The CISO Series had me on their podcast again to share some unvarnished thoughts. Hope you enjoy:

A young woman is killing it in her first cybersecurity job out of college. Management is so thrilled with her that they want to give her a promotion. Problem is the promotion reveals a lot of other innerworkings that don’t speak well of the company’s culture. This week’s episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and Mike Johnson.

I am on a new podcast called Technically Divided. Hope you enjoy:

It seems like Artificial Intelligence is all the buzz these days. It’s all around us. Working almost invisibly. From the applications we use for work to the devices we carry with us to how we use social media, AI is working hard to make all of our lives better. Or is it? Join us as we discuss the realities of AI, how it helps, how it hurts, and how it can, in some cases, destroy.

Special Guests:
Davi Ottenheimer
Keiland Cooper

Plaid (technically a word that means blanket to stay warm) used to imply something good, something safe.

Now technology appropriation of the term is allegedly giving the exact opposite meaning instead:

A Settlement has been proposed in class action litigation against Plaid Inc. (“Plaid”). Approximately 5,000 mobile and web-based applications (“apps”) use Plaid to enable users to connect the app to the users’ bank account(s). This class action alleges Plaid took certain improper actions in connection with this process. The allegations include that Plaid: (1) obtained more financial data than was needed by a user’s app, and (2) obtained log-in credentials (username and password) through its user interface, known as “Plaid Link,” which had the look and feel of the user’s own bank account login screen, when users were actually providing their login credentials directly to Plaid. Plaid denies these allegations and any wrongdoing and maintains that it adequately disclosed and maintained transparency about its practices to consumers.

Ouch. Why would product managers have approved “the look and feel of the user’s own bank account login screen, when users were actually providing their login credentials directly to Plaid”?

Deceptive practices being core to this company’s product, in a way that destroys trust in web transactions, beg the question: is this really how financial “innovation” is supposed to happen?

“If Plaid is actually downloading and saving financial data without permission,and in breach of consumers’ rights, then it would need to reengineer the product and go on an apology tour … and regulators may be punitive.”

My guess is there was a serious lack of safety or ethics in the founding Plaid engineering culture, which allowed generations of its developers to release harmful products into society with abandon. In fact, Plaid denying allegations hints at a continuing lack of security ethos even though it’s been acquired by heavyweight Visa.

On a related note, soon after a poorly engineered “Plaid” car was released it burst into flames and almost killed the owner.

Unlike Tesla, which never seems to be held accountable for its serial lying and egregiously false representations, Uber is yet again facing penalties.

The second offense related to estimated taxi fares provided by the app to Sydney customers between June 2018 and August 2020, when the taxi ride option was abandoned.

The algorithm used to calculate the fare ranges inflated the taxi estimates. The actual taxi fare was almost always cheaper than Uber’s lowest estimate. Uber had not ensured the algorithm was accurate, the commission said.

Did not ensure the algorithm was accurate? Tesla’s inaccurate algorithm is killing people. At least Uber just stole some money. The first offense also was Uber lying to its customers.

Again, however, Tesla doesn’t seem to be in any trouble for all its lies that lead directly to deaths so it begs the question why regulators keep going after Uber.

In 2018 both Uber and Tesla had “self-driving” products that killed pedestrians. Guess which company shut down their program and faced extensive public and regulatory outrage, versus the other company that simply charged customers more for even less?

Regulating industry-laggard engineering practices of Tesla (documented as worse than even 1990s KIA in quality failures), let alone their inaccurate algorithms and deceptive business practices is an obvious requirement for market safety. That is probably why O’Dowd has started a campaign to do exactly that.

Putnam’s first ad for O’Dowd is dubbed “Unsafe at Any Speed,” an homage to the 1965 best-selling book by longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. It opens with a brief disclaimer and an image of O’Dowd, who is identified by his company title. The ad then shifts to a nearly minutelong compilation of Tesla cars crashing and nearly veering into things, and includes audio of passengers and drivers dismayed by the seeming malfunctions.

O’Dowd is being reported as an outsider to politics, when he seems to be the only one running with the inside view of actual engineering and market safety. This would be like calling a doctor an outsider to politics when running on a healthcare reform ticket.