if you'd like to make a call please hang up and try again if you need help stay on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly 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 one day we bombed but the best has made the worst i hope that understood one day we know so We'll be right back. 
Another good evening? 
It is a good evening. 
It is a good evening, for now, anyway. 
Of course, we have the bozos and clowns that are coming out later under the name of the Republican debate, as it were. 
Dictator wannabes, I suppose, is the best way to describe it. 
You know, it's fun. 
It's fun. 
We'll tune it in, see what sound bites drop, see who gets eliminated for saying something stupid. 
But, boy, I worry. 
I worry about what's ahead. 
Next week, something interesting is going to be happening. 
It will be happening before our show. 
Remember, once we had a party to commemorate this. 
Not this time, though, because it's old news. 
But FEMA, in coordination with the FCC, will be conducting a nationwide test of the emergency alert system and wireless emergency alerts, known as WEA. 
The national test will consist of two portions, testing both WEA and EAS capabilities. 
Both tests are scheduled to begin at approximately 2.20 p.m. 
next Wednesday, October 4th. 
The WEA portion of the test will be directed to all consumer cell phones. 
This will be the third nationwide test, but the second test to all cellular devices. 
So I guess it's the only time since we all met downstairs and had a blast. 
The test message will display in either English or in Spanish, depending on the language settings of the wireless handset. 
What if you have it set to some other language? 
What happens then? 
That's a good question. 
It's just out of luck, I guess. 
The EAS portion of the test will be sent to radios and televisions. 
This will be the seventh nationwide EAS test. 
Well, okay, that's super misleading because if you have optimum cable, every night is an EAS test at about 3 in the morning, where all channels get blanked out for a couple of minutes. 
And it's really, really annoying, and that's not how it's supposed to work, but that's what they do. 
So, yeah, maybe the seventh nationwide EAS test that disrupts everybody. 
But that will be happening at about 2.20 p.m. 
on Wednesday, October 4th. 
FEMA and the FCC are basically coordinating with EAS participants, of which WBAI is one, wireless providers, emergency managers, and other stakeholders. 
I guess that's us, in preparation for this national test to minimize confusion and to maximize the public safety value of the test. 
Who wrote this? 
To minimize confusion and maximize public safety value. 
Yeah, the purpose, in case it's still not clear, is to ensure the systems continue to be effective, to be an effective means of warning the public about emergencies, particularly those on the national level, such as election results or something. 
In case the October 4th test is postponed due to an emergency, why would it be postponed? 
It's a test of how strong the system is. 
You shouldn't postpone it for anything, but in case it is, due to widespread severe weather. 
Yeah, okay, so an emergency can be canceled by bad weather. 
It's good that we know that now. 
The backup testing date is October 11th. 
Yeah, so I don't know. 
You guys want to do something for this? 
2.20 p.m., cell towers will start broadcasting the test for approximately 30 minutes, so your phones will start making that annoying EAS sound, and it'll confuse everybody. 
And I guess if there's a real emergency, then we're all out of luck. 
For consumers, the message that appears on their phones will say, this is a test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. 
No action is needed. 
And it'll say that in Spanish if you're set for Spanish. 
But, again, we don't know what's going to happen if you have a different language. 
EAS portion of the test is scheduled to last approximately one minute and will be conducted with the participation of radio and television broadcasters, cable systems, satellite radio and television providers, and wire line video providers. 
What's a wire line video provider? 
Does anybody know? 
No. 
No? 
Okay. 
Would that be cable television? 
Well, we already said cable systems. 
Sounds very formal. 
Wire line video. 
I want that now. 
I want to know what a wire line video provider is. 
Anyone out there, if you're a wire line subscriber, please email us, OTH at 2600.com, because we're constantly learning. 
Somebody's furiously typing. 
They're going to look it up. 
Okay, fine. 
I guess we'll bypass our own listeners. 
Yeah, so that's what's happening next week, a little bit of excitement. 
Gila. 
Sorry. 
I'm actually kind of curious about this, because the thing I remember, I remember two things about the last nationwide test. 
The first was that I was not able to join you guys for the event, but the second one is that I never got that notification. 
Well, then you have nothing to worry about. 
The emergency does not apply to you, apparently. 
Apparently not. 
But I'm curious if I'm going to get the notification. 
One thing I have heard, though, is that there's a recommendation for people who may have a cell phone that other people in their lives don't know about, people who are trying to get out of an unsafe situation, who have a cell phone nobody else can know about, who would probably be best served to turn it off and leave it off. 
Yeah, that's a very, very good suggestion. 
I never even thought of that. 
But, yeah, if you have a second phone, whether it's because you're hiding from somebody abusive or perhaps you're having an affair or you're living a double life of one sort or another, it's not up to us to ask or intrude. 
But turn it off on October 4th in the afternoon because it will be making a noise or put it in vibrate mode. 
Does that work? 
If you put it in vibrate mode, will it still make a noise? 
I was wondering about airplane mode. 
Airplane. 
What happens to people on airplanes? 
Because some people can't remove the battery. 
Uh-huh. 
But flying up there in the sky, they don't know there's an emergency down on the ground because they're all in airplane mode. 
Yeah. 
Huh. 
All right. 
Well, you know, let's get cracking. 
A lot of experiments with books and plane tickets. 
Put people in various parts of the country, see what happens. 
Try different phone services. 
Subscribe to Wireline, whatever that is, and let's see how that works. 
If you're incarcerated, you could wrap in a candy bar wrapper maybe. 
That would help. 
Well, they're not going to tell anybody who's incarcerated. 
Okay. 
They're the first ones that they close the door. 
I've seen this happen. 
They turn off it. 
In real life, emergencies happen, and they lock prisoners away. 
But for a test? 
Well, I don't know. 
Maybe they'll think it's real. 
Who knows? 
That's true. 
All right. 
Alex, any thoughts on this? 
We don't see you. 
We just see your icon. 
Yeah. 
I'm here, and I think it would be fun to do something. 
I can't even remember how many years ago it was when we had the last party at the station in the Commons Cafe, and we had quite a nice turnout for that, too. 
Yeah, we did. 
That was good fun. 
I feel like that maybe could be replicated in some way, perhaps. 
I mean, it's somewhat short notice, but, yeah. 
I mean, we do all kinds of ridiculous things for these types of tests, so I think we need to keep that going. 
Yeah. 
Well, you know, when we get the real thing, do we know what to do, you know, or is it something that is just mass, you know, chaos and perhaps sent for the wrong reasons or not sent at all? 
Remember, the EAS was not activated in Hawaii during the fires because they were afraid people would do the wrong thing. 
If they found out there was an emergency, they might go into the hills where the fire was, and that's why they didn't send an alert because of what they thought people might do, whereas, you know, you just have to think for a second, don't go towards the fire. 
It's not too difficult. 
Rob, did you have something? 
Go ahead. 
Yeah, one possible response is just respond to every single emergency alert tone by going to your nearest independent cafe and throwing a party. 
Yeah. 
I mean, even if it's the end of the world, why not? 
That's perfect. 
Yeah. 
Hey, this has been in the news last couple of days about Target, the retail outlet, citing theft. 
They'll be closing nine stores, including one here in New York City. 
East Harlem, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland. 
Right away, let's not blame the Republicans, okay? 
Let's be fair about this. 
You know, we can point the finger and say it's because of their economic policies and because of the way they treat people that this is happening, but it's not fair. 
Do we all agree on that? 
No. 
No? 
You want to blame the Republicans? 
Well, I don't know that they're exempt. 
Yeah. 
The thing is, you know, people say, wait, why are you blaming the Republicans? 
Because Democrats are the ones who get blamed. 
It makes as little sense to blame Democrats or Republicans for this. 
Okay? 
That's my point. 
Does anybody have a problem with this? 
No? 
No. 
You go ahead. 
All right. 
That's right. 
So, yeah, so there have been these instances of mass robberies, I guess, where a bunch of people run into a store and steal things. 
And, of course, you know, what are you supposed to do? 
People are being mocked because they're letting them get away with it, as if you're supposed to stand up to a crowd of 20 people and stop them from basically causing mayhem. 
It's an unfortunate situation, but you can't point the finger and say it's because of you that this is happening unless you're one of the people doing it. 
It's indicative of the times we live in. 
It's partially because of online retailers because, you know, not many people are going to stores anymore. 
It's less crowded. 
They're more desperate for business. 
Think of the overhead. 
It's really the impact is maximal on sort of legacy retailers. 
And a lot of this has been pulled, the footing pulled right out from under a lot of the older establishments and smaller businesses. 
And what's left is the larger stuff. 
And what I feel is sort of emerging is this is a symptom of the way that e-commerce is locked down. 
Like, we already view a lot of the workers in those warehouses as being in prison-like environments and there's just no way to steal or, you know, they don't have to have the same overhead and it's mostly storage, but their employees are tracked and monitored so much that their loss prevention situation is much like a prison. 
And so that's just not the same for someone who's out in the wind in the street and in an environment that's increasingly kind of desolate and ripe for opportunists. 
And I think the most recent one was like after a protest or something, right? 
Well, yeah. 
And yesterday in Philadelphia, there was a protest about the execution of that motorist by a cop who completely got away with it. 
I won't even get into that. 
We don't have time. 
But there is, as predicted, a demonstration against such injustice and some people, low lives, took advantage of that and decided to cause mayhem and rob some stores or just steal things and basically demean the name of the people that are standing up for justice. 
It's a terrible thing when that happens. 
Rob, go ahead. 
It's also not a great thing. 
It's kind of a symptom of Target coming into a neighborhood and becoming, through sheer force of its retail might, the source for things like groceries for people in the neighborhood. 
And when you're in a disadvantaged neighborhood like this and, you know, your only source for your weekly food is a place like Target instead of maybe, say, a grocery store that's possibly locally owned, then this puts it in this situation where, okay, people are walking out of there with TVs and whatnot and they're closing the store. 
And where does that leave people who need to buy their groceries? 
And had this been, say, a grocery store, people wouldn't have been walking out of there with televisions. 
And, you know, you would have had just sort of a standard grocery store situation. 
So things like this have, I don't know what exactly the local shopping situation is like near this Target, but things like this have the potential to cause things like food deserts where people cannot get the groceries they need unless they expensively have them shipped or delivered or things like that. 
And that's an entirely dangerous situation in itself and can continue to add to the disadvantages faced by a disadvantaged neighborhood. 
You know, if you have a small store, and I think this is a good point, a place where you know the guy who runs it, where it's not that big, you're less likely to, you know, not care about what happens to that place. 
Whereas a big box store that's part of a chain, you know, who really cares? 
It's not related to you. 
It doesn't really help you in any way. 
It's just this existence, like it is all throughout the country, and they're not really tied to the neighborhood. 
So, yeah, you're still going to have people that commit crimes, absolutely, but you won't have this kind of detachment, which I think is what online shopping has kind of led us all into. 
We all expect to just click a few buttons and get things delivered to us, and the only stores in various neighborhoods are massive chains that have no connection to the neighborhood. 
So it's not surprising to see that detachment where people don't really care what happens, and the question is, what do you do about it now? 
You know, the National Retail Federation released a survey of big brands, found that the average rate of shrink, and I'm familiar with this term as a retailer ourselves with the magazine, shrink is basically product, product that disappears one way or another. 
It's the value of merchandise that disappears from stores without being paid for through theft, through damage, or even inventory tracking mistakes. 
Back a few years ago, Barnes & Noble expected us to pay for shrink, expected the retailer. 
We were responsible for it, even though we weren't the ones losing it. 
And when we suggested that, okay, well, we'll just station one of our own security people next to the magazine in every store. 
Is that what you want us to do? 
Never got an answer to that, but it was absurd. 
And, you know, the retailers tend to pass this on in one way or another. 
Anyway, that figure was 1.6%, the percentage of shrink, in 2019 and 2020. 
And then it was 1.4% in 2021. 
and last year it was 1.6%. 
So, you know, it's the same. 
It hasn't really changed. 
It's, you know, about that number, 1.6%. 
Now, if you break it down further and you look at that 1.6%, 36% of it comes from theft. 
29% of it is employee theft. 
And then 27% is process, control, failures, errors. 
So, it's, it's a pretty standard number, I think. 
I think there's also something to be said about it all becoming kind of a self-perpetuating cycle. 
Every single thing is now locked up in several stores by us. 
And I have very sensitive skin. 
I am allergic to a very specific item that's in a lot of soaps. 
And the soap I've been using for several years was recently discontinued. 
I need to find something new. 
But I need to check what I buy before I buy it to make sure it doesn't have this ingredient that I'm allergic to. 
I cannot walk into stores in our neighborhood, stores really anywhere in the city, and look at the information I need because I need an employee to unlock and stand with me so that I can make sure that I'm getting something that's not going to break me out. 
And it has now made it physically impossible for me to shop in person for the things that I need, and I can't necessarily rely on what I'm seeing online, on Amazon, for example, to make sure that the information that they're providing is actually correct. 
so I'm going to smell and it's all because of this theft prevention plan that's not really preventing theft that's not an issue in the first place. 
Rob, go ahead. 
Yeah, I mean, I was going to mention that same issue because in our neighborhood, a lot of the, you know, big chain pharmacies and things have been locking up more and more items, and you can see them locking up certain items, controlled substances, the cold medicine that you can make meth out of, alcohol, things like that, but they were locking up more and more like laundry detergent and things like that, and now they are locking up the paper slips that you have to take to the pharmacy counter to buy the meth drugs and things like that. 
So, like, they're worried about people walking off with their slips of paper, but that is the situation, and it makes shopping such a gloomier experience, too. 
I mean, the area we live in, I don't think it's particularly rough as these things tend to be defined, but this is just what's happening in these chains, and it represents the big attitude of these chains that not only don't have enough employees to go out and help all the people get the things that they need to out of these locked shelves, because they got rid of a bunch of the employees when they put in the self-checkout, so there is such a dearth of the human element in going out and shopping for these things. 
Alex, go ahead. 
I think to bring this back full circle in a sense that I think we need to think about the reasons why people steal in such massive and coordinated ways, because going alone, you're likely to get caught. 
Doing it together means you're less likely to get caught, you're doing it with a massive force that can't be stopped, and if you're doing it with that many people, why are so many people stealing? 
Probably because they have to, not because they're greedy, but go back to 1938. 
There's an American historian by the name of Crane Brenton who wrote a book called Anatomy of a Revolution, and it was basically a study of why revolutions happen, and his thesis was that revolutions happen because of something called the intolerable gap, and the intolerable gap is the distance between what the people want and what the people get, and it sounds a lot like what the people want and what they're getting is very far, there's a very far distance between those two points right now, so I said I was going to bring it back full circle, maybe we can blame the Republicans for this. 
Okay, well that's interesting, although I do have to say that some people steal because they have to, I think a lot of people steal just because it's fun, because it's a challenge, because they're with a gang of people, you know, you don't need to be stealing iPhones, you don't need to be stealing sneakers, but that's what a lot of people are stealing, and I can understand the mentality behind it, I can understand getting caught up in the moment, but I think it's very different than when you have no choice in order to survive, and then I think stealing is an obligation, I think you have to steal if you're going to stay alive by eating bread or something like that, so it's it's very different, go ahead Kyle. 
I know there's a lot more to this and there's some great points being raised in the discussion, but I think it's worth noting that it's wholly on the, it's in the interest of a lot of the big merchants and e-commerce sites, the newer businesses, to have retail be hell and not be a competitor, so they're very much, you know, I mean, I guess ambivalent about what the retail and how this is used politically, and I think the idea that shops and stuff get put out and you end up with lots of vacancies and then this is used in a political way, I think it is, it's less about the individual parties and more about class and the, influence that's going on with on the business side and how the people that are suffering are the people that just, that are everyday consumers that need to survive, but they have all the costs and changes, and it is sort of a tumult and a change in the marketplace, but the effects of it, I think, are not going to necessarily go away, like these are, I mean, with technology and stuff, this is definitely organized, there's, they're like boosting networks that are leveraging all of that and they're going to have fun with this, and it's, again, it only makes the e-commerce interests that are so powerful and sort of, what I would say, causing it and profiting, it only makes it more powerful, because we just shut down these things, it gets blamed on people, and they get more institutional power and less oversight to just continue gobbling up society. 
I'm just concerned with the political advantage some people are going to try and spin this to, you know, basically, you're looking at stores in New York, you're looking at San Francisco, you're looking at Seattle and Portland, all these democratic strongholds, and guaranteed tonight in the clown debate, you're going to hear people saying, look at what all these woke cities are getting, because people are going in there and stealing, and let's not fall for that, let's not allow people to fall for that, or make that the narrative, because it's wrong. 
I want to draw your attention to this New York Times article, came out in April of this year, headline, a tiny number of shoplifters commit thousands of New York City thefts, yeah, nearly a third, listen to these numbers, nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year, involved just 327 people, that's it, 327 people for a third of all shoplifting arrests. 
Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times. 
Some engage in shoplifting as a trade, others are driven by addiction or mental illness, and they're concentrated. 
18 department stores, seven chain pharmacy locations account for 20% of all complaints. 
So, you know, it's relatively easy to get a group of people, a relatively small group of people that caused a significant amount of mayhem. 
That's the story of my life. 
I've seen that happen over and over again where it's basically a small number of people either causing all the turmoil or creating all the solutions. 
No one else is really doing much. 
So, let's not be manipulated here into thinking that there's something going on that isn't going on. 
Let's try to think of creative ways to solve the problem and not just finger point and make it a political issue because it's a human issue. 
It's something that obviously is a problem and needs to be dealt with. 
Rob? 
And that's already being made into a political issue. 
The governor, Kathy Hochul, was on Channel 5 today talking about this and says it's a local policing issue. 
And, you know, this is going to be now used as the excuse to give the NYPD another zillion dollars for some tanks or some crap. 
more robot surveillance. 
I don't even know what it is. 
R2-D2 lookalike. 
What is that robot? 
Yeah, I keep seeing this everywhere. 
We were watching Canadian news from the Great White North and they had a story about this robot in New York City, the NYPD robot. 
Have you guys seen this? 
It's this massive piece of metal or something that I think it's in the Times Square station. 
The thing is, it's always with a human cop. 
I don't know what its purpose is. 
Well, they say that initially. 
It has an emergency button you can push, but there's a cop right there. 
You can push a cop's button. 
Yeah, that's not hard. 
But yeah, it's a little distressing because, yeah, it's slow and clumsy right now. 
It's going to get better, just like those dogs. 
The cyber dogs with guns? 
The cyber dogs, yeah. 
Okay, so that's some of what's been going on. 
We have some reaction to last week's complaint about Gmail, putting a lot of 2600 mail into spam by default because it's about hackers, it's about something that they deem to be spam worthy, and it's so very inconvenient for people who subscribe, expect to be getting things from us, and we're still trying to figure out a way to handle this, and we've heard a lot of other people complaining about the same thing. 
A few people also alerted us to this, listen to this headline, Google is killing Gmail's basic HTML version. 
You guys hear about this? 
Yeah. 
Google is removing its basic HTML view on all Gmail accounts starting in January. 
That's according to a notice on the company's support page. 
The company quietly confirmed the change on its site but did not provide additional information about why it's removing the HTML option. 
Now, I don't use Gmail very much, but HTML is how you connect, right, with a browser. 
Can someone explain this a little more than the story does? 
What they're discontinuing is the basic HTML version, which is the version that just gives you your mail, just gives you your links to your messages and things like that without loading a bunch of the accessory crap, the chats on the side, the Google this, the Google that, and a lot of the extra software that runs on top of Gmail that isn't necessary for you to get your mail. 
So it is the basic interface version, but it's also the version that a lot of people with site issues use, a lot of people with accessibility issues, and it's very important to, say, the blind community to be able to continue to access their Gmail with it. 
But, you know, Google decides what happens and who lives and who dies and who gets to read their email, I guess. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
Well, that's, does anybody know why they're doing this, other than to just be more evil? 
No? 
I don't believe they've given, like, an actual reason for this, other than, hey, we're Google, we switch things off all the time at random or at a whim. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
You know, I actually saw an advertisement for Gmail's spam filter. 
There's this ad going around about Google and how it's keeping us safe, and the spam filter apparently is one of those things that's keeping us safe. 
So, the mail that we send that goes directly into the spam filter apparently is dangerous and part of a national problem that Google is a solution to. 
Yes, Rob? 
Did you see this ad in your email? 
Because you could have marked it as spam. 
No, I did not. 
I did not. 
And, yeah, I wish I could mark all of the Gmail spam I get as spam and have it stop, but that never seems to happen. 
Okay, here's some good news out of New York State. 
New York State's education commissioner as of today has banned the use of facial recognition technology in schools, but she said it would be up to local districts whether to employ other biometric identifying tools. 
This decision was issued today from Commissioner Betty Rossa, prohibits schools statewide from purchasing or using facial recognition technology, but schools can decide whether to use biometric identifying technology other than facial recognition technology at the local level, so long as they consider the technology's privacy implications, impact on civil rights effectiveness, and parental input. 
Rossa's order cited a recent report by the state's Office of Information Technology Services that identified serious concerns regarding the use of facial recognition technology in schools, including as reported in reference studies, potentially higher rate of false positives for people of color, non-binary, and transgender people, women, the elderly, and children, as well as the ability of schools to use such technology without parental consent. 
So, yeah, I guess this is a good thing, right? 
Kayla? 
I wonder if this is going to affect some of those, the tools that people are using for distance learning, the tools that people were having to use to be watched while they were taking a test, and, because, you know, that there were definitely issues with that with students of color who were getting flagged for cheating or flagged for not looking if they weren't making direct eye contact with the camera, and I wonder if this ban on facial recognition is going to bump up against some of those online proctoring kind of software as well. 
So, that's just my first question. 
I don't know, but that was just the thing that it made me think of. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, let me tell you, I mean, my eyes are moist right now. 
I mean, I think this is a great step forward here, and people finally are waking up to the dangers of facial recognition technology, especially with respect to the use of such technologies in schools, and I think it was a concerned class of parents that filed a legal challenge that wound up causing the state to issue this moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology. 
But, look, on the other hand, I can understand why a school would think this would be a good thing to use, right? 
You know, you want to have sex offenders that you can detect. 
You want to have violent people that you can detect. 
But there are better ways and other technologies that you can use other than facial recognition technology that could also end up, I think, chilling a lot of the free association and the types of gatherings that you would ordinarily expect in school. 
I think that what wasn't mentioned in the article are the constitutional implications of the use of this type of technology, freedom of speech, freedom of association of children, school-age children, and how that can have a long-term effect over time, especially when you start introducing facial recognition technology to kids at the pre-K level. 
This is just something that they become used to, and we talk about this all the time on the show. 
There's always this notion of function creep. 
We use it for one thing now, what's it going to be in 10 years? 
You see that with surveillance cameras. 
People expect surveillance cameras to be everywhere, and if something happens, why didn't the camera pick that up? 
And these are people that ordinarily would have been against something like that, against some kind of privacy intrusion. 
License plate readers, things that we saw as a big threat years ago. 
Now people expect that as well. 
This person was driving a car unsafely. 
I want their license plate. 
Why didn't we get the license plate? 
There should be a camera that has this. 
And the same thing here. 
It's really, like you say, function creep. 
It's something that facial recognition is going to be something we expect to happen at all times. 
We expect our, you know, who is that person walking down the hallway? 
How come you can't recognize their face? 
And it's, you know, the days of just passing people anonymously and not knowing what's around the next corner, are those days over? 
Are we so afraid of everything that we need to be informed about everything? 
Kind of piggybacking on that, I have been irked, nay, bothered by something that I've been seeing a lot in my life this week, the past week or so, and this is as good a platform as any to mention it. 
I'm a Facebook user. 
We've talked about this. 
I am a simple, simple person, and I'm a Facebook user, and recently I've been seeing a lot of people doing the celebrating your senior challenge where they've been challenged to upload 10 photos of their child who's graduating from high school. 
No notes, no explanations, no nothing. 
So you're handing meta 10 photos of your child at various points in the past 18 years and saying, here, here is my kid, here is my kid at various points over the past 18 years. 
Now you can recognize their face from the time they were an infant to the time they were a senior in high school. 
And I have kind of lost my ability to say to the people in my life, please don't do this because you are helping to train algorithms in the guise of doing something exciting to celebrate your senior. 
So if you're listening and you think celebrate your senior week is a good thing to do, please stop. 
Just stop. 
Here's an idea. 
Can we use AI to generate a kid and upload that kid's pictures and just completely mess them up? 
I mean, there's nothing wrong with giving Facebook fake info and just trying to confuse it as much as possible. 
I think that should be what people do now more than anything else. 
You know, you want to know somebody's real kid? 
Get to know them in real life because Facebook is not real life. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah. 
Not only are you training the algorithms with that, you're training the kid to just accept the concept that they don't have control over their own image, that pictures of them are just going to be out there and that you're going to do this whether they like it or not. 
children cannot consent to these things and yet there are there is a whole generation of adults right now who grew up with their picture on their parents' social media from the time they were born to to whenever. 
And that's a really scary thing, I think, that that I think current generations are dealing with that that mine certainly didn't have to. 
And yeah, there there is a lot of things that can go wrong with having your child's photo out there and, you know, just you don't have to do it. 
We have we have children in our family whose parents, you know, privately share photos among one another, among the family, and there there are more closed ways to do that that don't put them on the open web. 
Exactly. 
Alex, would you be willing to represent a bunch of existing newborns as a future class action suit? 
Because, you know, they're babies now, but they're going to grow up and they're going to realize how they have had this injustice perpetrated against them with their pictures being spread all over Facebook and other places. 
And I think, you know, there'll be a lot of anger, you know, 15 years down the road. 
And you could you could stand to really have some some interesting case law here. 
Well, I think there will be a lot of anger with these kids, especially given how without any thought to the future considerations whatsoever, parents are, as Rob noted, plastering pictures of their kids all over Facebook, where we know it's basically a data minefield for surveillance capitalism. 
And I think, you know, who knows? 
Maybe there's there's a way to bring that action even sooner than, let's say, 18 years from now, because these people can have guardians that lead them and now we can sue on their behalf. 
Well, wait, you're doing the same thing then if you're if you're having guardians represent them, then you're not representing the kids interest. 
They might disagree. 
You don't know. 
Well, the guardian is supposed to represent the kids interest. 
Yeah. 
But how is it how are they going to ask a newborn? 
Do you want me to sue on your behalf? 
Well, if it's a newborn, sure. 
Yeah. 
But I mean, there's an assumption here that let's say it's even a four or five year old. 
They can't make a decision about whether or not they want to litigate on a particular claim. 
No, seven. 
You have to be seven for that. 
Yes, that's right. 
Seven, I think, is a good age to start thinking about litigation. 
And but, you know, a guardian is supposed to take the rights and privileges of another into consideration and enforce those rights. 
And so hypothetically, you know, a parent or guardian could could bring a suit on behalf of its children now. 
I mean, the problem, though, is that we were all subject to these contracts of adhesion whenever you sign up to any of these social media accounts. 
Right. 
So their terms of service and their terms of use force you essentially to grant them all these rights and licenses to the images that you post onto their platform. 
And now that's you're fighting against a contract that you took to which you had agreed, except if you're a baby, you never agreed to that. 
And yeah, interesting how things are going to. 
I think the schools just are a great way to start because it's a foundation. 
They have to use a lot of this technology there. 
And at least is instructing about the concept of privacy to both parents and students alike. 
Well, this tracks very nicely into a story from Canada where a decade of newborn child registry data has been stolen in what's known as a move it mass hack, a move it mass hack. 
I just like the sound of that. 
Ontario's government funded birth registry has confirmed a data breach affecting some 3.4 million people who sought pregnancy care, including the personal health data of close to 2 million newborns and children across the Canadian province. 
It's born Ontario is the name of the organization. 
They said in a statement on Monday that they say hackers, I'm going to say criminals, copied more than a decade's worth of data, including fertility, pregnancy, newborn and child health care offered between January 2010 and May 2023. 
News of the breach comes after the incident was discovered on May 31st. 
It's not known for what reason born took months to notify affected individuals that their information was compromised, but I'll bet it's related to how they got breached in the first place. 
Born attributed the cyber attack, a good name, by the way, for that organization. 
I just got it now. 
Born Ontario. 
Born attributed the cyber attack to the mass hack targeting MoveIt, which is a file transfer tool used by organizations to share large data sets over the Internet. 
Good to know. 
The notorious Russian linked ransomware and extortion group Klopp claimed responsibility for the MoveIt mass hacks, but has not yet claimed Born as one of its victims, according to a review of its dark web leak site that I'm sorry, this is a very silly paragraph. 
Yeah, Klopp claimed the MoveIt mass hacks from Born was not one of its victims, according to their dark web leak site that it uses to threaten to publish the victim's stolen data in exchange for paying a ransom. 
They have a website or they use it to threaten people. 
It's unbelievable. 
Born collects data from health care providers, labs and hospitals that offer pregnancy care and health care for children. 
This data is then provided to health care providers to guide and improve the care. 
The cyber criminals, better name for them, stole names, dates of birth, addresses and postal codes and health card numbers. 
The clinical information stolen includes dates of care and service, lab test results, pregnancy risk factors, type of birth procedures and pregnancy and birth outcomes and associated care. 
You know, if you if you had something like that happen in this country where we're much less progressive, people would be at great risk of having their their their their pregnancy status revealed to hostile government officials and potentially prosecuted for doing things to their own bodies that the government officials disagree with. 
I can't see who's raising it. 
Oh, Alex, go ahead. 
Yeah, this this move it preaches is really fascinating. 
In a lot of ways, I've worked actually on quite a few different incidents of companies for companies that have been affected by the movement breach. 
It's really it's a supply chain breach. 
It's very elegantly done. 
Again, another attack attributed to Russia. 
By the way, Klopp, the name Klopp, which they spell C-L-0-P. 
Klopp apparently is Russian slang for none other than bedbugs, by the way. 
So that shows you what they think of themselves. 
Well, you know what? 
That's that's better than calling them hackers. 
Call them bedbugs. 
I like that. 
Sure. 
I'm all for that. 
But what's fascinating here is so that move it, as you mentioned, Manuel, is essentially it's a file transfer system and allows you to transfer large files over the Internet. 
What else allows you to transfer large files over the Internet? 
Something called FTP, right? 
So, you know, FTP service file transfer protocol servers back in the day. 
This is what we use to transfer large files across the Internet. 
And when you use an FTP server and you transfer a file across the Internet from one place to the other, what did you do with that file on the FTP server? 
Did you leave it there or did you take it off? 
I'm asking. 
Well, I mean, I did different things on different days, but sometimes I left it there. 
Sometimes I didn't, depending on what I wanted to do. 
Well, part of the problem with this move it breach is that these companies were using these essentially FTP servers or file transfer servers called move it and then just leaving the data in the system. 
So it's just kind of hanging out there. 
So this was really a smash and grab job. 
How they accomplished this, how CLOP accomplished this was that they identified a vulnerability in the system itself and the move it system itself and exploited it over time. 
And what they did was they were able to access any of the data that was still stored within that application or within those certain folders or directories that the move it system had access. 
So if you transfer the data and you moved it out and you deleted it, it wouldn't be accessible. 
So if you think about this area, this town, province, whatever it was in Canada, how do they explain 10 years of data being stored there? 
You know, I think there's a relationship here to the way the story is written where it's saying that this data was stolen when in actuality it wasn't stolen because, as you said, a copy was left behind. 
It was copied. 
It was copied. 
And you can tell when something's stolen because it's no longer there. 
But how do you tell if something's been copied? 
So they probably didn't even realize it was copied until maybe they checked the access times of each file and saw that, yeah, this was accessed back in May or something. 
And then they started to realize, put two and two together, that, yeah, they got their data copied somewhere else, but not stolen. 
Well, I guess that's one way of looking at, you know, any kind of data theft is just an unscheduled backup to the cloud, right? 
You know, or involuntary backup to the cloud or somebody else's cloud. 
But this one is somewhat fascinating too, though, because it was such an automated attack that happened over a large period of time. 
And I think it was way more successful than Klopp had actually anticipated. 
So they were able to steal, to exfiltrate, copy, if you will, a massive amount of data from a huge number of organizations. 
So it doesn't surprise me that they're not on the leak site yet. 
They don't seem like the most high-profile victim that Klopp has reached. 
I mean, there have been a very high number of really high-profile victims, including a lot of very big U.S. 
law firms that have been hit by this attack. 
So the sad thing is, is that I think that they will eventually get onto the leak site. 
I monitor that leak site on a daily basis, and it's used for extortion. 
Yeah. 
They publish the data, and for a while, it was very difficult for them, for people to actually download the data through the dark webs. 
But now they have set up BitTorrents and made it a lot easier to download all this stolen data. 
Yeah, improvements. 
Improvements in technology. 
That makes this kind of thing a lot easier to trade and to sell. 
I want to close out with this other story, which is either horrible or amusing, depending on your perspective. 
But a hacker gang has claimed it has breached all of Sony's systems and stolen data. 
They're now offering to sell the data to the highest bidder. 
This is not what hackers do, by the way. 
This is what criminals do. 
Sony did not confirm the breach in a statement, but said it is investigating the claims. 
According to the group, ransomed.vc, we have successfully compromised, and that's how they spelled it, all of Sony's systems. 
They claim this on both the clear and darknets. 
We won't ransom them, they say. 
We will sell the data. 
Due to Sony not wanting to pay, data is for sale. 
The alleged breach was first reported by Australian site Cybersecurity Connect. 
The cybersecurity report said that ransomed.vc has posted a PowerPoint presentation online showing how the hacking was done, including screenshots of a login page and screenshots of files as well. 
The group said it's in possession of 6,000 files. 
It's really not that much, and it's hard to believe they have control of all the systems. 
It's basically small compared to all of Sony's systems. 
We're currently investigating the situation. 
We have no further comment at this time, said Sony. 
The cybersecurity report said that ransomed.vc threatened to post the information it has harvested online on September 28th. 
That's tomorrow. 
If it's not paid, time is running out. 
The stolen data is reported to be in Japanese. 
And get this, in a bizarre development, a bizarre element of this alleged hack, ransomed.vc has said that if payment isn't received, it will be obligated to report the breach to the European Union's data privacy body. 
So they're following the protocol here to report a data breach, even if it's a data breach they committed themselves. 
They're really making Sony look kind of silly here. 
So that's the funny part of the story. 
But boy, every week, every week it's something else. 
Closing thoughts, people. 
We have to move to overtime at 8 o'clock. 
I love how this threat actor group is utilizing legal compliance issues against Sony, and it's really kind of funny. 
Yeah, it certainly is. 
Go ahead, Rob, quickly. 
Just on that shoplifting story we were talking about earlier, just remember, if you see someone stealing food, know the heck you didn't. 
All right. 
Now, people, there is going to be a Republican debate tonight, so it's up to you. 
Whether or not you want to go near that, just know that the people there are afraid. 
They want to be the next dictator, I suppose, of their particular party, but there's somebody in the way. 
Let's just watch with detached amusement, and we'll see you again next week at this time. 
Go to youtube.com and find us there, Channel 2600, at 8 o'clock. 
We'll be doing overtime. 
You can call us. 
You can be a part of the show in that regard. 
You can also write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com. 
Good night. 


And welcome everybody to, what is this, Off the Hook Overtime, yes, that's it.
Here we are on YouTube, channel 2600.
It's cold in here this week, wow.
Yeah, we have a different studio for this show, and it's chilly.
A.K.A. Off the Clock.
Yeah, I guess you could call it that.
So, obviously, Kyle, you made it okay.
I did.
Rob, did you make it all right?
I did indeed.
Can you verify that we are, in fact, broadcasting over YouTube?
We are, in fact, YouTubing.
With a loose definition of the word broadcasting.
Gila, I assume you made it okay into Skype?
I am, in fact, here.
And welcome to the 16 people who are currently online with us.
Wow.
That number was much higher only a second ago.
I don't know what we did.
I guess when we started talking, that made people leave.
And Alex, did you make it okay?
Yeah, I'm here.
By the way, you can stop calling us, too.
I'm not sure why you're calling the call-in line, but you're already here.
How did you know that was me?
Did you think we didn't have caller ID?
Wow.
But it shouldn't come up with my phone number on it.
I mean, it's a number that's not my name.
Well, apparently it is.
Yeah, I don't know.
Let me try something else.
We'll check that.
No, don't try anything.
Don't call us because you're tying up the line for listeners.
Yeah, we just announced it.
This is their opportunity to voice what's on their mind.
It's about them.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Anyway, yeah.
So, yeah.
So we have so few people.
So if only one of them calls, I guess that's something.
But if we had more people, more people would call.
I think that's how it works.
And now the phone's ringing.
Is that an actual call?
I haven't given out the phone number yet.
802-321-4225 is our phone number.
802-321-HACK.
I guess pick it up even though somebody was calling before I gave out the number.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Is that supposed to be funny?
I think that we were just getting things warmed up.
Okay.
It's ringing again.
So let's try it one more time.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Hi, Manuel.
Rebel, we have not heard your voice in a very long time.
Where have you been?
We just assumed you were in the gulag in Russia or something.
No.
I'm in Indiana now.
The gulag in Indiana is almost as bad.
Wow.
What happened?
Well, all right.
Let's see.
What can I say?
Let's see.
Oh, you were talking about shoplifting on Off the Hook on the radio.
Yes.
So when is Off the Hook, when is WBA, BAI going to have you guys in the studio and be able
to take phone calls there?
That's a good question.
Now, we could probably go in ourselves, but we can't bring everybody with us, at least,
you know, without having a conversation with them.
But, you know, maybe we'll do it soon.
Yeah.
Because it would be nice to take phones off again.
And speaking of shoplifting, a lot of people are using the self-checkout for shoplifting.
They're taking, like, you know, like five items and, like, standing only one and all that
of the stuff.
I'm sorry, I was distracted.
Can you repeat that?
Okay.
People are, you were talking about shoplifting and retail stores.
People are taking, using the self-checkout to, you know, shoplift.
Right.
They take, like, maybe five items and only scan one or two, or scan the cheapest one and
keep the expensive ones, you know, things like that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
But that computer is pretty sophisticated.
That computer can tell when you do something wrong.
When we were traveling, we saw a demonstration of a scanner that you just put a pile of things
down.
It scans everything, and it's completely covered, every angle.
When did we see that?
In Chicago.
Oh, yes, we did, at the place where I bought cough drops or something.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
But it was only a couple of items.
But, like, you know, 20 items, that would be impressive.
Yeah.
But you think that that's the kind of thing that's being, that's advancing because people
are trying to, little things, ways to defeat it, and they record all of that, so maybe they
don't catch people individually, but they're pushing even further.
And, like, these other stores that seem to be around, but they haven't opened, they're
like the Amazon stores where you don't pay, you just walk out, that kind of thing, where
it's just the whole store is self-checkout.
Yeah, you put things in your pocket, you just walk out, and you just, you're labeled with
what you have on you that has been logged or not logged.
That's the world we're moving towards, where, you know, you just are completely accountable
for everything you're carrying and doing at all times, and that will be normal.
And facial recognition is used for your entry, and yeah.
Man, this is why I sound so apprehensive all the time, because I'm just worried about where
we are heading in so many ways, and it's just almost invariably not a good place.
Well, I'm keen to wonder if those stores maybe aren't opening because of the phenomenon we
were talking about, because Rebel's right, like, there's all kinds of little things that
are ways to get around the things, and it's all to cut costs.
And then it goes back in this, like, feedback loop to, again, punish the customer, pass it
along to the customer.
Well, you know, I think that customers are, in a sense, you know, right to be kind of mad
about this, right?
And, you know, where you just finish shopping at Walmart or something, you have this giant
cart of stuff, and then you have to check it out yourself.
I mean, you used to have somebody there to help you, somebody there to beg it, you know.
The savings isn't being passed on to you.
You're asking to do some form of labor that a human being used to do on your behalf that
used to be a human being's job.
And I think people are almost justifying to themselves that, well, if I'm doing a little
bit of the work that somebody else should be doing on behalf of this corporation, then
let's say Walmart is essentially stealing my labor at this point, maybe I'll take one
item.
Maybe I won't just forget to scan one of those items.
I mean, it's, in a sense, a form of retribution.
This is how I've seen it described by people, that it's a form of retribution.
If you're going to make me work, then I'm going to get paid for that work.
That's the theory.
It's like self-help law.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, I'm sympathetic and all that, but I think it's kind of a poor excuse.
I mean, look, I agree that what retailers do many times is unfair and takes advantage
of people.
But I just think that excuse of, well, I have to pass the barcode over the scanner now,
so I want to be paid for that.
I think there's better arguments.
I really do.
Of course there's better argument.
I don't think it's the most cogent way, but it's the principle behind it, I think,
is what's interesting.
I don't think it carries the day in terms of whether the action is justified.
Certainly not.
It chips away at the trust, right?
It's part of the overall squeeze, whether it's shrinkflation or, you know, with boxes being
smaller, costs going up, all the different ways people feel like they are, you know,
run through the ringer, so to speak.
You know, I bought a bottle of vitamins last week that was the same size as the last bottle
that I bought that had 100 pills in it.
This one had 65.
They didn't change the price.
The price was the same, but the bottle was the same size.
The number of pills is what changed.
And of course, I didn't have the old bottle with me, so I couldn't hold it up and compare
it.
You know, when I got home and had the two next to each other, I said, oh, wow, look what
they did.
So, yeah, I can feel a little bit of that outrage.
That's shrinkflation right there.
That's what they do.
What else have you observed, Rebel?
Well, yeah, that's what I've observed.
You know, like the cereal, they used to fill it up to the top, you know, with cereal, but
now they fill it up only half.
And they put air in the, like, you know how, like, you blow up a, like, plastic bag with
air?
Well, they tell you the product may have settled in shipping, whatever that means.
I don't even like to talk about Bluetooth trackers.
My electric bike was stolen again, but it was stolen from somebody I don't know.
Wait, hold on.
Hold on.
First of all, you had your bike stolen once before.
We all lived through that.
Now you're saying you had your bike stolen from somebody you didn't know?
Can you explain that?
Yeah, I was, I, you know, I thought, I mean, I left my bike in front of a vehicle that I
was in and I saw somebody get on it and run, but I thought I, for a split second, I thought
I knew, but I, I was running after them and I did not, you know, thank goodness if, you
know, talking about surveillance, this car vehicle had a dash cam.
We got the dash cam footage and no, I did not recognize that person.
It was stolen by somebody you didn't know, not from somebody you didn't know.
Okay.
All right.
So that's clear.
Right.
Did I say from?
You said from.
That really confused me.
So, okay.
So wait, the, the bike was in front of a car that you were in?
Right.
All right.
And, and you weren't on your bike, you were in a car and you thought that the bike would
be safe in front of the car and then somebody just got on it and rode away.
Right.
Exactly.
And then we had the dash cam and then, uh, you know, we, and then I had a Bluetooth tracker
on it and it's not very accurate, but this person took it from Queens, from near Flushing
on the Long Island Railroad because I saw it on my train.
He took it on a train?
Wow.
Yeah.
Out to Babylon, Long Island.
Really?
Okay.
So you're able to track it like that.
So what happens in Babylon?
But I haven't tracked it to a house in Babylon.
We went to the house and, you know, I had the police there and, you know, nobody seems to
know, you know, we, I mean, we didn't look, I'll say, cause it was like one of those four
family type houses and we didn't have the people upstairs, but now it's on a, another
street in Babylon.
Uh, and you know, we, I mean, the police need you there and it's really a whole big thing.
I mean, if, if, if, if the Bluetooth tracker was tracking it to a particular location, how
could you not find it at that location?
Well, cause it's a Bluetooth tracker and it's tracking only if other Bluetooth type of devices
are near it.
So it may not be in that particular address.
It may be around it.
It may be next door to it.
Maybe.
Well, then you need to stake out the neighborhood.
You know, that's, uh, it's, it's, it's premature to call the cops, just sit in the car, maybe the
same car you were sitting in before and wait for that bike to go riding down the street.
And eventually it will.
That's true.
But, um, if it had a GPS tracker, I would see it moving and I know where I'd probably be able
to find it.
Well, maybe because your bike gets stolen so frequently, you should have a GPS tracker
on it.
Yeah.
Now how, how does that work?
I mean, cause it needs batteries constantly.
The Bluetooth tracker just needs like a watch battery and it just uses a little bit of power.
There's a DGS track and you know, more.
It almost sounds, it almost sounds like you're asking if, if, if there's a way to boost the,
uh, sensitivity of, uh, locating the, with the Bluetooth signal, because you don't have
something as accurate as, as like, for instance, GPS.
So, um, I'm not sure exactly what, uh, that you said it's like a little coin cell.
What, what that system is or how Jeep, it's a Bluetooth, it's a Bluetooth tracker.
It uses Bluetooth.
If, if somebody else is in Bluetooth range, it kind of matches like by, by, uh, by triangulation,
I guess.
Using other known location data from like a, a router or some, some device.
I mean, okay.
Is this like, this is like the air tag thing that Apple has?
I have an app with it.
Yeah.
There's an app with it that you, you know, give you a map.
And, but, uh, a GPS tracker would have exact locations, whether it's moving or not.
Sure.
Sure.
It'd be like live.
Um, but if you could make like a little antenna or a way to like be more sensitive than just
the interface that you're using while you're in the area, you might have a sense of like,
okay, I can estimate exactly how far away it is using a system that's a lot less granular,
like really kind of course.
It's just telling you, okay, it's here this day.
It doesn't give you anything else like detailed as you're saying.
Well, you want to hide it there.
You don't want to, you know, you want it small enough to be able to hide it somewhere.
I had it like under.
So are you giving up or are you just thinking for the future?
Well, I mean, I get, I'm trying to have the, uh, Suffolk County police, you know, try to
say, well, you need to be there.
Well, I don't have a way of getting out there.
And, you know, it wasn't my car that I was in.
And we have the surveillance video from the, uh, the dash cam and we showed that to the,
you know, detectives.
Wait, so, so you have the person's face?
Yes.
And, uh, did you try showing that to the people in Babylon?
See if anybody recognized that person?
Yeah.
They, they don't, they say they kind of, they don't recognize it.
Uh-huh.
Or they're lying.
It's quite possible.
Maybe.
I mean, well, it was a older type person.
I don't know.
What?
Old people can't lie?
I don't know.
Old people are some of the best liars around.
Believe me.
You're pursuing it on your own behalf, so.
How, how, how soon after, uh, you went out there, did it suddenly go to another house
a few blocks away?
Um, about two, three days.
Okay.
So for two or three days after you went out, it was still in the same place?
Right.
Okay.
Well, it doesn't, that doesn't point to, um, uh, a panicked, uh, transfer of stolen property.
So.
Right.
It just might be.
Well, you know, if I was to tell, if I was to tell the news this.
I don't think the news.
I don't think the news is going to.
I didn't use a bike.
I haven't had it for two and a half years.
It was like $3,000.
Uh-huh.
And if I was to tell the news, if I was to make a GoFundMe page now saying my bike was
stolen, I wouldn't, I wouldn't get anything.
But if I was to tell the news this, then, you know, they would do, hey, this person,
uh, makes a living by, uh, delivering food and, you know, set up a GoFundMe page for it.
I would probably make lots of money.
I mean, not lots, but I'd have to get a new bike.
Well, I can't advise you on what to do, but, um, it's unfortunate.
It's unfortunate that happened.
Uh, but maybe, uh, maybe you can, uh, offer some people out there some incentive to help
you.
Maybe they can, uh, keep an eye out for it or for that person and then let you know.
Well, you live in Suffolk County.
Maybe you can put it back in.
But I don't know everybody in Suffolk County.
That's the thing.
You know, it's, it's not as tight as you might, you know, believe.
Anything else?
Any other adventures?
Um, yeah.
Uh, would you like to hear a demonstration of what, uh, annoying voicemails that we have
at work?
I'm not gonna get out of this, am I?
Okay.
Uh, make it quick though.
We got, we have other people waiting.
Hold on.
I assume we do.
That's long enough to hold, isn't it?
Click, click.
Yeah, I think, uh, my patience.
...are recorded for training and quality assurance purposes.
Okay, well, I don't have...
If you are a driver, please press one.
For complimentary direction, please enter the four-digit extension of the party you are
trying to reach.
Emmanuel, are you there?
I'm here.
Okay, I'm gonna press zero.
I'm sorry.
That is an invalid entry.
Please try again.
Is he listening to voice as well?
What?
Is he listening to voice as well?
I'm sorry.
That is an invalid entry.
Please try again.
Please enter the four-digit extension of the party you are trying to reach.
Two-six-zero-zero.
That's what I would say.
Oh, yeah, that's a good idea.
Please enter...
I'm sorry.
That is an invalid entry.
How dare you?
Please enter the four-digit extension of the party you are trying to reach.
One, two, three, four, if you're gonna be...
Oh, I know.
I don't have buttons on my telephone.
What did you just hit?
I'm sorry.
You just hit buttons.
That is an invalid entry.
Please try again.
How stupid do you think we are?
Please enter the four-digit extension of the four-digit extension.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
That is an invalid entry.
Anyway...
What was the purpose of that?
Rebel, what was the purpose of hearing that guy say that?
I don't understand.
What was...
What were you thinking?
They don't have a receptionist there.
They don't...
You know...
I can call random numbers and get similar things.
So what were you trying to prove?
I don't know.
If you press zero, it's...
You know, it says...
Or if you don't have buttons on your telephone.
What about all those people that have rotary phones?
You know, they can't enter an extension.
It's 1990 calling.
Yes, I know this.
We've known this for a long, long time.
Nothing has changed.
You can pulse the ringer.
You can't.
The handset, you know.
Rebel, closing thoughts before we open up...
...for another phone call.
Let's see.
If you don't have closing thoughts, that's fine, too.
Maybe we can...
You know, there's an idea...
I think artificial intelligence stole people's identities.
You know, they charge...
They open credit cards in people's names,
and, you know, they...
And they charge things.
Oh, AI is committing credit card fraud?
That would be kind of cool.
Right.
Yeah, because I get calls from AI sometimes.
It's like, you know, it waits for the word hello.
Uh-huh.
If you don't say hello, or if you don't say anything,
you know, or if you say something else, it doesn't, you know...
Okay, so Rebel, what I suggest,
pick up the phone and say goodbye and see what happens.
Oh, that's a good idea.
Yeah, just do that.
Make that a habit from now on.
Whenever the phone, you know, it rings,
pick it up and say goodbye.
Why don't you practice now?
No, I'll do that next time.
Practice now.
Go ahead.
Okay.
All right.
Hello?
No, you did it wrong.
Oh, boy, he's messing with me, isn't he?
Okay.
I have to go.
Yes, you do.
All right.
All right.
Good talking to you.
Good hearing from you.
Yeah, good.
Oh, by the way, I'll be at the November 20...
No, not the October 2600, but the November 2600 meeting.
Okay, so if those of you who don't want to see Rebel,
October might be your last chance.
Yeah, and that's coming up, not this week, but the week after.
Right?
Right.
Is that right?
Okay.
All right, then.
Okay.
Goodbye.
Bye.
And our phone number is 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK.
Alex, you know, we can't see you for some reason,
so if you're trying to say something, we have no idea.
What's going on?
Am I back now?
Now you're back.
You're doing something to your camera.
Yeah, I think it's because I had two instances of Skype running on two different machines,
and I was connected into the same conversation.
And I did that because I couldn't get enough of that repartee you had with Rebel.
It was exhilarating.
You connected to Skype twice with the same conversation?
I did.
Yeah, same account signed in on two different machines.
I don't understand that.
I don't understand what you could possibly gain from that.
I wanted to see if it would show both instances of me on each client.
And instead, it simply blocked out your face so we couldn't see you at all.
That's right.
So now you know.
Now you know what will happen if you mess with Skype like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't try this at home, kids.
802-321-4225.
802-321-HACK is our telephone number.
We will wait a few more minutes for another phone call.
And if we don't get one, we'll have an early night, which – go ahead, Rob.
So Rebel mentioned AI stealing things.
Can we talk about the other story involving 2600 and AI and a couple of books?
Oh, yeah.
I forgot about that.
Yeah.
I should have been good and pissed off on the show.
We discovered that there's a database.
I don't have it handy in front of me.
But there's a database where you can type in book authors or titles and see if those books have been used to train artificial intelligence.
And both 2600 books, Dear Hacker, the letters to the editor, 2600, and The Best of 2600, these huge books, they both have been used without our permission.
Now, mind you, maybe Wiley gave their permission, the publisher of the book, I don't know.
But it's still unsettling to realize that the words of our writers, the words of the magazine, are being used to train artificial intelligence, and we had nothing to say about it.
Yeah, I have the story in front of me.
This is a story on The Atlantic, and it's part of their series on a collection of books called Books 3.
That's one word, V-O-O-K-S and the numeral 3.
And this data set is based on a collection of pirated e-books that's been going around, most of them published in the past 20 years.
And it is over 191,000 books.
And this collection, obviously, it's unauthorized copies of at least some of these books.
Apparently, according to the rest of the reporting, I think it's most or all pirated.
But it is being used by Bloomberg.
It is being used by Meta.
It is being used by big companies to train generative AI.
And both 2,600 books are in there, which is not only did they not ask 2,600's permission, ask your permission, Emanuel, as the author, but also the permission of all the people since these books are compilations of things from the magazine, letters and articles.
They don't have the permission of the countless hackers all over the world who have written those articles and letters.
That's true.
That's true.
Now, maybe, Alex, I'm going to ask you, why should we be upset at this?
Well, look, I think there's two ways to look at it.
And I've been on the periphery of some of the – there's quite a few lawsuits out there.
I mean, I believe that we talked about the lawsuit last week, didn't we, with the Authors Guild on the show, didn't we?
So that's – well, look, there's two ways, I think, of looking at this in terms of fair use, right?
Because that's ultimately what this boils down to.
Is it a fair use?
Is it a non-infringing use of the copyright to train some kind of AI model?
I mean, what does it mean to use your data in training a separate model there, right?
And based on the traditional considerations that you would analyze to determine whether or not something is a fair use, one of the major considerations is whether or not it's being used in a commercial context.
And if it's being used in a commercial context, it's very much less likely to be a fair use.
Now, here, in many of these contexts in which the AIs are operating, the generative AIs and large language models are operating that have been trained on this massive – trained on this massive amount of data, they're operating in some kind of commercial environment, right?
There's subscriptions to these types of things or separate instances.
So that would indicate to me that it would be easy to argue that this is not a fair use, that it's probably an infringing use.
But then think about this on the other hand.
I mean, you made the point yourself, Rob, which was book three, that repository of data that mostly came from these pirated books.
And, I mean, who knows what kind of crap was infesting those PDFs and files, too, that they had ingested.
I can only imagine it was very unsavered.
But your two books, Emanuel, were just one out of 191,000.
So the amount of difference they might have made to a particular training model would be considered potentially de minimis and not actionable.
So on that basis, you could also then argue, well, maybe this is a fair use of the copyrighted material because it's not like it's going to spit out the entirety of your book if somebody asks it to.
It might do something in that style, but then that's a matter of inspiration, not necessarily copyright infringement.
So these are very much unsettled issues that I think you can look at one way or another, depending upon which side of the copyright you're on.
But it also, these are also issues that are very much unsettled and before the courts right now that I think we're going to learn a lot about.
And I think that the law is going to evolve a lot in response to this technology.
All I know is if we did something similar without asking permission, they'd be all over us, you know, whether it's music or video or even printed words.
I'm sure that legal teams would be saying, did you ask permission or not?
And we'd be held to account, whereas here it's just expected.
We were.
We were held to account for something very similar.
Think about this analog, right?
These large language models, they're ingesting these massive amounts of data, data that we know from the court pleadings, probably verified court pleading, is in fact stolen data, data of pirated books and things.
And you consider what Aaron Swartz was doing way back then.
He was ingesting lots of data, academic journals.
He figured out how to get academic journals without necessarily having to pay for every single page of them.
He wasn't using it in some, you know, he wasn't training some language model on this.
He didn't intend to sell licenses to whatever that corpus of data that he was generating was.
He was simply doing it for the sake of collecting information, scraping that data for the public good.
And not in a fraudulent way that, you know, it was never said they had the right to charge for it in the first place.
And the United States government charged him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, refused to settle the case, and he took his own life.
Well, and he was making it available for training humans.
Yes.
I guess that's a way of looking at it.
Democratizing the availability of it for humans to use in their own training because it was a costly part of study and access to this knowledge was, in his view, unfair.
And retrograde in the context of, you know, growing and expanding knowledge with the advent of technology.
You know, maybe I just don't know how many books there are out there, but it seemed like under 200,000 books seemed like a fairly low number.
I thought there were millions of books out there.
So, should we be honored that we were selected twice, have two of our books training AI out there?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, then I'll look at it that way.
We can maintain both.
You know, if you're training AI on Chaucer, if you're training AI on Shakespeare, I mean, those are the great stories, but you can't necessarily, like, AI.
And I was also interested because of the resolution of the Writers Guild strike and the new contract and what they said about AI.
And basically, they said that the writers can use it if they want to, but the studios can't force them to use it.
But this is the thing.
People talk like the way they write in Dear Hacker and in The Best of 2600.
If you're trying to make something that's going to sound like today, you can't train it on Dostoyevsky.
So, yes, I think it's a great compliment that they try to train AI.
You know, we're a piece of this moving forward.
AI, what AI turns into, they're taking a bit of us with them.
I'm just saying, you know, I'd like to get a little credit for that.
All of us deserve a little credit because all of our words are in there somewhere.
And it just seems only fair.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I mean, we are in good company in this.
One of the Atlantic's other articles about Books 3 goes into the authors represented.
And, you know, there are all-time greats.
Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare, R.L.
Stein, Stephen King.
Shakespeare got in?
Shakespeare got in.
Shakespeare definitely got in, yeah.
But also Nobel Prize winners.
You know, Harold Pinter, Gunter Grass, Bob Dylan, Octavio Paz, Christian publisher,
sci-fi publishers, education publishers, university presses from all over the place,
and lots of nonfiction, poetry.
Just, it is a huge chunk of, I guess, if you were to look at the body of commonly pirated
books out there, you would find stuff that is a fairly representative slice of human reading
material.
And we find ourselves among that.
And maybe there's a little compliment there somehow.
You got to take what you can get, you know?
Well, I think there's also, you know, turnabout here.
I mean, what happens when we really wield it against these kinds of actors and firms?
I mean, we're just as, we have just as much right to it and can access it probably just
as easily.
We probably have a keen understanding of it all.
And I think that, you know, maybe they do need some of the slap, like a little blowback
or slap back from the people that they're wielding a lot of this stuff over.
Because it's been this sort of top-down and people worshipping tech for years now, bubble
after bubble, whatever it is, just the sort of maintaining of power and treating people
as though they're less than and they can't possibly use the same tactics and come for them in the
same way.
And I just, I really feel like they're foolish in thinking that all this nicey-nice stuff
can't come back in totally different forms.
Like, it's hilarious how well-behaved we've been in the face of how many tools there really
are at our fingertips.
Go, Rob.
Yeah, and I want to hear from our listeners on what they think about this.
Give us a call, 1-802-321-HACK or toll-free at 1-833-755-2600 or tell us in the YouTube
chat.
We did get a response on Mastodon when we posted this story on the show's account.
And GI Jack wants to know, did any of my letters to the editor that got published in
2600 get used for AI, both honored and hopping steaming mad?
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
Yeah, I think every letter that's in that book would have been included.
So, yeah.
And I'm looking at the statistics for the books right now.
Dear Hacker was 576 pages.
I'm looking up best of 2600 right now.
You know, it's a significant number of pages.
Feel free to say something while I'm looking up the number.
They are big, heavy books.
Yeah, that one is 888 pages.
Okay, so we're talking about over 1,300 pages there.
And that's, you know, not to be in competition with Shakespeare here, but, you know, we've
got a bunch of pages, too, you know.
But the one difference between 2600 and Shakespeare is that Shakespeare is legally public domain.
Everyone's allowed to do what they like with him.
I guess so.
I guess so.
As we don't really care that much.
All right.
We have a phone call?
Yes, we do.
Okay.
And you are on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Yeah, hello.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we do hear you.
Yeah.
No, I just wanted to talk a little bit about what you were talking about on the earlier
show about shoplifting.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, so you said a couple of things.
One of the things you said was that you were kind of downplaying it a little bit.
And it says, to me, it's pretty much as bad as they say it is.
I mean, I've seen it myself.
I see it in Walgreens.
I shop at Walgreens all the time.
I see people literally just walking in and just walking out with stuff.
I mean, they don't even conceal it anymore.
Back in the day, people used to conceal their pockets and stuff.
Now they just walk right out with it.
They don't even care.
And you also said, well, it's a small percentage of people who are doing it.
Well, if that's true, that's even worse.
Because what that means is, and you're saying it's not political, but of course it's political.
Because that means they're letting those people come out.
If it's the same amount of people, same people doing this over and over again, that means
the district attorney, whoever it is, they keep letting these people out and they keep
doing the same thing over and over again.
Well, it just sounds like someone's bad at their job.
But how is that political if someone's just bad at their job, if they're not prosecuting
people?
I don't get how that's a political...
It is.
All this bail stuff, bail reform, letting people out with all that stuff going on.
It's all part of it.
It's all part of the problem.
Letting people out.
I agree.
I agree with the caller on this.
I think it's indicative of a process problem and a policy problem rather than an individual
in common.
I will add, though, that that statistic is just the individuals that were caught.
A lot of people don't get caught.
So I empathize a little bit.
Right.
That's true.
I don't know.
I just think there is a problem, though.
And it's not just people who are hungry who just need a loaf of bread.
There is some...
Oh, it's sport.
Yeah.
That was a point we were making, I think, is that it's not just people who are desperate.
It's part of some kind of initiation or just sport now.
But it's a complicated thing.
It's not just because this person got elected or something like that.
It's because of how we have evolved as a society, how big box stores now are places that few
people seem to go to.
Everyone buys things online.
So this is a lot easier to get away with.
And now that people are doing it, what are you going to do to stop it?
It's a challenge.
And nobody seems to have the answer right away.
Yeah.
Like, they have no allegiance.
Like, there's no allegiance to the businesses themselves.
And they see it also with the workers who themselves are either overwhelmed or don't care.
Like, their working conditions are just as bad as if they were there shoplifting themselves,
you know, for whatever reason.
But let me ask you, caller.
Let's make you district attorney.
And tell me, how would you handle this?
What do you think the best way to do it is?
If you're caught doing this three times, then there's going to be something more drastic,
maybe a year in prison or something.
I mean, you can't just keep letting these people out on the street.
I'd probably give you three times.
Yeah.
Maybe two or three times, and that's it.
You're going to have to get locked up at least a year or two, a couple years.
So a year in prison for shoplifting, even if it's more than once.
You think that's the right move?
Well, if it's a few times.
One time, two times, maybe not.
But if this is a repeated thing happening, then why not?
I mean, this person isn't...
I was in Wargreens last week.
I saw this guy who was literally fighting with...
Somebody tried to stop him.
He was trying to get out of the store with...
I think it was Peele.
He had a bunch of things.
Aspirin and things or whatever.
And some innocent bystander tried to stop him.
And there was a big fight there.
He had a knife on him.
I mean, it's just...
Some of these people don't do anything to get away.
Well, I mean, you're pointing at bigger issues there.
Somebody has a weapon, and they're acting not in a sane manner.
There are bigger issues that need to be dealt with.
And prison isn't normally the answer for this.
All kinds of ways of dealing with mental health need to be addressed, and they're not.
And that is definitely a problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's terrible.
I don't know if it's any worse.
I was listening to the statistics you mentioned, so I don't know if it's really any worse or better.
All I know is I'm seeing it more.
I don't know if it's going to be worse.
Maybe it's the same thing.
Maybe they just clean it up.
Maybe the other side is just clean it up for political gain or whatever.
But I just know that I see a lot of it.
I see people, you know...
The point I was making earlier is that I can find a way to blame Republicans for this.
I can find a way to blame Democrats for this.
I don't think either one of those is valid.
I think it's a problem we have as society.
I think we have to tackle it together as society and not simply say, this is happening because this person is in power.
No, because the people doing this don't care.
They're going to do it no matter what.
And the challenges are going to exist no matter what part of the country you're in.
So this is happening everywhere.
Yeah, it happens more in big cities because there's more people in big cities.
But it's a challenge that we have to get our heads together and figure out a way to deal with this.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.
Okay, well, thanks.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
Thanks for your call.
Thanks for listening.
Take care.
Interesting perspective.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I mean, you touched on it, but it's a much bigger issue than just somebody's walking into a store and not paying for stuff.
You mentioned the mental health issues and the police and the legal system's handling of mental health issues has evolved a lot recently, but it's still garbage.
And if somebody is compelled to shoplift by a mental health issue, they're going to keep doing it.
And then under the legal system, they'll just keep doing it and they'll get themselves arrested.
And maybe that'll end with them in jail for a long time for something that is not actually their fault, but it won't get them the help they need.
And, you know, on the other hand, you have people shoplifting for survival, for work, for, you know, for the financial gain.
And, you know, the problem there is why isn't there a better job for that person?
Why isn't there a safer job for that person?
And that, too, is a crime of society.
So, yeah, solving this is – there's no easy answers to this.
There's no simple quick fixes.
It is something that, like, we are entrenched in a system that does not serve these needs.
Yeah.
I don't see anybody minimizing this.
I don't see people saying, oh, it's just kids being kids or anything stupid like that.
I think a lot of us are confused as to what the best way forward is.
But it certainly doesn't help when it's politicized.
And we can't kid ourselves about what type of society we have and then be, like, slapping our cheek, you know, with our jaw on the ground every time something like this happens, waiting for some narrative to be shunted in to the conversation about who should be blamed.
And it's a terribly foolish way to approach what is becoming predictable, I think.
These are not hard crimes to commit.
I mean, you know, we live in a society where it's quite possible to get away with things.
The point is to live in a society where you don't want to be getting away with things.
Yeah, you can have, you know, a fancy meal at a restaurant and then just run out the door and not pay.
They trust you to give you everything and then ask for the check later.
Why?
Who knew that you could actually get all this stuff first and then run away?
Yeah, people can figure that out and people can start doing that en masse.
It's a breakdown in our culture.
And you have to ask yourself, why is that happening?
What is leading people to act this way?
And there are all kinds of other things you can point to, you know, violence and people just not listening to what others are saying.
An intolerant society, et cetera.
Okay, I guess I had the final word on that.
Yeah, I thought you were taking a call or something.
Well, I thought so too.
Kyle's confusing me here.
Did we have a call or not?
I didn't get it in time.
It rang like 10 times.
All right.
The person who called, call back.
802-321-4225.
And I guess we'll just wait in silence.
Yeah, it was very confusing there for a second.
Yeah.
Do I really have to be talking all the time?
Stephanie here.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I can say, continuing the conversation about this, you know, I have worked many retail jobs in my day.
I'm working one now.
And, you know, if somebody comes in and steals stuff, what am I going to do?
I am not going to physically try and stop somebody.
I don't know if they have a weapon or anything.
I am not a law enforcement person.
That is not my line of work.
So, yeah, that's just going to happen.
And that is part of the risk of having a shop.
That is part of the risk of selling things.
But it, I don't know.
It just seems like something that has been sort of co-opted by huge companies like Target.
And this goes back to what I was saying about food deserts on the radio hour, where it is a big company, you know, comes into town, forces out the small businesses, forces out the little guys.
Forces out the people that, you know, the public might care about a little more than your targets or what have you.
And then they fail to do it.
And then they close down.
And then what is the neighborhood left with?
It's sad.
That's a part of it.
That's not all of it.
So, I don't want that to be the excuse that, oh, because Starbucks kicked out the locally owned coffee shop.
That's why people are ripping off Starbucks.
Now, they probably rip off the local shop as well.
I mean, people who don't care will do that.
But when it becomes the trend that you just have big box stores and chains everywhere, people tend to care less.
And you will see more of a degradation in that community spirit.
But, Rob, you know, as a retailer, if somebody were to do something like that to you, rip you off in some way, well, okay, it's unfortunate.
But you have to, you know, basically balance whether you want to get into it with somebody or whether you just want to let it go.
I think what the caller said before about what happened in Walgreens where some guy tried to interject, I think that person was an idiot.
Don't ever try to do that.
You could be killed over, you know, something, somebody is shoplifting at Walgreens and Walgreens isn't going to care.
They're not going to, you know, pay for your funeral or anything like that.
No.
They just, you know, they're going to be Walgreens.
And you can't expect them to be anything else.
But when you see that person come into your shop again, you will be prepared.
You'll know this person's up to no good.
And you can warn people.
You can take precautions.
You know, they won't be at an advantage all the time.
They will do something bad.
You know they're going to do something bad.
You'll tell others they'll do something bad.
And then they'll have a harder time getting through to do more bad things.
People will be more suspicious of them.
It's not a pleasant way to live when people assume you're up to no good.
Don't you think, Emmanuel, this would be a great use case for facial recognition technology?
Oh, my God.
Well, you know, the argument is going to be made for sure.
Absolutely.
No doubt.
I don't know.
I'm not prepared.
I'm not prepared to figure out how to convince somebody not to use facial recognition in that kind of a situation.
That's a good point because it's diffuse when it's small retailers that maybe have a phone tree or network.
They call each other.
They say, this person is not, you know, they're 86.
We don't mess with them.
They're in the neighborhood.
Right.
That's a slower way.
But it's different when it's a big chain that all of a sudden introduces cameras or whatever kind of entry thing that diverts people who are on a blacklist.
Look at Madison Square Garden, what they did.
There are people that were lawyers that they didn't want to let into their venues.
Yep.
They had a very efficient way of doing that.
You know, okay, if Walgreens wants to do that amongst Walgreens outlets, I guess, fine, do that.
I have a problem when it's the government doing it.
I have a problem when it becomes part of society, you know, and it's kind of like the surveillance cameras.
Like, yeah, run your own surveillance system, but you control it and you give it to the cops if you want to give it to the cops, not if they demand it.
And, you know, it's different than having the government itself or the police department or the city or whatever running it all.
That is when it becomes unhealthy.
But if you already have some, like, you already feel like you have nothing to lose and you're not in a position where you have access to e-commerce, like you're connected and you have an address and all of that.
And then all of a sudden you can't go to any kind of retail stores.
It's, I think, again, not really.
It's creating even more of depths and agony for people that may already be addicted to something or just disillusioned and going to continue to escalate, do other things and maybe get caught in another situation.
But, you know, I think it's, it's, this speaks to knowing people, knowing people in the neighborhood.
Yeah.
You know, I, I, we watched the show based in Chicago, The Shy, great show.
My big complaint about it is that everybody seems to know each other and that's a limitation of the writing and the way it's, it's put together.
But it also is how a community is built when everybody knows each other and, you know, oh, this guy is having trouble or this guy acts in a dishonorable way.
You all can be prepared.
You all can maybe even help the person.
But when we don't know each other, we don't know what we're capable of, we're suspicious of everybody.
I think that's when it becomes more unhealthy.
And, you know, I noticed in the East Village, for instance, in New York City, people seem to know each other.
You know, you walk into a shop and the person knows you, knows what you want because people shop locally.
And you can do that inside a city as well.
And you can have the same small town values, the positive small town values in a big city.
So when we're not that different, we have a phone call who's been very patient.
And good evening.
You're on overtime.
Go ahead.
Oh, hi, overtime.
It's Ann Anonymous in Ulster County.
And I had to get off the YouTube to make the call.
It was a very non-technical little phone.
A word or thought.
Yes.
It's a five-cent flip phone.
It snaps it up right.
You know, the shoplifting thing, I have mixed thoughts about it.
And part of it is, well, one of the many, many things.
Thinking about for someone like me, I am in my 60s.
And I saw all of the mom and pop shops of all different kinds, be it food, groceries, arts and crafts,
all kinds of stores, health food stores, go out, succumb to big corporations, late 70s through 80s and into the 90s.
And, you know, I'm speaking for others who are angry, resentful, feel, I'm shopping in stores that I don't respect, don't like, even really, really despise.
And a very common kind of shoplifting now is eating food, taking food, eating food, and not paying for the food.
You're not going to get caught in the sense that you're not leaving with anything that's on you.
And you're stealing without any chance of someone, because by the time you get to the front of the store, the food is in your belly.
And I think, yeah, I have done it a couple of times.
I have done it a couple of times in the last year in Walmart on purpose, out of anger, out of, I'm forced to shop.
You know what it is?
For me, I did it twice.
I wanted to do this.
Maybe it was an experiment.
I meant it's an act, it's an act of, an active act of disrespect.
And, yeah, it's wrong and it's not an answer at all.
I'm just trying to shed the tiniest bit of light on one more aspect of shoplifting.
And it seems to me that eating and not paying for it has gotten bigger and bigger and is growing.
And I'm sure there's all different kinds of people doing it for all different.
Eating something in Walmart, I think you might have already paid the price.
Obviously.
Obviously.
Local stores where I've used the deli, when I buy the food, forks and plastic silverware that they had in one place in the store,
because so many people are doing this now, it's at a different place in the store.
So this is obviously a big thing.
But people are so disgusted with being forced to spend money in these stores that I don't want to really have anything to do with,
because it's the only thing that are around.
It's a sign of, it seems to me from other people, too, that I've seen, it's a sign of disrespect.
I wasn't particularly hungry, you know.
Right.
It's a kind of a very, very lowly way of an absurd type of activism.
But you know it was wrong.
You know it was wrong to do this, but it was an expression.
And sometimes we express ourselves in ways that we know are not considered acceptable, whether it's civil disobedience or even vandalism.
There are ways of expressing ourselves where, you know, it's not violent, but it's also not considered proper.
But we have to balance it.
We have to measure, is this, you know, worth, you know, a SWAT team showing up or anything like that?
Is this the breakdown of society completely?
Right.
Well, no SWAT team, nobody's going to show up from eating, point taken, and of course you're right.
It's a very crude form of civil disobedience, very crude.
And, you know, another thing, another thing, are you familiar, in Walmart, there is an employee stands here in Ulster County, pardon me,
an employee stands, and after you've done your shopping and paid, when you get to the main, the exit,
you have to stop and show the person, you have to hand the person your receipt,
and they go through all of your bags as you're standing at the door.
That is, I actually was in a Walmart within the last couple of months, because they were the only place I had a $3 item I needed.
But that was not the case in that particular one.
It might be something that some have this policy and some don't.
It's not just Walmart either.
It's, you know, I remember Best Buy did that at some point.
Wow.
Various other, various.
Some of the clubs.
Yeah.
Is that legal?
It causes.
Discount clubs.
Is it legal?
I think it varies by state.
Actually, Alex, you would probably know if this is legal or not.
You know, that is, it's my, I was never a Walmart shopper.
I've been there a few times in the last couple of years, and, well, I boycotted it for decades,
but, and I'm asking if it's legal in the sense that, and I wonder, because that's my property,
and after I bought it, it's my property and my cart, my bags, et cetera.
Right.
And when they're going through it, and if you tell them, no, I'm not interested in having
you do this, they'll let you know, no, no, we, they, we are going to do this.
And I mean, no one is going, no one is going to make a case out of this legally, I doubt.
Well, I think some people have made a case.
Actually, I want to ask, I want to ask, I want to ask Alex, do you have any, any input on this?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's objectionable for them to do it, but I think that they can get away with it, right?
Because you also have to remember that the Fourth Amendment, your privacy interests in particular,
and the prohibitions against searches, well, that only applies to the government.
And for a while, it only applied to the federal government, not even the states,
until the Doctrine of Incorporation applied the Bill of Rights to the states.
But here you have a private company saying, essentially, you play by our rules on our private property.
So unless it amounts to something like a civil rights violation, which I don't, I don't think it does,
you know, it's going to be hard to bring some kind of legal claim for that.
But, you know, I don't think any store in their right mind is going to physically tackle somebody
and go through their bags because, you know, just the PR from that alone would be detrimental to them.
Well, you'd be surprised.
I mean, it just takes one idiot, you know, who takes his job too seriously.
That is true.
But they do go, they do go, they do go, go ahead.
Hang on, Alex, Alex first, then the caller.
Yeah, I just wanted to tell you, caller, I have a Walmart near me,
we're near my place in Pennsylvania, and we have the same person that goes and checks your receipts.
But I find that she never really checks the receipts.
That essentially she just looks to see if you have a receipt
and then looks to see if the amount of items on the receipt somewhat resemble the number of items in your bag
and then lets you go.
It doesn't, she never really looks at things.
The price club type stores do that too, I believe.
Yeah, you know, so it's not a thing.
But I will tell you, a long time ago, when I was a law clerk and I had documents and stuff on me
that I was leaving a price club or a Sam's Club or something like that over near Pentagon City,
and I had just gotten my eyes checked and I had a prescription as well in my bag.
So I had this medical record one night in this attaché case.
And on the way out, the security guard insisted on me opening up my bag and showing him the contents of my bag.
And I just said, no, you can't, like, you know, absolutely not.
You know, I'm not letting you do that.
And I said, well, yeah, and they made a big deal out of this whole thing.
And I didn't back down about it.
To me, it was a matter of principle.
And I said, well, look, you know, there's a sign right up here, you know, that says,
and they pointed to the sign above the exit that said, we reserve the right to inspect all contents and bags.
Wait, it's above the exit?
Was it above the entrance?
That's exactly what I said.
That was exactly the argument I made, which was, you know, a sign that I see only on the way out of the store
doesn't mean I consented to it on the way in.
You know, like, that's just totally crazy.
And I held my ground, and they let me go without looking in my bag.
But it caused a big scene, and, you know, people looked at me like I was some kind of, you know,
shoplifter, reluctantly not opening my bag, because why else would this guy not open up his bag?
He stole something.
What have you got to hide?
Why do I want people just looking at my medical records in there as a matter of principle?
It just pissed me off.
But nobody has time for this crap.
You know, if you did that every time you went to the store, you know, you'd never leave the house again.
And that's what we keep coming back to.
People don't have time to challenge injustice, and that's why injustice prevails,
because it just, you know, somebody with a louder voice gets away with something.
It's a maze of life.
I can't put it any more simply.
It's just you're being molded and shaped and contorted just to eat, just to get by,
just to have any kind of, any sense of a life.
You have to navigate all this, and it's totally understandable, this sort of anti-consumer response of, like,
and I've seen it in grocery stores, you know, half-eaten things and stuff where people are just, like, disrespectful because what, you know,
the idea that, oh, this store's going to go away, the one that destroyed every other store.
Yeah, you know, that being the worst thing that this sort of activity results in, people are like,
the hell with it, and I can totally relate.
Yeah, and it causes, you know, a degree of disrespect and bad feelings and things like that,
but it's unlikely to be the reason why a store goes out of business, a big store, that is.
Probably the reason a store goes out of business is because of online retailing.
Most likely it's something more like that because that's really cutting a significant percentage out of the sales that they were used to in the past.
Some people coming in, even if they're organized gangs of people on occasion, I don't think that's enough to really have that significant a dent in the profits of any one store.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, but I don't think it's something that is going to put something out of business.
But imagine a landscape where there are no regular customers anymore.
You just have all this retail other than vacant stores that have already gone out of business.
You just have these places with all these items, all this merchandise just out.
It's like looking like a Target.
It's a Target.
That's funny because Target's the store that's closing.
But no, you see people coming into your store and that's unusual, so you view them with suspicion.
What are they up to?
They have to be up to something bad because there's so few customers.
So I think that's a part of it.
Anyway, Carla, we've talked too much.
Any final thoughts from you?
Oh, no.
It was very good to hear everything that you said.
I was lost listening into it, lost whatever thoughts listening to it.
Thank you for everything you're saying is interesting and good and important and true.
Well, thanks for sharing and listening to us this evening.
Yes.
Oh, thanks, guys.
Thanks.
See you next time.
All right.
Take care.
We had some good calls tonight, really good calls.
I'm very happy with them, but all good things must come to an end.
And that's where we are now.
Any final thoughts, folks?
I'm sorry.
We couldn't solve the shoplifting issue here on Off the Hook.
We don't have a shoplifting issue on Off the Hook, okay?
That's why I'm going to clear that up right away.
We've got that under control.
No, but in the rest of the country, yeah, there's some issues, and we have to deal with them.
Deal with, like, an extended family, like people misbehaving.
You got to do something about that.
Okay, so I guess write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com, and we'll be back next week with another edition
of Overtime as well as Off the Hook at 7 p.m.
Any final words?
No?
No, I don't have anything.
See you next week.
Good night.
Good night, everyone.
Stay tuned.