It is either non-violence or non-existence.
This is Dred Scott Keys, I'll be joining Bernard White and an entire WBAI audience
for a screening of Selma, a film about the African-American's struggle for the right
to vote in the deep apartheid South of the 1960s.
The screening takes place at the Regal Union Square Cinema, 13th Street and Broadway on
Tuesday, January 27th at 7pm followed by a Q&A session with the WBAI host.
Tickets are $30 and can be ordered by calling 212-209-2950, that's 212-209-2950, or go to
www.wbai.org.
And the time is just about 7pm.
You're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York, and it is time for another exciting episode
I've off the hook.
A very good evening to you.
The program is Off the Hook, Rob T. Firefly in the studio with you, I am joined today
by Mike.
Good evening.
And on the phone there should be Emmanuel and Kyle.
Yes, in fact, I think that is the case.
Kyle, are you also on the phone?
Yeah, I'm over here.
And can you hear us back in New York?
Yes indeed we can.
Well, that's pretty incredible.
It's the wonders of technology.
So where are you guys running around to this week?
Yeah, nice try Rob, are you Googling something?
We don't give out our location every single moment of every single day.
Where we are happens to be our business.
It's just fascinating, as I'm sure it is for the listeners, just following your journey
and putting pins on our maps, which we all have.
Thanks for asking.
Yeah, but you know, it's not so much about where we are, it's about what we're doing.
Okay, I'll bite.
What are we doing?
Or what are you doing?
I'm afraid I can't tell you that.
But suffice to say, it's interesting.
Very.
Hmm.
Okay, I am told that my mic is not working.
Let's see if what I can do about that here.
Ah, excellent.
Okay, I believe that solved that.
And yes, for those of you just joining us, my mic's been off for the show so far.
This is 99.5 FM, you're listening to WBAI New York.
This show is off the hook.
And this is how we do live radio.
Yay!
Excellent, excellent.
Do we have to say all that again?
Because well, first of all, you don't, you don't.
You guys were fine.
I was not being heard.
If you gave yes or no answers, we might not know what the questions are.
Nobody knows what we were responding to.
That's the problem.
You know what?
Let's just move on because we only have a few minutes this week.
Excellent.
Moving on.
Moving on.
So wherever it is that you are mysteriously running around.
Yeah, you know what?
You keep badgering us to tell you where we are.
No, I don't want to know that.
But you can tell us what you're doing.
It's just the information is very valuable for me to sell to my business partners.
What we're doing is our business, and you'll find out when you need to know.
How about that?
Okay.
This sounds like a plan.
So what else is going on in the world this week?
Well, actually, there is something interesting.
Did you guys hear about this hacker list that's going around?
Hacker list?
Well, it's actually called hackers list.
It's basically an organization that's trying to match up hackers with jobs, but the kind
of jobs are, are gaining access to email accounts, taking down pictures from Facebook that are
unflattering, breaking into people's hotmail accounts.
You name it.
It's something that has been all over the media in the last couple of weeks.
And I was wondering if you guys might have heard something about it.
You know, I did hear about it, and I had completely forgotten until you reminded me, because that's
how interested I am in this topic.
But maybe you have exciting news about it.
Well, it's not so much that I'm excited by it.
It's something that I think should matter to anyone who's concerned with what a hacker
is defined as these days.
What these guys are doing is basically defining hackers as people who are only interested
in money, only interested in getting the highest bid for a job.
The fact that people think of the pursuit of hacking as a job tells me that they don't
really get it to start with.
I think it's a very, very dangerous path to go down and very harmful to our community.
And quite honestly, very sleazy.
We've had some contact, or we've had some access, actually.
I don't know, Kyle, if you want to go into any detail.
Can we trust these guys on the other end of the phone?
I would.
Yeah.
And I guess we can share, but yeah, we got wind of what it's like to have an account
on the hacker's list from a couple fine listeners, of course.
It's interesting.
I was impressed to hear about some of the things they're listing there.
I was told that even things like change my grades, stuff, really bizarre stuff, all kinds
of stuff.
And it's interesting how they do it.
If you read a little bit on their website about how it's modeled, you can read all the
whole process of what it's like.
There's a lot of talk about ethics.
But from the people I talk to, it seems like it's pretty much a free-for-all based on what
people want to do.
I mean, changing your grades, I think any academic might argue that's probably not ethical
for one thing.
What if it's your grades in something that doesn't matter, like a non-credit course?
Did we lose them?
Uh-huh.
Hello?
Yeah, go on.
I was just wondering if you change your grades in something like a non-credit course where
it doesn't matter so much, is that ethical?
Do you get a grade in a non-graded course?
I don't know.
Well, anyway, we have gotten some interesting offers, intros to the service.
I think, what, we just saw something fairly recently.
Well, the most recent thing that's really interesting, and I want to let everyone know
because, I mean, there's good money if this is your thing.
I mean, this is, of course, our critique as well, but for anywhere between a couple hundred
and several thousand dollars, Hacker's List themselves are asking members to do some testing
for their site.
Yeah, apparently they think they might become a target.
That's a wacky idea.
In any event, we're thrilled and wanted to let everyone know that if you would like to
actually work on some of the stuff they're doing and see how secure their stuff is, that's
also up for grabs as far as what's available.
I'd encourage people to check it out if they want to see this because, really, it's the
concept, basically, of having a marketplace.
The site itself is talking a lot about ethics in the sense that they're not condoning anything.
If you read any of their legal stuff, which is typical for a site that offers services
that are long and drawn out and complicated, I mean, it's a ton of stuff.
I imagine it would be.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, absolutely, things can change.
I read through some of it.
It's easily accessible.
You don't have to be a member for that.
I think they're offering, what was it, $5,000 to someone who can help figure out if their
site is up to par.
I'm not sure it's that high, but they give ranges.
That's the other thing, which is kind of weird.
The way we figure it, we'll take the job and we'll ask our listeners to do some penetration
testing and if you guys hack into their site, what is it, hackerslist.com, we'll split the
money with you.
How's that?
That's sleazy enough for them.
It's sleazy enough for us.
This sounds like a plan, certainly a plan.
I guess my question is how good a job do you have to do if I spend one minute looking at
their website and don't find any security vulnerabilities because it's not my skillset?
Can I give them a favorable report and get some money for that?
I think you have to do something bad.
I think that's what they're looking for.
That's just my opinion.
I don't know.
I'm sure our listeners will be able to tell us more about that, but I just wanted to mention
it because I think it's really a blemish on the hacker community when things like this
go unremarked and it's really been everywhere in the media.
People are going to get the idea that this is what hacking is, and hacking is not about
the money.
It's about the thrill of discovery, of building new things, and these guys really honestly
don't seem to get that.
I just feel a bit silly in my own job searching.
I've been wasting my time with respectable sources of work and legitimate business and
things like that when I could have been getting involved in something like this, so viva la
internet.
In a time when we're hearing a lot of this word, we're defining ourselves, we've more
or less entered into an era where we're known and computers and technology are known and
mainstream, dare I say, it's important to choose your words.
I mean, I don't know, bandits for hire list, maybe we could help with the new name.
I don't know, but it's sad, I think, that we would be reduced to something like this
and basically be the type to just trick oneself out for these kinds of petty little things.
I don't know.
We really need to connect people to solve their problems, big or small, based on stuff
that's touted as ethical but really is asking people to do things that aren't.
I have a question for you guys.
I'm looking at some news articles about this website and every single post they quote is
misspelled.
Is that like a selection of the news sources to make the site look bad or can no one on
this thing spell in English?
I would guess the latter, Mike.
Okay.
I don't know what that says.
As long as we're talking about sleaze, I just wanted to also mention this company called
Turn.
You guys heard about this?
They have something known as Zombie Cookies?
Zombie Cookies, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, apparently this has something to do with Verizon.
They had this undeletable number that was being used to monitor their customers' habits
on smartphones and tablets.
It's basically being used by this company called Turn to respawn ... I see an article
in the New York Times, respawn tracking cookies that users have deleted.
We are trying to use the most persistent identifier that we can in order to do what we do.
This is actually a quote from Turn's chief privacy officer.
That must be one hell of a job for somebody invading so much privacy.
What happens, the Zombie Cookies, in the middle of a controversy about a new form of tracking
that the telecom industry has deployed to shadow mobile phone users.
Verizon and AT&T users noticed that their carriers were inserting a tracking number
into all their web traffic.
Even when the user tried to opt out, AT&T stopped using the number in November, but
Verizon has continued to use it.
However, they were saying that it would not be used to track their customers.
It sure seems like Turn is doing just that, and it seems like they're not at all apologetic
to doing this.
No, why would they be?
It's their job.
Over at the Ministry of Privacy, or whatever they're calling it, it is actually their job
to increase the value of their customers to their other customers by gathering as much
data as possible.
Privacy doesn't enter into it.
They want all they can get, and they'll use all they can get.
They're not going to be all that genuinely apologetic when caught at it.
For those who don't know, how would you guys explain the difference between a normal cookie
that you would get and these respawning ones?
I love, first of all, I love that respawn is a technical term.
It really is.
But in seriousness, I'm actually not particularly certain how exactly this is done.
But suffice to say, it's a special cookie that does not go away.
I do have a little bit of information about how that's done, which is there is basically
an identification number that's sent to websites that you visit with your phone that isn't
sent in other forms when you use a desktop browser or any other device.
But when you're using your device or your phone on the Verizon network, there's an extra
sort of little identifier that's slipped into the connection.
And the other end of the connection, the site you're reading, reads that and can do what
they want with it, including continuing to identify you as the same individual, even
if you've cleared your cookies, which normally would, to a degree, obscure that.
So would it be like maybe an extra part of your packets, right, or some sort of header?
They're intercepting.
So I'm blaming Verizon for this.
Like Tern, which is taking advantage of this, they sound like real sleazeballs, but it's
clearly Verizon's fault if you want to assign a single point of blame.
They're intercepting your web traffic to insert this tracking number, and apparently some
entities like Tern are taking advantage of this magic tracking number in order to track
you.
I guess you can get around this if every website you visit uses HTTPS or SSL, but some websites
don't offer that, and some websites with ads don't offer that.
And basically, as things are normally done, it's not something that you would be expecting
your internet provider to be doing to you when you use their service.
It certainly is something to – it's kind of alarming.
I mean, you don't really – I mean, it probably doesn't help your service either to be having
people add stuff and being redirected without really you knowing, based on a relationship
or whatever is going on between your provider or your cell provider and this company, these
companies.
And we've heard a little – a lot, actually, over the years, and I think it would be really
interesting to talk to some people at these ad companies, these companies we don't hear
about.
I know it's been talked about a lot in HOPEx talks and stuff like that, and it would be
really great to get more information about what actually goes on inside these companies.
And I mean, is the privacy officer really just a showpiece kind of – I mean, is it
just a mannequin with a wig on?
I mean, is this actually a person?
And I mean, we really, I think, also have work to do as far as reclaiming some of our
rights as consumers, which is, of course, a whole other area.
But if anyone out there maybe worked with Tern or somebody at another of these data
warehousing, like personal data, broker and personal data, if they'd like to share a little
bit, please write oth at 2600.com.
We'd love to learn more about this and other kinds of tricky technology that perhaps we
don't know about.
Most definitely.
Most definitely.
Most definitely.
Well, you guys are out there being mysterious, and I don't want to take up too much of your
time from that.
But we do thank you for joining us for a bit, and I wish you all the best of luck in doing
whatever the heck it is you're doing out there.
Wherever there is.
Well, yeah.
It's nothing suspicious.
I just want people to know that.
Everything is above board.
I must have dialed the wrong number.
I was looking for Emanuel Goldstein and Kyle from off the hook, if you see them.
Yeah.
Emanuel, do you have a chief privacy officer to reassure us that you're not doing anything
suspicious, or should we just take your word for it?
We're trying to find that person, in fact, but I'm sure they're around here somewhere.
Ah, here!
Hey, one thing before we go.
I just wanted to say congratulations to Laurie Porteous for being nominated for an Oscar
for Citizen Four.
If you have not yet seen Citizen Four, it's playing all around the world, and I'm sure
it's playing somewhere in New York right now.
Maybe you guys can find out where and let people know, but it's really an amazing film
about Edward Snowden, about the leaks, and it's just, it's awesome that she was nominated
for Best Documentary, and let's hope that she wins.
It was playing at the IFC on 6th Avenue, and I believe it's still there.
And it's especially gratifying to see a documentary about Snowden and what's going on be successful
in the mainstream enough to get the Oscar nod.
So we look forward to seeing how that shakes out.
And make sure that you bring people who don't agree to see that movie, because those are
the people that need to understand what's behind it all.
Absolutely.
Okay, well I wish you guys a very good night, and do some juggling with the phones to get
Bernie S., and we will continue.
So we'll take a short break right now, and listeners, I will leave you with a short tune.
This is by a rapper called Dan Bull.
Brave new world to life, cybergenesis Computer literate, like-minded linguist
The lines in his script are my kind of English And hindsight provides quite the image of
an activist Activist dying like he lived in the firing
line of online rights Traditionalist politicist
Quick to stick his digits on the hit list A lifetime in prison can drive minds to sickness
So why am I surprised he did this?
Fighting insurmountable odds Handed down from the gods
Because David is at risk when Goliath runs a business
We're all Aaron Swartz in a manner of speaking We'll carry on his work that still needs completing
We're all Swartz in a manner of speaking We'll finish every mission that still needs completing
And that was a tribute to Aaron Swartz by Dan Bull.
You can use your web search of choice to find out more from him.
Now on the phone we should have Bernie S.
Greetings from Pennsylvania, Rob.
Greetings, Bernie.
Thank you for letting me know my mic was off earlier.
That was...
Oh, I mean, I can hear you very faintly in the background as our other listeners could.
I was listening online, but then you sounded fantastic when the mic had switched on.
You're doing a great job engineering the show, though.
It's a lot...
You've got all kinds of knobs and dials and things you've got to juggle there.
Yeah, but it's always the one I haven't juggled that I should have, but yeah, there's a lot
going on this week.
Thank you, Juan.
And we've got a lot to talk about.
So, did either of you guys watch that interesting TV special last night involving the president
saying a lot of things?
The State of the Union Address.
That's the one.
Actually, I did want to mention very briefly about...
I heard you talking about the Verizon Wireless.
And by the way, we should really specify when we're talking about Verizon versus Verizon
Wireless because they're two different companies, just as AT&T and AT&T Wireless are completely
different companies despite their names.
It's Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless that are both in the league or in bed with this
company called Tern, which is basically making it impossible for users of basically cell
phones on either of those services to prevent themselves from being tracked as far as what
websites they're using.
If anybody who's curious about this wants to email us at oth2600.com, we can send you
a URL that will...if you visit it from your smartphone's browser, you have a very good
idea of whether you're being victimized by this.
And by the way, back in April, Verizon sponsored a Tern event, this company that's doing this
stuff in New York City called, quote, Bringing Sexy Back to Measurement, end quote.
This isn't what, you know, maybe this is getting a little too personal on the radio, but this
isn't what I would normally classify as sexy.
Speaking of sexy, yes, I did watch the President of the United States last night, did you?
I did.
I was sort of of two minds about it.
I wasn't sure whether to sit and watch the State of the Union or go outside and lick
the pavement for an hour, but...
Rob, there's other options.
I don't know.
It's quite good pavement.
They've just resurfaced in every...
Anyway, so I did watch the State of the Union.
I did watch with the sort of running commentary, the live blogging that the United States Pirate
Party were doing on their site about it.
It was...I think that material's still up there if you go to their site.
But yeah, it was pretty much what I expected of it.
I don't know.
What did you guys think?
You mentioned hackers.
He did mention hackers.
He mentioned hackers, and several people I know took a drink at that point.
As someone on the internet pointed out that this was the first time that the President
had said transgender or bisexual in the State of the Union speech, and it was also the first
time he said Instagram in the State of the Union speech, so...
Well, you've got to take the bad with the good, haven't you?
Representing all kinds of people.
I will say one thing that I liked that they did.
You may know that the State of the Union is not an extemporaneous speech.
It's prepared in advance, and this time they just released it online in advance so you
could follow along or just read it if you wanted.
That was nice of them.
Usually the press and the Congress and everyone who's self-important gets a copy in advance,
but this year the people could get it too.
It wasn't very far in advance.
It was, I think, a matter of hours in advance or something like that.
I mean, they're probably revising it, basically until he has to get in the car to go to the
Congress, but I appreciate the effort.
And there was some ad-libbing too.
I was at a political event last night watching it in a big room with a lot of other people,
and we were looking at our phones and sort of following the bouncing ball, seeing where
Obama was deviating from his script.
He did a few times, but not very much.
Yeah.
Now, there were a couple of particular quotes that he said, and I got these from you, Bernie,
though I don't have the audio available.
I've got a text transcript.
One of them was, quote, I intend to protect a free and open internet, extend its reach
to every classroom and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks so that
the next generation of digital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep
reshaping our world.
Wow.
I have the quotes here if you wanted me to play them into the phone, but we don't have
to.
What is a digital innovator?
A digital innovator.
I don't know.
Doing interesting things with your fingers.
Well, there's no sense in bringing past administrations into this, but yeah, the next quote is, no
foreign nation, no hacker should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets,
or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids.
We are making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats, just
as we have done to combat terrorism.
And tonight, I urge this Congress to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet
the evolving threat of cyber attacks, combat identity theft, and protect our children's
information.
Oh, he mentioned children twice in that paragraph.
He did.
He did.
It was, I think, Shani Jardim from Boing Boing that said, basically, when somebody in power
starts mentioning the children in a quote about security, you know bad things are about
to happen.
So the frightening thing, from my view, is that much of the president's speech will never
be acted upon because he has a Congress that doesn't agree with him, so he can make promises
for nice things that nice people might want with the full knowledge that he won't ever
have to deliver them, and he can blame someone else.
But this, this so-called cyber security stuff, and I can't believe I just used that word,
this is bipartisan.
This is the stuff that's going to pass.
It's insane.
And it's worth reading the actual transcripts.
Anybody can go online and try to find the...
Yeah, it's on WhiteHouse.gov.
But it's, yeah, it's where I got it, actually.
You know, it's like, you know, when they went on the previous administration, weren't they
guilty of, like, changing some presidential speech text after the, after the thing happened?
You gotta, you gotta look for a second source.
But if you read, like, you started reading this, Rob, and it says, no, you have to use
the right emphasis here, it says, no foreign nation.
No hacker should be able to shut down our network, steal our trade secrets, or invade
the privacy of American families, especially our kids.
Presumably, you know, he's carving out an exception for our own government being able
to shut down our network, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of our families
and our kids.
Of course.
And it should be mentioned, for those who might not be entirely familiar with how this
all works, the State of the Union is basically a speech.
It's not a legally binding thing.
It's not, if he says something, he has to do that thing.
It's basically just, you know, coming out and saying, hi, how are you?
But you know, even, even then, even when, even when it's something that he could, he
could have, I think, said more comfortably, or in a way that wouldn't have caused quite
so many people who know what's going on to clench so much.
Even then, it's just a mincing of words, and it's chopping things up and leaving all sorts
of loopholes.
And yeah, it's, it's, there are things in there to worry about.
And there are things that were not mentioned to worry about.
And yeah, I don't feel particularly calmed by the State of the Union at this point.
He mentioned something about, he didn't say the words net neutrality, but he said something
about a free and open internet, which is sort of a nod to what we call net, what some call
net neutrality.
And there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes in Washington right
now with the, with the White House and the FCC and the White House has chosen, Obama's
chosen chair of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, a former cable and telecom lobbyist, and trying to
get, that guy's name is Tom Wheeler, trying to get him to create new FCC regulations,
which are not, which are not invented by Congress.
FCC can create its own regulations to classify internet service providers as Title II, basically
public utilities.
And there's a whole lot of behind the scenes stuff going on right now.
And I'm sure Mike has some things to say about that too.
Yeah, I unfortunately didn't have the time to really look into the details, but I got
an email today from Fight for the Future, which is a lovely organization we've mentioned
before, saying that, you know, Congress is busy trying to legislate a sort of a non-neutral
internet to legislate the powers of the cable companies to slow down your internet on selected
websites such that, you know, if the FCC ever gets around to making a rule and that rule
is favorable, both of which seem pretty unlikely to me, but even if they do, then Congress
is going to be ready to go to overturn that and make sure that the non-neutral internet
that Comcast desires will stick around.
Well, they could defund the FCC, or at least certain parts of the FCC that would be responsible
for enforcing those regulations.
Another interesting thing going on that's kind of related to this is today, I think
it was today, Obama visited a city, I think it was in Idaho, where the municipal government
actually created their own ISP, their own internet service provider for the citizens.
It's one of the fastest local networks in the country where people can get on the internet.
But there are 19 states that have passed legislation to outlaw any municipality from doing just
that.
The White House is trying to say that they could get the FCC to basically ban or eviscerate
or just basically erase any state legislation that would prevent municipal governments from
offering internet access to its citizens.
I'm a little leery about our local government managing my internet connectivity, but I guess
it could be no worse than Comcast or Verizon or somebody else.
Yeah, it should be pointed out who exactly would benefit from the government not being
able to put up municipal internet service.
And that is, of course, the existing internet services, the telecom industry, who pay a
lot of money for their politicians and would like them to ensure their future bankrolls.
And have no competition.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, if there's an entity I trust less than the New York City government, it's certainly
Verizon.
But there's no competition.
Of course, New York City, just to be clear, has no plans to provide me with quality internet
access that I'm aware of.
But maybe one day.
Is New York one of the 19 states that has passed that kind of legislation?
Do you know?
You know, I don't know.
I'm certainly not aware of anyone in any part of New York that I care about offering this
service.
But I don't know that it's forbidden yet.
Pennsylvania does have a law like that.
It was passed, I don't know, eight or ten years ago.
However, our then Governor Ed Rendell was able to get a special carve-out for the city
of Philadelphia, which was trying to, and did at the time, set up a municipal Wi-Fi
service for folks.
Of course, it was a miserable failure because it was badly mismanaged, or badly managed.
But maybe the only state that has a carve-out, has such a law, but a carve-out for a specific
city to make it okay.
I mean, where these things have been successful thus far has been in small cities where the
large internet providers have completely ignored the citizenry, instead of places like New
York and Philadelphia where the large providers, you know, sort of actively abuse the citizenry.
But maybe that will change.
It's definitely something we should be keeping a very strong eye on.
Some more news from the world of governmentally provided services, healthcare.gov.
We spoke about that a lot when it came out and was difficultly unveiled.
There's an AP story out that shows a little investigation that's being done into what
goes on when you visit healthcare.gov and exactly where your data goes.
According to the Associated Press, the government's health insurance website is quietly sending
consumers personal data to private companies that specialize in advertising and analyzing
internet data for performance and marketing.
So yeah, again, it's like the Verizon wireless story all over again, but this is the site
that's supposed to be providing healthcare services to American citizens.
The scope of what's disclosed or how it might be used was not immediately clear, but it
can include age, income, zip code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant.
Yeah, they've basically connected to the site a number of times, monitored the connection,
and realized that data is going to Google, data is going to other advertising companies,
and it's not made immediately obvious that this is happening or why it's happening.
And this is healthcare.gov we're talking about, visitors to healthcare.gov.
Healthcare.gov, the online gateway to government subsidized private insurance for people who
lack coverage of their own on the job.
That's so strange.
I mean, as we've mentioned before in this program, the only class of information in
the United States where there are any legal privacy protections, besides government held
secrets, is health information, this HIPAA bill.
So I wonder if they're in compliance.
Absolutely.
A former White House chief information officer named Teresa Payton is quoted as saying that
you don't need all of this data to do customer service.
She served under President Bush, Bush II.
She continues, we know hackers are just waiting at the door salivating to get at this data.
Hey.
Salivating?
Salivating.
You know, maybe.
We're digitally salivating.
Okay.
If any hackers listening to this are salivating, maybe you need to get some medical help.
Try healthcare.gov.
But yeah, this data is actually, you know, from what's going on, it appears to me that
the threat is not hackers.
The threat are organizations that are built around profiting from your data, like Google,
like these other companies.
Who then go on and resell it to, maybe if this website learns you've smoked, it can
sell you stop smoking, or cigarettes, either way, really.
Or they can sell that information about you to people who would benefit from knowing your
general state of health and future chances of certain things.
Like getting a job or things like that.
Absolutely.
Cooper Quinton, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has said,
I think this could erode confidentiality when dealing with medical data and medical information.
So yeah, this article also lists some of the services that the data is being sent to.
Google's data analytics service, Twitter, Facebook, and a host of online advertising
providers.
Fun.
Yeah.
So it's not, is all of your personal data being sent to all these sites, or just the
fact that you have visited healthcare.gov?
Which, frankly, should still be protected information, but is perhaps less protection
worthy?
Yeah.
All this article says on, an SAP story says, the scope of what is disclosed or how it might
be used was not immediately clear, but it can include age, income, zip code, whether
a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant.
That last thing is something I particularly don't want anybody to know.
Yeah, please.
That's information that you should not share with our listening audience, Bernie.
But we've covered this sort of famous story in the Times that came out some years ago,
where Target basically can predict if people are pregnant before their parents, and partners
in many cases, know and use that data.
Because apparently, pregnant people are a great market opportunity for many kinds of
businesses.
Was that Walmart, or Kmart, or whatever?
It was Target.
It was Target.
There are other entities that do it also, but the one that got particularly famous for
it was Target.
Was that a story where a man was really angry and complained loudly to his local Target
store because his teenage daughter who lived at home with him was receiving all this pregnancy
product direct mail ads, like for products and coupons to his home, and he complained
she shouldn't be getting it.
She's way too young to be pregnant.
She shouldn't be getting that stuff, and then he found out later she was pregnant.
These companies were able to figure out just from her purchases in the store whether she
was pregnant or not, or give a very, very good guess.
And were able to know before her own father knew.
And it's not just that they were able to figure it out.
They were able to then use that data to advertise directly for her, sending her coupons for
pregnancy-related things.
And of course, the lesson that people will recall that Target learned was don't just
send people flyers for pregnancy-related stuff.
Also include other stuff so that they don't feel creeped out, but do the same amount of
creeping.
And again, I'm certain that Target is not the only ones who do this.
They just happen to get unlucky enough to be profiled in the Times.
But this is valuable data that you may not wish to share with marketers.
And I think it's worth learning more about what exactly healthcare.gov does or doesn't
share.
I can't believe I just used the word share in that sentence also.
I'm disappointed in you, Mike.
It's worth learning more about what healthcare.gov does or does not distribute to people who
wish to do you harm by overcharging you for products without your permission.
But also, because it's a government website and a government service, the information
that this is happening at all should be made clear to the people who are using it.
But what can we expect?
So speaking of Target, let's move on to a related subject, which is shooting rockets
at things.
Awesome segue.
Yeah, very good.
There's a story in the Seattle Times about billionaire and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk,
who has announced sort of an interesting plan.
He was at a glitzy private event and told the crowd, one day I will visit Mars.
This is a direct quote from Mr. Musk.
Is he going to bring any microphones with him, or will we finally stop hearing from
him?
I don't know.
Hopefully, if he's going to bring one, he brings a better one than the one I'm using
here.
To this end, to get him to Mars, one thing he wants to do with his organization, SpaceX,
is build a constellation of some 4,000 geosynchronous satellites, a network in space that could
deliver high-speed Internet access anywhere on Earth.
The satellites are to be designed by software and aerospace engineers in SpaceX's new engineering
office in Redmond.
And to this end, it will be, as he describes it, an Internet service provider that will
work anywhere in the world, so that's a quote, and basically somehow finance his trip to
Mars.
Now, Bernie, I heard this article, or read it perhaps even, and it didn't make any sense
to me technically.
Maybe you understand, or maybe it's just been misreported.
But a constellation of 4,000 geosynchronous satellites doesn't make sense.
At least one of those words, in my view, has to be wrong.
You don't need 4,000 satellites to cover the whole Earth if they're up at geosynchronous
orbit distance.
And also, if you had a geosynchronous satellite providing your Internet, the latency on that
thing, the time from when you press return, when you want to go to a webpage, to the time
when the webpage actually starts coming in is going to be unacceptably high.
So maybe this is misreported and he's going to put satellites in lower Earth orbit, or
maybe he just doesn't know what he's doing, and it seems unlikely he'd make that big
a mistake.
Have you been able to find any more details about this?
Well, I agree with you, Mike.
It doesn't make any sense, and Elon Musk is a pretty smart guy.
So he probably knows, as some of us know, that the geosynchronous orbit, which is about
22,300 miles from planet Earth, is actually named the Clark Belt, named after Arthur C.
Clark, a famous science fiction author who, I believe, wrote the story that turned into
the movie 2001, Space Odyssey.
He theorized long before Sputnik that you could put three geosynchronous orbiting satellites
around the Earth, and that would cover all of the communications needs of the planet.
So you're right, yeah, you put them all 180 degrees apart and you can cover, theoretically,
over the whole surface of the Earth.
There's no way you could put 4,000, you would need 4,000 geosynchronous satellites.
You could put them in low Earth orbit.
There aren't anywhere close to 4,000 available slots in the Clark Belt, either.
There's hardly any left, because they're all bought up.
It's basically high-priced space real estate.
It's the specific part of the orbit which the satellite doesn't, it appears to hover
over the same spot over the Earth all the time when you're in that orbit.
And so almost all the slots are used up.
So there's no way you could get 400, let alone 4,000 satellites in that orbit, because there's
just no real estate up there for that.
And you're right, the latency.
There's a company called Hughes, which has a service like DirecTV, only it's a two-way
satellite service.
And I know somebody who has it, and they can't even do voice-over IP over it, the latency
is so bad.
It's okay for web browsing and email and things like that, but anything like streaming audio
or voice-over IP, forget it.
The latency is terrible.
I mean, I've occasionally used these services either when in remote areas or once when helping
someone prepare to go to a remote area.
And they're sort of magical, the existing satellite providers.
They're extremely expensive and rather slow, but you can get internet access anywhere on
Earth with just a fairly small device.
But they're also kind of finicky.
You have to point them towards the equator and towards the exact location where the satellite
you want is, and the latency is not very good.
I certainly wouldn't replace even the terrestrial internet providers that we love to complain
about on this show with any of the current satellite technology.
So I guess it'll be interesting to see what exactly is being planned.
And Bill Gates tried to do this, I think back in the late 80s, there was a company he started
called Teledevic, which was going to have a much smaller number of, I think, low-Earth
orbiting satellites that would provide internet connectivity.
But I guess he didn't want to spend all his own money.
He was like the richest guy in North America at the time, and he couldn't even pull it
off.
And Elon Musk is far from the richest guy in America.
Well, going back to a story we were talking about a couple of minutes ago, the healthcare.gov
site, we just got an email.
I get to be that guy.
We just got an email from a listener that forwarded me an article saying that the Obamacare
site does not have to be HIPAA compliant.
Apparently it's exempt.
This is according to CRN.com.
Despite being one of the largest healthcare systems in the country, the Obamacare site
and back-end systems are not HIPAA compliant, nor do they have to be.
The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed.
So yeah, that's something else to think about when all this data is being slung around.
I think it's a good time to maybe invite some phone calls.
Country Code 1-212-209-2900 is the number to call.
Let us know what's on your mind, if you've been following any of these stories or any
other ones that you would like our input on.
And while we're waiting for this board to light up, I'll just let our listeners know
that we won't be on next week.
We're preempted.
There's a special on.
We will be back in two weeks with more of what we do.
So let's see.
There's a couple of lights blinking on here.
Let's see what happens when I press them.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Hello.
I'd like to ask a question.
Please do.
You're on the air.
Okay.
I'd like to know why is it that you got, there are already central satellite, stationary
satellites up there already.
I think there's one at the North Pole and the South Pole, the Earth.
There are a great many satellites out there already, enough where it's kind of hard to
find places to put new ones, as I understand it.
I think you can't put any more.
Right.
But the trouble with what's up there is everything that's up there is already run by somebody
or owned by someone.
And I think people want to put their own thing up there and do their own thing.
And that's something that you can do when you're, I think, ridiculously rich.
What do you think, Bernie?
Well, the caller is right.
There's a bunch of them up there.
There's way more than you imagine.
I think there's many hundreds and they have to be a certain distance from each other or
they'll bang into each other.
And depending on what the satellite's used for, like if it's a high power, like Direct
TV, Hughes operates these Direct TV satellites, the beam high power satellite TV signals down
to these tiny dishes that some of us have on our properties, they can't be anywhere
near another satellite that operates in that same frequency band or they interfere with
each other.
So there's a lot of issues other than just physical proximity.
There's a lot of interference issues.
And the slots are pretty much taken.
It's like the real estate used up.
So this has got to be either geosynchronous, it's got to be either low Earth orbiting satellites,
as Mike mentioned, or he's going to have to fire rockets at all the other satellites and
blow them out.
I think there's going to be a big problem coming up in the near future when the sun
starts kicking up.
The sun, sunspots?
Well, sunspots will knock out all our satellites.
It's been known to happen, temporarily at least, that has been known to happen.
Well, a lot of those satellites at night are shielded against the sun, radiation and all
the problems.
If there was a great big solar flare, it could permanently knock out some satellites.
You never know when they're going to pick up on you.
Well, I guess if you have 4,000, you can spare a few.
Yeah, excellent.
Well, I think we'll look for another caller.
Thank you very much for that call.
Hey, Bernie, I have a question for you, still on this satellite thing.
Yes.
Do you think these satellites are more or less susceptible, if they exist, to spying
by large government agencies than cables?
They are, I wouldn't know if they're more or less, but they are both 100% vulnerable
to that.
In fact, no American company will be allowed to launch any kind of satellite communication
service to American users without the FBI having complete and total access to, not
only the communications content, but all the so-called metadata.
I think back in the late 90s, a satellite phone company tried to start services, about
ready to throw the switch, and the FBI swooped in and said, nope, you can't turn the switch
until you let us have access to all your satellite earth stations and all the traffic,
and it really delayed that business from turning on the service, but eventually they buckled
and allowed the FBI complete access, so it's going to be under complete surveillance, whether
it's cables or satellite.
Even if you're Elon Musk.
Okay, let's see who else is out there.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Hi.
How do you do?
Okay.
I got a question that's more astronomical than not, but it really relates to the solar
flare stuff.
What I'm curious about is that, well, we all know that the sun is quite large.
It's so large, it's actually big, and what I'm wondering is this.
I don't know the term, but I know arc, that's like two-dimensional, but the sun is like
that, the chance that a solar flare makes a direct hit on planet earth, I would suspect
is infinitesimal, and even if the sun is having flares all over its surface, even then the
chance is just hugely small that it hits earth, and if I'm wrong about this, I'm going to
listen to the radio and hear your expert opinion, okay?
Okay.
Well, I think keep listening to the radio, because the guy you want to ask about this
is our colleague Michio Kaku, whose show is on in a couple hours, and I'm sure he would
have more to say about this.
What I know is the sun is a massive incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen
is fused into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.
I learned this from They Might Be Giants.
So we'll keep an eye on what goes on with this, and in the meantime, we will see who
else is out there.
We have time for a couple of more calls, I think.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
You're not on off the hook.
Those of you who aren't tones, stay on the line.
Call back if you get timed out.
Let's see.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes.
I also have a question.
Yes, indeed.
Who is selling the real estate up there?
Who's selling the real estate up there?
Bernie, what do you know about how they figure these things out?
Well, it's kind of sliced up as an international group called the International Telecommunications
Union, or ITU, and it's by international agreement.
ITU sort of coordinates things like radio frequency spectrum use around the world and
satellite orbital slots, and each country is allocated a certain number of certain amount
of real estate.
I think it's based on whether you're a country or not and whether you have how many people
you have, the size of your user base, that sort of thing.
It's some sort of complex formula, but even smaller countries have some slots, and a lot
of the smaller companies that don't have their own ability to have their own satellites,
they sell their slots or lease them to other countries, so that's how it works.
Well, that's definitely worth considering.
Yes, we are running out of room up there, and the room that we do have is tightly controlled,
so yes, if you want to send up $4,000 of anything, you've got to ask people.
Thank you very much for that call.
No one else on the line yet.
212-209-2900.
Let's see if we can squeeze one or two more phone calls in.
Please, we're not astronomers.
We aren't astronomers, though we are enthusiasts.
I have a lot of NASA patches on my jacket.
Yeah, if you have a question about NASA patches, maybe Rob knows the answer, but the sun itself.
Well, yeah, the sun is interesting and we need it, and let's see what other solar-based
life forms there are out there.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Okay, yes.
Speak up, please.
Whoops.
Sorry, I've got to go.
Have a good evening.
All right, let's see who else is out there who doesn't have to go.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
I was wondering, is there any update on the HOPEx pledge items?
The pledge items, yes.
Thank you for asking.
The pledge items, we are still working on those.
In fact, it is me personally now who is going to be corralling that data, so if you pledged
for premiums that you have not yet gotten, do let us know.
Send us email, oth at 2600.com, with the information of what you pledged for, when the pledge was,
and the name and address on the pledge, and we are working nonstop to make sure that the
premiums that are outstanding, that we do something about that because that's not good
for us.
It's not good for the station.
It's not good for anyone to have people still out there who have generously supported our
station and kept us on the air, and have not received the thank you gifts we promised.
So yes, we are working on that, and we do want to know.
So even if it's been a while, even if you think, oh, it's been too long, they don't
care.
No, we actually care, and we actually want to know.
We don't have the ability to answer every email that comes in about this, but we do
collect them, and we are keeping hold of that information.
So yes, continue to let us know about your premiums.
And yes?
I have a thought on this.
We were talking earlier in the show, before I came on, I heard you talking about this
marketplace for the evil kind of hackers who like break into computers for a fee.
We've gotten a lot of non-response from WBAI management about information about these premiums,
and we can't go any farther.
So I'm wondering, maybe we can go to this marketplace and hire some evil hacker to get
this data for us from WBAI, because WBAI's management is certainly not forthcoming with
this information we need.
I wonder if we could hire any evil hackers to do something nice instead, and just go
volunteer at the station and sort through some of this.
But we'll see what we can do about that.
We are just about out of time.
We would love it if you sent us some email, oth at 2600.com.
Stay tuned for our friends at the Personal Computer Show, and after them, for Michio
Kaku.
For Off The Hook, this is Rob T. Firefly.
Have a good night.
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