Meetings are from August 1st to 7th at Maisel Cinema, with special events for VIP ticket
holders that allow exclusive access to pre- and post-show private sound baths, lectures,
and parties with filmmakers and UFO luminaries Dr. J.J. and Desiree Hurtog.
Maisel Cinema is located at 343 Lenox Avenue slash Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem.
For more information, go to Maisels.org.
And you are listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
The time is just after 8 o'clock.
Time for Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook and Manuel Goldstein here with you tonight, joined by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And Kyle.
Hello.
Hi.
And hopefully you, our listener.
We should start by saying this is a fundraising part of the year.
Yeah, I think we cover pretty much every month now.
It's August and we're doing fundraising, but it's essential.
It's essential for the radio station to keep broadcasting.
And if you've listened to this show over the past, oh God, 30 years?
1988 is the first edition of this show?
Very nearly 30 years.
This October it'll be 30 years old.
My goodness.
We should do something special.
We should.
If we're not preempted for fundraising.
But yeah, we have been on the air for that long and in that period of time we've talked
about a good number of things, many of which are controversial, many of which are informative,
many of which are entertaining.
Well, some of them are entertaining.
A lot of different things.
And that's only one show.
So think of the power of a radio station that's able to do that 24 hours a day, seven days
a week, sometimes more, and we have existed since 1960 based solely on listener support.
So that right there should be enough for you to give a call to 516-620-3602 and just
pledge as much as you can afford and you'll feel good about it.
Yeah, this is, I like to think of it as a good time to remind people of the myriad of
ways you can actually contribute to WBAI.
We've talked about the SMS donation where you can just send WBAI, the call letter to
the station to 41444.
Also the online pledge site is give to WBAI.org.
Either way, I think both are very similar and should be fairly easy.
If you're asked at all, please mention off the hook.
We do get acknowledgement for donations given during this particular show.
Of course, I think the other third and last thing I'll add is the BAI Buddy Program that
kind of spans the different fundraisers that we've had over the last year.
I think we're still trying to increase those numbers.
So if you want to just know that your contribution is done and automatically set up and is incremental
and a continuing donation, that program is for you.
I encourage you also to mention off the hook and sign up for BAI Buddies.
Yeah, absolutely.
The BAI Buddies are essential because the more BAI Buddies we can get, the more that
this station actually has a predictable and dependable income level, which means we can
cut down on the amount of actual pledge driving we do here at the station.
So if you go to give to WBAI.org or if you call 516-620-3602 and ask about the BAI Buddy
Program, you can choose any amount of money that you can afford to donate to what we do
here that will be charged to you automatically on a monthly basis.
You may have noticed if you're into supporting creative work online that so many people are
doing like Patreon and things like that, where they can just keep their work going directly
through support of their fans, of the people who follow their work.
And this is no different.
This is exactly the same idea in a way that BAI can make use of it.
So give to WBAI.org or 516-620-3602 and we encourage you to become a BAI Buddy and be
one of the ongoing sources of support for the station.
If you just put it in perspective, it starts to make a whole lot of sense.
Because if you were to, say, become a BAI Buddy and contribute $10 a month, you multiply
that by 12 and that turns into $120 a year.
Now if you pledge $120 in one shot, that feels different than pledging $10 a month for 12
but in the end, it's the same income coming in per year for WBAI.
Now compare that to what you might spend, say, on coffee.
You go to a coffee shop and you could easily spend $10 a day just on a cup of coffee.
Multiply that by 365 and just compare the two.
Does WBAI give you more than that one cup of coffee a day does?
If so, well, put that in perspective and weigh the odds.
Coffee shop closes, you can always go to another one.
WBAI closes, yeah, try tuning one or two notches up the dial.
Tell me if that's anything like what you've heard on this radio station.
I know some people will say, yeah, that's a good thing, but it depends what you listen
to, obviously.
People have their favorite programs.
People have programs they despise.
For you to have a program that you despise, it means that we are doing something that
gets your brain working, all right?
And sometimes arguing and opposition are healthy things.
In fact, most of the time they're healthy things.
I disagree.
Well, it just shows what you know.
We'll continue this after the show, Rob.
516-620-3602.
If a lot of people call, then we can have a fairly uninterrupted show where we talk
about other issues that are going on, and boy, there are a lot of issues going on.
We're going to talk some more about the whole conference, but we're also going to talk about
some things that are going on in the world of technology, computers, hacking, that kind
of thing.
516-620-3602, either pledge one amount, one solid amount for a one-time pledge.
We can accept credit cards or checks or whatever works for you, or become a BAI buddy by calling
either that number or going to give2wbai.org.
You can also text 41444, as Kyle said, with the letters WBAI.
That's our call sign.
516-620-3602 is the way to speak to a human, though.
And there are also premiums.
There are also all kinds of premiums.
Too many to list on the air right now, but they can tell you down in Tally Central.
They're not as important.
They're thank you gifts, but they're not the reason for giving.
And while we could go into that, we have You Know Why.
It's our operational and other budgets.
They're really built by you, and we want to be able to go back to those.
So whatever it is, if it's a one-time or a recurring donation like the Buddy Program,
all of it counts.
All of it goes towards the expenditures that you might imagine a radio station like WBAI
has.
And speaking of premiums, I know people are asking, where's my premium from the previous
phone drive?
We have been so busy with the conference and with all kinds of other things.
It's our fault.
In fact, probably 90% it's our fault.
There might be some others that have not been processed.
We'll look into those as well, but we are going to catch up, and that'll be in the next
couple of weeks.
Everybody should be getting what they pledged for in the past.
We are sorry about that.
But we're human, and we're just so overworked.
We have records of it.
We have records.
We do.
We're following up.
Yeah.
All right.
So getting to what's been going on in the world, this 3D gun thing.
I wanted to talk about that a little bit because this is something that's been in the news
all over the place, that a website or a group of people are about to post blueprints for
3D printable guns, and that has been postponed.
It's illegal to post blueprints for 3D printable guns online.
However, hundreds of designs reportedly were downloaded before a decision was reached by
a federal judge saying not to do that.
What that means is if anyone posts this information online, they're in violation of federal law
and can suffer very serious consequences, so it makes it unlawful to post that information
and make it available to the public.
Now that issue is going to go back to court on August 10th when the sides will discuss
whether a preliminary injunction is needed, and it'll be going through the courts for
a while, I guess.
This is something that I've been struggling with because you know how I feel about guns
and gun control and all that, and I think we have a sickness in this country with our
obsession with weapons.
Something like this, though, where you have information, something that is downloadable,
how do you control that?
How can you possibly restrict something that is just basically downloading?
They can say it's illegal to post this, but what if somebody posts it in a different country?
Then what?
How do you track that without tracking everything?
And that's what worries me about this.
Have you guys had similar crises in your conscience about this?
Oh, I can go on and on about this story.
As many people know, I've been working in the 3D printing business for many years, and
And that's the thing.
This person behind this is really good at jumping on, in 2012, was really good at jumping
on the burgeoning story of 3D printing, this new thing that nobody was quite sure about,
and using his press savviness and ability to get on this issue to make it about him.
So what happened was he already published these gun files, which are there on the internet
now.
So illegal or not, it is information that was once put on the internet, so therefore
it keeps circulating on the internet, and you can go get it.
It's just not him putting it up right now, but it's circulating.
But it does really drag certain issues to the fore, because I, too, I'm somebody who
has many feelings about guns, none of them good.
I might be the most anti-gun person in this room, but on the other hand-
Oh yeah?
You want to fight about it?
Because I think I'd give you a run for your money.
But we have to use swords or something, but yeah, I am not a fan of guns, I hate them
and what they do, but on the other hand, a gun is a very simple machine.
It's a lever, it's a spring, it's a tube pointing in one direction, and once you legislate,
once you say that a shape is illegal to have, even the virtual representation of a shape,
which is a 3D file, then where do you draw that line?
It's a very simple device, and putting the plans to make it online, you can basically
take that in all kinds of weird directions by saying one shape is legal to have and another
is not.
One shape is illegal to print and another one is not.
And so looking at these, as the court did before this injunction, as an issue of free
speech and saying that the file that instructs a machine on how to make a gun or a gun-like
object is free speech, free speech is important enough to me where I have to choke back the
vomit and say, okay, maybe these files should be allowed to be posted.
And I think that's an idiotic thing to do, I think for many reasons, not the least of
which is if you want to build a gun, a plastic that you 3D print at home might be the worst
thing to do it in.
It's going to explode in your hand.
Okay, it'll explode in your hand now, but these things are only going to get better.
That's true, that's very true.
And there are even, there are the beginnings of the ability to 3D print in metal at home
at the moment.
So like, it's only going to get better.
It's only going to get easier to print things at home.
But at the moment, it's a very foolhardy thing to do, I think.
But then, yeah, it's, you have to, you have to consider where this can go and where this
should or shouldn't go.
And so, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm really torn on this because, you know, I'm thinking of challenges to this law, even
though I agree with the spirit of it or the ruling or the desire simply to keep this out
of people's hands.
But, you know, if you're going to make something illegal to download, okay, then how about
we read it on the radio?
Is that illegal?
Is it illegal to tell people how this works?
You know, that's something that I come up in opposition against all the time.
So it's really a tough place to be in.
What I'm curious about, though, is there anything that we can think of on a current 3D printer
that would be illegal for you to make right now?
You know, something that, okay, I created this and all of a sudden, as soon as you let
people know, you're guilty of something, you know?
It's an interesting question.
There are, you know, there's kind of the artistic versus pornographic thing.
Ah, child pornography.
Of course.
Child pornography to the rescue again.
That has been brought up in a couple of companies I've worked for that did 3D printing.
All right.
So if you somehow create child pornography using 3D printing, I'm not quite sure how
that would work.
But let's say you did that, then you'd be guilty of some kind of a crime.
There have been cases where people have had things like comic books or drawings or artwork
confiscated because it depicted fictional children.
And you know, is that an illegal thing to have if it's not an actual person?
I don't know the answer to that.
And our lawyer is off on assignment somewhere.
Well, that's 2D.
That's the 2D world.
That's the 2D world.
But the 3D world is different.
You could do a little sculpture or something that was the same thing.
And so like that's something else that's questionable.
But at the end of the day, it's a bunch of triangles that a computer is making in the
shape of something.
And you know, it's really, it hurts my brain to think of where this should and shouldn't
go.
Because even speech that I find repugnant, I have to say, well, maybe people are allowed
to say it.
Interesting.
Yeah.
It all comes down to speech in the end.
So it's, it's, it's a controversial issue.
And honestly, I don't know how you get the genie back in the bottle after, after this
happens.
It's, you know, I'm, I'm hearing from, from right wing people saying this is outrageous
because basically you're, you're, you're putting guns in the hands of everybody.
And I just want to say to them, that's the point we've been making for years now.
Your policies have put guns in the hands of everybody.
Now you see how crazy it is because it's gone one step further.
So maybe you'll see how crazy it was before.
And we can figure out some other way to deal with the entire problem.
And speaking as someone who has been a professional and a hobbyist in the field of 3d printing
for like six, seven years now, it's, it's been rough, you know, describing that to somebody
like a, you know, your average person.
What do you do?
Oh, I'm in 3d printing.
Oh, that's the thing with the guns.
How could you?
And I have a 3d printed placard somewhere that you can download off the site thingiverse,
which is a 3d repository and which says, no, I will not print you a blanking gun.
But with an expletive where the blank is, because this is radio.
And that that has had to be a thing like, no, there's more to this.
There's so much more to this than just making things that go boom.
But you know, that's the thing that gets the press.
And that's the thing that gets, you know, the president tweeting something barely coherent
at the early hours of this morning.
I think, I think it overall just stifles innovation.
I think, you know, companies and even manufacturers are using this technology and should be encouraging
and using it even more, you know, and I think that it is that slippery slope of, well, yeah,
if we just legislate this, we start basically carving out lanes where, where otherwise the
sort of field of innovation was wide open.
And I think for rapid prototyping and, and making custom parts, you shouldn't impose
sort of preemptive impediments to, to people designing different things.
But I do think what, where they're going to have to go is, you know, if this equipment
or if modified equipment is used in crimes or otherwise used after the fact to levy higher
penalties and so on, because you are adding, you know, high volume clips or whatever modifications
that are the, they themselves already illegal in, in, in so far as the ATF is concerned
and so on and so forth.
So I think a lot of like sort of higher penalties and so on are going to be the most effective
ways after that and will preserve sort of the, the landscape of innovation, which I
think is vitally like crucial.
And you know, I think like we're just barely familiar with 3D printing now.
And the, the accessibility is I think just becoming cheap enough to, to like just play
around with it, you know, and get familiar.
I think you yourself have said, you know, it's, you've been toying with it and working
in the industry for, for years now.
And you know, it's, it's only now sort of been as mainstream and popular and, and it
would be, I think, a shame to start legislating what you can and cannot do with that technology.
Yeah.
And it's, it's like under the law, you can carry a baseball bat around.
It's not an illegal thing.
But if you go and whomp someone over the head with it, then that becomes a deadly weapon
that you've just assaulted someone with under the law.
And I think, I think the same thing applies to anything that you might print that you
would then use as a, as a weapon.
It's like, there's, there's an old saying, you know, your right to swing your fist ends
at my face.
So yeah, this is, this is still, if you're going to go out and do something shady, I'm
sure you probably, if you're printing yourself a gun, you probably would have found something
else to use had you not had that ability.
But, but yeah, it's, it really, it really recategorizes this whole thing of like banning
an item when anybody can make any item.
Yeah.
And I think the other caveat here is like serialization.
Like if you are a firearms, firearms manufacturer, and you're using molded plastic or some other
sort of additive process to create these weapons, or perhaps just to prototype and then make
a mold and then injection mold or use traditional parts tooling to create a product, you're
still like going to be required to sort of submit volumes, like accounting of how many
products you've, you've sold and you're, you're creating a model, you're, you're serializing
it.
But I think an individual who's hobbying or doing this at home, who perhaps prints something
and doesn't put a serialization or some sort of watermark in there, the volumes they're
capable of producing and the sort of overall harm is so inconsequential compared to the
overall good of allowing people to print things.
My prediction on where this will ultimately go is that a certain type of 3D printer will
become the standard and that 3D printer will work like color copiers, where if you try
to make counterfeit money, it's going to somehow report you.
And if you print a gun, a legitimate 3D printer will report you and probably report you for
other things as well.
But that, that's a really difficult thing to hope for because the best 3D printers on
the consumer level are open source right now.
And that's, I don't think that's just my, that's just my open source bias.
That's a fact that they're all pretty much based on the same guts.
So anybody can build themself a 3D printer with, with the right bits and pieces.
And if that continues to be the case, you know, how are the people aren't going to build
that sort of weird DRM into their own machines.
I didn't say it would be an easy conversation to have.
There's going to be conflict and crackdowns and, and all kinds of things to object to.
But I think that's, that's the solution that's going to be put in front of us.
So we should be ready for that.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that's like a possible outcome, possible scenario, possible way of dealing with it.
But will it be desirable?
I highly doubt it.
And will it, will motivated individuals with the, the skill be using those?
Absolutely not.
All right.
Well, moving on to maybe a more cheerful story.
You hear that the charter slash spectrum has been kicked out of New York.
Yeah.
The state public service commission voted on Friday to revoke its approval of charters
2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable and ordered charter to sell the former Time Warner Cable
system.
I didn't know you could do this, but yeah, they, they, apparently their service is so
bad and you know, we can all attest to that.
No one's ever been a customer of either Time Warner Cable or spectrum can, can, can say
this.
But apparently if, if it gets to that level, the state can take action and actually revoke
things that it approved in the past.
Now no one expects charter to leave New York without a fight.
And the company has confirmed that they they, they plan to fight this tooth and nail.
But interesting development too, that we also got wind of a group of striking charter spectrum
workers holding the picket line for nearly a year and a half have introduced a new business
plan to break the corporation stranglehold and cable TV service in New York city and
replace it with a new worker cooperative that benefits everyone.
Doesn't that sound great?
That would, that would be great.
Pacifica.
Um, so the cable channel Pacifica cable.
Wow.
Okay.
That's an interesting concept.
Why is that?
So outside of the realm of we're real dreamers here.
Well, if we pull in the kind of money that they were pulling in, our problems would be
solved.
Wow.
Um, but it took the group about 50 strikers, uh, three months to assemble the comprehensive
business plan.
So they were planning for this before all this happened, uh, which they maintain could
be enacted with limited disruption to New York city cable TV subscribers.
Um, so, uh, as we said, charter spectrums, existing franchise agreement with the city
of New York expires in 2020 so it's likely they're going to hold on to their customers
until then.
But uh, after that they, they have to, uh, they have to get rid of their, their company
and give it to somebody.
Uh, a New York city department of information technology and telecommunications audit of
the agreement completed earlier this year determined that because of charter's overly
broad interpretation of the term located in the city, charter failed to engage in practices
with respect to its vendor selection that demonstrate compliance with the requirements
set forth in section 17.4 of the franchise agreements, et cetera.
So they're in big trouble and uh, they have to, um, uh, get out of town and it's going
to be interesting to see what, what, uh, what takes place.
What's really fascinating about this is, um, it's the first time in, I don't know how
long that, um, a telecom monopoly basically is actually being punished for doing a crappy
job and for not doing what it promised it would do.
Because the whole thing behind this is that they agreed to certain terms when, uh, when
they got the approval to, uh, by time Warner, they agreed to have certain services in place,
um, and uh, you know, certain levels of accessibility and all that.
And they've completely failed to do that.
And uh, so like they, they are actually suffering a consequence, which is not something that
I think big, uh, big multimedia, um, type companies are used to really.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, how long has it been since divestiture?
In the consolidated sort of landscape.
Yeah, indeed.
And, um, internet service providers in this city, um, particularly are monopolies basically
because you can't really go to the other company because they've divided this place up like
a, like a Christmas turkey and, um, each keep their own bits and they don't interfere with
one another.
So there's so much of that, like lobbying power in that, in being such a, a, uh, a consolidated
single entity in that market that they can kind of, uh, you know, kind of make deals
and otherwise, uh, otherwise kind of weasel out of these things.
Whereas in this case, they're actually having to face the music of not being able to, to
work in that market.
All right.
And another, uh, good news.
Google is reportedly planning to relaunch its search engine in China, complete with
censored results to meet the demands of the Chinese government.
Oh, wait, that's, that's not good news.
That's bad news.
Oh boy.
Um, we need to file things better in this show.
Um, wow.
The company originally shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, citing government attempts
to limit free speech on the web, but apparently that's okay now.
Uh, all right, the US tech giant now wants to return to the world's biggest single market
for internet users because, hey, you know, we have to make money somehow.
And, uh, this, this whole free speech thing, it's, it's not working.
Net neutrality wasn't enough.
It's not doing it for, for Google.
Well, according to internal documents provided to the intercept by a whistleblower, uh, Google
has been developing a censored version of its search engine under the code name Dragonfly
since the beginning of 2017.
Uh, that search engine is being built as an Android mobile app and will reportedly blacklist
sensitive queries and filter out all websites blocked by China's web censors, including
Wikipedia and BBC news.
The censorship will extend to Google's image search, spell check and suggested search features.
And you know, if they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.
And we could have censored Google here in the States and, um, all other parts of the
world as well.
It's, it's a, it's a really bad idea.
It'd be like custom, like tailored just for you and your, your modern lifestyle.
What?
You did it for China.
You won't do it for us.
Come on, Google.
You have to, you have to censor everything, right?
Bespoke, bespoke censorship.
Yeah.
I mean that the Chinese I'm sure don't want to see pictures of tanks at Tiananmen Square.
Um, they just, you know, want to, want to have a little info on the area.
Wow.
Um, this is not going to play well.
I don't think.
I really don't think so.
Plus there are alternatives, uh, that, that, uh, people can use and, and they just won't
use Google, but will they know, will they know they can do that?
That's the problem.
The thing is, as I understand it, um, from what communication I've had with, uh, people
who live in China or have lived in China, it's a fairly common practice for people
to just VPN, um, when needed to access the, uh, real internet.
Um, but, uh, but it's also seen as just like kind of a hassle where like, oh, well, you
know, I'll just, I'll just stick with what I can get, uh, because you know, who wants
to go to the trouble?
So it's, um, it's, it's a strange, it's a strange situation, but yeah, I mean, Google
was going to do that, uh, you know, way back when, and basically the free internet kind
of gave them a bit of pushback about it.
Like, um, Google still had, I think, don't be evil in their, in their, uh, in their mission
statement at the time.
And, uh, it was seen as kind of violating that, but you know, it's okay now, I guess
eight years later.
Well, and, uh, it's a substantive, uh, consumer market that I think Google wants to advertise
to obviously, I mean, they can't, they can't walk away, like they can't deny that, um,
the spending power that they would otherwise be turning their backs on.
They like money.
Yeah.
And if they take money as a result of this from everywhere else, maybe that will, uh,
knock some sense into them.
If people stop using Google in places where it's not censored because they insist on doing
this, uh, you know, completely disregarding their, their, their previous statements and
values, maybe, uh, you know, they'll rethink this.
I think that's really the only way to get through to them since they've, they've proven
that's what matters to them the most.
Well, the bottom line is, is the weapon that we have to wield.
I mean, being good at Chinese censorship is not necessarily something they're, um, going
to be proud of, or at least we will, uh, we'll be judging them based on this.
I think.
Well, this is, this is a story that definitely will be, uh, continuing, uh, in the, in the
years ahead.
Uh, and this is something I just saw this story actually, which, um, is, is, is really
kind of shocking.
I, I use that word, uh, sparingly, but wow, uh, we've all heard of, uh, the kids being
separated from their parents by, by ice and, uh, the horrible things that are going on,
but it's, it's even worse than we think.
Do you know that, um, detained immigrants have to pay up to $8 a minute to talk to their
kids on the phone?
Yeah.
A letter sent to a us immigration and customs enforcement obtained by Buzzfeed news, uh,
around 150 democratic members of Congress argue that the practice of charging exorbitant
prices to place phone calls from immigrant detention violates ISIS national standards
as if they have any of those.
That's an, I would say an abuse, uh, of their contracts because I know the phone calls are
mandated.
They're like, I think a part of the terms, uh, set for how the care, uh, through department
of, uh, health services, how that's implemented, uh, those calls are in there.
So whatever those contracts are negotiated or rates, uh, per call, whatever that ends
up being is sort of built in per child.
They have, uh, they have the ability to call specific lawyers and government helplines
for free.
That's according to the agency's telephone access standards.
But those standards also say the facilities should enable detainees to make direct or
free calls to immediate family or others for detainees and personal family emergencies
and that they should have equitable access to reasonably priced telephone services.
Um, clearly that definition is, is rather loosely applied.
It's being very stretched very, uh, thinly.
So once people finally track down their kids, a lot of these detainees are paying anywhere
from 25 cents to $8 a minute to talk to their children.
That's according to the Texas Tribune and National Public Radio, which is, you know,
a pretty steep price for cash strapped detainees to repeatedly pay and, uh, when they can afford
to, the calls are short and sparse, usually lasting about 10 minutes.
Now, as, uh, the Tribune has reported, a few major private companies dominate the telecommunication
services across the country's vast web of detention and correctional facilities, greatly
profiting from the influx of detained immigrants funneled into centers to await immigration
proceedings.
And we've been reporting on this for years, how, you know, we had some of our own show
hosts who are detained and, and we learned how much it costs, um, to, to call out from
prison when you're, when you're a part of that system, it's a, it's a horrible scam.
And now the scam is being expanded so that, um, uh, detainees, uh, people, um, looking
to immigrate into our country are also being victimized by this, but it's so much worse.
They're in a foreign country.
They're trying to reach their kids.
They don't know where their kids are.
It must be so incredibly scary and it's, it's a really shameful thing.
And in many cases, this is a family members who have already been deported or who are,
who are, who were outside of the country to begin with.
And so on top of what they're paying to call internationally, um, they're also paying the,
the exorbitant surcharges.
And yeah, there's only recently been some kind of slight pushback against the exorbitant
prices of, um, your standard prison telephone calls in this country.
And, uh, but, uh, seeing it, uh, just strengthened all the more here.
I mean, we love to talk on this program about how phone calls, uh, now are basically cheap
or free.
Um, but, uh, that, that excludes the vast population in prisons and now in ICE detention
centers.
What is the average prison phone call these days?
I don't know off the top of my head, but I wouldn't, uh, I wouldn't put it too far off
of this.
Why don't we have like a price check, you know, prison call, uh, check, you know, around
the country.
I'm sure some of our listeners can tell it.
Not a lot of our listeners, but a good number of listeners who listened to the radio are
in prison.
Oh yeah.
I know there's, uh, subscribers and listeners all over, um, and who've probably toured several
of these facilities, but we should know, we should know what the average national rate
is in the U S but we don't, I'm going to say $8, you know, all it takes is somebody, somebody
writing to us, uh, from prison.
And you know what, if you, if you want to write to us from prison, you can write to
us via 2600 PL box 99 middle Island, New York one one nine five three since, um, it's
unlikely you'll be able to send email to OTH at 2600.com, which is how a lot of people send
us feedback.
Um, we would like to know, but, um, I do know it's, it's, it's outrageous.
It's not like, um, like what we were talking about as far as calls being free or very cheap.
And I think it's a very good question for the hacker community.
Why can't that be applied to prisoners?
Why can't that technology be brought to them?
What can we do to make that happen?
Yeah.
Why do they have to be punished more, uh, given just being in a certain situation in
their lives.
But it's not them.
It's their families being punished because they usually have to call collect and, and
the families have to pay these exorbitant prices and the, and the companies profit tremendously.
This has been an issue for decades, but you know, it's a, it's an easily, um, um, a solvable
issue where we simply get rid of the rip offs and because they're prisoners, we don't care
because they're immigrants.
We now don't care and it's shameful and it should not be ignored.
All right.
Uh, you might've heard the phrase inauthentic coordinated behavior.
If you hear that from, uh, uh, what, what Facebook is being, um, um, uh, a part of,
uh, recently, uh, deleted pages from groups who are identified by Facebook as part of
this inauthentic coordinated behavior campaign, um, which basically targets people based on
liberal politics as well as, uh, people of Hispanic and African heritage.
Uh, for instance, there's a, a deleted post of inauthentic coordinated behavior that calls
for protesters to occupy the headquarters of the U S department of Homeland Security's
immigration and customs, uh, uh, enforcement agency, uh, posted by a group called resistors,
an event that was initially titled stop ripping families apart.
D C was later retitled, stop ripping families apart, take over ice headquarters.
After Facebook users said they would attend a total of 131 people later marked themselves
as having attended the June 27th rally outside of ISIS Washington offices.
Um, but this never happens.
That's what's wrong with that.
And uh, you know, it sounds like a great idea.
I'm, I'm, I'm down for it, but it's not real.
It's not really happening.
This is just something that exists online.
Inauthentic, inauthentic coordinated behavior.
It's basically, it's Orwellian.
They're rewriting, uh, the, the future, the present and the past.
There's like more fake activism than actual activism.
I mean, what, what kind of world is that?
I don't know, but you know, we have enough real activism.
We don't need the fake act, but the fake activism basically, uh, gives the real activism a bad
name or it, it, uh, it somehow makes it less strong because you assume there's more things
going on and, and, and there aren't.
Uh, there's another group called, um, uh, uh, Ast, Astlin Warriors, um, don't know how
to pronounce that, posted an image stoking racial tension around Mexican child labor
during the Great Depression, calling it a commonplace site.
Uh, this was exacerbated by racial segregation.
Mexican and Mexican American children were often not allowed in white schools, read text
around the image.
Uh, though the precise identity of the groups who wrote these posts were not made public,
there is evidence they were not posted by Hispanic groups or liberal activists who have
been critical of ICE.
Instead, they bear similarity to the Russian trolls who tried to divide voters in the 2016
election.
Now, you know, the thing about this, um, we're very quick to blame Russian trolls, maybe
it is Russian trolls, but Russians don't have a corner on the troll market.
There's trolls everywhere.
Believe me, growing up on IRC, actually I was growing up and I went on IRC, I regressed,
then I had to grow up again.
Uh, the trolls are everywhere.
They're all over the internet, they're on Twitter, they're on Facebook, they're, every
possible online forum you can imagine has trolls.
And um, that is just part of the territory.
You don't need to be from Russia, it probably doesn't hurt, but uh, we would have this regardless.
And anytime you have an online community, this is the kind of thing you can expect.
So um, I think once you, once you go into it, realizing that, realizing that, you know,
if you're not part of something face to face, uh, it may not be true, it may not be actually
happening.
Um, you, you have a more, uh, likely, likely chance of getting through it without having
the wall completely pull over your eyes.
Absolutely.
And the whole Facebook angle to this is especially interesting because, um, so many people, for
so many people these days, Facebook basically is what they get the internet through.
It's how they message, it's how they get their news, it's how they communicate what they're
doing.
And uh, it's, it's just part of the danger of putting like one organization, one commercial
organization in between you and the world and getting all your stuff through it and
trusting what comes in.
And you know, it's, uh, it, I mean, all the, all the best activist stuff that I've been
part of is still using things like email lists and other like non-centralized ways of keeping
everyone in touch and keeping everyone updated.
And uh, so yeah, it, you've got to, you've got to take everything with a grain of salt
these days.
You've got to, uh, you know, double and triple check sources for things and, uh, and activism
is no different.
In fact, it's one of the main, uh, I think targets of this sort of thing.
Especially, uh, now when most people are thinking about these tactics are active, they're, um,
they want to be, um, they want to have their voices heard.
They want to be engaged.
They want to be political or otherwise, um, you know, heard in this sort of, um, frenzy
of, of politics and, and, uh, social, um, uh, movements, uh, that are sort of, uh, uh,
uh, uh, coming up and again and again in, in culture and in, in the news cycle, um,
you know, it, it's, it is, uh, uh, an outlet that people are, are going to use and, and
absolutely, uh, uh, need to be heard, you know, and, and, and be able to have, have
their, um, uh, I guess, uh, invigorate, they need to be invigorated and they're, they're
looking for things to, to, um, attach to or be affiliated with and feel like they're doing
something that matters.
And I guess when you're on that sort of heightened alert, you can also be sort of susceptible
to things that aren't necessarily, they're kind of in the spirit, but they're adjacent
and they're not, they're not actually, um, as real as you might think.
But that heightened alert is, um, you're, you're sort of, that anxiety can be, can be
exploited in some situations.
Now, there's a, there's a think tank called the Atlantic Council.
They've partnered with Facebook, uh, to help identify threats on the social network.
They were granted access to the deleted posts that haven't been revealed, uh, publicly.
Um, and, um, basically, um, uh, they've been analyzing this whole thing.
They, they plan to, uh, issue a longer report at a later date.
Uh, but, um, they say people who run disinformation campaigns benefit whether they're discovered
or not.
Either they go undetected and can sow discord or they're revealed.
And then people begin questioning the legitimacy of all people in a debate.
And that's what appears to have happened this Monday with, uh, one organizer of a counter
protest for next month's white supremacist rally, clarifying on Twitter that the entire
event was not a Russian front.
Um, it's, it really throws chaos into, uh, into everything, uh, and, uh, it's, it's fascinating
in its own way.
Yeah.
I mean, if, if there's some activist, uh, community or activist, uh, type of thing going
on and you're, you're either a troll or, uh, working for the other side and you'd like
to mess with it, I mean, what better way than to literally jam the radar by, uh, throwing
all this sort of, uh, nonsense up into their, their spheres and their cycles.
And, uh, it's very easy to do and, uh, you know, lots of people fall victim to that.
And it, it, it, it really does, uh, kind of make things just that much more difficult
for the people trying to actually do things.
All right.
Uh, that's, uh, pretty much what's been going on.
Some of what's been going on.
Uh, we've got a lot of letters from, uh, our show last week talking about the, uh, the
recently concluded hope conference, some of the chaos that came out of that, some of the
good things that came out of that.
I'd like to read what, um, what, what some people have said.
Um, I, uh, this is from John.
I strongly support you all in this environment.
We need hope more than ever.
Uh, I do hope as part of your postmortem, you'll revisit the photo policy, which, um,
um, I couldn't find on the website, but it was in the printed program.
That's, um, that's interesting.
Usually it's the other way around.
Usually you have more on the website than in the printed program.
But, uh, if I remember right, in, um, the off the hook conference wrap up back in 2016,
you mentioned reconsidering the photo policy and I was disappointed to see this year the
policy had not changed.
Well, interesting.
And in good memory too.
Um, the policy is, um, ineffective in stopping photography.
Um, Kyle, could you summarize what the policy is in a couple of sentences?
Basically, uh, it's very restrictive on, on what's allowed.
It'll be a cynical take, but basically you can't take pictures of people unless you have
expressed permission or you give an audible warning to absolutely everyone in the photo,
which that's, that's, that's kind of the short version.
All right.
Uh, so as, as this writer says, the policy is ineffective in stopping photography.
We all know that if someone wants a photo of any conference attendee, they could easily
get it surreptitiously.
The event is essentially a public space and it's not unreasonable, it's not reasonable
rather to expect privacy outside of restrooms, private rooms, et cetera, of course.
And keep in mind there are surveillance cameras in the hotel, in almost any space you're in
these days.
I think they added some.
There's more.
Oh, they definitely are.
They're adding more.
Adding more as we speak.
It's Manhattan.
The policy discourages documentation of the conference for historical and media purposes,
art, live reporting, fun with webcams, experiments with facial recognition, et cetera.
The policy discourages documentation of trolling slash disruptive behavior.
Having more photos and video of the trolling events this year would have helped clarify
and document the situation.
There are now open cameras live to the internet for the duration of the conference.
You can say that should be obvious to those who want to remain anonymous, but it's not.
In between talks, for example, it'd be quite easy in a darkened room to stand right in
front of a camera and have your likeness stream to the world live and not really know.
John says he ended up on screen in the Citizen Four movie, so I guess that does happen.
In short, I believe the current policy only discourages productive sharing of photos from
the event while not doing anything to discourage those who want photos for more nefarious purposes.
John says, thanks as always for all of your amazing efforts on this incredible and inspiring
conference and I think there must be a hope in 2020, otherwise the narrative is three
alt-right trolls shut down the libtard snowflake pity party.
Well, I don't know if I would have said it like that, but thank you, John, for your input.
And I'm glad he set us straight.
I know, Kyle, you've got issues with the photo policy as well, and you're a photographer.
I'll let others speak, yeah, I mean, absolutely, I agree with what he said, and I can go into
detail on specific things about it, but I think it's much like we were talking about
the opening of the show, where you're kind of cutting off, like our big, one of our big
things is like, okay, let's capture this great event, you know, and show our stuff.
We're bad at our own trumpet, you know, trumpeting up or drumming up our own support, so part
of that is taking some pictures of what you're doing and saying, hey, this is our hacker
event in Manhattan, and so I think we lose out, and that's my short answer.
It's like with, you know, banning all parts of certain types of machines, you eliminate
innovation, you eliminate the creativity and fun that can come along with that.
I get people are spooked about their participation in hacker culture, or however important or
self-important their project is, and in relation to their identity, but I think there are adequate
ways to mitigate that, and that this policy, combined with our conduct policy, do overlap
in some really unfortunate and unintended ways.
There is still a stigma attached to attending hacker events.
Some people don't want to be seen in these events.
It could affect them at work, it could affect their social lives, but I'm wondering if that's
realistic to expect that your identity won't be revealed if you're in a place with several
thousand other people, and whether that causes more harm than good to keep that information,
to restrict that information so that people are taking far less photographs.
The first hacker conference I went to was Hope in 2000, and there was an individual
I met there who was wearing a big hat and a bandana and the novelty Groucho Marx glasses
with the big nose and mustache and eyebrows on them, and when I asked this person about
it, they said that it was something to do with they were on probation and not allowed
to be there, but wanted to be there anyway and didn't want to be recognized, and I thought
that was awesome.
This was way back when cameras were still basically film, and now there were no digital
cameras or a zillion free photos of whatever, but even then I thought that was pretty inventive.
I'm not saying all our attendees should maybe cosplay to the next conference, but there
are things you can do if you wish to alter your appearance but still show up at a hacker
conference.
That's an interesting approach.
I'm not sure how useful it would be today if technology can get past that and identify
you anyway.
I'm sure Facebook is working on it.
But it speaks to the point of the prevalence of this thing that was once, and I've said
this before, was once seen as an entire device in and of itself, and now it's considered
a component, yet one other thing on the circuit board that is your phone.
So there are so many of these devices, and of course, I just think that should be part
of your consideration of your exposure, and that one person photographing you and doing
something with what they have taken that you don't like is such a small and tiny, tiny
bit of your overall privacy and exposure just by being at an event in Manhattan.
Again, the cameras that you should be most concerned about, you probably cannot see at
all.
So anyway, I think that it's just one thing that we should look at, and that, yeah, there
are a lot of tools and a lot of other ways that people can kind of mitigate their exposure
in that sense.
But absolutely, cameras used to be very huge, and with the sort of the quality of them now,
the resolutions and so on, we do need to have, I think, grown up or like a different
perspective on our behavior with this component and this prevalent device.
But at the same time, I don't think just having these like very overbearing policies and kidding
ourselves in the process is very wise either.
Okay.
You can join the conversation, 347-335-0818 if you have any opinions or thoughts or hope
experiences.
Here's another letter that we got.
I was fortunate enough to attend the Circle of Hope.
So first of all, thank you for an amazing event, having grown up in Scotland, somewhat
isolated from like-minded folks.
It was a very interesting experience to see the culture that exists in the USA.
It was many years before I could afford a modem, which was long after my computer was
a C64 with a low-lead data set, so I operated somewhat in isolation.
I regret not taking part in the workshops, which would have been great for interacting
directly with the hacking culture.
I was disturbed by the reports of intimidation that were going on.
Visiting the USA from the UK has always been strange, as any foreign country should be
due to different cultural practices, norms, et cetera.
I've always found the American people I've interacted with to be generally very friendly
and kind.
However, with the current Trump regime, there has been a change in tone.
The Fox News broadcasts in the hotel were disturbing.
You know we had no control over that, right, in the elevators.
That's just the way it is.
Disturbing the tone of a dictatorship's mouthpiece, Trump declares.
You can also laugh at these things when you can't change them.
The tone of the conference was very good.
Welcome all, set some ground rules, and expect that people are generally good to one another.
It is shameful that that was abused, and I hope with the discussion that follows that
measures can be put in place.
You have the right people to speak with.
I was sorely disappointed with Steve Rombom's announcement that he wasn't going to be attending
Hope in the Future.
My impression is that he is a good man with an allegiance to the office of the president.
I find utterly baffling, while it is occupied by an utterly corrupt and probably treasonous
boor, spelled B-O-O-R.
I would love to attend Hope in 2020 if the USA isn't split asunder by then.
We'll keep you updated.
I sincerely hope instead there will be some reconciliation in mainstream politics.
Tone is very important, and it is set by those at the top, signs Stu from Cambridge, UK.
P.S. the demo scene session was great.
Thank you, Stu, for that awesome letter, and be invited to write to us, too, oth at 2600.com.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm here.
Go ahead.
What's on your mind?
Okay.
I streamed some of the talks online, the Sunday talks, but Friday and Saturday, I missed.
Are they going to be posted anywhere?
Yes.
Okay.
Perfect.
That's something that a bunch of us have been working on for the last, however long it's
been since the conference ended.
Yeah.
We've been negotiating with our robots, and they're basically in charge of encoding.
So once the robots have completed all of their tasks, we'll be ready to share those online.
Let's be clear here.
We're not talking about the people we're working with to get you the videos.
We're not calling them robots.
Actual physical robots that print DVDs and things like that.
Okay.
I just want to make sure that's clear before anybody gets insulted.
No problem.
Where will I look for that?
Which site?
Your 72600 site?
Yeah.
There'll be an announcement on 2600 and on the hope.net site.
Yeah.
We have individual copies we'll make available if you want a specific talk and then other
packages.
Yeah.
It'll all be on the website and hopefully within the next few weeks.
Okay?
That'd be good.
Thank you.
Thanks for your call.
Good point.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Another thing we do also is provide audio for people that want to listen to things on
the go, maybe catch parts of a talk that they weren't able to hear all the way through.
They can fill in the gaps with audio files, which is coming soon as well.
And the streaming.
Again, all credit to the Internet Society, ISOC, the people there who did a fantastic
job just getting it out to tens of thousands of people that weren't at the conference and
were able to see every single talk.
They all were streamed, all three tracks for three days.
It's simply incredible.
I don't think any other conference in the States does that.
I know CCC does that over in Germany.
And that kind of was our model to try and do things the way they do it because they
get a lot of things right.
And Kyle, I know you were instrumental in getting us the 10 gigabit connection to the
internet, which is also something unique in this country.
Oh, I helped a little bit.
There's a great group of network and other volunteers that help make that happen.
That network team gets better every year.
I'm blown away by their capabilities.
We aimed for some high goals and it has basically created this massive infrastructure that we
want to just make better use of and provide for attendees, using for streaming, using
for all kinds of promotion and other kinds of services during the event and thereafter,
of course, figuring out what works and designing new things for the future.
And of course, the AV team too, with expanded space, being able to pull it off.
When I'm actually able to be conscious and get my thoughts together, I am so blown away
and in awe by what those guys are able to pull off each and every time, just so creative
and it looks really good and it's all incredibly professional.
When you hear good sound and see clear video, it's because of the work these guys have done
setting up every single stage and making it all work.
And it's uniquely American.
It's got that international feel.
We have speakers from all over, but we really have our own flavor, our own twist.
We've taken some of what we've learned from kindred projects and events and we've distilled
it and have this wonderful group of volunteer and other coordinators that just assemble,
self-organize and build this amazing infrastructure and create a venue to talk about technology
and all of these important issues to hackers.
It truly is magic and really a fun thing to have been a part of.
And of course, the Hotel Pennsylvania, the perfect backdrop for all this.
So much fun to be in that particular location in the city and just the cooperation and imagination
of the people there to help us have a successful event every time we do this.
It's unparalleled, so hopefully we have many more of these in the future.
Right now, I am drained.
I'm sure everybody else is.
Let's read one more letter, then we'll get out of here and make way for the next show.
I was there, I was witness to the MAGA Hat Incident.
Make America Great Again, in case those of you don't know what that acronym means.
I don't think the events of fascist infiltrating groups of any kind is new, but just because
a group of fascists infiltrated a group does not mean that the group is at fault or complicit
in fascism.
It means that the fascists are one step ahead.
I think anyone with a grain of moral fiber understands this.
Yes, it is frustrating that fascists gained an upper hand, but we are a creative group
of hackers that can and will do something about this.
We can solve this problem and many others.
I refuse to use the word provocateurs for these people.
Even if they are professionals and paid to do this, while not directly fascist, they
are complicit in fascism.
So to me, they are fascists.
And by the way, I knew of the one incident, but was unaware of the others.
I enjoyed the conference very much.
All I can say is keep hope going.
There is a lot of support for it and many of us will help protect hope from fascists.
Thank you, Bob in Minneapolis for that great letter.
Yeah, we have gotten a lot of this kind of writing and it's something that we're going
to face head on and continue to discuss.
And we're hearing all kinds of ideas and hopefully we're going to get more and more of those
coalesced into something that works for our unique community.
And I'm just, yeah, I'm pricing shock collars now and other forms of electrocution.
I'm thinking we'll make it like sort of a social thing.
So you upvote how many volts you get shocked with based on your behavior and how society
approves of you individually.
We'll gamify it.
We'll have to have a couple of meetings to get our policies straight, but we'll keep
you updated folks on how that goes.
It's fine.
It'll be mandatory.
Tone it down a little bit.
But thank you Kyle for that.
It works.
Yeah.
Appreciate it.
Rob?
Go to your local 2600 meeting.
It's everywhere this Friday, 2600.com slash meetings.
Yes.
They take place all over the world, except in Israel where they take place the first
Thursday of the month.
And if you don't have one near you, you can start it.
That same page has the info on how to do that, 2600.com slash meetings.
Our email address, oth at 2600.com.
And we look forward to hearing from you.
Have a good night.
Hey, this is Shaka Khan, and you're listening to WBAI.
New York, 99.5 FM.