And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
The time is just about, well, seven o'clock, I would say, and that means it's time for
another edition of Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
I hope that's understood, one day we'll know.
I hope that's understood, one day we'll know.
And the very good evening to everybody, the program is Off the Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Rob.
Good evening.
And Kyle.
Hello there, hackers.
And down in Philadelphia, I believe, is Bernie.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Wow, you've got a commanding voice tonight.
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516-620-3602.
Hey, Friday is the deadline for speaker submissions at the upcoming 11th HOPE Conference.
What that means is, if you have any intention, any fantasy, glimmer of hope of giving some
kind of presentation, engaging in a panel discussion, even a debate, who knows?
All sorts of things you can do on stage in front of a lot of people.
You have the opportunity to do that at the next Hackers on Planet Earth Conference, which
is taking place July 22nd through 24th at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
Now, what's different about our conference is that we open up the floodgates to all kinds
of different people to give presentations, to share their knowledge, to share their mischief,
tell stories, formulate ideas, plans, conspiracies, you name it.
It's all there.
And we do not stand on pretense and say, well, you have to have a particular degree or certification
or anything like that.
What you have to have is an idea, is something that would be of interest to a thousand hackers
or a couple of thousand hackers.
And there are so many people out there with information to share.
I know.
I see it all the time in the magazine.
And we've seen it over the years at the conferences.
So please don't feel intimidated.
If you've never spoken before in front of an audience, it can be a bit frightening.
But people are open, open to new ideas.
They're open to what you have to say.
And I think you'll find once you do that, you'll feel really amazing and empowered.
So the deadline to submit your ideas, basically a paragraph or two on what it is you want to talk about
and why it's interesting to the hacker world and all that and something about who you are,
that deadline is this Friday, May the 20th.
You can go to hope.net.
If you want to be fancy about it, go to xi.hope.net.
That's for 11.
But hope.net is basically the website.
And that will give you all the information you need on speakers.
Bernie, do I leave anything out, Bernie?
Yeah, I just want to say if they click on the Speakers tab, there's a really nice help document.
We call it our Speaker Tips.
If you're not really sure how to write a proposal, this explains in really great detail how to write a short, concise proposal
that's more likely to be accepted.
And we've gotten quite a few that people haven't followed those guidelines.
But it improves your chances of getting your talk approved.
If you send it, like no attachments, just some text about what you want to do.
Some information about yourself.
On that subject, Bernie, what would you say are some of the things that people do
that get them not considered very much more after they send?
There are some doozies.
There are some people.
Okay, my favorite is people that get the name of the conference wrong.
If you basically are telling us how much you want to speak at the conference
and the conference you're referring to is not our conference,
we're not likely to look upon that as a good thing.
We don't want carbon copies of talks that have been given at other conferences.
We've had people submit carbon copies of talks they've given at our own conference,
and we don't want that either.
We want new material.
No motivational anything?
Yeah, that's another thing.
If people say they're motivational speakers, it works.
It motivates us to say no because that's not what hacking is about.
We're not about motivational speaking.
Robin, do you have anything?
Another one that kind of bugs several people on our staff
is when people attach what they're doing as PDFs or doc files
or Lotus Notes files or whatever.
You just need to write the text.
Doc X files, ODT files.
We had an MP4.
I don't know how that worked.
It's very easy.
You just write the text into your email body and we'll get it.
That makes it easiest on us.
That makes it easiest on you.
I think that leads to more happiness all around.
I've heard also being concise helps.
If you write a big, long dissertation,
chances are the people who are reviewing these
aren't going to actually have the time to read through all of that.
So a nice, concise, direct summary of what you're talking about.
We don't need a PowerPoint presentation in your submission.
Some people have sent us an entire PowerPoint presentation.
No, that's overkill.
Other times people have sent a single sentence saying,
I would like to talk about this subject, and that's it.
No, we need a little bit more detail than that.
Somewhere in between those two things,
in between the full PowerPoint presentation and the sentence.
Just fill it in a little bit.
Don't worry about being the greatest writer on earth.
It's not necessary.
We've had people whose first language is not even English,
and they've given great talks.
That's not a problem.
Just be sure that you say something about what you want to talk about
and a little bit about who you are.
There were a couple of – I don't want to spend the whole time
talking about all the rejected – they are kind of funny.
There were a couple, actually,
where the entire topic of the talk was two sentences,
but the bios of the five presenters took up something like eight pages.
All sorts of certifications and great lives you people have led.
It's amazing.
I'm in awe of you.
But you know what?
You're not going to be speaking at the conference
because you didn't tell us what you want to speak about.
You told us a lot about your educational background.
Great.
But this is about a talk, not about who you are
and what you've accomplished.
Rob?
We're talking a lot about what not to do,
but I'm asked this question a lot,
and especially as we come up on the deadline, this is relevant.
People have asked me, should I submit on X, Y, or Z?
And the answer is yes.
Go ahead and make your submission,
because we're all pretty mellow people, I think,
outside of these radio station walls,
and we will not actually come to your house and bite you
if we don't choose your submission.
But we would much rather see it than not see it, I think.
And even if you don't get an acceptance letter,
it does not mean that you cannot give your presentation.
There's always the option of lightning talks.
There's always the option of the unscheduled track.
We try to make as many possibilities open to everybody as possible.
We try to be positive about the whole thing and not negative.
So, yeah, that's an important thing.
Get the ideas on paper or into a document, out of your head,
so that it's portable, so that we can share with each other
and try it on, see if it's something that might work.
And, yeah, don't go overboard with the bios.
Wait till after maybe you've been asked to do a talk,
and then we can follow up with the right kind of bio information.
Right, well, give us some bio info, but just not...
But a resume is not what we're asking.
Not your entire life story.
Or your resume, yeah.
Yeah, anything else, Bernie?
Are we finished covering everything?
Yeah, I mean, the whole point of the HOPE Conference, I believe,
at least for me, is to share information.
And not the kind of information you're normally going to be able to find online
or in news media.
This is people who've actually done some work on some topic
or have some really great idea and want to assemble a work group
to accomplish some worthy goal, and they have good ways of doing it
and how to go about it, but they just want to talk to a bunch of people
that might have a similar mindset to solve this problem
or they've already solved the problem.
They want to present how they did it.
That's what HOPE is all about, and when you get a lot of people in a room
that are passionate about a similar topic,
all kinds of wonderful things happen because they start talking to each other
and they start working on things together.
I've lost count of the amazing projects that have grown out of HOPE
and good relationships, too, between people.
Great friendships, people even got married meeting each other at HOPE.
It's an amazing way of meeting birds of a feather,
really passionately curious people who are interested in topics
that might be interesting to the hacker community,
and that's a really broad area.
Stuff that's of interest to the hacker community
doesn't necessarily have to be a technical talk.
It could be about something that's socially relevant in our community.
But by all means, if you have any thoughts on this,
go to hope.net and click on the Speakers tab,
and you'll see on how you can submit your ideas.
Do it today or tomorrow or Friday at the latest
because that's kind of our deadline.
Yeah, I can't emphasize what Bernie just said enough.
I would also reiterate your point about getting the submission in by the deadline
but also not always having the answer.
I mean, it's not about being the expert.
You may very well meet other people that know absolutely everything
about what you're curious about,
and your presentation sparks some other, as we say,
hallway conversation after your talk,
or maybe you get together with a workshop or a group
that's assembling virtually thereafter.
So all kinds of things can happen by sharing it.
Well, that's an important distinction.
You don't have to be the world's expert on a subject to give a presentation.
What you have to do is be able to provoke discussion, questions, challenges,
and that is a success as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, you can come with solutions as much as you can come with problems
and things you're trying to actually genuinely figure out.
That's really something you don't want to forget.
Our last conference, our keynote was Edward Snowden.
This year, one of our keynotes is Cory Doctorow.
We have some amazing people.
We've had Steve Wozniak speak and Kevin Mitnick,
all kinds of other people, Jello Biafra,
and we've also had people who are still in high school
who give very interesting talks
and comprehensive discussions about various issues.
Hacker World is amazingly big and diverse.
And our audience is really supportive.
I would say we have a really good group of attendees
and people who will listen, who will listen very, very carefully
to what you have to say, to what you're presenting about.
So I would say feel, yeah, a little nervous, but also excited
because there's a lot of support and a lot of good people
that will be eager to hear what you have to say.
Yeah, it's a heck of a place and a great environment
just for bouncing ideas off of people.
And that's the thing about the Hope crowd, too,
is whatever you've come in to present about or to learn about or both,
there will be others there who share the interest.
And if you're presenting on something
and you maybe don't have all the answers,
there will be a few people in the audience
who very probably are into exploring that with you.
And we've seen groups get together and projects start at Hope
as a result of people chatting at these things.
It's a heck of an experience.
And presenting, being part of it, is really something special.
And it's something that I really appreciated the first time
I submitted a talk and got up on that stage.
I hadn't been on a stage before that.
Really? That was your debut?
Yeah, that was my debut.
And nowadays I'm on stages all the time
and going through various stages.
Interesting. Okay.
Well, that's a little fun tidbit that I just learned.
So again, the deadline for speaker submissions is this Friday.
Go to hope.net.
Hackers on Planet Earth is what Hope stands for.
Our conference is in July here in New York City.
And you indeed could give a presentation as well,
but you only have until Friday to do it.
And you know what happened today?
Very exciting as well.
Tickets went out today.
What's that?
Hope tickets.
Hope tickets.
If you bought your ticket for Hope before May 13th,
you should have gotten your ticket today via email.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Yes.
Did you not get your ticket, Bernie?
No, I haven't ordered it yet, but I will.
I'll get to it.
I have to buy a ticket like everybody else.
All the organizers buy tickets.
It could sell out this year.
We have more tickets than ever that have been sold.
That is possible.
And I tried to get in on some of the specials we had,
but everybody else was too quick for me.
One second it took.
Less than one second for, I think, to sell 100 tickets.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
I just want to relate something.
At the very first Hope Conference,
something resonated with me that stayed with me
at every subsequent Hope Conference,
and this is the 11th one coming up this July.
Yes.
I had been working for a couple years on some project,
and then I met somebody else who had been going through
the same struggles trying to figure out the exact same thing.
And it was amazing.
It's like, wow, somebody else is working on the same thing too.
How did you figure this out?
This is how I came up with the answer to this.
And you'll do that.
You will run into people who are working on the same line
to something you are thinking along the same lines.
You will meet birds of a feather at Hope.
It is impossible not to meet people who,
if you talk to enough people at a Hope Conference,
you will find somebody who shares the same passion as you.
And you make a lot of good friends and contacts.
And when you get thousands of people at an event
with like 100-some speakers over three days,
good things happen.
It's all about information sharing,
and that's what our community is all about.
If you want an idea of the kinds of talks
that we've given in the past,
you can go to archive.hope.net,
and all 10 of our previous conferences, I believe,
are archived there.
You can see for yourself the kind of talks
that we've presented over the years.
I want to do a little test here of us four
to see if we get all the names of the conferences right.
I'll start with the first one.
We'll go clockwise around the room,
and Bernie will come right before me, I guess.
I'll start with the first conference,
which was called Hope.
Well, that's the name we had for it,
Hackers on Planet Earth.
Now, Kyle, I believe you're next.
You know what the second conference was.
And also, please state the year.
1994 was the year of the first conference.
You look befuddled.
95, 96.
Okay, already that's not right.
97.
97 is correct, yes.
But beyond Hope.
Beyond Hope, that's correct.
The only Hope conference, by the way,
that did not take place at the Hotel Pennsylvania
took place at the Puck Building downtown,
which is no longer the Puck Building.
It's a sporting goods store.
It's a sporting goods store now.
That's unfortunate, but it happens.
Actually, no, they're taking very good care of the building.
I have to give them credit for that.
The building looks good, yeah.
Rob T. Firefly, do you know what the third conference was
and when?
In the mysterious year of 2000,
the year of Y2K, we had H2K.
That is correct, 100%.
Bernie, I trust you're not accessing any online sources
to find out what the name of the conference
that followed that one was.
I've been to all these Hope conferences,
so I do remember them pretty well.
Following H2K was H2K2,
sort of a homage to R2-D2.
We called it H2K2.
And it was pretty exciting.
What year was it?
Oh, that was 2002, of course.
Okay, very good.
Now it's my turn again.
2004 would be the fifth Hope.
The fifth Hope took place in 2004
at Hotel Pennsylvania.
And now, Kyle, it's you again.
Okay, so four, five, six.
So 2006, this was actually one of my first Hopes.
It was Hope No. 6.
Hope No. 6, okay, correct.
Rob T. Firefly.
Okay, so 2008.
You guys are doing good, though.
You know history better
than most people know presidents and things.
I might break the combo.
Was 2008 the last Hope?
Are you asking or telling?
I'm guessing.
Well, as long as you say it in a statement,
I'll accept it.
What is the next Hope?
You're correct.
The last Hope was 2008.
It was not the last Hope, though,
and I guess, Bernie, this is your cue.
We thought it might be the last Hope
because the plans were to destroy the hotel
before the conference,
and we thought it would be the last Hope.
It had this double entendre thing.
It was like the last Hope for the hacker community
that had this conference.
But then there was, in 2010, the next Hope.
That's correct.
The next Hope followed the last Hope.
We did not want to be confused
with a Hope that's coming up soon,
which is not the next Hope.
The next Hope happened in 2010.
When you name a conference the next Hope
and then you can never have another one after that
that you refer to as the next Hope
because it just confuses everybody.
Okay, so back to 2012,
and that would be Hope number 9.
That was the ninth Hope in 2012.
And, Kyle, I see you're up yet again.
I want to say 2014.
Okay, then say it.
It is 2014, and that's Hope X.
That's correct.
And, Rafty Firefly, you have the easy task
of identifying the one that's coming up now.
Okay, what year is this?
Can I check my phone?
The next, the upcoming Hope in 2016.
That's a good unused name.
We haven't used that one yet, the upcoming Hope.
Yeah, there you go.
The upcoming Hope in 2016 will be Hope 11.
You got it wrong.
That's not what it's called.
It's called the 11th Hope.
The 11th Hope.
Not Hope 11.
After all this, we get it wrong
on the conference that's coming up.
I embarrass myself in front of you guys,
in front of my colleagues on the 11th Hope,
in front of our listening audience.
We'll forever live in history, too, on the archives.
All right, hey, we have a special guest with us
who is going to be involved in one of the upcoming talks
at Hope, has been involved in the past
in various things going on.
You might recall the Hope conference,
I believe it was the first place
that lockpicking villages actually came to the states.
We saw lockpicking villages overseas.
There were actual villages in camps,
at the Dutch camps, at the German camps.
We thought it would be fun to have a village
inside a hotel.
Ever since then, lockpicking villages
have been popping up all over the states
in various conferences.
It's an amazing tradition.
It's run by the guys known as TOOL,
the Open, okay, wait, I always get lost at this point.
Go ahead.
The Open Organization of Locks.
Open Organization of Locks.
You guys spell organization with an S, too,
because it's British.
That's TOOL.
These guys are amazing.
They run workshops throughout the entire weekend
showing people how to pick locks,
what the issues are with certain locks,
and they give talks that are just so incredibly riveting
and that pack the room for hours at a time.
We have Click in the studio with us,
who's a member, New York City member?
Yes.
Okay.
Tell us something about the organization to start with.
Actually, I believe the US chapter of TOOL
was founded at Hope in 2008.
Now, don't quote me on that,
but I do believe it was founded 2008.
Okay.
So it's what we do at The Villages.
We pretty much set up everything.
Everything is there to learn how to pick a lock,
and we'll walk you through step by step.
So you'll start off with the beginning,
and we'll teach you all of the basics,
everything you need to know.
We have presentations every hour,
so every hour you'll be able to come in
and just sit down if you have any free time.
And what you'll do is you'll learn step by step
the whole process of picking a lock.
And then there'll be people at the tables,
like wandering around.
We'll all have TOOL shirts on.
And if you have any questions at all,
we are more than happy to answer any questions.
I have a question.
As an outraged parent out there,
how dare you guys teach lock picking?
Is there any use for that other than criminal applications?
So a lot of people think that,
especially like locksmiths, really don't like us.
But a lot of parents do come up,
and they can't believe that we're teaching people,
like we're teaching the next criminal
how to break into a house.
But the real thing is,
is that the easiest way to get into a door
is to break a window.
So a lot of people that are breaking into houses,
they aren't picking the lock.
I mean, there's a saying that all locks can be picked.
It's just a matter of how long it takes to pick that lock.
So if it takes you like six, seven hours
to pick a lock open,
is somebody gonna pass that lock in that period of time?
And if so, then that lock is secure.
So that lock won't be able to be opened.
But if not, if you can open the lock in like 10 seconds,
that's not a very secure lock.
And that's what we try to educate people on,
is how secure their locks are.
Like they'll go to the store
and buy like a four pack of these like master locks.
And they'll lock up their like shed
that has like tools, like gardening stuff.
And is what they do is they think,
oh, well now I bought a boat,
and I have these four locks here.
I'm gonna lock my boat with this lock.
And it's not very secure.
So we try to educate people
and help them understand like how secure they actually are.
And does that resonate usually when you explain it that way?
Yes, it does.
Like from that point,
then they switch off of the like,
oh, well, you're doing bad things
and you're teaching bad things.
And then they start to be more interested
and they educate themselves.
So they'll start to ask more informational questions like,
okay, well, this is the kind of lock I have.
How secure is this lock?
Instead of being like,
well, you're just teaching all these people
how to break into houses.
So overall, how secure are locks,
the ones we use every day?
So I would say a majority,
especially like New York City is a different breed.
Like you can go to the store here,
like Home Depot or Lowe's
and there'll be higher security locks.
But I grew up in Oregon.
And in Oregon, we had,
I'd go to the store and I'd buy like low end quick sets.
And even my friend,
like he purchased this lock
and it cost him like $210.
And he was like,
oh, it's one of these fancy ones with the keypads.
And he like showed it to me.
And he's like, hey, you know,
I bet you can't like pick this lock
because it's got this digital keypad.
And, but it had a very like low security,
like Schlegg in the bottom of it.
And I just-
What's that word you just used?
Schlegg.
What's that?
It's a brand of lock.
I'm sorry.
Oh, okay.
All right.
No, it's a fully uninitiated.
So is Kwikset.
Kwikset's a cheaper brand.
And Master is another brand.
Okay.
We're talking shop here on the air, folks.
Okay.
So what's the average time
that a lock like that can be defeated?
It can actually be defeated pretty quickly.
This year at Hope,
we're gonna run a competition.
So at the competition is what you'll do
is there'll be like five or six locks set up
and it has like an electronic switch in there.
So as soon as the deadbolt is released,
then the timer stops for that lock.
So is what you try to do
is you try to pick that lock
in however time it takes you to pick it.
And then at the end,
if all the locks are open,
it'll show you who opened it the fastest
and what their time is.
Wow.
And what's the quickest
somebody can do something like that?
I did it seven seconds.
Seven seconds.
And these are like house locks
that like people have on their house.
So they're all the same brand of lock.
It's all Kwikset.
But it just goes to show you
like how secure you're not.
Well, do you get people coming to you
that are clearly interested in criminal intent?
Yeah.
So we run all of our chapters
all throughout the US.
We run a meeting once a month.
So our meeting's every third Thursday,
which is conveniently tomorrow.
Oh, okay.
Great.
And we meet up off of 181st in New York.
But is what we'll do
is we'll have someone that comes in
and normally like the criminal type,
the type of people that want to,
all they want is that quick fix.
They want you to tell them
how to open this lock the fastest.
What's the fastest way I can get in here?
And is what we try to do
is we start them off and like,
okay, we start with this one.
So this is step one,
then step two, then step three.
And is what they'll do
is they'll get frustrated with it
because they only want to know
how to open that lock.
So and then we kind of like,
we're like, okay.
And then they'll start to be like,
well, you know, here's a picture of this lock.
And you know, what's the fastest way?
Well, you start with this step one
and you work your way up to it.
So and a lot of that we just deter
by just pushing them into
like this is how you learn.
And they'll get frustrated
and then they end up leaving.
Right.
Because you're encouraging them
to learn the fundamentals.
And it kind of slows down their,
it's like a waiting period.
Yes.
But for information.
Teaching them to fish
and they don't want to learn that.
They just want the damn fish.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, you know,
we're familiar with this in the hacker world.
People always writing in,
I need a hotmail password.
I need a Gmail, Facebook, whatever.
They don't want to learn
how the technology works,
how hacking actually is a state of mind.
They just want those results.
They just want the payoff.
Yeah.
We have seen a lot of that
like hacker meetings
and things like that
where someone will show up,
you know,
oh, I want to steal a credit card
or I want to break into
my significant other's email
or this and that.
And just how do I do that?
And the people who are looking
for some kind of quick
and easy way to do something evil
like that are not the ones
who hang around in a community.
It's but, you know,
there are the people who show up
and are willing to learn
and have something to contribute.
And, you know,
end up growing and learning.
And one of the funniest things
that happened to me,
I, without naming names,
used to share an apartment
with somebody who's also
involved with tool.
And there was a certain lock
on the apartment door
and watching this person
keep changing the lock
until there was one
that they themselves could not pick
and therefore felt secure.
And I felt good.
And then they lost the key.
But that brings up another question.
We've heard this many times
in the, we've seen it in the paper.
Someone prints a picture of a key.
It's about the worst thing
they could do.
I don't think a lot of people
realize this.
I don't think a lot of people
realize that all it takes
is a picture of a key.
And newspapers have done this.
They've had pictures
of the master subway key
or something like that.
And that enables guys
who understand the technology
to just make a copy
right there, right?
Yeah, it actually is very easy,
especially if you know the bidding.
Because a lot of the locks
still have biddings
that go from like one to seven.
So if you look at the lock,
you'll be like, okay,
well, I know that key blank.
And from that key blank,
I can hand file a key
that'll open that door.
And that's why, like,
I don't understand
because it started off
with the New York City fire keys
for all the elevators.
And they took a picture
and they knew after that happened
that they shouldn't be doing
this anymore.
And then they came along
with the TSA locks
and they took a picture
and they said,
look how secure you are.
These locks are the only ones
in their high res photos.
And they end up going online.
And once it's online,
it's online forever.
Now, who is it
that's taking these pictures?
A news company.
Like press.
Yeah.
Okay.
But how are they getting to the key
in the first place
to take the picture?
I'm guessing they interview
someone with the TSA.
And they like hold up your key?
And they lay them down on them.
Yeah, it's like
these big press conferences
and stuff basically
to try to communicate a position
or whatever the city is saying about it.
But they very foolishly
lay the stuff out
or hold it up.
I think this has happened
in other countries in Europe too
with different keys.
And it's a result also of photography,
I think,
becoming so rich
or a high resolution,
as you said.
Right, right.
So you mentioned a TSA key.
What did that key do?
So the TSA keys
is what they try to do
is I think a lot of the talk
was trying to get people
to buy TSA locks
for their luggage.
And in doing that,
you would just attach
that lock to your luggage
and then the TSA
wouldn't have to break your lock.
They would just use their master key,
like a skeleton key actually,
that would go in
and open that lock.
And then they could go through
and say, okay,
there's nothing,
no bombs,
no nothing in here.
So we're just going to lock it back up.
Right.
And you'll never know.
So that's what the airport security
is trying to push
is that they can go through
your stuff at any time.
So is what we did
is as soon as,
especially in like the hacking community,
if you see something,
then you want to go out
and you want to do that.
So if someone posts a picture
of the keys,
then you're like,
I can cut those keys.
Right.
I want to see if this works.
Wouldn't anybody
who bought the lock
also get a copy of that key?
So you get a copy of the key,
but you don't get the master key.
I see.
So some of them,
they'll come with like a dial
that'll have like numbers on it.
So you dial the numbers in
and then they'll have
like a key in the bottom
and you don't get that key.
I see.
And then the other ones
that come with the key,
there's actually like a master key
that will open all of them,
but yours will only open yours.
It won't open your friends.
Okay.
Wow.
Interesting.
So you have so many stories to tell.
I don't want to,
I don't want to ruin the talk
because I'm sure you guys
have been up to a lot
in the last two years,
but have locks changed in recent years?
Are they getting more secure?
Yeah.
I wanted to ask,
I mean,
you guys must be laughing
at all these like smart deadbolts
and things that open with apps
and things.
It's just,
yeah.
Yeah.
So a lot of the community,
we meet every year
in the Netherlands
and out there
we get like
all these lock manufacturers
that come up
and they present us
with these locks
and they say,
hey, can you open them?
So as a community
is what we do
is we try to,
we try to find out
all the flaws in the locks.
Right.
And then from there
we present it
to the manufacturers
and like there was
the American padlocks
had a bypass
where you could just go
all the way into the back
and you could Jimmy
the lock open
without even picking the lock.
So we presented that
to the lock manufacturers
and then they inserted a disc,
a wafer disc
that prevented you
from going in there.
Now, can you still bypass that?
Yes, you can.
But I mean,
we do talk to the lock manufacturers
as much as we can
to help inform them
of the flaws in their locks.
We're not just out there
like we don't present it
to the community
before we go to them.
I see.
Okay.
And do they take you seriously?
Most of the time they do.
A lot of it is,
but I think Master
and Kwikset
they're a little tired
of us right now.
Yeah, but they keep making locks.
I mean, you guys
are doing them a favor
by showing the insecurities.
Yeah, I say that all the time
like because we buy
so many of these
like Kwikset's
and, you know,
Master padlocks
that I think we're
helping to fuel like them.
They should be sending them
to you for you to test.
Well, and to a degree
they want to sell
a lot of these locks.
They want to turn around
their product.
So they kind of don't want
to have to redesign it
every time
and admit their mistake almost.
It would be sort of
it would upend
their business model, right?
I mean, to a degree, right?
There's a little of that.
Yes.
So a lot of it is
and we tell people
like the Master lock
it's a pretty sturdy lock.
Like, yeah, you can fire
a gun at it
and it's not going
to fall apart.
But I mean,
with like a couple paper
like a two paper clips
and a bobby pin,
you can just pretty much
pick the lock open.
So a bullet won't do it
but a paper clip will.
It's good to know.
So I mean,
they are good to lock things up
but things that you
don't really care about
is what I'd be locking up.
Is there a kind of lock
that you guys recommend
as being actually safe
and secure?
So it's an Abloy Protect 2.
I think they're coming out
with a new version
but the Abloy locks are
they're very well done.
They're disc detaining locks.
So is what that means
is as it's going,
there's like three cycles
to the lock.
So as you're turning the key,
it's kind of like a
like a bank vault safe.
So as you spin the dials
the three different directions,
well, as you're turning the key,
it actually turns further
than normal locks.
So as you're turning,
it's kind of setting it.
So if you did pick it,
you would have to pick it
three different times.
Interesting.
And have you guys done that?
I haven't.
It's way above my pay grade.
There are people
in the Netherlands
that have opened them up.
They have a special tool
that they use to do it.
Those guys can do anything.
That's where it started, right?
That's where the tool started.
Wow.
They're phenomenal out there.
Uh-huh.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
I just want to say
this is another reason
for people to come
to the HOPE Conference.
If they have some lock,
maybe they found some lock
or their grandfather
or grandmother gave it to them
or they just have
some unusual lock
and maybe they don't even
have the key for it.
But if they bring it
to the 11th HOPE,
to this tool talk,
actually, I think there might be
more than one tool talk this year,
but in any case,
if they bring it
one to the workshop
or one to the HOPE,
to the tool talk
or panel discussion,
there might be an opportunity
to have the whole community
take a look at this lock
under like a macro camera,
a large audience,
and have comments made
by people on the tool team
about this lock.
And it's history.
It's vulnerabilities.
It's strengths.
And I think this is going to be
a really fascinating,
probably overreeling too much
of what's coming at HOPE,
but I'm really excited about
this type of give and take
where the audience
brings interesting locks.
I'm going to bring
a really interesting lock,
and I bet you nobody's going
to be able to pick it.
But in any case,
this is going to be
an interesting,
one of many interesting
presentations at the 11th HOPE.
So you just threw down
a gauntlet, I believe,
saying that they're not
going to be able to pick this.
That's right.
And of course,
they're going to want
to try to pick this,
so I look forward to this.
I can't wait to see somebody
pick Bernie S.'s unpickable lock
and maybe take a picture,
come to the 11th HOPE.
Yes, yeah.
Wow.
So, Click, tell us,
how did you get involved
in lockpicking?
So I actually first started
at DEF CON.
Okay.
I went there,
and they say like a lot,
this happens to a lot of people,
I've been to all the conferences,
helping out in the village.
But what happens is
you end up going there,
and you've got like
your list all set up,
like I want to see this talk,
I want to see this talk,
I want to see this talk.
And you've got your whole day
planned out,
and then you go into
the villages,
and you sit down,
and the whole day is gone.
You're just like,
I missed all these talks,
and all I did was
pick locks all day.
And it's very addicting,
especially once you start to get,
like opening the padlocks,
you start to pop the locks open,
and that,
the sound of the lock opening is,
it's actually,
it's highly addictive.
Is that where you got
your nickname, Click?
No, I had it before.
Okay.
We won't pry into that.
But is it true that
small children make
particularly good lockpickers?
In some cases.
It depends on how
their attention span is.
If they're not getting
the locks open fast enough,
then they tend to like,
tend to shove more lockpicks in there,
which it only takes two tools
to open the lock.
And a lot of people think
that the more tools you have,
the faster the lock will open.
But there are some kids
that are,
have been phenomenal at it.
Like they'll sit down at the tables,
and they'll just go right
through all the locks.
So I noticed at Maker Faire,
which you guys also
have a presence at,
the place is swarmed by kids,
and they really are fascinated
by picking locks.
I think it's great.
I think it's amazing interest
for people to have,
and will only lead
to positive things.
Yeah, they're very serious,
very focused.
You see the lockpickers,
and you don't want to disturb
the sort of focus
and intellectual concentration
that's going on there
to do this puzzle,
like problem solving.
It's pretty amazing stuff to watch.
Yeah, it's pretty great.
A few hoops ago,
personally, I'm still sort of
in the nursery
where lockpicking is concerned.
I can do some of the easy ones,
but I was sitting
at the lockpicking village,
you know,
screwing around with one lock
that was giving me trouble,
and next to me was a little girl
of maybe about eight or nine
who was just breezing through these,
you know,
zoomed right past me
and onto the next ones,
and there's the tendency
to feel a little angry
or jealous about that,
but no, actually, I was thrilled,
and I thought that, you know,
there's somebody
who's really getting something
from this conference
and who is going to grow
into an awesome adult probably.
Wow.
Okay, well, Click,
thanks so much for talking with us.
You mentioned you guys
have a meeting tomorrow.
Is that open to the public?
Yes, all of our meetings
across the U.S.,
they're all open to the public.
Ours is going to be
from 5.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.
up off of 181st Street.
If you go to our website,
it's toolwiththreeos.us.
Okay.
You can click on the members.
I believe it's members,
and that there should give
a listing of all the memberships
or all the meetings
in the United States.
And all the meetings take place
on the third Thursday?
Just the New York City chapter.
Oh, okay, just New York City.
Yeah, but they're all
once a month,
so they all have, like,
the same day,
but, like, a Monday or...
And about how many
different chapters are there now?
Wow.
I remember when it started.
Yeah, yeah, so when it started,
there was only, like,
three or four,
but it's actually,
I think we're up to
about 20 chapters now
all across the U.S.
Amazing.
Well, congratulations on that.
Thank you.
And everything you guys are doing,
it's really amazing.
Tool, the open organization
of lockpicks, lockpickers.
Lockpickers.
We'll be at the HOPE Conference
again with a village
that will be teaching people
all kinds of things lock-related
and at least a couple of talks
with all sorts of stories
and educational bits,
and we're looking forward to that.
Sounds good.
All right, thanks, Click.
Yep.
We are continuing here
on Off the Hook
at 10 o'clock tonight
in an extended program.
Again, a fundraiser.
Our phone number,
516-620-3602.
If you have any doubts
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This is the kind of thing
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So if you give a call
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But the important thing is
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Yes, we've been doing this
on and off since 1988,
believe it or not.
And all kinds of history,
all kinds of history
has come before these microphones.
You can hear all of our shows online,
www.2600.com slash Off the Hook
from day one until tonight.
So you'll see for yourself
how much we've been able to cover.
Imagine if the radio station
was not here for us to do that.
We would not have that history.
We would not have that history captured.
Yeah, and I would dare say
that with what's going on in the world,
the mainstreaming of phones
and, you know,
is everybody's phone works?
Yeah, everybody's got them.
We all are sharing in this,
and it's pivotal right now
what's going on with hacking
and people's understanding
of the impact of technology
in their lives.
We need your support.
We need this voice here
now more than ever.
This is a critical juncture
for the station and for us.
We want to continue to share
and report on what is going on
with technology, hacking, schools,
prisons, politics, you name it.
We're there.
We want to cover it.
It's amazing because I'm involved
in the digitization
of the old back issues of 2600,
and I remember the second year
was 1985.
We started in 1984,
and 1985, I believe,
was the first year we got a letter
saying that the hacker world is dead.
There's nothing left, you know,
and I've been hearing that
nonstop ever since
from one person or another,
and all it basically means
is they've given up.
They've moved on to something else,
and they've lost that curiosity
that keeps you going
in the hacker world.
There is more to hack today
than ever before,
and the hacker spirit
is so widely prevalent.
I am simply amazed,
and the community has grown up
and matured so much.
It makes me really proud.
Yeah, and part of why
this particular station
is such a good fit for us
is because the hacker spirit
is what has kept this place going.
I mean, we've been doing this show,
you've been doing this show
since 1988.
This station has been around
since 1960.
That's 56 years
that it's been around
just based on how good it is,
how much actual support
it gets from its listeners
because what we're doing right now,
asking you to pitch in
with your support,
is the only thing
that's kept this station going
for all of those 56 years.
Imagine that.
Yeah, this place,
it was a total fluke.
If you go on Wikipedia
or something,
look up the history of this station
and how it came to be
because it's far too long
and interesting a story.
It was won in a poker game
is the story that I've heard.
Well, that's actually less crazy
than what really happened.
What really happened
is a guy heard a radio station
out west that he liked
and was part of the Pacifica network
and called up and said,
hey, I've got a radio station
in New York City
I want to donate to you.
It was hung up on several times
as some kind of like, you know,
kook or something
that made no sense.
But eventually,
somebody believed him
that he actually did have
a radio station
that he wanted to donate
to Pacifica
and that's how WBAI got started.
Right.
And that would not happen again
in a million years,
I don't think.
So if we lose
what we're doing here,
it's not something
that's going to come back.
It's not something
that we'll be able
to just start up someplace else
because WBAI is a very unique creature
and it's a total bit of madness
that it even exists.
And we think it's the kind of madness
that's good and valuable
and worth keeping going.
So if you go to give2wbai.org
or call our pledge line
at 516-620-3602
and show your support
for our madness,
we'll have some things
to give you in return.
And it is a fantastically unique voice
to have hackers, right,
broadcasting in this immense city
and sharing these ideas.
You can't buy an app
that does this.
You can't subscribe
to something else.
This only comes
from community radio.
So we're really honored
to be here
and we'd like you
to show that appreciation.
So give us a call
at 516-620-3602
or give2wbai.org.
And you know,
there's a lot of jaded people
out there that say
radio is dead,
no one cares anymore
and you can do everything online.
If that's the case,
then we should be able
to just collect radio stations
like baseball cards
because they're worthless now.
It's not the case.
There are people always,
entities always wanting
to take over the spectrum
because there's no replacement
for radio.
Yeah, online exists
but the signal-to-noise ratio
is just incomprehensible
and usually
the most successful ventures
are adjuncts
to actual broadcasting.
When you have
a broadcasting license,
you open yourself up
to all kinds
of random listeners,
people driving in their cars,
people you can't actually see
and that's part
of the magic of it,
not knowing how many people
are out there
but we always run into them
at Maker Faires,
at Hope Conferences,
at 2600 meetings,
people who listen
to the radio show
just happen to hear something.
People in prison even
have radios.
They're able to hear us
and you certainly
can go online
and just tune into a podcast
but at the same time,
at the same time
it's important
that we be on the internet
as well
and broadcast to the world
because we hear from people
in all four corners
and that is magic.
That is true magic.
I remember when we first
started doing that
in the late 90s.
We were one of the first
radio shows
to actually reach out
and broadcast
over the internet.
In fact,
there was talk
that we might have been
one of the first podcasts
ever without using
an actual word
and that is merging
the old and the new,
merging different kinds
of technology
and I think there's magic
to that.
Had we not ever been
originating from
an actual radio station,
I don't think it would
be the same
and I think we would sit
in moments
where it was critical.
We'd wonder,
gosh,
how can we get on FM radio
if we were just
a stream of some kind
and I think a lot
of marginalized,
a lot of small communities
desire that.
They'd love to have
the kind of ability
that we have
and part of that
is keeping WBAI accessible
to the community here
as well as us
and on into the future.
Well,
the other magic
that you refer to
is just having a place
where people gather
and broadcast
as opposed to,
okay,
now we're going to switch
to this guy
in his bedroom
doing his particular.
There's nothing wrong
with that.
You get some really
good material
but it's not a radio station.
It's a lot of
disconnected entities
that are forming
a theme
but there's no replacement
for the magic
of an actual
gathering place
and whenever we travel,
we always listen
to local radio
and that's always
the most fascinating part
of any journey
is to listen
to what people
locally are doing.
Yeah,
it always gives us
a good indication
of what the
sort of mood is
of a different area
and we like to think
that if somebody
heard our show here,
they would be impressed
with the mood
here in the city
so anyway,
it's an honor
and it's something
we'd like to keep going
so please,
call us
516-620-3602
pledge whatever
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Remember,
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supporting the radio station
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but we will send
you something
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Just ask the people
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and they will help you.
516-620-3602.
Bernie,
anything to add to that?
Yeah,
radio is not dead.
It's an amazing medium.
I am honored
to be on this show
and on WBAI
for so many years.
It's just a magical medium.
There's nothing else like it.
It's not the same
as online thing
or television.
It is radio.
It sparks the imagination.
I am on a team
building a community radio station
here in Philadelphia.
It will be on the air
July 12th.
I was just able
to social engineer
a U.S. Coast Guard
a great call sign
WPPM
for People Powered Media.
It's going to be exciting.
Our friend Matt Blaze
is helping with the engineering
on this station.
This is a great project.
We're actually going to try
to simulcast off the hook
here on WPPM 106.5
in Philadelphia.
How in the world did you get
a frequency?
Is it LPFM?
It's an LPFM.
It will be a 100-watt station.
Wow, that's pretty good.
That's a lot of watts.
The transmitter,
the antenna
is going to be
just on the roof
with Matt Blaze
last week
doing some surveying
where the antenna
and everything is going to go
checking out other signals
and how to do this
due to transmitter link
through microwave signals.
There's a lot of engineering
on this.
We're going to cover,
according to the projected contour,
the signal contour
will probably cover
about 800,000 people
here in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia is about
1.5 million people.
That's a good half
of the city's population.
That's no joke.
This is great.
It's going to be
just like WBAI
in some respects.
It will be a listener-supported,
non-commercial radio station,
not public radio,
not this NPR kind of thing
where there's all these
corporate underwriters.
We don't have these
corporate underwriters
on WBAI.
This station here
we're listening to right now
is not beholden
to all these
corporate underwriters.
Neither are all of the
low-power FM stations
that are popping up
in communities large and small.
It's really exciting.
I think radio is
making a resurgence.
It is really a thrill.
That's a great project
that you're involved with
down there.
That sounds really exciting.
I'm happy for you guys
that you're doing that.
There's a lot that is emerging
with low-power FM,
but it's really an important example
of how this can be replicated
in other areas.
People can participate.
They can get involved
with their own local radio,
which is really important.
I think another thing
about streaming,
a distinction,
just to reiterate it,
a drive at home,
I think people,
you don't necessarily
have to have ads on streams,
but most people
who set up
some kind of streaming show,
they're going to use
a third-party service
or something else
that invariably throws ads in
or injects some kind
of payment scheme or something.
It really does take
a lot of engineering
to do both traditional analog radio
and the newer network-based stuff
or a hybrid of the two.
When you don't have that,
you end up making compromises
that affect the production value.
We try to keep
the highest production value
and quality that we can
with the signal
down to the equipment
here in our new studios.
It's critically important
how you set these things up
and where you get resources
and who you're beholden to,
if at all.
That's very interesting,
and I'm excited for that.
Keep us posted, Bernie.
Yes, please.
I sure will, yeah.
July 12th is our deadline
from the FCC
to be actually on the air
on 106.5.
We only have a few weeks to go,
so there's a lot of pressure.
We have our transmitter ordered.
We have Nintendo ordered.
We're building the studio right now.
A friend of mine named Mark,
who has a wireless
internet service provider
here in Philadelphia,
is donating the microwave equipment
to do the studio transmitter link.
Fantastic.
This is all a great project
coming together.
It's a lot of hackers, frankly,
on the technical side.
It's just a group of hackers
that have come together
to make radio.
Just kind of like happened
at WBAI.
Just hackers like us.
We're on this radio station
you're listening to right now,
and we've helped the station
with some technical aspects
over the years,
and we're pleased to do it
because it's a technical medium,
but it's one that anybody can enjoy,
and we try to do a program here
on Off the Hook
that anybody can listen to.
They don't necessarily have
technical skills,
so anybody listening,
I encourage them to call
516-620-3602.
Tell the operator
that you're listening
to Off the Hook,
and any premiums,
gifts that are still available
for Off the Hook listeners,
you'll be told about them,
and if not,
you can just pick any other premium
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for whatever pledge level
you want to accept.
The important thing
is to show some kind
of financial support
to keep this radio station
on the air
by calling 516-620-3602,
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give2wbai.org.
You can pledge online as well.
Well, Bernie,
thank you for that update
as to the things
that you've been involved in
down there in Philadelphia.
It sounds really interesting
and inspirational,
but it's not all
you've been involved in
down there in Philadelphia.
Bernie is very busy
with all kinds of projects
and activities,
and I understand
it's a bit of a scandal
coming out of the city
of Brotherly Love
involving once again
the police,
and they have been caught,
and I think you kind of
are helping
with the investigation
a little bit.
They were caught
disguising
one of their spy vehicles
as none other than
a Google Street View car.
Is this true?
Actually, it is true.
It's amazing.
They would do something
so stupid,
but I just mentioned
our friend Matt Blaze
will be speaking
at the HOPE conference,
and he's very involved
with making the conference happen
in the background as well.
The HOPE conference,
but the day before,
Matt was joining me
to get on the roof
of the transmitter site
for WPPM
here in Philadelphia.
He had a tennis appointment,
and he was walking
to the tennis appointment,
passed a whole bunch
of police cars
near the convention center,
and he saw one
which obviously looked
like a police car.
It had two of these
automatic license plate reader,
LPR cameras on the front
pointing at an angle outward.
Some of us have seen them before
that just sort of optically snap
and recognize, you know,
it could be thousands
of license plates per minute,
and they logged them
in the location
of where they were logged,
so that's a scary thing,
and there were some
other antennas
on the roof of the vehicle
that indicated
it was a police vehicle.
It was a low jack
antenna array
for locating stolen cars,
but the amazing thing is
on the side of the vehicle,
was this big sign
that said,
Google Street View,
and Matt is a smart enough guy,
he's like,
he sent out a tweet
with a picture saying,
WTF?
Question mark.
Can't say what that means
on the air,
but it was...
It's another radio station.
Yeah, yeah,
and then people started like,
wow, this is fascinating.
Some people said,
oh, he photoshopped
this picture,
and that's not going to do that.
He's got a reputation
to protect.
Another friend of mine,
Dustin Slaughter,
who's a reporter
for Vice Motherboard,
he happened to be
just having lunch
around the corner
and saw Matt's tweet,
and he ran over there
and took some pictures
of it, too,
and did some more digging
and called the Philadelphia police.
He's an independent journalist,
and finally got
the Philadelphia police
to admit
that they were in fact...
It was their vehicle.
It was using, you know,
plain...
It was an unmarked vehicle,
like a plain white SUV,
but with these cameras
on top of it
and a Google Street View sign
on the side.
So the day after
Matt saw this,
he told me about it
when I picked him up
to take him over
to the radio station's
transmitter site.
He's like,
Bernie, you won't believe
this thing that I saw yesterday.
It was a fascinating mystery.
So we were talking about it.
We weren't really sure
it was a Philly police vehicle.
He thought it might be
part of the Philadelphia
parking authorities project.
I said, no,
that's a state agency,
so they wouldn't...
The vehicle wouldn't be
registered to the
city of Philadelphia.
There was a registration card
on the dash
of the vehicle
that said
Philly city of Philadelphia.
But what agency?
So...
Dustin Slaughter
called in to the police
and talked to them
and finally got the police
to admit that, yes,
it's one of their vehicles
and that the officers
who operate the vehicle
were not authorized
to have a Google Street View
signs on the vehicle.
And I would imagine
the folks at Google
are not happy
about police surveillance,
dragnet surveillance vehicles
being used
under disguise
as Google Street View vehicles.
You know,
those cameras go around...
Those vehicles
that go around with cameras
to take the pictures
that you see online.
So this is quite the scandal
here in Philadelphia.
It's been a hot topic
for the past week or so.
And it's just pretty amazing
that the police
would be so dumb
to do this.
Well, let's just...
Just to clarify,
I just wanted to ask you,
Bernie,
there is no...
Anybody who's seen
a Google Street View car,
they know that there is
a photonics mast, right?
A spire of sorts
sticking out of the top
with a ball of cameras on top.
That is a photonics mast
on a Street View vehicle.
The cameras you're referring to
on this SUV
are a lot slimmer profile,
maybe rectangular,
and they sort of sit off the hood
and maybe off the back of the roof
to grab license plates, right?
This is not a single mast
on the center of the roof.
Right.
These are near the front.
These are like above the...
Just the front left corner,
like above where the driver sits
and then another one
on the other side
above where the passenger sits.
And these cameras
are about the size
of small shoeboxes
pointed at outward angles
at both sides of the street
where you would take pictures
of license plates
from the back
and from the front of vehicles
as you go down the street.
So that's what this vehicle
is being used for.
And it was an unmarked vehicle,
so this is sort of
covert surveillance,
but not that covert.
No.
The cameras are pretty obvious
to anybody,
but why wouldn't they be using
a standard police vehicle?
And then why the silly
Google Street View signs
on the side of it?
This whole thing
doesn't make sense.
It just really makes you question
the wisdom of the
Philadelphia Police Department.
I don't understand it
because people have seen...
Is this something
new to your neighborhood,
these vehicles
that map out license plates?
Has that been seen
in Philadelphia before?
I've seen them before.
Each police district,
I think,
has at least one vehicle
to do this,
and there's a computer
inside that logs all.
And then they upload it
to this database,
and then they search it
because there's GPS
in the vehicle,
so it logs the time,
the date,
and the geographic coordinates
of where the license plates
were found.
So if you had seen that before,
you wouldn't have
thought twice about it
because this is common, right?
Well, not that common.
When I see one,
I get excited
because, oh, I saw one.
Now, the Philadelphia
Parking Authority
has a white van
here in Philly, too,
that has cameras
in the same place
on top of this van,
and I take note of it.
In fact,
I was a step behind one
last year,
and I kept honking at them
every time they were running
a stop sign in front of me,
and finally,
they pulled over,
and I said,
you know,
you're running
all these stop signs,
and you're supposed
to be enforcing
the traffic code,
not running stop signs,
and they weren't
very happy about that,
but...
I couldn't help it.
You like playing
with fire, don't you?
Oh, yeah.
Well,
I'm curious,
where did they get
the sticker
that says
Google Street View
or Google Maps,
whatever it said
on the side?
It looked like it was,
you know,
they just
photoshopped it
and blew it up.
It was probably about,
the sticker was probably
about 18 inches high
and a couple of feet wide,
and it was on
the left
and right side
of the vehicle.
Yeah,
I'm sure they just went
to the police photo,
the police graphics lab,
or maybe they just
went over to
FedEx Kinko's
and had it made.
Who knows?
But it was,
according to the
police department,
the operators of the vehicle
were not authorized
to put those
labels on it.
Maybe they were,
and somebody
is trying to hide
from that fact,
but...
I would imagine
the Philadelphia
Police Department
has already gotten
a cease and desist letter
from Google's
legal department
at the very least.
Yeah,
maybe the operator
of that particular
type of vehicle
felt that
obfuscating
or this
attempt at
obfuscating
what's in the back
would just keep people
from looking
through the tinted
rear windows.
But I'm looking
at a picture here
in the article,
and it's definitely
on a window.
It's on a tinted window,
not like a magnetic
decal you would
put on temporarily.
That is affixed
to this vehicle
semi-permanently,
basically,
so whomever
drives it
is well aware
that it's there
and likely
installed it
themselves,
as I said,
because maybe
they're the operator
and they think
this will help
their job
being a bit sneakier
or at least
less questions
or a bigger deal
will be made of it
as it's going
to the community.
Yeah,
nice job on that,
guys.
It really worked
out well for you.
Now,
everybody's talking
about it,
everyone's pointing
at it,
and if you see
one of those
vehicles,
there's really
not much
you can do,
is there,
and if there
has been much
success
legally challenging
their existence,
does anybody
know of anything?
The point of view,
the legal point
of view on that
is do you have
a reasonable
expectation
and privacy
of your license
plate being
displayed
and people
seeing where
and when
it's displayed?
And,
you know,
the good argument
is to say,
no,
you don't really
have any privacy.
Anybody can see
what the police
and departments
and all the way
up to federal
agencies have been
doing for years,
for a few years now,
is capitalizing
on new technology,
which I saw
demonstrated about
10 years ago
at one of the
CBIT conferences
in Hanover,
Germany,
where they were
just sucking down
huge numbers of
license plates
with these cameras
with these little
matchbox cars
flying around
a track.
It's like,
holy crap,
this is really
impressive.
What they're doing
is each car
has a computer
that has
a hot list
of stolen cars
or maybe cars of
people they're looking for
that maybe are not,
there's not a warrant
for them,
but they want to find out
where they are
or keep them
under surveillance.
And these vehicles
go around
and there's not
just vehicles
with these cameras,
a lot of overpasses
and highway signs
have these cameras,
too.
A lot of intersections
and especially
choke points
like bridges
have these automatic
cameras pointing
in both directions
up and down the bridge.
They're not closed-circuit
TV cameras
just to see
what the traffic
patterns are.
They are logging
license plates.
And there's not
really much you can do
about it.
Some people have
tried using frontal
lenses on their
license plate
that will make it
only viewable
from straight ahead
instead of from above.
I don't know
how effective they are.
Some people I've read
have sprayed that
kind of glass
etching acid
on the lenses
of these cameras
so that glass
is no longer
transparent.
But, you know,
that's not going to be
successful on a wide scale.
I think we're just
going to have to
get used to
being
our locations
tracked.
Even if you had
your cell phone
turned off now,
they can tell
where you are
if you're driving
a vehicle
and the vehicle's
registered to you
or to your friends.
It's part of the
whole mesh
of surveillance
that's going into
the giant
government databases
of where we're
going.
I don't think
there's any
privacy grounds
on this particular
thing, unfortunately.
You're starting to
sound like Steve Rambam,
but unfortunately
that seems to be
the reality.
So there's no way
to actually detect
these devices.
Is there a passive
technology?
No, they're just
passive cameras.
They don't emit
any signals
that you could
pick up.
But, you know,
you can see them.
You can see the vehicle.
Well, maybe you can
see them.
Well, usually.
I mean, there are
cameras that are
hidden in the mesh
or hidden in it
behind the grill
or something.
I've seen several of
them that have the
cameras right on
top of the vehicle.
They're just more
effective and they
work that way.
Then my next question
is, if we can't
defeat the things,
how do we get the
things so we can
play with them?
Well, that's a good
question.
You can.
You can buy
these cameras.
People just can
search ALPR cameras
online.
There are private
companies that buy
these things, too.
Automobile repossessions.
They buy these
cameras and a lot
of these repo
companies will
purchase the data
from private
companies that have
these cameras up
and help them find
cars that they
want to repossess.
So, it's...
I would like,
Bernie, and maybe
you can help us
design this.
I would like to get
a system like that
and program it to
simply look for
police cars and
draw a little map
as to where all the
police cars in the
neighborhood are.
I like this idea.
Yeah, maybe we can
have an app on
phones that will
tell you where your
favorite cop happens
to be at the moment.
And, you know, I've
tried to do that in,
you know, just by
noticing with my own
eyes, okay, this guy
tends to go around
here.
You'd be surprised how
quickly you get
familiar with their
habits.
But why not?
If the technology
works against people,
it should work
against everybody
equally.
And police, you
think, would want to
know people, would
want people to know
that the police are
around, you know, as
a deterrent.
But a lot of cops,
they're not going to
know that.
So, you know, I think
that's a good idea.
All right.
Well we're going to
have to keep
exploring that.
I'm sure there'll be
some conversation
about this, I hope
to, if not a full-fledged
talk.
Hey, we're at the
past the halfway
point here at WBAI
in New York at 99.5 FM.
We are now taking up
the time of the
personal computer show.
We have them tied up
outside.
They're not getting
in tonight because
we've commandeered
the studios.
Well, we were told
to do that.
And we are on for
two hours doing
things during the
fundraisers.
So maybe they'll be on
for two hours next
week.
I don't know.
I didn't see the
schedule.
But we have a musical
break and then we have
a special guest coming
on after the musical
break.
But Rob, do you want
to tell us something
about what we're about
to hear?
Yeah.
We spoke about this
maybe three, four weeks
ago when news of its
production was
circulating.
But the French
electronic musician
Jean-Michel Jarre,
who is a pioneer in
that field, has been
in Russia and did some
recording.
So Jean-Michel Jarre's
newest album,
Electronica to the
Heart of Noise,
contains this track
Exit, which contains
vocals now from
Edward Snowden.
I had no idea this
existed.
This is awesome.
Wow.
You were away when we
were reporting on it.
So this will teach you
to travel.
Well, that's what
Jean-Michel did to go
over there and make
this recording in the
first place.
Absolutely.
So on top of
everything else, Mr.
Snowden is accomplished.
He's now an electronic
music vocalist.
Well, let's give a
brief listen to this.
Hopefully this will
work.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
Jean-Michel Jarre with
Edward Snowden here on
Off the Hook.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
Hopefully this will work.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
And we'll be back in
just a couple of minutes.
electronic music plays
electronic music plays
electronic music plays
Technology can actually
increase privacy.
The question is,
why are
our private details
that are transmitted online,
why are private details
that are stored on our
personal devices
any different than the details
and private records of our lives
that are stored in our private journals?
...stored in our private journal.
I think, you know, saying that
you don't care about the right to privacy
because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying
you don't care about freedom of speech
because you have nothing to say.
...anti-social principle
because rights are not just individual,
they're collective.
And what may not have value to you today
may have value to an entire, you know, population,
an entire people,
or an entire way of life tomorrow.
And if you don't stand up for it,
then I will.
And if you don't stand up for it,
then I will.
Wow, I'm impressed.
What a great track.
That's Jean-Michel Jarre
and Edward Snowden.
This shows the power of music and speech
when combined, what you can do.
And if you don't stand up for it,
then I will.
Really proud of what Edward has done
and what he continues to represent
and hope that
this whole thing works out
and he's celebrated for
the freedom fighter
he actually is
the founder of individual liberties.
So much we've learned in the last few years.
Manning, too.
Yeah, absolutely. Chelsea Manning.
So many heroes out there and so many more still to come.
That's what I mean when I say
I'm very proud of the hacker community
because that community has grown so much
and has such ideology
that is really worthwhile.
Yeah, and as someone who emailed the show
with this information weeks ago
mentioned, Jarre knows
of what Edward speaks with this stuff.
His own mother was a member of the French Resistance
was a survivor of concentration camps.
Wow.
And Jarre
who I would definitely term a hacker
just because I'm a fan of his work
and it just really
exemplifies a lot of
the hacker spirit, I think.
He's applying that to his work
and using it to express something important here.
It's inspirational.
It really is.
Whether you're a writer, whether you're a musician
or just somebody
who cares.
And I've been listening to Jean-Michel Jarre since the 70s
so it's just great to
hear these
voices combined. Wow.
Thanks for that, Rob. Thanks for sharing that.
You might have been
seeing something on the net
in the last couple of weeks from a blog
known as Vellum Atlanta
and it's basically
the title was Apple Stole My Music.
No. Seriously.
This is
one hell of a story.
This guy
James was talking
to a customer service rep
known as Amber. We've all talked to Amber
at one point or another. Does she still work there?
I think so. She works everywhere.
Now he had just explained to Amber
that 122 gigs of
music files were missing
from his laptop.
That's a lot of music. That's a good amount of music there.
Depending on how you encoded it, that's a lot
of music. I'd already visited
the online forum, he said.
I
basically tried that. They were no help whatsoever.
Several people had described
problems similar to mine but they were all dismissed
by condescending gurus
and we've all met them as well. Those aren't
geniuses, though. Well, some of them
consider themselves geniuses. I don't know if they're actually labeled
that way except in the stories. Okay.
Basically, they said
that he and people
like him had mislocated their files.
He had the free drive space
to prove that was not the case.
The files were gone. I'm sure they
would say that he just deleted his files
and I don't know.
Basically, Amber explained
I should blow off those dismissive solutions
offered online because Apple
employees don't officially use the forums.
Evidently, that honor is reserved for
lost, frustrated people
such as myself
and at least in this case
know-it-alls would rather believe we were
incompetent or lying than face the ugly truth
that Apple has vastly overstepped
its boundaries. Now, what Amber
explained was exactly what I had
feared. Through the Apple Music
subscription, which I had,
Apple now deletes files from its
users' computers. When I signed up for Apple
Music, iTunes evaluated
my massive collection of MP3s and
WAV files, scanned Apple's
database for what it considered to be matches,
then removed the
original files from my internal hard drive,
removed them,
deleted them,
and if Apple Music saw a file it didn't
recognize, which came up quite often
since I'm a freelance composer
and have many music files I created myself,
it would then download
it to Apple's database, delete it from
my hard drive, and serve it back to me
when I wanted to listen.
Just like it would with my other music
files it had deleted. In other words,
no longer on his computer,
but Apple would give it to him when he needed it.
Okay, this leads to four immediate problems.
If Apple serves me my music,
that means that when I don't have
Wi-Fi access, I can't
listen to it. When I say
my music, I don't just mean
the music that over
20 years, since before iTunes existed,
I painstakingly imported from
thousands of CDs and saved to
my computer's internal hard drive.
I also mean original music
that I recorded and saved to my
computer. Apple
and Wi-Fi access now decide
if I can hear it,
and where, and when.
That's the first problem.
Number two,
what Apple considers a match
often is not.
That rare early version of
Fountains of Wayne's I'll Do the Driving,
labeled as such, still had its same
label but was instead replaced by the later
released, more widely available version of the song.
The piano demo of
Sister Jack that I downloaded
directly from Spoon's website
10 years ago, replaced with
the alternate, more common demo version
of the song. What this means then
is that Apple is engineering a future
in which rare or varying
mixes and versions of songs won't
exist unless Apple decides they
do. Said alternate
versions will be replaced
by the most mainstream version,
despite their original at one time correct
titles, labels, and file contents.
That's problem number two. Problem number three,
although I could click the little cloud
icon next to each song,
next to each song title it is, and get it
back from Apple, their servers
aren't fast enough to make it an easy
task. It would take around 30
hours to get my music back. And even
then, problem number four,
should I choose to reclaim my songs
via download, the files
I would get back would not necessarily
be the same as my original files.
As a freelance composer, I save
WAV files of my own compositions rather than
MP3s. WAV files have about
10 times number of samples, so they just sound
better. Since Apple Music does not
support WAV files,
as they stole my compositions
and stored them in their servers,
they also converted them to MP3s
or AACs. So not
only do I need to keep paying
Apple Music just to access my own
files, but I have to hear
an inferior version of each
recording instead of the one
I created.
Wow. I saw this story
and I was simply blown
away, but I recognize. I recognize
the attitude, I recognize people
buying into nonsense like this
and allowing
a corporation to take control
of something they
collected, something they organized,
and applying
their rules to it.
And this is a dramatic
example of
what can happen. James of
Vellum Atlanta joins
us now on the phone.
James, this is an
incredible story. You must have gotten
a lot of reaction to it.
Oh yeah. I was not
expecting such a strong reaction.
You know, I thought maybe a few hundred people
would read the blog and maybe a dozen would be
helped by it, and you know, that's really what I was
trying to do. But
I posted the blog and I
posted it early the next morning because my boss
texted me, like, have you seen the Twitter
feed? It has exploded.
And then, you know, I checked my Facebook and someone
said, oh, it's on Reddit. You know,
it was on the top of the front page when I looked
and there was a lot more attention than I
was ready for, I have to say.
Well, people care about things like this,
and what you
exposed here resonates,
I think, with a lot of people because
if it hasn't happened directly to us,
we fear that something like that might
happen. I think we're all realizing we have so many
different systems and so many different devices
at varying stages of development
or being obsolete,
and then we simply
sort of cycle in new things and we see
this sort of conflict and overlap
and now overreach,
and it's fascinating how you sum
this up. Well,
thank you. And, you know, I have to say
that the story has changed as it's gone on
because, you know, Apple called me
that very day. I can't imagine.
You know, I got all my cell phone, too.
You know, I'd been getting calls
from reporters on Vellum's
landline, you know, the office at which I work,
the office that published the blog,
but Apple, you know, they read my name,
looked up my file, and called me on my cell phone
because that's the number they have for me, which,
you know, makes sense. If I have to contact a
vendor or a customer at work, I'll look up
previous information from them, get the
number, but it just seemed eerie, you know,
coming from Apple Corporate, but they were very
polite on the phone, and what they
explained to me when we spoke was,
oh, hey, look, it is not
supposed to do that deliberately.
But at the time, they hadn't yet
read the transcripts of the call, so
they didn't want to say I was
making this story up, but they just said
it's not supposed to do that.
And when they had called back, we had a few
conversations.
They finally revealed, okay, we read the
transcripts, and they didn't dispute
what Amber said to me. They just said,
we swear it's not supposed to do that. We don't know
why she said that. And, you know, I
told them, well, it's not just that she said
it's supposed to do that. She said she's gotten
many calls like this, and that's why
by now she knows the answer.
The answer is it's supposed to do that.
And they said, well, you know, this is the first
we've heard of this. We'll need to look into it.
But, you know, we take this seriously,
of course.
So, you know, they called me back a couple times
over that week, and
they asked if I would be comfortable if they sent
a couple engineers to my house.
Try to help troubleshoot. Exactly.
And, you know, that in and of itself
was intimidating as well, but
once again, the whole reason I did this,
my music collection means everything to me.
And, of course, I had backups I was able to restore
from my backup. Here's something interesting
that I didn't work into the blog because, you know,
narration-wise, it just didn't flow well,
but this happened twice, because
the first time I caught it, I went
back to a previous backup, and I reinstalled
all my music onto my hard drive,
and I relinked it to iTunes, because
I thought surely this was a freak
thing. You know, this was a freak thing,
so I redid it all,
and then it happened again,
like a day and a half later.
So, by the time I talked to
Amber, she was actually the third
Apple genius I had spoken to,
and I was transferred up to her. She was a
senior advisor. So when a
senior advisor told me, yes, that's what
the software is supposed to do,
you know, it made me very angry.
I took umbrage with that, but I also
believed her, and then, you know,
as soon as this post went public, I
had Apple calling me and saying, no, it's not
supposed to do that. So that, you know,
that threw me for a loop, because I wasn't sure which
Apple representative I was supposed to believe,
and it put me in an awkward position,
because I had already rung the bell.
You know, the blog had 1.8 million views
in the first 24 hours,
so then I had to be like, well, okay
guys, now they're saying it wasn't supposed to do
that, but I'll keep you posted.
But they didn't deny that it did that,
correct? Exactly. They didn't
deny that it did that. You know,
they weren't able to tell me exactly
why, and they do claim that
my case is very unique. They say there are
very few people, but, you know, a
large number of people have come forward online
and said something similar happened. Well, James,
why would your case be unique? It
sounds like what you were doing is what lots of people
do. Yeah, and I don't know the
answer to that either. You know, they were
trying on, you know, they wanted
me to help them replicate it, which
is why they did actually fly two of
their senior engineers
from California to my house this
weekend, and I spent a good deal
of Saturday and a little bit of time Sunday trying
to recreate the issue with them. And
did you succeed? We did not succeed
in recreating the issue, and, you
know, one of the perplexing things,
and I warned them about this, I said
I had Apple Music for eight months
before this happened, so why now?
And, you know, I brought that
up with Amber, and she didn't have an
answer for that, but she maintained that is
what it's supposed to do. Now,
when I'd spoken to the lower-level Apple
geniuses, when I first called,
you know, she, the first
person I talked to, she wasn't quite
sure what was going on, but she
tried to spin it like, but, you
know, now you have all this free hard drive space.
Oh, wow! Like,
that's a good thing, except, like, you know, lose
weight by cutting off your arm.
Wow, that's a
real cheerful attitude. I'm worried,
do you think every Amber at Apple was interrogated
until they found the right one, and what
might have happened to her?
You know, to be honest, I'm thinking
they just looked up the case number
because as soon as they read
my name, they were able to get my cell phone number
from my file and give me a call, and once again,
you know, that was a little intimidating, but I get it, I don't think
they overstepped any bounds doing
that in particular, but, you
know, my name is, I'm sure, attached to every
time I've called in and spoken to an Apple
genius or called in for Apple care or anything
like that, and evidently, they do
keep transcripts of the calls, so
from there, it was probably pretty simple for them
to look through and be like, okay, he called,
because I called two different times, I called the first time,
they couldn't figure it out, they tried to
sell me on the, well, at least you have more hard drive
space issue, so I reinstalled
everything, and then when it happened a couple days later,
of course, I was extra mad by now,
and the first gentleman to whom I
spoke there, it was just over his head,
and he's the one who transferred me up to Amber.
So it sounds like they did take a
keen and immediate interest in what
was going on by
calling you directly
after you had
spoken with their
support people as well as
publishing a bit about this. I think they took a
keen interest as soon as it hit the
internet. Spreading the word probably
was the
clincher on that part of it. Well, James,
I'm curious, go ahead. But they didn't
end up finding like a checkbox or something
in your settings and then say,
oh, you didn't do this, that didn't come out
of this thing over the weekend. No,
no, that didn't come out of the thing. They could find no
evidence of user error, and they told me after
having spoken to you, you know,
I'm by no means a programmer, I'm by
no means a hacker, but, you know, I've been
using iTunes since it existed. I've been
using Apple products since the 2GS
came out. When the 2GS came out, I
was playing Test Times in Tone Town.
You know, so like, I've been using
Apple products for a very long time, and
I like to think I wouldn't accidentally
highlight 98% of my
music files and then delete them and then confirm
and then empty the trash. How many
iPhones have you bought?
I'm only actually on my
third, believe it or not.
That's all right, that's some loyalty there to Apple.
I ride until the wheels come off.
Yeah, that's the spirit.
I've been using Apple products for a very long
time, and that was something, a side note,
that, you know, was really interesting, but
also kind of nerve-wracking, you know.
There are so many ideological wars going
on between people who love Apple and people
who hate Apple, and
you know, I wasn't interested in
grabbing a bat with a nail through it and joining
some gang either against
Apple or for Apple. I was just saying,
hey, they really made me mad with this
one thing, and now they're saying it wasn't
supposed to happen that way, so I'm in a strange
position here. Well, I mean, it sounds like you're doing people
a favor by exposing this
and keeping it from happening to them
if they fix it. Well, exactly, and
that's my hope, too. And you know, when they came,
when they spent the two days with me at my house,
they didn't pay me for that. I pretty
much gave up my weekend just to spend time
with them. They spent two days in your house?
Well, they, not
two full days. They arrived Saturday morning.
We were there for several hours, troubleshooting,
and then they came back on
Sunday. They actually gave me some homework
on Saturday night. They said, do whatever
you normally do, because, you know,
it might be a unique combination of the ways in which
you use iTunes. So I
told them, okay, if this were a normal Saturday night,
I might buy one or two songs
from the iTunes store. I might mess around
with a couple playlists. I might
import a couple of my own mixes from Pro Tools
or Logic, and I would
end the night streaming
music through the Apple TV from my
laptop, you know, with home sharing.
I would stream some playlists through
the Apple TV in the living room while my wife and I
hang out and drink some beers and play Boggle.
So that's my, that's the homework. I'll
do that. I went through all those motions,
and they came back on Sunday
to collect the data, and they did.
And, you know, they have logs of everything, but
the mass deletion
didn't happen again, which was, you know,
the smoking gun they were looking for.
And we weren't able to recreate that, but
once again, I knew that would probably
be the case, because
at the time, I'd had Apple Music eight months
before it happened once, but then it did happen
a second time two days later.
Hey, James? Yes.
This is Bernie in Philadelphia.
I'm sorry to interrupt. Hi.
You would think that they, Apple, would have logs
at their end, too, their own server logs
as to what's going on
at their end. And don't they
have their own, don't they have their own testbed
there with, like, you know, rooms
full of computers
like yours that they can run every
conceivable combination of things
against? Isn't that what they're supposed to be doing?
It's almost like they're questioning
you, like, you know,
like almost doubting you. I mean,
you know, obviously you're telling the truth, and
I don't know. I would feel like,
you know, it's your god job
to figure this out at your end. I'm not getting paid
for my weekend. You guys are getting paid
for your weekend. Like, why
do I have to give up my weekend for you
to fix your problems, which
shouldn't have happened in the first place? Don't you have
tools on your end to look at what
happens from there?
Yeah, and that's a very fair point.
That's a very fair point. And I was, you know, I was
kind of guarded, I have to admit, because
you know, they were running these logs, and
you know, obviously, like the joke I made
in my blog update, it's not like I have the
unedited Zapruder film on my computer,
but still, you know, I don't want
them poking around through every little thing. I have
work stuff on there. And also,
you know, those, I made some conditions,
you know, you can rifle
through my iTunes, my music library,
anything affiliated with Apple
Music, but any information you
glean from this is strictly
troubleshooting, and of course, you know,
maintain my confidentiality. I wasn't worried
so much about the confidentiality after the
San Bernardino phone incident.
I figured they would still, you know, be looking
out for my confidentiality, but
I do realize, obviously, there was a lot
more at play than just helping
me. They're trying to improve the program,
and of course, to make sure I'm not some lunatic
or I didn't make some completely idiotic
mistake. So, you know, we talked
through a lot, and they were satisfied with that.
They actually said, we do not believe
this is user error. Nothing leads us to believe
this is user error. And, you know,
I was able to point out to them, too,
it's not that every...
It's that, like,
98% were, and the remaining
ones, they varied by artist
name. Like, it would be different if
only Frank Zappa on
remained, then I'd be like, oh, I must have deleted
A through Y in my library accidentally.
But it wasn't like that.
The files that remained were scattered throughout the
alphabet. They varied by
date added. They varied by file type.
You know, so it was so random
that what remained, it would have been a
very, very elaborate
accidental deletion on my part
to pull that off.
So, James, this is Rob. Thank you so much for
joining us. Oh, sure. Thanks for having me.
Definitely. We've seen
now this story go way viral on
the net, and we've seen so many times
in these sorts of things that
some big, like, monolithic company
has a customer with a problem
and they're not helpful to the customer, so
the customer posts about it, and
then it gets big. It gets,
maybe, 1.8 million hits on their
blog or something. And that's
when the company will step in and go, whoa,
we better take care of this.
And that's where the power
with this sort of thing is.
It's really funny.
I mean, in your
interactions with Apple after your
story went viral,
did they make any mention of that?
Is that being a factor in how they're
taking care of you now?
Not specifically. They said
we're eager to help you
at first solve your problem.
And I pointed out, well, if you read the blog,
I had several backups. I don't have a problem
now. I just don't trust
Apple Music, especially based on
what your senior advisor told me that it's
supposed to do. And they reiterated,
well, she was incorrect.
We're sorry she told you that. We're sorry this happened
to you. And
I have to say, too, they
always had a warm tone
on the phone. And obviously
they didn't want to make me any more angry.
But I realize now,
I don't know what to believe as far as whether
or not it was supposed to, but it does seem
crazy that it would do that on purpose
because I would think that would be a PR nightmare
for them. And a lot of people have said,
well, I have Apple Music and this never happened to me.
So I'm willing to believe
that it was a bug. It's just
if there's nothing else to
this story, if it was just a bug,
it's still a story about how
they need to better train the people
in the phone regarding what they tell the customers
the software is supposed to do and not
supposed to do. And
it's also a testament to everyone out there
who doesn't back up their data. Like, back
up your data redundantly and then some.
And so with it going viral,
could you talk a bit about the response that
you've gotten just from other people, maybe
others who have had this problem or things
like it? I've had some people
who were pretty vague about it. You know, oh, that's
why I don't use Apple because this happened to me.
And there's not much to go on there.
You know, there was one gentleman who
posted a video on YouTube
showing how it happened to him and he went through
his Time Machine backups and he said,
you know, when I look through, I
see now that this full album I used to have
only has three songs. Where did the other
nine go? And he's scrolling through his
Time Machine backups and showing they're here, they're here,
they're here, bam, suddenly gone. I
did not delete these files.
He posted a video on YouTube. It was
called, Apple Stole My Music
No Seriously, I Mean For Real
or something like that, but then he changed the title
later because both he and I,
we were getting a lot of pushback from
Apple apologists who were saying, don't use the
word stole. They were storing it for you.
There's a
lot of people really took offense to me using
the word stole, but that's what it felt like
to me because, you know,
they didn't know whether or not I had backups
and what the senior advisor
told me once again was, well, you don't have a copy
but don't worry because we do. Yeah, well,
you mentioned the word stole the first time
in your blog entry when you
were referring to your own music
being taken off of your machine and stored on their
servers. Yes. So,
I think the word applies there.
It was not for your convenience.
Exactly, and let's say
and, you know, as I said, I'm willing to believe
that it's a bug and that Amber
misspoke or she didn't really understand how the
software worked, but, you know, she's a
senior advisor. I took her word for it. That
was what I went with and
I hope the blog at least helps
people. It reminds them the back
of their data and, you know, Apple did
it. They acknowledged there's a bug and they
said they're working on a fix and the new
iTunes update came out today. I
read through the fine print and I couldn't find anything
that spoke specifically to the deletion
issue, so I don't know if this update
was even the one that handled it or not,
but the point is if they
haven't fixed it yet, they're at least putting
fail-safes in there now, so
if they can't pinpoint the bug, they're at least trying to
come up with ways to prevent it from
repeating even if the bug kicks in,
which, you know, which is a good thing and that's
as this went on eventually, that was
all I wanted was other people not to
lose their libraries. Right.
So I have a question
just to kind of backtrack
a little bit and go through the steps that
you went through. The first time you
noticed this, you randomly noticed
that all of a sudden your music
wasn't there, correct? Yeah, well
what happened was it was a Friday
night, you know, I
just made a Jack and Coke, I was getting ready to
you know, blast the music
Friday night party style and
I went to click on a
song, a Camper Van
Beethoven song called It Was Like That When We Got Here
and it was
on a lag and I thought, well that's odd,
my processor shouldn't be burdened with anything
else, I don't have any other applications open.
It wasn't like that when you got there.
Exactly, exactly. Couldn't have picked a better
song.
So what I did, it was
I thought, this is odd, it's almost as
if this song is being served to me like it would
from Apple Music, even though I ripped
this personally as a wave file
for, you know, I really like that
song, the songs I really like,
you know, I ripped those wave files from the CDs I
buy, so you know, I thought
something was odd, so I turned off the Wi-Fi
and then I double clicked it and it wouldn't play
and it was gray. And then I thought, okay,
that's really odd, it's almost as if
Apple Music looked at my library
and now it's trying to supersede what's already
in Drive and serve me these songs
I already have. So then I
that was when I thought, well, I better
check. And so I looked in my, you
know, Commandant, I made a new window,
I clicked on Music, I clicked on iTunes,
I opened the iTunes Music folder
and in the folder there were
far fewer artists than there normally
are. There were maybe 50, 60 when there are normally
you know, thousands in there.
Was there anything unique about those
50 or 60 that remained?
No, they were,
as I said, they were all over the alphabet,
they varied by date added,
they varied by file type, I couldn't
find anything. And something I didn't
notice right away that I wish I had picked up on
sooner, there were certain
albums that many tracks were missing
and others weren't. There were a couple albums
where just the digital booklet remained.
You know how sometimes when you download NowMe you get that
digital booklet with it? So it's basically like
an algorithm or a computer
basically just ransacked your
music folder
with all of the artists, irrespective
of anything, with no real discernible
pattern. They were all on the same hard
drive? They were all on the same directory structure?
Exactly, yes
and you know, all on my internal hard drive
people have asked, well were you, you know, were you
connected to an external drive? Is that where you store your
music? And the answer is no.
They were all on my internal hard drive.
So what I did then, I
was like, oh my gosh, I have to recover these.
I had them backed up in a couple different places
but Time Machine was one of them, one of my
Time Machine drives, so I plugged in
and went to Time Machine and that's when I noticed
oh, some of these have been missing for a couple days
I just didn't notice because I had the
Wi-Fi turned on so when I would click on a song
title it would just play.
And then I realized, you know, so for a
couple days most of these have been missing but then
I found a Time Machine backup that still
contained them. It was, I believe
March 27th was the last backup
I had that still had everything.
So I added
all of the files again and then
in iTunes I said file, add to
library and I re-added everything
and you know, it was kind of a waste of time.
That was a little bit aggravating but I thought well this is weird
and of course I was opening the
idea that maybe I somehow clicked
some combination of preferences or
settings or something that had done this.
You know, I was open to that. I was just
confused so that was when I made
the first call to Apple and
that was when the
person, you know, she wasn't sure what was going on
but she tried to remain upbeat about the fact that I
now had free drive space and
that's a plus for some customers and
obviously I wasn't feeling
that approach so
I hung up with her but I thought okay, I
reinstalled it all, it should be back to normal
and it was for maybe a day,
a day and a half and then it happened
again and then I realized, oh my god
you know, it
did it again. So that was when I called
back and the first representative didn't
know and transferred me up to Amber
and the whole time I was thinking this must be a
bug. You know, I didn't call
I didn't have a pitchfork ready to go
you know, with these people
at Apple, I just assumed this must be a bug.
It was her telling me
no, the software is supposed to do
this that changed everything for me and
that's the reason that blog post had
such a hostile tone. Now the second time
it happened, were they basically the same
bits of music or was it different?
They were basically the same ones.
Interesting.
And I imagine it didn't
show up in your trash. You weren't able
to recover it that way. No, it did not show up in the
trash and I did look, although I'll say this too
you know, I habitually empty the trash
fairly often. So
you know, I may have emptied the trash when they were
in there and didn't notice but the other thing is
we're talking about 17,000 songs.
I think you noticed that. Yeah, you would have noticed that.
Exactly, I would notice the progress bar of emptying
the trash of 17,000 songs unless I
hit empty trash and then just got up and walked away
you know, I'm open to believing that may have
been the case but I didn't see it happen.
Is it possible anybody
else has access to your machine?
You know, that crossed my mind
too but just not that I can think of. I mean
you know, it's password protected
you know, my wife
has her own computer and she doesn't really
mess with mine because you know,
she just uses it for the bare minimum
you know, internet, she edits photos
but that's pretty much it. She doesn't really
mess with my music or anything like that
but of course I asked, you know, I wanted to do
my due diligence so I said like, did you
have you touched anything here?
Have you changed anything here?
And she was like, no, of course.
And I said, you know, I asked her again
once the blog got all that
I asked this
again but you have done nothing
to my computer and she was like, no, no
of course not. But once again
it would have been so elaborate what she would
have had to do to delete those specific
files but not all of them.
It would have been pretty time consuming for her
you know, you could click on one track, command
A to highlight them all but then you'd have to strategically
go through and unselect
or deselect many of them.
And then hit delete.
It's the type of thing that only
a computer or some kind of crazy
algorithm could be doing
very quickly and sort of haphazardly
it's not something a human
would be dedicated to randomly
screwing things up and
making everything into disarray
or being so
unpredictable. James, one more question
I don't mean to interrogate you on this, I am very curious
though, is it
possible that those files or those directories
were shareable on a network?
I don't
think so, I don't think so
but just the fact of what
was deleted versus what remains, like
some of those tracks I forgot I even had
some were on very active playlists
I use all the time, most were somewhere in between
so I just don't see how
some would have remained and others
wouldn't have because there was so little rhyme
or reason to what
was deleted and what remained that I just don't
see how any of that could have made sense.
Did you just open up the program
and they were gone or were you in the middle of
using the program and then they disappeared?
No, I opened up the program and they
were all still listed, it's just
that they were almost all being
streamed to me, 98% of them weren't
present in my library, they were just
you know, it was playing me
the Apple Music version, which of course
you know, if you have like that rare
acoustic version of a song, there's a good
chance Apple Music will play
the version from the band's greatest hits, even if it
leaves your label the same saying, rare
acoustic version. That is a real problem
as people rely on grace notes
and the like to label
their music, you might get it
labeled wrong and then
good luck finding it in your library when you think
you have something else and it's completely inaccurate.
Oh yeah, exactly.
Exactly, so
yeah, it's just been
a strange experience, but I have to say
that they have convinced me
that it was a bug and you know, they're
saying it's a bug now, I do believe
that it's a bug, it's just
it's been a strange journey getting here
but
they had me convinced and
another thing that put me in a strange position, I gotta
say, the two guys who came to my house, they
were cool, I mean they were good guys
you know, I found them very
relatable as people, we had good conversations
they were very polite and respectful
in my home, you know
even though they knew that I had written this thing
that caused them a headache, they were conference
calling with other engineers in
California and I said like, so how many people's
weekend did I ruin who are at work
right now? Yeah, but you also did them a service
by discovering this.
Oh, absolutely, and they were
grateful for that too, so you know, it just
made things extra strange for me because I came out
so angry, I can't believe Apple
would do this to their customers and what does this
mean for the future? Because you know,
I'm thinking about like when George Lucas goes back
and changes a Star Wars movie and
everybody gets angry, I was like, oh my
gosh, if the only versions we can see are
the ones being served to us, anyone
can rewrite history now, it will always
be that Ahan didn't shoot first
if they say so.
Wow, I think the NYPD might be interested in some
of this technology too.
I'll have to check back on that.
Very good, he had a gun, look
we edited it in.
What did iTunes make of
their own original music when it tried
to serve you their own version, did it
relabel it as anything else?
No, it was good about keeping
the labels the same with those, it was just the
file type was different.
And you know, even that, of course
I wouldn't be so dumb as to only save the
single copy of my own music in my
iTunes library and that's the only place.
It was the principality of, I did not
give you permission to do this and you're
telling me that's what the software is supposed to do?
I just really quickly went into
how dare you mode. And when I wrote
that blog post I actually sat on it
for two weeks because I just kept thinking like
this is crazy, they would really do this?
This is crazy.
But you know, I kept replaying the conversation
in my head and I was like no
I mean they told me they did this on
purpose, alright I gotta publish this.
But I still just never dreamed that it would get so much
attention.
Go ahead Bernie.
I'm sorry James, before you go I just wanted to
know
what do you do down there in Atlanta?
Both work and what do you enjoy doing
besides
your music collection?
Oh thank you, yeah.
My 9 to 5 job
I'm the manager of a photography
and design studio so I produce photo
shoots and manage a studio where
we do like brand visualization,
color palettes, things
like my boss is very good at telling you next
year what color will be popular.
I do a lot
of that, that's my 9 to 5
but she's good about letting me blog about
whatever I want on the blog
and that worked out well for
this particular month I guess.
On the side I compose a little
bit, just selling
catchy little instrumentals for
commercials and stuff like that.
That's really what I enjoy doing, I'm a musician
myself and I know you guys
were talking about electronic
music earlier and I'm a big synth pop
fan myself and I tinker
with that, I'm in a band called
Evening Shade that's all one word, that's a
synth pop act and I'm just
trying to recreate that cool
somewhere in between danceable stuff
and that early John Carpenter sound which even
John Carpenter is back into now.
I'll have to check my iTunes collection and see if Apple
gave me any of your music.
Very good.
Yeah, maybe they were Robin Hood and they just took it
from me and gave it to other people.
I had one quick question,
how certain were they that
they might be able to get to the bottom of this and
what kind of timetable, do you have any
idea how soon you might be able to get some more
information, when they might be able to get back
to you about it? Because it sounds like
Amber didn't really know, I mean she knew
it was supposed to work that way but
she wasn't so certain she was
explaining the whole process that maybe
they weren't supposed to tell anyway
or something. Do you have a sense that
they'll follow up and you'll get a little
bit deeper into why and what is going
on and what the confusion was with
their support people?
Well, as of right now
I haven't heard back from them since I
saw the two engineers on Sunday.
I did ask them
please keep me updated and I told them too
you know, okay you've convinced me that
this is probably a bug in which case
I obviously have a friendlier tone
with you guys now but I would still
love to know what this is and
I hope you understand the awkward position
I'm in now because it was your own representative
who told me this was
supposed to happen on purpose so
I'm believing you Apple guys
over that other Apple employee now.
It just puts me in an odd position.
Whether it happened
on purpose or whether it happened by accident
it's not something that you did, it's something
that happened as a result of a configuration
or a bad decision of
one part or another, I think people deserve to know
why that happened and how to
prevent it from happening again.
Exactly, and I found it interesting
the way they worded it is
they're installing safeguards
to make sure it doesn't happen
so I don't know that they've been able
to isolate the bug yet, I just think they're
putting extra measures into the code
to say, hey if anything
starts to get deleted, just stop
because that's not supposed to happen
and forgive my crude
way I'm explaining this here, I'm obviously not a
programmer, but you know what I'm saying
by fail-safe I think they'll look
for certain triggers, like if things get moved
to the track
they're going to move it right back to your collection
is what I'm assuming.
It'd be nice to pinpoint when is this happening
and what triggered it, and I think that's something
that they can figure out with some time.
Yeah, I'll be very curious to hear
more of an elaborate
response about how
their software is not designed
to do that instead of such certainty
about how it is designed to do that.
And I'm sure our listeners will be experimenting
day and night trying to get this to happen
to their collection as well.
It's interesting you say that, guys,
because with this new iTunes update
that came out just yesterday,
I did not install it on my laptop
because I keep thinking, or maybe it even
came out today, but I haven't installed it on my laptop
because I keep thinking, if this has
those safeguards, I will never be able to
replicate this problem. And I have backups
so it's not the end of the world if this happens
again to me.
I know how you feel, I've been clinging to the same iTunes version
for about ten years now.
That's a wise man because there are so many bells
and whistles now that it's dizzying.
Yeah, I don't like bells and whistles, I just
like music. Exactly, which
is why when all this, when I was in the thick
of all this, I tried Swincy and I was really
impressed because it's so much like
the earlier versions of iTunes.
I had a good experience with that and it
instantly, as soon as I said, here's my
M, I was listening within
30 seconds. I couldn't believe how quickly
it integrated.
Anyway, regardless, my point
is I'm going to try to keep using iTunes.
I'm going to avoid the update
for a while at least and see if this happens
again because I think it still might be able to help
people and maybe it will help them
figure out what this bug is
because if these safeguards
work, now they have no motivation to actually
track down what the bug was and I'm dying to
know myself. Not that I would even probably
understand it. Well, James, it's been
a fascinating story and I hope you give us
updates as things change. I'm not hoping
that your library gets wiped out again but
if it does, I hope you let us know so that
we can maybe help you figure out
what's causing this and, of course, if other
listeners have similar things happen to them,
write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear from you. James, good luck
and keep us updated.
Will do, gentlemen. Thank you for
having me on. Take care.
You too. Bye. And that was James
of Vellum Atlanta. You can read his blog
post at Vellum Atlanta. That's
V-E-L-L-U-M-Atlanta.com
and what a story.
His music library wiped out
apparently by Apple
and replaced by their versions of his
songs served to him from
their remote servers. As long as he remains a customer,
he can keep his music that he
encoded himself. I don't
think in any universe
they would say, yeah, this is a good idea.
At least not
for very long. Unless you're
Amber, I guess. Amber just
might have been cynical. She might have.
But this is
really a symptom of something much bigger
and I think that's part of why this went so viral
is because people are giving up
more and more control over their own
materials, their own files, their own
machines to all these
other entities and companies and
services. It's convenient. Why should I worry about
it? Put it in the cloud and I don't have to think
about it anymore. Put your photographs, put your
recordings, put everything, your memories, put them all
there. It reminded me of the story from
years back when Amazon
was deleting the book 1984
from people's devices
because it turned out that they weren't allowed to
own this version of that book. So they just
removed it as if you never had it.
When you think of the book, they're doing that too.
Wow.
That's the power that they have now.
That's the kind of thing they can do.
We had a problem with one of our issues
on Kindle and basically
they replaced the copies
that had been sent out in error with the right
ones. And that
was the right thing to do, but they went and they
grabbed what was in people's collections,
removed it, and replaced it with something else.
In an
evil person's
power, that could be something very
bad. You could change the news. You could change
history. And this is
what we have to think about whenever we use these new
forms of technology. Yeah, I'm fully
with that. I really feel like this is a
byproduct, a result
of more computers,
simply more computers being
about and on more people
and more services
that these computers
are working with.
And I think it's
sort of the generations of things
becoming obsolete, having
varying versions of things, getting a new device,
and then sort of things
trying to play nice with each other
or replace or
supplant another device. You get
this with TV
stuff now. Everything
is trying to be a TV, whether
it's your phone or your smart
TV or something you attach to
your TV. Everything wants to be smart.
And they don't always
play nice. I guess that's the only way I can
really boil it down.
But I definitely was getting that in this conversation.
And there is more of this
to be vigilant
regarding and look out for, because
we have this stuff, we're integrating this stuff,
and it's changing constantly. It can change
while we're sleeping and
all of a sudden have a new firmware version when you wake
up. It's just all kinds of ramifications.
And just to give this sort of power
over to something else, especially
now this is the music industry in this particular case
and the entertainment industry in general
really has, we've watched
them kicking and screaming be dragged into the current
technical environment where they're still
trying to clutch so much control
over what people are allowed to do with
what they purchase or what they're allowed
to watch, what they're licensed to watch.
And we're seeing a lot of
technical madness come from that.
There are absolutely
efforts underway to
skip this entire generation of keeping
music as something you
own. The sort of
streaming radio
services and all of
these, as you said,
cloud-based things. It's not just
music. It's books.
It's video. It's even your cars.
You don't own anything anymore.
You just lease the right to
use them. And it's very unhealthy.
We're going to see more and more stories like this, I think.
Guys, we are out of time.
Can you believe it? Two hours have just flown by.
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I didn't mean to scare anybody with that.
You really scared me.
We'll be back in two weeks, I think.
We won't be here next week, that's for sure.
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And don't forget, speaker submissions
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