May 3, 2022 • 19 mins
Police records are showing that across the country, women are being stalked with Apple AirTags. When released the devices were touted as a way to help users keep track of missing items like your keys, wallet or car, but police reports are showing that some women were getting notifications that their phones were tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own. In some of those cases they could identify a man in their lives, usually an ex-partner, they suspected were trying to track them. Samantha Cole, tech reporter at Motherboard, joins us for how some are using them as stalking tools.
Next, the military has long had a special relationship with the Jeep, specifically the WWII Jeep. In 1940 the Army was taking bids for a new military vehicle and settled on a design by the Willys-Overland company that would be produced by Ford. How it got its name? The common belief is that it comes from the abbreviation of “G.P.” which was a common term of any military vehicle. The Jeep even drove up the Capitol steps. Miranda Summers Lowe, contributor to Task and Purpose, joins us for how the Jeep became America’s favorite military vehicle.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, May three. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. Police records are showing
that across the country, women are being stocked with Apple
air tags. When released, the devices were touted as a
way to help you just keep track of missing items
like your keys, wallet, or car. But police reports are
(00:21):
showing that some women were getting notifications on their phones
that they were being tracked by an air tag they
didn't own, and some of those cases, they could identify
a man in their lives, usually an next partner. They
suspected that we're trying to track them. Samantha Cole, tech
reporter at Motherboard joined us for how some are using
them as stocking tools. Next. The military has long had
a special relationship with the jeep, specifically the World War
(00:45):
two gee in the Army was taking bits for a
new military vehicle and settled on a designed by the
Willie's Overland Company that would be produced by four How
it got its name, The common belief is it comes
from an abbreviation of g P, which was common term
for any military vehicle. The jeep even drove up the
capital steps. Miranda Summer's low contributor to Task and Purpose,
(01:08):
joined us for how the jeep became America's favorite military vehicle.
It's moves without the noise. Let's dive in because they
the women strongly suspected had planted the air tag either
on their car or in the purse or somewhere else,
usually in their car, in order to follow and ask
them because they had some kind of svendetta against them,
(01:28):
or we're trying to get track of them to keep
control of them. Joining us now, Samantha Cole, tech reporter
at Motherboard. Thanks for joining, Samantha, thank you for having me. Well,
let's talk about an interesting thing involving Apple air tags.
So when they were trotted out last year, Apple was
positioning as something to help you find your lost items.
(01:51):
You know, maybe your keys you can never find them,
a wallet, anything like that, a purse, but there was
concerns raised at that time about the potential all for
stalking people, for following people and and tracking them. Well,
now through some of the work that you guys are
doing and looking up for police department reports mentioning air tags,
(02:11):
we're finding a number of cases where women, mostly women,
were making reports saying that they are finding air tags
in their cars or you know, near them that they're
being tracked. And in a lot of cases they have
you know, somebody the next partner probably that could potentially
be doing it. So Semantha, help us walk through some
of this. What are we seeing in these police reports? Yeah, So,
(02:32):
like you said, we've filed requests for police reports from
a couple dozen of the biggest departments around the country
asking for anything that mentions air tags as part of
the incident. Um. What we got back from eight different
departments the answer our request for a total of hunneste
reports mentioning air tags at all. And then of that
hunt fifty fifty involved women who had called the cops
(02:54):
because they started getting these notifications on their iPhones that
they had an air tag moving with them. And when
you have an air tag near you or you know
tracking you, you know, added moving around the city, it
has an terification to your iPhone and says you know
you have this device near you and then showed you
a little map to see everything everywhere you've been. Um
(03:15):
and then of the fifty that mentioned air tags as
something that was maybe talking people, five could very clearly
identify a man in their lives, So ex partners has
been losses who's strongly who they women strongly suspected had
planted the air tag either on their car or in
(03:36):
their purse or somewhere else, usually in their car, in
order to follow and who asked them because they had
some kind of vendetta against them, or we're trying to
get track of them to keep control of them. Um. Yeah,
So that's kind of what we had seen through these reports.
And obviously this is a small slice of the country
and an even smaller slice of people who actually went
to the police to report this sort of thing happening. Yeah,
(03:58):
and that's an important distinction, right, This is lease records
that specifically state air tags, so that's going to be
kind of a limiting factor if police don't know what
it is or whatnot. And and beyond that, yeah, all
the people that maybe aren't just aren't reporting things like
this and taking a step back just how the air
tags work. Their little bluetooth kind of like the GPS tracker,
It pings other Apple products that have Bluetooth, and if
(04:21):
triangulates the position of where that air tag is. So really,
so many people have iPhones, you can really track these
things anywhere. So you know, that's kind of how how
it works on that share some of the stories that
you gathered on this because people, as you mentioned, the
women were hearing the ping, saying, hey, something's tracking you.
They're trying to look for they can't find it. You know,
(04:43):
one woman took her car to the mechanic. The mechanic
found it, these exhaustive kind of searches for what is
that infernal noise and then come to find out it's
an air tag. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. The devices themselves
that are really small, they're like slightly bigger than a quarter.
You've ever lost a quarter in your car, like you'll
never find again. Um, So they're tricky to kind of spot,
(05:03):
even when they're making that singing noise that you can
kind of activate from that notification. UM. A lot of reports,
like I said, mentioned the next partner, especially ones who
had been violent towards them in the past. They could
kind of speak to these past instances where you know,
maybe he had become physically or verbally abusive or was
kind of controlling her in the relationship. UM. Several of
(05:27):
the women who made these reports about the air tags
had orders of protection already out against these men, but
they were still able to use air tags to track
them wherever they went. UM. Multiple of the reports mentioned
that women were noticing expers trying up all around town
and it wasn't until they received a notification on their
phone that they realized why they kept seeing this guy
(05:49):
out while they were you know, running errands or whatever
it was. Um. So that was kind of pattern that
we saw through these reports. You know, they could always
kind of stay I know, it was just at random.
Usually when people said I think of being stalked, it
was you know, I think of being stalked and I
think I know who did it because it's going to
the police about him before. Yeah, definitely, those are the
(06:10):
red flags when they're starting to show up just by
coincidence quote unquote right that they're they're right next to
you and all that. So how do police handle these
types of reports? I mean you mentioned in in one
part of the article that you know, maybe some officers
aren't very familiar with the technology, you know, not everybody
is just tuned in, And so how do officers respond
(06:30):
when they get these types of reports? Yeah? So, I
mean some of them knew what their tags were and
what they did, and they could kind of say, you know,
this is a serious situation and you know he needs
to address this as talking um. Others weren't totally sure
what air tags were. Maybe the person doing the reporting
had to explain to them what they were um. Usually
(06:53):
a response and this is kind of the response a
lot of the times when you were talking about optimistic
violence survivors. When you're the police and it's incredibly hard
to go to the police in the first place, because
confronting your user is an incredibly dangerous and fraud thing
to do in the first place. But then you know,
you go to the police and the police say, uh, well,
(07:15):
have you filed an order protection you know, or restraining
order against this person? Do you want to file another one?
Do you want to escalate this up and just kind
of keep a paper trail? Um? Do you want a
hotline to a like a helpline or uh intimate partner abuse?
So there's not a ton that police are doing to
(07:37):
kind of help in this situation, and there's not a
lot that can't be done. I mean, it's you can
kind of use this as evidence more evidence against someone
because I illegal to stalk the one in those states. Um,
but there's not a lot of actually codified legislation about
being stalked with uh technology, with stccer wear, And we
(08:01):
don't know the extent of this, right, We don't know
how widespread this might be. Uh, we just have a
small sliver of police reports where we're finding kind of
this trend of it. For Apple, for their part, what
do they say and all this because critics are saying,
you know, there's been stalkers and stalking war things like
that for some time, but Apple just made it so easy.
And another thing that I found very interesting was the
(08:23):
fact that you know this works intrinsically with the Apple products.
If you're outside of that Apple ecosystem, would you even
get that notification? You know, you you'll you might never know?
So how does Apple respond to this? Yeah, I mean
you're exactly right. That's one of the major flaws that
security experts I said to point it out with us.
If you're outside of the ecosystem that Apple has set up,
(08:45):
then you'll never get the notification that you're being stocked.
I mean you'll never see on your Android phone this
kind of pop up that says you have an air
tag moving with you. Um, and they rolled it out
that way, and now they're trying to kind of fix
that law after the fact. And it's more than most
trackers are doing. I mean, the notifications are something that
(09:06):
Apple is doing to try to keep people safe. Most
trackers don't do any kind of monification UM, which is,
you know, incredibly dangerous. UM. Apple's response to this has
been to keep rolling out new security updates, and they
shortened the time it takes to get a notification, so
it was three days and now it's less than twenty
four hours. I think, UM, three is a long time.
(09:27):
Twenty four hours is a really long time to be watched.
You know, what do you do in twenty four hours?
A lot of stuff. Yeah, they're responding in these kind
of piecemeal ways. You know, the air tags are not
the only thing on the market like this. There are
other trackers Tile is the name of another one. But
they're saying they're trying to implement some anti stocking features
in the app. What what does that look like. I'm
(09:50):
actually not totally sure what Kyle is implementing. I know
that they're reacting to what the criticism that air SAgs
are getting and what app was getting in the press
and trying to fix their own product um, which is great.
I mean that's kind of what we want to see
from the beginning, is just preventative measure. You child should
(10:12):
have had this a long time ago too. So yeah,
any kind of response that they're doing is because of
the outcry against their tags as this central for abuse um,
and then they're kind of responding to it in that
way and saying, Okay, we need to actually look at
our own product um. It's an interesting look at what's
(10:32):
going on right. This was a suspicion that this could
happen before when these types of things launched, and we're
seeing it play out in certain police reports now. So again,
not to alarm anybody. We don't know how widespread this
might be, but it is a thing to be concerned
about if you, you know, if you're hearing that weird
beat going on. Samantha Cole, Tech reporter and Motherboard, thank
you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
(11:03):
Were six jeep that week. Joining us now is Miranda
Summer's low contributor to Task and Purpose. Thanks for joining us, Miranda,
thanks for inviting me. Well, let's talk about a pretty
fun topic here. The story of how the jeep became
(11:27):
America's favorite military vehicle. There's a lot of history intertwining
the jeep in the American military and uh, including how
it possibly got its name, the inspiration for how the
jeep was constructed. Uh. So Miranda walk us through some
of this. How how did these two uh become so
intertwined with each other? Well, first of all, it really
(11:49):
is amazing how much the jeep is just beloved iconic,
right for a piece of equipment. Um, the jeep has
really remained just something not just military personnel, but all
Americans know about and and have this affection for. Definitely,
they have their own special jeep wave when they when
(12:09):
jeep owners drive by each other. Well, and you know,
it's sort of something that that people stick with, right,
like once you become a jeep person. Um. Just kind
of incredible in that UM. In researching this, you know,
to find out how many different possibilities there could have
(12:31):
been for the cheap um kind of starting in World
War One when cars and vehicles first come on the market.
And you know, of course there are different groups of
people that want different things. You know, do you want
a big trucks that can carry a lot of things. Um,
you know, do you want a small car that you
know is fast, or do you want something that is
(12:53):
kind of um, you know, all terrain and can move
through a lot of things. So there's like a lot
of contention sort of going through as this gets developed,
including some of my personal favorites. Like you know, there
were so many cards that were being pulled by horses
at that point, so you know, why not just make
a cart that moves on its own and kind of
(13:13):
looks like a lawnmower or you know, when you you
go to shoot or you know, a lot of these
operations you lie down on your belly, so you know,
sort of one rejected concept was nicknamed the belly flopper,
and it was sort of like a motorized palette that
you'd lie down on and then you know, as the
soldier moved from position to position, but the whole vehicle
(13:34):
will just move with it exactly and you know, along
the way, right. So it took all these little inspirations
from those things, like you said in the article, tractors
and lawnmowers, this belly flopper thing, it took all of
those inspirations and it kind of started becoming you know,
the jeep, but you know it meant all the requirements,
the criteria that then the military needed at the time.
(13:55):
Let's talk a little bit about the name jeep too,
because that's a pretty fun part. As you mentioned, it
almost was called belly flopper. There's all sorts of different
things to it. Uh. They called it, let's see, blitz, buggy,
puddle jumper, midget, peep, and no, probably where it really
came from. I guess you mentioned World War One grease
monkeys had a term from military vehicles g P, and
(14:17):
that's probably where it came from. Yeah, So GP, you know,
general purpose, Uh, kind of runs together like jeep, and
that nickname seems to be around before the particular truck
we talked about. Um. But one thing I learned researching
this story is that term got used for a lot
of other things, like aircraft, which I had I realized.
(14:40):
Even through World War Two, some members of the Army
Air Corps refused to call the jeep a jeep because
they had a point that they called jeep, So they
called them peeps like the little marshmallow snack. That's pretty good. Yeah,
And in inside the military, I guess they were going
back and forth on, you know, which one was the
right one, which was the what they would call it.
(15:01):
When they finally the military said, okay, we want to
manufacture these things. I guess they said, uh, you know,
we're going to give out this contract whoever can do it.
There was a hundred and thirty five auto makers at
that time. Only two agreed to submit proposals, so right
away that limited right there. And I guess they wanted
seventy vehicles to be produced in just seventy five days,
(15:21):
so that's really tough, probably why a lot of them
backed out. But tell us who came through with the
final design here? Sure, So yeah, you gotta appreciate how
quickly this came to gather that when they finally decided
it was worth kind of doing. You know, a small
truck that we kind of think of as being a jeep, now,
(15:42):
UM tew different companies put in proposal, so the Bantam
Company and Willy's Overland, And at that point Willie's UM
was well known to the army because they made a
lot of artillery carts and carriages. But you know, I
wouldn't necessarily be who you would think, UM makes this vehicle.
But UM once there were two prototypes, the Bantam and
(16:06):
and the Willies. It kind of became clear that UM,
even though the Willies came in proposal, came in late
and uh overweight because they had put an oversized engine
in it, and feel testing the oversized engine did bantactic
UM and everyone was loving it. But the problem with
that is Willie didn't actually have the capacity to make
(16:28):
the number of trucks that the army was hoping for. So,
you know, in one of those great moments of history,
there's a chance meeting in Washington, d C. Where one
of the under secretaries who was working on this under
Secretaries of the Army saw edzel Ford himself and asked
if he would, you know, agree to a special deal
where Ford would you know, agree to help Willis produce this.
(16:52):
So a lot of the original jeep have that Willie's
label on it, but we're actually UM made by Ford. Yeah.
That's amazing and and carries on to this day. Right,
there's still certain model trims of the jeep that go
by the Willie's name. You can see them, you know,
sometimes you'll see it, I'll say rubicon on the front,
on the hood, but sometimes they'll say say, Willie's on
them too, so they're all there, and and then from
(17:13):
then on, you know, just kind of how do you
get it funded. Part of this whole thing is there's
a lot of great classic pictures that you have on
the article on the website showing the jeep from you know,
when it started in World War two and beyond, and
the jeep driving on the Capitol steps. You know, how
it plays into pop culture. There was a bunch of
songs about it. Four Jills and a Jeep in movies.
(17:35):
You know, it really took off after that, absolutely, And
one of the funnest things I found, um when I
went to you know, I saw that picture of um,
you know, the army camp. They actually put jeeps out
in front of the Capitol building and they gave members
of Congress the chance to drive it up and down
the Capital steps. But it was hard to pick which
picture because it was just there were so many. It
(17:57):
was obvious that even at a point before it was
in mass production, every you know, senator and congressman who
got to drive this um, well he just having a
blast and got their picture tape. Yeah, I think the
picture you end up putting in there was Senator Meat
of New York and he's just like waving back the
camera with his hand up, big smile on his face,
and you know us a few service members in the
(18:18):
back seat, and that definitely definitely looks like fun. And
you know, just kind of this whole trajectory, right, it
just uh really was being used I guess, you know,
for military purposes too, But just like the service members
coming back home, so did the jeep And you know,
obviously has its big history now in the in the
States and all, but it came back and went back
to its tractor roots, pulling threshers and plows and was
(18:41):
used to be converted for like many firefighting trucks, so
that you know, it got a ton of use. It's
incredible to see what they were used for over time.
Everything from two jeeps hooked up could pull a tank
like when it was still in military use. But then
you see them showing up as you mentioned, um as
I were fighting equipment of and log aid and farming.
(19:04):
Um just really kind of incredible how personal it is. Yeah,
really fun. Look, I'm a fan of the jeep itself,
but you know, just to know how the roots started
and all, this is pretty fun Miranda Summer's low contributor
to Task and Purpose. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks so much. That's it for today. Join us on
(19:30):
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Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
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This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright
and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramrrors and this
was your Daily Dive
It's Tuesday, May three. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. Police records are showing
that across the country, women are being stocked with Apple
air tags. When released, the devices were touted as a
way to help you just keep track of missing items
like your keys, wallet, or car. But police reports are
(00:21):
showing that some women were getting notifications on their phones
that they were being tracked by an air tag they
didn't own, and some of those cases, they could identify
a man in their lives, usually an next partner. They
suspected that we're trying to track them. Samantha Cole, tech
reporter at Motherboard joined us for how some are using
them as stocking tools. Next. The military has long had
a special relationship with the jeep, specifically the World War
(00:45):
two gee in the Army was taking bits for a
new military vehicle and settled on a designed by the
Willie's Overland Company that would be produced by four How
it got its name, The common belief is it comes
from an abbreviation of g P, which was common term
for any military vehicle. The jeep even drove up the
capital steps. Miranda Summer's low contributor to Task and Purpose,
(01:08):
joined us for how the jeep became America's favorite military vehicle.
It's moves without the noise. Let's dive in because they
the women strongly suspected had planted the air tag either
on their car or in the purse or somewhere else,
usually in their car, in order to follow and ask
them because they had some kind of svendetta against them,
(01:28):
or we're trying to get track of them to keep
control of them. Joining us now, Samantha Cole, tech reporter
at Motherboard. Thanks for joining, Samantha, thank you for having me. Well,
let's talk about an interesting thing involving Apple air tags.
So when they were trotted out last year, Apple was
positioning as something to help you find your lost items.
(01:51):
You know, maybe your keys you can never find them,
a wallet, anything like that, a purse, but there was
concerns raised at that time about the potential all for
stalking people, for following people and and tracking them. Well,
now through some of the work that you guys are
doing and looking up for police department reports mentioning air tags,
(02:11):
we're finding a number of cases where women, mostly women,
were making reports saying that they are finding air tags
in their cars or you know, near them that they're
being tracked. And in a lot of cases they have
you know, somebody the next partner probably that could potentially
be doing it. So Semantha, help us walk through some
of this. What are we seeing in these police reports? Yeah, So,
(02:32):
like you said, we've filed requests for police reports from
a couple dozen of the biggest departments around the country
asking for anything that mentions air tags as part of
the incident. Um. What we got back from eight different
departments the answer our request for a total of hunneste
reports mentioning air tags at all. And then of that
hunt fifty fifty involved women who had called the cops
(02:54):
because they started getting these notifications on their iPhones that
they had an air tag moving with them. And when
you have an air tag near you or you know
tracking you, you know, added moving around the city, it
has an terification to your iPhone and says you know
you have this device near you and then showed you
a little map to see everything everywhere you've been. Um
(03:15):
and then of the fifty that mentioned air tags as
something that was maybe talking people, five could very clearly
identify a man in their lives, So ex partners has
been losses who's strongly who they women strongly suspected had
planted the air tag either on their car or in
(03:36):
their purse or somewhere else, usually in their car, in
order to follow and who asked them because they had
some kind of vendetta against them, or we're trying to
get track of them to keep control of them. Um. Yeah,
So that's kind of what we had seen through these reports.
And obviously this is a small slice of the country
and an even smaller slice of people who actually went
to the police to report this sort of thing happening. Yeah,
(03:58):
and that's an important distinction, right, This is lease records
that specifically state air tags, so that's going to be
kind of a limiting factor if police don't know what
it is or whatnot. And and beyond that, yeah, all
the people that maybe aren't just aren't reporting things like
this and taking a step back just how the air
tags work. Their little bluetooth kind of like the GPS tracker,
It pings other Apple products that have Bluetooth, and if
(04:21):
triangulates the position of where that air tag is. So really,
so many people have iPhones, you can really track these
things anywhere. So you know, that's kind of how how
it works on that share some of the stories that
you gathered on this because people, as you mentioned, the
women were hearing the ping, saying, hey, something's tracking you.
They're trying to look for they can't find it. You know,
(04:43):
one woman took her car to the mechanic. The mechanic
found it, these exhaustive kind of searches for what is
that infernal noise and then come to find out it's
an air tag. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. The devices themselves
that are really small, they're like slightly bigger than a quarter.
You've ever lost a quarter in your car, like you'll
never find again. Um, So they're tricky to kind of spot,
(05:03):
even when they're making that singing noise that you can
kind of activate from that notification. UM. A lot of reports,
like I said, mentioned the next partner, especially ones who
had been violent towards them in the past. They could
kind of speak to these past instances where you know,
maybe he had become physically or verbally abusive or was
kind of controlling her in the relationship. UM. Several of
(05:27):
the women who made these reports about the air tags
had orders of protection already out against these men, but
they were still able to use air tags to track
them wherever they went. UM. Multiple of the reports mentioned
that women were noticing expers trying up all around town
and it wasn't until they received a notification on their
phone that they realized why they kept seeing this guy
(05:49):
out while they were you know, running errands or whatever
it was. Um. So that was kind of pattern that
we saw through these reports. You know, they could always
kind of stay I know, it was just at random.
Usually when people said I think of being stalked, it
was you know, I think of being stalked and I
think I know who did it because it's going to
the police about him before. Yeah, definitely, those are the
(06:10):
red flags when they're starting to show up just by
coincidence quote unquote right that they're they're right next to
you and all that. So how do police handle these
types of reports? I mean you mentioned in in one
part of the article that you know, maybe some officers
aren't very familiar with the technology, you know, not everybody
is just tuned in, And so how do officers respond
(06:30):
when they get these types of reports? Yeah? So, I
mean some of them knew what their tags were and
what they did, and they could kind of say, you know,
this is a serious situation and you know he needs
to address this as talking um. Others weren't totally sure
what air tags were. Maybe the person doing the reporting
had to explain to them what they were um. Usually
(06:53):
a response and this is kind of the response a
lot of the times when you were talking about optimistic
violence survivors. When you're the police and it's incredibly hard
to go to the police in the first place, because
confronting your user is an incredibly dangerous and fraud thing
to do in the first place. But then you know,
you go to the police and the police say, uh, well,
(07:15):
have you filed an order protection you know, or restraining
order against this person? Do you want to file another one?
Do you want to escalate this up and just kind
of keep a paper trail? Um? Do you want a
hotline to a like a helpline or uh intimate partner abuse?
So there's not a ton that police are doing to
(07:37):
kind of help in this situation, and there's not a
lot that can't be done. I mean, it's you can
kind of use this as evidence more evidence against someone
because I illegal to stalk the one in those states. Um,
but there's not a lot of actually codified legislation about
being stalked with uh technology, with stccer wear, And we
(08:01):
don't know the extent of this, right, We don't know
how widespread this might be. Uh, we just have a
small sliver of police reports where we're finding kind of
this trend of it. For Apple, for their part, what
do they say and all this because critics are saying,
you know, there's been stalkers and stalking war things like
that for some time, but Apple just made it so easy.
And another thing that I found very interesting was the
(08:23):
fact that you know this works intrinsically with the Apple products.
If you're outside of that Apple ecosystem, would you even
get that notification? You know, you you'll you might never know?
So how does Apple respond to this? Yeah, I mean
you're exactly right. That's one of the major flaws that
security experts I said to point it out with us.
If you're outside of the ecosystem that Apple has set up,
(08:45):
then you'll never get the notification that you're being stocked.
I mean you'll never see on your Android phone this
kind of pop up that says you have an air
tag moving with you. Um, and they rolled it out
that way, and now they're trying to kind of fix
that law after the fact. And it's more than most
trackers are doing. I mean, the notifications are something that
(09:06):
Apple is doing to try to keep people safe. Most
trackers don't do any kind of monification UM, which is,
you know, incredibly dangerous. UM. Apple's response to this has
been to keep rolling out new security updates, and they
shortened the time it takes to get a notification, so
it was three days and now it's less than twenty
four hours. I think, UM, three is a long time.
(09:27):
Twenty four hours is a really long time to be watched.
You know, what do you do in twenty four hours?
A lot of stuff. Yeah, they're responding in these kind
of piecemeal ways. You know, the air tags are not
the only thing on the market like this. There are
other trackers Tile is the name of another one. But
they're saying they're trying to implement some anti stocking features
in the app. What what does that look like. I'm
(09:50):
actually not totally sure what Kyle is implementing. I know
that they're reacting to what the criticism that air SAgs
are getting and what app was getting in the press
and trying to fix their own product um, which is great.
I mean that's kind of what we want to see
from the beginning, is just preventative measure. You child should
(10:12):
have had this a long time ago too. So yeah,
any kind of response that they're doing is because of
the outcry against their tags as this central for abuse um,
and then they're kind of responding to it in that
way and saying, Okay, we need to actually look at
our own product um. It's an interesting look at what's
(10:32):
going on right. This was a suspicion that this could
happen before when these types of things launched, and we're
seeing it play out in certain police reports now. So again,
not to alarm anybody. We don't know how widespread this
might be, but it is a thing to be concerned
about if you, you know, if you're hearing that weird
beat going on. Samantha Cole, Tech reporter and Motherboard, thank
you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
(11:03):
Were six jeep that week. Joining us now is Miranda
Summer's low contributor to Task and Purpose. Thanks for joining us, Miranda,
thanks for inviting me. Well, let's talk about a pretty
fun topic here. The story of how the jeep became
(11:27):
America's favorite military vehicle. There's a lot of history intertwining
the jeep in the American military and uh, including how
it possibly got its name, the inspiration for how the
jeep was constructed. Uh. So Miranda walk us through some
of this. How how did these two uh become so
intertwined with each other? Well, first of all, it really
(11:49):
is amazing how much the jeep is just beloved iconic,
right for a piece of equipment. Um, the jeep has
really remained just something not just military personnel, but all
Americans know about and and have this affection for. Definitely,
they have their own special jeep wave when they when
(12:09):
jeep owners drive by each other. Well, and you know,
it's sort of something that that people stick with, right,
like once you become a jeep person. Um. Just kind
of incredible in that UM. In researching this, you know,
to find out how many different possibilities there could have
(12:31):
been for the cheap um kind of starting in World
War One when cars and vehicles first come on the market.
And you know, of course there are different groups of
people that want different things. You know, do you want
a big trucks that can carry a lot of things. Um,
you know, do you want a small car that you
know is fast, or do you want something that is
(12:53):
kind of um, you know, all terrain and can move
through a lot of things. So there's like a lot
of contention sort of going through as this gets developed,
including some of my personal favorites. Like you know, there
were so many cards that were being pulled by horses
at that point, so you know, why not just make
a cart that moves on its own and kind of
(13:13):
looks like a lawnmower or you know, when you you
go to shoot or you know, a lot of these
operations you lie down on your belly, so you know,
sort of one rejected concept was nicknamed the belly flopper,
and it was sort of like a motorized palette that
you'd lie down on and then you know, as the
soldier moved from position to position, but the whole vehicle
(13:34):
will just move with it exactly and you know, along
the way, right. So it took all these little inspirations
from those things, like you said in the article, tractors
and lawnmowers, this belly flopper thing, it took all of
those inspirations and it kind of started becoming you know,
the jeep, but you know it meant all the requirements,
the criteria that then the military needed at the time.
(13:55):
Let's talk a little bit about the name jeep too,
because that's a pretty fun part. As you mentioned, it
almost was called belly flopper. There's all sorts of different
things to it. Uh. They called it, let's see, blitz, buggy,
puddle jumper, midget, peep, and no, probably where it really
came from. I guess you mentioned World War One grease
monkeys had a term from military vehicles g P, and
(14:17):
that's probably where it came from. Yeah, So GP, you know,
general purpose, Uh, kind of runs together like jeep, and
that nickname seems to be around before the particular truck
we talked about. Um. But one thing I learned researching
this story is that term got used for a lot
of other things, like aircraft, which I had I realized.
(14:40):
Even through World War Two, some members of the Army
Air Corps refused to call the jeep a jeep because
they had a point that they called jeep, So they
called them peeps like the little marshmallow snack. That's pretty good. Yeah,
And in inside the military, I guess they were going
back and forth on, you know, which one was the
right one, which was the what they would call it.
(15:01):
When they finally the military said, okay, we want to
manufacture these things. I guess they said, uh, you know,
we're going to give out this contract whoever can do it.
There was a hundred and thirty five auto makers at
that time. Only two agreed to submit proposals, so right
away that limited right there. And I guess they wanted
seventy vehicles to be produced in just seventy five days,
(15:21):
so that's really tough, probably why a lot of them
backed out. But tell us who came through with the
final design here? Sure, So yeah, you gotta appreciate how
quickly this came to gather that when they finally decided
it was worth kind of doing. You know, a small
truck that we kind of think of as being a jeep, now,
(15:42):
UM tew different companies put in proposal, so the Bantam
Company and Willy's Overland, And at that point Willie's UM
was well known to the army because they made a
lot of artillery carts and carriages. But you know, I
wouldn't necessarily be who you would think, UM makes this vehicle.
But UM once there were two prototypes, the Bantam and
(16:06):
and the Willies. It kind of became clear that UM,
even though the Willies came in proposal, came in late
and uh overweight because they had put an oversized engine
in it, and feel testing the oversized engine did bantactic
UM and everyone was loving it. But the problem with
that is Willie didn't actually have the capacity to make
(16:28):
the number of trucks that the army was hoping for. So,
you know, in one of those great moments of history,
there's a chance meeting in Washington, d C. Where one
of the under secretaries who was working on this under
Secretaries of the Army saw edzel Ford himself and asked
if he would, you know, agree to a special deal
where Ford would you know, agree to help Willis produce this.
(16:52):
So a lot of the original jeep have that Willie's
label on it, but we're actually UM made by Ford. Yeah.
That's amazing and and carries on to this day. Right,
there's still certain model trims of the jeep that go
by the Willie's name. You can see them, you know,
sometimes you'll see it, I'll say rubicon on the front,
on the hood, but sometimes they'll say say, Willie's on
them too, so they're all there, and and then from
(17:13):
then on, you know, just kind of how do you
get it funded. Part of this whole thing is there's
a lot of great classic pictures that you have on
the article on the website showing the jeep from you know,
when it started in World War two and beyond, and
the jeep driving on the Capitol steps. You know, how
it plays into pop culture. There was a bunch of
songs about it. Four Jills and a Jeep in movies.
(17:35):
You know, it really took off after that, absolutely, And
one of the funnest things I found, um when I
went to you know, I saw that picture of um,
you know, the army camp. They actually put jeeps out
in front of the Capitol building and they gave members
of Congress the chance to drive it up and down
the Capital steps. But it was hard to pick which
picture because it was just there were so many. It
(17:57):
was obvious that even at a point before it was
in mass production, every you know, senator and congressman who
got to drive this um, well he just having a
blast and got their picture tape. Yeah, I think the
picture you end up putting in there was Senator Meat
of New York and he's just like waving back the
camera with his hand up, big smile on his face,
and you know us a few service members in the
(18:18):
back seat, and that definitely definitely looks like fun. And
you know, just kind of this whole trajectory, right, it
just uh really was being used I guess, you know,
for military purposes too, But just like the service members
coming back home, so did the jeep And you know,
obviously has its big history now in the in the
States and all, but it came back and went back
to its tractor roots, pulling threshers and plows and was
(18:41):
used to be converted for like many firefighting trucks, so
that you know, it got a ton of use. It's
incredible to see what they were used for over time.
Everything from two jeeps hooked up could pull a tank
like when it was still in military use. But then
you see them showing up as you mentioned, um as
I were fighting equipment of and log aid and farming.
(19:04):
Um just really kind of incredible how personal it is. Yeah,
really fun. Look, I'm a fan of the jeep itself,
but you know, just to know how the roots started
and all, this is pretty fun Miranda Summer's low contributor
to Task and Purpose. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks so much. That's it for today. Join us on
(19:30):
social media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
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This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright
and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramrrors and this
was your Daily Dive
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