Latest / Identity at the Center / #270 - A Public Conversation About Privacy with Hannah Sutor of GitLab and IDPro
Transcript
- 0:05This is identity at the center. If it has anything to do with
- 0:10IAM, this is the go to podcast now your hosts Jim McDonald and
- 0:17Jeff Stedman. Welcome to the Identity at the
- 0:23Center podcast. I'm Jeff and that's Jim.
- 0:25Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
- 0:26Oh, not so bad yourself. Doing great.
- 0:28I've been thinking about in advance of this episode.
- 0:32I've been thinking a lot about privacy, thinking about, you
- 0:35know, the privacy statutes within higher education and
- 0:39within healthcare. And it's funny.
- 0:42Usually when you start picking at those use cases, a lot of the
- 0:46use case surrounds famous people.
- 0:48You know you don't want to give out health records for famous
- 0:51people or the class schedules for famous people.
- 0:55And I was wondering, does that apply to you and me doing this
- 0:58podcast? I don't know if I can because I
- 1:00don't ever actually really went to college or higher education.
- 1:03I think I have an economics class to my course or to my
- 1:06credit. So if you're looking for my for
- 1:09my records or my class schedule, it's gonna be pretty light.
- 1:11I don't know about I I don't know.
- 1:13I I I don't feel like that's something that should be
- 1:15publicly available. But maybe that's just me, Some
- 1:17people. Got out that you had high
- 1:19cholesterol. I mean, just one look at me.
- 1:21You probably already guessed that.
- 1:24Well, anyway, I don't know. But that's, that's what was
- 1:27going through my mind was, you know, the famous people thing
- 1:30and what is the line between famous and not famous?
- 1:34I think on the Identity at the Center podcast not famous.
- 1:39Decidedly so. Netflix or on broadcast
- 1:42television, that would that would make make you famous.
- 1:47So you know that would be a a momentous achievement if like we
- 1:50ended up as like a Netflix special, the making of identity
- 1:53at the center and hopefully it's a positive story and not one of
- 1:55those like, you know bizarre like Murder or we try to do our
- 1:59own conference and ends up like Fyre Festival or something like
- 2:01that it. Would be like identity at the
- 2:04center is a joke. Yeah, that's what it would be
- 2:07called. I did something yesterday and
- 2:10usually you hit me with something.
- 2:12I'm gonna hit you with something.
- 2:13I did something yesterday that I've done in the past and went
- 2:18and watched at a local brewery here in Asheville.
- 2:20I saw UFC, Not the UFC that you're thinking of, but a
- 2:26wrestling kind of thing. Obviously for show here in
- 2:30Asheville they put together. I don't even know what UFC
- 2:32stands for. It's like urban.
- 2:34Universal Fighting Championship. Well, that's what most people
- 2:37would know it as. But it's actually wrestling and
- 2:40it's like a local Asheville, NC type thing.
- 2:45And we went, and my wife and I went, got tickets paid $10 to go
- 2:48watch a bunch of people have a good time in a in a ring set up
- 2:52inside of a brewery. And so, you know, we're
- 2:54watching, like, people come off the top ropes and, you know, the
- 2:57fights and quotation Marks and the wrestling or whatever you
- 3:00want to call it, spilling out, you know, along the sides of the
- 3:03of the brewery ring and then into the brewery itself and then
- 3:07outside. It was absolutely nuts, but it
- 3:10was, it was a good time. I think you would have enjoyed
- 3:12it, 'cause it was just kind of like, you know, stupid fun.
- 3:14Yeah, yeah. I don't even know what to say
- 3:17about that, Jeff, but I'd be surprised to find you there.
- 3:21I'd probably be at the corner of the bar drinking and be like, is
- 3:23that Jeff? Urban combat wrestling.
- 3:26That's what it was. UCW.
- 3:27No, I'm sorry. What did I say before?
- 3:29UFC. Yeah, UFC, no UCW, urban combat
- 3:33wrestling, but it was fun. It was like a, you know, Saint
- 3:36Patrick's Day, you know wrestling thing.
- 3:39And there were several chants that I cannot repeat here on a,
- 3:44you know, show friendly for kids, 'cause we know I had a lot
- 3:47of those kids tuning in for that I am talk.
- 3:50But it was, it was a good time, you know, beers, burgers and and
- 3:54wrestling. That does sound fun.
- 3:56You know what would make it even more fun Was if you had a
- 3:59discount code. If it was the best discount
- 4:02code. If it was 100% off discount
- 4:05code. Unfortunately, those things
- 4:08rarely exist, but we got some good discount codes.
- 4:12Yeah, we got Identiverse not 100%, but 25% off.
- 4:16We have IDV 24-I D AC25 that gets you 25% off your
- 4:21Identiverse registration stacks with early Bird.
- 4:24So use early use often. Good way to show show support
- 4:27for the show. Having a hard time talking
- 4:29today. The words just aren't coming
- 4:30out. May 28th, the 31st, it's at the
- 4:34Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
- 4:36I'll be there, you'll be there. We'll be doing podcasty things
- 4:41to be determined. Our last episode is with Andy
- 4:43Hindle. He says we're gonna be doing
- 4:45podcasty things. I trust him.
- 4:47I trust that we'll be doing podcasty things.
- 4:50And that's the only thing is if if the past is any indication,
- 4:55so where are you staying? Are you gonna stay at the Aria?
- 4:58Yeah, I think right now I know you're trying to get me over to
- 5:00the Vadara, but you know, it's like an extra like 10 or 15
- 5:03minute walk from from there it's.
- 5:04Like an extra 10 or 15 steps, but OK.
- 5:08But I I'd have to go outside and you know, I mean I can stay.
- 5:12I get my record is five days indoors in Vegas and I feel like
- 5:163 days is nothing for me. Yeah, there you go.
- 5:19The other conference we've got going on is Identity Week.
- 5:22We're actually gonna be at Identity Week America later this
- 5:24year, but they also have Europe which is in Amsterdam, June 11th
- 5:27and 12th. And the America one that Jim you
- 5:30and I will be at is September 11th and 12th.
- 5:32That's the one in Washington DC and Asia and Singapore October
- 5:3622nd, 23rd. We have a conference code for
- 5:38that one as well, IDAC 30 that gets you 30% off of that
- 5:43registration and that code is good for all of the identity
- 5:46work. Identity Week.
- 5:47See. Told you can't talk today.
- 5:48Identity Week conferences, not just the American ones.
- 5:51So if you're in Europe or Asia and you're heading to Identity
- 5:54Week, another conference code that you can use and hopefully
- 5:57save a little bit of hard earned local currency insert
- 6:00denomination here, whatever that might be for you and looking
- 6:03forward to. That Yeah, fantastic discount
- 6:05codes. So what's our main topic today?
- 6:07Yeah, so I kind of joked as we were hitting by hit record here.
- 6:10It's like, here's what I'm thinking is what we're going to
- 6:11call the show, and it's a public conversation about privacy.
- 6:15And to that end, we've got Hannah Souter.
- 6:17She's the principal product manager at GitLab and an IDID
- 6:20Pro Board member. Man, I am struggling today.
- 6:23Welcome to the show, Hannah. Hey, Jim.
- 6:25Hey, Jeff. It's great to be here.
- 6:27Well, I'm the words are probably gonna come a lot better from
- 6:29you, but let's talk a little bit about your origin story.
- 6:32This is the first time you've been on our podcast and one of
- 6:34things I'd like to do is find out identity origin stories.
- 6:37How did you get into the wonderful world of identity and
- 6:40access management? Is it something that you chose
- 6:42or did it choose you? I think like most people, the
- 6:46identity and access management world chose me, but I think in a
- 6:49way I chose it as well, because after my first job and identity,
- 6:53I chose to kind of keep going down the path of identity,
- 6:56whereas I think I just as easily it could have pivoted elsewhere.
- 6:59But I really liked the niche. I really like the people I
- 7:04started to get to know. And I really like that it felt
- 7:07to me it feels very important in terms of, you know, you're kind
- 7:11of protecting an ecosystem, you're protecting people's
- 7:14information, you're protecting potentially proprietary
- 7:17information. And so I think there's a larger
- 7:19meaning behind it, which is part of the reason why I think I
- 7:21chose it. My first job in Identity so I
- 7:27was a developer way back when and eventually I started asking
- 7:31too many questions about why are we coding this and can I talk to
- 7:35the customer and are they happy with this or what do they think?
- 7:39And they're like you might like products.
- 7:42Most most of our developers don't ask this these kind of
- 7:44questions, so I ended up switching to product about 8 to
- 7:5010 years ago now. I've been there since and I was
- 7:54in developer tooling at one point just because of my
- 7:58developer background. So I worked mainly product
- 8:02managing developer APIs for a cloud platform and then one of
- 8:07the services that I inherited as part of the cloud platform was
- 8:11Identity. So it started as kind of a
- 8:14fraction of my job, and then the next role I ended up getting,
- 8:17they saw my Identity experience at the 1st place.
- 8:20They said we need someone fully in Identity.
- 8:23And then now I'm on my third sort of foray into Identity,
- 8:28specifically devoted to it now at GitLab.
- 8:31So I mentioned when I introduced you that you're a Principal
- 8:33Product Manager. And I think for one of the
- 8:36things I find really interesting about the identity field is the
- 8:38variety of roles that we have. Can you talk a little bit more
- 8:42about that role of a principal product manager, take us through
- 8:45sort of like your day-to-day looks like a normal week for you
- 8:48or are they all different? You know, kind of shed some
- 8:50light into that role? I product is really varied,
- 8:54which is part of what I like about it.
- 8:56So day-to-day I work with engineering counterparts.
- 9:00I have about six or seven engineers I work with.
- 9:03I have an engineering manager I work with.
- 9:06I also work with other product managers.
- 9:10I've talked to customers a lot, at least a few times a week in
- 9:14customer meetings. These usually originate with
- 9:17sales or customer success. If a customer has a question
- 9:20about user provisioning in GitLab or, you know, how do I
- 9:24most securely authenticate? Personal access tokens seem like
- 9:28the wild Wild West. Should I turn them off or what?
- 9:31I so it's a lot about security honestly and keeping what's the
- 9:36best way that people can keep their GitLab instance secure.
- 9:40Of course I handle you know this doesn't work the way we expected
- 9:44or we need this extra logging information to make this really
- 9:47much more robust. And one of the bigger projects I
- 9:51did recently was we had gotten a ton of customer feedback that
- 9:55our static roles and permissions that we had built in were not
- 9:59sufficient anymore. People were having to grant too
- 10:02much privilege just for like one small permission.
- 10:06So we knew we had to make our model more flexible.
- 10:08So we did a deep dive. Technically, my engineers did
- 10:12that in terms of how could we take our current authorization
- 10:16model and really rip it apart and make it something that
- 10:20customers can build from the ground up and only grant the
- 10:24amount of privilege necessary to accomplish a certain task rather
- 10:28than to have to assign roles out-of-the-box.
- 10:32So that's been something I haven't had the opportunity to
- 10:34do before any other job. That's, I think that's kind of
- 10:37the power of the product manager, right?
- 10:39Being able to sort of inflict your desires and what you're
- 10:43hearing from customers, right? Say, hey, these are the features
- 10:45that we want to put in there, which I find a little bit of
- 10:47empowering. Maybe maybe it's just me, but
- 10:49it's like, hey, it'll be a neat idea if we could do this.
- 10:51And you've got like the ammunition from like, yeah, the
- 10:53customers are saying they want this, like we should be doing
- 10:55this, right? Yeah, it's about customer
- 10:58interest and then you know also revenue, right?
- 11:02That's a powerful story to be able to tell if there's perhaps
- 11:06identity or authentication related feature, we can tier to
- 11:09a more expensive tier of our product and try to get more
- 11:13revenue in the door. That's really powerful.
- 11:15The security and compliance use cases usually tell a powerful
- 11:18story. But the one thing about being a
- 11:22product is that, you know, my engineers are my peers.
- 11:24I'm not, I'm not their manager in any any shape or form.
- 11:28So you do have to get their buy in.
- 11:30And what I always tell them too is I want you to push back on
- 11:34me. It's like my least favorite
- 11:35teams that I've worked with are ones that just take whatever I
- 11:38say and go execute. I'm like, no, I want your
- 11:41pushback. If there's something that you
- 11:42know is going to take a really long time and it's a ton of
- 11:45effort, maybe it only delivers, you know, 5% of what we need.
- 11:49I'm open to skipping that, you know?
- 11:51So I really like engineering teams and the collaboration that
- 11:54goes on with a strong team of engineers.
- 11:56I also introduced you as a member, actually a board member
- 11:59of ID PRO. Can you talk a little bit about
- 12:01that role? What are you working on from the
- 12:03ID Pro perspective? And I guess just for Full
- 12:05disclosure, right, I'm a member, Jim, you're a member.
- 12:07I also serve on a couple of different committees for like
- 12:09CID Pro and the nomination committee for board members.
- 12:13So I remember seeing your name on that list a couple years
- 12:16back, but tell us a little bit about your role with ID Pro.
- 12:20Yeah. So being on the board of ID Pro
- 12:22has truly been an honor. I never thought that board
- 12:26member would be, you know, on my resume.
- 12:28So it's been, you know, hugely encouraging for me that others
- 12:32believed I I was capable enough. ID Pro.
- 12:35We are a a network and a certification body for identity
- 12:40professionals. I found out about ID Pro because
- 12:44my roles in Identity, I've been sort of the lone soldier of
- 12:51Identity expertise in addition to my engineers, but more from
- 12:54like a product or a business side.
- 12:56I've never worked for an Okta or a company where Identity is the
- 13:00product. I've always worked somewhere
- 13:01where Identity is part of a bigger product, right?
- 13:05And I think there's a difference there.
- 13:06And you can start to feel like, well, do I really work in
- 13:08Identity if, you know, I, I've never worked for one of the big
- 13:11names of the booths that you see at Identiverse.
- 13:15But I think a lot of companies have, you know, every product
- 13:21has identity in it, some more customized or home grown than
- 13:25others. And there need to be people that
- 13:27oversee that. So I think there's plenty of us
- 13:29out there, but I was struggling to find them and that's when I
- 13:31found ID Pro and was really excited about, Oh my gosh,
- 13:35there's actually hopefully going to be people here that I can
- 13:38talk shop with and I won't feel like the only one.
- 13:41So that's when I joined ID Pro. And being on the board, we work
- 13:46together in a team as the board. We kind of set our yearly
- 13:50strategic initiatives. We kind of decide, you know,
- 13:54this is who we are. This is our value proposition.
- 13:57Here's what we want to provide to our members so to make sure
- 13:59they're getting benefits out of their membership.
- 14:03And we kind of do strategic initiatives for the year.
- 14:07And then we, along with our Executive Director, Heather
- 14:10Flanagan, execute on those priorities.
- 14:13We check in on them every month at a meeting.
- 14:17And one of the things I'm excited about that we've done so
- 14:20far this year is I think a huge part of our value prop is our
- 14:24Slack. And I would have never been one
- 14:27to be like, Oh yeah, like really excited about a Slack network.
- 14:31But I can't even tell you to be able to pop a message on Slack
- 14:35in one of the channels, ask a question and then you know get
- 14:40get the author of the SAML standard to reply to your
- 14:43message. And then ten other people who
- 14:45are have years and years of experience implementing these
- 14:48technologies. That alone is worth the price of
- 14:51membership I think in in one Slack chat.
- 14:54And it's the more active you are, the more you get back.
- 14:57And so our history used to only last, I think for 90 days and we
- 15:02recently upgraded our Slack plan and we can now have historical
- 15:06knowledge and and have all of those conversations that have
- 15:10been so valuable and now they're searchable, you can find them.
- 15:12And so I think that's one of the things I've been excited about
- 15:15so far this year. Jeff and I couldn't agree more.
- 15:18I mean, we're both ID Pro members.
- 15:21We talk about the Slack channels, like the number one
- 15:23benefit because not only can you benefit from your question, but
- 15:28Jeff and I can benefit everyone as an ID Pro member can benefit
- 15:33from your question and all the people who wrote responses.
- 15:36I also think one of the great things is like, sometimes you
- 15:39get these questions that kind of stir the pot.
- 15:42And I get the sense that you like to stir the pot a little
- 15:45bit too. And that was kind of one of the
- 15:47things you wrote in the December newsletter for ID Pro, an
- 15:53article called Privacy is a Human Right.
- 15:56I thought that kind of stirred the pot a little bit.
- 15:59Wonder why did you say that? Privacy has been super important
- 16:04to me over maybe the past year and a half.
- 16:08I remember it identivers, I guess it was three years ago,
- 16:11probably back when it was in Denver and we were all wearing
- 16:14masks. I heard.
- 16:15I just went to Jamie Danker's talk Introduction to Privacy and
- 16:21I remember just like scribbling down notes and being so
- 16:23interested in this topic that I went back home and I it kind of
- 16:30jived with some things, actually.
- 16:32My friends, you know, like non-technical folk, my friends
- 16:36who I sit down and watch. We have a group that watches The
- 16:38Bachelor when it's out. We get together once a week and
- 16:43we watch it together and they would always be like, you know,
- 16:46you work in tech. Like is my Alexa listening to
- 16:48me, like, why did I look at that toothpaste at Target?
- 16:51And then it started getting an ad for it like is, are things
- 16:55spying on me? And I realized, like I I don't
- 16:58have a great answer for that. And yeah, I've worked in tech
- 17:00forever and it's weird. And so I'm going to start to try
- 17:05to understand that and share my learning along the way.
- 17:09So that's really how my interest in privacy came about in terms
- 17:14of sharing it with others. I wanted to do a very low
- 17:17barrier way to share, so I started an Instagram account.
- 17:21But yeah, that's where. So my interest in privacy has
- 17:24blossomed over the past year and a half or so, leading me to
- 17:27write that article. Because I do think identity and
- 17:31privacy are interlinked at this point in our journey as a
- 17:35species that lives a lot of their lives online.
- 17:38So I was really excited to write that.
- 17:41Yeah, yeah. And I think my whole point on
- 17:44like questions that kind of store the pot is more that
- 17:47different people can end up on different sides of that issue or
- 17:50find themselves. And I'm going to bring up a
- 17:52topic that I think is one of these topics, but I think it's
- 17:55OK. I think it benefits us all to
- 17:57have those conversations, hear both sides of the argument and
- 18:01then figure out which one we align with.
- 18:03As I know this one, this next question that I have for you is
- 18:06something that not everybody agrees on, maybe not everybody
- 18:10has formulated an opinion on, But I mean, we hear about, you
- 18:14know, the Internet was created without an identity layer and
- 18:18that was the big mistake. So it's kind of like, well, had
- 18:22there been an identity layer in the Internet, all of our
- 18:24problems would be solved. And I don't think that's
- 18:27necessarily true. I think we're also moving toward
- 18:30different ways to have more of our identity able to be enabled
- 18:34on the Internet. My question is, do we have a
- 18:37right as humans to be anonymous on the Internet?
- 18:40I think out of all the questions we talked about today, let's
- 18:43still be the one I'm most fuzzy on.
- 18:44My answer on right? But this should make for a good
- 18:47discussion. I think I would lean more
- 18:50towards your right to have anonymity on the Internet than I
- 18:55would on, you know, every single thing should be tied back to
- 19:00your identity. I think that people are fooling
- 19:06themselves, quite frankly, if they think they can be anonymous
- 19:09on the Internet. And I know that sometimes if
- 19:13people put enough up, enough blockers, VPN, whatever, they do
- 19:17everything right to. Yes, you can maybe be anonymous
- 19:21on the Internet. And I I think there's a a tough
- 19:25line here because you know, I think about all the bad things
- 19:28that can happen on the Internet that people are much more likely
- 19:31to do if they know I can be anonymous, right.
- 19:36But I also think that potentially, you know,
- 19:40exercising your right to free speech, if that's tied to your
- 19:43identity and the wrong party gets a hold of that data, what
- 19:45could possibly happen? I I really do worry about if
- 19:50everything is tied to This is Hannah, which a lot of it is,
- 19:55right? Even like what we watch on our
- 19:57smart TV's, they know it's me. I worry a lot about the fact
- 20:04that our worlds are so influenced by what we see.
- 20:09The ads we see, the order things are shown in the news articles
- 20:12were shown. Everything is influenced by
- 20:15like. Here's what we think Hannah
- 20:16wants to see, here's what we think she's going to click on.
- 20:19And so I think it's really hard to get an unbiased view.
- 20:23And that is my concern with not being able to be anonymous on
- 20:27the Internet, is that there's no way to get out of this sort of
- 20:29like tunnel vision that's created for you by by the
- 20:34algorithm. What do you?
- 20:35Think well, tremendous point. Let me kick the Jeff first.
- 20:39It's like anything else. It's a tool and there are good
- 20:42and bad when it comes to a non anonymity and privacy and being
- 20:47able to, you know, tribute things to people.
- 20:50I don't have the answer, that's for sure.
- 20:52I mean I my, I'm man. I cannot talk today, man.
- 20:56Context switching all the time. Things that I want to be
- 21:00private, things that I don't care and things that I can't be
- 21:03private about because they're required by law.
- 21:05I have a driver's license, or I have to pay a bill, or I have to
- 21:07do XYZ right? Or maybe I think having the
- 21:12option to toggle that flag is important.
- 21:14I don't know who controls that flag though, because I don't
- 21:17think it's something that can be on the hands of the user 100% of
- 21:20the time, the same way that it can't be in the hands of the
- 21:24service 100% of the time. So I think it's kind of like
- 21:27this wishy washy consulting depends answer.
- 21:30And I don't know if we have a good infrastructure from an
- 21:32identity perspective to be able to enable that broad of a
- 21:36thinking because right now for the most part, we're all using a
- 21:39variety of different identity providers and services and
- 21:42things like that to log in. And if I look at my, you know,
- 21:45my password wallet, I probably have a 1000 different IDs in
- 21:48there. How am I supposed to manage
- 21:49privacy without some sort of centralized tool to do that?
- 21:52Who's going to management and would I trust the person
- 21:55managing that or the persons or the company managing that to not
- 21:59do things with the data that I might potentially put into that?
- 22:01So I don't know where to go with it, but I I see both sides of
- 22:05the coin and I think there needs to be some flexibility there
- 22:07somehow. I'm not smart enough to solve it
- 22:09though. What do you think, Jim?
- 22:10Well. I think Hannah brought up a a
- 22:12fantastic point, which is do you really think you can be
- 22:16anonymous on the Internet? That might raise the question,
- 22:20But here's kind of my concern is if you took away the ability to
- 22:24be anonymous, you might get away from people who are human rights
- 22:31activists in countries where you don't have the right to free
- 22:34speech. Right.
- 22:35And where these things are tremendous threats.
- 22:38And if, you know, the government finds out who posted that, that
- 22:43person might not live another day.
- 22:46So yeah, I think it's important. I think it's, you know, at the
- 22:50state of where our society is today and it's too easy to get
- 22:53trapped into. OK.
- 22:55In the US we have like online bullying and like believe me
- 22:59that's where I would love to just take away anonymity but at
- 23:03the same time I think there's other issues and and how the the
- 23:08evolution of the of the world needs to happen in terms of you
- 23:12know oppressive regimes or you know etcetera etcetera.
- 23:18The the those things trump, you know, issues that the other
- 23:24issues I guess because it look, it's not a black and white
- 23:27issue, but I think I fall down on the side of we need to have
- 23:31anonymity on the Internet. And I that's why when I hear
- 23:34like, OK the Internet was built without an identity layer, I
- 23:38think OK, I can agree with that to the extent that there there
- 23:42still could be anonymity. All right.
- 23:45Next question for Hannah. And I think that was a good one,
- 23:48right. And that might have been the
- 23:49hardest one, but I'm wondering like, so Hannah, you talked
- 23:53about privacy as a human right. And I'm wondering is an
- 23:57inalienable in now it's going to be my turn to not be able to
- 24:01speak in in in inalienable right.
- 24:12In other words like a God-given right or is it based on or
- 24:16depend on where you happen to be or where you live or where
- 24:19you're from. So in other words, like, is it a
- 24:22human right in the United States?
- 24:23But if you're in North Korea, you don't have that human right.
- 24:28Well, I think that's certainly the way it is right now.
- 24:32I mean I don't even think that we have, we don't have any, you
- 24:36know, legislation here in the US that does make privacy a human
- 24:40right. That's why I felt like, you
- 24:41know, worldwide this is still just very much in its infancy
- 24:45and that's why I wanted to bring it up in the, in the article I
- 24:47wrote. In my opinion, it is an
- 24:50inalienable right. It should not be available to
- 24:53certain people. I've seen a trending towards,
- 24:56well, we're going to, you know, if you want to use a certain
- 24:59social media platform and you want to use it with more privacy
- 25:03controls, then you're going to have to pay a certain amount a
- 25:05month. And then anyone who can't afford
- 25:08it gets, you know, their data, you know, taken away and sold to
- 25:13brokers. And I don't think that's right
- 25:15either. I don't think it should be
- 25:16something that only people with a certain financial privilege
- 25:19can afford. So I feel pretty strongly on
- 25:22this one that it should be an inalienable right.
- 25:24I just think that we're far away from that.
- 25:27What do you think, Chuff? Again, depends, I think are you
- 25:32know, are we saying that you don't have the right to privacy
- 25:34as a consumer or as an enterprise worker or in what
- 25:37context? I would say, again, it's not
- 25:40black and white. Some contexts I do not have that
- 25:43right. I need to be, you know
- 25:45accountable for whatever actions I take.
- 25:48And there are other situations where you know, I I can't or I
- 25:51shouldn't be to preserve physical security or emotional
- 25:55or mental security, right. Things like that.
- 25:58I I, I don't, I don't even know. I don't know how to answer the
- 26:00question because I think it's against that contact switching.
- 26:02And Hannah, you keep throwing me for a loop here and say, OK,
- 26:04well, I agree with that. I don't agree with them.
- 26:06So wait a second. Which context are we talking
- 26:07about here? You know, how do we, how do we
- 26:10even think about something like this where, you know, we're very
- 26:12fortunate the three of us live in the United States and we're
- 26:16able to have a certain amount of free speech.
- 26:18Not every person has that benefit or that luxury, and that
- 26:23has varying degrees of repercussions depending where
- 26:26you're at in the right How do you protect somebody?
- 26:28Yeah, and I think even just thinking to my day job at
- 26:31GitLab, right, it's another context specific thing.
- 26:34Because if you want to push, you know, code changes to production
- 26:39for example, we're gonna need a very high level assurance that
- 26:43you are who you say you are. And maybe you have to go through
- 26:45several step up authentication methods to prove, hey, that's
- 26:49actually Hannah behind the keyboard.
- 26:51And the further those go, the less privacy perhaps you could
- 26:56say you have. But it's all a trade off, right?
- 26:59It's like, is it worth it to have the level of assurance to
- 27:02do a potentially destructive action?
- 27:05Yeah, I kind of feel like there's certain privacy that is
- 27:10a human right. I think that you can put
- 27:14yourself in certain situations where you give up privacy.
- 27:20So for example, you walk into a store, it's a privately owned
- 27:24store if they are doing some kind of eye or they're watching
- 27:29your eyes in terms of like what you're looking at and then
- 27:33feeding that information to a third party.
- 27:36But here's where I think it breaks down.
- 27:38If you're doing those things and the person doesn't know you're
- 27:41doing those things, I think that's where it should break
- 27:44down. You know, and I think that's the
- 27:47problem with like, privacy policies, for example, is like,
- 27:50OK, if I'm going into a store and they're scanning my face and
- 27:55saying, oh, there's Jim McDonald and, oh, he looked at the Crest
- 27:58White strips. And now we're going to sell that
- 28:01information back to some marketing firm and we're going
- 28:04to tie his e-mail address to it. And we're just going to start
- 28:07and they're going to do whatever they want to do.
- 28:09Now they know he wants Crest or he's interested in Crest white
- 28:12strips and they're just going to start spamming him or something.
- 28:16I don't think that's right. So that that's kind of where I,
- 28:19I I think if people understand what they're getting into.
- 28:25But I also think that the counterbalance to that is that
- 28:29sometimes like, oh, you know, if like you go to the airport,
- 28:32we're going to start like, you know, scanning your face and
- 28:36knowing who you are as you're walking through the hallways or
- 28:39if you're on a public St. we're going to do those things.
- 28:42So we're always going to know where you are at any given time.
- 28:44I don't think that's, you know, if even if you know that's
- 28:48what's happening, you don't really have a choice of not
- 28:51walking on the streets. You know, what are you supposed
- 28:53to do to go live in the woods? Yeah, exactly.
- 28:57And I that's one of the things as I've been sort of talking
- 29:00about privacy in public that I've tried to be very clear on
- 29:04is that it's not all or nothing, right.
- 29:07Just because you you like you can share your photos on
- 29:11Facebook, right? But just understand what the
- 29:14implications of that are and maybe it's worth the trade off
- 29:17to you, right? Like maybe it's, you know it's
- 29:19really convenient to share the photos of your kid with the
- 29:21grandparents on Facebook. But hey, maybe you should make
- 29:24sure they're at least private, right.
- 29:25So there's like a balance, and it doesn't have to be all or
- 29:28nothing. And just because you use a
- 29:31certain platform doesn't mean that it's all a lost cause for
- 29:36your privacy. And oh, what does it matter?
- 29:37They can know everything about me because, you know, that's
- 29:40fine. I'm boring, right?
- 29:42It's like the common, you know, who cares?
- 29:45But I think, I think it can get potentially hairy, right?
- 29:48We were talking about walking into stores.
- 29:50You're looking at white strips advertising it to you.
- 29:54Yeah, that seems fairly benign. And I, some people even love
- 29:57those targeted advertisements. Like, yeah, I wanted to buy
- 30:00that. So thanks for reminding me.
- 30:02But what I'd be worried about is, oh, let's, you know, oh,
- 30:06gosh, Based on her last visit six months ago.
- 30:10Yeah. She's gained weight.
- 30:13What does that mean about her health?
- 30:14Right. And can we combine that with
- 30:15some other records from an online therapy place that's
- 30:19gotten hacked? And now we can tell that, you
- 30:22know, I postulate that a certain thing is going on.
- 30:24And now my health insurance company knows, and they that's
- 30:28what I worry about, is kind of like a next step into how this
- 30:31could go wrong. Yeah, I can see that, Jeff, your
- 30:33love of chicken and waffles is causing your your cholesterol to
- 30:37go up, right? Things like that.
- 30:42So Hannah, you had mentioned about the Amazon election,
- 30:46whether or not it's listening to you.
- 30:48And I've had conversation with people, so I don't really have
- 30:51the inside information. We did have a guest on the the
- 30:54show at one point who's like, absolutely, it's listening to
- 30:56you and I, here's the the dots that I've connected.
- 31:00It's like, does it require some human being to sit there and
- 31:03listen to what you're saying? No.
- 31:06With artificial intelligence, they can do speech to text, load
- 31:09that into some big data database somewhere and like just scan
- 31:14through it in seconds, right. So I think it definitely could
- 31:19be. Whether or not it is, I don't
- 31:21know. I don't think we know for sure.
- 31:23It is the person who mentioned that was not speaking on behalf
- 31:25of Amazon. So if you're Amazon listening,
- 31:27don't sue us, we don't know. But the same thing applies for
- 31:30any of these services, right, That has a Voice Assistant And
- 31:33it just seems like the correlation of different points
- 31:36of data is what's taking place. And they think about Jim,
- 31:39earlier you said choice. And I think that's one of the
- 31:41big parts of this is if you're walking to a store to get Crest
- 31:45White strips, we'll just stay with that thing and you don't
- 31:48have a choice. It's the only place that you can
- 31:50go to sell it. And the only way you can buy is
- 31:52by going in and giving up your information.
- 31:56In this case, is that really where we want to be where you're
- 31:59in a position where you only have, you don't have a choice.
- 32:02Essentially this is the way you have to do that versus maybe
- 32:05there is an alternative method, right?
- 32:07Maybe you have to drive an extra 2 miles to get to a location
- 32:10that doesn't do that. You made the decision to go into
- 32:13that private enterprise that theoretically told you what it
- 32:17was doing. But we had a conversation with a
- 32:19few weeks ago with Laura Gomez Martin and from our team here
- 32:22about privacy. And I kind of got on her case a
- 32:25little bit not, you know, not mean or anything, but these
- 32:29Eulas that we see out there, it's buried in, you know, walls
- 32:32of wiggle texts, and you really don't have a choice.
- 32:35It's really the only viable option.
- 32:37Are you gonna drive 45 minutes extra to get Crest White strips
- 32:40or milk or bread or gasoline or X thing?
- 32:45If you don't have the choice, then I think we run into issues.
- 32:49And then the correlation of the data that's being collected, I
- 32:51think is the other problem point.
- 32:53So yes, you might have all these different, you know, points of
- 32:56data, but until they're correlated, that's what truly
- 32:58makes it powerful. And that's what concerns me is
- 33:01some of these situations where it's like, oh, I know I visited
- 33:03this website over here. Of course there's a cookie.
- 33:05It tracked that I went to this other website and then I visited
- 33:09a physical location and then I drove my car somewhere and my
- 33:11phone knew where I was going because I wanted Google Maps to
- 33:14run. You put all that stuff together
- 33:16and guess what? Now you've got correlation of
- 33:19data that can be potentially extremely damaging or
- 33:23potentially extremely helpful. Hey, I get an e-mail every month
- 33:26of my Google travels. I traveled this many miles
- 33:29around the world and I went to these locations and my photos
- 33:31are Geo tagged. I love that.
- 33:33Do I love the fact that it could be used for other purposes?
- 33:36No. But that's that's where we are
- 33:39right now. Right.
- 33:40And it would be nice and perhaps there is this, I don't know, but
- 33:43if you had some granularity and being able to opt out on the
- 33:48Google front, it wasn't just like a mass all of my
- 33:51information from maps and use it.
- 33:53It would be like, oh, how nice would it be if I could get the
- 33:56check box that showed me my Pretty Little map.
- 33:58But then I didn't have to let them, you know, package it up
- 34:01and sell it or whatever they do with it or target me with ads
- 34:04for it. So I think we have a ways to go
- 34:07in offering better privacy controls to consumers.
- 34:10Yeah. My feeling also when it comes to
- 34:12human right, we can't look at like, here's how it is, You
- 34:16know, we have HIPAA laws in the United States, maybe in Mexico
- 34:20or in Canada. They're different.
- 34:22Maybe, let's just say they're lesser.
- 34:23I don't know, they might be stronger.
- 34:25But let's assume that for the sake of argument, they're
- 34:28lesser. I think when we talk about a
- 34:30human right, we should be talking about the way it should
- 34:33be, right. And when we're, we use Crest
- 34:35White strips as the example, it's kind of an innocuous
- 34:38example. But if you were to go and get
- 34:40some kind of medical procedure done or you're buying like birth
- 34:45control or something, that it's just nobody else's business,
- 34:48right? And you don't want that
- 34:50information to become public or you don't want some insurance
- 34:54company to use it to say, oh, we're going to deny you
- 34:57insurance because you had this procedure, you have a shorter
- 35:02lifespan or you have some kind of disease or here's another
- 35:06example, You get your DNA worked up, right?
- 35:09And you want to know for yourself, OK, am I likely to
- 35:14more likely to catch these diseases or whatever, You don't
- 35:18want that information to become public.
- 35:20You don't want that information to be sold.
- 35:23So to me it's the human right pieces about how it should be,
- 35:27not the way it is. Yeah, totally agree.
- 35:30All right. Let's shift topics a little bit
- 35:32because I think we've started to talk about this, but maybe not
- 35:35head on. And I think it's just that
- 35:37expectation of privacy as an employee.
- 35:39I think so far we've been talking about this maybe more
- 35:43from a consumer perspective. Typically, we're not a captive
- 35:46audience, right? We do have choices for the most
- 35:48part. But if you're an employee, you
- 35:50may not have as much choice. What are my expectations of
- 35:54privacy as a employee and how might that be different from the
- 35:58consumer side of things? What do you think, Hannah?
- 36:00I think your expectations as an employee go down, right.
- 36:05I have found that anytime I'm employed, I'm given pretty
- 36:09thorough policies to sign off on that says, hey, you know, here's
- 36:14if you're working on the work computer, here's what we're
- 36:17recording about you or could in theory record about you.
- 36:21So I think it's been at least pretty transparently disclosed.
- 36:26Hopefully that's the case for others as well.
- 36:28But I do think when you're an employee you have a lot less,
- 36:34you need to have a lot less expectations And again, you
- 36:37know, balancing sort of privacy and security, a lot of these
- 36:41things are kind of, you know, given under the well, we need to
- 36:46know exactly what our employees are doing for security purposes.
- 36:50And that does certainly have merit whenever you're dealing
- 36:53with, you know, intellectual property and keeping it sort of
- 36:57within your company's ecosystem. So I guess my personally my
- 37:02expectations as as an employee are pretty low, but at least I
- 37:05feel like I know what I'm in for.
- 37:06What What's been your experience?
- 37:09I'll add my my thoughts on it. My concern is that you know IT
- 37:15administrators are the ones who have access to your
- 37:20communications, at least your electronic communications.
- 37:23And my concern is, is like, you know, what if the IT
- 37:27administrator says, oh, I'd like to start reading Hannah's
- 37:30emails. Oh, she's having a a argument
- 37:33with her spouse or something like that.
- 37:36And you know, like somebody goes and abuses that.
- 37:39I absolutely think that is not acceptable.
- 37:42But I do think that the company has the requirement to watch for
- 37:48certain things that you're not exfiltrating the company's data
- 37:52or you know doing other things that is like corporate espionage
- 37:57kind of stuff. But it it I think it stops right
- 38:01there. And I think that if the company
- 38:03is going to put itself in that position, then it's required to
- 38:09make sure that that data is not being abused.
- 38:11Otherwise, it sets itself up for potential lawsuits.
- 38:15Well, I think this is an area though where most companies
- 38:17would have a policy statement somewhere that says, look, this
- 38:20is company property. You know, we may allow some, you
- 38:24know, adjacent use for convenience and things like
- 38:26that. But you know, if you're using
- 38:27your work e-mail to do it, all of your transactions, that's on
- 38:31you as the end user really not understanding or not adhering or
- 38:37even thinking about that type of privacy.
- 38:39So what is the responsibility of the individual to say, oh, I
- 38:42should probably have my own e-mail account to do this and
- 38:46not do everything through my atwork.com e-mail address,
- 38:50whatever that might look like. Now if an IT person is snooping
- 38:54my traffic, they're running Wireshark and they're putting
- 38:56together packets and doing things to get into my e-mail and
- 38:59my personal e-mail. Again, bad situation, but my
- 39:02responsibility as to myself would be of course I'm not gonna
- 39:06use my work account for that kind of thing, but there's lots
- 39:09of people who do. I have been in those situations
- 39:12from a security operations standpoint, doing the forensics
- 39:14analysis and people do dumb stuff all the time.
- 39:18I think it's gotten better probably or at least more known.
- 39:20But it does happen. You know, you get the the
- 39:22occasional e-mail, always sent it to the wrong address or you
- 39:25know you're in your address book of my work address, some
- 39:28personal address and you know, maybe there's some some you
- 39:31know, weird thing that goes to 1 address and not the other.
- 39:33But you certainly hope you fix that in subsequent threads.
- 39:37But I think there is some personal responsibility when it
- 39:39comes to the usage of a company, resources and understanding.
- 39:42Like, OK, yeah, like the organization, this belongs to
- 39:45them and they could do something with that data if they wanted
- 39:48to. And they have every right to do
- 39:50that. It is their property.
- 39:51Hannah, what do you? Think, yeah, I think that's very
- 39:52well said that there is a responsibility there on the
- 39:55employee side. One thing I'm curious about,
- 39:59Jeff, since you mentioned your sort of forensic background
- 40:03there. What I've always wondered on
- 40:06using a work computer for encrypted things like iMessage,
- 40:10right? Can your company still read
- 40:12that? I'm honestly not sure.
- 40:14There are ways to get around it now.
- 40:16It's been 15 years before I message was around that I was
- 40:20doing this type of stuff, but there are still ways to do that.
- 40:23To break the encryption on it. You typically need the device or
- 40:27at least a forensic copy of the device to do that.
- 40:29But I don't want to like say yes or no as of now, because the
- 40:33last time I did it we were still using Lotus Notes for e-mail.
- 40:37So that just goes how far back it was.
- 40:40Yeah, OK. There's also situations where,
- 40:43like on your desktop hard drive, you might have your W twos or
- 40:49other kind of tax forms that you downloaded from the the
- 40:54company's HR portal, so there's ways that people could access
- 40:58that. I guess your point though is
- 41:01well taken. I can see why companies say
- 41:04don't use your personal device for any personal stuff.
- 41:08Yeah, 'cause they don't want to be responsible for it, and maybe
- 41:10it's they don't care. They're trying to protect the
- 41:12users who maybe just don't clean up after themselves.
- 41:15A a company device to me is a public portal.
- 41:18I wouldn't do anything on my corporate computer that I
- 41:21wouldn't do at a kiosk, in a library or, you know, whatever
- 41:24it may be. Not that I would ever use any of
- 41:26those. But that same idea right?
- 41:28Of this is not a a trusted device for my personal
- 41:32information, that kind of thing. Yeah, I completely agree.
- 41:36I think that's I think people should be careful and and you
- 41:39know be judicious with what they do on their on their work
- 41:42computer for sure. There's another saying out there
- 41:45that if you aren't paying for a product, then you probably are
- 41:49the product. And this is one that I I
- 41:50definitely believe there is some truth to and I point back to my
- 41:53own experiences. I don't pay for Google.
- 41:55Well, I do, but not not the services I use like Google Maps
- 41:58and things like that. So they're clearly collecting my
- 42:02traffic information, right, to make sure that traffic, you
- 42:06know, they can show the green line or the red line in Google
- 42:08Maps. And I'm sacrificing that bit of
- 42:11privacy to enhance the map, the map application.
- 42:15My benefit, no, can't talk again.
- 42:18My benefit from it is I don't have to go to you know a AAA
- 42:22store and buy a triptych to do a cross country, you know, journey
- 42:27like we have to, you had to do like 20 years ago.
- 42:30Do you believe in that statement?
- 42:31Does that make sense that if you're not paying for a product,
- 42:34then you probably are the product and meaning that your
- 42:36data is probably what's being used?
- 42:39Absolutely. I think I've said this to my
- 42:42Instagram audience and I've put it in a lot of the content that
- 42:47I've written as sort of a principle to keep in mind,
- 42:50right, that nothing is free. You are giving up your data in
- 42:53exchange for a service. And I think as long as you
- 42:58realize that and you're OK with the trade off, then fine.
- 43:03But it's the fact that the it's so opaque to most people and
- 43:07they don't realize exactly what's happening or they they
- 43:10know some data is being collected.
- 43:12But you know, there's the small text about, oh, it may be shared
- 43:14with third parties. And then before you know it,
- 43:17your data is replicated copy after copy with data brokers.
- 43:20And it's basically impossible to peel back at that point and
- 43:24regain possession of. So I agree that if you're not
- 43:29buying it, you are the product. I've tried to get away from
- 43:37certain things as best as I can. It's really hard to untangle
- 43:41yourself from some of these products like Gmail for example.
- 43:46I moved over to Proton e-mail address, which I pay for.
- 43:51They have a very transparent privacy policy that they're not
- 43:54selling your data, but it does. It costs more than even like a
- 43:59Google Business account. And you have the pain of, like
- 44:03most people don't know me at that e-mail address.
- 44:05So do I I can I ever actually get rid of my 10 year old Gmail?
- 44:09Probably not. So it's a very powerful, sticky
- 44:13thing. And it's, I don't want to act
- 44:14like it's, you know, easy. Oh, just switch to all the, you
- 44:16know, privacy products because again, you have financial
- 44:20barriers. There's usability barriers.
- 44:23I'm not familiar with those. For example, I use Google
- 44:26Photos, right? I know they're scanning
- 44:29everything about those photos. They I take a picture in the
- 44:32kitchen, they probably know what's in my pantry door that's
- 44:34open, right? But I'm willing to live with
- 44:38that because it's easy to use, it's easy for me to share things
- 44:42on there. So I think as long as you're
- 44:44understanding the trade-offs, I think it is what it is and
- 44:48you're definitely the product and maybe that's OK.
- 44:51I mean, I think understanding that trade off is probably the
- 44:52most important thing. I'm a Google Photos person
- 44:54myself, right? And I'm looking at my my Google
- 44:57Chromecasts with Google TV, which is a terrible name for a
- 44:59product by the way. Google, if you're listening and
- 45:01I have an album that is my dog photos, and every time I pick a
- 45:04picture of one of my dogs, it's using its Google magic to add it
- 45:08automatically to my photo album and it just magically appears on
- 45:11my TV, which I think is great. My wife and I love that.
- 45:16Yeah, see, it's not all bad. Jim, I know that you've had some
- 45:21concerns or maybe some questions is probably a better way to put
- 45:24it around pictures and those getting uploaded and becoming
- 45:28property. I wanna ask you about this and
- 45:33kind of maybe get Hannah's take on this, but we just talked
- 45:36about Google Photos, right? You're uploading pictures and
- 45:39you're doing something about that.
- 45:41And I think this concept of all uploaded pictures become the
- 45:44property of that company is a real problem I have with that.
- 45:50Unless it's very clearly stated, I'm probably not going to use
- 45:52that platform. Where do you see that most
- 45:55often? Is that something you've come
- 45:56across, you know? What are your thoughts on that?
- 45:58Because I'd love to hear Hannah's comments after that.
- 46:00You know, I heard this in the early Facebook days, so I'm not
- 46:04even sure if it's it's ever true then or if it's still true now.
- 46:09But my understanding back in the day was that you agree as part
- 46:14of the end User License agreement that any photos you
- 46:17upload become the property of Facebook or you know via
- 46:21Instagram up the property of I guess meta is the the right
- 46:26term. Now my concern is then, OK,
- 46:29where might those pictures show up?
- 46:32And if there are pictures of like you and your family or
- 46:36pictures of you and whoever, could they show up and at some
- 46:42point you don't want them to be on the home page of Facebook?
- 46:45Now, I think that Meta's probably smarter than just to
- 46:49take Hannah's one of Hannah's pictures from her Instagram
- 46:52profile and throw it on the instagram.com website, But I
- 46:57don't know. I don't know if that's true.
- 46:59I think the language that I typically see is transferable,
- 47:03sublicensable, royalty free, worldwide license, all this, you
- 47:08know, legal gobbledygook, where it's OK.
- 47:11I uploaded a picture of one of my dogs and I'll just use Google
- 47:14for that example. I don't know if they're doing
- 47:15this or not, but I uploaded a picture and part of that service
- 47:19says, OK, I have one of these things.
- 47:20Can they make a copy of that picture, then do what they want
- 47:23with it? Who owns the copy of the
- 47:25original? I don't know.
- 47:26And are they with? Maybe.
- 47:28But I agreed to that when I took advantage of, you know, having a
- 47:33dynamic photo album with my dogs in it.
- 47:36Right. I've got cute dogs.
- 47:37I mean, I hope I get it, you know, a little bit of kickback
- 47:39from Google if that happens, But.
- 47:42But I think that's the issue, right?
- 47:43It's a copy of the original. It's not.
- 47:44Oh, we didn't use the original. We used a copy of it.
- 47:47Does that make? You sold.
- 47:48What if they sold pictures of you and your wife and millions
- 47:53of other people to a retailer, and then they used AI technology
- 47:59to do facial recognition. Now you walk into that retailer
- 48:03and they knew all this stuff about you or they say, Oh well
- 48:07now Jeff was looking at the Crest white strips and they they
- 48:10start pushing those ads to your your profile.
- 48:14Yeah, they use this podcast. They heard us talking about it.
- 48:16It's the part of the training data.
- 48:19Who owns the podcast, Jeff? Is it really you and me or is it
- 48:22actually the each podcast platform?
- 48:24People own it. This is a podcast for the
- 48:26people, by the people. Come on.
- 48:28Man, I'm with you. I'm with you, man.
- 48:31Well, and I think back to what I said earlier, right, is that
- 48:33it's the images. And then even if they're not
- 48:37selling the images, they're probably inferring attributes,
- 48:40right, or things in our images about us.
- 48:44And then these huge data profiles are built up by the
- 48:48data brokers who then, you know, package this information and
- 48:52sell it. And then I think you know it
- 48:55like, like I said at the beginning, like the fact that
- 48:58perhaps when I try to go look at the news and try to get an
- 49:01understanding of what's going on in the world, and I'm seeing
- 49:04some version of it that is different because they think,
- 49:08oh, this is the, this is the version Hannah will interact
- 49:12with, right. But my friend opens the computer
- 49:14and says what's going on in the world and they might get a
- 49:16completely different sense of what's going on because the
- 49:20output is all influenced by the data that is they had about us.
- 49:24So that's one thing I think is unique to sort of the past five
- 49:29to 10 years in terms of how tailored our experiences are
- 49:33that we may not even realize it. So I think you bring up early
- 49:35interesting point because I feel like we're going into an
- 49:37electric an election cycle here in the US right.
- 49:40And it's pretty clear that there are red states, blue States and
- 49:42purple states. And I do find it interesting to
- 49:45say, OK, well, you know, if someone has leans towards these
- 49:48specific sites or whatever, could that data be manipulated
- 49:52to show me things that would put me either for or against, right.
- 49:55Those situations. I do think that's interesting
- 49:57idea of, you know, maybe this is an AI thing.
- 50:00I don't know. But people are constantly trying
- 50:02to tailor their marketing, right.
- 50:03I mean, we use this for the podcast as well as like, hey,
- 50:06how do we get content that people want to listen to or
- 50:08watch or whatever it may be? You know, and we're just a
- 50:11stupid little podcast about identity.
- 50:13You know, I have to imagine that the larger media networks are
- 50:16probably doing their own analytics to say, oh, we know
- 50:19that, you know, this age demographic in this region that
- 50:23also looked at Crest White strips, you know, watch this
- 50:26sort of, you know, thing. Right.
- 50:28And I think I think that's an important point is, you know, if
- 50:32and and sometimes maybe it's not even changing the facts of the
- 50:34story, it's how the story is worded or other things right.
- 50:39They can kind of move you in One Direction or the other,
- 50:42depending on, you know, the goal of the of the service.
- 50:45I think what you're what you're fed online, definitely.
- 50:48I mean, I noticed it myself and I I feel like I'm pretty aware
- 50:51of it, but even I can notice like, OK, you know, oh, it seems
- 50:55like every I'll notice myself saying things like, oh, it seems
- 50:57like everyone is talking about, you know, this And I say that to
- 51:01someone else and they're like, what?
- 51:02Like, so I often times I catch myself wondering like, how much
- 51:06is that really true or how much is it just like continually
- 51:09feeding what I'm being shown and it's making me perceive things
- 51:13in a different way. And we're all living our lives
- 51:15so much online now that I think everyone sort of has their own
- 51:19perception of things that are going on, what's important,
- 51:21what's not. And it's really hard to know the
- 51:23truth. Would you know you were being
- 51:25radicalized one way or the other?
- 51:27However you want to find that if it was a slow progression over
- 51:30time based off the data coming in about you and your other
- 51:33activities, it might start with just a small little thing.
- 51:35It's like next thing you know, you know you keep reading about
- 51:38how Quest white strips actually turn your teeth black.
- 51:41It's like, Oh well, must be true, right.
- 51:43I see 1000 different articles about that and only one that
- 51:46says it's good versus someone else like Jim who's out there,
- 51:49he's buying them. He's like, yeah, these are great
- 51:50And he's in, you know Crest white strip fan club, these are
- 51:53things that the Crest you know the the best thing sliced bread.
- 51:55And he's in the maybe he gets one article.
- 51:57He's like, oh, that's nonsense. Like, how would you even know
- 52:00that you're being pitched one way or another?
- 52:02I find that really scary. And now I've got my tinfoil hat
- 52:05on. So I should.
- 52:05Probably say, yeah, I know, me too.
- 52:07I know it can quickly veer into that.
- 52:08And I don't like when I start to sound like that.
- 52:10But you know, it's it's an interesting question.
- 52:13It's an interesting thing to ask yourself, right?
- 52:14And maybe just become more aware of it.
- 52:16Yeah, such such a cool topic. I think we go for another hour.
- 52:19But Hannah, you've been such an awesome guest, and I wanted to
- 52:23finish with, you know, you've been kind of this privacy
- 52:26evangelist for over a year now, and I'm wondering, like, what
- 52:32have you learned? What's been your biggest take
- 52:33away? I think my biggest take away on
- 52:37privacy evangelism is that people care about human the
- 52:43human side of it. They don't care about a specific
- 52:46technology like. All of my most engaging and
- 52:49sticky things that I've done were like videos, little reels
- 52:54of me doing things like, oh, I this is what, like I logged in
- 52:59without a password and it's like I'm looking at me and then I
- 53:02flip the camera around and I touched my Ubikey, right?
- 53:04Like that was so popular. I don't know why, but I think
- 53:08talking about, you know, Fido and talking about Ubikey didn't
- 53:13connect nearly as much as seeing a person not have to put in a
- 53:16password and just touch something and now they're logged
- 53:18in. And that's what really drives
- 53:20the point home. I did another post where I took
- 53:24a photo of my Christmas tree and I said, you know, if I posted
- 53:28this photo of my Christmas tree online, what would I be giving
- 53:31away about myself? And then I put a little tag that
- 53:34went over each ornament and it was like my favorite vacation
- 53:36spot. How many people are in my
- 53:38family, the ages of people in my family, like one of my favorite
- 53:42foods. It's like all the different
- 53:44things you can potentially be showing about yourself just in a
- 53:47in an innocent seeming picture. So I think taking things out of
- 53:51like digital and technology and putting them into humanity and,
- 53:55you know, just everyday objects around the house and framing
- 53:58privacy that way seems to have resonated the most of people.
- 54:01That's a great experiment, being able to like, use those tracking
- 54:04tags right and pixels the opposite way, 'cause they think
- 54:08maybe people are familiar with it, but maybe not.
- 54:09But you open an e-mail or whatever website, there's
- 54:12usually a tracking pixel somewhere in it that is tracking
- 54:15what you're doing. It's just a little pixel.
- 54:17You would never note it. It's white on white background
- 54:19probably, or black on black background.
- 54:21And yeah, that data gets correlated, stored for somewhere
- 54:25and then correlated back to something about yes.
- 54:28So when you're answering those secret questions, right, It's
- 54:31like, OK, either use the truth or make sure you remember your
- 54:35lie, whatever that is, right? Yep.
- 54:38Yep. Exactly.
- 54:40All right, well, this. I feel like we got pretty heavy
- 54:42here, but I really enjoyed the conversation.
- 54:43I want to lighten up the mood. As we kind of wrap things up,
- 54:46we'll end on a lighter note. I've actually got two.
- 54:48One's from Jim, one's from me. Jim, I'm gonna go first because
- 54:52I think yours is more fun maybe than mine.
- 54:55But Hannah, question for you, what's the most unexpected thing
- 55:00that we would find if we looked at your music playlist right
- 55:04now, whether you're using Apple Music, Spotify, or something
- 55:07else? Like, what's the most surprising
- 55:09thing where it's like, well, that's not Hannah Hannah's
- 55:11changed. I think to anyone who doesn't
- 55:16know me, it would be surprising that I have a ton of really
- 55:21hardcore late 90s and early 2000s rap in my playlist.
- 55:27Super hardcore. I still really like rap and hip
- 55:29hop. But you know, back then it was
- 55:32just super hardcore rapping. And I still love that music to
- 55:36work out too, and I think most people would probably be
- 55:40surprised by that at first. All right.
- 55:42Give me some artists. So you're talking about late,
- 55:44late 90s, two thousand? Yeah, like Snoop.
- 55:49Dogg, Eminem, Doctor Dre, the old Lil Wayne.
- 55:55Yeah, all things like that Kid, Cudi, Chamillionaire and Nellie.
- 55:59Oh yeah, I could go. I could go on and on thinking,
- 56:02thinking back to my CDs in the CD player of Nellie.
- 56:06I I I can get behind that. That's not bad, Jim.
- 56:09How about yourself, 'cause I feel like it's all country music
- 56:11and I'm hope, I'm hopeful that there will be something good in
- 56:13there. There's lots of good country
- 56:17music in there. There's lots of good old classic
- 56:21rock, new rock, medium rock, like, you know, like the, what
- 56:26do you call that, grunge rock. But here's one that's going to
- 56:31stand out. The Ambien Zone.
- 56:34Just Music Cafe Volume four. And the song is called
- 56:39Weightless by Marconi Union and it's just one of those like New
- 56:44age kind of like sounds with no, no vocals and you just play it
- 56:49and just like when you want to meditate and it puts you into a
- 56:53meditative state. And I love it.
- 56:56I I use it just for that very purpose.
- 56:58But I don't have, I have a few songs like that.
- 57:01But I think everybody should check that out.
- 57:04They need some way to relax and get into its own.
- 57:08I use that for focus because I can't, you know, read and write
- 57:12while also listening to someone sing or talk.
- 57:15So I need the. I need the ones without lyrics
- 57:17as well to. I use it for focus though, when
- 57:19I really need to do something and concentrate.
- 57:23What about you, Jeff? Man, I am all over the place
- 57:26when it comes to music. I don't.
- 57:28I'm trying to think it'll be shocking.
- 57:29I mean, I listen to a lot of rock.
- 57:34I I like EDM, even though I can't dance for crap.
- 57:38I think part of that is like instrumental, like dance music.
- 57:43I love Lady Gaga. I think she's great.
- 57:45I don't. I like her old stuff better than
- 57:46her new stuff. I know, controversial, but like
- 57:49the song Telephone with Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, that's my jam,
- 57:52right? I could do that all day long,
- 57:55but maybe that's the most controversial.
- 57:57But the one thing I just. I can't get behind is like
- 57:59country music bothers me. You don't like Chris Stapleton?
- 58:02I don't. I'll tell you, I do have
- 58:04Mexicoma on my playlists. From who sings that it's what's
- 58:09the country guy sing. Name me country artist.
- 58:12Cause it's Mexicoma. Tim McGraw.
- 58:13I think it is. Oh yeah, that's it.
- 58:16You're right. It's Tim McGraw.
- 58:17I just looked it up real quick. OK.
- 58:18Yeah. So you're quicker on the on the
- 58:20scrolling I was that's Jim maybe that surprises surprises you
- 58:23that I have a Tim McGraw song on my list.
- 58:26Yeah, even 1 surprises me 'cause you're pretty, you're pretty
- 58:29firm in your hatred of country music.
- 58:31And it's not for lack of trying, 'cause my wife is a big fan, and
- 58:34we play this game every once in a while where we'll just like,
- 58:37hey, what do you want to do? I don't know.
- 58:38We're just kind of sitting there begging for the TV.
- 58:39We'll fire up the Apple TV or whatever it may be, and just
- 58:42start playing music for each other and telling each other why
- 58:46we like the song that we're listening to.
- 58:48So it's like. Do you like Texas hold 'em by
- 58:51Beyoncé? Because that's kind of like lady
- 58:53pop rap slash country. Is that the new one?
- 58:57Yeah. I have not listened to it yet,
- 58:59OK? Maybe that'll be another country
- 59:01song you like. I'll.
- 59:02Have to listen to it, yeah. And see.
- 59:03Yeah, I don't know. I haven't listened to it yet.
- 59:06So. And we we won't play it here and
- 59:07get a copyright strike. So we've tried that before.
- 59:10We've run into issues. So yeah, yeah, I.
- 59:14Don't know. All right, Jim, So my lighter
- 59:16note question is very brief. Are you a pineapple on pizza
- 59:20person? Let's start with our yes, let's
- 59:23say you, Hannah, Pineapple on pizza.
- 59:25Yes. All right, my turn.
- 59:27So I say I had pineapple on my pizza last night.
- 59:30I actually enjoyed it. But here's the deal.
- 59:33I woke up like a bunch of times with heartburn last night and it
- 59:36was kind of unusual for me. So I'm not sure if I can
- 59:41attribute that to the pineapple, but I'm kind of attributing that
- 59:44to the pineapple. So while it tasted good, I don't
- 59:48know if I can deal with the heartburn.
- 59:49What about you, Jeff? I'm glad that we asked this
- 59:52catching last because we're just gonna have to close out this
- 59:54conversation with Hannah because pineapple does not belong on
- 59:57pizza. Sorry, I have a traditionalist
- 1:00:00'cause everybody knows how traditional I am.
- 1:00:02But no, I I'm not a pineapple on pizza person.
- 1:00:07I respect your choice, Hannah. I do not agree with it.
- 1:00:09How about that? So at Identiverse, I should
- 1:00:12approach you with a giant slice of pineapple pizza.
- 1:00:14And I would, I would be very polite to say, oh, thank you.
- 1:00:16And then I'd like fake eat it like so it's like, I can put it
- 1:00:20like, you know. Take a picture of.
- 1:00:21People and then go right into the garbage or hand it out to
- 1:00:25the next person I find. Hey, Hannah, got you this pizza,
- 1:00:28Hannah. There you.
- 1:00:28Go and then pass it along, yeah. So I would be very, you know,
- 1:00:32diplomatic about it. I just, I don't know, There's
- 1:00:34something about the combination sweet and like greasy.
- 1:00:37Salty just doesn't do it for me. I just think that's the whole
- 1:00:39point of it. Yeah, I like that combo.
- 1:00:42Yeah, well, hey, teach, throw. Not everyone can be perfect,
- 1:00:44right? All right, let's go ahead and
- 1:00:48wrap it up. We're up over an hour again.
- 1:00:49We always try to keep these like, closer to 45 minutes and,
- 1:00:52like, fail miserably. But when the conversation.
- 1:00:54An hour and 3 minutes is the perfect episode length.
- 1:00:57And by the time I get this cut down a little bit, we'll
- 1:00:59probably be like 101, maybe 60 minutes, but I'll keep talking
- 1:01:03to inflate that number. But no, when the conversation's
- 1:01:06flowing, right, we just keep on going with it.
- 1:01:07So, Hannah, thank you so much for taking the time with us.
- 1:01:11Thank you for all you do for ID Pro as a regular old member.
- 1:01:15Let's keep the Slack channel going because definitely, I
- 1:01:17think we're all fans of that. I'll put a link in our show
- 1:01:20notes to your profile. And I think we talked about that
- 1:01:23article, which originally appeared as an ID Pro kind of
- 1:01:26e-mail. So there's really not right now
- 1:01:28a public way to get to it. But hopefully by the time this
- 1:01:31goes, this episode goes live. I think we talked about maybe
- 1:01:33putting on like on your LinkedIn channel or something like that
- 1:01:35so people can go and check it out.
- 1:01:37So keep an eye out for that. Let's see what else we're on the
- 1:01:41web. idacpodcast.com. We're on Twitter or X or
- 1:01:44whatever it's called when you listen to this at IDAC podcast,
- 1:01:47if it even still exists. By the time people listen to
- 1:01:48this, we'll be on Mastodon at IDAC podcast.
- 1:01:53You think so? Elon hasn't run into the ground
- 1:01:55yet. Yeah, he's got enough money to
- 1:01:56make it through sheer dollars and cents just to make it
- 1:01:59moving. As long as I keep buying
- 1:02:01Tesla's, let's see, we're on Mastodon, at IDAC podcast, at
- 1:02:06Infosec, dot exchange, connect with Gemini and LinkedIn, like
- 1:02:09subscribe, do all that cool stuff that helps us get great
- 1:02:12guests just like Hannah. And with that, we'll go ahead
- 1:02:16and leave it for this week. Thanks everyone for listening
- 1:02:18and we'll talk with you all in the next one.
- 1:02:21You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
- 1:02:25We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
- 1:02:29review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
- 1:02:32website at identity@thecenter.com and find
- 1:02:36us on Twitter at IDAC Podcast. See you next time on Identity at
- 1:02:44the Center.