Speaker 1: Uh, welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast about
Speaker 1: things falling apart and how to deal with that and
Speaker 1: hopefully take care of yourself and your people. Um. Today
Speaker 1: we have a returning guest, Carl Casarda from Enranged TV. UM. Now, Carl,
Speaker 1: every time you and I have chatted on a show together,
Speaker 1: it has been about firearms, which is obviously your passion
Speaker 1: and specialty, well one of your specialties. But today we're
Speaker 1: not talking at all about guns. Um. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: here and there, but today we're talking about the thing
Speaker 1: that is has been your your career, uh for what
Speaker 1: most of your working life. Fair to say, Um, you
Speaker 1: want to kind of walk through your background here because
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about information security and like sort
Speaker 1: of the future of threats that are going to be
Speaker 1: like coming uh throughout like the next few years of
Speaker 1: our lives. Obviously, this year in particular, there's been a
Speaker 1: bunch of stories about like Russian attacks on digital infrastry
Speaker 1: sure and vice versa. And that's always like pretty much
Speaker 1: has been something that's in everybody's backburter since we got
Speaker 1: the Internet, usually through like Questionable films with Sandra Bullock. UM,
Speaker 1: I think net that was net right, Um, the net,
Speaker 1: the net, yes exactly, Yes, where they somehow hacked a
Speaker 1: car and nineteen ninety eight or something. You gotta do
Speaker 1: that when you're flying through cyberspace with your VR comment
Speaker 1: on and your gloves right yea, um, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to walk everyone through kind of what your actual
Speaker 1: background is in this industry first. Yeah, totally. So if
Speaker 1: anyone watches En Rangers, watched it for a long time,
Speaker 1: you'll see this reflected in some of my content because
Speaker 1: I do deal with some of this intermittently on the channel,
Speaker 1: and it's definitely influenced how I approach my work there
Speaker 1: with the social media and all that. But so way
Speaker 1: back when I was like one of those kids that
Speaker 1: was in the hacker space, and I grew up like
Speaker 1: trying to make computers and technology do what it wasn't
Speaker 1: designed to do, and learn to make it do things
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have done for my own interests or others
Speaker 1: around me, not not in any really negative way, but
Speaker 1: like just a deep curiosity and how does this stuff work?
Speaker 1: And being part of the early online community. We're talking
Speaker 1: pre Internet, where you have like an acoustic coupling jack
Speaker 1: modem and you would dial in like war games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: literally plug your headset into the fad. I was on
Speaker 1: boards like that way back when we never should have
Speaker 1: gone past those days doing things wirelessly with such a mistake,
Speaker 1: Like I'm so piste off that when I like sit
Speaker 1: down to research, I'm not like jacking into a gigantic
Speaker 1: box um like it that makes me live it, Like
Speaker 1: shadow Run promised me that I was going to be
Speaker 1: like using one hand to shoot at the approaching corporate
Speaker 1: security guards and have another hand on my like keyboard
Speaker 1: that I wear around my neck that I like plug
Speaker 1: into the wall to hack buildings. But well, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: someday we'll have neurological implants or wet wire implants brought
Speaker 1: to us by Monsanto Li. The rmum will just get
Speaker 1: shut off in our own rooms, right from their mouth
Speaker 1: to God's ears. Carl absolutely, who doesn't want that? Who
Speaker 1: doesn't want my neural tissue tied directly to a corporation?
Speaker 1: But that? Fuck yes? But anyway, so I grew up
Speaker 1: in that space, and it actually back then it naturally
Speaker 1: turned into a career. It wasn't like now nowadays, you
Speaker 1: pretty much have to go get a bunch of certificates
Speaker 1: and a college degree to even start looking at an
Speaker 1: infrazet career. But back then, if you kind of had
Speaker 1: like skills with a Z at the end of you
Speaker 1: could get a job. And I ended up doing like
Speaker 1: help desk at this one company landed up they noticed
Speaker 1: that that's where my interests were, and I ended up
Speaker 1: becoming their information security architect over a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and that turned into a multiple decade career pretty much
Speaker 1: culminating and working at a Tier one Internet backbone provider
Speaker 1: doing sub seed fiber optic like routing, networking and de
Speaker 1: dos mitigation and bought net control, search and destroy, So
Speaker 1: it really turned into a really wide career, not only
Speaker 1: like when I started off backbone internet, but like encryption, firewalls,
Speaker 1: application layer controls across the board for multiple corporations. So
Speaker 1: it was a weird and interesting space. But I don't
Speaker 1: really do that much anymore except on the side, but
Speaker 1: I've had a pretty exciting career with it. So I
Speaker 1: think probably a good place to start is just in general,
Speaker 1: because folks are always interested about this, what what do
Speaker 1: you what is your recommendation for people ask like what
Speaker 1: should I be doing to kind of protect myself as
Speaker 1: I forced my head under the constant stream of sewer
Speaker 1: water that is social media these days. Well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the simplest thing and everything. An infosec is always controversial,
Speaker 1: just like anything, Like any any recommendation makes someone's gonna
Speaker 1: be like, but otherwise or anyways, or there's a better solution,
Speaker 1: and there always is a better solution. But the realistic
Speaker 1: thing is when you talk to the average person, the
Speaker 1: average person isn't gonna sit there and hack a Linux
Speaker 1: box to have a better social media experience. That's that's
Speaker 1: not realistic. So the best thing anyone can do, the simplest,
Speaker 1: best thing, is to get one of the trusted password managers.
Speaker 1: There's a number of them out there. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to recommend an individual one right now, because anyone I
Speaker 1: recommend someone's gonna go. But there's another one, but there's
Speaker 1: a few of them out there. Having a password manager
Speaker 1: and having a unique, difficult, complex password for every account
Speaker 1: you log in onto on the internet is the first
Speaker 1: number one thing you can do as an individual to
Speaker 1: protect your interest, because if you're logging in with the
Speaker 1: same password monkey to Facebook, Twitter, and your bank account,
Speaker 1: that is a disaster. Waiting to happen. So the first
Speaker 1: thing you can do password manager passwords you yourself can't remember.
Speaker 1: As a result, I allow the password manager to generate
Speaker 1: like twenty four character long alpha numeric crypto. Nonsense. You
Speaker 1: put a gun on my mouth to say, what's your
Speaker 1: password to your bank and I don't know. I can't
Speaker 1: give it. You have no idea. And so that right
Speaker 1: there is the first thing any basic individual can do
Speaker 1: to protect themselves on the Internet that, uh is totally sensible. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not great at password managers, but I
Speaker 1: never know what my passwords are and they're all different,
Speaker 1: and so my life is this constant stream of like
Speaker 1: needing to figure out what my password was, failing and
Speaker 1: resetting it. But it does mean that I change passwords regularly. Right,
Speaker 1: But what's so great about password managers. You can have
Speaker 1: passwords that you could never human remember, and you can
Speaker 1: have weak ones per website, every website you log in,
Speaker 1: you can be unique, and by having it in this
Speaker 1: database that's properly encrypted with a key phrase or even
Speaker 1: dual factor, then at that point means you literally just
Speaker 1: can cut and paste your passwords into things you don't
Speaker 1: yourself know what they are and if depending on your
Speaker 1: privacy levels, you can do that locally with local solutions
Speaker 1: with files like on your own machine. But frankly a
Speaker 1: couple of the cloud based solutions, as much as the
Speaker 1: cloud freaks people out, is the better one because it
Speaker 1: will work on your phone, it'll work on your black top,
Speaker 1: it'll work on everything everywhere. That makes total sense, um
Speaker 1: I think. Another good thing to get into while we're
Speaker 1: on this subject, we just started talking about passwords, and
Speaker 1: obviously it is important to keep and secure those. Um.
Speaker 1: I think one thing folks don't often think about, especially
Speaker 1: people who are activists UM who who may foresee or
Speaker 1: have engaged in things that are legally questionable, don't think
Speaker 1: about enough is social media networking um as and by
Speaker 1: which I mean having social media that like It is
Speaker 1: possible to find your other social media by like knowing
Speaker 1: you know, like having the same name and Twitter and
Speaker 1: on Instagram and stuff. Um Having social media that like
Speaker 1: can be tracked across accounts um most people would be
Speaker 1: surprised at how easy it is to do that, and
Speaker 1: mellanct a huge amount of tracking nazis tracking even like
Speaker 1: a ton of the what the work I did not do,
Speaker 1: but my colleagues did to like doc docs Russian like
Speaker 1: secret service agents and stuff. Was like, oh, we found
Speaker 1: them in you know somebody their their bosses wedding, Like
Speaker 1: they're tagged in this thing in v K and from
Speaker 1: that we were able to like find their their account
Speaker 1: on this other site and like from that, like now
Speaker 1: we have this like map of everywhere they've been for
Speaker 1: the last like three weeks, and we can like build
Speaker 1: this social map of their entire life. Yeah. No, by list.
Speaker 1: By just literally existing in modern space, you're constantly leaking
Speaker 1: some form of metadata, right you are, You are always
Speaker 1: leaking metadata, and the more of you allow to exist
Speaker 1: in the world, the more that's the case. So, like
Speaker 1: there's also you've got to think about what the threat
Speaker 1: is and what the risk is. Right, there's the risk
Speaker 1: of the individual having a para social relationship with the
Speaker 1: Internet like I do as a content creator is one thing. People,
Speaker 1: there's always someone that wants to delve into your private life.
Speaker 1: But that's a very different risk than a nation state actor. Right,
Speaker 1: those are two different things. And when it comes to
Speaker 1: a nation state actor, quite honestly, unless you're real good
Speaker 1: and I've been doing it for a long time. The
Speaker 1: individual bluntly is kind of fucked word. As a general rule,
Speaker 1: your best security as an individual in that situation is
Speaker 1: the anonymity of the crowd. But when we're also not
Speaker 1: talking about most people who are threatened to kind of
Speaker 1: by the state and that situation are not being threatened
Speaker 1: by the federal government. But they may have they may
Speaker 1: like be attending protests and not want the Louisville Police
Speaker 1: to like put together that they're in an affinity group
Speaker 1: with people, and like, something you can do for that
Speaker 1: is make sure you're not like if you have a
Speaker 1: personal account that's under your name with your friends, that
Speaker 1: account shouldn't be liking and sharing things from like a
Speaker 1: political account that you have, or from the account of
Speaker 1: like a a group that you're a part of or
Speaker 1: something like that. Like just try to think about and
Speaker 1: look at your your digital footprint from the outside and think,
Speaker 1: is it possible to connect me to people I don't
Speaker 1: want to be publicly connected to through this And the
Speaker 1: minute you've breached that connection once it's gone forever. Right,
Speaker 1: this is the forever. Yes. This is the same thing
Speaker 1: as like with phones, like someone will have like their
Speaker 1: regular phone which, by the way, all these smartphones are
Speaker 1: just surveillance devices in our pocket. Right. Let's let's say
Speaker 1: you go get a burner so that you don't want
Speaker 1: to be connected to the device that you normally use
Speaker 1: on on a level that's one step above the regular
Speaker 1: individual level. If you ever have those two devices emanating
Speaker 1: at the same time, they're now connected in a way that,
Speaker 1: like let's say, the authorities can associate them together because
Speaker 1: of triangulation and seeing a burner phone and your phone
Speaker 1: coming from the same house, you've breached all the privacy
Speaker 1: you would have had from your burner phone for example. Now, Carl,
Speaker 1: do you have much to say on the subject of
Speaker 1: because I know one thing I have seen people do
Speaker 1: people who are you know, having conversations that they're concerned about,
Speaker 1: is put bags in Faraday cages. And I've heard things
Speaker 1: about how reliable Faraday bags and stuff are for actually
Speaker 1: stopping signals. Do you have much to say on that matter?
Speaker 1: My experience with that is not all not all bags
Speaker 1: that you can just buy off the internet or made equally. Um,
Speaker 1: So what you want to do is tested, and you
Speaker 1: can only test it to a certain degree. But the
Speaker 1: really simple tests are you put it in the bag
Speaker 1: and you try to darn dial the darn thing or
Speaker 1: use any WiFi connections to it. And that's a simple test.
Speaker 1: Now is it as good as like? Is it as
Speaker 1: good as not having the thing on you? Of course,
Speaker 1: not leaving or else is always the best answer, but
Speaker 1: it properly In my opinion, a properly built Faraday box
Speaker 1: or cage or bag that you've put some testing into
Speaker 1: is a pretty reliable solution. And it's you know, there
Speaker 1: are so a problem that you might encounter, is um
Speaker 1: or that I have so one thing I have heard
Speaker 1: people talk about it is like, well, in order to
Speaker 1: have kind of a private conversation, we like drove to
Speaker 1: a specific location and we left our phones off in
Speaker 1: the car and then went on a walk. And the
Speaker 1: problem with that is that now you have both just
Speaker 1: driven to a location with those phones, and those phones
Speaker 1: are associated with each at it right right, Well, so
Speaker 1: first of all, you got to think of a world
Speaker 1: where all of this metadata is being collected at all times.
Speaker 1: So these phones and their associations in physical proximity to
Speaker 1: one another is stored somewhere at all times, whether or
Speaker 1: not it's going to be resourced or accessible to the
Speaker 1: powers that be when they wanted to be. It's all there,
Speaker 1: my phone next to your phone, next to that guy's phone.
Speaker 1: Those associations all exists. They're all talking to the same
Speaker 1: cell phone towers in the same area, giving them not
Speaker 1: only GPS coordinates but triangulation data, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you go way back to the hacker Kevin Mitnick,
Speaker 1: that stuff was going on back then before they had
Speaker 1: gasiness triangulation data to get him right, So that stuff
Speaker 1: is all still happening, and those associations occur. In regards
Speaker 1: to saying I turned my phone off, how do you
Speaker 1: know that's off? Most of these moderate phones, what does
Speaker 1: off mean? And yeah, okay, pull the battery maybe, But
Speaker 1: even then, I would not trust any of these devices
Speaker 1: in the regards to them. Quote being off, especially things
Speaker 1: like phones that have un or not removable batteries. Off
Speaker 1: is more like sleep it is, right, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think one of the worst things that's happened for
Speaker 1: personal security is the end of the phone where you
Speaker 1: can remove the battery, like being unable to actually cut
Speaker 1: power to it without you know, disassembling it is a
Speaker 1: real issue. One could argue that there was like that
Speaker 1: that's a much much more insidious reason they did that,
Speaker 1: or one could argue that it was just one of
Speaker 1: design and comfort, and it's like hard to say. It
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter if it wasn't sidious or not. Reality
Speaker 1: kind of a poor Kano Los dose situation right totally
Speaker 1: is so well. Now that we're talking about phones, here's
Speaker 1: another thing that's been near and dear, and I think
Speaker 1: you've seen some posts for me about this. Um everybody
Speaker 1: really likes the convenience of things like biometrics, thumb authentication,
Speaker 1: fingerprint i D, facial identification. And here's the reality of that.
Speaker 1: We know this already and there's legal this exists in
Speaker 1: legal space already. But the reality is that you can
Speaker 1: be coerced to provide biometric data against your will. So
Speaker 1: if your phone is authenticated to with a fingerprint i
Speaker 1: D or your face i D, they can pretty much
Speaker 1: say you must give us your thumb to unlock this phone,
Speaker 1: or for that matter, frankly, they could hold the phone
Speaker 1: in front of your face in certain circumstract circumstances, even
Speaker 1: against your will, and it will unlock the device. And
Speaker 1: that is considered not a violation of your rights. So
Speaker 1: for example, if you had a long, strong password on
Speaker 1: the phone, they cannot coerce you to give that up
Speaker 1: because that would be a violation of your own rights
Speaker 1: and Fifth Amendment, which is interesting, um so. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, one could also argue that a certain
Speaker 1: circumstances where there's a lot of cameras that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily watching everything you do. But you could also consider
Speaker 1: that pass phrases could be dangerous, like saying an airport,
Speaker 1: because all those cameras could see you plugging in your
Speaker 1: pass code. So it's a matter of if, when and
Speaker 1: where right, So what's the right solution at the best time.
Speaker 1: But I would say that if you were going to
Speaker 1: be in a place that was contentious, um it is
Speaker 1: almost always better to make sure you do not allow
Speaker 1: for any biometric authentication on device. Yes, I never like
Speaker 1: never turn on don't even like ever have had it
Speaker 1: in the like ideally you have never turned on facial
Speaker 1: recognition on your phone, like even if you like deactivated.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't I really that was that
Speaker 1: was one of the first I used to be in
Speaker 1: tech journalism, right, obviously I'm not an expert on any
Speaker 1: of this. But like the worst thing in terms of
Speaker 1: like my personal comfort with devices was when they were
Speaker 1: like everything's gonna read faces and fingerprints. Now I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't love that, um, but you know it's it's inevitable, right,
Speaker 1: because it is and I had in the past. I
Speaker 1: did a fingerprint unlock earlier in my life, and I
Speaker 1: do not have any devices that unlocked that way anymore.
Speaker 1: But you do like that it is more convenient, right,
Speaker 1: You miss it when you need to get to your
Speaker 1: phone quickly and you can't do it. But like, I
Speaker 1: don't even I don't even let my phone have just
Speaker 1: like a four phrase like password anymore. Like it's eight
Speaker 1: characters for me. It's a little bit of a pain
Speaker 1: in the ass, but it comes with fewer risks. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that's challenging to every individuals they
Speaker 1: have to look at what their threat profile is, right,
Speaker 1: So like, for example, um, soccer mom driving her kids
Speaker 1: to school and stuff, she might be really good, well
Speaker 1: off with a biometric authentication on her phone, frankly, because
Speaker 1: if she didn't use that, maybe she wouldn't even use
Speaker 1: a proper four character pass phrase. And if she's not
Speaker 1: concerned about being at a protest, for example, and having
Speaker 1: some authoritarian take her phone away from her and authenticate
Speaker 1: to it. Maybe she doesn't need to worry about that.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of us in the world's we
Speaker 1: live in, that's a different risk profile. Right, We've got
Speaker 1: to think about what our risks are as individuals and
Speaker 1: what makes sense. So if your passphrase is going to
Speaker 1: be one, two, three, four or use a thumb print
Speaker 1: I D. For most people, they'd be better with the
Speaker 1: thumb print I D. But for someone like myself, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a good idea. Yeah, and that's UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that kind of brings us to uh, probably
Speaker 1: the last part of this, which is um, do you
Speaker 1: have specific advice on like VPNs UM. Obviously I recommend
Speaker 1: everybody you signal I I justform messages in general, but
Speaker 1: like a specially stuff that is secure. Don't if you
Speaker 1: if you like Number one first rule of any kind
Speaker 1: of this sort of security. Don't ever put anything on
Speaker 1: your phone ever that's legally questionable if you can avoid it,
Speaker 1: like conversationally, like right, do not don't send it over
Speaker 1: a phone if it's something you would not be able
Speaker 1: to survive. Having read D you in a courtroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so for the audience, a lot of the audience may
Speaker 1: not know what signal even is, right, So signal ism
Speaker 1: is a is a text messaging alternative. So like for example,
Speaker 1: on your phone, you've got regular text or if you've
Speaker 1: got an iPhone, you've got I message. Signal is an
Speaker 1: end end encrypted solution that you install as an app.
Speaker 1: And because it's end end encryption, it means that it
Speaker 1: passes the wire in theory not decryptable by the parties
Speaker 1: that are passing the data packets in the middle, So
Speaker 1: that's a man in the middle the decryption. Right, So
Speaker 1: for example, I message is encrypted theoretically end to end,
Speaker 1: but Apple ultimately has the cryptographic keys, so there is well,
Speaker 1: they might say one thing, there is nothing really preventing
Speaker 1: them from being man in the middle and being able
Speaker 1: to read the message in transit from a to be.
Speaker 1: But if the keys are stored on your device, which
Speaker 1: are then protected with your passphrase or whatever your authentication
Speaker 1: mechanism is, and those keys are not archived or kept
Speaker 1: by some hierarchical man in the middle authority, if it's
Speaker 1: done right, which signal is done pretty well, it means
Speaker 1: that your data in transit is probably not decryptible, and
Speaker 1: that's why Signal is a good solution, and it's a
Speaker 1: good one for the average person. Install the app. It
Speaker 1: works just like test text messaging, but you can have
Speaker 1: a pretty good level of knowledge that the data you're
Speaker 1: passing is not being decrypted or caught in transmission or
Speaker 1: in the path. So I would say get get signal. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's your best bet, right Like, and again we said,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, you don't want to ever say
Speaker 1: anything over a phone. That is something that can get
Speaker 1: you in trouble. But also like, life is life, and
Speaker 1: that's not always realistic for people in certain situations. So again,
Speaker 1: signal is your best bet. Nothing is perfect. And again
Speaker 1: if you're putting it on your phone, there's a number
Speaker 1: of things that could go wrong every single time you
Speaker 1: do that. But um, that that's one of your better
Speaker 1: things that you could do. And then of course we
Speaker 1: talk about VPNs. Yeah, so so VPN to those like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go with the basic levels because I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know the level of knowledge that people are listening.
Speaker 1: VPN is a virtual private network. So with that is
Speaker 1: you connect to this virtual private network and it passes
Speaker 1: your data through an encrypted tunnel to an exit point
Speaker 1: somewhere else on the Internet in theory masking the source
Speaker 1: and origin of your requests. So like, for example, let's
Speaker 1: say you were looking up something on the Internet that
Speaker 1: you didn't necessarily want people to know you're looking up. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: let's say you're researching the truth about the assassination of
Speaker 1: President John F. Kennedy by Bernard Montgomery Sanders Um. And
Speaker 1: you know that the n s A is looking for
Speaker 1: truth seekers who are who are finding out the reality
Speaker 1: of that situation. You know, you don't necessarily want them
Speaker 1: to know that you have have become pilled. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you were to do this from your computer at home,
Speaker 1: but what happen is to people that don't know how
Speaker 1: this all works, you would be coming from an I
Speaker 1: P address that's associated with your account that you're connecting to,
Speaker 1: whether it's Verizon or Comcast or whatever. And you go
Speaker 1: and search up that truth, and the n s A
Speaker 1: finds you with a keyword search for jfk and the truth.
Speaker 1: And therefore, because of that keyword search, they go to
Speaker 1: Comcast or to Verizon and say, hey, we are requesting
Speaker 1: you tell us who did this search, They will get
Speaker 1: them essentially a request that's a legal request for information,
Speaker 1: and then Comcast or Verizon will provide the n s
Speaker 1: A this is the I P address and account of
Speaker 1: the person that did that. What VPN does is you
Speaker 1: connect to the vp and service. First, the connection from
Speaker 1: your machine to the VPN services that encrypted. Now does
Speaker 1: the VPN service no, your IP address, yes, But when
Speaker 1: you actually type in that information or go to the
Speaker 1: Internet to request that data, it actually goes through the
Speaker 1: VPNs private tunneling network and egresses from somewhere else on
Speaker 1: the Internet, thus masking your actual I P address and
Speaker 1: in theory your origin of source. Now that's not true,
Speaker 1: but what that does is mean that if someone if
Speaker 1: say the n s A I wanted to know who's
Speaker 1: doing this truth search, they would then find an eat
Speaker 1: IP address that actually came out of let's say Joe's
Speaker 1: VPN service, and they would have to go to Joe's
Speaker 1: VPN service and go, we noticed this emanated from your network?
Speaker 1: Who did this? At that point you have to trust
Speaker 1: Joe's VPN service to not disclose their account information about you.
Speaker 1: So what you've done is you've changed it. We know
Speaker 1: the telecoms will communicate with the government or whoever if
Speaker 1: they need to, they always will have. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know if Joe's VPN service will You've changed your trust
Speaker 1: model from your telecom to your VPN service. So if
Speaker 1: you're gonna pick a VPN, you have to do a
Speaker 1: little bit of research to know that it's a trustworthy
Speaker 1: resource that won't just give you up at the lightest
Speaker 1: form of interrogation. Yeah, and none of them again, there's
Speaker 1: nothing perfect and often like we did find out what
Speaker 1: was it last year that one of popular VPN was
Speaker 1: like run by the FEDS, Like it's yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: an impossible thing. Um. I know a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: particularly journalists, use proton Um, which is i think based
Speaker 1: in Switzerland, and you will get given up if you
Speaker 1: if the Swiss government is angry at you. Right, you
Speaker 1: brought up a very good point. Uh, Services that exist
Speaker 1: outside of the KNUS the continental US mean that they
Speaker 1: are under different legal jurisdiction than ones that exist wholly
Speaker 1: within the CONUS. So as a result, if something from
Speaker 1: the United States government comes as a request to the
Speaker 1: Swiss company, there's a much like like higher chance of
Speaker 1: a Swiss company would be like, we don't really care
Speaker 1: about your reports. That's worth considering. Also, think about this,
Speaker 1: This actually works in reverse. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too deep into this, but when you're working at
Speaker 1: a tier one Internet back one provider, you should know
Speaker 1: that sometimes traffic strangely gets pushed offshore and then back
Speaker 1: to the United States for analysis that would normally be
Speaker 1: let's say, not necessarily constitutionally legal in the United States.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of shenanigans going on. Yeah, and again, like,
Speaker 1: I think protons are generally a pretty good service. I've
Speaker 1: had no problems with it. Um, But we should should
Speaker 1: be clear hear. None of these are perfect solutions. There
Speaker 1: is no perfect solution. The only perfect method of digital
Speaker 1: security is not putting things on the Internet or like
Speaker 1: through you know, the mobile networks and stuff like that. Is,
Speaker 1: if it stays between you and someone else, Um, that
Speaker 1: is your best bet of it not being you know,
Speaker 1: intercepted or something. A conversation that you have in the
Speaker 1: woods without phones anywhere near you is the most secure
Speaker 1: kind of conversation station. Let me second on proton. I
Speaker 1: agree it's a good service. There are others out there.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to pick on one in particular or
Speaker 1: pick against anyone in particularly. There's a bunch of work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another thing that you need to consider in this sort
Speaker 1: of thing is also what you're dealing with. Like so,
Speaker 1: for example, on I put up a post a while
Speaker 1: back because there was a bunch of stuff going on
Speaker 1: in Ukraine with with people posting photos that got their locations,
Speaker 1: had things happen. I mean, that's and that has been
Speaker 1: happening for a decade in that war, like well almost
Speaker 1: a decade as long as it's been going on, And
Speaker 1: I posted something about it. And one of the recommendations
Speaker 1: I made on there was a contentious one, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna back it up in a minute. As I used,
Speaker 1: I mentioned tour the Onion relay. So the tour is
Speaker 1: essentially it was originally created as a as a way
Speaker 1: to deal with the dark Web quote unquote and to
Speaker 1: also relay traffic in a way to mask the origins,
Speaker 1: very much like a VPN service. Now there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of these, So what it was is there's these
Speaker 1: Onion relay nodes all over the Internet, and when you
Speaker 1: connect to the to the Onion network, your traffic bounces
Speaker 1: through three, four, or five, six, seven of these nodes,
Speaker 1: you can sort of dictate what you want depending on
Speaker 1: the client you have. And so let's say you connect
Speaker 1: to an Onion router network node in Arizona and then
Speaker 1: you egress somewhere in France, and you've jumped through six
Speaker 1: nodes in the process. Well, one of the things that's
Speaker 1: a well known fact is that a number of these
Speaker 1: Onion relay routing nodes are owned by nation state actors,
Speaker 1: whether it's the United States or others. So, so one
Speaker 1: of the things I got taken to task for, and
Speaker 1: I want to explain this is people like, well, that's
Speaker 1: not a compromise network. It doesn't mean that it's useful.
Speaker 1: Actually it does, because depending on what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do may matter. If you're trying to mask the origin
Speaker 1: of your data source or your upload or your search
Speaker 1: for a short duration of time, this will still help
Speaker 1: you jump through six nodes. They've got a relay back
Speaker 1: six nodes to figure out the origin of the person
Speaker 1: connecting to the relay network. And that's assuming that there
Speaker 1: was a compromise node in the process. So that means
Speaker 1: if you're passing data through a compromise No. Does that
Speaker 1: mean the data in transit is safe? No? But is
Speaker 1: the is the anonymity of the origin of the poster
Speaker 1: safer for a longer duration of time? Yes. So these
Speaker 1: things get really complex, real fast. And this is again
Speaker 1: one of the best things you can do, because there's
Speaker 1: no single perfect solution, but stacking, so not just going
Speaker 1: through tour but also tour into VPN at the same time.
Speaker 1: And you're I think one of the better ways to
Speaker 1: think about security is kind of the way Sebastian Younger
Speaker 1: describes how insurgent war works, which is it's all about
Speaker 1: creating friction for anybody trying to spy on your ship.
Speaker 1: There's no perfect answer, but the more things you can
Speaker 1: make be a pain in the ass, the better your
Speaker 1: odds that you will not have an issue. Right like,
Speaker 1: That's all you can do is make it potentially more
Speaker 1: annoying and more difficult for for whoever might be looking
Speaker 1: right like it. The more friction you can create, broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: the more secure you're going to be. Absolutely Now another
Speaker 1: thing to think about, and we're getting kind of deep
Speaker 1: in the weeds too. This is above and on the
Speaker 1: average person, right, the average person get a password manager
Speaker 1: don't use your same password everywhere, and don't use biometrics
Speaker 1: unless you're forced, like pretty much have to and move
Speaker 1: on with your life. But once you're beyond the average person,
Speaker 1: this is what we're talking about now. So like if
Speaker 1: you're if you have a computer and you use it
Speaker 1: as your normal day to day operating system, talking to
Speaker 1: your friends, doing dot dot dot dot dot, but then
Speaker 1: also need to do something else a little more privacy inclined,
Speaker 1: you should not trust that device. So at that point,
Speaker 1: your web browser may have all sorts of cookies and
Speaker 1: metadata and storage in it that, even if you're going
Speaker 1: through a VPN, still may be able to reveal your
Speaker 1: identity a spell as Mac addresses and other stuff. So
Speaker 1: if you really want to get pretty into the weeds
Speaker 1: with this, you have to do something like use an
Speaker 1: ephemeral operating system, install that it has no legacy data
Speaker 1: on it. One example of that that is it's a
Speaker 1: Linux based when it's called TAILS, you essentially use it
Speaker 1: like a live USB drive. You boot off of that only,
Speaker 1: or you use a machine dead cared for this and
Speaker 1: you burn the OS down every time you're done. Because
Speaker 1: there's no legacy information or data that can be pulled
Speaker 1: out of your web browser or your cookies or your
Speaker 1: Mac dress information that can associate it with you, regardless
Speaker 1: of if you've done everything right to mask your IP
Speaker 1: address of origin. God, that's the hot girl shit. Um,
Speaker 1: when you're when you're when you're doing when you when
Speaker 1: you're doing that kind of stuff. Um. And again I
Speaker 1: think at this point, I think, up through most of this,
Speaker 1: it's been kind of like people being like, that's too much,
Speaker 1: and people being like, Okay, yep, this is exactly what
Speaker 1: I already am or need to be doing. Um, this
Speaker 1: is probably very few people need to be concerned about
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, but um, you know it it
Speaker 1: is I I've know, I know. Like again, I worked
Speaker 1: at Belling cat Um. I had a number of colleagues
Speaker 1: who were like personal enemies of the Russian state who
Speaker 1: had to do stuff like this. Um and it's you know, paranoia,
Speaker 1: I mean, And here's the thing going above. So again
Speaker 1: like if you're a normal person, you probably don't need
Speaker 1: to be you know, doing stacking a VPN, you know,
Speaker 1: getting signal and all this stuff. But also why not, right, like,
Speaker 1: there's no harm in in the additional security. It is
Speaker 1: a little bit frustrating. But here's one of the things
Speaker 1: I think people don't often think about enough. You're not
Speaker 1: engaging in that kind of security stuff purely because there's
Speaker 1: a threat now, but in part because you don't know
Speaker 1: what the future is going to bring. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I would point out for that is
Speaker 1: a lot of people right now have been having for
Speaker 1: years conversations about a thing that may soon legally be
Speaker 1: murder on a federal level, you know, um abortion right,
Speaker 1: And so it is possible that overnight an awful lot
Speaker 1: of conversations a bunch of people have had legally will
Speaker 1: suddenly be very illegal conversations. And then you may be
Speaker 1: glad that you took greater care with your your personal
Speaker 1: security prior to that point. Yeah, I mean, like so
Speaker 1: think of the I mean, I'm not a person that menstrates,
Speaker 1: but on menstruation tracking app it's very useful to a
Speaker 1: lot of people who do. And those tracking apps now
Speaker 1: that metadata in there, at some point could be extremely
Speaker 1: dangerous or incriminalized or incrimin criminalizing, incriminating excuse me, to
Speaker 1: someone who otherwise was doing nothing more than trying to
Speaker 1: maintain their natural health. And so that is a really
Speaker 1: dangerous concept. So at this point, I mean, within the
Speaker 1: United States, I hate to say this, those apps are
Speaker 1: probably dangerous to the individual because that data could be
Speaker 1: easily used by a government resource to UH to do
Speaker 1: something bad to someone who's done nothing wrong. So I
Speaker 1: think we should move. I mean, at this point, I
Speaker 1: think we've covered the basis that you could kind of
Speaker 1: responsibly the advice you can responsibly give someone in a podcast,
Speaker 1: and and folks should be able to let let me
Speaker 1: throw one thing out real quickly. So you mentioned, like,
Speaker 1: for example, we don't you don't necessarily have the risk
Speaker 1: vector that requires using VPN or signal. But let me
Speaker 1: say this, way back when, gosh, when I was doing
Speaker 1: crypto work decades ago, I was what you mean, cryptography
Speaker 1: and not we should specify these days, excuse me, cryptograencryption. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had the opportunity. We're with Phil Zimmerman of p
Speaker 1: GP and actually PGP pretty Good Privacy, which was one
Speaker 1: of the fundamental UH security project or projects way back when,
Speaker 1: was actually written for human rights violations. He wrote it
Speaker 1: because people were doing research of like warlords were getting
Speaker 1: their laptops taken away and then finding out who spoke
Speaker 1: to them and getting people killed. So PGP was like
Speaker 1: this human rights thing right from the beginning. And cryptography
Speaker 1: back when I was young and naive, I always thought
Speaker 1: to myself, this is what we need. This is the
Speaker 1: future when everyone gets proper crypto will blind the government
Speaker 1: will blind the corporations. We're gonna have this crypto anarchist
Speaker 1: future where the government and corporations can't get us. And
Speaker 1: the reality is most of that God who served. And
Speaker 1: the truth is cryptography is too hard for most people
Speaker 1: to use, and as a result, we don't. But here's
Speaker 1: what I will say. The more people that do something
Speaker 1: simple like you signal or use a VPN just to
Speaker 1: browse the Internet, not because they're doing anything to various
Speaker 1: just because their privacy like conscious, Yeah, because it makes
Speaker 1: it normalize. And that means that the person that's using
Speaker 1: it because they need to for like, let's say, to
Speaker 1: protect human rights doesn't stick out like a needle in
Speaker 1: the haystack because everybody's already doing something sane in the
Speaker 1: first place. Normalizing proper privacy and cryptography is better for everyone. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely agreed. This is a nice segue because you were
Speaker 1: just talking about the past and how beautiful and bright
Speaker 1: it seemed. Um, let's talk about what you see as
Speaker 1: kind of the future of info security threats. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: so there's so many levels to that. First of all,
Speaker 1: if we're talking nation state level, I personally strongly believe
Speaker 1: that all of the big players have already compromised everyone's network.
Speaker 1: Everybody got everybody's got us, China's got us, we got China,
Speaker 1: anybody right now it could go in and pretty much
Speaker 1: funk up the grid on someone else like that, And
Speaker 1: there's yeah, and that's not actually the least that's that's
Speaker 1: safer than other possibilities, like because there is the level
Speaker 1: of of mutually a shared destruction there where it's like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: Russia could take down the grid, but like that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be good for them, and vice versa. You know, Yeah, no, true.
Speaker 1: So the reality is, though everybody's and everybody's network, those
Speaker 1: days are over. Um, when it comes to the individual
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna have a the audience, there might be
Speaker 1: people in the audience to feel differently, and it still
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we don't try. So one of the
Speaker 1: things I want to say is you're gonna hear some
Speaker 1: skepticism here because I've been doing this career for a
Speaker 1: long time and I've seen things go wrong more than right,
Speaker 1: and so in that regard, this is gonna sound kind
Speaker 1: of cynical. But when it comes to the idea of
Speaker 1: individual privacy, in my opinion, with the exception of when
Speaker 1: you're taking a very active effort in something very specific
Speaker 1: that you want to keep private because that's something you're
Speaker 1: working on personally, the reality is individual privacy is dead
Speaker 1: and gone, and we're just starting to smell that corpse um.
Speaker 1: Whether it is credit card data transactions, your cell phone history,
Speaker 1: your phone numbers, what you've done on the internet, what
Speaker 1: you've done on social media or not done on social media,
Speaker 1: whether you have an account on Facebook or not, doesn't
Speaker 1: even matter. The metadata and the trailer you're leaving behind
Speaker 1: you is all aggregated, all of it behind big data corporations,
Speaker 1: all of it compromised, all of it searchable. Even stuff
Speaker 1: the government has on you has been sold to large corporations.
Speaker 1: Because I can tell you that some of the data
Speaker 1: that they kept for like let's say D m V
Speaker 1: or m v D, they decided to sell it off
Speaker 1: to a corporation and they themselves access it through a
Speaker 1: third party when doing research on you. So all of
Speaker 1: that big data, there's a law of physics. The more
Speaker 1: you aggregate, the mortal get compromised. Um, geez, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that's the truth. No, no, no, I mean yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're like it's this Uh, there's this frustration because
Speaker 1: I can remember the days when the privacy hounds. And
Speaker 1: I don't say that in a negative term. We're like
Speaker 1: warning everybody about, Hey, you don't want to be aggregating
Speaker 1: all of these different social media things together. Hey you
Speaker 1: don't want to be using all of these services. Hey
Speaker 1: there's actually some like real downsides like all of what's happening.
Speaker 1: Like part of why things are so cheap on Amazon
Speaker 1: is you know that that your data there is is
Speaker 1: one of the assets that they have. And um, those
Speaker 1: people were absolutely right, and they lost harder than anyone
Speaker 1: has ever lost at anything. Like So, Like when I
Speaker 1: was back there at that company doing all that cryptography work,
Speaker 1: we were trying to give crypto like to the average
Speaker 1: general population of the Internet. I had this, like I said,
Speaker 1: this naive view of like the future that was gonna
Speaker 1: be this place where we're gonna have the Internet where
Speaker 1: everyone was connected, and it was gonna be not only
Speaker 1: would we have personal privacy through cryptography, but we would
Speaker 1: be able to transfer information to one another in a
Speaker 1: way that would make the Shenanigans impossible. Well, to some
Speaker 1: degree that's been true, we've seen some of that, but
Speaker 1: to another degree, we also have Snowdon dropping the bomb
Speaker 1: on revelations about what the government has done to the
Speaker 1: individual and how they've broken the law with all of
Speaker 1: our privacy and data and what came of that a
Speaker 1: man in exile in Russia and pretty much fucking nothing, Yeah, right, nothing?
Speaker 1: And um I was sitting at a Defcon presentation where
Speaker 1: General Alexander was on the screen talking about what they
Speaker 1: weren't doing while Snowden was dropping revelations proving him to
Speaker 1: be lying. And nothing comes of it, right, nothing really
Speaker 1: comes of it. And one of the things that's so real.
Speaker 1: And so whether it's the tribal level, your neighbors across
Speaker 1: the street or the internet tribe, we as a people
Speaker 1: in the aggregate are always willing to give up our
Speaker 1: rights to something bigger for convenience. And we've done that
Speaker 1: and it's called Facebook and Twitter and social media and
Speaker 1: in the process, what was going to be an amazing
Speaker 1: resource has become the trap. Uh, it's such a it's
Speaker 1: because you know, you know Garrison, I I my my
Speaker 1: friend who is much younger than me, UM has grown
Speaker 1: up with the Internet being being what it is now
Speaker 1: right like this this kind of like nightmare trap. You
Speaker 1: know that that's sucking us all in this like giant
Speaker 1: squid that has us in its tentacles. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: I get I sometimes like dissociate talking with them about
Speaker 1: certain Internet things because in my heart it's still the
Speaker 1: promised land. Yeah, I wish I I guess my I
Speaker 1: wish I felt that way. It doesn't feel like that
Speaker 1: way to me anymore, to be honest, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's not right like and what I mean that in
Speaker 1: like sort of I have this I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: never entirely been able to like let go of the
Speaker 1: vision of like, oh it could have been There's so
Speaker 1: many things that could have been. Well, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like all technology, anything can be remonized, right right,
Speaker 1: Like an a R fifteen can be used for good
Speaker 1: or for evil. A knife can be used to make
Speaker 1: a beautiful meal or to commit a murder. And the
Speaker 1: Internet is technology and it has been weaponized. It's been
Speaker 1: weaponized against us. But at the same time, if we
Speaker 1: just turn a blind eye to it and then not
Speaker 1: learn how to use this technology to our advantage, we're
Speaker 1: allowing them to do that unabated. And that's where like
Speaker 1: the kind of hacker mindset comes from, which is like,
Speaker 1: how do I make this thing do what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do for me while not letting someone else do
Speaker 1: it for them. And unless we take control of the
Speaker 1: technology for ourselves, like I said earlier, normalizing using signal
Speaker 1: and even basic VPN and cryptography, then we're just giving
Speaker 1: it up. We're not even making it a challenge. We're
Speaker 1: just like, here, you go have it. And uh, that's
Speaker 1: something that I think that's more important as a community.
Speaker 1: Maybe as people grow up on the Internet versus seeing
Speaker 1: it becoming something that I saw become something maybe either
Speaker 1: a they'll just accept which I hope isn't the case
Speaker 1: that the reality is privacy is dead, or maybe they'll
Speaker 1: approach the Internet differently than say someone at my age did.
Speaker 1: We're frankly, we kind of messed up and we didn't
Speaker 1: realize that Primrose Path was actually trap and that's a
Speaker 1: like that was a mistake and maybe we can kind
Speaker 1: of like evolve beyond that. But like you're asking, where
Speaker 1: is info set going now? I I don't have good
Speaker 1: notes for that. Like when I first started working in
Speaker 1: the career, it really felt like a great thing. We
Speaker 1: were doing important stuff. We were doing the DOOS mitigation.
Speaker 1: We were going into hospitals and making sure that insulin
Speaker 1: pumps weren't compromised as a DIDOS host. Believe it or not,
Speaker 1: hospitals are INFOSECT nightmares. And we were doing stuff that
Speaker 1: felt good. And then later in the career I realized,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I'm not doing anything to secure anybody's
Speaker 1: personal information or make the Internet safer. I was just
Speaker 1: protecting some corporate coffer And the reality was that the
Speaker 1: private information that we were supposedly protecting the debate would
Speaker 1: turn into calls, which was what's more expensive losing the
Speaker 1: data or the lawsuit for losing the data. Literally, those
Speaker 1: were the conversations and corporations, and those are the conversations
Speaker 1: that corporations have now about each and every one of
Speaker 1: ours personal information. Now when you when you think about
Speaker 1: because so I obviously I'm in a different it was
Speaker 1: in a different field. But when I was doing a
Speaker 1: lot of the research on terrorism that I was doing,
Speaker 1: I had these things that were like sort of the
Speaker 1: this kind of attack is going to happen at something
Speaker 1: I feel that very much about, Like drones. There's going
Speaker 1: to be like a mass killing of civilians not in
Speaker 1: a war zone by a civilian weaponized drone at some
Speaker 1: point in the not too distant features going to happen.
Speaker 1: It's going to be done. It's absolutely in an inevitability. Um,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Do you what are you when
Speaker 1: you think about kind of the the digital equivalence of that,
Speaker 1: Like what are you looking towards? Well, I agree with
Speaker 1: you about the drone, Like you can see God, Yes,
Speaker 1: you plot the you plot the dots and you know
Speaker 1: what's going to occur, right, It's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: possible to avoid. We unleashed that out of the cage
Speaker 1: and it's going to happen. Um. Quite honestly, I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing it already. We're seeing we're seeing the level
Speaker 1: of privacy invasion that I don't think people already know
Speaker 1: has happened. Like I know some of us realize that
Speaker 1: we talked about it, we rant about it, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't think people realize the level of the incursion
Speaker 1: that has occurred to the point where all of this
Speaker 1: data aggregated to the point they know what toilet paper
Speaker 1: you prefer to buy. Like I'm talking like people like
Speaker 1: Facebook knowing that um or the size of the corporate
Speaker 1: oligarchy that controls the Internet, whether it's the small like
Speaker 1: Alphabet Court, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft's becoming a smaller player weirdly,
Speaker 1: but when you think about those big names, they kind
Speaker 1: of like control everything in every piece of data about
Speaker 1: you and everything you move, and say that, I think,
Speaker 1: I think what's the end of that? I don't think
Speaker 1: we got to the end game of that, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how we roll it back. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: So what's the prediction. My prediction is it's gonna get
Speaker 1: worse and we're gonna get to the point where there
Speaker 1: isn't room to move without that surveillance tracking you and
Speaker 1: like so for example, you think of things like Sci
Speaker 1: Fi Minority Report, you walk to the mall and there's
Speaker 1: facial idea happening everywhere you go with targeted advertising at
Speaker 1: the mall. Oh that's coming I guarantee that's coming, and
Speaker 1: all of that's happening already, and that facial recognition stuff
Speaker 1: that's going on is happening currently now we're just not
Speaker 1: that aware of it happening. The cop cars driving down
Speaker 1: the road and every license plate is being measured with
Speaker 1: the cameras being O CRD optical character recognition, and that's
Speaker 1: coming back, and they're tracking every car they're driving by
Speaker 1: on the highway even though there's not a GPS unit
Speaker 1: on your car. The ability to not be tracked will
Speaker 1: soon be impossible. How's that yeah? I mean allegedly, when
Speaker 1: I was younger, they were like certain stupid petty crimes
Speaker 1: I would commit just because like, people will not be
Speaker 1: able to do this in the future, and I have
Speaker 1: a moral responsibility to steal the bulbs from in front
Speaker 1: of this bar and throw them in my threads, Like
Speaker 1: what one day that will be a thing that people
Speaker 1: can't do without getting caught, And so like I just
Speaker 1: I had to. You know, there are like some bright spots,
Speaker 1: because I think you're absolutely right, there's no on like
Speaker 1: a broader scale, there's no turning back the clock for
Speaker 1: stuff like facial recognition and how funked up. It's going
Speaker 1: to get There are states like where I live in Oregon,
Speaker 1: where like they have passed laws that are just like you,
Speaker 1: public facial recognition is not a thing that is legal
Speaker 1: in this state. Um. And I definitely support more attempts
Speaker 1: like that, because again, anything you can do to sty
Speaker 1: me them, to reduce the spread of the grid, to
Speaker 1: reduce the profitability of these things, even though it's again
Speaker 1: overall a doomed cause. Right, Um yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I obviously I think that that's a good law,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that laws stop corporations when the
Speaker 1: corporations have more power than law. Yes, of course. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's like I mean, obviously you can you can
Speaker 1: ban it for police to use and stuff, which does
Speaker 1: something to the extent that you know they follow the law,
Speaker 1: but um, none of this is I don't know, Like
Speaker 1: I That's one of the things that makes me most
Speaker 1: depressed about the future is the thought that like the
Speaker 1: space for this is not like a major issue, I guess,
Speaker 1: but like the space for kids just like funk around
Speaker 1: and do dumb ship when they're nineteen is going to
Speaker 1: get so much smaller. I mean, I would say. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the thing is like, as a natural human being,
Speaker 1: whether you're doing anything wrong, even if you're not doing
Speaker 1: anything wrong, the nature to feel like you have a
Speaker 1: private space that's to your private community space. I'm not
Speaker 1: even talking about wrong or right here. We're just talking
Speaker 1: about just that feeling that at this moment, this is
Speaker 1: my space where I'm not being watched. Is a natural,
Speaker 1: healthy need of the human orgasm or organism. Um and interesting,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, but no, it's it's a it's a human need.
Speaker 1: And I think we're gonna find those spaces become smaller
Speaker 1: and small. And I think when you said, what's your prediction,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but I think the prediction
Speaker 1: is it will become impossible to not be tracked. Now,
Speaker 1: the bright spide of that, the bright side of that,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe there's a bright side. Maybe at some point
Speaker 1: when that's the reality, it could somehow also affect the
Speaker 1: people that are powerful and the people that are small.
Speaker 1: And we all realize that humans are humans and therefore
Speaker 1: the failings that sometimes we have as all human beings
Speaker 1: we just kind of acknowledge and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's just what people do. Like maybe we
Speaker 1: just realize people are people. But the idea that there's
Speaker 1: never going to be a space to not get tracked,
Speaker 1: I don't know. To me, I find darkly disturbing. It
Speaker 1: is disturbing. I do think it kind of to pivot
Speaker 1: off of what you were saying. The other aspect of
Speaker 1: that that is more positive is that all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: all of this surveillance ship um or at least not all,
Speaker 1: but quite a bit of it is you know, in
Speaker 1: a way, it's like a knife fight. There's no way
Speaker 1: that both parties don't get cut, and you know, the
Speaker 1: ones wielding the knife might get cut less, but they're
Speaker 1: still going to get cut. And part of what that
Speaker 1: means in this situation is that the prevalence of all
Speaker 1: of these different ways to surveil and track also allows
Speaker 1: us to track in the same way that like police
Speaker 1: law enforcement watches people through their phones, but also a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of cops are getting filmed doing
Speaker 1: fucked up ship now right now. Again, the balance of
Speaker 1: the cuts I don't think is going to be work
Speaker 1: out in our favor, but it's not going to be
Speaker 1: nothing on them either. And and and you're right, I
Speaker 1: think there are there are some things that we will
Speaker 1: learn in the future about the people in power in
Speaker 1: the world that would it wouldn't have been possible for
Speaker 1: us to learn in the past, or may not be
Speaker 1: possibly even right now, And that could be And if
Speaker 1: we learned that about people in power, then they can't
Speaker 1: weaponize it as much against the people that aren't in power. Right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know one thing that I'm because I'm thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about the fact that a bunch of folks in
Speaker 1: the reproductive healthcare industry have pointed out that right wingers
Speaker 1: have started using drones uh to follow people home from
Speaker 1: like planted parrot hoods and followed them to their cards
Speaker 1: to build databases of the people who are going to
Speaker 1: places to potentially like do that kind of reproductive healthcare
Speaker 1: that these folks don't think should exist. Um. The other
Speaker 1: side of it, though, is that, um, it is also
Speaker 1: possible to surveil them, um, and it will be possible
Speaker 1: to track the people doing that sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: it will be possible to do that in terms of
Speaker 1: like legal accountability, and it will be possible to do
Speaker 1: that for the people who embrace uh questionably legal tactics
Speaker 1: for for frustrating those efforts um or illegal tactics for
Speaker 1: frustrating those efforts. They have access to the same technology.
Speaker 1: Um And again it's it's it is a knife that
Speaker 1: will cut everybody. Um And I guess that's better than
Speaker 1: just one person getting cut in this situation. That's that's
Speaker 1: the concern I have, right, I agree with that like
Speaker 1: I that technology goes it's a weapon and its weaponized
Speaker 1: in all directions, depending on how to use it for
Speaker 1: good over bad. And so this is the same place
Speaker 1: I come to when it comes to the gun control argument.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can do no, no, no, the same problem, right,
Speaker 1: because if we allow only one side to have all
Speaker 1: of the control and power and understanding of the technology,
Speaker 1: then we at ourselves are at a huge deficit. We
Speaker 1: cannot defend ourselves or fight back. So when it comes
Speaker 1: to this kind of data and technology, knowing the basic
Speaker 1: fundamentals of what you can do to protect yourself, understand
Speaker 1: the reality of what the surveillance state or corporation is,
Speaker 1: and then doing your best to not make it easy
Speaker 1: for them is at least one step forward. But if
Speaker 1: we don't own this technology, if we don't own the tech,
Speaker 1: someone else will and they will use it against us.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that, and like they're super simple
Speaker 1: stuff like I was gonna bring us up with like
Speaker 1: you can't see video because it's a podcast, but like
Speaker 1: there's these cool glasses from doctor are called reflectacles that
Speaker 1: I'm showing you Robert, and look like regular sunglasses, but
Speaker 1: when you put them on, they do they reflect I
Speaker 1: R light and actually mess with cameras in a way
Speaker 1: that your turns are diet facing a ball of light.
Speaker 1: So you can wear these, You can wear their cold reflectacles.
Speaker 1: You can wear them and just walk around the mall
Speaker 1: and all the cameras get blown out by your by
Speaker 1: your glasses. Like doing that just because you can. It's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. That's the hot ship. That's the ship.
Speaker 1: I was promised that that at least does exist. It's
Speaker 1: not everything I had hoped it would be in terms
Speaker 1: of its ability, but it is like that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff rules and I will be picking up a pair
Speaker 1: of those. Um, well, we should probably close out. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to note because I mentioned this. UM I
Speaker 1: got something a little wrong when I was talking about
Speaker 1: the facial recognition ban. UM. It is in an ordinance
Speaker 1: in the City of Portland itself, Um, it's the first
Speaker 1: city that has done this, and it prohibits the use
Speaker 1: of public facial recognition technology by all private businesses in
Speaker 1: the city. UM. So that is the scope of the
Speaker 1: band that a band that exists in Portland. I recommend
Speaker 1: looking it up. It is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: I would support everyone pushing forward in their city. UM.
Speaker 1: Because again, the more holes you can make in this thing,
Speaker 1: the better. Yeah. I don't want to put that down.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing. But the challenge of this is
Speaker 1: just like I mentioned earlier, moving the data out of
Speaker 1: the konas and back the minute photos from like I
Speaker 1: take my iPhone and scan the crowd and then put
Speaker 1: that picture up on the internet, not under their jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: and all that facial recondition happens on every face in
Speaker 1: that yep. And that is again, well, we'll do another
Speaker 1: episode at some point about things that you can do
Speaker 1: to just get like there. That's a whole different bag
Speaker 1: of tricks. Um. But this has been really useful and
Speaker 1: really valuable. Carl, do you want to plug anything before
Speaker 1: we roll out here? Not much, just my normal thing
Speaker 1: if you're interested in this kind of content, but with
Speaker 1: a more firearms oriented thing. You can find me an
Speaker 1: in range dot tv. But you'll also find some information
Speaker 1: security stuff there as well. I cover that intermittently when
Speaker 1: it applies to both topics. So if you, if you
Speaker 1: even if you disagree, but appreciate my approach to this,
Speaker 1: come check me out. I appreciate it awesome. Check out Carl,
Speaker 1: check out in range tv, and continue to listen to
Speaker 1: podcasts because the only thing that will save us is podcasts.
Speaker 1: When I think the same, right, but good for business.
Speaker 1: It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Speaker 1: Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.