Accountability & Responsibility in a Digital World: Paul Davis at TEDxStMaryCSSchool (Transcript)

What I found out four and half years ago, so to speaking, is this is the most rewarding time of my life – education and giving knowledge back.

When my mother gave me, I am now able to give it you. I have always followed the footsteps of mom, who at the time was single mom because my parents split up. And she gave me all the values to move forward in life. And everyday that I do something, I want to make my mom proud, because she gave me the opportunity to who I am today.

Having said that, at young age you have ton of accountability and responsibility. The responsibility is yours. The accountability is to your parents. I speak to the principal all the time where I heard of stories of kids coming into the office, who have participated in cyber bullying and said that that was a mistake, I didn’t mean to do that, it was an accident. And I looked at the principal and I said those are pathetic excuses, because there is no such thing as accidental cyber bullying or mistake. I can simply explain how cyber bullying occurs.

Number 1, you have to type in and take a picture to do the hurt, to initiate the pain. That’s an action item. So if I make an improper comment I have typed that out, then I have to actually transmit it, meaning, I post it or send it from one device to another device. So the person sees it. Two action items don’t equal a mistake or an accident. They equal intent, meaning it was intentional.

I met a father who said to me, “I don’t know what my son was thinking then.” I looked at him and said, “I know. He was thinking about hurting someone, because he has to think about it before he typed it and transmitted it.” So I want to put excuses aside and I want everyone to step up. You are in power with technology, that is how privileged you are, because you are in a country where your parents work so hard to empower you with that technology. Be respectful, because they own it.

You know, before I came over here today, I stopped off a mobility store, and I walked in and I said, “My daughter wants to buy a phone. I want to give it to her.” And I asked the lady how old she needs to be. She says 18. I said I wanted her to come in, I wanted her picture so she has to be 18. So students, if I ask you how many of you own your phones, the majority will put up your hands. The reality is you don’t. Your parents own those devices. You see what happened was when you purchased the phone, your parents made the financial transaction.

Number 2, they signed the contract with the telephone company, because you cannot, you are not an adult. Number 3, they pay the monthly bill. You may pay for the phone yourself, which was responsible. You have actually given them the money to pay for the bill, but it is their name on the contract and makes the financial transactions all the time. If the principal confiscates a phone, hands it over to the police officer, that police officer investigates it. Your name does not come up, Your parents name comes up.

So I always talk to kids, you love and respect your parents. Think about how to use these technologies when you go online, because every time you go online, you leave digital trails of all your actions. Now some people say digital trails, digital footprints are the same thing. I actually break them down into two. Let’s talk about digital trails. Let me give you some examples – sending a text message, the sending device, the receiving device, the servers in between. If I send a text message and it’s hateful, frightening, bullying and racist, I can delete the message of my device to not get in trouble. But the person who receives it now has a copy on their device. If they report to law enforcement and they investigate it, they can contact both phone companies and get the information of when I sent the message and when that message was received.

When you go online and you send an email, emails leave so many digital trails. It’s unimaginable. How many servers they hit before they actually hit the recipient’s device. I want to use your teacher as an example. Let’s say your team comes to school and they give you a test. And they sit behind the computer and decide to email 25 friends and family about a big party to have on the weekend. That is a mistake because school board will know when they send the email, at what time, from what computer, to whom,most contacts of that email, and that computer was where the teacher should be teaching and the school board will know.

What about at school the principles decide I need to do some shopping. I am a principal, I can’t leave, but I need to do some shopping. So they spend an hour on walmart.ca to do some shopping. Then they come back with a big smile on face as the order will be shipped and no one knows. They are wrong. As the school board knows when they did, how long they were online, and when they left. These are trails of the actions. Every time you post something on KIK, Facebook, Twitter, every example up there leaves a trail. You know that Ask website where you thought it was anonymous. Well, for those at same merry, I busted that myth. I showed them exactly we are asked if I am service resigned. And how long law enforcement has access to your IP addresses, the content we sent, received and posted.

I know you guys use the thing called Yek? Yok, Yek, Yak? I am making fun. Most people think no one will know, that is completely anonymous. Look at the legal section within Yik Yak, you know what you will find? You will find how they will relinquish information to law enforcement with a simple subpoena. None of these trails disappear and they lead to your digital footprints.

Let me give you an example of digital footprints. What you write to your hard drive is not physically written. What you write to a memory card, a flash drive, your smartphone, if you are a console gamer – many have hard drives – it will write the information to the hard drive. Cloud storage. People think the cloud is virtual, it is out there. The cloud is a physical hard drive except it gives you easy access to what you post up on the web. But it is physically written somewhere on a hard drive.

So go back to the point #1, it is written there, and of course your footprints, stamp every time you surf a social network site. Why? Because it is posted. Now let us talk about digital trails and footprints. You transmit something from your smartphone to Facebook, you left the trail and the footprint. You send something from your computer to cloud storage. You have got the stamp, the footprint on your computer, and the trail to the cloud storage. You have got another footprint on cloud storage. Handheld device to Instagram. You post a simple comment, you like the picture, you leave the trail what is permanently online in the digital footprint. We can go through example after example after example.

But I am here to tell you you leave both trails and footprints every time you go online. Now when your teacher’s nerve going up, we had to say a picture worth a thousand words. But that was all up to interpretation. So if we show ten people the same picture, their thousand words will be different. Now a picture is a book, a digital book. So what you look at visually when I look at it as a programmer, as a coder, I look at it digitally, meaning, time, date, location, aperture setting, lighting settings. All kinds of information is written to a picture. So that picture to me, believe it or not, and I am in bounce. But I am at a hill called Sunshine. The only way you will know by looking at that picture that I am at the Sunshine is by looking at the map behind me.

If you look closely enough, as I analyze the picture, you can see in the reflection of my visor the chairlift that is off to the side and chairlift has a name. And if you google that name, you would see Sunshine. But what happens if you could not see the chairlift? Or you could not see the map? Well, analyzing the picture using binary code because binary code makes a picture zeros and ones. You would analyze the time, day, location of where the picture was taken, which is precise as I remember sending that picture over to my wife and they are able to decode it. So these trails are real. You know how sophisticated pictures are. You know the bad people that want to bring harm to all different countries won’t use a word to give acknowledgement. They send messages within images, JPEGs, because images are made of binary code. They are actually in that messages, in certain components of pictures, and when its picture is received, that person intended to receive pictures is now decoding it and looking at what the message is. And law enforcement have to go through pictures.

So think about that from national security level, and when they are investigating a picture that was sent from one device to another in case there was an inappropriate picture. I let google track me. Give you one more example about digital trails. I was in Calgary for two weeks. One day I decided I want to let Google track me. So here is what I did. I had Google follow me from the moment I woke up in my hotel, tick both two schools I went to that day. So I left my hotel. I went to school A. Then I went to a Starbucks. And then I went to school B. After school B, before I spoke to the parents of both schools together, I went back to the hotel and took a nap. After that, I had a light bite. I went back to the school. And after that I was invited to a function which was on the western of Calgary. After that, I went back to the hotel. It tracked everywhere I was going precisely.

Just to finalize it, the trails do not lie. So listen, when it comes to cyber bullying, students have always said, “It is a matter of how and when you roll that card.” Today you do not cyber bullying, as you love, care and respect each other. It is obviously the best reason why you would not hurt others. If you happen to go home this weekend and bully another person online digitally from your home on your computer, the next day when your principal is investigating what happened, they actually have to address the bully as two students are involved.

Now principals have three options. Number 1, give the bully a warning. Number 2, suspend the bully from school. Number 3, call on the police. If your principal has to call the police, well, a suspension can still be an issue, but now the police do not care about that, they care about criminal law. And they want to see if what you did violate the criminal law. And you all know everyone in this room, you are not kid anymore. You now are young offender. So these charges can be laid against you.

The day after you turn twelve years old, it is called twelve years plus a day. You are criminally chargeable by law. But you do not have to worry about that as you love, care and respect each other. I just need you to know that in your mind. So what happen if you get cyber bullying? I have always told kids every day, “Don’t ever respond to a bully.” I know it is an emotional piece. Move away from it. What I need you to do is I need you print out a picture, post, comment, chat session, screenshot, get all that evidence together and bring it to an adult that you trust, show them what has hurt you. Let the adult, whether be a teacher, a principal, a guidance counselor, your parents, a police officer, show to them, let them deal with it.

We, the adults, as our ethical and moral duty in life, are to help guide and protect you. Bring it to us, say “I need help.” And let us deal with it, let the bully get caught. Let them get dealt with. They left trails behind. But I need you to speak out. And finally when you leave school, you will leave with two things guaranteed to students – an education and reputation. You spend every year of your life earning an education. You have also built up reputation, social media. What happens when you go looking for a job? You will submit a resume having your first name, last name, your address, email address, phone number, where you went to school, what jobs you had. When the employer looks that up, they are able to look you up online, and now judge you based on your online activity. Those negative digital trails can supersede your education. So you can be the best qualified for the job, but if the trail says you posted an inappropriate picture, you disrespect people, you do something that just goes against what they like the candidate, they take both documents, rip them up. You know that is a violation of human rights, right?

You know what the problem is? No one will ever know what happened. Why? Because it is happening online. So please when you go online, I want you to do something. I want you always to think, whether your parents are here or not, I am going to make them proud. If you have that voice in the back of your head, when you use the technology given to you, you will always make the right decisions. Thank you very much for listening.

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