Password – 14th January 2015

Speaker A: radio station.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Password with me, Peter Warren, on Resonance 104.4 FM. Taking technology to task. This week, as the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo goes on sale after the murderous attack on its staff, the authorities here and in the United States are tooling up to bring in new surveillance techniques. We find out how estranged couples are snooping on their former partners by hiding spyware in computer games and cuddly toys. Podcasts have been seen as a salvation of the media. The mouthing off is the high-tech medium for 2015. We find out the whys and wherefores and what you have to do. And the next generation of computers that will let you feel as well as watch TV films or even an email from your boss. That will be coming to a skin near you. First, here’s Jane Wyatt with the latest on the response to the Charlie Hebdo murders.

Speaker C: The magazine’s increased its print run this week to 1 million as supporters rally following the fatal shootings of 12 Charlie staff and 5 people at a kosher supermarket. Hacktivists in the Anonymous grouping responded by breaking into an Islamic website, Ansar al-Haq, and they released a video online. The video from the Belgian Anons, as they call themselves, shows a speaker wearing the group’s trademark Guy Fawkes mask and hood, declaring vengeance for those killed in Paris and using the signature slogan “We are Legion, expect us.” They declare war on Al Qaeda and say that they will not accept Sharia law. However, Other Anonymous supporters oppose this operation, calling it racist. This kind of split is just typical of the grouping.

Speaker B: And Islamists are hitting back with cyberattacks against French targets, including a gardening website. They also hit CENTCOM’s Twitter and YouTube channels, antisocially attacking the State Department’s social media just as President Barack Obama was making a speech about his latest cybersecurity crackdown in response to the Paris attacks. It won’t come as much of a surprise that my sources tell me that Obama’s State of the Union address next week will include a hurriedly revived relaunch of a new law that was voted out last year as too repressive. And our own Prime Minister, David Cameron, was talking about trying to outlaw online encryption so that terrorists and criminals cannot hide from surveillance of their social media, phone calls, and online messages. Anyone using encryption will be suspect. If you think about it, it’s basically unworkable and shows how the authorities have not woken up to the technological age. Just take one example: I have sensitive documents about a new scientific discovery. I encrypt them so that I don’t lose them to Chinese hackers and then send them unencrypted through the web to comply with Mr. Cameron. You know it makes sense. We’d love to know your views. You can follow me on Twitter @pwarren or email pwontheradio@gmail.com. This is Password with Pete Warren on Resonance FM. And after this, on Wednesdays, you can hear Kitchen Magic Time, and on Fridays, The other rock show follows Password. Now I’m joined in the studio by cyberbullying expert Jennifer Perry, one of— sorry, Jennifer Perry of the Digital Trust. Jennifer, welcome to Password.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Now you’ve some thoughts on encryption, and what are they? You have concerns.

Speaker C: Well, I do have concerns. We are losing prosecutions because we can’t get a hold of data. If the data that we need is based in the US or based outside the EU, it can be very difficult to get the data. So one of the issues issues that the Home Office wants to look at is having data stored here in the UK for accessibility. I think it’s also an issue of not necessarily logging the data, but looking at the check and balances on who has access to it.

Speaker B: Okay, so there’s a lot to think about there, but you’ve actually come here to talk about some research findings that you’ve come up with about the technological lengths that estranged partners will go to to track down former loved ones. Tell us about those.

Speaker C: It is. I’ve been working on, on stalking and harassment issues for some time, and what we’re seeing is an escalation of surveillance type of technology being used against other individuals. And it includes everything from spyware, accessing online accounts, GPS tracking devices, listening devices in the home, and yes, we’ve even had cases where they’ve put tracking devices inside children’s toys in order to track the mother down.

Speaker B: So what are the ramifications of that then? I mean, what are your— I mean, obviously there’s concerns, but what are those specific concerns?

Speaker C: Well, the ultimate ramification is a murder. And yesterday it was reported that a man used a mobile phone and the Find My Friend app to track his wife. He was having an affair and he killed her lover, was sentenced yesterday. So that’s ultimately what you’re worried about, is a physical assault or a murder. But also it’s the fact that— that during custody battles, divorce battles, or even, you know, non-relationship issues, people are gathering information to either use against the other person in legal proceedings, ruin their reputation, or cause financial damage.

Speaker B: I mean, there’s some issues too, aren’t there, about social media. There are some people who are complaining or suggesting that their social media is being used to harass them.

Speaker C: Yeah, social media is, is a great research tool for any kind of harasser. And if you look at the default settings in 2005 on something like Facebook, it was over 90% of your, your profile was private. Today it’s less than 2%. So it isn’t necessarily that we’re sharing more, but certainly the social media companies are sharing more on our behalf, making it more and more difficult to have any form of private conversations with your online colleagues or friends.

Speaker B: So typically then, what would you do if you wanted to harass somebody using social media? How can you do it?

Speaker C: Well, they’ll do several things. First of all, they’ll use your social media to map out who your friendships are. They will follow them, they will call them, they will harass them, they’ll try to get information about you. They’ll use it to send out offensive messages either by your behalf or you’ve ruined your reputation, or they’ll hack your account. We’ve seen Multiple people have their accounts hacked. If you hack your account, then you can pretend to be that individual and cause them a lot of problems by racial slurs or hate campaigns. And that’s the sort of thing that we see. We see revenge porn being put up. People put intimate photos onto somebody’s Facebook account. All their friends and friends of friends and their friends of friends can all view it. So these are the type of tactics we see being used.

Speaker B: And the police aren’t really up to speed on this, are they? I know that the police have been told about these sorts of incidents, but they don’t really know how to investigate them, do they?

Speaker D: No.

Speaker C: What the police really need is kind of like almost a triage system. The volume is so high. Alex Marshall of the Police College says he predicts 50% of first-line police officers’ callouts are related to social media and harassment. So the volume’s too high, so we need to be able to look at which of these are most likely to lead on to some type of long-term harassment, or as I said, a physical assault of some sort.

Speaker B: But there are problems too, aren’t there, with the social media companies themselves? Because the social media companies will have to provide evidence of this happening, and I understand that some people, when they’ve asked for evidence, that it’s not taken seriously by the social media companies, or the social media companies don’t really want to get involved in the effort of providing them with that sort of evidence.

Speaker C: Well, it costs them money, you know, and if you to use TeamCost Them Money. So yes, there’s certain social media companies that we know that will work with the police and respond to the police, and there’s certain social media companies that absolutely won’t. And the problem is social media comes under primarily US law and not UK law, and trying to compel them to provide information for harassment or stalking or some type of hate crime is exceedingly difficult, so much so that a lot of the police have stopped even trying So when people go to them with a problem, they say there’s nothing they can do. They don’t even attempt to investigate it because they know they won’t get the information they need for a successful prosecution.

Speaker B: Do you think this is just a sign of the times, though? I mean, we’re now in a technological age. We’re in the 21st century. We’ve got all of this technology, the technology, you know, I see press releases all of the time about new bits and bobs that are coming along. There’s even a plug that you can use to actually crack people’s Wi-Fi. So that goes back to the sort of devices that you seeing people giving to people?

Speaker C: Well, what’s, what’s happening is, is the technology is actually increasing the problem. If you think about kind of a harassment or somebody who’s obsessive, it’s like a gambling addict. The more information they give, the more that feeds the obsession. So the access to social media or knowing where somebody is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the fact that you can do it from your own home makes it easier and more compelling for them to do it. So it’s actually feeding the problem. I would say that a lot of people use social media, and I use social media, and without any, you know, major issues. My advice is always focus on those who have— once they become a target, you have to change your security, you have to change what you’re doing online in order to improve your safety. And a lot of victims don’t want to do that, and I understand that, but just like walking down a dark alley at night, you take precautions. When you become a target, You’re going to have to make some changes and increase your security.

Speaker B: But in terms of these devices that you’ve been finding, you know, people putting bugs in toys, that sort of thing, I mean, you know, what do we do? We can’t put everything in the microwave because, you know, that’s not quite going to work. And if somebody’s put something on a mobile phone that they’ve given to a child, if you put it in the microwave, it’s going to fry the phone as well as the software.

Speaker C: Well, we can clean phones and we can, find bugs, but the biggest thing is to recognize the symptoms that something is going wrong. The fact that somebody keeps showing up all the places that you show up at, the fact that they seem to have more information or access to friends or know what you’ve said and who you said it to, all those are symptoms that somebody is monitoring you somehow. And then it’s a case of deduction to determine how they’re doing that.

Speaker B: So in a sense, what you’re saying is that this is an extension of the phone hacking, that the journalist evidently knew what was going on because they were monitoring something that somebody didn’t know was being monitored.

Speaker C: Yes, and it’s just as illegal as the phone hacking as well.

Speaker B: Okay, right. Well, we’ll be having you back on the program, Jennifer, and I’m sure that this is not a problem that is going to go away.

Speaker C: No, it’s going to continue to grow.

Speaker B: Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, they say seeing is believing, but now technology lets us not only watch but also feel the action of a a TV series, or just a message on social media? This is going to be a difficult one for me. Shuram Subramanian is working on an innovative system that uses air pressure to let you type without touching the screen or keyboard and experience art, music, or film with all of your senses.

Speaker A: So what we do is we give you this feeling of touch in free space, and we’re using ultrasound. We use an array of ultrasound speakers to focus the sound wave in different points and to defocus them on other points, so you only feel that point where it’s focused. So that’s in a nutshell what we’re doing.

Speaker B: So how does that system work? Does that mean that you have to have a unit in the games console that is beaming out ultrasound?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So you need to have a unit that’s installed in the game console or in the dashboard of your car or anywhere else you want, but you don’t have to wear this unit on you. It’s like, you know, if you want to play with the Xbox Kinect, you put the Kinect in front of your television and you can play with it, right? Instead of using the Kinect, you can use the Kinect and our device, or we can integrate this with the Kinect, that’s all.

Speaker B: So if you describe that to me, I’m standing in front of, say, a television and I’m moving my hands around and It’s a little like the thing that we’re used to seeing in science fiction films. Minority Report springs to mind where people are pulling things around in the air. But what you’re doing is you’re giving me the feeling that I’m touching something.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. And this Minority Report concept has been there for a long time, right? And it’s starting to emerge and it’s starting to take shape in a much more refined and nuanced experience. In fact, you can now buy a laptop from HP which integrates this kind of gestures in the laptop. So there’s the space between the keyboard and the monitor in the laptop where you can do this kind of gestures. And the typical problem people have is exactly what you said, that you don’t feel anything. I don’t know, did I touch the button? Did I not touch the button? Have I gone too far? You know, so these kind of things, these are simple sensations we can give you. And if you’re playing a game of tennis or volleyball in your home entertainment system, you know that you’ve touched the ball.

Speaker B: But that’s the all-important thing, isn’t it? Because what do I actually feel? Do I feel a sensation similar to that of when I hit a volleyball, or do I feel something that’s slightly different but that just lets me know that I’ve hit something?

Speaker A: I think at the moment there is nothing. You don’t feel anything at all, and what we offer is this thing that you feel something to let you know that you made contact with the ball. It is possible with our system to give you that fine-grained feedback to tell you how you hit the ball and so on, but I think that would take some more research to get there.

Speaker B: Okay, so you’re saying the signs are good at the moment, we’re not quite there, but at some point in the future it’s highly probable that we might be able to get that sort of sensation that we would feel if I was playing tennis or kicking a ball or something something like that.

Speaker A: Exactly, yeah, and it can be even more refined, it can be like you put a spin on the ball, like a topspin or something, so you feel that sensation in your hand, so you know it’s not just you made contact with the ball, but the ball, you made contact in a certain way.

Speaker B: Now to actually do this, obviously the system, the sound system, it’s a combination of things, isn’t it? Because there’s a combination of devices, one is reading what your arm is doing in terms of light and positioning, and then another one is beaming the sound back to it.

Speaker A: Yes, yeah, that’s exactly right. And for reading the position using light and other things, we depend on third parties. So we— there are many hundreds of solutions out there from Microsoft, from Intel, from Leap Motion. We can use any of them, and what we offer is this feedback from sound. And I think that’s the at the core, innovation in what we do.

Speaker B: And of course, this isn’t just something that would be confined to, say, sport. I mean, theoretically, it’s something that you could do for drama, where you could show a very dramatic action, and, or even, you know, a potentially an online fight.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, there is talk from the television industry at some point to also include haptic information in the TV channel, and if that does happen in the future, then you can start feeling, right? So you have the soundbar on your television, there’s a scene in the TV, and you start feeling them.

Speaker B: So of course what we’re moving towards is what George Orwell envisioned in 1984 with the feelies.

Speaker A: Yes, yeah, people say that, yes.

Speaker B: Because that is something that the film industry is currently very keen on. I think I went to a cinema about 2 years ago where they were trying to to get people to sit in chairs that would give them some sort of sensation of what was going on in the action that they were watching.

Speaker A: Yes, and in fact, if you go to Disneyland theme parks anywhere in the world, you would have it. You can see movies with exactly that experience, right? So they make these 4D and 5D cinemas in the theme parks where you have Shrek or any of their characters walking through when the donkey speaks, you have a burst of air on your face to personify the character.

Speaker B: As long as it’s not a burst of bad air. But, um, now to our next studio guest, Helen Zoltzman, in this month celebrating 8 years as a professional podcaster with a masterclass on the 26th of January and a UK tour. So Helen, how did you do it?

Speaker D: Well, I think it was really by failing to not do it. A friend asked me just over 8 years ago now if I wanted to do a podcast, and I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. And then I suppose dogged persistence, not really knowing the reason for it, but just, it’s very exciting to be able to make your own stuff with podcasting. There are no gatekeepers. So we were just making this show in my living room in Crystal Palace, and we could do whatever we wanted with it because there are no commissioners as well. We just had this constantly growing audience around the world, which was also very exciting. So that kept us going. And now it’s become a viable career option, which is not something that I think would have been possible even a year ago, really, for me to make a living out of podcasting. But now, thankfully, it is.

Speaker B: But was that a bit odd? I mean, there you were sitting in your living room thinking, no one’s listening to me.

Speaker D: Well, even from the beginning, people were listening. And in 2007, the audience was a lot smaller for podcasts. And you had to be very dogged because the The main way people got them was through desktop iTunes, but that meant they had to connect a separate device to their computer. It was a hassle to actually listen to a podcast. And then smartphones came along. You could just click a little button on your phone and the thing downloaded onto the same device. And the audience exploded and became older as well. You didn’t have to be as tech-savvy. And ever since then, I think more and more people are finding out about it. And I think now is a particularly good time to be podcasting because it’s had a lot of attention the past few months. Which I’m happy about.

Speaker B: Well, there’s no doubting the quality of your podcast, but—

Speaker D: Well, subjective, isn’t it?

Speaker B: But how do they make money? How do you turn your words into wine?

Speaker D: Well, we try several different methods. So we sell off old episodes for 79p each because we thought that’s how much they sell a track for on iTunes. And so a half-hour speech track, it seems like quite good value compared to a 4-minute song. And we always have at least 100 episodes available for free, but if you’re a superfan, then that’s not enough. Occasionally do an album, but we also have sponsors on the show. And so that brings in money. And then I’ve just started, in fact today, a new podcast for an American network called Radiotopia, which runs Kickstarter campaigns once a year. It did one, it finished in November and they raised $620,000. And when you’ve proven that your fans are willing to donate that money for something they can listen to for free anyway, that means other people are more willing to give you money because they have the faith that they’ll see a return on their investment. So they get more sponsors, they get grants, and I’m the first British beneficiary of this.

Speaker B: Well, but how’s that different from Radio Player? I mean, that lets you listen to great radio shows anytime you like, not just when they broadcast live.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think quite a lot has changed over the years. There used to be a lot more of schism between radio and podcasts, and I think now that they’re using the same delivery mechanisms and the listener doesn’t necessarily care where something originated from, they just want to listen to what they want when they want to listen to it. But with podcasts, you’ve got to bear in mind that firstly, it’s not like a radio station where if you put on one show, that’s a space that cannot be occupied by another show. There is room for all the podcasts until the internet runs out. But secondly, the resources are different. So while you’re on these platforms alongside, say, BBC shows and Resonance shows, you can be making the show on nothing. I think it costs us about $12 a month technically to make Answer Me This, my first podcast. Our time, that is the more costly factor, I guess. But it means that you’ve got these podcasts that they don’t sound like radio shows. And sometimes that’s bad because they sound a bit fuzzy and painful to listen to. But other times it’s great because the tone is much less restrained, I guess. You can get this very genuine feeling from it, a very straight expression between the podcaster and the listener with no layers of commissioning in between, no structure. And also people can make them about whatever they want unfettered. And therefore, if you have quite a niche interest, the chances are that somewhere in the world someone is making a show that shares your interest.

Speaker B: Does that mean it’s just really an audio blog? I mean, what, what, what, what, what, what? I just, to make a podcast, I just ramble off the top of my head, which many people say I do anyway.

Speaker D: Sure, if you want to make a bad podcast, ramble off the top of your head. And if you want to make a good one, it takes work. And I think it’s the same with blogs. They started out as this kind of diary medium, and then it just became an easy web platform for people to do very professional website content. And so the definition of blog really is just, I suppose, the platform rather than and the content’s similar with podcasts. Like any medium, there are rubbish ones and there are good ones. I think there’s a problem with discovery with podcasts ’cause it’s quite hard to find new ones. Word of mouth is still probably the main one. I think technologically there is a space for someone to jump into and do a kind of Netflix-style, if you like this, you would probably like this. And I think maybe someone is building one at the moment, fingers crossed.

Speaker B: So, I mean, you say there’s good podcasts and bad podcasts. How do I go about becoming a good podcaster?

Speaker D: I think you really need to put in effort. I think a lot of people assume they’ll turn a mic on and it will be magic. And I think even for very experienced broadcasters, that is not the case. So we edit our podcast really hard, especially because when we started, we had no audience. We weren’t names, and we were competing against big-name comedians because we were making a comedy podcast. So you’ve just got to be aware that someone is giving you their time, but you’re competing with the rest of the internet. So if they’re not interested in about 30 seconds, they’ll go off. Off and be entertained by something else, and they’ll probably never try you again. So we just tried to make sure that the show was worthy of their time by taking the bad bits out.

Speaker B: So, but I mean, in a sense, that’s the essential rule of journalism, isn’t it? You’ve got to grab them in the first 3 paragraphs.

Speaker D: Absolutely. I think in radio they say put your best stuff at the end, but podcasting, you put your second best stuff at the end. But you can’t afford to do that. You have to frontload the show a bit and grab people early. And I prefer short shows as well. There are a lot of shows where, because they can be 3 hours long, they are. And I rarely think that something needs to be 3 hours long. And the more— I know quite a lot of people who listen to podcasts on double speed so they can listen to more shows, and my brain can’t absorb the information that way. But if a podcast is under half an hour, I’m more likely to give it a go.

Speaker B: Okay, so I’ve made my hopefully good podcast. Where do I go to broadcast it, and how do I tell people about Well, you can resort to the normal mechanisms of telling people, like Twitter.

Speaker D: And at the beginning, we took a note of every journalist that wrote about podcasts, and we’d email them saying, “We’ve done this show, maybe you could write about it,” because that’s a lot easier than them finding podcasts to write about, which, as I said, is quite difficult, even if that is something they’re being paid to do. And also, you can be on other people’s podcasts as cross-promotion. What you need is a host. Which will then distribute your podcasts to the places where people get podcasts, like iTunes. And you can either build this host yourself if you’re tech savvy. I’m not, so I pay a few dollars a month for someone else to do it for me, like Libsyn or SoundCloud. And then it’s pretty much as easy as starting a blog.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker E: Okay.

Speaker B: Well, that was Helen Zaltzman, who’s one of the UK’s top podcasters. Helen, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Right, now, the selfie stick, a contraption for getting enough distance between you and your camera phone to take a good picture, was one of the biggest sellers over Christmas. And this year it’s likely to be overtaken by drones, unmanned small helicopters or aircraft that you can fly around to take aerial pictures of whatever you like. At least that’s what the drone lovers would like us to believe. In fact, the flying of drones is quite strictly controlled by the Civil Aviation Authority because, in theory at least, they are a danger to aircraft. The American Federal Aviation The Civil Aviation Authority has just brought in licenses for estate agents using drones, and I’ve been speaking to Gerry Corbett of the CAA. He’s at Gatwick Airport, and he’s been telling me about our laws.

Speaker E: The main element for the Civil Aviation Authority is really the protection of other flying aircraft and to make sure they’re not endangered. So clearly, something of, you know, a few grams is a relatively, or almost no risk at all to an aircraft. But when you start getting to things that weigh 1 or 2 kilograms, and that’s some of the typical aircraft that are sort of drones that are being used at the moment, being purchased in shops. They potentially can have quite, you know, quite a bit of damage to an aircraft if they hit them in the wrong place.

Speaker B: Well, particularly if you bear in mind that airports, people are very, very concerned about what birds are flying in the area. If you’ve got a 1 or 2 kilogram drone, then that must be the equivalent of rather a large bird.

Speaker E: Yes, you’re dead right, that sort of thing is the same. And of course birds are relatively soft and squashy, whereas drones can be— you know, they’re made of plastic which is fairly frangible, but there are some slightly more solid bits inside which will certainly damage an engine or break a windscreen or something like that. The bottom line is really that people have to be responsible, have to think about it when they put something like this into the air and think about the consequences.

Speaker B: But then we have already seen this though, haven’t we? There have been reports within the past 2 or 3 weeks of people actually flying of aircraft enthusiasts flying drones, I think on the outskirts of Heathrow and Gatwick.

Speaker E: Unfortunately with that, of course, the actual aircraft itself and the operator was never traced, so we don’t know the other side of the story throughout. I still feel in many ways it’s inconceivable that somebody would actively park themselves a couple of miles on the approach to Heathrow Airport and just launch something into the air. With the intent of taking out an aircraft or intent of even trying to experiment to fly close to it. I suspect it was more likely that somebody flying a little bit further away who lost the aircraft, flew the aircraft beyond their line of sight and got into trouble that way.

Speaker B: That does raise a potential issue, doesn’t it, which is that these could be used for terrorist purposes.

Speaker E: They could be. Terrorism security side of things is not really something that the CA can really comment on. You know, that’s really something that has to be referred to the security authorities. As with a lot of things, you know, a lot of things can be used in a wrong way if the intent of the person doing it is that way inclined.

Speaker B: Right. Now, Resonance 104.4 FM has an annual fundraising week that’s starting from the 9th of February until the 15th. With the funds, we aim to trial a DAB service, overhaul our website, and increase the range of our FM broadcast beyond central London. Details of the fundraiser, events, and listings for our annual auction can be found at fundraiser.resonance.fm. Now, this is Password with Peter Warren. If you’ve just joined us, you’ve missed it, but we’ll be back next week with the results of our time travel music competition, and you can find out more about new technology on our website, Future Intelligence. Password is made by Angel Media Productions CIC. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.