Wiretapping the Secret Service can be easy and fun | Bryan Seely | TEDxKirkland

In 2014, Bryan Seely hacked the Secret Service and the FBI, and then turned himself in to alert authorities to the problem. He'll tell you what you can do about it in his very entertaining talk.

Bryan Seely has garnered a great deal of national attention in the last year. He recognized there were some critical problems with the websites we use most often. He learned that not only is our personal security threatened, but so is our national security. To prove his point, Seely hacked the Secret Service and the FBI last year, and then turned himself in to alert authorities to the problem. He'll tell you what you can do about it in his very entertaining talk.

[ShinChan]

Mr. Bryan Seely, if you ever read this message, I wanna let you know that I laughed.
I laughed.
A lot.

[matteorayner]

The poor man is dying out there. Absolutely silent crowd 😕

[Lunascaped]

"My friends call me Bryan"

Subtitles: *(Laughter)*
Rip

[dwemeri]

And Google is like: Yeah, let me recommnd this video

[ChrisHanline]

Every single person on the production team of this talk: *"STAY ON THE RED CIRCLE"*

[theradioactiveplayer]

love how everybody's focusing on the audience, and not the fact that this is the single largest security risk of (perhaps) all time

[ColocasiaCorm]

"My friends call me Bryan."

*silence*

[josephorlandi]

If you wanna get em to fix it just make a fake google headquarters and when people call just forward it to Bing. Make them realize how it feels to be in the receiving end.

[fikzwolf]

Google: *Has a problem*

Also Google: *Let me recommend this video of our problems*

[gp]

I literally ignore EVERY AD I see regardless of where it is. Seems like that was the right choice...

[SecondLifeAround]

Secret Service: "You're not under arrest but HIRED!!! Heyyy ooooh!!"

[TheOfficialDaBoogaloo]

*The mic he was wearing didn't pick up the audience, everyone calm down.*

[zufalllx]

"Edward's Snow Den"

Bravo.

[kysier]

Based on activity history, Google/YT suppressed this video for years.

[tommykarrick]

This is still my favorite TED talk, I wonder if this has ever been fixed but I’m inclined to assume that no it hasn’t
Also, for everyone saying “tough crowd” it’s cause they didn’t mic the crowd, Tom Scott talked about it once. The crowd was fine in person you just can’t hear it

[smode]

And in 2017, 2 years after this, Google puts out news stories claiming that Google researchers found this problem. They even used his opening example of the locksmith. "As an example, a fraudster might list a locksmiths at a location on Google Maps when they don’t actually have premises there. When a potential customer calls the phone number listed, they are put through to a central call centre that hires unaccredited contractors to do jobs all over. Often the customer ends up being coerced into paying more than the original quoted price." UNREAL

[verdatum]

Grey-hat hacking done BEAUTIFULLY. This is the true hacker archetype. One of the best Hacking Ted talks I've seen.

[ariakusakabe]

He seems like such a normal guy yet he stepped up to do something so selfless and pure! He may be a bit monotoned but you can hear the sincerity in his voice. It’s upsetting that big companies always get away with shameless deeds.

[attorneyronfrey]

The risks he took were extremely courageous. His freedom was truly at stake.

[lovetoeatallthefood]

Sadly, I'm not at all surprised by Google's failure to take any meaningful action to address this problem. I run a number of mail servers and GMail has been one of the largest, most consistent sources of spam that they receive - almost all of it SEO/web dev spam from India. I did some testing recently and, 30 days later, more than 75% of the GMail addresses I'd reported to Google for spamming were still active. Though, "strangely, " they had terminated 100% of the addresses that I'd reported with the option "this sender appears to be impersonating Google" - funny, that.

And, of course, there's the $500 million fine they received a few years ago thanks to their profiting from - and turning a blind eye to - ads for counterfeit pharmaceuticals.