August 29, 2022 • 55 mins
A disgruntled man takes revenge on politicians by mailing feces. Meta (formerly Facebook) is under scrutiny after sharing info that led law enforcement to investigate someone for the now-illegal act of abortion. Amazon's proposed purchase of iRobot, the maker of Roomba, has privacy advocates furious -- and they're concerned about something much more dangerous than an automated vacuum.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis
code named Dot Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Uh, folks. As we said before,
August is always a busy month for your pals over
(00:46):
here at stuff they don't want you to know. And
we're all officially back ish in the States. We're going
to be back in Atlanta altogether pretty soon. But the
show goes on. So we're returning to you with were
Strange News and Matt Well. I think you guys both
had run ins before with the experience I described in
(01:06):
the in the original Strange News, which is it can
be so devilish lee difficult to find just one story sometimes.
And we've got we've got a backlog right because we
had some classic episodes last week in place of Strange
News and listener mail segments. But we're coming with some
fire today. Well, yeah, yeah, we're super kind to you know,
(01:27):
put off one or more of these, um due to
my absence, and I'm really happy to be back. A
lot of these stories continue to be valid. There may
even be updates from the first hits that we had
of them, and um yeah, I'm really excited to dig
in and see what everyone came up with. Well, let's
get started. Then mine is a little bit stale, if
not hardened and uh dehydrated, perhaps piece of give us
(01:53):
the straight man. I was picturingly more like a piece
of shredded wheat that had fallen between the car seats.
And then you went somewhere completely different with that, and
I respect you for it. Man, Well, thank you. Uh,
we're jumping to some news from July eight two comes
(02:14):
from AP News, written by Samantha Hendrickson. Title of the
story is feces mailed to Ohio GOP lawmakers Post Office Investigates. Well,
we've we've talked about things that have been sent through
the mail before on this show. We've talked about ye
old Ted Kazinski, probably the most dangerous of the people
(02:37):
and events that we've spoken about when it comes to
what happens with our our mail and the heroic people
that are out there right now delivering it every day.
Thank you to everybody out there listening that does that
or is doing it now right. Some of our folks
are on deliveries that is correct from Amazon to what
dhl uspsd X know your neighborhood corner guy even might
(03:06):
make a trip curry carrying pigeon task rabbit. Yes, you're
dealing with all kinds of strange substances that you are
unaware of because they are packaged up all nice and neat, unless,
of course, they smell a little bit like poo poo. Uh.
Even then you might not be aware because it could
(03:27):
just be contaminated with fecal matter and not you know,
smell like the full thing. In this story, it discusses
how twenty five individual state Republican senators in one week
were sent mail that was contaminated with feces or feces
was specifically mailed within a letter, right within an envelope.
(03:52):
Here's the deal too. It wasn't like it was some
kind of manifesto that was written to each of these
individual lawmakers. It was just it was just pop it
wasn't as though there was some point to be made
necessarily other than here, this is what I think you
should get in the mail. Well, whatever happened to carrying
your own hoop to the doorstep of your enemy and
(04:13):
and and setting it on fire manually? I mean, why
do we have to involve these third parties in this?
It just seems very inconsiderate innocence, you know, cowards. I say,
if you, if you take take the take the flaming
poop to your opponent. Also, Matt, before we go on,
I just want to answer a question I'm sure a
lot of our fellow listeners have, and it's it's a
(04:36):
weird one because I looked into this before we rolled. Actually,
I've been excited about this story. Uh. It is in
the United States entirely legal and not against the law
to mail poop unless you are specifically mailing it to
harass people. Did that the motive? We remember, Matt, you
did another story while back that discussed the legal and
(05:00):
the way it has to be marked. If you're sending
like medical specimens that could contain you know, agents body right,
but it also like you know, pathogens and things like that,
there has to be some labeling if you're doing if
you're going by the book, Yeah, it becomes dangerous and
(05:20):
and I don't know the legality been about it, but
it becomes dangerous if it's unsecured specimen, right, if it's
just just in a container, that's what it's bad. And
that's that's how the state of Ohio characterize it, right,
(05:43):
Because when you send an unsecured sample in this way
to the Statehouse, everybody in that state House, or at
least the mail receiving area of that Statehouse, or if
the mail actually gets to the office of one of
the lawmakers, that's when it becomes dangerous because any one
that opens it, they themselves could become contaminated, maybe even
(06:04):
you know, depending on what it looks like. Because we
don't have a ton of information. They didn't take any
pictures at least that I've seen, uh of fiber. What
was the consistency? Was it ropey? Was it a ropy
water test? Was there a water test? Is it a floater?
(06:25):
Is it a plunker? I mean, these are health questions
at some point. I'm just concerned for the health and
well being of this. I'm titling, I'm titling this part
is loose poop. It's going to be the title lose
foods SI scoops. I don't know skits never mind, move on,
moving on, alright, So, so I'm gonna give you a
(06:45):
quote from this original article from John Fortney Fortney fo
or t N E. Y. I honestly don't know how
to pronounce it. Um, but he gave this quote. This
type of bio hazard attack doesn't just stop with the
people it's directed towards. This is something that could potentially
affect every single employee at the Ohio Statehouse, regardless of
their political affiliation. Um, that makes sense. And then moving
(07:08):
away from that quote, I'm gonna give you another quote
from the article says, the US Postal Services Law Enforcement
Arm is investigating the matter as a federal crime, a
federal crime most likely because it was aimed at lawmakers, right. Um.
And they also said in this article they wouldn't comment
when this happened on whether it was human or animal waste.
(07:30):
That's what they said. So that's that was early July
of this year. Then, you guys, almost exactly a month later,
on August eight, another story came out of the AP
again by Samantha Hendrickson and this title is x Ohio
(07:51):
court mediator arrested allegedly sent feces to GOP. So it
took a month, but they tracked down the old culprit because,
I mean probably because they he gave him a nice
little DNA sample every time he committed a crime. I'm
assuming a serial poop Taylor. Oh, I didn't catch that. Yeah,
(08:12):
it was Yeah, that's how it happened. Yes, at least.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm not Yeah, I'll just give
you here. It was at least three dozen feces filled
letters that were sent by this one person. And the
person arrested. His name is Richard. I won't give you
a full thing just for the sake of this episode.
(08:34):
You can look it up if you want to. He
is a seventy seven year old man from m O
G A d O R E Ohio. Seventy seven year
old dude angry send him poop everywhere, regular as hell,
I would argue. I want to point out that a
court mediator is an interesting position for someone to have
(08:56):
as a background and make this decision, because a court
mediator is all about finding reasonable agreements between two opposing parties.
So I think maybe our pal Richard has been saving
up some frustration for a while. This is not typical
court mediator behavior. We should say, yeah, he'st do They
(09:18):
usually say to you, like I a mediator, it's successful
of doing their job. Than neither parties are particularly happy. True,
it's kind of Solomon's. Uh, it's kind of a King
Solomon argument at times. Right that no one should walk
away feeling like Dave knocked it out, because then it's
not a compromise or negotiation. But uh, this so, Matt, Okay,
(09:39):
we've established that this guy did it, Like you said,
it's a very important point. Believe he WINNI mail poop. Right.
He's charged but not convicted. It's not going to take
a ton of forensic science to verify, uh, to verify
who's playing Santa with the coca here? Yeah? Yeah, because
you think about it, even if it was maybe an
(10:00):
animal that Richard owns, uh it could they could trace
that back to the animal, get a DNA sample and
then oh there you go, Bob's your uncle. I don't
know how it works. Uh, it was it was the
right poop. So he's charged with sending quote injurious articles
as non maaile vel violating a federal law that prohibits
(10:20):
mailing certain things, including hazardous materials um And that's according
court records. The thing that he has charged with, this
specific thing is a misdemeanor, but it carries a maximum
prison sentence of a year and a one hundred thousand
dollar fine. That is an expensive poop trip. That is egregious.
Like also, though, is it because and I don't know
(10:42):
this part, that is it because they proved a malicious intent?
Or is it simply because he was not adhering to
the procedures and the correct packaging precautions people left. That's
a very interesting distinction because sure feels like, you know,
it could be seen as a there's a threatening, you know, behavior,
(11:05):
but that's hard to prove, right, Like, it's all about
intent there. So how do they ultimately get him, Matt, Well,
it could be presented that way. I will tell you
how they ultimately got him. And this is an important note,
the poop filled letters never actually made it to the offices. Okay,
So we we were theorizing like it would be dangerous
right there, um Fortnity was talking about it would be
(11:27):
dangerous if it showed up, but because the the United
States Mail services, so it's crazy complicated, uh, and it's
amazing the way the system functions. These letters were deemed
to have stuff in them that shouldn't be mailed because
there were false return addresses on the on the actual envelopes,
(11:48):
so the system caught it before it even sent anything out.
Because if if a return address is not correct, uh,
it often will get placed into a specific sorting not
a bin, but a sorting system, and then it would
be returned or destroyed or just kept until a correct
return address could be found because a phony or inaccurate
(12:11):
return address it would be a red flag. So I mean,
do do some of those maybe like go through higher
scrutiny sorting or like inspection or is it is the
like you know, the typical procedure. They just go back immediately.
I don't know the ins and outs of it, of
how it functions. There's a great video you can watch
their several actually that shows part of the the system,
(12:33):
but not all of it because some of that stuff
is pretty sensitive and and you know, it would be
dangerous if everybody knew exactly how it functioned. But it's
it's super cool and and and complicated is the best
way to say, I don't know, Ben, Do you know more? Yeah,
a little bit? Uh? So what what you need to do? Really,
and this is not advice, but if you which you
(12:55):
need to remember when you're mailing something is you don't
have to put the full return address. In the US,
you can often just put the ZIP code or used
to be able to. And so the easiest way for
someone to cross check that is to say, hey, was
this dropped in a box or sent through the post
uh in a place where that ZIP code is right?
(13:18):
Or was it really far away? Is somebody sending something
from say Dallas, but they're purporting to send it from
Portland's unnecessary tongue twister there? So what you want to
do if you again this is not advice, but what
what you would want to do as an observation is
if you were trying to send something from UH nine
(13:41):
o two one oh to take a famous zip code,
then you would physically want to drop it in a
box in nine O two one oh. And if you
don't want to be um, well this goes into being surveilled.
But uh, if you if you want to try to
be clean, let's serve that eagle doesn't get mad at
as Matt Noel. Let's say you're trying to surprise someone
(14:03):
and it's a nice thing. You're not sending them poop,
You're sending them, uh, the happy Birthday card or whatever.
Then what you would want to do is not go
into the physical uh post office. You would want to
go to a letter drop and then you would drop
it there in the same zip code as the return address,
so you're not faking the return address. Really, it's it's
(14:27):
not too much of a workaround, but it's the best
way to do it. Hey, that that would work out.
I want to get back to you the question you
asked nol how do they catch him? So the US
Postal Inspection Service actually surveilled him. They watched him, and
they watched him in his home, which is kind of
kind of creepy, uh, but it's what you do. They
(14:51):
watched him attempt to mail a letter while wearing gloves,
which you know, there's a little sass if you're going
to do that. Maybe you're just trying to be tidy
and you know safe or not contaminate your your envelope
with feces because you just went to the bathroom, so
you put on gloves. It's just to be nice to
the receiver. But in this case, they went and checked
(15:14):
out the letter and it was determined to be contaminated
with feces and it was addressed to Jim Jordan's representative,
Jim Jordan's apparently. Uh so this is There's another similar
case from a few years ago from I think, but
it wasn't politically motivated. There was this lady in Iowa
(15:35):
who got charged for mailing cow feeces calmaneure to her
neighbors because they didn't like how her dog was barking.
Her dog was behaving, and uh she got charged with
third degree harassment. So I'm not sure what the uh like,
what the sentencinge would be for that. But with at
(15:55):
the age of seventy seven, you know, we can make
some assumptions that this guy is um he's putting his
personal beliefs over the idea of personal safety. Right. It
doesn't sound like he was trying especially hard to remain anonymous.
It seems like he kind of was, but maybe he
(16:18):
didn't care because he's seventy seven and he's like everyone,
am I going to get a year right now? He's
out on bond. I think it's dollar bond, and his
next hearing is tomorrow as of the day that we
record this, not when you're hearing it, so August. But
if they can't, if they can't prove he was doing
(16:39):
it as harassment, right, If they can't prove the motive,
then that might change the conversation. What if he is
just um what what if he's able to say I'm
just very proud of my hoop and I want more
people to appreciate it. I want to hear that argument.
I want to be a juror if if there, if
ever goes to trial law and order court, can we
(17:04):
do a little a little quick math here? How many
instances did you say? It was? Three? Yeah, and and
and what was the potential finds to be levied? It's
a misdemeanor, I would see. Now here's the thing. I
don't know if each one would be account right. So
(17:25):
if each is each letter account of this misdemeanor, I
think it is one collective thing. It would be it
would be separate. Um, it would have to be a
separate account for each Then that's thirty six years. Uh
oh god, a hundred thousand dollars times thirty six. Yeah,
(17:47):
I don't that's they're not they're probably not going to
give them as no for sure, but let's just so
that's my my bad at math, it looks like thirty
six No, three hundred and sixty million dollars. No, three
(18:08):
point six thank you, three point six million. I'm not
doing the decimal right, that's that's expensive time on the throne, presumably,
How would you go about this? But okay, we don't
have to go into the specifics. Would just squat and
do it right over the contact? Okay, anyway, Matt, this
was illuminating. Um. It obviously gave us a lot to
(18:29):
you know, to make jokes about. But it does, you know,
it does really show an interesting view into the way
the postal system works, in the way these types of
things are assessed. You know. Obviously this is easy to
kind of joke about because it wasn't like anthrax, you know,
or like a dirty bomb or something. Well, it was
definitely never mind, but it's it's an easy way to
(18:49):
kind of carry on these kinds of investigations without having
to get too heavy. Um, but man, a lot of
effort with the method. The method is it is a
bucket next to the toilet, and those fancy metal it's
a really fancy metal letter opener. You've seen them. Like,
it looks like a little knife. You just make you
(19:10):
get that and exactly you just kinda scoop a little
out and then just give it a nice I mean,
you just gotta just give it a nice little slide
across the interior. You guys are joking, but there are
there are things legitimate medical procedures where people have to
send in a stool sample and you get like a
little container and you have to put some of your
(19:32):
feces in there and you can send it through the
post I agree, Matt, this is this illuminating. This makes
me think back to some of our fellow conspiracy realists
who had written to me and said, why don't you
guys do something like stuff the post Office doesn't want
you to know, or stuff about shipping, which I think
is going to be worthwhile. Also, I just found this
(19:52):
because I was curious. I wanted to give us um
some clarity where we're ending here, because I know a
lot of us in the audience did they have some questions. Now,
it's a brave new world, right if you can mail
poop legally. Whether or not this guy gets prosecuted depends
on whether the recipients decide to press charges. Since mailing
(20:12):
poop is legal, it's illegal if it's not packaged correctly,
and it's illegal if get this the person who receives
it takes offense. That's how that's kind of how the
laws raised. So if you get it and you're like,
oh great, we're poop, you know, people's pooper, like pokemons
to me, then it's not a crime. But if you
get it and you're like, oh no, but no, stop
(20:34):
mailing poop, then it's a crime. It's harassment. Things to
keep in mind from your friends and stuff. They don't
want you to know. Don't mail us poop. Don't do it. Please.
My dog is speaking of feces samples. I've had to
do that many a time with my dog and she
is just really loving this ball right now. Okay, hey,
we're gonna end this segment right here, but we'll be
(20:54):
right back with more strange news and we're back. Um.
This is a story that that we've all been aware
of for for a little while, surprisingly not getting as
nearly as much press as as I think any of
us would have expected. But it is revolving around two
(21:14):
very uh important issues I think of of of the
time we're living in UM, the privacy of of data
and what can be done with your data when it is,
like you know, UM being hosted by these large companies.
And also obviously a huge one is is the tenuous
nature of of abortion law. Well, I mean it's not
(21:35):
really tenuous at all. It's it's technically the law of
the land that it's illegal, but there are different you know,
circumstances that will allow for an abortion in some states.
Basically it's obviously being sent back to the States because
of the overturning of the federal ro versus Weigh legislation case.
So it's it's something that is not going to just
(21:56):
you know, solidify overnight. But we are starting to see
cases kind of trickle through UM showing some future very
serious ramifications of this law. And I think, you know,
Matt and Ben were all of the mind that this
is something that will open the door to just folks
in desperation doing unsafe things. Potentially, you know, if they're
(22:18):
in need of an abortion and they can't they can't
get one legally. This is what we know about times
before abortion was legal federally, people were using all kinds
of horrific improvised methods and you know, going to underground
clinics that were you know, at the very least sketchy
and shady. Yeah, ro versus Wade. Again, to be clear,
(22:39):
I said this in the past. It's not it's not
an opinion, folks, It's a fact, regardless of value feel personally,
Roll versus Way being overturned does not illegalize abortion across
the board. It effectively only illegalizes it for the poor. Uh,
people who are privileged and well to do are going
to still be able to get that procedure and there's
(23:01):
it's not gonna change their lives. In particular. This is
to victimize the already disadvantaged. You know, I've seen it
phrase very similar to what you just said have been.
It doesn't outlaw abortion, it is outlaws safe abortion. UM. So,
this this case is a very kind of early example
of two of those things kind of colliding. The idea
(23:21):
of of of data privacy and security um and and
the idea of being prosecuted now for for seeking an
abortion or for taking manage into your own hands, um
and This case involves a young woman and her mother
UH in Madison County, Nebraska. UM, a forty one year
old woman, is now facing charges for helping her teenage
(23:46):
daughter uh illegally abort pregnancy UM using it would appear
like a morning after pill kind of situation. I haven't
seen I haven't read the full court documents, but based
on what I'm seeing in the in the reporting that's
out there, it's it's that um and. And then the
reason that we know what we know about this is
(24:09):
because the Facebook messages between the mother uh and and
and her daughter UM Jessica Burgess, by the way, is
the mother and the daughter is Celeste Burgess, are out there.
And that's because Facebook or metas or whatever gave them
over to law enforcement who were pursuing, you know, prosecution
of these two individuals um And. What we have is
(24:32):
a chain of of of communications between them referring to yeah,
one pill stops the hormones, and then you have to
wait twenty four hours to take the other one. That
sounds like either plan B right is there or there
are other ones that you can take later. I thought
that got there came a point where you pill would
no longer do the trick. That sounds like a Plan
B situation, but I'm not I'm not an expert. Um.
(24:55):
And then the mother writes, remember we burn the evidence,
I will finally be able to wear g means. I think,
I guess that's like, yeah, that's the daughter, excuse me celess.
So I guess he's referring to, hey, get my life back. Um.
There are some details in this story that are disturbing.
They do, they did report it as a miscarriage, and
then the fetus was They disposed of it themselves, the
(25:18):
mother and daughter, and they you know, basically got someone
else to help them do it. And then I think
when they realized that the authorities were onto them, they
like dug up the remains and and tried to burn
them or they were talking about doing that. There are
some some very very disturbing details in here. But again,
all of this comes from the fact that they couldn't
(25:40):
just do it, you know, properly. They couldn't just go
to a clinic and do it. I don't think money
is the issue here. This is literally like Nebraska has
already been a state that for a long time has
had very um, very difficult prohibitively difficult abortion laws. Um,
and this just made it even worse. So I'm marrying
the lead here again. The fact of the matter is
(26:00):
in the big part of the story is that Facebook
gave over these direct messages, these private messages between these
two users, you know. Um, and they did it in
response to a warrant. Metas did come out with a
statement to Motherboard to do the initial reporting on this thing.
Nothing in the valid warrant through received from local law
enforcement in early June prior to the Supreme Court decision
(26:23):
mentioned abortion. The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation,
and court documents indicate that police at the time were
investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned
and buried, not a decision to have an abortion. Both
of these warrants were originally accompanied by non disclosure orders,
which prevented us from sharing any information about them. The
(26:44):
orders have now been lifted. Another Metas Books person tweeted
this is from the Motherboard article and identical statement, shortly
before the company contacted Motherboard with this comment. Um, So
I don't know. This is really messy on so many levels.
I really want to hear you guys, thoughts, because it
does appear that the warrants were served before the Supreme
(27:04):
Court decision it was handed down, but that they handed
over the messages after the timeline is a little a
little tricky yet honestly metas position in this case is
that they are legally required to comply with those sorts
of warrants, and that part, unfortunately, is true. I agree
(27:26):
with you that the timeline is messy, and their their
statement regarding this has triggered this conversation about whether or
not they knew they were talking. They were giving police
information about an alleged illegal abortion. But still with that,
(27:48):
you have to wonder did they get the warrant and
then just say, Okay, we're giving profile info, we're giving
d M info, but we're not reading it ourselves. Like,
what what's the process there? Because the argument seems to
say that they themselves did not connect the dots between
condemning this person right and just complying with a warrant.
(28:12):
And and again, you know, it's a it's an interesting
argument because as far as I can tell, they would
be required right to comply with a warrant. You can't
just say no, that was a question that I had
and Matt, you know, I know you've brought stories to
the table in the past, or you've definitely been something
that I know has been on your radar UM involving
(28:32):
Apple and there end to end encryption UM when it
comes to eye message and you know, like text messages
between iPhone users UM, and they have what's called end
to end encryption, and there was that whole story, Uh,
I think you brought I can't remember exactly, but I
know them we've talked about where there was that shooter
UM and the government was trying to petition Apple to
(28:55):
like write like a back door, UH, so they could
get access to the the guy's phone UM because like
Apple even can't do it if they don't have the password,
and they were saying they wouldn't do it because it
would like it we could potentially, like you know, be
a vulnerability for like all of their users. I think
that one was specifically about getting into his phone. UM.
(29:16):
But also like Facebook, I just found this page that
says describes what does intend encryption? How does it work?
And Facebook on their own website describes it as uh,
it has extra security and protection to your messages and
calls and uh, and calls in a conversation so that
only you and whoever you're talking to you can see it.
And then it says no one can read your messages
(29:37):
or hear your calls. Accept the people who have these
special keys, because that's what the encryption key. Not even Facebook,
We couldn't even if we wanted to. Has something changed
since this fact was written. I don't understand how they're
able to say that they use end in encryption and
messenger and then give over specific d M s like
(29:59):
that when they say that they don't have the key.
That's a good question, but unfortunately I don't have the answer.
I've watched some really helpful videos on how end and
encryption works, and it is fascinating and theoretically that is correct.
What what you just read where it would be physically
impossible for someone to read those secured messages unless they
had the specific keys, right, because you need two keys
(30:21):
to to send it and read it to you need
two keys to read it on either end. Right. Um,
it's really cool the way messages get sent. I think
it's a lock box example that you can find on
YouTube right now, where I think we mentioned this on
the show before you can watch online. It's it shows
how if you put certain locks in a like you've
(30:42):
got three, three or four keys, I think that actually
are required to send a secure end end message like that.
I think it's a feature. I think it's sort of
like you know, having like private browsing in your Chrome,
you know tabs. I think you have to like specifically said,
I don't think all Facebook messages are end to end
encrypted because there's a section on this help center for
(31:04):
a messenger this says secret conversations, and then it goes
into all this stuff, and I think it's like a
like I like, I like a teacher. Here's what I'll add.
You should assume that anything you do on the internet
will one day become public knowledge. There is no real
secrecy that you can safely assume, even honestly. Yes, if
(31:26):
you look at the nuts and bolts technically of a
lot of end to end encryption. UM, I'm a big fan,
as you guys know. I'm always trying to get us
to move our group chat to things like signal or telegram,
uh for these reasons. But you cannot assume, you just
you simply cannot safely assume at this point that anything
you do online is private, okay to put a to
(31:49):
put a fine point on a conspiracy realist, all the
stuff you don't want people to know you're clicking on
at three am. Someone knows whether it's your I s P,
whether it's five Eyes, whether it's your pal interned Steve
as we're gonna learn later this week. Everybody's got one.
So I don't know. It's terrible though, that this applies
(32:11):
to people who are at some of the most vulnerable
positions in their lives, you know. And and the problem
with some of these statements is just like we were
talking about with the reasoning about invading the Hague, we're
seeing authorities, in this case, secular tech authorities, kind of
picking the story that's convenient for them, you know, And
it looks us I'm not saying their lying. I'm just
(32:33):
saying it feels very convenient. Guys. Can you just answer
me this. Why was there an investigation in the first place? Here?
I haven't found that that's the price. It has to
do with the disposing of the remains, um, but that
I'm not in any of this reporting. And again I
haven't read the full document seeing like why they were
suspected in the first place, to the point where they
(32:54):
sought this warrant um and also ultimately the warrant allowed
them to get access to their phone and stuff too.
So Nebraska has a, like I said, a very tight
um abortion law. Like even before this this overturning of Rev. Wade,
it's twenty weeks, I believe that's what it's been. Um.
So they were already, you know, with they were already
(33:17):
in reach of that law despite what happened with the
Supreme Court. But and but it was reported as a miscarriage, right,
they reported it that way, that's right. But then there
was something that didn't look right in the investigation. Perhaps
did you catch any of this? I just don't understand it.
I don't. I just don't understand how that that it
was a miscarriage, which is a terrible, horrific thing that
(33:40):
happens all the time to to families, couples, individuals, and
somehow someone decided it was time to investigate this miscarriage.
I just like that blows my mind. The line in
the n p R. Pieces police in Norfolk, Nebraska had
been investigating the woman Jessica Burgess and her daughter's a
Less Burns for allegedly mishandling the fetal remains of what
(34:03):
they've told police was celest still birth. So maybe like
they buried it in the first place, and they weren't
supposed to do that, and then they like to legal
burning imburial. Illegal burning imburial is what the that's what
it warrant was regarding. So they kind of told and
if you are complying with a warrant and you're met up, Uh,
(34:27):
the thing here is that I did. You can find
the requests online. You can find the Madison County, Nebraska stuff.
It's linked out, and reading over it this the accounts
of this warrant, you would almost have to be willfully
ignoring the crux of the investigation. They never used the
(34:50):
A word. They never say abortion in these docs, but
they do talk about like they heavily imply it is
a fetus. Um. You know, without speaking to someone directly
met up and we probably won't hear from them outside
the public statements they made, But without speaking to them,
it's it's kind of hard to guess how they're internal
(35:10):
logic was working here. But one of the reason I'm
really glad we're talking about the story is we do
live in a surveillance state and stuff like this when
it happens, this is not going to be the last. Sadly,
it's heartbreaking and it's frightening. It should frighten everybody. There
has bigger ramifications to beyond just what we're talking about here.
(35:31):
Like again, this is a complicated one because it involves
two massive zeitgeisty topics in terms of like the abortion laws,
availability to safety and all of that and the privacy stuff.
But I found this really great right up on a
reporter's committee h for a Free Press, I think it's
what it's called, UM Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Uh,
(35:52):
And they identify two massive wrinkles that this creates in
the ability the press to report on stuff like this. Uh.
And they this is what they say. It's gonna read
it because I think it does such a good job. One,
the availability of medication abortions creates a new wrinkle in
how the law treats the procedure. Historically, it was exceedingly
(36:14):
rare for abortion patients versus providers to be targeted by
law enforcement. Rather, providers would be identified through decoys and informants,
and abortions were often identified after complications prompted a trip
to the emergency room. Today, however, medication abortions are quite
safe and the pills can be obtained online. As a consequence,
investigators have an incentive to both target the suspected patient
(36:35):
with investigative tools and to use highly invasive means to
do so, as they did here. And one of those
would be going after like specifically going after whistleblowers or
or anonymous sources. Um and and that is going to
create almost like a witch hunt kind of atmosphere here
that I think has really scary long term ramifications. So
(36:59):
I did really think about that aspect of it, but
it could potentially create that, I don't know, so scary
stuff here, much more to impact than we can in
this uh this strange news section. So let's take a
break and digest some of the stuff and then come
back with one more piece of strange news. And we
(37:23):
have returned, Fellow conspiracy realists. It feels so good to
be back. What do we miss well, Donald Trump's in
the news, Elon Musk and a Twitter whistleblower in the news.
Cambodia is getting some of its history back. Check out
our episode on Museums and the providence of the things
they take. Uh, Steven Seagal going hard on the paint
(37:45):
for Russia in a move that will surprise nobody. And
I've got to get back on daily see guys at
some point just to talk trash about Steven Seagal. But
you'll see you'll see some of ours guys, guys coming
to hang out with us. Maybe no spoilers the last
speak story. We have rumbas. Anybody got a roomba play
along at home? I hope your room is going now.
(38:08):
I have a like an off brand Rumba esque thing
and we put big giant Google shoes on it. No,
it's not even a shark. It's like it's a It's
it's one I can't even I can't even pronounce his name.
It's it's real dumb guys is banging in the walls
getting stuck on stuff. Uh. Adding a big dumb Google
I just made it even more delightful. But yeah, I
don't know if Rumba was much smarter. Um, but this
(38:30):
is about as dumb of a smart vacuum as you
could possibly get. And that I know. Uh, you and
I are very much of the same mind on a
lot of things. So I'm gonna take a wild guess
and say that you do not have a rumba. There
was one in this house for quite a time. There
is no longer one in this house. Yes, okay, very
careful answer. I respected, I respect you, bro. For the record,
(38:53):
my mind is not Internet connected. Just for the record,
mine is not Internet connected. This one is just strictly
a remote, controllable little widget. It does not, you know,
have any access to That's what makes it smart. The
Internet is what smarts it up exactly. So here's the thing.
So Roomba. Roomba made quite a splash and they're very successful.
(39:16):
Rumba has a parent company called I Robots. Uh, And
there you know, there's a They're part of the fad
where you put a little eye in front of everything,
started by Apple and propagated out through numerous companies, included
our corporate overlords, I Heart Media, the Clear Channel. So
so Rumba got in the news for a while. And
(39:36):
this is a little older story about when it cover
it because it's not getting the attention it needs. I
Robot was purchased by Amazon, which been Amazon bought Roomba.
When you think of the Humble little Roomba looks like
a Pixar character in many ways. You probably don't think
of a company or a product that's worth one point
(39:58):
seven bill in dollars, which is what Amazon paid for it.
You know, do you know how far like this is
hurting Jeff's plan to kind of sort of get into
space again for eleven minutes, and that's very important to him.
His eleven minutes kind of sort of in space, not
really space whatever. So this is on the heels of
(40:20):
some very troubling things that Amazon has been doing. They
recently acquired a company called One Medical, US healthcare company,
and then right on the heels of that, they made
this offer to buy I Robot. Why why are they
doing these things? Well, they're not buying the little vacuums.
(40:42):
They're not super gas about the real estate that One
Medical has. They're super gas about the information it has
about you. We're talking about you made a great point, Matt,
wh We're talking about the smart aspect Rumba learns. That's
the thing people love about it, right, They're like, Oh,
it's kind of dumb and it's kind of bump bump
bump for a while, but eventually it figures out where
(41:04):
your furniture is, figures out the rooms, it figures out
the hallways, it maps them. And what a lot of
people didn't realize was that because this is connected to
the Internet, it shares that map, just like uh, just
like Amazon, Alexa and Google Home are so suspect to me.
(41:24):
That's why Nolan very glad that you're you're moving vacuum
cleaner is not Internet connected. This is not about products.
I'm gonna call it doubt. It's about the data. Because
now there is a If this all works out, Amazon
will have direct access to with no intermediary by the way,
(41:45):
no middleman, no gatekeeping, It will have direct access to
a full map of people's homes if they have room
bus For a lot of us, some people might be saying,
you know, what's the big deal, What's what's the big deal? Uh? I,
it doesn't bother me that people know where my laundry
room is, but consider that nothing again exists in a vacuum.
(42:10):
I've got to stop saying that so often. But it's
really bothering me these days. Because now if you are
part of one medical there will be medical information about you.
If you remember of Amazon Prime, then there's a lot
of stuff out there about you, and a lot of
conclusions that are drawn that you probably are not aware of.
You will be you will be flummixed a lot of
(42:33):
us listening today when you realize just how much info
there is on you to the point where I can
predict your behavior, which is something a lot of social
scientists have been looking for for decades. And what I
and what I say scientists too, I mean like DARPA
has been looking to do this for decades and they
got closer than you think a long time ago. So
(42:54):
now private companies are doing this and they're saying, look,
only I robot can check out these room bug maps.
But now if, like with Amazon at the helm of this,
then we don't know who would have access to that data. Um,
Amazon said they don't have any details to share, right.
(43:15):
Amazon is saying, no, it's not gonna Amazon is basically saying,
don't worry about it. You know what I mean, like, hey, guys, chill,
just be chill. So, uh, this announcement came on August five,
so later this month, as we record just last month
that you hear this, and it's crazy because they're not
(43:38):
the way these things work, doesn't It doesn't mean that
they're gonna get data from room BA homes going forward.
It means they're gonna get data ever since I robot
figured out how to do this. And if you talk
to people like Maurice Stuck, a former d o J
prosecutor and antitrust expert, you'll see that Amazon's like they're
(44:00):
assumed focus for this is more targeted advertising. The Amazon Alexe.
Here's when something breaks the room but knows you're it's
in the kitchen, you know what I mean? How how
how much more regular and specific can they get? And
this is also again this is a a concern of aggregation. Uh,
(44:21):
Matt off Air, Uh, we were talking a little bit
about the Amazon astro. I don't know if anybody has um.
I don't know how much experience do you think people
have with the Amazon astro. I think we've all we've
seen the commercial. Right, It's like you were talking about, Yeah,
(44:43):
tell me about the astro. I don't This is Yeah,
it's a tiny little robot that is way more expensive
than we can afford. But you know you've just got
an extra thousand dollars chilling, then hey, maybe you want
this Alexa on wheels that has a lot of cameras
and sensors and collects even more data on you what
(45:05):
you do and in this case kind of like room
but where you do it in your house. Uh, It's
just it's just super creepy. It's another one of these
things that if you add in the I robot info
with this Amazon, you know, if you happen to have
one of these robots, you basically just have all information
twenty pounds. It looks like a little Pixar cartoon. Uh.
(45:28):
It has voice commands, so of course you can hear YouTube.
It'll follow you around. It's got wheels if you I
put a little link in the in our chat here
and you can see that right now. Also, this thing
is kind of like a PS five. You have to
request and invite to buy it. As you said, Matt,
it's a thousand dollars right now. It's very cute, you know.
(45:52):
I'm sure it triggers some warm cuddly feelings for people. Um.
And it Also this is interesting Amazon is aware of
the concerns here because one of the big features advertised
for this also include this in the chat, is that
Amazon astro can can have its camera and microphone and
(46:13):
motion turned off with one button per Amazon. Per Jeff.
Also it uh, it can function as security. I don't
know if you guys had heard that part. It will
link up with your Ring subscription and Astro will patrol
and it will get this investigate activity. So so the
(46:37):
dog is where it's not supposed to be. Someone's breaking
into your house and then all of a sudden, which
is my Amazon Astro noise, Yeah, Danny is masturbating again.
Did you guys see that uh love Death in Robots piece?
That was kind of pick Sarry. It was kind of
(46:58):
like yeah with like it had like a them but type,
you know, Helper robot. They like it goes nuts and
it starts murdering everything. Uh, it goes somewhere more creative
than that eventually. No spoilers, but I did think that
one did a pretty good job of looking at the
like big picture dystopia that we are heading for. I
think it was partially inspired by things like the Astro. Uh.
(47:22):
And you know remember years back when we're talking about
the dog drones and I called it, man, it was
no hard thing to call, said, someone's gonna put a
gun on these, because that's how humans are. They're just
going to figure out the recoil and I got they
did it. So how far are these astro attachment's gonna go?
(47:43):
I mean businesses always seek to uh consolidate uh profits
while diversifying products. Right, not to be too Harvard business
about it, but this means that your astro in the
future might also have a room by included on it.
Maybe uh your room bow will becoming increasing way can
astro Uh they want to add these surveillance capabilities, and
(48:06):
then what happens when they start sort of mesh networking? Right?
What happens when you are at the secret Wizard of
Oz control room in Amazon and you can map an
entire neighborhood and maybe during times of domestic unrest, you
get warrant and you have to supply the information that
(48:29):
you have about that entire neighborhood where protests just happened
to be taking place. God, I just connect that that
old sidewalk app up right, It's just it's everything, It's
already there. They're just not all in one body yet.
(48:50):
Oh well, here's the other thing you're gonna you're gonna
love for anybody's feeling to U two spooked about this? Well,
as long as you don't live in a ranch style house,
you may have a little bit of respite. Because right
now Astro and Rumba cannot go up or downstairs. So
(49:12):
so hide in the basement, hide on the second floor,
you know what I mean, And don't put the Amazon
Alexa up there. Now. Of course, we have to point
out a lot of this right now, A lot of
these concerns are proactive. I would say, there hasn't been
any proof yet of an obsessive, super sophisticated amount of
(49:33):
data being used against people, uh in yet at this point. Right,
but we have to remember that governments can still request
this stuff from different corporations, and in many cases those
corporations must comply. Also, data can be used predictively. The
(49:54):
predecessor for what happened with Meta recently is Target. You know,
and Target has hidden income stream selling surveillance equipment to
other businesses. Like next time you're in the target, look
up at the ceiling. See how many cameras there are.
There are a ton, They're very good at it. Well,
I just wanted to add, like we we we this
all kind of like meshes together. No point intended with
(50:18):
um the ring camera discussion that we've been having. And
I just found out that apparently Amazon is launching a
ring camera generated like like hidden camera show like in
America's stupidest criminals are like the funniest you know, front
yard goofs or whatever. And I need to look into
(50:39):
it further. I don't know you would think you would
have to be used or submitted because you know, like again,
I have the stupid app for Ring, and I know
there's a way that I can opt out of it,
but I get all these messages for this like neighborly whatever,
and and it comes with videos attachment be like creepy
prowler guy, what's that in his hand? And you look
at the video? Um, so I under you know how
(51:00):
this submission would work or if it literally is just
like well we if you if you read the terms
of service close enough, you'd see that we own all
this footage. Uh Wanda Sykes isst hosting it by the
normalized surveillance while vilifying the disadvantaged. For sure, I want
to finish what I was saying though about Target, because
(51:21):
Target used their data to predict a pregnancy that a
teenager and not told her parents about, and the parents
found out about it via target, So it's important to
remember that's the predecessor. Now, I didn't mean to roll
over you, man. Can I make one last point on
the rumor game show thing. I think you're right on there.
It feels like they're just increasing people's desire to keep
(51:44):
track of that ring footage and uploaded to neighbors. I
think this is a really great to a great way
to incentivize that, similar to America's funny sol videos where
if you offer people maybe just two hundred dollars or
five dollars, if your submission gets onto the TV show,
it's gonna that means more people are going to be
uploading their own videos for sure. That's right. The show
(52:06):
is going to be called Ring Nation, and they do
claim that they will be securing permission and then the
videos could come from other sources too, But it's all
going to be a big giant incentive for uploading your
videos to like, you know, whatever cms that they set
up for this thing. And um, it's a big old
commercial for ring and to to sew this up, folks,
(52:28):
to put a frightening bow on it without sounding like
a broken record or a whistleblower who is suffering from
Alzheimer's and repetitive motion of thought. Uh, this stuff is happening,
It's there is precedent to it, but this is untrammeled territory,
which means that again, technology is outpacing legislation. And since
(52:52):
the passage of the Patriot Act in the United States,
your rights to privacy in this kind tree and abroad,
by the way, shout out five eyes have eroded and
far past what you may be comfortable thinking about or considering.
So this is a step further down that direction. And
(53:15):
we want to hear stories. I definitely want to know
any weird things that have happened to you in these
our days of absolute surveillance, which are you know, we're
in the nascent days, but it's happening your kids, your grandkids.
If this continues on a current trend, Uh, they're going
to look at privacy is something kind of anachronistic and
(53:36):
old fashioned, and they'll do so with good reason. So
let us know what spooky things have happened to you. Uh,
let us know your take on mailing poop. Let us
know what what role you think private corporations should play
in privacy or security or the lack thereof. As always,
(53:57):
we can't wait to hear from you. We try to
be easy to find line correct. You can find us
on Facebook, you can find this on Twitter, and you
can find us on YouTube with the handle conspiracy Stuff.
On Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff show Yes. If you
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It's a voicemail system. When you call in, you'll hear Ben.
(54:19):
Please give yourself a cool nickname that we can jot
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And now you've got three minutes, say whatever you'd like.
Please include whether or not you give us permission to
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that's fine, that's fine. Why don't you send us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heeart
(54:42):
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want you to Know
(55:02):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis
code named Dot Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Uh, folks. As we said before,
August is always a busy month for your pals over
(00:46):
here at stuff they don't want you to know. And
we're all officially back ish in the States. We're going
to be back in Atlanta altogether pretty soon. But the
show goes on. So we're returning to you with were
Strange News and Matt Well. I think you guys both
had run ins before with the experience I described in
(01:06):
the in the original Strange News, which is it can
be so devilish lee difficult to find just one story sometimes.
And we've got we've got a backlog right because we
had some classic episodes last week in place of Strange
News and listener mail segments. But we're coming with some
fire today. Well, yeah, yeah, we're super kind to you know,
(01:27):
put off one or more of these, um due to
my absence, and I'm really happy to be back. A
lot of these stories continue to be valid. There may
even be updates from the first hits that we had
of them, and um yeah, I'm really excited to dig
in and see what everyone came up with. Well, let's
get started. Then mine is a little bit stale, if
not hardened and uh dehydrated, perhaps piece of give us
(01:53):
the straight man. I was picturingly more like a piece
of shredded wheat that had fallen between the car seats.
And then you went somewhere completely different with that, and
I respect you for it. Man, Well, thank you. Uh,
we're jumping to some news from July eight two comes
(02:14):
from AP News, written by Samantha Hendrickson. Title of the
story is feces mailed to Ohio GOP lawmakers Post Office Investigates. Well,
we've we've talked about things that have been sent through
the mail before on this show. We've talked about ye
old Ted Kazinski, probably the most dangerous of the people
(02:37):
and events that we've spoken about when it comes to
what happens with our our mail and the heroic people
that are out there right now delivering it every day.
Thank you to everybody out there listening that does that
or is doing it now right. Some of our folks
are on deliveries that is correct from Amazon to what
dhl uspsd X know your neighborhood corner guy even might
(03:06):
make a trip curry carrying pigeon task rabbit. Yes, you're
dealing with all kinds of strange substances that you are
unaware of because they are packaged up all nice and neat, unless,
of course, they smell a little bit like poo poo. Uh.
Even then you might not be aware because it could
(03:27):
just be contaminated with fecal matter and not you know,
smell like the full thing. In this story, it discusses
how twenty five individual state Republican senators in one week
were sent mail that was contaminated with feces or feces
was specifically mailed within a letter, right within an envelope.
(03:52):
Here's the deal too. It wasn't like it was some
kind of manifesto that was written to each of these
individual lawmakers. It was just it was just pop it
wasn't as though there was some point to be made
necessarily other than here, this is what I think you
should get in the mail. Well, whatever happened to carrying
your own hoop to the doorstep of your enemy and
(04:13):
and and setting it on fire manually? I mean, why
do we have to involve these third parties in this?
It just seems very inconsiderate innocence, you know, cowards. I say,
if you, if you take take the take the flaming
poop to your opponent. Also, Matt, before we go on,
I just want to answer a question I'm sure a
lot of our fellow listeners have, and it's it's a
(04:36):
weird one because I looked into this before we rolled. Actually,
I've been excited about this story. Uh. It is in
the United States entirely legal and not against the law
to mail poop unless you are specifically mailing it to
harass people. Did that the motive? We remember, Matt, you
did another story while back that discussed the legal and
(05:00):
the way it has to be marked. If you're sending
like medical specimens that could contain you know, agents body right,
but it also like you know, pathogens and things like that,
there has to be some labeling if you're doing if
you're going by the book, Yeah, it becomes dangerous and
(05:20):
and I don't know the legality been about it, but
it becomes dangerous if it's unsecured specimen, right, if it's
just just in a container, that's what it's bad. And
that's that's how the state of Ohio characterize it, right,
(05:43):
Because when you send an unsecured sample in this way
to the Statehouse, everybody in that state House, or at
least the mail receiving area of that Statehouse, or if
the mail actually gets to the office of one of
the lawmakers, that's when it becomes dangerous because any one
that opens it, they themselves could become contaminated, maybe even
(06:04):
you know, depending on what it looks like. Because we
don't have a ton of information. They didn't take any
pictures at least that I've seen, uh of fiber. What
was the consistency? Was it ropey? Was it a ropy
water test? Was there a water test? Is it a floater?
(06:25):
Is it a plunker? I mean, these are health questions
at some point. I'm just concerned for the health and
well being of this. I'm titling, I'm titling this part
is loose poop. It's going to be the title lose
foods SI scoops. I don't know skits never mind, move on,
moving on, alright, So, so I'm gonna give you a
(06:45):
quote from this original article from John Fortney Fortney fo
or t N E. Y. I honestly don't know how
to pronounce it. Um, but he gave this quote. This
type of bio hazard attack doesn't just stop with the
people it's directed towards. This is something that could potentially
affect every single employee at the Ohio Statehouse, regardless of
their political affiliation. Um, that makes sense. And then moving
(07:08):
away from that quote, I'm gonna give you another quote
from the article says, the US Postal Services Law Enforcement
Arm is investigating the matter as a federal crime, a
federal crime most likely because it was aimed at lawmakers, right. Um.
And they also said in this article they wouldn't comment
when this happened on whether it was human or animal waste.
(07:30):
That's what they said. So that's that was early July
of this year. Then, you guys, almost exactly a month later,
on August eight, another story came out of the AP
again by Samantha Hendrickson and this title is x Ohio
(07:51):
court mediator arrested allegedly sent feces to GOP. So it
took a month, but they tracked down the old culprit because,
I mean probably because they he gave him a nice
little DNA sample every time he committed a crime. I'm
assuming a serial poop Taylor. Oh, I didn't catch that. Yeah,
(08:12):
it was Yeah, that's how it happened. Yes, at least.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm not Yeah, I'll just give
you here. It was at least three dozen feces filled
letters that were sent by this one person. And the
person arrested. His name is Richard. I won't give you
a full thing just for the sake of this episode.
(08:34):
You can look it up if you want to. He
is a seventy seven year old man from m O
G A d O R E Ohio. Seventy seven year
old dude angry send him poop everywhere, regular as hell,
I would argue. I want to point out that a
court mediator is an interesting position for someone to have
(08:56):
as a background and make this decision, because a court
mediator is all about finding reasonable agreements between two opposing parties.
So I think maybe our pal Richard has been saving
up some frustration for a while. This is not typical
court mediator behavior. We should say, yeah, he'st do They
(09:18):
usually say to you, like I a mediator, it's successful
of doing their job. Than neither parties are particularly happy. True,
it's kind of Solomon's. Uh, it's kind of a King
Solomon argument at times. Right that no one should walk
away feeling like Dave knocked it out, because then it's
not a compromise or negotiation. But uh, this so, Matt, Okay,
(09:39):
we've established that this guy did it, Like you said,
it's a very important point. Believe he WINNI mail poop. Right.
He's charged but not convicted. It's not going to take
a ton of forensic science to verify, uh, to verify
who's playing Santa with the coca here? Yeah? Yeah, because
you think about it, even if it was maybe an
(10:00):
animal that Richard owns, uh it could they could trace
that back to the animal, get a DNA sample and
then oh there you go, Bob's your uncle. I don't
know how it works. Uh, it was it was the
right poop. So he's charged with sending quote injurious articles
as non maaile vel violating a federal law that prohibits
(10:20):
mailing certain things, including hazardous materials um And that's according
court records. The thing that he has charged with, this
specific thing is a misdemeanor, but it carries a maximum
prison sentence of a year and a one hundred thousand
dollar fine. That is an expensive poop trip. That is egregious.
Like also, though, is it because and I don't know
(10:42):
this part, that is it because they proved a malicious intent?
Or is it simply because he was not adhering to
the procedures and the correct packaging precautions people left. That's
a very interesting distinction because sure feels like, you know,
it could be seen as a there's a threatening, you know, behavior,
(11:05):
but that's hard to prove, right, Like, it's all about
intent there. So how do they ultimately get him, Matt, Well,
it could be presented that way. I will tell you
how they ultimately got him. And this is an important note,
the poop filled letters never actually made it to the offices. Okay,
So we we were theorizing like it would be dangerous
right there, um Fortnity was talking about it would be
(11:27):
dangerous if it showed up, but because the the United
States Mail services, so it's crazy complicated, uh, and it's
amazing the way the system functions. These letters were deemed
to have stuff in them that shouldn't be mailed because
there were false return addresses on the on the actual envelopes,
(11:48):
so the system caught it before it even sent anything out.
Because if if a return address is not correct, uh,
it often will get placed into a specific sorting not
a bin, but a sorting system, and then it would
be returned or destroyed or just kept until a correct
return address could be found because a phony or inaccurate
(12:11):
return address it would be a red flag. So I mean,
do do some of those maybe like go through higher
scrutiny sorting or like inspection or is it is the
like you know, the typical procedure. They just go back immediately.
I don't know the ins and outs of it, of
how it functions. There's a great video you can watch
their several actually that shows part of the the system,
(12:33):
but not all of it because some of that stuff
is pretty sensitive and and you know, it would be
dangerous if everybody knew exactly how it functioned. But it's
it's super cool and and and complicated is the best
way to say, I don't know, Ben, Do you know more? Yeah,
a little bit? Uh? So what what you need to do? Really,
and this is not advice, but if you which you
(12:55):
need to remember when you're mailing something is you don't
have to put the full return address. In the US,
you can often just put the ZIP code or used
to be able to. And so the easiest way for
someone to cross check that is to say, hey, was
this dropped in a box or sent through the post
uh in a place where that ZIP code is right?
(13:18):
Or was it really far away? Is somebody sending something
from say Dallas, but they're purporting to send it from
Portland's unnecessary tongue twister there? So what you want to
do if you again this is not advice, but what
what you would want to do as an observation is
if you were trying to send something from UH nine
(13:41):
o two one oh to take a famous zip code,
then you would physically want to drop it in a
box in nine O two one oh. And if you
don't want to be um, well this goes into being surveilled.
But uh, if you if you want to try to
be clean, let's serve that eagle doesn't get mad at
as Matt Noel. Let's say you're trying to surprise someone
(14:03):
and it's a nice thing. You're not sending them poop,
You're sending them, uh, the happy Birthday card or whatever.
Then what you would want to do is not go
into the physical uh post office. You would want to
go to a letter drop and then you would drop
it there in the same zip code as the return address,
so you're not faking the return address. Really, it's it's
(14:27):
not too much of a workaround, but it's the best
way to do it. Hey, that that would work out.
I want to get back to you the question you
asked nol how do they catch him? So the US
Postal Inspection Service actually surveilled him. They watched him, and
they watched him in his home, which is kind of
kind of creepy, uh, but it's what you do. They
(14:51):
watched him attempt to mail a letter while wearing gloves,
which you know, there's a little sass if you're going
to do that. Maybe you're just trying to be tidy
and you know safe or not contaminate your your envelope
with feces because you just went to the bathroom, so
you put on gloves. It's just to be nice to
the receiver. But in this case, they went and checked
(15:14):
out the letter and it was determined to be contaminated
with feces and it was addressed to Jim Jordan's representative,
Jim Jordan's apparently. Uh so this is There's another similar
case from a few years ago from I think, but
it wasn't politically motivated. There was this lady in Iowa
(15:35):
who got charged for mailing cow feeces calmaneure to her
neighbors because they didn't like how her dog was barking.
Her dog was behaving, and uh she got charged with
third degree harassment. So I'm not sure what the uh like,
what the sentencinge would be for that. But with at
(15:55):
the age of seventy seven, you know, we can make
some assumptions that this guy is um he's putting his
personal beliefs over the idea of personal safety. Right. It
doesn't sound like he was trying especially hard to remain anonymous.
It seems like he kind of was, but maybe he
(16:18):
didn't care because he's seventy seven and he's like everyone,
am I going to get a year right now? He's
out on bond. I think it's dollar bond, and his
next hearing is tomorrow as of the day that we
record this, not when you're hearing it, so August. But
if they can't, if they can't prove he was doing
(16:39):
it as harassment, right, If they can't prove the motive,
then that might change the conversation. What if he is
just um what what if he's able to say I'm
just very proud of my hoop and I want more
people to appreciate it. I want to hear that argument.
I want to be a juror if if there, if
ever goes to trial law and order court, can we
(17:04):
do a little a little quick math here? How many
instances did you say? It was? Three? Yeah, and and
and what was the potential finds to be levied? It's
a misdemeanor, I would see. Now here's the thing. I
don't know if each one would be account right. So
(17:25):
if each is each letter account of this misdemeanor, I
think it is one collective thing. It would be it
would be separate. Um, it would have to be a
separate account for each Then that's thirty six years. Uh
oh god, a hundred thousand dollars times thirty six. Yeah,
(17:47):
I don't that's they're not they're probably not going to
give them as no for sure, but let's just so
that's my my bad at math, it looks like thirty
six No, three hundred and sixty million dollars. No, three
(18:08):
point six thank you, three point six million. I'm not
doing the decimal right, that's that's expensive time on the throne, presumably,
How would you go about this? But okay, we don't
have to go into the specifics. Would just squat and
do it right over the contact? Okay, anyway, Matt, this
was illuminating. Um. It obviously gave us a lot to
(18:29):
you know, to make jokes about. But it does, you know,
it does really show an interesting view into the way
the postal system works, in the way these types of
things are assessed. You know. Obviously this is easy to
kind of joke about because it wasn't like anthrax, you know,
or like a dirty bomb or something. Well, it was
definitely never mind, but it's it's an easy way to
(18:49):
kind of carry on these kinds of investigations without having
to get too heavy. Um, but man, a lot of
effort with the method. The method is it is a
bucket next to the toilet, and those fancy metal it's
a really fancy metal letter opener. You've seen them. Like,
it looks like a little knife. You just make you
(19:10):
get that and exactly you just kinda scoop a little
out and then just give it a nice I mean,
you just gotta just give it a nice little slide
across the interior. You guys are joking, but there are
there are things legitimate medical procedures where people have to
send in a stool sample and you get like a
little container and you have to put some of your
(19:32):
feces in there and you can send it through the
post I agree, Matt, this is this illuminating. This makes
me think back to some of our fellow conspiracy realists
who had written to me and said, why don't you
guys do something like stuff the post Office doesn't want
you to know, or stuff about shipping, which I think
is going to be worthwhile. Also, I just found this
(19:52):
because I was curious. I wanted to give us um
some clarity where we're ending here, because I know a
lot of us in the audience did they have some questions. Now,
it's a brave new world, right if you can mail
poop legally. Whether or not this guy gets prosecuted depends
on whether the recipients decide to press charges. Since mailing
(20:12):
poop is legal, it's illegal if it's not packaged correctly,
and it's illegal if get this the person who receives
it takes offense. That's how that's kind of how the
laws raised. So if you get it and you're like,
oh great, we're poop, you know, people's pooper, like pokemons
to me, then it's not a crime. But if you
get it and you're like, oh no, but no, stop
(20:34):
mailing poop, then it's a crime. It's harassment. Things to
keep in mind from your friends and stuff. They don't
want you to know. Don't mail us poop. Don't do it. Please.
My dog is speaking of feces samples. I've had to
do that many a time with my dog and she
is just really loving this ball right now. Okay, hey,
we're gonna end this segment right here, but we'll be
(20:54):
right back with more strange news and we're back. Um.
This is a story that that we've all been aware
of for for a little while, surprisingly not getting as
nearly as much press as as I think any of
us would have expected. But it is revolving around two
(21:14):
very uh important issues I think of of of the
time we're living in UM, the privacy of of data
and what can be done with your data when it is,
like you know, UM being hosted by these large companies.
And also obviously a huge one is is the tenuous
nature of of abortion law. Well, I mean it's not
(21:35):
really tenuous at all. It's it's technically the law of
the land that it's illegal, but there are different you know,
circumstances that will allow for an abortion in some states.
Basically it's obviously being sent back to the States because
of the overturning of the federal ro versus Weigh legislation case.
So it's it's something that is not going to just
(21:56):
you know, solidify overnight. But we are starting to see
cases kind of trickle through UM showing some future very
serious ramifications of this law. And I think, you know,
Matt and Ben were all of the mind that this
is something that will open the door to just folks
in desperation doing unsafe things. Potentially, you know, if they're
(22:18):
in need of an abortion and they can't they can't
get one legally. This is what we know about times
before abortion was legal federally, people were using all kinds
of horrific improvised methods and you know, going to underground
clinics that were you know, at the very least sketchy
and shady. Yeah, ro versus Wade. Again, to be clear,
(22:39):
I said this in the past. It's not it's not
an opinion, folks, It's a fact, regardless of value feel personally,
Roll versus Way being overturned does not illegalize abortion across
the board. It effectively only illegalizes it for the poor. Uh,
people who are privileged and well to do are going
to still be able to get that procedure and there's
(23:01):
it's not gonna change their lives. In particular. This is
to victimize the already disadvantaged. You know, I've seen it
phrase very similar to what you just said have been.
It doesn't outlaw abortion, it is outlaws safe abortion. UM. So,
this this case is a very kind of early example
of two of those things kind of colliding. The idea
(23:21):
of of of data privacy and security um and and
the idea of being prosecuted now for for seeking an
abortion or for taking manage into your own hands, um
and This case involves a young woman and her mother
UH in Madison County, Nebraska. UM, a forty one year
old woman, is now facing charges for helping her teenage
(23:46):
daughter uh illegally abort pregnancy UM using it would appear
like a morning after pill kind of situation. I haven't
seen I haven't read the full court documents, but based
on what I'm seeing in the in the reporting that's
out there, it's it's that um and. And then the
reason that we know what we know about this is
(24:09):
because the Facebook messages between the mother uh and and
and her daughter UM Jessica Burgess, by the way, is
the mother and the daughter is Celeste Burgess, are out there.
And that's because Facebook or metas or whatever gave them
over to law enforcement who were pursuing, you know, prosecution
of these two individuals um And. What we have is
(24:32):
a chain of of of communications between them referring to yeah,
one pill stops the hormones, and then you have to
wait twenty four hours to take the other one. That
sounds like either plan B right is there or there
are other ones that you can take later. I thought
that got there came a point where you pill would
no longer do the trick. That sounds like a Plan
B situation, but I'm not I'm not an expert. Um.
(24:55):
And then the mother writes, remember we burn the evidence,
I will finally be able to wear g means. I think,
I guess that's like, yeah, that's the daughter, excuse me celess.
So I guess he's referring to, hey, get my life back. Um.
There are some details in this story that are disturbing.
They do, they did report it as a miscarriage, and
then the fetus was They disposed of it themselves, the
(25:18):
mother and daughter, and they you know, basically got someone
else to help them do it. And then I think
when they realized that the authorities were onto them, they
like dug up the remains and and tried to burn
them or they were talking about doing that. There are
some some very very disturbing details in here. But again,
all of this comes from the fact that they couldn't
(25:40):
just do it, you know, properly. They couldn't just go
to a clinic and do it. I don't think money
is the issue here. This is literally like Nebraska has
already been a state that for a long time has
had very um, very difficult prohibitively difficult abortion laws. Um,
and this just made it even worse. So I'm marrying
the lead here again. The fact of the matter is
(26:00):
in the big part of the story is that Facebook
gave over these direct messages, these private messages between these
two users, you know. Um, and they did it in
response to a warrant. Metas did come out with a
statement to Motherboard to do the initial reporting on this thing.
Nothing in the valid warrant through received from local law
enforcement in early June prior to the Supreme Court decision
(26:23):
mentioned abortion. The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation,
and court documents indicate that police at the time were
investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned
and buried, not a decision to have an abortion. Both
of these warrants were originally accompanied by non disclosure orders,
which prevented us from sharing any information about them. The
(26:44):
orders have now been lifted. Another Metas Books person tweeted
this is from the Motherboard article and identical statement, shortly
before the company contacted Motherboard with this comment. Um, So
I don't know. This is really messy on so many levels.
I really want to hear you guys, thoughts, because it
does appear that the warrants were served before the Supreme
(27:04):
Court decision it was handed down, but that they handed
over the messages after the timeline is a little a
little tricky yet honestly metas position in this case is
that they are legally required to comply with those sorts
of warrants, and that part, unfortunately, is true. I agree
(27:26):
with you that the timeline is messy, and their their
statement regarding this has triggered this conversation about whether or
not they knew they were talking. They were giving police
information about an alleged illegal abortion. But still with that,
(27:48):
you have to wonder did they get the warrant and
then just say, Okay, we're giving profile info, we're giving
d M info, but we're not reading it ourselves. Like,
what what's the process there? Because the argument seems to
say that they themselves did not connect the dots between
condemning this person right and just complying with a warrant.
(28:12):
And and again, you know, it's a it's an interesting
argument because as far as I can tell, they would
be required right to comply with a warrant. You can't
just say no, that was a question that I had
and Matt, you know, I know you've brought stories to
the table in the past, or you've definitely been something
that I know has been on your radar UM involving
(28:32):
Apple and there end to end encryption UM when it
comes to eye message and you know, like text messages
between iPhone users UM, and they have what's called end
to end encryption, and there was that whole story, Uh,
I think you brought I can't remember exactly, but I
know them we've talked about where there was that shooter
UM and the government was trying to petition Apple to
(28:55):
like write like a back door, UH, so they could
get access to the the guy's phone UM because like
Apple even can't do it if they don't have the password,
and they were saying they wouldn't do it because it
would like it we could potentially, like you know, be
a vulnerability for like all of their users. I think
that one was specifically about getting into his phone. UM.
(29:16):
But also like Facebook, I just found this page that
says describes what does intend encryption? How does it work?
And Facebook on their own website describes it as uh,
it has extra security and protection to your messages and
calls and uh, and calls in a conversation so that
only you and whoever you're talking to you can see it.
And then it says no one can read your messages
(29:37):
or hear your calls. Accept the people who have these
special keys, because that's what the encryption key. Not even Facebook,
We couldn't even if we wanted to. Has something changed
since this fact was written. I don't understand how they're
able to say that they use end in encryption and
messenger and then give over specific d M s like
(29:59):
that when they say that they don't have the key.
That's a good question, but unfortunately I don't have the answer.
I've watched some really helpful videos on how end and
encryption works, and it is fascinating and theoretically that is correct.
What what you just read where it would be physically
impossible for someone to read those secured messages unless they
had the specific keys, right, because you need two keys
(30:21):
to to send it and read it to you need
two keys to read it on either end. Right. Um,
it's really cool the way messages get sent. I think
it's a lock box example that you can find on
YouTube right now, where I think we mentioned this on
the show before you can watch online. It's it shows
how if you put certain locks in a like you've
(30:42):
got three, three or four keys, I think that actually
are required to send a secure end end message like that.
I think it's a feature. I think it's sort of
like you know, having like private browsing in your Chrome,
you know tabs. I think you have to like specifically said,
I don't think all Facebook messages are end to end
encrypted because there's a section on this help center for
(31:04):
a messenger this says secret conversations, and then it goes
into all this stuff, and I think it's like a
like I like, I like a teacher. Here's what I'll add.
You should assume that anything you do on the internet
will one day become public knowledge. There is no real
secrecy that you can safely assume, even honestly. Yes, if
(31:26):
you look at the nuts and bolts technically of a
lot of end to end encryption. UM, I'm a big fan,
as you guys know. I'm always trying to get us
to move our group chat to things like signal or telegram,
uh for these reasons. But you cannot assume, you just
you simply cannot safely assume at this point that anything
you do online is private, okay to put a to
(31:49):
put a fine point on a conspiracy realist, all the
stuff you don't want people to know you're clicking on
at three am. Someone knows whether it's your I s P,
whether it's five Eyes, whether it's your pal interned Steve
as we're gonna learn later this week. Everybody's got one.
So I don't know. It's terrible though, that this applies
(32:11):
to people who are at some of the most vulnerable
positions in their lives, you know. And and the problem
with some of these statements is just like we were
talking about with the reasoning about invading the Hague, we're
seeing authorities, in this case, secular tech authorities, kind of
picking the story that's convenient for them, you know, And
it looks us I'm not saying their lying. I'm just
(32:33):
saying it feels very convenient. Guys. Can you just answer
me this. Why was there an investigation in the first place? Here?
I haven't found that that's the price. It has to
do with the disposing of the remains, um, but that
I'm not in any of this reporting. And again I
haven't read the full document seeing like why they were
suspected in the first place, to the point where they
(32:54):
sought this warrant um and also ultimately the warrant allowed
them to get access to their phone and stuff too.
So Nebraska has a, like I said, a very tight
um abortion law. Like even before this this overturning of Rev. Wade,
it's twenty weeks, I believe that's what it's been. Um.
So they were already, you know, with they were already
(33:17):
in reach of that law despite what happened with the
Supreme Court. But and but it was reported as a miscarriage, right,
they reported it that way, that's right. But then there
was something that didn't look right in the investigation. Perhaps
did you catch any of this? I just don't understand it.
I don't. I just don't understand how that that it
was a miscarriage, which is a terrible, horrific thing that
(33:40):
happens all the time to to families, couples, individuals, and
somehow someone decided it was time to investigate this miscarriage.
I just like that blows my mind. The line in
the n p R. Pieces police in Norfolk, Nebraska had
been investigating the woman Jessica Burgess and her daughter's a
Less Burns for allegedly mishandling the fetal remains of what
(34:03):
they've told police was celest still birth. So maybe like
they buried it in the first place, and they weren't
supposed to do that, and then they like to legal
burning imburial. Illegal burning imburial is what the that's what
it warrant was regarding. So they kind of told and
if you are complying with a warrant and you're met up, Uh,
(34:27):
the thing here is that I did. You can find
the requests online. You can find the Madison County, Nebraska stuff.
It's linked out, and reading over it this the accounts
of this warrant, you would almost have to be willfully
ignoring the crux of the investigation. They never used the
(34:50):
A word. They never say abortion in these docs, but
they do talk about like they heavily imply it is
a fetus. Um. You know, without speaking to someone directly
met up and we probably won't hear from them outside
the public statements they made, But without speaking to them,
it's it's kind of hard to guess how they're internal
(35:10):
logic was working here. But one of the reason I'm
really glad we're talking about the story is we do
live in a surveillance state and stuff like this when
it happens, this is not going to be the last. Sadly,
it's heartbreaking and it's frightening. It should frighten everybody. There
has bigger ramifications to beyond just what we're talking about here.
(35:31):
Like again, this is a complicated one because it involves
two massive zeitgeisty topics in terms of like the abortion laws,
availability to safety and all of that and the privacy stuff.
But I found this really great right up on a
reporter's committee h for a Free Press, I think it's
what it's called, UM Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Uh,
(35:52):
And they identify two massive wrinkles that this creates in
the ability the press to report on stuff like this. Uh.
And they this is what they say. It's gonna read
it because I think it does such a good job. One,
the availability of medication abortions creates a new wrinkle in
how the law treats the procedure. Historically, it was exceedingly
(36:14):
rare for abortion patients versus providers to be targeted by
law enforcement. Rather, providers would be identified through decoys and informants,
and abortions were often identified after complications prompted a trip
to the emergency room. Today, however, medication abortions are quite
safe and the pills can be obtained online. As a consequence,
investigators have an incentive to both target the suspected patient
(36:35):
with investigative tools and to use highly invasive means to
do so, as they did here. And one of those
would be going after like specifically going after whistleblowers or
or anonymous sources. Um and and that is going to
create almost like a witch hunt kind of atmosphere here
that I think has really scary long term ramifications. So
(36:59):
I did really think about that aspect of it, but
it could potentially create that, I don't know, so scary
stuff here, much more to impact than we can in
this uh this strange news section. So let's take a
break and digest some of the stuff and then come
back with one more piece of strange news. And we
(37:23):
have returned, Fellow conspiracy realists. It feels so good to
be back. What do we miss well, Donald Trump's in
the news, Elon Musk and a Twitter whistleblower in the news.
Cambodia is getting some of its history back. Check out
our episode on Museums and the providence of the things
they take. Uh, Steven Seagal going hard on the paint
(37:45):
for Russia in a move that will surprise nobody. And
I've got to get back on daily see guys at
some point just to talk trash about Steven Seagal. But
you'll see you'll see some of ours guys, guys coming
to hang out with us. Maybe no spoilers the last
speak story. We have rumbas. Anybody got a roomba play
along at home? I hope your room is going now.
(38:08):
I have a like an off brand Rumba esque thing
and we put big giant Google shoes on it. No,
it's not even a shark. It's like it's a It's
it's one I can't even I can't even pronounce his name.
It's it's real dumb guys is banging in the walls
getting stuck on stuff. Uh. Adding a big dumb Google
I just made it even more delightful. But yeah, I
don't know if Rumba was much smarter. Um, but this
(38:30):
is about as dumb of a smart vacuum as you
could possibly get. And that I know. Uh, you and
I are very much of the same mind on a
lot of things. So I'm gonna take a wild guess
and say that you do not have a rumba. There
was one in this house for quite a time. There
is no longer one in this house. Yes, okay, very
careful answer. I respected, I respect you, bro. For the record,
(38:53):
my mind is not Internet connected. Just for the record,
mine is not Internet connected. This one is just strictly
a remote, controllable little widget. It does not, you know,
have any access to That's what makes it smart. The
Internet is what smarts it up exactly. So here's the thing.
So Roomba. Roomba made quite a splash and they're very successful.
(39:16):
Rumba has a parent company called I Robots. Uh, And
there you know, there's a They're part of the fad
where you put a little eye in front of everything,
started by Apple and propagated out through numerous companies, included
our corporate overlords, I Heart Media, the Clear Channel. So
so Rumba got in the news for a while. And
(39:36):
this is a little older story about when it cover
it because it's not getting the attention it needs. I
Robot was purchased by Amazon, which been Amazon bought Roomba.
When you think of the Humble little Roomba looks like
a Pixar character in many ways. You probably don't think
of a company or a product that's worth one point
(39:58):
seven bill in dollars, which is what Amazon paid for it.
You know, do you know how far like this is
hurting Jeff's plan to kind of sort of get into
space again for eleven minutes, and that's very important to him.
His eleven minutes kind of sort of in space, not
really space whatever. So this is on the heels of
(40:20):
some very troubling things that Amazon has been doing. They
recently acquired a company called One Medical, US healthcare company,
and then right on the heels of that, they made
this offer to buy I Robot. Why why are they
doing these things? Well, they're not buying the little vacuums.
(40:42):
They're not super gas about the real estate that One
Medical has. They're super gas about the information it has
about you. We're talking about you made a great point, Matt,
wh We're talking about the smart aspect Rumba learns. That's
the thing people love about it, right, They're like, Oh,
it's kind of dumb and it's kind of bump bump
bump for a while, but eventually it figures out where
(41:04):
your furniture is, figures out the rooms, it figures out
the hallways, it maps them. And what a lot of
people didn't realize was that because this is connected to
the Internet, it shares that map, just like uh, just
like Amazon, Alexa and Google Home are so suspect to me.
(41:24):
That's why Nolan very glad that you're you're moving vacuum
cleaner is not Internet connected. This is not about products.
I'm gonna call it doubt. It's about the data. Because
now there is a If this all works out, Amazon
will have direct access to with no intermediary by the way,
(41:45):
no middleman, no gatekeeping, It will have direct access to
a full map of people's homes if they have room
bus For a lot of us, some people might be saying,
you know, what's the big deal, What's what's the big deal? Uh? I,
it doesn't bother me that people know where my laundry
room is, but consider that nothing again exists in a vacuum.
(42:10):
I've got to stop saying that so often. But it's
really bothering me these days. Because now if you are
part of one medical there will be medical information about you.
If you remember of Amazon Prime, then there's a lot
of stuff out there about you, and a lot of
conclusions that are drawn that you probably are not aware of.
You will be you will be flummixed a lot of
(42:33):
us listening today when you realize just how much info
there is on you to the point where I can
predict your behavior, which is something a lot of social
scientists have been looking for for decades. And what I
and what I say scientists too, I mean like DARPA
has been looking to do this for decades and they
got closer than you think a long time ago. So
(42:54):
now private companies are doing this and they're saying, look,
only I robot can check out these room bug maps.
But now if, like with Amazon at the helm of this,
then we don't know who would have access to that data. Um,
Amazon said they don't have any details to share, right.
(43:15):
Amazon is saying, no, it's not gonna Amazon is basically saying,
don't worry about it. You know what I mean, like, hey, guys, chill,
just be chill. So, uh, this announcement came on August five,
so later this month, as we record just last month
that you hear this, and it's crazy because they're not
(43:38):
the way these things work, doesn't It doesn't mean that
they're gonna get data from room BA homes going forward.
It means they're gonna get data ever since I robot
figured out how to do this. And if you talk
to people like Maurice Stuck, a former d o J
prosecutor and antitrust expert, you'll see that Amazon's like they're
(44:00):
assumed focus for this is more targeted advertising. The Amazon Alexe.
Here's when something breaks the room but knows you're it's
in the kitchen, you know what I mean? How how
how much more regular and specific can they get? And
this is also again this is a a concern of aggregation. Uh,
(44:21):
Matt off Air, Uh, we were talking a little bit
about the Amazon astro. I don't know if anybody has um.
I don't know how much experience do you think people
have with the Amazon astro. I think we've all we've
seen the commercial. Right, It's like you were talking about, Yeah,
(44:43):
tell me about the astro. I don't This is Yeah,
it's a tiny little robot that is way more expensive
than we can afford. But you know you've just got
an extra thousand dollars chilling, then hey, maybe you want
this Alexa on wheels that has a lot of cameras
and sensors and collects even more data on you what
(45:05):
you do and in this case kind of like room
but where you do it in your house. Uh, It's
just it's just super creepy. It's another one of these
things that if you add in the I robot info
with this Amazon, you know, if you happen to have
one of these robots, you basically just have all information
twenty pounds. It looks like a little Pixar cartoon. Uh.
(45:28):
It has voice commands, so of course you can hear YouTube.
It'll follow you around. It's got wheels if you I
put a little link in the in our chat here
and you can see that right now. Also, this thing
is kind of like a PS five. You have to
request and invite to buy it. As you said, Matt,
it's a thousand dollars right now. It's very cute, you know.
(45:52):
I'm sure it triggers some warm cuddly feelings for people. Um.
And it Also this is interesting Amazon is aware of
the concerns here because one of the big features advertised
for this also include this in the chat, is that
Amazon astro can can have its camera and microphone and
(46:13):
motion turned off with one button per Amazon. Per Jeff.
Also it uh, it can function as security. I don't
know if you guys had heard that part. It will
link up with your Ring subscription and Astro will patrol
and it will get this investigate activity. So so the
(46:37):
dog is where it's not supposed to be. Someone's breaking
into your house and then all of a sudden, which
is my Amazon Astro noise, Yeah, Danny is masturbating again.
Did you guys see that uh love Death in Robots piece?
That was kind of pick Sarry. It was kind of
(46:58):
like yeah with like it had like a them but type,
you know, Helper robot. They like it goes nuts and
it starts murdering everything. Uh, it goes somewhere more creative
than that eventually. No spoilers, but I did think that
one did a pretty good job of looking at the
like big picture dystopia that we are heading for. I
think it was partially inspired by things like the Astro. Uh.
(47:22):
And you know remember years back when we're talking about
the dog drones and I called it, man, it was
no hard thing to call, said, someone's gonna put a
gun on these, because that's how humans are. They're just
going to figure out the recoil and I got they
did it. So how far are these astro attachment's gonna go?
(47:43):
I mean businesses always seek to uh consolidate uh profits
while diversifying products. Right, not to be too Harvard business
about it, but this means that your astro in the
future might also have a room by included on it.
Maybe uh your room bow will becoming increasing way can
astro Uh they want to add these surveillance capabilities, and
(48:06):
then what happens when they start sort of mesh networking? Right?
What happens when you are at the secret Wizard of
Oz control room in Amazon and you can map an
entire neighborhood and maybe during times of domestic unrest, you
get warrant and you have to supply the information that
(48:29):
you have about that entire neighborhood where protests just happened
to be taking place. God, I just connect that that
old sidewalk app up right, It's just it's everything, It's
already there. They're just not all in one body yet.
(48:50):
Oh well, here's the other thing you're gonna you're gonna
love for anybody's feeling to U two spooked about this? Well,
as long as you don't live in a ranch style house,
you may have a little bit of respite. Because right
now Astro and Rumba cannot go up or downstairs. So
(49:12):
so hide in the basement, hide on the second floor,
you know what I mean, And don't put the Amazon
Alexa up there. Now. Of course, we have to point
out a lot of this right now, A lot of
these concerns are proactive. I would say, there hasn't been
any proof yet of an obsessive, super sophisticated amount of
(49:33):
data being used against people, uh in yet at this point. Right,
but we have to remember that governments can still request
this stuff from different corporations, and in many cases those
corporations must comply. Also, data can be used predictively. The
(49:54):
predecessor for what happened with Meta recently is Target. You know,
and Target has hidden income stream selling surveillance equipment to
other businesses. Like next time you're in the target, look
up at the ceiling. See how many cameras there are.
There are a ton, They're very good at it. Well,
I just wanted to add, like we we we this
all kind of like meshes together. No point intended with
(50:18):
um the ring camera discussion that we've been having. And
I just found out that apparently Amazon is launching a
ring camera generated like like hidden camera show like in
America's stupidest criminals are like the funniest you know, front
yard goofs or whatever. And I need to look into
(50:39):
it further. I don't know you would think you would
have to be used or submitted because you know, like again,
I have the stupid app for Ring, and I know
there's a way that I can opt out of it,
but I get all these messages for this like neighborly whatever,
and and it comes with videos attachment be like creepy
prowler guy, what's that in his hand? And you look
at the video? Um, so I under you know how
(51:00):
this submission would work or if it literally is just
like well we if you if you read the terms
of service close enough, you'd see that we own all
this footage. Uh Wanda Sykes isst hosting it by the
normalized surveillance while vilifying the disadvantaged. For sure, I want
to finish what I was saying though about Target, because
(51:21):
Target used their data to predict a pregnancy that a
teenager and not told her parents about, and the parents
found out about it via target, So it's important to
remember that's the predecessor. Now, I didn't mean to roll
over you, man. Can I make one last point on
the rumor game show thing. I think you're right on there.
It feels like they're just increasing people's desire to keep
(51:44):
track of that ring footage and uploaded to neighbors. I
think this is a really great to a great way
to incentivize that, similar to America's funny sol videos where
if you offer people maybe just two hundred dollars or
five dollars, if your submission gets onto the TV show,
it's gonna that means more people are going to be
uploading their own videos for sure. That's right. The show
(52:06):
is going to be called Ring Nation, and they do
claim that they will be securing permission and then the
videos could come from other sources too, But it's all
going to be a big giant incentive for uploading your
videos to like, you know, whatever cms that they set
up for this thing. And um, it's a big old
commercial for ring and to to sew this up, folks,
(52:28):
to put a frightening bow on it without sounding like
a broken record or a whistleblower who is suffering from
Alzheimer's and repetitive motion of thought. Uh, this stuff is happening,
It's there is precedent to it, but this is untrammeled territory,
which means that again, technology is outpacing legislation. And since
(52:52):
the passage of the Patriot Act in the United States,
your rights to privacy in this kind tree and abroad,
by the way, shout out five eyes have eroded and
far past what you may be comfortable thinking about or considering.
So this is a step further down that direction. And
(53:15):
we want to hear stories. I definitely want to know
any weird things that have happened to you in these
our days of absolute surveillance, which are you know, we're
in the nascent days, but it's happening your kids, your grandkids.
If this continues on a current trend, Uh, they're going
to look at privacy is something kind of anachronistic and
(53:36):
old fashioned, and they'll do so with good reason. So
let us know what spooky things have happened to you. Uh,
let us know your take on mailing poop. Let us
know what what role you think private corporations should play
in privacy or security or the lack thereof. As always,
(53:57):
we can't wait to hear from you. We try to
be easy to find line correct. You can find us
on Facebook, you can find this on Twitter, and you
can find us on YouTube with the handle conspiracy Stuff.
On Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff show Yes. If you
would like to contact us with your voice, you can
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It's a voicemail system. When you call in, you'll hear Ben.
(54:19):
Please give yourself a cool nickname that we can jot
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And now you've got three minutes, say whatever you'd like.
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(54:42):
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want you to Know
(55:02):
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