[00:00.000 --> 00:04.540]  And thanks so much to everyone for your support and love and kindness to me.
[00:04.720 --> 00:05.940]  I'm Christine Blasdell.
[00:06.120 --> 00:06.900]  It's been my pleasure.
[00:07.080 --> 00:10.600]  Stay tuned for more incredible programming coming your way right here.
[00:31.770 --> 00:39.210]  And we do promise you some incredible programming coming up right away in the form of Off the Hook here on WBAI New York.
[02:29.550 --> 02:30.990]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:31.090 --> 02:31.850]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:31.910 --> 02:33.950]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:34.090 --> 02:35.590]  Joined tonight by Mike.
[02:35.890 --> 02:36.130]  Hello.
[02:36.390 --> 02:36.830]  Rob T.
[02:37.050 --> 02:37.470]  Firefly.
[02:37.670 --> 02:37.970]  Good evening.
[02:38.190 --> 02:38.570]  Bernie S.
[02:38.690 --> 02:39.830]  down in somewhere.
[02:40.070 --> 02:41.110]  Greetings from Pennsylvania.
[02:41.270 --> 02:41.450]  Pennsylvania.
[02:41.930 --> 02:44.610]  And we have two voices from the past joining us.
[02:44.610 --> 02:45.530]  We have Voltaire.
[02:45.970 --> 02:46.270]  Hi.
[02:46.270 --> 02:47.690]  And we have Mish.
[02:47.950 --> 02:48.190]  Hello.
[02:48.710 --> 02:51.910]  And a prize to anyone who can figure out the last time Mish was on the radio show.
[02:52.070 --> 02:52.730]  It's been a while.
[02:53.070 --> 02:53.810]  Many years, I think.
[02:54.010 --> 02:55.710]  You don't qualify because you know.
[02:55.830 --> 02:57.550]  You might know, but other listeners might not.
[02:58.570 --> 03:02.990]  So, well, as long as you guys are here, have you been listening to the radio lately?
[03:03.210 --> 03:07.030]  Know about this whole Edward Snowden thing we've been talking about for the last month or so?
[03:07.450 --> 03:10.270]  Yeah, I've been listening mostly on podcasts these days.
[03:10.810 --> 03:11.950]  But, yeah, I've been keeping up.
[03:12.150 --> 03:16.130]  Any thoughts from the West Coast, which is where you are in from?
[03:18.370 --> 03:19.930]  I told you I was going to ask you something.
[03:20.290 --> 03:20.390]  I know.
[03:20.450 --> 03:20.750]  I know.
[03:20.910 --> 03:21.590]  And you didn't...
[03:21.590 --> 03:25.110]  You're a lot closer to Hong Kong where Edward Snowden is.
[03:25.190 --> 03:26.290]  Maybe you have some special insight.
[03:26.550 --> 03:29.830]  I thought he's closer to here now in Russia, isn't he?
[03:30.070 --> 03:30.830]  Is Russia...
[03:30.830 --> 03:33.090]  Moscow, is it closer to this coast or the other?
[03:33.090 --> 03:35.170]  This is not that relevant to the whole issue, is it?
[03:35.190 --> 03:35.810]  I'm trying here, okay?
[03:35.810 --> 03:35.990]  All right.
[03:37.230 --> 03:42.790]  But, you know, as far as the way it's being reported in the mass media as opposed to here on WBAI, it's like two different stories.
[03:42.810 --> 03:43.570]  It really is.
[03:43.730 --> 03:50.830]  One story, you would think the guy was some kind of terrorist who's one step ahead of the law and threatening to destroy the United States.
[03:50.950 --> 03:59.590]  And on the other side, he's a hero, somebody who's revealing the state of the way things are, revealing the truth, something we've been taught to do when we grow up.
[04:00.450 --> 04:02.330]  So, how do you know who to believe?
[04:03.430 --> 04:03.830]  Anybody?
[04:04.350 --> 04:05.270]  I don't know.
[04:05.410 --> 04:14.070]  Around here on WBAI parts, I know that, you know, we had in the past Kevin Mitnick, who was being given the same treatment in the news.
[04:14.230 --> 04:17.370]  He was public enemy number one, doing all sorts of terrible things to terrible people.
[04:17.390 --> 04:18.330]  And what did he do?
[04:18.390 --> 04:23.250]  He had source code to a phone operating system, which nowadays, many people have source codes to their operating system.
[04:23.310 --> 04:23.570]  Yeah.
[04:23.610 --> 04:25.130]  And his case was no big deal.
[04:25.230 --> 04:26.330]  But this is a big deal.
[04:26.470 --> 04:27.430]  This is something that...
[04:27.430 --> 04:29.370]  And he definitely wasn't affecting international politics.
[04:29.590 --> 04:29.870]  Mm-hmm.
[04:30.170 --> 04:32.770]  And the thing is, the conversation is going on now.
[04:32.930 --> 04:35.110]  People are talking about the NSA all the time.
[04:35.550 --> 04:39.910]  People in the upper echelons are talking about, no pun intended, about the NSA.
[04:40.090 --> 04:42.710]  But commoners like us are talking about it, too, in the subway.
[04:44.110 --> 04:45.630]  So, how could that be a bad thing?
[04:45.670 --> 04:47.110]  Of course, if you're the NSA, it's a bad thing.
[04:47.210 --> 04:50.150]  But how could that be a bad thing for freedom-loving people like us?
[04:50.530 --> 04:50.850]  Bernie?
[04:51.610 --> 04:53.850]  It's not just the NSA that's getting...
[04:53.850 --> 04:59.090]  That's, you know, used to go by the moniker, or no such agency, or at least it's inside people, used to.
[04:59.990 --> 05:01.750]  Of course, it stands for National Security Agency.
[05:01.750 --> 05:11.210]  But the angst this is causing world leaders is just blowing my mind.
[05:11.930 --> 05:32.870]  Our top levels of our administration, from the president to the head of the Department of Justice, to the head of our Department of State, and foreign leaders, China, Russia, Germany, it is mind-blowing how this has affected international relations and is really outraging people around the world,
[05:33.010 --> 05:34.010]  not just the United States.
[05:34.650 --> 05:48.070]  And that's another case of the two different stories that are out there right now, because if you look at the stories about Snowden and this whole fiasco in the news media, even the mainstream news media of other countries, a lot of other countries are now,
[05:48.090 --> 05:54.410]  you know, rightfully outraged at, how dare America do this thing, while our news is still, how dare this guy reveal that America is doing this thing?
[05:55.170 --> 05:55.590]  So...
[05:56.430 --> 06:03.710]  Yeah, and it's sad to see people be manipulated like that, something that's so obviously to their benefit, to learn about.
[06:04.330 --> 06:06.530]  It's something that we should be welcoming and encouraging.
[06:06.690 --> 06:09.030]  Volta, let me ask your opinion on this whole story.
[06:09.170 --> 06:10.190]  You've been following it, I assume?
[06:10.190 --> 06:11.610]  Yeah, very closely.
[06:12.170 --> 06:20.410]  I'm obviously very supportive of Edward Snowden, and yeah, I just hope that he gets someplace safe.
[06:20.630 --> 06:22.090]  Yeah, where would that be?
[06:22.310 --> 06:27.410]  What's happened in the last week is he has officially asked for temporary asylum in Russia.
[06:28.190 --> 06:34.430]  In fact, that might become more semi-permanent, who knows, if he can't get out of the country safely.
[06:34.670 --> 06:48.870]  It's crazy to think that we're talking about this in a real sense, that he can't safely travel because of what our government will do in foreign lands, to somebody traveling freely from one place to another, because they don't happen to like the message that he's sending.
[06:48.970 --> 06:54.230]  It sounds like something that we've been told about, that other countries do to their dissidents.
[06:55.530 --> 06:58.290]  And it's just sad and scary.
[06:58.530 --> 06:58.730]  Mike?
[06:58.910 --> 07:00.910]  I mean, the comparison is a bit inept, though.
[07:01.430 --> 07:10.870]  I mean, other countries have terrible human rights records as well, but very few countries try and restrict the movements of people who are not in them, or at least passing over them.
[07:11.250 --> 07:20.290]  I mean, the Chinese government, for example, does all kinds of things to the people in China, but they very rarely try and say, you know, you can't fly through Europe if China doesn't like you.
[07:21.110 --> 07:23.410]  So it's really a weird situation.
[07:23.890 --> 07:24.290]  Yeah, it is.
[07:24.390 --> 07:24.870]  It's very strange.
[07:24.950 --> 07:25.410]  And I don't know.
[07:25.770 --> 07:28.410]  Anyone want to predict what's going to happen next, where it's going to go?
[07:29.210 --> 07:39.070]  Well, Russia has already threatened him by saying that his being allowed to stay there is conditional on him, not releasing more information that would hurt the U.S.
[07:39.070 --> 07:42.030]  But I don't know where that's going to go, but that's kind of...
[07:42.030 --> 07:48.530]  He has given the information to reporters, so it's no longer in his decision to...
[07:48.530 --> 07:52.030]  No, he still has things that he hasn't released or...
[07:52.030 --> 07:53.390]  He hasn't released everything to reporters yet.
[07:53.390 --> 07:54.990]  He has, like, a whole bunch of information.
[07:55.190 --> 08:02.390]  He's being very careful about not releasing everything, like, stuff that could hurt, like, U.S.
[08:02.970 --> 08:05.750]  interests or, like, individuals and stuff.
[08:06.210 --> 08:07.150]  But, yeah.
[08:07.150 --> 08:20.370]  But then there was this article that came out over Reuters that basically said that Snowden has documents that could prove to be the worst nightmare for the United States.
[08:20.650 --> 08:22.210]  Let me read how it opens.
[08:22.670 --> 08:23.910]  Fugitive former U.S.
[08:24.010 --> 08:30.810]  spy contractor Edward Snowden controls dangerous information that could become the United States' worst nightmare if revealed.
[08:30.850 --> 08:34.950]  That's according to Glenn Greenwald, according to the Reuters story.
[08:34.950 --> 08:38.350]  And it makes it sound like he's threatening the U.S.
[08:38.450 --> 08:43.570]  Now, I understand that Glenn Greenwald had some words to say about the way this particular story was written.
[08:43.930 --> 08:45.770]  But it's...
[08:45.770 --> 08:48.450]  How do you battle that kind of perception?
[08:48.630 --> 08:50.950]  I mean, the story was just so terribly reported.
[08:51.550 --> 08:57.650]  The story is a summary of an interview that Greenwald gave to an Argentinian newspaper.
[08:58.670 --> 09:08.950]  And if you read the original interview, either in Spanish or in some sort of, you know, automated translation, it's just... everything in it is taken out of context.
[09:08.950 --> 09:10.490]  It's just a very silly story.
[09:10.710 --> 09:12.770]  Well, tell me if this quote is inaccurate.
[09:13.370 --> 09:15.470]  Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S.
[09:15.570 --> 09:19.610]  government in a single minute than any other person has ever had.
[09:19.610 --> 09:20.310]  The U.S.
[09:20.610 --> 09:29.090]  government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happens to Snowden because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.
[09:29.190 --> 09:29.950]  Now, that's in quotes.
[09:30.330 --> 09:31.870]  So, I mean, it does sound like a threat.
[09:32.110 --> 09:33.790]  It's kind of hard to counter that.
[09:33.910 --> 09:35.610]  Are you saying that was translated badly?
[09:35.870 --> 09:40.410]  I mean, I don't have the original article, again, in any language in front of me.
[09:41.670 --> 09:47.010]  But it's just... it's not... Greenwald is not threatening the United States.
[09:47.010 --> 09:51.270]  He's not interested in destroying, you know, individuals in the U.S.
[09:51.410 --> 09:51.690]  government.
[09:52.170 --> 09:57.630]  It's just not accurate to say that there's any reason to be afraid of Glenn Greenwald.
[09:57.770 --> 09:58.690]  It's just silly.
[09:58.910 --> 10:08.370]  Well, he says in his piece about the Reuters article that like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves.
[10:08.370 --> 10:14.650]  It's particularly being seized on to attack Edward Snowden and secondarily me for supposedly blackmailing and threatening the U.S.
[10:14.730 --> 10:14.970]  government.
[10:15.190 --> 10:16.210]  That is just absurd.
[10:16.370 --> 10:21.270]  That Snowden has created some sort of dead man's switch whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the U.S.
[10:21.310 --> 10:26.130]  government was previously reported weeks ago and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing.
[10:26.430 --> 10:27.690]  That doesn't mean he thinks the U.S.
[10:27.750 --> 10:28.950]  government is attempting to kill him.
[10:29.030 --> 10:29.570]  He doesn't.
[10:30.110 --> 10:33.830]  Just that he's taking precautions against all eventualities, including that one.
[10:35.870 --> 10:37.530]  So, he goes on.
[10:37.530 --> 10:40.130]  And you can find the entire statement online, obviously.
[10:41.130 --> 10:44.410]  But the story just keeps getting more and more interesting week after week.
[10:44.510 --> 10:46.710]  I don't know if we're ever going to be able to stop talking about this.
[10:46.850 --> 10:47.670]  It just keeps developing.
[10:48.230 --> 10:48.490]  Emmanuel.
[10:48.710 --> 10:49.090]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[10:49.610 --> 11:13.670]  One of the pieces of information that came out in that interview, I think Glenn Greenwald, who's probably had more conversations with Ed Snowden than any other reporter, is that Ed Snowden possesses or is secreting somewhere thousands of classified documents about how the NSA operates.
[11:13.950 --> 11:17.170]  I think the term blueprints for how it operates was thrown around.
[11:17.170 --> 11:21.130]  I'm not sure if that's a Glenn Greenwald quote the word blueprints.
[11:21.910 --> 11:37.350]  But the allegation is that these blueprints could be used by people to evade surveillance or to duplicate some of NSA's efforts in surveilling others.
[11:38.050 --> 11:55.190]  But the bottom line is, if Glenn Greenwald says that Ed Snowden has thousands of documents, I think Americans would be well advised to take a look at these documents if they're released, because I am personally interested in what our government is doing.
[11:55.850 --> 12:02.190]  Yeah, and you can imagine those in control not knowing exactly what documents they're talking about.
[12:02.190 --> 12:05.030]  That really must make them incredibly nervous.
[12:05.470 --> 12:12.130]  And having them being incredibly nervous doesn't exactly make me feel secure, because who knows what crazy move they'll pull next.
[12:12.690 --> 12:24.870]  But interesting thing that came out of this, in his retort, Glenn Greenwald listed the things that have been revealed as a result of Edward Snowden over the past few weeks.
[12:24.870 --> 12:29.030]  And I'd just like you to hear the significance of all these different bits of information.
[12:29.250 --> 12:33.710]  It started with NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily.
[12:33.750 --> 12:40.870]  There was that one, then that was quickly followed by NSA PRISM program, taps into user data of Apple, Google, and others.
[12:41.750 --> 12:43.050]  Obama orders U.S.
[12:43.170 --> 12:45.770]  to draw up overseas target list for cyber attacks.
[12:46.670 --> 12:50.810]  Boundless Informant, the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data.
[12:51.410 --> 12:54.850]  FISA court oversight, a look inside a secret and empty process.
[12:54.870 --> 12:58.310]  Top secret rules that allow the NSA to use U.S.
[12:58.430 --> 12:59.530]  data without a warrant.
[13:00.930 --> 13:05.310]  GCHQ taps fiber optic cables for secret access to world communications.
[13:06.170 --> 13:08.570]  How the NSA is still harvesting your online data.
[13:08.710 --> 13:09.670]  NSA collects U.S.
[13:09.990 --> 13:12.690]  email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama.
[13:12.910 --> 13:16.130]  The NSA's mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians.
[13:16.430 --> 13:18.890]  The Snowden video sequel in Brazil Fallout.
[13:19.090 --> 13:24.510]  And finally, how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages.
[13:24.510 --> 13:26.290]  And we're going to be talking about that a little bit as well.
[13:26.390 --> 13:29.450]  But boy, there's a lot of information that has come out of this one guy.
[13:29.550 --> 13:33.890]  And he's a source for all kinds of future stories, too, I would imagine.
[13:34.430 --> 13:41.470]  I mean, so the NSA and the national security people in general just don't want us talking about them.
[13:41.470 --> 13:45.990]  Because when we do talk about them, we learn what they're doing and that makes them really sad.
[13:47.290 --> 13:49.050]  So we are talking about them.
[13:49.170 --> 13:50.390]  These people are being called into Congress.
[13:50.570 --> 13:55.690]  I don't know if you saw this story, Emanuel, that some of the NSA folks were called into Congress just today.
[13:55.830 --> 14:00.730]  And they revealed that they do what's called a three-hop query.
[14:00.730 --> 14:05.430]  So if the NSA decided I was a terrorist for whatever reason, they could get my data.
[14:05.790 --> 14:08.590]  They would also get your data because you're just one hop away.
[14:08.670 --> 14:09.330]  We know each other.
[14:09.510 --> 14:15.870]  They would get the data of someone you went to high school with because that's two hops away from me.
[14:16.010 --> 14:20.850]  And they would get data on that person's coworkers because that's three hops away.
[14:20.950 --> 14:21.870]  And that's just insane.
[14:21.970 --> 14:23.070]  That covers almost everybody.
[14:23.290 --> 14:24.350]  Someone I went to high school with?
[14:24.430 --> 14:26.430]  I can't even get data on people I went to high school with.
[14:26.570 --> 14:28.010]  They would actually go to that much trouble?
[14:28.010 --> 14:32.750]  If you know them, it's three hops away from any terrace.
[14:32.850 --> 14:34.390]  I'm sure I'm three hops away from terrace.
[14:34.390 --> 14:36.010]  Well, it's six degrees of separation, right?
[14:36.190 --> 14:37.930]  So they're halfway there.
[14:38.550 --> 14:38.910]  Right.
[14:39.090 --> 14:39.690]  To everybody.
[14:39.890 --> 14:44.870]  Except the six degrees thing was in a non-networked age, people going through the mails.
[14:45.110 --> 14:49.070]  The social graph wasn't as easily discoverable.
[14:49.250 --> 14:54.970]  So probably if you actually know all of the connections and you can search them more quickly, it's probably less than six.
[14:54.970 --> 14:55.850]  Interesting.
[14:56.330 --> 14:56.770]  Wow.
[14:57.030 --> 14:58.450]  So that's what they said today.
[14:58.670 --> 15:00.450]  And how was that met by Congress?
[15:00.990 --> 15:01.950]  You know, I don't know.
[15:02.090 --> 15:03.310]  This was John C.
[15:03.410 --> 15:13.510]  Ingalls, who was the deputy director of the NSA, testifying in a congressional panel, which The Guardian describes as an angry congressional panel.
[15:13.730 --> 15:14.790]  So maybe there's some...
[15:14.790 --> 15:16.050]  Wait, how angry are they actually getting?
[15:16.170 --> 15:19.550]  Are they really getting angry or is this just something they put in the press release?
[15:19.710 --> 15:22.130]  Because Congress has not really stepped up to these guys.
[15:22.610 --> 15:25.010]  Some Congress is starting to step up.
[15:25.170 --> 15:25.910]  It's going to take time.
[15:25.910 --> 15:29.830]  As we've said before, I would love for the NSA to be disbanded tomorrow.
[15:30.090 --> 15:32.050]  But realistically, of course, that's not going to happen.
[15:32.610 --> 15:37.950]  We're going to get, I hope, more oversight over the coming weeks and months and years.
[15:38.470 --> 15:40.530]  And we have to keep up the pressure.
[15:40.750 --> 15:46.610]  But just because we haven't won in a day doesn't mean that we're not going to slowly rein these people.
[15:46.610 --> 15:47.630]  Well, it is having an effect.
[15:47.630 --> 15:48.450]  I will say that.
[15:48.510 --> 15:50.830]  I saw a really amazing piece online.
[15:50.870 --> 15:52.290]  I can't point to it.
[15:52.370 --> 15:53.730]  I don't know exactly who wrote it.
[15:54.130 --> 15:59.910]  But somebody who actually tried to visit the data center in Utah that's about to be opened up.
[16:00.070 --> 16:02.890]  And what happened to them when they wandered too close?
[16:03.030 --> 16:09.390]  They were stopped, much like Kyle and I, were stopped at Fort Meade by the NSA police and questioned for quite some time.
[16:10.090 --> 16:12.650]  But I didn't know you could even see the buildings.
[16:12.670 --> 16:13.850]  Apparently, you can see the buildings.
[16:14.270 --> 16:21.950]  And the fact that people are doing this and thinking about it and challenging in one way or another, these are very healthy signs.
[16:22.310 --> 16:23.730]  And I'm seeing more and more of that.
[16:23.890 --> 16:28.050]  I heard, I'm not sure if this is true or not, because I just happened to see it go by really quickly.
[16:28.050 --> 16:29.970]  And if you blink, you miss something in this story.
[16:30.070 --> 16:36.970]  But I heard somebody say, and tell me if this is just true or some net rumor, that Obama was changing his position on spying on Americans.
[16:39.450 --> 16:43.170]  Or is that another indication of him changing with the times?
[16:43.370 --> 16:44.130]  I haven't heard it.
[16:44.130 --> 16:50.890]  And we have to be very careful because Obama is really good at saying things that people interpret as being what they want to hear.
[16:51.070 --> 16:54.610]  And he doesn't always do what people want.
[16:54.730 --> 16:55.230]  It's magic.
[16:55.370 --> 16:56.570]  He's really good at it.
[16:57.290 --> 16:57.990]  He's a lawyer.
[16:58.370 --> 16:59.410]  Yeah, I guess so.
[16:59.470 --> 17:00.350]  That's where you learn these tricks.
[17:00.730 --> 17:01.050]  Emmanuel?
[17:01.270 --> 17:01.450]  Yes.
[17:01.670 --> 17:16.330]  One of my concerns is this oversight by our elected representatives, congresspeople and senators, they all know that the NSA has collected a massive amount of information on them as well.
[17:17.230 --> 17:21.970]  I think one of the... and I think they're a little bit afraid of what could be done with this.
[17:22.170 --> 17:37.730]  Who knows what affairs they're having or peccadilloes they've exposed through their supposedly private email communications and other communications and web searches and all this.
[17:37.730 --> 17:40.410]  I mean, it kind of boggles the mind.
[17:40.550 --> 17:41.130]  It's just like...
[17:41.130 --> 17:41.670]  Remember, J.
[17:41.770 --> 17:52.090]  Edgar Hoover had these infamous decks of three-by-five cards with all the important people in Washington and in entertainment and arts and so forth.
[17:52.090 --> 18:11.650]  And I think this hasn't become the scandal it could be because we don't know yet how all this information is being used to coerce people or just let people know that, hey, we have this information, play your cards right, or whatever.
[18:11.910 --> 18:12.890]  We don't know that.
[18:12.990 --> 18:22.610]  I think once... if and when it becomes clear that some of this information is being abused, and the sheer volume of it indicates to me that surely somewhere it's being abused.
[18:22.850 --> 18:29.730]  I mean, it's noted himself that he personally, without any oversight, could listen to anybody's phone call or read anybody's email.
[18:29.730 --> 18:31.470]  I mean, that boggles the mind.
[18:31.550 --> 18:35.410]  If he could do it, who else is doing it that didn't have the social conscience that he does?
[18:35.810 --> 18:47.270]  And I fear that our elected representatives are afraid to take action because they could have some of their secrets, personal secrets exposed.
[18:47.270 --> 18:49.130]  Now, we know something.
[18:49.290 --> 18:50.130]  We don't know everything, obviously.
[18:50.310 --> 18:57.550]  We know something about how communications work on the internet and email and telephony and all that kind of a thing.
[18:57.690 --> 19:02.270]  A statement like that, I could see anybody's email, I could listen to anybody's phone conversation.
[19:02.690 --> 19:08.590]  Is that something that we believe is posturing or something that is, in fact, technically possible?
[19:08.770 --> 19:11.210]  I'd like to ask people their feelings on that.
[19:12.430 --> 19:13.370]  Ed Snowden said that.
[19:13.370 --> 19:17.830]  He said that, yes, but I'm not necessarily believing everything he says.
[19:17.830 --> 19:20.610]  Is it possible that he's overstating it a bit?
[19:20.930 --> 19:23.310]  I mean, it's possible that he's overstating it a bit.
[19:24.450 --> 19:30.390]  You know, possibly he can only read the email of people who use the five most popular email providers or something like that.
[19:31.470 --> 19:37.950]  He can't read, you know, as he said, the president's, you know, work email and stuff like that.
[19:37.950 --> 19:47.490]  But whether he can survey 80% of the population or 90% or 100%, I don't think is the question we should be asking.
[19:48.810 --> 20:04.750]  Yeah, and the point is, you know, even if they're claiming, even if they're putting in the framework to do things that you can't technically do now, if the framework is there, if the legal mumbo-jumbo is there in place, then when we can do it, which is always going to be sooner than we think in the scheme of expanding computer power,
[20:05.290 --> 20:06.310]  then they're going to do it.
[20:06.390 --> 20:16.510]  And do we try and nip this in the bud now or do we wait until things are, you know, more technologically feasible to do something about them, by which time I think it'll be too late?
[20:17.490 --> 20:24.510]  Well, one thing I've noticed is that opinions seem to have shifted a bit, whereas a few weeks ago the majority of people seem to think there's nothing wrong with this.
[20:24.950 --> 20:28.750]  Looks like more people are objecting now, or maybe the same people are objecting louder.
[20:28.950 --> 20:33.530]  Whatever it is, it's more in the mainstream now that this is something we should be concerned about.
[20:33.730 --> 20:34.990]  And that's a positive step.
[20:35.170 --> 20:47.750]  And we owe the hard work of a lot of people in EFF, EPIC, ACLU, various places like that, who have gotten the word out and basically banded together with all kinds of strange bedfellows that are all concerned with this type of thing.
[20:47.810 --> 20:48.950]  What was it, Mike, that happened this week?
[20:49.050 --> 20:54.650]  The EFF joined a lawsuit with gun people and Bible people.
[20:54.870 --> 20:59.310]  Well, the Unitarian church, I don't think, would like to be described as Bible people so much.
[20:59.310 --> 21:00.490]  Do they have a Bible in their church?
[21:00.850 --> 21:01.530]  All right, then.
[21:01.550 --> 21:03.370]  I don't know a lot about Unitarians.
[21:03.450 --> 21:05.050]  I think they sometimes have a Bible in their church.
[21:05.050 --> 21:05.730]  I'll bet there's a Bible.
[21:05.890 --> 21:07.550]  I'll go into a Unitarian church after the show.
[21:07.810 --> 21:08.490]  All right, you do that.
[21:08.490 --> 21:11.710]  But there's this broad coalition is the summary.
[21:12.110 --> 21:27.310]  The Unitarians, and I forget the name of the gun rights groups, and the EFF are all teaming up to say, you know what, our interests, all of our interests to advance our agenda in the United States are threatened when we cannot make phone calls in private.
[21:27.790 --> 21:28.970]  And so they're suing.
[21:29.050 --> 21:29.370]  I don't know.
[21:29.970 --> 21:32.390]  And what's exciting about this is there's a bunch of lawsuits.
[21:32.510 --> 21:34.050]  I don't know which one's going to succeed.
[21:34.050 --> 21:35.170]  I hope at least one does.
[21:35.570 --> 21:40.230]  We've talked before about some lawsuits that EPIC is filing directly with the Supreme Court.
[21:40.390 --> 21:46.030]  They're saying they're the only ones who could possibly oversee the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
[21:46.130 --> 21:47.010]  I don't know what's going to happen.
[21:47.110 --> 21:50.810]  I hope that at least one of these lawsuits helps.
[21:51.210 --> 22:05.770]  Well, the amazing thing and the thing that I think we really need to use as an example is the fact that people from organizations that don't always and many times often don't agree with each other are working together because we have a common interest.
[22:06.030 --> 22:07.370]  And there is nothing wrong with that.
[22:07.630 --> 22:14.810]  We can disagree with people all we want, but if we're trapped in a burning building, we work together to get out of it.
[22:15.130 --> 22:18.290]  And I think the analogy is a pretty sound one in this particular case.
[22:18.410 --> 22:19.810]  So that's exactly the right thing to do.
[22:19.970 --> 22:20.370]  Emmanuel.
[22:20.530 --> 22:21.050]  Yes, go ahead.
[22:21.130 --> 22:23.690]  I have a partial list of the plaintiffs in this.
[22:23.790 --> 22:24.510]  Oh, please, go ahead.
[22:26.130 --> 22:34.010]  As Mike mentioned, the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Cal Guns Foundation.
[22:34.010 --> 22:36.550]  I don't know if that's a gun rights organization.
[22:36.730 --> 22:37.550]  Cal Guns?
[22:37.630 --> 22:38.870]  C-A-L-G-U-N-S.
[22:38.910 --> 22:39.630]  Oh, Cal Guns.
[22:39.690 --> 22:42.030]  Cal Guns Foundation, not Cal Guns.
[22:43.170 --> 22:50.370]  Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, People for the American Way, I think that sounds like a conservative group, and Tech Freedom, and a bunch of others.
[22:51.190 --> 23:01.730]  And, of course, EFF is also representing plaintiffs in the 2008 case, Jewel versus NSA, which now is able to move forward in a really intriguing...
[23:01.730 --> 23:09.270]  Mike brought up something to us earlier about a really intriguing legal conundrum we're in.
[23:09.430 --> 23:18.830]  Do you want to expand on that more, Mike, about how the government is sort of trying to play it both ways in having the constitutionality of this law even reviewable?
[23:19.670 --> 23:22.470]  I'm not sure to which specifically you're referring.
[23:22.590 --> 23:26.990]  I do want to point out that People for the American Way probably would not describe itself as a conservative group.
[23:27.750 --> 23:30.930]  But the government is always trying to have it, well, its way.
[23:31.070 --> 23:34.150]  But they'll use whatever legal argument they can make to get that.
[23:35.210 --> 23:37.490]  There was a case a few years ago where...
[23:38.490 --> 23:40.610]  I'm really trying to stretch for the details here.
[23:40.610 --> 23:58.290]  But the federal government had argued that the laws or the legal opinions that were being used for some of these surveillance programs were subject to constitutional review.
[23:58.290 --> 24:00.030]  Oh, oh, so they...
[24:00.030 --> 24:01.030]  Yeah, so there was a...
[24:01.030 --> 24:19.650]  The government won in the Supreme Court when there was a previous lawsuit that tried to get some of the surveillance stopped before we knew all the details, but people were sort of afraid that they might be surveilled and that they tried to argue that this would inhibit their freedom of expression.
[24:20.510 --> 24:22.990]  And the Supreme Court didn't buy that argument.
[24:23.950 --> 24:31.290]  The government said, no, you have to prove that you are being surveilled and present, you know, evidence for this.
[24:31.510 --> 24:42.830]  So now what is happening is, first of all, the evidence we have from Snowden and others that were all being surveilled, so you don't have to necessarily find your own needle in the haystack.
[24:42.970 --> 24:43.970]  But there's also some...
[24:43.970 --> 24:54.170]  They're starting to use this data in some criminal cases, some ordinary criminal cases, which is exactly what the government said last time are the people who could challenge this.
[24:54.650 --> 24:57.430]  So we'll see what happens when they do try and challenge it.
[24:57.490 --> 25:01.010]  I'm sure the government will come up with some other inane rationale.
[25:01.290 --> 25:02.950]  Well, they can't have it both ways, but they often seem to...
[25:02.950 --> 25:03.890]  Oh, but they can have it both ways.
[25:03.890 --> 25:06.050]  They seem to get both ways, but it's really not fair.
[25:06.050 --> 25:08.070]  So let's hope that works out.
[25:08.930 --> 25:20.110]  We touched upon this a few minutes ago, but I want to discuss what happened with Microsoft because, as you recall, when the whole PRISM thing was first revealed, all the tech companies, Apple, Microsoft, Google, they all said, not us.
[25:20.150 --> 25:21.150]  We had nothing to do with it.
[25:21.290 --> 25:22.970]  This is, you know, completely bogus.
[25:23.390 --> 25:31.950]  And now we have this revelation from more files that were released that shows that Microsoft collaborated closely with U.S.
[25:32.350 --> 25:39.370]  intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the NSA to circumvent the company's own encryption.
[25:39.510 --> 25:43.170]  And that's according to top secret documents that The Guardian obtained.
[25:43.590 --> 25:47.050]  The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of cooperation.
[25:47.070 --> 25:51.110]  between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years.
[25:51.210 --> 26:01.590]  They show that Microsoft helped the NSA circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal.
[26:02.310 --> 26:07.630]  The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail.
[26:08.070 --> 26:19.330]  The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via PRISM to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide.
[26:19.770 --> 26:28.610]  Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to understand potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases.
[26:29.450 --> 26:38.590]  In July of last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through PRISM.
[26:38.590 --> 26:48.670]  And finally, material collected through PRISM is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA with one NSA document describing the program as a team sport.
[26:50.370 --> 26:52.870]  Well, what does Microsoft have to say about this?
[26:52.930 --> 26:55.170]  Is it still something that they have no knowledge of?
[26:55.290 --> 26:57.010]  Completely ridiculous?
[26:57.410 --> 27:01.610]  And what does this say about the other organizations that say we had nothing to do with this?
[27:01.810 --> 27:04.290]  It sounds like it's pretty thorough.
[27:04.590 --> 27:04.810]  Walter?
[27:04.810 --> 27:10.850]  It's theoretically possible that the executives could say with a straight face that they had no knowledge of it.
[27:11.150 --> 27:28.050]  As we saw with the case with the ISPs in Europe that are being spied on, the way they do it is they have people come straight from the NSA that they're employed by those companies and their sole job and they're the only ones that know about it is to facilitate the wiretapping.
[27:28.050 --> 27:39.910]  So you're saying one person at Microsoft could know about this and this could be happening without the knowledge of anybody else there and they could be telling the truth saying we know nothing about this but it could still be happening as if they all were cooperating.
[27:40.170 --> 27:40.350]  Exactly.
[27:40.830 --> 27:41.250]  I don't know.
[27:41.330 --> 27:41.970]  Is it that simple?
[27:42.130 --> 27:43.350]  Would somebody else...
[27:43.350 --> 27:46.890]  Here's my challenge to Google because a lot of cool people work at Google.
[27:46.990 --> 27:47.730]  I know this.
[27:47.910 --> 27:51.890]  They have supposedly a very progressive stance on many things.
[27:52.630 --> 28:07.470]  Those people who work there, if they were to discover that they weren't being told the truth by their own company and that there was this program in place that only a few people knew about, they discovered it, I ask them, would they reveal that or would they look at their NDL and say,
[28:07.630 --> 28:10.950]  I'm not allowed to talk about it ever and I won't say a word.
[28:11.130 --> 28:21.010]  That's my question because invariably in any of these organizations, somebody is going to discover it if it exists and that person is very important.
[28:21.010 --> 28:22.850]  That person can tell the truth.
[28:23.170 --> 28:24.590]  How many people though are willing...
[28:24.590 --> 28:30.270]  I think there are a lot of people that would be willing to tell the truth if we live in like a truly free country but how many people are willing to...
[28:30.270 --> 28:36.070]  I think in the hacker community especially, there are a lot of idealistic people and a lot of people in the hacker community work for some of these organizations.
[28:36.390 --> 28:40.950]  I'm just hoping that the right people are in the right place at the right time and that the truth will come out.
[28:41.190 --> 28:41.430]  Mike?
[28:41.850 --> 28:49.270]  I think that the people who are going to want to reveal this information are precisely the ones who are not given access to it.
[28:51.010 --> 28:53.050]  But sometimes you stumble upon access.
[28:53.290 --> 28:56.130]  Sometimes things happen that are not predicted.
[28:56.670 --> 28:58.890]  And those happy accidents are what we live for.
[28:59.270 --> 29:00.710]  So we'll just have to see.
[29:00.830 --> 29:08.350]  But in the meantime, you know, I take all this with a big grain of salt, because I think that what was being said at first is being borne out.
[29:08.590 --> 29:12.870]  It sure looks like there's been a lot of cooperation between Silicon Valley and these agencies.
[29:12.870 --> 29:13.490]  Emmanuel?
[29:13.690 --> 29:13.850]  Yes.
[29:14.170 --> 29:37.290]  What it seems to have been a practice for quite a while, not just with the Internet service providers and other services providers and telcos, is that the agencies that have data sharing agreements, and this started way back with CALEA back in 94, that the FBI actually worked with various telecommunications providers,
[29:37.350 --> 29:42.850]  like at that time it was Beltlantic, I guess, to set up like little subplans.
[29:42.870 --> 29:48.470]  subdivisions within the company where only people that had to need to know this information ran that department.
[29:49.210 --> 29:57.070]  Former or current FBI agents, people with security clearances, classified, maybe even top secret.
[29:57.770 --> 30:00.610]  So this is kind of like the intelligence agencies do.
[30:00.670 --> 30:04.350]  They set up these secure compartmentalized information facilities.
[30:04.630 --> 30:10.370]  And that's what's done inside of telcos and big companies like Google, Yahoo, and so forth.
[30:10.370 --> 30:11.810]  But there's like the company within the company.
[30:12.030 --> 30:21.030]  And there's firewalls that prevent... that are designed to prevent other employees from having any knowledge of what's going on inside the subdivision.
[30:21.290 --> 30:24.830]  So that's kind of scary, but that's how it's being done.
[30:27.530 --> 30:27.930]  Indeed.
[30:27.930 --> 30:33.450]  You're listening to Off The Hook, our email address, OTH at 2600.com, if there's anything that you'd like to share with us.
[30:33.570 --> 30:35.910]  We'll also be taking phone calls in just a little bit.
[30:36.490 --> 30:44.870]  Something else was revealed this week, which I thought was rather interesting, on Cryptome, the website run by our friends over there who reveal all kinds of interesting things.
[30:45.530 --> 30:51.030]  They revealed this, and I'd like some interpretation as to what it all means.
[30:52.310 --> 30:56.850]  These are basically PGP keys.
[30:57.530 --> 30:59.650]  Apparently, this is something that you can look up.
[30:59.750 --> 31:01.790]  You can look up when PGP keys were generated.
[31:02.250 --> 31:08.430]  Now, it's known that Edward Snowden used a pseudonym known as VERAX, V-E-R-A-X.
[31:08.430 --> 31:21.510]  And what Cryptome did was they printed when certain keys were formed for that particular username, VERAXInformedDemocracyFront in parentheses.
[31:21.770 --> 31:34.830]  And you see that a certain fingerprint was created on May 20th at 5.41 p.m., another one at 9.41, another one, actually two at 9.41, one right after the other.
[31:34.830 --> 31:43.170]  Basically, there's a whole list of fingerprints that supposedly show that somebody was creating PGP signatures at that time.
[31:43.790 --> 31:51.690]  And I'm thinking to myself, if this is something that you can just look up, isn't that yet another way of tracking somebody's contacts?
[31:51.690 --> 32:06.110]  If two people create, say, a PGP key within minutes of each other, and you suspect that they're talking to each other, isn't that yet another way of watching what they're doing without actually seeing the contents of the message?
[32:06.230 --> 32:06.450]  Mike?
[32:06.570 --> 32:07.850]  So I have a few points here.
[32:07.970 --> 32:15.110]  One is that the timestamp of the key creation is only guaranteed by the key creator.
[32:15.110 --> 32:16.790]  So if you want to lie, you can.
[32:17.110 --> 32:27.110]  So it's possible that someone, particularly in a very public case like this, some random third party thought it would be amusing to publish these keys, and they have nothing to do with the actual people involved.
[32:27.170 --> 32:28.550]  Can they lie about the date, too?
[32:28.670 --> 32:28.790]  Yeah.
[32:29.130 --> 32:31.510]  Because it says Monday, May 20th, well before the story came out.
[32:31.590 --> 32:33.570]  So here's an easy way to do it.
[32:33.650 --> 32:37.290]  You change your computer clock to Monday, May 20th, generate a new key, and then publish it.
[32:37.330 --> 32:38.090]  Is that really all you have to do?
[32:38.190 --> 32:38.390]  Okay.
[32:38.850 --> 32:41.930]  There's other ways to do it, but that's the easy way, and I don't know why you'd choose a hard way.
[32:43.650 --> 32:55.710]  The other thing to note is that these queries are from the public key servers, so the only keys in there are the ones that have been intentionally published to that server.
[32:56.710 --> 33:02.630]  So it's possible that, again, someone involved in this story chose to publish their key there.
[33:02.770 --> 33:05.930]  It's possible any other number of things are possible.
[33:05.950 --> 33:09.430]  But if you want to communicate without having your keys in there, don't put them there.
[33:10.050 --> 33:15.270]  At what point in the key creation process does it ask you, do you want your key to be publicly readable?
[33:15.390 --> 33:16.770]  Because I don't recall ever seeing that question.
[33:17.530 --> 33:19.150]  It's not a question of publicly readable.
[33:19.150 --> 33:20.410]  It's a question of published.
[33:20.630 --> 33:20.790]  Okay.
[33:20.950 --> 33:25.850]  So if I write a newspaper article, I might or might not publish it on the web.
[33:26.590 --> 33:27.090]  I see.
[33:27.150 --> 33:32.490]  Even though if I print it out and show it to you, you could read it, whether it's on the web or not, to strain the analogy.
[33:32.490 --> 33:40.250]  So was this list obtained by somebody keying in PGP codes, or did they look something up and have it read back everything that matched that name?
[33:40.410 --> 33:42.850]  You can search it by name, by string.
[33:43.090 --> 33:43.270]  Okay.
[33:43.670 --> 33:56.590]  And the final point that I want to make is that PGP does not provide and should not be claimed to provide the sort of hiding who you talk to.
[33:56.590 --> 33:58.390]  It is not good for that.
[33:58.390 --> 34:00.030]  It is not designed for that.
[34:01.010 --> 34:02.710]  It doesn't claim to do that.
[34:02.870 --> 34:09.750]  So if you and I are communicating with PGP, the N-Eastropper, assuming we do it right, can't read what we're saying.
[34:09.870 --> 34:11.910]  But they'll still know that we're talking to each other.
[34:13.570 --> 34:22.350]  So finding an additional way to find that information is interesting, but it is not breaking any sort of security that PGP ever claimed to provide.
[34:22.350 --> 34:24.250]  So is something like Tor good for that?
[34:25.510 --> 34:29.810]  Tor can be a part of a solution to that problem.
[34:30.170 --> 34:30.270]  Okay.
[34:30.450 --> 34:34.050]  That's torproject.org, I believe, is the website to learn more about that.
[34:34.290 --> 34:35.370]  D-O-R is how you spell Tor.
[34:35.370 --> 34:35.630]  Right.
[34:35.910 --> 34:38.670]  And PGP, of course, you know, I don't know what the...
[34:38.670 --> 34:41.070]  Probably PGP.everything is their website, I would imagine.
[34:41.090 --> 34:46.110]  So PGP got bought by a company and they sell you an expensive version that is not worth using.
[34:46.290 --> 34:48.090]  The thing that you should...
[34:48.090 --> 34:53.190]  That you're probably using, if you say you're using PGP, is called the GNU Privacy Guard.
[34:53.670 --> 34:55.010]  And that's GPG.
[34:55.190 --> 34:55.610]  GPG.
[34:55.890 --> 34:56.090]  Oh, boy.
[34:56.150 --> 34:59.270]  Is it any wonder people tear their own heads off when they try to deal with this kind of thing?
[34:59.370 --> 35:13.310]  And if you want to use it and you want a slightly lower chance of tearing your head off, there's this thing called Enigmail, E-N-I-G-M-A-I-L, which is a plug-in for Thunderbird that is relatively easy to use.
[35:14.230 --> 35:15.890]  Relatively being the key word, but...
[35:15.890 --> 35:19.450]  When you're a three-year-old, I'm going to go in the other direction this time so I don't get in trouble.
[35:19.590 --> 35:28.070]  When you're a three-year-old can do this without any problem whatsoever, that's when we will have arrived at the stage where encryption and anonymity is the norm.
[35:28.170 --> 35:29.330]  And that's where we should be.
[35:29.330 --> 35:44.250]  I mean, again, I do want to remind people that PGP is valuable, but it does not provide protection at all from the sort of metadata collection that we've been talking about where the NSA is interested in who you are communicating with, but not necessarily what you say.
[35:44.450 --> 35:51.810]  Yeah, PGP, and that is basically akin to writing a letter out in a secret code that only you and the recipient know and then sending it through the mail.
[35:51.810 --> 35:55.530]  People are still going to be able to see the return address and the mailing address of the thing.
[35:56.710 --> 35:57.010]  Hey, Mike.
[35:57.450 --> 35:57.890]  Yeah.
[35:58.030 --> 36:04.870]  I just wanted to ask a little bit about key signing to address Emanuel's question.
[36:05.190 --> 36:18.590]  Could a spy or intelligence agency glean any useful information from when people generated their keys and who signed them and when?
[36:19.810 --> 36:20.330]  Yes.
[36:20.330 --> 36:20.350]  Yes.
[36:21.090 --> 36:22.810]  You want me to explain this, I guess.
[36:23.210 --> 36:23.310]  Yeah.
[36:24.230 --> 36:27.210]  So key signing is something that you can do.
[36:27.430 --> 36:36.750]  So if Emanuel generates a PGP key, then as we said before, there's no way to distinguish Emanuel actually doing this from someone claiming to be Emanuel.
[36:37.050 --> 36:40.990]  So what might happen is that I know Emanuel.
[36:41.170 --> 36:43.850]  We meet in person, you know, at the radio station every week.
[36:43.850 --> 36:51.910]  And so he might, I know it's him, he might tell me, this is my key, and then I might sign that with my key.
[36:52.110 --> 36:55.750]  So what I'm saying is I do, in fact, believe that this is Emanuel's key.
[36:55.750 --> 37:12.730]  And I can then publish that signature so someone who has previously met me and verified that I'm who I say I am can then, you know, know that I assure them that this is Emanuel's key.
[37:12.730 --> 37:18.430]  And if they believe that I know Emanuel, then they have some evidence here that this is actually Emanuel's key.
[37:19.130 --> 37:28.570]  It's weird because it is, it's, all these signatures are one way and there's not a whole lot of, you have to be very careful about them.
[37:29.310 --> 37:34.470]  Random people have been signing some of the keys we mentioned that were seen on Cryptome.
[37:34.470 --> 37:39.490]  And it's very careful, we have to be very careful about assuming that means anything.
[37:40.710 --> 37:48.670]  If we don't believe that these random people have any reason to have actually met, for example, Edward Snowden, then we should not credit their signatures.
[37:48.710 --> 37:58.330]  We know that the random people did, in fact, sign it, but we should be careful not to take that as evidence for anything beyond that.
[37:58.330 --> 38:04.670]  This can all get very complicated, unfortunately, and I fear I haven't done a good job explaining it.
[38:04.890 --> 38:07.970]  Well, it's as good a job as we're going to get tonight, so thanks for that.
[38:08.130 --> 38:14.110]  I wanted to play just a brief excerpt from this Snowden statement this past week.
[38:14.710 --> 38:18.290]  And then we have a couple other things to mention, and we're going to take some phone calls.
[38:18.390 --> 38:19.550]  But let's give a listen to this.
[38:19.670 --> 38:20.470]  It's courtesy of The Guardian.
[38:25.380 --> 38:26.820]  Okay, for some reason it's not working.
[38:27.000 --> 38:28.300]  Oh, because I didn't hit the right button.
[38:28.340 --> 38:28.640]  I'm sorry.
[38:28.760 --> 38:31.260]  Can somebody fill a few seconds while I go back?
[38:31.360 --> 38:41.400]  Do you know, I wonder if this is from the recent statement that Edward Snowden made in the airport, or from the earlier interview that is now being made public?
[38:41.500 --> 38:43.820]  This is, I believe, the statement in the airport.
[38:43.960 --> 38:44.980]  Let's listen for it.
[38:45.680 --> 38:47.720]  I did not seek to enrich myself.
[38:48.000 --> 38:50.000]  I did not seek to sell U.S.
[38:50.060 --> 38:50.380]  secrets.
[38:50.740 --> 38:55.160]  I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety.
[38:55.160 --> 39:01.160]  I announced today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum.
[39:01.160 --> 39:06.700]  I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future.
[39:06.700 --> 39:25.920]  I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted.
[39:26.580 --> 39:29.900]  I do intend to ask for political asylum in Russia.
[39:30.120 --> 39:55.880]  I do intend to ask for political asylum in Russia.
[40:03.740 --> 40:12.160]  I don't know how happy they are, the Russian government, to have to deal with this, but it seems like the safest place for him to be right now.
[40:12.160 --> 40:14.820]  Well, they could very easily stop dealing with it, so...
[40:14.820 --> 40:18.020]  Yeah, but, you know, how would that make them look in the eyes of the world?
[40:18.140 --> 40:24.180]  They would look weak, like they're capitulating to the U.S., and they'd have an awful lot of people angry at them that are not angry with them right now.
[40:25.280 --> 40:27.540]  A lot of people are already angry at the Russian government.
[40:27.660 --> 40:28.540]  It doesn't seem to bother them.
[40:28.640 --> 40:32.380]  Yeah, well, a lot more people would be, but, you know, somehow I don't see them doing that.
[40:33.120 --> 40:40.280]  Of course, there's always the worry that there could be a backdoor deal of some sort, or we have some people they want, and some kind of trade happens.
[40:40.280 --> 40:41.120]  Who knows?
[40:42.800 --> 40:46.860]  By this time next week, I'm sure something else dramatic will have happened as well.
[40:47.100 --> 40:51.040]  Okay, we're going to take phone calls at 212-650-5782 in just a moment.
[40:51.360 --> 41:00.400]  But first, I just wanted to focus on another story that took place here in New York, actually, this morning.
[41:01.140 --> 41:05.940]  And I'm sorry, you know, this web browser does not do what I want it to do.
[41:06.080 --> 41:08.380]  I lost the story that I had on there a second ago.
[41:08.380 --> 41:13.740]  So, but, okay, apparently, early this morning, a lot of people in New York were woken up by an Amber Alert.
[41:14.160 --> 41:15.100]  3.51 a.m.
[41:15.240 --> 41:15.760]  3.50.
[41:15.840 --> 41:16.600]  Were you one of them, Bernie?
[41:16.820 --> 41:19.620]  No, but I was reading this article in the New York Daily News.
[41:19.800 --> 41:20.940]  That's the article I just lost.
[41:20.940 --> 41:22.160]  Okay, why don't you tell us about it, then?
[41:22.380 --> 41:22.680]  Okay.
[41:23.840 --> 41:27.060]  Amber Alert wakes thousands of New Yorkers at 3.51 a.m.
[41:27.160 --> 41:30.080]  Wednesday morning, sparking debate about the emergency system.
[41:30.960 --> 41:45.020]  The Amber Alert was issued in the city, and I'm going to jump around in here, to all five boroughs twice, starting at 3.51 a.m., for just a third time in the past year.
[41:45.140 --> 41:46.340]  So they've done these Amber Alerts.
[41:46.420 --> 41:53.980]  And Amber Alert is an alert that goes out through various media to make people aware of a missing child.
[41:53.980 --> 42:06.540]  Okay, actually, I got the story back, and we have the exact message, 3.51 a.m., Amber Alert, Manhattan, New York Amber Alert update, and then a license plate number, and the kind of car that they're looking for, which is great.
[42:06.680 --> 42:10.740]  I mean, it's not great what happened, but it's great that there's a system where people can be on the lookout.
[42:10.900 --> 42:17.420]  Sometimes you see it posted on highways, and maybe as a scroll in a TV station or something like that.
[42:17.420 --> 42:24.640]  But in this particular case, people, apparently, without knowledge, have their phones waking them up, telling them about this kind of a thing.
[42:24.880 --> 42:26.780]  Now, is this something that people opt into?
[42:26.780 --> 42:29.140]  Is this something that's now mandatory on new phones?
[42:30.020 --> 42:31.480]  My phone obviously didn't do it.
[42:31.560 --> 42:33.420]  I don't even get text messages, and people send them to me.
[42:33.760 --> 42:35.900]  So I'm very curious how this works.
[42:35.980 --> 42:36.140]  Walter?
[42:36.600 --> 42:38.100]  I'm pretty sure it's an opt-out system.
[42:38.240 --> 42:42.160]  I think the last time we got a flash flood warning, I decided to turn it off.
[42:42.520 --> 42:46.700]  Okay, so it's the same basic program that did the flash flood a couple of weeks ago.
[42:46.700 --> 42:47.460]  I assume so.
[42:47.740 --> 42:48.080]  All right.
[42:48.300 --> 42:49.020]  Anyone else?
[42:49.240 --> 42:59.420]  Yeah, the messages in this system can be sort of tagged with a severity, and at least on my phone, you can customize which severities you wish to receive.
[42:59.440 --> 43:04.600]  So I have apparently extreme and severe threats turned on, but Amber Alerts turned off.
[43:05.340 --> 43:07.040]  What if it's an extreme Amber Alert?
[43:07.320 --> 43:08.060]  I don't know.
[43:08.340 --> 43:12.480]  There's this other level also, the presidential alert, that you cannot opt out of.
[43:12.680 --> 43:13.880]  I don't know what that's for.
[43:13.880 --> 43:14.220]  Okay, wait.
[43:14.340 --> 43:15.500]  This worries me.
[43:15.500 --> 43:18.640]  So you cannot opt out of the presidential alert at all?
[43:18.860 --> 43:21.240]  Can you opt out of the app in the first place?
[43:21.440 --> 43:22.200]  Can you delete it?
[43:22.440 --> 43:23.700]  On new phones, no.
[43:24.180 --> 43:24.580]  Wow.
[43:24.800 --> 43:31.260]  So you're saying that on every new phone, if Obama wants to say something to you, you can't stop him?
[43:31.740 --> 43:33.000]  Unless you turn your phone off.
[43:33.100 --> 43:34.360]  Or can they turn it back on?
[43:34.360 --> 43:38.040]  I mean, some phones you can modify so that they don't do it, but it's not supported.
[43:38.040 --> 43:38.680]  This is scary.
[43:38.860 --> 43:39.480]  This is scary.
[43:39.720 --> 43:42.460]  I mean, that's not what I signed up for, for sure.
[43:42.640 --> 43:42.860]  Walter?
[43:42.860 --> 43:46.220]  So if Bo gets lost, nobody will be able to sleep through that?
[43:46.660 --> 43:47.080]  No.
[43:47.460 --> 43:47.620]  Okay.
[43:47.900 --> 43:48.280]  Bernie?
[43:48.580 --> 44:04.160]  Well, I don't think any president in American history until now has literally had the power to make, you know, tens of millions of people instantaneously jump on their word at, you know, 24 at any time of the day or night.
[44:04.160 --> 44:09.660]  And I think that it's a, you know, there was the old emergency broadcast system and the emergency alert system after that.
[44:09.800 --> 44:16.560]  But that requires people to be awake and tuned into some sort of media, you know, mass media broadcast.
[44:16.940 --> 44:17.800]  This is different.
[44:18.120 --> 44:19.820]  People's phones are much more a personal device.
[44:19.840 --> 44:21.220]  You have them by your bed all night.
[44:21.220 --> 44:26.000]  You keep them on your person 24-7 for the most part, except you're from the shower or something.
[44:26.000 --> 44:36.940]  But I think this is an unprecedented amount of power where the president can reach out and literally vibrate something in our pants at will.
[44:37.700 --> 44:40.400]  I think they'd be very hesitant to use that.
[44:40.420 --> 44:44.980]  But the fact that there's such an infrastructure exists, it seems like it could be abused.
[44:45.280 --> 44:48.980]  Well, now, you know, we're pointing the finger at Obama saying he's the one doing this.
[44:49.060 --> 44:50.800]  But obviously he didn't come up with the system.
[44:50.960 --> 44:52.380]  He didn't say, this is what I want to do.
[44:52.380 --> 44:53.400]  So, who did?
[44:53.580 --> 44:54.920]  Who came up with this?
[44:55.040 --> 44:56.220]  What does this come out of?
[44:56.360 --> 44:58.540]  This was being planned during the George W.
[44:58.640 --> 44:59.140]  Bush administration.
[44:59.160 --> 45:00.880]  It took a long time to roll this out.
[45:00.980 --> 45:02.240]  This took years to roll out.
[45:02.280 --> 45:03.300]  But who's behind it?
[45:03.560 --> 45:04.780]  I mean, who runs it?
[45:04.880 --> 45:05.120]  Yeah.
[45:07.160 --> 45:09.460]  Well, the... that's a good question.
[45:09.560 --> 45:11.640]  I mean, there must be some agency or some organization.
[45:11.940 --> 45:12.140]  It's a consortium.
[45:12.580 --> 45:21.280]  It's... the Federal Emergency Management Agency, I think, is a key player in this, because their website, FEMA.gov, goes into a lot of details about these.
[45:21.380 --> 45:27.800]  It's called CMAS, also known as EAS-type messages, or W-E-A-type messages.
[45:27.840 --> 45:32.600]  They use different acronyms, but it explains which ones you can opt out of and how you can opt out of.
[45:32.620 --> 45:38.380]  And you can opt out of them by contacting your mobile phone provider, Verizon or AT&T or whoever, Sprint.
[45:39.180 --> 45:44.380]  But just the fact that you can't turn off the presidential CMAS alerts...
[45:45.420 --> 45:55.500]  If you remember, we were talking about the color... the whole color code thing back, you know, 10, 12 years ago, after 9-11, they came out with a five-color thing.
[45:56.000 --> 45:58.600]  And it was essentially designed to make people afraid.
[45:58.600 --> 46:02.360]  You could... if they announced it was an orange alert, you'd have to be heightened and red alert.
[46:02.520 --> 46:03.220]  You're really scared.
[46:04.340 --> 46:06.260]  It seems to be sort of an extension of that.
[46:06.380 --> 46:07.680]  They got rid of the color code thing.
[46:08.760 --> 46:10.380]  Do you have fears about this?
[46:10.920 --> 46:15.940]  Well, I have fears about anything being done without my okay on something that I own.
[46:16.240 --> 46:25.680]  A message coming across that alerts me to some condition based on somebody's opinion that this is something I need to drop everything and know about.
[46:25.740 --> 46:26.640]  Yeah, it can be abused.
[46:26.720 --> 46:27.180]  Absolutely.
[46:27.460 --> 46:28.540]  Absolutely can be abused.
[46:28.660 --> 46:33.180]  And on that subject, it can be abused by unauthorized people as well.
[46:33.180 --> 46:41.120]  And I'd like to ask, if we knew of a way to get in there and actually make that system send a message, what would you do?
[46:41.480 --> 46:42.380]  I'd send a message.
[46:42.520 --> 46:43.540]  I would send some kind of a message.
[46:43.620 --> 46:48.980]  But I'd send the kind of message that would hopefully wake people up to how these kinds of things could be used against them.
[46:49.000 --> 46:50.740]  I wouldn't hopefully say something stupid.
[46:50.740 --> 46:55.600]  But I'm sure if I did that, it would be some kind of class A felony and I would never see the light of day again.
[46:56.840 --> 46:57.240]  Yep.
[46:57.460 --> 46:58.260]  Just for sending a message.
[46:58.480 --> 47:01.960]  So yeah, obviously, these things are looked upon with great seriousness.
[47:02.100 --> 47:02.200]  Rob?
[47:02.340 --> 47:10.780]  But to play a little bit of devil's advocate here, I mean, past generations had the emergency broadcast system, the emergency alert system, which would ring a tone on everyone's TV, on everyone's radio.
[47:10.980 --> 47:17.820]  But that was in an era when people generally had the TV or the radio on during the day and people were within reach of these devices.
[47:18.440 --> 47:22.320]  And a lot of people don't watch television anymore or not in the traditional sense.
[47:22.520 --> 47:22.720]  Right.
[47:22.820 --> 47:23.940]  EBS was one thing.
[47:24.200 --> 47:27.580]  And it never really was abused, I don't think.
[47:27.880 --> 47:34.960]  But imagine if back then in those days, everybody's landline rang at the same time with a message from Washington, D.C.
[47:35.240 --> 47:38.560]  It would be looked upon very differently because then it's intrusive.
[47:38.640 --> 47:41.320]  Then it's something that is actually forcing itself upon you.
[47:41.440 --> 47:44.980]  And to say that you can't stop it is something that really scares me.
[47:44.980 --> 47:45.480]  All right.
[47:45.540 --> 47:48.380]  Our phone number is 212-650-5782.
[47:48.560 --> 47:50.800]  We have a few minutes left to take phone calls.
[47:50.960 --> 47:54.860]  Reminder, the station goes into fundraising mode next week for this summer fundraiser.
[47:54.980 --> 47:55.960]  That lasts for three weeks.
[47:56.340 --> 48:04.420]  I'm not sure how many weeks we're going to be on because a bunch of us are going to be traveling over to OM and it's going to be kind of hectic and crazy.
[48:04.580 --> 48:06.120]  So I believe we'll be on next week.
[48:06.200 --> 48:07.800]  I don't know about the weeks after that.
[48:07.920 --> 48:11.580]  So we will update people via the website at 2600.com.
[48:11.720 --> 48:12.220]  Let's take a phone call.
[48:12.640 --> 48:13.180]  Good evening.
[48:13.340 --> 48:14.240]  You're on off the hook.
[48:14.480 --> 48:16.120]  Yes, I'm Tom from the Bronx.
[48:16.240 --> 48:16.560]  Hi, Tom.
[48:16.800 --> 48:24.160]  I'd like to say that Snowden had a marriage proposal from that Russian spy, the woman.
[48:24.720 --> 48:27.160]  Yeah, I'm sure he took that very seriously.
[48:27.260 --> 48:30.320]  Well, I think he should hear wedding bells and marry the woman.
[48:30.700 --> 48:31.120]  All right.
[48:31.160 --> 48:33.700]  Well, that's good advice and I'm sure he'll take that to heart.
[48:33.840 --> 48:35.860]  But thanks for that.
[48:36.760 --> 48:39.360]  212-650-5782.
[48:39.700 --> 48:41.780]  And we're talking about going to OM.
[48:42.480 --> 48:43.480]  Mike, you're going to OM, right?
[48:43.760 --> 48:43.960]  Yes.
[48:44.320 --> 48:44.600]  All right.
[48:44.720 --> 48:47.160]  And who else do we know is going to OM?
[48:47.740 --> 48:48.560]  A lot of people.
[48:49.300 --> 48:50.120]  Bernie, are you going to OM?
[48:50.160 --> 48:50.820]  Thousands of our friends.
[48:51.080 --> 48:51.520]  I'm sorry?
[48:51.900 --> 48:52.820]  I am going to OM.
[48:52.820 --> 48:53.560]  You're going to OM, too.
[48:53.660 --> 48:54.780]  So Bernie is going to OM.
[48:54.840 --> 48:55.400]  I'm going to OM.
[48:56.160 --> 49:00.660]  I believe Juntz is going to OM, who's the guy who puts the show up on the website.
[49:01.700 --> 49:04.460]  And I think that's it for this particular circle of people.
[49:04.600 --> 49:06.100]  But Mike, you're going other places, too, right?
[49:06.480 --> 49:06.800]  Yes.
[49:07.220 --> 49:08.500]  Do you want to reveal places you're going to?
[49:08.700 --> 49:08.840]  No.
[49:09.000 --> 49:09.240]  Okay.
[49:09.540 --> 49:10.760]  So Mike's going on a secret mission.
[49:11.540 --> 49:12.300]  Bernie, how about you?
[49:13.480 --> 49:15.740]  I won't be around Europe much longer.
[49:15.880 --> 49:17.660]  A few days after OM, but then I'll be coming back.
[49:17.760 --> 49:19.660]  So it depends who I meet up.
[49:19.760 --> 49:26.220]  You know, what I typically do at these attacker conferences around is I meet up with interesting people and I decide to meet them where they live.
[49:26.620 --> 49:28.520]  They say, come back and we'll show you around here.
[49:28.800 --> 49:29.960]  And I've done that a few times.
[49:30.120 --> 49:34.640]  And it's a wonderful way to not only meet people, but to see places you never saw before.
[49:34.840 --> 49:35.660]  That's the way to do it.
[49:35.800 --> 49:37.920]  And that's Kyle and I will be doing the same thing.
[49:38.040 --> 49:41.300]  I know we're going to wind up in Ireland at some point, but various other places.
[49:41.440 --> 49:42.000]  We're open to suggestions.
[49:42.240 --> 49:52.740]  So if listeners out there would like some off the hookers to visit their neighborhood, well, write to us, OTH at 2600.com, and maybe we'll stop by your country or your village or what have you.
[49:53.440 --> 49:58.700]  But OM takes place the 31st of July through the 4th of August, which is coming up pretty quickly.
[49:58.700 --> 50:04.560]  And I believe you can still get tickets if you're listening to us in Europe or if you're really flying by the seat of your pants here in the U.S.
[50:04.760 --> 50:10.520]  and would like to take a trip overseas and meet some hackers and build a campground.
[50:10.920 --> 50:16.900]  I couldn't think of a better way to spend the summer, ohm2013.org on 2013.org.
[50:16.960 --> 50:17.320]  Yes, ma'am.
[50:17.320 --> 50:18.800]  People from other continents are invited, too.
[50:18.940 --> 50:19.600]  Yes, they are.
[50:20.040 --> 50:25.520]  Australia, Antarctica, Africa, South America, Asia, Asia, too, and the rest of Europe.
[50:26.060 --> 50:26.740]  Let's take another phone call.
[50:26.860 --> 50:27.160]  Good evening.
[50:27.320 --> 50:28.180]  You're on Off the Hook.
[50:30.620 --> 50:31.060]  Hiya.
[50:31.060 --> 50:35.340]  I think we still haven't taken the measure of NSA right.
[50:35.500 --> 50:41.420]  I was just rereading The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins.
[50:41.420 --> 50:58.240]  He was sent out by a subsidiary company to go out and suburb and bribe and manipulate and load huge debts onto countries, especially in South America, at the behest of NSA.
[50:58.280 --> 51:00.660]  They weren't just hoovering intel.
[51:00.660 --> 51:01.920]  They were meddling.
[51:02.500 --> 51:03.980]  What's the name of that book again?
[51:05.040 --> 51:07.480]  Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
[51:07.900 --> 51:08.260]  Okay.
[51:08.460 --> 51:09.300]  John Perkins.
[51:09.780 --> 51:10.080]  All right.
[51:10.180 --> 51:11.920]  Well, thanks for the suggestion.
[51:12.240 --> 51:15.000]  I don't know if you were suggesting that people read that, but I think a lot of people will now.
[51:15.420 --> 51:16.620]  And thanks for your call.
[51:16.920 --> 51:20.680]  Again, phone number 212-650-5782.
[51:21.580 --> 51:30.240]  So again, because we're going away and because we're going into fundraising mode, I guess this is the last few minutes we can take phone calls, at least until sometime in August.
[51:30.740 --> 51:33.120]  So take advantage of that, I guess.
[51:33.340 --> 51:35.040]  212-650-5782.
[51:35.300 --> 51:38.260]  We only have one incoming phone line, so we have to wait for the circuits to reset.
[51:38.700 --> 51:40.100]  Here's a new phone call.
[51:40.180 --> 51:40.460]  Good evening.
[51:40.600 --> 51:41.180]  You're on off the hook.
[51:41.880 --> 51:42.280]  Hi.
[51:42.540 --> 51:43.820]  My name's Frank from Brooklyn.
[51:44.140 --> 51:44.640]  Hi, Frank.
[51:45.700 --> 51:48.900]  I just wanted to say, you know, my phone sends me all the time.
[51:49.280 --> 51:51.940]  Anytime there's a storm now, my phone goes off.
[51:52.040 --> 51:53.620]  It might be like just a thunderstorm.
[51:54.260 --> 51:55.900]  And this has happened several times.
[51:56.860 --> 52:01.600]  And then even this morning, I woke up and, you know, I had an AMBRO alert on my phone.
[52:02.380 --> 52:11.800]  And it was a child that was abducted by her mother, which I feel like that should be a police matter maybe, but I don't know if I need my phone telling me when a mother kidnaps her own child from the government.
[52:12.040 --> 52:12.640]  It's just like...
[52:12.640 --> 52:14.260]  Yeah, that does seem kind of strange.
[52:14.400 --> 52:19.380]  But what better way to mobilize an entire city to track down that mother and go chasing in the streets?
[52:19.500 --> 52:30.920]  And it's just really crazy to think that that's actually the power that the government is now taking where they can wake up an entire city unless people figure out ways to either just disable their phone completely or disable that app.
[52:32.000 --> 52:32.460]  It's... yeah.
[52:32.640 --> 52:34.100]  And every thunderstorm, really?
[52:34.220 --> 52:35.220]  Every thunderstorm, you get an alert?
[52:35.380 --> 52:36.740]  I guess you're on the lowest setting.
[52:36.880 --> 52:43.520]  I've done at least three in this last season of... I mean, we have had some wacky weather, but it's like emergency stand doors.
[52:44.580 --> 52:47.240]  It's just... it's too... and the phone beeps.
[52:47.320 --> 52:49.080]  It makes like this horrible, shrill noise.
[52:49.240 --> 52:50.460]  It's like, hey, you're going to die.
[52:50.460 --> 52:51.180]  Yeah, yeah.
[52:52.580 --> 52:54.320]  Well, that's a great way to get somebody's attention.
[52:54.520 --> 52:55.900]  Thanks for the info on that.
[52:55.980 --> 52:58.580]  But yeah, I guess a lot of New York City was woken up this morning.
[52:58.640 --> 52:59.980]  Yeah, you can turn these levels off.
[53:00.180 --> 53:06.360]  None of these arise, I guess, to the level of the president personally intervening to wake you up, but...
[53:06.360 --> 53:10.440]  Well, on the phone... okay, see, I don't have a new phone, but on the phone, what is it called?
[53:10.560 --> 53:11.420]  What is this app called?
[53:11.500 --> 53:12.640]  Does it have a name of some sort?
[53:12.780 --> 53:13.540]  Can you see it?
[53:15.240 --> 53:17.640]  It's called Cell Broadcast Settings.
[53:18.180 --> 53:19.380]  That's what it is, Cell Broadcast Settings.
[53:19.380 --> 53:27.000]  On my phone, which is, of course, going to be different for everyone's phone, you go to Settings, and then Cell Broadcast Settings, and you can customize it from there.
[53:27.100 --> 53:28.980]  And what are the choices when you go there?
[53:29.100 --> 53:32.380]  You can just basically turn off everything except the presidential one?
[53:32.460 --> 53:33.240]  Does it even mention that?
[53:34.060 --> 53:43.080]  The presidential one is hidden down at the bottom, but extreme threats, severe threats, and amber alerts, as I said before, are my choices.
[53:44.200 --> 53:45.640]  You choose to get amber alerts?
[53:45.800 --> 53:46.820]  No, I choose not to get amber alerts.
[53:46.820 --> 53:47.060]  Oh, okay.
[53:47.300 --> 53:49.200]  Now you say the presidential one is hidden at the bottom?
[53:49.300 --> 53:49.840]  What does it say about it?
[53:49.840 --> 53:53.280]  Well, because it's not a setting, so you can't turn it on and off in the other settings.
[53:53.580 --> 53:57.220]  And there's this thing about an opt-out dialogue.
[53:57.500 --> 54:04.220]  And this is actually a developer-only text, so maybe we shouldn't be talking about it to people who aren't developers.
[54:04.220 --> 54:04.700]  I don't know.
[54:04.700 --> 54:05.880]  I'm sure they want to know.
[54:06.100 --> 54:07.700]  They want to know how to turn these things off.
[54:07.700 --> 54:11.220]  So the first time you get one of these notifications, and again, this is totally phone-specific.
[54:11.220 --> 54:16.120]  I don't want to say what my phone does is relevant to people who have different phones.
[54:16.260 --> 54:21.840]  But the first time you get one of these notices, you'll get a message box saying, do you want to get more?
[54:22.140 --> 54:23.560]  Of course I want to get more.
[54:23.660 --> 54:28.700]  And that dialogue box will not appear if you get a presidential alert because you can't opt out of those.
[54:29.160 --> 54:31.420]  Of course, we don't know because they never sent one, have they?
[54:31.420 --> 54:34.820]  Well, it says right here, it won't show the dialogue after a presidential alert.
[54:34.820 --> 54:36.400]  Oh, it actually mentions that in the text.
[54:36.540 --> 54:37.440]  Yeah, that's where it mentions it.
[54:37.480 --> 54:39.680]  But there has never been a presidential alert sent, right?
[54:39.860 --> 54:40.660]  I don't believe so.
[54:40.720 --> 54:41.740]  Voltaire, your phone says something different?
[54:42.000 --> 54:46.140]  Yeah, on iOS, I see nothing about presidential alerts.
[54:46.240 --> 54:48.020]  I only see Amber Alert and emergency alerts.
[54:48.120 --> 54:48.940]  I've turned both off.
[54:49.160 --> 54:51.860]  You also see nothing about the NSA reading everything on your phone.
[54:52.160 --> 54:52.440]  No.
[54:52.640 --> 54:54.420]  That's under a different category.
[54:54.640 --> 54:54.860]  Yeah.
[54:55.220 --> 54:56.640]  There's some hidden things in iOS.
[54:56.860 --> 54:57.420]  We all know that.
[54:57.920 --> 54:58.280]  All right.
[54:58.360 --> 55:00.300]  We had some calls, but they've since disappeared.
[55:00.300 --> 55:07.160]  So, anyone calling back in, 212-650-5782, you could be the last voice to be heard on this subject for a few weeks.
[55:08.900 --> 55:09.940]  You know, sure.
[55:10.020 --> 55:10.140]  Okay.
[55:10.200 --> 55:10.500]  Here we go.
[55:10.740 --> 55:11.240]  Good evening.
[55:11.420 --> 55:12.260]  You're on Off the Hook.
[55:13.480 --> 55:14.160]  Speak up, please.
[55:14.800 --> 55:15.280]  Okay, great.
[55:15.520 --> 55:16.720]  I tried calling a couple of times.
[55:16.860 --> 55:18.860]  It was a strange message saying the person wasn't available.
[55:19.100 --> 55:20.560]  Yeah, well, now we are available, and here we are.
[55:21.180 --> 55:21.760]  Great show.
[55:22.020 --> 55:22.200]  Thank you.
[55:23.220 --> 55:25.020]  One quick one before I get into my comment.
[55:25.900 --> 55:30.040]  When is the next show you did at the Penn Station?
[55:30.640 --> 55:31.000]  Okay.
[55:31.000 --> 55:33.980]  I think what you're talking about are the conferences that we do at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
[55:34.500 --> 55:34.860]  Right.
[55:34.960 --> 55:35.080]  Right.
[55:35.200 --> 55:36.600]  It would be great if we did it in Penn Station.
[55:37.320 --> 55:39.660]  Well, we have those conferences every two years.
[55:40.080 --> 55:43.840]  And if, theoretically, we were to have another one, it would take place next summer.
[55:44.620 --> 55:46.660]  Okay, but why wouldn't you possibly have one?
[55:46.860 --> 55:58.640]  Oh, I mean, all kinds of things can go wrong between now and next summer, but assuming everything, you know, assuming the country survives and we're all still walking around free, I don't see why we wouldn't do another one.
[55:59.260 --> 55:59.580]  Right.
[55:59.720 --> 56:00.960]  That's all I'm allowed to say at this point.
[56:01.700 --> 56:01.940]  Right.
[56:02.140 --> 56:06.580]  The hacker comment by the president, though, he said, I'm not going to check down this hacker.
[56:06.980 --> 56:13.060]  I thought that was interesting that you guys had like a hacker show, but the guy didn't really hack into anything.
[56:13.240 --> 56:15.780]  He really was on the inside and is letting people know.
[56:16.020 --> 56:18.040]  Yeah, he was basically a whistleblower.
[56:18.220 --> 56:25.980]  But I think he had a lot of hacker values as far as getting information out, sharing information, not profiting from it.
[56:26.840 --> 56:27.280]  Yeah.
[56:27.480 --> 56:31.040]  So I would take that as a compliment, being called a hacker in that regard.
[56:31.940 --> 56:32.200]  Right.
[56:32.380 --> 56:40.020]  But what do you think that he could have possibly information on that if he were to, unfortunately, die or something?
[56:40.020 --> 56:44.100]  What do you think could be in that information?
[56:44.180 --> 56:46.080]  Or what do you think that they were up to?
[56:46.920 --> 56:48.920]  And why wouldn't he release that now?
[56:49.020 --> 56:53.960]  Why is he using that just so that they won't kill him or they won't abduct him?
[56:54.920 --> 56:55.660]  It's a good question.
[56:55.740 --> 56:56.760]  Voltaire, do you have something to say about this?
[56:56.840 --> 56:58.540]  Yeah, it's actually pretty anticlimactic.
[56:58.680 --> 57:02.660]  It would be the names of individual, like, secret agents or stuff like that, most likely.
[57:02.900 --> 57:07.420]  So it wouldn't be that interesting to the average American, but it might be put their lives in jeopardy.
[57:07.440 --> 57:12.240]  Or maybe it's stuff that he hasn't himself had a chance to go through and he doesn't know what it is.
[57:12.360 --> 57:13.700]  He just has everything together.
[57:14.200 --> 57:18.160]  And you kill him and it just all gets released and someone else has to deal with it.
[57:18.220 --> 57:18.540]  That too.
[57:18.680 --> 57:18.900]  Yeah.
[57:19.140 --> 57:20.160]  So who knows?
[57:20.280 --> 57:20.500]  Rob?
[57:20.640 --> 57:26.760]  Yeah, it's important to note that this is no longer the Pentagon Papers era of having to carry away file folders with every document that you want on them.
[57:26.860 --> 57:32.220]  Like the USB keys that most of us have in our pocket these days can literally hold thousands, maybe millions of documents.
[57:32.600 --> 57:40.360]  So he might have piles and piles of things yet to go through from whatever his source was, or he might have just put things aside to look at later.
[57:40.540 --> 57:40.780]  All right.
[57:40.860 --> 57:41.820]  Well, we're gonna have to leave it there.
[57:42.060 --> 57:49.100]  I want to thank people for their calls and you can continue communicating with us by writing to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[57:49.300 --> 57:53.360]  And we'll be happy to read your letters, maybe even on the air.
[57:54.820 --> 57:57.940]  Yes, we'll see you next week in one form or another here on WBAI.
[57:58.000 --> 57:59.040]  Stay tuned for The Personal Computer Show.
[57:59.220 --> 57:59.800]  Have a good night.
[58:03.930 --> 58:09.550]  We are amazed but not amused by all the things you say that you do.
[58:13.010 --> 58:18.950]  Though much concern but not involved with decisions that are made by you.
[58:21.870 --> 58:26.110]  But we are sick and tired of hearing your song.
[58:26.930 --> 58:30.670]  Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong.
[58:31.390 --> 58:38.070]  Cause if you really want to hear our views, you haven't done nothing.
[58:46.250 --> 58:51.690]  It's not too cool to be reader cute, but you brought this up on yourself.
[58:53.050 --> 58:54.130]  Sing it, Stevie.
[58:55.410 --> 58:58.350]  The world is tired of pacified.
[58:58.650 --> 59:01.690]  We want the truth and nothing else.
[59:02.130 --> 59:02.330]  Yeah.
[59:03.470 --> 59:04.010]  Yeah.
[59:04.770 --> 59:08.730]  And we are sick and tired of hearing your song.
[59:09.490 --> 59:13.350]  Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong.
[59:14.210 --> 59:20.490]  Cause if you really want to hear our views, you haven't done nothing.
[59:43.930 --> 59:51.780]  We're sick and tired of hearing your song.
[59:51.800 --> 59:52.160]  And we're sick and tired of hearing your songs.
[01:00:15.700 --> 01:00:17.880]  Yeah, you haven't done nothing.
[01:00:17.880 --> 01:00:19.380]  That's what Stevie Wonder said.
[01:00:19.380 --> 01:00:23.080]  And he's refusing to play any more concerts in Florida.
[01:00:23.300 --> 01:00:26.180]  And that's because of the Trayvon Martin case.
[01:00:26.340 --> 01:00:27.220]  But you know what?
[01:00:27.640 --> 01:00:29.640]  Who is not used to this?
[01:00:29.740 --> 01:00:30.500]  This is America.
[01:00:30.500 --> 01:00:32.280]  That's how we do things in America.
[01:00:32.900 --> 01:00:35.060]  You're able to kill African Americans.
[01:00:35.820 --> 01:00:37.340]  That's just how we do.