AS HEARD ON NH Today WGIR-AM 610: Printer Technology, Identifying Fraudulent Ballots and Social Engineering

Welcome,

It's Friday, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jeff Chidester on NH Today. We discussed the Fraudulent Ballots and Printing Technology and how they can tell not only that it was printed. Then we got into social media and social engineering.   Here we go with Jeff. 

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- CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] That it prints on everything. And that grid has all that information. The idea is we don't want people using color copiers or printers to print money, which is why the secret service got involved with this. But it's gotten even more intense now with these new printers and new printer technology. 

Good morning, everybody.

This is a kind of an unusual appearance, but this is an unusual week, right? I was on this morning on the New Hampshire today with Mr. Jeff Chidester. He was sitting in this morning. He and I go way back. He's just a great guy. I love him, but we got into some, I think, great topics here on how we can detect certain types of fraud when it comes to voting and also a deep dive into social engineering.

 These sites are showing us stuff they think that we want to see and, uh, even search engine. So how do you get around those problems? This was a great little hit this morning. I'll be back, of course, tomorrow. But it is going to be a repeat show, but I think you're going to enjoy it anyway. It's one that I picked personally, 

Jeff Chidester: [00:01:11] Welcome back eight 38 in the morning. Of course, we've moved this gentleman around throughout the week because of the election, but we also want to make sure we get to hear from him. Of course, we're talking about Craig Peterson. You can find out more about Craig by going to Craig peterson.com.

Craigpeterson.com. 

Craig, I haven't talked to you in a long time. How you been, bud.

It has been awhile. Hey, I'm doing really great. It's great to hear you on the radio again, 

It's fun. We had a really fun show today. It's always a pleasure when I get to join you. I think keeping with the theme when we think about the tech aspect of voting, one of the other things that have come out to light, is something that you've been talking about is the ability to go ahead and now print out these ballots.

I mean, some States actually allowed it, but the continuation of being able to do that also leads to potentially more fraud. 

Craig Peterson: [00:01:54] Absolutely true. We have rumors out there. I know, for instance, in one of the polling places here in New Hampshire, they actually ran in and made copies of some of the same-day voter registrations because they ran out of the cards. There were so many people voting the same day. There are rumors that there's been some ballot stuffing going on. Apparently, in some areas, they have taken the real ballot they got their hands on. They ran it through a copier, printed them out and filled them in, and showing up with briefcases full of these things.

And many people might not be aware of it. But, you probably are, though, Jeff. Our color printers for, well, more than a decade. Now, when you print a page, any page at all that printer embeds on it, the serial number of the printer that made that print, as well as the date and time of that print. Were you aware of 

Jeff Chidester: [00:02:54] that?

No, it wasn't.

Is it how, where is it? Where do you see that? How would you see that? 

Craig Peterson: [00:03:01] The secret service apparently has some kind of secret agreements with all of these printer manufacturers, but it's not just in the US, it's worldwide, but if you have a slightly older printer, what you can look for is a series of little yellow dots, and they are scattered all over the page. And you can take a page that you print out and go ahead and take a picture of a zoom into the upper left-hand corner and take a picture, then put it on your computer and zoom in even more because these things are just one pixel and it has a grid that it prints on everything.

And that grid has all that information. The idea is we don't want people using color copiers or printers to print money, which is why the secret service got involved with this. But it's gotten even more intense now with these new printers and new printer technology, and you'll probably familiar as well—Jeff, with the technology where you can embed a message in something else. 

So, for instance, you might send a picture of something to supposedly your friend, and it's intercepted by the Russians, and the Russians look out and say, Oh, it's just a picture. But embedded inside of that is a secret message. That sort of thing could happen pretty commonly. That is exactly what our printers are doing right now. They're using dithering now to create moderate watermarks. And it isn't just color printers anymore. It's even black and white printers. 

So if they really want to get into this, they can tell that a ballot has been faked and which printer printed it, and the date and time of the printing itself. 

Jeff Chidester: [00:04:49] Once again, we're talking to Craig Peterson.

Of course, you can find out more by going toCraigpeterson.com. Craigpeterson.com. I'll throw it up on the Facebook page as well. And tech talk show as well. It can be heard on many stations, actually. And his podcast. You just over the place. 

You know, Craig, I never knew that. That's actually fascinating.

It would be interesting to see how people looked into that as they went through that process, of being able to deduce that number and that code. That's just once again, I just did not know that. 

One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, Craig too, is when we think about, I haven't had a chance to talk to you in so long, you look at all these tech issues, and you look at how the tech giants have really been so much focused.

We found out yesterday that the tech giants have once again basically shut down President Trump's accounts, and they're not letting those posts up. Where's that going to go? I mean, I understand that the balance they want to have, but once again, they are, they're not supposed to be technically, journalists.

it's up to the people to decide whether they believe the information or not. I know that's a little bit difficult. We have to trust people. Where's this going to go, as far as a tech understanding, as far as the federal government addressing this issue. 

Craig Peterson: [00:05:53] I remember way back in 83 when I first got really involved in the internet, and I was so excited because we had democratization of information, unfiltered and of course now what you're referring to today is the fact that these major social media platforms are filtering what we see. 

That started those five, maybe it was eight years ago, where on Facebook you could follow somebody, and you would see on  your feed everything that person posted. Facebook decided, no, we're not going to do that. We are going to decide what Jeff Chidester might be most interested in seeing.

Some major celebrities dropped right off.  Basically, what was happening is Facebook said, "Hey, you company X or Mr. Celebrity B" If you want people to see the posts, you know, the people that said they liked your page and they want to follow you. Do you want those people to see your posts? You have to pay us extra. 

That's when this whole controversy started, right? And where you're going, is, are they a publisher or are they more like a public forum? They're acting a lot like a publisher where I see this going. People are very upset about this on multiple levels right now because the left and the right have had this type of censorship applied to them. I am a free and open. Internet. It's difficult from a technology standpoint to do the type of censoring that they're doing. So they've got more people involved now they've got 200% more people censoring than computers. Ultimately I think this has been a terrible thing for democracy mean I'm gonna boil it right down to that.

It's a feedback loop, right? So anything you're interested in, you'll see. And anything that disagrees with what the computer thinks you might be interested in. You'll never see it. 

Jeff Chidester: [00:07:44] Well, absolutely. Once again, we're talking to Craig Peterson. Of course, you can find out more about Craig by going to craigpeterson.com craigpeterson.com.

I happen to think that their algorithms actually suck in a little way because I keep getting dancing cat videos. I hate cats. So maybe that's why they're going after me. 

Craig Peterson: [00:07:59] There is good news here, though. And here's what it is. There are some suggestions that that algorithm, that program, that computer, that decides what it's going to show you, that they open up, what's called an API or an application programming interface to it.

So that third parties could put out, Hey, listen, you don't like the way Facebook monitors and controls your feed. We are the Republican party, and you can use ours, and we'll show you Republican stuff you're interested in or the Democrat party or whatever it might be. That might be even worse to a degree, but I'm sure there will be organizations that if that does happen and it looks like it might, where they open up that computer engine, there will be organizations that say, Hey, we're going to try and be fair and balanced, and we'll give you a little bit of both.

Jeff Chidester: [00:08:52] It's a good point too when people have to be very mindful that what they're getting back for data is not the complete picture. So you have to be pretty aggressive, especially if you're going to use these tools to inform yourself, be aggressive with your search patterns, and your mindset to make sure you're getting the stories from every particular angle.

That means that my searching has to be searched differently on several different machines because I found out eventually one gets polluted. Even though I'm trying to get pushed past and looking at both sides, 

Craig, before I let you go once again, Craig Peterson, you can find out more by going to craigpeterson.com. You can catch him on tech talk as well. Any last thoughts? 

Craig Peterson: [00:09:25] Well, of course, that is every Saturday, 1130.

 Yes, use two other search engines. Don't use Google for almost anything anymore, unless it's a really tough, difficult search. I have found much better results lately with duckduckgo.com. 

I love that. It's so much better, or maybe even quant Q W A N T, which is out of France. And that'll give you much better results when you're doing the searching. 

if you're like me and you really have to dig down deep, because remember I do the cybersecurity,  then I use something called Devonthink, and it's paid software, but it can crawl sites, and it uses multiple search engines and Boolean algebra, even to allow me to really dig into a topic.

So there you go. I think that's the way for most people to go. 

Jeff Chidester: [00:10:16] Perfect. 1130 tech talk Saturday, of course, Craig Peterson online Craig peterson.com. Craig has a great weekend.  

Justin McIssac: [00:10:21] I don't know if you're wearing shorts, but if you are  keep it clean, man. 

Jeff Chidester: [00:10:25] Alright, 

Have a good weekend 

Craig Peterson: [00:10:27] I had a really fun little appearance this week.

I did a presentation for Ingram micro. They are like the largest distributor, I think, in the world. They're just massive. We provide master managed security services for some of their managed services providers, break-fix shops, VARs, et cetera. If you're interested in how you can sell cybersecurity and make some bucks off of it but not have to spend quite literally up to $5 million just to get launched. Check out  Sellcybersecurity dot com sellcybersecurity.com. 

I have a little form there and a video of the session. All it is going to do is give me your email, address, and name, and then I'll email you. Not any sort of a funnel or anything else. So check it out, sellcybersecurity.com.

 Have a great weekend, everybody.

We'll be back next week. Take care. Bye-bye.

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