[00:00.000 --> 00:06.200]  So as a former teacher that I was, I know that history is about living that process.
[00:06.420 --> 00:21.860]  And I'm so proud that Bill de Blasio is someone that was part of the movement to get their freedom on Nelson Mandela, that joined the solidarity movement, going to Central America, fighting for social justice, fighting against police brutality.
[00:22.180 --> 00:25.980]  Someone committed to invest, make the right investment.
[00:25.980 --> 00:31.200]  And social justice is what Rodriguez says de Blasio will bring to New York City.
[00:31.340 --> 00:33.380]  De Blasio was able to make a case.
[00:34.080 --> 00:37.840]  And the time is just about 7.01 p.m.
[00:38.380 --> 00:43.440]  You're listening to WBAI 99.5 FM here in New York.
[00:43.440 --> 00:46.820]  And it's time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
[00:52.260 --> 00:56.760]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:57.720 --> 00:59.700]  I cut myself while shaving.
[01:00.260 --> 01:02.300]  Now I can't make a call.
[01:03.000 --> 01:05.040]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:07.470 --> 01:10.520]  But from Diddly Bom, for the best, it's back from worst.
[01:11.200 --> 01:13.020]  I hope that's understood.
[01:13.190 --> 01:14.020]  From Diddly Bom!
[01:23.860 --> 01:25.480]  A very good evening to you.
[01:25.760 --> 01:27.160]  This program is Off the Hook.
[01:27.300 --> 01:27.680]  Rob T.
[01:27.840 --> 01:28.820]  Firefly here with you.
[01:29.000 --> 01:30.800]  I am joined in the studio by Mike.
[01:31.000 --> 01:31.400]  Hi there.
[01:31.760 --> 01:32.540]  And by Alex.
[01:32.800 --> 01:33.300]  Good evening.
[01:33.820 --> 01:35.640]  And on the phone by Bernie S.
[01:36.220 --> 01:37.560]  Greetings from Philadelphia.
[01:39.520 --> 01:42.880]  And there's been a bit of a lot going on this past week.
[01:43.060 --> 01:47.840]  We're back to our regularly scheduled and formed program after some fundraising.
[01:48.060 --> 01:51.700]  I want to thank everyone who helped us out, who contributed.
[01:51.880 --> 01:55.900]  You still can if you go to WBAI.org and follow the links to support Off the Hook.
[01:56.220 --> 02:01.040]  It's still a very important thing to do with the future of things around here, as uncertain as they are.
[02:01.040 --> 02:04.740]  I guess we should let our listeners know that Emmanuel is unwell.
[02:04.940 --> 02:06.420]  He's got the flu or something.
[02:06.580 --> 02:10.280]  He hasn't been captured by the government or anything like that.
[02:10.420 --> 02:11.400]  That's what he claims.
[02:11.440 --> 02:12.620]  Though I'm not sure.
[02:12.680 --> 02:20.680]  I think the message seemed a little like his voice chopped up and reassembled in the right order to sound reassuring.
[02:20.820 --> 02:21.860]  But I don't think...
[02:21.860 --> 02:23.420]  I'm not too comfortable with it.
[02:23.760 --> 02:24.900]  I just got an email.
[02:24.900 --> 02:26.060]  They're a lot easier to forge.
[02:26.260 --> 02:27.600]  So there was nothing suspicious.
[02:28.520 --> 02:33.020]  Okay, well, let's get right into a couple of things that have been going on.
[02:33.900 --> 02:43.900]  Things developing in the case of Glenn Greenwald, whose partner was detained when he tried to carry documents from former U.S.
[02:44.020 --> 02:46.540]  intelligence contractor Edward Snowden through a London airport in August.
[02:47.820 --> 02:49.220]  This article from Reuters.
[02:49.380 --> 02:58.860]  Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was detained in question for nine hours by British authorities at Heathrow on August 18th, when he landed there from Berlin to change planes for a flight to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
[02:59.120 --> 03:00.920]  We talked about this when it happened.
[03:01.240 --> 03:05.060]  Now, there was a court hearing this week for Miranda's lawsuit.
[03:05.900 --> 03:15.120]  A document called a port circulation sheet was read into the record prepared by Scotland Yard in consultation with MI5 and I think James Bond and people like that.
[03:16.260 --> 03:23.300]  According to the document, intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity, which has the potential to act against the interests of U.K.
[03:23.440 --> 03:24.120]  national security.
[03:24.520 --> 03:31.580]  So this is now the British powers that be going on the record as saying they think the dude's a spy.
[03:32.560 --> 03:36.520]  Not only that, Rob, the U.K.
[03:36.580 --> 03:44.320]  officials are saying that Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was involved in espionage and terrorism.
[03:44.660 --> 03:47.520]  Yet, months later, they still haven't charged him with anything.
[03:47.740 --> 03:48.780]  Well, he's not in...
[03:48.780 --> 03:49.700]  So what's the deal with that?
[03:50.120 --> 03:51.100]  He's not in the U.K.
[03:51.120 --> 03:51.700]  to be charged.
[03:51.700 --> 04:01.740]  But it's also extremely clear that he is not, in fact, involved in espionage and certainly not involved in anything that could remotely be reasonably described as terrorism.
[04:02.660 --> 04:07.280]  But, you know, the interesting thing about the word terrorism is it doesn't mean a whole lot.
[04:07.440 --> 04:14.740]  So I guess maybe the truth, you know, the exposure of the truth does strike terror into the hearts of some British government officials.
[04:14.740 --> 04:19.340]  So they're easily terrorized when we learn what's going on.
[04:19.460 --> 04:22.360]  So they charge people with crimes like this.
[04:22.500 --> 04:29.800]  And they know, they must know full well that a terrorism charge would never, you know, stick.
[04:29.820 --> 04:46.340]  If they actually arrested Miranda and tried to charge him with terrorism or anything like that, whatever the British equivalent is, it would never stick because he hasn't done anything except carry a USB stick from Berlin to Brazil.
[04:47.080 --> 04:49.420]  But they don't have to make it stick.
[04:49.660 --> 04:50.920]  They can detain people.
[04:51.320 --> 04:56.760]  And, you know, this is exactly the sort of abuse of these powers that we talk about.
[04:56.960 --> 04:59.220]  And the governments always say, you know, just trust us.
[04:59.400 --> 05:03.880]  We'd never use these powers on anyone who isn't Muslim or something like that.
[05:03.880 --> 05:09.920]  And, you know, it's no fair to the Muslims, but it's not, you know, it just doesn't hold up.
[05:10.560 --> 05:32.000]  And another thing I think about this that's very interesting and also in a sense not surprising is that I think, well, of course they claim that he was somehow associated with terrorism because that's what the particular law under which he was detained gives the British authorities the right to detain people who are associated with basically only terrorism.
[05:32.240 --> 05:41.520]  This Schedule 7 of Britain's Terrorism Act basically is only supposed to give authorities the right to question persons who are associated with terrorism.
[05:41.720 --> 05:45.940]  So they're obviously taking great pains, I think, to justify their actions.
[05:46.060 --> 05:48.360]  This doesn't necessarily surprise me at all.
[05:48.360 --> 06:11.800]  I think, though, that they are really stretching the definition, obviously, of what a terrorist and terrorism is, but it also, I think, is somewhat logical and cogent to take the position that if he's taking classified documents outside of the UK that could harm British national interests,
[06:12.060 --> 06:15.720]  then that's something that they would have a right to be concerned about.
[06:15.720 --> 06:22.380]  But I think that they're misusing the law in a manner which is a little bit unsettling for me.
[06:22.680 --> 06:28.700]  You know, even accepting that, it's clearly not terrorism by any reasonable definition of the term.
[06:29.460 --> 06:35.000]  Carrying documents, government documents, government-produced documents from one place to another.
[06:35.520 --> 06:42.040]  You know, I understand maybe why the GCHQ is annoyed, but this is clearly not terrorism.
[06:42.040 --> 06:53.140]  And it shows, you know, why oversight is necessary, because they define terrorism so broadly that David Miranda falls into that definition.
[06:54.160 --> 07:00.900]  And in this case, we know about it, because they actually, you know, detained him, and then they let him go so he can talk about it.
[07:00.900 --> 07:07.440]  But when they detain, I'm sure they're detaining David Miranda's data, but we don't know about it.
[07:07.520 --> 07:16.940]  So we can't argue that it's wrong without these leaked documents and without some more effective form of oversight.
[07:17.040 --> 07:18.800]  Well, I think that's absolutely right.
[07:18.800 --> 07:24.180]  But also, the flip side of that is, if we don't know what's in these documents, we don't know how harmful they could actually be.
[07:25.740 --> 07:43.180]  And I think what they're doing, and attenuating this definition of terrorism, they're really, I think, stretching the effects of what David Miranda was doing, so that if it was the case that these documents did, in fact, get out to the public, then that could have some kind of deleterious effect in their ability to fight terrorism.
[07:43.180 --> 07:45.640]  I think that's what they're concerned about.
[07:45.680 --> 07:52.900]  And that's, I think, the angle by which they're trying to rope him under this terrorism, the Section 7 of the Terrorism Act in Britain.
[07:54.180 --> 07:59.520]  I think the other side of what you're saying is that if we don't know what these documents are, we don't necessarily know how harmful they could be.
[08:00.880 --> 08:03.420]  So it's tricky, yeah, but there is no oversight here.
[08:04.180 --> 08:07.100]  And I don't think that we're ever going to find out what's on these documents.
[08:07.360 --> 08:27.520]  But even assuming maximum harmfulness for these documents, whatever the worst case you can think of, and you're imagined might be wilder than mine, so maybe you can think of some really terrible thing that could be in these documents, it still doesn't strike me as even vaguely reasonable to define carrying them from one place to another as terrorism.
[08:27.700 --> 08:31.100]  Does the word terrorism even have a reasonable definition anymore?
[08:31.860 --> 08:37.260]  I think we're going on a dozen years of it being cited to mean anything from, I don't agree with you to, I don't like your face.
[08:37.900 --> 08:44.080]  I think it adequately describes a lot of things that the United States government has been doing for a very long time.
[08:45.600 --> 08:47.320]  But maybe that's another thing.
[08:47.520 --> 08:52.300]  Speaking of this oversight and stuff, isn't Senator Dianne Feinstein, U.S.
[08:52.360 --> 09:03.260]  Senator Feinstein, isn't she claiming there needs to be a more oversight and review of U.S.'s surveillance activities through NSA and CIA?
[09:03.260 --> 09:05.280]  Like, what's she been doing all this time?
[09:05.380 --> 09:07.160]  Yeah, exactly, Bernie.
[09:07.500 --> 09:09.160]  Yeah, this is very funny to me.
[09:09.240 --> 09:16.200]  I mean, I think this is a perfect segue into this as well, because, yeah, this is what Dianne Feinstein remarked about last week.
[09:16.340 --> 09:23.480]  I mean, she is, I'm sure everybody knows, the California Democrat in charge of intelligence oversight on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
[09:23.800 --> 09:35.680]  And she basically denounced the U.S.'s monitoring of phone calls of the leaders of our allies and claimed, in the sense that, basically, such sensitive operations should actually require presidential approval.
[09:36.040 --> 09:44.640]  She also claimed that her committee would be initiating, quote, a major review into all intelligence collection programs.
[09:44.760 --> 09:45.820]  Well, exactly.
[09:46.000 --> 09:48.000]  I mean, I think this just makes your point, Bernie.
[09:48.020 --> 09:51.400]  I mean, am I wrong in thinking that this was actually her job in the first place?
[09:51.540 --> 09:55.680]  Is this kind of like, you know, when somebody falls asleep in class and then is called upon?
[09:55.680 --> 09:58.400]  And you wake up and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, I'm here.
[09:58.560 --> 09:59.560]  I'm ready to go.
[09:59.720 --> 10:01.060]  I'm ready for a major review.
[10:01.380 --> 10:14.280]  I'm not the first one to point this out, but I think it can be very summarized, you know, very, very shortly by saying that Dianne Feinstein clearly cares more about Angela Merkel's privacy than she does about the privacy of her own constituents.
[10:14.920 --> 10:23.300]  And I don't know, you know, I don't think Angela Merkel voted for her, so I don't know how she expects to be reelected on that platform, but it's crazy.
[10:25.680 --> 10:36.180]  Dianne Feinstein really wishes people wouldn't spy on her, and I guess she identifies with Angela Merkel, maybe, but she doesn't identify with, you know, millions or all of America.
[10:37.860 --> 10:40.040]  It's a little bit unsettling, I think, yeah.
[10:40.140 --> 10:45.940]  But, you know, it's this whole notion that people were asleep at the wheel in the Oversights Committee, that's what really bothers me.
[10:46.000 --> 10:59.120]  And I think, you know, and I've said this before, that I think ultimately our disagreement with the surveillance programs is not necessarily a legal issue, but is a political issue, and that there ought to be political consequences for the people that were asleep at the switch.
[10:59.320 --> 11:06.140]  It was their job to engage in meaningful oversight of these programs, and they let it lapse and fall by the wayside.
[11:06.840 --> 11:17.180]  And I think, just going back to the issue of scrutiny, if you're going to have something like effective scrutiny at this point, you really just have to stop the growth of these programs.
[11:17.400 --> 11:22.820]  Because without stopping the growth, you can't necessarily have effective scrutiny.
[11:23.020 --> 11:34.860]  When growth outpaces scrutiny, all the checks and balances in the world, even the most effective committee on this planet, will not be effective in providing any kind of meaningful oversight.
[11:36.280 --> 11:40.920]  You know, there's one change that has actually happened recently with the U.S.
[11:41.100 --> 11:41.660]  surveillance.
[11:42.680 --> 11:55.260]  The British Independent just published a really interesting article with photographs of an NSA DCHQ listening post in Berlin.
[11:55.920 --> 12:01.800]  It was on the top of some hotel building, or at least the name of a hotel is plastered on the top of the building.
[12:01.820 --> 12:10.020]  It's one of these unusual cylindrical radomes, like the one on top of Tufelsberg in West Berlin, where the NSA had a facility for decades during the Cold War.
[12:10.020 --> 12:24.000]  But anyway, some news organization, like the local TV channel, took some infrared photographs of this radome on top of this building right before the Angela Merkel story broke.
[12:24.540 --> 12:27.580]  And right after the story broke, it went dark.
[12:27.620 --> 12:29.540]  Like, it was no longer emitting any heat.
[12:29.980 --> 12:33.800]  So they shut all that stuff down right away.
[12:34.180 --> 12:37.480]  It'll probably turn it on again soon, but I just thought it was kind of amusing.
[12:37.480 --> 12:40.300]  You can see these before and after photos like, whoops, we got caught.
[12:40.500 --> 12:41.940]  We got to lay low for a few days.
[12:42.720 --> 12:51.740]  I do think, though, there's another interesting thing about the fallout from this Merkel spying and, you know, spying on other European leaders.
[12:53.360 --> 12:59.100]  Merkel is also not really that offended that Americans are spying on normal German citizens.
[12:59.100 --> 13:02.160]  She's really mostly annoyed that they're spying on her.
[13:02.160 --> 13:18.240]  And I think that Xi in particular and other European leaders and also Brazilian leaders and other leaders throughout the world are really not as much of an ally as we might wish they were.
[13:18.380 --> 13:21.280]  They really want to stop U.S.
[13:21.500 --> 13:25.880]  spying on, you know, on the powerful in the rest of the world.
[13:25.980 --> 13:27.140]  But they don't mind so much U.S.
[13:27.220 --> 13:29.380]  spying on the normal people of the world.
[13:29.380 --> 13:32.700]  And they especially don't mind, you know, domestic surveillance.
[13:33.000 --> 13:34.840]  So we've talked before about Brazil.
[13:34.960 --> 13:37.080]  Brazil is really angry that the U.S.
[13:37.100 --> 13:39.620]  is spying on the Internet traffic of all kinds of people.
[13:39.820 --> 13:46.120]  And their solution is to centralize everything in Brazil so that the Brazilian government will have more ability to spy on it.
[13:46.200 --> 13:56.620]  And we really have to be careful, I think, of politicians who express anger at this mass spying and then their solution is just some slightly different form of mass spying.
[13:57.500 --> 13:59.080]  And there's so much going on in this field.
[13:59.380 --> 14:11.060]  There's been another story that came out earlier today about former NSA codebreaker William Binney, who is now saying he tried to tell people about government spying some time ago and people just weren't listening.
[14:12.360 --> 14:13.040]  Let's see.
[14:13.200 --> 14:19.160]  William Binney was a mathematician and codebreaker who actually worked at the NSA to work on top-secret projects.
[14:19.500 --> 14:24.140]  And quoting him, he would say, he says they were mapping the relationships of everybody in the world.
[14:25.480 --> 14:32.060]  And so Binney and a small team were creating a computer program constantly scanning data from cell phones and emails aimed at finding terrorist activity.
[14:33.140 --> 14:43.380]  And quoting Binney, the idea was how can you look into terabytes of data going by every minute and see what's important in that data that you need to pull out to look at and analyze to figure out the intentions, capabilities, of potential enemies in the world.
[14:43.380 --> 14:51.200]  But he says the government was spying on average Americans and he was offended by this and resigned in protest.
[14:51.500 --> 14:57.600]  And that's when problems apparently really started for him in 2007 where he says he was raided by the FBI.
[14:58.360 --> 15:03.120]  Quoting him, they pushed their way in with guns drawn and pushed my son out of the way and came upstairs and pointed guns at my wife and me.
[15:03.200 --> 15:05.880]  They took our computers and all the electronic equipment we had.
[15:07.220 --> 15:15.440]  And this was a result of the government thinking Binney overstepped the boundaries and putting the country at risk by coming forward and exposing some of the things he thought were wrong.
[15:16.120 --> 15:20.540]  And wasn't Bill Binney one of our keynote speakers at the HOPE conference last year?
[15:20.540 --> 15:20.640]  Indeed.
[15:20.940 --> 15:23.720]  William Binney was a keynote speaker at HOPE last year.
[15:23.860 --> 15:28.900]  And yeah, he talked about a lot of this exact sort of thing while he was at HOPE.
[15:29.780 --> 15:41.160]  So yeah, this is some of the same things that Snowden's leaks talk about and that are really, for the conversation to be getting going now when people like Binney have been talking about this for years.
[15:42.140 --> 15:48.660]  It's still, I find it very interesting that things have taken so long to break into the public sphere, as it were.
[15:48.720 --> 15:49.200]  What do you guys think?
[15:50.020 --> 15:50.940]  I mean, I think...
[15:50.940 --> 15:51.320]  Oh, go ahead.
[15:51.480 --> 15:55.580]  I think it just goes to show that Snowden, what Snowden did was exactly the right approach.
[15:55.720 --> 15:57.440]  The internal oversight doesn't work.
[15:58.460 --> 16:05.900]  And, you know, even if you think the NSA is like sort of okay, which, you know, I think it's fairly clear if you listen to me, I don't think that.
[16:05.900 --> 16:11.300]  But even if you do think that, the oversight was not happening.
[16:11.740 --> 16:20.240]  The internal whistleblower program was not doing anything because the NSA was behaving precisely as it was designed to operate.
[16:20.560 --> 16:26.420]  And so if we want to rein it in, we need to go outside the established internal channels.
[16:26.740 --> 16:29.520]  And that's what Snowden did.
[16:29.680 --> 16:38.900]  And that's why, you know, we talk about this stuff all the time, but that's why everyone is talking about this now, precisely because he went outside the official channels.
[16:39.420 --> 16:42.960]  Didn't William Vinnie, he went with the official channels.
[16:43.100 --> 16:43.480]  Yes.
[16:43.480 --> 16:46.120]  And then he resigned when that was ineffective.
[16:46.860 --> 16:49.000]  And then he got bitten for it.
[16:49.040 --> 16:50.320]  People weren't really talking about it.
[16:50.440 --> 16:57.920]  It didn't become a large discussion in the average community, in the United States, around the world.
[16:57.920 --> 17:09.280]  But as Mike pointed out, when Ed Snowden went outside official channels as a whistleblower, then all hell broke loose and people started talking about it.
[17:09.400 --> 17:11.320]  And everybody's talking about this now.
[17:13.680 --> 17:14.240]  Amazing.
[17:15.040 --> 17:22.420]  At the end of last week, and on Halloween, actually, Edward Snowden posted and released an open letter to the German government.
[17:22.800 --> 17:24.920]  And I'd like to read this.
[17:26.320 --> 17:28.500]  This is a letter from Snowden to the German government.
[17:28.880 --> 17:33.160]  To whom it may concern, I've been invited to write to you regarding your investigation of mass surveillance.
[17:33.460 --> 17:43.040]  I am Edward Joseph Snowden, formerly employed through contracts or direct hire as a technical expert for the United States National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
[17:43.420 --> 17:50.080]  In the course of my service to these organizations, I believe I witnessed systemic violations of law by my government that created a moral duty to act.
[17:50.400 --> 17:57.060]  As a result of reporting these concerns, I have faced a severe and sustained campaign of persecution that forced me from my family and home.
[17:57.200 --> 18:02.660]  I am currently living in exile under a grant of temporary asylum in the Russian Federation in accordance with international law.
[18:03.180 --> 18:07.380]  I am heartened by the response to my act of political expression in both the United States and beyond.
[18:07.780 --> 18:15.540]  Citizens around the world, as well as high officials, including in the United States, have judged the revelation of an unaccountable system of pervasive surveillance to be a public service.
[18:16.000 --> 18:22.420]  These spying revelations have resulted in the proposal of many new laws and policies to address formerly concealed abuses of the public trust.
[18:22.800 --> 18:29.500]  The benefits to society of this growing knowledge are becoming increasingly clear at the same time claimed risks are being shown to have been mitigated.
[18:30.100 --> 18:40.280]  Though the outcome of my efforts has been demonstrably positive, my government continues to treat dissent as defection and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense.
[18:41.360 --> 18:43.480]  However, speaking the truth is not a crime.
[18:43.640 --> 18:50.000]  I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.
[18:50.420 --> 19:03.180]  I hope that when the difficulties of this humanitarian situation have been resolved, I will be able to cooperate in the responsible finding of fact regarding reports in the media, particularly in regard to the truth and authenticity of documents as appropriate and in accordance with the law.
[19:03.400 --> 19:10.220]  I look forward to speaking with you in your country when the situation is resolved and thank you for your efforts in upholding the international laws that protect us all.
[19:10.440 --> 19:13.680]  With my best regards, Edward Snowden, 31st of October, 2013.
[19:14.860 --> 19:16.320]  I think that follows...
[19:16.320 --> 19:24.380]  There were some stories a few days ago around that time that letter came out maybe before that of Snowden actually testifying in Germany.
[19:24.720 --> 19:25.460]  No, no, no.
[19:25.460 --> 19:29.160]  That would open up a whole diplomatic can of worms for the German government with the United States.
[19:29.520 --> 19:40.000]  So I think Snowden's saying like, well, you know, as soon as I get immunity from the U.S., I'll be happy to testify in Germany and anywhere else about the authenticity of these documents.
[19:41.020 --> 19:45.020]  Yeah, and just to be clear, Snowden has not yet testified in Germany.
[19:45.260 --> 19:46.760]  He's expressed a willingness to.
[19:47.020 --> 19:50.940]  There was some talk about him being asked to testify in Germany.
[19:51.160 --> 20:06.600]  Yeah, so Christian Streubler, I'm pronouncing it wrong, but he's a German Green Party politician who went to Moscow and met with Snowden and brought this letter back and has said he would like to bring Snowden with him, but there's some issues to be worked out first.
[20:07.140 --> 20:07.760]  For sure.
[20:07.920 --> 20:08.440]  Just a couple.
[20:11.300 --> 20:13.740]  So, another story in the field.
[20:13.740 --> 20:22.420]  We spoke about LavaBit when they shut down their secure email service for fear of betraying their customers' trust.
[20:23.280 --> 20:27.940]  Lidar Levison, who is the founder of LavaBit, has now taken it to Kickstarter.
[20:28.780 --> 20:37.840]  There is a Kickstarter going to fund the release of open-source dark mail, basically taking what LavaBit had going, open-sourcing it so others can implement the technology.
[20:38.840 --> 20:46.040]  From the Kickstarter description, this is on kickstarter.com slash projects slash LADAR, L-A-D-A-R.
[20:47.260 --> 20:48.640]  I think you can find it from there.
[20:50.420 --> 20:50.960]  Let's see.
[20:51.320 --> 20:57.200]  The Summer of Snowden may have taken the LavaBit email service offline, but the lifeblood of the service is still alive and relevant to dark mail.
[20:57.880 --> 21:03.900]  Dark mail, of course, being a term that refers to mail that protects one from being surveilled, basically.
[21:04.600 --> 21:08.480]  The goal is to perfect and release its source code as a free and open-source software project.
[21:08.680 --> 21:13.540]  The Magma daemon supports access via SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, and HTTP.
[21:14.400 --> 21:18.000]  Magma can be clustered and transparently encrypts user data before storing it on disk.
[21:18.220 --> 21:25.140]  It includes a JavaScript web mail system that uses a JSON-based API to provide secure mail access via the web.
[21:25.760 --> 21:28.100]  The team will build in support for the dark mail protocol.
[21:28.840 --> 21:35.160]  Dark mail, a newly developed messaging protocol, is designed to provide end-to-end encryption of both the message itself and the email in transit.
[21:35.160 --> 21:39.060]  Because encryption will be integrated into the protocol itself, it will be invisible to the user.
[21:39.700 --> 21:43.200]  Dark mail users will get the security of PGP without the cognitive burden.
[21:44.080 --> 21:49.800]  A lot of people involved in encryption and that whole world, I think, know how important that idea can be.
[21:49.920 --> 21:50.020]  Mike?
[21:50.320 --> 21:57.680]  So I'm going to be a little bit contrarian, as I often am, and say that I don't think this Kickstarter is a good use of your money.
[21:58.840 --> 22:09.740]  I really appreciate all the work that Ladar has done and I have donated to his legal fund and I would think that is a good use of anyone's money if they have a little bit of money to spare.
[22:10.600 --> 22:14.160]  But I don't really understand this Kickstarter he's asking for.
[22:14.360 --> 22:23.400]  It's a lot of money, $200,000, to release some source code that has already been written and I would think that is not such a good idea.
[22:23.640 --> 22:30.740]  The Lovabit architecture, it has a lot of nice things about it, but it is not spy-proof.
[22:31.480 --> 22:32.620]  We say end-to-end encryption.
[22:33.000 --> 22:36.920]  The people who work for Lovabit can, in fact, read your mail.
[22:37.900 --> 22:42.320]  They expressed a willingness even to hand over Snowden's mail.
[22:42.720 --> 22:47.560]  They just objected to the sort of mass handing over all of the mail that the U.S.
[22:47.840 --> 22:48.260]  government wanted.
[22:49.500 --> 22:51.100]  So there are other projects.
[22:51.240 --> 22:52.420]  There's one called MailPile.
[22:52.560 --> 22:53.520]  There's one called Leap.
[22:53.640 --> 23:05.480]  There's others that are on the top of my head right now that I think are a better direction forward in this regard and also, you know, have usability as an important goal.
[23:06.720 --> 23:29.520]  Why do you think, Mike, it has taken so long, it still really hasn't happened, where a mail client, a secure mail client, has been available to people that don't want, as Ladar says, to deal with the cognitive burden of trying to figure out how to do something other than just very simple sending or receiving messages.
[23:30.040 --> 23:40.040]  Why isn't there a really simple application that would make it difficult for others to surveil the content of communications?
[23:40.160 --> 23:46.020]  I know you can't really prevent the traffic analysis and headers, but what do you think, why has it taken so long?
[23:46.120 --> 23:55.160]  So, I will say that I think there's an email program called Thunderbird, and there's a plugin for it called Indigmail that I think is pretty good.
[23:55.160 --> 24:03.000]  It's not great, but I think a normal person can figure it out even if it's not obvious to them.
[24:03.860 --> 24:08.360]  But I think more generally that there hasn't been the demand for this.
[24:08.440 --> 24:17.980]  It's only been super nerdy people who have been interested in this stuff, and making software that is usable by super nerdy people is fairly easy.
[24:18.120 --> 24:21.180]  Making software that is usable by normal people is a lot harder.
[24:21.870 --> 24:35.400]  And so, most people, given a choice between Gmail with spying or some complicated thing without spying, will take the Gmail because they have thousands of engineers working on making Gmail easy to use.
[24:35.600 --> 24:39.580]  And the people who are working on the secure stuff are more interested in security than usability.
[24:39.860 --> 24:48.060]  So, I think that we will see in the next few years enough people interested in this problem that there will start to be some good solutions available.
[24:48.740 --> 24:50.960]  But there are reasons why they're not.
[24:51.180 --> 25:14.240]  I would hope so because that's long been one of the free and open source software world's biggest weaknesses is the fact that I think maybe not as much focus is put on the end user's experience from a non-technical standpoint as these companies who have products like Gmail and other for-profit services and products that are made just to be easy to use.
[25:14.780 --> 25:17.560]  And user interface is an interesting field.
[25:17.700 --> 25:20.420]  More people should get involved in it and share their talents with the open source community.
[25:20.780 --> 25:31.840]  You know, I remember way back in the day maybe it was the mid-90s or the later 90s probably actually but I remember there being a PGB plug-in for Outlook that actually worked pretty damn well.
[25:32.200 --> 25:37.380]  And I don't know why that went away but it seemed pretty easy to use and it just...
[25:37.960 --> 25:48.660]  I also think that the difficulty here may arise from I think the very simple fact that at some point the data that's encrypted has to become decrypted in order to actually read it and use it.
[25:50.040 --> 25:51.220]  the data becomes vulnerable.
[25:51.740 --> 25:54.800]  And it's difficult to design around that.
[25:55.360 --> 26:03.580]  Yeah, it does behoove all users of this magnificent internet we have to sort of familiarize themselves a little bit with some of these issues.
[26:03.720 --> 26:25.100]  I'm not saying you have to understand all the technical gobbledygook if it's all Greek to you but to understand simple things like the decryption being done on your own computer versus being done on some company's computer that doesn't guarantee its security or things like that just people people need to learn about these things people need to know about them in order to be effective internet
[26:25.100 --> 26:25.900]  citizens I think.
[26:26.020 --> 26:48.700]  Yeah, and I think to go back to Mike's point which is that there is a demand for this now I don't think the demand even comes specifically from just internet users but I think that there's a real business sensitivity to people stealing data via email right now and I think that's really what's going to ultimately drive these products to the market there was a report last week in the Financial Times
[26:48.700 --> 27:13.700]  that basically said that in Germany German companies actually believe that the United States is just as bad as China when it comes to stealing trade secrets you know via some kind of economic espionage and exploiting information security weaknesses I mean that's a really really big problem I mean that's kind of crazy to put the United States on par with China in terms of economic So businesses are
[27:13.700 --> 27:15.820]  seeing a need that they really need to protect their data.
[27:16.140 --> 27:17.480]  They're willing to pay for it.
[27:17.580 --> 27:19.080]  They don't want their trade secrets stolen.
[27:19.200 --> 27:21.200]  They don't want their business plans or their financials stolen.
[27:21.480 --> 27:27.540]  So encryption and encryption solutions are, I think, going to be something that's very profitable and very marketable.
[27:27.720 --> 27:29.300]  And hopefully it will trickle down.
[27:29.300 --> 27:51.720]  Some of the Ed Snowden documents, the leaked NSA documents from Ed Snowden, have been consistent with that claim, indicating that the NSA has been engaged in surveillance for economic advantage, as was said in the documents, economic advantage for the United States over its rival nations.
[27:51.720 --> 28:00.100]  So this isn't just, you know, idle speculation by these German business people that you're citing.
[28:00.440 --> 28:04.740]  This is basically this smoking gun in these leaked documents.
[28:05.340 --> 28:16.820]  And, of course, some German Internet providers have come up with a solution that's like the one we described earlier, where they have this, like, made-in-Germany stamp, and they promise your data won't be sent to the United States unless you send it there.
[28:16.900 --> 28:19.060]  And only the German government can spy on you.
[28:19.180 --> 28:19.740]  Isn't that great?
[28:20.540 --> 28:22.640]  Well, at least we can pick and choose our spies.
[28:23.320 --> 28:27.480]  But, you know, this is also bringing up another issue as well, where people are actually starting to ask a lot of questions.
[28:27.580 --> 28:33.780]  When you have these issues about, you know, like we were speaking about before the balkanization of data, what could possibly happen in Brazil?
[28:33.920 --> 28:42.140]  Once you centralize all this data and it stays within the borders, you allow another country to have a much greater leeway when it comes to domestic spying.
[28:42.280 --> 28:44.220]  I mean, that's just a natural offshoot of this.
[28:44.380 --> 28:47.720]  If all the data is centered in Brazil, then Brazil can examine all that data.
[28:47.720 --> 28:58.080]  But so people are thinking about it, especially in Europe, people are thinking about more secure solutions about where their data is stored, putting it in the cloud somewhere in a much more secure fashion.
[28:58.080 --> 29:03.680]  But people are actually asking the question now, all right, hey, where's my data actually being stored?
[29:04.200 --> 29:07.460]  Under what laws can this data be accessed?
[29:07.460 --> 29:15.480]  What kind of legal process do you, as a data storage provider, require in order to release my data?
[29:15.560 --> 29:17.660]  I mean, these are questions that companies are asking.
[29:17.860 --> 29:19.740]  These are questions that are very, very important.
[29:19.900 --> 29:22.460]  These are questions that individual users ought to be asking as well.
[29:22.600 --> 29:23.840]  They're just as important.
[29:24.380 --> 29:31.340]  Particularly in the United States context, though, companies, first of all, they don't necessarily even know the answer.
[29:31.940 --> 29:39.840]  We haven't talked yet about the story of the NSA spying on Google's, you know, interdata center connections.
[29:40.280 --> 29:40.980]  So even though...
[29:40.980 --> 29:41.660]  They're fiber networks.
[29:41.860 --> 29:41.980]  Right.
[29:42.620 --> 29:47.680]  But they are not allowed to give honest answers to these questions in many cases.
[29:47.680 --> 29:59.680]  And so, and unfortunately, it's very, very difficult for, as a normal person, to be able to tell, you know, to assess the honesty of a claim that there's an actual technical solution here.
[30:00.900 --> 30:06.860]  So we get, you know, charlatans claiming that they will protect your data from the government.
[30:06.860 --> 30:11.120]  And it's not easy to know if they are accurate.
[30:11.120 --> 30:13.620]  You know, I think you bring up a very good point.
[30:14.080 --> 30:19.440]  Literally, on the front page today of the company and market section of the Financial Times was a...
[30:19.440 --> 30:21.420]  You read very different newspapers to me.
[30:21.600 --> 30:21.820]  Yeah.
[30:22.300 --> 30:27.540]  I'll tell you, I sound like, you know, like a salesman for the FT, but I do think it's a good paper.
[30:27.660 --> 30:28.860]  And it's based in London.
[30:29.300 --> 30:32.720]  And you have a much more interesting international perspective, I think.
[30:32.840 --> 30:35.720]  And I like the Wall Street Journal, too, but I like the FT.
[30:35.780 --> 30:36.020]  It's also pink.
[30:36.020 --> 30:36.560]  It's a different perspective.
[30:36.700 --> 30:36.920]  It is.
[30:36.980 --> 30:37.980]  It's known as the pink pages.
[30:38.540 --> 30:39.800]  I really think it's interesting.
[30:39.800 --> 30:55.500]  But in any event, so on the front page of the FT today, not to get off topic too much, there is literally an article about Apple seeking greater leeway from the government to publish information about the amount of requests it gets for data on its customer device.
[30:56.140 --> 31:01.300]  Not for customer data, but for data about its particular devices that belong to customers.
[31:01.660 --> 31:05.000]  So it's a pretty interesting story.
[31:05.000 --> 31:13.660]  I would invite people to read it in particular, because Apple here, they're really joining the fight now to challenge these restrictions on the reporting.
[31:14.380 --> 31:19.620]  And what Apple is seeking is really the right to publish specific information about the quantity of these requests.
[31:20.800 --> 31:22.880]  And there's a lot of them coming from the government.
[31:22.880 --> 31:31.080]  And this is basically coming on the heels of Google calling the NSA's supposed surveillance on their fiber networks outrageous.
[31:31.500 --> 31:37.620]  So this is very interesting to me, because what we see here is what we'd actually hoped to see and what we predicted was possible.
[31:37.620 --> 31:43.520]  We're seeing that consumer trust in these big companies is being sufficiently eroded.
[31:43.520 --> 31:47.520]  And that's going to hit these companies, these big technology companies in the pocketbook.
[31:47.640 --> 31:50.660]  And when there's a credible threat of that happening, they start acting.
[31:50.920 --> 32:00.060]  So with this in mind, Apple has now offered this statement that has contrasted its own company policies with those of others like Google and Facebook and Yahoo.
[32:00.280 --> 32:07.300]  I mean, basically, they said exactly this, that their, quote, business does not depend on collecting personal data.
[32:07.500 --> 32:11.340]  We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers.
[32:11.460 --> 32:12.880]  I mean, what do we think of that?
[32:13.840 --> 32:15.160]  They do it anyway.
[32:16.480 --> 32:31.100]  I don't think these companies really care that much about our privacy, only to the extent that when we find out that they are turning it over to the government, that we might not use their services anymore, and hence they would lose money.
[32:31.320 --> 32:33.920]  And they'd have to answer their shareholders.
[32:35.260 --> 32:36.560]  That's where the threat is.
[32:36.640 --> 32:37.340]  I think that's what's going on here.
[32:37.500 --> 32:38.680]  Yeah, that's where the threat is to them.
[32:38.680 --> 32:52.680]  I mean, we can get as angry as we want, but it's when we get angry enough to put a dent in these large faceless corporations that they realize that maybe they might lose a couple of dollars on it, and that's when things get done, because these are the entities that have the power.
[32:52.680 --> 33:00.940]  No, I think you're absolutely right here, and I think looking at these statistics is actually also a little bit scary as well.
[33:01.060 --> 33:01.940]  Let me tell you what these are.
[33:02.160 --> 33:02.260]  Sure.
[33:02.260 --> 33:12.040]  Within the first half of 2013, Apple received 12,442 requests from 41 different countries.
[33:12.320 --> 33:16.640]  These were requests for information about particular devices.
[33:17.340 --> 33:33.540]  Apple actually stated that it complied with three-quarters of those requests, and this breaks down to 3,110 from the United States, 429 from China, and 689 from the UK.
[33:34.060 --> 33:41.260]  And interestingly enough, Apple also came out and said that none of these requests pertain to national security information.
[33:41.420 --> 33:43.180]  So what is the government asking for here?
[33:43.300 --> 33:48.100]  I mean, apparently a lot of these requests were about lost and stolen phones.
[33:48.920 --> 33:50.660]  This is another thing Apple's claiming.
[33:50.820 --> 33:52.320]  So, I mean, I don't really understand this.
[33:52.320 --> 34:01.240]  I mean, so what do you guys think, you know, is this just, you know, a nod in the right direction from a benevolent and enlightened core of Apple executives, you know, or is it really just a PR tactic?
[34:01.420 --> 34:09.580]  Are they trying to hold on to the last vestiges of consumer trust that these tech companies have, you know, and placing a little air gap between them and the government?
[34:09.720 --> 34:13.380]  I mean, we're starting to see a lot of people backing away from these surveillance programs now.
[34:13.540 --> 34:16.640]  We just talked about Dianne Feinstein backing off politically.
[34:16.800 --> 34:19.200]  Now we're seeing a lot of the big tech companies doing exactly the same.
[34:19.200 --> 34:26.060]  Well, I mean, I think it's important to distinguish, you know, Apple, this is clearly a PR move.
[34:26.220 --> 34:30.300]  Like, Apple, they released their first ever transparency report.
[34:30.800 --> 34:36.740]  You know, I don't have an inside line to Tim Cook's thinking, but I have a guess why this is the year they chose to do it.
[34:36.740 --> 34:39.780]  But, uh, a lot of...
[34:39.780 --> 34:50.300]  It's true that Apple has less data than some of the other players, but it doesn't mean that data on Apple users is not present in the services and, in particular, the networks.
[34:50.640 --> 34:57.520]  So, you know, Apple doesn't actually maybe know, like, what web pages you visit, but it doesn't mean you're protected just because you have an iPhone.
[34:57.640 --> 34:58.160]  They can...
[34:58.160 --> 34:59.560]  The carriers know.
[35:00.160 --> 35:05.140]  And so, I don't think there's a whole lot to be learned from this report.
[35:05.360 --> 35:14.400]  In particular, what they don't say in the report, what they are forbidden by law from saying in the report, is what kind of mass surveillance is going on.
[35:14.800 --> 35:22.480]  Apple has an iMessages product, which is allegedly secure, but it turns out they can read your messages if they want to.
[35:22.480 --> 35:26.960]  So, we don't know if Apple is giving that entire database to the NSA.
[35:27.860 --> 35:29.380]  Prism says they are.
[35:29.560 --> 35:30.700]  Apple says they're not.
[35:30.920 --> 35:38.900]  There's no way without effective oversight to know for sure because Apple is required by law to lie to us and say they are not giving the data.
[35:40.000 --> 35:40.840]  This is also...
[35:40.840 --> 35:48.720]  Anytime you trust a company, what a company says about themselves to be the truth, you might as well be watching their advertising.
[35:48.720 --> 35:57.780]  We need oversight for these things by people or entities not directly involved, somebody who could be impartial and examine what's actually going on and tell the public.
[35:57.900 --> 35:59.440]  But we don't have that sort of oversight.
[35:59.700 --> 36:05.360]  So, I do want to mention, we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there was a rally in Washington about a week and a half ago.
[36:05.480 --> 36:05.780]  Yes, indeed.
[36:05.780 --> 36:07.920]  And the Stop Watching Us rally.
[36:08.180 --> 36:13.640]  And I went and I don't know why you two didn't come, but it was good.
[36:13.640 --> 36:16.400]  But I do wish more people in general had come.
[36:16.400 --> 36:18.220]  And the two of you would have been lovely to see.
[36:18.300 --> 36:19.980]  The three of you would have been lovely to see.
[36:20.120 --> 36:25.480]  But the organizers of the rally said about 3,000 people came.
[36:25.740 --> 36:28.320]  The Spiegel report said several hundred people came.
[36:28.560 --> 36:30.640]  Probably means the truth is somewhere between those two numbers.
[36:31.220 --> 36:34.340]  But in order to stop...
[36:34.340 --> 36:40.680]  You know, on a Saturday in Washington, a few thousand people is not enough to, you know, make the difference.
[36:40.680 --> 36:42.380]  But it is a start.
[36:42.600 --> 36:48.820]  I was really impressed by the diversity of the speakers, race, gender, political opinion.
[36:49.900 --> 36:54.020]  The organizers did a really good job of putting together an interesting and, as I said, diverse program.
[36:54.200 --> 36:55.440]  We had two congressmen.
[36:56.160 --> 37:05.580]  Congressman Amash, who's a slightly nutty Republican, and Dennis Kucinich, who's a very nutty, but my kind of nutty, former Democratic congressman.
[37:05.580 --> 37:09.040]  And we had some musical groups.
[37:09.220 --> 37:12.720]  We had activists from all over the spectrum, again.
[37:13.300 --> 37:18.340]  And so I hope that the next one will be, you know, 10 times as big.
[37:18.420 --> 37:25.300]  We should have 30,000 people or 300,000 people, because that is what will make people in power take notice.
[37:25.620 --> 37:33.380]  Hey, Mike, don't you think these concerns generated by these privacy-invading abuses by U.S.
[37:33.380 --> 37:38.580]  government and other governments, is creating some politically strange bedfellows?
[37:39.800 --> 37:40.120]  Yeah.
[37:40.500 --> 37:42.840]  As I said, the two congresspeople...
[37:42.840 --> 37:47.440]  So there was a bill that we reported on in Congress that almost passed.
[37:47.440 --> 37:48.620]  That's the crazy thing.
[37:48.800 --> 38:03.180]  The bill in Congress that almost passed to defund the NSA or defund some of the NSA's programs was sponsored by Congressman Amash, who I mentioned, and Congressman Conyers, who's a Democrat, who's quite liberal.
[38:03.660 --> 38:05.880]  And it was opposed.
[38:06.080 --> 38:06.760]  It was an amendment.
[38:07.480 --> 38:14.400]  And generally, I was told at this rally, I don't know if it's true or not, that generally the White House, like, doesn't bother with amendments.
[38:14.820 --> 38:18.080]  But this amendment, they really, you know, tried.
[38:18.320 --> 38:19.260]  They leaned on everyone.
[38:19.380 --> 38:31.280]  The Democratic leadership, the Republican leadership, the people in power, the people in the center of the power, not just politically, but the ones with the most power, really wanted this amendment to fail.
[38:31.420 --> 38:33.540]  And they got their way, but only just.
[38:34.340 --> 38:42.080]  Because even the people with, you know, a lot of power, congresspeople are, you know, like, pretty high up on the powerful people list.
[38:42.480 --> 38:47.940]  But the ones with only moderate amounts of power tried to stop the NSA.
[38:47.940 --> 38:53.340]  And I think, you know, with our support, they can succeed one of these times.
[38:55.120 --> 38:55.540]  Interesting.
[38:55.920 --> 39:01.640]  So that was the Stop Watching Us rally that we talked about when last we were on the air.
[39:02.400 --> 39:06.420]  More information about them is on stopwatching.us, I believe is the site.
[39:07.000 --> 39:08.000]  However did you guess?
[39:09.460 --> 39:09.880]  Intuition.
[39:11.560 --> 39:14.540]  So, Alex, you've been doing a bit of running around as well.
[39:14.680 --> 39:16.960]  Yeah, I had a very good excuse for not being there.
[39:16.960 --> 39:17.740]  I was out of the country.
[39:17.980 --> 39:18.720]  That's no excuse.
[39:18.860 --> 39:19.040]  Yeah.
[39:19.400 --> 39:22.200]  I should have flown back to, what was it, Washington?
[39:22.440 --> 39:22.680]  Yeah.
[39:23.160 --> 39:25.060]  Yeah, I guess, yeah, there's Dulles.
[39:25.740 --> 39:30.620]  And if you're a Democrat, right, a national airport as opposed to Reagan.
[39:30.860 --> 39:31.960]  You know, I took the train.
[39:32.200 --> 39:34.140]  It was quite nice, quite socialist.
[39:34.660 --> 39:36.360]  Yeah, well, I was out of the country.
[39:36.360 --> 39:38.100]  I was out of the country for a couple of weeks.
[39:38.140 --> 39:40.980]  I was in Switzerland for a week.
[39:41.400 --> 39:44.960]  Got to drive around the Swiss countryside, which was really, really lovely.
[39:44.960 --> 39:47.280]  Speaking of places with effective train systems, though.
[39:47.400 --> 39:48.240]  Oh, my goodness, yeah.
[39:48.440 --> 39:49.600]  Yeah, very, very efficient.
[39:49.860 --> 39:51.860]  Very efficient, you know, right on time.
[39:52.200 --> 39:59.760]  But I have to say, but this, driving around Switzerland, the radio over there completely stinks.
[40:00.020 --> 40:01.300]  I mean, it is horrible.
[40:01.620 --> 40:08.320]  It's just, you know, and maybe I'm offending some of our Swiss listeners or possibly, you know, all kinds of Europeans.
[40:08.320 --> 40:11.120]  But I think the music was completely homogeneous.
[40:11.120 --> 40:14.540]  There was nothing I could find that was absolutely interesting.
[40:14.740 --> 40:19.220]  It was all this, like, kind of tinny, shallow, techno-pop nonsense.
[40:19.220 --> 40:20.720]  It was absolutely horrible.
[40:20.900 --> 40:22.320]  You're not just angry because it was all in Swiss?
[40:23.400 --> 40:24.080]  In French?
[40:24.200 --> 40:24.800]  In French.
[40:25.220 --> 40:26.160]  That's right, yeah.
[40:28.480 --> 40:38.440]  There was one station that was a little bit offbeat, which I kind of enjoyed, you know, but the French aspect of it was slightly isolating a little bit.
[40:38.560 --> 40:44.580]  But I have to say, you know, it really made me think of the treasure that we have here at WBAI.
[40:44.660 --> 40:55.120]  And I was sad that I wasn't helping to fundraise at that particular moment because I had, I could have really ranted for a while after spending, you know, four or five hours in a car in Switzerland.
[40:55.620 --> 40:57.980]  And then I was over in England for a little while.
[40:57.980 --> 41:01.860]  And the radio there was actually a hell of a lot better.
[41:03.140 --> 41:11.160]  Well, there's another, moving on to something completely and totally important and vital to, I think, the future of us all.
[41:11.640 --> 41:12.460]  The FCC.
[41:12.840 --> 41:22.060]  We've talked about them quite a bit on the show, but it seems that they have an influence somewhere you might not think of, your beauty salons.
[41:22.380 --> 41:28.760]  The FCC has sited a hair salon for harmful interference from light bulbs to AT&T's 700 megahertz cell site.
[41:29.540 --> 41:41.100]  Based on an investigation of an interference complaint by AT&T, the FCC has sited a salon called Perfect Cut Salon for not resolving harmful interference caused by their fluorescent lighting fixtures.
[41:41.880 --> 41:46.840]  Basically, the lights in this beauty salon were interfering with a nearby cell tower.
[41:47.680 --> 41:54.540]  So, you know, first they came for my beauty salons and I didn't speak up because I don't go to beauty salons.
[41:57.240 --> 41:58.520]  Rob, this is no joke.
[41:58.680 --> 42:09.020]  These CFL light bulbs, compact fluorescents, the ones that kind of look like a corkscrew, they are horrible emitters of RF noise.
[42:09.360 --> 42:16.420]  As a ham radio operator and shortwave listener and other radio signal monitor, these light bulbs are horrendous.
[42:16.520 --> 42:23.600]  I can't wait until we just get rid of all of them and switch over to LED bulbs, which are nice and quiet from an RF spectrum standpoint.
[42:24.320 --> 42:31.060]  So, but apparently there were these, these, it wasn't just the light bulbs, it was these General Electric fixtures.
[42:31.360 --> 43:00.260]  And the salon owner reportedly contacted General Electric and tried to hit them up for money to pay him to replace the light fixtures, which General Electric wasn't going to give And when the interference was not resolved, the FCC came back and said, you got to turn off the lights or we're going to fine you a lot of money.
[43:01.320 --> 43:06.820]  So for those, for those listeners of ours who run their own beauty salons, you know, don't throw those letters away.
[43:06.980 --> 43:07.420]  They're important.
[43:08.560 --> 43:20.200]  Well, you know, what's very strange about this too, and maybe I misread the story when I read it, but it sounded like the salon owner let AT&T into the salon to perform some kind of testing.
[43:20.360 --> 43:23.020]  And then that's what precipitated the complaint to the FCC.
[43:23.680 --> 43:28.740]  So I think, you know, the moral of the story is, you know, don't let AT&T inside your house or your beauty salon.
[43:28.900 --> 43:30.600]  I mean, it's just going to cause you a lot of trouble here.
[43:30.960 --> 43:32.420]  I mean, why would you do that?
[43:32.600 --> 43:36.000]  Why would you let AT&T in to do this testing?
[43:37.420 --> 43:38.460]  I did not foresee.
[43:38.460 --> 43:39.400]  I didn't read the story.
[43:39.520 --> 43:42.060]  So when Rob started reading it, I didn't know where it was going to go.
[43:42.520 --> 43:52.660]  It's reasonable to expect that a beauty salon owner might be very well educated about beauty salons, but may not know so much about RF interference and may not have any...
[43:52.660 --> 43:53.760]  You're assuming a lot there.
[43:53.760 --> 43:54.240]  I don't know.
[43:54.300 --> 43:59.160]  You know, maybe some, maybe this particular one is an expert and that's why the liability, you know, came up.
[43:59.260 --> 44:08.700]  But why in the world would you expect them to know that they have liability for their light fixtures interfering with AT&T...
[44:08.700 --> 44:09.920]  Because it doesn't make any sense to me.
[44:09.940 --> 44:11.620]  Because what did AT&T tell them?
[44:11.760 --> 44:15.980]  They were going in there to inspect and saying, oh, you know, we just wanted to come in and...
[44:15.980 --> 44:16.580]  Yeah, exactly.
[44:16.920 --> 44:20.160]  And then they, you know, put on some RF monitors or something.
[44:20.360 --> 44:23.160]  So to stay stay from the FCC, I think we can take away from the story.
[44:23.220 --> 44:24.140]  Brush your own hair at home.
[44:24.740 --> 44:26.540]  But it's also, you know, this is one of these...
[44:27.580 --> 44:30.740]  I'm sure it was a contractor that installed these particular light bulbs.
[44:31.060 --> 44:42.280]  And so for them to go and ask GE for some kind of indemnification of this, I mean, from a legal perspective, it seems to me like this is just underscoring the importance of having a good contract with your contractor.
[44:44.100 --> 44:46.260]  Don't go to GE for remuneration.
[44:46.420 --> 44:47.900]  I mean, I can't believe we're spending more time on this.
[44:47.980 --> 44:53.180]  But is it even the contractor's fault or were the fixtures just emitting too much RF?
[44:53.180 --> 44:54.900]  Well, only your stylus knows for sure.
[44:55.040 --> 44:58.520]  And I think on this note, I would like to attempt to take some phone calls.
[44:58.620 --> 45:09.480]  We have got our old phone system back for intents and purposes, which means, I believe, the number to get in touch with us is our classic old number, 212-209-2900.
[45:10.580 --> 45:18.220]  So I'm going to attempt to operate this fancy, new, fancy old telephone here and see what's out there.
[45:18.880 --> 45:19.540]  Good evening.
[45:19.780 --> 45:20.420]  You aren't off the hook.
[45:20.640 --> 45:21.200]  Oh, hi.
[45:21.280 --> 45:21.880]  How are you?
[45:22.040 --> 45:22.160]  Hello.
[45:22.160 --> 45:24.280]  Thank you so much for taking my call.
[45:24.460 --> 45:25.400]  This is Zabby.
[45:25.580 --> 45:26.240]  How do you do?
[45:27.460 --> 45:32.380]  That's Zabby Z for Zorro, A for Apple, BB for Brilliant, and Y for Yes.
[45:33.180 --> 45:33.540]  Excellent.
[45:33.900 --> 45:38.520]  From WUSB's A Woman's Perspective on Politics.
[45:38.520 --> 45:41.860]  I do a show there, Mondays, 1.30.
[45:42.040 --> 45:42.340]  Excellent.
[45:42.480 --> 45:43.200]  So what's on your mind, Zabby?
[45:43.200 --> 45:51.240]  Well, I wanted to tell you that when, I believe, the man that's on the phone, is it Bernie?
[45:51.480 --> 45:52.080]  Yes, indeed.
[45:52.480 --> 45:52.760]  Yeah.
[45:53.280 --> 46:13.680]  When he raised the information about Mr. Snowden and espionage accusations, it was pretty much dismissed right away by, I guess, yourself.
[46:13.680 --> 46:14.500]  I don't know.
[46:14.860 --> 46:15.440]  You're the host.
[46:15.780 --> 46:17.520]  You're probably spilling in for manual.
[46:17.520 --> 46:18.200]  One or more of this.
[46:18.500 --> 46:30.820]  But I did hear that on WBAI's background briefing that there was a big interview just recently, a background briefing.
[46:30.820 --> 46:33.560]  It played at 5 a.m.
[46:33.800 --> 46:34.480]  in the morning.
[46:34.480 --> 46:42.700]  I was just trying to get the date for you, but you asked for calls before I could get that date.
[46:42.900 --> 47:04.820]  But it turns out that Mr. Snowden, there's rumors that he was a double agent working for Russia, spying on doing, you know, because he was working in there for, I guess, the NSA or one of these organizations, that's where he was working, he was a double agent.
[47:05.120 --> 47:15.420]  And that's why, somehow, he winds up in Russia, of all places in the world, to fly to for cover.
[47:15.640 --> 47:27.020]  But in any case, dear, there's something that I believe Bernie brought up, and he was a little upset at the time, and you told him to calm down, I think.
[47:27.500 --> 47:36.840]  But anyway, most definitely, it made some sense to me after I listened to that interview.
[47:37.140 --> 47:39.560]  Okay, well, thank you for letting us know about that, Zabby.
[47:40.180 --> 47:42.740]  I'll just say why I don't find that credible.
[47:43.260 --> 47:46.960]  I mean, the reason he's in Russia is because he couldn't go anywhere else.
[47:47.040 --> 47:47.320]  The U.S.
[47:47.400 --> 47:49.800]  government effectively prevented him from flying anywhere else.
[47:49.900 --> 47:50.740]  But if the U.S.
[47:50.880 --> 48:02.320]  government had the slightest bit of evidence, the slightest reasonable suspicion, that Edward Snowden was a double agent for Russia, because this is still the Cold War time, then we would have seen it.
[48:02.380 --> 48:04.480]  It would be on the front page of the New York Times.
[48:04.820 --> 48:09.840]  Yeah, the powers that be would love something like this, I think, to hold up as evidence that this man is bad, but they don't.
[48:09.940 --> 48:12.100]  So they just keep saying this man is bad without telling us why.
[48:12.480 --> 48:13.620]  Anyway, thank you very much for your call.
[48:13.960 --> 48:17.020]  Moving on, I would like to hear someone else out there.
[48:17.320 --> 48:19.520]  212-209-2900.
[48:20.140 --> 48:21.140]  Let us know what's up.
[48:23.600 --> 48:24.760]  So no one's calling.
[48:25.020 --> 48:25.280]  No one's calling.
[48:25.420 --> 48:26.520]  The board was just full.
[48:26.640 --> 48:32.100]  We have this whole once again system where we can take multiple calls, you can wait for us to talk to you.
[48:32.100 --> 48:35.700]  It doesn't buzz on the line when someone rings in, which is nice.
[48:36.200 --> 48:40.400]  212-209-2900 is the number to tell us what's on your mind.
[48:42.380 --> 48:44.020]  We have only a few minutes.
[48:44.020 --> 48:44.740]  Oh, here we go.
[48:44.920 --> 48:46.080]  Maybe we can fit one more in.
[48:46.420 --> 48:47.000]  Good evening.
[48:47.180 --> 48:47.720]  You're on off the hook.
[48:49.940 --> 48:50.620]  Speak up, please.
[48:51.500 --> 48:51.860]  Hello.
[48:52.240 --> 48:52.420]  Hello.
[48:53.360 --> 48:54.000]  Hey, good evening.
[48:54.060 --> 48:54.520]  How are you?
[48:54.720 --> 48:55.180]  How do you do?
[48:55.600 --> 48:56.060]  What's up?
[48:56.180 --> 48:56.520]  Excellent.
[48:57.480 --> 49:04.500]  My name is George, and I just happened to turn on the radio last just called the tail end of that conversation about the salon.
[49:04.860 --> 49:05.300]  Mm-hmm.
[49:05.880 --> 49:22.860]  I know you guys don't want to make a big thing about it, but my thing is, I guess my only question would be here is, as a salon operator, if I'm going into business, how am I supposed to know that those lights would affect AT&T's tower?
[49:23.180 --> 49:24.340]  That's an excellent question.
[49:24.400 --> 49:27.180]  And I do wonder how you are supposed to know these things.
[49:27.320 --> 49:32.360]  I guess the only way to do is maybe to sit around and wait to get a nasty letter from the FCC.
[49:32.780 --> 49:32.980]  I don't know.
[49:33.040 --> 49:33.500]  What do you guys think?
[49:33.740 --> 49:39.820]  Well, yeah, I don't think that you're necessarily required to know, but you're required to act if the FCC comes and tells you that there's an issue.
[49:40.040 --> 49:47.440]  And when I made the comment about having a good contract with your contractor, it was kind of facetious, really.
[49:47.820 --> 49:55.420]  But if you don't know these things and there happens to be an issue with something that your contractor installed, then I would think it would be their obligation to come in and fix it.
[49:55.640 --> 49:58.660]  And you would probably want to have them contractually obligated to do that.
[49:58.840 --> 50:01.940]  But that's, I think, a different show and a different topic.
[50:02.960 --> 50:05.380]  But you raise a good point.
[50:05.500 --> 50:06.060]  How would you know?
[50:06.160 --> 50:13.920]  But I think if the FCC tells you that you have a problem, then you probably want to act because as a business owner, you're going to get slapped with some pretty major fines if you don't.
[50:14.060 --> 50:14.280]  Indeed.
[50:14.420 --> 50:15.300]  Thank you very much for that call.
[50:16.360 --> 50:18.000]  Who else has got a call for us?
[50:18.140 --> 50:20.760]  212-209-2900.
[50:21.120 --> 50:24.620]  While we wait for the call, a bit of disappointing news.
[50:24.820 --> 50:29.600]  The Internet Archive, which people should know, is a wonderful organization in San Francisco.
[50:29.600 --> 50:32.680]  They had a fire this morning in their book scanning facility.
[50:33.020 --> 50:33.220]  Oh, no.
[50:33.560 --> 50:36.780]  The good news is that all the people and all the data are safe.
[50:36.960 --> 50:44.420]  The bad news is that I was looking at a photograph of the building where the book scanning took place and it is burned out.
[50:44.800 --> 50:52.240]  So archive.org, they could use a little bit of your money if you want to help them rebuild and a little bit of your goodwill.
[50:52.400 --> 50:52.760]  Yeah.
[50:53.020 --> 50:54.880]  Very good friends of ours and the Internet.
[50:55.040 --> 50:55.560]  Archive.org.
[50:55.680 --> 50:57.380]  Let's see if we can fit another phone call in.
[50:57.680 --> 50:58.360]  Good evening.
[50:58.520 --> 50:59.060]  You're on Off the Hook.
[51:01.380 --> 51:01.860]  Hello?
[51:03.560 --> 51:05.080]  Okay, you've got to be faster than that.
[51:05.340 --> 51:06.540]  Let's try someone else.
[51:06.780 --> 51:07.320]  Good evening.
[51:07.480 --> 51:08.440]  You are on Off the Hook.
[51:09.000 --> 51:09.420]  Yeah.
[51:09.520 --> 51:09.740]  Hello.
[51:10.020 --> 51:10.320]  Okay.
[51:10.560 --> 51:11.800]  Just a couple things.
[51:12.260 --> 51:24.840]  I was reminded of a case a while ago where a bar had a hard floor behind the bar because they were told by one government agency that they had to have something that germs couldn't get into.
[51:25.040 --> 51:30.860]  Another government agency came in and said, no, no, you have to have a rough surface floor so the employees don't slip.
[51:31.260 --> 51:36.020]  So the hair salon should get another government agency to fight the first one.
[51:37.360 --> 51:39.420]  Sort of like getting a cat to fight the mice.
[51:39.820 --> 51:41.020]  Yeah, something like that.
[51:41.500 --> 51:52.320]  But anyway, the other thing was we've got something light squared, I remember, and they were told, no, you can't do this because you might interfere with the GPS signals.
[51:52.840 --> 52:11.380]  And I'd like to complain that the FCC hasn't been regulating the cell phone dialing process because almost every device I have that has a speaker, I guess none of them are shielded, but almost everything I have has this annoying noise that sounds like a gallop.
[52:13.000 --> 52:15.060]  Yeah, the old GSM buzz.
[52:15.360 --> 52:17.920]  A lot of us know that if you keep your phone by your computer speakers.
[52:18.500 --> 52:18.620]  Right.
[52:18.780 --> 52:26.980]  My car speaker, my portable radio, my clock radio at home, my external computer speakers.
[52:27.280 --> 52:28.920]  You know, how could they allow that?
[52:29.080 --> 52:31.080]  And also, it's not the same for every phone.
[52:31.420 --> 52:37.520]  My own phone is a cheap LG, and I barely hear the noise, but I'll be driving down the road and I'll hear it loud.
[52:37.720 --> 52:40.120]  And I look around, I don't see who's dialing the phone.
[52:40.300 --> 52:42.800]  Yeah, there's a lot of noise out there on the airwaves.
[52:43.140 --> 52:49.160]  There's a lot of pick and choose between the government enforcing one thing against one person or another against another.
[52:49.460 --> 52:49.920]  Yes, indeed.
[52:50.020 --> 52:51.480]  So, good luck to the hair salon.
[52:51.740 --> 53:10.280]  You know, if you're paranoid, if you hear that GSM buzzing noise in a radio, and there's nobody around with a cell phone, if you're really paranoid, you might think that there could be a GPS-based, with a GSM cell phone attached to it, like, attached to your car.
[53:10.540 --> 53:12.540]  It sounds like you've had that thought, Bernie.
[53:12.760 --> 53:16.020]  Well, maybe it's one of the old phones I lost, and somebody's calling you.
[53:16.060 --> 53:16.400]  Maybe.
[53:17.000 --> 53:18.140]  Thank you very much for your call.
[53:19.260 --> 53:23.380]  You don't think our listeners, or we, or the world is paranoid enough, Bernie?
[53:24.140 --> 53:24.720]  I don't know.
[53:24.800 --> 53:27.960]  I'm going to try and fit one more quick phone call in here before we have to leave.
[53:28.140 --> 53:28.640]  Good evening.
[53:28.760 --> 53:29.300]  You're on Off the Hook.
[53:29.300 --> 53:31.200]  Hey, how's it going?
[53:31.380 --> 53:31.620]  Hi there.
[53:31.820 --> 53:44.480]  I would like to promote this thought of, all right, some of the same contractors who built the healthcare exchanges are building stuff for the NSA.
[53:44.920 --> 53:46.140]  So what is it?
[53:46.260 --> 54:03.720]  Is it that they build good stuff for the NSA, or the stuff for the NSA doesn't do what it's purported to do, or they have the total compliance of the internet companies like Google and the actual backbone companies.
[54:04.260 --> 54:07.120]  And I like, like, look at city time in New York City.
[54:07.320 --> 54:14.660]  All these major, major programs of procurement, the computers don't do what they're supposed to do.
[54:14.660 --> 54:18.300]  And that's about how large contracts are enacted.
[54:18.540 --> 54:19.960]  So I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
[54:19.960 --> 54:30.880]  Well, this is, I think, interesting in the Google perspective, really, because, you know, we haven't, I think, spent a lot of time talking about this outrage, and whether it's genuine or disingenuous or not.
[54:30.960 --> 54:42.060]  But I think, you know, it puts these companies in a very, very precarious position, because on the one hand, if Google's complicit, well, then they're complicit in the surveillance activity, and they're undermining their own bottom line.
[54:42.480 --> 54:45.120]  And everybody's going to be very, very angry with them.
[54:45.280 --> 54:57.680]  But then again, if they are not complicit, and their data is subject to being sniffed out on their own fiber networks, then they've been handling our massive amounts of data, our personal data, in an insecure manner.
[54:58.200 --> 55:00.700]  And that's something that we should think about.
[55:01.720 --> 55:03.640]  And we'll have to close on that thought.
[55:04.060 --> 55:07.240]  Send us email, othat2600.com.
[55:08.240 --> 55:10.060]  For Off the Hook, this has been Rob T.
[55:10.140 --> 55:10.460]  Firefly.
[55:10.720 --> 55:11.400]  Have a very good night.
[55:36.030 --> 55:37.850]  We'll see you next time.
[55:46.770 --> 55:50.570]  Who's here anyway?
[55:51.850 --> 55:55.890]  Other girls are easy.
[55:58.250 --> 56:01.190]  Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo?
[56:01.330 --> 56:05.110]  Yeah, you gotta do.
[56:05.410 --> 56:09.110]  Happy food is asking mine.
[56:19.050 --> 56:23.150]  No, we all can't be super fly.
[56:24.130 --> 56:28.450]  G-Q-P-H-D-F-B-I.
[56:28.990 --> 56:33.470]  You can pretend and you can try.
[56:33.950 --> 56:37.230]  Move ahead, lay down dead, or sleep on by.
[56:39.290 --> 56:49.090]  When the truth seems so far away, Buddha loves you and Jesus saves.
[56:49.810 --> 56:53.890]  You need answers for your dismay.
[56:54.130 --> 56:57.690]  Ask your sister, ask your mom, ask DNA.
[56:59.290 --> 57:03.870]  What's up, sweet cakes?
[57:04.410 --> 57:07.990]  Who's here anyway?
[57:07.990 --> 57:13.490]  Hey, the girl, say, girl, are easy.
[57:16.130 --> 57:18.610]  Whatcha gonna do, little buckaroo?
[57:18.730 --> 57:20.670]  Hey, you better ask her nice.
[57:21.170 --> 57:22.690]  All you gotta do.
[57:22.690 --> 57:26.310]  Happy food is asking Mom.
[57:27.710 --> 57:31.550]  Yeah, just ask your mom.
[57:32.210 --> 57:33.910]  Do, do, do.
[57:34.550 --> 57:36.710]  Just ask your mom.
[57:37.230 --> 57:39.070]  Do, do, do.
[57:39.490 --> 57:41.870]  Yeah, ask your mom.
[57:42.770 --> 57:44.290]  Do, do, do.
[57:45.030 --> 57:45.530]  Yeah.
[58:26.620 --> 58:31.300]  What's up, sweet case?
[58:31.700 --> 58:35.440]  Who's hip anyway?
[58:36.820 --> 58:41.440]  Oh, girls are easy.
[58:43.060 --> 58:46.340]  What you want to do, little buckaroo?
[58:46.520 --> 58:47.080]  Come on!
[58:47.840 --> 58:51.920]  What's up, sweet case?
[58:53.040 --> 58:56.380]  Who's hip anyway?
[58:57.700 --> 59:02.060]  Oh, girls are easy.
[59:03.740 --> 59:07.000]  So what you gonna do, little buckaroo?
[59:07.180 --> 59:08.040]  Come on!
[59:08.040 --> 59:09.100]  Ask your mom.
[59:09.780 --> 59:14.960]  All you gotta do, happy food is ask your mom.
[59:26.400 --> 59:28.740]  All righty, all righty, all righty.
[59:28.860 --> 59:30.840]  Hey, congratulations to the new mayor.
[59:30.840 --> 59:36.000]  I think you might be pretty good there, but we'll see how that goes.
[59:36.000 --> 59:36.060]  Thank you.
[59:36.060 --> 59:36.720]  A little pause...