Driving A Tesla Increases CO2 Emissions – Sen Hassan Aid Stole Gigabytes Of Data and more Today on TTWCP Radio Show: [04-27-19]

On This Episode…

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.

 

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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.