- So Dr. Shiva, what's your
position on free speech
and big tech censorship?
- Well, John, as you know,
I'm a big fighter for free
speech, the First Amendment.
I was one of the people who
was one of the keynote speakers
at the Boston Free Speech Rally,
but let me answer your question
because the First
Amendment is a foundation
of American freedom.
With the First Amendment, we
have the right to assemble.
We have the right to have open discourse
and essentially freedom to
discuss all sorts of issues,
and from that freedom is
how we can have a society
where we can practice real science,
and what I mean the science
is the scientific method,
and as a scientist,
I know that open discourse and free speech
is extremely important for
science to occur because,
if we don't have open science,
what we end up having it is
we end up having scientific consensus,
a bunch of people just agreeing
and suppressing free speech.
So I just wanna let you know
that the first amendment,
I believe, is the essence of foundations
of even doing science to get to truth.
Now, when it comes to big tech censorship,
what we have going on is five
or six major companies today
control the entire dialogue
through the digital medium.
On the tele co side, you have
AT&T, Vodafone, and Verizon,
and then on the software
side, you have Google,
you have Facebook, and probably
one or two other companies,
and what's happened is
this big tech censorship has occurred,
and what I'm gonna share
with you also leads
to the solution.
It's occurred because an entity,
an organization that was
created by the founders
of this country, which
people have forgotten
why it was created,
and it's gonna initially
seem weird to you,
is the United States Postal Service.
The United States Postal
Service was created
by the founders like Franklin to ensure
that all of us could be the press.
That's what I want people to understand.
It was not supposed to be
that mega corporations were
the press, the free press.
All of us were supposed to be the press.
This was at a time when the
Postal Service was created
because the crown was not allowing us
to publish our own news.
- They were going through
people's mail and stuff.
- They were going through people's mail.
So when they created the Postal Service,
it was I can send you a letter.
You can send me a letter at a low cost,
and if anyone interfered, it
would be 22 sentenced years
in prison because they had a police force
for the Postal Service.
So think about this.
The founders of this
country wanted all of us
to be able to write, communicate,
and if anyone interfered,
the post office police
force would shut that down.
Now, fast forward to
what occurred in 1997.
In 1997...
As you know, I created
the first email system,
and I was running another
company in the '90s and in email,
and I saw it in 1997 is
when the email volume
overtook postal mail volume.
Now, in 1993, after the invention of email
that I did in '78,
we had the web-based versions of email,
Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, all these companies,
and they started offering email for free,
just like the Facebooks were
coming out, social media.
So everyone was signing up
for these free accounts,
but no one read the privacy statement.
The privacy statement basically
said they own your content.
So we traded freedom for free
email, okay, but in 1997,
what happened was email volume
overtook postal mail volume,
and I went to the Postal
Service and I said look,
you guys should be
offering digital services,
free version of email.
You should be offering
a version of Facebook,
a version of YouTube, etc., brought to you
by the Postal Service,
and you guys can make billions of dollars.
I'm sure Americans
would pay like 50 bucks,
and it would be protected by
the laws of the Constitution,
where if anyone interfered,
22-year sentence in prison,
20-year sentence in prison.
They thought I was an idiot.
They thought your nice kid.
Good idea.
We're bigger than Walmart.
I was 29 at the time.
Well, anyway, they didn't listen to me.
Fast forward to about 14 years later,
in 2011, the Postal Service
is going out of business.
I done gave another
interview and Time Magazine,
and I said these guys
were absolutely foolish
for not offering these digital services
because they could have, first of all,
made money and defended
the American people.
Anyway, that article
came out in past company
and in Time Magazine.
The Inspector General,
Dave Williams, calls me.
He goes why are you attacking
me 'cause the news went viral.
The Postal Service hired
me, and I wrote two reports
for them showing how they
could make billions of dollars,
A, for themselves so
they don't go bankrupt
and protecting our rights,
and what that solution
is, the Postal Service,
we pay them about 50 bucks,
and they offer a platform where
we get the email equivalent,
the Facebook equivalent and...
That's a good sign, okay?
And we also get the equivalent
of Facebook or YouTube, etc.,
and what ended up happening
was they commissioned me
to write two reports.
I submitted them.
They haven't done anything,
but the point is I have a
solution, and by the way,
you won't get the solution from a lawyer
because, remember, lawyers
are all about causing problems
or prolonging problems,
but that's how we solve
big tech censorship.
The Postal Service has got to do their job
and particularly in the digital realm,
and the Postal Service was
created as a public commons,
and we need to now have the
electronic commons brought
to you by the Postal Service.
- All right, thank you.
- Sure, you're welcome.
- [Narrator] Vote for Dr. Shiva
Ayyadurai on September 1st.
(instrumental music)
