[00:00.000 --> 00:06.560]  Pacifica Radio has been compelled, under California court order, to consider amendments to its bylaws.
[00:06.860 --> 00:15.180]  Now, these bylaws protect the democratic governance system, key to our mission of promoting peace and justice through our broadcasts.
[00:15.440 --> 00:26.860]  The court order was initiated by Pacifica National Board members Donald Goldmacher from KPFA, Mansour Sabag from KPFK, and Bill Crozier from KPFT.
[00:26.860 --> 00:33.660]  Crozier was one of the board members who came and closed down WBAI on October 7th.
[00:33.720 --> 00:49.580]  However, in the opinion of a large majority of the Pacifica National Board, the proposed bylaws amendments are destructive, a slap in the face at all the activists who struggled for years to create a democratic governance structure for Pacifica.
[00:49.580 --> 00:58.460]  It would do away with our local station boards and replace them with rubber stamp advisory boards that now dominate NPR stations.
[00:58.700 --> 01:07.480]  It would put Pacifica under the absolute control of six transitional directors appointed by those who filed the lawsuit.
[01:07.480 --> 01:14.080]  They would even have final say over all Pacifica broadcasts, including over WBAI.
[01:14.220 --> 01:22.660]  I'm Alex Steinberg, Pro Tem Chair of the Pacifica National Board and member of WBAI's local station board.
[01:22.660 --> 01:29.540]  I urge all delegates and members to study these bylaws carefully and vote your conscience.
[01:29.540 --> 01:32.560]  This is WBAI New York.
[01:34.680 --> 01:35.880]  Oh, I was going to say that.
[01:35.980 --> 01:37.620]  Okay, it is WBAI New York.
[01:37.860 --> 01:40.580]  The time is just about seven o'clock.
[01:41.380 --> 01:42.620]  Time for Off the Hook.
[01:47.940 --> 01:49.840]  The telephone keeps ringing.
[01:50.220 --> 01:52.400]  So I ripped it off the wall.
[01:53.400 --> 01:55.360]  I cut myself while shaving.
[01:55.960 --> 01:57.900]  Now I can't make a call.
[01:58.560 --> 02:00.700]  We couldn't get much worse.
[02:01.360 --> 02:03.260]  But if they could, they would.
[02:03.500 --> 02:06.160]  Bum Diddly Bum for the best, expect the worst.
[02:06.800 --> 02:08.660]  I hope that's understood.
[02:08.900 --> 02:09.740]  Bum Diddly Bum!
[03:11.410 --> 03:13.550]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[03:13.630 --> 03:15.110]  The program is Off the Hook.
[03:15.110 --> 03:16.490]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
[03:16.630 --> 03:18.250]  Joined tonight by Alex.
[03:18.490 --> 03:18.910]  Good evening.
[03:19.150 --> 03:19.610]  Rob T.
[03:19.750 --> 03:20.230]  Firefly.
[03:20.470 --> 03:20.850]  Good evening.
[03:20.990 --> 03:21.230]  Gila.
[03:21.410 --> 03:21.610]  Hello.
[03:22.010 --> 03:22.530]  And Kyle.
[03:22.870 --> 03:23.270]  Hi.
[03:23.730 --> 03:27.070]  Well, it's going to be a busy hour because we have a lot to talk about.
[03:28.310 --> 03:35.150]  As expected, Iran is retaliating for the assassination by the United States.
[03:35.350 --> 03:39.990]  And the first casualties, websites.
[03:40.510 --> 03:43.070]  Hacked by Iran's cybersecurity group hackers.
[03:43.070 --> 03:46.090]  This is only a small part of Iran's cyber ability.
[03:46.090 --> 03:47.410]  We're always ready.
[03:47.750 --> 03:49.870]  That was the homepage for the U.S.
[03:50.030 --> 03:53.330]  Federal Depository Library Program on Saturday evening.
[03:54.570 --> 03:55.850]  I don't know what that is.
[03:56.090 --> 03:59.090]  But they were taken offline pretty quickly after that.
[03:59.210 --> 04:00.730]  And not many people saw that.
[04:01.050 --> 04:04.310]  And we don't even know if that had anything to do with Iran or just somebody who was bored.
[04:04.310 --> 04:17.310]  But the federal, as long as people are curious, the Federal Depository Library Program was created to provide the public with no fee, ready and permanent public access to federal government information.
[04:17.770 --> 04:24.850]  That includes bills, statutes, court opinions, and a wide range of material produced by the government.
[04:24.850 --> 04:25.810]  A senior U.S.
[04:26.450 --> 04:31.110]  official involved in cybersecurity matters confirmed the incident but dismissed its importance.
[04:31.110 --> 04:34.310]  This is a nothing event, that senior official said.
[04:34.370 --> 04:36.670]  A small, under-resourced agency.
[04:36.870 --> 04:39.170]  A defacement of small times stakes.
[04:39.510 --> 04:40.670]  Small times stakes, that is.
[04:41.190 --> 04:44.310]  And it's nice that they admit that they don't get the resources they need.
[04:44.310 --> 04:50.250]  So, hopefully, this incident will result in increased funding for the U.S.
[04:50.470 --> 04:52.870]  Federal Depository Library Program.
[04:53.070 --> 04:54.770]  That's some good news out of all this.
[04:55.530 --> 05:01.810]  The senior official added the hackers were likely sympathizers to the Iranian regime but not linked to the government itself.
[05:02.850 --> 05:11.750]  Or just people who feel the need to put out something on a website because that's how people tend to express themselves in various ways.
[05:11.750 --> 05:19.530]  Now, Iranian hackers are likely planning social engineering and phishing efforts in retaliation for the U.S.
[05:19.610 --> 05:23.450]  military's killing of Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani.
[05:24.430 --> 05:30.050]  I kind of... am I wrong in saying I kind of like these responses better, the cyber responses?
[05:30.530 --> 05:31.990]  Is that naive, Alex?
[05:32.310 --> 05:34.010]  No, I don't necessarily think so.
[05:34.130 --> 05:39.250]  I mean, I think it gets dangerous when you combine a cyber-based response with a kinetic response.
[05:39.250 --> 05:46.470]  You know, if you start bombing and then knocking out critical infrastructure, things get really scary when bombs are going off in the dark, right?
[05:46.710 --> 05:51.890]  Well, I'm more scared by infrastructure being controllable by anybody on the Internet.
[05:52.050 --> 05:52.890]  It doesn't have to be Iran.
[05:53.090 --> 05:53.930]  It could be anyone.
[05:54.790 --> 05:59.130]  And it's that insecurity that's more frightening to me than somebody getting angry.
[05:59.130 --> 05:59.530]  Yeah.
[05:59.710 --> 06:09.190]  And look, you know, these hypothetical phishing attacks that are going to be forthcoming from Iran, you know, it really depends on whom they're phishing, right?
[06:09.190 --> 06:15.310]  If they're phishing industrial control systems, they're phishing SCADA systems, they get inside, they can wreak havoc.
[06:15.310 --> 06:26.770]  However, I think it's very unlikely that they're going to engage in a brand new phishing campaign now to try to get access and figure out how this all works so that they can take down some critical infrastructure.
[06:26.770 --> 06:41.630]  I think it's much more likely that the Iranians, if they are going to engage in any kind of cyber response, is that they will use access that they already have, access that they've already cultivated, where they've made lateral movements, they understand the network,
[06:41.730 --> 06:42.850]  they know how things work.
[06:42.850 --> 06:51.670]  They can begin wiping data, as they've done in the past, or they can begin to turn things on and off, and let us know that they're there.
[06:52.370 --> 06:55.290]  I mean, I've wiped more data of my own by accident.
[06:56.350 --> 07:00.790]  It's, you know, this is something that is just, it's part of the rules.
[07:00.790 --> 07:02.810]  It's part of what happens when you use technology.
[07:02.950 --> 07:06.290]  Things can go wrong, and you have to be prepared for that.
[07:06.390 --> 07:19.430]  So if somebody calls you up and convinces you somehow to wipe your data or connects you to something that does that, you should have a plan for that, because whether or not it's you dropping a hard drive on the floor, or somebody stealing your computer,
[07:19.650 --> 07:25.850]  or somebody from Iran calling you and convincing you to give them your password, it's going to happen at some point.
[07:25.910 --> 07:29.550]  Experts are concerned about a possible flurry of social engineering attempts.
[07:29.710 --> 07:31.270]  This piques my interest.
[07:31.870 --> 07:35.490]  Aimed at compromising the credentials of employees in various agencies.
[07:35.670 --> 07:45.970]  Social engineering typically involves gathering information about a target, such as what he does for a living or who her employees are, and using that information against the individual.
[07:46.230 --> 07:58.910]  And once this takes the form of a phishing email, which uses the personal details to convince the recipient to click on a malicious link, often that happens giving the sender access to the victim's files or other information.
[07:58.910 --> 08:03.030]  It's from a CNBC story about the possible risks ahead.
[08:03.630 --> 08:08.210]  You know, I, for one, would be okay if this was what war was.
[08:08.330 --> 08:11.070]  I mean, you know, websites, okay, they're a thing that exists.
[08:11.210 --> 08:24.450]  But, you know, maybe if the president had, say, social engineered himself some credentials and then took down some Iranian website rather than going and, you know, commanding the murder of somebody, I might actually like him a little more.
[08:24.450 --> 08:26.070]  He doesn't use a computer, though, I don't think.
[08:26.230 --> 08:27.290]  I really don't think he does.
[08:27.490 --> 08:27.490]  Oh, no.
[08:27.490 --> 08:28.650]  He uses the best computers.
[08:28.810 --> 08:30.130]  He has the biggest computers.
[08:30.130 --> 08:31.470]  They're better than everyone else's computers.
[08:31.470 --> 08:31.850]  Yeah.
[08:32.050 --> 08:33.650]  I think they're kind of equal.
[08:34.030 --> 08:43.850]  They have different effects, some more immediate, some creating sort of bodily harm and the sort of things you might expect from traditional warfare.
[08:44.130 --> 08:51.250]  But I would say these virtual environments have maybe slower effects or can persist for longer.
[08:51.490 --> 08:58.030]  And then the combinations of them can maybe multiply their impact.
[08:58.030 --> 09:04.830]  So I think it's all sort of can be terrible when you're at the effect of some of this stuff.
[09:04.990 --> 09:13.650]  Well, the ultimate to me would just be deleting his Twitter account or hacking it and tweeting out something that actually makes sense.
[09:13.970 --> 09:20.090]  You know, the opposite of what you do when you hack somebody's Twitter account and put out nonsense, you go the other way and you start putting out sense.
[09:20.090 --> 09:21.990]  That would be the ultimate hack for me.
[09:22.270 --> 09:23.690]  And I would accept that.
[09:23.830 --> 09:28.030]  I would accept that as retribution, as an appropriate retaliation.
[09:28.170 --> 09:33.170]  But the thing is, in this crazy world of ours, that would be treated super seriously.
[09:33.170 --> 09:36.530]  People would be threatened with prison for hacking a Twitter account.
[09:37.570 --> 09:38.870]  This is the world we live in.
[09:39.010 --> 09:50.830]  But ever since we started doing this show, we've separated the virtual world from the real world and encourage people to live in the real world and play around in the virtual world as much as possible.
[09:50.950 --> 09:54.310]  But just like you don't start a war over being kicked out of an IRC channel.
[09:54.310 --> 09:55.250]  Well, some people will.
[09:55.430 --> 09:58.150]  But you don't want to live in that kind of a world.
[09:58.310 --> 09:59.230]  Not real.
[09:59.390 --> 10:00.050]  Anyway, virtual.
[10:00.410 --> 10:00.990]  Okay, fine.
[10:01.050 --> 10:01.790]  Have a virtual war.
[10:02.090 --> 10:08.070]  Just no admin has ever shed serious tears over seeing their website come home in a zip file with a flag over it.
[10:08.650 --> 10:09.530]  Not yet, anyway.
[10:09.750 --> 10:12.910]  And I know some admins that probably would fall right into that role.
[10:13.510 --> 10:17.450]  But yeah, so Iran's retaliation could be hacking, not bombs.
[10:17.550 --> 10:24.850]  Of course, we already know it's somewhat been missiles, rather friendly missiles, actually, which shows some restraint if that was intentional.
[10:25.390 --> 10:30.810]  But as we've mentioned, all kinds of hacks have already taken place.
[10:30.910 --> 10:34.830]  All kinds of compromised data is probably already accessible.
[10:35.050 --> 10:41.230]  So it's just a question of calling in those favors or using those saved passwords.
[10:41.670 --> 10:44.550]  And maybe we'll see something happen.
[10:44.690 --> 10:50.790]  But the extent to what happens, the extent of what happens is based on the security that we have right now.
[10:50.790 --> 10:59.350]  If we have something that is completely vulnerable to outside attack or to a disgruntled employee, then we don't have a very good system.
[10:59.350 --> 11:01.970]  And we need to find that out very, very quickly.
[11:02.630 --> 11:03.030]  Yeah.
[11:03.230 --> 11:08.790]  And, you know, a lot has been said over the last several days about watching for Iranian attacks.
[11:08.890 --> 11:09.750]  How do we do this?
[11:09.850 --> 11:10.910]  You know, what are we looking for?
[11:10.910 --> 11:10.930]  Sure.
[11:12.370 --> 11:19.990]  There are a lot of different APT groups, advanced persistent threat groups that relate to Iran, APTs, I think, 33 through 35.
[11:20.310 --> 11:28.150]  We know that historically they've been interested in targets in the oil and gas sector, in the energy sector, heavy industry, etc.
[11:28.250 --> 11:30.250]  So all of those should be on high alert.
[11:30.250 --> 11:42.210]  And I guess it's also time to brush up on what's known as the TTPs as they relate to those APTs, TTPs being the tactics, techniques and procedures of these Iranian threat actor groups.
[11:42.890 --> 11:48.490]  But I think it's also important to mention that these are public, for the most part, TTPs.
[11:48.670 --> 11:59.790]  So all these tactics, all these techniques and procedures that can be attributed to Iran can also be replicated now by opportunistic others sending up false flags that would otherwise indicate Iran.
[12:00.250 --> 12:15.270]  And again, that's why I think, excuse me, why we are not likely to see things like password spraying, which is, you know, known to be a technique of Iranians trying massive amounts of passwords on particular logins, etc., etc.
[12:17.010 --> 12:31.910]  As a technique from Iran right now, I think what we're going to see is what I said before, which is leveraging the access that they already have, or being inside and looking for lateral movement around your network, anomalous lateral movement in your network.
[12:31.910 --> 12:35.090]  That could be an indication that you've got some kind of alien in there.
[12:35.670 --> 12:38.330]  And if you work on an oil rig or...
[12:38.590 --> 12:38.890]  Yeah.
[12:39.110 --> 12:39.990]  An unknown.
[12:40.390 --> 12:40.750]  Okay.
[12:40.830 --> 12:42.450]  It just sounds kind of weird when you say it that way.
[12:42.670 --> 12:43.150]  Yeah, yeah.
[12:43.230 --> 12:43.730]  Well, it is.
[12:43.810 --> 12:44.730]  That's why I said it that way.
[12:44.830 --> 12:46.850]  Just to get you to chime in.
[12:46.950 --> 12:47.670]  One, make sure you were listening.
[12:47.950 --> 12:48.390]  Mission accomplished.
[12:48.530 --> 12:49.130]  Yeah, fantastic.
[12:49.130 --> 12:56.170]  But yeah, if you see this anomalous activity from unknown persons or aliens inside your network, obviously you've got a problem.
[12:56.250 --> 12:59.250]  Maybe Iran, maybe somebody else could be an insider threat.
[12:59.430 --> 13:00.190]  Why don't we just...
[13:00.190 --> 13:03.450]  Instead of referring to people breaking into systems as hackers, call them aliens.
[13:03.650 --> 13:04.130]  We could call them aliens.
[13:04.130 --> 13:04.710]  That could be fun.
[13:04.830 --> 13:05.150]  Absolutely.
[13:05.150 --> 13:06.390]  You have an alien in your system.
[13:06.490 --> 13:07.670]  An alien, a ghost.
[13:07.730 --> 13:11.510]  It changes the narrative a lot, and it makes it a lot of fun, too.
[13:11.610 --> 13:11.850]  Absolutely.
[13:11.930 --> 13:13.450]  They're illegal aliens in most cases.
[13:13.450 --> 13:15.930]  Well, it depends on what they're doing, I guess.
[13:16.210 --> 13:23.630]  But anyway, the Department of Homeland Security on January 4th terrorism advisory warned that homegrown violent extremists...
[13:23.630 --> 13:27.450]  I don't know why they had to be violent, or even extremists, or even homegrown.
[13:27.550 --> 13:32.070]  Anyone really could capitalize on the heightened tensions to launch individual attacks.
[13:32.290 --> 13:37.650]  Iran maintains a robust cyber program and can exercise cyber attacks against the United States.
[13:37.650 --> 13:44.810]  Iran is capable, at a minimum, of carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical infrastructure in the United States.
[13:45.290 --> 13:47.770]  You know, they're being very nice to Iran.
[13:47.990 --> 13:56.430]  They're giving them all kinds of props here and saying they're capable of almost anything, and maybe that's why they've held back so much, because they're really kind of blushing.
[13:57.150 --> 13:58.110]  They continue here.
[13:58.230 --> 14:03.310]  Be prepared for cyber disruption, suspicious emails, and network delays.
[14:03.310 --> 14:05.850]  Okay, you know, I get all three of those every day.
[14:05.850 --> 14:12.470]  So, what, I'm supposed to just blame Iran now every time the network is slow, or I get a weird email, or something's disrupted?
[14:12.470 --> 14:13.390]  Come on already.
[14:13.710 --> 14:18.290]  This is like when Kevin Mitnick was in prison, and everything that happened to the internet was his fault.
[14:18.630 --> 14:20.090]  Because he must be doing something.
[14:20.610 --> 14:21.410]  Get this, though.
[14:21.670 --> 14:30.890]  Iran's small size and the fact that it's been relatively isolated from the import-export market has served as an advantage to the country's cyber capabilities.
[14:30.890 --> 14:31.450]  That's right.
[14:31.550 --> 14:32.170]  An advantage.
[14:32.390 --> 14:40.910]  Practical engineering skills to build original appliances, applications, and technology in lieu of supporting this tech have been coveted for decades in Iran.
[14:41.050 --> 14:52.730]  In other words, by being isolated, by having sanctions put against them, they have thrived in developing their own counter-weapons as far as attacking other systems.
[14:52.730 --> 14:59.310]  Yeah, that and their own systems, because they can't import commercial industrial control systems things.
[14:59.450 --> 15:02.250]  They've had to become makers and make them themselves.
[15:02.470 --> 15:03.750]  And those are very unique systems.
[15:03.890 --> 15:14.010]  They become much more difficult to compromise and not really subject to supply chain type compromises, whereas, you know, other countries would be who weren't subject to sanctions.
[15:14.670 --> 15:20.310]  But, you know, I think you've raised a couple of interesting points here, I think, about Iran.
[15:20.550 --> 15:30.710]  But I think mostly what we should be really worried about is wiping of data, people coming inside, wiping in data, that kind of malicious activity.
[15:30.830 --> 15:35.210]  But again, this is why we have things like business continuity plans in place, you know, backups.
[15:35.210 --> 15:35.850]  Okay, yeah.
[15:35.990 --> 15:45.110]  But when you say that, that makes me think that there's going to be all these people out there now sending out emails, convincing you to buy their products that will protect you against this sort of thing.
[15:45.250 --> 15:47.290]  And that's where the real victimization comes in.
[15:47.550 --> 15:47.950]  Yeah.
[15:48.170 --> 15:49.770]  Well, and let me tell you this, too.
[15:49.830 --> 15:57.970]  I mean, we watch a lot of threat activity every day in the DNS with our DNS intelligence platform that we have developed.
[15:58.010 --> 16:04.230]  And we have seen a massive amount of targeting of the energy and oil and gas sector over the last couple of years.
[16:04.230 --> 16:08.590]  You know, it's very, very difficult to attribute it to any one particular group.
[16:08.590 --> 16:17.650]  But we definitely are seeing a very high level of interest from what we believe are likely state-sponsored groups outside of the United States.
[16:17.930 --> 16:23.310]  But this then raises a sort of interesting issue in an analog, I think, to the nuclear age.
[16:23.810 --> 16:30.810]  Whereas when we had nuclear powers that were facing off against each other, we had the policy of MAD or mutually assured destruction.
[16:31.710 --> 16:36.950]  The United States is also an APT, an advanced persistent threat to other nations.
[16:37.310 --> 16:46.170]  And we are very, very good at what we do as a country in terms of compromising other nations' industrial control systems getting into their critical infrastructure.
[16:46.170 --> 17:02.550]  And so it's sort of a game of tit for tat that we have right now, where other nations, of course, are going to be very interested in our critical infrastructure, our oil and gas and energy sectors, because they want to be able to demonstrate to us that if we attack their infrastructure,
[17:02.790 --> 17:04.430]  they will attack our infrastructure.
[17:04.430 --> 17:09.210]  And I think this is sort of a cyber arms race, so to speak.
[17:09.390 --> 17:12.930]  I hate to even use that phrase because it sounds so hyperbolic.
[17:13.090 --> 17:20.230]  But I think we are seeing a digital analog right now of what we had in a nuclear age, which was mutually assured destruction.
[17:20.530 --> 17:25.850]  Everybody is interested in everyone else's industrial control systems and all of their critical infrastructure.
[17:25.850 --> 17:31.650]  And that's not going to change, regardless of what kind of defensive posture any of these entities have.
[17:31.830 --> 17:35.850]  The thing, at least the theory behind mutually assured destruction was deterrence.
[17:36.150 --> 17:37.230]  Where's the deterrence here?
[17:37.430 --> 17:45.750]  Well, the deterrence is, you know, think about when the lights went out inexplicably here in New York last year, right?
[17:46.210 --> 17:52.670]  A lot of people think that perhaps that was a signal from another country that they were inside the New York City infrastructure.
[17:53.170 --> 17:55.890]  And they let us know that they can shut the lights off.
[17:56.030 --> 17:59.010]  So if you shut our lights off, then we'll shut your lights off.
[17:59.110 --> 18:00.970]  That's the deterrent component of this.
[18:01.130 --> 18:06.710]  You know, if that's what the war, what the theme of the war is, then let's, I'm all for it.
[18:06.810 --> 18:12.310]  Let's turn each other's lights off, have a UPS or something and have a backup system ready.
[18:12.310 --> 18:17.090]  You know, I'm not so much worried about the data wiping because you're going to notice that.
[18:17.230 --> 18:18.670]  You're going to notice when your data has been wiped.
[18:18.790 --> 18:21.130]  And if you have a backup, okay, you're all right.
[18:21.270 --> 18:23.410]  A little bit inconvenient, but you get all your data back.
[18:23.870 --> 18:27.870]  I'm more worried about, you know, minor changes that can be made.
[18:28.070 --> 18:41.870]  You know, I imagine just going in and changing a couple of things that you're not going to notice maybe for months or even years, but it's going to mess something up at some point and you won't be able to recover from it because you won't be able to figure out what got changed or when it got changed.
[18:42.470 --> 18:45.690]  That's a lot more, a lot more subtle and I think a lot more dangerous.
[18:45.950 --> 18:46.650]  Yeah, it is.
[18:46.850 --> 18:51.090]  And, you know, anecdotally, let me tell you something that happened to me on the last election day.
[18:51.270 --> 18:55.650]  I went to vote here in New York and they could notice the middle initials changed.
[18:56.210 --> 18:56.930]  Something similar.
[18:57.150 --> 18:58.070]  Just trying to get your attention.
[18:58.230 --> 18:58.430]  Yeah.
[18:58.790 --> 18:59.630]  Something similar.
[18:59.770 --> 19:00.370]  Just a good prank.
[19:00.470 --> 19:00.950]  Nobody got hurt.
[19:01.150 --> 19:03.490]  My name was changed in the voter database.
[19:03.690 --> 19:03.810]  Okay.
[19:03.990 --> 19:05.370]  I seriously had no idea.
[19:05.530 --> 19:06.250]  I did no knowledge of this.
[19:06.250 --> 19:06.430]  Yeah.
[19:06.710 --> 19:07.770]  It actually was changing.
[19:07.810 --> 19:11.090]  It took them about 10 minutes to figure this whole thing out.
[19:11.170 --> 19:12.890]  And luckily, you know, this wasn't a presidential election.
[19:13.010 --> 19:17.570]  There was very, very few people voting in election day where I live in the city.
[19:18.630 --> 19:22.490]  And, you know, I was there with my son because I wanted to show him what voting was like.
[19:22.730 --> 19:23.650]  How democracy works.
[19:23.730 --> 19:24.530]  Yeah, how it works.
[19:24.710 --> 19:26.370]  And, you know, and then we're stuck there.
[19:26.450 --> 19:27.350]  They can't find my name.
[19:36.250 --> 19:36.810]  Cross-referencing.
[19:37.010 --> 19:40.310]  And it took about 10 to 15 minutes of me sitting there at this desk.
[19:40.430 --> 19:42.310]  And we realized that somehow my name was changed.
[19:42.390 --> 19:44.550]  But I've been voting at this precinct for the last 12 years.
[19:44.890 --> 19:48.330]  Every single time, my name was perfectly found.
[19:48.490 --> 19:50.170]  It was easily to look up right there.
[19:50.370 --> 19:51.410]  No, there was no change.
[19:52.390 --> 20:00.350]  Somehow, between last year's election and this year's election, my name in that database was changed by one character.
[20:00.710 --> 20:03.870]  And this is the kind of minor change that could really wreak havoc.
[20:04.050 --> 20:05.270]  This is exactly what I was talking about.
[20:05.330 --> 20:05.510]  Exactly.
[20:05.510 --> 20:08.350]  It's like they listened to this show, went back in time and did that.
[20:09.390 --> 20:09.650]  Perhaps.
[20:09.770 --> 20:15.570]  But, I mean, you could just go to voterregistration.gov if you have the login, which is still set for the default, I believe.
[20:16.510 --> 20:18.290]  Everybody is registered in the country there.
[20:18.290 --> 20:22.690]  You go in and you get administrator access and you simply change a bunch of the names around.
[20:22.690 --> 20:23.870]  All these people won't be able to vote.
[20:24.110 --> 20:25.590]  Imagine the chaos that's going to cause.
[20:25.790 --> 20:26.310]  Well, it is.
[20:26.310 --> 20:37.650]  I mean, I think about a presidential election, if you really wanted to mess with an election, if you were to alter the voter database role by just deleting things, the database is going to get smaller.
[20:37.830 --> 20:43.050]  That's going to be some noticeable change that a system administrator will probably figure out at some point.
[20:43.250 --> 20:56.090]  But if you just change one character and everybody who's registered as a Democrat's name, the database is going to stay exactly the same and it's going to wreak absolute hell on the administrators when they're trying to look people up.
[20:56.170 --> 21:07.070]  It's going to basically disenfranchise them because nobody will have the capacity to try to figure this out for thousands of people waiting along the lines in the city to try to vote.
[21:08.090 --> 21:12.350]  So, you know, that was a weird thing, but I think it is exactly what you're talking about.
[21:12.350 --> 21:19.530]  These small, imperceptible changes over time, and what we do know is that the Iranians had stated that they are taking a long view of this.
[21:19.710 --> 21:27.730]  The missiles, we know, are just a precursor, perhaps a literal shot across the bow, but they're taking the long view.
[21:27.730 --> 21:33.030]  When Iran says they're taking the long view, take them seriously because they've been around a lot longer than we have.
[21:33.790 --> 21:35.490]  That is certainly true.
[21:35.650 --> 21:41.330]  And I've been asked to clarify, there is actually no voterregistration.gov out there with everybody's name on it.
[21:41.510 --> 21:43.270]  That I know of, alright?
[21:43.610 --> 21:45.530]  If there is a site, it's a different address.
[21:46.330 --> 21:49.830]  Okay, also, this story just keeps going.
[21:50.230 --> 21:56.610]  Former Australia coach, you know, they don't say what sport it is, but Darren Lemon, anybody know who that is?
[21:57.150 --> 22:03.710]  His Twitter account was hacked, and the hackers have been posting derogatory messages against Iran.
[22:05.390 --> 22:13.070]  And so, if you're following this person, who is, I guess, the Brisbane Heat.
[22:13.370 --> 22:14.870]  Again, I don't know what sport this is.
[22:14.950 --> 22:16.170]  It's in the Big Bash League.
[22:16.830 --> 22:17.950]  Probably rugby, right?
[22:18.210 --> 22:18.710]  I don't know.
[22:18.910 --> 22:19.950]  Rugby or cricket?
[22:19.950 --> 22:21.910]  Or Australian rules football or something?
[22:22.110 --> 22:23.030]  Is that the same thing?
[22:23.210 --> 22:23.570]  Maybe, yeah.
[22:23.570 --> 22:24.830]  They play cricket, sure, they play cricket.
[22:24.830 --> 22:25.390]  Yeah, they play cricket out there.
[22:25.390 --> 22:26.030]  Okay, Australian?
[22:26.190 --> 22:27.390]  I've never heard of that, but okay.
[22:27.570 --> 22:30.630]  Well, anyway, the Brisbane Heat tweeted, Hi, Heat fans.
[22:30.770 --> 22:31.610]  Thanks for the messages.
[22:31.610 --> 22:38.090]  We are aware our coach Darren Lemon's Twitter account has been hacked and are working closely with Twitter to rectify the situation.
[22:38.090 --> 22:41.190]  We apologize for any offense caused this evening.
[22:41.410 --> 22:43.870]  And yes, the hackers have been abusing Iran in their tweets.
[22:44.450 --> 22:53.090]  While the account's name has been changed to Kazem Soleimani F Iran, of course, the name of the person who was assassinated by the United States.
[22:53.670 --> 23:00.070]  The perpetrator so far used Lemon's account to promote anti-Iran messages and propaganda to his 340,000 followers.
[23:00.610 --> 23:02.350]  That is a way to get a message out, I guess.
[23:02.450 --> 23:09.290]  They'd send out multiple explicit tweets regarding the country along with linked images and YouTube clips relating to the suffering of the nation.
[23:10.150 --> 23:10.510]  Wow.
[23:10.790 --> 23:11.390]  It is cricket.
[23:11.970 --> 23:13.630]  Oh, thanks for clarifying that.
[23:13.770 --> 23:13.930]  Okay.
[23:14.130 --> 23:16.090]  The most important element of the story there.
[23:16.170 --> 23:16.570]  Yeah, sorry.
[23:16.690 --> 23:18.290]  I just had to find out.
[23:18.390 --> 23:19.490]  No, it's good.
[23:20.410 --> 23:20.770]  Yeah.
[23:20.870 --> 23:22.210]  So, yeah, I don't understand this whole thing.
[23:22.310 --> 23:23.910]  We're working with Twitter to resolve the situation.
[23:24.110 --> 23:25.370]  You change the password.
[23:25.530 --> 23:26.050]  That's all you do.
[23:26.310 --> 23:29.090]  Twitter, you know, our account, and we're probably a verified account.
[23:29.250 --> 23:30.270]  So you take that seriously.
[23:31.290 --> 23:32.350]  Obviously, it's been hacked.
[23:32.470 --> 23:32.930]  Turn it off.
[23:33.090 --> 23:34.190]  You know, it should take two minutes.
[23:34.750 --> 23:34.870]  Yeah.
[23:34.950 --> 23:37.950]  And there's probably other platforms that user's on.
[23:38.110 --> 23:44.650]  He could just, like, revert to that and let people know that way until they can get the other account working.
[23:44.710 --> 23:46.530]  And treat it like what it is, a prank.
[23:46.830 --> 23:51.170]  Let's not get, you know, people, federal investigators and prison terms involved.
[23:51.650 --> 23:53.750]  Let's call 1-800-TWITTER and get it over with.
[23:54.590 --> 23:57.130]  There is no such phone number as 1-800-TWITTER as far as I know.
[23:57.250 --> 23:59.270]  But just whatever their number is.
[23:59.270 --> 24:00.050]  Yeah.
[24:00.170 --> 24:06.450]  I mean, it's a step to taking sort of your identity if your identity is wrapped up in that platform.
[24:06.710 --> 24:16.930]  And personal information and so on is helpful, especially if it helps you traverse different systems or authorities and so on.
[24:17.110 --> 24:25.530]  So it's potentially big, but it shouldn't be immediately this visceral thing that we go to the highest level of concern.
[24:26.110 --> 24:34.770]  There's always, you know, taking a break and being offline for a while as they had to do.
[24:34.910 --> 24:37.250]  They were kind of pushed towards that, but it shouldn't be devastating.
[24:37.590 --> 24:38.690]  Definitely should not be.
[24:39.130 --> 24:49.230]  Speaking of changing the narrative and making subtle changes and getting people to believe things that are not true, this is actually taking place with regard to the Australian fires that are taking place.
[24:49.370 --> 24:58.790]  Bot and troll accounts are involved in a disinformation campaign that are exaggerating the role of arson in the bushfire disaster.
[25:00.150 --> 25:06.330]  The fires that are burning across the nation have been accompanied by repeated suggestions of an arson epidemic or arson emergency.
[25:06.610 --> 25:17.170]  The false claims are, in some cases, used to undermine the link between the current bushfires and the longer, more intense fire seasons that are brought about by climate change.
[25:17.170 --> 25:17.910]  Yeah.
[25:18.010 --> 25:22.850]  The Queensland University of Technology Senior Lecturer on Social Network Analysis.
[25:23.650 --> 25:24.410]  Wow.
[25:24.550 --> 25:25.370]  I want to see his door.
[25:26.910 --> 25:44.510]  First, Queensland University of Technology Senior Lecturer on Social Network Analysis, Dr. Timothy Graham, examined content published on the arson emergency hashtag on Twitter, assessing 1,340 tweets, 1,203 of which were unique, published by 315 accounts.
[25:44.630 --> 25:49.630]  Using a Twitter bot detection tool, he assessed a random sample for bot-like characteristics.
[25:49.830 --> 25:59.970]  His preliminary analysis found there was likely a current disinformation campaign on Twitter's arson emergency hashtag due to the suspiciously high number of bot-like and troll-like accounts.
[26:00.170 --> 26:06.550]  He also found a large number of suspicious accounts posting on the Australia fire and bushfire hashtags.
[26:07.330 --> 26:14.290]  Australia suddenly appears to be getting swamped by mis- or disinformation as a result of this environmental catastrophe.
[26:14.630 --> 26:23.710]  And we are suffering the consequences in terms of hyped-up polarization and an increased difficulty and inability for citizens to discern truth.
[26:24.050 --> 26:27.410]  Claims about arson are not the only falsehoods being spread on social media.
[26:27.550 --> 26:33.970]  Other patently false claims include that the government has created the bushfire crisis to clear land for high-speed rail.
[26:34.590 --> 26:38.550]  Another absurd claim is that somehow the Islamic State is responsible.
[26:38.550 --> 26:40.410]  That story coming to us from The Guardian.
[26:41.230 --> 26:48.710]  I don't know if this particular story mentions it, but there was also activity of Wikipedia and such things being edited.
[26:48.930 --> 27:02.330]  And there was this concerted effort to make other brush fires and similar things that had happened in the past alter the data to make them seem more serious than they were, just so the current brush fire doesn't seem like as huge a thing in comparison to everything that's come before it.
[27:02.750 --> 27:10.410]  So they're basically, in another form of disinformation, just making it look like, oh, what's going on is not so bad.
[27:10.450 --> 27:12.890]  And really, people are just getting all excited about nothing.
[27:14.270 --> 27:18.550]  Well, it's not nothing, but they're getting excited about the wrong things.
[27:18.550 --> 27:24.710]  I mean, my theory on this brush fire disinformation campaign is sort of like...
[27:24.710 --> 27:25.990]  It's bush fire.
[27:26.170 --> 27:27.350]  A bush fire, excuse me.
[27:27.530 --> 27:43.490]  Yes, bush fire disinformation campaign is sort of, you know, the physical analog of this would be, you know, if you're a hypothetical terrorist and you leave a backpack in a subway with some wires protruding from it and then gauge the response.
[27:43.790 --> 27:57.750]  I mean, I don't necessarily see a huge benefit to spreading disinformation about the bush fire, you know, really coming to anybody except perhaps, you know, climate change deniers, things like that.
[27:57.890 --> 28:10.290]  But, you know, you could really very easily think up a hypothetical malicious actor who is now gauging the responses of social media companies to disinformation campaigns.
[28:10.350 --> 28:11.250]  What are they doing?
[28:11.430 --> 28:13.250]  How are they regulating this content?
[28:13.690 --> 28:16.350]  You know, how fast can we spread this content?
[28:16.550 --> 28:18.090]  How fast can we spread this misinformation?
[28:18.510 --> 28:19.590]  Who's doing it?
[28:19.850 --> 28:22.930]  You know, are our bot networks being easily detected?
[28:23.530 --> 28:29.170]  All these kinds of things can be gauged by a misinformation campaign to which everyone is paying attention.
[28:29.170 --> 28:40.950]  And, obviously, we have a 2020 election coming up and this would be really great intel or a really great proving ground if that's what your intention was over the next nine, ten months.
[28:41.070 --> 29:06.290]  Well, it's also really profitable for people like this or whoever is behind it to get people, get other people, readers or participants to fight each other, to think that there's all this adversity going on when there isn't any, to get people afraid of a particular threat or a particular religion or a particular race or nationality.
[29:06.610 --> 29:13.610]  And I don't know if it's part of an experiment or if it's part of an agenda, but it's not hard to do.
[29:13.730 --> 29:20.430]  When you get all your information from social media, it's so easy to be manipulated.
[29:20.430 --> 29:22.450]  It's sort of a familiar tactic.
[29:22.810 --> 29:25.810]  I mean, the adage divide and conquer comes to mind.
[29:26.690 --> 29:27.090]  Mm-hmm.
[29:27.450 --> 29:28.030]  No, absolutely.
[29:28.350 --> 29:30.290]  And that's what I think we're seeing here.
[29:30.590 --> 29:35.570]  Now, in kind of a related development, Facebook just banned deepfakes.
[29:35.930 --> 29:47.190]  You know, deepfakes are what we're going to be exposed to over the next year, with videos that are indistinguishable from real videos with people saying things they never said.
[29:47.190 --> 29:49.570]  misleading deepfake videos.
[29:50.430 --> 29:51.630]  But there are loopholes.
[29:52.030 --> 29:56.810]  Deepfakes, as they're known, are now banned on Facebook and on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
[29:57.330 --> 30:00.170]  They announced this two nights ago, Monday night.
[30:01.250 --> 30:07.350]  And the thing is that policy doesn't extend to deepfakes meant as parody or satire, which I think is fine.
[30:07.790 --> 30:13.190]  Nor does it ban other forms of doctored videos made with less sophisticated software.
[30:13.190 --> 30:19.390]  It also doesn't override Facebook's policy against fact-checking politicians.
[30:19.710 --> 30:20.290]  I repeat that.
[30:20.470 --> 30:23.910]  Facebook has a policy against fact-checking politicians.
[30:23.950 --> 30:26.550]  It doesn't mean politicians who are fact-checking.
[30:26.630 --> 30:29.190]  It means they will not fact-check politicians.
[30:30.030 --> 30:36.510]  That means deepfakes posted by a political candidate would not be removed.
[30:36.710 --> 30:39.570]  In other words, Trump continues to do whatever he wants.
[30:39.570 --> 30:47.090]  Now, while the new policy is being heralded as a step in the right direction, misinformation watchdogs are calling on Facebook to do more.
[30:49.570 --> 30:55.730]  Basically, this is something that there are huge loopholes you can drive through, particularly if all you have to do is be a candidate.
[30:56.030 --> 31:04.230]  Hey, if I want to post deepfakes, I'll just register to run in some race someplace, pay the filing fee, and hey, I'm a candidate so I can post whatever I want.
[31:04.230 --> 31:17.690]  Now, we should explain for people not familiar with the term, deepfakes are basically when you use really advanced software for the current time to make a video look like the participants are other people.
[31:17.690 --> 31:29.670]  You put, like, the face of a celebrity or a political figure or someone onto the body of someone else, and so then you have something that looks like the celebrity is doing and saying things that they didn't actually do.
[31:29.710 --> 31:37.650]  It's basically what Photoshop is to photographs, where now we're not exactly sure on first glance if we're looking at genuine material or not.
[31:37.650 --> 31:45.790]  Well, you know, the one that people might be most familiar with is the Nancy Pelosi video where it was edited to make it look like she was slurring her words.
[31:45.910 --> 31:47.350]  That's going to remain on Facebook.
[31:47.610 --> 31:48.630]  I'm not sure why.
[31:48.630 --> 31:55.390]  I'm not sure why that qualifies, perhaps because it was posted by Trump or somebody.
[31:57.850 --> 32:12.470]  Sorry, it may have become newsworthy as a result of being outed as having been doctored and thus is sort of used as an example and important for its place in history as having been used that way.
[32:13.010 --> 32:25.410]  But it's just a symptom of the media environment we're all dealing with now where, you know, people got generally familiar with the idea of Photoshop and basically now if you look at a photo, there's a chance it wasn't actually what it looks like.
[32:25.550 --> 32:27.990]  But now we're there with videos, basically.
[32:27.990 --> 32:36.270]  So if you see a video that really grinds your gears or riles you up or looks like something really extraordinary, you now have to really consider the source and where you're getting it from.
[32:36.270 --> 32:59.490]  Yeah, and it I think also is sort of the democratization of a lot of what was used in computer graphics for movie making and other areas where this kind of production had a lot of advancement, evolutions, investment and was of interest for the purposes of entertainment.
[32:59.490 --> 33:14.110]  And a lot of that technology has become a lot more affordable as computers and the tools to create such things are more readily available as sort of the average person, right?
[33:14.390 --> 33:14.710]  Right.
[33:14.870 --> 33:23.990]  And so the things that like, say, the movie Forrest Gump was doing 20, 25 years ago that were a huge deal in the movie industry and the computer graphics world, now you could do that on your desktop.
[33:23.990 --> 33:25.110]  Yeah.
[33:25.350 --> 33:32.150]  And separately, I think, from the company standpoint, you know, this to me is a PR move.
[33:32.310 --> 33:33.850]  You know, it's 2020.
[33:33.870 --> 33:35.350]  It's an election year.
[33:36.050 --> 33:49.890]  You know, there are recently, I believe, some internal memoranda or some leaked documents indicating that Facebook executives had had made statements about their responsibility and getting Trump elected, et cetera, et cetera.
[33:51.170 --> 33:56.970]  And now this is a PR move saying, you know, we're not going to tolerate this kind of misinformation on our platform.
[33:56.970 --> 34:02.050]  And there is a big difference between making a broad policy statement and actually enforcing it.
[34:02.210 --> 34:07.890]  I mean, how is this going to be enforced if deep fakes are arguably indistinguishable from real videos?
[34:07.890 --> 34:17.330]  I mean, there must be some kind of digital signature that we can recognize for a video that's generated as opposed to a video that was actually recorded.
[34:17.430 --> 34:20.430]  We can do this with steganographic encryption technology.
[34:20.430 --> 34:23.370]  We can detect when steganography is used.
[34:23.370 --> 34:25.530]  We should be able to detect a deep fake.
[34:25.710 --> 34:44.210]  But from Facebook's perspective, the more they regulate their platform, the more likely it is that they are not going to fall under the auspices of immunity granted to them under the Communications Decency Act, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,
[34:44.310 --> 34:51.330]  as an interactive computer service, as essentially a platform where people interact and they have no regulation over the content.
[34:51.330 --> 35:05.770]  That's why they don't want to regulate facts stated by politicians, because then they're regulating speech on their platform that would place them much closer to losing that Section 230 immunity under the Communications Decency Act.
[35:05.990 --> 35:10.390]  And on that note, you know, this is a somewhat controversial position to take.
[35:10.550 --> 35:11.990]  I don't necessarily agree with them.
[35:12.030 --> 35:17.910]  And this is something I always go back to, which is we should be the guardians of our own minds.
[35:17.910 --> 35:25.930]  We should be getting very well practiced, like Rob had mentioned, that if something riles us up, we should look into it.
[35:26.030 --> 35:31.110]  I know we're all busy, and we all have busy lives, and we're flipping through Instagram, and then we go to Facebook, and then we go to Twitter.
[35:31.450 --> 35:33.610]  But spend some time to actually think about it.
[35:33.730 --> 35:41.550]  Our brains are the best bulwark against misinformation that could ever have been devised, because we can look at the facts, we can analyze them.
[35:41.730 --> 35:42.610]  That is up to us.
[35:42.610 --> 35:51.430]  I don't necessarily want to abdicate that responsibility of determining what is truth and what is false to some executives in Silicon Valley.
[35:51.790 --> 35:54.450]  I would much rather have that responsibility myself.
[35:54.450 --> 36:03.130]  But I also agree with Alex about it really being a cosmetic policy, because especially since the way that the policy has been drawn, there are loopholes in it, you could drive a Mack truck through.
[36:03.770 --> 36:11.410]  And if they're going to be creating that kind of a policy, I think then that their fact checking routines and procedures need to change.
[36:11.410 --> 36:26.670]  Because given the amount of time that it takes to analyze whether it is in fact a fake, but they've given the fact checkers these nearly impossible quotas to meet, you're setting it up in a situation where nothing is ever going to happen because it's going to be physically impossible to do it.
[36:27.370 --> 36:33.890]  So this is, you know, make fake policy, win big prizes, but nothing is really fundamentally going to change on this.
[36:33.890 --> 36:39.950]  If anything, people are then going to say, well, this can't be fake because it's on Facebook and it can't be fake if it's on Facebook.
[36:40.070 --> 36:40.910]  I have to believe it.
[36:40.970 --> 36:41.130]  Yeah.
[36:41.310 --> 36:47.370]  And there's a danger here of Facebook getting even more credibility by having something like that on there.
[36:47.650 --> 36:50.190]  If it's on there, yeah, it must be true because it's been vetted.
[36:50.470 --> 36:56.990]  And it's a good question to ask, how will it be vetted if it's impossible to distinguish reality from fiction?
[36:57.390 --> 37:03.850]  And perhaps what they will wind up doing is going to some other authority, a governmental authority, who will say, no, that's not true.
[37:03.970 --> 37:04.610]  That didn't happen.
[37:05.110 --> 37:07.950]  And the danger there, of course, is that maybe it did happen.
[37:07.950 --> 37:11.090]  And now you're relying on somebody to tell you what's true and what is not.
[37:11.250 --> 37:13.330]  So I agree with Alex as far as that.
[37:13.410 --> 37:21.850]  What I don't really see, though, is how our minds, our brains or the brains of many people are the resource that we need, that you have to feed those brains.
[37:21.850 --> 37:33.610]  You have to you have to give them something to to access to consider that that brings them outside the confines of the particular viewpoint that they're bombarded with 24 hours a day.
[37:33.810 --> 37:39.030]  How do you how do you mandate that somebody look into alternatives without force feeding them?
[37:39.650 --> 37:42.650]  Well, that's a difficult question, I think, in practice.
[37:42.930 --> 37:52.590]  But I think training your mind to recognize logical fallacies, to recognize propaganda and to be generally skeptical is is a really good start.
[37:52.730 --> 37:56.090]  And I think that these are things that are not taught anymore in school.
[37:56.250 --> 38:01.410]  We're not taught really how to think, even in college, even in higher education.
[38:01.410 --> 38:08.110]  You know, the classics, philosophy, logic, reason, things like that, you know, they're just sort of missed out on.
[38:08.170 --> 38:12.210]  And I really think that that's the fundamental bulwark against misinformation.
[38:12.590 --> 38:14.390]  I really agree.
[38:14.390 --> 38:24.630]  But I don't want us to slip into making this a media literacy problem, because let's bear in mind that Facebook is profiting from this.
[38:24.790 --> 38:26.530]  This is a commercial strategy.
[38:26.530 --> 38:28.150]  They're selling those ads.
[38:28.310 --> 38:31.190]  They are making money from disinformation.
[38:31.690 --> 38:34.690]  So I just I'm I'm getting a little bit.
[38:35.430 --> 38:44.050]  I mean, let's yeah, let's blame one another for not talking enough and not going on walks in forests and whatever we're supposed to be doing to be better.
[38:44.050 --> 38:45.030]  All burning citizens.
[38:45.830 --> 38:45.990]  Yeah.
[38:46.150 --> 38:47.830]  I mean, it is true.
[38:48.050 --> 38:52.450]  We have to be able to discern that stuff and be practiced in that.
[38:52.450 --> 39:00.530]  But I would I wouldn't want to go too far in saying that, you know, the voters and everyone just hasn't been doing enough reading.
[39:00.530 --> 39:06.930]  I think the companies need to be regulated and held accountable for what they have been making a lot of money off of.
[39:06.970 --> 39:10.090]  And plus, keep in mind, a lot of people don't want to hear another perspective.
[39:10.090 --> 39:14.590]  They don't want to consider the possibility that maybe what they're hearing is false or maybe they're wrong.
[39:14.590 --> 39:19.810]  You know, bouncing off your two, I think, excellent points, Emmanuel and Kyle.
[39:20.390 --> 39:31.550]  Another thing to think about why this is so difficult for us is because Facebook is providing to advertisers knowingly massive amounts of psychological data about us.
[39:31.750 --> 39:38.490]  Triggers, slight triggers, things whenever we're on Facebook and we like something that gives them more psychological insight into what we like.
[39:38.490 --> 39:43.330]  When we flip through an article and we go right back to Facebook, that's something that we don't like.
[39:43.530 --> 39:52.990]  If we every time we spend a second on that platform, they're gaining more and more information about us, about what triggers us, what motivates us.
[39:53.210 --> 39:56.130]  Anytime we make a purchase with Amazon, they do the same thing.
[39:56.210 --> 40:04.270]  If some things are in your cart and then you remove it, all of this is psychological insight that is then weaponized in the form of advertising.
[40:04.270 --> 40:13.810]  And when we're talking about political advertising, we are essentially talking about the potential for propaganda and misinformation to be bought and sold on that platform.
[40:13.850 --> 40:19.990]  And knowing how well they know us, it can become extraordinarily difficult to fend that off.
[40:20.590 --> 40:25.750]  And then, secondarily, just another point that I'd like to make is, it's goddamn 2020.
[40:25.790 --> 40:29.610]  The last time we were dealing with this was four years ago, 2016.
[40:30.130 --> 40:40.650]  And I don't see us having made any measurable difference in the state of things in 2016 as they were and the state of things in 2020 as they are now.
[40:40.670 --> 40:48.990]  We are still just as ripe for a misinformation campaign on all of our social media platforms as we were four years ago.
[40:48.990 --> 40:50.750]  We think that the federal government is slow.
[40:51.050 --> 40:51.710]  Look at Facebook.
[40:51.990 --> 40:59.990]  Yeah, the reason that still exists is because it's profitable and it's what the people in charge want.
[41:00.230 --> 41:07.610]  And they also... the models that can be built based on likes know more about you than anyone else.
[41:07.790 --> 41:10.170]  And I'll just read a section here.
[41:11.330 --> 41:12.990]  Basically, ten likes...
[41:12.990 --> 41:13.830]  A section of what?
[41:14.750 --> 41:17.810]  Christopher Wiley's book about Cambridge Analytica.
[41:18.710 --> 41:23.350]  Ten likes a model can predict a person's behavior more accurately than one of their coworkers.
[41:23.750 --> 41:25.930]  With 150 better than a family member.
[41:26.070 --> 41:30.410]  And with 300 likes the model knew a person better than their own spouse.
[41:30.590 --> 41:39.790]  This is in part because friends, colleagues, spouses, and parents typically see only part of your life where your behavior is moderated by the context of that relationship.
[41:39.790 --> 41:50.910]  So, they have all of this data and it is more than any business, any coworker, any other interaction you have in your life is being marketed by a corporation.
[41:50.910 --> 41:58.990]  And there's so much more about your entire persona that can be gleaned from that data.
[41:58.990 --> 42:01.690]  Now, we've brought Cambridge Analytica into this, I believe, for the first time.
[42:01.810 --> 42:03.330]  So, would you care to define our terms?
[42:03.730 --> 42:04.630]  Who are they?
[42:04.790 --> 42:05.510]  Or who were they?
[42:05.970 --> 42:11.750]  Yeah, they were a psychographic company set up in part by Steve Bannon.
[42:12.170 --> 42:23.610]  And their predecessor was a British-based group called SCL, which was involved in doing psychographics and using that to influence in war zones.
[42:23.770 --> 42:25.450]  Sort of like information warfare tactics.
[42:25.890 --> 42:26.290]  Psychographics.
[42:26.290 --> 42:39.150]  Yeah, that's a term that's being tossed around a lot right now, but it's basically using elements of psychology and building up profiles of people's personalities to use in predictive modeling.
[42:39.150 --> 42:46.390]  And the 2016 election being one of those, one of those events that Cambridge Analytica is heavily involved in.
[42:46.410 --> 42:47.410]  That's what's happening right now.
[42:47.570 --> 42:49.210]  It's actually occurring as we're speaking.
[42:49.730 --> 42:55.470]  An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from that defunct firm, Cambridge Analytica.
[42:55.550 --> 42:57.230]  And they became defunct because they were exposed.
[42:58.410 --> 43:10.150]  Those leaks are basically revealing the inner workings of the company that collapsed after British newspaper The Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles.
[43:12.390 --> 43:12.990]  Amazing.
[43:13.730 --> 43:26.390]  More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on an industrial scale are set to be released over the next months.
[43:26.390 --> 43:27.650]  That's this from the story in The Guardian.
[43:28.070 --> 43:48.950]  It comes as Christopher Steele, the ex-head of MI6's Russia desk and the intelligence expert behind the so-called Steele dossier into Trump's relationship with Russia, said that while the company had closed down, the failure to properly punish bad actors meant that the prospects for manipulation of the US election this year were even worse.
[43:49.790 --> 43:51.390]  I completely agree.
[43:51.390 --> 43:58.970]  And I didn't know the statistics that Kyle had cited with respect to the number of likes giving you that vast amount of psychological insight.
[43:59.190 --> 44:07.550]  I just got a notification from Facebook yesterday that it was my 13th anniversary of being on Facebook.
[44:07.550 --> 44:13.110]  And if you think about 13 years on that platform, how well they know me is slightly terrifying.
[44:13.110 --> 44:15.030]  I'm sure better than I know myself.
[44:15.030 --> 44:22.610]  And it made me think back to 2007 when I did register for this and the reasons why.
[44:22.770 --> 44:26.030]  And the reasons why were that it was the fear of missing out.
[44:26.990 --> 44:38.050]  Because I was getting ready to go over to Oxford and all these things were being organized by the next student class for the BCL, the law degree I was doing over there, through Facebook.
[44:38.050 --> 44:42.770]  Everyone was on Facebook and you got to meet your colleagues before you got there on Facebook.
[44:43.170 --> 44:45.510]  And it was a new platform.
[44:45.810 --> 44:47.070]  Everybody thought it was so cool.
[44:47.290 --> 44:49.630]  I was a bit hesitant about any social media at the time.
[44:49.730 --> 44:55.470]  But again, we all got on there essentially because of the fear of missing out this whole FOMO nonsense.
[44:56.750 --> 45:04.410]  And, you know, I really don't think that if I deleted that, that account, I'd be missing out on much of anything anymore.
[45:05.010 --> 45:05.630]  That's true.
[45:05.770 --> 45:06.150]  But the data is still there.
[45:06.790 --> 45:07.510]  Yeah, it is.
[45:07.570 --> 45:07.910]  It is.
[45:08.470 --> 45:09.170]  It's frightening.
[45:09.310 --> 45:11.970]  Even if you try not to be involved, you get sucked into it somehow.
[45:12.370 --> 45:13.330]  It's kind of scary.
[45:13.730 --> 45:22.890]  The documents that are being released, though, being leaked via Twitter, they're on a Twitter account known as Hindsight Files.
[45:23.150 --> 45:26.410]  H-I-N-D-S-I-G-H-T-F-I-L-E-S.
[45:26.410 --> 45:31.930]  And they have links to material on elections in Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil.
[45:32.370 --> 45:48.330]  These documents were revealed to have come from one Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower and to be the same ones subpoenaed by Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
[45:48.330 --> 45:54.710]  Now, Brittany Kaiser starred in the Netflix documentary The Great Hack, which Kyle and I just saw the other day.
[45:56.030 --> 45:59.370]  She decided to go public after last month's election in Britain.
[45:59.650 --> 46:01.050]  It's so abundantly clear.
[46:01.470 --> 46:07.190]  Our electoral systems are wide open to abuse, she said, and very fearful about what is going to happen in the U.S.
[46:07.230 --> 46:08.150]  election later this year.
[46:08.410 --> 46:13.750]  And I think one of the few ways of protecting ourselves is to get as much information out there as possible.
[46:13.930 --> 46:14.570]  Hard to disagree.
[46:15.350 --> 46:15.950]  Yeah.
[46:16.230 --> 46:16.350]  Yeah.
[46:16.530 --> 46:20.070]  Um, it's, it's, uh, interesting turnaround, especially for her.
[46:20.210 --> 46:42.710]  Um, what I, um, gather of her story, um, she basically was using a lot of the modeling in the systems or, uh, at least promoting it on behalf of Cambridge Analytica and acting as a liaison between the Republican Party and thus, uh, the, the, uh, current administration's team to,
[46:42.710 --> 46:44.550]  um, exploit this for her.
[46:44.550 --> 46:47.090]  For as much political gain as possible.
[46:47.810 --> 47:05.770]  And, um, that system and those models had been devised by, uh, Christopher Wiley, the, the person that I've been, uh, referring to, who is also a whistleblower, but worked, um, early on in putting that entire, uh, system together before it was, um, shopped around to the,
[47:05.770 --> 47:06.370]  uh, campaign.
[47:06.370 --> 47:13.010]  And then I think she worked on the campaign for about three years or so, um, thereafter once it was sort of in effect.
[47:13.010 --> 47:22.070]  Well, uh, just, uh, uh, Christopher Wiley in the film, uh, in fact, he made it very clear that, uh, uh, uh, Brittany Kaiser is not a whistleblower.
[47:22.350 --> 47:25.190]  Uh, you want to go into, uh, what that's all about?
[47:25.350 --> 47:35.430]  I, yeah, I have a couple of theories about, um, you know, the way he was portrayed in the film, um, and the way that is presented is graphically.
[47:35.430 --> 47:50.670]  It's actually just, um, basically a representation of a tweet that he made, I think, um, in the timeline of events, um, perhaps at a certain point of her journey to becoming, um, as forthcoming as she is right now.
[47:51.070 --> 48:01.870]  And I think what he was saying is that, you know, she, she has had a longer journey to, to releasing what she knows.
[48:01.870 --> 48:10.550]  A lot of what, um, is being released is her own working documents and calendar stuff she was using on the campaign.
[48:10.550 --> 48:27.030]  And I, I think what he meant is that she's, her motives weren't, um, from the beginning in quite as pure, like, um, she realized kind of what was going on and how this was.
[48:27.030 --> 48:33.770]  She, she realized the import of, of what they were doing more so and, and was still okay with having worked there.
[48:33.970 --> 48:42.210]  See, when, when you say she took a longer journey, I think what that means is she just did a lot of harm before she finally realized this is the wrong thing to do.
[48:42.770 --> 48:45.690]  And, you know, I, I saw the film, uh, it's, it's, it's okay.
[48:45.970 --> 48:47.050]  It's not the greatest film.
[48:47.210 --> 48:50.690]  A lot of, uh, these little talking dialogues with text messages and things like that.
[48:50.850 --> 48:50.930]  Fine.
[48:57.030 --> 49:09.370]  Uh, to, uh, to start with, I, I feel like they devoted way too much time on, on Brittany Kaiser and her, uh, slow motion, uh, realization that, uh, all this spying and all this data collection, all this manipulation is a bad thing.
[49:09.590 --> 49:09.810]  Okay.
[49:09.810 --> 49:11.370]  We knew that at the beginning of the film.
[49:11.550 --> 49:14.530]  Uh, it's great now that we're finally getting the truth, but you know what?
[49:14.530 --> 49:20.930]  It might've cost us quite a bit, uh, because of what Cambridge Analytica and, and their ilk did in 2016.
[49:21.710 --> 49:39.270]  Yeah, I, I think specifically, um, the hack would be more around what we were getting at with the exploitation of Facebook data and specifically the lax policies that Facebook had at the time around sets of data like this.
[49:39.270 --> 49:58.990]  It was essentially through a windfall of cash from the Mercers and Renaissance Technologies, early investors of Cambridge Analytica for Steve Bannon and Rebecca Mercer and, uh, her family basically contributed and that money was then used to negotiate with,
[49:59.270 --> 50:09.190]  um, some academics who had access to the Facebook data and, um, uh, Wiley and a guy named Alexander Kogan.
[50:09.750 --> 50:22.270]  And another guy named, uh, another person named Kosinski, um, were shopping this around, um, with, uh, uh, to a professor, a professor Nix, I believe.
[50:22.570 --> 50:23.810]  Uh, oh no, no, I'm sorry.
[50:23.910 --> 50:25.150]  That, that was their, uh, CEO.
[50:25.290 --> 50:30.070]  Nix was the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, who was sort of the, uh, Wheeler dealer of the operation.
[50:30.370 --> 50:37.230]  Um, but they, um, met with, uh, Kogan, I believe, I think he was at Harvard or one of the universities.
[50:37.230 --> 50:47.770]  And essentially, they negotiated, um, and originally, um, um, the professor, uh, Kogan found out about the $20 million and they wanted royalties for access to the data.
[50:48.130 --> 50:53.950]  But, um, um, Nix, uh, Nix, the CEO of, uh, Cambridge Analytica, refused.
[50:54.430 --> 51:01.050]  And, uh, the professor then sort of panicked that, um, this project wouldn't, wouldn't really go forward.
[51:01.050 --> 51:08.430]  So, uh, after Cambridge Analytica rejected the cash demand, um, he agreed to do it on original terms.
[51:08.670 --> 51:17.050]  He would let them have the data and then, um, uh, and Cambridge Analytica would pay for it at the cost of, of, uh, running surveys.
[51:17.310 --> 51:28.830]  And because essentially they were selling, they're paying people to use an app and that was how they were, um, uh, building the data sets that were big enough to get profiles on all of, uh, America.
[51:28.830 --> 51:33.370]  So, um, and then, um, he would be able to use the data for his research.
[51:33.530 --> 51:46.530]  So, it was sort of a, uh, um, they basically negotiated access to the deal so that this large data set would be created and the academics would then be able to go, uh, use it for their own research as well.
[51:46.690 --> 51:50.730]  And you're, you're, uh, referencing, uh, Chris Wiley's book, which is the word we can't say.
[51:50.870 --> 51:51.350]  Well, it's...
[51:51.350 --> 51:52.070]  I want to say it.
[51:52.110 --> 51:53.310]  It's mind F word.
[51:53.590 --> 51:54.250]  Mind Frick.
[51:54.590 --> 51:57.570]  Uh, well, don't spell it like that, but, uh, look it up.
[51:57.570 --> 52:05.470]  Uh, and, uh, the thing is, uh, one of the problems I have with the film, I don't think they really did him justice because, look, we know about Cambridge Analytica.
[52:05.610 --> 52:08.210]  We don't know about Cambridge Analytica because of Brittany Kaiser.
[52:08.350 --> 52:12.810]  We know about Cambridge Analytica because of Chris Wiley, because he was the whistleblower.
[52:12.890 --> 52:19.050]  And what they, what they said about him was that, uh, he only worked there for nine months and he had it in for the company.
[52:19.270 --> 52:24.290]  No, he worked there for nine months and he realized this is messed up and I got to tell people about it.
[52:24.290 --> 52:25.090]  And he did.
[52:25.290 --> 52:28.170]  And that's what everybody should do in situations like this.
[52:28.290 --> 52:33.530]  I would just say, yeah, I agree with your take on that from this particular film.
[52:33.690 --> 52:38.630]  I'm also not sure that this film... I'm not sure about the director of this film.
[52:38.790 --> 52:44.430]  This may be... I don't know how many films have been done by this group of individuals.
[52:44.710 --> 52:47.610]  So maybe... And also, documentary is not like film.
[52:47.650 --> 52:49.850]  You can't make everything perfect and going into it.
[52:49.950 --> 52:51.590]  You kind of have to deal with what's occurring.
[52:51.590 --> 52:56.410]  So there's... And you just may not have had enough to fill in some of the story.
[52:56.730 --> 53:04.110]  And lastly, it may be... I would just consider... I think it may have been possible that it's a choice.
[53:04.370 --> 53:19.290]  That Christopher Wiley wanted to speak to Congress, wanted to write his words down, but did not want to be on the big screen and as some big celebrity doing...
[53:19.290 --> 53:24.470]  You know, going into who he was so that he could just be the subject of it.
[53:24.570 --> 53:25.710]  I think he was more...
[53:25.710 --> 53:25.990]  He doesn't have to be, though.
[53:26.150 --> 53:26.590]  He doesn't have...
[53:26.590 --> 53:30.950]  A documentary can focus on somebody who's not in it as an important figure.
[53:31.230 --> 53:32.950]  I just think he was dismissed too much.
[53:32.950 --> 53:35.350]  I think way too much attention was put on this person.
[53:35.350 --> 53:35.890]  Oh, no, I agree.
[53:36.090 --> 53:37.510]  Who was doing too little too late.
[53:37.570 --> 53:40.070]  Yeah, it was like a minute that they basically just said, yeah, nine months.
[53:40.150 --> 53:43.710]  No, he built the system and it would have been worth going into in more technical...
[53:43.710 --> 53:46.550]  In greater detail, but I think there may have been a choice there.
[53:46.690 --> 53:51.910]  There may have been different venues that he wanted to contribute to more than this particular one.
[53:52.070 --> 53:59.350]  I mean, I will admit I haven't seen the movie yet, which obviously puts me at a disadvantage, but was there a point where, you know, this person was like, hey, he wrote a book.
[53:59.490 --> 54:03.150]  I want to be part of this too, kind of writing those coattails.
[54:03.310 --> 54:07.110]  So, you know, she was more the central figure because she gave them access in a way.
[54:07.210 --> 54:13.870]  Well, she sure did because, you know, two-thirds of the film is following her around from airport to airport as she's revealing information to various people.
[54:14.110 --> 54:17.810]  I just feel like, you know, it's a film critic in me saying that.
[54:17.910 --> 54:21.970]  I just think they could have made it a lot more interesting and relevant.
[54:22.750 --> 54:24.750]  I saw the film, most of it.
[54:24.810 --> 54:25.450]  I fell asleep.
[54:25.630 --> 54:29.890]  I thought the same thing that, you know, the film from the outset had a firm grasp on the obvious.
[54:30.310 --> 54:40.810]  The not so obvious flip side of this, though, I think can be somewhat terrifying because we know these platforms have been collecting decades worth of data on all of us.
[54:40.810 --> 54:43.910]  They don't make exceptions about whom they collect this data.
[54:44.290 --> 54:56.650]  That means that our war politicians, and in particular, people like the president of the United States, are also giving away their data, their psychological profile, their likes, their dislikes, their triggers.
[54:56.910 --> 55:10.730]  Every time we're scrolling through that early in the morning when they're sitting, when he is sitting on the toilet thinking about his next tweet, he's giving away massive amounts of information, probably about his location, his likes, his dislikes.
[55:10.970 --> 55:15.610]  All of our politicians that are engaging in social media are giving away this information.
[55:15.930 --> 55:29.230]  And in so doing, we are implicitly trusting these platforms that have been subject to massive data breach after data breach with this psychological profile data of our policy makers.
[55:29.550 --> 55:36.510]  Policy makers that can assassinate foreign leaders, launch missiles, push the button on nuclear war.
[55:36.750 --> 55:46.410]  This is what's really terrifying to me, is that there is no distinction made about whom this data is collected and how it can be weaponized, either now or in the future.
[55:46.630 --> 55:48.710]  This is something I really think we need to rethink.
[55:48.710 --> 55:56.270]  Yeah, I mean, it's bigger than that because, you know, we can worry about data breaches, but the way this is set up, it's designed to be used in that way.
[55:56.430 --> 55:59.090]  That's the biggest breach of all, the breach of our trust.
[55:59.290 --> 56:08.430]  But one of the other major problems I had with the great hack, the film, is that they left us feeling so hopeless, like there's nothing...
[56:08.430 --> 56:13.890]  At the end, a bunch of students are asked, so how many of you are logged onto Facebook and everybody raised their hands?
[56:14.130 --> 56:15.790]  But never was the solution presented.
[56:15.870 --> 56:16.330]  Well, you know what?
[56:16.390 --> 56:17.930]  You don't have to be logged onto Facebook.
[56:17.930 --> 56:19.550]  Here's how to get off of Facebook.
[56:19.810 --> 56:21.030]  We need options.
[56:21.190 --> 56:21.810]  We need answers.
[56:22.010 --> 56:23.090]  We need alternatives.
[56:23.350 --> 56:29.570]  And not just feel like victims all the time, like there's nothing we can do about it and all these evil people are going to have their way.
[56:30.110 --> 56:32.590]  You know, I just like to feel a little bit empowered.
[56:33.510 --> 56:38.650]  Yeah, maybe the question ought to have been, you know, how many of you would delete Facebook?
[56:38.710 --> 56:45.690]  And, of course, that became a campaign after a lot of the whistleblowing about their involvement went.
[56:45.690 --> 56:49.450]  And I think it's good not to forget.
[56:49.610 --> 56:56.950]  I think kind of going where Alex was speaking, it was coming away from your thoughts.
[56:57.170 --> 57:10.950]  It reminded me of sort of what we felt after the revelations about the NSA that, well, okay, this is what the telephone network is capable of insofar as listening to us.
[57:10.950 --> 57:17.550]  And I think it's good not to forget that these private entities have that already.
[57:18.050 --> 57:29.230]  Like, whether it's employees or whether they're allowing access and it becomes exposed or exploited by a third party, that's one thing.
[57:29.350 --> 57:39.250]  But we're still kind of not speaking or acknowledging the elephant in the room at the same time, which is all of these companies that have that capability.
[57:39.250 --> 57:47.310]  Like, if Facebook wanted a certain president, or, you know, just start asking yourself those questions about how much private control there is.
[57:47.450 --> 57:53.330]  If someone can use a service like this to do one thing, what could the service itself be used for?
[57:54.130 --> 57:55.870]  A good note to end on.
[57:56.150 --> 57:59.350]  Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[57:59.350 --> 58:03.630]  If you have any thoughts or observations or leaks.
[58:03.810 --> 58:06.830]  Hey, if you have leaks, go to our secure drop box.
[58:06.830 --> 58:08.830]  Go to our website, 2600.com.
[58:08.890 --> 58:09.530]  You'll find it there.
[58:09.970 --> 58:10.250]  Oh, yeah.
[58:10.310 --> 58:13.250]  And we also had an announcement we promised to give people about Hope.
[58:13.470 --> 58:14.870]  Hope tickets will...
[58:14.870 --> 58:16.910]  The final batch will go on sale next week.
[58:17.430 --> 58:18.910]  You can probably figure out what day.
[58:19.250 --> 58:23.470]  But if not, keep looking at hope.net, 2600.com.
[58:23.790 --> 58:26.010]  More details will be announced there in the coming days.
[58:26.610 --> 58:28.350]  Until then, keep listening on WBAI.
[58:28.510 --> 58:28.990]  We'll see you next week.
[58:29.070 --> 58:29.250]  Good night.
[01:00:37.510 --> 01:00:40.310]  Good night.