Debugger

Jen Jacobsen of the Artist Rights Alliance joins host Bob Sullivan to talk about the decades-long 'battle' between artists and tech firms. Will it come to a head with AI music? Can we build incentives into the system that reward creators? This is part 3 of Debugger's miniseries on the future of music called "Sugar High."

There are a lot of scared composers, songwriters, and performers out there, we learn in part two of our miniseries "Sugar High." Streaming disrupted the music industry, but artificial intelligence could bring even more dramatic change, says Reid Wick, director of advocacy for the organization that gives out the Grammy Awards.

Tech firms like Spotify have already upended the music business, with many artists struggling to adjust. Will AI-generated music mean the end of musicians? In this miniseries, Debugger follows Grammy-nominated folk musician Tift Merritt as she records her first new record in nearly a decade and tries to navigate this perilous time for musicians. In part 1, Merritt tells host Bob Sullivan what it's...

Digital stalking, aided by data brokers, took another deadly turn this month in Minnesota. When alleged political assassin Vance Boelter began his rampage on June 13, he had a list of 45 state politicians in his car. He also had a notebook full of their personal information -- and detailed information on 11 different Internet data brokers. When will Congress and tech giants take this crisis seriou...

Outrage was high after the UnitedHealth hack was revealed, but will that anger turn into action? In this final episode of our 4-part series on the UnitedHealth hack, Duke's Hannah Pechet examines both the legal and the policy fallout from the cyberattack. When ransomware gangs strike again, will corporations, governments, and society be ready?

Ransomware gangs operate in a shadowy digital underworld. Sometimes they play by certain rules, sometimes they don't. In episode 3 of this 4-part series, Duke University's Jacqueline Rodriguez delves into the hacking gangs who hacked UnitedHealth and extorted the firm.

Nearly 200 million Americans' data were exposed by the UnitedHealth hack, and the event crippled some healthcare delivery systems across the country. In episode 2 of the UnitedHealth hack series, Duke's Navina Doss reveals the true depth of the cyberattack.

Imagine showing up at a pharmacy and being told you can't pick up your prescription because of a cyberattack. The UnitedHealthcare hack was much more than a typical smash-and-grab data theft. In the opening episode of Duke University's 4-part series on the UnitedHealth hack, Veronica Roque offers a day-by-day account as the true depth and significance of the cyberattack slowly became appar...

Duke University Professor David Hoffman joins host Bob Sullivan to explain the 4-part series Debugger will soon release covering all aspects of the UnitedHealthcare hack or 2024.

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...

Think about the last time you lost your smartphone … even for a few minutes, or worse, for a whole day. Now, imagine living your whole life this way.  The digital divide, which feels like a tired phrase from the early days of the Internet, is still quite real. Maggie Woods runs North Carolina’s Office of Digital Equity, which is trying to tackle this problem.

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, a nd many, many other books and publications on whistle-blowing. He's also one of the nation...

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 jus...

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 a...

North Carolina recently joined a growing list of states – more than 20 now -- that have banned social media app TikTok from government-issued devices. Here to discuss this with me is Ken Rogerson, professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.

How do developing nations learn to protect their developing Internet capacity? One option: free training from the United States Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI). What is USTTI? Here to explain that is Chairman and CEO Jim O’Connor.

Elon Musk has taken over Twitter and .. well, a lot is going on. One really important development that might be overlooked is Musk's new ... and now delayed ... attempt to change Twitter's Blue Check system. Verification online is a very, very tricky subject. In this episode of Debugger in 10, Robyn Caplan of Duke University offers a bit of a history lesson on Twitter's Blue Checks. It's a good re...

"Do your own research" sounds like a harmless suggestion. It's more complicated than that, says today's guest, UNC professor Francesa Tripodi, author of the new book The Propagandists' Playbook . In this episode of Debugger in 10, Tripodi discusses the IKEA Effect in research, why Googling is more like a scavenger hunt, and how algorithmic polarization means the question you ask leads you to the a...

Should a company executive face criminal charges after a data breach? That's one of the questions opened up by the remarkable trial recently of Joe Sullivan, former head of cyber security at Uber, who was recently convicted of essentially hiding a hack from federal investigators. The case has people in cyber security divided and maybe a little bit scared. In this episode of Debugger in 10, Duke Un...

Research by Duke University shows data brokers have collaborated with scammers  - and they've fine-tuned their algorithms to attack the most vulnerable consumers, such as people facing cognitive issues.  Duke's Alistair Simmons and Justin Sherman discuss their findings on this episode of Debugger in 10.