Apr 26, 2019
What is a green car? It might surprise you. So be sure to listen in today.
Today I will unpack the problems with our new junior Senator Maggie Hassan. Yea, she hired someone who stole gigabytes of high-value data.
What do you think of Facial recognition? Well, I will discuss some of the problems with the FBI facial recognition program.
WiFi? Is it bad for your health? I will talk about what a new study out of the Czech Republic found.
If you think that by going to the cloud, your business is going to be safe, you have another thing coming to you. I will explain why in today's show.
Amazon? Wow, I can't believe they're doing this with books. If you have not heard about this, listen in.
There are a number of mental health apps available for your tablets and smartphones. Do you know what data they share? It may surprise you.
For all this and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com
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Transcript:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment; it might contain errors.
Airing date: 04/27/2019
Driving A Tesla Increases CO2 Emissions - Sen Hassan Aid Stole Gigabytes Of Data
Craig Peterson 0:03
Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. We're about to get started with
another one of our Saturday shows heard every Saturday morning here
on these iHeart Radio broadcast channels. Yes, terrestrial radio.
And I also have it out online. You can find it all at http://Craig
Peterson.com. Well, today we are going to be covering a couple of
articles that I think might be a bit of a surprise to you. One of
them has to do with green cars. Now, if you've known me for a long
time, you know that green cars aren't green. But but there's a
study out we're going to talk about that yet another study,
remember the one that said that the Hummer H2 was actually, no it
was the H1 was actually greener than the Toyota Prius, while the
new study up right here in New Hampshire, that's where I'm located
Senator Hassan, her aid, stole gigabytes of high-value data. So
we'll talk about that. And what happens when a business or in this
case a government agency, has one of their employees go rogue? The
FBI facial recognition program is under fire. WiFi? Is it bad for
your health? A new study out and a very interesting article from
the Czech Republic on that. If you think that by going to the
cloud, your business is going to be safe. You have another thing
coming to you. New research out on that. Amazon? Wow, I can't
believe they're doing this with books. You might have heard about
this with 1984 that George Orwell book a little while ago. Well,
there's a whole lot here we're going to talk about. And mental
health apps, and what data are they actually sharing. So here we go
with all of our news that's fit for today.
Craig 2:02
So first up today, let's talk about driving your Tesla. Now they
are cool. And I had a really interesting discussion with one of my
daughters. She lives in Norway right now. She's running a huge
project, autonomous ships for Kongsberg, which is just a huge
shipping company. They well they make the controls and stuff for
shipping. They just bought Rolls Royce marine here a few months
back. And I was talking to her about Teslas because electric cars
get a special subsidy in Norway. Now, here in the US, Tesla has
already reached the 200,000 car mark. And the idea behind this was
that they would provide, the federal government would provide extra
money to help subsidize the purchase of electric cars, not just
Teslas. But once they hit the 200,000 car mark, that subsidy would
go away. And some of the Democrats in Congress are pretty busy
right now trying to figure out how can they re-establish that deal,
get that deal going again. And they may end up doing that. Well in
Norway, they have similar things where the government is
subsidizing electric vehicles, and to a very large point, because
in Norway, right away, you don't have to pay the sales tax, which
is 25% sales tax. Imagine that. And then it's a VAT, too. So it's
not just the sales tax when you buy it, but there's sales tax every
time a product changes hands, from manufacturing parts through
distribution through the final retailer, and then you. So things
are just crazy expensive there. And they have a great free market
economy. Don't get me wrong, they are not a socialist country. None
of the Scandinavian countries are socialist, but they are very
heavily taxed and they do have a lot of government programs. So
they were talking about getting rid of this subsidy, effectively a
subsidy for electric cars, Tesla stock went down. And there's a lot
of reasons it goes up and down, right? Well, here in the US what's
the reason everybody seems to be giving for an electric car. Why do
they want these electric vehicles? What's the big deal? Why does it
matter? Well, here in the US, they're telling us this story that
while it's more green, there's less carbon that goes into the
atmosphere. And it's just it's a wonderful thing. And every Friday
night, we get together all of us electric car owners, and we lock
arms and we sing Kumbaya, right? And it's all because it's green.
They're just wonderful vehicles. And you know that there's
obviously some miss truths to that, let me put it that way. And in
fact, there are there, it's just not true. And that's what the
studies showing. In Norway, they're much more saying about this.
And Norway, they're saying, hey, yeah, that these electric cars are
not more green. But what we're trying to do is prevent the
pollution in our environment, in our environment here in Norway. So
we don't want these cars to, to be emitting all of this nastiness
and trucks and things. We just want electric vehicles, we don't
care that they're made in China and Japan, and that shipped all
over, we don't care about the pollution they're causing worldwide
and the fact that the recycling this stuff. It's just it's
hazardous, right. But what we care about is we have clean air. Now,
that to me, is a legitimate argument. I think there are legitimate
arguments might be its cool technology. And the other argument
might well be that you know, the air here tends to be a little bit
cleaner. Now, of course, they're dumping all of the crap that
there, their byproducts making these batteries in these cars.
They're dumping them in the ocean in China and into the air and
eventually gets here, all of this plastic in the ocean that's
coming from these third world countries and communist countries
that just don't care about it. Right. So this article is absolutely
fascinating. And it's saying that driving a Tesla results in more
CO2 than our Mercedes diesel does. So think about that for a
minute. Diesel's have gotten a really bad name lately, because of
some cheating that was done on an emissions test. Now, I put that
cheating in air quotes, you saw that, right? If you're watching
this http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube. You saw me do that? Well,
the reason I do that is the diesel's are it's a different type of
emission. And when the engine is cold, they run different
currently, then when the engine is warm, or when it's hot. And some
of these tests that were being done by our EPA and the European
Union, don't really give the diesel vehicles credit. And you know,
Europe, if you've been there, if you've rented a car, even if you
were driven around, you notice most of the cars were diesel,
because, in fact, a lot of the gases that are emitted by the
vehicles, it's better if it's diesel, it washes down more quickly
out of the atmosphere. But they're worried about the nitrous oxide
and some other things that can cause problems for some people. So
you know, hey, I get that. So hydrogen methane technology that is
being used right now in the new diesel's has made a huge, huge
difference. So if you look at this a little bit closer here, I'm
going to pull this article right up on the desk area go see now you
can see it on YouTube on http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube.
Craig 8:02
It's touted as a zero-emission vehicle. Now we're talking about the
Tesla Model 3, but in actuality, it creates more carbon dioxide
dumped more into the air than a comparable diesel-powered car. And
it's I love this article, when the CO2 emissions from the battery
productions included, electric cars like Teslas are, in the best
case slightly higher. We're talking about CO2 emissions here, in
the best case, Teslas have slightly higher emissions of CO2 then a
diesel engine, and our otherwise much higher and this is from a
German Think Tank. And it's just absolutely fascinating here Daily
Caller article that we're quoting from, and I love this picture
they have of the Model 3 in the car show here in Toronto. So they
looked electric car production in Germany, it's heavily reliant on
coal power, we're in the US, of course, we burn coal, we burn wood,
we have things that the left really hates, like, heaven forbid, we
have nuclear power, which is course, frankly, the cleanest of all.
And if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we get off of their
hands, and use some of this new nuclear technology that was
invented here, 30 years ago, we would be in incredible shape,
there'd be almost no nuclear waste at all, because we can re-burn
it and certain types of reactors and things but people just got
completely scared about it. California is requiring automakers to
cut greenhouse gas emissions in cars, producing lower emission
vehicles buying credits, which is making people like Al Gore very
rich right? At the federal level, the US government's giving you a
$7500 per electric vehicle tax break. It's it just goes on and
on. A study here from the University of Cologne, talking about what
they found in responsible energy, which forgets it, right, and who
wants responsible energy policies, it's just not out there right
now. But a study released to 2018 also found that driving electric
cars might come with higher emissions of diesel vehicles, largely
because of the lithium-ion production. For those that are unaware.
This lithium most of its harvested in Quebec, NASA uses the area
for miles, hundreds of square miles around the lithium battery
mine, if you will. NASA uses it for testing lunar landings because
there is no life at all. And then that is shipped off over to China
for pre-processing and shipped to Japan, to turn it into a type of
foam, is shipped back to China to finalize the battery components,
shipped back to the US to be installed in the Tesla. Think about
all of the carbon dioxides from that. A Manhattan Institute study
from Tony teen found that putting more electric cars on the road
would likely increase emissions compared to internal combustion
engine vehicles. Now, you know that I have a libertarian band. So
part of my dislike of this whole thing is that you know, come on
people bottom line. Why should the government be the one that's
deciding that's what the next best technology is going to be? Does
that make any sense to you really doesn't make any sense that the
government should be deciding, hey, listen, we're going to bet your
tax money on electric vehicles rather than hydrogen fuel cells or
some of these other technologies that might win. Again, let the
private sector decide. And this is yet another area that our
government has become socialist with a government trying to control
the means production, the types of production, trying to
incentivize it, etc, etc, right? Stuff that I obviously just don't
agree with. But I guess you guys already know that. Right?
Okay.
Craig 12:12
So next up, let's see if I can make this work here for YouTube.
That's http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube, I think it was this key
combination. That didn't work. Yeah, I'm doing something wrong. So
what I'm going to do is this, because I'm pretty sure that will
work. Yes, there you go. Okay, so now you can see the article. This
is from the Daily Caller, this is former senator has a son from New
Hampshire, you know who she is what her one of her former aides now
is in very, very much trouble. Now we know the Democrats have
been, I'm going to say it, I'm going to say it out.
Because this is true. They have been stupid when it comes to their
IT people, they have not hired, in most cases, the people they
should have hired, and we got a listener out there. So hat tip to
Guy if you're listening, who have decided that because I keep
talking about these problems with security, that he's going to take
up a career in security. So he signed up for this six-month course,
kind of getting started in cybersecurity. Once he's done with that,
it'll take a year or so of him having real-life experience in it,
and then he'll be really quite good. But man alive here, they
missed all kinds of red flags about what this guy was doing. But
here's the bottom line. This is a plea agreement that he did sign
apparently extraordinary, extensive data theft scheme is what it
was called. He installed keylogging devices that picked up every
keystroke on these machines. So a keylogger, in case you're not
aware, if you're using a keyboard, with a USB cable, and then that
USB cable plugs into the back of your computer, as someone can
insert on the back of that computer, one of these keyloggers and
the way this keylogger ends up working is that you're typing your
keys, and they're all being intercepted by this little USB device.
So you might want to right away, especially if you are democrat
senator, apparently, you might want to right away go and check the
back of your computer and see if there if your keyboard is plugged
in directly. Now, you know, if you watch for a while I use Macs,
right? So here's an example of the mouse I use. And on the Mac,
it's Bluetooth wireless, but it also has available here, a USB
port, right? It's actually one of Apple's proprietary port. And I
have the also the keyboard here. This is what I'm using on my iMac,
in fact, to control the video that we're creating for YouTube on
that iMac. So that's what that's all about right there. Okay, and
that was really nice. It's really handy. But what Apple does is
everything is super-encrypted. In fact, in order for me to
configure this trackpad to my Mac, I have to plug it in via cable.
It does some handshaking it automatically configured the iMac for
this trackpad or this keyboard. Same things true for laptops of
using external devices. So Apple has gone the extra extra mile.
Craig 15:39
If you're using a regular Bluetooth keyboard like here's my other
computer here. This is a standard older Mac, keyboard, and mouse I
have it in the mount. So it's all together. But this uses regular
Bluetooth and regular Bluetooth has encryption as well. So
typically, generally speaking, your Bluetooth is going to be
safer than using a wired keyboard or wired mouse because you can
install these keyloggers right so that's kind of what I was getting
at here.
Craig 16:16
So back to our friend here at senator Hassan's office. What she did
is or he did I should say is he installed these keyloggers so they
usually have to come back to get back keylogger in order to read
it. But remember, if you're typing on your computer, what are you
typing? Oh, a username and a password. And usually, those are
pretty well identifiable pretty easily identifiable. So apparently,
Jackson Cosko worked with an unnamed accomplice and other Hassan
employee who reportedly lent him a key that he used to enter the
office at night and who allegedly tried to destroy evidence for him
after the fact. So Cosko accepted responsibility for the events
revealed by federal prosecutors in court last Friday. Apparently
was doing it from July and October. But he really did a lot more
than that. It kind of goes on here in this article from the Daily
Caller, he sneaked into her office, reportedly multiple times at
night gathered dozens of gigabytes of data, including usernames and
passwords belonging to Senate employees, okay, like really come on
guys. Tens of thousands of emails, internal documents, credit card
information blog, the Senate employee social security numbers,
blah, blah, blah. So be careful out there. These IT people are not
what they appear to be in many cases. And of course, the huge thing
with the Democrats. And I couldn't believe how they responded when
it was disclosed that Wasserman Schultz's IT people had had just
committed me incredible crimes all the way across the board. And
she was throwing the tantrum or when they tried to investigate. In
fact, I don't think the FBI ever got to fully investigate this
thing.
Craig 18:10
So anyhow, keep an eye on your IT people. Make sure you know who
they are. Make sure they're of good character. It's easy enough to
do basic background check nowadays, you can get them done for 20,
30 bucks online, just check in public record and make sure they
look okay. Okay. And it's difficult. I get it. It's difficult to
hire the right person. because, frankly, how do you know who the
right person is? What do you know about IT? What do you know about
security, it's difficult, you got to find somebody that's been in a
long time.
Craig 18:43
Alright, so next up, let's talk about this FBI problem here. This
is from NextGov.com. I'll put it up on my screen here
http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube. Of course, you guys the audio
guys listen to the podcast. And here on iHeart Radio as well. You
guys are my primary audience. Okay. But if you want to see some of
these articles, I put them up here on the screen. But this is huge.
The FBI reportedly has ignored, for the most part, the GAO, the
Government Accountability Offices concerned over its use of facial
recognition technology, in criminal investigations, its new
technology, its kinda neat. They can scan all kinds of public
cameras and photos as well as records, the FBI has to try and find
suspects and close cases. That part's fine. But apparently, what
they've been doing is they're pulling from a database of more than
30 million mug shots and other photos. And while they're doing
this, they're looking for matches, right? Doesn't that make sense?
And they're trying to find the matches, they're trying to get the
right people, but they get bad matches, they get mismatches with
people who were nowhere in the area. Okay, I get that. You figure
it out, right, and you take care of it. But apparently what they've
been doing is they have been going after them and prosecuting and
trying to get convictions. The auditors and the GAO recommended
that the FBI tests the accuracy of these things at least once a
year, make improvements, etc, that are very interesting. So if
you're charged nowadays by the FBI or local prosecutor, what's
the right thing to do? Because you weren't in the area. You didn't
do it. Are they going to convict you on bad evidence now because
they trust the computer so much? I don't know.
Craig 20:49
Okay, so next up from the TechRepublic, we got an article about
WiFi, how many people complain about WiFi saying it's bad for our
health? Well, another study out and I've been saying this for a
long time. And man that I feel bad one time I was keynoting at an
annual event for it was for a bank. And I was their keynote speaker
for their annual shareholder's meeting and talked about the future
of technology. Where it's going? What's happening? And a lady came
up to me and said, so what do you think about radiation from
phones, from cell phones? And I said, well, you know, I've been an
advanced class amateur radio operator for many, many decades. I
have had a lot of radiation from these radios exposed to me, I've
never had anything happen. And most of the studies that have been
done about ham radio operators have said, hey, there's nothing
definitive about a problem. So bottom line, you know, doesn't
really matter. It's not a big deal, that you have this happening.
And then she said, you know, you can see the tears welling up in
her eyes. And she says, Well, I think it was her husband had been
diagnosed with cancer. And they said that it was because he had the
phone up to his head all the time using it at work. And that work
should be paying for all this medical treatment and, and pain and
suffering and stuff. And man made me feel really bad. But the truth
is, there are no strong ties between these various types of
radiation. And the biggest problem I think people have is a
misunderstanding. We call it radiation. But this isn't x rays. This
isn't, you know, the radiation you get from outer space, it is
non-ionizing radiation. And radiation from a scientific definition
is just energy moving through space, it's not a big deal. So these
new WiFi devices that are going to be rolled out all over the
country for 5G, they're going to be everywhere. And that's one of
the reasons you can get such high data rates. They are everywhere.
And so you're going to be close to them. Even mount them on our
houses, on telephone poles are going to be just everywhere. But the
RF signals, these radio frequency signals that are generated by
WiFi, by Bluetooth, by your phones, in any device that's sold
legally in the US is tested. And you know, I'm not one for trusting
government testing necessarily, right. But in reality, the safety
limits are just incredible. You know, you're talking about 500
milliwatts, and I have routinely been transmitting at 50 watts,
which is a lot more power, and I haven't experienced any problems
and, and 100 watts on some of the HF bands and even higher. So
studies just, there was one of University of Barcelona, looking at
RF exposure of children, ages 8 to 18 in Europe over three day
period, WiFi represented 4% of total RF exposure. 62% of the RF
exposure came from cellular base stations. 23% from broadcast TV
and radio. And 10% from a nearby cell phone. So the exposure is
approximate point .001% of that of the safety limits imposed by the
European Commission, which is even tighter than here in the
US. So back to this article, again, TechRepublican on http://CraigPeterson.com. You'll see it.
WiFi is just not bad for your health.
Craig 24:45
So we're going to whip through a couple more here pretty quickly
because we only have a couple of minutes left. If you think that
switching over to cloud services is going to make you safe. I'm
afraid there's another thing coming for you. Because right now
cloud services are the Wild West. And various cloud services have
various amounts of safety with them, if you will, they have really
kind of an abysmal record. You think about all of these huge data
breaches that have happened on the cloud recently. And it's
incredible, like 2 billion records found on the cloud from one of
these cloud services providers just in the last couple of months.
So just because you're using Office 365, or you're using some other
type of cloud services, Salesforce.com, etc, does not mean it's
safe. Now, I'm not saying that they aren't relatively safe, but
there's a new study out. And this is from the global phish report
from Avanan. And they looked at 55 million emails sent to Microsoft
Office 365 and Google G Suite account. Those are the big guys. If
you have an email for your business, you're probably either with
Office 365, or Google G Suite. And they found roughly 1% of all
messages or phishing threats that use malicious attachments or
links. And of those, 25% that were marked safe by the Exchange
Online protection built into Office 365. And delivered to us. So
just a little word of warning there. Just because you're using the
cloud service does not mean that your emails are safe.
Craig 26:31
I've got to bring this one up too. Amazon, they are burning books.
And I don't know what to do about this. You know, remember Jeff
Bezos said that he was going to be you know, open, they sell any
books, he wanted the exchange of ideas, which is, of course, a very
libertarian classic liberal way of doing things. But now apparently
he is removing books from the store. We know already that he has
removed books from people's iPads etc. So in February this year,
they banned a number of books from white identitarian Jared Taylor,
a book called The White Nationalist Manifesto by Greg Johnson. You
may completely disagree with these guys. Right. But again, they
need to have their voices out there as part of the public debate.
They also banned, had bans on Holocaust revisionists books in 2017,
a purge of all books by the controversial pickup blogger and author
Daryush Valizadeh, I guess it is. Many others, many others.
Amazon's refused, by the way, to take down a book defending
pedophilia on first amendment grounds. They have not removed
certain books that are up there that are anti-christian, even
though there have been complaints about them. So they got to get
their act together.
Craig 27:57
And if you're using a mental health app, you can see it on my
screen here http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube, be
careful out there because of the data they're sharing. Alright,
have a great week. I am out of time. We will chat next week and of
course during the week as well on my podcasts.
http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.
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Related articles:
Driving A Tesla Results In More CO2 Than A Mercedes Diesel Car, Study Finds
Former NH Sen. Hassan Aide Stole Gigabytes Of ‘High Value’ Data
Wi-Fi Is Not Actually Bad For Your Health, Scientists Say
FBI’s Facial Recognition Programs Under Fire Over Privacy, Accuracy Concerns
Using Cloud Email? Office 365? You’re Not Safe From Phishing Attacks
Amazon Has Been On A Digital Book Burning Spree For Months
That Mental Health
App Might Share Your Data Without Telling You
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