Speaker 1: We've all had that mildly creepy experience. You're shopping online for,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a coffeemaker, and suddenly an ad for
Speaker 1: that very same coffeemaker pops up on every website you
Speaker 1: visit for the next week.
Speaker 2: You didn't know you were in an audience, but you are.
Speaker 2: You're the audience for this industry.
Speaker 1: So yeah, by now we know we're being tracked. But
Speaker 1: the truth is most of us don't know the half
Speaker 1: of it. I'm West Kesova today on the big Take.
Speaker 1: What online ad brokers and now governments can really find
Speaker 1: out about you? Bloomberg cybersecurity reporter Ryan Gallagher writes in
Speaker 1: Business Week about an Israeli company that markets information about
Speaker 1: people's online travels to law enforcement and intelligence agencies around
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: What Raison has done is found a way too basically
Speaker 3: purchase this information on mass on an absolutely gigantic scale,
Speaker 3: and repurpose it and to a system that uses the
Speaker 3: same advertising information but for other purposes.
Speaker 1: He'll tell us what they're using that info for in
Speaker 1: just a bit. First, though, let's hear from doctor Johnny
Speaker 1: Ryan on exactly what's being vacuumed up about you as
Speaker 1: you click around the web each day. He's a Senior
Speaker 1: Fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and he's
Speaker 1: an expert in online tracking. Johnny, you've said the system
Speaker 1: that targets adds to us online is the biggest data
Speaker 1: breach ever recorded, and it's repeated every day.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that it's the world's biggest
Speaker 2: data breach with because when you visit a website or app,
Speaker 2: almost any website or app that has advertising information about
Speaker 2: what you're watching, reading, and listening to and where you
Speaker 2: physically are is very likely to be broadcast out to
Speaker 2: tens or maybe more of companies who then do god
Speaker 2: knows what with it. That is happening all the time. Now,
Speaker 2: it's a simple, simple idea. The websites want to show ads,
Speaker 2: and often when you turn up on a website, whereas
Speaker 2: you'll notice there are empty rectangles just for a split
Speaker 2: second around the editorial that you want to read, And
Speaker 2: sometimes even as you're looking at the page loading, the
Speaker 2: ad appears and it bumps the.
Speaker 4: Editorial content down.
Speaker 2: Now, what has happened in that tiny moment of time
Speaker 2: is that information about you is sent out to at
Speaker 2: least one auction this is an auction for the opportunity
Speaker 2: to show you an AD And how does it work.
Speaker 2: The way it works is you go to a website.
Speaker 2: The publisher of the website sends information about you to
Speaker 2: a company that it has contracted with called a supply
Speaker 2: side platform an SSP. The SSP if he gets any
Speaker 2: data it can about you that the website has exposed
Speaker 2: to it, and it puts it together in what is
Speaker 2: called a bid request. I will tell you what can
Speaker 2: be in a bit request. In a moment, that bid
Speaker 2: request is sent to at least one auction called an
Speaker 2: ad exchange. Often there is an auction of auctions, multiple
Speaker 2: ad exchanges, and that request for bids or bid requests
Speaker 2: then is sent by each ad exchange out to tens
Speaker 2: or hundreds of companies. So publisher of website or app
Speaker 2: goes to SSP, goes to AD exchange, one or more
Speaker 2: goes to multiple they're called demand side platforms DSPs. They
Speaker 2: work on behalf of advertisers and they are keeping their
Speaker 2: eyes open monitoring for the right kind of person, in
Speaker 2: the right kind of context and place, who their advertiser
Speaker 2: is trying.
Speaker 1: To reach, what kind of information is being collected, How
Speaker 1: specific is it.
Speaker 2: It includes tags like I'll quote you, the technical number
Speaker 2: IAB seven hyphen two eight, and that denotes a person
Speaker 2: who is categorized as incest slash abuse support. The word
Speaker 2: support is important there. That is a person who has
Speaker 2: been a victim. Similarly, code IAB seven hyphen three is
Speaker 2: AIDS slash HIV. This clearly should not be being broadcast
Speaker 2: about people based on what they're reading. Why would you
Speaker 2: broadcast it? And what happens when it's broadcast. Well, there's
Speaker 2: another industry standard, which is called the audience taxonomy.
Speaker 4: This is the Rosetta.
Speaker 2: Stone for the data broker industry. The data broker industry
Speaker 2: exists to sell information about people. Now, you've got plenty
Speaker 2: of players in that industry, and they need to reconcile
Speaker 2: what they know about you, and they need some way
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 1: And how are these determining these various classification code?
Speaker 2: Now those codes I've just given you come from anywhere
Speaker 2: they can get the data. The data broker industry is
Speaker 2: certainly a big consumer in online advertising, but it does
Speaker 2: not confine itself to that. If you take the example
Speaker 2: of one that should be particularly concerning a so called
Speaker 2: purchase intent, what is this person intending to buy there's
Speaker 2: a code for aerospace and defense that's IAB code eight
Speaker 2: eighty five. Now, presumably this is someone who works in
Speaker 2: the defense industry and is visiting procurement websites, but the
Speaker 2: information about them being present on the site is then
Speaker 2: being broadcast out to innumerable parties, and often the advertiser
Speaker 2: can tell the auction I'm looking for this particular code, person,
Speaker 2: this number, this string of numbers and letters. What can
Speaker 2: be in a bit request is totally benign, things like
Speaker 2: is this a video ad what size is the rectangle?
Speaker 2: What technology should it use? Should have any issue I
Speaker 2: think with that side of it. But the rest of
Speaker 2: the information is about the person or their device, And
Speaker 2: of course, when you know enough about a device, you
Speaker 2: can find out that it's the same person you saw
Speaker 2: last time on that same device, and then you can
Speaker 2: stitch together multiple devices by finding out about the person
Speaker 2: and their behavior. The information about the person includes where
Speaker 2: they are that can be literally their GPS coordinates. The
Speaker 2: bit request will also say what you're looking at. Now,
Speaker 2: sometimes that's just the name of the website, but often
Speaker 2: it's website slash, category slash name of article and Beyond that,
Speaker 2: then it'll have the long ID code that is assigned
Speaker 2: by the SSP, that is the publisher's tech firm. It's
Speaker 2: assigned to you as you go out into this auction,
Speaker 2: but it may also include identifiers that prospective buyers have
Speaker 2: for you too. That is called pre matching, so the
Speaker 2: buyers who've expressed an interest in this person get a
Speaker 2: good shot at showing him an AD And of course
Speaker 2: all of this entices a higher bid for your attention.
Speaker 1: So as you're looking at different things online, these codes
Speaker 1: are automatically assigned to you depending on the content you see.
Speaker 1: Every facet of what you're looking at has another code
Speaker 1: that follows around with you.
Speaker 4: That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's legal for them to collect this information
Speaker 1: because whether we quite realize it or not, we consent
Speaker 1: to it when we click on those little windows that
Speaker 1: pop up.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends on the jurisdiction. We unfortunate Europeans have
Speaker 2: been inundated with consent spam. It's meaningless spam because it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter whether you say yes or no to
Speaker 2: any particular thing. There is behind that system, no means
Speaker 2: of controlling what happens to the data once they're broadcast out.
Speaker 2: Why is that Well, because the end of decided not
Speaker 2: to go the route of protecting the data. We know
Speaker 2: what we know, often very often because the industry's standards,
Speaker 2: which are very very dry. Documents are public documents. It's
Speaker 2: not covered up. You can find this online instantly.
Speaker 1: Now, are all of these various codes aggregated so that
Speaker 1: the various aspects of your life are put together into
Speaker 1: a comprehensive profile, or do they exist as separate strands
Speaker 1: that go different places.
Speaker 2: In the online advertising industry, there is a user ID code.
Speaker 2: It can have different names for everybody. Now, different companies
Speaker 2: will have different codes and they will then have to
Speaker 2: match them. This practice of matching often involves cookies, but
Speaker 2: there are other ways of doing it. And when you
Speaker 2: visit a web page, often there will be a large
Speaker 2: number of companies who are just loading a single pixel
Speaker 2: which is often transparent. You can see it from each
Speaker 2: other's servers, so that they are getting asked for that
Speaker 2: pixel by your machine. It allows them to cross reference
Speaker 2: you in a very very clear way and know that
Speaker 2: they're both talking about the same person. So I know
Speaker 2: you as as ABC two five seven and someone else
Speaker 2: knows you as two, three, four, five, six wys, but
Speaker 2: you're actually the same guy, and we have a commercial
Speaker 2: deal to match up what we know about you.
Speaker 4: That's how we might do it.
Speaker 1: So all of us, in our daily lives, we have
Speaker 1: so many devices. Do all of these come together or
Speaker 1: does each of these create its own profile?
Speaker 2: Cross device targeting is the holy grail for online advertising.
Speaker 2: If you are a marketer, there is no end of
Speaker 2: tech people who will walk into your office and show
Speaker 2: you diagrams of how you can reach someone at every
Speaker 2: stage of their journey to buy your product. All of
Speaker 2: those devices they probably end up somewhere in your house,
Speaker 2: So even if you're just looking at location alone, the
Speaker 2: fact that they keep ending up at the same place
Speaker 2: is the first hint. But there are going to be
Speaker 2: many others. Another question is how many people get to
Speaker 2: try to do this about you and then can sell
Speaker 2: what they've learned back into the scrum. And then the
Speaker 2: next question is how many times does this happen to you.
Speaker 2: We got industry data from one of the big systems
Speaker 2: that coordinates auctions of auctions, and we have it by
Speaker 2: state before I give you the numbers. This doesn't include Amazon,
Speaker 2: which has its own system. It doesn't include Meta, which
Speaker 2: has its own system, So these numbers are low. If
Speaker 2: you're in Arizona, on average per day, based on thirty
Speaker 2: days of numbers, this will happen to you seven hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty two times. If you're in Colorado, it's nine
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Where information about you is sent out to someone who
Speaker 1: then uses that information in one way or another.
Speaker 2: Yes, we don't know what the information is for each
Speaker 2: particular broadcast, but it will almost certainly include at least
Speaker 2: ideas and stuff about your device, so it's building up
Speaker 2: a picture of you over time. All of this adds
Speaker 2: up to a really big number. You asked at the beginning,
Speaker 2: why would we describe this as the biggest data breach? Ever,
Speaker 2: the answer is because Americans are exposed in this manner
Speaker 2: one hundred and seven trillion times per year, So there
Speaker 2: is no other data breach that even comes close to
Speaker 2: that scale. And when you think about the sensitivity of
Speaker 2: the data that it is about what you are looking at.
Speaker 2: You're on embarrassingwebsite dot com for whatever category of thing
Speaker 2: you like looking at on your own, that's what we're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: You talked about these codes that are assigned to people.
Speaker 1: Does it include your name? Does it include who you are?
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't need to. The identification codes specified in
Speaker 2: the industry documents are far longer than your Social Security number.
Speaker 2: If we're talking about where someone lives, everything that they're reading, watching,
Speaker 2: and listening to, there is no question that this is anonymous.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the industry stopped using that defense
Speaker 2: a long time ago. It's just not open to question.
Speaker 2: These are definitely data that you can use to find
Speaker 2: out about an individual after the break, What if anything,
Speaker 2: can we do to protect our privacy online? Are there
Speaker 2: dangers to this information being collected for individuals that you
Speaker 2: can be found out that this information can be used
Speaker 2: against you.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: We've had cases where DHS, the Department of Homeland Security,
Speaker 2: was found to be buying this data for example. There
Speaker 2: are other cases where different security services were buying it
Speaker 2: as well. But let me give you a more prosaic
Speaker 2: but I suspect more terrifying example. When you next apply
Speaker 2: for your dream job, imagine you're at an earlier stage
Speaker 2: in your career. Was you can't remember what you did
Speaker 2: online last week, last month, or last year. You put
Speaker 2: in an application for your dream job. There are a
Speaker 2: whole lot of clever, bright, young prospects just like you
Speaker 2: as who are applying for that job. You're competing against them,
Speaker 2: and because there are so many of them, the company
Speaker 2: will almost certainly have some automated filtering of those cvs,
Speaker 2: probably some so called AI system that sifts them and
Speaker 2: tries to figure out what else it can find out
Speaker 2: about them and score them in some way. If, however,
Speaker 2: your CV ends up associated with the tag for drug
Speaker 2: use bankruptcy, you know, whatever it is, or the politics
Speaker 2: don't align, it's pretty clear your CV is not actually
Speaker 2: going to be seen by a human. You pull that out,
Speaker 2: that idea of sifting through people's private lives and then
Speaker 2: using it to filter their futures, you pull that out
Speaker 2: across society and you get a very bleak picture.
Speaker 1: All of this, of course, raises the question what can
Speaker 1: we do to protect ourselves so that our information isn't
Speaker 1: being used in this way, that profiles about us aren't
Speaker 1: being compiled wherever we go.
Speaker 2: Well, I've got some bad news. The bad news is
Speaker 2: the individual I don't think can or should be expected
Speaker 2: to wear a tinfoil hat and protect themselves. I just
Speaker 2: don't believe that that is a sensible solution. It is
Speaker 2: clearly the job of lawmakers and law enforcers. Credit to
Speaker 2: the completely transformed and invigorated FTC Federal Trade Commission, because
Speaker 2: they are currently considering how to introduce new rules that
Speaker 2: would act on this kind of problem. In fact, on
Speaker 2: the problem I believe in particular as well, think about
Speaker 2: where the responsibility lies here was Is it your job
Speaker 2: to protect yourself back in the middle of the last
Speaker 2: century against a chemicals industry that just dumps stuff in
Speaker 2: the rivers and lakes.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: There's very little that you can do. That is a
Speaker 2: systemic problem. It is up to the legislator and the
Speaker 2: enforcer to take action to protect you. And although you
Speaker 2: might decide to boil every cup of water and change
Speaker 2: how you live, the general population.
Speaker 4: Won't do that.
Speaker 1: So you said that the Federal Trade Commission is looking
Speaker 1: into this. If you were to say to them, here's
Speaker 1: what you need to do to make people's data more secure,
Speaker 1: what would you tell them?
Speaker 2: The FDC can enforce where they can find on fairness
Speaker 2: and deception. I think they have a pretty good case
Speaker 2: to make there. The other thing that they can do
Speaker 2: is introduce new rules, so the FDC has rule making ability. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Congress and Senate in the US have had various attempts
Speaker 2: to introduce a sensible federal privacy law and have failed
Speaker 2: to do so. But in the interim, the FTC can
Speaker 2: use its rule making power. Now it'll be challenged, of
Speaker 2: course by the industry. This is a multi billion dollar industry,
Speaker 2: but I think they're in a pretty good place where
Speaker 2: they can do this.
Speaker 4: What we need is for everyone to be protected.
Speaker 1: So what are we to take away from this? When
Speaker 1: you think about the future, what do you see?
Speaker 2: I see two possible futures. I see one future where
Speaker 2: we keep treating personal data as a kind of a
Speaker 2: lubricant for part of the economy. I think that's one
Speaker 2: very likely future, and it's a blique one because individual
Speaker 2: human liberty and agency, our democracy, our media, our individual
Speaker 2: prospects are at hazard. And that sounds like a very
Speaker 2: grim statement to make, but it's the statement I'm making
Speaker 2: having been in that industry. The other future sees something
Speaker 2: called law being applied in some jurisdictions. The law will
Speaker 2: have to be written. But we've been here before this
Speaker 2: happens something harmful happens, it goes unnoticed for quite a while,
Speaker 2: but then the problems it causes ultimately galvanize action. What
Speaker 2: we need to have a brighter future for everyone, I
Speaker 2: think is a serious effort at a federal privacy law,
Speaker 2: and part of that law needs to give individuals a
Speaker 2: private right of action because enforcers do not always get
Speaker 2: the jobs done.
Speaker 1: Doctor Johnny Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Wez enjoy using the internet now.
Speaker 1: So now we know that kind of information that's being
Speaker 1: collected about us and what's being done with it. And
Speaker 1: as I mentioned at the top of the show, it's
Speaker 1: not just advertisers who want to get to know us. Bloombers.
Speaker 1: Rank Allegher is here with that part of the story.
Speaker 3: Ran.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about how your travels across the Internet
Speaker 1: are being watched by people who want to sell you stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's not only that you've reported an Israeli company
Speaker 1: called Raizone. Can you tell us about them?
Speaker 3: Raizone is a company based out of Tel Aviv in Israel,
Speaker 3: and one of their key or their flagship products, is
Speaker 3: the tool they call Echo and this technology essentially repackages
Speaker 3: information gathered from the advertising industry and then sells it
Speaker 3: to governments to help governments track people. The data that
Speaker 3: they buy from the advertising industry is really basic information
Speaker 3: about websites that you have visited, geal location associated with
Speaker 3: your device, and this information is supposed to be used
Speaker 3: by marketers and advertisers to sell you products that are
Speaker 3: more relevant to you based on where you live, based
Speaker 3: on the types of websites that you visit, your interest.
Speaker 3: But what Raizon has done is found a way to
Speaker 3: basically purchase this information on mass on an absolutely gigantic
Speaker 3: scale and repurpose it into a system that uses the
Speaker 3: same advertising information but for other purposes to track people.
Speaker 3: So governments can essentially monitor people they're interested in, where
Speaker 3: they're going, who they're associating with, going back months in
Speaker 3: time up to even like six months back in time.
Speaker 3: And they refer to this echo tool as like it
Speaker 3: being like a time machine because it allows governments to
Speaker 3: look back in time.
Speaker 1: Exactly what kind of information are they collecting.
Speaker 3: It's just quite generic basic information such as like an
Speaker 3: IP address, which is a series of numbers that everyone
Speaker 3: has whenever you connect to the internet. Also a unique
Speaker 3: advertising ID that's also would be connected to your individual phone,
Speaker 3: and this is a code the advertising industry uses to
Speaker 3: basically identify particular devices and so they can know, Okay,
Speaker 3: this person has a visit to these websites, they are
Speaker 3: possibly interested in buying this product, and so they can
Speaker 3: then target you with those adverts and also geolocation like
Speaker 3: sometimes GPS data that your phone will routinely share with
Speaker 3: websites or apps that you're using in isolation. This kind
Speaker 3: of data is pretty meaningless. It doesn't really reveal your name,
Speaker 3: it doesn't reveal much information about you, maybe accept a
Speaker 3: particular website that you visited. The power of what raizone
Speaker 3: is doing here with its technology is is taking these
Speaker 3: individual records and building them up into this huge repository
Speaker 3: of literally billions or trillions of these records that will
Speaker 3: be connected to entire countries, and then governments can then
Speaker 3: use this data in bulk to basically de anonymize it
Speaker 3: to find out who.
Speaker 4: These people are.
Speaker 3: They can essentially reverse engineer the advertising ID and link
Speaker 3: it to a particular person and see where they've been going,
Speaker 3: where they live, the people that they are associating with
Speaker 3: based on the gal location. So that's essentially the power
Speaker 3: of it is when they take these individual records and
Speaker 3: build them up, and build them up over months and weeks,
Speaker 3: you know, and they can see patterns of people's behavior
Speaker 3: and their activities, and their friends and their relationships, and
Speaker 3: where they work, where they live, these sorts of details.
Speaker 1: When we come back, who's paying up for this information?
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit more about this idea of
Speaker 1: D and nanimizing the data. Is this difficult to do?
Speaker 1: How much effort does it take to identify individual people
Speaker 1: from this giant pile of data.
Speaker 4: Through this reporting.
Speaker 3: We actually got internal documentation showing how this system works,
Speaker 3: and Raizon is very clear in the documents that it
Speaker 3: has produced on this echo technology that they use this
Speaker 3: advertising data to produce what they call profiles on individual people,
Speaker 3: showing not just their name, their age, where they live,
Speaker 3: but also their hobbies, their interests, granular details about a
Speaker 3: person's character, almost in their personality. The way they're able
Speaker 3: to do this is because they're collecting so much data
Speaker 3: that eventually, if you have just one record of you know,
Speaker 3: I visited this website in this place on this particular day,
Speaker 3: in this minute, it doesn't mean much. But once you've
Speaker 3: got that over months weeks. You know, every hour on
Speaker 3: a particular person, you're able to see, Okay, every night,
Speaker 3: this person goes back to that building, so that's probably
Speaker 3: their home. Every day they go to this location, they
Speaker 3: probably work there, and over time you can see learn
Speaker 3: a lot about a person and also fusing that advertising
Speaker 3: information with other sources of data that a government will
Speaker 3: have access to. It seems, at least from the documents
Speaker 3: I've seen, fairly trivial for them to then make the
Speaker 3: leap from this supposedly anonymous data to actually a person's
Speaker 3: name and who they are and identity.
Speaker 1: So how does the product work if government uses Echo?
Speaker 3: What happens usually will be the government or like the
Speaker 3: law enforcement agency or intelligence agency, We'll go to Raizon
Speaker 3: and say, look, we want to use your system and
Speaker 3: we are interested in let's just say again hypothetically France.
Speaker 3: So what raizone will then do is that they can
Speaker 3: make a custom installation. They will start harvesting data from
Speaker 3: the advertising industry through supply side platforms and industry jargon.
Speaker 3: It's basically like an ad exchange that people can purchase
Speaker 3: data from, and then they will start buying the data
Speaker 3: on France and they will harvest. You know, the government
Speaker 3: says we want data between January and March on the
Speaker 3: entire nation of France. Raizon can then purchase and harvest
Speaker 3: that data and put it together in the system and
Speaker 3: what the government ultimately gets.
Speaker 4: It's essentially just like.
Speaker 3: A Google like system, you know, where they just go
Speaker 3: in into what's just an interface and they can then
Speaker 3: begin to search for particular locations that they're interested in
Speaker 3: on X date and find out who was at that
Speaker 3: cafe on Tuesday at three pm and narrow it down
Speaker 3: like that and see all of the people who were there,
Speaker 3: and then they can drill it down, Okay, where did
Speaker 3: this person go after the cafe. That's kind of how
Speaker 3: it works, and it will be very depending on what
Speaker 3: the government's interested in.
Speaker 1: When you went to Raison and asked them about their
Speaker 1: business and the Echo product, what did they say?
Speaker 3: They're on the record response was very brief and to
Speaker 3: the point, and basically they just said that they sell
Speaker 3: their technologies to help governments fight crime and terrorism and
Speaker 3: they didn't really want to go beyond that, so they
Speaker 3: like to stay under the radar this company, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: You said the price of their product varies depending on
Speaker 1: what the government wants. How expensive is this.
Speaker 3: What we were told is that if it was like
Speaker 3: a major installa like a big you know, they're looking
Speaker 3: at maybe a few different countries and a lot of data,
Speaker 3: it will be up to about ten million dollars. Looking
Speaker 3: at a smaller country, smaller number of people, it will
Speaker 3: be down near like two million, So that the sort
Speaker 3: of price band was like two to ten million. Was
Speaker 3: we were told about regular sales that they're making, and
Speaker 3: we were told also that it's been quite successful in
Speaker 3: so far as they have dozens of law enforcement and
Speaker 3: intelligence agencies. You're buying this across the world, you know,
Speaker 3: and most continents across Europe, North America, Asia, Middle East, Africa,
Speaker 3: I believe also, and they have a few different products
Speaker 3: that they sell, but this is their main product that's
Speaker 3: bringing the most money in for them. Is quite a
Speaker 3: powerful tool for the budget of a major intelligence agency,
Speaker 3: not a lot of money.
Speaker 4: And also I think one of.
Speaker 3: The appeals of it is that it doesn't involve hacking
Speaker 3: into a person's phone or installing any equipment within a
Speaker 3: telecommunication network, so in a way it kind of has
Speaker 3: a lower profile.
Speaker 4: It's less likely to be detected.
Speaker 1: Ryan, is there any regulation against the company like Raizone
Speaker 1: selling this kind of data?
Speaker 3: The Israeli Export Control system regulates the sale of particular
Speaker 3: surveillance technologies that involve hacking into phones or placing equipment
Speaker 3: within a network. This technology Echo doesn't involve either of
Speaker 3: those two things, so therefore it isn't regulated through the
Speaker 3: Export control which gives Raizone a lot of latitude to
Speaker 3: just sell essentially to however it wants without much oversight.
Speaker 3: And also you know within individual countries that we'll be
Speaker 3: purchasing this, there isn't much regulation because this isn't data
Speaker 3: that is being obtained directly from like a telco. It's
Speaker 3: not been like wire tapped or anything like that. So
Speaker 3: the agencies that are using it aren't having to go
Speaker 3: and get like a search warrant to obtain it. It's
Speaker 3: commercially purchased data. Certainly, I know, like there are regulators
Speaker 3: in Europe and also in the United States. There have
Speaker 3: been several US senators who've expressed concerns about this kind
Speaker 3: of marketplace for this data. Because of the reasons I've outlined,
Speaker 3: it's a very unregulated space.
Speaker 1: Raizone is marketing this Echo product to governments and intelligence agencies.
Speaker 1: But are any companies using it.
Speaker 3: Not as far as I know, And they do say
Speaker 3: that they won't sell it to private companies. They say
Speaker 3: that it's only a tool that they will sell to governments.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't really know ultimately how it's being used,
Speaker 3: but it's supposed to be used to fight crime and terrorism.
Speaker 1: Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: My pleasure, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
Speaker 1: It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Vergalina.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Rebecca Shasson is our producer.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Raphael mcili is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.