with family and friends. We will be presenting historic and inspiring recordings from the
collection going back to 1949, including John Lennon, recently restored women's history programs,
four hours of a rare Jimi Hendrix documentary, and newly discovered recordings. So tune in to
your Pacifica station Tuesday, November 17th and 18th for the Pacifica Radio Archives annual
broadcast. You can listen and donate online at pacificaradioarchives.org.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York. It's just about seven o'clock on
a Wednesday, and every now and then that means it's time for Off The Hook.
11, 11. It's not even funny.
11. That's ridiculous. 11. 11. That's what we can do. We can go anywhere
because we live here. Yeah, but not only the right of free travel, I'm saying 11.
11. One, two, three. Yes, sir. Yes, today is the 11th day of the 11th month, and it's also the day
that we announced the 11th Hope, or actually that we opened up ticket sales for the 11th Hope.
This is Emanuel Goldstein here of this edition of Off The Hook, joined tonight by Mike.
Good evening. Kyle.
Hi, Heather. And Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia. And yes, it was a very momentous occasion
as we started this whole process up again, the 11th conference that we're going to be holding
next July. You know what? I don't have the date in my head. Does anybody have the date in their
head? This is some professional... Does anyone have the calendar in their head? Well, I have
to go to the website. I mean, I have a calendar on my phone. It's whatever the 24th. The 24th is
probably in there. That's true. All right. So Mike is quickly looking it up. 22nd to the 24th.
22nd and 23rd. Wait, say it again, Bernie. The 22nd and the 23rd of July 2016 would be Friday
and Saturday. Well, what happened to Sunday? And Sunday, the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th. But you
didn't include it. That's why I was wondering why you didn't include Sunday. I had a feeling
that's what it was. Yeah. Well, okay. Do you know it doesn't even say that on your website,
Hope.net? On my website? Yeah. I thought it was our website. All right. Well, whoever's website.
If it was my website, I would have put the dates on it. When there's a problem, it becomes my
website. You notice that? Yeah. All right. So what's the problem with my website? It doesn't
have the dates on it. Well, it did before we had to tell people that we didn't have any more
tickets. But don't panic. We're not sold out. It's not sold out. We offered 100 tickets
at a very reduced price. And it was a bit of mayhem. It was. But mayhem we can handle and
that we have handled. And it's exciting. So currently, that is the place to go for information.
And right now, we have absolutely no more information other than that. And that's the
point. That's what we were trying to tell people is that, look, we had Edward Snowden as our keynote
last time. And all we're telling you is that we're having another conference. And if you want to get
tickets, they will become available on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour and 11th
minute. We wanted to do 11 seconds, but there's only so much we can do. And we offered it at that
time and made the best man or bot or whatever win. And, you know, I tried to get tickets.
Bernie, did you try to get tickets? I know you've tried in the past and failed.
I tried, but unsuccessfully. I don't have one of the newest, fastest supercomputers. So
I guess I was just a few microseconds too slow.
You'd think I'd have an advantage because I was very close to where the button was pushed. But
not at all. Not even close. By the time I just selected it, it was sold out.
You can't make an exception for yourself.
Wouldn't be right. And I don't think I could either if I wanted to.
I think there were ample folks out there that were a little perplexed
and possibly thought there was something technically going on. But I think the
actual sale was over in less than several heartbeats.
Okay. On that subject, do you want to guess how many seconds it took for this to sell out?
I can't participate.
The obvious guess is 11.
11.
11. It's not even funny.
11.
11. That's ridiculous.
11.
11. That's what we can do. We can go anywhere because we live here.
Yeah, but not only the right of free travel, I'm saying 11.
11. One, two, three. Yes, sir.
You know, there's not a number that we can't have fun with. But yeah, it wasn't 11 though,
Mike. You were wrong. It was actually between three and four is what I was told.
I have no way of verifying that. And we don't have a track that has threes and fours in it.
So about 11 thirds of a second.
Something like that. Yeah, something like that.
But yeah, and we'll have a lot more information. We're going to have another
discounted ticket event next month as well. And then we'll be opening it up for real
at the full price come sometime next year, I believe in January.
Pay attention to the site, xi.hope.net or hope.net.
You said that very fast. xi.hope.net. Xi for?
The Roman numerals. 11.
All right. Well, we have all kinds of things that have been going on in addition to
planning our next conference. Oh, and by the way, it'll be here in New York City,
Hotel Pennsylvania. And that's pretty much all we know at the moment, but it's going to be awesome.
Yes.
I'm really thrilled that we know the date to the conference so much earlier than it happening.
This time around. And I'm hoping we can really have a lot of time to plan things
earlier this time in all respects. This is great. People can plan their schedules
and other things way far in advance. So compared to other times. So thank you.
Yeah. Well, I thank the hotel and thank well, I don't want to thank God necessarily. He's
busy with other things. But, you know, this fate in general, the universe, it all came together.
Well, it hasn't even happened yet, but it will happen and it will be awesome.
And I know that people from all over the world will show up and make it
another historical event. I just I wonder how we're going to beat last time. I really do.
It also after.
I'm sorry.
We always managed to beat last time.
Yeah, we always do. We always do somehow. But yeah, we will. We will.
After 10 events, the 11th, you're likely to get some things right.
Yeah, I would hope so.
But I think experience is helping. So hopefully everyone's feeling organized.
We're certainly working on that feeling as well. But that's that's about all there is
with that topic. But we're in the midst of something here.
We are.
Is fundraising over?
Fundraising is over, Kyle. It's been so long.
Oh, no. You know what? I'm thinking of the other. Oh, my God.
What? Go ahead.
Well, what are we in the midst of here since I brought that up?
Confusion, apparently. What do you think is happening around?
It's not. It's not a phone system.
Oh, well, the good news is we do. The phone lines have been they're here. The phone lines are here.
Well, I actually wanted to report I can see a phone behind the desk here on the floor.
Well, it does have a light on. I can't reach it. I would I would turn off all
of the surge protectors holding everything together. And this would not be any more.
Well, an audible station.
The good news is the phone. The phones are here. The phone lines are here. The bad news is they
have not yet been installed on our end. But that's you know, it's likely that they will be very,
very soon.
So that must have been what I was getting at as far as what we're in the midst of,
which is exciting. So in a couple of weeks, we'll have more information about that.
And it's going to have to be a couple of weeks because we're not going to be on again next week
because there's a between fundraiser fundraiser that they're doing nationally.
OK, so that's probably went through me, but that's a Pacific event.
Everyone's excited about and more information about that.
Yes. In the next couple of weeks.
Cartwheels in the hallways. That's how excited we are.
I mean, the most information about that will be on this very radio station one weekend.
Right. You learn all about the Pacific fundraiser.
Yeah, you probably won't have to wait long, but our reporting of it, perhaps the
sideways reporting.
We should thank everyone who pledged during the fundraiser that we did hold.
And if you haven't paid your pledge yet, now would be a great time to do it.
Absolutely.
But, you know, most people, I think, pay by credit card and they've already paid.
And we want to thank you.
Yes, we had a fair amount of support with with the recent pledge.
It's kind of weird, though, because we're only on every couple of weeks.
We are turning into a biweekly show and I don't want to do that.
But we've been we are preempted last week.
We were preempted two weeks before that.
I don't know. I can't remember beyond that.
But it seems like this whole thing next week.
Now, that's I think what's confusing.
Yeah, that threw me.
So let's try and cram as much as we can in this particular hour,
because we're only on for an hour.
That's the good thing.
A couple of weeks ago, we were on for two hours and two weeks before that,
we were on for two hours as well.
So we were able to have the same amount of material, but just not every week.
So, OK, we have some very disturbing developments out of the UK,
which I wanted to touch upon, at least for a moment.
And that involves this home secretary named Theresa May.
You know, I think this is somebody that will go down in history
as one of the biggest threats to freedom and privacy and all kinds of things like that.
She's been pushing all kinds of privacy invasions and monitoring surveillance, things like that.
But the thing that really gets me here in this law that's been proposed
is that, yes, can I help you?
Well, leaning over my shoulder.
OK, no, I'm not a problem.
Not a problem.
Cramped quarters here at the station.
The thing that gets me and I'm sure gets a lot of people is this law that's been proposed
where they are saying that they're going to be able to see the names of
all the sites that people visit on the Internet from their connections.
From your home, from your office.
And it's amazing to see how this is being justified as a way of keeping us safe,
keeping track of people.
And it's not like they're keeping track of the actual page you go to.
They're just keeping track of the site that you go to.
Now, can you imagine someone in the government being able to look at
all the sites that you visited in even just one day, how much of an intrusion that is?
They're comparing it to phone calls,
saying that it's no different than looking over your itemized list of phone numbers,
which in itself is also a violation if the government is doing that.
But it goes so much further than just a list of phone numbers.
I mean, I have only one positive thing to say about this bill,
and that is that I appreciate that they're actually admitting that they're going to do this.
I need not imagine that my government is making a list of every website that people visit,
because we know from Edward Snowden and others that they are in fact doing it,
but it's a secret program that they don't talk about.
I appreciate the UK's forthrightness in proposing this in the public square,
so that I can say in the public square that this is a terrible idea and they shouldn't do it.
As foreigners, we can say that.
But I imagine many native UKers would be very strongly opposed to this sort of thing.
I know Edward Snowden has actually been asked his opinion on this.
He warned that communications data covered by the proposed legislation
was the activity log of your life.
And I think it's good that we're going to Edward Snowden now to ask his opinion on things like this,
because you need to hear from an expert.
You need to hear from somebody who understands what privacy is.
Theresa May, I don't think, does.
Bernie, I'm sure you have some thoughts on her.
Yeah, well, I think she understands it, but she doesn't care.
She would like her government to surveil its citizens in every way possible, apparently,
and is supporting that situation.
I think, yes, I can imagine this for society, for nationally or globally.
I can imagine this for myself and as a possibility in the world.
I think what it sets up really well and, unfortunately, and what is more important,
is the concept of being judged by this.
It's one thing to have where you're going at someone, an entity's fingertips,
if they have fingertips, but it's one thing.
But then to have society, and then who and how do we judge those things?
And what if there are mistakes?
Like red light cameras going off all the time.
So it's an impressive logical mental exercise to go through.
The thing is, my worry here is that this becomes the norm.
This becomes something that we just take for granted.
Why should I care if the government sees what websites I go to?
So I go to CNN, and maybe if I'm daring, I go to MSNBC.
Sometimes I might even look at Fox.
But I don't do anything.
I'm not going to the ISIS website because I don't know what it's called, for one thing.
But I'm not doing anything that is...
I'm living by Edwin Mises' rules.
I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide.
And you live by that logic long enough, you start to really believe it,
and you start to impose it upon other people too.
You impose it upon your kids, and your friends, and your co-workers.
It's really unhealthy.
And it's something that I think we could very easily convince ourselves is necessary.
That's what they're trying to do over in the UK.
They're trying to convince us, or their citizens, that this is a necessary evil.
They don't even think it's evil, to fight the terrorists,
to fight the people that want to hurt us.
And it's not at all.
It's simply another way to give up more of your privacy.
You don't have to tell anybody your thoughts, or what you read,
or what you look at on the net, or what you watch on television.
You know, all of this, it's private.
And privacy is something we seem to be giving up.
Every week, there seems to be another erosion,
either that we give up voluntarily, or that is taken forcibly from us.
And we need to speak out a lot louder against this sort of thing,
because it's not going anywhere.
They're going to keep trying to do this to us.
Let's listen to some of their reactions.
David Anderson QC.
Does anybody know what that means?
QC?
Apart from Quebec City?
Kind of title.
It's a title.
Okay, thank you.
I knew that.
It might mean that he's a lawyer, but maybe I'm confusing it with another one.
He basically said that he's considered the government's terror watchdog.
I don't know if that gives you a QC title.
He said in June that the UK needed a comprehensive new surveillance law
to replace the current fragmented rules.
Speaking on the BBC radio, he gave Mrs. May's proposals four stars.
It's not out of 100.
It's out of four, I think.
But said it would be for Parliament to determine the extent of surveillance powers and safeguards.
He said this isn't a license for the police to simply prowl over everything you've been doing.
But I quite accept that a lot of data is being kept by these service providers,
and under the government's proposals, it would be kept for a very long time.
This creates obvious risks, he said, adding,
I simply wouldn't vote for this unless I had been very substantially satisfied
that those risks had been minimized.
Again, meaningless.
We don't know what that means.
We don't know what...
Yeah, he might be satisfied, but I don't think any of us would be.
But listen to this.
Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham.
Labour's not in power now.
They're supposedly the more liberal of the parties over there.
He backs the draft bill, saying it was
neither a snoopers charter nor a plan for mass surveillance.
So, you know, they're all in this.
They're all clueless and evil, and they need to be stopped.
They're clearly doubling down on this, right?
So we have leaks, so we know, okay, it's out there.
As Mike said, the public square, we're talking about it.
But as you also alluded, not enough.
Because now it's about how do we brand this?
Okay, everyone knows, cat's out of the bag.
But let's double down on this strategy of knowing everything and having
strategic intelligence on every system and every thing imaginable.
And here it is, case in point.
It's like out as something that, you know, we've all sort of already accepted.
We just don't know it yet.
I mean, I saw another thing on this story today as well,
and that is the cost of retaining all this data.
So I guess we should be a little more specific.
This bill would require internet service providers to keep records
of every connection their users make.
And the cost of maintaining these records is on the internet service providers,
who will be forced, of course, to pass this cost on to their customers.
This is not, you know, we get to stop terrorists for free.
This is we spy on everyone and make them pay for their own spying.
It's like decentralizing the spying, distributing it a bit
so that it's not some big centralized agency,
but rather they have their corporate and individual minions out there doing it for them.
It doesn't cost that much.
247 million pounds over the next 10 years,
including the storage of internet connection records
and the warrant approval regime, whatever that is.
It's the cost is one aspect.
It's just kind of a bitter irony.
But as storage becomes cheaper and bigger,
this kind of thing doesn't cost very much at all.
It's not really a money issue.
It's an issue of what we're willing to give up.
I mean, I agree with you.
Even if this thing were free, we shouldn't do it.
But the cost you quoted is the cost to taxpayers,
not the cost to anybody else who actually has to implement the system.
That's why they're able to make it so cheap.
Privatization.
Government privatization, folks.
It works.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like the actual costs.
And then the other hidden costs there are passed on.
And it's just an industrial kind of business to business thing.
Yeah, I remember the first time I went to Europe,
people were upset over itemized phone bills.
They literally thought that was something that the government could use
with World War II fresh in their minds.
They could use it to track people or to establish relationships between people.
Correlation.
And in the past, it was a very crude system where people would get billed
by the number of ticks or something that their phone would generate
from how long it was off the hook or whatever.
It was very primitive, very crude,
but it was satisfactory to those people that worried about that kind of thing.
Here in this country, years ago, we were worried about caller ID.
We thought that would be an invasion of privacy.
We thought that would be something that would take away our anonymity
and we wouldn't be able to call people without everybody knowing who we are.
Those two things have been widely accepted.
And I'm not necessarily saying those are bad things.
Maybe they're good things.
I still have mixed feelings about caller ID.
I think there are plenty of times where you don't want to broadcast your number.
But it's something to see how quickly society can change
as far as what is considered acceptable, what is not considered acceptable.
And this is something that I see happening here,
where one day it'll just be assumed that,
yeah, you go to a URL on your home computer,
it's going to be public or at least government knowledge that you went there.
So you better be careful where you go.
I haven't seen an itemized phone bill in years.
You haven't seen a phone bill in years either, have you?
I mean, I pay for my phone service.
You have to download it, I think.
I don't have...
No, I can't get that data.
I'm sure that the company I do business with
has that data and would gladly provide it to the government.
But itemized phone bill is not something I have access to.
Yeah, well, you have to make phone calls.
I do not make many phone calls, but I do make at least a couple a month.
They should show up on your bill, whatever device you're using.
I've had a prepaid plan and there's no way to get an itemized phone bill.
Okay, well, that's good, I guess.
Bernie, you had something?
I was just going to say, you recommended people watch
where they go, where they visit with their web browser, I said, or use a VPN service,
one that you trust to not give your browsing history to the government.
It would make it harder for people to know where you browse to.
Or you can use tools like Tor and things like that.
Yeah, the thing is, it can't be so difficult that it's a burden.
It's got to be easy.
I think as hackers, something that we need to be working on constantly
is how do we make this the norm?
How do we make privacy and anonymity something that is not the exception,
but rather something we expect and value?
I'd like to be able to travel someplace and not let the whole world know that I'm doing it.
You know, not register in certain places.
You know, where's the manual?
Nobody knows.
I could be in this country or that country.
I did that a few times.
It's a lot harder to do that now.
Try doing it in your own country.
See how hard that is.
You know, countries like North Korea, they know where you are at all times.
We're getting there.
We're getting to the stage where we have to register our location at all times
or carry something that tracks us,
whether it's by our own choice through our phones
or something that is implanted in us or whatnot.
We are moving towards that very definitely.
And I think it's important to just try and be anonymous as much as possible
and see how much you can actually do these days and how hard it is.
I think you're wrong.
I don't think we're headed there.
There's a story right under your elbow that shows we're already there.
Okay, we're already there.
What do we do?
Do we just give up or do we fight back?
Do we try and retain something or regain some of the privacy that we've lost?
I don't think we're completely there.
I think people are there who want to be there.
I think people have Google tracking every movement and check in everywhere they go.
Yeah, those people, they don't have any privacy.
Right now, it's their choice.
I guess we should say for people who can't see your elbow what the story is.
Well, I'm going to get into it.
It's basically about the recent expansion of Google's Timeline feature.
Apparently, it's being used to provide investigators unprecedented access to users' location,
history data of locations in the past.
It allows them in many cases to track a person's every move over the course of years.
That's according to a report recently circulated to law enforcement.
The personal privacy implications are pretty clear,
but so are the law enforcement applications.
According to the document, which is titled Google Timelines,
location investigations involving Android devices.
The Timeline allows users to look back at their daily movements on a map.
That same information is also potentially of interest to law enforcement.
It's now possible to submit a legal demand to Google for location history
greater than six months old.
That's according to the report.
This could revitalize cold cases and potentially help solve active investigations.
Now, Google's Timeline feature was launched in July of this year.
Or the expansion was, in any event.
It allows investigators to request detailed information about where someone has been
down to the longitude and latitude over the course of years.
Previously, law enforcement could only yield recent location information.
This kind of thing is scary.
It should scare everybody, regardless of whether or not you're burying bodies.
Weren't those called tower dumps?
Yeah, they were, right?
With the whole metadata thing?
Yeah, tower dumps are not as hard as they used to be.
Yeah.
This is not the same thing as a tower dump.
They're provider dumps, right?
I mean, this is data that Google maintains that it gets
from your device, not through the network.
Right.
But so you said earlier, Emmanuel, that people are voluntarily giving up their privacy and
should act to stop this.
I am, I feel like, in the really top echelon of people who try to be informed about these
issues.
I have literally no idea how to find out if my data is included in this set, what I,
my ear may not have done to turn it on.
If I did turn it on, how to turn it off.
And I don't think it's reasonable to expect that normal people know these things either.
Well, it is reasonable to say, don't play the game then.
Because if you don't know how to find the information that's being stored on you,
you can't be surprised when you find out a lot of information is being stored.
I mean, so what do we do?
Throw our cell phones in the river and not use any services?
I literally have no idea if I'm using the service or not.
I might be, I might not be.
Okay.
Well, this is Google.
This is Android.
These are things that you can point a finger at and say, am I using these things?
And are they giving me the privacy that I want?
Do I have enough control over this?
Sounds like you don't have enough control over it if you don't even know if you're being
tracked.
And that's the kind of thing that we need to get more of a control over.
I mean, I learned a thing recently about Google that if you do a voice search,
either on the device or the smartwatch, then they keep that voice recording literally forever.
And you can go on a website and see a list of all these recordings and play them back.
Isn't that cool?
I guess.
But I had no idea this was happening until actually our colleague Joons told me not too
long ago.
And you're entitled to royalties from those too.
Well, it's like it's a recording.
So once I learned about it, I turned it off.
But I don't think it needs to be entirely on the end user to discover what these giant
corporations are doing and manually find all these obscure settings, deliberately obscure
settings.
They make it as hard as possible so that people don't turn it off.
Okay.
Okay.
But if they know that fact, they know that they make it as hard as possible to find these
things so they can turn them off.
Don't use those companies.
What are the companies that don't do this?
Are there no other companies?
If there aren't any other companies, then maybe this technology is not ready for a free
society yet.
If it's really that bad.
I don't think it's fair to just say, like, let the market decide.
Like, we need to figure out what these giant entities are doing.
We need to have transparency in what data they're collecting.
And we need to make them make it easy to turn these things off.
Yeah, but by continuing to use them en masse, it's getting to the point where we won't know
how to survive without them.
And it's something that we just won't want to discard.
I mean, you're already demonstrating you don't want to discard this really cool technology
that you use because it's too much of a bother to figure out what's being stored where.
So your suggestion to me is I just throw my cell phones in the river.
Well, I'd never said throw anything in the river, okay?
Let's keep the river out of it.
You have not offered me any other solutions.
Well, you know.
Again, I'm pretty smart about these things.
So if I can't do it, like, everyone should do it is out.
Like, that's not an available solution with the current state of affairs that everyone
should just suddenly spend all their time understanding the privacy policies of every
entity with which they do business.
That's not an available option.
This is the same discussion we have about encryption, by the way.
Because we say people should use encryption, but it's too damn hard to use.
And people don't use it as a result of that.
Things need to be made simpler, both with encryption and with figuring out what is being
kept about you, what companies are storing.
I think it's incumbent upon us to support any movement that tracks these companies and
says what exactly they are doing and how you can control this.
For instance, you just talked about how you erased your voice from somewhere in the cloud,
which you assume it's erased.
How did you do that?
How was that done?
Because I don't know anything about that.
You have to find this page, which someone sent me a link to.
I don't know how you find it if no one sends you a link.
How did they get the link?
I have no idea.
Well, maybe Jones will tell us later, but he sent me the link and I clicked the link
and it gave me a recording of everything I had done.
And there's a button, a fairly visible button to delete one day at a time.
But if you've been using the service for years.
A fairly visible button on a web page that nobody knows the URL of.
If you find this web page, then you can probably find the button to delete one day at a time.
This is the problem.
What you can't do, what I had to actually search for how to do, I had to do a Google
search for how to use Google, is if you go to some super advanced option on that web
page, and I don't remember what it is.
I wish I did so I could tell our listeners.
But somewhere in there, there is an extra special button to delete all the history.
But you will not find this button on your own.
0% of the population to the nearest hundredth of a percent can find this button on their
own.
And that is a deliberate choice that people at Google made.
Okay, but we can make a choice too.
Now let's start with this.
This button that is somewhere on a hidden URL someplace that erases your voice every
time you say something into your phone.
If you do a voice search, yeah.
A voice search, which I've done on Google.
It's kind of cool.
And it is cool.
I'm not saying it's not.
But I did not know either that my voice was, I mean, I search for some pretty weird things
sometimes.
You're saying that a recording of everything I've searched for is stored someplace.
Yeah, I want that wiped out.
I want to press that button.
I want to find that button.
Well, now you know that you can.
So you're way ahead of most people.
This is progress.
So what we need to do is to make sure that is publicly known and that Google participates
in getting that information out.
So that's our first step.
Let's do that to start with.
I honestly think the one thing that is missing here is the realization of just how quickly,
like Google is a special case because they make it up as they go.
I mean, Google does not work at all like it did a year ago or even earlier.
So to even depend on them for accurate instructions on how they work now, let alone how it used
to work, I mean, they're constantly changing the entire thing.
It is itself a living file system.
That's why it's up to us to get the information.
It's constantly updating.
So they can decide on a whim what your Android device or what their policy, make up new buttons.
They got bags full of buttons, OK?
They can litter their stupid services with buttons and configuration and making up new
hoops to jump through to maybe have your information technology managed in some like logical usable
way.
Here's the flip side to all this, though.
Law enforcement people think that Google is the enemy.
They basically don't like the fact that users like Mike can edit or delete specific locations
in their history or their voice.
But in this particular case, they're talking about that location gizmo.
They can delete an entire day.
They're concerned about the importance of preserving crime scenes or histories or whatever.
And they say, unfortunately, Google has made it very easy to delete location history from
a specific date.
So they think that Google is doing too much to help us.
It just shows you how far apart the two sides are.
And props for Google.
Someone at Google cares about privacy somewhere in there and is making these buttons.
They are my hero.
But you're also believing that it's not recoverable after they do that.
And I don't trust anybody.
I don't think that it's necessary because they say it's deleted.
It really is deleted.
As the end user, we have absolutely no way to know beyond the assurances.
I feel like if it didn't work, they would make it easier to use.
But what do I know?
Well, let's just end with this particular quote from the report.
Consider including Gmail, photos and videos, search history, contacts, applications, other
connected devices, Google Voice and Google Wallet if they are relevant to the investigation.
Think about how much information somebody who uses all of those features will be leaving
behind and how much of their privacy will be analyzed, scrutinized.
Now, I'm not even talking about whether you're guilty or innocent, because, well, if you're
deemed not worthy of pursuit, they're still going to look at all this information.
They're still going to have a good time going through all your personal material.
So this is something we need to be aware of, something we really have to understand.
And not look to any one entity as the solution, as having the answers for us, right?
It's on us as much to direct them as consumers as it is on them to protect us or whatever else.
And, of course, on into the duty of law enforcement and on and on and on.
But there's, I think, a balance between the two.
And also society itself has to decide what we are OK with, what makes us safe in all regards.
Well, this is why hackers are considered such a threat, because
hackers are the ones that are able to figure out ways into systems,
leak all kinds of documents, show things like Edward Snowden showed that are simply
not believed at first, but then found to be completely true.
The company is not going to tell you this.
The average person does not have the ability to get in and find this information.
When hackers are able to gain access, it's incumbent upon them to share that information,
not use it for their own personal gain.
And that's how we benefit, by learning these things that would not be told to us otherwise.
On that subject, Bernie, I know a story was breaking earlier
concerning prison phone records.
You know the story I'm talking about?
Yeah, actually, Rob shared that with us.
He's not with us tonight.
He's not feeling well.
Feel better, Rob?
Yeah, there's big companies that manage, unfortunately, I know this from experience,
multi-billion dollar companies that manage prison phone systems,
so that when prisoners call their friends or loved ones or attorneys,
they have to pay a fortune for each call,
which then a big percentage of which is given back to the prison to...
That's a different injustice.
Yeah, let's talk about the injustice at hand.
The current thing is that, according to the EFF,
an enormous cache of phone records obtained by a news reporting organization called Intercept
showed that there was a major breach of security at one company called Securist Technologies.
They're one of the biggest providers of phone service inside this country's prisons and jails.
And unauthorized people were able to find millions of records of phone calls,
and actually downloadable recordings of the prisoners' phone calls.
So this stuff is not safe.
And what's particularly disturbing to me is that attorney-client phone calls
of prisoners to their attorneys were being recorded illegally,
and this could result in a massive lawsuit,
because the ACLU said this is maybe the most
massive breach of attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history.
Called...
It was by David Fathi.
He's the director of the ACLU's National Prison Project.
When I myself was touring five prisons during my ordeal back in 1995-96,
whenever I would request to make an attorney-client privilege phone call,
the people in charge would just basically laugh and say,
okay, it's not being recorded.
And they had no way of differentiating my call from anybody else's call.
So all that stuff was recorded.
For all I know, it's still recorded.
And this is not surprising to me at all this is going on,
but now they got caught doing it because an anonymous hacker
broke into this system and proved that this company called
Securus Technologies was recording attorney-client phone calls of prisoners.
Well, now there's one thing...
I don't usually have a problem with the Intercept,
but I do have a problem with this headline,
because the headline reads,
massive hack of 70 million prisoner phone calls
indicates violations of attorney-client privilege.
That implies that hackers broke in and violated these prisoners' rights
by getting the phone calls in the first place.
And what they did instead,
and it's not really clear from this headline,
is they uncovered evidence that 70 million phone calls
had been recorded by prison authorities,
including phone calls with attorney-client privilege.
Am I getting that right?
Yeah, I think so, Emanuel.
It was not the hackers that violated attorney-client privilege.
It was the prison authorities who did this.
And pretty clearly, they did that knowingly and willfully.
And who knows who they shared that with.
I mean, prosecutors who have access to attorney-client privilege
phone calls of defendants basically have a blueprint
to how to prosecute this person
because they get to hear the whole defense strategy.
And no wonder the Department of Justice in this country
has a 97% conviction rate
if they can hear all the attorney-client phone calls.
Again, I can't say I'm surprised that this was happening,
but it's another good example of what we're talking about
because we assume that the rules are being followed
until a hacker shows that they're not.
And now we know that we're being lied to,
we have the evidence to show it,
and we can do something about it.
And let's hope that we do something about it this time.
Yeah, it's confirmation that the technical means is misused.
And we know this.
We know more often than not, when something is possible,
someone's going to exploit it one way or another.
When people get ahold of it,
they'll use these to whatever end.
Yeah, absolutely.
Hey, guess what?
Our friends at Hacking Team, they're back.
Remember Hacking Team?
I didn't know I had any friends there.
Yeah, well, I had air quotes around that.
Basically, they got hacked good in the last year.
Oh, these are the Italian...
Yeah, there's an Italian connection.
Corporate espionage, yeah, yeah.
They are basically back with a bold pitch to police,
according to this particular news story.
Do they have a new logo?
I don't know what their old logo was.
But yeah, they're back.
And the thing is, they are viewing various things that we're doing.
They're viewing all that as a threat.
I can't really be surprised by this.
Oh, really?
Yeah, all the encryption and privacy awareness and things like that.
And they are trying to regain all the respect that they lost
by having their entire client database.
That seems to be the trend in the governmental security community.
It's definitely things are ramping up
because, boy, is it dangerous out there.
And everybody, battle stations and cyber, all of it.
Well, Hacking Team is now pitching its products
to help U.S. law enforcement get around its encryption problem,
that's what they call it, with hacking tools.
So they're using hacking tools for other purposes.
Oh, that's good.
The company apparently thinks this whole hoopla around encryption
is the perfect time to speak up.
Most law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad will become blind.
They will go dark.
They will be simply unable to fight vicious phenomena such as terrorism.
So you got to bring it right in there.
Hacking Team's CEO, David Vincenzetti, wrote this in an email
sent to a mailing list made of potential and current customers back in October.
Only the private companies can help here.
We are one of them.
It is crystal clear that the present American administration
does not have the stomach to oppose the American IT conglomerates
and to approve unpopular yet totally necessary regulations.
So again, you see how the American IT conglomerates are seen as the enemy
by those people that also see privacy and security and encryption as the enemy.
It gets complicated.
Yeah, it's funny because those IT entities,
they're controlled by bottom line.
So it's sort of, it's like a little bit removed, right?
Because their customer is, I guess, what you would say is demanding this.
But it's sort of several people removed.
They represent the consumers and now who they then go up against
are governments, organizations, entities, providers, and so on and so forth
that demand certain protocols or this or that.
Under whatever kind of security legislation or whatever the jurisdiction dictates.
And so they're now adversaries with these tech companies,
which is interesting because then when consumers report on it
and when we talk about it,
it's oft about what these companies are doing also with our data privately
to say nothing of what they're reporting to governments and so on and so forth.
Very interesting, the sides of this as it is.
You read it objectively.
Well, it's a question of not who do you trust,
but who don't you trust the least.
Yeah, who's the least worst ally in adversarial time?
Whatever.
Yeah, that's what's going on.
It's very Game of Thrones-ish and you have to be very careful.
There's a lot of loyalty.
Yeah.
Okay, you know, we're going to try and take phone calls.
Are we ready for this?
Can you?
Yeah, I think if you want to make the necessary connection.
I'm doing it now, actually, in case you can't tell.
I'm doing three things at once.
Sure, sure.
I'm logging into something and...
We haven't done that in a little while.
Recovering my password and here's the hardware device that...
Make sure to tell Google where you are.
Yeah, now Google already knows.
I already asked permission to do this from Google.
Ask them if it's okay to make the phone call from where you told them you are.
Yeah, now this is so we can listen to our...
Hear from our listeners.
Right.
And get around the fact that we don't have a phone line working here,
except for the one that Bernie is on right now.
Bernie, you're taking up 100% of our phone capabilities here.
Oh no, sorry.
Did I go away?
No, no, stay here.
We're going to hack our way around it.
It's one of the last weeks we'll be able to do that.
Yeah, because we might have actual phone lines next time we're on the air.
What?
Yeah, it's possible.
It's highly possible.
I just have to remember how to do this.
I have to turn...
You guys banter for a moment while I play with the buttons.
This is community radio.
What is not possible?
That is...
Oh, there it is.
That's what we say in community radio.
I've never heard anyone say that.
I mean, I know that I'm supposed to agree with you if this is an improv thing,
but I don't know what you mean by that.
You're right, though.
They don't talk about it enough around here, or loud enough.
But this is WBAI 99.5.
I guess legally it'd be WBAI New York.
99.5 FM.
They hid settings in a weird place.
Okay, so our phone number that you can call now is area code 331,
and again, I don't even know what that is, 223 WBAI.
And you call that number, it will ring to our specially hooked up into the board
cell phone device, and you'll be able to talk to us.
And it'll be confusing.
There might be a delay.
There might be some distortion.
But it's the best we can do right now.
331-223-9224.
223 WBAI.
And Kyle, where is this going to show up on the board?
Which one here?
That one there?
That's the very one I'm playing the CD from.
Are you sure?
Okay, that's going to conflict then.
Yeah.
Okay, well, the phone's ringing.
Are we moving?
Wow, such cables.
All right, so we're over here now.
I need an answer.
Are we over here or not?
Should we answer this phone call?
I don't know what that will remove.
That might be something.
Okay, but you just plugged something in.
What should I do?
I did not.
I made an attempt, but I didn't do it yet.
Okay, we've lost two calls so far.
So good evening.
Is somebody there?
Hello?
There's nobody there, Kyle.
Is somebody there now?
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you now.
Yes, can you hear me?
We hear you fine.
Can you hear us?
I can hear you fine.
Okay, the test is complete.
Do we have anything to say?
I do.
I just wanted to comment on what you've been talking about,
specifically referring to this new bill being proposed in England
regarding having all of your website locations collected for government review.
This reminds me of another topic you brought up earlier this year
regarding the small, small victory that privacy advocates had
gotten in regards to cell phone collection of records.
And at the time, you said, well, now they don't have to collect these records,
but who will stand up to the government because they're all in debt with each other,
all the large players like T-Mobile, Verizon, et cetera.
And I would say to you that this does create a business opportunity
for some privacy-minded individual.
And I hope that maybe they'll be listening to my voice at some point,
that they can create a cell phone company or an ISP.
I mean, certainly there's already plenty of VPN services,
but perhaps more about the cell phone that will advertise,
we don't keep your records for government review.
And that I think there would be more interest in that
than perhaps some of the more cynical of us would believe.
Absolutely.
Thank you for that.
That's an excellent, excellent comment.
I think that's the right attitude.
And it's not just companies and products.
It's also clubs, organizations, open source projects.
If you're working on some software, different types of sites and services also fit in there.
And when we put on events and when we go to events that have
their own infrastructure and stuff,
very often the guys that are running it or the people there will tell us
that they're very proud of not keeping records.
And in fact, no logs is very important.
When you're having perhaps like a security conference
and you have people from all over and all different kinds of industries,
that attitude needs to permeate.
That needs to be something that's a bit more popular
in other parts of society, not just hacking community.
So I think that the caller is right, that we do need some entities
who are going to provide services to privacy conscious people.
And I know that Nick at the Calyx, C-A-L-Y-X Institute
has been working on this for years.
It's very hard, but it is something that he's been working on.
But I also think that the caller is wrong because we need these services,
not just for those of us who will take out the time to really study these issues
and move to the most privacy conscious ISP,
possibly even if it's more expensive or whatever.
We need privacy protections for everybody.
And that requires not passing nutty bills like they're passing in the UK.
And it involves changing the practices of the large,
dominant players in this industry who so many people are customers of.
I agree completely with what you said,
but I would just say that we have to start somewhere.
Okay. Hey, thanks for your call.
And thanks for blocking your number too,
because it shows that you know what you're doing and that's important.
This next caller, well, we just lost him, but another caller will come in.
Again, 331-223-WBAI.
It's weird, I deactivate it when we get a call,
but the call waiting tones still come across.
Okay, this person did not block their phone.
So I know that you're calling from New York someplace.
Good evening. Yes, you're on the air. Go ahead.
Hi, am I on the radio station?
And you're on the air too. So it's getting very confusing.
So please turn down your radio.
Hi.
All right. Can we do that?
This is what I was afraid of.
I can hear somebody.
Yeah, that's you and me seven seconds ago.
So can you turn that down and we can have a conversation?
I can hear somebody.
Sure.
You mean the radio, though?
Okay. My patience just...
Go ahead.
You there?
Yeah.
Okay. Speak, please. You're on the air.
Okay. Hello?
Yes.
Hi.
Hi.
Yes, I'm here.
This has been fun, but I'm going to move on to another call.
Good Lord.
People, just think it through before you make the phone call.
331-223-WBAI.
And good evening. You're on the air.
Please turn down your radio or whatever.
Am I on the air now?
You're on the air right now.
I had a question about an organization that I heard about in the UK.
It's called Young Rewired State.
I don't know anything about it except it's on Wikipedia, and that's not much.
Have any of you heard anything about it?
No. Tell us.
Say again?
Tell us about it. What is it? I have not heard anything of this.
The name of it is Young Rewired State for school kids 18 and under and Rewired State for 18 and over.
And it's something about—I don't know much about it.
It's something about teaching kids or getting kids together who are exceptional performers in school to be hackers.
And they have conventions.
They have conventions.
I don't have the information in front of me right now, but they have conventions.
This isn't that NSA thing that I've been hearing. Is that an NSA camp that I've been hearing about?
I don't know. It didn't mention NSA.
Well, no, they wouldn't.
It mentioned that they were now affiliated with IBM somehow.
So this is a really interesting kind of evolution, and it's part of the mainstreaming of
computers and internet society in general and hacking.
So there are a lot of really interesting programs out there.
I halfway thought you were going to talk about infrastructure and
cool things people are doing in rural areas to connect people.
But these kinds of programs—because it said rewiring was in the title—but
it doesn't surprise me that there's programs that are kind of getting people to
look at things differently, to problem-solve in other ways.
And a lot of groups are embracing this, leading.
And some have different directional aspirations than others.
So definitely if you're going to sign up someone you know that
is young and probably learning and new in the area,
do a little research, because some of these organizations are, in fact—
I'll do a little research, but I wanted to find out if they are government-affiliated.
The only thing they mentioned is they're IBM-affiliated.
What are their goals? What are their young rewired? What does that mean?
The intent is to get a lot—and this has a lot to do with STEM educational stuff,
and I don't want to get into this too much—but it is an emphasis on science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics in the schools to get people
excited and engaged so that these companies can actually hire people
locally because they haven't been able to for a long time.
And it's all been about relocating and rebuilding cities
based on people from other parts of the world who have the qualifications.
And we do not have that in our educational system at present.
And so there's a huge emphasis from companies to get American students up to snuff, so to speak.
Okay, listen, thanks for your call, and that's going to be all the time we have to take phone
calls. I wish we could take a lot more, but—
NSA did a huge camp this summer, too. That was—
Yeah, well, we'll get into that. We have a whole show we can devote to that.
Hey, we went to a 2600 meeting this last Friday.
We did.
What a lot of fun that was. It's been such a long time since I've been to one.
I forgot how cool they are.
That was completely unintentional. Usually, we realize that after the fact.
It was really good to sync up with everybody and see a lot of excitement and enthusiasm
and questions. People want to know what's going on. What do we do?
Where are we going to go with hope and everything?
Well, hopefully, that's something that we'll see a lot more of in the future. Hopefully,
we can make it to some more of those things. And listeners out there,
attend local meetings first Friday of every month. We're out of time, but a lot of people
have been asking about the 11 bits that we've been playing on our website and on the radio.
It comes from Negative Land, an amazing track
that the late Don Joyce worked on called Time Zones. Here it is in its entirety.
The autonomous Komi Republic, which is part of the Russian Federation,
is situated in the far northwest of Europe and spreads up to the Arctic part of the Ural
Mountains. It's crossed by nine northern parallels. Ten fair-sized European states
could be placed on its territory. Besides indigenous residents, that is the Komi people,
there are also Russians, Ukrainians, Nenets, Chuvashis, and Tartars.
And now let's go back into history a little bit.
A boy lying on skins behind our backs was turning the knobs of a small transistor radio.
To use radios as vehicles of the psychological warfare.
And the tent was suddenly filled with an announcer's voice speaking Komi.
Then with music from Moscow, followed by English and French speech.
The recording was made at the Moscow Theater of Musical Miniatures.
Now back to modern times.
Your attention please. At the recommendation of the International Time Bureau,
commencing at 23 hours 59 minutes 60 seconds UTC,
an extra second will be inserted into the NBS time scale.
This adjustment is required to maintain internationally coordinated universal time
as broadcast from these stations in close agreement with UT1 or astronomical time.
WA-6-0DB with a question.
And, uh...
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
And about power...
Do you mean...
We got so much power now...
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
We got so much power now, that's ridiculous.
Do you mean... Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
Power and all that, that's...
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
Power and all that, that's power...
We got so much power, that's ridiculous.
We got, power, power, power, power, power, power.
Now, it's ridiculous we got so much power now...
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
It's not even funny.
You meant...
That's ridiculous.
Do you know how many...
It's not even funny.
You meant...
That's ridiculous.
Do you know how many...
That's, that's ridiculous.
Do you know how many time...
That's ridiculous, it's not even funny.
You meant...
It's not even funny.
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
It's not even funny.
How many time zones?
Yeah.
We have four in this country, right?
How many time zones?
Yeah.
One, two, three.
Four in this country, right?
Yes, sir.
Four.
One, two, three.
Yes, sir.
Right?
Yes, sir.
Four time zones?
Yeah.
We have four in this country, right?
No, sir.
We have, we have.
Yes, sir.
Do you know how many time zones they have?
Yes, sir.
Four.
No, sir.
I never really studied that up.
Eleven.
Eleven.
It's not even funny.
Eleven.
Eleven.
That's, that's ridiculous.
Eleven.
Eleven.
That's what we can do.
We can go anywhere because we live here.
We can go anywhere else.
But not only, not only the right of free travel, I'm saying eleven.
Eleven.
One, two, three.
Yes, sir.
Eleven.
Eleven.
That's how big they are.
Yeah, yeah.
Eleven.
That's how big they are.
Yeah, yeah.
I, I can believe that.
I'm a firm believer in that.
Right?
One, two, three.
Four.
Yes, sir.
One, two, three.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
The Soviet Union, the whole half side of the world.
Yeah.
And we're just a little, one little tenth of the globe.
Yeah.
They, when you talk about fighting, we're a country that we're a firm believer on Christ.
And it's called help thy neighbor.
Do not kill, do not, you know, steal, cheat, lie from everybody.
That's why we have to have computers because man, nobody is perfect.
You know?
It's not even funny.
You meant?
And about power, man, nobody is perfect.
You know?
So what is your point?
There's, there's, there's two things you don't talk about.
One's politics and the other one's religion.
You, you meant?
They can, the reason you don't talk about them is because they combine in each other.
You know what I'm saying?
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
You know what I'm saying?
Don't you kid yourself.
Thanks, Glenn, for the, uh, you know, just thanks for the, the good thoughts.
This concludes our transmission to Oceania.
However, listeners in East Asia may continue listening on the following shortwave frequencies.
6110, 7230, 9565, 9760, 15160, and 15425 kilohertz.
I'll separate the...
Here it comes.
Weather science disorder.