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And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
It's 8 o'clock, time for another edition of Off the Hook.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Von Diddley Bonk, but the best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Oh, yeah, that's me. I'm here.
Alex. Hi.
Good evening.
And Voltaire.
Greetings.
Wow.
So here we are on this Wednesday.
Put the book down, Kyle.
Put the book down.
No, I'm just...
We've got the Bob Woodward...
Haven't had a conversation in two days now because everyone's reading this book.
I got to get through chapter 40.
It's my third cup of coffee, and I've been reading straight through.
It's good stuff.
No, it's riveting.
I'll say that.
Yes.
But we do have a show to do.
We do have some things to take care of.
And hopefully we'll take some phone calls.
The phone number to take note of, 347-335-0818.
We'd love to hear from you.
And you can also write to us, oth at 2600.com.
Hey, an update to a story that we reported on last week,
a disturbing story concerning a missing person in the hacker community
named Arjun Kempfris.
Again, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.
A Dutch hacker.
He's been to Hope.
He's well-known in the community.
He has been missing since August 20th out of a city known as Bodo in Norway,
another place that I've been to.
You've been to as well, Kyle.
It's a place with an airport.
It's a place that's fairly near the sea.
And that is the last place anyone has seen this guy.
Now, there have been some developments in that a signal was received
on his cell phone.
This is interesting.
A signal was received on his cell phone in the southern part of the country,
a place called Vekessa, I believe is how you pronounce it.
It's about 50 kilometers south of Stavanger.
Now, what's interesting about this is that Arjun was supposed to get on a
train in Bodo heading to Trondheim, which is to the south.
Now, if you were to take a train to Trondheim and then continue from
Trondheim to Oslo and then continue from Oslo to the last stop,
you would wind up in Stavanger, which is near where this
cell phone was turned on.
I don't believe there is one train that does the whole thing.
You would have to take the train to Trondheim, then a train to Oslo,
then a train to Stavanger.
But conceivably, it's possible.
It does seem to be a route that a train could go on that would go
all the way down there.
Again, I'm just spitballing here as far as throwing out theories and
ideas as to what might have happened.
Now, his phone was turned on in that small place, Vekessa,
which is about 50 kilometers south of Stavanger.
But a German SIM card was inserted after the phone was on for 20 minutes.
I was getting conflicting reports as to whether or not his pin was entered.
The consensus right now seems to be that it was not.
Some people were saying that it was.
If his pin was entered, that would indicate that that was, in fact, him.
But if it was not entered, and the phone was on for 20 minutes,
and then a German SIM card was put into it,
it kind of leans towards maybe somebody finding the phone
and putting a SIM card into it, or maybe something else.
Who knows?
Very little information is being given to the public,
so it's kind of hard to do anything but speculate.
Now, yesterday, something a bit more disturbing was discovered.
They found a bunch of his missing property.
A fisherman found some of his belongings,
and that was near Bodø.
They're found in the sea between the towns of Fosk and Ragnan in Nordland country.
They didn't reveal what the belongings were,
but he was traveling with a portable kayak,
so it is possible that he set out from that area,
and his belongings were found fairly nearby where that might have taken place.
It's very frustrating because we're just getting bits and pieces,
and the authorities didn't seem to be taking it all that seriously.
In fact, I heard a lot of speculation that perhaps he's doing this deliberately,
trying to stay off the radar, and he knows how to do that,
but there's too many disturbing things here.
Not the least of which...
Here, I'm going to hand you this story.
This is just typical stories that are coming out.
Alex, upon looking at that story, what do you see that's wrong with it?
Well, it has Julian Assange on the front cover.
Not only one picture, it has two pictures of Julian Assange,
and no pictures of the guy who's missing.
And they're almost the same picture.
Every single story I read just lapses into Julian Assange's story,
about how he's being holed up in the embassy,
and that's an interesting story, and we've been following it for years,
but for God's sake, this is a story about this guy.
If you look at the headlines, it's basically,
Assange comes first, this guy comes second,
or here's a strange disappearance of WikiLeaks associate.
That is not the story.
It is a story, but it's not that story.
We need to focus on this guy.
Being eclipsed constantly by something else.
Can I ask you a question about that story?
The belongings that were found by a fisherman,
they were found in the water.
That's my understanding.
If that understanding is correct,
and let's say there was some kind of capsizing of his kayak,
that does not necessarily jive at all
with the idea of a cell phone turning up near Stavanger.
That's exactly true.
How does a cell phone get from,
not the northern part of Norway, but pretty far up,
all the way down to the southern part of Norway,
and here's something else, I did a little research on,
and this is something that they could be telling us,
the currents flow upward over there.
Even if somehow something floated all the way down,
while it doesn't happen that way,
the currents go northerly at that particular point,
from what I've been able to understand.
There is something, there is more going on here,
but we don't know what it is,
and unfortunately it's being eclipsed
by all this conspiracy talk
about how they want to get Julian,
and this guy was somebody who,
I don't even know how close he was to him.
He may have met him just a couple of times,
or he may have done something for WikiLeaks,
but I don't think that's the story.
The story is this guy is missing.
Is he hiding?
Was he abducted for some other reason?
Is he lost someplace?
That is what we have to be focusing on,
and unfortunately I'm not seeing enough of that,
and as a result not enough information is getting out.
The hacker mindset could prove helpful here.
The cell phone alone,
if we knew more about how that was detected exactly,
what happened, was the pin code entered?
Not being able to get a straight answer on that
is frustrating,
because that reveals all kinds of information,
and if the pin code was turned on,
it could explain why the authorities
aren't pursuing this as strongly as they should.
If you look up his name,
there's only a handful of stories about this,
most of which have been provoked
by people in the hacker community.
More important than the WikiLeaks connection here
is the fact that Arjun authored the tome
Information Security for Journalists.
That means that he's probably
in intimate contact with journalists,
perhaps was working on some interesting stories.
That has more relevance to me
than a tangential link to WikiLeaks.
I think that's far more important than this.
I don't see any indication in this story,
and I haven't read the entirety of it,
of what his last contact or meaningful contact was
with WikiLeaks.
How about this?
Why Bodo?
Why was he there?
It's a nice place,
but I wouldn't take a vacation there.
It's basically a midway point to other places,
but maybe there was something there
that attracted him, but what was it?
The fact that he was supposed to get on a train
the day he went missing.
Okay, surveillance cameras, they're everywhere,
so did he get to the train station or not?
I haven't seen any clear answer to that.
There's all kinds of things
that could be looked into here,
and knowing the information
would be extremely helpful.
I've heard, as well,
that Europe does have a lot of CCTV.
They absolutely do, yes.
I'm really curious if the phone
is being examined any further
than what you were initially saying is coming out.
As far as just media in general
or where he left off as far as using it,
there's probably layers and layers
of security and difficulty there,
but maybe media cards or just anything,
any kind of clue as to what exactly
he was doing right before
he was separated from that device.
That goes for the other belongings, too.
You weren't able to list them,
but I'm really curious what other stuff,
electronics or otherwise,
might be kind of an indicator
as to what was going on
or how it came to be
that he was separated from those belongings.
I can't tell you anything about the belongings.
I can tell you how long Julian was in the embassy for.
The story goes into that,
but it doesn't give you information
on the belongings that were found.
The other thing is,
the belongings would include his cell phone,
most likely.
That's something that you would
generally have on you
if you were going on a kayak.
Well, you may have had more than one.
There could be a lot of different scenarios there.
Yeah, a lot doesn't add up here.
How does his phone get to the southern part of the country
and his other belongings wind up
in the water in the northern part?
We need answers here.
We'll continue following it
and hopefully come to some kind of a conclusion here.
If you want to follow the story,
his name is Arjun Kampfries,
and I'm sorry again for pronouncing it wrong,
A-R-J-E-N-K-A-M-P-H-U-I-S.
And, yeah,
it's just another thing
that we are paying attention to here.
But other things are going on as well.
Some rather disturbing news today,
more disturbing news out of Europe.
We mentioned this copyright directive
that was on the table.
Well, the EU has approved
the controversial copyright directive,
which includes an Internet link tax
and upload filter.
Basically, it was a controversial piece of legislation
intended to update online copyright laws
for the Internet age.
And usually when you have a phrase like that,
it doesn't go in a very good direction.
This directive was originally rejected
by MEPs in July
following criticism of two key provisions,
Articles 11 and 13,
which were dubbed the link tax
and the upload filter by critics.
In Parliament, an updated version of the directive
was approved,
along with amended versions of Articles 11 and 13.
And the vote was 438 in favor,
226 against.
It wasn't exactly close.
They say the fight is far from finished,
but, you know, I'm hearing that a lot,
and it's getting rather depressing.
The fallout will be far-reaching.
It will take quite a while to settle.
The directive itself
still faces a final vote in January 2019,
although it's very unlikely
it'll be rejected at that point.
After that, it'll need to be implemented
by individual EU member states
who could very well
vary significantly
in how they choose to interpret the text.
But anyway, the most important parts,
as I mentioned, are Articles 11 and 13.
Article 11 is intended to give publishers
and papers
a way to make money
when companies like Google link to their stories,
allowing them to demand paid licenses.
And Article 13 requires certain platforms
like YouTube and Facebook
to stop users sharing unlicensed copyrighted material.
Now, you know, already YouTube is a massive pain
as far as that goes
because they overdo it.
They overdo it so much.
There are people, you know,
worried about hearing a snippet of a song
in a passing car
when they're making a documentary
that they're uploading to YouTube.
I've heard stories of people
who are covering revolutions, uprisings,
and, you know, they're filming all kinds of things,
but the thing that stops them
is a clip of a song going by in a car,
and they have to either reshoot something
or delete it because of that.
It's insane.
It goes against everything
that copyright is supposed to stand for,
and it's yet another example of the abuse.
Now, critics of the Copyright Directive
say these provisions are disastrous.
In the case of Article 11,
they note that attempts to tax platforms
like Google News for sharing articles
have repeatedly failed
and that the system would be ripe to abuse
by copyright trolls.
Article 13, of course, is even worse.
The legislation requires
that platforms proactively work with rights holders
to stop users uploading copyrighted content.
The only way to do so
would be to scan all data
being uploaded to sites like YouTube and Facebook,
and that would create an incredible burden
for small platforms
and could be used as a mechanism
for widespread censorship,
and that's why figures
like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales,
worldwide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee
came out so strongly against the directive.
And, you know, really, just listen to those guys
because they're the ones who invented all this.
Why don't you listen to them
and, you know, take their opinion
a little bit more seriously?
If they say it's going to break the net,
it's probably going to break the net.
Well, of course,
the people backing these provisions say
the arguments above are the result of
scaremongering by big U.S. tech companies
eager to keep control of the web's biggest platforms.
They point to existing laws
and amendments to the directive
as proof that it won't be abused in this way,
and these include exemptions for sites
like GitHub and Wikipedia from Article 13,
exceptions to the link tax
that allow for the sharing of mere hyperlinks
and individual words describing articles
without constraint.
But I don't think many of us are buying that.
It's yet another example of control
being exercised over the things
that we take for granted
and making the net a whole lot more unpleasant
and difficult to work with.
Walter?
Yeah, and even with the new additions,
like when it comes time for the member states
to implement these laws,
they're going to be overly broad,
and then they'll be just part of the reason
why this passes,
because the recording and motion picture industry
spends so much money on lobbying,
like on the front page
of all the major newspapers across Europe
where ads for this to pass these bills.
So now when the same thing's going to happen
when it comes to the member states,
they're going to spend millions of dollars
lobbying the member states
to implement it in the most harsh way.
Yeah, and with respect to implementation,
really what happens
with these European Union directives
is this is essentially a statement
from the European Union
that says you need now to enact national legislation.
It's called transposing legislation,
and each one is going to do it
with a different wrinkle,
and some states may balk at this as well.
And the idea here is really to harmonize laws
within the European Union,
but it never really works out that way,
and it's these kinds of overarching
directives that come from the European Union
that then require some kind of legislation
to be ramrodded down the throats
of these national legislatures
that the people of these countries
may not agree with
that gave rise to the notion of Brexit
and rise to the notion that the European Union
is taking away our sovereignty
and the right to make our own laws
in our own country.
This is a very good example
of the kind of idiocy
that we see from these Eurocrats
constantly making rules in areas
where they shouldn't be entering.
Eurocrats?
Eurocrats.
I like that word.
You like that word?
I can use it again and again and again.
Did you make it up?
No, this is in common parlance.
You can probably look it up, actually,
basically anybody that lives in Brussels.
But in any event,
there's just so much wrong with this.
When we covered this a couple of months ago,
I remember thinking that this couldn't pass today
because it's so idiotic.
It's so unworkable in so many ways, too.
And there's so much wrong with this.
There's so much potential for misuse,
for fraud, for abuse.
Copyrights are inherently tricky things
because they don't last forever, number one.
So how do you determine when a copyright expires?
Are these mechanisms that are filtering content
going to determine the date
on which a copyright was issued,
the date that it expires?
Is it going to look for all these things?
And what about the idea that, let's say,
we are criticizing a particular newspaper
or a particular book
and we're using an excerpt of it,
and that's perfectly fine under copyright law
in the European Union and in the United States
with respect to the fair use doctrine.
So how are these algorithms going to determine
whether or not something is a fair use?
The only way they can do it
is the way that YouTube is doing this now,
which is to shift the burden onto the user
to make an argument that the fair use doctrine applies.
And that's unfortunately not really fair to the user.
It will have a deleterious effect
on the debate that we have
and dialogue that we have on the Internet.
And frankly, I don't really understand
how smaller companies are going to be implementing this
unless they're going to be beholden to larger entities
that are doing this,
at which point all the information
that is going back and forth between users and websites
is also going to be passing through a third party.
And that's really not great
for freedom of speech and dialogue as well.
I can keep going on this if you want me to.
I mean, you know, one other issue is
with respect to the usage
of these types of filtering mechanisms,
one of the things that you think they're going to be doing
is creating a hash, right, of a copyrighted work,
creating, you know, using MD5 or whatever algorithm
you want to do to create some kind of hash of a work.
But if they're using hashing,
like companies do to detect child pornography,
all you have to do is shift one bit
and an entire hash changes.
So, you know, from a technical standpoint,
I could see this with respect to copyright
being really difficult to implement.
Well, on the subject of child pornography,
I happen to have a story here
concerning stamping out the spread
of child sexual abuse material,
which apparently is known as CSAM.
C-S-A-M. I didn't know that.
It's a priority for big Internet companies.
It's also a difficult and harrowing job
for those on the front line,
human moderators who have to identify
and remove abusive content.
So Google, as of last week,
released free AI software
designed to help those individuals
and hopefully the children being abused.
Most tech solutions in this domain
work by checking images and videos
against a catalog of previously identified
abusive material.
This sort of software is known as a crawler.
It's an effective way to stop people sharing
known, previously identified CSAM.
Really, I never heard that before.
It can't catch material that hasn't already
been marked as illegal.
For that, human moderators have to step in
and reveal content themselves.
Google's AI tool triages flagged material,
helping moderators work faster.
And using the company's expertise
in machine vision, it assists moderators
by sorting flagged images and videos
and prioritizing the most likely
CSAM content for review.
It should allow for a much quicker
reviewing process.
In one trial, says Google,
the AI tool helped the moderator
take action on 700% more CSAM content
over the same time period.
This is a hard thing to argue,
but it's also fairly easy to expand this
into other realms, other domains
where images might be objectionable.
Let's say, oh, I don't know,
because it's a good example, Tiananmen Square.
Let's say images of that,
of the pro-democracy movement,
or maybe the Arab Spring,
or all kinds of things that
can be considered controversial
that the authorities would prefer
that you not spread around.
Well, using a tool like this,
it would be very trivial to just go out
and find all the images,
maybe track down the people
who posted those images,
but make sure that the images themselves
do not spread.
And, you know, while always the first
example of this is something
that we can all agree on,
the ones that follow, those are the ones
that you have to worry about,
and they're inevitable.
Yeah, this makes me think of
the conversation about war crimes
and the instance where
collateral murder was released.
Imagine any kind of military footage
or footage from operations
in the Mideast or anywhere
somehow being something that
a private entity steps in and filters
on behalf of the U.S. government.
So then all of a sudden,
anybody posting or reposting,
you know, video of reporters being killed
by our soldiers, maybe the audio
or whatever it is gets flagged,
then you immediately stifle the ability
for people to show what has been
going on overseas.
You know, I think the danger
of what you're talking about
already exists, Emanuel.
If you think about the current way
that child pornography is flagged right now,
and I haven't called it CSAM
or whatever you called it.
I never heard that before.
No, neither did I.
We always call it CP,
child pornography, right?
Yeah, okay, I don't know why
we need initials for these things.
I don't know.
Because it's like, you know,
George Washington Bridge being called GWB.
It's the same amount of syllables.
Well, that makes sense.
No, it's not.
It doesn't, GWB.
W is a letter with three syllables.
Yeah, but I don't know why.
It just does.
You think so?
George Washington Bridge
is just as fast as A.
Anyhow, to get back to...
BQE.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
NICMIC is another acronym here.
NICMIC stands for
the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children,
and they track child pornography.
They have the largest repository
of child pornography,
hopefully, on the earth.
And the way in which they track this
is that child pornography,
once it's flagged,
is sent over to NICMIC.
They create a hash of this.
Anything that's uploaded,
whether it's to Facebook,
to Google, to YouTube,
Instagram, whatever the hell it is,
even things like Google Drive
and these cloud-based storage providers,
is usually scanned.
A hash is created of the files.
That hash is then compared
to the hash of child pornography.
If there is a match,
then a notification is sent over to NICMIC.
NICMIC then will send a notification
over to either FBI
or to state or local law enforcement.
They investigate the matter,
especially if there are a lot of matches
to these hashes
because they've got this
gigantic database of child pornography.
So this system for monitoring images
and things already exists.
I think this innovation from Google
is generally a good thing
if it doesn't overflag.
And overflagging child pornography
can have disastrous consequences
for people's lives.
Think about what could happen
if something is erroneously flagged
and it goes over to NICMIC
and then an FBI investigation is launched
and then they show up at your house
and they take your computers
and they take them for months
and you're arrested.
And then all of a sudden,
you're $200,000 or $300,000
in legal fees in the hole
trying to prove that this flag
through this algorithm was erroneous.
On the other hand,
my wife works in the prosecution
of sex crimes
and in particular crimes against children.
She has to look at these things.
It's very traumatic.
And when I was a law clerk
at the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Armed Forces,
we dealt with a lot of appeals
of child pornography convictions.
And we had to look at child pornography
because one of the big issues then
was whether or not the pornography was real
or if it was rendered by a machine.
Because if it was rendered by a machine,
you couldn't be convicted
for the possession of child pornography.
There was no actual child in there
even if it was an image
that looked like a child.
And all of this is really draining
when you have to look at this.
It's very emotionally disturbing
and when you do this day in and day out,
it has a real deleterious,
I'll use that word again,
effect on your personality.
And within these institutions
where people have to do this on a daily basis,
there really aren't support programs
to help you out.
What about people who want to do that
on a daily basis?
You have to get a fair number
of those kind of people
applying for the job in the first place.
That's a good point.
That is a good point.
But my other rather non-serious
contribution to this,
NCMEC, that's not exactly a name
that puts fear into your heart.
You're being investigated by NCMEC?
You need something better than that.
They're doing the hash matching.
Or as a lot of people call it,
the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.
They do a lot of really good work.
I mean, child pornography
is a vicious, horrible, heinous crime
and needs to be stamped out.
But I think that it's
really dangerous territory
if we are going to rely on algorithms
and not human validation
to make these calls.
But the other thing, though,
that I think needs to be addressed
is that people are not aware
that when they use Google Drive,
their images are being scanned
or their text is being scanned.
It's being monitored
and sent to authorities.
Absolutely.
That's something that needs to be,
you know, yeah,
child pornography is bad.
I get it.
But that is also something
that is extremely troubling
and dangerous.
Well, I'll tell you,
we dealt with a case
in the defense of somebody
who was investigated
for the possession
of child pornography
and he was not,
he was not solely in charge
of this particular computer.
You know, this computer
was in a doctor's office
where tons of people
were coming and going.
And then there was a hard drive
that was taken in and out.
And, you know,
it becomes a really, really
tricky issue here
because misclassification
of child pornography
can ruin someone's life.
Of course.
You know, to go back
to what we were dealing with
at the Court of Appeals
for the Armed Forces,
a lot of what we were seeing there
was back in the days
when people were trading
around CD-ROMs
and these CD-ROMs
had images burned onto them.
They're ROMs,
read-only memory, right?
So soldiers who are out to see,
didn't have an internet connection,
wanted some kind of self-enjoyment
is one way of putting it.
So they would burn these CDs,
trade them around
and sometimes on these discs
out of the 10,000 images
that were there,
there were one or two
that looked like
they could have been
child pornography.
And you essentially
waive your Fourth Amendment rights
when you become a service member.
So you don't have
the normal expectations of privacy
and anybody can come
inspect your room,
inspect your barracks,
look in your computer,
especially if folders are open
and discs are out.
Well, they would look at these discs,
they would find these files,
they would arrest the soldiers,
charge them,
court-martial them,
and appeal it.
But the sad thing is
they didn't want
to be in possession
of this child pornography
It's a strict liability offense.
And now,
what would ultimately happen
is they would be convicted,
they would be sentenced
to confinement in prison,
dishonorably discharged
from the military,
19, 20 years old,
and branded a sex offender
for the rest of their lives.
Because somebody gave them
a CD-ROM with an image on it.
That's exactly right.
At some point,
I think we have to
let sanity take over
and say,
that's not the same thing
as abuse.
That's different,
that's something that
you could have no control over.
And the hysteria,
you know,
sometimes that little fact
is lost.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't really subscribe
to the idea that,
I mean,
I think this is a lot of
feel-good stuff,
makes people feel better,
but I don't think there's
really a panacea
for electronically managing this.
I think it's something
that's always going to be there.
It's like any taboos.
You know,
the more you compartmentalize it
and say this is bad
and you can't do this,
people will find ways
and they'll find alternate methods,
like you said,
burning discs or something.
You know,
whether it's inadvertent or not.
I don't know.
I'm a little critical,
especially when it's
ruining people's lives.
I mean,
child pornography's a trigger,
word that can just,
you know,
just wreak havoc
just by the perception.
And I don't know.
I've really,
really mixed feelings,
especially as an artist.
And just in general,
I think that,
you know,
the fallout of having
everyone's files
so rifled through,
it just doesn't feel like
you have control
over your artifacts,
which is sort of
the opposite,
the antithesis of
the Fourth Amendment.
Yeah,
and it's worth pointing out
people actually care about
like helping child abuse.
The vast,
vast majority of child abuse
happens not from like strangers,
but from like parents
and members of the same household.
And the same people
that are like,
so are the most like gung ho
about fighting child pornography
are the same people
that are cutting welfare services.
Yeah,
exactly.
I mean,
this,
we could go on this.
This could be like a two hour show,
but I mean,
you look at like the Catholic Church
right now,
they have some serious issues
and they have done nothing
but ensure the sanctity
of the family
and lobbied for,
you know,
initiatives that destroy
the rights of people
like that don't necessarily
fit that model
and aren't a part of that.
And they've closed off
an entire segment of the community
and created an unhealthy environment
where power and authority
sort of can be used
to exploit actual vulnerable children.
Yeah,
and if you want to fight this,
attack it at the source.
Attack it where it's happening.
And there are plenty of,
you know,
of ways of finding out
where that's happening.
And when you see coverups,
that is the true enemy.
That is what you have to
keep from happening.
And yeah,
you know,
images whenever possible,
you know,
get rid of those.
But you also have to ask yourself
the technology
that we're introducing,
how can that be misused
for everything else?
And I just see so much potential here
for these AI tools
to be used to control us,
to monitor us,
to put the fear of the Lord into us.
Yeah,
that's something we said before.
And I just want to reiterate that,
that it's like,
it is these taboos,
these things that have
a visceral connotation
that make people feel like,
you know,
this is the right,
you know,
we should do this
and not think about necessarily
we deem edge
or other sorts of fallout,
like edge cases
or, you know,
the consequences.
And just have this massive cleanse.
But, you know,
do we ever get to a full clean internet?
And once we get there,
as I said,
you know,
are we ready for the ways
that people find around
that now cleansed platform,
whether it's Google or anyone,
right?
You know,
and then as you said, Voltaire,
are we really looking,
are we addressing the issues in society?
And again,
if we're only going to have nuclear families
look how that,
look how that worked
for the Catholic church.
Look where that gets you.
You create a sickness.
You create an environment
where people,
where it's okay to abuse people
that like,
that are like same sex oriented
or otherwise, you know,
transgender,
all of these different things
that have changed
and something that,
you know,
a lot of the world has accepted,
at least the West
and in a lot of cases
become sort of a complete
complete relegation.
And then are closed down.
People don't have resources.
They don't get to talk to people.
They don't get to express themselves.
They don't get to be themselves.
They just sit around
and are at the effect of hegemony.
And then you act shocked
and surprised
when people have manifestations
of their kinks
and so on coming out
because you're taking away anything
that's even closely considered,
you know,
God help you
if you have a diaper kink or something.
Wow.
Well, that's quite a note to examine.
But yeah,
it's definitely an issue
that I think is going to be affecting
far more than the intended target
and one that we as hackers
need to focus on.
But, you know,
keeping with the topic of Google,
how is Google
intruded upon your life this week?
I think that could be a weekly feature.
And, you know,
one thing I noticed this week,
I have basically...
Okay.
You know what?
I'm not going to say what I have
because I believe in privacy.
I believe in keeping certain things to myself.
But I'm going to come up with substitutes
and, you know,
achieve the same effect that way.
I have a Mercedes
and my Mercedes has hubcaps
and I hire somebody
to occasionally polish the hubcaps.
That's believable, right?
Okay.
So I have not had my hubcaps polished
in a good couple of years.
So I asked the person
who last polished my hubcaps,
are you still in the business
of polishing hubcaps?
Could you do that for me?
You know,
I'm still reachable in the same way.
And the person wrote back saying,
oh, no, I'm sorry.
I have a full schedule.
I can no longer help you out
with your hubcaps.
You'll have to find somebody else.
Now, I used one of my Gmail accounts
for this.
I know by law,
you're only allowed one,
but I have several.
No, that's not true,
but it will be someday, I'll bet.
So I basically communicated
using that particular account,
and I read the reply.
And then what surprised me
was seeing what was under the reply,
the reply from this person.
And the basic gist of it
is that there were three choices,
and they were suggested responses
to what he had said to me,
such as, sorry to hear that,
or thanks for answering,
I'll find somebody else,
things like that.
Basically, it read my damn email,
and not only did it read it,
it interpreted what it was saying to me
and how I might respond.
And I just, you know,
I didn't see this one coming,
but apparently this is the new normal now,
and I don't know how long
this has been going on for.
I don't really use Gmail all that much,
but have you guys noticed this?
Yeah, I mean, I think
their natural language processing
has gotten really, really good.
What's interesting is
they have made a decision
to stop scanning the content of emails
for targeted advertising.
I think they did scan the content to do this.
For advertising purposes,
for targeted advertising purposes,
but they're obviously still scanning the content
for natural language processing
and giving you these types of recommendations.
I mean, I remember...
Is that supposed to make me feel better,
that they're not scanning it for advertising,
they're just scanning it to be creepy now?
Yes, I think it is supposed to make you feel better.
It obviously isn't.
I think you should send that complaint
to the complaint line.
What leapt out for me
was the connection to the assistant.
In other words, the sort of AI thing.
We reported on this a couple months ago.
Basically, it was a thing that had made calls
and would schedule appointments on your behalf,
sort of like a personal assistant would,
but this version was in software
and it was sort of attached to that platform.
And I'm just kind of curious.
It seemed to me when I looked at it
that it was like the manifestation of that
that just sort of pushed to Gmail.
A lot of the answers were short
and very glib and terse
and not very informative or friendly
or anything like you, me.
I noticed this as well in an account
that I have access to.
So it just seems a little kind of early,
but by having it integrated with Gmail,
assume that's on your phone
and you're managing it there
and the assistant is something
you can activate and speak to
while you're on the go,
you could potentially be doing sort of response
and then that could easily be flipped
into something that's doing that for you,
maybe when you set some hours.
Like, you know, I'm away,
have my assistant queue tasks or something.
It just seems like the early steps of that.
Yeah, because what you just described
sounds like one of the early away messages,
but this is a step beyond that.
And like you said, it's the early stages.
What's this going to look like,
you know, a bit down the road?
And, you know, a few years,
are we going to be communicating
with anybody anymore?
Or are we just going to have our accounts
answering questions for us, Walter?
Yeah, even though, like, as Alex said,
they're not using the,
or at least they claim
they're not scanning emails
for the cell advertisement.
There's still, it doesn't mean
they're not using your data
for commercial purposes
because by collecting all this data
about your email,
they're like AI services
are based on having a ton of data collected
and they're selling those AI services
back to governments,
like in their smart city initiatives
and surveillance projects
where you need a ton of AI data.
So basically, AI is,
or data is kind of like the new oil.
And when they have a monopoly on that,
they can charge you serious rates
on governments.
Yeah, and building on that point
that you made, you know,
this is a marked shift, I think,
in terms of the type of data
that's valuable too
because what they were looking for before
was content about you and your life
and what your preferences were.
And I think what we're seeing now
is a shift from content
because they've already got enough content.
Everybody has seen
what we're doing for many years,
seen what we're doing
via instant messages or emails,
et cetera, et cetera.
And they're shifting more
towards behavioral analytics.
So this is data about your behavior.
How do you respond to this person
when he asks you this question?
In the aggregate,
over a billion people
becomes very, very valuable information
about human behavior.
But on the subject of human behavior
and talking about Gmail
in particular years ago,
this is sort of a funny story.
When I was using PGP
to communicate through a Gmail account,
obviously the content was encrypted,
so Gmail couldn't read it,
but I was still getting
targeted advertisements.
And I thought that
the targeted advertisements
were on the one hand kind of brilliant,
on the other hand,
a really horrible stereotype
of people that use encryption
because the advertisements
I were getting
were for home cleaning services.
So if you were using PGP
in a Gmail
and sending encrypted email,
I think there was
an implicit assumption
that you were some kind of slob
who needed your home
to be cleaned by a professional.
It was hilarious.
I was constantly getting
home cleaning services.
I would never put that
in any content,
but encrypted messages
for some reason triggered
home cleaning services.
This is about hubcaps, okay?
Just I want to state
the hypothetical.
Again, I don't own a Mercedes.
I don't think I even have hubcaps
on anything I own.
But the point is,
in your particular case, Alex,
I don't know.
Maybe home cleaning
is just the generic thing
they send out to everybody
because everybody has a dirty place
at some point
and needs to clean it.
I don't know,
but I'd like to hear
if other people
maybe got things like that.
But what I'd like to do,
maybe we could engage
in some kind of experiment here
because we both have access to Gmail.
That's a big thing.
Wow.
We're in the elite club.
We have access to Gmail.
What if we came up with
some of the most bizarre messages
back and forth
just to see if we can blow Gmail's mind
and have it suggest
all kinds of things to us
on how we should respond to that?
Just pick the most outrageous scenario
you can imagine.
Like do you still sell sarin nerve gas?
Okay, there's that.
That brings up other issues.
But I was thinking more like
I'm going to be launching
to space tomorrow
and I was just wondering
if there's anything
that you'd like from Mars
before I come back.
I don't know,
just to see what Google suggests.
But your sarin gas thing
is also a good idea.
But I wonder,
with something like that,
would we in fact be triggering
other features
that might alert authorities?
Now, all kinds of plots and schemes
that are being discussed
between two people,
Gmail to Gmail,
you know,
take it to its logical conclusion
and come up with something
really horrible.
Would you get a visit?
Would you be put on a list
as a lawyer?
What do you think?
I think it's quite possible.
I do.
I think it's quite possible.
If you have these kinds
of communications
where you're talking about things
that could reasonably lead to
some kind of terrorist activity,
then yes,
I think it could lead
to further scrutiny
at the very least.
Keep in mind that
people have the perception
when they're using Gmail
that it's secure,
that only they
and the people they're sending to
can read the mail.
But that's not the case, is it?
No, it's not the case.
I mean, there's plenty of people
that can read the mail,
especially email
when it's sent unencrypted
over the internet.
And that's the case
with most email providers,
absolutely.
That's right.
But it's just, you know,
in their particular case,
they're kind of big
on pushing privacy.
And to see this used
in this particular way
where your words
are being analyzed,
I just think people need to know
that that's what's happening.
That's true.
I mean, and this is something
I've been saying for a while,
that if Google wanted
to encrypt email worldwide,
this is really something
that they could probably
implement really easily.
At least Gmail to Gmail,
they could implement
some kind of certificate-based
encryption system
where everybody has
each other's certificates
or you can look it up
based on the email system
and then you automatically encrypt.
It would, however,
defeat the business model
that they have created.
Absolutely.
And you are getting
something for nothing.
So, you know,
there's that to consider.
There's always a price.
Let me just give out
the phone number
so people can join
the conversation
in the time we have left.
347-335-0818.
Area code 347-335-0818.
Give us a call.
Let us know
what's on your mind.
It can be about
the topics we've discussed
or it can be about
something completely different.
Again, 347-335-0818.
Voltaire.
To Alex's point about
Gmail could easily implement
like a P2P-based
and secure millions
of people's emails,
they actually,
Google went out of their way
to stop the system
from developing.
They announced
a project like that
and then immediately
put it on the back burner
and basically
turned it into vaporware.
But because it's announced
there's less development on it
because people are assuming
that this is already
a solved problem.
Oh, like,
oh, we'll wait for Google
to do it for us.
Yeah, exactly.
That kind of thing.
Yeah.
Because we're all so helpless.
Yeah, we need the help.
Okay, we have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
What's up?
Yeah,
from my perspective,
I think Google is wonderful, man.
You know,
I remember,
because I'm probably like
a little younger than you,
I'm like 40,
so I remember when I was in college
like 20 years ago,
Yahoo was the big thing
and then AOL came in
and 2006,
YouTube came out,
you know, Google came out
around that time
and they just took over, man.
But I love Google
because, you know,
you have Google Chrome
which actually alleviated
the lag times
like the regular Google
as far as web browsing.
So, you know,
they had Google Chrome now
and I've been using that
ever since.
Every phone I've had,
even going on the computer
with the library
or the internet cafe,
no one uses
IE no more.
You know,
everything is Google.
Yeah,
Firefox still,
you know,
still is giving them
a run for their money.
Have a good day, man.
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks for calling.
That's a lot of fun.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks for calling.
That's a lot of praise
there for Google
and you'll see that a lot
in the tech community.
Yeah.
You know,
he brings up
an interesting point too.
You know,
Google came in,
I think around 2004
or so
when they created Gmail.
I think an interesting point
to make here is that
back when...
Well,
they were around before that.
That's true.
But Gmail,
I think,
came out around 2004
when you needed...
Remember,
you needed an invite
to get a Gmail account?
That's right.
But here's the thing
with space.
You've got storage space,
which was actually
quite valuable
back in 2004.
True.
So you were getting something
for that exchange.
There was an exchange
of your privacy
for space.
Now,
with space being
virtually limitless,
it's incredibly cheap,
we are definitely
getting less of a bargain
when we're giving away
our privacy like this.
Yeah,
but we're used to it.
We have another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
So,
you know,
we were talking earlier
about the content ID stuff
on YouTube
and all that stuff.
I know we've talked a lot
about the issues
regarding just
whether that system
should be in place
in the first place
because it obviously
hinders a lot of
charging for links
and stuff.
It's crazy
and all that oversight
is too much.
But one of the big problems,
too,
is just the system itself
doesn't actually work that well
and there's almost
no human oversight.
So,
for example,
years back,
I had some music
that I put online
completely original,
but YouTube's
content ID system,
for some reason,
you know,
it's a heuristic system.
It saw something
that it thought
was copyright information
and it flagged
my original music,
original recordings
with no copyright material
in them at all.
And so, yeah,
and because
there's no human oversight,
it took two or three weeks
before I could get through
to a human
to actually say,
oh, yes,
this is yours
and put my videos
back online.
Wow.
That's terrible.
And I think that's something
that happens to a lot of people.
I don't think that's,
you know,
if you do a Google search
of content ID,
it's, you know,
dozens or hundreds
of reports
of this kind of thing
happening of,
even if you have the license,
it can often be an issue.
I've had colleagues
who have
legally licensed music.
They are paying their royalties.
They've got the license.
They've got their sync license
and their master license.
And if they put it on YouTube,
YouTube's content ID system
just goes off
and it says,
hey,
submit the right paperwork,
but by the time
your video is back online,
you know,
if it's two weeks,
that's,
for a lot of content creators,
that's a big problem
because that's two weeks
that you're not monetized.
Yeah.
It's a big deal
because any scheme
like we described
and discussed tonight,
any scheme is going
to be automated
from their perspective.
They just,
they can't have the overhead
as much as I sort of agree
with Alex
that there should be
some human involvement
for different cases.
I really highly doubt
that's in the business model.
And YouTube specifically
is growing so fast
and our bandwidth,
our ability to get content there
is growing exponentially
all the time
that there's really no way
they could build something
that was even really a hybrid.
Everything has to be automated
from their business perspective alone.
So that's absolutely
a frustration
and an attribute
of a lot of these entities
that you just,
you have to know someone.
You have to have a friend
that works there basically
to get any of these companies' attention
in a lot of ways.
Yeah,
Colin brings up
a really excellent point here.
Something I didn't think about
when I was reading
that article earlier today
but you're absolutely right.
Copyright can be licensed
and how are any of these filters
going to determine
whether or not
you're a licensed,
authorized user
of this particular copyright?
And people spend a lot of time
negotiating rights to music
or to film
or to images
and it will absolutely be flagged.
There's no way
for any of these filtering systems
to account for
independent private legal agreements
between two entities
or two people
for their use of copyrighted material.
It's going to be
a complete disaster
if this is implemented.
In other words,
it's not really an active system.
Once implemented,
it's sort of there
and it's an opaque filter
and an unattended one at that.
Well, thanks for the call.
Anything else you wanted to say?
No, that's all I wanted to bring up.
Thanks.
All right, thanks.
You know,
it brings up a lot of memories though
because we've had our run-ins
with YouTube
with just about every company out there
but I remember one in particular
with our friend Virgil
who gives talks occasionally
at our conferences.
He gave a talk
at one of the Hope conferences
where he was playing
an excerpt of a story about him.
He did something.
I forget exactly what it was about.
I think it involved Wikipedia
and he played an excerpt
from the Colbert Report
and it got flagged immediately
when it was put up on YouTube
for people to see his talk.
In fact,
our account got suspended
because we dared
to violate Viacom's copyright
but the story was about him.
It was his story.
He was showing it to people
yet somehow it didn't belong to him
and we had to blank it out
in order for people to,
but then the talk didn't make sense
because he was referring
to something that he did
because somebody else talked about it
and they had a license.
We were forbidden
and the ultimate irony
is that Viacom didn't make that available
anywhere else.
They just had it logged
and things like that
happen all the time.
Another thing I'm involved in right now
is archiving of old videotapes.
I'm kind of manic about this
since the 1980s,
recording historical things on television
or old episodes of TV shows
and what I'd like to do
because I've inadvertently captured
a lot of history
including commercials of all sorts,
things that I might even have
the only copy of.
I would like for people
to crowdsource that,
look at each video
and say,
hey, that's me in that commercial there
and we can make clips
and have a kind of archive.
You can't upload it.
As soon as you upload it,
it's flagged
because somebody thinks
that you're going to be
taking advantage of copyright
by watching a 30-year-old episode
of St. Elsewhere
on a copy of a videotape.
It doesn't make any sense.
There need to be outlets
for creativity,
for archiving,
for historical study
and they don't exist right now.
Yeah, the best places I think
are like archive
or even like museums
do a better job
of allowing content like this
to exist and be curated.
But again,
it's behind a paywall.
It's behind a foundation.
It's the only protected way
it can exist
as a digital recording
and it's really a shame
because there's so much
in culture and in ads
about just seeing how companies
and brands have changed
over the years
and you really have
an amazing treasure trove of stuff
but it's a real problem
finding where you can share it,
where you can allow people
to see it and work on it
but for them to do that
in a legal way
and in a public way,
all of the current platforms
are just terrible for that.
They will completely obliterate
any aspiration
to use people's knowledge
and enthusiasm
to really capture
and find out what's there
and then talk about it.
There could be all kinds
of things in it.
You mentioned archive.org
and thank God
for the Internet Archive
because if that weren't around,
there'd be so much
that would be lost permanently.
The thing is,
it's the exception.
It should be the rule.
Internet Archive should be something
that we all take an interest in
because just, you know,
BBS is from the past
which is how Jason Scott
got involved,
textfiles.com.
Preserving all that
is such a valuable service.
It's something that
if we don't do it,
it'll be lost forever
and okay,
you may protect your copyright
but you lose history
like you've never done before
and who gains from that?
But if you designed
your own platform,
if you really invested
in making it
specifically the way
you want to share it
and leverage community interest
the way you intend,
it should not be that
you need the backing
of archive.org
and a lot of people
to protect you in doing that.
Say you're just a student
or you put together
a small site
and you're building
this whole thing yourself
and then you're told
by outside entities
that you need to do filtering
or that you need
to not host something
or your site's seized
just because a couple
conglomerates decide
you ought not exist
or they don't want
to talk about their past
and there you are.
You really can only
find refuge
in these organizations
and that's really bad
because they,
I think Jason
and archive.org
would admit they have
their work cut out for them
and people should be free
to share and create
and do the archiving
that needs to be done
so that it's sort of
ready for curation
when it gets to archive.org.
You know,
just a thought here.
With all the money
these companies make
with their copyright
and control of the internet,
a percentage should go
to Internet Archive
to preserve and maintain.
I just came up with that idea
but I think that should be
mandated.
And fight their lawyers.
Building on this issue
that Carlos brought up
with regard to sharing,
a real foreseeable
but unintentional consequence
of this content filtering law,
if it's passed
at a plenary vote at the EU
and it's transposed
into national legislation,
what we're already seeing
with GDPR to an extent
is this further balkanization
of the internet
where because of these
burdensome rules,
certain sites and dialogue
and content
are not available
to people in the EU
because of these restrictions.
We're going to see that
in California
with the California Consumer
Privacy Act
and what I fear would happen
is certain forums,
certain sites
where content is exchanged
and discussed
will be prevented
from being displayed
in the EU
because of these
particular rules.
That balkanization
is not good for free speech,
not good for dialogue,
not good for the internet
at all.
I think the RIAA
and the MPAA,
the organizations
that say that these filters
are mandatory
are huge hypocrites
because they claim that
if we don't have
strict copyrights
we won't have incentives
to create more culture
when in fact
they're the ones
that their filters
are destroying
vast pieces of culture
and preventing them
from getting out.
Let's give it a try
and see if it really does
stifle creativity.
I wager it doesn't.
All right,
that's going to have to be
the last word.
Write to us,
oth at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
In the meantime,
stay awake
and send us your feedback
and challenge the system
and all that good stuff.
We'll see you next time.
Good night.
You're tuned to listener-sponsored, non-commercial
Pacifica radio. This is WBAI in New York and you just heard, what was the name of
that program? All About Hacking? Off the Hook.