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Adam Savage Revises Claim of Lawyer-Bullying On RFID Show
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Sep 04, 2008 02:45 PM
from the but-that's-what-they-want-him-to-say dept.
from the but-that's-what-they-want-him-to-say dept.
Nick writes "A few weeks ago a video of a talk given by Adam Savage of the television show MythBusters spread across the internet (including a mention on Slashdot.) On the video, Savage stated that the show was unable to produce an episode about previously known RFID vulnerabilities due to a conference call to Texas Instruments that unexpectedly included several credit card companies' legal counsel. TI (via a spokesperson talking with cnet.com) stated that only one lawyer was on the call and that the majority of the people on the call were product managers from the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) invited by TI to speak. Then Savage (via a Discovery Communications statement) reaffirmed that he was not on the call himself and that the decision was not made by Discovery or their advertising sales department but rather MythBuster's production company, Beyond Productions."
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Hardware: CC Companies Scotch Mythbusters Show On RFID Security 466 comments
mathfeel passes along a video in which Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage recounts how credit card companies lawyered up to make sure the Discovery channel never, ever airs a segment on the flaws in RFID security. "Texas Instruments comes on [a scheduled conference call] along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... They [Mythbusters producers] were way, way outgunned and they [lawyers] absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let us go near it."
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so (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so they told him to revise his story to make them seem nicer or get the boot?
Methinks this is likely.
Re:so (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Boot him where? Without Adam Savage "Mythbusters" loses quite a bit of its' luster. I would be willing to bet "Mythbusters" is one of Discovery Channel's more popular shows.
True, but not so popular that they wouldn't just kill it and run re-runs while they scrambled for a replacement.
When the entire network is at stake, NO ONE is THAT irreplaceable.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When the entire network is at stake, NO ONE is THAT irreplaceable.
Good point. Can you imagine what the Discovery suits did when AmEx, Visa, Discover, etc said to them "Well if you think our cards are so insecure, perhaps we should just pull our credit card processing from your web and retail stores". Probably it never came to this exactly but I'm sure the message was clear: You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well if you think our cards are so insecure, perhaps we should just pull our credit card processing from your web and retail stores".
Wouldn't Discovery have an excellent basis for a lawsuit here? I imagine that pulling someone's merchant account just because you don't like what they said wouldn't be allowed, but then again, IANAL.
Re:so (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, I'd say those merchant accounts improve the standing of the CC companies.
"The ToS you signed clearly says you won't try to circumvent the security features on the Credit Card systems we let you use, and you're making a FREAKING TELEVISION SHOW about it?"
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RFID credit cards (Score:4, Informative)
Really? You've never seen a MasterCard with PayPass [wikipedia.org]? My bank replaced my old debit card with one over two years ago.
Granted, the only place I've seen that accepted PayPass was at a Sheetz, and it didn't seem to work. But they're definitely out there.
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Re:so (Score:4, Funny)
I have 2 in my wallet right now
American Express Clear and Chase Freedom
Nice at McDonalds, 7/11 and CVS when I want to confuse the hell out of the cashier.
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Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
For the record, I do work for a merchant service provider (aka - a credit card processor). In the many years I have been here, we have never offered a point-of-sale system that supports contactless payment (RFID), and I have never seen a credit card that had an RFID (other than in commercials).
My bank tried to get me to use one some time ago. They claimed it was "more secure" but they also tried to charge me an extra $50/year for the privilege of having it, and I couldn't see any change to the laws that made them responsible for money mysteriously disappearing from my account. As far as I was concerned, if they wanted to run a "more secure" system (without commenting about whether it was actually more secure), they shouldn't have been offering it to consumers as an optional extra.
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Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean "made them less responsible." I thought consumers are protected from all charges beyond the first $50 in the case of fraud. [ftc.gov] (Scroll to bottom.)
So, $50/year is a total ripoff unless you get defrauded more than once a year. It's basically guaranteeing you lose that $50 bucks annually, even if you never experience any fraud. Nice.
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Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like they would say:
"Oh, wel pulled your merchant account because we didn't like what you said."
No, that isn't how it works. Standard practice is to pick some other reason or infraction (of which there will be many, which 99% of the time would be overlooked or not mentioned).
Believe me, they have more than one way of dropping somebody for a reason which will provide no recourse.
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Re:so (Score:5, Interesting)
There is this thing called a "printing press" and it was invented in 1439, and has been commonly used to print news and other sorts of pamplets.
The first newspaper in this country was started in 1704. The one I work for isn't quite 200, but I assure you, it's been dealing with irate advertisers for all 180 years of its existence. When the first medical research came out that corsets caused health problems, you bet your ass the corset makers screamed bloody murder when the news made it into the papers.
If someone gives you money, they think they have a right to tell you what to print. This is not the case in the better publications.
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Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably it never came to this exactly but I'm sure the message was clear: You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Nope. You bite the OTHER hand.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, I hope that would be their next episode (or possibly already is, since I'm only halfway through season 2)
Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Any replacement just wouldn't work well. There is a particular chemistry between Adam and Jamie (in a non gay way) that makes the show interesting. Jamie alone would just be to intimating of a character, too overbearing. Just as Adam alone the show would be to chaotic and wild. Both together really help moderate both. Taking Jamie's edge off, and actually making Adam seem like he knows what he is doing.
While the 3 stooges Karie, Grant and Tory, can probably pull it off but they are not really known for the big builds.
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Re:so (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be in my bunk if anyone needs me.
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Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
They won't can Adam. Where would they find someone who's simultaneously so devious and so ignorant of scientific fact?
They tried to un-stupid the show a little when they brought in Grant, who actually seems to have passed a science class at some time in his past, but even he seems to have lost the ability to keep them from walking straight into unphysical presumptions.
All that production budget and they can't spend a few minutes a week phoning a real scientist to ask if their ideas to prove/disprove the myths aren't just more myths? They only seem to spend on "explosives experts", but that's their insurance company talking. I guess the insurance company cares if someone gets blown up, but not if someone gets stupider thinking it's being made smarter.
Still. The show is too much fun to stop watching.
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch the first couple seasons. They do call people and have people do research (and often times do a lot of math on their own beforehand). The problem is that A) doing match and research is boring for television and B) it pretty much gives away the ending before they've even built anything.
A lot of times they already know for an absolute fact what is going to happen, either because it's blatantly obvious to anyone with a minimal physics background (i.e. they paid attention in high school) or because it actually did happen to a real person with witnesses. But the fun part of the show is them building shit and blowing shit up, and the "reveal" of the result near the end of the segment.
The show is cut the way it is because if it weren't it wouldn't be nearly as interesting or fun. I honestly believe the show would not have been nearly as successful if it was just them doing research and math and the audience knowing the result way ahead of time before they even built anything.
A successful show that gets people INTERESTED in science or at least questioning the world around them is better than a show that has real "hard" science/research/math and gets canceled in one season.
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. And no network would dare cancel a show that people around here like. That's why shows like Firefly, Emeril Live and Stargate SG-1, to say nothing of Jericho, Babylon 5, Futurama, Family Guy, and The Office, have been airing non-stop on their original networks for years.
And let's not even mention how Star Trek is still on the air fourty years later.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
compared to dirty jobs, tougher in Alaska, ice road truckers, ax men, and deadliest catch, Mythbusters is a show for the gods.
Compared to being shot or stabbed, a toothache feels great as well.
Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:so (Score:5, Informative)
Only if you don't understand how the quota system works. Once you fill your quota, you can lease quota from less successful fishing boats. That's why they do the crab count. It's not a mad dash like it was in the first season but it's still a race. Once the quotas are leased to another vessel they're theirs to harvest, but it's not as cut and dried as you think. In fact I believe one of the vessels was doing so poorly this year they ended up leasing their quota out and cutting their season short this last season.
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Very possible that it got enough public traction and that's exactly what happened. Now they're hoping it'll quietly slip under the radar, which it'll probably do.
I distrust lawyers, and I don't trust TV shows or their hosts. So is it fair to be at odds with the entire thing still? Yep. Is it more fair to believe that security through obscurity is fair? Probably.
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it more fair to believe that security through obscurity is fair?
Security through obscurity is nothing new to Mythbusters. How many times have we seen them censor themselves when talking about explosives or chemicals when you can easily obtain the censored information in all of 30 seconds with a Google search?
My guess is that it's something the lawyers make them do.
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
One episode in particular was where they were not allowed to say 'sperm'. They had to replace a prefectly fine medical term with 'genetic material'.
It is a science show for pete's sake!
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Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
That was the ep where they tested boxers Vs briefs if I remember right.
Actually it was cooler than that. They were testing a myth about a woman in the Civil War that supposedly got impregnated by a bullet that hit her and which had previously hit the family jewels of some poor bastard.
They actually set up this rig downrange with (you guessed it) ballistics gel. Halfway downrange they had a bag of "genetic material" (semen) in the line of fire. They had a marksman fire through the bag and into the ballistics gel. Then they tried to find "genetic material" with a microscope.
They busted the myth as I recall.
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Re:so (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
As a programmer, I've been on calls that were supposed to be technical, but due to miscommunications or management concerns managers and even the CEO was on the call. Having legal council there to hear the proposal from the Discovery team seems possible to me.
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Re:so (Score:5, Funny)
In this context, you'd need to use the word 'plausible.'
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legal counsel = cancer - they show up everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:legal counsel = cancer - they show up everywher (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:legal counsel = cancer - they show up everywher (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see it happening if the Companies in question wanted underline how serious the issue is. Nothing says "we're gonna stomp you" better than saying "This is George, he's chief legal counsel for my Company. Now what were you saying?"
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Re:so (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of who was in on the meeting and how it happened - it was political, not scientific. This leaves standing the elephant in the room: RFID is simplistic to mimic.
If one understands the radio wave effects (backscatter or modulation), one could use a scanner to capture all the RFID's within a zone.
Then, essentially building a device tuned to emit an identical signal (for passive, this is secretive but not impossible as Adam alludes to), (for active, I'm unsure how difficult this is) and then this clone can be used in lieu of the original tag.
This means for RFID-cards using passive technology, cloning them is allegedly a education measure, not a true security measure. Like unlocking cell phones and other corner-store concepts, one could imagine RFID signatures built-to-order based on scanner values (one need not have the original RFID, just a response from it).
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Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
You are incorrect, but probably not in the way you imagined: the passports do use RFID, but not to confer advantages to the owner. If that were the case, then they'd make it optional and charge extra for it! Instead, RFID in passports confers liabilities to the owner and advantages to the government: it allows the government to surreptitiously track the owner more easily.
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Re: (Score:3)
The entire telling was hyperbole, and his tone of voice labeled it as such. The details weren't meant to be a factual recap. When he talks about how white the staffer gets retelling the story, that's a big clue.
I reject your reality and substitute my own! (Score:5, Funny)
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"I really, really like my job."
Everyone say it together, now... (Score:5, Interesting)
SmartCard Bullying myth...
BUSTED!
That said, I'm amused that all it took was one lawyer and a bunch of product managers (no bias here, right?) to cow a production company into submission.
So what has changed is... nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like the blame has shifted, but the point is still the same: they would like to do a show on RFID, but they were politically motivated not to.
If Mythbusters wants to continue, they'll have to (Score:3, Funny)
hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's safe to say that if he didn't have an intimidating phone call with a bunch of lawyers before, he HAS now. :)
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
TI is obviously hoping that by quibbling over details, people will manage not to notice that the core of the story hasn't changed.
Other than That (Score:4, Funny)
...the story was accurate.
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Its not the first time... (Score:5, Informative)
Like the time they were testing all the various myths involved in beating alcohol tests (Breathalyzer, etc) and were very careful to word their statements to say that no one method managed to beat all the different tests, and never specifying which methods beat which tests. Or the time they tested the fuel efficiency of drafting behind a big rig truck and spent most of the episode hamming up the potential dangers of tailgating.
To be fair though, in those cases it was more about Safety (translate Liability) as they could heavily damage road safety and Law Enforcement's ability to police it. Its like how in most fiction Ive seen, they always misquote the proportions of charcoal, sulfur, and salt peter that go into gunpowder, so the young and/or stupid won't go out and blow off fingers.
OK, we get it (Score:4, Informative)
The decision was made by the Mythbuster staff in much the same way a man with a gun directed at him volunteers.
Anyone see "Wrong Trousers?" Gromit puts down the bat when feathers points the gun.
(Instant karma for using Wallace & Gromit!)
Re:Retraction? heh (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no, that's probably true! Discovery didn't make the decision, they just presented the choice to the production company to either not produce the show, or take a long walk off a short pier.
Beyond Productions made the decision of which option to take entirely on their own.
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Re:Retraction? heh (Score:4, Informative)
>Discovery didn't make the decision, they just presented the choice to the production company to either not produce the show, or take a long walk off a short pier.
Beyond Productions is an independent Australian company and sells sometimes different versions to the UK and other countries (which also don't have the 'don't try this at home' stuff and where you can say things like 'sperm' on TV), they could very well do it in this case as well.
Different network, same torrent.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:batshit my butt (Score:5, Informative)
Are you saying there were no bodies, or were you saying there were two?
Allyn E. Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers (a company involved in providing emergency engineering and post-collapse assistance) said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts." [popularmechanics.com]
Of course, once you reach the level of batshitness you've achieved, you can simply ignore his testimony by saying "they got to him too!"
And I'm sure you simply don't accept the claim that the remains of 184 people were identified [dcmilitary.com]; surely "they" got to all 102 DNA analysts, sample processors, logistics staff, and administrative personnel at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It's a DOD facility, after all.
Are you saying there was no debris from the plane? That's simply incorrect; hell, you can even see photos of a bunch of it at this batshit conspiracy site [0catch.com]. And photos of the plane debris inside the building (where, in answer to your question about the lawn, most of it ended up, in agreement with conservation of momentum) can be seen at this somewhat less batshit crazy site [rense.com]. And some more photos here [abovetopsecret.com]. And more photos, with amazingly detailed analysis, here [aerospaceweb.org]
But I'm sure "they" got to the owners of all of those sites.
757. If you can't get that much right after being corrected, I don't see any point in talking to you further.
Like most of the plane, the tail and wings got shredded, and ended up inside the building. As Mete Sozen, a structural engineer who studied the impact in computer simulation, put it, "At that speed, the plane itself is like a sausage skin. It doesn't have much strength and virtually crumbles on impact." [bbc.co.uk]
It's like shooting an aluminum foil origami crane out of an air cannon at high speed, through a stack of steel cheese graters, and then demanding "where's the crane's tail? There must be a trick!"
Into a building? One as hardened as the part of the Pentagon that was hit? Please, name me one similar crash.
Oh, and by the way, regarding your original question about simulating the piloting of the crash, see this [aerospaceweb.org]:
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