AS HEARD ON NH Today WGIR-AM 610: Cloud Security, Privacy and Contact Tracing

Welcome,

Craig Peterson here. I was on with Chris Ryan on NH Today. We talked about how you can stay secure and private while using the Cloud and then we talked about Contact Tracing, privacy, compliance, and government tracking. Here we go with Chris. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit.

- CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] This morning, I was on with the new host of New Hampshire today, Mr. Chris Ryan.  I like the way he does interviews a little different than most of the interviews I do. He really drives to get involved. He understands the stuff I send him. It's kind of fun. Actually, it makes me look good. Anyhow, here we go this morning, of course, talking about the latest in tech security. In fact, right where he went. When I was just editing it, I noticed they had a bit of a running joke going on this morning. I think you'd probably figure it out. It has to do with traffic here. There is no traffic here, frankly. Well, okay, a couple of days out of the year, but that's it.

Chris Ryan: [00:00:41] Joining us right now on the program. Craig Peterson from tech talk here on WGIR. I can hear it. 1130 on Saturdays. He joins us right now on the program. Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:00:50] Hey, speaking of tyranny, doing pretty good.

Chris Ryan: [00:00:52] Good for the show. One to talk to you a little bit about your thoughts on where things are headed with cybersecurity at this point in time, particularly as we're utilizing clouds more. We're putting our pictures up on the cloud, we're putting information up on the cloud. It's a great way to share information with relatives and things of that nature. But when you're putting it out there, the question is - how secure is it? Particularly for individuals that are not quite sure exactly how to utilize the cloud and to keep it safe.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:24] Yeah. And that extends frankly, over to our businesses our bigger ones, our smaller ones. People are looking for just an easier way to do things. You've got your pictures you've taken of the kids. You've got the videos from the holidays and you just stick them up there in the cloud and keep your fingers crossed.

When it comes to businesses, they look at the cloud and say, Oh, isn't this wonderful because I don't have to do anything.

They don't have to have a server anymore. I don't have to worry about backing up. None of that is true in either case. We've seen many, many times, including recently, for instance, Microsoft teams lost all of the conversations from one of the major corporations out there.

Chris Ryan: [00:02:07] Justin, we should talk to Tim about this, and cancel our promotions meeting today.  On Microsoft teams so we don't have to do that.

Justin McIssac: [00:02:13] I like the canceling the promotions aspect of this.

Chris Ryan: [00:02:15] No, but you're right. We're utilizing, using these platforms, whether it's zoom, whether it's Microsoft teams, and we don't know how safe they are. Are there ways do you utilize the platform? Let's say zoom, as an example, everybody used that, Microsoft teams, people use that.

Is there ways to make sure that those conversations are safe because a lot of times if they're even being recorded and people don't know it.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:37] Yeah. In the case of Zoom, it's been routed through China and Chinese servers are out of the country, it seems to happen a lot with zoom. Zoom has been caught absolutely lying to us.

Talking about fake news, they say, it's secure end to end. We have end-to-end encryption. They did not have it. We're not actually sure they have it right now, either. They're saying that they finally do, after years of saying their conversations were secure.

Going back to, how do you have secure conversations? How do you know your data is securing the cloud? Well, there are some platforms that have been certified as being secure. When you're talking about teams, there's only one and that's WebEx teams. Microsoft is not there. Zoom is not there. WebEx allows you to have secure conversations end to end, but let's just talk about the simple stuff.

If you want to have your stuff be secure or not lost, at the very least back up your cloud services. Don't just trust the phone calls that you've recorded or your pictures or your home videos or your business documents or your emails. Don't trust that they're not going to get lost, which is probably going to be most people's biggest problem because they do get lost.

These big guys say, well, we're not responsible for that. I don't care if it was 10 years of all of your important emails. Back them up from the cloud.

Use some of these tools that are out there, like Signal. If you want to have a small meeting with a few people with friends. Signal is what the big-time experts on security use. It is secure end to end.

It comes right down to this, Chris, you just can't trust the providers because they're trying to sell what they have. They're not trying to develop what exactly we need for security, safety, and making sure that stuff we care about doesn't get lost.

Chris Ryan: [00:04:37] I want to talk a little bit about big tech and government. There was a conversation back in the start of the pandemic between Dr. Fauci and I believe it was Rolling Stone that I read. He was talking about South Korea versus the United States and how South Korea was able to get control of the pandemic because of the fact that the government could spy on its citizens. Basically, and determine who had COVID when and where they were, who they're with and tie all these things together. He said the government can't do that here and frankly doesn't have the capability of doing that but if we were to work with big tech, then the potential exists for there to be real contact tracing versus, the type of contact tracing that's discussed right now.

In your view, how often does the government work with big tech on these types of endeavors? Is there some sort of legal minutia or middle ground where the government can work with big tech in order to provide information to them where the government itself cannot quote-unquote spy on you in certain circumstances,

Craig Peterson: [00:05:44] Oh, that's got to be difficult. Bottom line. The government has been worked with big tech a lot.

We've seen tens of thousands of cases where the government has issued blanket warrants for a location. So for instance, what happened on the sixth down in Washington, DC. They can, they do, and they have sent a warrant off to Google being their favorite target because their information is gathered from all kinds of devices. They say, who was in this area? They get this blanket warrant and tada, Big tech will produce that information, but that's when they have a warrant.

We found now that various parts of government, including the military. Homeland Security has been doing this as well. They go to big tech and say, Hey, I want to know where this person is, where they've been and big tech tells them that, without a warrant, because what they're doing is harvesting your data.

You know, that free app that you have, Justin. That app isn't as free as it seems to be. Because they are.

Chris Ryan: [00:06:51] What do you know about Justin, that I don't know?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:53] Yeah. Well,

Justin McIssac: [00:06:54] Which app you talking about?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:56] The traffic one that you're using.

Chris Ryan: [00:06:58] Oh, the traffic one. Yeah, that's it. Justin, we need, we'll get back to that. After. I'll handle that myself. I don't need your help, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:10] They're not providing you with a free service. They are charging you and they're charging you by getting your information. Government and military intelligence and other agencies, go to these data aggregators that are taking all of this data and putting it together.

Now there's the next step when you're talking about, well, let's making sure that we got the social distancing going on. And what if I came in contact with someone that had some form of a terrible disease. The type of tracking that's done by our phones is not accurate enough for the government to go in and say, where are you within six feet of this person that came down with whatever it might be.

Chris Ryan: [00:07:49] They can tell you the same place, but they can't tell if you are within even,  a hundred yards of the individual. You could have been in the same shopping mall. It could have been the same restaurant, but you don't know exactly the proximity.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:00] Yeah, exactly. Right. Because once you get inside now they've lost all of the resolutions and even outside there's a reflection and other things that cause problems. Ever tried to use GPS and downtown, well, Manchester is a little different but Boston, New York, some of these bigger cities, it just doesn't work.

So the type of tracking that's used for this contact tracing is different. It requires an app on your phone. That app basically uses Bluetooth to see if there's any other phones around that it's compatible with or even any other phones around.

When you get into South Korea. If you get it, certainly in China. They will push an app to your phone, they have control over it in many cases. Therefore they can force the app onto your phone. People tend to be a little more compliant in South Korea than they are in the US.

I don't know if you've noticed that or not, but they'll download these phones themselves, will keep tabs on, who's close to whom and that will help with our contact tracing. Even in the best of cases, they've only found that there's usually about 50% compliance.

If it's done by the government saying, Hey people, just go ahead and download an app so we can all be safer. The only place where we have very high compliance are places like China.

Chris Ryan: [00:09:19] Craig as always appreciate you joining us for the show.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:22] All right. Hey, thanks.

By the way, for those of you, who've been asking Karen and I are getting really close to having this Intro to Windows Security course done and out. Yeah, and we've already caught another three or four together.

This is going to be life-changing. I really do think so for so many people, because you've been trying to solve some of these problems. You're worried about what's positive to do, what's negative to do because some of the things that these vendors, advertisers are trying to get you to buy will actually make you less secure.

So keep your eyes on your mailboxes, cause that's coming soon. Take care. We'll be back tomorrow.

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