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The DNA of 15 Million People Is For Sale
Episode Notes
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YouTube version: https://youtu.be/kJAumTZo5OA
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 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 their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.
Joseph:I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are four zero four media cofounders, Sam Cole.
Sam:Hello.
Joseph:Emmanuel Mayberg. Hello. And Jason Kevlar.
Jason:Happy baseball season, everyone. Opening day tomorrow.
Joseph:We're gonna become a sports podcast. I I think literally the least qualified the least qualified person on the entire planet. Well, Jason, we're gonna start with you. This is one you wrote. The headline is DNA, 15,000,000 people for sale in twenty and me bankruptcy.
Joseph:I mean, that is a nightmare headline. I wanna step back first a little bit, and I'm sure many people have heard of twenty three and me as some of these similar companies. But for those who don't know, what is or I guess guess was 23andMe?
Jason:I mean, it was a direct to consumer genetic sequencing company. Still is. It's still operational. I think I think probably most people know what it is right now because it's become such a popular, like, Christmas gift for people to do a DNA test and see, like, what percentage of, like, North Ireland you are from. Like, a lot of that there was, like, a period where it was a very hot Christmas gift.
Jason:And this is something that I have been railing about for years because I actually went on a panel at South by Southwest in, like, 2016 possibly about genetic data privacy. And on that panel, someone from 23andMe was there, someone from the FBI was there, and then a genetic artist was there. And we're sort of talking about, like, what can happen if your genetic data is in one of these really massive databases. You know, there there's been some, like, interesting art projects over the years where, like, people would make portraits of people based on their on DNA that they had harvested from them. Like, they would take a strand of hair, sequence the DNA, and then make, like, a portrait of it.
Jason:And that started off as, like, an art project. But over the years, there have been companies that have made tools for cops, for example, that would make genetic profiles of people, like like genetic mugshots, I guess you'd call them. And then very famously, there was this case where the Golden State killer, who's a serial killer, was identified based on a genetic database. I believe it's called g d match, like GEDmatch. And it wasn't his DNA that was in the database.
Jason:It was his family's DNA that was in the database, and they were able to identify him. And I think that it's one of those things where we often talk about really extreme cases when we talk about privacy. It's like when you talk about Apple and iPhone encryption, the cases where the FBI says, like, hey. We want access to this encrypted data. It's like a terrorism case or like a child abuse case, something like that.
Jason:And there have been a series of cases that have been solved using data from genetic databases, broadly speaking. And these are often, like, serial rapists, serial killers, really, like, awful situations. And that is, like, quite an interesting development for law enforcement. And it's, like, it's pretty, like, an interesting thing, like, an interesting technology, but it's based on you and your loved ones and people you know submitting genetic data to these gigantic databases. And 23andMe is one of the biggest ones.
Jason:Ancestry is obviously another huge one. And, basically, you know, there's now 15,000,000 people in the 23andMe database, and the company is bankrupt. And so Yeah. All of that is is up for sale right now in in like a bankruptcy auction more or less.
Joseph:Yeah. And it's basically, the cops are turning to either these tools have been developed as you say for law enforcement or Ancestry or whatever. They're basically commercial databases that they can send then send a legal demand to to be like, hey, turn over this information. And I mean, it's almost in the same sort of way. It's just like Google collects all of this data and then, you know, the FBI or or whoever are like, we're gonna give you a court order, a search warrant, or whatever legal mechanism is appropriate or that we like, and we're gonna demand that data.
Joseph:It's like that, but for genetic information basically. And you can't change your genetic information really. It's kind of one and done. So you can see why it would be so valuable to law enforcement. I'm just curious.
Joseph:So maybe you can't remember, but, like, what did the FBI person say on that panel? Like, the benefits of it to them? Or
Jason:Yeah. I mean, so that that's a really interesting thing is, one, yes, law enforcement can subpoena this data from a company like 23andMe or from Ancestry, which is now owned by BlackRock, by the way, which is, like, this massive private equity firm. But other genetic database companies have started sort of, like, proactively offering tools to law enforcement where they don't need to subpoena it. They don't need to get a warrant. They don't need to go, like, make a specific legal demand.
Jason:They're just making law enforcement tools, meaning, like, search, like, search features, but also these, like, genetic mugshot things that I mentioned earlier where they will take a DNA sequence and then they'll run it through essentially like an AI that generates what they believe a person to look like based on their genetic information. And then they'll be like, oh, we can run this through a facial recognition database or something like that and try to identify someone. And there's all sorts of problems with this. One, it's like your genetics don't fully make up what you might look like. And so there's been cases where, like, people are misidentified.
Jason:Like, there there's just, like, all sorts of potential problems here. You know, the f I think that still to this day, even though we've been talking about the potential for this for a long time, it's still pretty early. Like, there's not widespread use of genetic databases to research crimes. I have filed a bunch of public records requests with a a few different states because Florida, for example, has spun up, like, a genetic database law enforcement division and trying to get documents from them. Virginia has a very similar thing, but it's, like, it's pretty early on for police to be, like, actively trying to get this information except for in the highest profile of cases.
Jason:But we know that there's some companies that have begun to develop tools. And so, you know, I've written a few articles over the years where I'm like, don't submit your genetic information to these companies because you don't know the chain of command or, like, what is gonna happen to these companies. And I think that's what this bankruptcy shows. It's like there was a company called, I believe, GEDmatch. I think it was them.
Jason:There's there's a few different ones. But yeah. So g d GEDmatch was formed as a nonprofit. Like, this one dude started it, and it was a nonprofit. And they're like, oh, you know, submit your information.
Jason:We'll do some, like, genealogy. We'll do some ancestry. Maybe you can learn a little bit about your potential proclivities for, like, specific genetic diseases and things like that. Well, one day, the person who founded that was like, oh, I don't wanna be a nonprofit anymore. So he sold the company Surprise.
Jason:Yeah. He sold the company to this other company called Verogen, which had these contracts with the FBI, and then Verogen itself sold to a Dutch multinational conglomerate that was like a pharmaceutical company, a surveillance company, like a a bunch of different things. And so, like you said, you can't change your genetic information. And so if you submitted this to this, like, oh, small little nonprofit project, like, ten years ago, Well, now it's owned by, like, a Dutch multinational with both pharmaceutical contracts and also law enforcement contracts. And so that's the thing about 23andMe is that it's this project that, like, started out as, oh, like, fun.
Jason:You can learn what percent from what country you are. You can and then it sort of expanded into we we'll be able to tell you if you have markers for specific genetic diseases. They started offering some personalized medicine stuff. And then 23andMe launched these partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to do research on their databases and then to develop drugs. And it's like that is also kind of interesting if you put the privacy stuff aside.
Jason:Like personalized medicine, there's a lot of potential there. But this is not necessarily why people initially submitted their DNA to the company. And then it's like the company goes through some financial hardships, and suddenly now it's bankrupt. And it's like, oh, shit. We're, like, out of money.
Jason:We need a different revenue source. We need to figure out, like, a different mechanism for for making money. And now it's for sale, and who knows who is going to buy it? Like, it could be an international company. It could be a company that works with law enforcement.
Jason:It could be the you know, that it's bought out of bankruptcy by, you know, the the founder of the company who is Anne Wojcicki. Wojcicki? How do you say this? I don't know. She's the sister of Susan Wojcicki, who was the CEO of YouTube.
Jason:But as part of this, she said she stepped down as the CEO and has said that she's gonna try to buy back the company. But there's, like, any number of potential outcomes here, and they're all kinda like, well, if you have your DNA in this database, it's like it's all up in the air. You don't know what's gonna happen.
Joseph:Yeah. Or even as we saw with the recent selling of the Pokemon GO company to a company funded basically by the Saudi state. Right? I'm not saying that's gonna happen here, but I don't know. There's a chance that could happen.
Joseph:Right? So you went through the bankruptcy documents. I'm not sure how detailed they were. We have some experience going through bankruptcy documents coming from Vice. They can be very, very interesting.
Joseph:Was there anything noteworthy in them at this time, or is it more more is gonna come out? Like, what did you learn looking those actual documents?
Jason:Yeah. So we actually haven't talked about why 23andMe filed for bankruptcy, which is really important and goes back to privacy as well and is all throughout the bankruptcy documents, which is 23andMe got hacked in at the end of twenty twenty three. And it it was basically like a credential stuffing hack where 23andMe itself like, its database wasn't compromised, but there was basically, like, millions of customers whose passwords were reused. And, essentially, they, like, lock like, hackers logged into those, downloaded their information, sold it on Breachforms, I believe, which is is Breach Forums dark web or is it just a
Joseph:It's Clearweb now. They don't even care about the dark web anymore. You just Google it and you find it. That's how it was like nowadays. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. So it was be basically, they were selling people's genetic information and and sort of, like, different connections that were made by 23andMe on this hacker forum. And, specifically, they were selling information about Ashkenazi Jew users, people who had, like, that sort of DNA in their profiles, and then also Chinese DNA. So it was like a kind of fucked up targeted sale of information. And this was during the early days of, like, Israel bombing Palestine.
Jason:And so there was, like, this that was, like, part of the sort of undercurrent of what was happening there. And as a result of this, 7,000,000 people had their information leaked. And now there's been more than 50 class action lawsuits all over the country. There's also been 35,000 different, like, arbitration demands from people who had their information leaked. And so basically, 23andMe is dealing with the legal and potential financial fallout of this hack, where they have, like, all of these court cases about how they should have kept their customers' data safe.
Jason:And, essentially, the bankruptcy documents say, like, we don't have the money to cover the potential damages from all of this litigation that we're facing. So we're gonna file for bankruptcy to just, like, try to start over. Like, we fucked up. We're in dire straits, and, like, we're gonna try to start over. You're right.
Jason:We have looked at a lot of bankruptcy documents over the years, and they're usually super, super interesting. There's also, like, a lot of filings as part of a bankruptcy case. And by that, I mean, there's usually, like, thousands and thousands of pages of documents, and they don't all come out at once. And so right now, there's, like, a lot of information about who they owe money to, which is, like, a lot of pharmaceutical companies. There's some AI companies, which is kind of interesting.
Jason:There's a lot of, like, marketing companies. But it doesn't say why they owe money to those companies. Like, it doesn't say how they got into this situation. But as part of this, they will have to submit some, like, various narratives about what went wrong and why they were doing all of this sort of thing. So it's something that we'll keep an eye on for sure.
Joseph:It is pretty wild that a credential stuffing attack, which is basically the lowest of the low hanging fruit you can get, generally speaking. It's wild that that sort of attack has basically killed a company, you know. And I understand why and I understand why people are mad, but to go from basically a shitpost on this hacker forum to killing 23 and me is wild.
Jason:Yeah. I mean, theoretically, isn't this something that should have been stopped by, like, a rate limit sort of thing, one would think?
Joseph:Yeah. Back at Mufferboard where we all used to work, we did a story about Ring cameras when they were getting hijacked essentially, and hackers were doing the same sort of attack. They would break in with a reuse password that maybe the victim had somewhere else or something, and then they just use it to log in to Ring. And we found that, you know, there was no rate limiting. I can't remember the status of 2FA exactly, but it also, like, didn't block connections from Tor, you know, the anonymity network that a lot of ordinary people use, but a lot of criminals use.
Joseph:And if you are 23 and me, presumably, you should be putting rate limiting in place to stop, you know, multiple logins from IPs and multiple attempts or that sort of thing, and you should probably block Tor connections as well. I don't know whether the attackers in this case use that or not, but there are absolutely ways to protect against credential stuffing even if your users have made the unfortunate mistake of reading a password. And just for the, you know, user advice as well, that is why you use a password manager, which generates unique passwords for every site So you don't have to remember them all, and you don't end up using the same password everywhere. And then you're one of the 7,000,000 people who has their genetic information, pushed online, published online. So what happens now, Jason?
Joseph:Do we just follow?
Jason:Or So a couple of things. One, you can apparently delete your information from 23 and me. So you can, like, log in and delete it. And that's actually what the attorney general of California recommended people do. They sent, like, an urgent warning to to people in California saying, like, hey.
Jason:Go delete your information. If you do live happen to live in California, California has a privacy law that makes like, they have to delete your information. If you live elsewhere, you can request that it is deleted and hopefully it is deleted, but, like, who can say for sure? And then the other thing I'll say is, like, just I I personally it's like I I wouldn't submit my information to a company like twenty three and Me, I would hope that my family wouldn't either. But I do think that this is, a pretty tricky thing because the uses of genetic databases thus far have been to, like, catch the worst of the worst criminals.
Jason:And I think that that is something where it's like, okay, that's like kind of interesting. I think that, you know, personalized medicine where that you can create pharmaceuticals that are targeted directly to people with specific genetic diseases, like, that is a potential very, like, good thing for society. But what I worry about is that the they're not privacy laws that protect from mission creep here. And so I just don't think that, like, congress has protected people. Haven't really thought about the potential implications of this.
Jason:I think that, you know, right now we're catching serial killers, but there literally have been apartment complexes that have sequenced, like, dog shit DNA to identify the owners of dogs who are not picking up, like, dog poop in their apartment complexes, which is like, pick up. Pick it up. But that is, like, weird surveillance stuff that you can easily imagine this being used for nonviolent offenders. You can easily imagine it being used to try to detect, like, undocumented immigrants, things like that, especially kind of, like, with this current administration. And so I think it's something that that we need to just, like, be very, very thoughtful and cautious about as we roll out this sort of technology more widely.
Jason:What happens next is they go through a bankruptcy proceeding. Usually, these are pretty quick, so it could be only, like, a couple months before we know who buys 23andMe. I don't think that the company is going to go fully out of business because this genetic database is very valuable. So someone will buy it and do something with it. It's like, can just kind of hope that the person that buys it or the company that buys it is not like a a weird surveillance company or I don't know.
Jason:That's like it it could be anyone at this point. So we'll continue to cover it, but that's sort of like what's what's going on at the moment.
Joseph:Yeah. And it sounds like you're probably not in this data, Jason. Sam, do you know if anyone in your family signed up to this? Or
Sam:I feel like Jason and I have had, like it's not really an argument, but, like, everyone's phone will be like, should I do 23 of me? And he's like, no. Dumbass. And then I'm like, okay, I guess. But my I know, like, I have not immediate family, but extended family who's done it.
Sam:So I'm kinda like, am I fucked anyway? You know?
Joseph:I'm already in it.
Sam:I'm already in it probably. Kind
Joseph:of. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah.
Sam:This also makes me this whole thing, and this is a little bit of a side. This makes me think of there was a it was a couple years it was many years ago. It's not a couple years ago. It was 2019. I did a story for Vice about, it was the headline was, did my did the FBI seize my vagina cultures?
Sam:And I had, like I was, like, doing some stunt blog about, like, this culture company, and they were gonna, like, sequence something based on that. I don't know. But in the process of doing that story, the FBI raided the office and took all of the data. So I was kinda like, okay. Now does the FBI have this?
Sam:And it's just like, you don't really know what's gonna happen to this stuff once it's out of your hands. Once you put it in the mailbox, who knows?
Jason:I forgot about that story. It's one of the best stories you've ever done. It's so wild. It's so wild that that happened.
Sam:Yeah. I it's such a weird turn of events.
Joseph:Please dig it up because I wanna put that on the show notes because I don't think I've ever read that, and I and I would love to read it as well.
Sam:I did get the results back from the, like, microbiome test eventually, but the FBI had Did you
Joseph:get anything from the FBI?
Emanuel:Did they did they get back to you? No.
Sam:Don't even remember why the FBI was raiding. That's a that's a bigger question is why was the FBI raiding this office? But, yeah, I should look back into that and see what the progress is on that investigation for sure.
Jason:And so I actually am in one of these databases. I'm not in '23 and me, like, hopefully. I think some of my cousins have done it. But also, similarly for a stunt blog, when I was a freelancer at motherboard many, many years ago. Me and my ex girlfriend did a blog where you could send a spit sample to, like, some random DNA sequencing startup that would then print a report about how compatible you were.
Jason:And that company existed for, like, six seconds. Like, we we did it. They sent it back, said we weren't compatible. We then did break up, like, several months later, so very accurate. And then the company went out of business immediately.
Jason:And it's like, have no idea what happened to that. Like, I have no clue where it is or or what happened to it. It's like, my genetic data has not changed. And so it is somewhere. And that that's like that's kind of my point.
Jason:It's like scary that a lot of these companies are very, like, fly by night. Like, 23andMe is huge. They've been around forever. But, like, there were there was a period where a lot of, like, random startups were doing stuff like this, and it's, like, who knows if they were acquired? Who knows if they sold their data to some someone?
Jason:Who knows if I'm I've been getting targeted by advertisements based on my DNA for years? Like, I have no idea, and that's concerning.
Joseph:Yeah. For sure. Alright. We'll keep an eye on the bankruptcy documents. And when we come back, we're gonna talk about a website that's been doxing Tesla owners across The US.
Joseph:We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back. This is one Jason and myself wrote. Doge Quest site claims to docks Tesla owners across The US.
Joseph:Jason, we did discuss the Tesla protests in another recent episode, but can you give us a super quick summary to get us up to speed? These protests are still going on, basically. Right?
Jason:Yeah. I mean, the Tesla takedown protests have only gotten bigger over time. The Tesla takedown is like what they're being called and they're being organized online. And primarily, they're happening on weekends, like the organized ones at Tesla dealerships all over the country. You know, these have notably, I believe, had quite an impact on Tesla's stock price.
Jason:It's like Tesla stock went down a huge amount, you know, for a variety of reasons. I I would attribute some of it to the protest. It's since gone up, you know, due to lord knows what
Emanuel:Stock market stuff.
Jason:Reason? Stock market stuff, but also, like, I don't know, Trump advertising Teslas at the White House, things like this. But basically, there's been, like, concerted efforts to protest Tesla all over the country. So there have been that, but then there's also been, like, acts of vandalism and arson at Tesla dealerships, which the Trump administration and Elon Musk and others have wanted to classify as domestic terrorism or hate crimes or, like, a a level above your, like, standard vandalism as a, you know, act of protecting Elon Musk.
Joseph:Yeah. And we'll talk about that briefly in
Emanuel:a second because we're actually gonna talk
Joseph:about two stories here. But very briefly on this Doge Quest website, one day, I get this signal message saying, hey. Check out this website, which is doxxing Tesla owners, and it links to this Doge Quest website. I say, thank you. I'm taking a look to whoever this tipster was, and I open it up.
Joseph:And there's this interface, like a Google Maps style interface for United States, and it has all of these little icons. There's one for Tesla superchargers, and it's a little image of a Supercharger. There's ones of the Doge dog, the Shiba Inu, the meme dog. And then when you click that and it has personal information of members of Doge I'm even hesitant to say employees because who really knows what the technical term is. I'm just gonna say members of Doge.
Joseph:And then there are little Tesla car symbols, and you click on those, and they include the alleged personal information, belonging to actual Tesla drivers. And now it's not every single Tesla owner in in The States or or or anything like that. But, you know, there's names, there's email addresses, there's, phone numbers. And it's funny because I've actually just opened the site, and now I literally can't see any of the Teslas on here. So I actually don't know whether they've removed those or not.
Joseph:There's the Superchargers and the Tesla dealerships, as well. But at least at the time, there was Tesla owner data on there. I went about verifying it, and initially, this was for the ones who had social media accounts, I was going through those and seeing if there was any information that would indicate they're a Tesla owner. Eventually, did find some of those. There were a few that were like fans of Musk or Tesla seemingly.
Joseph:And, you know, we got to the point where I felt comfortable enough to publish, so we did that with that headline. Then shortly after, people started responding to me. You know, I obviously reached out to some of these people. And, you know, one gets back to me and confirms, yes, they're a Tesla owner. They said they bought it a while ago.
Joseph:And they say they're not a fan of Musk. They bought the vehicle before they knew what Musk would become, all of that sort of thing. But clearly, this site sits I mean, I think it would be unfair to say it sits with the the the Tesla takedown protest because those are nonviolent protests where people are gathering. Like, don't wanna lump it in with that, but it is obviously that broader context of people are very, very mad at Tesla, the company, and seemingly some of the owners of the vehicles as well, at least based on what everybody says on social media. And Jason, your earlier reporting about Cybertrucks and all of that sort of thing.
Joseph:I guess I'll just read out DogeQuest's own sort of definition on this website. It says that DogeQuest is the ultimate hub for enthusiasts of the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge. Our innovative platform allows users to explore an interactive map of Doge landmarks, but that's not all. We also we also cater to Tesla Motors owners, providing a comprehensive resource to locate nearby service centers, showrooms, and charging stations, all of their fingertips, and it goes on. Obviously, it is a very tongue in cheek way of doxing these people, and the cursor is a Molotov cocktail, which I think would, you know, indicate some of the intent here potentially.
Joseph:Jason, what did you think when I sent you the map? Because we ended up working on this together.
Jason:Yeah. I mean, I think the initial it was really interesting because it's not it's not exactly subtle. It's like, yes, very tongue in cheek, but, like, the intention here, I believe, is clear. And like you said, we tried to verify the information on it. And a lot of the information was correct, but there were some, like, mapping issues with some of the Tesla dealerships.
Jason:It wasn't super clear, you know, if all of the Tesla owner information was correct. And I think what was very interesting to me is, like, when there initially was Tesla owner information on there, there's probably only a couple thousand Yeah. If that. Like, a few hundred to, like, maybe a thousand, like, Tesla owners that they were claiming to docs. And it it's, like, not clear where that information came from because there's, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not probably millions of Teslas sold in The US.
Jason:Maybe hundreds of thousands is more accurate. So it's clear that it wasn't taken from, like, a massive, like, database of Tesla owners. It it was compiled in some way that we are unclear on. And so, I mean, we weren't able to verify where the information came from. Like, speculatively, it could have come from people who have been posting positively about Tesla over the years or have, like, you know, done social media posts about owning a Tesla, stuff like that.
Jason:But then we started talking about it, it's like even if not all of the information is correct, the fact that this website existed at all was very interesting and a newsworthy story because it clearly was created to, like, intimidate Tesla, Tesla owners, etcetera, during this, like, incredibly politically fraught time where people are protesting, people are, you know, vandalizing Teslas and Tesla dealerships and things like that. And so even if not every single data point was accurate, although it seems like a lot of them were, it was, like, notable.
Joseph:Yeah. Like, we wouldn't have covered it if all of the data was wrong. Like, that wouldn't have been correct. But to me, like, it was much more about the acts or even sort of the gesture or the symbolism of this map at all, which was, as you say, most likely to intimidate, Tesla owners. And, you know, the one I spoke to, she said that, you know, she was worried.
Joseph:She remembers Gamergates and people being doxed during that, and she compared it to that. Obviously, I don't think they're they're one and the same, but that was, you know, their personal opinion of being worried about what was gonna happen next. Some people did write in with theories about where the data came from, which was like an earlier data breach, and I'm yet to honestly have the time to go and verify that. I agree that it looks more like a an aggregation of data rather than a sort of Tesla breach. And I should say that, you know, after we broke the news of the sites, a couple of other outlets like NBC and Business Insider, they went and they spoke to more people in data as well, and they also verified it.
Joseph:But you did mention in the earlier segments, you know, terrorism and and and that's how this some of these acts are being framed by the administration. We wrote another piece how three alleged Tesla vandals got caught. There was this announcement from the attorney general, and it wasn't really new arrests. It they were, you know, some through March, some throughout February, but there was kind of this big announcement putting three or four of them together, and that gave us the opportunity to look through the court documents and go, oh, these are the sorts of capabilities that law enforcement are using to catch these people. And, you know, I think there's a public interest in that.
Joseph:Think there's a public interest in knowing what protests are doing, what violent vandals are doing, and what law enforcement are doing. I wanna know what all of that are doing and then obviously communicate that. So what do we learn from those court documents, Jason, that we started going through?
Jason:Yeah. I I found that they were very, very interesting because it combined a lot of technologies and surveillance, like, strategies that we've written a lot about over the last couple years. One, there was a lot of, like, social media surveillance happening. So they would identify or or potentially identify someone, and then they would find their social media handles and see, like, what they had been posting. And and one of the suspects had posted, like, a anti fascist flag, things like that, and they used that in the court documents.
Jason:They also used social media posts to identify, like, the fact that someone had recently moved to the town where an arson had taken place, which I thought to be interesting. But the the most, like, fascinating thing is that all three of the people that we wrote about were identified using their vehicle in some way. All of them seemingly drove to the Tesla dealerships that they then vandalized according to the court documents.
Joseph:Or or the charging stations. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. Or a charging station. Yeah. And so, like, two two of the people according to, you know, the court documents, but also there were screen grabs of surveillance footage in each of the court documents that we looked at. And two of the people were wearing, like, all black and masks.
Jason:And, you know, you probably wouldn't be able to identify them based solely off of what they were wearing because they they were, you know, covering their faces and stuff like that. But their license the cars that they drove there were nearby, they were able to grab their license plates, and then they were run through automatic license plate readers. In one case, it was a FLoC device, which we've written about FLoC a lot, which is a company that makes these. And then in another, the brand of license plate reader was not set in the court document. But basically, they were then able to track these suspects, like, all around the town that they were living in.
Jason:And very interestingly, I believe in the Colorado case, there was there was a, you know, Molotov cocktail situation in Colorado. They they essentially, like, set up an alert for the license plate. And when the suspect left their home, it triggered an alert in the flock, like, system that then alerted the cops that that like, exactly where that car was traveling, and they were able to chase the person down and, you know, arrest them. So it really does show that these, like, automatic license plate readers that we've been writing about a lot are widely used in The United States now. Like, these are three random like, none of them were even big cities.
Jason:They were, like, smaller towns in three different states. One was Oregon, one was South Carolina, and one was Colorado. You know, and license plate information was used in all of them. One of them was not I believe the South Carolina case didn't have automatic license plate readers, but they did look up the person in a license plate database and helped identify him that way. But I found that to be, like, quite interesting.
Joseph:Yeah. And I think that active flock alert shows something that a lot of people may not consider. And honestly, sometimes I forget it as well, is that automatic license plate readers, which are these cameras, which are typically stationary and they just sit there and they record which vehicles are going in or out. That is ordinarily a very passive surveillance technology. It's creating a record of, well, last week on Tuesday, this white van with this license plate came in.
Joseph:But with that alert, it can turn much more into an active surveillance system as well as you say, where, well, the vehicle's moved now, so now we can go perform physical surveillance or we can physically trail them or or something like that. And that's just something I'm not sure many people really think about when it comes to automatic license plate readers. And these cameras, they don't just look at the plates. They will look at the color of the vehicle. They might be able to figure out the brand or the model as well.
Joseph:So, you know, I don't know, a red Porsche or or something like that or red hatchback or van or or whatever. So they are more detailed than just the license plate. And, of course, there there's those technologies and there was, like, normal police work as well, like, comparing a receipt that was found in search of one person's residence and found finding there was the same brand of beer that was then used in the Molotov cocktail Molotov cocktail, and they found the discarded box that was carrying the beer, like very, very normal stuff. But then these more interesting technologies like automatic license plate readers. Just to round out, Jason, what do you think about, you know, president Trump and other officials like the attorney general saying that this sort of activity is gonna be prosecuted potentially as domestic terrorism.
Joseph:What does that mean for maybe the tools that police are gonna use and maybe, you know, the sentences that people like this may face as well?
Jason:Yeah. I'm not an expert in this, but I know that if you classify something as domestic terrorism, it I believe it means that perhaps, like, the CIA can get involved. It it means, like, that they are allowed to use, like, more intense surveillance mechanisms to potentially catch people. It means that the sentencing is harsher. It means that they can request certain data from tech companies, like, more easily.
Jason:I think that's correct.
Joseph:Yeah. The the way I would see it is that they could and then when I say they, I mean more like the FBI or somebody like that. And the agencies involved in at least some of these cases was ATF. But if something's marked as domestic terrorism, you know, that kind of gives permission to use more invasive technologies. And, you know, maybe that's something like a stingray or an IMSI catcher, which has often been used to track down murderers.
Joseph:It's been used at protests, all of that sort of thing. You can easily see that if some sort of behavior is marked as domestic terrorism, they may feel that they can use more invasive invasive technologies. Doesn't mean they necessarily have to. You know, in this case, it was just normal police work and then sort of the automatic license plate readers.
Emanuel:I say it's normal police work because regardless of the terrorism designation, what is what we're clearly seeing is that law enforcement is motivated and is being motivated to chase these people down, which is not the case for every crime. You can try to daisy chain security cameras and license plate readers for many types of crime that take place every day. And that doesn't happen because there's a question of resources and motivation to solve particular crimes, other forms of vandalism. But clearly, law enforcement is very motivated to catch these people, and that is the entire point of the designation and of these cases is to, like, make an example and scare people into not doing this.
Joseph:Yeah. Totally fair. Alright. Let's leave that there. If you are listening to the
Emanuel:free version of the podcast, that'll now play us out.
Joseph:But if you are a paying four zero four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about a fake piece of JD Vance audio and, of course, the massive signal group chat fiasco. I feel like we have to talk about that. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. We'll be right back after this. Alright.
Joseph:And we are back in the subscribers only section. We'll talk about Emmanuel's story just quickly for a little bit, and then let's talk about the signal stuff. The headline of Emmanuel's is viral audio of JD Vance bad mouthing Elon Musk is fake, just the tip of the AI iceberg. What is this audio exactly, Emmanuel?
Emanuel:This is audio that sounds like it was secretly recorded, the type of kind of staticky, far away voice of JD Vance speaking very badly about Elon Musk, calling him a fake American and a fake leader and that he's actually very bad for the administration and stuff like this, but it it is it is not real. It is AI generated that was confirmed by his comms person. And then also by us, talking to Reality Defender, which is a deepfake detection company that uses software to detect all forms of AI generated content, but particularly audio. And they detected it as likely fake even though that staticky effect, which makes the audio sound more real because usually leaked audio has that quality, and also it kind of clouds the ability of their software to detect that stuff, but still shows up as likely fake by their testing.
Joseph:Yeah. We'll actually we'll play a little clip of that now just so people can hear it themselves as well.
Emanuel:Everything that he's doing is getting criticized in the media, and he says that he's helping and he's not. He's making us look bad. He's making me making us look bad. He's making me look bad. And I'll tell you this, and he wouldn't like it if I said it, but he's not even in a America.
Emanuel:He is from South Africa, and he's cosplayed as this great American leader in a room that has the portrait of some of the greatest men that ever lived in this country, and he has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official. I am an important one in this situation, not him. So if he wants to tank the economy and his cars, maybe that's what he deserves.
Joseph:So after people heard this, I mean, and before you went and you verified it and you did your article, this it comes down on social media. What are people's reactions to this audio?
Emanuel:I am cautious about, like, trying to assert what people at large think about the audio just from social media posts. They run they run they run the gamut. It's like there's people who are immediately calling it AI, which they say about a lot of stuff, including authentic media, and there's people who think it's fake. As Sam wrote many years ago when we were still discussing video deepfakes, People tend to believe they're priors, so Republicans think it's fake. Kinda the blue anon crowd kind of is more inclined to believe it's real.
Emanuel:Yeah. But many many people saw it, I think, the important thing. I saw it on YouTube initially. I think it was just recommended to me. And I'll admit that for, like, the five seconds when I was first listening to it, I was like, oh, this is like, oh, crazy, juicy audio.
Emanuel:And then, I don't know, you do one minute of googling and you'll see that it is fake, or if you use some critical thinking, you'll see that it's fake. But I my position that of all the synthetic media, AI generated audio is the hardest to tell whether it's real or not. I look at this point, I look at a video or an image or even text. I can kind of tell. Audio is pretty tricky for me.
Jason:I think like this garbled the way that this was done, it's like, how would you ever know? I don't think that I don't think that it's possible to know, really. It's like you you talk to, what, Reality Defender. Right? So there's obviously some, like, AI detection algorithms out there that, you know, are are better than some are some are better than others, but they themselves use AI, which we've written about before.
Jason:So it's like you still can't be a % certain. And I think that without additional context on some of the best manufactured deepfake audio, I guess I'll call it deepfake audio. I don't know what else to call it. Devoid of like it's just you you would have no way of of being able to tell, I don't think. I mean, in this case, it's like they said that it's not real, and I think that, you know, you can't always trust this administration or really like any politician at this point, but I think that it's like it it was a little bit out of character, I would say, for JD Vance.
Jason:And so I wasn't terribly inclined to believe that it was real based on the context of the audio. Like, it was it was almost too good in terms of like, oh, yeah. Like, JD Vance is talking shit about Elon Musk behind doors. Like, that's that's a fluent on fever dream, more or less. But based on, like, you know, looking at AI images, looking at AI videos, it's like I can still tell almost always and I I can't with audio.
Emanuel:Yeah. Just like a bit about that, and then we can get to the other thing. There's the contextual clues in here. They're the easier ones to pick up on, which is if you know anything about JD Vance, he's very on message. He's, like, very controlled when he's speaking publicly.
Emanuel:Even if he shifted his positions over time, right now, he's in, like, pro Elon, pro Trump camp. So and he never really veers from that. So it's like Jason said, it's very out of character for him to do that. And then the other thing is it's possible for audio like this to pop up initially on social media, which is where this came from. As far as I can tell, it came from TikTok where it had 2,000,000 views last time I saw.
Emanuel:But even if it starts there, it would very quickly be picked up verified by some sort of news outlet, like that is the first thing that I would try to do. And since that hasn't happened in twenty four hours and they were able to put a a very strong denial in that time, then that looks pretty fake. I guess on the technical side though, I did see and this has come up before, but it's like if you're an audio engineer and you look at the WAV files, then there's a way where people speak when it's AI generated where it tapers off in kind of like a different way from speaking to quiet, which is something you see with AI audio. So that's one way to kind of technically tell that something is fake. And then also on denial, I guess, to segue, it's there are way more embarrassing things that they don't deny, but that will just fess up to immediately when caught.
Emanuel:So
Joseph:Yeah.
Emanuel:It also helps.
Joseph:Sorry to completely ruin your really good segue. I did just wanna ask Jason. I think, Jason, I wanna ask you one more thing because I feel like you post on Blue Sky about this. But and this I
Emanuel:find this really interesting.
Joseph:Was talking about this to someone yesterday. Even when something like this is debunked and it's like the audio is fake, you sometimes get responses from people who are like the next level. It's like, it doesn't matter that it's fake. It could be true or the sentiment is probably true, so it's fine. Like, they're probably actually saying this behind the scenes anyway.
Joseph:Jason, I feel like you got some of that maybe, and maybe that's the sentiment you kinda see generally with AI. Is that right?
Jason:Yeah. I mean, I I wrote about this in an article called Hurricane Helene and the fuck it era of AI slop where it's like you can use AI, like, AI slop, AI generated imagery, AI audio to confirm your priors about anything. It's like, you can say, oh, this isn't real, it's AI even when it is real. When something is fake, you can say, well, like, oh, it, like, feels true to me, so it's real. It it just it's like, I think that's the destabilizing part about AI in general is that you can just be, like, it can be used to pitch with whatever narrative you want.
Jason:And, yeah, I mean, the the thing that I said in general is like someone said to me, I'm not convinced it's fake. This article isn't definitive either. It says, quote, likely fake, but that's not a %. Plus, this administration lies so much, I don't think I would believe them saying it was fake. And then I said, destroying the ability for people to tell what is real and what is fake and giving plausible deniability for either option, depending on what feels true to you, is the entire problem with the technology.
Jason:Damn. Which I wrote while walking my dogs. I don't
Joseph:know if that's task.
Jason:Yeah. This person had like four followers, so not not my finest beef moment, but whatever.
Joseph:It's fine. Okay. Let's go back in time to Emmanuel's good segue. Emmanuel, do you wanna give us the very quick summary of what happened or do want me to
Emanuel:Please do it. I yeah.
Joseph:I was hoping you'd do fuck it up. Anyway, okay. So and and jump in if I get any of this wrong because I'm gonna try and do it without looking at the article. But as many listeners may have heard, the editor in chief of The Atlantic was accidentally added to a signal group chat, which with a bunch of senior national security officials, including the secretary of defense, the vice president, and director of national intelligence, maybe four, five, six, like that.
Jason:Marco Rubio.
Joseph:Oh,
Jason:yeah. Some others too.
Joseph:Sure. And they start talking about potential plans about striking the Houthis in Yemen, you know, who've been attacking shipping containers very much recently, you know, going back to the previous administration as well. So they're talking about that. And at the start, it it's just not clear whether this chat is real or not. Like, maybe it's somebody like project Veritas.
Joseph:I know they don't fully exist anymore, but those sorts of groups that try to frame journalists by putting them in bad situations or giving them bad info, it looks like that. And then as it progresses over the days, there's a reportedly very specific information in there about these strikes. And then the general chief of the Atlantic is, you know, sat in their car in a grocery in a grocery car park looking for verification. And then sure enough, you know, bombs start falling on the Hootie targets, and it became becomes clear, amazingly, that this is the real group chat of senior NatSEC officials discussing operational plans with very specific information, and they've accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. You know?
Joseph:And I'm I'm doing a very, very quick version, but eventually, go and they confirm this with, you know, the national security apparatus and they and they get a statement confirming the group chat is real. They've already left by this point. They reach out for comment, all of that sort of thing, but it has created this entire firestorm of coverage where there's so many different angles to talk about, and we're just gonna maybe just touch on a couple very, very briefly. But Jason, was that a fair summary, you think?
Jason:I mean, probably. First first first reaction is LOL for me.
Joseph:It's crazy.
Jason:Sam, what did you think?
Sam:I mean, I don't know. It's I see a lot of people saying, like, signal isn't safe in reaction to this, but I think it's the dumbest take you could get from this. It's like
Emanuel:Nothing is safe if you're a moron.
Sam:Right. It's like if you're pee and you're drunk as fuck all the time, probably not. Probably, you should put your phone away forever. That's I don't know. It's like it's a really it's such as I don't know.
Sam:It's like every time something happens on Signal where it's, like, it's user error, people freak out about Signal. It's just like
Emanuel:I'm sure everyone has had the, like, oh, shit pit in their stomach when they realize they sent a message to the wrong group chat. I'm sure everyone is familiar with that. And it's just like, this is the all timer, like, peak peak of that. Just imagining yeah. Tulsi Gabbard or whoever just would be like, oh, shit.
Emanuel:Just just on that point Yeah.
Joseph:About signal very, very briefly. Signal, I feel very comfortable saying it, is generally incredibly safe. Talking about operational plans to bomb targets on this consumer app. I mean, we don't know if the US government has approved officials to talk about that sort of information, which in a lot of cases is gonna be classified. Right?
Joseph:Like, is there a memo inside there which says, yeah. You can talk about that on Signal. I seriously, seriously fucking doubt it, even if signal is robust. And, course, we don't know what devices this was on. Like, is it on US government managed devices?
Joseph:Is it on their own personal ones? God. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just on their on their fucking iPhone that they got from the Apple Store or or whatever. So is so it is secure normally, but they shouldn't be talking about this on there, you know.
Jason:So the a very smart take that I saw was from Josh Marshall who runs TalkingPointsMemo and I think that this gets to the heart of it to be serious for a moment, is that these people all work for the Department of Defense or the National Security, like, apparatus in the US federal government, they have secure mechanisms for communicating with each other that does not need to rely on, like, off the shelf hard software that they are presumably downloading, in some cases, to their personal phone. And so what they're using Signal for, like, we can surmise, is to hide communications from the US government because there are there are, like, different rules about maintaining records of official actions and things like this. It's like this, you know, SIGNAL has the option for disappearing messages. SIGNAL is, you know, probably approved for some US government actions, but they probably need to, like, keep records of what they are talking about. And in this case, it's like, they could have been talking about this stuff on official secure channels developed by the US government for things like doing war, and they were not.
Jason:And I think that that is like something that we should be talking about, I guess.
Emanuel:Sorry. To to interject just for a minute, Jeffrey Goldberg would be able to see whether the chat was set to deleting messages or not. No? If you're in the group chat, has that been clarified?
Joseph:It wasn't mentioned in the story, and I don't think it's visible in the screenshots.
Emanuel:Yeah. Right. That seems important to know whether their chats were set to self delete or not. Sorry.
Joseph:And you think important for security reasons or for FOIA reasons or record keeping reasons? I
Emanuel:mean, yeah. It's it's like say.
Sam:It says in the story.
Joseph:Oh, what does it say?
Sam:Well, it said set some of the messages in the signal group to disappear after one week and some after four. That reads questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law. Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved. Oops.
Jason:Well, congrats to you for reading the full article. Very Hey.
Joseph:Hey. I was bringing it up to then read
Sam:I just control f disappear.
Jason:Yeah.
Sam:So, yeah, that's a bad that's that's a bad one.
Jason:Do we wanna have a beef right now or no? How internal beef or no?
Joseph:How about you bring up your beef? I don't think we have an internal beef. How about you bring up your beef briefly? Because I think it's an it's an interesting point. Because what he does eventually is he leaves the group chat after he has determined that this is a real conversation with these real officials, and then he leaves the chat.
Joseph:And some people think you shouldn't have done that.
Jason:So this is like, this fell into his lap in a way that is, like, you know, insane. You know, there's hearings as we're recording this, there there's been hearings in congress about, like, how this happened, blah blah blah. We don't know what the fallout is gonna be over this. Like, it could very well be swept under the rug. That might be what happens.
Jason:But this is, like so the article is good. Like, crazy, good, very interesting article. But there's a few things that I take issue with. One, when they start discussing war plans and, like, what they're going to do and who they're gonna bomb and so on and so forth, Jeffrey Goldberg does not include any of that in the article. And he says that he does it for, like, national security reasons and things like that.
Jason:And I think that that is entirely that, like, makes sense on a, like, intellectual level that that makes sense because journalists typically have will sometimes have withheld information if it could lead to the deaths of people and to protect national security and things like that. That said, by not including that information, Republicans have been able to sort of, like, hand wave away the severity of what was being discussed. And I saw an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg on, I believe it was, like, Jen Psaki's show, I think, on MSNBC, where he goes into a little bit more detail about it. It was, like, specific targets, people that they wanted to kill, like weather information, stuff like that. Like, that information is not super clear in the article itself, and The Atlantic self censored that information for an attack that had already happened, that already had, like, damaging effects where people were presumably killed, injured, etcetera.
Jason:I don't think that they should have not included that. I think that that's probably a pretty controversial take, but I think that they should have included it. I think that's pulling punches. I think it's kind of cowardly. And I think leaving the group chat was also cowardly.
Jason:And I think that the argument against that is, like, well, then they would be then, like, Goldberg would perhaps be, like, handling classified information, publishing classified information, putting people at risk, so on and so forth. To which I say, you're owned by Lorine Powell Jobs, one of the richest people in the world. You are Jeffrey Goldberg, like, one of the most sort of, like, milquetoast, middle of the road, center right, center left, like, old man journalists who has the ability to fight a court case about this. They're gonna come after you either way. Like, publish the details or, like, fuck off is my sort of position on this.
Jason:And if you're scared to fight a legal case about it, like, fuck you. Like, fuck you. You should fight a legal case about this. This is worth fighting a legal case about. You should have published everything.
Jason:You should have, like, stayed in the chat. We have Tulsi Gabbard at in congress today saying there was no classified information in there. Like prove it. Prove it. That is my take.
Jason:I think that's I think that's not everyone's take, but that's my take.
Joseph:Yeah. I'll just give mine for I don't know, because I think it's an interesting discussion that I I'm not a lawyer, obviously, but I as a journalist, I would just be worried about legal ramifications potentially. I'm I'm I'm talking for myself, not the the owner or the editor in chief of a billion dollar company or or or whatever. You know? All of that aside with the money, and I totally hear what you're saying.
Joseph:But once it turned from accidentally receiving this information, which may or not may may or may not be true to, oh my god, this is real. I think there is just way more avenue for the US government or anyone to argue that he's violating some sort of wiretapping law or something about handling classified information even if he doesn't publish that information as well, just handling that information potentially. And then on the publishing specifics, I know it's really hard because we don't know what he withheld. So we don't know what he should have published and it's almost like trying to see a shadow. You can only really see the contours of it.
Joseph:But, yeah, it really, really depends. And, like, maybe there was more that you could have published and, like, there probably was a little bit, but I would just be very hesitant of I don't know. Maybe it reveals how they're targeting people or some sort of capability or there's an informant or something. And, you know, that's something we deal with all the time where there's like and it's actually in a story that we're gonna publish soon. Me and Jason working on it.
Joseph:You know, we figured out the identity of informant for the FBI, and we've decided not to name them in case they receive, you know, threats to their safety in the future. That's for that story. We don't know the specifics here, so it's harder. But I don't know. I think I'm just crazy cautious about that stuff as well, but I hear where you're coming from.
Joseph:Emmanuel Sandwich, you've dumped all. Should we just publish the screenshots?
Sam:I think they should send it to us, and then we can really have this conversation for real, And you guys can get in the ring. Yeah. If you're if you work at the Atlantic and you have access to all the files that Jeffrey has, send it to us. No. No.
Sam:I mean, that's I'm kidding. But, yeah, I mean, it's, you know,
Jason:It's obviously Please know.
Emanuel:Please know.
Joseph:But, I
Sam:mean, I don't you know? I mean,
Jason:if you can't use either. I want them to take the risk.
Sam:You know, maybe. I'm not gonna ask for them, because I do think that's probably crossing the line. I mean, if there's an investigation, I assume it's like the Atlantic's gonna get dragged into it anyway, and, like, maybe this stuff is gonna come to light anyway. It's like if they have it saved at all, which if they don't have it saved, that's dumb as fuck, but I assume they must.
Joseph:To cover your own bases in the case of an eventual because they're as you say, they're gonna get attacked either way. You already have the secretary of defense denying well, not even denying, just getting mad about it. So, yeah, there's gonna be some sort of issue, I'm sure.
Sam:Yeah. I think it'll shake out in one way or another. So we'll see it probably eventually.
Emanuel:I posted a picture today of one of those giant dildos that looks like a tentacle, and I would have posted that in the chat. I'm just being like, I'm a corrubio. I have a container on a ship full of these tentacle dildos and the hooties for not letting it through. What are we gonna do about this? I don't know.
Emanuel:Just to bring it back up. Sorry.
Joseph:You already made that joke earlier in the day, and I'm really surprised you brought it up from the podcast, but I really, really appreciate it. With that, I'm gonna try to read the outro while my cheeks are hurting from laughing. So let me try and play let me try and play us out. As a reminder, four zero four media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers.
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Emanuel:We will see you again next week.