Notes for season 4 episode 5, “Prophets“
00:49 “We have incumbent Governor Murray leading 52 to 48”. Ah, the “cursed ratio”.
00:53 Samaritan observes poll workers, noting party affiliation, age, race, income. This feels post-2020, but is from 2014.
03:11 We can see a bunch of unracked servers in the secret train. They appear to be the same Supermicro chassis seen in the NSA facility in season 2.
04:21 The back of a Dell 2009W monitor. Drink.
06:55 The “Shadow Map of New York”, a paper map annotated with areas not subject to networked surveillance cameras. i.e. places beyond the reach of Samaritan. “It also comes in digital” is it a big .kml file?
07:46 Pollsters being supremely confident, and then being shocked at the result feels post-2016, but this is from 2014.
08:45 In 2001, Finch is testing his AI using Voight-Kampff trolley problems using the Alice/Bob naming. We see a brief shot of the c source code for the machine – but the code is largely unreadable and looks like the output of a decompiler. Indeed the code seen is from a decompiled version of Stuxnet placed on GitHub. The webcam Finch seems to be using in 2001 is an anachronistic Logitech C920 from 2012.
09:57 “I killed it because it lied!” Important rules for dealing with AI.
10:18 We see someone conspicuously remove the network cable from a CCTV camera (a Neo Coolcam NIP-02) but despite being a digital camera, the effect applied in the “Machine POV” still resembles the effect from an analogue source being disconnected.
11:18 “The election was rigged.” Again, this plot line feels very uncomfortable from the 2023 perspective.
11:42 Anthora coffee cup. Drink.
15:06 Simon suggests that the voting machines had been tampered with. Security concerns have been raised with electronic voting machines for years before this episode.
In 2013, New York authorised a switch from their new computerised voting machines, to 1960s lever-based machines due to stability concerns.
15:04 The’ve upgraded the UI for the Bluejacking app they use – it now looks like something from Iron Man.
20:29 Finch suggests using the NSA backdoors. “I’ll do Google, you take Yahoo.”
22:47 Facial recognition is employed to uncover Perez’s hidden past. So, Finch’s plan is to coerce a female politician to resign by threatening to reveal her history as a sex-worker to the press? Ick.
26:45 The Decima/Samaritan operative is in full “Terminator mode”.
27:28 This is playing out like a videogame escort mission where you need to influence an oblivious character to walk a particular path.
28:19 Finch uses a tool to cut the hotel CCTV cables going into the router, but given time is a factor surely it would have been far quicker, if less dramatic, just to unplug them?
29:37 It’s implied that Samaritan killed Perez by causing her to be prescribed different drugs that have a fatal interaction. Also Finch’s desktop login name is “Admin”, which seems like bad security practice.
30:00 Out of 43 versions of the AI, only one didn’t try to kill Finch or escape. Finch and Root debate if The Machine cares about them, or if it has fooled them into thinking that as part of its own agenda. Super-intelligent AIs alike cats in that respect.
33:38 Somehow cutting the cables for the hotel CCTV hasn’t stopped the Samaritan operative from bringing them back online? Did he rush in there with a crimper?