It's Been a Minute
Drones, TikTok & Luigi Mangione have us asking: who's watching us?
Fri, 20 Dec 2024
From the drones over New Jersey, to the surveillance cameras that captured Luigi Mangione, to even TikTok - our movements, our likeness, even our shopping habits can be tracked. But how did we get to this point? Host Brittany Luse sits down with NPR Cybersecurity Correspondent Jenna McLaughlin and the Brennan Center for Justice's Faiza Patel to get into just how much of our daily lives are up for grabs. Then, Brittany turns the page to the best books of 2024. She is joined by NPR Arts Desk reporter Andrew Limbong and Traci Thomas, host of The Stacks podcast to rank the good, the bad, and the "I just can't put it down."Support public media and receive ad-free listening & bonus content by joining NPR+ today: https://plus.npr.org/Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: How are drones, TikTok, and surveillance connected?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. This week, we're connecting the dots between a backpack, drones, and TikTok. I know, I know. How are all of these things connected?
Well, we're going to find out with NPR's Jenna McLaughlin and the Brennan Center for Justice's Faiza Patel. Jenna, Faiza, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Great to be here. Thanks for having us. Happy to have you both. So last week, we covered the Luigi Mangione case and what it says about the larger feeling toward health care in this country.
But there's one part of that conversation that I wanted to poke at a little more. The photos authorities used to ID Mangione. In Starbucks, in the taxi, and in the hostel, Mangione's face was captured by surveillance cameras. And granted, he was in Midtown New York City, one of the most heavily watched areas in the world.
But I thought it was really striking that no one seemed concerned about how easy it was for authorities to follow his every move. In fact, a lot of people were surprised he wasn't caught sooner. Constant surveillance is something we've kind of come to expect in this country. Cameras on the streets, when you enter a store, even in the self-checkout lines, more cameras.
And haven't we all joked about how our phones are listening to us when we get a super specific Instagram ad? And now there are drones flying over New Jersey and no one seems to know whose they are or what they're doing. I feel like there's been a shift, at least for me, in the way we talk about being watched.
Whether it's the government or private companies collecting our data, it always feels like somebody's watching me. So I have to ask, why are we so okay with constantly being watched? And have we unknowingly negotiated a new social contract?
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Chapter 2: What does the Luigi Mangione case reveal about surveillance?
Well, it was a slow burn, and I think you have sort of two things happening at the same time. So one is you have huge leaps in technology, right? It becomes much cheaper. to have cameras everywhere and to process the data and their ability to capture images and voices and other kinds of data about us has also gone up dramatically.
At the same time, you have two other factors on the buy side, if you will, right? So one is the government after 9-11 builds a huge surveillance infrastructure and that includes police-owned cameras in our city streets. It also includes purchasing data from all of these different apps and cameras and license plate readers that are all over our cities. Right.
I feel like that's a fact that a lot of people just are not aware of, just how much our information the U.S. government is buying from private companies.
Yeah. At the same time, you have a targeted ad market, right? So companies want to know where you went, what you bought, what you clicked on, so they can serve you with targeted ads. So you have this confluence of factors on both the supply side and the demand side, which lead us to a situation where surveillance becomes pervasive.
I mean, I think because it's happening a step at a time, people don't necessarily realize how pervasive the surveillance is. Like crabs boiling in water, basically.
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Chapter 3: Why are we okay with constant surveillance?
Precisely. I agree with Faiza. Technology moves faster than the law, than regulation, than protections. And people might not have initially been aware of those systems that have been put in place. I think around 2013, when Edward Snowden released his documents about the NSA's sort of pervasive surveillance around the world, but also of American phone records.
People first started to become aware that that was happening and to be upset about it, particularly from the perspective of government surveillance. However, I think people also love the convenience and the fun of the corporate side of surveillance in a way. You think about that app where it'll age your face a certain number of years and tell you what you look like in the future.
Chapter 4: How has technology changed surveillance practices?
I remember, I remember.
That ended up being a Russian app and people happily gave up their photos of their faces.
What has begun to feel different for me in this moment, but also specifically in the case of Luigi Mangione, is the occasional participation of companies. In the case of Mangione, Peak Design CEO Peter Daring reached out to the police after multiple people alerted him that the alleged shooter appeared to be wearing his company's backpack.
After some backlash, Peak Design released a statement clarifying that they, quote, had not provided customer information to the police and would only do so under the order of a subpoena. But that still made me wonder about how things like our shopping data that you brought up, Faiza, is being used. What kind of precedent does that set for consumers?
I mean, I think it all goes back to the ad economy, right? Which is that Every move you make in the commercial space, by and large, is tracked so that companies can build profiles of you about what kind of purchaser are you. Are you a Walmart purchaser or are you a Whole Foods purchaser? And what does that mean in terms of what your income and lifestyle and purchasing habits might be?
And then that allows them to target ads to you just to make us buy more stuff. It's the American way. And that data, though, is also really rich and detailed and also provides insights about individuals' political leanings potentially, their faith. All of these kinds of information may be inferred from a sufficient collection of data.
And that then becomes very useful to the government, which also fuels the market for this data to continue being collected and continue being sold.
Gosh, I feel like that's kind of a bad situation for the consumer to be in.
One thing that I think is important to also remember in all of this is that the data isn't always accurate, right? I didn't know that. Yeah. They call it noise when they talk about data. You could be associated with the wrong people, the wrong cars, the wrong address.
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Chapter 5: What is the role of data brokers in surveillance?
So that makes a huge difference, checking the privacy settings on your browser. will also limit the collection of information about you. So those are things we can do. There are things that companies have done and I think will continue to do to protect user data. But at the end of the day, I think the government has to step in and provide us with comprehensive data privacy protection.
You know, the entire European Union, all of those countries have a law that protects their data so that there are limits on, you know, the data that is collected. So they're like, you know, pretty basic building blocks of what data privacy law has to include. And we have a bill that's been introduced but has never actually moved out of the Commerce Committee, I believe.
And the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency, CISA, have put out a lot of information about what they call secure by design. They want companies to design their products with security baked in so that people don't have to think about that kind of thing.
Yes, that's what we want, security by design and privacy by design.
Sounds like until we get some comprehensive laws passed, our data privacy will continue to be at the mercy of private companies and their judgments on what they are willing to share. So let me just delete this app real quick. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate this conversation. I have learned so much here. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of government data purchases?
And as a thank you, I'd like to teach you something by playing a game with the two of you. Can you stick around for a tiny bit longer?
Sure.
We'll be right back with a little game I like to call, but did you know? Stick around.
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All right, all right. We are going to play a little game I like to call, But Did You Know? Here's how it works. I'm going to share a story that's been making headlines this week. And as I give you some background of the story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it. But don't worry. It's all multiple choice. The right answer is in there somewhere.
And the first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point. Person with the most points wins. And their prize is bragging rights. Are y'all ready? Let's go. All right. I love this enthusiasm. Okay. To start... As we close in on the quarter of the century, Pantone has unveiled the 2025 color of the year, mocha mousse.
It's described as a mellow brown infused with a sensorial and comforting warmth. The color of the year tradition has been around since 1999. So it's only right to ask, what was the first Pantone color of the year? Was it A, Tangerine Tango, B, Peach Fuzz, or C, Cerulean? Cerulean. I'm going to go with Peach Fuzz. All right. Faiza says Cerulean. Jenna says Peach Fuzz.
Well, Faiza, you guessed right. The answer is C, Cerulean. Cerulean. The color symbolized tranquility for the new millennium. And so that makes me wonder, what are each of your colors of the year 2025? Mine's always the same. Navy. Navy. FISA. Classic Navy. Okay. I like that. And Jenna, what about you? I'm going to go with forest green.
Oh. Reconnect to nature. Oh.
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Chapter 7: How can we protect our privacy in a digital age?
Oh, I absolutely have favorite articles. I still think about how, I think it was in 2019, perhaps, or 2018, my mind was rocked by Taffy Brodesser-Akner's profile of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean... Okay, okay. All right. I take it back. All right, all right, all right. Favorite articles. Favorite articles.
127.
That's incredible. What about you, Andrew? 53? You heard it here. My guests today, NPR Arts Desk reporter Andrew Limbaugh and Tracy Thomas, host of the Stacks podcast, really are in the stacks. The reason they're here today is because they've got a bird's eye view of what happened in books this year. And let me tell you, we are telling on ourselves in our literature.
So they're going to help me break down some of the big themes in this year's books. Marriage, money, and what writing is even for. And later, some recommendations for 2024's best books. Tracy, I want to hear from you. What themes or trends are you seeing in this year's books?
I feel like the trend that I have seen the most this year is books that are concerned with money. And I'm not talking about like books about class. I'm talking about books that are expressly talking about how much things cost, obsessions with salaries, making money. For example, the first one that came to mind for me was Colored Television by Dan Z. Senna.
All right, Tracy, tell me the story of the book without spoilers. I mean, the protagonist, Jane, she is a novelist who is also a professor. She's taking a break from teaching to finish her second novel. It's a flop. She decides, you know what? There's actually not that much money in books anyway. I'm going to get into Hollywood. And she decides to write a TV show with a Hollywood exec big wig.
Jane is what Dancy calls mulatto, which is black and white American mixed. And she's going to write the great mulatto television show. And it's a total farce, but Jane is obsessed with money. How much this costs, how much her rent is, how much she could make, how much the green juice costs that the producer is drinking at their first meeting. And I love it.
You know, it's funny. We just had Waylon Wong from The Indicator on for an episode about dating up in class. And it reminded me of this stat that Waylon had brought to us. Investopedia calculated the cost of the American dream in 2023, which includes a house, sending two kids to college, vacations, etc.
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Chapter 8: What were the key themes in this year's books?
And when she was let go from the evening news in 1995, I kind of felt like she disappeared. We all know the old adage in journalism, you're the journalist, you the journalist are not supposed to be the story. So it was really great to get to know her better through reading her book and to find out where she's been for the last 30 years.
But one of the things I love the most about reading it is that even though she was somebody who was known for being cool, calm, collected, asking sharp questions, getting the story. She still was like, you know, she had the comportment of somebody who delivered national news. I didn't know she was so funny. I didn't know she was so tough. I mean, she had so much grit.
She opened up about surviving sexual abuse by a family doctor. going toe-to-toe with Dan Rather at CBS. I mean, she was denied so many things in her career. She had to fight for so many things. She has such a potty mouth and such like a funny way of looking at and describing the things that she went through. But to me, this was kind of like the platonic ideal of a memoir.
It was really well written. It actually seemed to have been written by the person whose name was on the cover of the book, which is not always the case. It was really, really, really interesting to hear from her in her own words how she saw her career, and now how she understands her impact on younger generations.
She had a great press tour for this book that I thought was really funny. I listened to her interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, and she kind of big dogs him a couple times in a way that's really funny.
Yo, that was actually a tactic that I feel like she had to develop professionally, that she unpacks many times in the book.
Yeah, she was like, oh, that's how you're going to start this question?
I'm like, wow, dude. I love this. Okay. I need to read it. I'm sold.
I'm sold. Oh my gosh. That was great. It was great. Okay.
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