[00:00.660 --> 00:09.520]  You're listening to WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio and online at WBAI.org.
[00:09.600 --> 00:14.360]  The role of media in a democratic society should be to empower people to make decisions.
[00:14.920 --> 00:18.020]  WBAI, speaking truth to power for over 50 years.
[00:18.340 --> 00:28.280]  You have very few powerful media outlets that are actually doing the two things that I think are the most central aims of good journalism, which is to give voice to the voiceless and hold those in power accountable.
[00:31.260 --> 00:33.500]  WBAI, your community alternative.
[00:35.080 --> 00:37.900]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
[00:38.060 --> 00:39.460]  Time is just about 7 o'clock.
[00:39.580 --> 00:42.200]  Time for a special two-hour edition of Off the Hook.
[00:47.440 --> 00:51.900]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:52.900 --> 00:57.380]  I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
[00:58.040 --> 01:00.220]  We couldn't get much worse.
[02:45.390 --> 02:49.030]  And you're listening to Off the Hook, where nothing's working as usual.
[02:51.530 --> 02:58.030]  Sorry, we were supposed to have North Korean music underneath us, and apparently that's not to be, because somebody switched the switch to something else.
[02:58.290 --> 02:59.490]  It should be CD2, Kyle.
[03:00.710 --> 03:01.030]  All right.
[03:01.670 --> 03:02.550]  This is Emanuel.
[03:03.050 --> 03:03.730]  It's going to be a great night.
[03:04.050 --> 03:05.030]  Joined tonight by Mike.
[03:05.310 --> 03:07.590]  Should I say something about the great leader anyway?
[03:07.810 --> 03:08.090]  Rob T.
[03:08.190 --> 03:08.570]  Firefly.
[03:08.870 --> 03:09.610]  Good evening.
[03:09.790 --> 03:10.070]  Kyle.
[03:11.350 --> 03:11.770]  Hello.
[03:11.990 --> 03:12.690]  And Bernie S.
[03:13.250 --> 03:14.390]  Greetings from Philadelphia.
[03:14.610 --> 03:14.810]  You know what?
[03:14.810 --> 03:17.450]  Let me just take the thing and put it in the other CD play that we know works.
[03:17.670 --> 03:18.750]  You guys fill time.
[03:19.650 --> 03:24.190]  It's an exciting week to be here on the air, because it is the Winter Fun Drive.
[03:24.550 --> 03:24.930]  Yes, indeed.
[03:25.130 --> 03:26.390]  And our friend Jim is here.
[03:26.730 --> 03:27.130]  Hi.
[03:27.850 --> 03:28.510]  That's true.
[03:28.750 --> 03:29.130]  Hi, Jim.
[03:30.090 --> 03:30.730]  Hey, Jim.
[03:31.250 --> 03:31.610]  Hi.
[03:32.690 --> 03:34.750]  So that's good news all around.
[03:35.210 --> 03:38.590]  And we're excited to kick off the Winter Fundraising.
[03:38.750 --> 03:39.670]  That's what I just said.
[03:39.890 --> 03:40.590]  No, no, no.
[03:40.730 --> 03:42.390]  Over here on this side of the studio.
[03:42.710 --> 03:46.890]  Oh, so our audience can't see that you're all the way on the other side of the studio from me.
[03:47.070 --> 03:48.050]  Well, it's dimensional, Mike.
[03:48.050 --> 03:49.650]  It's at least a meter away.
[03:49.750 --> 03:51.010]  It's a long way.
[03:51.250 --> 03:53.330]  The news is just reaching you?
[03:53.410 --> 03:53.650]  Yeah.
[03:53.770 --> 03:53.970]  Is that how it works?
[03:53.970 --> 03:56.390]  Yeah, we got wind of the fundraiser.
[03:56.390 --> 04:00.330]  It's really exciting, because this is how we keep ourselves on the air.
[06:22.470 --> 06:23.270]  Oh, yeah.
[06:23.350 --> 06:24.130]  Now, that's much better.
[06:24.150 --> 06:26.430]  That's a better way to enter the programming night.
[06:26.930 --> 06:31.170]  Of course, the North Korean classic, Under the Light of the Moon.
[06:33.450 --> 06:34.010]  I'm sorry?
[06:34.330 --> 06:35.930]  You're saying this is better than a fun drive?
[06:36.090 --> 06:37.810]  No, this is in addition to the fun drive.
[06:37.810 --> 06:41.090]  This is the kind of music that will get people flocking to the phones.
[06:41.350 --> 06:46.470]  And once they make the call, then we ask them to contribute to keep things going.
[06:46.970 --> 06:47.890]  So, here we are.
[06:50.030 --> 06:52.650]  Again, welcome, Mike, Rob, Kyle, and Bernie.
[06:53.150 --> 06:54.950]  Hey, this is a special two-hour edition.
[06:55.270 --> 07:00.950]  And we are playing North Korean music for the entire two hours, but not out loud, because we'll be playing other things as well.
[07:01.090 --> 07:02.370]  But it will be going in the background.
[07:02.510 --> 07:04.430]  And there's a reason for that, too, which we'll get to a little bit later.
[07:05.170 --> 07:09.850]  But yeah, this is the opening night of the, what season is this?
[07:09.850 --> 07:10.110]  Winter?
[07:10.330 --> 07:11.570]  Winter fundraiser.
[07:11.710 --> 07:15.910]  I mean, it may not feel like it, especially in the studio, but it's winter somewhere in this hemisphere.
[07:16.390 --> 07:18.590]  Okay, Reggie's here to figure out what happened this time.
[07:18.790 --> 07:20.230]  I know how to press the play button.
[07:20.350 --> 07:21.230]  This, it doesn't work.
[07:21.350 --> 07:21.530]  Oh.
[07:21.790 --> 07:21.890]  Yeah.
[07:22.330 --> 07:23.510]  It doesn't come over here.
[07:24.050 --> 07:24.770]  Because somebody...
[07:24.770 --> 07:25.850]  Well, now you turned us off.
[07:25.930 --> 07:26.970]  Now you turned the music off.
[07:27.110 --> 07:27.470]  All right.
[07:27.830 --> 07:28.190]  Wow.
[07:28.490 --> 07:28.970]  Oh, okay.
[07:29.050 --> 07:29.450]  Wait a minute.
[07:29.630 --> 07:30.210]  Okay, now.
[07:31.170 --> 07:32.730]  You think it's going to work just by doing that?
[07:32.810 --> 07:33.630]  We did that before.
[07:34.570 --> 07:35.570]  So, we had it backwards.
[07:35.750 --> 07:35.950]  Right.
[07:36.330 --> 07:36.970]  All right, guys.
[07:37.070 --> 07:38.970]  Fill time while I go back and...
[07:38.970 --> 07:41.550]  I mean, it wouldn't be the same if everything just worked, right?
[07:41.710 --> 07:42.870]  Like, it would be very disappointing.
[07:42.870 --> 07:45.810]  And we have a two-hour show tonight, so it's a special.
[07:45.810 --> 07:46.430]  Not anymore.
[07:46.590 --> 07:47.470]  We have an hour and 15 minutes.
[07:47.690 --> 08:00.310]  We will get into why we're playing this a little later, but suffice to say, it is mostly in honor of the fun drive that we are listening to these stirring, stirring musical...
[08:02.330 --> 08:03.990]  I don't even know how you'd describe it.
[08:04.030 --> 08:04.310]  Opera?
[08:04.510 --> 08:06.350]  I believe it is a form of opera.
[08:06.430 --> 08:07.410]  It's a rousing anthem.
[08:07.650 --> 08:11.030]  I think it deserves its own category, really.
[08:11.130 --> 08:11.550]  Its own genre.
[08:11.790 --> 08:12.850]  Opera is sort of limiting.
[08:12.850 --> 08:18.030]  I mean, when Dear Leader invented the opera, I think he would have wanted us to appreciate it on this level.
[08:18.210 --> 08:19.270]  It was him, right?
[08:19.570 --> 08:20.070]  Of course.
[08:20.250 --> 08:20.370]  Yeah.
[08:20.670 --> 08:22.210]  No, that sounds correct.
[08:22.550 --> 08:24.210]  You're going to get shot for this, you realize.
[08:25.010 --> 08:26.430]  You're going to get banned from Pyongyang.
[08:26.590 --> 08:27.170]  It's okay.
[08:27.170 --> 08:32.290]  I think that's really what this station embodies.
[08:32.690 --> 08:43.450]  Not necessarily those consequences, but it's really about the ability to say all kinds of things and share those perspectives with the listening audience.
[08:43.450 --> 09:05.170]  So, um, we like to remind everyone around this time, um, and during these drives, when we're here with you, that, uh, it's about keeping speech and, um, uh, diverse opinions on the airwaves and, and contributing to the wider, um, uh, spectrum of ideas that are out there in...
[09:06.170 --> 09:07.150]  Sorry about that.
[09:07.330 --> 09:12.250]  Nothing says diverse spectrum of ideas like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
[09:12.730 --> 09:15.270]  Yes, yes, Mike, I'm glad you brought that up.
[09:15.690 --> 09:17.810]  Um, I don't even understand what I'm saying.
[09:18.010 --> 09:18.170]  Yeah.
[09:18.170 --> 09:19.270]  Let alone why you're agreeing with me.
[09:19.270 --> 09:19.630]  It's fine.
[09:19.790 --> 09:25.590]  Just let that wave of loyalty and dedication, let that flow through you.
[09:25.590 --> 09:28.790]  I don't have any loyalty or dedication to this music.
[09:28.790 --> 09:32.790]  I'll tell you where we have loyalty and dedication, and that's to this radio station and this program.
[09:33.170 --> 09:33.570]  Yeah, that's true.
[09:33.570 --> 09:34.030]  Thank you, Rob.
[09:34.210 --> 09:41.270]  Only at a station like this could, uh, you know, it's one of the very few venues that we can truly express, uh, express what we feel we need to.
[09:41.270 --> 09:45.670]  Um, and that, uh, that is protected and, and kept around for us to do this.
[09:45.730 --> 09:50.790]  And it's, it's hanging by a tenuous thread, as, as are so many, uh, venues of free speech.
[09:50.790 --> 09:51.690]  Yeah, just like this analogy.
[09:51.970 --> 09:52.890]  Just like this analogy.
[09:53.290 --> 10:05.930]  In a few short moments, we will share all the particulars, uh, about what we're offering this evening, uh, as well as ways you can, uh, get in touch with the, um, tally room as we have called it in the past.
[10:06.130 --> 10:08.830]  So, a lot of exciting things to look forward to there.
[10:09.010 --> 10:20.270]  Um, but it is, uh, it is a celebration of, of off the hook and WBAI and, uh, this grand tradition of community radio.
[10:20.490 --> 10:22.310]  Now, uh, uh, in Brooklyn.
[10:22.630 --> 10:37.790]  Uh, we've, we've done many of, I think last time, uh, we were doing this kind of fundraising, we were, we were in a different location, well, it's, it's partly due to people's support and the exciting, um, changes that have taken place that we have this,
[10:37.910 --> 10:55.610]  uh, interesting studio that, that throws, uh, a diversity of, of, uh, configurations our way, um, but regardless of, of those configurations, we continue to build and innovate and, uh, and share news and ideas from the hacker perspective, um, with the world.
[10:55.610 --> 11:02.070]  And, uh, we're very grateful to be a part of WBAI and a part of that community of diverse voices.
[11:03.210 --> 11:03.830]  Quite so.
[11:04.030 --> 11:16.370]  And, uh, there's, there's really something about all of this that, uh, that does embody the hacker spirit that, uh, you know, we're, we're basically, you know, like we can repair our broadcast equipment while broadcasting through it because we're a bunch of hackers and geeks and this is the sort of thing we're good at.
[11:16.490 --> 11:16.630]  Yeah.
[11:16.730 --> 11:19.670]  I had everything all planned out to, uh, to, to seg perfectly.
[11:19.690 --> 11:22.530]  And, uh, it just, it just takes one thing failing.
[11:22.530 --> 11:26.090]  Uh, but thanks Reggie for hooking up a Mac so that we could play CDs later.
[11:26.570 --> 11:28.370]  Uh, we had no way of doing it otherwise.
[11:28.650 --> 11:34.610]  I was noting before the show to, to Rob, there's a precariously placed plug that someday will fall out of the wall.
[11:34.770 --> 11:38.970]  And I believe that is what all the other equipment is attached to.
[11:39.150 --> 11:41.490]  And so there's sort of a week to week.
[11:41.630 --> 11:46.550]  I watch it slowly, uh, hang more, uh, precariously away from the outlet.
[11:46.790 --> 11:52.370]  And I know I won't be here when it happens, but someday the entire board will go dark.
[11:52.370 --> 11:55.310]  And it will be because that, uh, socket falls out of the wall.
[11:55.450 --> 12:08.290]  Just part of the diversity and, and, and fascinating, uh, uh, ride that is, um, engineering here at, um, off the wall or off the hook and, and WBAI.
[12:08.390 --> 12:12.230]  For, for the listeners who can't see us, I should point out that Kyle is the one sitting closest to this plug.
[12:12.230 --> 12:23.570]  Yeah, I, I sit in the same sort of location and I can check in on this particular outlet that is, um, that the entire technical, uh, entourage here hinges upon.
[12:23.790 --> 12:27.530]  You, you could also embody the hacker spirit yourself and, and just, uh, kick it into place.
[12:27.710 --> 12:27.970]  Right.
[12:28.090 --> 12:29.350]  Or move it a little closer.
[12:29.350 --> 12:36.370]  So there's a little slack, but I'm worried that will be the, the, the movement that actually pushes it over and out of the actual outlet.
[12:36.750 --> 12:40.670]  Um, I'm sure someone could push it in further, um, and, and so on.
[12:40.670 --> 12:41.110]  Okay.
[12:41.450 --> 12:42.490]  Uh, are we working now?
[12:42.850 --> 12:43.770]  Well, uh, things are working.
[12:43.770 --> 12:44.030]  Yes.
[12:44.090 --> 12:46.290]  Well, unfortunately we lost 15 minutes, uh, due to this.
[12:46.430 --> 12:47.230]  Well, it sounds great.
[12:47.630 --> 12:53.290]  Uh, well, yeah, but that's what we got working at the beginning of the show, but, uh, getting the rest of, uh, the equipment working took a little bit longer.
[12:53.430 --> 12:56.630]  Sorry about that, but there's no time for us to get in here before the show to make sure things are working.
[12:57.170 --> 12:59.230]  Uh, so yeah, we are in the middle of a fundraiser.
[12:59.430 --> 13:01.850]  Uh, this is the, uh, the winter fundraiser.
[13:02.250 --> 13:09.990]  We're on for two hours and what we were offering tonight is a, um, a package of something that, um, I'm completely blown away by.
[13:09.990 --> 13:20.890]  I always am just by going through all the things that are presented, uh, from our, um, uh, our last conference, which took place in 2014, it was called Hope X, took place in New York City.
[13:21.470 --> 13:26.830]  Uh, and we have another conference coming up in, in July, July 22nd through 24th at Hotel Pennsylvania.
[13:27.070 --> 13:27.970]  That's called the 11th Hope.
[13:28.430 --> 13:29.850]  It's going to be even better somehow.
[13:29.850 --> 13:32.650]  It's going to be even better than the one we did, uh, in, in 2014.
[13:32.650 --> 13:33.490]  I don't believe you.
[13:33.630 --> 13:33.790]  Yeah.
[13:33.910 --> 13:37.030]  It's, it's every, every, every time you say that, but every time we do it.
[13:37.030 --> 13:48.790]  And, um, what we're going to do tonight is, is just give you an example of some of the things that have taken place simply at the last conference, which, um, is, is simply unbelievable.
[13:49.410 --> 13:54.290]  The diversity of people, the, the skillset, it's just, um, like I said, it blows me away.
[13:54.450 --> 13:55.730]  This is a lot of fun for me.
[13:55.730 --> 14:08.610]  I, I love going back and listening to some of these and it really is the, the amount of, the, the way we're able to, uh, condense and coalesce all these interests and ideas and get them around, um, this structure of a talk and a presentation.
[14:09.290 --> 14:14.730]  It's, it's, um, it's kind of amazingly simple, but it's really beautiful in the end, what we come up with.
[14:14.730 --> 14:29.470]  And we just get these, these, uh, great, uh, these great opinions and, and, uh, and, uh, ideas that may turn, illuminate your, your perspective and, and, uh, turn you on to something you had no idea you'd be interested in.
[14:29.610 --> 14:35.290]  And, uh, and it really is fun, um, fun and gets me, uh, excited about the event, uh, coming up in July.
[14:35.910 --> 14:36.390]  Yes.
[14:36.910 --> 14:46.950]  Um, and, uh, we have picked a handful of, um, of talks here to, uh, to highlight, but what we are offering for people who call in and who wants to give out the phone number.
[14:47.730 --> 14:48.350]  Go ahead.
[14:48.830 --> 14:50.650]  212-209-2950.
[14:50.970 --> 14:51.210]  That's right.
[14:51.330 --> 14:55.710]  212-209-2950 is the number to call to pledge.
[14:56.070 --> 15:07.990]  And if you pledge only $50, five, zero, $50, you will get every single one of the talks that we presented at Hope X in 2014 on DVD.
[15:07.990 --> 15:09.730]  You'll get about a hundred DVDs in the mail.
[15:09.890 --> 15:10.530]  That's going to be something.
[15:10.530 --> 15:16.630]  I was putting these premiums into the system, uh, last night, and I assumed there must be some mistake.
[15:16.910 --> 15:20.070]  You get all these DVDs for a pledge of $50?
[15:20.510 --> 15:20.910]  That's right.
[15:21.090 --> 15:21.510]  That's right.
[15:21.690 --> 15:23.370]  Uh, but it gets even better than that.
[15:23.490 --> 15:29.830]  Uh, if you don't want a hundred, um, um, DVDs showing up at your door, you can get something much smaller where it has the same amount of information.
[15:29.830 --> 15:32.730]  And that is the, uh, Hope X thumb drive.
[15:32.970 --> 15:34.010]  It's 64 gigs.
[15:34.290 --> 15:35.450]  That's how big the thumb drive is.
[15:35.630 --> 15:41.630]  And it contains all of the talks, uh, in full quality MP3, uh, MP4 format, I believe.
[15:42.170 --> 15:46.830]  Um, and, uh, you're free to copy them, put them on, uh, your own system.
[15:46.970 --> 15:49.210]  And then you have a 64 gig, uh, thumb drive as well.
[15:49.210 --> 15:52.990]  And that's for a pledge of $75 to 212-209-2950.
[15:53.690 --> 15:54.410]  So it's really, uh...
[15:54.410 --> 15:54.670]  How many talks?
[15:55.070 --> 15:56.050]  Uh, about a hundred.
[15:56.450 --> 15:56.930]  A hundred talks.
[15:56.990 --> 15:57.770]  At least a hundred, I think.
[15:57.790 --> 15:58.650]  The size of my thumb.
[15:58.770 --> 15:58.930]  Yeah.
[15:59.670 --> 16:00.690]  A pledge is $75.
[16:01.050 --> 16:04.050]  And some of them are longer than an hour, too, which makes it even, even better.
[16:04.190 --> 16:06.210]  So it's, it's an amazing amount of material.
[16:06.550 --> 16:08.050]  But, you know, don't believe me.
[16:08.150 --> 16:09.030]  Don't take my word for it.
[16:09.210 --> 16:11.970]  I'd like to just play an excerpt from, from one of the talks.
[16:12.110 --> 16:17.210]  How many of you, did any of you, go to a talk called Disruptive Wearable Technology?
[16:17.930 --> 16:24.890]  I did not, because one of the sad things about the Hope Conference is, even for those of us who attend it, it is impossible to see every talk.
[16:25.130 --> 16:25.750]  That's true.
[16:25.930 --> 16:26.450]  That's true.
[16:26.610 --> 16:29.970]  Uh, but if you got the thumb drive or the DVDs, you can watch them all.
[16:30.110 --> 16:34.350]  Yeah, so, uh, don't be like Mike and miss this talk, because it's a really, really good talk.
[16:34.490 --> 16:42.870]  And, uh, you can see it, uh, for yourself, uh, on either a thumb drive or a DVD, if you pledge to 212-209-2950.
[16:42.870 --> 16:47.330]  Now, uh, this particular talk was presented by, uh, Becky Stern.
[16:47.470 --> 16:50.610]  She's the director of Wearable Electronics at Adafruit.
[16:51.290 --> 16:53.210]  And, uh, they're a really awesome organization.
[16:53.770 --> 16:55.950]  Um, you've probably heard about them in the hacker world.
[16:56.090 --> 16:58.210]  I'll read you a little bit of the, uh, synopsis of the talk.
[16:58.290 --> 17:07.510]  As technology becomes ever more embedded in the fabric of our society, and even our clothes, we must grapple with ever more complicated trade-offs regarding privacy and security.
[17:07.510 --> 17:15.470]  This talk will highlight disruptive, wearable technologies that creatively and assertively address these modern technological and social changes.
[17:16.070 --> 17:21.490]  Come, learn about underwear that tattles on a TSA agent's wandering fingers during a secondary screening.
[17:21.630 --> 17:24.650]  Makeup that makes you imperceptible to facial recognition software.
[17:24.850 --> 17:29.550]  And eye-tracking glasses that let a paralyzed graffiti writer tag again.
[17:30.170 --> 17:32.230]  I mean, this is just so awesome.
[17:32.230 --> 17:40.170]  Um, this, this, this represents the kinds of things that we strive for in presenting conferences of, uh, thousands of hackers from around the world.
[17:40.750 --> 17:47.290]  This, this kind of, excuse me, creativity and, um, and technology and, and, and, um, just sharing of the information.
[17:47.490 --> 17:52.370]  And I know that this year it's going to be even more of a step in, in, in the right direction.
[17:52.750 --> 18:02.310]  So, um, let's listen to this excerpt and hopefully it'll work on this machine and we'll be back, uh, hopefully with a lot of phone calls, 212-209-2950.
[18:09.030 --> 18:10.650]  So, um, hi everybody.
[18:10.810 --> 18:13.150]  If you don't know me, um, my name is Becky Stern.
[18:13.350 --> 18:19.770]  I'm the director of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries, a DIY electronics kit company, uh, here in New York City.
[18:20.070 --> 18:20.450]  Is that okay?
[18:20.970 --> 18:28.330]  And, um, we make parts and sensor breakouts and tutorials and source code for makers and hackers to build their own technology and mod the stuff they already have.
[18:28.330 --> 18:37.550]  But my passion is combining electronics and crafts, uh, to make unexpected, useful, self-expressive, um, and mischievous wearable electronics.
[18:38.010 --> 18:38.770]  You good there?
[18:39.650 --> 18:40.090]  Okay.
[18:43.230 --> 18:48.010]  But in addition to making stuff with electronics, I'm no stranger to using fashion as a hacking tool for culture.
[18:48.270 --> 18:58.070]  Um, this is a project I volunteered on called Wall Suits, where, uh, we, you know, we brought a whole bunch of donated business suits for men and women to Zuccotti Park for the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
[18:58.190 --> 19:10.750]  And we offered, uh, haircuts and, um, a changing booth to, um, you know, transform their look so that their appearance might be more palatable to those they wished to affect, uh, so their message would be more likely to be heard.
[19:10.910 --> 19:15.590]  And there's me, there's me down in the corner there at the, um, at the pants hemming, hemming station.
[19:17.630 --> 19:25.110]  So, to me, the definition of, of disruptive wearable technology is the application of science that, that disturbs or interrupts an activity.
[19:25.110 --> 19:33.530]  I'm not so, uh, not so much talking about the definition of disruptive that means, like, groundbreaking, um, or innovative, because obviously most of these things will already do that.
[19:33.630 --> 19:37.210]  But the ones that interrupt, um, or disturb.
[19:38.170 --> 19:44.390]  They can, um, you know, disruptive wearable tech can solve some problems, uh, you know, probably by creating some problems.
[19:44.530 --> 19:48.290]  If you took the subway here, maybe something like this could have helped you.
[19:48.950 --> 19:59.250]  And the, the projects I'm going to share with you today cover, like, the last ten years of, um, the creative use of technology that impacts culture, um, things that you wear on your person.
[19:59.270 --> 20:07.690]  This is the creative misuse of some anti-bird technology from the garden store, um, implemented by a, um, a student in Singapore named Su Ming Cheng.
[20:09.970 --> 20:21.650]  I think that wearables have the potential to inspire us, protect us, express ourselves, and give us real-life superpowers, um, and a lot of that, uh, hacking the body culture comes from our favorite place, MIT.
[20:23.030 --> 20:34.110]  Um, up here we've got Steve Mann with, you know, some people call him, whether you agree with it or not, the grandfather of Google Glass, Leah Beakley, the inventor of the lily pad Arduino, Aya Badir, founder of Little Bits, and my boss, Lamour Freed,
[20:34.230 --> 20:36.230]  who, you know, in her spare time likes to make cell phone jammers.
[20:38.010 --> 20:46.090]  There's other places, a lot of academic places, but I think the main, the main place that a lot of this culture comes from is, is, um, MIT, NYU's interactive telecommunications program.
[20:46.310 --> 20:48.870]  Lately, when I went through my slides, it was like, wow, there's a lot represented there.
[20:49.510 --> 20:52.270]  Um, and so we'll just dive right in.
[20:52.350 --> 20:55.630]  I'm going to show you a bunch of projects, and they're more or less in chronological order.
[20:55.750 --> 20:59.070]  We're going to take it back to 2005 from the old Afrotech Mods site.
[20:59.210 --> 21:00.490]  Raise your hand for your epic fan, yeah.
[21:00.990 --> 21:04.730]  Um, and, um, I had to fetch this from archive.org because the site's a lot different now.
[21:04.830 --> 21:06.050]  These are the Pika Shoes.
[21:06.190 --> 21:14.430]  They have, um, an ion generator in the sole of the shoe, and it helps you build up a static charge so that you can shock people by touching them.
[21:15.990 --> 21:25.170]  And they're not very... we're going to go through and see maybe things get a little bit more fashionable, and I'll talk about fashion at the end, but, um, uh, these are definitely mischievous, right?
[21:25.310 --> 21:28.770]  And they're, they're useful, and they give you that superpower, like Pikachu.
[21:29.690 --> 21:30.890]  It's hard to get these parts.
[21:31.050 --> 21:36.190]  I've, I've been told it's hard to get the ion generators now, so that's one reason you can't build this project yourself right now.
[21:36.310 --> 21:37.290]  But it is a how-to guide.
[21:39.190 --> 21:41.330]  This is Random Search by Ayah Badir.
[21:41.430 --> 21:42.510]  It's her thesis project from MIT.
[21:42.850 --> 21:49.490]  And it's, um, it's an undergarment that records the location and pressure of the way you're touched during a secondary screening at the airport.
[21:52.370 --> 22:01.970]  And, um, she, she did a lot of research to make this garment, um, undetectable by x-ray so that she could wear it through the airport and not, you know, not be secondarily screened because of the project, but rather.
[22:02.430 --> 22:09.450]  Um, so she used, um, some, those are conductive velcro up there, and then these are the fabric sensors that, um, she did to test there.
[22:09.670 --> 22:10.450]  Here I have a little video.
[22:11.310 --> 22:11.990]  Oh, sorry.
[22:12.330 --> 22:12.870]  We'll play the video.
[22:13.150 --> 22:13.950]  Oh, teaser.
[22:15.790 --> 22:24.630]  So, you know, as an, as a Middle Eastern woman, she felt extra targeted, um, and then powerless, uh, to, you know, complain if, if someone touched her inappropriately.
[22:24.710 --> 22:26.590]  And she was secondary screened, you know, all the time.
[22:27.150 --> 22:30.950]  Um, and so the, this garment gives her the power to track that misconduct.
[22:31.830 --> 22:37.790]  So you'll see that's a theme going through, that we have wearable electronics and technology can make us feel powerful.
[22:38.670 --> 22:41.010]  Here she is proving that it doesn't go off in the metal detector.
[22:43.790 --> 22:44.350]  Let's go ahead.
[22:45.730 --> 22:50.310]  So this is, um, this is one of two projects of my own that I put in that I managed to weasel into my slideshow.
[22:50.490 --> 22:52.110]  This is the laptop CompuBody sock.
[22:52.190 --> 22:53.930]  Maybe you've seen it before and you didn't know I made it.
[22:54.030 --> 22:56.330]  Well, because it's popular on the internet, but I made this.
[22:56.450 --> 22:57.830]  I knit it with my own two knitting needles.
[22:58.210 --> 22:58.830]  Um, it was major.
[22:58.930 --> 23:01.050]  I made it as a, as a sculpture and art piece.
[23:01.130 --> 23:02.030]  I was in grad school.
[23:02.190 --> 23:08.790]  Um, and I wanted to sort of, um, highlight the attention space that you have when you're using the computer, like nothing else matters.
[23:09.110 --> 23:14.970]  And, um, but the fun thing about art is that the meaning is whatever the viewer decides it is.
[23:15.150 --> 23:15.350]  Right.
[23:15.430 --> 23:16.770]  And I'm, I'm big into that.
[23:16.850 --> 23:18.330]  Like whatever your interpretation of is art.
[23:18.390 --> 23:19.990]  So if you feel like you don't get art, you can go to the museum.
[23:20.150 --> 23:21.530]  It's whatever you think it's about.
[23:21.710 --> 23:25.870]  And it's the artist's job to sort of like raise questions that make you get gears moving in your head.
[23:27.410 --> 23:36.470]  Um, and that means that once it's out there in the world on the internet, like commentary happens, you know, like I didn't think it was for porn, but I guess, I guess that's what it's for.
[23:39.290 --> 23:46.290]  But really when I made it, um, I, I wanted to, my fingers were cold when I was typing and I wanted to make a keyboard cozy and then I just like couldn't stop knitting.
[23:47.730 --> 23:54.170]  Um, I read an article actually that Edward Snowden uses something like this, like a big red hoodie to like cover his computer.
[23:54.290 --> 23:56.350]  Cause then you can't see typing or like what's on your screen.
[23:56.710 --> 24:01.990]  This is my, my old roommate who's such a good sport on our, we took a trip to Maker Faire and he modeled for me on the airplane.
[24:05.950 --> 24:07.590]  The next project is the iWriter.
[24:07.890 --> 24:10.670]  It's by, um, members of Free Art and Technology or FAT.
[24:10.770 --> 24:14.050]  I'm also a member of that group, but I didn't work on this project, so it doesn't count as mine.
[24:14.050 --> 24:14.310]  Yeah.
[24:14.510 --> 24:22.370]  Um, and it's the, the iWriter is a pair of eye tracking glasses that let this paralyzed graffiti artist draw again.
[24:22.810 --> 24:30.470]  And, um, that's, I think it's really powerful and it's made with DIY tech, low cost, stupid camera, IR LEDs, cheap plastic glasses.
[24:30.870 --> 24:32.950]  Um, and I have a little video about that.
[24:34.770 --> 24:35.510]  All right.
[24:35.710 --> 24:40.410]  And that was an excerpt from Hope X.
[24:40.510 --> 24:41.030]  What do you guys think?
[24:41.830 --> 24:42.630]  I liked it.
[24:42.810 --> 24:44.250]  I wish I had seen the whole talk.
[24:44.810 --> 24:46.150]  Well, you can see the whole talk.
[24:46.150 --> 24:57.770]  If you, if you pledge now, uh, $50 for the, uh, for the DVDs, $75 for the thumb drive, you'll get that plus about 99 other talks and you'll be able to see just, uh, what Becky was talking about.
[24:58.030 --> 24:59.470]  Wait, wait, I don't think I understood.
[24:59.610 --> 25:00.570]  These are all video.
[25:01.030 --> 25:01.370]  Yes.
[25:01.630 --> 25:01.830]  Yes.
[25:01.930 --> 25:03.490]  You were hearing audio because this is radio.
[25:03.770 --> 25:05.830]  Uh, but there is video attached to this as well.
[25:06.190 --> 25:06.930]  Yeah, exactly.
[25:07.130 --> 25:18.370]  If, uh, if you were listening and you were wondering what she was referring to when she was, uh, showing off pictures of things or you would have liked to see them, you can, because we're going to present them in, um, wonderfully clear, uh, HD video.
[25:18.710 --> 25:18.930]  Yes.
[25:19.150 --> 25:26.850]  And 212-209-2950 is the number to call to pledge to get this talk and about 99 others from Hope X.
[25:26.970 --> 25:30.750]  A lot of stuff going on with, with, uh, uh, textiles and new materials and stuff.
[25:30.930 --> 25:31.490]  That's exciting.
[25:31.610 --> 25:37.210]  I want to know more about, uh, this kind of, uh, integration of clothing and sensors and stuff like that.
[25:37.370 --> 25:42.990]  So we'll clear a path for Kyle to make a phone call to pledge for this so he can find out more about this and 99 other talks.
[25:43.410 --> 25:50.530]  Well, it wasn't a prediction I had, but I think, you know, uh, fashion is, is, uh, it's, hacking is, is always fashionable.
[25:50.730 --> 26:00.770]  So why not incorporate fashion and, and this, uh, new electronic, uh, uh, uh, uh, ability you can, you can integrate into them.
[26:00.890 --> 26:06.550]  And, and Becky Stern, who was speaking, uh, is well known for, uh, for working at the crossroads of hacking and fashion.
[26:06.870 --> 26:10.070]  Um, her work is, uh, you might have seen it in make magazine.
[26:10.070 --> 26:15.210]  If you're, if you keep up with that or at maker fair, um, such events and she does really, really brilliant things.
[26:15.290 --> 26:17.630]  And, uh, she was good enough to bring them to hope.
[26:17.890 --> 26:18.290]  Cool.
[26:18.430 --> 26:23.090]  And of course, if you're not familiar with her work, what better way to become familiar than to see her full talk?
[26:24.090 --> 26:24.490]  Absolutely.
[26:24.710 --> 26:27.630]  2 1 2 2 0 9 2 9 5 0 to get this.
[26:27.910 --> 26:38.510]  And, uh, all the other talks from hope X in 2014, again, pledges of $50 gets you all the DVDs, the pledge of $75 gets, uh, you all the files on a 64 gig thumb drive.
[26:38.790 --> 26:39.670]  Bernie, what do you think of this talk?
[26:40.270 --> 26:46.470]  I, I, I didn't catch that talk either because you know, we're running around trying to make help that conference happen.
[26:46.670 --> 26:48.330]  And as Mike pointed out, it's impossible.
[26:48.710 --> 26:57.010]  Even if you're just a bystander at Hope and not, um, not one of the organizers, there's no way you can see all the talks because we have like three of them going on at once.
[26:57.330 --> 27:00.170]  So it's just an extravaganza of content.
[27:00.590 --> 27:16.650]  Uh, but now in the palm of your hand, you can have about a hundred hope talks and panels and other great information, um, and support this radio station for, uh, for a mere, um, $75 for the flash drive, or if you want to have a hundred DVDs, which is a little unwieldy,
[27:16.850 --> 27:17.590]  that's $50.
[27:18.090 --> 27:25.930]  Frankly, Emmanuel, I think you're crazy for donating, um, all, all this, because this is a tremendous value, a hundred DVDs for $50.
[27:25.930 --> 27:32.790]  That's 50 cents per DVD with each an amazing video of, uh, of a talk.
[27:32.830 --> 27:33.810]  Well, don't talk me out of it.
[27:33.910 --> 27:38.330]  Now that you mentioned that, it does seem like, uh, an awful lot that we're, we're giving away here.
[27:38.450 --> 27:40.830]  This is like, this is like the deal of the century.
[27:41.190 --> 27:42.230]  Really, it is pretty amazing.
[27:42.430 --> 27:53.670]  So I just want to encourage our listeners, even if you went to, to the Hope X conference, you know, we had, uh, Daniel Ellsberg and, uh, Edward Snowden and, and some really amazing speakers at that conference.
[27:53.910 --> 27:56.930]  Um, even if you were there, I doubt you've seen all the talks.
[27:57.150 --> 28:01.570]  So call 212-209-2950 and you will have them all.
[28:01.670 --> 28:11.110]  You can hold them in your hands and you can still support this radio station, which is the only station I know of that will, uh, allow us to cover this stuff in such depth and detail.
[28:11.570 --> 28:15.150]  Also, um, these DVDs are things that, uh, we make available on our own store.
[28:15.370 --> 28:28.390]  And, uh, I can't tell you on the radio how much we charge for them because that's against the rules, but I can tell you that this is significantly, significantly less than you would pay to get all of these in one package at one time anywhere else, but here at WBAI because it's,
[28:28.390 --> 28:33.330]  it's our donation to the station and to, uh, our supporters for helping us out and helping us stay on the air.
[28:33.590 --> 28:44.250]  So call 212-209-2950 or you could use the internet, go to give2wbai.org and, uh, and find the listing for the, uh, for the Hope DVDs there or the Hope Jump Track.
[28:44.330 --> 28:48.750]  Yeah, we have to get the exact phrasing right because if you don't get it exactly right, sometimes they can't find it.
[28:48.850 --> 28:53.150]  This would be the Hope Archives thumb drive and the Hope Archives DVD collection.
[28:53.430 --> 29:00.930]  So, uh, if you're having trouble on the phone, 212-209-2950 or you can't find it at give2wbai.org, that's what you have to look for.
[29:01.050 --> 29:02.810]  And it's, it's right there, looking at it right now.
[29:02.990 --> 29:04.870]  212-209-2950.
[29:05.790 --> 29:06.570]  We have another talk.
[29:06.830 --> 29:08.970]  Uh, yes, there's more than, more than one talk.
[29:09.230 --> 29:09.350]  We have 99 other talk.
[29:09.350 --> 29:10.650]  Well, we're not going to play all 99.
[29:11.050 --> 29:12.150]  Uh, no one could.
[29:12.310 --> 29:13.510]  And the 99 is just an estimate.
[29:13.670 --> 29:13.970]  I don't know.
[29:14.090 --> 29:15.130]  I lost track after a while.
[29:15.310 --> 29:20.590]  Uh, but, uh, this is another, uh, talk that we, um, uh, really haven't excerpted before.
[29:20.730 --> 29:23.070]  And I think it's, um, it's a good idea to, uh, to do this.
[29:23.230 --> 29:41.210]  Uh, this is a talk given by, uh, hacker, safe cracker, and computer science professor, Matt Blaze, who, um, uh, did a talk on, uh, it was called Geolocation, Location, Location, Technology and Countermeasures for Mobile Location Surveillance, something we talk about week after week here on this particular program.
[29:41.830 --> 29:43.990]  Uh, read you a little bit of the, uh, abstract to this.
[29:44.090 --> 29:50.030]  We all know that law enforcement and private companies, for that matter, can track you through your mobile phone, but how exactly does tracking work?
[29:50.130 --> 29:51.350]  How precise are they?
[29:51.490 --> 29:52.810]  When can they get this data?
[29:52.910 --> 29:56.690]  And is there anything you can do to obscure your movements without moving into a Faraday cage?
[29:56.950 --> 30:03.770]  This talk will discuss the various technologies that law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and private industry use to track individual movements.
[30:04.250 --> 30:07.430]  And, uh, there are a surprising number of different techniques.
[30:07.970 --> 30:10.230]  This is, um, a talk that I didn't get to see.
[30:10.310 --> 30:11.650]  Any of you folks managed to see this one?
[30:12.070 --> 30:12.970]  No, I did not.
[30:13.110 --> 30:13.670]  Bernie, how about you?
[30:14.110 --> 30:15.090]  I didn't catch it.
[30:15.190 --> 30:20.350]  I really wanted to, uh, I know Matt, he's one of the, our really valued volunteers making the Hope Conference happening.
[30:20.710 --> 30:23.570]  And, uh, I caught part of it, but then I followed up later.
[30:23.710 --> 30:24.790]  I watched the video later.
[30:24.790 --> 30:25.570]  And it's amazing.
[30:25.570 --> 30:36.770]  If you're concerned about surveillance of your cell phone or surveillance of you through your cell phone, not just by our government, but by companies and other entities, this is a worthwhile talk to listen to and watch.
[30:36.910 --> 30:41.050]  It's, uh, it's pretty eye-opening kind of scary, but it's worth checking out.
[30:41.570 --> 30:41.670]  Okay.
[30:41.790 --> 30:42.670]  Well, let's do just that.
[30:42.810 --> 30:48.510]  Let's get a little taste of, uh, the, uh, geolocation, location, location, uh, talk from Hope X.
[30:49.050 --> 30:51.890]  Again, phone number 212-209-2950.
[30:51.890 --> 30:54.750]  Pledge of $50 gets you all the talks on DVD.
[30:54.770 --> 30:58.290]  A pledge of $75 gets you all the talks on a 64-gig thumb drive.
[30:58.430 --> 31:00.950]  212-209-2950.
[31:07.180 --> 31:21.340]  So, um, so, you know, this is going to be very much focused on in 2014, what are some of the open technological, legal, and policy questions, um, related to tracking mobile devices?
[31:21.500 --> 31:24.020]  And how does it actually, how does it actually work?
[31:24.200 --> 31:27.920]  So when, first of all, when we say mobile devices, what are we talking about?
[31:28.520 --> 31:48.420]  Um, so essentially mobile devices, um, for our purposes here are computers, um, that have a couple of special features that make them particularly interesting from the point of view of tracking and make them particularly important from the point of view of protecting or violating your privacy.
[31:48.700 --> 31:52.000]  Um, the first property of a mobile device is that it's mobile.
[31:52.140 --> 31:55.200]  You carry it around with you very often everywhere.
[31:56.080 --> 32:09.540]  Um, and, you know, the, the mobile phone is sort of the classic example of this thing that we're really, um, you know, people, um, would sooner leave their house, you know, without their keys or their pants than without their phones, right?
[32:10.080 --> 32:14.340]  Um, these devices have lots of sensors crammed into them.
[32:14.620 --> 32:18.280]  Um, they know a lot about what their environment is.
[32:18.480 --> 32:22.700]  In particular, these devices themselves generally know where they are.
[32:22.860 --> 32:26.480]  Um, um, they generally have, um, uh, GPS units.
[32:26.700 --> 32:30.120]  They generally have directional sensors like compasses and so on.
[32:30.480 --> 32:37.440]  Um, and they have the capability of transmitting signals to the outside world in a number of different ways.
[32:37.440 --> 32:40.860]  They have a, a cellular phone, um, uh, transmitter.
[32:41.040 --> 32:43.860]  They often will have data, cellular data services.
[32:44.180 --> 32:52.680]  They often have Wi-Fi, they often have Bluetooth, and they often have other things that they may, that you may or may not even be aware, um, are, are existing.
[32:53.140 --> 33:12.140]  And then finally, mobile devices have this property that they, much more than the computers that we as hackers, um, sort of grew up learning about, um, these are, uh, much more heavily tied to network-based services of various kinds provided by various places,
[33:12.720 --> 33:16.900]  um, than, um, other kinds of computing devices that we, that we use.
[33:17.000 --> 33:19.760]  These devices are designed to be online.
[33:20.060 --> 33:29.580]  And not only are they designed to be online, they're designed to be online in multiple ways in order to, to, to function the way we expect them to function.
[33:30.260 --> 33:40.900]  Um, now, you know, at one end of the spectrum, we have old-fashioned, you know, dumb mobile phones, phones that don't have touch screens that you can't run apps on, and so on.
[33:41.020 --> 33:50.100]  Um, and, you know, these, uh, have, you know, have been kind of upgraded to include more computational capability, smartphones, um, tablets.
[33:50.620 --> 33:53.900]  And then there's this idea of the internet of things.
[33:54.520 --> 34:05.680]  Um, your car likely contains a number of mobile devices, very often, that have been subscribed to, um, with different services on your behalf, um, when the car was built.
[34:05.680 --> 34:11.280]  And you may not have any direct relationship that you know about with the service provider that's providing them.
[34:11.440 --> 34:14.640]  Um, and it's, you know, driving around with you everywhere you go.
[34:14.880 --> 34:23.560]  Your toaster and your refrigerator and so on will, will soon be followed, although your refrigerator is a little less mobile than, uh, than, than your car is.
[34:24.100 --> 34:24.580]  Right.
[34:24.760 --> 34:25.560]  Unless it's running.
[34:25.780 --> 34:25.900]  Yes.
[34:26.000 --> 34:26.380]  Very good.
[34:26.700 --> 34:27.060]  Okay.
[34:27.360 --> 34:27.580]  Okay.
[34:27.620 --> 34:30.280]  You get the worst joke of the conference award.
[34:30.920 --> 34:31.400]  Okay.
[34:32.040 --> 34:46.300]  So let's, um, uh, let's go to, uh, uh, kind of some very oversimplified how phones work, uh, kind of a baseline, um, uh, uh, uh, understanding the basic cellular technology.
[34:46.560 --> 34:58.160]  So basically, your phone handset, this device, is essentially, uh, a fairly low power, um, because its battery has to last a long time.
[34:58.340 --> 35:03.940]  And there are also, you know, health, maybe health effects from zapping you with high levels of microwave radiation.
[35:03.940 --> 35:21.300]  Um, so it's inherently a low power device that has a crappy, uh, antenna, um, making it effectively an even more low power, um, two way radio, um, that you expect to have universal connectivity pretty much everywhere you go.
[35:22.120 --> 35:35.540]  So to make up for the fact that the range of your mobile phone is inherently very limited, it can only reach, um, you know, maybe a mile or so under even the most ideal circumstances.
[35:35.540 --> 35:41.420]  And in an urban area with lots of obstructions around it, uh, considerably less, uh, than that.
[35:41.620 --> 36:04.640]  Um, the cellular carrier, uh, has to build out a network of, um, uh, towers which are called cell sites that have essentially a connection to the back infrastructure, to the telephone network, to their network, um, such that, uh, there are, there is a tower,
[36:05.060 --> 36:09.940]  a cell site, within range of your phone wherever you want to take it.
[36:10.260 --> 36:17.160]  And, you know, the term cellular phone, which is more commonly used in the U.S., in, in Europe, they call them mobile phones.
[36:17.760 --> 36:29.880]  Um, but, uh, the term cellular phones comes from the idea that you think of these ranges of the towers as cells that are adjacent to each other, tiled across a map.
[36:30.180 --> 36:34.820]  And you're in one particular cell at any time that has the best coverage of your phone.
[36:34.980 --> 36:43.860]  So essentially, a mobile phone company is primarily in the real estate business to rent these tower locations to put their cell sites in.
[36:43.860 --> 36:54.480]  And your, your, your handset is essentially looking for the cell tower that's broadcasting a signal, and you're also broadcasting a signal.
[36:54.640 --> 37:07.780]  And you figure out which of these cell sites is within, uh, range, and which has the best signal coverage where you are at any given moment, and registers with that, that.
[37:08.060 --> 37:10.440]  Now, it has to do that in order to work.
[37:10.640 --> 37:18.620]  Uh, it has to do that even when you're not making a phone call because that's the mechanism that your phone relies on in order to be able to receive calls.
[37:18.800 --> 37:23.980]  We have to know where you are in the network in order to know where to route an incoming call to you.
[37:24.140 --> 37:39.620]  So what this essentially says is that right off the bat, this device is at least doing some sort of course tracking of course tracking of your location because you, um, uh, it, it has to in order to work that way.
[37:39.740 --> 37:48.880]  We know what cell you're in, um, because that information has to be recorded with the cellular provider in order to route incoming calls to you.
[37:48.980 --> 37:51.980]  And as you move around, you're re-registering with different cells.
[37:52.100 --> 37:54.860]  It's generally the one that's nearest you.
[37:55.020 --> 38:03.800]  And that essentially list of registrations, uh, identifies where you are within the, um, radio range of your phone.
[38:04.260 --> 38:07.640]  So that's the sort of oversimplified version of this.
[38:07.720 --> 38:09.120]  How many people knew that already?
[38:09.260 --> 38:12.780]  Well, if I could see anything, I'd imagine everyone's raising their hand right now, right?
[38:12.880 --> 38:14.280]  This is, but I can't see a thing.
[38:14.400 --> 38:17.480]  So I'm just going to pretend that everybody, uh, that there are people in the room.
[38:17.640 --> 38:20.020]  I assume all of you have taken your clothes off or something.
[38:20.140 --> 38:21.800]  I just cannot see a thing up here.
[38:22.300 --> 38:22.500]  Okay.
[38:23.060 --> 38:29.140]  Um, the, um, so, um, this is sort of the oversimplified version.
[38:29.260 --> 38:31.920]  So you might say, okay, well, I can live with that, right?
[38:32.080 --> 38:34.400]  The radio range of my phone is maybe a mile.
[38:34.580 --> 38:36.780]  So that means I'm within a one mile radius of this.
[38:36.920 --> 38:39.600]  This thing can only track me within about a mile, right?
[38:39.780 --> 38:45.320]  Because that's, you know, the cell companies, of course, want to economize.
[38:45.480 --> 38:47.920]  They're primarily in the real estate business.
[38:48.140 --> 38:55.680]  They want to economize on how many of these expensive towers they have to put up and, and all this expensive space that they have to rent.
[38:55.880 --> 39:01.580]  And they're going to want to get away with putting as few of those up as they possibly can.
[39:01.720 --> 39:08.560]  And what you might say is, well, we should put them up so that their distance is essentially the typical radio range of one of these phones.
[39:08.560 --> 39:11.660]  And that's a mile or two, uh, apart from each other.
[39:11.820 --> 39:21.320]  Um, and so that's the limit of the resolution of the tracking that these kinds of devices do as you're registering with the network.
[39:21.640 --> 39:33.560]  But it turns out that now that everyone has one of these things, the radio range is not the limiting factor of how close or how far apart you can get away with having these.
[39:34.140 --> 39:49.960]  Um, if the, because everybody wants one of these, uh, devices, and because the amount of radio spectrum allocated to cellular and mobile phone services is inherently a scarce resource.
[39:50.080 --> 39:56.200]  There's a limit to how much of it there is, and we're using more of it than there are, uh, users.
[39:56.920 --> 40:07.340]  Um, and we're demanding more and more high bandwidth services, uh, to take up that limited amount of radio spectrum.
[40:07.660 --> 40:26.000]  Um, the, uh, capacity of a cell tower is reached, particularly in any kind of populated area, well, well before the radio range radius would say you'd have to build another one.
[40:26.180 --> 40:41.680]  So you're going to reach all of the radio spectrum capacity, um, for a cell tower within a much, much smaller, the, uh, within all the users within a much, much smaller radius than you would if you were just looking at the radio range.
[40:41.800 --> 40:45.760]  And in fact, what that means is that how do you, how do you deal with this?
[40:45.840 --> 40:49.920]  Well, there's, we could get more spectrum, but we've kind of reached the limit of that.
[40:50.040 --> 40:56.240]  They keep auctioning off more by trying to steal it away from television stations and public safety users.
[40:56.480 --> 41:01.940]  But, you know, we can auctions, we can't auction off spectrum fast enough to meet the demand.
[41:02.160 --> 41:02.940]  So what do you do?
[41:02.940 --> 41:10.740]  Well, what do you have to, what you have to do is have each of these towers serve fewer users.
[41:10.860 --> 41:12.360]  But everybody wants one.
[41:12.660 --> 41:14.020]  So how do you deal with this?
[41:14.140 --> 41:15.820]  Well, you put more towers in.
[41:15.900 --> 41:23.800]  You make the density of these cell sites, um, uh, closer and closer spaced together.
[41:23.940 --> 41:33.340]  So that instead of a one mile radius, it's going to have a small enough radius to be able to serve the users that were, that are within range of this.
[41:33.940 --> 41:56.340]  So what effectively this means is that because everyone has one of these things, um, you are, um, um, your location that's revealed by pairing with the nearest cell tower, um, is, is going to be a much higher resolution, a much finer grained resolution than it was,
[41:56.340 --> 42:03.920]  you know, 20 years ago when cell phones were this sort of luxury item that, that, uh, rich, rich self-important people had.
[42:04.060 --> 42:06.480]  Now everyone is a rich self-important person.
[42:06.680 --> 42:11.000]  And what that means is that we're tracked as a sort of side effect of that.
[42:11.180 --> 42:14.440]  We're tracked with much more high resolution when we do this.
[42:16.060 --> 42:28.260]  And that is, uh, an excerpt from the Matt blaze talk on geolocation at hope X that, uh, we are making available for people who pledge to WBAI tonight.
[42:28.660 --> 42:29.760]  Uh, Bernie, what do you think of that talk?
[42:30.120 --> 42:32.640]  Uh, you just started getting into the scary part.
[42:32.760 --> 42:47.460]  Then he starts going into how you can be tracked with my wifi and your Bluetooth headset and otherwise, and how, how all this data is compiled and sliced and diced and recorded and logged forever about, uh, where you've been and where you go and all that.
[42:47.580 --> 42:49.060]  So it's worth checking out.
[42:49.240 --> 42:58.760]  And, and you can do that by, uh, pledging your support to this radio station at the same time by, uh, calling 212-209-2950 and pledging a mere $50.
[42:59.200 --> 43:06.200]  You get a stack of a hundred DVDs with this and 99 other amazing talks approximately, uh, over $75.
[43:06.200 --> 43:11.560]  You can get it all in the palm of your hand on a flash drive, but this is, this is at a tremendous information value.
[43:11.820 --> 43:18.500]  There's no way you're going to get this much content anywhere else, um, for this price and support WBAI.
[43:18.880 --> 43:22.260]  So give us a call 212-209-2950.
[43:22.280 --> 43:25.940]  Oh, and our last premiums, uh, they're just going out now, aren't they?
[43:26.280 --> 43:27.120]  I believe so.
[43:27.280 --> 43:30.000]  I believe everything is, uh, is pretty much in the hands of the right people.
[43:30.320 --> 43:30.620]  Yes.
[43:30.940 --> 43:31.260]  Yes.
[43:31.480 --> 43:32.600]  Uh, it has all been delivered.
[43:32.880 --> 43:33.140]  Yes.
[43:33.920 --> 43:34.280]  Uh, go ahead.
[43:34.480 --> 43:42.240]  Bernie, you sort of hand waved away at the end of what you just said that, uh, and you support WBAI, but I want to emphasize that this is really all linked.
[43:42.340 --> 43:47.360]  We would not be able to do the conferences without the audience that we build here on WBAI.
[43:47.520 --> 44:02.660]  No other radio station in the world would give the likes of us a radio program on an FM transmitter in, uh, in a major city like New York City to connect with the people we connect with, connect with you, the audience, connect with people like Matt Blaze,
[44:02.880 --> 44:13.000]  uh, to be able to produce conferences like this, to be able to produce talks like the ones you'll get if you call 212-209-2950 and pledge.
[44:13.480 --> 44:20.860]  And if, if we go off the air, it really is, uh, putting a hamper on this sort of activity.
[44:21.040 --> 44:24.580]  And so we really want you to support us to keep us on the air.
[44:24.660 --> 44:27.820]  And that is why we thank you with these thank you premiums.
[44:27.820 --> 44:31.920]  You mentioned that, uh, we're on an FM, uh, broadcast signal, correct?
[44:32.200 --> 44:32.580]  It's true.
[44:32.720 --> 44:34.620]  We're also in New York City, correct?
[44:35.460 --> 44:38.020]  Um, and, um, uh, what else did you know?
[44:38.100 --> 44:39.660]  On top of the Empire State Building, right?
[44:39.800 --> 44:40.880]  I didn't say that, but it's also true.
[44:40.880 --> 44:42.280]  Okay, all right, but I'm just trying to help out here.
[44:42.480 --> 44:43.080]  Was there anything else?
[44:43.140 --> 44:48.400]  Any other qualifiers you, you had there as far as, uh, um, major signal?
[44:49.160 --> 44:49.520]  Powerful?
[44:50.040 --> 44:51.040]  Lots and lots of watts.
[44:51.520 --> 44:52.240]  Yeah, lots of watts.
[44:52.780 --> 44:56.140]  Okay, what you left out was that we're in the middle of the FM dial.
[44:56.520 --> 45:00.600]  And being in the middle of the FM dial means people expect to find commercial stations there.
[45:00.680 --> 45:07.540]  You might notice there's this ghetto over to the left end of the FM dial where they stick all the non-commercial stations.
[45:07.640 --> 45:09.560]  Everything below 92 is supposed to be non-commercial.
[45:10.120 --> 45:22.160]  Um, and somehow we managed to escape and, and live free here in 99.5 where you would expect to hear a country music station or a top 40 station or another sports station or something like that.
[45:22.620 --> 45:26.340]  But somehow, somehow we managed to hack the airwaves and stay in the middle.
[45:26.820 --> 45:28.740]  Um, it's, there's a long story behind it.
[45:28.820 --> 45:40.520]  We've been on the air since 1960, but, uh, it's very unusual to have that kind of access to be able to broadcast something to so many people in a major city, but also in the middle of the FM dial.
[45:40.640 --> 45:46.560]  So it's, it's, it's something that is so precious and unique, and hopefully, uh, will always be prized by our listeners.
[45:46.700 --> 45:49.440]  And that's, that's the reason why we have to do these things every few years.
[45:49.640 --> 46:02.060]  You know how expensive it is to keep a radio station going, to pay the rent on, on, uh, the tower, uh, and all the other things that are involved in, in, in maintaining, uh, let alone expanding what it is that we do.
[46:02.220 --> 46:03.500]  So that's why we ask for your support.
[46:03.680 --> 46:06.180]  212-209-2950.
[46:06.400 --> 46:07.700]  $50 may not seem like that much.
[46:07.780 --> 46:08.660]  What are you going to solve with $50?
[46:08.940 --> 46:09.440]  Well, you know what?
[46:09.880 --> 46:14.080]  A bunch of people calling in doing that, that suddenly solves some big problems.
[46:14.180 --> 46:16.280]  So your contribution does count.
[46:16.440 --> 46:17.160]  It does add up.
[46:17.260 --> 46:19.800]  It's all part of the, uh, uh, the whole jigsaw puzzle.
[46:19.960 --> 46:21.500]  212-209-2950.
[46:21.500 --> 46:21.920]  $50.
[46:22.340 --> 46:24.900]  You get all the talks on DVD, $75.
[46:24.900 --> 46:32.000]  You get all the talks on a 64 gig thumb drive and you can copy them to your heart's content and share them and do anything else.
[46:32.160 --> 46:32.560]  Yeah.
[46:32.680 --> 46:32.800]  You mentioned.
[46:33.300 --> 46:34.320]  Uh, go ahead, Bernie.
[46:34.460 --> 46:35.060]  And then, then Rob.
[46:35.660 --> 46:37.500]  I, I tried to interrupt you there, Rob.
[46:37.640 --> 46:46.880]  One of the advantages of getting this content, uh, this way, either on DVD or on a USB flash drive is it doesn't take up room on whatever device you're playing it on.
[46:47.000 --> 46:48.200]  It's on its own physical media.
[46:48.400 --> 46:54.780]  I know people, people, uh, laugh at me for having a, uh, a physical media fetish, but, uh, you know.
[46:54.780 --> 46:55.660]  That's not why they're laughing.
[46:56.260 --> 46:56.700]  Oh, okay.
[46:57.740 --> 46:57.900]  Okay.
[46:57.900 --> 46:59.320]  Was that a flash drive in your pocket?
[46:59.420 --> 47:03.160]  Anyway, the, um, the, the flash drive is the size of your thumb.
[47:03.360 --> 47:06.340]  You got a hundred videos from talks at the Hope X conference.
[47:06.500 --> 47:07.320]  It's amazing stuff.
[47:07.760 --> 47:10.080]  And it doesn't take up any space on your computer.
[47:10.440 --> 47:24.180]  So that's why, uh, this is a great thing, but you're mainly, as Mike pointed out, you're supporting a radio station that has, unfortunately, significant expenses, uh, operating, uh, an FM transmitter, uh, in the middle of a major market on top of the Empire State Building,
[47:24.460 --> 47:28.480]  which, yeah, that may seem antiquated, but it's, it's, it's really awesome.
[47:28.780 --> 47:34.360]  They're, they're, it's, it's unequaled by any other, uh, no, no other rate, no other hacker show.
[47:34.720 --> 47:38.720]  If like, there's that many hacker shows have this common audience in a major market.
[47:39.140 --> 47:41.760]  When you say it's antiquated, what, what, what's antiquated?
[47:42.160 --> 47:50.920]  Well, a lot of people think that, uh, the FM broadcast radio is, uh, is, uh, an antique, obsolete medium.
[47:51.060 --> 47:51.620]  Oh, I disagree.
[47:52.020 --> 47:52.840]  They think that, eh?
[47:53.060 --> 47:53.280]  Wow.
[47:53.280 --> 47:58.220]  A lot of people think that a lot of people, you can't get it, uh, stream it over the internet and listen to it on your cell phone.
[47:58.360 --> 47:59.920]  Then it's, uh, then it's old school.
[48:00.100 --> 48:00.620]  Well, you know what?
[48:00.840 --> 48:01.540]  No, it's real.
[48:01.700 --> 48:02.680]  This is best fidelity.
[48:02.840 --> 48:07.260]  You're going to get the best fidelity ever with an FM radio listening to the station, but you can also hear it streaming.
[48:07.560 --> 48:10.320]  I am not one of those people that thinks FM radio is obsolete.
[48:10.540 --> 48:12.080]  It's a, it's a valued medium.
[48:12.560 --> 48:14.580]  You can drive around, listen to it.
[48:14.660 --> 48:22.020]  You can be, it's, it's, it's got much more potential audience than just, uh, people that happen to have expensive devices.
[48:22.400 --> 48:26.740]  And there are also, there are many ways to listen to our signal and that does include podcasts.
[48:26.900 --> 48:32.960]  It does include, uh, listening on your phone and various other devices, tune in apps and, and things like that.
[48:33.140 --> 48:41.460]  But, uh, that says something that people want to hear what's on the radio and how it gets broadcast, uh, isn't really the issue.
[48:41.620 --> 48:45.260]  Some people listen over the air, some people, uh, listen online.
[48:45.480 --> 48:58.920]  Uh, but, uh, to have a radio station, that is the physical point where you produce all these programs and you have people coming together and sharing their talents and, and making one cohesive package that's on the air 24 hours a day.
[48:59.200 --> 49:01.920]  That's something you don't get very often with, uh, with podcasts.
[49:01.920 --> 49:05.880]  It's very difficult to have that kind of, uh, of, of community.
[49:06.100 --> 49:16.340]  So yeah, there, there is some antiquity to it, but there's also some, uh, some good old fashioned quality, uh, that is, is, uh, really, really hard to build from, from the ground up.
[49:16.500 --> 49:16.840]  Yeah.
[49:16.940 --> 49:21.560]  And one of my favorite things about this place is the existence of this station is ridiculous.
[49:21.560 --> 49:22.560]  It's a fluke.
[49:23.000 --> 49:31.380]  It's a, if you, if you look into the history of the station and how it came to be, it was really just the most random sequence of events that led to that led to its existence.
[49:31.400 --> 49:33.620]  It's a sequence of events that would not be repeated again.
[49:33.860 --> 49:35.180]  This could not happen today.
[49:35.680 --> 49:38.900]  What, uh, what brought the station about in the 1960s, it would not happen today.
[49:38.900 --> 49:45.000]  And if the station were lost, it would not rise again in this form because that you can't do this today.
[49:45.200 --> 49:45.380]  Yeah.
[49:45.460 --> 49:46.000]  You just can't.
[49:46.080 --> 49:46.460]  You know what?
[49:46.500 --> 49:49.640]  Those of you out there who think that radio is antiquated, go get a radio station.
[49:49.780 --> 49:52.700]  Then that's so, you know, so antiquated and worthless should be easy.
[49:52.860 --> 49:53.860]  Just go out there and get one.
[49:54.220 --> 49:56.580]  And, uh, if you're looking for something to do with it, let us know.
[49:56.700 --> 49:59.800]  Cause we'd love to have an opportunity to have a whole radio station at our disposal.
[50:00.020 --> 50:00.340]  Also.
[50:00.520 --> 50:00.700]  Yes.
[50:00.820 --> 50:00.980]  Okay.
[50:01.000 --> 50:05.480]  We're broadcasting on FM, uh, on FM analog radio, which is a very old technology.
[50:05.480 --> 50:08.080]  It's a reliable technology, but we are also streaming on the web.
[50:08.180 --> 50:09.460]  We are also podcasting.
[50:09.720 --> 50:12.700]  Um, we've been podcasting this show since before people called it podcast.
[50:12.780 --> 50:13.200]  That's right.
[50:13.400 --> 50:14.820]  In fact, we were one of the first podcasts.
[50:14.980 --> 50:15.440]  We were.
[50:15.600 --> 50:18.320]  Someone even thought we might've invented the name, but I checked and we didn't.
[50:18.320 --> 50:26.800]  I don't think we invented the name, but, uh, we were definitely, I mean, I was listening to the show on downloaded audio files since before the general public knew what a downloaded audio file was and I was loving it.
[50:26.940 --> 50:27.560]  It was real audio.
[50:27.560 --> 50:27.980]  Remember that?
[50:28.120 --> 50:28.840]  It was real audio.
[50:28.840 --> 50:29.200]  Wow.
[50:29.340 --> 50:31.880]  If we had invented the name, we would have given it a better name.
[50:32.040 --> 50:32.300]  Yeah.
[50:32.300 --> 50:35.360]  I would like to think that I would like to think we did, uh, but I'm pretty sure we didn't.
[50:35.920 --> 50:41.000]  Uh, but yeah, so, uh, there are many different, uh, ways that you can receive a signal.
[50:41.300 --> 50:45.120]  Uh, but, uh, the magic of radio, you never really know how many people are out there.
[50:45.580 --> 50:47.560]  It's different with, um, with, with online.
[50:47.560 --> 50:49.500]  You can actually see how many people are out there.
[50:49.620 --> 50:51.140]  Sometimes you can see a lot about them.
[50:51.800 --> 50:54.140]  And it can be controlled a lot more easily, too.
[50:54.760 --> 51:01.700]  You know, there aren't many people in North Korea that are tapping into online broadcast from different countries.
[51:01.700 --> 51:08.720]  But there are people that sneak radios in and can hear via shortwave or FM or AM things they're not supposed to hear.
[51:08.780 --> 51:17.040]  And that's a freedom that you always have with radio, the freedom of being anonymous, being passive, being able to listen under the covers late at night.
[51:17.040 --> 51:21.420]  When your parents tell you to go to bed, you know, it's harder to do that with a computer.
[51:22.260 --> 51:22.500]  All right.
[51:22.860 --> 51:26.180]  Hey, Bernie, what does the name Thomas Drake mean to you?
[51:26.980 --> 51:27.460]  Wow.
[51:27.760 --> 51:30.080]  He is one of my heroes.
[51:30.080 --> 51:34.640]  He worked for the National Security Agency, and he had a conscience.
[51:35.020 --> 51:40.000]  And he saw some things that were going wrong, illegal things.
[51:40.320 --> 51:42.160]  And he was a whistleblower at the NSA.
[51:42.700 --> 51:43.920]  And guess what happened to him?
[51:43.920 --> 51:54.160]  Instead of rewarding him or finding these problems, NSA, they persecuted him and prosecuted him and tried to destroy his life.
[51:54.380 --> 51:58.400]  And his story was told at Hope X.
[51:58.480 --> 52:04.040]  By the way, Tom Drake is one of the people that inspired Edward Snowden to go the route he did.
[52:04.040 --> 52:18.020]  But Ed Snowden realized that Thomas Drake and Bill Binney, another one of the previous Hope speakers, when they went the official route and became a whistleblower and went through proper channels, they got crucified.
[52:18.920 --> 52:20.660]  So Ed Snowden said, you know, that doesn't work.
[52:20.760 --> 52:21.600]  That model doesn't work.
[52:21.600 --> 52:23.720]  And he did it the way he had to do it.
[52:24.180 --> 52:24.620]  Yeah.
[52:24.760 --> 52:29.140]  And a lot of people know that Edward Snowden was one of our keynote speakers at Hope X.
[52:29.240 --> 52:33.960]  In fact, you'll get his talk, in addition to Daniel Ellsberg's talk, when you pledge for this package.
[52:33.960 --> 52:36.840]  But not as many people know about Thomas Drake.
[52:36.980 --> 52:44.080]  And that's a shame, because his talk, it's actually an interview with Vivian Weissman, who made the documentary The Hacker Wars.
[52:44.680 --> 52:45.840]  It's so incredible.
[52:46.060 --> 52:48.760]  Kyle, you were playing this the other day, and I was just overhearing it.
[52:48.880 --> 52:53.820]  And I, you know, I never got a chance to watch the whole thing, but I could not believe how compelling it was.
[52:53.840 --> 52:56.200]  I didn't even realize it was our own conference.
[52:56.340 --> 53:01.540]  It was, wow, this looks like something that, you know, you'd see on HBO or something like that.
[53:01.540 --> 53:03.100]  And it was just really, really riveting.
[53:03.300 --> 53:09.480]  He tells some stories here that I think would inspire many people, let alone Edward Snowden.
[53:10.100 --> 53:18.500]  Yeah, it's another angle, another perspective of a lot of the stories and reporting that's gone on in the last couple of years.
[53:19.100 --> 53:30.380]  And it's sort of one of those things that you hear and you realize, wow, okay, so now this other person is enlightening us on what's going on with communications and so on.
[53:30.380 --> 53:37.600]  And it adds sort of, it definitely is emblematic of the plot thickening, so to speak.
[53:37.860 --> 53:40.680]  Well, Thomas Drake is a decorated U.S.
[53:40.780 --> 53:41.700]  Air Force and U.S.
[53:41.940 --> 53:42.260]  Navy veteran.
[53:42.260 --> 53:47.060]  He was a senior executive and technical director for NSA software engineering and implementation.
[53:47.060 --> 53:59.120]  And that's where he discovered and blew the whistle on massive multi-billion dollar fraud, waste and abuse, the failures that led to 9-11, the widespread violations of citizens' rights through secret mass surveillance programs after 9-11.
[53:59.120 --> 54:11.520]  And after years of addressing those issues in vain through official channels, he finally went to the press and soon became the first whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 to be charged with espionage.
[54:12.060 --> 54:16.480]  Well, the whole story is pretty much given in the talk.
[54:16.480 --> 54:20.460]  I don't want to spoil the whole thing, but we will play a little bit of an excerpt.
[54:20.600 --> 54:22.180]  At least it wasn't martial law, of course.
[54:22.660 --> 54:23.280]  No, no.
[54:23.300 --> 54:24.460]  You can always be thankful for that.
[54:24.560 --> 54:25.380]  For this time.
[54:25.860 --> 54:41.000]  Yeah, I like to think, though, that this is a guy that inspired Edward Snowden and who knows how many others, that every time somebody hears a talk like this, every time somebody sees what a person with courage does, it inspires more people to do the same thing.
[54:41.100 --> 54:42.500]  And we have more whistleblowers than ever.
[54:42.700 --> 54:47.840]  What a great idea to pledge for this premium and send it to your friend who works for the government.
[54:48.060 --> 54:48.720]  There you go.
[54:48.940 --> 54:55.640]  And if you get the thumb drive, you can send it to everybody who works in the government because you can make all kinds of copies and just keep sending it out.
[54:55.820 --> 54:59.580]  This deserves to be seen by many people and spread around.
[54:59.580 --> 55:08.380]  And that's what I'm hoping we accomplish tonight, getting these DVDs and getting these thumb drives out as well as getting some much-needed funds for the radio station.
[55:08.480 --> 55:10.420]  212-209-2950.
[55:10.520 --> 55:19.500]  All 100 or so DVDs will come your way if you pledge $50, and you'll get a 64-gig thumb drive if you pledge $75.
[55:20.140 --> 55:21.860]  212-209-2950.
[55:22.000 --> 55:29.660]  Let's hear a little bit of a conversation with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake from the HOPEX conference.
[55:34.560 --> 55:40.220]  And it's important to note that my moment of truth was actually the first week in October of 2001.
[55:40.620 --> 55:42.360]  Now, this is barely three weeks after 9-11.
[55:42.620 --> 55:45.520]  I confronted the lead attorney at NSA.
[55:45.520 --> 55:50.980]  He actually showed up in the recent Frontline documentary called The United States of Secrets.
[55:51.560 --> 55:54.040]  And he said, you don't understand, Mr. Drake.
[55:54.240 --> 56:00.900]  This is after he acknowledged that the White House had approved what they called the program, the President's Surveillance Program.
[56:01.040 --> 56:02.620]  It was always called the program.
[56:03.120 --> 56:04.020]  He said, you don't understand.
[56:04.020 --> 56:04.880]  We just need the data.
[56:05.900 --> 56:07.520]  We just need the data.
[56:08.440 --> 56:24.620]  And see, when he said that, I was thrown back to a period in my other life, my other day job, when I was a cryptolinguist flying an RC-135 during the Cold War in the European theater.
[56:24.980 --> 56:28.240]  And what country did I become an expert in?
[56:28.320 --> 56:33.440]  What country did I spend many, many years listening in on their communications?
[56:33.440 --> 56:34.360]  East Germany.
[56:36.380 --> 56:47.320]  It was just a very surreal moment because now I'm realizing that on a far vaster scale that my own government is now deciding that in the interest of national security, we're just going to collect it all.
[56:47.560 --> 56:50.940]  We need to know everything there is to know about anybody, at any time, anywhere.
[56:51.240 --> 56:53.000]  And we have the platform to do it.
[56:53.200 --> 56:54.460]  That's what's called Internet.
[56:55.300 --> 56:56.380]  And all the telephone.
[56:56.640 --> 56:57.860]  All the telephone systems.
[56:59.400 --> 57:00.400]  To what end?
[57:00.560 --> 57:03.140]  To what end is the security surveillance state?
[57:03.770 --> 57:05.560]  It's ultimately about social control.
[57:06.520 --> 57:14.380]  Let no one be naive to believe that somehow there's a morality in collecting all this information, and it won't be used for other purposes.
[57:14.790 --> 57:16.680]  And that's precisely what the government is doing.
[57:17.140 --> 57:24.580]  And if anyone stands up to the power structure like a hacktivist or a whistleblower, they don't just indict you.
[57:24.580 --> 57:26.600]  They try to destroy you.
[57:27.320 --> 57:28.920]  This is what they try to do to you.
[57:30.360 --> 57:30.860]  Yeah.
[57:32.800 --> 57:34.800]  What does it mean to have your life destroyed?
[57:35.340 --> 57:35.740]  Okay.
[57:36.200 --> 57:46.140]  Just imagine each of you as sovereign human beings coming under the purview of the government as a person of interest and then becoming a target of the government.
[57:46.700 --> 57:49.500]  The government has decided that you're an enemy of the state.
[57:50.620 --> 57:59.340]  And imagine that they have the highest power microscope, a digital microscope, and they spend four years drilling down into your life.
[57:59.860 --> 58:03.000]  Everything there is to know about you, what will they find out?
[58:03.200 --> 58:04.960]  And how could they use it against you?
[58:05.200 --> 58:09.320]  How could they manipulate facts and say facts about your life?
[58:10.060 --> 58:11.600]  Especially when they want to punish you.
[58:11.740 --> 58:13.700]  Especially when they want to put you away.
[58:15.140 --> 58:25.880]  See, I faced a certain reality when the original chief prosecutor came to me in April of 2008 before I actually resigned from NSA.
[58:26.880 --> 58:34.040]  And he said, Mr. Drake, how would you like to spend the rest of your life in prison unless you cooperate with our investigation?
[58:35.160 --> 58:40.460]  This is how far the government was willing to go to protect national secrets.
[58:41.460 --> 58:45.060]  There was no way they were going to let someone like me and others.
[58:45.290 --> 58:47.320]  But at that time, I was the target.
[58:47.940 --> 59:00.380]  The target of their multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation in terms of who had leaked information about the Stellar Wind program to the New York Times, James Rice and Eric Liffblow.
[59:01.820 --> 59:04.040]  And they were hell-bent to punish somebody.
[59:04.040 --> 59:10.700]  I found out from very deep sources within the government that Cheney had issued a direct edict.
[59:11.180 --> 59:13.100]  Find and fry the perpetrators.
[59:13.270 --> 59:14.740]  I don't care who they are.
[59:15.080 --> 59:16.540]  Make an object lesson of them.
[59:16.770 --> 59:17.140]  Burn them.
[59:17.520 --> 59:17.700]  Right.
[59:18.460 --> 59:28.960]  And so, when you're on the receiving end of the government, with all the powers they have in terms of surveillance and the FBI, they can make life extraordinarily difficult.
[59:29.200 --> 59:32.680]  And so, I was made a person of interest in 2006.
[59:33.340 --> 59:37.660]  And I experienced severe electronic surveillance and physical surveillance.
[59:38.000 --> 59:47.300]  I ultimately had FBI agents tailing me no matter where I went just to make sure they kept track of me.
[59:50.060 --> 59:51.080]  What can I tell you?
[59:51.200 --> 59:52.160]  I mean, it's...
[59:53.000 --> 59:54.120]  I don't think...
[59:54.120 --> 59:55.840]  And I keep talking about this in public.
[59:56.100 --> 01:00:01.460]  And every time I tell the story, people start to appreciate what it's like if the government decides to destroy you.
[01:00:03.660 --> 01:00:04.440]  It's not...
[01:00:04.440 --> 01:00:05.680]  It's not...
[01:00:05.680 --> 01:00:08.380]  Look, I listen in on the East German state.
[01:00:08.580 --> 01:00:15.460]  I was very familiar with Astazi and the police state and what they did to isolate and...
[01:00:16.900 --> 01:00:19.240]  and fragment people's lives.
[01:00:19.580 --> 01:00:19.700]  Okay?
[01:00:19.860 --> 01:00:26.660]  Listening in on the lives of others, literally, where they had the entire telephone system designed for surveillance.
[01:00:27.660 --> 01:00:29.820]  That's precisely what's happened in this country.
[01:00:30.660 --> 01:00:38.040]  I have another clip, which is three hacktivists that were targeted and they've tried to destroy them as well.
[01:00:38.220 --> 01:00:45.360]  And I think that we'll go back and forth between your story and the story of the hacktivists because I think we've found a lot of analogous situations.
[01:00:45.580 --> 01:00:47.320]  Look, you don't speak truth to power.
[01:00:48.560 --> 01:00:53.100]  You know, you don't poke the bear in the eye with a stick, right?
[01:00:54.750 --> 01:00:59.000]  You don't hold up a mirror and expose government criminality.
[01:01:00.340 --> 01:01:03.520]  Government criminality without them reacting to it.
[01:01:05.360 --> 01:01:17.900]  And so, yeah, I found myself behind several eight balls in 2008 and it took me a couple years and it was the Obama administration to figure out how to charge me under the espionage act.
[01:01:21.650 --> 01:01:31.390]  And that was an excerpt from the Thomas Drake interview that took place at HopeX here in New York City in the year 2014.
[01:01:32.170 --> 01:01:32.790]  Powerful stuff.
[01:01:32.850 --> 01:01:37.830]  In fact, I'm a little angry that it ended because I want to hear more, but that's all we brought with us to the station.
[01:01:38.310 --> 01:01:42.570]  However, you can hear the whole thing for a pledge.
[01:01:42.650 --> 01:01:44.550]  For a pledge of $50.
[01:01:45.210 --> 01:01:45.710]  You know what?
[01:01:45.710 --> 01:01:49.330]  I think this one talk is worth a pledge of $50, but you don't get just this one talk.
[01:01:49.330 --> 01:01:53.310]  You get all of the talks at the HopeX conference, which is about 100 of them.
[01:01:53.630 --> 01:01:55.990]  And they're all pretty damn good if I do say so myself.
[01:01:56.270 --> 01:02:02.310]  We picked some real amazing speakers and material to cover.
[01:02:03.130 --> 01:02:15.770]  Again, 212-209-295 or a pledge of $50, you'll get 100 DVDs, about 100 DVDs, and a pledge of $75, you'll get the full video files on a 64-gig thumb drive.
[01:02:15.990 --> 01:02:25.370]  Again, 212-209-295 ask for the Hope Archives thumb drive or the Hope Archives DVD set.
[01:02:26.570 --> 01:02:27.410]  Amazing stuff.
[01:02:27.590 --> 01:02:31.830]  You know, going to hacker conferences for as long as I have, I've seen the growth.
[01:02:31.950 --> 01:02:43.290]  I've seen how things have changed over the decades and how, yeah, we used to just talk about breaking into computers and mischief and things like that and then security holes and various other things.
[01:02:43.390 --> 01:02:44.450]  But it's grown so much.
[01:02:44.530 --> 01:02:46.570]  There is so much material to cover.
[01:02:46.670 --> 01:02:53.370]  To have somebody like Thomas Drake come to our conference and tell his story, it simply blows me away.
[01:02:53.430 --> 01:02:56.310]  To say nothing of Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg, names like this.
[01:02:56.450 --> 01:03:09.330]  But then at the same time, we also have people who are just breaking into, no pun intended, breaking into the world of hacking and figuring things out in ways nobody else has done.
[01:03:09.370 --> 01:03:17.710]  That's why you might see a talk by a 13-year-old followed by a talk by a college professor and then by somebody who used to work for the government, et cetera.
[01:03:17.950 --> 01:03:21.230]  It's that diverse, that interesting, that vibrant.
[01:03:21.230 --> 01:03:25.110]  And that's why our audience is so interesting as well.
[01:03:25.550 --> 01:03:27.450]  212-209-2950.
[01:03:27.750 --> 01:03:28.910]  Bernie, bring back memories?
[01:03:30.070 --> 01:03:30.810]  Scary memories.
[01:03:31.050 --> 01:03:45.050]  I was there, I listened to Tom talk, I talked with him several times on the phone before he came to Hope because he was gracious enough to come all the way up from the Washington area where he lives to speak because he thought this was a really important conference to present his story to,
[01:03:45.650 --> 01:03:59.990]  just like Edward Snowden did, just like Bill Binney did, just like so many other people who came to Hope to share important information that they knew there weren't a lot of other venues that would honor and host this kind of valuable information.
[01:04:00.370 --> 01:04:06.210]  So, if you think this information is valuable, please, check it out and support this radio station.
[01:04:06.310 --> 01:04:09.650]  Give us a call at 212-209-2950.
[01:04:10.030 --> 01:04:11.330]  Support the radio station.
[01:04:11.970 --> 01:04:17.570]  Support what we're trying to do is bringing this kind of information to you and everybody else.
[01:04:17.790 --> 01:04:24.990]  And give it a hand because if you don't, if nobody else does, we're not going to be able to do it anymore because this venue is just going to disappear.
[01:04:25.750 --> 01:04:26.110]  Absolutely.
[01:04:26.430 --> 01:04:36.330]  And, you know, it does my heart good and I think a lot of people as well to see a talk like this and to see the young people getting interested in it because they will never hear that story anyplace else.
[01:04:36.610 --> 01:04:37.990]  It's not going to be on the mass media.
[01:04:38.210 --> 01:04:43.310]  It's not going to be in the newspaper except in a very distorted and unfair way.
[01:04:43.430 --> 01:04:47.050]  This way, you get to actually hear a first-person account.
[01:04:47.050 --> 01:04:48.390]  You get to ask questions.
[01:04:48.450 --> 01:04:53.790]  You get to actually experience something that you'll remember for the rest of your life.
[01:04:54.030 --> 01:04:59.870]  Now, we're talking about DVDs and thumb drives right now, but the conferences take place every couple of years.
[01:04:59.990 --> 01:05:01.070]  We have another one coming up in July.
[01:05:01.070 --> 01:05:07.490]  In fact, if people want to submit talk ideas, we have our call for participation open right now.
[01:05:07.630 --> 01:05:11.310]  If you go to hope.net, you'll see all the information that we have up currently.
[01:05:11.570 --> 01:05:33.070]  And if you email speakers at hope.net with your information on what you want to talk about and what your expertise is and various other things like that, you might find yourself being played on WBAI in a couple of years with all kinds of people just basically enraptured,
[01:05:33.130 --> 01:05:37.270]  listening to what's coming out over the speakers saying, wow, this is amazing.
[01:05:37.270 --> 01:05:40.890]  This is something that I never thought was possible and it's inspirational.
[01:05:41.110 --> 01:05:46.450]  And we just will see the community continue to grow and continue to mature in all sorts of different ways.
[01:05:46.650 --> 01:05:46.830]  Yeah.
[01:05:47.090 --> 01:05:53.010]  Just mentioning really quick at the beginning of our second hour here, if you've tuned in for our friends at the Personal Computer Show, they have the week off.
[01:05:53.190 --> 01:05:54.730]  But they will be back next week.
[01:05:54.830 --> 01:05:59.650]  This is Off the Hook and we are broadcasting on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
[01:05:59.970 --> 01:06:13.050]  And we are presenting material from our HOPE conference, our biannual hacker conference, and basically our pride and joy where all sorts of awesome stuff happens, some of which you will hear some bits and pieces of.
[01:06:13.270 --> 01:06:16.230]  Now, I've been going to the HOPE conference since 2000.
[01:06:16.370 --> 01:06:17.430]  HOPE 2K was my first one.
[01:06:18.650 --> 01:06:20.330]  And I've been...
[01:06:20.810 --> 01:06:25.350]  The 16 years I've been going to the conference, I've been part of making the conference happen for maybe half that.
[01:06:26.330 --> 01:06:28.830]  And it blew me away when I went to my first one.
[01:06:28.950 --> 01:06:30.510]  It blew me away again when I went to my second one.
[01:06:30.650 --> 01:06:33.430]  Every single one has been better than the ones preceding it.
[01:06:33.770 --> 01:06:36.630]  And HOPEX is the best conference I think we've ever done.
[01:06:36.970 --> 01:06:39.410]  It amazed me in so many ways while it was going on.
[01:06:39.470 --> 01:06:40.090]  It still does.
[01:06:40.350 --> 01:06:50.050]  And the fact that you can still experience the talks that were presented at the conference on a really convenient video format, either DVDs or a thumb drive.
[01:06:50.430 --> 01:06:52.870]  No insulting DRM, nothing stupid like that.
[01:06:53.670 --> 01:07:00.030]  But just something that you could watch on your device of choice and your software of choice and get a taste of what happened.
[01:07:00.030 --> 01:07:05.730]  And it's a really amazing thing to me that people can do this because the conference itself is such a special thing.
[01:07:06.190 --> 01:07:10.530]  And it really bears revisiting whether you're there or not.
[01:07:10.690 --> 01:07:28.990]  So if you call 212-209-2950 or if you go to give to WBAI.org and scare up some of these HOPE panels, you will get to relive that if you were there, experience it for the first time if you didn't, and see what we're going on about and why we're so excited about HOPE 11 coming up in July.
[01:07:28.990 --> 01:07:30.510]  The 11th HOPE, Rob.
[01:07:30.690 --> 01:07:31.370]  The 11th HOPE.
[01:07:31.430 --> 01:07:32.230]  Don't call it HOPE 11.
[01:07:32.510 --> 01:07:34.290]  We don't just put a number after our conference.
[01:07:34.570 --> 01:07:35.050]  I'm sorry, don't hit.
[01:07:35.270 --> 01:07:39.910]  Every one is a different concept, a different name, a different set of artwork and all that.
[01:07:40.550 --> 01:07:42.030]  212-209-2950.
[01:07:42.230 --> 01:07:44.930]  Yes, everything Rob said is true.
[01:07:47.050 --> 01:07:56.130]  And this is something that I think we can all share in as far as just hearing what's being said, learning, and coming up with ideas for ways to do it better in the future.
[01:07:56.330 --> 01:07:59.510]  So hopefully the next conference in July will be even better.
[01:08:00.170 --> 01:08:08.550]  And you know, the one that took place in 2014 was great, not just because we had Edward Snowden, but because we had so many other people as well.
[01:08:08.730 --> 01:08:09.650]  And we could have...
[01:08:09.650 --> 01:08:20.730]  I think the conference would have been great even if we didn't have Edward Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg or people like that because there are just so many interesting ideas and demonstrations conversations that we get at these things.
[01:08:21.690 --> 01:08:25.390]  So we are going to play an excerpt of Edward Snowden just to prove that he was actually...
[01:08:25.390 --> 01:08:26.050]  Well, he wasn't there.
[01:08:26.210 --> 01:08:26.630]  He was...
[01:08:26.630 --> 01:08:35.550]  This is the only time that we would do a video presentation because obviously he couldn't travel outside of Russia to be with us.
[01:08:35.690 --> 01:08:37.490]  But I don't think anybody complained.
[01:08:38.150 --> 01:08:55.630]  So the talk with Edward Snowden is not just a talk by Edward Snowden, which would be special enough, but a conversation between Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg, two very distinct generations of whistleblowers sort of wondering between each other why there was no whistleblowers in the generation between.
[01:08:55.950 --> 01:09:03.890]  But talking about their similarities, their differences, and a really fascinating bit of history was made at Hope.
[01:09:04.030 --> 01:09:10.650]  And that is just one of the hundred talks you will get if you call 212-209-2950.
[01:09:10.650 --> 01:09:17.930]  If you don't like talking on the phone, you can go to give2wbai.org, that's the numeral 2, and pledge there.
[01:09:18.930 --> 01:09:30.370]  And get these amazing premiums and keep this radio station on the air, keep this program on the air, keep these conferences coming so that we have more talks to offer you in the future.
[01:09:31.290 --> 01:09:32.670]  There's no reason not to do it.
[01:09:32.870 --> 01:09:38.450]  Yeah, and I know people aren't happy when we have to go on the air and ask for money, but would you rather we had commercials?
[01:09:38.450 --> 01:09:43.650]  Because if we had commercials, well, that's the other way radio stations stay on the air and pay all the bills.
[01:09:44.190 --> 01:09:54.070]  And believe me, we have a lot of bills to pay, but it's nothing compared to what a commercial station occupying the same frequency would be paying as far as paying all the people on the air and various other things as well.
[01:09:54.070 --> 01:09:58.250]  So these are necessary expenses that absolutely need to be made.
[01:09:58.410 --> 01:09:58.890]  It's worth it.
[01:09:59.010 --> 01:10:01.110]  212-209-2950.
[01:10:01.430 --> 01:10:09.230]  And the station itself has had to scale back a little bit in the last couple of years with the move and various other bits of turmoil.
[01:10:09.850 --> 01:10:17.470]  But the staff themselves, the management, are really doing a tremendous job under the circumstances.
[01:10:17.970 --> 01:10:48.950]  And I'll echo what I know Bernie has said, and I know he feels deeply that people work incredibly hard here and it is a truly unique community behind the scenes that makes all of this technically possible and fosters this kind of communication and information transfer that we've all said that we've said is so crucial to what we get out of it as well as what the community and discussions around
[01:10:48.950 --> 01:10:50.610]  some of these issues get.
[01:10:50.610 --> 01:10:56.190]  as far as building and evolving the discussion.
[01:10:57.630 --> 01:11:03.330]  So little of the audio that you hear on the internet is truly commercial-free.
[01:11:03.510 --> 01:11:13.390]  You get stuff, and there's some really great stuff that I listen to where they ask their listeners to donate and some to which I have donated, and then they play a sponsor announcement.
[01:11:13.590 --> 01:11:31.390]  And the sponsor is often, you know, an internet infrastructure provider of some sort who, if they were our sponsor, we could never criticize on the air, it would really limit our freedom of speech, which is why we choose not to do that, which is why we stay within the tradition of the Pacifica tradition,
[01:11:31.390 --> 01:11:32.870]  which has been going for 50 years.
[01:11:33.170 --> 01:11:43.750]  Our only sponsors are you, the listeners, and that's why we need you to call 212-209-2950 or go to give2wbai.org and show your support.
[01:11:43.970 --> 01:11:47.430]  Not to put you on the spot, Mike, but can you name one of the sponsors?
[01:11:49.010 --> 01:11:49.650]  I can.
[01:11:49.770 --> 01:11:50.010]  Go ahead.
[01:11:50.530 --> 01:11:52.850]  There's companies like Squarespace and MailChimp.
[01:11:54.130 --> 01:11:54.770]  SquareChase sucks.
[01:11:55.330 --> 01:11:55.650]  MailChimp...
[01:11:55.650 --> 01:11:56.010]  MailChimp?
[01:11:56.630 --> 01:11:57.270]  MailChimp sucks.
[01:11:57.290 --> 01:11:57.930]  They're awful.
[01:11:58.130 --> 01:11:58.450]  Terrible.
[01:11:58.790 --> 01:11:59.730]  You can say that here.
[01:11:59.910 --> 01:12:01.390]  I have no idea what those things do.
[01:12:01.510 --> 01:12:02.430]  And you don't have to learn.
[01:12:02.550 --> 01:12:02.870]  I can say it.
[01:12:03.010 --> 01:12:15.570]  If we were like one of the other places that takes the money, and if you listen to a lot of podcasts, there's only like five other companies that sponsor podcasts and so we would not have a wide variety of options to choose from.
[01:12:15.770 --> 01:12:21.630]  You would hear us talking about the wonders of those two companies because it would be required if we were to take their money.
[01:12:21.710 --> 01:12:22.890]  MailChimp is a silly name.
[01:12:23.050 --> 01:12:23.970]  Yeah, actually...
[01:12:23.970 --> 01:12:23.990]  I don't know what...
[01:12:23.990 --> 01:12:24.330]  I don't know what...
[01:12:24.330 --> 01:12:24.810]  I've got the other name.
[01:12:24.830 --> 01:12:25.110]  Slow down.
[01:12:26.130 --> 01:12:31.650]  They've helped us in the past and it is silly but, you know, they'd probably be okay with us making fun of their name.
[01:12:32.270 --> 01:12:33.170]  Well, let's hope so.
[01:12:34.330 --> 01:12:36.510]  They have participated in Hope in the Past.
[01:12:36.730 --> 01:12:37.210]  Oh, have they?
[01:12:37.350 --> 01:12:38.350]  Yeah, okay, fine.
[01:12:38.370 --> 01:12:48.330]  But we can still say things unlike other radio stations where, you know, if AT&T sponsors you, you can't ever do a story about AT&T or criticize them or anything like that.
[01:12:48.470 --> 01:12:51.590]  But we can say, you know, it's independent thinkers.
[01:12:52.230 --> 01:12:53.110]  We're people.
[01:12:53.310 --> 01:13:01.270]  We're not forced to pick a side because our hands are tied by accepting funds and so on and so forth.
[01:13:01.270 --> 01:13:07.090]  this program is built on being able to be objective and speak freely about this stuff.
[01:13:07.270 --> 01:13:19.330]  And if someone we think is wonderful today turns out to do something evil tomorrow, we can talk about that evil without worrying about it because we're able to be honest here and that's a really valuable thing.
[01:13:20.330 --> 01:13:23.250]  This is really all we do to keep this station alive.
[01:13:23.470 --> 01:13:27.370]  You, the listeners, are the only thing that has kept us on the air for over 50 years.
[01:13:28.570 --> 01:13:33.390]  There's no sponsorships, no, you know, piles of free money sitting somewhere.
[01:13:33.510 --> 01:13:42.510]  No, it's all been people who care about this station, who listen to this station, who want to become part of what goes on at this station, putting in what they can to help this station continue.
[01:13:43.110 --> 01:13:57.530]  And by calling 212-209-2950 or by going to give2wbai.org, you can become part of what's going on here and help keep us doing what we do and what we think is important and what we have done for such a long time.
[01:13:57.730 --> 01:13:59.510]  People are asking why we're playing North Korean music.
[01:13:59.630 --> 01:14:00.190]  We're going to tell you.
[01:14:00.270 --> 01:14:02.170]  We said we'd tell you and we'll tell you in a little bit.
[01:14:02.230 --> 01:14:04.050]  But first, we have to play another excerpt.
[01:14:04.790 --> 01:14:10.670]  This is from the Edward Snowden talk, the Daniel Ellsberg slash Edward Snowden talk from Hope X.
[01:14:10.950 --> 01:14:20.070]  This is just one of about 100 talks that you'll get if you pledge to 212-209-2950, $50 for the DVDs, $75 for the thumb drive.
[01:14:20.410 --> 01:14:22.370]  And here's Edward Snowden.
[01:14:26.090 --> 01:14:31.930]  Okay, so I know there are some of you who felt you didn't applaud enough for Daniel's amazing speech.
[01:14:32.130 --> 01:14:32.970]  Here he is again.
[01:14:49.250 --> 01:14:55.650]  I also would like to introduce Trevor Tim from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
[01:14:56.070 --> 01:14:56.990]  He's going to be here.
[01:15:02.510 --> 01:15:07.410]  He will have selected some questions from Twitter that you guys have submitted.
[01:15:07.970 --> 01:15:19.030]  And I guess this is a good time to remind people in the press this is not a press conference, so the questions we're going to ask Edward later come from our attendees and hopefully there'll be questions that you're interested in as well.
[01:15:19.930 --> 01:15:23.150]  Please just follow our guidelines and everything will be cool.
[01:15:24.310 --> 01:15:25.190]  And that's...
[01:15:25.190 --> 01:15:26.230]  Oh, yes, I almost forgot.
[01:15:26.530 --> 01:15:34.710]  We have a third panelist who will be joining us from Russia, one of my real heroes.
[01:15:34.750 --> 01:15:39.130]  And I think many people in this room, many people in the hacker community, many people in America.
[01:15:40.750 --> 01:15:42.210]  Edward Snowden, welcome.
[01:16:01.880 --> 01:16:02.580]  Hi, guys.
[01:16:07.380 --> 01:16:08.440]  How is it over there?
[01:16:10.560 --> 01:16:11.980]  Can you hear me now?
[01:16:26.280 --> 01:16:28.400]  That last quote was actually for the FBI.
[01:16:28.560 --> 01:16:29.280]  I wasn't for you guys.
[01:16:29.400 --> 01:16:31.640]  I'm hoping we can help them pad out the indictment tonight.
[01:16:37.670 --> 01:16:41.750]  So I'm having a little bit of trouble here on the stage, but I think I can hear Dan's microphone.
[01:16:42.050 --> 01:16:52.250]  I want to start out by saying to Dan Ellsberg, thank you for everything you've done, for all of your service, both in the government and outside of the government.
[01:16:52.350 --> 01:17:05.630]  Everything you did for us as a nation, as a society, you have given us, you have given so many, so much, and told us the truth about what our government was doing at a time when the truth was very hard to get.
[01:17:07.010 --> 01:17:20.290]  And I have to say I actually I watched a documentary about your life as I was grappling with these issues myself and it had a deep impact and really shaped my thinking.
[01:17:20.470 --> 01:17:21.730]  So thank you for everything you've done.
[01:17:31.660 --> 01:17:39.400]  And I see you've shaved since I last saw you and I have to tell you you didn't have to do that for this audience.
[01:17:43.840 --> 01:17:50.580]  Well, luckily I've got plenty of black t-shirts but I do not have Keith Alexander brand dad jeans.
[01:17:53.820 --> 01:17:55.320]  I'll save those for DEFCON.
[01:17:57.920 --> 01:18:07.140]  So, I'm going to try to stay largely out of the way and let these guys talk but I think there's a few topics that we'd like to cover.
[01:18:07.420 --> 01:18:16.100]  And to start with I was hoping Dan could describe what it felt like the first time he heard about Edward Snowden.
[01:18:16.760 --> 01:18:29.820]  His feelings on hearing his name and seeing what he had given the world and if his feelings have changed since and how he's grown to feel about Edward Snowden.
[01:18:31.260 --> 01:18:33.340]  I can tell you exactly what I felt.
[01:18:34.100 --> 01:18:34.700]  Hope.
[01:18:35.760 --> 01:18:40.300]  actually, which had not been in great supply for me recently.
[01:18:40.300 --> 01:18:45.060]  When I saw this name of this conference I had mixed feelings about it.
[01:18:46.140 --> 01:19:14.520]  My feelings of hope go up and down a little and they haven't been too high and there's no question I felt that when Chelsea Manning was revealed I used to ask in a way how often do you need a Pentagon Papers which is a massive disclosure that is unequivocal of documents that really shows one document doesn't do it as Ed knows and men don't.
[01:19:14.680 --> 01:19:24.760]  They can say well we changed that the next day that was just some particular little department some low level person origin and they did that or something.
[01:19:25.040 --> 01:19:50.780]  So what you really need is a massive stuff as in the Pentagon Papers that shows no this is what they said the next day and the day after that and here was the official policy and so forth and I waited 40 years to hear that and so I was pretty much losing hope that there would be anybody inside who was willing to risk his freedom his life or her life and freedom to put out what needed to be put out
[01:19:50.780 --> 01:20:01.820]  because if you put out a lot of stuff and I want to get into this with you Technically, you have to be something of a specialist to put out a lot of stuff and not be identified.
[01:20:03.160 --> 01:20:05.560]  So I was feeling not hopeful that it would come.
[01:20:05.660 --> 01:20:08.420]  Then just three years after Manning comes Snowden.
[01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:09.300]  So there's no question.
[01:20:09.500 --> 01:20:10.940]  I thought it is possible.
[01:20:12.340 --> 01:20:22.980]  And in fact, Ed, you once told me that you hoped, among other things, to show that one could do this and be successful.
[01:20:24.000 --> 01:20:27.920]  And I'd be interested to hear, actually, from you what your measure...
[01:20:27.920 --> 01:20:33.500]  There's no question in my mind you have been successful, but what you had in mind when you wanted to show that people could do this.
[01:20:33.680 --> 01:20:35.940]  Because after all, you are out of the country, et cetera.
[01:20:37.460 --> 01:20:40.520]  Well, so there's a lot of things to address there.
[01:20:40.620 --> 01:20:41.560]  I mean, that's a big topic.
[01:20:41.680 --> 01:20:47.720]  But you said something that I want to respond to first, which was you kind of touched on technology.
[01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:51.400]  You talked about how people recently are specialists.
[01:20:51.400 --> 01:20:58.380]  They're able to use specialist skills to gather information that's tremendously important to the public, but we've been denied access to it.
[01:20:58.480 --> 01:21:10.860]  And they're able to publish that and get it around the world before anyone's able to stop it, before they're able to kill the story, and before they're able to basically shut the public out of the room of government.
[01:21:11.020 --> 01:21:13.680]  You know, they sort of divorce us from our democracy.
[01:21:14.600 --> 01:21:21.660]  And the key for me there is that technology empowers dissent.
[01:21:22.060 --> 01:21:23.580]  This is something we've seen again and again.
[01:21:23.680 --> 01:21:26.640]  And people forget this because they think about it only in modern times.
[01:21:26.700 --> 01:21:28.320]  They only think about it at the recent examples.
[01:21:28.400 --> 01:21:29.420]  They think about me.
[01:21:29.540 --> 01:21:30.380]  They think about Manning.
[01:21:30.480 --> 01:21:33.320]  They think about other people who followed in the same sort of thread.
[01:21:33.460 --> 01:21:36.080]  But they forget that technology actually enabled you.
[01:21:36.080 --> 01:21:42.020]  People forget about the fact that you were, you know, in a garage with a Xerox machine.
[01:21:42.260 --> 01:21:45.460]  You know, a copy machine might not seem like a killer app to a lot of people.
[01:21:45.920 --> 01:21:49.100]  But that enabled you to get this back to the public.
[01:21:49.360 --> 01:21:55.120]  And the same Xerox machine that gave you that gave us Samizdat in the former Soviet bloc.
[01:21:56.420 --> 01:22:01.120]  And what that tells me, and what I think is important for our society.
[01:22:01.280 --> 01:22:02.940]  And I don't just mean in the United States.
[01:22:03.080 --> 01:22:03.780]  I mean around the world.
[01:22:03.960 --> 01:22:08.520]  Is to recognize that technology empowers individuals.
[01:22:08.700 --> 01:22:09.640]  It empowers voices.
[01:22:09.820 --> 01:22:10.780]  It empowers democracy.
[01:22:11.040 --> 01:22:13.480]  In a way that can turn one man into a movement.
[01:22:13.880 --> 01:22:16.240]  Or a woman into a world power.
[01:22:16.540 --> 01:22:20.380]  And that has fundamentally changed the way that we relate to our government.
[01:22:20.700 --> 01:22:24.240]  And more importantly, the way our government relates to us.
[01:22:24.240 --> 01:22:27.320]  You know, they say when people fear the government, we have tyranny.
[01:22:27.660 --> 01:22:30.840]  But when the government fears people, we have democracy.
[01:22:30.840 --> 01:22:31.560]  We have liberty.
[01:22:31.720 --> 01:22:32.260]  We have freedom.
[01:22:32.480 --> 01:22:33.880]  And I think that's very true.
[01:22:33.880 --> 01:22:35.200]  And we see that more and more.
[01:22:35.480 --> 01:22:38.700]  When the government has been left sort of in the dark.
[01:22:39.480 --> 01:22:44.480]  Even when we have whistleblowers who come up and stand at great risk to bring things to the public.
[01:22:45.040 --> 01:22:50.400]  People like Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, Ed Loomis.
[01:22:51.360 --> 01:22:54.620]  Who end up getting, you know, these guys get pulled out of the shower.
[01:22:54.760 --> 01:22:55.560]  Naked at gunpoint.
[01:22:55.620 --> 01:22:56.260]  In front of the families.
[01:22:56.380 --> 01:22:57.140]  Their lives are destroyed.
[01:22:57.260 --> 01:22:58.160]  Their careers are destroyed.
[01:22:58.920 --> 01:22:59.720]  They're discredited.
[01:22:59.920 --> 01:23:01.720]  You know, they said they're disgruntled.
[01:23:02.540 --> 01:23:04.900]  There's these broad campaigns brought against them.
[01:23:04.980 --> 01:23:07.900]  But they didn't have hard evidence.
[01:23:08.680 --> 01:23:09.780]  They did everything right.
[01:23:09.780 --> 01:23:10.640]  They went through the system.
[01:23:10.720 --> 01:23:11.640]  And the system destroyed them.
[01:23:11.700 --> 01:23:12.420]  The system buried them.
[01:23:12.420 --> 01:23:14.100]  And we see this happen again and again.
[01:23:14.680 --> 01:23:16.380]  Something very important happened today.
[01:23:16.380 --> 01:23:18.100]  A lot of people haven't seen it yet.
[01:23:18.180 --> 01:23:22.740]  In the Washington Post, there's an opinion article by a former State Department official.
[01:23:23.200 --> 01:23:27.000]  Who has basically said, he's bound by classification.
[01:23:27.000 --> 01:23:30.800]  He had to get the article screened by the government.
[01:23:31.140 --> 01:23:33.980]  To redact any classified information before he could publish it.
[01:23:34.320 --> 01:23:38.460]  But the Washington Post ran it and he basically said, Executive Order 12333.
[01:23:38.580 --> 01:23:40.340]  Which is one of the signals intelligence authorities.
[01:23:40.520 --> 01:23:44.980]  Which allows the United States to intercept, basically, communications that are occurring overseas.
[01:23:44.980 --> 01:23:50.280]  Is being used to collect incredible amounts of communications.
[01:23:50.280 --> 01:23:52.220]  Not just on people around the world.
[01:23:52.340 --> 01:23:53.360]  Not just innocents everywhere.
[01:23:53.680 --> 01:23:55.240]  But specifically on Americans.
[01:23:55.500 --> 01:23:58.620]  Which is precisely what the United States government has said they are not doing.
[01:24:00.420 --> 01:24:04.740]  And this is the kind of thing that's illustrative.
[01:24:04.920 --> 01:24:08.080]  Because what he revealed was explosive.
[01:24:08.280 --> 01:24:09.800]  It should be on the front page of every newspaper.
[01:24:09.800 --> 01:24:13.280]  But instead, it's an opinion article on one newspaper.
[01:24:13.280 --> 01:24:18.640]  Because there's not clear, irrefutable evidence that brings the President to the podium.
[01:24:18.840 --> 01:24:21.800]  That brings the Congress to the press.
[01:24:22.000 --> 01:24:25.120]  And says, we have to have a national conversation.
[01:24:25.440 --> 01:24:28.900]  Where the public is given back its seat at the table of government.
[01:24:29.020 --> 01:24:34.260]  And we, as a society, are given the opportunity to decide where the lines should be drawn.
[01:24:34.260 --> 01:24:37.440]  Not a few officials sitting behind closed doors.
[01:24:37.560 --> 01:24:43.800]  And I think that is a new power that technology has given us over the last hundred years.
[01:24:44.340 --> 01:24:47.240]  That is increasing in frequency, strength, magnitude.
[01:24:47.800 --> 01:24:59.100]  And if we pair that with a responsibility to use it appropriately, to police ourselves the way our technology grows.
[01:24:59.240 --> 01:25:04.760]  And not sleepwalk into new protocols, into new usages, into new applications for these things.
[01:25:04.860 --> 01:25:12.640]  But we really think about the implications of putting, you know, our fids in our sneakers and our washing machines and the things we buy at the grocery store.
[01:25:13.060 --> 01:25:16.280]  We will have not a dystopian future.
[01:25:16.440 --> 01:25:22.820]  But we will have a democracy in which citizens around the world, in every country, are empowered.
[01:25:23.380 --> 01:25:25.120]  Regardless of the policies of their government.
[01:25:25.280 --> 01:25:29.420]  And we, at the very minimum, will know the truth of our world and the truth of our governments.
[01:25:29.540 --> 01:25:31.340]  And it will not be able to be hidden from us anymore.
[01:25:41.450 --> 01:25:44.990]  And that was an excerpt from the Edward Snowden talk at...
[01:25:44.990 --> 01:25:45.930]  This is not.
[01:25:46.270 --> 01:25:47.890]  At the HOPEX conference.
[01:25:48.090 --> 01:25:50.010]  This is North Korean music that we're playing for a reason.
[01:25:50.650 --> 01:25:56.930]  But that is just one of a hundred talks that you will get if you pledge to 212-209-2950.
[01:25:56.930 --> 01:26:00.990]  You'll see the rest of the conversation between Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden.
[01:26:01.250 --> 01:26:01.950]  Fascinating stuff.
[01:26:02.750 --> 01:26:06.670]  It's truly amazing, the kinds of talks that we had at this conference.
[01:26:07.050 --> 01:26:13.390]  But we are donating this to the radio station so that the radio station can keep going and keep broadcasting material like this.
[01:26:13.510 --> 01:26:17.410]  Whether it's through our show or through all kinds of other programs that air during the week here.
[01:26:17.730 --> 01:26:19.430]  212-209-2950.
[01:26:19.950 --> 01:26:22.570]  Again, $50, you'll get all the DVDs.
[01:26:22.670 --> 01:26:23.590]  About 100 DVDs.
[01:26:23.690 --> 01:26:28.310]  For $75, you'll get all the videos on a 64-gig thumb drive.
[01:26:28.590 --> 01:26:29.810]  What do you guys think of that talk?
[01:26:30.390 --> 01:26:33.390]  I like the last phrase he used.
[01:26:33.510 --> 01:26:36.190]  Let's not sleepwalk into new technologies.
[01:26:36.190 --> 01:26:38.990]  I think that's something we echo a lot on this program.
[01:26:39.170 --> 01:26:43.530]  He said it so much more eloquently than I've said it, but that's kind of how I feel.
[01:26:43.630 --> 01:26:47.690]  People are sleepwalking into new technology, blindly accepting things, and being the victims.
[01:26:47.910 --> 01:26:52.810]  And leaving it to experts, the people that know and so on, and not questioning that stuff.
[01:26:52.990 --> 01:26:53.270]  Uh-huh.
[01:26:53.750 --> 01:26:57.750]  You could become one of the experts if you listen to all the talks in this package.
[01:26:57.750 --> 01:26:59.570]  Yeah, well, you can watch all the talks.
[01:26:59.770 --> 01:26:59.830]  Yeah.
[01:26:59.830 --> 01:27:02.870]  They're videos, so you'll see things that we can't possibly show you here.
[01:27:02.870 --> 01:27:05.810]  But yeah, you know, on all different subject matter.
[01:27:05.950 --> 01:27:10.310]  I mean, think about the diversity that is represented in a conference this size.
[01:27:10.530 --> 01:27:11.630]  And you'll get it all.
[01:27:11.770 --> 01:27:13.290]  212-209-2950.
[01:27:13.610 --> 01:27:14.970]  And it is really diverse.
[01:27:15.170 --> 01:27:20.910]  I mean, we've only got time to play you the smallest fraction of the material here, and the people that were speaking.
[01:27:20.910 --> 01:27:24.570]  But I actually have the Hope X speakers list in my hand right now.
[01:27:24.870 --> 01:27:27.750]  And just this amazing group of people.
[01:27:27.930 --> 01:27:29.350]  There's such an eclectic list.
[01:27:29.490 --> 01:27:30.550]  There are all sorts of...
[01:27:30.550 --> 01:27:33.410]  You know, there are big names like Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden.
[01:27:33.590 --> 01:27:37.930]  But there are names that people who are of a certain level of nerdiness consider big names.
[01:27:38.030 --> 01:27:42.790]  People like Becky Stern, Eva Galper, and other people, Chris Segoyan.
[01:27:42.790 --> 01:27:49.970]  But there are also so many people who are just from all walks of life who maybe aren't as well known, but whose work is no less important.
[01:27:50.130 --> 01:28:05.490]  There's all these artists, professors, academics, lawyers, activists, purely unorganizable people, just presenting on such a wide range of topics and interests and fields that it's just fascinating.
[01:28:05.490 --> 01:28:06.550]  We've got lock pickers.
[01:28:06.690 --> 01:28:16.530]  We've got, you know, community organizers and managers and patent attorneys and just all these different types of people presenting at...
[01:28:16.530 --> 01:28:19.150]  You know, you only find this group together at something like Hope.
[01:28:19.430 --> 01:28:29.010]  And you'll only get this group together in one package by calling 212-209-2950 or by going to give2wbai.org and pledging for this.
[01:28:29.070 --> 01:28:29.710]  Yeah, we won't lie.
[01:28:29.830 --> 01:28:35.170]  It's, you know, nothing compares to being there and being able to actually interact with all these people and see the connections that are being made.
[01:28:35.410 --> 01:28:39.170]  But this is the closest you can get to being there without being there.
[01:28:39.250 --> 01:28:40.150]  And obviously it can't be there.
[01:28:40.270 --> 01:28:40.990]  It happened two years ago.
[01:28:41.270 --> 01:28:49.850]  But all the talks that were presented in three different tracks over three days, you'll get a pretty good sense as to what the conference is all about.
[01:28:50.030 --> 01:28:52.170]  And maybe you'll make it to the next one.
[01:28:52.350 --> 01:28:54.510]  I mean, frankly, to get the full experience, you need both.
[01:28:54.610 --> 01:28:57.490]  You need to have been there, which either you were or you weren't at this point.
[01:28:57.690 --> 01:29:01.750]  And you need the talks because there's three simultaneous talks going on.
[01:29:01.750 --> 01:29:05.870]  And even if you're there and do nothing but attend talks, you missed two thirds of it.
[01:29:06.410 --> 01:29:10.550]  So you can catch up on the other two thirds or more likely more than that.
[01:29:10.690 --> 01:29:20.630]  If you call 212-209-2950 or go to give2wbai.org and get all the talks that you missed if you were there or you missed all the talks if you weren't there.
[01:29:22.010 --> 01:29:24.890]  And, you know, get as close to the full experience as you can.
[01:29:25.430 --> 01:29:26.370]  Bernie, your thoughts?
[01:29:28.210 --> 01:29:32.150]  That Hope talk, Hopex talk with Daniel...
[01:29:32.150 --> 01:29:33.390]  It wasn't one talk.
[01:29:33.510 --> 01:29:37.290]  It was a conversation between Daniel Ellsberg and Ed Snowden.
[01:29:37.430 --> 01:29:39.950]  It was one of the most inspiring things I've ever heard.
[01:29:40.990 --> 01:29:45.770]  And I know we were getting off the topic about why we need to support this station.
[01:29:45.990 --> 01:29:51.930]  But frankly, no other radio station in New York or anywhere else I know of is going to be broadcasting this kind of material.
[01:29:53.630 --> 01:29:59.590]  It's critical to our way of life, our democracy, our society.
[01:29:59.610 --> 01:30:14.710]  If you value your privacy and your independence, that you be aware of what's going on with our government and corporations and, as Ed Snowden says, don't blindly walk into accepting new technology, to paraphrase him.
[01:30:14.970 --> 01:30:22.310]  I just want to urge all of our listeners to support this kind of material being widely distributed on the air and elsewhere.
[01:30:22.590 --> 01:30:29.350]  To call and support this radio station, WBAI, by calling 212-209-2950.
[01:30:29.710 --> 01:30:32.770]  $50, you get a stack of 100 DVDs.
[01:30:32.770 --> 01:30:35.050]  Or if you want it on a USB flash drive, it's $75.
[01:30:35.570 --> 01:30:39.770]  If you want to just support this without the premiums, pledge any amount you want.
[01:30:39.870 --> 01:30:42.790]  Just call that number, 212-209-2950.
[01:30:43.110 --> 01:30:44.670]  This is a worthwhile cause.
[01:30:44.770 --> 01:30:45.930]  It's a non-profit station.
[01:30:45.930 --> 01:30:47.590]  You get a tax deduction.
[01:30:48.050 --> 01:30:51.810]  But most important, you're helping a community stay informed.
[01:30:51.990 --> 01:30:53.710]  212-209-2950.
[01:30:53.890 --> 01:31:03.890]  I'd just like to point out, you know, the number of things, maybe you could count a number of things that we do here at this particular radio station on this particular show that you wouldn't be able to do in other places.
[01:31:04.010 --> 01:31:05.950]  I mean, we're airing this content, for one thing.
[01:31:06.050 --> 01:31:13.650]  We're talking about these controversial topics and hearing things that you simply do not hear in the mass media for reasons of their own.
[01:31:13.650 --> 01:31:20.830]  We're talking about security issues that are inconvenient to the establishment, to various corporations.
[01:31:21.230 --> 01:31:24.950]  I even said a couple of corporations I don't even know suck before.
[01:31:25.150 --> 01:31:26.490]  You couldn't do that on a commercial station.
[01:31:26.550 --> 01:31:28.850]  Hey, we're playing North Korean music underneath us, for God's sake.
[01:31:29.050 --> 01:31:33.190]  All these things that we're doing that would not be allowed in any other environment.
[01:31:33.970 --> 01:31:35.630]  I think that's worth supporting.
[01:31:35.810 --> 01:31:38.210]  That's something that's worth acknowledging and supporting.
[01:31:38.210 --> 01:31:40.930]  So yeah, we do have to ask for your support occasionally.
[01:31:41.450 --> 01:31:43.570]  It's what keeps this kind of thing going.
[01:31:43.750 --> 01:31:48.950]  And the line of thinking between what we do at the conference and what we do here at the radio station, it's very similar.
[01:31:49.150 --> 01:31:53.110]  It's open to all kinds of different views, all kinds of diversity and education.
[01:31:53.470 --> 01:31:58.790]  And if you support that kind of thing, you should consider giving us a call and supporting the radio station.
[01:31:58.870 --> 01:32:01.230]  212-209-2950.
[01:32:01.230 --> 01:32:07.190]  We have just under a half an hour left in this special two hour off the hook.
[01:32:07.490 --> 01:32:12.070]  And this is not actually the end.
[01:32:12.070 --> 01:32:13.190]  I think we have one more clip.
[01:32:13.410 --> 01:32:14.290]  We have a couple more clips.
[01:32:14.290 --> 01:32:14.610]  Okay.
[01:32:14.650 --> 01:32:15.490]  We're going to have to move.
[01:32:15.790 --> 01:32:16.010]  Yeah.
[01:32:16.350 --> 01:32:29.130]  But just to reiterate that this station itself and our program, they give you these kinds of ideas and stuff as soon as we hear about it.
[01:32:29.190 --> 01:32:36.990]  We work very hard to curate the content for the event and to bring you news and information from the hacker community.
[01:32:37.590 --> 01:32:44.270]  And very often you'll hear a really comprehensive talk like this well before other people have sort of explored it.
[01:32:44.270 --> 01:32:52.570]  And I don't want to be a loop here saying that we've covered some of these things very early on.
[01:32:52.630 --> 01:32:58.270]  But it is true that we've sort of almost been touching on a lot of these things.
[01:32:58.370 --> 01:33:02.870]  Sometimes they come back around as far as popularity or mention.
[01:33:03.270 --> 01:33:12.550]  And it's very often the case you'll hear something on one of these sets or shows that you've heard in years past.
[01:33:12.730 --> 01:33:14.590]  And we're happy to do that work.
[01:33:14.770 --> 01:33:19.650]  But part of making that possible is keeping the station on the air and keeping this program on the air.
[01:33:19.830 --> 01:33:23.410]  And your call now will be a vote for both those things.
[01:33:23.410 --> 01:33:25.650]  This program and WBAI.
[01:33:26.410 --> 01:33:28.670]  212-209-2950.
[01:33:29.030 --> 01:33:29.950]  Hey, I'm going to say...
[01:33:29.950 --> 01:33:37.110]  I'd like to change gears a little bit here and do something in a different direction but just as much in the hacker community as what we've been doing before.
[01:33:37.110 --> 01:33:41.070]  I'm going to say a name and I'm going to watch how you guys react to the name.
[01:33:42.030 --> 01:33:42.750]  Johannes Grinsfurther.
[01:33:43.870 --> 01:33:44.850]  Did you pronounce that?
[01:33:44.850 --> 01:33:45.890]  I don't think I pronounced that right.
[01:33:45.930 --> 01:33:46.570]  Is the delay turned on?
[01:33:46.690 --> 01:33:47.610]  Can you pronounce it better, Mike?
[01:33:47.730 --> 01:33:48.250]  No, I can't.
[01:33:48.330 --> 01:33:48.530]  All right.
[01:33:49.230 --> 01:33:51.070]  Bernie, can you pronounce Johannes' last name?
[01:33:51.650 --> 01:33:52.890]  I can't pronounce it either.
[01:33:53.010 --> 01:33:54.150]  But he's a great guy.
[01:33:54.270 --> 01:33:54.610]  I love him.
[01:33:54.630 --> 01:33:56.510]  That's just one of many ways that he stumps us.
[01:33:56.610 --> 01:34:00.050]  But he does the most amazing talks at our conferences.
[01:34:00.970 --> 01:34:03.650]  And it's completely different than anything you've heard so far.
[01:34:03.650 --> 01:34:07.950]  But it just goes to show the diversity in our community and just the amazing talent.
[01:34:08.470 --> 01:34:13.490]  He's just made a film, in fact, that he's going to be playing at the 11th Hope in July.
[01:34:14.290 --> 01:34:16.110]  And all kinds of other surprises, I'm sure.
[01:34:16.270 --> 01:34:18.890]  But I'll read you the abstract from his talk.
[01:34:19.030 --> 01:34:20.110]  I can't say the title.
[01:34:20.670 --> 01:34:23.890]  Even the title contains a word that I can't say over the radio.
[01:34:23.890 --> 01:34:25.930]  That's just, you know, one of the sacrifices we have to make.
[01:34:26.390 --> 01:34:34.710]  But Johannes of our tech group Monochrome will indulge in a public rant about hacker culture and why it has to be saved from itself.
[01:34:34.870 --> 01:34:39.590]  Expect strong language, indecency, and valid critique of the status quo of hackdom.
[01:34:39.990 --> 01:34:46.170]  And in parentheses, it says, no wonder his 2008 Google tech talk got censored and never made it onto Google's YouTube channel.
[01:34:46.370 --> 01:34:47.190]  Yeah, you can't find that.
[01:34:47.330 --> 01:34:47.930]  I've looked.
[01:34:48.670 --> 01:34:49.210]  All right.
[01:34:49.270 --> 01:34:52.110]  Well, hopefully I got all the obscenities out of...
[01:34:52.730 --> 01:34:55.190]  with the little funny noises that we have to make instead.
[01:34:55.610 --> 01:34:58.610]  Again, 212-209-2950.
[01:34:58.710 --> 01:35:00.870]  Let's hear a little bit of Johannes' talk.
[01:35:04.520 --> 01:35:18.940]  Okay, so the first thing I see going on, going on, going on, and especially in the last couple of years, hacker culture is interestingly dominated.
[01:35:19.960 --> 01:35:22.260]  Let's not call it dominated, but obsessed.
[01:35:22.540 --> 01:35:25.420]  Obsessed with one thing, and it's martyrdom.
[01:35:26.560 --> 01:35:28.940]  Martyrdom, martyrdom, martyrdom.
[01:35:29.760 --> 01:35:33.220]  And martyrdom in a strange combination with stardom.
[01:35:33.580 --> 01:35:34.720]  There are people...
[01:35:34.720 --> 01:35:37.860]  I mean, you pretty much saw it yesterday with Snowden.
[01:35:38.120 --> 01:35:49.220]  Everyone was cramming their stupid bodies into this tiny little room over there to see a virtual presentation of a guy who said the same things that he says all the time.
[01:35:49.420 --> 01:35:50.280]  And you know, yeah.
[01:35:50.460 --> 01:35:51.440]  But it's Snowden.
[01:35:51.560 --> 01:35:52.220]  It's Snowden.
[01:35:52.440 --> 01:35:52.940]  He's Snowden.
[01:35:55.500 --> 01:35:56.080]  Snowden!
[01:35:56.280 --> 01:35:57.100]  I love you!
[01:35:57.100 --> 01:35:59.400]  You make me a child!
[01:35:59.680 --> 01:35:59.780]  Really.
[01:36:00.200 --> 01:36:01.060]  It's really...
[01:36:01.060 --> 01:36:02.780]  That guy is nice.
[01:36:03.040 --> 01:36:04.440]  He did great things.
[01:36:04.700 --> 01:36:08.860]  But no one in the entire world deserves so much attention.
[01:36:09.100 --> 01:36:09.380]  Really.
[01:36:09.660 --> 01:36:10.720]  No one, yeah?
[01:36:11.140 --> 01:36:14.020]  And I'm not saying that because I'm mean.
[01:36:14.180 --> 01:36:15.420]  I don't even know Snowden, yeah?
[01:36:15.500 --> 01:36:16.380]  I like what he did.
[01:36:16.600 --> 01:36:31.800]  The main problem with that kind of discourse, if you have really complex problems in our world, like the stuff with the NSA, like other stuff, like other stuff, we tend as human people to personify discourse.
[01:36:32.140 --> 01:36:36.640]  And that's what's most of the time not good for the discourse.
[01:36:36.820 --> 01:36:42.420]  It's not good for talking about things by talking about people who talk about things.
[01:36:42.420 --> 01:36:45.100]  Because you end up talking about the people.
[01:36:45.240 --> 01:36:47.440]  And the people are unimportant.
[01:36:47.720 --> 01:36:48.380]  Really, they are.
[01:36:48.780 --> 01:36:50.200]  Snowden is not important.
[01:36:50.520 --> 01:36:52.940]  What Snowden did is important.
[01:36:53.060 --> 01:36:54.420]  And what it cost.
[01:36:54.720 --> 01:36:57.320]  But Snowden is not Michael Jackson.
[01:36:57.640 --> 01:36:59.820]  And no one should be Michael Jackson.
[01:37:00.000 --> 01:37:00.180]  Really.
[01:37:00.440 --> 01:37:00.780]  No one.
[01:37:02.400 --> 01:37:04.780]  Because you see what happened to Michael Jackson.
[01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:06.420]  He killed himself!
[01:37:06.660 --> 01:37:06.840]  Yes!
[01:37:07.600 --> 01:37:09.380]  The same is true for Assange.
[01:37:09.380 --> 01:37:11.820]  I think that Assange is one of the biggest assholes I know.
[01:37:13.040 --> 01:37:15.560]  He did some really great things.
[01:37:15.740 --> 01:37:16.480]  Yes, he did.
[01:37:16.720 --> 01:37:20.360]  But at one point, that **** should have just like stepped off the stage.
[01:37:20.540 --> 01:37:26.580]  He should just have gone away and leave the project to itself and other people running it.
[01:37:26.740 --> 01:37:30.320]  And just take his **** stupid face out of the equation.
[01:37:30.500 --> 01:37:30.600]  Yeah?
[01:37:30.780 --> 01:37:32.160]  He should have done that, yeah?
[01:37:34.760 --> 01:37:36.280]  I have never met Assange.
[01:37:36.280 --> 01:37:42.320]  But I have a strange reaction to him appearing everywhere and everyone talking about him.
[01:37:42.620 --> 01:37:43.320]  The guy is a guy.
[01:37:43.540 --> 01:37:44.000]  It's like...
[01:37:44.000 --> 01:37:45.080]  No, I'm not hating him.
[01:37:45.140 --> 01:37:45.660]  Not really, no.
[01:37:45.840 --> 01:37:48.460]  He's a guy who did something really important.
[01:37:49.020 --> 01:37:55.380]  But the problem was that the importance of the person Assange suddenly became bigger than WikiLeaks.
[01:37:55.540 --> 01:37:58.260]  And it actually killed WikiLeaks.
[01:37:58.620 --> 01:38:01.620]  And that's the biggest sin that was committed in this whole process.
[01:38:01.620 --> 01:38:03.400]  Of course, the media are part of that.
[01:38:03.560 --> 01:38:06.400]  The media want to personify discourse.
[01:38:06.700 --> 01:38:10.080]  They want to have the face of Assange and talk about Assange.
[01:38:10.160 --> 01:38:11.400]  They don't want to talk about WikiLeaks.
[01:38:11.460 --> 01:38:12.480]  They want to talk about Assange.
[01:38:12.820 --> 01:38:14.380]  They don't want to talk about the NSA.
[01:38:14.380 --> 01:38:15.600]  They want to talk about Snowden.
[01:38:16.060 --> 01:38:17.620]  They don't want to talk about CryptoLeaks.
[01:38:18.280 --> 01:38:20.080]  They want to talk about APPLEBOMM!
[01:38:22.040 --> 01:38:23.000]  That's what they want to do.
[01:38:23.000 --> 01:38:27.020]  And I like Jake Applebaum, but... Applebaumics, really.
[01:38:28.540 --> 01:38:29.940]  He's a good friend of mine.
[01:38:30.000 --> 01:38:31.780]  I mean, he was so big when I first met him.
[01:38:31.900 --> 01:38:33.480]  He's like, nice guy.
[01:38:33.800 --> 01:38:36.380]  But no, no, no, no.
[01:38:36.600 --> 01:38:46.240]  Because there is something weird going on in our brains if too many people are running after a person and saying, Jake, it's so great.
[01:38:47.480 --> 01:38:48.900]  Jake is not Christ.
[01:38:48.900 --> 01:38:51.540]  But some people think that he's Christ.
[01:38:51.780 --> 01:38:53.120]  They're almost praying to him.
[01:38:53.200 --> 01:38:54.620]  And that's where the whole martyrdom comes in.
[01:38:55.140 --> 01:38:57.500]  Martyrdom is something that people really like.
[01:38:57.660 --> 01:38:59.220]  They like to be the martyrs.
[01:38:59.360 --> 01:39:01.440]  They like to be the ones who have the feeling.
[01:39:01.580 --> 01:39:03.000]  It's kind of like an exchange.
[01:39:03.660 --> 01:39:04.960]  It's a strange economy.
[01:39:05.180 --> 01:39:06.720]  It's like, I'm the martyr.
[01:39:06.940 --> 01:39:08.780]  I do all the wonderful things.
[01:39:09.200 --> 01:39:10.180]  I get kicked.
[01:39:10.280 --> 01:39:12.520]  I get kicked by the FBI and whoever else.
[01:39:12.660 --> 01:39:14.220]  But I'm doing it for you.
[01:39:14.740 --> 01:39:15.740]  I'm doing it for you.
[01:39:15.840 --> 01:39:16.760]  I'm your martyr.
[01:39:16.780 --> 01:39:18.360]  And I want to be loved by you.
[01:39:18.900 --> 01:39:23.340]  And that strange dynamic is going on all the time, everywhere.
[01:39:23.520 --> 01:39:24.960]  And it has to be stopped.
[01:39:25.080 --> 01:39:28.240]  And it can only be stopped by not running after those people.
[01:39:28.440 --> 01:39:38.540]  It's not giving them this, like, the whole idea of the yes-men is so interestingly contrived because the biggest yes-men are the followers of the yes-men.
[01:39:39.600 --> 01:39:41.160]  It's almost ironic, yeah?
[01:39:41.240 --> 01:39:44.840]  And the same thing is for people who are into dissent.
[01:39:45.160 --> 01:39:48.560]  I mean, even the website of Hope is presenting faces.
[01:39:48.900 --> 01:39:54.280]  It's presenting faces of people who we should worship because they did something really great.
[01:39:54.840 --> 01:39:55.940]  Yes, they did it.
[01:39:56.100 --> 01:39:58.080]  But actually, the facts are important.
[01:39:58.320 --> 01:39:59.200]  What they want to do.
[01:39:59.340 --> 01:40:04.240]  The politics is important and not who did that political thing.
[01:40:04.800 --> 01:40:10.320]  To a certain extent, I mean, I don't want to go into details here, but there are many things like that.
[01:40:10.440 --> 01:40:12.680]  Martin Luther King Day and that kind of stuff.
[01:40:12.680 --> 01:40:14.800]  I mean, we have an urge to do something.
[01:40:14.960 --> 01:40:17.680]  We want to thank someone for doing something really great.
[01:40:17.900 --> 01:40:22.780]  In the end, some people know Martin Luther King, but they don't know what he did.
[01:40:23.080 --> 01:40:26.640]  And that's not how it should happen.
[01:40:26.780 --> 01:40:27.140]  One second.
[01:40:33.260 --> 01:40:37.220]  Okay, so, we like worshiping.
[01:40:37.360 --> 01:40:37.820]  We shouldn't.
[01:40:38.080 --> 01:40:40.200]  It's a person-centric debate.
[01:40:40.200 --> 01:40:49.440]  We discuss the fallacies of people at certain points, like Assange is the best example, when we should talk about the project itself.
[01:40:49.940 --> 01:40:55.860]  It's a debate about single people when it should be a debate about content and about theory and about themes.
[01:40:56.660 --> 01:40:58.600]  It's actually anti-topic.
[01:40:58.800 --> 01:41:05.740]  It's quite easy to not reflect on topics when you talk about people.
[01:41:06.480 --> 01:41:09.200]  Dissidents as heroes is okay.
[01:41:09.400 --> 01:41:11.900]  I mean, people do great things and that's perfect.
[01:41:12.200 --> 01:41:16.740]  But the problems with the very notion of heroism is a problem.
[01:41:17.040 --> 01:41:17.800]  It's a very...
[01:41:17.800 --> 01:41:24.240]  I mean, I'm using the term now and you probably will misunderstand it because I'm a European leftist, but I don't like liberals.
[01:41:25.860 --> 01:41:29.520]  So, liberal discourse means that there are certain liberal virtues.
[01:41:29.900 --> 01:41:30.760]  You know, there is...
[01:41:30.760 --> 01:41:32.420]  The hero is a very liberal virtue.
[01:41:32.520 --> 01:41:35.160]  The hero is someone we have to thank for doing something.
[01:41:35.440 --> 01:41:42.380]  The hero is a really crazy narrative because the hero is like a one person and that one person does something really great.
[01:41:43.300 --> 01:41:45.560]  And it's like, you know, like Frodo, yeah?
[01:41:45.940 --> 01:41:47.580]  Everyone is talking about Frodo, yeah?
[01:41:48.640 --> 01:41:52.000]  Nobody is talking about the other hobbits and, you know, like...
[01:41:52.000 --> 01:41:58.720]  A struggle is always a struggle of people and groups and usually not the struggle of one single person.
[01:41:59.020 --> 01:42:09.640]  Even the whole discourse about Aaron Schwartz that is really, really super tragic is actually a discourse about the whole scene and people who did not support him or supported him or whatever it is, yeah?
[01:42:09.640 --> 01:42:16.960]  Of course, it can be transported over the person very tragically, but that's not how it should be.
[01:42:17.160 --> 01:42:22.480]  So, the story of the hero, the hero narrative is destroying a lot of good stuff out there.
[01:42:22.480 --> 01:42:30.880]  Uh, the same, uh, stuff is going on when, especially in the U.S., all the debates about, I should move around.
[01:42:32.240 --> 01:42:32.660]  Yeah.
[01:42:32.920 --> 01:42:34.480]  So, all the debates in the U.S.
[01:42:34.900 --> 01:42:36.720]  are factually, in the U.S.
[01:42:36.760 --> 01:42:38.120]  hacker scene, are...
[01:42:38.120 --> 01:42:39.500]  Am I breaking your necks?
[01:42:39.640 --> 01:42:40.040]  Is it okay?
[01:42:40.580 --> 01:42:41.180]  Turn it on.
[01:42:41.740 --> 01:42:42.960]  Move the chairs if you like.
[01:42:43.060 --> 01:42:43.720]  You can do that.
[01:42:43.800 --> 01:42:44.360]  It's okay.
[01:42:45.560 --> 01:42:46.400]  Yeah, it's okay.
[01:42:46.900 --> 01:42:47.500]  That's good.
[01:42:47.620 --> 01:42:48.220]  That's good.
[01:42:48.400 --> 01:42:48.960]  That's good.
[01:42:49.060 --> 01:42:49.740]  She got it!
[01:42:49.920 --> 01:42:50.660]  Yes, she got it.
[01:42:50.780 --> 01:42:50.980]  Okay.
[01:42:50.980 --> 01:42:54.420]  And it is about freedom.
[01:42:54.900 --> 01:42:57.500]  It's about the wonderful terms we have here.
[01:42:57.780 --> 01:43:04.160]  Freedom and liberty and constitution and we the citizens and all that kind of stuff.
[01:43:04.340 --> 01:43:07.840]  The main problem is that all those words mean nothing.
[01:43:07.840 --> 01:43:09.520]  In fact, they're all bourgeois crap.
[01:43:10.340 --> 01:43:12.420]  Uh, what is liberty?
[01:43:12.740 --> 01:43:14.480]  What is a freedom?
[01:43:14.760 --> 01:43:15.280]  Where is it?
[01:43:15.500 --> 01:43:17.960]  What, what, what does, what's, what's a f***ing constitution?
[01:43:17.960 --> 01:43:21.360]  Can you, can someone really explain what the f***ing constitution is to me?
[01:43:21.620 --> 01:43:25.980]  The main problem is that we are, especially in the hacker scene, we like to point that out.
[01:43:26.180 --> 01:43:27.440]  I am a citizen.
[01:43:27.640 --> 01:43:29.880]  The NSA is doing bad things against me.
[01:43:30.000 --> 01:43:31.320]  I am a citizen of the U.S.
[01:43:31.760 --> 01:43:33.180]  Nobody gives a f***ing, really.
[01:43:35.140 --> 01:43:38.600]  Uh, it's a f***ing state in a f***ing capitalist system.
[01:43:38.780 --> 01:43:39.620]  That's what it is, yeah?
[01:43:39.680 --> 01:43:42.060]  What do you expect to happen, yeah?
[01:43:42.260 --> 01:43:44.380]  Of course, you can say, like, I'm a citizen.
[01:43:44.380 --> 01:43:46.060]  I'm a proud citizen of the U.S.
[01:43:46.060 --> 01:43:48.480]  And I don't like what the NSA did to me, yeah?
[01:43:50.200 --> 01:43:51.160]  Um, f***ing...
[01:43:52.040 --> 01:43:52.520]  Yes.
[01:43:52.880 --> 01:43:56.840]  I mean, you know, like, capitalism is 200 years old and f***ed everything up ever since.
[01:43:57.160 --> 01:44:00.060]  Uh, the very notion of freedom does not exist.
[01:44:00.280 --> 01:44:04.740]  The very moment I have to earn money to live makes me unfree.
[01:44:05.100 --> 01:44:08.680]  I'm unfree from the very second that I get born, you know?
[01:44:10.340 --> 01:44:16.300]  And fighting for something like freedom is almost like fighting for, I don't know, what is it?
[01:44:16.460 --> 01:44:17.740]  It is a strange term.
[01:44:17.960 --> 01:44:19.120]  We want freedom.
[01:44:19.280 --> 01:44:19.960]  We want liberty.
[01:44:20.240 --> 01:44:22.840]  We want the upholding of the Constitution.
[01:44:23.140 --> 01:44:25.620]  All that stuff is just like that's templates, you know?
[01:44:25.740 --> 01:44:27.520]  Like, don't use those stupid templates.
[01:44:27.700 --> 01:44:28.740]  Nobody needs them, yeah?
[01:44:28.920 --> 01:44:30.280]  Talk about the basics.
[01:44:30.500 --> 01:44:33.200]  Talk about what that freedom means to you.
[01:44:33.340 --> 01:44:38.560]  And most people that I talk to find out that they actually don't mean what other people mean with freedom.
[01:44:38.680 --> 01:44:46.640]  Because I could talk to you and you say a completely different definition of what he believes is freedom than she believes that freedom is, yeah?
[01:44:46.800 --> 01:44:52.220]  And most discourses, especially in the hacker scene, are about words and terms and beliefs.
[01:44:52.720 --> 01:45:02.820]  And I could guarantee you half of the people in this room here do not agree with the other half of the room when they talk about terms like liberty and freedom and Constitution and rights.
[01:45:03.100 --> 01:45:04.780]  I'm pretty sure about that, yeah?
[01:45:05.020 --> 01:45:07.560]  So, uh, we have to go back to the basics.
[01:45:07.560 --> 01:45:09.000]  It's not just... it's not that easy.
[01:45:09.180 --> 01:45:09.920]  It's not that easy.
[01:45:10.020 --> 01:45:13.140]  And sometimes hackers make it very easy for themselves.
[01:45:13.700 --> 01:45:14.020]  Okay.
[01:45:14.500 --> 01:45:20.160]  So, uh, the next one is that hackers have a strange ignorance towards history.
[01:45:20.520 --> 01:45:21.780]  Many, many, many have.
[01:45:22.180 --> 01:45:24.900]  There, uh, is...
[01:45:28.240 --> 01:45:31.780]  Well, that was another excerpt from the HOPEX conference.
[01:45:32.200 --> 01:45:37.160]  Our friend Johannes Grenzferler from, uh, Austria giving his talk.
[01:45:37.320 --> 01:45:39.400]  The title we cannot say on the air, but...
[01:45:39.400 --> 01:45:42.660]  And a lot of words we couldn't broadcast over the air, but you get the words, you get everything.
[01:45:43.000 --> 01:45:44.000]  And, and you know what?
[01:45:44.200 --> 01:45:47.780]  Uh, seeing it in video format really adds so much to it.
[01:45:47.840 --> 01:45:49.400]  And you don't get that, obviously, on the radio.
[01:45:49.400 --> 01:45:57.100]  Uh, a pledge of 212-209-2950, a pledge of $50 to that phone number, will get you all the DVDs from HOPEX.
[01:45:57.160 --> 01:45:58.380]  It's about 100 DVDs.
[01:45:58.860 --> 01:46:02.300]  And, uh, wow, it's a lot of, uh, a lot of video to watch.
[01:46:02.340 --> 01:46:09.820]  But if you don't have a DVD player, or you don't believe in DVDs, or you don't want to get a big package, uh, you can get a, uh, huge thumb drive instead.
[01:46:10.040 --> 01:46:14.900]  64 gigs, just chock full of every talk from the HOPEX conference of 2014.
[01:46:15.540 --> 01:46:20.940]  And you can copy those files over, and then you'll have a, uh, 64 gig thumb drive to do anything you wish with.
[01:46:21.460 --> 01:46:23.060]  212-209-2950.
[01:46:23.400 --> 01:46:24.500]  It's not a huge thumb drive.
[01:46:24.700 --> 01:46:25.700]  It's a thumb drive.
[01:46:26.020 --> 01:46:26.520]  Thumb size.
[01:46:26.580 --> 01:46:29.840]  Yeah, the actual size of the thumb drive is, is, is probably very small.
[01:46:30.080 --> 01:46:30.220]  Yes.
[01:46:30.440 --> 01:46:35.340]  212-209-2950, or give to WBI.org to get these premiums.
[01:46:35.340 --> 01:46:41.460]  Uh, if you, like me, think that this is really, like, not enough money to get all this stuff, you can give more money.
[01:46:41.660 --> 01:46:42.280]  That is allowed.
[01:46:42.460 --> 01:46:42.660]  Yes.
[01:46:42.840 --> 01:46:49.620]  Um, and if you think that you will just go do it tomorrow, or later in the evening, you're wrong.
[01:46:49.760 --> 01:46:50.460]  You're gonna forget.
[01:46:50.660 --> 01:46:51.360]  Do it now.
[01:46:51.520 --> 01:46:53.320]  212-209-2950.
[01:46:53.760 --> 01:46:55.920]  Give to WBI.org.
[01:46:56.080 --> 01:46:57.240]  You know, I don't understand.
[01:46:57.380 --> 01:46:58.800]  People are calling the call-in line.
[01:46:58.800 --> 01:47:00.380]  I see, I see the lines lighting up.
[01:47:00.600 --> 01:47:03.160]  No, that's, we're not taking phone calls this week.
[01:47:03.160 --> 01:47:04.840]  We take phone calls so many other weeks.
[01:47:04.840 --> 01:47:11.580]  And think about that when you call the other phone number to pledge your support so we can continue doing that in the weeks where we don't have to ask for your support.
[01:47:11.580 --> 01:47:12.700]  It's, it's very important.
[01:47:12.820 --> 01:47:14.360]  It's a, it's a two-way street here.
[01:47:14.480 --> 01:47:30.220]  We support you, and, uh, it's important that you support us, because otherwise this place can easily go under and be taken over by some other corporate entity, and, and you'd never have the opportunity again, as, as Rob was saying earlier, to have a radio station like this in the middle of the FM dial,
[01:47:30.480 --> 01:47:34.960]  in the middle of New York City, broadcasting to four different states, and online as well.
[01:47:35.060 --> 01:47:37.320]  212-209-2950.
[01:47:37.840 --> 01:47:39.340]  Uh, Bernie, what'd you think of that talk?
[01:47:39.820 --> 01:47:44.400]  That was a great talk, and, uh, Ed Snowden's parents were at HOPEX as well.
[01:47:44.480 --> 01:47:47.300]  I took them to this, took them to this talk, and they loved it.
[01:47:47.380 --> 01:47:49.700]  They said that was one of their favorite talks at the whole conference.
[01:47:50.060 --> 01:47:50.820]  Great stuff.
[01:47:51.100 --> 01:47:56.460]  Johannes was running all around the room, dancing like, like a ball, and it, everybody loved it.
[01:47:56.460 --> 01:48:01.560]  And it was just one of, uh, one of about a hundred talks at HOPE, that you will really enjoy.
[01:48:02.100 --> 01:48:10.480]  And if you just get this, uh, package of, of, of videos from the HOPE conference, but more importantly, support this radio station, uh, and get it all.
[01:48:10.620 --> 01:48:12.680]  212-209-2950.
[01:48:13.460 --> 01:48:14.700]  Um, that's all I gotta say.
[01:48:14.780 --> 01:48:15.240]  It was a great talk.
[01:48:15.460 --> 01:48:17.280]  I, I want to disagree with you slightly, Bernie.
[01:48:17.600 --> 01:48:32.640]  Uh, if you get all these talks, if you get a hundred talks, the odds are there will be one you don't enjoy, uh, because there's no way we could take the risks we do and present the kind of stuff that, uh, not everyone does enjoy if we tried to cater to giving you a hundred,
[01:48:32.880 --> 01:48:40.420]  you know, we could give you a hundred DVDs of, like, kittens or something, and you would enjoy all a hundred of them, but you wouldn't grow, uh, you wouldn't learn anything.
[01:48:40.520 --> 01:48:44.380]  There's always that one cat, you know, the one that doesn't, uh, well, I'm not gonna get into this.
[01:48:44.420 --> 01:48:53.720]  Yeah, anyway, uh, but, so there will be a hundred talks, and they will all be interesting, but some of them you will disagree with, and that is, I think, what's, uh, wonderful about it.
[01:48:53.740 --> 01:48:55.460]  Yeah, but you know, you can disagree with a talk and still like it.
[01:48:56.000 --> 01:48:56.560]  I, I, I...
[01:48:56.560 --> 01:48:57.240]  That's true.
[01:48:57.380 --> 01:48:57.520]  Yeah.
[01:48:57.660 --> 01:48:59.340]  But there's gonna be one you just don't like.
[01:48:59.440 --> 01:49:09.080]  It's not to you, it's just not interesting to you, it's not, uh, even something you disagree with, uh, and, and that's okay, because there will be 50 more that are interesting.
[01:49:09.080 --> 01:49:12.480]  It's amazingly like WBAI, like all the programs we have here.
[01:49:12.620 --> 01:49:15.180]  There might be one program you don't like on this radio station.
[01:49:15.280 --> 01:49:15.840]  It's quite possible.
[01:49:16.020 --> 01:49:21.980]  If you listen long enough, you, you might find one you don't like, but there are so many programs that you will like that I maintain.
[01:49:21.980 --> 01:49:25.760]  It's worth calling 212-209-2950 and pledging your support.
[01:49:25.960 --> 01:49:26.100]  Yeah.
[01:49:26.200 --> 01:49:32.380]  And it's worth really, uh, really, um, stressing the fact that this is such an eclectic mix of, of talks.
[01:49:32.640 --> 01:49:39.820]  Um, I, I am C at the conference, which basically means I'm put in a room and, and I see the talks that are happening in that room because it's where I'm, it's where I'm working.
[01:49:40.120 --> 01:49:48.680]  Um, so I'm seeing talks that I might not have chosen off the list if I, if I were just watching, but every talk that I've seen has been fascinating, um, has been educational.
[01:49:48.680 --> 01:49:52.980]  Um, I've learned things that I didn't know I didn't know, or that I didn't know I was interested in.
[01:49:53.080 --> 01:49:56.480]  I've developed new interests based on random talks that I've, uh, seen at Hope.
[01:49:56.860 --> 01:50:10.040]  And, uh, that's because, although this is such a wide ranging eclectic mix of people presenting at the conference, the one thing they all have in common is they're all presenting on something on which they're, uh, something of an authority on which they're passionate about and,
[01:50:10.200 --> 01:50:15.020]  uh, which they can really apply the hacker speak, the spirit to and present at something like Hope.
[01:50:15.240 --> 01:50:20.420]  And it's, it's really amazing to just, uh, pick a random talk and, and watch it.
[01:50:20.760 --> 01:50:33.580]  And, uh, if you call 212-209-2950 or go to give to WBAI.org, get, uh, the Hope thumb drive or the Hope, uh, DVDs, um, you will have access to such a library of information, most of which you had no idea you wanted to know until you know it.
[01:50:33.900 --> 01:50:45.060]  And, uh, on that topic of, uh, just, um, finding a subject and something, you know, and presenting on that, that leads us to, uh, what we've been leading up to all night with all this music.
[01:50:45.420 --> 01:50:56.060]  Yes, we had a talk on North Korea using social engineering and concealed electronic devices to gather information in the world's most restrictive nation.
[01:50:56.060 --> 01:50:58.260]  Let's take a, a listen to a few minutes of that talk.
[01:51:01.460 --> 01:51:02.720]  So it's quite spooky.
[01:51:02.860 --> 01:51:11.480]  You can't really hear it in this video, but there's just a loud buzz of 60 hertz, or it's 50 hertz, actually, in North Korea, like AC buzzing sound.
[01:51:15.320 --> 01:51:20.200]  And of course, um, when you're in there, you're expecting to be found and detected at any time.
[01:51:20.780 --> 01:51:25.520]  Um, on my first trip down, we did, we did, um, get caught and we'll shoot off the floor.
[01:51:27.480 --> 01:51:35.100]  What you also do at night, when, um, your mind is, feel you're drunk, and what was of particular interest to me, is collecting intelligence transmissions.
[01:51:35.300 --> 01:51:42.880]  So both communications between South Korean spies that may be in North Korea, and North Korean messages to North Korean spies.
[01:51:43.600 --> 01:51:51.320]  Um, both voice, um, so if you know anything about number stations, um, voice, data, um, morse code, and so on.
[01:51:53.060 --> 01:51:59.320]  This one here is a North Korean number station, so sending messages to North Korean agents.
[01:51:59.320 --> 01:52:05.400]  Actually, this wasn't recorded in Ponyang, this is recorded in Dandong, in China, which is a border city.
[01:52:13.220 --> 01:52:32.400]  So the operator is saying, um, which agent the message is for, and then they're sending a, uh, sequence of four sets of, um, numbers, which actually will be used on a, um, uh, uh, what they call a one-time pad, to, which the agent will use to decrypt the message.
[01:52:36.760 --> 01:52:41.240]  All night, in your hotel room in the Yang Gatto, you hear this dredging.
[01:52:41.520 --> 01:52:46.680]  You might, you have to listen carefully here, but this is really, really loud when it's the middle of the night, and you're trying to sleep.
[01:52:47.600 --> 01:52:54.360]  And this is primarily because the North Koreans built, uh, great, um, thing, uh, kind of like a dam.
[01:52:54.500 --> 01:53:00.440]  It's called the West Sea Barrage at the mouth of the Tandonggang, um, river.
[01:53:01.020 --> 01:53:07.740]  And as a result, the river is silted up, so they dredge all night, 24 hours a day, actually.
[01:53:09.560 --> 01:53:16.280]  At six o'clock, the PA system through Ponyang, um, um, starts playing trance music.
[01:53:20.580 --> 01:53:26.240]  This actually originates from speakers at the railway station, but it echoes through the city.
[01:53:26.960 --> 01:53:34.680]  Um, the recording, this recording was actually made, um, at a hotel called the, um, Corio Hotel near the railway station.
[01:53:34.860 --> 01:53:37.760]  But you can actually hear it at the Yang Gatto in the distance as well.
[01:53:38.040 --> 01:53:41.460]  But this just plays like a, a kind of like a trance music.
[01:53:43.140 --> 01:53:48.480]  Around 7am, propaganda announcements start through the PA systems.
[01:53:52.600 --> 01:53:56.720]  So all of this is recorded just by poking a microphone out of my hotel window.
[01:53:58.660 --> 01:54:04.820]  And then as workers start going to work, patriotic working music starts.
[01:54:13.730 --> 01:54:31.070]  And because I had, um, an interest in radio, I was also, um, um, um, collecting samples, quite a lot of samples, hundreds of hours of domestic North Korean radio, particularly FM radio, which, um, most of the North Korean radio I can actually receive by satellite back in Australia.
[01:54:31.350 --> 01:54:35.910]  Um, this is a satellite they're using to send it to their transmitters around the country.
[01:54:35.910 --> 01:54:38.670]  But FM radio I can't receive in Australia.
[01:54:38.970 --> 01:54:42.530]  So that was a particular interest to me, to actually collect FM radio.
[01:54:43.730 --> 01:54:48.270]  On the FM band in Ponyang, again, remember how close Ponyang is to Seoul.
[01:54:48.590 --> 01:54:53.550]  There's a possibility that FM radio from Seoul would reach North Koreans in Ponyang.
[01:54:53.690 --> 01:54:56.250]  So they take measures to avoid that happening.
[01:55:02.680 --> 01:55:04.520]  So this is jamming.
[01:55:04.860 --> 01:55:14.300]  And as you go across the band, you'll find any signal which is from South Korea is being jammed.
[01:55:15.400 --> 01:55:18.600]  And then there, you'll also find their own radio programs.
[01:55:18.620 --> 01:55:19.880]  7시를 알려드리겠습니다.
[01:55:20.400 --> 01:55:21.340]  Of course, unjammed.
[01:55:31.950 --> 01:55:37.070]  So most of these FM stations, you'll now find, um, good samples on, um, YouTube and so on.
[01:55:37.070 --> 01:55:41.410]  And they, pretty well, all of them, if not all of them, have originated from my recordings.
[01:55:41.690 --> 01:55:44.510]  As I, I just share information, so it quickly gets out there.
[01:55:45.070 --> 01:55:48.110]  Now, North Koreans don't know radios as we know them.
[01:55:48.410 --> 01:55:52.250]  Radios, usually in North Korea, don't have a tuning dial.
[01:55:52.510 --> 01:55:54.610]  They're simply a speaker and it's a cable radio.
[01:55:54.990 --> 01:56:02.130]  So North Koreans are primarily using radio as a way of distributing the signal around the country to cable head-ins.
[01:56:02.130 --> 01:56:07.090]  Um, this example here is called the third network, which is a speaker on a wall.
[01:56:07.250 --> 01:56:09.390]  They're in every house in North Korea, in every building.
[01:56:10.030 --> 01:56:14.630]  And, um, reports are that you can turn it down, but not completely turn it off.
[01:56:14.810 --> 01:56:18.170]  It starts around five o'clock in the morning and finishes around 10 PM.
[01:56:19.230 --> 01:56:20.430]  It's a secure network.
[01:56:20.430 --> 01:56:26.170]  I don't know of anyone that's ever had a, managed to get a recording out of the country of the third network.
[01:56:26.170 --> 01:56:32.230]  So most secure messages for North Korean citizens are sent on that network and not through the airwaves.
[01:56:33.150 --> 01:56:52.470]  But because North Koreans don't have radios and you, you don't expect to come across one inside North Korea, one day, um, I was blown away when I walked into a hotel room in a new hotel, recently refurbished hotel in Humhong, which is a, um, a city which has only just recently opened to foreigners.
[01:56:53.230 --> 01:56:59.190]  Because, wow, look, this is exactly what you'd see in every hotel room around the world, except not North Korea.
[01:56:59.510 --> 01:57:01.150]  There's a radio between the beds.
[01:57:01.770 --> 01:57:04.530]  Of course, I went there, turned on the radio, didn't work.
[01:57:04.650 --> 01:57:09.210]  But, you know, when you go around the world and you stay in hotels, quite often the radio doesn't work in hotels.
[01:57:09.710 --> 01:57:12.610]  So I decided, oh, okay, well, this radio's not working.
[01:57:12.610 --> 01:57:13.510]  This is bizarre.
[01:57:13.510 --> 01:57:15.810]  I've never seen a radio before in North Korea.
[01:57:16.150 --> 01:57:21.070]  And how would they let such a, um, subversive type of instrument be available to foreigners?
[01:57:21.070 --> 01:57:24.590]  So, I spent the night trying to find out why it didn't work.
[01:57:26.940 --> 01:57:29.260]  Um, it's not broken.
[01:57:29.580 --> 01:57:32.700]  They've actually cut the, um, transformer windings.
[01:57:32.820 --> 01:57:37.920]  They've removed the speaker, removed all of the cables, the audio cables.
[01:57:39.660 --> 01:57:43.620]  And so, quite deliberately, they've disabled this radio.
[01:57:43.880 --> 01:57:45.400]  And yet, they've kept it in the room.
[01:57:45.540 --> 01:57:52.680]  And this is, um, in my book, I go a fair, quite deeply into this, which is propaganda for visitors.
[01:57:53.380 --> 01:57:59.600]  This is an illusion of being connected to the outside world, an illusion of normality in a hotel room.
[01:57:59.720 --> 01:58:04.340]  But as you can see, that radio is never intended to work and will never work again.
[01:58:04.700 --> 01:58:12.340]  In fact, the, um, the following morning, I reported at the reception desk that my radio didn't work, and they showed me they'll have it, you know, thank you.
[01:58:12.640 --> 01:58:14.160]  We'll get it fixed for the next guest.
[01:58:19.120 --> 01:58:22.280]  Well, that was a really interesting talk by, uh, Mark Fahey.
[01:58:22.420 --> 01:58:25.480]  Bernie, I know you were instrumental in getting that talk at, uh, Hope X.
[01:58:26.040 --> 01:58:28.940]  Yeah, uh, Mark, I, I met Mark, uh, at another event.
[01:58:29.140 --> 01:58:30.500]  And it's like, Mark, you gotta come to Hope.
[01:58:30.600 --> 01:58:31.600]  And he, he'd never heard of Hope.
[01:58:31.680 --> 01:58:32.660]  Actually, he had heard of Hope.
[01:58:32.660 --> 01:58:33.740]  He's a 2,600 reader.
[01:58:34.140 --> 01:58:36.640]  And, uh, but he didn't know how amazing Hope was.
[01:58:36.720 --> 01:58:38.840]  So he's, uh, he's actually coming back to the 11th Hope.
[01:58:39.440 --> 01:58:40.860]  Um, maybe he'll do another talk.
[01:58:41.260 --> 01:58:45.320]  But, uh, that was one of the talks that I think more people commented to me about anything.
[01:58:45.320 --> 01:58:48.780]  About what, what, what media is like in North Korea.
[01:58:48.960 --> 01:58:50.940]  And it's a really interesting study to watch this talk.
[01:58:51.100 --> 01:58:57.660]  Because it, it, it shows what can happen when the government has complete control over all media.
[01:58:57.940 --> 01:58:58.420]  Fascinating.
[01:58:58.700 --> 01:59:00.200]  Which they don't have here, fortunately.
[01:59:00.580 --> 01:59:02.660]  Uh, we're able to broadcast, uh, with impunity.
[01:59:02.900 --> 01:59:04.780]  But we're out of time, so we have to leave.
[01:59:05.040 --> 01:59:08.120]  But please, call 212-209-2950.
[01:59:08.820 --> 01:59:09.620]  Pledge your support.
[01:59:09.720 --> 01:59:11.720]  $50, you'll get all the DVDs from Hope X.
[01:59:11.820 --> 01:59:13.380]  $75, you'll get a thumb drive.
[01:59:13.380 --> 01:59:16.120]  Filled with all the DVDs from Hope X.
[01:59:16.780 --> 01:59:19.000]  $2,600 meetings are happening all over the world this Friday.
[01:59:19.380 --> 01:59:21.160]  Um, $2,600.com slash meetings.
[01:59:21.460 --> 01:59:21.860]  All right.
[01:59:21.980 --> 01:59:23.540]  And we will see you in two weeks.
[01:59:23.880 --> 01:59:26.200]  Until then, um, have a, have a good night.
[01:59:26.520 --> 01:59:27.840]  Uh, pledge your support.
[01:59:27.960 --> 01:59:29.240]  212-209-2950.
[01:59:29.580 --> 01:59:31.260]  Give to WBAI.org.
[01:59:31.560 --> 01:59:32.800]  And you can write to us.
[01:59:32.960 --> 01:59:35.120]  O-T-H at $2,600.com.
[01:59:35.200 --> 01:59:37.400]  Until two weeks from now, it's Emmanuel for Off the Hook.
[01:59:37.720 --> 01:59:38.320]  Have a good night.
[01:59:38.320 --> 02:00:11.140]  O-T-H
[02:00:19.180 --> 02:00:50.710]  at $3,600.com.
[02:02:13.100 --> 02:02:14.560]  Big finish, boys.
[02:02:14.560 --> 02:02:15.140]  All right.
[02:02:15.260 --> 02:02:18.060]  Well, we'll be finding you another fundraising program.
[02:02:18.380 --> 02:02:24.580]  It's a shame they're not marked better to make the engineers' job a little easier to find them.
[02:02:24.840 --> 02:02:32.420]  In the meantime, though, why don't we enjoy some wonderful promotional announcements?
[02:02:33.920 --> 02:02:37.040]  February 12th, 2016.
[02:02:37.480 --> 02:02:39.880]  Stan, with the move...
[02:02:39.880 --> 02:02:40.080]  Good-bye.
[02:02:40.080 --> 02:02:40.180]  Actually, thank you.
[02:02:40.300 --> 02:02:40.400]  Good night.