What A Day - The Apple Of Bill Barr’s Eye

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr wants Apple’s help unlocking the iPhone of a Saudi Arabian shooter who opened fire on a naval base last month. We discuss what Apple’s response means for data privacy. In this week's 2020 update, Senator Cory Booker dropped out, supporters of Warren and Sanders are beefing, and there’s a debate tonight where the top six candidates will go head-to-head. And in headlines: Russian hackers are at it again, Diego the horny tortoise, and Thinx underwear and the dangers of free-bleeding.

It's Tuesday, January 14th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the best way to pregame a totally epic Democratic debate night. Let's get it. First debate of 2020. Rise and grind and watch CNN, I guess. On today's show, Cory Booker drops out of the presidential race. The United States asked Apple to unlock the Pensacola shooter's iPhone. And then some headlines. Three weeks out from the first 2020 primary voting in Iowa,

another candidate has decided to exit the race. Senator Cory Booker, who did not qualify for two debates in a row, announced that he was leaving the crowded field on Monday. That means that the most diverse primary field in history has lost another candidate of color. Today, I'm suspending my campaign for president with the same spirit with which it began. It is my faith in us, faith in us together as a nation, that we share common pain and common problems that can only be solved with a common purpose and a sense of common cause. So now I recommit myself to the work. I can't wait to get back on the campaign trail and campaign as hard as I can for whoever is the eventual nominee and for candidates up and down the ballot. We can't not mention it,

but the music in the video is distracting. I wish they hadn't done that anyway. That was the video that Senator Booker put out Monday about leaving the race. He also said that the campaign needed more money to be able to scale up and win. And that given that and the upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate, this seemed like a good moment

for him to leave the trail. Yeah, relatable. Impeachment's a lot. I need money. Yeah. Good time to leave. Yeah. I mean, we can hear him out on that.

Booker, throughout this presidential campaign, focused his message on positivity, and he also had a pretty solid criminal justice package of policies. He endorsed a gun licensing program, which some of the other candidates picked up as well along the way. Yeah. And he also got a lot of flack for focusing on positivity. And that was from me included. I think that it's a really good message, but it did feel a little weird for it to be 2020. And the reality we're living in to focus on, you know, the words we're using in a debate sense. It felt a little distracting. So, yeah, it just it just didn't break through. I mean, Booker was making this argument that he could reassemble the Obama coalition, but he never really cracked into that top tier and polling in early states and overall. And a lot

of voters seem to really like him. But one of the major issues that he had is that he never really could climb with African American voters, peeling them off from former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden's been resilient in a way that I think a lot of campaigns weren't necessarily expecting. And when you look at the rest of what people think is typically a Democratic coalition, young voters, Latino voters as well, a lot of them in polling have been interested in Biden and some of the other candidates not named Booker. And that was just it wasn't really moving for him. And to go back to the money thing for just a second, throughout Booker's time running in 2019, he raised a total of about twenty two point one million dollars, which to put in perspective on the whole is less than what Senator Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg individually each pulled in in just the fourth quarter of last year. Oh, and the primary, you know, it waits for no man.

So we got to keep on chugging. We have another debate coming up tonight. This time it's in Iowa. It's at Jersey Drake University. We've got Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer. What are we thinking is going to happen? Well, let's talk really quickly about a couple broad things

since the last time we checked in with the wad heads out there. It's not going to stick. It might if I keep trying. This is the smallest stage that the candidates have been on thus far, the smallest amount of people. And the last time that we had one with fewer candidates, we got a lot of substantive and pretty heated back and forth in a way that I think we both thought was pretty good and interesting. Now, this is going to be the last one before the Iowa caucuses on February 3rd. And the race, as far as we know, appears to be really, really, really, really close there. Yeah. And one of the last times we talked 2020, we were discussing the booty bump.

But hasn't there been a booty slump? Yeah. In a way. Yes. I mean, all these candidates are sort of jostling and, you know, back and forth. Yeah. They're one. They they're two they're three uh there were there were two recent iowa polls with buddha judge very much still in the mix in a des moines register poll sanders was actually in the lead followed by warren then buddha judge and biden and then one on monday from monmouth biden was first followed by sanders and buddha judge and warren i think that any of them could reasonably win which is making things a little bit more tense in the closing weeks before voting and maybe at this debate. But in terms of like what we actually see, you know, from all the candidates on the debate stage, I would bet that we see more Sanders and Biden back and forth.

They've been the two that throughout the year have sort of been the number one and number two nationally and in many of the early states. Sanders has gained momentum in the last few months. And then with Iran becoming part of the 2020 campaign rhetoric, he's kind of zeroed in on Biden's prior support for the Iraq war. I think that's a fight that he really, really wants to have. And then we might also see more of the kind of trifecta of Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Warren arguments from last time. That'd be my best guess right now. Yeah, I for one think I'm just ready for people to start voting. Yes. How many more times can we hear? Well, this will do it again.

You know, like, thankfully, be the last one before the caucuses. And then, you know, we'll actually have a result to point to. One other thing that we should talk about, though, before we move on is this story that's been kicking around about Warren and Sanders, the cheat sheet version of it, I think, is just the easiest for now. And I think people can read about it if they want to go more in depth, because I, for one, think it's a little bit overhyped. Basically, what happened is the two of them, the ideologically the closest in the primary race and different in a number of ways, but people who are honest to God friends had this meeting in 2018. It was just the two of them.

We knew about the meeting for over a year. But what was reported on Monday from a number of anonymous sources initially was that in that conversation, Sanders expressed to Warren that he did not believe There seems to be some sort of miscommunication or misunderstanding from him and some other sources versus what her interpretation was of it and what other sources interpretations were of it. Anyway, Warren later confirmed that that's what Sanders said, but she sounded not too perturbed by the conversation. Yeah, I've said this on Twitter already, but the reality is I just don't care about this. I find it to be a complete waste of everyone's time. I think if it's dominating news cycles, it's like, have we learned nothing? You know, and I think that voters feel the same way. Like no one is sitting at home like wrapped wondering what's going to happen with their friendship. It doesn't matter. People want to know, you know, are they going to be in debt forever? Is a student loan crisis ever going to end? Are we going to war? I mean, there are things that are far more pressing and to be distracted by, you know that by nature of how those debates work and the moderators that they're inherently

looking for these kinds of conflicts because that is an easier route to take than necessarily discussing all of the major issues all the time. Like you said, this was a meeting that happened a long time ago. Could be different understandings based on what I've read and the people sort of describing it. But it got me thinking about a broader thing that in a position as a reporter, and especially a reporter that does campaign trail stuff that is sort of like, day in day out, you know, we are not always the good guys to voters. And I'm super, super cognizant of that. Reporters just have different incentives in all of this. Like if you get a piece of news and you get something that is dramatic within that piece

of news, that is like the greatest thing in the world. And the pressures are just different than they are for somebody else who processes all this information once it's out there. It is what it is. You have an editor. If you tell that editor like, hey, I found this out about a private meeting they're going to be like write that shit immediately yeah um but the goal for reporters differentiates from the goal that like you as a listener or other prospective voters in your lives may have so i just think in these situations it's

always important to keep in mind that as this primary goes on, there could be other days like this. These candidates are trying to beat each other after all. And the last two presidential primaries did not get as nasty as 2008 did. And look how that turned out. Yeah, I'm pretty sure people still voted for Barack Obama. Yeah. I mean, if my memory serves correct from several times that far away, right? Exactly. So we'll check in with you again on 2020 tomorrow in our debate recap. But for now, just stay sane out there. It's a new decade, but a lot of our problems remain the same. The earth is warming.

The glasses on my face are old. They're not from my childhood, despite other suggestions to that contrary. And I don't have contact lenses, which is something that I'm going to fix soon. Oh, and tech giant Apple and the US government are facing off again because of a locked inaccessible iPhone in a criminal investigation. Okay, Akilah, do you want to unpack what's going on here? Yeah, I think the first thing is that people should know I said that his glasses were from childhood. They're not. Okay, sorry.

You outed yourself. Yeah, fine. Well, here's the more important news. Last month, there was a shooting on a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, that left three dead and eight others wounded. The perpetrator was Saudi Arabian and was killed at the scene by law enforcement. And since that time, law enforcement has been attempting to access that shooter's personal iPhone for clues and information on how many people were involved or knew about it. And if there are ties to some sort of international terrorist organization. Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr called the shooting an act of terrorism and asked Apple in a press conference to assist with the investigation. And Apple is refusing to unlock the phone.

And obviously, this isn't the first time Apple has been in this sort of position. Right. In the months following the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 dead and 22 others injured, the same issue came up with Apple refusing to cooperate with the FBI's request to decrypt data on the shooter's iPhone. And this all gets us into an essential privacy debate. Can the tech company that enables all of your data access that data and give it to the police? And what's to stop the police or tech company from overstepping here? Yeah, I think it's an interesting sort of philosophical question, too. Well, Apple's defense is that, you know, one,

if they start unlocking iPhones for law enforcement, there's a high risk of the entire history of this country. Two, that data isn't just your own, which is to say that, you know, one, if they start unlocking iPhones for law enforcement, there's a high risk of abuse, read the entire history of this country. Two, that data isn't just your own, which is to say that, you know, if you hacked into my iPhone right now, there's a pretty good chance I have other people's phone numbers and addresses and sensitive information. So that would mean that Apple was just authorizing a privacy breach of people who may not even be accused of a crime. The third thing, you know, if they wrote code to unlock iPhones, there's a good chance that criminals could learn how to use it and exploit it. So no one's safer. And, you know, to that end for making all phones less secure because some people are bad actors

is simply bad business. That's true. Yeah. And Apple says that it's against terrorism. Duh. We know this and that it cooperates in hands over data where it has access, like stuff on the cloud. But as far as accessing iPhones, here's what CEO Tim Cook had to say following the shooting in San Bernardino. He said, quote, The FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features. Here's Cook in an ABC interview with David Muir a couple of months after that shooting. And you'd have to write that system in order to unlock that phone. Yes. Yes. We have no more information about this phone. The only way to get information, at least currently the only way we know,

would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the software equivalent of cancer. We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it. And that is what is at stake here. Whoa. Software equivalent of cancer is strong wording from a guy who seems that chill and literal. Yeah, pretty literal.

So, I mean, it seems like there's a good reason not to do it. But, you know, it's five years later. We're still having this debate. So where is Congress on something like this? Has there been any sort of movement to change any applicable laws or create new ones for these instances? No, not really. The apparent reasoning is that like legislating the issue in a way that forces companies to build security weaknesses into their products is just not what Congress is for. And it's also I mean, it just sounds terrible. Why would they're not going

to do it? Yeah, no, that's good. Okay, so we have the big picture on this. But in this more recent ongoing case in Florida, what's been going on? Well, the FBI is doing their due diligence. So they've interviewed 500 of the shooter's friends and associates, analyzing 42 terabytes of digital information they can get a hold of. And Apple has given the FBI access to all of the information that they have, including the shooter's iCloud account. In the 2015 case, the FBI found this third-party tech company that could go around Apple's encryption.

And according to the FBI, they cannot find a tech vendor to hack into this shooter's phone this time. So, you know, perhaps the solution to all of this is stricter gun laws, since this shooter was able to lawfully purchase the murder weapon in Florida because of an exemption. But hey, you know, if Apple decides to say, fuck it, here's how you break our phones, we'll let you know.

And now for some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. In kind of impeachment news, Russian military hackers are at it again, Headlines. Ukraine were dominating the news. Experts say the timing implies that hackers were trying to find something potentially embarrassing about the Bidens, and they used the same tactics Russians used to hack the account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, in 2016. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This does not bode well for a totally fair fight in 2020, and it's a good reminder that your password should be hard to guess like mine, which is cowabungagideon5000. Shit. Oh, man. Cowabunga Gideon 5000. Shit. Oh, man. Cowabunga Idiot 5000.

More like it. Okay. Period underwear company Thinx once sold us on a dream of a post-tampon world where we could free bleed like Vikings without any cares at all. Well, now it seems like that dream could be built on a bed of toxic chemicals that Thinx stored dangerously close to the origin of all human life. Ew. Yeah. A recent test of Thinx underwear found significant amounts of polyfluoroalkyl substances,

or PFAS chemicals, that have previously been linked to cancer and fertility problems. PFAS are used in waterproofing and stain-resistant finishes, which kind of explains how they might have ended up in things, but definitely doesn't make it good, smart, or okay. For their part, things contested the report and provided lab results of their own, showing no detectable PFAS. TBD, what is fact and what's fiction in this mystery of the futuristic panties? A horny-ass tortoise who almost single-handedly saved his species by fathering 800 offspring on Española Island in the Galapagos has retired

from having sex all the time. Diego, which is the correct name for an extremely horny tort, was brought from San Diego Zoo to Española in 1976 when the island was home to just over a dozen tortoises. Having bred in captivity since then and helped the population grow to 2,000, he's now ready to be released into the wild, where presumably he'll start selling nudes on his OnlyFans and become a millionaire. Good luck to you, Diego. You're over 100 years old. Good luck.

The Oscar nominees came out yesterday morning, and we want to yell about it. Every major category was predictable. Joker is the most nominated film, so I guess winding through every stage of the press tour was a winning strategy for director Todd Phillips. Netflix overperformed with Marriage Story and The Irishman, leading to their 24 nominations, which is the most of any media company this year. Spielberg is sitting in his car crying on the phone with his manager. There was no love for giant co-jailo. The Farewell was completely left out. Greta Gerwig's Little Women adaptation snagged several noms,

but glaringly not a Best Director nomination, which begs the question, did Little Women direct itself, themselves? Like, how did it happen? The only Black person in a major acting category is playing a slave, because I guess that's the only way the Academy is comfortable with diversity. And was the Sandman snubbed for Uncut Gems? Yes, he was. Did his online excitement for Kathy Bates, his mom in The Waterboy and Best Supporting Actress nominee, warm our hearts? Also, yes. True. Since Adam Sandler famously said that if he didn't get an Oscar nomination for this film that he'd make the worst movie in history, we have a suggestion for him. A feature film adaptation of the 2020 Oscars. Sure, there's no green book,

but it still looks to be a real snooze fest. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, give us a rating, trade us a commemorative coin, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you are into reading and not just airline safety manuals like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's how you roast an award show. Todd Phillips. You're done. You're done, kid. What A Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein

and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.