Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss all the spying our tech devices seem to be doing on us and why what we know may just be the tip of the iceberg.
Hello, welcome to the Car Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who's been working on developing his own seven Day theory, Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. You ready to show them the way you bomb first?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah, man, you just got me nervous talking about me, me being responsible for more things like new theories. I don't.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: No more theories.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: I'm learning how to delegate in my mature age now. So, you know, let's let someone else be responsible for that stuff.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Here we go. There we go.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: That's what I want to do.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: All right, now before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and hit like on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. I'm recording on January 7, 2025. And recently we've seen reports of a settlement that Apple has, has agreed to, to pay a lot of money to settle claims over privacy with Siri activating automatically and recording people's conversations. And they're paying, you know, $95 million worth of settlement, which, you know, for a company like Apple is not a lot of money. But we've also seen reports dealing with the, the, the guy who blew up the cyber truck in Las Vegas recently about how Elon Musk and Tesla provided all this information, this data about the. What was going on at the cybertruck and the time leading up to that to law enforcement. And law enforcement been effusive with praise and how much, how helpful that was. And it just, you know, seeing those two together and then, then many other reports that we see from time to time on these things, it really just kind of opens this question on, well, how much recording and tracking is happening with not just, not just the government agent agents walking around, you know, tapping phones and checking this or you know, police officers, you know, following people or anything like that, but like the things that we buy and voluntarily bring into our lives, you know, phones, cars, things like that. And so wanted to discuss them that. So Tunde, you know, based on this or just looking at this recent Apple settlement and you know, with Siri spying, you know, revelations about Tesla data being shared, you know, with, with law enforcement, meaning it was available to be shared. It was, it was tracked, it was there regardless of what happened. And presumably it's there for all Teslas. You know, do you think there are any limits as Far as how big tech and just, you know, these companies are spying on us through our devices. Is there anything that's cutting us back or is this just open season on us?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: It appears to be open season, yeah. And it's a very interesting conversation, actually, and one that I think as a society, we need to be having more.
And it's interesting because part of it is, I think, just the evolution of technology. I don't think that there's like a sinister hand behind all this or anything. I think, you know, I'm sure that the ability to spy. I remember hearing stories about the NSA tapping telephone poles back in, like, the 50s, physically. So my point is that, yeah, like, anytime there's a new technology out there, someone is going to try and exploit it. So, you know, for their own means, whatever those means are. And so, you know, intelligence services may be looking at it for information that they want, whereas advertisers are trying to use it and manipulate it for things they want. And sometimes those things overlap and sometimes they don't. And I think even in preparing today and reading some of the articles I read, it's like, you read this stuff and you're like, oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense, I get it. But there are things that we don't think about on an everyday basis. So, you know, I know we have a audio and video podcast, but I'm holding up my iPhone for those watching us on YouTube. And the idea that this phone is something that is trackable and all that is something I comprehend as a consumer. I get it.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: You utilize some of those services.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I got gps. I know that you can call me on the cell phone, you know, and somebody, you know, the signal finds my phone. I can look on the Internet, obviously, the WI fi, all that stuff knows where I'm at. But, you know, in reading one of the articles, it was talking about how a lot of our smart devices now, and some of these things we know that we're buying and some we don't, like the power of your smart TV to monitor your home at all times. I know that my TV is smart in a certain way, but I didn't know it was that smart.
I have no, but it was interesting reading stuff because we have, like, these Bluetooth light bulbs that my wife can control, like when we're out of the house from her phone that, you know, they can dim the lights or make them brighter. And one of the articles mentioned how the fact that that's just attached to my WI fi allows whoever has the data from that Light bulb. The manufacturer, the company that bought their data, whatever, knows exactly that I have that type of light bulb in my address, in my house. So the idea is that when you come over to my house, James, my devices are picking up your information on your phone. From a consumer standpoint, it's actually, there's data being sent back to these companies about who you are, meaning they want to know who I'm hanging out with. And so they were even saying that they would know how much income they make.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: They know it's the who, it's the when, it's the how long, you know, it's how often. It's all that.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And then. And then that information's out there, so governments can buy it, too. And when I say governments, I'm not only talking about the deep state and all this stuff. We're talking about state governments, local municipal law enforcement. So that means that the surveillance state can also know exactly where you are at all times, that you came into Tunde's house, for example, at a certain date and time, and that when you left, the GPS is helping it track you. All that. And so, yeah, it's, it's. That's what I mean. As a consumer, it's like, I kind of knew this stuff. But when you read about how invasive and how intrusive it has evolved and that these different devices from different manufacturers are all communicating with each other, that's. To me, the part was like, wow, like, I kind of understood it was that deep. But seeing it, like, presented to you as evidence is like, okay, I didn't know we gave up all this stuff.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's because, like, all of the capabilities of the devices that we take advantage of have other implications and have other things that they could be used to be beneficial for. And so, like, you, you, you people are surprised a lot of times when they find out that their devices are listening to them. But then if you want to be able to have voice activation of your device, the device has to be listening all. At all times. It has to. Like, that's, that's the fundamental way that that would work is voice activation requires the device to always be listening. And so that, and that's what's happening with the Siri thing is like, oh, it was coming on at times when somebody wouldn't necessarily prompt it. But, you know, like, that's something that it's capable of doing and that's built in. I think that it's.
What's interesting to me is less about the state here, you know, and then I know, you know, in tongue in cheek kind of reference, like a deep state or anything like that. And I think we all have the imagination to kind of understand how that, how a state can go over broad, you know, a government can go over, can go overboard and exploit this, this type of information and create a, you know, surveillance state, a police state, things like that. I think we all can kind of imagine how that would happen. What I think that's happening that I don't know that we have the imagination for at this, at this point is this is happening from a corporate standpoint. Like right now, what's happening is that the people that are gathering this information and leveraging this information to their benefit well beyond our knowledge and our consent are the corporations. And so these businesses and, you know, purportedly, you know, just in the pursuit of making more money, they want to know us better so they can market to us better, so they can, you know, do these types of things.
There they are building up these huge databases of information about everything that we do, everybody we interact with and, you know, how often we do this, how often we do that and so forth and where it's in so many places. Like you said, your tv. Like, the thing that blows my mind is I'm looking at the cars and I'm looking at, okay, you know, like, this is the cars that I am drive sharing the road with. I don't own a Tesla, but the cars I'm sharing the road with are riding around with cameras. Not internal, just internal cameras, but cameras facing outward. You know, I'm riding around looking at all the Tesla cars, like these Tesla, all the Tesla drivers are snitches. They're riding around driving cameras all around town all the time for just to be collected by some private company individual, you know, whoever. So. And you know, I'm looking at that and I'm like, okay, well that, that, I don't like that. I'm taking a walk and then I see a Tesla drive by and I'm like, oh, that Tesla just recorded me walk down the street, you know, and so like, I, I don't know that we're just kind of conscious of on the, on the large scale how you put all this together. And you do have a surveillance state, but it's one that's operated, you know, kind of in a capitalistic frame as opposed to a government frame. So that's very interesting to me.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: The other piece I want to throw out real quick before I get back to you is that some of this is our Own devices, You know, like, okay, yeah, I buy an iPhone or something like that and I assume this risk, or I buy a smart tv, I assume this risk that, you know, like the capabilities that I want to take advantage of can be used against me as well, or can be used to track me and build databases on me. But the interesting thing, and you kind of mentioned this and what you were talking about is just the idea that it could be someone else's stuff that is monitoring you as well. And that's kind of like in the example I just gave with the Tesla thing. Like I don't even own a Tesla. But there's, I'm sure there's plenty in the Tesla database of my car driving around because they had Tesla's driving by me or me walking around town or something like that. And so it's like some of this is kind of we, we opt into it when we buy the device, even if we don't know the full extent that we're opting into. But then some of it is just moving around in society. This is beyond just closed circuit cameras put up by the city. This is like every potential other citizen is over here spying on you, so to speak, on behalf of their, their, their whatever company they own a device from.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a great point about the Tesla's. And I learned that as well in this recent, you know, the unfortunate thing where the guy committed suicide on New Year's Day in front of the hotel with the cybertruck. I was kind of surprised when I saw some of the stuff on the news with the camera footage of him when he was charging up and just walking into his truck and all that. And I was just thinking like, man, that this thing is pretty invasive. And look, I appreciate that the CEO of Tesla was able to help law enforcement and he was quick to respond in a positive way. But it also got me thinking, like you said. Well, I was like, well he's like a private citizen that owns a company. Like what if he said no? You know, and we saw that when, remember I think it was 2014 when Apple refused to give the FBI help in opening an iPhone from the terrorist attack in, I think it was on the west coast somewhere, either Portland or something, or Northern California. When I remember the guy that was sympathetic with isis, he and his wife went in his office building, you know, like his old job, and shot it up and killed 14 people. And I actually disagreed with Apple on that one. I thought, well, this guy just committed a terrorist act and murdered 14 people. Why wouldn't you help law enforcement actually just get into the guy's phone and let's be sure that he didn't have accomplices or there wasn't someone else helping him that's going to do this tomorrow to another office building. So I do think you're onto something with this idea. Like in America, we become culturally very tuned to not trust our government. And you know, we hear comments like the deep state and really distrusting authority has been part of me. We're formed out of a rebellion against King George, right, as a country. So we have always, you know, and federalism was the way of forming our government. So we've always distrusted central authority from a governmental standpoint in America. And you're right, what we've done is kind of abdicated some of this authority, let me just put it that way, because I'm thinking of things like the fourth and sixth Amendment, this ability of our own personal and private rights that are in the Constitution. We've kind of abdicated the responsibility of that from the federal government and given it up to private corporations who themselves are just a different version of a big bureaucracy that is its own deep state, in a sense, this kind of corporate, big tech stuff. But the difference is they're answerable to shareholders, which are much fewer in number in the United States than they are to eligible citizens who can vote. Well, that's the interesting place we're in.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: And they also aren't like the constitutional protections don't apply to them. Of course, constitutional protections apply to what the government can do to us, you know, or what the, what authorities the government has. And so I think use the right word, advocate. And I think sometimes we kind of, as you point out, you know, the government is a big institution, you know, has, you know, tendency or can get too big, can get, can, can abuse power, things like that. We, we again, we tend to understand that and have the imagination and the kind of conception to appreciate that. I don't know that we fully appreciate that in the corporate sense because as you pointed out, corporations are also large institutions that are prone to abuse of power. All of the things you could say about a government, corporations can be, can, can, can fall into those same traps. And we don't have that level of protection. And in fact, the only protection we really have from corporations going kind of bananas and, you know, invade, invading our privacy or, you know, doing whatever is the government. You know, the government is when you have big corporations. Your only protection against big corporations is big government, you know, and it's no, you know, it's no secret why a lot of big companies, big corporations want smaller government because then they can push the government around as opposed to having the government be able to come in and tell them when they, when they overstep the bounds and push them back into, into a good place. And so, yeah, like a lot of these games that are being played, you know, kind of we don't, we don't appreciate. But the thing that I, that I really took away from this and that I think we, we have to really come to appreciate and figure out a way out of is that if there was a limit, like the question, you know, going like, okay, well is there any limit to this or are we underestimating this? And it's like, I think there's no limit right now to how much corporations can spy on us from a practical standpoint because one, they can do it discreetly. And so we don't really know a lot of the stuff that's happened. And unless we get a revelation like Elon Musk give sharing all this footage that was recorded of this guy, you know, again, just in the course, normal course of action, you know, like it was, it wasn't recording him because there was something specific going on. It was just like this is just what the Tesla cars do all the time to all, all, everyone, you know, they just record you all the time, you know, all around the vehicle or this Apple thing with the phones activating, you know, things like that. Like the places that limitations would come from that would be either government like rules, regulation, laws, regulations, things like that, which our government's kind of on the take. So you know, like the court system, you know, less so. But you know, legislatively, you know, regulatory wise, much of the government is just, you know, like you give them money and they do what you want them to do, you know, so that's a problem. And then another place it could come from was public pressure, but public pressure. We're so easily divided and distracted and manipulated through big tech a lot of times that like we're not going to be able to put, to put pressure on companies to not behave like this because we'll be worried about some other wild goose chase two minutes later that we saw on a meme somewhere. And so I think we're kind of in the wild wild west with this right now because there is no kind of sober authority or actor who would be able to, to pressure and, or compel these type of businesses to scale back, be lower than their capability on how much they're spying and invading our privacy. They're just going to continue to do as much as they can up to their capability, unless and until that changes.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, man, now you said a lot there. I want to. I want to address a couple things. I didn't want to interrupt you, but. But it was tough because you had. You had some things that I definitely want to.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: You're ready to go.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: That's chopping at the bit.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: No, but on a serious note, because, like, I've. I've had this feeling for decades, actually, since I was younger, just when I started understanding things like big banks and, you know, what happened in 2008 and all that. Like, you're right. Like, I always thought, okay, whether it's a big government or a big corporation, they both could run the risk of becoming big bureaucracies. That, you're right, can abuse a system. And so again, we become so polarized into push. I'm either for this or against that. So our culture in the last. Since the 80s kind of became, in America, anti big government. And we're all for deregulation and everything is about private, you know, ownership and all that.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah, we want big government, small governments.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. But when that goes too far, it's like the oligarchs. Yeah, that's exactly. So when that goes too far, we see what happens. And that's just like what happened, like you're saying the first Gilded Age of the late 1800s, early 1900s. And that went too far. And that got corrected with things like the New Deal. And we're back to, you know, we dismantled the news deal basically over the last few decades, and we're back to, you know, the corporate side dominating the system. So either you're going to have a government dominating a situation, or you're going to have the oligarch class dominating a situation. Or you can do what the United States kind of figured out between the 1930s and the 1980s, let's say, is you have a bit of a health equilibrium where both coexist and both are uncomfortable in a sense, which means that the public won. And so now we're going back into. We're already there, but we've been brought back into a gilded age. And this is what I want to discuss is because we've been distracted as American citizens, not paying attention to actually what's going on in our government and the regulators and areas like the courts. And we. Because, like you said, we allow ourselves to get distracted with memes. And in the democracy, it's Only as good as the public is there to support it and keep it going. So I'm specifically speaking here about a law in 2018 that allowed Internet companies to sell data in a different way than they had been allowed before and without our consent in the way that they needed it before. You know what this remind me of, James? When I started learning about it, it kind of reminded me of Medicare Part D on the medical and pharmaceutical side. That this was kind of just a giveaway to big tech. And I started thinking, no wonder why the revenues and those stock price has gone up like exponentially since 18. I mean I know tech has always been last few decades a good place to be, but it's.
And the reason I say that, James, is because when you think about it, law enforcement, there's a process of protecting our rights to the Constitution that developed over time, which is if law enforcement is suspecting anyone of a wrongdoing, they get a subpoena through a court action overseen by a judge, and they go to any company in America and that company has to give up the information.
So if law enforcement wants to look at me or you because we show up on some list that we did something wrong, they could always go to Google, Microsoft, Apple, whoever, and say, hey, give me the, you know, we need this information on this person now is.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Certain channels with some level of redundancy and some level of. To make sure that the things that are in place to make sure they don't abuse that or to try.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Correct. Exactly. Now what we have is the state of Florida or the city I live in or the county I live in, or the federal government, right? They go to Google and say we want this information. Google say, okay, it's going to cost you X amount of dollars. And they just sell it to them. And because of the lobbying, right. Just like Medicare Part D. That's why it reminds me of that we had a fine system prior to 2003 where the federal government was able to negotiate.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Drug prices like any large purchaser of drugs would.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Correct.
After 2003, they weren't allowed to. That regulation was removed. And so we all complain about our deficit. I've seen estimations that just Medicare Part B alone, it represents around 8% of our federal deficit right now, about $3 trillion. So again, that's why we got to pay attention to the stuff underneath the surface. Not just who's president, but what's going on regularly. And this data one reminds me of that because how much of our deficits since 2018 is from that law where we're basically spending. You know, it's costing us, let's say, potentially tens to hundreds of billions of dollars a year every year for us to, you know, provide this data to.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: For law enforcement to acquire this data.
Which.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Which it doesn't need all that data. Right. They need specific data, but not. Not a dragnet sweeping everything. So that's what I'm saying, James, is this is another one again, where I look back and say, yeah, this is a breakdown that's happened over time. This isn't something that just all of a sudden some politician was in office and they did this or.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Well, this is the system.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: From. From a privacy standpoint, that's understandable because as I noted, just, you know, my last statement, it's kind of like what these companies are doing is spying on us to the fullest of their capability, their technical capability, you know, like their physical capability. And if you go back to 1950, there just wasn't much spying. Kellogg's could do one, you know, or General Motors, like, they sold you a car, and then it's kind of like, you know, like, that's it. Like, they could get information from you when you bought it, but that's it. Or you buy a box of cereal and it's like they don't get any more information about you because of that. They pay, you know, like, firms to. To research this kind of stuff and figure out what kind of people are buying this. You know, how. How often are they buying this, you know, like, things like that. And so market research was a thing. Now the market research is kind of built into the technical capability of the devices. And so we just haven't caught up to the idea that this quote, unquote, market research, as they may call it or whatever. Let's. Spying and invasion of privacy, to me is they have the capability technically now to do it. We just haven't caught up with it from. Just. And I mean, the purpose of this kind of conversation is to kind of start. We need to start catching up with the fact that this is what's happening. And from a regulatory and a legal standpoint, we need to start doing something about it. Because unless and until there's government action or public pressure to. To. To adjust this trajectory, they're going to continue to spy on us or perform market research from. To the. To the fullest of their capability, technically, which increases all the time. You know, you can put also microphones and everything you put cameras and everything you put in, and you use them, and then you. You don't Just have the microphones and cameras. You have an Internet connection, so you can then send that data in real time back to the mothership, so to speak. So the capabilities are increasing, and then they're going to continue to increase. And so we better get a handle on that.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Hold on. Let me. This is where I got to stop you, because I got to respond to this, man. You can't go on to your next point. This is great. First of all, I got a real. Just funny joke for the end of this conversation.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Well, I want to wrap us up.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: So just about my personal experience recently with some of this stuff. But no, I just wanted to say this because some of the things we mentioned coming into the show, like the lawsuit. So last week, again, this is the fault of our mainstream media for not important, really important things, but spending time reporting what people say on Twitter all day. So last week, in the first week of the year, in January, Apple lost a lawsuit that you mentioned at the beginning of the show.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Well, they settled it, right?
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Settled it, yeah. Sorry.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Which is they maintain that they did. Not. Accurate.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why it's good to say settle something. Yeah. So. So. And the reason it's good you brought that up to correct me on settlement, because it's an important point of why I'm bringing this up. So they settled for 95 million.
I'm looking here in the article I'm reading from an obscure, you know, media source, not a mainstream one, that basically it could have cost Apple. The attorneys for the plaintiffs estimated that had Apple gone to the trial process and lost because of what would have happened in discovery, this could have cost Apple 1.5 billion. So Apple was smart to settle for that dollar amount. And that's what I was going to bring up is I started looking at Apple's finances, and I saw that Apple stock price is up 288% in the last five years, which is good for them, right? And their shareholders, they currently have right now 65.17 billion in cash. And they're a company with a market cap, meaning their total worth is 3.7 trillion. So what I'm saying is, is that a $95 million settlement is what a lot of these companies now, Microsoft, Google, you name it, right? They price all this in. Now, that's the cost of doing business. It's like what fines used to be like for fossil fuel companies or tobacco companies back in the old days when they were the ones, you know, cleaning up and making all this money on the back of our society. So it's just kind of like what we've lived through in the last 10, 15 years is watching a whole new sector of the economy just take over and become the new oligarchs. And all we've done really is replace oligarchs that we said we don't like, like the fossil fuel industry or tobacco. And maybe in our lifetime, me and you with just new ones who seem to be much more powerful now because they've also manipulated our leaders in government on their way to the top, more so than the fossil fuel and the other industries were able to do well.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: But they also are more powerful because they control the way we think. They control what we see, they control how we communicate, they control how we get around. And so, like, they, they are, the things they do for us are like they're just going to exercise more power in our lives than Philip Morris, you know?
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: You know, like Philip Morris doesn't have a camera in your cigarette box, you know, in a Bluetooth signal that tells them everywhere, everywhere you go into. And whoever you get next to it.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Might be coming if they knew it.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Was good for them. Right.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: When the cost per camera goes down to three cents a camera, dude, it'll be in every cigarette cart.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So. But I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of How Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: I am Tunde Vermont.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you soon.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: A.
