60 Wall Street in the Atrium in Lower Manhattan. To repeat, on Sunday, December 13th, starting
at 1pm, all are invited to the WBAI CAB, which will be having an open meeting at 60 Wall
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And you're listening to WBAI New York. The time is 7-0-1, or no, 7-0-2 actually, which
means it's time for Off the Hook.
The time is 7-0-1, or no, 7-0-2 actually, which means it's time for Off the Hook.
The time is 7-0-1.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Mike, Rob T. Firefly, Kyle,
and Bernie S.
Good evening.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Well, we're on for two hours tonight. Extra expanded edition of the program. Let's start,
first of all, by dispelling a few myths. Yes, it's a fundraiser show, but we are not going
to be spending a whole lot of time asking you to call in. Why? Because we've only done
two shows since the last fundraiser, and there comes a point where you have to say enough
is enough, and there's only so much the audience can take. I know. If you want to support us,
please call us and show your support.
I mean, here's the thing. 212-209-2950. Call now and get your pledge in, and then you won't
have to listen to us asking for money for the rest of the two hours.
It's that simple. And Rob, I understand your paintings are being offered again.
They are indeed. I did a set of paintings for our fundraiser a while back, and there
are still a few left. Paintings of various historical hacker luminaries, figures from
hacker history. And for a pledge of $50, you can get one of those, ask for the luminaries
of the hacker world painting, or I'm doing a new set now, which will be paintings of
various historical and interesting telephones, which you can get, ask for the historical
telephone painting. You can go to give2wbai.org and search for paintings, or you can give
us a call, 212-209-2950, and help us keep doing what we're doing here.
So if people ask for, what was it they asked for?
You could ask for a luminaries of the hacker world painting, or you can ask for a historical
telephones painting, either of those for a pledge of $50 or more.
So we have two separate premiums then?
Two separate premiums, because there are only a very few of the hacker luminaries left.
I think there were four left last I looked.
And we also have the keynote addresses that we offered last time. That's all the keynotes
for all the HOPE conferences, all 10 of them. And actually, it's more than 10 talks, because
we had several keynotes for some conferences. Those are available on DVD for a pledge of
$50, or on flash drive, thumb drive, for a pledge of $75. And that's all in full DVD
quality and all that. Again, 718-780-8888. No wait, that's our phone number for taking
calls. I'm sorry, we have two phone numbers now. This is two completely different numbers,
212-209-2950. That's the number to call to pledge. The other number I just gave out,
718-780-8888, is our call-in number, and we will be taking calls later on.
Maybe if you call that number, you shouldn't read your credit card number on the radio.
No, don't do that. We won't let you do that. I had a nightmare with my credit card company.
Tell me if anyone's ever experienced anything like this. I won't spend too much time on
it, but I'll spend more time talking about this than asking people to call in yet again.
I had a kind of a suspicious charge that I noticed. And yeah, okay, you can laugh. The
charge was from January. At the end of the year, you basically go over all your financial
records and all that. And I had been using a card while traveling because I was using
the card that had no fee for international transactions. So it was maybe six or seven
pages long. It was a huge bill, and it was in foreign languages, and it was very hard
to figure everything out. But there was something in the middle of it that kind of leapt out,
and it was a mail order charge to some company in Illinois. Actually, it was a public television
company, if you can believe that. And so I was wondering, what is this? What is this a charge
for? Is this something that I actually bought? I don't remember. It was in January. I was
traveling at the time. It's just kind of an odd charge to have on there. So I called Chase,
the credit card company that controls all the credit cards now apparently. And you know what?
They don't keep records past 90 days. That is what they told me. Yeah, we have no record of
anything beyond 90 days. Now, I wasn't looking to reverse the charges. I just want to know what it
was. I called the company that's listed there. I just get an answer machine. They don't call back.
But you figure the credit card company would have some kind of record as to what it was,
some kind of reference number, anything. No, the only information is what's on your bill,
which is the amount, the company name, and the date. And the funny thing is,
they had contacted me on that very day to say they were concerned about fraud on my account.
But the charges that they were concerned about were recurring charges that were completely
legitimate that had appeared before. So I said at the time, no, what are you, stupid? These are
completely legitimate charges. They've appeared before. Why do you think this is something of
concern? They didn't tell me about the one suspicious charge. So it's just, it's been
really kind of almost a funny nightmare. All I want to find out from these people,
and I know somewhere in the bowels of Chase, they have a record of a transaction beyond 90 days in
the past where they can tell what it was, maybe more information, phone number, or some kind of
reference number, anything like that. You know, we've been operating a store since 1999 at 2600,
and we can go back to any sale and tell somebody, yeah, this is what this was for. It's not that
hard to do. And I just have a feeling I'm coming up against a brick wall because they don't want
to put in the effort. Sometimes you can get different information on the website of these
credit card companies than you can on the statement. What kind of information? I can't
even see a bill that far back. It's January of this year. Actually, you know what, there might
be something there, but the only thing I've ever seen is a PDF, which is a copy of the bill. Yeah,
I usually don't go back that far because I don't pay that attention to finances that far in my
past, but in general, there's information. It's different information. I bought an Amtrak ticket
recently, and I could go on the website of my credit card company, and it would tell me what
Amtrak is in case I didn't know, but it wouldn't tell me that on the bill itself. So maybe you can
try that. I don't know. I did have a good experience with that same credit card and Amtrak
because I found out literally the day that the program was ending that I could transfer a huge
number of points over to my Amtrak rewards program, so I got 65,000 points. That's a lot
of Amtrak. I could go cross-country again, but this just annoys me because I know there are
situations where people need that information, and they definitely have it. They're just being
kind of pig-headed. Yeah, you would think when the company's one job is to take money from
location A and give it to location B, they would somewhere in their volumes of records have
some idea of what location B was. Yeah, I mean, you can be sure that if there was a lawsuit
involved, and I'm not suggesting you start one, but if they really needed this information,
they could get it. Yeah, again, I'm not looking to reverse it. It's my fault. I should have
questioned it within the 90 days, which I know is the max that you can question a charge,
but I do want to know, and they have this information, what was it for, and if it was
a fraudulent charge, who was it sent to? You can tell me that. You can tell me who it was sent to,
then I can deal with it on my own, and I'm happy to do that. It would be cool if the stuff that
they flagged, they kept by default so that that information you could go back and look at,
even if you said, oh, no, there's no fraud today, maybe accidentally or something like that, but
you'd still have whatever triggered it in some sort of organized area because an automated system
wanted it to go for more scrutiny, so maybe it'll save in your account.
It's coming back to me now because you and I were traveling at the time this happened,
and I remember pulling over in the rental car that we had and talking to somebody on the phone
at Chase and explaining to them that, yes, I'm traveling, I'm legitimate, that charge was for a
place I'm staying while I'm traveling, and these other charges that you're giving me are charges
that recur every month, and I don't even know why you're asking me about these charges because
they're obviously legitimate, but he never mentioned this charge, which was the suspicious one.
Yeah, I'm thinking even if you okay it mistakenly, whatever was triggered should still be organized
in a way to go back and look at, especially if you want to much later, and it's a period of time
that ordinarily you wouldn't go back and scrutinize the actual purchases.
Well, they say that the internet never forgets and that all these computer records are kept forever,
but they're really not if people don't look after them, if they don't actually open up the files and
give access to people that have legitimate access to them or should have legitimate access to them.
Bernie, any thoughts on this?
Yeah, I agree with Mike. I think it's inconceivable that Chase does not have
more detailed records about this transaction from back in January, but as I recall,
this isn't the first time you've had an unauthorized or potentially unauthorized charge
to your card. Didn't somebody once buy a dog and dog food with your credit card?
Someone did buy a dog, yeah. I'm not sure if that was, no, that was on Amex, actually.
I'm pretty sure it was on Amex, and we were able to have the dog returned
because it was an illegitimate purchase. The dog was repossessed from its illegal purchaser?
I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I just know that it was not
a legitimate purchase and was not... You reversed a dog.
I had to. There's no choice. You have to look at these statements very carefully because they're
not going to look at them for you. You can have things reversed, but after a certain amount of
time, they're going to claim that they don't have the info, and we all know they do.
Anyway, I don't want to spend so much time talking about my problems.
It's just lucky that we're experts in dog repossession.
Yeah, yeah. Well, we became experts. We should be talking, though, about something more important,
namely crypto and the dangers that it's facing now. With all this renewed interest in terrorism
because of all night cable news networks that obsess over it, now all of a sudden,
encrypting anything is seen to be tantamount to being a terrorist.
We see this pretty much all the time, but what's particularly ironic here is that there's absolutely
no indication that any kind of cryptography was even used in any of the terrorist incidents that
took place. I'm talking about Paris, I'm talking about San Bernardino, and I'm talking about
Colorado City, which apparently nobody believes is a terrorist act, even though
today pretty much the guy said, hey, you know what? This was a terrorist act.
Whatever. The point is, encrypted messages were not used in any of those. Now, even if they were
used in those particular incidents, and they were the reason why somebody couldn't find out
about something, I still think that's not a valid reason to expect people to not use
encryption. Anybody have any other views? I mean, look, the U.S. government is an expert in using
encryption. Its links to the drones that it uses to terrorize people all around the world are,
in fact, encrypted, so they should know how useful it can be, but the fact of the matter is that
many other people are not so expert as the U.S. is, and they just come up with any
excuse to try and have access to everything. Yeah, and this is pretty much any excuse.
It's basically, yeah, they could have done this, so because they could have done this,
we need to ban it. It really is going and being embroiled in this discussion without real
findings that point to it, and really, if it was as critical a tool, I think we would
be in a much more deeper state of peril, or we're already sort of screwed, because
it is proven to be very difficult to access. I mean, really good encryption is really good
these days, so it's sort of weird that, I mean, it's been used a little bit,
and there is some software and stuff like that that is being talked about as part of tools that
this particular group is using in different ways, but it's not like the backbone of it,
so to speak. I mean, it's not like there's, like these words mastermind, these huge big plots that
are all encrypted, and we have to just decrypt everything so that we can uncover them. I feel
like there's a lot more investigative work, and not just electronic communications are where a
lot of the planning is going on, and the ideas themselves are conceived. I mean, the word you
used, I think, is the focus of this, tools. These are tools, and tools are used by everybody.
Encryption is a tool, and encryption can be used by people investigating criminals as well.
It should be thought of in that way, not just a one-sided thing where only the criminals
benefit. It's a tool. It's not going anywhere. Mike?
I mean, it should be clear that a lack of encryption, if people stopped using strong
crypto, it would lead to much more crime because we would be unable to protect electronic commerce.
We would be unable to protect electronic communications. The government would be
unable to protect the records that it holds. There would be much more crime
if crypto was less available and less strong. Yeah, encryption, it's scary that this talk is,
that this discussion is happening just over encryption as a generic term.
Just encryption itself is a basic fact of safety on the internet. It's like locking your home when
you leave, and this is pretty much saying that trying to pay... Wait, wait, wait. You lock your
home? How does the government get in to help you? I don't want them coming in and seeing my meth labs.
Oh, I mean, if you do that, that's, you got something to hide, apparently. Right, exactly.
It's like making it illegal or taboo in some way to lock your home just in case you're
hiding something shady inside. And that is obviously ludicrous, but it's the equivalent
of what we're talking about here in the physical realm. And yeah, it's scary. Encryption is a tool.
It can be used by bad people. It can be used by good people. It can be used by neutral people,
but it's important to be able to use. You know what? I think we don't use it enough.
I mean, my email, a lot of my email is not encrypted. That bothers me. A lot of our web
browsing, not encrypted. A lot of what we do is not encrypted. We don't use encryption enough. We
need to spread it around a lot more and make it easier to use. What these guys are proposing,
left and right, and people in charge in countries all over the world, they're proposing making it
even harder, making it more restricted, giving them backdoor access, all the things that will
make it completely useless. Kyle? So indeed, suffice to say, it is going into this debate
kicking and screaming. It's hopefully kicking and screaming because it's convenient, I think,
politically to raise doubt. And I think that's the language that we're hearing a lot from
politicians is that we have a problem here, just like they're able to conflate religion and so on
with killings. It's, you know, this faith has a problem. So now it's IT and information services
have a problem. And the problem is encryption. And that it's like, it's total reverse framing.
Companies like Google and all the others that are making it easy for terrorists by not clamping
down, by not giving the government access to everything that they do and spying on their users.
But the stupider it sounds, the more people, the more of the thrust of it being a problem
is thrown about. And the information I think right now is really lacking. I mean, with real,
I don't know, research points of view. I mean, there's some really insane stuff being said about
encryption in general, the idea, as we said, it's a tool. And I mean, to politicize it and say that
it's a tool that's, I don't know, got a position or not. I mean, it's essentially a neutral
technology. So the government is complaining about going dark and people who are not in the
studio, which is all of our audience, can't see me making scare quotes when I say going dark, but
I am. Scare quotes? Yeah. Scare quotes. Now you can see what I'm doing. I'm clarifying for you.
Okay. All right. Whatever. But what that term, what they're going dark from is the ability to
read people's communications without notifying them. Like if I have data on my phone and the
government wants to see it, they can still come to me, arrest me and demand that I give them the data.
But you'd never, you'd never cave into that. Ever. What? You could be tortured. You could be
threatened with all sorts of things. You would never give that information. Yeah. Mike doesn't
know how to sing. Because you would not be in this room if you gave up information like that.
You know, it's a certain code that we all follow. All right. That regardless, what the
government wants the ability to do is to be able to read my communications without me knowing.
That's what they mean. That's what's going dark. They're not going dark from serving subpoenas on
people. They're not going dark from arresting people. They sure are good at that in the
government. They're going dark. And it's not even clear that it's true, but they claim they're going
dark from being able to read people's communications in secret without their permission.
And that is a form of darkness that I really encourage the government to learn to deal with.
Right. And once they can do that, whenever they want without notifying you, that also
kicks due process out the window. They're not bound by needing to get hold of your phone to
get your warrant. It's like what we were talking about last week with our guest and his national
security letter, where if you're served it, you're not allowed to say that you've been served it.
He, by the way, finally released the full three pages of the national security letter.
Only the target's name is blacked out. So people who want to find that.
Do you have anything to add?
Yeah. Kyle touched on something about our own government politicizing the situation where
people were, where a lot of people were killed. And well, it's not hardly the first time our
government has done that, but I just find it particularly disgusting and distasteful
that our own government would dishonor the lives of families of people who,
the lives of the people that were just recently killed in these terrorist incidents by using
them as a, as a pawn to take away people's right to communicate privately. It's really
disgusting. I'm offended on a, just on a basic privacy level, but that we use capitalize on
people's deaths to use this false argument that if we only could read everybody's communications,
we'd be much safer, which isn't the case anyway. There's, as you pointed out,
there's no evidence at all that encryption was, was used by the terrorists that committed these
recent horrific acts. So it's, it really makes me sick to my stomach our government's doing this.
Okay. Yeah. Bernie, sick though you may be, you should not be surprised because every government
in the world wants this ability and they always have. I mean, look what happened after 9-11
and the Patriot Act being passed so quickly. They basically had it ready to go in case something
happened where they could get it through quickly without much of a fight. And I think the same
thing is happening here. I'm not surprised. I would say I'm shocked, shocked that our government
would do such a thing, but they're doing it again. And people should wake up to the fact
that our government is lying to us about, about criminalizing the use of encryption or having
backdoors to encryption will make us safer. It will, it will make us more at risk.
Okay. Go ahead, Mike. And to be clear, it'll make us not merely at more risk from our government
spying on us. It will also make us more at risk from criminals spying on us. The very thing they
claim to be concerned about, but it's all well and good for me to rant about this on the radio.
But there is a special place that I ranted about this last night, which is the White House has
produced a little form where they are soliciting the feedback of everyone in the country on this
issue. You were ranting at the White House? Well, in a little box. It was fun. Good for you. A
little text box on the website. Oh, oh, okay. This is cyber stuff. Yeah. A cyber box, a cyber
text box. I've used one of those. Yeah. Uh, although, uh, I, I managed to complete my entire
rant without using the word cyber, which I think is well done. Did you use the word cipher? I did
not, but I could have. Uh, and, and anyway, so what happened was there was a petition to the
White House on their official petition website, got a hundred, over a hundred thousand signatures,
uh, to, you know, encourage the White House to take the stance that, uh, we should continue to
have online security. And, uh, the White House's response was, well, we want people to tell us
what they think about this, even though a hundred thousand people already told them what they think.
Um, but if you would like to fill out this text box, I encourage you to go on the White House's
website and find the little text box and tell them that you think encryption is important,
that you think security is important, and, uh, that you want the government to protect
these things. Or I guess if you disagree, put that in the text box too, but you know. Yeah.
So, uh, let them know. Um, and, um, you know, again, um, don't be surprised because this is
what governments want. This is what governments do, not just our government and also not just
people in government. Uh, here's an example. We've all heard about this, this, uh, maniac
who's running for president, is not part of the government, hopefully never will be, but,
uh, he basically, uh, first he, he went after the Muslims and, and suggested that they not be
allowed into our country anymore. Uh, and then he, um, he went after the internet and said Americans
should consider closing the internet up in some way to fight Islamic State terrorists in cyberspace.
Yes. That's, uh, that's sorry if I just made, yeah, no, please interrupt any quote from Donald
Trump. Right. No, that is exactly the kind of quotation that I had, uh, been deriding against
when we first started talking about this, because that's exactly it. Then the lack of understanding
of how a network works and just blanket condemnation, um, to push this, this attitude.
And it's, it's, again, I think we've said this a bunch. I've, I've railed about it a bit about
the political season, but follow the fear, follow the, the, the knee-jerk reaction they
want to elicit is that we're to be fearful and that this kind of, um, giving up this liberty,
this expression that, which is essentially, um, what cryptography can be, uh, to give that up,
um, for safety, to, to, um, to give you some false sense of security. I mean, that's what it is
because it isn't actual security. Security is running your own, perhaps, uh, uh, services or
encryption and, and, and so on and so forth. So we really need to upend this logic because there
is, it's really weak as it is, and we, we need to tear it up to shreds. So you're basically,
you're basically objecting to Trump's plan and saying that that plan might violate freedom of
speech. I'm saying that the internet is not going to agree with him on that. Okay. So he would say
to you, because he did address that point directly, that these are foolish people. We have
a lot of foolish people. He's referring to you, Kyle. He's referring to you. Donald Trump has
called you out and has called you a foolish person. And he went on, he went on beyond that to
say, we have to go see Bill Gates. It's like, you know, a trip down the yellow brick road or
something, uh, to better understand the internet and then possibly close it up. Now he's talking,
these are real technical terms here because the internet does have a close up button
and he knows where it is. Apparently just folds right up like a box. Bill Gates knows how to do
it. Uh, he characterized the problem of internet extremism, internet extremism by saying we're
losing a lot of people because of the internet. I think he's losing a lot of brain cells because
of his mouth, but whatever. Uh, so, uh, but the thing is, okay, so that's what Trump is saying.
Trump says all kinds of ridiculous things and we all laugh and laugh until it becomes reality.
And then we realized that we should have been doing more than just laughing, you know,
next Tuesday is next debate. All those other people, they have to destroy this guy. If they
don't destroy him, then they are not patriotic Americans as far as I'm concerned. I mean,
let's be clear though, on this particular issue, there is bipartisan support. Yes. I was about to
get to that. Okay. Hillary Clinton in fact, um, has been, um, saying similar type things. In fact,
to the people that criticized, um, well, she didn't exactly say close up the internet, but,
uh, the people that criticize clamping down on encryption, she said, we're going to hear all
the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera. I don't know if she did the scary quotes,
but, uh, if we, um, truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to
shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we've got to shut off
their means of communicating. It's more complicated with some of what they do on
encrypted apps. And I'm well aware of that. And that requires even more thinking about how to do
it. And Obama has said, uh, that he would urge high tech and law enforcement leaders to make it
harder, uh, to use technology to escape from justice. That's very vague. And, um, I'm not sure
that's referring specifically to encryption and, uh, Hillary Clinton kind of vague as well,
not specifically saying, did she say encryption at any point? Um, I don't know. She says we have to
have more support from our friends in the technology world. Yes. Uh, I'm in the technology
world. I'm not her friend on this issue. Oh, that's reaching out to you. Deny online space,
just as we have to destroy Isis's would be caliphate. We have to deny them online space,
which is so, so let's be clear. Like, uh, Hillary Clinton is like not nearly as insane as Trump.
She's not proposing like locking up every Muslim in the country or anything like that.
But, uh, on this issue, on the issue of, um, protecting our security online,
they are, there's very little difference between them. And that is scary to me.
I think there's a difference between them. I mean, I, I don't agree with what she's saying,
but I think somebody as ignorant as Trump in charge, it would be a lot worse if he actually
was able to get some legislation passed that would make it illegal to use certain programs.
I did not put that past him to do something crazy like that. Can't see. Remember, um, Bill Clinton
was, uh, presiding over the whole Clipper chip fiasco. And we saw how that went. Once it was
proven that the whole thing was completely insecure in the first place, courtesy of Matt
blaze, our friend, um, they dropped it, they dropped it and they didn't pick it up again.
I think reason can be heard, you know, with legitimate political people as opposed to,
uh, uh, to fascists. I'll say it. I mean, I hope, I hope you're right. And I encourage people,
as I said, to go on the white house form and put their thoughts there
as well as other forms of political pressure. But the position right now,
the uninformed Hillary Clinton position is too close to Trump's uninformed position for my
comfort. What is the address? How do people get there? Just a whitehouse.gov just search
white house crypto comments or something. I don't want to get you on a list if you do that, won't
it? Um, okay, well vote. And is there a deadline? Go ahead, Bernie. I just want to say, I thought
Hillary Clinton was really in favor of email privacy. Yeah, I think all these politicians
are, I'm sure even Trump is in favor of his own email privacy, but that doesn't help the rest of
us. Yeah, maybe hypocrisy is just amazing. Maybe we can find out if Trump uses encryption anywhere.
You know what? He doesn't. Let's face it. I'm sure he, he's, he doesn't know how to even begin
launching PGP or anything like that. Uh, now this, um, uh, go ahead.
No, I just wanted to say like in the, the comments from the white house also, again,
just listen for the framing of what the internet is and what their, their idea of talking to the
leaders of the internet. That's insane. There are no, I mean, we, you, me, everyone logging in on
the wifi hotspot at wherever your favorite cafe everywhere in the world, we are all the internet.
And for them to say that, uh, a leader of a company is the answer to, to fixing the internet
or to say that these service providers, I mean, they're not even talking about ISPs and so on.
They're talking about, um, major corporations that provide services. I mean, they probably
mean carriers too, now that everyone is using mobile telephones and so on and so forth, but,
but it's abject ignorance. And what they're talking about is akin to not being able to
express yourself on the internet because the same technology for invading all of this,
probably would be used as much probably for blocking sites that maybe disagree with,
with certain opinions and so on. So there's a, it's very specific ignorance that it's,
it's because the, the, you know, talking about the internet's complicated or it's, it's a big,
big, uh, nebulous sort of idea. Great. That's all fine and well, but just, just passively,
like the average American listening to that says maybe would say like, Oh, that's a good idea. I'll,
I'll entrust this company or that company and they're going to solve it. And that's it.
Speaking of good ideas, you just gave me an idea when you said we are the net. I realized,
you know, we've got to, we've got to make a song. We've got to get all the luminaries of the
internet together. And just like we are the world, we have to have something that explains all this,
all the, all the, um, um, the, the threats that the internet is, is facing from legislation,
from ignoramai, uh, and, and just have really catchy lyric. We are the net. We are the users.
We are, you know, somebody can figure out the lyrics, but let's just get all these people from
Google and, and, and, and Yahoo and whatever else is out there. Uh, and a bunch of hackers,
and this is put something out and spread it around the world and, and, and just have a show of force.
Go ahead. I just want to finish that. The sad part in this, the thing that makes it,
I think, scary to everybody is that we are just emerging with this network. We're just getting
higher speed broadband access in, in both this country and around the world. Amazing services,
amazing capabilities. Um, so this, this, the, the, um, the exciting part of that, what is possible
is, is, is, um, really dependent on how vigilant we are and the way we educate our neighbors and
the way we talk about internet and as a resource, as a utility, as a community, um, gathering place
and a product of all of our consciousness. I mean, that cannot be lost. This is speech,
all of it encrypted, non-encrypted, everything. Yeah. And what scares me about this is, uh, we're
seeing two candidates right now. One of, one of the apparently biggest candidates from the
Republicans and one of the apparently biggest from the Democrats. And they're both very wrong on this
issue, but they're both agreeing with each other. And I'm very used to these two parties, uh, sort
of always trying to point each other as, uh, as the wrong one. But what this, uh, what this shows
me is that, um, if, you know, be educated when you vote, if you like a candidate, see what they
think about this, you know, contact them directly through their, uh, whatever social media or, or
mailing, uh, presence they have and, uh, see how they feel on this. Because if you're listening
to this program, chances are you actually care about this sort of thing and, uh, want to know
more about the person you're voting for. So, uh, rather than just voting for one of these, uh,
nut jobs, because you don't like the other one, you know, get educated as to what exactly you're
voting for. I'm curious if a single candidate has a public key, are there any candidates out there
that have public keys that have used, that use encryption without shame? I mean, every candidate
who's ever bought anything online on the internet and typed their credit card number in has used
encryption. It's not what I mean. It's what I mean. I mean, do they actually have their own
privately maintained key that they, they give to people to send encrypted? I don't mean through
employment or through government or something like that. I mean, something that they themselves,
uh, subscribe to that they believe in. I mean, I think that's the wrong question. Uh,
everybody I know has one, just about everybody in the community I know has their own public key.
I'm just wondering if any politician out there use PGP, you'd win my support if you did.
I think Larry Lessig has one. Okay. Is he still running?
Well, I haven't heard a thing as far as that goes, but that, that, okay. That would be a good
example then if, if somebody, but I'm looking at somebody more mainstream or even somebody
currently in office someplace, a governor, a mayor, anybody, if you know of a politician
someplace that uses PGP, that has a public key somewhere, write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
I think it would mean something. Of course, you know what? It would probably work against them
because people like Trump would say, hell, aha, this person enables secrecy and, and,
and, uh, is basically causing terrorism. That's where we're at right now. Um, go ahead, Bernie.
Uh, this is just so eerily reminiscent of, I don't know, it was like 20,
23 years ago, the whole clipper chip debate, as you pointed out, our friend,
Matt Blaze, uh, discovered that the government's attempt to, uh, provide a back door to have a
back door to, uh, private phone calls that anybody could have if they purchased, uh,
an encryption device from AT&T, telephone encryption device, which I actually owned a
couple of, of those things that were seized from me by the secret service. Um, he proved
that there was, this was a useless exercise in trying to have a, uh, a spare key for the
government to get into your communications. Um, once the government has a spare key,
um, you can bet that that, that, that set of keys will be highly targeted by
intelligence agencies and other bad guys around the world. Um, and then we will have no privacy
at all. And we'll be a far more risk, um, as Mike confirmed earlier, we'll be at far more risk
than we are now. So this is just insane. Yeah, I'm with that, Bernie. I absolutely agree.
It is an exercise in futility. Once you allow any kind of access, you, you are completely
defeating the purpose of encrypting in the first place. And it's indefensible, right? It, you,
you would then to police a process that bypassed the very security that you're implementing would
be insanity. You, you, you would be trying to, to, um, watch traffic. I don't know what you
would do. You'd be doing a lot of stuff. I don't know, uh, intrusion detection, all of it,
just because you allowed an entity, the run of, of an algorithm and encryption, uh, scheme,
that's completely indefensible. That, I mean, period you, there's no point. It completely
shatters it as an option. You're listening to off the hook. We're talking about encryption
and the threat to encryption and the perceived threat that encryption causes.
You can join the conversation. We're doing a two hour show tonight,
but for the rest of this hour, I think we're going to be talking about this particular topic.
Our phone number is 718-780-8888. 718-780-8888. Now, uh, we're mentioning that, um, um, there,
there's a threat in this country from all different sides, but again, the threat is
not limited to this country. After, uh, the terror attacks that took place in Paris,
uh, French law enforcement has made it clear they want to have several powers added to a
proposed law, including the move to forbid and block the use of the tour anonymity network,
forbid and block the use of the tour anonymity network. Yes, you heard that right. That's
according to an internal document from the ministry of interior that was seen by French
newspaper Le Monde. Uh, that document talks about two proposed pieces of legislation,
one around the state of emergency and the other concerning counter-terrorism regarding the former
French law enforcement, uh, wish to, and here's a quote, forbid free and shared wifi connections
during a state of emergency. Yeah. They want to make it so you can't even go to a cafe
and use free wifi and, and, and shared wifi while state of emergency is taking place.
And I think that that state of emergency has been expanded for a couple of months now.
Yeah. I mean, that's the thing they want to ask. It would be one thing if there was
real value in shutting down a wifi for an hour or something. Uh, it's clear that there would be no
such value, but it would be one thing, but they're, they're defining state of emergency to mean like
a permanent state of emergency. Well, there's anyone anywhere in the world who doesn't like
French people, um, to, to be clear in, in an actual emergency, the thing you want is more
ability for people to communicate. Uh, you want to be able to say like, I'm okay by any
communications network you can get your hands on. Yes. Um, so I think shutting it down in a,
in a true emergency is precisely the wrong approach, but it's not even the approach
they're going for. We've mentioned this before, but if, if you're debating an idiot,
uh, you want the idiot to continue speaking. You don't want to shut them up because the
more they say, the more they're going to prove how much of an idiot they really are.
Uh, and, uh, same thing goes for criminals. If people are conspiring in a criminal manner,
whether it be by wifi or on Twitter or something like that, you kind of want to let them keep
going so that you can learn more about them and, and, and see just what it is they're,
they're planning on doing. Um, encryption does not enter into things like that. Uh,
basically, and it hasn't been proven to be something that has been used in any of these
cases in the first place. But if it were, if it were something that was, uh, used commonly,
uh, there are still good old fashioned detective methods of tracking people who are doing
suspicious things. As long as people talk to each other, that's always going to be the case.
And law enforcement is always going to try and make it seem like they need more power. They
need to be able to look at more of what you're saying and thinking. And we can't let that
happen. That's something that I think we're, we're definitely, uh, uh, threatened with right now.
Yeah. And that there's so many parts of the behavioral, uh, part of what people would,
would be doing, like how, how people would interact. There are many other, uh, telltale
signs of, of people. And that's the sick part of this, that the embroiling a technology like
encryption in this is somehow going, going to, um, rationalize, not looking at the actual weapons
and the actual other social ills involved, um, the access to weapons and so on and so forth.
Like they're, they really are doing a disservice to the actual, uh, event that happened a couple
of weeks ago. And the many events, I think that we've been speaking about, um, because it it's,
uh, it's completely, uh, separate. Like you could use no technology at all and have this huge
massacre and people would still be talking about, let's, let's, uh, dismantle any kind of encryption
scheme. It's, it's baseless. It has no relation to the actual problem that we're, that we're
looking at. And yet it's being dragged in. It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity for people
in charge to get more power. So they will take that. Right, right. Yes. That's exactly what it
is because, uh, when, when something terrible happens, people are afraid. And when people are
afraid, they're looking for, okay, what's the thing we can change right now to make this not
happen anymore? What can we, you know, what, what's the simple, easy thing that we could do
to switch off the bad. And, uh, that's the perfect time for things like the Patriot Act, things like
really stupid things to get pushed through. And, uh, you know, it, it, it behooves us to be aware
of this and, uh, try and prevent it. All right. Uh, continuing though with this story. And, uh,
I know we had a bunch of phone calls come in, uh, please call back if you get disconnected
718-780-8888. We'll take calls in just a moment. Uh, but apparently, uh, the whole, uh, move over
there to, uh, ban free wifi comes from a police opinion, uh, that it's apparently difficult to
track individuals who use public wifi networks. Well, you know what life is difficult. There are
challenges. You can't take away things that are, uh, used for so many different purposes. You can't
just, uh, dismantle, um, democracy and, and, and, and freedom of assembly and freedom of speech
just because it's more convenient. Now, as for Tor, Tor being a network of servers maintained
by volunteers routes, a user's traffic through, uh, several different points, obfuscating their
original, perhaps identifying IP address. Um, that is something that is definitely under threat
in France. And that's something that we have to, uh, uh, keep, uh, keep an eye on and defend
because, uh, you get rid of something like that. And you basically saying that anonymity in any
forum is the threat is the problem. And as soon as you start saying things anonymously,
you become tantamount to a terrorist. So let's be clear. There's two ways friends could go about,
uh, banning Tor. One is to pass a law against it and, and, uh, which will have no effect,
right? Because if you're willing to like murder dozens of people, you're also willing to break
the law that says how you can communicate. So, uh, that's silly. Uh, it will only affect,
you know, people who, who are law abiding. Um, the, the other thing they could do is try and
technically block it. And in order to do that, you have to build a massive network of state
controlled computers that control what people can and cannot access on the internet.
The only country to successfully pull this off is China with the so-called great firewall of China,
which has made it really hard to browse the web anonymously in China. If France wants that
kind of, uh, surveillance and control apparatus, then the terrorists have indeed won. Like there,
there's nothing else to say. Yes, go ahead, Bernie. And then we'll start taking phone calls.
Um, uh, what Rob just, uh, uh, said about, uh, um, this, this being used to make people afraid
and, and, uh, uh, using this as a, as an excuse to take away people's rights. Uh, this, you know,
I hate to bring up the Nazi analogy, but, uh, Joseph Goebbels, the, um, minister of propaganda
during the third Reich, uh, he, he said, and I'm going to paraphrase him now, you know,
all you have to do is make people afraid and they'll, uh, they'll let you do whatever you
want to make them feel safer. And this is exactly what our own government is doing right now. It's,
it's really sad. But again, it's not just our government. It's, it's people not in the
government and as people in other countries, it's, it's a global phenomenon. It's a very
dangerous one. I mean, look at the elections just, uh, uh, this weekend in France, the national front,
most powerful party now, whoever would have thought that would be the case, but, uh, we're
going down some very dark roads. And in fact, you know, if you, if you want to say that, uh,
ISIS is, is controlling people, they're controlling those people a lot more than anyone in the Muslim
community. So that's something to think about. Let's start taking some phone calls so our
listeners can chime in here. 718-780-8888. And good evening. You're on the radio.
How are you doing? Hi, what's on your mind?
I'm just lowering my radio. Yes, please.
You know, I want to just talk for a second about something that you spoke about at the
very start while you're, you're dealing with your credit card company. When, uh, when I have
disputes with companies now, you know, whenever you call them pretty much any company you call
gives you a recording before you get the representative that says, uh, um, this call
may be recorded for training and, uh, was it training, uh, quality control purposes.
So I say to them, look, okay, we've got, I've had two times this year, I've had disagreements
with companies about billing. And I honestly thought like I'm being screwed here. So I said,
look, I got a supervisor and said, don't take my word for it. Get the, get the recording,
whether it's a tape or digital. And the answer both times I got was, well, you see, uh, sir,
it's not that simple. And I go, that's okay. Take a week, take two weeks, take two weeks,
get the recording, listen to it and contact me. And once you say that to them, it's incredible.
It's incredible what happens. So I just thought, and by the way, can I just also mention,
uh, the IRS requires all taxpayers and banks to keep records of all transactions for,
I believe it's seven years. Yes. I mean, you're supposed to hold on to every receipt
in case you're audited. And they say it's a minimum of seven years. Yeah. I mean,
I know for sure they have the info. Don't, don't let them get away with it. Yeah. Well,
I said to the guy on the phone, uh, so there's nobody there in the entire chase organization
that can look up this sale that took place in January. And he said, yes, that's right. And
you know, at that point you just can't continue with that person anymore.
I mean, but the thing is the person you're talking to has literally never met anyone
who's employed by chase. Uh, and this is a deliberate choice on the, on the part of the
people who run chase to never let you talk to anyone who works for chase. Um, it's not the,
the fault of the person you're talking to, but like, yeah, it's entirely person,
entirely reasonable that the person you're talking to has literally never met anyone
who has ever met anyone who has access to this data and is telling you the truth when they say
they can't possibly get it for you. But that's not the same thing as the data doesn't exist.
Also what I like to do in these situations when, uh, when you're on some important issue and
you call them up and they say this call may be recorded. I like to take that as permission. Oh,
it may be. Thank you. And then I record the call and then I have what it would take them
however many weeks to get hold of. And I can play them back the edited highlights. If I need to call
them back, you know, Rob, you don't need permission in New York. You can record New York. You don't,
as long as you know about it and you're doing it, you can, you can record a phone call where,
where a one party state, there's a great website out there. If you search for, um, in quotes,
can we tape, um, which tells you state by state, uh, what the laws are like by you as regards to
recording telephone conversations. Bernie, I don't think you are in the one party state, are you?
No, Pennsylvania is a two party state. So are you both? Both people on the call have to be made
aware of their courting. That doesn't mean they have to give consent. They just need to be advised.
But I found with these companies, if you tell them I'm recording this call, just say, well,
we can't talk to you and they hang up. Bernie, can I, can I just ask you a question? Uh, now
you're, um, it's a legal maneuver question. Uh, you're in a two party state. That's what they
refer to it as? Yes. So if you call a friend on three way and then call this, this organization
and the two of you know about it, is it not two parties, you know, being able to verify this?
I had a great question. I have long wondered that it has never been tested in the courts,
to my knowledge. Um, neither has the, uh, what our caller just said when the, uh, when there
were companies play a, a greedy message saying your call may be recorded for quality control
and training purposes. To me, that sounds like permission. Your call may be recorded,
so I may record it. Um, I don't know if that has ever been tested in the court of law, but I sure
would like somebody to try testing it in the court of law because that would, that would be a
breakthrough. Well, I like my idea better, but anyway, let's, uh, let's take another phone call
718-780-8888. Good evening. You're on off the hook. Hi, good evening. Hi, what's on your mind?
Um, I was listening to you guys earlier again. I called last week, but again, I think I might
become a regular caller. Great show. Thank you. Um, I, I can't remember which one of you guys
it was that said it, but that was a brilliant and beautiful point. And it was well made. You
guys were talking about, um, and wanting to, as far as the encryption and then wanted to close,
like, uh, tighten up the internet, whatever that means. Um, and somebody brought up the point
about Hillary Clinton, where actually this was a issue that I guess, I don't know if you look at
the two years, I guess everybody's forgotten about it, but she was just being questioned about why
she can't, uh, use, uh, her email server through the government. I had to have a private email
that nobody else had access to, you know, um, the hypocrisy that goes on when they talk about
things like that. I mean, I've heard it said before in political discussions and they're trying
to, to denounce, uh, you know, maybe like Russia or something like that back in the day, or even
China. And one of the things that they talk about, like human rights violations, because, uh,
residents or, or citizens of those countries don't have open access to the internet, you know,
and then now all of a sudden we're talking about shutting it down as if that's something that,
that, that would be a good thing. I mean, the way that, that, that things just kind of flip
on a dime and, and the way that they, they express things and say things nowadays,
the hypocrisy that's in it and people just lapped up, nobody questions anything anymore.
And even acts, does that even make sense? You know, and there's even like a, a kind of tone
at like nowadays you watch things, it was almost like you hear one word and like now when something
hits the newspaper, I see something and I'm waiting. Like I can almost anticipate what's
going to be on the headlines, uh, two or three days later, because it almost seems like everything
is being set up for an action that comes later on. Well, so you say, uh, nobody questions, uh,
things anymore. And I agree, uh, people aren't questioning not nearly enough, but this is
nothing new. People have been, uh, manipulated like this for as long as, as, as, as people have
been around. And it's funny too, cause you know, not to make a movie reference, but you watch
things back in the day, you know, I don't know, some kind of thriller, some like that. And it's
like, that's a conspiracy theory that come on now that could never happen. And you, it's almost
like, you know, like I used to have a, a, a literature teacher used to say that, um, film
and, and, and art is really a, just a depiction of life. You know, if it hasn't happened yet,
it's something that's coming, you know? And it's weird not to get off topic last week,
somebody made a reference to True Romance. It was a great movie. What was wrong with
True Romance? I thought it was a beautiful movie. I don't know. I'm not going to get into that,
but anyway, but you guys have a good night. Great, great show. Great show. Thanks for your call.
Thanks. Again, our phone number is 718-780-8888. If you have any thoughts on the threat of
encryption, I'd like to know the people out there, do you use encryption? Would you like to use
encryption? Is it something that scares you? Is it something that you think is a, is a threat to our
way of life? Is it something that you fear, uh, its absence will be a threat to our way of life?
718-780-8888. Mike? So I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I took the opportunity
to look up the section of the Pennsylvania code and it, uh, the code itself states that all parties
to the communication have to give prior consent. Ah, so you're an all party state, Bernie, not a
two party state. Uh, not just two, but all. Yeah. So does that mean, I'm sorry, does that mean if
somebody is eavesdropping on the conversation that they have to be aware if it's being wiretapped
at the same time? I am not a lawyer and do not wish to provide any further legal advice.
I can be a real pain in the ass in the courtroom, but, um, uh, go ahead, Bernie, you're, you're,
you're making a point. I was going to say that I think I, I'm not looking at the statute either,
but I've read case law on this and it means that they, they must be aware that the conversation
is being recorded, not necessarily consent to it. Um, they can always shut their mouth or walk away.
That was, I've been advised by multiple attorneys on that, but maybe the, maybe what is in a statute
may be a little bit different than what case law has decided since. Okay. Let's take another
phone call. 718-780-8888. Good evening. You're on off the hook. Oh, it's a tone. Let's get rid
of that and go over here. Good evening. You're on off the hook. Hey, how are you doing? Hi,
what's on your mind? Hey, uh, just a quick thing. I just saw on the French news that when they
raided those mosques, they actually found ammunition in the mosque and ISIS, IS literature.
And my question is this, we see what's going on with Trump, the far right, just one in France,
the dude who is in head of Pegida in Germany looks exactly like Hitler. He even has the mustache. If
you Google the picture and I'm saying, if you put the pieces together, um, it's pretty frightening.
And I, I'm just wondering if you guys, I mean, have you heard that they actually found,
I'm not making this up. They found ammunition in the mosques and in France. I haven't heard that
myself, uh, Kyle. Oh, just two things. I think, uh, well the caller does, um, he's talking about
a picture that was taken of the leader of Pegida who was, I don't want to talk about that. I'm
talking about the mosque. They just raided. Okay. Well, we'll get to that. You had a point about
the Pegida leader. We can talk about churches with ammunition too, but anyway, yeah, there was
a photo of him taken at like a costume party or I don't even think it was that he was like dressing
up for fun. It's pretty scary. Um, but it was a costume. Yeah. Hey, can we talk about the mosque?
They really, Hey, we'll get to it. We got two hours. Calm down. We'll get to it. So, okay. So
you think, uh, there's been, uh, some kind of raid in a mosque and ammunition was found. So,
so here's my point. Okay. Yes. Yeah. What we see with Trump is going to be Mickey Mouse compared
to what we're going to see coming in Europe because what happened is they kicked the can
down the road 40 years in Europe. They didn't confront their Muslim problem. Google Muslims
on a bus in France. What is, what is their Muslim problem? Google Muslims on a bus in France and you
will see the problem they have. Muslims on a bus. Is this some kind of film or? It's a 40 second
clip. It'll show you what you need to know. They have a really bad problem in Europe and the problem
is the, here's, here's my question to you guys. Sure. What happens to the left in 20 years in
Europe? What happens to them? We already see the French fling to New York city. If you go to the
upper east side, it's nothing but French people. They're fleeing. French are fleeing to New York
city. I'm learning all kinds of things here. All right. If you go up, see it on the upper east
side. But my point is this, what, Hey guys, what, what do you think is going to happen to the gay
parades in 20 years in Europe? They are in serious trouble. That's why you see the Nazis are returning
to Europe because the liberals made it happen. Well, I hadn't thought about gay parades in 20
years in Europe, but now that does give me something to think about. By the way, before
the Nazis came to power, you had the same thing happen in Germany. You had the ultra liberalism
up that you had the, you had that happen. This is exactly what's happening again. And I'm just
concerned that, you know, when you see it happening with Trump, you see it happening in Europe,
but Europe is going to be much worse because I'm just saying a date, but they, Hey, there's a
reason why they are finding ammunition in the mosques. People, we have to admit that there is
a problem with, with it. Okay. We need to stop pretending that there isn't. Okay. Well, you've
given us a lot to think about. All right. Anyway, thanks for that call. Anybody want to tackle any
of these points? Let me just say that, you know, when, when people start talking about the Muslim
problem, they're very often unaware of things like, you know, a lot of the cops that were in
the line of fire were Muslim. A lot of the people driving ambulances were Muslim. A lot of people
that obviously are the victims are Muslim. And to say things like that is so ridiculously
overgeneralized and misleading, but you know, let's look into it. Let's see if there's any truth
to the fact that this caller claims that mosques are hoarding ammunition or something in Paris. I
don't think that's at all what's happening. I mean, I feel like it would be well, Trump would
be reminding us of it constantly if it happened, but, but I don't know enough about the story to
comment meaningfully on it, but let's remember that like substantially all of the victims of
groups like ISIS are in fact Muslims. So which is why people are fleeing the Middle East in such
large numbers because they want to get away from groups like ISIS. So to, to say the Muslims as,
as one entity that, you know, every one of this religion believes one thing
makes me suspicious of the rest of the argument.
Yeah, I think it's, he would maybe come back saying like, well, so far only, only Muslims
really have been affected. And, and there's a lot of prophecies and a lot of people trying to like,
you know, get their, get their story around what, what is going to occur or, or what is
happening and what it all means. I mean, we're all trying to derive meaning. And I think
the question about the left and, and where we'll all, where we'll be, where we'll fit in, where,
how that will be, that's maybe a good question in there to a degree. And I think that's why a lot
of people are raising some of these questions now. So I think definitely the caller is asking
questions that we're all sort of going through. And that's exactly why I think encryption and,
and bringing up this, you know, issue of surrounding politicians wanting to destroy
the ability to encrypt your conversations is as relevant as everything else. But I don't know,
I think you could find as much ammunition in like a church or something. That just seems arbitrary.
I just looked it up. But why the pain in the ass is loading webpages? You have to have this
issue where it's just jumping all over the place and it's ads and videos playing. I'm trying to
read a story and it just keeps moving around. You should install adblock.
Well, I, you know what, I don't, I think they, they installed ad plus on this because it's just
more and more. But anyway, it's emblematic of the fear I think that's going on.
Well, I want to read what I, what I discovered by, by looking this up.
Kalashnikov ammunition and Islamist propaganda videos were seized by French police in raids on
Sunday after shutting down a mosque in the Paris suburbs linked to the traditionalist Salafist
branch of Islam. The prayer hall in Lagny-sur-Marne, which is around 18 miles east of Paris,
was shut down last Wednesday following a major police operation. During raids linked to the
mosque, police found 7.62 millimeter ammunition for a Kalashnikov rifle and propaganda videos
for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL. According to the prefect, the highest state
representative and the locations of the raids were not disclosed. It's interesting, but as Kyle
said, I think you can find things like that in American churches without too much difficulty.
It doesn't, you know, it's one instance and you don't know what the reasoning behind it was. Was
it one, one person who was hiding something there? Ultimately the caller asked what's,
what's going to happen to the left in 20 years? What's going to happen to gay parades in 20 years?
What happens in any social field in 20 years? Ultimately it's up to us now. It's up to people
in that world now and all we can do is be informed by what happened in the past when we make these
decisions. Yeah. It's the incremental changes along the way that really, they are what dictate
where we'll arrive as a society. But gosh, you can't help but notice the fear and this,
people want to be right. They want to be certain that they figured it out or that it is maybe
simple, simpler than it really is. And I think there's some caution that needs to be a part of
that in your own edification. I mean, try not to take everything so seriously.
A fear goes in two directions too. If people are afraid of a specific group of people,
you can't be surprised when that specific group of people starts being afraid of the other people
out there, perhaps surrounding their mosque or whatever. In America, this kind of thing,
I assume, unless I misunderstand the NRA, would be encouraged. Mosques should arm themselves and
should have all kinds of ammunition to protect them from mosque intruders, right? That's an NRA
video, right? I must have missed that. Okay. If they have any integrity whatsoever, obviously,
the rules would apply to all American citizens, not just the white ones. And that's probably what
we're seeing here. And again, this is one instance that the details are very sketchy.
Buzzfeed of all media entities did a piece not too long ago where a black woman went to a gun show
and reported on how she was made to feel there. So, you know, some rights are more widely spread
than others. If you want gun control in this country, I made the suggestion on last night's
radio show. You get a busload of people dressed up in full Muslim attire and just go target
shooting over and over again. And before you know it, white America will be saying, we need gun
control in this country. That's what happened in California when, yeah, it's true. When the Black
Panthers marched around with guns, all of a sudden there was a real interest in gun control when there
wasn't before. Just something to consider. Yeah. And look at, like, Jerusalem and these places,
they've got these missile defense systems, the Iron Dome. They're testing the Iron Beam this
winter, actually, starting in 2016. They'll have lasers coming from planes and stuff. I mean,
it's going to be so much fun. Oh, wow. There is no shortage of weaponry involved with religion.
Yeah. Okay. Again, you're listening to WBAI New York. If you're tuning in for the Personal
Computer Show, be prepared to slam your face against the wall because it's not on this week.
It'll be on next week. We're on for another hour until nine o'clock. Yeah. Ultimately, and apart
from all that, we've got a new Star Wars movie coming as well. But apart from all of that,
ultimately, if you're coming at it from a place of peace and tolerance, or you're coming at it
from a place of frightened xenophobia, yeah, the future is up to you right now and what you can do
and what decisions you make and who you put in power and what you allow them to do with that
power. So, yeah. Should we continue taking phone calls? That led to a rather interesting discussion.
We have a lot more to talk about, but our listeners do need to be heard from occasionally.
I think we should put the phones through their paces. We've been so
without, so maybe it's better that we just talk on the phone. Well, let me also point out that
this is a fundraiser. This is the fundraiser with no name because we've used all four seasons and
this is now December and the winter one takes place in January. So, yeah, if you want to support the
radio station, support this particular program, please call 212-209-2950. We have four different
premiums available that this program is donating. Two from Rob T. Firefly, who will explain what they are.
Yes, indeed. I've done some paintings. On a past fundraiser, I had a set of paintings
of luminaries of the hacker world and there are still a very few left. If you donate...
A few luminaries left or a few paintings?
Very few paintings of the luminaries left. Most of them were snapped up. I've heard some very good
things from people who've received them and are enjoying them. But yeah, there are a few left and
you can go to give2wbai.org and look for the luminaries of the hacker world painting. You can
get that for a pledge of $50 or more. Or there's another set of paintings, which I'm going to be
doing, which are a set of historical and interesting telephones, also for a pledge of $50 and you can
get that. And these are paintings on canvas. You can get that for a pledge of $50 or more at
give2wbai.org or call 212-209-2950 and ask for either the luminaries of the hacker world painting
or the historical telephones painting.
Yes, again, 212-209-2950. If you want to speak with us on the air, the phone number is 718-780-8888.
We're talking about encryption and governments and fear and other things as well. And let's take
our first phone call. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook. It's that tone again. Wow, that tone
keeps going back. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook. Go ahead.
Hey, guys. I love your show.
Thanks.
But truthfully, I'm kind of with you guys with the security issues and all, but I just don't
think, I think by now we realize that people or the vast majority of them don't really care so
much. We've gotten used to, you know, the cameras coming up. No one's really complaining about the
cameras and all the other facets of life where we're just monitored. And for the most part,
I think people just really think, I'm not doing anything wrong, so I don't have to worry.
I think you're right. In fact, whenever things like this happen, you hear a clamor for cameras.
Where's the video footage? Where's our protection for our community? We need more surveillance.
And we want them on police offices now. I mean, we just, we really want, you know,
complete coverage of, you know, monitoring everywhere.
Well, it's interesting you should say that, because yes, that's an argument from a completely
different perspective. But yeah, it is another form of surveillance.
Well, that, I mean, that's going to come back to bite. I think all these, we want the body cams to
protect us against the officers. But I think in more and more cases, they're going to do
more harm than good and pretty much show a lot of these instances, you know, the before and the
after. And, you know, people take an iPhone picture of just the action, and we're missing
what's going on before. And I think that's going to change a lot of people's minds. I think in a
way, these cameras are going to help the police officers in their case, in many instances,
where if you were just caught a picture of the action of the police officer shooting the
perpetrator, it looks like the police officer is wrong. But if we see what's going on before,
sometimes I think we could be swayed. So I think these body cams are not going to be
for the purpose that we, and they'll just be monitoring, you know, as they're walking around,
they'll just have, you know, it's just another form of monitoring.
Yeah. Imagine it's automated. Imagine the body cam is telling the police officer what to do.
Imagine they can't, you know, make a judgment call. Imagine they can't make a judgment call
anymore because there are systems telling them they must pursue such and such person,
just like they get dispatched to go to another crime scene. There's amazing things that are
possible when you start making things wireless and putting cameras and all kinds of features
into them. Right. You begin with the basic technology of the video footage, you know,
then you add to that. As time goes along, you know, we should add this feature, that feature.
But I just think, I just don't think it's, you know, we can cry about it, but
the American public, the vast majority of them really mind being monitored.
And that's what it comes down to. If they did, I mean, they've had plenty of instances in the
past where we could have complained, you know, more and more cameras go up and no one seems to
care. You know, the NSA comes out and, you know, there's a little uproar from the select community,
but most people really did care. Yeah. It's, it's about, it's really about who,
be very, very mindful and very careful about who actually you're looking to, to provide you that,
that safety, that security. If you're fearful, that's fine, but don't impose it on other people
that perhaps, you know, have maybe taken their security into their own hands and a little,
and are a little bit more serious, or maybe they're not, they just have a different understanding of
the world. But I think it's, it's absolutely, it's crucial to not just go running towards a
particular company or a particular politician to be able to fix the, the overarching sort of fear
that is being thrown, thrown about. You really, you have to be mindful of the technologies and
services you use and build the kinds of procedures and stuff you want to keep you safe and educate
yourself. Okay. Thanks very much for that call. We're going to move on. Before we move on to the
next call though, I did type in Muslims on a bus as that caller suggested that we do. And what I
saw on YouTube was a video from 2008, according to the timestamp on it, of a bunch of people on a,
looks like a bus, might be a tram, I'm not really sure, apparently getting into some kind of
altercation and, and maybe they're Muslim, maybe not, it's hard to say really. I've seen videos
like this before with all groups of people ever. And the thing that I find interesting about this,
I do suggest people type Muslims on a bus and go to YouTube and maybe not look at the video so much
because you've probably seen things like this before. And I'm sure there's not that much that
you'll learn, but read the comments, read the comments about what people say we should do about
the Muslims. That is where you'll really get an education. Have you not learned, Emmanuel,
have you not been on the internet before? Don't read the comments on the internet.
I think Mike, in this case, I think this, this makes the point that that caller was trying not
to make. All right. I think people need to see that.
You're encouraging our audience to read not just internet comments, but YouTube comments.
Well, okay. The alternative is that they just type Muslims on a bus and reach the same conclusion
based on some closed minded people. So I think, you know, look at what they have to say. Again,
letting people speak is the best way to, uh, to win an argument.
Okay. Let's take another phone call. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Yeah. I just, uh, two quick things to say. Go ahead. Number one, if you go to jebbush.com,
someone hacked the domain name server and it points to donaldtrump.com.
I just did it about 15 minutes ago. Second thing is if you guys don't pick up the phone,
it goes to the station manager's voicemail.
How about that?
Make sure you leave a message. Make sure you leave a nice message.
I'll do it again.
All right. Thanks guys. Take care.
We have a full switchboard too, on my point. I almost feel like letting them all go.
Good evening. And I just checked out that webpage. He's right. It does go to donaldtrump.com.
But that is not Jeb Bush's website.
Well, it sure sounds like it to me. jebbush.com. It goes to donaldjtrump.com. Why is it not his
website? I don't know. But if you wish to get to Jeb Bush's website and see this terrible logo
that they've designed, it's on jeb2016.com. But what tells you that that is his website
and jebbush.com is not his website? What's telling you that?
I wrote Jeb Bush into a search engine.
And the search engine, you believe the search engine over our crawlers?
I do. Sorry, crawler.
jebbush.com is his site and I think his site got hacked.
You can read the who is if you are on a full-size computer and can do more research than I can do
right now.
I believe that, yeah, the page ranking maybe is why he chose it. But it's interesting. So
it's probably one is a campaign site and one is maybe his domain name.
I suspect it is not his website at all. But I don't have the time to do the research.
It's got his damn name in it. And if I took that site,
I'll bet I'd be getting a lawyer calling me saying, give it back.
That's what I think is happening.
We have free speech in this country still sometimes, Emanuel.
We also have a caller who's been hiding or hanging out on our phone line for a few minutes.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hey, how you doing?
Sorry about all that banter there. Go ahead.
That's all right. You guys have a great show.
Hey, real quick about, you know, if you say something often enough,
it becomes the truth. They're saying all Muslims are terrorists.
But a lot of it is false flags. If you look at, like the guy was saying about
finding guns in a masjid over there. If you look at California, there were three shooters.
If you look, if you Google it, he's going to turn to Google, sorry.
But if you look up online, there were three shooters. But why are they only talking about
two? And I'm surprised that no one on BAI, you know, commented on that in any of the shows either.
So I can look that up.
What tells you there were three shooters? I mean,
I know they were saying that at the beginning, but is there evidence that there was a third?
Well, because the original witnesses, I just happened to have the TV on at that time.
And all the witnesses kept saying there was three shooters, three shooters.
And a little bit later, all of a sudden, they didn't talk about the third shooter.
Well, that does tend to happen on breaking stories. They tend to get it wrong. Usually,
you know, school shootings, they say there's multiple and it turns out to be just one.
These things do have a habit of changing over time.
Oh, true. But I always go by the originals, but what the original people are saying right there,
you know, it's just kind of uninteresting that all of a sudden there's two shooters,
and they're saying all this stuff. I'm pretty sure if you walk in, they were full boxes,
and you walk out with boxes, you can just say, oh, you know, that stuff was in there already.
And then also, sometimes you see other things that you always question,
it doesn't make sense, but you figure out later. Like, I used to hear stories about,
oh, the Muslims, they're celebrating all around the world. I never understood that story. And then
someone said, look up people dancing Israelis. And I was like, well, I looked that up. That's
pretty much what that is. They show that people were from Israel, from the agency.
And they went there on the Jersey side to film the first planes that were going to hit.
And then they were jumping up and down, like, because they saw it. And someone called the cops,
and then when the cops showed up, you know, that's who was jumping up and down.
Well, okay, you're right about that. And it's funny that none of the media has latched on that,
because you can look it up, and you can see news stories written about people who were
working for the Israeli Secret Service who were acting suspiciously. I don't think there
was a report they were jumping up and down and celebrating the planes hitting,
but they were suspicious. They were taken into custody, and then they were let go when
they found out that they were working for the Israeli government. But that is what Trump
seems to be remembering when he says that there are thousands of Muslims jumping up and down on
the shores of New Jersey celebrating. That's the closest thing to that that you can find.
It's weird that none of the press has picked up on that and is reporting that.
The other thing that he's confusing it with are those pictures of Palestinians
celebrating on September 11. But again, there was no context at the time as to what it was
they were celebrating. And it was maybe 20 people total, but that got shown over and over and over
again. You did not see the footage of Yasser Arafat giving blood, though. You only saw that
maybe once, and then that was never shown again. Also, when watching something like a YouTube
video and looking at the title, consider that the uploader can write whatever they want in there.
I can upload a video and call it dancing Muslims or singing Israelis or, you know,
jumping Martians or whatever. It doesn't make the title automatically true.
What if we all did that? It would definitely, the subject would lose a lot of meaning.
Thanks for that call. We're going to move on. Good evening. You're on off the hook. Go ahead.
Hey, how you doing?
Hi, what's on your mind?
Can you hear me?
Yes, we hear you fine.
Just two quick things. The shooter in California, she had a baby shower. The victims threw her a
baby shower. She was wearing a body camera when she executed them. They were both wearing body
cameras. But I wanted to call you back.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? They were wearing body cameras?
They were both wearing body cameras.
How have you heard this? And how have we not heard this at all?
They were going to post the videos. That's common. But here's my point.
Are you the YouTube guy again? Are you the Muslims on a bus guy again?
Listen, because you mentioned the bus video. Listen, they're reciting scripture.
They're calling for the murder of Jews.
Well, I guess that makes the whole religion invalid then. Thanks. Listen, one call per caller.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Oh, God.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, sorry. Yeah, as they used to say on Monty Python and now for something totally different.
Please.
I just wanted to mention that after several decades of having a landline and never missing
a bill payment, Verizon has taken away my landline. They stopped servicing them. I live in New Jersey.
Apparently they've done it in Chicago, too.
Where in New Jersey are you?
I'm in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Oh, wow. Did you get a letter or something? What happened? Did they get a letter? What did the
letter say?
Okay, here's the thing. For about two years, they've basically been bullying us with files.
You know, they come, they knock on your door, they ring your bell.
They send you advertisements constantly. And so what they did apparently was they
sent us notices, but it looked just like the advertisement. You know what I mean?
So you don't open every one of those and read every one of those. You basically just pay your
bill. But then apparently they did send one that said 30 days. And then they sent another one about
30 days later that looked a little different. They actually read and it said seven days.
But what I really wanted to say about this, and you could hear I'm pretty upset about this.
Yes, I would be too.
The thing is that most people who are affected by this are elderly, like myself.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, come on, Verizon. I understand moving on. I totally get that.
I'm not against all the new technology and everything. I mean, I'm on my cell phone.
But, you know, did they really have to do this to us? Agreed. It's shameful. It really is.
It is shameful that they would do this.
I want to suggest to the caller that she called the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
I did. I did.
What did they say?
Basically, it's like this. Apparently, Verizon has been trying to do this for a while
and they weren't able to. I called so many different places. Actually, I'm a little
confused. But the basic story is that legally, a little bit at a time, they've been chipping away.
Okay. First, it was absolute no. Then it was, okay, well, you could do it if you didn't disrupt
any services. Like, in other words, people would just get Fios and still be able to have a phone.
I'm sorry. One second. I'm losing my train of thought.
One of the other things they did was not maintain the older infrastructure. So the copper wires,
the stuff that was actually the old network, was not maintained. That was part of their rollout
and moving away from it. Yeah.
So it would sound awful and you'd be begging them for something different, basically.
See, that's the whole thing. They're saying they don't want to service those copper lines anymore.
But, you know, basically, that comes down to it's a financial decision and screw you,
elderly people. Even though we have been loyal, and I have to tell you,
there was nothing wrong with my line. It was working beautifully, you know?
Well, can I just ask you a question? Because I'm sure there are a lot of people
listening who don't understand the importance of a landline to somebody, some in the studio,
in fact. What is it in particular that you no longer have that you valued?
Well, okay, a couple of things. I am an elderly person, and I had the landline when we were hit
for the first time here with the hurricane that really affected us, which was Sandy a few years
ago. We had nothing. Everything went down. We were flooded. There were boats outside my house.
It's shocking. I never even had an inch of water. And the only thing that we're working
with the landline, okay? So I had a phone for emergency, whatever. The other thing is,
again, I'm elderly. Believe it or not, I had dial-up computer. So they took away my computer,
too, basically. And they just, you know, that's it. They leave you on your own.
Bernie, can I ask you what would happen if somebody was hit by a hurricane and they had
a Fios line only? Oh, they would lose their phone service,
because the batteries, the Fios line is not powered by batteries at the central office.
It's powered by a little tiny battery pack in a network interface in your home. And that only
lasts for a few, keeps your service alive for a few hours. So assuming the fiber itself wasn't
destroyed by the hurricane, if it was still a connection, as soon as the power would go out,
probably a few hours later, you'd lose your phone service. So it's a much more dangerous
service to have if you're interested in having a phone line for safety. It's much more dangerous
to have Fios, because it's not nearly as reliable. And structurally, it's not quite as centralized,
would you say, Bernie, right? I mean, you'd have these lines, these copper lines going directly to
a central office that's then powered and has banks of batteries and so on. But there's other
intermediate things that are going on. If you're maybe getting a couple strands for an entire
neighborhood, that might be powered in one part of the neighborhood, and then you power something
else on your block. So even if you're active for a couple hours, or you make some other kind of
technical solution work, you could be hampered by something in between, because you're not
going to a central location, necessarily. It's being switched and dealt with in the neighborhood
and in the region. You're right. There's far more points of failure with Fios than there is with a
plain old telephone service line. Hey guys, could I just interrupt for a second? Because actually,
I have to tell you, I have an old plan, and this is a little expensive for me. Wow. From Jersey,
bless you for that. Wow. It's funny that they won't get rid of that. They'll get rid of the
actual landline, but they won't get rid of the 1980s billing plan. You know, actually,
I'm on my cell phone. What I wanted to say, everything you said, I've been reading and
everything since this happened this past month. But my whole point really is basically about how
they are screwing the elderly. Because, you know, like I said, I relied on that phone.
And you know, that phone, if I had a phone problem when my phone broke or something,
it cost me $20 to get a new phone. You know, the cell phone that I've had for emergency,
basically my cell phone I've just used when I go out to call a taxi or something.
I have an old flip thing. It doesn't, this phone does not have internet. And in other words,
if I go to get a phone with internet now, I mean, they cost a fortune. You know, we're talking,
my whole thing, like I said, is that basically I'm talking about how they've screwed the elderly.
And it's just a shameful thing for them to do, this company that is so rich. I mean, I know
they've been screwing their employees for a long time. I remember they went on strike a few years
ago. But anyway, thank you. Thank you so much for taking my call. I appreciate it.
Okay. Now, Mike, you've got something to say.
I mean, like, is your position, Emmanuel, that like no one should ever be allowed to
exit a business that they were previously in? Should we be like demanding that Western Union
restore its telegraph lines? Well, it's funny how I'm suddenly the person on the spotlight here,
but okay, fine. You're going to ask me these questions. Well, yeah, you know, if you're a
public utility... Western Union is a public utility. Telegraph, like, made America. Like,
coast-to-coast America, you could not have without the telegraph.
Yeah, but we still have it. It's called the internet. I mean, it's...
So we've replaced a technology with a functionally equivalent one that's better and cheaper.
I don't recall a lot of people that were basically complaining when Western Union
stopped with the telegraph. I hear a lot of people complaining about
landlines being turned into FIOS lines. Well, and at least it was equivalent,
right? It did the telegraphy pretty much exactly the same way, right?
The thing is, what I have a problem with, you know, I love new technology and new developments
and things like that. What I don't like is the attitude that all old technology must be
eliminated in favor of the new technology. Why can't there be a mixture, a change over time
where you use one more than another, perhaps? Why can't you have vinyl and CDs? Why can't you
have film and digital cameras? Why can't you have payphones even though everyone has a cell phone?
You know, on 9-11, I remember nobody could make a cell phone call, but the payphones were working,
those that were still maintained. The biggest problem was the fact that the phone company
wasn't maintaining them because nobody was using them anymore. But if you have some backbone of
old technology there, when the new technology fails, and it will fail at some point somehow,
then you have a way of getting something done, of communicating in a different way,
and you also have a link to the past. You have some understanding of how technology works,
and you can basically figure out telephony in ways you can't do with gadgets that are
so sophisticated that if you drop it once, you have to replace it because nobody can fix it.
You know, we all should know how to wire up a phone. We all should know how to hook something
into the phone network. I would get a lot more use if I knew how to start a fire.
Well...
And I don't know that.
You don't know how to start a fire? I can teach you that.
Yeah, it's a lot more useful, but I get through my life without it, so...
Right. Well, okay, so if you're stranded on a desert island somewhere, you can start a fire.
Yeah, I'm gonna die, let's be clear. If I'm stranded on a desert, like a real desert island,
I'm gonna die. I'm totally useless, but I'll try. Hopefully it'll be a desert island in
reach of a nearby island with cell service. I don't know.
Are you saying new technology is better than fire?
No, I'm saying I'm gonna die. I have no useful skills, no useful survival skills. If that's
your point, I'll happily admit it.
Suddenly this turned in a different direction. Bernie, did you have anything to add to this?
If I was in the same island with Mike, I'd help him survive. I was a boy scout,
I learned survival skills.
All right, and you probably learned how to use a landline there, too. Kyle?
Well, I just agree with that. She really was trying to emphasize the point that
they are preying on them, confusing them, inundating them, doing a lot of kind of nasty
things, consciously or subconsciously, with people that are probably the least prepared
to deal with a completely new type of information technology platform. I guess it's a, what would
you call it, a medium, right? You have different wires, so it's different connectivity. So
having them be the people that are being approached and having to adapt and go through
this, I think that is kind of a lot to expect from people that really just are used to one
system working in a particular way. And they're essentially getting less in turn. When it's
all said and done, they have less service than in their opinion. It doesn't work the same way,
and I guess not as well.
It's more than just them not being used to a new system, and it's not working the same way.
In some ways, it works better. And if you prefer something, you shouldn't be forced
not to use it just because it's not as profitable as a company wants it to be.
If the infrastructure is still there, and I don't see that infrastructure
being dismantled, people should still have that choice. I don't think there's anything
that hurts new technology as far as that goes. Rob?
Yeah, I mean, something like a public utility. I mean, when Western Union stopped sending
telegrams, I don't know how many people there were who depended only on telegrams,
who didn't have the wherewithal or the access to replacement technology to fill that role in
their lives.
They replaced it with Teletype.
Right, but so if you were...
You can still send a telegram, can't you? You just need to have somebody to deliver it.
Right, but where...
They got rid of the service.
I'm sorry?
They got rid of the service about, I think it was about 12 years ago.
But what's required for the service? Couldn't someone just start that up again somehow?
Well, there are third parties that provide similar kinds of services now,
but Western Union stopped offering telegram service about, I don't know, about 12...
Right, but what I'm saying is hardware-wise,
what did they need? A teletype and some sort of connection, right?
Yeah, they had a network with, well, back in the day they had teletype machines that
would print out stuff. My aunt, who recently passed away at 92, was a teletype operator for
Western Union. She would take a... People would walk up with a slip to the window,
and she would make sure it was written properly, and then she would type it in.
She would take their money, and she'd type it in, and it would...
She would send it to the right... She would route it to the right
Western Union office, and the recipients...
The office closest to the recipient would get it printed out,
and then it would be delivered by hand to...
Okay, the point I'm trying to make, Bernie, is that that could be replicated fairly easily.
I mean, not the easiest thing in the world, but another company, if they really wanted to,
could do this. With the phone network, it's a bit more difficult. I don't see Verizon or
other phone companies saying, you know, we don't want these landlines anymore. You take them,
you run them, and we'll just, you know, divest ourselves of all this.
They did that in Maine. The Bell Telephone Company in Maine got...
Completely divested themselves of all the landline service and turned it over to a third
party HELAC.
Well, so maybe that's the answer, then. If they don't want to do it, give it to somebody who does.
Right. The whole state of Maine is now operated by an independent company.
I bet they're doing okay.
Yeah, Verizon did that in the city with the payphones. They just, you know,
in total shipped them off to somebody else. But the point I'm trying to make is that
as our caller demonstrated, not everybody has access to the replacement for a landline.
If you have a phone from 50 years ago, and it's plugged into the wall,
and you still have the service hooked up,
chances are that phone still works just as well because it's a robust technology.
But not everybody can scrape together the money for a cell phone.
Not everybody can scrape together the money for a smartphone.
And should they have to if the old stuff is still there?
Yeah. Digital TV is another example of how people were forced
to change standards for no good reason, and you can't just plug something in anymore.
You have to get another piece of hardware. It doesn't work as well.
And someone just made that decision that this is how it has to be,
and the old way just isn't going to exist anymore.
The other thing that she mentioned that I think is worth noting, and we ought to think about,
is just how much money the Bell system made, and how much money is involved.
So when these people buy up Spectrum, or they pivot in one direction and just dump customers,
or don't take care of equipment, it's because their bottom line is going to get better by not
doing that, by going the opposite. And it may be counterintuitive to use the customer,
but they benefit. They do not do anything unless they're making money.
If your point is that someone today could operate a service of hand-delivering messages
within a day, then there are more entities than ever before offering the service of providing
voice communications. But the Telegraph network itself, like wires with Morse code operators on
them, no longer exists because it has been replaced with a similarly functional, not exactly
the same, but similarly functional, but better in all ways technology. And the same is happening
slowly but surely with copper telephones. Well, it's not better in all ways, I'll tell you that.
I mean, just listen to the sound quality of a phone call today and compare that to something
50 years ago. It should be much better. I agree, it should be much better, but it's not.
Listen to phone interviews on television or radio stations. You can barely make out what
people are saying. Maybe if the companies invested a little bit more and used more bandwidth,
we wouldn't be having this conversation. Maybe I'd be sold. But right now, there's no comparison.
I think that's a much better policy argument to make than Verizon must be required to maintain
copper all over the place. Well, they're not replacing it with anything comparable. That's
my point. If they were doing that, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Right. What if Verizon came to the lady who called us and said, okay, well,
you know, instead of your landline, let's give you a comparable cell phone that'll
cost a comparable amount. And that'll work in a hurricane.
And that'll work in a hurricane, yeah. How's she going to get to the internet?
She can't dial up the internet on her cell phone. Yeah, phone without internet. That sounds so weird
now. She had dial-up service on her landline, and now she's effectively cut off from the internet
because they are discontinuing her landline. I don't think you can do dial-up over a Fios.
That's not moving ahead. That's moving backwards. You can get internet on cell phones, Bernie.
Yes, but she wants to connect her PC at home to the internet.
You can do that. Well, only if she bought a phone that was
capable of tethering, and there'd be a very limited amount of data.
A modem has even more limited amount of data.
Uh, I think over a month's time you could download far more with a dial-up modem than you could...
Okay, you know, we can talk about this all night. I just, I don't see the pressing need
to force people to do things like this against their will.
Well, not when people are clamoring for it. There's entire neighborhoods, entire regions.
Yeah, Fire Island is a great example of that. Right.
Verizon tried to pull that nonsense there after Sandy.
Absolutely. I'm thinking of south downtown in Seattle, the ridiculous centralization of where
they're rolling things out when entire, whole other communities could be served and are begging
to have high-speed internet. It ought not to be something that people see as a negative when
others are really pulling their hair out over lack of access at all. So, yeah, it's pretty
haphazard is what it sounds like. You're listening to an extended version of
Off the Hook. We're on until nine o'clock. We might take some more phone calls in a little bit.
Of course, you can write to us, oth at 2600.com. This is a fundraising edition. The fundraising
number, 212-209-2950. If you have been listening to this show and you've gotten something out of
it, please consider making a donation. You can also go to the website, givetowbai.org.
That's to the number or the word, T-O. On that site, you can make all kinds of donations,
getting all kinds of premiums, or you can look up our specific premiums. Rob, I know there are a
couple of premiums you're offering tonight. There are. There are some paintings, paintings
on canvas that you can get of my own original art, unique paintings, each one of them. One set
is hacker luminaries, luminaries of the hacker world, which there are a few left, I believe.
For a donation of $50 or more, you could also get a historical telephones painting,
which will be paintings of various historical and interesting telephones, also for a donation
of $50 or more. Be sure to ask for it by name. Exactly, or search for it by name.
We've also got some Hope stuff up, haven't we? Hope Archives. Ask for that by name, too. The
Hope Archives DVD collection, that'll give you all the keynote addresses we've had since the very
first Hope Conference back in 1994, up until Hope X last year. You can get a DVD version of that for
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but you're also showing your support for the style of fundraising we're doing tonight where we don't
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exactly your thing, you can still go to give2wbai.org or call 212-209-2950 and make a donation of any
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you get for a certain amount or above, you get a membership in the station and a say in what goes
on here. So 212-209-2950 or give2wbai.org. You know, it amazes me that we've been on now for an
hour and 41 minutes, and we've been just talking nonstop about a few things, but we have so many
other things we could be talking about as well. I'd like to try to get to some of them in the
19 minutes that we have left, less than 19 minutes we have left. But it goes to show that there's a
lot going on in this community, a lot of discussion that needs to be had. And I'm glad we have our
phone lines back so we can share that with our listeners as well. And thanks to everybody who's
called in tonight, even the ones with some crazy theories. Now we've heard from our friends in
Germany that the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress has sold out. This is unbelievable.
We were in the venue last year. It's so big, so incredibly huge, but apparently they reached
their maximum. They say as of Saturday morning, the 32C3 ticket pre-sale is sold out. We are
overwhelmed by the enormous number of people who want to join us in Hamburg, but unfortunately
the venue's capacity is limited. Therefore, there will not be another batch of tickets for pre-sale,
but there will be very limited amount of day passes for sale on site. So if you already got
your tickets to go over to Hamburg this winter, the 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th of December,
well, go anyway and beg for tickets at the door. But really, next time, get your tickets the same
time you buy your plane tickets. It's probably the best idea. And we've seen this kind of thing
happen in very many places. We just did another pre-sale on Sunday for the upcoming Hope
conference, the 11th Hope taking place in July here in New York. And once again, I think within
10 seconds they were all gone. So there is definitely a need to share these kinds of
discussions and this kind of material, whether it be on the radio, through the magazine,
through various conferences. It's good to see this is healthy, but it is very competitive now.
So we hope to see a lot of people showing up in New York, but I guess we should caution you that
it might sell out there too, especially if things keep growing the way they've been growing.
Our tickets will go on sale in January, and there'll be more information on hope.net.
I wonder if, like a lot of times at conferences in this country, you see what are called B-sides,
which are other small events that pop up alongside larger events. And I wonder if something like
that's going to happen in Germany now for maybe those who can't get in, but who've already made
their travel arrangements or whatever. So yeah, if you know of anything like that, let us know,
oth at 2600.com. There has been at the past at the same time as the CCC. I haven't heard
anything this year, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. Yes, Bernie? I was going to say,
there is obviously the B-sides conferences here in the US, like info security. Just a few weeks
ago, I went to B-sides Delaware and Wilmington, where Josh and Janice put together a great all-day
conference, a lot of fun. But I would like to see, how about a B-sides thing for hope? Is that
possible for people that can't make it to New York? Absolutely. It's New York City, so I think
there's plenty of room for it, and I'd love to see something like that as well. It just keeps
getting bigger every year, so that'll be the case, I'm sure, here and other places as well.
Okay, so moving on to some other items. This is a story that I just saw a couple of days ago
from our favorite place, Florida, where a woman's car snitched on her after she allegedly
rear-ended two vehicles and left the scene without reporting the accident to the authorities.
This happened in Port St. Lucie. They managed to track her down, thanks to her Ford's
emergency assistance safety feature. Now, the system activates when sensors on the car detect
a sudden change of speed or movement. An emergency call is automatically placed to
local first responders, who can pinpoint the precise location of the incident using
information supplied by the vehicle's GPS unit. An audio recording released by the authorities
reveals how the perpetrator tried to convince the dispatcher there was no cause for concern.
That's basically saying everything was fine, but the dispatcher said,
but your car called in saying you'd been involved in an accident. Doesn't do that for no reason.
Did you leave the scene of an accident? And all of this kind of degraded from there.
What do we think about cars ratting on us?
I think I missed this episode of Knight Rider.
It's hard to argue, you know, I mean, why would you want to let somebody get away with
something like this? I mean, a tip for motorists is if you kill someone in your car and you don't
leave the scene and you're sober at the time, then you can, you won't be charged with a crime,
basically, under any other circumstances. So it's bad advice, but it is a little bit
disconcerting that this device, this expensive, dangerous device that this woman bought was,
was then the thing that turned her in. The thing is, we know, especially on this program,
but also people in general know how often computers glitch and go wrong and start doing
things they're not supposed to. So what happens when your car snitches on you and says you've
been in an accident and you haven't? Who are they going to believe? You or your car?
Well, there's that. There's certainly that. I see it as more of a stepping stone. Like,
it's hard to argue this. It's usually hard to argue the initial use of some new technology
because it's only to protect you. It's only to isolate when somebody does something unforgivable.
But where does it stop? Do we, do we now log every mile per hour somebody drives? How fast
they go? One mile above the speed limit. You get a ticket for going one mile above the speed limit.
You're accountable for every action that you, every transgression, everything. If you don't
make a full stop before making a right on red, then that's another ticket right there.
If you, and then, you know, if you drive to a neighborhood you're not supposed to be in,
well, that can be recorded as well, and you can be penalized for that.
You know, where is the line? Everyone has a different place for that line, but we seem to
always be moving it. And that's what worries me about things like this. You know, in the,
in the past we didn't feel the need for this, but just as we feel the need for surveillance cameras
in all the neighborhoods now, and by we I mean Americans in general, because that does seem to
be the consensus that this is how you prevent crime, by having surveillance cameras around.
Um, where are we going with this? How much surveillance are we talking about?
You know, in, in people's homes now, there are nanny cams. You, you spy on your own kids.
You know when your kid leaves a particular area that you agreed they would not leave.
So kids can't be kids anymore. They can't ever, um, break the rules. It, I just worry about what
kind of people we're going to turn into when we fear any transgression whatsoever, no matter how
minor. So I have a question for our, that the section of our audience, which celebrates
Christmas. I heard about this thing recently, which is an elf that like spies on your children.
Is this real? Yes, indeed. Uh, my, uh, my nephew has one of these. Um, it's apparent it's,
it's a toy elf that sits on a shelf and the child is not allowed to touch it. It must
remain under the watchful gaze of the elf who supports. Wait, wait, wait. Uh huh. What point
to your big brother is watching you. And, uh, the elf will, uh, you will, you will find if
you are a child with an elf on the shelf, the elf will move when you're not looking and sit
somewhere else and watch you from there every so often. And apparently we'll report back to
Santa Claus and or his minions and whoever he shares data with, uh, about your actions.
Right around 40 years from now, 45 years, when we have a country filled with paranoid lunatics,
this is the starting point. This is how it all began. Just make note of that.
Where do I get one of these elves? I want to, uh, I imagine in any toy store. I don't know.
On a shelf, apparently. What are the big brother elves? What are they called?
No elf on a shelf is what it's called. So this is a real thing. Like I read about it on the
internet and I thought it was like a joke, but it's a real thing. It's a real thing. And this
is what happens. You think it's a joke and it turns out to be real. Just like Trump. I'm looking
at his face right now because I'm still on, on Jeb Bush's website and I'm looking at Trump's
smiling face. I'm going to try and change that. Yeah, that's him. Yeah.
We're, we're using, um, the amazing advances in technology to make some of the stupidest things
and some of the worst things. Uh, I think we'll look back on a lot of products and, and software.
This that's been, that's come about in the last 10 years with, um, maybe some sadness and, and, uh,
hopefully a good deal of humor. Um, because it's, it's, I don't know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
because it's, it's, I don't know, there's so many other things people could work on and use
their skills, uh, and so many areas that need design and engineering. And it's just kind of
terrible. Well, you know, one thing, speaking to that, one thing that I've learned is that there
are so many smart people out there. We went to another meeting, another 2600 meeting this last
Friday and people going to the CCC and going to other hacker conferences. You'll soon realize how
many bright, intelligent people there are that get it, that are willing to pour themselves into
projects and come up with all kinds of new creative and positive things. So don't lose hope.
There are all kinds of, um, of cool people out there and a lot of them are hackers and, uh,
it's a positive thing. 12,000 tickets the CCC sold. Isn't that something? That's amazing. All
right. Let's take a couple more phone calls cause you have a few more minutes and I'd like to do
that. 718-780-8888. Is this a caller? Good evening. Hi. Hi. What's on your mind? I want to ask about
encrypted smartphones. Okay. Go ahead and ask about encrypted smartphones.
What do you need to know? Do you, do they make one? Is there one that you recommend?
There's a, there's a couple of them out there. Um, the, let's see. So the, let's see, there's the,
uh, black phone, which is a, uh, an encrypted Android phone. There's, um, you can't find that
in a local store though, can you? No, they have a project website and, um, I believe it's
blackphone.ch. Right. $700. Can I just ask the caller, like, what do you wish to encrypt
and such that who can't read it? Is that really a necessary question? Should it just be the default
that we encrypt our communications period? So, so like, uh, substantially all new, uh,
cell phones with the newest versions of the operating systems from both Google and, uh,
and, and Apple, the data on the phone itself is encrypted so that you can't just like break it
open and read all the data. So that's like all phones do that. If you just wish to communicate,
um, with people, uh, encrypted so that it's encrypted over the wire, you can get an app
called Signal, which again, available for both of those platforms and as easy to use as any other
SMS client, uh, except that if you're communicating with someone who also has it, then it will be
encrypted. Um, and you can use that on, on whatever phone you already have, uh, if it's a smartphone.
So there are options that don't cost $700. Is the caller calling about encrypted voice
communications or encrypted, uh, uh, SMS, MMS and email on her phone? Everything.
And I'm, I'm hesitant to get one because one, the price to the lack of privacy. Um,
I think it's, it's dangerous. I have a flip phone. Well, it's funny cause, um, um, a lot of phones
are about $700 these days. So it's kind of funny that the, the ones we're talking about are that,
yeah, they're, they're generally a little bit more. And there are a lot of groups that are
working on making actual entire phones that are, um, encrypted. There's another project. Um, you
might be interested. I don't know if it's any better, uh, uh, price-wise or whatever. Uh,
I'm not really shopping for this stuff myself, but crypto phone.de is another one. They've
been developing, uh, an encrypted telephone for quite some time. Incredibly pricey, actually.
They have a lot of different models. They have a desktop VoIP phone and they have also mobile
phones. Um, it's called a crypto phone and they sell a variety of products that have varying
degrees of capability. But as Mike said, it's, it's also a little bit more pricey. Probably
somebody that's maybe involved in a business or something is, is their target. But as he said,
also there are other, um, apps and things that people are adding and there are even, um, devices
they're naming. I think the, the Priv was like an Android phone. You don't have, you don't have to
spend money. Any smartphone, you do have to spend money for a smartphone, but any smartphone
manufactured in the past couple of years is capable of running this, this app Signal. And I'm,
it's free. But Signal is only for text messages, right? No, you can also make voice calls. And
the voice calls, you can understand what people are saying. I haven't actually tried the voice
call feature, but it's, it's, it's fairly new. Next show, why don't you go on the air using it
and we'll see how good it is. I'll do it because our phone in the studio can't support it. All
these encryption things, both sides, phone has to support it on the other side. So you can only call
other people who are doing the same thing. That's the problem. That's how encryption works. You have
to be able to decrypt it. Yeah, but you can still encrypt the connection. No, you can't unless the
person on the other end can decrypt it. Yeah. But the point is, uh, there, there are many, I don't
know what you want. No, there are many, there are many areas of weakness. None of the products anyone
has ever described. What can one person have something magically called encryption and the
person on the other end doesn't have to have it. There's no such product. You're misrepresenting
what I'm saying. I'm saying there are, there are places where, where you can tie into the
connection. For instance, before, uh, it's sent over the wireless spectrum where either it's
encrypted or it's not encrypted, such as a T-Mobile tower. Yeah. Uh, that's how law enforcement gets
access to, uh, to, to conversations. They go to the place where it's not encrypted. I think what
the caller wants is as much encryption as possible from, from when she picks up the phone to when the
other person picks up their phone. Now, if they're, if they're broadcasting their phone conversations
out a loudspeaker and their porch, you know, that's on their side. But I think what she's
looking for is something that just covers as much as possible and to have a solution where the other
person has to have the same thing or it doesn't work. I don't think that's what she's looking for.
Am I right caller? Yes. And you know, also you talk about this signal app. So for text and
voice, what about email? And is it really necessary? You guys are fighting over whether
the other person has the encryption app as well. So that means I would have to tell all my friends,
oh, okay, get this app so I can, so you can read my messages or hear my messages. That's crazy.
Yeah. That's been the problem with, uh, with a lot of encryption applications is, uh, basically
having to tell people, you know, your keys and, and, and getting them to figure it out. And
every time somebody sends me an encrypted message, there's a problem and we have to
work it out. And it just takes a very long time. We need to get better at this.
It's about having layers of it too. And a lot of, a lot of your operations, the way you work,
it's specific to specific to where you get your email. If you're using a provider, that's not
necessarily handling your data in a good way that that could also be a vulnerability. So it's,
it's something you might have to build a little bit more to get exactly what you want.
I think we all can agree on is we have a long way to go before this starts working the way
we really want it to work. Rob.
I can say that signal in particular has come a long way toward making it intuitive and easy
to use. I've used it for a long time since it was two separate apps, text secure and red phone.
But now it's a very simple thing. If you, if the other side doesn't have the app installed,
it just sends them normal text messages and calls. But if, uh, if, but there's also,
it's also very easy to send them a link to get the app, which is free and open source and,
um, and easy to use. So yeah, it's worth it. I think.
We're out of time caller. I thank you for your interest and for sparking this discussion and
we'll keep looking into it and hopefully, uh, you'll find what you're looking for.
Yeah. There's lots out there.
All right. Uh, and, uh, we, we went through two hours pretty quickly.
Uh, one more time, the phone number to pledge 212-209-2950. Uh, there's a variety of off the
hook, uh, premiums there for your, for your taking. If you, if you pledge a certain amount
to support this radio station, uh, write to us, OTH at 2600.com. That's our email address.
Hey, uh, today is the anniversary of the death of John Lennon or actually, uh,
35 years ago today, the whole world was in mourning in a way that I think, uh,
has not equaled since in a kind of a very unified way. And rather than do it,
all the other radio stations are doing and playing a John Lennon track.
I'd like to play something from the person that, um, that he looked up to the most that
got him through hard times. And, uh, that meant so much to him. We'll see you next week.
Emmanuel for off the hook. Good night.
I hate you. I hate you.
You stick to his cake. I want you. I want you. You're making me sick.
But yeah, yeah. That quote never long enough to read your mom is trick.
Yeah,
No kick is good enough for life-long substitution No brick will give you a lifetime consolation
And whether you like it or not, you're part of the transition
And whether you dig it or not, we are a number in population
And leave your private institution, get down to real communication
Leave your scene of destruction