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tasks and research. They will initially say, ‘This is impossible, this is ridiculous, this is another crazy idea,’ but once I believe the logic of something makes sense and it can work, I am pushing so hard until we crack it and until the way is found.”

The development of Mega came about in the same way, Dotcom says. Discussion around what it would be turned to talk about privacy. “I said the key to having this new privacy company is we find a way to turn encryption into something that is on the fly, without having to install anything.” The idea was to find a way to shut the world out of people’s personal business.

Dotcom said the initial response was doubt as to whether it could be achieved. As soon as data left a computer, trickled out into the internet and beyond, it was fair game. The answer was encryption which happened before information left a computer. But it needed to be done in a way which allowed users to be, effectively, technically ignorant. Anything complicated would be a barrier to mainstream use of the service. “Often, you have the greatest technologies and greatest innovations which never become a mass product because they are too complicated.”

It had been tried before but, as Dotcom put it, “encryption never took off. It was for the super advanced user and for the very paranoid.”

Also, it required the person receiving the encrypted information to also be using encryption so they could unlock and access the information on receipt. “So it was a really small group of people that was using it.”

Whatever they built would have to automate the encryption process. “If you want something to be taken off and have critical mass you need to make it for monkeys. If a monkey can use it then it has the potential to become something that everyone is going to use. Users in general, they don’t want to install things. They don’t want to have to understand anything complicated. The moment they have to make five clicks, it’s over. It is just annoying and they say, ‘Who cares?’ But if you do it without them even noticing, that’s a different story. Then they want that added benefit of security because they know it is happening anyway in the background.”

In Dotcom’s view, there was no reason why technology would not allow the construction of encryption. “If we want to bring encryption to the main stream we have to find this solution,” says Dotcom. “I just knew it had to be possible because everything I put together in my head meant it made perfect sense — it’s just no one has done it yet. We just have to find a way to make it happen.”

Surely, he said, there was enough capability in modern internet browsers to build an encryption engine while all the data was held in the computer — and to then allow the information to make its journey

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