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The Current Transcript for January 31, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Please sit down, resume your seats, put your flags away. You're leaving. And take them with you. If you are leaving now.

[Cheers and applause]

MATT GALLOWAY: Apparently, breaking up is hard to do. Apparently it takes a long time as well. After years of wrangling, Britain is about to leave the European Union. The miniature flags have indeed been packed. The commemorative coins have been stamped. And tonight, Brits will raise a pint in celebration or dismay. In a moment, the view from London. And then:

SOUNDCLIP

There's still a lot of dirt in the back of our minds because we are learning more and more how the process was even more simple than we thought and how do we prevent this from happening again.

MG: The it that she's talking about is a scam that steals your mobile phone number. And with those digits, people can grab everything from your banking information to online shopping apps. The 411 on the port-out scam in 30 minutes. Also on the way, it's Super Bowl Sunday and the last time the San Francisco 49ers were there, they were led by Colin Kaepernick. With the controversial quarterback still in exile, a look this morning at the high cost of speaking out in sport for black athletes. We begin, though, with Brexit. Finally. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Brexit day

Guests: Margaret Evans, Alexandra Phillips, Alexandra Bulat

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We will always love you and we will never be far. Long live Europe.

VOICE 2: I know you're going to miss us. I know you want to ban on national flags, but we're going to wave you goodbye.

VOICE 3: With grief and regret. I accept that we will leave the European Union on Friday. Oh. No. Here come the tears.

VOICE 4: Britain will triumph outside of EU. Farewell to the Brexit party. I love you guys.

VOICE 5: And when the moment comes for Scotland to rejoin the EU, I hope this parliament will welcome us. And in the meantime, I hope very much that he will leave a light on for Scotland.

MG: And that's the end of that. The E.U.'s Anthem is Ode to Joy. But there was a range of emotions on display after members of the European Parliament voted to accept Britain's decision to leave the EU. Grief and jubilation, defiance and admiration. Wednesday's vote came after years of heated debate and tense negotiation. And now, at last, the UK stands alone. The CBC's senior European correspondent Margaret Evans is in London. Margaret, good morning.

MARGARET EVANS: Hi, Matt.

MG: London loves a party, sparklers out as the bunting up or people ready to celebrate the exit.

MARGARET EVANS: There are a few. But you know, London is a city that voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union. So there are a lot of long faces around. And in fact, when he was taking the underground to work this morning, you know, there was, even the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, is delivering this message: London is open. And you could see it when it was giving your train time approaching, it said 'London is open today and always'. You know, there are plans for people to drape a flag or a banner from Westminster Bridge saying we're against Brexit and a pro EU kind of flag as well down on the cliffs of Dover. So that kind of stuff is happening. But the people who do want to leave are having a party outside Westminster on Parliament Square. They had wanted Big Ben to bong in Brexit because it's under scaffolding. So they're making do with a clock that's being beamed on to Downing Street. They'll countdown that that final hour of membership in the European Union. It's not a bong, but it's a clock.

MG: This has gone on for a long time. It feels to some people and I guess on either side that it's gone on forever. Are people just relieved that this is finally done?

MARGARET EVANS: There are a lot of people relieved. I mean, there are a lot of people who would like to have stopped the clock and reversed it, too. But, yes, I mean, really even just a few months ago, if you said to people on the street, will Britain leave the European Union or not, they didn't know. And they kept thinking they were leaving. I mean, they've minted these celebratory 'we're leaving the EU' coins. They've they had to melt them down, several months back because they didn't actually leave on time. So, you know, there is that desire for certainty, but especially amongst business people, because they really still don't even know the terms of their future trading relationships or how they'll do business with the European Union, which, of course, is a huge trading partner for the United Kingdom.

MG: What will be different when people wake up tomorrow morning?

MARGARET EVANS: Pretty much nothing. I mean, I shouldn't say pretty much completely nothing. I mean, there is some certainty with this phase that that we're going into, which is called the adjustment period or a transition phase, a withdrawal agreement is in place. So people who've been living in the United Kingdom, European citizens, have a bit more certainty that, you know, they've been living for a certain period of time. They'll be able to stay. So some of that is changing. But really, Britain remains in place in the European Union. They still have to follow EU regulations. They're in the single market, the Customs Union. They have to pay membership fees and they will, but they will have no place at the table, no say in EU decision making. British citizens will be able to still travel freely within the European Union for the next eleven months, but they will not be European Union citizens. And that's because they're going through this transition phase where they're going to have to, battle out what this future relationship is going to be. What is the divorce settlement, as everybody keeps using these marriage analogies and divorce analogies.

MG: And a lot of the commentary seems to be that working at that divorce settlement will be the real hard work. That, sure, you can get to this moment and have the coins ready, the celebratory coins were ready, but it's working out that new deal. That's going to be really difficult. What are the stickiest parts of that new deal?

MARGARET EVANS: Well, I mean, that's right. I mean, they it's a huge task ahead of them. I think what people are focussing on the most is what they call a level playing field. The Europeans are really worried that the British will not kind of adhere to the standards, the same level of environmental and social protections, or competition protections that exist within the European Union will try to undercut it. That's what people tend to be focussing on. And they're also just worried about how little has been done because these past three and a half years have all been about negotiating the terms of this next 11 months. European Union has said it is extremely unlikely that they'll be able to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal by the end of the year. The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, is insisting that he will get it done. That was his campaign slogan. And the Conservative Party here is selling tea towels with his image on them that says 'got Brexit done'. So, you know, people said he couldn't open the withdrawal agreement he did. But why it's a big, ambitious task ahead.

MG: And the clock is ticking, ticking in part because people are trying to find out - we heard at the beginning their concerns around Scotland as well - people are trying to figure out where in the UK they may stand on this. How divided is the United Kingdom on this?

MARGARET EVANS: It is extremely divided. I mean, I can't really overemphasize that emphasize that in a way, because this whole debate the past four years has really challenged people. The people who want to leave, who see the European Union as having encroached on British sovereignty slowly and surely over these years, they're actually feeling stronger about who they are, although they also have worries. I mean, what kind of trading partners are they going to find in the big wide world? That's why you see this focus and emphasis on the United States and relations with Donald Trump. But for the people who once wanted to remain there, they genuinely feel like they've been blindfolded and forced to walk a plank. And they have no idea what their direction is. Their sense of what it meant to be British has changed. And it's changing on both sides. Some are happy about it. Some are not. But it's hard to overstate that. I mean, you know, there are also just internal divisions, as I said, at the beginning of our chat. You know, London is a city that voted overwhelmingly in favour. A lot of the northern areas and less prosperous areas voted to remain. And those aren't necessarily European Union issues. That's a disparity in terms of income. And a lot will depend on whether or not the British prime minister, Boris Johnson fulfils on his pledge to make them feel more of a part of it. If they do well, they feel less threatened by the notion of, you know, a close relationship with the European Union?

MG: Just finally, as Boris Johnson taking on that idea of healing the country, bringing people back together?

MARGARET EVANS: He has said so. He did that when he was elected. He made a point of saying that. But there's a lot of scepticism about it because there has been some triumphalism in a way connected to Britain's leaving. I mean, they've tried to be muted about it, but a lot of the people who supported him are kind of blowing their horns. And there are a lot of injured people in the United Kingdom right now as well, which is really sad.

MG: And that's rubbed some people the wrong way. People say that that's not the British way. You don't honk the horn when you win. You'd be a bit more discreet and gentle about it.

MARGARET EVANS: Yes, it's rubbing salt in the wound. That's for sure.

MG: It'll be an interesting few months, certainly as the clock continues to tick. Margaret, thank you.

MARGARET EVANS: It's been a pleasure.

MG: CBC's Margaret Evans. She is our senior European correspondent and she is in London. Alexandra Phillips has been fighting for this moment. She's former chief of staff to Nigel Farage, was elected last May as a Brexit party member of the European Parliament and has just cleared out her office in Brussels. Alexandra Phillips, good morning to you.

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Good morning.

MG: Were they sad to see you go from the European Parliament, or was it a little bit of don't let the door hit you on the way out?

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Mixed emotions because there are plenty of them. Euro-fanatical in the European Parliament to completely subscribe to this sort of so federalist bureaucratic game of protection, a system. But there are also other Patriots, Democrats in that parliament who are a little bit envious, actually, that we fought and won our freedom and they kind of want to follow us at the door.

MG: You've just taken train back to London. How does it feel to be back on British soil?

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: I just it all just hit me. But we're going to have a big day in Parliament Square tonight. I think when I'm surrounded by my fellow countrymen in support of Brexit, then, I think there'll be a few tears of emotion. I think it's going to be really warm and exciting evening.

MG: There were all sorts of extraordinary promises made about Brexit, talking about regaining sovereignty and taking back your country. What are you hoping for Britain now?

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Well, it's exactly that, actually. If that's exactly what we've done, we have regained sovereignty because what's happened over the past 47 years is membership, is more and more powers have been sent to the EU. Things are determined by an unelected, faceless European Commission, which is at the whim of 30000 corporate lobbyists, work on behalf of big banks and big business. And anybody who thinks that leaving the EU is somehow insular or inward facing, it's got it wrong. This is about 21st century global Britain and actually the possibilities are endless. When you are in complete charge of your own destiny, imagine all the fantastic things we can do with it. And I can't wait for my country to be able to open our arms wide and say, Hey, Canada, we've missed you. Let's do free trade. Because, of course, we can't have a free trade deal with you unless we're an independent nation. And I want us to embrace the Commonwealth. I want us to actually forge incredible connections with the developing world. The EU treats are like neo colonial. I mean, they actually, with their protection systems, prevent free and fair trade with lots of countries around the world. And I think a lot needs to change.

MG: But as part of the European Union, you are part of those discussions and people now are saying the hard work is ahead. You need to figure out trade deals with Europe and the countries that are there. And Angela Merkel has said that those trade deals are going to happen on the EU's terms. Haven't you stepped yourself out of that discussion?

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Okay. So first of all, saying we were part of the discussion is a little bit false, actually, because like I just said, those discussions happen behind closed doors between 30000 lobbyists and unelected commissioners on huge salaries who no one knows and no one can get rid of. And that, to me, is just inconceivable in a 21st century democracy. The citizens of Europe, the small businesses, the every day, men and women, the plumbers, the builders, the doctors, the lawyers who have no say whatsoever on things being decided by Goldman Sachs, by Pfizer, by Unilever. So actually, we haven't been part of discussions. But what we're going to be, you know, standalone [unintelligible] and yes, be part of these discussions. And yes, of course, the EU think they are more sizable. And so therefore, they're going to be able to have the upper hand in negotiations. But we are going to be mostly [unintelligible] and we can actually begin parallel negotiations with countries like America, with Canada. And the U.K. as a largely importing nation could set to foster extremely well from Brexit because we can actually slash tariffs. We can actually say we're open for business internationally. We can actually be a chief competitor to the EU. And this is another thing Angela Merkel said is, okay, so Britain is still our friend and neighbour, but we've got to look at them as competition right now. And I think what's going to happen over the course of the next decade is the UK is thriving due to its independence, is going to expose all that is wrong and outdated, outmoded and unwelcome about the EU model.

MG: There are a lot of people in your country that don't agree with that. And I just wonder how you will go about - now that this is happening, how will you quell the divisions in your country?

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: I think history itself and, you know, as it starts from [unintelligible] will show people that this has been the right decision. I want us to be an international country, not a protectionist, you know, favouring Caucasians from Europe countries. I want Australians, and [unintelligible], Americans and Asians to feel as equally welcome and on a level with our European neighbours, I actually think there's been a whole lot of scaremongering and doom mongering by those who advocate Brexit. And frankly, a lot of those who I'd like to say [unintelligible] with the gold stars say, I feel like I'm a European. I'm a European. I speak fluent French. I live in Belgium. But I don't think they actually understand what it is that they're saying. In this era of identity politics and people are misappropriating the entire argument. And I think if more people actually understood the politics of it, which for decades no the EU has been incredibly good at disguising through subterfuge and propaganda. I think more people go, oh, hang on, actually, Brexit is a fantastic idea. And I would say, when Brexit is a success, if you try and find someone on the streets of London in 20 years time who would admit to voting remain, you'd be very lucky.

MG: What about in a year's time? Do you think that, for example, Scotland will still be part of the UK? Given the divisions the people in that part of the union feel when it comes to what's going on right now?

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Yes, I mean, of course, because frankly, in a year's time, we're only just going to be beginning the process of Brexit because we go through this transition period where actually nothing changes. We still can be playing into the EU, subject all of its rules and regulations until the 31st December, that is if the transition is extended. As for Scotland, they have an independence referendum, not that long ago, about six years ago.

They very well could have another independence referendum.

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Well they could. As a true Democrat. I think if Scotland turns around and there's a big enough push in the people to say we want to do this again, and what I say the people, I mean the people by majority, and not just Nicola Sturgeon and her pet project. And I think if Scottish people say, okay, really, we do want to go our own way, frankly and sincerely have a referendum and they win an outright majority for that. Then of course, that should be respected. I'd be a hypocrite not to say that. But I think that look, in terms of what the SNP is able to [unintelligible] in Scotland, it's more down to their own mismanagement, the economy than it is this this this idea that somehow England is to blame.

MG: Alexandra Phillips, we'll leave it there. Thank you.

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS: Thank you, pleasure.

MG: Object Alexandra Phillips, member of the Brexit Party, former member of the European Parliament back home in London. Alexandra Bulat is a PhD student at University College, London, chair of Young Europeans, part of the EU Citizens Rights Organization. The three million Alexandra Bulat. Good morning to you.

ALEXANDRA BULAT: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: How you're having me. How are you feeling as the clock is ticking down towards Brexit?

ALEXANDRA BULAT: Well, as an EU citizen, I honestly feel quite, you know, quite anxious about this. And actually, I'm spending Brexit Day where I live in Cambridge in the UK, going to scan my documents for my British citizenship application to be able to secure my future in the UK. And, you know, the reporter said that things haven't really changed the reasons they but I think things have changed for EU migrants in the UK and also British people living in other EU member states. Because since a year ago, actually EU citizens in the UK had to apply to stay in their own homes through the EU settlement scheme. So some of our rights have already changed because we have to apply for this.

MG: Tell me more about that. What is your status and what happens to people like yourself now?

ALEXANDRA BULAT: Well, so much as the majority of EU citizens living in the UK have to apply for the EU settlement scheme in order to be able to stay after Brexit. So, for example, I applied, last year I got settled status. And of course you apply for British citizenship as well after. But what is really interesting is even when people, EU citizens in the UK, get settled status, which is basically an indefinite leave to remain or presetlled status, which is more an inferior status limit of leave to remain only allows you to be in the UK for five years. But even when they get the status, a lot of people I speak to and people who were surveyed just last week in a research project, they are saying we still don't feel certain. Even the ones who have the status.

MG: Who does that scheme apply to me? Who has to apply to be able to stay? Is it everybody or is it people who are more recent arrivals?

ALEXANDRA BULAT: Well, technically speaking, if you'r not a British citizen, if you're from the EU or not, they'll have a British passport. There're exemptions for Irish people, Irish people don't have to apply to this scheme because of different agreements. And like pretty much everyone else has to apply. There are very, very few exceptions. So even if, for example, even if you came from, let's say, Germany 20 years ago and you came here under EU right, you still have to apply for the scheme. You don't apply, the important thing is that you have a deadline to apply, which is June 2021 at the moment. If we have this withdrawal agreement in place. But if you don't apply by the deadline, you will be unlawfully resident in the UK. So what we're really concerned about is people who want to be informed on time. And there are many people that I meet on an everyday basis with think they don't have to apply because they've been in the country for many, many years. It has their businesses here, families here and so on. And I'm really worried about people who would be left behind and who will find themselves overnight undocumented. So really the legal status in that to make sure this doesn't happen.

MG: Just before I let you go. Does the UK still feel like your home, having gone through all of this? And with a lot of people and we just heard from Alexander Philip saying that a lot of people want this. They want to take their country back. Does it still feel like your home?

ALEXANDRA BULAT: Well, I mean, in terms of I want to stay in the UK that I took all the steps to secure my status, but to be completely honest, I do feel very disappointed and I feel disappointed, not nothing but people who voted one way or the other. I feel disappointed in the politicians who make a lot of promises to us EU citizens in the UK. And what we've seen in the course of the past three years is that those promises are not respected. Like Boris Johnson, our prime minister, in 2016, he was campaigning for leave and he said, don't worry, everyone was here, like all EU citizens like myself who are already in the country would be automatically granted their right. You don't have to do anything and this hasn't happened to have to apply to stay in our homes. And while many of us still want to consider the UK our home, we feel quite unsettled by this set of status scheme. And we feel, you know, we said that, you know, that we're disappointed in the political system that has left us behind.

MG: We'll let you go and file for your citizenship papers. Alexandra Bulat. It's good to speak with you. Thank you.

ALEXANDRA BULAT: Thank you.

MG: Quite a day for you. Alexander Bulat, PhD student at the University College London and chair of the Young Europeans. It's part of the EU Citizens Rights Organization. The three million and as you heard on this Brexit day, she's off to file for her citizenship papers to stay in Britain. The CBC News is next. And then did you know that scammers can steal your phone number and then use it to drain your bank account? We'll talk about this scam and how to protect yourself. Coming up after the news, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Stick around.

Port-Out Scam Expert, ISIS cover

Guests: Samantha Burnet, Jesse Schooff, Rukmini Callimachi

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, sure, the Super Bowl is an advertising bonanza, but for the rest of the year, advertisers are having to get creative. We'll look at a new, slightly creepy way that advertisers are getting your attention. It's called virtual product placement. We'll tell you all about it, coming up in half an hour. But first, how scammers can hijack your cell phone.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Think of all of the things that you keep on your mobile phone these days, you have your email, you have maybe your Amazon account that you can access. There you have your banking information. What happens if someone steals your mobile phone number? That's what happened to one family in Saskatchewan. Andrew Johnson said the scammers made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

SOUNDCLIP

ANDREW JOHNSON: I understand if a pilot made a mistake. If I had opened a goofy e-mail, you know, if I had replied to something, if I had let him in. But in this case, I believe I am just a complete victim.

MG: What happened to the Johnsons is called port-out fraud. Andrew Johnson learned that his bank will reimburse the money, but the RCMP says it's actively investigating three major cases in Saskatchewan and it's happening to people in other parts of the country as well. People like Samantha Burnet, who's with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning.

SAMANTHA BURNET: Good morning.

MG: You have experienced this kind of port-out fraud yourself. I'd never heard of this before. I started reading about it. What happened?

SAMANTHA BURNET: That's right. Yes. So about two weeks ago, I received a text message out of nowhere about one o'clock on Saturday. It came in from pretty illegitimate looking number an eight digit number four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And it just said that somebody has requested to transfer your phone number over to another provider. If this was not you, please call Rogers urgently at this number. I tried to Google the number, couldn't really find it associated with Rogers, so I kind of brushed it off as that was the text message that was the scam.

MG: As a lot of people would do. Where's this number? I don't understand this. And you just delete or you ignore.

SAMANTHA BURNET: Absolutely.

MG: What happened then?

SAMANTHA BURNET: So about two hours later, I just saw no service on my cell phone and realized that that, in fact, was a legitimate text message that was coming in. So at that point, I immediately called Rogers to tell them what had happened. They looked into it and said that, yes, my account had been cancelled. My cell phone number had been transferred over to another provider. If this wasn't me, obviously, then they could now start initiating the process to reinstate my account and get my number back for me.

MG: What happened then?

SAMANTHA BURNET: So from there they sent me into a Rogers store to get a new SIM card with proof of I.D. to show that it was me try to get my account number back. And within I guess probably two hours I had my service back and I did have my phone number back. But within that short period of time, what they were able to do with just my phone number.

MG: They being the scammers.

SAMANTHA BURNET: Whoever the scammer was worked very quickly and knew exactly what they were doing. They obviously had my email and my phone number linked together. So they were able to get into both my email accounts. I use my cell phone number as my two factor authentication. So if you click, I forgot my password. It will send you a verification code to your phone number that they now had. So they were able to get into both my email accounts, changed the the recovery email. From there they got into my Amazon account using the password reset that they could send to my email.

MG: Because they had access to your eamil.

SAMANTHA BURNET: Yes, by now had access to everything. And in Amazon I have my credit card information stored. So they were able to sign up for prime process and order. 800 dollars worth of PlayStation 4 being delivered to an address that I can see here in the city. And that all happened so quickly.

MG: Within the space of a couple of hours.

SAMANTHA BURNET: Hmm mm.

MG: You go to Rogers, but did you go to the police as well?

SAMANTHA BURNET: Yes, I have tried to go to the police. I called them last week to submit this report, and I have not yet heard back. So I'm still waiting on them to contact me.

MG: What would you want from the police?

SAMANTHA BURNET: I mean, I would like people to take this more seriously. It's a pretty violating experience. Again, I don't think I did anything wrong in this situation either. Somebody was able to so easily put my phone number over without showing any I.D., without proving they actually had that phone number on their phone.

MG: Did you say, though? I mean, when these people ordered that whatever 800 dollars with a PlayStation 4 is that you knew where it was going to be delivered.

SAMANTHA BURNET: I can see the address. Yes.

Presumably police would be interested in something like that.

SAMANTHA BURNET: I thought so. Yes, I thought so.

MG: In the meantime, your phone's working fine. Now the Rogers account is back to normal.

SAMANTHA BURNET: So the phone's working fine. They still are going through the process of trying to get me my phone plan back. It's about a year and half old. So, I'm on a temporary account right now. It seems to be much more complicated to reinstate everything back to normal.

MG: Rogers put out a statement to the media about this and it says, and this is a quotation: "We take protecting our customer's personal information very seriously. And as fraudsters evolve their tactics, we work with other carriers to continually strengthen processes to prevent unauthorized porting, including new protections put in place this past fall". How satisfied are you with those protection measures that the telecom companies have in place to prevent something like this from happening?

SAMANTHA BURNET: Yeah, to be honest, I'm actually quite disappointed. The answers I got from Rogers were that this is all they can do to try and prevent it. I asked if I could have received a phone call. All an email, something that comes in looking more official and legitimate to make me understand that this is something I needed to take action on.

MG: And maybe give you more than 10 minutes on a Sunday when you get this weird email to do something.

SAMANTHA BURNET: And give me more than 10 minutes. But yes, they said that based on the regulations and the competition rules that they are kind of held to, they are only permitted to send a text message. That's all they can do. And if you don't respond in 10 minutes, then they have to release your number to whatever provider has requested it. And I kind of think that's a bit ridiculous.

MG: I started it by saying like, just think of how much you store on your phone. You talked about it being violating. Is that kind of what's going on here is that so much of your life is is on this device?

SAMANTHA BURNET: Absolutely. And I think the other scary part is I have no idea what other information they have access to. This is just based on my hypothesis that they have my email, they have my phone number, they've got into my email account. There's a lot of stuff in there.

MG: They could have gone through your email.

SAMANTHA BURNET: Bsolutely. Yes. So I have no idea what else they could have accessed. I tried to take all the proper measures to protect myself once this happened. So I hope this is the end of it.

MG: Are the things that you're doing differently now based on what you've gone through? I mean, do you, you know, unlink your credit card information from the Amazon account or other steps that you're taking? Knowing that this has happened?

SAMANTHA BURNET: YeS. So I did add a pin to my Rogers account. They have said that a pin can help you can help protect you from this in the future. I'm not sure if that truly can, based on how this all went down the first time. But yes, I mean, I think adding the two factor authentication I thought was a measure I was taking to add extra security tonight.

MG: That's what we're told to do.

SAMANTHA BURNET: So now I kind of think differently about that.

MG: Pay attention to those text messages, I guess.

SAMANTHA BURNET: And pay attention to your text messages.

MG: Samantha, thank you.

SAMANTHA BURNET: No problem.

MG: Samantha Burnet has been talking about what she experienced a couple of weeks ago in terms of this port-out fraud. Her number being taken in, any number of other things being taken after that number was stolen. Jesse Schooff is a digital rights advocate who spent the last decade working in I.T., has been listening to this. Jesse, good morning to you.

JESSE SCHOOFF: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do you make of what you've heard from Samantha Burnet?

JESSE SCHOOFF: Yes, I first and foremost, I want to express my sympathy, that harrowing experience, nobody should have to go through that. And just hearing her over the past few minutes, Samantha sounds like a savvy user, someone who I, as a information security person, would hope that we have out there. So, you know, if this thing can can happen to her, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this is something that can happen to anyone.

MG: So walk us through. She explained from her perspective what had happened. But how does this work? How does a scam like this work?

JESSE SCHOOFF: Well, Samantha's got like a lot of the broad strokes, absolutely right. How this works is scammers will zoom in on someone and that victim will probably be someone that they have some information on. So let's say I'm a criminal and I want to get into your bank account, transfer your money away, you know, order gift card in your name. Something like that. Something to get your money. I am probably going to have to convince a company that I knew. Well, how do I do that? Unfortunately, the way that we validate identity in this day and age is through personal information. I know your date of birth. I know your name. I know where you live. I know your phone number, your email address, all of this kind of stuff. And this stuff isn't really secure anymore. I mean, if you pay attention to the news, you've probably seen that it seems like every couple of months there is a major data breach. We just have the life labs breach. We have the Equifax breach last year that affected quite a number of Canadians. We've had, I think, at least one breach from the [unintelligible]. And at the time, when we see these in the news, we sort of brushed them off. You know, well, that happens. That's an embarrassment for the company. They should have been more careful. But there are real consequences to that when all that data is out there floating around. You know, and it's accessible to criminals. They can build really powerful profiles on people that will allow them to to impersonate someone to to call up the cell company, for example, or I've heard that it's possible to do this online in some cases and initiate that port-out request.

MG: And we are now able to take our number around to different cell phone providers. But I thought that there would need to be more steps involved and to ensure that I'm the one who's taking my number, that it's not somebody else who's taking my number. How do you go about just moving somebody's number from their account to somebody else's account?

JESSE SCHOOFF: Well, Samantha touched on this, too, is that, you know, back in the early 2000s, cell companies were holding onto their customers very, very aggressively. Like, I've heard stories about people who had to endure one hour retention calls with aggressive salespeople just because they called up their original provider and said, I want to know, I want to move my number over to this new provider. So the CRTC, they stepped in and they said, you know, this process has to take no longer than two and a half hours. Cell phone providers, you figure it out, make it happen. So they've accomplished that goal. But unfortunately, they've increased customer convenience at the cost of process security.

MG: You don't need to provide I.D. in order to change providers?

JESSE SCHOOFF: Judging by what's happened, I would say not like I'm not familiar with all of the cell companies individual procedures, but it's clear that this process is very easy. Perhaps a little bit too easy.

MG: Samantha talked about two step verification. We've been told that that's what we should have to better protect our accounts, whether it's your social media accounts or your banking information, was designed to make things more secure. How did that end up becoming the security problem in and of itself? When somebody gets your your mobile phone number.

JESSE SCHOOFF: I'm glad you asked this and this was something that I really try and zoom in on when I talk with people about this, is that we have this stopgap to two factor authentication called two step verification. And the way that works is by texting a code. You want to get into something, you have your username and your password or you want to reset your your password because you blocked it. Company will text you a verification code. But, you know, as we've seen, your number isn't intrinsically tied to you. Someone could be over your phone. Someone could port your number away. That means that it's possible to to effect this kind of attack with some other information.

MG: The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association represents cell phone providers. In a statement to us, they said this is a quotation: "The industry is in the midst of making changes to the number reporting system that will add new levels of verification while continuing to meet the CRTC requirements. We do not publicize these measures as doing so might give criminals information they can use to try to circumvent them". What would guard against a problem like this, do you think?

JESSE SCHOOFF: To be honest, I don't have a lot of recommendations for the cell phone providers. There need to be additional procedures. We could do things like we could say, you send that text message out that says your number is going to be ported away. You give people a little bit more time, 90 minutes, let's say. That is time that the hackers that are trying to perform this attack, they can't afford. Like the first time I saw this in the news, the man, the victim said that it was 12 minutes between the time that you got the notification that his number had been ported away and getting an email from pay pal that someone had reset his password and transferred his money out of his account.

MG: But does anybody even pay attention to those text messages? To Samantha's point, you got a text saying from some number four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. You just going to delete it because you think it's a scam?

JESSE SCHOOFF: Yes, and that's a fair point. I would also put part of the onus of this on the bank. I think that that two step verification, which is different than having an authenticator out on your phone, that's really what we prefer to call two factor authentication in the I.T. industry. Two step verification. It was like you say, it was supposed to keep us safe, but in fact, it's opened up a security hole in the procedures around resetting your password.

MG: This is eye opening for a lot of people. And they will be holding their phone perhaps a little bit closer and wondering what's on it and who might have access to it. Jesse. Thank you.

JESSE SCHOOFF: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Jesse Schooff is a digital rights advocate. He spent the last decade working in I.T.

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SEGMENT.

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

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We've captured, we defeated, this group, largely, defeated ISIS 100 percent of the caliphate. 100 percent. And we wanted to do a 100 percent.

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MG: President Trump speaking last October about the so-called defeat of ISIS. A new report from the United Nations is painting a bleak picture about ISIS as resurgence. For the latest on the group, I'm joined by Rukmini Callimachi. She is an international investigative reporter with The New York Times, covers ISIS and created the podcast Caliphate. Rukmini, good morning.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell us more about what the U.N. report says about the resurgence, if I can put it that way, of ISIS.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: The U.N. report is saying that ISIS has now been liberated from the task of holding territory in Iraq and Syria. And that by being liberated from this task, it now has more time to do covert operations and attacks against security forces in the region. They're saying that the group has since losing the last little bit of its territory, has begun to reassert itself. What is especially worrying is that there appears to be significant financial activity, wire transfers that are being received by ISIS members and their families in the camps in Iraq and Syria, where they're being held, despite the fact that this camp is being monitored by byte by allies of the West.

MG: Where's that money coming from? Who's funding ISIS? I read somewhere that over 100 million dollars worth of funds in coffers. Where's that money coming from?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It's coming from a variety of sources, but it appears some of it is even coming from Europe, from sympathizers, from perhaps family members. And ISIS- some of that money is, of course, going to to the individuals themselves, to the widows, to the women, to the children. But the report says that ISIS is believed to be taking a cut of that money is coming into the camp.

MG: We heard the U.S. president say that ISIS had largely been defeated. He, of course, celebrated the fact that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed by U.S. forces in October. Who's in charge now?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: The new caliph that was named right after the death of Baghdadi last fall was identified in ISIS propaganda only as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qureishi. I realize that's a mouthful, but in fact that mouthful means almost nothing. We know that that's a made up name. And the only information in it is that he's a Quraishi. A Quraishi means somebody who has dissented from the tribe of the Prophet Mohammed in Saudi Arabia. So he was essentially cut out. We didn't know who he was. But there's increasing reporting from intelligence agencies both in Iraq and Syria and in the West, that the person who was the new Caliph is somebody who is known by the nickname Haji Abdullah. This was a deputy of Baghdadi, a Turk man from Iraq, a longtime member of the group who was involved in putting together the theological justification for the genocide against the Yazidi people.

MG: So when al-Baghdadi was killed, what sort of leadership vacuum did that create? It was it filled almost immediately, or has there been a time when this group has been floundering without a leader?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It appeared to have been filled very quickly. There was now an announcement very soon after his death indicating that Haji Abdullah or that this person, Abu Ibrahim, al-Hashimi Qureshi was was the new leader. And what's interesting is if the reporting is correct and the person that ISIS named is indeed the person that UN report and others are suggesting is if this is the person who was involved in the US genocide, we know that the U.S. State Department listed that man in September of 2019. Baghdadi is killed in October. So in September of 2019, a five million dollar reward was announced for information leading to his capture. That suggests to me that American intelligence services were aware that this person was, the prince in waiting, if you will. And and were already mobilizing resources, assets to to look for him and to provide a reward for his capture.

MG: We've seen a change in the level of U.S. forces in the region. What impact has that pullout of forces in that region had on ISIS?

It's too soon to see what that pullout has done, but it certainly looks like the perfect storm and it looks very similar to what happened in 2011, 2011, 2012, which is the last time that American forces pulled out of Iraq. And we now know and looking and looking back that that was one of the critical decisions that led to the rise of ISIS, as we know today. We're now seeing a situation that should be worse. Back when American forces pulled out in 2011, ISIS was down to less than a thousand members. Now, just in Syria, you have a captive population of ISIS members and their families. That is estimated to be 100000 people that are being held in these rather badly protected camps. Yes, they're being held, but we've seen there have been escapes. We know from the U.N. report that they're receiving money. And we have heard from the Kurdish insurgent fighters who are holding those camps that they're not able to hold them properly. So that seems to me to really be like a ticking time bomb.

MG: Who does the group pose the biggest threat to now? If there is a resurgence and as you mentioned, the numbers are swelling, who is most at threat from ISIS?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Immediately it's Syrians and Iraqis, unfortunately. They're the ones who are bearing the brunt of the IED, the car bombs, the targeted assassinations. What the UN report does, the one piece of good news in the report is that ISIS has external operations capability, does not appear as yet to have been rebuilt, meaning their ability to take fighters from Iraq and Syria and send them back into Europe to carry out something like the Paris attacks. That seems to have been degraded, of course, with time, we could see that reconstituted. But the biggest threat right now is, unfortunately, to locals in the region.

MG: Just before I let you go, whether it's premature or not, how dangerous was the comments that the U.S. president made saying that ISIS has largely been defeated?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I think it was rather short sighted. And unfortunately, it's very much history repeating itself. We also saw President Obama initially call ISIS the [unintelligible] team, at a point in time when it was very clear that ISIS had become an important player.

MG: And speaks to a lack of sophistication in terms of understanding how deep this caliphate runs?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It's once again history repeating itself in the sense that we keep on thinking that this group is defeated prematurely and we keep on it. We could we keep on announcing that and we keep on pulling resources exactly at the moment when the downward turn is occurring. If American forces have stayed in this region, if the killing of general Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian official, had not occurred and American forces could continue to fight ISIS in Iraq, that would have kept pressure on the group, exactly at the point in time when its influence was declining. Instead, at that very moment, we took our hand off of the controls and are allowing it to grow back.

MG: Rukmini Callimacmhi, great to speak with you. Thank you.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Thank you for having me, Matt.

MG: Matt Callimachi is an international investigative reporter with The New York Times and creator of the podcast Caliphate. The news is next. Coming up in our next half hour, the Super Bowl happens on Sunday. The last time the San Francisco 49ers were at the big game Colin Kaepernick was their quarterback. But since he knelt for the national anthem, no team has been willing to sign him.

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I've been ready for three years. I've been denied for three years. We all know why I came out here, showed in today infront everybody. We have nothing to hide. So we're waiting for the 32 owners, 32 teams, Roger Goodale, all of them to stop running, stop running from the truth.

MG: Coming up in 90 seconds, we take a look at the price that black athletes pay for speaking out. Stick around. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Advertisers can digitally add product placements in TV and movies — tailored to your digital footprint

Guest: Roy Taylor, Tiffany Hsu

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music]

MG: Are you ready for some football Sunday at Super Bowl Sunday when more than 100 million eyeballs worldwide will be glued to the big game and the commercial breaks.

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Where is the beef.

[Automated voices]

MG: Thanks to fan favourite ads like those, the NFL championship is probably the only broadcast left when viewers don't skip or block the ads. It's also one of the few remaining big live events when so many eyeballs are trained on the same show at the same time. And that means that outside of Super Bowl Sunday, advertisers have been scrambling to find new ways to capture our attention. One of the most intriguing new ideas is virtual product placement. What that means is that you and I could watch the same show, but see very different things. Roy Taylor is the founder and CEO of Ryff, a company pioneering this technology. Roy. Good morning.

ROY TAYLOR: Good morning.

MG: Give me a sense as to what product placement is. You see a show, there's a can of Coke that's there. Somebody paid for the can to be there. What is virtual product placement?

ROY TAYLOR: So virtual product placement, it's where we can take a 3-D object and put it into the scene. And because the 3D objects sit in the cloud, we can change them based on almost any variable.

MG: So in the simplest of terms, explain how you do this.

ROY TAYLOR: Well, it's very similar to the way we experience video games. When you play a video game online, the objects which appear on the screen to the viewer are stored, some of them locally on their computer's hard disk, but a lot of the data comes to them via the cloud, which is what enables players from all around the world to experience and enjoy the same game at the same time. So we take that notion that you can take 3D objects and render them into the screen and we just apply them to film and television.

MG: How many different versions of something could you have? If you're watching a TV show and I want to see this soft drink and somebody else, they would like to be targeted with that soft drink. How many different versions can you have?

ROY TAYLOR: Potentially thousands. But currently, if you want to do different versions, for example, then you have two choices. You can either film the scene with one version and then refiml it with another and then refilm it with another. Or you can use traditional post-production. But that's slow and very expensive.

MG: And this is the opposite of that. It's a lot faster, but it's also a lot cheaper?

MG: Yes.

MG: Marketing reporter called this the holy grail of the advertising industry. Why do you think this would be so attractive to your clients?

ROY TAYLOR: Oh, for many reasons. One, right now, when you put a product into a scene, to a certain extent, you're having to guess that the cultural relevance of your brand works for the widest audience. But that's what it is at best, at guess. You can't know in advance that politically for a new show or film, for example, that is going to appeal to all of the people that you want it to appeal to because you don't know who's watching. And so therefore you have to just do your best guesstimate. But now that we especially in streaming, we know who's watching, we don't have to guess anymore. And from the consumer's point of view, I think this is a also really, really a good thing, because we only sometimes don't like product placement when it's products we don't like. If the products we like, we don't mind at all.

MG: You have a blurb on your website that says Ryff is here to help you navigate the increasingly ad free media landscape. How much of this is about making sure that I can't skip over the ad, that I can't just ignore the ad because the ad is the show and the show is the ad and it's targeted to me?

ROY TAYLOR: Well, already this is a 15 billion dollar industry, according to PQ media, which is also, according to them, is growing at 14 percent a year. And we are seeing increasingly brands get into the content and that's called brand integration as opposed to traditional just product placement. So it's already happening and it's growing fast. But to get back to the point I made earlier, when, for example, you watch the Netflix movie, Murder Mystery, with Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler, the show had a strong placement, a strong integration with Amazon gift cards, and it was woven into the plot. And Claritin is also heavily woven into the plot. And it's a terrific movie and I think it works very well. And hats off to everybody involved. But in France, you might not want to promote Amazon gift cards. You might want to promote some other brand of gift cards. So we make it possible for you to have choices.

MG: This is only available right now through streaming. Could you imagine that this would be something that we would see in a life broadcast in the near future?

ROY TAYLOR: Oh, absolutely. We're very, very busy. Interest is extraordinarily high. We believe that we can take what we have and apply it to live sports. We can take it to e-sports, e-sports arenas. You can take the ability to use modern digital technology to completely revamp the advertising industry.

MG: In the history of cinema there are in some ways the iconic elements of product placement. Think of you think of the movie like ET. ET. eats Reese's Pieces. When we watched ET. when we were kids, we knew that ET. loved the Reese's Pieces. Could you change those if you didn't want to advertise Reese's Pieces? Could it be that E.T. like m&ms instead?

ROY TAYLOR: Yes. This is probably my most frequently asked question. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And they're all iconic pieces of content where we would probably be very unhappy if we were asked to support any change. But there are plenty of others where I don't think the viewer would mind was whether.

MG: At what point in time will it not be done by demographics but it will be done individually, that somebody will have hoovered up a bunch of data on who I am, and they know that I like this? And so I, Matt Galloway, we'll see this thing advertised in the show but you, Roy Taylor, might see something completely different, and it's not based again on demographics, it's based on individual product placement.

ROY TAYLOR: Yes, it'll entirely happen and it will happen as soon as early next year.

MG: Roy Taylor, it's great to speak with you about this. Thank you.

ROY TAYLOR: Thank you. Appreciate the time.

MG: Roy Taylor is the founder and CEO of Ryff. Tiffany Hsu. Is reporter who covers the advertising industry for The New York Times and has been listening along to this. Tiffany, good morning to you.

TIFFANY HSU: Hi, how are you?

MG: I'm well, what do you make of what Roy's been talking about in terms of what his company is working on with virtual product placement?

TIFFANY HSU: You know, he's not the only one. There are a number of other companies that are doing the same thing. They're already showing up on a number of streaming platforms and they're in talks with many more.

MG: Do we know how well this actually works, product placement individually and then more broadly, virtual product placement?

TIFFANY HSU: It's touch and go. There's a group of consumers that absolutely hate it. And every time it comes on screen, they want to turn off whatever program they're watching. There's so much of it that actually there are some programs that now specifically do it to make fun of it. But for a lot of other viewers, it's just a blip. It goes by. It's hard to say how effective the placement necessarily is in terms of marketing a product.

MG: Roy said that within a very short period of time, we will see personalized product placement. And to do that, you need to know about the people who are watching the shows. We know that services like Amazon Prime and Netflix have all sorts of information about us. What kind of information do those services have and how could that be used?

TIFFANY HSU: Because you have more TV that's linked online, those programs that are on those channels now have more access to the kind of information that like Facebook or Google would. And so you have information usually demographically about this group of people in this location tend to shop for this type of product. It generally is broader than a drill down individual 'I know that Matt likes to eat Popeye's chicken sandwiches', for example. But can you imagine having a Popeye's chicken sandwich and in a scene where you're watching it and then a vegan in another household is is seeing something totally different? Have you seen the Art Basel Banana, for example?

MG: You wouldn't want to mess that up and have me - I mean, I might like the art, the Art Basel Banana, but the vegan may not want to see the Popeye's chicken sandwich.

TIFFANY HSU: Exactly. And targeting in this day and age, especially on TV, is is still fairly fresh. Things get tricky. There are a lot of kinks that have yet to be worked out, especially when you're trying to focus in on a specific viewer.

MG: You wrote a piece last year. The advertising industry has a problem. People hate ads and people do that. Is this what we're talking about, this virtual product placement? Is it really going to be the answer to those companies that are suffering because we hate ads?

TIFFANY HSU: It's hard to say how profitable something like product placement is going to be. If you take a company like Netflix, they will adamantly say that while sometimes they take some payment for these sorts of deals, generally speaking, it's not a huge income centre for them. That said, that might change. Now, granted, there are also certain circumstances in which ads are welcome. Younger consumers are willing to see ads that they want to see. This is why there's so much of a focus on customizing ads, because the advertising world has figured out that if you serve an ad that someone is in a state of mind to accept, then they'll accept it. What they don't want are ads that could also be served to their grandparents or their teachers at school. But they're definitely environments in which ads are totally fine.

MG: Instagram, for example?

TIFFANY HSU: Instagram is a great example. Tick tock. Actually, this weekend at the Super Bowl, TiVo is bringing back an option that it's had for the past few years that lets you skip the football part of the Super Bowl and go straight for the ads.

MG: [Laughs] That's amazing.

TIFFANY HSU: Yes, because TiVo understands that this is a special situation where people actually want to see those ads. Now, is TiVo doing this for the Oscars? Probably not.

MG: It is in some ways a challenge is what an ad is. I mean, again, if you have influencers, viral ads, what you see on Instagram, people may not look at them as. I just wonder what it says about our tolerance for advertising today. How we see advertising when those things we're willing to take on but the more blatant forms of advertising or perhaps the older forms of advertising will want to dismiss.

TIFFANY HSU: Versions of this conversation come up with me every single day. Google just did a redesign of its search ad format, which it actually had to walk back on because there were so many complaints that the paid ads were starting to blur into the organic search results. You get the same confusion with sponsored content, right? Which is why a few weeks ago, Teen Vogue caught a lot of flack for a Facebook article that wasn't originally attributed to Facebook. The format of ads and the way ads look and come across is changing really, really fast. And there's so many more platforms that ads can be under so many different ways ads can look at. Often, a consumer isn't going to know that an ad is an ad.

MG: On Sunday, are you watching for the football or are you watching for the ads?

TIFFANY HSU: I mean, I'm watching for the ads. I cannot wait for the ads.

MG: I hope they are everything that you hope for. Tiffany, thank you.

TIFFANY HSU: Thank you so much.

MG: Tiffany Hsu covers the advertising industry for The New York Times. You might have noticed that for the past few years, Canadian TV networks watching or airing the Super Bowl have been showing the American ads. No longer. The CRTC decision that directed Canadian networks to show U.S. ads during the Super Bowl has since been overturned.

[Music]

'They lose everything': Black athletes who protest pay same price as 50 years ago, says author

Guest: Howard Bryant

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

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TOMMIE SMITH: The right glove that I wore on my right hand signifies the power within black America.

MG: That's Tommie Smith describing an historic moment in the civil rights movement. The year was 1968. It was the Olympic medal ceremony for the 200 meter run. Tommie Smith won gold. John Carlos won bronze. And during the singing of the U.S. national anthem, they both raised black gloved fists.

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TOMMIE SMITH: The black glove, my team-mate, John Carlos, wore his left hand, made an arc, My right and his left hand, also signify black unity.

INTERVIEWER: Now, do you think you represented all black athletes in doing this?

TOMMIE SMITH: I can say I represented black America.

MG: Today, black athletes still protest, but according to my next guest, the stakes have changed. And nowhere is that more apparent than on Super Bowl Sunday. Howard Bryant is a senior writer at ESPN. His new book is called Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field. Howard Bryant, good morning.

HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning.

MG: This book begins with the line "to be black is to be a dissident." What do you mean by that?

HOWARD BRYANT: You know what I mean by that is when you look at the stakes, as you mentioned earlier, and the reaction that athletes receive from taking an advocacy position is so overwhelming that you wonder why is this necessary for them to risk everything? Why is that - Why are those the parameters right now? And when you think about it. Tommie Smith or John Carlos, when you think about a Muhammad Ali or Colin Kaepernick. You think about these athletes. And that has been the- that's the setup. This is the structure that when they advocate for black people, what happens? They don't just lose their careers. They may lose their livelihoods. They lose everything or they risk losing everything. And that's the reason why you have so many athletes who are reluctant to even talk about these issues.

MG: How have those stakes changed since 68? Because I means that gesture seen around the world, an indelible moment for so many people. I mean, that was controversial at the time, certainly. But how have those stakes changed from then till now?

HOWARD BRYANT: Well, I think the stakes have changed in that, in 1968, you wouldn't have thought that 50 years later there would be stakes. I thought that the country was supposedly moving toward some form of equality and that you didn't have to — that that gesture was not going to still be I guess relevant is the right word. That most of my over most of my lifetime, the argument in the United States has been that we're not perfect, but we're getting there, and things are better than they used to be, and that this is going to be. If you put the time in and you do the work and you get the good grades and you serve your country and you do all of these things that you will be accepted. You won't have to raise the black fist. And I think what we're seeing 50 years later, especially coming after the 2016 election, is that that's not the case. And that was one of the real motivations for me to say, okay, this is more of an acknowledgment that I don't feel that what we're talking about today is more aspirational. I feel a much more hostile environment where if you don't like it, leave. And that there's this feeling that you can have your citizenship revoked is very, very different from the aspiration that we used to hear when I was younger.

MG: You mentioned Colin Kaepernick. And for so many people, what he did, it is still the defining political moment in sports of our time. Decided to kneel during the American national anthem in protest of police brutality against black Americans. How would you characterize the reaction to his protest?

HOWARD BRYANT: The reaction itself was so complete. And it wasn't just that you disagreed with what he did. It was the fact that even when Nike, a billion dollar corporation, decided to support him, people were trying to boycott Nike. And that was one of the big things that really, really, really struck me just like that, that it was more than simply disagreeing with this one person and this one person's gesture. It was anybody, whether it's Nike or the NFL or anybody who tries to support him in any way, there was going to be some massive protest by a certain section of the country. And that hit me that they were trying to destroy this man. And that runs completely counter to what I felt our belief systems were.

MG: One of the things that's the reaction to Colin Kaepernick's protest showed us and he wrote about this in the book is the relationship between sports and the police. Have a listen to Chris Hayes on NBC talking about this back in 2014.

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Since five Rams players took the field last Sunday, making the hands up gesture show solidarity with protesters over the shooting of an arm, Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson. There's been a stinging rebuttal from the St. Louis Police Association. To them, hands up gesture was an affront to those officers that called for the players to be disciplined and included this quote: "I'd remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertisers products. It's cops and the good people in Saint Lewis and other NFL towns that do that."

MG: What is the relationship between law enforcement and professional sports?

HOWARD BRYANT: Well, I think that was another area that made me think that this was a good project to take on. I began to think also that people say they want sports to be neutral. They say that they don't want any politics in their sports. And yet you see police as product placement in sports everywhere you go. You watch a football game...

MG: Product placement?

HOWARD BRYANT: Absolutely. The police are everywhere. When you watch a basketball game, there's a cop right behind the bench. Watch a college football game there. There are two policemen that run to the middle of the field when they're shaking hands with the opposing coach.

MG: That's not about security?

HOWARD BRYANT: Are we really in that much danger? And so I think what it is, is that the police in this country are central. They're central to our propaganda. They're central to our entertainment. They're central to everything. I think that what you see in sports now is both sports and both police and military post 9/11 have used sports as a tool, and they are embedded into sports right now. There are over 200 law enforcement appreciation nights at a ballgame across the country, whether you're talking about basketball, football or baseball.

MG: I mean, there are people who would certainly say and they're not just people in law enforcement, but people who would say that law enforcement officers are worth appreciating. And that if you have a big public event, a big event that's going to gather tens of thousands of people, why not use that as an opportunity to celebrate first responders in your community?

HOWARD BRYANT: Because you can't have it both ways. Can you say that that's not a political, that's not a political gesture? Certainly, if you're going to do that, wouldn't you then- wouldn't you then appreciate your nurses and your doctors and everyone else that helped the community? I think that what you're really seeing here, and especially when you see the hostile reaction to the players by the police unions, especially that clip from Chris Hayes in New York and when Byonce did her concert down in Florida a few years ago. It's a hostile reaction. And if you say that you don't want Colin Kaepernick kneeling, if you say you don't want politics in your sports, then why are you making me genuflect to police when I'm paying a ticket for a ballgame?

MG: If you have that relationship, if their relationship exists and you have the appreciation nights, what impact does that have on how a player might approach a protest, if there's something that they want to use their venue to do.

HOWARD BRYANT: It certainly intimidates them, to not want to protest. Because how would you feel about going up against 60,000 thousand people cheering against you? It muzzles protest. And the bigger question to me is that when you treat police like they're part of the team, what does that do to your jury selection? How do you get justice? And if you follow what's happening in our country here in the United States. It's very, very difficult to convict police for anything. And that's part of the reason is this hero worship that takes place in the profession. In considering that an entire profession is inherently heroic when it's not.

MG: This isn't a book entirely about Colin Kaepernick. But he runs his narrative, runs right through it. The fact and just the last point on Kaepernick. He can't get a game in the league. And there are people who say that he's yesterday's man. The league has moved past him. He's not that good anymore. And he's been out of the league long enough.

HOWARD BRYANT: I don't think that's the point. I don't think that's the point at all about whether he's good or not. The point is, is that is that what we do to people? It's not, the whether he can play or not. It's the why of it all. The why of it all is that you decided to take him and sacrifice him. Is that what we do to people in the United States? So to me, the real issue wasn't whether or not he can play or whether he can't play or whether he's a distraction or whether he's not. The question is, is that. Is this what we do to people? And if the answer is yes, then we've got a big problem. And that's really what this project is all about. It's about we've got a big problem in this country.

MG: Where do you see progress in how pro sports teams deal with race?

HOWARD BRYANT: I don't think that I do. I think that I see sports being used as a very prominent vehicle to sell war. I see sports as a very prominent vehicle to sell very many things that they want to sell in terms of authoritarianism. And I think that they send a lot of messages to the players depending on the sport, obviously, but I think that in general. Sports is a place for me where people want what they want when they want it. They want their entertainment. But then when they see something, they don't like, there's a backlash toward the player. You ask me about progress. I actually think that things are going a little bit backwards in terms of the aggressiveness toward black athletes, because I think that sports is the one place where we overestimate the power of money and where we feel that we can attack players because they're rich. And it's actually interesting to me that that athletes are the only people in the world in the American sort of, you know, our culture, where you want to hear less from them because they make money. Everybody else, if you have money, they want to hear more from you. If you're Kim Kardashian what are we listening to her for? Cause she's rich. Why are we listening to Donald Trump? Because he's rich. Why are we listening to Michael Bloomberg or Mark Cuban? Because they're rich.

MG: But for athletes, you sit down on the couch and just want them to play.

HOWARD BRYANT: Absolutely. And that is completely due to race and class.

MG: You write in the book that African-Americans are renters, not owners in America. What do you mean by that?

HOWARD BRYANT: Well, what I mean by that is the number of times that African-Americans are constantly told to leave their own country. If you don't like it, leave. Go back to Africa. Go back. When Donald Trump said, come on, Kaepernick, maybe you don't belong in this country. And yet so many white Americans feel like where we are in this country is borrowers, that you are going to white schools or you're living in a white community or living something about this isn't yours. No matter how many gold medals you win or no matter how many schools you build and no, you know, no matter how many times you serve and how many of your family members put the uniform on and die in America's wars, that there is a feeling still that your citizenship can be revoked.

MG: We started out in talking about Tommie Smith and John Carlos and what they did in 1968. Now in, years later, 50 years later, you can look at that and you can see them as icons. You can see what they went through. In some ways, there's a story of redemption, but there were very hard times when you talk with them. There are very hard times in the days and the weeks in the months and the years after they took that gesture. Is there the possibility that there could be other stories of redemption in what you're talking about? Someone like Colin Kaepernick in this moment is being exiled from the league that he wants to play in, but will be seen differently, perhaps by that league in years to come?

HOWARD BRYANT: I think the issue, sure, you know, Muhammad Ali went through this as well. Time does this for everybody. But what's happening in real time? What happened to Tommie Smith and John Carlos in real time? John Carlos was a bus boy. He was a security guard. He lost everything. And so he lost his entire livelihood to be celebrated 50 years later. Is that the deal that you- who would accept that deal? And what does that say about us? What does that say about this place? If this is the option. You know, I talked to John Carlos last week and, you know, we were having the same conversation about, well, it's the same game. It's the same thing. Same thing that he went through. That money may be different. There may be some, you know, players who have more than what he had. But the bottom line is still the same thing. The minute you advocate for black people, you are in jeopardy.

MG: What would you say, then to young black athletes today who might be on the cusp of that sort of fame and fortune, but also, you know, have the megaphone that that comes with and maybe they want to speak about the world that they're in right now. What would you say to them about that?

HOWARD BRYANT: I'd say it's your turn. I'd say this, you get to decide what world you want.

MG: Even if there are real consequences for you speaking this?

HOWARD BRYANT: There are always real consequences, as we know. If you're African-American, everything you do comes with a consequence. I think that the most important thing you can do is recognize the consequences. And look in the mirror and like what you see.

MG: Howard Bryant is great to talk to you.

HOWARD BRYANT: It's my pleasure.

MG: I appreciate. Thank you. Howard Bryant's new book is called Full Dissidents: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field. That is our program for today. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. It's been a busy, busy week. I might remind you of the new podcast that we launched. It's called The Current Weekly. You can listen back to some of our favourite stories of the week. It starts off this week with our conversation with Edith Grossman, 95 year old Holocaust survivor. She is a force of nature. And you'll hear that on The Current Weekly. Get that where you find your podcasts. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and have a great weekend.

Friday January 31, 2020 Full Transcript

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