The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Jason: 00:00

Our databases, our intelligence suggests that you may have committed a crime. We don't know exactly what that crime is, but we are going to find a reason to pull you over.

Joseph: 00:15

Hello. And welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to the best comments.

Joseph: 00:37

Gain access to that content at 404media.co. Also, do remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch all of our episodes, including this one. Subscribe at youtube.com/@404mediaco. I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are two of the other four zero four Media cofounders, the first being Sam Cole Hey. And the other being Jason Kepler.

Joseph: 01:03

Hello. Hello. We survived our party just about. We will talk about that a bunch more in the subscriber section at the end of this episode, but it was a lot of fun. Let's save the chat until then.

Joseph: 01:20

Jason, do you wanna take us through this first story?

Jason: 01:23

Quickly, if you are in LA, we're doing a live podcast with The Intercept on Thursday at The Loved One at 07:30PM. We'll drop a link to RSVP for that. I think there's only a few spots left. So if you wanna come to that, please do. Alright.

Jason: 01:40

Let's talk about this story that you did, Joseph. It's called a secretive DHS Predictive Policing Unit is analyzing Americans' financial habits and pulling them over. That's a bit of a long headline. It's a good one though because there's a lot going on here. So I guess we'll get to the specifics, but, like, what is the new what, like, what is this?

Jason: 02:02

What's going on here?

Joseph: 02:03

Yeah. The new thing here is that DHS or more specifically Border Patrol is running these secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans' financial activity and other data, sends that information to local cops or rather really the names of these people. Local cops then find a pretence to pull them over. They're not suspected of any sort of particular crime. You know, there's not probable cause here.

Joseph: 02:34

They're not going after somebody because, oh, they trafficked x y z amount of drugs or something like that. They pull them over, not suspected of a of a particular crime because DHS thinks they're probably worth searching, and they probably maybe have stuff on them that would be of interest to DHS. So there's all of that stuff, and one of the really big things that we've revealed in this article is simply the name of this unit or rather units, and we'll explain that in a bit. And these are called predictive intelligence targeting teams or PITT. I guess we can say PIT for short.

Joseph: 03:18

The thing is

Jason: 03:19

It's a different PIT.

Joseph: 03:20

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is it's not like I can really go to, like, I don't know, a DHS podcast and see how they announce it, do pronounce it. Do they say PITT?

Joseph: 03:34

Do they say PITT? When you Google, or rather before we publish this article, when you Googled predictive intelligence targeting team, literally nothing came up, and I thought that was very, very interesting and one of the reasons why, you know, we're revealing the name of this Predictive Policing unit.

Jason: 03:54

Yeah. So this again, like, no one knew what what they were doing here, but this came to you through a guy named Kyle Olson. Who is he and what happened to him?

Joseph: 04:06

Yeah. So Kyle Olson was driving from I think California to Wisconsin. He works on a cannabis farm in California, and he was taking some edibles, some oil, some marijuana back to Wisconsin. Right? And I'm not an expert in all of the state laws around marijuana and cannabis.

Joseph: 04:38

What I'll say is that he believes that what he was doing was legal. I also think it's neither here nor there. Right? Because it's much more about DHS didn't have probable cause or suspect of a particular crime, that sort of thing, and we'll get to that. But he was driving, as I said, from California to Wisconsin.

Joseph: 05:01

He has his dog in the back. He has a black SUV. There's some luggage racks on the back that's sort of attached to the rear bumper. And then, eventually, when he's crossing through Montana, I believe, that is when a state police officer pulls him over.

Jason: 05:25

So he's pulled over, and, like, why why did he think they were stopping him? Or, like, what did what what what originally happened here?

Joseph: 05:34

Olsen sent me a bunch of body cam footage from the police and also sort of his dashcam footage, you know, a camera in his own SUV, and that includes a rear camera. And I watched that, and you see the cop car, the Montana, I think, Highway State Patrol. They pull out onto the interstate. They follow Olsen for a while. Eventually, they put their lights on.

Joseph: 06:04

They pull Olsen over, and then in the body cam, this sergeant sergeant Beck, I think, goes up to the side of Olson's car, and he says, hey. Nothing major. We're just pulling you over because, like, your license plate is a little bit obstructed. The sergeant thinks there's a cover on the license plate, like a glass cover sort of thing that's shielding it. He also thinks that those big luggage racks might be obstructing it as well, but, crucially, that is the given pretense and the given reason for the stop, and sergeant Beck says it quite explicitly.

Joseph: 06:45

Like, hey. Just so you know, this is the reason we're pulling you over is because you have an obstructed license plate.

Jason: 06:51

Right. But that's not why he was pulled over. Like, as you later found out, the whole entire reason we're doing this story is he was flagged by the pit, this this predictive intelligence team. So, like, how did he find out about it, and then how did you kind of like, what did what gaps were you able to fill in?

Joseph: 07:12

Yeah. So Olsen's case has, like, progressed. Right? Like, he has been charged. He's been charged with a DUI because they took his blood at the time, and I I think he was allegedly under the influence of cannabis, so I'll have to double check that.

Joseph: 07:30

But he was charged with a DUI and then later charged with possession with intent to supply because of the edibles and the marijuana and stuff in his car. So that case has been going on, and as part of that, he's been given discovery, right, which is, hey, here's the evidence that the state or the authorities have against you, and in that, he was given a very, very interesting DHS written document, and it actually lays out the real reason for this stop, which is that Border Patrol is running this predictive intelligence targeting team, and an officer, a Border Patrol agent from one of those teams in the sort of Washington state sector was going through Americans' financial data and other information. They identified Olson as a potential person who was engaging in narcotics trafficking. They then that information, and then they provided it to sergeant Beck, specifically the cop who then called Olsen over. So in other words, the license plate stop was a pretense.

Joseph: 08:46

It was just a reason to get him over at the time. The real reason that Olson was stopped was because of a DHS Predictive Policing Unit that's analyzing all of this data, pinpointing vehicles and people, and thinking, they look interesting. We should probably pull them over. And I don't know. It's pretty rare for us, I think, to see a document like this.

Joseph: 09:13

We'll about other really, really crucial reporting on DHS predictive policing in a moment. But having a document like this where DHS says, yes. I'm analyzing the data, and then I thought this person was doing this. They're not suspected of a crime, but then I gave it to the cop and they pulled them over. I mean, it's a really, really crazy document.

Joseph: 09:33

When I because the turnaround of this article was pretty quick. Right? I mean, that's the benefit of how we operate. We can move quite quickly. We're still very careful and diligent, but, like, we don't have a ton of bureaucracy.

Joseph: 09:45

Right? So we can do that. I got this document who, to be clear, Olsen gave it to me. I then showed it to you, Jason. Like, what did you think when I showed you this document?

Jason: 09:55

Well, I think let's tell people specifically what it says because it's it's called a memorandum of investigation. And so it's a DHS document that explains a bit about the investigation in here, and it's from someone in the Spokane sector of Border Patrol Targeting and Intelligence Division, which I guess oversees the the, you know, this PITT group. And he wrote that he reviews, quote, law enforcement sensitive databases, and then uses that to develop intelligence that they hand over to local law enforcement, which you said, but it specifically says that, quote, information contained within law enforcement sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity. And then they basically asked them to, like, use to to interdict this person. So

Joseph: 10:59

Pull them over.

Jason: 11:01

Then in the actual, like, report detailing the stop, Beck wrote, quote, it was relayed to me by US border patrol targeting analyst Matthew Phelps that he had identified a vehicle that had indicators of possible narcotics trafficking. So this, again, it's like DHS is using unknown like, we don't know which government databases. We don't know which financial information to, yeah, tell local cops, like, what to pull people over for because they think that they may have possibly committed a crime. That is really wild. It's just a really wild thing to do.

Joseph: 11:38

That's not how typically the justice system works in America. Right? Like, you don't pull people over on a hunch. You pull people over because they have committed or are suspected to have committed a specific offense. Right?

Joseph: 11:54

And, of course, you know, it's very convenient in this case that the license plate did look to be obstructed. I don't think that was a lie. You know? Like, I think it was probably obstructed. But, like, if that hadn't been the case, how would have this cop have pulled over Olsen at DHS's behest?

Joseph: 12:16

You know? Like, you can pull somebody over for a license plate obstruction and then maybe, oh, wow, you just find all of this weed as well, but is antithetical and antithetical to how the justice system usually works when it's actually the other way around.

Jason: 12:31

Well, I mean, I think the case, it's like maybe they would have pulled him over for going one mile an over one mile an hour over the speed limit or something like that or a busted taillight or whatever. It's like as we sort of have learned, it's like it doesn't really matter what he was pulled over for. This is this reminds me of the story I did about flock a few weeks ago related to flock being used as a pretext to pull someone over for weed. Because in this case, like, the details are also somewhat sparse, but it's like this guy was pulled over for an obstructed license plate, and he was charged with DUI. He was charged with, you know, intent to distribute, but it's not clear that that's, like, the crime that DHS was actually looking for.

Jason: 13:21

Like, I I think that from what we can tell, it doesn't seem like he had kilograms of weed or anything like that. Like, it was he had some amount of weed. Weed is not legal in Wisconsin, and so it's like it it's, you know, it's unclear whether, like, this led to the type of crime that DHS was expecting.

Joseph: 13:48

He doesn't seem to be he's not a big time drug trafficker. I'll say that. You know? If that's what DHS is looking for, that this Olsen guy doesn't appear to be that on the available evidence. Yeah.

Joseph: 14:01

But when I sent you the document, like, what did you think?

Jason: 14:04

I mean, I just immediately thought this is crazy. Like, I I think that we've written a lot about predictive policing in general, which is a term that is controversial Yeah. Because, like, often it's tied to surveillance systems, to AI systems, to and the thought of predictive policing is literally, like, minority report precrime vibes where it's like, well, the patterns of your behavior, we've detected that you are going to commit a crime, and therefore, we are going to intercede before this crime can be committed. Or I guess in this case, it's like our databases, our intelligence suggests that you may have committed a crime. We don't know exactly what that crime is, but we are going to find a reason to pull you over.

Jason: 14:56

And, I mean, it seems to me that, like, this is happening more often at the border, although I'm not exactly sure. But yeah. I mean, I thought, like, this is crazy. It's very dystopian. It's sort of like there have been companies that have tried to do this before.

Jason: 15:13

There's one called PredPol, which is like predictive policing literally. That's based on just like crime statistics in a neighborhood essentially, and I actually don't know the current status of this, but this is the US government doing it, the federal government working with local police. It's just like a very insane thing. But, yeah, do you get

Joseph: 15:33

a sense of, like, how widespread this program is? So there was some really, really important reporting somewhat recently from the Associated Press where two reporters there did a massive project where they I mean, they revealed the Border Patrol was doing predictive policing in the first place, and that was very much focused on automatic license plate readers, you know, like we've spoken about a million times. But these were a little bit different in that, if I remember correctly, it's a very long investigation that people should definitely go read. It is linked in in our story. But in some cases, these were border patrol license plate readers, like hidden in traffic cones and and, like, traffic bollards and that sort of thing, and it created this network of license plate readers that border patrol were looking at to then predict, this vehicle is gonna be suspicious based on where this person has gone and where they appear to be going and their past movements and all of that sort of thing.

Joseph: 16:41

So that's an amazing investigation. They traveled all over the country to do that. Definitely go read it. And now we're adding, oh, it's not just license plates. They're looking at financial data as well, which to be honest to me is like even wilder.

Joseph: 16:55

Like, we kinda know that license plates are being used all the time. Again, FLOG, Axon, Motorola, Vaccada, whatever. They're they're they're all over the place. Right? But the idea that federal agencies are somehow just, like, you know, panning for gold through financial data to then find somebody to be like, let's pull them over, is is crazy.

Joseph: 17:20

And this isn't I don't think this is in the document we got, but I imagine that this person, yes, looked at oh, sorry. This border patrol agent looked at financial data. Presumably, they also did look at license plate data to identify Olson's vehicle in the first place. I think that's sort of just a given as well.

Jason: 17:39

Yeah. I mean, for this, this also raises some questions for me about federal efforts to police weed in in places where it's legal, which we'd only get so far into. But I think that a big part of the legal weed industry, which obviously federally still illegal, has been that they haven't been able to access bank banking stuff. And that I I know that the weed industry has developed ways of using the banking system a little bit, and this raises questions for me of, like, well, if they're using the banking system in any way or if if there's, like, tons of cash being withdrawn, things like that. Like, I don't know.

Jason: 18:22

Is this is this an effort by the feds to police weed in a different way? I think we don't have enough info about how this is working to say much more than that, but the fact that this guy was ultimately pulled over on weed charges is, like, is pretty interesting to me. And are we aware of, like, anyone else that this has caught?

Joseph: 18:46

Yeah. So well, I'll I'll I'll say first that there there seems to be other pit teams, pit units, whatever we're calling them now, PITTs or whatever. Like, this one focused on one of the north of the border, but then if you go through court records of a related case, which I'll get to in a minute because that actually answers your question, but you go through those, there's a bunch of text messages between law enforcement agents and and a border patrol border patrol agents. If you take one of those phone numbers and then you type them if you take one of them and you put them into WhatsApp, the profile photo of that apparent border patrol agent is like a law enforcement patch, you know, where they have all of these symbols. Maybe it's a physical thing they put in their bag or their uniform or or whatever, and it says tech ops PITT relating to a sector down south by by the Mexico US border.

Joseph: 19:50

So already now, we've identified two PITTs, the one north related to the Olsen case, and then one down low thanks to this WhatsApp profile. I would say that customs and border protection, which is sort of the the one above Border Patrol, they have 20 secondtors, and I did ask Customs and Border Protection, well, do you have, like, a pit in every single one of these sectors? And they didn't answer that. To go back to your question about who else this has impacted, this is mentioned extensively in the Associated Press report. It was also covered and obviously represented by the Institute for Justice, which is this sort of civil rights litigation organization which has done a ton of stuff on automatic license plate readers.

Joseph: 20:41

In that case, a cop pulled over somebody who was just like straight up innocent. They hadn't done anything, and they ransacked their vehicle. They went through all of it, and then this target victim was sat in the passenger seat of a cop squad car talking to the officer who'd, like, pulled him over, and he, like, basically spilled the beans. Sort of, like, yeah. Like, this is based on intelligence, and I'm looking for the big fish, blah blah blah.

Joseph: 21:09

And that lawsuit, because this person who was, you know, unfairly pulled over sued, that opened up, like, this whole new world of, oh, okay. There's something going on here, and that's how I got the phone number for this other PITT team, and I imagine how the Associated Press sort of learned of it in the first place potentially. Maybe speaking out of turn there. I'm not actually sure how they figured that out. But, yes, the point is the case we we spoke about and covered, the Olsen case, yes, he was charged with a DUI and then charged for a possession with intent to supply, alleged crimes not proven in the court of law, not a perfect victim by his own admission when I've spoken to Olsen.

Joseph: 21:53

You may think, well, the the program is doing its job then because it's getting these people moving weed. Okay. Well, what do you think about the innocent guy who was pulled over and didn't have anything at all? You know? And just very briefly, like, I do think that there's, like, too much emphasis sometimes in coverage or from the public of, like, the need for a perfect victim.

Joseph: 22:16

Like, I think that some people may only care about this story or maybe some outlets would only cover this story If it was a purely innocent person pulled over because of border patrol's predictive policing, I kinda, like, don't care. Like, it it doesn't really matter. Sure. Maybe this person was maybe they are guilty of the DUI and the other charges or whatever. This was a vehicle for revealing more details about the Predictive Policing Units, and I think ultimately that's what's important here.

Joseph: 22:47

You know? Yeah. Agreed. Should we leave that there? And then after the break, Sam is gonna ask you a bunch of questions about a new piece of AI fashion.

Joseph: 22:58

We'll be right back after this. Alright. We are back. Sam, do you wanna take this one, the Jason ring?

Sam: 23:12

Yes. So, Jason, as the fashion experts on the team that's done to fashion Actually, I think, Joe, you're more fashionable than I am most of the time.

Joseph: 23:26

I appreciate that.

Sam: 23:27

You guys are mocking me constantly. So, yeah, this headline is this digital camouflage shirt confuses AI powered surveillance cameras. Yeah. So we've heard, like, adversarial fashion a bit in the past. It's something that's been around for many years, but you had the chance to kinda go and experience this particular project in person.

Sam: 23:51

So, yeah, do you wanna just kinda walk us through what happened when you went and checked out this it's a shirt based on the headline as we know. But, yeah, what did you what did you see? What happened when you, like, put it on and and stood in front of a camera?

Jason: 24:07

Yeah. So, essentially, this shirt is it's, like, made up of a bunch of blobs, and we can talk about how it was made in a second. But it's, like, green and black and pink and red. It's it stands out. Like, it stands out a lot.

Sam: 24:20

It's like looking at flashes.

Jason: 24:21

That's the thing. It's I think this is why it resonated with people so much is because the pattern's so complicated. Like So, yeah, if you don't know, please look up the I think you should leave skit about Dan Flashes because it's exactly that. But, basically, it's designed to camouflage a person from an AI object recognition camera. So, basically, these are cameras that do object recognition, not facial recognition.

Jason: 24:53

So it identifies people as a person, and when you put this shirt on, it can no longer identify you as a person. It it confuses that camera. We can talk about how it does that in a in a second. But, basically, like, these cameras are used quite often in police surveillance and in private surveillance as well, where they can send an alert if a person is is recognized. They can also determine whether someone is, like, laying down.

Jason: 25:22

So, like, if a homeless person is trying to sleep somewhere, they can also identify, like, different types of actions. So, like, fighting or anomalies or, like, someone loitering for a long time. And so this camera or this shirt is designed to confuse those types of cameras. And what this guy, Simon Weckert, did was he is running an open source object recognition algorithm called YOLO, which is very popular. It's like the starting point for a lot of different surveillance systems.

Jason: 26:01

Flock uses YOLO, for example, like a type of YOLO for its license plate recognition, and then a lot of other surveillance companies use this as a starting point. And so he like, in his studio, he is running a camera that's running this algorithm, And what he did was something called gradient gradient something. But bay no. Basically, what he does is he pits, like, an algorithm against this. And so, like, if you're running the software, you can tell the confidence score of what Yolo is seeing.

Jason: 26:42

And so he will see like, Yolo will say, like, with 99% confidence, this is a person. And then he designs a pattern and he runs that by YOLO, and they say, okay, like, 98% sure this is a person. And then he keeps altering the pattern, which is basically made up of random shapes until that confidence interval goes down and down and down and down and does it over and over and over again until it can no longer recognize you as a person, and he succeeded. Like, this shirt does work for the YOLO open source algorithm. I was standing in in his studio in front of the camera.

Jason: 27:25

When I wasn't wearing the shirt, there was a big green box around me that said person. When I put the shirt in front of me, I was no longer recognized. And so I I mean, he's making these. He's selling them for, I think, like, $80 each. Like, it is an art project, and we can talk more about, like, why he did this, what the purpose of art is in general, what the response has been.

Jason: 27:50

Because this went extremely viral, like, not just our version. Like, our version on the website did okay, but I think on Instagram, like, I don't know, maybe a million people saw the the video, but then I also saw, like, many other versions of this. Like, people were talking about this far and wide, kind of like, what is the point of something like this? Is this going to give the police or surveillance companies incentive to improve their algorithm? So on and so forth.

Jason: 28:19

Is this Dan Flash's IRL? There was, like, many things that people were debating.

Joseph: 28:23

I did see a surveillance company specifically use this in marketing where they were like, hey. Look. Our our people detection algorithms are not fooled by the shirt. Like, it was an actual, like, piece of marketing material on LinkedIn, which I know just felt a bit lame, really, to do that. Yeah.

Sam: 28:45

Yeah. That is that's super lame. Good for them, I guess. But I feel like the like the like you said, like, is an art project. And a lot of the times with these kind of, like, so called adversarial fashion projects, I almost feel like, and I think some of the artists who've done them have said that the point is not necessarily to be invisible walking around town for years years to come.

Sam: 29:10

It's like the shirt's not gonna work once the technology gets slightly better. So it's not like this is an invisibility cloak forever. It's more like a conversation starter about the fact that you are being watched everywhere. Is was that kind of Simon's take on it also? Like, was he is he trying to make it more of a statement about surveillance than he is, like, this is a functional item, or does he think that this is, everyone should be owning one of these shirts?

Jason: 29:38

Yeah. I mean, this is part of the article, but I didn't go that deep into it because I feel like people need to, like, understand this implicitly. It's like the point of this shirt is not to put this shirt on and then go commit a bunch of crimes. You are wearing a super bright shirt. Like, it's like not I think that that's part of the point is it's, like, super bright.

Jason: 30:04

It's you stick out like a sore thumb. It's, like, showing like, finding a person who commits a crime who's wearing this shirt is not gonna be, like, terribly difficult. The point also of, like, we've written about and seen shirts that have, like, license plates all over them, like, fake license plates, and it's, like, to quote, unquote poison the data or confuse a flock camera or whatever. And it's like the point of those is not to go go poison flock forever. Like, that doesn't really do anything.

Jason: 30:36

What it does do is when you're out in public, people will be like, yo, why is your shirt so weird? What's going on here? And then you can say, oh, this is designed to confuse an AI powered surveillance system. And then they'll go, woah, what is an AI powered surveillance system? And then you can explain what it is and, like, raise awareness about that thing.

Jason: 31:00

And, like, that is the entire point of this shirt of a lot of adversarial fashion. I mean, I think that there are some that are a bit more practical, like wearing a full on mask at a protest or something that where you think there's gonna be facial recognition or something like that, like, sure. That that has kind of a more practical use. But something like this where it is an art project where it specifically probably doesn't work against higher tech, like, higher tech implementations of AI cameras. Like, that's part of the point.

Jason: 31:34

One of the points is we don't know specifically which algorithms are running on these cameras. That information is not released to the public. But this is kind of, like, the best that we can do is, like, using these open source systems. You can attack that, and you can sort of show how powerful these open source systems are and then start a conversation about the fact that the ones that the police actually have or that companies actually have are better or more powerful than this. And then we can be like, well, maybe this is something we want in our society, maybe it's not.

Jason: 32:12

Like, that is the entire point of this. That's the point of art. It's the point, like, to provoke a conversation, a response, etcetera. And this has been, like, wildly successful in doing so, but I think that there are a lot of people like, a lot of people understand that, but then there's been a lot of response that's like, oh, you're telling the surveillance companies that that this works, and then, therefore, they're just gonna update their algorithm. And then Simon is gonna have to update his shirt, and then, like, this is this is not gonna work for that long.

Jason: 32:47

And it's like, that is the entire point. It's like, it's to provoke a response from the surveillance companies. It's to provoke a response from the people wearing it. It's a provoke a response from society. We cover this type of thing as journalists to raise awareness about the fact that it's happening so that people can have a conversation about whether this is something that should exist or not.

Jason: 33:12

It's like we all have our role to play, basically. And it's like the role of this type of art is to be like, yo, like, here's if you're not interested in reading thousands of words about how this sort of thing happens, maybe you're interested in watching a thirty second Instagram video that clearly shows how this technology works, or maybe you're into fashion and you're like, woah. This is the ugliest shirt I've ever seen. Why does this exist? And you can have a conversation about it then.

Jason: 33:42

And it's like the fact that some people can't understand that is like mind boggling to me, but I guess many people are stupid.

Sam: 33:49

Yeah. It's not meant to be taken like so so so literally. I mean, if you want to be safer and, like, more disguised against facial recognition in public, just wear a hat, like a baseball hat over your head and, like, dark glasses and a mask. It's, like, that's the easiest way. But even then, a lot of these cameras can detect, like they can identify you through your, like, walking style and gait and, like, lots of other things.

Sam: 34:14

So I don't know. It's like it's I I feel like the commentary of it all is still important to have. I hesitate to say it's ugly. It's kinda cool looking, I think. I would buy

Joseph: 34:25

one. Ugly.

Sam: 34:25

It's I would wear it. It's definitely different.

Jason: 34:28

I think it's cool, but a lot of people are like, this is a really ugly shirt. Like, that that is what These people are my fashion. Said. But it's just like they just don't appreciate complicated patterns. You know?

Joseph: 34:39

They just I think the people saying that know subconsciously or consciously that they just can't pull the shirt off, and that's what they're saying. Yeah.

Sam: 34:47

Yeah. I think I think we should all get one probably. I also saw somebody in the comments of this story on our site say, this might be a great way to get hit by a self driving car, which is, like that is, like, I think you should leave skit. Like, was avoiding getting facial recognition, and I got hit by Waymo. I don't know if that's how it works, but I'm sure that's not actually how it works.

Joseph: 35:08

But I think that's Well, I don't.

Jason: 35:09

I mean, it's a different technology, but it it is, like, similar, like, as in they're they're detecting objects and things like that. So I would imagine whatever Waymo is running is more sophisticated than this off the shelf whatever. And that that's the other thing. It's like, oh, like, by showing that these things can be attacked, the surveillance companies are gonna try to improve their algorithms. And it's like, they're trying to do that anyway.

Jason: 35:36

They're improving their algorithms all the time. Like, that is the whole yes. That's what they do.

Sam: 35:41

Yeah. Totally. Cool. Well, okay. We're all gonna order a shirt and wear it on the next pod and confuse the the recognition systems of YouTube, I guess.

Joseph: 35:51

Well, that yeah, and River and Riverside would be the AI

Sam: 35:55

It'll break. It'll completely break.

Joseph: 35:57

In the podcast platform we use. Alright. Yes. As Sam said, we'll leave that there. And if you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out.

Joseph: 36:05

But if you are a paying for a four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about our third year anniversary. We had the panel. We had the party. Both were amazing. There will be a recording of that to come at some point, but we'll discuss the details of that after the break.

Joseph: 36:23

You can subscribe and gain access to that content @404media.co. We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back in the subscribers only section. I mean, yeah, there is a headline.

Joseph: 36:41

It's only because Sam kindly wrote this on a holiday Monday. We had something to email. I mean, I'll say the headline, but, of course, we're just gonna chat about the party and stuff. It is or was, we are going to be okay, a three year anniversary events recap. I guess the headline with the we're gonna be okay is obviously related to the panel we did or, like, the series of stuff we did.

Joseph: 37:10

Sam, just fill fill people in maybe who weren't there or or they were, but, like, what did we do on Thursday night?

Sam: 37:20

We had a live taping of the podcast on Thursday night on the third at the Green Space, which is in the West Village slash Chelsea border. It's an WMYC, like, production space. So they do all kinds of, like, cool events. They do, like, Broadway on the radio, which is cool. I would need to, like, tune in for one of those where they have just, like, Broadway shows on stage on the radio.

Sam: 37:45

But this time it was us. We did a little reception. We talked about how the company was going. I don't think we need to, like, rehash everything that we talked about on that panel because we're gonna re rerelease it as a podcast episode soon, and it'll also be video on YouTube. But, yeah, I mean, it was an amazing turnout.

Sam: 38:09

People actually showed up, which is always cool. I don't know why. Every time we have one of these events, I'm like, I hope people show up, and then too many people show up. So it was really nice to be able to see people in person. The headline of that story is from one of the q and a questions we put up.

Sam: 38:25

I find this to be I don't know how you guys feel about it. I find this to be a much smoother experience when we put out a box and let people write down questions because everyone gets a chance to, like, ask something. You know, it's like it feels like a more, I don't know, fair and, like, time efficient way to do a q and a, but we put out this box.

Joseph: 38:44

That and people may be, like I I know. Some people are spooked.

Sam: 38:49

People are shocked.

Joseph: 38:49

The microphone. Yeah.

Sam: 38:50

Yeah. Yeah. It's totally I get it. I never ask questions during q and a's at events because I'm scared. This is we I showed this on the podcast.

Sam: 38:57

This is a man. I know he's not here today, so we're gonna For hear in

Joseph: 39:00

audio listeners only, that is a very limited edition sticker we have of Emmanuel's soy face. There was a

Sam: 39:08

sound emoji. It's like an emoji react. This is the are you going to be okay? Are we going are are we going to be okay? Which I don't know.

Joseph: 39:19

Who asked the one? It was Jason.

Sam: 39:21

Jason answered

Jason: 39:22

it. Don't why it's asking. Answered that one. I mean, that was the first question that we got. Maybe it would have been better if we pulled it out at the end, but, of course, it was random.

Jason: 39:33

But yeah. I think it's a it's obviously a very broad question, and I think that Oh, that's the other thing that I wanted to say about the shirt, and I think I I can just bring it back to this. It's like we cover really, like, upsetting dystopian things over and over and over again, and, like, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news. But we try to write about how people are pushing back against these systems and these things as well. And I think that no, like, one person or one project or one anything is going to, like, fix all the scary things that we write about, but I think it's important for people to see examples of people fighting back even if they are imperfect and even if they're not going to, like, lead directly to, you know, like, the end of all bad things in the world.

Jason: 40:33

And so I think that's something that I try to keep in mind. I I think I probably I I I rarely write about good news because so many of the tips we get are just like, hey, something really bad is happening, and that's important to cover as well. But I do think that we don't want people to read our website and despair, I guess. And I think that I don't think that people do, but there are, like, lots of people who are pushing back against all the bad things that are happening, and we wanna highlight that as well.

Sam: 41:11

Yeah. I think that's always like people are always like, oh, you're so like you're so bummer news. And it's like, well, the fact that people reach out to us and like give us tips and, like, are concerned about these issues in the first place and, like, read the stories and and subscribe to us, honestly, is, like, the most hopeful thing. Like, that is the hopeful story is the story of everything we cover because these stories wouldn't be possible without, like, people reaching out with tips and leaks and people doing cool shit like the shirt. I think it's, like, the theme of the site is often just, like, humans are, you know, still are still okay even though the technology that is oppressing them often is bad and evil.

Sam: 41:58

It's like the people the people that are being targeted are still, like, pushing back, which I don't It's like one if one day the if one day the story is, like, no one gives a shit anymore, that will be when I say we're out of hope and nothing matters. But people still give a shit as demonstrated by these events. Yeah. Joe, do you have thoughts on whether or we're gonna be okay?

Joseph: 42:21

No. No. That's not no. We're not be okay. That's No thoughts?

Joseph: 42:27

No. We don't know. We don't have any thoughts on that.

Sam: 42:29

Yeah. Fair. My favorite question was

Jason: 42:31

Just as this is trying to remain unbiased. I have no

Sam: 42:35

opinion. Yet to be determined. Yeah. Yeah. Sources say sources close to the matter say we were are going to be okay.

Joseph: 42:41

So Taking journalistic ethics to the extreme where I'm just, like,

Jason: 42:47

frozen opinion on the matter.

Joseph: 42:48

Yeah. On on anything. Yeah.

Sam: 42:50

Yeah. My favorite question of the night was about the orals.

Joseph: 42:56

Oh, yeah.

Sam: 42:57

Someone asked about that.

Joseph: 42:58

Who put that in? So Jason loves the loves the fact that a baseball question appeared, and it was you know, he he obviously understandably jumped at the moment. But, like, Jason, do you think was that you, or was this No.

Jason: 43:12

No. The the subscriber who came and wrote that question spoke to me afterward and said I wrote that question, and then we talked about baseball, like, quite a lot more. And he was saying that he wants more more baseball content on the pod. So Dude. I don't know.

Jason: 43:31

We may need to we may need to give our subscribers what they want.

Joseph: 43:37

Subscriber. We may need to

Jason: 43:39

give our one subscriber what they want.

Sam: 43:42

I think many people want this.

Joseph: 43:44

People love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: 43:45

Yeah. I think also while while that was all happening, this reminds me I just finished silo season three. We should do a silo pod.

Joseph: 43:57

Sure. I really, really do need to watch that. Right? Is this

Jason: 44:00

a TV show? Silo recap. Yeah. Silo is an Apple TV show that just finished its third season, and I watched, like, seven episodes of it this weekend, and so I now feel like I live in the silo. Okay.

Jason: 44:18

I may never escape the silo. Silo is like an underground place where all the all these people are living.

Joseph: 44:24

They're old people. You told me about you told me to watch Silo years ago when it first came out, and I foolishly didn't jump on it, and I'm really behind in the sci fi. Like, I only just finally watched the alien TV show, which was great, but, like, I think Silo is probably a level above that. It's probably way better, but I'll I'll check that out. If you if you wanna do a pod, I'll try and pitch three seasons of it.

Joseph: 44:47

That's gonna take a while.

Sam: 44:49

Also speaking of baseball, someone I've forgive me. I forgot his name, but someone came up and wanted to talk about Boogs barbecue at Camden, and how he was listening to the pod and was inspired to go and get hot dogs and Boogs and barbecue. So our influence. You're welcome.

Joseph: 45:07

That's Impact.

Sam: 45:09

You're welcome to the Orioles franchise.

Joseph: 45:15

Should we should we talk about the party?

Sam: 45:18

Yeah. I mean, what is there to discuss about the party? It was just a good time. We hung out and drank with our good friends and subscribers in our community. I mean, like, we said this several times, but, like, our readers are so hot and cool.

Sam: 45:31

And if you're a subscriber of four zero four, you are automatically hot and cool. So it was nice to see everybody in person at that also. That was much more chill, just like a a hang at Three's Brewery. It was no one learned anything, hopefully. There was no educational programming.

Sam: 45:49

So that was

Jason: 45:51

Some people told me it was a great networking event, which is, like Yeah. Not the intended purpose. No. But, I mean, if you met someone cool, I guess that's good.

Sam: 46:00

I get that. Because it's like people have a lot in common. If they people can probably find something in common if they are readers of ours and, like, are coming in person to this event. They're probably sharing things in common with other people who are there. So maybe we should get into networking events.

Sam: 46:15

Maybe we should be, like, selling tickets to, like, conferences and stuff.

Joseph: 46:17

Yeah. We need to pivot to more of a, like, TechCrunch disrupt model. Yeah. Where we get four leaders to come in, and then there are breakout rooms, all of these fucking words that you hate to like, when when I'm I have to go speak at conference or something and then or attend a conference or cover one, it's like, okay. Breakout room, like, word.

Sam: 46:36

I leave

Joseph: 46:37

There is a word. Yeah.

Sam: 46:38

I leave the Zoom at that point. I'm like, goodbye. I'm not here anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam: 46:42

Let's never do a mixer. Let's promise each other to never do a mixer.

Joseph: 46:46

Well, apparently, we did by accident. Accidentally. Really good. So Yep. There were, like, you know, lots of journalists, tech people, activists, AI people in various forms, like really, really interesting.

Joseph: 46:59

I'll shout out two things. Beer, pretty damn good, including the nonalcoholic beer that I switched to at some point. And then there was also a story I did a while ago where scattered lapses, that sort of, you know, loose group of hackers, they dox a bunch of member DHS, ICE, FBI officials, blah blah blah. And because I think Mexican well, allegedly, according to DHS, like, oh, Mexican cartels are saying provide information on ICE agents and there's a bounty, blah blah blah. In the quote of that story, one of the hackers said, I want my money, Mexico.

Joseph: 47:41

And then someone at the party made a sticker with that quote saying, I want my money Mexico and a skull and maybe the camera can see it. It was a pretty cool little sticker. So I just wanted to shout that out. But, yeah, it was great to meet people, hang out. Food, really good.

Sam: 47:59

We made these.

Joseph: 47:59

I only got to eat one piece, but it was good. Oh, yeah. And we gave out

Sam: 48:02

Which I wanna make

Joseph: 48:03

stickers. Yeah.

Sam: 48:04

If you like these stickers, tell us. Well,

Joseph: 48:08

let let's not get too far into this, but we were thinking, and I think we've just been far too busy, and maybe this will go later in the year, maybe it'll be next year, but, like, emphasizing that for humans by humans language, like, it's on the sticker, and we we have it in some places, but, like, I think it should be much and we've spoken about this a bit. I think we think it should be much more prominent on the site. And, like, in the podcast intro, we say, oh, unparalleled unparalleled access to hittables with online and IRL. That was our tagline when we launched, and it's changed to, like, oh, it's for humans by humans now, so we need to just

Jason: 48:48

Yeah.

Sam: 48:48

It resonates with people, I think, because everything is a lot is for robots by robots these days. So

Joseph: 48:54

And it makes more sense, and it just tracks more with what we do. Like, I think when we started, it was about hidden worlds, and there still is a lot of it. But, like, it's also just, like, us telling people what we think or adding context to something that's not hidden. It's right there. It's the AI industry.

Joseph: 49:13

It's like burning around your fucking face or whatever. You know? But, anyway, that was a cool sticker, Sam.

Jason: 49:18

I said in some of my interview podcast intros, by the way.

Sam: 49:22

I You did?

Jason: 49:22

Went off script.

Joseph: 49:23

Yeah. Yeah. And then I think our audio producer brought that up, and I was just like, I don't have time to look at that right now.

Jason: 49:31

But, yeah, we we we I got snitched on.

Joseph: 49:34

Kind of. Kind. Not in a bad way, to be clear. It was just like, oh, is that the script now? Was like, I don't know.

Joseph: 49:39

I don't have time. I will we will figure it out later, but, yeah, we we should lean into that. Great party, though. I could not talk for about twenty four hours afterwards. I went to

Sam: 49:52

bed at,

Jason: 49:52

like, 8PM. Anybody.

Joseph: 49:53

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam: 49:54

Yeah. I was like I played Breath of the Wild for about twenty four hours straight and Nice. Spoke to no one. And I played farming simulator twenty thirteen, which someone left on their stoop in my neighborhood, and I put it I put that

Joseph: 50:07

disc Yeah. In my

Sam: 50:09

Wow. I was like, I hope this is not like a I don't know. Like a phishing, very complicated phishing attempt directed directly at me because it was my next door neighbor.

Joseph: 50:19

If it if that was fin seven and they've moved from malicious USB drives to malicious copies of farming simulations 2023, that

Sam: 50:27

Got my ass.

Joseph: 50:28

Infect yourself. That's a fucking story.

Sam: 50:30

Caught my ass. It was like the the install errored out several times, and that's when I started to be like, I wonder what's actually on this, but it it turned out to just be tractors.

Joseph: 50:40

Emmanuel's not here to defend himself so we can attack him, but, you know, like, he didn't he buy a whole tractor simulator?

Sam: 50:47

Did he?

Joseph: 50:48

For years and years ago, he had, like, the steering wheel No way. Big stick, but it was, like, specifically for a tractor Are you serious? I'm pretty sure.

Sam: 50:57

And if not

Joseph: 50:58

and if I'm and if I'm wrong, who cares? Just believe it and just continue to continue to tell people that about it.

Sam: 51:04

Buy that off of him.

Joseph: 51:05

Oh, I feel

Sam: 51:06

so sick.

Joseph: 51:06

Yeah. Fuck. It was it was a few years ago or something.

Sam: 51:10

You need that stuff. Anyway, that yeah. We we won't I won't get into my my new obsession with farming sim, but in a future pod about games after the sports pod.

Joseph: 51:19

Super briefly, yes, we'll save it. I played a lot of lawnmower simulator. That's fucking sick.

Sam: 51:24

Oh, that I'm interested in. Because a lot of the farming someone is, like, cutting it's, like, doing the the corn harvesting, which is very satisfying.

Jason: 51:33

Right. I

Sam: 51:34

wanna cut some grass.

Joseph: 51:35

That, but you you have to get a single blade of grass because you missed it, and it feels so good when you get it.

Sam: 51:39

Oh, shit. Okay. That's my next that'll be next weekend's hobby.

Joseph: 51:43

Yeah. We should probably wrap this up. Got other stuff to do. Let me find the script. One second.

Joseph: 51:52

As a reminder, four zero four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to four zero four Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast.

Joseph: 52:18

That stuff really, really does help us out, or just tell a friend. This has been four zero four Media. We'll see you again next week.