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TS EPISODE 20
Data brokers, privacy and global surveillance with Byron Tau
In this episode of the Technology & Security podcast, host Dr. Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by investigative journalist and author Byron Tau. They discuss the intricate and often opaque world of data brokers and global surveillance. Tau, known for his deep dives into complex subjects, shares insights from his book Means of Control, highlighting the potential misuse of large data sets and the delicate balance between data collection for security and the risk of social control. The discussion traverses the evolution of data brokers, from their inception involving public records to the sophisticated surveillance technologies of today. Tau elaborates on how everyday devices like mobile phones and fitness trackers contribute to the extensive surveillance network, often without user awareness, raising critical concerns about privacy and the power dynamics at play.
The episode also delves into the real-world implications of data misuse in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. Tau provides a nuanced perspective on the Russian interference in the 2016 US election, China's use of TikTok for data collection and content suppression, and the geopolitical complexities of technology in diplomacy. He shares the story of Operation Gallant Phoenix, a multinational effort against ISIS using unclassified data to enhance international cooperation. The conversation touches on the concerns surrounding TikTok's data practices and content manipulation, and need for careful policy considerations. Tau's reflections on the current technology environment, the challenges for leaders, and his personal journey of writing his book add depth to this engaging discussion, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in the hidden mechanisms shaping our digital age.
Resources mentioned in the recording:
· Byron Tau (2024) Means of Control , Crown https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706321/means-of-control-by-byron-tau/
· NOTUS https://www.notus.org
· Miah Hammond-Errey (2024) Big Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence: National Security Disrupted (20% discount code for book AFL04) https://www.routledge.com/Big-Data-Emerging-Technologies-and-Intelligence-National-Security-Disrupted/Hammond-Errey/p/book/9781032485584
· https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/byte-sized-diplomacy-should-australia-ban-tiktok
· https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62919887-the-peacock-and-the-sparrow
This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people, and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge their continuing connection to land, sea and community, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Thanks to the talents of those involved. Music by Dr Paul Mac and production by Elliott Brennan.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:00:02] Welcome to Technology and Security. TS is a podcast exploring the intersections of emerging technologies and national security. I'm your host, Doctor Miah Hammond-Errey and my guest today is Byron Tau. Byron is an investigative journalist who has been writing about law courts, national security and technology for the past 15 years. He covered the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and writes on privacy, cyber security cybersecurity and surveillance. His first book was published in February this year called Means of Control. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Byron Tau: [00:00:35] Thanks for having me.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:00:36] I'm coming to you today from the lands of the Gadigal people. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge their continued connection to land, sea and community. Byron, in many respects your book could be considered explosive. How has the reaction been, especially from your many government sources?
Byron Tau: [00:00:55] Yeah. You know, it's interesting because a lot of people who maybe were hesitant to talk to me or thought I had an agenda actually ended up quite liking the book and thinking that it told a complicated story and told it well and told it fairly. And so it was heartening to hear even people who, you know, didn't necessarily want to talk to me or didn't necessarily trust me, saying that I did a good job with the material. So that's been heartening. The reaction has, um, you know, it's a book. So you've written them. Um, uh, sometimes it's a little anticlimactic because you spend so much time with the material, and then it goes out into the world. And it's been gratifying to hear from people over the past few months who have read it and have given me feedback, both praise and sometimes, you know, directing me to where I've gotten things wrong. But so far, so good for listeners.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:01:48] Not yet acquainted with your work, or perhaps the advertising industry more generally, can you quantify the extent of data collection on citizen citizens globally and where this data resides?
Byron Tau: [00:02:01] Sure. So in my book, I break it down into sort of four generations of data brokers, and they all broker slightly different kinds of data. First, I would say there's sort of the traditional data brokers which came out of the 1960s, and they were collecting things like names and some basic consumer information that they could derive from things like magazine subscription lists. They would sometimes be able to get spouses, sometimes to be able to get your voting history, sometimes your mortgage records. But basically things that were public record or very, very basic consumer information. So that's one kind of data. Then as social media became much more important in people's lives, and people started linking their real world identity with some sort of a digital identity, sometimes pseudonymized, sometimes under their real name, there became this very big market for the collection and the dissemination of things that were being said on social media. So a whole generation of data brokers sprung up to sell that kind of data, sometimes to brands who wanted to know what people were saying about their products or their company, but also sometimes to governments, to public safety entities, to the military, to the intelligence community, because they wanted to be able to understand global chatter on topics of all kinds. In some instances, terrorist groups were organizing on social media. Isis is a perfect example of a very digitally savvy terrorist group that was using then Twitter to attract a lot of recruits and to disseminate its message, and people were talking about crimes, people were tweeting from civil unrest. So there were all sorts of government uses for that data alongside private sector ones. Then we get into what I call location data. Or sometimes it's it's derived from mobile advertising data.
Byron Tau: [00:03:52] So sometimes it's called ad tech data. But it's essentially data that's derived from mostly mobile devices where you take your phone in the world when it's plugged into this huge network of advertisers that are collecting your location. When you enable a weather app or a game to have access to it, that's big business. And brokers popped up to collect that information. The original use case was advertising. These advertisers wanted to be able to target people by their consumer preferences, driving insights from where people go and what can we advertise to them based on that information. But of course, when you're tracking hundreds of millions, if not billions of devices around the world, that's also a very potent public safety and national security and intelligence tool. And so governments became very interested in that. And finally, I call this sort of emerging frontier market for wireless data. I call it grey data in my book. It's not brokered by traditional brokers, but it's there to collect if you know how to collect it and that kind of data. I'm talking about things like the fact that your Bluetooth headphones actually emit a unique identifier, and if you can collect that identifier in specific places and link it to a geography or a person, then you have some very interesting information. And so there is actually this strange market for wireless data from things like car tires, from things like Bluetooth headphones, from things like the Mac address that your phone broadcasts. There are these companies that sell antennas or sell data sets based on that, and that can all be collected, vacuumed up, and is sort of a frontier intelligence data set that public safety entities, law enforcement, the military and the intelligence community are all experimenting with.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:05:37] It's pretty wild, actually, how much data is just created and collected on pretty much everything. Where do you think particularly advertising would also wireless data industry could go?
Byron Tau: [00:05:50] A phrase that came up time and time again when I was doing reporting on this book was that this is the Wild West. I do think the governance piece is catching up to the reality. I do think it's a lot less of a Wild West than when I first started reporting on this 4 or 5 years ago. I think that countries around the world are all taking these governance issues a lot more seriously than they were five years ago. So, you know, I have some optimism that there are going to be better governance frameworks going forward. At the same time, there is this growing hunger for data to do things like train generative AI. Um, you know, when I was thinking through some of these issues and reporting this book, sometimes, you know, a solution would come to me and I'd say, hey, you know why even collect this? Companies should just go without it or purge it or, you know, keep, keep it on a very short retention time frame. But I think with the rise of large language models and machine learning, that I think that's even less realistic than it was five years ago because there is such a hunger to feed data sets into these new frontier technologies. And, you know, that's raising all sorts of new questions that I don't even get into in this book.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:07:04] You did just outline the four kind of key areas of data broking, and I love the way you put that. Can you explain for listeners how intelligence services and others can access those different kinds of data?
Byron Tau: [00:07:17] Yeah, so there's a lot of different ways, and it's not always easy to figure it out. As part of this book, I did more than 300 interviews, sometimes the same person over and over. I did a lot of research to try to get to the bottom of it, and there are a variety of ways, in some instances, uh, intelligence community participants, agencies are simply buying it in. You know, on the open market, there are data brokers who are willing to sell them to enter into an above board contract with the intelligence community. In other instances, sometimes there's this whole architecture of defense contractors or government contractors that are set up to offer a little bit of a layer of obfuscation, um, you know, to the government entity to, to, to the data broker to provide some level of deniability, um, and to also shield both the data broker and the government from some of the direct consequences of contracting with each other. And then there is sometimes these arrangements that are a little bit shadowy, or they're a little bit secretive. In some instances, I've found entities that appear to be government linked that are posing as marketing companies or commercial entities, in some cases, governments are getting this kind of data not in an aboveboard commercial transaction, but by having a contractor pretend to be something that they're not, or to set up a company that's not fully honest with the commercial player about where the data is going to go. And finally, there have been some instances where, you know, people who've worked for private companies have told me stories where the government will come directly to them and ask for the data outside of a commercial relationship. So there's a number of ways that this data gets into government agencies and entities.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:09:03] In the book you talk about tire pressure monitoring systems. You know, can you give me an example or kind of, you know, make this a little alive for people who might not be across the data collection industry? I want to give people a sense of the kind of privacy intrusion that's possible.
Byron Tau: [00:09:19] Yeah. So, you know, I think that mobile location data in particular tells a very rich story about people, because where we go in the world says a lot about us, and it can also reveal things that we don't necessarily want revealed to the whole world. Um, so, you know, if you seek abortion care in the United States and you have downloaded an app that's tracking your location like a weather app or a game. A data broker might have that you entered an abortion clinic, and that is something that data brokers have done. They have geo fenced abortion clinics and delivered targeted ads to people who were present there. Um, you know, this kind of data could show if you're having an affair, right? Or if you are where you say you are to your boss or your spouse. Um, so location data in particular, I think, tells a really rich story about people as they move around the world and what they're interested in, where they go, who they hang out with, what other individuals they're in proximity to, or what other organizations they're in proximity to. In addition, I think, you know, with with the tire pressure sensors and the Bluetooth headphones, you know, these are technologies that are so familiar to us, and yet most people don't fully grasp their surveillance potential.
Byron Tau: [00:10:34] Right? The fact that your car's tire is constantly screaming on a radio frequency, a unique identifier, is not something most people are aware of, and it's not something that they've given any thought to the surveillance potential of. And it's the same with your, you know, your pair of Apple AirPods or your other wireless headset, right? Like people don't think of these things as tracking technologies. But if you are clever enough, if you have enough antennas distributed around the world, and governments are incentivized to be that clever and to distribute that many antennas, then you can start to do things like track people with Bluetooth headphones or link car tires to a specific license plate. And, you know, that's the thing I think I want people to take away is that the technology that they use is pretty carelessly designed, and it's not intended for privacy. Most of these companies that have designed these things did not intend to create a surveillance system, but they have, in effect, done that because they have not thought through the social, social, societal and political consequences of the technology they've created.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:11:45] You mentioned in the book that China, Russia and North Korea all have the same kind of access or potential access as companies in the US.
Byron Tau: [00:11:54] Essentially, every device on Earth is probably hooked up to an ad exchange in some way, shape or form. If you have any apps on your device that rely on mobile advertising, or if you visit websites that rely on banner or display advertising, you have shared some piece of information with an ad exchange. And when you have that much cyber data sloshing around, when you have that much information about billions of devices around the world, it's going to attract the attention of governments. And because these ad networks were designed in a very open way, they were designed to connect ad buyers with people who have open ad space on their mobile devices or in their browser windows. That means that they're they're pretty open to manipulation or infiltration. And so foreign governments can set up things like shell companies, or they can have contractors or companies within their country, set up such entities and siphon off data from these ad networks. Now, in most cases, that's technically against the rules of these ad exchanges. You're not really supposed to sit there and capture the cyber cyber data of billions of people. But the reality is it's very difficult to police, and there are some very clear instances of governments doing that. The US government is one I wrote about in my book, but there's also been a line of reporting about Israeli companies who have done the same thing and who have offered that product to countries around the world, which is essentially a data stream of where billions of millions or billions of devices are at any given moment. And it's probably no exaggeration to say that any country with a halfway decent cyber program has found a way to get this data in some way, shape or form.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:13:40] Can you talk through some of the kind of, uh, tensions and examples of use by non-government organizations and groups?
Byron Tau: [00:13:47] Sure. So this data is available for private sector use, I think, you know, in this this summer we saw a group in the United States, the Heritage Foundation. We saw them, you know, tweeting out insights about phones that were at the home of the person who, uh, allegedly tried to assassinate Donald Trump. Um, those insights are questionable, but it's something that any private group could do. Uh, and it's it's creeping into the realm of private investigators. Journalists have used this data. The New York Times used it to try to identify people who were at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. And then there have been some pretty eyebrow raising use cases. For example, a small Catholic publication called The Pillar. At one point obtained data from ad networks that came from Grindr. It's not that Grindr was actually out there selling data on its users, but Grindr was mobile ad supported and was plugged into this web of mobile advertising and ad exchanges. And so a data broker had a pretty rich Grindr set. And this Catholic publication went out and obtained some of this data and used it to identify specific a specific priest who was using grinder in violation of the Catholic Church's teachings and doctrine on homosexuality, and this person was forced to resign his church position. He was named in a publication and so real world consequences can be visited upon people through this commercially available information.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:15:24] And I'd add to that the kind of the cyber security risk of that data being attacked for ransomware or so on in the book. And just earlier, you mentioned how unique our individual trajectories really are, and you talk about it as our own precise movements, being very individual. Have you had much pushback on that?
Byron Tau: [00:15:45] Not really, because I think it's just objectively true that if you were to have a data set of all the devices in Washington, DC, you'd probably only need a few tiny pieces of information that could be obtained from other data sources or other data brokers, or are just laying out there on the web to identify the owner of any of those devices. You know, I'm the only person, uh, in Washington, D.C., who gets up at my home address and bikes straight down the National Mall and goes to an office in Georgetown. And, you know, now if someone has the D.C., uh, phone records, they can probably find me because I've just given that information. But, you know, our patterns and habits are unique to us, and I, I think, um, you know, companies will sometimes try to claim that these data sets are anonymized, but they know that there are things you can infer from them. And you know, the the reason government entities are interested in these data sets is because there are things you can infer from them. There are sometimes individual names you can infer from a device by cross-checking the property records, or cross-checking other data sets that have information about where people live and where people work. And, you know, I think that this has been demonstrated time and time again.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:16:58] It absolutely has. And I feel like I've just inadvertently aged myself there because this is like I've been writing about for a long time. And it it is heartening in some ways to see more global recognition of that reality. What are some of the interdependencies and vulnerabilities in the national security environment and technology that you wish were better understood?
Byron Tau: [00:17:22] Yeah. So I think I would point to this wireless data. I think it's still not understood broadly by the general public and surveillance devices based on tracking people through their Bluetooth headphones or their phones. Wireless like Wi-Fi antennas are coming into common use now. I found some examples of police departments down in Texas, in the United States, that were installing devices made by German company that can do just this, that they're built into a license plate reader, and they can capture ambiently all the information about a device that passes within range. And you put enough of those sensors around a country or around a city, and you will have very good insight into where people go. And I don't see a big push from the technology companies to do a whole lot about that. And I don't see a tremendous outcry from the public about how these things that we're all increasingly carrying around are a very serious privacy vulnerability. And there are technology solutions that you can build into your devices to mitigate some of this, right. You can rotate the identifier that your Bluetooth headphone is broadcasting on some random interval. And, you know, you can also talk about, at a societal level, whether we want to give police agencies these kind of powers or these kind of technologies, you know, without any sort of judicial supervision or judicial oversight. So this is one area where I think is quite poorly understood by both the public, by policymakers, and even by civil society in some cases.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:19:04] And I think your book is a great step towards helping people understand the real depth and breadth of collection and their potential for privacy, intrusion and reality in many situations. Do you think that people are concerned about privacy? I wonder if it's just as you conclude in the final chapter of your book, people feel a little despondent when they find all this out.
Byron Tau: [00:19:27] I think people care about privacy, but are very sort of there's a learned helplessness in a lot of cases because these technologies really are so embedded in our lives and they are useful, right? Like it would be hard to give up the conveniences of a modern cell phone or the magic of Apple's AirPods over privacy concerns. But I do think people when you know, there are these stories about, say, General Motors sending data to a data broker, people do get angry. And, you know, I don't think people like a lot of what's happening in the technology ecosystem. I also don't think they quite know what to do about it, that, you know, the, the, the way that modern phones and modern technologies and modern services are is that it's very difficult to know exactly what settings to turn off or what you know, what, what services you can trust that are privacy friendly and which ones aren't. So a lot of people have simply given up, uh, so unfortunately, that is part of the public discourse and dynamic around privacy at the. At the same time, I do think there are a lot of states in the United States that are acting on privacy. And when you have numerous states that all pass slightly different privacy laws, then there becomes a lot more impetus at the federal level to do something that harmonizes them all.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:20:55] Your book is called Means of Control. How do you see that government and the commercial sector generally are controlling citizens, or is it that you're more concerned about the possibility of control?
Byron Tau: [00:21:07] Well, the honest answer is it came from a Thomas Pynchon quote that I very much liked, and I needed a title, but it's very much the latter. You know, I don't want to imply in that Western democracies are necessarily using these huge data sets right now, today, for the purposes of controlling their citizens. But the potential is there that these are very, very complicated systems, and they are in many ways more complicated than most people can really grasp. And when you have systems that complicated, they are there. There is a potential for them to be misused for some form of social control. And I think we are seeing authoritarian countries using data in that way. And, you know, currently in the United States, in Australia and the UK and in Western Europe, um, you know, these are still democratic countries, but there is this hunger for data from government officials and how to balance, uh, sort of legitimate and responsible uses of data and where to draw the line is going to be a very, very important question going forward.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:22:19] Yeah, absolutely. That brings me to a segment on alliances. Uh, what role does technology play in diplomacy, and how can we improve alliances, particularly on on data and privacy?
Byron Tau: [00:22:31] It's a good question. Um, I'd point to an anecdote in my book that I thought was pretty interesting. At one point, the US federal government had set up a international task force called Operation Gallant Phoenix, which was a multinational coalition that was trying to fight ISIS and to stop both the flow of fighters in to the Middle East, and then also to try to track and bring some accountability to fighters that were in the Middle East and went back to their home countries, and that involved a whole range of countries that the United States didn't necessarily have great or long lasting security partnerships with. Right. Like the US and Australia and the UK were all in the Five Eyes alliance together. We have a long standing intelligence relationship, but this effort involved bringing in lots and lots of countries that the US didn't necessarily have, that, um, that deep or long of a history with. And one of the solutions they found to this problem was open source or unclassified data. So there were instances where they were able to share a lot of information with a foreign state, because either the classified analog was in the unclassified data and they could just send them the unclassified stuff, or the origin of the tip or the lead or the intelligence was actually itself unclassified and on social media or on something off an ad network. And it was born unclassified and so they could share it with a wide array of partners. So in, you know, in in many ways, as tough as this book is on, on some of these programs that, you know, the rise of data that is from commercial sources or is unclassified is actually in some ways kind of strengthened some alliances and brought countries together to fight international problems in ways that potentially were more difficult 20 or 30 years ago.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:24:20] Yeah, that's a really great perspective. I'm going to pivot here. You covered the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election extensively. What stayed with you from this story?
Byron Tau: [00:24:31] I think what stayed with me was the questions about how effective this campaign that the Russians waged, the lasting impact that this campaign of trolling and hacking and leaking left on the American psyche is one that still reverberates today. Right. There are intelligence briefings now, today, uh, you know, about foreign malign influence in our elections. There are accusations from partisans on both sides that so and so. Who's exercising their First Amendment rights is toeing some foreign governments line. And there is an enduring belief among partisans on both sides that something nefarious happened in one or both of these elections. And in many ways, the Russians were quite successful at helping unglue the basic social trust that undermined that underlies a democratic country and a democratic election. That this whole notion that a country can reach into our internal affairs and merely through some Facebook ads and some sockpuppet accounts on Twitter, can cast doubt on the legitimacy of an election. That really stuck with me, that the public confidence in both the information environment as well as, you know, the the political process could be so affected by, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million dollars in advertising and sock puppets.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:26:00] Where obviously coming towards another US election, presidential election this year. How do you think that's playing out in the current campaign?
Byron Tau: [00:26:10] It's a good question. I think there's a lot more awareness, uh, by the government of these campaigns. I think they've learned some lessons from previous elections. I think there is actually an attempt to be a little bit more transparent than in previous elections. The federal agencies that are responsible for cybersecurity and for the assurance of our elections are trying to balance both providing the public with good, timely information and being more transparent about their engagements with these companies. And so they may not get it right, but I think they have learned their lesson from previous election cycles and are trying to correct and learn from those past mistakes.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:26:51] How and why are the intersections between data and the information environment so important?
Byron Tau: [00:26:57] The sheer amount of commercial data that's out there can sometimes make it easy to target some of these campaigns. I think even this week, intelligence community officials had said that they've seen the rise of Russian sort of influence campaigns in a box coming out of marketing companies based in Russia and based around the world. And so when you have so much commercial data floating around out there, it allows you to make easy targeting decisions about who to reach or you know who to target your message at, how to target your message at those people.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:27:31] Can you talk through your current concerns about data collection and influence capacity of TikTok and and what you see as most significant in the US at the moment?
Byron Tau: [00:27:41] So I think there are two concerns about TikTok and they're both a little different. One is the data collection piece. And I think, um, you know, my personal opinion is that that part of it is a little bit overstated that given the amount of information that's out there on ad networks, that's out there from data brokers, and given the fact that most of these data brokers are not conducting extensive due diligence on who they're providing information to, there are many, many ways to get very detailed cybersecurity information or personal information about Americans. Now, maybe TikTok is a particularly rich source. Maybe it shows a lot of social connections. Maybe it shows a lot of people's propensity. But that kind of data is also out there elsewhere and is collectable by countries like China. The piece, I think is very interesting, and I don't think we as a sort of free democratic country, have a great answer for is the content piece that TikTok, um, you know, there's no evidence that TikTok's algorithm has ever been manipulated for political purposes by Beijing or anyone else.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:28:47] Although there is evidence of suppression of specific types of content. So and I've written about this in a recent column, which I'll put in the show notes, things like Tiananmen Square, for example.
Byron Tau: [00:28:57] There is that um, but that, you know, Beijing was behind putting its thumb on, you know, some hashtag or something like that. But in a geopolitical crisis, you certainly could imagine something like, you know, say there was a war heating up over a potential invasion of Taiwan, and all of a sudden, you know, 200 million Americans started seeing a whole lot of antiwar, pro-China content in their feeds. It would be very hard to do something about that in that moment, especially if you know it was authentic American content and the only thing being tweaked was the frequency with which it was being shown to Americans.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:29:34] This idea of kind of equivalence between censorship and content moderation, which is clearly a topic which needs to be grappled with across all the platforms. Tiktok's ownership is is clearly a problem in the US context, Fascinatingly, for third countries like Australia is that both those platform entities are foreign owned, so it brings a different dimension to the discussion. When we think about foreign investment vulnerabilities, we generally think about critical infrastructure. So decisions behind banning Huawei technology in 5G networks. But many of the new investment vulnerabilities, you know, things like TikTok, are consumer applications. What do you see as the implications for the future of foreign investment in digital technologies?
Byron Tau: [00:30:20] Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I don't know how it's all going to shake out, but there definitely is a realization among Western policymakers that as digital services creep up in countries that are not democracies, that there are these questions about what do you do about that? Um, you know, historically in the United States, most of the platforms that Americans have used have been American. And, you know, that's actually what underlies a lot of our spying power. The fact that so many people around the world use Gmail or use Facebook or use Twitter, that enables us to collect lots of intelligence from lots of sources around the world, and we're suddenly having to grapple with the fact that, you know, the future digital services may not be based in in allied countries or Western democracies. That may come from, other places, and that may subject American citizens and citizens of our allies, our democratic allies to to surveillance and in some cases, transnational repression. And in some cases, you know, I think we've even seen this with China and other countries trying to reach across their borders into the domestic political affairs of the United States. There were cases of China setting up police stations to harass some Ex-chinese nationals, who in many cases were American citizens. We saw some of some Indian linked activity around the world to deal with critics. And so this kind of thing is going to increase. And the, the, the amount of data that's going to be out there and the number of digital services that these countries that may potentially be interested in, in these kind of activities, transnational repression have access to is going to increase. And so it's going to be a very interesting policy problem. But I do think there is a realization, um, you know, in the last few years with actions taken by both the Biden administration and the US Congress to crack down on flows of Americans data abroad, that's a recognition that these services, these technologies and these data sets can pose a threat to the privacy and the dignity of American citizens.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:32:27] Yeah. I mean, they're incredible first steps. Personally, I'd love to see a more systematic approach to protecting everyone's data and the system being more attuned to privacy. I want to go to a segment called Emerging Tech for Emerging Leaders. What do you see as the biggest challenge for leaders arising from the current technology environment?
Byron Tau: [00:32:47] You know, I mean, I think there are all sorts of questions to ask about algorithms, you know, beyond just the chat bots that are now infecting everything that we we do on the internet. I mean, there's going to be a lot more pressure to have computers make decisions. And, um, those computers may not always be making the right decisions. And, and human beings may be relying too much on computer systems to make decisions because there's some potentially misguided belief that they're less biased or that they can make better decisions. And I think, um, you know, I think people who are in the space of deciding whether to put computer algorithms into all sorts of things, like we are already seeing it in criminal justice, in hiring and deciding who gets certain benefits. It's being applied in all sorts of ways, and I don't think we have fully thought through the social consequences of it. And I actually think there was a great story in the New York Times recently about, um, Spain deployed an algorithm that was supposed to determine the risk of domestic violence Re-offenders. And in general, the police were largely deferring to this algorithm. And there's a real question about whether that works, and b, whether that is the right policy solution.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:34:09] Coming up is a segment called Eyes and Ears. What have you been reading, listening to, or watching lately that might be of interest to our audience?
Byron Tau: [00:34:18] Hmm. So I've gotten very into the Apple TV series Slow Horses, which is about some washed up MI5 agents who are on detached duty to a to sort of a unit that is for misfits and wash ups. So that is highly entertaining. Um, I also, uh, recently got back into spy novels. Um, uh, I was looking for some summery, beachy reads, and so I recently read, um, an old le Carré book, um, that I'm totally blanking on the name of. But then I also read The Peacock and the Sparrow by IS Berry, which was highly entertaining, and I can recommend that to anyone who is into spy novels. So that's what's been keeping me busy recently. I'm in a real espionage kick. Actually.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:35:06] We, uh, we are deep in the middle of winter, so referring to things as summer summer reading is really jealousy inducing. Um, I want to go to a segment now called disconnect. How do you wind down and disconnect reading books?
Byron Tau: [00:35:20] Um, I, uh, did some travel this summer. I went to Peru and, uh, went to the beach up in Massachusetts, so that was nice. And in general, I try to, I tried I've been rehabbing a running injury, so, uh, that's been going well. I've been finally able to get out there. I've been riding my bike, um, and I've been catching up on my reading because when you write a book, um, often you neglect other things in your life. And I'm a big reader. I enjoy reading mostly non-fiction, but I'll mix in a novel here and there, and so it's been good to try to get back to that.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:35:57] And I want to ask you a little about the implications for global technology companies in the use of their specific tech in and data in war from the reliance of satellite communications and use of drones in the war in Ukraine, as well as, more recently to Israel's alleged use of AI targeting systems in Gaza. What does this mean for societies and government?
Byron Tau: [00:36:22] I think it means that lawyers are going to continue to be, you know, at the forefront of deciding a lot of these tech questions going forward. But in seriousness, like, I think there's so many fascinating questions here about, you know, you know, autonomous drones and the dual use of what are clearly intended for civilian use technologies that can then be repurposed for warfare. And then, of course, the application of AI and algorithms to things like targeting decisions. You know, I think these are fascinating questions. And the fact that we have active conflict zones right now in the world means that they're going to be at the forefront in these conflict zones.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:37:03] The final segment is need to know is there anything I didn't ask that would have been great to cover? One thing I'd.
Byron Tau: [00:37:09] Give a shout out to is my employer notice. If anyone is listening, but they'd like to work in American politics and journalism. We are a new nonprofit news outlet based in Washington, D.C. that's not us. Sort of a play on POTUS, which is the nickname Americans give to the president, or Scotus, which is the nickname we give to the Supreme Court. We cover news and policy and politics in Washington, and we offer a paid two year fellowship program for early career reporters. You get some mid-career folks like me kicking around to be mentors and to help teach, and you get to do some great journalism. And, you know, journalism is in a interesting transition right now. And so it's, um, it's a nice initiative. It's a it's meant to train the next generation of reporters and anyone listening who has any interest in a career in media, I would definitely check us out at Notis. Org.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:38:03] Byron, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure.
Byron Tau: [00:38:06] Thanks so much for having me.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:38:09] Thanks for listening to Technology and Security. I've been your host, doctor Miah Hammond-Errey. If there was a moment you enjoyed today or a question you have about the show, feel free to tweet me at Miah_HE or send an email to the address in the show notes. You can find out more about the work we do on our website, also linked in the show notes. If you like this episode, please rate, review it and share it with your friends.
