The Chaser Report - Find My BodyCam | Welcome To The Future

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

It wouldn't be a week of Charles' return without a story about how Bluetooth will cause the end of the world. Have you ever wanted to know if a police officer was within 400m of your location? Turns out you can!---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Future, Future, Future, Future, Future with Dom and Charles as well as the Chaser Report. Yep, we are putting this on the standalone feed as well, bringing that back the feed in which we largely talk about the wonders of Bluetooth in the modern era. Charles, I found a headline to discuss today, which we won't discuss today. I wonder people can hear the lawnmower behind it. But anyway, this is for VIPs only. So this is the story from the Telegraph in the UK, and you're home away from home.

Yep. The headline is sex crazed nudists are running wild and the authorities decline to act. Oh, oh. So that's just for VIPs. We can't trust that on the regular feed. I'm usually fairly anti-authority, but I think I support the authorities. Yes. We'll get on to that in tomorrow's episode for paying subscribers only.

Thank you to those who've kept paying the modest feed, despite incredible crap lack of episodes recently, by the way. But Charles, it wouldn't be a full return by you to the feed. Yes. If there was not an episode in week one about Bluetooth. Bluetooth. Yes. Okay. So this is the greatest story, I think, ever in the history of humanity.

I thought you're going to say of Bluetooth. But of humanity and Bluetooth, much the same thing, really. Yeah. Yeah, I think when scientists look back, or and archaeologists look back at this era, it will be. The mainly seen through the rubric of Bluetooth devices. They'll be calling it not the Anthropocene, but the Bluetooth scene. Yeah, that is what it's going to be called. So, I don't know, did you catch four corners on Monday nights?

I didn't, but I just had a really sad thought, just that when humans finally are extinct. Yeah. Because of AI. Yes. What will happen for many centuries after our death is it all of our Bluetooth devices? I'll just be sitting there seeking connection. Oh, they'll see it. Seeking connection.

And no one will ever. say yes or type the code awkwardly in. Mind you. What an image. They rarely got connection even when there was a... That's true. So I'll be exactly like the one world. Actually.

No, I didn't see four corners, but let's take to Mads while. I quickly bowed it up on it. Okay, look, I didn't. Just declare a vote. I didn't see four corners. Oh, good. Perfect. The usual level of preparation will bring.

Like, this was, there was a whole episode on sort of these private military contractors who have basically sewn. up the market for, you know, gadgets that the police can use. And in particular, tasers and those body cams, right? And in particular, I want to talk about the body cams that essentially it would seem all Australian police seem to have nowadays. They do, don't they? So I think it originally came in through the AFP.

That's the first. They're called the first. Yeah, I think they were the ones in Australia who are they. They got more money, don't they? Federales. And they're built by this company called Action. on. All right.

That just sounds sinister, doesn't it? I know, exactly. If you were coming up with sort of tasers and body cams, surely you'd name your company something like, you know, bright, bright fluffy things. Friend tech or SafeCam. Yeah. I suppose that's even more sinister in a way. Or Hugatron.

Yeah, Hugatron. Or just Skyness. Yes, the honest. I don't know with that. It's just a networked sky. Okay, so the really fascinating thing about this is this company sells devices. to all police forces around the world. He's literally, like, we're talking, I think, 17,000 different police bodies that they sell to.

They make about $17 billion a year in these sales, right? And they've sewn up the market. They basically have got a monopoly on providing, you know, body cams and tasers. Isn't that nice that's the subject of a monopoly? Yes. Of all the forms of information and data collection, you just want one company trusted. be all that, don't you? And there is,

Motorola is also in that business. But in Australia, it's basically axon. Anyway, so. So, so you'd think that they'd be pretty good at making these bodycams. And I'm just buying shares in Axon. I'll be a sec. So, but the thing is, what they've done is they've got, the way these body cams work is they have their Bluetooth enabled, right?

What? Their Bluetooth enabled. Are you telling me that the body cams that police wear? Yes. recording crime scenes, recording the incredibly sensitive personal information to people, often on their worst day, or tragedies, or people are actually dying. Yes. That has Bluetooth?

They have Bluetooth, right? Oh, my God. And I presume a large part of it is so that, you know, you can connect it to your phone and control when it's on and off so that if you're about to commit some sort of hideous piece of police violence, you can switch the off button and stuff like that. Oh, there would be good uses for it. Like, we're not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. I thought it's going to be a sake of stitch them all together into some sort of amazing

multi-cam 3D renderer. TikTok. Of an extra judicial killing. Yeah, yeah. But whatever it is, that's what they do, right? But the whole way they've been, this is the funny part of it, right? So this is not about Bluetooth. I'm not laughing yet so much as feeling very scared.

So normally when we talk about Bluetooth, we talk about the fact that it can't connect, it doesn't work. Yes. This is in some ways the opposite. the problem, which is the way they've embedded Bluetooth into these devices is using the new LE standard. It's the low energy standard. And it just constantly emits a Mac address, right? And that allows...

Very techy here. So every device on the whole of the internet has a Mac address, a physical hardware address. Yeah, yeah, hardware address. Every gadget in the whole world. And if you're, say, Apple, yes. Right. And you, all your iPhones use Bluetooth.

Ironically, nothing to do with the Macintosh, by the way. It's like machine address code or something. The one thing that you do is you can do something called macadress scrambling. I don't know how it works, but essentially, you know, you can imagine the privacy implications of transmitting a unique identity. Yeah. That with the new Bluetooth standard is allows you to identify exactly where that person is within 400. So you can work out where the police are. Right. So this is the point. So if you've got an iPhone, it doesn't do that because it just constantly scrambles that macadress and confuses your system.

But that would be Charles if it was made by a company that cared about privacy. Yes. These body cams, they just emit the same Magadress and constantly. And hackers and organized criminals have gone, hang on, this is a great way to know whether the cops are coming. And you can just, there's plenty of tools on the web. You can actually download that is open source tools that allow you to just log in and identify all the cops who have their body cams on that are within 400 meters of you, right? And so that's sort of incredible, isn't it? You go, so why don't they just use the Apple scrambling method, right? And so Four Corners interviewed this hacker who went, no, no, no, you can't because the way they've done it at a sort of hardware level, which means no software update is going

to solve this problem. This is a problem that is embedded into the very design of these Exxon body cams. So you're saying that, hypothetically speaking, yeah, if I'm sitting here as a criminal and a police officer, if I know the MAC addresses of all the body cams, which is I don't know where you find that, but presumably, no, no, no, no, no, there's a particular range. No, they just, they just, you set up your computer outside the AFP and suddenly you'll see hundreds of body cam suits just emitting their Bluetooth things. And you can literally, you could just sit there and then as Bob from, you know,

secret affairs or secret intelligence events walks out of the front of the building or the drug unit walks out of the building, you can see him on the map that you've got on your computer going, oh, well, that's his Mac address. And literally it's transmitting. I mean, this is a terrible, deeply upsetting thing that completely undermines law enforcement. completely undermines as well. I know. The safety of the offices.

Finally, a use of the blue to. Charles, can I just ask? I mean, I'm appalled and worried by this. I think this is going to lead to huge problems. Criminals will escape Scott free. But Charles, just on a related note, do parking inspectors wear body cams? Just wondering. It just randomly occurs to me.

I think we should push for all parking inspectors to be given body camsuits as soon as possible. Because my car is pretty, I'm wondering if my car could send me a notification. Yes. If a parking inspector comes within 400 meters. That's a great idea. That could be very good. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. Anyway, I'm appalled about the thing with the police.

That's really, really dangerous. It's terribly disturbing. But I must say I thought where this was going was that members of the public could hack into the body cams. Yeah. And can they actually watch the feed from them? Oh, no, I don't think. It's just literally, the problem is, I'm sure some hackers can. Like, I'm sure if you were a proper big hacker, but the main thing that you can do, well,

according to this Four Corners report was, like, the main worry is it's just leaking constant updates about where the exact location of these police are. Yeah. Which is fucking hilarious. But yes, you're right. You could probably do some sort of, you know how they do forced injection sort of stuff and all those sorts of fancy. You could get Claude.

Claude would be able to help you. Oh, really? Yeah, you know, Mythos? Oh, mythos, the one that's so powerful that they can. Isn't that an amazing bit of marketing? Yeah, I know. Charles, I don't know if you know my, uh, do my eye. Yeah.

And we've got this new, new variant of it. It's called Supreme. And it's, it can hack anything. Yeah. I can't try it. It's bad for security, but, oh, it's pretty good. You should probably invest in my company. For those listeners who did miss that story,

It's true. Anthropics' latest version of Claude has not been released because they claim that they asked it to sort of hack into websites. And basically it could hack into everything including like Department of Defense websites and things like that. Imagine being part of the beta testers for that one. Well, apparently Apple was granted. Like all the workers at Apple granted access to this new version beforehand. Is that why Apple's stuff suddenly got really good value and then? Yeah.

Sort of winning, like the MacBook Neo. Neo. That was just an invention. Mythos came up with that. Yeah. They could. Okay. Right.

I'm just trying to think what could be done. I mean, so there's nothing they can do. And the manufacturer is saying, well, we've got a stealth mode. Guess what the stealth mode does? Turns off Bluetooth? No. Nope. I don't know.

It doesn't do anything. It's just, it's just called stealth mode. Most Bluetooth devices doesn't do anything. So even in stealth mode, you can still track the policeman's location. It's just like not even a stealth mode. I mean, I was worried about as many people have been, you know, the body cams being worn as a means of surveillance, has increased police power. Some people say that they're a tool for police accountability.

If police have to have them on or mean that they behave in a more appropriate way because I know that the footage can be reviewed. Yes. Turns out they really are a tool for police accountability, aren't they? You want to know where they are. They could use it for, they could use it for like shift management, couldn't they? Like, you know, did, did officer turn up 4 a.m. to go and do the beat policing you're supposed to do? Imagine if in Roger Rogerson's Day.

Oh, God. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Now we'll Bartos would have just got out the detector, wouldn't he? So with the right hardware, this is saying, with the right hardware, organised criminals could actually set up a really simple system which would allow them to track police in real time and detect raids from kilometers away.

Oh, wow. Isn't that brilliant? So, and the whole point is. So Axon, which, you know, like if you release a DUD product and you sell them to 17,000 police forces around the world, surely if that product doesn't work, you have to recall it, right? In general. And they're saying, no, we don't have to record it because the whole point is they can't afford to record it, recall it, because they can't, there's nothing they can do to fit. The whole thing has been designed in a way that's completely insecure. It's sort of brilliant.

That's really, it's so. It makes me, I do just want to go into, like, I think we should register as, you know, one of those suppliers to police forces. Because if you can sell completely, like I've got tons of dud products that I could sell to police force. You could have sold the avocado, poor toys, couldn't you, to the water police? Yeah. That would have been fantastic.

They could have put an outboard motor on the back of them and used them as, well, they couldn't have used them, but that's the whole point. But that is very good. No, that is a really good story. Yeah, okay. So, I'm just wondering. So I think, well, I think your idea of what, who else do we want to track? Because I think what, you know, you're right, there's a sort of public interest in accountability.

We just start pushing for anyone that we actually want to track to be required to be body plans. I really think ticket inspectors on Melbourne trams. Ticket inspectors on Melbourne trams. Parking inspectors. I'd say, what about spouses? No, that's probably a bit creepy. Very creepy. Yeah.

That's called coercive control, I think. is the technical term for that. I mean, the thing is Charles, you've had a, you've had a mode like this for years. Oh, yeah. Which is unlike anybody else. Yeah. Charles is someone who lives in Charles. Charles is so loud that you can hear him coming 400 meters away.

Like, it's literally the same thing. Yeah. So you don't have a stealth mode, my friend. Not actually possible. Well, no, it's exactly like the Exxon's stealth mode, which is it doesn't work. All right. Well, look, that is, as far as Bluetooth stories go, that is truly phenomenal. And you know, because the other.

Bluetooth story that I don't think we've covered since the last Welcome to the Future was they had a Bluetooth era on that flight that went to the moon, the Artemis flight. Oh, that's right. So they had two. We saw this news come through and I really wish we were doing the podcast while we're in holidays. That's right. Yes. So what happened was, so the first thing that was widely reported was that Outlook had been, was running on the Artemis computer in space, right? Actually, just Microsoft Outlaw. Microsoft Outlook, and there were two instances of Outlook, neither of which worked, and there was nothing they could do about it. And so the astronauts radioed down to Earth saying, hey, tech support, can you, like, Outlook doesn't work. What do we do about it?

And then Earth had to take over the spacecraft's computers to force quit the thing. Wow. Because the astronauts couldn't work out out of force quit it, right? Charles, I've always thought. It's so funny. It's like Outlook doesn't work on Earth. It doesn't work in space. Astronauts are so brave.

I thought previously that the bravest thing they did was track themselves to a giant explosive device. Yeah. That gets lit and just, you know, could anything. Just that moment of takeoff is so dangerous. But Charles, the bravery involved in going aboard a craft run on Microsoft. Windows. Wow. I know.

I mean, it's not often, blue screen of death is meant to be a metaphor, Charles. It's not meant to actually involve potential death of brave astronauts. But then the funny thing is, so that was about. A day after this, so then on the 5th of April, which was the Sunday, and I think it launched on the Friday, didn't it? They had a Bluetooth era, right? So they were trying to pair an ECG device, which is like, monitors your heart. Which is genuinely important in space, you think.

With a medical tablet, right? And the problems were that the way to tether them was through Bluetooth, and they just could not get it to connect. You know, cables are good. You're plugged it in. Yeah. You're in space. It's fine.

And so, and then they, they were having trouble with Microsoft Outlook, right, which is sort of thing. What they ended up doing was they ended up ditching their medical tablet and instead using their phones to tether with the Bluetooth. That's right. The other funny thing is they all had their smartphones. They all had, yeah. We're so addicted to smartphones. Yeah.

That we even take them to space with us. Because you, you wouldn't want to miss out in your duerlingo, would you? While you were slingshiding around. the earth to the moon and back, you need to keep the streak going on your Russian or whatever it was to be able to make friends with the cosmonauts. You think in like billions of years time, aliens will discover probes from our planet that have just been travelling space and time for billions of years. And then they'll go, oh my God, this is from an advanced civilization.

And then they'll see the Bluetooth logo. And they go, oh, no, it's not an advanced civilization. It's actually the best projection we have. We should actually send out devices in every direction with Bluetooth on them. So that anyone who sees them, like, rather than Voyager going, oh, we should go and meet these people. They've got all this interesting culture. No, they don't know what they're doing the hopeless.

Although perhaps that would lull them into a false sense of security that they could easily invade us. Although given the body cam thing, perhaps it's not so false anyway. Well, at least the aliens will know how to take out all the police exactly where they are. Well, could we get aliens to wear body cam so that we can see them coming? I kind of feel like this could solve a whole lot of problems in the US, couldn't it? If you, because they hate their police forces because the police forces just keep killing black people. I kind of feel like, surely there's some sort of solution there. Or do they just turn off their body cams before they kill people?

They probably do. I thought you weren't supposed to be able to, which given the level of this technology, clearly means that you can. Yeah, that's right. Couldn't just to me. All right, should we turn this off? Okay, let's turn this off. Actually, I've just got, I've actually tethered this thing with Bluetooth, so I should be able to turn it off pretty easily. I'll just, hold on.

Oh, it's not working. It's not working. Just manually, log in remotely and reboot. Here we go. I'll quit. Force quit. We're part of the iconic class network. Catch you to.