Debugger

The Latin American tech industry is growing….fast…and so is the region’s cybersecurity needs. There’s an ambitious plan to bring together all the various interested parties for discussion at an organization called the Center for Latin American Convergence – also known as CCLATAM. Today’s guest is Piero Bonadeo, president and co-founder of the Miami-based organization.

There's a shortage of cybersecurity professionals all around to world -- and that includes Costa Rica, home of today's guest, Carolina Taborda. She heads a new project there called the CyberSec Cluster which aims to deal with this issue, among others. Taborda joins us just a few days before a Cybersecurity Leadership Program in Costa Rica that will be co-hosted by Duke University.

The White House issued an executive order recently that takes on data brokers who might try to sell sensitive personal information on Americans to foreign adversaries like China and Russia. A recent study by Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy demonstrated how intelligence agencies might buy personal information on American soldiers, or diplomats, or politicians, and perhaps use it for blackmail or strategic advantage. Justin Sherman, an adjunct professor at Duke, led the study, and he is today's guest.

Facial recognition is one of the most controversial frontiers of the tech world, and if you've read any story about facial recognition in the past decade or so, it's probably been written by this episode's guest, Kashmir Hill, a New York Times reporter who has a new book out called Your Face Belongs to Us.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen joins host Bob Sullivan to talk about life after taking on Facebook: the slow pace of change, the research she is conducting (some with Duke students) and why she's become interested in Ralph Nader's battle for automobile safety.

When Whistleblower Francis Haugen came forward and testified before Congress about what she thought was going wrong inside Facebook, she changed big tech forever. But how? Here to discuss that with me is Stephen Cohen, author of the book, Rules for Whistleblowers, A Handbook for Doing What's Right, and many, many other books and publications on whistle-blowing. He's also one of the nation's leading whistleblower attorneys.

Eva Galperin is director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and one of the leading voices against stalkerware and other technology used for non-consensual tracking of victims. She joins Debugger to discuss research she is conducting with Duke University on tracker gadgets, like AirTag or Tile devices, and how well software warns potential victims they're being watched.

If you feel a little creeped out by the idea of wearing gadgets that send your pulse rate or oxygen levels or sleep patterns to a big tech company …wait until you hear what Duke University professor Nita Farahany is warning people about in her brand new book, The Battle for Your Brain. Earbuds might be able to spy on your thoughts. And like it or not, you might have to let tech into your brain just so you can compete with artificial intelligence.

Your home is getting "smarter" all the time...full of smart gadgets, anyway. But most people know precious little about what these Smart TVs -- what ALL these smart gadgets -- are learning about us, and what happens to that data? Duke University professor Pardis Emami-Naemi is hoping to change that. She's working on a proposal to add nutrition-like labels to gadgets, so the privacy trade-offs we are all making all the time make are easier to understand