Tech Friday with Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 7/5/2024

Episode Transcript

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All right, rocking in the houseon an early Friday morning, must be
Dave Hatter's turn sounds like Hatter music, Gary Jeff on the Morning Show on
this fifth of July. It's IndependenceWeek and we're still not independent of all

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kinds of cyber threats. That's whywe have this guy in to talk about
it, the self proclaimed tinfoil hatguy Dave Hatter, with some tech talk
stuff for us this morning. Howyou doing, Dave? Hello, I
thought Dave was waiting. My bad, we were going to talk about AI

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girlfriends. Well, if you can, Joe, try and contact him again
and we'll figure out. Now.This is just too hard to believe,
although I believe almost anything these days. The headline of this story is your
AI girlfriend is a data harvesting horrorshow. No kidden number one. Why

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would you have an AI girlfriend orboyfriend? Is the question this Mozilla researcher
says to be perfectly blunt. AIgirlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends.
What the hell is an AI boyfriendor girlfriend? I mean, is there

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an actual robot or is it justsomewhere in the ether. I'm not certain.
And we have this story about theninety thousand lg smart TVs that may
be exposed to remote attacks. Mostof them are in the Republic of South
Korea, but there are a goodsix six and a half thousand here in

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the United States. You're LGTV spyingon you, and then shared Brown calling
for a band on evs from Chinaaccording to the Register. So if we
ever talked today this morning, wewill tackle those topics specifically. But again,

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if you have smart anything in yourhouse, then you're not very smart.
Okay, we do have Dave.If you would go ahead and put
him on Joe, that'd be great. Dave, we missed your walk up
music and everything else. Did yourcomrades disappear this morning? Is there a
technical reason? Is there a technicalreason for this? Believe it or not?

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Gary, yet, there is atechnical reason. I'm not exactly sure
what happened. I could hear you, but honestly, you couldn't hear me.
So I know you're talking about AIgirlfriend, which is in a completely
insane topic on its face, evenbefore we get into the details. But
yeah, I'm not sure what happenedthere. But you know, we went
to old school. Yeah, that'sokay. It's always good to talk to

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you any way we can get you, and we have this twentieth century technology
we're going to use today. Ohexactly. So I mean think of it
as think of it as sail over, Gary, Jeff, we sailed over
to our backup system. That's wonderful. I mean I wish we'd do that
with a lot, a lot ofdifferent things, a lot of different aspects,

(03:28):
a lot of different technology that Iwish we could fail back to what
was there before, because it all, like I always said, Dave,
whenever they started really really focusing onmaking radio fully digital, and we handle
these hard drives and programs that we'venever dealt with. I mean I started

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with two turntables and a microphone,just like back back in nineteen eighty.
So when they started installing all thishardware, every time they would do a
quote upgrade, I knew that thething was going to be crashing almost immediately
after they upgraded, and I'd begetting the CDs and the carts back out

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to complete a radio program. AndI kind of enjoyed that. You get
very lazy relying on the technology.But when the technology doesn't work, because
well we've improved it, and youknow the story. So what what the
hell is an AI girlfriend or boyfriend? Yeah, well, so think about

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a chatbot like we've seen before,and you know, I guess my best
explanation. For those who may rememberthe Microsoft Tay story, Microsoft rolled out
one of these AI chatpots called Tayon Twitter back in twenty sixteen. Within
twenty four hours they had to shutit down because it just went totally off
the rails. Now, this doesn'timprove a lot since then, don't doubt

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that. But the idea, again, Gary Jefficck, comes back something you
and I have talked about so manytimes. When you're using these products that
are free, you are not thecustomer, You are the product their amount
of time in your data. Andas Mozella, I know you started out
in the Mozilla angle. The peoplethat make Firefox have this great website called
Privacy Not Included. It's a greatresource really for any number of things if

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you want to try to understand isan application or a platform or a product
privacy sending. Now, obviously theydon't have every single thing in the world
in there, but they'll take alook at broad sloths of different products and
you have a good idea of whethersomething is going to be privacy friendly or
not. And I love the waythey'll count it that if it's not a
privacy for the product, they'll putit in the privacy not included bucket.

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So they looked at eight different AIgirlfriends. So you sign up and you
talk to this thing and it's yourgirlfriend to quote unquote or boyfriend could go
either way, right, And theylooked at these things and the eleventh look
that none of them were viewed positively. There were privacy problems, there were
security problems, and you know,one of the things point out, and
I can't stress enough to people,if you're using something where your data is

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the fundamental driver of their revenue,well of course they're going to want to
collect as much data as possible.And you know they mentioned in here that
these things, of course are askingfor the most sensitive data possible about you
because then supposedly that's going to bethe experience better. You know, here's
a direct quota from the article.Even AI Chad thought and film may push

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users to quote share all your secretsand desires unquote and specifically ask for photos
and voice recording, which would bereally handy if someone wanted to cute your
voice and aid take you. So, Yeah, this is just insane,
Gary Jeff. It's hard for meto imagine how someone could be lonely enough
to want to use one of thesethings. And I'm glad someone is exposing

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it because you know, there's nothinggood will come of this. I predict
well, I mean, will anAI girlfriend get mad if you don't take
her to dinner? I I mean, how does that work? How does
any of this work? And whatwould make people gravitate? I mean,
how sad does your life have tobe that you need romance versus art via

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artificial intelligence. I'm looking at ReplicaChai, Romantic AI Eva, AI Chat
bought, and soul soul Mate.AI doesn't have a soul. How can
it be a soul mate? Whatthe hell? Thanks for the point,
Garret. Yeah, but one lastthing for one at a time again.
You know these things are voracious intheir effort to collect your data. The

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article points out one of them werestriking finding a team in Mozilla count of
the tracers in these apps a littlebit to of to collect data and share
them with other companies for advertising.Mozilla found the AI girlfriend asks use an
average and wait for two thousand andsix and thirty three trackers per minute,
and Romantic AI had twenty four thousand, three hundred and fifty four trackers and

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just one minute of using app.So it's not just that they're directly collecting
your data, it's through these trackersthey're selling your data to other people.
So you might be in there talkingabout things like your sexual health, your
mental health, or your deepest desiresquote unquote, and imagine who would potentially
have access to that data and whothey might sell that to. I mean,

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again, nothing good could possibly comeof this, and I just can't
strongly encourage people enough. If you'rethinking about using one of these, or
if you know someone that does,don't take old tenfold Dave Hatter's word for
it. Go out and check outMozilla and see what they have to say
about it. You've got to beyou. You got to be mentally ill

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to even in dabbling this. Imean, I'm just going to go the
easy route, Dave. I'm goingto find a computer I hate and buy
it a house. We'll take abreak and come back more with Dave Hatter
and Friday Tech Talk. You're onfifty five KARC the talk statement that's uh

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six forty three. It's right hereon fifty five KRC DJ GJ at the
Controls and Dave Hanner joining us ona Friday tech talk. I was just
I was looking at your opinion postin the Northern Kentucky Tribune, Dave,

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and it's titled cybersecurity threats pose achallenge in One adversary stands above the rest.
Let me guess who it is beforeI even read any further, The
People's Republic of China Wild Gary,Jeff. That's an amazing guest. How
did you guess that? So tellme a little bit about what you wrote

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here about the PRC and infiltrating ournetworks. That the Chinese are so good.
I mean, they have planned thisand plotted this for quite a while,
and they're executing it now with greatprecision and perfection, and we seem
to be allowing them to do itup to this point. Yeah, we

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definitely seem to be asleep at theswitch, although I think folks are coming
around. But before I before Iget it, I just got to tell
you I love that that song.Have you ever seen the Futurama episode where
Bender the robot plays washboard on himselfto that song? No, I haven't.
You haven't watched Futurama. It's quitefunny anyway. But there's an episode

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where Bender, because you don't know, this very funny robot and yeah,
he does that song and he playsthe washboard on himself. It's great.
Anyhow, we we have we havea ro we have a robot named Bender
around here, but he's not thatfunny. Oh yeah, anyway, you
were saying, Yeah, so youknow, all the all the three better

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agencies have been warning about critical infrastructure. The Eye looks at critical infrastructure for
sixteen different sectors. You know,chemicals, you know, a variety of
things, most of them I thinkare pretty obvious, the electric grid.
And they've been warning for some timeabout PRC, the People's Republic, could
Chinese Communist Party infiltration and our criticalinfrastructure with the theory that at some point,

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you know, when the time isright and they decide they wanted to
launch to attack, and they wouldpotentially be able to cause chaos and you
know, pretty much up in thewhole country without every firing or shot because
and I say this all the timeto people, Gary, Jeff, just
just stop the thing, even ifyou don't believe a word I'm saying.
If this sounds like some sort oftenfoil hack conspiracy, think about how much
time you spend online in a givenday. This is an average person.

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You know, you bank online,you entertain yourself online. Many people now
work in some sort of online fashionfactories are increasingly digital. You know this
system is internected to that system.Mention this seed before I always encourage people
go out and read an article calledthe Coming Software Apocalypse. It's not even
really focused on cybersecurity. It's morefocused on bad software and technical debt,

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legacy software that's never been upgraded andimproved, that has issues. And now
because we rely on this stuff.In the old days, things were mechanical.
Now everything is digital. It's oftennot even possible to understand every possible
state that's something to be in becauseof the software inside it. And now

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you have hackers breaking into this stuff. In the business, it's called lurking
or dwell time. Right, I'mgoing to lurk around in there, I'm
gonna dwell. I'm going to lookfor possible opportunities to steal money, steal
data, some combination that both orand from the perspective of an adversary like
the people from public in China.I'm going to plant back doors there and

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wait till the right time to shutyour factories down, or cause chemical releases,
or do whatever it is that Imight want to do. So my
long witted point here is people havebeen talking about this for a long time.
It started to reach a critical level. I encourage people who haven't looked
into this before go out and seewhat FBI Director Ray has said about this,

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as well as people like the NationalSecurity Director and so forth. I
mean, they've been raising the alarmabout this for some time. And so
the point I'm trying to make isit's well, our entire society now depends
on this stuff. Former NSA directorand former Army General Paul KNAKASONI said,
quote, cybersecurity is national security unquote. I totally agree with that. And

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then you've got folks like Niko Hipponent, who's an internationally renowned cybersecurity expert.
I got a photo of him froma TED talk he gave where he's got
a giant screen he standing next to, and it says we're no longer protecting
computers, We're protecting society. Andthat's that's where we're at. So I'm
just trying to use what little bitof influence I have as someone who's worked

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in this business for a long timeand he sees these problems that is very
concerned about them, to just raiseawareness out there every chance I get.
So I appreciate it when people pickthese things up when I put them out.
You know, I'll post this thingon X and you know, I'll
post it on my show notes sofolks can read it for themselves. But
don't take my word for it.You will find there are many experts,

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in many government officials warning that,you know, we must get serious about
securing this critical infrastructure before something oncatastrophic and unthinkable happens. And it's going
to happen eventually if we don't taketake care of it soon. Yep,
definitely, we're right there at thePrecipice six forty eight. We'll take a

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break and come back one more timewith Dave Header on Friday Tech Talk on
fifty five KRCE the talk station.Now with a few minutes left for Dave
Hatter On a Friday, Harry,Jim and the Mad Hatter talking tech stuff.
So Dave, I'll give you yourchoice either smart TVs, or Chinese

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evs. We just beat up onthe communists pretty bad in the last segment.
So, but this kind of relatesto, so which one do you
want to uh have a stabish about? How about if I how about if
I work them both in together?Oh, you are a master, You're
a master. It does go ahead. They both speak to the privacy and

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dumpster fire that is the so calledInternet of things a ka quote unquote smart
devices. So, uh, Gary, Jeff, you and I have been
talking about this stuff for a longlong time. Internet of things. Most
of that stuff is basically designed toget market share, get the market fast.
They don't care about your privacy andsecurity. Much of it comes from

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China. And you know when youbuy these smart coffee makers and things that
sound cool but really you don't need, you're just asking for trouble. Two
things on the smart TV. Ifyou have an LG smart TV, I
strongly encourage you to go into itssettings, update the software in it,
and make sure it's set to automaticallyupdate. There are many of them that

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have some pretty signinum vulnerabilities that wouldallow a remote takeover. People say,
so, what well I might beable to get from your TV to your
computer or other devices, which wouldbe problematic. But you know, again
the whole Internet of Things, youhave devices that have software in them.
You have software that has bugs,you have software that it's not configured correctly
the bad guys. Notice there's asearch engine called showdam. It's specifically designed

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to find Internet of Things devices.That's one of the ways they were able
to tell there's at least ninety thousandlgtvs out there that have the software vulnerability.
So when we have these Internet ofThings devices that are poorly designed,
poorly developed, and misconfigured, itbasically is making it easy for the bad
guys, whether it's the Chinese CommunistParty or North Korea or just your average

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hacker. And the whole Chinese electricvehicle idea to me is so alarming.
Imagine for a second Carria Jet,even if you're trust of these vehicles coming
from China that are full of microphonesand sensors. Back to Mozilla for a
second. I encourage people to checkout their privacy not included report on new
cars. They're basically rolling surveillance devices. Now take that to the next step,

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where you have an adversarial nation.The single most adversarial nation in the
world. They're going to build carsthat you're going to buy. They're going
to collect all your personal data.They're going to know everywhere you go,
and there're surveillance tools. For example, what would stop the Chinese Communist Party
from having backdoors in the software ofthese cars that they could use the surveillance
devices. They don't need satellite,they don't need spyplanes. They're spying on

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us through these cars. But theworst and most scary part of this would
be what do you think would happenwhen you have a eight to ten thousand
pound vehicle full of nasty batteries andchemicals and such that could be weaponized and
turned into basically projectiles. Every Chinesecar at four point thirty pm on Friday

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afternoon just accelerates, or even worse, because of the advanced AI GPS type
capabilities, they are targeted to specificthings like your local subpower substation, and
while you're in it, you becomea missile that drives through the fence into
the transformers. And I know thissounds crazy to people. I'm not the
only person talking about this, andpeople like Shared Senator Shared Brown from Ohio

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have reached out. You know thatthe Biden administration has gotten, you know,
pretty serious about this, but youknow, shared Brown has reached out
and warned about this, as haveothers, both politicians and experts, that
it's not just that they're subsidizing needsand trying to steal market share and you
know, damage American companies that makecars. It's not just that these things

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are individual and collective surveillance devices.It's that they can be weaponized by a
foreign adversary. And as we allknow, every company in China is ultimately
controlled by the Chinese government and theChinese Communist Party. I think it's absolutely
insane that we would even consider allowingsomething like this into our nation, especially

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in light of the seemingly rapidly decreasingstuck for work Ry Jeff relations relations with
the Chinese Communist Party. It's crazy. Well, I mean, in any
kind of autonomous vehicle, I'm steeringclear of no pun intended, whether it
was made in Communists China or anywhereelse. I'm just not a big fan

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of that. The less that technologytakes control of my life, the better
I like it. Well, Iagree with you one hundred percent. Despite
doing this for a limit. Yeah, it's all so immature and so fraught
with peril due to privacy and securityissues, even if you take the Chinese

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Communist Party hang on it. Yeah, less is better at this point unless
you really know what you're doing andyou know vet things carefully and you know
how to figure them correctly, andyou know how to keep them updated,
which most people don't. And that'snot a crack on society. It's just
you know, this stuff is complicated, it moves fast, and most people
don't want to have to know allthis stuff, which I fully understand.

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But if you're if you're using thesekinds of devices and you don't really understand
how they work and how to securethem, you are really asking them for
trouble. Oh, I encourage folksstay away from them. All I need,
Dave Hatter is a pocket watch anda nine volt transistor radio and I'm
fine. Dave Hadder, have afantastic weekend, Enjoy the rest of the

(20:41):
Independence holiday and thanks for joining usthis morning. Always my pleasure. Gary,
Jeff, you too, and helpedto chat with you. Thanks.
We will speak to George c.Landreth on let Freedom Ring again after the
news at seven o'clock, fifty fiveKRC, the talk station, changing world.
There's one constant you can depend on. Fifty five KRC, the talk

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station at the top end, bottomof the hour,