[00:00.000 --> 00:00.720]  16.
[00:01.140 --> 00:02.840]  It was the best of times.
[00:02.840 --> 00:04.460]  It was the worst of times.
[00:04.980 --> 00:05.920]  11 p.m.
[00:06.040 --> 00:09.700]  New Year's Eve, right here on WBAI-FM.
[00:09.980 --> 00:11.300]  Wait for the history.
[00:11.580 --> 00:12.680]  And it's a little bit sad.
[00:12.920 --> 00:16.460]  Everybody knows the war is over.
[00:17.180 --> 00:20.620]  Everybody knows the good guys are.
[00:21.360 --> 00:28.780]  Hi, this is Alec Baldwin, and you're tuned to WBAI, listener-supported, non-commercial radio in New York.
[00:28.780 --> 00:30.180]  Anything can happen.
[00:30.500 --> 00:35.140]  Support WBAI, peace and justice radio in New York.
[00:35.520 --> 00:36.440]  Anything can happen.
[00:38.500 --> 00:39.920]  Anything can happen indeed.
[00:40.420 --> 00:44.100]  But it's 8 o'clock on a Wednesday, and what happens then?
[00:44.920 --> 00:46.700]  The program off the hook.
[00:46.960 --> 00:47.800]  That's what.
[00:49.220 --> 00:50.340]  Not always, though.
[00:50.780 --> 00:51.280]  Sometimes.
[00:51.640 --> 00:51.960]  Yeah.
[00:52.220 --> 00:52.880]  Okay, there you go.
[01:01.720 --> 01:03.700]  I cut myself while shaving.
[01:04.180 --> 01:06.260]  Now I can't make a cough.
[01:06.900 --> 01:09.060]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:11.660 --> 01:12.520]  But, fun diddly bump.
[01:12.760 --> 01:14.500]  But the best is back from worst.
[01:15.120 --> 01:17.020]  I hope that's understood.
[01:17.180 --> 01:18.020]  Fun diddly bump!
[01:53.100 --> 01:54.920]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[01:54.920 --> 01:56.660]  The program is off the hook.
[01:56.780 --> 01:59.520]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[01:59.520 --> 02:01.620]  Joined tonight by Rob T.
[02:01.720 --> 02:02.120]  Firefly.
[02:02.340 --> 02:02.980]  Good evening.
[02:03.380 --> 02:03.680]  Kyle.
[02:04.360 --> 02:05.340]  Hello, everyone.
[02:05.740 --> 02:07.240]  And Bernie S.
[02:07.920 --> 02:10.080]  Greetings from northeast Pennsylvania.
[02:10.760 --> 02:12.620]  Okay, that's a little different than what you usually say.
[02:12.880 --> 02:14.160]  You're not in Philadelphia, that means?
[02:14.460 --> 02:17.160]  No, I'm in the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area tonight.
[02:17.520 --> 02:18.580]  Okay, got it.
[02:19.240 --> 02:19.940]  Getting around.
[02:19.960 --> 02:23.820]  My geography is terrible, so I'm not even sure if Philadelphia is in the northeastern part.
[02:23.960 --> 02:25.100]  I think it's in the...
[02:25.100 --> 02:26.940]  It's near southeastern part.
[02:27.100 --> 02:27.900]  It's near Pittsburgh.
[02:28.500 --> 02:29.940]  No, he's not in Pittsburgh.
[02:30.160 --> 02:30.600]  No, Pittsburgh is...
[02:30.600 --> 02:32.160]  No, that's the west.
[02:32.700 --> 02:33.720]  Even I know that.
[02:35.480 --> 02:42.080]  Okay, more geography lessons later on as we talk about other things as well.
[02:42.080 --> 02:43.240]  We're going to be taking a listen to phone calls.
[02:43.300 --> 02:43.780]  Isn't that exciting?
[02:43.780 --> 02:45.220]  We haven't heard from our listeners in so long.
[02:46.420 --> 02:47.440]  So get ready.
[02:47.560 --> 02:51.420]  But the only caveat is we have one phone line.
[02:51.580 --> 02:52.480]  We used to have 12.
[02:52.640 --> 02:53.400]  Now we have one.
[02:53.900 --> 02:54.700]  Get used to it.
[02:54.740 --> 02:57.220]  It's going to be hard, the years ahead of us.
[02:58.320 --> 03:00.020]  So I'll give you the phone number now.
[03:00.200 --> 03:00.800]  I mean, why not?
[03:00.960 --> 03:02.300]  Why should anybody have an advantage?
[03:04.700 --> 03:07.120]  347-335-0818.
[03:07.900 --> 03:10.980]  I realize almost none of those numbers sound like our old number.
[03:11.640 --> 03:12.760]  347 is the area code.
[03:12.860 --> 03:15.260]  One of the area codes for Brooklyn, which is where we are right now.
[03:16.180 --> 03:16.900]  335 Exchange.
[03:17.320 --> 03:18.960]  And 0818, which is the cool part.
[03:18.960 --> 03:24.620]  So, yeah, we'll take phone calls later on and hopefully hear from our listeners.
[03:24.860 --> 03:29.820]  We've been hearing a lot from our listeners via email and various things we've been talking about over the last few weeks.
[03:30.460 --> 03:32.280]  We'll try to get to some of that as well.
[03:32.440 --> 03:45.300]  But first, I think the story that kind of dominates is the surprising, the rather shocking, if I do say so, a story of what happened with Yahoo.
[03:45.940 --> 03:48.140]  Last week, this happened.
[03:48.660 --> 03:51.460]  They disclosed that they were hacked yet again.
[03:51.600 --> 03:53.320]  And this was back in 2013.
[03:54.520 --> 03:56.960]  Why did it take three years for them to figure this out?
[03:57.240 --> 04:05.020]  Well, maybe because it was a billion accounts that got hacked and they had to take that long to add them all up.
[04:05.100 --> 04:05.480]  I don't know.
[04:05.560 --> 04:06.540]  I don't know what the reason is.
[04:06.880 --> 04:10.220]  But the story basically goes something like this.
[04:10.460 --> 04:12.580]  Yahoo has suffered another hack.
[04:12.820 --> 04:22.040]  The company disclosed that it has discovered a breach of more than 1 billion user accounts that occurred in August of 2013.
[04:22.040 --> 04:25.520]  When you say more than a billion, you don't mean a billion and three.
[04:25.880 --> 04:28.780]  You don't mean a billion and 112.
[04:29.420 --> 04:33.480]  You mean something like a billion, 250,000, whatever.
[04:33.840 --> 04:37.420]  The number that follows the billion would have been a big number in the past.
[04:37.780 --> 04:45.380]  But now we're talking about such massive, huge numbers that doesn't even register anymore.
[04:45.880 --> 04:51.420]  This breach, by the way, is believed to be completely separate and distinct from that other breach they had.
[04:52.080 --> 04:54.600]  Remember, in September, they reported a breach.
[04:55.100 --> 04:57.700]  That only affected 500 million accounts.
[04:57.900 --> 04:59.460]  So that's a different breach.
[04:59.760 --> 05:08.120]  And if we're to assume those are different accounts, that's 1.5 billion accounts of Yahoo's that have been hacked.
[05:08.260 --> 05:13.840]  First of all, how in God's name does Yahoo have 1.5 billion accounts?
[05:13.840 --> 05:17.520]  I mean, we must be talking people that have multiple accounts, right?
[05:17.620 --> 05:21.360]  Tell me there aren't 1.5 billion people in the world that chose Yahoo.
[05:23.060 --> 05:26.580]  There might have been at some point, because Yahoo used to be kind of a big deal.
[05:27.340 --> 05:28.380]  Yeah, I guess.
[05:28.520 --> 05:30.480]  But 1.5 billion people?
[05:30.620 --> 05:35.720]  Is it possible they just slowly accumulated that many users because they've been around for so long?
[05:36.820 --> 05:40.540]  You mean people never deleted their accounts, or they forgot their password and registered again?
[05:40.720 --> 05:41.180]  Yeah, maybe.
[05:41.400 --> 05:41.980]  Stuff like that.
[05:42.060 --> 05:42.340]  Okay.
[05:42.480 --> 05:47.240]  My next question, though, is are there any Yahoo accounts that did not get hacked?
[05:47.680 --> 05:49.440]  Because add those to the mix, too.
[05:50.620 --> 05:52.280]  And you might even hit 2 billion.
[05:52.540 --> 05:52.860]  I don't know.
[05:52.940 --> 05:53.520]  Bernie, what do you think?
[05:54.120 --> 05:54.680]  Yes, Bernie.
[05:54.800 --> 05:54.980]  What do you think?
[05:55.140 --> 06:06.260]  Well, first of all, just for people to wrap their mind around, this is basic math, but this is, what, five or six times the size of the entire population of the United States of America, this is a large number of people.
[06:06.460 --> 06:14.940]  And possibly, I mean, just possibly Yahoo didn't let anybody know about this three years ago because they were putting the company up for sale.
[06:15.260 --> 06:26.740]  In fact, Verizon has already agreed to buy Yahoo and is now saying, well, now that you mention this, the company's worth a lot less, so we'll probably offer you less than 4 billion, $4 billion.
[06:27.220 --> 06:28.300]  You know, that's a part of me.
[06:29.100 --> 06:32.020]  The company's worth $120 billion a few years ago.
[06:32.020 --> 06:33.540]  So now it's worth like $4 billion or less.
[06:33.620 --> 06:42.680]  Yeah, well, there's a part of me that believes that there's somebody at Verizon behind all this that's trying to get the price down, or there's somebody at Yahoo behind all this that really doesn't want to sell to Verizon.
[06:43.880 --> 06:44.140]  Could be.
[06:44.640 --> 06:45.600]  It's certainly possible.
[06:45.780 --> 06:59.220]  But the other thing is that this is related to the whole DNC hack as well, because there were accounts that, believe it or not, were Yahoo accounts that were swept up in this.
[07:00.180 --> 07:01.040]  Isn't that something?
[07:02.900 --> 07:09.360]  It does not surprise me that the type of people who would have their accounts swept up in the DNC hack would be the type to still use Yahoo.
[07:09.640 --> 07:11.940]  I'm sure there were some AOL common addresses in there as well.
[07:12.000 --> 07:12.920]  It just takes one person.
[07:13.040 --> 07:23.560]  Just takes one person having a stupid email server, you know, a service that isn't secure and talks to other people who are following the rules.
[07:24.420 --> 07:26.880]  And then all of a sudden, all this information is out there.
[07:27.040 --> 07:28.060]  It doesn't take much.
[07:28.060 --> 07:30.300]  But wow, more than a billion accounts.
[07:30.500 --> 07:31.000]  I'm just...
[07:31.000 --> 07:32.340]  I can't wrap my head around that.
[07:32.480 --> 07:36.500]  Did you mention how much this database of accounts was allegedly being sold for?
[07:36.940 --> 07:38.840]  I heard it was a really good price.
[07:39.020 --> 07:39.780]  What do you got?
[07:39.900 --> 07:42.160]  Around 300K, apparently.
[07:42.460 --> 07:43.120]  300,000.
[07:43.320 --> 07:45.080]  That's from a register article on this.
[07:45.180 --> 07:45.220]  Yeah.
[07:45.280 --> 07:48.080]  So that's something like 33 cents per user, right?
[07:48.640 --> 07:49.620]  Yeah, I guess...
[07:49.620 --> 07:50.580]  No, that's quick math.
[07:50.580 --> 07:53.440]  Yeah, I'm good at this kind of stuff.
[07:53.640 --> 07:54.020]  Wow.
[07:54.160 --> 07:54.420]  Okay.
[07:55.620 --> 07:58.040]  But that's what's amazing about this.
[07:58.900 --> 08:08.340]  When an account gets hacked in old school style, selling the information is something that is so completely alien in the hacker world.
[08:08.460 --> 08:09.340]  That's not what it's about.
[08:09.440 --> 08:10.480]  That's never been what it's about.
[08:10.700 --> 08:16.220]  This is obviously something that goes beyond that, something on a professional level.
[08:16.220 --> 08:20.960]  And in fact, they're saying that state actors were likely behind this as well.
[08:21.120 --> 08:22.660]  So here we go again.
[08:22.980 --> 08:33.520]  You know, it's basically people with a motive, with a profit motive too, and possibly political motives behind all of this.
[08:33.980 --> 08:36.980]  And it just keeps getting more and more weird and interesting.
[08:37.220 --> 08:37.540]  Yeah.
[08:37.680 --> 08:43.900]  Just a little plug for a very useful site if you're worried if you might be among those who have had their info stolen.
[08:43.900 --> 08:51.320]  There is a site called haveibeenpwned.com that's spelled haveibeenpwned.com.
[08:51.380 --> 08:58.880]  And this is a site that gets hold of these databases from these major data breaches and has a little search tool.
[08:58.880 --> 09:04.100]  So you can put in your email address or your username and see if you turn up in any of the leaked info.
[09:04.280 --> 09:07.260]  Wouldn't just any email address at yahoo.com be included?
[09:07.380 --> 09:08.540]  I mean, that'd be an easy way to...
[09:08.540 --> 09:09.020]  Very likely.
[09:09.040 --> 09:11.940]  I guess if you've had a Yahoo account sometime in the past 20 whatever years.
[09:11.940 --> 09:15.240]  What are you supposed to do if you do show up on that list?
[09:15.440 --> 09:19.680]  I guess then it will tell you in which data breach it happened.
[09:19.860 --> 09:28.520]  And you can maybe take measures to secure that account or other accounts where you use the same login or things that you might have stored in that account or whatever.
[09:28.980 --> 09:31.500]  Here are the measures that I think we can agree on.
[09:32.560 --> 09:43.300]  Don't use services like Yahoo for your sensitive email if you're not using some kind of encryption to protect it when they do get hacked because they will.
[09:43.460 --> 09:44.540]  It's got nothing to do with you.
[09:44.860 --> 09:50.820]  Obviously, these billion users all didn't use the same password or something that was guessable.
[09:50.960 --> 09:57.060]  It was obviously a breach of a much bigger size than that.
[09:57.060 --> 10:15.200]  So, if a server or rather a massive service such as Gmail, such as Yahoo, Hushmail, what have you, if they get compromised in some way, then you get compromised too through no fault of your own.
[10:16.200 --> 10:20.220]  If you're running your own mail server, obviously, then you have control.
[10:20.420 --> 10:22.200]  Now, I don't expect everybody to be able to do that.
[10:22.340 --> 10:23.380]  It's great fun to do it.
[10:23.380 --> 10:28.400]  It's worth learning how to do it, but I know not everybody knows how to do these things or wants to know how to do these things.
[10:28.540 --> 10:32.560]  But you can find people that you trust that are doing this.
[10:32.760 --> 10:45.060]  Why not trust somebody you know more than some faceless corporation that is going to do something massively stupid and completely compromise your privacy and try to invade it while you're using their system in the first place?
[10:45.200 --> 10:45.340]  Kyle?
[10:45.940 --> 10:53.880]  Another tactic I think we could all agree on in addition to that, I think, is compartmentalizing your use of a lot of these services.
[10:54.180 --> 11:01.920]  And when you have a service that wants to talk to another account or another service, create a whole new account for that.
[11:02.380 --> 11:06.860]  Separate the stuff as much as you can as a layer of protection.
[11:06.860 --> 11:13.340]  If you're even more concerned, pay very close attention to how you connect to those services that you've compartmentalized.
[11:13.340 --> 11:31.400]  And there's also the fact that people are doing something I think is very foolish, which is doing mission-critical stuff with a free service like Yahoo, something you're not paying for, something that's basically provided at will and has no real reason to work all that hard at keeping your stuff secure.
[11:31.580 --> 11:36.280]  This is something that you're being given for free so it could scrape information from you and advertise to you and so on and so on.
[11:36.300 --> 11:40.220]  But it's not something that you have a customer-provider relationship with.
[11:40.220 --> 11:42.340]  It's a freebie that you're just making use of.
[11:42.340 --> 11:44.320]  And there are a lot of fun freebies out there.
[11:44.400 --> 11:45.260]  I use many of them myself.
[11:45.440 --> 11:58.640]  But if you're putting things in there that you depend on or that could really have serious implications on your life, your business, whatever, it's time to reexamine that and see if there's something you could maybe take to a professional service.
[11:58.740 --> 11:59.660]  Well, I think you raise a good point.
[11:59.660 --> 12:06.160]  You don't have that customer service relationship because you're not a customer.
[12:06.280 --> 12:06.760]  You're a product.
[12:07.020 --> 12:17.640]  You know, when you're not paying for a service, you are something that is being exploited by the company to make money through advertising, through various other things that they do.
[12:17.760 --> 12:18.440]  Bernie, did you have something?
[12:19.160 --> 12:19.780]  Yeah, thank you.
[12:19.840 --> 12:34.280]  I just wanted to say, if it's not obvious to everyone who's listening, when a hack like this happens, and they get your, not just your email address and password, but probably other information about you, if you're using that same password with other services,
[12:34.300 --> 12:36.480]  you need to change that.
[12:36.640 --> 12:36.880]  Yes.
[12:36.980 --> 12:38.180]  Because they already know who you are.
[12:38.300 --> 12:49.120]  Whoever hacked this stuff has this database, knows who you are, could probably find your other email addresses and hack into them if they know your Yahoo password or what other services you're using with the same password.
[12:49.120 --> 13:00.780]  So you should never really, I know it's a pain to remember different passwords for different things, but it's really important because when one account gets hacked, they could get into all your stuff if they have, if you're just using one password.
[13:00.960 --> 13:10.420]  You know, you raise a good point here because people do say that it's difficult to memorize lots of different passwords for lots of different accounts.
[13:10.600 --> 13:13.660]  First of all, that is the only way to remain secure.
[13:13.800 --> 13:24.820]  You cannot use the same password for even two different services because if one gets compromised, the other is very likely to get compromised, but it's really not as difficult as people make it out to be.
[13:24.980 --> 13:36.300]  I'd like to demonstrate that, but to do that, remember those things that we used to, what are they called, had like card covers and paper in the middle and you'd flip them and it'd be words and...
[13:36.300 --> 13:37.140]  Oh, books?
[13:37.260 --> 13:37.540]  Books.
[13:37.720 --> 13:38.140]  Thank you.
[13:38.280 --> 13:38.700]  Thank you.
[13:38.780 --> 13:39.000]  Wow.
[13:39.100 --> 13:40.200]  It's amazing how quickly you forget.
[13:40.640 --> 13:42.440]  Is there one of those around here somewhere?
[13:42.840 --> 13:44.340]  A book?
[13:44.820 --> 13:45.480]  Book, you say?
[13:46.040 --> 13:46.660]  I don't know.
[13:46.800 --> 13:47.580]  We're a radio station.
[13:47.740 --> 13:48.260]  We're audio-based.
[13:48.260 --> 13:48.860]  No, just a book.
[13:49.020 --> 13:49.220]  Book?
[13:49.500 --> 13:50.200]  Yes, please.
[13:50.320 --> 13:51.280]  Can someone find one?
[13:51.700 --> 13:52.080]  Really?
[13:52.100 --> 13:52.780]  We don't have...
[13:52.780 --> 13:53.180]  A book?
[13:53.220 --> 13:54.200]  Well, it's a radio studio.
[13:54.200 --> 13:57.400]  I guess we wouldn't expect to find...
[13:57.400 --> 13:59.140]  You want something that's been published.
[13:59.140 --> 14:00.960]  Here's a compact disc, all right?
[14:01.120 --> 14:01.620]  Now, you know what?
[14:01.760 --> 14:02.360]  I'll tell you what.
[14:02.560 --> 14:04.840]  I'll do something that makes a lot more sense.
[14:05.460 --> 14:08.720]  I'll take this story on the Yahoo hack, all right?
[14:08.820 --> 14:09.380]  And use that.
[14:09.480 --> 14:10.840]  Pretend that's one of the...
[14:10.840 --> 14:11.840]  What was it again?
[14:12.280 --> 14:12.720]  Books.
[14:12.880 --> 14:13.160]  Books.
[14:13.460 --> 14:13.680]  Book.
[14:13.880 --> 14:14.160]  Okay.
[14:15.560 --> 14:21.180]  Okay, so here, I'll go to a paragraph in the middle of the story, all right?
[14:23.580 --> 14:26.560]  Let's say you have a book in your house.
[14:26.600 --> 14:28.140]  You know what book it is.
[14:28.360 --> 14:29.680]  You keep it in a prominent place.
[14:29.920 --> 14:30.480]  All right.
[14:30.800 --> 14:34.220]  Here is the first paragraph of that book.
[14:35.040 --> 14:44.980]  Yahoo also announced today that its proprietary code had been accessed by a hacker who used the code to forge cookies that could be used to access accounts without a password.
[14:45.540 --> 14:46.100]  Okay.
[14:46.460 --> 14:49.760]  Your password is the first letter of every word in that sentence.
[14:49.960 --> 14:53.560]  Y-A-A-T-T-I-P-C-H.
[14:53.660 --> 14:54.440]  Okay, you get the idea.
[14:54.600 --> 14:56.500]  But nobody is ever going to guess that.
[14:56.700 --> 14:58.620]  Your next account is the next sentence.
[14:58.720 --> 15:03.820]  The outside forensic experts have identified user accounts for which they believe forged cookies were taken or used.
[15:03.960 --> 15:05.380]  So that's T-O-F-E.
[15:05.500 --> 15:06.100]  Yeah, okay.
[15:06.340 --> 15:07.800]  You have to have the book nearby.
[15:07.900 --> 15:11.320]  You have to know to look at that.
[15:11.420 --> 15:15.260]  But it's not as hard as people make it out to be.
[15:15.400 --> 15:17.060]  You can carry something a lot smaller.
[15:17.140 --> 15:18.400]  You can have something in your wallet.
[15:18.600 --> 15:24.200]  Even if you lose your wallet, nobody is going to know that it's the first letter of every word in that sentence that's your password.
[15:24.380 --> 15:29.260]  And that the next server you use is a password for a whole different service.
[15:29.920 --> 15:37.460]  You know, there are probably lots of other better ways to remember different passwords for different systems that you might use.
[15:37.860 --> 15:39.980]  But this is just to demonstrate it's doable.
[15:40.220 --> 15:41.440]  It's not something that's impossible.
[15:41.480 --> 15:47.140]  And I think too often we're told for the sake of convenience, just give all your data to some big company someplace.
[15:47.140 --> 15:48.220]  They'll take care of the rest.
[15:48.500 --> 15:49.640]  And I'm really sick of it.
[15:49.680 --> 15:57.960]  You know, I use these services to such a minimal degree, mostly to play with, mostly to have fun with, and to try and break them too, because I think that's a part of what we do.
[15:58.800 --> 16:05.060]  But even with that, the attempts to invade my privacy are really annoying.
[16:05.220 --> 16:13.300]  I'm getting these little reminders on my phone to pay a bill by tomorrow when I never told them that I owed money to this particular...
[16:13.300 --> 16:14.000]  They're all accurate.
[16:14.180 --> 16:16.160]  They all know exactly what I owe to whom.
[16:16.280 --> 16:29.800]  But because I gave my email address to one of those companies, they're somehow sharing through email and sending to my phone, which is linked to that account somehow, and I'm getting these annoying little messages.
[16:30.080 --> 16:43.900]  The other day, for the first time, I was encouraged to share photographs for some kind of GPS application to help people find some location, because they determined that I was at this particular intersection, and there was no picture for that intersection.
[16:44.040 --> 16:49.880]  So I got this kind of intrusive message saying, hey, we know you're there, so why don't you share the picture you took?
[16:50.300 --> 16:54.640]  And I don't think they would want me to share the picture that I took, because they don't know what the subject matter was.
[16:54.760 --> 16:58.300]  But these kinds of things happen to all of us.
[16:58.420 --> 17:03.140]  And to those of us who use those services a lot more, they are a lot more intrusive.
[17:03.300 --> 17:04.660]  So there are ways around it.
[17:04.780 --> 17:05.740]  You don't have to be a victim.
[17:07.380 --> 17:11.920]  Yeah, I think one other thing, it's a little bit loftier.
[17:12.120 --> 17:29.580]  But if you're one of those people that is a friend that knows how to do some of this stuff, maybe teach other people some of the core principles behind this, so that they can organize and create alternatives for some of these services, so that there are safer alternatives that are as convenient for people who don't want to learn it themselves.
[17:29.840 --> 17:31.640]  And I'd like to hear all these ideas.
[17:32.080 --> 17:34.840]  Email us, OTH at 2600.com.
[17:34.940 --> 17:38.100]  Bernie, you don't use the same password for everything, do you?
[17:38.540 --> 17:46.780]  I use a different password for everything, but I have a secret algorithm in my head that makes it very easy to remember the different passwords depending on the service I'm using.
[17:46.780 --> 17:48.040]  So that's another way to do it.
[17:48.180 --> 17:49.300]  It's inside your head.
[17:49.400 --> 17:50.620]  You can't get more secure than that.
[17:51.640 --> 17:53.700]  Well, there's always waterboarding, but...
[17:54.280 --> 17:55.140]  Yes, that's true.
[17:55.140 --> 17:58.160]  Or breadboarding in your case, which I'm trying to...
[17:58.160 --> 18:00.680]  You don't want to bring those memories up of...
[18:00.680 --> 18:01.280]  Very traumatic.
[18:01.540 --> 18:01.980]  I forgot.
[18:02.300 --> 18:03.420]  I put that out of my head.
[18:03.580 --> 18:07.680]  That's closing ceremonies at Hope if people want to witness Bernie S.
[18:07.740 --> 18:08.480]  being breadboarded.
[18:09.080 --> 18:10.640]  It's our own in-house technique.
[18:10.880 --> 18:12.980]  It is, and it proved to be very effective as well.
[18:13.180 --> 18:13.540]  Yes, very effective.
[18:13.540 --> 18:26.160]  Moving to something more serious, the attack on the marketplace in Berlin, I've noticed there are calls for more surveillance as a result of this.
[18:26.260 --> 18:31.520]  I'm going to read a bit of a story from a publication called The Inquisitor, which I assume is not fake news.
[18:31.640 --> 18:46.440]  The attack on a Berlin Christmas market on Monday has the whole world in mourning as German authorities continued to search for a suspect while politicians and citizens alike tried to make sense of the tragedy that took the lives of 12 people and injured dozens more.
[18:46.660 --> 19:00.620]  The search is being complicated by the absence of security camera footage that would typically be available for similar events occurring elsewhere in Europe and the United States, in busy parts of cities, and at crowded public places like a Christmas market.
[19:00.840 --> 19:09.380]  Now, according to The New York Times, there is no security camera footage of the attack on the market in Berlin due to German attitudes towards surveillance.
[19:09.760 --> 19:20.660]  Now, such security footage has been historically helpful to investigators in piecing together similar tragic events such as an attack in Nice several months back, which bears striking resemblance to the attack in Berlin.
[19:20.840 --> 19:25.280]  Security camera footage of that attack was helpful in the investigation by authorities.
[19:25.280 --> 19:27.880]  That's according to the BBC.
[19:30.860 --> 19:41.400]  The Christmas market attack and the ensuing investigation comes shortly after authorities in Berlin successfully apprehended a suspect in the infamous train kicker incident.
[19:41.700 --> 19:42.780]  Not that you heard about this.
[19:42.940 --> 19:46.740]  This was captured on security camera footage from a Berlin underground train station.
[19:46.940 --> 19:58.280]  In that footage, a man seen holding a cigarette and a beer bottle is seen approaching a woman from behind and kicking her in the back as she walked down the stairs toward the entrance to one of the underground railway stations.
[19:58.840 --> 20:03.440]  The video received worldwide attention and was assumed to be a hate crime by many viewers.
[20:03.840 --> 20:10.120]  It can be argued that without the presence of this security footage, it would have been nearly impossible for authorities to identify the suspect.
[20:10.760 --> 20:17.160]  This has caused police organizations in Germany to call for an increased presence of security cameras in public places.
[20:17.200 --> 20:17.800]  So here we go.
[20:18.040 --> 20:27.720]  You know, it's really kind of difficult to argue against something like that other than the fact that we're under constant surveillance for everything we do.
[20:27.920 --> 20:35.140]  And while we may not see the misuse of it right away, the tools are definitely being put in place.
[20:35.280 --> 20:47.160]  It's kind of a parallel to what we've seen in the Obama administration where all this surveillance has been maintained and built up and now we're handing it over in a nice little package to Donald Trump.
[20:47.380 --> 20:50.080]  So we will certainly see the abuses there.
[20:51.040 --> 20:56.340]  And likewise, I think in any country where you have massive surveillance, you will see abuses.
[20:56.720 --> 20:57.340]  Bernie, what do you think?
[20:58.360 --> 20:59.680]  Bernie, what do you think?
[21:00.520 --> 21:05.960]  I think that, believe it or not, I actually heard something useful on CNN last night.
[21:06.080 --> 21:10.240]  I was visiting a family member at a hospital up here and it's CNN.
[21:10.500 --> 21:11.720]  After a while, see what the news was.
[21:11.880 --> 21:28.040]  And there was a reporter in Berlin reporting that there was no security camera footage because Germans, particularly in Berlin and elsewhere, are more skittish about deploying such technologies because of their Nazi and Stasi past.
[21:28.540 --> 21:36.580]  And that is really interesting that they made a deliberate decision there to not have too much Orwellian government surveillance because they knew what it was like before.
[21:36.780 --> 21:39.900]  Of course, there was no video surveillance cameras really during...
[21:39.900 --> 21:45.260]  Well, I guess the Stasi, they had video surveillance, but it was more audio and personal spies they had.
[21:45.480 --> 21:50.940]  But the bottom line is, there's a lot of people in Germany now that are probably wrangling with this in their heads.
[21:51.060 --> 22:01.140]  Like, well, we know this, bad governments can get a hold of this technology, but then we feel unsafe because this truck driver... Security cameras would not have stopped that truck.
[22:01.420 --> 22:02.080]  No, they wouldn't.
[22:02.240 --> 22:03.040]  That's not the argument.
[22:03.160 --> 22:04.480]  The argument isn't that it would have stopped the truck.
[22:04.600 --> 22:10.940]  It just would have made it easier to see who it was who was driving and to have the face of that particular person plastered in media.
[22:11.480 --> 22:12.000]  Right.
[22:12.120 --> 22:15.820]  Well, apparently they found the guy's ID under the driver's seat, so they're looking for him now.
[22:16.260 --> 22:22.520]  Which, you know, why do they constantly leave behind their driver's licenses and ID papers?
[22:23.400 --> 22:26.380]  Some criminals are just really not very, very sharp.
[22:26.380 --> 22:43.740]  The other thing that allows them to do is analyze where people were able to exploit vulnerabilities in the logistics system that allowed them to get into this truck for future reference to whatever end that ends up being.
[22:44.040 --> 22:53.440]  Well, you know, I think the point that Cindy Cohn brought up from the EFF on our show a couple of weeks ago, there's a big difference between surveillance and cameras.
[22:53.440 --> 23:04.200]  cameras, people walking around with their own cameras and basically photographing things or videotaping things on their own and not being just under surveillance.
[23:04.360 --> 23:09.620]  Lots of times, these crimes are captured by individual people.
[23:09.620 --> 23:19.980]  So it's not like you're constantly being watched and scrutinized by the state, but there are people around who, if something interesting is happening, are recording something.
[23:19.980 --> 23:26.960]  For instance, they could be recording all kinds of abuses by the authority figures, something that they're not too keen on releasing themselves.
[23:27.240 --> 23:41.560]  I think that's really where we stand to benefit as the strength through individuals, not the monolithic covering of every square foot in a city so that you can't jaywalk without somebody noticing.
[23:42.480 --> 23:43.520]  Does that make sense?
[23:44.260 --> 23:44.560]  Yeah.
[23:44.660 --> 23:45.340]  Yeah, absolutely.
[23:45.340 --> 23:46.260]  All right.
[23:46.780 --> 23:49.300]  Well, staying in Germany for a moment.
[23:49.420 --> 23:56.000]  By the way, the Chaos Congress is going to begin in a couple of days, and we don't seem to be there.
[23:56.020 --> 23:57.460]  I guess we're not going this year.
[23:58.080 --> 23:59.860]  Well, it's possible.
[24:00.020 --> 24:00.860]  No, I don't think so.
[24:01.620 --> 24:02.000]  Emmanuel?
[24:02.260 --> 24:02.600]  Yes, Bernie?
[24:03.000 --> 24:14.500]  I ran into several Germans at a really neat art exhibit in Manhattan last past weekend called The Glass Room.
[24:14.640 --> 24:15.400]  Did you check it out?
[24:15.460 --> 24:23.200]  There was a lot of people from a German privacy group that were there, and they're all CCC fans, and they were asking me if I was going to CCC.
[24:23.440 --> 24:24.200]  I said, I can.
[24:24.400 --> 24:25.300]  I have some other applications.
[24:25.520 --> 24:28.400]  But it was good running into some German hackers.
[24:28.660 --> 24:30.380]  There are German hackers everywhere.
[24:30.460 --> 24:33.200]  So that's just something that people need to know.
[24:33.720 --> 24:35.900]  But there's going to be a whole lot of them in Hamburg.
[24:36.500 --> 24:40.660]  It runs the 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th of December every year.
[24:41.640 --> 24:48.580]  Of course, it's also sold out, so you can go there and watch people go in and out, I guess.
[24:48.740 --> 24:53.780]  But I don't know if you'll be able to get in at this point, unless you buy someone else's ticket or something.
[24:53.880 --> 24:55.620]  But go to ccc.de for more information.
[24:55.820 --> 25:05.440]  But sticking in Germany for just a little bit, apparently the issue of fake news over there is being dealt with in a rather interesting way.
[25:05.640 --> 25:17.200]  The government is threatening to bring in legislation next year that would see Facebook and other social media firms fined up to half a billion euros for publishing fake news.
[25:17.500 --> 25:27.100]  Market-dominating platforms like Facebook will be legally required to build a legal protection office in Germany that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
[25:27.200 --> 25:32.200]  That's according to parliamentary chair of the Social Democratic Party, Thomas Obermann.
[25:32.200 --> 25:34.520]  And he said that to Der Spiegel.
[25:35.180 --> 25:45.880]  And if after appropriate examination, he says, Facebook does not delete the offending message within 24 hours, it should expect individual fines of up to 500,000 euros.
[25:46.320 --> 25:53.140]  The subject of a fake news story would be able to demand the correction published with similar prominence, he added.
[25:54.380 --> 25:54.940]  Wow.
[25:55.720 --> 25:56.700]  I don't know.
[25:56.860 --> 26:01.620]  This really does not seem to me to be the way to deal with something like this.
[26:02.260 --> 26:05.320]  Fake news, obviously, is something that a lot of people are discussing.
[26:06.900 --> 26:21.360]  But this scares me more, this definition of what is fake news and what is not, and a penalty for publishing something that is wrong or fake or a parody or God knows what.
[26:21.900 --> 26:27.300]  It just seems to me that could be abused a whole lot more than the fake news story in the first place could be abused.
[26:27.300 --> 26:37.720]  I think, you know, we all have the intelligence, the power to look at a story and judge it based on its merits and also based on the merits of where it is coming from.
[26:37.880 --> 26:46.460]  If it's coming from a site that is known for publishing inaccurate or hysterically crazy news articles, then you take that with a grain of salt.
[26:46.560 --> 26:46.880]  And you know what?
[26:46.880 --> 26:49.560]  If you believe it, you're probably going to believe anything.
[26:49.560 --> 26:52.560]  And you can't really control what people believe.
[26:53.400 --> 26:59.880]  Was there any clarity about how those funds would be allocated and what those fines would then be used for?
[27:00.480 --> 27:07.320]  Not in this story, but I know that jail time was also included in this.
[27:07.460 --> 27:12.620]  Five years in jail if you're convicted under the strict libel laws over in Germany.
[27:12.820 --> 27:17.420]  So, yeah, it seems like a bit of an overreaction.
[27:17.620 --> 27:17.880]  I don't know.
[27:17.940 --> 27:20.880]  Bernie, what do you think the best way to deal with fake news is?
[27:21.580 --> 27:28.960]  Well, they don't have a First Amendment in Germany, so that law could not be struck down as unconstitutional as it surely would be here.
[27:29.280 --> 27:30.660]  Well, who knows what's coming?
[27:30.860 --> 27:36.240]  But in any case, I really don't think censorship is the answer.
[27:36.500 --> 27:39.680]  I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think censorship is.
[27:39.820 --> 27:47.780]  Whenever you get the government saying what should be legally publishable or not, it goes down a path that makes me uncomfortable.
[27:48.860 --> 28:04.980]  Yeah, I would say that filtering and scrutiny is important for things that are just outright sort of scams or some sort of scheme or racket that someone's devised.
[28:05.200 --> 28:14.740]  But I also think that protection for opinion and people to express themselves is quite important.
[28:15.340 --> 28:24.200]  But maybe this will allow some of those companies to take what is disseminated on their networks a little bit more seriously.
[28:24.720 --> 28:38.560]  Yeah, I'd kind of, given the choice, I'd rather have a million pieces of crappy fake news out there than have one piece of content of interest, one piece of genuine content taken down or unjustly censored.
[28:39.020 --> 28:40.880]  And I think this is going in the wrong direction.
[28:40.980 --> 28:41.220]  Oh, yep.
[28:41.380 --> 28:44.000]  And also, you know, truth is subjective.
[28:44.000 --> 29:04.620]  So we could say something about, oh, I don't know, a leader of a country in the months ahead that is open to some contention as to perhaps say, oh, I don't know, his mental state or his intelligence or something along those lines.
[29:04.620 --> 29:11.060]  And that could be defined by said leader as fake, false, libelous.
[29:11.280 --> 29:17.020]  And under this kind of a law, we would be criminals, we would be fined, we would be imprisoned.
[29:17.420 --> 29:26.440]  And to me, that's a whole lot worse than putting out a story that some people might believe and some people might not believe.
[29:26.440 --> 29:38.000]  And I think if you have an informed populace, you have people actually discussing things and comparing facts, then fake news is no longer something to really be concerned about.
[29:38.220 --> 29:53.160]  I think what we've seen, what's been the problem here recently is that platforms like Facebook are pretending to be news sources when actually they're just ways for people to communicate amongst each other.
[29:53.680 --> 30:01.600]  And you can see something on there and believe that it's really coming from a bonafide news source, but it's actually just something that someone posted on Facebook.
[30:01.980 --> 30:08.740]  The fact that we don't realize that and emphasize that enough is what I think led to most of the problems.
[30:09.320 --> 30:11.460]  Yeah, it's a bit heavy handed, I think.
[30:13.440 --> 30:19.260]  And I mean, like you said, people can communicate and share amongst one another.
[30:19.440 --> 30:29.620]  I mean, you wouldn't consider memes that people post, like images and so on that they've made themselves or otherwise reposted.
[30:29.660 --> 30:31.240]  You wouldn't consider that a news source.
[30:31.420 --> 30:32.520]  But it's as easy.
[30:32.680 --> 30:42.300]  It's of the same quality if you want to self-produce and thus accessible to then share widely.
[30:43.780 --> 30:44.180]  Yes.
[30:44.360 --> 30:45.060]  Bernie, anything from you?
[30:45.940 --> 30:47.880]  I'm looking forward to our callers tonight.
[30:48.620 --> 30:49.460]  I am too.
[30:49.460 --> 30:53.260]  But you're just going to have to wait a little while longer because we have a couple other stories to get through.
[30:53.860 --> 31:00.020]  Again, that phone number, when we start taking phone calls, 347-335-0818.
[31:01.600 --> 31:08.240]  Here's something also in the department of people taking the wrong things a little too seriously.
[31:08.840 --> 31:12.460]  This comes from a site called Fandroid.com.
[31:12.620 --> 31:16.880]  I have no idea what it's about, but this post just got my attention.
[31:17.840 --> 31:20.000]  It's entitled, Idiot Rename...
[31:20.000 --> 31:23.360]  Any story that starts with the word idiot just gets my attention by default.
[31:23.840 --> 31:30.380]  Idiot renames Wi-Fi hotspot to Galaxy Note 7 during flight and ruins holiday travel for everyone.
[31:32.100 --> 31:33.020]  Oh, yes.
[31:33.540 --> 31:35.440]  Okay, so here's what happened.
[31:35.600 --> 31:42.840]  Traveling, and this is in the words of Chris Chavez, traveling during the holidays is both a test in patience and will.
[31:43.140 --> 31:46.380]  Those with family out of state or overseas know this all too well.
[31:46.620 --> 31:54.020]  Aside from dealing with long lines and turbulent weather, you pretty much have to pray to the gods that nothing goes wrong and your flight stays on schedule.
[31:54.280 --> 32:02.240]  A single delayed flight, or worse, a canceled one, could throw everything off, bringing about the end of your world and sanity as you know it.
[32:02.360 --> 32:11.340]  So, what happens when a would-be practical joker crosses the line of a harmless joke and into something more dot, dot, dot, criminal?
[32:12.140 --> 32:24.220]  This is something that I, more senior editor Serenity Caldwell, these are things and people I have no idea who they are, knows about firsthand.
[32:24.380 --> 32:30.320]  After what should have been routine travel was completely derailed by someone playing an incredibly insensitive joke.
[32:30.480 --> 32:36.260]  Okay, so I guess I, more, and it's spelled like a Mac thing, lowercase I, more.
[32:37.620 --> 32:42.720]  The senior editor named Serenity Caldwell is the person that had this happen to them.
[32:43.240 --> 32:47.780]  And by now you know the story of the now canceled Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
[32:49.300 --> 32:53.900]  A flaw in the phone's design caused batteries to spontaneously combust.
[32:54.120 --> 33:03.040]  Apparently, there wasn't enough room for them to expand inside the phone, causing smoke, flames, and the very real possibility of catching other things on fire as a result.
[33:03.320 --> 33:10.680]  Didn't take long before news spread and the Note 7 was explicitly banned from being taken on flights, obviously due to their unstable nature.
[33:10.880 --> 33:17.220]  So, what happens when someone broadcasts the equivalent of a bomb scare using their phone's SSID?
[33:17.560 --> 33:19.320]  You can imagine the hysteria.
[33:19.480 --> 33:26.040]  According to Caldwell, she arrived at her gate to learn that her flight had been delayed several times before eventually being canceled.
[33:26.460 --> 33:34.820]  After a flight attendant spent the next few hours rescheduling passengers' itineraries, she overheard the crew talking about what grounded the plane in the first place.
[33:34.820 --> 33:47.640]  It seems a flight attendant noticed a Galaxy Note 7 Wi-Fi hotspot mid-flight, something that would have forced an emergency landing had personnel not been able to track down the perp, who likely had a long talk with TSA upon landing.
[33:48.280 --> 33:52.760]  Renaming your SSID as a joke isn't nearly as funny as it was a few years back.
[33:53.060 --> 33:57.320]  Remember when everyone was renaming their Wi-Fi to FBI surveillance van?
[33:58.040 --> 33:59.460]  I actually don't remember that.
[33:59.600 --> 34:03.540]  But I never thought someone would be dumb enough to take it this far.
[34:03.700 --> 34:06.460]  We still don't know the age of the person who played the joke.
[34:06.680 --> 34:12.960]  But it's possible it could have been a dumb kid who didn't consider the far-reaching consequences his little joke would have on others.
[34:13.120 --> 34:18.220]  In either case, expect a lifetime TV movie based on the above events to arrive in time for next Christmas.
[34:18.580 --> 34:19.640]  Travel safe, everyone.
[34:19.820 --> 34:29.440]  Thank you, Chris Chavez on the website Fandroid.com, spelled with a PH, for that interesting accounting of a story.
[34:29.740 --> 34:30.900]  I mean, come on, really?
[34:31.400 --> 34:34.500]  Are we not taking things a little too seriously here?
[34:35.380 --> 34:44.180]  Equating the naming of an SSID to a terrorist hoax or a threat of any kind?
[34:44.580 --> 34:45.260]  I don't know.
[34:45.400 --> 34:46.740]  Am I underreacting here?
[34:47.300 --> 34:51.380]  I'm just canceling plans to name my new phone Ford Pinto.
[34:52.780 --> 34:53.340]  Okay.
[34:55.040 --> 34:58.700]  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to say with this.
[34:58.860 --> 35:05.380]  It is something that when I traveled recently, I noticed a lot of signage about this particular model of phone.
[35:05.580 --> 35:10.560]  So there's a lot of, I think, maybe undue panic.
[35:11.100 --> 35:16.020]  And this is another overcorrection, I think, in the news.
[35:16.160 --> 35:20.000]  The words, Galaxy Note 7, are not a terrorist threat.
[35:20.260 --> 35:20.380]  Right.
[35:20.660 --> 35:28.360]  The phone itself, I mean, fine, you can say don't have this device on, you know, in your luggage.
[35:28.920 --> 35:30.680]  Presumably, your luggage has already been checked.
[35:30.840 --> 35:32.840]  They know what it looks like in the x-ray, that kind of thing.
[35:33.260 --> 35:38.800]  Just saying, well, if you write Galaxy Note 7 on a piece of paper, is that tantamount to a threat now?
[35:38.980 --> 35:41.700]  We really, we need to, we need to calm down a little bit.
[35:42.340 --> 35:46.940]  Yeah, I mean, airports are widely known as not having much of a sense of humor about these things.
[35:47.120 --> 35:50.920]  And you don't even joke about things like bombs or terrorists or whatever.
[35:51.220 --> 35:52.700]  Yeah, but bombs and terrorists are not products.
[35:53.140 --> 35:53.300]  All right.
[35:54.340 --> 35:57.640]  Galaxy Note 7 is a bona fide product, whether it blows up or not.
[35:57.820 --> 36:00.960]  It's something that has been produced, that exists, it's in the news.
[36:01.140 --> 36:04.060]  And there's all kinds of reasons why that phrase could show up.
[36:04.240 --> 36:07.020]  Maybe that's what you like to call your Wi-Fi network.
[36:07.020 --> 36:07.720]  I don't know.
[36:07.980 --> 36:13.120]  You know, I've called my SSIDs all kinds of weird things, and I don't expect to be scrutinized.
[36:13.280 --> 36:31.200]  I think maybe what we're missing is that it's not, and I know I might be going out on a limb here, but it's not widely known, maybe, to your average smartphone user, hard as it is to believe, that you can change an SSID.
[36:31.220 --> 36:32.080]  And you can.
[36:32.280 --> 36:34.360]  You can make it say anything you want.
[36:34.460 --> 36:36.880]  You can make it say all 26 letters of the alphabet.
[36:37.540 --> 36:39.100]  Well, I don't know if I can handle that many.
[36:39.180 --> 36:39.980]  I don't know how many characters.
[36:40.100 --> 36:41.560]  No, it's really flexible.
[36:41.640 --> 36:49.440]  You can have all kinds of cases, all kinds of different characters in that particular SSID.
[36:49.440 --> 37:07.220]  Now, by referencing a legitimately banned and slightly fiery phone that they do have fireproof bags on planes for, and they can dispose of because of this hysteria, because that's been found to be actually faulty.
[37:07.460 --> 37:23.560]  And that, combined with lack of knowledge around SSID capabilities, could make for volatile, as we have seen in this story, a bunch of misunderstandings, basically.
[37:23.740 --> 37:25.060]  Well, misunderstandings, I can see.
[37:25.340 --> 37:30.980]  But just to equate this with a threat of any sort, I just think that's... we're going a little too far here.
[37:31.040 --> 37:32.440]  Bernie, I know you must have an opinion on this.
[37:32.740 --> 37:33.440]  Oh, thank you.
[37:33.620 --> 37:34.940]  I am full of opinions tonight.
[37:35.560 --> 37:49.360]  What's... I mean, other people, people not too close, not too thoughtful, might... could label their phones as an SSID as an ISIS jihadist, or, you know, whatever the boogeyman of the day is.
[37:49.580 --> 37:51.300]  And it would just cause panic.
[37:51.560 --> 38:05.800]  But like you said, an SSID is just... it's just a message being broadcast through the air that is probably far less likely to be true than... far less likely to be true even... it's probably a hoax, folks.
[38:06.760 --> 38:09.360]  Or somebody managed to bring one of those phones on board.
[38:09.500 --> 38:10.320]  That's possible, too.
[38:11.240 --> 38:13.200]  How do you think... how do you think they tracked it down?
[38:14.960 --> 38:16.700]  How did they notice that?
[38:16.780 --> 38:17.940]  I don't think they did track it.
[38:18.000 --> 38:21.320]  Did they actually say... No, according to the story, they found the perp.
[38:21.460 --> 38:24.160]  Whether they just made an announcement saying, okay, who's the wise guy?
[38:24.300 --> 38:31.100]  And somebody stepped forward, or if they use some kind of technique to actually figure out who had that particular hotspot.
[38:31.300 --> 38:34.580]  I think they... I don't think they used sophisticated equipment to do it.
[38:34.660 --> 38:41.720]  They probably just walked up and down the aisle and confiscated everybody's phone and then looked through them, I would guess.
[38:41.740 --> 38:42.720]  How do they do that?
[38:42.880 --> 38:44.920]  I mean, your phone's in your bag and carry on.
[38:45.960 --> 38:48.360]  How are they going to know they got them all, especially if it's not even on?
[38:48.920 --> 38:49.580]  Good question.
[38:49.700 --> 38:57.440]  I don't think they use sophisticated equipment to track down the phone by the... such equipment exists, but they don't, you know, they don't have that on airplanes or even in the airports.
[38:57.700 --> 39:01.880]  Do you think, Bernie, that maybe this is something, our listeners could write in about?
[39:02.080 --> 39:03.620]  OTH at 2600.com.
[39:03.740 --> 39:09.620]  Do you think, Bernie, that any aircraft are equipped with the ability to see active access points?
[39:09.800 --> 39:16.180]  Maybe something that only the flight crew would be accessing as a part of the in-flight entertainment and management system?
[39:16.560 --> 39:17.100]  Is there...
[39:17.100 --> 39:24.020]  does anyone know of any model of plane that has the ability to survey access points?
[39:24.720 --> 39:26.020]  A $50, yes.
[39:26.660 --> 39:37.300]  Listeners could write to us about it, but a $50 Android tablet with Wi-Fi capability can, with an app, can show you all the Wi-Fi hotspots and the SSIDs and the MAC addresses and all that other stuff.
[39:37.860 --> 39:41.520]  So, you know, it doesn't have to be built into the plane itself.
[39:41.520 --> 39:43.600]  It can't show you the seat numbers, though, can it?
[39:44.340 --> 39:45.020]  Oh, no.
[39:45.180 --> 39:46.040]  That's a different matter.
[39:46.360 --> 39:50.340]  They, now, they, they, it could, yeah, we can, then, such a system, they'd be good in place.
[39:50.540 --> 39:54.220]  I, I doubt they're going to install such equipment in airplanes over this.
[39:54.280 --> 39:55.020]  So, that's a no.
[39:55.520 --> 39:56.500]  So, that's a no.
[39:56.760 --> 39:58.420]  That's probably not standard equipment.
[39:58.620 --> 39:59.600]  If they do it, they do it.
[39:59.800 --> 40:02.980]  A no for now, because you better believe they want to do things like that.
[40:03.160 --> 40:13.060]  I remember a story, uh, somebody told us years ago, uh, where, uh, people were told that we can't take off until the one person who has their cell phone still on turns it off.
[40:13.640 --> 40:16.760]  And people were wondering then, how do they know somebody has their cell phone on?
[40:17.360 --> 40:23.800]  And, uh, the conclusion was that they were just, uh, uh, messing with people to get them to double check to make sure their phone was off.
[40:24.000 --> 40:25.060]  Ah, that's where that comes from.
[40:25.100 --> 40:25.460]  I see.
[40:25.720 --> 40:27.100]  Well, perhaps, uh, go ahead.
[40:27.180 --> 40:31.260]  Yeah, I, I would guess it's easy to tell if something is on, but not easy to tell where it is on the plane.
[40:31.580 --> 40:31.840]  Uh-huh.
[40:32.100 --> 40:41.080]  That's, that's kind of, I think, the, what, the truth being, uh, they're kind of using that as a, um, a threat, an idle threat, but it's a bluff, basically.
[40:41.700 --> 40:50.280]  It's just, it's just, you know, what, what I'm getting out of this is that there are some things we're taking way too seriously that clearly are, I mean, yeah, that phone can be dangerous.
[40:50.540 --> 40:56.420]  If you think that phone is on board, you find that particular phone, but you don't treat it like it's a threat.
[40:56.540 --> 41:04.980]  It's a, it's simply words on SSID, uh, all kinds of things can be said on there that, uh, could be interpreted in various ways.
[41:05.200 --> 41:09.980]  Another story that, um, I saw, uh, this week, what if Donald Trump's Twitter account got hacked?
[41:10.160 --> 41:11.480]  I don't really get, want to get into it.
[41:11.580 --> 41:18.480]  Uh, it's basically saying the ramifications that, uh, could happen if somebody gained control, uh, just the things that he's been able to do.
[41:18.560 --> 41:25.960]  He, he wiped $2.7 billion off the share price of Lockheed Martin, uh, right after he slammed the cost of the F-35 stealth fighter.
[41:26.340 --> 41:34.080]  And, uh, he made Boeing shares fall to, um, uh, by a huge amount just by criticizing, um, uh, their cost for Air Force One.
[41:34.480 --> 41:40.820]  Um, but if somebody actually hacked Trump's Twitter account, to me, that's just a joke.
[41:41.000 --> 41:41.580]  That's funny.
[41:41.800 --> 41:50.420]  That's something that, uh, you know, it's the equivalent of, um, of, of, of spray painting a message on a wall, you know, a bit annoying, but you clean it up, you move on.
[41:50.880 --> 41:52.540]  I think we've lost our sense of humor.
[41:52.740 --> 41:59.060]  And, uh, if that were to happen, uh, and by the way, who amongst us, if we had the password would not do something with it.
[41:59.380 --> 42:02.660]  Uh, but if somebody were to do that, they would be treated like a terrorist in these days.
[42:02.820 --> 42:04.880]  And that's, that to me is just completely wrong.
[42:05.040 --> 42:05.200]  Yeah.
[42:05.280 --> 42:10.440]  I think they're mainly worried that someone might get access to Trump's account and post a bunch of flatulating gibberish to it and make him look like an idiot.
[42:11.340 --> 42:11.700]  Yeah.
[42:12.240 --> 42:14.960]  Um, he has to earn that himself, doesn't he?
[42:15.020 --> 42:16.960]  He has to improve his image on his own.
[42:17.120 --> 42:18.220]  What do you think his password is?
[42:18.700 --> 42:19.680]  Uh, well, that's the thing.
[42:19.740 --> 42:20.100]  I don't know.
[42:20.280 --> 42:25.240]  Uh, I like to know what kind of, um, does he use login verification that, uh, Twitter offers?
[42:25.420 --> 42:25.700]  Oh.
[42:25.940 --> 42:35.020]  Where you have to, uh, go through a couple of other steps, maybe have a code sent to your phone every time that you have to send back before you can, uh, you can actually post anything.
[42:35.240 --> 42:38.100]  We can at least find out what kind of verification he uses.
[42:38.420 --> 42:40.080]  You know, we can learn something about that.
[42:40.520 --> 42:41.200]  Sounds hard.
[42:41.800 --> 42:42.980]  Uh, it would be hard for him.
[42:43.140 --> 42:43.580]  Yeah, I would.
[42:43.660 --> 42:44.420]  I believe it would be.
[42:44.480 --> 42:47.780]  I think he probably has it in the most insecure mode, but I'd like to know for sure.
[42:48.220 --> 42:48.500]  Okay.
[42:48.640 --> 42:51.620]  Uh, we said we were going to take phone calls and I, I intend to keep that promise.
[42:52.020 --> 42:56.120]  Our phone number is three, four, seven, three, three, five, zero, eight, one, eight.
[42:56.820 --> 43:06.760]  And, uh, we would like to hear from our listeners on this, um, the subjects we've talked about tonight or anything else that's, uh, been going on over the last few weeks or just something completely unrelated.
[43:07.500 --> 43:09.940]  Three, four, seven, three, three, five, zero, eight, one, eight.
[43:10.020 --> 43:13.840]  If you get a busy signal, that means you're not on the single line that we have.
[43:14.440 --> 43:16.340]  Here's the person who is on the single line that we have.
[43:16.400 --> 43:16.660]  Good evening.
[43:16.820 --> 43:17.500]  You're on off the hook.
[43:18.220 --> 43:18.940]  Good evening.
[43:19.280 --> 43:24.360]  Uh, even though I don't have any gadgets like you guys are talking about, I love listening to you.
[43:24.520 --> 43:25.120]  Oh, thank you.
[43:25.280 --> 43:26.580]  Uh, you're welcome.
[43:26.780 --> 43:29.600]  You're most entertaining as you probably know.
[43:30.140 --> 43:38.640]  Um, I do, however, uh, I'm, I, I, I am a recipient of what's called an Obama phone, a Medicaid cell phone.
[43:38.760 --> 43:39.600]  Obama phone.
[43:39.760 --> 43:40.260]  I like it.
[43:40.460 --> 43:41.080]  Oh yeah.
[43:41.500 --> 43:43.260]  It's real top notch stuff here.
[43:43.440 --> 43:45.140]  Now I have a question.
[43:45.420 --> 43:47.420]  Um, it's through assurance wireless.
[43:47.600 --> 43:48.580]  Am I allowed to say that?
[43:48.660 --> 43:49.220]  Oh, no problem.
[43:49.300 --> 43:49.540]  Go ahead.
[43:49.740 --> 43:49.980]  Sure.
[43:50.120 --> 43:51.820]  And it's an Alcatel.
[43:52.060 --> 43:52.500]  Okay.
[43:52.860 --> 43:53.820]  One touch phone.
[43:54.020 --> 43:54.200]  Okay.
[43:54.520 --> 43:55.600]  Two or three months ago.
[43:56.460 --> 43:58.300]  Now I just have that for emergencies.
[43:58.300 --> 44:00.300]  I leave it sitting in my living room.
[44:00.460 --> 44:01.480]  Sometimes it's charged.
[44:01.600 --> 44:02.600]  Sometimes it isn't.
[44:02.920 --> 44:04.200]  Very rarely use it.
[44:04.360 --> 44:09.140]  I was on my landline last September to my sister's cell phone.
[44:09.740 --> 44:27.340]  When we hung up a couple of hours later, I was checking the Medicaid cell phone and found that about four minutes of our conversation was contained in a voicemail on the cell phone, the Medicaid phone, but there was no subtraction of any minutes or anything.
[44:27.660 --> 44:37.000]  It was as though it was like recording both our, uh, things on the phone, although I wasn't on speaker phone on the landline.
[44:37.960 --> 44:40.940]  So I called assurance wireless about it.
[44:41.540 --> 44:43.800]  And I said, had you ever heard of this before?
[44:44.400 --> 44:45.480]  And they said, no.
[44:45.880 --> 44:50.540]  And I checked with a friend and they took care of the problem for me, whatever that meant.
[44:50.960 --> 45:00.660]  I checked with a friend who told me that some cell phones have microphones that can pick up ambient noise in a room, even if they're turned off.
[45:00.880 --> 45:02.840]  Is that true to your knowledge?
[45:02.980 --> 45:03.740]  That is true.
[45:03.880 --> 45:09.440]  Uh, in fact, if you, um, if you watch Citizen Four or a Snowden movie, you'll, you'll learn more about that.
[45:09.540 --> 45:20.200]  But in your particular case, I'm wondering if it was just, uh, perhaps a misdial of some sort, something we've done on this very program where we think we've dialed something, but we've actually connected to somebody's voicemail.
[45:20.360 --> 45:22.400]  It records for the maximum amount of time.
[45:22.600 --> 45:28.640]  And then your first clue that anything, uh, actually happened is a beep saying your message has exceeded the maximum length.
[45:29.120 --> 45:34.480]  Um, I w I would bet that this was something unintentional, uh, rather than something nefarious.
[45:35.040 --> 45:35.480]  Okay.
[45:35.580 --> 45:35.720]  Yeah.
[45:35.840 --> 45:37.440]  Cause there were no minutes to subtract it.
[45:37.580 --> 45:38.120]  I'm sorry.
[45:38.200 --> 45:39.060]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[45:39.400 --> 45:39.540]  Yeah.
[45:39.840 --> 45:41.200]  Cause there were no minutes to subtract it.
[45:41.820 --> 45:48.440]  Didn't you say that you were on the phone from your landline to your person you're speaking to and you weren't on a speaker phone.
[45:48.620 --> 45:54.340]  So how would cell phone have possibly have picked up both sides of the conversation and recorded what, like four minutes of it?
[45:54.500 --> 45:55.900]  This is really puzzling.
[45:56.000 --> 46:00.040]  Well, well, well, hold on a second, Bernie, before we, uh, before we start the, okay, go ahead.
[46:00.120 --> 46:01.180]  You have something, Kyle.
[46:01.320 --> 46:02.660]  I have a theory about this, but go ahead.
[46:02.820 --> 46:03.720]  I have a theory too.
[46:03.760 --> 46:05.060]  It's probably the same theory.
[46:05.680 --> 46:18.460]  If that person called your cell phone, then hung up quickly, that's a flash to, to, to make another call, then called your landline, then somehow flashed again, or otherwise those were made into a three-way call.
[46:18.560 --> 46:19.080]  Invoking three-way.
[46:19.080 --> 46:26.180]  You might've heard a beep at some point when it filled up the, the voicemail and then continued your conversation with the connection.
[46:26.360 --> 46:32.220]  But my question is why would not there have been minutes subtracted from my monthly allocation of minutes?
[46:32.880 --> 46:35.380]  That, that generally doesn't happen when you get a voicemail.
[46:35.580 --> 46:35.800]  Yeah.
[46:36.040 --> 46:37.120]  That, that one I can't.
[46:37.340 --> 46:37.660]  Oh, it doesn't.
[46:37.980 --> 46:39.960]  Oh, you mean you're, you're saying that minutes don't get subtracted.
[46:39.960 --> 46:43.500]  No, when you listen to your voicemail, though, you're using minutes, correct?
[46:44.380 --> 46:45.480]  Yeah, I think so.
[46:45.520 --> 46:46.460]  That could depend on the service.
[46:46.840 --> 46:50.340]  No, no, no, no, because you're, you're calling their system from the phone, right?
[46:50.340 --> 46:56.120]  I don't think that would happen, but I would say... I don't think we can understand the minutes situation, but we can understand how it happened in the first place.
[46:56.160 --> 47:01.660]  If they called you, their bill might show a call to your phone as well, and that may be charged on their bill.
[47:01.660 --> 47:17.660]  But anyway, you did, you did say that cell phones contain, uh, something within them, uh, which can be activated or something so that ambient noise can be heard when people think they can't be heard, say, speaking in their dining room and their phones in another room and they're not using the phone.
[47:17.940 --> 47:21.340]  Cell phones do, uh, do by, cell phones do by necessity have a microphone.
[47:21.340 --> 47:24.840]  It's the bit you speak into, um, when you, when you're, uh, using the phone.
[47:25.060 --> 47:31.940]  So there is a microphone, but, uh, especially with the lower end, uh, um, phone such as the one you're using, that's not a smartphone.
[47:31.940 --> 47:34.320]  It doesn't have apps and things and recorders in it.
[47:34.760 --> 47:37.860]  Um, I think I think that's not what happened here.
[47:38.000 --> 47:43.320]  Yeah, the plausibility of someone targeting that specific model of non-smart phone.
[47:43.600 --> 48:04.580]  And when I say that, I really do mean it because the proprietary or esoteric, the particular type of software that it runs would be probably way harder and more esoteric to exploit than a modern Android-based phone.
[48:04.580 --> 48:14.680]  That there are many out there and has a lot of development, so can run many different types of software versus something that's very limited to its own proprietary ecosystem.
[48:14.860 --> 48:25.880]  But there is a lot of malware out there that if you somehow download it or connect to it, can do things like turn on a microphone, turn on a camera, on a computer, on a phone.
[48:26.380 --> 48:29.180]  And there are ways to protect yourself from that.
[48:29.300 --> 48:30.760]  You put a piece of tape over your camera.
[48:31.120 --> 48:33.180]  You cover up your microphone somehow.
[48:33.180 --> 48:39.780]  Now, keep in mind, microphones on cell phones are really kind of lousy in the first place, so it's not good for bugging your entire house or anything like that.
[48:39.900 --> 48:41.920]  Well, I don't think anyone was trying to bug me.
[48:41.960 --> 48:44.100]  I think it was some flaw in the system.
[48:44.760 --> 48:47.740]  If they were bugging my life, they'd fall asleep in the world.
[48:48.040 --> 48:51.600]  Anyway, thank you for your very serious answers to my question.
[48:51.740 --> 48:52.800]  Thanks for that call.
[48:52.820 --> 48:53.660]  Thank you so much.
[48:53.780 --> 48:54.080]  All right.
[48:54.220 --> 48:54.460]  Bye-bye.
[48:54.460 --> 48:59.620]  And let's open up the phone lines for another call, 347-335-0818.
[49:00.360 --> 49:03.520]  It's probably safer than most, being that it wasn't a smartphone.
[49:04.180 --> 49:06.480]  Well, yeah, you know, a lot of people don't use smartphones.
[49:06.700 --> 49:08.400]  You see people with flip phones these days, too.
[49:08.480 --> 49:09.480]  I kind of respect that.
[49:09.580 --> 49:10.740]  Yeah, there's a lot of people that use them.
[49:10.840 --> 49:11.880]  They're pretty proud of it, too.
[49:11.980 --> 49:13.860]  If you see someone with a flip phone, they're serious.
[49:14.060 --> 49:15.080]  Let's take another phone call.
[49:15.460 --> 49:16.180]  And good evening.
[49:16.180 --> 49:17.100]  You're on Off the Hook.
[49:17.540 --> 49:17.900]  Hi.
[49:18.180 --> 49:18.480]  Hi.
[49:19.160 --> 49:26.280]  My question is about a, I don't know, hacking, getting into a broken cell phone.
[49:26.840 --> 49:30.960]  It's an old slider, Samsung slider phone, and I broke it.
[49:31.060 --> 49:31.300]  Okay.
[49:31.720 --> 49:36.640]  And the two halves, the front and the back, the slide, are apart, and they can't communicate.
[49:37.400 --> 49:38.600]  I've got to throw it away.
[49:40.360 --> 49:43.860]  But most of the stuff, there's hardly anything on the SIM card.
[49:43.860 --> 49:46.900]  And I'd like to get my photos and my contacts.
[49:48.840 --> 49:50.460]  So, can somebody...
[49:50.460 --> 49:51.260]  Is that doable?
[49:52.380 --> 49:52.820]  Yes.
[49:53.500 --> 49:54.560]  I figured it was.
[49:55.040 --> 49:56.180]  How do I...
[49:56.180 --> 49:59.340]  Do I contact you guys by email to get one of you to...
[49:59.900 --> 50:00.500]  We can...
[50:00.500 --> 50:00.840]  Yeah, right.
[50:00.960 --> 50:01.840]  It says OTH at 2600.
[50:02.260 --> 50:02.800]  Wait, wait, wait.
[50:03.200 --> 50:04.200]  Bernie, we don't...
[50:04.200 --> 50:04.480]  I'll get back to you.
[50:04.580 --> 50:05.920]  We don't fix phones, though.
[50:05.960 --> 50:07.160]  We're not phone repairmen.
[50:07.980 --> 50:09.000]  It's not a repair.
[50:09.400 --> 50:10.120]  It's not a repair.
[50:10.360 --> 50:12.140]  It's getting my personal data.
[50:12.140 --> 50:13.820]  And I've already cleared it with the provider.
[50:13.820 --> 50:16.360]  They said that they have absolutely no problem with that.
[50:16.960 --> 50:21.240]  I'd be happy to send this person a couple of references where they could research more on...
[50:21.240 --> 50:22.540]  There are...
[50:22.540 --> 50:22.680]  Yeah.
[50:22.900 --> 50:23.820]  I can't do it myself.
[50:23.820 --> 50:24.400]  Forget it.
[50:24.740 --> 50:33.180]  So, depending on the design of the phone, and I'm not sure, but I would be more hopeful if you had ports like a USB port.
[50:34.320 --> 50:35.200]  This is...
[50:35.200 --> 50:36.020]  It sounds like it predates that.
[50:36.020 --> 50:36.840]  Do you know what a slider phone is?
[50:37.020 --> 50:37.840]  Yeah, I do.
[50:37.960 --> 50:38.460]  I think I do.
[50:38.600 --> 50:39.460]  It's a bit older.
[50:39.700 --> 50:40.900]  It's very much older.
[50:40.900 --> 50:41.600]  Right, right.
[50:41.600 --> 50:44.640]  So, it slides open to reveal a keyboard of some kind.
[50:44.900 --> 50:45.260]  Exactly, yeah.
[50:45.500 --> 50:53.740]  So, yeah, I think it might be more towards like what Bernie's thinking, where you'd have to take it apart and do a lot of sort of low-level data recovery.
[50:54.680 --> 51:07.280]  If you've already looked at, like, say, the SIM card, I've had luck with a phone of mine that got run over by a car, but still booted up, sort of, with all of its screen broken.
[51:07.460 --> 51:11.360]  So, that, I was able to pull all the data off with a USB cable.
[51:11.940 --> 51:13.000]  No, I can't do that.
[51:13.100 --> 51:13.920]  But there are...
[51:13.920 --> 51:15.080]  It was my life to get that phone done.
[51:15.080 --> 51:15.340]  You did.
[51:15.540 --> 51:25.340]  There are other pins and sort of ways that the phone is programmed that may or may not allow you to glean more information from it.
[51:25.380 --> 51:28.360]  But that's about as much as I could say in my uneducated opinion.
[51:28.360 --> 51:34.640]  The thing is, don't give up, because there is a way, whether we find it today or tomorrow, there is a way...
[51:34.640 --> 51:35.040]  I'm in a hurry.
[51:35.340 --> 51:35.480]  Yeah.
[51:35.640 --> 51:39.360]  And, you know, you'd lose nothing by holding on to it and waiting for something to come along.
[51:39.480 --> 51:42.600]  But, yeah, email us, OTH at 2600.com.
[51:42.700 --> 51:46.220]  I'm sure if Bernie has some answers, he'll definitely share those.
[51:46.400 --> 51:47.840]  And thanks very much for that phone call.
[51:47.980 --> 51:50.580]  We're going to try and squeeze in one more.
[51:50.880 --> 52:01.000]  Yeah, I also think if you're in a situation like that, getting a local help that can actually have physical access to the phone and check it out with maybe expert equipment is a good way to go.
[52:01.100 --> 52:06.580]  So if you have a repair shop or something with people there that might be able to help you with older tech, that's probably the way to go.
[52:07.420 --> 52:09.880]  347-335-0818 is our phone number.
[52:10.040 --> 52:10.980]  Let's take this next phone call.
[52:11.040 --> 52:11.340]  Good evening.
[52:11.480 --> 52:12.220]  You're on off the hook.
[52:13.620 --> 52:13.980]  Hello.
[52:14.400 --> 52:14.780]  Go ahead.
[52:16.700 --> 52:17.380]  Oh, okay.
[52:17.500 --> 52:17.640]  Yeah.
[52:17.720 --> 52:19.400]  I would like to discuss...
[52:19.820 --> 52:24.700]  You know, you talked about analog solutions to the sort of password problem.
[52:24.900 --> 52:25.120]  Okay.
[52:25.120 --> 52:26.380]  And I use KeePassX.
[52:26.460 --> 52:27.860]  I was wondering what you guys think about that.
[52:28.000 --> 52:29.260]  Well, why don't you describe it for us?
[52:31.860 --> 52:35.900]  KeePassX, it's essentially a password lockbox.
[52:36.220 --> 52:39.800]  It's a program in which you store your passwords.
[52:40.000 --> 52:44.420]  And it has a password generator in it and has auto-type options and things like that.
[52:44.420 --> 52:51.840]  And so it allows you to generate huge passwords with all sorts of conditions.
[52:51.840 --> 52:57.540]  So you can use undercase or you can use alphanumeric or you can use integers or you can use a combination of them.
[52:57.800 --> 53:03.160]  And it generates it, stores it all in an AES encrypted container on the computer.
[53:03.420 --> 53:06.160]  And how do you gain access to it?
[53:07.780 --> 53:09.340]  KeePassX, it's a free program.
[53:09.340 --> 53:14.580]  How do you personally gain access to your account so that you can get information from it?
[53:15.280 --> 53:17.780]  Well, I only have to store one analog password.
[53:18.080 --> 53:21.040]  So I have a big, like, 20-character password in my head.
[53:21.120 --> 53:22.920]  So I use that to get into the program.
[53:23.100 --> 53:27.680]  If I somehow get that big password that's in your head, what do I have access to?
[53:29.800 --> 53:31.340]  Well, it depends.
[53:31.700 --> 53:37.420]  You have to have access to my encrypted database, which is only on my computer.
[53:37.740 --> 53:43.520]  But you would gain access to everything pretty much, with the exception of my PGP.
[53:43.980 --> 53:44.480]  Okay.
[53:46.020 --> 53:48.940]  This is another area I wish I knew more about.
[53:49.120 --> 53:52.440]  So everyone, you know, I'm sure everyone can learn more about encryption.
[53:52.440 --> 53:54.960]  It is an evolving field.
[53:55.140 --> 54:01.920]  But I would say that, you know, I would make sure that that one password is one that you make up.
[54:02.440 --> 54:04.660]  Like, don't rely on any of the generation.
[54:05.380 --> 54:06.000]  Got it.
[54:06.120 --> 54:06.240]  Right.
[54:06.340 --> 54:08.480]  Well, whatever it is, but make sure you don't...
[54:08.480 --> 54:09.740]  And it probably has safeguards.
[54:09.820 --> 54:10.880]  I've never used this.
[54:10.880 --> 54:22.840]  But, you know, to be sure that that random thing that you decide is the one is truly something that you made up and is random, as random as you can generate.
[54:22.960 --> 54:25.920]  Because random is kind of expensive, costly in computers.
[54:26.180 --> 54:43.820]  But, Kyle, the thing is, even if it's an amazing, complex password, 20 characters, 30 characters, you know, if somebody has, you know, a key sniffer on the computer, the one time they enter that password, and having that password unlocks the key to 100 other passwords,
[54:44.020 --> 54:46.180]  I don't think that's the best system, you know?
[54:46.640 --> 54:48.620]  Well, I agree with you there.
[54:48.780 --> 54:56.660]  There are certain limitations, but that's why I use Cleopatra for PGP, because it opens up PIN entry, which doesn't allow for sniffing.
[54:56.920 --> 55:01.820]  Or for the most well-protected, better, more so than other programs I looked into.
[55:01.820 --> 55:10.720]  Yeah, so it sounds like you've done the kind of research that you would need to do to start to approach these techniques for storing this stuff.
[55:10.860 --> 55:14.300]  So definitely you want to educate yourself as much as possible.
[55:14.660 --> 55:16.120]  And I'm kind of with you, E.
[55:16.200 --> 55:18.480]  I think it's having just one.
[55:18.580 --> 55:26.480]  But I'm not saying that I have a better system or that there aren't better ways to do it.
[55:26.480 --> 55:34.380]  But I think being as creative as possible and having this maybe be just for a couple things, I think.
[55:34.540 --> 55:35.800]  Personally, that's what I would do.
[55:35.880 --> 55:37.760]  And then I would come up with other ways for other things.
[55:37.860 --> 55:38.940]  But I like the...
[55:38.940 --> 55:39.160]  If you have something...
[55:39.160 --> 55:39.920]  If you have...
[55:39.920 --> 55:45.400]  Like, my method was you have a book, and that book has, you know, the first letter of every word in a sentence.
[55:45.620 --> 55:50.960]  Nobody knows that the book is key except you, because that one thought is in your head.
[55:50.960 --> 55:57.040]  So you can lose the book, and someone is not going to know what to do with the book unless you tell them.
[55:57.180 --> 56:00.420]  There's nothing that they can crack to get that information.
[56:00.680 --> 56:00.800]  Yeah.
[56:00.820 --> 56:04.820]  And on the whole subject of password managers, like, I know many people, including experts, who swear by them.
[56:04.980 --> 56:12.280]  I've never been comfortable with them just because what it amounts to is not knowing yourself the passwords to your things that you have stored in this gadget.
[56:12.280 --> 56:21.020]  So what happens when you're sitting in another computer, you don't have access to the gadget, maybe the app or the service or whatever you're using stops working, and then you're stuck.
[56:21.220 --> 56:27.120]  So it's kind of an end run around the situation, but it's not one that I personally am comfortable with.
[56:27.940 --> 56:32.500]  Well, generally, I run everything off a virtual machine when I log in other computers anyway, because I don't like...
[56:32.500 --> 56:35.340]  I don't really like using them, but I wouldn't move the database around.
[56:35.340 --> 56:40.240]  You can construct multiple redundant databases, and I think you can...
[56:40.240 --> 56:44.340]  There's options to, like, in Cleopatra to set the certificates to expire and things like that.
[56:44.580 --> 56:47.320]  I mean, you'd be SOL at a certain point, but...
[56:47.920 --> 56:48.700]  Well, we'd like to know.
[56:48.740 --> 56:51.180]  We'd like to know other methods, what people think of this.
[56:51.300 --> 56:53.860]  Thanks for sharing that with us, and we'll certainly look into it.
[56:54.320 --> 57:09.140]  Write to us, OTH at 2600.com to share your thoughts, your input, your ideas, and, yeah, your suggestions, your positive or negative feedback.
[57:09.140 --> 57:10.220]  We'd love to hear from you.
[57:10.320 --> 57:12.960]  We have a bunch of letters we haven't gotten to yet, but we will get to those.
[57:14.240 --> 57:16.180]  And we'll be back next week.
[57:17.420 --> 57:19.320]  And happy winter solstice, which is...
[57:19.320 --> 57:20.460]  Winter solstice, which is tonight.
[57:20.640 --> 57:22.560]  Happy any other celebrations you may have going on.
[57:22.640 --> 57:23.920]  Yeah, it's the shortest day of the year.
[57:23.920 --> 57:24.900]  It flew by.
[57:25.120 --> 57:26.320]  The longest night of the year.
[57:26.940 --> 57:27.300]  Wow.
[57:27.520 --> 57:28.120]  Merry Christmas.
[57:28.520 --> 57:29.660]  Yes, all that, too.
[57:29.800 --> 57:36.460]  And happy Kwanzaa, and happy Hanukkah, and Festivus for the rest of us, and whatever else you might celebrate out there.
[57:36.600 --> 57:37.360]  Happy hacking.
[57:37.360 --> 57:39.220]  Happy hacking above all.
[57:39.700 --> 57:43.080]  We'll be back next week with another action-packed edition of Off the Hook.
[57:43.180 --> 57:46.960]  Till then, Emmanuel, for all of us here at Off the Hook, good night.