Hey, this is Chaka Khan, and you're listening to WBAI, New York, 99.5 FM.
And you are listening to radio station WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York, WBAI.org, everywhere.
And the time is just about 7 p.m., which means it's time for another exciting edition of
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 call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
Von Diddly Bonk for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, Von Diddly Bonk!
Bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk,
And, uh, very good evening to you.
This program is Off the Hook.
It is a show about fish.
No, it is a show about what's going on in the world from the perspective of a bunch
of people from the local hacker scene, and this is Rob T. Firefly here with you.
And I am joined in the studio by Alex.
Good evening.
And by nobody else.
We'll be bringing in some more of our regulars
in a little bit to give us an update on their adventures.
But for now, it's just the two of us on these mics.
And there have been things going on today that, uh.
There absolutely have.
And you know, just to comment on the two of us issue,
it's whenever we're not here, I feel
like they always complain about us not being here.
So should we reciprocate that favor?
I don't know if you have anything in particular
you want to say about Emmanuel and Kyle while they're absent.
That's true.
We haven't got them on the phone yet.
So you know, we could say anything right now.
They could be listening.
Do you think they're listening?
Oh, they're probably listening.
They're always listening.
They hear everything, those guys.
Big ears.
Both of them.
And I think we'll leave it at that for now.
But now, our esteemed colleagues will
be joining us in just a few minutes
while we work out some telephone connection plans.
But yeah, so today, there is a story
that we have been following on this program
since it feels like time immemorial, which
is the net neutrality issue.
And there was a vote today in the House of Representatives
of this here country dealing with the issue.
Now, Alex, you know a bit more about this than I do.
So how would you describe this?
Just, I guess, generally as another futile political
gesture that will go absolutely nowhere.
Yeah.
Don't hold back.
What do you really think about it?
OK, sure.
Well, I guess we should summarize it
before we go into it entirely.
And then my analysis, my top level analysis,
will hopefully make a little bit more sense.
So there was another vote to repeal the Trump
administration's repeal of the Obama-era rules
that protected net neutrality.
And one of the first things that the Trump administration
did with regard to the FCC was roll back
some other Obama-era rules about monetizing information.
In fact, this was a rule that was not yet even in effect,
but it was an Obama-era rule that
prevented ISPs from monetizing information on the subscribers.
And then they proceeded swiftly to repealing net neutrality
rules, which were the rules that prevented
throttling or prioritizing certain types of traffic
over others on the internet, making what would essentially
be the proverbial slow and fast lane.
So everybody on both sides of the aisle,
by everybody I mean voters, has been opposed
to the repeal of net neutrality.
But yet Ajit Pai, the FCC chairman,
pushed this forward and repealed the net neutrality rules that
were in effect from the Obama era.
And they did this through the Restore Internet Freedom
Act, which was a complete misnomer,
because the only thing it's restoring
is the ability for communications providers and ISPs
to charge for a fast lane and a slow lane.
And this has a lot of negative effects on our ability
to, let's say, start a small company
and compete with companies like Google and Facebook
that would obviously, or Netflix that
would be monopolizing the high speed lanes that would be
created under net neutrality.
And it would make it economically more difficult
for these startups to compete with these larger voices.
And it would drown out, therefore, the smaller guys
and reduce our freedom of choice and expression on the internet.
And so there's all these big problems
that we've been talking about quite literally
for years in this program.
And I have to say, I do get a little bit bored talking
about net neutrality, because it's always the same thing over
and over and over again.
And we're constantly repeating the mantra
that around 85% of voters on both sides of the aisle
support net neutrality.
And so today in the House, which, of course, as we all
know, is controlled by Democrats,
there was a vote to repeal the net neutrality rules.
And it passed.
So that means it goes to the Senate.
And this may pass the Senate.
It may not.
One thing that's interesting to note
is that in 2017, I believe it was,
there was a Senate-led bill to repeal
the repeal of net neutrality, meaning it
would restore net neutrality.
And it actually passed, because there were some Republicans
that crossed the aisle.
I think there were three Republicans that
crossed the aisle.
And this passed.
But at that time, the House was controlled by Republicans,
not Democrats.
And it stalled in the House.
Now we have the opposite situation,
where we have a bill originating in the House that's ultimately
going to go to the Senate, which is now controlled by Republicans
and actually was controlled by Republicans back then, too.
So even if they cross the aisle, it
may be completely futile, because Senator Mitch McConnell
has made it quite clear that he's
going to use procedural rules to block this
from ever coming up for a vote.
That's a big problem.
So even if there were enough votes for the Republicans,
these three Republicans that would cross the line,
the net neutrality rules would still never be voted on.
And then let's say that this particular bill came
up to the Senate for a vote.
The Republicans crossed the line.
We got it passed through the House.
We got it passed through the Senate.
This is all hypothetical.
Then the president would veto it.
And there still wouldn't be enough of a majority
in the Senate to override the president's vetoes,
which is why I said at the beginning of my rant
that I feel like this is just another empty, boring
political gesture of goodwill from politicians
that is ultimately going to go absolutely nowhere
and demonstrates, I believe, just
how powerful an administration is
when it controls the executive branch
and a single chamber of Congress.
It makes the 2016 election, I think
when we think about this, all the more important in a 2018
election in which the Democrats regained only the House
and not the Senate seem all the more disappointing.
OK, I was doing something else.
Could you say all that again?
Yeah, let me start back from the top there.
OK.
Actually, instead of that, I have our special guests
on the phone, Emmanuel and Kyle.
Are you guys out there?
Yeah, well, I'd like to say something to that
before we even get introduced.
I feel very strongly about what Alex just said
and about everything that's been going on since 2017.
It feels like everything is just for show,
and we never actually get any victories.
And I just wonder, what does it take for that to change?
It takes a new administration and Democrats
controlling, again, a single chamber of Congress.
That's what I think it's going to take.
I mean, because when we're so polarized, go ahead.
Didn't we have a Democratic president and Democratic
Congress before?
And nothing seemed to change then either.
Well, we had rules in place that protected us.
I mean, the Trump administration repealed those rules.
Rules?
OK, that's the thing that we keep playing by.
Big mistake.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, rules, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the rules have to change here.
But it's, you know, look, we've got lawsuits
from the state attorneys general that
are being filed that are going to be heard
very likely this summer.
I don't know how much those are going to fly,
or whether they'll have legs, whatever
analogy you want to use, because of this concept of Chevron
deference that's given to agencies
and their particular decisions.
But what's interesting here, though,
Emanuel, is that the Republicans also
have their own proposal on the table
now to repeal the repeal of net neutrality
and restore net neutrality.
But it's a proposal that doesn't give the FCC any ability
to actually enforce these particular rules.
So it would be a mandate without any teeth.
And the Republicans see this as giving
the FCC, a regulatory body, more authority.
And any issue of regulation, anything
that would broad any regulatory body's authority
is for Republicans, by default, just a bad thing,
regardless of whether that broader mandate would
do things like protect consumers,
maybe enhance First Amendment rights, our rights to publish,
protect our freedom of association,
and is generally supported by over 85% of the electorate.
So I think until Republicans start seeing regulation
as not something inherently bad, we're
going to have this polarization over this fight.
I'd like to agree with that.
But I think it's until the American people start
realizing that they're being lied to and misled.
I mean, just what's going on with the FAA
alone over the past few weeks with that whole 737 thing,
not grounding them when they should have, instead
just deferring to Boeing.
That should tell you right there that deregulation
and stripping of power of federal regulatory agencies
is a bad idea.
And I'm saying this as a subject of the FCC,
an agency that caused me tremendous grief
over the years, all of us.
You do need regulations.
You do need teeth behind these rules.
And when you take that away, people die.
And all kinds of horrible things happen.
Anyway, let's introduce ourselves.
This is Emmanuel.
Kyle over here.
Hello.
And our friend Greg Newby.
Hey, good to be here.
And we're all in Ontario right now having a smart car
adventure because, well, it was time.
We hadn't done that in a while.
And the smart car wanted to go back home for a bit
and visit some of its friends in Canada.
So here we are.
Well, hey, and how are you, Greg, and Kyle, and Emmanuel?
Welcome back to the show.
And how was the trip up to Ontario?
Did you drive the smart car there?
Well, we had a small adventure.
I think the best way to put it is that the smart car needed
Greg's help.
And he was there to help us transport it.
And other than a nice, long drive, it was very smooth.
Let's just say we drove it to where
a trailer was waiting that we could drive it up
onto the trailer.
And here's a fun fact.
You know that smart car wheels are narrower
than the tread on trailers that you drive up on.
No, I didn't.
But I guess that's true.
We do now.
We know that.
We know that it's really the tires hang off
by about a little over 50% on each side.
So it's very invigorating to do that.
So the thing that you drive up, the ramp,
is narrower than the wheels?
Yeah, they kind of stick, well, hang over.
It's wider than the wheels, so that the wheels almost
fall off on the inside.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, definitely I was helping
drive the thing onto this contraption.
And it really did.
It was great.
It got my heart racing a bit and increased my blood pressure.
And it made me really feel alive.
And I found religion.
So now I've got to fulfill some obligations.
And the angle at which you're driving this thing up
into a tractor trailer is pretty steep, right?
I mean, it's not exactly 45, but it's
got to be like 30 degrees or 35 or something at least, right?
So if you go off the edge, it's nerve wracking.
Especially in a car that's like four feet long
with a flat back, you do kind of feel
like it's going to tip over backwards on itself.
But spice to say, the vehicle's been transported.
And it's in good hands.
And it'll be getting a nice, well-deserved tune-up.
And our smart car is different than the ones
you see on the road in the States.
They never introduced this one in the States.
It's purely a Canadian car.
It's diesel.
It's a little bit smaller.
So people still are amazed when they see it,
because nothing quite like it has ever come into the States.
And this actually ties in a lot.
Just the maintenance and getting the right kind of parts
for older vehicles and stuff like that,
it ties in a lot with right to repair and the ability
to access vehicle computer systems,
to have tools, to have schematics, and so on.
So in the end, it was that we needed
to get it to the right kind of place
that can handle those things and do the necessary maintenance,
as opposed to us continuing DIY solutions.
So that's basically all there is to say about that.
Well, and speaking of right to repair,
did you see the editorial in the New York Times
this week supporting the right to repair?
Oh, yes.
It was a good read.
And it's one of those issues that we've
been talking about for about 100 years.
But it's interesting to see the mainstream come around
and start recognizing it as a concern.
Yeah, and build it into platforms.
That's an area where Canada is actually ahead of the curve.
I don't know how soon legislation will occur,
but Canada is already working on right to repair legislation
at the national level.
Canada is ahead of the United States
in many areas, we found out.
Like what?
What other areas could they possibly
be ahead of this great country, the United States of America?
Well, Canada's legalization is another one.
It's legal all throughout the entire country here.
In fact, the stores, so we're in Ontario,
and the stores were a little late.
The legalization occurred about a year ago.
And then Ontario began with their online web-based purchases
this year, in 2019.
And the stores just opened, I think, was April 1st.
Yeah, so there's some number, it's a pretty small number,
I think under 20 stores around Ontario, where you go in,
you have to show your 19 even to get into the store.
So you can't bring a kid to look at the pretty flowers
and stuff.
And then you can get your variety of products.
And there's one thing I noticed, just reading up
on some of the rules, because as Greg indicated,
it was a slower kind of methodic rollout,
starting with the online sales in Ontario.
But the retail locations and other laws,
they paid themselves, I think, really well.
And I think it's something that some of the states considering
it, and the nation, national efforts in the US
could definitely model and learn from.
Was that they're open to letting people
consume cannabis in public.
Yeah, like in a park and on sidewalks.
It's OK here.
And meanwhile, in states like New York and New Jersey,
cannabis legalization hasn't put on hold by Democrats,
if you can believe that.
And through all kinds of ignorant misinformation,
such as it's going to make things
more dangerous for kids, it actually
makes things safer for kids.
Because once you have legalization
and you have to buy marijuana in an approved location,
approved store, they check to make sure kids aren't buying
it.
Dealers on corners don't do that.
And it's also, I don't want to get into a whole big thing,
because it's really not our usual subject matter.
But it's not a gateway drug, because it does not
lead to other drugs, except by somebody suggesting, hey,
maybe you should try this other drug, which
is something a dealer would do.
Somebody in the store is not going to do that.
Yeah, it's about safe access.
Yeah, so these people saying that it's dangerous,
we're not ready for it yet, they really
annoy me, because they're speaking out of ignorance.
They're speaking out of things in the past that
have been proven to be wrong.
And other states have legalized it.
Canada legalized it.
The benefits are immense health-wise,
for medical marijuana alone.
But the recreational benefits, as well,
are something to be modeled after.
Can I ask a quick question?
Of you guys, about the legalization
of marijuana in Canada.
Did the legalization of marijuana in Canada
help or hinder your ability to drive the car into the truck?
It added a couple of mandatory questions at the border.
But otherwise, it was non-impactful.
Yeah, and it didn't apply.
First of all, we were in New York when we did it.
Oh, gotcha.
It could have only helped, I think.
But no, all kidding aside, no.
We take this seriously.
I live in a district about the border crossings.
Because even though you can fly with up to 30 grams
within Canada, and you might be flying with some.
Wait, wait, wait, hold on.
You can fly with pot?
Up to 30 grams.
Wow.
It depends how much individuals can possess.
Yeah, but you can't fly from Washington to Colorado
with pot.
Exactly.
And nor can you fly from, say, Toronto to Denver,
because you're crossing a border.
OK, but can you fly from Washington to Oregon?
They border each other, and it's legal in both states.
Can you do that?
Can someone help us with this?
I don't think that you can, because you're
going to be subject to other federal regulations,
and TSA inspection, which is a federal agency, which
is going to be subject to different DOJ regulations
than the states are subject to.
So I would probably say no.
I wouldn't advise any of my clients to try that.
You see, Alex, you're asking us how Canada is ahead,
and you're giving us more examples.
This is another way Canada is ahead of us.
I completely agree, in some respects,
that they certainly are.
And I don't see the federal policy
with respect to marijuana legalization
changing anytime soon, which is why, again, you
have these really idiotic systems in place in places
like Colorado, where they don't necessarily
have access to the banking system because of FDIC
regulations and federal regulations regarding
the transfer of money.
So you have marijuana and cannabis businesses
essentially doing business in what is just cash,
which raises a whole host of separate security
issues with respect to those particular businesses
in these states.
So yeah, I tend to agree, even though I raised the question
that, in some respects, Canada can be ahead of us.
But I have to say, so did you guys drive up
through Vermont to get there?
We drove up through New York, but we're not
going to get too specific, are we?
Are we going to take the back roads we took?
Well, I think it's interesting to comment
that we crossed at the Thousand Islands last year.
That's pretty specific.
OK, yeah, we did.
And it was interesting because the Thousand Islands is brand
new.
They rebuilt it for Canada Day, the 150th celebration
of Canada's becoming a country last year.
So yeah, we didn't have to go through Vermont.
OK.
Yeah, it looks brand new.
And I think they're even working on a wall
to keep Americans out.
I used to drive from, I used to live in Montpelier in Vermont.
And I would drive up, not regularly, but fairly often,
to Montreal.
And it always struck me that, when you're driving up
through Vermont, it's beautiful.
There's mountains everywhere.
It sort of looks like a fairy tale
when you're driving, even on the interstate.
And then you get to the border, you go through the border.
I was never really hassled going into Montreal.
But then as soon as you would cross the border,
the landscape became so incredibly dull.
It was just flat and nothing around
until you got to Montreal.
And I just thought that it might have
been a sort of commentary on what we thought of Canadians.
It's just a flat, boring land.
But apparently, it's not.
Apparently, it's the land of milk and honey over there.
Well, I wouldn't say that's a reflection of the people.
The people in Canada are, overall,
really a kind, welcoming bunch.
And I actually noticed the same thing driving around,
that just how quickly you can get rural
and into these sort of agrarian and wooded
and natural landscapes.
It's truly beautiful.
And it's amazing how much of Canada
is undeveloped and really wild.
And it is truly, truly beautiful to experience.
Can I say something else that Canada is better at than we
are at television?
We were basically trying to watch an over-the-air television
program last night.
We didn't have television.
So we had to go online.
Now, in the States, you have to jump to all kinds of hoops
and show your proof of residence and sit
to all kinds of advertisements and things like that.
CBC has a streaming service called Gem up here.
And you simply have to sign up for it.
It doesn't cost anything.
And boom, instantly, you have access to up to, I think,
15 CBC channels from around the country.
You can see local news from different places,
something that apparently is illegal in the States.
And you can just basically benefit.
And guess what? When a commercial comes on,
they just stop. It just says, we'll be back soon.
You don't see anything. Imagine that in the States.
Yeah, they limit the advertisers
because they're not paying for your market.
They're paying for cable and other subscription services.
So they don't, by default,
just throw that into any old platform.
They very deliberately direct those ads.
Now, I presume that you would need a Canadian IP address
in order to access that Gem service?
Well, that's interesting because we tried to access it
through an Apple device
that was registered in the United States, and it didn't work.
And when we used something that was basically tied to Canada,
it did work.
So, yeah, you know, there are ways around that, of course.
You can use all kinds of VPN solutions
to basically show up anywhere in the world you want to.
But once you do that, it's relatively easy.
You know, I was in London last week,
and into the BBC, obviously,
has something very similar to BBC iPlayer,
which if you want to get the iPlayer app for your iPhone,
you have to have a device that's registered with,
an Apple account that's tied to a UK bank account.
So it becomes very difficult to do that.
And then they geo-block you by your IP address.
But when I was in London last week,
I could access the BBC iPlayer through the web
and through the app with my regular US iPhone.
Everything worked swimmingly.
It was, you know, a real pleasure to use that.
And again, you know, there are ways around it
by using a VPN that pops you out in the UK.
But most of these services, I've realized,
have already taken account of the various IP addresses
that belong to these particular services.
One way around that blocking, though,
I've found is that if you get a specialized,
dedicated IP address for yourself
that maybe you and a few other people use,
which is, you know, only another dollar or two per month,
that's one way to access perhaps the BBC iPlayer
when you're outside of the UK.
And I wonder if that would work
with the Canadian GEM service as well.
So we don't know for sure about where CBC
will let you play back.
And we actually played back through a regular web browser
on a Canadian IP address.
But the experience we had was almost the opposite,
or it's a similar situation to yours,
but the opposite implementation,
which was we tried to download the app.
So they have this app called GEM, G-E-M.
And it said, you're not in the right region to download.
Now we're in Canada, right?
I'm using my, I tried it on my Canadian phone,
you know, my Canadian phone number.
I tried it on my Canadian IP address.
I tried it on my, you know, iPad
that was on the same IP address.
So why wouldn't it let me download?
Because I have a Apple ID,
which is associated with my American credit card number
and my in-law's address back there.
And so it didn't care where you were,
it cared where your billing was.
And how does it decide where your billing is, what country?
It decides because it forces you to give a credit card
with a, you know, an associated valid mail address.
That was interesting.
In other words, they didn't care where you were.
They did care about where you were
sort of homed from their account.
And I actually had the experience when we moved to Canada,
which is why I still keep this account associated
in the U.S. because I bought some movies and, you know,
some apps and a couple other things through the Apple store.
And when I moved to Canada, I said, okay,
I'll change to my Canadian credit card number.
And, you know, just continue on in Canada.
And I did that, no big deal.
You can do that in the Apple, you know,
store in the Apple portal.
But suddenly all my content went away.
Even stuff that I could buy in Canada, right?
So I got in touch with Apple.
They were pretty helpful.
And they said, dude, you know,
your content is licensed for basically
where your billing address is.
This is stuff you already had bought
and was on your device.
I didn't fool myself.
It doesn't mean that I own anything, right?
I have a limited time license
under the 30 page Apple terms of service.
It doesn't mean you own something in their world.
In your world, I think you do own it.
Yeah, I always wonder about this
because I don't want to say I get apocalypse now.
I have apocalypse now on VHS.
I have apocalypse now on DVD.
I have the director cut on Blu-ray, right?
And so I buy it in the Apple store.
Which one can go away?
You're going to have apocalypse then
because it's going to disappear.
Okay, so Alex, another way that Canada is better.
I don't mean to make a whole list,
but you got me going here.
They still have snow, lots of it.
In fact, they got lots of snow this year and it's awesome.
Well, there's still lots of snow
in the United States as well.
I mean, they don't have exclusivity
on snow at the moment, by the way.
I was in the Poconos two weeks ago.
We had huge amounts of snow.
I couldn't even back the car out of the driveway.
So I don't buy that as a reason for Canada being so great.
I've seen you try to back the car out of the driveway.
The snow has got nothing to do with it.
This time it was turned on.
Okay, one more thing, just off the top of my head.
They have phone booths here, lots of them.
We go from town to town and we always see
a big Bell payphone booth, not just a payphone,
but a booth, you know?
And we got rid of the booths first
and then we got rid of the payphones.
They're doing exactly what we talk about week after week.
They have the old technology just sitting there
in case you need it.
It's easily available.
You can see it from a distance.
And it's really comforting to know
that the payphone is always there and they work.
That's amazing.
You should take some photos.
I'm sorry, you should take some photos
of the phone booths while you're there.
The booths, I think, are partially there
because of the wind, because it's cold in Canada.
But the telecom situation is not that bright in Canada.
Canada has, we're in a somewhat rural area,
not totally rural, but we're in an area
where we don't have any broadcasts over the air TV.
We don't have any cable TV options.
And the DSL, which we do have luckily
because we have a landline, is only about a megabit down.
So that's behind.
And a lot of the communities in Canada
are much more rural than we are,
including a vast, what they call First Nations,
so Native American is what you would call them in the U.S.
And they are, indigenous populations,
they are grossly underserved by the modern telecom.
So I think the phone booths are good in themselves,
but I think they're also offsetting the relative lack
of the internet and the wireless infrastructure.
See, we don't have that problem with indigenous people.
We just pretend they don't exist and we move on.
Well, let me push back on the phone booth issue
again as well.
I mean, here in New York,
we've gotten rid of all the phone booths.
And before we got rid of all those phone booths,
people were just making anonymous phone calls,
committing crimes, using those public pay phones.
They were disgusting.
Don't you feel safer under the watchful eye,
the watchful three eyes, I should mention,
of Link NYC kiosks having replaced all of those pay phones
where you can go and make a free call, charge your device,
maybe even watch some pornography on the street
while you're there?
I mostly appreciate the way it's really cut down on crime.
Yeah, exactly.
It was all sarcastic, by the way, obviously.
The thing, Alex, is that Link NYC is only in NYC.
There's all kinds of communities up here.
They all have, I assume they all have phone booths.
And in the States, there's different phone companies,
there's different towns,
and they're pretty much being taken out of all of them.
And it's not just in the United States.
It's in many places.
It's a big mistake.
We love technology, we love advances,
but hang on to the old stuff as well
because they can complement each other.
Yeah, look, I completely agree.
And speaking of the Commonwealth,
when I was in London last week,
I did notice that they are installing the equivalent
of Link NYC kiosks all throughout London,
and they're called InLink UK.
And they also have the BT logo on them.
It seems like a lot of them are not in use yet,
but I took some photos.
We can share some online if anybody cares.
But we're learning from what's going on in New York.
I wonder, has the show talked about Huawei before?
Because the differentiation of Huawei is in the news, right?
The woman that was apprehended and so forth.
But Huawei is very big in Canada.
They're in supercomputing, but more importantly,
they are the primary carrier infrastructure.
So they basically replaced Northern Telecom
with the switches for cellular and landline,
and to some extent, a lesser extent,
but to some extent with the internet.
Well, that's not the Chinese woman
who was detained that I want to talk about.
There is another one who was detained in Florida.
Alex, I think you've got some details on this.
Yes, I mean, I think this has been all over the news.
There was this Chinese woman
that was somehow tangentially connected with the woman
that ran the massage parlor
in which Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots,
was found to have been soliciting prostitution
and various acts.
And she showed up at Mar-a-Lago,
made her way past Secret Service agents
by first telling them that she was there,
I believe, for some kind of pool party,
and then the United Nations International Friends event,
which didn't exist.
And she was found with all manner of devices on her,
I think nine USB devices, some cash,
a separate device that was able
to detect hidden security cameras.
And she intended on making her way over to President Trump.
And it was only through the valiant efforts
of the receptionist, not the Secret Service,
who recognized that she was not in a place
where she should have been allowed and had called security,
at which point she was apprehended, arrested,
and remains in federal custody until at least Monday
when there is a bond hearing,
at which I'm sure all the major media
are going to be in attendance
and we'll get some further details about her statements,
which appear to be changing by the moment
about her reasons for being there,
her whereabouts, her connections to China.
And this whole story is, to me,
so incredibly bizarre and frankly unbelievable.
And obviously now there is this FBI counterintelligence
investigation into her activities as well.
Well, I just want to ask you, legally,
what is it that they're holding her for?
What is her crime?
She went to a resort, a second-class resort,
and didn't belong there.
That's something that I think we've all done
many, many times.
What is it exactly that is the crime?
Yeah, she had malware.
So, I mean, how many individuals at Mar-a-Lago have malware?
They probably, the president probably has malware.
How do you find out somebody has malware?
I mean, you ask them, what is the chain of events here?
Well, to answer the first question
about the particular crimes,
I haven't actually seen the criminal complaint.
But she did plead not guilty
to whatever it was she was charged with.
But I would imagine it was some kind of inchoate offense
or attempt at infiltrating this
for foreign intelligence purposes
that she's basically being held on suspicion
of being an agent of a foreign power.
Now, interestingly enough,
if she was an agent of a foreign power
and she was traveling under official cover
of that particular government,
you wouldn't be able to hold her
because she would have had diplomatic immunity.
So if she was an agent of a foreign power, namely China,
which is what everybody is suspecting,
she would have been traveling under non-official cover,
which means that if she gets caught,
and she did get caught,
that there was really nothing
that the Chinese government could do
in trying to extricate her from this particular legal mess
that she now finds herself in.
Yeah, but Alex, she didn't infiltrate the White House.
She went to a country club.
How is it that a Chinese national
is not allowed to go to a country club?
Well, she was trespassing to begin with,
and she obviously had the intention to do something
that was about the collection of intelligence
with respect to the President of the United States.
So I mean, I think it's reasonable that she was picked up
and held here on these federal charges.
Plus, if you add to that
the fact that she had these nine USB devices,
several passports in her name,
which I didn't mention originally,
it indicates some kind of intent to,
let's say, violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,
infiltrate a network, commit these particular crimes,
and collect intelligence with regard
to the President of the United States.
All of this is really, really bad.
However, I do have to say, though,
that if this was a foreign intelligence operation,
it was so bumbling and idiotic
that it just defies my imagination
that this really could have been a state-sponsored act
trying to infiltrate Mar-a-Lago
with the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence.
I think it's more likely to me and more reasonable
that this woman is being used as a cutout
by somebody to try to make a point, perhaps,
about the lax security at Mar-a-Lago.
And that raises an interesting-
Oh, and the other thing that was surprising to me
was it essentially criminalized having four phones
being infected with malware and having, like, two passports
and not having a bathing suit
and also not knowing quite the right name of the conference
because the name that she had
was pretty close to the conference that was happening,
I think, the day before or the day after.
So that was what was remarkable to me
and got me thinking that this was, as you're saying,
you know, sort of a, there's something else
that's going on or maybe not going on behind the story.
And there are a couple of things
that really bug me about this.
Number one, the fact that you can go to a country club
to get intelligence about the US president
tells me that there probably isn't very much intelligence
there to begin with,
but it really, that is the violation as far as I'm concerned
that this kind of thing is happening
where you have a place like this.
That's not a government facility.
It's just basically someone's pad.
That is where all the secret discussions are taking place.
That's something that we need to study.
But the other thing, it has to do with the malware itself.
Now, she had thumb drive,
and apparently some bozo of a secret service agent
decided he was gonna plug one into his own computer system.
And guess what?
It did all kinds of things to his system,
which, you know what?
The thumb drives I carry,
if somebody plugs them into their system,
the same thing's gonna happen.
That's called defense.
Well, defense is important too
because this whole Mar-a-Lago situation,
as you mentioned, this is not a government facility.
And we have places that it's traditionally thought of
as the places the president will do their work,
the White House, Camp David even,
places where there's the infrastructure
for the government to provide their proper security
and everything else.
But because we have a president who's decided
that he'd rather hang out at a country club that he owns
so taxpayer dollars can go to his own business
for his stay there,
like they then had to just rig up
whatever security they could,
whatever protection they could at this place
that was not intended to house such dignitaries.
And we're seeing things like this as a result.
Someone just breaking into a country club
or sneaking into a country club
is now doing things that get the Secret Service
dogpiling on you like this.
Well, and to be fair,
and I think there's been a lot of chatter about this,
the wisdom of plugging this particular USB device
into a Secret Service computer.
And the Secret Service had made a statement about this
to Verge, basically saying,
I'll quote it, I'll read it,
but stop me if you get bored.
Quote, assertions that US Secret Service agents
are incompetent to carry out forensic examinations
on digital media, that is thumb drives, laptops,
cell phones, et cetera,
is outlandish and not rooted in fact.
The Secret Service Electronic Crime Special Agent Program
known as EXAP is internationally recognized
and special agents across the agency
receive extensive training in computer forensics
and undergo a rigorous certification process.
Forensic examinations conducted by these personnel
are done in accordance with the US Secret Service
standard operating procedures.
Secret Service forensic examinations are conducted
on standalone computers equipped
with specialized forensic software, probably NCASE,
which are not connected to Secret Service networks.
So they seem to really be backtracking this,
but that statement doesn't necessarily jive
with what I think was in the sworn statement
of the particular Secret Service agent, so.
So it was released, right?
I mean, so if all this stuff is true that you just read,
you didn't mention anything about having this be
part of the top news story worldwide
as the investigation is going on
before the woman even appears in court.
So there's something, like I said,
I think there's something less or something more
than is being told there.
I don't have the ability of Secret Service
to do forensic investigations
or get their buddies over at another agency to do it,
but how often do you see them talked about publicly?
Well, let's parse this,
because I think there is something
completely askew about this whole situation.
And let's think about the malware for a second too, right?
I mean, what the Secret Service agent had said
on the record in the sworn statement
was that this started immediately,
this malware, once it was plugged in via USB device,
started copying files immediately, right?
I mean, if this had been an intelligence operation,
I don't think that the malware
would have just started wildly copying files
from or onto the particular system
on which it was mounted as a device.
Compromising the President of the United States
would have probably involved malware
that was a little bit more narrowly tailored,
carefully crafted and stealthy.
And then think about this pool issue,
and then the event that you mentioned as well, Greg,
that she said she was going
to the United Nations International Friendship event,
and before that, she said she was going to the pool.
All of this is kind of bumbling.
If this, again, was a foreign intelligence operation,
they wouldn't have had to guess
at the particular event or name.
What the intelligence agency would have done
was actually organize an event at Mar-a-Lago
through some kind of proprietary company
or organization that they have within the United States,
and then all of their people would have lawful access
to the particular building.
It's probably, and frankly,
not that very hard to do at Mar-a-Lago
if you pay a lot of money to that organization
to organize an event like the United Nations
or International Friendship event.
Sounds like a great deal.
They are open for business, right?
Yeah, they are open for business.
I was really interested in,
Alex, I wonder if you saw anything additional about this.
Was the device or whatever it was
for spotting hidden cameras, I wonder what that was.
Yeah, I can think of it in terms of a listener,
like listening for signals in the five gigahertz spectrum,
something like that.
But what would this even be
that someone would be carrying around with them?
And where can we buy one because we need that?
I guess that was what I was asking.
You know, I don't know.
I've been trying to find a bit of information
about that particular device myself.
But to go to the devices issue as well,
again, another completely unbelievable fact
from this story is that this woman
who's trying to infiltrate Mar-a-Lago
is carrying this huge amount of USB devices
and this whatever device it is
to detect hidden cameras on her,
you know, just out in the open in a bag
or someplace that's easily detectable.
That would be horrible tradecraft
for a foreign intelligence operative
to just have these things out and exposed.
I mean, it seems like it was designed
to have been detected.
You know, and this issue of cash as well,
that as you also mentioned, Greg,
there was an investigation carried out
and a search warrant issued for her hotel room,
it seems like, before she had ever appeared in court
because of the urgency and exigency of the situation.
And there was all this cash found in her hotel room.
And Zhang's woman's explanation for this was,
well, with respect to the cell phones
that she had on her and the USB devices
was that she felt that they weren't going to be safe
in her hotel room.
But, you know, apparently $8,000 in cash
was okay to leave in the hotel room.
So it doesn't necessarily jive.
But again, this says to me,
no way doesn't pass the smell test
for a foreign intelligence operation.
Why would they be using cash in such a small amount?
The cash in the hotel room indicates to me
that somebody local might have paid her to do this
and act as some kind of cutout to make a point.
I think-
And giving her all of these tools and gizmos
as props to embolden the behavior and also get caught.
And in response to what Greg had mentioned,
I wondered the exact same thing.
What kind of specific technology?
I know we'll probably not get a lot of answers.
And the only couple of things I could think of
just in my pure imaginative mind
would be reflections and things from lenses,
like in an optical sense.
But I think that's less likely.
I think really what you're talking about
with video countermeasures
would be a device that is sensitive enough
to pick up the noise from the components
that are commonly used.
In other words, a common component
that every CCD requires
when it's encoding optical data into a digital format.
It's something so sensitive
that you could run across a wall
and be close enough in proximity to pick up that noise
of basically visual information
being encoded into binary and so forth.
Can I just mention one more thing?
And I want to hear from Rob
because I haven't heard from him in a while.
But basically, according to the New York Times,
the way this crazy event transpired,
this is what's interesting.
She arrived for this quote unquote
United Nations friendship event.
She showed the agent an invitation to that event,
but it was in Chinese.
Nobody there could read Chinese.
So that's why she was escorted off the property.
Nobody could read the invitation.
The agent questioned her after escorting her off the property
and then she became verbally aggressive.
And that's when she was detained,
when she became verbally aggressive.
She basically got a Secret Service agent angry.
And from that point on, she was held in custody.
So if she hadn't gotten verbally aggressive,
probably none of this would have happened.
Interesting, which would support the theory
that she was there to prove a point
and get into the news with all this.
I like the $8,000 connection or whatever it was.
That makes it sound like whatever it was
was not a government action
because of the way it was fungled.
The thing that Kyle was talking about,
my other thought on this, I think that's a good one.
You have some sort of signal detection listening device.
The other thing that was thought I had was infrared.
So if you're in an area that has cameras
that are gonna see in the dark,
they probably have infrared emitters.
And those you can pick up even on an iPhone.
Definitely.
That would be something like night vision
would see very obviously if a small infrared diode
was on the camera board itself.
But yeah, we're probably not gonna see much
in the way of details, but perhaps we will.
The plot thickens, as they say.
And to build off of Rob's, I think, very valid point
that this definitely seems like it was designed
to have gotten her caught.
On the other hand, one other theory
with respect to her verbal aggression
that you brought up, Emmanuel,
is that perhaps she was being paid in milestones.
The $8,000 was for her to do this initially,
and that might have been half
or a third of the particular payment.
If she got in there, if she was able to do something else
or take pictures or demonstrate
that she was able to get into the inner sanctum
or the sanctum sanctorum, so to speak, of Mar-a-Lago,
she might have gotten more money for that,
and that could have caused her
to become more verbally aggressive
because maybe there was a $50,000 or $100,000 payout
waiting for her had she gotten out
and taken pictures or something like that.
But one other thing I wanna bring up, too,
which is a bit of a mystery to me
and I think to everybody who's following
this particular story, is I don't understand why
there hasn't been more about this woman's background
and history in China coming out yet from the media.
She's a real person.
She has a history.
She has a real name.
It's difficult to conduct investigations in China
because of the names and the translation issues
and transliteration issues of names in Chinese and whatnot,
but the media's really good at this kind of thing
and investigators are really, really good
at this kind of thing.
The woman has said to, I believe it was FBI,
that she was involved in finance in China,
that she owns a million-dollar home in China,
and none of this seems to make sense
with the idea that she would be paid $8,000
to go on this insane escapade into Mar-a-Lago
with all these devices.
So I really want more information from the media,
from the investigators to come out
about what the hell she was up to in China before this
because there's got to be history there
and it's weird to me that nothing
has come out about that yet.
That's a very good point.
It's weird.
The other thing I'm wondering about is follow the money,
which usually the media are good at.
So if there's $8,000 for a fairly poor penetration test,
who might want to pay that type of money
as opposed to millions with a well-equipped excursion
and would equip with this sort of way?
And to me, that brings all kinds of things to mind,
definitely including the regular media.
Because if you were, you know, any company,
anyone doing, you know, looking for dirt
on the administration, you might say,
well, how easy is it to, you know,
to break into Mar-a-Lago?
Yeah, that's a great point.
I mean, this really smells or sort of reeks, really,
of the issues that plagued the UK quite a few years ago
with the blagging efforts of private detectives
using all these illicit means to access phones
and personal data and doing all kinds
of skulldugerous activities
that they shouldn't have been doing.
And perhaps it is something like that.
What's also interesting is that, to my knowledge,
and I don't follow the president on Twitter
out of principle, but I haven't seen Trump
tweeting anything about this,
or I haven't heard about him tweeting anything about this,
blaming it on the Democrats or blaming it on the media yet,
which is something that you would necessarily
have expected from him.
True.
Well, it's a story we're gonna be following,
and I'm sure it's gonna develop
in all sorts of interesting ways.
Well, let me ask you guys a quick question on this.
So we've got a bail hearing on Monday.
Do you think that she's gonna make bail?
Well, I'd like to know how the media covers it.
I think that would be a very interesting thing to study.
It depends.
Who's got the $8,000 in cash?
Yeah, well, I mean, the issue would be,
is she going to be granted bail at all?
They could set bail at $5 million.
She would have to pay a portion of that.
Or she could be considered a flight risk,
at which point, you know, the federal judge
that would be addressing this case would say,
absolutely not, you're going to stay in jail
until this case is heard, just like Maria Butina.
I think that'll be a factor,
but also I think they might not know what they wanna know
to bring the rest of the case.
In other words, they might want more time
to gather evidence, to trace back,
whether it's the money or the devices
or the passports or things like that.
Personally, I think it's a witch hunt,
an illegal investigation,
and I don't think they're gonna find any collusion.
What do I know?
Well, you know, Greg brought up a really,
really great point, and if, you know,
she's being represented right now by a federal defender,
as I understand it, a legal aid attorney.
She doesn't have a private practice attorney
representing her, unless somebody's gonna make
an appearance for her on Monday,
and that would also be rather interesting.
But Greg, you make some really good points,
that, you know, as it stands right now,
she was essentially trespassing
and just holding onto some interesting devices,
and she was infected by malware.
If I were the defense attorney,
trying to argue for her bail
or the dismissal of these particular charges,
those would be the arguments that I would make.
All right, hey, there's one more story
I'd like to get to, if we have time,
and that's that message that was sent to Amazon.
You guys hear about this?
No, which message?
It's from the rainforest.
They want their name back.
Yes.
Now, the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN,
recently decided to expand its list
of generic top-level domains, known as GTLDs,
and they have .amazon.
But eight countries containing the Amazon rainforest
objected to the retail giant's plans
concerning the new .amazon domain name.
Governments are Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia,
Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname,
and, wait for it, Venezuela.
All members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization,
known as ACTO,
they say that relinquishing the domain
exclusively to Amazon
could impact on matters of their sovereignty.
And, you know, in this era where, you know,
domains are decided by geography amongst many other things,
do you think geography would trump a corporation?
Not to coin a phrase, but what do you think, Alex?
Well, this is an issue that I've actually worked on
for about seven years now,
back in, actually, more like eight.
I was instrumental in the new GTLD application process
by which you applied for these strings
that would be delegated as top-level domains,
and top-level meaning to the right of the dot
in an internet address.
So you have gmail.com.
.com is a top-level domain.
Gmail is a second-level domain, or the domain name itself.
And this was a process that kicked off, really, in 2011
with the creation of the Applicant Guidebook
for the new GTLD application program.
And then the application period was opened in 2012,
at which point I was part of a team of attorneys
between New York and D.C.
We represented Google or Yahoo.
We worked, I worked personally, by the way,
on over 200 applications.
And this is a battle that has literally been brewing
between Amazon and these particular states since 2012,
when they put in their application for Amazon,
it's been going back and forth,
and back and forth, and back and forth.
And there's a specialized committee in ICANN
known as the GAC, or the Governmental Advisory Committee,
which has representatives from all different countries
that participate in ICANN
that provide advice to the ICANN board.
And it's very, very difficult
to get a new GTLD application passed
if you don't have GAC consensus advice,
which this Amazon application has been struggling with
for the exact reasons that you had mentioned to us, Emmanuel.
And what's kind of bizarre to me, though,
is that this was something that started seven years ago
with the kickoff of the new GTLD program.
Since that particular period of time,
a lot of .brand TLDs, meaning brand names like Nationwide
or Pepsi, Cola, Coke, things like that.
So you have .Coke, .Pepsi, et cetera, have been delegated.
They've gone live, they've gone into the root zone
of the internet, domain names could resolve.
But all of these particular brands
have really been struggling with how to use them,
how to monetize them, how to market them.
And a huge amount of them have been abandoned.
They've gone inactive, and they have decided that,
you know what, it's no longer worth me
to pay the $25,000 fee per year to ICANN
for this top-level domain that nobody's using,
that nobody understands, that nobody's gonna navigate to.
But yet, Amazon continues to persist
in this particular battle, despite the fierce opposition
from these particular countries and the GAC.
So it raises the question to me
about what they have up their sleeve
with this particular .Amazon.
And they offered some concessions to these countries
as well, giving them the two-letter country code
as a top-level domain, like EC.Amazon would be for Ecuador,
and they wouldn't do it.
Alex, Alex, they're offering concessions
to the eight countries in the Amazon region.
Think about that, think how wrong that is.
A corporation is offering them concessions.
They should be the ones in control, offering Amazon
concessions. Well, they are.
They are, and I don't think this will get passed
unless they get past the GAC issue as well.
But the other thing, too, to think about
is that this was Amazon seven years ago
when they put in this application.
Amazon seven years ago is a completely different animal
from the Amazon that we see now.
And I wonder how their plans have changed
for this .Amazon TLD.
I think that they have got very significant
and concrete plans.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be spending the amount of time,
resources, and certainly capital on legal bills
to try to push this thing forward with ICANN.
So this is definitely a battle worth watching.
And of course, there's precedent for this sort of thing
in the sphere of ICANN.
There was the 2004 case where a computer repair person
called Uzi Nissan had registered Nissan.com
in the early days of the internet.
And Nissan, the motor company, when they decided
they wanted a website on this here internet,
they tried to sue him for it and lost
because he's entitled to use his own name
and he was there first.
In this case, I think the Amazon,
as in the geographical location, was in fact there first
before the company that throws cardboard boxes
all over the place.
That's true, and there was another specialized
application procedure during this process.
And .Africa is an example of that.
So .Africa was delegated and put into the root zone.
And that was known as a community application,
which meant that in order for it to go through
as a community application and be processed,
they had to demonstrate that they had consensus
from a community of African nations that supported them
being in control of this particular top-level domain,
which they did and it got passed through.
Amazon did not have that.
So they are really butting heads
with these particular sovereign nations.
ICANN is gonna be under a very strong microscope here
because the international community
has always suspected that ICANN,
because it's a not-for-profit corporation
registered in California of all places,
could be susceptible to U.S. interests.
God forbid, right?
So I think that Amazon has that going against them as well,
that ICANN needs to be seen as much more international,
much more sensitive to underserved communities
and countries where local content
could necessarily be compromised
by the delegation of these top-level domains.
You know, it just bothers me
that we're talking about a .amazon top-level domain
and 2600 can't even get an Instagram account.
That's true, I know.
Yeah, well, life isn't fair, I guess.
Nope, except in Canada, where it's awesome.
That's right, exactly.
But I think we should definitely watch this.
I'm sure we'll continue to report on this
as this battle rages on.
And we're gonna have to kind of leave it there
because we are just about out of time.
But I'm sorry, guys.
But you know, you guys enjoy the rest of your trip to Canada
and we look forward to hearing all about
how your adventures went in the days, in the week to come.
We will, thanks for having us and we enjoyed the chat.
Totally, thank you, Greg Newby, for joining us again.
Kyle, watch your hand, be careful with that.
And yeah, have a great week.
Email us, oth at 2600.com.
Find us on Twitter at Hacker Radio Show.
Find us on Mastodon, hackerradioshowatmastodon.social,
if you're living that life, as we are.
For Off The Hook, this is Rob T. Firefly.
Have a very good night.
Let me tell you how it will be
Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you and 19 for me
Cause if you touch me, yeah, touch me, touch me
Touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me
Too grateful, I don't take it all
Cause if you touch me, yeah, touch me, touch me, touch me
I don't care, I'll touch your skin
I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
To my dreams, if you dare
Come on, I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
To my dreams, if you dare
Come on, I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
To my dreams, if you dare
Come on, I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
Come on, I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
Come on, I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
To my dreams, if you dare
Come on, I'll touch your skin
If you come undone
To my dreams, if you dare
Come on, I'll touch your skin
Because when I come undone
I'll touch you skin
It makes you feel
But I was blinded by your eyes
I was blinded by your eyes
But I was blinded
Yeah, I was blinded by your eyes
And you were looking for the way out
And you were looking for the way out
And you were looking for the way out
And you were looking for the way out
Oh, I found a way out
Those last two arms
Oh, I found a way out
Those last two arms
Yeah I found a way out
Those last two arms