And you are listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
The time is 8 o'clock and it's a Wednesday night.
So those two things together mean it's time for Off The Hook.
And it means no!
It's Off The Hook!
And the very good man to provide the program is Off The Hook, Emanuel Goldstein here with
you, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi there.
And Voltaire, welcome.
Good evening.
It's another interesting spring evening here in Brooklyn, and we have a lot of things to
cover tonight, even though we have a somewhat skeletal staff for various reasons.
We will make up for that with a lot to talk about, and hopefully we'll be able to take
some listener phone calls a little bit later on.
But you know, I wanted to start with something that I thought was particularly interesting
because this story came out yesterday, and wow, it sure hits home.
It hits home in a number of ways because it's hitting a lot of us in our homes.
But basically, it's this amazing story that was on a motherboard, which is part of vice.com.
If you haven't read it, you really should.
It's entitled Surveillance Starts at Home.
I'm just going to read you a few pieces of this article.
It's basically the story of a guy named John who tapped out a simple text message to his
wife in January of 2016 that said, I love you.
But that wasn't the only message that she saw.
Unbeknownst to John, his wife had bugged his smartphone.
That's right.
She was spying on John, eavesdropping on all of his text and multimedia messages, and tracking
his every move through the device's GPS.
She was also stealing all of John's photos.
In one slightly blurred picture, John, who happens to be a police officer in a small
town in the southwestern United States, is knelt over a subject who is face down on the
curb.
And in another photograph, John is taking a selfie, wearing a dress shirt and a black
tie.
A third picture shows an email exchange with Facebook's law enforcement help team, revealing
that John was requesting data on a target of an investigation.
All of this, his wife was able to see.
These messages and pictures, including some of the couple's more intimate moments, were
taken directly from John's cell phone by his wife, using a piece of consumer surveillance
software made by an American company known as RetinaX.
That's right, RetinaX.
And in a somewhat ironic twist, that software is called PhoneSheriff.
It seems no small number of people are willing to use this kind of technology on their partners,
spouses, or even children.
In fact, they have something called TeenShield.
They have PhoneSheriff, RetinaX also makes SniperSpy, TeenShield, it's unbelievable.
This all came to light thanks to the actions of a hacker who was kind of fed up with all
this.
This hacker calling themselves Leopard Boy, which of course is a reference to the 1995
cult film Hackers.
Did you know it was a cult film?
Hackers is a cult film.
No, I wasn't really aware that it had become a cult film.
When did it reach cult status?
I don't know.
No one informed me.
When we became a cult.
That's when.
Oh, that makes sense.
That makes sense.
But regardless, okay, so what this Leopard Boy did was basically leak a lot of information
about a couple of these companies.
Tens of thousands of accounts were provided to Motherboard.
Of course, it only represents a small slice of the consumer spyware market, but wow, that
is simply an incredible story.
Joining us on the telephone right now is Lorenzo Franceschi Bicchiari, which I hope I'm pronouncing
right, the co-author of this piece.
Lorenzo, welcome to Off The Hook.
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for having me.
Wow.
This is an incredible story because it tells such an interesting tale of something that
I think we're all affected by, whether we know it or not, and that is surveillance by
other individuals, or in many cases, I suppose, surveillance by ourselves towards other individuals.
Tell us how you got involved with this.
Yeah.
So the long story short is that two different hackers approached us at Motherboard, me and
my colleague, Joseph Cox, with data from two separate companies that essentially sell
the same product, or actually several products.
The companies had different kind of products, but they all do the same essentially, which
is still siphon data off of your devices to someone else.
It could be your parents, it could be your spouse, but at the technological level, it's
the same thing.
It's spyware.
Yeah.
So these two hackers broke into the servers of the two companies in an attempt to essentially
expose what they think is like an unethical and despicable industry.
It really is because people are lured into this by these companies.
They have certain marketing ploys to get people to feel paranoid and to buy these products,
don't they?
Yeah.
We're going to have more about this in the next few days because this is an ongoing series.
But basically, yeah, like for example, Flexispy, one of the two companies that was breached
has long been known to have some sort of aggressive marketing campaigns and even tricks to increase
their SEO in Google.
So as you said, they try to basically feel people paranoid.
They really like try to get people to their worst instincts, like they have an ad talking
about the fact that your spouse could be cheating on you right now and the only way to know
is to essentially know everything that's going on on their cell phone.
Where do they play these ads or print these ads?
I'd like to know how to get people to do these.
I don't remember exactly where Flexispy prints these ads, but there's like thousands of these
kind of companies.
One of them famously had an ad on their website that was basically like a picture of a woman
with booze on her face.
So it was like really, really gross.
Well, it sounds like they certainly are successful in catering to our worst fears and suspicions.
Can you give us an example of how pervasive this is?
How much information about somebody could be obtained by somebody else if they subscribe
to one of these services?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if you get this installed on somebody's cell phone, like for example,
RetinaX PhoneSheriff, the product that you mentioned earlier, it basically siphons, you
can siphon off all kinds of information for your cell phone.
So we're talking about text messages, messages exchanged with iMessage, which is encrypted
end-to-end, WhatsApp, same thing, supposedly encrypted end-to-end.
But obviously, if you see the messages on the phone, that doesn't matter.
So what you're saying is you can use something that claims it's encrypted and is encrypted,
but if they're accessing your phone, obviously, they see it before it gets encrypted.
So that doesn't do any good at all.
Yeah, exactly.
And then, you know, emails that you exchange through the app on your cell phone, call logs,
you can intercept phone calls or listen in on, you know, your partners or your children,
phone calls, browsing history, basically everything, you know, everything you can
imagine that you do on your cell phone these days, which, you know, most people do at this
point, do everything on their cell phone, you can siphon off those apps.
Well, you know, one of the hackers that revealed this information says, it's impossible to
know that you are the only one looking.
I want parents to think twice about unleashing this kind of stuff on their kids.
I want it to damage those spying mechanisms because I think it's almost entirely a bad
category of software.
He basically, what Leopard Boy said, what Flexispy allows people to do is effing seedy
and skin-crawlingly revolting.
I just want to applaud that sentiment because I can't think of a more descriptive way of
categorizing that.
It's a horrible intrusion and something that so many people aren't aware of.
Is there any way that someone can tell if they have one of these applications running
on their phones?
I think it depends what phone you have and what applications we're talking about, but
there are some ways that you can sort of protect yourself.
You know, you could review like the apps that are installed on your phone.
If you're on Android, maybe, you know, maybe installing an antivirus app could help, although
that's not, you know, that's not a guarantee.
So it's, you know, this is not like people shouldn't be paranoid because of this, but
you should just be aware of the fact that if your partner or if someone basically has
physical access to your cell phone, they could install this.
Wow.
Yeah.
Any kind of maybe behavioral differences that people could engage in as far as how they
use their phones?
For instance, maybe not texting everything that they're doing or communicating solely
through one particular device.
Yeah, that could help because if you, yeah, that's a good way to sort of confuse whoever
is talking to you, for example, and potentially like cut some of the data that they got access
to.
Yeah, I mean, that's sort of like common sense or common OPSEC, operational security.
So if you're like going to like an important meeting, maybe leave your cell phone behind
or, you know, if like, let's say that you are a victim of domestic abuse and you think
that your partner was abusing you, is using this stuff on you and you're going to meet,
let's say, your lawyer, maybe turn off your cell phone or even, you know, don't leave
it, don't take it to the room, stuff like that could can help.
It's probably a good way to avoid some kind of surveillance.
Wow.
What would you say to people that feel they have to have this software in order to keep
track of their kids, to make sure they're not in danger or just to check up on somebody
who they might not totally believe is telling the truth?
Yeah, that's a hard question to answer because I'm not a parent and, you know, I think the
natural answer to that is that I grew up, you know, without having a cell phone for
most of my childhood and I was fine and my parents were mostly fine.
So I think that, you know, the old fashioned ways of checking on children can still work.
I understand that this is, you know, it's very tempting, right?
Like now these children bring basically tracking devices on themselves all the time.
So it's much easier than finding more creative ways to keep track of them.
But the point that the hacker made in that quote that you just read about when he said
like you never know if you're the only one looking or listening in was that when you're
using these apps and this kind of spyware, you're basically giving your children's data
to somebody else.
You know, in this case, a company that might be or might not be trustworthy.
So you should think about that before, you know, putting this out to your children.
Absolutely.
And also, you know, it's kind of a wake up call for people that might not realize just
how much information about themselves is able to be gleaned from that device.
I mean, it should be pretty obvious since you're doing so much on this phone that if
you have access to the actual phone, yeah, you can learn quite a bit about somebody.
But it's possible people don't really think it through and they just assume it's a convenient
thing to have with them at all times, not realizing the potential negative implications
of it.
Now, what we what we know based on this, on these on these tools that are installed, stalkerware
it's called, you need to have physical access to the phone at some point in order to install
them.
Have you come across any examples of cases where you might not have to have physical
access?
Well, sorry.
Well, for this kind of stalkerware, so consumer spyware, we haven't seen that yet.
But if there are like similar software that's sold to governments and intelligence agencies
around the world, that is essentially the same thing.
It's like basically a remote access tool that you install on somebody's device.
And those do use like exploits and more sophisticated ways to get into people's phones.
But you know, those are more rare.
Those are supposed to be used against only like criminals and terrorists.
So those are not like, probably are not on your phone just because they don't get sold
to random people, ordinary people.
But as these things become easier and easier to use and install, I'm worried that by default
they will just be out there and you know, press of a button and something can be added
to your phone and you would never know it was out there.
What I think we're seeing here is a wake up call to how much privacy can be lost just
by one or two apps.
Yeah, definitely.
I think that we should, as you said, we should be aware of the fact that these cell phones,
the cell phones we use every day are essentially like hold the key to our entire existence
and our entire like self.
So we should be aware of like the risks and we know without being paranoid, but just be
aware of what can be done and what we can do to avoid being spied on.
Lorenzo, have you talked to anybody who actually uses this software?
Yeah, we spoke briefly to some of the customers.
We've contacted them to verify the data and also like to try to understand what they use
it.
And it was actually kind of surprising because a couple of them were like, oh yeah, I use
it to monitor my boyfriend or girlfriend.
And one of them said it's normal.
And the other one said something like it works.
It was great.
And, you know, it was jarring because I mean, in the US it's illegal to do something like
that.
So it's not just, you know, if we forget about the ethical issues, it's just, it's a crime
to actually install this kind of app on your partner.
It sounds, it almost goes back to the sorts of advertising and preying on people's anxieties
as a selling point, because these people that say it works or that they enjoyed it, you
know, it was great.
It's normal.
Wow.
It's normal.
Of course, in the same breath, they're sort of rationalizing someone looking at their
own private information.
In other words, these people would probably be really aghast if someone was revealed they'd
invaded their privacy, but yet they're doing the same thing because it's presented in a
very comfortable way, you know?
It's different.
If you're doing it, if someone else is doing it to you.
We somehow rationalize.
If we think we have a right to know, given it's a partner, someone you've invested emotionally,
a lot of your time and your life in, you somehow are judge, jury, and executioner.
And it is the ease of use that allows you in your certainty, in your mind, to take that
next step and violate someone you care about, probably violate their privacy in ways that
are not loving.
Walter?
I think stories like this kind of validate very locked-down OSes, like especially iOS.
A lot of people, when Microsoft introduced the trusted computing method, people were
complaining that it was like a Trojan horse to take away your privacy and your rights.
But I think that this kind of validates it because even if you have local access, you
should still be protected privacy-wise.
That's why I feel like more locked-down OSes will be better protected than this.
Lorenzo, what kind of response have you gotten to this story so far?
Well, we've gotten a lot of readers.
The story's gotten a lot of attention.
Curiously or funnily, the companies still haven't gotten back to us, which I think speaks
a lot about-
Wow.
They haven't responded at all?
No.
They haven't given us a response at all.
I think that's really strange because even if you think that this company should exist,
I guess they owe a response to their customers because they lost their data, and for now,
they haven't even said anything.
In fact, today, I was just talking to a customer support from FlexiSpy, and I asked them, what's
up with the service-wise working?
He said that, oh, we're just doing maintenance.
I said, well, I heard that you guys were hacked, and he's like, oh, no, that's only false news.
Fake news.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's the answer to everything these days.
How many companies are there?
There are two companies we're talking about here?
Yeah.
Here, we're talking about two companies, but as far as I know, there's no census of how
many of these companies are out there because it would be actually pretty easy to market
one of these software.
You can just probably find some RETS remote access tools online and rebrand them and start
selling them.
Now, as far as you know, are these companies based in the United States or elsewhere?
Yeah.
RETS is actually based in the United States, and to their credit, they don't market their
stuff to jealous spouses.
On their website, they only say that it is for parents, so in that case, parents have
a legal right to monitor their kids or for employers.
Same thing with employees, legally, there's basically permission to do it.
But Flexispy is based in Thailand, so U.S. laws don't apply to the company.
My colleague, Joseph Cox, wrote about another company that was based in Poland.
The fact that they are in one country or the other doesn't really matter at the end because
I can buy them from anywhere and I can use them from anywhere.
Voltaire, go ahead.
I'm going to make a prediction that within a year, these companies will have shut down
but have opened up with the same employees, just using a different name.
It doesn't sound difficult to do that.
Yeah.
Is that a common practice in this industry?
Yeah.
We saw that with Hacker Team and some other vulnerabilities vendors to governments that
when they got hacked and had bad PR, they would just close that and then open up with
a different name.
Yeah.
It's possible that that could happen, unfortunately.
Lorenzo, you have to head out pretty soon, but just a question concerning the legality
of leaking all the information.
Are the hackers that did that, are they facing legal problems as a result of revealing this
information about these companies that sell spying equipment to all the people?
Yeah.
I mean, the fact that they revealed it, I don't know if that's by itself a crime, but
the way that they obtained it, it could definitely be framed as a violation of the Computer Fraud
and Abuse Act, so it's definitely ... Obviously, you can't just break into somebody's servers
and steal data, even if it's a company that you believe is doing something wrong.
Have they revealed how they were able to get all this information?
Yeah.
They told us a little bit about it.
They didn't go too much into details, but it seemed like it was relatively easy.
They got into some server.
Well, with Retinax, it was actually like they reverse-engineered the APK, the Android app,
and that way found some credentials and slowly moved laterally and found all the credentials
and the classic ... They didn't use anything like zero days or any fancy technique as far
as we know.
As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the best hacks that I've been aware of in years
because not only did they target a company and get critical information, but they did
it for a good reason.
They have something to say that's intelligent, and we have all learned a lot from their actions.
We've learned how vulnerable we are to spying by other people just like us, and I hope that
message isn't lost when the wrath of justice is turned upon one way or another.
Now, Lorenzo, where are you going next with the story?
Are there any new developments?
Yeah.
We still have to go through some of the data.
I mean, we looked at most of it, but there's still some stories that will probably come
out of it.
We'll have some stories in the next few days, so stay tuned.
Okay.
I'm speaking with Lorenzo Franceschi Bigari, and I want to thank you so much for speaking
with us.
He writes for Motherboard Vice, and I hope to read more about this.
It's a fascinating story.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for having me.
All right.
Take care.
And you can find that story by searching for Inside the Stalkerware Surveillance Market,
and that story is on motherboard.vice.com.
I don't know.
Have any of us ever been victims of this?
Not that I know of.
Users of this?
No.
I mean, okay, you have to physically have access to a phone for this particular style
of surveillance, but I just find it's kind of a sad thing when you don't trust somebody
enough where you have to do that, even if they are 100% innocent of anything you believe
them to be doing, having an affair or running some kind of conspiracy racket or something,
and you've spied on them, and you realize they haven't done anything.
You've read their mail, and they're innocent.
What does that say for the trust level in the relationship?
I think already the damage has been done, regardless of what you find.
And doesn't that give you a platform to just continue to watch until they trip up, until
something does happen, and you can say, aha.
Yeah, because they're covering up, obviously.
They're hiding something, and we're going to find them one way or another, and you just
keep intensifying the search.
It's really, really unhealthy.
If you're thinking of installing this on your significant other, on your kids, whatever,
think twice.
Think twice about that.
As Lorenzo said, there are old-fashioned ways of raising kids and keeping track of them.
You don't have to monitor their every movement and spy on them and invade their privacy,
because they have privacy, too.
It's an unhealthy thing to show people in the beginning part of their life.
This is normal, as one user said.
It's not normal.
It's wrong.
Yeah, and you should grow up to have some autonomy.
It's so surprising how normal every kid is becoming, like sort of a walking lojack, just
in case the eventuality that little Bobby's going to get jacked on the street or something.
You have to have all this tech in their pocket, look at everything they ever browse on their
smartphone or whatever, all in the name of your overbearing safety as a parent.
Granted, you do have an obligation to look out for your children's best interests, but
there's other ways of doing it, especially the spouse stuff.
Have a conversation.
If you are having trouble in your relationship, I don't think an app is going to solve it.
Those things get lost in this stuff.
Every time you do something like this, every time you have monitoring devices on your kid
or you're spying on your spouse, you're not doing something else, which could serve the
same purpose of establishing trust and confirming suspicions and things like that.
If you rely on a cell phone to make sure your kid is safe, then you're not relying on actual
real world examples of keeping your kid safe.
You're assuming the technology is going to step in and do it for you.
Not only is that wrong, it's unhealthy as far as actual relationship and conversation
and things like that.
It's a bad precedent to set.
You really need to think twice before doing something like this because it always has
a price.
It always comes back and does something in return that you're not expecting.
Voltaire?
I think people need autonomy, especially children, to be able to make mistakes on their own.
Absolutely.
When you're under the fear of constantly being monitored, you're not going to be as creative
or adventurous and I think that can stifle a child's development.
Or if you're given a false sense of security with that and you're not in turn taught real
things like street smarts and some of that knowledge that parents really are most well
equipped to pass on to their children.
Both the children and the parents, I think, are at a disadvantage as a result of relying
too heavily on this.
What I really like about this story is it showed what hackers can do when they target
something that is unfair and basically they brought this conversation to the mainstream
and hurt these companies too, which deserve to be hurt because what they're doing is not
right.
I kind of liken this to what other hackers have done over the years, targeting things
that are unfair.
We're getting a fair amount of flack for trying to get the Trump tax returns, but that's another
example of getting information to people who deserve to see that information.
Whether or not it's legal, that's another issue, but to be able to use your desire for
knowledge, your desire for truth, and your skills in getting that information in a positive
way, that's something we should never discount.
That's something the hacker community is very, very good at and I think this is a shining
example of it.
Voltaire?
I think another thing hackers or computer security experts can do is get involved with
your local crypto party and try to reach out to battered women's shelters and places where
they'll have abused spouses and they might not even know that they have this spyware
on there.
Abused spouses are definitely victims in these kinds of cases.
Many times the abuser is monitoring where his victim is going and they're not able to
hide and they have no idea how this guy is always able to find them.
Well, it's this spyware on the phone that was installed there and who knows what other
kinds of features exist that we don't know about yet.
It's very important that we understand how it works and that we expose it when we learn.
By sharing that, we can illustrate just that the information is there, a little glimpse
in how operationally it comes to be because there's a system that creates that stuff.
That's why it's stored, that's why when we see it brought to light like this, it can
be so instructive as to the actions of an entire, as we're finding out, industry that
has matured in the last decade and beyond.
There's something kind of similar to this I'd also like to focus on this week and that's
the story of the Shadow Brokers.
This story comes from The Intercept.
The Shadow Brokers were an entity previously confirmed by The Intercept to have leaked
authentic malware that was used by the NSA to attack computers around the world.
They have released another cache of what appears to be extremely potent and previously unknown
software capable of breaking into systems running Windows.
The software could give nearly anyone with sufficient technical knowledge the ability
to wreak havoc on millions of Microsoft users.
The leak includes a litany of typically codenamed software implants with names like Oddjob,
Zippy Beer, and SDModit, capable of breaking into, in some cases, seizing control of computers
running versions of the Windows operating system earlier than the most recent Windows
10.
If you're running Windows 10, you know that there's a whole bunch of problems that that
brings to the table that make it worth taking your chances on this.
The vulnerable Windows versions ran more than 65% of desktop computers surfing the web last
month.
That's 65% of computers surfing the web run Windows of one sort or another.
Now the crown jewel of the implant collection appears to be a program named Fuzzbunch, which
essentially automates the deployment of NSA malware.
Yeah, the NSA is behind all this.
They would allow a member of the agency's Tailored Access Operations group, that is
part of them, Tailored Access Operations to more easily infect a target from their desk.
That group is the elite US hackers, I believe, or at least that's a good place to start
looking.
It doesn't get more elite than that.
I think that's what they call it, though.
According to security researcher and hacker Matthew Hickey, co-founder of Hacker House,
the significance of what's now publicly available, including zero-day attacks on previously undisclosed
vulnerabilities cannot be overstated.
I don't think I've ever seen so many exploits and zero-day exploits released at one time
in my entire life, he said via Twitter, and I have been involved in computer hacking and
security for 20 years.
Affected computers will remain vulnerable until Microsoft releases patches for the zero-day
vulnerabilities and, more crucially, until their owners then apply these patches.
We have an update on that, actually.
Now this is as big as it gets, says Hickey.
Nation-state attack tools are now in the hands of anyone who cares to download them.
It's literally a cyber weapon for hacking into computers.
People will be using these attacks for years to come.
Now basically, as of Saturday, April 15th, we're told that Microsoft has published a
statement saying it had determined that most of the vulnerabilities were patched in a series
of Windows updates released in March.
Now why is this interesting?
These updates that basically the security researchers who analyze the NSA tools apparently
didn't install themselves, but that means the exploits in question weren't actual zero-days
and that anyone running the most recent updates on software still supported by Microsoft is
safe from the shadowbroker's arsenal.
It's the timing of the patch in question that's interesting.
If Microsoft truly did not receive any help from the NSA, as it claims, the fact that
it fixed a litany of holes vulnerable to secret NSA tools exactly a month before those
tools were made public is an amazingly fortunate coincidence.
And also, Microsoft skipped the usual acknowledgments section with the patch, which typically nods
to how they were informed of the threats fixed in a given update.
So it's good news for users, but kind of strange how that came about in the first place.
Adding to the intrigue is that Microsoft in February delayed their patch and people were
wondering about that and now it looks like we have an answer.
Yeah, I mean, the evidence is there.
They must have been in communication about this.
If you read Microsoft, I don't have the wording right in front of me, but their statement
about it, it's sufficiently opaque that you could assume that even though technically
they weren't told like, oh, the bug is such and such, the NSA could have wrote to them
and said like, oh, you might want to double check like line 67 of your code or something
and like hinted at where to find it.
There's so many, also so many caveats to what you just read.
Just the statement of all systems that were patched or whatever that jargon, however they
worded it goes, it was, you know, under the, you have to assume that those systems are
still supported and there's a lot of previous Windows systems that are just no longer supported.
There's just a lot of attributes to the way Microsoft works.
Again, not, if you know the history at all unfamiliar, perhaps even people who've used
Windows in the past and been urged to go from one system to the other.
There's plenty of things to be desired and it is, it's unfortunate that they don't have
any kind of support or enthusiast groups that are maintaining and finishing their work.
And as a result, a lot of Microsoft's operating systems just end up kind of unfinished and
they really just want to continue to sell newer stuff, whether it's that good or not.
And it's just, it's, it's kind of disappointing coming from Seattle.
You know the old saying, an operating system is never actually finished, only abandoned.
I thought that was art.
Oh, is it art?
I always mix the two up.
I'm sorry about that.
But we have, we have some other things we want to get to and I also want to get to,
to listen to phone calls.
But here's an update from Kenneth who wrote to us or actually called us last week.
We spoke briefly about how FedEx has incorporated surveillance cameras into their line of deceit
and betrayal to their employees, contractors, vendors, and anyone under their umbrella of
business.
We know how he feels about this.
I happen to be under this umbrella and find it unfair to work under this added stress.
Besides the everyday stress that comes with being a professional driver, there was little
to no notice that this tyrannical order was in progress.
I now see I have to seek employment elsewhere because of this.
For the meantime, is there anything that can combat this new trying situation?
And what he's done is he's attached some, some pictures, which obviously we can't show
you over the air.
I'm going to pass it around to you guys.
It's called, the system is called the LYTX, how do you pronounce that, how do you pronounce
that word?
LYTX, drive cam ER-SV2 event recorder.
That's what's, what's put on the windshield and it basically monitors what the, what the
driver is doing.
Now their website says, our goal is simple, saving lives.
How can you argue with that?
Drive cam safety programs combine video based coaching with predictive analytics to help
you take action before a collision happens.
Our programs are proven to change driver behavior and driver rapid ROI.
I'm not sure off the top of my head what ROI is.
Return on investment.
Is that what that is?
I don't speak corporate.
Yeah, that means like you can move so many packages per trip and you're returning the
investment of whatever, I don't know.
Saving you time, money, and most importantly lives.
When you invest in your drivers, you'll be rewarded with sustained changes that can help
lower your fleet's risk and improve productivity.
I can see how, how FedEx bought right into this, but I'm going to pass the picture around
if you guys want to look at that, maybe analyze ways that it can be, it can be messed with
by anybody or defeated.
I don't really think there's, there's much you can do here to prevent it because obviously
if you tamper with it, they're going to know you're doing that.
As far as how much, how much information is capturing, that's something we can help
with.
We can look into this particular model, ask our listeners and find out.
Honestly, how long before these drivers are all replaced with machines?
Yeah.
By talking about driverless trucks, I mean driverless cars, that's scary enough, but
to see an 18 wheel rig going down the highway 55 miles an hour with nobody driving, that's
going to be a change in reality, really will be.
I only got to that because I thought to myself, yeah, be better drivers and then you won't
have anything on the tape, but it's, that's kind of a, that's kind of a glib way to put
it for somebody who's kind of at the mercy of this and maybe they've been a fantastic
driver and haven't had any incidents or anything.
Why then should they be subject to this?
But you have nothing to hide then, Kyle.
It's like the surveillance of your phone.
If you have not, if you're not up to anything, if you're not doing anything wrong, why are
you so resistant to being, being graded, being watched, being monitored?
Walter, did you have an answer for that or?
Yeah, because like the, like the mobile phone spying story, this is a violation of dignity
and I feel like it might be hard for an individual trucker to fight back against this, but I
think this speaks to the importance of unions and collective action for stopping these.
And you better believe truckers have dignity.
They not only do they know the rules of the road, they, they they know their rights, they,
they, they know their individual value.
And yeah, this is a slap in the face in many ways.
And I'm curious if there's any overhead for the installation and the monitoring or any
of the systems connecting to the trucks, perhaps not, but you know, and maybe that's a worthy
costs from a liability standpoint versus trucks going without and not being able to settle
cases and so on.
Also, we'll keep in mind.
With evidence from a video.
We are going to be seeing more of this, not just in FedEx trucks, but in our own passenger
cars.
Anytime that you take the wheel of a vehicle it's, it's likely that you will be monitored
and judged and surveilled.
And there are a lot of people who will say, that's a good thing because we want to be
able to prevent accidents.
But you know, there's, there's a line, there's a line that's crossed between staying safe
and sacrificing some of your, your privacy and, and, and some of your rights.
And you know, I increasingly see that line being blurred.
So one day we will be finding ourselves driving down the road and every action will be will
be recorded someplace.
And it's it kind of makes you nervous and that nervousness can make you do things that
you wouldn't do if you weren't nervous as well.
It's interesting too.
I don't know if you've noticed this, but if, if you if you watch commercials on television
lately for some reason, um, accidents, car accidents have become funny.
All the insurance companies have these ads where, you know, you're back into a car.
So I wasn't paying attention.
I was, I had a drink, I spilled coffee on me.
And you know, it's not, it's not a life threatening, a horrible negative thing.
It's funny.
It makes you laugh.
And I just find that's disturbing.
And it must be leading us into this environment where we feel we have to have technology step
in and take care of us because we are so incompetent.
We can't do it ourselves.
Think of the humor.
It's almost like poking fun at people who don't have assisted braking, which is an emerging
technology that's pretty standard on a lot of new cars now.
This is a system where it would notice something in front of your car and automatically brake.
Also like lane position, all these kinds of new sensors.
I don't mean to be difficult here, but sometimes you need to hit something.
Let's say you need to push a car out of the way because before it hits another car and
you, you know, I know it doesn't happen often.
That's so true.
The Facebook killer, uh, the police had to ram him and you know, if the car had stopped
the police car from ramming him, we would have a Facebook killer on the loose.
It's crazy.
Wow.
I didn't even know about that one.
I'm so worried.
Yeah, no, it's terrifying.
Really not being sarcastic.
Don't get me started on the Facebook killer.
The only reason people cared about the Facebook killer was because he put it on Facebook.
If it had been just another random shooting in Ohio, nobody would have cared.
And that's, that's the real tragedy.
Okay, we could easily go on for hours about this.
Let's get into some listener mail and a listener phone calls.
Our phone number, 347-335-0818.
I can't memorize that number for some reason, but I have to keep looking at the, at the,
at the wall.
347-335-0818.
We'll try to alternate between letters and phone calls.
Um, okay.
So, um, let's see what we have here.
Okay.
We had a lot of feedback actually for, uh, potential names of the next HOPE conference,
which is our 12th conference will be taking place in 2018.
And um, we have this, um, this suggestion, uh, from, uh, XCVB, I'm not sure if that's
a name, but, uh, it's a, it's a good handle anyway.
Hi guys.
Like your show.
I listen on the net in Florida and maybe HOPE 12 should be HOPE High Noon, like the Western
movie High Noon.
Uh, and it's 12 o'clock, 12 noon.
Uh, yeah, you know, um, hope of noon hope.
I don't know.
12 is an interesting number.
It is a very interesting number.
Um, here's another, uh, I've just listened to, um, to last week's radio show.
I have a couple of ideas for the HOPE conference name.
I started thinking about hexadecimal and base 12 duodecimal.
Oh boy.
Uh, but it turns out, uh, duodecimal is 12th in Latin.
That's T-W-E-L-V-T-H, which I think sounds better.
Uh, HOPE duodecimal or perhaps duodeca hope, but back to, oh boy, but back to, um, back
to hex.
How about HOPE 0X0C or, or this one, which is probably my favorite HOPE pound C or just
HOPE C. Oh, the problem with HOPE C, C means a hundred in, in, in Roman numeral.
So everyone's going to think it's a hundredth conference.
Because we did recently do some stuff with Roman numerals.
We did.
HOPE X.
Yeah.
And we continue to use that for at least our subdomain, uh, for the HOPE site, but that
doesn't necessarily have to be part of the theme or the title this year.
Okay.
But these are ideas.
Wouldn't dodeca, wouldn't it be dodeca, like dodecahedron, it'd be dodeca hope?
Oh, you're asking me?
I don't know.
I don't know, but it's, it, it sounds, it rolls off the tongue.
I think it's the same root, uh, from those, for those words.
There are probably many other variants that could be inspired by these initial suggestions.
So absolutely.
Yeah.
No bad ideas.
All viable.
And we really appreciate them.
Please send more, uh, OTH at 2600.com.
Love the show.
It just gets better and better over the years.
Keep it up.
And, uh, thank you, Simon from, from near London, UK.
And it is a problem.
We just keep getting better.
And the problem with that is that, you know, more is expected of us.
We need to sort of have a downward turn for a while so that we can just, you know, take
it a little bit more easy.
Honestly, I, I, I'm not going to comment because I, I can tend to be a bit self-deprecating.
Good, good.
Keep that up.
I'm still learning.
And, uh, I would say I'm no expert at all.
Okay.
We have a phone call here.
So let's take this, this phone call.
Uh, good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yeah.
Hi.
Uh, this is, uh, Mike.
I work in the telematics industry and I can share some, uh, some insight on Lytx cameras.
Oh, that's how you say it.
Lytx.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a, that's a camera company.
So FedEx, what, uh, you'll eventually find out is that FedEx requires all the contractors
to, uh, install and operate the cameras and, and, uh, submit all the data.
I just, I just read one of the features in this, uh, comprehensive coaching, real time
in vehicle, visual and audio alerts, prompt drivers to notice and correct their behavior.
You're going to have a computer harassing you, not giving you instructions on where
to go, like navigation, literally telling you you're a bad driver.
Sit up straight.
Keep your eyes on the road.
No slouching.
And, and Lytx, Lytx as a value added service, uh, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, provides,
uh, hourly coaching for fleet managers so that they can control their, uh, their employees
better.
How does it charge for, how does the hourly based on the video, how does the hourly coaching
work?
Oh no.
They, they, you know, what they do is they serve, they, uh, basically review all the
video on a 24 seven basis and they decide what to let the fleet managers know has to
be corrected.
Wow.
So it's like, uh, this is a place for, um, backseat drivers to, uh, capitalize on their,
um, their, uh, hobby or, uh, it's more windshield drivers really.
Yeah.
The people that are critiquing it, but they, they actually provide this as like a service
or a consultancy, um, outside of the managers for the entity who's hired them or, or bought
this product outside of their, um, expert, their, um, insight as to what they think
their drivers behavior should be.
It's this company does determining that based on their, uh, best practices.
Very interesting insight.
Yeah.
And the rub and the rub is that you, to keep your Fed, your FedEx contractor agreements,
you must install the cameras.
I'm a little confused.
Uh, who is saying this FedEx is saying this or someone is saying this to FedEx?
Oh no, FedEx contractors are required now to have these camera systems installed, which
FedEx pays for it, you know, to be fair, however, they get all the data feed, you know, 24 seven.
So you're allowing them to see inside your contractor's truck and, you know, on, from
the windshield out because it's really a liability play, you know, and, uh, they're trying to
drive those insurance costs down the best they can.
Okay.
I guess I just wasn't aware of FedEx has contractors.
I thought they were all FedEx employees to start with.
Oh no, the vast majority are contractors.
Yeah.
This is like FedEx home delivery and stuff too.
I think there's, um, all these different products within FedEx and of course they may have,
uh, contractors as a third party, but that's interesting.
Does it send signal, um, through the mobile network?
Uh, is that how these things work functionally or is it stored and then retrieved at a later
time physically maybe?
No, it's all, it's all, uh, it's all, uh, transmitted, uh, directly to analytics.
Analytics is back end where they can view it and then give feedback to the, uh, to the
fleets and, and, you know, and sell them different programs based on, you know, the accident
level and some of the severity when you were talking before about lane departure.
So that's certainly those part of the value added services because what they want to do
is drive more behavior based training based on the video, you know, to the fleets because
it's the profit margin side.
Right, right, right.
Absolutely.
As a part of their, um, business model.
But, uh, it's very interesting functionally because that actually was one of our main
questions, uh, when a listener wrote in about this and, uh, in fact, if, if that, uh, device
is out of range or otherwise unable to get signal, um, you know, because of the jammer
that's on your dashboard or whatever you're doing to disrupt cellular communications,
that would potentially, uh, eliminate this thing from communicating with that company.
The reason why FedEx, uh, switched to a contractor model is to make it harder for unions to organize
and they're saying like, oh, well, we're not your employer, you're employed to these contractors.
So you can't, uh, unionize against us.
But I think the fact that they're able to say, look to, and they require these cameras,
like it shows that they are in fact, the employer is just like an obfuscation method.
And we see the same thing with Uber.
Oh yeah.
In reality, that's exactly where it goes.
And, uh, and just about two days ago, the U.S. Postal Service requires all of their
contractors to install a one specific 24 seven trailer tracking system and they have to sign
off that they give up all their rights to the data.
Wow.
That's, that's, that's really interesting.
Thanks so much for your insight on this.
Anytime.
All right.
Take care.
Enjoy.
And, uh, hopefully we can, uh, get in a couple more phone calls, 347-335-0818.
We have, uh, more suggestions on, um, on names for the next conference.
I was listening the other day to Off the Hook, heard you guys were looking for some suggestions
for the next Hope conference.
My name suggestion is, get ready, In Hope We Trust.
I like it.
Okay.
In Hope We Trust.
It's a phrase, it's not really a name, but, uh, it's, it's, we have to, we have to think
outside the box.
I came up with this name because we are all hackers who live on this planet and will speak
for yourself.
And come together to fight for the ones without a voice or to amplify their voice.
Every two years, we get together in the summer to present ideas or make others aware of what
is happening in a different part of the world.
I attended my first Hope conference in 2016, the most recent one.
And while it was a very hot weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the items for sale, workshops
and the community accepting of everyone, regardless of skillset.
Thank you for all your hard work and allowing everyone's voice to be heard.
Signed, Reva.
Thank you so much for that, uh, that great letter and, uh, we will definitely take that
into consideration.
It's a good idea.
In Hope We Trust.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Good evening.
I have a question about Fios.
Maybe you can help me.
We can try, but not experts.
Yeah.
And I don't think we have very much experience.
Maybe you can tell us how it's going for you.
Yeah.
I have a family member that just has a regular phone in the house and they get a threatening,
not threatening, they say Verizon is threatening that the service will be cut off at the end
of May if they don't change, change to Fios.
Oh yes.
Well, I know Verizon is trying to get people to drop their copper lines and sign on to
Fios, uh, which is, in my opinion, is not nearly as, as, um, uh, resilient to storms
and power outages and things like that.
Uh, they are putting pressure on, but I don't think they can force you to, um, to, to switch
over.
Is that what they're implying?
Yes.
They're saying that by May 31st of 2017, if you don't do Fios, your phone service could
be interrupted.
And the only phone call you'd be able to make on your copper line is 9-1-1-0-0 for operator.
Yeah.
I say call their bluff because they're saying it could be, it, you know, it, it could be
interrupted.
What they're basically saying is that, um, well, we might just take our sweet ass time
getting over there to fix it.
And, uh, you might be inconvenient, you know, the old, uh, leaning on somebody to get them
to do what you want.
I would not fall for it.
I had to hold on to that copper line because there is, there is a lot of good in that.
Right, right.
I know my neighbor switched and they sent them a battery pack with 12 D batteries for
a backup system.
Right.
That's terrible.
That's terrible.
And it's, it's really interesting to know this is much cheaper for them to operate.
It is in their interest to not invest in the copper system because it was much costlier
to, it's much costlier to maintain than some of the current technologies that is powering
it, hiring people to work on it, um, versus what you can fit, uh, through modern communication
mediums like, uh, fiber optics.
It's interesting that that, that battery pack, that is your backup for when you lose power.
When that runs out, you run out.
You don't have the ability to make phone calls anymore.
Whereas now the, the massive battery backup is located in your central office.
Now, if, if, if you know where the central office in question is, I suggest going down
and visiting them and saying, Hey, do you have any plans to, um, uh, to take the switch
out?
You know, so that, uh, that the battery backup, are you guys going to be losing that?
If they say, yeah, we're going to demolish the building tomorrow and it's not even going
to be here.
Then, okay.
Maybe what they're saying makes a bit of sense, but if it's still going to be there and I
believe it will be, then that, that copper line is still going to have backup power when
you lose power.
And it's, it's, you used to give out a number of years ago, the call up to see where you're,
um, I don't know, the phone companies locally.
Yes.
Uh, basically the suffix of nine, nine Oh one usually works in the New York area.
So if you, you dial your exchange, for instance, our exchange is a three, three, five.
You have to dial the area code now.
So we'd have to dial three, three, three, four, seven, three, three, five, nine, nine
Oh one.
Now I'm not sure that works.
Newer exchanges, they actually sometimes assign those numbers to customers, which is a stupid
thing to do.
But many times what you'll hear is you'll hear a switchman who made a recording in the
central office saying, Hey, this is the, uh, the three, four, three, three, five exchange
serving this part of Brooklyn.
Et cetera, et cetera.
They're really humorous to listen to and, and they'll tell you what kind of switch is
being used.
Oh, one other thing to, to keep in mind about that wording is, um, that it is, it is that
threshold of individuals that keep the costs to maintain that switch, um, uh, at least,
um, at zero or, um, not losing too much money.
So by insinuating it's going to go away when in fact it won't, if people still use it,
they can move people slowly.
And that kind of goes into what Emmanuel was saying about, yeah, we're going to take our
time because it's in their interest to get as few people running it as possible so they
can just shut it down and no one will complain.
Yeah.
It's voluntary.
Do you have a final comment on this?
Does that number you, uh, work for cell phones or just landline?
That number does not, as far as I know, it does not work for cell phones.
Um, it would be nice if it did.
They tell you what, uh, but the thing is with portability, a cell phone exchange no
longer defines the company, uh, that, that owns, that, that runs a, any, any company
can have any exchange now, basically.
Uh, sir, does that answer all your questions?
Uh, yeah.
If you switch to a different comp, phone company, does it go through fire or through the copper
line?
If you switch to a different company, uh, well, it depends because there are companies
that use Verizon's copper lines, but if you say switch to a, your cable company, obviously
they'd be using the cable line.
I see these other companies that advertise, you know, a cheaper phone service per month.
Uh-huh.
Some, sometimes it's beneficial, sometimes you, but you won't be able to call Verizon
repair directly.
I, I, you know, I've, I've experimented with this myself and you become a one, one step
removed from them.
Somebody else has to call them.
You can't speak to them directly, even though they still use the same exact infrastructure.
But my advice is hold on to, um, uh, to that particular wire for as long as, as it's around.
Uh, and, uh, you know, the only time they can take it away is if it's physically doesn't
exist anymore.
Like on fire Island, they, they were trying to do that.
I'm not sure if they actually succeeded.
Uh, they, my cell phone's on fire and I thought, uh, did they, did they actually do that?
Did they get rid of landlines?
We're not 100% sure.
In fact, if someone on fire Island could update us right in OTH at 2600.com, but thanks so
much for your call.
Take care.
I think they should donate all the copper to hackers.
Well, okay, fine.
We'll run our own network.
Why not?
You know, it's, the thing is, I love new technology, I really do, but I also love old technology
and I think the, the, the perfect thing to have is a mix of the two.
Don't get rid of pay phones, you know, don't get rid of copper lines, use them, use them
in tangent with the new things because eventually something is going to fail.
Something's going to stop working or something will be compromised in one way or another.
It's good to have a backup system, whether it's an old system, a new system, whatever.
It's also good to, uh, to learn how these technologies work and apply the principles
to other things.
And we're really in an advantage here in the US, um, in, in one regard, and that is the
sheer variety of mediums, uh, for transporting information and getting access to these services.
Other countries just went with one or the other, um, ethernet or whatever it is, ISDN,
um, in those days.
But, uh, here we have a lot of options and it's, um, it's really about being imaginative
in the market you're given.
Absolutely.
That's a, that's a good note to end on.
And um, we're going to end on that note, I think.
Thanks Voltaire.
Thanks Kyle.
Thanks to Lorenzo for speaking with us earlier.
Uh, please write to us here at off the hook, oth at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
If you have an idea for the next hope conference name taking place in 2018, it's our 12th conference.
We'd like to work that in somehow.
Uh, send your suggestions, add to the, uh, to the list we already have, oth at 2600.com.
Stay tuned for the personal computer show here on WBAI.
This is Emmanuel for off the hook.
Have a good night.