AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Voting and Technology - Online and Mail-In, Oracle and TikTok,

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  He had a few questions about Voting and the Technology surrounding Mail-in and Online Voting and then we got into the sales of the Chinese company ByteDance to Oracle. Here we go with Jim.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] They've been using some of our drone footage, which is why these Chinese drones are illegal to use for government contractors and many others. Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. I am enjoying this weather. This is my time of year. I was on with Jim this morning, we talked about TikTok, this whole Oracle thing. Why did the president do what he did and is the sale actually going to fix the problem? President Trump identified. So we talked about that and of course, we also talked about voting. It can't get political sometimes with Mr. Polito. So here we go.

Jim Polito: [00:00:41] Okay, this is the guy you need to have at your side through all of this. I want to talk to him about Oracle and TikTok, cause I want to get his take on it.  I've got something more important to talk about first, and that is online voting - God help us. Here are our good friend and tech guru. Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:05] Hey, good morning, Jim. Love this weather. Love it.

Jim Polito: [00:01:09] This is Canada weather. Speaking of the great white North, Gary, a listener from Gardner sent a picture of him. You know, some scrape marks on his windshield had a little bit of frost on the windshield little bit there. Yeah. I would figure that you would like this you're coming into your season here.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:30] I am. I, I remember summers, it would get to like 70 or 72 and it was just wonderful. That was summer weather. I just don't like 90 degrees.

Jim Polito: [00:01:41] Well, I'm kinda, with you there. I'm with you there. I don't like it.

Alright. Here's what I don't like. I don't like online voting. First of all. I don't like mail-in voting. I don't like online voting, but you sent me some interesting information. We can do online banking, which you would think needs all of this security. What's the difference between that and attempting to do online voting? Why can't online voting be done?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:10] Yeah, this is a really interesting problem. The bottom line for everybody is it's not a problem that will be solved any time soon, or my soon. I mean, it will take many years before this problem is solved. The big problem you have has to do with a secret ballot. So when you go to the voting booth, although this year they took the little flap off the back of the booth. So people could potentially look over your shoulder, but people were there to monitor to make sure there wasn't somebody holding a gun to your head to make sure you voted the right way. In fact, it's illegal pretty much everywhere to take a picture of your ballot. And that's gone to court many times because again, Someone could be extorting you to make sure you're voting the way they want you to.

Or if you live in Orange County, California, the ballots came pre-filled with the Democrats, checked off. How do you know if it's a legitimate ballot, that's the problem really comes in Jim? When you're talking about ATMs, banking is different. We do have encryption from the ATM machine, all the way to the data center for the bank.

And then the banks also share their data over secure links and, and they count on you checking your bank statement at least every once in a while.

But once you've voted, all right. How do you know that your vote was counted? That your vote made it? How can you do it secretly? Yeah. And so that's the big problem here.

You cannot have it secret. Now. There are some technologies out there right now that allow this auditable voting system, kind of using the technology that's behind Bitcoin, but it's not there yet. We can't be sure someone is literally or figuratively holding a gun to your head while you vote. Mail-in voting doesn't work because of that one reason and we can't do online voting because again, the same reason, but it just can't be audited.

Jim Polito: [00:04:24] Yeah, I get it. Now that makes complete sense to me because you do lose the ability of the secret ballot. I want everybody to vote, but if somebody chooses not to vote, that's their right.  I guess it's public information that someone could look at.

Well, what ballot did Jim Polito take in the primary? You know, if I take a Democrat, I'm an unenrolled. So if I take a Democrat ballot or I take a Republican ballot or whatever, somebody can look at that and say, Oh, he took a Republican ballot. Oh, he voted in that election. And then you get on a certain list, but I see where you're going.

The next step from this is, yeah, it's actually easier to do the banking because everybody's upfront about it. There are built-in checks and balances. You would give away the secret ballot if we were to say you vote online.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:17] Well, even with banking, we look at it and look at your credit card.

Now they have the chips on them that do help to authenticate your card. But right now, the latest numbers that we have are from 2018, and credit card fraud alone costs the world's banks almost $28 billion. In 2018. That's a system that is sure. So what kind of fraud could we expect from heaven forbid, we have mail-in voting.

I think that might be inevitable, but that was a fraud. There's going to be crazy and it's not like an ATM, we just can't secure it. We can't be sure that people are voting secretly and that's been fundamental. You look at some of these other countries, China has 98% of the population voting every time there's an election. They know exactly who you voted for. Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:06:14] Well, and you don't have much of a choice, frankly, when you voted China, you're voting for the communist party that's it. We're talking with tech talk guru, Craig Peterson, our good friend who loves the little cold snap in the air right now.

Alright. Let's get to Oracle and TikTok. Now, you know, I, I don't post things on TikTok but I did register my name so that I would have Jim Polito on TikTok as I do on everything else because someday, maybe, you know, people, my age will take over TikTok. I don't know.  I found it. They talk to me decently. I was explaining to my stepsons. They said you're on TikTok. And they said, well, wait a minute. I'm not posting anything. I do view stuff on TikTok and I said, my TikTok experience is much different than yours and they said, what do you mean? I said, my TikTok experiences, politics and home improvement, and maybe motorcycles and the rolling stones. You know, like that's the kind of stuff that gets sent to me. Cause that's the kind of stuff that I like. Oracle now beats out Microsoft to buy this platform owned by the Chinese communists.  I've been looking forward to hearing your take on this

Craig Peterson: [00:07:34] This real interesting thing, because it's the first time ever I'm aware of where some deal like this has happened. Certainly during the war, we had businesses that were broken up. For instance, Bayer here in the US that makes the aspirin was a German company in world war two. Congress divested the German company, Bayer of all interest in the United States. And, given the company to some buddies, right.

But you know, maybe not that I couldn't happen here in the United States. What we're looking at right now is this company called Bytedance, which is this Chinese company. Don't think of companies under socialism the way we think of them under a typical free market. The company is controlled by the socialists in China, by the Chinese communist party.

They were sending data to China. And anything that goes to China is monitored by the Chinese military. They've been using some of our drone footage, which is why these Chinese drones are illegal to use for government contractors, and many others because they have GPS in them. They're showing video it's giving them the exact GPS coordinates and they'd probably have a better map of the United States than we do now.

When it comes to TikTok much the same problem. We're taking videos. We're giving locations where we are, who our friends are. So if they want to trick you into something with phishing, et cetera, they now have enough information to do it. So that's why President Trump said that. This is it. I am invoking these powers that have been with the president in Congress for many, many decades now. I am going to force the divestiture of TikTok. Or it's going to be illegal to have on the stores here in the US. So where we're at right now is the Chinese government said we will not allow Microsoft to buy TikTok. So that came in over the weekend and that's when Oracle's rose to the top.

Cause Microsoft and Walmart were, kind of, going into together. Walmart really wanted to control it and Microsoft would do the technology. But what they're going to do is bring it here, under US control. But unlike the Bayer Aspirin factory, where you can have someone go when you can see there is no socialist influence here. The national socialists of Germany are not here running it anymore, it's the Americans. You can't audit all of this code, that is TikTok in a matter of days, weeks, months, or maybe even years. There's still going to be problems here, but it is moving in the right direction. Oracle is an odd company and their pricing strategy historically has been to grab people by the ankles and shake them upside down and see how much money comes out and that's how much it costs to buy their database.

Jim Polito: [00:10:39] Isn't the CEO of Oracle kind of an odd duck.

Craig Peterson: [00:10:44] Oh yeah. He has the biggest Yacht in the world. And he is very, very, very, very strange, Larry Elison. This is going to be interesting on that front alone is TikTok going to become a charge for service? What's going to happen? But we're not going to get the security we want out of TikTok for some time. But I would imagine initially the servers are going to move directly in the US, under US control, and Oracles going to be mandated to not allow any of that data to go to China. They will probably be able to stop most of that from happening.

Jim Polito: [00:11:19] Unless, of course, there's some little sleeper bit of code somewhere in there that the Chinese have developed, but we'll see. Interesting. I feel better. Look, I never really cared about the Chinese knowing what I'm looking at on TikTok and where I am. I'm not important. But maybe we just don't want the Chinese to know what do Americans do and where do they go to be able to mine, that kind of information about us. Maybe in that respect, I don't care as an individual, but I care as a country. We'll see. The good thing is, Craig we have you here with us to watch this whole thing. Very helpful information, especially about voting and everything else.

So Craig, if people want to know more about Craig Peterson, I guess they can tune in on Saturdays, but there are other ways to reach you.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:11] Yeah. In fact, starting today, I have a couple of times a week. You got to have emails going out there about a three-minute read. I'm trying to keep these short to help you understand what's going on here in the tech business, particularly securities, I'm giving you some tips, some tricks, other things.

I'll be doing live pieces of training, all of this free. I'm not trying to sell something right. This isn't the way you might expect it to be, but I am going to be putting that out and you can get it by going to Craig peterson.com/subscribe, correct. peterson.com slash subscribe. You'll get my weekly newsletter, which covers everything Jim and I talk about.

And even some things we don't get to as well as some of this real quick minute training that I'm going to be doing.

Jim Polito: [00:12:58] That's fantastic. The Craig Peterson show, if you want to listen Saturday mornings at 11 o'clock on WTAG obviously in Western mass, you can use the iHeart radio app. And, there you have Mr. Peterson. We've got you covered front to back. Thank you. Craig so much enjoys the Canadian weather and we'll talk with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:19] Indian summer. Alright? Bye-bye.

Keep an eye out for this first email today, these three-minute emails. And let me know what you think if it's worth my doing, I think it is. And I'm sure it'll get better, but what do you think might make it a little bit better as well?

All right. Take care, everybody, and we'll be back tomorrow. Bye-bye.

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