I'm Robert Knight, inviting you to rejoin us on Earthwatch, a live, free-form radio
excursion into space, science, news, politics, metaphysics, music, the arts, and more.
This is Earthwatch Transterrestrial Radio, Wednesdays at midnight, on the new WBAI 99.5
FM, Pacifica Radio in New York.
And you're listening to WBAI New York, where it's seven o'clock.
And once again, for Off the Hook.
I'm Robert Knight, inviting you to join us on Earthwatch, a live, free-form radio
excursion into space, science, news, politics, metaphysics, music, the arts, and more.
This is Earthwatch Transterrestrial Radio, Wednesdays at midnight, on the new WBAI 99.5
FM, Pacifica Radio in New York.
And given to everybody, the program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Mike.
Hi.
Sartret.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Redhack.
Hello.
Jim.
Hi.
Down in Philadelphia.
Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia, and congratulations, Emmanuel.
What did I do?
You apparently are Discovery Channel's fourth favorite hacker.
We'll get into that in a second.
PacRed also is here from either Pennsylvania or Brooklyn.
I'm not sure which it is, but welcome either way.
There's so many people here today.
I think we got everybody.
Yeah, so I don't know what that's all about, Bernie.
Some people emailed me that, and I'm trying to stay off the radar and just take something
like this for it to all fall apart.
Well, I guess the Discovery Channel discovered you, and I'm curious, who are the three hackers
who are more popular?
There were like, what, ten hackers they rated as far as their favorites, and you rated number
four.
Well, of course, Kevin Mitnick is number one.
That's a given.
I didn't really look at it, to be honest.
I was too embarrassed.
I don't think I ranked at all, so I'm so envious.
I don't think they said very much either, which is good.
It's for the best, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember Kevin Mitnick was first.
Number two was Theodore from Nmap, and number three was someone at Google, and then it was
you.
Yeah, you know, I don't really rank with these guys, because I'm not developing things like
that, you know?
They're developing the scary Orwellian technology of the future.
I'm sitting back and complaining about it.
So you're telling them that they don't know who their favorites are?
You know, who's to say how taste works?
I have no idea.
I can never understand that.
But then again, how many hackers have a comic book about them?
Well, actually, a bunch of us in this room do.
Well, all right.
Because we're all in it.
That's true.
Yeah.
Okay, now, but getting serious now, getting really serious, because this is pretty serious.
This is what I was kind of afraid was going to happen at some point, and now it seems
to be happening.
So it involves the G word, you know, the Google word.
They're now, they're now developing, I guess they've been developing this for a while,
but you know, instead of simply typing text into a web page, now Google wants the ability,
and they apparently have at least part of the ability, to perform an internet search
simply by looking at a photograph.
So you basically take a picture of something, and they're going to tell you where it is,
what it is, what it did, what it's going to do, things like that.
That's called a search by site feature.
It's called, ready for this?
Google Goggles.
Yeah, Google Goggles has a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what's
been uploaded, informs its analysis of what's been uploaded.
And basically, it can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos,
and more.
It is our goal.
It is our goal to be able to identify any image.
It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision.
You can take a picture of an item, use that item, or use that picture, rather,
of whatever you take as the query.
The feature is still in Google Labs to deal with the nature of computer vision and with
the services present shortcomings.
Google Goggles works well on certain types of objects in certain categories.
I don't know.
I mean, I saw this coming.
This is science fiction.
And one day, I imagine you won't be able to hide anywhere, because any photograph will
be able to give you away.
Well, I mean, it's interesting if you think about the future applications of this.
One of the hot topics these days is where you can overlay something.
The term is, I'm not remembering.
Augmented reality.
Thank you.
Augmented reality, where you can basically have, say, your phone, and you point it at
something, and it overlays what's there.
So using GPS and such and a compass feature, they have now where, OK, if I point my phone
in a certain direction, it shows me where this restaurant is or that restaurant is,
et cetera.
And so this kind of is the same idea, except that rather than using your location as a
reference, it's looking at some image and giving you information about what you're seeing.
All the cool and fancy applications aside, I still think this has been coming for a long
time.
We've been basically trying to deal with the ability to not be able to search through
images for a long time, just simply supplementing it with text.
It's only now that finally companies like Google are finally getting the processing
power and the inventory of images to go through that it was going to come, whether we have
the cool augmented reality or not.
Does it say anything about what resources they're using to match things against?
Is it like the database of images they already have cached?
What are they using?
You got me.
You're asking the wrong person.
It could be proprietary, for all we know.
But what do you want to bet that the MPA and the RIA and them are really excited about
this?
Because now you can start prosecuting about album art.
Yay.
The program itself is really under development.
Google is known for releasing very early stage stuff to the public.
And this hasn't even been released to the public yet.
So that just shows that it's months, if not years, off from being released.
Yeah.
But I mean, I've known this was coming for a while because I know how Google works and
how they think.
It's not necessarily a bad thing.
Nothing is necessarily a bad thing if implemented properly.
Exactly.
It's Google that's implementing it.
Well, I'd rather they be implementing it than, say, Microsoft or Yahoo or somebody like that.
But the question is, how do we want this to be implemented?
This also isn't entirely new.
I mean, you've had the ability to search for book covers for a while through other services.
So this isn't something completely new.
But I thought that recognizing landmarks and such was pretty interesting.
Although I think that you have to still give your location for the image for them to figure out landmarks.
Well, they have billions.
They say they have billions.
How have they been collecting these billions of images?
Google Street View images.
Is that where they're getting it all from?
I'd imagine they'll be part of it if they're talking about location.
Or, I mean, you can also think about people tag things on, say, Flickr.
So you could leverage something like that.
You know, a bunch of Flickr images of the Golden Gate Bridge.
And then if you recognize something that's similar to it.
But what if you take a picture of the Queensborough Bridge and you call it the Golden Gate Bridge on your Flickr account?
And get a lot of people to do this over and over again.
It's a new form of culture jamming.
That's awesome.
Let's go.
I think we should lie about all kinds of things.
Take a picture of Richard Nixon's face and say, you know, this is a dog or something.
We don't know where they're sourcing their images from.
But if they were, say, using something that's, you know, public upload.
That's not nice, Voltaire, making fun of Richard Nixon like that.
I'm sorry.
I don't understand why any of us care.
Like, Google's released a new product.
They have an excellent PR team because we always talk about it every time they release a new product.
You know, people like you, we would never talk about anything because it has the G word attached to it.
We'd be blindsided by all these technological developments.
I mean, why?
We're not supposed to talk about it because they're big and powerful?
No, I just want to – you seem to think this is really fascinating.
And I want to understand what's really fascinating about it.
Being able to identify any image simply by looking at it on a computer, by holding up a photograph and scanning it
and having somebody say, that's this person standing on this street corner at this particular time or whatever.
I mean, I think that's kind of significant.
Packrat?
I have a concern.
Bernie has a concern.
Packrat, I want to hear what you have to say first.
I think it might be kind of fun.
You could be walking through a field, see a giant metal box, take a picture of it and say, I wonder what this is.
Verizon co-location.
Yeah, I mean, that's part of the good thing.
We could use it against the powers that be as well to say, what is this building?
What is this prison over here?
Who's running this?
We could do this ourselves too if we all got together and combined resources.
So it's a fascinating idea.
But it's just – it can be very Orwellian as well.
Yes, Bernie?
Well, I have a concern once this technology matures and you extrapolate what seems logical,
but that's not always how the future pans out.
But in any case, one fearful vision I have is lots of video cameras,
basically webcams all over the place that are remotely controlled, and the location of them is known.
And if people's facial images are stored and recognized, then anyone passing through a particular –
the technology could exist in the future so that anyone passing past one of these cameras
could have their face recognized and their position logged at this location in time.
Now, I'm sure law enforcement has been working on this for a while.
In fact, I know they have been working on this for a while.
Bernie, but remember what we know about surveillance cameras,
which is that they don't work because there's so much stuff and you have to watch it after the fact.
I mean, like, this for me reminds me – once again, it's going to be hiding in plain sight.
There's going to be such an incredible stream of data that we're just not even going to know
what we're looking at or know what's important to look at.
They really don't work.
Some of the facial recognition stuff does work.
And the technology is getting better.
I'm not saying I'm afraid of this happening tomorrow.
But 10 years from now, that seems plausible.
So you have to be forward-thinking and see –
when you want to make policies or decide what's best for society,
you need to look ahead rather than being reactive after it's already happened.
So we're just speculating as to various possibilities, and that's one concern I have.
Well, first of all, what Bernie was saying,
it wouldn't just be something that would be after the fact if you're using computers to catalog it.
But I don't really see how that's any different from what we already have now with carrying cell phones.
If we all carry cell phones around, our locations are very easily cataloged already.
I don't really see that particular application taking away any privacy we've already given up.
Yeah, I'm just wondering about some of the privacy issues.
I mean, if I don't want Google indexing my website, I can stick a robots.txt file on my site
and leave it at that.
Who do I talk to about making Google not index my face?
I think you can talk to them.
Well, no, you can talk to them because they blur people's faces out in Street View all the time.
So I imagine there's going to be something similar when they implement this particular technology.
Actually, interestingly enough, there is a place in the contiguous U.S.
where they do have a monitoring center where there's cameras all over the place
that are just watching people all day long, and it's in Lancaster City, Pennsylvania.
Bernie, have you heard of this?
Yeah, I've been to Lancaster. I've seen some of those cameras.
To answer Rob's question, there is a visual photographic firewall technology
you could put over your head called a paper bag.
No, that's not legal. I don't think you can walk around in a paper bag anymore
because that's considered a mask.
Or also, you know, you could point certain LEDs at your face like infrared LEDs
that would blur out your face to any camera.
The New York City Mask Law only prohibits groups of three or more.
So if you're a lone paranoid person, you can walk around with a paper bag.
But if you have two friends, you can't do it.
We did prove when some of you folks came by my office a little while ago
that some of it's pretty easy to fool just by sticking stickers on your face,
making you look like you have high eyebrows to show you're surprised,
making you frown by having things go down your face.
So, you know, that's not perfect.
Although that would be suspicious to anybody you walk past
if you were wearing stickers on your face.
Well, like I said, you could just get robots.txt tattooed across your forehead,
and then you also get benefits because you don't have to work anymore
because, you know, you can't be employable once you have a tattoo on your forehead.
Two words. Face paint.
We can all walk around like the insane clown posse.
That's going to be awesome.
We're not really dealing with the issue, though.
I don't know. I'm not sure how things are going to fan out in the future.
We could all move to Switzerland. They have privacy laws.
Yeah, but no minarets.
No minarets.
It's a trade-off.
It's a trade-off, true.
At the same time, I mean, privacy considerations aside,
it is a cool technology and it is something that we're trying to move towards
to identify things, not just people, but things in general.
I share their enthusiasm because I want to be able to identify everything, too.
It's good to be able to know what is this and where does that go
and where does this come from and things like that.
And whether or not Google is trying to spearhead it,
the technology has been in the works in research universities for a long time.
What's left after this? I mean, seriously.
We can catalog songs. We can see every street.
We can take pictures of images and find out what they are.
We can identify all of our stuff. What's left?
Interstellar travel, I think. That's really what we have to do.
I mean, there's always something surprising around the corner.
If you think about any of what we have today,
it probably would have been mind-boggling 15, 20 years ago.
One of the things that's a little bit concerning,
and I don't know if this is what you're about to bring up,
but the recent comment made by somebody on staff at Google
that why should anybody worry about their privacy
as long as they're doing things is by the CEO.
What was the comment?
As long as you're not doing anything illicit, why should you care?
That's not what he said.
How did he go?
He said that if people are doing something
and they don't want others to know about them,
maybe they shouldn't be searching it on Google anyway.
It's the same thing, basically.
But it's just specifically they're saying,
if you don't want anyone to know, then don't use Google for it.
It's a little bit worrisome that you have somebody thinking that way there
when there's many things that are acceptable in one place and not in others.
I mean, if you want to be in Iran and look up certain things about democracy,
if you want to be in someplace that's homophobic
and you want to look up things about homosexuality.
Is that what he was talking about?
I don't really think of that as necessarily a bad thing in the case of Google.
I mean, anyone can do indexing.
One of the big selling points for Google
is the fact that they put all this information together
that you can use in a more meaningful way than just a simple basic search.
Now, if that's really a problem for somebody,
I mean, we are supposed to be in a capitalist society
where you can simply choose another company
that provides the same service that is more anonymous.
Okay, I found the actual quote here.
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know,
maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Okay, that's not very nice
because it has nothing to do with Google.
That's basically a value judgment saying that, you know,
anonymous acts or implying that anonymous acts
simply shouldn't be done if you don't want people to know about it.
But as far as, you know, if you want to take that a little further,
so many people are doing stupid things and posting them online
and then howling in complaint when they get caught for them.
Like, for instance, underage drinking on Facebook.
That just came out this week.
These idiots are going around taking pictures of themselves at parties
and then they're surprised as hell
when their teachers and parents see their pictures
and say, what are you doing doing this?
It's really kind of funny.
This is actually a step further
because the local law enforcement to that town made a fake account
and then, you know, attempted to become friends with people
and then used that access that they were then given
to look at their photos and call them in for questioning.
That's a very smart law enforcement.
I honestly don't have much of a problem with that
because they're preying on stupidity.
If people want to do stupid things,
then they're going to do themselves in
and better they do it early than later
when they really could get hurt.
I have to say this law enforcement agency, though,
clearly has too much time on their hands.
They need either more crime or fewer officers.
Maybe they just care too much.
About 19-year-olds at parties?
Who cares?
Are they 19?
Yeah, they're in college.
I thought they were like 12 or something.
Why are they doing it, you know, clandestinely,
creating a fake account?
Why aren't they just simply being given access
to look over people's accounts no matter how private they are?
What do you mean, have access to look over people's accounts?
You're saying that they're going based on their stupidity, but...
They're making up a person that doesn't exist,
you know, an attractive woman,
and these people are saying,
oh, sure, I know this person, I'm going to be their friend,
and they find out all this information.
They're entitled to do this.
Why don't they simply talk over with Facebook
and get the access?
Well, that's a bit more nefarious, isn't it?
But this is, in my opinion, more nefarious.
They're lying, pretending to be someone they're not.
Again, they're lying.
Lying is such a crime all of a sudden.
Cops lie all the time.
Yeah, that's what they do.
Their whole premise is lying to people they want to catch.
And it's much easier to create a fake account
and try to befriend people at the local college
than it is to try to get a subpoena
and have them give you access.
It's much easier to do grand stupidity.
This seems like a bit of a double standard.
People don't care about them creating a fake account,
but they care about them being given access.
I'd much rather create a fake account
than have access to private information.
I'm the same.
I'm giving them my information.
If I friend somebody, I don't know.
And it's my own fault
if that person turns out to be something
that I don't expect.
Yeah, I'm really of two minds about this
and I've always told people,
anything you post to the internet,
act like everyone in your life will be able to access that.
Exactly.
Because it's possibly true.
And that's exactly what happens.
But on the other hand,
if my wasted youth had not been before the days
that videos and images were commonplace online,
I think I would have more to answer for these days.
And this is something that so many people I see
make this mistake.
They boast about it.
They say, you'll never find anything about me
It's so easy to find any kind of information
about anybody.
I don't want to sound like Steve Rambam here,
but we leave our droppings all over the net
and it's not hard to find little bits of it
and piece it together
and figure out various things that you didn't think
you had out there.
What was interesting, though,
is they really had to convince the people
that they were in trouble.
According to the article, anyway,
their friends who didn't actually go down
to the police station,
not because they weren't called in
and they weren't made to admit to whatever it was
that they had photos of,
but the people who did actually follow through
and go there to their police station,
they were the ones who got ticketed
and had to go to court and pay a fine and all that.
So I don't know.
It's kind of interesting.
The question is,
if they just had the photos,
would they be able to do anything with that
or did they require the person to come in
and admit to whatever it was that they were at fault of?
Okay, moving on, though.
We have other things to discuss.
And this is one of our other favorite entities.
Is this okay, Mike?
Transportation Security Administration?
They're big. They're powerful.
I mean, did they do something other than issue a press release?
Well, they always issue press releases,
but they did something really silly.
They released a document
that they weren't supposed to release.
It's an unintentional release,
they call this,
an unintentional release of a document
that is unclassified and unimplemented.
And they basically
are still taking the incident
of releasing it very seriously
and they've taken swift action
to do various things,
none of which brought the document back
because we have copies of it.
It's interesting.
Bernie, did you have a chance to look this over,
the document they accidentally released?
Bernie?
Hello, Bernie?
The red light's still on.
I had my cough button on.
I was coughing and I had muted myself.
One hell of a cough.
Okay, well, did you get a chance to look at the document?
I did.
It seemed pretty innocuous to me.
It just basically
was the standard operating procedures
for what transportation security
agency
officers
presumably at airports
should be,
what their procedures are,
and how, ostensibly,
a bad person could read through the lines
and craft
their entry
through those checkpoints in a way
that it might not be discovered.
But the funny thing is,
and Mike can elaborate on this,
is how they had released this document,
I think, in a redacted format
so that people couldn't read
the sensitive stuff in there.
They blacked it out, in other words.
Right, right.
There's a famous document
that Mike can elaborate on
that the NSA has released
for government agencies
on how to do this,
and they didn't do a very good job, did they, Mike?
No, I mean, what they did is basically
they issued the document
with big black electronic rectangles on it,
but they didn't know that you can just
go in and remove those big black
electronic rectangles
and see the document underneath.
So Cryptome and some other people did.
If you work for the government
and you have something that you don't
want me to know,
this makes me sad, of course,
but you should go read the NSA guide
called Redacting with Confidence,
and it tells you how to make a document
that actually the information
is not there, in fact.
The NSA wrote this document, Redacting with Confidence.
So if you're the government,
you can trust the NSA.
If you're not the government, of course,
you can't trust the NSA.
How to take things out of documents.
This isn't the first time we've heard about this.
We've heard about this time and time again
where some agency, US or foreign even,
releases a document
and they just highlight the text in whatever editor
they have and say, cover it with black.
You highlight the document
and the text is still there.
You'd think they'd learn,
but they don't.
It's not a question of them learning,
it's a question of so many people doing the same thing
and not everybody knowing the same thing.
Let's delve into a little bit of what is in this document.
As Bernie said, it's not that fascinating,
but there are some interesting things here.
This is some of the stuff that was not
blacked out.
Basically, talking about
baggage and accessible
property handling and lifting.
Lifting items that
are too heavy or too awkward or using improper
lifting techniques may cause
the TSO, does anybody know what TSO stands for?
Transportation Security Officer.
Thank you, Bernie.
It may cause the TSO to develop hernias
and back strains. Hernias are a condition
where a portion of the intestine
pushes through a muscle wall, usually
as a result of heavy exertion.
Back strains result from overstretching
certain muscles and can be caused by lifting even
the lightest of... Okay, so that goes into
some details to what hernia is all about,
which obviously they didn't want that to get out.
In addition to that,
if you wander around this document,
which by the way you can find on cryptome.org,
our good friends over there,
cryptome.org,
you'll see examples of what Federal
Air Marshal badges and credentials
look like, where everything goes on the badge
or everything goes on the credentials.
Central Intelligence Agency sample
credential. Those look really easy to forge.
They really are easy to forge
from what I've heard.
Yeah, with a red or blue
border, Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives sample badge
and credential. Wait, did they add a department?
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives?
It used to be just Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms. Bernie, do you know about this?
They added something? Yeah, a long time ago.
Really? So it's now the ATF&E?
Is that what they call it?
They're not ATF agents anymore. They're ATFE agents.
I didn't know this.
It's a good anagram for fate. They should just go with
fate. It is. It is. Wow.
United States Congress
identification. There's actually a picture
of a U.S. House of Representatives...
And they blur out her last name,
but there's only so many Congress people.
Maria McSometh.
My eyes are going, but it's Maria.
It begins with an M, the last name.
McSomething.
She's with the 110th Congress,
January 2007 to 2009.
So she's on her way out.
And also, let's see.
We have some other redacted
bits of information, which I find
always interesting.
What would be interesting to... There's the list
of countries that if you present
a passport from such a country, you
can automatically get the extra
special screened. If the individual's photo ID
is a passport issued by the government of
Cuba, Iran, North Korea,
Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan,
Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq,
Yemen, or Algeria,
refer the individual for a selectee
screening unless the individual has
been exempted from selectee screening by
the FSD, or aircraft
operator. Interesting. I wasn't
aware Algeria and Lebanon were on
the list of suspect countries.
They've got a lot of
Muslims in there or something like that.
Doesn't Lebanon have Hamas in charge of the country?
Yeah, but they were voted in.
Algeria!
They voted in people we didn't like,
but they negated the election,
so there you go.
They're also in the World Cup, so that gives them some
legitimacy. I think there's also settings in there
for the x-ray machines and the
detectors. I don't have the whole document here.
I have some of it. They also say
if the ID lacks the required federal, state, or
local government, airport, or aircraft
operator, ultraviolet, or
microprinting security features, contains
inkjet dots, or appears to be tampered
with, the ID is suspect.
So if you have a fake ID, that might make
some eyes go up.
The thing is, if you're from one of those countries, but you live in the
U.S., then you might have a U.S. driver's license,
and you can get around the
special screening. It doesn't seem that useful.
Voltaire. I was just wondering
what they had against Eritrea.
Eritrea? They're not in there.
It's not fair.
I'm sure you can apply to have your country
included in the suspect ones.
Yes, Bernie, go ahead.
There's one thing I noted in there. I think I saw this.
It confirmed that you
are allowed to take photographs of the screening
areas, as long as you don't take pictures of
the
x-ray screen
video monitors kind of stuff.
I have been
asked in the past by TSA
officials to not take the pictures.
They even had someone ask me to
erase some pictures, and I went
through the motions, and they thought I erased them, and I hadn't.
In fact, you are allowed
to take pictures, according to this document.
So, there.
Basically, we should print
out the document and bring it with us next time we fly
and show it to them after we take pictures.
Yes, you tell us how it happens.
There's a section here, which I thought
was kind of interesting, called Special Situations.
TDCs may be faced with a variety of
special situations outside of the scope of
normal checkpoint screening operations,
and they include a bunch of things, anything from
late-arriving passengers to
people who don't have the right travel documents.
But there's a couple interesting ones here.
Individuals who wish to voluntarily
relinquish prohibited items prior
to entering the screening checkpoint
advise the individual that TDCs
cannot accept prohibited items
and that the individual should dispose of the
items before entering the screening checkpoint to
include disposal in designated
amnesty bins. Amnesty
bins. Now we know what they're called.
Amnesty bins. Isn't that great?
Okay, but what's a TDC?
Bernie, what's a TDC?
You got me.
Travel document checker, I think.
Yeah, because they talk about travel document checking,
so that must be what a TDC is, someone who does that.
Those must be the people who meet you at the front of the line before you
actually hit the screening point. Could be.
So they don't want my knives?
No, and the amnesty box
does. Unruly
passengers they have to deal with. The TDC
should attempt to resolve these behaviors
using good customer service techniques.
If the individual does not
heed the TDC's direction,
then, you know what happens? The TDC
must notify the
STSO slash LTSO
for resolution. So if you see an
STSO slash LTSO
waddling down the aisle, you know you're
in for it. That's the senior and lead
security people.
You know this for a fact. Tell me they listed
what good customer service techniques are. I really want to know.
No, you're supposed to know that.
What if they consider beating
somebody good customer service?
Well, it's possible they do.
Does this imply that I am
If I fly, does this mean I'm a customer of the
TSA and if I don't like their service
I can like get
a new vendor or something? I think they're referring
to the customer service techniques of the
airlines, but who knows.
And finally, the other
special situation they might
face. Individuals who exhibit
suspicious behaviors slash
appearances during the TDC engagement.
TDC engagement.
If the TDC believes the individual is
exhibiting such behaviors slash
appearances, notify the STSO
directly. Not the LTSO,
the STSO. Or
where proximity to an STSO
prevents direct notification through a local
travel document marking system
as described in section 2A-
2.C.1
.c.1
.c.1
I neglected to print out. I'm sorry.
But I'm sure going to look at that when I get back
and find out what they say about that.
Now, that was not redacted. That was
all, I guess,
not considered all that sensitive. What was redacted
is this part under alternative travel document
checking procedures.
This part was not crossed out. During peak
travel periods, the FSD
or his or her designee
may authorize alternative travel document
checking procedures at screening checkpoints equipped
with ultraviolet lights and magnifying
loops. Loops?
L-O-U-P-E-S? That's like when you use a
jeweler's thing to look at things. Tell us about
this, Barney? That's how you say it. Loops.
It's like a very tiny magnifying
glass, usually with multiple lenses. Oh, really?
Okay. Jewelers, as
Gus pointed out, jewelers use it. Yeah.
It's called a jeweler's loop. I've seen jewelers use it. I haven't
seen TSA people use them.
But, okay. You can look at very, you know,
look at documents.
If you use a small magnifying glass,
it has a lot of magnification.
On a dollar bill, you can see all the microprinting
and credit cards. It's kind of fun. Okay.
Now, that was the part that
was not crossed out. This is the part that is crossed out.
This is the last thing I'm going to read.
The use of black lights slash
loops may be reduced from
100% of individuals processing
through the screening checkpoint to
no less than 25%.
And this alternative procedure
must not be used for more than 30 minutes at a
time and may be used no more than three times
in an eight-hour shift unless authorized
by the FSD due to exigent
circumstances. So,
yeah, that's... You can wait
them out. Yeah. Now you know what they can do
and what they can't do. So, again,
Cryptome.org has the whole document which
was accidentally released by the TSA.
Nice going, guys. I imagine there's all kinds
of other documents out there that
accidentally get released. Cryptome actually had
a really good week. They've got the...
We mentioned last week the spying policies
of a bunch of telecom companies, and they got a whole
lot more on Cryptome.
There's always good stuff there, but this week has been
a particularly good week for them. We had some
feedback to what we talked about last week. You're talking
about the whole Sprint thing that we talked about.
The 8 million
GPS pings, I guess,
or requests, or whatever they are.
Jacob writes in to say that
I'm sure by now you all have found the website
for getting GPS locations from Sprint, which
we didn't. So, thank you, Jacob, for
I think sending us this. And the
off chance you didn't and closed is a link.
The link is
https://fts2001.sprint.com
https://fts2001.sprint.com
https://fts2001.sprint.com
That's an old link. But it does work.
It does work.
It's not the system you're talking about. This is an older
system I think it's referring to. But, anyhow,
it's still fun to look at. It is fun to look at. There's all kinds
of things there. Maybe that'll lead us to something else.
Okay, so you don't think it's
actually going to the system
where you request GPS location
on customers? I don't think so. I think it's
an older mission site
for surveillance stuff to Sprint.
So, Sprint has
a long and proud history of providing
surveillance tools to law enforcement.
It has, and it should be recognized as such, for sure.
As do all the telecom carriers.
Yeah, but Sprint has that toll-free number
and they have, I don't know,
What, you think Verizon makes the
law enforcement agencies pay? Like, what does
long-distance cost these days? A couple cents a minute?
Alright, someone proved me wrong. Send us
the 800 number for Verizon and we'll call that as well.
Okay, speaking of
leaked documents and
scandals and things like that, we've all
heard this in the news in the last
couple of weeks about the
hacked emails involving
global warming. Anyone
have thoughts on this?
Allegedly, according to all the email I'm getting,
proves that global warming is a farce
and that everything is being covered up by the
scientific elite of the world
and that they're trying to control
our brains and do all kinds of other things.
And it's just incredible to me
how quickly control
of a situation can be gotten by
people who have no idea what they're talking about
and have absolutely nothing on their side. But yet,
somehow, by just
talking loudly and frequently, they're able
to get this talked about on every
single major news program
that exists as
if there's any truth to it whatsoever. Gus, I think
you had your hand up first. This is why it bothers me
that there is also this headline where
Google is starting to do,
being in Google, both doing real-time search
of things like Twitter, because that's,
you know, when you index things that people
are sort of spouting and retweeting all the time,
the people who are loud win, and
that's not cool. Yeah, and that's why
I don't like about all the forums that, CNN
just introduced forums on just about
every story, and that means that people
who are loud and stupid and like to
repeat themselves get the
same basic readership as the person
who did the research and wrote the story in the first
place. If you read through the comments, which a lot of people don't,
a lot of people are just like, eh, forget
the forums. I get disgusted after the first
two usually, so I stop reading them,
but yeah. This is why Slashdot is awesome.
Slashdot has taken years to work up a
modding system where the worst people get
pushed down. But Slashdot is a forum. It starts as a
forum. It's not a
newspaper. It's not journalism.
It's basically a place where people
exchange ideas, but the New York
Times, CNN, all these other places, they're
places where you go to read news. I'm sorry,
I hate to interrupt, but Gus, did you
just say that Slashdot is a place where you can find
insightful
commentary? No, I'm just saying that they did a better
job of modding down the people who really are terrible.
You can. It's number five, insightful. That's how you find it.
You look for number five. Yeah, no, I'm just
saying that they, I mean, having compared a number of
different systems for moderating a discussion,
I think Slashdot's is kind of it. I think it
works. I definitely think it works. I don't read it every day, certainly, but
it's time-tested. It's something that they've developed
over a number of years. Yeah, but anyway, so we're veering
way off the subject here. So basically
what we have is
these leaked emails, which I
object to the word hacked, because really, what was
done to get these emails in the first place? Does anybody
know? Anybody know how the emails were actually obtained from
the East Anglia University?
I believe someone guessed passwords.
Is that what it was? Most likely.
Jim pointed it out to us, and we'll
find out. But
basically, there is no smoking
gun here, as far as I can see. Someone tell
me if I'm wrong. It's hugely
cherry-picked information, and even the cherry-picked
is pretty, like, inaccurate. Well, they find
people's personal communications, scientists
that basically are saying nasty things about the people
who don't agree with them,
and using that as evidence that
their whole premise is wrong. They had
thousands of pages that they had, quote-unquote, hacked
into, and that they had access to, and the ones
that are being quoted the most, the
ones that they say are the most damning, are really
just, like, not
that inaccurate at all.
They don't really... If you look at anybody's
personal email, you're going to find something in there
that makes them not look very good.
The recent case where the government
was... The Fed just lost
a lawsuit against
one of the bankers. I think it was
the heads of
Freddie May or Fannie Mac, one of the two.
And they basically lost the
case because their case resided entirely
on emails,
and, like, one sentence from
a three-page email, and it had
that... It turned out that
if you had it in context, it didn't, like, blame them.
But it's just another
example of it being taken out of context.
Yeah, and basically...
Also, a lack of understanding
of the whole scientific process. I believe we
were talking about that earlier, right?
Yeah, we were talking about that earlier. A lot of people hear
theory of whatever,
and they take that to mean
that their...
that the grounding is on
is shaky, which is not necessarily
true. It's taken on somewhat of a
different meaning in the scientific community.
For example, the theory of evolution, for instance.
I don't want to get way off the track here,
but some people latch onto
that and say that means that it's not fact.
That's not how science...
Does anybody want to explain how science actually...
a second or two, how science works?
I mean, a theory would be
basically something that you
can't necessarily prove completely, but it's
the best thing that fits the data that you have.
So given
the data that you've collected,
theory best fits that model.
So, for example, you've got relativity, which is
the best guess for now, but
then you've got things like...
So you're guessing, which means you don't know.
No, but based on the data that you've
seen. And it fits.
The model fits
the data.
But it's not provable that
it's exactly correct.
Technically, gravity is still a theory.
Yeah, it is still a theory, but it seems to work around me.
Here.
The United States National Academy of Science
says that
some explanations are so well established
that no new evidence is likely to alter them.
That is what they consider to be
a theory. You know, probably the
reason why we call it a theory
is just because of technical nitpicking.
Unless you infinitely test something,
an infinite number of times, you're never going to be
infinitely sure it's true. So there's always that
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
chance that you're wrong.
So you admit evolution could be wrong.
Gravity could be wrong.
If you want to speak with the language
that the scientific community
uses, yes, but... And sometimes that
language is foul language, too, and this is something
that they're latching onto as well.
Look how they treat their opponents with disrespect.
It's a private email. People are allowed
to say all kinds of things in private email.
The question is, does the science,
is the science being proven
wrong? And there's nothing in there
to indicate that at all.
And it's incredible to see this used,
this quote-unquote hack used as a way
of derailing the whole process. And just one
thing back to the wording that we're talking about.
Just because something's a theory, and doesn't mean
that you can completely prove it, doesn't mean that if you
make something up, that that's any more
valid. So just because
you say that, you know, oh, creationism
doesn't mean that that's what happened, and I would,
you know, challenge you to prove to me that that happened.
I just mentioned evolution as an example.
I know, but... The real story here is
the global warming climate change thing that happens.
Same thing here. You have all the data on warming,
you know, taken in Antarctica
and so on and so forth. Just because you
say it's not happening, doesn't mean that you've taken
and analyzed the data and then proved that it's not.
If there really was a conspiracy, don't you think
in those thousands of pages, you'd find a lot
more damning evidence than just simply
saying, let's not emphasize this so much
because it might make the other side look better.
You know, wouldn't you see real
evidence that there's a global conspiracy?
And, you know, I'm trying to figure out what would be the
point of this global conspiracy? To make us, like,
not pollute more, and to
make us drive better? One world government!
Yeah, communism or something. One world government!
You know, this whole... On the note of
conspiracies and also taking
issue with the word hacker, another issue
I've taken with the whole reporting on this is
that they're calling the leakers,
they're calling them the global
warming skeptics. And I think that global warming,
it's like an insult to the
word skeptic because skepticism
is all about questioning
conspiracy theories and, like, fringe theories.
And, if anything,
the... This is blind faith.
Exactly. So it's
like an insult. I don't think it's fair to
call these people skeptics.
Skepticism is part of science. Skepticism has
to be about questioning theories of global
warming as well. You just have to be able to...
That's a very good point because... You have to engage. And the problem is
we're not going to have anybody engaging because, frankly,
you can't teach science and have it standardized
tested under No Child Left Behind or
Race to the Bottom or whatever we're calling this now.
To get to the stage where something is
discussed, it has to go through a whole scientific
process where it's put through the ringer
and basically
every single question imaginable has already
been asked at this point. And the average human being never
gets to see that process.
Yeah, that's actually just what I wanted
to bring up. This seems to be based
on the general public's lack
of understanding. You know, I mean,
to say that the scientific community
could have some sort of a conspiracy
is just... It's strange. We're not dealing with
some monolithic organization. You're dealing with
a dispersed... But people love to
deal with monolithic organizations. But how do you know? I mean, how are we to
know that we're not dealing with a monolithic organization?
In high school, you get your science textbook,
it's given to you, you memorize it, and that's the end of it.
You're not doing scientific inquiry. We teach science
more or less wrong. I'm not going to
blame most science teachers because there's great science teachers
out there. I just believe it because
we say so. Yeah, that's not the right way to...
You have to question these things. That's true. My science
teachers did not know...
Oh boy. These aren't people
who are basically
questioning. They have a position
and they're not yielding at all.
But you're also talking about... I mean, these are emails
leaked from one research institute. They're not the only
people researching this. They're not the only people collecting
data in the world. Yeah, everybody releases their emails so we can
see what's being said and you'll see that
it's really... Yeah, then it'll be a big global concern.
We want to take phone calls. 212-209-2900. Please join
the conversation because we only have a few minutes left. Rob?
I just have one point I'd like to make. I'm not
a professional scientist. I don't have letters after
my name. Really? But I can encrypt my email.
Nice.
Well, that's true too, but do you?
How many people... Okay,
right now, scouts honor how many people
have encrypted email that if I was
to access your computer right now, I'd be
able to not read anything?
Are you raising your hand, Pat?
I just don't have any email
on my computer. You do so.
Of course you do. Nobody raised their hand.
I delete things right away. I mean, not everything,
but not everything is sensitive. Some things
are and those things are not. Isn't that a good way to say
what's sensitive and what's not sensitive by only encrypting
the sensitive stuff? It's true. Yeah, it makes it a lot
easier for the people trying to crack your encryption.
Well, if you trust your encryption
or it also depends on how
long it needs to be sensitive for. If you really want to
spend enough time to crack the one or two messages
that I have, well, they better be really important.
By default, everything should be
encrypted by default and that's
just not the case now. Yes, Rob?
I usually don't encrypt my email, but also
I'm not working for a major research institute.
But that's exactly why you should encrypt your
email because your private life
is just as private as somebody's
research.
If somebody cracked into my inbox right now,
what they would find is a bunch of rubbish because I talk a lot of
nonsense. There's nothing there that's going to...
But think of the time they'd waste trying to track down
whatever it is you're up to. That would be fun.
These guys work for a major research institute, but
what they're doing is ultimately ending up
in the public domain. I mean, yeah, they
may or may not care to have their
personal barbs read by the people they're
made against, but there's no
inherent secrets in what they're doing.
That goes back to what I was saying
about if you don't believe everyone should see what you're posting
to the net, don't. And an email is a post to the net.
It's not a very secure medium.
Well, then how would you communicate with anybody? You can't talk on the phone.
PGP is a perfectly secure medium.
If you're at the same institute, go say hi to somebody.
Okay, first of all, anything with a password can
be broken at some point, especially
with humans involved. So PGP is not
the solution. It stands for pretty good
privacy. Yeah, it's not the best.
Okay, Redak.
You also have to consider, in terms of encrypted
email, that it's a two-way thing. The other person
has to also have encryption. So unless you can convince
everyone in the world to have
public keys that you can then
verify is theirs, or at least the people
you want to communicate with, it's kind of, you can't
put the blame on us for not having everything
encrypted. Okay, Packrat, then we're going to the phones.
Whatever just happened to having a
good conversation with somebody, especially when you're
talking about something sensitive. Don't put it on the
net. It's simple. Yeah.
I think the more of us talking about sensitive things,
the better, because that way it makes it all the
harder for them to crack down everybody.
As we brought up before,
this wasn't even really something sensitive. This was just
a personal conversation that's being
applied to their work,
which is silly.
Yeah, I'm just saying, people that are
hearing about this in the media
take everything with a grain of salt, and
nothing is that simple.
There's smoking guns all over the place,
and things are being disproven because of some massive
conspiracy theory. On TV that might work, but not in real life.
But sensationalism
sells. Oh, it does.
It certainly does, and we're talking about it quite a lot.
So Fox News would love to have something that they can blow out of proportion,
so they can get more viewers or readers. And they have it.
They have it.
All right, 2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-100. Good evening. You're on
Off the Hook. Hi, guys.
Hi, what's on your mind?
I think you shouldn't poo-poo these
emails out of ethanglia so
quickly, because there was a lot of stuff that was
revealed in them, and that is that
records were destroyed.
Name one thing that's why records were destroyed.
Manipulated data,
and when you say, well, why
would they do this? Well, there's something going on right now
as we speak called the Copenhagen Conference.
Yeah, we've heard about it. It might turn into
Bernie Madoff making him look like a shoplifter,
because there's a lot of money and
a lot at stake at this, and those people
seem to be very, very concerned
about this.
Wait, who are those people?
And again, this is all
public data. I think people should know about this.
I don't know why anything should be hidden.
What is it that is being
hidden from people? Sorry?
What's being hidden from people?
Well, the fact that a lot of
the results they're coming up with
were data that they destroyed
for some reason, and they don't really have a clear
explanation why they did.
Well, I destroy data all the time.
Scientists, who knows why they're doing
things in their own private labs?
Basically, you're reading someone's private email
and questioning why they do what they do,
and I'm sure they can explain it all
to us and waste a lot of time, but
I don't see a smoking gun here.
I don't see something that proves that global warming
is a fantasy.
Well, Manuel, I think we should be inquiring about this,
because this will affect us in a big way,
and if a lot of it's based on a fraud,
then we should know about this.
Yeah, but show me the evidence that it's actually based on a fraud.
I don't see that anywhere.
One thing, who's they?
Are you talking about people from one university,
people from another university,
the National Institute of Science
in the United States?
It's not like there's one single collective they.
Who are you talking about,
that everybody else in the scientific community
from all the different countries around the world
wouldn't notice this, since they're all
doing research. That's what the scientific
method is founded on.
But CRU at East Anglia was the main hub
for a lot of the results
that were cut. This is a very significant place.
How do you know?
How do you know?
Because a lot of it was based on it.
How do you know?
The point is, whether or not
it's a major hub or whatever, the point is,
if we're looking at people's private emails,
people sometimes say
things that are immature, or they sometimes
take actions that are not necessarily the most
professional. Even at this radio
station, sometimes I see behavior like that.
It happens every place.
You can't simply
denounce an entire scientific
study that has been going on
for decades now
and involving millions and millions of people
and say that the whole thing is based on some
massive conspiracy and fraud and things like that
because some people said something
that wasn't entirely 100% right.
That's what I'm looking for.
But I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is
that it should be more inquiry. These are people who do not
want any more debate.
But there have been debates. There have been questions and debates
for so many years now.
There have literally been hundreds of articles
in scientific journals for
year after year after year.
Are we going to go back and question evolution too?
Before you say
there's no debates, go and read
all that research. Read reviews of the
literature. That is what's out there.
Maybe the earth doesn't really round anymore.
That is where the real information is here. Do not listen to the
journalists. Do not listen to the politicians.
We should not ask any more questions.
Sorry? We should not ask any more questions.
No, no, no. I'm saying go ask your questions.
Ask your questions of the scientific
literature because that is where science
happens. Not in journalism.
Not in politics. It's all out there. You just got to
read, look at it, and you'll see what has
been asked so many, many times.
I actually have a friend of mine who
studies at Edinburgh. His name is Matthew
Unterman. He has a book out on
climatology studies. Check it out.
That's true. A lot of people feel like there's not
a lot of discussion going on, but
they're getting all their information from these
layman news outlets.
Meanwhile, a lot of the information that comes out
are on these scientific journals that the general public
just doesn't see. They don't see all this debate that's been
going on for so long.
Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
Hi. Hi. What's on your mind?
Democracy Now has a nice segment on it.
But we're not Democracy Now.
We're Off the Hook.
No, no, no.
Democracy Now has a nice segment on those
emails. Yes.
There's a resident scientist at my
house.
Oh, that sounds serious.
They don't make generalizations.
And I think
2,000 UN scientists
putting together blah, blah, blah.
That's one hell of a conspiracy, isn't it?
I wish to say my concern about
that Google image,
I think in terms
of mistaken identity
and mistakes. When I
Google my own name, yes, sometimes
I do that and hit images.
There's stuff that
only vaguely,
weirdly, wildly relates.
And I'll listen off here. Bye.
Go ahead, Redak. Well, in terms of the
image search, we're not actually talking.
That's one thing. Searching Google,
Google image search, you're basically
what they're doing is looking for
the text that you're searching for on pages
and finding images that are on those pages.
Also, this is a little different.
This is talking about giving them an image
and having them identify the image.
It's a little bit different. It would be like saying,
like we said before, putting a picture
of the Golden Gate Bridge into
Google and it telling you, this is the Golden
Gate Bridge. It is so and so high.
Can we talk about the technology behind that for a second?
How does somebody search and match
an image? Because I think a lot of people maybe aren't clear on that.
I mean, like my...
It would have to be processing the image in some way.
They'd have to have some sort of algorithm that's capable
of analyzing the image. So what they're looking at is the numbers. They're looking at the numbers
that make up each pixel, right? Each, like, each
red... I would imagine it's similar to the way
that a song is identified
just by simply
not listening with a speaker
but actually
putting a CD, like CDDB. You put a CD
into your computer and it looks at it.
It's able to make some kind of algorithm based on
the time and the tracks and say,
that's what this is. Same basic thing with photographs.
I mean, computer vision is a heavily researched
topic, but basically you have to find some way to
filter down to some set of, I would
assume, images that you identify against
and then going further into that.
So there's probably some kind of fingerprinting algorithm
that gets you close and then...
But it's very... It's a hard problem
and so the fact that they're trying to do it
is kind of impressive. Okay, let's take another phone call. Good evening.
You are on off the hook.
Oh, finally. Hi, guys. Hi, what's on your mind?
Oh, it's on Democracy Now!
tonight. There's a document
that was leaked
from the council,
believe it or not, the Danish government
exactly where they are having
the conference. This is a different leak I think you're
talking about. Oh, a different leak, but what I'm saying
to you is, the secret was that
the G8 have planned
to lie to the rest of the developing world.
Yeah, that's a whole other scandal, but... No, no, no.
But I'm not talking about that. I'm
talking about how easy it is
to keep knowledge secret,
particularly when it's intellectual.
See, they were talking about intellectual
property. The developing countries
have a hold on high
technology vis-a-vis global
warming. Global warming
was the issue tonight. If you
Google, not Google, if you
print out the rest of
Democracy Now, you will hear
the pan-African people
that will walk out in protest
if they are behind
the man, and here's the name.
His name is Lumumba
Stanislaus
D-I-A
King. P-I-N-G.
This is the man that would
walk out, and the man in America
that didn't go to Copenhagen
said, the whole thing is rigged. I won't
go to it. So tonight was the proof
that Professor, excuse me,
the scientist at NASA,
all of whose arguments
were didactic. You know when they
docket out the real scientific
documents? This is what is done
with the evidence of global warming.
The Bush administration did it, and the
Obama is continuing it. So
only Hanson, you know who
Hanson was. He's the fellow that
was the whistleblower at NASA.
It's the NASA information
that the U.S. and the other
northern countries want to keep priority
only in their hands.
And at this late date, nobody
wants all that technology in those
countries' names.
Thank you for that.
No problem, no problem.
I think it just goes to show that, yeah,
we have to ask a lot of questions and
look at the facts and look at what other people are saying
and things like that. All kinds of conspiracies.
Yes, Mike, quickly. She raises a good point that
there's these accusations
of censoring
information that would allegedly prove
global warming doesn't exist, but the
U.S. government for a long time had a policy
of preventing its
own scientists from speaking out
in favor
of the notion that global warming does exist.
I mean, that's a conspiracy
that actually did happen, and obviously
it was uncovered with evidence.
By brave
people speaking out against it.
And if there were
some global conspiracy to forge all
the global warming data, it would have to be such a
large conspiracy. Surely one of the conspirators
would have got a book deal.
All right, let's take one more phone call.
Good evening, good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, man, I got
a conspiracy.
Okay, you know what? I just don't have the mood for whatever it is
you're going to say. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hi, how are you? Hi, what's on your mind?
Quickly. Very simple, actually. I think you guys
are dropping the ball on this. One of the main
controversies about leaked
emails was the raw data
for the modeling was dismissed,
was mysteriously disappeared.
Forget about what? They don't
like each other. The real raw
data for the modeling. For the modeling
of all global warming everywhere?
For one particular experiment?
Global warming exists.
Anthropomorgic,
meaning created by it.
If you got rid of the raw data
of your own research, you cannot
prove it to anybody else.
Nobody else can test your research. But what was this
actual data that they got
rid of? That's why he resigned.
The actual raw data
for his modeling at the
University of Anglia, whatever it was.
Okay, but this is just
one experiment or all experiments?
No, nobody says global warming does not exist.
I agree 100%.
So basically you have a scientist that did something
unprofessional. No, no, no. We're just talking about
specifically that. His raw data
he refused to release.
All his data should be eliminated.
He was one of the lead authors
of these studies. You can't
just dismiss that. If you want to know why
certain governments want to promote it,
cap and trade.
What I'm dismissing is simply the conclusions
that so many people are reaching that this proves
that global warming doesn't exist.
It definitely exists.
Right. If somebody's experiments are found to be
fraudulent based on something that was said, yeah,
obviously that's something that you should look at
and pay critical attention to.
We're not saying not to do that. We're saying
that let's not conclude
that everything is simply not true
because of that.
Unfortunately,
we're out of time.
Thank you for calling.
We could go on for hours and hours about this.
Write to us.
oth at 2600.com. We'd like to
hear from you and I'm sure
we'll hear all kinds of things about this.
Voltaire, yes.
I want to wish my dad a happy birthday.
Yeah, okay, except
you're nowhere near the date. Okay, thanks anyway.
Have a
good evening. We'll see you next
week. oth at 2600.com
What's
the
point here
anymore?
Here's one tip
to be secure.
You should be less
obvious.
I don't think
you're smart enough now.
I tried your birthday, I tried your most first name, I have the password to your heart.
Who's that girl from Camp Lejeune, sent you letters every afternoon?
Rather not have her around, had to bring her server down.
I tried your birthday, I tried your most first name, I have the password to your heart.