"Dirty Laundry" deliverable

Info

Summary

Short video showing someone experiencing the violent aftermath of a severe data breach.

Goals

  • Exposing the grave dangers of entrusting tech companies with very sensitive and private information (here, the person’s web search history).

  • Highlighting that we have to come to blindly trust technology with our most intimate secrets.

  • Get the audience to ponder whether they should immediately stop giving their private information away.

Concept

A typical user of a web search engine (let us call it “Search”) has grown accustomed to search about the most private and potentially embarrassing topics. He wakes up to realize a massive data breach has leaked many users’ search history to all their connections. We follow him going through the aftermath, leading to his ultimate suicide. If was a false awakening. He finally - this time, really - wakes up and realizes this has all been just a nightmare. He then immediately checks and gets to realize that no one can be sure your search history can be deleted an Search’s servers.

Strategy

  • This deliverable does not require additional strategy. Please refer to Reality Shock campaign strategy.

Script

The video starts with the main character (let us say a man, in his forties, married with two kids) at night at home in bed playing with his laptop (wife is next to him, asleep). We see him using a search engine called Search, which he uses to search about increasingly private and potentially embarrassing topics, starting with benign topics such as career tips, etc and progressing through a natural succession to more and more compromising topics. In the process, we come to understand he is facing a mid life crisis, and seems to fantasize about a junior co-worker. While searching, we seem him hesitate for a second, but he proceeds anyway.

These are the search queries he would enter on Search (in brackets what Google gives us for these):

  • “Career promotion tips” (innocent links on how to advance your career)
  • “Boss is a prick” (links on how to deal with a difficult boss)
  • “Attractive colleague” (includes links to people’s experience with this issue)
  • “Hot colleague” (first link is “How to attract and seduce your hot colleague”)
  • “Business trip affair” (4th link is “How to cheat on your wife on a business trip”)
  • “Fake business trip” (Same idea but emphasizes he is thinking of planning one)
  • “Hot office videos” (No need to describe what you get there)

He clears search history, switches off his laptop and bed light and falls asleep.

He wakes up around 6am to a call from a good friend, one of his male colleagues, who tells him “man, something very bad happened last night. We’re in deep shit. You’d better check your emails asap”. He goes to her emails and realizes the inbox is full with all sorts of messages with subject lines including insults, LOL, and ONE message from the friend linking to a news article. He clicks on the link and sees that the whole front page of the newspaper is dedicated to the most severe data breach in history, involving Search. He reads on to see that the breach resulted in sharing the search history of millions of users to all their connections, including colleagues, bosses, wives, friends, etc, etc.

It is now 7am and he leaves for the office (wife still asleep). On the street, he sees many people running in the opposite direction while talking on the phone. At the office, his boss is waiting for him at his corner office to announce he is fired with immediate effect. He goes to a coffee place, only to realize his credit card is rejected.

Next scene he is seen fighting with his wife on the phone, she tells him it is over. Next scene, he goes to see his father for advice, his father refuses to look him in the eye and just shows him the door. Next scene, he sits with some of his friends in a bar. They have all been affected by the hack. They sit there, with their drinks, not saying a word, looking at each other. He ends walking in a park, where it seems strangers are looking at him suspiciously. He is seen back home (wife and kids have left), where after a few seconds collecting his thoughts, he opens a drawer, revealing a gun. He glanced at his laptop screen on the table and focuses on Search’s main page, which shows the slogan “Everything you need is at your fingertips”.

At that moment we hear a loud bang and the screen goes black and the music stops. But it was all a nightmare. He wakes up in sweat. It is the middle of the night. He calms down for a few seconds, then grabs his laptop. We see him type: “permanently delete personal data on Search?”. The results page shows many links that all seem to imply it is impossible to be 100% sure. One of the links maybe humanetech.com (to be discussed).

Duration

  • Short, but duration still to be determined.

Music

Three Little Birds (Bob Marley) provided we can get copyrights. Listen here on Youtube

Production

  • Production requirements and details are still to be determined.

Funding

  • Funding requirements have yet to be determined.

Team

  • To be determined

Resources

Updated: