[00:01.210 --> 00:09.630]  Like many of you, like many Americans, I have felt frustrated and betrayed by the state of the mainstream media in this country.
[00:10.070 --> 00:14.530]  A media whose priorities seem out of step with their responsibilities.
[00:16.810 --> 00:21.770]  We need a media that strengthens democracy, not a media that strengthens the government.
[00:22.150 --> 00:27.830]  We need a media that enriches public discourse, not one that enriches corporations.
[00:27.830 --> 00:35.510]  Hi, I'm Jane Fonda, and this is WBAI, listener-supported, non-commercial radio in New York.
[00:37.950 --> 00:43.970]  And you are listening to radio station WBAI, 99.5 FM.
[00:43.970 --> 00:47.010]  The time is just about 7 p.m.
[00:47.430 --> 00:50.850]  It is time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
[01:03.470 --> 01:07.850]  I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
[01:08.470 --> 01:10.690]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:13.490 --> 01:16.090]  Bum Diddly Bum for the best, it's back for worst.
[01:16.690 --> 01:18.590]  I hope that's understood.
[01:18.850 --> 01:19.650]  Bum Diddly Bum!
[02:13.240 --> 02:15.180]  A very good evening to you.
[02:15.980 --> 02:18.240]  This program is Off the Hook.
[02:19.520 --> 02:20.260]  Rob T.
[02:20.380 --> 02:21.940]  Firefly here with you in the studio.
[02:22.360 --> 02:24.420]  I am joined here in the studio by Mike.
[02:24.420 --> 02:25.460]  Good evening.
[02:26.500 --> 02:28.640]  And on the phone, we should have Bernie S.
[02:29.280 --> 02:33.000]  Greetings from Philadelphia, where Verizon workers are on strike.
[02:34.000 --> 02:35.580]  Yeah, we heard something about that.
[02:36.780 --> 02:38.320]  What's going on with that, Bernie?
[02:38.380 --> 02:42.080]  This is going on in your territory, so I expect you to be our man on the ground out there.
[02:42.420 --> 02:51.020]  Well, Verizon territory is up your way, too, but there's a central office right around the corner from where I live.
[02:51.020 --> 02:59.180]  And typically, there are Verizon trucks parked out in front of it every morning by workers, and there were none to be seen this morning.
[03:00.340 --> 03:12.640]  But I did read today that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was actually on a ticket line with Verizon workers this afternoon in New York, which I think is pretty amazing.
[03:12.760 --> 03:15.120]  When's the last time you heard of a presidential candidate doing that?
[03:16.220 --> 03:17.860]  I don't remember offhand.
[03:18.580 --> 03:20.560]  So this strike is happening at Verizon.
[03:20.780 --> 03:23.120]  Do you know any of the background of what's going on with it?
[03:23.120 --> 03:47.220]  Well, I think Verizon workers are claiming, or the CWA, the Communications Workers of America, are claiming that Verizon is focusing all of their investment in wireless, as in Verizon wireless, mobile phones, as opposed to their copper plant, you know,
[03:47.220 --> 03:54.560]  the plain old telephone system, the plain old telephone system, POTS, as we call it, or as it's been called for many decades, good old dial-ton service.
[03:55.280 --> 04:06.740]  Verizon seems to be letting that infrastructure rot and is not maintaining it and has been replacing with some pressure.
[04:06.740 --> 04:22.540]  There are some neighbors of mine that have been pressured by Verizon to replace their copper line with Verizon Fios to provide sort of a faux dial tone, which is not supported by the battery at the central office.
[04:22.700 --> 04:31.220]  And you just have to have, like, maybe a day or so battery power in a little junction box in your basement, which is not very good from an emergency standpoint.
[04:31.220 --> 04:45.840]  And Verizon workers are saying that, hey, you're not maintaining the network as you should.
[04:46.080 --> 04:59.020]  And Verizon employees that have been maintaining the physical infrastructure of Verizon's landline network are saying that you have to keep that network up.
[04:59.020 --> 04:59.660]  That's the deal.
[04:59.920 --> 05:07.460]  You were given monopoly status to maintain this infrastructure, and now you're not keeping your end of the deal up.
[05:07.840 --> 05:09.560]  So that's part of it.
[05:09.620 --> 05:15.480]  I'm sure there's other issues involved, but that's what I'm hearing from Verizon workers, a couple of whom I've talked to on the street.
[05:18.060 --> 05:21.040]  I mean, what do they want exactly?
[05:21.040 --> 05:31.240]  I mean, it seems reasonable that Verizon should invest in what people, what consumers want, which is, by and large, mobile telephony.
[05:31.440 --> 05:36.020]  I think they should do that in a way that doesn't ruin the livelihoods of their workforce.
[05:36.180 --> 05:40.280]  But I'm curious what the proposal is, if you know.
[05:41.600 --> 05:45.620]  Well, there is wage issues.
[05:46.400 --> 06:00.500]  Verizon, the CWA, Communications Workers of Association, Communication Workers of the American Union, I believe, is requesting a 6% over, I think, a few years' pay increase, which seems to be reasonable.
[06:01.020 --> 06:17.260]  But the problem is, when Verizon shifts its infrastructure over to all wireless, wireless, or mostly wireless, there's no jobs for the folks that maintain the wired infrastructure that is either copper or fiber running into people's homes.
[06:17.400 --> 06:24.760]  Verizon apparently has stopped really rolling out new Fios for the most part, which is really surprising to me.
[06:24.780 --> 06:33.920]  You'd think they'd want to install fiber everywhere and their Fios network to compete against big cable like Comcast and Times Warner.
[06:33.920 --> 06:35.920]  But they're not.
[06:36.000 --> 06:40.440]  They just seem to be shifting all their investment over towards, or the vast majority of their investment, over to wireless.
[06:40.760 --> 06:47.960]  And frankly, there's no way the wireless infrastructure could support that many...
[06:47.960 --> 06:50.880]  There's just not enough R-Spectrum to support that density.
[06:51.220 --> 06:52.360]  That's very...
[06:52.360 --> 07:06.580]  That's interesting, because I know that Verizon is being sued by several cities, New York City among them, for not abiding by the agreements they've made to provide Fios to people who want it.
[07:06.680 --> 07:14.840]  I know in New York, they're supposed to have rolled it out to every home in the city by now, and they certainly have not done so.
[07:15.520 --> 07:22.000]  I can't get it, despite the fact that the coffee shop, which is literally around the corner from my apartment, can get it.
[07:22.000 --> 07:34.160]  And I don't live in an otherwise particularly underserved infrastructure-poor neighborhood, but Verizon is just not making the investments that they contractually agreed to make.
[07:34.620 --> 07:46.300]  Well, there's apparently some 40,000 Verizon workers who are on strike as of this morning, and that's a pretty large walkout, in my opinion.
[07:48.180 --> 08:05.480]  So, we're just going to have to see what happens with this, but I would imagine that any Verizon customers who have trouble with their Fios or their Copper Wireline are going to be kind of stuck in the near future, because Verizon is just saying, well,
[08:05.540 --> 08:08.420]  we have management employees, we'll have go out and do this stuff.
[08:08.660 --> 08:25.340]  Frankly, these management employees don't have the, you know, boots-on-the-ground skills that the workers that have, you know, climbed the poles and get out there and really do the hard work to keep telecommunications going on the street that they have.
[08:25.940 --> 08:38.200]  I mean, it really makes you wonder how necessary the work that the management people do the rest of the time is, if they claim they can just go do the groundwork without any negative benefit to the company.
[08:38.460 --> 08:39.600]  I've seen that before.
[08:39.600 --> 08:45.200]  Or, like, here in Pennsylvania, here in Philadelphia, there's SEPTA, the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority.
[08:45.420 --> 09:02.100]  And when they were on street quite a few years ago, they had their management people driving the trains, and I saw they put up all these signs saying, open the doors on this side of the train for the management workers to know, like, which side of the track to open the doors.
[09:02.700 --> 09:13.700]  It's like, I thought, you know, that's a great example of management just really not knowing the nuts and bolts and nitty-gritty of the day-to-day operations of a large organization.
[09:14.660 --> 09:18.840]  So, you know, I wish the Verizon workers luck in this.
[09:19.240 --> 09:34.480]  But frankly, the bottom line is, I think you agree on this, that Verizon has, you know, gotten all kinds of tax benefits as being a common carrier and as a monopoly.
[09:34.960 --> 09:45.080]  And now they're just sort of playing a shell game with that and not fulfilling their obligations to provide universal service and just shifting everything over to cellular.
[09:45.400 --> 09:47.740]  I mean, I've said it before, you've said it before.
[09:48.440 --> 10:00.700]  It seems to me, the telecommunications company, it's hard to say, really want to have the benefits of the market without any of the obligations.
[10:00.700 --> 10:10.120]  In my view, they need to either choose to actually permit competition or to be regulated as the monopoly as they, in fact, are.
[10:10.340 --> 10:19.920]  This claim that the market will decide when there's not more than one competitor is found in no one's econ textbook, neither a communist one nor a capitalist one.
[10:20.100 --> 10:21.420]  And I just don't...
[10:21.940 --> 10:25.260]  I don't know why we, as consumers, stand for it.
[10:26.900 --> 10:27.380]  Well...
[10:28.640 --> 10:30.600]  Rob, what do you think about all this going on?
[10:31.380 --> 10:47.460]  I think it's very interesting to watch because we've spoken often on this show and some might say a little too often about the benefits of keeping the old infrastructure functional rather than swapping over everything to newer, more digital, shinier things.
[10:48.280 --> 10:55.440]  And things like plain old television service do still have their place, I think, in today's world.
[10:55.780 --> 11:10.960]  And also things like, yeah, Verizon does have a lot to answer for along both that line of wanting to ditch POTS prematurely and also not doing their thing to provide Fios and such things elsewhere.
[11:11.200 --> 11:21.760]  Any New Yorker who's tried to get Fios, as Mike mentioned, does know that it's kind of a dark art as to how or if they can supply your building regardless of what's going on around the corner.
[11:21.760 --> 11:24.900]  So it's going to be interesting to see where this goes.
[11:25.670 --> 11:33.240]  I have a quote from Bernie Sanders who actually marched on a picket line with Verizon workers today.
[11:33.660 --> 11:35.520]  This was an article by Reuters.
[11:35.760 --> 11:39.140]  And he said that...
[11:39.140 --> 11:40.600]  Let me see here.
[11:41.000 --> 11:42.080]  Let me find this.
[11:42.860 --> 11:43.980]  I'm sorry.
[11:46.460 --> 11:47.780]  Yeah, apparently...
[11:49.060 --> 11:50.860]  I don't have the actual quote.
[11:51.120 --> 11:58.720]  But basically, Bernie Sanders said that Verizon is...
[11:58.720 --> 11:59.220]  Here it is.
[12:01.400 --> 12:11.520]  Trying to take away health benefits, outsource jobs, and avoid federal income taxes, calling it just another American corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans.
[12:11.960 --> 12:14.340]  So that seems to be Bernie Sanders' take on it.
[12:14.880 --> 12:21.020]  And apparently, Verizon employees cheered when Bernie Sanders said that on the picket line today.
[12:21.240 --> 12:26.960]  I guess before we next speak to each other, New York...
[12:26.960 --> 12:30.440]  Residents of New York will have had the opportunity to vote in a presidential primary.
[12:31.040 --> 12:33.980]  At least the ones that are a member of a party that has a primary.
[12:34.300 --> 12:34.480]  Yeah.
[12:34.800 --> 12:35.480]  Yeah, well, that's...
[12:35.480 --> 12:39.600]  New York has one of the most closed primaries in the country.
[12:39.600 --> 12:46.820]  You have to have chosen what election you wish to vote in by last October, which is sort of nuts.
[12:47.200 --> 12:57.400]  But I just, like, never expected to be able to vote in a primary that wasn't already 100% decided, even if this one seems to be mostly decided.
[12:57.740 --> 12:58.960]  Yeah, it's really refreshing.
[12:58.960 --> 13:12.600]  Here in Pennsylvania, in less than two weeks, we're going to have our own so-called closed primary, where only registered Democrats or Republicans can vote for someone in that party.
[13:13.940 --> 13:17.600]  Registered independents don't get to vote.
[13:18.660 --> 13:19.660]  I don't get that.
[13:19.720 --> 13:21.020]  It just doesn't make any sense to me.
[13:21.080 --> 13:22.260]  I thought we lived in a democracy.
[13:22.560 --> 13:23.960]  But in any case...
[13:23.960 --> 13:35.500]  Well, primary elections aren't really part of democracy so much as they are internal power struggles among members of such-and-such party to decide which person the party is going to throw at the actual election.
[13:36.000 --> 13:37.760]  Yes, that seems to be the case.
[13:38.820 --> 13:41.500]  So, folks in Philadelphia here, I was actually...
[13:41.500 --> 13:44.400]  I'm going to have to reveal my own partisanship here.
[13:44.400 --> 13:46.680]  I was out on Sunday...
[13:47.180 --> 13:51.460]  Yeah, you revealed a bit of that by being at the rally last time we...
[13:51.460 --> 13:56.040]  Well, not just at the rally, but on Sunday, I was actually canvassing for Bernie Sanders on the street.
[13:56.040 --> 14:02.680]  And I knocked at about 40 doors in the Fishtown neighborhood, which is near where I live.
[14:02.940 --> 14:06.040]  And I knocked at about 40 doors of registered Democrats.
[14:06.040 --> 14:14.520]  And I was really surprised that more than 90% of the people I spoke with were pro-Bernie Sanders.
[14:14.520 --> 14:16.560]  I expected it to be kind of split down the middle.
[14:16.700 --> 14:18.220]  I was really surprised.
[14:18.760 --> 14:27.540]  So, I'm not sure how accurate the polls are, which are saying that Hillary Clinton is ahead by double digits, it's maybe 10, 13 points.
[14:27.920 --> 14:34.560]  But that's what I'm seeing on the street, at least in the community that I canvassed.
[14:34.740 --> 14:37.480]  And you're absolutely positive they were talking about Bernie Sanders, the candidate.
[14:37.680 --> 14:40.160]  They didn't just open the door when you knocked and said, hey, Bernie.
[14:40.740 --> 14:49.660]  No, it was kind of funny, though, when I knocked the door and the answer and said, hi, my name's Bernie, and I'm here representing Bernie Sanders for President's campaign.
[14:50.400 --> 14:56.420]  Yeah, I guess New Yorkers who wish to vote for Bernie S, that's an option if they want to take it.
[14:56.780 --> 14:58.180]  Yeah, well, I don't want anybody to vote for me.
[14:58.340 --> 14:59.940]  I don't want the job as president.
[15:01.300 --> 15:03.060]  Well, a namesake of yours, then.
[15:03.440 --> 15:03.760]  Exactly.
[15:04.120 --> 15:05.380]  Well, actually, it's Bernie Spindel.
[15:05.520 --> 15:07.320]  I'll reveal that for the first time on the air.
[15:07.420 --> 15:10.140]  But in any case, I am...
[15:10.140 --> 15:10.400]  All right.
[15:10.400 --> 15:18.020]  Well, as a namesake of a presidential candidate, Bernie, what do you think of the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016, a proposed law?
[15:20.160 --> 15:21.320]  Which law is this again?
[15:21.520 --> 15:23.580]  The Compliance with Court Orders Act.
[15:23.740 --> 15:24.280]  What do you think?
[15:24.460 --> 15:26.280]  Shouldn't we be complying with court orders?
[15:27.040 --> 15:31.040]  I would think that one should comply with court orders regardless.
[15:31.040 --> 15:38.760]  There's an act that says that people should comply with court orders, or is this just sort of a made-up name that means something else other than what it says?
[15:38.880 --> 15:45.860]  This is proposed legislation introduced officially, I believe, today by Senators Feinstein and Burr.
[15:46.440 --> 16:02.280]  And what it would actually do is mandate that manufacturers of electronic devices provide a way for the government to get into those devices to circumvent any encryption that's inside them.
[16:03.520 --> 16:03.900]  Wow.
[16:03.900 --> 16:24.540]  So would this criminalize or outlaw communications providers from providing end-to-end encryption for their customers with having no way to provide the clear text or clear content to the government?
[16:25.960 --> 16:32.800]  The bill, as you would expect, right, so the bill demands something impossible, which is to create encryption
[16:36.140 --> 16:39.080]  that can be broken.
[16:39.500 --> 16:47.080]  The implication is that these companies should create encryption that can be broken only by the government and not by any third parties, which is impossible.
[16:48.580 --> 16:55.160]  It's, of course, very poorly written, so it's hard to know exactly what they want.
[16:55.840 --> 17:05.300]  Senator Wyden, who is not as crazy as the two senators we mentioned before, said, this legislation would effectively prohibit Americans from protecting themselves as much as possible.
[17:05.540 --> 17:18.220]  Not only would the legislation leave people vulnerable to stalkers, identity thieves, foreign hackers, and criminals, it would also provide an incentive to would-be terrorists to use non-American encrypted products and apps to continue their conversations.
[17:25.160 --> 17:25.860]  We would.
[17:26.320 --> 17:28.000]  I mean, it's going to put an end.
[17:28.400 --> 17:38.940]  If this bill is taken literally, it will put an end to the American technology industry because it will be impossible to create secure devices in this country.
[17:41.720 --> 17:52.360]  People who want to do their online shopping rely on encryption, rely on strong encryption that criminals can't get into, as we've said so many times on this program.
[17:53.480 --> 18:04.680]  And it's not clear, you know, if I buy a device that complies with this legislation and then put my own software onto it that's actually secure, is that going to be okay?
[18:04.700 --> 18:08.540]  What if the device manufacturer just provides a handy link to get that software?
[18:08.780 --> 18:16.000]  There's a lot of open questions with such poorly written bills, but the whole concept, the fact that they're even trying, I find quite disturbing.
[18:16.340 --> 18:32.440]  Yeah, I was wondering that by itself, if it wasn't the communications provider providing it, or like a company like Facebook, who's through their WhatsApp, program now provides end-to-end encryption, what if I just installed my own encryption app and say you did,
[18:32.600 --> 18:37.440]  and we discommunicated securely, is that going to be covered under this new bill?
[18:37.620 --> 18:39.340]  It seems kind of ambiguous to me.
[18:39.480 --> 18:53.380]  I really want to know who the technical advisors are for Senator Feinstein and who the other one is, because this is actually mathematically impossible, what this bill...
[18:53.380 --> 19:06.820]  It reminds me of maybe this is an urban myth, but back many years ago, supposedly there was a bill to legislate the numeric value of pi to 3.0.
[19:07.100 --> 19:11.200]  Maybe that's an urban myth, but this is what this seems like to me.
[19:11.500 --> 19:14.560]  It's like to legislate something that's mathematically impossible.
[19:14.560 --> 19:21.300]  The bill, to be clear, does not require that the covered entities do the impossible.
[19:21.300 --> 19:23.640]  It only requires that their software be insecure.
[19:23.860 --> 19:31.000]  It does not require that their software be secure, which is completely the opposite of legislation that probably we should be writing.
[19:32.400 --> 19:41.020]  The only way to comply with this law that anyone knows about is to create insecure software that third parties can get into, and that is deeply worrying to me.
[19:41.020 --> 19:56.600]  They define a covered entity as a device manufacturer, a software manufacturer, an electronic communication service, a remote computing service, a provider of wire or electronic communication service, a provider of a remote computing service.
[19:57.200 --> 19:59.060]  I'm reading this, by the way.
[19:59.320 --> 20:01.240]  The bill is repeating itself.
[20:01.420 --> 20:03.820]  I'm not repeating things I've already said.
[20:04.000 --> 20:09.660]  Or any person who provides a product or method to facilitate a communication or the processing or storage of data.
[20:09.860 --> 20:10.760]  And then they go
[20:15.240 --> 20:22.360]  Doesn't it sound very much like what the FBI was trying in court to get Apple to do?
[20:22.500 --> 20:38.220]  Is to provide a backdoor or actually have a new version of the Apple iOS mobile phone operating system for iPhones to have to be insecure?
[20:38.580 --> 20:40.220]  I don't think that's a coincidence.
[20:40.760 --> 20:45.940]  No, it seems like very coincidentally times or maybe not so surprisingly coincidental.
[20:46.220 --> 20:54.640]  I think Senators Feinstein and Burr were reading the newspaper just like we were and just had a completely different reaction to it than we did.
[20:55.960 --> 21:01.560]  Their reaction was, wouldn't it be a great idea if people in a certain industry were legislated to do their work wrong?
[21:02.600 --> 21:04.400]  I mean, the bill is just nuts.
[21:04.680 --> 21:09.060]  It starts with, as we said, the short title, the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016.
[21:09.060 --> 21:15.200]  And then the very next thing they say is, it is the sense of Congress that no person or entity is above the law.
[21:16.060 --> 21:21.560]  Economic growth, prosperity, security, stability, and liberty require adherence to the rule of law.
[21:21.700 --> 21:28.040]  And it just goes on and on in that vein for quite some paragraphs before getting to anything even vaguely like a point.
[21:28.040 --> 21:30.000]  Quite hubris, I think.
[21:31.380 --> 21:32.420]  That's one way to put it.
[21:34.040 --> 21:37.860]  So, I would encourage people to write their Senators to oppose this bill.
[21:38.020 --> 21:38.980]  I hope it gets stopped.
[21:39.800 --> 21:44.980]  If it does get stopped, of course, they're going to try again when we're not looking, which is the unfortunate lesson that we've learned.
[21:46.760 --> 21:53.240]  Didn't we go through this same kind of stuff back in the mid-90s with the crypto wars?
[21:53.240 --> 21:54.220]  The Clipper chip.
[21:54.480 --> 21:55.480]  The Clipper chip.
[21:55.780 --> 22:14.700]  And this is like deja vu all over again, where the Clinton administration was trying to, you know, when AT&T introduced this encrypted phone device that you could plug into your phone, a wireline phone, because mobile cell phones weren't all that common back in the early 90s.
[22:15.600 --> 22:21.320]  And AT&T announced they were going to have this device to provide, you know, fairly secure encryption.
[22:23.700 --> 22:25.700]  And yet, it was a hardware device.
[22:26.100 --> 22:27.680]  Well, the software in the hardware.
[22:27.900 --> 22:33.760]  But the FBI bought all of them to prevent any of them from getting on the market.
[22:34.360 --> 22:50.240]  And then basically compelled, somehow, AT&T to release a crippled version using a new chip from the NSA called the Clipper chip, as you mentioned, that would have a back door using something called the key escrow, where the government would have, like,
[22:50.640 --> 22:56.600]  the keys for everybody's communications escrowed with some mutual third party, supposedly.
[22:57.020 --> 23:15.980]  Of course, it was by our friend Matt Blaze brilliantly figured out a way around it with a piece of software he released called the leaf blower, the leaf meaning the law enforcement access field that had the means for returning, getting into the encrypted communications.
[23:16.440 --> 23:20.320]  But, you know, so basically what the government did back in the mid-90s is they gave up.
[23:20.420 --> 23:24.540]  They realized this was impossible, what they were trying to accomplish, and they finally gave up.
[23:24.620 --> 23:30.640]  But I'm wondering if we're going to reach that point again 20 years later, or whether things will turn out differently.
[23:30.660 --> 23:31.880]  What do you think, Rob?
[23:33.000 --> 23:45.540]  Oh, I would like to think that things would be going in a better direction than they were in the Clinton administration, but I wish I could have complete and total faith that we haven't gotten stupider on a grand scale.
[23:45.800 --> 24:01.640]  But I will definitely be keeping an eye on this, because it's funny to watch people who make the laws, and who form the laws, and who debate the laws, and who regulate things display complete misunderstanding for the things they're in charge of regulating.
[24:02.220 --> 24:12.020]  Going back to Senator Series of Tubes Stevens from Alaska, you know, a few years back, to things like the clipper chip, and yeah, it's a ride.
[24:12.160 --> 24:12.980]  It's been a real ride.
[24:13.080 --> 24:22.480]  And we're actually looking at a different story that was on a Tech Dirt article yesterday about how the House is pushing the bill.
[24:22.680 --> 24:33.960]  The House is pushing a bill that's preventing the FCC from doing anything about ISPs, fiddling with usage caps, and kind of working the net neutrality thing a bit.
[24:35.160 --> 24:41.920]  It's called the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, which is an interesting name.
[24:42.180 --> 24:43.020]  The No Rate Regulation...
[24:43.020 --> 24:43.500]  Wait, can you say that?
[24:43.620 --> 24:44.600]  That doesn't make any sense.
[24:44.740 --> 24:45.940]  The No Rate Regulation...
[24:45.940 --> 24:46.560]  No Rate?
[24:46.560 --> 24:47.080]  Yeah.
[24:47.280 --> 24:48.380]  No Rate Regulation.
[24:48.520 --> 24:50.700]  Oh, we're opposed to Rate Regulation.
[24:50.820 --> 24:51.260]  Apparently.
[24:51.360 --> 24:51.560]  Okay.
[24:51.700 --> 24:53.640]  ...of Broadband Internet Access Act.
[24:54.320 --> 25:09.300]  It's set to debate this week in Congress, and would, according to a press release by the Energy and Commerce Committee, prevent the FCC from regulating rates charged for broadband internet, quote, just as the administration promised when they reclassified access to the internet as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act.
[25:10.560 --> 25:25.280]  But somebody from the organization Public Knowledge, an attorney called Harold Feld, posted to the site Medium.com that the bill tries to use a special definition of rate regulation to ban the FCC from doing much of anything about anything.
[25:25.820 --> 25:43.240]  From Feld's post, HR 2666's language would protect broadband providers from any, quote, review or, quote, enforcement of their prices and prevent the FCC from even, quote, declaring, let alone addressing any broadband prices or fees or as even unreasonable.
[25:43.600 --> 25:50.500]  To make this even more clear, the bill prohibits the FCC from reviewing any prices, fees or overages, quote, regardless of any other provision of law.
[25:50.960 --> 25:53.660]  That goes way beyond the FCC's traditional rate-setting authority.
[25:54.120 --> 25:59.280]  Any other provision of law includes the FCC's mandate to promote competition and its consumer protection authority.
[25:59.580 --> 26:00.100]  Aha.
[26:00.600 --> 26:11.940]  So this is sort of a backdoor attempt to neuter the FCC's attempts to enforce net neutrality?
[26:12.380 --> 26:18.560]  I don't think it's a backdoor attempt so much as a legislation in Congress that is designed to do precisely that.
[26:19.940 --> 26:20.380]  Okay.
[26:20.820 --> 26:21.980]  Maybe it's not a backdoor.
[26:22.120 --> 26:23.260]  It's pretty blatant.
[26:23.640 --> 26:23.640]  Yeah.
[26:23.740 --> 26:24.180]  Yeah.
[26:24.280 --> 26:37.920]  From the Tech Dirt Post, which goes on to say it should probably be reiterated that while the FCC says it does have the authority to regulate some rates under Title II and its net neutrality rules, for example, preventing paid prioritization, the agency so far has shown no interest in really doing so.
[26:38.860 --> 26:54.600]  So, yeah, this is another example of the laws that are being proposed and debated and talked about in Congress and possibly passed, having little or nothing to do with what's actually good for anyone on the tech level or on the social level or on any level,
[26:54.940 --> 26:58.380]  apart from the pockets of the companies who are running these things.
[26:58.380 --> 27:09.580]  And what you said, Rob, you mentioned in this article about, I guess that was published in a tech dirt about Title II.
[27:09.880 --> 27:26.640]  Title II, if I'm not mistaken, is the body of law regulations that allow the FCC to regulate common carriers and communications providers.
[27:26.840 --> 27:40.840]  And it's precisely what we were talking about earlier with Verizon trying to have it both ways, having to have the protection of a monopoly yet not be responsible for being regulated under Title II.
[27:41.320 --> 27:44.800]  So, you know, it comes full circle, this stuff.
[27:44.960 --> 27:47.960]  It's all really tied to what's in the public interest.
[27:47.960 --> 27:54.560]  Should the government have you really regulated these virtual monopolies to protect us?
[27:54.660 --> 27:56.180]  Or should it just be a free for all?
[27:56.380 --> 28:05.200]  And we are at the mercy of these monopolies, like back in the day when, before they started to get broken up.
[28:05.420 --> 28:06.400]  Let's be clear.
[28:06.500 --> 28:14.640]  These are not... what Verizon, and Verizon's not the only one, but all these companies want, is not an unregulated marketplace with competition.
[28:14.940 --> 28:19.780]  They want government-granted monopolies and no further regulation.
[28:20.180 --> 28:22.120]  And in my view, that's just completely unacceptable.
[28:22.480 --> 28:31.340]  And as we've just seen with Verizon, they will make promises to get themselves monopoly status and then just not fulfill them and nothing really happens.
[28:31.480 --> 28:34.740]  Sounds like someone needs a compliance with Court Orders Act.
[28:35.800 --> 28:36.760]  There you go.
[28:36.940 --> 28:45.080]  It doesn't seem to apply to these big phone companies and internet service providers complying with Court Orders.
[28:45.380 --> 28:50.640]  Because it wasn't this something that Verizon agreed with the city of New York?
[28:50.780 --> 28:54.120]  Yeah, I mean, it's like a contract, not a court order, as I understand it.
[28:54.240 --> 28:54.780]  But you know what?
[28:54.780 --> 28:56.960]  It makes for a better joke, if I say it the first way.
[28:57.360 --> 28:57.960]  There you go.
[28:58.700 --> 29:00.860]  It makes the fact of the matter no less true.
[29:01.420 --> 29:15.240]  Talking of things we were facing in the 90s, we were facing a certain case involving 2600 and hyperlinks, where it was the Ford Really Sucks domain and where that would point.
[29:15.460 --> 29:18.720]  There was the DECSS case and where that would point.
[29:18.720 --> 29:28.120]  And if you're posting hyperlinks to a site hosting software that people are trying to suppress, then you're just as responsible as the actual site hosting that software.
[29:29.520 --> 29:36.360]  And there's now a case coming out of the EU, which is in the same vein, but seems to be going the other way.
[29:36.900 --> 29:40.540]  An EU court has just advised that internet hyperlinks do not infringe copyright.
[29:43.020 --> 29:44.760]  That's surprising news from the EU.
[29:44.980 --> 29:45.840]  Good to hear.
[29:45.840 --> 29:46.300]  Yeah.
[29:46.540 --> 29:51.660]  The opinion by the European Court of Justice's advocate general is nonbinding, but the court normally follows such advice.
[29:52.480 --> 29:54.100]  This comes from Reuters.
[29:54.240 --> 30:00.040]  A link to a website which publishes photos without authorization of the author does not in itself constitute a copyright infringement.
[30:00.980 --> 30:10.560]  And we've seen cases come specifically out of the EU with the young man whose name was... what was his name?
[30:10.640 --> 30:11.060]  O'Dwyer.
[30:11.740 --> 30:13.060]  Was it Richard O'Dwyer?
[30:13.060 --> 30:13.840]  I think so, yes.
[30:13.840 --> 30:16.420]  I think it was Richard O'Dwyer, yeah, with TV Shack.
[30:16.560 --> 30:16.740]  Mm-hmm.
[30:16.860 --> 30:17.280]  TV Shack.
[30:17.580 --> 30:22.320]  His website, TV Shack, where he just provided links to where people could download TV shows.
[30:22.320 --> 30:23.500]  And he was in the UK.
[30:23.960 --> 30:24.180]  Right.
[30:24.380 --> 30:34.220]  He was not violating any UK law, yet the US had him extradited to face copyright infringement.
[30:34.220 --> 30:39.720]  And it wasn't even copyright infringement, but it was a crazy case.
[30:40.480 --> 30:40.580]  Yeah.
[30:40.720 --> 30:48.060]  But this... so do we think this is going to make any difference now that the EU court has advised that internet hyperlinks do not infringe copyright?
[30:48.180 --> 30:49.040]  How would that have helped?
[30:49.300 --> 30:53.320]  Had this decision been made prior to Richard O'Dwyer's case a few years ago?
[30:53.720 --> 30:54.740]  Well, I think...
[30:54.740 --> 30:56.280]  Would it have made any difference?
[30:56.640 --> 31:01.260]  Yeah, I think the fact of O'Dwyer's case was he wasn't breaking local laws, but he was breaking US laws.
[31:01.480 --> 31:06.140]  I mean, look, the US has a lot of power, but it's always easier to prosecute people locally.
[31:06.360 --> 31:10.600]  So any sort of protections for EU citizens are good to have.
[31:10.740 --> 31:10.860]  Yeah.
[31:10.980 --> 31:20.040]  This particular case arose in the Netherlands, where a website, which I'm going to terribly mispronounce, it's spelled G-E-E-N-S-T-I-J-L.
[31:20.420 --> 31:23.060]  Is that Geenstiel or something to that effect?
[31:23.300 --> 31:24.800]  Is that a Dutch name?
[31:24.960 --> 31:26.100]  If it is, it's unpronounceable.
[31:26.220 --> 31:27.420]  I'm sorry to our Dutch listeners.
[31:28.440 --> 31:34.740]  But the website had provided a link to an Australian site showing pictures of a Dutch celebrity which had been taken by Playboy magazine.
[31:35.080 --> 31:38.740]  And the Australian site did not have Playboy's consent to do so.
[31:39.560 --> 31:51.200]  So the court's opinion says hyperlinks which lead even directly to protected works are not, quote, making them available, end quote, to the public when they are already freely accessible on another website and only serve to facilitate their discovery.
[31:51.980 --> 31:53.600]  Wow, that's just way too logical.
[31:53.600 --> 31:54.040]  Yeah.
[31:55.020 --> 32:00.580]  It's logical, which means that maybe this won't have all that much power because it's just an opinion.
[32:00.800 --> 32:05.360]  And it's also, I think, against the interests of people with lots of money and angry faces.
[32:05.360 --> 32:09.020]  So I'm not too optimistic about this, but it could be.
[32:09.100 --> 32:10.280]  It could be something special.
[32:10.540 --> 32:10.960]  Who knows?
[32:11.040 --> 32:14.360]  Do we think this is going to spread to the United States?
[32:15.700 --> 32:17.860]  I wouldn't bet the farm on it, Bernie.
[32:19.180 --> 32:20.360]  It's a rhetorical question.
[32:20.360 --> 32:23.060]  I don't think it will either, but it just makes too much sense.
[32:23.360 --> 32:23.680]  That's okay.
[32:23.780 --> 32:24.560]  I haven't really got a farm.
[32:26.980 --> 32:33.120]  I mean, of course, there's all kinds of bad legal decisions coming out of the European Union, too.
[32:33.260 --> 32:44.680]  I was made aware of a case recently where the German publisher Axel Springer is suing, which is a very large publishing firm, and they're suing all kinds of ad block software companies.
[32:45.400 --> 32:50.520]  And people who don't know, ad block is some software that you run on your computer that you own and supposedly control.
[32:51.000 --> 32:55.780]  And it becomes basically part of your web browser and prevents advertisements from being loaded.
[32:56.580 --> 33:04.060]  And, you know, Axel Springer derives apparently much of its revenue from showing people advertisements, and they don't like this.
[33:04.680 --> 33:08.700]  It's fully, in my view, you know, within their rights to not like this.
[33:08.900 --> 33:15.060]  But suing the manufacturers of the software seems a little bit nuts to me.
[33:15.380 --> 33:21.880]  And as a case, they were suing some large companies earlier, and that's still ongoing.
[33:22.040 --> 33:29.860]  And I've heard they're starting to sue even very small companies and private individuals who do this just kind of stuff in their spare time.
[33:29.860 --> 33:31.980]  So that's a case that will continue to follow.
[33:32.280 --> 33:35.360]  Are you talking about ad blocker software companies?
[33:35.540 --> 33:35.860]  They were suing?
[33:35.860 --> 33:36.360]  Yes.
[33:36.980 --> 33:37.500]  Wow.
[33:38.000 --> 33:40.380]  So, I mean, I use ad blocker software.
[33:40.380 --> 33:43.100]  I imagine you and Rob do as well.
[33:43.300 --> 33:43.700]  I do.
[33:43.900 --> 33:48.080]  I'm looking at a news article about it right now, and I don't see any advertisements.
[33:49.600 --> 33:54.340]  I visited the Wired.com website just the other day, and I was blocked.
[33:54.540 --> 33:59.460]  It said, we were complaining about the Forbes website the other day, a few weeks ago.
[33:59.700 --> 34:06.800]  And now Wired.com does not allow you to view their website if you're running an ad blocker.
[34:07.400 --> 34:07.700]  Yeah.
[34:07.820 --> 34:14.700]  I mean, so this seems... I don't like this, and it will make me probably read Wired less, but it seems entirely fair to me.
[34:14.840 --> 34:17.700]  If that's what they want to do, then that's their choice.
[34:17.840 --> 34:26.300]  But suing companies that provide software to end users who then run it on their own computers under their own control, that seems frightening to me.
[34:26.420 --> 34:26.540]  Yeah.
[34:26.660 --> 34:30.700]  It's worth explaining on a technical level for listeners who might not be familiar.
[34:30.700 --> 34:33.840]  Ad block software is something that just runs on your computer.
[34:34.100 --> 34:41.260]  Your browser downloads a website like normal, and Ad block then makes its changes to the website that your browser loads before you can see it.
[34:41.580 --> 34:48.700]  It decides what can execute, what can appear, and according to its own filters and configurations and stuff, which you have control over.
[34:49.100 --> 34:53.300]  So it's not changing anything on a remote website server without their permission.
[34:53.320 --> 34:56.920]  It's just filtering what you see when you load their site.
[34:56.920 --> 34:56.920]  Right.
[34:57.460 --> 35:08.600]  I mean, I've been listening to some podcasts of late, and many of them, which are not produced by non-commercial radio stations like ours, have advertisements in them.
[35:08.780 --> 35:10.920]  And sometimes I don't want to listen to those advertisements.
[35:10.920 --> 35:17.460]  So there's a button in my music player that's labeled, you know, skip forward 30 seconds, and I press that button.
[35:18.000 --> 35:21.400]  What the ad block software is doing is essentially the same thing for web pages.
[35:21.880 --> 35:25.400]  And it seems to me that this just has to be legal.
[35:25.580 --> 35:35.540]  But unfortunately, a lot of these ad blocking software companies are very small and may not have the legal resources to fight entities like Axel Springer.
[35:35.720 --> 35:35.960]  Right.
[35:36.080 --> 35:50.200]  If you're familiar with the experience of watching a recording of a television program, and it stops for commercials, and you press fast forward, or the equivalent on your device to speed through the commercials without paying attention to them, you've basically been your own ad blocker right there.
[35:51.040 --> 36:04.280]  So these ad blocking programs will, like in my case, they will just show like a blank square where there would be, you know, some dancing person advertising some product and yelling at me.
[36:05.440 --> 36:09.200]  And, you know, I think I should have a right to do that.
[36:09.280 --> 36:20.920]  But as Mike says, I do think that website operators should, you know, it's their right to say, hey, we're not going to let you view our content if we detect that you're using an ad blocker.
[36:20.960 --> 36:22.780]  But I think it's really going to be there to a detriment.
[36:23.000 --> 36:26.460]  I think people are just going to say, well, screw you, I'm going to be looking at Wired.com less.
[36:26.680 --> 36:32.720]  I certainly already look at Forbes.com much less than I used to because of this restriction.
[36:33.000 --> 36:37.700]  Not that, you know, I'm just not going to drop my ad blocker for them.
[36:37.700 --> 36:40.040]  You know, they already have ads on their website.
[36:40.960 --> 36:42.280]  I just don't get it.
[36:42.400 --> 36:49.280]  I mean, their articles pretty much on Forbes have all kinds of plugs in them for ads.
[36:49.460 --> 36:55.280]  So I don't think an ad blocker is going to necessarily prevent all their advertisers from getting revenue.
[36:55.480 --> 36:57.480]  I mean, it's an interesting technical battle.
[36:57.640 --> 37:01.600]  There's the ad blockers, and now these sites are deploying ad blocker blockers.
[37:01.760 --> 37:06.600]  And presumably what's already in the works is the ad blocker blocker blockers.
[37:07.060 --> 37:08.620]  And we'll see where it goes from there.
[37:08.840 --> 37:12.040]  But this all seems, you know, fair to me.
[37:12.180 --> 37:13.820]  It's an arms race for the mental environment.
[37:13.960 --> 37:21.340]  You know, I've been known to walk through Midtown Manhattan and take long detours to avoid going through Times Square because I don't want to look at all those ads.
[37:22.360 --> 37:23.500]  You know...
[37:23.500 --> 37:24.300]  Oh, well.
[37:24.900 --> 37:25.260]  Uh-oh.
[37:25.580 --> 37:27.120]  Someone is going to sue you, Rob, for that.
[37:27.240 --> 37:29.120]  Someone's going to sue me for avoiding the billboards.
[37:29.120 --> 37:32.300]  And maybe you're too small potatoes to just sue an individual.
[37:32.300 --> 37:39.940]  But the company, the city of New York, for providing those streets which route you around the advertisement, that sounds like a good target.
[37:40.220 --> 37:40.660]  Absolutely.
[37:40.880 --> 37:48.300]  Or we could sue the evolutionary path that gave me eyelids so I can close my eyes sometimes and not see an ad in front of me.
[37:49.180 --> 37:51.520]  But it's all a lot of fun.
[37:51.660 --> 37:52.700]  Talking of blocking things.
[37:52.960 --> 38:03.300]  There was a really fun story from... that was relayed by the BBC last week about the Great Firewall of China, with which we're mostly all familiar, I think.
[38:03.780 --> 38:14.800]  The Great Firewall of China is, of course, the device that stops Chinese internet users within the country from seeing things that the Chinese government doesn't want them to.
[38:15.600 --> 38:22.340]  And there was a person who designed this, whose name is something to the effect of Fang Bingxing.
[38:23.660 --> 38:41.040]  And apparently recently he was giving a speech, this designer of the Great Firewall, on internet security at the Harbin Institute of Technology when he tried to access a South Korean website, because he wanted to use it as an example of another country that has something like the Great Firewall in place and regulates the internet for its users.
[38:41.700 --> 38:46.460]  When he tried to pull up the South Korean website, he himself was blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
[38:47.620 --> 38:50.060]  And to continue with his speech, he needed the site.
[38:50.180 --> 38:59.300]  So he was forced to set up a VPN connection, a virtual private network connection, which is the done thing, the common practice if you want to skirt state censorship.
[38:59.860 --> 39:12.460]  And he had to do this in full view of the audience, which led to much hilarity and mockery online, at least those who could get to the bits online where you're allowed to engage in hilarity and mockery.
[39:13.120 --> 39:20.280]  But he, perhaps to avoid embarrassment, apparently the university he was speaking at, scrapped the Q&A session that was to follow.
[39:20.900 --> 39:23.020]  Oh, that would have been fun.
[39:23.440 --> 39:28.640]  But he did this in full view of the audience at the conference, which is pretty funny.
[39:28.960 --> 39:48.100]  When I was in Beijing and Shanghai and some other cities a few years ago with Mitch Altman and a bunch of other people from Noisebridge, a bunch of us set up VPNs in advance of us going there, knowing that we would have to surmount the Great Firewall of China to access our data back home here.
[39:48.460 --> 39:50.700]  And it was no problem to do.
[39:51.120 --> 39:53.520]  But I was surprised the number of...
[39:53.520 --> 40:00.560]  We got to meet hackers and a bunch of other interesting folks around China in our travels.
[40:00.560 --> 40:05.340]  And I was surprised how common this practice was.
[40:05.500 --> 40:12.620]  So this is something that apparently a lot of people do in China, but nobody really can talk about it, because that would be illegal.
[40:13.200 --> 40:19.620]  I mean, I've definitely heard that they don't really care if foreigners in particular get around the firewall.
[40:21.560 --> 40:24.340]  But I don't know what they do care about.
[40:24.580 --> 40:28.020]  Obviously, they don't care if the architects of the firewall get around the firewall either.
[40:29.140 --> 40:34.800]  Or that he demonstrates the routine method of getting around the firewall to the audience he himself is speaking with.
[40:35.320 --> 40:40.000]  So Mr. Fang had to defang the Great Firewall of China.
[40:40.060 --> 40:40.940]  Oh, really, Bernie?
[40:41.320 --> 40:41.540]  Really?
[40:42.560 --> 40:48.860]  If you have any bad puns to your audience, or perhaps something insightful to say, we would love to hear from you.
[40:49.020 --> 40:50.660]  And we'll be taking your phone calls in a little bit.
[40:50.820 --> 40:52.800]  718-780-8888.
[40:53.060 --> 40:55.300]  It's been a while since we've taken some phone calls.
[40:55.440 --> 40:56.220]  It has been a while.
[40:56.220 --> 40:59.700]  So hopefully there's insight stored up amongst our listeners.
[40:59.880 --> 41:01.600]  I'm looking forward to hearing from our listeners again.
[41:01.640 --> 41:06.760]  Of course, if you hold for too long, it'll just ring out and send you to parts unknown.
[41:07.020 --> 41:10.480]  So if it rings for too long, just hang up and try calling again.
[41:11.260 --> 41:14.280]  But yes, number 718-780-8888.
[41:14.860 --> 41:18.100]  While we're waiting for some phone calls, I'll read an email we got from a listener.
[41:18.340 --> 41:25.500]  A couple of weeks ago, we talked about Google dorking, which is searching for things that would turn up in private files that are still indexed by Google.
[41:26.540 --> 41:32.100]  Somebody suggested we try the phrase, quote, limit distribution of this document to trusted personnel.
[41:32.600 --> 41:34.220]  If you Google that sentence...
[41:34.220 --> 41:34.800]  What happened?
[41:34.840 --> 41:35.420]  Did you try it?
[41:35.640 --> 41:44.860]  I didn't try it, but this listener suggests that you will turn up a metric boatload, which is 2.2 imperial boatloads for the metric compared, of documentation on RSA security products.
[41:45.200 --> 41:47.680]  So boatloads are proportional to mass.
[41:47.840 --> 41:47.980]  Okay.
[41:48.180 --> 41:48.760]  Good to know.
[41:50.740 --> 41:51.220]  Absolutely.
[41:51.220 --> 41:51.900]  How's it looking?
[41:51.900 --> 41:53.060]  We've got some phone calls.
[41:53.200 --> 41:56.020]  I'm going to press this one and greet this listener.
[41:56.160 --> 41:56.640]  You're on the air.
[41:57.920 --> 41:58.480]  Hello?
[41:58.960 --> 41:59.520]  Yes, hello.
[41:59.840 --> 42:01.140]  I just was curious.
[42:01.500 --> 42:03.920]  Me and a friend of mine were talking about the possibility.
[42:04.260 --> 42:10.780]  Is there any way someone could plant a... This might sound a little conspiratorial, but we're just curious.
[42:11.600 --> 42:17.640]  Can someone plant a file on your computer from the outside without you being aware of it?
[42:19.200 --> 42:21.060]  Oh, so many answers to this question.
[42:22.640 --> 42:28.560]  I mean, the short answer... The one-word answer is no, but the more accurate answer is yes.
[42:31.380 --> 42:40.740]  If you have a computer that's not connected to any network, then of course you'll need physical access to that computer to do anything to it.
[42:40.820 --> 42:55.940]  But if you have a computer that's on the internet, then there are all kinds of nefarious ways to maybe trick you into clicking on something or exploit a bug in software that you use, like your web browser, to make things happen to your computer that you don't want.
[42:57.780 --> 43:02.280]  Are you talking about any particular kind of file in question?
[43:04.940 --> 43:12.540]  Well, to use the extreme example is... and I don't even want to say it, but let's say child pornography.
[43:13.980 --> 43:26.980]  Like, could you see these accusations in the newspaper, and we were just thinking, if it's possible, and then you didn't actually do it, and they planted it, and they accuse you of something that you had nothing to do with?
[43:28.460 --> 43:29.660]  Yeah, well, there have been cases.
[43:29.860 --> 43:33.980]  There was a really good talk at a recent HOPE conference in New York.
[43:34.680 --> 43:39.740]  By the way, the 11th HOPE conference is coming up this July 22nd through 24th.
[43:39.740 --> 43:40.440]  I'll plug that.
[43:40.740 --> 43:42.540]  You can get more information at HOPE.net.
[43:42.680 --> 44:00.860]  But there was a really good talk, I think it was just a year and a half ago, at HOPEX, about this very topic, and how there are some situations where there are viruses or malware that can cause, you know, maliciously cause computers to download illegal files.
[44:01.560 --> 44:05.880]  That's probably not the case in most of these criminal cases, but it can happen.
[44:06.060 --> 44:08.100]  And there have been demonstrated cases where that's happening.
[44:08.300 --> 44:13.000]  And some people have really had their lives ruined by this kind of thing.
[44:13.320 --> 44:26.120]  So, in any case, the answer to your question, as Mike said, from a practical standpoint, is yes, if you're connected to the Internet, it's possible that these such files can be placed on your computer without your knowledge.
[44:26.280 --> 44:34.500]  Of course, you'd have to have a good lawyer and a good forensic expert to prove that in a court of law if you're being charged with possessing files that you personally didn't download.
[44:34.760 --> 44:36.120]  But, good luck with that.
[44:37.120 --> 44:48.580]  It's just interesting, because it's sort of like, I don't know if the term is a cop guy asked, or if you got accused of something like that, then we'll just believe that it's in a newspaper and you let... How do you prove something like that?
[44:48.620 --> 44:49.560]  Or how do you prevent it?
[44:51.400 --> 44:55.360]  Well, you have to have good security, or as Mike said, don't have your computer connected to the Internet.
[44:56.760 --> 44:59.220]  Yeah, I mean, thanks for the call.
[44:59.320 --> 45:00.540]  It's an interesting question.
[45:01.100 --> 45:01.740]  Okay, thanks.
[45:01.860 --> 45:01.980]  Bye.
[45:02.660 --> 45:11.620]  I guess we should clarify, even if your computer is not on the Internet and you put a USB drive or a CD or any other kind of media, then that's another way that things can happen.
[45:12.140 --> 45:12.440]  Mm-hmm.
[45:13.180 --> 45:16.600]  We've got a full switchboard, so I'm going to take another phone call.
[45:16.900 --> 45:17.520]  Good evening.
[45:17.620 --> 45:18.140]  You're on the air.
[45:20.200 --> 45:20.600]  Yes.
[45:20.600 --> 45:27.380]  In reference to the fellow who was asking about the security of his computer, it's difficult to do, but that's what I do.
[45:27.560 --> 45:28.760]  Turn off your scripting.
[45:28.920 --> 45:32.920]  There'll be much less access to the interior of your machine, even if you're online.
[45:33.480 --> 45:37.800]  Just as I switched off the radio, I heard you talking about USB drives.
[45:39.600 --> 45:46.640]  In XP, it was called No Drive Type Auto Run in the registry, and there's something similar in Windows 7.
[45:46.640 --> 45:48.820]  I'm not totally sure, but you guys can find this.
[45:49.520 --> 46:03.700]  You go in there and you set all the bits to one, set it all Fs in hexadecimal, and it will not auto run, it won't run autorun.inf on your stick or your CD, and thus prevent it.
[46:03.800 --> 46:11.960]  At the office I used to work at, they had a server system, and they had a split computer system.
[46:12.100 --> 46:13.380]  One set of computers were online.
[46:13.520 --> 46:19.300]  The other computers that we worked at were all offline, not connected to the network.
[46:19.420 --> 46:25.260]  But they still had remnants of the virus problem that they had had that caused them to do this whole shenanigans.
[46:25.700 --> 46:28.160]  They still had remnants of that in their server.
[46:28.420 --> 46:33.240]  Of course, they got into trouble by exposing political trouble inside the office for exposing, hey, you know, you got this in here.
[46:33.540 --> 46:41.460]  But they had auto run, and so they were able to transfer the virus on their sticks, which they used.
[46:41.600 --> 46:49.000]  They would go to the online stuff, go get the customer files, put them on the stick, carry over to their workstation, plug it in, take the files, do their work.
[46:49.140 --> 46:49.740]  Guess what?
[46:50.920 --> 46:54.460]  This, I forget what it was called, you guys can look it up.
[46:54.700 --> 46:55.380]  Some virus.
[46:55.560 --> 46:55.700]  Right.
[46:55.900 --> 46:55.900]  Yeah.
[46:55.980 --> 47:00.540]  I mean, they can also, of course, even without the auto run, be viruses inside the files, the files that you want.
[47:00.880 --> 47:01.280]  So...
[47:01.280 --> 47:02.440]  Oh, that'd be another issue.
[47:02.740 --> 47:03.660]  There's another issue.
[47:03.800 --> 47:06.700]  Turn off the scripting in your Microsoft office.
[47:07.660 --> 47:10.740]  Of course... I have never met anyone who uses that for anything.
[47:11.220 --> 47:11.500]  Yeah.
[47:12.220 --> 47:16.980]  Of course, the specifics of any particular operating system could be way different from one another.
[47:17.200 --> 47:22.700]  And to go further into that, I would suggest staying tuned for our friends at the PC show, which comes right after us.
[47:22.940 --> 47:23.040]  Correct.
[47:23.160 --> 47:33.620]  But yeah, there are all kinds of ways that things can get into your computer, including what we used to call sneaker net, which is just walking something from computer to computer on a removable piece of media.
[47:34.160 --> 47:38.620]  But yeah, it's hard to be careful enough, but we have to be as careful as we can.
[47:38.840 --> 47:40.300]  We're going to move on, but thank you very much for your call.
[47:40.580 --> 47:40.720]  Right.
[47:40.840 --> 47:40.920]  Bye.
[47:41.840 --> 47:48.200]  And of course, I just drive home the point, and some of our senators want to make it even easier for your computer to be insecure.
[47:48.700 --> 47:48.840]  Absolutely.
[47:49.140 --> 47:50.720]  But let's take another phone call.
[47:50.880 --> 47:51.280]  Good evening.
[47:51.440 --> 47:51.920]  You're on the air.
[47:52.760 --> 47:53.020]  Hello.
[47:53.340 --> 47:53.520]  Hi.
[47:54.660 --> 47:55.060]  Okay.
[47:55.060 --> 47:58.900]  I don't know who gave it the name Google Docs, but the real name is Google Operators.
[47:59.020 --> 48:01.120]  And there's a great PDF out there.
[48:01.460 --> 48:05.000]  You can download for free on the internet by Johnny.
[48:05.200 --> 48:06.340]  I hack stuff long.
[48:06.580 --> 48:10.480]  And I think it's just called googlehackers.pdf.
[48:10.660 --> 48:11.420]  It's really great.
[48:11.600 --> 48:12.340]  You have to read it.
[48:12.340 --> 48:13.600]  It's about 500 pages.
[48:13.760 --> 48:16.880]  You have to read it at least five or six times to absorb everything.
[48:17.100 --> 48:17.680]  And even then...
[48:17.680 --> 48:18.160]  That's a lot of reading.
[48:18.480 --> 48:19.660]  It certainly is.
[48:19.780 --> 48:23.340]  I've read it twice myself, and there's just no way.
[48:23.540 --> 48:27.060]  And I used to make my own operators.
[48:27.300 --> 48:37.360]  For example, at one time, I was able to google inurl colon status.stm, not htm, s as in stance, samtm.
[48:37.480 --> 48:44.500]  And it used to give me a bunch of broken routers with remote administration already enabled.
[48:44.780 --> 48:46.300]  I couldn't believe that one.
[48:46.380 --> 48:48.040]  I haven't seen that in a while, though.
[48:48.680 --> 48:59.520]  And then also, going back to some months, after the 20 rings on your phone line, it's starting to go back to the station manager's voicemail again.
[48:59.920 --> 49:00.800]  Oh, joy.
[49:01.440 --> 49:01.740]  Yeah.
[49:01.940 --> 49:05.940]  Are you leaving voicemail messages for Berthold Reimer?
[49:05.980 --> 49:06.260]  Well, no.
[49:06.440 --> 49:09.080]  I can try that again as soon as I hang up.
[49:09.160 --> 49:12.760]  I haven't left one for him in a while, but it hasn't worked in a while.
[49:13.140 --> 49:16.180]  In fact, the first time tonight, I think it went to a fax machine.
[49:16.740 --> 49:24.560]  So, I don't know what's happening with the phone system over there, but the Google operator thing is far more important than that.
[49:24.700 --> 49:25.240]  Well, thank you.
[49:25.340 --> 49:26.340]  Thank you very much for your call.
[49:26.700 --> 49:27.640]  Okay, thank you.
[49:27.840 --> 49:31.380]  And for anyone else calling in, if you get the fax machine, we don't recommend you talk to it for too long.
[49:31.780 --> 49:36.680]  Well, maybe you can whistle to it and bring down the government or something.
[49:36.800 --> 49:37.160]  I don't know.
[49:37.160 --> 49:37.160]  No.
[49:38.380 --> 49:38.880]  All right.
[49:38.880 --> 49:41.380]  I'm going to take this phone call before it goes to a fax machine.
[49:41.380 --> 49:41.940]  Good evening.
[49:42.480 --> 49:43.280]  You're on the air.
[49:43.740 --> 49:44.180]  Hi.
[49:44.320 --> 49:44.820]  Hey, guys.
[49:45.060 --> 49:45.700]  This is Zybogit.
[49:46.360 --> 49:47.840]  Interesting thing I saw today.
[49:48.040 --> 49:59.100]  I don't know if this is old news, but apparently the MTA of New York has issued some sort of press release that by 2018, they're going to discontinue the MTA MetroCard.
[50:00.280 --> 50:08.440]  And that confuses me because apparently they're going to replace it with some system that they haven't announced yet that will be fully operational by 2020.
[50:08.820 --> 50:10.220]  And no one knows what it is.
[50:10.400 --> 50:14.060]  So I'm kind of curious unrelated to what do you think it's going to be?
[50:14.200 --> 50:23.080]  The longest rumor I heard is that it might be like the London Underground where you use your smartphone with the NFC connection in order to access the service.
[50:23.080 --> 50:24.660]  And what could be wrong with that?
[50:25.100 --> 50:25.960]  So I'm just curious.
[50:26.160 --> 50:35.260]  The one piece of info out there about this seems to be that it's going to be they're looking for something contactless, something touch free, which means RFID or NFC or things of that sort.
[50:35.740 --> 50:38.340]  The system in London, you can use your smartphone.
[50:38.560 --> 50:39.500]  You can also use...
[50:39.500 --> 50:40.540]  No, I couldn't.
[50:40.900 --> 50:41.580]  I tried.
[50:41.800 --> 50:42.440]  Maybe you can't.
[50:42.680 --> 50:47.380]  But apparently there are people in London who can or who at least are pretending convincingly enough.
[50:47.520 --> 50:52.440]  But you can also get cards with RFID chips and the oyster cards, I believe they call them.
[50:52.720 --> 50:58.640]  And lots of systems all over the world have had such things in use for many, many years.
[50:58.820 --> 51:02.100]  Bernie, I know they're trying to do such a thing in Philadelphia.
[51:02.700 --> 51:03.220]  Yes.
[51:03.240 --> 51:04.400]  Are they succeeding at all?
[51:04.860 --> 51:15.000]  Well, the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority has been testing for like two years a contactless RFID token system or FAIR instrument system.
[51:15.160 --> 51:17.220]  But they're still having problems with it.
[51:17.320 --> 51:20.260]  And they still haven't rolled it out full for full everybody yet.
[51:21.500 --> 51:26.940]  So it may be even longer than 2018 before you see something like this in New York.
[51:27.160 --> 51:29.960]  And it's a much smaller system you have in Philadelphia.
[51:30.600 --> 51:30.620]  Yeah.
[51:32.100 --> 51:36.780]  SEPTA is a much smaller system than the MTA by probably several times smaller.
[51:37.220 --> 51:43.680]  But, you know, the big caution about this is not so much the technology that, you know, gets the data out of your device.
[51:43.680 --> 51:45.420]  But what do they do with that data?
[51:45.700 --> 51:47.300]  Like, you know, do they track?
[51:47.300 --> 51:49.280]  You know, they try... these things are addressable.
[51:49.880 --> 51:52.340]  And, you know, what are they doing with this data?
[51:52.480 --> 51:53.220]  Who's going where?
[51:53.420 --> 51:54.120]  And when?
[51:54.320 --> 51:55.160]  And how often?
[51:55.380 --> 51:56.240]  And with whom?
[51:56.720 --> 51:58.500]  And, like, what's happening to this data?
[51:58.540 --> 51:59.240]  What are they doing with it?
[51:59.340 --> 52:06.080]  I also know they have this RID system in place, I believe, in the PATH train stations in New York, and particularly New Jersey.
[52:06.780 --> 52:07.140]  But...
[52:07.140 --> 52:07.300]  Yeah.
[52:07.420 --> 52:07.760]  Yeah.
[52:07.940 --> 52:18.300]  And my other worry is more of just that, you know, by default, if a lot of these are being used with their phone, and even if they do have a disposable method, that's going to still kind of cut a certain percentage out of the tunnels.
[52:18.440 --> 52:20.560]  And I'm kind of wondering if that's part of the design.
[52:20.940 --> 52:22.760]  Is that a train whistle I hear in the background?
[52:24.640 --> 52:25.040]  Yes.
[52:25.040 --> 52:28.440]  Unfortunately, I do live in New Jersey and near a church, so things get epic.
[52:28.720 --> 52:42.920]  But no, yeah, apparently I'm more worried about, like, this sort of tech, especially if a lot of it is on your phone, even if they make a disposable method, that this will definitely, I feel like, cut possibly a certain percentage of types of people out of the tunnels,
[52:42.980 --> 52:45.780]  which I'm wondering if that's also by design, knowing the MTA.
[52:46.900 --> 52:47.680]  Good questions.
[52:47.800 --> 52:49.420]  We're going to have to see where this goes.
[52:49.840 --> 52:52.540]  But we will be covering here at Off the Hook, that's for sure.
[52:52.720 --> 52:53.180]  Thanks for calling.
[52:53.180 --> 52:54.440]  I can't wait to start hacking them.
[52:54.540 --> 52:54.880]  Thank you.
[52:55.960 --> 52:56.360]  Absolutely.
[52:56.800 --> 53:09.040]  I will say, as the owner of a non-anonymous auto-refilling MetroCard, where they get all my data and it's linked to me, to my account, I can go online and see everywhere I've taken the subway.
[53:09.640 --> 53:13.140]  There's a lot of privacy implications that are very frightening, but it is quite convenient.
[53:14.020 --> 53:16.740]  So it's a trade-off, for sure.
[53:17.700 --> 53:21.240]  Maybe we have time for one more phone call before we have to go.
[53:21.440 --> 53:22.980]  Let's try this one.
[53:23.100 --> 53:23.460]  Good evening.
[53:24.180 --> 53:24.880]  Oh, excellent.
[53:25.000 --> 53:25.200]  Howdy.
[53:25.280 --> 53:26.580]  I'm turning off my radio right now.
[53:26.880 --> 53:27.160]  Thank you.
[53:28.220 --> 53:35.520]  I just wanted to share some comments about the, I'll dub it, the Feinstein encryption mixtape, featuring, I didn't catch the name.
[53:36.720 --> 53:40.360]  The encryption bill we were talking about, the Compliance with Court Orders Act.
[53:40.960 --> 53:41.700]  Yes, that one.
[53:42.480 --> 53:47.780]  And as far as me visualizing it, I would say it's like the roadrunner painting tunnels on caves.
[53:49.080 --> 53:53.500]  And that's about what's up with Congress regulating their violations.
[53:53.800 --> 53:55.840]  And it's just like, why are we doing this?
[53:58.180 --> 53:59.760]  I think that's very astute.
[53:59.820 --> 54:00.840]  I think you might have something there.
[54:02.000 --> 54:02.440]  Weird.
[54:02.620 --> 54:02.940]  Thank you.
[54:03.260 --> 54:05.560]  I'll just stop and babbling with the correlation.
[54:05.780 --> 54:17.400]  How many times did we have to fight CISPA and it's applying variances that got denied before they tacked that on or whatever... I forget what bill around the holiday, maybe Thanksgiving they rolled that out?
[54:17.580 --> 54:17.840]  Yeah.
[54:17.960 --> 54:24.960]  I mean, the forces... I mean, that was an interesting case because the corporations were sort of all on one side on that one.
[54:25.080 --> 54:26.540]  And it was only people who opposed it.
[54:26.660 --> 54:31.020]  This one, I think there's going to be some large technology players who speak up to oppose it.
[54:31.280 --> 54:33.580]  But yeah, it's pretty worrying.
[54:33.780 --> 54:37.160]  And the Congress people know Congress a lot better than we do.
[54:38.180 --> 54:39.940]  We're out of time, but thanks for the call.
[54:40.680 --> 54:40.980]  Right on.
[54:41.040 --> 54:41.320]  Thank you.
[54:41.700 --> 54:42.400]  Yes, indeed.
[54:43.420 --> 54:44.600]  And yeah, you're right.
[54:44.680 --> 54:48.180]  We are just about out of time here, but I think this has been a fun episode.
[54:48.740 --> 54:49.920]  Thank you to all our callers.
[54:50.200 --> 54:54.060]  Send us email, othat2600.com.
[54:54.720 --> 55:00.680]  Stay tuned to hope.net, H-O-P-E, for the latest on our HOPE conference coming up in just a few short months.
[55:00.920 --> 55:04.220]  And stay tuned to this very radio station for the personal computer show.
[55:04.860 --> 55:06.340]  For Off the Hook, this is Rob T.
[55:06.440 --> 55:06.780]  Firefly.
[55:07.100 --> 55:07.880]  Have a good night.