The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Just How Much Information Do Tech Giants Have On You?

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

It's a potpourri day and there are lots of stories here to choose from.  A  Reuters study on Amazon and the information it collects on you; what's Canada's favourite password; why are fewer kids being born; is there a maple syrup shortage, real or artificial - which Xmas tree will you choose; and a lot more.  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Have you ever thought about what information, private information, is being collected on you? We'll talk about that in just a moment. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here once again in Toronto on this day. Because last night I was at a red carpet event, which feels a little odd having been one of those in a couple of years because of, well, you know why. But I was last night, but it was really different for me. I mean, obviously, as somebody who was in the kind an actress and attends those kind of things, whether they were in Stratford at the Stratford Festival or in Toronto at various different events around her television and acting career. And that still happens.

But last night i was at the uh it was not really the premiere but a showing of the nav batcha doc it's a documentary on nav batcha and nav is super fan you see him may ever go to a raptors game in toronto or you ever watch a Raptors game on television, you always see Nav Bacchia. He hasn't missed a single game of the Raptors since they started in the mid-1990s. And he's been recognized by the league. He's been recognized by the Raptors team. They gave him one of those championship rings, the only non-player to ever get one.

And he's in the NBA Basketball Hall of Fame. So his life story is fascinating. You know, he was born in India, came to Canada after the troubles in India in the 1980s, early 1980s. And he had a real problem finding a job because of his appearance. But he ended up as a car salesman. Then as a car dealer. And now as one of the biggest car dealers in North America. But at the same time, and through much of this,

he was a Raptors fan. And his story is fascinating. And it's been documented by this Toronto-based company and sold as a documentary to the CBC. It will be on the CBC a week from Friday, December 3rd. So you can look for that. It's excellent. It's really well done.

And, you know, I'm in the documentary business these days. And so I admire good work. Well, why was I at this red carpet event? I was there with my son, Willie. And if you're a longtime listener to The Bridge, you know Willie, because he often helps out in the production of this podcast. But Willie works for a company called Uninterrupted, which is a sports media firm.

It started in the U.S., was started by LeBron James. And when the Canadian portion of Uninterrupted began, it was started by LeBron James and Drake, were two of the major forces behind it. So Willie works for Uninterrupted, and one of its subsidiary companies, well, not subsidiary companies,

but one of its partner companies, is called Good Karma, and it produced this Nav Batchadoc superfan. That's what it's called. So I was at the red carpet event last night with my son. And it was a different moment for me because what happens on a red carpet, they take pictures of you arriving,

and then you go through this line of people who want to interview you. And Gesler was being interviewed. Willie was being interviewed.ie was being interviewed so it was pretty neat and it was a it was one of those you know proud father moments there's no question about that anyway i uh i'm not just saying watch the documentary because my son's involved. I'm saying watch the documentary because it's a heck of a good story. And in many ways, it's a story about Canada, and you'll know what I mean if you watch it. I'm not going to go through it here.

All right. This is a potpourri kind of day so i've got lots of little stories to tell you about the first one comes out of reuters and reuters decided to check on a story concerning how much information the big tech giants put together on you without your knowledge. And they chose to look at Amazon. And this is why they chose to look at Amazon. There's a Virginia lawmaker by the name of Ibrahim Samira.

And he'd been kind of an internet privacy expert. And it was certainly an issue that he likes to deal with. So he wanted to find out what Amazon was collecting on him. So he wrote out a request for them to provide, as the law states, all the information they had on him. Now, the e-commerce giant had more than 1,000 contacts from his phone. It had records of exactly which part of the Koran that Samira, who's raised as a Muslim, had listened to on just one day last year.

The company knew every search he had made on its platform, including one for books on progressive community organizing and other sensitive health-related inquiries he thought were private. Are they selling products or are they spying on everyday people, asked Samira, who also happens to be a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Samira was among the few Virginia legislators who opposed an industry-friendly, Amazon-drafted state privacy bill that passed earlier this year at reuters request samira asked amazon to disclose the data it collected on him as a consumer and that's how that information

came out seven reporters for reuters who were doing this story they also obtained their amazon files and the data reveals the company's ability to amass strikingly intimate portraits of individual consumers. And one of the ways, just one of the ways, they collect information is on Amazon customers who have Alexa, the voice assistant. Its e-commerce marketplace, Kindle e-readers, audible audio books, its video and music platforms, home security cameras, and fitness trackers. Through all of that, Alexa-enabled devices make recordings inside people's homes

and ring security cameras cameras capture every visitor. Such information can reveal, and I'm reading from this Reuters report, such information can reveal a person's height, weight, and health, their ethnicity via clues contained in voice data, and political leanings, their reading and buying habits, their whereabouts on any given day, and sometimes whom they've met. One reporter's dossier revealed that Amazon had collected more than... Wait for it. You're not going to believe this. This is just one reporter's dossier revealed that Amazon had collected more than 90,000 Alexa recordings of family members

between December 2017 and June 2021, averaging about 70 every day. The recordings included details such as the names of the reporters' young children and their favorite songs. And I've got to tell you, a lot more. You can go to Reuters and get the full article. It's a fairly lengthy one. But I'll tell you, you read that article and you go,

okay, you know, I get it. It is 2021. You tend to think nothing's private anymore. Everything's kind of out there. Every time you pick up your device, who else may be looking at what you're looking at because you're looking at it? This makes you think. It makes you wonder about that central question.

What, if anything, is private anymore? Well, one of the ways we try to be private is we have passwords, right? For access to different files of our information, whether it's a password to your bank account, whether it's a password to whatever. Everything has a password, right? And I don't know about you, but I know in

my case, trying to keep track of passwords forces you often to use the same password for everything or just about everything. And I'm not sure that's healthy either. And you're constantly warned, change your passwords, change them often. Well, yeah, okay, sounds good. But then you forget them. And you go, okay, I'm going to write them down. And then you can't find the piece of paper you wrote them down on. Or you can't find the part in your device where you put your passwords.

And then you worry about, well, if I put my passwords in my device in a special list, somebody else is going to, you know, Amazon's going to find it. So passwords are always a challenge. Well, every year about this time, a company called NordPass, they're like a tech security company among many other things. They somehow are able to track what the most common passwords are, how many people use them,

how long it takes to hack them, hack into them. So here's the question. What is the most common password used anywhere? Any idea what that may be? That's a worldwide question. Think about it for a second. Okay, the answer, here it is. The most common password is 123456.

Six numbers, 123456. six numbers one two three four five six use more than a hundred million times as the password key password last year and that includes in canada it's the most common canadian password as well. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Now, if that doesn't sound very original, it's because it's not very original. So tell me, oh wise man, what would be the most common password that's an actual word as opposed to a series of numbers?

It's number five in the world. It's number two in Canada, right behind one, two, three, four, five, six. Got any ideas on that one? The second most common password in Canada. The fifth most common in the world. You know what it is? This shows just how original thinkers we are. It is password.

That's the second most common. Password. That's the second most common. Password is password. Go figure. It's also the second most common password in the United Kingdom. I won't bore you with the whole list of 200, but you can find them at nordpass.com. Search for the password section. Interesting, right?

That's us. Now, you've often heard me refer to the Pew Research Center in the United States. They're always coming up with fascinating new studies in different parts of our life. Well, they've just completed a study in the United States, okay, so this is American data, with parents or potential parents. And what they're finding is different than what they've found before, and it wonders, it leaves us all wondering whether this sets a new, you know, a new sense of where we're heading

in terms of young adults, middle-aged adults and their relationship to kids. Because the headline on this story is more Americans report not wanting to Have Children Ever. So when we dig into the article at the Pew Research Center, here's what it says. A new survey from the Pew Research Center finds that more adults report they do not want to have children, ever. About 44% of people ages 18 to 49 report it's unlikely or not too likely that they'll have children.

That's almost half. In a 2018 survey, 37% of adults who weren't parents shared those same thoughts. People who are already parents also note that they're not eager to have more children. A whopping 74% of parents under 50 have no plans to add another child to their lives. Now, experts that Pew has consulted say, say hey this is not a surprise this is a trend we've been seeing for years says one expert the birth rate is declining it was declining before the pandemic we did not see a pandemic baby boom like some people expected. Christine Whalen, who's the director of the Money, Relationships, and Equality Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, told Today Parents, that's the website we pulled this Pew Research Center article off of.

Here's what she told Today Parents. Instead, we saw a further decline during the pandemic, which makes sense because you are concerned about your future, especially from a health perspective. Then you don't really want to bring children into the world. But the new data includes something that hasn't often been reported. More people are saying they simply do not want to have children for no reason in particular. About 56% say they just don't want to have children, while 43% provide another reason. The two most common reasons include medical and financial concerns. This is how they conclude their story. There's a lot more data in there, so if you want to search it out,

you can at today.com slash parents. It's likely that the trend of more child-free adults will continue, even though baby booms often follow historical mass traumatic events such as pandemics or World War II, for example. I mean, I was born in the baby boom following World War II. Waylon, that's our researcher friend, she doesn't anticipate the end of the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to a boom. What's more, she thinks the survey results indicate that people don't feel optimistic about the years to come.

They don't want to make the sacrifice now to invest in an unknown future later. When we choose to have children, we know that we are choosing sleepless nights and heartache. But our hope is that we are choosing to bring hope and new life into the world and that things can be better. If you're saying you don't want to have kids, what you're saying is, I enjoy my life right now.

I don't want to engage in the delayed gratification for an uncertain reward. You know, I read this piece this morning, on the morning after I'd had this moment, on the red carpet. And I thought, you know, I wouldn't trade that for anything. You know, that was one of those proud father, proud parent moments,

and boy, you can't have that if you don't have kids. And I don't want to dismiss the, you know, the extremely hard work that raising kids is. And in my life, I was away for much of the time my kids were growing up. And so it was my spouse who was doing the hard work. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't trade it, as I said, for anything. All right, we're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, a couple more of these interesting stories right after this. And hello again. Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto. This is The Bridge. You're listening on Channel 167. Sirius XM Canada, Canada Talks, or you're listening on whatever podcast platform that you favor, and you can catch The Bridge on it.

Wherever you're listening, we're glad you are. And thank you once again for the letters that are literally pouring in. You've been keeping me busy signing book plates for my new bestselling book, Off the Record. And the deal is if you send me some visible proof that you've purchased the book, I will mail you out. And don't forget your address. You can't believe the number of people who send me a letter,

but they never send me their address. It's a little hard to send you a book plate signed if you don't send me your address at the same time. Anyway, go ahead and send it to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And if you're looking for more information on the book and the easy way to order it, just go to thepetermansbridge.com. That's my website, and there's all kinds of material there on the book.

Published by Simon & Schuster, available at the great bookstores that we have in this country, all over the country. And it's wonderful because the letters I've been getting are literally from all over the country, from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, and up into one of my favorite places in the world, Canada's Arctic. All right, a couple more stories for you here. And these are kind of seasonal. This is kind of a, you know, it's December tomorrow, and we move forward as we're in the holiday season already. Hanukkah began two nights ago so you know the strategic oil reserve you know how they have that in the states and then when prices start to fluctuate and they get

worried about getting getting oil to consumers for their cars or their heating home or whatever. They go to their strategic oil reserve and pump more oil into the market to make up for cutbacks by like OPEC nations. Well, here's something I never knew. And I can thank Hannah Jackson from CTV News who wrote this story up on their.ca platform. Canada has a strategic

maple syrup stockpile and you know what? We're going into it right now because there's a shortage well they say there's no shortage imminent but the market is busy enough that they need a little more than they have so they're going into the strategic stockpile of maple syrup. Who knew? An increase in demand, coupled with an average year for production, has forced Quebec maple syrup producers to tap into their strategic stockpile to ensure no pancake is left without the sweet golden sap. That's Hannah Jackson's writing, and it's a great line. The Laurierville Quebec plant and warehouse, approximately 200 kilometers northeast of Montreal,

is being focused on because that's where the province's strategic reserve of maple syrup is stored. Can you imagine? They've got hundreds of liters of maple syrup. It can hold 94,000 barrels, each containing 205 liters. According to the organization's website, the 2021 harvest is estimated to be around 133 million pounds of maple syrup. While that sounds like a lot, one of the people who works there explained that

this comes after two record years for maple syrup production. In 2020 alone, a total of 175 million pounds of maple syrup was produced. Those years were just amazing. That was perfect to put some maple syrup in stock at the reserve, and this year we take some of it out because production was less good this spring. Taking syrup from the strategic reserve is normal, and those responsible add that the reserve is fully playing its role right now. Syrup's taken out every year and while 50 million pounds is a lot,

there will still be 50 million pounds left in the stockpile. We won't miss maple syrup in 2021 for sure. Now, did you know this? Quebec produces 73%, almost three quarters of all maple syrup in the world. The rest of Canada produces approximately 6% of the world's maple syrup, while the U.S. accounts for around 21%. So it's really a North American product that goes around the world, and it's a great gift around the world. When you arrive in some foreign country and you've got, you know, a can or a bottle of maple syrup that you had in your luggage,

not your carry-on, you're a pretty popular person. It's a great export. Here's the other decision we have to make at this time of year. And here's some helpful information on making that decision. Christmas trees. What are you going to do? Which kind of tree has the benefit that you may be looking for? As we all focus on climate change,

we're trying to find climate-friendly decisions in our purchasing power. So which kind of tree has the lowest carbon footprint? A natural tree or a store-bought plastic tree? Just like so much in life, it's complicated. This story is from CNN. It's definitely a lot more nuanced and complex than you think. Andy Finton, the Landscape Conservation Director and Forest Ecologist at the Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts. That's what he told CNN. So CNN has made a list, and checked it twice,

of the things to know before you choose between real and artificial trees. It's easy to imagine that reusing an artificial tree year after year is the more sustainable option. But our friend Mr. Fenton says, if an artificial tree is used for fewer than six years, the carbon cost is greater than investing in natural trees. If the artificial trees are used for a longer lifespan, that balance changes. And I've read that it would take 20 years

for the carbon balance to be about equivalent. This article on CNN about Christmas trees has tons of facts. So if this fascinates you, you might want to try and search it out. I'll just read one last one. On average, how long do you think it takes to grow a fully grown christmas tree on average it takes seven years to fully grow a christmas tree according to the national christmas tree association of course of course there's a national christmas tree association and as it grows it absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, protecting forests and planting trees

can help stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis by removing the planet warming gas from the atmosphere. Of course, we all knew that. Right? Okay.

Here's your last fun fact. You've probably been wondering, Man's Bridge, you're always bragging about airplanes and airports, but you haven't told us an airplane story in a few weeks. Well, here's one. To close out, today's The Bridge. How long do you think it takes to fly from Cape Town, South Africa to Antarctica?

First of all, there are no airports like what we would consider airports in South Africa. There are landing strips, about 50 of them actually, but they're for smaller planes like Twin Otters, Hercules, planes that can land without the benefit of a huge runway. Well, this story is about a plane that flew for five hours to get to Antarctica and then landed. Wait till you hear what it was. Keep in mind that the first plane to ever fly to Antarctica was in 1928.

So this is not a new deal. That was a big deal at the time. They flew from the South Shetland Islands in a monoplane in 1928. An Australian pilot, military guy, was the first guy to fly to Antarctica and land there. But what are we talking about today? It happened just a couple of weeks ago, November 2nd. And this wasn't a monoplane. This wasn't a twin otter. This wasn't a Hercules.

It was a four-engine Airbus A340. That's the big, big jumbo jet, right? And it landed in Antarctica without an airport, the kind of airport that we're used to. It's part of a new company. They're kind of a travel adventure company. They flew their Airbus A340 with tons of supplies into their camp that they're setting up as an adventure camp. So how'd they land, Peter?

They landed on ice. They had cleared a 3,000-meter runway on the ice surface. Now, 3,000 meters is about 10,000 feet. That's more than enough to land an Airbus A340. But, you know, you're going to land on ice. It's sliding all over the place. They had to grade the ice. So they cut little lines into it for the whole length,

the 3,000 meters of the runway. So there was a degree of traction when that aircraft landed it landed without incident it took off a couple hours later without incident now that's a big deal may not mean much to you you know it means a lot to me. As our airport guy, I can just imagine that flight at the airport. And Joburg. The airline was called High Fly. High Fly, flight 801, is now ready for boarding at Gate 42,

ready for takeoff from Johannesburg to Antarctica, the first ever Airbus A340 to land on what's generally conceded to be the last great continent. It's the one continent I haven't been to. And it's the one continent I certainly hope I will get to before my adventure flying ends. So there you go. Today's kind of special edition of The Bridge. Hope you've enjoyed it. Hope you'll be back tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. I'm sure we'll probably end up talking about the new variant of COVID and what's happening in terms of the worldwide search for answers to the key questions about this variant. Biden's advice yesterday was good. It's a variant of concern. It's not a variant of panic. So they're searching for the answers. Tomorrow we'll talk about it on smt

that's it for this day i'm peter mansbridge thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours