Flock Cameras, Meta Glasses and the Surveillance Backlash

21:29It's a huge topic on social media. It's huge at every city council meeting. The companies and the police are saying, what, do you love criminals? Do you love crime? Like, how could you want to take this down? And I think it's just something where there was not the initial sort of due diligence done before deploying this sort of technology.

21:48Kara Swisher:Very much like data centers, NDAs, just let's build them. Let's not tell you about these things. It's a very, it's a similar tactic by a lot of these companies. Let's get it out there. And then by the time they're out there, you know, ask for forgiveness rather than permission, essentially. We'll be back in a minute.

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24:08Kara Swisher:Best of all, everything comes in a variety of great tasting flavors. I really like IQ bars. I like the chocolate ones or peanut butter ones. I also use their IQ mixes after I work out. A lot of these things can taste terrible and these do not. And right now IQ bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20 % off all IQ bar products, including the ultimate sampler pack plus free shipping to get your 20 % off text Cara to 64 ,000. Text CARA to 64000. That's CARA to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. Ripple has been powering modern finance for a decade. We're leading the charge to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the future of finance.

24:54Kara Swisher:You can have it all. Legacy, stability, and digital innovation. Systems that work with your other systems. Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. For informational purposes only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities. Let's take a step back and talk about how bias is woven into the tech behind the cameras and throughout tech more broadly. Sevilla, your book, Algorithms of Oppression, examines how algorithms are neither neutral nor objective, as they say they are.

25:29Kara Swisher:You studied Google search at the time, and in a related research, computer scientists Timnit Gebru and Joy Bulamwini, both of whom I've interviewed many times, found racial and gender biases in AI and facial recognition software. Break it down for us. How exactly are the stereotypes built into the AI training data? To me, it's the old computer thing, garbage in, garbage out. But talk a little bit about that. Yeah, sure. I mean, I've been on the case since 2010, you know, kind of first publishing about this in 2012. And I will say that back then, even the word algorithms was not a part of our everyday lexicon.

26:08It just wasn't for everyday people the way it is now. And we think of these technologies as being purely about math, mathematical computation. and the systems designers, the software engineers themselves, still want to hold on to these ideas. But the truth is that if you take something like, in the context of a search engine, trying to index the web, and you use something like hyperlinking as a way to signal what's important, if this website is, you know, linking or pointing to this website, and enough of those kinds of things are happening, then that means it must be credible and legitimate. So it goes up in the page rank.

26:51And, you know, what you have is a massive network of computers and websites that can be optimized by those who have the most money. So in the case of the study that I did, I found that when you did queries on Black women, Black girls, Latina girls, Asian girls, you know, the majority of their representation, misrepresentation of them was pornography. So you couldn't get a fair representation for certain communities when you did search. And part of that is because the porn industry was able to optimize those keywords more powerfully than any Black women or girls or Asian or Latina girls could do.

27:36And so you have this kind of tension between thinking about ad tech, where industries that have a vested interest in trying to kind of surface what they want to the top of the pile is in play. But you also have designers who are not testing and not thinking about certain ideas in certain communities, certainly of a social nature. And so they also design technologies that are incredibly easy to manipulate. And of course, we've seen this even in the case of back then when I was studying, again, 15 years ago. If you did keyword searches on Jews, you would get Holocaust denial sites, anti-Semitic sites, you know, right there on the first page in the first couple of hits.

28:19So the way in which these things happen is you have the convergence of ad tech, people and actors, bad actors who can optimize content with what we call the metadata, the description about the websites, along with being able to pay more to Google to optimize their content. They're willing to pay to have more visibility. You have minoritized people who cannot compete with that. And then you have an overlay of an idea that what's happening here is neutral and objective. And you have this kind of as the cultural overlay where people relate to it, right?

28:57Kara Swisher:Right, right, right. Because most of those people have financial incentives, the porn industry particularly. But also other industries too. I mean, you know, if you think about this incredibly flawed, and of course, racial stereotypes and gender stereotypes, misogyny are also a huge part of the internet. So if you are indexing the internet and you have no standard or value by which to evaluate, let's say, evidence-based research against a subreddit that's, you know, a neo-Nazi thread or a misogynist thread or something in the manosphere, you actually put those things all up equal to each other in that level of engagement.

29:32Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah. I once had an argument with Larry Page about, he said, all news is the same. I go, the New York Times is not the same as the National Enquirer. You do know that. Like, it was a weird, like, well, just put them all up. But I'm like, no, because you're then waiting the National Enquirer. It was an astonishing conversation. I'll never forget it. Victoria, you recently wrote about Meta's smart glass rollout. Again, another product they had not thought about or done any anticipation of any possible consequences. And said the company was playing its cards all wrong. First, explain the controversy around Meta's facial recognition software internally called NameTag.

30:05Kara Swisher:What are some of the biggest privacy issues and how has the company responded? And I will note, yesterday, Meta tried to give me a pair of Ray-Bans. I have a pair, but I was like, no, I don't want any more of them. But talk a little bit just so people understand the issues. And, you know, the good applications seem, to me, creepy, but possibly delightful. Yeah, so name tag, you know, it wasn't a thing that Meta put out there. There was a New York Times investigation that found that this internal document from Meta where they were saying, oh, we'll roll out this facial recognition feature. at a time where privacy advocates are distracted by political turmoil.

30:44Kara Swisher:And so, you know, everyone latched onto that and it was like, excuse me, what? Like, you clearly don't have great intentions there. And, you know, 404 has done great reporting about spotting these meta glasses on Customs and Border Patrol agents. And so a lot of people are like, oh, so you're telling me that the government could facially recognize me wearing these glasses. Meta kind of had some executives come out and be like, no, no, no, no. It's meant to be a closed system on Instagram. And, you know, it's based on your contacts. You get to define who these people are. That wasn't widely disseminated.

31:16Kara Swisher:And then Wired came out with their own investigation. And they found that Meta had silently shipped the code for this name tag feature to millions of devices out there. And, you know, secretly walked it back after all of that. And once the backlash was huge because, you know, no one wants to feel like they're walking down the street and an ordinary pair of metaglasses is like identifying them. A couple of years ago, there were these college students who modified a pair of metaglasses so that they could instantly dox people based on existing facial recognition database that are out there. And, you know, it's creepy.

31:52Kara Swisher:It's just creepy to have the idea, especially if you're a woman, that you're walking down the street and a pickup artist could be looking at you and finding out your name and your address, pretending that they know you. And it can be quite scary, especially since - They also disable the lights that are supposed to mint. They can disable that it's taping. Yeah, so for the longest time, Meta's privacy policy was don't be a jerk. Also, we have this singular LED light that will signal to everyone that you're recording. well, this LED light can not only be tampered with in multiple ways, both by software and physically by drilling into the light, it's very easily washed out by bright sunlight.

32:30Kara Swisher:So you're outside, you're walking, it's daylight. I have pictures on theverge.com where I have the light on and you really can't notice that it's there. I've had many people in testing, I'll be like, can you see this privacy light? And they're like, oh, you know, it's really easily washed out. We're in bright sunlight or we're indoors even. then no one's really noticing it. A true story. I was at a Vanity Fair Oscar party and Sergey Brin walked in with Google Glass and nobody would talk to him. This was many years ago, maybe a decade ago, when they were putting out Google Glass. And he came up to me and he goes, no one's talking to me.

33:02Kara Swisher:I wonder why. I go, you fucking creeper. Like, what do you think? These are celebrities. They don't want to be, you want to tape people? Well, I'm not doing it. I'm like, yeah, but how do they know? Like, it was really, it's sort of the mentality from the beginning that this is a good thing to be able to identify people. Yeah, and it's just like there is a disconnect between what people know the limitations of the devices are versus what they can actually do. Online, you see a lot of people go, oh, I don't want to be recorded 24-7. Well, the reality is that these glasses only last about 30 minutes of continuous recording, and that's if you've got them charged all the way up.

33:36Kara Swisher:But in the future, and there has been reporting on this, Meadow wants these devices to be super sensing or recording 24-7, in which case there's a lot of sensitive situations that opens people up to— Yeah, you might not want to. Yeah. 404 Media reported earlier this summer how police were using Flock feature called Freeform to track people, not just cars, which they had claimed that was what they were doing. Again, Flock has said its products do not have facial recognition. But Jason, how does Freeform work and what are the characteristics people are searching for? I mean, you were walking your dog.

34:08Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, this freeform search does use the automated license plate reader system. So, again, Phlock says this just takes static images, but it's not just a static image of a license plate. It's an image of a car. And for a while, they did roll out video as well. What freeform searches is essentially Google for cops. Victoria brought up earlier this woman who was arrested in Florida who served 13 days in prison. What happened there was the cops searched for a black SUV. And so rather than actually having the license plate in question, they typed in black SUV. And her car was flagged by this system.

34:45She was near the site of a hit-and-run accident that killed three people. The cops showed up at her house and arrested her on these manslaughter charges. Her car was not in any accident whatsoever. She was not involved. She just happened to be nearby. This can be applied to searches for people. So you could search protest sign, like someone holding a sign. You can search for different types of bumper stickers. You can search for dog, for example. And so if there's a report of a dog bite or something like that, a cop could search any dog that passed by one of these Flock cameras. Another thing that Flock likes to bring up is that these cameras are not always recording.

35:24They are motion activated. And so they're only recording when something happens, which is essentially the same thing when anyone or any car drives by. And so that's one of the things with this company is that the technology started off being maybe not so advanced, but they've been adding features left and right. They are experimenting all the time. And once a city is sort of locked into a contract, it's like they're getting all of these upgrades and cops are experimenting with them. Of course they will. Yeah, it's become like the first thing that cops do is they go to Flock anytime there's a report of a crime and they're like, I'm going to type it into the system and see what comes up.

36:01Kara Swisher:Yeah, it makes their life easier in that regard, less policing and more surveillance. Every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here is yours. Hi, everyone. I am Nicole Perleroth, the cybersecurity journalist and author of This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends About the Cyber Weapons Arms Race. I have covered everything from the Snowden files to the recent Chinese cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure. And more recently, I've been tracking North Korean efforts to secure remote IT work at US companies on my podcast to catch a thief. I am also actually a Flock customer. Our street set up flock safety cameras after we were broken into.

36:40But perhaps more than anyone in the neighborhood, I'm also acutely aware that we are creating an ambient surveillance network where the people getting caught in these dragnets never opted in and really never have a way to meaningfully opt out. So the big question I would ask of each of you is what information should companies simply never be allowed to collect in the first place? And what is the single most important rule you would put in place before this infrastructure becomes impossible to unwind? Thank you so much.

37:16Kara Swisher:Safiya, you go first, then Victoria, and then Jason. You know, this is an interesting question because I also can personally relate to this, having had a vandalism at my home, and how would we respond? And, you know, our choice was to have a closed system where we could know what was happening around us, but that did not feed to law enforcement and did not trigger the cops coming and, let's say, arresting my teenage son falsely. So I think when one implements a surveillance tech for their own personal safety, that does not mean that they're entitled to surveil the entire neighborhood or everyone around them and ensnare and entrap everyone into that.

37:57But, you know, I thought that was the more ethical, personal choice for our family. And I think these are the kinds of things that also protect my neighbors, ultimately. It's not so much what is the message from the companies. I think it's what is the message that we carry and what are the values we carry in our neighborhoods, in our communities, you know, with our neighbors. We have an incredible community listserv, and we do a lot of things to try to just look out for each other as people. And I think outsourcing that to the tech isn't particularly beneficial, not to the degree that it creates, you know, other opportunities, as Victoria was talking about, like having a conversation about what we see and how we can help each other.

38:40Kara Swisher:Right. And what would be the single most smart rule you would put in place? I think these systems should be illegal until we have done the proper vetting, have the proper public discourse, and we have more democratic participation in whether they exist in our lives at all. At all. Victoria? So a lot of the surveillance tech I deal with is kind of on a personal level. It's wearables. I'm going to get to that next. One thing that I've been grappling with recently is the idea of my personal privacy and data as my personal privacy, kind of similar to what Sophia was saying. I don't think that anyone should ever be put in the position to be the steward of someone else's privacy, given these devices.

39:21Kara Swisher:And so that's the one thing that you consent is like the number one thing in my mind at this point in time. And the idea that I am now burdened with your privacy if we just happen to be sharing a physical space is a heavy burden. And it's really kind of turned me off the supposed convenience or benefits of these devices. The number one rule, I think, is that we cannot leave it to private companies to make these decisions. We do need regulators and we do need places to weigh in and chime in. Because what happens when you have a pair of glasses that is your primary seeing device and you go into a court and the court is like, well, we've banned it and you're left without a seeing device that is vital to you navigating the world.

40:05Kara Swisher:Are you then obligated as an individual to carry two backup seeing devices on you at all times when glasses cost a bajillion dollars in the U.S., especially if you're visually impaired? So it's like, we need to be having, like Sophia said, a very public discourse and one with legislators. And we cannot leave it to these private companies to decide. And I think it's laudable that they were trying to sell it as a device, like the Metaglasses for veterans who can't see or blind people who can't see and things like that. It's life-changing for them. But those people, too, deserve privacy. Those people, too, deserve a higher standard.

40:43Kara Swisher:So I have a little bit of an issue with people using accessibility as a shield. Jason? Yeah, I mean, I think facial recognition should be a non-starter. But I think more broadly than that, like automated enforcement using these technologies where right now the big difference is that we used to have human beings watching surveillance footage, getting it after the fact, that sort of thing. Now you have an AI watching this footage at all times and you have a network that is a lot larger than it's ever been. And I think that we really risk criminalizing a lot of frivolous behaviors. I think that we are marching towards a place where it is very difficult to exist in public without running afoul of some local ordinance or small crime.

41:29And I think that— That's Larry Ellison's goal. It is. I know exactly what you're referring to. And that's the goal that some of these people imagine.

41:37Kara Swisher:This is for people who don't know Larry Ellison said, it's good to have them because then people behave. Exactly. Said the person who never behaves. I think we are starting to see surveillance systems affecting behavior, especially with metaglass and things like that. Like, a guy on my softball team wore them the other day. I didn't know he was wearing them. He had a home run and he turned them on. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm being recorded. I didn't even know. And you sort of don't know how to react in that moment. It's bad enough with cell phones, but you can see them coming in a lot of ways.

42:03And then I think that there should be a warrant requirement. And I think that, you know, a lot of cops and the companies say that this will make it the technology not viable. But, you know, there's been studies done that the average warrant takes something like three minutes to process. Like this can be a very streamlined process. But I do think that adding that little bit of friction will prevent a lot of abuse. It appears to be a nonstarter for Flock and companies like it. It's something that they don't want to talk about. And it's something that they fought very heavily against. They say, please regulate us.

42:35But then you say, OK, warrant requirement. And they shut down.

42:40Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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45:25Kara Swisher:Ebglis Lubrikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems.

45:56Kara Swisher:You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Let's shift to the consumer angle. Victoria just referenced about wearable tech. By some estimates, nearly half of Americans own a wearable device. But a recent report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that most wearables lack basic transparency reports and key privacy features. Victoria, you argue that after smartphone, quote, tech companies have decided they should live on and eventually in our bodies.

46:34Kara Swisher:So is more wearable and implantable tech that captures your biometric data and inevitability? And how is personal data that's collected on these devices used. Just for myself, I don't wear the Oura Ring anymore. I've shifted to a regular watch, not a digital watch. The phone is probably the one thing that is with me all the time. So talk about this briefly. So basically, you know, these devices are constantly like sampling your biometrics, like a smartwatch, for example, is constantly measuring your heart rate. It's measuring your movements and it all gets fed into algorithms that are proprietary and are different depending on what company you're using.

47:14Kara Swisher:And they'll use that and feed it into an AI increasingly now that gives you personalized insights. And the idea is that eventually you'll get personalized medicine. And this is kind of an interesting concept, sort of, but it requires so much data. And these companies are getting increasingly invasive. So they're increasingly tying up with CGMs, which are continuous glucose monitors, because metabolism is a thing that they want to get into. They want to track your hormones, and so they're asking you to pee into a cup and use your pee data in some way. They want to measure your sweat through your feet for a scale.

47:50Kara Swisher:And all of these things are supposed to create a picture of you so you have better health data. That's the benefit that they give to you. But it's also just like, well, they want all that information so they can serve you targeted ads. They want all that information so that they can serve their advertisers in some ways. And it's similar to how the flat camera is saying, like, crime is something that we'll solve and we'll give you all this convenience. It's going to save your life. So it's a pretty compelling thing. But, you know, as we're seeing, they're not just health trackers anymore. They're going to be ambient listening devices that are just on your body all the time.

48:27Kara Swisher:This new Apple announcement, ambient. Yes, the audio intelligence announcement, which is just, you know, it's making people feel a certain way because it's one thing to save your life if you're in a car crash or if you fall down. It's another when it's just like, oh, is your Apple Watch listening to me at all times? Right, exactly. What is the transcript that's being generated? And, you know, Apple has released a white paper, some support documents that said there's no audio that's being saved. There's no playback. There's attribution stripped from all of these high-level summaries. There's no transcript.

49:05Kara Swisher:And it seems like they're trying to preemptively address some of the privacy concerns there. But it's also just like it changes the behavior of people now. And these are the people who just changed Lake Ontario to Lake America. Just pointing that out. ridiculous people they are. Apple, by the way, just unveiled its new AI watch that always listening feature that takes notes of awareness conversations through the day. Turn it off, everybody. Just turn it off. There's no need for you to know that. It's at least opt in. So it's not on by default. So if you don't ever want it, you don't have to. If it was a Facebook one, it would be on by default.

49:40Kara Swisher:So go Apple. Good for you, Apple. The New York Times recently reported that Nanit and other startups offering smart baby monitor systems, tanning benefits like optimized nap predictions. According to Times reporting, the wearables market is approaching$100 billion, a huge potential in the baby tech sector. Sophia, you worked in tech and advertising before entering academia. Talk about the rise of baby tech and what's the risk-benefit analysis that parents should consider for hooking up a newborn with a smart monitor. I have four kids. I have used listening monitors on them. But increasingly, as I had more children, less and less monitoring happened.

50:15Kara Swisher:over time. And certainly there's been a lot of reports of people hacking into it, et cetera, et cetera, these sort of nightmare stories. Talk a little bit about newborn baby tech. Yeah. I mean, so much of this wearable tech is snake oil. And I think that's one of the things that people really don't understand. I mean, even in a hospital, you know, we remember during COVID that the oximeter can actually accurately read the levels of oxygen among African-Americans or more melanated people. So the science is faulty on a lot of the premises as Victoria is getting at. So imagine putting the faulty science on a newborn baby.

50:54I'm gonna tell you that there's not a lot of research on newborn babies, just as there is not a lot. If you think about clinical trials and the kind of scientific basis of how research is done in medicine, it's mostly white men. So the entire premise here that we somehow are going to know more and be more effective in a medical intervention context is patently false. And we know this. To me, you know, when you think about babies and talk about people who can't consent to being entrapped into these systems, and of course many, many parents over the last decade, as they've been quitting Facebook, have also been taking their children off the Internet for very important reasons, because your children shouldn't be on the internet.

51:43Their faces shouldn't be on the internet, not just for the way in which their images are used for child sexual exploitation materials and child pornography. But I think, you know, babies like crime, like the things we're talking about health are such an emotional trigger for families. People want to protect their babies. They want to believe that they're giving their children the very best and that, What a pernicious kind of craven marketing ploy to use. I mean, that is really, they are the objects of manipulation for parents and people who are caretakers of children.

52:20Kara Swisher:Also, you cannot optimize naps. Sorry. You really can't. You can't. And also, babies aren't doing many crimes, I've noticed. Babies aren't crying. Leave the babies out of it. No crime in babies. And if they are, we'll take care of that one baby. Very clever baby. The only time I've used technology monitoring, and it's on the opposite end for elderly people, my mother was falling a lot and I allowed a fall camera in the thing because it was hard, you know, because she fell so much. And so in that case, I found it useful. I made certain they had an on-off switch for it. Wearable technology can help empower people.

52:54Kara Swisher:It can. And devices like Apple Watch can help doctors and patients detect conditions like atrial fibrillation. I used one when I had a stroke. It was very helpful. But that utility depends on collecting, again, an increasing amount of detailed data. Victoria and then Jason, how should people weigh those benefits against the privacy risks? And where should the line be drawn that these devices collect, retain, and share? And is any company doing it right? First, Victoria, then Jason. That's a lot of stuff. But, you know, I will say that one thing that we do at The Verge in our reviews is we haven't agreed to continue a section at the end of each review.

53:30Kara Swisher:and we talk about the terms and conditions you're agreeing to. And I always say that if you're very sensitive to your private health data, you do not want a wearable device. I say this as the wearable lady because it's not just, you know, your device, you buy it, that's one set of terms and conditions and privacy policies. You have to connect it to your phone. That's a separate set of privacy terms and conditions. And then, you know, all of these things, they're saying, oh, connect to Strava, connect to these other third-party things. those have their own separate terms and conditions. So when you're connecting through these APIs, you are agreeing to that third party's possibly less rigorous privacy terms and standards.

54:09Kara Swisher:So there's no way to really stop and contain the privacy of your health data. HIPAA exists, but it's woefully inadequate and has been outdated for wearable technology since its inception. So, you know, you can't really rely on those things. And what I generally tell people is that these devices are constantly bombarding you with more metrics, more things to become anxious about. And what you really have to do is come in with a very strong goal if you have a health issue. That, again, if you have had a stroke, if you have had a heart condition, I continually test CGMs because I have a messed up metabolism.

54:48Kara Swisher:and I'm trying not to have full-blown diabetes, even though it's in my family history. So there's like certain terms of engagement that I have set for myself. And, you know, I've talked with my own editors about what level of invasive technology I am willing to test for myself and what I will not test because an increasing number of these companies want my blood and I have to sit with that about like all the blood draws that they want to take from me. And by that extension, consumers. These are very serious things that these companies want to learn from you. So it's like, do you have a condition that needs to be monitored?

55:21Kara Swisher:Are you chronically ill for those people? Wearables can be very empowering. It can help them regulate their day and their energy. There are specific wearables that are out there to help them with that. If you are someone who is hard of hearing or low vision, there are certain trade-offs there that will make your life more autonomous, more independent, and that's great for you. But if you are an average person, sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is not engage with these devices. It's to listen to your own body. And, you know, I always say wearables are only meant to monitor long-term trends.

55:55Kara Swisher:You can like ignore it most of the time and still be fine. Yeah. You know when you've had a good night's worth of sleep. You generally do if you're healthy. In the series I did for CNN, I was talking to Zeke Emanuel, and we were talking about the Oura Ring, and he goes, you know when you don't sleep well. You don't need it to tell you that you didn't sleep well, which is interesting. So, Jason, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, like, there's a reason why people use these things, which is they're very convenient. And I think that they almost kind of like insidiously enter your life where you get them for one reason, and then, you know, new features are added, that sort of thing.

56:27I think often about TSA pre and clear and all these things that we do at the airport to save a few minutes, like, or to not have to take our wallet out, like that sort of thing. And I think every person needs to sort of make their calculation like what they're comfortable with and what they're not comfortable with. I think that one of the things that I try to do in my work is focus on how we can push back for better regulation of these technologies. And I think Victoria raised a super important point that every surveillance device, or whether it's a wearable, whether it's, you know, you're buying a ring camera, these sorts of things, they connect to other systems.

57:03And I think that once you don't have any idea where your data is flowing, that's when I start to personally get very uncomfortable with it. And you asked about companies that you trust. I mean, I think that they don't have a perfect track record, but I think Apple at least nods to privacy a lot. And they do a lot of things like on device, things like this, like you can control where the data is going often.

57:24Kara Swisher:Yeah, unless they get your device. It's in there. Exactly. And that's the other thing is like, I mean, the only way to be absolutely safe is to like opt out of society entirely. And I think that that is not feasible for most people. I think also with something like a ring camera, it's like maybe your family is okay with you having a ring camera, but is the people who deliver packages to your house, is the gardeners, you know, you're sort of opting other people into these ecosystems. And I think people need to consider that. Well, let's end by looking at the shift around public attitudes. I have taken all these things off my house, which is interesting because I don't have an aura ring anymore.

58:00Kara Swisher:I'm moving to analog watches again. I still, of course, have the phone. Apps and products routinely encourage users to share a more personal information exchange for better experience or improved product. There's a sense that you're contributing to making something better by sharing your data. They ask you that all the time. Would you like to share to help us improve our systems? Sophia, what other arguments do companies use to persuade us to surrender our data and And how valid are those arguments? Everyone has gotten that pop-up, for example. Yeah, I mean, I think that the more that these technologies are embedded into our public institutions, into our jobs, you know, into kind of authority conferring, legitimizing spaces, the more people feel they cannot resist or they feel that someone has vetted these things for them or their livelihood is dependent upon them.

58:49So I think that's one of the challenges is the public is, for example, deeply suspicious of generative AI and large language models. And yet when they go to work, especially the more they're working in kind of like white collar jobs, they're being forced to use these kinds of things. And so I think the companies have been smart to try to really triple down on enterprise level engagement. And of course, we have things like, which we haven't even talked about, surge pricing and predictive pricing and things that happen. You know, now you're in the grocery store and you're paying more. I'm paying more than Victoria is paying, you know, for the same bag of carrots.

59:30Like all of these kinds of things, I think, are thankfully The Verge and 404 Media have been powerfully covering and helping us understand, investigative journalists understand what the stakes are. But the companies are really gamifying. You know, they're either going through our jobs or they're kind of gamifying, making these things seem fun and interesting and like you don't want to be left behind. I mean, we see these ads all over L.A. for friend.com, you know, the friend necklace that, oh, okay, we could just do a show on friend. I mean, from hell. So, you know, the wearable necklace that tracks every single thing you do and all your conversations and somehow that's cute and comments on your life.

1:00:09So, I think, you know, we just have to get smarter and smarter about this. Our instincts in the public that these things are not what we want are the right instincts. And I would just say that people have ways to resist. One of the most powerful things that people can do, if you have a pension or you have a 401k or you have any way to direct your money out of surveillance tech, that is something you can and should do. We're doing that as professors right now in the UC. We have a massive campaign going to take our pension money out of surveillance tech. There should be pressure on CalPERS and CalSTRS and all of the different pension funds because that's actually where these companies get the money to make the terrible things that are either going to put us out of work or make our lives more difficult.

1:01:00So we need to also feel more agency and power in speaking back to and cutting off the flow of capital into these dumb ideas.

1:01:08Kara Swisher:I would also stress that they're saying if you give her your data, it'll be better. It's their business. They can figure out a different way than stealing from you. Last question for all of you. The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently released a two-part guide to online safety and doxing, which is ways to reduce your overall footprint along with steps to take if you're in the midst of being doxed. Ultimately, a lot of people don't feel in control of their personal data. A lot of it you can't opt out of unless you want to just live out in the woods and grow your own vegetables, which maybe you might want to do soon about the vegetable part.

1:01:38Kara Swisher:But what will it take to convince people that their actions matter when it comes to protecting their privacy? Because, in fact, they do. And I've said that this popular backlash against surveillance tech and data centers is a proxy for anger toward tech oligarchs, billionaires, AI, a number of things. Do you think we're reaching a moment when backlash can lead to actual systemic change or political movement and changing our relationship with tech and consumers? I doubt it. I sort of go more with different European regulators, one of whom told me we're trading convenience for control of our lives.

1:02:12Kara Swisher:So I'd love each of you to sort of reflect in a big picture. Do you think there is a movement? Because I feel it with my older sons. They are veering away from this stuff in a way that is social media tracking and things like that, much more so than people that are older than them. But do you feel like it is one of those moments where we want to renegotiate our relationship with tech. Jason, Victoria, and then Sophia, you can finish and have the last word. I absolutely do think that there's a movement there, like you identified. I started becoming a tech journalist right before the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013.

1:02:47And that was a big moment. I mean, there were not huge changes in privacy then, but it was very top of mind. But I've been covering surveillance and privacy ever since then. And I've always looked at it as this very niche thing that, you know, a lot of people care about very deeply, but that the masses either don't understand or don't get out of bed to talk about. And with this flock and AI data center backlash, I mean, I log on to Instagram and the videos I'm seeing there are people talking about it. One, a lot of them are very informed, like getting into the nitty gritty. And two, a lot of them don't have 10 ,000 views.

1:03:20They have 10 million views. And I mean, that's a difficult way to assess popularity. But I do think you are seeing people show up at city council meetings, you're seeing city councils cancel these contracts. And you're also seeing attempts by the people who are opposing Flock to make this a more universal discussion about surveillance technologies in general. And so, you know, there are powerful interests sort of on the other side, like there's a lot of money on the line for these companies, AI companies, especially to have us use this technology and to have, you know, data center proliferate and all that sort of thing.

1:03:54But I do think that there is a very concerted backlash right now. And I do think that politicians are starting to listen, whether that leads to meaningful change or whether it leads to, you know, like packaging it up around the edges and getting shoved down our throats anyways. I think that kind of remains to be seen, but I'm feeling a bit more optimistic than I have in quite some time just because of the amount of energy that we're seeing right now.

1:04:21Kara Swisher:Victoria? Yeah, I just want to bring up the example of Google Glass, the original version, and the current backlash that we're seeing with Metaglasses. The public absolutely has a say in whether these things proliferate, because what happened with the Google Glass, people were ripping them off each other's faces. And then you don't want to get into a situation where you're in danger. I see this incredibly violent language that my readers and people online say with these pervert glasses where it's like, oh, going to rip them off each other's faces. And I'm like, don't do that. That could be not so great for you.

1:04:54Kara Swisher:But at the same time, you know, my coworker, Mia Sato wrote a story about how people are harassing retail workers with these glasses. And one thing that I found super encouraging was the retail worker was so smart and he said, meta stop recording. So people can do things to make these devices unattractive. and that will force companies to either adopt a less evil way of implementing that. We've seen that with Apple with these new audio intelligence features where they're saying, so it's not going to do this. It's not going to do that. We're trying to make it attractive in a more private way because there is this public backlash.

1:05:29Kara Swisher:So yes, I do have hope. They're certainly not going to do it on their own. Trust me. They're not going to do it on their own. So people do have to say very loudly, we don't like this, do better. So I do have hope there because we killed smart glasses once. This is very fragile. I'm still a skeptic. It's not inevitable that smart glasses have to be a thing. Do you know where the video will go in your AirPods? That's where it's going. Much more so I'm just telling you. FYI, that's where it's headed. Sophia, you get the last word. Well, I got to say, I've been in this conversation for a long time, too.

1:06:06And I definitely think that the way everyday people are talking about these issues is so different than it was in 2010 and 2012. So I'm extremely hopeful. In fact, what I see is unions are starting to come to the table and they're bargaining over the use of AI and the job. That is go, go harder, do more on that. We are seeing all over Europe, in particular, a complete divestment from U.S. big tech. I mean, nation states are talking about we need to get our governments and our citizens off of Microsoft. So these are very big global shifts. And in fact, there's a whole new renaissance for Linux, if you can believe it, or people having the server at home, keeping things local, figuring out how to make mesh networks.

1:06:55We see new kind of Bluetooth networking, just very interesting kinds of what we might think of as fringe now, but moving toward more and more toward the mainstream because people do love tech, but they want to do it in ways that are not so consequential. And of course, the more that people learn about Palantir and what it means to have these kinds of companies as the infrastructural backbone of where all this data converges to create digital profiles that determine how you can move. I mean, social credit, people worry about what China's doing. We should be worried about what the United States is doing.

1:07:33So I think that these are much more mainstream conversations than they were a decade ago. And I'm grateful that we're able to have these conversations. This conversation will reach a lot of people. And there are practical ways, again, that people can move their money out of surveillance tech. They can bargain over those things on their job. They can confront the school boards and the schools where their children go and get this predictive AI out of the lives that are kind of where these technologies will over-determine what is possible for us and for our futures.

1:08:06Kara Swisher:Yeah, I do believe there is, for the first time, I agree with all of you, that there is suddenly a lot of anger. It's a lot of reasons, but it's converging. And it would be really nice if our regulators would listen to people, which they don't do most of the time, instead of get bought and paid for by these companies. Anyway, I really appreciate it. It's really important to understand surveillance and to have a good attitude towards it. In some cases, it can be helpful. In most cases, it is helpful only to these tech companies. And I really appreciate your continued work, all of you. Thank you.

1:08:37Thanks for having me. Thanks for having us. Thank God, yes.

1:09:09Kara Swisher:Valley's surveillance panopticon. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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