In the spirit, you have peace. In the spirit, you have joy. You don't need to learn the voice of God. You know the voice of God, but in your spirit. Revelation, you have it. Power, you have it. You say, Brother David, what are you telling me that I don't need to advance, that I don't need to grow? No, I'm saying that because the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and he possesses all of those things, that those things have already been deposited in you. So spiritual growth is not me receiving those things. Spiritual growth is when my mind, my thoughts, my emotions begin to align with who I already am in the spirit.


Good day, fellow investors. So the coronavirus is the topic of this week. And in this week's stock market news, I really want to discuss that, define the scenarios, give a report from Italy. Yes, I have been to Italy to see with my own eyes. Sorry, sorry, if I contagia you, please subscribe and click that notification bell so that we go through this new coronavirus investment journey together. So we'll discuss the situation, Europe now, new contagions, very interesting, from unfortunately health perspective and from an investing perspective. We'll then discuss the fundamentals of investing, which is the topic of this channel. As always, what would Buffett do? What are the risks and rewards? And of course, my strategy. Let's dig immediately into the content. If you look at the headlines, please subscribe to Will Wall Street Journal to Bloomberg to everything. And if I just summarize it, worst year since 2009, JPMorgan, cutting profit estimates for SAP 500 and globally, and then new cases all over the world. So it's really, really spreading fast. The fear and greedy index, I think a month, two months ago we used it and we showed how it was pretty positive, extreme greed levels. And usually when there is extreme greed, quite often is followed by extreme fear where we are now. And the result of extreme fear is this decline in the SAP 500 index of almost 12% in five days. And I don't know how it will be this Friday, but probably very bad because I'm filming this just before the market opens. The problem is in such a situation that the theater door, the exit door with the full theater is usually very, very small when things like this happen and therefore you see such declines. Now we are seeing new situations, new contagions all over the world, which increases the panic and has a big economic impact. I'll show you in a moment the situation in Italy where I have been yesterday and a little bit around the globe so that we put the perspective on what's going on and then we'll define scenarios and those scenarios will help us define how to behave. We recently have had two new situations, three new in the Netherlands. Italy is with a number of patients growing very, very fast and you'll see Italy is blocked. Now there are also good things. Housing is getting a jolt but that might be a very short-term situation because of low interest rates because of everybody rushing to safety, interest rates are falling, which allows you for cheaper and cheaper mortgages but then you have to know what you're buying and if people start losing their jobs, having less income, less stock market values, then also the market, the real estate market will be hurt. So I've been to the north of Italy, had the meeting, the borders were open so we went, we met two people and did some shopping but the key is that on the road, there were only trucks, no cars. We went to a shopping center to do some shopping. It was completely empty so you can't get coronavirus because it's really empty. No coronaviruses in the area we were but the highway, everything is totally empty. A friend went to Milan to the rail station today, 8.30 in the morning. It's usually packed like this that you don't see, you can barely move. As you can see, it's empty. The train to, the fast train to Rome, to Bologna that he took is also empty, which is really interesting how, okay, now there is the virus but people are really protecting, taking care of themselves and hopefully this contagion will ease out like we have been hearing from China where the situation is easing out thanks to the quarantine and everything. However, this will have an economic impact and we have seen Yao Kai's video reporting from Japan. Airports are really, really empty also in Japan and outbound flights from the United States are down 20%. That's inevitable, we'll have an impact on earnings, on the economy and on stock prices. So that's inevitable. We just have to see now how to behave and we'll behave in relation to the scenarios out there. This is the global situation, but as I said in my video from three weeks ago, discussing the coronavirus, any new outbreaks will have the similar, a similar impact as we have seen in China to other regions and now those regions are spreading all over the world. The virus is, let's say, a severe form of flu from the numbers there, so 80% mild, mild symptoms, unfortunately with the older, with those that have a precondition, it is unfortunately very, very deadly. And this is therefore logically, rationally, close the borders, quarantine, try to protect as much as we can, which will have repercussion and has already huge repercussions on the economy that we will see when the earnings come out in the next three, six, 12 months, depending on how long will this coronavirus peak because if it peaks now during the spring days and then it eases out in the summer, then it won't be such a big hit. Perhaps it will be a normal flu, but if it stays for a year, two years, we will learn how to live with that, but it will have big implications for the economy. However, in the very long term, the world will again be a better place that's given. The question now is how much will the impact be? How big will the impact be? Whether it's time to buy now or to wait, that's impossible to know and impossible to predict. So you have to do everything in stages, see who was going on, what's becoming cheap and what is the actual risk reward of investments. The key issue is something else when it comes to investing. The key issue is that there is a lot of debt in the system being pumped from money and even companies like 42% of the market in Europe that have negative interest rates will have a difficult time repaying, refinancing that debt if there is no business for them to do. Global US corporate debt has skyrocketed, so if there is a slowdown, there will have to be more debt or saving or intervention from the governments, from central banks, that's a given. And now when something like that happens, you see the wisdom of Warren Buffett. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. And now the tide is going out and you see who has the cash, 125 billion for Buffett and who hasn't and who has to sell whatever they have to sell. Stronger balance sheet stocks are doing better, respectively, than weaker balance sheet in stocks. And you can see when the periods are good, then the bad balance sheets do extremely better, outperform the good balance sheets. So now it's time you say, okay, what will happen? And that's something you never know. Should you jump from safety to non-safety? Impossible to know. Better to be always ready for anything. What will the governments do? I think they will print money when the occasion comes in Europe, if there is a slowdown, then they will print money. If there is a global slowdown, everybody will do it. So it will have, let's say, an even impact in the world. But if Europe starts printing money, less business, less everything, then it might even lead to hyperinflation if the rest of the world is doing good. So again, uncertainty, we are in an environment of high, high uncertainty. And now we have seen the situation in Hong Kong has been difficult for six months. What are they doing? They are giving 10,000 Hong Kong dollars to each adult on their bank account. That's what governments will do in the future, but we'll see the value of that money and how much it will help. On companies, it depends on the company personal. It depends on you. Now, what's my strategy? Well, I'm a net buyer of stocks. I want to accumulate great businesses, hold them for a long time. And these opportunities, when I see the market 11% down, when I see a hit on the economy, on earnings, likely recession going forward, now I don't buy immediately. I simply will start deploying my money over the next six months, the cash that I have into great investment opportunities patiently, slowly, just improving my portfolio. As I do all the time. Nothing changes for me. Stocks are 11% down. What's the level where they've been a few months ago, six months ago. So it's nothing has really happened from such a perspective. If the market falls 40%, it's down where it was five years ago. So if you build a portfolio of great value of businesses, of dividends, of earnings, of growth, then, well, stock prices are there, but it's not something we depend on. If you depend on that, then we know you're swimming naked and the tide will flush you out. So that's investing, that's what I do, those who want to do and get notified when I do something, see my portfolio, check my stock markets research platform and you have the link in the description of the video below. On the long term, well, I'm very positive that in the next five, 10 years, two years, probably already one year, we will learn how to live with the coronavirus if it becomes the new flu, let's say. The flu kills thousands of people each year and we live with it, we learn to live with it. So this will probably be the same case with the coronavirus and the unfortunate, but likely new viruses that will come in the future. So we have to take the short term out, okay, the world, Europe will be frozen significantly, but what will happen, what will be the reaction, what will be the situation long term is something we have to think when it comes to long-term investing. I'm always positive, if you're not positive, what's the point of life? So I think that over the next five, 10 years the situation will be good if you buy good businesses, businesses that sell things that people need that are cash flow profitable, that have a more competitive advantage. What Buffett has been doing for the past 50 years and will continue to do and what will Berkshire continue to do in the future? That's also what we do on this channel. So subscribe and click that notification bell. A nice chart that I have found related from the Wall Street Journal related to macro events. And you can see that during the event there are significant hits from the fall of France, from Pearl Harbor, from Nixon resigning, from the 1987 stock market crash, from the unfortunate September 11 terrorist attacks, Lehman Brothers. So always negative, short-term negative. But if you're buying businesses, you see that over the long-term and as you increase the long-term, the 10 year later returns are all positive. And that's something that is very interesting to see how short-term, long-term, usually the long-term wins over the short-term. Just a quick look at what's next on the channel. Carnival Cruises, extremely requested video to make in the comments. So I'll give my perspective on it. I'll dedicate tonight probably and put the video on Saturday or Sunday. Then I've enjoyed the Buffett interview. I'll try to summarize that during this weekend and publish it, perhaps also Sunday. And I'll discuss, make a short video on discussion when stocks are down like now. Is it good or bad? You'll enjoy that video. So again, subscribe. Looking forward to your comments in the comment section below. Click like if you enjoyed this video and I'll see you in the next video.


Hi guys, Noah from Kickin' Their Bass TV, and me and my partner Chris are getting ready for a Lake Eufala Tournament, it's a TVF state tournament, which TVF is pretty much a high school for FLW. So it's a state tournament. So we're gonna try it. We're gonna try to get in the top, what is our goal? Top five, let's say top five. So we're pretty much just prepping. We're getting everything out of the boat. That's irrelevant to Lake Eufala. I don't know if you guys have fished it, but it's a lot of lily pads and grass and stuff like that. So we're used to the linear and the open water. So we're taking most of the stuff out and we're throwing in some frogs and all kinds of other stuff. And I'm having to get all the big poles out of the big meat stick poles. Got my Revo rocket, that's a nine gear ratio reel. So yeah guys, getting everything ready. Took off all my flora carton and I'm putting on some braid. And this is the stealth braid by spider wire. This is 30 pound. And the reel I have it on is a Revo rocket. That's the nine gear ratio reel. And it's all my legend tournament. This is a heavy powered fast action. This is seven, 10. So I mean it's a big rod. It's meant for a swim bait, but it's such a stiff rod that it's gonna be used for flipping too. Last and final pole. And we have one more right there. Here's all the rods right here. Got the raw gloves on, tied everything on. We pretty much stripped most of the line off of everything and put on braid like right here. All of these Revo rockets got braid. That's my punching one. Here's a swim jig. Swimming horn it lose. Spinner bait, chatter bait. That's a new Zeeman one. Things looking pretty sharp. Just got those in from Tackle Warehouse. That's a Zeeman Pop Shad.  Little top water bait, soft plastic. Put braid on that. Put braid on this one. That's the frog rod. Big meat stick. Then a little swim bait. So yeah, I mean we're going down today's Wednesday. We're leaving after school tomorrow, Thursday. We're gonna skip school Friday. So we're gonna go there after school and we're pretty much gonna practice Friday. We're just gonna pretty much figure out what the fish are doing because we don't know 100% if they're gonna bite that swim bait or anything. So my dad will throw one of those baits. Chris will throw one of those baits. I'll throw one of those baits. We'll figure out what's the most productive layer down to a couple. So on tournament day, we're not fumbling. We already have the baits that we need. Now I'm gonna throw them in the rod locker. Let them all out. They're all organized. And some rod gloves. I would highly, highly, highly recommend it. Keeps it so much more organized. Keeps you from knocking out your eyelids, which is a big deal. I can tell you we have a lot of pulls when we've knocked out some eyelids and then we start using these. It's really happening. This is about one of the organizers of the rod lockers I've been in. Only a couple pulls in here. I'm sure we'll throw a couple more. All right, now we have all the boxes that we got everything out of right here. It's just a big mess right now. Got some rods, got some reels that we're not using. So we'll put those away. Most likely there's reels right there.  We'll take them with us and we'll also get some line so we can respawn and say we need another braided reel. So we'll be prepared and everything. Just always come prepared guys. Make sure you're ready for the tournament. So you don't have to go do some pit stops while you're down there. What we decided to do is just grab the line and some of the reels and we're just gonna throw them in the back of the rod locker right here. Keep it with the rods and reels. Keep it out of the way. So I'm gonna be in the way with all the baits. Throw in the chatter baits, lip of the screen baits in the back compartment. We're just really packed right here. We have a lot of stuff that we're wanting to bring the other compartment, crisp all of his stuff. If you watched my tournament preparation video, I showed how soon my partner stuff is in the other side. I mean, we're packed. As you can see, the boat's gonna be weighted down a little bit, but I mean, it's what we're gonna have to do. Once we figure out what they're buying Friday, then we can take some stuff out and lighten up the boat. As you guys can see, got everything put up. Graphs are on, covers are on. We're gonna load the boat home. So once me and Chris get out of school, we'll come home. Throw his rods in, because he still has to re-spool a couple. I actually just notified him about this tournament. My buddy Weston was gonna fish it, but he ended up getting sick. There's always something with him, breaking his leg and everything. But once we come home from school, we're gonna throw the cover on, and then we're gonna leaf in there. What time do you think we'll get there? About seven o'clock. Seven o'clock? Seven o'clock, so it's gonna be hot down there, sorry. It's gonna be like 90. What'd you say, 95? 94, yeah. 94 degrees, that's crazy, because I swear we're just fishing at 30 degree while the freaking ice coming off your line. But yeah, guys, that's pretty much what we did to prep. We are gonna be vlogging. I'm gonna vlog Friday, and then Saturday, so it's probably gonna be two separate vlogs. I may put them all together, I'm not sure yet, just depending on how much footage I get. And I'll also get some tournament footage and try to make a video for you guys. So a lot to come from you follow. I believe it's the 24th that we have a tournament on you follow for Bass. This one's for FLW, and so we're gonna be fishing that one too. So a lot to come from you follow. So we're pretty much prepping for that tournament with this tournament, so it's gonna be some fun. So I'll catch you guys down there. Stay tuned for the vlogs. I'm sure they're gonna be coming out Sunday. Tournament this is Saturday, so. And I'll keep you guys updated if you haven't followed me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Definitely go check my pages out. And that's where I post updates every single day. So you guys can stay tuned to the channel. So thank you guys for watching. See you guys next time.


I was born and raised in the city of Bideford, Maine. The city itself is full of somewhat garbage people, but I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else. I had many wonderful memories. As the beach was an hour walk away, the backyard was sprawling, and the woods that lead down to the river were right next to my house. It runs about 135 miles from New Hampshire and splits the towns of Bideford and Soco, emptying out into the ocean beyond. Most mothers, my own included, did everything in their power to make sure children didn't go to the water until three people died at the beginning of the year. This may sound morbid, and indeed it is. But for good reason. All the children in the cul-de-sac knew bits of information, usually clashing, but I first heard the full story told by an old man named Rodney. Rodney was an old Native American man who lived down the other side of my backyard. His grandson Josh and I would often play games with each other and became pretty good friends. Rodney was a good spirited man, always telling us fun stories about the people from his lineage and usually scary ones when we would put the tent up out back and camp out for the night. It was one such night when I heard the curse of the Soco River. Back in the year 1675, Winter Harbor, now known as Bideford, was well established by the Europeans. The local Natives generally welcomed them and boats would come and go along the river. One such boat carried three white men who were said to be drunk as a skunk and meaner than one too. A woman who had given birth to the chief's son was upon one of the islands carrying the child in tow. They decided to have a little fun and test out a story they once heard. It was said that Native Americans could doggie paddle from birth and they wanted to find out, most likely making a few bets on it. Despite the woman's screams, they ripped the baby from her arms and threw him into the water. Unsurprisingly, the child drowned. Some say she went in after him, only to drown herself. What eventually did happen is the chief found out and placed a curse on the river. Until the day white men clear the banks, the spirits of the river would take three lives a year. Some say the three were killed right there, but regardless, there were no delegations made. In fact, it was said to ignite violence between the tribe and the Europeans kicking off the war of King Philip. There was a little more to it than that, I'm sure, but it's been about 26 years now, so my memory is a tidbit fuzzy. The one thing I can remember, in fact, it's probably what caused my terrible lifelong nightmares, is the night he took us out fishing. Conveniently enough, Rodley took us by canoe out to Skelton Dam. It's a popular place for fishing and swimming. In late summer, the sun's warm while being shaded by the large forest around it, and as the sun goes down, the sounds of wildlife make it an unparalleled place to relax. He'd paddled us downstream for about an hour when finally the night came. He didn't catch a whole lot, and honestly at seven years old, I hardly knew what I was doing, but I had fun with Josh and Rodney was telling more of his stories of the past. I don't know what time it was, possibly 10 or 11, but fog began rolling across the water. Rodney made a crack about the spirits making their way from the deep when all the noise from the banks stopped. There were no insects, birds or frogs to be heard, just the quiet sloshing of water on wood. I don't think we even noticed at first, not until I could see the dead serious look on old Rodney's face. He didn't say it, but he was scared. He said something to the effect of we better pack it in so we reeled in our fishing poles and he started the long trip back up the river. Being children, Josh and I didn't really panic. Rodney was experienced in the woods, and though he stayed silent, he didn't much let on that something was wrong. He just kept his eyes forward and worked the oars. This went on for a while. The sounds of nature were still silent. I don't know how Rodney didn't get lost, but I assume it wasn't his first time in conditions such as this. The closer we got, the more we let go of our fear. That is, until the crying began. I couldn't tell where from, but like a gunshot out of the silence, this shrill high pitch sobbing rang out from the land. It would be so loud, like it was right next to you. Then seemed to move away, only to return just as quickly. To make it worse, the sobbing would erupt into insane bursts of laughter. Even thinking about it now makes me shiver. Not a male or a female. It was something I can't possibly find words to match with. As it continued, we started to hear the sounds of something jumping through the forest, easily keeping pace with the boat. I tried to block most of it out, but that's not something that ever goes away.   But most of his efforts were spent rowing in a panic driven manner. The tone of his voice was quick and stern, and I believe he was praying. The sob crying stopped after a bit to our relief, however, it was short lived. A woman's voice shot out from somewhere, distant but also close in a blood freezing tone. It screamed, help me. I looked out through the fog. It wasn't a woman I saw, however. On the bank to the right, I could make out a thin figure. Not too many details were visible, aside from the long horns that sprouted up from its head like that of a deer. The image quickly melted back into the fog and disappeared. Once again, help me please could be heard from the bank, the opposite one, however, the one closest to us. As this happened, the sound of drums came and quickly crescendoed their way all around us like that of a dozen or more people playing drums. Many told us once again not to look and steer the canoe away towards the center of the river.  I say men, but they were all much too short and the shape wasn't quite right. They were all lined up along the shore, just staring at us as that ghastly cry for help continued to follow, switching sides from time to time. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life, including my current age.  The fog was a constant and would swallow everything almost as quickly as it appeared. As terrifying as the things on the bank were, at least they couldn't get to us. Or so I thought. We must have been pretty close to the boat launch by that point, but before we could get there, the sounds of splashing erupted on all sides of us. The occasional slosh of water told us there was something around our boat and it wasn't long until the knocking began. It was soft at first.  But they quickly got louder as if people were pounding their fists against the signs. It was getting so bad, I thought we were going to tip. And poor old Rodney was rowing like a madman. The panic on his face was as clear as day. He was no longer trying to be silent. And I could even see something trying to grab and pull at the oars. Well, we finally made it to the boat launch. Rodney practically throwing us on land. He didn't bother with our bags or fishing stuff either. We ran to his truck, still hearing drums beating all around us, now coupled with the sounds of loud growls. I can't tell you what for sure, but some sort of animals were pacing around the fog on all fours. They kept their distance, thank God. But before we were fully on the road, we were in for one more surprise. The branches and leaves of the trees off to the left of the truck began shuffling. The forest here is thick, so it was hard to see what it was, but some sort of large bird burst through the canopy and shot across the lake. I've never seen anything so monstrously huge in my life. Rodney later told me he believed it was a thunderbird. I'm not sure, but the wingspan was anywhere from 20 to 30 feet long. Since that night, I stayed away from the river. In fact, I moved halfway across the country. I can't really tell you a whole lot else from that night. I never got many answers myself. I can tell you, however, that I believe in the curse of the Saco River wholeheartedly, as well as its spirits, do not go into that river. Unless, of course, three people have already been found dead.


Okay, everybody count off? Good. Thanks. Anybody? Is an empty seat next to you? Raise your hand. Looks pretty full. Anyone know if this place has a fire code or not? Don't start fires. If you start a fire, you have to share. Some seats over there. People with hands, people who have their hands up have a seat next to them. So the smart money goes that way. The smart money is not in Vegas. All right. So hi there. I'm Bruce Schneier. Are there any questions? That was the easiest talk I ever did. If there are any questions, I'm happy to take them. Yes. There are actually mics here. There's one there and one I can't see behind the camera guy there. We'll find out, right? Yes, they work. That one works. First off, Bruce, thanks for coming out. Again, always pleasure to see you here. The question is, it's an old question, and I'm wondering if maybe you have any new insight into an answer on this. With cryptography becoming more in the kind of collective consciousness, especially with people who are less technically savvy, there has been an argument for a long time trying to explain to people that encryption is not security.  Do you have any insight on how to better explain to those people why that's fundamentally flawed? It's interesting. I think you're right that a lot of people think of crypto as a panacea, where in fact it is just a tool and a very powerful tool for a bunch of reasons, but it doesn't automatically make security. Any data has to be used. One of the things that the Snowden documents have really brought forward, which I think is a good thing we're talking about, is metadata. Data that has to be unencrypted and consistent to operate. This cell phone is a great surveillance device because the metadata where this phone is has to be in the clear. Otherwise it can't ring. I'm thinking about that, I should turn the ringer off. So there's a lot of things encryption can't do. Encryption can protect data at rest, but if you are, I'm going to make this up. Target corporation, you have a database of credit card numbers that you're using, it can't be encrypted because you can't, or at least encrypted, the key has to be there. I talk about encryption as a tool, not as security, just like your door lock is a really important tool, but it doesn't magically make your house secure. What encryption does, and I think this is a real important, is it, I think that NSA surveillance, it forces the listeners to target. What we know about the NSA is that they might have a bigger budget than anyone else on the planet, but they're not made of magic. They are limited by the same laws of physics and math and economics as everybody else. And if data is unencrypted, if they can tap a transatlantic internet cable, they can get everything. But if stuff is encrypted, they have to target who they're listening to. I mean, if the NSA wants into your computer, they are in, period, right, done. And if they're not, there's one of two things that's true. One, it's illegal, and they're following the law. And two is you're not high enough on the priorities list. So what encryption does is it forces them to go through their priorities list. And they can hack into your computer and there's no problem, but they can't hack into everybody's computer. So encryption is just a tool, but it's actually a really powerful tool because it denies a lot of the bulk access and forces the listeners to do targeted access. And there's a lot of security benefit in that. All right. Are you first in line? Yes, I believe I am. Okay, so I just want to see what that mic is. I wanted to see your opinion on the back door that Obama wants. Which one does he want? You know, so... Okay, true. So I'm not sure Obama personally has an opinion here. Why the bad guys are the only ones that are going to be able to... I'm not sure Obama personally has an opinion here. It's interesting. This is the same back door that the FBI has been wanting since the mid-90s. In the mid-90s, we called it the crypto war. Now we call that the first crypto war. And so number three, I'm done. It is you guys. I only do two crypto wars per lifetime. So it's interesting. You're referring to PGP? No, in general. FBI director Comey gave a really interesting talk, really Q&A at the Aspen Security Forum. Actually, I recommend listening to these talks. This is a very high level, mostly government discussions about cybersecurity, national security. Really interesting stuff. He was interviewed by, I think, by Wolf Blitzer, who actually asked a great question saying, what do you say? This is kind of personal, but why don't you like the term lone wolf terrorist? That was kind of funny. Anyway, he was talking about the going dark problem and the need for back doors. And this is the scenario he is worried about. And he's very explicit. It is an ISIS scenario. ISIS is a new kind of adversary in the government's eyes because of the way it uses social media.  ISIS does it with Twitter. And this freaks the government out. So this story, and they swear up and down this happens, is that ISIS is really good at social media at Twitter and YouTube and various other websites. They get people to talk to them who are in the U.S., like you guys, except a little less socially adept and maybe kind of a little crazier. But they find these marginal people and they talk to them. And the FBI can monitor this and go FBI ra ra. But then they say, go use this secure app. And then this radicalized American does. They talk more securely. And the FBI can't listen. And then this and then, you know, dot, dot, dot explosion. So this is the scenario that the FBI is worried about. Very explicitly. And they've used this story again and again. And they say this is real. This is happening. Okay. Now, it's sort of interesting. If this is true, I mean, let's let's take it as let's take it as read that as true. Oh, the other phrase they use is actually a new phrase I recommend. They're talk about the time between flash to bang. It flashes when they find the guy, bang is the, you know, when the explosion happens. And that time is decreasing. So the FBI has to be able to monitor.  And this really bugs them. I have a warrant, dammit. Why can't I listen? But I can get the metadata. I can't listen. So if you think about that as a scenario and assume that it's true, it is not a scenario that any kind of mandatory back door solves. Because the problem isn't that the main security apps are encrypted. The problem is there exists one security app that is encrypted.  So the problem is not what he thinks it is. The problem is general purpose computers. The problem is an international market in software. So I think the back door is a really bad idea for a whole bunch of reasons. I've written papers about this. But what I've come to realize in the past few weeks is it's not going to solve the problem the FBI claims it has. And I think we need to start talking about that. Because otherwise we're going to get some really bad policy. So the question there, you've got to like a good morning. So this will probably go less in the direction of for instance crypto. My question is somewhat twofold. I'm going to focus more on the first one in one at a time because otherwise the perfect in the course of day to day interactions, both with security people and with less security minded folks. I've come to the conclusion that operational security is very difficult to instill. From your experience is there an easier approach to getting the understanding of OPSEC through to lay people? So I think OPSEC is pretty much impossible.  Dealing with his mistress. And if the director of the CIA can't get OPSEC right, we're all done. This is very, we see that in the hackers at Hack Sony. We see people screwing up OPSEC again and again. I'm not sure there is a solution. Because good OPSEC, I mean good OPSEC is really and truly annoying. Right? Good OPSEC, mediocre OPSEC means leaving your cell phone at home and who's going to do that? It means not using email or for certain things. I've come to the belief that we're not going to be able to train people in good OPSEC. That the best security is going to be pretty good security that's ubiquitous. And so we saw some of this in some more of the Snowden documents. A lot of people read the real recent article that came out of Germany on X KeyScore. Really good article, actually OK article, really great document dump on documents on how X KeyScore works. This is one of the NSA's very flexible databases for monitoring the internet. And you can read their documents and they talk about how they can find people using encryption and roll up, basically roll up the networks. They can't read the traffic. They know who's talking to who. Remember metadata, encryption doesn't solve everything. And I'm reading this and it's clear you can do this with PGP as well. So you want to find out who's using encryption, it's easy if you monitor enough of the internet. And what that tells me is that someone would be better off not using the great encryption program they wrote or the really powerful one they've just downloaded, but the average one that everyone else is using. That you actually are better off using an iPhone with iMessage. Even though, you know, I'm pretty sure the FBI can get at it individually, but you can hide using it because we're all using it. You don't stand out. So I think there is a lot of power in that. You had a second part. Make it quick. You actually basically answered it. Excellent. It was for pros making the use of Opssec less obvious. Right. I think you make Opssec invisible. Yeah. Good security works. I mean, think of SSL. Good security works if people don't even know it's there. The encryption from the handset to the base station, great if it was better, but it's working because nobody knows it's there. So in thinking maybe not as thoroughly or deeply as I should about like cyber terrorist threats and bad actors that want to do corporations or, you know, infrastructure harm, these sorts of things, or just the public, right? It seems like all the ingredients are there for people to do really bad things. And there are a lot of holes in security flaws. What keeps there from being enough, you know, motivated bad actors and people, you know, what keeps them at bay? I think fundamentally people are good, right? Society works because most of us are honest. I mean, you're kind of looking to be funny, but none of you have jumped up and attacked the person sitting next to you, right? You laugh. But if this was a room full of chimpanzees, that would have happened. We are the only species that can get away with this.  So, I mean, this sounds weird, but I think a lot of what keeps the really bad things happening is most people don't want to do really bad things. If that wasn't true, society wouldn't work. So I think you write that all the pieces, a lot of pieces are there. There's a couple of things. Terrorism is harder than you think. I mean, yes, technically it can be easy, but the whole operation is actually harder, which is why you don't see a lot of terrorist attacks. And what you do see tend to be these lone wolves that wake up one morning and say, I'm going to do something bad, which know there's no conspiracy to detect. There are no mistakes you can make over the course of the planning. That flash to bang time is so short. So I really do think that's why. Something that's interesting, I ought to mention as long as we're on close topic, that it's a new tactic we're seeing more of. And we've seen it for a few years. Now we're seeing it, I think, a lot. We're going to see a lot more of it. This notion of institutional doxing. You can go into a company, take all of their stuff and publish it. It's freaking people out, right? This is what happened to Sony. This is what happened to the hacking team. The guy who did that is in this room, thank you very much. It's what might have happened to Ashley Madison, which is a little more awkward for some people. Right? If you remember a few years ago, it was H.B. Gary Federal. And I think this is a really interesting tactic because it empowers individuals against very powerful organizations. And it is the first, I think the first real counter-argument I've heard to the increasing practice of hiring a sociopathic CEO.  But I expect to see more of this. You know, I know people are noticing that WikiLeaks is publishing Saudi diplomatic cables. Man, they are corrupt country. But this is again, someone hacked in and is just dumping all this stuff. So that's an interesting example of a new bad thing that's being enabled by technology that's happening more and more of. But in general, I do worry about the bad things happening, but I think it's less common than we think because most people don't do them. It's the systemic stuff that bothers me. You know, that the Internet of Things and being able to hack cars and planes and heart monitors and, you know, other stuff. And the interconnection of those. I mean, I think we're going to see more unanticipated vulnerabilities.  And it's not just any complexity, it is nonlinear, tightly coupled complexity. And that's really what the net gives us. So we've got to be real careful there. Yes? I got to turn out a reading in practical cryptography years ago. I had occasion to go back and look at it recently in the hash section. I noticed at that time, you guys had assessed that our ability to analyze hash functions was good 10 to 20 years behind our ability to analyze the other primitives. And so I was wondering if you think that gap has closed in the last decade? I think we're much better at understanding hash functions now. We're not, you know, we're still implementing bad ones, but that's more legacy.  And I'm not going to bore everybody with it. I think I revise that in the revised edition of that book, which is cryptography engineering. And, but I do think we understand crypto, encryption primitives better than hash function primitives. Even though there's an interesting assembly, you can make one from the other. Which is why, and if people remember, when there was the hash function contest that NIST ran, what, five years ago, I built a hash function on top of a symmetric algorithm. Because I felt I understood that better than doing a hash function natively like Shah was. I'm not even convinced the NSA understood hash functions very well. You know, the with Shah they had a vulnerability, they fixed in Shah one, which still was a little dicey and it's been updated. So because a hash function is not something they're using in military applications much until recently. They didn't have their rich history like they had with encryption. The code in Reindale is not the code that's in AES. And I use two fish because I trust you more than I trust the feds. Do you think that AES is actually a trustworthy cypher? I think AES is. I trust AES. You know, it is Reindale. There are a bunch of tweaks in the parameters, but they're totally above board and kosher and everyone's happy with them. Reindale, it is weird because you can actually describe the algorithm in a linear, in an equation that fits on one page. It's kind of small type, but it fits on one page, which kind of freaks people out a little bit. But I do trust it. I think it is secure. I do not think there is a backdoor or anything snuck in. I truly don't. NIST did a great job with the AES process. With their SHA 3 process as well. I really do, you know, NIST unfortunately got tarred with that with the dual ECU and an energy generator. And they're trying to sort of rebuild their trust. But they've done a fantastic job with crypto primitives by and large. So, you know, I like AES. I mean, thanks for using two fish. I like it too.  But no, I use AES without reservation. And don't worry about it. As disturbing as the current crypto war is, something that actually scares me a lot are stories like Lava Bid or even the larger tech companies getting national security letters. I'm wondering what we can do as tech companies or just the InfoSec community in general to defend against governments secretly ordering companies to put backdoors into their products. So, this is actually, I think the thing that should freak us out the most. And to me, this is the biggest deal revelation of Snowden and all the stories around it. And Lava Bid especially. It's, you know, it's not that we believe that encryption was perfect and nobody can break it. But we did believe that the tech rose and fell on its own merits. And the idea that the government can go into a company and say you have to break your encryption and then lie to your customers about it is terrifying. The law can subvert technology. And we cannot, as a community, as a society, truly believe anything is secure as long as that's true.  And I blogged about this a couple of days ago. It didn't get enough play. It was kind of the last paragraph of a post. Maybe no one reads that far. That there is a persistent rumor going on around right now that Apple is in the FISA court fighting an order to backdoor iMessage and FaceTime. And Nicholas Weaver, I don't know if he's here this week, has written about how they could do that. I mean, how they can modify their protocols to make that happen. And we don't know. That is fundamentally terrifying. And I don't know how to fix that. We have to fix that through the legal. There's no tech fix. I mean, the kind of things you can do. I mean, I think that if we thought about it, we could rewrite the Apple protocols such that if they did have to put a backdoor in, we would notice. If they did have to make a change, we would notice that a change was made. We would say, why did you make a change?  We would know something was up. So maybe there's something in making your algorithms not backdoor proof, but backdoor evident. So maybe to think more about that. But this is a hard one. And I don't have a good answer. And it is one that I think really should disturb us. More open source is going to be good here because more sunlight, harder to subvert. But as long as the government can issue secret orders and secret courts based on secret laws, we have a problem. And it is not a tech problem. It's a legal problem. I think I'm on that side now. Hi. We seem to be in a situation where the software industry can release software that runs on billions of devices and it's completely insecure and badly written. And there's no consequence whatsoever to those companies for the problems that they create. They're just recently, what comes to mind is the MMS hack on Android. Can you just discuss generally what you think about this from a legal perspective and software companies being held liable or accountable for the bad software that they write? So I've always been a fan of liabilities. I've written the first thing about it maybe in like O2 or something. Even before Y2K. And so here's the basic argument that right now as you say, there are no costs to writing bad software. When you read a software license, it says pretty much explicitly, if this software maims your children and if we knew that it would do that then so I did not tell you because it would hurt sales, we're not liable. And those string-wrapped licensees issue even security software. It says, you know, no, read the license, it'll say no claims about security are made, even though there are. So what liability changes that, right, it adds a cost to not designing software properly. It adds a cost to insecurity. It adds a cost to non-reliability. And that has real value. I mean if you think about it, we were already paying these costs, we're paying it in losses, we're paying it after-market security devices, we're paying it in sort of the entire industry that has strung up around dealing with the fact that the software sucks. But with a liability regime, we would pay anyway, right, the cost would be passed on to us of course, but at least we'd be getting more secure software out of it. So I see a collective action problem, I see even market failure here, right, the market is not rewarding good security, the cost of insecurity is too low, the value of insecurity is high, and liability changes that. It is a lever we can use to rebalance these cost-benefit ratio. And I think it's a powerful one. It is not a panacea, lots of ways liabilities go wrong, but liabilities do a lot. They really provide value. And I think they would 100 percent here in software. So I want to see liabilities. I mean we know why the Android vulnerability isn't being promulgated because they design their system so that they Google produced the patch, it won't go down to the phones. Because the phone manufacturers don't care very much and you don't have that tight connection between phone and iOS like you have in the iOS world. So the patch doesn't go down stream. If suddenly the phone manufacturers will libel, I assure you the patch mechanism would work better. And that's a lever we have as society and we should use it. I think it's a better one than regulation here because it's one that's dynamic and tends to seek its own level. But that's why you use it and I'm a big fan of it. Actually thinking about this, hang on. Everybody smile. There's more of you than fits on the screen. It's not going to work. All right, hang on. People at the edges you don't have to smile. All right, thanks. Who is next? It was you, right? Bruce, it seems like less and less surveys seem to show that Americans are concerned about the privacy of their information. Often you hear terms like I'm not hiding anything, I don't have anything to hide so I'm not worried. And it seems like people my age and younger don't have much of an understanding of Edward Snowden or the relevance of what he released. What would you say to those perspectives? So I don't know people know I had a book published in March called Data and Goliath. And it talks about surveillance, government and corporate. And I spent a lot of time, I just spent a whole chapter on that question, on privacy and why it's important. And it's not true that people don't care about privacy. And it's not true that young people don't. Old surveys show that they do. They're very concerned about it. And you know this is true. You remember being a teenager. You concern about privacy a lot from your parents, from your teachers, from your friends. You don't care about the government because who cares. But you're concerned about the privacy in your world. And you know people who are fluent kids, teenagers who are fluent in the net are very fluent in how to maintain their privacy. They might not do a good job, but they try a lot. I argue that privacy is fundamental to human dignity, to individuality, to who we are that without privacy we become conformist. We don't speak out. And I think it's a really interesting argument in social change. And so we're in an extraordinary year where gay marriage is legal in all 50 states. And that issue went from impossible to inevitable with no intervening military, middle, middle ground. It's amazing. But what it means is, and you can take legalization of pot, you can take a lot of issues you can take in this way. Back then something is illegal and let's say immoral. It goes from illegal and immoral to some cool kids are doing it to illegal and we're not sure. And then suddenly it becomes legal. But in order to get from here to here, you've got to be a point here where the thing is illegal and people do it anyway.  That was kind of okay. Or, you know, I tried pot and the world didn't end. And it might take 40 years and a couple of generations. But then you get to the point where it's legal. Interracial marriage. I mean any of these issues. But if you have surveillance here, if you can stop people from trying the thing and saying, you know, that's not that bad. Maybe we're wrong. You never get to the point where the majority of us believe we're wrong. So I think surveillance, broad government surveillance will really have a stifling influence on social progress. Because it won't let experiments to happen. Now, it's not arguing you can make to anybody, right? But I think it is probably the most important one. But really, in anyone who says I have nothing to hide, there, you know they're lying, right? I mean there aren't cameras in Scott McNeely's house because he has nothing to hide. You know, and so I think you really have to point out that those are arguments aren't true and that privacy isn't about something to hide. It is about maintaining your sense of self in a public world, right? I get to determine what I tell you people and what I don't tell you people. And that is empowering. And if I lose that, I am fundamentally a prisoner of society. So attaching privacy to something to hide, to secrets, is just wrong. It's about human dignity and it's about liberty. And I do, I spent a whole chapter on that and I do it better in the chapter. So I offer that up. Yes. Most people seem to be more worried about back doors and forced government back doors, but I'm sort of more worried about a sneakers, no more sneakers, Marty type of dealer. What is your opinion on quantum computing and current encryption and also quantum encryption and its rebuttal to quantum computing? All right. So quantum encryption has nothing to do with quantum computing. They're completely separate. And let's do quantum computing first. Quantum computing is, it's going to become real, probably not in our lifetime, but it will become real. I mean, it's a technology, it's advancing. I think we can factor like 24 now, but it'll get better. It has potential to change crypto, but not, not destroy it. It will break all of the common public key cryptography algorithms, the ones based on factoring discrete log problems. So RSA, Diffie-Hellman and those, it'll break those in linear time and be very nasty. But we do have public key algorithms that do work. Even the original Merkel knapsack, the first public key algorithm, not the knapsack, the guy, his early one that had to do that additional work factor of a square instead of exponential. That still works. There are coding theory algorithms still work. They're less efficient, but they still work. We'll still have public key cryptography, symmetric cryptography. In theory, the best quantum cryptography does is have your key length. It reduces your brute force search by a factor of a square root. So double your key length and you're done. And this does actually hosting conferences on post quantum cryptography. Go download the papers. People are thinking about this. How can we build secure systems that are resilient to a quantum cryptography, sorry, quantum computing theoretical world? So that's the breaking, that's quantum computing. Quantum crypto is really quantum key exchange. Vented in the 80s, research continues. I think there's a product now. And it is a clever way to exchange keys using quantum properties. Really neat, great science, great physics, something I as a group probably absolutely no need for. I can exchange keys just fine. Thank you. The math is working. So I think it is kind of pointless from a practical point of view. Great science, I love reading the papers, but I would never buy such a device because I would use one of the math systems and they work just fine. So that's sort of my quick quantum primer. But it's great science and I love the research. And eventually, yes, we'll be able to factor numbers very quickly, which will be cool. Yes. Sorry if you caught the previous talk by Yijian and Demon Saw and to get your opinion on sort of this idea of simplifying some of the complexity associated with encryption for personal use. So I definitely want things civilized. This is the answer about the OPSEC, the same thing. The more you make it invisible, the more you make it transparent, easy to use, no work. Even sacrificing some security, I think we do better. I'm really liking Maxim Marlon's bike signal right now on my iPhone. It's a great program. And it's just has a really clean interface. It works. I can actually... All the key exchange happens in the background. It's well designed. I can actually confirm there's no man in the middle. I don't have to, but I can. And the fact that I can is enough of a deterrent for people trying it. So I really like simple stuff. Simple stuff that's easy to use because I want everyone to use it. There's a value in it being ubiquitous. So expert only encryption has much less effectiveness. One last comment to the quantum guy. One of the things we know about the NSA documents is they have a budget line for quantum crypto. It's not very large. Which means they do in research but they don't have the quantum computer in Utah. I'm pretty sure that it's not something they can do. Yes? First of all, Bruce, you're my security crush. Mind if I take a picture with you after the show? I don't. But you guys all have weird pie plates on your chest. I'm just saying. You look like... I'm putting the hype down for a little bit.  It's Flava Flaville. Bruce, so with the explosion of software defined networking and enterprises looking to use it and employ it quickly, do you have specific concerns around the security of such bleeding edge technology and this virtualization of router switches, firewall, et cetera. You have some thoughts on that? You know, I don't have any specific concerns. Just the general of more complexity, more things to be insecure and another layer of organization means someone else to serve a warrant to. So those are my concerns. I mean, there's huge value in this. And I'm a big fan of security outsourcing for organizations because it's very hard to do right and the more you can consolidate the expertise, I think the better you'll do. So I tend to like those, but there are legal risks that, you know, someone else can and, you know, we've been seeing cases that the FBI can serve a warrant on Facebook for your stuff by passing you. That they can do that. And that does cause problems. But in general, I think the value of outsourcing, the value of software to find this and that are great. And there are security risks, but I think in benefit, I tend to like that technology. So as a balance, no major concerns over shared control plans. I mean, that's it.  Those are the things to be concerned about. But are they major concerns? They're like regular-sized concerns. All right. Thanks. Yes. First of all, thank you, Bruce, for everything you do. With the pie plate also, I'm saying. My question is, even if they wanted to, would policymakers be able to stay current with the pace of technology? You know, it's interesting. I think where I've come to the belief that the United States, it's ungovernable. And that's one of the reasons. That technology is moving so fast that the people who understand it can run rings around policymakers. And whether it's writing laws that, you know, five years in retrospect, you realize, whoa, they understood that and put that sentence in and we didn't realize that. This is hard. I like seeing laws that are technologically invariant. And instead of writing laws to keep up with technology, write laws that don't have to. And there are examples. I mean, you know, laws about assault and murder don't really care about the weapon. You know, I could write a law about privacy for communications that doesn't care if it's email or voice or voice over IP or something. I can I can do that. I think that's better. I'm not sure it'll happen. I mean, there's so much co-option of the legal and policy process by people who stand to make and lose a lot of money. I mean, right now, the cybersecurity bill, you know, that's probably going to get signed, it's got all sorts of amendments and writers and what it actually does isn't what they say it does. That's an easy one. You start doing something like healthcare or climate change. Forget it. So I'm I'm not optimistic about lawmakers staying current because of technology. I think we're going to have to go through some bad times before we realize how to create law in a society where tech moves so fast. Now, there's an argument to be made that the modern constitutional democracy is the best form of government mid-18th century technology could event. Right? You know, communications are hard, so we've got to pick one of us to go all the way over there and make laws in our name. Right? It made sense in 1782. It's kind of what? Now. And there's a lot of ways that our systems that were designed when nation states started becoming a thing are sort of breaking now because things are different. Things are moving too fast. The communications are different. It's all different. And I think we have to redesign democracy. This, of course, is a ridiculous thing that will never happen. Right? But I think we kind of need to. I don't know. That wasn't an optimistic answer, was it? Yeah, sorry. Yes? Hey, Bruce. So a few months ago, there was news about Chris Roberts being detained at the airport after he posted a tweet about the security of the United States. Is he here? Does anyone know if he's here? Okay. Yes? And then your blog post said that maybe FBI knew that Chris Roberts worked in the field of avionics. That's why he was detained. And then, recently, Wall Street went down, and there was this news that the Anonymous had posted a warning about it, even though Wall Street claims that it was an IT issue, it was a minor IT issue. So what do you think? Is the emphasis on offensive security? Right. Like, the issue was similar with Chris Roberts as well as Wall Street. So we didn't know in the Chris Roberts case that he actually was being at least somewhat watched by the FBI. All right. That he'd talked to them before. And the Chris Roberts case is actually very complicated. And I stopped commenting when I realized it was way more complicated than I understood. You know, people don't know this is the case of him being on a plane and saying something about going into the avionics bus via the USB port in his seat. Which, you know, would be crazy if you could, and wouldn't surprise me if Airbus forgot about that. It really seems every time you put physical security people and give them an IT security problem, they completely forget that they should meant talk to an IT security person. Anyone follow the hack on the bring safe? It's like completely embarrassing. It's like they never even open an IT security book. Oh yeah, we can do this. No problem. I don't know how much proactive it does seem like the FBI is monitoring more groups and more individuals. And we see them monitoring the Occupy movement or Black Lives Matter. Real social change movements that might not be as I don't know as mainstream as they could be. So there's a lot of that going on. How much in those cases I don't know. The Wall Street case, I have no idea. I mean, certainly there's always a lot of bragging that that might not be true. Yeah, but then they posted it the day before the Wall Street went down. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the details. And it's hard to speculate. I think there is more monitoring and this is the point of fusion centers. This is the point of information sharing between the NSA and others. And I think a lot of it's going on. Yes. So do you trust elliptic curve based Cypher suites or non-elliptic curve or NY? So I've been skeptical on elliptic curves for a bunch of years. I am in the minority here. Most cryptographers do trust them. So I'm giving you a minority view. There's a lot we don't know about elliptic curve mathematics. And there certainly could be classes of elliptic curves that have hidden trap doors that we don't know. The NSA uses elliptic curve crypto. So I can tell you that. So in general or at least in some instances it is secure believed by the NSA. But I also know that they have in some cases tried to influence curve selection. Now for good or for bad I can't tell you. So I worry about elliptic curves where the curve selection process isn't transparent. Now if you want to use elliptic curves in your system Dan Bernstein, right a guy we all trust or at least I do had a public process and they called the Bernstein curves and they are available to us. The NSA said here here's some great curves I would say, you know, so that's my feeling on that. I think the math is sound but I think there are gotchas we don't fully understand. I'm getting the go we'll get off stage soon signal. Do you have a yes or no question? No. Thank you so much. So my question is now that I find myself in a position where I'm working with government agency where they use the same software as everyone else they got the same problem as everyone else and I'm convinced that the actions of stockpiling zero days weakening crypto is just as harmful. What can I do to convince or show these people that our arms of the government are doing things that hurt us. This is hard and a lot of us are trying to do this. I mean really just keep saying it this is the political process it's not the tech process it's not clean. I have to leave I'm doing a book signing at the bookstore at four so come by and say hi not all of you at once I will be around I'm going to go outside there


You're welcome back to the Breakfast on Plus TV Africa. It's now time to go back in time and we're going to the year 2015 on this state history June 18 when an explosive device accidentally detonated killing about 18 vigilantes and injuring about 53 others. So what happened on this day in history was that a health official and vigilantes who were helping the military against Boko Haram you know you know they picked up this one of the vigilantes picked up this you know device and they were taking it back to the town of Mongolia in Buenos States from a military operation in Marte and a chief you know medical director at the Medjugorje specialist hospital in Buenos capital said 13 people had been killed you know 53 were injured you know it was just unfortunate that it just picked up this explosive device brought it back to Mogulu and it accidentally exploded basically killing people and injuring others and we know that back then 2015 it doesn't seem like such a you know distant time but we saw that Boko Haram and their you know insurgency and the tactics involved you know using bombs detonating bombs you know suicide bombs as well suicide bombers to you know inflicts injury you know on people people especially in market places but this one was just purely an accident you know they picked up this device it accidentally detonated and people lost their lives that was really really really really sad we'll also go back to history in 1894 the Uganda protectorate was established and the territory was extended beyond the borders of Boganda to an area that roughly corresponds to the present day of Uganda let me just give you a bit of a background to that particular story right now in the mid 1880s the kingdom of Uganda was divided between four religious factions adherents of Uganda's native religion that's the Catholics the Protestants and the Muslims each vying for political control in 1888 Mwanga II was ousted in a coup led by the Muslim faction who installed Kalemah as the leader the following year a Protestant and Catholic coalition formed to remove Kalemah and return Mwanga II to power this coalition secured an alliance with the imperial british east africa company and succeeded in Austin Kalemah and reinstated Mwanga in 1890 the IBEAC sent Frederick Lugar to Uganda in 1890 as its chief representative and to help maintain the peace between the competing factions in 1891 Mwanga concluded a treaty with Lugar whereby Mwanga would place his land and tributary state under the protection of the IBEAC in 1892 having subdued the Muslim faction the Protestants and Catholics resumed their struggle for supremacy which led to civil war that same year the british government extended their support for the IBEAC to remain in Uganda and of course on the 18th of June 1894 the british government declared that Uganda would come under British protection as a protectorate so yes um 19 1894 1894 and now we know that uh in 1962 the United Kingdom got independence to Uganda so that's all we have for you on today's history uh we'll take a break here and return to our first major conversation of the day


and welcome to HealthFocus, a production of the Ministry of Health and Wellness. I am Fenel Neptune. Today we have with us the Chief Environmental Health Officer, Mr Pakar Ragnanan, who will provide us with some information on the Public Health Act. Welcome to the programme. Thank you and thanks for having me with you this this morning. Great. And we have been hearing a lot about the Public Health Act. Can you give us some information on this act? The Public Health Act was really enshrined into law in 1975. This is the basis under which the office of the Chief Medical Officer and that of the Public Health Board functions. As we know the Public Health Board is an advisory board to the Minister and the technical arm to the Public Health Board is the Division of Environmental Health. Under the Public Health Act enshrined in 1975, there were a number of different pieces of regulations that also came into law and this was as far back as 1978. This is what enables the the ministry to function and to have capacity to enforce. These are the regulations and some of the critical areas of regulation has to do with areas such as waste disposal, food safety, slaughterhouse regulations, dealing with barber shops and beauty salons, regulations that deals with notifiable of sudden diseases, so communicable and infectious diseases. It also made provision for regulations to deal with transportation of human remains. There are regulations that deals with bakeries, that deals with hotels and apartment gas houses and there are host of other pieces of regulations that came into force in 1978. Key under that Public Health Act, two pieces of regulations that I know have come to the fore of late. One has to do with the nuisance regulation and the other one is the offensive trade regulations. They have both been enacted and enforced from 1978. Okay and how often is this Public Health Act actually reviewed and amended? In the last 40 years or more, the Public Health Act has gone one review and that was in 2001. However, the review was not a substantial review and if you compare the 2001 revised Public Health Act to the 1975 Act, you would not see many changes. So it was a basic superficial kind of review. The only substantial review that has been done to the Public Health Act was done in 2019 and this review allowed for new areas to be brought under regulations. Some of these new areas include body art. So we know sentlusions have been doing tattooing and body piecing and so forth but that practice had not been regulated. So on the new Public Health Act it makes provision for regulations to be established for body art. Under the Public Health Act that was revised in 2019 as well, there is a new area that deals with smoking of tobacco products in public spaces and what this act has done now is to take measures to ensure that public smoking is prohibited and therefore it must be done on the very regulated conditions. So there are now regulations in place to deal with these areas. The revised act also deals with issues like spas and massage parlors and these are new areas generally. As well as with this amendment of the Public Health Act, there was a review also of the regulations that we mentioned earlier. So we're going to go more into some of these regulations because these regulations as well were amended. Okay and when was the last time the Public Health Act was reviewed and amended? So like I said the Public Health Act last review was in 2001. There were some regulations that were reviewed. For example the Food Regulations was reviewed in 1983. However many of the pieces of legislation including the regulations have not had a substantial review over the last 40 years. Okay and over this period have there been consultations with stakeholders? Sure. The amendment of the legislation both the Public Health Act and the regulations has gone through a significant process over a period spanning more than 15 years now. Okay. There have been different consultations at different levels including the government employing a legal consultant to review these regulations and to have consultations with key stakeholders and parties and to come up with the best mix for St. Lucia and that was done. Apart from the consultations there were discussions interministerially as well to look at what is the best approach in dealing with the regulations. One of the things that we found is that St. Lucia have had significant development over the last 40 years. Well we are actually due for a break so we will definitely have to take this break. We will be back in a moment. Wash your hands. Wash them right. With soap and lots of water get between fingers. Get under the nails. Go above the wrists. Do this for no less than 15 seconds. Rinse properly. Dry with a clean towel. If there is no water do the same washing motions with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 70 percent alcohol. Wash your hands. Wash them right. This message brought to you courtesy the Bureau of Health Education of the Ministry of Health and Wellness. Welcome back. We will continue our discussion with the Chief Environmental Health Officer Mr. Pakil Raghman on the Public Health Act. Before we took the break we were discussing as it relates to the consultations and you mentioned that besides the consultations there were also ministerial reviews. Can you go in depth on this? Yes. So as part of the consultation process a number of stakeholders were invited to consultations. This happened over a period of time because the Ministry were looking at the review of two separate pieces of regulations or legislation. One had to do the Public Health Act until materiously the Quarantine Act. What we have seen is that the Quarantine Act for example has been enforced since 1945 so it's quite a data piece of legislation. Therefore we recognize that the Act impacted different sectors and as a result the consultation that were held were held with associations were held with other ministries agencies and so forth. And they were at different times and at different levels in terms of developing the final product for the amendment. But I was saying apart from just these consultations we have seen that the landscape of St. Lucia's development have changed significantly over the last 40 years. And as a result there was quite a lot of pressure being placed on the division of environmental health to respond to some of the developmental issues and hence the reason why it was so important for us to have amendment to this legislation. So think of the landscape in St. Lucia back 40 years ago. How many hotels did you have in St. Lucia at the time? How many restaurants did you have? How many industrial business places did you have? What was the kind of impact that was on the environment and human health back then? What we have seen is there have been significant development in terms of the the physical landscape of St. Lucia. What we have seen is there have been increased in terms of commercial activities. There have been increased in terms of industrial activities, institutional activities, agricultural activities have increased as well as an increased need for residential units, residential homes. What has happened is because of this development there has been encroachment on land use. So lands that were traditionally used for one purpose have now been converted into mixed use purposes and therefore you see there are challenges that occur as a result of the mixed land use policy that happens in St. Lucia. Importantly over the last 40 years we've we've missed an opportunity as a country I believe to have very clear land zoning plans and policies for St. Lucia and hence the reason why we see the impact of certain type of activities impacting livelihoods, impacting people's comfort living in their own homes and as well we've seen an escalation in the demands that have been placed on the country both locally and internationally. So all of these have from part of the development landscape of St. Lucia which has really made it important to have updated revised legislation to be able to deal with the challenges that ensue as a result of development. Wonderful. And some of the areas are amended. When we got to complaints received by the Environmental Health Division can you speak in terms of the numbers that the division actually received for complaints? Complaints is is one of the biggest challenges that Environmental Health Division faces. One is there is an expectation by the person who is lodging a complaint that the issues that are affecting them will be resolved and primarily what we have been saying is that on a yearly basis the department receives an average of 500 complaints that spans a number of areas. Many of them have to do with respiratory related complaints. What it is? So they talk about smells.  The smell from indiscriminate burning of garbage. That has been a major complaint. Along with that we have issues with regards to improper wastewater disposal. So very often we get complaints about a defective septic tank where wastewater from one septic tank or one sokaway is surfacing above ground. It's flowing in a drain. It's crossing somebody's path.  We have had complaints with regards to animal raring and people complain that they are animals. It starts from dogs, chickens, pigs and so forth and we get the complaints all the time. We get a complaint in terms of solid waste management and indiscriminate dumping of solid waste. These are some of the basic complaints that we receive and there is a high expectation of the persons who are making the complaint that their matter will be resolved. Sad to say that these complaints sometimes they take years and years before you can get a resolution. We've had situations for example where well I would have to cut you off just a little because we are coming to the end of the program already but I can definitely see that you have a lot of information for us. Well that's how we've come to the end of health focus. I want to thank you so much Mr. Fakal Ragnanen for providing us with this information on the public health path. Thank you. On behalf of the entire production team I am Fenel Netjoon. Thanks for watching. Until next time.