[00:01.980 --> 00:05.220]  Free Speech Radio News is a worker-run collective.
[00:05.540 --> 00:08.380]  Monica Lopez and Tana Guzze produce today's broadcast.
[00:08.820 --> 00:10.460]  Leanne Caldwell is our Washington editor.
[00:10.700 --> 00:16.180]  Our technical production team at KPFA in Berkeley is Eric Klein, Antonio Ortiz, and Puck Lowe.
[00:16.520 --> 00:24.220]  For archives of this or any other newscast or documentary, go to our website, www.fsrn.org.
[00:24.420 --> 00:28.940]  From KPFA in Berkeley, I'm Brian Edwards-Tiekert, sitting in for Audubogado.
[00:33.060 --> 00:35.680]  And this is radio station WBAI New York.
[00:35.820 --> 00:37.360]  The time is just about 7 o'clock.
[00:37.540 --> 00:38.860]  Time once again for Off the Hook.
[01:40.660 --> 01:42.320]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[01:42.420 --> 01:44.040]  The program is Off the Hook.
[01:45.140 --> 01:47.460]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[01:49.940 --> 01:52.800]  Joined this week by Bernie down there in Philadelphia.
[01:53.380 --> 01:54.340]  Greetings from Philadelphia.
[01:54.440 --> 01:55.400]  Well, you're ready right there.
[01:55.580 --> 01:57.340]  Usually you're last, and today you were first.
[01:57.720 --> 01:58.000]  Thank you.
[01:58.340 --> 02:00.140]  And over there is Mike.
[02:00.460 --> 02:00.800]  Hi.
[02:01.340 --> 02:02.500]  On the other side of the room, not Kevin.
[02:02.840 --> 02:03.240]  Hello.
[02:03.540 --> 02:03.940]  Redbird.
[02:04.180 --> 02:04.940]  I don't like this order.
[02:05.760 --> 02:06.860]  Yes, it's random order.
[02:07.040 --> 02:07.380]  Good evening.
[02:07.380 --> 02:09.580]  And joining us from the Deep South is Lynn.
[02:10.140 --> 02:10.460]  Hello.
[02:10.740 --> 02:11.180]  Hey, Bernie.
[02:11.300 --> 02:12.320]  Sorry I missed you in Philly.
[02:13.180 --> 02:13.660]  Oh, yeah.
[02:13.820 --> 02:14.660]  Well, next time.
[02:14.880 --> 02:15.520]  Maybe next time.
[02:15.660 --> 02:15.960]  All right.
[02:17.900 --> 02:20.700]  You come from what part of the South?
[02:21.560 --> 02:21.960]  Atlanta.
[02:22.220 --> 02:23.540]  You had a tornado come through there.
[02:23.820 --> 02:24.760]  Just a little one.
[02:24.860 --> 02:30.920]  And I was in the previous big one that they were all talking about on the news when I was about four years old.
[02:31.340 --> 02:32.400]  Okay, so it was a while ago.
[02:32.660 --> 02:32.860]  Yeah.
[02:33.100 --> 02:35.740]  Not to give anything away, but you're far from four right now.
[02:35.740 --> 02:37.080]  I'm far from four right now.
[02:37.080 --> 02:40.120]  So you weren't in Atlanta when an actual tornado came through.
[02:40.360 --> 02:40.820]  Yes, I was.
[02:40.940 --> 02:44.920]  In fact, I was about two miles from where everything went down.
[02:45.120 --> 02:45.800]  Must have been fun.
[02:46.960 --> 02:49.920]  It looked biblical outside.
[02:50.120 --> 02:50.220]  Yeah.
[02:50.540 --> 02:51.160]  Biblical weather.
[02:51.360 --> 02:52.220]  That's always...
[02:52.220 --> 02:56.920]  Yeah, I was waiting for the locust and the rivers running with blood and things.
[02:57.020 --> 02:58.540]  I mean, it was pretty serious.
[02:59.660 --> 03:00.020]  Wow.
[03:00.020 --> 03:00.880]  We don't get that up here.
[03:00.940 --> 03:02.080]  There's a lot we don't get in New York.
[03:02.140 --> 03:02.840]  We don't get earthquakes.
[03:03.020 --> 03:03.860]  We don't get tornadoes.
[03:03.880 --> 03:04.460]  We got a tornado.
[03:04.580 --> 03:05.260]  Well, you got a tornado.
[03:05.260 --> 03:05.700]  I got a tornado.
[03:05.880 --> 03:06.560]  You're in 914.
[03:07.320 --> 03:07.940]  I present.
[03:08.220 --> 03:08.380]  Yeah.
[03:09.260 --> 03:12.760]  But here in 212 and 646 land, we don't get that kind of thing.
[03:12.940 --> 03:13.460]  Well, actually, no.
[03:13.480 --> 03:13.760]  It's not true.
[03:13.800 --> 03:15.300]  We did have a tornado in Brooklyn last year.
[03:15.600 --> 03:16.160]  Little one.
[03:16.420 --> 03:16.980]  Little tiny one.
[03:17.000 --> 03:18.680]  Brooklyn also not 212, but...
[03:18.680 --> 03:20.680]  Yeah, it's 347 and 718.
[03:20.800 --> 03:21.380]  It used to be 212.
[03:21.380 --> 03:25.860]  But it's 212 and, and, and multiple other ones, isn't it?
[03:25.860 --> 03:26.580]  And don't forget 917.
[03:27.040 --> 03:27.200]  Yes.
[03:27.200 --> 03:28.140]  Everyone always forgets 917.
[03:28.700 --> 03:31.000]  Do people out there remember when Brooklyn used to be 212?
[03:31.580 --> 03:32.300]  Does anybody remember?
[03:32.340 --> 03:32.900]  You do not.
[03:32.920 --> 03:33.800]  You weren't even alive.
[03:34.080 --> 03:34.680]  Of course I was.
[03:34.680 --> 03:35.320]  No, you weren't.
[03:35.380 --> 03:39.340]  Because they, they stopped being 212, I think, in the early 80s.
[03:40.020 --> 03:40.700]  Early 80s.
[03:40.760 --> 03:40.880]  Yeah.
[03:41.140 --> 03:42.760]  So, you know, you weren't around for that.
[03:42.820 --> 03:43.160]  I was around.
[03:43.420 --> 03:43.640]  No.
[03:43.900 --> 03:46.060]  It's, it's kind of scary because I remember these days.
[03:46.060 --> 03:49.740]  I remember when 212, I remember, I remember letters on phone numbers.
[03:49.900 --> 03:51.700]  You know, you know what I'm talking about, right?
[03:52.280 --> 03:52.640]  Yeah.
[03:52.840 --> 03:54.420]  I, I hear stories about it.
[03:54.500 --> 03:56.580]  Like Stilwell 7 and things like that.
[03:56.580 --> 03:57.360]  You remember that, Bernie, right?
[03:57.380 --> 03:57.480]  Yeah.
[03:57.620 --> 03:57.880]  Oh, yeah.
[03:57.920 --> 03:58.300]  It was great.
[03:58.300 --> 04:07.740]  And you could, and, and it's funny because I, I talked to switch technicians and they, they still sometimes refer to their, their switch or their exchange by that name.
[04:07.940 --> 04:14.000]  And there was a standard list of, of names like, uh, Greenwood, for instance.
[04:14.220 --> 04:19.400]  It would, the GR for the letters that, you know, of the alphabet that, that were for that exchange.
[04:19.560 --> 04:22.060]  It would, there was a standard list of, of names.
[04:22.280 --> 04:29.840]  Sometimes they would alter from that standard bell list for something that was particularly, uh, appropriate for that locality.
[04:30.040 --> 04:32.620]  But it was, you could, it was a really easy way to remember phone numbers.
[04:32.780 --> 04:36.320]  Well, like Pennsylvania 6, 5,000, the, the number for our beloved hotel.
[04:36.600 --> 04:41.000]  Now it used to be that, uh, three letters were indicated, uh, Pennsylvania.
[04:41.620 --> 04:44.900]  So if you, if you look at the phone dial, P E is 7, 3.
[04:45.120 --> 04:48.260]  So it's 7, 3, 6, 5,000 is the phone number for Pennsylvania 6, 5,000.
[04:48.500 --> 04:51.680]  But P E N, P E N, N is six.
[04:51.980 --> 04:53.520]  So 7, 3, 6, it still works for that.
[04:53.520 --> 04:59.160]  So it used to be three letters and then four numbers, but then they changed it to two letters and five numbers.
[04:59.880 --> 05:03.420]  Somehow that opened up a lot of numbers back in the fifties, I think, when they did it.
[05:03.560 --> 05:11.260]  And to this day, I don't know if it's like this in Philadelphia, but here in New York, you will very often see signs painted on the sides of buildings with old phone numbers on them.
[05:11.400 --> 05:12.400]  And I think they're protected.
[05:12.460 --> 05:13.920]  I think you're not allowed to paint over those.
[05:14.100 --> 05:23.180]  Occasionally they try to put like a, an advertisement over it, uh, with nylon or something, but they don't actually paint over the old advertisements from the fifties and sixties that have lettered phone numbers in them.
[05:24.100 --> 05:25.160]  Is that, is that true?
[05:25.340 --> 05:27.300]  Because there was a whole outrage about that.
[05:27.440 --> 05:31.140]  I think a couple of years ago when they discovered one behind some building that was torn down.
[05:31.480 --> 05:36.920]  And, uh, I think, I think they either wanted to paint over it to put a temporary ad up while the building adjacent to it was being rebuilt.
[05:37.140 --> 05:39.500]  And there was, I don't know, but I didn't know they were protected.
[05:39.540 --> 05:46.820]  I see so many of them around that they have to be protected because otherwise I just can't imagine them not painting over these things and doing something ugly to them.
[05:47.180 --> 05:48.920]  Uh, but you'll see them all over the East village.
[05:49.040 --> 05:49.740]  You'll see them all over Manhattan.
[05:49.740 --> 05:51.880]  In fact, uh, Bernie, do you, do you have those down in Philadelphia?
[05:52.560 --> 05:53.580]  Oh yeah, it's great.
[05:53.760 --> 05:56.000]  Some of them are, you know, well over a hundred years old.
[05:56.160 --> 06:01.780]  Uh, it's indicating, you know, like, like, like Dutch cleanser or what, you know, whatever.
[06:02.000 --> 06:06.920]  There was one, one near me here that, uh, it's, uh, Edwards Corner.
[06:07.400 --> 06:09.060]  It says Edwards Corner on the side of it.
[06:09.120 --> 06:16.700]  And it was a, it was a rope company back when there was a shipyard here in Philadelphia over a hundred years ago where they would sell all kinds of big ropes for ships.
[06:16.860 --> 06:18.140]  And it's still on the side of the building.
[06:18.320 --> 06:19.380]  You can still make it out.
[06:19.380 --> 06:20.280]  Uh, this is great.
[06:20.460 --> 06:23.460]  This is like historical documents, but they're huge on the side of buildings.
[06:23.640 --> 06:25.600]  My favorite are the horseless carriage ads.
[06:25.900 --> 06:26.040]  Yeah.
[06:26.240 --> 06:26.800]  Those are, those are always the best.
[06:26.840 --> 06:27.840]  A place where you can get horse feed.
[06:28.040 --> 06:28.200]  Yeah.
[06:28.220 --> 06:32.120]  And various other, uh, commodities that you need to get through your 19th century days.
[06:32.360 --> 06:34.820]  I mean, wouldn't it be great to get one of those numbers?
[06:35.300 --> 06:39.100]  Well, I, you know, I imagine there's got to be a few that still are in working order.
[06:39.300 --> 06:42.440]  I mean, Pennsylvania 65,000 is probably the one that, that has stayed throughout.
[06:42.440 --> 06:50.560]  I don't think they're on the sides of buildings anywhere, but it would be kind of cool if some drugstore or something that advertised on the side of a building still has the number and still uses the letters.
[06:50.740 --> 06:54.000]  It's funny how we've, we use letters now in a different way.
[06:54.140 --> 07:01.420]  It's like 1-800-LAWYER or something, but, uh, we don't use the Stillwell 7 type of letters, but it's still the same basic idea.
[07:01.420 --> 07:05.060]  Well, the problem is, is we've got all these exchanges that have zeros in the middle.
[07:05.240 --> 07:06.340]  Yeah, that ruined everything.
[07:06.360 --> 07:07.500]  That kind of throws everything off, you know?
[07:07.560 --> 07:08.320]  Ruined the whole thing.
[07:09.200 --> 07:14.000]  Okay, um, well, we have more to talk about than just reminiscing back, um, in the old days.
[07:14.320 --> 07:16.980]  How about something for the new days, for, for, for now?
[07:17.200 --> 07:18.100]  We just got this in the mail.
[07:19.080 --> 07:21.900]  This is the brand new issue of CyberSocket.
[07:22.600 --> 07:25.800]  Uh, yes, but you might be, you might be wondering...
[07:25.800 --> 07:27.700]  That does not look like a computer-related magazine.
[07:27.940 --> 07:28.260]  No, it's not.
[07:29.180 --> 07:30.680]  He's, he's, he's, he's pretty attractive, isn't he?
[07:30.680 --> 07:32.200]  Uh, it's, it's a web magazine.
[07:32.460 --> 07:34.220]  It's a, um, how would you describe this?
[07:34.300 --> 07:35.560]  It's a web magazine in print?
[07:35.560 --> 07:37.320]  Well, it says web magazine on it.
[07:37.400 --> 07:38.460]  I don't know what that means exactly.
[07:38.540 --> 07:40.280]  But it's a paper magazine, to clarify.
[07:40.540 --> 07:42.240]  Yeah, but it says on it web magazine.
[07:42.820 --> 07:48.940]  Uh, and just to give you an idea of, of the stories that this kind of magazine runs, um, secrets of successful blogger, bloggers.
[07:49.020 --> 07:50.080]  They spell successful wrong.
[07:50.580 --> 07:51.120]  Uh, wanna...
[07:51.640 --> 07:53.300]  Aren't there two C's in successful?
[07:53.800 --> 07:54.560]  That is wrong.
[07:54.560 --> 07:56.540]  Yeah, and that's on the front page.
[07:56.700 --> 07:58.700]  I mean, the head, the, the, the, the magazine cover.
[07:58.940 --> 08:00.000]  Wanna be a porn star.
[08:00.180 --> 08:01.440]  Tips on breaking into the business.
[08:02.920 --> 08:08.260]  Um, it's, it's basically a male, uh, magazine for, um, I don't know how else to phrase it.
[08:08.320 --> 08:14.160]  But the point is, the reason I, I, I have the, uh, the March edition of Cyber Socket here in my hands is because somebody sent it to us.
[08:14.220 --> 08:18.980]  And the reason they did that was because, actually, we are on page 51.
[08:19.260 --> 08:19.440]  Ooh.
[08:19.840 --> 08:20.360]  Well, no.
[08:20.700 --> 08:21.240]  No, hold on.
[08:21.400 --> 08:24.520]  Our, our pictures, no, our pictures are not on, uh...
[08:24.520 --> 08:24.940]  Okay, good.
[08:25.120 --> 08:25.860]  ...on page 51.
[08:26.180 --> 08:27.420]  That guy's picture is, though.
[08:27.440 --> 08:27.880]  Look at that.
[08:28.520 --> 08:29.240]  Please continue.
[08:29.280 --> 08:32.520]  I'm just saying, you know, if, if this wasn't radio, we'd be in trouble.
[08:32.860 --> 08:34.320]  Uh, but here's what they say about us.
[08:34.520 --> 08:36.440]  Uh, this, uh, 2600, not off the hook.
[08:37.120 --> 08:37.760]  There, there's a...
[08:37.760 --> 08:39.100]  Lynn, do you want the picture?
[08:39.180 --> 08:39.440]  No.
[08:39.460 --> 08:40.160]  I'm gonna hold this one.
[08:40.160 --> 08:41.880]  I'm looking at the picture on the back, and it's...
[08:41.880 --> 08:43.420]  Your eyes are bugging out of your head.
[08:43.700 --> 08:43.980]  Whoa.
[08:44.340 --> 08:44.660]  Okay.
[08:44.940 --> 08:45.140]  Yeah.
[08:45.300 --> 08:46.060]  You can do that.
[08:46.160 --> 08:46.860]  Yes, you can do that.
[08:46.880 --> 08:47.780]  You just have to be in shape.
[08:48.380 --> 08:49.220]  It takes time.
[08:49.320 --> 08:49.580]  It takes practice.
[08:49.580 --> 08:51.100]  The bear is not in shape in that picture.
[08:51.580 --> 08:52.280]  No, but the...
[08:53.160 --> 08:54.160]  But the guy...
[08:54.160 --> 08:55.820]  Listen, let's not talk about this now.
[08:56.000 --> 08:58.240]  People are gonna have to pick up their own copy to see what we're talking about.
[08:58.560 --> 09:03.960]  Uh, this quarterly magazine specializes in material related to the computer and communications underground.
[09:04.480 --> 09:09.400]  Uh, members hail from around the globe, with local chapters meeting in person on the first Friday of every month.
[09:09.500 --> 09:11.780]  It's open to all, regardless of experience level.
[09:11.880 --> 09:19.380]  If you've got a talent for programming and an avid interest in hacking or the tradition of phone freaking, 2600 is a great source for information and contacts.
[09:19.520 --> 09:22.260]  www.2600.com.
[09:22.440 --> 09:27.300]  What this is doing in a male, uh, um, porn magazine, I don't know.
[09:27.400 --> 09:29.320]  But, you know, I, I'm all for it.
[09:29.560 --> 09:30.540]  As many magazines as possible.
[09:30.760 --> 09:32.080]  We really need a better PR department.
[09:32.280 --> 09:33.400]  No, this is, this is good.
[09:33.520 --> 09:36.300]  Whoever got this into this magazine, well done.
[09:36.300 --> 09:40.680]  And, uh, please send us any other magazines that 2600 or off the hook appears in.
[09:40.940 --> 09:43.680]  Um, I still want to know why this is a web magazine.
[09:43.960 --> 09:46.240]  Yeah, you can have it and, and examine it with your heart's content.
[09:46.380 --> 09:47.040]  Some other time.
[09:47.340 --> 09:47.580]  All right.
[09:48.080 --> 09:48.120]  Uh.
[09:48.260 --> 09:50.240]  It was, uh, it was printed with a web press.
[09:50.660 --> 09:51.080]  All right.
[09:51.100 --> 09:51.900]  Maybe that's what they mean.
[09:51.920 --> 09:54.140]  Maybe they've been saying that for centuries, you know, because that's...
[09:54.140 --> 09:56.480]  Certain types of, uh, certain types of printing press called a web press.
[09:56.640 --> 09:56.900]  All right.
[09:57.120 --> 09:57.760]  That's probably what they use.
[09:57.760 --> 10:01.380]  Um, now, uh, Bernie, I have a story for you, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy this.
[10:01.600 --> 10:04.620]  Um, this is, like, something we've never reported before.
[10:05.260 --> 10:23.100]  A government laptop computer, stolen last month, held unencrypted medical records of 2,500 participants in a government study, uh, according to the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, uh, the incident, the incident prompted the NHLBI to issue...
[10:23.100 --> 10:25.280]  Those are the worst acronym, worst acronym in the world.
[10:25.440 --> 10:26.320]  You can't say that at all.
[10:26.320 --> 10:28.440]  Uh, the NHLBI?
[10:28.720 --> 10:30.740]  They can't even say the letters without stumbling.
[10:31.160 --> 10:31.380]  Yeah.
[10:31.660 --> 10:32.440]  How'd they pick up the phone?
[10:33.120 --> 10:33.560]  NHLBI.
[10:33.740 --> 10:35.360]  Actually, it sounds like National Hockey League.
[10:35.840 --> 10:36.280]  NHLBI.
[10:36.620 --> 10:38.840]  Well, I bet the receptionists are good at it.
[10:38.920 --> 10:39.020]  Yeah.
[10:39.260 --> 10:45.860]  Anyway, uh, it prompted them to issue a statement saying it would no longer, no longer store patient medical information on laptops.
[10:46.460 --> 10:48.040]  So you see, folks, we're making progress.
[10:48.420 --> 10:49.660]  They've learned their lesson.
[10:49.780 --> 10:52.840]  Yes, it costs 2,500 people their, their innermost privacy.
[10:52.900 --> 10:55.580]  So there's how many possible five-letter acronyms?
[10:55.580 --> 10:56.540]  26 to the five.
[10:56.700 --> 11:00.100]  So one by one, we will, uh, teach them the value of privacy.
[11:00.980 --> 11:06.380]  The, uh, lack of encryption violated federal guidelines dating back to 2006.
[11:07.340 --> 11:07.660]  Yeah.
[11:08.020 --> 11:11.880]  Um, basically, uh, they say the laptop fell through the cracks and should have been encrypted.
[11:11.880 --> 11:13.640]  It also shouldn't have been stolen.
[11:14.520 --> 11:19.460]  A thorough review of other laptops containing sensitive information is underway as soon as they can figure out where they all are.
[11:20.040 --> 11:23.100]  The assumption has to be that your equipment's going to be stolen at some point.
[11:23.300 --> 11:23.520]  Absolutely.
[11:23.740 --> 11:33.320]  And, and, and there have been so many high, high quality open source, uh, encryption packages available lately that it's just, there's just no excuse for it now.
[11:33.540 --> 11:33.900]  Name one.
[11:34.200 --> 11:35.060]  TrueCrypt for Windows.
[11:35.320 --> 11:35.820]  If that's something.
[11:35.920 --> 11:36.400]  They went fast with that.
[11:36.600 --> 11:36.760]  Yeah.
[11:36.820 --> 11:38.700]  It's, it's, it's the government.
[11:39.040 --> 11:43.180]  They pay top dollar to contractors to buy software.
[11:44.380 --> 11:50.900]  Why not buy the commercial one that's out there with support in the whole freaking nine yards?
[11:50.900 --> 11:54.400]  Or just get, get, get, get an open, okay there?
[11:54.760 --> 11:55.340]  That was close.
[11:55.560 --> 11:55.700]  Yeah.
[11:56.240 --> 11:57.380]  No, you can still say that on the air.
[11:57.560 --> 11:59.880]  Uh, you can get an open source one, open source solutions.
[12:00.040 --> 12:00.140]  Yep.
[12:00.280 --> 12:00.620]  Right, Mike?
[12:00.820 --> 12:01.360]  Aren't there good ones?
[12:01.800 --> 12:02.120]  Yes.
[12:02.560 --> 12:02.660]  Yeah.
[12:02.780 --> 12:03.720]  Joe just mentioned one.
[12:03.840 --> 12:03.960]  Yeah.
[12:04.020 --> 12:09.700]  And you, uh, and you don't have to run, you can run Windows, you can run, uh, Linux, you can run FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD.
[12:09.940 --> 12:10.440]  It's compatible.
[12:10.720 --> 12:11.380]  You can run a Mac.
[12:11.520 --> 12:12.300]  You can run a Mac.
[12:12.540 --> 12:13.180]  You can run an Amiga.
[12:13.300 --> 12:13.860]  That's impossible.
[12:14.220 --> 12:20.240]  But isn't, doesn't even XP have some basic level of encryption if you select yes?
[12:20.940 --> 12:21.880]  For that user?
[12:22.300 --> 12:22.740]  I think so.
[12:23.080 --> 12:26.000]  I mean, it's, I think that it's vulnerable, but at least it's...
[12:26.000 --> 12:27.440]  I think you have to get the professional.
[12:27.880 --> 12:28.280]  Professional.
[12:28.640 --> 12:29.580]  Yeah, XP professional.
[12:29.720 --> 12:31.080]  I'm sorry, I'm told you can't run an Amiga.
[12:31.380 --> 12:32.700]  Um, I've outdated information.
[12:33.300 --> 12:34.440]  Uh, Bernie, what do you think of this story?
[12:34.540 --> 12:35.460]  You think it's the same old thing?
[12:35.800 --> 12:39.180]  Well, I think the laptop is probably running Windows ME.
[12:41.260 --> 12:49.920]  Based on the, the, uh, competence level of the, uh, people who put that information on there and didn't encrypt it and didn't safeguard it.
[12:49.920 --> 12:58.940]  I mean, this, we're talking about thousands of people's private information, this just being carelessly, uh, effectively thrown out on the street, just put at risk.
[12:59.080 --> 13:05.220]  I mean, my biggest gripe about all this is there's never any accountability for those at fault who've done this.
[13:05.860 --> 13:10.940]  Um, yeah, a couple of bad press releases and they got us done talking to, there's never any accountability.
[13:11.520 --> 13:23.160]  These people should, should have to pay out of their own pockets for, um, you know, for any problems that the victims of, uh, identity theft as a result of this carelessness suffer.
[13:23.340 --> 13:24.280]  But that'll never happen.
[13:24.460 --> 13:32.480]  We should note here that this is medical information, which is the one type of information or one of the few types of information that is actually protected under U.S.
[13:32.580 --> 13:32.780]  law.
[13:33.160 --> 13:37.460]  Uh, the HIPAA Act is one of the few acts we have in the United States that protects your privacy.
[13:37.820 --> 13:42.080]  And even here with medical protected information, they can't seem to get it right.
[13:42.280 --> 13:48.740]  I mean, you should see the level, I mean, even my doctor's office, you should see the level of security that they go through.
[13:48.860 --> 14:00.060]  I mean, they have computers in the, in the, the exam rooms and you go in there and I mean, they don't walk out of the room without locking that computer and it's got a fingerprint reader and they got to have a password.
[14:00.180 --> 14:00.360]  Right.
[14:00.820 --> 14:03.880]  And then he's like, Oh man, I can't remember what changed the password to.
[14:03.980 --> 14:04.680]  I'll be right back.
[14:04.680 --> 14:07.260]  Like, Hey, Gladys, what's the password?
[14:08.220 --> 14:08.580]  Yeah.
[14:08.660 --> 14:10.040]  I've seen people do things like that.
[14:10.180 --> 14:16.400]  It's, um, you know, there's all different points of failure that could happen, but something like this, we really should be beyond it.
[14:16.480 --> 14:18.740]  But it's always, it's always the simplest to mitigate.
[14:19.280 --> 14:21.240]  It's, I mean, it's, that's what we always hear about.
[14:21.340 --> 14:24.220]  We always hear about the silly things that, you know, unencrypted hard drives.
[14:24.340 --> 14:26.040]  That's, that's, it's, it's easy to fix.
[14:26.560 --> 14:27.080]  Yeah, absolutely.
[14:27.680 --> 14:31.900]  Uh, here's another story, which I think is, um, is, uh, pretty, well, it is kind of hilarious.
[14:32.120 --> 14:34.540]  It's not that funny if you're the person it happened to, I guess.
[14:34.880 --> 14:38.300]  But, uh, it really is, uh, it really is something else.
[14:38.940 --> 14:49.980]  Um, basically, uh, the, the headline here, this comes from the Canadian press, um, hoax advertisements cost a man from Oregon huge property losses.
[14:50.380 --> 14:52.240]  Uh, this comes from Jacksonville, Oregon.
[14:52.500 --> 14:57.780]  A pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost an Oregon man much of what he owned.
[14:57.960 --> 15:09.820]  The ads popped up on Saturday afternoon saying the, um, the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly, and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking.
[15:10.740 --> 15:13.320]  But, uh, Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave.
[15:13.560 --> 15:20.140]  Uh, the independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.
[15:21.300 --> 15:22.020]  No kidding.
[15:22.200 --> 15:26.940]  On his way home, he stopped the truck loaded with his work ladders, lawnmower, and weed eater.
[15:27.140 --> 15:30.540]  I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back, he said.
[15:30.660 --> 15:34.720]  They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did.
[15:35.520 --> 15:37.200]  The, I, I shouldn't be laughing.
[15:37.200 --> 15:37.480]  I know.
[15:37.760 --> 15:40.780]  The, the, the driver sped away after rebuking Salisbury.
[15:40.980 --> 15:44.740]  On his way home, he spotted other cars filled with his belongings on the way out.
[15:45.020 --> 15:49.860]  And once home, he was greeted by close to 30 people who were rummaging through his barn and front porch.
[15:50.300 --> 15:57.520]  The, uh, trespassers, I don't know if they're technically trespassers, but I guess they probably are, uh, they were darned with printouts of the ad and they tried to brush him off.
[15:57.720 --> 16:00.660]  They honestly thought that because it appeared on the internet, it was true.
[16:01.020 --> 16:02.280]  It boggles the mind.
[16:02.680 --> 16:08.220]  Jacksonville police and Jackson County Sheriff's deputies arrived, but by then several cars packed with his property had fled.
[16:08.960 --> 16:17.840]  Um, basically, um, uh, Michael Easley had seen the ad that claimed Salisbury's horse had been declared abandoned by the Sheriff's department and was free for a good home or to a good home.
[16:18.100 --> 16:19.720]  I can't stand to see a horse suffer.
[16:19.860 --> 16:22.540]  So I drove out there and got her, Easley said, the horse didn't look abandoned.
[16:22.780 --> 16:25.760]  She's in good shape for being 32 years old, but it looked old.
[16:25.760 --> 16:28.400]  So she left a note on Salisbury's door.
[16:28.820 --> 16:31.180]  I'm sorry, it was Michelle, not Michael, explaining the ad.
[16:31.320 --> 16:35.660]  She then decided to call to make sure the ad was legitimate when the second similar ad appeared.
[16:36.000 --> 16:38.440]  I feel bad because I was a part of it.
[16:38.460 --> 16:40.340]  Uh, she said it felt right to call the police.
[16:40.440 --> 16:40.860]  I don't know guys.
[16:40.900 --> 16:41.280]  What do you think?
[16:41.380 --> 16:45.860]  It's a pretty insane that you can just put an ad in Craigslist and have somebody's house pilfered.
[16:45.860 --> 16:48.720]  Well, I, I, I'm wondering why he was so quick to leave his property.
[16:48.920 --> 16:51.940]  I mean, he, why would you let some, why would you let them do that?
[16:52.220 --> 16:53.680]  Well, I don't think he let them do it.
[16:53.720 --> 16:57.680]  I think basically they just, he was, he wasn't there at the time and he just saw people.
[16:58.140 --> 16:59.160]  He went to work, right.
[16:59.320 --> 16:59.940]  And people went to work.
[17:00.240 --> 17:03.700]  I imagine whoever did this must know who he is and must know his schedule.
[17:03.720 --> 17:05.800]  So it probably wasn't that hard to do.
[17:05.940 --> 17:06.140]  Okay.
[17:06.220 --> 17:09.340]  From, from the, I just got the impression that he had left while they were coming.
[17:09.840 --> 17:13.420]  Not, well, I think he went to chase somebody to get his ladders back.
[17:13.620 --> 17:16.940]  And while he was gone, more people were there.
[17:17.020 --> 17:20.680]  Or maybe, maybe he saw the people with the ladders on his way home and then saw more people when he got home.
[17:20.960 --> 17:21.420]  I don't know.
[17:21.540 --> 17:22.500]  It's just, it's just pretty crazy.
[17:22.600 --> 17:24.660]  Did you cover this exact same story some time ago?
[17:25.100 --> 17:26.260]  I don't remember covering this story.
[17:26.280 --> 17:32.340]  I feel like, I feel like I've read this very similar Craigslist posting my, I've left my home, take all my stuff.
[17:32.440 --> 17:33.160]  Oh, this just happened.
[17:33.520 --> 17:36.140]  But I feel like this is not the first time it happened, is my point.
[17:36.240 --> 17:36.340]  It's not.
[17:36.520 --> 17:37.280]  It's happened before.
[17:37.460 --> 17:39.940]  And in fact, it happened after this one as well.
[17:40.160 --> 17:46.560]  So this is probably going to generate a whole bunch of copycats doing the same bad joke on people.
[17:46.680 --> 17:53.460]  And they should have done it for like an address like 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or something instead of the one they use.
[17:53.460 --> 18:01.140]  What if you just know somebody, say, say they use a simple clock or something to protect their property and you say, just come and take whatever you want.
[18:01.200 --> 18:02.200]  The combination is this.
[18:02.360 --> 18:08.260]  And just have people actually break into someone's home and just empty it out and see if they actually think they can do that.
[18:08.460 --> 18:09.500]  It's probably not a good idea.
[18:09.580 --> 18:10.120]  They probably will.
[18:10.480 --> 18:10.760]  No.
[18:11.300 --> 18:11.620]  Okay.
[18:11.760 --> 18:19.680]  We have joining us today, special guest, Steve Rambam is here from the Hope Conferences and Private Eye Extraordinaire.
[18:19.860 --> 18:20.060]  Welcome.
[18:21.040 --> 18:21.520]  How are you doing?
[18:21.760 --> 18:22.340]  Pretty good.
[18:22.420 --> 18:22.940]  What have you been up to?
[18:23.020 --> 18:26.320]  You're going around chasing evildoers and Nazis around the world?
[18:26.500 --> 18:28.060]  Many evildoers, catching them left and right.
[18:28.280 --> 18:28.500]  All right.
[18:29.220 --> 18:29.440]  Okay.
[18:29.440 --> 18:29.620]  I'm sorry.
[18:29.680 --> 18:30.980]  Your microphone was not on all the way.
[18:32.200 --> 18:34.680]  And you're going to be speaking at Hope coming up in July.
[18:34.680 --> 18:35.560]  I am.
[18:36.020 --> 18:39.040]  I will maintain my perfect record.
[18:39.500 --> 18:41.580]  I'm appearing at every single Hope.
[18:41.700 --> 18:43.400]  You've been at every single one from 1994?
[18:43.900 --> 18:44.080]  I have.
[18:44.240 --> 18:44.520]  Wow.
[18:44.720 --> 18:45.120]  Incredible.
[18:45.340 --> 18:45.500]  I have.
[18:45.680 --> 18:49.200]  And we have some amazing things planned this time.
[18:49.340 --> 18:52.520]  Now, I think we're going to give you more time this time than ever before.
[18:52.860 --> 18:53.600]  We were talking...
[18:53.600 --> 18:57.700]  I mean, basically, the last time you spoke at a Hope Conference was technically after it had ended.
[18:57.700 --> 18:58.780]  Well, at Stevens.
[18:59.080 --> 18:59.900]  Yeah, at Stevens Institute.
[18:59.960 --> 19:04.080]  Now, I will say, you gave me three hours at Stevens, and we had to...
[19:04.080 --> 19:05.180]  You could have taken six.
[19:05.400 --> 19:08.900]  Well, we had to remove the audience with a forklift.
[19:08.980 --> 19:12.500]  We had to remove you, too, because you were, you know, they were closing the university down.
[19:12.620 --> 19:13.100]  Clutching the podium.
[19:13.160 --> 19:15.740]  Yeah, and you were still speaking, and we were, like, wheeling you out to the street.
[19:15.840 --> 19:30.100]  And it was amazing, because the audience was transfixed, and you just had so much to say and so much to... And that's what I think is what typifies a good speaker at our conference, is somebody who can rivet the audience and keep them off the street for that amount of time.
[19:30.200 --> 19:32.740]  I'm also smart enough to know that the best part of it is the Q&A.
[19:32.900 --> 19:33.660]  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[19:33.760 --> 19:34.100]  So...
[19:34.100 --> 19:34.440]  Absolutely.
[19:35.260 --> 19:40.020]  If I end after a couple hours and go right into Q&A, the audience will never leave.
[19:40.200 --> 19:40.740]  That's true.
[19:40.880 --> 19:41.420]  We'll be there.
[19:41.540 --> 19:42.220]  We'll order pizza.
[19:42.480 --> 19:44.840]  Do you want to tell us anything about what you have planned?
[19:44.960 --> 19:45.280]  What kind of thing?
[19:45.340 --> 19:53.840]  Well, besides a fairly dramatic update to the Privacy is Dead talk with quite a bit of new stuff.
[19:55.880 --> 20:08.560]  As you may or may not know, thanks to the last HOPE conference, Rick Dakin, my victim from the last conference, and I have done a book called Stealing Your Own Identity.
[20:09.160 --> 20:11.480]  I'm not sure if you know this, but Rick is on the phone right now.
[20:12.220 --> 20:12.940]  Rick, are you there?
[20:13.160 --> 20:13.980]  He tracked me down.
[20:14.000 --> 20:14.280]  Yes, I'm here.
[20:15.240 --> 20:17.020]  Rick, you've learned from the master.
[20:17.020 --> 20:17.840]  He's now hunting you.
[20:19.640 --> 20:20.740]  You've been hunting this guy?
[20:20.880 --> 20:21.400]  You've been stalking him?
[20:21.400 --> 20:26.100]  Let me tell you the premise of the book, because I have to tell you, this is the most fun I've ever had in my life.
[20:26.600 --> 20:27.520]  Rick and I made a bet.
[20:27.620 --> 20:33.000]  Now, I have to tell you, Rick is an unapologetic lefty.
[20:34.420 --> 20:43.620]  And he is the president of, or some vice president of the Sarasota Manatee Young Democrats Club.
[20:43.740 --> 20:48.820]  So he's running around doing great things for, oh, blah, blah, or one of those guys right now.
[20:48.820 --> 20:49.140]  I thought you said he was a lefty.
[20:49.400 --> 20:50.220]  He is a lefty.
[20:50.300 --> 20:50.620]  Oh, okay.
[20:50.860 --> 20:51.580]  He is a lefty.
[20:51.700 --> 20:52.680]  Around here, he'd be right.
[20:52.780 --> 20:54.380]  Yeah, he'd be moderate.
[20:54.540 --> 20:54.880]  That's true.
[20:56.140 --> 20:57.340]  He and I made a bet.
[20:57.540 --> 21:04.260]  And the bet is, if he can stay hidden from me, he hides, I try to find him.
[21:04.680 --> 21:07.860]  And if he can stay hidden for 60 days, he wins.
[21:08.140 --> 21:11.180]  And I have to vote straight Democrat in the next election.
[21:12.660 --> 21:17.520]  If I can find him 10 times in a year, I win.
[21:17.960 --> 21:18.400]  Okay.
[21:18.680 --> 21:20.080]  And he has to vote straight Republican.
[21:20.080 --> 21:21.080]  How do you prove this, though?
[21:21.260 --> 21:22.540]  No, I actually find him.
[21:22.960 --> 21:25.540]  How do you prove that he's going to vote the way you want him to vote?
[21:25.800 --> 21:28.620]  Well, I mean, there's a certain level of trust involved.
[21:28.900 --> 21:34.220]  And frankly, with the voting boots they use in Florida, I can probably find out how he voted anyway.
[21:35.800 --> 21:37.880]  My county switched to optical scanning.
[21:38.080 --> 21:39.360]  You know, we had a big thing.
[21:39.360 --> 21:40.060]  Don't worry.
[21:40.360 --> 21:42.000]  Those will be busted before the election.
[21:42.560 --> 21:44.760]  Somebody, probably somebody in this room will do it.
[21:45.440 --> 21:51.120]  So what happened is I made a point because we wanted to do a tie into the privacy is dead.
[21:51.260 --> 21:56.340]  And we wanted to do a tie into all of the things that we've been revealing over the years.
[21:56.880 --> 22:01.400]  All of the methods that I've used to find him were high tech.
[22:01.680 --> 22:04.540]  We found him one time by cell phone pinging.
[22:06.400 --> 22:09.120]  When we did that, it was about 10 o'clock at night.
[22:09.280 --> 22:11.160]  We traced his cell phone to a strip mall.
[22:11.960 --> 22:15.100]  The only thing open was the bar that he was sitting at.
[22:15.360 --> 22:16.940]  I was in New York.
[22:17.060 --> 22:22.180]  I called the bar and I said, do you have a large shaven headed guy named Rick at your bar?
[22:22.540 --> 22:24.340]  And the bartender says, yeah, I know.
[22:24.500 --> 22:25.780]  Rick, in fact, he's sitting right here.
[22:26.140 --> 22:27.320]  I said, hand him the phone.
[22:27.400 --> 22:27.940]  Hands him the phone.
[22:28.080 --> 22:28.860]  I said, busted.
[22:30.120 --> 22:30.820]  Another time.
[22:30.960 --> 22:32.600]  And this is the first time I've ever done this.
[22:32.680 --> 22:36.000]  And I think it's the first time it's ever been done as part of an investigation.
[22:36.220 --> 22:41.900]  I found him through EXIF tags that he had in his photos.
[22:42.160 --> 22:43.860]  You probably know this, of course.
[22:44.080 --> 22:50.160]  Every digital photo has a unique identifier in it that identifies a specific camera.
[22:50.320 --> 22:52.280]  It's a fingerprint for that photo.
[22:52.660 --> 23:00.980]  And if you post your photo with these tags intact, I can tell whose photo it is no matter how hard you try to conceal the source.
[23:01.220 --> 23:02.900]  The tag is there, but how do you translate the tag?
[23:03.000 --> 23:03.820]  Well, here's what I did.
[23:03.920 --> 23:08.840]  I went to Rick's website and I'll give you the Reader's Digest version.
[23:09.060 --> 23:21.180]  I went to Rick's website, rickdakin.com, and I noticed that he was posting a series of photos like P0001, 2, 3, and then from 4 to 9 would be missing.
[23:21.320 --> 23:22.000]  It would go to 10.
[23:23.080 --> 23:23.780]  What did I do?
[23:23.780 --> 23:33.180]  I went to Flickr, ran a program that went to all of the photos with the missing sequence and checked for his EXIF tag.
[23:33.440 --> 23:34.800]  You can search Flickr?
[23:35.080 --> 23:35.360]  Yes.
[23:35.460 --> 23:35.640]  Okay.
[23:35.760 --> 23:38.420]  And it's very easy to do and we demonstrate this in the book.
[23:38.900 --> 23:49.080]  And in fact, we're putting up a website with the book that's going to have a lot of the software that we use for these investigations and a lot of audio files from when I interviewed people.
[23:49.160 --> 23:56.760]  In one of the chapters, I actually tracked him to a dummy company and a bank in Belize.
[23:56.980 --> 23:59.120]  He went to the trouble of...
[23:59.120 --> 24:02.420]  I have to say that this is the one that just pisses me off the most.
[24:02.980 --> 24:03.740]  Well, right.
[24:03.880 --> 24:05.600]  Belize is supposed to be super secret.
[24:06.360 --> 24:09.040]  You're running money through Belize or...
[24:09.040 --> 24:32.100]  I went to Belize, you know, I went to Belize cash in hand and using cash opened up a Belize IBC, an international business company, which I don't know if you're familiar with those, but the two facts, I think, that are all you need to know about a Belize IBC is that you cannot be a Belize citizen and have one of them and you cannot do any business in Belize.
[24:32.260 --> 24:33.800]  You guys are really playing hardball here.
[24:33.920 --> 24:34.440]  No, no, no.
[24:34.900 --> 24:37.520]  The truth is we both did this to the max.
[24:37.640 --> 24:38.740]  We both got carried away.
[24:38.740 --> 24:57.980]  And we called it off one capture before the end or a half a capture before the end because Rick was getting so fanatical and I was getting so fanatical that the next hide and capture would have cost each of us probably $15,000 to $20,000.
[24:58.760 --> 25:00.880]  And we said, you know, this is going too far.
[25:00.960 --> 25:02.640]  But Rick went down to Belize.
[25:02.780 --> 25:03.880]  I mean, he spent $4,500.
[25:04.640 --> 25:05.720]  He opened up...
[25:05.720 --> 25:07.100]  And this is just to hide from you.
[25:07.720 --> 25:08.880]  Right, and you know what?
[25:09.040 --> 25:14.200]  Normally it would work, but I found this Flickr site of his and on it, he...
[25:14.200 --> 25:16.680]  And I've been to Belize a number of times as an investigator.
[25:16.680 --> 25:18.920]  It's basically Weasel Central.
[25:18.920 --> 25:24.180]  It's where all these guys go and hide their money because it makes Swiss banks look open.
[25:24.300 --> 25:24.800]  It really does.
[25:24.840 --> 25:25.920]  And it's a lot more close.
[25:26.260 --> 25:27.780]  Right, exactly right.
[25:27.940 --> 25:32.280]  I flew there right from my ranch in Texas.
[25:33.420 --> 25:44.920]  And what I did was, I found on his Flickr site a photo which underneath Rick had been foolishly considered enough to post because he was putting this website up for his buddies.
[25:45.220 --> 25:46.400]  Right, and it was anonymous.
[25:46.560 --> 25:47.840]  It was set up with an anonymous...
[25:47.840 --> 25:48.040]  Right.
[25:48.120 --> 25:49.420]  He was really hiding.
[25:49.580 --> 25:50.780]  He wasn't emailing anybody.
[25:50.780 --> 25:52.440]  He wasn't posting his whereabouts.
[25:52.480 --> 25:54.500]  He wasn't doing book signings, nothing.
[25:54.740 --> 25:57.940]  But he wanted to allow people to know that he was fine or what he was doing.
[25:58.120 --> 26:00.540]  So under this photo, it says, my new corporate headquarters.
[26:01.720 --> 26:02.560]  And here's the thing.
[26:02.660 --> 26:04.080]  So people even warned me about that.
[26:04.260 --> 26:07.460]  So people were like, okay, well, what if he finds it?
[26:07.500 --> 26:09.000]  And I said, well, first of all, there's no way he's going to find it.
[26:09.100 --> 26:12.260]  But even if he did find it, I was like, that shouldn't matter.
[26:12.940 --> 26:17.860]  Like, even if he knew that I had gone to Belize, and I figured he could probably figure out I went to Belize.
[26:19.360 --> 26:30.280]  Even if he knew that, and he knew, and there's only so many places, and so if he whatever, did whatever, and went to every single place, he should not have been able to find out the name of my shell corporation.
[26:30.540 --> 26:39.620]  Because the only place that the name of that shell corporation exists is on a piece of paper that I signed power of attorney over to this company to manage.
[26:39.740 --> 26:40.980]  And in the bank.
[26:41.640 --> 26:42.420]  And in the bank.
[26:42.600 --> 26:42.740]  Right.
[26:44.080 --> 26:50.320]  And neither of those are, you know, in any kind of digital format, you know, that he should have any kind of access to.
[26:50.620 --> 26:51.020]  Right.
[26:51.020 --> 26:54.080]  In the filing cabinet on the fifth floor of a building in Belize City.
[26:54.080 --> 26:59.020]  To understand this, first of all, I have to find the website, which doesn't have his name anywhere on it.
[26:59.260 --> 27:03.620]  And it's one of, how many Flickr websites, how many Flickr sites are there?
[27:03.800 --> 27:04.460]  Tens of millions?
[27:04.760 --> 27:06.140]  I was going to say over a hundred, but yeah.
[27:06.260 --> 27:06.400]  Okay.
[27:06.620 --> 27:10.220]  So first I had to find the Flickr site.
[27:10.660 --> 27:14.060]  Then I had to identify that this building is in Belize.
[27:14.340 --> 27:16.580]  Then I had to identify which building in Belize.
[27:16.780 --> 27:20.820]  And then I had to find the right office to walk into and to get them to tell me to do something.
[27:20.820 --> 27:22.980]  So here's what I did.
[27:23.500 --> 27:27.740]  And all of the captures are actually this interesting.
[27:29.300 --> 27:36.220]  I found his Flickr site by searching for the EXIF tags in the matching sequence of photos.
[27:36.520 --> 27:37.700]  Found the photo.
[27:38.080 --> 27:39.280]  Went to Belize.
[27:39.520 --> 27:42.380]  Went to this building, which by the way is called the Marina Towers building.
[27:43.320 --> 27:46.700]  And I walked in looking very disheveled with a knapsack.
[27:47.120 --> 27:48.540]  And I started...
[27:48.540 --> 27:50.540]  It's only a six-story building.
[27:50.740 --> 27:52.980]  With about eight or ten...
[27:52.980 --> 27:55.300]  Which makes it one of the tallest buildings in Belize, right.
[27:55.840 --> 27:56.800]  That's true, actually.
[27:58.020 --> 27:59.400]  And I went to the top floor.
[27:59.600 --> 28:01.940]  I started at the top only because the elevator was broken.
[28:01.940 --> 28:04.680]  And I figured I'd get the climb over with.
[28:04.780 --> 28:04.880]  Right.
[28:05.100 --> 28:06.020]  Go to the top floor.
[28:06.120 --> 28:07.180]  And I start knocking on doors.
[28:07.280 --> 28:10.680]  The second office that I go into, I got lucky.
[28:10.680 --> 28:11.440]  And here's my wrap.
[28:11.500 --> 28:14.380]  I said, look, I just came in on Continental Airlines.
[28:14.520 --> 28:15.940]  The airlines lost my plane.
[28:16.260 --> 28:17.380]  Lost all my luggage.
[28:18.060 --> 28:23.020]  My good friend, Rick Dakin, recommended somebody in this building to me.
[28:23.100 --> 28:24.820]  I don't remember the name of the company.
[28:24.980 --> 28:27.340]  I just remember it was the Marina Towers building.
[28:27.680 --> 28:32.260]  And I'm trying to do business with the same IBC facilitator that he did.
[28:32.720 --> 28:33.120]  Second...
[28:33.120 --> 28:39.160]  And by the way, I was wearing a body wire, running body wire, throughout this whole thing because I knew that Rick would never believe it.
[28:39.400 --> 28:39.460]  Right.
[28:39.460 --> 28:47.320]  And I actually emailed Rick from Belize, an MP3 of this entire interview that's going up on the website.
[28:48.240 --> 28:53.060]  But I went in and I said, you know, I'm looking for whoever handles Rick Dakin.
[28:53.160 --> 28:53.720]  Is this the right...
[28:53.720 --> 28:55.240]  The woman says, oh, yeah, sure.
[28:55.420 --> 28:55.940]  Come on in.
[28:56.360 --> 29:02.000]  So halfway through, I say, look, you know, I want to be sure you're not just scamming me into doing business with you.
[29:02.140 --> 29:03.520]  Tell me the name of his company.
[29:03.660 --> 29:05.760]  And she, oh, it's Mark Wright International.
[29:05.760 --> 29:07.260]  I said, that's right.
[29:08.480 --> 29:12.120]  And I said, and I said, okay, you know, let me have all the paperwork.
[29:12.280 --> 29:14.140]  I'll take it back to my hotel and fill it out.
[29:14.260 --> 29:16.020]  And by the way, what banks do you use?
[29:16.140 --> 29:19.720]  And she said, we recommend Provident Bank to all of our customers.
[29:20.340 --> 29:29.960]  So I immediately left from there, jumped in a cab, went over to Provident Bank and went and said, I'd like to open an account and I'd like to use my friend Rick Dakin as a reference.
[29:30.500 --> 29:31.260]  Tap, tap, tap.
[29:31.660 --> 29:34.320]  I see the account come up on the screen with the balance.
[29:34.540 --> 29:36.740]  He says, oh, sure, we'd be happy to have your business.
[29:36.960 --> 29:39.700]  I write it down, go back to my hotel, send an email to Rick.
[29:40.220 --> 29:42.180]  Now, Rick, were you in Belize at the time?
[29:42.620 --> 29:43.680]  No, this was a month after.
[29:43.680 --> 29:44.680]  No, he was in Florida.
[29:44.900 --> 29:45.080]  Okay.
[29:45.340 --> 29:45.460]  Yeah.
[29:45.640 --> 29:45.960]  No, yeah.
[29:46.020 --> 29:46.720]  No, this was not.
[29:46.840 --> 29:47.020]  Yeah.
[29:47.060 --> 29:50.260]  I mean, I only went for the, you know, the week it took me to do it.
[29:51.480 --> 29:56.980]  And I'd been back and I had a card, basically, you know, it was like a Visa cash card that I could put money on.
[29:57.200 --> 30:14.360]  And so, and that is a pain in and of itself, where you basically, you would, to put money on the card, you wire money to an account in Frankfurt, and then they transfer it over to the holding company's account in Frankfurt and then transfer the money back to Belize and then walk it over to the bank for you.
[30:14.500 --> 30:18.960]  What you have to understand is that by this point, I went down there because I had gotten desperate.
[30:18.960 --> 30:21.380]  Rick was really getting good at this.
[30:21.640 --> 30:24.140]  This was the eighth capture at this point.
[30:24.300 --> 30:27.020]  And he had a phony ID.
[30:27.400 --> 30:30.920]  He was living in a location not under his own name.
[30:31.140 --> 30:33.040]  He was using drop cell phones.
[30:33.280 --> 30:40.020]  He had a credit card slash ATM card under this name, Mark Wright.
[30:40.300 --> 30:44.500]  I mean, he was really, he was, he was Patty Hearst.
[30:44.580 --> 30:46.660]  Steve, what have you done to this poor person when he started?
[30:46.660 --> 30:49.960]  I mean, he wasn't living this life of espionage trying to run away from you.
[30:50.120 --> 30:56.460]  And now, I mean, Rick, how has this affected your life at home, always running, running away someplace to a foreign country?
[30:56.560 --> 30:58.420]  He's got a pretty good girlfriend out of it, actually.
[30:58.680 --> 30:58.880]  Yeah.
[30:59.320 --> 31:02.340]  Well, not, I don't know, out of it, but, um...
[31:02.340 --> 31:03.860]  Well, you meet all sorts of people on the run.
[31:04.260 --> 31:09.100]  You definitely, you know, so it was definitely an experience and it definitely got really tiresome, you know?
[31:09.280 --> 31:09.460]  Uh-huh.
[31:09.980 --> 31:10.280]  Um...
[31:10.280 --> 31:14.760]  Do you think you could have done something differently to, to avoid Steve Rambam finding you?
[31:14.900 --> 31:15.600]  Or is that impossible?
[31:15.700 --> 31:15.740]  I do.
[31:15.920 --> 31:17.720]  We, we had rules of engagement, though.
[31:17.840 --> 31:17.980]  Yeah.
[31:18.240 --> 31:19.460]  We had rules of engagement.
[31:19.720 --> 31:22.520]  He was not, he was not allowed to go out of the country.
[31:22.760 --> 31:24.060]  Which, by the way, he cheated.
[31:24.300 --> 31:24.420]  But he did.
[31:24.560 --> 31:24.980]  He went to Belize.
[31:25.040 --> 31:25.620]  Yeah, he cheated.
[31:25.880 --> 31:26.040]  Uh-huh.
[31:26.040 --> 31:26.640]  I got him anywhere.
[31:26.900 --> 31:27.120]  Ha, ha.
[31:27.360 --> 31:29.320]  I didn't know I was hiding out of the country.
[31:29.780 --> 31:31.220]  Yeah, he wasn't actually hiding in Belize.
[31:31.300 --> 31:31.940]  He just, he just...
[31:31.940 --> 31:32.520]  No, no, no.
[31:32.520 --> 31:34.800]  Well, yeah, it was...
[31:34.800 --> 31:41.380]  Steve, I seem to remember somewhere in the rules there was something about you doing this all on your own and we could talk about rickdakinhunting.com.
[31:42.300 --> 31:43.760]  Yeah, that's another thing.
[31:43.960 --> 31:45.120]  He, he, he kind of...
[31:45.120 --> 31:47.040]  Which I still think stretches the end.
[31:47.040 --> 31:52.800]  Okay, towards, towards the end, capture number nine, I figured this has to all be high-tech.
[31:53.120 --> 31:55.660]  We're going to do crowdsource hunting.
[31:56.260 --> 31:57.140]  Crowdsource hunting.
[31:57.320 --> 32:01.260]  Yeah, so I put up a website called rickdakinhunting.com.
[32:01.960 --> 32:06.380]  With a big picture of him saying, wanted, reward for Rick Dakin.
[32:06.800 --> 32:09.460]  And I put up a whole bunch of information about him.
[32:09.560 --> 32:12.360]  And I posted to all of the investigative news groups.
[32:12.860 --> 32:30.680]  And if you look at the blog, which is, which is the Rick Dakin hunting blog, that, that went up before we closed down the site, before I did capture number nine, we had, and this is a really accurate estimate, close to 5,600 investigators looking for him.
[32:30.680 --> 32:31.260]  My goodness.
[32:31.340 --> 32:32.220]  Across the country.
[32:32.860 --> 32:35.700]  Everybody who's a member of the NAIS, NCIS.
[32:35.700 --> 32:37.140]  And let me tell you, that's a freaky feeling.
[32:37.300 --> 32:40.140]  Yeah, everybody, everybody on, on my news group.
[32:40.300 --> 32:45.060]  I host a news group of 3,200 investigators, investigations of PeopleFinder.
[32:45.360 --> 32:47.500]  All of the people that, and in fact...
[32:47.500 --> 32:50.800]  Although, to my credit, I did not fall for the trap that I think you were trying to do with that.
[32:50.800 --> 32:51.680]  Yes, that's true.
[32:51.780 --> 32:52.820]  I was hoping to cap...
[32:52.820 --> 32:54.620]  I was hoping that he was going to...
[32:54.620 --> 32:56.740]  What I did was, I put an update page up.
[32:56.800 --> 32:59.540]  And by the way, this did work six months later.
[32:59.700 --> 33:04.920]  I helped catch one of the Secret Service's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives by doing this exact thing.
[33:05.040 --> 33:05.160]  What?
[33:05.680 --> 33:08.080]  We put up, we put up an update page.
[33:08.240 --> 33:13.000]  And every day, I would put up new information about the hunt for Rick.
[33:13.080 --> 33:17.880]  And the idea, of course, was to hope that Rick would keep logging in to see what new information we had.
[33:17.880 --> 33:20.300]  And I would get an IP trace and pounce on him.
[33:20.380 --> 33:20.540]  Right.
[33:20.740 --> 33:22.980]  But how would you know it was him and not somebody else following him?
[33:22.980 --> 33:32.060]  Well, anybody who's checking back every single day, like a deranged, you know, typing monkey, is either going to be him or a member of his family.
[33:33.240 --> 33:34.440]  He didn't fall for it.
[33:34.480 --> 33:34.640]  Okay.
[33:34.740 --> 33:37.500]  Which really goes to his credit, because I'm astounded.
[33:37.640 --> 33:39.660]  Well, he'd already got me with an IP trace once.
[33:40.160 --> 33:42.940]  Yeah, actually, I pretended that I was...
[33:42.940 --> 33:47.080]  I set up an account in England, and I started emailing him these...
[33:47.080 --> 33:56.420]  these harassing emails that I was the owner of a bookstore outside of London, and I wanted to buy a hundred copies of his Geek Mafia book.
[33:56.540 --> 33:58.000]  And why aren't you responding?
[33:58.160 --> 34:00.560]  Respond right away, or we'll pick another title.
[34:00.600 --> 34:02.820]  And he started getting a little concerned.
[34:02.840 --> 34:06.780]  And this was at the beginning, so he didn't know what a bastard I could be.
[34:07.400 --> 34:13.600]  And he actually started responding, and he emailed back to this address from a Panera cafe.
[34:14.780 --> 34:19.000]  And I was... I had a monitor on the email, and it popped right up.
[34:19.080 --> 34:20.240]  I ran the email address.
[34:20.380 --> 34:21.420]  I found Panera.
[34:21.580 --> 34:22.340]  I called there.
[34:22.620 --> 34:24.900]  They paged him to the phone, and he picked up the phone.
[34:25.020 --> 34:25.180]  Oh, man.
[34:25.440 --> 34:28.820]  Which, by the way, was probably the most obnoxious capture of the whole thing.
[34:30.060 --> 34:30.820]  I don't know.
[34:30.820 --> 34:33.560]  I actually think the blind date was the most obnoxious capture of the whole thing.
[34:33.560 --> 34:34.720]  Oh, my God.
[34:34.820 --> 34:35.720]  Blind date.
[34:36.400 --> 34:36.880]  Okay.
[34:37.280 --> 34:37.580]  Okay.
[34:37.800 --> 34:38.740]  This was...
[34:38.740 --> 34:40.480]  This was...
[34:40.480 --> 34:41.860]  You know, I...
[34:41.860 --> 34:43.800]  Rick, again, I'm sorry.
[34:44.420 --> 34:45.560]  I'm really sorry.
[34:45.740 --> 34:48.000]  So, and to my credit, I shouldn't have probably had that, but I did.
[34:48.000 --> 34:53.040]  Rick is a single, you know, internet active person.
[34:53.680 --> 35:01.360]  You don't have to be James Bond to figure out that this guy is going to be on dating sites.
[35:02.020 --> 35:13.100]  So, I searched, and I searched, and we actually wrote an algorithm, and it's now part of our investigative search, a meta-search that we do for investigators in law enforcement.
[35:13.280 --> 35:16.120]  We wrote this search, and we found Rick's posting.
[35:16.720 --> 35:17.240]  Okay.
[35:17.380 --> 35:18.200]  On Match.com.
[35:18.500 --> 35:20.140]  His name isn't on it anywhere.
[35:20.140 --> 35:24.540]  Where it's like, big, hunky, writer, you know, something like that.
[35:24.540 --> 35:25.400]  I forget what it is.
[35:25.820 --> 35:27.880]  Shaved head, scribe, some...
[35:27.880 --> 35:29.820]  So, you use those words to track him down?
[35:29.860 --> 35:30.540]  No, no, no, no, no.
[35:30.540 --> 35:33.760]  We found him on Match.com.
[35:33.880 --> 35:41.800]  And I had a really attractive investigator, female private investigator, named Michelle Stewart.
[35:41.940 --> 35:42.560]  Oh, my God.
[35:42.700 --> 35:43.400]  I know where this is going.
[35:43.480 --> 35:45.400]  Start with a phony address.
[35:45.520 --> 35:45.780]  Uh-huh.
[35:46.160 --> 35:47.620]  Start communicating with him.
[35:47.620 --> 35:53.220]  And she said, I'm a nurse, I used to be a cheerleader, and she was so good.
[35:53.420 --> 36:02.200]  I mean, just to make sure he showed up for the thing, she said, just in case you don't recognize me from my photo, I'm wearing a mini skirt and a tank top and this, that.
[36:02.360 --> 36:06.320]  And I'm sure he was drooling on his way to this cafe.
[36:06.880 --> 36:08.800]  And she called, like, we talked on the phone, too.
[36:09.000 --> 36:09.540]  Oh, that, right.
[36:09.680 --> 36:12.960]  I mean, we set up a drop-line cell phone for her and everything.
[36:13.100 --> 36:15.520]  And she's chatting with him and emailing back and forth.
[36:15.540 --> 36:17.580]  And Rick is getting kind of hot.
[36:17.980 --> 36:18.920]  I just want to know...
[36:18.920 --> 36:19.320]  No, no, no.
[36:19.660 --> 36:21.200]  I've got to tell you the punchline.
[36:21.320 --> 36:22.040]  Yeah, that's what I want to hear.
[36:22.040 --> 36:26.840]  The punchline is, he goes, he's waiting to meet her, and I walk in with a bouquet of flowers.
[36:26.840 --> 36:27.340]  Oh, my.
[36:28.560 --> 36:30.160]  This is an honest-to-God true story.
[36:30.200 --> 36:31.120]  I've got this on video.
[36:31.980 --> 36:32.660]  That's brilliant.
[36:32.840 --> 36:33.160]  That's brilliant.
[36:33.200 --> 36:38.720]  We're talking with Steve Rombaum here, Private Eye Extraordinaire, and kind of a scary guy if he's looking for you.
[36:39.660 --> 36:45.080]  Is there anything that Rick could have done to avoid you finding him when he was trying to hide all this time?
[36:45.600 --> 36:48.780]  Here's the thing, from my point of view, and I'm sure Steve has other ideas, too.
[36:48.780 --> 37:04.520]  But part of our goal with this, from the beginning, was to, like, or at least part of my goal, starting out, and obviously got more extreme as things went on, was to see how to live as normal a life as possible, you know?
[37:04.640 --> 37:09.360]  And then sort of, I mean, I figured on getting captured a few times in the beginning, kind of a learning curve.
[37:09.360 --> 37:27.900]  And so, yeah, if I had gone and, you know, got a job washing dishes in Butte, Montana, you know, and rented a room off of Craigslist and lived like that, you know, I could have gotten the two months or the whatever, you know?
[37:28.240 --> 37:28.420]  Right.
[37:29.740 --> 37:44.740]  But, sort of, that's not really helpful to people, and, you know, we wanted also this to provide information that's helpful to people, that maybe give them some tips that they can incorporate into their life without, you know, turning their entire life over.
[37:45.820 --> 37:49.820]  And then, you know, obviously things got out of hand a little bit, but...
[37:49.820 --> 37:53.540]  It's true, we both became just outrageously obsessed with this.
[37:53.540 --> 37:54.300]  Tell us about the book.
[37:54.880 --> 37:56.520]  The book is called...
[37:57.060 --> 37:58.760]  What have we decided to call it, Rick?
[37:59.000 --> 38:00.120]  Stealing Your Own Identity?
[38:00.280 --> 38:01.120]  Stealing Your Own Identity.
[38:01.240 --> 38:01.380]  Right.
[38:01.640 --> 38:03.320]  I take it the book is not yet out, then.
[38:03.600 --> 38:05.180]  Well, it's not.
[38:05.400 --> 38:11.400]  We have actually some pretty impressive offers, including from one, as they say, major publisher.
[38:13.080 --> 38:17.920]  Like, we just really finished up this stuff in December, so I've been furiously writing up everything.
[38:17.920 --> 38:23.280]  I mean, we've got about 300 of an estimated 360 completely done.
[38:23.280 --> 38:26.880]  And so the book, the book will be done within three, four weeks.
[38:27.080 --> 38:28.000]  Oh, you have a publisher?
[38:28.700 --> 38:31.080]  We have, we have an offer from one.
[38:31.380 --> 38:39.320]  We have, well, we have, we have an offer in writing from one, but I'm actually holding out for a particular publisher.
[38:39.500 --> 38:39.720]  Okay.
[38:39.840 --> 38:42.340]  But you might get more offers after the story goes out tonight.
[38:42.340 --> 38:49.300]  Well, I have to tell you, the, the, the, the book does, you know, we envision this.
[38:49.300 --> 38:56.120]  I don't know if you ever read Nickeld and Dimed, but we envision this as Nickeld and Dimed for the privacy issue.
[38:56.440 --> 39:11.340]  And, and the truth is, this book just demonstrates in a very dramatic way, and in a way that we can all relate to, that it is impossible to live a normal life in America without leaving an endless trail of digital footprints.
[39:12.340 --> 39:20.720]  You know, I thought going into it, that I would come out the other side with like a lot of ways that I could, you know, lessen my digital footprint.
[39:20.940 --> 39:21.840]  And I, it's true.
[39:21.940 --> 39:24.680]  I mean, I've obviously learned things, but kind of, I've just given up.
[39:25.660 --> 39:27.400]  Well, and that's not good.
[39:27.400 --> 39:29.860]  Well, but it, but it really is the reality.
[39:30.040 --> 39:35.120]  You have to, you have to be nearly the Unabomber to not appear.
[39:35.280 --> 39:37.120]  You know, you were talking about medical records.
[39:37.320 --> 39:45.560]  The, the issue is not 200 and, uh, 2,500 poor guys who lost their medical records on a laptop.
[39:45.760 --> 39:52.140]  The fact of the matter is there are medical record data aggregators that have nearly all the medical records in the U.S.
[39:52.140 --> 39:59.920]  in one place for HMOs, for prescription comparison, for insurance company underwriting.
[40:00.300 --> 40:06.220]  Uh, to be blunt, if I want your medical record, I can get it without looking for a laptop to steal.
[40:07.420 --> 40:13.160]  Everything there is to know about you is either directly or indirectly available.
[40:13.400 --> 40:23.020]  Where you live, where you work, what you read, what you eat, who your friends are, your religion, your sexual orientation, your politics.
[40:23.160 --> 40:28.900]  And I mean, this is something that we've covered in quite a lot of detail in the HOPE presentations that I've given.
[40:29.120 --> 40:38.160]  The next presentation at, at, at, at HOPE this coming, this coming summer, we're going to show some incredibly dramatic stuff.
[40:38.720 --> 40:39.180]  All right.
[40:39.260 --> 40:40.520]  I, I really look forward to this.
[40:40.580 --> 40:43.060]  And, uh, I think you've scared quite a few people with this, uh, tale.
[40:43.200 --> 40:45.080]  By the way, how did, how did Rick come to be your victim?
[40:45.080 --> 40:51.460]  Well, he, well, and, and thank you, and thank you for that segue because I'm about to ask for another victim.
[40:51.720 --> 40:51.980]  Okay.
[40:52.120 --> 40:53.180]  And I've got a website.
[40:53.460 --> 40:56.060]  Why would anybody want to put themselves through that after hearing this?
[40:56.220 --> 40:57.680]  Well, first of all, let me tell you something.
[40:57.820 --> 41:00.160]  Rick is easily the bravest guy in North America.
[41:00.820 --> 41:19.580]  Uh, I, as you may remember, a year and a half ago, put forth an appeal on this very radio show, uh, for a victim, for me to do a digital proctology exam upon, and to discuss the findings at HOPE.
[41:19.880 --> 41:20.980]  Rick volunteered.
[41:21.460 --> 41:27.740]  And Rick, I have to say, signed the most obnoxious legal release ever written.
[41:28.220 --> 41:28.520]  Ever.
[41:28.820 --> 41:30.380]  Yeah, my lawyer was, uh...
[41:30.380 --> 41:47.720]  Yeah, a portion, a portion of it said, I can invade your privacy, and I can reveal the information that I gathered publicly, even, and I'm paraphrasing here, but not by much, even if it causes you embarrassment, ridicule, humiliation, et cetera, et cetera,
[41:47.760 --> 41:52.280]  and then it ends by saying, and even if the information revealed is substantially false.
[41:52.580 --> 41:52.980]  Wow.
[41:53.280 --> 41:53.980]  He signed it.
[41:54.620 --> 41:56.460]  Now, I've got to tell you, it worked out great.
[41:56.600 --> 41:57.880]  Rick and I became great friends.
[41:58.020 --> 41:59.300]  We got a great book out of it.
[42:00.120 --> 42:04.080]  Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the next victim.
[42:04.320 --> 42:04.540]  Yes.
[42:04.900 --> 42:15.900]  So let me say, we have set up a website, rather an email address, called invademyprivacyatwriteme.com.
[42:16.640 --> 42:24.460]  Spelled out, invademyprivacyatwriteme.com.
[42:24.460 --> 42:30.600]  That is an email address set up for the next victim, whoever you may be, and you know who you are.
[42:31.420 --> 42:39.400]  All that I ask is you not be 17, mainly because we want somebody who actually has a life to be exposed.
[42:39.800 --> 42:41.900]  You need to have actually been out there.
[42:42.180 --> 42:43.820]  You can't be the Unabomber.
[42:43.900 --> 42:47.660]  You have to actually go out and participate in life.
[42:47.880 --> 42:49.360]  Which means just your normal person.
[42:49.520 --> 42:50.080]  You're not looking...
[42:50.080 --> 42:50.320]  I mean...
[42:50.320 --> 42:51.180]  Right, right.
[42:51.180 --> 42:54.100]  But you can't be a crazed lunatic sending packages.
[42:54.100 --> 43:01.700]  You can definitely be a crazed lunatic, but you have to be a crazed lunatic with credit cards and a job and a telephone and that sort of thing.
[43:01.700 --> 43:02.200]  Fair enough, yeah.
[43:02.320 --> 43:07.300]  You can't be living in a cabin in the woods sending homemade bombs to United Airlines.
[43:07.360 --> 43:09.120]  Well, they probably won't be able to email you anyway if they are.
[43:09.200 --> 43:09.820]  Well, that's right.
[43:09.940 --> 43:10.140]  All right.
[43:10.220 --> 43:10.600]  That's right.
[43:11.560 --> 43:18.940]  And by the way, your email to me volunteering has to appear to come from a sane person.
[43:19.640 --> 43:21.460]  That might be a challenge, but...
[43:21.460 --> 43:24.100]  Well, hopefully somebody will squeak through.
[43:24.600 --> 43:27.540]  But if you tell me that...
[43:27.540 --> 43:32.460]  And this is an email that I got before I settled on Rick last time.
[43:32.620 --> 43:44.660]  If you tell me that you're being watched night and day by helicopters and bugs through the walls and all of that, and you want to see the sort of thing these people watching you could have found out, I will not return your email.
[43:44.980 --> 43:45.440]  Okay.
[43:45.620 --> 43:46.240]  Well, that sounds...
[43:46.240 --> 43:47.640]  And that email address again is...
[43:47.640 --> 43:52.920]  Is invademyprivacyatwriteme.com.
[43:52.920 --> 43:57.620]  Now, you're planning something for hope with this victim, or is this...
[43:57.620 --> 43:58.600]  There are three things.
[43:58.800 --> 44:07.020]  You know, I tell you, the hope conventions are really the high point of my speaking engagements any year.
[44:07.100 --> 44:10.840]  I speak probably every two, three weeks on one topic or another.
[44:11.020 --> 44:14.000]  I lecture to law enforcement seminars and that sort of thing.
[44:14.340 --> 44:17.700]  But I always prepare to the max for hope.
[44:17.840 --> 44:18.880]  And we're doing three things.
[44:19.520 --> 44:22.840]  Number one, we're going to be doing the privacy is dead.
[44:23.680 --> 44:27.760]  Presentation with a very significant Rick Dakin component.
[44:28.120 --> 44:28.860]  Woo-hoo!
[44:29.400 --> 44:29.980]  Yeah, woo-hoo.
[44:32.280 --> 44:35.480]  And I promise you, this by itself will be killer.
[44:36.300 --> 44:43.440]  We are going to use a new victim for all of the new databases that have been developed.
[44:43.440 --> 44:49.920]  The stuff that's even more obnoxious and more intrusive than two years ago, than when I went after Rick.
[44:50.220 --> 44:51.120]  Sounds really tempting.
[44:52.060 --> 44:55.460]  And the third thing, some of this stuff you will not believe.
[44:56.180 --> 45:08.500]  We have an aggregator that puts up in a table on a web page, your politics, your religion, what sort of books you read, how you vote, and the type of food you like to eat.
[45:08.620 --> 45:10.060]  And it does it in 30 seconds.
[45:10.220 --> 45:13.720]  You give me your name and some unique identifying data.
[45:13.720 --> 45:17.180]  And I'm not talking about a date of birth or a social security number.
[45:17.180 --> 45:20.420]  I'm talking about a city and state, that sort of thing.
[45:20.440 --> 45:22.580]  I might give you my name later, just to see what it comes up with.
[45:22.720 --> 45:24.600]  I can actually do it for you on my PDA.
[45:24.900 --> 45:25.860]  You'll freak out.
[45:25.860 --> 45:28.120]  Yeah, I try to mix it up to confuse people.
[45:28.660 --> 45:29.060]  Well...
[45:29.060 --> 45:32.120]  I eat the weirdest things, just to throw people like you off.
[45:32.380 --> 45:38.200]  Well, you know, an Ethiopian dog lover who doesn't actually cook the dog, we know it's you.
[45:40.300 --> 45:41.460]  That sort of thing.
[45:41.640 --> 45:42.500]  All right, well...
[45:42.500 --> 45:44.040]  Come on, that was too easy.
[45:44.880 --> 45:52.500]  You know, so the second part is we're going to use the second victim, who I hope is emailing me even as we speak.
[45:52.640 --> 46:14.320]  But the third thing is we're going to reveal something pretty dramatic about a major social networking site who has been, which has been, through its security staff, going around the country, essentially, and committing felonies in an effort to gather and aggregate,
[46:14.320 --> 46:19.480]  for marketing purposes, as much information as possible about you and me.
[46:19.540 --> 46:22.460]  Now, this is one of the major social networking sites.
[46:22.740 --> 46:25.280]  This is going to be the result of a one-year investigation.
[46:25.800 --> 46:33.500]  We have affidavits and statements and people from the inside who've already actually gone on the record and signed sworn statements.
[46:33.780 --> 46:34.700]  You can't tell us which site.
[46:34.860 --> 46:37.280]  I can't, but it is one of the obvious ones.
[46:37.340 --> 46:37.560]  Okay.
[46:38.200 --> 46:41.940]  If you name three of them, one will definitely be the site.
[46:42.100 --> 46:44.360]  Okay, so tell us more about what they've been up to, or...?
[46:44.360 --> 46:49.840]  Well, they've been going around, for example, and doing things that are a violation of federal computer crime acts.
[46:50.020 --> 46:52.380]  They've been going into people's servers.
[46:53.060 --> 46:59.180]  They've been inducing people to build back doors into software, believe it or not.
[47:00.320 --> 47:07.180]  They've been, in one case, one of the employees pretended to be a federal agent to get information.
[47:07.380 --> 47:09.400]  It's a remarkable story.
[47:09.420 --> 47:10.500]  And why are they doing this exactly?
[47:11.300 --> 47:12.520]  Because they're idiots.
[47:12.800 --> 47:14.580]  Because they're lazy idiots.
[47:14.580 --> 47:23.540]  They are not doing anything that they couldn't accomplish just by throwing some of their billion-dollar market cap at the problem.
[47:23.780 --> 47:26.220]  So now where is this going to go, as far as your involvement?
[47:26.320 --> 47:29.020]  I would imagine to indictment and criminal trial.
[47:29.500 --> 47:29.940]  Interesting.
[47:30.060 --> 47:31.000]  And what's the time frame?
[47:31.100 --> 47:32.660]  Can we expect to see this in the newspapers?
[47:34.080 --> 47:35.900]  The day after my talk at Hope.
[47:35.900 --> 47:36.380]  Okay.
[47:36.880 --> 47:38.100]  So you're going to reveal it there.
[47:38.340 --> 47:45.520]  I actually cleared that with my client, which is the law firm of Gary Kurtzer in California.
[47:45.700 --> 47:48.160]  Now, are you going to make it through the talk at Hope this year?
[47:48.260 --> 47:49.980]  Or do you think federal agents will be waiting for you again?
[47:50.180 --> 47:56.340]  Well, you know, I don't think it worked out real well for them last time.
[47:57.540 --> 48:03.840]  But they had not just egg, but an entire omelet on their face.
[48:04.160 --> 48:08.900]  We're going to have all the details of why that happened in this book as well, because it relates to all these things.
[48:09.580 --> 48:11.780]  I mean, obviously, I'm still an investigator.
[48:11.860 --> 48:16.460]  I'm still a licensed, non-criminal record individual.
[48:17.480 --> 48:19.840]  And all the charges were...
[48:19.840 --> 48:22.180]  Well, I was never even indicted.
[48:22.180 --> 48:35.320]  What you have to remember is the idea of these arrests was to essentially bench me in connection with an investigation that I was doing, which was embarrassing the heck out of the feds in Manhattan.
[48:35.700 --> 48:40.320]  Now, again, you know, this is a perfect example of stupidity run amok.
[48:40.520 --> 48:46.800]  If the feds had come to me and said, Steve, you're really screwing up a guy that we need for a couple of trials.
[48:47.180 --> 48:53.580]  Just let him do these trials, and then you can screw him in connection for what you've been hired to screw him.
[48:53.680 --> 48:56.300]  I'd probably go, you know what, guys?
[48:56.300 --> 48:58.740]  I don't like you very much, but I'm a good American.
[48:58.740 --> 48:59.460]  I'll do it.
[48:59.840 --> 49:00.820]  Even if it was this guy?
[49:00.900 --> 49:01.680]  Even if it was the prince?
[49:02.480 --> 49:03.140]  No, no, no.
[49:03.220 --> 49:03.640]  The prince...
[49:03.640 --> 49:04.580]  I would have let...
[49:04.580 --> 49:05.760]  You wouldn't have let the prince go.
[49:05.780 --> 49:06.220]  The prince?
[49:06.340 --> 49:07.260]  What are we talking about here?
[49:07.380 --> 49:15.120]  You know, the funny thing is, this guy was a released mental patient in Detroit.
[49:15.120 --> 49:20.460]  Detroit, he got out of the mental institution, and the FBI hired him as an undercover informant.
[49:20.580 --> 49:21.520]  This is honest to God, true.
[49:21.780 --> 49:22.920]  I have his commitment papers.
[49:23.280 --> 49:26.940]  And they will be on the website connected to my book with Rick.
[49:27.080 --> 49:27.600]  You say Detroit?
[49:27.740 --> 49:28.540]  I might know this guy.
[49:28.780 --> 49:31.540]  Well, he was in a place called Happy Valley.
[49:31.740 --> 49:32.500]  Oh, Happy Valley, yeah.
[49:32.900 --> 49:33.820]  Oh, come on, really?
[49:34.000 --> 49:35.400]  Well, there's many Happy Valleys.
[49:35.820 --> 49:38.420]  Well, this one is a scary, scary place.
[49:38.560 --> 49:45.800]  And we actually interviewed the cops that threw him down and subdued him and put him in the straitjacket and took him there 20 years ago.
[49:45.980 --> 49:50.820]  For 20 years, he has been one of the FBI's top informants.
[49:50.940 --> 49:53.120]  He's what's called a top-level informant.
[49:53.220 --> 49:56.180]  This is their highest echelon informant.
[49:56.700 --> 49:58.320]  They've given him code names.
[49:58.400 --> 50:01.380]  They've given him a salary of $5,000 a month.
[50:01.600 --> 50:02.940]  They've given him expenses.
[50:03.260 --> 50:04.560]  They recruited his wife.
[50:04.560 --> 50:16.960]  They allowed him to change his name from I'm a nut to Franz Josef von Habsberg Lothringen.
[50:17.640 --> 50:18.320]  I see.
[50:18.820 --> 50:19.880]  And both his...
[50:19.880 --> 50:21.320]  He looked that guy up and saw him.
[50:21.520 --> 50:21.980]  No, no, no.
[50:22.040 --> 50:23.700]  I'm not making this up, by the way.
[50:24.080 --> 50:24.280]  Yeah, yeah.
[50:24.280 --> 50:27.940]  And he basically has been traveling around telling people he is the prince of Austria.
[50:28.280 --> 50:29.860]  I interviewed his in-laws.
[50:30.060 --> 50:31.840]  They really thought he was the prince of Austria.
[50:31.840 --> 50:33.580]  I interviewed his first wife.
[50:33.880 --> 50:35.960]  She really thought he was the prince of Austria.
[50:36.460 --> 50:38.060]  Well, he was technically his only wife, right?
[50:38.120 --> 50:39.240]  Because he never divorced her, right?
[50:39.640 --> 50:40.580]  No, he's got...
[50:40.580 --> 50:42.540]  Well, I don't know if technically he has two or not.
[50:42.560 --> 50:45.100]  All right, let's not get into too much personal detail about the prince of Austria.
[50:46.200 --> 50:48.080]  But we call him the prince.
[50:48.160 --> 50:48.420]  Okay.
[50:48.680 --> 50:50.840]  And I've got to say it's an amazing story.
[50:50.960 --> 50:58.720]  The most amazing part of the story is this guy has made, through trickery, case after case after case for the FBI.
[50:59.380 --> 51:03.440]  He was involved in Operation Uptick, Operation Rolling Stone.
[51:03.760 --> 51:05.480]  Why did they hire somebody like this, exactly?
[51:06.380 --> 51:06.780]  Well...
[51:06.780 --> 51:08.720]  He was a drug dealer and a con man.
[51:09.520 --> 51:10.020]  I guess so.
[51:10.240 --> 51:11.360]  On his best day.
[51:11.520 --> 51:11.780]  Uh-huh.
[51:12.140 --> 51:13.020]  On his best day.
[51:13.480 --> 51:15.600]  Drug dealer, con man, fraudster.
[51:16.040 --> 51:18.080]  Well, I mean, we've seen things with the Kevin Mitnick case.
[51:18.200 --> 51:21.100]  We've seen the FBI hiring people that are not trustworthy.
[51:21.100 --> 51:22.860]  But you've never seen anything like this.
[51:22.940 --> 51:23.080]  No.
[51:23.080 --> 51:33.280]  I mean, this guy was literally released from a mental institution, allowed by the same judge that committed him to change his name to this royal name.
[51:33.840 --> 51:37.320]  And from there, he's just basically been on a rampage for 20 years.
[51:37.480 --> 51:43.600]  He had a warrant on him for 21 years in Florida while he was working with the FBI.
[51:45.240 --> 51:46.580]  An abscondor warrant.
[51:47.260 --> 51:56.800]  And when I found this warrant, turned it over to my clients, and they introduced it into evidence in court in New York, the FBI and the U.S.
[51:57.060 --> 52:04.280]  Attorney's Office basically contacted the local DA's office down there and said, would you do us a favor and just close this case?
[52:04.420 --> 52:04.660]  Mm-hmm.
[52:04.920 --> 52:05.500]  And they did.
[52:07.340 --> 52:07.820]  Fascinating.
[52:08.620 --> 52:22.880]  Steve, we only have a few minutes left, but I want to tell people that you'll be, of course, giving an extended lecture at The Last Hope, and you can register for The Last Hope at our website, thelasthope.org, and or through our main site, www.2600.com.
[52:23.460 --> 52:30.480]  But let me ask you, what is it that makes you want to share all this information with people who come to a hacker conference like Hope?
[52:31.080 --> 52:32.620]  Because you can just keep it all to yourself.
[52:33.080 --> 52:37.660]  First, well, and to be honest with you, a lot of the good stuff.
[52:37.820 --> 52:40.560]  I do keep back because I am an investigator.
[52:40.580 --> 52:51.900]  I do work investigations, and I work with law enforcement, and I work basically catching bad guys, so I've got to keep a few things in reserve for people who are even smarter than Rick.
[52:52.120 --> 52:53.520]  And there's not many, by the way.
[52:53.700 --> 52:57.820]  And Rick, by the way, will be at the Hope Conference to assist me with the presentation.
[52:57.820 --> 52:58.420]  I sure hope so, yes.
[52:58.880 --> 53:02.900]  As will be a flying squad of investigators.
[53:03.040 --> 53:05.240]  And I hope you bring a ton of your books with you and sign them because...
[53:05.240 --> 53:06.380]  Well, I hope they'll be ready.
[53:06.580 --> 53:10.640]  If not, if not, we'll be prepared to take people's names and...
[53:10.640 --> 53:13.340]  I don't think everyone wants to give you their names.
[53:13.580 --> 53:21.120]  Well, I've got their names already, and they might as well just add to the data I have on them that they want to... the fact that they want to buy the book.
[53:21.240 --> 53:24.560]  And by the way, I'm one of the few people who can be trusted with your data.
[53:24.720 --> 53:26.480]  Is there anything else coming up you want to tell us about?
[53:26.480 --> 53:28.780]  Any media appearances or...
[53:28.780 --> 53:40.740]  Well, let me say that CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is doing a big documentary, an hour or two, on privacy and on the precise topic we've been discussing.
[53:41.080 --> 53:46.780]  There's a guy, it's like Hal Brzezinski or Ted Kaczynski or...
[53:46.780 --> 53:48.180]  I can't think of his name.
[53:48.200 --> 53:49.100]  Don't think it's Ted Kaczynski.
[53:49.100 --> 53:53.920]  He's going to send me just a furious email, because he's listening to this show tonight.
[53:54.720 --> 53:56.480]  He's going to come with his whole crew.
[53:57.580 --> 54:01.640]  We've got... we're doing something great with CBS's 48 Hours.
[54:02.780 --> 54:09.040]  I'm speaking at a conference of, I hope, naughty nurses in Tampa.
[54:09.180 --> 54:14.060]  They're not so naughty, but I'm speaking at the Nurses Conference on Privacy next month in Tampa.
[54:14.240 --> 54:15.860]  You have an interesting life, I've got to say.
[54:16.180 --> 54:17.260]  And you know what, guys?
[54:17.260 --> 54:20.980]  Send me emails, because truly, I still don't have enough excitement.
[54:21.220 --> 54:21.660]  Email address.
[54:22.220 --> 54:23.900]  One more time, thank you very much.
[54:24.000 --> 54:29.660]  It's invademyprivacyatwriteme.com.
[54:29.760 --> 54:32.660]  And I will respond to every email that I get.
[54:32.920 --> 54:35.960]  Now, Rick, anything that you want to add to this?
[54:36.140 --> 54:37.060]  Any addresses?
[54:37.360 --> 54:37.840]  Sure.
[54:38.660 --> 54:51.220]  I'm actually in California right now, just finishing up a little promo tour of my new book, which is the sequel to Geek Mafia, which just came out a couple months ago.
[54:51.220 --> 54:53.980]  Which is a damn good book, and it has a lot of this cool stuff in it.
[54:53.980 --> 54:54.940]  Tell us about Geek Mafia.
[54:55.040 --> 54:55.580]  What was that all about?
[54:56.080 --> 55:05.520]  So Geek Mafia was my first novel, which was sort of hacker, con artist, you know, techno-thriller crime thing, which is set in Silicon Valley.
[55:06.440 --> 55:13.600]  And the sequel is sort of more of the same, but set in Key West, and involving even a little more technology.
[55:13.600 --> 55:16.560]  And there's a bunch of interesting stuff with RFID tags in there.
[55:18.440 --> 55:23.280]  And yeah, just, you know, lots of exciting, hacker-centric fun.
[55:23.460 --> 55:25.100]  And when will the second one be out?
[55:25.460 --> 55:25.780]  It's out.
[55:25.780 --> 55:26.460]  The second one is out now.
[55:26.560 --> 55:26.820]  Oh, it is?
[55:27.040 --> 55:27.140]  It's out.
[55:27.540 --> 55:29.200]  He's on his book tour, and I'll tell you what.
[55:29.480 --> 55:31.060]  It is a killer book.
[55:31.060 --> 55:32.160]  Where can you get it?
[55:32.940 --> 55:40.820]  You can get it from either pmpress.org or akpress, or from amazon.com, and your bookstore should be able to order it for you.
[55:41.000 --> 55:45.560]  And I should add that Rick Dakin obviously has a website, rickdakin.com.
[55:45.680 --> 55:47.980]  That's D-A-K-A-N.
[55:48.140 --> 55:48.280]  Okay.
[55:48.980 --> 55:53.000]  Now, it's just interesting that we're talking about finding you, Rick, because I actually found you last weekend.
[55:53.860 --> 55:54.360]  Did you?
[55:54.760 --> 55:54.980]  Yes.
[55:55.580 --> 55:57.000]  Did he know you were looking for him?
[55:57.100 --> 55:57.780]  I don't think so.
[55:57.960 --> 55:58.700]  Where did you find him?
[55:58.800 --> 56:00.320]  In a certain park in San Francisco.
[56:00.820 --> 56:01.940]  At a certain book fair.
[56:02.080 --> 56:04.240]  You actually ran into this guy in San Francisco?
[56:04.640 --> 56:04.920]  Yes.
[56:05.020 --> 56:06.100]  And you're just telling us this now?
[56:07.320 --> 56:09.160]  Well, he saves the good stuff for less.
[56:09.220 --> 56:10.520]  Were you in San Francisco, Rick?
[56:10.880 --> 56:12.660]  Well, it wasn't hard to find me in San Francisco.
[56:12.820 --> 56:15.880]  I was this listed speaker at the San Francisco Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair.
[56:16.100 --> 56:16.740]  There you go.
[56:17.560 --> 56:22.340]  He is the only large straight guy in San Francisco at this moment.
[56:22.580 --> 56:25.440]  Well, I'm sure we're getting mail at that.
[56:26.340 --> 56:38.020]  And by the way, let me just add, for those of you who do not want to have your privacy invaded, but you want to get in contact with me, for any reason, my company website is polorium.com.
[56:38.020 --> 56:42.600]  P as in Peter, A-double-L-O-R-I-U-M.com.
[56:42.960 --> 56:43.460]  All right.
[56:43.600 --> 56:46.200]  Steve Rom, I want to thank you very much for stopping in today.
[56:46.400 --> 56:47.120]  Always a pleasure.
[56:47.380 --> 56:48.380]  Because it has been amazing.
[56:48.560 --> 56:49.720]  You have some great stories there.
[56:49.820 --> 56:53.200]  And I think you've got a movie coming from all this.
[56:53.200 --> 56:57.500]  And I look forward to seeing you at HOPE, where Steve will be giving an extended talk.
[56:57.780 --> 57:03.060]  Again, more information on HOPE, go to www.thelasthope.org.
[57:03.060 --> 57:09.800]  It is The Last Hope, taking place July 18, 19, 20, in New York City at the world-famous Hotel Pennsylvania.
[57:10.120 --> 57:11.880]  That's going to do it for our show tonight.
[57:12.280 --> 57:13.680]  Emmanuel Goldstein for Off the Hook.
[57:14.340 --> 57:18.240]  We'll be back again next week with another exciting show.
[57:18.240 --> 57:24.720]  Also, I want to mention a conference coming up, CarolinaCon 2008, March 28th and 29th, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
[57:24.980 --> 57:28.680]  Go to carolinacon.org for information on that.
[57:28.820 --> 57:30.060]  Yet another hacker conference.
[57:30.280 --> 57:33.180]  And, of course, don't forget notacon.org.
[57:33.540 --> 57:36.120]  Notacon taking place in Cleveland in two weeks.
[57:36.220 --> 57:36.700]  Have a good night.
[57:38.580 --> 57:42.220]  I don't want to be the victim of Babylon, Sissy.
[57:42.480 --> 57:43.440]  Babylon, Sissy.
[57:44.700 --> 57:48.100]  I don't want to be the victim of Babylon, Sissy.
[57:50.560 --> 57:54.560]  I don't want to be the weakness to none of this weekend.
[57:56.640 --> 58:00.600]  I don't want to be the weakness to none of them weekend.
[58:02.200 --> 58:09.640]  With deadly cleansing and clothing, soon there will start legislation for human backcoding.
[58:11.440 --> 58:17.020]  With biological warfare, pollutants released in the air.
[58:17.020 --> 58:24.640]  I don't want to be the victim of Babylon, Sissy.
[58:25.080 --> 58:26.060]  Babylon, Sissy.
[58:27.220 --> 58:30.720]  I don't want to be the victim of Babylon, Sissy.
[58:31.160 --> 58:32.100]  Babylon, Sissy.
[58:33.280 --> 58:37.160]  I don't want to be the weakness to none of them weekend.
[58:39.340 --> 58:43.200]  I don't want to be the weakness to none of them weekend.
[58:58.020 --> 59:01.720]  We'll be right back.
[59:56.330 --> 59:57.730]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:22.990 --> 01:00:32.580]  We'll be right back.
[01:00:39.840 --> 01:00:42.380]  I don't want to be Bob Holden.
[01:00:42.520 --> 01:00:45.200]  I don't want to see Bob Holden.
[01:00:45.420 --> 01:00:46.260]  Bob Holden.
[01:00:53.300 --> 01:00:54.380]  All right.