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Is the West Out-Surveilling China? - Paul Walsh | Ep. 167
Description
I call Paul Walsh a surveillance-tech whistleblower. Professionally he’s known as an independent technical expert on online safety, privacy, fraud, espionage and phishing, with global patents and advisory to agencies, governments & corporations. An early AOL pioneer, he co-invented the content labels behind account verification and advised the UK government during its first parliamentary inquiry into online child safety. He advocates for child safety, and civil liberties while exposing surveillance, state power and AI & big tech overreach. We discuss Digital ID’s core role, "protect the children" as a wrapper for social media bans, Chat Control and device scanning, and why Paul believes Western democracies are now outbuilding Russia and China on surveillance.
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LINKS
Paul on X: https://x.com/Paul__Walsh
Paul on Substack: https://paulfwalsh.substack.com/
Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwalsh/
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Watch on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoice
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CHAPTERS
00:00 - Coming Up...
02:29 - Introduction: Paul Walsh
03:22 - Governments & Big Tech Collaboration
05:39 - Identity Verification at the Heart of Everything
06:49 - Banned by AI, Exiled for Life
08:49 - Child Safety as the Trojan Horse: Australia, US, EU & UK
13:10 - Ad-Break: Ledn & Abundant Mines
15:35 - Parental Controls Are Built Into Every Phone
18:32 - 14 Years Ago: UK Government Ignored His Advice
23:57 - Why Australia’s Social Media Ban Was Built to Fail
27:54 - Efrat’s Substack Ban in Australia
29:46 - “Robust Age Verification” Means ID for Everyone
32:36 - Ad-Break: Trezor
33:08 - What Edward Snowden Showed Us
35:39 - Chat Control 1.0 in the EU
39:33 - Chat Control 2.0 Removing End-to-End Encryption
40:36 - Apple’s iMessage & ChatGPT: Consent Nobody Gave
49:15 - Surveillance by Flock, Carbyne & more
54:05 - Caring About Kids Without Surveilling Everyone
58:35 - Is the West Out-Surveilling Russia & China?
01:08:11 - Meta’s Lawsuit & Laws That Reward It
01:13:07 - Digital ID, Ireland’s Wallet & the Digital Euro
01:17:17 - Ireland’s Big Tech Dependency & Public Private Partnerships
01:23:29 - Can This Be Rolled Back?
01:25:31 - “AI Broke Out”: What’s Really Going On
01:29:24 - VPNs, Palantir & Predictive Policing
01:31:56 - CBDCs: Who Decides How Much You Can Spend?
01:34:42 - Privacy & Decentralization: GrapheneOS, Nostr, White Nois