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Time for Off The Hook.
Thank you for listening, give us a call.
And you are listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
And you are listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
As we are joined tonight by Mike.
Hi there, how are you feeling?
I'm feeling better, thank you very much.
But let's not interrupt the introductions first.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening, I'm feeling fine.
Alex is here.
Good evening.
Kyle.
Good evening, I'm always fine.
And Bernie S.
I'm feeling fine in Philadelphia.
Okay, we're all feeling fine.
It's good to have that established.
Yes, I was out last week.
Kyle was out last week too.
That was basically his ride.
But I think we're all healthy this week.
And we're not out next week, I understand.
Because there's a Pacific Archive special for two days next week.
We have some interesting things to talk about today.
We might be talking to some Romanians.
We might be.
We're not sure yet.
We're trying to get the phone number.
To get the phone number, we need to get onto a network.
To get onto a network, we have to perform some kind of sorcery.
And we're working on that right now.
But in the meantime, we have plenty to talk about.
All sorts of things going on, as usual, in the hacker world.
In the espionage world.
In fact, we have, in all the craziness, I forgot to put on our new espionage music.
So, hang on.
It takes a while to load things.
Are we on?
We're on the network?
Yeah.
Actually, we've played this before.
We've played this before.
Well, there's been espionage before.
There's been lots of espionage before.
But this is our new espionage theme.
What do you think?
I feel surveilled.
I don't trust it.
This is the music that you will be getting used to.
Oh, I like this.
This is good.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Combustible Edison, I believe, is the artist.
I'm seeing, like, British cars, maybe some weapons, some secret agents.
People always think of the British when it comes to spying.
Why do you think that is?
Well, my media appetite was well satisfied with a fine amount of 007 and that kind of stuff.
So, I'm probably terribly skewed in that direction.
I've been just saturated with that in my upbringing.
Okay.
We have gotten the phone number from the Romanians.
So, I'm going to be setting that up.
This is the perfect music to play while I'm doing this.
I'll be setting up the contact that we'll be making with Romanians in just a few minutes.
Can I ask you folks to carry the show a little bit while I deal with accounts and passwords
and network connectivity and things like that?
Alex, you seem eager to go.
Sure.
Absolutely.
Why not?
I'm always happy to carry the show.
Well, I have an interesting update from the EFF, actually, which was a press release issued today,
which involves some parties that I think we'll all remember.
What kind of parties?
Judicial parties.
Oh, cool.
That's way more dull than the kind I thought you wanted.
That's right.
Parties in the sense of the plural noun parties of being individuals.
Well, please, go on.
Do tell.
I will, indeed.
I will, indeed.
The EFF filed an appeal in the Second Circuit to protect all people, environmental activists,
from the prying eyes of—now, get this.
We're not talking about the NSA.
We're not talking about the FBI or GCHQ, as it would happen when it comes to the Brits.
We're actually talking about the prying eyes of Chevron.
Chevron.
Yes, exactly.
If you want to say that in unison one more time, that would be great.
I think it's this music is really making it hard to focus on what you're actually saying.
I like the musical background.
I'm in the spirit, definitely.
I was going to say the city zoo, but Chevron.
So, yes, Chevron has been engaged with these environmental activists in about a two-decade battle in Ecuador
with regard to damages arising from some drilling that they did.
And all of this probably should have ended in 2011 when there was a judgment against Chevron for about $19 billion.
And this judgment was then subsequently upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court.
Now, however, Chevron is contesting this judgment in the United States, in the Southern District in New York,
by way of a, I believe it's a civil RICO suit, RICO being the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act.
And they're basically claiming that this judgment in Ecuador was procured by fraud.
Now, as part of this, what they did here in the United States was issue a subpoena to Microsoft
claiming they want the IP addresses, the mailing addresses, the billing information, the home information,
and basically the entirety of 30 different activists' email accounts for the past nine years.
And this was actually upheld by, and I think a lot of people will remember his name,
by Judge Lewis Kaplan here in the Southern District of New York.
Bernie remembers Judge Kaplan.
We were all there, weren't we?
Old Cappy.
Absolutely.
Yeah, Old Cappy.
Oh, boy. What's he up to?
Well, apparently he's up to ruling that the First Amendment was not violated when it came to this overly broad subpoena
because most of the people were not actually American citizens, so they weren't afforded the protection of the First Amendment.
And so this is actually on appeal right now to the Second Circuit.
And the EFF on Halloween has filed an appeal to the Second Circuit claiming that Judge Kaplan was both wrong on the law
and wrong on the facts because, in fact, one of the activists, I believe, according to the EFF, was, in fact, an American.
But this is very, very interesting, I think, in the context of what we've all been talking about for the last several months now.
But we're dealing not here with the government, but we're dealing with a private actor, a big corporation,
who just through a very simple legal process known as a subpoena can demand access and require a service provider
to provide your entire e-mail inbox for the past nine years.
And having been a young associate at a big law firm many years ago,
it just makes me sick to my stomach to think that there would be people like me trolling through nine years of e-mails of activists.
What do you guys think about this?
So the gist of this was that it was OK for an American concern, Microsoft,
to violate the privacy of all these people when it was thought that they were all foreigners.
That's right. Well, the First Amendment didn't apply. That's right. In that sense, yeah.
And here we're also dealing with something where we're talking about nine years.
So I think Chevron would have a decent argument to say that, well, look,
relative to the two decades that this battle has been raging is actually somewhat narrowly tailored.
But what we're dealing here with is several years ago,
it would have been very, very difficult to just get nine years of data and hand it over to somebody.
But now that everyone's e-mail is stored in some kind of cloud,
it's very, very simple for someone like Microsoft or Google to simply just put it on a disk and send it over.
I mean, nine years of e-mails is barely that much data, I would imagine.
I mean, this is why I think it is dangerous when people who who we generally like make arguments that are rooted in the First Amendment.
They say you're violating my rights as as under the First Amendment.
Or they say it is outrageous that the NSA is spying on Americans or these other sorts of I'm going to call it friendly American exceptionalism.
You know, and again, from people I generally like.
But I think when we're dealing with large entities like Chevron who can jurisdiction hop or large entities like the NSA who have partners in other jurisdictions,
it is really dangerous to rely only on your own national government to protect your rights.
And I think it is important to remember that people outside the United States have rights, too.
And this is something we say from time to time on this show.
But I go to conferences overseas and Americans show up and start talking about the First Amendment.
And and the people overseas just sort of like roll their eyes because they know the First Amendment doesn't protect them.
So I have a caution for people who are defenders of civil liberties to to remember the foreigners.
Yeah. And what's very interesting is the fact that I completely omitted when I was detailing the facts earlier.
But these people whose email addresses are the subject of the subpoena are not accused of any wrongdoing.
They're actually not accused of partaking in this supposed fraud that procured this judgment.
So these are just people on the fringe that are associated with the people who supposedly procured the fraud.
So this is even even broader when it comes to that.
I mean, but think of the effect, the chilling effect, though, that this will have.
You know, if you can imagine the associative network that these people have over the last nine years, if you're an environmental activist to give that all to Chevron.
Yeah. What about alternate uses of that data once it's once it's subpoenaed?
And I had a question, Alex, what power? I mean, what what is the expectation?
I mean, of Microsoft to comply the subpoena that that is a subpoena.
Right. That's like a serious deal. Right. That that holds a lot of power over that particular corporation.
And that's being wielded from Chevron. Yep. That's absolutely right.
Yeah. And in fact, if you go back to the Latin root of subpoena, it means it's subpoena, which means under punishment.
So if you don't comply, you're going to be punished. And if you don't comply with a subpoena, a subpoena specifically is authorized by a by a judge as this one was.
You can be held in contempt of court and that can actually you can you can be thrown in prison for not complying with a subpoena.
You can be seriously fined. And in fact, you know, it's really important to remember that, you know, as an attorney, let's say that you and I have a civil suit against each other.
I can just issue a subpoena demanding all different types of documents that are relevant to whatever the case is.
So we I think we have to be very, very mindful that there are there are private actors that can use pretty simple formal legal process to demand the same things and the same data that governmental agencies are accessing all the time.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just wanted to first, I think, since we don't all know and not really love Judge Kaplan because he was involved in some bad, we think, some bad rulings in the ECSS case back in 2000 or so.
He doesn't seem to want to say no to big corporate interests, in my memory.
But in any case, what what's the argument that Chevron is using to say that all these environmental activists information should be e-mails for the past nine years should be turned over if they're not party to the to the alleged fraud?
What's the connection? I don't get it.
Yeah. Alex, how do you decide what's relevant or how do they decide what is relevant to be included in a subpoena?
What are the guidelines for that? Or you might have already spoke to that a little.
Well, relevance depends on the case and it depends on the arguments and depends on the lawyers.
I mean, you can make some cases relevance can be deemed to be very, very broad.
In other cases, it can be very, very narrow.
But here we're claiming here the issue is, you know, was this judgment procured by fraud?
Were these people somehow involved in the procurement of a judgment by fraud?
And if the lawyers for Chevron can make a case that somehow these e-mails could tend to prove that a fraud existed, then they're relevant to the case.
So it's, you know, it's tricky.
It's done by a case by case basis.
I mean, it's a defined relevance is really a defined concept, but it's always relative to the issue at hand.
I'd like to break away now and read a letter from one of our listeners.
And you can be one of the people whose letters we read on the air by writing to us, OTH at 2600 dot com.
Give us your comments on the discussions you hear on off the hook and bring up your own talking points as well.
This is from Action Nate.
You touched on a very important point about government espionage versus corporate espionage.
The US is building a mass storage device for storing everyone's data forever for law enforcement purposes.
I'm not sure device is the right word.
Well, like a massive amount of acreage in Utah.
There could easily arise a situation where a mega corporation is in direct conflict with the government contractors and technology providers who have access to this data for any reason.
Even if the government corporate infrastructure can be trusted, a law enforcement might be tempted to sell sensitive corporate information to a rival corporation.
Because mega corps cannot audit secret programs that they cannot even talk about.
They cannot be sure of their data and who is reading their communications.
They are now aware that every phone call, email, text message and phone call of every employee and contractor for the last 10 years are now stored permanently forever.
There is likely a significant competitive disadvantage of basing your business in a country where you cannot keep a secret.
Perhaps the self-interest of the mega businesses will save us all.
Anyone have any comments on that?
I think they might somehow save themselves.
But the interest of the businesses saving us all is, alas, an unlikely outcome.
Not intentionally save us all.
But by us being around, maybe we'll be saved by their self-interest.
Possibly.
Yeah.
Sounds good to me.
Make it happen.
Yeah.
We'll see.
We'll be logging this as it proceeds.
Okay.
We have made contact with people in Romania.
And what we're going to do now is call them live.
First of all, I just want to bring this up to you guys who probably have never heard of this.
Have you ever heard of DEFCAMP?
No.
DEFCAMP.
DEFCAMP.
It's not a camp for deaf people.
No.
Well, I'm sure that's what you'd call it if you did that.
I knew that was coming.
Maybe already there is one.
I don't know.
Well, when you hear DEFCAMP 2013, what do you think?
It's not DEFCON either.
It's basically a hacker slash security conference taking place in Romania.
This month, the 29th and 30th of November, the Crystal Palace Ballroom is hosting one of the most mesmerizing events of hacking and information security in Romania.
I'm reading their words.
Now, in its fourth year, the event continues to impress its audience with knowledge sharing, competition with various levels of difficulty, Romanian foreign speakers, all sorts of surprises and fun.
And one bit of surprise and fun that we're going to have is calling them live on the air.
Do we have a dial tone?
Is that a dial tone?
That's what they sound like?
So I guess I have to dial 9 first.
No, no, no, no.
I don't want that sound.
I don't think that's the right line.
Let's try this one over here.
It's the same tone.
All right.
Let's try dialing 9 again.
Yeah, this isn't working out very well.
Boy, the challenges we face here.
Okay, Bernie, I'm going to have to put you on hold because you're unfortunately part of this whole phone operation at this point.
I can't hang up that line.
Hang on.
Okay.
Do we have a dial tone now?
Can I hit 9?
All right.
We'll try and get Bernie in a little bit later.
But right now, we have to try and call Romania and see if our circuits actually are working.
And for some reason, I didn't even cut the dial tone.
Wow.
Boy, this is a disaster, isn't it?
Anyone have a tone dialer?
How many hackers does it take to dial a telephone?
I don't know.
You need a touch tone pad that works.
Can I get a real dial tone, please?
You see, this touch tone pad is not working.
There we go.
All right.
That's the problem is that half the numbers don't seem to be going through, and I don't really want to broadcast the phone number over the air, which you can do.
Oh, this is ridiculous.
Guys, I'm going to ask you again to carry the show while I figure out how to dial the BAI telephone.
So, Alex, where were you?
I think we were talking about relevance.
Is that right?
Yes.
Well, this will be an interesting case, I think.
So the EFF has appealed to the Second Circuit, which is the federal appellate court for this particular region.
And it will be held—I'm sorry, it will be heard by a three-judge panel.
I don't know exactly when the case will be called, but it will be very, very interesting.
Let's pick that up in a little bit because we're ringing a phone in Romania now.
Oh, look at that.
Hello?
Hi, is this Anatole?
Yeah, this is me. Hi.
Anatole, hi. It's Emmanuel over at Off The Hook.
We're joined by our staff of co-hosts here.
And we are live on the radio in New York City, and you're in Romania, correct?
Yes, I'm here. I heard live just now.
I'm sorry?
I was listening to the—
Oh, you were listening. Okay, great.
Well, then you're sort of caught up.
We're going to try and bring Bernie in again.
I don't know if I'm going to regret this.
You might hear a horrible noise. If that's the case, we'll try and stop it.
Hang on.
And, Bernie, are you there?
Bernie, are you there?
Yes, I'm here.
Okay, great.
Anatole, can you hear Bernie?
Yes.
Okay, Bernie, can you hear Anatole?
Yes, hello, Anatole.
Hi, Bernie.
Okay, well, I guess this is as good as it gets.
Anatole, tell us what DeafCamp is.
Okay, so it's not Deaf People's Conference, as you thought initially.
It is a defense camp.
That's where the name comes from.
It's the fourth edition, and it was really, really hard to bring it.
Okay, so it was hard in the beginning.
The CEO of the organization, when they organized the first event,
he was literally begging the speakers to come and present,
because everyone was thinking it's illegal.
It was that kind of freak out people.
Well, we can relate to that.
We run a conference ourselves here in New York,
and sometimes we do have to beg people to present,
and sometimes people do think that it's illegal, and it certainly is not.
Yes, it's certainly not illegal,
but the speakers that presented in the first edition
were from the southern communities here in Romania,
and it was a little bit tricky to convince them to show up,
their real names and stuff like that.
That was the thing.
And that was four years ago, 2009?
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Now, are there many hackers in Romania?
Oh, yes.
There are pretty much, pretty many hackers, literally hackers.
There are a lot of good people out there, white hat hackers.
A lot of penetration testers, a lot of red teams and stuff like that.
This year, for example, we will have speakers from KPMG,
from the CEO of CyberGhost, if you heard about CyberGhost,
it's a VPN service.
The speaker of the CyberGhost will talk.
Our sponsor, BitFinder, also will have a speaker at our event.
It evolved a lot since then.
And about how many people show up?
We expect to have about 300 this time.
Okay.
The first edition, it was basically more like a meetup of hackers,
but we slowly, step by step, moved to the other markets, like companies.
We invited basically everyone who is interested in security, not just hackers.
But there's a lot of technical stuff also.
We're trying to keep this balance.
For example, this year, we have Miatia,
that's in your presentation, Shadow Lab,
as an HP Enterprise Security app speaker.
Also, we have Nathan Wacholet, the HTTP hacker,
also from Shadow Lab.
Our keynote speakers are Raul Novate-Chiesta,
the founder and the president of the Security Brokers.
He's from Italy.
And Carsten Ehram, Chief Research Officer at Risk-Based Security.
So it's a pretty high level.
So though you guys have grown pretty quickly,
there's still a pretty good balance between individuals and people
doing their own projects, and some people maybe representing
larger projects and corporations.
Yeah, that's what we try to keep this balance.
Sounds amazing.
Now, the website is defcamp.ro.
Is that correct?
Yes.
There's also .com that's related to this one,
so nobody can mis-type it.
Okay.
Well, it's taking place relatively quickly.
I only found out about it today,
and that's why it sounds a little bit rushed,
because we only found out you guys existed.
It's taking place the 29th and 30th of November,
and I realize that's short notice for people to book flights to Bucharest
and Romania.
But if you're already in Europe, maybe it's not so much of a trek.
Tell me, Anatole,
have you made it to any other European or American hacker events?
Well, I haven't attended yet to any other conference
outside the country right now,
but Andrei, the founder of Def Camp,
has attended multiple times to different events like Black Hat,
a couple of events in Amsterdam, as far as I remember,
and stuff like that.
Also, he was at an activity in Hungary.
He travels pretty much.
Now, this is an annual event,
people just finding out about it here in the States.
You're planning on putting it on again next year at about the same time?
Yes.
Okay.
We might send a contingent of people out there to check it out.
I've been to Romania once.
It's a fascinating place,
and I'd certainly like to meet a bunch of Romanian hackers.
Anatole, I have a quick question.
You're actually very welcome,
and we would be very happy to have you again at our event.
Is there anything you could tell us about this venue, the Crystal Palace?
It sounds pretty ornate.
Well, we had a couple of choices.
They had better internet, so that's it.
That's a good one.
It's just a place that we usually organize big events at.
It's pretty nice, and as I said before, the internet is pretty good.
We had a couple of problems at the past event with internet.
It was dropping just every five minutes,
so this time we said, okay, Crystal Palace it is.
That sounds great, and it's attracted quite a few people.
You guys have a lot of people interested in showing up?
Yes.
Our tickets are almost sold out, actually,
and if you want to join us, we're tied up, really.
Anatole, this is Alex.
A quick question for you, and maybe Emmanuel can answer this too,
but if you're an American traveling to Romania,
are there any travel restrictions?
Would you need to get a visa before you enter?
Do you know about that?
No, there aren't any restrictions.
Just get the plane and come.
Fantastic.
Drop us an email if you need some help with the hotel or the guides around.
Just drop us an email.
I wish I had known about this sooner, because I'd love to go to Romania again.
It's a fascinating place, but definitely putting it on the calendar for next year,
I hope some of you guys can make it to Hope X,
which is our conference taking place next July.
Maybe some of us can make it to CCC in Hamburg this December.
We would like to.
All right.
First of all, I'm called Sam,
and I would love to participate this year.
Okay.
Well, we hope we're able to stay in touch.
Again, the website for people to get more information about DEFCAMP?
Just DEFCAMP.ro, D-E-F, not DEFCAMP.
Right, and .ro, DEFCAMP.ro for Romania.
And please send us an email, let us know how it goes.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I think we've got the satellite effect here.
Anatole, can you hear me?
Hello? Hello?
Yes.
What was that you wanted to say?
DEFCAMP.ro, DEFCAMP.
Okay.
Well, thanks again for staying up until after 2 in the morning your time,
and best of luck with DEFCAMP.
We'll be checking in,
and hopefully we'll hear from hackers in other countries as well.
And we hope to see you at some other hacker events yourself.
Yes, surely.
It was my pleasure, and I'd really like to see you guys at DEFCAMP.
We were waiting for you.
Okay.
And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight.
Okay, that's what we're here for.
Thanks very much.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.
Thank you.
All right, so there you go.
Oops, I just hung up on Bernie, too.
Well, Bernie, hopefully, will get back in touch with us.
What do you guys think?
DEFCAMP, Romania, who's in?
I would love to be.
I'll put it on the calendar for next year.
Yeah.
I'll go.
Yeah, Romania, it's an interesting place.
It has quite a history, has quite a history back in the Ceausescu days,
in the 80s and beyond.
But it's an incredible environment.
When was the last time you were in Romania, Manuel?
Gosh, that had to have been sometime in the early 90s, I think.
You can probably check on this radio show, The Archives, when I talk about it.
I regret that I won't be able to attend this event,
but I did buy a plane ticket to Hamburg for the CCC,
so I hope to see some of our listeners there.
All right.
And, yes, Chaos Communication Congress, as always,
taking place December 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th,
and second year taking place back in Hamburg.
So that's something to look forward to as well.
At the CCH.
CCH?
What does that stand for?
I think that's what they call it.
I don't know.
Okay.
They just take over places, don't they?
But it's not the BCC anymore.
Not the BCC, because that's in Berlin.
Speaking of the BCC, speaking of the BCC,
Kyle, you and I saw the documentary about WikiLeaks, The Fifth Estate, correct?
Yes, we did.
Yes.
Now, I'm sorry, Bernie?
Did you say documentary?
Oh, you know what?
I misspoke.
It's not a documentary, is it?
It just flew over the heads of everybody in this room, too.
But that's what happens when you're presented with things based on fact,
you kind of believe maybe that is fact.
And one thing that this movie did, and if you haven't seen The Fifth Estate,
I do recommend seeing it just for the entertainment sake
and just so you can be part of the conversation.
What they did, this is really unbelievable,
they made a fake chaos congress and had it in the BCC in Berlin.
Can you imagine this?
Can you imagine this?
They made a movie shoot with hundreds and hundreds of hacker-looking people
exactly the same way that the chaos congress would have taken place
in that very building, and they did that for the sake of the film.
It must have been the most surreal experience to see that going on.
There was no rocket outside, though.
They couldn't get the rocket.
They couldn't book the rocket.
Yeah, I don't think CCC would participate.
But what they did get, they got Club Mate like you would not believe.
Everybody was drinking Club Mate.
The fake Julian Assange at one point called it that disgusting energy drink.
I don't know if the real Julian Assange ever said that.
That's something we have investigators looking into right now
because that would be a scandal.
But do you have any feelings on the film, Kyle?
Did you think it did anything justice?
Well, other than referring to it from now on as the Club Mate movie…
It was an infomercial, pretty much, because everybody was…
I was embarrassed.
No, it was an interesting bit of media text.
I don't know.
It had a lot of problems.
It told a story.
About how somebody was good and somebody was evil,
pretty much that's what the story was.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
It was told from the perspective of Daniel…
Domscheit-Berg.
Yeah, and the other last name too he has.
Schmidt.
And from his perspective based on two books
that are pretty much anti-Julian Assange books.
And basically they told the story about how Julian was reckless
and didn't care about exposing the names of people who were operatives
who would be put at risk and how all these journalists
were trying to keep him from doing this.
And, of course, Daniel was standing in the way
and could not understand how people could be so heartless.
It just really was a bit too much, I think.
There was, for instance, the obligatory Manet keyboard
with spinning camera effect.
I believe that was initiated in hackers or something.
Was the text from the monitor reflected in reverse on their faces
like it was being projected?
Easily. I don't know.
Maybe the font wasn't big enough.
I don't know.
It was pretty…
Kevin Mitnick's face showed up on the computer screen
as he was being hacked.
No, that was a takedown.
I'm sorry.
They also had all these 3D graphics of desks
and a very Matrix-esque where they show the concept
of shell people working within WikiLeaks.
And they would illustrate that with rows and rows of 3D desks.
I don't want to ruin it.
I mean, that's probably the most important part of the story.
Kyle, they ruined it when they made it.
I'm so sorry.
You're not going to ruin it.
Don't worry about that.
Good point.
But one thing that they did do,
there was literally nuclear wreckage after Julian did something.
I forget what it was he did.
No, no, no.
What was that again?
After Daniel Domscheit-Berg quit or was leaving,
he basically went into the system and began some cron
or something that started deleting everything.
He erased the garbage files.
Right.
Yeah, he erased the garbage files.
And what, Julian came onto the scene and what happened here?
And there's just nothing but carnage and wreckage everywhere.
It's symbolism taken to the extreme I never thought it could be taken to.
You know, I do have just the smallest amount of sympathy
for the producers here because what actually presumably happened,
which was people sitting at computers and typing,
is really boring on film.
Well, yeah.
Actually, I think Johannes has spoken about this at Hope,
how it's very impossible to show, like,
modern stuff happening in a black box on film.
But it was really terrible.
I don't know.
I wonder what Disney would have done with the story.
I maintain it can be done if done properly.
You can have that same feeling of excitement,
looking at what's on a screen as the person actually typing it
and breaking into the defense department or whatever.
You don't have to have actual torpedoes coming down from the sky
and silicon chips and things presented in real life
to make it something people can identify with.
This sounds like a cartoon to me.
It would have been a good cartoon, actually.
In fact, it would be a good weekly Saturday morning cartoon series
where Daniel is battling Julian
and they just go from secret document to secret document
and little kids take notes.
Lots of action figures.
So much cross-promotion and merchandising opportunities there.
Speaking of which, now I'm going to assume
that a major chapter in this film was Julian Assange
coming on this very program and speaking to us,
so I just want to know who played all of us.
No, no, that was somehow skipped over.
Cutting room floor.
Yeah, oh, and by the way, Har was a warehouse party.
Yeah, Har was represented.
The Dutch hacker camp, two hacker camps ago,
hacking at random.
It was not outdoors.
It was an indoor event, according to the film.
I guess they couldn't get the camp fuel to replicate that.
But I was kind of impressed with CCC.
It looked like CCC, but it was obviously not.
But they actually went to the trouble to do that, go back to it.
Can you imagine somebody...
And then Joey showed up.
Yeah, if somebody made a film about hope
and they actually went to the Hotel Pennsylvania
and just had all these people running around
pretending to be hackers, it would be so weird.
And I had no idea they had done this
until we actually saw it unfolding before our eyes.
The interesting thing, I ask people if they've seen this film
and almost everybody has.
I've heard from so many people this film has done so badly.
We know somebody who runs a theater.
They say never in their history have they had a film
that nobody has gone to in such droves.
He was mad at us, like really mad,
because he thought it might be good.
I don't know.
We had no idea.
We hadn't seen it, and we were looking everywhere for it.
We were trying to watch it when it came out,
and it just disappeared after the first week.
Of course, if you don't want to watch it
but you're still curious about it,
Wikileaks.org has the entire script posted on their site
along with their counters to a lot of what the script is showing.
You can read that in text format.
I imagine the counters are longer than the script.
I think you may be right.
So that's The Fifth Estate.
Is there another film,
is Spielberg involved in something else I hear?
There is another Wikileaks movie, I think.
I don't know much about it, though.
It's Wikileaks 2, The Wrath of Khan, is that it?
Yeah.
The Snowden films, I'm sure.
They're on their way as well.
Okay.
We're going to take some phone calls in just a little bit,
but I wanted to focus on this story
because it's kind of controversial,
and I kind of want to get controversy going again.
Bernie, I know you have some input on this.
There is a bill in the city of Philadelphia.
You know what I'm talking about, right, Bernie?
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to read it.
Let's see.
It's Bill Number 130,584,
introduced on the day after September 11,
September 12, 2013,
by Council Members Johnson and Jones.
Sounds like a good TV series there.
Amending Title 10 of the Philadelphia Code,
entitled Regulation of Individual Conduct and Activity,
by adding a new Chapter 10-2000,
prohibiting the use of a three-dimensional printer
in order to manufacture a firearm
under certain terms and condition.
And, of course, a defined firearm
is any device designed, made, or adapted
to expel a projectile through a barrel
by using the energy generated by an explosive
or burning substance,
or any device readily convertible to that use.
A three-dimensional printer is defined
as a computer-driven machine
capable of producing a three-dimensional object
from a digital model.
The restriction on use reads as follows.
No person shall use a three-dimensional printer
to create any firearm, or any piece or part thereof,
unless such person possesses a license
to manufacture firearms under federal law.
Discuss.
Well, that's the crux of the issue right there, Emanuel.
If you don't have a license to manufacture firearms,
and you do so,
then you're violating the law already.
So I don't see the point of this law.
And Philadelphia City Council seems to get involved
in all these issues that are so far beyond their ken,
like global warming
and 3-D printer applications.
First of all, they have no clue.
And second of all, it's just not...
It shouldn't even be their purview to deal with this stuff.
What about screws?
I think guns are held together with screws, aren't they?
So what if you manufacture parts called screws
with a 3-D printer?
Are you then guilty? This is just silly.
It's very silly.
I work in the 3-D printer industry,
as many people know.
Though, of course, I only speak for myself in this.
But, yeah, as you said,
it's already illegal to make a firearm out of anything
if you don't have a license.
And that holds true if you're using a 3-D printer.
That holds true if you go to a hardware store
and buy a handful of plumbing,
which will probably net you better results
than the common consumer 3-D printer at this point
if you're into making something that blows up.
Is that for sale or for personal use, or both?
That I don't know.
I'm not up on gun stuff.
But the thing is,
what is legal now that will be made illegal
by this piece of legislation?
The answer is nothing, because the laws are already in place,
no matter what tools you're using.
I mean, is somebody sitting around
trying to find a way around the law to build a gun?
Like, maybe if I use my feet to put it together, it's legal.
No, maybe if I do it this way.
No, it's just illegal to make one
if you don't have the qualifications,
if you don't have the certificate to make one.
What about 2-D guns?
Oh, boy.
Is this fair fighting your enemies in Flatland?
Yes, Mike. Yes, it is.
Some of our older listeners
may remember the term zip gun,
where people were making
improvised firearms
out of, like,
car radio antennas,
like the metal tube of them.
This was going on like that.
A zip gun? I thought it was a compressed gun.
No, zip guns were just
homemade improvised firearms.
Out of the telescope?
One of the common parts used
was the bottom part of a car radio antenna.
And this has been going on
for more than half a century.
And there's already laws
against making improvised firearms.
So this is just a silly
exercise and waste of time
by the Philadelphia City Council.
I mean, to me it seems a lot like it's
political point scoring by, was it Johnson & Jones?
Was that the council member?
Good old Johnson & Jones.
He's out there for self-interest again.
Look at these issues
that are hot-button issues
to try to gain support, to make people think
that they're doing something important
when they don't know what they're doing.
Yes, exactly. And 3D printing,
that's where it is in the mainstream consciousness right now.
It's this strange new thing
that a lot of people don't understand.
But, you know, maybe there's a way
that it can be scary to me.
And so they watch the mainstream news,
and the news is just talking about guns
and what you can do with a 3D printer.
And so now, in everyone's mind,
it's associated with guns, and that's scary, and that's terrible.
And, oh, I hope there's some legislator out there
to save me from the perils.
I have a small 3D-printed item
that I downloaded from the Internet and printed out for myself
that sits on a bookshelf in my house
that I point to whenever I start explaining 3D printing
to somebody, and they immediately bring up guns
because that happens now.
And it's just a little placard that says,
no, I will not print you an expletive gun.
But what if somebody
in the future, when these things get faster
and you can produce more items,
what if somebody just makes it their mission in life
to print as many of these things as possible
and just hand them out like candy?
Is that a real
concern that people have?
It's already illegal now to make guns
and hand them out like candy in most of the United States.
So I do have a little bit of sympathy
for the two council people here
who are not allowed to
pass actually effective
legislation to reduce
the number of firearms in their city.
So they're reduced to silly gestures
like this one, but I
don't think it's going to have much effect.
I was at a birthday
party last night where there was a
3D printer we were playing with, and
there were a lot of jokes
about the Philadelphia City Council
swooping down on us
for making parts that
conceivably could be put into
some kind of a gun.
It sounds like a wild birthday party, let me tell you.
But I mean, think about it too.
Really, what are
the legitimate interests in printing
3D guns? I mean, I think Emmanuel
makes a good point, but also on the other hand,
what if you want, with the definition of firearm
there, I mean, that would even
prevent you from printing some kind of
historical replica of a gun from the
19th century that was obviously
not a threat to anybody
today. Or props.
Right. Absolutely.
How do you keep your kids from
using your 3D printer to
print a gun late at night and then shoot
the whole family? That's the
future, right?
The basic idea, though, of trying to outlaw
any use of a 3D printer is you're
outlawing a physical shape, and
that's it. And so what do
you do when somebody outlaws a shape? You print a different
shape. What do you do when someone outlaws that shape?
And it's just really silly to
try and control anything, I think, along these lines
because there's always going to be, you know,
if somebody can do it and they want to do it, they'll do it.
If somebody wants to build a gun right now with off-the-shelf
hardware store parts, they can do it.
The question is, will they? The question is, what are they going to do
with it? The question is, you know, what do you
do after they've done something bad?
Okay, you punish them.
But until then, I don't, you know,
everything's on 3D printing itself as a
subject, and it's funny.
What if you could print
a nuclear bomb on a
printer? I'm just following
the Geraldo questions that
I've been given. Out of the standard thermoplastic
that we usually get with these things, it would be
difficult.
Well, now, you say that now, but in another
five years, who knows?
I think you raise a good point, though, Rob.
I mean, it really is, at its essence, just
a shape. So, would
this law be violating anybody's right to
free speech? I mean, is a shape, do you have
a right to print shapes? Is
a shape, could that possibly
be considered speech?
No.
Exactly.
It's not speech. It's many things.
It is not speech.
But a letter is a shape.
You put a whole bunch of shapes together,
you get a sentence.
This is going down the road I was
hoping was going to go down.
Again, our email address
is oth at 2600.com.
Please, we want to hear your opinions.
Oh, you know what? Our phone number. We have the old
phone number back, right?
Somebody went downtown and brought
the phone number back up here. I don't know how they did that.
The steps and the switch, right?
212-209-2900. I have not
said that in a while. Almost a year.
Say it again, one more time, please.
212-209-2900. Now, me saying that,
am I expected to believe that these lights
will light up now with people calling that number?
I do want to mention one other
silly thing that politicians are
trying, which is Danish politicians are
talking about banning Tor.
And the great thing about
this story, I actually had to check with
a Danish friend of mine, because I'm reading it in machine
translation. I'm like, no politician would
really be that blunt. But apparently they are.
Trini Bramson said,
we cannot deny that there's a need for new forms
of surveillance.
American politicians are more
subtle than that, so I appreciate
the honesty of this spokesperson.
But watch out if you're in
Denmark and you like privacy, they might try
and take Tor away.
For those people that don't know what Tor is, Mike?
Tor is a program you can use to
get some anonymity on the
internet so that the website you're visiting
doesn't know who you are and your ISP
doesn't know what websites you're visiting.
If you would like to learn how to use
Tor, guess what? There's going to be
a little
how-to
this coming Monday
right here in New York City. Bring your laptop,
learn how to use the most popular anonymity tool
in the world, Tor. An interactive
workshop will take you from square one to becoming
a regular user, comfortable
with going beyond the basics.
For more technical users familiar with
Tor, you can come prepared to help others
join the world of online anonymity.
Used correctly, it can protect you
from online surveillance from third parties.
No one can see what you are searching for or what websites
you are visiting.
Various things like that.
And this is taking place
at the
CUNY Graduate Center right here.
Well, not right here, but the same
basic network of
schools. We're at CCNY. Yes,
365 Fifth Avenue,
room 5414,
and that's on Monday from
6pm to 9pm.
Three hours, three hours
of learning how to use Tor.
I do recommend it.
That's really cool.
Perhaps you could even
learn about creating
an exit node and you could
not just use Tor, but you could become part
of Tor. That would be something.
Become part of the conspiracy in the eyes of the government
for sure. Wouldn't that be fun?
Hands-on Tor for civilians. How to set up and use
the most popular anonymity tool.
Let us know how that goes,
folks, if you attend one of those.
We just had a whole bunch of calls and they all disappeared.
How about that? We talked too long.
212-209-2900
is definitely our phone number because
those numbers were lighting up. Those little
buttons were flashing.
We're sorry if we didn't get to you, but if you call back,
we will try. I just want to mention
that the Tor class is being held by
the Open Internet Tools Project, OpenITP.
You can get more information
on openitp.org
and there's an events tab with more information
on this particular event.
Let's take a phone call. Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Listen, I called and it rang for about
a minute and a half and I stopped.
That's because we wouldn't
stop talking and eventually it
timed out, but you're connected now.
I would like to
offer in a humble way because I
don't know everything about everything.
I was involved
in a little CAD cam
when I
was doing my engineering degree,
but I would offer that
the concern is that if somebody uses
these parts of a 3D printer
to make a mold
and from the mold
use things
like steel or
at least metal, something that would hold up
to explosions. We do have
something dangerous. That is very
true. A lot of people rapid prototype
with the printers and then can cast
out of other materials with it.
There are also 3D printing methods
right now that can print directly in metal.
It's known as laser sintering, but that equipment
is still very expensive and beyond the average
consumer, whereas the plastic-based 3D printers,
pretty much anyone can get hold of one.
Isn't discussing this also
potentially a threat?
What if you have a 2D printer
and you print out the blueprints of a gun?
How illegal is that?
Sometimes, as we've
discussed in this program, the distinction between
speech and things that are not speech is blurry.
In this case, Emmanuel, I think it's
actually really clear.
It takes politicians
in Philadelphia to make that clear to us.
We thank them for that.
212, 209, 2900. I don't think there are
the same number of lines here because usually
we get all 12 lines ringing in. It seems to
only go up to 4 now.
We just get the number and one
line for that number. I'd like to know if anybody
gets a busy signal when they try calling us.
They seem to time out very
quickly, too. If you're
getting timed out, please call back because right now, all
the lines went out at the same time. For no other reason,
call to tell us that. Well, we have to
learn. It's important. 212, 209,
2900. We have about five minutes left, and we're not
on next week. This is
your chance to call in and say what's on your
mind.
Faster!
Wow, this is weird because it does seem to be
taking a lot longer for people to get through. Hello!
No, nobody's out there.
I'll just say that I'm into
people who are deathly
into guns.
I'm into their right to print out crappy
ones out of plastic because that means they'll probably blow
their own hands off. Alright, we have a call.
212, 209, 2900.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
I just wanted to put in a
good word for your old theme song,
Please Keep It. The old theme song?
You mean the Off The Hook intro? Yeah.
Oh, we haven't gotten rid of that. That was at the
beginning of the show. We just played the spy theme
as well. Okay. So we're adding
music. Okay.
All the lines are lit up
now, so I guess somebody
heard that. I was calling, by the way, and
the phone was ringing at
the same time you were saying
you lost all your light.
Yeah, well, the reason for that is because
you actually took place
seven seconds ago, and what we're
doing right now is playing the past
over the radio. You're pre-recorded.
You might not know that, but you are pre-recorded
so that when you hear something, it's already happened.
Oh, I understand that,
but I'm just saying that
twice you said that
you had lost all of
your phone calls while
my phone was happily
ringing, and I
couldn't tell that
I wasn't connected up to you guys.
Oh, but you were. It's just that I was in the past
in that particular case. Seven seconds later,
I would have said, hey, here's a phone call. In fact,
that's what I did, and that's how we started this conversation.
It's been ringing for a good while
before you said
you had lost everything.
I can't explain that.
This could be our phone system, but I can
say that we've now lost all the
calls that were, once again,
all the calls that were waiting. We had about five of them,
and they all went off together. That's what's so weird
about this. 212-209-2900,
thanks for that call, and
our phone lines are wide open again.
Perhaps we should
start talking about beauty salons and the FCC.
Why?
What would that do?
You missed last week. Yeah, I did miss.
I missed all of last week, in fact.
Please call in and
keep our heads ringing. Yeah, we're not asking for money or anything.
We're just asking for your feedback and
insight to let us know
that listeners are still out there. We're still here.
You notice that? We're still here, and
it looks like we might be here
for some time to come.
We're not asking for money for a Kickstarter project.
Do we have time to talk about that?
No, because we have calls again, but we will try to talk about that.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Hi, how are you doing?
Okay, what's on your mind?
Well, I like your show, first of all.
Why, thank you.
I like to say that.
And America and the world
is going into a place
that, what are we ponds
going to do?
Okay.
And, uh,
I don't know.
We can't hoard
money. We're poor, and we're just getting
poorer and poorer and poorer.
Uh-huh.
Well, uh, we're not getting
poorer with knowledge, that's for sure. Not around here
anyway. Well, that's not
taxed just yet. Not yet.
But, uh...
I hope not, I hope not ever.
Yeah.
The more knowledge we get, the more threat we are
to those who are in power.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Where are you calling from?
Oh,
I'm from the Bronx.
Okay. Well, um, keep listening, and I'm sure
you'll become richer for it
in that regard anyway.
Yes, yes. It gives me an open mind
and more to think about.
All right. Well, that's what we're about. And thanks for, uh,
thanks for appreciating that. Let's see if we can take one more call.
And good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Yeah, please.
Hi, yeah, I'm calling regarding your program.
I just wanted to make a comment.
I really don't want to make it a lengthy discussion.
But I know that, um,
my father used to use blueprints
to create things. And I believe
that these
3D, um,
replications of guns
or nuclear weapons are
actually like a virtual prototype.
Okay.
But I do have a little bit of a
concern about where they're going to go.
Because of the way that all of the surveillance
is going on with our government,
that anyone who is
trying to obtain this information
from these sites,
the government probably has their number.
That's, um, that's possible.
That's possible. And information is
definitely power and a threat to, uh,
to those in control.
So it's something to, uh, to look out for.
Thanks for your call. Any, um,
Bernie, I know you had something to say about Lavavit.
Well, I don't know if there's time, but, uh,
the guy we were talking about a couple
shows ago, uh,
Ladar Levinson, he's, uh,
starting a, uh, a Kickstarter project
to, um,
uh, to basically release
already open
source, uh, well, basically
open source some, uh, some code
to create, uh,
a new form of encrypted
mail. Something to make it easy.
That's going to have some, uh, features
for what is referred to as dark
mail, right, Bernie? Yeah.
Okay. Well, we really, literally
only have time to give out the information so
that people can participate in that if they want to.
Well, um, there's, there's some
controversy about that, whether this should be funded
or not. But you can just go to, uh,
Lavavit, uh, just search, just search
the search engine for Lavavit and, uh,
Kickstarter, and you can find out more about it.
But you'll also probably find some information about the
controversy surrounding this project because it's,
uh, you know, it's
like, why is this not just, why doesn't he just release
the code? Okay. There's more to it than that.
Well, we don't have time to get into that controversy this week, but
we will get into it in the future and find out how that
turned out. We're out of time. We're not on next
week. Write to us, OTH at 2600
dot com. Emanuel for Off The Hook.
We're going to go out with the theme
from a famous spy movie just so that
we can keep the whole spy thing going for
at least a little while longer. Have a good night.
A man of intrigue, he lives for the thrill.
Always has places to go and people to kill.
Danger is the game he plays, and he holds every card.
Cause if you wanna win, you gotta spy hard.
A man of the world, so suave and discreet.
He trips over the women piled up at his feet.
But evil's lurking, so he's always on his guard.
Cause if you're gonna spy, you better spy hard.
He's always there when the chips are beginning to fall.
He wouldn't care if they kicked him and grabbed him
and shot him and stabbed him and nailed both his ears to the wall.
Facing death every day is a tough job for any man.
But his hours are flexible and he's got a great dental plan.
By the way, if you walked in late, allow me to reiterate
the name of this movie is Spy Hard.
They call it Spy Hard.
You're watching Spy Hard.
It's the theme from Spy Hard.
Yeah! Wow, that's a fantastic deal you got there.
They always have interesting music here at Off The Hook.