It Could Happen Here - What the TSA Has Planned for Us

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Robert and Garrison accost a TSA spokesman to discuss their new, sketchy plans for facial recognition cameras in airports. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and

it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google Search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech Hey everybody, Robert Evans here. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, Call zone media. and the Department of Homeland Security more broadly. Obviously, DHS, much more problematic than just the TSA. We did a couple of episodes on them with Behind the Bastards back in the day. But you know, the TSA came to be right after 9-11. And both its establishment, you know,

the seeming necessity of it and the kind of impositions into personal privacy that it made commonplace. We're both harbingers of the very fucked up era we find ourselves in now. And the TSA is an interesting law enforcement agency to me. From the perspective of a normal person, I think they're kind of the least objectionable of our federal law enforcement agencies, right? They at least I should say of all of the cops that we have in this country, they're the ones you're least likely to have a serious problem with, right? Like they're not real cops in the way that that most cops are. They don't like ticket or arrest you generally, unless you're one of the startling number of Americans who gets caught with a loaded handgun

trying to go through airport security. Mostly, and I've flown way more often than I want to remember. Mostly my experience with TSA agents is they check your ID, they stare at an x-ray machine where your shit goes through it. Sometimes they alert and swab some stuff. But for me, it's usually not that big a deal. For most people I know, it's not that big a deal. Obviously, the degree to which it's a problem is going to vary widely depending on whether or not you're a white dude. But that said, still less potential for things going horribly, violently wrong than with a lot of police interaction. So I'll give them that. And it's interesting to me that kind of given this fact, the TSA is so hated, not by I think most Americans, I think we're all kind of frustrated by them. We know, you know, they're not great at their jobs, they, they get caught in tests, letting shit through all the time. It's kind of a pain in the butt. But there's a chunk of Americans who fucking

hate the TSA. And they hate it because of how invasive it is. And it's a little weird if you're a regular person, because going through airport security is still less invasive than like applying for an apartment, which a lot of people do more regularly than they fly, or taking a trip to the DMV, which again, a lot of people do more regularly than they fly. But people, you know, with money, upper middle class and rich people, that's where you really get most of the hate from the TSA. Now, obviously, there's some from principled libertarians, and I tend to think they have a point there.

But there's a lot of people who really hate the TSA, specifically because it's kind of the only law enforcement friction they deal with on a day-to-day basis. They live in a neighborhood where they're not getting pulled over. The cops, their job is not to fuck with the people who have money. So the only time they're going to get patted down and deal with that thing that is a pretty common experience for Americans in a lot of cities is when they go through the airport when they fly, and they also fly often because they have more money. So I find myself in this interesting

position when reporting on the TSA of there's real abuses there. There's a lot of real threats there. The fact that they do get so much up in our business and that we've normalized it is an issue. And at the same time, like I always know when I do something like this, the people who get angriest about whatever I write about the TSA are going to be the worst pieces of shit in the country. So it's a fun balancing act. Now, obviously, as I'm trying not to gloss over, there are some really good reasons to be pissed at the TSA. Like this 2015 story from Denver of several agents who were caught running a groping scam. Basically, one female crew member would

point out the men that she found attractive and a colleague would signal that person out for a pat down. And they basically say like, oh, it's alerting something around your groin or inner thigh so that like she could fondle them essentially now these these people got fired tsa went after them when they got caught but who knows how many people they groped in the interim period a video in 2023 caught tsa agents at miami international airport stealing from passenger bags in the security lines. There's like footage of it. Obviously, the people who do this are going to be very, very stupid because like, there's, you know, as a TSA agent, there's cameras all over the place, you're in the fucking TSA. And the video is just this guy like reaching his hand into a bag, pulling out cash.

It's not hard to find headlines that are similar, though, going back about as long as the TSA has existed. What interests me more are the massive violations of privacy and the potential involvement the TSA and their normalization of those invasions of privacy has in the expansion of the surveillance state. This year, it's CES 2024. When we found out the TSA had a booth and they were there to talk about their new facial recognition scanners, Garrison and I had to go check it out. And the interview that we conducted is going to kind of be the heart of this episode. But I wanted to get over a little bit more of a preamble first. So the TSA started testing facial recognition scanners on a voluntary basis at 16 domestic airports in, I think, 2022. They expanded it to 25 airports or so last year, 2023. They are in 27 now,

according to what we were told by a representative, and the goal is for this technology to go nationwide. Obviously, not everyone is thrilled with that idea. And I'm going to quote from a June 2023 article on CBS News. Five U.S. senators sent a letter demanding that TSA halt the program. You don't have to compromise people's biometric security in order to provide physical security at airports, said Senator Ed Markey. Pekoske, who is the TSA representative, says he agrees with senators in that he wants to protect privacy for every passenger. I want to deploy technology that's accurate and doesn't disadvantage anybody.

Privacy advocates worry about the lack of regulations around facial recognition and its tendency to be less accurate with people of color. Most images are deleted after use, but some information is encrypted and retained for up to 24 months as part of the ongoing review of how the technology performs. What's left out of that article is that the TSA is also allowed to maintain biometric data taken from non-citizens, people entering the country from foreign countries, migrants, and the like, and they're able to keep that and share it. It's kind of unclear the extent of that, but they're not bound by the same rules with those

people that they are for citizens. And there are other issues as well, as we'll get into. So Garrison and I were both excited to have a chance to chat with a TSA representative. This guy was less excited to see us, and we will get into that story. But before we do, it's time for an ad break. of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if

we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more

examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm

Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So Garrison and I show up at the CES booth, and it's kind of a small one.

You might imagine it's about the size of like three normal office cubicles, maybe. There's a couple of tables. There's like a little podium thing in the front that's got their logo on it they have some stickers including one that's like it uh it's like peanut butter is a liquid and it's it's a a cartoon of peanut butter which i was informed when i commented on it by one of the tsa people that yes peanut butter is a liquid which is one of those things that it's both absurd and also like, well, actually, I don't know how else you'd categorize peanut butter if you're the TSA. So I guess it's something I can't have much of an issue with.

Cream? But is a cream different from a liquid? I don't know. That's for the philosophers to decide. So Garrison and I come up to this booth and there's a guy standing behind the podium. The way stuff works at CES is you have generally a mix of actual officers from the company. Sometimes it'll be like a CEO or an executive in the case of a smaller company. Other times it'll be regular employees or like engineers and stuff who can answer technical questions. And then a bunch of most of the people that you talk to are like PR reps. I don't know who the guy was that was at the booth when we first showed up because as soon as we said we wanted to talk about their facial recognition cameras, he saw we were media and he instantly

did the PR equivalent of throwing his buddy on a grenade. He like backed off. He was like, let me get something for you. He pulled his coworker over and then he fucking vanished. And I'm going to play you a little bit of audio of that. We're interested in what you have here in terms of facial recognition. It's the cat too, right over there. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. What are you saying? Cause I know right now, like if you've got a pre-check or, Oh gosh, what's the other one? The independent company that does it. Are we on a live interview now?

I thought so. I mean, we came up to ask to talk to a TSA representative. Okay, sure. Yeah, sure. Hang on just a second. So the guy we found ourselves in front of was R. Carter Langston, who is actually the press secretary of the TSA. And by God, I don't know if I've ever seen a man less happy to see me.

Eventually, we started talking. And I have to give Carter credit for professionalism. His eyes said, I despise you both on principle and am enraged to be doing this. But his voice remained calm, even, and his responses were, to be quite honest, pretty polished.

I'm kind of interested in sort of how you see this altering the way we do air travel over the next five, ten years, right? Because obviously right now people are using facial recognition if they have PreCheck or they have, I'm spacing the name, but you know, the independent company that does get you past the line and stuff. Like they do like facial recognition when you are in the airport. Is this something that you see as coming more broadly to like everybody going through security in the future eventually yeah eventually um so right now it's at 27 participating airports and it's not at every single uh we call them travel document checker

podiums it's not at every single checker travel document checker podium, TDC for short. But it is growing and becoming, we're deploying more and more as funding becomes available. We're using facial recognition to identify passengers, it's a significant improvement over the previous way we were identifying passengers, just with the human interaction looking at an ID credential and looking at it based on what that individual knows about the 50 states and territories and how they could what their credentials look like the technology actually takes that over and does a much better job of validating the authenticity of that ID and then the facial recognition component with a picture, a still image, taking

a picture of the passenger standing in front of the travel document checker podium, and then matching that picture of that person standing there live against the credential photo, and making a match that way. So we know that the credential is valid. It's true. It's accurate. We know that the person standing there is also the person on the credential. We can verify the boarding status and the screening status of that individual and can provide them with where they should go next for their screening.

Because the officer is able to discern, based on all of the information provided at the back end of the monitor that they reviewed, they can see all of those items have been checked. There's a boarding status and there's a screening status. And then just tells the passenger where to go to follow up for screening. So I'm interested in how someone becomes basically enrolled in this, right? Because my assumption is at this point, just the picture you get when you're getting your driver's license or your state ID from the DMV is not sufficient for a facial recognition system, right? Simply having the picture in the government space, you need to

have somebody like get their face scanned, their irises scanned or something like that in order to have them in the system, right? It's not in the system at all. So with the way we're rolling these out at airports and checkpoints is once a passenger has been identified and goes into screening, all of the information that was captured is gone. We don't store any of the pictures. Participation right now is completely voluntary. There's signage right there at the checker podium to indicate that passengers can opt out. They don't have to participate.

And all that happens at that point is the same officer will turn basically over to the alternative process, review the ID, review the boarding pass, and allow the passenger to continue. Too easy. They don't lose their place in line, and they're not delayed in any way from getting screened. But in terms of the people who choose to use it, right? So if you're in this system, is it literally just comparing your face to the face on the ID? You're not enrolled separately the way you are if you are in PreCheck or something? No.

Okay. No, there's not a database associated with this. And so, no, that's not our use. Now, some of the airlines have partnered with us. They saw a benefit in it. And they're using similar technology for backdrop for their frequent flyer miles program participants. So that is, there's a database associated with that, obviously. And so those passengers have an entirely different experience. But the way that we're using it at the checkpoint is, as I just said, for identity verification.

You caught that, right? How he says participation is voluntary right now? Well, I hadn't come across this information at the time, but afterwards I read a fascinating Washington Post article from last summer about Portland Senator Jeff Merkley. Jeff Merkley says that when he was trying to make a flight at Reagan International Airport, he was told that if he didn't verify his ID via face scanner,

he would face a significant delay. Quote from the article, there was no delay. The spokeswoman said the senator showed his photo ID to the TSA agent and cleared security. So basically, he was lied to. Somebody lied and said, you're going to, if you don't want to like be delayed and maybe miss your flight, you have to submit to a face scan, which is one of the things that privacy advocates were worried about from the beginning. But you know what privacy advocates aren't worried about? The products and services that support this podcast. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of

generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Betroffline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts

dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So I think when it gets right down to it, the silliest part of all of this to me is that the TSA isn't even claiming they need to run faces through like some futuristic database of terrorists, right? Like they want to scan our faces so they know if this like bad guy they're tracking is in the airport and disguised using a fake passport or something. That's not actually what it does. and disguised using a fake passport or something. That's not actually what it does. Facial recognition the TSA is using, right now at least,

just takes the place of the TSA guy you hand your ID before you go put your shit in bins, right? Like, you know, you go up and before you can go take your stuff out of your bags and put it in those bins, you hand a guy your license, sometimes your license and boarding pass. He looks at it in your face. If you wear a mask, he tells you to take it down for a second, and then he lets you go in, right? That's what the facial recognition scanners are actually doing here. That Washington Post article also cites an anti-facial recognition activist, Tawana Petty, who says that she was told by a TSA agent

at the same airport, Reagan, that undergoing facial recognition scanning was not optional. So people are already being told this is a requirement. And obviously, as a spoiler for where this goes, the bigger, deeper question is like, how long is that going to be the case, right? So, you know, that's kind of the big concern, right? Is that they're saying it's optional now, it obviously won't be forever. And some people are just going to be told they don't have a choice. Like that's kind of bullying, strong arming people, threatening that they'll miss their flight if they don't submit to it, which makes me extra suspicious about their data retention, right? And that is the question we asked as the

interview went on. Where is the TSA's biometric data or really where is passenger biometric data actually going to go once the TSA has it? In terms of just information storage, is there, I know, I've been seeing more of these like signs the more that I travel. I do a decent bit of traveling for these sorts of systems. And I'm curious about how this works for non-U.S. citizens. sorts of systems. And I'm curious about how this works for non-U.S. citizens. Because I know there's certain, at least in some of the technology that's being used by Customs and Border Patrol, they do store images captured of non-U.S. citizens for a certain time period. They do take pictures of U.S. citizens when entering the country at lots of airports. Are these two systems interacting at all? Or is the TSA system and Customs and Border Patrol system more separated?

Well, first of all, I can't speak for Customs and Border Protection. But I can tell you that we have two very different use cases. So their use case is very much oriented in the customs arena, and then ours is, as I just mentioned, at the checkpoint would obviously accept that credential. It's a photo credential. So again, all that the system would do is validate that that person on that credential is also the same person that's standing right there in front of the travel document checker. person that's standing right there in front of the travel document checker.

Most of you are probably aware of this, but the TSA actually does not have a good record of protecting private data. Now, this is not old man Robert being a libertarian. It's just documented history. The TSA initially claimed their full body scanners, which took what are essentially naked pictures of passengers, never stored photos and couldn't transmit them. But in 2010, this was revealed to be a lie when we gained access to documents that included technical specifications and vendor contracts, which indicated the TSA required vendors of these

scanners to provide equipment that can store and send images of screened passengers. Now, this was supposed to only be in testing mode, but if it can store and send images of screened passengers, it can store and send images of screened passengers. In 2012, a former TSA agent accused his co-workers of saving nude body images of passengers from the body scanner and making fun of them in back rooms. He said that safeguards were put in place to ensure the agents manning the scanners never saw the people they were scanning outside of the scanner, but that these policies were frequently violated. Basically, every privacy policy they had was frequently violated by agents so that they can make fun of people's dicks, right? That's the story. The TSA retired its old scanners the next year, replacing them with a device that showed

less detail and particularly provided agents with less clear looks at people's gongs. In 2021, a TSA agent in Minneapolis was accused by airport police of taking dozens of photos of young women going through flight screening. The TSA's record here, both in terms of the agency itself and in terms of its employees, is certainly not worse than numerous police departments, or the FBI. This is something to keep in mind. As frustrating as all this stuff is, literally every local and city law enforcement agency has worse cases, and by God, so do the feds. Could make a case that as frustrating as a lot of this is, the TSA is less of a threat to privacy than most other federal law enforcement agencies. But that's beside the point. For one thing, normalizing facial recognition technology

in the airports is a step towards normalizing it everywhere. The data that is gathered will not always be deleted. And more to the point, there's no way to know that the system isn't going to expand in directions that we all find deeply uncomfortable as it goes on. That's why you kind of have to nip this stuff in the bud, especially since they're not really promising extra security here. When you look at the scandals of the TSA, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they'll be getting tested by some other law enforcement agency to see if they can sneak shit through, right? And the TSA will let a bunch of guns or a fake bomb or whatever through because people aren't paying attention. Facial scanners aren't going to catch that, and it's kind of Facial scanners aren't going to catch that.

And it's kind of unclear to me what they are going to catch. My other bigger issue is that even though they say they're going to throw away biometric data, they're not going to keep it more than 24 hours outside of special situations, which they do kind of leave themselves an in there. The fact that they say they're deleting this stuff doesn't mean they are going to delete that stuff. and in there, the fact that they say they're deleting this stuff doesn't mean they are going to delete that stuff. And I brought up this troubling history of like lack of respect for privacy, violations of privacy by TSA agents in the past within the context of this new system.

And I want to play Carter's answer for you. I am curious, you know, there were a couple last five or six years, a couple of cases, stories that blew up of pictures, images of passengers who were on the body scanners being shared, right? Like that says there were a couple of scandals about that. Has that influenced your attitudes on the data retention policy that should exist for the facial recognition system? or the facial recognition system? So let me first tell you that we follow the National Institute of Standards and Technology, their guidelines and standards to AT. Not only that, we publish online our privacy impact assessments. So we're very transparent in our use of this technology,

how we're using it, what we're using it for. And again, it's completely voluntary. Nothing is stored, and it's simply for identity verification, And it's simply for identity verification, which is really the lynchpin for transportation security. I mean, we've got to know that who we're letting into the secure area of an airport is in fact the person that they say they are. So yeah, that's more or less how the conversation ended. Carter was very happy to see us go. And I don't think Garrison or I were particularly surprised by anything we heard. But I did find it interesting that he kind of confirmed the goal is eventually for this

to not just be everywhere, but be something that you can't opt out of. be everywhere, but be something that you can't opt out of. And I do partly wonder how much of that is them looking for a way to get more data on people, maybe even to share to other law enforcement agencies, and how much of that is kind of the same reason a lot of, you know, AI style technology and kind of facial recognition does sort of fall under that umbrella. If you're going to have a general intelligence, one thing it has to be able to do is recognize people's faces. So it is a piece of that. And I think that just like a lot of other applications of that kind of technology are inevitably used to cut workforces. That's kind of probably the chief thing the TSA is looking to use it to do, right? If you can replace the guy who has to look at your ID,

or at least most of them with facial recognition scanners that do the, right? If you can replace the guy who has to look at your ID, or at least most of them, with facial recognition scanners that do the same thing, then you can save on your budget, right? Now, the downside of that may be to us. The upside is it could be faster. The downside, of course, is there's a really good chance it won't be. The robot will be even more racist than an ESA agent might be, you know? It's one less chance to deal with a human with whom you might be able to talk something through. Anyway, we'll all see where this goes. But for today, this has been It Could Happen Here, and I have been Robert Evans.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking.

It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.