2014. What are you going to remember?
In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders.
Let's do it this way. Television, of course, is all right.
You appear, but there is no one around, and then everything is put in storage.
Let's do it as follows.
Tune in for a shortcut, 11 p.m. New Year's Eve, right here on WBAI-FM.
Citizens of Crimea who are first and foremost citizens of Ukraine have been denied their right to objective information, she said, in a newsroom that's now been silenced.
We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine.
I share the enthusiasm of Soviet engineers about the cleverness of the American people.
And the time is just about 7 p.m. You're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York, and it's time for a year-ending edition of Off the Hook.
Now I can't make a call. We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Bondedly bond for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bondedly bond!
And a very good New Year's Eve evening to you. The program is Off the Hook. Rob T. Firefly here with you. I am joined in the studio by Mike.
Hello.
Let's try that again. I am joined in the studio by Mike.
Good evening.
There you are. And who have we got on the phone with us?
Well, gosh, I've been hit. This is Emmanuel here in Hamburg, Germany, joined by Kyle.
Hi.
And we have some guests with us. But we have a message for you first. What's the message?
Happy New Year!
2015 has arrived here a bit earlier than it has arrived for you, and we've just blown up a whole bunch of things.
We're going to be blowing up some more things pretty soon.
Excellent. Well, it's the time for it. Am I right in thinking it's actually exactly midnight just now or just past midnight?
No, you couldn't be more wrong, Rob. It's two minutes after one o'clock.
That's why it's relatively quiet here now. There's only something exploding every five seconds instead of five every second.
Well, that explains that.
Yeah, we're going to try and make up for that by blowing up things ourselves.
Emmanuel, do you know why you're beeping all the time?
Why am I beeping all the time? I don't know. Am I a robot?
Well, there's a beep on your line less than every minute, possibly caused by every explosion, but it seems unlikely.
Well, you might be hearing explosions as beeps, and that is typical of American short-sightedness,
of not realizing when something is actually exploding. To you, it sounds like a beep.
Yeah, explosions over the phone.
That is one possibility.
It's just a working theory right now, but that's what I can come up with.
Well, we'll work with it. We'll work with it. So you guys, you didn't just go out there to watch things blow up, did you?
No, no, no. We came out here to drink champagne as well, and if you hold on one second, we're going to open the bottle.
A different type of explosion?
Yeah, a different type of explosion.
There is some other event going on besides New Year's and drinking and blowing up things.
I'm not sure if you heard that or if you were talking over it, but we just opened up a bottle here and it's over.
I guess the question on Rob's mind is, why are you in Germany in the first place?
Well, that's a good question. The best answer to that question is, do you mind not pouring it all over the...
We were at the Chaos Communication Congress, which is the annual event held by the Chaos Computer Club.
It was in Berlin a couple of years ago. Now it's in Hamburg.
I have to say, Colin will give our opinions on the whole thing.
It is one of the most incredible conferences. It's huge. It's gotten so big.
McFly is here, and he can answer some questions specifically as to how it's grown and some of the particulars.
We'll talk about some of our impressions as well.
The CCC Congress has moved to Hamburg three years ago.
The venue before had 3,500 potential places, and the new venue has up to 13,000.
Before, it was quite an issue to get a ticket.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
We're just toasting here with some champagne.
Before, it was quite an issue to get some tickets.
One year, we managed to sell out in 15 seconds.
There was the need to change something. We couldn't find a venue in Berlin.
We moved to Hamburg.
How many people were there this year?
We were wondering how many people were at the conference this year.
Hello, McFly again.
We were just wondering how many people were there this year.
I remember last year, you were excited to tell me it was over 9,000.
I'm sure it's even more this year.
I don't know the official number because we were already taking down some stuff.
But I've heard the number is over 11,000 this time, so it has grown a bit more to the upper limit.
The big step in the growth was clearly moving to a new venue because the old venue limited us very hard on the 3,500.
And the actual choice we made to move was basically done by the questions of
how do we decide if we only have 3,500 seats, who can come or not.
It shouldn't be a money issue. It shouldn't also be an issue that you are able to write your script.
You can buy tickets even if they are sold out in 15 seconds.
So we really felt that a new venue is needed and we got so much more space in the new venue.
The whole venue just fits in Hall 1 of the new venue, so the whole building.
And we have lots more spaces.
And one of the new things we brought in was the assemblies, which have been at Hope 2.
That actually came to the CCC Congress three years ago, in 1993.
And that was one of the big changes, like having the small villages of people doing things all over the place.
You can basically walk up and down the building and see something new and something exciting every 100 meters.
Any assemblies that were a particularly highlight for you?
Yeah, I wanted to mention the assemblies are actually really critical because they're where people get together and link up.
And those assemblies eventually become villages on the camp where people can get together and catch up from Congress,
maybe share their projects and literally live together a bit on the campsite.
And that's coming up. It's been announced it's a big deal this summer.
Actually, McFly, can you tell us when the next Chaos Camp will be and where it will be? What kind of a place?
The place will be slightly north of Berlin. It will be in a kind of industrial area building.
It's called Zigelei Parks, a factory where you produce bricks.
It's an awesome new venue. We had the Russian airfield for the last two camps.
And one of the points you should possibly mention is the camp is only every four years.
So unlike the CCC Congress, which is every year, the camp is every four years.
And that will be a very awesome place to go for that time.
A rare opportunity. Can you use the bricks to build your tent?
No, you can't use those bricks to build your tent.
But there will be a lot of other possibilities to build a tent.
For example, build geodesic domes or some trucks or other things.
And construction with tarps in between. That's been a nice big thing.
Excellent. So, McFly, what other things have been a highlight for you at this CCC Congress?
Excuse me?
What other things at the Congress have been highlights for you?
The Congress highlights is clearly the point that fingerprints are dead for me.
That is one of the points they mentioned.
They managed to get the fingerprint of the Minister of Defense of Germany
just from taking pictures from the hand.
And they were able to build replicas out of that fingerprint.
That actually worked pretty well.
The all text-based security system with three-factor authorization are dead.
And there are other nice things.
The Citizen Four movie was shown to the hacker scene.
There was a lot of discussion about hacker ethics and all that stuff.
And other interesting things.
Sounds cool.
For those in New York, I finally got a chance to see the Citizen Four movie.
It's still playing here at the IFC Center on 6th Avenue.
And I can't recommend it enough.
The IFC Center, if I remember correctly, is letting people under 17 see the film
even though it's rated R.
Because they're choosing to make it more available.
That's fantastic.
I hadn't actually seen any of Laura Poitras' photography and work.
It was really amazing to watch that and to watch it with other hackers
at an event like this.
So take your friends, take your community and share that.
Because it's really inspiring and really personalizes
what it means to be committed to something
and sharing information that people need to hear about.
Excellent.
And speaking of random information people need to hear about,
we've solved the beeping problem.
There's a big button on the console that says Annoying Beeping.
I accidentally left it in the on position.
But anyway, Kyle, what other stuff is going on out there
that's been a highlight for you?
Hello, Emmanuel.
We're just about to launch right now.
I'm sorry, I have to hand you off to Emmanuel.
We were in the middle of this.
I just wanted to say about Citizen Four
because that was something that I saw for the first time
in a room with several thousand hackers,
which was an incredible thing in and of itself.
But this is a film to take anybody to
who does not believe that what Edward Snowden did was the right thing.
Because you'll see him as a human being
in the days before his name was even revealed
in the hotel, basically just discussing
and theorizing and coming up with all kinds of scenarios
as to what was going to happen in the future.
It's a really good story.
And it's just the most honest representation of all of this.
It's a great contrast to the secrecy
that his actions are fighting.
So whatever Citizen Four is playing in your area
or if it comes out on DVD anytime soon,
make sure the people that see it are not just the people
that get it already,
but the people that don't get it
because there is no better way to convince them
than to show them this film.
Those are always the best documentaries,
the ones that you can apply to actually open people's eyes a bit.
So Kyle mentioned a launch.
What exactly is launching out there?
Right now we have RenderMan on the ground.
He is going to be launching...
Before you like that, RenderMan,
you didn't light it yet, did you?
Can you describe to us what kind of firework this is?
It's square.
It's...
I thought you needed something about fireworks.
Okay.
Alright, so just light the thing
and let's see what happens.
I'm going to back away a little bit.
Get out of my way!
Damn it!
Alright, hold on, hold on.
If there's one thing I know about RenderMan,
it's never get between him and something that's lighting on fire.
I think...
Hopefully you get the point.
It's being made abundantly clear.
Okay, good.
Is it going to stop anytime soon?
How many of these things did we buy?
I think that's the beep right there.
Yeah, that's one hell of a beep.
Okay.
Alright, well that was the first one.
Hey, Bobson is here.
Bobson from Bulgaria.
Say hi, Bobson.
Excellent.
Wow, nice to be here.
I was going to say you're usually on the phone,
but you're on the phone this week too.
How are things?
Excellent.
Happy new 2015, but I guess you have to wait for it
for another five hours or so.
Yeah, we haven't gotten it yet,
so don't break it or mess it up or anything
before we get it because it'll be a second-hand year.
But how's it going out there for you, Bobson?
Oh, I've had the greatest time over the past week or so.
Maybe more around Hamburg.
Nice to run into your delegates.
It was their first time in Hamburg,
and I think they had a great time as well.
Excellent.
Now, you've been there before, right?
To the Hamburg location?
Oh, yeah.
Third year of going.
Excellent.
How's it been growing and changing
in the time you've been going?
Well, this year we had the entire building
all to our own.
We didn't have a lot of space.
We had the entire building all to our own.
There was no place that wasn't ours
for the duration of Congress.
First year we only had part of the Congressional Center
where we're at,
and last year, which was the second year
on this location,
we had all of the meeting halls
and lecture halls and all that,
but there still was a small canteen-type place
that was being serviced
by people who were actually contracted
to service events at the venue with food and that.
But this year,
there were just our folks cooking for everyone.
So here's Emmanuel,
wanting to speak to you,
so I'll be heading over.
Is he still hanging around?
Have a great New Year.
Happy New Year, Robson.
Happy New Year.
I just want to remind people
that this segment of the program
is really going to be only until about half past.
Then I think Bernie's coming in.
We're going to take phone calls a little bit later on.
So we're going to have to move fairly quickly here
from Hamburg, where it's just turned New Year's.
I wanted to,
after risking his life lighting those fireworks,
I wanted him to step in.
He came over here from Canada to CCC
and has stayed on in Hamburg
and has some comments, I believe.
Hello, all.
Hello, Enderman.
It was my first CCC.
Absolutely amazing conference.
Just the people are great.
The amount of,
you know, big hacker family thing.
Running people at the airport
and, you know,
hackers tend to stick out at the airport.
Next thing I know, I'm having coffee with them.
It's great.
Halfway around the world
and it still feels somewhat like home.
It's great.
With horror killer sounds in the background.
What sort of shenanigans are you getting up to
out there besides blowing things up?
Maybe there's other shenanigans
besides blowing stuff up?
Hmm.
No, seeing the sights.
Spending time in Germany,
a beautiful place.
It's just always nice to see people
and new perspectives on things.
To hear Laura Petraeus
and CCC support and everything.
It's just,
as it was being said,
seeing it with a bunch of other hackers
is something else.
It's done by and for the community
and it's really nice to share it.
It certainly sounds like an experience
and I'm sorry I can't be out there with you guys
but I'm enjoying it vicariously through you
so have extra fun for me.
Yeah, well, if you were out here
you'd probably be ducking a lot
but it's pretty interesting out here.
I live in New York,
that's what I'm doing all the time.
But thank you very much.
Yeah, well, bigger artillery here than New York.
Excellent.
Well, it's always good to hear from you,
and stay safe,
come back with all your extremities.
Well, do they still have to be attached?
It's really a decision
I don't think we can make for you
from this across the ocean.
It's just the hassle of having to
check them in your luggage.
I think Canadians have health insurance.
Okay, folks.
The Vendement is going to set up
the second batch of fireworks right now
because the thing is
you're required to light them every,
was it seven minutes?
Eight.
Or you have to get out of the street.
So we're lighting the second batch now
but I wanted to tell people,
actually Vendement, don't do that yet.
I just wanted to tell people first.
We had this amazing event
at CCC.
There were so many
good talks taking place.
Kyle and I wandered into
this massive room at one point
just because we wanted to sit down
but we wound up seeing a talk
by a parliamentarian
from the EU, EU parliament member,
the EU parliament member who was elected
as part of the pirate party in Germany
and she was talking about
how they're going to be fighting copyright
in 2015.
It was just such an incredible thing
because part of this community
is actually part of the government as well.
It's a tiny part,
one person doing all this
but the one person is actually in there
influencing people
and it's that kind of magical spirit
that you see in a place like this
and hopefully we'll see that someday
in our country because this is really
how you affect change,
how you get things to be different.
But there are other places too.
There are many talks going on
in prompter areas,
in the hallways,
upstairs by the massive room number two
there is an impromptu tea house
where people would just come and have tea.
Around the clock you'd just sit down
and somebody would come and give you tea
or tea masters.
There were instructions on how to become a tea master.
There are all sorts of rules
and pleasant rules,
things like that,
and people to meet and it was just amazing.
What happened there
at the beginning of the conference
was something really incredible.
It was 25 years ago,
in 1989,
that the historic gathering
known as the Galactic Hacker Party
took place in Amsterdam
and that was when so many people
met for the first time,
so many countries,
hackers from different countries got together.
It was the first time I'd ever gone to Europe.
I met Rob,
I met Andy from CCC,
I met Val Holland
and the idea was to have a reenactment
of a debate
or a conversation
between Val Holland
who was one of the founders
of the Chaos Computer Club
and Pengo who was a hacker
who had actually sold information
to the KGB
and basically brought disgrace
to many in the hacker world.
There was a debate.
Val Holland was very upset with him
about this and Pengo was defending his actions
saying that he had no morality
and basically this was
the right thing to do.
Now this conversation
had taken place in 1989
at the Galactic Hacker Party.
I was not able to understand it
because it was in German
but here it was presented in English
and it was just an incredible thing
to look back on that
and hear people's perspectives
on intelligence communities
and what hacker ethics are all about
and it just made you realize
what has been going on
for such a long time.
It has become such an important conversation.
It's one that continues.
It's one that will always continue
and also it was kind of
an interesting reflection too
because here you have
this guy Pengo
who had basically
turned to the dark side
and taken hacker knowledge
and given that to the intelligence agencies
and you contrast that
with what Edward Snowden has done
in relation to the community
and it makes you think that
something good is happening.
There is hope.
There is a possibility
of some sort of progress
but just little magical moments like that
and we have them at Hope too.
Things you wouldn't expect
things that happen
out of the way, places
and just interactions
and people you meet and talk to.
That is the magic of a hacker conference.
That's why everybody should go
to events.ccc.de.
It's 13th through 17th
and there will be all sorts
of information about that
at events.ccc.de.
Now Randaman you are going
to light our next selection.
Do you have anything to say about this?
There are two fuses I noticed.
Yes.
Just make sure that all the same parts
go into the same box
if this thing goes really badly.
Just make sure it's all right.
Are you going to light
or am I running like hell?
Most people want you to light both.
Why don't you go and do that.
I'm going to move over here.
Guys in New York cover your ears.
We don't know what's going to happen
with this.
We really shouldn't still be there.
Should he?
Okay.
These things are shooting up
in the air.
Going about six stories
up in the air.
I think there's one left that's
going to.
Okay.
We're good.
You're still with us.
You can buy these things.
I'm still with you hopefully.
These things can be bought
in supermarkets,
all sorts of places.
And anybody basically
can buy them on New Year's Eve
and days before New Year's.
You see kids walking around
with fireworks packages
that are bigger than them.
It's really an amazing thing.
We're in a supermarket before
and there's aisles of champagne
and fireworks in the next aisle.
So it's an incredible fear
that takes over this part
of Europe in
late December.
And I hope that you have.
Yes.
If I understand correctly,
you could have bought these
fireworks, but you no longer can.
You know what?
Actually,
McFly, can you buy fireworks
still?
Sorry?
Can you buy fireworks after
midnight on January 1st?
Nope.
So I couldn't buy fireworks
right now.
So what you've got,
you've got to ration carefully.
So basically,
maybe we could resell this
for a lot of money.
You know what?
I'm thinking like an American.
This is a very American approach.
I just wanted to say that.
All right.
Listen, we know we're running
out of time.
We have one final
bit of fire.
Are you lighting that, Kyle?
Oh, wait a minute.
You have anything final to say
before you.
OK.
Hold on.
Get away from there.
The only thing better than
watching fireworks on TV is
listening to them on the radio.
I think part of me is on fire
actually because that was a
string of firecrackers that
that threw sparks in the air.
And all right.
Everything's OK now, though.
But that was that was it.
That was our final roll of
fireworks.
I just want to say Happy New
Year and everybody get
organized and have fun in
2015.
And I'm looking forward
to a lot of change
in the world and good
things.
Yeah.
I hope you guys have a happy
happy new year there in New
York.
And actually, you know, Kyle
and I will be moving on from
here.
We're going to be visiting
some hacker spaces in
Austria, I believe Salzburg,
Vienna.
They also have radio stations
there, which are amazing that
we might even be on.
Also, possibly we'll be going
to Budapest, Prague,
Bratislava, places like
that.
So if anybody out there
would like us to drop by, if
you have a hacker space or
something interesting to show
us, write to us, OTH at
2600.com.
Definitely.
And we'll be expecting lots
more reports on the cool stuff
you're seeing out there.
I'm very happy 2015 to you
guys.
And to everyone else.
All right.
Have a happy new year.
Excellent.
Definitely.
And please wish Bernie a
happy new year for us and all
of our WBAI listeners.
Thank you so much for all
your support over the years
and let's make 2015 a great
one.
Very much so.
All right.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
OK.
So with that, I will let
those guys go.
And I will bring Bernie Essin
so we can do the rest of the
show.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
I think I'll leave you with some
tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
While I'm doing that, I think
I'll leave you with some tunes.
At worst, I played at 2600 hertz.
You could stack 50 tangents and
call overseas.
It's just too bad that they're
obsolete.
Cause they stopped working in
1993 after upgrades to switching
technology.
Silver's the color of the mobile
phone that's been modified so
that it is glowed.
It can make calls to anywhere it
even roams.
And I don't have to pay for it
on my own.
It's like three nights and
begins every day.
Only there's no bill that I have
to pay.
Gold is the color of the morning
sun that shines down on the boy
who's beige boxed in.
He's been on a conference call
11 hours, camouflaged by bushes
and pots of flowers.
Him and friends have been
talking all night long, calling
test lines and R-box from dusk
till dawn.
Voting voice fails my guess,
seeing at touch tones, making
prank calls to ballparks and
auto zones.
Then he sees a man look out the
window, and he starts to think
that he should probably go.
So he grabs his backpack and runs
towards home, through their
driveway and backyard and down
the road.
Through their driveway and
backyard and down the road.
I'm doing good.
I just arrived in Philadelphia
from a trip.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
I'm going to be spending the
next couple of days in the
city.
that the National Security Agency document published this week by the German news magazine
Der Spiegel from the Trove provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden shows that the
agency had full access to voice, video, text messaging, and file sharing from targeted
individuals over Microsoft's Skype service.
The access mandated by a foreign intelligence surveillance court warrant was part of the
NSA's PRISM program and allowed sustained Skype collection in real time from users identified
by their Skype usernames.
Is this surprising to any of us, really?
Well, as some of us may remember, Skype started out as a Swedish company, which would not
be subject to U.S. laws or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any of these things.
But years later, it got purchased by Microsoft, which we know is in bed with the NSA.
And sure enough, now we have evidence of that courtesy of Edward Snowden.
There's an excellent series of articles that Der Spiegel published simultaneously with
a talk given at the Congress by Jake Applebaum and Laura Poitras.
I watched the talk.
It's on video.
You don't have to go to Germany to see it, and you don't have to go to Germany to read
Der Spiegel because their articles are on their website in English.
And they had two articles, one about cryptography, one about CIA drone killings, both accompanied
by large numbers of previously unseen documents.
And I don't want to say they're good because they're really frightening stuff, but they're
well-written and well-reported.
I'll give them that.
It really speaks to how much of a ... It's pretty intense, the way that things are still
coming out of this stuff that Edward Snowden now leaked.
How long ago was it now?
Well, anyway, yeah, we're still going through this.
Early last year.
Yeah, early last year.
And we're still finding things like this in it.
And yeah, it's something to keep an eye on.
Elsewhere in the world, India.
There's a big story coming out of India where they've just decided to block 32 websites,
Pastebin, GitHub, Internet Archive, Vimeo, and a lot of other sites.
It appears that the order to block the sites was issued on December 17th.
It's now starting to be put into effect sort of sporadically.
The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, the policy director from there, Pranesh
Prakash, posted a copy of the notice listing the 32 blocked URLs.
He posted this to Twitter.
Now, the URLs that are blocked are Pastebin, which, for those who don't know, is a site
where you can just copy and paste bits of text and put them up there for other people
to see.
A whole bunch of sites that are basically Pastebin clones that do the same thing.
But then it gets more interesting.
Archive.org, the Internet Archive, is blocked.
Video sites like Vimeo.com, Dailymotion.com, they're both blocked.
Web hosts like Webs.com, Weebly.com, Freehosting.com, they're blocked.
GitHub.com was part of this block.
And Mike, how would you explain GitHub for those unfamiliar?
GitHub is a website that people use to collaborate, mostly on software projects, and it uses a
thing called Git, which has a lot of nice features for keeping history of your work
so that if you mess up, you can get back to the version that worked, and for collaboration.
I and many other people use it all day professionally, and presumably many people in India are totally
in trouble not being able to access this website to do their daily work.
There are solutions.
One nice thing about Git is that if you've ever had a copy, you have a copy of everything
so you can get along for a while without it.
But they have some very nice collaboration tools built on top of it, and whatever the
Indian government is afraid of, they've clearly blocked a lot more than that.
And another thing that was blocked was a project on SourceForge.net, an open source project
called Forky, that's P-H-O-R-K-I-E.
And to block an entire software project is pretty overreaching, but what this project
is is a self-hosted Pastebin clone that you could install anywhere and host anywhere and
have a running Pastebin clone.
So they've really got it out for these Pastebin type sites, it seems.
Arvind Gupta, the National Head of Indian Political Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP,
had posted to Twitter that the websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory
by anti-terrorism squad, and were carrying anti-Indian content from ISIS.
The BJP, of course, is the ruling party.
Indeed.
So when you're talking about subversive anti-India content from ISIS on sites like GitHub or
Pastebin or SourceForge, I think this might be a bit of an overreaching bit of censorship.
What do you guys think?
I really wonder what these governments are thinking to block ... They're really harming
their own economies by blocking these developers' websites.
Terrorists are going to be anywhere.
It doesn't ... Just because they might be exchanging software code on a massive web
platform like GitHub does not mean that the platform or that medium really poses a risk
to that government's national security.
This is really crazy.
I mean, it's a clear case of government overreach, as with almost every government censorship
attempt we've ever seen.
These services are all nice because they allow you to share programming code, which is just
text, so you can share any other kind of text, including, I suppose, text about terrorism
or violence or anything else, but rather than go after the specific offending content, they've
just gone over it after the entire platforms.
I'm trying to think of a metaphor.
It would be the equivalent of banning libraries because you don't like one book in it.
It's just nuts.
Or Gmail in China, which was recently blocked.
It's like if they don't like some people that are communicating on Gmail, why not just block
all of Gmail?
It's just crazy.
This is the sort of thing we're always ... We're talking about things like government censorship
and how it could overreach and be used either through deliberate malice or through just
incompetence and not understanding what they're blocking.
It will end up with a whole lot of collateral damage, and we would see that with GitHub
and with SourceForge and this.
Whatever they are trying to block, they're blocking a whole lot more than that just by
blocking these sites in total.
The Times of India, at the time this story was posted, said that they were able to access
all the websites that were blocked over Airtel 3G, but not under their standard, I guess,
land-based ISPs.
I mean, it seems like there's some delay in the rollout of this to all the internet service
providers, and so some are blocking more than others at any given moment.
But this is a court decision that all the ISPs have to block it all.
I guess we'll watch this story and hope it gets reversed, but it's just insane.
It's very insane.
Some other stories going on.
Hey, guess what we get to talk about?
You know that whole Sony North Korea thing?
Really?
Really?
I knew you would like this, Mike.
Oh.
Yeah.
Well, one thing that happened after we went off the air last week is on the 29th, North
Korea's internet went out again.
The whole country lost their internet.
How much internet did they have to lose?
I don't know, but the people there with internet, those privileged few, I'm imagining, lost
it at around 7.30 p.m. on the 29th Pyongyang time.
The same incident occurred earlier that week when the country's internet connection was
disrupted that Tuesday, the 27th, I believe that would have been.
CNET reported that North Korea is blaming the United States for these internet disruptions.
I'm sure blaming a foreign country for something that is probably not the act of an entire
foreign country, I don't know.
That can't end badly at all, can it?
You raise the point that it's very difficult to determine the source of whatever brought
down North Korea's internet, just as it is difficult to determine the source of whoever
took documents from Sony.
I'd like to point out too that more and more U.S.-based internet security firms and experts
are challenging the FBI's rather hasty conclusion that North Korea was behind this Sony hack.
There's a lot of very plausible rebuttals to the FBI's theories, theories which are
lacking in detailed information, which the FBI is saying, oh, we can't reveal these secrets
that led us to make this determination.
This whole thing reminds me of something that happened back in 1996.
The FBI is very fallible, and they make claims about things that happened that didn't really
happen.
Back in 1996, folks in the New York area may remember W.A. Flight 800, I think it was,
that blew up and crashed just off the south shore of Long Island, and the FBI hastily
concluded that it was a terrorist action, and then saw to it that all people flying
out of the United States, or flying anywhere in the United States, had to show government
photo ID to board a commercial aircraft.
Sometime later, it was determined that this was not a terrorist action at all.
It was an accident.
There was chemicals, and the spark was something that blew up the fuel tank from the spark
and a wire or something.
That was the official conclusion after a long study, yet the security restrictions that
were issued at the behest of the FBI were never lifted.
The FBI makes mistakes, sometimes on purpose, and we already know from the leaked Sony emails
that a very high level ranking U.S. State Department person gave an enthusiastic thumbs
up to the scene in the film where the leader of North Korea was violently burned and blown
up.
I think the FBI has a ... The U.S. government clearly has an axe to grind with North Korea,
and vice versa, but I've seen this conclusion by the FBI was very hasty, and it's encouraging
to see a lot of U.S. experts calling them on that, saying, no, prove it.
It is interesting.
Lots of luminaries, lots of well-known and respected individuals in the security industry
have come up and spoken up against the FBI's hasty conclusions.
Bruce Schneier, who I think everybody in the world loves ...
He's been a Hope speaker, of course, and he's been raising questions on his blog.
The L.A. Times spoke to someone at a security firm called Norse, who is not convinced that
anything came from North Korea.
Kirk Stamberger, a senior VP at Norse, said in an interview that, quote, we can't find
any indication that North Korea either ordered, masterminded, or funded this attack.
Nobody has been able to find a credible connection to the North Korean government.
A team of nine analysts over at Norse dug through data, including their worldwide network,
quote, of millions of web sensors, you know, nice bit of marketing.
What does that mean?
It means that they're good at getting some marketing in when talking to the newspaper,
but yeah, internal Sony documents and underground hacker chat rooms.
They're citing underground hacker chat rooms as a source, which always goes well.
Rob, I have a question.
The studio that you and I are in right now is underground.
It is.
Does that count?
I think so, and we're in a room where hackers and we're chatting, so this studio is an underground
hacker chat room.
I'm declaring it.
I'm calling it.
All right.
I can do this sort of thing when I'm in charge of the engineering board here.
Seems fair to me.
Hey, Rob, wasn't there a recent study on the linguistics of the code for this malware
that was used to attack Sony with, and the linguistics indicated that it was much more
likely to have written, the code was, or the attack might have been written by Russian
speaking individuals, and much less likely to be North Korean.
And also, wasn't there a lot of information that was in the code that probably could have
only come from a deep Sony insider?
That's some of the claims happening now.
Yep.
That's some of the claim happening now, and it would make a whole lot of sense to anybody
who knows how these things usually work.
The linguistic evidence, I mean, while not conclusive, is pretty interesting.
The people who did this made public statements, and it does not appear that English is their
first language, or they were deliberately making mistakes to conceal who they were,
but either way, the mistakes that were in the document seem not to be the kinds of
mistakes that native Koreans would make when speaking English, native Korean speakers.
So that's interesting, although certainly not conclusive.
The plot thickens, which being in the movie industry, I'm sure they wouldn't know anything
about thickening plots, but the plot thickens.
And another thing to come out of this whole mess is Sony is about to get sued for pirating
music in the interview.
This story off of Torrent Freak.
As the controversy surrounding the interview continues, a singer is claiming that after
failing to reach terms with Sony, the company put her music in the movie anyway.
After not receiving a penny from the movie giant, Yoon Mi-Rae is now set to sue.
Yoon Mi-Rae, real name Natasha Shanta Reid, is a US-born hip-hop and R&B singer, and in
January 2013, as part of MFBTY, which stands for My Fans Better Than Yours, the 33-year-old
hit the number one spot in the Korean music charts, and in September reached the same
heights on Billboard's K-Pop Hot 100.
But while these recognitions were achieved by fans buying her music, she's now in the
spotlight for not getting paid for her work.
She was in negotiations with Sony to have her track, Payday, appear in the interview.
No agreement was reached, and Sony just put it in the film anyhow.
Of all the tracks, they took one called Payday?
They took a track called Payday, from an American musician making music for Korea,
and yeah.
They, I mean-
Did they think she wouldn't notice?
I mean, until this whole data theft story got into the news, probably no one would have
ever seen this film, so it might have been likely they could have gotten away with it,
but I guess they didn't replace it when they got all this free publicity.
It's pretty funny.
I mean, for any Sony executives listening, I mean, let me put it to you this way.
You wouldn't download a car.
You wouldn't steal a car.
You wouldn't, I would download a car, but-
Why wouldn't you download a car?
Isn't that the future?
Yeah, I used to do 3D printing.
I did download several cars, and I printed them out, and they're on my shelf now.
But no, yeah, Sony's finding themselves the targets of a lawsuit, and that should be fun.
I want to get to some listener emails.
We had a story we talked about last week about the hotel chain that wanted to block
people opening up their own Wi-Fi points in the hotel.
We got a lot of response to that.
Night Owl had sent us the link to the text of the Marriott filing to the FCC.
It's available on, for anyone listening to this with a pause button who can get this
whole URL, I'll read it to you, apps.fcc.gov slash ECFS slash document slash view question
mark ID equal sign 60000, that's four zeros, 986872.
Night Owl-
You can just email us and off the hook, and we'll send it to you.
I bet if you type Marriott FCC filing into a search engine, it will come right up as
well.
Yes, indeed.
But Night Owl also comments, as Recode noted, there are some very worrying clauses in the
filing.
In some cases, they conflate natural limitations of the RF spectrum with defending against
viruses, and elsewhere, they completely ignore non-technical remediation techniques, e.g.
customer education and improved communication, all in a manner designed to allow them to
get new rules passed to authorize Marriott to block all Wi-Fi networks on their premises.
It's definitely worth looking further into.
It's a very interesting story, and we're interested to see where this goes, obviously.
Pyro also wrote to us about this, asking if the FCC does reverse its decision, will
they have to refund the 600K they already fined them?
I think that's highly unlikely.
One, I think it's highly unlikely the FCC is going to reverse their decision, and two,
the government never likes to give money back.
I think no on both counts.
It doesn't seem very likely.
It's kind of nice to hold out hope.
Bernie, there's a mistake in your analysis, though.
The government here is not dealing with normal people, but with large corporations.
This is true.
The U.S. has often given many, many financial breaks to industry, but in this case, I think
the FCC is actually ... I know people at the FCC who really care about the public interest,
and I don't think they would have brought this action against this Marriott partner
had they not had the public interest in mind.
I'm hoping they stay the course with that, and we'll see how that works out.
I hope so as well, but I think it's not certain.
I agree.
It's not certain.
The FCC sometimes makes good decisions when they do things quietly, and they sometimes
make terrible decisions when they do things quietly, but just the right amount of public
pressure from large corporations without this story getting big enough for there to be real
public pressure from the real public could go a long way towards making bad things happen.
Definitely worth a look.
We also got a nice email from Ben regarding the story, and he mentions a simple fact that
you can go to any Home Depot or other home supply place and obtain wallpaper that contains
a copper mesh, which is essentially a Faraday cage, which would prevent the leaking of the
hotel's Wi-Fi signal in the room that was covered, suggesting that the Marriott just
installs this simple non-technical fix to it instead of getting legislation passed to
allow them to do all sorts of shady things with outside Wi-Fi points.
Ben says, you would think a multinational corporation would be aware of this fix, just
saying.
If it's not obvious enough, this would prevent man-in-the-middle hyper attacks on the Wi-Fi
or brute force attacks, simply because most of these types of attacks would not be perfect
rated by somebody staying in the hotel, and obviously an attacker would not register his
or her credit card or identification with the desk clerk at a hotel they were planning
on attacking.
Basic security precautions could be taken, Ben says, by the network administrator.
This is one layer of physical security that the hotel maintenance man could implement,
which would solve almost 100% of their alleged problems.
He also says, P.S., love the show.
Just donated to the radio station after writing this email.
Thank you very much for that.
If anyone wants to join Ben in donating, you have just four hours and 10 minutes to get
a tax donation in the current year, if that's something that interests you.
Yes, indeed.
And WBAI is also having a neat sort of sweepstakes.
If you donate before the end of the year, which is in four hours, you can find information
on that.
I don't know if you would call it a sweepstakes, but it's sort of an extra thing that there's
a possibility of you getting if you donate a certain amount.
You can find all that on WBAI.org within the next four hours and change.
On the subject, we are also still getting mail from some of you who haven't gotten your
NSA drives, your Snowden drives, and we just want to remind you that, yes, we do want to
hear about it.
If you ordered a premium from us way back, if you didn't get it yet, we do want to hear
about it because when it comes to the thumb drives, we gave them to the station.
They're in the hands of people at the station, so if they're not getting to where they need
to go from there, we need to know so we can investigate what's going on and try and make
that happen.
So, we do want to get you your past premiums.
We do want to hear about it.
If you haven't gotten them, send us an email at oth at 2600.com and let us know about it.
The information we need is what your pledge was, the name and address on the pledge, and
what item you pledged for, and yeah, we do want to hear about it.
The situation with that is ongoing and we're still working on it, but we thank everyone
for their support and for bearing with us when stuff does not go completely our way
and we have to work a little harder to make it all happen as we're doing now.
I want to give a shout out to the volunteers.
There's a lot of volunteers that work at WBAI specifically trying to clean up this premium
mess, but it's become apparent to us that some of these volunteers, or maybe all of
them, aren't being given the accurate information they need to fulfill these premiums, and that
comes down to WBAI management, who we, for some reason, can't get to respond to our inquiries.
That's what's going on, and we're sorry for all listeners that aren't getting their premiums.
We're working on that, but it's a WBAI management issue at this point.
We are still working on it.
We're not letting it go.
We're not hoping it goes away.
We are still working on it, trying to get in touch with management, in touch with the
right people, get the right things going in the right places, so yes, this is ongoing
and we're working on it, and thank you for understanding.
Let's see, what else is going on?
Did you see the story?
It really snuck by everyone's radar.
The NSA, on December 24th, released their internal self-audit, as they were required
to do, because the ACLU won a FOIA lawsuit, but they were not required to do it exactly
on Christmas Eve, but they did because they knew that most of us would miss it, and there's
a lot of stuff.
It seems that most of the abuses that they find are self-reported, which is super for
the honest people who mess up, who work at the NSA, and look at something they shouldn't,
but what it means is that there's no technical controls in place to prevent the NSA from
violating its own policies, and there's no detection for NSA employees who violate the
policies and don't self-report.
This leads to the kinds of abuses that we've heard about and speculate about, and I highly
recommend you take a few minutes to look up this report and read about it.
I just want to say Happy New Year to everybody, and thank them for supporting the show and
WBAI.
There's a few hours left.
You can go to givetowwbai.org to get your last-minute pledges in to keep the station
on the air.
It's still struggling financially, but next year will be a better year, we're convinced,
and I just want to thank everybody for listening.
This has been quite an honor to be on this show for so long.
Yes, indeed.
Mike, any parting words for 2014?
No.
Again, to echo what Bernie said, we want to wish you a Happy New Year, a Guten Rutsch,
and all the best for the coming year.
Yes, indeed, and for Off The Hook and for my colleagues, those with us and not with
us right now, thank you very much for continuing to listen and letting us be part of your day.
It's definitely an honor, and it's something that I enjoy very much, and long may we keep
doing it.
Now, to close out the year, I'll close this with the only sort of thing I can, a bit of
a break.
We'll be right back.