WBAI, using either a credit card, debit card, or by electronic fund transfer from your bank
account, is safe, secure, and easy. And it helps keep our unique, alternative, and diverse
programming on the air. You'll get a WBAI membership card and other goodies. Sign up
online. Go to WBAI.org and click on Donate. All the details are right there. The WBAI Buddy. Be one
today. Yes, and many of us are BAI Buddies every day. Takes a lot of patience. WBAI New York,
it's seven o'clock time once again for Off The Hook.
We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. Fundedly bound for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Fundedly bound.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this exciting Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening. You and Reggie are going to spill that bottle one more time. There should be liquid in it at least. Kyle is with us as well.
Hello all the hackers. And listen to the sound of Bernie S. not with us. The reason for that is because we're still struggling to get the Skype connection going because we don't have any phones.
Due to overwhelming incompetence somewhere. Yeah, that's always the reason why you don't have phones.
But we did come up with a great solution to problems here. And Kyle, you were just saying
sometimes it's the simplest solutions. We decided instead of everybody hovering over my shoulder to
get Skype working, we just turned the monitor to the other side of the table and put the keyboard
over there. And now I have all this space because I don't have a useless keyboard in front of me and
Rob T. Firefly gets to do it all. Yeah, I'm in control of the useless keyboard now. Don't let
this go to my head. You know, if you either you guys have to slap me. It's one of the virtues,
I think, of this open studio plan that we have here. It's all part of the evolution of the radio
station. And really, it's a magical gift that we're all so, so thankful for. And we're thankful
for everybody who listens and who's out there now tuning in despite our difficulty gathering
all of our participants today. I understand we have Bernie S. with us now. Is that true?
Is he? Yes. Greetings from Philadelphia. Wow. That's him. Pretty loud down there. You guys
are getting ready for the convention, I guess. We are. There's going to be a lot more loudness
coming up soon down here. Yeah. Tell us, have they issued bulletins or alerts or warnings to
people down there to expect? What's going on? What's it look like? I was talking to somebody
about an hour ago. First, I was walking past Philadelphia's adult probation and parole office,
and there was a huge line halfway around the block. What? There's a juvenile probation office? No,
no. This is adult probation and parole. Well, I know that. I'm just saying, because they label
it adult, does that mean there's a children's one? Let me finish my story. All right. So,
I asked somebody a couple hours later. He doesn't know. There was a huge line outside the Pennsylvania
parole office, Pennsylvania probation and parole office. And I don't know what's going on,
but there's a huge line. He said they let a whole bunch of people out of jail to clear out rooms,
to clear out beds for protesters. Maybe they let people out of jail so they could become protesters.
Well, maybe they, well, if they're on probation and parole, they might best not protest lest
they violate their parole or probation. And apparently this happened back in 2000 at the
RNC here in Philadelphia, Republican National Convention. They took a lot of people out of
prison to clear out beds for protesters who were then arrested after the city had taken out an
insurance policy to cover them in case they got sued for violating people's constitutional rights,
which they did and which the insurance company paid. And I just think it's a warped system we
have down here where it may happen in the Cleveland too, where the municipality, the city
takes out an insurance policy knowing in advance they're going to be violating people's
constitutional rights and locking them up for free speech and then settling it later with the
insurance company after the convention. This is just really warped. Well, yes, it's standard
operating practice. It's the way they seem to do things. And yeah, it's weird because in 2000,
that's when the RNC was taking place in Philadelphia. And I remember it well because
it was right after one of our HOPE conferences again. And our layout artist, Shapeshifter, was
arrested down there. In fact, it's interesting because I went down there on the train just to
see what was going on in the streets. And I remember he was the person I called when I got
off the train to find out where to go. And they were monitoring him. They were following him
because they thought he was one of the main coordinators, I guess, being layout artist at 2600.
A ringleader.
Ringleader, yeah. They thought he was a person to give them all the information they needed.
And so they were watching him. And when they saw him on the phone,
and it might have been on the phone with me at that point because the time kind of coincided,
they said, well, we knew that he was plotting something at that point because he was on the
phone. And they use that. They use that as the reason to arrest him.
The accusation was that he, Terrence, allegedly pointed in a certain direction up a street,
and then people walked that way. And therefore, he deserved to be arrested on a half million
dollars bail, which, you know, then got reduced to $100,000. And you and I
managed to raise 10% of that to get him out of jail. And then that dragged on for a couple,
three years until a judge said, I see no evidence of any wrongdoing at all here.
So, except on the police's part who lied about what he had done.
But he was still expected to pay a percentage for being arrested and held, even though he was found
not guilty. He eventually had to bring a lawsuit against the city, which he won, I believe.
Yeah, the city, yeah, he did. The city kept, the city of Philadelphia charged a 30% service fee
for the $10,000 that you and I put up, a service fee for, for, for bailing him out.
Of course, you know, we, you know, Terrence was cool enough to reimburse us later after
this insurance company settled with him. And I helped pay for his college tuition,
which is a good thing. But this is just not the way things should work in this country.
It's really bizarre.
It's built to entangle you in this system. It's a trap almost.
So now, apparently, Bernie, your city did not learn its lesson from 2000. They're doing it
again, this time with the DNC. I don't know if that's going to be any better for them. But
are you noticing anything different?
Well, I did notice that the past couple days, they put up 50 colorful donkeys around the city
that are, like, have each state's name on it.
Like the cows we used to have here?
I don't know.
We used to have these giant cows. Do you remember the giant cows all over the city?
I think in Berlin, they have bears.
Well, they have bears in Berlin. Yeah, but we had cows. Does anybody remember this?
In New York City, we had cows everywhere, all different colors and shape, well, the same shape.
But yeah, so maybe donkeys is what you get now.
Yeah, because it's a Democratic Party symbol. So it's all about democracy, right?
I wonder what Cleveland has.
What I remember happening back in 2000 was that in a couple of three weeks leading up to the
convention, the city suddenly did all this public service work, like making fountains that hadn't
spouted for decades finally work, and installing shelters for bus stations, and installing really
beautiful lights on the Ben Franklin Bridge.
None of that was done forever until the Republicans were coming to town,
and they spruced things up really well.
Because these are the decision makers in our country, whether the Democratic
Party or the Republican Party, it's pretty much the same thing.
And they're the ones that hold the purse strings and make decisions on who gets what.
And they need to put on a dog and pony show, or a dog and donkey show, as it may be.
And so that's going to be coming here soon.
But I expect a lot of people get arrested right after Hope here in Philadelphia.
And I wonder why authorities feel that is necessary when people are simply expressing themselves.
I know when I was caught up in 2004 in New York City, I was arrested because I was on a street,
basically on a block.
I was on the sidewalk.
They told you get on the sidewalk, but that wasn't good enough.
They penned in everybody in the street.
But what was the crime that we were just on a street, you know, walk down a particular block?
You know, people get arrested for crimes, for vandalism, perhaps, or violence,
or just doing things that we recognize as crimes.
But in this particular case, both in Cleveland and in Philadelphia,
there are going to be people speaking their minds, and protesting,
and maybe having a sit-in or something like that.
None of which should be considered something that you have to lock somebody up for.
But we all know that that's exactly what's going to happen.
And it's a sickness.
Yeah.
And if these organizations want to throw their conventions and not have other people around,
why do they keep throwing them in major cities?
Yeah.
Why do they keep throwing them in major population centers?
Why don't they, like, go out to the Nevada desert somewhere,
and, like, light a big guy on fire or something?
I got a better idea.
Why don't you rent one of those ocean liners,
and go out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and have fun there,
and maybe go somewhere else instead of coming back here?
Let's leave the rest of us alone.
Because, really, Bernie, you're a resident of Philadelphia.
Don't you just want to be left alone, and not have to deal with this crap?
Yeah.
I'm not even sure if I want...
I don't know if I even want to be around when this is happening.
But I do want to help out best I can.
We just started a community...
Just this past weekend, we started...
Well, we started it more than a year ago.
A community radio station, WPPM, People Powered Media.
It's a legitimate FCC-licensed community radio station.
Just went on the air Friday, and we are doing some testing.
And our first live broadcast will be coverage of the
Democratic National Convention here in Philadelphia.
I've met some journalists here in Philly that have...
Actually, we're able to obtain floor credentials for the convention floor.
They're going to be doing some live call-ins to WPPM about what's going on there.
But also, a lot of them will be covering...
These reporters will be covering what's going on in the streets,
and around the convention center, and elsewhere in Philadelphia.
Make people...
So people can learn about what people are really upset about in this country,
whether it's corruption in the Democratic Party,
or corruption in the Republican Party.
I think this is really newsworthy stuff.
And I think the next few weeks should be pretty ugly,
both in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
And people are going to be heard one way or the other.
So tell us about this WPPM in Philadelphia.
What's the frequency?
106.5 FM.
It's 90 watts with an antenna that's about 100 feet off the ground
near 3rd and Spring Garden Street.
And we've been working on it for a good year.
And we've got the transmitter all set up.
The transmitter antenna set up.
Had a very interesting antenna raising party,
or as I called it, an antenna erection party.
And we...
Or tower erection party.
And it works.
It's on the air.
I spent all of Saturday with our friend Matt Blaze,
assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Driving around with some very expensive radio equipment
all around Philadelphia doing field test measurements,
calibrated signal strength measurements all around the city.
This radio station had a heck of a great signal across the city.
And we were...
Matt and I were both really surprised.
It's like, wow, this signal is really getting out.
So we got it on here just in time.
And we're just broadcasting some looped discussion and music right now.
But come the end of the month, we'll be doing some live programming
about what's going on here in Philadelphia.
Well, that's good news.
It's good to hear that there's a new station going on the air in Philadelphia.
It's going to reach the entire city, or a good part of it anyway.
And it's something that I guess people can do in different cities as well.
Was it a long process to get this on the air?
Yeah, it took the better part of a year to apply for the construction permit.
There's only a certain number of frequency slots available in the country,
especially in populated areas.
And the next application window is going to be who knows when.
You can't just...
FCC opens certain windows where you can apply for one of these construction permits.
And there's a very small number of them around the country for populated areas.
Because as you well know, or some of our listeners know,
the government doesn't want, or the commercial broadcasters don't want
community radio stations in their same market.
So they've pulled a bunch of tricks out of their bag to try to prevent these stations from being
anywhere near their station's frequency on the FM dial.
But about three years ago, President Obama did sign a new law that allowed
second adjacent frequencies that are instead of three slots away, two slots away.
So Philadelphia was able to get, I think, three or four
community radio station construction permits.
The other groups are still working on getting theirs on the air.
But we got ours on the air already.
And it's going to be great.
We have a great signal across most of the city.
And this is a nonprofit organization, a listener-supported...
Just like WBAI, except it's a different license class.
WBAI broadcasts like 4.3 thousand watts from on top of the Empire State Building,
which is a huge amount of power.
WPPM is 90 watts at 100 feet off the ground.
But that's still covering the city surprisingly well.
And it's going to get news and other useful information and good music and so forth
out to a lot of people in the city who won't have to pay some internet service provider
or cable provider to get this information.
So we're looking forward to serving the public.
And one final question.
Is there an online stream?
Not yet.
We are in the process of deciding on equipment to purchase that will make that happen.
So yes, WPPM will literally be online.
So you can hear it on the internet as well as...
It will be online before the DNC happens.
So people will be able to tune in from far.
You might have the best coverage, actually.
It's possible.
Yeah.
So people will be able to tune in if they just search for WPPM.
That's People Powered Media.
We don't have a website yet, but we're working on that.
So it's a work in progress, but that's how things work.
All right.
All right.
Well, I didn't know about that.
That's really kind of cool to know.
And of course, sandwiched right in between the two conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia
is the HOPE Conference, Hackers on Planet Earth, something that we put on every two years,
happening at the Hotel Pennsylvania from July 22nd through 24th,
right smack in the middle of New York City.
So I guess that'll be the calmest thing going on
compared to the craziness that's happening in other parts of the country this summer.
Yes, indeed.
A friend of ours, a journalist from Italy named Marina,
she commented to me how she has to cover the one convention and cover the other convention
in between to regain her sanity.
She's coming to HOPE.
Well, she's covering that one too, I hope.
Yeah, but in a more sane way, I guess.
Well, OK, so we've been basically dealing with deadlines
and getting all sorts of things prepared.
Now we're in kind of this weird state where it's a little calm
because it's too late to change anything now.
No time, no ability to change scheduling or descriptions
because the program is being printed
and various other things have been bought or rented or registered and...
Wrangled.
Wrangled, yeah.
So right now, if we did a good job, it'll work.
If we didn't do a good job, we'll find out about it in short order.
But yeah, there's still a lot to do, still a lot to organize.
But as far as getting things done by a certain date, that's all history now.
And it feels kind of good, still stressful.
But now it's just a question of doing what we've done 10 times before
and hopefully still getting it right.
But we depend so much on our attendees and volunteers
who come and make it all possible.
And as long as we have the same people, the same type of people,
I think we'll have a great event.
Yeah, it always amazes me, the people we get involved in this event
and the fact that, yeah, okay, we're putting this on.
We're sort of core staff as it would be put.
But when the event actually gets underway,
it is such a product of the crowd there
rather than anything we particularly are doing.
And that's beautiful.
That's as it should be.
We can plan for a general framework or the structure of the nuts and bolts
of things that need to be in different places and all of that.
We can do as much of that as possible
to get a lot of unknowns out of it.
But there's still this sort of leap, this uncertainty,
dare I say, this hope we have that it'll come together in the end.
Yeah, we have something like 100 scheduled talks right now.
There's going to be much more than that
because we have what's known as the fourth track,
which is basically, it's a hope tradition.
We open it up as soon as the conference begins.
If you have a talk that you want to give on the spot,
we give you an hour to do it.
It's first come, first serve.
There's a room up on the 18th floor of the hotel that is great for that.
And a lot of people can fit in it and you can give presentations.
And it's full.
It's full pretty much the whole weekend.
So that's yet another track in addition to the three that we have.
Plus, we have all the activities going on in the mezzanine downstairs.
We have a bunch of workshops on the sixth floor.
It's a weekend packed with activity.
And it's incredible to me how much of it there is.
It boggles the imagination.
We'll have lots of things posted and updates on social media
and various other places, especially the hope.net website.
Yeah, we should talk about that.
The Twitter account, the Twitter hashtag, whatever,
hopeconf, H-O-P-E-C-O-N-F for conference.
So follow that if you want updated information
on what's going to happen that weekend.
And you can go to our event website, xi.hope.net.
Yes, and for now, though, hope.net goes there.
It's the default hope site, but that won't last forever, obviously.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And we will present details and all the pertinent information
that we want to get out there in the next week or two.
Yes.
Anything else you guys want to add to conference details?
Bernie, anything?
There's so much going on, Emmanuel.
I counted more than 150 speakers we have this year over three days.
That is an amazing amount of information that's going to be promulgated.
And those are just the official talks.
There's going to be a fourth track of people that can sign up each morning
to grab a one-hour slot to talk about something that's not on a regular schedule.
And there's going to be workshops, galore, and projects.
So literally hundreds of people giving really interesting presentations
and workshops and projects and other things.
It is just an extravaganza of really fascinating information and stuff going on
that nobody should miss.
This is just information overload, but there's so much going on.
I encourage all our listeners on Off the Hook to go to hope.net
and click on the schedule and just see some of the incredible talks and panels
that are going to be presented this year.
I'm blown away.
We got some really first-class submissions this time around.
And I got to hand it to you for putting together the Speaker Selection Committee
and getting it all, organizing all that, and even more complicated scheduling.
Everybody has different schedules.
And I can't imagine what it's like scheduling more than 100 different people
over three days that all have different scheduling needs.
That's going to be crazy.
Yeah.
In another life, I think I was a traffic cop because just having to wrangle all those people
and get them all to agree to be in a certain place at a certain time, it's no small thing.
But it does work, and it's incredible to see it actually come together.
Well, it's going to be one event not to miss.
The 11th Hope, July 22nd, 23rd, 24th, at the Hotel Pennsylvania,
right across the street from Madison Square Garden,
which makes it really easy to get to from anywhere.
So we hope to see everybody listening there.
I mean, stuff will be online, too, but it's the experience of being there
and being with the people that are at the event that makes it really special.
Bring all kinds of stuff, too.
If you have a project, maybe bring your personal computer,
whatever devices you use to do that kind of stuff.
Arduinos, all that kind of stuff.
We'll have plenty of facilities to accommodate projects and various types of electronics work.
And also, if you have any kind of server or you'd like to do some hosting at our conference,
we provide a cage for you to lock your equipment in and connect up to the network.
We can give you more details.
Look on the map for the Knock Knock, and that is where we'll
take your equipment and make sure that it's online during the event.
The Knock Knock.
Yeah, it's not quite the Knock, but it's the Knock Knock.
A knock is Network Operations Center.
Right, but it's the knock of the knock.
I think that's, I don't know where the name came from.
I'm going to pretend I understand that and wish everyone well in that endeavor.
Sounds pretty awesome.
Yeah, but please bring all kinds of gear or whatever kinds of gizmos,
things you want to show off, and we'll accommodate.
We'll make sure that you get a chance.
Also, if you've got, like so many of us have, some project in a drawer somewhere that you
mean to keep getting around to soldering together, bring it to Hope because we will have the stuff
you need, and it's a heck of a great place to get involved with something like that.
Also, just on a personal level, I'm really looking forward to seeing all my conference
family again because you get to know certain people, you see them every couple of years
at this event, and you get to catch up, and that's something really special as well.
And that's why we only do it once every two years.
Exactly.
I think if we did it every year, it wouldn't be as special, but it's really cool to see
people you haven't seen in a couple of years, and it gives you the year in between to do
other things and have experiences and tell us about those the year afterwards.
Also, I'm not sure we'd survive doing this every year.
That's the other thing.
We would never pull this off.
It would drive us insane.
It's always different, though.
There's always a ton to cover, a lot to talk about socially, politically, involved with
hacking and stories, all of these kinds of issues and different disciplines that converge.
It's always new.
It's always really right there at the forefront, and we're happy to present it and bring it
to people, and definitely everybody's participation and collaboration is what makes it the sort
of unique thing it is.
Yes.
Cory Doctorow will be giving our keynote address on Saturday, and that's going to be really
amazing and awesome.
First time he's been at the HOPE Conference, too, so looking forward to that.
And as Bernie said, over 150 other speakers of all different qualifications and experiences,
they all have something interesting to say.
In fact, there'll be many more than that because, as we mentioned, we have the unscheduled track.
There's also workshops downstairs and all sorts of other activities that are still in
the planning stages.
Also, tickets are still available, yes, and the price goes up at the door, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
We can't give the exact number, but I know that's usually what happens, and I think that's
going to happen again.
But also, if you unfortunately can't make it to the conference, there will be things
for you to do.
You can listen to Radio Statler at radio.hope.net.
That'll be streaming, and all kinds of people will be involved with that.
Also, if you will be at the conference and you want to do some radio, get in touch with
the radio folks and see if they can schedule you because we are looking to fill up that
schedule, and I know some people out there do very good radio.
A word about volunteering, too, because the only way we can pull this off is through volunteers,
kind of like the way WBAI has survived since 1960.
It's impossible.
It's impossible to have a radio station in the middle of the FM dial and have it survive
without any commercials, and Bernie's proving it's possible, obviously, in Philadelphia
to do this, but people will say it's impossible.
Similarly, having a conference in the middle of Manhattan is impossible.
When we started this back in 1994, everybody was telling us how impossible it was.
You can never do this.
Yeah, they can do it in Europe.
It's easy to do things in Europe, but it's much harder to do it in the States.
We decided to do it anyway, and through the efforts of volunteers and people who just
believe that they can succeed, we've pulled it off 10 times now.
And also, Kyle, that's how we got the network.
We were told it was impossible to get a network any faster than, say, 50 megabit, which is
what we had previously.
It hadn't been tried.
It hadn't been researched to its absolute conclusion.
And now we're at 10 gigabit, and actually, we're going to push it a little bit more and
make it 11 gigabit for this special conference, more than any hacker conference, I believe,
in this country, and more than, I think, most other, any kind of conference in this country.
And it's really up to your imagination to use that bandwidth for something that it's
never been used for in the past.
Yeah, we want to provide it as a resource, open and freely, and really see what people
come up with, given this opportunity.
We will have to put up signs saying, use more bandwidth, because people don't use enough
bandwidth.
And we're going to come up with all kinds of ideas on ways that we can use this to its
maximum potential, and we're open to more ideas.
But again, if you're interested in volunteering, we still have many tasks that we need help
with.
Volunteering is not a job.
It's not an unpleasant thing.
It's part of the experience.
When Kyle and I go overseas to various other conferences, we almost always volunteer to
help out, in addition to attending the conference as a paid attendee, because that's how you
meet people.
That's how you learn how it all works.
That's how you have fun experiences.
I know very few volunteers that ever regretted doing what they did.
It's an awesome experience.
And it's something you should be in control of, and you determine how much time you may
want to dedicate towards that.
But it really is as rewarding as the valuable content that the event provides.
But it's different stuff.
It's getting to know people that you may not ordinarily work with, and meeting people that
are probably from different backgrounds or probably have different expertise, and coming
together around stuff that maybe neither of you are expert at.
But through that, you get a bit of camaraderie.
You get to be a part of making this unique event happen.
As we've said, it's really unique.
So we try to encourage people who want to do it.
It should be something you want to do and that you're excited about, not some kind of,
let's see, you shouldn't be looking at it as though it's a lot of work and drudgery.
It should be an exciting thing and a unique way for you to not just consume the event,
but be a part of hosting it and making it special for somebody else.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, anything else to add about Hope?
Looking forward to it.
Okay.
Yes, come to Hope.
Wild tickets are still available.
Hope.net is where you can find all the information.
And there's a lot more still to come.
So we'll be talking more about that.
We're only on one more time before the conference.
Because the week of the conference, we're preempted, which I think actually is a bit
of a relief because we have so much preparation to do.
So next week is it.
Next week is the last week before the conference.
And after that, it's recovery time.
So fun things ahead.
All right.
So we were talking about conventions, political nonsense.
And I guess we should focus some time on what's been in the news the last day.
And of course, that's the damn emails from Hillary Clinton.
Yeah, we have to focus on that a little bit.
There was a finding yesterday, the FBI investigation was announced.
And basically, some things were said that I think might wind up further influencing
the presidential campaign and the election in November.
Now, James Comey gave this press conference yesterday.
I think many of us saw it.
And he had some things to say that weren't exactly, I wouldn't call it praise.
Yeah, they said that they're not going to file charges.
There's nothing here worth filing charges about.
But he did say that Hillary Clinton was extremely careless in running her own email server.
And that's something I'd like to explore a little bit.
Is it careless to run your own server rather than use the government provided server,
which could be open to all sorts of security issues or stupidity?
It's something that I think we don't really think about that much.
We just say, oh, she didn't go through the normal channels,
didn't do things exactly the way she was told to do it.
And we don't explore it further than that.
It's a little bit loaded in that.
And it's not the, it oversimplifies really what both the government systems would be like,
and perhaps what she was setting up.
But I think that in general, it's about best, like how you use it, like the practices,
the behaviors and so on that are associated with using it, not necessarily to host or not host
yourself.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I would say in general, like for the average person,
I wouldn't say it's careless to run your own email server or even
purchase your own paid service that does the same thing for you.
I would say it's a very good thing to do rather than depend on,
like, say, your job's email address or a free email address or something.
But in her position, as an employee of the government,
and the government is ostensibly theoretically based on a system of accountability,
if she's conducting business from an email server that's not subject to the government's
control and oversight and archiving and being open to being looked at and examined and
having things come up, then she's doing something wrong, I think.
Well, yeah, you're looking at the issue of transparency.
Yes.
If you're controlling your own email server, you can cover things up pretty easily.
But as far as security, we always hear about government computer systems being hacked.
We hear about NASA.
We even hear about the Department of Defense.
But, you know, when's the last time you heard about Gmail being hacked,
like having their entire system compromised?
I think that if you leave it up to the individual to decide what is more secure,
many times they will opt not to use the government-provided system.
Not saying it's right.
I'm not saying it's something that she should be praised for.
But to imply that because she did this, things are less secure,
I don't know if that's necessarily true.
I don't know if we've ever heard of Gmail in total being hacked,
but individual people's Gmails get hacked all the time.
Yeah, well, it's their password that gets out.
Yes.
And her account could get hacked if somebody gets her password on whatever system she uses.
Absolutely.
But as far as an actual compromising of the entire system,
where we read about this all the time, where government systems are infiltrated,
databases are downloaded, and it's because of some bureaucratic way of doing things.
If you can find a better way to do it than that,
isn't that something that should be pursued?
I would say it's like the lowest bidder kind of thing,
where they buy a system of some sort through a bidding process,
and then operate it basically following some corporation's guidelines
and implement it as a government system.
But I would say that I think the government entities that host their mail,
they're larger targets.
They're a desirable thing to compromise.
Whereas an individual Gmail or Gmail in its entirety is,
I think, there's more supervision, so it's less enticing.
That's an excellent point, because the State Department,
all right, we know the State Department domain.
Actually, I don't know it off the top of my head, but the State Department domain...
State.gov.
Is that what it is?
Yes.
Bernie, is that true?
I believe it is. I believe it is State.gov, yeah.
State.gov. Okay, for some reason...
Nobody uses .gov websites with me.
Why are you using State.gov?
I'm offended you asked. I travel.
I research places.
No, the website, okay.
But the email, the email accounts under State.gov.
Okay, so we know what the target is.
If we want to target Hillary Clinton on that system, we know where to go.
Anybody, tell me, what is her domain on the server that she's running herself?
Clintonemail.com.
All right, you know that...
Wait, is that really what it was called?
It was Clintonemail.com.
It's a fantastically stupid name.
So it would be like H...
It might have been Clinton Mail.
No, I think it was Clintonemail.com.
Okay, but nobody knew that before this whole thing started,
except for the people she was talking to.
My point is that if it's not something that's obvious,
that's another level of security right there.
And I would take this all as a sign, though,
that maybe the people who are in charge of State.gov
need to improve things if the Secretary of State herself
doesn't want to use their thing and instead wants to roll her own.
I think this is maybe a wake-up call to the people
to maybe use the next-to-lowest bidder or something.
I don't know, somehow improve what they're doing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Now, to address the point you made, Rob, about transparency,
brings up an interesting question.
Let's say that Hillary Clinton decided she wanted to use,
I don't know, GPG on her account,
on the State Department computer,
on the email account she has there.
Well, that's something she could easily hide.
She wouldn't be able to give that to the archive
and let people read it because it's encrypted
with a key only she knows.
Is that stepping outside the boundaries
of what she should be doing,
even though it's actually making things more secure?
I would say so because it's a matter of transparency.
And if further encrypting things
so her bosses can't see what she's doing
is against the, I guess, terms of service
that State.gov would give you.
She's the Secretary of State.
We're her bosses, I'm sorry.
That's true.
So we're her bosses.
Can we have it both ways,
where we say it's got to be transparent
and it also has to be secure?
Well, look, I have a personal email account.
I can encrypt that seven ways till Sunday if I want to.
But if I'm working for a company
that has say over what I do in their name,
then if I'm doing things in their name,
I might be required to do so in a way they could oversee.
Interesting.
Bernie, you had something?
Yeah.
First of all, it was against U.S. State Department's
internal policies to run a private email server
and do official communications on that.
And certainly the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
was aware of that policy.
And today, FBI Director James Comey said that
Hillary Clinton's practice of sending and receiving emails
while traveling in foreign countries
and general lack of cybersecurity
made it, quote, possible that household actors
gained access to Secretary Clinton's
personal email account, end quote.
So she was sending email back and forth
on her own mail server, apparently unencrypted,
in foreign countries where you know that,
I mean, the State Department has a whole department,
sub-department called Diplomatic Security.
They're kind of like a mini NSA
that works within the Department of State
and make sure that state secrets
are supposed to stay secret.
And they were just thwarted every time with Hillary,
whether it had to do with her
using an unencrypted BlackBerry
on Mahogany Row in the State Department
or traveling around the world
using unencrypted mail
for official State Department secrets.
By the way, this was information that
the department, the head of the FBI today said was,
or yesterday said was classified
at the time it was sent or received.
And that a person in Hillary's position,
quote, should have known
that an unclassified system
was no place for that conversation, end quote.
So Hillary knew what she was doing.
Well, okay, but I have a question though.
I have a question about,
you said that,
Cromie was saying that
it could have been intercepted by hostile actors
while she was traveling.
What system does state.gov have
if she's using that system
for it not to have been intercepted?
Well, it's this whole system of diplomatic cables
that there is a way of,
the State Department already has
a significant infrastructure
for classified information exchange
throughout the Department of State.
Now we do know that some of that stuff
who people with security clearances had access to
was leaked and a whole lot of cables,
diplomatic cables
from Hillary Clinton's State Department
got leaked to Wikileaks several years ago.
And that's a whole backstory
that is in the headlines today.
And those were in the proper place, right?
Well, they were in the proper place
and it got compromised from an insider
who already had access to the system.
But what Hillary was allegedly doing
was using an unclassified system
in foreign countries
to send and receive classified information.
And I think that really does affect national security.
But I think just as important
as what Rob brought out,
it was a method that to me
is pretty transparently obvious
with a way of evading oversight
in what her department was doing.
And I'm not defending that.
I'm not saying that she's not trying to hide something
or being sneaky or something like that.
But what I'm questioning is the assumption
that because she was using a private server,
it's less secure.
And when you have a system
where by what we've just seen,
documents were leaked by an insider
because there are so many people
who have access to state.gov
that somebody could do that.
Whereas if she's using her own server,
not that many people have that same amount of access.
So the leak isn't as possible.
But also on a level of peer security,
anyone in computer security will tell you
one of the strongest tools in your arsenal
are the logs and access
to what's actually going on on a technical level.
So if state.gov is being attacked by somebody,
ostensibly if the people there know what they're doing
and they're not asleep at the wheel or something,
they can see what's going on.
They can maybe guard it
or they can track it down
to the responsible parties afterward.
If she's using her own email server,
who's to say she doesn't have a million Trojans on there
from clicking cat pictures
on AOL instant messenger or something.
The government can't guarantee the security of that
in whatever manner they can.
So again, I think it's a less secure system.
I think that I sort of agree,
but I also think that she had the opportunity,
had it been set up in a more comprehensive way,
like end to end and like taking ownership of your connection
when you are overseas and thinking all of that through,
which would take a fair amount of engineering
from her staff standpoint.
She had the opportunity to have even better security,
I would dare say, than the government,
but it was that she didn't complete that.
And so by comparison, in hindsight,
they're looking at, okay, this is our standard system.
We have certain infrastructure for these communications
and you did sort of a halfway job on something
that yeah, potentially could have been more or less equal,
but it wasn't, especially given the travel and so on.
And that's partly because of her carriers
and where she's getting connectivity on a personal phone
and so on and so forth,
versus what the US government coordinates for embassies
and so on and so forth.
Well, it's certainly not going away,
even with yesterday's statement.
In fact, the Washington Post has upgraded its verdict
on the veracity of Mrs. Clinton's classified information claims
from two to four Pinocchios,
which apparently is how they've been measuring this.
The Associated Press wrote that the FBI
left much of her account in tatters
and may have aggravated questions of trust
swirling around her Democratic presidential candidacy.
And if the public doesn't buy her argument
that she's the safe choice,
much of the advantage she has on the,
according to this news story,
sometimes intemperate Mr. Trump,
much of that advantage will disappear.
So yeah, this is something,
while I think it's mostly a waste of time
to be constantly talking about this,
it's something that could definitely influence
how people vote, how people think of the candidates.
It's relevant for that reason.
Let's be thankful she does email.
Well, yeah, should we be thankful she does email?
Maybe in a situation like this,
you tell her don't do email,
tell your assistant and they'll do the email
and you just do the negotiations or whatever.
Yeah, perhaps the next administration will work just like that.
What email account is she going to use if she's president?
That's what I want to know.
Oh, I know, I know.
The president is not allowed to have their own email account.
Is that true?
They're not permitted.
The NSA will not let them do it.
Wait, so these emails I'm getting from Barack Obama
saying that if I, it's all caps too, I don't know why,
the million dollars in a bank account in Kenya,
that's not something that I should believe?
I think that probably wasn't really from President Obama.
Sorry to break it to you.
All right, we might have to cancel
some of the HOPE features that we were funding.
You were counting on that money to fund HOPE conference.
I was.
We were going to have an elephant in each room.
I knew it was too good to be true.
Anyway, so it's something to look out for.
I'm just wary of being told things that aren't technically true
like we hear so many times in mass media
talking about what hackers can do and what hackers have done.
And lots of it turns out to be only theory.
A lot of it turns out to be a complete fabrication
and fear mongering.
Let's at least get the technical aspects of this correct.
And they're oversimplified, vastly oversimplified.
And there's all these things being conflated and overlapping.
And somebody wants to make some final determination
out of just theorizing about what happened
or what should have been the right way to do whatever.
And I think ultimately, it's vastly,
there's vastly much more nuance and there's a lot more depth
to how to actually implement this stuff
and what actually occurred and what we're looking at in total.
And it's interesting to see how wrong people do get it
and just how exaggerated, I guess, the discussion gets.
And speaking of how wrong things can be,
there's news stories going around concerning this hacker named Guccifer,
who has claimed that he has had access to Hillary Clinton's email
and has been found to have broken into email accounts
with a number of high-level authorities in the United States.
Well, word has it today that he is missing from his prison cell.
In fact, there's also word that he's dead.
And both of those words are false words.
In fact, you can go to snopes.com to find out about this one.
I've never gone to something so quickly after it's been reported.
But on the 2nd of July of this year,
Hillary Clinton was interviewed by the FBI.
And on the same day, conspiracy site whatdoesitmean.com,
wow, I need to visit that site more,
reported that hacker Marcel Lazar-Lahel,
whose online moniker is Guccifer,
had gone missing from his Virginia jail cell.
He'd made headlines, again, for breaking into the emails
of a number of high-level authorities in the U.S. and his native Romania.
He also claimed he hacked into Hillary Clinton's
and the Democratic National Committee's email servers.
The former taxi driver is currently awaiting sentencing in the United States
on charges relating to hacking into private AOL accounts.
What amazes me is that you can hack into private AOL accounts from Romania
and get a free trip to the United States to face charges.
That, to me, is just unbelievable.
It also amazes me that there are still private AOL accounts.
That is incredible, too, yeah.
An astounding foreign intelligence service report circulating in the Kremlin today
says that the Romanian hacker known as Guccifer,
who successfully gained access to all of the private and government emails
of Hillary Clinton, was discovered missing yesterday
by agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
who were sent to interview him at the U.S. jail he was supposed to be in,
and his whereabouts are still unknown.
So you might see that story circulating.
The claim didn't get very much traction until July 5th,
which was yesterday, when FBI Director James Comey announced
that the Bureau would not be pursuing charges against Hillary Clinton.
That announcement kindled interest in the earlier report
that Guccifer had mysteriously disappeared from his jail cell
ahead of an FBI interrogation.
Rumors that he had disappeared from or died in custody are false
and have been refuted by a statement from the city of Alexandria's sheriff.
And you better listen when the city of Alexandria's sheriff says something.
Marcel Lahel Lazar, a federal inmate, also known as Guccifer,
is at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia.
He is alive and has never been missing from this facility.
And that was an official tweet.
The rumor of his disappearance originated with a single source,
the blogger known by the pen name Socha Fall
of the political conspiracy site whatdoesitmean.com.
There's another site called Rational Wiki
that describes that site outlet as sensational and outrageous.
So you can never really believe what you hear
on the internet or in the mass media.
So take everything with a grain of salt and question and ask questions.
Ask lots more questions and learn.
Learn how it's all put together.
Well said.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, it is about learning.
And please teach.
You have plenty to offer.
All of us do.
It's common sense.
You know, it's really...
We take things too seriously that we read online and accept them as gospel.
And that's simply not the case.
There is...
Well, there's always these instances of Twitter accounts being hacked
and Facebook accounts being logged into.
Get this.
Brendan...
How do you pronounce his name?
Can I see it?
Iribe?
How would you say that?
I don't know.
I-R-I-B-E.
I don't know how to pronounce that.
I'm going to say Iribe.
Can we agree on that?
Yeah, I like that.
Brendan Iribe, CEO of Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus.
Oh, man.
Has become the latest victim in a long line of tech moguls
who have had their social media accounts hacked over the past few weeks.
The hacker who took over...
I said...
I forgot how to do it already.
Iribe? Is that what I said?
Iribe's account on June 29th used the platform to announce himself
as the company's new CEO saying,
we here at Oculus are very excited to announce our CEO.
And his handle is LID, L-I-D, on Twitter.
During the relatively brief hack, LID reportedly changed Iribe's...
You know, it's easier to say LID than Iribe.
I'll say that right now.
Changed Iribe's biography to read,
hey, it's LID.
I'm not testing your security.
I'm just having a laugh.
Referring to the long line of recent celebrity and tech boss Twitter hacks.
Tweeting to Iribe's 16,000 followers,
the hacker went on to mock the tech boss for using the same password for four years.
Imagine creating the coolest crap,
and he used a different word,
to ever be introduced to gaming and technology,
but using the same pass for four years.
LOL, silly Mr. CEO.
The hacker also changed Iribe's cover photo
and said he would only give the CEO his Twitter account back
if he gets a free Oculus Rift.
If Brendan wants his Twitter back,
I want a free Oculus Rift,
so I watch porn the cool way.
This is...
You know, it basically tells you how serious such issues are.
Not at all.
This is just a silly prank.
And if somebody is dumb enough to use the same password...
You know, we had Hotmail.
427 million passwords from Hotmail are floating around right now,
and they are attached to various usernames.
So if you're one of these people that can't keep track of more than one or two passwords,
and you use the same password on different systems,
you need to be concerned with this.
It's your own fault.
You're using the same password on a weak, compromised system,
and then using it on something that you care about a little bit more.
Somebody gets access to that first one,
they're going to get access to that second one.
It's as simple as that.
I think, you know, we all know to use different passwords,
or at least mix it up a little bit.
Doesn't that make sense, Bernie?
It does make sense, but...
You're free to change them as well.
Yeah, you are.
It doesn't have to be the same password that you used four years ago.
So anyway, yeah, that's a great reminder to do a little password...
maintenance, everyone.
Yes.
Just for fun.
Don't use the same...
Don't even use something that's similar.
If you have to write it down and encrypt the file where you write down your passwords,
if you're going to do that, even if it's on your own system, it's not hard to encrypt things.
They tell you things are difficult.
They say that hackers are always going to figure out a way in.
Well, yeah, you know what?
Hackers will always figure out a way in, as will almost anybody.
If it's something that is glaringly open, but if you learn about encryption,
if you learn how to keep your important stuff secure,
and you keep track of the important passwords that allow you to unlock
the file that has all your other passwords in it, you should be safe.
You should be okay.
There are all kinds of hysterical warnings about using public Wi-Fi
and how you will be hacked mercilessly by hackers,
because hackers are the only people doing this.
It's not true.
It's not true, all right?
If you use certain safeguards, such as using SSL on websites you visit,
maybe not paying your American Express bill at an internet cafe,
if you feel that the network might not be 100% secure.
There are ways that you can be intercepted.
There are also ways you can detect this.
We're out of time, but I can't think of a better way than simply
asking a lot of questions, talking to hackers,
learning, going to monthly meetings of 2600,
and certainly going to Hope, because a lot of people there understand this.
And do different things.
Don't fall into patterns.
Try something new.
Try a new technology.
Try a different way of doing what you had done in the past and see what's possible.
It might take you in a whole different direction
and help you stay private at the same time.
One thing that I was happy to hear was that this person
that took over the Oculus CEO Twitter account,
I don't hear that he's facing a lengthy prison term.
Yeah, isn't that extortion or ransom?
I don't know exactly what, but yeah.
You have to basically understand the digital world and the real world
and take each one as seriously as it needs to be taken
and take steps to make things as secure as you want it to be.
It's really in your hands.
All right, we are out of time.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com.
That is our email address, and we'll be back again next week
for the final show before the Hope conference.
And again, more information on Hope, visit hope.net.
We'll see you next week.
Good night.
Later.
The finest ingredients are right in the mix.
So
so
When you learn you can build all the robots you'd like and it won't make you feel any better.
All it does is make us late for school.
Is that the only thing you care about?
Robot attack!
Robot attack!
Now you will eat your children.
Robot attack!
Robot attack!
Now you will eat your children.
Shock!
Short shock!
Short shock!
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
Robot attack!
Robot attack!
Robot attack!
Now you will eat your children.
Robot attack!
Now you will eat your children.
Your time is up.
I will no longer play.
Or you.