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The telephone keeps ringing So I ripped it off the wall I cut myself while shaving Now I can't make a cough We couldn't get much worse But if they could, they would On Dilly Bomb But I best expect the worst I hope that's understood On Dilly Bomb All right, we're welcome to Off the Hook We'll be right back. 
What makes that an assassination as opposed to just a murder? 
Well, the fact that a professional assassination, a professional assassin, excuse me, murdered him in cold blood. 
Did he leave his resume behind? 
How do you know it was a professional assassination? 
Well, I mean, there are certain telltale signs that somebody really knows what the hell they're doing. 
You know, I think, you know, I think the only telltale sign here is that we're all paying undue amount of attention to this because the guy is a CEO of a big company. 
That's the only reason. 
If this had been a poor schmo that, you know, like one of us, nobody would give it the I mean, you know, I turned on the TV this morning and the press conference from the NYPD was on CNN. 
It was on MSNBC. 
It was on Fox. 
It was on News Nation. 
It was on BBC. 
It was on all the local channels. 
This is for one guy getting got outside a hotel. 
I mean, look, I feel bad. 
It's awful. 
And I hope they catch the person who did it. 
But I mean, there's there's millions and millions of people here in New York and a fair number are victims of crimes at some point. 
And they get no attention whatsoever. 
What exactly? 
And you call it an assassination. 
That's that's that really throws me. 
And I didn't see your text because you tend to text me like two minutes before the show. 
And I don't really look my phone that. 
But, you know, it's interesting. 
There are some things about the story that that that fascinate me. 
For instance, I heard the guy escaped on a city bike. 
Is that is that true? 
Could he be that stupid? 
I mean, the reason I say that is because, you know, you can't just take a city bike unless one just happens to be lying around. 
You have to register. 
So, you know, there's going to be a paper trail at some point of registering for that that city bike. 
And it's a fairly trivial thing for them to figure out who took what city bike in that region at that particular time. 
And from what from what was also disclosed at the press conference this morning. 
Yeah, I did watch it. 
Every city bike has has GPS on it. 
So they know where it is if they can figure out which one it is. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, that's right. 
So so with regard to the city bike thing, the first thing I will say about about bicycles in in Manhattan, having ridden one for the last, I don't know, God, maybe 14, 15 years now, I've been riding a bicycle in in Manhattan. 
And I can tell you, it is the I think the best anti surveillance vehicle that you can have in in Manhattan. 
I mean, you can go the wrong way down one way streets. 
You can blow through lights. 
You can blow through stop signs. 
There's no car that could chase you and get you on a bike because of the versatility and the places where you can go on a bike. 
So I think you utilizing a bike as a getaway vehicle in Manhattan is actually absolutely brilliant. 
Oh, yes. 
A bike. 
A bike. 
Absolutely. 
This was a city bike. 
So you couldn't ask for more more tracking of your whereabouts. 
Well, I'll tell you this, too, though. 
I mean, I think I think it's questionable or rather that the conclusion that he used a city bike to get away is somewhat dubious. 
I mean, the film footage is pretty grainy. 
It's hard to tell whether or not it has that the bike has that dark blue hue that city bikes have. 
It certainly looks like a clunker, which the city bikes are. 
But I think it might have been one of those electric city bikes that are used. 
Interestingly enough, there was a data science nerd on Twitter who seems to have been scraping city bike usage data minute by minute and was able to identify that a bike was used right around the Hilton on 6th Avenue. 
I think it was around 54th or 56th and 6th was taken out and then put back in and was the only city bike that was checked out at around the time of the murder slash assassination and then was used to go up to a 82nd in Madison. 
So if that is, in fact, the bike that was used in this this murder, that would have been extraordinarily interesting. 
And cutting through Central Park on the way the way up there. 
I don't know if he cut through Central Park. 
That was on Blue Sky Hours before it was on Twitter. 
So get with the times. 
Oh, was it? 
Yeah. 
Well, you know, just not cool enough. 
Not yet. 
We're working on it, though. 
I'm working. 
You're right in the region. 
So are you trapped there because they're blocking off all the streets or something? 
Well, so I couldn't get home. 
The trains are messed up for any number of reasons. 
God bless the MTA. 
Plus, the Rockefeller Center tree lighting is tonight. 
So it's a gridlock day. 
So that's why I'm doing the show from my office. 
I could not get home in a reasonable amount of time this evening. 
So I came back. 
And there are helicopters and there are police officers directing traffic on every corner. 
And there are helicopters hovering in the sky as we're in the middle of, I wouldn't call it a massive manhunt, but a short manhunt. 
And, yeah, I think a bike is a great getaway vehicle if it's your own bike. 
And the fact that who was it? 
I sent this into the show this afternoon because somebody referred to digital exhaust, I think was the phrase they used. 
From a bike, from the city bike, conceptually. 
Yeah. 
I see what you posted now, actually. 
Streams of data that can be used to track the rider. 
That's according to David Schmoise, a computer scientist at Cornell University who helped design the system. 
So he knows a thing or two about it. 
So, yeah, you know, I don't have a city bike account. 
I am scared to ride a bike in the city, so I don't city bike. 
But, Alex, you're braver than I. 
But, no, everything is just locked up right now. 
And I do apologize. 
It's also incredibly warm at my office. 
This is why I have the window open. 
But helicopters. 
I did say that I feel like we had an episode of Law & Order today, which is kind of awesome. 
Wait, the city went through an episode of Law & Order or there actually was an episode being filmed? 
No, I feel like we're just living in an episode of Law & Order today. 
Well, this will show up in two years, I'm sure, on one of those shows. 
I wouldn't even give it that much time. 
I would hope helicopters are there for crowd management for the tree lighting. 
Because I can't imagine how they're going to find a single person in a helicopter in New York City. 
But, no, I don't know. 
I don't know the first thing about this, so who knows. 
But, anyway, between the creation of a city bike account, connecting it to a credit card, undocking it, riding it around the city, and docking it at a new location, every user creates many streams of digital breadcrumbs that can help Lyft, which many people might not know, is the company that operates CityBike. 
Yeah, you thought it was CityGroup, didn't you? 
Well, somehow it's Lyft. 
That helps Lyft track the user's location, possibly, possibly their identity. 
Combined with the user's phone data and location shared with cell towers, it is amazing how much information is conveyed, according to Mr. 
Schmoiz. 
So, yeah, you know, I assume they know what a city bike looks like, the NYPD and other people investigating this. 
I don't think they got that wrong. 
The only question is, was this a city bike that had been stolen and was just sitting around, and this guy happened upon it, or was it unplanned in one way or another? 
I also heard they found a cell phone nearby. 
So that's, you know, if you drop a cell phone after committing a so-called professional murder, you're not that professional in my eyes. 
But anyone could have dropped a cell phone, though. 
That's certainly possible. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Unless you drop a cell phone full of fabricated data that's entirely a red herring for police officers, law enforcement, etc., that would be pretty brilliant. 
Is real-life crime that well thought out? 
Because that would be something. 
Yeah, I mean, it very well could be. 
It'd be pretty simple to fill a cell phone up with a bunch of bogus data or perhaps to try to point the finger at somebody else or some other entity or some other motive for this particular killing. 
But, I mean, one thing for sure, though, when it comes to the city bike, if this guy used a city bike to commit an assassination, I think that's a pretty clear violation of their terms of service in terms of use. 
Well, I don't know if it's even brought up in their terms of service, so he might have found a loophole there. 
Probably one of the prohibited acts. 
Or maybe there'll be a change to their terms of service in terms of use policies now that prohibit use in connection with any kind of assassination. 
Okay. 
You know, you keep bringing up that word. 
And if you're going to use that word, I'm going to use it every time somebody gets killed intentionally. 
Because what is the difference? 
I mean, I always thought assassinations were limited to political figures, but I guess, you know, as long as you think the person is important enough to warrant all this attention. 
And, boy, has it gotten a lot of attention. 
Well, I mean, he's the CEO of a fairly hated massive insurance company, right? 
So if this was motivated by trying to cause some kind of change with respect to the insurance industry or on account of the insurance industry doing something really terrible to this person or this person's family, it's some kind of retaliation. 
Or if it was to gain some kind of business or political advantage, then I think we would call it an assassination as well. 
I think that's the difference between an assassination and a murder is that, you know, you're trying to gain some kind of ulterior advantage through the assassination of this particular person. 
Well, I mean, if, you know, somebody is having an affair with someone else's wife and person B kills person A to gain an advantage by not having person A around anymore, you know, I struggle to find a difference. 
Most of those killings would technically be considered manslaughter because killing of a paramour or somebody having an affair with your wife or your husband are generally crimes of passion that don't require any kind of premeditation. 
Assassination is really synonymous with murder in many ways because it requires malice aforethought, which is the premeditation element under the criminal law required for first degree, a first degree killing, a first degree murder. 
I love it as much as the next guy when you talk legalese, but there is some premeditation involved in a lot of killings. 
They're not always crimes of passion and there is passion involved in many crimes. 
So I think if somebody is angry at somebody else and shoots them, it's really no different than what we're witnessing here. 
And the fact that there's even a different categorization, one is manslaughter and one is what, first degree murder, that is wrong because, you know, that's putting one life above all others. 
Well, consider the difference though. 
Let's say you and I get into a really heated debate about, I don't know, let's say content moderation or hashing photos on device as opposed to off device, you know, something like that. 
It's on, let's go, yes, absolutely. 
Yeah, let's bring that one up again, right? 
Let's say we can do a really heated debate about that. 
We're at a bar. 
Yeah, you want to go? 
We're going, we're going to go. 
We'll do it, yep. 
And you pull out that gun that you're always carrying and you shoot me in the chest because you're so angry about this position about, that I took that this really shouldn't, wasn't really a privacy violation to create hashes on your device. 
Right, let's move on with the analogy. 
It's getting to go, you know, and by the way, most people agree with me anyway on that point. 
So you're so angry about losing that argument that you, you, you kill me in a bar, pull it out and just shoot me. 
In a bar or outside the bar? 
I mean, I wouldn't do it in the bar. 
I do it, you know, in the alleyway. 
That's traditionally where you do it. 
That is tradition. 
That is traditionally where you would do it. 
That's true. 
The, so that, that would be manslaughter because it wasn't premeditated, right? 
It was the heat of the moment. 
We got into an argument and you, you decided to kill me at that moment. 
Now, if you had, let's say, brought gloves with you, you put the gloves on, you had a silencer in this, you decided to get me riled up by bringing up this, this, this image hashing argument that we had last year. 
And, um, we get all riled up and then you use that silenced gun with the gloves that you brought with you. 
That would indicate some kind of the, the, the necessary premeditation or the, the meant the, uh, the malice of forethought for that to go from manslaughter to become a murder charge. 
Okay. 
I, I still don't see the difference because, you know, the difference is the planning, the planning. 
Why does the planning, why does the planning make it so much worse? 
You know, that's, that's what I don't get. 
Because it goes from being a crime of passion to a crime that was premeditated. 
Premeditated murder is, is kind of the worst crime in the books. 
Yeah, but the person is just as dead and murder is murder. 
So whether or not I'm, I'm feeling impassioned. 
You just, okay. 
He's talking, he's talking, he's making a legal argument. 
He's talking about in legal terms. 
You're talking about a moral argument, speaking in moral terms. 
They're two, you're in two different ballparks. 
He has no moral code. 
That's, that's what we're putting here. 
Oh, that's not true. 
Yeah. 
Okay. 
All right. 
Let's move on. 
This is getting a bit tiresome. 
Rob, go ahead. 
I think it might be sort of a class thing too, because like assassination versus murder, because just like how you can be just weird, but like once you have a certain amount of money, you're eccentric. 
So maybe once you're rich and famous enough, you're not just getting murdered, you're getting fancy murdered. 
You're getting assassinated. 
Okay. 
Well, maybe we should move on to other, other stories because there certainly are a lot of them. 
And this is just something that's taken up way too much time in the, in the city today. 
Anyway, Gila, if something happens outside the window, please let us know. 
Um, or if the, um, the fugitive seeks refuge in your building, uh, tell us about that too. 
Um, okay. 
So, uh, I saw this headline, um, earlier today and, um, it kind of leaped out at me. 
Uh, Trump FBI pick cash Patel successfully hacked by foreign spies. 
Now I'm not an expert on the whole, um, FBI, um, um, um, leadership, um, uh, thing here, but I, I can't think that it's a good thing for somebody who has been picked ahead of that organization, uh, to have headlines written about him saying that he was successfully hacked by foreign spies kind of, you know, makes you open to all kinds of ribbing in the office. 
And, uh, uh, you know, it sort of puts to the side, the fact that this guy's a lunatic that wants to dismantle the FBI in the first place. 
But apparently Iranian hackers have, um, this is how this story from the Daily Beast phrases it. 
Iranian hackers have reached their tentacles into the incoming Trump administration. 
After the president-elect's pick for FBI chief, Kash Patel was targeted by a cyber attack, um, CNN has cited two sources. 
One of them stated that at least some of Patel's communications had been infiltrated. 
Uh, Donald Trump's team wouldn't go into specifics about the reports. 
And I don't know why we would even ask them. 
Um, but transition, uh, spokesman Alex Pfeiffer told the network Kash Patel was a key part of the first Trump administration's effort against the terrorist Iranian regime. 
And we'll implement President Trump's policies to protect America from adversaries as the FBI director. 
Unfortunately, uh, all, all this information is in the hands of the Iranian regime, but we'll, we're just going to not worry about that so much, but boy, this is, this is a bit of a black eye. 
Wouldn't you say? 
Yeah, I, I, I would, I would certainly agree. 
I mean, I don't know why this, this seems to happen constantly with the, the Iranians. 
I mean, I would like to learn a hell of a lot more about what the technique used was that compromised Kash Patel. 
You know, was it some kind of impersonation of another individual with whom he was communicating? 
Did they insert themselves into the middle of a communication? 
I mean, I'd really like to gauge the operational security of somebody who is going to head the FBI by knowing a little bit more about the sophistication of the attack that was able to compromise him. 
Because if we're going to put the nation's secrets and in fact, counter counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence in this guy's hands, um, he should have a little bit more caution perhaps when it comes to cybersecurity and, and be a little more operationally ready. 
Um, so I, I think, I think we are owed more information, um, especially since he's going to undergo some kind of presumably Senate confirmation for this type of, uh, position. 
His passwords were Trump 2024 on all of his devices. 
You see, you believe it. 
You, you, you're thinking in your mind that that's, that's possible. 
And that's exactly the point is that, yeah, he could be that stupid easily. 
Nevermind as, as, as dangerous as, as he's alleged to be. 
But we, we also know it from prior to the election that the Iranians had targeted Donald Trump and his campaign, uh, and that the Iranians are not happy with Donald Trump. 
They tried to actively, it seems like meddle in the election a little bit by releasing information. 
They had that JD Vance dossier that was mostly comprised of open source intelligence and things that were eminently Googleable. 
Uh, but so, so it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever that they're going after these, these high level picks and anybody who's tapped on the shoulder as a presidential appointee in any position, whether it's high profile or not, I think should, should really be taking a look at the manner in which they, they engage online and, uh, have a check of their cyber hygiene. 
Well, uh, Iran, of course, is not the only, uh, state actor out there that, uh, is up to shenanigans. 
Chinese state hackers known as Salt Typhoon have breached telecommunications companies, uh, in dozens of countries. 
And, um, the U.S. 
is not, uh, exactly an exception here. 
Uh, during, uh, a press briefing today, the White House official that, um, um, basically released all this, uh, and, uh, Neuberger, um, told reporters that three, uh, I'm sorry, these breaches, uh, include a total of eight telecom firms in the United States. 
Um, and while these attacks have been underway for likely one to two years, um, she says, at this time, we don't believe any classified communications have been compromised. 
Um, the Chinese compromised private companies exploiting vulnerabilities in their systems as part of a global Chinese campaign that's affected dozens of countries around the world. 
I believe it was even referred to last week as the worst, um, uh, breach in history. 
So that's, uh, that's, that's rather a lot. 
Uh, we cannot say with certainty that the adversary has been evicted, said a senior CISA official, um, because we still don't know the scope of what they're doing. 
We're still trying to understand that along with these, with those partners. 
Um, on Tuesday, um, FBI officials, you get this, advised Americans to switch to encrypted messaging apps to minimize Chinese hackers' chances of intercepting their communications. 
Our suggestions, what we have told folks internally, is not new here. 
Encryption is your friend. 
Whether it's on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication, even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible. 
Okay. 
Um, does anybody else have an issue with this? 
Because the FBI is saying, yeah, we believe in encryption. 
We've always told people this. 
Encryption is your friend. 
Literally, encryption is your friend. 
Is this the same FBI that was fighting tooth and nail against encryption because it made it harder for them to investigate so-called criminals? 
Alex, back me up here. 
That, that, that happened, right? 
That wasn't a fever dream. 
No, I, I think that's absolutely right. 
And that's, that's, that's what happens here. 
And I think we can go back even further, right? 
Let's, let's go back to the 1990s here, right? 
Uh, and talk about the clipper chip for a second. 
Remember the clipper chip? 
Like, I remember listening to this show when I was 15 years old in my bedroom and you guys were arguing about the clipper chip. 
And for those who aren't as old as me, the clipper chip was this little device that allowed communications to be encrypted essentially from end to end. 
But the problem was like, so you could use this on the phone. 
You could use this for email. 
It was kind of like this universal little chiclet size chip that allowed communications to be encrypted. 
Uh, but the problem was it was supposed to be backdoored so that the U S government could access all of the communications that were going to be encrypted. 
There was going to be essentially a key escrow for, uh, a key to decrypt all the communications if the government so wanted. 
And so the hacker community, privacy community, the cryptography community all threw up their hands and said, this is unacceptable. 
That was a battle that was fought pretty hard and won by the hacker community back in the nineties. 
Now, fast forward to salt typhoon and the stories coming out over the last week. 
It's really kind of fascinating because it seems like the manner by which they were able to compromise the, almost the entirety of the United States is telecom and, uh, uh, infrastructure is through something called CALEA or the communications assistance to law enforcement act. 
And CALEA requires all telecom companies essentially to have a backdoor system whereby wiretaps can be, can be installed, it's called lawful intercept technology. 
And it makes a lot of sense if you're the government, if you are a prosecutor and you are investigating, let's say some kind of organized crime, you get a warrant to wiretap somebody, you need to go to AT&T or you need to go to some kind of local carrier and they need a means by which you, they can implement that particular wiretap for you. 
And it seems very much like this is the technology that's been put in place across all of U S telecom infrastructure. 
And is that which the Chinese were able to exploit and utilize not for lawful intercept purposes, but for unlawful intelligence gathering interception purposes, exactly the kind of stuff that we were arguing about and talking about and banging on saying, this is a danger. 
And this could happen if you backdoor any particular type of system way back in the 1990s. 
So I'm going to call it and say, we got it right 30 something years ago. 
Yeah. 
I don't think there was much arguing on our side because we were pretty much united on that front that this would be a very bad thing. 
According to this NBC story, FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have a complicated relationship with encryption technology, historically advocating against full end-to-end encryption that does not allow law enforcement access to digital material, even with warrants. 
But the FBI has also supported forms of encryption that do allow some law enforcement access in certain circumstances. 
But, you know, if you're sending your text messages via Signal or some equivalent, are there backdoors for them to get in? 
Are there easy ways for them to access those messages? 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Well, I don't think so. 
I mean, I think the public key cryptography, the asymmetric public key cryptography that's utilized in Signal and most of these end-to-end encrypted messaging applications is probably pretty difficult to compromise. 
I don't think that it's easy for them to do. 
But the easiest way to compromise any form of end-to-end encrypted communication would be to compromise the device itself. 
So let's say if FBI or an intelligence agency or some adversary wants to access your Signal chats, if they can access a device, one of the endpoints that has the ability to decrypt that chat, actually has the key to decrypt on it, then that's very trivial. 
Then it's simple. 
So if they can compromise your phone, and people also don't realize that, you know, phones are very often more secure than desktops. 
So if you're running Signal on your phone, and then you have the Signal desktop client running on, let's say, Windows or Mac or something like that, that's another attack vector by which all of those Signal chats could be compromised. 
And desktops are a hell of a lot less secure than mobile phones most of the time. 
But people don't. 
They don't lose their desktops often. 
No, they don't. 
Well, that's true. 
They don't lose their desktops. 
But you know what I'm talking about. 
Some kind of desktop client, like either one is for a laptop. 
But a desktop could be remotely compromised fairly easily as well. 
You know, pop in through the router, take a peek around. 
You know, desktops are pretty almost trivial in many ways to pop if they're not properly updated. 
But you know, the thing with losing a phone, you know, you drop your phone on the street or leave it on the subway or a cab or something like that, and the person is somehow able to unlock the screen. 
Not the hardest thing in the world to do, especially if it's like some kind of, you know, a shape or something, a line or a diagonal, whatever. 
That's fairly trivial to get past that. 
The question then is, do people have passwords auto-entered, logged in by default, et cetera, et cetera, where if somebody has that phone in their hands, they have a lot of power. 
They can access an awful lot of things without any kind of confirmation because it's assumed the person holding that phone is the right person, is a trusted person. 
So number one, I would advise against making that the default on your phone. 
And number two, if you do lose your phone, immediately move to deactivate it from everything, which could be, you know, quite a task. 
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. 
If you go back to, I can't recall if it was 2016, 2017, when there was that failed Turkish coup against Erdogan that was mostly organized by way of WhatsApp messages. 
It was mostly organized by Erdogan, but never mind that. 
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. 
Yes. 
But when the coosters were finally rounded up, they had to hand over all of their phones and, you know, by some kind of duress, I imagine physical duress, they were caused to open those phones. 
And then the world was their interrogator's oysters at that point. 
They had access to all of the end-to-end encrypted communications, all of their photos, all of their emails, everything. 
So, yeah, extraordinarily dangerous attack vector there. 
Absolutely. 
Okay. 
You know, I saw this other headline today, Chinese espionage campaign scooped up data on thousands of U.S. 
mobile phone users, according to sources, this on ABC. 
The story that we're talking about and what everybody's talking about, the worst hack in history, thousands of phone users? 
You know, I would think it would be millions, many millions. 
But I don't know if they're talking about the same thing here, but it certainly seems like that number is a little low. 
Well, it is weird because I'm looking at that same article and the headline is thousands of U.S. 
mobile phone users. 
But the first paragraph in the article says about more than one million customers. 
So who knows? 
Boy, people have to proofread these days. 
Yes, Alex, final point on this. 
Well, the difference could be that, you know, maybe millions of people could have been affected. 
But if it's thousands of people, well, let me put it this way. 
I think millions of people's metadata might have been affected, but it could be that thousands were targeted for actual interception of their communications. 
I think that's more likely to be the case. 
Well, it's sloppy regardless. 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
You know, people need to use encryption wherever possible. 
Use Signal. 
WhatsApp, I know, does end-to-end encryption. 
And there's all kinds of other apps and programs that people can make use of. 
Please write to us, OTH at 2600.com with your recommendations, your experiences, anything that you experience that is not up to par. 
We want to know about that as well. 
It's so important to keep our data safe, you know, and to not be taken advantage of by anybody. 
Yeah, like, if you feel incredibly frustrated or it's got you sort of furious, channel that. 
And channel that into helping test new platforms, new protocols, all that work. 
Or just try them out yourself. 
Teach someone else how to use it. 
All of those efforts can pay off and they could actually really help someone who might otherwise fall victim to some of the things we're talking about. 
So, yeah, it is really infuriating just hearing what vulnerabilities were allowed to victimize so many customers that rely on these telecommunications networks. 
And it's just, it's really hard when you think that you're paying for this. 
Like, I just, I keep going back to that. 
Like, we pay for this. 
Yeah. 
How? 
Pay a lot. 
We pay so much money for this. 
Anyway, like, the rest of where I would go with that is not safe for air. 
Yeah, understandable. 
I imagine a lot of our listeners would agree with that. 
But it's important, you know, when there are solutions that present themselves that they be transparent, easy to install, don't require technical knowledge of any sort. 
They should be the default. 
And I don't think any phones should be sold that do not have end-to-end encryption on, you know, their basic texting programs, texting apps. 
This is what we need today so that we're not constantly taking advantage of. 
Okay. 
Yes, Alex, quickly. 
Yeah. 
One final point on this, too, that I don't think has come out in any of the media reporting about this. 
But if it is, in fact, true that it was the lawful intercept technology that was put in place essentially to backdoor all of the telecommunications infrastructure across the United States so that the government could listen in to phone calls on account of the CALEA, the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. 
If we have that capability, that backdoor capability in place, the question I want to ask is, how were Chinese adversaries able to utilize that technology without being caught for so long? 
If this is so dangerous and such an extraordinarily, I think, powerful capability that we put into the hands of law enforcement, how come nobody is auditing that particular access? 
Unless the Chinese were so great at covering up their tracks and anti-forensic behavior here, I would think that somebody in one of these telecoms should have noticed this almost immediately. 
It shouldn't have taken several years and a massive investigation to uncover this. 
Like, if that infrastructure is being abused, it should have been noticed years ago. 
That's what I want to understand. 
But if that is the case, and I haven't heard this alleged yet, and please let me know if I'm wrong, but if it is the case that this enhanced ability that was given to law enforcement was the weak point that allowed so much of the compromising to take place, they need to be held accountable severely for that because that was one of the arguments against that in the first place. 
And to see that happen would be completely infuriating. 
Kyle, do you have a last word on this? 
No, I think it's been said, but yeah, CEOs, take heed. 
You will pay. 
Well, don't make it sound like that. 
It's no connection to what happened today. 
Oh, you're right. 
It's a bad day for that. 
Can we change the subject? 
I'm trying to, believe me. 
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And it's really the only way that the station continues to broadcast. 
There are a couple of ways you can do this. 
You can go to buddy.wbai.org, and there you can sign up to basically pay a small amount every month. 
It adds up to a bigger amount over a year and helps keep the transmitter going and helps keep radio station programming flowing over the airwaves and on the Internet. 
It doesn't matter where you are in the world. 
But your help is appreciated, regardless of whether you're local or on the other side of the planet. 
So, please, buddy.wbai.org. 
Does anybody have the phone number handy? 
You do, Rob. 
Go ahead. 
Yep. 
The cool new BAI pledge phone number is 1-833-WBAINYC. 
Or if you're a numerical string purist, that's 1-833-922-4692, which spells W-B-A-I-N-Y-C. 
I wonder if 833 spells something. 
If we can make a word from 833, then we've really got it. 
It's better than that lawyer phone number they keep advertising. 
Okay, well, that's good, though. 
833-W-B-A-I-N-Y-C. 
How did we do that? 
That's awesome. 
Wow. 
Please, we're serious, though. 
It's so important to keep this station going. 
We're at 99.5 FM, in the middle of the FM dial in New York City. 
And I'm not sure people appreciate what that means, because you may notice that everything 91.9 and below is non-commercial. 
That's the non-commercial ghetto, they call it, you know, where all the stations are just kind of shunted off, and, you know, people don't think about it. 
They listen to all the commercial musical crap that, you know, appears in the commercial band 92 and above. 
And a lot of the good stuff is below 92. 
There is some garbage there, too, especially when you have religious stations saying that they're non-commercial as well and taking up frequencies. 
But regardless, we're at 99.5 FM, we're in the middle of the commercial band. 
How did that happen? 
Well, in the same way that we got that cool phone number, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 
The station actually, this station started as a donation. 
Yeah, that's the biggest donation of all was the station itself. 
This was a commercial radio station. 
And the owner of that commercial radio station had, I believe, gone out to California and heard a Pacifica station out there and was so enthralled by it that he said, I want my radio station in New York City to broadcast this. 
And after a few phone calls when nobody believed him, he finally succeeded in convincing Pacifica that he wanted to donate a full power radio station in the middle of the FM dial to Pacifica so that it would broadcast non-commercial programming, commercial-free, listener-supported. 
Yeah, 1960, that happened. 
And since then, this station has pretty much gone continuously with your support. 
There is no story like that anywhere on the FM dial or the AM dial in New York City and in most of the country. 
And you can help continue that saga just by going to buddy.wbai.org and pledging whatever you can afford. 
You can be a part of that. 
Now, I know there are certain numbers, Gila, I think you have the figures on this where you can start voting. 
Yes, an aggregate gift of $25 a year or more entitles you to becoming a voting member of WBAI. 
So again, if you BAI buddy $2.50, which would not be great because the amount it's going to cost the station in credit card processing fees alone will cancel it out. 
But if you, excuse me, make an outright gift to $25 or when your BAI buddy contributions add up to $25, you are a voting member of WBAI. 
Again, we cannot encourage you enough to become a BAI buddy. 
Helping the station come up with reliable income on a regular basis is hugely helpful. 
Again, also, don't forget, we're coming to the end of the year. 
Obviously, WBAI are tax deductible within reason. 
Consult your accountant. 
But this could be super helpful for you. 
Absolutely. 
Again, buddy.wbai.org. 
That phone number once again, Rob? 
That phone number once again, 833-WBAI-NYC. 
That's 833-922-4692. 
Okay. 
Remember, we're in fundraising mode here in early December and the future of the station is in your hands, pretty much. 
All right. 
You know, when I say 207, does that mean anything to anybody? 
Oh, it means something to you, Alex? 
I know it means something to you. 
We talked about it. 
Anyone else? 
No? 
Rob, I know it means something to you. 
No? 
I heard something about it recently. 
Okay. 
207 is the area code for Maine. 
And in fact, what, you're shaking your head, Kyle? 
You don't believe me? 
I can prove it. 
I'm sorry. 
It's just, it's 206. 
206 is Seattle. 
Yeah. 
That's where you're from. 
Yeah. 
Go ahead. 
Tell me about 207. 
Well, I can tell you about 206. 
No, the fact that it's 206. 
Okay. 
A little bit of lore here. 
Area codes are still three digits. 
And they either have a one or a zero in the middle. 
At least the old area codes did. 
The newer ones, what a mess. 
But if it had a zero as the middle number, that meant that area code was good for the entire state. 
And if it had a one in the middle, that meant there were multiple area codes in that state. 
So for instance, New York, 212. 
Then you had 516. 
You had 914. 
You had 518. 
315. 
716. 
You see, they all have one in the middle. 
And when they split before, you know, they went haywire with anything can be an area code. 
You had 718 and 917 and things like that. 
Other states like Maine, 207. 
Hawaii, 808. 
Alaska, 907. 
You see, it's one area code for the entire state. 
And Kyle, 206 being Seattle wouldn't seem to make sense, you know, a city, except when you think, yeah, it must have been the entire state was 206 at one point. 
Yeah, things have changed. 
Things have changed significantly. 
There's all kinds of area codes out there now, but not in Maine. 
In Maine, they want to hold on to their one area code. 
Yeah. 
So basically, the Maine Public Utilities Commission has approved the consolidation of 135 calling areas into one rate center. 
However, those 135 rate centers are served by Consolidated Communications, Northern New England LLC, which is the largest of Maine's remaining 24 landline service providers, also referred to as incumbent local exchange carriers. 
Those other 23 providers serve another 114 rate centers. 
Yeah. 
So basically what all that means, it extends the life of the 207 area code. 
Now, the current forecast calls for the 207 area code to be exhausted, meaning that it runs out of numbers by the second quarter of 2036. 
But previously, they had predicted that it would run out of numbers as early as 2015. 
Then it was 2019, 2024. 
And it just keeps moving. 
But with these actions, where basically they're not wasting phone numbers by assigning 10,000 phone numbers to every company that qualifies as a rate center and doesn't need anything near that number of phone numbers, they're able to preserve 207. 
Now, unlike in many places in this country, there is a certain pride in the 207 area code. 
People want to hold on to it. 
They want to make sure that they don't have to use a different area code because they've quote unquote run out of numbers. 
Does that increase the likelihood that you'll actually get a working number when you call in that area code because they're allocated so sparingly? 
Well, you don't know what exchange or what extension in that exchange is going to be used or not used. 
But even of a handful of exchanges that you wanted to call through, you would be more confident under, in theory, that you would get someone who's actually using or otherwise, it's not going to go to some extension that hasn't been implemented. 
Yeah, I mean, if you look at, you know, businesses in a city, like Bangor, Maine, you'll likely find more phone numbers in certain exchanges. 
So if it's like 336 Exchange and you see, you know, it's a pizza place with that phone number, odds are if you keep calling within that exchange, you'll find other phone numbers as well. 
It's the same pretty much in any city. 
But there are lots and lots of numbers that are unused. 
And this whole area code splitting thing has been a horrible development, I think, in telephony because it wastes so many numbers. 
It resulted in crazy area codes that don't make geographical sense. 
But it's good to see that there is a movement to preserve 207. 
And it means something. 
It's where you're from. 
You're from a particular place. 
I mean, 2-1-2 means a lot to us here in New York City. 
It absolutely does. 
2-1-3 in California, 3-1-2 Chicago, and other numbers as well. 
But that does matter. 
And when you start splitting it up so that it doesn't mean anything anymore, you're losing something kind of precious. 
So good on Maine for recognizing that. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
I think this is an extraordinary effort. 
And I really believe in this concept of territorial integrity. 
And that can be defined in many ways by the area code. 
And I see this effort as akin to something like the Treaty of Westphalia. 
You know, we all know that that took four years to negotiate and a battle raged on. 
But it created this sort of territorial integrity of modern Europe these days. 
And I think we need the digital equivalent of those types of protections for territorial integrity for area codes. 
I think it's extraordinarily important. 
Are you using Game of Thrones to make your point? 
No, I didn't say Westeros. 
I said Westphalia. 
All right. 
Just checking. 
It also has parallels, I think, to IP addressing allocations. 
A lot of waste there as well. 
Yeah, like IP for, and I mean, if there wasn't a move towards a different numbering scheme altogether, yeah, we'll check back on IPv6. 
But not all is well in Maine. 
I don't know if you heard this other story, but there are a bunch of radio stations that are going off the air. 
And they're all owned by author Stephen King. 
You might not have known about this, but yeah, he owned three radio stations for the last 41 years. 
The Zone Corporation is the name of the company that basically owned these stations under his control. 
WZON, WKIT, and WZLO, they'll all sign off on December 31st. 
In a press release, Stephen King cited losses in the millions of dollars, too much even for him, and also his advancing age as reasons for the shutdown. 
While radio across the country has been overtaken by giant corporate broadcasting groups, I've loved being a local independent owner all these years, he said. 
I've loved the people who've gone to these stations every day and entertained folks, kept the equipment running, given local advertisers a way to connect with their customers. 
Tabby and I, I guess that's his wife or his cat, I'm not sure. 
Tabby and I are proud to have been a part of that for more than four decades. 
Okay, not a cat. 
But the Kings bought WZON in 1983. 
Zone Corporation said they'd be making no further comment, no further public comment, that is. 
But maybe this is, you know, a station Pacifica grab if it's open. 
Yeah, you know, it's also important to see when people realize the importance of radio. 
It's not just us, not just people like us. 
It's people all over, people listening to AM radio, people out in the boondocks that don't get any kind of other connection to the outside world. 
And we all recognize the threat that radio is under all the time. 
The threat from massive corporations that want to own hundreds and hundreds of stations, be the only voice in town, have people read word for word the same newscasts, and have AI do the heavy lifting. 
And deep down, we all know community radio is where it's at, whether it's commercial community radio or non-commercial community radio. 
You want a radio station where there's somebody there live broadcasting at the time that you're listening to them. 
Somebody who can tell you, hey, there's a tornado coming, or, you know, close your windows, it's about to start raining. 
Or, you know, can celebrate a local team winning, or tell you the local news. 
That is what radio is all about. 
We've always gotten that here at WBAI. 
It's good to see people in the rest of the country get that as well. 
It's sad to see stations like this, and I know Stephen King poured his heart and soul into, wind up either going off the air or falling into those very hands of corporate interests who just don't get it. 
And they never do. 
I don't know what it is. 
For as long as I've been in radio, the commercial entities have never understood radio. 
They don't play anything different. 
They play the same hits. 
They have the same voices. 
They discourage accents. 
They do everything that people don't like, because that's how the industry works. 
And it's just sad to see it constantly, constantly win and be the norm. 
Well, here at WBAI, obviously we're the exception, and you can be the exception too. 
Please help keep us going. 
Visit buddy.wbai.org. 
Pledge whatever you can afford. 
And give a call to that phone number, 833-WBAI-NYC, and talk to a volunteer and pledge whatever you can afford there. 
The result will be a strong signal at 99.5 FM in New York City, as well as a signal over WBAI.org, where you can hear all kinds of different voices and perspectives and opinions and also take part in that conversation yourself. 
It's a fantastic place. 
It's a gift in New York City. 
We're so lucky to have it. 
Please help us keep it and be a part of it yourselves. 
All right, we're just about out of time here. 
Any final thoughts before we sign off for another week and go on to overtime over on YouTube? 
2600 meetings are happening all over the world this week. 
Go to 2600.com slash meetings to find one near you or start one near you, first Friday of every month in most of the world. 
That's right. 
It's when hackers gather in food courts and other facilities to meet in person and talk about things, share information about technology. 
It's really pretty amazing. 
It's been going on since 1987. 
And it's a lot of fun. 
Look for one in a city near you or a country near you. 
All right, we're going to be on YouTube, channel 2600 over there at 8 o'clock. 
You can call us. 
You can be a part of the conversation there. 
And we'll be back here next week at 7 p.m. 
on WBAI. 
And remember, buddy.wbai.org, 833-WBAI-NYC. 
See you next time. 
  And welcome everybody to YouTube here on, I said it backwards, welcome everybody to Overtime on YouTube. 
Did we all make it? 
I'm here. 
Kyle's troubleshooting. 
Rob Gieler, Alex, you all there? 
Yeah, I'm here. 
Are we on YouTube? 
Can you hear us? 
We might drop for a second. 
All right, we might drop for a second, I hear. 
Rob has a blank look on his face. 
Does that mean we're on YouTube or not? 
We are not yet on YouTube. 
We are not yet on YouTube. 
Okay. 
Well, this is fun. 
And you'll tell us when we are on YouTube. 
I will tell us when we're on YouTube. 
I'm just gonna sit back and wait for that. 
Okay, we are we are on YouTube. 
Oh, that was a nice little break. 
Okay. 
We are here. 
Ready to chat away for a bit longer. 
Good discussion tonight. 
Yes. 
And I guess I agree. 
I did find something, by the way, during the break, and I was doing a little bit of research about this salt typhoon compromise of telecommunication systems across the United States. 
And it turns out, it does very much seem like things are circling in focusing on the CALEA lawful intercept technology. 
And I found a letter that somebody with whom we're very friendly, wrote to the FCC chairwoman on the 11th of October of this year. 
And it's really kind of interesting. 
It's a letter from Senator Ron Wyden to the FCC chairman, as well as to the attorney general. 
And he wrote this, which is, I think, literally quite aligned with everything that we had discussed. 
These telecommunications companies are responsible for their lack of cybersecurity and their failure to secure their own systems. 
But the government shares much of the blame. 
And listen to this. 
The surveillance systems reportedly hacked were mandated by federal law through the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, CALEA, which was enacted in 1994 at the urging of the FBI, forced phone companies to install wiretapping technology into then-emerging digital phone networks. 
In 2006, acting on a request from the FBI, the FCC expanded this backdoor mandate to broadband internet companies. 
During the congressional hearings for CALEA, cybersecurity experts warned that these backdoors would be prime targets for hackers and foreign intelligence services. 
However, these concerns were dismissed by then-FBI director, who testified to Congress that experts' fears of increased vulnerability were unfounded and misplaced. 
Congress, relying on the FBI director's assurance and the security risks experts warned about could be addressed, passed a law mandating backdoors. 
The DOJ received $1 billion in today's dollars to provide industry grants for the development and purchase of new wiretapping technology. 
And that's what China used against us to spy on, presumably our most high-ranking elected officials and presidential appointees. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Just FYI, we keep dropping out and buffering on YouTube. 
It seems to be a universal problem. 
The chat is confirming that everyone's getting it. 
Okay. 
You were suspecting something like that might be happening, but not on the radio. 
Is that correct? 
We started getting complaints about the quality of the radio stream toward the end of the show. 
I can't speak to the full length of the show, but on socials, people started letting us know that they were getting lots of crackling and dropping out. 
You need to let us know when that happens, because we thought everything was fine. 
So convey that to us, and we can try to fix it. 
Now, Kyle, you're on top of whatever is going on here. 
We have so much bandwidth. 
We have so much high-tech, and it fails on occasion. 
Our best intentions are not always the source of technical stuff like this. 
So what I was going to do is restart some of the software I'm using, but I'm not sure that that's exactly needed. 
But what do you think would help? 
We need to... 
Everyone, we're going to fix this. 
We're going to fix it together. 
I wasn't really thinking about doing this on the air as like a group project. 
Well, it's going to be now. 
We have no choice. 
I could just leave, and y'all can figure it out. 
Well, that's not nice. 
Well, I don't know. 
Can I stop it for a second? 
You can do whatever you want. 
We want to be able to understand each other. 
So yeah, go ahead. 
Just let us know what to expect. 
All right. 
Well, I'm going to stop it, and I'm going to reload things, and we'll be right back. 
We'll be right back. 
Okay, are we back? 
I believe. 
So what did we do? 
Did exactly what I said. 
Restarted the software that I was using. 
Okay. 
I'm not sure that helped. 
And this may be something that is not in my control, so please don't continue to look at me. 
I'm not looking at it. 
I'm not even looking in your direction. 
I'm doing what I normally do. 
I just, people are curious, like, what we did to fix it. 
Well, the OS wants to do some stuff that I'm obviously not going to let it do. 
No, not now. 
Obviously not going to let it do. 
Who the hell does it think it is? 
Then the browser wanted to do some stuff that I obviously didn't want it to do. 
Then, like, the streaming software, like, launched very slowly because all that was going on. 
And then it, I didn't realize it wasn't already launched. 
I didn't realize it was already launching. 
So then I, like, basically tried to launch it four times. 
And then by the time I dug through all of that, we were already, like, kind of underway. 
And so that ultimately was showing some kind of overload, exceeded, which is more of, like, a bandwidth thing. 
Like, the stream encoding was too high resolution, which hasn't really been a problem lately unless it's outside of my control. 
So do your part, Internet. 
Well, yeah, it's crazy because we have so much bandwidth and it still somehow acts like we have no bandwidth. 
Every bit of software, every machine, like, my machine was running some kind of diagnostic test. 
It decided that the middle of the show was the best time to do that, and I had to abort that. 
You guys out in Skype land, are you all there still? 
And can you hear us? 
Do we sound okay? 
So we're here, and we can hear each other. 
But we are buffering, again, as we speak on YouTube. 
Wow. 
We're buffering more than not right now. 
Someone did pipe in the chat to mention that apparently there were some audio issues at the end of Off the Wall last night. 
Really? 
Okay. 
Didn't know about that. 
I just read some as they come up. 
And, yes, Rebel did very helpfully inform us that streaming is not working right now. 
All right. 
You know, here's my theory. 
I think our bandwidth might suck. 
I think we need to reboot a modem or a router or something like that, and maybe that'll fix that. 
Look, this is okay. 
It's only YouTube. 
I don't really care. 
You know, we can just play around and do diagnostics all hour long. 
Radio, though, I'd rather not. 
You know, I hope the radio show went out okay. 
But regardless, we have a clean copy here in the studio, so that is where we'll go on the archive. 
So if you only heard choppy bits of the radio show, fear not, you can hear the whole thing in its splendor when we get it uploaded. 
But, Kyle, what do you think of the idea of just rebooting our modem? 
Yeah, it's all kinds of screwed up. 
All right. 
How do we do that? 
Where do we go? 
I don't even know where the modem is. 
Very funny. 
Oh, you're serious. 
I am serious because we have different modems in different places. 
I'm not sure. 
I'm not talking about this on the air. 
Okay. 
So I'm going to turn us down. 
How long should we expect this to last? 
I don't know exactly what we're doing. 
We're rebooting a modem. 
Ten minutes? 
Five minutes? 
Reboot a modem? 
All right. 
Well, if this is space command, all right, you've got to tell the media what's going on. 
Tell the people what's going on. 
So, folks, we're going to just be silent for about five minutes, hopefully, at the max. 
And when we come back, hopefully, we'll be in decent shape. 
Thank you. 
Well, you have nothing to apologize for. 
I'm kind of thrown now because we have an AI device that was who's you want to go fight it. 
I will fight it. 
I will fight it right now. 
The wake word is computer. 
The wake word is computer and whenever somebody says that, it says something to us and I can't shut it up now because I just said that word again. 
Okay. 
Anyway, so guys in Skype land, Rob, I see you have a big thumbs up. 
What does that mean. 
Are you sure you don't want to put it? 
Are you sure you don't want to put all your stuff in our cloud? 
Are you sure you don't want to get 50% off of this? 
Are you sure you don't want to like sign up for this and like register for that? 
Are you sure you don't want to buy this? 
Are you sure? 
And it's like, you have to sit there and look for like, skip, don't, no, go away. 
And it kept, I hate you. 
It kept moving the box all over. 
So you had to chase it. 
Burn Redmond. 
Yeah. 
Awful, awful. 
Wow. 
Anyway. 
So, so. 
Thanks, Microsoft. 
We love you. 
Uh, and now we're here. 
All right. 
Well, you know, we're going to keep all the silence, obviously, on the archive because that's what we do. 
Uh, things air as they air. 
Um, but boy, that, uh, that, that was fun. 
I think what we can do is just reboot that machine more, more regularly and maybe that won't happen. 
Well, there is actually another like system update. 
I've just been avoiding a bunch of stuff, but basically the, the thing was, you know, is going quite clunkily as, as their modern OSs do when, when encountering anything unusual, like, like their software working or, or being updated to a working state. 
But, uh, yeah, um, it was like opening OBS, the streaming software we use like multiple times and then saying it was already open. 
I don't know if that was like ghosty attempts at opening it, but everything is like on a huge delay. 
And then the browser was doing this. 
It was just very, very sad. 
Yeah, it was hobbling alone. 
Now we lost about 10 to 12 minutes of the show. 
Now, can we check to make sure we can get that time added back onto the YouTube satellite? 
Because I know it's expensive and, uh, and time is fleeting. 
We can. 
Okay. 
Green light. 
So we'll go for an extra 10 to 12 minutes or so. 
Cool. 
All right. 
Um, so Alex, were you saying something before you were so rudely cut off? 
He was citing, uh, Kalia. 
Yes. 
Oh yeah. 
I guess I was. 
Right. 
So, so long ago. 
Just give us the wrap, wrap up the tail end of it or something. 
Yeah. 
So I found this letter from Senator Wyden that was sent, that he had sent to the FCC chairwoman, as well as to the attorney general, to Merrick Garland. 
And he was going on about how this was the Kalia infrastructure that Salt Typhoon had compromised as part of this nationwide, uh, compromise of the telecommunications infrastructure that allowed essentially a foreign adversary like China to eavesdrop on any communications. 
And he had mentioned, and I think this is exactly what we were talking about. 
So he, he's so aligned, I think, in so many ways, uh, with us. 
Uh, he said during the congressional hearings for Kalia, cyber security experts warned that these back doors would be prime targets for hackers and foreign intelligence services. 
However, these concerns were dismissed by then FBI director who testified to Congress that experts fears of increased vulnerability were unfounded and misplaced. 
He then goes on to, to mention that in today's dollars, the department of justice received 1 billion U.S. 
dollars to provide industry grants for the development and purchase of this new wiretapping technology. 
That was that issue. 
And like I said, we were, we talked about this back in the nineties. 
I think it was 1994 when Kalia was passed. 
So yeah, 30 years ago is when we were arguing about this and look, it takes, maybe it took 30 years for a foreign adversary to, to compromise the infrastructure, but it happened. 
Yeah, it did. 
And it's inevitable that something like this will happen. 
So, um, yeah, hopefully, um, I don't know the cat's out of the bag. 
So there's really nothing we can do that I can say hopefully about because it's already worst case scenario, people's information is out there. 
People, uh, have been compromised through no fault of their own. 
Uh, I, I, well, will there ever be, you know, responsibility taken by anybody for this? 
I doubted. 
No, no, no, probably we pay. 
Yeah. 
You know that don't you understand? 
That's how this works. 
We pay. 
They don't ever pay. 
Okay. 
You pay the bill, you pay for your credit reporting to get, you know, turned on and off and on and off you pay. 
They don't ever pay the politicians who let them get away with all of it. 
Don't pay. 
They never pay. 
They get money. 
Their shareholders get money. 
They, they monopolize so that you have no other option. 
They make you hostage to their walled garden and you pay. 
And then, then you get mad at something like this and you still pay. 
They don't pay you. 
You're not going to make any money. 
No, one's going to give you a check. 
There's going to be no, even if there is restitution in these, these guys are like, uh, some kind of monetary compensation. 
It'll go to lawyers. 
Don't forget the lawyers feed the lawyers. 
Yeah. 
You don't get anything. 
You barely get a phone certified to work on a 5g network. 
If that you're lucky, you pay. 
I'm getting that. 
We pay. 
And Alex, um, you're a lawyer, so you don't have to pay. 
Uh, no, no. 
We get, we get a free pass. 
We get, you know, we've had 5g since the eighties. 
As a matter of fact, I don't know that, um, that, that would make anybody mad. 
Um, I wanted to share another choice bit, uh, from Senator Wyden's letter. 
I mean, uh, and by the way, so I, I talked with him, uh, fairly recently because, you know, he's, he's married to our, our dear friend, um, Nancy Bass Wyden, who is the owner of the Strand bookstore who's, who's been on the show as well. 
So, um, he, he goes on to say that DOJ should recognize the failure of its, of its current approach to combating cyber attacks and that the data breaches that, that caused this incident are a direct result of corporate negligence. 
You know, a few sentences later, he says, well, federal investigations and prosecutions of foreign hackers can yield valuable results. 
It would be short-sighted in the extreme for the DOJ to prioritize criminal prosecutions of foreign hackers who are almost never brought to justice above holding companies accountable for negligent cybersecurity. 
These companies are corporate scofflaws that have harmed our public and our national security through their negligence. 
DOJ can prevent future cyber attacks, incentivize improvements in corporate security by working with these regulators, et cetera, et cetera. 
But so, I mean, he's calling him out. 
He's calling, he's saying this, you know, this was corporate negligence that harmed national security and that companies need to be held accountable before the DOJ goes after these, these foreign adversaries that compromise the systems. 
I think that's a very interesting approach. 
And we can't go after them. 
We have to be like, you know, minding our P's and Q's and nice and, nice and afraid. 
Because, again, if you do anything, if you get fed up, if you decide the corporation might have to change some behaviors or something, you pay with your life. 
You go to jail, you know? 
Like, you get all this fear to act. 
Don't do anything. 
Just keep paying. 
Like, it's absurd. 
And, like, I've lost my sense of humor about it. 
I mean, I'm being funny, but it's not funny. 
None of it is. 
Like, we are hung out to dry. 
And now, now it's like, okay, foreign adversaries are in the mix. 
And no one really cares. 
And we have all these, like, jobs and all these titles and all this normalizing of security and, like, an understanding of it. 
But we're not prepared. 
And we're all just, we're all just going to be victims now. 
That's the game plan. 
I find this absurd. 
Like, as a hacker, I'm a little bit annoyed. 
Like, I find the whole situation irritating. 
All of it. 
Like, I don't, my identity in this and my sense of purpose is I'm very lost. 
Because I feel like there are so many failures. 
And we laugh and have a good time. 
And everybody, I don't know, like, goes back and does a bad job. 
And I don't know if we're being heard or not heard or it's just a big funny joke. 
I'm starting to think it's the latter. 
But I'm welcome to other thoughts on this. 
Like, I don't have any more to really, like, break into the discourse. 
It's just very, very frustrating that after decades of listening to and then talking about and airing and we're still the boogeyman and, like, none of these companies would hire us. 
Because they would, they're all like, oh, we don't trust you. 
Hey, we don't trust you. 
None of you. 
Okay? 
We don't want your jobs. 
Okay? 
Stop. 
Not, like, as though we want you to trust us anymore. 
Like, forget it. 
Yeah. 
Definitely. 
I mean, you know, they are not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow at all. 
Lowest common denominator at best practices. 
Well, it just goes to show the lack of foresight. 
And, you know, yeah, I don't think people have, by people, I mean people in power. 
They have not listened to us. 
Had they listened to us, a lot of this stuff wouldn't be happening. 
And basic security would have been observed. 
And, you know, we would be in much better shape. 
Me? 
I'm confused. 
I mean, who has my data? 
You know? 
The data that I was concerned about. 
Is it the FBI? 
Did they get my data without going through channels? 
Is it Iran? 
Is it China? 
Who has my damn data? 
It just seems to be out there for anybody. 
Frustrating. 
Yeah, well, it is. 
I mean, again, this is like a problem not just in the United States, but I think particularly perhaps because of the United States, the nature of the surveillance capitalism economic models that all these platforms have engaged in for the last 20-something years. 
You know, it's like trying to control your data. 
It's like trying to get toothpaste back in the bottle now. 
And this is where I think technology is evolving and where the sort of new internet that is developing in the Web3 space has the ability to give users back this type of power so that they themselves can assert their own terms of use. 
We don't necessarily have to abide, like Kyle was saying, by, you know, all the rules and regulations of these companies. 
You know, it's what we, you know, our own terms. 
We can begin to dictate the terms again of how our data is used and shared and potentially abused. 
Yeah, I mean, just being woefully behind on privacy legislation, which we've talked about ad nauseum, that speaks to what ease points and what you just said. 
I mean, that is, they're so mirrored. 
What are you supposed to be worried about other than everything all the time? 
And what kind of actual person in the modern era do you become? 
Are you just frantic and untrusting of everything and everyone and how long before that turns into complete complacency and lack of thinking it's just all laughable or that it doesn't matter anymore? 
Because we've, we've come round and round and round to that cycle and there's generations of people that don't understand why or how this might affect or be important and it is important and I don't know. 
I mean, it doesn't seem like anyone takes it very seriously and it's just, there's so many things that are put on the, like, I'm speaking as consumer, but I think as a hacker, I think we have a little bit more knowledge about the kind of structure of the system we're looking at as, as big and complex and integrated as it all is, but consumers themselves then take on a lot of the, the liability and are told all of a sudden now consumers have to be like, like, uh, like dealing with, uh, um, uh, advanced persistent threats. 
Threat actors basically constantly. 
Like we've been reporting about that for like decades in, in one way or another. 
And it's now like a regular thing. 
And like, here it comes to the telecom telecom network finally. 
And it's, it's like, uh, and, and it's as alarming as ever. 
And, uh, what is, what is the, when is it, uh, of a level of concern that, that it is, um, not the burden of the consumer or like built in to the cost that, that the consumer pays and not ever into the profits, not ever into the structures of, of, uh, new policy that would, that would curb the worst impacts of some of this stuff. 
As we bravely slang chips to everybody, uh, uh, in this new era and, and talk about all these new, I mean, as much as you're talking about, like new ways of doing it all. 
But yet we're still fundamentally losing, um, uh, as you point out, like a grip on it, it's just, you can't contain it unless you have some support. 
And I just really think it hasn't been baked in and we keep talking about it and we keep talking about it and it's just, it's wildly frustrating. 
And I just don't want to, I don't want to rant. 
I'm, I'm here to take calls. 
Just tell me when to take a call. 
I, I think I have a solution. 
I think I have a solution to all this. 
Crypto. 
I don't know if you're kidding. 
I just wanted to make things even worse. 
Well, cryptography would help a little. 
If I can piss everybody off at the same time, there's a certain unit. 
Yes, bro. 
It is, in a sense, what, what, cryptography is. 
Don't agree with me, Alex. 
Don't agree with me. 
I'm not agreeing with you in that it's crypto, as in cryptocurrency, but cryptography, as in, you know, the public key system on which things like Ethereum are built, I think are very much at play here. 
But, you know, I'm going on about this because I just finished my new column, which is about bridging the divide between the hacker culture and the Ethereum culture. 
And I'm arguing in that, that column that there is this unnecessary divide and it's, it's wrong. 
And we need to begin to bridge it because we're fighting for the same things. 
So you'll have to read the column. 
It'll be on page 52, I'm guessing, in the next issue. 
Which I believe is due out in mid-January. 
So that'll, that'll be something. 
Okay, we're going to take phone calls, 802-321-4225. 
That's area code 802-321-HACK. 
And we'll answer questions or hear stories or whatnot, whatever people feel like. 
802-321-4225. 
Let's wait for those phone calls to come pouring in. 
Just watch, like, in the new cell phone contracts, like, you are now an agent to, uh, tasked with performing counter-espionage operations. 
If you see anything fishy on your device, like, you're deputized. 
Uh-huh. 
Uh, because of, uh, this terrible tragedy that happened to the telephone company. 
You were also theorizing about it. 
Maybe it's sort of like a forewarning for other purposes. 
That was my, my more optimistic side. 
Um, when the FBI is saying, hey, guys, you gotta use encryption now. 
Um, maybe they're saying, because, you know, all hell's gonna come down the highway next year. 
And the Justice Department is gonna be completely co-opted by fascists. 
So, you guys might want to start encrypting your traffic, because we won't be able to protect you anymore, if you believe the FBI protects you. 
That's, this is the FBI. 
Yeah, that, you know, it's, uh, it's, okay, let's say this is the good agent Cooper, uh, and, and, and the, the bad agent Cooper has just come back from the Black Lodge. 
Uh-huh. 
And he's gonna be installed in the spring. 
And, um, uh, yeah, and, and, and, uh, who knows what's gonna happen. 
So, yeah, it's, uh, I watch a lot of David Lynch, so that's probably not healthy. 
Or is it? 
I think you're well-prepared. 
For all eventualities, we have a phone call. 
We do? 
Yes. 
I didn't hear it ring. 
I guess the ringer is off. 
I believe it was silence. 
You want me to put it on a little bit? 
Well, it's good to hear that ring. 
It's kind of comforting. 
All right, you do that. 
I'll do this. 
All right. 
And, uh, good evening. 
This person's already talking. 
Do I just let them talk, or should I greet them? 
Just interrupt them, like, rudely. 
All right, well. 
Oh, I'm sorry. 
I was talking to somebody else. 
Hi, Emmanuel. 
You know, Rebel, damn it. 
It's traditional, when you call a radio show, or a podcast, as this is, that you wait to be introduced or greeted by the host before you start talking. 
Oh, yeah, yeah. 
To do otherwise, and to continue to do otherwise while I am correcting you, is considered a grave affront, and one that should not be tolerated. 
So, I hope I've made myself clear. 
With that, let's go to this phone call. 
Oh, good evening. 
You're on off the hook over time. 
Go ahead. 
Yes, and I hope that phone calls me. 
Rebel. 
Yeah, Rebel. 
How are you doing? 
What a surprise. 
Yes. 
On what you're talking about now, but of what you were, I'd like to mention of what you were talking about on the radio about phone numbers. 
That's one hell of a sentence there, but okay, go ahead. 
Let's do that. 
Yes. 
I think that, oh, what's that thing called? 
Oh, shit. 
Time and how it's passing? 
No, no, no, no. 
I know that thing that, when you take the phone numbers and you can have different companies on one phone number. 
Portability? 
Boy, portability. 
Okay. 
I think that's the worst thing that they've done. 
Because now all these Indian scammers, they have these phone numbers. 
It's like, when you get calls, they come in 917 numbers and like, you know, phone numbers like from your area code and from different exchanges that you call. 
They don't actually, we've been over this so many times, they don't actually have your phone, the phone number. 
They're faking the phone number out. 
I mean, they're basically spoofing caller ID. 
So you think they're calling from a phone number, but they're not. 
So they're spoofing the caller ID and they're putting in a phone number of a phone that doesn't exist, I guess. 
Or that does exist. 
Or they're putting in a phone, or they're getting 800 numbers that like, when you call like Microsoft, the Microsoft scam, when they say your computer's infected, they say call 1-800-whatever and you call that 800, how are they getting the 800 numbers? 
That's why we're working at 800 numbers. 
Well, we have all kinds of toll-free, everything from 833 up to 800 now is toll-free, but it's easy to get a toll-free number. 
They're cheap. 
So I don't think that's really that difficult. 
So, well, you guys have an 800 number. 
I don't know if we still do, but we did. 
And it was easy and cheap and you can program it to go anywhere. 
Yeah, but it's cheap. 
How much is it when somebody calls you? 
How much do you have to pay when somebody calls you? 
Not much. 
I mean, I never actually saw the bill, but I think it's like, you know, a dime or something for a call. 
Oh, I'm not really sure. 
At one point, I know they added more for pay phones, but not many people were calling from pay phones. 
But in the end, you know, who even needs toll-free phone numbers anymore? 
It's kind of an antiquated system. 
Right. 
That's the other thing. 
When people advertise, they advertise a toll-free number. 
When they're like local right here, why don't you just give a local number? 
Like, why are you? 
Nobody uses pay phones. 
Nobody has a need for it. 
Because nobody really does long distance. 
Let me ask you, Rebbel. 
Well, maybe you would remember this, but back in the old days, and I'm talking like 80s and 90s, they used to always have to give, as some kind of technological reason, maybe somebody could fill us in on this, they would have to give an 800 number for the country and then another 800 number for in-state. 
The in-state number would always be different. 
I watch old videos and it says, in Connecticut, dial 1-800-whatever, from New York, dial whatever, you know? 
Yeah, so you remember that. 
Yeah, I remember that. 
Wow. 
Let's see. 
Yeah, 800 numbers, and then because, you know, so that you don't have to make a long-distance phone call. 
And now that, but now that even wired line, if you get a wired line in your house, you don't have any, it's like a telephone you have. 
You pay a monthly service charge, fee, you make all the long-distance calls, unlimited long-distance, so you don't really have to worry about, like, long-distance charges or toll charges. 
That's true, that's true. 
But, you know, if you want to pay for it, they'll charge you for it. 
You can still do it. 
Well, I think you can offer, I think you can, I don't know if they'll even offer that, like per call charging. 
Per call. 
But I don't know, I don't have a wired line phone, so. 
Sad day when Rebel disconnected his wired phone. 
I mean, think about, think about what that meant, you know? 
You were, you were the phone company customer. 
Yeah, and the third number calls, they don't do that anymore. 
Oh, yeah, third. 
Okay, explain what that was. 
Well, I mean, you can make collect calls where you call, if I would call this number, 802-321, you know, and back in the days when you had to make long-distance calls. 
Right. 
You dial zero, and then the 802-321-4225, say, I'd like to make a collect call where you would pay for the call. 
You'd say. 
If I accepted Rebel, if I accepted the call, I could say, no, I don't want to accept the call from that person. 
Or I could make another phone call and bill it to that number, like instead of having a calling card. 
Well, let's just stay on collect for a second, because there are a couple of types of collect calls. 
Collect person to person, and that's where you're asking for a specific person, and they have to go and get that person to the phone to accept the call. 
And all that time, you could be talking on the phone to the other person and sending secret messages to them while the operator is waiting, you know, for the person you're asking for to come to the phone to say yes or no to the collect request. 
And, you know, you could do this thing where the automated operator says, you have a collect call from, and then when you would say, call me back at 279-3400. 
Well, that's the recorded collect name. 
That's when you're not talking to an operator at all, but you record your name in a three-second window. 
And, yeah, people did that all the time. 
People, you know, my grandparents did this. 
You'd call, when you got home, you'd ring the phone twice, and we saved money that way and conveyed a message. 
Oh, yeah, I remember. 
I remember when I was in college, my father would say, revert the charges, and I'll not accept the charges, and then I'll call you back. 
Sure. 
He'd know the phone number that I'm, my dorm's phone number, but he'd say, call, instead of me making a long-distance call home, I remembered it. 
He'd say, call, collect, and then I won't accept the charges, and that'll be my fix to call you back. 
You could also just make a person-to-person call, not collect, just person-to-person, and then the operator would stay on, and you wouldn't be billed unless you reached that person. 
So that was an opportunity to convey all kinds of messages in the time that they were looking for that person, too. 
But, okay, now let's get to the first, the thing, the thing you were talking about, the third-party call. 
How did that work? 
Well, that was if you didn't have a calling card where you'd bill if you were to pay phone or even at a regular phone. 
You would call a number, like I said. 
No, no, you would do that. 
The fact that you could do that, that's the issue. 
You could bill a phone call to somebody who has no idea who you even are. 
Right. 
Well, back in the bell system days, you'd just tell the operator, you'd call, let's say, 802-321-9 or whatever. 
I'd call you, let's say I'm calling from somewhere where I don't want them to pay for the call. 
I'd call and bill it to another number. 
And usually it would go through, like I'd bill it to 516-751-2600. 
Our old office line. 
Yes. 
Well, I mean, you're still... 
No, we don't have 516 anymore. 
They took that away from us. 
No, I know that, but I'm saying you still have five, you know, that office number. 
But let's say I went to bill to that number back in the old days and call 802-321-9, 321-416-751. 
Yes, but what we could do is put a block on third-party calls on our phone line. 
Not in the bell system. 
So you never succeeded at doing that, Rebel. 
Right. 
But during the bell system before 1984, they didn't have the... 
The TFPS operatives did not have the option to know whether... 
You wouldn't have that option back in those days. 
Right, but then you came on the scene and that option became very necessary, so they implemented it. 
But, you know, what they did sometimes, they would call the number that you were trying to bill to and ask for verification that it's okay to do that. 
But what if the person's not home? 
What if it's busy, you know, if it goes to an answering machine? 
So sometimes the default was just, yeah, charge it to that number and see what happens. 
But the number... 
But sometimes... 
I remember I was seeing a video on YouTube about... 
In Virginia, back in the 80s, they had a problem with people billing calls to third numbers, so they just started calling for acceptance. 
And this was back in the bell system days. 
I saw a video in the 80s. 
Okay. 
I think that's pretty much all the kinds of calls you could make. 
And I'm sure there were others. 
There was busy line verification and call interrupt. 
Oh, that's also something you wouldn't be able to do in the bell system days. 
That only came up about after 1984. 
What did? 
In the busy line verification. 
Really? 
You couldn't verify before 1984? 
I thought you could. 
No. 
TSPS wasn't able to verify. 
It was only the TAPS system and the OSDS system. 
Wow. 
Okay. 
That's something I didn't know. 
But if you called somebody and the phone line was busy, you could ask the operator, can you verify the busy signal? 
What that meant was they would interrupt. 
They would sort of barge into the phone call. 
And they were able to determine. 
It was a scrambled signal, but they were able to determine, is the phone just off the hook or is there a conversation going on? 
And then the operator would come back and say, there's conversation or the phone is off the hook. 
Would you like me to report it or whatever? 
And if there was conversation, they would offer you the option to do an emergency interrupt, which I believe was free for a while. 
And then they started charging an arm and a leg for it. 
And the emergency interrupt, the operator would barge in. 
In fact, on my brain damage show, which is on 2600.com in the radio section, there are some times when obnoxious callers to the radio show would use that service, call interrupt. 
They would barge into a phone call that was going out over the air. 
And you'd hear the New York telephone operator saying, I have an emergency interrupt for this phone number. 
And you would either tell them to get lost or you'd say, OK, I'll hang up and they can call me. 
Well, I remember on Offerhook even, we used to do that. 
It probably happened there, too. 
Wait, did you say you used to do that? 
Wow. 
OK, all right. 
Excuse me. 
Excuse me. 
This is Nainix. 
I have an emergency interruption for Bernie. 
Yeah, good times. 
Good times. 
Now, and about what you're talking about now, you know, you can make money off these, you know, data breaches. 
And oh, my friend made hundreds of thousands. 
Well, not hundreds, but maybe tens of thousands of dollars. 
You know, you just call the credit, get a credit card and say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't get this credit card. 
Maybe it was a data breach. 
And then they just, you know, dismiss it. 
They just dismiss tens of thousands of dollars. 
First of all, that's not making tens of thousands of dollars. 
That's stealing tens of thousands of dollars. 
No. 
Big difference. 
Oh, you know, it's a data breach, you know, and they'll just think that it was, you know, a data breach from China. 
Yeah, but what, OK, what kinds of things was your friend buying with a credit card? 
Well, going to, going to Europe and going on. 
Yeah. 
You see, the thing with that is sometimes you have to give your name to curious people who fly airplanes and let people into their countries, and they might do a little bit of investigation and say, hey, you've got the same name as the person that, you know, applied for the card in the first place. 
Isn't that odd? 
No, but then you just blame China for it. 
I say, oh, there was a case. 
You blame China. 
You know, that only goes so far, Rebel. 
That only goes so far. 
You should visit your friend, though, wherever they wind up. 
I'm sure they'll appreciate the company. 
I did visit them, and, you know, they went out of money, though. 
I don't know what to believe. 
Alex, why were you wearing a Rebel shirt before? 
I meant to ask you that. 
No, I didn't even realize that. 
He was wearing a shirt that said Rebel on it. 
Rebel, you would have loved this. 
The lawyer is wearing a shirt that doesn't mean that's a copyright. 
Yeah, it is. 
He can go after you for that, as you well know, Alex. 
That's right, yeah. 
But he's not wearing it. 
He's not wearing it now. 
For some reason, I think he realized that even though this is an audio show, somehow you would see him. 
And that's right. 
Well, I'm actually establishing a pattern, you know, going on, going forward from today where every week I'm going to be wearing a shirt that predicts the name of the first caller. 
It might be Tim in Connecticut. 
It could be Rebel. 
Yeah, but it's almost always Rebel. 
You really only need one shirt. 
I've got the Rebel shirt ready, as you know. 
Well, I hope we pay for it, because that's the way I make my living. 
That's, you know, you, you know. 
Yeah, Rebel is pretty litigious there. 
So, yeah, look out for that. 
All right, Rebel, it's been a joy, as always, talking to you. 
I hope you stay safe over the next week. 
And we'll probably talk to you next week. 
Yeah, of course. 
And it's the 2600 meetings on Friday. 
Yes, as we already told the people on the radio show. 
But they are this Friday. 
And there'll be one, I believe, at the Citigroup building. 
Correct, Rob? 
Yes, indeed. 
The Citigroup building on 53rd and Lexington. 
In that mall with the weird name. 
Yeah, in the Hue, the food court that is called the Hue. 
The Hue. 
And actually has some good stuff in it, some good food court options. 
Sounds like you sneeze every time you say that. 
I'm going to the Hue. 
Bless you. 
See? 
All right, so, Rebel, maybe we'll see you there. 
Okay, yeah, maybe you'll be there. 
Okay. 
All right, have a good night. 
Bye. 
Hi, that went fairly smoothly. 
I think I'm working on my computer lab. 
Uh-huh. 
Next call. 
802-321-4225. 
We're on for another few minutes. 
Extra 10, 12 minutes that we have for losing the time before. 
And your phone calls are welcome. 
There were some fun anecdotes shared in the YouTube chat, Gila, if you see those, about what people used to do to avoid paying for the collect calls. 
Yes, yes, this is true. 
Excuse me. 
So, Tim McKinnon again said that my family, when traveling, would place a person-to-person collect call and ask for themselves. 
It would be declined, but told us we reached our destination okay. 
I think everybody did that. 
I said my grandparents would do that, and it's true. 
And, you know, my grandparents were not phone freaks, all right? 
These are just normal, everyday people that would always use that system to convey a message. 
Ring the phone twice, hang up, and what are the odds of somebody else doing it at approximately that time? 
Very slim. 
And, you know, when the phone rang, I don't know if you guys grew up in households like this. 
When the phone rang, there was no caller ID, and it was a big deal. 
The phone ringing, you always picked it up. 
You never knew who was on the other end. 
And there was always something to be taken very seriously. 
Also, I think it was an introduction to, like, how to screen. 
I think that was, like, a family activity, you know, because I was assigned, you know, the very job I think I'm doing now, like, you know, answer the phone, right? 
And you're learning things like how to present yourself, you know, ask if someone is available or ask if you can take a message if someone is available. 
You were the call screener? 
You were the call screener for your house. 
I did a lot of that. 
Yeah, I feel that some calls. 
Did you ever call somebody and they would answer the phone? 
This is the Smith household. 
This is Reginald. 
How can it be so formal? 
But you knew they were, like, told to do that by their parents. 
And we delight in just calling them back over and over again. 
They couldn't break character. 
Yeah, I didn't have strict rules like that. 
But that's the exact kind of thing I'm talking about. 
Like, that's, like, social conditioning where you're just learning phone etiquette, like, early on. 
And you learn it or you used to learn it around the household telephone that required screening, you know, required certain, you know, rapport as or certain, let's say, filter as far as who this number represents. 
Is it just an individual? 
No, it's this family, like you said. 
So we didn't have that rule. 
It was just hello. 
And then who are they asking for all that? 
And then offer to take a note if they're not available, all that. 
At least that's as far as I got with the job. 
And then, you know what, times changed and, oh, never mind. 
Well, there's so many fun things you could do with landlines. 
You know, pay phones that took incoming calls. 
You could call them at random and talk to strangers in the streets of New York City. 
We did that on our radio show back in the early 80s. 
And it was a ton of fun just meeting people that way. 
You didn't have to be doing a radio show to have that much fun. 
You just needed a phone number. 
We had at the other radio station a key system, a phone key system. 
That's like the five buttons on the phone. 
Picture a rotary phone, black rotary phone with five lines on the bottom and a hold button as well. 
This phone was special because you could press two buttons down at the same time. 
And if you did that, you connected two lines together. 
So what we do, and keep in mind there's no caller ID, we would call the local pizza shop and we'd connect them to just random places all over. 
You know, we find either cheap or free numbers to call and just connect them to all these places. 
And they pick up the phone and all of a sudden they're talking to an operator in Botswana or something or they're talking to another pizza place in Manhattan. 
And it got to be an adventure. 
And they would pick up the phone and be looking forward to the next call. 
So my friend and I, this was actually after a radio show, decided we were going to go down to that pizza place just to like, because we had called us so many times we got hungry. 
And we were there and the phone rang while we were there. 
And the guy picked up the phone and said, yeah, what is it this time? 
And it was the boss calling and he got in trouble. 
And we heard the whole thing. 
But that kind of fun, you couldn't possibly do that these days. 
You couldn't pair lines together that easily. 
They probably don't have a landline. 
You probably couldn't reach somebody as easily on the phone. 
It was a special magical time. 
The longer I hang out with hackers, the more I realize how polite and mild-mannered and well-adjusted I behaved. 
It doesn't mean that I was. 
You were very polite. 
It doesn't mean that I was. 
It just means that that's how I behaved. 
We would connect people to their family and other parts of the world and all sorts. 
We had fun. 
I didn't have any fun. 
Well, all you have to do is bring back landlines and the fun will come. 
All right. 
802-321-4225. 
Speaking of landlines, is that landline ringing or occupied? 
It is not? 
Nay. 
Okay. 
So we'll leave it open for a little while longer. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
A brief announcement from the chat is that there is a new 2600 meeting in Birmingham, UK, starting this week. 
If that is, in fact, true and it has not been submitted to the meetings headquarters, there are two ways to do that. 
Either meetings at 2600.com or go to 2600 meetings on Blue Sky. 
Don't go to Twitter. 
We're not looking at that anymore. 
2600 meetings on Blue Sky. 
You'll be able to let us know there and we'll follow you back and all that kind of thing. 
But let us know soon, because I believe that's being finalized tomorrow and it won't be updated again until the next issue comes out. 
Yes, Alex. 
As I'm sure, Fun Sox is thinking at the moment, there's no Birmingham in the UK, Gila. 
It's actually Birmingham. 
That's right. 
Yeah, they dropped that H. 
Yeah. 
We've only got the ham down in Alabama. 
I said Birmingham. 
Did you? 
I thought you said Birmingham. 
I thought I said Birmingham. 
There's an audio record. 
We can go back and find out. 
They dropped the H from Birmingham and they added it to the word herb for some reason. 
We have a phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the cover time. 
Go ahead. 
Yeah. 
No, I was just curious what you guys think about. 
I know this isn't really a politics show, but I just wanted to I wondered what you think about the Biden pardoning his son. 
Well, I do another radio show on Tuesdays. 
I talked about that at length yesterday. 
But I'll say just very quickly, I don't know what everybody is so surprised at. 
You know, this was the guy's son. 
He changed his mind. 
He went to Thanksgiving and he acted like a human being. 
And, you know, I just don't get Republicans get away with this kind of thing all the time. 
Was Hunter Biden supposed to spend the rest of Joe Biden's life in prison just to prove a point, just to take the high and mighty road? 
Or, yeah, you can say Joe changed his mind, was hypocritical, whatever. 
He's got his son back. 
And I can understand that. 
Even if, you know, I don't think it's right. 
It doesn't matter. 
It's it's a human thing. 
That's that's my feeling. 
Rob, do you have another? 
Yeah. 
Also, Joe Biden knows he's fully at the end of his political career. 
So anything he does really won't matter to his future at all. 
You know, what's he going to lose by by going through it and doing this? 
Nothing. 
He he has nothing to lose. 
He has, you know, a free son to gain. 
And I want to hear the Republicans talk about how easily pardoning is, you know, in a couple of months when the next one pardons himself. 
Well, you know, there are people who are saying that they're saying, well, he he just made it easy for Trump to pardon all these other people. 
And do you honestly think he wouldn't have done that anyway? 
Do you think anything that you do is going to influence any of his actions? 
I seriously doubt that, Alex. 
Yeah, I tend to, I think, mostly side with you on this one, Emmanuel. 
I think I think it was a human decision for sure. 
But I also think it was, you know, in a moral decision in many ways and an unpragmatic decision, because I think as you really were just hinting at here, the fact that he did this prevents the Democrats now from taking the moral high ground when it comes to the misuse and abuse. 
Alex, Alex, they've been on that moral high ground for ages. 
It's so lonely on that road. 
They're not winning anything. 
They need to sometimes be a little selfish and just say, you know what, we've got the power. 
We're going to take a look in North Carolina, as Republicans do everywhere. 
They're stripping the governor, the Democratic governor of his power and making it so that Republicans always have the final say, even when they lose elections. 
You know, that is that's what they go to. 
That's what they do. 
Democrats, I've never seen them do that, but they still keep losing. 
You know, so at some point you've got to say, screw you guys. 
You know, I'm going to do this because I can. 
And I get it. 
I understand why. 
That's all well and that's all well and good if they're going to benefit the masses or the people in some way. 
But when you benefit a member of your immediate family, there's a big difference there. 
You can do that. 
You can do that. 
You know, your family is important. 
And no one should be surprised that Joe Biden is concerned about his family. 
He pretty well. 
I mean, he trades in that as a core sense of his identity. 
Look, when Joe Biden was president, I mean, he's, you know, his last few days now. 
But if he had won reelection, you know, if he had stayed in the race in one reelection, he wouldn't have pardoned his son. 
I'm pretty sure of that because it would have been seen as an abuse of his continuing power. 
But now that he's at the end, yeah, he's cashing in this one thing that he can do. 
I mean, he's supposed to not do that while Trump has done so much else and will continue to do so much else. 
No, that's that's just asking way too much. 
That's the point that I'm that I'm trying to get to here is that you can you can make the claim that this causes the Democrats to have lost the moral high ground. 
And it makes it easier now for Trump to to abuse this process. 
But I think you have to you can look at it another way. 
You can go backwards in time and you can say those crazy pardons that Trump made have basically set the stage for the abuse of the pardon process. 
Sure. 
You know, that that's I think that a better way of looking at it, quite frankly, because up until then, pardons are always controversial. 
But but his were batshit crazy. 
Honestly, and it's funny because he pardons some people that are criticizing this pardon. 
People say, I guess the rule of law doesn't doesn't apply anymore. 
And they got pardoned by Trump, which is crazy. 
But I honestly think many of the American people are kind of resentful of the high moral ground. 
So if you if you do the right thing, they don't like you for that. 
And Trump does the wrong thing. 
It's like, yeah, it's what I want to do is I get that he's one of he's one of us. 
It's ridiculous. 
But that seems to be where we are. 
Gila. 
Gila, you're muted. 
Sorry, not anymore. 
We have an interesting note from the chat from a user known as the Miss Lourdes, who says, re-Biden's son, getting his son clear away from further difficulty and complication under a Trump Justice Department makes a whole lot of sense. 
Then further goes on to say is what Biden should do is January 1st issue an executive order clearing all student loans and require destruction of records in 15 days just to really throw Trump under the bus. 
Wow. 
What if what if what if what if Biden pardoned every migrant that didn't have documentation? 
That would that would really it would just piss everybody off. 
But still, that would be something that would be that would be fun. 
That would be just a good old fashioned fun. 
Yeah, I'd be more in favor of that, perhaps. 
And, you know, benefiting your immediate family members. 
I mean, I and federal legalization of cannabis. 
But anyway, there's just so many things, you know, we all should be thinking about in our own way, like to be prepared. 
And yeah, this is this is you you you you have to expect just as people might be reacting in your close proximity that there's you know, this is the Biden administration weighing anchor a little bit. 
They're kind of packing up the tent and and and leaving the political scene, as was pointed out. 
Well, if it if it pisses off the Republicans and pisses off Trump that much, I don't really care what it is. 
I'll nod my head in favor of it. 
Anyway, does it does that answer your question, caller? 
Yes. 
No, it does. 
Yeah, it does. 
I was just trying to say, because to me, Democrats, they're so weak. 
I mean, they're so weak. 
They're all you know, they just they they cannibalize their own people. 
And they're all you know, they're all like, oh, high and mighty. 
And how I mean, how are they going to leave his son in prison or face in prison and and and leave the president to prove a point? 
Right, right. 
Yeah, to prove a point. 
That's where, like, I think that the logic that Alex is speaking to, it's like, yeah, but what do we gain? 
And nothing, nothing. 
I think that was what he was saying. 
You know, is that where you is that what you heard in that conversation? 
Yeah, they're still losing. 
They still lose elections all the time doing this moral stuff. 
And they still lose and lose and lose. 
It doesn't work anymore. 
You know, they need to they need to get tough. 
All that stuff doesn't work. 
Yeah, I think you're right. 
I think you're right. 
Yeah. 
Let's let's let's see how this how this plays out. 
And hopefully other tactical decisions are made as well. 
And hopefully people will take my call. 
Thank you for calling. 
Thanks for listening. 
Yeah, we appreciate you joined us. 
Take care. 
802-321-4225. 
Not much time left, but good to hear from people. 
Any other thoughts about this issue or others or things from the chat or anything? 
Anyone, please step in. 
They're unmuting. 
It's four of you, for God's sake. 
There are, you know, people are talking about, you know, other pardons that have happened, and, you know, and and it's interesting to note that in his first term, Trump pardoned his son-in-law's father. 
So, you know, and now he's the ambassador to France. 
Yeah. 
The goddamn ambassador to France. 
He has no experience whatsoever. 
However, oh, my God. 
And just all the all the all the crazy people that are being nominated for positions of power. 
It's funny. 
It's a good laugh. 
We're all enjoying it. 
But it's not going to be so funny when they actually get installed. 
And it's a good likelihood that at least a few of them will. 
All right. 
Let's take another phone call. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the cover time. 
Go ahead. 
Hey, two things I want to say. 
And the second is regards to toothpaste. 
So if I forget, please remind me. 
OK. 
But, you know, in this in this culture that uses historical and unprecedented as two words that, you know, obviously people don't know history. 
Love to use. 
Because when Biden justified his son's pardon, he said something that nobody paid attention to because, oh, this is self-serving. 
He said that he was unjustly singled out for political reasons. 
But now, if you remember what happened over the summer when he had a plea bargain in place for, you know, a pretty routine case that happens all the time, the Republicans in the House brought it up and, you know, tearing their their clothes off and saying what a scandal it was that this was being offered. 
And then it was withdrawn. 
So he has a point. 
Absolutely. 
The guy was being prosecuted because they couldn't get to him, to him, meaning Biden senior, the president. 
They tried to, you know, meanwhile, Trump was impeached twice. 
They couldn't find anything that they would have hanged him on. 
So they got to the sun. 
And unfortunately, this is what happened. 
And I don't see, you know, nobody in the media mentioned this. 
Well, it was, it was mentioned. 
It was mentioned, but if... 
No, I mean, now. 
Okay. 
They mentioned it in the summer. 
Nobody brought it up now. 
If... 
Nobody said, by the way, it's true. 
It was singled out for... 
Right. 
If you found somebody, if you found somebody who committed the same crimes as Hunter Biden, they would not have been facing the prison time that he was. 
Of course. 
And the Republicans would not give a rat's ass about that person. 
And if Joe Biden goes and pardons everybody who committed the exact same crimes, they're not going to care about that either. 
They only care about somebody whose last name is Biden or, you know, whatever target they find me a case comparable to that that was ever discussed on the House floor in the entire U.S. 
history, almost 250 years of it. 
As I said, you know, as a visual artist, I will make a piece, a tombstone that says the American Republic, July 4th, 1776, November 5th, 2024. 
Because I think we are really going towards not just unprecedented and uncharted. 
No, this is... 
It has happened before in history. 
You know, Julius Caesar was at least a military commander, and the Roman Empire moved from the Republic, which is what inspired the so-called founding fathers in this country. 
Not the Empire. 
It was the Republic. 
So with Julius Caesar, we have the end of the Republic. 
With Donald Trump, we have the wholesale, you know, piecemeal selling to our enemies, to the highest bidder, essentially, of everything that was the American Republic. 
That's my personal opinion. 
Right. 
Now, let me get back to the toothpaste before... 
Hang on. 
I want to hear what Kyle has to say about this. 
I just want to challenge just a little bit. 
Like, I mean, I get why you think, like, you want to posit it that way. 
Like, I feel like we're all kind of, like, there's a lot of people saying that, framing it in the way that it's like, okay, so this is the end, da-da-da-da-da. 
And it's like, I feel like it's like reaching for confirmation. 
Like, oh, yes, it's the end. 
So, yeah, like, it, like, validates a level of discourse of, like, oh, it's fatalistic. 
It's like, okay, so I'm going to set my hair on fire. 
And I'm going to, you know, whatever crazy direction after that. 
Or not crazy. 
Whatever. 
Maybe it gets very serious and very, like, grim and just fatalistic. 
But my point is, I think it's more like, I don't want to go there because it's tempting. 
And my thought is that this is more like the hard way. 
There's no easy way in the U.S. 
It's always the hard way. 
Always. 
Something like that. 
But I don't dispute, and maybe I'm wrong, you know, I'm not your way of thinking, your opinion's your opinion, just as you said. 
So that's all. 
Go ahead. 
Kyle, I just want to address one thing you said. 
You know, we are there. 
No, we're not even there. 
It hasn't even started. 
If you think this is painful, wait until January 6th when it's going to be confirmed that this bastard is going to be our so-called leader. 
And then, you know, January 21st when he gets into the White House, and that's just the beginning. 
So we are still at the prodroms. 
The show hasn't started yet. 
You know, this is just the pre-show. 
So, you know, I don't want to get too dark here, but this reminds me a lot of, you know, it's 1932 Berlin. 
Well, again, you know, I have a real problem with that. 
It hasn't started yet. 
I have a real problem with the Nazi Germany analogies because, you know, it's a different situation. 
I think, you know, the American people right now are not like the Nazi crowds of the 1930s. 
It's going to take a whole lot to get to that level. 
But there are certainly some disturbing things. 
And fascist leaders are certainly very disturbing, regardless of the kinds of people who follow them. 
So, you know, I take the point that this is definitely a dark era that's about to begin. 
But I do think there is hope. 
I do think that there are enough people that get it, enough people on the opposition. 
And I think there are even enough people who took the plunge and voted for this guy that will see the threat when it actually finally becomes apparent to them. 
I know it should have been seen years ago. 
But some people, it takes longer. 
Kyle, do you have some other point? 
Yeah, I think there's going to be enough that is plainly that we don't need to point and see it everywhere. 
Because, again, like speaking to this in language, you're making it, you're trying it on. 
Right. 
So you're airing it. 
And like in like our reaction, our support, our discussion, validation, whatever is by in in that sharing of the idea. 
And I'm I'm thinking that that that idea necessarily, like it seems like we're really looking for it. 
And I think that there's going to be enough of it that is apparent. 
We're actually we should be looking for what actions are preventing that. 
What actions are positive? 
What actions are going to fortify or help people in the face of that as the the dominant activity? 
It's no longer a rarity. 
So, again, I think it's about people shifting to where actually Democrats are most well equipped. 
And that is the opposition. 
So oppose. 
Right. 
But like it's not something you have to sell if it's going to be something so apparent. 
OK, that's you. 
I mean, otherwise I wouldn't be calling this show and trying, you know, to have a discussion about this because I would just crawl up and die, which is what they would like us to do. 
Just another way of thinking. 
You know, we're talking and we're trying we're trying to find ways to go on as you know, with some degree of normality, not that we're normalizing any of what's going on, but we do need some degree of predictability in our lives. 
Right. 
You need to know that when you switch the switch on, the light is going to go on. 
OK, get you get you a second point. 
Get you a second point. 
So when when somebody mentioned getting the toothpaste back in in the tube, which you can do, by the way, you can do that. 
Exactly. 
That's my point. 
You know, you know, I do it regularly. 
And but it's a great metaphor because that's that's how I deal with my data. 
I take out as little as possible so that if I took out too much, I can jiggle the tube, create a void and put the excess back in. 
That's that's all I wanted to say. 
You know, I like it as a metaphor and and it works in my life in both both both regards, data and toothpaste. 
Well, that's going to be the final point made tonight. 
And it's a it's a lovely one to envision. 
Great talking with you guys, as always. 
All right. 
Thanks for the call. 
All the best. 
Take care. 
My pleasure. 
Bye bye. 
That's going to do it for tonight. 
And yes, we made up for the time we lost. 
We're sorry about that, but we fixed the problem. 
Thank you, Kyle, for taking care of it all. 
And I know I'm sorry. 
I can't. 
It was frustrating in my my good ear. 
Yeah, I said it. 
I'm not going to say it again. 
It's over here. 
But let me hold it. 
We'll just reboot that machine more often and not let Microsoft take advantage. 
It honestly was it was it was it was on a good run, let's say. 
And I just, you know, you have to care for these things. 
It's like a Tamagotchi, you know, or any kind of small houseplant or right. 
I don't know what I'm saying. 
Succulent cactus. 
We've been on long enough. 
I'm ready to end this. 
Guys in Skype land, say you say your goodbyes. 
Good night. 
I'll see you at the twenty six hundred meetings. 
See you. 
Gila. 
See Alex. 
I was like, I'm waving like you can hear that. 
Yes. 
Thanks to everybody for hanging in with us, even during our technical issues this evening. 
It's it's great, as always. 
Thank you. 
And we'll be back next next Wednesday for off the hook, 7 p.m. 
And hopefully we'll see you then. 
OTH at twenty six hundred dot com. 
And please support WBAI because they're the ones that bring us all together. 
Eight three three W B A I N Y C. 
What's who's furiously typing. 
That's you, Gila. 
Sorry. 
I'm sorry. 
No, it's a nice sound effect. 
It just confused me. 
This is this. 
Once a mod, always a mod. 
Come on. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
I'm signing off now. 
Good night, everyone. 
Bye.