The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)
from 404 Media
The New Jersey Drone Panic
Episode Notes
/Transcript
YouTube version: https://youtu.be/VMysupECTzE
Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. So 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. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.
Joseph:I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are the 404 Media cofounders, Sam Cole
Sam:What's up?
Joseph:Emmanuel Mayberg. Hello. And Jason Kebler.
Jason:Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon.
Joseph:Real quick bit of housekeeping. We have some new merch. Jason, do you do you wanna tell people about that? And stress that it's preorders.
Jason:Yeah. We talked about this, I think, last week, but it it's up in the Shopify now. Some cool hoodies, a crewneck sweatshirt, and 2 new, t shirts. Sam, thank you for getting these all designed by, Ronan. What's Ronan's last name?
Sam:Ronan Wood.
Jason:Ronan Wood. Fantastic work. Again, it's a preorder. You were not gonna get it before Christmas, but you'll get it beginning of next year. So you can go buy those.
Jason:I think they're really cool. I can't wait to have them.
Joseph:Yeah. I'm really looking forward to having the sweatshirt and the hoodie, specifically. Alright. Let's get going. This is gonna be a fun one, an interesting one.
Joseph:Jason wrote about the drones all over New Jersey. The headline is, WTF is going on with the New Jersey mystery drones, maybe mass panic over nothing. Let me just lay out sort of the the backstory just a little bit. So more than a week ago at this point, around a week ago at this point, residents of New Jersey started reporting seeing drones in the night sky. Sometimes they were small, sometimes they were large, lots of different lights.
Joseph:They move very quick before darting away, sort of a very, traditional stereotypical UAP sighting. There have been lawmakers demanding how answers from US law enforcement. I think, you know, if even in congress or something, right, like grilling, the head of agencies or senior officials for answers. More and more people are posting videos to social media of these apparent sightings. But it's become clear, and we'll go into this in a bit more detail, but it's become clear that many of these sightings are actually normal planes.
Joseph:People are even shining lasers at them. And the FBI has warned people, please do not shine a laser at a commercial jetliner. That's a really, really stupid idea. Jason, you wrote an article that put this panic into context. And to be clear, we're not here to debunk every single video that's being put on TikTok.
Joseph:That is almost a full zone to this point. And I think your article actually demonstrates that as well. So to go back, you bring up this recent historical example, which put this all into context. What happened in Colorado in 2019?
Jason:Yeah. So I just finished writing and filing with but we haven't published it yet. By the time this is up, we'll have published another story about this. And my, like, whole reaction to this is just like, I cannot believe this is happening. It's so it's so frustrating as just like someone who has I've covered drones since before they were allowed in US airspace, like, since the very, very early days.
Jason:Like, that was my first beat as a tech reporter, and people have always been really crazy about drones. They've just been really no one is ever normal about these things. They're never ever ever normal about them. And there's definitely things that we should worry about with drones. It's like cops doing persistent surveillance, like Department of Homeland Security flying predator drones over the border, which they do.
Jason:You know, things like this are concerning people using them to spy on others, people flying them unsafely. This sort of thing happens, but they've been in our airspace for a very long time. And in December of 2019, in Colorado, there was a series of mystery drone sightings that was very similar to what we're seeing in New Jersey now. It was like a few local, reports, and then there were more local reports, and then the news covered it, and then it became national news. And then there were many, many, many, many reports.
Jason:And then what happened was the military got involved, the Federal Aviation Administration got involved, the Department of Homeland Security got involved. There was, like, a cross state task force where all of these local police and sheriffs got involved and started doing an investigation. And what they found was nothing. They found nothing, which is to say that the drones that they found, the quote, unquote drones, they were able to track many of them to being commercial planes or other passenger planes. Others of the drones were legal hobby drones being flown by random people.
Jason:Other of the drones were being flown by farmers. And then in some cases, the, quote, unquote, drone sightings were stars or they were SpaceX satellites or there were other things in the sky. I live in Los Angeles, talked about this a lot. On Friday, I went outside, random time, looked to the sky, and I saw so many blinking lights in the sky, things moving around, looked exactly like every every video that I've seen on Twitter and TikTok, just these blinking lights, and it's like, oh, what is that? And you can take a a video of it, and on your shitty cell phone, it's gonna look like a drone.
Jason:And it's like, this is what a lot of people are seeing. And that that has been, like, here in New Jersey, the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the FAA, and one other group, I don't have it up right now, did a joint press release saying, most of these things we've gotten 5,000 reports. Almost all of them are confirmed passenger planes of some sort. Please stop shooting at them. Please stop shining lasers at them.
Jason:I'm flying into New Jersey tomorrow when you're listening to this. Please don't shoot at my plane. It's like it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And I know that I'm sound, like, like, distraught.
Jason:And I actually I find all this to be quite fun and funny and fun to write about and follow, but it's also bad. It's not good.
Joseph:Oh, yeah.
Jason:It's not bad.
Joseph:It could it could get really, really scary when the FBI and authorities put out their message saying, please stop shining lasers at planes. I'm like, holy shit. This is real now. This isn't either people, you know, believing one thing on TikTok when it's something else or, you know, and I think we'll get into this until your piece hasn't been published yet. I haven't read the copy.
Joseph:I just saw the the headline, I think. But potentially grifters as well, just trying to latch onto it. Right? So you mentioned that you are a long time drone reporter. You did that years years ago.
Joseph:I remember that on Motherboard, as well. But interestingly, this is like a perfect intersection of 2 of your interest because you've actually also covered UFOs and UAPs and all of that sort of world a a shit ton. Right? So you you worked on a a documentary for Netflix called Encounters. Just briefly, what was that, documentary?
Joseph:And sort of how does that apply here?
Jason:Yeah. So the documentary was called Encounters. We worked on it for several years at Vice, and it came out in 2023. And it follows 4 mass UFO sightings, 1 in Texas, 1 in Wales, 1 in Zimbabwe, and 1 in Japan. And it tried to sort of, like, answer this question of, 1, why do humans look for aliens?
Jason:How do they try to explain things in the sky? What are scientific explanations for this? And then also, like, what is the psychology of mass psychosis, like, a a mass delusion, more or less, which is not to say that people aren't seeing anything. It's just that, like, what causes these sorts of mass sightings? And I'll be very honest.
Jason:It's like I find the topic of UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena to be quite interesting, and I think that there are people who are approaching it in a way that is interesting. And I think that, there are definitely, like, US like, classified US military projects where they're flying things in the sky and they're not telling you what they are. Other governments have similar programs. There's no evidence that anything that's happening in New Jersey is that.
Joseph:And the Pentagon said it was not US military craft. Now as you get saying in your piece, they don't have the the best history when it comes to being transparent, but, hey, they said that.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Pentagon has the latitude to lie about classified programs in particular, and and some of these programs, like, are classified. And some of them have been declassified. And one of my former bosses, Garrett Graff, wrote a book about this and how that like, a really well reported book about how the Department of Defense has lied about some of these things.
Jason:So I find, like, the US government's sort of, like, research into UFOs and UAPs to be interesting. I think that in the last few years, there's been a lot of congressional hearings about this. There's been Pentagon reports about UFOs. A lot of the actual reports that have been given to congress have been sort of pleased by the Department of Defense for more funding to study UFOs, which is quite interesting. But you're you're right.
Jason:It's like there's a this crossover between drones and UFOs. And Fane Greenwood, who is a really good drone reporter, and I also wrote a similar story, like, several years ago, like, separately covering separate things. But a lot a lot of things that are reported as UFOs end up being explainable drones, and then a lot of things that are reported as drones are just passenger airplanes, things in the sky. People don't usually look at the sky. Like, it's it's just there's been studies about this, and people are quite oblivious until there's a situation like this, and then everyone is looking at the sky and looking for something, some sort of explanation for what is going on.
Jason:So I understand that I've been, like, railing about this for a little while, and it is entirely possible that some of the things in New Jersey are, I don't know, like Pentagon projects or or not easily explained. But the vast majority of the things that people have been freaking out about have been explained, can be explained. Many of them have been debunked by, like, random people on Twitter or Blue Sky, where you'll have a politician or someone tweet a video and it goes viral, and then they'll cross reference it with a flight tracking software and the taillights that are on this, you know, aircraft. And it'll be like, no. This is actually just a a passenger flight or this is a helicopter or this is something else that is easily explained.
Jason:But it's really hard to debunk each and every one of these. You also have, like, you have things like local police saying it's a car sized drone that was a 100 feet over whatever. And there's also been studies that people can't tell how far away things are at night or how big they are in the sky because that's really far away and human eye depth perception, like, doesn't work very well at night, especially. So there's, like, a lot of this happening. And then the story that I I'm publishing now is that every political grifter has come out of the woodwork to talk about this in some way.
Jason:It's like Marjorie Taylor Greene is threatening to shoot these drones down herself. Donald Trump is doing AI photos of Chris Christie with McDonald's and DJI Phantom drones. I don't know if y'all saw that.
Joseph:Yes.
Jason:I think you did. Larry Hogan, who was the former governor of Maryland, tweeted a photo that got millions and millions of views, turned out to be stars in Orion's belt. Like, things like this are happening. And then you have the sort of, like, slightly more serious people in New Jersey who are like, this is a threat. Like, I'm gonna try to get the government on it and so on and so forth.
Jason:But, like, all of these people are sort of stoking the fear, of people, and then they're leveraging this into high profile appearances on Fox News, on CNN, on NewsNation, on all these cable news networks. And this isn't gonna go away until there's some other news story to distract people.
Joseph:You and you think that's the case because even if a video gets debunked or a sighting gets debunked, and it's like, well, no, that was displaying or whatever, there's just gonna be another sighting, another sighting until people basically get bored or there's something else to distract them. Is that what you mean?
Jason:Yeah. So here's a sentence that I wrote that I thought was pretty good, which is, all of this has become a no win cluster fuck for everyone except the attention seeking grifters within the government
Joseph:who are themselves railing against the government to focus attention on themselves.
Jason:To these people, government, the government to focus attention on themselves. To these people, government inaction is unacceptable, and government actions and explanations cannot be trusted. So it's like the Pentagon not shooting these drones down is unacceptable to them. The Pentagon saying there's nothing to worry about means that the Pentagon is gaslighting and lying to you. Like, the it there's no there's, like, a no win situation here.
Jason:And what happened in Colorado I mean, this is crazy, but what happened in Colorado was the coronavirus pandemic started, and all the news attention went to that. And then suddenly, no more drone sightings. No one saw any drones.
Joseph:Right. And and, crucially, I know they're kind of linked, but crucially, you don't necessarily mean there was just no more media coverage about it because, oh, the media had to go cover COVID or whatever. You mean there were fewer drone sightings. There were fewer people reporting sighting the drones in the first place.
Jason:Yes. Because there there was few there was less media attention, so there were less people looking at the sky, so there's less people reporting the drones. And because there are less people reporting the drones, there was less media coverage, so on and so forth, cycle cycle, and it was over.
Joseph:I get I guess just sort of the the the last thing I wanted to touch on that is sort of the flip of it is that with this new New Jersey example today, is it something of like a self fulfilling prophecy where you have I don't know what the patient zero of this sighting is. I'm I'm sure you do, Jason. I'm sure you've seen it. But, like, there was one initial sighting or some initial sightings and everybody jumps on that. It keeps going and going and going.
Joseph:Does it even get to the point and I think you mentioned this that happened in Colorado, where sometimes it's the sightings or even people flying their drones to try to look at the other drones that they think they're perceiving. It just becomes a semblance cycle, basically.
Jason:Yeah. That did happen in Colorado where the police were investigating drones drone sightings. And to investigate them, they were flying their own drones, looking for the drones that may or may not have existed. And then the drones that they were flying were being reported as sightings and so on and so forth. And it's It's
Joseph:so good.
Jason:It's really good. I don't know. I don't know. I know I just, like, ranted for a long time, but I'm curious what Emmanuel and Sam think of this because I don't know if anyone else even finds it interesting, but it's been blowing up, like, every group text that I have for, like, 2 weeks. And I feel like such a buzzkill being like, sorry.
Jason:They're nothing. Everyone's like, oh, it's aliens. And I'm like, it's nothing. It's nothing. It's not even a it's not even a thing to talk about.
Emanuel:I would say I would consider it progress that the idea that it's aliens has not been the dominant thing I've seen in the news, which is good because it's slightly less fantastical. As you were talking, I just checked out the UFO subreddit r u f o. And as I'm sure you know, it's like every post. It's hundreds of posts and it's all about this. So they certainly think it's you it's UFOs, but I haven't seen that in the mainstream as much, which seems good.
Emanuel:Right? Like, people imagining drones, not great, but at least they're saying it's
Jason:drones. Iranian mothership.
Joseph:Yeah. At one point, I believe a lawmaker said it was an Iranian mothership that was firing out the drones, and then they go back to the mothership and the and the big mothership is off the East Coast. Even when I'm saying it out loud, I sound
Jason:like it
Sam:thought of, like, men in black or something.
Joseph:Right. I sound like it.
Sam:Independence Day.
Joseph:A little a little baby doing, like, a stream of consciousness Hollywood script. And then the boat was off the East Coast, and then the drones came out. And then they were it's like, okay, mate. It's not that. Relax.
Sam:I would rather it be I would rather people speculate about aliens though. Like, that's so much more whimsical and fun and, like, humankind versus aliens. It's a much nicer conspiracy theory to have than, like, it's China or something. You know? I don't know.
Sam:I find that I find, like, the the politicization of this to be a really interesting turn, that people are using it as this way to kind of stoke fears about your own government, other governments. Yeah. I'd rather it be aliens.
Jason:I really do like talking about it. Like, I think it's fun to talk about, but then but then you had to see people, like, shining these powerful lasers at passenger planes, and, like, I have family members texting me literally scared. I'm just like, okay. Maybe not so good.
Emanuel:Dude, people need to stop looking up. Keep keep your eyes down.
Jason:Yeah. Keep your eyes on the road.
Emanuel:Keep your eyes on the road. Look at your beautiful family. Get back to work. You know what I mean? A lot of people walking around looking at the sky.
Joseph:A lot of people reference this tweet, but there's the really good one that I've just brought up a screenshot a screenshot of. And it's like, pigs can't look up, but I could pick up a pig one night and show them the sky and that's all. I'm not saying anyone's a pig. I'm just saying it's a pretty good tweet that people are referencing in regards to this instant. Which, yeah, people don't really look up.
Joseph:I don't really look up. What's going on up there? That needs to worry me. I don't know.
Jason:Dude, at nighttime, you should be inside. Let's be real. That's that's phone scrolling TV watching time.
Joseph:Right. Exactly. You need to be consuming media at that point. You need to move from the from the bad screen to the good screen. Alright.
Joseph:Let's leave that there. When we come back, we're gonna talk about a story I published about Cellebrite being used to unlock phones, and then the cops putting malware on them. Very nice. We'll be right back after this.
Jason:Okay. So, Joseph, we're gonna talk about one of your stories. Cellebrite unlocked this journalist's phone. Cops then infected it with malware. For people who don't know, what is Cellebrite?
Joseph:Yeah. It's funny because when I wrote this piece and you edited it, you were like, you need to tell people what Cellebrite is. And Sam's brought up that issue before, and I'm definitely guilty of it where you just assume people know stuff and you shouldn't do that. But anyway, this is what it is. Cellebrite is probably the most famous company that breaks into mobile phones for law enforcement agencies.
Joseph:They have a little tool called the I mean, I pronounce it UFED, u f e d. And that comes as a tablet or it's software on a PC. And you will plug the phone in, you know, an Android or an iPhone, and then it will either bypass the passcode if it needs to or maybe it will brute force it. Or if there isn't a passcode, it will just grab the data. But it will not only gain access to that phone and then, you know, basically open up and do whatever you want.
Joseph:It then grabs the data and archives it in a very nice way for law enforcement. It's like a tool that is used every single day by agencies, all over the world. And I don't think in and of itself, it's controversial at all. Like, I I think it's a very, very normal tool. But back in Motherboard, we did a series called phone I think it was called the phone crackers or something.
Joseph:And that was because celebrate got hacked to 500 gigabytes of data, and that was given to me. And it was just some very interesting stuff in there, like banks also use celebrate, and it's not just cops necessarily.
Jason:Right. Right. So, traditionally, I mean, you just said other people use it, but I know it most in the context of cops use it to unlock people's phones, when they have, you know, seized it as evidence. But what Amnesty International found was cops not using it just to, like, find out the contents of a phone, but actually to do something much more malicious. What was that?
Joseph:Yeah. So Amnesty found multiple cases. One was a journalist who I'll I'll speak about in a minute. And I think there were activists as well. And basically, what the Serbian authorities were doing was, getting the phone, and I'll go into more details about what happened with the journalists in a second.
Joseph:But they get the phone, They then use Cellebrite to unlock it because they don't have the passcode. And then rather than just extract the data, which I think they did in some cases, they then use that unlocked phone, which had been broken into a Cellebrite, to then install very powerful, malware. And when I say powerful, I don't mean it's like super sophisticated in the sense that Pegasus by NSO Group is, which is malware that a lot of people have probably heard of, and that can remotely infect your phone. This is physical access malware. They used to be holding the phone.
Joseph:But once they install it, it can turn on the microphone on the device. It can start taking screenshots, including of private social media posts or signal messages as well. And there's actually a screenshot in there showing some of the signal messages that were due to be collected. Of course, that does not mean signal is compromised in any way. It is that one of the ends on the end to end encryption, the phone, has been hacked and there's been malware in in installed in in this case.
Jason:Joseph, tell me about Slavisa Milanov.
Joseph:Yeah. Milanov is a journalist in Serbia who works for FAR, FAR. It's a Serbian Serbian outlet. They cover lots of local issues, but then also, you know, public corruption and that sort of thing. And Amnesty spoke to them for the report, and then I wanted to speak to Milanov directly as well.
Joseph:So, you know, we exchanged some messages. And what they said was that one day, in February, they were driving to a particular part of the country with a colleague who was the editor in chief of FAR. And they were stopped by traffic police. And they said, look, you have to be tested for drugs and you need to come to the police station. He complies.
Joseph:I don't really know what else you're gonna do in that context. He gets there and they say, okay, you may need to give up your belongings before you go in here and do the tests and we speak to you. So he gives up his tobacco, his wallet, his keys, and crucially, his, Android phone. He doesn't give them the passcode. He then goes in.
Joseph:He does these tests. He says, obviously, the drug tests come back, negative. And then he's asking the Serbian police, okay, well, what's going on? Can I go? Am I able to leave now?
Joseph:And then one of the officials says, we're we're we're just waiting to hear back from the boss or the chief or something like that. He then steps out. And then Milanov claims that he heard this officer phoning somebody up and saying, look, the tests are negative. I can't hold him for any longer. Suggesting there has been some sort of other reason or pretense for the for the traffic stop.
Jason:Like, they were looking for some reason to hold him possibly?
Joseph:Basically. Yeah. At least that's the implication. Right? And then so there have been a lots of other outlets covered this, covered this story because it was under embargo to a lot of people.
Joseph:I don't think everybody necessarily got all the detail we got from Milinov, but outlets like Reuters, at least got, like, a no comment out to Serbian authorities. So we have to read between the lines, obviously, and that's just how it is. But, eventually, Milanov is taken to another building with 2 officials in plainclothes, and they start asking him questions basically about his journalistic work, about his organization, and that sort of thing, which is, you know, that wasn't the reason he was stopped, allegedly. He was because to do some drug tests or whatever, a traffic stop. Anyway, that passes.
Joseph:He then gets his belongings back, and he's allowed to leave, and he gets his phone back. He very quickly is suspicious of the phone. It looks like a lot of battery is being used up, I think he I think he said. They absolutely said that, he installed an application, I think, called Stayfree. I hadn't heard of it personally, but I looked it up.
Joseph:And then it showed that apps were some apps were being used when the phone was in the hands of the authorities, meaning that the police have been doing something with his device. Right? So he gets that, and he's suspicious. He then contacts Amnesty International because he doesn't trust, the Serbian authorities. They then investigate and they find, this malware, which is what, Amnesty dubs, dubs Novi spy.
Joseph:Novi. Hope I'm pronouncing that right. The Serbian word for new. And beyond what I just said about taking screenshots and turning on the camera and that that sort of thing, all of those sorts of normal things malware would do, it comes as 2 apps. And it kind of hides itself as, like, a legitimate service.
Joseph:Like, it it calls itself an app like com.services.something. So if you were scrolling through your Android phone, it may not jump out as suspicious. And Amnesty thinks that the serving authorities either bought or developed this malware, internally. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. So I wanna talk a little bit about the the implications of this because Cellebrite sells to a lot of people, as you mentioned, and it's usually looked at as a forensics tool where you can get evidence off of a phone. And often, the like, ideally, the cops have some sort of legal authority to look at a specific phone. It's like in the United States, it's it's the phones of people who have been arrested. But they sell to a lot of authoritarian governments.
Jason:They sell to a lot of places where the the rule of law might not be the same as it is in, you know, the United States or elsewhere. So, I mean, in this case, they're they're essentially, like, helping cops hack phones to install malware even if Cellebrite itself is not involved in the actual, like, installing of malware. It's like it's their product being used. So how is Cellebrite responding to all of this? How has sort of, like, the international community responded to all of this?
Jason:And how has Google responded to this? Because I know Google is also involved.
Joseph:Yeah. Cellebrite was crucial to getting this malware on the phone. Even if it wasn't the case that, oh, you have the Cellebrite tablet or whatever, you push a button and that loads malware onto the phone. From all appearances, it would not have been possible for the Serbian authorities to get this malware onto the device, without the Cellebrite tool to bypass or brute force, the passcode. So it is crucial there.
Joseph:And, you know, I know this and I'm pretty sure listeners will know this as well. Cellebrite is not an active surveillance technology. I mean, you could argue it's a surveillance technology in a way, but I don't really wanna break down semantics like that far. It's not active surveillance technology. It's not something you install and then monitor.
Joseph:But here it is being used to facilitate that absolutely. And celebrates response is interesting. Often, these sorts of reports come out, not about sort of the interesting malware, but, oh, Cellebrite was being used by x x y x y z authoritarian governments as you say. In this case, Cellebrite told me in an email, and then they sort of double down in the statement. They are investigating it.
Joseph:And if they found the what Amnesty says is true, that will mean the Serbian authorities have violated their sort of terms of use of Celibrate, and they will reassess well, Cellebrite will reassess whether it works with the Serbian authorities. Now is that gonna happen or not? I don't know. Is the investigation from Cellebrite actually any good or not? I I I really don't know.
Joseph:I can't imagine that Serbia provides that much business in the grand scheme of things with celebrate when they have countries all over the world. Maybe it's worth, from a cold PR perspective, dropping Serbia or whatever. I really, really don't know then. Obviously, we'll keep we'll keep an eye on it. But I thought that response was interesting at least.
Joseph:When it comes to Google, this is interesting for a couple of reasons. So Amnesty gets this information. It provides some of it and shares some of it with Google. Amazon and Google also discovered one of the 0 day vulnerabilities and exploits that Cellebrite was using to break into phones. They got patched by, Qualcomm, which is the chip manufacturer.
Joseph:Right? And that's sort of separate. I don't really get into that. But what Google also did after getting information from Amnesty was that it searched, it seems, Android devices for this Novi spy malware for these malicious apps, and then remotely removed them. I think that's obviously a pretty good thing.
Joseph:You know, people in Serbia who may have been targeted by this. And it's it's probably way more than a handful of people based on some forensic evidence, in the report they don't really get into. It's probably a ton of people. But Google removed that. Okay.
Joseph:That's all well and good. I think it's also just an interesting reminder that Google has the ability to go and just remove stuff from people's phones. Again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's interesting. I don't know if people know that.
Joseph:You know?
Jason:I did not know that. I didn't know they could do that.
Joseph:Right. They they can detect what apps are installed on what phone, at least in some way. You know? They they would probably call it telemetry, and then they can be like, we are going to remotely scrap this, basically. Yeah.
Joseph:So that's news to you is what you're saying.
Jason:Dude, I had no idea that was possible, actually, via Android. I don't is it possible on iOS? And the so so I'm sorry. This is like a kind of a dumb, like, version of it, but for a while, like, flappy bird was pulled from the App Store on iOS, for example, because the creator took it down. But if you already had it installed, then you already had it installed.
Jason:And it was there were people, like, selling iOS devices with Flappy Bird installed on it for, like, a lot of money during this a very dumb period of, like, the 20 seventeens, 20 eighteens. Uh-huh. I don't know. It's like it's well, it's like it's like TikTok is getting banned in the US potentially, and there has been some theorizing, like, oh, well, maybe maybe it will just continue to work on phones that have it installed on already. This also came up with Fortnite on iOS where
Joseph:Right.
Jason:You could continue playing Fortnite on iOS during the, like, Apple versus Epic Games beef, lawsuit over, like, app store royalty fees for a while until the app got updated so much that it was like, okay. This is no longer operable. So the the thought would be with something like TikTok that maybe it will continue working until the app gets so updated that, like, whatever version you have installed in your phone won't work anymore. And I don't know if Apple has this capability either, but I've never I didn't know that they could remotely uninstall a they, meaning any phone manufacturer, operating system manufacturer could uninstall a piece of software from your phone.
Joseph:Yeah. It's interesting, and I would like to know more about it. So if anybody does know more about it, do ask me. But, you know, I don't could you be legally compelled to do that? I don't know.
Joseph:I haven't seen a case like that. It would be more does Google or the third party menu or or the some of the person sorry. The company providing services like Apple or whatever. Do they see that as malware and do they wanna remove it? I guess it's the usual bar for it.
Joseph:But it's interesting. Yeah. And they would like to know more for sure. Alright. We'll leave that there.
Joseph:If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now place out. But if you are a paying 4 zero four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about how someone made a pretty interesting project to show the surveillance cameras all around New York City. I think Sam tried it out, and sort of their protest when they got a lot of a lot of, issues about it. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.c0. We'll be right back after this.
Joseph:Alright. And we are back in the subscribers only section. Sam, you wrote this one. Traffic camera selfie creator holds cease and desist letter in front of traffic cam. A pretty complicated headline, but then when you see the image, it makes complete sense.
Joseph:So what is the traffic cam photo booth project to start?
Sam:Yeah. So I think it was August. It was, like, in the summer. This it went viral on TikTok and was kinda like a it was like a little stunt project, art project that, this guy named Maury Coleman, set up where he set up a website where you could find your nearest traffic camera and on a map. And then if you click on it, you can see, obviously, traffic because the these are, like, this is open available data that you could go on, like, the New York Department of Transportation website and access these cameras too.
Sam:But, he made it so you can click on the camera and then go to that location and, like, the cross streets or whatever it is and pose and then click to refresh the camera again, and you'd be in the picture. And he said that he had done this project because he got an assignment from, he he's I think he's, like, an art school student, but he got an assignment that was to take it was to capture a picture without a camera. I
Jason:think it
Joseph:was full assignment.
Sam:That's cool. It's like I don't it's, like, made me, kinda miss, like, quirky art project assignments from college. But yeah. So that was his, his project, basically.
Joseph:But beef before we get into sort of what happened there, the these cameras, what's the the intended purpose is not taking selfies, on the streets. What what is the intended use? Is it just so the Department of Transportation can see and then, see traffic and that sort of thing and maybe the NYPD can tap into them as well? Like, what what's the use case for, well, normally?
Sam:I mean, traffic cameras are all over the city, to monitor traffic. And, like you said, like, it's for, like, throwing in transportation to monitor or flow traffic, I'm sure. I don't know specifically what they are using that those video feeds for, but it's also our surveillance tool. Right. You know, they're everywhere, everywhere you go.
Sam:In New York, especially there are cameras, whether they're these traffic cameras or close circuit cameras or whatever it is. So, yeah, they're used for, I think, a variety of things. They're also, there's cameras all over the place for, like, speed cameras, like, speed traps. So he was tapping into, like, that network. And it's like it's this is open again, this is, like, open available information and open available data.
Sam:He wasn't, like, hacking the system or something. This is just, something that anyone could do. And, actually, he, on the website, provided, like, the source code. So if you wanted to do this in your city, you could do it.
Joseph:Right. You probably just have to swap the endpoints, the API endpoints or something, but it would probably work. Yeah.
Sam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, that was it was like a cute little, like everybody was doing it at one point and posting it. You know, you could they he set it up so, like, you could screenshot the website and then post it on your your social media.
Joseph:Did you did you test it out back when it was blowing up?
Sam:I didn't when it was a big thing. I think I just, like, saw it in my feeds. I was like, oh, that's cute. Whatever. I tested it for the story just to make sure it was still functioning, and it is.
Sam:It's like, you know, I knew exactly where there was a camera in my neighborhood. And I was like, I wonder if that's working, and it was. And then I was like, let me go physically there and see if I can get a picture of myself. And I could. And it was cool.
Sam:It was fun. It's creepy. Right. Because then you really realize how watch you are. You know?
Sam:It's like, this camera's, like, watching me, like, go trudge on my little Red Bull run every day, and it sees you do that path every day.
Joseph:It's just like You didn't you didn't need need to admit it was a Red Bull run.
Jason:Oh, I
Joseph:cameras don't
Sam:know. Drinking a Red Bull on this show. So but today, it's tea because I'm trying to be better. Good. Yeah.
Joseph:So the the service is popular. People are enjoying it. I presume it kind of fell off a little bit as well, but it was still running. And then they get this cease and desist letter. What was what was that exact what what was the Department of Transportation demanding, basically?
Sam:Yeah. I mean, I'll just read, like I'll read the the pertinent points just straight from it. So this was in November. The letter was, from New York Department of Transportation. It demanded that he immediately remove and disable all portions of, traffic camera photo booth, which is the name of the project, website that relates to NYC traffic cameras and or encourages members of the public to engage in dangerous and unauthorized behavior.
Sam:It said that the project is promoting the unauthorized use of New York City traffic cameras and encourages pedestrians to violate NYC traffic rules and engage in dangerous behavior. Yeah. Well, on the web well,
Joseph:on the website, doesn't the creator also say, look, please don't break any traffic laws. Also, if you do, I'm, like, basically taking their responsibility. Like, a normal a very normal disclaimer, but it's I mean, I imagine they anticipated something like this happening.
Sam:Yeah. I mean, I so I was trying to figure out whether those, terms because you at when I checked, when the cease and desist story came out, which was, last week when he posted about it publicly, it was already on there, and I didn't have, like, access to a good archive of the site that showed how it was before. I didn't dig super hard so it might be on there. But at this point, like, as of right now, there's a checkbox that you have to check to use the site that says, I agree not to use Trafficcam photo booth for any unlawful purpose. I don't know how you could or would, but, I will comply with all local laws, and I will not use traffic cam photo booth in a manner that creates a foreseeable risk of harm or danger to myself or others.
Sam:I don't know. It's like it's it kinda feels
Joseph:like it's that base covered. Yeah.
Sam:Yeah. There's that. There's also it's like in the instructions of, like, how to use it. It's like, please don't stand in traffic while you do this. Like, I don't want you to get run over.
Sam:Please use it on mobile so that you're not outside standing in traffic with your laptop. It's like there's a lot of wording now that I don't know for sure whether it was there before. But at this point, the site is very clear. Like, don't be dumb with this. Like, don't go stand in traffic, literally.
Sam:That probably, I'm guessing, is a response to getting this cease and desist, which came out. It was addressed to him a month ago, and he just posted about it on Twitter last week and said, I have been advised not to comment further, but he kinda made a comment of its own.
Joseph:Yeah. That we'll we'll talk about that in a second. Jason, were you gonna say something?
Jason:I was just gonna say that, I don't think that we have heard from any lawyers on this, but it seems like a pretty bullshit cease and desist to me. Like, it's a it's a taxpayer funded open source traffic camera situation. I don't know. I don't know. It it seems pretty dubious to me, and it's not, like, beyond Eric Adams' New York City to send a bogus cease and desist to people.
Jason:Like, I I just don't I don't see what law he's breaking, I guess. I
Sam:mean, I assume that, like, they that because the statement that, Mori makes on his website is that this project is meant to bring to light, the fact that these cameras serve to acclimate us to the idea that constant monitoring is an everyday part of life in the city. It's what his website says. So it's it is a send up of, like, the surveillance state of New York City. And so I am guessing that some DOT employees or someone, you know, were passing it around, and someone at some level of power got pissed off. And that they don't like that people are highlighting that this is a thing.
Sam:But, yeah, I mean, I that would be very petty and weird. But
Jason:I mean, I can see why they're mad. I'm just I don't really know. I don't know on what grounds this this would be illegal, but I don't know. Violation of a government terms of service that you didn't really, like didn't consent to this type of surveillance. I it's just it feels like an overreach to me.
Jason:I I doubt that it will become any sort of, like, actual legal test. Like, it would be kind of insane if they actually sued him, but it doesn't it doesn't really pass muster to me. That's right. Yeah. Which is probably why he turned it into an art project.
Joseph:Yes. Sam, how did the creator react to the cease and desist?
Sam:So he printed it out and stuck it to the end of a 25 foot window washing pole and took a picture of it with a traffic camera.
Joseph:Like, held it up to one of
Emanuel:these cameras. Yeah.
Jason:He held it up,
Sam:and I hope people listening to this will go look at it because it's really funny. It's there's a he posted a picture on there of himself with the pole holding it up to the camera, and then, they he posted the picture from the traffic camera, of the view is like a street in New York, and then the letter is, like, right there in the face of the camera. The cease and desist is right there. It's like a really excellent middle finger to the whole situation. And he took this whole thing to Art Basel in Miami and printed out the the cease and desist photo and the picture of himself with the pole and displayed it at basil, which is really I don't like god bless art students.
Sam:I don't know what to say. It's just so funny.
Joseph:Well and you say that the idea is to bring to attention, you know, cameras like this and that sort of thing. And, you know, I wasn't aware of it. And then, you know, googling around. Because there's also how the NYPD can use well, either potentially these cameras or its own cameras, right, as well. And, you know, there's an amnesty investigation here from a few years ago at this point saying the NYPD has the ability to track people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx by running images from 15,280 surveillance cameras into evasive and discriminatory facial recognition software according to the Amnesty, investigation.
Joseph:I mean, yeah. What a good way to bring attention to something that people just simply wouldn't know is there. You think that was the idea then?
Sam:Yeah. Yeah. I think definitely it's like it just made it it made it into so we, like I don't know. We we write sometimes about stories that are it's like someone's doing an art project that's also like a, an indictment of some system. And a lot of the times, they kind of are, like they kinda fall flat.
Sam:It's like, okay. You know, that's that's cute. That's whatever. But this, I think, is, I don't know, actually. I don't really know how I feel about it.
Sam:I actually wanna hear Emmanuel's opinion on this because he is the only one here who has been to art school. But I I find it it's a like, the season is this thing is very good and very funny, and it's a great turn of events for this whole project and for him, probably. But as it is originally, I don't know if it brings to light the traffic cameras or it, like, normalizes and makes them adorable, you know, making them like a TikTok trend. I don't know if that really fulfills, like, the the mission that he says he has about surveillance and sending that up. But, you know, I don't know.
Sam:It's it's the fact that I didn't write about it when I first saw this because I was like, okay. Like, surveillance for sure, but you're also, making a a TikTok hashtag out of this.
Joseph:Emmanuel, what do you think about that? You think it was okay, the message?
Sam:Let's hear it, professor.
Emanuel:My feedback is, the onion headline we always reference when one of these things come up is
Sam:I wasn't gonna say it.
Emanuel:I think it's like local dipshit vows to fight Trump administration with art, and he's standing with his arms folded with, like, some really bad Trump art behind him. And I think the difference between that and something that is actually good is, technique for want of a better word. And this guy actually built something, which is what I think is cool. Like, it's a technically complex thing, and the way that he made it, I think, said something about the world. And that is usually why I choose to cover something.
Emanuel:Like, a few months ago, I covered this camera that uses AI to AI generate a nude image of whoever you take a picture of. And, like, talking with the artist about how they actually made the thing kinda tells you a lot about how the technology works. And then, you know, also, if you care, which I do, to, like, philosophize about what it all means, then that's fun. But, what I think makes it good is, like, the the actual process, which is interesting. And I would say in this case, it is.
Emanuel:Would you say, Sam, that it's like he built, like, a he built a thing. Like, it's a cool Yeah. Complicated thing. Yeah.
Sam:For sure. Yeah. It's like he he put he put the effort in, for sure. And I think also I always think about the, the guy who made the deep fake of Zuckerberg this is such a throwback, but it was in, like, 2020, I think, maybe 2019. But he made a deep fake of Zuckerberg saying something.
Sam:I don't even remember what he said. It was something, like, embarrassing and not real. It was like, I'm gonna I'm taking over the world or something. It was really cringe. But I think when projects, like, can go to power into responding, I think that's really interesting.
Sam:So Facebook ended up, like, having to address its terms around deepfakes at that point because probably every reporter was hitting them being like, did you see this deep fake of Mark? What do you what's your comment? And they had to come up with a comment. And I think in this case, what's interesting about this now is that the Department of Transportation wasn't like, you're hired to make a social strategy for our website. You know?
Sam:It's like they are pissed, and I think that's the interesting part of it. If they were like, we're gonna embrace this and turn it into a social media trend, then it would be like, okay. You failed. But they're mad, which is the fun part and, like, why I think it works. I give him an a.
Emanuel:K. I'm sure.
Joseph:Wow. And that's ultimately all
Jason:It's peak it's peak of the form for sure, in my opinion.
Sam:Yeah. Good job, Maury.
Joseph:Yeah. Alright. We'll leave that there, and I guess I will play us out. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 4 0 4media.c0.
Joseph: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. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a 5 star rating and review for the podcast, if you want to.
Joseph:That stuff really does help us out. This has been 404 Media. We will see you again soon? Question mark.