Fake News.
Fake News.
Faker News.
Fake News Fake.
Fake News.
Fake News.
Fake News.
Fake News.
Fake.
Fake News.
This fake news was indeed.
Fake News.
Are you tired of fake news?
You're listening to the alternative.
It's real news powered by real New Yorkers just like you.
WBAI 99.5 FM resistance radio powered by the people.
Keep it locked right here.
And you are listening to radio station WBAI in New York,
where the time is just about 8 o'clock.
Time once again for another edition of Off the Wall.
I'm sorry, Off the Hook.
Wrong show, wrong station, wrong day, wrong time.
This is the WBAI 99.5 FM resistance radio.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
Von Diddley Bonk for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Von Diddley Bonk!
WBAI 99.5 FM resistance radio
what's the exact amount?
Only $50.
$50.
And you pledge that to WBAI, you will get,
what will they get?
You will get an original acrylic-on-canvas painting
of a piece of historic data storage technology.
Might be something modern, might be something ancient,
might be somewhere from something in between,
but all of these paintings will be of various hallmarks
and landmarks in the timeline of data storage.
And they'll all be brightly colored, acrylic-on-canvas,
original paintings, not prints,
and they will be five-by-seven stretch canvases.
And there's a specific phrase that people must ask for,
right, when they call up?
Yes, if you call 516-620-3602
and ask for the historic data storage painting,
or you could go to give2wbai.org
and search for the historic data storage painting on there.
All right.
It's that simple.
And again, thanks to everybody who called in last week
to keep the radio station going, to keep us broadcasting,
to keep us transmitting our signal throughout the world
in one manner or another.
It's super important.
And this is our summer fun drive.
It's the smallest of the fun drives,
but it's no less important
because we do have to pay those bills.
Yes.
I have a question for Rob.
This really, as you know, I got two of these last week.
You did.
And I'm very much looking forward to them and having them.
You didn't get them yet.
No, I didn't get them yet.
He hasn't painted them yet.
He hasn't painted them yet.
Right, that would be something.
But I'm wondering what he's thinking
because historic data storage devices
could encompass quite a universe.
Would something like an abacus be classified?
Or a brain.
Brain could certainly be in historic data storage devices.
It's stored data for at least a little bit of time.
Oh, DNA, you could throw that in there.
That's good, RNA.
We talked about pacemakers last week.
Are you running out of ideas, Rob?
Is this why you need to use these things
instead of technology?
I'm doing my best.
But it's surprisingly interesting
to look into the history of these things
and how they all work.
And if you get one,
you will also get a little display placard
that explains what it is that you have a painting of
and how it worked and when it was used.
You could have a picture of the placard
because the placard itself is storing data, isn't it?
Oh, that's getting into recursion.
And it's also getting into recursion.
Oh, that's pretty funny.
Yes.
Well, folks, we're gonna have to rely on you calling us up
because we have no way of knowing
how many people are calling in.
We can't see the phones lighting up here.
And in fact, we can't even see the emails that come in
because somebody logged out.
And so we have no idea
how many people are calling in to pledge.
So we just hope that there are people out there
who are going to call in during this hour
to 516-620-3602 or to give to wbai.org
and pledge for these paintings
or pledge for whatever else you feel is something
that we're offering that you might like.
There's a whole list of things on the website.
And also, if you're just interested in pledging, period,
you can make that as simple as possible by texting,
by texting a special short code that we have.
41444 is the special short code that we have
and text the letters WBAI
and you will be able to pledge in that manner as well.
And there's all kinds of options.
I think you can have a recurring payment,
you can have a one-time payment.
You can pledge something like $5 a month
and that comes out to be, what, $60 a year,
which is not insignificant, but rather painless.
So there are all kinds of options
and we're using technology to embrace those options.
So the important thing is to do something
to help WBAI stay on the air
because that is how we've stayed on the air since 1960.
It works, it's something that people realize the value of,
this particular radio station here,
especially on a day like this,
where Trump's really gone mad again
and is lashing out at everybody.
And a lot of people feeling the pain.
This demonstration's going on right now in Manhattan
and I imagine throughout the country
about his latest attack on the trans community.
Latest, and it won't be the last either.
And it won't be the last community that is attacked.
We will need a station like WBAI
to keep people informed of the latest,
the latest in the carnage and the latest in the resistance
because this is where we organize.
This is where we talk about what do we do now
and hopefully we see some results.
Yeah, and we have been doing this since 1960.
This is the only thing that has kept the station on the air.
We don't get grants, we don't get sponsorships,
we don't get any fancy checks from large corporations
that would like us to feature their products and services.
All we do is what we're doing right now,
which is ask the listeners, you the listeners,
to show your support and throw in a little something
to keep us on the air, whatever you can afford.
If you're into donating $50,
you can get my historic data storage painting as a premium.
If you'd like to donate less or a different amount
or if you'd like to just donate without getting a premium,
you can donate any amount you wish.
Just call 516-620-3602 or go to givetowbai.org
and mark your donation in the name of your favorite show,
which we hope is off the hook.
It's certainly ours.
And do what you can to help keep this going.
This is what's been going on for 57 years now.
57 years of just this.
So it's crazy that it's worked so far
and I think we need to keep being this crazy.
Okay, Kyle, is that something you want to share with us
or is that something we don't quite know if we have yet?
I think I can share this with everyone.
There's two limited packages.
Our general manager just came in here to hand us some books.
He wanted us to know this.
Actually physically have them in our hands.
Yeah, this is late breaking additions
to I believe what we're offering already.
We have two of a particular book at the $40 level
that we would like to make available
and it is called Hack This!
24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects.
And the other pack is at the $70 pledge level
and we have five of these available
and it is a two book package.
One book being Beautiful Lego by Mark Doyle,
all about Legos and beautiful, beautiful Lego projects.
Great photography in there.
And then also Teach Your Kids to Code.
So there's five of those
and then two at the $40 level of Hack This!
Okay, so when you call 516-620-3602,
be sure to ask for those specific packages.
What were they again, Kyle, the two?
Sure. Hack This!
There's at the $40 level, the book is called Hack This!
I think if you indicate that,
we'll be able to track it and make sure it gets to you.
And when we run out, we run out.
So if that happens, we'll definitely let you know.
The other one is, I would say the Coding
and Beautiful Lego pack, we'll say it's at the $70 level
or just say Two Hacker Book Pack, maybe.
Well, are we guessing what it's called?
Because you have to get the phrasing just right.
I'm trying to get that information.
Okay, Rob was on it.
It might be the Teach Your Kids to Code package.
I think it is, Teach Your Kids to Code
and then you get Beautiful Lego as a part of that.
It's two books at the $70 level
and we have about just under half a dozen of those.
Okay, so we'll update people on that
as we learn more about what it's actually called
and how available it is.
Suffice to say, we'll get you as close
to what you wish to have and we have a variety of things
to thank you for supporting WBAI and Off the Hook,
the longest running hacker radio show in America.
Oh yeah, that too.
Okay, definitely, I'll wear that badge of honor
or curse or whatever it is.
Okay, I have the screen up now.
We do have the, for a pledge of $75,
you can get Beautiful Lego and Teach Your Kids to Code.
Wait, so the numbers didn't even match.
You were saying 70, 75?
It's $75.
You could get the books Beautiful Lego
and Teach Your Kids to Code.
He wrote it down, he wrote 70.
Give him a break, all right.
I just like accuracy and media, that's all.
Okay, the suggested price on the site is 75.
Pardon me for misspeaking.
We've only got five of this package.
It's written in front of you, you're not misspeaking.
Is there anything else in the room
you'd like to draw attention to?
No, no, no, I think I'm just, you know,
full disclosure is all.
Okay, so we have Beautiful Lego and Teach Your Kids to Code.
That's what this package is called.
There's only five in stock.
These are books that we've offered in fundraisers past
and we've found some extra copies of,
so we're offering those while we can.
516-620-3602.
Very, very limited time for those.
And very limited phone circuits too,
so be sure to jump on them quickly.
Or for a pledge of $40, you can get Hack This
by John Baketill, which is full
of incredible hackerspace projects.
There's an exclamation point at the end of Hack This.
Just to let you know, this is an active book.
It's an exciting book.
And it might not be listed the right way
if you don't include the exclamation point.
No, it's actually just called Hack This.
In our system, it's called Hack This
without the exclamation point.
You see, that's how you wind up going down the wrong road.
You leave out a punctuation mark like that
and who knows what you wind up getting.
You might get Hack This, that boring book
that doesn't have any enthusiasm.
This one's got an exclamation point.
That's the one you're gonna get.
Are they all signed as well?
Because the copy I'm looking at is signed.
Why are you asking me?
I didn't know these books existed before.
Wow, that's a good question.
I don't know why I'm asking you.
If one is signed, odds are they didn't just sign one.
Because I'm seeing a beautiful signature
of somebody I presume is John Baketill.
The author of the book, yes.
Yes, the author of the book.
That's generally who signs them, right?
It's a good idea.
Don't sign books that you didn't write, folks.
That's really rude.
It is kind of funny.
People go into bookstores and they sign all kinds of,
you know, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby.
It's inappropriate.
Don't do that.
You could get a Donald Trump stamp
with that ridiculous signature of his
and just sign children's books.
That would be fun.
That would mortify them.
That would traumatize them for life.
Well, it would be something fun.
He's scaring them already with rallies that he's having.
I know.
The kids' rallies.
That's a good point.
Wow.
And then right at the end of it,
he couldn't help himself but to take a dig
at the media as well.
At the end of it?
I think it was throughout it.
I couldn't stomach the entirety of it.
Well, none of us can.
But anyway, hopefully you can stomach us.
Hopefully you can get your dialing fingers engaged
and give a call to 516-620-3602
and pledge for any of these packages.
We'd love to hear from you.
And it's just great to know that our listeners are out there
and that they care.
And that we'll be here in weeks and months and years
to come to talk about what's going on
in the world of technology.
And we want to do that tonight.
We want to do as much of that as possible.
We also want to take phone calls a little later on.
Phone calls here into the studio.
Different phone number.
So don't call it now because we're not going to take it now
and it just proves that you're trying to cut ahead in line
if you start ringing that one phone line we have.
We'll give the number out and that's when
we'll start looking at that flashing light.
You know, I'm looking at all these books here.
They really are absolutely beautiful.
But I would say they pale in comparison, in my opinion,
to Rob's artwork here.
I mean, and there's quite a few left.
I would suggest, you know, in terms of dollar value
and staying power and uniqueness,
what Rob is offering here is really great.
And it has the added benefit of keeping him busy.
Because if he's not busy, you know what happens.
I do.
Bad things happen.
You know, idle hands and the devil,
something like that, right?
They are the devil's playground.
There you have it.
You guys know me too well.
Well, you can prevent all that by giving a call
to 516-620-3602 and asking for the,
what's the name of the package again?
I don't want to get it right.
For a pledge of $50, you can get
the Historic Data Storage painting.
But for a pledge of $40, you can get
a Hack This by John Baketall.
And for a pledge of 75, you can get
the Beautiful Lego and Teach Your Kids to Code package.
And all of these, not just my paintings,
but all of these are works by members
of the hacker community trying to create
and educate and enlighten.
And at the end of the day, that's what we're about
here at WBAI and hear it off the hook.
And this is the only thing that can keep that going.
So call 516-620-3602 or go to givetowwbai.org
and do what you can to help.
I think it's important to mention also
that on this program, we make a point
to have everything that is offered be a donation.
You're donating your time to make the paintings.
These books have been donated to us.
Everything that we offer is also another donation
to the radio station that we give
to those people who call in and donate.
So it's a lot of giving going on.
A lot of giving, but there's also a lot of getting
because if you're out there listening on the radio
or on the internet, you're hopefully getting something
out of this program.
I'd like to think, we've been doing this since 1988,
that people are getting something out of it.
Is it a good idea?
Should we keep going?
I think the votes are in.
I think we've got a following of sorts.
And certainly on the Hacker Radio Show Twitter feed,
we have a lot of people following that as well.
We have people on IRC channels.
We have spontaneous gatherings all across the country
of people who listen at the same time.
It's off the hook as a tradition
and we want to keep that tradition going.
516-620-3602.
Okay, so some of the news that's been going on.
Alex, I wanted to ask you about this.
Have you heard about this heated legal battle
involving Snopes?
I have not, actually.
Really?
Okay, let me be the one to tell you.
Enlighten me.
We know what Snopes is.
The fact-checking website that basically debunks
internet rumors, but they've expanded quite a bit
because there's a lot more lying going on lately.
So they now have 16 people working for them.
They basically call out political leaders for dishonesty.
But here's the thing.
They found themselves locked into a legal battle
that has drained all the money they need to survive.
Now, they get all their revenue from advertising.
They had to create a crowdfunding page this Monday
seeking half a million dollars, $500,000,
from readers to remain operational indefinitely.
Now, there's this company called Proper Media
that apparently isn't acting so proper,
according to Snopes.
They're the vendor that runs its advertising services,
and they've been withholding the site's revenue
and refusing to relinquish control of the site.
And that leaves the company that owns and operates Snopes.
Does anybody know the name of the company
that owns and operates Snopes?
Trivia question here.
No?
No.
It's called BARDAV, B-A-R-D-A-V.
There's a little bit of trivia for you.
Basically, that leaves that company with no way
of moving the site to a new host or installing its own ads.
They say we have no income whatsoever.
We've had no income whatsoever for the last several months,
and the future looked rather bleak.
Now, Proper Media is telling a very different story.
They say Snopes employees are continuing to get paid
from the advertising revenue,
and that this is basically not entirely true,
or not true at all, what is being said here.
So it's really kind of interesting.
They say that the CEO, the founder of the site,
David Mickelson, should be removed from the company
because of wasteful spending.
Now, the two sides have sued each other in separate claims,
present entirely conflicting descriptions
of who owns the company,
and what is being withheld from whom,
and the earliest chance for a resolution
appears to be a court hearing scheduled for next week.
So that's what's going on with Snopes.
But let me ask you this.
Why is Proper Media,
what's their alleged justification
for withholding this revenue?
Well, they're saying they're not doing it.
That's the thing.
So they're saying the money is going over to Snopes
or DBA, BARDAV.
Yeah, here's the thing.
It's got to do with ownership and control.
Mr. Mickelson, the founder,
owns 50% of the BARDAV shares,
and other entities apparently have more power as well,
like for instance,
there's a Proper Media officer named Drew Shantrop,
who has a seat on a two-person board alongside Mr. Mickelson.
So there's conflict here.
People, they have a stake in the company at Proper Media,
so apparently there's some kind of a dispute going on
with who controls the site, who maintains the funds.
It sounds to me like it's a complete disaster.
It's a complete disaster.
It also sounds to me like, you know,
we may lose a valuable outlet over this as well.
If it's true that they're withholding funding
or withholding revenue from Snopes,
they're weakening them,
and then at the same time causing them
to spend probably a ridiculous amount of money
on lawyers to pursue this claim.
Yes.
So, you know, this is just part and parcel
of the tactical skirmishing that goes on
with the legal system in general.
There is a hearing scheduled for August 4th,
and hopefully some clarity will come after that.
Now, Proper Media wants the jury to be able to decide
Proper Media wants the judge
to remove Mr. Mickelson from the company,
and the BARDAV part of all this,
the ones who own Snopes,
is hoping the judge requires Proper Media
to hand over the rest of the advertising revenue.
So I think what we need is we need a Snopes page about this
to basically dismiss the mistruths
and to basically give it a score
as to how true the story actually is.
But the good news for Snopes,
depending on what you believe Snopes is,
they've gone over their 500,000.
In fact, I think they're at 560,000,
and they did that in only a few days.
That's fantastic.
So it's good to know that if things like that happen,
that the internet has your back.
Yeah, you know, this also just underscores a real point
that I think may resonate with some of our listeners,
which is the need to have really clear corporate governance
no matter how big or small your entity is.
Even with a startup company with three or four people,
you really need to have very clear lines
of ownership and direction, clear accounting of funds,
because otherwise you could end up in a morass
just like they have.
And it's, you know, this is gonna be a complete disaster.
I guarantee you that at that August 4th hearing,
there's gonna be very little clarity that comes out of it.
These things take a long time
to wind through the legal system.
And unless a settlement is reached,
there is really no way to predict how this is gonna go.
And, you know, this kind of infighting
within any kind of organization,
whether it's Pacifica, whether it's Snopes,
whether it's, you know, a bunch of hackers
or a bunch of Democrats, it doesn't make you look good.
It doesn't appeal to people
who are not already involved to become involved.
It's very important to maintain a unified front
if you're doing something along these lines.
And, you know, it's very unfortunate that it came to this.
It's good to know that, you know,
people are there to save them
if it really does turn into more of a disaster.
But it's best not to go down that road in the first place
and to think of everything you can to avoid this.
And sometimes that means doing things
in a non-traditional way,
not having a traditional board of directors
or going public or, you know,
whatever it is that leads to these corporate battles.
I think you're entirely right.
And it's unfortunate, too,
that it's gonna be very distracting
from their real purpose,
which is to sniff out falsehoods
and make them publicly known.
So let's see, let's keep tracking this.
Yes, definitely.
Rob?
The whole dot-com boom,
and Snopes has been around for a very long time,
since the 90s, I believe,
it really illustrates how it behooves any of us
when we start up a project
or when we start up a business or something.
And things like, concerns like the website
and advertising and whatever come along,
you have to be aware, really,
of how much control you're handing over
to this service or that entity
when you're signing whatever papers you're signing.
Because if you're in a situation like this,
if you've got your own backups
and you've got your own wherewithal
to just uproot it and put it up someplace else
and continue on from scratch,
I mean, that's something to consider.
The industry's come a long ways, too.
I think we've had to be more savvy
with the advent of a lot of the tech firms
or Web 2.0 service companies and so on,
because this stuff, we learned.
We learned from the bubbles of the 90s and so on.
And so it really, it does matter.
And now, that may have been a weakness
when Snopes was established way back when,
that perhaps a lot of startups now
wouldn't actually encounter
because the tech industry has matured
such that these are the things that are not left undone.
Which may have been a mistake in Snopes' distant past,
being a sort of original company.
Yeah, I think you bring up a good point, Kyle,
in that we learn from the mistakes of the past.
Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the mistakes
from which we've learned in the past
are generally business mistakes
that affect business decisions.
That's kind of what I meant.
It's like the tech,
people that have the skill in technology
aren't necessarily business,
really good entrepreneurially with business per se, or law.
And I think that the crossover now,
you find a lot more crossover now
with new companies, people starting out.
They're very quick to bring those people on board
with an idea, whether it's intellectual property
or other business liabilities.
Yeah, I agree.
I feel like I've been saying a lot lately in my day job,
people who are good at chess are generally bad at life,
and maybe not vice versa.
But we do see this,
to go back to the hacker subject of our show,
we've learned a lot in terms of business decisions,
but we still see the same idiotic mistakes being made
from an information security standpoint
or a hacker standpoint.
And people just don't seem to be learning
from major mistakes in the past.
Think about the Sony breach a couple of years ago.
Huge, major public embarrassment,
international embarrassment for Sony,
because people put really dumb things
in unencrypted clear text emails
that were stored on a server that was breached.
Then look at what happened to the DNC.
I mean, we see the same thing.
When are people gonna wake up
and stop putting these things in writing, number one,
or at least encrypting them?
I think it's part of the transition to tech platforms
for a lot of these companies.
They've just now transitioned to a place
where maybe their offices are a lot less filled with paper
and sort of the older ways of doing business.
So we don't have a lot of concrete recent memory
of running really large and layered networks
of the scale and size that entities are relying on.
And they're just relying on them
to have the regular course of business happen
to say nothing of responding to an incident.
So this is new territory, actually,
when you look at the history to have as many companies
relying so much on networks and data
that we're still getting good
at running big networks, I think.
Yeah, I think you're right about that.
And we need to get better at it a lot more quickly.
Both structurally in the businesses,
but also behaviorally.
Absolutely.
Well, staying on the subject of lawyers for a moment,
this is actually something
I've been sitting on since January.
I've always wanted to focus
on this particular story about Instagram.
It must be quite warm by now.
It's, yeah, I've been sitting on it
for almost six months now, more than six months.
Anyway, in the UK, more than half of 12 to 15-year-olds
are on Instagram.
According to Ofcom,
the country's communications regulator,
so are 43% of eight to 11-year-olds.
Eight-year-olds with Instagram accounts, amazing.
How many of them actually understand
what they signed when they joined?
Pretty much zero percent.
That's according to Growing Up Digital,
which was a report released in January
by the UK Children's Commissioner.
That's right, the UK has a Children's Commissioner.
We need eight-year-olds to do a dramatic reading
of some end-user license agreements.
You might get that, because what happened was
a lawyer basically rewrote the policy
in child-friendly language.
Oh, in kid terms?
Yes.
Oh, great, are you gonna read some of this?
I'm gonna read some of this, yes.
Okay, all right, I'm ready, I'm ready.
Including a quote from a 13-year-old
that said, are you sure this is necessary?
There are 100 pages about Instagram's terms of services.
Actually, it's really 17 pages, kid, with 5,000 words.
But still plenty, still plenty.
Anyway, so Jenny Afia is a privacy law expert
at Shillings, a UK-based law firm,
and she rewrote Instagram's terms of service
in child-friendly language,
and here are a few of the paragraphs.
Officially, you own any original pictures
and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them,
and we can let others use them as well,
anywhere around the world.
Other people might pay us to use them,
and we will not pay you for that.
We may keep, use, and share your personal information
with companies connected with Instagram.
This information includes your name, email address,
school, where you live, pictures, phone numbers,
your likes and dislikes, where you go,
who your friends are, how often you use Instagram,
and any other personal information we find,
such as your birthday or who you are chatting with,
including in private messages.
We might send you adverts connected to your interest,
which we are monitoring.
You cannot stop us doing this,
and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert.
I like this.
We can change or end Instagram,
just like we can change or end you.
No, I'm just kidding.
We can change or end Instagram
or stop you accessing Instagram at any time,
for any reason, and without letting you know in advance.
We can also delete posts and other content randomly
without telling you for any reason.
If you do this, I'm sorry, if we do this,
we will not be responsible for paying out any money,
and you won't have any right to complain.
I like that a lot.
You won't have any,
that just kind of sums up a lot of these terms and services.
You won't have any right to complain.
Wow.
We can force you to give up your username for any reason.
We can, but do not have to remove, edit, block,
and or monitor anything posted,
or any accounts that we think breaks any of these rules.
We are not responsible if somebody breaks the law
or breaks these rules,
but if you break them, you are responsible.
If they made it more easy,
then people would actually read it
and think twice about the app,
say that a 13-year-old girl,
after being shown the revised policy,
one third of internet users are children,
but the internet wasn't created for children.
And this is certainly,
this shows you how children will be victimized
by this kind of attitude.
Well, not just children, I think, adults as well.
I mean, nobody reads these things.
I think the reading,
or rather the paraphrasing of these policies
was very accurate.
I also find that it wasn't necessarily dumbed down
to the level of a 12 or a 13-year-old.
I mean, this is really what happens,
and it was quite an accurate representation
of what's in these privacy policies.
I would read terms of services
if they were written in that tone.
I wouldn't be happy about them, but I would read them.
And I think everybody should be aware,
like this one has been made clear,
of just what is within these things.
Well, that's true.
I mean, they confuse adults.
Nobody reads these things.
In fact, I did a spot on CNBC
that I think is gonna come out next week
with relation to an application called Snatch,
which is an augmented reality app,
just like Pokemon Go, but is available in the UK.
And it has to do with,
you run around this augmented world of reality,
and you can actually get real prizes mailed to you,
but you have to steal them from other people.
So the whole premise is really dishonorable
from the beginning.
But I talked a lot about privacy policies,
and they are so long and drawn out.
And I read through every single policy,
the terms and conditions, the privacy policies,
the cookie policies, in preparation for that interview
that I did with CNBC.
And I'm a lawyer.
I even draft these policies.
I'm guilty of drafting
some incomprehensible privacy policies myself.
I try to use real language when I do it,
but it's sometimes difficult.
On the other hand,
these policies took me several hours to go through.
And this is what I do all day.
I read incomprehensible language.
They are deliberately long and drawn out,
and incomprehensible for a reason.
They don't want people to understand them.
I mean, they're sort of like,
so long and incomprehensible,
it'd be like going on a first date with Donald Rumsfeld,
or somebody like that.
It's so mind-numbingly
circumlocutious in so many ways
that nobody can really understand them.
That's why you have things buried in them
that are hilarious.
Every once in a while,
somebody uncovers some sort of Easter agonies,
or you give away your firstborn child,
or something like that.
But it's a real problem.
There's major privacy issues,
and major privacy implications that arise from
putting all this data into the possession of a third party.
People don't realize that any of that data
can be subpoenaed through legal process.
It can be subpoenaed,
let's say, even if you're in a divorce proceeding.
It doesn't have to be some sort of criminal investigation.
It can be a civil investigation.
If somebody wants to place you at a certain place
at a certain time,
if a third party app is tracking your location,
that information can be made available
to whatever party is seeking it,
so long as they have the power of a subpoena.
Yeah, and I really love this whole break it down
so a child could understand it thing.
There's a trope that's been going around
the internet for ages.
I think it's from Reddit.
It's called ELI5, which stands for Explain Like I'm Five.
Basically, that can be any kind of scientific question
about how the world works,
or any question about anything,
including something like this.
As anyone with a child in their life probably knows,
if you want to take something
that you think you know everything about
and learn a bunch more of it about it,
all you have to do is try and explain it to a kid.
It's really, it's not just for kids,
because this is something
that adults can learn a lot from, too.
Well, speaking of learning from all kinds of things,
whether they're mistakes or not,
you hear about the Pokemon Go Fest that took place?
The last few days?
I didn't know anything was going on with that,
but I have noticed people walking around
like that whole Pokemon phenomenon,
the same thing where they have a car battery
and a wagon behind them and stuff.
Yeah, there's a lot of that going on,
but this was something bigger.
This was happening in Chicago's Grand Park.
It was called the Niantic Pokemon Go Fest.
It's a gathering of about 20,000 Pokemon Go players.
I think I heard about that, too.
Yeah, it was a disaster.
Didn't work out.
Total disaster.
They were worried about the weather.
The weather turned out just fine,
but the technology did not,
and as a result, they are going to be
supposedly refunding attendees their admission cost,
which was something like,
actually, I'm not sure how much the admission was,
but some people were saying they basically
had to travel across the country to get there.
I don't know why people do these things.
So there was an admission cost
for people to show up somewhere
and hunt imaginary things on their phones.
Yeah, and within minutes, the cell networks got shaky.
Within 20 minutes, the doors officially opening.
Every single network was down,
and people couldn't even connect.
Wow, I kind of want a refund, and I didn't even go.
Yeah, no, it's pretty annoying.
It's really, I'm not sure just how crazy
it wound up being in the end, but it was a disaster.
In the games industry, it's not unknown
for something that's hugely anticipated
to either unveil or have some kind of event,
and more people try and connect to it
than they were prepared for,
which means it locks up the thing for everybody,
and it angers everyone.
So if they were doing something like this,
and depending on, I guess, the local cell infrastructure
and things like that, this isn't a new thing.
They maybe should have seen it coming,
especially with all the history that Pokemon Go
has had with its whole unveiling.
Yeah, and the game relies really heavily
on being able to communicate outside of just your phone.
You're not playing necessarily something
that's local to you.
You really need that connectivity.
So when many people get together,
and they haven't really tested it,
or don't have a contingency for when it goes wrong.
You have to have a contingency.
That's the whole thing.
If you don't have a contingency, you're doomed.
You gotta anticipate this stuff
whether it's infrastructure,
when you're getting a lot of people together,
or you're gonna expect a lot of traffic
on your website or on your news group,
it's critical to at least consider what might happen
if you get overloaded,
or you sell out of something really quickly.
Well, and they had people lined up
around the block for hours beforehand.
They had these big screens that were supposed to show
which teams were ahead, and those were simply turned off.
And when Niantic, which is the company
that apparently ran this,
do they own Pokemon Go?
I don't even know.
I don't keep track of these things.
When John Hank from Niantic took the stage,
he was greeted by an audience a few thousand deep,
many of them chanting, fix your game, or we can't play.
And some more aggressive attendees approached the stage
to personally share or shout their discontent.
So yeah, that's something.
The update to this story is that it's not clear
if Niantic will be automatically refunding attendees
or just those who ask.
So if you haven't been contacted, you should ask.
It sounds very disappointing.
I would have, on the other hand,
loved to have seen the first augmented reality riot occur.
That would have been something.
In real life or in the augmented reality?
In augmented reality. Where would the riot be?
Yeah, I think in this VR-type world
where either strange animals exist
that you hit with balls and things.
You know, it's not a bad idea.
We need to practice these things because of what's ahead.
We need to practice our rioting skills.
We need to practice our gathering, demonstrating,
whatever it is that we need to do,
but do it in augmented reality and get it right,
and then do it in real life.
Yeah, you're joking, but honestly,
there's a lot of possibility for gamifying riots
or protests, actions, and so on,
and creating technology to augment communication
and organization when you're demonstrating
and exercising your right to assemble.
We have a myriad of tools and resources,
and there are a lot of people thinking about this,
maybe even in this studio.
Okay, here's my idea.
Video game, just a video game in general
called Stop Trump, all right?
And he does more and more bizarre, reckless, crazy things,
and you have options.
You have ways that you can organize other players
or take actions yourself, and do you stop him?
Are you able to?
Do you have any influence whatsoever?
And the game develops, and it's a multiplayer game,
obviously, because it has to be.
Yeah, I think it's called Congress.
Well, yeah, but that doesn't work anymore.
This is something that actually would work
and that kids would like, but somebody has to,
look, I came up with the idea, okay?
So maybe give me a share of the profits,
but someone else has to write the program
and do the marketing and that kind of thing.
But Stop Trump, that's the name, trademarking it.
Find a way to hook a leaderboard
with achievements up to this,
and you've really got something.
All right, we have this story, too,
you might have heard about.
Man gets stuck in ATM, slips help me notes through slot.
This really happened.
The contractor was changing a lock inside a room
that connects to the ATM at a Bank of America in Texas.
Of course, Texas, of course, Bank of America,
of course, contract, okay.
He got locked inside the vestibule.
He started slipping help me notes through the receipt slot,
through the receipt slot.
Most people thought it was a joke.
What kind of joke is that exactly?
I'd like to know what kind of a joke that is.
Now, someone eventually called the cops
and officials described it as a once-in-a-lifetime situation
that you will probably never see or hear again.
I like that description.
That's fascinating, though,
but why wouldn't the guys start yelling, too?
I mean, slipping notes is one thing, but-
It's probably really well-sealed in there.
I would imagine if there's room for paper
to go through a slot.
Have you ever been inside an ATM?
It's really hard to be heard on the outside.
You've been inside an ATM?
I've seen it.
I haven't actually walked inside myself,
but I've seen when they open up the back of it
to deliver or take money.
Well, they're gonna do really heavily insulated doors
for security, obviously, so people can't throw
a shoulder into it and break into the back of the ATM.
Right, or a shoulder-launched grenade or something
that might penetrate.
That, too?
It has to be fortified, and your voice,
you probably couldn't even get a cell signal out.
If you had a cell phone, I'll bet it was
within all the metal.
Might've been, might've been like a Faraday cage.
Maybe that's the only place where we can have
secure phone calls.
Or just metal studs in the wall.
Kids don't play inside ATMs.
Well, this brings up a larger issue with respect to ATMs.
Refrigerators are fine, but not ATMs.
A little bit.
No, not refrigerators, either.
Yeah, like a curmudgeon, but I don't understand
why ATMs have to be so goddamn big now, as well,
that they can fit a human being in them.
You go into any ATM, the screen is gigantic.
You get to choose your language.
There's all kinds of functions and things
that nobody really wants.
They just want to take cash out very quickly.
I don't want to have to click through five different things.
I don't need a 27-inch screen to use an ATM.
Well, what about all the ATMs you see on the street?
Those are tiny.
Those are tiny.
Those are fine.
Why can't normal ATMs at a Bank of America
be small and work and not require me to click through
or touch through all these things?
I don't even want to touch the screen.
They're fairly disgusting to begin with.
Well, I think banks just like to have space.
That's why they open so many banks,
even when the economy is falling apart.
They open banks left and right.
There's all these offices and drive-ups
and vestibules and ATMs.
And not many employees, they get rid of them,
but they just like their space.
Well, that's true.
Because they own all the space.
I mean, that's what Manhattan is becoming.
I mean, it's becoming a bank, a Bank of America,
next to a Duane Reade, next to a Pinkberry,
next to a Chipotle, next to a Chase Bank,
next to a TD Merit.
You laugh, but there was a situation on Long Island
where there was a Chase Bank next door to a Chase Bank.
I'm not surprised.
And actually, I saw the same thing somewhere else too.
I forget where.
It might've been near Coney Island or something.
But there was, yeah, a Chase Bank next to a Chase Bank.
Apparently, they took over a different branch
of a different bank and neglected to close the one next door.
This is the world we're living in.
It's true.
All I know is the machines at my bank
are never this well stocked
when I want to withdraw a guy from my account.
Yeah, well, yeah, you won't have that problem.
That's true.
I had something I wanted to mention
that was a different topic.
Okay, let me give out the phone number
for people calling in.
Yeah.
First of all, if you want to pledge,
516-620-3602, that's the important line to call.
But if you want to call in and be on the air,
we said we were going to take phone calls.
We want to hear from people 347-335-0818.
We only can take one call at a time.
So if it's busy, call back, 347-335-0818.
Go ahead, Kyle.
So this was a story I read,
and it's with regard to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests
in North Dakota, I think, this past spring, winter time.
And there were a lot of people there,
obviously thousands.
And as a result of them being there,
what has been revealed, or they are claiming,
is that an amazing amount of electronic surveillance
occurred.
And this article talks about fake cell phone towers
used to listen on personal conversations,
dead batteries mysteriously cropping up,
and other funny things that were noticed
during that action.
This was spoken about at B-Sides, actually,
which is going on, I guess, this week in Las Vegas.
Some of the leaders for that protest were there.
They saw other things like drones being shot down,
and kind of the old single-engine surveillance-type planes,
I guess, that would fly over like you see
in Narcos or something.
But yeah, the traditional FBI little single-prop plane
basically cruising overhead.
So there was a lot of that kind of stuff going on.
And people, it became very clear to people,
those who showed up to oppose the construction
quickly found out that electronic countermeasures
were being used both overtly and covertly.
For example, a yellow helicopter spent a lot of time
flying over the encampments, numerous small aircraft,
as I mentioned, and so on,
in addition to fake cell phone towers.
This is gonna become the norm at any demonstration.
You can count on it.
This kind of speaks to what I was talking about
using technology in actions.
I just wanna read this last part.
Lisha Sterling, who actually we spoke with,
executive director of Geeks Without Bounds,
shed some more light on this issue.
She was at Hope, too.
She said, when arriving at the camp,
she set her phone into airplane mode
to preserve battery life, but soon found
it was discharged within hours.
She claimed four smartphones had been pwned remotely
during her time at the protests.
Protestors documented equipment from three different
national or federal security agencies,
as well as those from a private security company,
goes by the name of TigerSwan.
In any event, this goes on, about 814 people
were arrested at the site, et cetera, et cetera.
Very interesting.
MC catchers, as we refer to them, or Stingray devices,
it is being claimed were used there,
and it's not surprising.
You can bet this is gonna be a topic of interest
at next year's conference when we have people
here in New York.
We'll be talking about all the different forms
of surveillance that have yet to be implemented
that will be by then, I'm sure.
Actually, that was July 20th.
It's about a year from now.
Just about a year from now, we'll be over with Hope,
the Circle of Hope, which is what the 12th one
is gonna be called, July 20th through 22nd.
So, yeah.
Anyway, yeah, it's really interesting
that this sort of post-game, or the processing
of how that all went, and review,
is revealing stuff like this.
I'm glad people are talking about it.
No, this is interesting.
This is important, and this is one of the examples
of how technology and activism and being aware merge.
There are so many people in the tech world
who say stay with technology and don't talk about politics.
No, they're all related, and this is why.
This stuff is used against everybody at some point.
And lessons will be learned, and these actions
are testing their way for us to understand
the difficulties and challenges,
and then rapid prototype solutions.
This, anyway, is a good article by Lane Thompson
from The Register.
Well, okay, thanks for that.
We have a phone call.
347-335-0818.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Go ahead.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we hear you fine.
Yay, awesome.
Real quick, I just wanna clarify more details
on the Pokemon Go Fest, because while I wasn't there,
I got to see it unfold on the internet while it happened.
Okay.
The crowd was real rowdy.
In fact, during certain parts,
people were actually throwing water bottles
at the people on the stage.
And one of the most interesting tech things
that came from that was that Sprint was the only company
that dragged portable extra cell towers
to try to handle the traffic.
According to Niantic and other sources,
all the other phone providers claimed to Niantic
when they were doing the planning for the event
that their traffic would have handled the volume,
and obviously it didn't.
I just thought that was interesting.
Yeah, those are called COWS, cell tower on wheels.
Interesting, interesting.
Thanks for the clarification.
You're welcome.
All right, take care.
Our phone number is 347-335-0818.
If you have something to say
about the world of technology, hackers, that kind of thing,
we're taking phone calls in the next few minutes.
And of course, our pledge line is still open, 516-620-3602.
Let's take this phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Off the hooks.
Boy, we have some feedback here.
I'm on the air?
You're on the air right now.
If you could turn down your radio, that would be great.
Okay, so how do we get tickets to the Circle of Hope,
or when do we start looking for it?
I'll take Dan's help there.
Okay, thank you for that.
How do you get tickets to the Circle of Hope?
Wow, I don't think we've been asked that this early.
Well, right, we announced the date
so that people could plan ahead.
That's why we did it.
We're not ready to sell tickets yet
because it's a year away.
Probably the first batch,
I think last time we did it in November.
Yeah, it was like 11-11 because it was the 11th Hope.
Yeah, right around fall.
We'll do something like that,
discount the tickets in November, maybe December,
but they'll go on real sale in January.
There'll be a lot of information.
We'll definitely provide details about that,
so stay tuned.
All right, I'll take another phone call.
Good evening, you're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Yes, I'd just like to ask a question.
I've lost a piece of document from the IRS,
and on that document, I don't know why,
but they give the full number of the social,
and I'm just wondering what can be done
when this document is found by someone
that has nefarious intentions, so to speak?
Well, you know-
Is there anything I can pretend with?
I mean, I have the usual stuff, the protection stuff,
but is there anything above and beyond that
that can be implemented?
The information is your name
and your social security number.
Was your address on there as well?
Yeah, I guess, yeah, the address is on there.
Well, you know, it's not the end of the world
because this information is relatively easy to get.
The phone company has this information
if you give it to them,
so just the fact that it's lost
doesn't mean it's the end of the world.
What you need to do, though,
whether you lose information like this or not
is always keep an eye out
on strange things that are happening.
Look at your credit card bills.
Don't just pay a bill without looking at it
and seeing, hey, does this add up?
Look at your bank statements.
Make sure things aren't being withdrawn.
Lots of times, they make mistakes.
They do things.
It's not identity theft,
but if you're going to catch identity theft,
the way to do it is by paying attention.
Okay.
All right.
Okay, thank you, sir.
All right, good luck.
Goodbye, thanks.
Yeah, people are really scared.
They're scared of losing their identity to cyber thieves.
It's not so dramatic, but there is a threat.
There always has been a threat.
If you pay attention,
you'll be able to thwart it, usually.
Well, that's absolutely true,
and one thing to remember is
you have to look at your bank statements.
You have to look at your credit card bills
because if you pay off the balance,
you don't have the right to contest
those particular charges.
I believe, if I'm remembering correctly-
Wait, say that again?
If you pay off the balance, why-
If you pay off the balance of your credit card,
let's say somebody engages in a spear phishing campaign
for fake hope tickets, and they buy one,
and or somebody just makes an unauthorized charge
on a credit card.
If you pay off that balance,
you may lose the right to actually contest that charge.
Right, because you're a retro-
You'd be retroactively going back
and disputing a charge that had already been settled.
That's right.
There's something called the Truth in Lending Act
that applies to credit card companies,
and it's federal law.
Yeah, but the thing is,
I have my credit card set to pay the full balance,
and I have contested things
after they've paid the full balance.
You still can.
A lot of card companies will allow you to do that,
but sometimes you may lose that right.
You have, I think, between 90 days and six months
to do something, and if you don't do something,
then you lose your rights,
but I think whether you pay it or not,
if you do it within enough time-
That's true, and also with respect to debit cards
as opposed to credit cards,
those transactions are a lot more difficult to contest,
regardless of whatever regulations
a credit card company may have in place,
because debit cards are essentially final
at the time of the purchase,
as opposed to a credit card,
where you can contest it after the fact.
But it depends on the lender or the bank
and the kind of sympathetic ear you might get
when you call and how you approach it.
And they're becoming more and more difficult lately
in terms of refunding charges.
Yeah.
I suggest, though, people go online
and look for what you're liable for,
for fraudulent purchases, credit, debit.
They vary from place to place, from country to country,
but you'll find that many times
you're protected against fraud if you report it,
and that's the big caveat there.
You have to report it.
If you ignore it or if you don't notice it
and time goes by,
this is how I bought that kid in Brooklyn a train set
because I didn't notice it for like 11 months.
Yeah, somebody used my credit card number
and I was doing my year-end finances
and I was like, what's this charge?
And the credit card company wouldn't tell me what it was.
They just said it's for this company,
but we can't tell you anything more than that.
And we have no records.
They actually said this to me, we have no records.
So I had to do my own detective work.
And I found, I knew exactly where it was sent,
by whom I talked to people in the store
and I realized this is what happened.
And I was out of luck because I didn't report it in time.
And I wasn't about to, you know,
traumatize a kid who had gotten a train set
or his mom who was working, you know,
two jobs to make ends meet.
I knew a lot about her at the end of this too.
Wasn't she a cheerleader too?
She, at one time when she thought things
were gonna go in a different path,
but that didn't work out.
And when we were watching her sleep too,
she was-
Oh, we weren't doing that, Kyle, no, no.
But we could, we could, but yeah,
technology can be used in good ways or bad ways.
It depends on how you choose to accept it or utilize it.
Was that the train set you were monitoring
through the baby monitor?
I was not monitoring the train set,
no baby monitors, nothing like that.
The one that you show us all the time.
All right, the show's over,
enough time has been spent on this.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com is our phone number,
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If here to pledge, which is the only number
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Let's run down the, what we're offering one more time.
Okay, if you call a 516-620-3602
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For a pledge of $40, you could get Hack This,
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You can also find these items if you go to the website,
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All right, that's the show for tonight.
Not sure if we'll be back next week.
If not, definitely the week after.
You can write to us again, oth at 2600.com.
For Off The Hook, this is Emmanuel.
Have a good night.