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Alex is on assignment we will not be hearing from him this week however I did get to hang out with him quite a bit last week so I'm welcoming the the reprieve we actually went out to Pennsylvania to visit our friends and family and we did get to hang out with him quite a bit last week so I'm welcoming the the reprieve we actually went out to Pennsylvania to visit our friends and family and we did get to hang out with him quite a bit last week so I'm welcoming the the reprieve we actually went out to Pennsylvania to visit our friends and family and we did get to hang out with him quite a bit last week so I'm welcoming the the reprieve we actually went out to Pennsylvania to visit our friends and family and we did get to hang out with him quite a bit last week so I'm welcoming the the reprieve we actually went out to Pennsylvania to visit our friends and family and we did get to hang out with him quite a bit last week so I'm welcoming the the reprieve we actually went out to Pennsylvania
to visit our friend Virgil Griffith and that was quite a car you were there too although you weren't on the list so you couldn't get into the prison most elite club in town but yeah you got you got to hang out in a coffee shop so it wasn't all bad was in the area yeah so it was it was good to see him and for those who are concerned about him he's doing well I mean he's not enjoying prison or anything like that but he is he is still Virgil and that's that's what matters and he's
basically thinking and planning and writing and noticing and that's what a
hacker does when they're locked away. For those who don't know, we've
talked about this case many many times. It's basically, he's been locked away for
a number of years because he went to North Korea and really just answered a
few questions that people had about cryptocurrency, questions that you could
answer on the Internet. And well, because Donald Trump was in power at the time
and made it illegal to go to North Korea, he was able to be charged with a
bunch of crimes and the rest is history, I guess. It's an injustice and
somebody like Virgil should not be in prison. He should be on the college
lecture circuit, but that's how it is. You guys out there in Skype land, any
questions perhaps since you weren't actually there? Yeah, I mean you've known
Virgil for a long time obviously and I believe, am I correct in thinking this is
the first time you've seen him since he was arrested? This was the first time
I'd seen him since the night he talked to the FBI voluntarily and basically
told them everything he did because he thought that was the thing he should do.
And they turned around months later and used it against him and arrested him
when he was coming to visit his family at Thanksgiving. So I hadn't seen him
for a few years. I just remember he was so very happy to be able to share
his experience in North Korea, just like I was when I went to North Korea. He had
all these newspapers and souvenirs that he was handing out. He gave some
to the FBI agents that were asking him questions about his unauthorized trip to
a country that he used to be legal to travel to. In this
country, we're not used to being told we can't go places. So I completely
understand why he did it anyway. But yeah, I hadn't seen him since then and I
was worried. I was very concerned about what prison might have done to
him. I know this system wears you down. I know just being put on trial like that
wears you down. Those of you who saw him in the courtroom can certainly attest to
that. But I think the support that he is getting and just being able
to use that mind of his and know that the days are ticking. He will
one day be free again. Can you say anything about what the experience of
visiting the facility itself was like? I mean obviously we probably can't get too
far into the nitty-gritty. Well actually I can say on next week's
Off the Wall, we're gonna have some actualities from that. I didn't record
inside the prison obviously, but it was an interesting experience because you
have to be very careful when you go in there. You have to follow the rules
obviously. You basically can't bring anything in. I brought a second form of
ID. I figured it would be safe to have two forms of ID. No, you can
only bring one. Okay, so what do I do with the second one? You have to put that back
in your car. Okay, but the car has already driven off because Kyle's in the car and
he needs to spend time somewhere else, not a parking lot of a prison. So
shenanigans like that. I had to basically bury my ID for a couple of hours outside.
That's what you go through. I wish Alex were here because he's been
through this so many more times and he knows the system. He's
one of the reasons Virgil is thriving because of the support that he has shown.
I just think that's so typical of the hacker community that we adapt. We
become lawyers. We start changing the system from within and that's
where the real power is. So what sorts of things were you
able to do? Was it just like a brief hangout and catch up and chat? We were
able to hang out for a couple of hours and it was actually quite nice.
I was expecting the people in the prison to be hostile. They were actually very
polite and cordial, so I have no complaints there. It is a prison. I
know that and it's not a pleasant environment, but they did the best on
that particular occasion to make people feel somewhat welcome. But what happens
and people need to understand this. It wasn't last weekend. It was
the weekend before Memorial Day holiday. What can happen and what has happened in
the past is that they suddenly realize they don't have enough staff for the
rest of the weekend and they say, okay, all visits are over for the weekend on
Saturday. So no visits Sunday, no visits Monday. I'm not saying that happened this
time. I don't know what happened this time, but that has happened in the past.
And when you consider there are people who have traveled across the country to
visit their relatives, their loved ones who are in prison, and to be told, no,
sorry, we're closed. Sucks to be you. And that's what happens a lot, way, way
too often. Didn't happen to us. We're lucky. So anyway, so that was an
interesting event that I experienced. And again, I hope he gets out sooner
rather than later. We'll see.
Yeah. And just knowing that you're able to visit someone, you're still
communicating. I think that's something Virgil's doing is taking in as much as
he can and getting through the moment he's there, but also reaching out and
using the resources available to him and to have folks check in. That is really
crucial. If you know anyone in a circumstance like this, reaching out,
writing them as an exercise, all of those things really, really matter. And I
look forward to a day that he is sharing a lot of what he's been reflecting on
and excited about with the rest of the world outside of prison.
Yeah. One thing, I didn't mention this. You're in this big room with lots and
lots of people, and the visitors are allowed to go to the vending machines and
buy food for the inmates. Inmates are not allowed to go to the vending machines.
They're not allowed to have cash in their hands. But you pay, what, $8 for a
piece of pizza, and then you walk it over to the microwave and you hit blast on
that for a couple of minutes, and then you bring it to your friend or loved
one, and it's the best meal they've had in weeks. So that's kind of how the
system works. All right. On another note, Kyle and I went to the Long Island
Maker Faire this past weekend, which took place in Port Jefferson in Suffolk
County, and it was pretty awesome to see a Maker Faire again, not as big as
the World Maker Faire used to be. Well, and all the satellite and mini Maker
Faires, they're continuing. So this is in the grand tradition, and wherever they
take place, it's always exciting to see everyone getting out there and showing
and telling what they're working on. We have some exciting news that we have
been privy to on the subject of Maker Faire in New York City. World Maker
Faire, that's history at the old fairgrounds in Queens, or near the old
fairgrounds in Queens. But Coney Island Maker Faire, yeah. What do you think
about that, Rob? What do you think about that, Gila? I like Coney Island. Coney
Island Maker Faire. Coney Island Maker Faire, this is exciting. Is there
a date attached to this? Yes, there is a date. The date is October 7th and 8th of
this year, which is the weekend. Fantastic. So yeah, you can get more
information. It's being put together right now. If you want to help out, if
you want to spread the word, ConeyIslandMakerFaire.org, and of course,
Maker Faire is spelled M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.org. ConeyIslandMakerFaire.org,
October 7th and 8th, 2023. They're very aware, by the way, that Coney Island is
where a lot of Mr. Robot took place, and there will be some surprises. Can't say
more than that at the moment. But I will read what it says on this little card
that they're handing out. A renaissance of wonder, Coney Island Maker Faire 2023,
hashtag C-I-M-F-2-O-2-3. Maker Faire is back in New York City, all new in
America's playground, the greatest slideshow, and I can't read this. It's
tiny writing. Slideshow and tell on earth. Comes home to the place it was
always meant to be, the birthplace of amusement. And that's certainly true of
Coney Island. So I can't think of a better place. I really can't. It's gonna
be pretty amazing. So that's October 7th and 8th of this year. We'll
certainly have more details about that as it gets closer. That is incredibly
exciting. Yeah, a lot of people are talking about what could happen there
and given how much success in the past with the World Event and others of
these smaller Maker Faires, it's going to be different. But I hope as
fun and just lively as the World Maker Faire was known to be. So I
can't wait for Coney Island Maker Faire. That's it. All right, now
getting into the world of hacking or quote-unquote hacking. This is from the
New York Times. A faked declaration of martial law and military mobilization by
President Vladimir Putin of Russia aired on Monday on a number of Russian radio
and television networks. An incident that the Kremlin described as a hack. It's
great how everybody blames hackers no matter where you are. Yes, the Kremlin
described it as a hack. The bogus speech which was broadcast on the Mir radio
station. Didn't know there was a Mir radio station and television networks.
Yeah, it's not just a space station which crashed to earth many years ago. They
said Ukraine had invaded three border regions and urged the residents to
evacuate to the Russian heartland. It's kind of funny to think that that would
happen, that Ukraine would invade Russia and everybody would have to flee. Wow. The
clip also depicted Mr. Putin declaring a general mobilization saying all the
power of the country needed to be harnessed to defeat a dangerous and
insidious enemy. He's probably already said that a few times. The press service
of Mir which is a Russian public broadcaster said in a statement released
to the state news agency TASS that its radio and television channels had been
illegally interrupted for a little more than a half hour before being restored.
Can you imagine a half hour of a TV network and a radio network being hacked
and just completely taken over? That is really remarkable. I mean in
the field of broadcast signal intrusion, which is what this the term for this
sort of thing, you really haven't seen much happen in the way of broadcast
signal intrusions of note for a long time. It used to be easier in the analog
era of this country. There was the famous Max Headroom incident. But to get
on the air at all and then to stay on the air for half an hour, like I have to
take my hat off to whoever managed to pull that off. Or give a
very disapproving look to the people in charge who don't know what they're doing.
Probably a bit of both. But the broadcast appeared to piece
together genuine recordings of Putin's voice to create a realistic spoof and it
coincided with a surge in Ukrainian attacks along the front line that may
signal the start of Kiev's long-awaited counteroffensive, which has been
previewed more than the fall television season, which by the way is going to be
late this year. So yeah, that happened. And then you have Twitter where all
kinds of fake information is given out on a regular basis now. Dozens, this is
actually a week or so ago, dozens of verified accounts on Twitter with very
large followings spread misinformation about an explosion near the Pentagon
tweeting the news alongside what appears to be an AI generated image. AI is doing
nothing but getting people into trouble. You know, it's the kind of thing that we
all predicted. Accounts such as War Monitors, Bloomberg Feed, and RT. They
don't use the Twitter RT, it's just RT. Russia Today, the
television network apparently fell for this as well, posted an image of a large
gray smoke cloud appearing next to a white government building with a
corresponding caption that stated there was an explosion near the Pentagon.
Bellingcat journalist Nick Waters tweeted that there are a few signs that
make it an AI image, including that the fence melds into the crowd barriers on
the image and there are no other images or videos being posted on social media.
Those are the clues that you look for. Now the image was quickly
retreated by many different accounts, some crediting Twitter sources as the
original source. Now while some of the accounts that tweeted it out either
apologized or deleted the image, Bloomberg Feed was suspended. It
continued to be shared by accounts that had blue checks thanks to Twitter's
pay-to-play verification system. The stock market even briefly dipped due to
the fake news. This is what happens when you get rid of the verification account,
which unfair though it was, it did offer a degree of verification, whereas now it
just verifies that you're willing to pay Elon Musk to get a ridiculous blue check.
And the people who don't have blue checks actually have more
respect, I think, than those who yield and pay whatever it is he's
demanding. Anyway, within an hour of this fake report being circulated, government
officials stepped in to clarify that the tweets were fake news. There was no
explosion or incident taking place at or near the Pentagon Reservation, said
the Arlington Fire and EMS Department, and there's no immediate danger or
hazards to the public. The spreading of this fake news across accounts that have
up to a million followers and blue checks raises more alarm bells on how
Twitter's current structure as a result of Elon Musk's ownership can expedite a
misinformation campaign. Again, we predicted this. You know, when you do
this kind of thing, people are going to misbehave and you give them verification,
they're going to use that to their advantage. The thing is, it's happening
over and over and over and over and that it isn't being addressed or no one
cares there. It just seems to be more of a feature than a bug at this point. I
mean, when do you start saying, okay, this is the business model
here, y'all? I mean, what the heck? What the hell else is it? Absolutely. Yeah,
that's where Twitter is right now and it's sad, you know? It was a
nice spot for a very long time and here we are. I sometimes reminisce about
people that used to post there. All right, well, let's look at some good
news, which is not fake. It's real. United States versus Smith. That case, a
district court judge in New York has made history by being the first court to
rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, absent
exigent circumstances, although other district courts have wanted to do
so, I guess. Now, this is from the EFF. They are thrilled about the decision,
obviously, given they've been advocating for a warrant for border searches of
electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade. If the case
is appealed to the Second Circuit, they are urging the appellate court to affirm
this landmark decision. Now, U.S. Customs and Border Protection asserts broad
authority to conduct warrantless, often suspicionless, device searches at the
border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports,
and seaports. Now, for a century, the Supreme Court has recognized the border
search exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, allowing
not only warrantless, but also often suspicionless, searches of luggage and
other items crossing the border. Did not know for a century they allowed that. The
number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion
of privacy they represent is only increasing. In 2022, CBPEDA has conducted an
all-time high of 45,499 device searches. The Supreme Court has not yet
considered the application of the border search exception to smartphones, laptops,
and other electronic devices that contain the equivalent of millions of
pages of information detailing the most intimate details of our lives, even
though EFF asked them to back in 2021. Not very responsive. But this is, it
bodes well, I think, if this is the kind of thing that we can look forward to.
Yeah, I think that unfairly it's been used as something that is a matter of
routine anymore. You know, it's not just something that's done in a
circumstance like where a warrant is used. And it's now just so common and
easy. It wasn't something that required extra equipment and so forth. They seem
well-prepared and the technology's advanced enough where this isn't some
heavy lift. And people do need a little bit more protection than just having
some person with this kind of equipment's suspicion and authority in that venue.
Think of all the information that's on your cell phone or on your laptop or on your
tablet. And to have somebody just rifle through that, it's very different than
just being searched. I've been searched many times, but I've never had electronic
devices searched. And that to me would just seem to be so much, so all-encompassing
and completely disturbing. I don't know. Any thoughts, Rob Gila?
Yeah, I mean, I could see being searched at the border when you land, when you get
off a boat, whatever. They don't want you to have certain physical items. They don't
want you to have something dangerous. They don't want you to have something
explosive. I get that. What are they looking for in the data on your phone that
warrants the same caution? What series of ones and zeros, what string of words,
what bunch of numbers could they possibly find that make it worth your right to some
measure of personal privacy? They're looking for thought crime. They're
looking for ideas. They're looking for signs that you might be trouble. And if they're
able to even for a moment have unsupervised access to your devices, they can copy so much
information and just peruse it at their leisure or simply abuse your privacy in one way or
another, share it with people who aren't authorized. It's a nightmare. It's something
that I'm sure was never the intention when these laws were written. And we definitely
need to have this confrontation.
And so much, yeah, the reliance is increased. It's just exponentially that people are securing
so much of their lives with this kind of equipment, especially since there's a big push for two-factor
authentication and using password managers and so forth and all this other stuff. I mean,
it's just creating another huge vulnerability for people in a moment when they're doing
something they're totally entitled to. And it can just be so all-encompassing so quickly
that how can you be prepared and live without something that has been so important to you
live without something that has been so vital if you are subject to such sort of frivolous
search on a whim?
Yeah. I mean, your phone basically is for most people in the smartphone era, your phone
is your communicative life. If at the border, someone asked you, okay, we want to see everything
that's been in your physical mailbox over the past year and transcripts of every phone
conversation you've had, and also things you've just said to people standing around you,
you'd think they were nuts. But the digital equivalent of that is all wrapped up in someone's
cell phone.
Right. So our advice to people who travel, encrypt whenever possible. Don't put everything
in your life onto your cell phone. And just be aware. If something happens like this,
let people know. And raise a big stink about it. Yes, Gila.
And also, make sure that you disable the biological unlockers.
Yes, yes. Because all they have to do is say, hold this up to your face or put your thumb
on it. And you've given them unfettered access. And that's not what you want to do.
That's a great point. The biometrics.
Yeah. They still can't compel you to reveal your password, but they can always take your
finger and wrestle it onto a pad or take your face and point it at your phone.
I always like to make my password this horrible insult directed at them, because then they
can say, oh, you've insulted us. No, I gave you the password. That was the password.
But yeah, that's my own personal trick. I don't know if you heard about this. Gmail
has this brilliant new system. They have now blue check marks. It's called sender verification.
Yeah. It was introduced last month and it highlights verified companies and organizations
to users with a blue check mark. The idea is to help users discern which emails are legitimate
and which may have been sent by impersonators running scams.
The first thing that got me about that system was, wait a minute, do you have to be a Gmail
user to get a blue check? If that's the case, well, that certainly is a slap in the face to
anybody not using Gmail. You're basically calling them all illegitimate or implying that they are.
Anyway, don't worry, because scammers have tricked the system already. It didn't take very,
very long. This was spotted by cybersecurity engineer, Chris Plummer, who says that scammers
have found a way to convince Gmail that their fake brands are legitimate, thereby using the
confidence the check mark system is supposed to instill against Gmail users. Plummer says the
sender found a way to dupe Gmail's authoritative stamp of approval, which end users are going to
trust. This message went from a Facebook account to a UK net block to 0365, a phone number, I
believe, to me. Nothing about this is legit. Plummer reports that Google initially dismissed
his discovery as intended behavior, right, before his tweets about it went viral and the company
acknowledged the error. That's what it takes. In a statement, Google wrote, after taking a closer
look, we realize that this indeed doesn't seem like a generic SPF vulnerability. Thus, we are
reopening this, and the appropriate team is taking a closer look at what is going on. We apologize
again for the confusion, and we understand our initial response might have been frustrating.
Thank you so much for pressing on for us to take a closer look at this. We'll keep you posted
with our assessment and the direction that this issue takes. The flaw is now listed as top priority,
which is currently in progress. But yeah, hats off to Plummer for finding that, because
not only do you have to find these things, but you have to get the people in charge to
recognize it and acknowledge it. And this sort of thing is something that you have to
expose when it happens. If people are going to believe this, they're going to believe this blue check
means anything. I don't know what it is about blue checks. Why would you want to have a blue
check like Twitter when that system is being ridiculed by everybody, and now Google's doing
the same thing? Yeah, it's a laugh, that's why. It's weird to say that. And I'm also just entertained
by all of this because of, I don't know if this has been a proliferation generally in the world,
but I know that in faith communities of my particular faith, there has been this weird
moment where people are creating Gmail accounts in the name of clergy, and then trying to scam
people out of, it's a gift card scam, basically. But people are like, Hey, I'm, you know, Rabbi Smith
at Temple Beth Columbus at gmail.com. Hey, I need you to call me right now, because we're
having an emergency. And, you know, if you can create a Google scam account, if you create a
Gmail scam account, then I don't know, I just I always want to encourage people, especially if
you're opening mail on a desktop client to just hover over that sender name real quick to see if
you can pop up the email address, because that's, you know, nine times out of 10, that's an easy way
to spot a scammer. Yeah, and slow down. Yeah, slow, slow, you're clicking. But I do. I think
this verification stuff is like, it's getting a little ridiculous. It was it was always,
I don't know, I just think a formal, a formalized version of clout. And I think you should let your,
you know, let your content speak for itself. And, you know, don't don't try to
differentiate so much, I guess it's more important for, for official brands, and maybe celebrities.
But I, I don't think it's, it's a necessary part of the core function of social networking,
if you're using it to truly communicate widely and network a little bit. And, yeah, let it happen
on its own. You don't have to pay for followers and pay for badges and all this fake stuff.
But also, it's worth thinking about that. If Google is doing this just for Gmail users,
this is a special feature of Gmail only you don't get it if you use other email services or email
servers. Email is a standard, it's supposed to work the same no matter where you use it from,
no matter where you use it to. It's a decentralized system in that, in that sense. And if Google is
now adding, you know, they have such a domination over the email market, just as it is, for many
people, Gmail is email. And if if now Gmail has email, but with some extra sauce on it,
then this is, this is drawing more people to their service. And it's, I think it's a, it can be a step
toward trying to make it a closed system, or more of a closed system than the open interoperable
thing. We've all been emailing each other for generations. And we know things like, you know,
email to a specific domain. If you email us at 2600.com, you know, that's, that's our known
domain. And you know, you're emailing oth at 2600.com with your thoughts on off the hook or
other things at 2600.com for you know, other things, you might contact the folks there about
and we need to we need to spread further education of the systems that are already there to kind of
verify what's going on in an email message that have been refined over the decades.
I mean, the other thing it almost makes me think of is I was thinking about, you know,
being a young teenager and having AOL having my first AOL account and knowing that if you
were an AOL user, you were emailing another AOL user, you didn't need to include at AOL.com,
you can just use the username. And then if you were emailing anybody else, it was like, you know,
you had to include the domain name. And now that I'm thinking about it, in retrospect, it's almost
like the difference between seven digit dialing and 10 digit dialing, or even four digit dialing,
because in the old days, if you were in the same exchange, you only had to dial the last four
digits. Exactly. And as we've, you know, gotten accustomed to cities where with overlay area codes
or what have you, where even to call somebody 10 feet away, you have to 10 digit dial. So what that
expansion has been, and we've all adjusted to it, and it's been okay. And I'm trying to think about
how we can extrapolate that also. Well, it wasn't okay for me, I have not adjusted to it. I resented
every time I have to dial my own damn area code. I resented. I do.
That's fair enough, too.
It's it is that sort of rough, rough transition, or at least I think that
trustability or, or verifiability is sort of dynamic. And you've seen it in people exploiting
accounts or taking over accounts that were dormant for nefarious or other, you know,
silly purposes. So it is seemingly more of a move towards really not trusting a lot of any of these
sources. And, and some of the providers that have a lot of say over platforms like Gmail,
which interoperate, as was pointed out with the email protocol and so forth, it can damage
outwardly if they start putting their thumb on the scales or sort of doing things that make you
jump through all kinds of authentication hoops, or they make some decision to not trust one feature
of the protocol and then switch it up again. And, or, or issue, you know, white lists or black
lists of different domains and stuff on the fly. As I said, dynamically, like, and you have to
imagine it is happening that way because of a lot of the way security is being handled and having,
you know, to shut down different networks on, in, in, in, you know, emergencies. And, and so a lot
of that changing and, and so forth, I think is lending itself. The environment itself is lending
to them making these big decisions, but they're not thinking about that interoperability, which
was sort of the foundation. Yeah. You know, one thing that people talk about a lot when it comes
to Gmail is spam filtering. And people say, Google has a really good, or Gmail has really
good spam filtering. I think they have really bad spam filtering. The reason I say that is because
it's overly aggressive. Yeah. It'll catch the spam, but it also catches personal correspondence.
You know, I don't use Gmail for anything important, but I do use it as, you know, ways of contacting
people that I don't want to give out my real email address to, or that I just want to be able to
communicate in a particularly different way, or maybe I want to use a different name. I can do
that too. And what I've noticed is that if I look in my spam box, I find many, many things there
that really shouldn't be there. For instance, I gave this email address to a credit card company
in that spam folder were notices of potential fraud from my credit card company, which I have
corresponded with before on that very same Gmail account. Somehow Gmail decided, no, this is spam.
You shouldn't see this. And I almost didn't see it. And there have also been personal
correspondences that I should have seen of people that I communicate with. So I don't know how they
program this, but it's not doing a very good job because it's catching way too much. I'd much
rather get a little bit of extra spam than lose legitimate communications. And apparently
at Gmail, that's not a consideration.
No, that's true.
No, that's totally like real life. I mean, I think a lot of people go through that.
So yeah. And things that you would imagine it would filter that it would recognize as
promotional or spam-like, those should get triggered. Say some retailer or something
that you used because you didn't want to use your other email addresses and you knew it was
going to send you spam. People do that all the time. Why doesn't that get filtered and put into
some kind of distinct folder? I'm sure you can. You can set keywords. I know. I know. I know.
I know there are ways.
We are going to get so many Google defenders emailing us. It always happens.
We are marching right now after we get the pick. Anyway, so the long and the short, I don't know.
It is curious. I think that variability, they don't have a good sense. And it is wrong more
often than people really should attribute to it. Well, we have more. Oh, go ahead, Gila.
I was going to say there was a period of time where I was missing emails from you
because Gmail just decided that I didn't need to hear from you anymore. So everything you sent
was landing in my spam folder. It was a weird moment.
They had it out for $2,600 for a little while because almost everything we were sending out
was winding up in spam. How do you fight that? How does a small company like ours
fight something big like Gmail if they decide that you're either not relevant or you're negative and
must be filtered out? It's something to really think about. The more power we give them.
There's also just the pure logic of in our situation, we all email each other a lot.
We work on this program together and other stuff together. And Gmail deciding that somebody you've
been communicating with for years upon years, all of a sudden, oh, that's fake, that's spam.
Yeah. I think many times the Gmail I get is fake and spam, but I still keep getting it.
And it makes you wonder because so many small businesses, so many people individually,
they rely on it. And when these policies or platform updates or whatever they call it,
have an impact like this, it's inconsistent. People can't rely on it. And they really,
really, really are. And exactly like was pointed out with Gila's email,
throwing their weight around with policies and then pointing to small businesses and medium
enterprises that they are not as resourced to go digging around and reconfiguring and
changing it to bow to their whims as a massive organization. They should be wildly portable
and responsive to interacting with the protocol and not telling everybody else they have to
change on a dime, given whatever way they feel like the wind is blowing every other day.
There's got to be a lot more support for people outside of that platform, in my opinion.
A little more Google shaming and then we have to move on. This has to do with revelations
that Google contributed $45,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee
after a leaked Supreme Court decision indicating that the Supreme Court was going to end the right
to nationwide abortion access. After that was leaked, they contributed $45,000 to the RSLC.
That's according to the Center for Political Accountability, CPA.
Not only that, Amazon contributed $50,000, Intuit $100,000, Comcast $147,000. Google,
Amazon, Comcast, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, all of them, they did not respond to requests
for comment. Yeah, but that's where some donations are going from these companies,
which is kind of surprising. It's kind of surprising. Blue chip companies gave to
Republican groups funneling money to lawmakers who overturned abortion ban vetoes in North Carolina.
The headline of this story, which ran in The Guardian, Amazon and Google fund anti-abortion
lawmakers through complex shell game. It's so complex, we don't have time to get into it in the
remaining moments, but do look up that story. It's fascinating and indicative of how motives
are not as pure as you might think they are. Absolutely. The companies that are willing to
put themselves out there and who have painted their logos rainbow colors for pride this month
and things like that, it's always very interesting when you start looking into what their money
actually does when they get into the political game like this. I'm really interested in the
corporations and entities that choose not to. I think that's as important as whatever. Even if
they are even, they contribute to both as the campaign season rolls through. There really is,
I think, a lot of damage that it does to the media industry just with how much money is spent and how
over-reliant sometimes they seem. I really think there should be a cap, but that's political
opinion. I don't know. I think for as much attention as the media gets, they really are
not doing themselves any favor by just getting gobs and gobs of money from these campaign cycles
and stuff. Especially with the damage we were talking about with fake stuff.
If we just let the highest bidder rule and we don't have any journalistic integrity,
I know that might be a quaint term, but I really feel like you're going to get
every bit of chaotic society that you imagine because people will come in, they don't care
about the messaging. We've got plenty of examples. I don't want to name names and
deconstruct it here, but that's why a community radio, that's why it has a different model.
You can name that name.
WBAI.
That's right. Please support this place because you may not agree with everything you hear,
but what you hear are honest opinions. We're not both-siding everything, which is so disgusting
to hear that in the mainstream where basically every opposing opinion has to be treated as if
it's somehow as legitimate when much of it is based on lies or evidence that has been easily
disproven. It doesn't do any favors for people who depend on these outlets for getting information,
finding out what the facts are. If you just simply give everybody, whether they're qualified or not,
the same attention, it's like a chat board on a newspaper story where somebody has poured their
heart into researching and investigating and interviewing and following up and writes the
story and then the first comment is, oh, I think it's all stupid and that person gets equal amount
of attention because they're given equal amount of attention on the page. It's just wrong. It's
just wrong to handle things that way, in my opinion.
Yeah. The sort of blurred nature of entertainment and news and all of that has changed a lot
because there's now entertainment in politics. It's like this really weird mixing of things,
of models and formats and so forth. I don't know. It is really, really critical, I think,
to get it right and to just inform people and not be so ad oriented. I don't know. I just feel like
we could do so much more with it, even on commercial broadcast mediums. If it was a little
bit more sane, maybe then when a more controlled political cycle came through,
people would be interested in actual debates and less entertainment politics or less entertainment
news. Yeah. There is more news than just what we are seeing every day on the news cycles.
Literally one, two stories and that's it. There is so much going on in the world and
we basically need to pay more attention to that and our news networks are failing us dramatically.
Okay. I don't know how we got off into that, but we're in the middle of shaming Amazon at this
point. Just a little bit more of that. Every single, and this is not a surprise to any of us,
every single Amazon ring employee was able to access every single customer video, even when it
wasn't necessary for their jobs. Not only that, but the employees along with workers from a third
party contractor in Ukraine could also download any of those videos and then save and share them
as they liked. This is all before July of 2017, but it's kind of what we were fearing back then.
The FTC basically are the accusers here and they're basically confronting Amazon on this.
Amazon is facing a settlement of $5.8 million and of course, as you might guess, some employees
abused that access. One example, the FTC says a ring employee viewed thousands of videos from at
least 81 different female users. The employee allegedly went looking for camera feeds that
suggested they may have been used in the most private of areas, such as master bedroom, master
bathroom and spy cam. I have to ask, who in their right mind puts a camera in their bathroom?
I mean, yeah, it's wrong to be spied upon and I get that and that is a complete injustice, but
why are you putting a camera in your bathroom in the first place? What's going on in there
that you want? You have to assume that everything on your camera is going to be seen by somebody
else unless you have a completely closed system, which Amazon Ring is not.
I'm just speculating on a bathroom camera. Okay, so here's an idea. You have a cat and the cat's
not using the litter box, so you want a camera in your bathroom to see if the cat is using the
toilet while you're not at home. That's like the only reason I can think of that you would need to
put a Ring camera in your bathroom. That's a really specific reason, but yeah, okay, and if
nobody else used that bathroom, maybe that's acceptable, but if humans go in there at any
point in time, no, I just can't. I can't accept that. I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just
saying it's an idea. It had better be only that scenario because the world does not need more
audio and video from private chambers where people are doing business.
Is anybody surprised by this? That Ring had access? They abused the access? They shared the
access? No. Well, that's why you set boundaries when you do camera placement if you're installing
or setting up home security, right? I mean, you got to have boundaries. You got to have private
spaces. You can still monitor access in various areas of concern.
Yeah, but here's the thing. Okay, configuration aside, what this story says is every single
customer video, so I imagine even if they set rules that this is not viewable outside my house,
it didn't matter. They were still able to access it.
Well, that's I think the nature of a lot of the newer systems, a lot of the wireless systems,
easy setup, stuff that is harder if you're running it, running your own video system,
you have a lot more control, but even those a lot more have backups or cloud interface using
internet connections, so you are trusting whatever storage system, they're exfiltrating all your
nasty audio and video from the bathroom too. Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I mean, if you're going to make that decision as a consumer to outsource watching
your house, then this sort of thing is going to happen. I'm fascinated by the quote from the FTC
complaint. Only after the supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos of
pretty girls did the supervisor escalate the report of misconduct. Only at that point did
Ring review a portion of the employee's activity and ultimately terminate his employment.
Wow. Between January 2019 and March 2020, the FTC alleges more than 55,000 customers
had their Ring devices compromised. In some instances, cyber criminals used the two-way
communication to terrorize Ring customers like something from a horror movie. It's funny, but
it's also really creepy and scary. Here are some examples. Several women lying in bed heard...
Okay, I really object to the way the story is written. This is from malwarebytes.com,
but they say several women lying in bed heard hackers curse at them.
Malwarebytes, do you know who these people were? How do you know they were hackers and not just
idiots? It sounds like they were idiots. Several children had racist slurs thrown at them. At
least hackers weren't blamed for that. An elderly woman in an assisted living facility was sexually
propositioned and physically threatened. A digital intruder told a woman through her camera that they
had killed her mother and then said, tonight you die. A woman was told her location was being
tracked and that her device would self-destruct at the end of a countdown. She disconnected the
device before the countdown ended. Wow. And you know what? And throw it away too. Throw it away.
Aside from the fine, Ring has been ordered to delete any customer videos and data collected
from an individual's face known as face embeddings that Ring obtained before 2018.
That's crazy because it's biometrics that they're using presumably once, but it ended up getting
exfiltrated and now that nice, well-formatted information can be applied to other situations.
Ah, that's the feature that becomes a huge vulnerability.
Yeah, absolutely. Hey, we're just about out of time, but I just wanted to say because we
haven't mentioned it yet, how nice it's been today to have this sort of reunion of everybody
walking around wearing mask skin. It just brings back memories of the period from 2020 to 2022
where that was prevalent. Of course, the reasoning is a little bit different now.
We are in the middle of a situation where smoke is coming from the border. The border crossing is
out of control apparently and now smoke is pouring over the Canadian border into the United States
and Joe Biden has not done a thing about it. Outraged. But yes, people, please stay inside,
wear a mask if you go outside because it really is, you know, kind of acrid out there. I don't
know. What do you guys, any experiences with the smoke? Oh, yeah. First, I want to suggest people
go to airnow.gov. That's A-I-R-N-O-W dot G-O-V. Just check how things are in your area and it'll
let you know if it's okay to go outside. But yeah, we've had the windows to the apartment
closed tight all day, but when we go over by the windows, it smells like burning.
It does. And that's because it is. Not here, but somewhere it's burning.
Stay hydrated, everyone. Good night.
And for those of you who want to continue the conversation, we will be convening on YouTube
channel 2600 in just a couple of minutes at eight o'clock. Join us there where you can call
and you can also be part of our chat. Write to us, O-T-H at 2600 dot com. We'll see you again
next week at 7 p.m. on WBAI. And of course, stay tuned to WBAI New York. Good night.
Oh, laughing friends deride, tears I cannot hide. Oh, so I stall and say,
when a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes. Smoke gets in your eyes.
Hey, Smokey Robinson, and you're listening to WBAI 99.5 FM, New York.
you