Okay, all right, let's set the stage for this evening's classic episode. Fellow conspiracy realists, cast your memory back to twenty nineteen. Nobody was really sure what would happen. Alexander Dugan had some ideas, he had some wishes on his wish list, and we got we got very We finally did an episode on something we had been talking about for gosh, more than a decade at this point, the
idea of smart devices and surveillance. And I think this might have been the one that radicalized us a little bit.
Maybe a bit tiny bit, because this is definitely a moment in time when, in real time, we realized just how much mass data collection was happening within our phones, not by necessarily the government, but by individual third party companies that we all say yes to when we down load their applications or we use their services.
Who reads the terms and conditions right? Who reads down to paragraph seventeen of the agreement, especially when you're scrolling on a phone and you're in a hurry because you got to get the app dude.
Well, then, but then when you combine that with companies potentially giving that information to governmental entities, and you combine that with actual governmental entities that have stated before or it's been leaked before stellar wind that communications on individual phones are being picked up, and even communications through the massive pipelines that go underneath the oceans.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, it's a prism of conspiracy and it probably takes five eyes to see oo in full right. This is also this is also shot up for anybody who ever thought, oh, my phone is listening to me, the speakers take it up something, it's so much deeper.
Oh my gosh, Ben, I'm gonna say this so I say it on record. That is happening so much to me recently where it's that echo on the telephone. It's that thing where you're getting feedback when you're talking to one other person when you don't have the speakerphone on, or when you're using a Bluetooth headset that's got a microphone that's close to it, when you're talking on PlayStation.
Oh buddy, oh man, Well, Matt, I'm with you there. If this is the year we get hauled off to the crazy house, that I think we'll be in the same uber because we're not paying for the ambulance.
Is the joke anyway?
Anyway, this is our classic episode twenty nineteen smart devices and surveillance.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. Turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
My name is no.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul, mission control deck and in spirit because today we have our returning super producer Seth Johnson. Everybody give him a hand. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. I was thinking about this. How many people, on average do you think are listening today's show on a cell phone or maybe on a laptop with another electronic device on in the background.
M I would say many, if not most.
I see. I'm thinking a lot of people probably have their phone in their pocket or on one of those cool little armbands when they're just yeah, oh yeah, dude.
Runners or people who want to look like they have ran or will run somewhere in the future.
Yeah, there's so I should chase those people. Is that what you're saying? OK?
Yeah, yeah, give them, give them some steaks, you know what I mean. I think that's what's missing for joggers.
I feel like that, you know. I feel like jogging is just practice for you know, running away from something, you know. I feel like these people are very paranoid.
One of my this might be a hot take, but one of my very old and dear friends years back, you guys know him, he told me. He told me that one of the first signs of gentrification in a neighborhood was people running when no one's chasing them.
Brilliant.
He's a weird guy, but I thought it was a good point.
I think so too so so.
But the reason that we're even mentioning this, like multiple devices going on in the same audio space, is because that's one of the main things we're going to be talking about today, our devices and potentially monitoring them.
So, right, are you addicted to your phone, your television, or your tablet? Are you one of the people, like many of us, who can't really hold a conversation without at least checking in on this thing. I'm guilty of that.
He's literally doing it right now.
Yeah, well, I'm kind of waving it around, do you find yourself tuning out, you know, when when the conversation is taking its course, and then finding yourself tuning into the closest device whatever that is, what like right exactly, So, just for the lay of the land, here, we have three laptops out open right now. We all have our phone somewhere near our person, and we have you know, a bevy of av equipment that is probably the most
innocent of the contraptions here right in this room. And if you are one of those people who constantly finds yourself clicking in or dropping out of conversation, tuning into something else, you are not alone. Let's reiterate that, because at first it sounds kind of nice, right, it sounds kind of like ah, warm, fuzzy huggy time. No, no, no, think about it. You are not alone in multiple senses of the phrase. Here are the facts.
Smartphones, smart devices, smart everything. Really it's everywhere, and you're probably working with one right now just because you need the technology to listen to this today. Let's look at the Pew Research organization. There, they've done you know, they
do statistics like nobody else. It is estimated they say that more than five billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones, so they're doing more than just making a connection via satellite to another phone somewhere or from you know, it's not a landline anymore. It is it's a phone. It's an encyclopedia. It's absolutely everything you could possibly do.
It's like Ziggy from Quantum Leap. Yes, no, literally have that in our hands now. It doesn't quite predict the future, but it comes damn close.
Yeah. And this is that's a global number, yes, throughout the world numbers. So more than half of the people alive today have one of these things. It's I'm holding up the phone again like a prop. It's one of technology's biggest breakthrough success stories of recent decades because just a few decades ago, no one had him.
Exactly.
Now five billion people have these, so get this.
In the US specifically, we've got nine to ten or more Americans aged thirty four and under who have had a smartphone since twenty fifteen, while the ownership rate among the fifty and older age group has raisen from fifty three percent to sixty seven percent over the same period. One of my dearest oldest friends, who is in his early fifties very purposefully still has a dumb phone. Oh, Harry, Harry, Yeah, yeah,
very much on purpose. He just like he is old school in that way where he rejects a lot of this like over connectedness, and consequently he's a much more.
Thoughtful person than a lot of people that I know you well. After this episode, most of us are going to want to switch back. I know, I know Verizon where I am offers a flip phone.
Option, so Nokia's never break too Well, there you go.
It seems more and more like a good option. We'll get into it.
Though, because it doesn't just stop with smartphones. We also are talking about smart TVs, and yes, Matt, you're absolutely right. This may well ruin some some people's day, but this is important to know. So we checked out STATISTICA when we wanted to find some more stats and specs on smart TVs. The global TV set unit sales are projected to increase from two hundred and twenty nine million units in twenty sixteen to two hundred and fifty nine million
by twenty twenty. That's pretty nuts, because you know, televisions shouldn't be this sort of disposable resource. They never were, right, but now more and more people are buying TVs more and more frequently.
I mean, I have a smart TV that is made by Amazon. I'm sure it's made by some third party manufacturer overseas.
It is Amazon.
You know why though, you guys, because it was dirt cheap and it's it works great, and I likely interconnectedness of it. But we'll get into some of the features that this well you call it a feature, it's really more like a bug. No, literally a listening surveillance feature, but just not for you.
Yeah, feature bug is in the eye of the beholder.
That's absolutely right, And in this case, the eye of the beholder is big data.
Yeah. As of twenty eighteen, seventy percent of the television's being sold across the planet are smart TVs. And a smart TV at the most basic explanatory level, is a television that combines a lot of features one would associate with a computer. Right, So, if you like no own a smart TV, you can watch your favorite shows, but you don't have to just watch them when they're on. You can also you know, dial it up on demand for instance. You can connect it with your phone.
Not to mention, you can it's very customizable. You can combine all of the different services into one kind of widget box, let's call it. Where you have your Netflix, you got your Hulu, you got your Amazon, which obviously, my Amazon TV leans pretty heavily on the global search on My Amazon TV searches like all of Amazon, and it gives you products, it gives you TV shows, it gives you other stuff that's in your set of apps or subscriptions, but very much leaning toward the Amazon side of things.
Yeah, the most important thing about a smart TV, when we call it that, is that it's able to communicate with your network or the network that it's attached to, and could possibly see all of the other devices that are attached to that network.
Could possibly sure this is This is true though, so Android is probably the most widely used operating system among smart TVs, but that by no means should be taken to indicate that other oss aren't in there. iPhones are in there as well. Apple has a hand in this. And while smart device addiction is real, especially when we talk about mobile devices, it's I think we should bracket that as the subject of its own episode in the future, assuming we don't get black backed or disappeared there's more
to the story behind the purposefully addictive technology. Here. You see, while we stare into that electronic abyss, even though we might not know it, sometimes things in that abyss, in this sort of black mirror, are staring back at you.
And we'll get into that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. So we talked about smart devices. They're popular. Everybody loves them. They're the hottest thing since fresh baked sliced bread. Whatever.
Yeah, they do all the stuff we need, they do.
All the stuff we want too writ But with smart devices comes the concept of surveillance. And we've talked about this a little bit before at our previous episodes on big data, big data, whatever your preference may be.
Oh yeah, and if you're worried about you know your smart device is tracking you or anything, and you still have one of these Amazon echoes or maybe a Google personal assistant like a home or something plugged in and turned on, you can stop worrying. They've already got you. It's over. It's just too late. Yeah, we're having a little bit of fun. There's that's not fully true. You think that's fun, Matt, But there is some sand to this idea, and we're gonna get into it a little bit later.
Remember back when PDA's were a thing. Sure, personal digital assistance. Yeah, now we have robot overlords that are like doing our bidding? But are they really? Are we not really just doing their bidding?
Oh? God?
Right, it's like the old oh Man. There's so many weird ways to go with this. But we should talk about the nuts and bolts too, right, because we know our smart devices have to keep track of the user. You have GPS, you have the ways app or something you're driving, you have Lyft, you have Uber, what have you?
You know, all things that make the stuff function and make it convenient for you.
And then there are also a lot of apps that say, hey, we want permission to access your microphone or your location, and you're like, wow, Candy Crush, this is getting serious. You know, I'm picking that as an example that's not one. Okay, great, Well, at least we have candy Crush to remain as a sacrosanct example of good programming. But when our smart devices are keeping track of us, the kind of surveillance that they have is, as we can tell, squarely aimed at
tracking our preferences. Let me figure out what you like says your mobile device such that I can give you better offers make it easier for you to say yes to things in the future. And that's why if you were on our Facebook group, here's where it gets crazy. You'll see You'll see all the strange, insidious examples ranging from hilarious to disquieting about how just how these algorithms can hone in. I think, Noel, you posted a meme recently that was Facebook related.
Yeah, I did.
It was one of these great Simpsons memes where it was just an image of like Bart Simpson in bed and Homer leaning in really creepily like eyeball to eyeball, and it was I think Homer was labeled as Facebook ads and Bart was labeled as things I said out loud but never actually Google searched or whatever.
Or some people even say I was just thinking about this.
It definitely started a conversation of people giving examples of these things. And I've experienced it too. We have a lot of advertisers that like vet stuff through us, and sometimes I feel like I just say it or like I'm talking to you guys about it, and I've never even like read copy or seen an email or gone to the site. Next thing, you know, Facebook's serving me up you know, tushy or whatever. That bad example. But like you know, you know I'm talking about You've seen it, have them?
Sure? No, there's a reason for that. So, you know, we get into why what are the motives behind all of this surveillance. We kind of talked about a little bit tracking our preferences and everything, but honestly, like what are you going to do with all of that? If you if you start to really think about and understand what the economic model is behind all this stuff, you realize that it's because we, you, me, each of us, We are the batteries of the economic system, its products.
It's literally the matrix. We are living in the matrix everybody. We are inside our pods. Our pods consist of your smartphone and your smart TV and all the things you interact with your laptop. That is us. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession, a fight club.
No, and here's the thing too, we mentioned I mentioned this off air. I got that Amazon TV because it had a lot of features, It had really high resolution, and it was dirt cheap and TV prices way down, and as we saw at the beginning of the show, TV sales way up. And I think you can't ignore that there's an exchange going on there with like we're giving up this part of ourselves in exchange for cheaper and better, more efficient technology.
Well, one must ask at a certain point, one must ask where the income for where the company is actually arriving from. We've mentioned before one of my favorite examples, and I won't go into it now because longtime listeners have already heard this for a time. Target the corporation, the retail store was not making most of its money off of selling people baby toys and trousers. Do people
still say trus trousers? Okay, sure, knickerbockers whatever. They were making the bulk of their income, a huge proportion of it from selling their security system infrastructure to other companies, kind of like the way McDonald's makes most of its money through real estate. So it's okay to sell a television at a phenomenal loss, right when you know you're going to recoup that money and then some on something else. And I think that's what's happening at the televisions. Would you agree?
I mean, It sure seems like that to me.
So we know, we know that no matter who you are, no matter where you are in this wide world or just orbiting yourround it, you have something that really wants to be your friend, wants to be your best friend, your teacher, your mother, your secret lover, to quote Homer Simpson. And this thing that can't wait to be your best friend is called the advertising industry. It's had its eye on you for a while. It already knows a lot about you, right Matt.
Oh, yeah, it knows a great deal about you. But it wants to go deeper. It wants to go a therapist style on you. He wants to know what you love, what do you hate, who do you trust? And also how much liquid cash can you get your hands on in the short term. Now, okay, again we're joking a
little bit, but you get the point. For real. They want to know how much you can spend and what you would want to spend it on if you absolutely could, right now, if somebody just popped something in front of your face, right now, what is the number one thing you would buy? Because we'll find it and we will show it to you and you will buy it.
Yeah, and companies just gobble up all of this data because the level of technology that we're at right now isn't quite as sophisticated as they would like. We're getting there, they're certainly pushing it every day, but right now it's just kind of like a throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks approach.
You know.
Artificial intelligence, it turns out, in this regard at least, is not that intelligent and it needs a ton of help.
So it's efficient as all hell, but it is not. It cannot make the connections a lot of times unless it is helped out by a human user.
Still a black box, though great example works.
I often get served ads for things that I've already bought.
That's yeah, I was gonna say too. That's like it's we're at the stage where in the Terminator franchise, the original cyborgs were easily discernible from organic humans, right because it's a bit ridiculous. There's not any human advertiser who would say, well, this person just bought a toilet, so you know what, they need five more toilets.
You know.
That's like, like, what's gonna happen? Are you gonna are you gonna just bought a toilet. You'll see an ad for it, and then you'll go, no, I don't know, Maybe I'll just treat myself. It's it's bizarre.
Well, maybe you're a contractor. Maybe it thinks we're all contractors and we're all building out bathroom fair points.
Yeah, and we know that, we know that companies have a lot they want to do with this data, even if they can't entirely get the rubber to meet the road and practice. And we'll we'll expand that picture in a frightening way a little bit later, but for now, let's think of it this way. Companies give all the data they can get their hands on, even the stuff you would think is unimportant. They give all of that
equal weighting. When it comes to picking it up. There's nothing that gets ignored if it's able to be monitored and captured. And that's because AI programs, as we said, just aren't that intelligent yet. They are efficient, mat but they're not that intelligent. Like think about home surveillance systems. You have a you know, Noel, You and I probably have Amazon Echoes, yes, yeah, and you have a Google Home or something like that.
Correct.
Okay, so these home surveillance systems, which is the correct term for them. These home surveillance systems have these uh, these assistants, these programs that will guess at what they think you said, but they still frequently missed the mark. You know what I mean, right, But they.
Also aren't listening and I think in theory and unless you say that wake word right, whatever that might be.
No, they are always listening. Oh hey, the because they have to hear the wake word.
I love doing this. Let's prank someone who's listening to one of those in their house right now. Alexa no play, Alexa play, don't please? Don't the remix are the origin We're kidding, We're kidding. I hope we're all still friends with our with our various devices. But but we say this to point out that these things are far from perfect.
And there are a lot of people employed by these companies, human listeners, right, just like many of us listening today, who are tasked with going through these things and seeing listening to the recording that someone said and then seeing what the assistant thought they said, and then reconciling the two to build a better mouse trap for your personal information.
Yes, and that is where we get into the Amazon Echo story out of Bloomberg that we were going to talk about, and that is the fact that there are thousands of Amazon employees and contractors who, like Ben said, are tasked with literally listening to what the microphone recorded in your living room. So if so, you're asking Noel about is is it always listening? Yes, the microphone is always turned on. As long as you've got your Alexa plugged in or your Google Home plugged in, that mic
is on and it is listening. It doesn't record anything until you say Alexa or computer or Echo or whatever.
The key, right is the wavecord? Yeah, sure, But which is a creepy phrase in and of itself if you ask me.
But that is literally an open mic sitting in your house. It's a hot mic, and that is where it gets really creepy. But it also gets really creepy. Like, Okay, on the surface, it makes complete sense. It's what Ben was saying. It's quality assurance, right, it's trying to make that AI better. It's an educational thing for the system. But below the surface, like if you really break it down and you take away some of the words that are in there that make it feel like a fun
and exciting new thing. There is this mic in your room. It's recording information things that you're saying in your private home, and it's sending it to some person that you've never met. And then this stranger is going to transcribe exactly what you said in your living room. Then it's going to feed it back in that system, so that when that mic here's you talk again, it knows exactly what you said.
But again, it's only after you've said the wakeword. It's not They're not transcribing all your conversations in your living room. It's all in theory stuff that you are attempting to communicate to the device of Otherwise it wouldn't be any use to them, it wouldn't help them improve the algorithm at all.
But my point here is that that is how it functions, according to the way the creators want it to function right now. Made this device on. Yes, that is the forward facing thing. And I'm not saying Amazon is doing anything illegal or you know, scary like that, but there is there is an easy route there to exploit that microphone that's in your living room.
That's sure. So you're saying, maybe if someone a bad actor let's say, got a hold of this, or do you think Amazon could potentially be the bad.
Actor Amazon's partners. Let's let's say, let's foreshadow it that way, Amazon's Amazon's buddies, the folks in bed with it. But Matt, what's interesting to me about this is that you are talking in terms of an above the surface level. Yes, my spider sense tells me you've got to below the surface.
Take, No, well below the surface. Take is just in my mind, the reality of the situation of We've talked about it before on here. We kind of hit it a couple times in this episode already, just that we are literally bugging ourselves. And you know, and you think, when you think about a world in which perhaps the powers that be end up ruling, Let's just say this United States that we live in. Let's say that some
group comes along and takes over. And now it is illegal in this land to do X. And let's say your family or your living situation is X. Now there is a microphone in your living room or your kitchen or wherever it is, and if you're just having a regular conversation about what your life is and what you are doing, but it is illegal in this land, and there's a mic in there, right, there's potential that there you could be abused in some way or persecuted.
That's all reminds me of the telescreens in nineteen eighty four, which were like on this on one level, seen as like a luxury and as like a really cool technological gadget where you could watch all of these whatever entertainment so wished. But it was a two way thing. It was monitoring you. But there's a certain acceptance of it, you know, like it's not secret monitoring. Everyone knows they're
being monitored. They just know to stay in line and not fall outside of the party, you know, doctrine or whatever. And we've kind of found ourselves in a very similar situation where like complicit in our own surveillance.
Or well was nothing if not prescient in that regard. There's a there's here's a real life example or something that could play out plausibly. And this is heavy stuff. So imagine that you live in a country that is least economic developed country economically developed country, and that country has an authoritarian government and they have strict religious laws
of one sort or another. Let's say that for a time there was a different regime, and you were maybe in a same sex relationship, and you and your partner lived lived your normal, everyday life. Right. You just happen to have your device because you like to hear music when you cook. Who doesn't like that? But then the regime changes, and now again same sex relationships are forbidden
or haram or whatever. And now that stuff that you said that got hoovered up into the cloud, now it makes you complicit in what that government sees as a crime. And that means that, according to that government, the stuff that you did, which was perfectly fine, your relationship was
perfectly fine until someone retroactively decided it wasn't. And now because you wanted to hear the remakes to ignition, now just because of the conversation that occurred around that time, now you are in hot water and there's not a recourse to help you. That's a terrifying possibility. Matt. You were telling us off air that at least some companies like Amazon attempt to quell those fears by publicly stated there are hard constraints on how long an echo can record something.
Oh yeah, absolutely, And again to Amazon's defense, I am being completely conspiratorial in this and it's just one of those weird foresight things that both men and I were talking about there. But Amazon has stated that only a fraction of one percent of interactions with their devices actually gets transcribed in this way by a human, by a
human where it gets sent off. They transcribe at the center back in since the beginning of twenty nineteen, and this is by the way, from August of twenty nineteen from the ambient, so eight months of transcribing had had gone through and only point two percent of all requests to Alexa had actually been transcribed. So that's very a very very small number of conversations that actually get listened to and transcribed.
Interesting how they put it in percentage though, because putting it in percentage can make something something seems smaller than it is in reality.
Right, it's a massive sample size, right, That small percentage is actually a massive.
Number, right, Right, It just sounds a little more reasonable.
Right.
Well, here's the great thing. When you say, hey, whatever, Alexa gonna do it, You're gonna do it. Spread it out enough. But when you do that, generally you ask a very short request or a very short question or something to that effect, and then.
It does the thing and then like that window of monitoring is over kind of.
Right, generally, yeah, it lasts for about two seconds, that's the average. So when somebody is transcribing, that's literally all all it says.
You can they make good money doing that?
Or is it like they know it's Amazon, They're not getting paid very well at all?
Is it sort of like we as a company, we do a lot of transcribing interviews and stuff. You think it's very similar to that. You think even outsource it. They couldn't.
It is contractors.
It is contractors.
Some of its contractors, some of its employees got it.
And this practice has no currently has no real legal constraints because, as we know, technology always outpaces legislation tale as old as time. However, I get the feeling that a lot of us were sort of aware that something's off with these home assistants, or that there is some kind of transaction at play. If it's not terrible, if it's something we're okay with, we knew there was still something. And you can hear, you know, when things go wrong in nine one one calls and all these other spooky
stories about things going south with Google or Amazon. But what about the other devices. We have some news for you about smart TVs. Look around your room or wherever you happen to find yourself, is there a TV in there? Things are about to get very interesting for you. After a word from our sponsors.
All right, we're back. Let's jump in to something we learned about thanks to New York Times in a twenty eighteen article about filing. New York Times, they are not failing.
I don't believe, I mean not after this bump. I mentioned this article in the gang Stalking episode. So you're welcome, New York.
Yes you did, Ben. Ben did bring this up, and we decided we were going to look into it, and we did, and now we can't look away forever. So it's a thing called Samba TV. That sounds fun Samba TV, it.
Sounds really funny. Know what else sounds finn I'm gonna skip down just just a tad. How does this sound to you?
Guys? Hey?
How about you want to interact with your favorite shows, get recommendations based on the content you love, connect your devices for exclusive content and special offers. How about Samba Interactive TV lets you engage with your TV in a whole new way. That sounds great sounds.
Damn good.
I'm into that.
So what is Samba TV?
Oh?
Hey man, what's Samba TV?
Okay, I'll tell you. It is a software, a piece of software that is present in a lot of television models, some models from nearly a dozen smart TV brands. And again this is as of late twenty eighteen. That has changed. There are more included now, but it is Sony Sharp Phillips, a lot of that, all the hits, all the head
ones in this software. In particular, it identifies what is being watched on the monitor the television by literally analyzing the pixels displayed and then comparing that data to a set of known media that exists out there.
It's a similar way like audio things or even YouTube things are flagged for copyright violations.
Yes, but in this case it is the end user that is the actual piece of hardware that is being monitored.
Right, And this was always coming Nielsen ratings, like the Nielsen Institution wanted this.
Yes, there needed to be a way to find out who was watching what when, and in particular, when you're saying about who, it means everybody who is around, not just that this household is watching something. But here's the idea you're viewing history is then in part used to suggest, as Noel was saying, as the flowery language there that's actually present in the PR from Samba TV.
Oh yeah, they wrote that copy.
Of Well it's not only the PR, it's the opt in message.
Yes, yes, it's used to suggest the next content that Samba TV believes you will yourself enjoy. But that is not all that Samba TV does. It also identifies all the other devices that are connected to the same network through which it is accessing the internet.
So your friend comes over, they have a phone with Wi Fi. Now they're in the loop as well.
Yes, if you are Netflix and chilling or whatever the kids call it these days at somebody else's house or apartment and Samba TV is there, it knows that you're there because it can identify your device and the Mac address and all those things.
And here's the thing. This company claims that it is adhering very closely to privacy guidelines set forth by the Federal Trade Commission, that it does not directly sell any of this data. Instead, at tizers can pay the company to kind of guide the hand of the ads in the placement, which which makes sense. Doesn't sound too insidious, right.
Well, it's directing ads to the other devices that are present who they believe are watching the television program right.
Right, right, And so your opt in stuff happens at the television right at the TV, but it doesn't happen at your smartphone necessarily if you walk into someone else's house.
And so, how do they get around the legality of other people? Like, are they automatically part of your opt in when they's.
That's what I'm saying, there's not informed consents. Interesting and also think about this, this technology is amazing. If our species was less of a garbage fire, we could use this to do wonderful things for you know, say someone's mental health, right, and someone's like, okay, I see you've watched Faces of Death four nine times in a row. I'd like to recommend the Great British Bacon Show. Do you know what I mean?
You do a better job with your content consumption? No, it's totally true. And when you let's say you plug in your new smart TV and it has Samba on it, it will present you with that very flowery language that's the opt in message. There is a giant terms of service and privacy policy. You know page that you can peruse if you wish. I believe it's sixty five hundred words for the terms of service and four thousand words
for the privacy policy. But why would you even bother doing that when you can interact with your favorite shows, get recommendations based on the content that you love.
That terms of service is a real page turner.
Oh yeah, yeah, But why would you want to do that when this seems so innocuous and you just want to start playing your Fallout four?
Yeah, well, to see, that's not the real insidious thing here is that Let's put yourself in the position of you've spent let's say the last couple of months saving up money because you really, you know, you need to get this new TV. You're really excited about it. You finally get it right, and you're installing it your you know, your hands are all sweaty because you know Fallout four, the next playthrough is about to happen. You're like, oh
my god, this is I'm so excited. You plug this thing in, you start going through the initialization process, the Samba thing pops up, and you know you can you literally have to decide if you're going to spend an hour parsing through all of that legal ease or if you're gonna get to whatever it is you're you wanted to get to, and most people just click enable and move forward. It has nothing to do with the flowery language or anything like that. It says enable, Okay, yes,
this gets me to the next thing. Just click and enable, And that is exactly what most people do.
Right on the order of an estimated ninety percent, A vast majority of people do click enable. And once this stuff is up and running, it's a katie bar the doors they used to say in Days of your Samba sees everything that is displayed on the monitor, regardless of what you're watching or playing or how you're displaying it. It doesn't matter if you're watching TV. It doesn't matter if you're watching a film. It doesn't matter if you're broadcasting a home video.
Right yeah, it could be literally anything, you know, if you are broadcasting a home video of something that you wouldn't want anyone else to see, Samba TV is analyzing it. It isn't necessarily matching up with any known media. Sure, but if you broadcast the same kind of home videos, Let's say I your kids, maybe a romantic video you made with your partner. I mean, honestly, who knows. That's again taking a little bit further than the known technology
or the known reasons for using it. But it could be used in the future by someone to figure out very personal, intimate things about you. But it's sort of like.
When we read about the NSA and the way the NSA was monitoring people's phone calls. They weren't recording the actual audio. They were just capturing the metadata so they knew how long a call lasted, or like you know who this web of interconnectedness or whatever, it's similar with this. It's not like they're recording actually what you're streaming. They're just capturing the data of what it is, how long you watched it for, et cetera, of the pixels of the pixels.
Right, So this, okay, this is true. Even if we want to be as skeptical or I should say, as credulous as we can, and if we take those pieces of State of pr copy at their word, this still has a ton of hilarious, cartoonish vulnerabilities. You can learn too much about people and there's no way for the end user to stop it. Other than try to opt out. But opting out it doesn't delete all the stuff that has already learned about you. Are we being paranoid perhaps,
or perhaps we should introduce you to Alfonso. Oh God, I love that Alfonso.
Okay, So to break this down thus far, we've got our personal assistance that always are on Slicious no matter if we're saying the keywords or not. They have their microphone on and they are listening. They aren't necessarily recording all the time, but they are. Now you have your smartphone over there that is literally watching what you're watching too, and it is making informed decisions about what you watch and sending ads to all the devices in your house. Now,
let's say you're on one of those devices. Let's say it's an Android device. Let's say you went to the Google Play whatever it is app store thing, and you've downloaded some apps and some games. Well a lot of these apps and games, not all of them, but a lot of them have partnered with this thing called Alphonso. So this is a really interesting little piece of software that's attached to these apps, and what it will do is prompt you to enable the use of your microphone.
Right and these would be things that do not ostensibly need that kind of access. Pull three D beer pong, trick shot, real bowling, strike ten pen, you know these kind of word salady names, little fun waste of time apps.
Well, and not just those some anti spying software. There's a ton of apps out.
There right because it's it's this Alphonso is app agnostic. Yes, So here's what happens. Here's why they want that microphone access. Because when you're using this app, or when you grant this app microphone access, Alfonso can figure out what you happen to watch by identifying audio signals and television ads and shows and even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see really quickly. Here is how it works. So we're all hanging out, we're
watching some television show that we're into. Let's go with lost, something with commercials. So when the show switches to commercial, there is a pitch an audio signal that goes out to the room. You cannot hear it, your pets cannot hear it, your kids cannot hear it. No one can hear it, and no one is supposed to hear it. It's only for your phone's and that's what they do. They communicate with your phone, and then the phone will also let people know via Alfonso. The phone will let
the users of the app, the real app. The users of Alfonso understand who is in that room, where they came from, maybe where they're going, and what they would like to buy. That's not what you sign up for when you walk. You know, you go to a potluck at your friend's house to watch some kind of film. Right, and how many apps are we talking here?
Well, okay, so according to the New York Times, there were over two hundred and fifty apps on the Google Play Store with this feature. Right, And if you want, if you head over to the Google Play Store and you type in quotations Alfonso Automated. That's A L P H O N S O A U T O M A T E D, and you will find all of
the various apps that have this thing installed. But then if you if you look at an interview with some Alfonso people, they said that there are thousands of apps that they've partnered with and they didn't want to disclose all of them because they have competitors who are trying to basically get in on their territory. Yeah, approach their territory.
Remember when spyware was a big concern. This is like some next level spyware.
This is spyware.
Yeah, but it's like different, right, It's like it literally is opt in, right, it's spying on you.
Yeah, it's crazy, and now we know it's cyclical. So it's all of the devices functioning together in this web of trying to figure out what you want the most and how to display that thing to you most effectively.
I guess Staltz effect. Yeah. This also, this problem becomes complicated even further when we realize that private entity institutions are not the only actors in this sphere. Indeed, they may be some of the more innocuous. I love that you mentioned spywaar or NOL, because the best spywear right now is being built not by private industry but by state actors. We mentioned Amazon's partners, right, Amazon's partners using
the data. Amazon's partners are alphabet soup intelligence agencies or strongly thought to be so, especially.
Legedly, especially thanks to that early cash injection.
Right, exactly so. According to a Washington Post article from twenty seventeen, the United States government has already turned theoretical exploits and vulnerabilities in this kind of stuff into functioning attack tools. One of these goes by the objectively badass name Weeping Angel. Weeping Angel is specifically meant to target
Samsung TVs. This is just a small, microcosmic example, and this is at least what it was doing two years ago, according to WikiLeaks after infestation, Weeping Angel places a target TV in a fake off mode so that the owner believes the TV's off when it's still on. And then in this fake off mode, the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and then sending them over the cloud to a covert CIA server. This sounds bonkers. This sounds bananas. I can't believe it's real.
Why would anybody ever be paranoid? Right?
Why would they?
That's crazy?
And I hope whomever is listening to this around a smart television has unplugged their headphones and is listening on speaker.
You know, Okay, look everything, I just have to say this, everything we've been discussing today, If if you are of a certain mind, perhaps like myself quite a lot, quite frequently, it could lead you down a dark pathway where it feels as though there's surveillance everywhere and you're being targeted in some way. We can assure you this is not just about you, no matter what you may think or
no matter what you may believe. Sure it is, it's mass it's everybody, and again it is not necessarily nefarious. But it's real.
I that's a matter of perspective. There is a certain self importance or self aggrandizing that occurs when people are suffering from paranoid delusions. Right, But being paranoid about this sort of stuff does not make you delusional. It means that you have unfortunately turned over the rock and you've seen the thing squirming in the darkness beneath. This is very real stuff.
I love that, and I also am terrified by it.
But you know, it's not all bad. I mean, there are ways of kind of at least stemming some of this stuff a little bit. Right, Yeah, So, how to Geek actually has an easy to follow a guide on how to stop Google Home from recording you all the time. Google Home has a thing where it actually saves your voice memos. You can check that out. You have to opt in for constant recording allegedly, while you can if you're an existing user opt out.
Yeah, that's the that's the whole thing. They've updated their terms of service basically Google Home has right and actually Amazon has done something similar there where you have more choices now. But if you're an A I think, if you're a legacy user, you actually can't get out of some of the agreements you already signed into. Yeah, somebody fact checked me on that, but I recall reading that this morning. Here's the good thing. Remember Samba TV we
were talking about it felt so creepy. Literally, all you have to do is say disable when you get to that screen and you're installing your TV. That's all you have to do and you're done.
Do you really not think it has something like why do you think people are so prone? Ninety percent? Is such a massive like amount? Like, are so prone to click enable.
Because you've got a new toy and you want to take full advantage because it's presented, like I said, as this lovely way of like making this a better experience for you the user.
Why wouldn't I want that?
Well?
And it's a menu that you have to click through, right, So think about it this way. If it's on enable, so you your cursor is on enable. When the screen pops up, you'd have to go down to terms of service, down to privacy policy, down to learn more, down one more to disable the clicks. The as stupid as that sounds, and you know, benign as five clicks or four clicks, people will take the easier route and just say, okay, fine.
Enable, I'm in a hurry. I can't do I got MF places to be, you know what I mean.
It's true.
So it's it is true, and it's an exploit not just of technology, but an exploit of our own hardwired physiology. Our brains are built to function this way, right, and this leads us to some conclusions in what is very much an ongoing events right. The first conclusion is that there are some issues remaining. There's a lack of accountability. One of the primary issues in this conversation is the utter lack of accountability on the part of private institutions
as well as government agencies. It is not difficult to imagine these companies cooperating with intelligence agencies, further exacerbating the legal pitfalls involved. And again it's important to point out just as a cheap skate. It's important to point out that the people getting their data gathered are not paid for that information, quite the opposite it used to be. You know, what's that old adage. We always said, if you're not paying for it, you are not the customer,
you're the product. Yes, right, But now the pendulum swings a little bit further in the wrong direction in my opinion,
because we are paying for these services. We are paying Amazon, we're paying Google to spy on us to whatever end, and we are we are not accounting not only for this, we're not accounting for the larger problem, which is that insurance companies aggregate this information, your financial institutions aggregate this information, and there is nothing that stops them from cooperating together
to build a footprint of you close enough. The idea is that this footprint, this digital impression of you, will one day have the fidelity such that it can predict future actions you will take.
So you're saying that it could in theory be used against you, Yes, very much.
So we're saying they're going to make Android versions of you knowl' I'm cool with that.
That's what some help.
Yeah, but it's not gonna be about you anymore. No, No, it's gonna be Amazon.
And and and it's it's fascinating when you think about it, because now I know.
You're not joking. It's it's it's like a shape of me that is my data, you know, like it's out there in the matrix. It's a null shaped data cluster.
Or a Matt shaped data cluster, a Seth shaped cluster, Seth shaped cluster.
That sounds like a band.
Yes, it does like a tasty treat, it does. I feel like it's maybe a it's maybe like a hostess thing. So we are brilliant ideas for desserts to treat the side. We are all in this together. We are looking at the end of privacy as we recognize it. And that's sort of tricky. That sounds more dramatic than it really is, because the concept of privacy as we know and enjoy it today is relatively recent. Yes, right, and everything we've learned indicates that type of privacy we idealize may end
up becoming a short lived fat to future historians. We're entering. You know, Matt, you and I talked about this a long time ago. An inequality of privacy, Right, Privacy is a new currency. Some of the world's most influential, powerful, successful people still have this kind of privacy, right yeah.
A weird example is just think about how much it costs to get a good tint on your windows. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. If you see someone drive by with perfectly tinted like the darkest windows you've ever seen, that is expensive. Well, and that's literally privacy just in your car anyway.
I'm sorry, I feel like something going on is your car, Okay.
No, no, I'm just saying that that amount of privacy just to be on the road driving costs money, right yeah. And if you think about really good shutters on a home or something like that, in those little examples, it takes quite a bit of means to protect yourself just from someone viewing with their eyeballs where you are at any time. And then if you apply that to the digital space, it gets more and more expensive.
It's creating something very similar in nuts and bolts and the mechanics of it to the infamous sesame credit that's occurring in the Chinese mainlanes precisely. And I'm not being alarmist about this, and I don't you know, I don't want people to be any more frightened. That is absolutely appropriate. You should be a little We're at the Pandora problem right. Once the Pandora's jar is unscrewed, once the lid is off,
there is no going back. There were some rumblings in Congress about investigating what is essentially a smart TV spir ring, but the advantages of keeping the technology in play for now seem to outweigh the problems of consent and the fact that consent is not occurring, and the fact that yes, this could and up with your with your information from other places, such that it might affect your ability to get a car loan, It might affect where you can live. This can get very dirty, very quickly.
It's a slippery slope, and especially once I mean, what if, like we can't opt out anymore, you know, if if that goes away, Like are we really owed that right to opt out? Like it's sort of like almost a pr move to allow us to opt out, Like you could very easily say, as the manufacture of a product, say well, if you don't want us to have your data, don't buy the products. Like it's sort of almost a courtesy. If you think about it to allow people to opt out of this.
Yeah, but what it could just.
Are you owed a fancy television?
But it's no, but are you owed? And are you owed? Are you required to participate in some of these systems insurance one is required to.
Do so absolutely, that's different, I think. But I guess what I'm saying is, like with the television, all these are gadgets that, like you could not necessarily call necessities.
Well, think about think about most people with a steady job, think about email communication nowadays, or an app that's used wherever you work or you know there. You have to have some kind of connection like that. You really do, and with most of these devices, you're going to run into these issues.
Or add to that the compounding complicating factor that for the for a huge proportion of people who have mobile phones, it's their only way to access not just the Internet, but it's their primary tool for any financial dealings like people's lives hinge on this thing. Yes, so I see both sides of that, But here's what I think we can end with. We can say it's not just the
United States. Way back in twenty seventeen, when WikiLeaks released this, they showed that digital spine is going to continue to grow. It's not going to go away.
We're talking about the Weeping Angel thing, right right.
Weeping Angel and specific which again is just for Samsung TVs and it's relatively low tech. You have to put a USB stick in there, but now you don't. Now it's now it's a whole different thing. You know, anybody got sort of irritated when you bought a new cell phone and it had stuff pre installed that you can't move. Think about this times a thousand. That's what's happening. That's what's going to happen. And it's not just happening in
the US. Other advanced nations China, Russia, Britain, Israel and so on are creating newer, more robust, powerful tools to do this, and any any nation that can gain access to this kind of spying technology is going to do so, and they can do it through a web of private industry. There are no laws. This is wild West, and it's very bad. It's very bad for the people who are not at the top of the food chain.
And with that, we all threw away our devices. We got out our acoustic guitars or ukuleles and started Kumbaya.
I started writing my version of roth Water Emerson's on Nature.
Right, that's correct. I got our my Jimbei out and we just started playing.
Finger symbols from the Yeah.
And we just you know, commune with nature for the rest of our lives and watch the sunset dissipate over the horizon.
Had an ashram in Quebec.
Yeah, and then we all woke up and went back to work.
Yeah, that's true. And hey, listen, I'm just being Devil's aavogaated about like are you owed a smart TV? And I agree it's a great question. Well with the phone though, You're right, the phone is for many an affordable entry point to the Internet because it doubles as a you know, a crucial communication device and a way to access the Internet, which we can all agree is a necessity for things like banking everything, you know, everything starts on the Internet,
the Web, of course. But I would argue that for the things like, you know, an Alexa, do we do we need an Alexa? Maybe maybe for accessibility? Maybe maybe that's a thingy for like people with disabilities, and Alexa could be a very important addition to a home for others. I think it's more of a luxury and sort of like a neat little gadget.
You know, you're absolutely right, and you all nobody needs a smart television monitor right, But very soon the only available televisions will be smart televisions, at least ones that are easily purchased.
I think what I was getting at when Ben talked about the sesame credit and the slippery slope of all this is what if there does come a time where you can't opt out anymore. Just by buying the thing and installing it in your home, you're opting in. The Only way to opt out is to not buy it, or to buy something else.
There you go, or live in the woods.
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
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