This is a message for my fellow WBAI listeners, from a guy who just happened to be born and
raised right here in the Republic of Brooklyn.
In case you didn't know it, and I think you do, January 20th will be a day that will live
in infamy.
This is the day that a certified wacko will be sworn in as president of this country.
On that day, I'm going to play hooky and party instead with Earth Mom and Randy Credico,
who I admit does a pretty good impression of me, and other WBAI producers, and do a
little karaoke myself at a low-cost, high-yield fundraiser for WBAI.
It's only 10 bucks, that's 10 bucks, 7 p.m. on January 20th at the Commons Cafe, 388 Atlantic
Avenue in downtown Brooklyn.
Come on, let's party, before we all end up in jail.
Yes, best hurry up, it's WBAI New York, the time is 8 o'clock, time for Off The Hook.
Yes, but if they could, they would, on Dilly Bum, but the best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, on Dilly Bum.
I hope that's understood, on Dilly Bum.
And it's another exciting edition of Off The Hook, Emanuel Goldstein here with you,
joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Kyle.
Hi.
Special guest, Mitch Altman.
Hello.
And down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
I'm not in Philadelphia, but I am in Pennsylvania, and greetings from that state.
You know, Bernie, you could tell us you're in Philadelphia, it wouldn't make any difference,
because we don't verify anymore.
So enigmatic.
We strive for accuracy in reporting.
Greetings from northeast Pennsylvania.
Full disclosure, and also greetings to Jim in the studio.
Hello.
And, yeah, we have a lot to talk about tonight, a lot going on.
But, you know, first I'd like to say hi to Mitch, who has not been here in quite a while.
You've got to move that microphone a little closer to you, though.
Yes.
There you go.
So you're back from where now?
Most recently from Berlin.
Okay, all right.
Mitch, as you may know, is the designer of the famed TV-B-Gons that many of our listeners have received.
And those of you who haven't received them, we're still sorry about that.
But hopefully everybody will get the premiums they asked for.
But what else have you been up to, Mitch?
Well, I was at 33C3 earlier before Berlin.
For those who don't know, C3 stands for Chaos Communication Congress, C3.
And 33 is the 33rd incarnation of that, 33rd year, hence 33C3.
Yep.
And I've been going since the 23rd, so I kind of like these things.
They've grown quite large in recent years.
15,000 German hackers.
Well, not just German hackers, but hackers in Germany.
Yeah, collecting in Hamburg most recent years from all over the world to present the projects they really love
and to share with one another talks and workshops and music and food and just about anything.
It's really cool.
I imagine the tone this year or last year must have been a little different
because of all the things that have happened.
How would you put your finger on that?
Well, me being an American over there,
there's been a lot of talk about what's going on in our country,
and they look to me to try to give insight, and I wish I had more insight to give.
What's a typical question you might get asked walking down the hall?
What's with you people?
Yeah, yeah, I get that here.
I really do.
Or what's with you, but that's another thing.
But yeah, how do you answer that for people in Europe that don't understand?
Of course, we can point to a lot of leaders over there that don't make any sense either.
Back in the day, there were a few occurrences.
Oh, in this day too, though, in this day as well.
Yeah, well, the whole world seems to be going in a right-wing trajectory,
and so many places that I've been traveling around the world, they're really hurting.
There's really only a couple of countries I can think of that in recent elections
have been going in a direction I think is more positive, Austria and Italy.
So now this is the first time you've been back in this country since when?
Let's see.
Well, I was home actually for an entire month, which is kind of rare.
That is very rare.
2016, I was only home two and a half months.
So, yeah, I was traveling in Europe for about a month,
and before that I was all over the planet, Brazil, China, Europe,
and all sorts of places where I was giving talks and workshops
and answering the question, what's with you people, to the best of my ability.
Well, okay, so all that said, can you tell us more about what 33C3 was like?
We've been to a number of those German conferences.
I like to think that the HOPE conferences are more or less inspired
by conferences like that that take place in Europe.
So I hope that's still the case.
I hope it's still got this international flair to it and kind of rebellious spirit.
Or has it gotten too big for that?
No, I think the spirit that you described is definitely there.
It's grown really big.
People in CCC, the Chaos Computer Club,
which puts on the Chaos Communications Congress,
they really did a good job in keeping the spirit as best they could
while giving more people the opportunity to experience these amazing events.
So unlike other conferences around the world,
hacker conferences, they don't shy away from politics,
and HOPE definitely is inspired by that, which is one of the reasons I love it.
I'm glad you raised that point because we do get some guff from people.
Is that the right word?
It's good enough.
We get guff from people who say that we shouldn't discuss politics at all.
We shouldn't be political.
We should just talk about computers and hacking and things like that.
I see the same kind of reaction whenever anybody other than a politician
talks about something political.
And not that the direction of the country is necessarily a political issue.
It's something that affects us on so many levels.
But particularly with hacking, I mean,
hacking is right there front and center in every story you're reading about today.
So to tell us, in essence, to shut up about it
and just let those quote-unquote experts deal with it
seems to me to be highly irresponsible and, quite frankly, dangerous.
Yeah, I couldn't have said that better myself.
Everything we do is political.
I mean, what is politics?
It's doing what we do, and it affects the world around us, right?
And how does it affect the world around us?
Do we want it to be positive?
Do we want it to be negative?
I hope we want it to be positive.
But we have to think about these things in order to have a positive impact in our world.
Everything we do has an impact.
What are you going to do?
What do you choose to do, and why do you choose to do it?
These are really important things to think about.
I was asked at the start of the last minute, I think someone had a cancellation at 33C3,
and they asked me to give a talk.
It wasn't technical at all.
It was somewhat personal.
But I put it in context of what's going on in our planet
and show that it's really important, well, it's always important,
to do what we do to make a positive impact to the best of our ability.
But what's going on in recent times in our country and elsewhere
really points out that that's super important for all of us to do.
And how was that received?
Very well.
We were watching a number of talks from 33C3 over here in the USA
because they were all streaming.
Yet another thing that they inspired us to do here,
we stream our talks as they happen at the HOPE conferences.
But that tone, that feeling, that curiosity, exploration, rebelliousness,
it was all still there.
I felt it.
And even though we were thousands of miles away,
it was really good to feel a part of that.
Yeah, and they do that purposely so that people can share in the joy of all that.
I think one of the unique things about these is they're less corporate,
and that attitude of not getting into politics is a very antiseptic corporate attitude
to if you're used to a trade show or you're used to a security conference or something.
You mustn't upset the sponsors.
You wouldn't want to get the sponsors upset.
Exactly.
So that sentiment then becomes something that's very easy for Americans, I think, to go to
almost out of this self-censorship or our own sort of PR firms.
No, I'm feeling that now.
I'm actually feeling that in our own social circles where people are just kind of,
okay, you know what?
We've talked about this enough.
Time to move on.
We don't want to be saying the same things over and over again.
First of all, you won't be saying the same things over and over again
because there's going to be no end of new material to deal with, just today alone.
My God, that press conference.
I'm referring to the first Donald Trump press conference in over six months, I believe.
And to see CNN almost thrown out, to see a completely legitimate media organization
being treated as if it was making up facts when, in actuality,
they were doing exactly what they should be doing.
This is the future.
This is what we have to look forward to.
And we need to be standing in alliance with people like this
and realizing that we're all in danger here.
Every outlet and WBAI is first and front in that.
I think the mantra we're going to keep falling back on
over the next however many months or years is we are all Pacifica
because Pacifica is used to getting thrown out of things.
But to see that almost happen to a major news organization,
simply for not, you know, this has to do with the BuzzFeed documents
that BuzzFeed released, I believe, yesterday
that purport to show Trump in some kind of compromising position.
I don't even know the facts.
And I don't even know if these are facts.
Supposedly, they have not been substantiated.
That is all CNN did.
They simply reported the existence of this
and the fact that they weren't substantiated.
And that is enough for them to be blacklisted just mentioning it.
Every two-bit dictator behaves like this.
You have to present him in the most positive light.
You have to show good pictures of him.
Believe me, I've been to some countries where this is how it works.
But to see it happen here.
Now, you'd better be speaking out on this.
As much as you are awake, you should be speaking out on this.
And I'm sorry if people are uncomfortable by that,
but the situation is an uncomfortable one,
and we're not going to shy away from that.
Bernie, any thoughts from wherever you happen to be in Pennsylvania?
Yeah, I happen to be watching that press conference as well,
and I was like, wow, this is really going in a direction
that we're going to have to experience for the next four years, maybe.
And the news story was that these documents were presenting,
documents containing this information about Trump
allegedly in a very compromising situation
when he was in a hotel apartment in Russia.
The story was that these documents were,
a two-page report about these documents
was presented by the intelligence community
to the President of the United States and to the President-elect.
That is the story.
None of the content of the documents were reported by CNN.
Well, Bernie, you've said enough.
You've said enough now to ensure that you will get thrown out of a press conference.
And Donald Trump will be writing down your name now and adding that to the list.
And did you hear the applause, too?
There was applause while Trump was vilifying CNN as a fake news media.
Yeah, but Bernie, where was that applause coming from?
The applause was coming from Trump's staff offstage.
This was staged applause.
Exactly.
You couldn't see that.
So this is like, wow.
This is the first press conference that Trump has done for months.
And so I hope he does a lot of them
because we really need to see what this guy is thinking about the press in this country,
which is a really important part of our society.
Well, it's interesting, too, because I was reading up on this.
And, again, this is all very, very relevant to the hacker world
because we are in the midst of all this.
There's all kinds of information that many of us are privy to,
all kinds of security issues that many of us know how to exploit,
and all kinds of facts that the mainstream misses that we can discuss,
regardless of who it happens to favor.
But one thing I noticed earlier today, I was reading news stories about this,
and I went to Google News, which is a good news aggregator,
but I noticed something very disturbing,
that the story about this press conference, the front and center story,
the first one that appeared was from none other than Breitbart News.
And Breitbart News was headlining that CNN is fake news
because that's actually what our future president said,
is that CNN is fake news, equating it with all the Pizzagate morons
and all the truthers and the birthers and the cure-cancer-now-a-miracle-cure-type people,
equating a legitimate news organization with that.
That was our future president doing that.
Breitbart News doing the same thing in their headline, saying CNN is fake news,
and that, if you went to Google News, was the first story you would see about that.
And I complained on Twitter, I called Google News out on that,
saying, why is that happening?
And I don't think that I have any sway at all.
But I did notice it's not there anymore.
So I don't know, maybe other people noticed it as well.
I hope so.
And we need to know how to make sure things like that don't continue to happen
because there are legitimate news outlets.
We don't agree with all of them.
I can name a bunch that I think are awful, but at least I know they're legitimate.
They check their facts.
They report when they get something wrong.
And then there are the illegitimate ones, and they are on all sides of the spectrum.
And we can't mix the two up.
We have to know what the difference between the two happens to be.
You mentioned truthers and birthers.
Just for any listeners unfamiliar with those,
those are the movements spearheaded by the president-elect himself.
Well, yeah, I guess so.
Conspiracy theories of all sorts.
And I like a good conspiracy more than most people,
but mostly on TV, where it belongs.
Have you ever tried to run a conspiracy?
It's difficult.
Somebody always talks.
Somebody always drops evidence that makes it really, really obvious.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's impossible, but come on.
It's absolutely absurd how much attention certain things have gotten
in place of actual news that isn't being reported.
So this is something to really focus on,
and that's something I think we have a unique ability to do.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie, please.
Did you notice President-elect Trump say, quote,
on the press conference today, he said, quote,
hacking is bad, but look what was learned from that.
Yes, yes, I did pick that up.
It's a good sound bite for us, I think.
But, you know, you have to wonder, though,
once this guy actually gets real power,
and think of all the power he has now.
It's nothing compared to the power he will have in just about nine days.
Yeah, so what's he going to do?
What's he going to do to people that he thinks are a threat?
And you better believe he thinks hackers are a threat
because it's been nonstop talked about ever since the election,
and it's not always going to favor him.
And the first time it does not favor him,
the first time something gets leaked that makes him look like an idiot,
and believe me, that will not take long,
what is the reaction going to be?
And that's something we have to be prepared for.
That's something we have to really understand.
We put out a magazine about hacking.
We put out the only regular printed magazine in this country about hacking.
Yeah, so I think maybe we might have something
to be a little concerned and worried about.
This radio station, another thorn in his side.
It's right in his town.
You know, he's sitting there right now at Trump Tower,
can turn on the radio to 99.5 and, hey, here we are.
And we're talking all kinds of crap about you,
and a lot of it is real and provable,
and he doesn't like that at all.
So this is the kind of thing that we have to be concerned about
and we have to plan for.
Well, the president-elect has shown a great love
of liking things when they're good for him,
not liking them when they're bad for him,
sometimes in the same sentence, sometimes in the same breath.
And this is free speech.
This is the media.
This is late-night television.
This is all manner of things, and hacking is among them.
So great for this hack that made his opponent look bad
or worse than him,
but the first hack that ends up with him, the target,
then hackers in general are going to be all terrible.
Yeah, I agree with this sentiment.
I don't want to come off as too catastrophist,
but it is a real thing that we may not even get the moment
to allow him to get it as far as how security works,
how talking about information security works,
the amount of importance that revolves around sharing information
and having the widest possible amount of information,
because as soon as you take away outlets for people
to talk about this stuff, like a magazine or other outlets,
in your own interest,
you're hurting the ability for independent security researchers
and other people to disseminate information about systems,
which inherently hurts the security structures
and the ways things are built in the future.
I'm just fearful that if we aren't talking about this stuff
and we aren't supporting one another out the gate,
we may not even have a chance to explain why we're here
and why it's important that we teach students and everyone
about hacking and hacking culture
and why it's important to innovation and so on.
Yeah, and I think you touched on a good point
as far as supporting each other,
because that's something we're going to have to learn how to do,
and it doesn't mean just supporting the people
who fall into lockstep with what you say.
It means supporting people that might not agree with everything
or might not agree with most of what you say,
but still are in danger
and are feeling intimidated and threatened.
So that's something, again, we're going to have to learn.
Yeah, and I go around the world
helping people form communities in the form of hacker spaces,
and at Noisebridge, where I was before going to Europe,
we had a Trump preparedness workshop.
Oh, wow.
And it was a whole bunch of people who volunteered
to teach what they know about security.
So having secure e-mails, secure encrypted hard drives,
if you're a journalist,
how to make sure your sources are kept secure,
and all sorts of different topics
that people taught each other on.
And it really is about people coming together,
no matter what your viewpoint is,
supporting each other
so that we can remain as free as we possibly can.
Our country's been through a lot of, you know,
it's only like 200-some years old,
but we've been through some really dark periods.
We've managed to survive,
even like the second president put in place the Sedition Act, right?
And no one was allowed to criticize him or the government at all.
Somehow we survived that and many other times since.
I don't know what's going to happen now.
In hackerspaces around the world,
people are talking about this much more now,
which I think is a positive thing.
But we have no idea how negative things might get.
So it's really important that we're discussing the possibilities,
including that this guy will be kept somewhat in check
by other aspects of our government and our society.
So we don't want to go into a place of total despair,
but we've got to keep our eyes open for the reality of the situation.
The thing is, Mitch, you'd be surprised how quickly those things fall apart,
how quickly the media toes the line,
how quickly the other forms of government
just basically become people who sign everything that the leader wants.
It might seem inconceivable, but it's being set up in that way.
It's the same reason that those surveillance structures are already there,
those same consolidated media outlets are all there in place
as tools for that executive authority
and will fall into place, as you said.
And without the diversity of outlets and opinions and resources flourishing,
we then become at the effect of those systems.
And imagine the narrow scope of technology then
when it's mainly suited to subjugate you.
And this is why it's such a mistake to set that apparatus up
so that it can be used in the future.
This is one of the harshest criticisms of the Obama administration,
is setting up more of this.
That, okay, maybe you thought Obama was great and he wouldn't abuse it,
his administration was fine,
but no guarantee in this country that it's going to stay that way.
In fact, no guarantee anywhere it's going to stay that way.
And once you build it, it's not going to be dismantled.
So that's something that unfortunately I think a lot of people are finally learning.
Yeah, well, having come from a place where just eight decades ago
things were going very much awry.
Oh, that's right. Germany, yeah.
Yeah, that place.
And there were many differences 80 years ago in Germany than now,
but there are some really disturbing similarities as well.
And then not long after that,
the Soviets going in and setting up a government
where the Stasi did some pretty amazing things as far as surveillance goes,
and they definitely weren't doing it in the best interest of the citizens of former GDR.
You're not criticizing Russia, are you?
I wouldn't.
Because I don't know if that's allowed anymore.
I think I just put myself on a blacklist,
but I'm probably already on it anyways.
We'll take you on.
But yeah, this has certainly been a topic of discussion everywhere I've been in Berlin.
And I just look down everywhere I go,
and there are these little bronze paving stones
with the names of people who were carted away and killed in concentration camps
in front of apartment buildings.
That's one of the subtle ways Germans, especially in Berlin,
keep track of the history, good and bad.
I guarantee you that any country, any part of the world, any time in history,
if you had asked the people right before some atrocity happened,
are you capable of this, they would have answered strongly,
no, we're better than that.
We're not. We're not better than that.
Nobody is immune from this,
and we need to pay close attention and monitor this and report
and never shut up, never stop talking about these things.
And always listen as well.
Support each other, listen,
and that's what I hope we remain here at WBAI,
where we become a safe place for people to speak out
on whatever it is that they want to get out there.
In fact, on that note, we'll be taking phone calls a little bit later on in the show.
I wanted to focus just a little bit of time, though,
on what happened last Friday
when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, known as ODNI,
for those of you who don't follow the acronyms,
released a declassified version of its report
on Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election.
And that report, which draws on intelligence gathered by the FBI, CIA, and NSA,
concludes with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin
ordered an influence campaign in 2016
aimed at the U.S. presidential election
that included hacking the personal email accounts
of Democratic Party officials and political figures.
Now, a lot of this has already been reported publicly,
but there are some key findings in that report,
such as the precise nature of the link between WikiLeaks
and the Russian hackers that had not been disclosed before.
There's all kinds of analyses of this online,
both supporting its findings and questioning its findings,
and I think both of those viewpoints are extremely important.
My way of looking at this, and tell me if you disagree,
when confronted with the possibility
that the Russians hacked into anything,
whether it's Gmail, whether it's a government computer,
whether it's a website, a database, you name it,
whether they hacked into something
in an attempt to influence the election,
my first reaction to that is, of course they did.
Of course they did.
I mean, if you say anything of that nature
and say that the U.S. government attempted to do this,
our reaction would be, of course they did,
because that's what they do.
We don't need to see the logs.
We don't need to see all the information.
We just kind of in the back of our minds know.
Of course you do need to see that information
if you're investigating the case yourself.
That's a whole other discussion.
But, yeah, this is how it works.
So I do believe that, yeah, there was influence here.
But my next point, or my next exclamation,
which many people don't agree with, is, so what?
Yeah, this is what happens.
What do you expect?
This is what they're going to do.
It should not be a big deal.
It should not be something that we are surprised by.
And it should not be something that causes
all kinds of hostilities and ramifications,
because this is how the game is played.
So I don't know why people are so busy trying to say,
oh, it's impossible, the Russians would never do this,
or people saying, my God, they did this,
it's time for World War III.
No, this is, you know, encrypt things, keep things secure,
use a little intelligence, and it won't be so bad,
you know, as far as when your information gets leaked.
And I know a lot of information did not get leaked,
and maybe we'll learn something when that happens
in the days ahead.
Yeah, you've got to expect that a lot of people
looking at the U.S. election around the world
were timing certain things around this.
It just goes to show how big and powerful a machine
this economy and government power is in the world
and in our own territory.
So it's, of course, something that everyone is looking at,
and that they wouldn't be doing this,
it would be probably more suspicious.
So I do agree that we can't be so surprised.
Mitch.
Yeah, I'm not.
And then Bernie.
I'm not surprised at stuff like this at all,
because, you know, like you said,
it is the way the game's played.
I don't want to blame the victim and say
they shouldn't have done whatever
and it's their own fault.
But the thing is, whenever the mainstream media,
in my mind, whenever the mainstream media
puts out something that vilifies some other place,
like in this case Putin, he's very easy to vilify,
just like Stalin was not all that many decades earlier.
Not just like Stalin.
Well, vilified.
In a similar vein.
Yes.
In a similar vein as Stalin was vilified.
Yes.
But why is this being put out?
So there are all these different places,
like the Hillary campaign wants to have an easy out
for explaining why they lost.
And if they can blame it on the Russians, so be it.
Okay.
I have a question for predominantly people on the left.
Are we going to drop the Hillary thing
at any time in the near future?
Because who cares?
You know, she lost.
It's over.
It's done.
Do we need to constantly go back and say,
oh, you know, she's trying to blame somebody else.
Who cares whose fault it was?
We need to focus on, you know,
the big monster coming up over the hill
approaching us right now.
And I don't see people doing that nearly enough.
Yeah, well, it's easier to look back at this point,
I suppose, for a lot of people.
We've got to really look at the way things are.
And there are other people in roles in our government
that are going to be using this information about Russia
for things that are very much not positive.
So, yeah, keep an eye on that too.
Yeah, right.
Go ahead, Bernie.
Go ahead, Bernie.
Oh, thanks.
As you and Amit just said, this is how the game is played.
Major governments around the world,
even minor governments like Cuba,
we all spy on.
All our governments spy on each other.
And the United States of America
is probably the biggest player in that game
and has not only been spying on other countries
but trying to influence and actually succeeding
in throwing elections, staging coups, that sort of thing,
going back many generations.
This is our country's history.
So I play a little mental exercise
whenever I'm listening to a news story or reading one.
And as Mitch just pointed out,
whether it's some political person
or the news media is vilifying some other country
for trying to interfere in our stuff
or whatever the story is,
if it's vilifying another country,
I try to...
The mental game I play with myself is,
does this apply to anything the United States has done?
If you swap the names
with whatever country is being vilified in a news story,
if you put USA in there,
can it actually apply in any situation in their history?
And almost always, yes.
Yeah, and again, you know,
that does not negate what's going on.
I think we should be focusing on all aspects of it
and not simply say,
well, you know, because we do it too,
then I guess it doesn't matter.
It matters whenever anybody does it,
we should be focusing on it,
but let's not pretend that our hands are clean
because they most certainly are not.
And how Bernie put this interests me very much
because looking at what's going on right now,
with every angle you can,
just from, I think, a very hacker perspective,
which is trying to see things as they are,
not as you're told they are,
trying to put your mind in the,
put yourself in the shoes of one side, of the other side.
Does this all make sense?
Does this all balance?
And I think that's part of why I think
we're looking now at a world,
as I think we have for a generation or two,
in which being a hacker and acting and behaving
and learning and thinking as a hacker does,
itself is becoming sort of a political act.
And that is, I think, one of the big reasons
that it would be really hard to truly separate
the political from the hacker,
like at our events and on our radio program.
Right, but without becoming preachy and boring,
I detest that.
I want to have a dialogue,
a good conversation back and forth.
Even if you're a hacker for hire
and leaking things for regimes
or for your favorite candidate,
it's all, as you said, a political act.
I really like that.
The one thing you mentioned about
the security and Hillary's emails,
that was brought up by the big monster
that's coming over the horizon
as a way to deflect.
He's deflecting, saying that the DNC's security
was not as good as the RNC,
which sets it up perfectly to,
anyway,
to deny the entire leaking motive
and everything,
like that it was the security
that kept anything untoward about Donald Trump
from coming out.
And then now that completely goes against
what we're now hearing about this,
what is it, the blaze or buzzfeed thing
of other things that the Russians
and the intelligence agencies are
quote, unquote, holding against Donald Trump.
I honestly think they just,
the intelligence agencies didn't know what to do.
They just sat him down and made him watch a video
of him doing something awful,
and they're in on it.
They're like, we can't think of anything else.
We got this on you.
Don't drag us through the mud again.
Without saying whether or not
there's any truth to any of this,
the fact that we're discussing
term-ending scandals
nine days before the term begins
tells me that we're in for one hell of a ride.
Oh, absolutely.
E, this is going to be a show
like you've never seen.
It's uncanny,
the amazing things
that we have to actually check and verify.
And that was a tactic during the campaign.
And all indications have kind of pointed to
the fact that a lot of that mode
and that spirit
hasn't really left this administration.
It's pretty much carrying on
the partisanship and divisiveness
in any way back to hacking.
Well, I mean, we never left hacking,
but I just want to say,
there are a lot of depressed people.
We've been talking about this
since the day after Election Day.
But, you know,
I'm not feeling that depression
with the people around me.
I'm feeling passion,
a lot of good conversations,
a lot of spirit,
and that's going to continue.
And I think in that sense,
this might be a really good thing for us
because it's a good slap across the face.
No one likes getting slapped across the face.
But once you have gotten slapped across the face,
you wake up a little bit
and you start doing things
a little bit differently.
And maybe that's what we need.
And if we stick together
and back each other up
and realize that there's so many of us
and that we have a lot to say,
I dare say we'll come out of this
a lot stronger than we came into this.
Just remember, there were so many people.
We're here in New York.
It's easy for us.
There are so many people
in other parts of the country
that don't have that support network
that might feel like they're alone.
And we need to make sure
they know they are not alone,
whether it's because
you're in a particular social group,
have particular preferences,
come from particular backgrounds,
or just are a little too smart.
There's all kinds of reasons
why you might feel like
you're in this by yourself.
But believe me, you are not.
Or your context is not allowing you
to express yourself the way you'd like to
or a myriad of other things
that you find make you a little bit different
than the thrust of society
is trying to impart to everyone.
And this difference that we have
is knowledge, too.
And don't forget,
our keen understanding
of a lot of this technology
and a lot of the systems,
as well as the legislation
and stuff behind it,
as we've talked about
many, many times on this show,
through experience many of us have had
either around the legal system
or vicariously through stories
that have impacted the hacking community
over the years.
So I think all of those things
are tremendously to our advantage.
And we bring those skills to this.
And as you said, it's a slap.
It is a slap, I think,
because we should have seen
our involvement, our place,
our importance long ago
just given how much hacking
was in the news
and in the forefront
of talking about politics
or whatever,
whether it's behind-the-scenes hacking
between parties or whomever.
It was ever-present, omnipresent,
and as important as ever
for us to help interpret and share
and hear other people's insights on
so that we can together
draw our truths and conclusions
and build a future
that doesn't resemble our worst fears.
Mitch, I know you've been involved
for many years
dealing with these kinds of feelings
of helplessness from people,
isolation, and depression
that many people in our community,
in the hacking community,
have had to deal with.
You were on a panel, in fact,
called Geeks and Depression, I believe.
Yeah.
At one of the HOPE conferences.
How do you see this going?
Do you think this is something
that will help empower people,
or do you see people perhaps
getting more disenfranchised
as a result of the changes?
Well, at first,
people are feeling disenfranchised
and in shock and despair,
but community is all about
people looking out for one another,
and that's what you and Kyle
have just been saying.
We have to look out for each other.
We have to support each other,
and make sure everyone knows
that they're not alone
in whatever it is they're feeling.
Back in the 1980s,
when the Reagan administration
was coming into power,
it was really effective
in getting people to feel
if you disagreed at all
with what was going on,
that you are just an alien,
and it was very alienating.
We have to be sure that we,
with the communities that we have
and the Internet now,
that a lot of people have access to,
that the word gets out
that people aren't alone,
that we are supporting each other,
and it's really important
that we have this ongoing discussion.
And very important for us
to not get lost in the fragmentation
of our affinity groups,
of our media,
of our knowledge or expertise,
experience,
or even personal eccentricities,
or whatever it may be.
We need that camaraderie
to be something that supports
people coming together
and having strength through that,
and not be lost to despair,
because that is when people
don't have a chance.
I've talked about this
in other instances
about veterans and friends
and family I've known.
They didn't have a chance.
They went.
I didn't even get a chance
to talk to them as a friend
and really open up
what they're going through,
and I don't like that,
and I don't want that
for anyone else.
I really hope that people
don't suffer in silence
and they actually express themselves
and come together
around solving problems together
so that people,
like you said, E,
that are isolated,
that are out in other parts
of the country,
that may not know
where they can get support
or learn more
or feel like they're affecting
their world
or the country proper,
that they have that chance
to thrive
and to become
who they're destined to be
and not just disappear
to despair.
Let me interrupt for a second.
Continue that thought.
No, no, I'm done.
The phone number is 347-335-0818
if people want to join in
on the conversation.
Please continue.
Yeah, so we,
back, you know,
to draw an analogy
with the Reagan administration,
there was this guy, James Wad,
who was put in place of the EPA
to dismantle it,
and that was the best thing
that could have happened
for the environmental movement
back then.
What we're facing right now
is not just the destruction
of environmental movement,
but perhaps the very democracy
form of government,
not only in our country
but around the world,
any possibility we have left.
So hopefully a slap in the face
isn't a good thing to feel,
but a wake-up call
and people coming together
to do,
it's really important
all the time
for us to do
all the cool stuff we do,
and this is just
a really important reminder
that that is really true.
I can hardly wait
till the third season
of Mr. Robot.
I don't know what they're
going to come up with
to top this.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Yes, it's Tom from the Bronx.
Tom, we haven't heard from you
in a dog's age.
Wow.
Well, it's hard to get through,
I suppose.
I suppose so.
Only one phone line, though.
I'd like to say this.
It's a catastrophe
in ways coming.
I think Hillary Clinton
actually threw the election to Trump.
I got a bad feeling about that.
Well, that's one hell of a tactic
on her part.
What would be in it for her?
Well, I don't know,
but maybe they feel
Trump could do a lot
of hideous deeds
that maybe she doesn't want
to be connected to.
Okay, all right.
That's possible.
The hideous deeds,
I can definitely see that.
Yeah, and I don't know
what the heck
we're going to do.
I wonder how they're going
to handle a lot of things.
I wonder what's going to happen
to people's pensions.
Are they going to get
a dollar a month or something?
I mean, I really wonder.
Yeah, health care, immigrants.
There are just so many things
to wonder when God's name
is going to happen.
But just remember that
everything that does happen,
it's owned by them.
It's their fault,
the people that are doing this.
So let's make sure
they're accountable.
Yeah, well, we've got to hope
for the best.
That's all I can say.
All right, Tom.
Good hearing from you.
Just one thing.
Yes?
Peanut butter and banana sandwiches
will go big time.
That's what people ate
during the Depression.
I never had one of those,
but you know what?
I will try it now.
That was big during the Depression.
Sounds like something.
People ate that at a compulsion.
Wow.
All right, well, Tom,
good hearing from you again.
Stay in touch.
Good to chat with you, bud.
All right.
Our phone number again,
347-335-0818.
We only have one phone line,
so whoever gets in the quickest
is the person that we put on the air.
Go ahead, Rob.
I like peanut butter
and banana sandwiches.
I've never had that.
I've had jelly.
Try it with a little honey on it.
It's great.
Is there a particular type of bread
it works best with?
Whatever your preferences are.
We used to serve that
and call it a monkey sandwich
at a deli I worked at.
Peanut butter on raisin bread.
That's surprisingly good.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Hey, guys, it's Dalsini.
Oh, Dalsini, how are you?
Hey, what's up?
So I have a quick announcement
because, you know,
speaking of apparatuses...
Well, this is the place.
Our next New York City Privacy Board meeting
is coming up on January 19th,
and if people want to know more,
they can go to the URL
bit.ly slash privacy NYC.
And what kinds of things
are discussed at these meetings?
So in particular,
first we're going to focus on
the link NYC kiosks
that have been installed
all over the city.
Yes.
And this is a conversation
that came about from Hope
because we had a talk there last time
that, you know, touched on that,
and we didn't really know
what was going to happen
at the time too much.
The privacy guidelines
on their website are very vague,
and we don't know
what our politicians have agreed into,
which, you know,
brought up the conversation, of course.
How much are our politicians
informed about this,
and are they just giving away the store
with regards to our privacy?
So that started the conversation,
and from there, you know,
we're hoping to get some things
moving on a local level,
which I believe,
with what was discussed on the show today,
is one of the first things we need to...
on one of the first arenas
where we need to start.
Yes, yes.
Everything around you first
and move your way out
towards your region and...
Yes, definitely.
Dalshini, give out the information
one more time about the meeting?
Yeah, I just realized
I gave the wrong URL.
So it's bit.ly,
b-i-t-dot-l-y
slash privacy...
Hang on one second.
I got to look this.
I just made this URL.
Actually, we made it easier.
P-r-i-v-2-0-1-7.
So priv2017.
On Bitly.
Okay, great.
Thanks very much for that information.
Okay, bye.
All right, take care.
And that's the kind of thing
that we need to be
spreading information about.
It's happening all over the place.
If you're looking for a way
to get involved,
start with groups like that
in your area.
Again, 347-335-0818
is our phone number.
And talking of getting involved,
the NYC Privacy Board,
that's a project that came together
at our local 2600 meeting,
which is also a great way
to either get involved
with the scene that's going on
around you,
wherever you are in the world,
or if you don't find one,
start one yourself.
Absolutely.
Or a hackerspace.
Hackerspaces as well.
Those two.
All kinds of things you can do.
And crypto parties.
Some people have 2600 meetings
at their hackerspaces.
Sure.
Which is good,
but sometimes you want
to get away from the computers
and go out into the mainstream
and see people
walking down the street.
The first meeting
was our 2600 meeting
here in New York City.
And we met so many people that way
that were not aware
of what 2600 or hackers
were all about,
or were just aware
of the mainstream definitions.
So by all means,
keep that in mind
when you decide
where to have your meetings.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Hi.
This is Rose
from Flemington, New Jersey.
How are you doing?
Great.
I have to turn
this damn radio down.
It's giving me a hard time.
Yes.
Please turn the radio down.
I'm sorry about that.
I'm trying to get it off.
Yeah, I just want to make
a quick couple of points
that when Reagan came in,
there were 45 cities
with more than one...
This radio is acting bad here.
It won't go off.
Let me attack this.
Yeah, we have a way
of forcing our way
through the radio waves.
Yeah, no.
The thing is,
I have to pull it out
by the plug.
Pull the plug, kid!
Damn you.
Why won't you behave?
Okay, well, now...
Here's the point.
Reagan, yes.
When Reagan came in,
there were 45 cities in America
which had more than one
news outlet,
and when he left,
there were 17.
And then we have to kind of
look back a little bit further
to the early 50s
when he was tangled in
with Julie Stein
and other people
who were on the radio
and other people
who were on the radio
and other people
who were on the radio
and other people
who were on the radio
and other people
who were on the radio
He worked with Julie Stein
to get rid of
the stagecraft union,
working very closely
to get rid of
the stagecraft union,
working very closely
with Hoover,
and he received $400,000
to stop that union.
with Hoover,
and he received $400,000
in 1952
to stop that union.
We have people in this country
We have people in this country
who actually believe
that Reagan was a hero,
who actually believe
that Reagan was a hero,
but he was the one
who shipped
all the jobs overseas.
and you can't get
through that ignorance.
through that ignorance.
And so he never
So he never
had much known
And the Donald, I mean, the guy needs a...anybody who brags about functioning on three hours
of sleep needs a hair burn and a pee test.
That explains a lot, actually.
Doesn't it?
Yeah.
Because if I...
And I'm going to have three fabulous wives in 10 years cranking out the babies.
It's just so strange.
I've got a comment for you.
How about people in glass houses should not defecate in public?
Well, that's quite a concept I'm going to try the rest of the night to get out of my
head.
But thanks so much for that call and for those thoughts.
And please keep them coming.
Thank you.
Bad question.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you very much.
Bye.
Wow.
We have the best callers in the world.
We really do.
Our email address, by the way, here at OffTheHook is oth at 2600.com.
Please write to us with your thoughts, comments, opinions, things like that.
I think it's people in glass houses don't need to defecate in public.
Let's just move on.
Yeah.
Here's a story.
Okay.
Thank you for that.
You hear about this Alexa gone berserk?
We had Alexa in the studio a couple of weeks ago.
And people really liked that.
Alexa had fun, too.
She wants to come back.
But apparently she wants a script beforehand to know what we're going to ask her because
that song apparently took a lot out of her.
Somebody on television, a TV anchor, said something on the air.
And apparently Alexa's all over the country acted upon it.
That's what the story says.
A news presenter said, I love the little girl saying, Alexa ordered me a dollhouse.
And apparently what happened was people have Alexas that are sitting there.
In fact, I'm probably driving them crazy right now because they're triggered by the word
Alexa or the name Alexa.
They went and ordered a dollhouse for a lot of people.
So we don't have the one we brought in set up that way.
But I understand it's possible to order things by voice.
But I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think you need to verify before something
actually gets shipped off to you.
I don't know.
But I'd like to know for just for experimentation, I'd like to know how many Alexas are responding.
If I say, Alexa, count to 10.
How many of you are dealing with that right now?
How many of your Alexas just started counting to 10?
I could have done a lot worse.
I know like a self-destruct command as well.
Or find the most expensive thing on Amazon.
Yeah, yeah.
Or buy me a car.
Alexa, buy a car.
Let's see what happens.
Well, some people are clever and they pick one of the other wake words rather than Alexa.
So if you say, Echo, count to 10, you might set off a different signal.
Echo, count to 10.
Amazon, count to 10.
Those are the three.
That's it.
You should be able to pick whatever you want, I think.
But then again, I didn't design the thing, so I don't really know.
But I'd like to know more about that.
And I'd like to know if our Alexa demonstration a couple of weeks ago set off any others.
But it should be pointed out that you can turn off in your Alexa settings if you have
one of these, the ability to just order something by a voice command.
Yes.
A lot of fun.
A lot of things that we'll be able to do in the future as well.
Play with it by all means, but never take it that seriously.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hello.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
Happy New Year.
Thank you.
Donald Trump's on my mind.
Oh, boy.
What a surprise.
Yeah.
I got to tell you, I never voted for a Republican in my life.
I'm 72 years old, but I voted for Donald Trump.
Oh, it's your fault.
I'll tell you why.
I thought that Hillary had to be stopped, and I couldn't see myself voting for Cruz
or any of the others.
I voted for Bernie in the primary, and after he went down, I made my decision that Hillary
had to be stopped and the Democrats had to be taught a lesson.
Can I ask you one question, though?
Did you vote for Jeff Sessions?
Well, I didn't vote for Jeff Sessions, but to tell you the truth, talk about crappy news.
All this stuff about Trump, about being a racist and everything else, the news puts
it out, everybody listens to it, and that's all you hear.
It's like a broken record, oh, he's a racist, he's a homophobe, he's this, he's that.
The man has never dropped a bomb on anybody in his life.
Hillary Clinton kills people, so did Obama killed people for eight years, and nobody
got out in the streets and said a damn thing about it.
Okay, well, first of all, Donald Trump is not in a position where he's supposed to be
killing people, whereas every president of the United States, unfortunately, does have
that power.
In a month or so, I bet that Donald Trump will have killed people.
Yeah, well, why don't you write him a letter, ask him, pretty please.
Yeah, if that record keeps up, if that's maintained where Donald Trump kills nobody while he's
president, then I'll agree with you, but it's really not fair to compare somebody who is
in office as president to somebody who's a businessman who really shouldn't be killing
anybody.
Well, none of them should have been killed.
I agree.
But then you look at life.
In a perfect world, but...
People have been killing people for millions of years.
Yeah, but that's the nature of our country and that office, so, you know, I would like
Donald Trump to be the first president ever not to do that, but I don't see it happening.
You do raise a good point, they were not equals.
Make friends with the Chinese, Putin will get rid of ISIS, we won't have to kill anybody.
Well, yeah, it sounds like you're listening to what he's saying.
I don't know.
Let's see what happens.
You know, it's going to be very interesting.
We have plenty of time to discuss and debate and compare notes.
I just think, you know, for those people who say that they didn't like Hillary Clinton
and that's why they either didn't vote or voted for Trump, just remember that all the
people, including all the judges, Supreme Court justices, the people in this cabinet,
those are people that you voted for as well.
So just, if you're good with that, fine, you know, you're good with that.
But if you just were voting to send a message for one person, I think that was a big mistake.
Well, you got to have faith in your fellow citizens, I think.
I do.
And I hope that we all come together in the future and have a drink over this episode
we're about to go through.
Including all of the people that Trump spoke out against.
All right, thanks for your call.
Yes, all those people as well.
Boy, okay, you know, I want to end with a sad story.
Because it is a sad story.
And Bernie, I know you know something about this.
Norway, Norway is, okay, I might have this wrong, they're making it illegal to listen
to the radio?
Or is it something else?
Well, sort of, if it's a radio that receives FM, you know, like WBA broadcasts on 99.5
megahertz FM, frequency modulation FM.
It's been around for decades, invented by Edwin Armstrong, and it's a way to get pretty
good fidelity audio from one point to another for free, at least for the receiver standpoint.
And anybody can build an FM radio, it's not a proprietary technology.
But, you know, here in the US, the FCC has tried to push everybody into something called
HD radio, or IBOC, in-band on-channel.
It's been kind of a flop.
But in Norway, they went one step further and said, we are now turning off FM, all FM
radio broadcast stations, and they all have to be digital, using something called DAB,
digital audio broadcasting, which is not a proprietary thing, like HD radio is here in
the US, but it's digital, and most radios don't receive it yet there.
They're just trying to push everybody to buy these new radios.
And two-thirds of Norwegians don't even want this.
So we will be...it'll be interesting to see what the Trump administration does in this
country with the FCC.
He's gonna...he may keep Ajit Pai, one of my least favorite FCC commissioner, and may
put him in charge as the head guy, so we'll see what happens.
But communication is important, and we have to follow this stuff.
Well, yes, apparently the shutdown is beginning today with the northern town of Bodø.
We were in Bodø, weren't we, Kyle?
Not sure, yeah, I think so.
Yeah, we definitely passed through there.
They're switching off their local network today.
And by the end of the year, all FM broadcasts in Norway will have ended, replaced by digital
audio broadcasting transmissions.
Yes, and what Bernie says is right, they generally offer better sound quality.
But, you know, kind of similar to what digital TV is like here in this country, you either
get it or you don't.
There's no fringe.
And once it's out, it's out, and the signal range isn't quite as great.
So there's advantages and disadvantages, and any time you force a change like that,
there's going to be some rough patches.
And, you know, I don't know what's wrong with just analog radio.
It works, and it reaches so many people, and it's magic.
And that's why we do what we do.
If you like what we do, if you don't like what we do, write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'll be back again next week.
Thanks, Mitch, for coming in.
You're welcome.
And we'll see you next time you pass through.
And the rest of us will be back in one week.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
Good night.