Adam Savage Revises Claim of Lawyer-Bullying On RFID Show

Nick writes "A few weeks ago a video of a talk given by Adam Savage of the television show MythBusters spread across the internet (including a mention on Slashdot.) On the video, Savage stated that the show was unable to produce an episode about previously known RFID vulnerabilities due to a conference call to Texas Instruments that unexpectedly included several credit card companies' legal counsel. TI (via a spokesperson talking with cnet.com) stated that only one lawyer was on the call and that the majority of the people on the call were product managers from the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) invited by TI to speak. Then Savage (via a Discovery Communications statement) reaffirmed that he was not on the call himself and that the decision was not made by Discovery or their advertising sales department but rather MythBuster's production company, Beyond Productions."

Comments

so

[thermian]

Ok, so they told him to revise his story to make them seem nicer or get the boot?

Methinks this is likely.

Re:so

[Mashiki]

Very possible that it got enough public traction and that's exactly what happened. Now they're hoping it'll quietly slip under the radar, which it'll probably do.

I distrust lawyers, and I don't trust TV shows or their hosts. So is it fair to be at odds with the entire thing still? Yep. Is it more fair to believe that security through obscurity is fair? Probably.

Re:so

[Shakrai]

Is it more fair to believe that security through obscurity is fair?

Security through obscurity is nothing new to Mythbusters. How many times have we seen them censor themselves when talking about explosives or chemicals when you can easily obtain the censored information in all of 30 seconds with a Google search?

My guess is that it's something the lawyers make them do.

Re:so

[BobMcD]

Boot him where? Without Adam Savage "Mythbusters" loses quite a bit of its' luster. I would be willing to bet "Mythbusters" is one of Discovery Channel's more popular shows.

True, but not so popular that they wouldn't just kill it and run re-runs while they scrambled for a replacement.

When the entire network is at stake, NO ONE is THAT irreplaceable.

Re:so

[Ron_Fitzgerald]

I agree. Whatever they may say, there most important people are the sponsors, not the viewers.

One episode in particular was where they were not allowed to say 'sperm'. They had to replace a prefectly fine medical term with 'genetic material'.

It is a science show for pete's sake!

Re:so

[jayhawk88]

When the entire network is at stake, NO ONE is THAT irreplaceable.

Good point. Can you imagine what the Discovery suits did when AmEx, Visa, Discover, etc said to them "Well if you think our cards are so insecure, perhaps we should just pull our credit card processing from your web and retail stores". Probably it never came to this exactly but I'm sure the message was clear: You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Re:so

[s1lhouette]

compared to dirty jobs, tougher in Alaska, ice road truckers, ax men, and deadliest catch, Mythbusters is a show for the gods.

Re:so

[MobyDisk]

As a programmer, I've been on calls that were supposed to be technical, but due to miscommunications or management concerns managers and even the CEO was on the call. Having legal council there to hear the proposal from the Discovery team seems possible to me.

Re:so

[jellomizer]

Any replacement just wouldn't work well. There is a particular chemistry between Adam and Jamie (in a non gay way) that makes the show interesting. Jamie alone would just be to intimating of a character, too overbearing. Just as Adam alone the show would be to chaotic and wild. Both together really help moderate both. Taking Jamie's edge off, and actually making Adam seem like he knows what he is doing.
While the 3 stooges Karie, Grant and Tory, can probably pull it off but they are not really known for the big builds.

Re:so

[Minwee]

Boot him where? Without Adam Savage "Mythbusters" loses quite a bit of its' luster. I would be willing to bet "Mythbusters" is one of Discovery Channel's more popular shows.

Right. And no network would dare cancel a show that people around here like. That's why shows like Firefly, Emeril Live and Stargate SG-1, to say nothing of Jericho, Babylon 5, Futurama, Family Guy, and The Office, have been airing non-stop on their original networks for years.

And let's not even mention how Star Trek is still on the air fourty years later.

Re:so

[mugnyte]

  Regardless of who was in on the meeting and how it happened - it was political, not scientific. This leaves standing the elephant in the room: RFID is simplistic to mimic.

  If one understands the radio wave effects (backscatter or modulation), one could use a scanner to capture all the RFID's within a zone.

  Then, essentially building a device tuned to emit an identical signal (for passive, this is secretive but not impossible as Adam alludes to), (for active, I'm unsure how difficult this is) and then this clone can be used in lieu of the original tag.

  This means for RFID-cards using passive technology, cloning them is allegedly a education measure, not a true security measure. Like unlocking cell phones and other corner-store concepts, one could imagine RFID signatures built-to-order based on scanner values (one need not have the original RFID, just a response from it).

Re:so

[elrous0]

Hey, Deadliest Catch was a great show in its first season. But then Alaska changed the fishing rules and went to a quota system instead of a "grab what you can until we sound the horn" system. From the second season onward it got pretty boring. I don't even know why they still do the "crab count" thing. After the first season, it's meaningless.

Re:so

[moxley]

It's not like they would say:

"Oh, wel pulled your merchant account because we didn't like what you said."

No, that isn't how it works. Standard practice is to pick some other reason or infraction (of which there will be many, which 99% of the time would be overlooked or not mentioned).

Believe me, they have more than one way of dropping somebody for a reason which will provide no recourse.

Re:so

[Spy der Mann]

Probably it never came to this exactly but I'm sure the message was clear: You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Nope. You bite the OTHER hand.

Re:so

[LWATCDR]

Not bloody likely ore even smart, they would never pull the merchant accounts.
What they would do is pull their advertising. Totally legal plus far more effective.
They would also threaten to sue for any "damages" that the show caused since they are teaching people how to break the cards.
So they could do a show that ticks off their customers BTW you the viewer are not their customer, you are their product. Or run a show that a few people will like. Not doing the show is just good business.
Oh and not watching Mythbusters anymore? That will just hurt the cast and crew. They will just take it off the air and put on "When Sharks Go Bad".
Simple but none to comforting truth.

Re:so

[ildon]

Watch the first couple seasons. They do call people and have people do research (and often times do a lot of math on their own beforehand). The problem is that A) doing match and research is boring for television and B) it pretty much gives away the ending before they've even built anything.

A lot of times they already know for an absolute fact what is going to happen, either because it's blatantly obvious to anyone with a minimal physics background (i.e. they paid attention in high school) or because it actually did happen to a real person with witnesses. But the fun part of the show is them building shit and blowing shit up, and the "reveal" of the result near the end of the segment.

The show is cut the way it is because if it weren't it wouldn't be nearly as interesting or fun. I honestly believe the show would not have been nearly as successful if it was just them doing research and math and the audience knowing the result way ahead of time before they even built anything.

A successful show that gets people INTERESTED in science or at least questioning the world around them is better than a show that has real "hard" science/research/math and gets canceled in one season.

Re:so

[mapsjanhere]

and with the same lousy science as Mythbusters... A "graduate degree" in industrial design seems to be the highest qualification among them. So that beats Hyneman's Russian literature degree.

Re:so

[The Yuckinator]

I couldn't agree more. I set up an ecommerce site for a client and she uses Moneris as her transaction processor. So we got the enormous Moneris manual and got to work - it turns out that they have several specific items that must be present in each transaction over and above the card number, the expiry date, the amount and the person's name.

Yet what baffled me is that in every single "sample" transaction presented in the manual, at least 4 or 5 "must-have" items according to their list, were absent. Calling them on it produced something of a "do as we say, not as we do" response.

Translation

[jayhawk88]

"I really, really like my job."

I smell lawyers...

[Coraon]

This sounds like the kind of statement someone was forced to read to avoid a PR problem, usually this occurs because a lawyer told him "you can't say that we will get in trouble!" to be honest I'm more likely to believe his first statement.

So what has changed is... nothing

[MobyDisk]

It sounds like the blame has shifted, but the point is still the same: they would like to do a show on RFID, but they were politically motivated not to.

hmmm

[tool462]

I think it's safe to say that if he didn't have an intimidating phone call with a bunch of lawyers before, he HAS now. :)

In other words

[93 Escort Wagon]

TI is obviously hoping that by quibbling over details, people will manage not to notice that the core of the story hasn't changed.

Re:legal counsel = cancer - they show up everywher

[m.ducharme]

I can see it happening if the Companies in question wanted underline how serious the issue is. Nothing says "we're gonna stomp you" better than saying "This is George, he's chief legal counsel for my Company. Now what were you saying?"

speedpass

[yodleboy]

i thought it was awesome, until i lost my keys on a bike ride and some tool promptly spent $200 at the gas station. and i mean PROMPTLY, the transactions all happened while it was still out riding. anyway, i was put off by it at that point. the concept that possession of that little stick means verification of identity is kinda scary. i mean, i have ASK FOR ID on the back of my credit/debit cards and usually give a little "you gonna read the back" if they forget. with the speedpay/RFID model, they never see the card, i just wave it like a magic money wand. RFID has lots of great uses, but i don't really want my money tied to it...