Negara, Julie Crosby, and all the gang that makes democracy now happen here, 516-620-3602.
Keep calling in.
I'm Amy Goodman.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you very much, Amy.
It's 7 o'clock, and you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
It's time once again for Off the Hook.
I'm Amy Goodman.
It's time once again for Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Manuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Mike.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Bernie S. somewhere.
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
And Alex is somewhere, too.
That's right.
I'm here in Boise, Idaho.
You're here in Boise, Idaho.
No.
No, I'm not.
I'm kidding.
I'm in London.
Okay.
This is Julian Assange, and you're listening to Off the Hook at WBAI in New York.
Now, wait a minute.
He is in London, but I don't think he's here.
Is he?
Julian?
There's no way to know.
Don't be quiet now after saying that.
Manuel, are you monitoring the electronic bugs in the Ecuadorian embassy in London?
No, I'm not monitoring those.
That's not my job.
I thought you were playing the audio from the bugs that are in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Well, why would he be saying that in the Ecuadorian embassy?
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Maybe he practices the promos there.
Okay.
It's possible, I guess.
Well, anyway, the most interesting story, I guess, is Alex, you are in London, in fact.
That's right.
I am in London.
I'm in a pretty posh hotel right off of Hyde Park.
And several hours ago, I was in Geneva.
Interesting.
Are you seeking asylum somewhere?
You seem to be going from country to country.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well, they wouldn't let me travel through various airspaces, so I was forced to take
the trains and planes, trains, and automobiles over here.
But no, unfortunately, it's just business, not seeking asylum, nowhere yet.
And I haven't been to the Ecuadorian embassy.
Well, you have to go.
It's wonderful this time of year, I hear from all the reports.
We have a lot to talk about.
We have all kinds of updates, as you might expect.
But first, I'd kind of like to take a little bit of time off from the stories that we are
bringing you week after week, because there are a couple of other things that I want to
focus on just for a moment anyway.
This is interesting.
This is something, actually, I just received from a friend of mine yesterday.
Rob T. Firefly, I'm holding this up.
What does this look like to you?
Can you describe it for our listeners who can't see this?
It's small and round, and maybe it looks like the top of a thermos of some sort.
It does look like the top of a thermos, doesn't it?
Now, I'd like you guys to listen to the sound this thing is making.
Do you hear that?
Yeah.
Is it a Geiger counter or something?
Well, that's a concern.
This is, a friend of mine gave this to me last night, a friend I trust.
And what happened was, he went to one of those Price Club type stores, and he bought a whole
big case of Advil.
And on top of the bottle was this thing, which looks like the top of an aerosol can or something
like that.
Apparently, it was supposed to be taken off, but they didn't take it off, and he waltzed
out of the store with this thing on top of it.
Now, I'd like to know, and he'd like to know, and I think a lot of people would like to
know, just what this thing is doing by ticking like this, and what kind of fun can we have?
It says on the side, 2 alarm, the number 2 and the word alarm.
Bernie, have you ever heard of anything like this?
You know, I experienced something like this just a couple of weeks ago.
I bought a dental waterpik thing, it's like a little pump that sprays water, and you can
spray water in between your teeth kind of thing.
And I bought it at a Kmart, and as the woman scanned it, a sound came out of the box that
had the product.
I'm like, wait a minute.
What kind of sound?
She said it was like a short beep.
I did it a couple, three times.
And I said, wait a minute.
What kind of sound?
She said it was like a short beep.
I did it a couple, three times.
And I said, wait a minute.
I did it a couple, three times.
And I said, what caused that sound?
She said, oh, it's a scanner.
I'm like, no, it wasn't.
It came from the product that I'm buying.
What's with that?
I even called the store manager over, and we all tried to scratch our head and figure
it out.
We couldn't figure out what it is, and I took the whole box apart.
I don't know what the heck.
Maybe it was the scanner was resonating with something in it.
I don't know, but maybe it's similar to what you're talking about.
Well, it could be some kind of tracking device.
I mean, they will have the capability, if they're not already, to put tracking devices
on everything you buy so that they can tell where that box of goods is going to go and
where it's going to go.
Yeah, there's a couple of cords in here that it looks like are set up to grip maybe the
top of the bottle.
Are those cords or are those wires?
If they are wires, do not clip them, because I'm not sure exactly what that-
Do I cut the red one or the blue one?
No, don't.
Do I do it?
The red one or the blue one, man?
They're all black.
All black wires, and it's ticking, so I really, just out of habit, I don't like to cut wires
when things are ticking.
It does say in here patent pending, so if we wait around for that process to complete,
we can then maybe-
You know what?
When they get the patent, they don't go around and update those things.
I have things from the 1950s that still say patent pending on them.
They must have gotten the patent by now.
I don't know.
They work pretty slowly.
They've never issued an update for any of these products, so if anyone out there has
any information as to just what this ticking device is that you can sometimes get by accident
if you buy something and the checkout counter neglects to take it off, and also what kind
of phone can we have?
Can we go into a store and cause all kinds of alarms?
Yes, Bernie?
If you know what the manufacturer of the product that it was attached to, why don't you just
call the manufacturer and talk to their customer service department?
I'm sure somebody there might be able to explain this further.
You're suggesting that I call Advil and ask them what the big black device on top of that
product was and what it's capable of.
Yes.
Whatever big pharma company.
They have warehouses full of people who answer the 800 number customer service stuff.
Warehouses full of people.
I'm sure somebody-
Yes.
Okay.
Why don't I just go visit the warehouses full of people?
That sounds more interesting.
Apparently, the two alarm company makes theft prevention stuff, so I'm assuming it has something
to do with that.
I figured it was for theft protection of some sort, but when you steal that, how much of
an effect does it actually have?
Well, these wraps can, I guess, somehow go around the product, but-
Don't pull those.
Yes.
I think maybe they're just meant to hold on to the top of it or something like that.
Maybe there's something inside there that'll retract them a little and grip the thing and
then let them loose when you lawfully buy the thing.
It doesn't explain ... I'm just on their one page for their website because I don't want
to spend the whole time surfing the web, but it doesn't say why it ticks.
Because your phone can't display more than one page, apparently.
That's the real reason.
Okay.
So, Mike, can you hold that up to the mic and let's hear that noise one more time so
our listeners can listen to it?
So it's ticking about, I'd say, once a second, right?
Is that about accurate?
Yeah.
Once a second.
I don't have my metronome with me for comparison.
You know, wherever I put this, I can hear it, so it's really ... I got to give it back
to the person who gave it to me because it's some kind of a curse.
Is it giving you a headache?
Yeah.
You can get a pill for that.
You know, that's interesting.
Yeah.
It is giving me a headache.
Wow.
They're ingenious.
They really are.
Okay.
So that's our little challenge for today.
Also, an exciting announcement.
It's kind of exciting.
I think it's exciting.
We have encoded and put online all the videos from Hope No. 6 from back in 2006.
Yes, it's a conference from the past, but it's fascinating to watch and listen to.
You'll hear talks from hackers about, oh, I don't know, surveillance and what the future
might hold.
There's all kinds of fun things that were covered back then in 2006.
We are in the process of encoding all of the conferences.
Now we have six different conferences all online.
Just go to youtube.com slash channel 2600 and you can watch all these videos to your
heart's content.
In fact, what you can do is you can click on the ... It's called a playlist, the Hope
No. 6 playlist.
And the entire conference will play through in order.
So it's almost just like sitting in a room and not moving.
But the conference had multiple simultaneous talks.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
It would be stupid to play both at the same time.
So what we do is we play track A first, and then when that's over, track B begins.
So if you want us to play it all at the same time, I guess we could do that too, but I
can't imagine anybody enjoying that.
There's some strange people out there.
Yes.
Go ahead.
One of the things that I remember about Hope No. 6, it was the first Hope conference that
Mitch Altman came to, and he said that the experience changed his life.
And if you can claim credit for changing Mitch Altman's life, that is a B in your bonnet.
I'm not saying ... I'm not taking responsibility for it.
I just suggested he go.
Well, no.
He went.
Third person.
Third person, you.
I'm saying anybody who can change his life.
It's amazing because he lives such an incredible life doing what he does, inventing things
like TV Be Gone and the Brain Machine and all that.
So it's great to be able to contribute to people expanding their horizons, and that's
what we've been doing for year after year.
This year, it's going to be in Holland at OM, and it's going to be an amazing time there.
Next year, we're going to do something else in New York, and we'll have more information
on that as that comes up.
Did you see the email that Mitch sent to us today that had a really neat graphic of ... had
a picture of Ed Snowden, Bradley Manning, and Julian Assange, and it had a banner.
It said, at the top of the banner of the picture, it said, if the ... Oh, jeez, I'm trying to
paraphrase.
You know, you're going to bring something up.
It's good to have the quote in your head.
If you're not doing ... If they're not doing anything wrong, what does the U.S. government
have to hide?
It's sort of a spin on the government saying, if you have nothing to hide, then you have
nothing to worry about, about being monitored, you know?
Right.
Well ...
And that's a picture of all three of them.
Was that, from that time, they all hung out together at a bar, or was it ...
Well, it was sort of a montage.
Yeah, that's what I figured.
It would be great if we get all three of them in one place.
That'd be fantastic.
Well, all three of them might wind up in one place if the U.S. government has its way.
Hopefully that won't happen, but, you know, I was thinking about this before, thinking
about what the ideal situation would be, and that would be for the ... And, of course,
this is a total fantasy, and I know it, the U.S. government to drop any charges against
Snowden and simply say, come back and be part of a dialogue to help us fix this system,
which is so obviously broken.
Because you are somebody with conviction, you're somebody who has guts, and you're somebody
who knows what he's talking about.
It would be nice to have a sit-down conversation with the American public, but that'll never
happen.
Snowden would be a fool to do, as the U.S. government suggested, if they suggested that.
Well, I know that.
Yeah.
If somehow, somehow something like that were possible.
That's my ideal fantasy there.
Okay, so what are the ...
Neil?
Yes, Alex.
Go ahead, from London.
Oh, just very quick to go back to that point.
Somebody wrote in an opinion piece in the Financial Times this weekend, I think it was
a Harvard law professor, as a matter of fact, saying exactly that, that essentially that
Obama should pardon Edward Snowden, and that people ... You know, Richard Nixon was pardoned,
and that plenty of drug dealers were pardoned, and that this is the type of person who deserves
at least that kind of treatment, the treatment that you would give a drug dealer.
But I think it was a very, very well-reasoned piece, and if the listeners want to go back
and check out the Financial Times this weekend, there's an excellent opinion piece about why
Snowden should come back to the United States and be pardoned.
Well, I'd like to look at a letter that was sent to us by a listener named Jesse, who
says, I'm glad Edward Snowden exposed the government's wrongdoings, but I wonder why
did he ever reveal his identity, and even more so, if he is so against government intrusions
on our privacy, why would he flee to countries that have atrocious human rights records?
Some of these countries stack the bodies of dissidents like cordwood.
Venezuela is most recently guilty of shutting down opposition media outlets and spying on
political opponents.
China, well, I just don't have the time to list its record.
Russia has over 20 million dead before World War II even started.
So Snowden insists on fighting for freedom while seeking asylum in countries that have
banned the word from their lexicon.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Well, Jesse, thanks for your letter, first of all.
You know, I don't see the so-called democratic countries lining up to offer him asylum.
I see only these countries with questionable records that are doing it.
Of course, every country does have a questionable record, if you look deep enough.
But this is not Edward's list of countries that he would prefer to go to.
Basically, he's applying to many, many countries, and these are the ones that are answering.
So a better question is, what are the so-called good guys, democratic nations that you would
like him to go to?
What is their problem?
What are they afraid of?
Anyone else have anything to say to that?
Go ahead.
Emmanuel.
Go ahead.
Speak.
Oh, sorry.
I'm tricky on the phone here sometimes, used to being in the studio.
But I think that's exactly right here, and I think we also have to make the distinction
that if I tell you smoking is bad for you while I have a cigarette in my hand, it still
doesn't affect the argument.
The fact that there could be a hypocritical aspect to the argument doesn't actually affect
the argument itself.
Smoking is still bad, and that is still true.
I think it's a very sad commentary, and I think it's what you were hinting at, that
he has to go to these governments that have these atrocious records.
And what I find is very, very interesting is that these Latin American countries, and
I think we've said this before, the ones that have the most to lose are also the ones being
the most defiant at this point.
But it does distract from the main issue, which is his disclosures.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And it's something to pay attention to.
Let's look at all these countries and see who's not responding, who is offering something,
and why.
I was wincing, though, when I heard the Venezuelan statement where basically they were saying
how, for some reason, they worked Syria into it, and they were talking about how Assad
is the true leader and a peaceful, loving person.
And I could just see Snowden kind of clenching his teeth when that statement was made.
Why does that have to be attached to an offer of asylum for him to actually prop up a dictator
like that?
And that's my opinion.
Rob?
I also think another point in the listener's question is that a lot of the countries that
we, as Americans, are basically raised to believe of as the quote-unquote good guys,
the ones who are out there, the ones who are our friends, the ones who are friendly, are
also the ones who are working very closely with us and the ones that are in the news
a lot lately for working unfairly closely with us on things like letting us monitor
their networks, places like the UK and Germany and European countries like that.
And they're the ones that maybe aren't such good guys after all, much like ourselves.
There was an excellent piece in The Spiegel the other day, the German paper in English,
on their website, exploring the possibility of Snowden receiving asylum in Germany.
I don't know anything about German asylum law, but the person who wrote the article
seemed to think that Snowden would have a very good case under German law, but of course
they won't do it because that would involve annoying the United States, which they really
don't want to do.
He's sort of forced to go to these countries that do not have such great relations with
the United States, and I'm sort of amazed at the number of purported experts in Bolivian
freedom of the press law that have appeared over the last few weeks.
I don't know what they've been doing the rest of their lives, but there's some degree of
skepticism that I have towards these people who suddenly are telling us what countries
are free and which aren't, and it looks remarkably like the list of US allies.
Now was this the Spiegel article that featured an interview with Snowden?
Different article.
Different article, because that article also appeared, where our friend Jacob Appelbaum
did an interview with Edward Snowden.
He and Laura, whose last name I can't pronounce, but...
Well basically what they did was they talked to him before this whole story came out.
Yeah.
And Laura Poitras, I believe, was her last name.
And I haven't read it, but have you glanced at it?
Rob?
I had a look at it, and it was very interestingly done.
Jacob was apparently told that he would be communicating over double encryption back
and forth over secured channels with someone who was going to leak.
This is before everyone knew who Edward Snowden was, and I think Jake mentioned in the article
that he had been at the time expecting that it would be someone in their 60s, but he had
been tapped to contribute some questions on technical matters, his area of expertise
to the questions that who turned out to be Snowden was being asked.
All right.
Bernie, I know you had some thoughts on that particular interview.
I think it was the most interesting, revealing, and informative interview I'd seen yet of
Ed Snowden.
I think Jake Appelbaum asked him some excellent questions.
Not that they're both not under the government's crosshairs right now, both Jake and Ed Snowden,
but there's a potential that Jake may be under even additional scrutiny.
He's probably already under investigation, because the U.S. has already subpoenaed his
electronic communications records from several different companies, but it's really worth
checking out.
You can go to Spiegel, S-P-I-E-G-E-L dot D-E, or just email us at O-T-H at 2600.com, and
we will send you the link.
It's really a very worthwhile interview.
He goes into a lot of ... Ed Snowden goes into a lot of technical details about how
some of the surveillance works, and maybe some ways to protect your privacy, or at least
slightly.
It's a good interview.
We also have these updates.
Ireland denied the U.S. arrest warrant for Edward Snowden.
They said it was incomplete, which sounds really good, but actually what it means is
that all they have to do is get another more complete version of it.
I think it goes to show what you were saying in weeks past, Bernie, that they really do
a half-assed job of filling out these forms sometimes.
Does that surprise you?
It doesn't surprise me.
There's this facade that high-ranking government officials are beyond approach and do things
so well, even if they're career officials, like the person who ... The extradition order
that was sent to Hong Kong for Ed Snowden apparently was missing his passport number
and his middle name wrong.
It's amazing.
Actually, no, it shouldn't be amazing that the levels, that the competence rises to the
top in our government, or any government for that matter.
If you read the questions that the Irish government said, it was really quite interesting.
They were like, hey, these crimes you say he committed, he was not in the U.S. at the
time.
Isn't that a problem?
Of course, the U.S. will say something, and I wouldn't expect that Snowden would be safe
in a country like Ireland.
It was just amazing, the hubris, as Bernie said, of the U.S. government officials who
fill out this paperwork.
What do you mean he wouldn't be safe in a country like Ireland?
I think that if he went to Ireland, the U.S. would eventually get his paperwork in order
and he would be sent to the U.S.
Do you think that would be the case if he went to any country that was an ally of the
U.S.?
Absent some very strong showing, I would think that.
Also, a number of people have been asking, why is North Korea so quiet about this?
Wouldn't they be jumping at the chance?
Well, I guess they are.
I don't think they've actually offered him asylum, but they did produce a video, in fact,
where Edward Snowden is prominently featured.
Oh, there he is.
Yes, this is a North Korean video that basically uses U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden to
highlight what he sees as South Korea's subservient relationship with America.
South Korea is taking sides with its master by rationalizing the idea that any country's
intelligence agencies can collect clandestine information for its own national security.
Let's see if we have any other quotes here.
How humiliating and servile, they say.
Only a puppet government would welcome American activities with open arms and applaud, even
when they commit murder, wage war, or plunder wiretap.
Yes, plunder wiretap.
They're showing pictures of Snowden.
It's fun to watch.
Does that mean the wiretapping is an act of plundering, or the wiretaps themselves are being plundered?
Far be it from me to try and interpret this, but it's interesting to watch.
It finishes by saying, South Koreans frequently rage over our, quote-unquote, cutting-edge
security threat whenever it gets the chance.
A country like this only exists in somewhere like South Korea, where the country doesn't
know how to be angry, or how its temper, or rather, lose its temper in front of its
master, America.
And that's the word from North Korea for this week.
Read the next one, Emanuel.
What's the next one?
This one, it says, in referring to South Korea, the North Korean government saying, South
Korea, it instead can only show its unmanly smile while raging against the same people
by foaming at the mouth.
They are indeed evil forces.
I missed that one.
You know, when you're insulted by the North Korean propaganda machine, you have been
insulted.
It doesn't get any harsher than that.
Oh, they've got pictures of George W. Bush?
Is that...
All right, interesting.
It goes on and on for quite some time.
And they did post this to YouTube, where anyone can watch it.
Well, that's the thing.
Where else are you going to post it?
You have to post it to YouTube.
So we posted Hope No. 6 there.
North Korea posts their propaganda there.
It's where you want to post things to be seen.
And the NSA knows who watches all of it.
That's right.
They get the records on a daily basis.
So, okay, any other major developments in the Snowden case that happened this week?
I know it was revealed that there was a New York Times article about how he was honing
his hacking skills.
In 2010, they say, while working for a national security agency contractor, Edward Snowden
learned to be a hacker.
He took a course that trains security professionals to think like hackers and understand their
techniques, all with the intent of turning out, quote-unquote, certified ethical hackers
who can better defend their employers' networks.
But the certification, which was listed on a resume that Mr. Snowden later prepared,
would also have given him some of the skills he needed to rummage undetected through NSA
computer systems and gather the highly classified surveillance documents that he leaked last
month.
And that's according to security experts.
So I kind of thought that the certified ethical hacker program was kind of total nonsense.
I mean, if you can get one and still work for the NSA, its ethics surely don't match
up with mine.
But in this case, it appears to have been a success because Snowden seems to have turned
into, as far as we know, an extremely ethical hacker, far beyond the expectations of the
certified ethical hacker program.
So good job on that one.
Do you really think that this course is what taught him to be ethical?
Do you really think that's what...
No, I don't.
But, you know, maybe.
Maybe it did.
I just have to make sure because, first of all, in my opinion, hackers are by definition
ethical.
You don't need a course to stick ethical in front of somebody's interests or profession
or whatever you want to call it.
So the whole thing strikes me as sleazy and insulting.
And unethical.
And unethical.
Absolutely.
But people are convinced they need to do this in order to get a job someplace and be certified
as an ethical hacker.
But I think the whole thing stinks of nonsense.
Yeah.
It's just the type of thing where some company comes out with a course and a quote-unquote
degree that you can earn to put more letters on the end of your name when you're looking
for jobs.
And in the IT scene, that can be pretty weighty.
You want to be an ethical hacker, listen to this program, all right?
Read things on the internet and talk to other people.
Go to the conferences.
Learn things.
Learn things.
Communicate.
That's how you get ethics.
Not through a course.
Not through a course.
Not through someone else making money off of you.
So the North Holland Dogblood, the local paper near where Ohm is going to take place.
What's the name of that paper again?
I'm not saying it again.
I pronounced it wrong the first time.
I want to see if you can pronounce it the same way twice.
Almost certainly not.
But they ran an article entitled The Hackers Are Invading.
And it was a pretty good, very short article about Ohm and it's coming up.
But they described the people who are attending Ohm as quote, the good guys.
They used the English phrase.
And I was sort of offended.
Yeah.
Are we the good guys?
No.
I'd be very offended.
I mean, first of all, not everyone who will attend is a guy.
But even beyond that, I don't know.
I didn't like the description.
And this was just a regular newspaper?
The local paper.
Interesting.
Alkmaar, which I'm also pronouncing wrong.
We can have words with them, I suppose, when we're over there.
Now, Alex, what do you think of ethical hacking?
Well, I think to an extent it really raises a question of whether you are a moral relativist
or if you believe that morality is something that's completely objective.
And I think it sounds like we are taking the position that our morality is right and we're doing the right thing.
And I'm not sure if that's entirely right.
I think it raises a philosophical issue that people should look into a little bit later.
But I also think that there was something interesting in the quote that you read about rummaging undetected through these systems.
And I think that might shed some light on our listeners' email as well.
And why I think that Snowden may have revealed himself is because maybe he wasn't rummaging undetected through these networks.
Maybe he copied this data in such a manner that ultimately he would be found out.
And by revealing himself, he was able to control the story a little bit more effectively before it really hit the fan.
Was he actually rummaging through things that he wasn't supposed to be rummaging through?
Or did he actually have access legitimately to all of this and he just chose to tell us about it?
I think he had access to it. Right. Exactly.
And I think that's right. But rummaging, I think, is not a really technical word here.
I mean, obviously, he copied certain things and then violated the Espionage Act by disclosing them.
But I think by copying that, I think that he ultimately would have been found out, which is probably why he chose to reveal himself.
It's my take on it. I have no idea whether or not it's accurate or not.
But I think, you know, what everybody is saying and what these polls are saying is that the fact that people classify him as more as a whistleblower than a leaker demonstrates that there is a very, very ethical component to this and something moral about these revelations.
Okay. We also had developments from Iceland for a little while last week,
when Iceland lawmakers introduced a proposal in their parliament last Thursday to grant immediate citizenship to the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden.
And basically, I think that lasted about a day before they decided to go home for summer vacation instead and just not do anything about it.
Is that an accurate assessment?
So the Pirate Party, which has three members of the Icelandic parliament and three other parties, which collectively formed the opposition, had brought this motion.
And I guess they had had a motion to consider it immediately before the summer recess, and that motion failed.
So there's a chance that if this whole situation is still going on in September, the bill could come back and be actually voted on its merits.
But it seems like he's not going to Iceland.
At least not now. If he did go to Iceland, do you think he'd be safe there? You said he wasn't going to be safe in Ireland. Isn't Iceland also?
I mean, so this is what I was describing as sort of exceptional evidence.
If the Icelandic parliament voted to give him citizenship, that would be a huge sign that they were going to try and protect him.
Okay. Also, there was some more information about the bug that we made reference to in the Ecuadorian embassy.
They revealed some details.
There was an image of the hidden microphone that was used to bug an office in Ecuador's London embassy, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been living for over a year now.
They told reporters the recording device was found beneath a desk in the office belonging to Anna Alban, who is the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United Kingdom.
They said the microphone was discovered on June 16th, and they basically waited to reveal this because they didn't want a visit to London to be overshadowed by all of that.
But there are pictures of it floating around on the internet, and yeah, it's a real thing.
And I guess we shouldn't be surprised by that either because embassies get bugged, but this particular one being bugged by most likely UK authorities at the behest of the US authorities is definitely something interesting.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
Some of our listeners might be interested in knowing that this – I've seen pictures of this thing, and it appears to be what people are saying it is.
Both people in the security countermeasures field and the media are saying this was a – it's called a GSM bug.
It's basically – effectively it's a cell phone but without the dialing part.
And it was hidden inside a mains outlet, like an AC outlet, like behind the power wall plate, and it was wired – it was powered by the mains current.
And these bugs are very hard to detect because the spy can call into the device and turn it on.
It's not always transmitting.
It's only transmitting when it's been called into to – it's kind of like an auto-answering cell phone.
And if you're sweeping a place for bugs, it's very hard to find that if it's not transmitting right then and there, and even then it's kind of hard to find.
So I imagine that embassy is under very heavy visual surveillance, physical surveillance.
And when anybody of interest comes to the embassy, they probably call and turn on a microphone and listen, but not now.
My guess is there's others there they haven't found, so we'll see.
Interesting.
Now, Mike, you said there was some kind of development with the trial of Bradley Manning today.
Yeah.
So as we reported last week, I think the prosecution had wrapped up its case and the defense was to start its case on Monday.
And it did start on Monday and it finished today after only three days and ten witnesses.
Wow.
That's – I'm a little disturbed by that.
Yeah.
It seems like they didn't have very much to say.
I don't quite know what to make of it.
Of course, Manning has already pled guilty to a number of the charges, so there was no defense to be made there.
They were trying to defend him against this aiding the enemy charge, which still seems really weird to me.
So they called people like Yochai Benkler, the professor who studies media and its effects.
But I don't know.
I hope that the lawyers know what they're doing, but I don't know.
Do we have an idea as to when the sentence will be passed down?
Well, the verdict first.
Verdict and then the sentence.
I guess I'm assuming what the verdict is going to be because there wouldn't be a sentence if there was.
Well, I mean, there will definitely be some findings of guilty, I assume, to the charges Manning already pled guilty to.
But there was also a number of restrictions as to what the defense could present evidence about.
A lot of the evidence they wanted to present as to sort of the effects of the disclosures, was anyone actually harmed by them, that sort of thing,
the judge has ruled that cannot be presented until the sentencing phase.
So maybe there'll be a bit more robust testimony going on then.
Now, does this mean that—it must mean there's no more activity there.
We shouldn't be encouraging people to go down there anymore because it's over, right?
I don't know how it works, but I assume you're right.
What else would they be doing?
I don't think their defense is rested and the prosecution is rested.
There might be some closing statements.
I don't know anything about how it works.
All right.
Well, go to BradleyManning.org for more information.
Yes, Alex.
Oh, yes.
Well, there could be some motions towards the end of it.
And the fact that it only took three days for the defense to mount its case doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.
I mean, we also have to remember that it's the prosecution's burden to prove its case.
And if they do a bad job proving their case, if they haven't hit on every single element of this aiding and abetting of the enemy crime,
then the defense doesn't actually have to do anything.
They don't have to actually put on a case whatsoever.
The defense can simply say to the judge, we believe that the prosecution hasn't made their case,
and we move for a directed verdict right now, and the judge can say, I agree, and then dismiss the charges.
The fact that they only took three days to do this, I think, actually gives me some heart,
because maybe there were some holes in that case.
And from the way in which you described the proceedings when you were down there a few weeks ago, Emanuel,
it sounded like they made a very, very boring case.
And maybe there's some validity to this notion that the defense knows what they're doing,
and maybe we could get a good result.
I don't know.
I would love to see the transcripts, especially of Professor Benkler.
It's going to be very, very interesting.
And I would be surprised if the defense made a motion for some kind of directed verdict right now,
at least to preserve the issue for appeal.
The military judge, I think, as we all know, is under a tremendous amount of political pressure
and serves under the commanding officer.
So the commanding officer of the base who referred the charges is going to be a higher rank than the military judge.
And military judge, because of this pressure, I'm not saying that they're completely partial,
but I think it's likely we'll find a verdict.
So there may still be some proceedings where the defense is making a motion for a directed verdict,
and then that preserves the issue for the appeal.
So we'll see. I think we should all keep our fingers crossed.
Just to clarify, Alex, the defense did make these motions.
They posted them to the defense counsel's website.
I haven't had a chance to read them.
I don't know anything about them beyond they exist.
All right. And you can also see the transcripts of the trial.
Where are those transcripts, Mike?
They're at the website of the Freedom of the Press Foundation,
which has, as we've mentioned before, been funding independent stenographers to go in there
and take transcripts because the official transcripts are being held secret.
I don't understand the logic behind that.
If they're going to permit people to make their own transcripts,
why not simply release the actual transcripts?
This doesn't make any sense to me.
Just to make it more of a hassle, I think.
Okay. This seems kind of bizarre.
All right. So we're going to take phone calls in just a little bit at 212-650-5782.
But first, a couple of other stories.
This is something that we got last week, but we got it right at showtime,
so we didn't have a lot of time to really look at it.
There's a story about the United States Postal Service.
Remember them, the people that bring paper mail?
They're supposedly doing something, I guess, in the spirit of this whole NSA thing.
They're logging all of your mail.
They're actually scanning envelopes and keeping track of where mail is coming from and going to.
Is this real? I mean, it was in the New York Times.
It doesn't mean that it's real, though.
I mean, this just sounds kind of bizarre.
Has anyone looked into this more?
I read the article. It didn't seem made up.
Okay. Can you explain what they're doing then?
The Postal Service uses computers to sort your mail
so that they don't have to have humans read the address.
They just have a computer.
Apparently, this computer takes a picture of the mail to look at it.
Apparently, what's news to me is that it keeps the picture forever
and the police can look through them.
Okay. Let me see if I have this straight.
It can basically call up all the mail that goes to a particular address
or a particular name at a particular address
and see where that person got mail from, assuming there's a return address on it.
Apparently, they were using this as part of the cases.
There were some recent cases where anthrax was being mailed around.
They wanted to see everyone who mailed these people.
Even if there's no return address, they can see where the letter came from
by knowing what sorting facilities it went through.
But that's not always on the envelope,
unless there's some secret way that they were able to read that information.
No, but they know which sorting facility took the picture,
so they know where the picture was taken.
I see what you're saying.
Okay. So there's multiple pictures of the same envelope then as it goes across the country.
I guess.
Wow. How long have they been doing this for?
Does it say in the article?
Well, you read the article.
I didn't read it. I just read the headline.
Bernie, do you know anything more about this?
Yeah. It's called the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program,
and according to the New York Times, the program was created soon after the anthrax attacks
in late 2001 that killed five people, including a couple of postal workers.
It says it's a highly secret program that seeped into public view only last month
when the FBI cited it in its investigation of rice and lace letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg.
Okay. Hold on. Let's stop right there. Hold on a second.
It's a highly classified program that was revealed when the FBI made reference to it.
In other words, the FBI inadvertently leaked information about this secret program.
Yes, to quote Rick Perry. Oops.
Okay. So basically they did the same thing that Snowden did, except they didn't mean to do it.
And I'm not hearing a whole lot of talk about how this has irreparably harmed our nation.
That's a good one.
Okay. So now this has been going on since 2001,
and the post office has been scanning every single piece of mail that goes through their sorting facilities
and then logging it, keeping track of it.
I'm kind of amazed by how efficient that sounds.
And it's the post office we're talking about.
If I mailed you a letter 10 years ago, Emanuel, and put my return address on it and your address on it,
if today the FBI wanted to look, like, let's see what email Emanuel received.
You mean regular mail Emanuel received, not email.
Regular mail. I'm talking about snail mail.
They would know.
It was just a regular envelope.
And as Mike pointed out, even if you don't have a return address on it,
they'll know that you received mail from a particular sorting facility
because that's all the post net barcodes in the bottom of the envelope.
We did a really good Hope Conference presentation on that about five years ago
about everything you always want to know about the mail but were afraid to ask
and explain how the post net barcodes work and all that.
It's an interesting thing, but bottom line, it seems like our government is slowly drawing a net around it,
logging and mining metadata about who we communicate with and when and how often, where we travel.
All this stuff, whether it's snail mail, email, phone calls, travel, their license plate readers,
it's hard to see where they've missed anything that they could spy on us with.
It's really worth drawing the parallel with the current controversy over metadata in phone records
because this is basically the same thing.
If you don't quite understand the phone story but you're enraged that they're suddenly keeping all this information
from your postal mail and have been for a dozen years now in secret,
this is the exact same thing they're doing, it's just a different medium.
The FBI employee who leaked this information, I imagine he's to now hold up in Moscow
wondering what's going to happen to him next or is he seeking asylum?
I do want to abolish this word metadata, at least except in specific technical context,
because this is the data, the data of who you called, when and where and why, possibly how,
is important data to the surveillance apparatus.
It is the easiest data for them to mine through automatically.
They invented this word or repurposed this word metadata so that they sound a little bit less scary
than we are getting all your data, but that's what they're doing.
They're not getting all the data because they're not getting the actual contents.
The reason metadata is being used is because data is what's inside the envelope
and they haven't gotten that yet, so we need to be able to talk about the two of them at the same time.
We can call it call routing data or something if we need to be more specific,
but it is data and they want us to think it isn't and we need to be careful.
Well, they want us not to worry about it, not to think that it matters, but here's the thing.
If this upsets you, if you weren't upset by what Snowden revealed,
but this upsets you, the fact that every single one of your pieces of mail,
your address, the sender's address, where it went through, what the envelope looked like,
what is being saved, if that bugs you, then why on earth wouldn't the same information
being logged in email, why wouldn't that bug you?
In fact, that should bug you even more because there's probably a lot more of that.
It's an opportune moment for that to be revealed, that information,
and I have to wonder, the timing of this is really kind of interesting.
When you say, go ahead.
Ed Snowden, in that interview we're talking about where Jake Applebaum asked him some really good questions,
Ed Snowden said, I'm going to quote what Ed Snowden said.
He said, in most cases, the content isn't as valuable as the metadata
because you can either refetch the content based on the metadata or, if not,
simply task all future communications of interest for permanent collection
since the metadata tells you what out of their data stream you actually want.
So I don't think anybody could have said it better.
That sounds a little confusing, so you should probably read the whole interview,
but I thought that was rather telling.
How can people see this whole interview?
Well, they can email us at oth2600.com and we'll send them the link to Der Spiegel
or they can go to spigel.de and search Der Spiegel's website for…
It's just spiegel.de, it's not derspiegel.de?
They probably have both.
It's spiegel, spiegel.de.
All right. Hey, we're ready to take phone calls.
We have about 10 minutes or so left to take phone calls from listeners.
Do you have any opinions, thoughts, contributions of any sort?
212-650-5782.
That is our telephone number here in our Harlem studios.
We're talking about, as we've been talking about the last few weeks,
the Edward Snowden case, the Bradley Manning trial, the Julian Assange situation,
and other bits and pieces of technology that are developing and falling apart in front of us.
Again, 212-650-5782.
Let's see who's on the telephone.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hi. My name is Yanni Floropoulos.
I'm a professor at Montclair State University.
I really want to say thank you,
and I really, really appreciate that you bring these topics up on the radio.
The really remarkable and scary thing is that the U.S. government is currently rerouting
and monitoring pretty much all of the Internet data on the World Wide Web through fiber optics and nodes.
That's one thing that maybe we want to talk about after I finish saying my comment.
The second thing is that the United States is also working with countries like France
in developing a prism-type monitoring system in the French and the French-speaking
and post-colonialized French-speaking world,
along with the German Secret Service and intelligence offices.
The most scary thing is that Great Britain has worked with our spy apparatuses here in the United States
in obtaining the information of both private and government officials within the EU and outside of the EU.
Additionally, the activities that the U.S. spy apparatuses are doing in Brazil and Latin America,
as well as some soon-to-be-revealed stuff that's happening both in South Korea, Central Asia, and Japan,
is really, really a brave new world in what we consider to be privacy and our rights.
This is beyond what the U.S. government is doing.
This is beyond U.S. hegemony.
This is beyond technological snooping or spying.
Governments are lying to their citizens on their cooperation and collaboration with the U.S. intelligence community,
both private and government.
And at the same time, they're lying to their people while saying that the U.S. is some evil constituency.
And I'll draw attention to what happened in Germany prior to the releasing of information
that the German spy agency was working with the NSA.
You had German politicians saying that, you know, America's an evil empire
and we should reconsider our U.S. and EU free trade talks,
when in fact they were in cahoots with the NSA and the CIA
and the new face recognition system that the FBI is talking about.
And the third thing that I want to end with is that we have many different spy agencies in the United States.
It's so vast that the information that's gathered by many of our agencies are confusing,
meaning that the information cannot be disseminated properly because there's just so much information by so many actors.
Think of Edward Snowden.
He's a low-level guy. He's a nobody.
Can you imagine what people with top clearance see and what they do?
Regardless of what the fiction is about the FISA courts,
people that really, really monitor our information are not known, are not accountable, and extort people.
The whole situation with Morales and the situation with Bolivia in the European Union
is evident that the countries that were spied on by the U.S. government via the NSA
were the same governments that denied the airspace to the Bolivian aircraft.
We are spying on private citizens, on corporations, on government officials.
This goes against Article 41 of the UN Charter.
This goes against the Geneva Convention.
This goes against almost every single aspect of customary international law.
We are declaring a war on every single nation via intelligence, via economics.
And I really thank you guys for bringing up this stuff.
And if you want, I'll get off the air. I'll stay on the air.
But I really want to thank everyone for bringing these issues to light today.
Okay. Thank you very much for those thoughts and for your call and for your support.
And our phone lines are open, 212-650-5782.
And it's interesting what that caller brought up.
And it makes you realize that when they say that these revelations,
revelations of Bradley Manning, revelations of Edward Snowden, are being used to help the enemy,
it makes you realize that that's us. We're the enemy.
We're the people that aren't supposed to know about this.
We're the people that will be empowered with this information.
And that is how our governments think of us.
So, yeah, it should make you angry. It should make you indignant.
And I'm sorry I talked too long and we lost that call. Here's another one.
Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
Hey, I got right through and just called.
That's what happens. We only have one phone line.
I did email Bernie a while back.
And regardless, there's a project going on with an Iraq thing, but they're doing a smart card over there.
I believe it's IQcard.net or something,
but it's about a card that they're loading to put money into.
It's like a debit card for their citizens.
But there's quite an economy building over there,
and I think it may become a bigger thing than we see it at first, and I don't know that.
And I just think it might be interesting.
And I'm relating back to it might be, gee, you want to spend something off the card.
We're going to know exactly where you are, what you spent, and what you spent it on.
This is a card for who exactly?
Iraq citizens, Iraqi citizens.
Why would Iraqi citizens be using a card that we give them?
That their government's giving them.
Oh, interesting.
But their currency and their economy and their whole government is going to just soar.
So the card may soar in ways that we didn't plan,
and their whole economy may soar in ways that we don't even conceive of yet.
And you're saying that this is being used kind of as an experiment to see if this works,
and then it will in the future be applied to us?
I don't know if it's an experiment, and it may be.
Yes, it may be.
It may be a form of, you know, when they say they want to put the chip in or something.
But it's just a card.
But again, if everyone starts using it there,
they can monitor everyone more easily or monitor their expenses.
I fairly regularly engage in electronic commerce using a card,
so I'm not sure exactly what's new here.
Well, it seems this one's more all-encompassing.
Is that the case?
You know what it is?
It's a huge worldwide project.
Not the card, but currency resetting thing.
It's a global resetting.
Things are going to change, like soon.
And I'm not saying this card is behind it,
but it may end up that this may be one of the premier cards or currencies
or things to be involved with.
So if it really has a great Grand Slam home run going on,
maybe the card will become more prominent than we ever conceived.
Okay.
Well, thanks for the information.
And something else to watch out for.
See if we can fit in one or two more phone calls.
212-650-5782.
This is off the hook here on WBAI.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
Yes.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
I just wanted to bring up the fact that nobody's read that book, 1984.
Nobody's read that book?
I think everybody's read that book.
Well, if they did, then we would definitely know what's going on is what was predicted.
I think the people in charge have read that book, too, and took notes.
The really funny thing about that is that sales of 1984 have apparently spiked unbelievably
over the past year or so with all this going on.
That's interesting.
Actually, I think that they've soared 7,000%.
7,000%.
Wow.
Okay.
Let's see if we can take this other call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yeah.
I'd like to make a comment.
Go ahead.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
You really got me thinking when you mentioned about us being the enemy, the American people
being the enemy.
I think we got into this mess by the philosophy of social Darwinism.
Social Darwinism is not based on science.
It's not Darwinism.
It's something that countries pick up when they have a fascistic mentality.
Hitler used it.
It basically says that Hitler basically told the German people that it's either them or
the world.
The world wants to kill them.
That's how he got his foreign policy going.
He got their approval to go into other nations.
They were threatened.
Interesting.
Basically, instilling fear in people is a way to gain more power.
Yeah, but it's more than that.
It's a social Darwinian way of looking at things, not knowing that it's not based on
science.
It's not what Darwin said.
I think it's never attacked, though.
It's very subtly given to us on TV with the animal shows.
Okay, here we are in Africa.
Let's watch this lion kill this thing.
This is the way of life, by the way.
The animal show.
Okay, well, I've never heard that before, but I guess there is something to be said
there.
Animal shows definitely play a part.
Listen, we're going to have to leave it there, though, because we're out of time.
Thanks very much for all the calls.
Alex, any last words from London?
Well, I would just like to say goodnight to everyone.
It's just about 1 a.m. here.
There was absolutely no chance I was going to fall asleep during this incredibly invigorating
discussion, so thank you all for that.
Well, I'm happy that you stayed awake.
Bernie, I'm happy you stayed awake, too.
I think our listeners all stayed awake, as well.
For those of you who might have fallen asleep or are listening to us later on, you can always
write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'll maybe read your email over the radio next week when we're back.
American Mass Media is a marvel of technology.
It is whiz-bang, sparkle glitter, and satellite wizardry.
It is a master plan of methods to communicate in a pauper's worth of substance.
With such technology, how are people so woefully misinterpreted?
The average American neither knows nor cares about the vast world beyond the nation's border.
In every phase and facet of national life, there is a war between stories, resistance,
and story resistance.
Samanu 4 Off the Hook will be back again next week.
Same time, same place.
Stay tuned for the personal computer show here on WBAI.
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E-D-O-Y
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to devastate any nation which initiates a nuclear attack.
Proceed in developing nuclear weapons to maintain this superior capability for the defense of
the free world against any aggressor.
Scientific development of new weapons has reached a point where effective progress is
not possible without such tests.
Rebel with the God of Magnificence.
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Lots of it on film and in the studio.
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Rebel with the God of Magnificence.
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Deals consummated in one laboratory.
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