We have a whole day of presentations but I want all of you to be vocal, please stop at any point if there are anything in the presentation that's unclear. We want your voice to be heard and we want this to be a useful day for you to take information with you. So I'm going to start just doing a brief overview of kidney cancer just to set the stage for the other presenters for this morning. So I'll start off by just saying here is a picture of the kidney and not all tumors that are in the kidney are really kidney cancer. The ones that we are going to be talking today is those that arise in the cortex. So this is the cortex and these are the ones that are the real kidney cancer that we are going to be talking about today. What are the other tumors that can happen in the kidney? You can see that this is the part where urine is made and it comes through the urinary tube called the ureters and it's a common cancer that usually happens in the bladder but you can have this type of tumors happening in the kidney as well and those are called transitional cell carcinomas they're more like bladder cancers. Then you can have Stanford is an institution with expertise that's world renowned in a disease called lymphomas they usually happen in lymph nodes all over the body but because we are an institution of referral inevitably when we see sometimes tumors in the kidney they end up being a lymphoma. There are other cancers that can happen in the kidney but our date today is going to be focused on the kidney cancer that arises in the cortex. So what is the incidence of this disease? This is a slide taken off from the American Cancer Society they put up these every year with sort of estimates what's the what is the burden of disease that we are talking about and this is a new cancers that happen in men and women and sadly kidney cancer features as the top 10 diagnosis both in men and in women. So about 40,000 cancers each diagnosed each year in men and in women about 25,000 so it's certainly not as big as diseases like prostate cancer and breast cancer but certainly it's enough for us to have our voices heard and for us to continue working on this disease to get the best that we can in terms of outcomes. So what about kidney cancer at diagnosis? You know most patients present with fortunately today we see a lot of patients coming into the emergency room for another reason maybe they have a gallstone or they have abdominal pain and incidentally kidney cancer is discovered those are good and they represent about less than 50% of the time where it's confined to the kidney. Unfortunately half a quarter and even a third spread by the time the diagnosis is made because kidney is in an anatomic location where if you don't have a symptom the tumor can continue to grow and unfortunately for a third of patients by the time the diagnosis is made it may have spread elsewhere. Here is a brief staging as you hear multiple talks today I just want to set the stage for what the different stages are. So stage one are small tumors less than seven centimeters confined to the kidney. Stage two tumors are greater than seven centimeters but they are still in the kidney and you're going to hear about the surgical management for those group of patients. Stage three we call it locally advanced disease where there is tumor that's left the kidney to either the blood vessels either the renal vein or the inferior vena cava or the fat involves the perinephric tissue and finally stage four diseases if we have distant disease so whether there's lymph nodes up in the neck or disease in the lung liver bone or brain would be considered stage four. So we now know that kidney cancer is not one disease it used to be even five years ago we would classify all of kidney cancer as one we know that this list is growing and it's just I have another slide where this list now includes 20 different types and I think that speaks to good things where we are learning more about this disease we are learning more about the biology we don't want to lump all kidney cancers as one but we want to get to subgroups where we are able to have different treatments that are directed to different subtypes but the most common kidney cancer is called clear cell and all of our drugs that we have today are really focused on this histologic subtype and that's where the drug development has been focused the most that represents 75 percent there's a less common one and all of the rest are lumped as non-clear cells so there's clear cell and the rest are considered non-clear cell what does non-clear cell mean it includes those with a papillary type and we now know again that there is type one papillary and there is type two papillary and each of these are specific mutations that drive these different tumors and I think as the what we look forward in the future are specific drugs that target each of this that we will have different drugs for each of this and then there's a less common one called chromophobe and oncocytoma we have other subtypes which I haven't actually put in but there are many more that are coming so overall just a brief slide on the background so again you know we said this is in 2012 but I already showed you it's around 40 000 patients new diagnosis per year majority a clear cell about a third of patients unfortunately have stage four at diagnosis prior to 2005 we had very little in terms of medical treatments for kidney cancer and it was all with the immunotherapy or cytokine with the drug called interferon but today things have changed remarkably and we are going to be spending the latter part talking about it so here's a slide which I'm really proud of to talk about where we headed and where we are today so these are the drugs that we have had just in the last decade you can see we have made so much progress had I done this talk in 1993 I would have stopped shot with one drug which was high dose intraleukin 2 starting in 2005 we have had remarkable success in approval of various drugs for kidney cancer and we are going to be talking about seraph anib sunitanib another class of drugs called mTOR inhibitors with temsirolimus and everolimus there's avastin or bebasisumapizopanib and acetanib I know it's 2012 and it seems like what's happened since 2012 by the end of the day I'm going to share some new drugs that we may be having even by the end of this year so what do we know a little bit just about one slide on the biology just so that we understand where things started and how drug development went on for kidney cancer to the left is a normal this is what happens in normal situations we have a protein called VHL it binds to this hydroxyproline and combines with this element called HIF 1 alpha and once this complex is bound it gets broken down by ubiquitin and proteasome and then the HIF gets degraded in our body that's the normal process that needs to happen in kidney cancer and when this VHL protein is mutated or is abnormal this is what happens here VHL is unable to bind via a hydroxyproline with HIF so HIF just accumulates in your body without getting degraded and what are the consequences when we have too much HIF in our body you get all of these proteins called VEGF and PDGF and this is what drives these tumor cells to proliferate and spread so knowing this was really important that now that we know this is what happens in kidney cancer people then started thinking about how about if we find ways to block VEGF if VEGF is what is increased let's find drugs that target VEGF and that's what the slide is and it just shows you that there are many different ways by which we can block VEGF you can block the ligand with a drug called Bevacissimab or you can block the receptor with a variety of drugs that we are going to be talking about today so these are the main two two classes of drugs that we have in kidney cancer one are called VEGF inhibitors and the second class are called mTOR inhibitors and these are names that you are going to be hearing a lot by the end of the day and so I'm just going to wrap up this by just saying this is what kidney cancer medical therapy looks like in 2015 we actually have three classes of drugs there's immunotherapy and now it includes interferon and interleukin 2 and I think by the end of this year there will be a new class of drugs called PD1 inhibitors or a drug called nivolumab we are hoping will get approval by the end of this year and there's also going to be a new drug called cabozantinib then there are VEGF inhibitors with sunitinib, soraphinib, pisopinib, acetinib and Bevacissimab and mTOR inhibitors so that's just a brief overview so that it puts in perspective and context some of the talks for today yes so immunotherapy is definitely a separate class of drugs they are not targeted drugs they sort of it's like if you get the flu you know how your whole immune system is all revved up with a variety of chemicals that the body secretes to help fight your flu it's identical to that that's what immunotherapy is when we mean for cancer therapy and we talk a little bit about that the targeted drugs the VEGF inhibitors are all the idea here was it was aimed at blocking the VEGF so it's completely different from immunotherapy so here is our agenda for today I gave a I went a little bit over on my welcome we are going to have Carrie Konoski from the kidney cancer association who's sponsoring this meeting today talk a little bit about their association and what they can do for our patients I'm then going to make a slight switch on the agenda because it makes sense to talk about local therapy first what do you do when you have tumor confined to the kidney and we are really happy to have our surgeon here today Dr. Jeff Son who's an assistant professor in urology he's going to give us an update on what can be done for local therapy so we're going to make a little bit of a switch and then it makes sense for me to talk about medical therapy and we're going to go over some of the drugs that I just spoke and then we'll take a very small break and then I would like for Sujatha Narayan who's one of our medical oncologist here at Stanford she's going to give us a little overview on clinical trials I think that's a big part of all of the progress that's happened in kidney cancer and I think as patients it's nice to understand how this process works where do you start with clinical trials what are your risks what are the benefits of Sujatha is going to give us an overview about how clinical trials work then I think one of the things that are really new is genomic testing who should we be doing it on we think a lot of this is how we are going to be headed in the years to come people are going to have their individual tumors tested and maybe that will help us drive specific therapy that's what personalized medicine is it's so confusing today as to who should get it done what do we do with the results so we have one of our fellows who's doing molecular testing Joshua Gruber he's going to come and talk to us a little bit about genomic testing and I think that would be he's going to give us some examples about some of the tests and see how we can learn from those we'll take a break for lunch and I think there's a latter part of the afternoon we are going to talk a little bit about imaging and how we can improve with some of the ways we can diagnose this early are there different modalities by which testing can be done and then I'm going to have Tommy Messner who's works with us in our research enterprise talk a little bit about what Stanford has done in terms of how we collect blood tissue and what we hope to learn from that in the future and then I want the best part of the afternoon which is really about a patient forum where Jordan Chavez who's a social worker come and engage all of us in sharing our stories and how we can help each other in this journey for this disease and then we'll wrap up so with that I'm really hoping it'll be a good day for all of us to take some information


Everybody forced and Donnie here up in 22 23 one and one basketball hobby ten bucks full case number one It's a tiered random style random was done shortly before the break There are the results. There's a link in chat. You can find these anytime a latent sports cards comm anytime Let's go ahead and get started Ryan if you had one mag, but you had a Jake Browning and a Tim Tebow card Which card gets the mag? Here we go. Here we go 20 cards in the case, baby. Come on Let's see a monster timeless here Let's see if I can pull the Steph Curry one-on-one timeless just like old times just like last year Front to back and say mag. Nope. Nope. Nope. You got only pick one only one The other card gets destroyed They're in the mag together.  I'll go get Jake so he can just Renact it go down to Jay's level No downtown but a hardened timeless. Well, there you go. There you go. Yeah, you won't get a downtown every case They're they're they're they're Every what handful of cases are so typically it's like two. It's like between three and five of cases Usually it's on top though Benedict's a matter in downtown Pacers Eric W That's crazy.  That is so sick. Look at the Indy cars. That's so fire. Oh Man, that's how you do it folks That's how it's done Congrats Eric W. There's a scratch on the mag deep scratch on the ice interesting the car looks fine Well, then that's uh, that's how it goes right there What are the odds of that I'm gonna be I don't have to give us a Donnie Donnie's got a lot of work today here. Oh boy Okay, and then the auto That is And a redemption let's see Wouldn't would be funny. It's funny that it's funny to talk about it, but right Timeless moments auto-horizontal. Are you kidding me? Wow? Are you kidding me? Doesn't have a Red what's red red is to like 15 or something. Let me just get out of the checkers. We're gonna need it Yeah, yeah first box we got a downtown in a timeless moments Yeah Yeah What we're breaking different products.  We had to catch up with you Horizontal timeless moments red is gonna be numbered 25 or 15 different players will have a different the Andre Aten that goes to Phoenix There we go, dude Phoenix second tier hit what a star insane start Brian M with the Suns Well, then Aten for the Suns Cory said you well Cory didn't hit it. So are you gonna want a D'Angelo Russell at a 25 for the Lakers the base design looks kind of nice Dilo Lakers No way Timeless Ha ha ha ha of James Harden at 25 Houston This is how you open one-on-one right here 16 at 25 the beard the bosa for the Rockets All right, well, you're gonna work hard two boxes two card stands. Yeah, we're running out quick Well, they're not a case hit none of these are case hits You're the only thing you're guaranteeing this is one auto per box. That's what you get in one-on-one This product's not for the faints of heart, but as you can see it pays off sometimes most I mean sometimes it does You're high-risk high reward. There's no need to go in case number three by the way as Malik Beasley Lakers the 99 I wish they would have something over the first card, right? And a rookie Blazers Shade on sharp auto to 99. How about that dude? That's nice, too. He is killer Michael C with Portland Well, then yep, this stuff is awesome. Donnie one word to describe one-on-one. What would what would you use? Pretty pretty go there to 99 for the for the wolves Pretty good pretty who's that who's that headband? Rookie patch auto Shailen during the 35 going to Detroit Nice hit Detroit This one goes out to Thomas C nice during Yeah, one word.  He didn't yoke it seemed like best buds Redemption Jersey auto purple purple is Purple Jersey auto gonna be what 35 or 20 it says 35. I think yeah Wait, no Says 35 or 25 Nicola Yoke itch. I just was talking about him nuggets both hits in the box the Joker the Jersey auto Yeah, dude Genway with the nugs This is just this is just getting crazy. It really is Yeah, fill it up. We got more to break. We got spots left random card style of this to today guys Random card style you're guaranteed something. It's the only spot and one-on-one you can buy with us where you're guaranteed to get something Speaking cards with resistance Palo Ben caro downtown Palo Ben caro downtown Palo Ben caro downtown Look at that photo Jalen Duran rookie to 99. That's very sweet pistons on the how you durin What does view rookie green purple? It's gonna be Bochamp. It is Marjahn Bochamp Jersey auto to 99 rookie from Milwaukee Drag it something across the tile. Yes, right Maybe they put up the Christmas tree Jalen Brown Celtics 12 of 40 12 of 40 we go seas and Next next is out of 99 It is Jersey autograph Jordan pool warriors Jordan pool game war in Jersey auto for the dubs Pool party. Don't really shady. Donnie will buy you a spot That's rookie for the Rockets tarry eason 13 of 15 on the red red base and next up our auto That kid that is Nets Jason kid autograph team Titan signatures to 99 Yeah, retro nets, although that's not the one he's wearing This team Titans mean like maybe they're just use retro logos on I don't know nice kid though. There we go Nets Brooklyn kind of looks like the Pepsi Kind of does Yeah, they're like shadow boxes behind them We'll have that on a lot of them Maxi out of 40 here for the Sixers nice. Oh, that dude's great. That dude's great rookie red Nice one pelicans Dyson Daniels patch auto to 25 second tier hit for the Pells Dyson Daniels Which a some kid even on the Nets in the 90s was he there for like what 99 2000 season That was before I remember a lot of like specific things in basketball outside of like the magic Timmy number to 99 for the for the spurs and last hits is a rookie heat autograph to 99 Nicola Jovic Yoko chin Jovic Autos in the same case Alrighty hot hot start cool off at the end there, but good god some big-time cards Not gonna do a full recap. It's It's it's 20 cards. We had a Thomas moments hardened for the Rockets to 25 So freaking cool and that is that is from 2223 and a downtown of Benedict's, Matheryn Rookie for the Pacers That's what I'm saying y'all there we go. Let's get these next few cases filled up


URL Display a web link With Moodle it's very easy to display for our learners. Links to websites or links to files uploaded on the internet. This saves them having to go and find them themselves. They get a direct link which you the teacher have chosen. So to do this, we click the turn editing on button top right or we scroll down to the administration block and click the turn editing on link there and then in the section where we want to add our link or URL we click the link add an activity or resource. It doesn't matter if you choose the wrong section because you can always move it afterwards. This now brings up the activity chooser and we go down to the resources section because URL is a resource. We can either click twice or we can click once and then the add button and this will display the screen where we can add the name that we wish to give our URL. It doesn't have to be its actual name but a descriptive term that the students will see on the course page. We can add a description of it and if we want to display that description on the course page we can check the box and then scrolling down to the content section we actually paste or type the name of our URL, our web address, the link to the website or an uploaded file. If we don't exactly know where our uploaded file is we can click the choose a link button and this will take us to the file picker. There are several other settings which you might like to explore in your own time for instance appearance how exactly you would like this URL to be displayed but for now let's scroll down, click save and return to course and we can see that we very quickly added a link to our website for our learners to access.


Yeah, we are here to talk to you about a lot of fun handcuff trickery today. I am Deviant from Tool. Along with me also from Tool is Dave Pochet, Dr. Tran, the dashing secret agent. And as a special benefit, we also have Ray, one of our German friends from the sport-picking groups overseas. He came all the way from Germany. Let's give him a hand, guys. We have a lot of good things that we're going to show you, but especially let's get right to our featured speaker first. Okay, hi. I was asked to talk about a few things we did in Europe with handcuffs because there's somewhat different there. One of the most, I think, funny things actually happened last year at Haar. Because the Dutch police, which is the country where the Haar takes place, has a very special kind of handcuffs. This is completely different from all the cuffs you will find in the U.S. and it has a special key. So it's shaped differently than all the keys you know. And they're very proud of that. And so they're carrying these around all the time and they were running around on the campground where all these hackers were. And one thing about the key is that they won't sell the handcuff to anybody. And as I collect sort of handcuffs, I don't really like that because they won't sell it to me. Ah, we can't sell it. The key is so secret. But they're hanging it on their belt. The top secret key. And it hasn't changed for years, what I can say. So it's the same key, but it's just still considered secret until Haar. So what we did is we used a 3D printer to replicate it. Taking the measurement from a key we got somewhere. Printing it on our 3D printer and coming with a 3D printed key to Haar. So as you saw in the previous slide, we approached the police guys there and they, oh, we printed your secret handcuff key. Can we try it on your cuffs? Of course they were going, no, no, no. This is a secret key. You don't have it. Oh, we have it. Just try it out. No, no, no. Take it. This would go to your van and try it there. Don't tell us. Oh my God. Oh my God. Everybody. Does anybody have handcuffs? Oh, so see, as you were saying, even the ninjas are afraid of the Dutch handcuffs. Okay, but the policemen were just afraid of our keys so they're running away. No, we don't take it. We won't try it. We said, you can have one try it alone. Don't tell us. We just wanted to let you know that we did set it because your key is now public. But they didn't want to. Fortunately, later on, the older one wasn't there. The younger ones didn't know. And we actually were able to try it. And surprisingly, it really worked. So for all of those who ever are going to travel to a hacker camp in Holland or something, just download your copy of the key at key.new with the dot after the e. So you can get an STL model there. You can get all the measurements from it and you can print it on these 3D printers which are getting more and more popular. Yeah, so that's the thing about these Dutch keys. If you search on the internet for 3D printer handcuffs, you will find quite some coverage, some of them funny, some of them crazy. Go search for it. So another thing I'm currently working on because this Dutch key is almost a year old, but this is not completely finished. Watch on key.new for the final. We found out that there's actually an airline restraint kit featuring another very unusual cuff because it's using an English cuff. It's called the CHUP Detainer cuff by the CHUP company. Lockpickers will know the CHUP company for high security locks like in safes and everything. The handcuff isn't that high security but still very, very hard to pick. You have to have real lockpicking skills, three-level manipulation and everything. But it's a very solid keyway. So I'm pretty sure we'll have a working model for that airline restraint kit in plastic. So you can go to the metal detector visit with any problems. So watch out on the earth for these to appear. Okay, another thing about the Dutch cuffs, if you happen to be there and don't have the key with you, we have a short video for you to see what else you can do with them if you have high tech tools like, for example, paper with you. So the paper basically blocks the mechanism and the cuff slides open. I have to warn you so that this won't work if it's correctly operated and double locked on both hands. So probably try to run away before both sides are double locked. That's an interesting fact, though, when people see that video, they usually say, oh, aren't those those big, heavily engineered handcuffs? How can you slip out of something with as simple as paper? Well, a lot of cuffs, actually, big, heavy-duty cuffs, their security isn't in. They're anti-pick resistance or manipulation resistance like these German cuffs by the Kliusso company. They're really just designed to kind of almost be like leg irons and hand irons. They're not really designed to be unpickable cuffs. Many of you have seen these cuffs as well, by the way. How many people have ever watched Firefly or Seen Serenity?  So you've all seen Kliusso model 13s before. What you've probably never seen, though, is that same kind of a trick, that same sort of a shimming trick. You can do that on these. Again, similar cuff, big, heavy cuff. But if you have something like a sticker, do I have a sticker sitting up here? I do. Can you still hear me? So if you have, let's say, like a sticker paper backing. Because that works well, dollar bills work well. Sometimes that paper is just thin enough to slip in underneath the teeth here, but thick enough to still trip the levers. So if I can slip it under, or I just shred the paper. Yeah, let me just flip it around one last time. Demo fail. If you have dollar bills, you don't mind shredding up. You can usually do it with that too. I don't know if you can see it. It works really well with European currency, since they tend to be more plastic. Yeah, European currency, Australian currency, especially have you ever tried to rip Australian currency in half? You actually can't do it. Yeah, it's like Tyvek. But a lot of those big cuffs, you know, they're also pickable. Someone will see the actual keys that come with them. They look real serious. Here's one of our locksmith buddies just popping open those same heavy duty cuffs and he's actually picking them at a tool meeting with something that's smaller than a regular handcuff key. So just because a cuff looks really big and angry or just because the key it comes with looks really huge, it doesn't mean that it's in any way really that pick resistant. Well, let's talk more about just typical cuffs, because we're throwing all these weird foreign cuffs at these people and they may have never seen the inside of just regular cuffs before. Would you like to go over that? Absolutely. So here we have a cutaway of a simple handcuff design. This is the type that will be employed by United States law enforcement and very, very straightforward. There are not a lot of complex moving parts and again as we'll talk further on, a handcuff is not designed to be a high security restraint. It's just designed to keep someone situated while particularly during transport. That was nice. Not many moving parts. You see you've got the ratcheting arm there in group and you've got the pawl at the bottom. Both of those have ridges that interlock with each other and that just keeps it from moving in and out when you have the cuff in moving outwards, I should say. And then there's a spring that holds the pawl up so that engages the ratcheting arm. There's also the double lock bar and when that is engaged, you're not able to tighten the cuff or unlock it with the key unless you flip the key around the other way. One of the main purposes for this is to protect law enforcement from lawsuits and claims of abuse because if you ever catch someone who doesn't double lock their cuff, if someone is a little crafty, what they might do is really slam that down, crunch it up and get black and blues all over their arm and say, listen, I was being abused by this cop. So that's the main purpose for that and you'll see that very rarely where law enforcement officers not double lock a cuff. And that's really it. It's just very straightforward. Not many moving parts again and not a complicated mechanism. We've got a couple of videos here we're going to show you. Yeah, it's not a lot going on in there. Yeah, the mechanism itself is a real simple to understand thing. As you can visualize this, there's not much going on in the cuff. The parts that move don't move very far and even getting the pall to trigger down. You're just talking about fractions of an inch worth of movement. So obviously there's a lot of ways you can reach in there without the proper key and still trigger this sort of movement.  For example, like a shimming attack. Shimming is the use of really thin metal inserted somewhere into a lock mechanism. You can insert thin bits of metal in one side or another on the outer edge of the cuff body and still try to get at that pall. Now the side you just saw someone pushing on, that's hard to do unless you over tighten yourself. This side over here, it's easier to slip a shim underneath because the teeth are going the right way. But of course really tight cuffs you're not always going to just get into that side. But almost, I'd say almost every cuff we have on this table, probably with the exception of some Korean ones, could be shimmed like that. And really quickly just in case you didn't understand it, that double lock mechanism, that bar underneath here. Normally it's out of the way, the key or a shim or a pick or any number of other things would allow the ratcheting pall arm to move. But if that bar clunks over, now nothing can move. The pall can't move, you can't shim it, you can't even use a key properly. The only way to get in as Dave pointed out is to bring a key around the other side. And if you see with our hands out of the way of this next shot coming around the other way, click, we'll pop that double lock bar out. Of course there are other ways of popping the double lock bar out and we're going to come back to that in a second. First though, just so they know we're not completely telling tales out of school here. So we try some shimming and picking attacks and the like. You guys want to see this? See this breakout of handcuffs? First we'll try to use some handcuff shims. Now there are real proper shims like from Searpik and those guys. Or you can just use tension tools and things like that and try to shim out. Do you want to do the video? No, we'll just do it on camera here. So who's up first? There you go. The dashing secret agent. He'll be hurt. So for these handcuffs I'm going down the side that has a split. So I have a tension tool here just from a lockpick set. I'm wedging it underneath the paw, if you can see, and I'm just pressing down. Power cops. I have some little more expensive cash here from the investment company using a very, very sin standard tensioning tool. And I go the side with the ratchet. So one thing you have to do when doing that is push in the ratchet a little with the tool. So I'm pushing the bow in a little when putting in the shim. Then it gets between the ratchet and it's open. Nice, very nice. I'm just going for the same thing Robert just did to reiterate and so you know there aren't any trick cuffs. These you just go in from the back here. Push in down. This is a standard tension wrench. You can use any bent piece of metal really. And then I'm just going to push down and it's open. So how about picking because we can pick out of these cuffs too, right? Yeah. Shall we show them some picking attacks as well? You guys want to see some picking attacks? Yeah.  Just a regular pair of valors. One way of telling which direction you need to pick is looking for the fulcrum where the paw is going to be pivoting on. So you can actually see the rivet here right on the handcuffs. So you know this paw is going to be flexing this way. So what you want to do is use your pick tool to just reach in there and just try to press down on the paw. Don't do this with really nice picks. Picks you just bought let's say because sometimes it will trash the pickup pretty good. We'll often see us that we'll grab some of those kinds of things. How many people have ever hated lock picking in the movies like when someone doesn't have a tensioner they're like, the door fell open and it's all fake. Cuffs actually sometimes in the movies it is kind of like that.  A little thin piece of metal in the right place. You're just trying to catch a simple paw lever. Notice how big the bit is on the end of a typical handcuff key. It doesn't have a lot of huge reach you're just trying to reach just barely barely barely inside the key way and you should be able to trip that lever. Another really common tool you can use a lot of common things like bobby pins, paper clips and other stuff to pick a, you know, pick handcuff locks even the standard ones or some higher end ones.  Well there's one piece that you can use and you can pinch it and release that little silver piece bend it open and it makes an awesome handcuff key. So some people may or may not clip those on their belts every day as they go out. But I mean in all actuality though if you're in a nonviolent protest and for no reason you get scooped up and someone's not looking it might be a handy way to get out or like shine there at some place. Of course absolutely. Or if you're unlawfully restrained you can use handcuffs too. Here's a binder clip right there. Yes indeed binder clip that will work very well. So wow how we doing on time we got to keep moving along a little bit. Shall we try, you know what ask us in the Q&A room if you want to see popping out of double locks or ask us up in the lock pick village we can actually pick out of the double lock but you're going to learn even more other double lock techniques in a minute possibly here. My favorite video escape by the way I just love to throw this in any time I'm doing a handcuff talk so many people know Render Man. Render Man is a really really skinny really flexible fellow and he is able to do this sometimes at parties sometimes at you know Fed conferences and the like.  I've been told by my FBI buddies this video actually gets shown at Quantico now during trainings actual Render Man here. Just you know it's like alright so I'm going to get cuffed up here you know you got me done up pretty well behind the back all in place.  That double lock though when we keep talking about how the double lock should be a secondary mechanism that's kind of hard to attack and mess around with there are some physics involved however that can be exploited Tran you want to talk some more about that. So as mentioned before the double locking bar is a metal bar that when you use the little the little post on the end of a handcuff key to push that bar across that bar will prevent the paw from moving up and down you can either pick that open or you can use a little bit of physics does everyone know who that is? Exactly the apple Isaac Newton there's something called the whack attack because that bar is made of metal and has mass everyone knows objects in motion want to stay in motion so what you can do is actually whack the handcuff and cause and the momentum or the inertia of that double locking bar will want to continue moving so if you whack it in the right direction you can just pop it back into the reset position and I'll try to demo that real quick Yeah Who saw my very first DEFCON talk ever at DEFCON 13 was it? Agent X did this on stage anybody see that? Yes, wow some old timers here So here's a pair of handcuffs that are not double locked because you can tighten it what you do is use the end of a handcuff key there's a little post on the end just click it in this one's broken use the other side these are yours my are fucked up dude when you bang them too many times it's like bumping a lock eventually it's just dead I'll just use these pink handcuffs that was what you really wanted all along wasn't it yes they are I made these myself so using the post at the end of the key I just engaged the double lock the handcuff is not going to tighten at all all you have to do is smack it against something really hard like a padlock or an anvil or a rock you know with the anvil you keep in your pocket all the time and now you can over tighten it very very nice one set the double lock just by smashing down really hard physics it works bitches now there are other handcuffs I try to they have countermeasures for this one way of doing that is to have a plastic piece the plastic piece doesn't have enough mass for you when you whack it it doesn't have the same inertia so it's not going to move so that's one way of doing it using plastic and then there's another technique with the other handcuffs that you realize there's almost no mass in that double locking bar in fact the double locking bar and the spring is the same piece of metal so there's almost no mass right there and it's extremely difficult I don't think we've ever been able to use the whack attack to un-set the double lock no we never have we're going to come back to Jules a little later they really are probably our favorite cuff ever yeah who has seen these handcuffs before what a medical lock is a medical lock is actually a very high security lock I think one of the best brands here in the U.S and they actually put one of those on a handcuff so for picking you're a bit out of luck with those but as a company you should be a little careful on what cuff you put your high security medical lock on because what they use here is a standard PLS handcuff so we have this high end locking cylinder on it so here we have again a double not double locked cuff you actually need a special tool to double lock it because they put this clumsy lock on it so I'm applying the double lock just the normal way so now it's locked and I've slammed it before oops I don't have a used mine yeah he doesn't want to break my cuff you can break his own though because that housing is just high impact plastic but it is just plastic you can crack it off actually the ones you have is that a metal housing on the Desmo one this is designed with a Desmo lock this is a European lock and it's used on many of the slot machines so you can tell it's I would say even more secure than the medico so let's try it with this one here oops that's a demo effect I guess yeah okay so it took it took us three efforts okay but you see we opened the double lock without using this high security lock at all and now we can shim it so this $200 cuff is basically the same security as any other one so there was also another thing you were going to tell us about cuffs you brought with us right and regarding that double lock trickery with the German cuff yeah that's another double lock fail you'll see in Germany we have usually basic normal cuff with a slightly different key but it's the principle is basically the same this one here has been used in the past I think until 2005 or something and they're still around so they stopped making them now but they're still around and for 20 years or something those were around and the nice thing about this is that they are the only cuff that I know of that's in police use which you can escape from without any tool at all I won't show it on hand because the demo is so effective in the last but let's see so what I'm doing what I'm doing is you remember the pictures from before here's the double lock you can activate it with the fingers it's actually clever designs as a police officer doesn't have to use the top of his handcuff key you can just activate the double lock like this but what I do is by pushing in the bow a little like almost a complete click but not really so it moves down the red shirts as far as possible and then put in the double lock push in push it in even more so the double lock goes against the red shirts and holds them down and the cuffs open so this of course again is possible if the double lock hasn't been engaged before but the slamming or ramming just works nice on these so slam them open and use the double lock and escape without any tool at all very nice oh but now they have new ones but don't be too afraid so those new ones they'll skip them this is a very difficult design they have a three-bitted key and they're very expensive and everything in sort this will be the ultimate handcuff ever but they had a nice design floor again the three-bitted key is used on the paws but it's not used on the double lock and no shim protection so actually you can open them like the other ones so if you go to Germany and are some bad guys have the cops cuffs because German police of course never would cuff you unlawfully so don't be afraid too much to go to Germany as a German without a tool, obviously normal tools do you want to show the one last three-bitted fail on the Kyung Changs as well the next one oh yeah and we have another fail because I think you will be talking about the Kyung Changs with the three paws, the normal ones but they also make a very good one which even is better than the German three-paw one because it has the sheets of metal reaching up to the bow so you can't shim it because there are three parts, you need a three-bitted shim and who has a three-bitted shim who can improvise one in seconds but one nice thing we found out two years ago or something and published it on the congress as a zero-day exploit for handcuffs in Korea they still don't know it because they don't watch our videos there's one little glitch if you do the same thing which I did with the clues just like pushing in the bow almost a click then the three paws appear here without the sheets between so you can put in a straight tool hold them down and escape from the cuff so just in case you encounter one of those be sure to know that very very awesome are we glad Ray made the journey over here to talk about some of this so with all these techniques for having better cuffs kind of fail how do they make, how do police around here try to deal with the idea of oh I want a better quality cuff the two most common brands you're going to see in the US by far is going to be the most popular is going to be Smith & Wesson and then Peerless also are going to be pretty popular as well Republic Arms and then Safari Land you'll see around the world but it all comes down to money for a lot of these things so if you're going to spend less money on manufacturing you're not going to get as high quality a product most of the time so these are just a little better made just like any other lock they have less tolerances and the less tolerance you have the easier the harder it is rather to exploit the lock and then here are some examples with some of the higher end locks here now as you guys know if you've ever done any lock picking up in the lock pick village a higher quality lock doesn't always mean unpickable it just means you have to try a little harder so that thin shim technique that Ray was showing earlier where you actually have to insert the shim and see it kind of deeper by clicking yourself tighter you can do that on high quality cuffs like Smith & Wesson and Peerless if you're lucky and if you're not too drunk on camera here but yeah I can sink a shim down I just have to over tighten myself and you can still get out of those and that's open that's what standard cops can use in Vegas so if even those sort of techniques kind of fail if the idea of oh like you know we'll just make it tighter tolerance if that still doesn't buy you complete protection if someone knows any of these tricks what do they actually do in reality to make a standard cuff better well usually what they wind up doing is putting multiple poles in Ray had touched on this a second ago do you want to shim or keep me out of that side because I'm feeling kind of like a douche up here so putting in multiple poles like Dave could reach in and pick this right now because again it's a heavier cuff but it only has one Paul this kind so you know like a Hyatt's brand or an ASP a Chicago handcuff can you guys see that there are actually two Paul's in there now you might be able to shim that thank you pretty effectively but you can't reach in with like a pick or a paperclip or something like that you might trip one Paul but not the other and the same thing is carried even further with other brands that use like triple Paul's a lot of Hyatt cuffs from the UK have these the Kyung Chang's from Korea so again multiple Paul's in hitting some you might not hit all of them the Eul's are trying to tell us them tell them just about how bad ass the Eul's take this so we mentioned that just because you have multiple Paul's doesn't makes it harder to pick but doesn't necessarily make it harder to shim well the Eul handcuffs they went completely crazy with these this design they basically put a metal a metal blade in between the shim so you would need a split shim to get in there they went even further they have these flanges that crimp over and these ridges so when you even if you had a multi-tipped shim those flanges will direct the tips of those shims against a ridge or an edge it can net those shim the shim you stick in there will never reach those Paul's and also that metal blade going down goes through the entire body of the handcuff too so your key has to have a split in it to be able to reach around through the blade yeah the Eul Cuffs there's some of the nicest we've ever seen and for quite a while we couldn't get out of them none of our friends could get out of them even like CPA the 949 guys who are usually some of the nicest handcuff people you'll see like banging around parties with a bunch of cuffs on their arms they frustrated these guys too we didn't think anyone was going to be able to pick or manipulate their way out of Eul's I was impressed when some private scary security contractor type guys from one point tactical or at my house one day and they said oh you know I've seen I've heard of these these are kind of cool and with enough tinkering you know one fellow named Phil he was actually able to pick out now he wasn't wearing them at the time but it was a wonderful proof of concept where he said alright I've got this you know bent piece of paper clip and he just had to size it right and he got that to reach in around the blocking blade and trip both levers so we are like yeah whoa we were all impressed and let's celebrate so way to go Phil not a crazy high-tech attack but it's definitely one of the coolest things I didn't think that would be possible and that's why it pays to have really scary friends who are willing to just try it you're like nah fuck it I'm just going to give it a try anyway and sometimes you wind up with a cool attack like that now I should point out Eul takes it even further with their pro series their deluxe series in addition to having really nice silicone lining around the inside so you don't need the fuzziness if you want to have some fun with these they also have a much tighter keyway it's at a canted angle if you're wearing these proper cuffs palms out there's almost no way you're going to get into that tight keyway they have major shim protection now they've even added basically what we call a crushing wheel it's a spinning gear in the front that the pole can just ride across but imagine slipping a shim in there it'll just chew up and destroy it the shim will not get anywhere because of this grinding wheel it is again just the fucking the deluxe series Eul's are probably the nicest cuffs I've ever seen and they're heavy duty aluminum alloy so they're heavy duty but they're not heavy you can carry them like we are usually carrying a bunch of cuffs around and by the end of the day it feels like your shorts are falling off not with the Eul's they really do think of everything what was that oh yes one more if you know like crazy private security contractors from Iraq and stuff they will teach you a lot of really really wicked shit man this is Kelly one of the other guys from on point and has anyone ever heard of like Kelly have you seen any of these guys come around the show every now and then when you see the seer pick guys the seer pick this you know evasion and escape anybody do any seer training no they won't admit it there's like operators in the room but they're just not going to raise their hands so they will occasionally show you this trick and we don't like doing it because if it doesn't work it really really hurts and it you know they're out 50 bucks even if it does work but has anyone ever heard of just handcuff breaking not like you know crazy I'm a super strong man in the circus kind of handcuff breaking just leveraging physics just being able to make the chains bind up because you know how some cuffs are hinged a lot of departments have moved to that in fact when I was in Australia cuffs were looking at the cuffs like oh yeah here can you hold this for a second so this one this one cops like oh yeah you've got those you got those cuffs yeah you're coming from America right and he starts doing this and I'm like oh I know what you're talking about there yeah handcuff breaking is when you can twist the chains around and try to get them to lock up on themselves and then when the chains can't move and the eyelet can't swivel correctly you can actually just crunch down if you catch it just right you can try to snap the chain or snap the eyelet off and if it works oh yeah show so right now the links are bound together if I were to snap any harder this chain is probably great especially since this is aluminum yes and depending on the model of cuffs they may bind differently sometimes on some cuffs the links will even loop over the eyelet which makes it even easier I'm gonna maybe try it I don't know if we can try what are these cuffs costing I don't want to think about it man I've broken a few of these I've broken a few of them if you can keep trying to twist them around they're almost in a spot when I did you know like in baking shows there's one I made earlier what guys will do if you go to the seer pick table these diamond saw blades these like little diamond file here you can get the chains and you rough up the chains you can sometimes get them to bind up on themselves and I'd really like maybe if I can do it in one hand let me try it one handed here you're picking out on one side I don't want to sit here twisting them all day alright so the idea is to get the chain up on itself if you can get the chain up on itself and not let it twist around any further I can just kind of manually swing it into position almost I don't know if it's going to go I don't think it's going to go I want to keep talking while I just keep trying to fuck with this over here I want to try if we've got a quick second would you want to okay I've got a twist around and if I really don't want to hurt my wrist here and open that kind of hurts don't do that oh you want to talk about how I'll be alright in a second I just need more whiskey so yeah variations in designs different sizes of cuff can start to happen when you start introducing all these different features like sizing the paw differently sizing a different pack of paws imagine you know a cuff body that's really narrow like this one here but a key that might be from another brand of cuff where let's say there are multiple paws if you have a key thank you that's too wide this key is not going to turn in that cuff at all you guys understand that it'll fit in the key way whoo devil but it won't actually be able to move now we run into that sometimes especially when there's like a sea of cuffs on a table like all of our collections and we're like oh man which key went to which cuff maybe I'll get you out of those if someone's stuck in the lockpick village we're like oh wait a minute no I can't get you out of those wait who's got a different key over here that happens and it became such a problem for law enforcement that a lot of law enforcement supply catalogs started offering what they would call universal keys and usually these were just keys where the bit was cut down or oftentimes I think they were just keys that failed quality control and the bit was like way too small so then they're like hey we can sell these as universals alright it'll turn and it'll always fit how small the cuff is well that's fine that'll work really well but remember cuffs that have multiple poles like you know yules or not yeah yules would have multiple poles like these chiang chang in this video especially those triple poles when there's a lot of slop in there can you guys see this this is a universal key trying to operate the chiang chang and it's catching some of the poles but not all of them at different times so some go down others don't so it's probably not going to release these and slip like in between the poles or slip on and it'll like eat the key that happened like two years ago this poor kid we're trying to close up the lockpick village and he comes up to me he's like hey man can you help me out I'm like oh sure he's like some 12 year old kid right I'm like yeah yeah oh you got stuck in those yeah you need to be showing how to get out of them he's like no no I was in your lesson you guys showed me I'm like oh what happened it's like well you know I tried this key and the key won't move nothing will move and I went oh shit we have to go home with them on his arm we eventually like snapped the key off and then put a new key in but we kind of had an idea we said alright this is a problem the idea that you can't just carry around a single key that will always work even though they're all the same universal form factor we said alright what if at our last tool meeting of 09 the Christmas meeting I said everyone bring your cuffs we're going to Ed's shop Ed has a billion cuffs almost as many as Ray maybe I said alright everyone bring your cuffs I'm on a table measure all the cuffs measure all the keys measure them really precisely and start to chart out exactly how all these numbers crunch down we said if we look at because the key is like four dimensions you know the shaft has a thickness and the bit has a height and a width if we chart all these numbers together and compare everything including a few brands that need that split do any patterns start to appear do any ranges and tolerances start to appear as it turns out yes they do and there is kind of like a Goldilocks style ideal key we were able to find one it absolutely can be workable and now we can open up basically every kind of cuff that we have in this standard handcuff key form factor so starting out you know here are those crazy three paul Kyung Chang's which are one of the hardest ones that are always a problem sure enough works on those how about the peerless ones that are popular for a lot of police departments this is a colorized model 700 works on those how about the new generation the cheap peerless p010s that are now fabricated in Korea works on those how about old brands that aren't even really used much anymore these are Winchester's works on those I think this is a pair of maybe Chicago cuff company cuffs bang works on those here is a pair of smith and wessons again another really popular one here is the cheap little Valars the Valars that are such a pain in the ass that no one likes to work with you know I think we have a pair of one of the Korean Yule's just there south african company republic arms works on those next beyond that I think is the british by rbs this is the ASP used by a lot of tactical teams ASP cuffs works on those british cuffs from the hyatt's company the rbs company hyatt's has now become safari land based out of the US works on those does it work on the scotland yard rbs rapid cuffs yes it does works on those we just kept going down the line and even ray now giving us some german police issue cuffs works on those it works on everything and now if you want to have one well this is the key it's not really hard to make this all we found is that you need tolerances of machining you need to really be precise within about I'd say a tenth of a millimeter or less if you can machine things really close to these dimensions you can absolutely have a key that fits in all these cuffs you gotta be a little careful occasionally those triple pall cuffs you have to be kind of right in the middle manually it won't perfectly seat on its own but it's narrow enough to work everywhere what what the outer diameter of the shaft 3.5 millimeter the inner diameter 2.9 the blade itself should be 5.5 tall and it should be between 2.9 and 3.0 wide with a 0.3 millimeter down the very middle of the blade yes this will all be on the web if this is probably in your slide deck on the presentation CD now what we published this for is because even though tool did this research and we patented it we only plan on maybe selling this to law enforcement if there's an interest in the market we have no care if any of you want to do this on your own we completely believe in creative commons and you know copy left if you want to make these please do if you want to make these come up to the lockpick village we have a ton of a certain type of key that is ideal if you look at this chart and start saying alright I need a key that's this wide this tall with these dimensions immediately some keys get knocked off the list because they're just not the right starting dimension they're too big I'm sorry they're too small in some ways ultimately the Kyung Chang and the Smith & Wesson key are the only real suitable candidates for getting this key to be you know something you could shave down but look how much metal you'd have to take off the Kyung Chang compared to a Smith & Wesson really the Smith & Wesson key the new style Smith & Wesson key is freaking perfect you have to narrow the bit slightly it's already the right height then you drop a cut down the middle of it and right there there it is we have these Smith & Wesson keys up in the village we brought our calipers we brought our dremel tools and just freaking go at it make your own and then try it in like every one of these cuffs that we got here and see if you did a good job Con this very year yeah is there anything else that we forgot to add any of the other tips we wanted to say there the question was is that key the new thick key yes the one that has a thicker head stamped Smith & Wesson right on it I want to add that be careful with handcuff keys some states they're illegal to have if you are arrested if you're arrested and have a handcuff key on you you have to tell the police officer you have a handcuff key and have to take it away or it's an automatic felony if you do it in one place you will become an automatic FARC headline thank you 5 minutes for questions yeah so we even saved a little time for like 1 or 2 questions here and then we'll go into the Q&A room and follow it up and do a lot of hands on yeah man the question was does the split key how does that work with the triple pawl the split is small enough that you're never going to like lose the middle pawl through the split so it functions just as a wide enough bit to be able to triple pawl all three pawls if you center it so you'll barely be catching the edge of the outer pawl and the outer pawl and the middle pawl is just hit by both sides of your split bit oh yeah that's he was thinking about the three pawls with a blade but this is only this one kyeongchang I showed earlier this is blades it won't work on those but these are not used and as you see put a little and use a straight tool and push them all down so yeah and like the ASPs that you need to split you need to cut in the ASPs you need to cut in the yule but our key works in those ASP has a three pawl one with out blade and a two pawl one with blade so it works in both ways have you guys assessed the gacha handcuffs betterhandcuffs.com oh the gacha handcuffs are not on the market since company is basically out of business so don't be afraid of them I'd really love to see them throw up from a collector's point of view to have something round shaped key with an inner triangle so it's completely different but they're not on the market they're produced a few and they're out of business so don't be afraid of the gacha handcuffs from a design point of view using the gear it still seems completely takes away the fact of shimming it yeah you can't shim the gachas but you can copy a key I could 3D print a key for the gachas I guess anything else or should we start packing up all this steel and let you play with it next door one last question then we gotta go next door what type of dremel bit I found that the wheels you know those little brown wheels that snap and break all the time they're too wide they make a special diamond wheel they call it cut off way it's like 15 bucks that tends to be narrower that's a better one to use for the slot or like a really thin axel blade if you've got steady hands and not up drinking is that it are we good going next door okay we're gonna go next door thank you very much


Our 10th and final presenter this afternoon is Suriya Agarwal, his title Intercepting Bacterial Communication to Limit Antibiotic Resistance. It has been predicted that by the year 2050, 300 million people will die due to antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is the ability of bacteria to survive, despite the presence of antibiotics. In just three decades, antibiotic resistance is projected to become deadlier than cancer and heart disease. In this doomsday scenario, a simple cut or infection that could have been easily treated would prove fatal. Welcome to another pre-antibiotic era. But how do we prevent the scenario? Bacteria live in highly complex communities called biophones. These can be thought of as being analogous to cities, as in they have walls and pipes. They organize, they resist, and they gossip. And just like communication is important for us humans to go about our daily lives, it's important for bacteria, too. With that communication, their cities would come crumbling down. So my goal was cut out. I needed to be able to understand this gossip and manipulate it in order to attack their cities. And I did just that. I've decrypted a new code that bacteria use to communicate with each other and exchange messages. It's actually a molecule that I've discovered. And through targeted genetic manipulation in the lab, I've been able to break this molecule and study two main bacterial behaviors. First, I studied the structure of these organized biophones by microscopy, why structure? Because a healthy structure is critical to bacteria's ability to colonize your throat, lungs, or middle ear. And it's also important to evade the activity of antibiotics. And I found that without this molecule of green circles, bacteria cannot form a healthy biofilm structure in red like it does in the presence of the molecule. You see sort of large holes and a collapsed structure. The second behavior I studied was bacterial sex, or DNA exchange amongst bacteria. Why sex? Because this is one of the ways they adapt over time and gain the ability to resist antibiotics. I found that this molecule relays a message that's critical for DNA exchange and adaptation. Thus, I found that this molecule is important for the formation of a healthy biofilm structure and for making cells adapt at transferring DNA that may make them antibiotic resistant. So what's the big deal? All my studies have been performed on a specific bacteria called pneumococcus, which has been termed as a serious antibiotic-resistant thread and is estimated to affect about 4 million individuals annually in the US. So by targeting this and other communication molecules, can we stop pneumococcal disease? Can we use this strategy to prevent and cure other bacterial diseases? And ultimately, can we avoid the impending antibiotic-resistant apocalypse that stares us in the eye? Thank you.


As a lot of you know, I read the comments on every episode of this show. I love seeing people discussing and debating ideas, and I'm always happy to answer questions and go deeper into issues that I couldn't cover in the video itself. Facilitating those kinds of conversations is a big part of why I do this. But one question that comes up again and again is why I bother to talk about fiction at all. People often say, you know this is a movie, right? Yes, yes I do. But as I wrote in reply to one such commenter almost a year ago, movies are about the human experience. We tell each other's stories in order to communicate our values and ideas in a format that is entertaining and emotionally moving, and therefore memorable. And lately, as I've looked out at the world from the bubble I've been forced to inhabit for the last few months, I've been thinking a lot about dystopian fiction. Perhaps more than any other genre in literature and film, it helps us peer into society and see it for what it is and imagine what it could be depending on which values we choose to accept. These stories can be set in the most unrealistic of worlds and feature the most unbelievable characters and yet still manage to expose raw truths of humanity more powerfully than the most accurate documentary. My father was a writer. You would have liked him. He used to say that artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use them to cover the truth up. A man off to my own heart. Dystopian fiction is both a repository for our fear and anxiety and one of our most effective means of warning about different pathways to terrifying authoritarian societies we'd never want to actually experience. There are so many great films in this genre, from Brazil and Blade Runner to Total Recall and Judge Dredd, Akira to Watchman, THX1138, Fahrenheit 451, 1984 and A Clockwork Orange going all the way back to 1927's Metropolis. But today, I want to focus on the idea of dystopia and on one film in particular, V for Vendetta. Take a second to hit the subscribe button, click that bell icon and welcome to Out of Frame. As crazy as this seems to me, V for Vendetta came out 15 years ago, but in a lot of ways it's still shockingly relevant today. For those who haven't seen it, it's absolutely worth a watch. Based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore, V for Vendetta was the first film produced by the Wachowskis after The Matrix trilogy. It's set in the UK in a bleak future after a virus ravages their population, creating turmoil and terror. People look to their government for protection and their fear opens the door to the rise of fascism led by the Norse fire party and its dictator Chancellor Adam Suttler. Played perfectly to type by John Hurt, who you might recall also played Winston Smith in 1984. It paints a world in perpetual lockdown with strict nightly curfews enforced by abusive Gestapo-like police. The government fills British society with propaganda designed to foment social mistrust and hatred of religious and cultural differences, keeping citizens in a state of compliance. It's a deeply totalitarian world, blatantly modeled off of the Nazi Third Reich, where any speech that criticizes the state or rejects its values is censored and those who government officials deemed to be threats disappear in the night. After a brief prologue, the film introduces us to its main character, Evie Hammond. She's a young woman of no particular importance who works for the state-run British television network.  An enigmatic masked character, V's brutality against the officers quickly turns to gentle kindness with Evie. Evie remains under V's protection for the rest of the evening, as he brings her with him to witness the event that will set the film's plot in motion. The next day, V hijacks a BTN broadcast to take credit for the bombing and announce his intention to blow up the British Parliament building in exactly one year. His speech is anthemic and bold. It's one of the most vibrant monologues I've ever heard in a film, and I think it's a huge part of why people resonate with the character. And the truth V wants to expose is dark. One of the more interesting facets of V's statement is that he ultimately places the blame for this turn of events, not on political leaders who manipulated people into allowing them to amass authoritarian power, but on the complacency of the people themselves for not standing up for their freedom. Having lived through the last couple decades, his words are eerily familiar. V finally, as V concludes his broadcast, his call to action initiates a ticking clock for British society. V is, by any definition, a terrorist. He's also a freedom fighter, and as the film reveals more and more of his backstory, it becomes easier to empathize with his motives. But at the end of the day, what V really is, is an allegory. When Alan Moore wrote the original story in 1982, he was writing from his standpoint as a Marxist, socialist, and self-described anarchist who hated Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and religious fundamentalism. He used his art to attack what he saw as a future that would be marred by nuclear war and fascist nationalism if his political enemies retained power. And I think that V's speech in the book was Moore's way of expressing some of his most radical ideas through fiction. But like any film, V for Vendetta is a product of its time and the perspectives of its creators. And the changes the Wachowskis made to the story reflect that. Instead of a nuclear attack, the initial threat that ushers in totalitarian rule is an engineered virus. And instead of subtle references to UK politics in the 80s, the political criticism seems more to be directed at George W. Bush and the civil liberties being lost as a result of the new war on terror. Of course, one thing that remains entirely consistent is the criticism directed at Christian theocrats who would have the government impose their religious values on everyone by law. V is the self-appointed antidote to this brand of totalitarianism, and his existence as a character is designed to shine a light on these same kinds of injustices present in the real world. Everything he does is meant to help us as audience members understand and identify with the underlying themes in the film itself. And even if, like me, you're not a socialist and you recognize that real dystopian societies are just as often the result of people's supposedly good intentions as they are a product of malevolence, there are still some incredibly strong themes here. People should not be afraid of their governments. Government should be afraid of their people. This is the power of great works of fiction. Art often holds a mirror to society, and we should especially pay attention when we don't like what we see. Now, V for Vendetta wasn't perfectly prophetic. It's a comic book movie after all. But like most films of its genre, it did get some things right. In the years since it was made, I think it's fair to say that the wars on terror and drugs have created a number of lasting problems, not least of which being people's general desensitization to the idea of perpetual conflict and the language of warfare. We've gotten used to the idea of a state that has nearly unlimited power to spy on citizens, violate people's privacy without any form of due process, and arrest people or take their property without a warrant or even legitimate cause. We've grown oblivious to the militarization of police and the shift away from the idea that they are here to protect and serve towards the idea that cops exist to enforce even the pettiest of laws with brutality. Perhaps most disturbingly of all, the war on terror has invited a lot of the same kinds of social mistrust we see in the movie. We've been increasingly conditioned to see our neighbors and fellow citizens as potential threats and told to turn them into the authorities if they do anything we don't like. Over the last 20 years, we seem to have abandoned the live and let live. It's a free country ethos of America and replaced it with a culture of busy bodies. You know who I'm talking about. Barbecue Becky, permit Patty, dog park Debbie, corner store Caroline, a veritable army of Karens. These are people who are constantly on high alert, looking to report any misdeed they can find. Even if they're made up. From suspicious UPS drivers to dangerous six-year-old girls, there's an endless stream of examples where obnoxious people call the police over nothing. But this isn't Mayberry and modern police aren't Andy Griffith. Today's officers are outfitted with body armor, tanks, and automatic weapons they got from the US military. Only they didn't get the army's rules of engagement or the Marines combat training. Instead, they got powerful public sector unions shielding them from the consequences of misconduct and qualified immunity, a legal concept that absolves government officials from personal liability, even when their actions harm citizens and violate their civil rights. The idea originated with a 1967 Supreme Court case, Pearson versus Ray, which was about a group of racially integrated clergy members who were arrested in Mississippi for using a segregated bus terminal. While segregation and the arrest itself were ultimately ruled unconstitutional, the Supreme Court rejected the idea that police officers and judges could be held individually responsible as long as they weren't intentionally violating the law or being unreasonable. Of course, what's reasonable is open to interpretation. Qualified immunity was revisited by the Supreme Court again in the 80s and in the 2000s. Each time, the court has held that officers cannot be personally sued for violating people's rights. The result has been an ever-growing number of cases where police officers have abused their power and used excessive force against citizens with essentially zero repercussions. Meanwhile, the radical expansion of criminal laws and tough-on-crime policies around the country has created incentives for officers to treat everyone as an enemy combatant. So calling the police to shut down a kid's lemonade stand or arbitrate a neighborhood dispute isn't just a cowardly way of outsourcing adult confrontation to authority figures, it's also potentially deadly. And while it's tempting to frame the problem entirely in terms of racism, it's a lot bigger than that. Fear does really weird things to people. I was in high school when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 of their classmates in Columbine, Colorado. A few days later, I was in the school library with a friend looking at a book about medieval siege weapons and debating the merits of the trebuchet. Then, in an unmistakably accusatory tone coming from the other side of the stacks, our librarian demanded to know what we were planning. We weren't planning anything. We were just nerds living in small town Nebraska. A couple years later, 9-11 brought with it a new kind of fear that people in the U.S. had never really experienced before. Terrorism. I already talked about the Patriot Act in my episode on the Winter Soldier, but what I didn't really talk about was the way that civil society changed. Just like that librarian, people started seeing anyone as a potential threat. And if you happen to be a Sikh or a Muslim, everything you did could be subject to the suspicious, watchful eyes of busy bodies who assumed anyone of Middle Eastern descent was an Islamic radical. Every time we find something new to be afraid of and let that fear guide our behavior, our society breaks down a little more. I'm worried that we're going to see this creeping social distrust fester and expand in ways that few of us probably want. Meanwhile, the disturbing precedent set by states asserting total control over their economies and human behavior during this crisis is going to be with us for a long, long time. Tonight, I will speak directly to these people and make the situation perfectly clear to them. The security of this nation depends on complete and total compliance. While there's little evidence that the last several months of lockdowns actually saved many lives, there's a lot of evidence that they caused significant damage to our society and economy, to people's mental health, and to our civil rights. Much like what happened with the Patriot Act, the new stimulus bills quietly expanded the government's power of surveillance, as if that wasn't a big enough problem already. At the same time, the Trump administration just created a new watch list that includes people merely suspected of a broader range of crimes than ever before, including money laundering, wildlife trafficking, and healthcare fraud. Any one of these new laws can become a pretext for politicians and police to abuse their power. And now, we have riots. V for Vendetta depicts a society that devolves into a police state when its people give in to fear and trade freedom for security in response to a virus. I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but it's hard for me not to see shades of that future in our present reality. And the question I want to ask you is simple. Is this the world you want? Are you okay with constantly looking over your shoulder for police, regardless of whether or not you've done anything wrong? Are you okay with SWAT teams breaking down your door and shooting at you without announcing who they are? Are you okay with knowing that your financial and medical records can be searched at any time or that the government could read your email, search, and cell phone history without a warrant? Would you be willing to start a business, knowing that your state could declare it non-essential and shut it down for months at a time? How do you feel about having a government that decides protests and criticism are no longer allowed in an emergency? And it's not just government.  Do you think that raising kids in this kind of world will create stronger, braver, and more ethical adults in the future? I don't. Fear of coronavirus led a lot of people to quietly accept deeply authoritarian policies without objection. Doing so made them feel safe, but we are only just now starting to see the magnitude of this decision. Our policy response to COVID-19 created a powder keg of civil unrest that just exploded. It even contributed to the spark that set it off. George Floyd, whose death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has resulted in both peaceful protest and destructive riots across the country, spent the last few months of his life unemployed when his job was deemed non-essential. But the idea that we can trade freedom for security has always been a false choice. What we're actually doing when we give up our rights is concentrating power in the hands of people who don't know or care about us. In the history of the world, no one living under totalitarian regimes has ever been safe. But I would take it even a step farther and argue that there's actually no point to living in a safe society without freedom. Revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having. Everything anyone has ever done that's worthwhile, from sailing the oceans to exploring outer space, starting a business or pursuing their dreams, involves taking significant risks. And some of the most beautiful and meaningful parts of life are the very things someone else would call non-essential. What is the value of life if you're never really allowed to live? dystopian fiction reminds us that our future will be shaped by the choices we make and the values we accept in the present. If we allow fear and complacency to drive our decisions, we will end up with the kind of society that stories like V for Vendetta warn us about. If we want a tolerant, free, and prosperous world, then we must all join together as people and courageously reject both tyrannical abuses of power from politicians and police and the senseless destruction of lives and property caused by violent opportunistic mobs. So if you feel what I feel and you see what I see, I challenge you to peacefully stand up for your rights, not in a year or even later in November, but right now. Our future depends on it. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. I know a lot of people are frustrated and hurting right now and a lot of what's going on is hard to deal with. One of the great things about YouTube is that we can all talk it out in the comments together. This channel is not a safe space or an echo chamber and I'm not going to go through and block people who say mean things to each other. But I do want to say that what happens here is a microcosm of what happens out in the real world. As we interact with people online, we all have a choice to treat people with respect and use those opportunities to learn something new about someone else's perspective or not. We can always find reasons to hate other people's opinions and blast them with an angry insult instead of trying to understand them. But in the past week, we've seen the worst of humanity and the best. To quote Ayn Rand, it is man's irrational emotions that bring him down to the mud. It is man's reason that lifts him to the stars. Let's use the comments here to lift each other up. I'd also like to give a shout out to our new patrons. We just launched our Patreon account last month and it's already starting to gain some traction. I'm super grateful to everyone who has already supported us and I'm looking forward to seeing how that will grow over time. Check it out. An extra special thank you goes to Matthew Tabor of The Create Unknown for being our first associate producer on Patreon and for being a good friend of the show and a huge part of its success for the last couple years. Thanks Matt. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel. Hit that bell icon so you get notifications whenever we put up new episodes and as always, be sure to check out all our social media on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for watching.