[01-18-17] The WGAN Morning News
Joined Ken and Matt as we discuss what’s going on with FBI paying GeekSquad to not only dig around customers’ computers but a possibility of actually planting kiddie porn on and other types of evidence for criminal activity.
This, and why Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 is no longer as exciting this year.
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Related stories:
The FBI Is Apparently Paying Geek Squad Members To Dig Around In Computers For Evidence Of Criminal Activity
CES 2017: Here are some of the craziest announcements from the show
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Transcript
WGAN – 2017-01-18_Hits_at_CES2017
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing Date: January 18, 2017
Craig Peterson: Wednesday mornings I’m heard throughout the state of Maine on Maine’s number 1 morning radio show, Mornings with Ken and Matt. Let’s do a little Sanity Check, shall we?
Matt Gagnon: 7:38 on the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. And then every 7:38 mark on Wednesdays, we get a chance to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. Craig, how are you this morning?
Craig: Good morning. Doing well. Hey, I thought this is supposed to be a huge snowstorm?
Ken Altshuler: Well, huge is a relative…
Matt: Kinda spitting out a little bit.
Ken: It’s anywhere from 1 to 17 inches. You know, depends on where you are. You know.
Craig: That’s true. It does shift a bit doesn’t it?
Ken: It does. Speaking of shifting a little bit, let’s talk about Vegas. I know you can’t really talk about Vegas. But the Consumer Electronics Show wrapped up. Can you tell us… can you give us inside information about what the big news was from that show?
Craig: You know, this was probably one of the worst CES shows, I think, in a lot of years. You can’t always have major innovations out there every year. And CES this year was kind of that way. I’d say there were two kind of interesting things. Really, only a couple this year. One was a new TV that came out from LG that was really, really cool. You know there’s technology now that is allowing them to print displays on almost anything. Do you remember Back to the Future, where they had the cereal box with the little moving cartoons on it?
Matt: Oh yeah, of course. By the way. I’m still waiting for my hoverboard. I don’t know where that is? But I was told it would be arriving by last year, but it’s not here.
Craig: Lexus had one. Did you know that? A few years ago.
Matt: I’m sorry, what? There’s a hoverboard?
Craig: There was a hoverboard.
Matt: How much did this hoverboard cost? That’s the key question though, right?
Craig: You couldn’t buy it. But it was just kinda one of these demonstration pieces of technology. And it did work. But it wasn’t efficient. It really didn’t, you know, didn’t have that problem with being over water by the way, like Marty did. But, you know, it’ll be a few years from now. But they have that technology of the display on those little cereal boxes today. That technology exists, which is totally, totally cool. So LG has a paper-thin TV that you could put on your wall which is totally cool. So that’s one of the cool things that came out. You know Dell announces 8K display but, you know, most people don’t have Ultra High Def 4K. And there’s not much programming. And personally, I don’t know if you guys spent time in front of 4K video and all.
Matt: I do. Yeah. Ever since I bought my curved 65-inch 4K TV. That thing is nice.
Craig: Was it the Samsung?
Matt: Yes it was.
Craig: Yeah, yeah. Those are really nice TVs. But the programming isn’t really there. I looked at some of those and say… I remember I saw my first 8K display last year. It doesn’t look real. It’s just… it’s so, so good, you know. And Ken and I both grew up with… I remember when we got our first colored television, you know.
Ken: Yeah, I do too. Yeah.
Craig: Yeah.
Matt: Excuse me but I had a black and white TV in my room until I was like 16 so…
Ken: Well I remember the year…
Matt: I share your pain gentlemen.
Ken: They had a…
Craig: In your room?
Matt: Well yeah. Yes, I know. In my room. But it was 13 inches and it was black and white and every one of my friends had a colored TV. So don’t even start with me guys. I suffered a little bit too. It was tough to be me.
Craig: So that was kind of a cool thing. And the other one was there’s a company out there that’s trying to, or at least wants to kinda displace our friends over at Tesla and it’s called the Faraday Car. And it’s just a little bit faster than the Tesla. It’s a little bit cooler than the Tesla. But the company that’s backing it, it’s primarily backed by a Chinese firm, is kinda on the verge of bankruptcy. So, I’m not sure how well that will go. And Faraday, for the demo, they had a very cool demo out there. But they had to switch cars right before the demo. And then the car that they showed, one of the cool things with the Faraday is there’s a button on the side. And you push this button, and then you walk into the store and the car will go and find itself a parking spot. And of course, it didn’t work at all. So you know, it was just kind of a boring year this year, I think.
Matt: Alright, we’re talking to Craig Peterson our tech guru who joins us every Wednesday. This time to talk about tech topics. Let’s talk about the FBI. The FBI’s been in the news a little bit lately. For some political questions. But apparently they are paying Geeksquad members to dig around computers for evidence of criminal activity. This smells a little fishy to me. What do you think Craig?
Craig: I’m sitting here shaking my head. Yeah. I talked to a guy who used to work at Geeksquad and he used to fix the computers that you bring in and that’s what a lot of people do right? Geeksquad does a lot of things. They’ll come out to your house and help you install your new TV, your stereo, etc. But one of their functions is to be able to fix people’s computers when they go south. So, you bring it in and you’re saying, Hey listen, it’s slow. It’s got a virus. It won’t boot. It’s blue screening. Whatever it might be. And Geeksquad digs into it. So I asked him if this was true. Basically, the accusation is the Geeksquad members are being paid $500 by the FBI if they dig through someone’s computer, I mean to say accidentally notice on someone’s computer, evidence of a criminal activity such as kiddie porn. Now, nobody wants to hear about kiddie porn, right? The stuff’s nasty. And there’s other crimes that you don’t want to hear about. But the part that’s concerning to me is the $500, right? Why am I bringing my computer in the first place? And do I really want someone digging through, trying to find this evidence? First of all, how much you guys think a Geeksquad guy or gal makes? Just, you know, their hourly…
Matt: Ok, I worked for Best Buy back in the day and they didn’t have Geeksquad when I was there. But I’d say those guys made, I don’t know, like $30?
Craig: Yeah, exactly. Well, maybe 30 bucks now. So do you think there’s an incentive for someone making 30 bucks an hour to dig through your computer to make 500 bucks? Do you think there might be an incentive for someone who makes 20 bucks, 30 bucks an hour, to maybe have something on a little thumb drive they stick on to your computer and then call the FBI? So I…
Matt: Are you suggesting that somebody has kiddie porn sitting on a thumb drive and he’s gonna put it in my computer if I go to the Geeksquad to get that file?
Craig: I’m not, hey listen, I was an expert witness on a case out on New Jersey, that was a guy who is a high level CEO at a very large company who is accused of having kiddie porn on his computer. Now, in this day and age, kiddie porn can be put in your computer all kinds of ways. Our major corporations in the US, their computers are being used unbeknownst to them, to distribute beheading videos of American military and other people worldwide. They’re being used, unbeknownst to them to distribute kiddie porn. So how does it get on? Where’s the incentive? How do you know where it came from? And I was going through just this week, in fact, before Manning’s commutation, well not quite commutation, but his sentence is reduced here. I was going through these WikiLeaks documents and trying to figure them out a little bit more. But, you know, one of the big tools the NSA has, and has been using, is designed specifically to hide where you’re coming from. To hide what you’re doing. So, anyways, I asked this guy I know, a friend of mine, he works for Geeksquad, did this exist? And he absolutely confirmed it. He confirmed not to putting kiddie porn on your computer. But he confirmed that yes indeed, if you came across about something, you know, you’re weren’t supposed to be digging, digging, digging. But if you came across something that was evidence, like it might be evidence of criminal activity, you were supposed to report it and there was a $500 bounty. So this story has some legs on it and I think it’s
gonna be interesting but we gotta think about what’s the motivation, right? What’s the motivation for the UPS guy or FedEx guy, or electric meter reader, or the mailman, to report on us? And how far should this go? And does it make sense to have a bounty for evidence against someone that may or may not be legit and we know historically that there had been people who falsified evidence just to get these bounties.
Ken: We’re talking to Craig Peterson. He joins us every Wednesday at 7:38. Always go to his website. http://CraigPeterson.com and get his newsletter and all these regular information. Now Craig, before I let you go, are we gonna stop buying cars now?
Craig: Wow, isn’t that a… Ken, what a question. Ultimately the answer is yeah, alright? The predictions are kids that are born today, even under 10 years old, people predict, will never, ever get driver’s license. That these cars are going to be driving themselves, and you’re not gonna own them. Just at the end of this month here…
Matt: Are you suggesting like an Uber kind of arrangement with the driverless car where you just call it to your house and then you just take it and then you don’t need it anymore?
Craig: Well who wants a car, right?
Matt: I do.
Craig: What you want is to get from A to B. Well you wanna get from place to place.
Matt: You’re right.
Craig: You wanna be able to go to Home Depot and get a load of wood, right? For your house or toilet or whatever it is. What you want is to get from A to B, or to bring something from a place to a place. So it’s going ultimately be way, way cheaper for you to just, as you said, you know, call an Uber than to own a car. Now if you’re living much more rural areas you’re probably still gonna have to have some sort of a car. It’s probably gonna be autonomous. But Cadillac this month in New York City, is rolling out a new program for $1500 a month, which is about twice the price to lease a high-end Cadillac, but for about $1500 a month, all of you down in New York City can rent a Cadillac month to month so that you can show up in the style you’d like to become accustomed to. So it’s interesting.
Matt: Who of us would still learn how to drive though? You know, just in case. Shouldn’t like you have your autonomous car but like, you know.
Craig: Hey, us guys, we’re not gonna give up driving.
Matt: I’m not gonna ever do. I’m gonna own a car until I die. I don’t care.
Craig: See, you know, there’s some gals who are that way too. But, I don’t know, single guys wants to give it up. For the most part, right? If I’m on longer trip, I’d rather the car drive.
Matt: What do you think is gonna happen by the way, Craig? Not to interrupt you. You know, when you have all these driverless cars. What if you have like a vintage, you know, like a Shelby GT Mustang or something and you wanna drive that around. Are they gonna be even allowed on the road? When they sort of mandate and stuff?
Craig: Yeah, ultimately no. No, they won’t be. There’ll be special licenses, just like right now. You can get an antique license and you are only allowed to drive the car to and from events. So you can’t use a car with an antique tag for daily driving.
Ken: I’ll be dead by then anyway.
Craig: Yeah.
Ken: Hopefully.
Craig: We’ll be banned. We’ll be abandoned.
Ken: Yes we will.
Craig: Us guys.
Ken: Although I did see the new 2017 Mustang. I’m really telling that.
Matt: Oh, you know, I rented the 2016 Mustang. The souped-up variety with the convertible whatever when I was in Florida last year. Oh that was fun.
Ken: I had a 1965 so…
Matt: 1965? Great.
Ken: You’re in for yesteryears…
Craig: my daily driver is a 1980 Mercedes diesel. There’s no electronics on this thing. It’s entirely mechanical, right? So here I am the tech guy. We’re talking about autonomous cars, what do I drive? A 1980 Mercedes diesel that has mechanical linkages. Why? I don’t trust the computers in some of these new cars.
Matt: Alright. Craig Peterson our tech guru. Thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And we’ll talk to you again next week.
Craig: Hey gentlemen, thanks.
Ken: Thanks.
Matt: Alright, thanks a lot Craig.
Craig: Make sure you subscribe by going to http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes and check out all of these articles everything we just talked about, you’ll find on my website. Craig Peterson. Have a great day and look for my daily coming up shortly in my podcast stream.
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