Accountability & responsibility in a digital world | Paul Davis | TEDxStMaryCSSchool

when I was 12 years old my mother purchased a computer for me thinking that I was going to play games on it when she gave it to me she didn't understand what I was going to do with it and I started coding right away and it's because of my mom and the gift that she gave me that allowed me to in basically explore technology programming circuit boards and it was from that point on after programming and hanging out with like-minded individuals that allowed me to explore my interest even more that I got my first job

when I was just under 20 years old with a tech firm and I thought this is it my career is going to be in Tech and for the past 26 years professionally I've dedicated my life to information technology and I've always said it's fun but it was four years ago at my daughter's school where the principal talked to me about why kids get in trouble using technology that my life turned around and what I did was I spoke to the kids in my daughter's school about being safe online and I also had a conversation with

the principal about speaking to the parents because I've always said the kids and for those at St Mary remember this I don't blame any of you guys for getting in trouble online I've always put the responsibility on parents who's you know they put the technology in your hand and they're supposed to guide you I mean that's our responsibility I said so please let me reach out to these parents along with the kids and he did one thing led to another and you just heard the stats in terms of uh how many kids I've spoken to

over 25,000 parents over 1,200 principles twice at the Ontario provincial police twice at the Department of National Defense and what I found out 4 and 1/2 years ago as I started speaking is that this is the most rewarding Time of My Life Education and giving knowledge back when my mother gave me I'm now able to give to you and I've always always followed in the footsteps of a mom who at the time was a single mom because my parents had split up and she gave me all the values to move forward in life and every

day that I do something I always think about am I going to make my mom proud because she gave me the opportunity to where I am today so having said that at a young age you have a ton of accountability and responsibility the responsibility is yours the accountability is to your parents I speak to principles all the time where I hear stories of kids coming into the office who have participated in cyber building and have said that was a mistake I didn't mean to do that it was an accident and I look at the principles

and I say those are pathetic excuses because there's no such thing as accidental cyber bullying or it was M AK I can give you a very simple example of how cyberbullying occurs number one you have to type in or take a picture to do the hurt to initiate the pain that's an action item so if I make an inappropriate comment I've typed that out then I have to actually transmit it meaning I post it or I send it from one device to another device so the person sees it two action items don't equal a mistake

or an accident they equal intent meaning it was intentional I met a father who said to me I don't know what my son was thinking when he made that comment and I looked at him I said I know what he was thinking he was thinking about hurting someone because he had to think about it before he typed it and then transmit it so I want to put excuses aside and I want everyone to step up you are empowered with technology that's how privileged you are because you live in the greatest country in the world where

your parents have worked so hard to empower you with that technology be respectful because they own it you know before I came over here today I stopped off at a mobility store and I walked in and I said my daughter wants to buy a phone I want to give it to her and I asked the lady how old does she need to be she says 18 I said no I want her to come in I want her to pick she says she has to be 18 so students if I asked you how many of you

own your phones the majority will put up your hands the reality is you don't your parents own those devices you see what happened was when you purchased the phone was that your parents made the financial transaction number two they signed the contract with the telephone company cuz you can't cuz you're not an adult number three they pay the monthly bill now you may have earned your money to pay for the phone which I think is responsible and you might actually give them the money every month to pay for the bill but it's their name that

is on the contract and makes the financial transactions all the time if a principal confiscates a phone hands it over to a police officer and that police officer investigates it your name doesn't come up your parents name comes up so I always tell kids you love care and respect your parents think about how use these Technologies when you go online because every time you go online you leave digital Trails of all your actions now some people say digital Trails digital Footprints are the same thing I actually break them down into two let's talk about digital

Trails let me give you some examples sending a text message the sending device the receiving device the servers in between if I send a text text message that is hateful threatening bullying or racist I can delete the message off my device not to get in trouble but the person who received it now has a copy on their device if they report it to law enforcement and they investigate it they can contact my phone company their phone company and get information as to when that I sent the message and when that message was received when you

go online and you send an email emails leave so many digital Trails it's unimaginable how many servers they hit before they actually hit the recipient's device let's say I want to use your teachers as an example let's say your teachers come to school and they give you a test and then they sit behind their computer and they decide they're going to email 25 friends and family about a big party they're having on the weekend well that's a mistake because the school board will know when they send the email at what time from what computer computer

to whom what was the context of that email and if that computer was in class where the teacher supposed to be teaching and they sent it from that computer the school board will know what about if your principales come to school and they decide to surf the web and they decide I need to do some shopping I'm a principal I can't leave but I need to go online and do some shopping so they spend an hour at walmart.ca to do some shopping after an hour they come out of the office with a big smile on

their face cuz they're getting the orderers ship to their home and they'll think well no one will know well they're mistaken cuz the school board will know when they went online how long they were online and when they left these are Trails of their actions every time you post post something on BlackBerry Messenger kick Facebook Twitter every example up there leaves a trail you know that ask website where you thought it was Anonymous well for those at same M I busted that myth I showed them exactly where askfm servers reside and now how law enforcement

have access to your um IP addresses the context of what was sent received and posted I know you guys use this thing called Yik something y Yik Yak I'm making fun you know what most people think well no one will know that's completely Anonymous look at the legal section within yikyak you know what you will find you will find how they will relinquish information to law enforcement law enforcement with a simple subpoena none of these Trails disappear and they lead to your digital Footprints let me give you examples of digital Footprints what you write to

your hard drive is now physically written what you write to a memory card a flash drive your smartphone if you're a console gamer a lot of them have hard drives it will write information to the hard drive cloud storage people think the cloud it's virtual it's out there the cloud is a physical hard drive except it gives you easy access to what you posted up on the web but it's physically written somewhere on a hard drive so go back to point number one it's written there and of course your Footprints stamped every time you visit

a social networking site why because it's posted so now let's talk about digital trails and Footprints you transmit something from your smartphone to Facebook you left the trail and and you've left a footprint you transmit something from your computer to cloud storage you've got the stamp the footprint on your computer you've got the trail to the cloud storage you've got another footprint on cloud storage handheld device to Instagram you post a simple comment you like a picture you you've left a trail of what is permanently online in a digital footprint and we can go through

example after example after example but I'm here to tell you you leave both trails and Footprints every time you go online now when your teachers and I were growing up we had a saying a picture's worth a thousand words but that was all up to interpretation so if we put the same picture in front of 10 people their thousand words would all be different now a picture is a book a digital book so what you look at visually when I look at it as a programmer as a coder I look at it digitally meaning time

day location aperture setting lighting settings all kinds of information is written to a picture so that picture is of me believe it or not and I'm in bam but I'm at a Hill Called Sunshine now the only way you will know by looking at that picture that I'm at sunshine is by looking at the map behind me if you look closely enough because I analyze the picture you can see in the reflection of my visor the chairlift that's off to the side and the chair L chairlift has a name and if you Google that name

you would see Sunshine but what happens if you couldn't see the chairlift or you couldn't see the map well analyzing the picture using binary code because binary code is what makes up picture zeros and ones you would analyze the time day Loc of where the picture was taken which is precise because I remember sending that picture over to my wife and they were able to decode it so these trails are real you know how sophisticated pictures are you know the bad people in this earth that want to bring harm to all different countries I won't

use their word and give them acknowledgement they send messages within images within jpegs because an image is made up of zeros and one's binary code they actually embed messages in certain components of the pictures and when it pictures received that person that is intended to receive the picture is now decoding it and they're looking at what the message is and law enforcement have to go through pictures so think about that from the National Security level angle and then think about it when they're investigating a picture that was transmitted from one device to another in case

it was an inappropriate picture I let Google track me give you one more example about digital Trails I was in Calgary for two weeks and one day I decided I'm going to let Google track me so here's what I did I had Google follow me from the moment I woke up in my hotel to every school I went to I went to two schools that day so I left my hotel I went to school a after school a I went to Starbucks after Starbucks I went to school B after school B before I went and

spoke to the parents of both schools together I went back to the hotel I took a nap after that I had a light bite I went back to the school and then after that I was invited to a function which was on the the West End of Calgary after that I went back to the hotel it tracked everywhere I was going precisely so to just finalize it the trails don't lie so listen when it comes of cyber bullying students I've always said it's not a matter of if you're going to get caught it's a matter

of how and when you will get caught but today I'm not going to lecture you on cyber bullying because you love care and respect each other and that's obviously the best reason why you would hurt another person if you happen to go home this weekend and Bully another person online digitally from your home on your computer in your bedroom the next day when your principes are investigating what happened they actually have to address the bully because two students are involved now principles have three options number one give the bully a warning number two suspend the

bully from school number three call the police if your principal has to call the police well a suspension can still be issued but now the police don't care about that you see they care about criminal law and they want to see if what you did violated criminal law and you all know everyone in this room you're not a kid anymore you're now a young offender and so these charges can be laid against you the day after you turn 12 years old it's called 12 years plus a day you're criminal criminally chargeable by law but like

I said earlier you don't have to worry about that because you love care and respect each other I just need you to know that in the back of your head so what happens if you get saber bullied I've always told kids every day don't ever respond to a bully I know it's an emotional piece move away from it what I need you to do is I need you to print out every picture post comment chat session screenshot get all of that evidence together and bring it to an adult someone you trust show them what has

hurt you let the adult in your life whether it be a teacher a principal a guidance counselor your parents a police officer show it to them let them deal with it we the adults that's our ethical and moral duty in life is to help guide and protect you bring it to us say I need help and let us deal with it let the bullies get caught let them get dealt with they've left Trails behind but I need you to speak out and finally when you leave school you're going to leave with two things guaranteed to

you students an education and a reputation you've spent every year of your life earning an education you've also built up a reputation social media what happens when you go looking for a job you're going to submit a resume a resume is going to have your first name last name your address your email address your phone number where you went to school what jobs you had when an employer looks that up they have the ability to look you up online and now judge you based on your online activity those negative digital Trails can supersede your education

so you could be the best qualified for the job but if the trails say you post inappropriate pictures you disrespect people you do something that just goes against what they like as a candidate they take both documents they put them together they rip them up you know that's a violation of your human rights right you know what the problem is no one's ever going to know it happened why because it's happening online so please when you go online I want you to do something I want you to think your parents whether they're here or not

and always think I'm not going to make them proud if you have that voice in the back of your head when you use the technology that they gave you you will will always always make the right decisions thank you very much for listening