WEEKEND EDITION- Whistleblower Allegations, GM Strike Continues, Nationwide Surveillance Network

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,

(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. Interesting political story this week, a whistleblower complaint
has triggered a tense showdown between Congress and the intelligence community.
The complaint involves President Trump's communications with a foreign leader
and an alleged promise that he made. Caitlin Oprisco, she's
a reporter for Politico, joins us for more on this

(00:49):
whistleblower complaint. So last week, Adam Shift was the chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee. He filed a subpoena for
this whistleblower complaint than filed with the Internal watchdog for
the all of the US by agencies. The watchdog received
it about a month ago and deemed it to be urgent.

(01:10):
And credible, and so by law, the UH, the opposite
of the Director of National Intelligence, usually has to submit
the whistle blower complaint to Congress within seven days. That
didn't happen, and so the watchdog reached out directly to Congress.
And now they're kind of like an atten showdown over
the contents of this complaint. And like you said, we

(01:34):
don't know what's in the complaints. Reporting by the Washington
Post says it's about features the president centers around his
communications with the foreign leader. Made it a phone call,
and that it, like you said, involved some sort of
promise that he made. So the phone calls that the
president is having, they're usually monitored by a few different
agencies out of time. So this is how somebody was

(01:56):
able to maybe hear it. It's unclear if the whistleblower
actually did it directly or gained the knowledge somewhere after that,
but the Washington Post had reported that the president did
have communications with at least five different foreign leaders in
the weeks leading up to when the complaint was filed,
and they kind of determined that based on you know,

(02:18):
readouts from the White House and other publicly available information.
And one of the things that they noted is that
he had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin,
which is he did a lot of people's attention that
the Russian media reported that phone call first, and then
it was until you know, the end of that day
that the White House you've been confirmed it took place.

(02:39):
And this administration has been like kind of murky about
readouts of phone calls between Trump and foreign leaders, so
there's really no way to know for sure exactly what
was said. And he's also, i mean not limited to
phone calls. He's met with two or three leaders in
the White House since that time, gone to a couple
summits where he's met with world leaders. He's talked to

(03:00):
a lot of world leaders in that time. Right before
when the complaint was filed, the acting Director of National Intelligence,
Joseph McGuire, has not wanted to release the contents of
what the whistle blower actually said, and this is leading
a lot of people, including Adam Schiff, to say that
they're just trying to provide cover for the president. One
of the things that he said is that this specific

(03:22):
complaint isn't subject to the statute, the whistleblower Statute because
the subject of the complaint is not within his purview,
is not work in his office, and is not like
in the intelligence community. And so the general counsel for
McGuire argued, that makes it at his purview, and so
that's why they went to the Justice Department speaking legal

(03:43):
guidance for this. And Adam Schiff said today after his
briefing from the Inspector General that he has reason to
believe that the Justice Department said that they didn't have
to turn over the complaint. How has the President responded
to this? I know he's sent out a few tweets
he said, this is another fake news story. But what
else has he mentioned about this? So his tweets this

(04:03):
morning were the only comment his study's given on the
report so far. Like you said, he called it fakeness.
He also said that anytime I speak on the phone
with a foreign leader, I know that there is you know,
any number of people listening from various agencies, And he said,
is anyone dumb enough to believe that I would say
something inappropriate with the word that he used, he said,

(04:24):
on such a potentially heavily heavily populated call. And then
he said, I would do what was right anyway and
only good for the USA. So he's shutting down this
idea that he would say something inappropriate to a world
leader on a phone call. Caitlin Oprisco, reporter at Politico,
thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much
for having me story this sweet that is still ongoing.

(04:46):
The United Auto Workers Union went on strike at General Motors,
sending almost fifty tho members to the picket lines. The
union is pushing for GM to improve wages and narrow
the pay gap between older and new workers, and reopen
plants that have shut down. Among other things, GM wants
workers to pay for a greater portion of their healthcare costs.
For more in the story, we spoke to Phoebe wall Howard.

(05:06):
She's a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Well, a
couple of things happening here. Nearly fifty workers, as you said,
and that's intense states. So this is not a Detroit
or Ohio issue. This is a national issue. This, of course,
is where the United Auto Workers are saying they broke
her a deal with General Motors during the economic recession.
They forfeited vacation, they forfeited wages, and they forfeited other benefits,

(05:30):
saying we're all in this together. When everybody's making money,
bring us back to the table. So the GM workers
actually broke a contract that protected them during the recession,
took massive cuts at the time, and says now GM
is a very healthy company. It's executives are paid very well.
Do not cut our healthcare and protect our wages. What's

(05:52):
interesting is the Center for Automotive Research notes that the
u A w wage is actually down sixteen per cent
since those cuts. So that's an industry friendly organization at
the University of Michigan that says the wages today are lower.
So that's what you have here a GM. They have
this kind of two tier system where older workers are,

(06:13):
you know, making whatever money they're having, and new employees
are getting hired in at much lower wages, and some
of them say that that causes this kind of strife
between them because they're doing very similar work and they're
getting paid vastly different salaries. Absolutely with the temporary workers
and the two tier, and that is an issue where
the workers say they really want parity. Interestingly, the workers

(06:36):
on the line I interviewed last night said it makes
them feel better that everybody has the same wage. So
some of the strikers that I talked to were the
higher wage strikers and they felt it was fair again
bringing everybody up. A number of people hadn't had pay
raises in years. I know GM has wanted them to
pay a greater portion of their healthcare costs. That seems

(06:57):
to be a big sticking point. They pay very little
the employ ease compared to average workers across the country,
but that's where GM is trying to save some costs
by having them pay a little bit more of their
healthcare costs. The health care is a big issue, like
for all companies. The issue that labor will say is
that their jobs are exceptionally physical and more prone to injury. Frankly,

(07:19):
so their point is, yes, we have better health coverage,
we are also in significantly more dangerous conditions in terms
of repetitive motion and even dealing with robots. For now,
workers that are striking will get paid two fifty dollars
a week while they're out of work, although they do
have to wait I think fifteen days before this actually
kicks in. Two or fifty dollars a week is not

(07:42):
very much. That's going to be pretty tough for them
to live on for their part. On GM side, they
said that things won't really get affected to the consumers
for about seventy days or so, that after that then
you'll start seeing certain models or colors or things that
consumers want that they might not be available at that time.
Two things that you touch on in terms of the
two fifty dollars a week. One is that the local

(08:05):
union halls have been collecting food and nonperishable so people
throughout the community have been collecting goods in support of
the union workers, many non union people. I saw them
delivering cars full of materials, especially in Flint, people from
driving all over the state of Michigan and delivering that stuff.
As far as days and supply, GM is absolutely confident

(08:27):
that it has prepared and produced, so they do have
a stash. However, remember we learned the teamsters have announced
that they are supporting the U a W workers. That
means that they will not be delivering vehicles. They will
not deliver them from the factory and they will not
deliver them to the dealer. So when the truck drivers
say we will not cross this picket line, that is

(08:50):
a very serious issue that hasn't gotten a lot of attention.
But that's one thousand truck drivers who are saying we
won't be returning your phone call. Has been a scandal
going on with the United Auto Workers leadership. They were
using union funds for lavish trips and things like that.
How has this impacted all the negotiations and the workers themselves?

(09:11):
How do they feel about all of this? So, the
issue of fraud and scandal and FBI convictions over the
last two years, it's real with the national United Auto Workers. However,
the workers will say separate from that. Many say they're
happy to be striking and they feel like it's overdue.
So for them, the issue is some of the folks

(09:32):
at the table doing the negotiation are under federal scrutiny
right now for potential wrongdoing. These are leadership teams, some
of which have pleaded guilty and have been given prison time.
So that is a valid issue of valid concern and frankly,
the focus of tremendous anger and resentment. Phoebe wall Howard,
one of the auto and labor reporters for the Detroit

(09:53):
Free Press, thank you very much for joining us. It's
a pleasure. Thank you. There's a company called Digital Recognition
network who's built a private, nationwide surveillance database that could
potentially tracked the movements of car owners over long periods
of time. This network is built on the backs of
REPO men equipped with cameras that scan the license plates

(10:16):
of every car they drive by and then added to
a searchable database that's accessible to private investigators, REPO agents,
and insurance companies. For more in the story, we spoke
to Joseph Cox. He's a senior writer advices Motherboard about
how to track someone with this digital Recognition network tool.
This is not a database created by government, although law

(10:37):
enforcement can also pay franks as as well. It is,
as you say, created entirely by a private company and
they sell or give these cameras to REPO men who
drive around and they sort of simultaneously benefit from the database,
which is that if they pass a vehicle and the
system says, hey that that vehicle is marked repossession, you

(10:59):
can go get it, so they get that benefit as well.
But as they drive around, it scans, it continually updates
the data base sort of simultaneously. And even though REPO
men are the ones who are you know, primarily building
this database, that's certainly not the only ones using it.
It's also accessible by insurance firms, and in the case

(11:21):
of my source who looked up a plate for us,
they were a private investigator and they could use that
data for everything from tracking, you know, a spout at
someone's suspects of cheating, right up to sort of repossessing
a car something like that. There's a wide spectrum of
use and potentially abuse of this data. Yeah, these stories

(11:42):
are always very interesting to me. You know, we all
we see a lot of stuff in TV and movies
and you just kind of naturally think this stuff is
widely available, and then you read a story like this
and you're like, wow, that stuff actually is true. So
that's why these things are always interesting to me. We
didn't interview previously on the podcast with a skip tracer,
and we were asking her, you know, some of the
methods that you used to track people down, and for

(12:03):
obviously reasons, she didn't want to reveal any trade secrets
or anything. But then I read this article and I
was like, this might be exactly one of the types
of tools that she's using. So you did get in
touch with somebody who helped you use this service and
look up a license plate, how did that whole thing
play out. Yes, So we've been covering sort of um
sort of similar what you touched on them the tools

(12:25):
at skip tracers or bail bondsman, private investigators or bounty hunters.
Of course they're not all one and the same thing,
but they do often make use of the same sort
of tools. Previously, we did um an investigation where you
could track cell phone tracking data, as in the location
of someone's phone, and bounty hunters were doing that. After
that sort of reporting, more people reached out and eventually

(12:46):
a private investigator with access to this dr N system
got in touch, and then of course I wanted to
verify that the system worked as advertised. And then that's
how we devise this sort of test, because I mean
to be DRN has been around for you know, around
ten years now. It is not a new system. It
has been building up over that time. It's around nine

(13:07):
billion scans now. But to try and give the readers
a sense, sort of a more tangible, concrete sense of
what this tool actually is, we thought we would actually
use it. So we gave a license plate to the
priv investigator who looked it up and then they did
see that well, the person cars parked here, then it's
over here, and now it's in a different state. And

(13:29):
then I gave that information to the person who gave
us consent to be tracked, and they gave us a
bit of context, like, oh, yeah, that's that photo is
outside my house. That is when a member of the
family drove to go see someone else in a different state.
So it is possible to track people, as you say,
over a long period of time and in potentially um

(13:51):
sensitive situations. I mean, for throwing back to an older
case from years and years ago now, but a police
officer was using similar technology to sort of uh, surveil
and catalog people who were driving and parking outside gable
and then trying to extort them. That's a long time ago.
But this is a similar sort of technology today that
could be used for that as well. And so how

(14:12):
much does this cast? The d r N It seems
charges twenty to look up a license plate. That's not
very expensive at all, right, Yeah, it is relatively cheap
once you get access by being a reaperman or whatever.
It's twenty dollars for a look up and then seventy
dollars for a so called live alert. You know, you'll
you'll give it a plate that you want to have

(14:32):
constant information on, and then whenever the system spots it,
it will send you an email or some sort of notifications.
So once you do get in, as it seems to
be with a lot of these skip tracing or private
investigators halls, once you're inside, it is pretty cheap to
do these look ups because of course for this community,
and especially the bail bondsman ones. Let's say there's a

(14:53):
bail for ten grand, they don't want to spend thousands
of dollars on this tool. And because this system has
been built at such scale, companies like DRN can afford
to offer this sort of information of the relatively cheap price.
So how wide is the DRN reach? Obviously the scans
can happen throughout the country. Do they have these cameras

(15:15):
set up with rebo men in every state? Pretty much? Yes,
So I won't be super specific on where we did
the test and what states or what cities just to
protect you their individuals privacy there. But in our tests
it was various states across the country, and I was
also sent the results of a scan in a large
metropolitan city. There was on a much more granular level

(15:39):
sort of. The other way to go about it, I
guess is look at the states that have pushed back
against it with legislation. There was you know, one in Utah,
but then DRM pushed to get back against that and
that law got overturned. But from everything that we can tell,
it is nationwide or nearly in every state of as.

(16:00):
It then depends, you know, whether a repotman has actually
driven past that area. If you're in a city, it's
going to be a lot more dense with a lot
more cameras. If you're in the middle of nowhere, maybe
your vehicle hasn't been caught. But we phrasing the articles
coast to coast, and that does appear to be accurate.
Let's talk a little bit about the legality of all this.
Pictures taken in public are protected by the First Amendment.

(16:23):
So theoretically, pretty much everything that they're scanning, all these
license plates, since happening in public. There's no expectation of privacy.
It should all be legal. But let's say in the
case of a car that needs to be repossessed something
like that, or you know, they're looking for a bad guy.
You know, most people are going to say, Okay, that's fine,
go ahead and do this. But they're picking up license

(16:44):
plates of everybody pretty much they passed by potentially, and
members of the public really would have no way to
know whether their data has been collected by this or not. Yeah, exactly.
I mean there's sort of two points of the legalacy.
First is the collection of data, which, as you say,
it is legal to go take photos in public under
the First Amendment UM, and that is what DRN says

(17:07):
it's doing here. It just says, hey, we're just taking
photos in public. But critics of that, like the American
Civil Liberties Union, they will say that at a certain
point this qualitatively becomes something else. I mean, this is
not the same as a p I driving around and
oh I happened to find someone's car and I'll take
a photo of their plate. This is automated at scale,

(17:29):
and it's not really necessarily what the law had in
mind when it was written around this sort of public photography.
But then you also have the reality of accessing the data,
so after it's been collected, and then of course someone
wants to go use it. If you're a police officer,
when it comes to you know, search and seizure. You're
going to be doing stuff under the full Amendment. Now,

(17:50):
some people believe license plate data should have a warrants,
some say it shouldn't. There's still debates around there, but
at least there's a debate around it. When it comes
to private companies, I mean, the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply
to them, right, They can do whatever they want these data,
be a reaperman insurance firm, or in our case of
private investigators. So it's almost there are almost fewer protections

(18:12):
around the data when it's being used by DRN and
private individuals then it would be if it was a
law enforcement You mentioned the potential for abuse of this system.
What did they say with regards to that, So it's
not entirely clear how the tool has been abused. The
examples we gave are, you know, maybe a jealous X
trying to spy on their spouse. There could be core protespionage.

(18:35):
There could be lots of different things. But what they
did admit the company in a public council hearing I
believe was that yes, people are sharing access. So if
I'm a p I and I have a used name
in the past word, apparently people are then giving those
to other people who don't actually have authorization to use
the tool. So not only do you have p i

(18:55):
s who may be using the software in the system
for malicious purposes such as stalking someone or following someone,
they can then re share the access with someone else
as well. And just the issue is sort of what
you touched on. We don't know how it's being abused
because there's very few avenues to follow up on this.
You can't go and you know, do a freedom of

(19:17):
information request to find out. I feel data is in
here because it's a private company. So we know that
the access has been abused, we just don't know exactly
how yet. Obviously we're hoping to get more information on that.
Joseph Cox, Senior writer, Advice is Motherboard. Thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

(19:37):
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