[00:02.830 --> 00:06.370]  Hello, I'm Tony Ryan, host of Soul Central Station.
[00:06.590 --> 00:11.230]  Join me this Saturday night as I feature rhythm and blues recording artist Chaka Khan.
[00:12.210 --> 00:20.570]  I'll be taking your Chaka Khan song request and I'll be giving away tickets for her upcoming concert on August 23rd at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
[00:20.810 --> 00:29.370]  So join me this Saturday night on Soul Central Station starting at 10pm on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
[00:33.780 --> 00:37.020]  And you're listening to WBAI New York.
[00:37.080 --> 00:37.980]  We're surprised.
[00:38.320 --> 00:39.480]  It's 7 o'clock on a Wednesday.
[00:40.000 --> 00:40.960]  Time for Off the Hook.
[02:03.800 --> 02:05.280]  And a very good evening for everybody.
[02:05.420 --> 02:06.480]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:06.540 --> 02:08.860]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:08.860 --> 02:10.260]  Joined tonight by Mike.
[02:10.560 --> 02:11.020]  Good evening.
[02:11.280 --> 02:11.840]  Rob T.
[02:12.120 --> 02:12.600]  Firefly.
[02:12.800 --> 02:13.140]  Good evening.
[02:13.400 --> 02:13.660]  Kyle.
[02:14.430 --> 02:15.280]  Hello, New York.
[02:15.400 --> 02:15.840]  Hello, world.
[02:16.240 --> 02:17.200]  And Bernie S.
[02:17.700 --> 02:18.500]  Good evening from Pennsylvania.
[02:18.500 --> 02:19.440]  It's good to be back.
[02:19.900 --> 02:23.520]  Well, yeah, we're back every week, every Wednesday at this time.
[02:23.680 --> 02:27.490]  7 o'clock is when you can listen to Off the Hook on WBAI 99.5 FM.
[02:27.490 --> 02:31.110]  And as we approach the end of July, August is just around the corner.
[02:31.110 --> 02:35.930]  I wonder, I wonder, just what this summer... What are you looking at me strangely for, Rob?
[02:37.200 --> 02:39.060]  I think you forgot to wind your watch.
[02:39.660 --> 02:40.340]  You know what?
[02:40.360 --> 02:42.660]  No, I didn't forget to wind my watch.
[02:42.960 --> 02:50.480]  I forgot to voice my frustration at not being on for the last two weeks because we missed all of July, well, the end of July.
[02:50.620 --> 02:51.880]  And what's the day now?
[02:52.240 --> 02:53.500]  It's mid-August?
[02:53.500 --> 02:54.840]  It's August 13th, yeah.
[02:55.000 --> 02:57.780]  I mean, wow, that's a lot that we have to catch up on.
[02:57.860 --> 03:05.840]  And I'm sorry, listeners, that we weren't on the last couple of weeks, but, well, apparently, we weren't raising enough in the fundraiser, so that's what happens.
[03:06.800 --> 03:07.760]  I could go on.
[03:07.820 --> 03:10.380]  You know, I could go on for quite a while about why that's the case.
[03:11.240 --> 03:15.160]  I know listeners are frustrated and angry that they haven't gotten their premiums from last time.
[03:15.760 --> 03:16.600]  Folks, we're trying.
[03:16.720 --> 03:20.880]  We're trying to get the station to send them to you, and we're not getting anywhere.
[03:21.440 --> 03:22.480]  I don't know what to say.
[03:22.700 --> 03:31.640]  And I do know it's also kind of interesting that while we were away, we noticed that there are premiums from our own conference being offered on the radio station.
[03:31.880 --> 03:32.980]  Bernie, you saw this, right?
[03:33.340 --> 03:41.730]  Yeah, the famous Snowden-Elsberg talk is being offered on Democracy Now!
[03:41.880 --> 03:44.300]  Well, it's being offered on the whole station, actually, which is great.
[03:44.480 --> 03:49.320]  You know, if you want to pledge $75 to get that talk, that's wonderful.
[03:49.320 --> 03:57.200]  But it's just weird because this is the content that we put together, and we were preempted, and other shows are just offering the content, and no one even talked to us about it.
[03:57.560 --> 04:02.140]  It's a very weird way of treating people here, treating listeners.
[04:03.090 --> 04:04.460]  And we're trying to work this out.
[04:04.520 --> 04:08.600]  We are trying to work this out, but it is frustrating, and we're reaching the end of our ropes here.
[04:08.670 --> 04:16.120]  We have a lot of ropes to reach the end of, but it's not any concern right now because there is no fundraiser at the moment.
[04:16.880 --> 04:19.200]  So we're going to try and just focus on content tonight.
[04:19.440 --> 04:22.170]  You could always donate, but we won't ask you to, tonight.
[04:22.540 --> 04:24.560]  Well, give to WBAI.org with the number two.
[04:24.700 --> 04:25.020]  Go ahead.
[04:25.140 --> 04:25.980]  Yes, but...
[04:25.980 --> 04:28.790]  Or become a WBAI buddy.
[04:29.020 --> 04:35.340]  I know that we are trying to get you the flash drives that you pledged for last October that the station still has not obtained.
[04:36.560 --> 04:40.060]  Raised $8,000 for the radio station, and it's shameful.
[04:40.300 --> 04:40.600]  It's shameful.
[04:40.600 --> 04:47.040]  We're sure they're going to work on it because it's such a simple gesture to get this hardware for that premium.
[04:47.290 --> 04:47.440]  Yeah.
[04:48.260 --> 04:48.880]  Yes, Rob?
[04:49.060 --> 05:03.290]  So we are working on getting the flash drives into our hands, but just a quick reminder to listeners who have pledged for something else and haven't gotten it in the past, even if it was quite a long time ago, if you haven't already, let us know.
[05:03.380 --> 05:03.680]  Let us know.
[05:03.790 --> 05:05.700]  Send us an email, OTH at 2600.com.
[05:05.800 --> 05:07.000]  We are hanging on to those.
[05:07.100 --> 05:11.260]  We are bringing those to the attention of the people whose attention we can bring it to.
[05:11.700 --> 05:12.300]  It's funny.
[05:12.520 --> 05:19.520]  I got a piece of email from a BAI staffer a week or so ago saying that they found a whole lot of our premiums in an office.
[05:21.260 --> 05:24.500]  And we deliver the premiums to the radio station, so they send them out.
[05:24.860 --> 05:27.650]  And someone just found a pile of them that never went out.
[05:27.680 --> 05:29.860]  And I'm trying to find out what they're from and never heard back.
[05:30.450 --> 05:34.400]  So yeah, if you didn't receive them, that's probably where they are in that pile someplace.
[05:34.400 --> 05:36.920]  How much office does WBA even have nowadays?
[05:36.920 --> 05:38.220]  Enough to lose things in.
[05:38.460 --> 05:40.150]  It's just, it's so incredibly frustrating.
[05:40.150 --> 05:46.680]  And I don't want to simply bitch and moan about this on the radio, but folks need to know where we are in this situation.
[05:46.680 --> 05:49.040]  And we're fighting for you.
[05:49.180 --> 05:52.440]  We're trying to get the things that you pledged for out.
[05:52.720 --> 05:55.340]  Apparently, distributing by Geocache wasn't the best idea.
[05:55.880 --> 05:56.120]  Yeah.
[05:56.380 --> 05:57.060]  To be continued.
[05:57.480 --> 05:59.340]  We will definitely post updates.
[05:59.440 --> 05:59.780]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[06:00.420 --> 06:16.160]  I wonder if you have any theories or anybody else here on the show have any theories as to why it's so hard for WBI's general manager or someone in charge to pick up the phone and call a phone number that's on a quote we sent them for these blank USB flash drives.
[06:16.840 --> 06:31.220]  And everything is on the quote already for them to place the order for and have them shipped to us so we can populate them with all the NSA and WikiLeaks data and have them delivered to our most supportive listeners.
[06:31.380 --> 06:35.340]  What is so hard with picking up the phone and just placing an order with a credit card?
[06:35.560 --> 06:37.150]  Maybe the NSA is threatening them.
[06:37.540 --> 06:38.280]  I don't know.
[06:38.460 --> 06:40.360]  Far be it from me to theorize as to what.
[06:40.460 --> 06:42.220]  I do not want to make this into a personal thing, though.
[06:42.340 --> 06:47.780]  It's not one person or a particular part of the radio station or anything like that.
[06:47.780 --> 06:50.400]  But it's a systemic problem and it needs to be dealt with.
[06:50.560 --> 06:54.740]  And we have not been offering new premiums as a result of this.
[06:54.760 --> 07:02.280]  And that's why we're not raising enough money because we're not offering new premiums.
[07:02.320 --> 07:05.040]  We don't want to offer new premiums if they're not going to get sent out.
[07:05.900 --> 07:08.540]  That just seems like basic justice 101.
[07:09.080 --> 07:12.180]  And unfortunately that leads to us being preempted because we're not raising enough money.
[07:12.260 --> 07:17.650]  It's a real, it's a Kafka-esque situation, but it's par for the course here.
[07:17.780 --> 07:18.420]  WBAI.
[07:18.800 --> 07:22.240]  Anyway, let's move on because we have an actual show to do tonight.
[07:22.380 --> 07:24.240]  And we'd like to hear from our listeners, too, a bit later on.
[07:24.320 --> 07:25.660]  We haven't heard from you in quite a while.
[07:25.780 --> 07:28.060]  We've only been on once since the HOPE conference.
[07:28.240 --> 07:31.580]  And boy, the HOPE conference was such an historical event.
[07:31.920 --> 07:40.960]  Still hearing from people who attended, still hearing from people who just caught wind of it online or through articles or things like that.
[07:41.280 --> 07:43.540]  Definitely the best conference we've ever put on.
[07:43.620 --> 07:47.360]  I think the most significant hacker event in this country in quite some time.
[07:47.360 --> 07:54.100]  And I don't know if we'll ever be able to top it, having Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg speaking to our audience.
[07:54.780 --> 07:58.320]  Such a thrill just seeing the response that those guys got.
[07:58.740 --> 08:00.420]  And it means the world to them.
[08:00.800 --> 08:07.650]  Imagine Daniel Ellsberg seeing a bunch of teenagers applauding him and knowing what he did and what he stood for.
[08:07.980 --> 08:16.650]  And Edward Snowden realizing that there are thousands of people, a lot more than that, in this country that will stand up for him and support what he did.
[08:16.650 --> 08:19.820]  And that's what it's all about.
[08:19.840 --> 08:20.900]  It's bringing people together.
[08:21.220 --> 08:23.440]  It's crossing communities.
[08:23.480 --> 08:26.940]  I remember back in 2000 when we brought Jello Biafra to the HOPE conference.
[08:27.120 --> 08:28.700]  Totally different crowd.
[08:28.860 --> 08:29.700]  Totally different community.
[08:30.040 --> 08:34.500]  The punk rockers and his spoken word tours and things like that.
[08:34.580 --> 08:35.500]  But it meshed.
[08:35.860 --> 08:37.500]  We had Negative Land.
[08:37.820 --> 08:41.260]  They had a message to send to our attendees as well.
[08:41.260 --> 08:43.880]  And I think everybody listened to each other.
[08:44.120 --> 08:47.500]  So much you can gain just from that simple act, just by listening.
[08:48.480 --> 08:49.040]  I'm sorry.
[08:49.080 --> 08:49.260]  Go ahead.
[08:49.560 --> 08:51.140]  I've always loved that about the HOPE conference.
[08:51.700 --> 09:03.640]  Since early on, there have been people speaking who not only are the sort of people who you would expect to see at a HOPE conference, people like Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick and folks like that who you would think, okay, they're speaking to hackers.
[09:03.640 --> 09:08.200]  But people like Jello Biafra, like Aaron Magruder, the cartoonist behind the boondocks.
[09:08.740 --> 09:11.180]  People said to me, why Aaron Magruder?
[09:11.260 --> 09:12.780]  What does he have to do with the hacker community?
[09:13.260 --> 09:14.640]  He's a cartoonist.
[09:14.800 --> 09:30.420]  But the thing is, Aaron Magruder, who draws boondocks, he was the only person in the newspapers that were carrying his comic strip to get the case against us by the MPAA, the DECSS case, back in 2000.
[09:30.660 --> 09:31.900]  He was the only one to get it right.
[09:32.420 --> 09:36.000]  And that made what he was doing a hack, as far as I'm concerned.
[09:36.240 --> 09:40.780]  He hacked the system because he got the message into the newspapers that would not cover the story.
[09:40.940 --> 09:44.000]  And that's the kind of thing that we acknowledge and we appreciate.
[09:44.060 --> 09:57.300]  And it goes beyond just the latest exploits and what corporation is offering what product next week and who can come up with a cleverest meme and various things like that.
[09:57.680 --> 09:58.860]  So much bigger than that.
[09:58.960 --> 09:59.920]  So much more important than that.
[10:00.020 --> 10:01.560]  So much more lasting than that.
[10:01.680 --> 10:05.880]  People will remember Hope X in a hundred years, I dare say.
[10:06.140 --> 10:15.100]  I won't be around to prove that, but I'm pretty sure someone listening to this archive, because yes, we keep archives, will say, yeah, Hope X, that was legendary.
[10:15.100 --> 10:17.920]  And I hope we're able to do more things like that.
[10:18.100 --> 10:20.840]  Well, if you're wrong, no one will be listening to this archive, so...
[10:20.840 --> 10:22.020]  It's a win-win, isn't it?
[10:22.180 --> 10:23.420]  Yeah, you really can't lose this bet.
[10:23.620 --> 10:31.300]  I will say that Rob said, you know, name some people as the sort of people you would expect to find at a conference like Hope.
[10:31.400 --> 10:36.600]  And I really think, I've been saying this a lot to people who didn't attend the conference, who want to know what it's all about.
[10:36.900 --> 10:40.200]  I really think the eclecticism of the conference is really what makes it.
[10:40.940 --> 10:45.760]  It's certainly true that it is not the best computer security conference in the world.
[10:45.980 --> 10:48.140]  Well, that's because we're not a computer security conference.
[10:48.160 --> 10:49.320]  We don't try to be.
[10:49.520 --> 10:56.560]  We did have, actually, an excellent talk on iPhone security that I think did have some genuinely new things in it.
[10:56.700 --> 11:04.660]  But, you know, it is not three days straight of the latest exploits and the latest techniques for exploiting and all this stuff.
[11:06.120 --> 11:17.200]  But what other conference is going to have, you know, Edward Snowden at the same talk as you have someone teaching you about poisons and how to protect yourself against them at the same conference?
[11:17.200 --> 11:18.280]  That was an awesome talk, too.
[11:18.560 --> 11:18.720]  Yeah.
[11:19.240 --> 11:25.700]  So I'm really excited about the eclecticism, and I want to get out of the box of people you'd expect to see at Hope.
[11:26.040 --> 11:26.460]  Yes.
[11:26.720 --> 11:29.360]  And I don't know, who would you expect to see at Hope other than us?
[11:30.380 --> 11:32.080]  You never know who's going to show up next.
[11:32.200 --> 11:36.820]  So if you have ideas for who should be there in 2016, please let us know.
[11:37.540 --> 11:41.940]  We've been soliciting feedback, feedback at hope.net is the email address we've been using for that.
[11:42.000 --> 11:46.420]  And a lot of people are saying, you know, it's time you guys moved to a bigger venue because you had too many people there.
[11:46.480 --> 11:47.440]  And we did have a lot of people.
[11:47.940 --> 11:55.620]  There was a lot of crowding, and it was a challenge because we had to initiate all kinds of crowd control with the Edward Snowden talk.
[11:56.200 --> 11:59.840]  Everybody obviously wanted to see that, but it was on video.
[12:00.200 --> 12:03.380]  It wasn't recorded on video, but it was on a screen.
[12:04.160 --> 12:14.620]  So we encourage people, if they couldn't make it into the main room that was showing it, to go into an adjunct room or to watch on their laptops because we had all kinds of cool streaming going on.
[12:14.960 --> 12:18.200]  People all around the world, tens of thousands of them are watching this at the same time.
[12:18.780 --> 12:23.460]  We had crowd issues because fire marshals were around and we didn't want to overcrowd.
[12:23.740 --> 12:26.680]  But yeah, you might have to look at bigger spaces.
[12:26.960 --> 12:28.660]  And maybe you can help with that.
[12:28.760 --> 12:32.600]  Maybe if you know of bigger spaces in the New York area, let us know.
[12:33.320 --> 12:34.960]  The thing is, there aren't that many of them.
[12:35.140 --> 12:37.320]  There's something like Javits Convention Center.
[12:37.500 --> 12:38.960]  I think that would be kind of impersonal.
[12:39.000 --> 12:42.360]  I don't think that would have the same Hope flavor to it.
[12:42.420 --> 12:43.340]  But I could be wrong.
[12:43.440 --> 12:45.660]  You know, I'm open to all kinds of possibilities.
[12:45.820 --> 12:47.960]  If you know something, feedback at hope.net.
[12:48.140 --> 12:49.200]  We'd love to hear from you.
[12:50.180 --> 12:50.540]  Absolutely.
[12:50.540 --> 12:52.260]  And I've been loving the feedback we've been seeing.
[12:52.460 --> 12:59.780]  If you've sent something to feedback at hope.net, know that it is being looked at and commented on and discussed among the people who make hope happen.
[13:00.180 --> 13:02.580]  And yeah, it's very heartwarming to see all the good feedback.
[13:02.860 --> 13:06.480]  It's illuminating to see feedback of criticisms people might have.
[13:06.740 --> 13:07.960]  And we want all of it.
[13:08.040 --> 13:11.720]  So if you've got any feelings on your Hope experience or Hope in general, let us know.
[13:11.820 --> 13:12.720]  Feedback at hope.net.
[13:13.260 --> 13:13.620]  Yeah.
[13:13.800 --> 13:16.140]  And I just want to reiterate regarding crowding.
[13:16.300 --> 13:24.660]  I mean, it was something that we were dealing with prior to the event and also during some of the major keynotes.
[13:24.740 --> 13:28.000]  I mean, there were a lot of people really concerned about this on our staff.
[13:28.000 --> 13:34.600]  And we worked really hard to make it as, well, safe, but also as enjoyable as possible.
[13:34.860 --> 13:38.180]  And just at least make sure everyone had access in one way or another.
[13:38.440 --> 13:44.240]  The thing is, I know a lot of people were disappointed if they couldn't make it into the main room when the Snowden talk was taking place.
[13:44.400 --> 13:47.520]  But you don't come to a conference like Hope just for one talk.
[13:48.060 --> 13:49.340]  We had 100 of them.
[13:49.660 --> 13:52.220]  And we had all kinds of activities in addition to that.
[13:52.760 --> 13:58.720]  So yeah, you know, it does happen occasionally where there's something extremely popular and not everybody can get into it.
[13:58.820 --> 14:02.460]  We just hope that you were able to enjoy yourself in other ways.
[14:02.560 --> 14:07.800]  And we also did make the talk available online on our YouTube channel, Channel 2600.
[14:08.400 --> 14:11.820]  And everything else, we're eventually going to get it all up on the YouTube channel as well.
[14:11.880 --> 14:14.080]  But we also have the full set of DVDs.
[14:14.200 --> 14:20.900]  And just today, in fact, we were able to get everything converted to high quality MP4s on two flash drives.
[14:21.300 --> 14:23.300]  And these are flash drives that we already have.
[14:23.460 --> 14:25.340]  So it's not a question of waiting for BAI to get them.
[14:26.440 --> 14:31.280]  We already have those two 32 gig flash drives.
[14:31.680 --> 14:32.740]  We've never done this before.
[14:32.860 --> 14:36.920]  And that's in response to a bunch of people saying, hey, I don't have a DVD player on my laptop.
[14:37.040 --> 14:39.380]  I don't have any DVD media in my home.
[14:39.760 --> 14:40.640]  Okay, you know what?
[14:41.200 --> 14:42.500]  That happened kind of quickly.
[14:42.740 --> 14:44.940]  People sort of shifted away from that technology.
[14:44.940 --> 14:46.720]  To me, DVDs still seem kind of new.
[14:47.380 --> 14:49.340]  But I guess people aren't using them anymore.
[14:49.560 --> 14:51.620]  So all right, we have it on flash.
[14:51.880 --> 14:52.720]  And you can share these.
[14:52.860 --> 14:54.020]  You can copy them.
[14:54.480 --> 14:55.300]  They're massive.
[14:55.760 --> 15:00.360]  They're not online in this form because they're just huge and they're really high quality.
[15:00.820 --> 15:03.700]  But you're welcome to spread them around as much as you want.
[15:03.960 --> 15:07.600]  That's something we just put on our site today at 2600.com.
[15:08.020 --> 15:08.360]  Yes, Bernie?
[15:08.920 --> 15:10.080]  I didn't say anything.
[15:10.180 --> 15:11.580]  But I know you want to say something.
[15:11.680 --> 15:12.180]  No, no, that's great.
[15:12.300 --> 15:19.340]  Because optical media, you know, these five inch optical discs don't fit into every computing device anymore.
[15:20.240 --> 15:30.560]  With a USB flash drive, you can plug it into your netbook or laptop that has no moving drives in it.
[15:31.060 --> 15:32.820]  And copy that data down.
[15:33.060 --> 15:35.340]  Now, there's other people that don't even have a USB.
[15:35.540 --> 15:37.460]  Actually, my phone... Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.
[15:37.620 --> 15:38.520]  People don't have USB?
[15:38.900 --> 15:40.880]  How do you get things onto computers now?
[15:40.940 --> 15:44.000]  Some self, like, you know, like iPhones do not have a USB.
[15:44.300 --> 15:47.700]  My BlackBerry phone does have a USB drive.
[15:47.900 --> 15:49.220]  I can USB port.
[15:49.340 --> 15:50.860]  I can plug a flash drive right into it.
[15:51.520 --> 15:53.140]  But that's not your computer, Bernie.
[15:53.260 --> 15:54.820]  Your computer isn't your BlackBerry, is it?
[15:54.960 --> 15:55.300]  There is.
[15:55.400 --> 15:55.520]  No.
[15:55.800 --> 15:59.720]  My point is, there is no one medium that fits everyone's needs.
[16:00.040 --> 16:03.480]  So that's why we provide it in a variety of formats.
[16:03.700 --> 16:07.320]  Online, on DVD, on USB flash drive.
[16:07.620 --> 16:09.160]  Will the audio be available?
[16:09.480 --> 16:11.160]  The audio is available now, isn't it?
[16:11.240 --> 16:12.220]  The audio is already online.
[16:12.240 --> 16:16.040]  If you go to x.hope.net, every single talk has a link to the audio.
[16:16.260 --> 16:17.680]  So you can do that right away.
[16:17.900 --> 16:23.640]  Now, will 20 Secondary be making available all of the audio files on some sort of removable media that you can purchase?
[16:23.880 --> 16:32.120]  Well, that actually already is the case, that we have that on DVDs, the audio DVDs, and that's also available on the flash drives.
[16:32.220 --> 16:33.500]  How many disks is that, by the way?
[16:33.540 --> 16:35.340]  It's two full DVD disks.
[16:35.580 --> 16:35.720]  Great.
[16:35.740 --> 16:38.660]  And a bunch of files on the flash drives as well.
[16:38.840 --> 16:46.100]  So the thing is, we're staying up all night for weeks after the conference, making everybody happy, trying to get into the format people want, trying to preserve this thing.
[16:46.200 --> 16:50.560]  And that's one of the strengths, I think, of the HOPE conferences is that we preserve things.
[16:50.980 --> 16:54.260]  And it's a bit of history that will live on for a long, long time.
[16:54.400 --> 17:01.260]  Because what we're doing is history and something that I want people to be able to appreciate 100 years from now.
[17:01.580 --> 17:03.620]  And I know that you're still listening 100 years from now.
[17:03.760 --> 17:06.290]  And we're really excited about this format.
[17:06.510 --> 17:10.080]  I mean, it was one thing to get everything organized and make sure everything was correct.
[17:10.080 --> 17:12.420]  And as you said, preserved, because we want to be accurate.
[17:12.880 --> 17:17.120]  There's portions of things that get cut off, whatever logistical things are happening during the event.
[17:17.120 --> 17:19.250]  But we pretty much we have everything.
[17:19.440 --> 17:23.920]  And that's how we generate the audio as well as the discs and other things.
[17:24.290 --> 17:35.880]  But once that's in in as good a shape as we're we're happy with for for archival purposes, then it was a fair amount of time to get it to a format that people liked.
[17:35.980 --> 17:48.960]  And this was a response to a lot of things that people had said, but things we had heard in multiple places on more than a few people had had mentioned that perhaps DVD was a bit too well outdated for for people.
[17:49.140 --> 17:54.680]  So this hopefully even got to Blu-ray, you know, we're throwing the whole technology aside, and we never even got the Blu-ray.
[17:55.790 --> 17:56.270]  Exactly.
[17:56.820 --> 17:57.300]  But Emmanuel?
[17:57.660 --> 17:57.920]  Yes.
[17:58.200 --> 17:59.510]  It is a good format.
[17:59.510 --> 18:11.940]  If you want to take that, if you want to walk out of hope, you know, just a minute or half an hour after the talk just happened, with that content in your pocket, that is a great medium.
[18:12.200 --> 18:13.700]  It's relatively inexpensive.
[18:14.120 --> 18:16.160]  I mean, you need a wide pocket to fit a DVD in it.
[18:16.160 --> 18:17.140]  But yeah, I take your point.
[18:17.280 --> 18:20.620]  I've got big pockets, you know, and not deep pockets.
[18:20.740 --> 18:22.220]  I always suspected you had big pockets.
[18:22.300 --> 18:22.720]  Now I know.
[18:23.060 --> 18:23.740]  Wide pockets.
[18:24.780 --> 18:34.180]  No, but you could see a talk at Hope, and then a few minutes later, pick up a DVD recorded in real time and walk out of there with it, which is great.
[18:34.200 --> 18:36.880]  Then you can transfer it to whatever other medium works for you.
[18:37.280 --> 18:39.320]  But a lot of people took advantage of that.
[18:39.400 --> 18:43.100]  And I want to thank you for making that an option for all the speakers.
[18:43.620 --> 18:56.160]  If you gave a talk at Hope, you can contact us at feedback at hope.net and get five DVDs of any of the Hope talks, including your own, if you'd like that, which is, I think, a great offering.
[18:56.300 --> 18:59.380]  A thank you to all of our speakers who make Hope possible.
[18:59.580 --> 19:01.960]  And we're also making that same offer to volunteers.
[19:01.980 --> 19:09.200]  If you registered as a volunteer, we'll send you five DVDs as well, because volunteers are what make Hope possible.
[19:09.460 --> 19:14.200]  And everything we can do to make you guys happier is something that we will try and do.
[19:14.300 --> 19:16.060]  And we're always trying to improve on that.
[19:16.300 --> 19:17.580]  So I have a question, Emmanuel.
[19:18.260 --> 19:23.360]  Regular listeners of the show may notice that sometimes you're a little resistant to new technology.
[19:24.240 --> 19:25.080]  Hold on a second.
[19:25.160 --> 19:26.760]  I'm not resistant to new technology.
[19:26.960 --> 19:28.180]  I question new technology.
[19:28.340 --> 19:31.320]  I tend to find the bugs, and I tend to break things very quickly.
[19:31.320 --> 19:34.020]  You also resist my categorization of you as resistant.
[19:34.260 --> 19:38.180]  Because that's a new form of technology that I find some problems with.
[19:38.220 --> 19:42.000]  So my question is, DVDs are now old enough that you're okay with them?
[19:42.120 --> 19:43.600]  I've always been okay with DVDs.
[19:43.600 --> 19:46.500]  Look, they sued me before I even had a chance to use one.
[19:46.500 --> 19:53.060]  You know, the DVD Copyright Control Association and the MPAA all because of this old DVD nonsense back in 2000.
[19:53.360 --> 20:00.040]  So yeah, I was a little bit biased against them for a little while, but I still went out and I got myself a DVD player region free, I might point out.
[20:00.040 --> 20:04.240]  I guess we should clarify that the DVDs that in question here are not encrypted.
[20:05.030 --> 20:05.860]  No, of course not.
[20:05.940 --> 20:06.400]  They're not encrypted.
[20:06.560 --> 20:07.300]  They're not region coded.
[20:07.720 --> 20:13.580]  You can copy, if you can figure out how to suck the data off the DVD, you can copy it as much as you want.
[20:14.060 --> 20:17.200]  And certainly with the flash drive with the MP4s, you can do that as well.
[20:17.480 --> 20:18.020]  Yes, Rob?
[20:19.490 --> 20:22.580]  I'm still upset though that you decided to discontinue the VHS tapes.
[20:22.780 --> 20:24.200]  You know, I think that was a bad move.
[20:25.060 --> 20:27.260]  And I would like to share hope with my grandmother.
[20:28.030 --> 20:28.920]  Well, okay.
[20:29.140 --> 20:30.540]  Your grandmother probably has a VCR.
[20:31.320 --> 20:32.460]  It is amazing though.
[20:32.640 --> 20:38.280]  And this is a topic in and of itself to see the technology change and not always for the better.
[20:38.440 --> 20:44.140]  And that's something that I do take issue with because there are many times I think we, um, we don't make good decisions.
[20:44.380 --> 20:50.420]  For instance, digital TV, I could go on for hours and hours about why that is a complete nightmare, a train wreck.
[20:50.560 --> 20:52.240]  I can't get TV stations I used to get.
[20:52.620 --> 20:54.640]  And, uh, the picture really isn't any better.
[20:54.640 --> 20:57.700]  And it's, it's a, it's, it's a bad technology that was forced upon us.
[20:58.220 --> 21:04.380]  Um, I find all kinds of problems with smartphones, but that's, you know, and that's something that's being reflected, uh, in the mainstream.
[21:04.520 --> 21:10.080]  Now people realize, Hey, I'm being tracked all the time now and willingly too, because I gave all those information away.
[21:10.480 --> 21:21.280]  Uh, yeah, you have to have a critical eye towards any form of new technology, but it is fascinating to see how, um, VHS tapes, they're gone, uh, turned into, um, uh, DVDs.
[21:21.460 --> 21:22.580]  Now they're on the way out.
[21:22.740 --> 21:24.660]  Blu-ray, apparently we're not even going to give that a chance.
[21:25.220 --> 21:28.220]  Um, everything is going to be, what do we call this?
[21:28.440 --> 21:28.820]  Magnetic?
[21:29.120 --> 21:30.500]  Uh, well, not magnetic.
[21:30.540 --> 21:31.160]  No, it's not magnetic.
[21:31.280 --> 21:31.860]  What, what do you call it?
[21:31.900 --> 21:38.240]  Solid state, solid state, but, uh, isn't that, isn't that, uh, something that can be wiped out pretty quickly?
[21:38.760 --> 21:41.320]  You know, we were testing, we were testing actually some of the files.
[21:41.740 --> 21:43.480]  I think we should call these people out.
[21:43.540 --> 21:45.140]  I think we should, because that's what we do here on off the hook.
[21:45.440 --> 21:48.960]  We have a device called a WD live.
[21:48.960 --> 21:49.960]  You guys familiar with this at all?
[21:50.040 --> 21:50.680]  You ever hear about this?
[21:51.060 --> 21:51.940]  Western digital?
[21:52.340 --> 21:53.300]  It sounds scary.
[21:53.480 --> 21:54.800]  It's like a little box.
[21:54.940 --> 21:59.740]  It allows you to play different files over your TV with HDMI outputs and stuff.
[21:59.860 --> 22:05.440]  So you can plug a thumb drive or connect to something over your local network and stream stuff to your TV.
[22:05.620 --> 22:14.220]  It's kind of like, uh, whatever Apple has for TVs or, um, other kinds of like sling box and other, uh, digital players.
[22:14.340 --> 22:20.980]  Now we plugged, uh, one of our thumb drives in to test it because we want to test it on all platforms and it, it, it worked great on all platforms.
[22:21.120 --> 22:29.060]  When we got to the WD live device, we noticed that, um, titles that had absolutely nothing to do with the talks were being displayed.
[22:29.200 --> 22:29.540]  What was that?
[22:29.640 --> 22:31.660]  The Hollywood, uh, story or something like that.
[22:31.940 --> 22:39.780]  Something ridiculously stupid, uh, was showing up as, you know, it was a, it was some kind of a hope talk, but it was being called the Hollywood story.
[22:40.300 --> 22:42.580]  And I was, I was fit to be tied.
[22:42.780 --> 22:44.180]  How in the world is this happening?
[22:44.300 --> 22:45.180]  We checked everything.
[22:45.400 --> 22:47.720]  And now it's got this crazy nonsensical title.
[22:47.960 --> 22:55.640]  Turns out the WD live device was intelligently figuring out what these files actually were and getting it completely wrong.
[22:55.760 --> 23:01.720]  And without asking anything, it was simply, uh, it was, it was making an XML file, which was then being displayed.
[23:02.080 --> 23:12.780]  Kind of like what you, uh, would see with CDDB data where it created a thumbnail image and XML, uh, file that it found or generated.
[23:12.800 --> 23:21.180]  And it was doing that upon mounting the, the drive and, and, and modifying, literally modifying at least one file or adding two files.
[23:21.180 --> 23:22.220]  It didn't modify the file.
[23:22.220 --> 23:26.220]  It simply added a file that it was then referencing, displaying information.
[23:26.440 --> 23:27.460]  The file itself was untouched.
[23:27.620 --> 23:32.340]  I would really be upset if I, if it modified the MP4s, but it did not do that.
[23:32.520 --> 23:40.040]  This is just another example of how you have to be careful of what you're, what you're putting into your system or, or, or what the system is doing to the devices.
[23:40.380 --> 23:48.420]  I know a number of people rightfully so are concerned about putting USB devices into their system because all kinds of malware can be included.
[23:49.240 --> 23:51.260]  All I can say is we're not doing that.
[23:51.700 --> 23:54.960]  And the USB devices that we hand out, it would be a bad idea.
[23:55.100 --> 23:55.480]  Don't you think?
[23:55.640 --> 24:01.240]  Bad PR for us to infect your machine with malware and, uh, a public relations nightmare.
[24:01.480 --> 24:03.760]  So believe me, we're not doing that.
[24:03.820 --> 24:05.740]  Can you get thumb drives with right protect tabs?
[24:06.160 --> 24:10.040]  Apparently, apparently there is a switch on some of them, uh, but not all of them.
[24:10.080 --> 24:13.740]  Maybe you get like a piece of tape and you put it over two of the pins.
[24:13.980 --> 24:13.980]  Yeah.
[24:13.980 --> 24:14.940]  That doesn't protect you though.
[24:14.940 --> 24:18.420]  If you have a thumb drive that you put into your system and it has malware on it.
[24:18.460 --> 24:18.580]  Yeah.
[24:18.580 --> 24:26.340]  Well, I'm, I'm concerned about protecting the 2600 data, not about protecting, you know, you have to disable like auto mounting if, if you want to do that.
[24:26.500 --> 24:30.720]  Anyway, enough about us, enough about, um, uh, what we've been doing since the conference.
[24:30.840 --> 24:31.600]  Just, it was great.
[24:31.760 --> 24:37.380]  Uh, we haven't been on since, uh, the week after the conference and we were kind of in a, in a, a weird state of shock then.
[24:37.720 --> 24:46.260]  Uh, but, um, we're still working on, on, on getting things, um, uh, post-conference organized, uh, and, uh, and catching up to all the feedback.
[24:46.520 --> 24:46.720]  Yeah.
[24:46.840 --> 24:51.440]  And with the feedback, I think there's a fair amount of excitement for what we could do in the future.
[24:51.620 --> 25:06.980]  And I know that there's a lot of enthusiasm amongst people, uh, who helped out, uh, volunteering and organizing to maybe improve and, and think about these things in the next couple months and years, uh, until the next time, because, uh, we very well may be looking for,
[25:06.980 --> 25:09.000]  uh, new venues and other things like that.
[25:09.160 --> 25:18.220]  So it's been important and actually really, um, productive conversation, I think in part due to the reaction and the positive side of, of how hope went.
[25:18.380 --> 25:24.260]  And then also just, uh, the energy and enthusiasm that people, uh, have as they reflect back.
[25:24.500 --> 25:30.480]  We're open to all kinds of, um, uh, new ideas, new ways of doing things, but let me stress, we do this conference every two years.
[25:30.560 --> 25:35.160]  We don't do it every year because we would go completely insane if we had to do this every year.
[25:35.280 --> 25:42.120]  And we want it to be, um, something of a special event in, uh, a similar way, 2,600 meetings take place once a month.
[25:42.300 --> 25:44.260]  I know some people want to have them every week.
[25:44.360 --> 25:49.920]  Some people want to have them every day, but it becomes less of a special event when you have things too often.
[25:50.220 --> 25:57.300]  Uh, and, uh, hope is something that happens every two years, just like, uh, the camps overseas are things that happen every two years.
[25:57.300 --> 26:00.360]  And we, we alternate with them next year, I believe is a German camp.
[26:00.500 --> 26:00.840]  Yes.
[26:00.940 --> 26:01.840]  So I'm looking forward to that.
[26:01.940 --> 26:02.480]  That'll be fun.
[26:02.900 --> 26:10.460]  And, uh, we're also going to try and make it to, um, uh, CCC, the, the chaos Congress in Hamburg, uh, this, this year in December.
[26:10.720 --> 26:12.920]  Mike, you were at, uh, at the one last year.
[26:13.160 --> 26:13.280]  Yeah.
[26:13.420 --> 26:14.100]  The new digs.
[26:14.220 --> 26:14.520]  Yeah.
[26:14.580 --> 26:19.740]  I'm, I'm still overwhelmed by the size of it, uh, in the somewhat new space.
[26:19.860 --> 26:20.740]  Well, you see, that's the other thing.
[26:20.880 --> 26:24.360]  Uh, they have something like what 10,000 people show up at their, their events now.
[26:24.420 --> 26:25.520]  Not quite, but almost.
[26:25.820 --> 26:25.860]  Yeah.
[26:26.100 --> 26:28.720]  You know, I'm happy with what we have right now.
[26:29.260 --> 26:31.940]  Um, I don't really want to get much bigger than that.
[26:32.260 --> 26:33.780]  You know, and where's that coming from?
[26:34.220 --> 26:34.860]  Sorry about that.
[26:34.960 --> 26:37.620]  That's my, what are my phones?
[26:37.840 --> 26:39.220]  One of your phones over the phone.
[26:39.340 --> 26:39.760]  Okay, great.
[26:40.180 --> 26:46.760]  Listen, let's get to some news because we haven't been on in a few weeks and, uh, we have a lot of catching up to do and no way we're going to catch up to everything.
[26:47.540 --> 26:58.240]  Um, you can call us in just a little bit, 212-209-2900 and, uh, share whatever feedback you have on us, on the conference, on the station, on the world, whatever.
[26:58.600 --> 27:02.540]  Uh, you can also write to us, oth at 2600.com.
[27:02.960 --> 27:06.120]  Uh, here's something that, that, uh, got my interest.
[27:06.420 --> 27:11.880]  Um, it's a story, uh, from a, um, uh, a publication called, uh, the intercept.
[27:12.400 --> 27:19.440]  Nearly half of the people on the U S government's widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group.
[27:19.580 --> 27:35.440]  That's according to classified government documents obtained by this previously mentioned publication called the intercept of the 680,000 people caught up in the government's terrorist screening database, a watch list of known or suspected terrorists that is shared with local law enforcement agencies,
[27:36.040 --> 27:36.960]  private contractors.
[27:36.960 --> 27:38.360]  Hey, we're private contractors.
[27:38.500 --> 27:39.240]  How do we get this list?
[27:39.700 --> 27:45.960]  Uh, foreign governments, uh, more than 40% are described by the government as having no recognized terrorist group affiliation.
[27:46.540 --> 27:56.640]  And that category, 280,000 people, quarters of a million people dwarfs the number of watch listed people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah combined.
[27:56.800 --> 28:04.920]  Now what's interesting, I mean, that is interesting, but what's really interesting here is that these documents were obtained from a source in the intelligence community and it wasn't Snowden.
[28:05.580 --> 28:07.600]  There's a new leaker out there.
[28:07.780 --> 28:13.640]  That's what the news has been over the past, uh, a couple of weeks is that somebody else is leaking information.
[28:13.640 --> 28:21.860]  And I was thinking this as, as Edward Snowden was talking to our audience a few weeks ago, how many people are being inspired right now?
[28:21.960 --> 28:37.540]  How many people, I didn't think it would happen in a week, but I'm thinking 10 years down the road, somebody who's maybe, you know, eight listening to him now in our audience or, or 20 or whatever will be in a situation where they're facing something that's unjust,
[28:37.540 --> 28:44.960]  uh, something that they have knowledge of, something they think the world should know about and something that will make the world a better place if they know about it.
[28:45.120 --> 28:52.420]  And they will make the right decision as opposed to making the decision they are told they, they have to make by the people in charge.
[28:52.820 --> 29:04.380]  Um, I think every time something like this happens, every time there's a Bradley, Chelsea Manning, uh, or if there's an Edward Snowden, um, there are hundreds more that will be inspired by this.
[29:04.540 --> 29:11.440]  And hopefully a fraction of those will find themselves in the right situation at the right time and we'll make the right decision.
[29:12.020 --> 29:15.240]  Uh, we have no idea who this person is who's leaking information now, do we?
[29:16.200 --> 29:17.040]  We, we don't.
[29:17.140 --> 29:29.100]  But, uh, if they looked at, uh, one of the rooms that, uh, had a little sign on it to displaying the name and information regarding, uh, uh, an important whistleblower, they could have been looking at the one that reflected back at them with an image of themself and said,
[29:29.260 --> 29:29.340]  you.
[29:30.040 --> 29:30.400]  Okay.
[29:30.500 --> 29:32.840]  So what you're referring to, we had, we had four rooms.
[29:32.940 --> 29:35.080]  Would you like to, uh, to list the rooms, Rob?
[29:35.220 --> 29:35.700]  We did.
[29:35.920 --> 29:39.160]  Uh, we, we had, uh, Serpico room, uh, named after Frank Serpico.
[29:39.400 --> 29:46.020]  We had an... Frank Serpico being a former New York City cop who, uh, basically whistle blew them and got them very annoyed.
[29:46.380 --> 29:48.600]  Um, we had the Olsen room named for Frank Olsen.
[29:49.160 --> 29:53.740]  Um, we had... Who, uh, he was, uh, Bernie, what was his, uh, his call to fame?
[29:53.800 --> 30:01.280]  He was a, uh, he was a bacterial, bacterial logical warfare scientist working for the CIA back in the fifties.
[30:01.460 --> 30:12.420]  And he, uh, was about to blow the whistle on, uh, a project where the, uh, CIA was unwittingly dosing Americans and Canadians with LSD to see what effect it would have on them.
[30:12.660 --> 30:16.060]  And, uh, then they dosed him and, uh, he killed himself.
[30:16.520 --> 30:18.240]  So, um... At the Hotel Pennsylvania.
[30:18.420 --> 30:18.940]  Yeah, exactly.
[30:18.940 --> 30:21.100]  Which is kind of a horrible irony there.
[30:21.540 --> 30:23.500]  Uh, so, and then, uh, of course, the Manning room.
[30:23.600 --> 30:25.680]  We had the Manning room named for Chelsea Manning.
[30:25.920 --> 30:28.800]  And, uh, the other whistleblower we named a room after was you.
[30:29.300 --> 30:29.700]  Yes.
[30:29.920 --> 30:36.500]  And, uh, that was a not so subtle message to indicate that you could be the next whistleblower, if you so choose.
[30:37.020 --> 30:40.020]  Um, so, yeah, we have no idea who this person is.
[30:40.100 --> 30:45.200]  It's not one of us, but, um, hats off to the person for, for sharing this information.
[30:45.380 --> 30:47.500]  I mean, a couple of other interesting things about this story.
[30:47.600 --> 30:51.720]  First of all, we should mention the, the intercept is, uh, Glenn Greenwald's outfit.
[30:51.900 --> 30:57.340]  Um, I, I don't think this story was written by him, but it's not, it's something that, uh, people should be watching and, and aware of.
[30:57.340 --> 31:08.620]  Um, and the 40% figure is people who, uh, by the estimation of the people who put them on the watch list have no known terrorist group affiliation.
[31:08.980 --> 31:22.440]  Uh, this system is so, uh, devoid of any safeguards that we can imagine that some of the people on this watch list who are believed to have, uh, an affiliation with a group the US government considers terrorist, uh, are not, in fact, affiliated with such groups.
[31:22.800 --> 31:30.300]  Uh, so it's probably, you know, even more than half or, or well more than half of the people on this list who wish us no ill.
[31:30.800 --> 31:33.120]  Um, but it's at least 40%.
[31:34.800 --> 31:35.200]  Absolutely.
[31:35.420 --> 31:36.580]  The question is, why are they on the list?
[31:36.700 --> 31:37.520]  I'm sorry, Bernie, go ahead.
[31:37.700 --> 31:40.320]  The question is, why are they on the list?
[31:40.440 --> 31:52.460]  But I wanted to mention a minute ago when you were talking about people being inspired by, uh, Edward Snowden and, and, uh, uh, uh, Daniel Ellsberg at the Hope X conference, uh, to themselves become whistleblowers.
[31:52.600 --> 32:04.440]  It's worth noting that, uh, at our most recent Hope conference before this, uh, two years ago, Bill Binney was our keynote speaker and Laura Poitras came, interviewed him at, uh, Hope No.
[32:04.540 --> 32:10.020]  9, and put that into a documentary, which has reportedly, uh, inspired Edward Snowden.
[32:10.360 --> 32:14.420]  So all this stuff is connected and it really is having an impact.
[32:15.620 --> 32:17.780]  Yeah, it, and it really is.
[32:17.880 --> 32:21.220]  It's interesting because I was watching some talks from Hope No.
[32:21.280 --> 32:22.220]  9 not too long ago.
[32:22.260 --> 32:26.980]  We put those on YouTube and, um, I was hearing reference to Glenn Greenwald.
[32:27.100 --> 32:28.820]  I was hearing reference to, to Laura Poitras.
[32:29.260 --> 32:42.160]  Uh, I wasn't hearing reference to Edward Snowden because he hadn't yet revealed anything, but it was just interesting to, to hear many of the same names being spoken back then that became household names, uh, only a year or so later.
[32:42.160 --> 32:49.300]  Um, and it does, it does say that the hacker community really does have its finger on the pulse of a changing world.
[32:49.620 --> 32:59.200]  And I think, you know, we need to address the people that say hackers should stay away from this, that it's, it's political and we shouldn't have any, any connection with any, any kind of politics.
[32:59.520 --> 33:00.620]  Everything is politics.
[33:00.860 --> 33:03.180]  Everything is, is relevant in some way.
[33:03.280 --> 33:03.400]  Yeah.
[33:03.520 --> 33:19.140]  You have, uh, security holes, um, and you have leaks and you have all kinds of, of, um, of aspects to the hacker world, but to simply define it rigidly and only focus on one particular aspect of it is denying a lot of the reality.
[33:19.600 --> 33:24.740]  Um, so I'm glad we do things the way we do things and I'm glad others do the things the way they do things.
[33:25.000 --> 33:28.700]  I think there's a lot to learn, a lot of different ways to see the hacker world.
[33:29.120 --> 33:33.080]  And, um, 2014 has been a very interesting year so far for that.
[33:33.900 --> 33:34.960]  Um, okay.
[33:35.100 --> 33:36.540]  Now, uh, this is a story.
[33:36.700 --> 33:41.680]  Uh, we have a, a few stories here, but we do want to take your phone calls as well because we haven't heard from our listeners in so long.
[33:41.860 --> 33:47.580]  Uh, but apparently, uh, good news folks, uh, corporate America is seeing the wisdom of encryption.
[33:47.900 --> 33:52.440]  Your web mail will be safer from prying eyes at some point next year.
[33:52.980 --> 34:08.950]  Um, Yahoo and Google are, are making this promise to their mail service users, uh, who together make up the vast majority of web mail users, more than 425 million people use Gmail and, uh, Yahoo mail, 273 million.
[34:09.720 --> 34:23.240]  Um, basically by, um, sometime in 2015, uh, Yahoo says they will not only be encrypted end-to-end, but they will also be compatible with the end-to-end encryption that Google is working on for Gmail.
[34:23.580 --> 34:24.330]  That's interesting.
[34:24.450 --> 34:25.000]  Isn't that interesting?
[34:25.310 --> 34:28.160]  Now, what I wonder is I don't use either of these systems.
[34:28.430 --> 34:29.540]  What does that mean for me?
[34:29.640 --> 34:35.640]  Does this mean that, uh, I won't be able to, uh, encrypt, uh, mail end-to-end with, uh, with Gmail or with Yahoo?
[34:35.950 --> 34:46.410]  Are they going to somehow, um, um, keep these people out of this whole thing and encourage others to, to use these services for the sake of security, which would be really ironic?
[34:46.780 --> 34:48.720]  Um, I, I haven't seen much addressed there.
[34:48.950 --> 35:00.620]  I mean, I think they're, they're building on open standards, whether they're building on them in a, in a fully open way or not is not yet clear, but I, I do have some serious doubts about their claims to be truly end-to-end.
[35:00.910 --> 35:12.200]  Um, as you know, Emmanuel and, and many of our listeners know the way Google makes money from Gmail is they read your mail, scan it for keywords and use those keywords to choose which ads to show you.
[35:12.330 --> 35:15.280]  So if it's not all they do, but that's how they make money from Gmail.
[35:15.450 --> 35:23.580]  They do all kinds of other things, um, with, with other bits of their time, but, um, um, they can't do that if they can't read your mail.
[35:23.730 --> 35:27.850]  So I, I seriously doubt that it's as end-to-end as they claim.
[35:28.000 --> 35:28.230]  Yeah.
[35:28.350 --> 35:30.020]  I'm not quite sure how that's going to work.
[35:30.120 --> 35:30.540]  Yeah, exactly.
[35:30.730 --> 35:40.660]  How will they be able to give you the right ad if they can't read your, your, I imagine, um, you'll, Google will be able to read it, but nobody else will be able to.
[35:41.210 --> 35:45.060]  Which, let's be clear, would be a huge improvement over the current state of affairs.
[35:45.060 --> 35:49.600]  Like, let's, let's not, that's not nothing, but it's not, uh, quite what we want either.
[35:49.870 --> 35:55.390]  Their, their ad machines are somewhere in between one end and the other, I think.
[35:55.560 --> 35:56.580]  I think that's what that means.
[35:56.730 --> 35:56.950]  Yes.
[35:57.850 --> 36:00.060]  Well, it'll be interesting to see how that, how that happens.
[36:00.290 --> 36:02.930]  Uh, but, uh, as I said, Google is doing more than just this.
[36:03.020 --> 36:12.540]  Uh, recently they defended their policy of electronically monitoring users' content for child sexual abuse after it tipped off police in Texas to a child pornography suspect.
[36:12.660 --> 36:16.290]  Remember, folks, everything is about either child pornography or terrorism.
[36:16.580 --> 36:30.350]  And that's how, that's how we, uh, we initially bite down on the hook and get reeled in because, uh, uh, once we accept it on those particular premises, it gets spread around to all kinds of other things as well.
[36:31.080 --> 36:41.270]  Um, Houston restaurant worker, John Henry Skillern was arrested Thursday, a couple of Thursdays ago, actually, uh, following a, a cyber tip, really Yahoo.
[36:41.520 --> 36:44.120]  This is Yahoo news, a cyber tip.
[36:44.250 --> 36:44.330]  Yeah.
[36:44.730 --> 36:50.870]  Uh, from Google, um, that basically they passed along, uh, to the national center for missing and exploited children.
[36:51.310 --> 36:59.330]  Um, this guy had some kind of image in his email that he was sending around and Google was able to detect that he had this image.
[36:59.580 --> 37:03.830]  And in so doing realized that he was up to no good and alerted the authorities.
[37:03.910 --> 37:07.390]  Now, few people would say, oh, that's a bad thing.
[37:07.500 --> 37:15.370]  They shouldn't have, have gotten this guy, even though having an image is very different from somebody personally, but that's a whole other conversation.
[37:16.540 --> 37:21.250]  Now, this is something that I don't think a lot of people realize Google was able to do.
[37:21.410 --> 37:25.810]  And if Google can do it with this, it means Google can do it with other things as well.
[37:25.910 --> 37:41.520]  Now let's, let's go to a fictitious universe where the United States is an evil regime and certain things are illegal to talk about certain things like, oh, I don't know, politics or, uh, um, revolution or even encryption.
[37:42.310 --> 37:52.600]  And you're able to be tracked down and arrested because these, these pictures or conversations, PDFs, what have you show up in your email.
[37:53.520 --> 37:54.480]  Things change.
[37:54.640 --> 37:55.890]  They change over the years.
[37:56.020 --> 37:57.330]  They change in different parts of the world.
[37:57.450 --> 37:59.310]  And Google, of course, is not the only company out there.
[37:59.460 --> 38:11.310]  There are all kinds of other companies, all kinds of other governments that would love to use this ability to track people based on what they say, what they believe, who they are, uh, their ethnicity, their religion.
[38:11.640 --> 38:13.480]  It just goes on and on and on.
[38:13.620 --> 38:18.140]  So while, yeah, you can, you can celebrate this and say, okay, another bad guy has been caught.
[38:18.930 --> 38:23.960]  Eventually this is going to be used against you in a way that you're not so thrilled about.
[38:24.100 --> 38:24.270]  Rob?
[38:24.660 --> 38:40.640]  There, there's also the question of, uh, how much of this is under automatic control because, uh, as, as you were saying earlier, um, when you put your own movie file into your Western digital thing, uh, some database somewhere matched his fingerprint with something that it was not and started showing you that the wrong title.
[38:41.250 --> 38:47.580]  Um, so it's, it's very easy for images to, uh, duplicate the same fingerprint as some other image out there.
[38:47.770 --> 38:49.830]  What if that fingerprint had matched child porn?
[38:49.910 --> 38:51.290]  What if that fingerprint had matched child porn?
[38:51.350 --> 38:55.870]  Then the FBI would be knocking on the door just because we plugged a USB device into a, into a WD live thing.
[38:55.870 --> 39:07.140]  But also what worries me about this is, um, a user of free email, I'm, I'm fond of saying, and people aren't fond of hearing from me that a user of a free email service like Gmail or like Yahoo basically has no right complaining about anything that, uh,
[39:07.250 --> 39:09.750]  that their provider does because they're not the customer.
[39:09.830 --> 39:09.950]  Yeah.
[39:10.020 --> 39:10.640]  They're the product.
[39:10.910 --> 39:14.620]  They're, they're the product being sold to the, to Yahoo or Google's advertisers.
[39:14.950 --> 39:16.040]  I think the product has a right to complain.
[39:16.160 --> 39:21.710]  But, but, uh, but there's still, there's still, uh, there's still sort of, you don't have a customer provider relationship with them.
[39:21.870 --> 39:34.460]  Um, whereas if, uh, if someone like, uh, likes, like I do, gets their email from a, uh, from a host that they pay for, you know, who's to say that, uh, my host now has to do the thing that Yahoo or that Google is doing.
[39:34.660 --> 39:45.190]  Who's to say that if I run my own server, I'm going to be required by the government to run some sort of filter on it that I don't, um, specifically want to just because someone somewhere might have an image that, uh, that sets off an alarm.
[39:45.410 --> 39:48.710]  So this, this really, it's, it's, it's a classic slippery slope deal, I think.
[39:48.710 --> 39:50.100]  And it's something that we have to worry about.
[39:50.310 --> 39:53.250]  Um, Mike first and then Bernie.
[39:53.430 --> 39:58.710]  I, I, I, I think I used to agree with that analysis, Rob, but I've come to think it's, uh, actually completely wrong.
[39:58.980 --> 40:13.750]  Um, I think that people just because they're not paying for a product or service, um, do have the right and perhaps even the responsibility to investigate the terms under which the service is provided and to fight to make those terms more favorable to them.
[40:13.830 --> 40:15.040]  I think that's totally fair.
[40:15.290 --> 40:19.660]  I think it's, uh, something that people do do, should do, and, uh, must do.
[40:20.140 --> 40:26.040]  And, you know, just because you're not paying, like Google still wants you to get your email with them.
[40:26.160 --> 40:35.230]  They run marketing campaigns encouraging you to use your business email with them, to use your personal email with them because they make more money when you do so.
[40:35.430 --> 40:40.830]  And if you don't like the terms that they're offering, which is, uh, I don't like the terms they're offering.
[40:40.930 --> 40:41.450]  I don't use it.
[40:41.450 --> 40:50.810]  But then I think, uh, you know, you have the right to, you know, complain and to withdraw your business from them, even if you're not a directly paying customer.
[40:51.060 --> 40:51.660]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[40:52.160 --> 40:54.850]  Um, I agree with Mike absolutely on that.
[40:54.960 --> 41:01.810]  Everybody has, uh, there's a lot of power that the general people have in demanding, uh, that a company not do this.
[41:02.020 --> 41:06.430]  Because if, if customers flee, um, the companies really care about that.
[41:06.560 --> 41:09.870]  They care about that more than anything, losing, losing their, their customer base.
[41:10.060 --> 41:20.620]  But to address what Rob said, what, what if, uh, Rob, I know he doesn't use Gmail, but if he had a Gmail account, suppose someone sent, emailed him a bunch of, uh, uh, illegal images.
[41:21.230 --> 41:29.430]  And maybe they even went to the spam inbox, but whatever, uh, they would be then in his, uh, unbeknownst to him in his Gmail, uh, account.
[41:30.000 --> 41:33.960]  And would that not make him, uh, uh, a target?
[41:34.500 --> 41:38.290]  And remember, Rob, before you answer, that ignorance is no excuse.
[41:38.930 --> 41:41.100]  So not knowing it doesn't get you off the hook.
[41:42.190 --> 41:45.250]  I'm, I'm already worried about what I'm going to go home to tonight when I check my email.
[41:45.450 --> 41:46.690]  And you don't even have a Gmail account.
[41:46.710 --> 41:47.330]  That's amazing.
[41:47.890 --> 41:48.250]  Yes.
[41:48.350 --> 41:49.060]  You're this worried.
[41:49.710 --> 41:51.640]  Um, yes, these are things to worry about.
[41:51.790 --> 41:58.540]  If, again, if you are the product, I think you have the right to complain, uh, because you don't have that, that kind of service relationship.
[41:58.600 --> 42:02.020]  Uh, you're making them money in, in one form or another.
[42:02.690 --> 42:05.140]  And, um, and, and they treat you like you have no rights at all.
[42:05.710 --> 42:17.430]  But my, my worry is that they're popular because they're free, but is that, uh, is that popularity going to mean that they are basically doing something which will be forced into being a standard further down the line for, uh, people who use other services?
[42:17.690 --> 42:23.080]  I mean, I think we, as the sort of tech elite, uh, have a, are really playing a dangerous game here.
[42:23.210 --> 42:36.390]  If we say the only acceptable solution to, to maintain your own privacy is to run your own mail server or to have a friend who's capable of running their own mail server, I think that, uh, there will be no privacy for the, the 95% of the people who, who can't do that.
[42:36.580 --> 42:37.890]  I think we have to fight.
[42:38.040 --> 42:39.210]  We have to help people fight.
[42:39.270 --> 42:45.140]  We have to fight ourselves to make sure these giant behemoths like behave in a, in a slightly more moral way.
[42:45.910 --> 42:47.500]  I don't see any other option.
[42:47.950 --> 42:51.850]  You know, I forget because, um, at 2600, we do run our own mail server.
[42:52.000 --> 42:58.560]  And so it's kind of funny to see these conversations going on and, uh, not to be able to identify with them many times.
[42:58.910 --> 43:10.710]  Um, yeah, there are certain conveniences we have to do without, but I think we're better off just not buying into all this, um, uh, privacy invasion that, that, that seems to go on just with a simple thing of sending email.
[43:10.930 --> 43:21.620]  I mean, years ago, so the idea of a company monitoring your email, being able to scan it for keywords or images would be something most people would object to.
[43:21.750 --> 43:25.710]  And now it's something that so many people just blindly accept.
[43:25.950 --> 43:33.230]  I'm blown away by, um, the number of people write into us, uh, for articles or, or photo submissions or whatever.
[43:34.040 --> 43:37.910]  I'd say well over three quarters of them come from Gmail addresses.
[43:38.080 --> 43:40.430]  And it just tells me that, yeah, they have a great interface.
[43:40.540 --> 43:44.600]  They have, they have amazing technology, but you're giving away something rather important.
[43:44.640 --> 43:50.360]  And it doesn't matter if you're not doing anything illegal or controversial, it's still your privacy that's being sacrificed.
[43:51.120 --> 43:51.270]  Yeah.
[43:51.400 --> 44:03.710]  And, uh, I would add that, you know, you have the choice to find webmail services and domains and whatever that, that respect you a little more, um, and that give a damn.
[44:05.580 --> 44:05.980]  Absolutely.
[44:06.520 --> 44:10.860]  Hey, uh, let's open up our phones 212-209-2900.
[44:10.860 --> 44:16.860]  We'd like to hear from our listeners who we have not heard from in such a long time because we haven't been here and we're sorry for that, but we're here now.
[44:17.300 --> 44:18.360]  And so are you.
[44:18.600 --> 44:19.560]  So please give us a call.
[44:19.920 --> 44:28.620]  Uh, let us know what you're thinking about, uh, privacy, about the Hopex conference, about Off the Hook, about BAI, about planet Earth.
[44:29.710 --> 44:30.620]  Did I leave out anything?
[44:31.620 --> 44:33.820]  If we left out something, you can call us about that too.
[44:34.790 --> 44:35.140]  Absolutely.
[44:35.290 --> 44:36.750]  212-209-2900.
[44:36.900 --> 44:37.660]  We have some phone calls.
[44:37.770 --> 44:38.480]  We have a lot of phone calls.
[44:38.980 --> 44:39.940]  Let's see who's out there.
[44:40.020 --> 44:40.360]  Good evening.
[44:40.480 --> 44:41.270]  You're on Off the Hook.
[44:41.770 --> 44:42.120]  Hello.
[44:42.380 --> 44:42.660]  Hi.
[44:42.750 --> 44:43.300]  What's on your mind?
[44:44.140 --> 44:44.400]  Yeah.
[44:44.770 --> 44:46.460]  Uh, I, well, I'm interested.
[44:47.380 --> 45:03.710]  I was at the Hopex conference and I would like to make not only a suggestion, but a heartfelt plea that you have a text transcript of these talks.
[45:04.290 --> 45:13.620]  A lot of them were incredibly clear, but I couldn't catch all of the references or illusions or know how the things were spelled.
[45:13.860 --> 45:23.500]  I could read them at my own rate, cut and paste my favorite search engine, and, uh, and, uh, really explore in depth there.
[45:23.640 --> 45:25.540]  Hacking is about use.
[45:26.640 --> 45:29.140]  Hacking, you know, that's the thing.
[45:29.290 --> 45:31.820]  It's not just the fact that it looks pretty.
[45:32.120 --> 45:34.840]  It's the fact that we can use it.
[45:35.160 --> 45:39.900]  And I think that that's, uh, you know, I think that's overlooked there.
[45:39.980 --> 45:44.620]  If we had text, then we could see all of these things.
[45:44.620 --> 45:51.230]  We could refer to things that, you know, and some of the, yeah, I still don't know what a beacon is, for instance.
[45:51.500 --> 45:55.480]  Well, let me ask you, um, what would be something that you'd be happy with?
[45:55.580 --> 46:00.880]  Something, are you talking about something, uh, live at the conference or something that would be released later on?
[46:01.840 --> 46:03.210]  Just plain text.
[46:03.440 --> 46:06.160]  Like, Amy Goodman has a text transcript.
[46:06.640 --> 46:12.140]  And then I can find out how all of those foreign names are spelled and things like that.
[46:12.340 --> 46:12.690]  Okay.
[46:13.040 --> 46:18.420]  Well, I know, I know many talks have, um, have links or slides or things that are made available.
[46:18.640 --> 46:23.860]  Uh, but I think what you're talking about is something more comprehensive that would, um, cover just about everything we do.
[46:24.210 --> 46:27.690]  It certainly is possible and, uh, appreciate the idea.
[46:27.690 --> 46:29.980]  I, I think we all appreciate the idea.
[46:30.340 --> 46:37.520]  Um, it is a, a fair amount of, uh, of legwork to, to do those kinds of things with this many talks.
[46:37.540 --> 46:52.440]  But what I think you're going to notice and what will happen is that when people start getting access, uh, now that we've got the full comprehensive archives, uh, built, uh, people will be able, just as what we've, we've talked about this a lot with leaks and stuff,
[46:52.580 --> 47:03.540]  just like that, people will be able to actually go through them and perhaps someone will, uh, we'll step up with, uh, maybe some tools that they could actually create those from either audio or video files that we've generated.
[47:03.820 --> 47:04.770]  That's a great idea though.
[47:04.920 --> 47:05.820]  It is a great idea.
[47:05.980 --> 47:16.320]  And I'd like to ask the community out there, if anyone specializes in this sort of thing or has advice about, uh, an easy way that we could, um, create something like this, get in touch with us, let us know because, uh, really the, the community is, uh,
[47:16.380 --> 47:17.440]  is the greatest power we have.
[47:17.540 --> 47:18.710]  And we're definitely not opposed to that.
[47:18.820 --> 47:19.540]  It sounds like a great idea.
[47:19.690 --> 47:20.500]  Thanks for that call.
[47:25.920 --> 47:26.580]  Speak up.
[47:26.900 --> 47:27.440]  Good evening.
[47:28.000 --> 47:29.250]  Is that Bobson from Bulgaria?
[47:29.520 --> 47:30.190]  Hi, Bobson.
[47:30.540 --> 47:31.230]  Hey, Bobson.
[47:31.250 --> 47:31.440]  Hello.
[47:31.790 --> 47:32.380]  How are you doing?
[47:32.620 --> 47:34.730]  I did not see you at the HOPE conference, Bobson.
[47:34.750 --> 47:35.250]  Where were you?
[47:36.200 --> 47:42.940]  Uh, well, I had the budget, I just didn't have the financing to make it there, so.
[47:43.770 --> 47:47.440]  I've, I've heard that said before from many other people, so I, I do understand.
[47:49.150 --> 47:55.360]  I, uh, wanted to, uh, I called about, uh, what an earlier course said about subtitling.
[47:55.600 --> 47:56.060]  Okay.
[47:56.270 --> 48:03.920]  Last year, the CCC Congress people started, uh, doing that.
[48:04.080 --> 48:23.360]  Well, what they did is they had, uh, some volunteers who wanted to take that dictation during the talks, sit in prime seats, who had, where tables were available for them to sit down and start taking dictation as much as they could.
[48:23.520 --> 48:50.380]  And after that, those, uh, um, the writings of these people were logged somewhere and someone was supposed to, based on these, uh, writings, uh, come up with subtitles for the recordings of last year's Congress, except I have not yet been able to dig through the FTP sites and see if anything came out of it.
[48:50.380 --> 48:53.230]  I hope it did, because it seemed like a really good idea.
[48:53.420 --> 49:03.340]  Well, it is a good idea, and I hope that, uh, we're able to find people that can, that can do that, that would be willing to sit through all 100 talks and, um, and, and, and transcribe them.
[49:03.480 --> 49:04.820]  Because yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
[49:04.940 --> 49:06.040]  It's a, it's a valuable service.
[49:06.540 --> 49:15.840]  Uh, just, I want to add, I mean, just to step, just to step back a little bit from, from all the feedback and, uh, and, and as much as we want to encourage people, we really need people to step up and volunteer.
[49:16.020 --> 49:26.040]  I mean, all these ideas are great, but, uh, we, we need as many people who, who have the talent and, uh, interest to, to come forward and maybe, um, participate as well.
[49:26.040 --> 49:41.840]  And, um, while we do have a pretty, um, pretty, uh, a pretty good, uh, group of volunteers, a lot of new volunteers too, we're always looking for new people and especially people with expertise in some of these things, either during the event or in post-production because,
[49:42.140 --> 49:58.880]  uh, well, there's so many good ideas and we'd love to do them all, but, uh, it, it really takes people that want to focus on it, that have the time, that are willing to donate and, and work on it in some capacity because, well, it's just, uh, one of many good ideas that,
[49:58.960 --> 50:01.020]  that just need attention really.
[50:01.360 --> 50:01.640]  So...
[50:01.640 --> 50:15.270]  And for all the things that worked out well at, at HopeX, there were other things that could have worked better, that could have been developed more, and all of that can be accomplished with more people, um, just volunteering to do something, do something that they know something about.
[50:15.460 --> 50:20.900]  So this is something that I think we can do both for future conferences and for ones that have already taken place.
[50:20.920 --> 50:26.480]  Obviously, the, the methods will be a little bit different, but it's good to bring it to our attention as something that is, is, uh, needed.
[50:26.840 --> 50:29.640]  Bobson, I hope we see you, uh, in Hamburg this, uh, December.
[50:30.640 --> 50:31.520]  Yeah, me too.
[50:31.620 --> 50:32.840]  That would be excellent.
[50:33.210 --> 50:33.480]  Okay.
[50:33.710 --> 50:36.820]  Well, you take care and, uh, say hi to everybody in Bulgaria for us.
[50:37.420 --> 50:37.980]  All right.
[50:38.320 --> 50:43.080]  Uh, I, uh, I'm gonna do it individually because I don't feel like killing this much, but okay.
[50:43.250 --> 50:48.360]  Okay, we'll just stand on a, on a balcony with a megaphone and, uh, we'll, we'll talk to you next time.
[50:48.360 --> 50:51.120]  Uh, 212-209-2900.
[50:51.360 --> 50:52.380]  Let's take another phone call.
[50:52.420 --> 50:52.800]  Good evening.
[50:52.940 --> 50:53.800]  You're on off the hook.
[50:55.120 --> 50:55.800]  Go ahead.
[50:55.900 --> 50:56.270]  Speak up.
[50:57.230 --> 51:07.340]  Uh, you know, the country was up in arms when Nixon, back in the seventies, was spying on the democratic committee.
[51:07.790 --> 51:16.540]  Well, what's so different now that we just accept spying is just the way of life and just be careful with what you say or type away at?
[51:16.540 --> 51:26.380]  Uh, there are so many things we've become jaded about over, over the last 40 years that we take for granted now that we never, uh, would have, uh, accepted before.
[51:26.640 --> 51:31.710]  Uh, are we different people or we're just distracted by the television that we're on?
[51:31.710 --> 51:41.320]  I think we've been, we've been trained very well by the mass media and, um, and there's a lot more, uh, uh, mass consciousness and mass hypnosis that's going on.
[51:41.640 --> 51:42.320]  That's, that's my theory.
[51:42.320 --> 51:44.770]  That would have been possible back in the seventies.
[51:45.020 --> 51:46.770]  Uh, probably not.
[51:46.770 --> 51:48.790]  You know, I'll tell you, I'll tell you an interesting thing.
[51:48.880 --> 51:52.880]  I was going through some of my old cassette tapes that I keep as a child, which for some reason still work.
[51:53.420 --> 52:01.040]  And one of them, I was taping the news station here in New York city and there had just been a bombing, I think it was at LaGuardia airport.
[52:01.300 --> 52:02.020]  And look this up.
[52:02.080 --> 52:11.480]  There was, uh, a Croatian separatist hijacked an airplane from LaGuardia and flew it all the way to Europe and planes from LaGuardia don't go to Europe, but this one did.
[52:11.840 --> 52:14.540]  Uh, and they, they, they killed somebody.
[52:14.820 --> 52:19.440]  Um, I think the, the baggage blew up, uh, maybe at, um, at Port Authority or something.
[52:19.960 --> 52:22.290]  There was a locker that blew up and I think it killed a cop.
[52:22.640 --> 52:24.560]  Uh, and it was an act of hijacking.
[52:24.860 --> 52:29.300]  It was the top story on the news, but it wasn't the only story on the news.
[52:29.480 --> 52:32.400]  They moved on to other stories after about three or four minutes.
[52:32.560 --> 52:33.790]  And I was blown away by that.
[52:34.230 --> 52:35.730]  You know, imagine something like that.
[52:35.840 --> 52:43.840]  Just a hint, somebody taking a picture of the Brooklyn bridge, uh, with a turban on that's going to be 24 hour news cycle right there.
[52:43.980 --> 52:48.160]  They're, they're going to be covering that story nonstop, all different angles, talking to relatives, things like that.
[52:48.540 --> 52:50.190]  We are different people right now.
[52:50.320 --> 52:53.520]  It doesn't mean we can't change to something a little bit better, Mike.
[52:53.660 --> 52:59.120]  Uh, so I'm going to disagree with you a little bit and I'm going to disagree with you by being optimistic, which I so rarely do.
[52:59.620 --> 53:07.230]  Um, I think that, uh, there are a lot of people that are aware of what's going on and a lot of people working to change it.
[53:07.420 --> 53:12.080]  Um, even some powerful people, uh, the U S Congress has, uh, voted.
[53:12.250 --> 53:18.790]  They came very close to voting to like defund the NSA once, and they successfully passed a bill to rein in some of the worst abuses.
[53:19.190 --> 53:21.770]  Um, I think this bill is not everything we want.
[53:22.020 --> 53:30.580]  Uh, but the, the Congress felt the obligation to do something because enough people had told them, Hey, you better do something about this.
[53:30.710 --> 53:32.270]  And we're not done yet.
[53:32.270 --> 53:39.270]  But I think it's important to, to note that just because we're not done yet doesn't mean that this task is impossible.
[53:40.640 --> 53:41.190]  All right.
[53:41.250 --> 53:46.290]  Well, I think there are, you know, there are a lot of people who are aware and a lot of people who are working to, to make the world better.
[53:46.440 --> 53:47.540]  I agree with that.
[53:47.660 --> 54:00.400]  I think that, uh, there is always potential, but it's easy also to get discouraged by the lack of progress and Congress really doesn't ever seem to do anything other than, than, uh, play to an audience.
[54:01.000 --> 54:02.770]  I'd like to be proven wrong on that, Rob.
[54:02.900 --> 54:05.190]  And, and, uh, how easy it is as a central point of it.
[54:05.250 --> 54:07.250]  It's very easy to get talked into giving up a right.
[54:07.420 --> 54:09.500]  It's very, very difficult to ever get it back.
[54:09.960 --> 54:10.340]  Absolutely.
[54:10.560 --> 54:21.020]  Just like the technology you, you, uh, install former technology, whether it's a surveillance camera or, um, or, uh, email tracking devices or whatnot, it's very hard to get it uninstalled.
[54:21.320 --> 54:21.940]  All right.
[54:22.100 --> 54:23.400]  Uh, 212-209-2900.
[54:23.560 --> 54:26.820]  Let's take another phone call and good evening.
[54:27.100 --> 54:27.880]  You're on off the hook.
[54:28.440 --> 54:28.640]  Yeah.
[54:28.790 --> 54:29.600]  Hi, good evening.
[54:30.080 --> 54:43.750]  Um, I found recently two new opportunities for identity theft and I've got to let the authorities know somebody sent me a letter from some company wants to lend me money and I'm to respond to them at an email address.
[54:44.000 --> 54:46.250]  And I'll just use AOL for example.
[54:46.440 --> 54:49.120]  And it's my name at AOL.com.
[54:49.940 --> 54:54.080]  They had the nerve to use my name to open up an email address for me to respond to.
[54:54.640 --> 54:55.380]  You're kidding.
[54:55.520 --> 54:58.210]  They open up an email address in your name.
[54:58.520 --> 54:58.860]  Right.
[54:59.820 --> 55:01.860]  Now that's like stalking or something.
[55:02.100 --> 55:09.690]  And the second one, which is as bad is I just got a letter from a car company that want to, they want to lease or sell me a car.
[55:09.690 --> 55:17.420]  They put a credit card in there with, uh, it's supposed to be worth $2,000 only to them, of course, but it has my name embossed on it.
[55:17.580 --> 55:23.600]  It shows through the envelope window and you'll never guess how the letter is addressed.
[55:24.620 --> 55:29.000]  It's addressed to my name or current resident at my address.
[55:30.040 --> 55:30.540]  Wow.
[55:30.960 --> 55:31.230]  Yeah.
[55:31.380 --> 55:35.100]  I mean, are things getting looser and looser or stupider and stupider?
[55:35.270 --> 55:36.730]  They are getting stupider and stupider.
[55:36.920 --> 55:37.920]  Uh, definitely.
[55:38.160 --> 55:38.480]  Thank you.
[55:38.730 --> 55:38.940]  All right.
[55:38.980 --> 55:39.250]  Thanks.
[55:39.480 --> 55:40.460]  Thanks for sharing that.
[55:40.580 --> 55:42.400]  And I'm sure there are a million stories like this.
[55:42.480 --> 55:47.580]  That's like such stark contrast that like there are entities and people getting away with that kind of stuff.
[55:47.710 --> 55:51.380]  And yet we have to worry about what kind of gifts or JPEGs we get in our inbox.
[55:52.190 --> 55:53.080]  It's crazy.
[55:53.360 --> 55:59.400]  I suspect that in the second case from the car company that the the color is, uh, not as special as he thinks he is.
[55:59.480 --> 56:07.710]  And they'll, they'll offer this deal to probably anyone who walks in the door, uh, with or without this piece of paper with his name on it, which is all he was sent.
[56:07.900 --> 56:09.900]  Um, it's not an actual credit card, I presume.
[56:10.270 --> 56:14.500]  So I don't think that's a particularly frightening.
[56:14.560 --> 56:25.660]  I've had a, I've had a sort of a different experience with credit cards lately where, uh, one of my credit cards was turned off because I dared to use it in a place in my neighborhood that I always go to and they viewed it as suspicious.
[56:26.320 --> 56:35.040]  And I got a call from a computer saying that, uh, this is a suspicious transaction, a place I've gone to a million times done the same thing, but their computer flagged it.
[56:35.140 --> 56:37.000]  And my car was turned off as a result.
[56:37.060 --> 56:40.500]  And I had to call and deal with, uh, um, getting that fixed.
[56:40.640 --> 56:49.500]  And another time, you know how you get credit cards and, and, and they have that little sticker on them and you have to call in or go online, uh, to register them.
[56:49.500 --> 56:50.500]  It's a real pain.
[56:50.840 --> 56:52.620]  And they ask you security questions.
[56:52.860 --> 56:58.380]  Now I even wrote down the answer to the security questions because I tend to lie, but I got it right.
[56:58.440 --> 57:00.000]  And they said, I got it wrong.
[57:00.140 --> 57:02.040]  I don't know if they looked it up and said, oh, you were lying.
[57:02.060 --> 57:04.660]  And this is actually the answer to where you first went to elementary school.
[57:05.120 --> 57:07.920]  Uh, but I gave it exactly what I gave it the first time.
[57:07.920 --> 57:10.100]  And I got that turned off as well.
[57:10.210 --> 57:16.160]  And now the credit card company really thinks I'm not me because I called them from a different phone line to try and fix this.
[57:16.270 --> 57:17.440]  And they still didn't believe me.
[57:17.730 --> 57:20.320]  It's in my name and I can't even get it turned on.
[57:20.460 --> 57:21.520]  It's, it's, it's comical.
[57:21.660 --> 57:23.500]  I just want to see how far that goes.
[57:23.730 --> 57:33.360]  Um, and it's all, it's always awful to call to do this because when you get a human, uh, if you can even get through a language barrier, they want to keep you on the phone forever to sell you something else.
[57:33.360 --> 57:37.100]  And it's a, it's about 25 minutes just to register a new card.
[57:37.250 --> 57:38.140]  It's, it's insane.
[57:38.460 --> 57:40.500]  Makes you not want to use credit cards anymore.
[57:40.750 --> 57:41.640]  That and many other things.
[57:41.640 --> 57:46.540]  A very similar thing happened to me, but, uh, it turns out it's not because of information I gave at any point.
[57:46.640 --> 57:48.730]  I was opening up a new account with a financial organization.
[57:49.000 --> 57:51.880]  They asked me some questions about my history, which I answered truthfully.
[57:52.000 --> 57:54.020]  And they said that it didn't match what they had.
[57:54.160 --> 58:00.100]  They're using some other database to get my info and then, uh, and then confirm with me and who knows what kind of quality control is on that.
[58:00.270 --> 58:02.800]  So share your stories with us.
[58:02.900 --> 58:03.690]  We'd love to hear them.
[58:03.860 --> 58:07.320]  O th at 2600.com here at off the hook.
[58:07.320 --> 58:16.820]  And hopefully if we didn't annoy too many people, we'll be back on the air next week at this time from seven to eight, every Wednesday here on WBAI and coming up next, the personal computer show.
[58:17.520 --> 58:18.440]  We'll see you next week.
[58:18.520 --> 58:18.710]  Good night.
[58:31.080 --> 58:33.520]  I gave you my life.
[58:35.160 --> 58:38.000]  You gave me my life.
[58:38.840 --> 58:44.060]  Like a gosh of wind in my hair.
[58:46.480 --> 58:49.060]  Why do we forget?
[58:51.790 --> 58:53.670]  Why do we forget what's been said?
[58:54.690 --> 59:00.950]  Play the game of life with a pause.
[59:34.810 --> 59:48.880]  I may cry someday, but the tears will dry whichever way.
[59:50.560 --> 59:57.180]  And when our hearts return to ashes.
[59:59.180 --> 01:00:05.260]  It'll be just a story.
[01:00:07.420 --> 01:00:14.100]  It'll be just a story.
[01:01:03.650 --> 01:01:05.570]  And it's 8 p.m.
[01:01:06.170 --> 01:01:15.830]  Your tune's a listener-sponsored, non-commercial, WBAI New York 99.5 on the FM dial, streaming live at WBAI.org.