In Rio de Janeiro, our sister, Mariella Franco, who led for LGBTQ people who are also doing
that.
So we know all of that.
It goes beyond this, but we know we have to organize, organize, organize.
The movement just doesn't sit right here in this moment.
The movement we're building, the way we change this country, is going to be sustained activism.
And I know that you're here today, you're here tomorrow, and you're in to the end till
we win.
This is listener-sponsored, non-commercial WBAI New York.
And that's true.
This is WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cut.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bundelibão for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
And a very good evening to everybody, the program is Off the Hook.
We're back after an absence of a couple of weeks.
Good to see everybody again.
This is Emanuel Goldstein, joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly?
He's not here?
Okay.
Well, Alex, Alex isn't here either.
Oh my goodness.
Kyle, you're here.
Hi.
Hey, how you doing?
What's going on?
Did I miss a memo or something?
No, I think it's only us tonight.
Are there microphones turned up?
Well, they're turned up, but they're not there, so nothing's gonna happen.
Huh.
Wow.
I think you found some kind of...
It's a waste of microphones, is what it is.
Yeah, we have a lot of them.
You know, speaking of microphones, I saw microphone trees.
And if you don't know, in the industry, it's the armature, the mechanism that holds microphones.
I saw this in the new studios here at WBAI.
So what that means is we're getting more of our new home.
Our new broadcast studio is developing.
I even saw a board.
Yes, what looked like a board.
A board, like a real mixing board?
A radio mixing console.
Wow, because this one is from Playtel.
Play School?
Yeah.
I didn't want to say the actual name, but yes, it's pretty much...
Play...
It's amazing what they teach kids these days.
Play Doh?
It works.
It works.
But yeah, the new studio, thanks to your listener dollars, and we're not kidding, that's what
made it possible.
That's what made it happen.
We want to thank you so much.
It is encouraging.
If you have not called in yet, this is the final week of our fund drive for the winter.
Yes, there will be one in the spring as well, but this is the winter one, all right?
Four seasons a year.
And I think we have five fundraisers now a year.
But regardless, the money goes for things that are important, like a new studio, like
a new board, like microphone trees.
And the less exciting things to look forward to, like operating costs and general maintenance.
The transmitter itself requires power, all the telecommunications in between.
Oh, that transmitter.
You know, it's amazing though, when you consider a year or so ago, the doom and gloom that
we were facing with the transmitter, the Empire State Building, them suing us out of existence,
et cetera, et cetera.
Well, guess what?
We got through it.
We got through it.
We have a new transmitter, new location.
We're broadcasting to just about pretty much all the area we were broadcasting to before.
And the future looks bright.
It really does.
But your calls to 516-620-3602, pledging anything you can afford, makes such a difference.
You're hearing it in our voices.
You're hearing the optimism that we're feeling.
And we need that in this day and age especially.
We need some wins.
And WBAI is the biggest win that I think we can invest in right now.
So please, 516-620-3602.
That's for all you who just want to pledge and support the radio station, aren't interested
in what particular items.
Although, you know, the people on the other end of the phone will be able to tell you
some of those items.
We'll have some specifics to give you in just about 15 minutes or so of some things
for tonight's show.
But if you just want to make the pledge, get it done, make that phone call, 516-620-3602.
Or go to the website, givetowbai.org.
Give the number to WBAI.org.
You can also text WBAI to 41444.
Try it.
And you'll get a message back.
And you'll have this nice little two-way conversation with the computer.
But in the end, you can donate a particular amount that you can pay every month or however
often you want, however much you want.
So many different ways.
So many different ways to support the radio station.
But only one, 99.5 here in New York City.
And it's been like this since 1960.
I dare anybody to find another radio station in New York City that's been around that long
doing something similar.
Yeah.
And those contributions really do keep us going, literally and figuratively.
In our moments of crises, when it comes down to technical stuff like that, when you're
making those contributions, when you're calling and supporting off the hook, as well as WBAI,
it basically is a shot in the arm for us behind the scenes and helps us endure, solve problems,
and make sure that we are looking forward to tomorrow.
Because, well, you've contributed and want to see tomorrow.
And that means we get through all those details and plan some exciting things for the future.
Yeah, you're listening to an incredible place that has an incredible history.
It is part of the Pacifica Community Radio Network.
That's right.
And we're very proud of that here at WBAI.
It predates NPR, by the way.
It sure does, yeah.
And in New York City, this station in particular has been there throughout it all.
You name a particular point in time, and we cover a real gamut of music, as well as talk,
and informative programming that is local.
We're real people.
We're down here.
We get to run down the hall, look out the window, tell you how traffic's doing.
That stuff makes us real.
We're not going to be getting traffic reports, though.
No, we're not.
Unless you're really interested in what's happening on Atlantic Avenue.
Maybe we can tell you about that.
But that's it.
That's going to be the extent of it.
And I just mean that it is authentic and dynamic and flexible.
We can talk about all kinds of things.
And here, in particular, on the Off the Hook program, we cover mainly telephony, telecommunications, computer.
Hacking.
Computer hacking.
Yeah, we say the H word here.
Communications and hacking and more hacking.
A lot more hacking.
We started this show in 1988.
That was the first edition of Off the Hook.
All of our shows, with the exception of a couple that got stolen out of my car way back, all of them,
hundreds of them are online at 2600.com.
And it was in 1988, I believe, that I heard the first person tell me that they were sick of all the fundraising on WBAI
and we should just stop right now.
Imagine if we had listened to that person.
Imagine if we hadn't done any of the things that we did through the 80s, the 90s, the aughts, whatever you call that period, and the teens.
All the history that would not be there.
And that's just for one radio show.
All of the technological developments, the prosecutions, persecutions, and bright young minds that we have had on these radio waves.
Bright old minds as well.
All kinds of people.
It's all there.
It's all there on our site for you to go back and listen.
Listen to the way phones used to sound back when crossbar switches used to exist.
Listen to the development of the personal computer and how things got faster and faster.
The internet was in its infancy when we first began.
And you can hear how we basically were a part of everything that was going on throughout that whole era.
The development of hacker conferences such as the Hope Conference and our travels to various parts of the world.
All preserved.
All possible because of WBAI.
It's simply an incredible place, an incredible gift that we all have, that we all share.
And never, never a commercial has aired on this particular radio station.
Unless you count Max's old time radio shows where he plays old commercials from the 1940s.
And that's just historical interest.
But no, we don't accept underwriting.
We don't accept commercials.
We could.
We're at 99.5 FM.
It's in the middle of the commercial band.
But it would detract from our programming.
That is why our listeners are so important to us.
Yes, listeners are important to every non-commercial radio station and even religious stations too who beg for money.
But all of those other places have additional funding sources.
We do not.
We only depend on our listeners.
That's why it's so important.
More people listen to more things these days, making it more of a challenge.
But those people who do stay tuned to 99.5, who listen to WBAI and the entire Pacifica network, they are true listeners.
They are listening to what is being said.
If I get one word wrong, I will hear about it because people are listening to what I'm saying.
That is the difference.
We don't have people who just have the radio on in the background while they're doing something else.
I mean, we do.
But people who listen to our radio shows here on WBAI, they tend to really be paying attention.
They sure do.
And sometimes the things we're talking about aren't of interest to you.
And sometimes we surprise people.
And it's something that they're an expert on.
And they tell us about it.
They can always call into the station.
We've taken many a phone call over the years, as well as writing to us.
We'll give out the email address for you to correspond with us.
If speaking on the phone is not your preferred method.
But today, we're raising funds for the radio station.
And that means you can make your first phone call to us to 516-620-3602.
That's 516-620-3602.
Let's get some early pledges, if you can.
And we've got a special premium package that we're going to be talking about a little bit later in the show tonight.
Right after we introduce our special guest.
But first, let's take a look at some of the things that have been going on that are of interest to the hacker community.
You remember that NSA program that Edward Snowden revealed?
The one where Americans' domestic phone calls and texts were being analyzed?
Is this the thing that came into the discussion as like a metadata thing?
Yes.
Okay.
Because there were several things.
So my first question was, what?
Basically, this was revealed through a podcast, actually.
Whoever said a podcast don't reveal things occasionally?
Well, apparently, the NSA has not used that system in months.
And the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
Now, here's the history.
George W. Bush started the program as part of its intense pursuit for al-Qaeda conspirators.
That was shortly after 9-11.
And a court later secretly blessed it.
The intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, disclosed the program's existence in 2013, jolting the public and contributing to growing awareness of how both governments and private companies harvest and exploit personal data.
So we talked about that on Off the Hook back then as soon as it happened.
And it was a big deal then.
It's a big deal now.
Congress ended and replaced the program that was disclosed by Snowden with something called the USA Freedom Act of 2015.
That's what will expire in December.
Security and privacy advocates have been gearing up for a legislative battle over whether to extend or revise the program and with what changes, if any.
So the person who was on the podcast is an advisor for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.
He raised doubts over the weekend about whether that debate will be necessary.
He brought up the pending expiration of the Freedom Act but then disclosed that the Trump administration hasn't actually been using it for the past six months.
Now, of course, that could be because they locked themselves out of it.
But probably it's more of a positive development than that.
Actually, not certain that the administration will want to start that back up, this representative said or this advisor to the representative said.
He referred to problems that the NSA disclosed last year.
Technical irregularities had contaminated the agency's database with message logs it had no authority to collect.
So officials had to purge hundreds of millions of call and text records gathered from American telecommunications firms.
So the other interesting thing about all this is that it wasn't really useful.
Without the program, without using it over the past few months or however long it's been, the sky has not fallen.
The intelligence community has to make the case that reviving it is necessary if indeed the NSA thinks it's worth the effort to keep trying to make it work.
The phone records program has never thwarted a terrorist attack.
And that's a fact that emerged during the post-Snowden debate.
So the question remains, why restart it rather than whether to turn it off?
Now, the NSA has used the call detail records, which is metadata showing who called whom and when, but not the content of what was said.
As a map of social networks, analyzing links between people to identify associates of terrorism suspects.
Even without the program, the NSA could still collect telecommunications data from abroad, which domestic surveillance laws have largely left unregulated.
But while overseas-based collection can give some access to Americans' data, it apparently does not provide the systematic access to purely domestic phone messages.
So I think this is a fairly positive development and something that, you know, I'm a little bit, I kind of doubt it's going to happen.
I hope it does. I hope it does not get renewed.
It might be the first positive thing to come out of the Trump administration. Who knows?
Yeah. And these systems, let's just be clear.
You know, were an agency, were they to be investigating you or an individual in America who is a citizen and they had a substantial amount of suspicion of some wrongdoing,
they could still, I believe, subpoena and get those sorts of records through an investigative process.
But what this is talking about and what it gets to the heart of is wholesale, en masse, collecting this data just to have it,
and have it on equipment and networks that surveillance agents and institutions can access whenever they feel like.
And for whatever reasons, perhaps, and I guess what I'm saying is without warrant or, you know, under kind of, you know, dubious legal grounds.
And as you said, the international metadata is collected in course of regular business for the sort of the security and other sort of national interests already.
But this is about American citizens data being stored. And, you know, imagine if there was like a government leak or a data breach where just because it's there,
just because wholesale, all of this stuff had been once upon a time useful, it's just sitting there.
And then all of a sudden these kinds of records get exposed when you have stuff in additional places like this and perhaps unsubstantiated,
but it's still sitting somewhere, you end up being more vulnerable. So if this expires and we don't find a real need for it,
it, as you said, I think will be really something that increases overall privacy.
And I think we need to be very watchful and mindful of the way these laws are put into place,
because at the time it was in a very frenzied moment in our country after an attack.
And what a lot years ago, what I think the attitudes, what we realized early on was that this is part of having kind of terror on demand.
You know, when you need to gain access to everything, you come up with a sort of justification for it.
So I really hope that this administration ignores that and does not create some sort of reason for this kind of storage of data.
Well, the thing is, they're always going to be spying on us one way or another.
That's something I don't think we should ever just assume that that is going to go away.
This data will be kept somehow.
But ending this particular program, I think, would at least be a positive step towards saying this is not normal.
This is not something that should be just the average course of daily events where this information is stored about us.
And you can find out so much about people by seeing who they call, who they talk to, who they email, et cetera, et cetera.
So we need to, you know, for whatever it's worth, protect that level of privacy that we have.
They are always going to be looking for more information.
Here's one more example of a fairly new development involving another organization.
Of course, I'm talking about ICE.
In the late summer of 2018, that's last summer, as there are protests against the Trump administration's immigration policies,
as they were intensifying, as the movement to abolish ICE gained momentum,
ICE actually was keeping tabs on a series of anti-Trump protests in New York City.
That's according to documents obtained by The Nation via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Yes, we still have that.
Among the protests, the agency tracked were several promoting immigrants' rights and opposing the administration's deportation policies,
as well as one protesting the National Rifle Association.
One event was actually organized by a sitting member of Congress.
Yeah, Congressman Adriano Espalade, a Democrat who represents part of northern Manhattan and the Bronx,
organized a rally at Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan to protest the white supremacist group,
Identify Europa.
Not sure I'm pronouncing that correctly.
It's spelled E-V-R-O-P-A.
I think that's how you pronounce it.
Just a few days earlier, a gang of these white supremacists had gathered at the very same park
to unfurl a racist anti-immigrant banner from a bridge there.
Now, that was an affront to the local community.
The rally that the congressman organized in response was titled,
Uptown Standing Together Against Racism and Xenophobia.
It was meant to counter the group's hateful message.
Espalade's district includes a robust immigrant presence, many from his native Dominican Republic.
He himself is among the first formerly undocumented immigrants to serve in Congress.
Our rally was about unity, he says,
noting that the family-friendly event was attended by more than 300 people,
including children and young people, as well as New York State Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochel
and State Assembly member Carmen de la Rosa.
It was about pushing back against hate and telling our immigrant neighbors,
our Latino neighbors, our Jewish neighbors,
that we will always stand with them if they are targeted by racist and anti-Semitic groups.
But, despite all this, his rally ended up on a government list.
Yeah, and an email sent out on July 31st.
Homeland Security Investigations, H-S-I.
You know about them? H-S-I.
They're the investigative arm of I-C-E, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
They transmitted detailed information to an undisclosed number of recipients,
including at least one Department of Homeland Security supervisor,
about public protests planned by mostly liberal and left-leaning groups in New York City.
And that email contained a four-page document titled,
Anti-Trump Protest Spreadsheet, 7-31-2018,
which listed the time, date, location, and purpose of upcoming protests
slated to take place around the city.
Now, they did not list the white supremacist, racist demonstrations that were taking place.
Those apparently are not a threat.
But this is what is happening.
Congressmen being monitored.
Protesters against what ICE is doing, being monitored, being spied upon in various ways.
This is what we are looking at on an almost daily basis.
And I think this is a good time also to let people know that, you know,
we have the obligation to spy on ICE as well.
We want to know everything about them.
We want to know their radio frequencies, any leaked emails, memos,
internal communications, policies, etc., etc.
We have every right to know these things.
And if they're going to spy on us, we're going to spy on them.
It's only fair.
We have a SecureDrop section of our website.
SecureDrop allows you to submit documents of all sorts, audio, video, you name it,
all without us ever knowing who you are.
It's really, really simple.
Simply go to 2600.com.com.com.com/.securedrop.
All the instructions are there and the special address that you use the Tor browser to get to
to submit your documents are there as well.
And you can communicate with us, but we still won't know who you are.
It's an amazing system.
Kyle, I know you are basically key in setting it all up.
Yeah.
It's designed to be basically double blind, so both parties don't necessarily have to
know one another.
And we'd prefer if we didn't, so please don't tell us who you are.
It's designed to be anonymous, and that's the way to use it.
You can submit articles, you could submit stories, you could submit things that you're
maybe unsure about, that perhaps someone with more technical expertise, that maybe we could
find, that kind of thing.
It's important to us and I think everybody who's listening and a lot of our audience
that they have an ability to see stories and hear about stuff that's in the public interest.
We will protect your story, we will protect anything that you send us in this way, much
as we would any other story and any other source, as is done across the board in journalism.
So I really hope people take advantage of that, and we'll put some more links out on
the site and make it maybe a fresh news story so people see, but all the details are there.
It's a slash secure drop off our main site.
This is something used by journalists all around the world, from the New York Times
to the New Yorker to the Guardian.
Everybody is using this to basically receive news stories, to receive documents and things
that are of interest to the public.
We need to know what is going on, the kinds of sneaky behavior that are happening every
single day.
Yeah, we can talk about it, we can theorize about it, but when you have the actual evidence
in front of you, that's when you can do something.
We've gotten a lot of material so far at our secure drop address.
A lot of it, though, it's not really information, it's websites that we can go to without any
kind of encryption or disguising, it's personal communication, which is fine, but as far as
really juicy stuff, that's something that we can now receive without any kind of risk
other than if you start telling people what you're doing or are doing from an insecure
computer in the first place.
There is an opportunity here.
This is a fundamental tool of democracy that I think everybody needs to take part in for
us to maintain our democracy, to keep things from falling apart.
Again, the address, 2600.com slash secure drop, one word.
All the directions are there.
If you have any questions at all, you can always write to our email address, oth at
2600.com.
Yeah, and definitely follow some guidelines, maybe look up submitting sources anonymously
just on some tips and tricks.
Definitely you want to follow basic operational security and not be, as you said, sharing
what you're doing, especially if it's sensitive, especially if it's something that is in the
public interest and you want to safely get out there.
But we'd seen, and this is why I would suggest that, is that we've seen systems like this
fail.
We've seen people and places become the clearinghouse for this kind of thing.
What's happened, I think, and what a lot of institutions, we're no different than, have
decided to do this themselves instead of trusting one or the other organization out
there to accept things securely.
The technology itself kept developing and in fact was something that Aaron Schwartz
started.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation and Secure Drop in general was a project that he had
nurtured along and-
And what better testament to his memory to make full use of this and use it to preserve
democracy.
Yeah.
You know, if you are submitting something, don't do it.
Let's say we're talking to a hypothetical ICE employee who has all this information
at their fingertips.
Don't use your personal computer at your desk to go to the Tor browser and then go to our
special .onion address for the Secure Drop service because you will be monitored.
You will be monitored by your superiors and they will know that you did something.
They won't know exactly what you did, but they'll know that you went somewhere suspicious
in their eyes and they will take action against you for that.
Instead, get the documents out of there somehow.
I'm sure there are ways that you can figure out to do that and do it from a secure location.
Now, if we get raided by authorities who kick in our doors and demand that we tell who sent
us these particular documents that are completely destroying the Trump regime, we won't be
able to say who they came from.
We won't know.
They can torture us.
We might, you know, blame somebody innocent, but we can't tell them who it is because we
won't know.
We absolutely will not know unless you tell us.
Don't tell us.
Yeah.
And that's that's the important thing is to remember that.
How you do this is highly dependent on your personal circumstance.
And by all means, you know, if it if it is appropriate and there is oversight or internal
affairs at whatever organization you're at, don't hesitate.
You know, do do the right thing.
Do what you feel is appropriate for the situation.
And you know, if you're having personal issues or issues that might not be in our wheelhouse,
we might not be able to help you with that specifically.
But so absolutely, you know, take whatever steps you need outside of it.
But if we if you think this is something we can help with and it is in the public interest,
we would absolutely like to see that information and and nurture it along and help help publish
and help share whatever story it is.
But it is it's highly specific to each person.
And you just basically need to follow a regular operational security.
So again, address 2600.com slash SecureDrop for any information you want to send to us.
Now, Kyle, I know you have a story from Holland that you want to get to.
I'm going to get our special guest on the phone and I will rejoin you in a few seconds.
Sure.
Yeah.
I'm reporting on a ISP in the country of the Netherlands.
We had a couple of listeners write write to us over the past couple of weeks.
And I'm as far as I'm aware, under the impression that this is an ongoing campaign.
If that's changed, we'll definitely update anyone.
Perhaps those listeners could give us a call or write to us at OTH at 2600.com if there
are any current updates.
But what I have is a URL and some questions about a campaign to keep Access for All going.
And for those of you who do not know what Access for All is, it is a small ISP in the
Netherlands that was started in the 90s.
It was one of several that basically stuck around and eventually was purchased by KPN,
which is the national telephone company in the Netherlands.
Well, it's not so much the national telephone company there as far as ownership.
These days it's owned by some conglomerates in Mexico and other institutions, much in
the same way a lot of our telephone companies and media companies are here in the US.
And just by contrast, KPN has about 30 million wireless subscribers.
And Access for All itself is a relatively small ISP.
It's got around 230,000 to 300,000 subscribers.
So in the realm of KPN's business, and as I said, they've since bought Access for All
or have been operating it and operating it as an independent subsidiary for some time
now.
They're basically trying to remove the brand and absorb all of those quarter of a million
subscribers into regular KPN business.
And what that means is people with KPN or Access for All domains, for instance, say
that's your email.
It's always been.
It'll change.
It'll change to KPN mail.
Oh, no.
I have a show on that machine.
Right, right.
I forgot my password, but hopefully I can get it back someday.
But I don't want to be KPN.
I want to be accessforall.no.
And it's true.
And so a lot of what KPN has said about it, because this is such a small amount of business
for them, they're taking a very familiar approach, something we're familiar with,
a very crass approach.
And basically the attitude is that they're focusing on the KPN brand so we can use our
resources even better to improve services, blah, blah, blah.
What can people do?
The long and the short of it is we need more people to get informed about this, to understand
why small ISPs like this are important.
You know, where else can you get dial-up?
Where else can you get DSL in certain locations?
And a lot of people are really upset about this in Holland, and they'd like the telephone
company to listen.
Again, this is very familiar for us.
So I'm just going to give the URL and leave it at that, and we'll provide some updates.
You can access the petition online.
The main URL is https://xs4allmoetblijven.nl.
And what that translates to is access for all must stay.
Again, you can go to that URL.
Do that one more time because I don't think a lot of people got that.
Yeah, I don't know how to pronounce it because my Dutch is terrible.
Dutch the letters was fine.
It's https://xs4allmoetblijven.nl.
And from there, you can get links to the petition site.
I'm not going to read the entire URL for the petition, but check that out.
Find out more about why access for all is important, even though they are owned and
operated by KPN as an independent arm.
They still matter.
They have great customer service, and I have small ISPs and telecommunications companies
like that.
This speaks right to a lot of the things we've covered on this show regarding landlines and
people that want specific types of telecommunications service that is of a high quality and with
great customer service.
And this campaign is an example of that, however far overseas, in this case, Holland.
Okay, we will be focusing more time on this in the future as things develop.
Maybe we'll have somebody from that organization talk to us.
Joining us now on the phone is the head of an organization that is known and loved in
the hacker community, NoStoragePress.
The head of NoStoragePress, Bill Pollack, is joining us.
Bill, welcome.
Thank you.
Always a pleasure.
I really appreciate the opportunity.
Well, Bill, I know you've had some interesting challenges.
First of all, let me just say before we even start talking about this that we have a special
NoStorage package.
We'll get into what's contained in that, but if you just want to call now and pledge
for that, for $100, you'll get the NoStorage package, 516-620-3602.
It's a couple of books and a t-shirt.
It's really worth it.
We'll go into details.
But first, Bill, I want to ask you what's been going on because I know you've been having
some terrible run-ins with Amazon selling some counterfeit versions of books of yours,
which I find to be incredible that this is actually going on.
Can you explain what this involves?
So it's the same, and I should note that the books that are part of the package are not
counterfeit because they came from our office.
Yes.
At least, and if they are, please let me know.
Guaranteed not to be.
Absolutely.
Well, I think so.
So we had this issue with Amazon in 2017, and that's been reported on.
There was an article about it in Ars Technica.
There was an article in Inc. with the five titles, and it's all publicly available information.
You can see what happened to us then, and basically the five books were faked.
So this happened again to us just recently where, with Art of Assembly Language, it was
faked again.
What happened is that one of our readers contacted us and said, I bought this book from Amazon.
Is this a no-charge book because people have come to expect a certain level of quality
from our books, and they should expect that?
So for example, we use lay-flat bindings.
We're about to put a post up on the blog about how that works.
It's a complicated binding.
It's expensive.
It's basically a binding that lets the cover float free so the covers don't crack because
I personally hate that.
You're like, if you're going to spend $50 on a book, I don't want the book to split
in half.
It uses, I think, the most expensive book glue you can get.
It's an old process, but there's a particular glue that you can get that's most durable,
and it's essentially like the pages are stuck together and then the cover floats free.
So that's one of the hallmarks of most of our technical titles.
We very rarely use print-on-demand because I don't like print-on-demand.
I don't like the quality of the book.
So the book that he sent to us is 8 1⁄2 by 11 inches, which I don't have any type
books that are 8 1⁄2 by 11, they're 7 1⁄4 by 11.
It's got a glossy cover, and I personally can't stand those because of the fingerprints,
so our books will have matte unless we screw up somewhere, and our books have a lay-flat
binding.
I was actually impressed when I saw it.
I thought, oh, that's cool, a nice, big, fat, no-starch book.
I guess we're selling that for $100.
That wasn't the case, of course, but basically, it's a fake.
And I bought them myself, and I know that they're fake.
So he sent us the copy, and these are, from what we can tell, they're coming through,
you know, Amazon has this process where they co-mingle inventory, and this has been reported
on by people at various times, so basically, they get the books from some source and some
automated process, I assume, says, okay, these are fine, put these in a place of the other
inventory that's coming directly from the publisher, and that's a process that needs
to be addressed.
Well, Bill, if I just stop for a second, so they co-mingle, that means that, say, I copy
your book, I make a version of it, and I tell Amazon, hey, I'm selling no-storage books,
co-mingle what I'm giving you into the originals, and they'll actually do that?
Yeah, well, they, you don't tell them to do, and, you know, I get this all secondhand,
they're not going to tell us that, but what's been reported is basically, you don't ask
for that, you just, what I've seen, and this is a fundamental flaw in the process is, and
I haven't done this myself, but when you go through the process and say, hey, we want
to, we have the rights to print this book, you check a box, and Amazon accepts it, apparently,
I mean, from what I can see, but I think they've recently, maybe thanks to some of the media
attention that we got, in addition to other companies, there may be, well, actually, there's
an issue with the recent Amazon Project Zero thing that I can address, but, so something
happens in the process where, now, I've been selling DRM-free e-books since, I never lock
anything down, so our books are on pirate sites and wherever, and by the way, if you're
going to steal something, you don't have the right to sell it, so share it, and then buy
it if you think it's actually good, but don't sell it, so, you know, you can get a PDF of
one of our books, and you can always, well, the PDF's back there, so I think they should
be able to give them whatever they need, and I'm not controlling that, and I'm not
going to, I'm trusting my readers, but basically, something happened in the process where they
sent them our digital files, including the cover file, and I don't know how they got
that, Amazon's service, so Amazon, Amazon has the CreateSpace entity, which is an Amazon
entity, goes out, and again, this is coming from what I can put together, they go and
order the printing from another company, and somewhere in that process, the one company,
who knows, like, does Amazon go and say, okay, we need more of these, and they say, oh, we
have it, we can give you this stock, and they ended up filling the stock at Amazon with
counterfeit copies of our book, and just to clarify for people, this is not Amazon Marketplace,
this is Amazon Direct, so they own the buy button, it's not third party, it's Amazon's
entity buying the inventory and selling it in place of our legitimate inventory, they're
stealing from authors, they're selling a fake book, but it's done through their subsidiary.
And the only reason, the only reason you know anything about this is because your readers
came to you and said, this is not the quality we expect from you.
Yeah.
Yeah, and people remember, and this is what happened in 2017, too, well, actually in 2017,
people were posting, and one of our authors contacted us and said, hey, I got this negative
comment on my book, and then we found out that they were selling fake copies, and again,
that's all reported online, there were five titles.
Okay, so wait a minute, this has been happening for a couple of years now, and in addition
to people ripping you off by, and Amazon ripping you off by selling counterfeit copies of the
books you publish, you get negative reviews because of the poor quality of those counterfeits.
Yes, and certainly, yeah, we were getting negative reviews, and the authors weren't
getting a dime.
You know, they're stealing from the authors, and their response last time was that we were
told to contact them if there was an issue, basically saying, police yourselves, which
puts the burden on the authors, and the authors, because we're not, we don't have an easy way
to check for this.
This is unbelievable, and Amazon, of course, is getting paid for this.
Yes, of course, Amazon is getting, you know, they're...
Can you contact Amazon and say, who else is supplying you with this book?
It seems simple enough.
I guess it's not.
Amazon is not very forthcoming with information, so, and actually, that's degraded over the
years.
There's no one to talk to.
I have not been contacted directly by Amazon about this, nor was I contacted directly by
Amazon the last time.
You know, they were coming to town a couple of weeks ago, they changed their minds.
We could have asked them when they arrived, but yeah, they are very hard to talk to.
They are very difficult to talk to, we've noticed.
Yeah, well, the issue here is, authors are being hurt here, and Amazon is putting the
burden on the publisher and the author to police Amazon, and that's what they're doing
with the Project Zero initiative, which has just come out.
They're going to push all the liability onto everyone that they buy from, and Amazon, when
I last checked, is worth $780 billion.
I'm running a small publishing company.
By Amazon standards, I'm a rounding error, so why should our authors or our company have
to police Amazon?
You know, this is a copyright violation.
It's very clear, it's copyright infringement, and it's fraud, and it's up to Amazon to address
it.
Why should we have to police it?
Why should the authors have to police it?
It sounds like the structure at Amazon makes this type of fraud very easy to perpetrate.
That's definitely been the case in the marketplace.
The fact that this is going through the main source is what people are finding most interesting,
because this is a first, and this is significant, and it's not something that Amazon is addressing.
When our readers have contacted Amazon on our behalf, and I've had this experience too,
the first thing, and if you want to have a good time, tell them that there's a problem,
and you hear that they're selling counterfeit books, and they'll ask you what the ASIN number
is, which is, I believe, what they assign to third-party marketplaces.
You tell them, this is being done by Amazon directly, and then it's like, does not compute.
What do you mean?
Not possible.
What's the ASIN number?
You can see people posted the dialogue.
It's kind of laughable, but it's being sold by Amazon directly.
That's the difference here.
It's not that there aren't issues with their marketplace.
This is a major problem.
This is copyright infringement by Amazon itself.
This is unbelievable.
Now, I just want to take a very quick break to let people know if they want to see what
a real no-starch book looks like, this is the time to call 516-620-3602.
A pledge of $100 will get you two quality no-starch, non-counterfeit books, Linux Basics
for Hackers, and Practical Binary Analysis, both recently released.
You'll also get a no-starch T-shirt.
How that's going to work, we're going to contact you.
You're going to tell us your size, and that'll be part of the package.
We only have a limited number of these, so 516-620-3602, call now.
Show your support for real books.
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Please call so we can continue with this interview.
Now, Bill, I know that this kind of thing must be going on with a lot of other publishers
as well, right?
I don't really know.
I mean, I've heard reports from people.
I know this has always been an issue internationally, and when I've heard from people, I have yet
to hear of a publisher that's having this same experience.
I've heard of people who are constantly finding counterfeit copies, and then publishers have
issues when, you know, they sell an overseas edition into India that ends up selling it
to the U.S.
That's a separate issue.
But I have not heard of another publisher, and I would love to, if anyone knows, I'd
love to hear of another publisher that's had the same problem.
But if you look at the Ars Technica post, you'll see what I was posting.
That was a significant problem, and, you know, I have not heard of any publisher having the
same problem.
But it doesn't mean that it's not happening.
We're speaking with Bill Pollack, the founder of the tech how-to book publisher, NoStoragePress,
and you can read the story, Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publishers' Computer
Books Again.
And Bill, I just had a couple questions.
You indicated that it's slipped in.
It's not a marketplace thing.
It's slipped into inventory that a legitimate supplier is hosting on Amazon.
Can you describe a little bit, is there any way at all to tell when you're purchasing,
you're on the Amazon page for a particular book?
Can you tell at all?
Is there any indicator that you would know this is not going to be the actual no-starch
book?
Or as you said, is this completely behind?
Everything is the same.
It's not at all like...
Everything is the same.
Okay, okay.
And yeah, that to me makes me wonder if they're somehow doing their own fulfillment because
they're able to mass produce these, like you said, on demand and using some other bulk
publishing service to lower their costs and maximize the profit per item.
You think it's Amazon themselves?
I'm curious because instead of someone having their own kind of individual scheme to go
after no-starch's business, would this be Amazon because they've already got the catalog
then saying, well, we can duplicate this through this service and maybe they're doing it to
a lot of different companies.
You think Amazon is running a counterfeiting ring?
I don't know.
Wow.
No wonder they don't want to come to this town.
No, that's a total speculation.
I don't think so.
Yeah, I mean, they don't need to do that.
It's a mistake.
Or, I mean, as he asked the question, can you find out in any way who is slipping this
in?
It's like a retail man in the middle or something.
Okay, but you know what?
Together, I think we can help figure this out.
We know people at Amazon.
There are people I hear at Amazon who might be able to feed us some information, maybe
through that SecureDrop link we gave before.
How would Amazon find out?
Just assume we have an Amazon person listening.
How would they find out who is supplying the counterfeit versions of your books?
There is an answer to that, which is someone starts the process at the printer end, from
what I understand, because someone that's printing them, I believe that you sign a form
that says you have the copyright, you're free to do this.
Someone at that end.
And there are also humans in the mix.
So what I figure is the process isn't robust enough where someone who's on staff has a
friend in Africa.
I mean, a lot of these reports are people with files who just, you know, they've got
nothing to do.
And I have some that seems to be possibly what happened here.
And they say, well, we have the right to do this.
So they then get set up as an account.
They get paid.
And then it starts to go through the process.
So then the books get printed, and then somehow they get brought into Amazon's main inventory.
I don't, I can't imagine that Amazon would do this intentionally.
But the thing about copyright infringement is intent doesn't matter.
Like they're still selling fraudulent goods.
It's still their responsibility.
And it seems like they don't really take that responsibility very seriously, because as
we're mentioning, this happened in 2017, and it's still happening.
If I were running Amazon, I'd be very concerned about this.
You would think so.
Oh, I can tell you.
This is actually kind of fun.
If you go to the art of the family language listing on Amazon, this is kind of funny to
me, sort of for the second edition, and look and click on the paperback site and look at
the image, you'll see the cover image has part of the spine on it.
The reason is that that's a picture of the counterfeit.
They ended up replacing our product images with images of the counterfeit cover.
The counterfeit cover doesn't fit the book properly.
Oh my goodness.
So it looks like it's not clipped properly, but if you go to the site, you'll see it.
And that's what happened.
It just entered the main inventory, and it's still up there, which is kind of fascinating.
Doesn't that mean somebody would have had to have submitted the counterfeit photo for
them to put on that site?
I don't know.
I think that's probably automated.
I think probably some, I mean, you know that probably someone submitted the files, and
then they grabbed the cover piece, and then that becomes your cover photo.
That's what I guess.
But I don't know that for a fact.
But it's still there.
I just checked right now.
Bill, this is such a fascinating, really a fascinating look at the behind the scenes
of publishing and what kind of things you're running into with online sales and storefronts
and so on and so forth, and it sounds, I guess it would be more likely that it is a confusion
over copyright.
I mean, I would see a scenario where perhaps there are a lot of files or PDFs that people
have made available online for particular books, and someone's sitting someplace.
We know there are, sure.
Yeah.
So someone sitting, seeing all these titles, maybe thinking, well, you know, I'm going
to start a business.
They're all right there.
And maybe that lack of understanding about copyright is leading to making several other
choices than are doing this two-year business.
But it is really a fascinating look.
I think part of this is thinking like a criminal and asking ourselves, okay, how could we pull
this off?
How could we counterfeit a book and have Amazon believe that we are the publisher and have
them sell our counterfeit versions?
And I'm sure there are people listening who can help us with that thought process.
So the thing here is, you know, Amazon should understand the importance of copyright, right?
Because this is about our authors.
It's about all authors.
And Amazon is putting the burden on our authors to police Amazon.
But you know, like all these things should really fall away as issues.
It's a copyright issue, and Amazon takes it very casually, it seems, and I don't understand
that.
Like, why do the authors have to police this?
And we don't know what their process is, nor are they likely to tell, because that's part
of their competitive edge.
But like, something is filtering through, and it's probably, I'm sure, as automated
as possible.
But it is really funny to see that that image is still there.
The image of the counterfeit is still there.
And if you click on it, you'll see it drops away.
The image that appears on the site page has the spine.
If you click the image, you'll see there's no spine on it.
That's the real book cover.
Which book is this?
The image on this, part of Assembly Language, second edition.
Okay.
It's even more important, I think, with something as replicable as a book or an item that is
published.
I think that's copied in a lot of ways and distributed widely.
That's better for authors.
But would Amazon stand up for this if their Wilson volleyballs weren't real volleyballs
or whatever?
Their physical items, you know, if it was a luxury item or other things, they wouldn't
stand for this.
They'd get complaints.
The same exact issue.
And here's a situation you're describing where authors are not getting paid.
Their publishing house is being bypassed in the process in a scenario where they absolutely
could and should assert copyright ownership.
And it's just, again, a fascinating look at the perils of distributing in the current
climate.
And I really hope this goes somewhere, we get some more information, because it's pretty
unjust from the sound.
Bill, now, do you have copies of some of the counterfeits?
Yes.
So, maybe we can figure out where they were printed, through the paper, through the binding?
We know where they're being printed.
Oh, you do?
I mean, yeah, they're being printed at where they print the books for CreateSpace.
It's the same, they're being printed by the main vendor that they use for CreateSpace,
which is an Amazon-owned entity.
It's in their main workflow.
They're not coming from outside, they're coming, now, they don't own that printer, they do
a lot of work with them, but they're coming from what we can tell from a company called
Lightning Source, which does print-on-demand printing.
So many of the tech books that people are buying today will also come from them.
And we use them for print-on-demand stuff, too, for certain titles, because basically
the nature of the business is, I explained the, you know, a lay-flat binding process.
I can't print, you know, 300 copies like that and make it be cost-effective.
So when we have books that are slow, but people still want them, we'll use print-on-demand.
But what's interesting is this book was never put into print-on-demand, so they don't have
those files.
The first thing we thought was, like, well, maybe the printer has these files, and someone
pulled the wrong switch, but they don't actually have these files.
So someone outside delivered these files to them and said, I have the right to print these.
Send me the money, buy it from me, like the CreateSpace model is a parental client.
And again, I don't know the mechanics, and somehow Amazon decided this inventory was
legit.
But as you can see in the cover image, the counterfeits replaced the buy button.
You can't get people at CreateSpace or Lightning to talk to you about this?
No.
They will not.
No one has reached out to me directly, and it's not like we didn't get a lot of media
attention.
They've reached out around me, but they're not coming to me directly, and I'm pretty
easy to find.
But no, we're not hearing from them directly, and you'd think they would want to do that
to try to address this.
One thing here is the counterfeits are much heavier than our originals.
They're much fatter.
So if you just simply, I mean, they're weighing everything, right?
So what if you just had a process where the stuff goes through, and you do a basic check
every week or whatever, and you see that there's a big change in weight?
And that weight is probably a good measure for almost anything, because in most cases,
those counterfeits probably weigh differently.
And in the case of the books, they always are different.
They're never going to use the LayFlat.
They don't use the right paper.
So like some human might look at the line and say, let's check the inventory.
The size is significantly different.
The dimensions are different.
Instead of going in a regular, they're 8 1⁄2 by 11 by, instead of 7 1⁄4 inches by 9.
They're thicker.
They're bigger.
The cover's wrong.
Like any five-year-old, any two-year-old, if you said, are these the same, they'd shake
their head no.
Wow.
Well, it's not much to ask Amazon to be of the mental capability of a two-year-old or
beyond.
Bill, what is your website so people can get more information on this?
HTTPS, you know, whatever, no starch, no starch dot com.
Everything is in the HTTPS.
And once more, 516-620-3602 is the number to call now to get your special no starch
package.
That's two books, two original books from no starch, Linux Basics for Hackers and Practical
Binary Analysis.
Plus, you'll get your own no starch t-shirt for a pledge of $100 to 516-620-3602.
Very limited supply.
You can also go to give2wbai.org.
Bill, in the seconds that we have left, can you say anything about these two books?
Practical Binary Analysis, when I first looked at that, I thought, this book is going to
be amazing.
And it is.
It's incredibly rich with detail.
It's the kind of pithy book that I love to publish.
I've had really good response to that, which pleases me, because one of my goals always
is to make people smarter.
And I think that's going to really help there.
Linux Basics for Hackers has been a runaway hit.
And it's, I think, oh, I want to say we sold something like 15,000 copies since November,
which is really great.
I think we're probably going to third printing.
It's taken off like wildfire.
I have several other books coming this year that I think will be very exciting, all in
my effort to give back to the hacking community.
I think you guys know, too, I started a foundation to also give back to the hacking community.
Bill, you've done so much good work over the years, and you're a valuable part of this
community.
We see you at every conference.
And no-starch books are among the best in the entire field.
So it's really terrible this is happening to you.
And I hope our listeners and people who are investigating this further will be able to
help figure out just what's going on and get Amazon to account for what is happening.
And I hope our listeners give a call to 516-620-3602 or go to givetowvai.org and get the no-starch
package.
Bill, we will follow up on this story.
And please let us know if anything changes on your end as well.
And we look forward to seeing you at the next Help Conference.
Yeah, thank you.
I should be there.
You can go to Aquario Cafe.
Okay.
Sounds good.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you very much.
To you all for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, hacking community.
Have a good night.
And that is an example of the kinds of things that you will hear on this radio show, on
this radio station.
Imagine a commercial radio station saying these things about Amazon exposing this.
Wouldn't happen.
Wouldn't happen.
We'd be too worried.
But these are the facts.
This is what we're exposing.
And now we investigate.
Now we try and figure out just what it is that's going on.
And we will certainly report back in the weeks ahead.
Once again, that phone number, 516-620-3602.
Ask for the no-starch package for a pledge of $100.
And you can also go to givetowbai.org.
And write to us, oth at 2600.com.
Next edition of Off the Hook scheduled for next Wednesday.
We'll see you then.
Have a good night.
And rest in peace, Keith Foote.
Breathe free.
Breathe free.
Hi, I'm Ella Joyce.
And when I'm in New York, I listen to WBAI 99.5 FM.
The more you listen, the more you learn.