Hi, this is Iggy Pop and you're listening to WBAI in New York, the voice of truth.
I took a pounding from the radio today.
I heard the radio say it over and over and there was no escape.
This is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York and this is Iggy Pop.
And you're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI in New York.
The time is 7pm, time for Off The Hook.
And good evening, the program is Off The Hook.
This is Red Hacked here filling in for Emanuel in the studio.
I'm joined tonight by Mike.
Hi there.
Dot Rett.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
And in the corner we have Jim.
Hi.
And on the phone, I believe, I've been told, we have Emanuel.
Yes, you do.
Emanuel here.
I'm joined by Kyle.
And we're both in Tromso, Norway.
And that was my next question.
You should also say that we have Bernie S. on the phone.
Oh, right.
Of course.
And Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
I actually forgot.
Sorry, Bernie.
All the way from Philadelphia.
Well, now, we're in Tromso, Norway.
And for those who don't know, that's in the northern part of the country.
Tromso is home to the northernmost university in the world.
It's home to the northernmost functioning theater in Europe.
And all kinds of other interesting things.
Right now, we're in Tromso, Norway.
And I'm joined by Mike.
Hello.
Hi.
I'm joined by Kyle.
And we're both in Tromso, Norway.
And that was my next question.
You should also say that we have Bernie S. on the phone.
Oh, right.
Of course.
And Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
I actually forgot.
Sorry, Bernie.
All the way from Philadelphia.
Well, now, we're in Tromso, Norway.
It's home to the northernmost functioning theater in Europe.
And all kinds of other interesting things.
Right now, though, it's in the middle of darkness.
The sun set in, I believe, November.
It has not been seen since.
And it won't come back up again until January.
So it makes for very interesting days here, where it's completely pitch-black dark.
And then you get a few hours in the daytime of light dusk, where it's kind of dim out.
Surprisingly, people are walking around and having full days, active lives, and things like that.
But it is very, very strange.
And Kyle and I are here on our way to the CCC Congress in a couple of weeks in Berlin.
It probably would have been nicer to visit Norway in the summer.
Well, I have visited this very place in the summer.
It's kind of weird, too, because then you have the sun that doesn't set.
And that poses all kinds of other challenges as well.
But I'd like to actually just touch upon, for a brief moment,
some of the things that we went through on the way over here.
Because, of course, we had to go through TSA security going out of JFK Airport.
And we went through no less than three different security checkpoints on the way up here,
three different flights that we had to take.
But each one, for inexplicable reasons, we had to actually leave, go out, come back in,
and go through all kinds of challenges.
And Kyle, as you know, is a photographer and has a very special situation
that he has to go through each and every time.
I'll let him get into this just a little bit, because it's an ongoing saga.
Yeah, we had a little bit of a challenge coming through.
We had to check into customs, and we went right back out when we landed in Oslo.
And then, of course, there was a transfer we made in Iceland, of all places,
which was another security screening.
And that was actually the first one.
And I had a little bit of difficulty and actually had to ask for a supervisor
because they were almost afraid to run my film through the X-ray machine
because I was maintaining my position that I didn't want it X-rayed.
But after I spoke with the supervisor, I was able to have him hand inspect it.
And it got better from there.
The flight from Oslo to Tromso was very, very smooth.
It was a very beautiful, simple Scandinavian airport.
The architecture and everything was gorgeous.
And that rang true even with the security screening area
that I believe was run by a subcontracted company.
And they had all this equipment and tools.
It was just really well designed.
As soon as I showed them the film, they handed it from one person to the other.
They swiped it with the swabbing machine.
And it was a done deal.
So that was very, very simple.
I mean, that's how it used to be here prior to 9-11.
There was no TSA.
So you had each airport hired security companies to do it.
And each one has, I guess, their own policies.
Right.
What I noticed particularly was the body skinners in New York at JFK, where we left from.
And it was interesting.
They had, like, three major lines.
And the only one that was seemingly being used for the X-ray machines was, like, the middle line.
And we sort of instinctively went to the left of it.
And they were not in charge of the X-ray machine.
Are you outside?
We keep hearing this breathing noise.
Is there breathing?
Or wind?
Maybe it's somebody else that's on the line.
At any rate, the guy that did the electrical or metal scanning just sort of put his hands on my stomach and said,
there, it was that quick.
And that was as much of a pat down as he was going to give me,
but did not ask anybody that I saw, really, to go through an X-ray machine.
But as we sort of got up on the landing and looked back at the security area,
we did see people going through the middle X-ray device, which seemed like the only one that was being used.
And we took note of it and then sort of went on our way.
Well, it's still supposed to be random, I think, right?
Yeah, it should be.
Anybody in the one side was really being put through, which was pretty peculiar.
It seemed like if you went through the middle one, they were going to try to get you to go through it.
They didn't seem to be asking anybody.
So that seemed like less than random.
It seemed like if you chose that line, you would have a better chance.
And if you went in this line on the left, then you wouldn't even be asked
and have as likely a chance of being subjected to that.
It was interesting to note, though.
I mean, that was very different.
I hadn't ever seen one of these machines being in use, personally.
Now, what would happen if you were asked to go through that machine and your film?
What would happen then?
Oh, wow.
You know, I hadn't even considered that.
I wasn't fully prepared to opt out of the entire thing.
So they would have felt up your film, I guess.
I didn't even consider if they would put my film through that.
That's a great question.
Absolutely, the film would probably be fogged because I think it's a different form of x-ray.
It's not the lower level of x-ray that your bags go through.
Right, it's not supposed to be dangerous.
Of course.
So it's different.
Because I remember when we went to What The Hack back in 2005,
they had this kind of do-it-yourself security set up there.
And one of the things they had was an x-ray machine.
And there was a very big piece of paper taped to it that said,
please do not stick any limbs into this machine.
Because obviously, if you give a bunch of hackers a big airport security x-ray machine,
they're going to think, well, I want to see my bones.
But that would be very bad.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I don't know how they compare.
I know the much larger luggage screening ones are a higher amount of x-ray
than the baggage ones that maybe carry-ons go through.
So it would be interesting to find out how they compare.
Now, I guess Emmanuel told me that he had some comment on the prices over there in Tromso.
I'm sorry, he was passing the phone over to me.
You were saying that you had some comment on the prices?
Well, it's interesting because here in Norway, I hadn't realized it.
I've been here before a couple of times, and maybe it's different,
or maybe I just didn't notice it back then.
But, boy, things are expensive here, expensive almost to the point of absurdity.
If you want to buy a hamburger, for instance, it'll cost you about $20.
If you want to stay in even a cheap place, it'll cost you upwards of $150 a night.
Bus rides can be $6, the local ones.
It's like it's a different universe here, and it's very difficult to figure out ways to just get by.
I imagine people here make enough money to be able to survive at these prices,
but, again, I don't think people go out very much.
I was just pretty stunned by that.
So we've had to sort of be a little bit savvy as to how we get through the day.
We went to a supermarket and bought all kinds of food there
so that we could simply get by and not break the bank
and spending money getting food outside all the time.
In fact, right now we're making tea inside an apartment that we rented
because that's a lot better than going out and paying something like $5 U.S. for a cup of tea.
It's a culture shock.
I'm curious, is the food there and the grocery stores better than here?
Because I was struck when Joonce and I went to Scotland at how much kind of better.
I mean, we went, for example, to the butcher and we got some lamb
that had been roaming the hills probably a few days earlier.
I'm curious if you have kind of similar food in the grocery stores there.
Is it a European thing?
We haven't sampled all the different things that they sell here,
but we did notice a huge variety of meats and various other products
such as produce and vegetables, fruits, that kind of thing.
Yeah, they really have a lot of local things.
Manuel, what grows in Tromso in December?
Well, they have a brewery, I'll say that. They make beer here.
They grow beer.
All right, that wasn't my question.
Yeah, they don't seem to have a lot of agriculture as far as vineyards.
There's no possible way, obviously, to grow wine.
That's one example.
All right, what about food?
Beer, wine, we love them both, but what about food?
Well, yeah, I mean, that range is true with vegetables and growing that kind of stuff.
So I don't think it's actually available as local.
And I don't know, we talked to someone local who was talking about how the older ways,
like some of the villages are dying out,
and they used to have livestock and smaller villages.
Each family would specialize in a different form of either livestock,
or I'm not sure about plants.
I didn't hear much about that.
I don't think it's as easy to do that up here.
Well, probably in the summer.
Yeah, but a lot of the younger people, younger generations,
these towns are diminishing, getting smaller and smaller,
going down to like 26 people,
and then the younger people aren't carrying on that tradition,
and they're moving to urban environments
and kind of going with what the rest of the world is doing as far as globalizing
and that whole thing, which is really interesting,
because I think in really progressive or urban places,
you see this throwback to sustainability and local farming movements and stuff,
and in the places where that has been the case for centuries,
you're still seeing it dwindle a little bit.
So that's about as much as I can say about that.
Now we've been perusing the Norwegian airwaves a bit,
listening to radio and watching TV,
and actually we saw something last night, very late last night,
this morning on Swedish TV, which has piped in here as well,
a documentary on our friend Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
It's big news here and everywhere around the world, of course.
This is, if you look this up on YouTube, you should be able to find it.
It's on a network called SVT, and it came out a couple of days ago,
and it goes into WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the charges against him,
and other leaking sites such as OpenLeaks that have just begun operations as well.
Do you guys have any updates on what's going on with WikiLeaks or Julian Assange?
Well, he's still in jail.
I guess the British judge said that he could have bail,
and then the Swedish people appealed, and somehow he's still in there.
I guess pending the appeal.
We heard the same thing, and either way,
he won't be able to leave the U.K. until sometime in January at the earliest.
I mean, I would assume that would be because he'd be extradited somewhere else
and not of his own volition, right?
Yeah.
There is going to be a hearing on the extradition, I believe.
I think January 11th is the date I heard, but if he's granted bail,
he was granted bail, but he's allowed to actually take that offer up.
It'll be decided tomorrow or Thursday is what I've been told.
I'm still waiting to see the trick that they're going to pull to get him into this country.
I'm sure it's coming.
Well, it's probably rewriting the Constitution or whatever it is that they do in situations like this.
But, yeah, certainly it's something that is of great interest to people here as well as in the States.
As far as new developments, what has happened since last week?
Well, Julian had been arrested last week.
I believe the denial of service attacks began after the show last week.
Was that correct?
It's been such a whirlwind, it's hard to remember exactly the timing of everything.
Well, there was a lot.
Yeah, there certainly was.
Did you see that Iceland was talking about kicking out MasterCard and Visa
because they refused to give donations through to WikiLeaks?
I did not hear that, but that would be awesome if that were true.
I'm going to double-check that, but I definitely saw that.
There was one interesting story that I just glanced upon that I thought was pretty humorous as well.
Probably not to the people involved,
but basically media in Pakistan published a fake WikiLeaks cable that attacked India.
In other words, this has gotten to the point where various people or entities are publishing stories,
saying horrible things, and then saying, well, we saw it on WikiLeaks, so it must be true.
Yeah, I have that report here, actually, and it's pretty entertaining.
According to the reports, the fake reports, which were published in a couple of Pakistani newspapers,
purported to be WikiLeaks material.
According to these reports, American diplomats issued withering portrayals of top Indian generals
because, of course, Pakistan has a rivalry going with India.
These American diplomats called an Indian general self-obsessed, petulant, and idiosyncratic
while heaping praise upon Pakistan's generals
and exonerating the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency
of any involvement in some attacks that happened in Mumbai in 2008.
Now, what I just think is interesting is how they thought they could even possibly get away with this
because immediately you had news organizations going through the reams of cables leaked by WikiLeaks,
and they're like, well, we can't find these.
The Pakistanis are maybe making things up.
I think they're sort of depending on the fact that most people, the average people, have not read the actual leaks
and they're just depending on what they see in the media about them,
and they're willing to take things at face value, especially if it's what they want to hear.
Well, you know who can't read the actual leaks is everyone in the Air Force.
The Air Force just—and it got relatively little publicity, this story.
I think it's probably the biggest story of the whole thing.
The Air Force has blocked access not only to WikiLeaks itself but to The New York Times,
to The Guardian, to The Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais, and like 20 other websites that are actual—
there's no question that these are media organizations,
but if you work for the Air Force, you can't visit these websites,
and I think that's really quite frightening.
It's incredible, actually.
I can bring up The New York Times website right now or just walk around the corner
and pick up The New York Times at a newsstand,
and I'll be reading material that United States Air Force individuals are not allowed to read.
It's not clear what happens if a person who works for the Air Force
buys a copy of The New York Times and takes it to work with them,
if that's still allowed or not, but they can't visit it on their work computers.
Maybe they can bring it to work and give it to their superior officers
to get it redacted and classified and then read what's left.
It's incredible to me that people who are in the Air Force
aren't able to read websites from the media of the country they're supposedly protecting,
and they can't, of course, go to WikiLeaks.
They can't look at the documents themselves.
Everybody else in the world can do this.
Everybody can look at WikiLeaks.
Everybody can look at Western media,
and people in the Air Force have all these restrictions.
Shouldn't they know as much as anybody else as to the facts involving the country that they're from?
Given that they're basically in a position to directly influence international events,
I think they should know at least as much as I do about things.
That's why you don't get to run things, holding opinions like that.
And I think it's really fascinating that they think this will actually work.
I mean people can go home and read The Times,
but it's really the beginning of the end, at least possibly.
Well, you know, while we're talking about the government doing strange things,
what about the reports that OpenBSD has backdoors in it from the FBI?
Why don't you tell us more?
Please do.
All right, well, recently some emails came out from some guy who claimed to work for—
by the name of the ex-government security contractor,
let's see, Network Security Technologies,
and supposedly they've been working to put backdoors into the very well-known
and supposedly very secure OpenBSD operating system.
So what would that mean?
It would mean that apparently this was, according to the reports,
allegedly this was ten years ago,
and the FBI individual's nondisclosure agreement about the matter just expired,
so he just came out with this information.
And if so, it would mean that if this exists,
it would mean that there's been a backdoor in OpenBSD for ten years,
which is kind of an interesting prospect given how widespread use of the OS is.
I've actually had people tell me how they thought it was the most secure operating system in the world
and be very interesting if these backdoors really do exist and it's not just a hoax.
Well, also you have to take into consideration that the code does change over ten years,
and if there was some backdoor or some hole that was purposely installed
that may have been removed in a revision at some point.
That's what I really would find interesting if there really was a backdoor in this,
especially for so long, is the fact that it's open source.
How could something like that maintain for so long?
A former FBI agent named E.J. Hilbert had posted to his Twitter
that the OpenBSD quote-unquote experiment happened but was ultimately unsuccessful.
But either way, it's always been kind of an open secret that I think governmental agencies
would really like to have backdoors in popular things like OpenBSD,
and it would be nice to kind of have confirmation one way or the other.
So one thing we can conclude is that if they were able to get this into OpenBSD,
run by a Canadian guy and is open source and we can see the code,
then it's surely in Microsoft and Apple products.
Yes, indeed.
And OpenBSD I think also had ties to DARPA at one point.
I think they were partially funded by them.
Now you just brought up Microsoft's Windows and OSX and all that stuff.
Well, the great thing about this is that now you have people calling for an audit of the source code,
and this is open source.
People can do that if they really want to,
and we can actually see for ourselves and we don't have to wonder.
Speaking of source code,
there was another sort of interesting event that happened I think the other day
where a popular network of websites, Gawker, was broken into
and some databases of their users' usernames and passwords and emails
as well as the source code to the systems that run their websites were posted publicly.
I think the funny thing was people took that.
I mean the passwords were hashed,
but I guess using probably a common hashing algorithm
or something that wasn't too difficult to reverse.
And so people were able to figure out with this database
what like the 50 most common passwords or insecure passwords
or something on the Gawker website were,
which included password and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and things like that.
Do you think they were allowed to do that?
I mean so many websites, just websites that I go to,
they're like, no, you can't do this and it will be checked before it's even sent.
The other interesting thing is if you are able to figure out,
if you have a database containing someone's email address and their password,
chances are they probably use the same password for that website
as well as their email address or at least a number of those people do.
I mean if you want to get people's email addresses,
set up a fake service and ask them to sign up with their email address
and a password of their choosing,
I'm sure a number of those users will give you access to their email.
And in fact we had a proof of, sorry.
Can I take a quick poll here?
How many people in the studio use the same password for more than one thing?
I use the same password for all the sites I don't care about
but not for my email or any critical things.
All my passwords are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Yeah, I know that just like Red Hat,
I have some passwords I use for multiple services
but I have a sort of tiered approach.
The most important accounts get their own passwords.
Red Hat, can I just ask you,
if you start caring about a system,
do you then change the password to something different
than the other systems that you don't care about?
I mean most of the things I don't care about
are things that I probably have only ever signed into once anyway
because they made me sign up.
I don't mean when you buy a book from a website
and they make you create an account.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about things you use on a regular basis.
No, I have different passwords for all of those things.
For everything you use in a week?
Yeah, it's not that hard really.
I mean if you have 6 or 7 different things,
you can memorize and write it down someplace.
How do you manage to only sign into 7 things in a week?
Well, I'm just saying.
That's an average number I think.
So the thing about it is
it's kind of hard to memorize different passwords
but you can always have some core password
or group of passwords
and then make variations on it based on the service
in some way that's easy to remember.
So if you come up with your own kind of password generation algorithm
that's not necessarily something straightforward,
you could have different passwords for different services.
So there's always that, right?
No, I do that for one of my lower tier applications.
The most important stuff would just get randomized
but no way to memorize it besides from...
Except from memorizing it.
Right, but beneath that I do have that.
That's very useful.
Sometimes I've forgotten the password
and I'll have to work the algorithm
and go through different possibilities
so I find the password again.
I've actually done that.
An interesting thing is...
It's not a part of people seem to think to memorize passwords.
I mean people memorize sports statistics,
they memorize types of guns and aircraft
and all kinds of other things
that you wonder how they keep that in their head.
It's just a question of importance.
If you think something is important enough, you'll remember it.
People used to remember phone numbers all the time.
Now nobody remembers phone numbers anymore
so there's all this extra space in your head.
The password's there.
The problem of course comes from when you use something a lot
and then you don't for a little while
and then you go back and you have no idea anymore how to get in.
And in fact we've had apparently a proof of concept of this whole thing
because very soon after the Gawker database was made public
there was a flood of spam on Twitter
advertising acai berries I think
which is allegedly because all these accounts
had the same usernames and passwords as their Gawker accounts.
Now it's interesting, Rob T. Firefly,
you say that this information on Gawker was quote-unquote made public.
Now if you were a member of the mass media
you would invariably have said that information was hacked.
I want to commend you first of all for not saying that word
but I also want to berate the mass media
for their continued misuse of it
both in this case and in the recent denial-of-service attacks
against Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal
and all kinds of other sites
from people angry at the whole WikiLeaks incident.
This is not hacking.
It's a form of expression I suppose
or it's perhaps criminal activity
if someone's simply clicking in
and copying credit card numbers off of a bank or something like that.
Does anybody want to explain why it's not hacking?
Yeah, I mean I've always maintained that
for some reason it's the media's,
it's the mainstream media's...
Belief.
Belief, yeah, that whenever anything destructive
is done with a computer as a tool
that it's hacking and it's not.
Whenever somebody drives over somebody with an automobile
the media does not refer to them as a mechanic.
If someone hauls off and shoots somebody
that person is not a gunsmith, they're a killer.
But if you do something with a computer
for some reason you're a hacker.
Yeah, we do have different words.
Isn't it possible that there could be
more than one definition to the word hacker?
I think there's also a golf definition.
There's also reporters.
There are different things that hackers get into
but I think there are some common themes.
Exploration, rebelliousness, sharing information,
and being open to alternatives.
None of which are the case of people simply
break into systems, copy things, sell them,
or vandalize.
Those are just destructive acts.
Or government acts.
So we're open to all sorts of alternatives
except for alternative definitions of the word hacker, okay.
Can I bring up something interesting though?
We kind of mentioned last week that
in the attacks on MasterCard and Visa
and whomever else
there was this software tool used called
I think it was Low Orbit Ion Cannon.
Which basically somebody could download
and they just put in the target
and then they hit a button and that was the attack, right?
But what's interesting about this
generally when you hear about
distributed denial of service attacks
what it is is some one person
has gained access to a number of compromised machines
whether they've been infected with a virus or something
and they have control over them
and then they say okay
this one person says let me point my
1,000 or 2,000 or 100,000 machines
at my target and attack it.
In this case, for this attack
it was actually individuals
each individually downloading this bit of software
and willingly joining this attack
so it was more of a kind of a grassroots
denial of service attack than
previously where it's
one person who's compromised a bunch of machines.
So that was kind of an interesting twist on it
that we didn't really talk about.
Even though it wasn't hacking
just the fact that enough people were mad enough
about this to want to do this
so that they take their individual computer
and make it part of this
I thought was interesting.
I'm fascinated by the way it works
I'm fascinated by the way it all ties together
and the vulnerabilities that it exposes
in the various targets that are defined.
But let's not be foolish here
and equate it to something like
the civil rights movement
or activism of any kind.
Any activist in the world should be annoyed as hell
that this is being called some kind of net activism.
When you're an activist
you stand up, you put yourself in the line of fire
and you stand up for your beliefs.
You don't hide behind some anonymous block of people
and simply cause destruction
which is the same kind of destruction
that can be caused against you at a moment's notice
by some other anonymous person in a different party.
So ironically with this...
It's mindless mass mentality here.
Well ironically with this
normally with a denial of service attack
you could probably claim plausible deniability
oh I didn't know my computer was infected
but here you're actively joining this attack
and thus if they were to trace your IP address to you
they could say well you participated in this.
So you're not actually...
The people who did this weren't actually anonymous.
They were using their computers
which were identifying themselves
by way of their IP address to do this.
Well now that opens up another question.
Is the software just running in the background all the time
so if someone just puts this on
do they forget about it
and then maybe this system goes on
to attack other targets and they just forget?
I think you actually put in the URL of your target
into it and then hit the button and then it went.
So you would be attacking that target
and it wasn't receiving commands from anyone.
It was the anonymous folks
I think posting on Twitter or something
here's our target
and then everyone would attack it
or something like that.
Right?
Mike's shaking his head.
I'm shaking my head at something else
but yeah that's the way it works.
There's a box and I'm pulling up a screenshot.
I wanted to point out
that this type of denial of service attack
where people are willingly participating
and being the attackers en masse
it's not unlike decades old practice
that activists use called phone bombing
or fax bombing
where everybody just calls the number of some
government agency or company
and open to tie up their phone lines or their fax lines.
So I'm wondering who here in the group here
thinks this is any different
or worse than that?
You know it's funny
that was actually referenced in I think XKCD today
the whole phone bombing
I think it was maybe the Nixon White House
or something like that.
So actually I didn't know about that before this morning
but I'm glad you brought it up.
No I personally to answer Bernie's question
I don't think it's really any different
than some of these other practices.
It does fit into what people have called activism in the past
only difference is the medium.
However the morality of what they're doing
that's a completely different matter.
Yeah I mean it's still illegal
but it's funny that you know
it's run by a group called Anonymous
but in reality the people participating are not anonymous.
Lots of things are both illegal and ethical
and I think it's really not cut and dried
the ethics of this situation.
Right.
And I think it's worth pointing out
that Anonymous is not a group of any kind
it's a banner under which anybody
anonymously can start something
and then others can join in on it.
But the tendency of the mass media
is to report as though Anonymous
is some organized sort of entity
and it isn't.
It's just a banner and anyone can pick it up.
A few days ago I saw even worse
than just looking at Anonymous
as a single organized group.
They said that 4chan was the one waging the attack.
I forget who it was.
But you know you're having this
reporting on these stories
but they don't fully understand
what they're reporting on.
It's unfortunate.
I think this whole thing takes away
from a lot of the positive things
that have come out of hacking
in the past couple of years.
It's interesting the tactics
but as I think has been said already
it's not really hacking.
And again there's so many positive things
that have been going on
and it just makes me think of
the fact that the important part is
the leaks and what's going on diplomatically
and that we should elevate this conversation
the dialogue of what's going on
and what governments are doing.
And there's this saying
I don't know where I heard it ever
but it's the moment I take away
your right to speech
I take away my own.
That's all I had to say about this.
It's true.
People say
I don't want to hear what you have to say
but it's fine to listen to what I have to say
but as soon as you make that precedent
then all of a sudden
that can be applied to everyone else.
That's what I think is one of the scary things
about seeing what's happening
to WikiLeaks right now
if this goes through
and these crazy legislature
legislative people like Lieberman
get Julian Assange prosecuted
then what happens?
The New York Times being blocked
by more than just the Air Force.
Yeah I think the question at hand
is kind of what constitutes journalism
and that'll I guess shake out
in Congress or wherever
they're going to debate it
over the next few months
but hopefully it'll shake out
in the favor of WikiLeaks
and other groups like it
because I don't see
how they're any different
from a mass media publisher
except that maybe
they're willing to take more risks
and protect their sources better
or something.
I think we're living
in a very interesting time
regarding that
because basically
we're in totally new territory.
New paths are being charted
and new ways around things
and new ways of doing things
and I think really
nobody's quite sure
how this is going to pan out
but however it does pan out
is going to be terribly important.
It will be.
I show hope for one
that they're very different
from the mass media
as the mass media
has defined itself
and that can only be an improvement.
Well then it really does come down to
if the government
is allowed to define
what journalism is.
If they just look at
what the mass media
has defined themselves as
then we might be
in some big trouble.
WikiLeaks wouldn't fit
that definition.
I wanted to ask our listeners
if they think it's okay
for political advertisements
to encourage people en masse
to call some government agency
or call some elected representatives
phone number
and effectively phone bomb them.
How does that differ
from people using
this sort of denial of service attack
against the websites
of Visa, MasterCard, PayPal
which is run by eBay
when I think Julian Assange
has correctly identified
this past week
in a public statement he made
where he says that
now Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal
and Amazon.com
have shown themselves
to be instruments
of U.S. foreign policy.
And we have this gray area now
where there's no well-defined line
between corporations
and U.S. policy.
How does that differ
when you call a government agency
to complain about something
or to try to call their phone number
to disrupt their operations?
How does this act differ?
It's just food for thought.
It's interesting.
I think when someone
is urged to call a politician's office
to express an opinion
presumably they're calling
to express the opinion
not to shut down the office
whereas if you're calling
to disrupt something
it's a different motive
behind all of that.
That's how I see it.
But there's a long tradition
in this country and elsewhere
of shutting down things
as a form of political action.
It's usually called a strike.
It can be called a sit-in
or something else.
And there's clearly differences
between these actions
and the Internet actions
but I really don't think
it's so cut and dried
as you're making it out to be.
It's a good example
to bring up strikes.
The difference here is that
they're not people from the inside
they're people from the outside
but the result is the same.
The business in question
is no longer allowed to function.
I think one reason though
some of us might be
want to condemn this right away
is just simply because
the fact that we do get
this kind of
this negative attention in the media
defining hacking as being
something negative
and these kinds of people
are only, you could say
are only helping to further
that misunderstanding.
The other difference that I see
is that when you have a strike
when you have a protest
or when you have a sit-in
or anything like that
99 times out of 100
people doing that
want a dialogue
they want to be able
to get their side out there
and what you see
in denial of service attacks
you want people to go away
and to shut up
and to not be there anymore
and I just have trouble
signing on to something like that.
I want the dialogue to be there
I want the debate to be there
and I think you get that
by bringing the issues
to the forefront
and arguing with the people
and making that happen
and by doing it this way
you simply put all the
sympathy on their side
you turn them into the victim
and this doesn't feel right.
I'm inclined to agree
I don't think censoring
anyone's speech is an
acceptable weapon for the
quote unquote good guys
but I also think that
we've had
speaking of the definition
of hackers
we've seen a lot of entities
2600 and some hacker spaces
and so on
have had to post statements
now condemning these attacks
and trying to inform the public
that this is not what
hackers are actually about
and it's basically
I'm afraid we're being
set back a little
as to the public's perception
of hackers in the hacker community.
Well we've had a lot of
good conversations
with people in the media
I talked to somebody at BBC today
and Al Jazeera last week
and they seem to get it
they ask the right questions
and they are aware
that there is this
difference of opinion
and that people say
that hackers aren't
necessarily hackers
and that it's a complex
chain of events
that are going on here
so maybe this dialogue
has to happen too
and maybe this is something
that we need to process
in order to redefine
who we are
and what we stand for
what's right and what's not right
one thing I would like to do though
we did call for
differing opinions
we don't want to just be
saying the same thing
over and over again
we want to hear
the opposing opinions as well
hopefully we'll have time
to take some phone calls tonight
but I did want to read a letter
that we got from somebody
who does take a different approach
he says
I've been listening to
tonight's show
unfortunately I wasn't able
to get through by phone
right now to offer
an opposing viewpoint
that you tried in vain
to solicit on the air
and the problem was
too many people
agreed with us
and they all got through
and people didn't agree with us
didn't get through
it happens sometimes
in my view
the most recent releases
suffer from a chronic
lack of judgment
over what should be released
the attitude appears
to have been
we have this material
so it should be released
rather than considering
each and every cable
and asking whether
the public interest
is served by the release
of that individual document
many of the cables
are a little more than
a tittle-tattle
that may cause
embarrassment for
the individual's concern
but raise no issues
of conduct in public office
or the policies
or actions of government
hang on a second
I went off the page there
okay
other documents
may impact
upon those areas
but there is another
public interest argument
against release
the case of the Arab states
urging military action
against Iran
is a good example of this
in publishing the data
in the manner that they have
they make the current
public pretense
untenable
releasing those documents
makes war more likely
not less
if war is the eventual
outcome
in part because of the
release of these cables
then Assange and company
must accept their
shared responsibility
for the lives
that would be lost
this isn't simply
hackers
sticking it to the man
it is a real issue
with consequences
as Wikileaks
has raised its profile
and passed
extensive amounts
of confidential material
from various sources
and in the process
has become
a powerful entity
in its own right
as a consequence
it has the duty
to exercise that power
with the same level
of responsibility
that it seeks
of the government
and other organizations
that it exposes
to public scrutiny
that is signed
by Andrew
and I think
Andrew raises
some very interesting
points
you guys in the studio
want to tackle any of them?
I think we should
but I think we should
also give out
our phone number
which is
212-209-2900
and you can agree
with us
or disagree with us
or whatever you want to do
and we will take
a few minutes
but I think
one of the issues
that his name is Andrew
he raises
is this sort of
balance of power
between Wikileaks
and the U.S. government
and I think
it is sort of
laughable
at this time
to compare them
one has a website
and the other
has a military
that goes around
the world
and shoots things
and I think
it would be great
for there to be
any mechanism
of control
of that
and I think
it would be
great
for there to be
any mechanism
of controlling
what the U.S. does
but
it is really
you know
there is yet to be
a single death
attributed to Wikileaks
and there are many
many deaths
attributable to the
U.S. military
also
the hypothetical situation
was raised
what if a war starts
as a result
of that particular
bit of information
being leaked
and Iran getting
really angry
at some other country
and some real
miscommunications happening
I don't think in general
it is a good
idea to listen
to what somebody
else said
and then start
a war over it
I am sure that
there are crazy
people who do
do that
but I think in general
that is not really
the way governments
like to handle things
That is not also
something we could
even really look at
and say one way
or the other
because if you have
this one government
getting angry
at another government
saying well
just stop listening
to each other
and they go to war
well chances are
they were not
on good terms
I would rather
be worried
that I am not safe
because of the truth
than think I am safe
because of a lie
I would just rather
the information
be out there
and then we
ostensibly
could trust our
various governments
and officials
to deal with
the information
in a constructive way
rather than
starting fights
with each other
I think also
you have to understand
that WikiLeaks
is not something
where I don't think
they are trying
to take any one
particular country's
interest in mind
within certain
countries' governments
who have been outed
essentially as
feeding information
to the US government
and have had to
step down
as a result
of these kinds
of exposures
and so
you could say
well now
the US
won't get that
information
and that's worse
for us
but is it
then better
for the other
country that
was being
essentially spied
on by their
own politicians
so you can't
really
question
who's going
to get hurt
or who's this
going to hurt
it's kind of
difficult to do
you can try
to take steps
like they're doing
to redact bits
of information
that maybe
a certain
individual
could be put
into jeopardy
as a result
of and I mean
physical jeopardy
not their career
if they're doing
something strange
but you can't
just look at it
from a US
centric perspective
right the whole
point of an
investigation
is to simply
you know
if they see
information
that's being
held secret
and they get
a hold of it
to put it
out there
and unless
they're going
to risk
someone's life
directly
then maybe
you cop out
their name
but otherwise
you know and if
you want to
muse about
things too
you know you
could say
well maybe
now Iran
has heard that
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
and they're
going to
do something
about it
because
because
and
if
if
you
if
you
if
if
the
paperwork
was
written
on
we have uh... hello you're on the air
uh... yeah
let me just turn my radio down
great thanks
i am i agree with
with you in terms of uh...
having the information available for everyone but on the other hand
i heard on a program it was on BAI
that uh... wikiLeaks was planning on
uh... divulging a lot of vulnerable sites around the world
that would put people at risk for attack
and i can't see the value of that uh... i wish that there were
uh... more
uh... conscience consciousness about
what the value of the information that they're giving out would be
because just to put out information
that's not protective of the general public
and put out uh...
gossip or whatever that would embarrass someone
makes no real sense to me when
we have such uh...
limited means
to provide
cogent information that could be helpful
so the information i think you're referring to was a list of
uh... sites that the u.s. government deemed important to its national
security i believe and it was released
i think that was the site but i think there was more than that too
and again i think that uh...
i mean it's like they're playing god because they have all this information
but i still think that the there it should be some responsibility and not
just anything that comes up
they should put out especially if it
again it indicted uh...
people in the company here
uh... someone had to have
said and and gotten your attention
that these are sensitive site
that uh... someone was probably the government saying the fighter sensitive
and should not be released to the public
and that makes the public say why are they releasing the sensitive site
the government will pay that it's been all the sensitive site
uh... that any any power station in the world is is uh... a sensitive site
uh...
it's uh... it's basically
their definition of something which uh...
we're accepting at face value and it's not necessarily true
yeah i hear what you're saying that uh... the site
that i heard mentioned to me personally
uh... it was it what the weather depicted the government which is
someone reporting on the information they had a what they were going to
release
and so just me thinking about which he why would they want to release that what
of what value is that
i thought why did they go with and and and and send it in the mail from the
first place i think that i have a good
specific locations
uh... it's it's like they're inviting trouble
and i could see that it's the point of the things were attacked for example
got prepared
that it would give the government uh... reason to quote-unquote shut down the
internet
and that
it's a concern of mine
but do you think it's used in a way
you see
you see the foolishness of
creating a list like that
and making it available to millions of people within a particular organization
i think it's a list of the most
sensitive sites that we believe we can come up with
here their addresses and their latitude and longitude
it seems like that is where the mistake was made if there was a mistake
that's my point that that that's a mistake and that's what i'm talking
about specifically
that uh... you know if they're going to release that kind of information
i don't think it's a good idea and there's so much more that they could do
to help people prevent things from happening in focusing on something that
uh... would be a target for people who don't mean anybody well
right right i'm i'm saying
the blame should not be placed on wikiLeaks for releasing that information
blame should be placed on the people
for creating a list like that in the first place and having it fall into the
wrong hands
well i agree with you there but i'm just talking about in terms of using some
kind of uh... whatever to
determine whether or not uh... there's so much i'm sure that they have
why release that
when they could release other things
okay thank you for my personal opinion
you're welcome
okay bye now
thanks and let's take uh... this one you're on the air
you're welcome
yeah i kind of got
i'm a little depressed in a way
and i think that what you all seem to be doing is looking for a cause
and i think it's a result of not having served your country
or in the case of our leadership being former op-eds
the thing is that everything is going wrong but all you guys are worried about
is playing with toys and talking about free speech
what do you like about this nation
i mean none of you have paid any dues so
i mean it seems foolish for you to sit there and pontificate
please comment
okay well the uh... the individual who
i'm sorry um... the individual who allegedly uh... releases information to
wikiLeaks was serving his country at the time
and uh... he made that judgment but you're applauding his act not each and
every one of you
but all i hear on the news is a bunch of punks sitting there talking about
oh god he's doing a great thing that's the kind of thing when i used to get
beat up by a by a bully
and all the citizens sit on the side and say
wow he he he really kicked his ass you dig where i'm coming from
why don't you get out and do something positive
you've got a nation full of illegal aliens and undocumented
aliens who are looking up to you guys to find out what the american way is
all about
and all we're hearing is disgruntled bunch of
half eggs half whatever thank you
thanks for showing us what it means not to be disgruntled
he sounded very angry
i don't know if we can comment on that i think he spoke for himself
i i i would just like to throw in a quick comment is you know someone's
that that's just the sound of of somebody who's is upset you know but
he's talking to us and telling us what we should or shouldn't be doing it doesn't know
what any of us uh... are doing and and hopefully i'm i'm hoping
that several people in this room are doing things that they feel are right to
do
given the situation and not just
looking and saying ooh
that's good or bad
one point here
isn't it so much better to hear
the other side sometimes
than to just silence them and not hear them
i think this is a good example of that
very much so
yes and let's uh...
here from you you're on the air
quote two-point make
uh... one being
that uh...
transparency help doesn't need help to prevent wars
because every time there's a war there's at least two sides both of them thinking
they're going to win
and one of them wrong
if they had more information
and that would discourage
people from the hat starting the war
yes
and your second point
my second point is
that uh...
it might be into and interesting hack
to find out how to
undo
what the
credit cards and paypal have done
so that they
will accept funds
i think that there's still other uh...
places out there where you can donate it to wiki leaks through other
you can still send a wire transfer to the uh... to the holland foundation
uh... which which successfully got
it's money out of paypal uh... just yesterday they the money was locked in
paypal
and and they can't accept any more money but at least they got the money that had
already been donated to probably to send them a license photo or something i
probably uh...
but it but it's harder it's harder to send a bank transfer to europe than it
is to use paypal
but money in general is very powerful stuff and it usually finds a way to get
where it wants to go so uh...
keep uh... keep an eye on uh... wiki leaks and uh... related sites and i'm
sure things will be posted as they come about
okay
let's not let one company be the only way to do this there should be all kinds
of alternatives
the paypal that are easy to use and install
the real hack would be uh... having getting people together to start uh...
alternatives uh... that we can use them and not just depend on one single source
that's uh... that's a big project but we have just a little bit of time left so
let's try and
take this call hello
are you taking a call right now?
uh... we're taking you but we have only a minute or so left
oh okay
if i could take another call i could wait
no no tell us
uh... yeah no i just want to make a comment about the wiki leaks
uh... okay
the other caller before saying that they're responsible to release these documents but
i think to me it depends on
if it's about
uh... government transparency then yeah i think they should be released
if there's a lot of corruption going on you know the public has a right to know
so i think it's a good thing that all these things are coming out
that's basically my comment
okay well thanks for it
uh... should we try and take another one?
sure why not?
all right
uh... can you be really quick?
yeah real quick i got fifty bucks that i want to donate to bail this guy out
can we do this?
uh... well the bail is set at a lot higher than that
i know but my fifty bucks and someone else's fifty bucks
bernie you good for it?
but anyway
you know what i was incarcerated i mailed out for bail money
and it ended up working
and you know what there could be a bail fund and fifty bucks isn't going to kill me
i haven't had any for a long time but i got fifty bucks for that man
i think you're your heart is in the right place but actually it's not the
money in this particular case that's the problem um...
his bail has actually been covered by uh... some high-profile individuals with
uh... lots of it
it's um... it's just a matter now of getting them to grant him the bail that uh...
that he's entitled to rather than
keeping hold of it. i didn't know that but it was from my heart
all right thanks very much
that's for peter king
thank you and uh... i think with that uh... that's going to have to be it
for tonight and so uh... we'll be here same time same place next week
suicide will be nice and neat
i didn't build the panama canal
open the flood bay doors please now
these aren't the droids you're looking for
these aren't the droids we're looking for
i am not a number, i am a free man
to the idiotmobile
right away michael
i will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
you don't understand, i could have had class
round and tasty
on paper
who's giving you what you've got
finally, passing up those lines
you know i've been nervous lots of times
let's rock
what's the matter?
just rob us of all his money
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
writing checks your body can't cash
i was elected to lead a league
i feel the need for neighbors
watch out for snakes
a good man's moped
excuse my hat, looks like a puppet
over
it's foolish
there was no driver in the car
the car, the car, the car
the car, the car, the car
run away michael
or is he out of his mind?
there are two things i love in this world
everybody and television
you must be shrooming
wait for me, movie
just like to meet the host of that show, meat boy
i want to go to there
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
royal tycoon
like a little mustache
i think it's fever
i just had a sex
i don't give a shit
close enough
don't hit me cousin
you're gonna need a bigger boat
where'd you hear it?
i think she bought it
suck it monkeys
i'm going hard for my stick
a drive
the fight is alive
soon you're lost
no alpha
pick those french fries
yum yum yum
fueler, fueler, fueler
it's two in the bridge cold
the light that burns twice as bright
burn half as long
six words in the house
we accept the one of us
we accept the one of us
we will cover, we will cover
we accept it, we accept it
i've no number 6
4, 3, 2
i am number one
i am your men
kick ass
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
give me my twenty thousand can
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
i think he woke up today with that flash
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
food fast and bunk fast
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
Boy this is not my Batman flash
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
we accept the one of us
we came, we saw, we kicked his ass
we accept it, we accept it
We came in strong and we kicked it down
We got the one on one
We came in strong and we kicked it down
We came in strong and we kicked it down