Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: If there is OKF I AM six forty live everywhere
Speaker 2: on the iHeart Radio app, It's the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2: Wayne Resnik in for Bill. Some of the stories we're
Speaker 2: following for you here at KFI. La County health officials
Speaker 2: say they have identified the first human case of bird
Speaker 2: flu in La County. The person who has it has
Speaker 2: mild symptoms. They are recovering at home. They're giving them
Speaker 2: some anti virals, so it's not it's not a super
Speaker 2: emergency situation for that person, thank goodness.
Speaker 1: They also say this.
Speaker 2: Person got the bird flu from livestock at his work
Speaker 2: site that had the bird flu. It is jumping from
Speaker 2: animals to people, folks. I don't know if it's panic
Speaker 2: time yet.
Speaker 1: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not panic time yet. Also, high surf also not
Speaker 2: panic time. High surf warnings hiatt surf advisories in effect
Speaker 2: all along the coast Ventura down through Orange County. The
Speaker 2: National Weather Service says you're gonna see waves as high
Speaker 2: as twelve feet at the beaches in La and OC
Speaker 2: and up in Ventura. Oh boy, eighteen feet. Some waves
Speaker 2: may hit that height that is too high to be
Speaker 2: around in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But no need to panic.
Speaker 2: Just don't go to the beach or even just stay
Speaker 2: you know, stay away from where.
Speaker 1: The water's crashing on the shore. That's all.
Speaker 2: Now, everybody loves money, and when a business sees an
Speaker 2: opportunity to make a lot of money, they get very
Speaker 2: excited and they start making plans to make all of
Speaker 2: that wonderful money. And in this case, the business is
Speaker 2: the private prison industry. And the reason that they believe
Speaker 2: that they're going to start to make a lot of
Speaker 2: money is because we have a new administration coming in
Speaker 2: in January and the President elect, Donald Trump has said
Speaker 2: he is going to undertake mass deportations, and mass deportations
Speaker 2: means big money for private prisons because the Feds have
Speaker 2: to put him somewhere until they deport them. Now, it
Speaker 2: is true that this is something Donald Trump said before
Speaker 2: his first term that he was going to deport tons
Speaker 2: of people, and he did deport I mean, he didn't
Speaker 2: do it, but you know what I'm saying. Under his administration,
Speaker 2: they deported about nine hundred and thirty nine hundred and
Speaker 2: forty thousand people less than under the Obama administration, Although,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to lie to you, I can't
Speaker 2: figure out if these numbers reflect a four year term
Speaker 2: for Obama or all eight years, because it would not
Speaker 2: be fair to take eight years of one president and
Speaker 2: compare it to four years of another president. But in
Speaker 2: any event, it is it is low more than the
Speaker 2: net number of Obama deportations, but way more than the
Speaker 2: current president.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: Even if it doesn't reach the numbers that President elect
Speaker 2: Trump is thinking about right now, it will likely be
Speaker 2: an increase over what we've been seeing, and that means
Speaker 2: more business for the big private prison companies like Geo Group,
Speaker 2: which runs a bunch of private detention facilities all over
Speaker 2: the place, and they had an earnings call recently where
Speaker 2: the executive chairman of the Geo Group said that this
Speaker 2: was an unprecedented opportunity.
Speaker 1: And that they are gearing up.
Speaker 2: They are bringing beds online that currently are not, they
Speaker 2: are looking at hiring a lot more staff. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be surprised if for the next couple three years, private
Speaker 2: prison work becomes an employment growth industry. And they're not
Speaker 2: the only one. There are other companies that do this.
Speaker 2: I think Geo is probably the big daddy. I mean
Speaker 2: they currently right now they're holding forty percent of all
Speaker 2: ICE detainees, so they don't have a majority market share,
Speaker 2: but they may have a plurality market share. They say
Speaker 2: they already have enough empty beds that they could spin
Speaker 2: up services there and bump up the number of people
Speaker 2: that they hold in custody, and that this could lead
Speaker 2: to over four hundred million dollars in additional annual revenues. Also,
Speaker 2: GEO owns a company called BI Incorporated.
Speaker 1: I worked with not four. I worked with BI.
Speaker 2: Briefly for a time a long time ago when they
Speaker 2: were starting the first electronic monitoring unit here in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles under the federal courts, and I worked on that unit,
Speaker 2: and we contracted with BI for services. They they hold
Speaker 2: a contract for the electronic monitoring of people awaiting court dates.
Speaker 2: So GEO has their hands in keeping people in prisoned
Speaker 2: pending deportation. They also have their hand in monitoring people
Speaker 2: who are waiting for court dates to find out if
Speaker 2: they're going to be deported or they're going to get
Speaker 2: to stay, or if they're going to get a green
Speaker 2: card or whatever's going to happen. So they really there's
Speaker 2: a lot of money for them to make. There's some
Speaker 2: other companies that are very excited, like core Civic is
Speaker 2: the other It's like Coke and Pepsi. I think Geo
Speaker 2: is Coke, core Civic is Pepsi. In the world of
Speaker 2: private prisons, they're saying essentially the same thing. We have
Speaker 2: unused beds that we can bring online very quickly. We
Speaker 2: can hire more people pretty quickly. And I guess to
Speaker 2: show that he is serious about doing this, President elect
Speaker 2: Trump has said he will issue emergency orders that will
Speaker 2: allow these private prison operators to hire people more quickly,
Speaker 2: speed up the background check process because right now it
Speaker 2: can take up to six months, and also to streamline
Speaker 2: the normal competitive bidding process for these contracts. So they're
Speaker 2: gonna do it, They're gonna do it quickly, and those
Speaker 2: people are gonna get rich, no doubt.
Speaker 1: All Right, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: We've been living with the twenty dollars an hour fast
Speaker 2: food worker minimum wage in California. So let's see how
Speaker 2: many jobs were killed and lost since that went into effect.
Speaker 1: Hi, will can you hear me typing? Actually there are.
Speaker 2: There are more jobs in the fast food industry in
Speaker 2: California since the twenty dollars an hour minimum wage passed.
Speaker 2: I remember, and you probably remember, and if you were
Speaker 2: listening to KFI, it was talked about a lot. When
Speaker 2: that law was signed Abe twelve twenty eight. There were
Speaker 2: stories of gloom and doom for the industry. For example,
Speaker 2: you may remember a franchisee of Pizza Hut, a group
Speaker 2: that owned one hundred They still do own hundreds of
Speaker 2: Pizza Hut locations. They said, we will lay off every
Speaker 2: single one of our in house delivery drivers because of this.
Speaker 2: There was a guy who owned like one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty or something Burger Kings. He said, I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to cut everybody's hours and I'm gonna have to start
Speaker 2: putting in more of those self service kiosks because of this.
Speaker 2: Rubios they said, we're gonna have to close like fifty
Speaker 2: stores because of the rising cost of doing business in California.
Speaker 1: Now in Rubio's is an.
Speaker 2: Interesting case because at the time that they said that
Speaker 2: that we're gonna have to close forty five fifty stores
Speaker 2: because of the rising cost of doing business in California,
Speaker 2: their biggest expense was their debt payments. Because they were
Speaker 2: acquired by private equity firm. Private equity is almost always evil,
Speaker 2: so that's a little disingenuous, but nonetheless that was the
Speaker 2: tone of the news coverage in the wake of the
Speaker 2: passage of the twenty dollars an hour fast food minimum wage.
Speaker 2: Then it went into effect and in April, I believe,
Speaker 2: and then after it went into effect, this group called
Speaker 2: the California Business and Industrial Alliance, they took out an
Speaker 2: ad in USA Today Full paid saying we've lost ten
Speaker 2: thousand jobs. Okay, I was actually they actually they put
Speaker 2: out that ad right after the beginning of a normal
Speaker 2: yearly cycle for fast food jobs. The fact of the
Speaker 2: matter is fast food jobs are seasonal, and jobs go
Speaker 2: away starting around June. They go away again right around now,
Speaker 2: and then they come back and that has happened.
Speaker 1: That happens over and over. It's a cycle.
Speaker 2: So if you use raw numbers you can get a
Speaker 2: misleading result. If you use seasonally adjusted numbers. During this period,
Speaker 2: actually five thousand jobs were gained. Now, the Hoover Institution,
Speaker 2: which is a think tank, they're very free market, so.
Speaker 1: They don't like minimum wages.
Speaker 2: They say they looked at unemployment data starting from when
Speaker 2: the law was signed through the end of the year
Speaker 2: and that a bunch of jobs went away. But then
Speaker 2: it was pointed out that they were not using seasonally
Speaker 2: adjusted numbers, and they and this is why I bring
Speaker 2: this up, because it's one thing for me to say
Speaker 2: they said ten thousand jobs went away, but that wasn't true.
Speaker 2: But it's another thing when they retracted their post and
Speaker 2: admitted that they blew it. So even they ended up saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we didn't do it the right way, the fair way.
Speaker 2: Then came another group called the Employment Policies Institute, which
Speaker 2: happens to be run by a guy who's a big
Speaker 2: lobbyist for the restaurant industry, who said, hey, let's look
Speaker 2: at January twenty twenty four and see what happens with
Speaker 2: employment because of this law. And oh, jobs went down.
Speaker 2: But remember I just told you there's a seasonal cycle
Speaker 2: in place. If that person had picked September of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, when the law was signed, for example, to
Speaker 2: then look, or if they had picked April of this
Speaker 2: year when it took effect, guess what, then it would
Speaker 2: have shown that jobs had gone up. So you can
Speaker 2: pick and choose obviously, how to put out information to
Speaker 2: have it to have it put forth the conclusion that
Speaker 2: you want, but that doesn't mean that your conclusion is
Speaker 2: really the fair or accurate one. So is there some
Speaker 2: way to know for sure what raising the minimum wage
Speaker 2: does to jobs? Not really, because it's actually very complicated.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of economists go.
Speaker 2: Who's just beth. If you raise the wage, you gotta
Speaker 2: pay people. You can't afford to have as many people
Speaker 2: who are But here's the thing. If you look at
Speaker 2: all of the studies that have been done in the aggregate,
Speaker 2: what you find is an increase in the minimum wage
Speaker 2: doesn't really have much of an effect. In some cases
Speaker 2: there is some job loss, but it's not catastrophic. In
Speaker 2: other cases, jobs go up. How can this even be
Speaker 2: if it's such simple math. Well, because there's a flip
Speaker 2: side to paying people more. When you pay people more,
Speaker 2: those if we call them, lower level jobs, become more
Speaker 2: attractive to workers. They stay longer, which means although they're
Speaker 2: paying the workers more, they are spending less money on
Speaker 2: recruitment and training and turnover and so in fact, in
Speaker 2: many cases, a raise in the minimum wage pays for itself.
Speaker 2: So that's the situation anyway, with the twenty dollars an
Speaker 2: hour fast food. It did not lead to a job ageddin.
Speaker 1: Okay, China. That's it. Let's get some news from Michael Monks. No.
Speaker 2: For a long time, the FBI has been warning about
Speaker 2: Chinese infiltration in the United States.
Speaker 1: Now we all know, everybody knows.
Speaker 2: There's some level of Chinese spying, and we think about
Speaker 2: it a lot in terms of there is steal our
Speaker 2: military secrets or hack into our high level computer networks.
Speaker 2: But also and the specific thing the FBI has been
Speaker 2: warning about four years is infiltration of by people working
Speaker 2: on behalf of China into local politics cities and counties
Speaker 2: which we normally don't.
Speaker 1: Think of China.
Speaker 2: Why would China want to bother with, for example, the
Speaker 2: Arcadia City Council. Well, let's find out, because the endoment
Speaker 2: has delivered by prosecutors, and this indictment says that a
Speaker 2: guy was trying to work on behalf of electing a
Speaker 2: particular person to the Arcadia City Council and the crime
Speaker 2: would be, you know, being an illegal agent of a
Speaker 2: foreign power. You can't do that. Now I'm torn about
Speaker 2: saying who they think the council person is, but it
Speaker 2: has been published in the La Times. So I guess
Speaker 2: I'm just telling you that the La Times is saying
Speaker 2: that the person who was being helped is Arcadia City
Speaker 2: council person Eileen Wang. I also want to make very
Speaker 2: very clear she's not been charged with any crime, and
Speaker 2: it's not even clear if she knew of this guy's
Speaker 2: ties to China. So it is entirely possible that Eileen
Speaker 2: Wang is a completely innocent person.
Speaker 1: Targeted though because of.
Speaker 2: Perhaps some connections to people who are supportive of China,
Speaker 2: or possibly some sincerely held beliefs that are pro China,
Speaker 2: but did not know that someone acting as a foreign
Speaker 2: agent of China was helping her get elected. So that
Speaker 2: that having been said, which I don't say is just
Speaker 2: a throwaway, it's really important that right now she not
Speaker 2: be villainized. However, the idea was that the guy who's
Speaker 2: been indicted, Mike Son, was putting together dossiers of who who.
Speaker 1: Did Eileen Wang know?
Speaker 2: What connections did she have that might be useful. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's not Eileen Wang that's useful to China at all,
Speaker 2: but maybe it's somebody that she knows and that would
Speaker 2: make her a valuable person to get into a position
Speaker 2: of power, because she simply knows people who would be
Speaker 2: of assistance to China. Because that's the strategy here, get
Speaker 2: in at the grassroots. We can all, we can all
Speaker 2: understand going after a senate, going after a high placed
Speaker 2: FBI agent, going after a huge, huge businessman. But the
Speaker 2: other approach is to go in at the local level,
Speaker 2: people who seemingly couldn't possibly be worth bothering with, except
Speaker 2: number one, they may know people, and number two, they
Speaker 2: may go on to be a big fish someday. Maybe
Speaker 2: you're a city council person today, but then maybe you're
Speaker 2: a state senator, and then maybe you're a governor, and
Speaker 2: then maybe you're in the United States Senate. And what
Speaker 2: it shows is the long, the long con the long
Speaker 2: strategy of the Chinese government to infiltrate here in order
Speaker 2: to get influence in place for their purposes. They're thinking,
Speaker 2: they're not only trying now for now, they're trying now.
Speaker 1: For much much later.
Speaker 2: And the FBI knows it, and they they've been warning everybody,
Speaker 2: and it seems like we're playing catch up. All right,
Speaker 2: ladies and gentlemen, you are allowed to have a digital
Speaker 2: license plate in California, and a couple of other states,
Speaker 2: and you can display fun little messages around the edge
Speaker 2: of it. And somebody's already hacked it in a heinous way.
Speaker 2: Let's find out what he did in a segment we're
Speaker 2: calling hacked.
Speaker 1: Every name, every sett all right. Joseph Rodriguez is his name.
Speaker 2: He's a researcher with IOActive, which is a security firm.
Speaker 1: And here's what he did.
Speaker 2: So these digital license plates are sold by a company
Speaker 2: called Reviver. You put them on your car, and as
Speaker 2: I said, you know how you can put a frame
Speaker 2: around your license plate from your car dealership or something
Speaker 2: that says, you know, eat, pray, love, or my other
Speaker 2: car is a thing whatever. So with these you can
Speaker 2: do it electronically and change it at will. And that's
Speaker 2: I guess what people like about it, all right. So
Speaker 2: here's what he did. So he got one of these things,
Speaker 2: and there's a sticker on the back of it, and
Speaker 2: you take the sticker off and it reveals some connectors,
Speaker 2: and he put a cable on the connectors and he
Speaker 2: was able to rewrite the firmware of this license plate
Speaker 2: in a few minutes. And now with this new basically
Speaker 2: operating system installed, he can control the license plate from
Speaker 2: an app over bluetooth and change the entire thing to
Speaker 2: show anything he wants. So the idea is, hey, man,
Speaker 2: you want to go one hundred miles an hour through
Speaker 2: a speed trap, Well just change your license plate number
Speaker 2: to something else. And you could change your license plate
Speaker 2: number two. I mean, I guess you could have it
Speaker 2: say like, UH, can't get me. I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: probably too many letters, but you get my point. But
Speaker 2: here's the thing. Here's why you should be concerned about
Speaker 2: this idea of somebody being able to change their digital
Speaker 2: license plate to another license plate number is if they
Speaker 2: change it to yours, guess who gets the tickets for
Speaker 2: blowing through the toll booths. Guess who gets the speeding
Speaker 2: tickets from the speed cameras you get them. Nobody wants
Speaker 2: that this also could be done maliciously on purpose. I
Speaker 2: mean you could, like, somebody could say I'm going to
Speaker 2: change my license plate number so I can speed in
Speaker 2: evague tolls and they happen to pick yours unwittingly. Or
Speaker 2: maybe you got a neighbor who doesn't like you and
Speaker 2: they've got one of them and they're like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm going to change my license plate number that guy's
Speaker 2: license plate and go out and purposefully run through tollbooths
Speaker 2: and speed through cameras. I would not panic about this
Speaker 2: just yet. There are some caveats here. It obviously has
Speaker 2: been done, however, couple of things. First of all, in
Speaker 2: order to get this firmware into this license plate, what
Speaker 2: he had to do is put some wires on a
Speaker 2: chip inside the plate and then monitor the voltage of
Speaker 2: the plate and then purposefully cause a glitch on the
Speaker 2: voltage at an exact moment to turn off the security
Speaker 2: features of the license plate so that he could rewrite
Speaker 2: the firmware. Now, once the firmware's in, then anybody can
Speaker 2: use the app and do it. But the it's you know,
Speaker 2: have you ever I don't know how many of you
Speaker 2: have ever jail broken your iPhone, but it's kind of
Speaker 2: like that, except there's a first step that's even more complicated. Also,
Speaker 2: you have to have physical access to the car and
Speaker 2: the license plate, and you have to take the license
Speaker 2: plate off the car. And these license plates have a
Speaker 2: feature that will alert the owner if they are removed
Speaker 2: from the car, So you also would have to roll
Speaker 2: up on your victim and jam the radio transmissions from
Speaker 2: the license plate in order to do the thing so
Speaker 2: that it doesn't tell the owner.
Speaker 1: That you've taken the license plate off. So in practical.
Speaker 2: In reality, this is unlikely to happen to anybody.
Speaker 1: He did it in a lab where.
Speaker 2: He didn't have to worry about the owner being alerted
Speaker 2: that the license plate was taken off the vehicle, for example.
Speaker 2: But just the fact that somebody thought to do it
Speaker 2: and figured out how to do it means someday it
Speaker 2: may become easier to do it. There. Already was another
Speaker 2: security researcher two years ago who he didn't hack the
Speaker 2: digital license plate, but he hacked the company's website, so
Speaker 2: he was able to make himself an administrator and change
Speaker 2: license plates that way. Now Reviver was able to patch that,
Speaker 2: so nobody's going to be able to do that again.
Speaker 2: But the problem with this new hack is you can't
Speaker 2: fix it remotely or by updating the firmware because the
Speaker 2: vulnerability is in the chip itself. So unless you get
Speaker 2: an unless they patch the chip and then give everybody
Speaker 2: new license plates, theoretically the license plate is vulnerable, but
Speaker 2: it's not that vulnerable because look at all the rigamarole.
Speaker 1: You got to go through to hack.
Speaker 2: It KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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