September 7, 2021 • 38 mins
There's a lot of tech news about the role of tech in surveillance. It's not particularly happy news. We also talk about how Android users are watching more TikTok videos than YouTube videos. And I feel old.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. This is the tech
news for September seventh one. It's a Tuesday, and we
(00:27):
got a ton of stuff to cover, and a lot
of it is pretty heavy, so let's get to it.
Tech Times reports that the Russian government has cracked down
on six virtual private network services as the country is
nearing a parliamentary election. And virtual private networks a k a.
VPNs have lots of different uses. A lot of companies
(00:50):
use VPNs for employees to log into before they use
corporate systems. One big reason to use VPNs is that
it provides a shield when browsing stuff on the Internet.
So the way it works from a very high level
is you log into a VPN essentially a server, and
then the VPN does all the info fetching for you.
(01:13):
So to someone who is snooping from the outside looking
at your connection, all they would see is that you
were connected to a VPN. They wouldn't be able to
see what you were doing beyond that. So if you
were researching stuff. Maybe you're researching stuff that the government
would disapprove of. Let's say you're in Russia and you
wanted to research something that perhaps the government wasn't in
(01:35):
favor of, Well, using a VPN, it would be very
difficult for them to figure that out. Now, this is,
of course, assuming that the VPN in question is encrypting
all communications that are taking place and also taking appropriate
steps to protect users. So if that's all true, then yeah,
it stands as a way for people to access stuff
(01:57):
without outsiders necessarily being privy to it. Anyway, if the
government feels like this is a bad thing, then the
really the easiest course of action is to block VPN
services in that country, and that's what Russia has done.
So those services include big names. If you've been listening
to podcasts or watching videos, you probably heard some of
(02:18):
these because they often advertise on those So it includes
stuff like Nord VPN, Express VPN, i p Vanish VPN,
Ola VPN, keep Solid VbN, and Speedify VPN. Now, according
to Russian representatives, this whole move has nothing to do
with the elections. It's to block services to curb a
(02:40):
legal activity such as the spread of child pornography, which
is frequently kind of the messaging that you will hear
whenever any government starts to crack down on stuff like this.
Russian representatives have also threatened companies like Google and Apple
for allowing an app that was created by Alexey Naval
these organization. He's a critic of Vladimir Putin, and so
(03:05):
the you know, the fact that that's also happening in
line with the shutdown of vp NS starts to kind
of point towards reasons other than curbing a legal activity. Um.
In fact, the Russian government has said that Google and
Apple are essentially interfering with Russian elections, which, you know,
if I can take a moment to add some opinion,
(03:27):
that's pretty freaking rich coming from Russia, country that has
interfered with elections around the world, including US elections a
few times, and will no doubt continue to do so. Anyway,
it's a good idea to pay attention to these sorts
of things, because while it's happening in Russia right now,
that country is only one of many that has political
(03:49):
leaders trying to get a firmer grip on the flow
of information. Some of those other countries are pretty darn
close to home. Some of them might actually be home.
A couple of weeks ago, I talk about the n
s O Group. That's a company out of Israel that
groups responsible for designing malware called Pegasus, and it allows
an external user access to infected devices remotely. So in
(04:12):
other words, if you infect a device with this malware,
you then can access that device in various ways, including
things like accessing a smartphones, microphone, and camera. Essentially, NSO
Group creates software that turns various devices into and like
you know, computers and smartphones into spies. That's what it
really gets down to. It it allows for surveillance. The
(04:36):
NSO Group markets this technology to various governments and does
so under the protection of the Israeli government. That means
that technically the n s A Group is not supposed
to market this to any country that is on unfriendly
terms with Israel. The company has shown a pretty blatant
disregard for accountability. It has made claims that I argue
(04:57):
our contradictory. For example, the company says it prohibits customers
from misusing the malware to target say that customer's own
citizens in an effort to exert authoritary and control. In
other words, n s A group says, no, this is
an order for us to protect against things like acts
of terrorism, but there have been numerous reports saying that
(05:21):
n s O groups customers include uh repressive and oppressive
governments that are using that technology against journalists, activists and
their own citizens. However, the company also says at the
same time that it has no way of monitoring how
its customers actually use its products, so that that ends
(05:45):
up being a contradiction right there, saying Okay, well, we're
only going to sell it to people who are using
it properly. Also, there's no way for us to know
how they're using it. Well, that's like n s O
groups saying all right, here you go, but don't go
using this in ways we don't approve of because there's
no way for us to track you. Right Like that's
the message there anyway. A an organization called Citizen Lab
(06:07):
recently released a report. In fact, they've released a few,
but the most recent report shows that it had identified
nine activists in Bahrain who had their devices compromised by
the n s O group Pegasus malware between June of
twenty and February of this year, and one thing that
(06:27):
makes this malware particularly effective is that it can infect
iOS devices through what is called a zero click attack,
essentially a message in I message, which means the target
does not have to click on like a malicious link
or anything like that to activate the malware. That means
that the whole advice of don't click on any links
(06:49):
you don't trust doesn't even apply here because it doesn't
require a link. Like I literally, the morning that I'm
recording this, I received a message on a different messaging
service that was a link attack, like it was trying
to get me to click on a link and to
enter my credentials. They're fortunately, even early in the morning,
(07:10):
before my coffee, I recognized it as an attack. Anyway.
More human rights organizations are calling on n s O
group to be held accountable for facilitating authoritarian acts and
furthering the capabilities of repressive regimes. They pointed out that
entities like the Bahraini government could use these tools to
seek out, detain, and even torture targets that the government
(07:34):
determines are you know, a problem, and by a problem,
I mean people who just happened to disagree with the government,
not necessarily someone who's like a terrorist or anything like that. So,
like I said, a lot of journalists and diplomats have
been targets of NSO groups Pegasus malware from various customers
of n s O group, and it's an ongoing problem
(07:57):
that just seems to be getting worse. All right, let's
stay on theme because this next story ties in with
both of the previous ones. Pro Publica has published a piece.
It's a lot of alliteration there about WhatsApp and a
contradiction in WhatsApps UH brand identity as a secure messaging platform. Alright, So,
(08:18):
just in case you're not familiar, the elevator pitch for
WhatsApp is that it is an end to end encrypted
messaging service. That means that if you and a buddy
are messaging and you're using WhatsApp, every message you send
to your buddy is encrypted and can only be decrypted
on the other end of that communication channel. Your buddy
is the only person who has the correct decrypt key
(08:41):
to read those messages. And then every message your buddy
sends to you is also encrypted, and only you hold
the decrypt key for those messages, so no one else
can read them. The same is true for any images
or videos, or links or anything else that's sent on
WhatsApp between the two of you. And WhatsApp is an
incredibly popular messaging service, not as much in the United States,
(09:05):
but in other parts of the world very much so.
So according to the company, no one outside of you
and your buddy would be able to understand what your
messages are, and that Facebook, which is the owner of WhatsApp,
would not be able to see those messages. WhatsApp would
not be able to have any idea of what it
was you were sending between the two of you, because
it would be encrypted, and so it's private and secure. However,
(09:29):
the company also has hundreds of contract workers whose job
it is to moderate or police content sent across WhatsApp,
And you might think, wait a minute, how is it
possible to moderate or police content if no one can
see the unencrypted stuff except for the users involved. Well,
(09:51):
there is one really big exception to this. If someone
were to tag an incoming message as being against WhatsApps policies,
Like you tag a message and you say that it's
spam or that it's abusive, or you know, something along
those lines, then that sends an alert to WhatsApp to
review the communication. So some contract workers somewhere, maybe Austin, Texas,
(10:15):
because there's a lot of them there, And this is
a person who technically does not work for WhatsApp or
for Facebook. They work for another company that serves as
the kind of the employment center for these contract workers
who then are contracting with WhatsApp. That person would be
sent the unencrypted offending message from the receiver, as well
(10:39):
as the four previous messages that preceded the one that
allegedly was against the policy. So in other words, you know,
if you receive a message, your side un encrypts that message.
From that point forward, that message is in plain text.
You can read it. So if someone were to get
access to your phone, they could read all that content. Right,
(10:59):
if they try to intercept the message, it would be encrypted,
but once it's on your device, they can read it. Well,
that's what this system does. If you flag something in WhatsApp,
it sends the unencrypted message on for review. Now I
point all this out because this is a sort of
back door through the security mess measures, and you can
(11:21):
kind of understand why it exists and that any platform
wants to reassure its users that those users are going
to be protected from harassment and other abuse. But on
the other hand, backdoors through security systems are almost always
a bad idea, and that's because of the possibility that
someone somewhere is going to abuse that exception to the
(11:42):
secure system and then turn it to nefarious purposes. Moreover,
since What's Apps brand is so heavily geared towards, you know,
privacy and security in communication, this really undermines the brand's position.
It undermines the rand's actual identity. Pro Publica also points
(12:03):
out that Facebook analyzes tons of metadata related to WhatsApp communications.
Metadata In case you're not familiar with the term, that's
information about information. So really it's all the stuff about
a communication except for the content of the communication itself.
Meta data can include who was involved in the communication,
(12:25):
like which were the parties that we're talking with each other?
What time were messages being sent back and forth? Where
were people when they were actually sending information? You know,
you pair it with like geolocation data, that kind of thing,
and you can determine a lot of stuff through meta
data analysis. You wouldn't know what the actual content of
the messages were, but you might be able to hazard
(12:45):
a guess just by examining enough meta data to figure out,
you know, what's going on, and that too, is a
huge threat to privacy and security. WhatsApp users were understandably
really upset when Facebook first denounced that some data collected
from WhatsApp would then be shared to Facebook proper, and
(13:06):
that the company itself would get into hot water because
reps from Facebook had previously sworn to EU officials that
incorporating that kind of ability was technically impossible between WhatsApp
and Facebook. They said, yeah, there's no way for us
to do it, even if we wanted to. We don't
want to want to, but even if we wanted to,
we couldn't do it. Then they turned around and said, hey,
(13:28):
guess what we're doing. So that was not, you know, consistent,
But yeah, it's just something to keep in mind, and
it helps remind us that most of Facebook's revenue depends
upon the company collecting and then leveraging, or if you prefer,
exploiting information about users. So with that in mind, it's
(13:49):
a really safe bet to assume that any product coming
out of Facebook contributes to that pursuit that even on
the face of it, if it isn't all about acting
your data in order to sell more stuff to you
somewhere down the line. That is what's going on, because
that's Facebook's business. That's how Facebook makes money. So yeah,
(14:12):
important to know. And it also explains why Facebook was
willing to shell out billions and billions of dollars to
acquire WhatsApp in the first place. So all the things
that people were worried about when Facebook did that are
kind of manifesting or becoming evident. Yeah, so important to remember.
We're gonna have some more stories that kind of relate
(14:34):
back to some of the themes we've already talked about.
I know it gets kind of dark and oppressive, but
it's important to know about them. But hey, I don't
know about you, but I could use a quick break.
All right, we're back and it's time to go down
(14:54):
on in Australia. Um, sorry, that was terrible. I had
to introduce a little of ity with my terrible terrible
Uh not even Australian accent, you can't even give it
that much. But yeah, my terrible attempt. Because there's a
new bill that's introducing some troubling powers for law enforcement
with regard to online information in Australia. UH, there's this
(15:17):
piece of legislation. It's called the Surveillance Legislation Amendment UH
Parentheses Identify and Disrupt INDO Parentheses Bill, and it introduces
three new powers for law enforcement. The first is that
law enforcement will be able to obtain a quote data
disruption warrant end quote and that in turn gives law
(15:38):
enforcement the right to copy, delete, or modify data in
order to disrupt it. Now, that alone is horrifying, and
I'll get to why I find it horrifying in just
a bit. But second, the second power is that law
enforcement will be able to apply for and obtain a
(15:58):
quote Network activit any warrant end quote that gives them
the power to collect data from networks and devices that
are believed to be used or maybe used with relation
to illegal activity. The third power is that they can
obtain an quote account takeover warrant end quote, and that
would give them the authority to do exactly what that
(16:20):
sounds like, to take over an account entirely in order
to gather information on an investigation. So, for example, if
you if the Australian Police think that you know Jimmy
the crook is is involved in a criminal operation, which
I mean seems logical because he's called Jimmy the Crook.
(16:42):
Then they could take over They could get a warrant
to take over Jimmy the Crook's Facebook profile and post
as Jimmy the Crook in an effort to gather information
about Jimmy the Crooks accomplices and potentially have like a
full sting operation. But yeah, as you get down to it,
this is all terrible, And again I totally get that
(17:03):
for law enforcement, online communications stand as a huge challenge.
Criminals can and do use all sorts of platforms to
communicate and coordinate, and it can be a challenge to
disrupt that, and it sure would be valuable to be
able to go in there and manipulate stuff, perhaps setting
up a sting operation to catch criminals in the act
(17:24):
and bring them to justice. But these provisions give way
too much power to law enforcement. So imagine that there's
a legal process for the police to get a warrant,
So they do have to at least go through the
steps of getting a warrant, but let's assume that it's
not too difficult to do that. So they go get
a warrant and then they can go in and manipulate
stuff that you have posted online. They can go in
(17:47):
and change the things you have posted. Arguably, they could
manipulate the stuff you post in such a way that
you appear to have posted incriminating material when in fact
you did not do any such thing. So an authoritarian
government could literally manufacture evidence against you, and then you
(18:07):
could be held accountable for something you never did. This
is the equivalent of the trope you see, and usually
it's in a comedy where a cop drops a brown
paper bag next to someone that picks it up and says, well,
what do we have here? Illicit drugs? It's kind of
like that, but on the data side of things. Now,
that's just one scenario in which this bill becomes a nightmare.
(18:30):
But again, it wouldn't even take an authoritarian government for
this to go wrong. Building in systems that would allow
law enforcement to do these sorts of things means that
you have to create vulnerabilities so that the police can
go in and do it. Right, you have to have
a way for police to access those platforms and those
accounts in order to do this data manipulation. However, if
(18:53):
you do that, if you create those vulnerabilities. It gives
the chance for other people to potentially exploit those. Now
I've used this analogy many times before, but here we go.
It's like you've got a gold reserve and you store
tons of gold bars in that reserve, and you've got
this huge vault, and you have a solid vault door
(19:15):
with like time locks and all this complicated stuff, and
it's really it's like practically impossible to break through. However,
you also include a little back door in the vault
that's protected by a cheap padlock because you need to
occasionally get into the vault and you don't want to
go through the trouble of unlocking the big door. Well,
anytime you create exceptions to a secure system, you essentially
(19:40):
nullify the security. So no matter how you shake it,
this bill is bad news. It creates far too much
surveillance power on the law enforcement side, and it introduces
the possibility for bad actors to take advantage of a
system for their own purposes. Heck, it also means people
can end up with a plausible alibi for all online communications,
(20:02):
because if there exists a way to go in and
change someone else's stuff online, perhaps even to the point
of fabricating messages on behalf of another person. Well that
what the waters are then moneyed right when it comes
to holding someone accountable for their online actions, because you
could conceivably argue that you never posted something incriminating because
(20:24):
there is a system that exists that allows others to
change what you post without your consent. So, in other words,
it can actually weaken legal cases rather than strengthen them. Now,
there's no word yet on how big I sps and
platforms are going to work within this legislation in Australia.
But this is the kind of stuff that really worries me,
(20:46):
and the hits just keep on coming. So maybe you've
heard of a service called proton mail. Maybe you use it.
This email service uses end to end encryption to keep
communications private between users, and just like WhatsApp, the service's
reputation depends heavily upon that fact, the idea that your
communications are secure through proton mail, and the bottom line
(21:10):
is that you use proton mail to protect your communication
from folks snooping on you. Well, now that services kind
of on the hot seat in the public eye because
proton Mail recently responded to a demand from police in
Switzerland to give up the IP address belonging to a
climate activist in France, which Proton Mail did. So why
(21:32):
were the Swiss concerned about a French climate activist, Well,
that's because the French authorities asked the Swiss for help.
It was ultimately the French authorities that wanted to track
down this activist who was responsible or you know, activists
who are responsible for organizing various protests in France, high
(21:53):
profile protests, and so these authorities called up their buddies
in Switzerland and they said, hey, love the chocolate, do
us a solid and lean on proton mail to give
us the IP address for this activist. Okay, and the
Swiss dead proton Mail, I should point out, is headquartered
in Switzerland, and thus when the Swiss authorities came knocking,
(22:15):
the company didn't really have a whole lot of options,
at least from a legal standpoint, and the CEO of
proton said as much that the company is legally bound
to follow local laws, and so there was really no
recourse other than to comply with the demand from the
Swiss authorities. The actual communication and the email service remains encrypted,
(22:35):
so the company legitimately cannot read any of the materials
sent through those addresses. They cannot reveal what communications were set,
Nor does proton mail have information on who owns a
particular email address. But they can give you an IP
address associated with a specific email address. They just can't
say definitively this email address belongs to you know, Joan
(22:59):
Smith or something. But as I mentioned earlier, metadata can
reveal an awful lot about a person, So it's quite
probable that French authorities are using the information to try
and track down activists who have arranged those really effective
protests in France around issues like affordable housing and climate concerns.
So pretty scary stuff. Sticking with tech and politics, but
(23:22):
now moving to the absurd. Business Insider reports that thirteen
House Republicans in the United States sent a letter to
Marissa Meyer, the quote president and chief executive officer of
Yahoo in quote uh and they were saying that she
should better well not hand over any personal information of
(23:42):
you know, any Republicans or anyone really over to an
investigative committee that's looking into the January six insurrection in Washington,
d C. Only okay, hey, House Republicans, you thirteen folks.
Marissa Meyer stepped down from Yahoo back in tween, so
she hasn't been in charge of that company for several years.
(24:03):
She wasn't in charge of the company during the whole
lead up to the twenty election, let alone the insurrection
on January six, and the fact that no one decided
to fact check that or I don't know, do a
simple Internet search. I mean they could have even used
Yahoo to do it. That speaks volumes not just about
tech literacy, but arguably just playing literacy. It's an embarrassing
(24:27):
display of ignorance. Anyway. At the heart of the matter
is the issue of one party in government power using
its authority to demand information and records about another party,
and doing so with companies like I s p s
and social media platforms and companies that provide email and
telecommunications companies and more. And to be clear, I think
(24:49):
there is merit in that concern. I think we do
need a thorough investigation into the January six riots, including
an investigation into whether or not anyone in government facil
ialitated or encourage the insurrection, into what degree as to
whether or not it was a criminal degree. I think
all of that needs to happen. However, I also think
we have to be careful in how that investigation advances.
(25:12):
Otherwise you could imagine a future in which whichever party
happens to be in power can lean on companies in
order to repress political opponents. That's not good. That's authoritarian,
no matter which way you you subscribe politically. And anyone
who has listened to me for a little while probably
has a pretty good feel for where my personal politics are.
(25:34):
So you know, it's not easy for me to necessarily
side with conservatives about data surveillance, but some things I
think need to be off the table. However, I also
want to make clear those rules have to apply across
the board, not just two Democrats who are looking into this,
but period to everyone, for all time, because otherwise it
(25:56):
becomes a free for all, and it's a nightmare. Now.
I'm pretty sure that a few weeks ago I mentioned
that El Salvador representatives were announcing that the company would
make bitcoin its official currency that becomes effective today, and
in preparation for that, El Salvador purchase around four hundred bitcoin.
Would plans to buy a lot more in order to
you know, make this transition. The four hundred bitcoin that
(26:20):
El Salvador purchased amounts to around twenty million dollars in value.
The country is aiming to make bitcoin legal tender alongside
the US dollar, which until today had served as the
nation's official currency. Citizens in El Salvador will at least
theoretically be able to use bitcoin for all financial transactions
within the country, including paying taxes. While cryptocurrency fans might
(26:44):
be excited, the same is not true for citizens inside
El Salvador. The majority of citizens have expressed concern about
this change. Some point to the fact that criminals often
rely on bitcoin in order to launder money from their
illegal exploits, and that El Salvador has a history of corruption,
including with the present government, and that might mean that
(27:06):
that corruption is about to get a whole lot worse
in that country. Other people in El Salvador are worried
that the change is going to have a negative impact
on their personal finances. The volatility of bitcoin is well established,
and so there's a legit fear that stuff like pensions
could get wiped out by another big dip in the
bitcoin market, just like the one we saw earlier this year. Now,
(27:29):
the currency has recovered quite a bit since it had
that dip, it hasn't gotten back to the all time
highs it was in in early spring, but it has
recovered a lot of the value that it lost, but
not all of it, and the value still is fluctuating
quite a lot. As I record this. The government in
(27:49):
El Salvador has had to respond to emerging issues during
the adoption process, including putting a hold on a digital
wallet app that's backed by the government. So it's the
Hill El Salvador Bitcoin app, and it's been but on
hold because of a high demand, a greater demand than
they expected, and that it was starting to tax the servers.
(28:12):
A significant population within El Salvador may not even be
able to access the cryptocurrency at all because there is
a significant digital divide in the country. So a lot
of people have no computer or smartphone. They would have
no way to access a digital wallet, which means they
can't even participate in that part of the economy. Now,
you might wonder why El Salvador is depending upon a
(28:36):
currency like bitcoin at all, or why it was dependent
upon the US dollar beforehand. Well, some countries like they're
at a point where they would not be able to
offer up a stable currency. It could be a currency
that is uh that fluctuates wildly in value, which is
not financially stable for all the people of that country.
(28:58):
So they in this case El Salvador was dependent upon
a larger, more stable uh country that of the United States.
At least when we get to the value of the dollar,
it's larger and more stable, uh. And that the switch
to bitcoin means that you're no longer dependent upon another
nation's currency. Bitcoin, of course is you know, it's it's
(29:22):
agnostic as far as nationality is concerned. So there's that
as well. Plus there was that whole corruption stuff that
was talking about. There are several reasons, none of them
are necessarily great for the majority of El Salvador's population,
and I am concerned about that. We've got a few
more news items to cover before we close out, But
(29:45):
before I get to that, let's take another quick break. Okay,
So The Verge has an article that's titled Automated hiring
software is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable job candidates. And
the piece cites a study from the Harvard Business School
(30:08):
that's looking into such software. And you've probably heard about
this type of software. Employers use it to come through
job applications, and they do it so that they can
weed out applicants who are just not suitable for a
particular position and then just focus on the ones who
are quote unquote the best fit. So the whole idea
is just, you know, not to eliminate folks who aren't
(30:30):
a good fit, but really define the right people to
match with the right job, which ideally is the best
solution for everyone because the job applicant lands a gig
for which they were best suited and the company ends
up getting the best candidate to fill a position. Only
that's not what's necessarily happening. According to the study. The
report says that software like what I just described is
(30:51):
actually rejecting millions of people who are qualified for the
positions that they apply for, and it contributes to an
issue in which there are people who are ready and
able and willing to work, but they're not able to
land a position because of these issues. That's bad news
for everyone in this system. It's really bad news for
all the people who are trying to land a job
(31:13):
because it means they consistently can't. But it's also bad
news for the employers because they are potentially missing out
on hiring the perfect candidate because some AI software mistakenly
put their application on the rejection pile. According to the
report of U S Employers and of Fortune five companies
(31:34):
use this kind of software to filter through job applicants.
As for the reasons behind the high rejection error, those
are many and they are varied. It really depends upon
which criteria the software is weighing as being the most
important in order to weed out unsuitable applications. So one
example that the Verge points out is that the software
(31:54):
could reject an application that includes an employment gap of
six months or more. Now, that would have meant that
I would have been eliminated once upon a time, because
I worked for a company for seven years steadily employed.
But then they eliminated my position. So I wasn't fired.
I just didn't have a job anymore. I realized the
(32:16):
distinction is a fine one, and I must admit it
was lost upon me at the time and arguably still is.
But anyway, you know, I was out of work for
six months while trying to get another job. And it
wasn't that I was unqualified. It wasn't that I wasn't
looking for work. I was doing both of those things.
It was just a really bad time to be out
(32:37):
of work when it happened to me, and I was
caught up in that it was just a bad job market. Well,
that sort of thing happens all the time, and this
type of criteria in software then exacerbates it. Right if
the software just says, oh, well, this person is not
reliable because they haven't had a job in six months,
that doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on the person. It could
(32:58):
reflect poorly on everything else, but then the person gets
the punishment for it. Meanwhile, you have this growing pool
of people who are seeking jobs who are getting rejected,
so they're back in the job hunt and they're looking
for more stuff, so they're more likely to apply to
lots of different positions for which they're qualified in the
hopes of landing something. But that means that the companies
(33:18):
that are posting those positions are going to see even
more applicants as more rejections join the job pool, and
that means that they get flooded with applicants, which means
that they feel like they have to rely upon this
kind of software in order to do that initial sorting.
And thus we see the problem get worse and it
feeds upon itself. Cycle after cycle, and as the software
(33:41):
becomes more entrenched in this hiring process, it gets harder
to shift to a different approach. Now, I wish I
had a happy ending to the story, but unless companies
across industries make a concerted effort to change, or unless
the organizations that offer these services work really hard to
eliminate those errors, this is going to keep going. And yes,
(34:04):
I recognize the irony that some of those jobs seeking
companies have advertised on this show. Now, to be clear,
I think their mission is admirable. The idea of let's
make it easier for the right people to find the
right jobs. I think that's great. That's a fantastic mission.
I also think that, at least in some cases, the
(34:24):
execution of that mission really needs some work. Analytics firm
app Any reports that Android users are spending more time
watching content on TikTok than on YouTube on a monthly basis,
and that this has been going on since August of
last year here in the United States, and over in
the UK it's been going on since May of last year.
(34:45):
So on average, users were spending around twenty two hours
and forty minutes per month watching content on YouTube, but
a full twenty four hours per month watching content on TikTok.
That's a lot of TikTok because those videos tend to
be pretty short, and YouTube has been leaning harder toward
promoting long form content. So it's two totally different content strategies.
(35:08):
So for TikTok to overtake YouTube is pretty darn impressive
because that's so many videos. All I can say is
that I contributed more toward YouTube because I watched maybe
five or six TikTok videos a month because I'm old
and I'm out of touch. That's not even really a joke.
It's more of a true statement. But the report was
(35:29):
focused solely on Android devices. I do not have any
details about iOS devices, but I would be shocked if
it was a much different story. I figured it's probably
somewhere all on the same lines. Also, while users were
spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, I should
point out YouTube still has way more active users than
TikTok does, so when it comes down to overall numbers,
(35:51):
YouTube is still well in the lead. But it was
interesting to see the viewing trends are favoring TikTok. And
our final story is about a man named Gilbert Michaels,
who recently received a prison sentence of four years for
the crime of selling printer toner for way too much
money to small businesses and nonprofit organizations. The seventy nine
(36:12):
year old had been selling Toner to these smaller entities
for decades at a huge markup, sometimes up to ten
times the actual market price for Toner, which if you've
ever shot for Toner you know is already wicked expensive.
And he is the good old telemarketer fraud approach to
do it, and it was effective. He was doing this
(36:33):
as far back as the nineteen seventies, and prosecutors said
that in one six year span he made one twenty
six million dollars defrauding clients and selling them Toner at
elevated prices. Michaels was found guilty on charges of mail fraud,
money laundering, and conspiracy back in two thousand nineteen, so
this was just his sentencing trial. He had already been
(36:55):
found guilty of the crimes and this story is pretty awful.
So essentially Michael's and his conspirators would contact these various targets,
these small businesses and charities, often posing as representatives for
legit vendors, companies that had an established relationship with the
targets and had sold them toner in the past, so
(37:17):
they would essentially pose as these legitimate vendors, and then
they would say, oh, so the price of toner has increased, however,
we will continue to sell you toner at the lower price,
you know, to help you out. So go ahead and
agree to purchase the next box of toner, and then
they would get someone to sign over on that. They
(37:38):
would then send the toner, but they would send an
invoice with an h an enormously inflated price for the toner,
so instead of that lower price they had said on
the phone and ends up being a much much higher price.
And then they would threaten legal action and UH and
collections agencies and such if the target refused to pay up,
(37:59):
or they would charge exorbitant restocking fees if the clients
returned the toner. So it was definitely shady, illegal stuff.
So yeah, not all tech crime involves cryptocurrency and hacking.
Sometimes it just involves good old fraud on the telephone
and some insanely expensive toner. And that's the tech news
(38:19):
for Tuesday, September seven, One if you have suggestions for
things I should cover on the show, any tech companies
or technologies that you're interested in, or trends in tech.
Reach out to me on Twitter. The handle is tech
Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
(38:45):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. This is the tech
news for September seventh one. It's a Tuesday, and we
(00:27):
got a ton of stuff to cover, and a lot
of it is pretty heavy, so let's get to it.
Tech Times reports that the Russian government has cracked down
on six virtual private network services as the country is
nearing a parliamentary election. And virtual private networks a k a.
VPNs have lots of different uses. A lot of companies
(00:50):
use VPNs for employees to log into before they use
corporate systems. One big reason to use VPNs is that
it provides a shield when browsing stuff on the Internet.
So the way it works from a very high level
is you log into a VPN essentially a server, and
then the VPN does all the info fetching for you.
(01:13):
So to someone who is snooping from the outside looking
at your connection, all they would see is that you
were connected to a VPN. They wouldn't be able to
see what you were doing beyond that. So if you
were researching stuff. Maybe you're researching stuff that the government
would disapprove of. Let's say you're in Russia and you
wanted to research something that perhaps the government wasn't in
(01:35):
favor of, Well, using a VPN, it would be very
difficult for them to figure that out. Now, this is,
of course, assuming that the VPN in question is encrypting
all communications that are taking place and also taking appropriate
steps to protect users. So if that's all true, then yeah,
it stands as a way for people to access stuff
(01:57):
without outsiders necessarily being privy to it. Anyway, if the
government feels like this is a bad thing, then the
really the easiest course of action is to block VPN
services in that country, and that's what Russia has done.
So those services include big names. If you've been listening
to podcasts or watching videos, you probably heard some of
(02:18):
these because they often advertise on those So it includes
stuff like Nord VPN, Express VPN, i p Vanish VPN,
Ola VPN, keep Solid VbN, and Speedify VPN. Now, according
to Russian representatives, this whole move has nothing to do
with the elections. It's to block services to curb a
(02:40):
legal activity such as the spread of child pornography, which
is frequently kind of the messaging that you will hear
whenever any government starts to crack down on stuff like this.
Russian representatives have also threatened companies like Google and Apple
for allowing an app that was created by Alexey Naval
these organization. He's a critic of Vladimir Putin, and so
(03:05):
the you know, the fact that that's also happening in
line with the shutdown of vp NS starts to kind
of point towards reasons other than curbing a legal activity. Um.
In fact, the Russian government has said that Google and
Apple are essentially interfering with Russian elections, which, you know,
if I can take a moment to add some opinion,
(03:27):
that's pretty freaking rich coming from Russia, country that has
interfered with elections around the world, including US elections a
few times, and will no doubt continue to do so. Anyway,
it's a good idea to pay attention to these sorts
of things, because while it's happening in Russia right now,
that country is only one of many that has political
(03:49):
leaders trying to get a firmer grip on the flow
of information. Some of those other countries are pretty darn
close to home. Some of them might actually be home.
A couple of weeks ago, I talk about the n
s O Group. That's a company out of Israel that
groups responsible for designing malware called Pegasus, and it allows
an external user access to infected devices remotely. So in
(04:12):
other words, if you infect a device with this malware,
you then can access that device in various ways, including
things like accessing a smartphones, microphone, and camera. Essentially, NSO
Group creates software that turns various devices into and like
you know, computers and smartphones into spies. That's what it
really gets down to. It it allows for surveillance. The
(04:36):
NSO Group markets this technology to various governments and does
so under the protection of the Israeli government. That means
that technically the n s A Group is not supposed
to market this to any country that is on unfriendly
terms with Israel. The company has shown a pretty blatant
disregard for accountability. It has made claims that I argue
(04:57):
our contradictory. For example, the company says it prohibits customers
from misusing the malware to target say that customer's own
citizens in an effort to exert authoritary and control. In
other words, n s A group says, no, this is
an order for us to protect against things like acts
of terrorism, but there have been numerous reports saying that
(05:21):
n s O groups customers include uh repressive and oppressive
governments that are using that technology against journalists, activists and
their own citizens. However, the company also says at the
same time that it has no way of monitoring how
its customers actually use its products, so that that ends
(05:45):
up being a contradiction right there, saying Okay, well, we're
only going to sell it to people who are using
it properly. Also, there's no way for us to know
how they're using it. Well, that's like n s O
groups saying all right, here you go, but don't go
using this in ways we don't approve of because there's
no way for us to track you. Right Like that's
the message there anyway. A an organization called Citizen Lab
(06:07):
recently released a report. In fact, they've released a few,
but the most recent report shows that it had identified
nine activists in Bahrain who had their devices compromised by
the n s O group Pegasus malware between June of
twenty and February of this year, and one thing that
(06:27):
makes this malware particularly effective is that it can infect
iOS devices through what is called a zero click attack,
essentially a message in I message, which means the target
does not have to click on like a malicious link
or anything like that to activate the malware. That means
that the whole advice of don't click on any links
(06:49):
you don't trust doesn't even apply here because it doesn't
require a link. Like I literally, the morning that I'm
recording this, I received a message on a different messaging
service that was a link attack, like it was trying
to get me to click on a link and to
enter my credentials. They're fortunately, even early in the morning,
(07:10):
before my coffee, I recognized it as an attack. Anyway.
More human rights organizations are calling on n s O
group to be held accountable for facilitating authoritarian acts and
furthering the capabilities of repressive regimes. They pointed out that
entities like the Bahraini government could use these tools to
seek out, detain, and even torture targets that the government
(07:34):
determines are you know, a problem, and by a problem,
I mean people who just happened to disagree with the government,
not necessarily someone who's like a terrorist or anything like that. So,
like I said, a lot of journalists and diplomats have
been targets of NSO groups Pegasus malware from various customers
of n s O group, and it's an ongoing problem
(07:57):
that just seems to be getting worse. All right, let's
stay on theme because this next story ties in with
both of the previous ones. Pro Publica has published a piece.
It's a lot of alliteration there about WhatsApp and a
contradiction in WhatsApps UH brand identity as a secure messaging platform. Alright, So,
(08:18):
just in case you're not familiar, the elevator pitch for
WhatsApp is that it is an end to end encrypted
messaging service. That means that if you and a buddy
are messaging and you're using WhatsApp, every message you send
to your buddy is encrypted and can only be decrypted
on the other end of that communication channel. Your buddy
is the only person who has the correct decrypt key
(08:41):
to read those messages. And then every message your buddy
sends to you is also encrypted, and only you hold
the decrypt key for those messages, so no one else
can read them. The same is true for any images
or videos, or links or anything else that's sent on
WhatsApp between the two of you. And WhatsApp is an
incredibly popular messaging service, not as much in the United States,
(09:05):
but in other parts of the world very much so.
So according to the company, no one outside of you
and your buddy would be able to understand what your
messages are, and that Facebook, which is the owner of WhatsApp,
would not be able to see those messages. WhatsApp would
not be able to have any idea of what it
was you were sending between the two of you, because
it would be encrypted, and so it's private and secure. However,
(09:29):
the company also has hundreds of contract workers whose job
it is to moderate or police content sent across WhatsApp,
And you might think, wait a minute, how is it
possible to moderate or police content if no one can
see the unencrypted stuff except for the users involved. Well,
(09:51):
there is one really big exception to this. If someone
were to tag an incoming message as being against WhatsApps policies,
Like you tag a message and you say that it's
spam or that it's abusive, or you know, something along
those lines, then that sends an alert to WhatsApp to
review the communication. So some contract workers somewhere, maybe Austin, Texas,
(10:15):
because there's a lot of them there, And this is
a person who technically does not work for WhatsApp or
for Facebook. They work for another company that serves as
the kind of the employment center for these contract workers
who then are contracting with WhatsApp. That person would be
sent the unencrypted offending message from the receiver, as well
(10:39):
as the four previous messages that preceded the one that
allegedly was against the policy. So in other words, you know,
if you receive a message, your side un encrypts that message.
From that point forward, that message is in plain text.
You can read it. So if someone were to get
access to your phone, they could read all that content. Right,
(10:59):
if they try to intercept the message, it would be encrypted,
but once it's on your device, they can read it. Well,
that's what this system does. If you flag something in WhatsApp,
it sends the unencrypted message on for review. Now I
point all this out because this is a sort of
back door through the security mess measures, and you can
(11:21):
kind of understand why it exists and that any platform
wants to reassure its users that those users are going
to be protected from harassment and other abuse. But on
the other hand, backdoors through security systems are almost always
a bad idea, and that's because of the possibility that
someone somewhere is going to abuse that exception to the
(11:42):
secure system and then turn it to nefarious purposes. Moreover,
since What's Apps brand is so heavily geared towards, you know,
privacy and security in communication, this really undermines the brand's position.
It undermines the rand's actual identity. Pro Publica also points
(12:03):
out that Facebook analyzes tons of metadata related to WhatsApp communications.
Metadata In case you're not familiar with the term, that's
information about information. So really it's all the stuff about
a communication except for the content of the communication itself.
Meta data can include who was involved in the communication,
(12:25):
like which were the parties that we're talking with each other?
What time were messages being sent back and forth? Where
were people when they were actually sending information? You know,
you pair it with like geolocation data, that kind of thing,
and you can determine a lot of stuff through meta
data analysis. You wouldn't know what the actual content of
the messages were, but you might be able to hazard
(12:45):
a guess just by examining enough meta data to figure out,
you know, what's going on, and that too, is a
huge threat to privacy and security. WhatsApp users were understandably
really upset when Facebook first denounced that some data collected
from WhatsApp would then be shared to Facebook proper, and
(13:06):
that the company itself would get into hot water because
reps from Facebook had previously sworn to EU officials that
incorporating that kind of ability was technically impossible between WhatsApp
and Facebook. They said, yeah, there's no way for us
to do it, even if we wanted to. We don't
want to want to, but even if we wanted to,
we couldn't do it. Then they turned around and said, hey,
(13:28):
guess what we're doing. So that was not, you know, consistent,
But yeah, it's just something to keep in mind, and
it helps remind us that most of Facebook's revenue depends
upon the company collecting and then leveraging, or if you prefer,
exploiting information about users. So with that in mind, it's
(13:49):
a really safe bet to assume that any product coming
out of Facebook contributes to that pursuit that even on
the face of it, if it isn't all about acting
your data in order to sell more stuff to you
somewhere down the line. That is what's going on, because
that's Facebook's business. That's how Facebook makes money. So yeah,
(14:12):
important to know. And it also explains why Facebook was
willing to shell out billions and billions of dollars to
acquire WhatsApp in the first place. So all the things
that people were worried about when Facebook did that are
kind of manifesting or becoming evident. Yeah, so important to remember.
We're gonna have some more stories that kind of relate
(14:34):
back to some of the themes we've already talked about.
I know it gets kind of dark and oppressive, but
it's important to know about them. But hey, I don't
know about you, but I could use a quick break.
All right, we're back and it's time to go down
(14:54):
on in Australia. Um, sorry, that was terrible. I had
to introduce a little of ity with my terrible terrible
Uh not even Australian accent, you can't even give it
that much. But yeah, my terrible attempt. Because there's a
new bill that's introducing some troubling powers for law enforcement
with regard to online information in Australia. UH, there's this
(15:17):
piece of legislation. It's called the Surveillance Legislation Amendment UH
Parentheses Identify and Disrupt INDO Parentheses Bill, and it introduces
three new powers for law enforcement. The first is that
law enforcement will be able to obtain a quote data
disruption warrant end quote and that in turn gives law
(15:38):
enforcement the right to copy, delete, or modify data in
order to disrupt it. Now, that alone is horrifying, and
I'll get to why I find it horrifying in just
a bit. But second, the second power is that law
enforcement will be able to apply for and obtain a
(15:58):
quote Network activit any warrant end quote that gives them
the power to collect data from networks and devices that
are believed to be used or maybe used with relation
to illegal activity. The third power is that they can
obtain an quote account takeover warrant end quote, and that
would give them the authority to do exactly what that
(16:20):
sounds like, to take over an account entirely in order
to gather information on an investigation. So, for example, if
you if the Australian Police think that you know Jimmy
the crook is is involved in a criminal operation, which
I mean seems logical because he's called Jimmy the Crook.
(16:42):
Then they could take over They could get a warrant
to take over Jimmy the Crook's Facebook profile and post
as Jimmy the Crook in an effort to gather information
about Jimmy the Crooks accomplices and potentially have like a
full sting operation. But yeah, as you get down to it,
this is all terrible, And again I totally get that
(17:03):
for law enforcement, online communications stand as a huge challenge.
Criminals can and do use all sorts of platforms to
communicate and coordinate, and it can be a challenge to
disrupt that, and it sure would be valuable to be
able to go in there and manipulate stuff, perhaps setting
up a sting operation to catch criminals in the act
(17:24):
and bring them to justice. But these provisions give way
too much power to law enforcement. So imagine that there's
a legal process for the police to get a warrant,
So they do have to at least go through the
steps of getting a warrant, but let's assume that it's
not too difficult to do that. So they go get
a warrant and then they can go in and manipulate
stuff that you have posted online. They can go in
(17:47):
and change the things you have posted. Arguably, they could
manipulate the stuff you post in such a way that
you appear to have posted incriminating material when in fact
you did not do any such thing. So an authoritarian
government could literally manufacture evidence against you, and then you
(18:07):
could be held accountable for something you never did. This
is the equivalent of the trope you see, and usually
it's in a comedy where a cop drops a brown
paper bag next to someone that picks it up and says, well,
what do we have here? Illicit drugs? It's kind of
like that, but on the data side of things. Now,
that's just one scenario in which this bill becomes a nightmare.
(18:30):
But again, it wouldn't even take an authoritarian government for
this to go wrong. Building in systems that would allow
law enforcement to do these sorts of things means that
you have to create vulnerabilities so that the police can
go in and do it. Right, you have to have
a way for police to access those platforms and those
accounts in order to do this data manipulation. However, if
(18:53):
you do that, if you create those vulnerabilities. It gives
the chance for other people to potentially exploit those. Now
I've used this analogy many times before, but here we go.
It's like you've got a gold reserve and you store
tons of gold bars in that reserve, and you've got
this huge vault, and you have a solid vault door
(19:15):
with like time locks and all this complicated stuff, and
it's really it's like practically impossible to break through. However,
you also include a little back door in the vault
that's protected by a cheap padlock because you need to
occasionally get into the vault and you don't want to
go through the trouble of unlocking the big door. Well,
anytime you create exceptions to a secure system, you essentially
(19:40):
nullify the security. So no matter how you shake it,
this bill is bad news. It creates far too much
surveillance power on the law enforcement side, and it introduces
the possibility for bad actors to take advantage of a
system for their own purposes. Heck, it also means people
can end up with a plausible alibi for all online communications,
(20:02):
because if there exists a way to go in and
change someone else's stuff online, perhaps even to the point
of fabricating messages on behalf of another person. Well that
what the waters are then moneyed right when it comes
to holding someone accountable for their online actions, because you
could conceivably argue that you never posted something incriminating because
(20:24):
there is a system that exists that allows others to
change what you post without your consent. So, in other words,
it can actually weaken legal cases rather than strengthen them. Now,
there's no word yet on how big I sps and
platforms are going to work within this legislation in Australia.
But this is the kind of stuff that really worries me,
(20:46):
and the hits just keep on coming. So maybe you've
heard of a service called proton mail. Maybe you use it.
This email service uses end to end encryption to keep
communications private between users, and just like WhatsApp, the service's
reputation depends heavily upon that fact, the idea that your
communications are secure through proton mail, and the bottom line
(21:10):
is that you use proton mail to protect your communication
from folks snooping on you. Well, now that services kind
of on the hot seat in the public eye because
proton Mail recently responded to a demand from police in
Switzerland to give up the IP address belonging to a
climate activist in France, which Proton Mail did. So why
(21:32):
were the Swiss concerned about a French climate activist, Well,
that's because the French authorities asked the Swiss for help.
It was ultimately the French authorities that wanted to track
down this activist who was responsible or you know, activists
who are responsible for organizing various protests in France, high
(21:53):
profile protests, and so these authorities called up their buddies
in Switzerland and they said, hey, love the chocolate, do
us a solid and lean on proton mail to give
us the IP address for this activist. Okay, and the
Swiss dead proton Mail, I should point out, is headquartered
in Switzerland, and thus when the Swiss authorities came knocking,
(22:15):
the company didn't really have a whole lot of options,
at least from a legal standpoint, and the CEO of
proton said as much that the company is legally bound
to follow local laws, and so there was really no
recourse other than to comply with the demand from the
Swiss authorities. The actual communication and the email service remains encrypted,
(22:35):
so the company legitimately cannot read any of the materials
sent through those addresses. They cannot reveal what communications were set,
Nor does proton mail have information on who owns a
particular email address. But they can give you an IP
address associated with a specific email address. They just can't
say definitively this email address belongs to you know, Joan
(22:59):
Smith or something. But as I mentioned earlier, metadata can
reveal an awful lot about a person, So it's quite
probable that French authorities are using the information to try
and track down activists who have arranged those really effective
protests in France around issues like affordable housing and climate concerns.
So pretty scary stuff. Sticking with tech and politics, but
(23:22):
now moving to the absurd. Business Insider reports that thirteen
House Republicans in the United States sent a letter to
Marissa Meyer, the quote president and chief executive officer of
Yahoo in quote uh and they were saying that she
should better well not hand over any personal information of
(23:42):
you know, any Republicans or anyone really over to an
investigative committee that's looking into the January six insurrection in Washington,
d C. Only okay, hey, House Republicans, you thirteen folks.
Marissa Meyer stepped down from Yahoo back in tween, so
she hasn't been in charge of that company for several years.
(24:03):
She wasn't in charge of the company during the whole
lead up to the twenty election, let alone the insurrection
on January six, and the fact that no one decided
to fact check that or I don't know, do a
simple Internet search. I mean they could have even used
Yahoo to do it. That speaks volumes not just about
tech literacy, but arguably just playing literacy. It's an embarrassing
(24:27):
display of ignorance. Anyway. At the heart of the matter
is the issue of one party in government power using
its authority to demand information and records about another party,
and doing so with companies like I s p s
and social media platforms and companies that provide email and
telecommunications companies and more. And to be clear, I think
(24:49):
there is merit in that concern. I think we do
need a thorough investigation into the January six riots, including
an investigation into whether or not anyone in government facil
ialitated or encourage the insurrection, into what degree as to
whether or not it was a criminal degree. I think
all of that needs to happen. However, I also think
we have to be careful in how that investigation advances.
(25:12):
Otherwise you could imagine a future in which whichever party
happens to be in power can lean on companies in
order to repress political opponents. That's not good. That's authoritarian,
no matter which way you you subscribe politically. And anyone
who has listened to me for a little while probably
has a pretty good feel for where my personal politics are.
(25:34):
So you know, it's not easy for me to necessarily
side with conservatives about data surveillance, but some things I
think need to be off the table. However, I also
want to make clear those rules have to apply across
the board, not just two Democrats who are looking into this,
but period to everyone, for all time, because otherwise it
(25:56):
becomes a free for all, and it's a nightmare. Now.
I'm pretty sure that a few weeks ago I mentioned
that El Salvador representatives were announcing that the company would
make bitcoin its official currency that becomes effective today, and
in preparation for that, El Salvador purchase around four hundred bitcoin.
Would plans to buy a lot more in order to
you know, make this transition. The four hundred bitcoin that
(26:20):
El Salvador purchased amounts to around twenty million dollars in value.
The country is aiming to make bitcoin legal tender alongside
the US dollar, which until today had served as the
nation's official currency. Citizens in El Salvador will at least
theoretically be able to use bitcoin for all financial transactions
within the country, including paying taxes. While cryptocurrency fans might
(26:44):
be excited, the same is not true for citizens inside
El Salvador. The majority of citizens have expressed concern about
this change. Some point to the fact that criminals often
rely on bitcoin in order to launder money from their
illegal exploits, and that El Salvador has a history of corruption,
including with the present government, and that might mean that
(27:06):
that corruption is about to get a whole lot worse
in that country. Other people in El Salvador are worried
that the change is going to have a negative impact
on their personal finances. The volatility of bitcoin is well established,
and so there's a legit fear that stuff like pensions
could get wiped out by another big dip in the
bitcoin market, just like the one we saw earlier this year. Now,
(27:29):
the currency has recovered quite a bit since it had
that dip, it hasn't gotten back to the all time
highs it was in in early spring, but it has
recovered a lot of the value that it lost, but
not all of it, and the value still is fluctuating
quite a lot. As I record this. The government in
(27:49):
El Salvador has had to respond to emerging issues during
the adoption process, including putting a hold on a digital
wallet app that's backed by the government. So it's the
Hill El Salvador Bitcoin app, and it's been but on
hold because of a high demand, a greater demand than
they expected, and that it was starting to tax the servers.
(28:12):
A significant population within El Salvador may not even be
able to access the cryptocurrency at all because there is
a significant digital divide in the country. So a lot
of people have no computer or smartphone. They would have
no way to access a digital wallet, which means they
can't even participate in that part of the economy. Now,
you might wonder why El Salvador is depending upon a
(28:36):
currency like bitcoin at all, or why it was dependent
upon the US dollar beforehand. Well, some countries like they're
at a point where they would not be able to
offer up a stable currency. It could be a currency
that is uh that fluctuates wildly in value, which is
not financially stable for all the people of that country.
(28:58):
So they in this case El Salvador was dependent upon
a larger, more stable uh country that of the United States.
At least when we get to the value of the dollar,
it's larger and more stable, uh. And that the switch
to bitcoin means that you're no longer dependent upon another
nation's currency. Bitcoin, of course is you know, it's it's
(29:22):
agnostic as far as nationality is concerned. So there's that
as well. Plus there was that whole corruption stuff that
was talking about. There are several reasons, none of them
are necessarily great for the majority of El Salvador's population,
and I am concerned about that. We've got a few
more news items to cover before we close out, But
(29:45):
before I get to that, let's take another quick break. Okay,
So The Verge has an article that's titled Automated hiring
software is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable job candidates. And
the piece cites a study from the Harvard Business School
(30:08):
that's looking into such software. And you've probably heard about
this type of software. Employers use it to come through
job applications, and they do it so that they can
weed out applicants who are just not suitable for a
particular position and then just focus on the ones who
are quote unquote the best fit. So the whole idea
is just, you know, not to eliminate folks who aren't
(30:30):
a good fit, but really define the right people to
match with the right job, which ideally is the best
solution for everyone because the job applicant lands a gig
for which they were best suited and the company ends
up getting the best candidate to fill a position. Only
that's not what's necessarily happening. According to the study. The
report says that software like what I just described is
(30:51):
actually rejecting millions of people who are qualified for the
positions that they apply for, and it contributes to an
issue in which there are people who are ready and
able and willing to work, but they're not able to
land a position because of these issues. That's bad news
for everyone in this system. It's really bad news for
all the people who are trying to land a job
(31:13):
because it means they consistently can't. But it's also bad
news for the employers because they are potentially missing out
on hiring the perfect candidate because some AI software mistakenly
put their application on the rejection pile. According to the
report of U S Employers and of Fortune five companies
(31:34):
use this kind of software to filter through job applicants.
As for the reasons behind the high rejection error, those
are many and they are varied. It really depends upon
which criteria the software is weighing as being the most
important in order to weed out unsuitable applications. So one
example that the Verge points out is that the software
(31:54):
could reject an application that includes an employment gap of
six months or more. Now, that would have meant that
I would have been eliminated once upon a time, because
I worked for a company for seven years steadily employed.
But then they eliminated my position. So I wasn't fired.
I just didn't have a job anymore. I realized the
(32:16):
distinction is a fine one, and I must admit it
was lost upon me at the time and arguably still is.
But anyway, you know, I was out of work for
six months while trying to get another job. And it
wasn't that I was unqualified. It wasn't that I wasn't
looking for work. I was doing both of those things.
It was just a really bad time to be out
(32:37):
of work when it happened to me, and I was
caught up in that it was just a bad job market. Well,
that sort of thing happens all the time, and this
type of criteria in software then exacerbates it. Right if
the software just says, oh, well, this person is not
reliable because they haven't had a job in six months,
that doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on the person. It could
(32:58):
reflect poorly on everything else, but then the person gets
the punishment for it. Meanwhile, you have this growing pool
of people who are seeking jobs who are getting rejected,
so they're back in the job hunt and they're looking
for more stuff, so they're more likely to apply to
lots of different positions for which they're qualified in the
hopes of landing something. But that means that the companies
(33:18):
that are posting those positions are going to see even
more applicants as more rejections join the job pool, and
that means that they get flooded with applicants, which means
that they feel like they have to rely upon this
kind of software in order to do that initial sorting.
And thus we see the problem get worse and it
feeds upon itself. Cycle after cycle, and as the software
(33:41):
becomes more entrenched in this hiring process, it gets harder
to shift to a different approach. Now, I wish I
had a happy ending to the story, but unless companies
across industries make a concerted effort to change, or unless
the organizations that offer these services work really hard to
eliminate those errors, this is going to keep going. And yes,
(34:04):
I recognize the irony that some of those jobs seeking
companies have advertised on this show. Now, to be clear,
I think their mission is admirable. The idea of let's
make it easier for the right people to find the
right jobs. I think that's great. That's a fantastic mission.
I also think that, at least in some cases, the
(34:24):
execution of that mission really needs some work. Analytics firm
app Any reports that Android users are spending more time
watching content on TikTok than on YouTube on a monthly basis,
and that this has been going on since August of
last year here in the United States, and over in
the UK it's been going on since May of last year.
(34:45):
So on average, users were spending around twenty two hours
and forty minutes per month watching content on YouTube, but
a full twenty four hours per month watching content on TikTok.
That's a lot of TikTok because those videos tend to
be pretty short, and YouTube has been leaning harder toward
promoting long form content. So it's two totally different content strategies.
(35:08):
So for TikTok to overtake YouTube is pretty darn impressive
because that's so many videos. All I can say is
that I contributed more toward YouTube because I watched maybe
five or six TikTok videos a month because I'm old
and I'm out of touch. That's not even really a joke.
It's more of a true statement. But the report was
(35:29):
focused solely on Android devices. I do not have any
details about iOS devices, but I would be shocked if
it was a much different story. I figured it's probably
somewhere all on the same lines. Also, while users were
spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, I should
point out YouTube still has way more active users than
TikTok does, so when it comes down to overall numbers,
(35:51):
YouTube is still well in the lead. But it was
interesting to see the viewing trends are favoring TikTok. And
our final story is about a man named Gilbert Michaels,
who recently received a prison sentence of four years for
the crime of selling printer toner for way too much
money to small businesses and nonprofit organizations. The seventy nine
(36:12):
year old had been selling Toner to these smaller entities
for decades at a huge markup, sometimes up to ten
times the actual market price for Toner, which if you've
ever shot for Toner you know is already wicked expensive.
And he is the good old telemarketer fraud approach to
do it, and it was effective. He was doing this
(36:33):
as far back as the nineteen seventies, and prosecutors said
that in one six year span he made one twenty
six million dollars defrauding clients and selling them Toner at
elevated prices. Michaels was found guilty on charges of mail fraud,
money laundering, and conspiracy back in two thousand nineteen, so
this was just his sentencing trial. He had already been
(36:55):
found guilty of the crimes and this story is pretty awful.
So essentially Michael's and his conspirators would contact these various targets,
these small businesses and charities, often posing as representatives for
legit vendors, companies that had an established relationship with the
targets and had sold them toner in the past, so
(37:17):
they would essentially pose as these legitimate vendors, and then
they would say, oh, so the price of toner has increased, however,
we will continue to sell you toner at the lower price,
you know, to help you out. So go ahead and
agree to purchase the next box of toner, and then
they would get someone to sign over on that. They
(37:38):
would then send the toner, but they would send an
invoice with an h an enormously inflated price for the toner,
so instead of that lower price they had said on
the phone and ends up being a much much higher price.
And then they would threaten legal action and UH and
collections agencies and such if the target refused to pay up,
(37:59):
or they would charge exorbitant restocking fees if the clients
returned the toner. So it was definitely shady, illegal stuff.
So yeah, not all tech crime involves cryptocurrency and hacking.
Sometimes it just involves good old fraud on the telephone
and some insanely expensive toner. And that's the tech news
(38:19):
for Tuesday, September seven, One if you have suggestions for
things I should cover on the show, any tech companies
or technologies that you're interested in, or trends in tech.
Reach out to me on Twitter. The handle is tech
Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
(38:45):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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