All righty then . Ladies and gentlemen , welcome back to another episode of Privacy . Please , cameron Ivey , here with Gabe Gumbs , we are hanging out chatting . You know this big thing that's going on . Well , first , first , gabe , how you living man .
Speaker 2How you living , I'm living , I am living .
Speaker 1I am living . Yeah , you got the hair down today . It's not tied up . I love that the hair's down today .
Speaker 2Yeah , you got the hair down today . It's not tied up . I love that the hair's down today . Yeah , the hair is all kinds of down today . I love that it's hair day .
Speaker 1I'm going to get her done today . Oh it's hair day it's , hair day it's hair day .
Speaker 2I'm living well , my friend , how are you ?
Speaker 1I'm good . I'm good , always good when we get to yeah . Especially when there's lots going on . It's never a dull day ?
Speaker 2No , no , there's plenty going on , plenty going on . We get a lot of questions about all kinds of topics . What's on people's minds this week ?
Speaker 1Well , specifically , I mean we were looking at this thing on the Doge data lawsuits with the . Watergate era and privacy law . Specifically , it's an article from Bloomberg Law . It kind of touches on lawsuits challenging the sharing of personal data by federal agencies with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency , and the lawsuits cite a Privacy Act of 1974 , which was designed to protect Americans' personal information from unauthorized access and sharing . These lawsuits allege that agencies like the labor , treasury and education departments unlawfully disclose sensitive data , including tax returns and social security numbers , to Doge .
Speaker 2Not like the coin either . Doge Department of Government Efficiency . I only have one question to kind of kick off this conversation , though , is are they going to look at the TSA ? Because if they're not looking at TSA , I don't know how to take them seriously . That's the first Whoa , whoa , whoa whoa . I'm talking about all of it . That's the first place to check for inefficiencies . If you're looking for inefficiencies , that's a good point .
Speaker 1That's because think about the information that they have on everyone that has TSA pre-check .
Speaker 2That might be the reason why we don't want them looking there , because if data is being shared in ways that were explicitly told by the people that it was collected from , that it couldn't or wouldn't be shared by , that is problematic . That is problematic . And we don't know the complete breadth of who data has been shared with Doge . But we know , for example , that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau they've already shared sensitive consumer information , including confidential data from financial institutions . So we know at a bare minimum that kind of data is in the hands of Doge . We don't really know who Doge is either . I mean , I've seen all of the random spewings in the interwebs , complaining about the age of some of the members and so on and so forth , but that doesn't tell me who Doge is right Like , who exactly is getting access to that data ?
Speaker 1Maybe it's Le Fleur from Dodgeball and it's just a half name of Dodge , but they take the D out and they're called Doge . What do you mean ? White Goodman , white Goodman , w-h-i-t-e . Okay , so let me ask you this so we don't know who Doge is .
Speaker 2That's interesting . Around . There's some information about some of the individuals , but it's all very personalized information and I'm not really concerned with who that person necessarily is specifically , although that is very important if they're going to get their hands on sense information . I'm more concerned about who is Doge as a complete entity . Yes , elon Musk is the administrator , but that still doesn't really tell me . I don't know if I feel comfortable with the lack of information generally around an entity that is going to get that kind of access to citizen data . And then , on top of that , some of the actions that they've already taken aren't really clear as to how this is to benefit us .
Speaker 2For example , steps have been already taken to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . And so that I'm not just kind of spewing random sentences there , what do I mean by dismantling ? Well , they completely overhauled the leadership , right ? So Russell Vought , who was the former Office of Management and Budget Director , he already signaled that shift in leadership . That same gentleman Vought , he instructed all of the CFPB staff to halt all supervisory examination activities . So no longer looking into things which , by the way , what had they been looking into ? Well , one of the things that CFPB has been looking into is investigating and cracking down on data brokers , a topic that we talk about a lot here . So this dismantling , oh other things that have happened , terminating any funding .
Speaker 2To be fair , they have a lot of money in the bank , still air quotes a lot , but I don't really know how much money they need to do things like properly enforce and regulate data brokers , which , let's be honest , we've spoken about it ad nauseum . That is a very important function of our government . Quite frankly , they've closed down some of their offices , they've reduced staff , so all of these things will certainly hamper their ability to enforce and I'm just going to be very myopic about this privacy laws . Why am I being that myopic ? Because that's what we talk about here on the show . I'm certain there's lots of other things that those are doing , but look , this is privacy , please . And so there's a number of privacy laws that the CFPB had oversight over GLBA right , financial privacy rules there , the Fair Credit Reporting Act , dodd-frank , copa , the Children's Online Privacy Act All of those are regulations . Fair Credit Reporting .
Speaker 1Act . Yeah yeah , equal Credit Opportunity Act , electronic Fund Transfer Act . I didn't even know these existed , you probably knew of at least some of them .
Speaker 2I know you're intimately familiar with COPA , for example . Well , I mean . I didn't realize that they were all under . I didn't realize which one entity had oversight over those myself , correct , you know I knew some of them to some degree , but yeah , that wasn't something I dug into until now because it became necessary to understand , like well , if that's getting impacted , like how is that being impacted ? Hey , but at least .
Speaker 1At least Trump signed an order to get rid of paper straws . Am I with that ? Who's with me ?
Speaker 2With your paper .
Speaker 1straws are useless and they suck , so I I know , I know , I'm just saying at least we're getting some good stuff done .
Speaker 2I don't know . I don't know if I needed regulation for that . Like , my response to paper straws has simply been to complain about it to management management or not go back to those establishments that insist on paper straws .
Speaker 1Off topic here , a squirrel moment , but I'll tell you what . If we care more about getting rid of paper straws , can we please do something about ? I know that there's talks about it , but like , let's cut out all these like terrible ingredients and foods that Americans still use , that europe and other countries do not use . It's just insane what they're doing to the american people with all the dyes and the you know you're saying focus on health and not on cutting back paper straws yeah , I , I don't mean to go off topic here , but this is also important that's okay .
Speaker 2Go off topic . Yeah , but this is also important , that's okay . Go off topic , yeah , you know what ? Because this is our show , we can talk about whatever we want . Hey what's up ? Don't at me .
Speaker 1It's on my mind . Yeah , don't at us One thing that I mean come on now , let's think about this . You go to school to be a doctor . What do you think they teach you as a doctor ? They don't mention anything about nutrition . All they do is talk about how you have to memorize all these different medicines and drugs . That's the only thing they care about . Is you understanding what all the drugs are on the market , so you know what to prescribe your patients to take care of a certain issue that you have , or health issue ? They don't teach you anything about the nutritional things because they don't want us to be healthy . You wouldn't get me to argue with that . You wouldn't get me to argue with that . I think it's more powerful than people actually realize . It's powerful . Yeah , I mean spinning back to what we're talking about here with the control over our own personal information and all these issues . I mean we got to start .
Speaker 2Where do we even begin to even help in this area , to be an outside voice , to be something that can help in the right direction , make a change For the average individuals like you and I . Maybe it begins with these conversations , it begins with sharing these conversations with others . Yeah , we get asked about a lot of these topics outside of the show and I'm reminded that someone left us at least one review that complained we get too quote preachy . That's okay . You don't have to certainly agree or align with our viewpoints . In fact , we welcome opposing viewpoints . So feel free to share those and not just complain that we're preaching . But I'm going to co-sign this one for you , brother . I'm going to completely agree with you that if we're looking to get rid of waste , then we can start certainly with not just within the government itself but within the non-government areas of our lives .
Speaker 1Well , it sounds like there were what nine complaints filed , with plaintiffs seeking temporary restraining orders to prevent Doge from accessing personal data . Courts have been divided on these requests , so these are . I mean . That's really important to see what this decision is going to be , don't you think ? I mean ?
Speaker 2I think so . I am beside myself that we are split on things like you know , enforcing GLBA , those kinds of restrictions are what were put in place to prevent further catastrophe in our financial markets . That's the whole reason things like that occur , and you know , it worries me that without that kind of oversight we can return to those kinds of risks being ever present .
Speaker 1I mean the ones that are split on not wanting to protect personal information . What's their agenda ?
Speaker 2I don't understand we already don't have any federal laws around that . We talk about that on this show a lot . In fact , was it the last show , maybe the show before we someone on and and we talked about a lot of the state laws yeah we dug .
Speaker 2We dug very heavily into the state laws , and that's that may be the place again for us to to
begin with . Action collectively as citizens is to is to get back on that local level and really voice what we want to see come out of our administrations . It doesn't matter which one it is this one , the next one , the last one we've got to be a hell of a lot more vocal , a lot more vocal . I'm okay with taking it to the streets too . If that's the vocality that's necessary , you can do that . You ain't made for the streets .
Speaker 1Nah , it's comfy inside , but if I have to go outside , I'll go outside . No , I'm not saying you , I just wanted to say that oh yeah , no , no .
Speaker 2No , I'm not either . Let's be clear about this . I'm not really interested in that activity , but you know , that's where we're headed .
Speaker 1I mean , yeah , that unprecedented access , having data being unprecedented is that's a huge concern , not knowing the implications or the whole circumference of what happens with that data , just like every other data that we talk about and that we're worried about in the wrong hands of , for example , data brokers ?
Speaker 2how is this data now being used ? How is it being protected ? How is it being shared ? Those are all questions that we should ask . Those aren't political questions , those aren't even preachy questions . Those are basic privacy and security questions that should have been laid out for us before the first bit of access was granted .
Speaker 1Yeah , and you know what , if someone's using my personal information , I should be getting paid for it . Then there's that Every single thing that's been used with my name or it's attached to my name , now Doge is going to argue .
Speaker 2We're using that information to reduce waste in the government . And I'm all about reducing waste , which I was being a little tongue in cheek but again , if we're genuine about reducing waste , I'm certain every American could , off the top of their head , think of three places where there's waste . We could start with our healthcare system . Mm , yeah , godly amount of waste in that system . Yeah , I don't know that there can be a more universally agreed upon fact among citizens . It's like no , there's a lot of waste in that . There's a lot of waste in a lot of systems .
Speaker 2I'm poking fun at the T , tsa , but like real talk , that shit is all waste . It's , it's a hundred percent waste . And I don't want to hear about protecting from terror , like . Go look up the information in the data yourself . Look at their own , their own self-auditing , and and you ask yourself the question of if the money's being spent is having a positive impact , whether or not you think a lot of that is theater or not . I ask you only to look at the numbers and you tell me whether or not you think there's waste there . But if that's not even a place to start looking , it's hard for me to take what they're doing seriously beyond . I take it seriously that privacy seems to be a casualty of this exercise . That's a good point , that's interesting .
Speaker 1It's just crazy . I don't even know what to think right now .
Speaker 2I mean Well , the thing that was posed to us was what does the internet start looking like with fewer , less oversight and regulations of privacy brokers ? Our friend , heidi posted earlier Shout out , shout out to Heidi . We love you . Heidi . I posted early on LinkedIn today that it was a position that she had gotten . I'm trying to remember the name of the agency . It was with DHS . It was DHS and she received an offer to form some work for her . And for those of you that don't keep up , heidi Sass , that's H-E-I-D-I-S-A-SS ID SAS . She's a privacy and technology attorney . So they rescinded her offer and quote privacy activities no longer align with the science and technology's mission . What's their new mission ? I don't know , but in not hiring this extremely well-experienced privacy lawyer and telling them explicitly in that rescinding of their offer that privacy activities no longer align with science and technology , it begs the question how does one perform science and technology activities that include the collection and analysis of personal information and then also remove privacy activities from your mission ? Those two things don't add up .
Speaker 1It's concerning , to say the least . I don't know if I should be violated , scared , concerned , worried . Those are all kind of similar . Yeah , going back to the , let me see if I can find it here . Going back to the article , just give another shout out to Ron DeSouza , who , by the way , we're going to have on the show at some point Not sure when , but he was actually in this very article which I'll share in the show notes , but it's a quote by Ron was saying we can see potentially all government agencies being subject to unauthorized access to their other systems . He's a field chief privacy officer at Transcend and he's saying so . It's incredibly important that these lawsuits are coming , because it's going to force judges to make decisions about Americans and their privacy . It's I wonder . I wonder how long this is going to drag out . That's the question too . Is it going to ? What else is this going to bring to surface as well ? Yeah , what else is this ?
Speaker 2going to bring to surface as well . There's definitely a lot of to be seen to be known . That's left for us to ponder on this topic . For sure , yeah .
Speaker 1Well , if anyone listening has any further information or thoughts on this , or questions or anything , we'd love to hear from you , as always . And is there anything else that you want to wrap up on this thought that comes to your mind , gabe , anything else you wanted to touch on ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I think the number one thing is to again continue to challenge our listeners , to provoke us with some of those questions and ask us to dig into more of those kinds of topics . We'll definitely be keeping our eyes on these things . A lot of times we see these headlines in the news and we don't always think about how they necessarily affect things like privacy and security . So you know , it's Cam and I's job to bring those to the show here . But the challenge to the listeners is you know , after this show ends and you flick over to the next show or you get on the interwebs , dig in for a little bit yourselves , right , like , don't take our words for all of it . That should never be where it ends . But find out where you think that some of these behaviors require more attention and let's talk about it .
Speaker 1It's the way to go . Well , thank you , Gabe .
Speaker 2Always a pleasure .
Speaker 1Thanks , listeners . We'll see you guys next week . Appreciate you .