Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: But right now, and every Friday morning at this time, it is time for another edition of Liedtke’s Got a Take. Good morning, Jon Liedtke.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene Valaitis.
Gene Valaitis: Now, I’m one of these guys, I’ve got different apps on my phone for getting, you know, a discount at a coffee place or burger or something like that. But holy cow, Liedtke! I just saw this wild story about a reporter who requested his McDonald’s data and got back a dossier that’s 515 pages long. Now, what on earth is McDonald’s doing with a file that thick on one guy who may occasionally buy a Big Mac? Like, this shocked me.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I mean listen, if CSIS builds a 500-page file on you, I hope you’re trafficking in weapons-grade plutonium, quite frankly, because this is wild! When McDonald’s does it, it’s because you ordered a McFlurry at 2:14 in the morning because you’ve lost control of your life and you’re spiraling out of control. I mean, they logged his GPS, the timestamps, every single code that he ever entered. They’ve got a more granular understanding of this man’s circadian rhythm than his therapist. They know when he’s happy, they know when he’s sad, they know when he’s driving, they know when he’s doing good, they know when he’s doing bad. They’re worse than Santa Claus here. And it’s all to risk it for a… what, snack wrap? This is wild.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Now, is this just a… shall we call it a glorified digital receipt? Or are these apps actually using artificial intelligence to predict not what you’ve done, but what you’re going to do next?
Jon Liedtke: No, this is far more than a receipt. This algorithm… this receipt that has come out, if you will, this dossier… it gave the reporter a customer attrition likelihood score of zero. Zero! That means they’re never going to leave! That’s not a customer profile, that’s a hostage message! The app predicted that he would spend exactly $29.15 over the next six weeks, tagged his lifestyle as ‘on the go, lunch in a rush’, which is corporate code for, I guess, eating sadness in a parked sedan in a parking lot. But they’re not logging what you bought yesterday, they’re mathematically modeling what your next emotional breakdown’s going to be and scheduling it at the drive-thru.
Gene Valaitis: Now this sounds like a tech story out of Silicon Valley, but I remember we’ve seen this happen right here in Canada with Tim Hortons. Remember that? Remind everybody what happened.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, we are not immune here. We shouldn’t be looking all smug in our Canadian tuxedos, quite frankly. In 2020, Canadian reporter… then-Canadian reporter James McLeod—he’s left the industry, I interviewed him about this down here in Windsor on our local radio station—he filed a privacy request through Tim Hortons, and it turns out that the app at that time was pinging his GPS every few minutes of every day for like, I think over a year, even when the app was completely turned off and closed. It logged when he slept, where he worked, where he slept, where he vacationed… and my personal favorite, every single time he visited a competitor coffee shop! I mean, Tim Hortons had the obsessive, jealous energy of an ex-girlfriend standing in the bushes outside your window screaming, ‘I saw you with Macchiato, James! Was the Double Double not good enough for you?!’
Gene Valaitis: Okay, so when Tim Hortons got caught red-handed tracking people 24/7, even with the app closed, I forget: what was the fallout?
Jon Liedtke: Oh, it was great! Everybody got thousands of dollars and there was no issue… no, I’m kidding, I’m joking with you, of course not. Did our laws bite back? No! We don’t have privacy laws with teeth; we have privacy laws that are like a jelly-filled doughnut. Four privacy commissioners from different provinces investigated and proved that Tim Hortons did break federal law, and the grand legal penalty under that was a class-action settlement where Tim Hortons offered affected Canadians a free hot drink and a baked good. Canadians surrendered their fundamental human right to location privacy, and the Canadian justice system valued that dignity at a $1.80 sour glazed doughnut.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, so if I get rid of the apps on my phone, I should… I should be okay. But… but you’re saying now what happens is something called Flock Safety cameras? What… what’s that? How do they work?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, so this is the genius of the dystopian upgrade. I mean, so you think that you can delete the app—checkmate corporate overlords!—but if you’ve been watching US media primarily (right now this is coming out from there, but having said that, we have seen a couple municipalities and private organizations in Canada looking to implement this)… these are cameras that are all on a grid. So private companies across North America can sign up, law enforcement can sign up, public organizations can sign up, and all of the cameras are fed into one AI model, and they use it to… what they advertise, for example: if a car gets jacked and there’s a child in the back seat, they’re able to find that car on the streets within minutes to an hour. And the thing is, is they’re not just reading license plates; they’re recording the car’s make, model, color, the dent in the bumper from when you backed into that, you know, traffic light or the mailbox. So while you can opt out of these apps, you can’t opt out of existing on asphalt to go buy paper towels. And the problem is, is that we have seen in the US there are some police officers who are using this type of AI camera tracking of individuals and vehicles to, you know, spy on their ex-girlfriends or their spouses. And so there’s privacy concerns there.
Gene Valaitis: Concerns! Putting it mildly! Hey listen, you also told me that private shopping centers and mall owners are buying these AI license plate readers, and is this accurate: they’re feeding the data straight to police? I mean, doesn’t that completely bypass normal warrant requirements? I mean, I didn’t even know this was happening!
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I mean we’ve actually got these here in Windsor as well where downtown business owners can sign up for a project that’s called Green Light, which is a camera with a flashing green light, and it records right out front of the business, and it sends the video straight to the police. But yeah, this is the ultimate loophole from the legislation. I mean, if the police want to track a vehicle 24/7, a judge requires a crazy little thing called a warrant based on probable cause. But if private businesses purchase AI surveillance cameras and willingly opt in to provide a live feed of that straight to law enforcement, then the police get a searchable, real-time grid of all movement paid for by the guy who owns the plaza with the Home Depot in it. So it’s a privatized dragnet, and we’re all just unpaid extras driving through a continuous police lineup.
Gene Valaitis: Oh my goodness! Man, you really bring me down here on a Friday morning! Well listen, where do we go from here? What can everyday people actually do, if anything?
Jon Liedtke: Well, there’s a little bit here. Individually, take out your phone right now, go into your settings, look for your location permissions like you’re weeding a garden, and switch it from ‘always allow’ to ‘never’ or ‘only while using the app’. Delete the six apps that you haven’t used since 2023. But systemically, I mean, we’ve got to stop accepting baked goods as legal settlements. We need to force Canadian lawmakers to give privacy regulators real financial teeth—you know, multi-million dollar fines that actually might make a corporate boardroom sweat instead of laughing all the way to the bank, or the bakery, excuse me. And until then, I guess just remember: if a service is giving you a discount or if it’s free, you’re not the customer anymore, you’re on the menu.
Gene Valaitis: I just hope Homer Simpson isn’t listening, because we know he loves doughnuts.
Jon Liedtke: He certainly does.
Gene Valaitis: Another great take. Thank you, my friend.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, we’ll talk to you on Monday. Jon Liedtke. Liedtke’s Got a Take, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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