Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 7/17/2026

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Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 7/17/2026 · Brian Thomas

0:01
Speaker 1: Six thirty up and down on a Friday morning. How
0:05
Speaker 1: do you Gary Jeff Walker in for Brian Thomas on
0:10
Speaker 1: fifty five krs And as you know, it's time for
0:13
Speaker 1: our round of Friday tech talk with it expert Dave
0:17
Speaker 1: Hatter from Intrust It to You and stuff that you
0:22
Speaker 1: need to know about the ever changing world of the
0:26
Speaker 1: Internet of Things, cyber security and the like. And our
0:31
Speaker 1: friend Dave Hatter, also the Mirror of Fort Wright, who says,
0:34
Speaker 1: as long as he has anything to do with it,
0:37
Speaker 1: no flock cameras in the city of Fort Wrye, Kentucky.
0:40
Speaker 1: God bless him for that and for everything else he
0:43
Speaker 1: does for all of us. Good morning, mister Hatter. How
0:46
Speaker 1: are you.
0:47
Speaker 2: I'm good, Garret Jeff, how are you doing good?
0:50
Speaker 1: I think that the city of Newport also is turning
0:54
Speaker 1: its back on the flock cameras. That's a rumor or
0:59
Speaker 1: if they actually have decided that they're going to get
1:02
Speaker 1: rid of them.
1:03
Speaker 2: Well, according to recent reporting and people I know that went, yeah,
1:07
Speaker 2: that looks like they are going to I think design understanding,
1:10
Speaker 2: Gary Jeff. They were testing them and then have decided
1:13
Speaker 2: not to move forward. So I think that's a step
1:17
Speaker 2: in the right direction. And you know, you and I
1:20
Speaker 2: talk about this all the time, Gary, Jeff. My issue
1:22
Speaker 2: would the so called Internet of things aka smart devices,
1:27
Speaker 2: is everything has software in it now and that creates
1:30
Speaker 2: all kinds of problems. And just a little background, It's
1:32
Speaker 2: been about twenty five years as a software engineer, so
1:35
Speaker 2: I know what I'm talking about from firsthand experience of
1:37
Speaker 2: writing software. It is difficult to write software that just
1:43
Speaker 2: does what it's supposed to do much less, doesn't have
1:46
Speaker 2: vulnerability in it. And you and I have talked about
1:50
Speaker 2: this so many times before, and I would encourage all
1:52
Speaker 2: of your listeners to go see for themselves things like
1:57
Speaker 2: back doors, concerns about some software in these devices coming
2:02
Speaker 2: from China, DHS, FBI warnings about this infiltration by the
2:07
Speaker 2: Chinese Communist Party into these devices for all kinds in
2:10
Speaker 2: the farious purposes. So when you think about something like
2:13
Speaker 2: a license plate reading camera, you can take flock out
2:16
Speaker 2: of the equation. Any of these things, you know they
2:20
Speaker 2: have software in them which makes them vulnerable. There's a
2:23
Speaker 2: very smart guy, a guy named Miko Hipponent. He's a
2:26
Speaker 2: well known, internationally renowned cybersecurity expert. Again, easily to verify
2:31
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. He wrote a book about this called
2:35
Speaker 2: If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable, And you have guys like
2:38
Speaker 2: Bruce Schneier, also internationally renowned cryptography expert cybersecurity expert, warning
2:44
Speaker 2: about He read a book called click Here to Kill Everyone.
2:47
Speaker 2: And the whole idea is that as we add more
2:50
Speaker 2: and more software into things. And I understand the rationale
2:54
Speaker 2: for this. You know, I'm no technology luddite. You know,
2:58
Speaker 2: it brings convenience, it adds capabilities, but it also brings
3:02
Speaker 2: you things like, hey, my car now wants me to
3:05
Speaker 2: subscribe to the heated seats, and the vendor can turn
3:08
Speaker 2: them off remotely. You know, all these sorts of things.
3:12
Speaker 2: So it's not just that these devices generally aren't designed
3:15
Speaker 2: with your privacy and security in mind. It's that their
3:19
Speaker 2: incentives for you as a consumer versus the business that's
3:22
Speaker 2: creating and selling them are generally poorer opposites of one another.
3:26
Speaker 2: You know, they want speed to market, market share, ease
3:29
Speaker 2: of use, capturing your data, subscription type services that can
3:34
Speaker 2: be turned off remotely. We also get into this whole
3:37
Speaker 2: issue of right to repair. I think we've talked about that.
3:40
Speaker 1: I wear I was just going to get into that
3:42
Speaker 1: with you. And has that legislation passed in Washington?
3:48
Speaker 2: I don't believe it has now as I understand it,
3:51
Speaker 2: President Trump recently signed an executive order saying that you
3:54
Speaker 2: have the right to repair your device. And you know
3:56
Speaker 2: this this started back in the nineties with things like
3:59
Speaker 2: the Digital Rights Management Act and companies wanting to protect
4:03
Speaker 2: their intellectual property. If you're as old as me and
4:06
Speaker 2: you Gary, Jeff, you probably recall the good old days
4:09
Speaker 2: and you'd rent a videotape and they had the big
4:11
Speaker 2: FBI warning about copying and so forth. But this is
4:14
Speaker 2: morphed into now that everything has software in it. Well,
4:17
Speaker 2: do you really own your car or your tractor? John
4:19
Speaker 2: Deere has been in the spotlight on this a lot
4:21
Speaker 2: where you go buy a very expensive John Deere piece
4:24
Speaker 2: of farm equipment and they say, well, you can't work
4:27
Speaker 2: on that because it's got our intellectual property. You don't.
4:29
Speaker 2: Do you really own it? You know, if I can't
4:31
Speaker 2: work on a machine that I bought, do I really
4:34
Speaker 2: own it? So my point of all of this is,
4:38
Speaker 2: you know, we have rushed all of this technology into
4:40
Speaker 2: our society. As a guy who wrote a lot of
4:42
Speaker 2: software and made a lot of mistakes. And I'll just
4:44
Speaker 2: give you one other thing before we get back to
4:46
Speaker 2: the license plate reader cameras. There's something called the o
4:50
Speaker 2: WASP Top ten, this Open Web Application Security project. This
4:54
Speaker 2: organization's been around for almost thirty years, and every three
4:57
Speaker 2: or four years they put out a list of designs
5:00
Speaker 2: software engineers to understand what are the most common vulnerabilities
5:04
Speaker 2: in software. And as our entire society now relies on software,
5:09
Speaker 2: think about this. For everyone that's listening to me right now,
5:12
Speaker 2: what do you do today that doesn't involve some sort
5:14
Speaker 2: of digital technology or so called smart device? Right Your doorbell,
5:18
Speaker 2: your camera, your refrigerator, your TV, your car, everything is
5:23
Speaker 2: smart quote unquote. They put out this list of the
5:27
Speaker 2: top ten things that are laws and software that could
5:31
Speaker 2: be fixed by the people building them. And you know,
5:33
Speaker 2: before I started to focus on cybersecurity partially as a
5:37
Speaker 2: result of looking at the o WASP top ten list,
5:39
Speaker 2: over time, I was not focused on these things, you know.
5:42
Speaker 2: I was focused on things like how do I get
5:44
Speaker 2: this software done for my client on the timeline and
5:47
Speaker 2: the budget that they give, or not as it robust
5:50
Speaker 2: and secure and focused on people's privacy. So there are
5:54
Speaker 2: items on the o WASP Top ten that have been
5:56
Speaker 2: on there for more than twenty years, Gary Jeff, things
5:59
Speaker 2: like SQL injection. This is a very simple problem to
6:02
Speaker 2: fix if you're a developer, engineer, programmer, whatever you want
6:06
Speaker 2: to call, if you know about it, but apparently many
6:08
Speaker 2: don't because it has been on the list for more
6:10
Speaker 2: than twenty years. So think about that all the software
6:13
Speaker 2: out there laws like this more than twenty years, even
6:17
Speaker 2: though they're well known. So ultimately, where I'm trying to
6:21
Speaker 2: go with this is software, while it's not bad, has
6:26
Speaker 2: its own problems, and as we add more and more
6:27
Speaker 2: into it, it creates all of these new issues for
6:31
Speaker 2: the people using it and for our society as a whole.
6:33
Speaker 2: Of these things like these license plate reading devices Yeah plrs.
6:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Dave, you're talking about that this has been
6:42
Speaker 1: out there for twenty years, and as you will probably
6:47
Speaker 1: readily agree this, Yes, I know we need to take
6:52
Speaker 1: a break, But I was just going to say this
6:54
Speaker 1: on top of that, Dave, is that as a software engineer,
6:59
Speaker 1: you know that almost as soon as you develop or
7:04
Speaker 1: write code for for for new software, it's almost obsolete
7:09
Speaker 1: and has flaws and bugs that can be exposed, and
7:15
Speaker 1: almost as soon as you're done doing it, the technology
7:19
Speaker 1: accelerates and changes, and there are bugs that you probably
7:24
Speaker 1: didn't see when you were writing the code. We'll take
7:27
Speaker 1: we'll take a break talking to Dave had Or Friday
7:30
Speaker 1: Tech Talk on fifty five KRC the talk station.
7:34
Speaker 2: Gas price, cities, growth, the prices, the cost.
7:37
Speaker 1: Of living in talk station. Some people may think, you
7:43
Speaker 1: know what, so one of the camera readers, the license
7:46
Speaker 1: plate readers, I'm not doing anything wrong. Why should I worry?
7:51
Speaker 1: That's really not the point, is it, Dave.
7:55
Speaker 2: Uh, Not in my opinion, Garry Yees, not in my opinion,
7:58
Speaker 2: because because the amount of data being collected, how it's
8:02
Speaker 2: being this is a third party company who knows what's
8:05
Speaker 2: happening with the data once they collected. And getting back
8:09
Speaker 2: to where we left off before about problems with software.
8:12
Speaker 2: So yeah, to your point, it's very difficult even for
8:16
Speaker 2: simple software to build software that does not have flaws
8:20
Speaker 2: and bugs, partially because as a software engineer, I'm using
8:25
Speaker 2: tools from other software companies. So it's kind of a
8:28
Speaker 2: turtles all the way down problem. Where you've got the
8:31
Speaker 2: software in the chips of a computer, you've got the
8:34
Speaker 2: software that comprises the operating system of the computer running
8:38
Speaker 2: on those chips. Then you have software that developers are
8:41
Speaker 2: using to build their own software. So you're at least
8:44
Speaker 2: four levels deep right off the bat. Now, as a
8:47
Speaker 2: software engineer, I might need some special functionality and I
8:50
Speaker 2: could try to write it myself, or I could go
8:53
Speaker 2: try to find it on the internet somewhere where someone
8:55
Speaker 2: else has already built it, and I'm going to use theirs.
8:58
Speaker 1: What could go wrong?
9:00
Speaker 2: Exactly? And I think about this for a second. So
9:03
Speaker 2: I need functionality that does X. Let's say something advanced
9:06
Speaker 2: like encryption. Well, I could try to write my own,
9:08
Speaker 2: but I'm not a cryptography expert. And the smart engineer
9:12
Speaker 2: the person who understands how difficult something like that is
9:15
Speaker 2: to get right because of the advanced math and so forth,
9:18
Speaker 2: and they could try to do their own thing, or
9:20
Speaker 2: they're going to go get something from someone like Microsoft. Okay,
9:25
Speaker 2: So I'm just giving you one simple example of an
9:28
Speaker 2: advanced feature that the average person is not going to
9:30
Speaker 2: be able to implement, no matter how good of a
9:32
Speaker 2: programmer they are. So you need something, and you can
9:35
Speaker 2: try to figure out how to do it yourself and
9:37
Speaker 2: then test it and make sure that it works right,
9:39
Speaker 2: or you can say, huh, has someone else built this?
9:42
Speaker 2: So I go find it and I plug it into
9:45
Speaker 2: my project and it works the way I want it to.
9:47
Speaker 2: So I use it and I move on to the
9:49
Speaker 2: next thing. Do I really know now if I didn't
9:51
Speaker 2: get it from someone like Microsoft, let's say, or Oracle
9:54
Speaker 2: or fill in the blank, can I really know what's
9:57
Speaker 2: in it? Does it work right? And then it may
10:00
Speaker 2: rely on some other software from some third party. So
10:04
Speaker 2: when you get into really complex software, my software may
10:09
Speaker 2: use a library of software from you, that might use
10:11
Speaker 2: a library from someone else that maybe call some API
10:15
Speaker 2: application programming interfaces over the Internet. So my point is
10:18
Speaker 2: you have often very little visibility into the full scope
10:22
Speaker 2: of the software, what it does, where it came from,
10:24
Speaker 2: or what kind of bugs are in it. So hopefully
10:27
Speaker 2: this kind of paints a picture of how complex this
10:30
Speaker 2: gets and how difficult it is to thoroughly test it,
10:33
Speaker 2: know what's in it, know that there aren't some kind
10:35
Speaker 2: of backdoors, whether inadvertent or malicious, And as we add
10:41
Speaker 2: more and more software, this becomes more and more of
10:43
Speaker 2: a problem. Now back to the cameras and the license
10:47
Speaker 2: plate reading and the sort of orwelling and surveillance state
10:50
Speaker 2: that all of these devices are creating, whether it's the
10:52
Speaker 2: cameras or I think you and I have talked about
10:55
Speaker 2: smart classes, which are now a big thing. Again.
10:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to get into that in the next second,
11:00
Speaker 1: but just go ahead and give us the preamble.
11:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, microphones and cameras everywhere. So you know, here's a
11:06
Speaker 2: headline for you. Report reveals how Russia hacked or Bell
11:08
Speaker 2: cameras to spy on data basis. So you've got these
11:11
Speaker 2: things out there everywhere. There's all kinds of reporting about
11:15
Speaker 2: hacking of these things. And as again as someone who
11:18
Speaker 2: has done a lot of software, I can tell you
11:20
Speaker 2: it's difficult, especially if your goal. If you're not starting
11:24
Speaker 2: out with the goal of building something that is secure
11:27
Speaker 2: and robust by the design, it's very difficult to secure it.
11:30
Speaker 2: And then on top of all of that, Gary, Jeff,
11:33
Speaker 2: I may have built security into something, but when I
11:35
Speaker 2: give it to you to use for whatever it's purposes,
11:39
Speaker 2: do you configure it right? Did you follow my instructions?
11:42
Speaker 2: Do you update it? When I tell you, hey, I
11:44
Speaker 2: found a bug, here's the software to fix it. You
11:46
Speaker 2: may have seen four just recently recalled four point four
11:49
Speaker 2: million vehicles four point four million vehicles because of software bugs.
11:54
Speaker 2: So now you've got these devices all around the country
11:57
Speaker 2: watching you, tracking you, and I I could go on
12:01
Speaker 2: all morning. Here's a headline from the Drive how flock
12:03
Speaker 2: cameras wrongly track me for days over quote stolen plates
12:06
Speaker 2: unquote and send police after me. So here's a guy
12:10
Speaker 2: the software not working correctly, is iding this car is stolen,
12:15
Speaker 2: and suddenly he's surrounded by police with guns out. And
12:18
Speaker 2: there are many, many, many examples of this. I post
12:20
Speaker 2: this stuff on my social media regularly. If you follow
12:24
Speaker 2: me on x, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever. I'm constantly sharing this
12:28
Speaker 2: kind of information because again I'm certainly not against technology,
12:32
Speaker 2: it's what I do. But I'm trying to help people
12:34
Speaker 2: understand that as we make things smart, it's causing all
12:38
Speaker 2: kinds of societal problems and frankly making us very susceptible
12:42
Speaker 2: to nation state adversaries like China and Russia and Iran
12:46
Speaker 2: who want to cause damage, who want to cause chasts,
12:50
Speaker 2: who want to potentially turn our whole society off. But
12:52
Speaker 2: back to Flock. Here's another one. So this is from futurism,
12:55
Speaker 2: lap the abandoned flock contract after making horrifying discovery. Going
13:00
Speaker 2: to skip right down to the money shot on this,
13:01
Speaker 2: so I'm quoting from the article after the latest flock contract.
13:05
Speaker 2: News broke four or four Media revealed that a July
13:07
Speaker 2: tenth audit by LA Police Officers Officer Inspector in General
13:11
Speaker 2: caught the department's ALPR cameras generating one hundred and sixty
13:15
Speaker 2: one false stolen vehicle alerts in two months, each one
13:18
Speaker 2: inning with officers pulling over an innocent driver, factoring in
13:21
Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty seven alerts, which quote resulted in
13:24
Speaker 2: the recovery of stolen vehicles unquote. The LAPD's cameras carry
13:27
Speaker 2: an air rate of thirty two point three percent.
13:30
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, that's effect Yeah yeah that that's
13:34
Speaker 1: not effectively.
13:36
Speaker 2: Giving officers a one in three chance of pulling over
13:39
Speaker 2: an innocent Personay think about that, jeez, think about that?
13:42
Speaker 1: All right? One last segment with Dave Hadder to come, uh,
13:46
Speaker 1: smart glasses and the cyber threats posed by smart underwear
13:51
Speaker 1: on Friday tech Talk on fifty five KR see the
13:54
Speaker 1: talk station, Fresh Breath, the talk Station and the start
13:59
Speaker 1: of July. I've meta revealed a kind of Kylie Jenner
14:05
Speaker 1: fronted campaign for its latest AI smart glasses line, as
14:10
Speaker 1: featured in Vogue Business. And you want to talk about
14:16
Speaker 1: surveillance that you can wear on your face, Dave, this
14:20
Speaker 1: is a problem.
14:22
Speaker 2: Well, as you might guess, Gary, Jeff, for all the
14:25
Speaker 2: reasons that I have already stated about so called smart devices,
14:31
Speaker 2: this has all the same problems. But now this is
14:34
Speaker 2: essentially a mobile surveillance platform, you know, that can be
14:39
Speaker 2: used for god knows what sort of unfortunate things. So
14:45
Speaker 2: Google rolled out quote unquote smart glasses some time ago.
14:49
Speaker 2: They didn't really catch on. I think it was probably premature.
14:52
Speaker 2: But what we're really talking about here is essentially glasses
14:55
Speaker 2: that a human being wears on their face. You know,
14:59
Speaker 2: they may or may not have prescription lenses in them,
15:01
Speaker 2: right you can buy sunglasses that don't for right now.
15:04
Speaker 2: But you know, computing power compute technology has gotten so
15:08
Speaker 2: small that you can fit it in the frames of glasses.
15:13
Speaker 2: And you know, they've partnered up with various different companies
15:18
Speaker 2: to do this. And I just checked with Joe if
15:21
Speaker 2: I could say a word, he says no, So I'm
15:23
Speaker 2: not going to say it. It's a great description though,
15:25
Speaker 2: for people that wear these things, I'll post I have
15:28
Speaker 2: posted it on social media many times. You'll see me
15:31
Speaker 2: out there saying this. But the idea that you know
15:34
Speaker 2: that the compute technology again is so small, and now
15:37
Speaker 2: you have ubiquitous internet connectivity through technology like five G.
15:41
Speaker 2: You can put on a charge up your glasses, put
15:43
Speaker 2: them on, walk around. They have microphones, they have cameras,
15:47
Speaker 2: and I've had people say the same thing about like
15:49
Speaker 2: the flock cameras and other license plate reading cameras. Well,
15:53
Speaker 2: you know, you have no expection, no expectation of privacy
15:56
Speaker 2: in public. I have nothing to hide. You've heard all
15:59
Speaker 2: these arguments, right, Okay, So now I'm sitting in a
16:02
Speaker 2: restaurant or I'm in a bathroom, for example, and I
16:05
Speaker 2: don't know that the person who was wearing glasses next
16:08
Speaker 2: to me. I wear glasses every day, Gary, Jeff can't
16:10
Speaker 2: really see very well without them. I'm not wearing smart glasses.
16:13
Speaker 2: I can tell you that. But now I could be recorded,
16:17
Speaker 2: My conversation can be recorded, my activity can be recorded
16:20
Speaker 2: by someone wearing these glasses without my knowledge, certainly without
16:23
Speaker 2: my consent, if they don't have my if I'm not
16:26
Speaker 2: aware of it, and yeah, I see this as further
16:31
Speaker 2: moves in the wrong direction for our society. Now, some
16:34
Speaker 2: would argue, well, you know, I can already do that
16:36
Speaker 2: with my cell phone. Well you could, but if you're
16:39
Speaker 2: recording me with your cell phone, in all likelihood it's
16:41
Speaker 2: in your hand and pointed at me, and rather obvious
16:44
Speaker 2: to me that's happening. These glasses so far all have
16:48
Speaker 2: some kind of light that turns on to show that
16:50
Speaker 2: they're active, really recording. Well, there's already people making stickers
16:55
Speaker 2: to cover them up. What would stop me if the
16:56
Speaker 2: frames are black, from just painting over it with lack
17:00
Speaker 2: paint so that you now can't tell that these are
17:03
Speaker 2: smart glasses that are actively recorded. So you know, I'm
17:06
Speaker 2: not a fan of this. I'm not a fan of
17:08
Speaker 2: most of this Internet of Things stuff, not only because
17:11
Speaker 2: it's full of software that's full of bugs and potentially
17:15
Speaker 2: creating privacy and security problems for the people that are
17:19
Speaker 2: using this technology in there, whatever environment they're in. But
17:23
Speaker 2: we are rapidly creating a place where you can't know
17:27
Speaker 2: at any given time if your conversation, if your actions
17:30
Speaker 2: are being recorded. And I know there are some people
17:33
Speaker 2: who love the idea of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. I encourage
17:36
Speaker 2: all your listeners to go look that up. I find
17:38
Speaker 2: it rather horrifying myself. That's essentially what we're building with
17:42
Speaker 2: all of this stuff, and it's all happening very quickly.
17:46
Speaker 2: You know, it'd be one thing if these companies, again
17:48
Speaker 2: we're focused on privacy and security and these things were
17:51
Speaker 2: done slowly and everyone understood how this works and was
17:55
Speaker 2: sort of in agreement with it. But you know, that's
17:58
Speaker 2: really not what's happening. This stuff is rap being released.
18:01
Speaker 2: It's out there in public, and I would bet you
18:03
Speaker 2: if you went out and asked ten people on the street,
18:06
Speaker 2: are they really aware of now smart glasses being readily available.
18:10
Speaker 2: They're fairly expensive, and you know, Meta is not the
18:13
Speaker 2: only people making them, by the way. But you know,
18:16
Speaker 2: at any given time, again, your child could be in
18:20
Speaker 2: the bathroom with someone who is recording them, and does
18:24
Speaker 2: your kid know about smart glasses? Probably not, So, you know,
18:29
Speaker 2: I appreciate the opportunity to try to raise awareness about
18:31
Speaker 2: these things. I don't really know what the solution is
18:33
Speaker 2: because I don't think we're all going to go back
18:35
Speaker 2: to the thirties, let's say, But you know, we really
18:39
Speaker 2: need to get a handle on all this technology, not
18:41
Speaker 2: only for the privacy implications of it, not only for
18:44
Speaker 2: the surveillance implications of it, but because the more and
18:47
Speaker 2: more of it that gets out there, the more risk
18:49
Speaker 2: we're at from adversarial nation states who can exploit it
18:52
Speaker 2: to do things like shut it down, use it to
18:55
Speaker 2: steal information. Imagine Gary Jeff from the standpoint you're a
19:00
Speaker 2: spy from a foreign country and you're talking to a
19:03
Speaker 2: government official who doesn't understand about that doesn't know about
19:07
Speaker 2: these glasses. Hopefully we're warning people about these. There's so
19:10
Speaker 2: many different ways these can be used in negative ways.
19:13
Speaker 1: Well, Dave damn, like you and I have talked many
19:16
Speaker 1: many times before, and thank you for your time this morning,
19:18
Speaker 1: we're all out of ours. But like you and I
19:21
Speaker 1: have talked before, whatever is available and known by the
19:26
Speaker 1: public technology wise, there's a whole lot more we don't
19:31
Speaker 1: know about. It's already been developed and is ready to
19:34
Speaker 1: roll out before we're ever aware of it. Of the
19:38
Speaker 1: smart contact lens, I guess would be next catch Dave
19:42
Speaker 1: Hatter his LinkedIn x Instagram and every Friday morning here
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Speaker 1: on fifty five KRC, the talk Station America,