There Are No Girls on the Internet - Sorry, Politico. Kamala Harris is right about Bluetooth

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00:00:50.080 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:53.240 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:58.760 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:01:02.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:01:09.920 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

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00:01:21.360 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:01:27.100 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:01:35.740 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

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00:01:51.160 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:03.620 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:08.880 I talk a lot about disinformation and media manipulation on this show.

00:02:13.440 Sometimes it's social media bots being driven by foreign bad actors.

00:02:17.320 But what do you do when the media manipulation isn't coming from overseas bad actors,

00:02:21.980 but instead from a mainstream, widely read media outlet? 0.70

00:02:26.020 I've been monitoring the increasing attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris since she became vice president. 1.00

00:02:31.980 Now, I already knew that she was going to face racist, sexist attacks 1.00

00:02:35.480 because she's a black woman in a visible position. 1.00

00:02:37.900 And that's just kind of what happens.

00:02:39.740 And it might be kind of hard to see if you're not primed to see misogynoir,

00:02:43.640 the combination of racism and sexism that we face as Black women.

00:02:47.600 But just look at some of the recent media narratives out there about Vice President Harris.

00:02:51.780 They're all really racially coded and gendered. 0.95

00:02:55.020 Recent stories paint you out to be a pushing, domineering Black woman, or uppity, 0.99

00:02:59.540 which is basically just a racist framing for Black women who don't know their place or are acting above their station. 0.95

00:03:05.120 A recent story about Harris' senior aide stepping down was framed as disarray in Harris' office.

00:03:10.520 Or take this recent Fox News headline.

00:03:13.640 Kamala Harris reportedly spends over $500 on cookware in a Parisian shop amid U.S. economic 1.00

00:03:19.760 uncertainty. How is Harris spending her own money on fancy pans even a news story? And we're not 0.99

00:03:26.220 just seeing this from hyper-partisan outlets like Fox News. Last night, Politico published one of

00:03:31.460 the most ridiculous pieces I have ever seen, and that is really saying something. The piece, 0.93

00:03:37.620 called Kamala Harris is a Bluetooth Phobic, is about how Vice President Harris uses wired headphones

00:03:43.260 instead of the wireless Bluetooth kind.

00:03:45.780 And the article's framing, like, basically calls her a crazy person because of it.

00:03:49.640 Former aides say the vice president has long been careful about security and technology,

00:03:54.020 with some describing it as prudent and others suggesting it's a bit paranoid.

00:03:58.380 The piece also goes on to say that when people visited Harris's office

00:04:00.920 back when she was California's attorney general,

00:04:03.260 she would instruct aides not to let them wait in her office alone,

00:04:06.600 as if that's not a totally normal thing for people to do. 0.79

00:04:10.760 The piece goes on to say that her office did not respond

00:04:13.200 when Politico asked if there was a fun origin story to Harris' Bluetooth weariness

00:04:17.720 or for any background on the particular security risks

00:04:21.180 Harris believes Bluetooth technology represents.

00:04:24.860 But you know what the journalist who wrote this story could have done

00:04:27.280 to get background on the security risks of Bluetooth headphones? 0.98

00:04:30.300 Literally just fucking Google it. 0.97

00:04:33.400 Because Bluetooth headphones are actually an extremely well-documented security risk. 0.99

00:04:38.000 And this is not some obscure thing that only techies know.

00:04:41.320 It's a pretty commonly known thing, literally, first page of Google.

00:04:44.820 Bluetooth's known security risks are also a part of the government's official security protocols.

00:04:49.140 For instance, did you know that White House computers have Bluetooth disabled as a default setting for precisely this reason?

00:04:56.080 Last year, the government's national security agency, Defensive Cybersecurity Branch,

00:05:00.500 recommended users disable Bluetooth altogether to avoid having their conversations compromised.

00:05:05.520 And, according to the Daily Beast, who just published a fantastic breakdown of the different security risks involving Bluetooth,

00:05:11.680 members of the current slate of State Department nominees, ranging from would-be assistant secretaries to potential ambassadors,

00:05:17.280 have also been warned by the NSA about Bluetooth's potential failability from a security perspective.

00:05:23.100 In briefings done by security engineering officers with the U.S. Foreign Service,

00:05:26.660 nominees are told that an open Bluetooth connection can be a, quote,

00:05:29.500 cracked window, allowing bad actors access to their devices and data. It can also allow attackers to

00:05:35.400 physically track you and create logs of your physical movements, habits, and behavior in ways

00:05:40.800 that can help predict your future movements. The NSA warned nominees that Bluetooth can be used to

00:05:45.520 track your locations using equipment called sniffers, even if your phone's cellular service

00:05:50.340 is turned off. And here's a scary case. Cybersecurity researchers found that Bluetooth

00:05:55.720 allowed bad actors to steal Target's contacts, call logs, and messages, and let them send fake

00:06:01.860 messages from their Target's phones. Now, to be clear, most regular people really do not need to

00:06:07.480 worry about this kind of thing. I know I personally don't use Bluetooth headphones, not for security

00:06:12.300 reasons, but mostly because I find Bluetooth technology to be kind of janky and like slow to

00:06:16.760 connect. And honestly, I just don't want to have to worry about losing one of my $200 AirPods on a

00:06:21.560 train. And I also think that the wire can be a really good signal to the world that I am

00:06:25.440 obviously wearing headphones. Those little earbuds can get lost behind my hair, and then people try

00:06:29.700 to talk to you while you're wearing headphones, and it's just very awkward. But even though

00:06:33.240 normal people don't really have to worry about this, it's still something that we should all

00:06:37.020 know. And if you're the vice president of the United States, obviously you need to have this

00:06:41.520 level of awareness about digital security. The Daily Beast talked to a former NSA threat

00:06:45.840 intelligence analyst who said it's a fine protocol for almost everyone, even with the

00:06:50.220 vulnerabilities that Bluetooth present, because these kinds of attacks require reasonably close

00:06:54.960 access to exploit it, along with an actor who has both the capability and the intent to do so.

00:06:59.980 This means only a few thousand people out of the billions on Earth need to worry about this

00:07:03.920 problem, and the Vice President of the United States is one of them. So did Politico mention

00:07:08.460 any of these widely known and easily verifiable facts about Bluetooth technology in their piece

00:07:13.340 about how crazy and paranoid Harris is for not having conversations over Bluetooth?

00:07:18.120 Uh, no, of course they didn't.

00:07:20.100 And this is what really makes me so angry.

00:07:23.120 What a missed opportunity to educate and inform the public on the security realities of technology many of us use every day.

00:07:30.400 What is even the point of a piece like this if it's not meant to inform the public?

00:07:34.340 And framing Harris as a paranoid crazy person for following pretty clear digital security guidance isn't just lazy, which it is.

00:07:42.220 I think it's also actively harmful because it obscures the facts.

00:07:46.460 It actively contributes to the public being less informed about the role of technology.

00:07:50.900 But why would a journalist do something like inform the public 0.92

00:07:53.540 when they can settle for cheap attacks on a Black woman in politics 0.99

00:07:56.880 to frame her as a domineering, crazy person? 0.99

00:07:59.960 And here's the thing.

00:08:01.000 There are plenty of real reasons to be critical of Vice President Harris.

00:08:04.600 I'm not saying that everybody should or has to agree with her policies or even like her. 0.91

00:08:08.660 But that doesn't mean it's okay for her to be attacked with unfair, shallow smear jobs either.

00:08:14.060 As a Black woman, sometimes it feels like we cannot win. 1.00

00:08:17.500 Harris is criticized for buying expensive cookware 0.99

00:08:19.520 and then criticized for using the cheapo wired headphones

00:08:22.180 that come with your iPhone

00:08:23.620 instead of spending hundreds of dollars for the wireless ones.

00:08:27.180 And even when we do the correct thing,

00:08:28.960 we're still criticized for it.

00:08:31.180 It is exhausting.

00:08:32.680 And what's worse, it doesn't leave room

00:08:34.320 for actual conversations about substance.

00:08:37.040 And I think that's kind of the point. 1.00

00:08:38.740 If Harris and Black women are associated with controversies, 1.00

00:08:41.440 Yes, even made-up BS controversies. 1.00

00:08:44.780 It'll create a media ecosystem where Black women and women of color can't fairly compete 1.00

00:08:48.860 and are being judged by absurd, unfair standards 0.99

00:08:51.740 instead of being judged by our policies, words, records, and actions.

00:08:55.400 And media outlets like Politico need to decide what kind of ecosystem they want to contribute to.

00:09:05.700 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - December 07, 2021

Sorry, Politico. Kamala Harris is right about Bluetooth

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