Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, March one, twenty two. We should
Speaker 1: all be thankful that a news episode did not fall
Speaker 1: on April one, because who knows what would have happened. Then.
Speaker 1: I do know what's gonna happen. Now. We're gonna complain
Speaker 1: a lot about big tech because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of stories that just continue to put a lot of
Speaker 1: companies in a pretty bad light. And I would love
Speaker 1: for that not to be the case. But here we are,
Speaker 1: so let's get started. Now. A lot of the news,
Speaker 1: like I said, is going to be about big tech
Speaker 1: shenanigans in this episode, not as many as as I
Speaker 1: originally had lined up. In fact, I threw out a
Speaker 1: ton of stories because the episode was starting to go
Speaker 1: too long, and and also it just I was starting
Speaker 1: to get beaten down by it. So anyway, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I read about today which I found
Speaker 1: interesting is an organization called the Tech Oversight Project that
Speaker 1: has created a wiki specifically to help folks read up
Speaker 1: on the various issues surrounding big tech over the last
Speaker 1: several years, like things that big tech companies have done
Speaker 1: that have been, you know, not good. The wiki is
Speaker 1: fittingly called the big Tech Wiki, and you can read
Speaker 1: a great article about this resource and the organization behind
Speaker 1: it over on gizmoto dot com. The article is titled
Speaker 1: Watchdog Group publishes Encyclopedia of all the nasty things big
Speaker 1: Tech has done, and it's by Mac Dagaron. But one
Speaker 1: caveat because the article itself reveals this, it's not actually
Speaker 1: all the nasty things big tech has done, because even
Speaker 1: with more than ninety pages of documentation, it's just scratching
Speaker 1: the surface. But the wiki collects this documentation about things
Speaker 1: like anti competitive practices, UH, the spread of misinformation, how
Speaker 1: these companies are funding political lobbying groups to shape legislation
Speaker 1: in their favor, and controversial partnerships with other entities, such
Speaker 1: as for example, Google's work with the U. S Military,
Speaker 1: and stuff like facial recognition which could potentially be weaponized.
Speaker 1: And it's a good article, so I do recommend you
Speaker 1: check it out, and the resource, the actual wiki itself,
Speaker 1: can help you catch up on all the exhausting amount
Speaker 1: of skullduggery that's been going on in the big tech
Speaker 1: sector for quite some time. I should also add that
Speaker 1: the project receives funds from the Ahmadyar Network, which politically
Speaker 1: is a left leaning organization. Now, I say that simply
Speaker 1: because I think it's always good to keep in mind
Speaker 1: the perspective that was used to cover certain issues. I mean,
Speaker 1: for that matter, I actually, no surprise, I leaned pretty
Speaker 1: hard left myself, So I'm not saying that my perspective
Speaker 1: is the correct one. I don't necessarily believe that I
Speaker 1: know how I feel, but I would. It would be
Speaker 1: way too much hubris for me to say my way
Speaker 1: is the right way. But you should check out the
Speaker 1: article and the wiki if you want to get angry
Speaker 1: at big companies like Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, those kind
Speaker 1: of things. Now, along those lines, CNBC published an article
Speaker 1: titled how Google and Amazon bankrolled a grassroots activist group
Speaker 1: of small business owners to lobby against big tech oversight.
Speaker 1: There's a heck of a long headline, and that's just
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that the Big Tech Wiki would cover.
Speaker 1: So in that article, CNBC reporters reveal that the lobbying
Speaker 1: group is called the Connected Commerce Council, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to represent small businesses and Amazon and Google are simply
Speaker 1: referred to as partners in the group. But apparently at
Speaker 1: least some of the business is listed as members of
Speaker 1: the group never actually joined it. Many had not even
Speaker 1: heard of the group, according to them, and yet their
Speaker 1: businesses were listed on the roster. Now, the implication is
Speaker 1: that this makes this a an AstroTurf campaign. AstroTurf is
Speaker 1: a term used to describe a situation where companies create
Speaker 1: what is supposed to look like a grassroots political movement,
Speaker 1: but is an actuality an attempt to push against legislation
Speaker 1: that would restrict or regulate the companies, or in some case,
Speaker 1: push for legislation that would give those companies more advantages.
Speaker 1: And astroturfing is pretty insidious. It's also a pretty common tactic.
Speaker 1: We've also seen big tech companies try to leverage small
Speaker 1: business in a way to excuse certain policies and practices.
Speaker 1: Meta has done this a lot as well, claiming that
Speaker 1: certain restrictions to its advertising strategy would harm small businesses.
Speaker 1: You know, they try to position it so it's not
Speaker 1: about hurting the bottom line of the big company, but
Speaker 1: rather it's the equivalent of think of the children. Is
Speaker 1: really what it comes down to, and it can be
Speaker 1: pretty shady stuff. Now that being said, this article also
Speaker 1: mentions that there are legitimate small businesses that are really
Speaker 1: part of the organization, so it's not like just a
Speaker 1: dummy group or anything like that. There are actual small
Speaker 1: businesses represented in the ranks that really do want to
Speaker 1: be there, and there are several that are in favor
Speaker 1: of the group and the group's policies, and they say
Speaker 1: that the group keeps them up to date on proposed
Speaker 1: legislation that could impact their businesses. So you might say,
Speaker 1: is this a real AstroTurf case or does it only
Speaker 1: appear that way due to the involvement of big tech
Speaker 1: companies that are particularly politically active, And I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to that. In a similar story, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post published an article revealing that Meta has been
Speaker 1: paying a consulting firm called Targeted Victory, and Targeted Victory
Speaker 1: primarily caters to US Republican candidates during election cycles. Specifically,
Speaker 1: Meta has hired on the consulting firm in order to
Speaker 1: create a kind of smear campaign against rival social media
Speaker 1: platform TikTok. Now, according to the Post, the goal was
Speaker 1: to reach out to various news outlets, and we're primarily
Speaker 1: talking about regional or local news outlets, and then convince
Speaker 1: them to run pieces criticizing TikTok and making various claims
Speaker 1: about TikTok's potential for harm, particularly for younger people. Now,
Speaker 1: some of those claims I think have some merit to them.
Speaker 1: I do think social platforms can facilitate harm, not that
Speaker 1: they're necessarily harmful just by themselves, but that you know,
Speaker 1: they are very effective at transmitting harm. In fact, Meta
Speaker 1: thinks this too about its own platforms, according to those
Speaker 1: internal documents that Francis Hogan leaked last year. But some
Speaker 1: of the narratives pushed by Targeted Victory are at best
Speaker 1: insincere and at worst are an outright form of misinformation.
Speaker 1: According to the Post, some of the stories Targeted Victory
Speaker 1: pushed were about harmful trends that had supposedly originated and
Speaker 1: propagated across TikTok, when, in fact, and at least a
Speaker 1: couple of those cases, those trends actually got their start
Speaker 1: on Facebook. So, in other words, the stuff Facebook was
Speaker 1: indirectly accusing TikTok of through targeted victory, we're actually examples
Speaker 1: of Facebook's own shortcomings. Now, to be fair, Meta slash
Speaker 1: Facebook does have some distance from these efforts because it's
Speaker 1: essentially paid Targeted Victory to do the dirty work, so
Speaker 1: Facebook's not directly involved, and the goals of that dirty
Speaker 1: work are twofold. One is to try to level the
Speaker 1: playing field a little bit between Meta and TikTok, because,
Speaker 1: as we've seen with Meta's financial report earlier this year,
Speaker 1: the company has been struggling to attract younger users and
Speaker 1: has cited TikTok as being one of the big reasons
Speaker 1: for that. Now, another goal is to deflect attention away
Speaker 1: from Meta and onto someone else, because Meta's been in
Speaker 1: the center of a of a target for a while
Speaker 1: now for good reason. But the company would really rather
Speaker 1: someone else take that place, and TikTok would sure be
Speaker 1: a nice substitute. And you know, TikTok, being a company
Speaker 1: that's owned by a larger Chinese conglomerate is a pretty
Speaker 1: good target if that's your goal. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: some legitimate concerns to have about TikTok, so it's not
Speaker 1: like all of these attacks have no substance to them.
Speaker 1: There are reasons to be concerned. Now, my own point
Speaker 1: of view is TikTok isn't that great and it does
Speaker 1: merit some scrutiny, But then I say the same thing
Speaker 1: about Meta. Both of them need to be scrutinized, potentially regulated,
Speaker 1: uh certainly held accountable for when they do things that
Speaker 1: are harmful. Anyway, it's interesting to see big tech behaving
Speaker 1: more and more like the ugliest facets of the political process.
Speaker 1: And by interesting I mean discouraging but not surprising. Staying
Speaker 1: on this topic a bit longer, Global Witness, which has
Speaker 1: frequently been a thorn and Meta's side, released a report
Speaker 1: yesterday saying Facebook's algorithm appears to be amplifying climate denial
Speaker 1: posts rather than offering up links to more reliable sources
Speaker 1: on the subject of climate change. So they actually ran
Speaker 1: a bit of an experiment. They created a couple of
Speaker 1: dummy accounts, Jane and John, both of which were supposed
Speaker 1: to represent climate skeptics. Now, the John account was set
Speaker 1: to follow legit scientific organizations, so it was liking pages
Speaker 1: that belonged to actually actual credible scientific groups and and institutions.
Speaker 1: The Jane account was directed to like a couple of
Speaker 1: pages that related to climate change skepticism. Then they sat
Speaker 1: back and looked to see what kind of content was
Speaker 1: being recommended in the respective news feeds, and they saw
Speaker 1: that Jane's news feed began creating, you know, seeing way
Speaker 1: more climate denial content in that feed. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, two thirds of the pages that included climate
Speaker 1: change misinformation were not labeled as such, so there was
Speaker 1: no warning. They're saying, you know, this is not necessarily
Speaker 1: reliable information and you should really look to such and
Speaker 1: such a place to get more reliable info. Now, the
Speaker 1: feed for John didn't have this problem. John didn't get
Speaker 1: the notifications of um, you know, posts that included climate
Speaker 1: denialism in it. So while John was seeing more information
Speaker 1: from legitimate sources, Jane saw progressively extremist content on the subject.
Speaker 1: So once again we see how Facebook's algorithm, coupled with
Speaker 1: Meta's insufficient flagging process leads to the amplification of misinformation.
Speaker 1: Will be coming back to that in just a moment,
Speaker 1: because we have another story that that touches on this.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So before the break, I talked about how Meta was
Speaker 1: failing to sufficiently label climate change misinformation as such, while
Speaker 1: it's not doing much better when it comes to preventing
Speaker 1: disinformation about the ongoing war in Ukraine either. According to
Speaker 1: the Center for Countering Digital Hate the c c d H,
Speaker 1: Facebook only manages to label about of all posts pushing
Speaker 1: misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding that the ongoing war in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: so that means eighty percent of those posts are just
Speaker 1: slipping by unlabeled, and these include messages such as a
Speaker 1: claim that the United States has been supplying bioweaponry to
Speaker 1: the Ukraine to use against Russian soldiers, a claim that
Speaker 1: has no basis in evidence or real support, and yet
Speaker 1: is a conspiracy theory that is propagating pretty quickly across
Speaker 1: social platforms like Facebook. So four out of the five
Speaker 1: posts that are pushing this in similar misinformation campaigns are
Speaker 1: going through without Facebook abling the post without so much
Speaker 1: as a missing context label, let alone and outright false
Speaker 1: information label. Im Ron Ahmed, the head of the c
Speaker 1: c d H, said, if our researchers can identify false
Speaker 1: information about Ukraine openly circulating on its platform, it is
Speaker 1: within Meta's capability to do the same. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: sick burn because I mean it's hard to argue against
Speaker 1: that statement. Right, if some outside group can come in
Speaker 1: and say, look, we're finding it all over your your platform,
Speaker 1: and it's your platform, clearly you should be able to
Speaker 1: find it too, how do you how do you argue
Speaker 1: against that? So Ahmed went on to reiterate the platforms
Speaker 1: like Facebook profit off of misinformation, which I kind of
Speaker 1: touched on before the break, and you know, we've said
Speaker 1: it many times. Misinformation quote unquote drives engagement and that
Speaker 1: is a major metric that Facebook relies upon while executing
Speaker 1: its revenue strategy. So engagement from revenue standpoint is good,
Speaker 1: and you know, you just have to distance yourself from
Speaker 1: what type of engagement you're talking about. It's unfortunate and
Speaker 1: it's something again, it's not new. We've talked about this
Speaker 1: many times on this show. And we are not yet
Speaker 1: done with Meta, the company and another one called Sama
Speaker 1: s a m A which Meta contracts with in order
Speaker 1: to run content moderation operations in Africa on Facebook. They
Speaker 1: have been named in a lawsuit in Kenya, and the plaintiff,
Speaker 1: Daniel Motog says that Sama violated Kenya's laws around employee health,
Speaker 1: safety and privacy. So content moderation on Facebook is a
Speaker 1: really tough gig, and in some regions it can be
Speaker 1: downright traumatizing because it's your job to look through stuff
Speaker 1: that gets flat flagged on Facebook and figure out, okay,
Speaker 1: does this in fact violate books policies? And in some
Speaker 1: cases it is incredibly evident that it violates policies. But
Speaker 1: in the process of reviewing the content, you're exposed to
Speaker 1: some really dreadful stuff. Motong says that the first video
Speaker 1: he remembers moderating had a video of a beheading in it.
Speaker 1: Now I know that if I were exposed to that
Speaker 1: kind of content, it would definitely have a massively negative
Speaker 1: psychological impact on me, to put it lightly. Motan says
Speaker 1: that Somema deceived employees. It gave them kind of a
Speaker 1: bait and switch offer. According to Motong, the employees were
Speaker 1: told they were going to work at a call center,
Speaker 1: and then once they signed on, they found out, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a call center, You're actually going to do
Speaker 1: content moderation on Facebook. Motong also says that some mfl
Speaker 1: far short of Kenya's requirements for employers to offer sufficient
Speaker 1: mental health resources to their employees. And this is not
Speaker 1: the first time we've seen complaints relating to data and
Speaker 1: the mental health of people who are tasked with the
Speaker 1: job of content moderation. Um, So we'll have to see
Speaker 1: what the outcome of this particular lawsuit is and whether
Speaker 1: or not it will precipitate any meaningful change in the
Speaker 1: process of content moderation and how the companies that are
Speaker 1: tasked with doing that are held accountable for employee welfare. Okay,
Speaker 1: while we add Apple into the mix of stories here,
Speaker 1: we're still, by the way, also he being criticism on
Speaker 1: Meta and Facebook, or at least pointing out something that's troubling.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reports that both Meta and Apple have handed over
Speaker 1: user data to hackers who fraudulently submitted emergency data requests. Now,
Speaker 1: tech companies generally try to hold off on just handing
Speaker 1: user data over to authorities as a means of establishing
Speaker 1: trust with users. Right, if you find out that a
Speaker 1: particular platform is frequently sharing user information with any agency
Speaker 1: out there, it's probably gonna make you get the he
Speaker 1: b gebs. Well, when companies are compelled by law, they
Speaker 1: will do it. I mean, obviously they don't want to
Speaker 1: break the law, and an emergency data request represents an
Speaker 1: urgent need for information. It could be in a case
Speaker 1: where a person has gone missing, for example, it could
Speaker 1: literally be life or death. So emergency data requests, unlike
Speaker 1: other types of authority data requests, do not require a
Speaker 1: court order, and a hacker group called Recursion Team are
Speaker 1: thought to be at least partly responsible for these fraudulent requests. Now,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, it's easy to accuse the companies
Speaker 1: of Apple and Meta of not doing due diligence to
Speaker 1: ensure that incoming requests are actually legitimate. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, the very nature of emergency requests indicates that
Speaker 1: a speedy response can be absolutely critical. I think in
Speaker 1: this particular case, the real problem lies in the process
Speaker 1: more than with Apple and met as actions, and the
Speaker 1: fact that it was possible for hackers to compromise that
Speaker 1: process is something we should really look at. Over in
Speaker 1: the UK case involving a Twitter user reminded me of
Speaker 1: the limits of free speech and how they are different
Speaker 1: in different parts of the world. Joseph Kelly was found
Speaker 1: guilty of sending a quote unquote grossly offensive tweet and
Speaker 1: a judge subsequently has sentenced Kelly to one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: hours of community service. So you might wonder, well, what
Speaker 1: was this tweet that merited uh, that kind of sentence. Well,
Speaker 1: it had to do with Sir Tom Moore, who was
Speaker 1: a man who, leading up to his one birthday, was
Speaker 1: doing laps around his garden. He did a hundred laps
Speaker 1: around his garden and it was all in a way
Speaker 1: to raise money for the UK's National Health Service in
Speaker 1: the early days of the pandemic. Sir Tom more than
Speaker 1: not too long later passed away, and one day after
Speaker 1: his passing, Kelly posted his tweet, which was the only
Speaker 1: good brit soldier is a deed one burn, old fella
Speaker 1: burn because he's you know, tweeting in a Scottish accent,
Speaker 1: which I will not do because I can't. Now I
Speaker 1: think anyone could agree that that tweet was at the
Speaker 1: very least in very poor taste. Two uh to you know,
Speaker 1: you had a country in mourning because Tom, Sir Tom
Speaker 1: had had really inspired a lot of people, and so
Speaker 1: then he he ends up saying this very you know, uh,
Speaker 1: unsympathetic thing. Now the question is did that break the law?
Speaker 1: Specifically didn't break Section on seven of the UK's Communications Act. Now,
Speaker 1: when that Act was passed, that section was originally meant
Speaker 1: to create accountability for people who were doing stuff like
Speaker 1: making obscene telephone call. That's what it was to refer to.
Speaker 1: But in the years since it has expanded to cover
Speaker 1: social media posts as well. The grossly offensive part really
Speaker 1: becomes tricky simply because you have to decide what are
Speaker 1: the criteria you're using to determine if something is grossly offensive.
Speaker 1: I mean, grossly offensive is a subjective thing, right, You
Speaker 1: might be offended by something I'm not offended by, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. Kelly, by the way, he deleted his message
Speaker 1: just twenty minutes after he posted it, and his lawyer
Speaker 1: in the trial argued that Kelly had made the tweet
Speaker 1: while he was intoxicated, like he wasn't you know, sober
Speaker 1: when he did it. But none of that managed to
Speaker 1: get him off the hook. And so now he's sentenced
Speaker 1: to do a hundred fifty hours of community service. Uh.
Speaker 1: For people in the United States, that probably comes as
Speaker 1: a shock because here we could tweet something like that
Speaker 1: and yeah, we might be called out for being insensitive
Speaker 1: or or you know, having really bad taste or just
Speaker 1: being tacky or whatever it may be. But you wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect anyone to be held accountable and have to do
Speaker 1: community service in return for doing that. Now, in the UK,
Speaker 1: there is an a new bill that will be coming
Speaker 1: law later on. It will becoming effective soon. It's called
Speaker 1: the Online Safety Bill that will end up replacing the
Speaker 1: old UK's Communications Act, So that will end up having
Speaker 1: a new set of rules. However, there's still measures in
Speaker 1: place where there's pretty vague language that you know, how
Speaker 1: the the nation could handle messages that are considered to
Speaker 1: be quote unquote harmful, Like who determines what constitutes harm
Speaker 1: and how do you determine accountability for those things. So
Speaker 1: if you are in the UK and you can't tweet
Speaker 1: something nice, don't tweet anything at all. I guess okay.
Speaker 1: I have a couple more stories that are less you know,
Speaker 1: the triolic, But we're gonna take another quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. All right, Let's get to the
Speaker 1: last couple of news stories for this episode. One of
Speaker 1: those is that Canadian politicians have drafted an emissions reduction
Speaker 1: plan that will require all new cars sold in Canada
Speaker 1: to be zero emission vehicles by the year twenty five. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's passenger cars, I should add, And this would put
Speaker 1: Canada on a growing list of countries that are setting
Speaker 1: similar deadlines for when car companies will no longer be
Speaker 1: allowed to sell new internal combustion engine vehicles in those countries. UH.
Speaker 1: That list notably does not include the United States. There
Speaker 1: is no federal mandate that follows this trend, but there
Speaker 1: have been a and orso states that have listed their
Speaker 1: own state deadlines for that. And honestly, once you start
Speaker 1: getting to a certain tipping point, there becomes a a
Speaker 1: movement within the automotive industry where you would expect everyone
Speaker 1: to switch over to electric anyway or some other zero
Speaker 1: emission vehicle design anyway, because it would just make more
Speaker 1: sense from a manufacturing standpoint to go that way rather
Speaker 1: than divide it up. So it may be that we
Speaker 1: don't ever see the US create a similar national policy,
Speaker 1: but if enough states follow that trend, then the effect
Speaker 1: will be the same. And like I said, it only
Speaker 1: applies to passenger cars, you know Canada's policy. Uh. In
Speaker 1: industry cars like things that are being used for enterprise purposes,
Speaker 1: they will have a longer timeline in order to convert
Speaker 1: over to zero emissions, which makes sense. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about things like heavy duty hauling vehicles
Speaker 1: or really strong construction vehicles, you're talking about stuff that
Speaker 1: has power needs that you know might not be met
Speaker 1: with current zero emission systems in place. So that does
Speaker 1: make a little more sense. But yes, we are seeing
Speaker 1: another country say no more internal combustion engine vehicles here,
Speaker 1: at least no new ones after a certain date. And finally,
Speaker 1: some security researchers demonstrated that it's possible to hack into
Speaker 1: a communications satellite and broadcast a video feed to a
Speaker 1: large region. Now, to be clear, the researchers did this
Speaker 1: with permission, so it's not like they were secretly hacking
Speaker 1: into a satellite feed and taking it over and creating
Speaker 1: pirate satellite television. But they were given the opportunity to
Speaker 1: attempt to access a Canadian satellite that was no longer
Speaker 1: going to be used. It had passed out of its
Speaker 1: useful life expectancy, but it had not yet been transferred
Speaker 1: to a graveyard orbit. I talked about this briefly earlier
Speaker 1: this week in an episode about orbits. A graveyard orbit
Speaker 1: is an orbit where you just you push stuff when
Speaker 1: you're when it's no longer useful, and it gets it
Speaker 1: out of the way so that you can put more
Speaker 1: useful stuff in that orbit. And it typically is is
Speaker 1: at an orbit that just isn't really well suited for
Speaker 1: any practical purposes here on Earth. So pushing a communication
Speaker 1: satellite out to a graveyard orbit means that would no
Speaker 1: longer really align properly to transmit back to Earth. So
Speaker 1: if if they had waited longer, this really wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been a possibility. But because that satellite was no longer
Speaker 1: in service but still reachable, it also meant there were
Speaker 1: no competing signals being sent to that satellite. So if
Speaker 1: you could send a signal to the satellite, it could
Speaker 1: then be it back down to Earth. Now, accessing the
Speaker 1: satellite required using an uplink facility. This is essentially a
Speaker 1: place that has a powerful satellite dish antenna and a
Speaker 1: really powerful amplifier and sending the right kind of signal
Speaker 1: that was strong enough to reach the satellite in question.
Speaker 1: Like you couldn't just do this with a simple radio
Speaker 1: antenna or something like that. You have to have a
Speaker 1: very concentrated, powerful beam of of signal to go up
Speaker 1: and reach the satellite, and then the satellite in fact
Speaker 1: did beam that signal back down to Earth. So the
Speaker 1: researchers showed there are no actual security measures in place
Speaker 1: on the satellites themselves. There's like there's no there's no
Speaker 1: like password or authentication or anything like that. If you
Speaker 1: are capable of sending the signal to the satellite, then
Speaker 1: it will just do its job and send it back
Speaker 1: down to Earth. Now you can kind of understand why
Speaker 1: there aren't any real protective measures on the satellite themselves,
Speaker 1: because you know, in order to even get this to work,
Speaker 1: you first have to have access to something like an
Speaker 1: uplink facility. That is not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 1: So it's not like you can go to your local
Speaker 1: electronics store and buy a consumer electronics version of a
Speaker 1: massively powerful transmitter and amplification system. Plus you'd have to
Speaker 1: have a way to identify where the satellite is and
Speaker 1: target it and track it. But the researcher showed it
Speaker 1: was at least possible, and in fact, it's not even
Speaker 1: that difficult once they had that access to the uplink center,
Speaker 1: so hackers could potentially get access to an uplink center
Speaker 1: and cause problems that way. And also they pointed out
Speaker 1: that just like in the past, it's still possible to
Speaker 1: hijack a working communication satellite, one that's still in service,
Speaker 1: as long as you send a signal that's stronger than
Speaker 1: the official And in fact, this has happened in the past.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen eighties. You lived on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: and we're a subscriber to HBO, it's possible that you
Speaker 1: witnessed this yourself because and I think it was six
Speaker 1: there was a disgruntled technician who was working at an
Speaker 1: uplink facility in Florida who used that facility to override
Speaker 1: the official New York Facilities HBO signal to a particular
Speaker 1: communication satellite. So, in other words, you have this this
Speaker 1: facility in New York, it's beaming the HBO feed up
Speaker 1: to a communication satellite which is beaming that back down
Speaker 1: to Earth on the East coast of the United States.
Speaker 1: This person in Florida decides, I'm going to use the
Speaker 1: Florida's uplinks center to override that signal. I'll just send
Speaker 1: a stronger signal to that satellite and then I'll have
Speaker 1: control the technician going by the name Captain Midnight took
Speaker 1: over a few minutes of airtime on HBO and used
Speaker 1: it to drumroll please complain about how expensive it was
Speaker 1: to get HBO added on too. Consumer satellite services, good
Speaker 1: use of time anyway, things haven't really changed that much
Speaker 1: since the nineteen eighties. Is still possible to take over
Speaker 1: a satellite by sending a stronger signal to that satellite,
Speaker 1: although you can also run the risk of damaging a
Speaker 1: satellite in the process if the signals get to be
Speaker 1: too strong. This is not that different from how radio works.
Speaker 1: In fact, radio works exactly the same way. We saw
Speaker 1: that and so did television. We saw that in the
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties as well, with the infamous Max
Speaker 1: Headroom incident that was over the air broadcast, not not satellite,
Speaker 1: but yeah, same sort of thing. If you're able to
Speaker 1: send out a stronger signal than an official one over
Speaker 1: a particular frequency, then that's what people are gonna get.
Speaker 1: That's how pirate radio can be a thing. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's illegal anyway. Uh. In an era of state sponsored
Speaker 1: hacker groups and propaganda campaigns, this knowledge kind of raises
Speaker 1: up some troubling possibilities, Like you could easily imagine a
Speaker 1: scenario where a country uses its own up link facilities
Speaker 1: to target a satellite that's that's orbiting a nearby region
Speaker 1: that happens to be an adversary of that country, and
Speaker 1: to take over that satellite and broadcast propaganda or shut
Speaker 1: it down. Even like, you can easily imagine that, and
Speaker 1: the fact that there aren't these security measures on the
Speaker 1: satellite themselves makes that a possibility. Or you could even
Speaker 1: have state sponsored hackers trying to get access to uplinks
Speaker 1: centers that are in other countries and and achieve the
Speaker 1: same goal. Uh so, maybe this will lead to changes
Speaker 1: in security around satellites. I think making sure that the
Speaker 1: up links centers are really secure is important because again,
Speaker 1: if you don't have access to an uplink center, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna send a signal strong enough in the first
Speaker 1: place to make it an issue. So protect those first.
Speaker 1: But I think also it might be time to start in,
Speaker 1: you know, figuring out security for the satellites themselves. Okay,
Speaker 1: those are the news stories I chose to cover on Thursday,
Speaker 1: March two. Like I said, there were a ton more,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, I was already getting pretty grouchy, as
Speaker 1: you can tell, and I figured that this was a
Speaker 1: good mixture to kind of share with all of you.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Eight