Off The Hook - 2020-10-07

[00:00.090 --> 00:06.630]  [SPEAKER_00]: This is WBAI New York, 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
[00:06.950 --> 00:12.530]  [SPEAKER_00]: The previous program was Economic Update with Richard Wolff, heard Wednesdays at 6.30 p.m.
[00:12.970 --> 00:15.510]  [SPEAKER_00]: Now stay tuned for Off The Hook, coming up.
[00:16.030 --> 00:20.090]  [SPEAKER_00]: Economic Update with Richard Wolff, Wednesdays at 6.30 p.m.
[00:20.550 --> 00:25.630]  [SPEAKER_00]: Now stay tuned for... Coming up, Economic Update with Richard Wolff.
[00:35.040 --> 00:36.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: I ripped it off the wall.
[00:37.360 --> 00:39.340]  [SPEAKER_06]: I cut myself while shaving.
[00:39.940 --> 00:41.860]  [SPEAKER_06]: Now I can't make a cut.
[00:42.540 --> 00:44.660]  [SPEAKER_06]: We couldn't get much worse.
[00:45.320 --> 00:47.220]  [SPEAKER_06]: But if they could, they would.
[00:47.500 --> 00:48.180]  [SPEAKER_06]: Bundle, bond.
[00:48.360 --> 00:50.120]  [SPEAKER_06]: But the best, it's made the worst.
[00:50.820 --> 00:52.640]  [SPEAKER_06]: I hope that's understood.
[00:52.980 --> 00:53.620]  [SPEAKER_06]: Bundle, bond.
[02:12.790 --> 02:14.310]  [SPEAKER_10]: A very good evening to everybody.
[02:14.450 --> 02:16.470]  [SPEAKER_10]: The program is Off The Hook.
[02:16.610 --> 02:22.830]  [SPEAKER_10]: Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:23.350 --> 02:23.910]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I'm here.
[02:24.490 --> 02:26.970]  [SPEAKER_10]: And hang on, if I can get all these buttons working properly.
[02:27.450 --> 02:30.110]  [SPEAKER_10]: We have... Yeah, I know.
[02:30.290 --> 02:31.250]  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm pressing the right button.
[02:31.590 --> 02:32.510]  [SPEAKER_10]: Actually, I already pressed the button.
[02:32.570 --> 02:33.430]  [SPEAKER_10]: I don't think I need this one.
[02:34.050 --> 02:35.110]  [SPEAKER_10]: We have Alex.
[02:36.490 --> 02:37.730]  [SPEAKER_10]: Alex, can you hear me?
[02:37.850 --> 02:38.270]  [SPEAKER_01]: Good evening.
[02:38.990 --> 02:40.650]  [SPEAKER_01]: I can hear you loud and loud.
[02:40.770 --> 02:43.490]  [SPEAKER_10]: It sounds like you're in a mausoleum of some sort.
[02:45.530 --> 02:47.870]  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm in my apartment, but thanks for that.
[02:47.870 --> 02:50.050]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay, well, this means you have a big, spacious apartment.
[02:50.770 --> 02:51.490]  [SPEAKER_10]: Rob T.
[02:51.730 --> 02:52.210]  [SPEAKER_10]: Firefly.
[02:53.130 --> 02:54.050]  [SPEAKER_03]: Good evening.
[02:54.610 --> 02:54.970]  [SPEAKER_10]: Gila.
[02:55.870 --> 02:57.270]  [SPEAKER_02]: Greetings and salutations.
[02:57.490 --> 02:58.750]  [SPEAKER_10]: Both of you in Queens.
[02:59.290 --> 03:00.950]  [SPEAKER_10]: And Voltaire is joining us.
[03:02.770 --> 03:04.030]  [SPEAKER_02]: Greetings from Brooklyn.
[03:04.330 --> 03:04.630]  [SPEAKER_10]: Brooklyn.
[03:04.790 --> 03:07.550]  [SPEAKER_10]: We have pretty much all the boroughs represented.
[03:07.950 --> 03:09.810]  [SPEAKER_10]: The ones that...
[03:10.390 --> 03:11.530]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, we don't have Staten Island.
[03:11.610 --> 03:13.310]  [SPEAKER_10]: We don't have the Bronx, but we'll get there.
[03:13.990 --> 03:15.830]  [SPEAKER_10]: And we have a special program tonight.
[03:15.830 --> 03:17.570]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's actually an extended program.
[03:17.730 --> 03:27.570]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're going to be on for 90 minutes before the vice presidential debate, otherwise known as an ass-kicking of Mike Pence, but we'll get into that a little bit later on.
[03:27.690 --> 03:34.510]  [SPEAKER_10]: We have a special guest who will be joining us in just a moment, Cory Doctorow, who has a new book out called Attack Surface.
[03:34.750 --> 03:39.270]  [SPEAKER_10]: I'd like to play something first before we actually start talking with him.
[03:39.270 --> 03:50.930]  [SPEAKER_10]: And this is kind of a piece that he recorded concerning the book, concerning what it's about, what we're all about.
[03:51.910 --> 03:55.370]  [SPEAKER_10]: And we'll get right back into things in just a moment.
[03:56.890 --> 04:01.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: When I started working in technology, I was a technological optimist.
[04:01.470 --> 04:14.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: That is to say, I believe that with the right technology, we could create a kind of demimonde that lived alongside mundane reality, out of reach and out of sight of temporal authorities.
[04:15.190 --> 04:30.670]  [SPEAKER_05]: Then, as I got more experience, and watched people suffer stinging defeats while trying this maneuver, I thought that perhaps technology could be a force multiplier for the powerless, a sling for the world's Davids to use on the world's Goliaths.
[04:31.470 --> 04:34.510]  [SPEAKER_05]: This, too, turned out to be a dead end.
[04:35.210 --> 04:39.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: Technology could topple Goliaths, but they wouldn't stay down.
[04:39.610 --> 04:48.370]  [SPEAKER_05]: You might be able to dump docks on a corrupt military contractor, or publish a video of a despicable mayor shouting racist things and smoking crack.
[04:48.690 --> 04:52.550]  [SPEAKER_05]: You can take the boy out of Toronto, but you'll never take the Toronto out of the boy.
[04:52.850 --> 04:54.050]  [SPEAKER_05]: I love you, YYZ.
[04:54.150 --> 04:55.690]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're the city that never sleeps.
[04:56.310 --> 04:56.530]  [SPEAKER_05]: In.
[04:57.430 --> 05:08.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: But then the FBI would flip your anonymous co-conspirators and get you sentenced to jail for 63 months, free Barrett Brown, or even 35 years, free Chelsea Manning.
[05:09.430 --> 05:12.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: Today, I remain a technological optimist.
[05:13.310 --> 05:15.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: But a realistic one.
[05:16.110 --> 05:21.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: Technology can be a force multiplier for the powerful and powerless alike.
[05:22.030 --> 05:27.810]  [SPEAKER_05]: But the use of technology by the powerless is more salient than when it is wielded by the powerful.
[05:28.070 --> 05:37.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because giving power to the powerless is a change in kind, while increasing the power of the already powerful is merely a change in degree.
[05:37.870 --> 05:43.830]  [SPEAKER_05]: But that temporary power boost will be denatured by the powerful as quickly as they can manage it.
[05:43.930 --> 05:47.550]  [SPEAKER_05]: So the advantage is not enough to make lasting structural changes.
[05:47.550 --> 05:54.010]  [SPEAKER_05]: To make lasting structural changes, you need to use technology to change politics.
[05:54.430 --> 06:07.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: In other words, technology is a tool for social change because it can temporarily shelter you from the all-seeing eye of a corrupt state, and because it can temporarily give you a force multiplier to take on the powerful.
[06:07.650 --> 06:19.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: And what you need to do during that temporary, technologically dependent window is reform your society so that your government is just and responsive and transparent.
[06:20.950 --> 06:28.130]  [SPEAKER_05]: Technology cannot substitute for a just society, but it can help you create that society.
[06:29.390 --> 06:38.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: As this book is going to press, the world is riven by authoritarian politics, supercharged by technological surveillance and influence campaigns.
[06:38.490 --> 06:44.830]  [SPEAKER_05]: We stand at the brink of a permanent environmental cataclysm that threatens our very species.
[06:45.340 --> 06:51.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: We have never, ever needed shelter and force multipliers, more than we do today.
[06:52.150 --> 06:58.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: To the technologists reading this book, your employers need you more than you need them.
[06:58.890 --> 07:03.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: You don't get massages and free kombucha because your employers are swell fellows.
[07:03.970 --> 07:08.570]  [SPEAKER_05]: You get them because they're terrified that you will go and work for someone else.
[07:08.890 --> 07:10.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: You have power.
[07:10.390 --> 07:12.010]  [SPEAKER_05]: You can use it.
[07:12.550 --> 07:28.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: Tech workers at giant and small tech companies are unionizing and demanding that their employers confront their role in the climate emergency, the inhumane treatment of prisoners and migrants, their labor inequities, and their contributions to harassment and disinformation campaigns.
[07:28.830 --> 07:37.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: You are not alone in wondering whether your work is a force for good in the world, nor in desiring to make it so.
[07:38.030 --> 07:45.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: Organizations like Tech Solidarity are standing by to help you organize, to make your work a force for good.
[07:46.350 --> 07:52.510]  [SPEAKER_05]: To the users of technology reading this book, it doesn't have to be this way.
[07:52.910 --> 08:03.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets reading, thou shalt stop rotating thine log files and instead mine them for actionable market intelligence.
[08:03.830 --> 08:14.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: Social networks can connect you with your friends and people who share your principles and interests without commodifying those relationships or ginning up conflicts in order to increase page views.
[08:14.410 --> 08:27.330]  [SPEAKER_05]: There is nothing about providing a well-designed phone or computer or car or tractor that necessitates that you be barred from installing a competitor's apps or getting it serviced by a third-party.
[08:28.030 --> 08:34.170]  [SPEAKER_05]: Technology does not have to be extraction's handmaiden, nor surveillance's constant companion.
[08:34.530 --> 08:44.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: These are decisions that named individuals, billionaires mostly, took for their own purposes, and then they argued that there was no alternative.
[08:44.890 --> 08:46.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: There is an alternative.
[08:47.190 --> 08:50.330]  [SPEAKER_05]: You have the right to technological self-determination.
[08:50.450 --> 09:00.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: If the companies that dominate the marketplace and the politicians who do not lift a finger to stop them refuse to give you that self-determination, then they must be stopped.
[09:00.690 --> 09:10.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: Not through individual action, but through collective action, organized through the Internet and projected into the real world through regulation and prosecutions.
[09:11.950 --> 09:20.510]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is a book about how people rationalize their way into doing things that they are ashamed of and how they can be brought back from that brink.
[09:20.930 --> 09:29.430]  [SPEAKER_05]: I wrote it because I am as guilty as you are of that kind of rationalization, and it's only by confronting it that we can overcome it.
[09:30.470 --> 09:33.170]  [SPEAKER_05]: I had some fantastic help in writing this book.
[09:33.410 --> 09:41.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: First, I had the support of my family, especially my parents, Gordon and Roz, and my wife, Alice, and our daughter, Posey.
[09:41.610 --> 09:50.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: My agents, Russ Galen and Anne Bihar, are indispensable, supportive, shrewd, responsive, pitbulls when fighting for you and cheerleaders in between.
[09:51.130 --> 10:06.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: My editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and the people of Tor, Molly McGee, Sarah Reedy, Alex Cerela, Fritz Foy, Lucille Rettino, and the Tor alums, notably Patti Garcia and Dot Lynn, made this book, and the ones that came before it, possible.
[10:07.710 --> 10:11.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: Julia Ullman's editorial help with this book was indispensable.
[10:11.730 --> 10:14.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: She showed me how to cut 40,000 words out of it!
[10:14.770 --> 10:19.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: Thanks to Juliet, and to Scott Westerfeld, and Justine Larbalestier for introducing me to her.
[10:20.350 --> 10:27.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: Michael Marshall-Smith was good enough to let me borrow his swearing for the f*** right off and keep f***ing off soliloquy.
[10:27.370 --> 10:32.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: Smith is a brilliant writer, but he's also an unsuspected grandmaster of profanity.
[10:33.530 --> 10:39.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: In the 12 years since I published Little Brother, I have had occasion to meet people who work in the tech industry.
[10:39.990 --> 10:51.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: Security researchers, cyber lawyers, software developers, network administrators, tech ethicists, activists, who came to the field after reading that book and its sequel, Homeland.
[10:52.250 --> 10:55.670]  [SPEAKER_05]: I never know quite what to say when you folks introduce yourselves.
[10:55.870 --> 11:05.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the truth is, it's because the pride and delight I feel when this happens is so huge and all-encompassing that I can barely choke out a response.
[11:06.770 --> 11:08.750]  [SPEAKER_05]: So for the record, let me say this.
[11:09.090 --> 11:16.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: To everyone who credits my book with getting them interested in technology as a force for good, thank you.
[11:16.850 --> 11:26.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: not for flattering me with your praise, but for getting involved in a field where that kind of thoughtful, combative, sensitive, ethical posture is needed more than ever.
[11:27.610 --> 11:43.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: My sincere thanks also to my EFF colleagues past and present and to our allies at other organizations from the Free Software Foundation to EDRI to Fight for the Future to Creative Commons to the Internet Archive to Wikimedia to Mozilla and so, so many more.
[11:44.790 --> 11:49.950]  [SPEAKER_05]: Thanks, finally, to the people who promoted Little Brother and got into so many greedy young hands.
[11:50.110 --> 11:57.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: Neil Gaiman, to be certain, but also the librarians, teachers, and mentors who did so much for me and my books over the years.
[11:58.850 --> 12:00.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: Folks, it's 2020.
[12:00.850 --> 12:02.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: The world is on fire.
[12:02.910 --> 12:06.790]  [SPEAKER_05]: The web is five giant services filled with screenshots of the other four.
[12:07.150 --> 12:11.810]  [SPEAKER_05]: Present-day wealth concentration makes the Gilded Age look like a socialist paradise.
[12:11.810 --> 12:13.610]  [SPEAKER_05]: We can do better.
[12:13.830 --> 12:15.590]  [SPEAKER_05]: We will do better.
[12:16.150 --> 12:21.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: We are an amazing thing, we humans, and we have done amazing things.
[12:21.650 --> 12:29.330]  [SPEAKER_05]: We will do more amazing things together and we'll need a free, fair, and open Internet to coordinate us while we do them.
[12:30.570 --> 12:32.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: We fight on.
[12:35.760 --> 12:36.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: Indeed.
[12:36.940 --> 12:42.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: Those are the words of Cory Doctorow, the author's note for his new book, Attack Surface.
[12:42.720 --> 12:45.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: Cory joins us now live on the radio.
[12:46.160 --> 12:46.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: Cory, welcome.
[12:47.700 --> 12:48.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you very much.
[12:49.200 --> 12:54.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: Your listeners won't know it, but I just did a very hasty reboot and I'm so glad to be back and actually working.
[12:55.100 --> 12:56.840]  [SPEAKER_10]: We expect nothing less.
[12:57.480 --> 13:04.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: People don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but technology-wise, it's always chaos and we wouldn't have it any other way.
[13:04.400 --> 13:10.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: But Cory, this book, we've all spent the last few weeks reading it and first of all, I want to personally thank you.
[13:10.120 --> 13:15.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: I had a lot of important work I had to do that I didn't get done because I was so entranced reading Attack Surface.
[13:16.020 --> 13:16.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: Wow.
[13:16.780 --> 13:27.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's a story that takes place in all different places with all different perspectives, the corporate perspective and the activist perspective.
[13:27.420 --> 13:31.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's the story of Masha Maximo.
[13:32.940 --> 13:51.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: Basically, she's a tech genius, I guess there's no other word for it, who works for various companies installing surveillance for dictatorial regimes and also kind of torn between friends in the activist world.
[13:52.180 --> 14:02.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's an incredible narrative that just takes you through the conflict, the internal dialogue, as well as what's really going on outside.
[14:03.100 --> 14:08.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: I just want to start by asking you, the book begins with a quote from Edward Snowden.
[14:08.160 --> 14:15.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: How much of an influence would you say his story was to the works you've written and how much of him is in Attack Surface?
[14:16.760 --> 14:25.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I'm really fascinated by Snowden because he's someone who went down a path that I find hard to imagine and then reversed course.
[14:26.700 --> 14:31.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: And this is an area that like as a society we're still reckoning with.
[14:31.380 --> 14:40.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: What it means to take a choice that seems right in the moment or rationalize your way into a choice that seems right in the moment, realize that you've gone down the wrong path and then try and find redemption.
[14:42.100 --> 14:44.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, every time...
[14:44.020 --> 14:48.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I'm a science fiction writer and so there's a whole generation of science fiction writers who are dropping dead.
[14:48.240 --> 14:53.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they're all wildly flawed vessels who have many virtues and many, many sins.
[14:54.080 --> 14:57.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: And whenever they die we have this like contest about their legacy, right?
[14:57.620 --> 15:00.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do we forgive them their sins because of their virtues?
[15:00.620 --> 15:03.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do we erase their virtues because of their sins?
[15:03.240 --> 15:15.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: Or do we find some way that the bad and the good can exist in superposition and that we can say that they are flawed, their flaws are unforgivable, their virtues are unerasable and that is who they are?
[15:15.900 --> 15:17.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Ed's one of those people, right?
[15:17.820 --> 15:31.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: He was gung-ho, he was in the CIA, he wanted to be special forces, and he has become one of the most thoughtful critics of the point of view that he came from, which is about as alien to my own point of view.
[15:31.300 --> 15:35.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: I was raised by lefty Canadian refugees, right?
[15:35.360 --> 15:49.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I could not be any less like the young gung-ho Snowden, and yet, here I find myself on the same side as him on all these issues, and I find that his perspective is invaluable.
[15:49.980 --> 16:04.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I don't know if you read his memoir, Permanent Record, but it is a spectacular explanation of how you come to realize that you're on the wrong side of an important fight, and really that's what this book is about.
[16:04.400 --> 16:06.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: Someone who is having a moral reckoning.
[16:06.520 --> 16:15.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the first two Little Brother books were young adult novels, and this is an adult stand-alone sequel, and people say, oh, it's an adult novel, it must have sex in it.
[16:15.080 --> 16:23.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's actually the only one of the three that doesn't have sex in it, and from my long experience, now that I'm nearly 50, I'm here to tell you that teenagers think about and have more sex than adults.
[16:24.780 --> 16:32.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: But the thing that makes it an adult book is it's about a moral reckoning with your legacy, and thankfully, not a lot of teenagers have to have those.
[16:32.660 --> 16:41.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, early on, we're plunged into this scene of chaos and demonstration in a fictitious country known as Slovstakia.
[16:42.640 --> 16:47.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, anyone reading this would swear that you were describing present-day Belarus.
[16:47.760 --> 16:52.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: So, you wrote this piece, though, before that nation's current situation.
[16:52.100 --> 16:58.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: Did you somehow foresee those events, or is this something that simply applies to numerous countries in the region?
[16:59.080 --> 17:10.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I wrote this thinking mostly of the Maidan in Ukraine, but, of course, Belarus, there are elements of the story of Slovstakia that are actually lifted from Belarusian protest history.
[17:10.240 --> 17:19.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: My grandfather was born in a town in what was then Poland and is now Belarus, and so it's a place that I feel a real connection to.
[17:23.020 --> 17:28.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: And some of the things that the protesters there have done to resist the dictatorship have been pretty intense.
[17:28.860 --> 17:44.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, they actually did have a protest where they all went and ate ice cream in the square and let it be known that anyone eating ice cream was a protester and dared the police to round them up, which they then did, rounding up everyone who was eating ice cream on a summer day in the square.
[17:44.980 --> 17:50.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so then they came back and they said, okay, we're going to have a protest where anyone who smiles is a protester.
[17:50.360 --> 17:54.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they all went down to the central square and just smiled at each other and dared the police to arrest them, too.
[17:55.100 --> 17:58.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And this kind of game of chicken about, like, what can we do?
[17:58.180 --> 18:08.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, you've seen right-wing provocateurs do this since, right, where you'll have, like, you know, dumbass Nazis declare that milk is a Nazi symbol or the OK symbol is a Nazi symbol.
[18:08.860 --> 18:12.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And a lot of those tactics were invented by pro-democracy activists in Belarus.
[18:13.300 --> 18:18.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: So certainly, if you, like, follow the region, you're familiar with some of the patterns, for sure.
[18:18.800 --> 18:19.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Have you been to Belarus?
[18:20.460 --> 18:21.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: No, never.
[18:21.460 --> 18:22.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: I've been to Russia.
[18:22.700 --> 18:28.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: My grandmother was born in Leningrad, and I still have family there in Petersburg.
[18:28.820 --> 18:31.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I've been to other countries in the region.
[18:31.260 --> 18:41.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: I used to go to Hungary pretty regularly, back when the Central European University was still there, before, you know, right-wing paranoid conspiracy theories about George Soros caused it to close down.
[18:41.800 --> 18:43.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: But now I've never been to Belarus.
[18:43.860 --> 18:48.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's one of those Iron Curtain countries that I haven't visited.
[18:48.260 --> 18:50.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: It is a really... I've been there several times.
[18:50.340 --> 18:51.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: Kyle's been there once.
[18:51.280 --> 18:53.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's so strange and surreal.
[18:53.600 --> 18:56.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's like going back to the Soviet Union, which I've never been to.
[18:57.360 --> 19:03.980]  [SPEAKER_10]: Kyle had a nightmare just trying to order a pizza in a cafeteria and doing it the wrong way and having to file the right paperwork and getting yelled at.
[19:04.100 --> 19:07.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I think somebody got fired, and their family might have been purged.
[19:07.120 --> 19:07.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: Who knows?
[19:07.680 --> 19:10.920]  [SPEAKER_04]: We really did see minivans pulling people off the street, too.
[19:10.940 --> 19:12.380]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, all kinds of things like that.
[19:12.540 --> 19:18.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: I don't know if that magic still exists with all the pro-democracy that's going on now.
[19:18.740 --> 19:21.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I hope it goes into a more positive way.
[19:21.540 --> 19:22.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: Alex, you have a question.
[19:24.280 --> 19:36.260]  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, along similar lines to yours, Emmanuel, I'm so curious, Corey, about when you wrote this book, because there seemed to be so many themes and variations and themes of things that could have been ripped from the headlines.
[19:36.420 --> 19:45.260]  [SPEAKER_01]: And specifically, one of the things that I thought was really fascinating, because it happened pretty recently, was the blue leaks, right?
[19:45.260 --> 19:56.280]  [SPEAKER_01]: And blue leaks sort of has an analog in your book towards the beginning, I think, within the first few chapters with the fusion leaks and all of this information about, you know, cops doing terrible things coming out in Oakland.
[19:56.280 --> 20:00.760]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, my God, did he rip this from the headlines or was he incredibly prescient?
[20:00.980 --> 20:01.820]  [SPEAKER_01]: So which one is it?
[20:02.240 --> 20:07.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I mean, it's that there have been so many leaks like that.
[20:07.280 --> 20:10.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we have such a short memory for them.
[20:11.460 --> 20:18.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, Little Brother, like, if I can, like, Little Brother is a book that I wrote in 2006 and came out in 2008.
[20:18.520 --> 20:20.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's a techno thriller that still plays today.
[20:20.580 --> 20:23.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: People read it and they're like, wow, this feels ripped from the headlines.
[20:23.520 --> 20:28.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, apart from the lack of social media in it, if I could go back, that'd be the only thing I'd change.
[20:28.260 --> 20:32.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the reason it feels ripped from the headlines is it made three really safe bets, right?
[20:32.900 --> 20:37.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: The first is that computer science would be pretty stable, right?
[20:37.200 --> 20:42.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, we're not going to invent a computer that can encrypt everything except the things the police don't need to be encrypted, right?
[20:42.420 --> 20:45.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, we have different computer engineering that chips get faster, whatever.
[20:45.520 --> 20:54.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: But the, like, underlying theory, it's like it's still, like, Turing, von Neumann, verse, verse, chorus, you know, that the computer science of your grandpappy is the computer science of you.
[20:55.600 --> 21:08.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: So the computer science would be stable, computers would be more important to our lives, and governments and corporations would continue to fail to come to grips with them as they were and continue to treat them as kind of magical objects that they could project their will and desire onto.
[21:08.860 --> 21:15.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: And because of that, Little Brother remains a story that is, like, absolutely about the things going on today.
[21:15.620 --> 21:32.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: And in the same way, the idea that powerful people would over-collect data, that they would over-retain data, and that they would lose control of the data that they over-collected and over-retained, and that they would regret it forever, is, like, such a safe bet.
[21:32.080 --> 21:34.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, think of, like, we forget about the OPM leaks.
[21:34.880 --> 21:36.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you remember Office of Personnel Management leaks?
[21:37.020 --> 21:46.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, like, if you want to get classified status and you work for the government or a military contractor, you have to give the OPM all of the potential compromising information.
[21:46.080 --> 21:46.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry.
[21:48.180 --> 21:49.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you want to jump in?
[21:49.300 --> 21:49.440]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[21:49.680 --> 21:52.080]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, on the topic of OPM, by the way, I...
[21:52.780 --> 21:54.360]  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and you also mentioned CIA.
[21:54.580 --> 21:58.980]  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually used to work at CIA a long time ago in the General Counsel's office.
[21:59.140 --> 22:02.580]  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, because of... and I was a clerk at the U.S.
[22:02.660 --> 22:15.060]  [SPEAKER_01]: Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, so I had TSSCI clearance in the intelligence community and a secret clearance in the DOD for the Department of Defense, and I got two data breach notification letters when the OPM breach happened.
[22:15.060 --> 22:17.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so they have... you know, you know, right?
[22:17.660 --> 22:18.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: You want to get... you want to get cleared.
[22:19.140 --> 22:22.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're like, okay, I have to tell you all the things that might be used to, like, blackmail me.
[22:22.960 --> 22:24.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's my mom's heroin habit.
[22:24.300 --> 22:27.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's the fact that, you know, my grandpa used to dress up in ladies' underwear.
[22:28.100 --> 22:28.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Whatever, right?
[22:28.780 --> 22:34.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: You have to give all that information to them, and then they breached it to the Chinese military, right?
[22:34.100 --> 22:44.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, you know, the idea that we can just blithely collect this stuff and nothing bad will happen with it, but it's like the idea that, like, well, you know, plutonium doesn't take up that much space.
[22:44.560 --> 22:45.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: How hard can it be to contain?
[22:46.200 --> 22:49.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: We should just make some plutonium and keep it around in case.
[22:50.960 --> 22:52.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: So true, so true.
[22:52.640 --> 22:54.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, in this...
[22:54.840 --> 22:55.980]  [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, we lost, Rob?
[22:56.200 --> 22:56.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay.
[22:57.420 --> 22:57.920]  [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, no.
[22:58.940 --> 22:59.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: We'll get him back.
[22:59.720 --> 23:00.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: We'll get him back.
[23:01.640 --> 23:07.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: So you've got all kinds of amazing illustrations of the technological world in this book.
[23:07.000 --> 23:19.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: And one of my favorites was when you were describing the history of Slovstakia, great name, by the way, and the relationship their ministry of communications had with various phone companies.
[23:19.200 --> 23:24.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: You used the phrase, the thrice-brewed teabags of the telecommunications world.
[23:24.460 --> 23:26.020]  [SPEAKER_10]: What exactly does that refer to?
[23:26.760 --> 23:42.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so, you know, the Soviet version, the ex-Soviet version of Beltway Banditry was going into these countries that were opening up and selling them the stuff that was being thrown away by telcos in the rest of Europe.
[23:42.680 --> 23:44.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, whatever, like the...
[23:44.320 --> 23:47.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: whatever Talia was throwing away, or Nokia, or whatever.
[23:47.860 --> 23:50.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you'd sell it to them at these, you know, god-awful markups.
[23:50.600 --> 23:52.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: You sort of half-configure it.
[23:52.580 --> 23:58.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then, you know, you'd put in whatever surveillance gear the oligarch who was running the ministry wanted.
[23:58.680 --> 24:07.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then they would hire someone like Deloitte or PwC or some other, you know, consulting firm to come in who'd do it again.
[24:07.520 --> 24:15.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, some massive markup, half-assed job configuring it, lots of stuff just left wide open.
[24:15.320 --> 24:16.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: There was a lot of...
[24:16.100 --> 24:23.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: especially, you know, with Kalia, the mandate that switches have backdoors, they would leave these backdoors open.
[24:23.780 --> 24:33.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, you have this telecoms infrastructure in Eastern Europe that for a long time was just like...
[24:33.040 --> 24:43.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: it was these, like, alluvial layers of bailing wire and spit and discarded crap from other countries that had been more fortunate.
[24:44.020 --> 24:47.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: And all of it wired together by people who didn't give a damn about their jobs.
[24:48.020 --> 24:57.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it really, like, made the Internet transition hard for a lot of those countries because they had such bad infrastructure.
[24:59.220 --> 24:59.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: Voltaire, go ahead.
[25:01.340 --> 25:20.540]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was going to say, getting to the shoddy infrastructure with backdoors from Kalia, in Greece, I think there was a major scandal because a backdoor that was put in place for American police when things were sold to Americans was people were basically able to hack into that and leak confidential information and it led to a political scandal.
[25:20.540 --> 25:26.860]  [SPEAKER_02]: So, that kind of gets to the point of why having backdoors or mandated backdoors like the FBI wants was so problematic.
[25:27.320 --> 25:36.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that Greek leak was wild because they had actually turned off the backdoor but someone broke into their telecom centers that we learned from the leaks that it was U.S.
[25:36.680 --> 25:44.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: intelligence broke into their telecom center, turned it back on again, and wiretapped the prime minister and the parliament for the most petty thing imaginable.
[25:44.140 --> 25:46.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: It was to try and rig the Olympic bid, right?
[25:46.920 --> 25:53.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, can you imagine, like, breaking into the prime minister's comms because you want to rig the Olympic bid?
[25:53.580 --> 25:57.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, something as, you know, socially useless as the Olympics to begin with?
[25:58.100 --> 26:00.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: To, you know, holy moly.
[26:01.820 --> 26:02.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: Wow.
[26:02.980 --> 26:05.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, truth is stranger than fiction many, many times.
[26:06.200 --> 26:09.660]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're speaking with Cory Doctorow about his brand new book, Attack Surface.
[26:09.860 --> 26:11.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: Cory, it's not out yet, right?
[26:11.560 --> 26:12.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's coming out in the next few days?
[26:13.280 --> 26:14.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: On the 13th.
[26:14.920 --> 26:21.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, this is the last day for the pre-orders for the audio book as well on the Kickstarter.
[26:21.720 --> 26:22.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay.
[26:22.380 --> 26:24.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: Tell us about the Kickstarter because that's really important.
[26:25.240 --> 26:25.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, sure.
[26:26.020 --> 26:32.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, this book, by all rights, should have, like, a fancy audio book from the publisher that bought it, Macmillan.
[26:33.100 --> 26:37.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: But I won't let Macmillan sell it via Amazon because Amazon owns the largest audio book platform.
[26:37.980 --> 26:38.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's called Audible.
[26:39.020 --> 26:42.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they have this requirement that everything that you sell will have DRM on it.
[26:42.660 --> 26:47.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: And when there's DRM on your book, it means that it's locked forever to Amazon's platform.
[26:47.580 --> 26:48.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's a felony under U.S.
[26:48.820 --> 26:48.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: law.
[26:49.100 --> 26:53.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: As you know from the Ramirez case, it's a felony under U.S.
[26:53.740 --> 26:59.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: law to distribute circumvention devices for technical protection measures under Section 12.1 of the DMCA.
[26:59.900 --> 27:10.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: So what that means is that every time you spend a dollar on my DRM audio books with Amazon, that's a dollar you have to surrender if I later break with Amazon and go to one of their competitors.
[27:11.520 --> 27:15.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so that means that the more you buy of my stuff, the more leverage Amazon has over me.
[27:15.660 --> 27:21.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if you watch the antitrust hearings, you know that when Amazon has leverage over you, they're not shy about using it.
[27:21.760 --> 27:28.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, understandably, Macmillan is like, okay, we dig that you don't want to, you know, have your stuff locked up with Amazon's DRM.
[27:28.380 --> 27:29.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Fine, but they're 90% of the market.
[27:29.800 --> 27:34.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're not going to, you know, give you money for the rights to an audio book that we cancel 90% of the market.
[27:34.560 --> 27:35.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, yeah, okay, fair enough.
[27:36.040 --> 27:37.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: So I produced my own.
[27:37.640 --> 27:39.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: I live in Southern California.
[27:39.480 --> 27:43.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm like half a mile from one of the great audio book studios, Skyboat Media.
[27:43.500 --> 27:46.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: And my friend, Amber Benson, who played Tara on Buffy, lives around the corner.
[27:46.740 --> 27:48.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: And she went in and recorded the audio book.
[27:49.040 --> 27:50.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: She did this amazing job.
[27:50.560 --> 27:59.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter, bundled with, you know, you can get it on its own or bundled with the e-book or with the other books and so on.
[27:59.380 --> 28:00.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Kickstarter is about to close.
[28:01.060 --> 28:02.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's raised over $260,000.
[28:03.480 --> 28:15.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the idea is to prove both to my publisher and to other best-selling writers that if you decide not to go with Amazon, you can take that appeal directly to your audience and that they'll back you up.
[28:15.600 --> 28:23.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if they do, then you can produce a different kind of Audible exclusive, a book that is sold everywhere except Audible, right?
[28:23.680 --> 28:24.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Exclusive of Audible.
[28:25.060 --> 28:33.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if we can actually get like a good fraction of the best-selling audio books everywhere except Audible, that will actually make Amazon cave, right?
[28:33.900 --> 28:35.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because it's the only thing they care about.
[28:36.160 --> 28:39.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: And reversing that is really, really important.
[28:39.340 --> 28:46.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Not least because one of the things that Audible does is it uses its monopoly to deny access for libraries.
[28:46.880 --> 28:56.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: So about half the best-sellers in the audiobook market are not available in any library because Audible publishes them exclusively and will not sell to libraries at any price.
[28:57.200 --> 28:57.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[28:57.600 --> 29:00.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so if you rely on libraries, you're just out of luck.
[29:01.380 --> 29:02.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's incredible.
[29:02.240 --> 29:04.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, how do people get a hold of this Kickstarter?
[29:05.180 --> 29:15.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you just type Kickstarter Doctorow into your favorite search engine, you know, whether that's Alta Vista or Ask Jeeves or Waze, you know, you can go straight to it.
[29:15.760 --> 29:16.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay.
[29:16.540 --> 29:17.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: Go ahead, Voltaire.
[29:18.180 --> 29:18.380]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[29:18.580 --> 29:33.300]  [SPEAKER_02]: When you were talking about science fiction writers that are passing being imperfect, I was going to make a joke about Ursula Le Guin being perfect, but then I remembered how the fact that she was unfortunately a copyright maximalist and very, I would assume,
[29:33.400 --> 29:34.220]  [SPEAKER_02]: very pro-DRM.
[29:34.400 --> 29:43.680]  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you had any, have you had success convincing fellow authors and sci-fi writers to give up DRM and maybe publish more, like, freely licensed content?
[29:44.140 --> 29:47.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, definitely giving up DRM was like a no-brainer.
[29:47.680 --> 29:57.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, what I actually did was I convinced Tor, which is Macmillan's science fiction imprint and is the largest English language science fiction publisher in the world to drop DRM on all its titles.
[29:57.840 --> 30:01.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: So every Tor e-book sold on every platform is DRM-free.
[30:02.280 --> 30:12.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's one of the reasons that there's a DRM-free option for publishers in the Kindle store, in iBooks, in all the other stores where e-books are sold.
[30:12.700 --> 30:16.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: And writers are, in general, pretty clued in on this.
[30:16.720 --> 30:19.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, like, you don't have to be a rocket science, right?
[30:19.720 --> 30:26.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: All you have to do is like type, how do I remove Kindle DRM into Google and see what comes back and go, oh, wait a second, this isn't protecting me.
[30:26.760 --> 30:30.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is just locking my copyrights to Google's platform forever and ever and ever.
[30:31.520 --> 30:34.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and Ursula had funny ideas about copyright.
[30:34.800 --> 30:39.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: We actually had lunch once and had a really big row about it that she never forgave me over.
[30:41.240 --> 30:43.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I regret it to this day.
[30:43.660 --> 30:45.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: I wish we could have come around on it.
[30:46.080 --> 30:52.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, there's this thing that writers tend to view copyright as a labor law.
[30:52.780 --> 30:59.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, as a child of labor activists, as a labor activist myself, I'm in favor of protection for labor.
[30:59.940 --> 31:08.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: The problem with copyright as a labor law is that in a monopolized market, it's more like lunch money for your bullied kid.
[31:08.100 --> 31:14.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: So you've got this schoolyard that your kid has to enter every day in order to get their education, right?
[31:14.400 --> 31:20.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's the marketplace that Amazon and the other intermediaries stand between authors and their audiences with.
[31:20.540 --> 31:22.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: And at the gate is the bully.
[31:23.100 --> 31:25.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Amazon, a big publisher, a big record label, whatever.
[31:26.280 --> 31:28.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they take your kids' lunch money every day.
[31:28.460 --> 31:29.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Congress is like your mom.
[31:30.080 --> 31:32.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Congress says, look at all these poor writers.
[31:32.200 --> 31:33.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: We need to give them more lunch money.
[31:33.720 --> 31:34.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: We'll give them more copyright.
[31:35.000 --> 31:36.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so they give us more copyright.
[31:36.800 --> 31:39.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, what do the bullies do if you give your kid more lunch money?
[31:39.160 --> 31:41.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: They just take that lunch money too, right?
[31:41.760 --> 31:55.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so every time we get more rights, like a longer term of copyright or a broader copyright, the non-negotiable contracts that we have to enter into to deal in the entertainment industry, which is now dominated by five publishers, four movie studios,
[31:55.780 --> 32:00.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: three record labels, with one bookstore, right?
[32:00.780 --> 32:08.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: One digital bookstore, one national physical bookstore chain, and one movie theater chain left, right?
[32:08.780 --> 32:11.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: To get into that market, you have to surrender all those rights.
[32:11.580 --> 32:14.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, I'm all for labor protection.
[32:14.780 --> 32:26.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: I just think that we need to think about, you know, banning binding arbitration and allowing writers to revert their copyrights after 35 years, which is something that's in the copyright law but impossible to use.
[32:26.600 --> 32:39.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: And all of those other things that would actually give us leverage, you know, instead of just giving us more privilege in the hopes that those privileges won't be taken off of us by the monopolists who sit between us and our audience.
[32:39.840 --> 32:40.440]  [SPEAKER_03]: Go ahead, Rob.
[32:41.840 --> 32:48.300]  [SPEAKER_03]: So, Corey, talking of the audiobook, like, I love audiobooks, I consume tons of them, and I also work in the field when I can.
[32:48.640 --> 32:57.320]  [SPEAKER_03]: And you hear so many stories about authors whose publishing company just basically took the audiobook away from them, and, like, they don't like the voice, or, you know, things weren't pronounced correctly, whatever.
[32:57.600 --> 33:01.320]  [SPEAKER_03]: So, like, did you have an active role in the production of the audiobook since you were rolling your own?
[33:01.600 --> 33:03.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah, well, this audiobook, I paid the bills.
[33:04.000 --> 33:09.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, I was on the, I was on the, like, we were actually going to go into the studio to do it, but the plague hit.
[33:09.900 --> 33:16.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, Amber, luckily, her partner is a sound engineer, and he just built a studio in their basement.
[33:16.460 --> 33:31.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, she went into their studio, the director, Cassandra Dequeer, at Skyboat, went into her studio, and I sat in my office here, and we were on a Zoom call for five days while Amber read, and she just sent the dailies to my editor, an amazing guy named John Taylor Williams,
[33:31.500 --> 33:33.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: who's been editing my podcast for like 16 years.
[33:34.000 --> 33:37.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: He composed the original music that's at the beginning and the end of this, and so on.
[33:37.680 --> 33:42.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: He's a great editor, a great sound designer, and a great musician.
[33:43.940 --> 33:48.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: And between the four of us, we were able to turn out really just a kick-ass audiobook.
[33:49.640 --> 33:52.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I can attest to that, having listened to it.
[33:52.460 --> 33:55.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: She's amazing with accents, and different voices.
[33:55.180 --> 33:58.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can always tell who's talking when it's really good.
[33:58.940 --> 34:02.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: But of course, reading is also a good way to soak this in.
[34:04.460 --> 34:06.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's an amazing book.
[34:06.640 --> 34:18.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: Again, in addition to Corey's Kickstarter, we're also offering it at WBAI, signed copies of the book, signed autographed book plates, actually, of Attack Surface.
[34:18.180 --> 34:27.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: If you call 516-620-3602 and pledge $50, or become WBAI buddy, you'll get one of, I believe, a dozen of these.
[34:27.580 --> 34:49.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: We only have a dozen, so they're going to go really fast, but it's something that I think will definitely get your imagination going and keep you occupied for quite a while as you live through these adventures of everywhere from Costa Rica to Oakland to Iraq and of course Slavstakia,
[34:49.380 --> 34:50.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: the fictitious name.
[34:51.220 --> 34:52.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, I'm curious about that.
[34:52.640 --> 34:57.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: How did you decide when to use real names like Russia, when to use fictitious ones like Slavstakia?
[34:57.860 --> 35:03.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: And you also used the word Boris to describe the Russian language and even Russian people.
[35:03.700 --> 35:04.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[35:04.160 --> 35:05.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: Why that choice?
[35:05.960 --> 35:18.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: So she's, you know, the protagonist of this book, Masha, she appears in Little Brother and in Homeland and she's something of an antagonist in those, in both of them.
[35:19.560 --> 35:31.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: And she, as she narrates this book, really distances herself from Marcus by saying, look, you know, like I can kind of, like I know what I'm doing and who I'm doing it to and who I'm doing it for.
[35:31.960 --> 35:35.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like I know I'm doing wrong stuff but I don't kid myself about it.
[35:35.480 --> 35:38.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: And she thinks that's the real sin is kidding yourself.
[35:39.120 --> 35:45.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things that being a grown-up in her world means is you don't blow your operation.
[35:45.860 --> 35:52.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so she's not going to reveal where she was doing, you know, wet work or, you know, black work.
[35:52.960 --> 35:56.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: She's going to, she's going to, like, use aliases and code names for it.
[35:56.920 --> 36:15.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things that she is wrestling with through the whole book is her lifelong devotion to compartmentalization, to, you know, getting herself through things that she knows she shouldn't do by, not by rationalizing but by just turning a blind eye to it.
[36:15.060 --> 36:20.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things that she does is she dehumanizes the people that she's helping to spy on.
[36:20.820 --> 36:47.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: She calls them Borises and she calls the attractive ones McHales, you know, and she does that also in this way that speaking as like a post-Soviet refugee kid myself or, you know, second-generation kid myself, it's a thing that people who are a generation or two from the old country do is we have this kind of love-hate relationship with our cousins back in the old place,
[36:47.240 --> 36:47.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: you know.
[36:48.740 --> 36:48.900]  [SPEAKER_10]: Wow.
[36:49.700 --> 36:54.020]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, a tech surface has a really unique narrative structure.
[36:54.300 --> 37:04.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: First off, it's told from the perspective of a female tech which is so refreshing but was it a challenge to write in the first person as a female?
[37:04.860 --> 37:07.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: Was there anything or anyone who made that easier?
[37:07.480 --> 37:11.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: Is this an exercise you'd recommend to up-and-coming writers?
[37:12.200 --> 37:15.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, certainly I think, you know, stretching yourself is always good.
[37:16.020 --> 37:39.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's the thing though, you know, all fiction is in some important sense science fiction because all fiction has the pretense that you can know what another person is thinking or feeling and no one in the entire history of our species has ever known what anyone else was thinking or feeling and so it's true that I don't know what it's like to be a woman and that is profound and it's a big gap.
[37:40.040 --> 38:10.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: I also don't know what it's like to be anyone except me and so all of the every character that you write is going to be a character that is where you have to engage in this imaginative exercise where you try to do the impossible which is to to imagine what it's like to be someone who's just not you and you know making that person more distant is more challenging but you know I'm also a science
[38:10.700 --> 38:32.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: fiction writer who periodically writes stories with aliens in them and so writing other members of my species even those with much more divergent experiences than my own is still going to be a lot less challenging than you know I wrote a novella with Ben Rosenbaum that was out for the Hugo once called True Names that was just told from the point of view of vast hive intelligences made out of
[38:32.060 --> 38:36.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: entire planets that have been consumed and reassembled as computing substrate.
[38:37.180 --> 38:40.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: But odds are you're not going to get confronted by an alien saying you got me wrong.
[38:41.560 --> 38:41.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Fair enough.
[38:42.180 --> 38:48.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, I apologize in advance for the mistakes I doubtlessly made.
[38:49.100 --> 38:49.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: I did my best.
[38:49.900 --> 39:01.300]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, I was convinced because it was being read, the audio that I was listening to being read by a female narrator, and I would never have guessed it was written by a man.
[39:01.540 --> 39:23.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I'm very blessed to also have close personal acquaintance of some extremely powerful and articulate women who work in security and cyber liberties, whether that's Cindy Cohen, who represented you in Ramirda's case, or Eva Galperin, who runs EFF's Threat Lab,
[39:23.340 --> 39:28.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: or any of the other women who I have been so privileged to know and work with.
[39:29.140 --> 39:43.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, you know, Runa Sunvik, who wrote one of the afterwords for this, you know, some of the experience that I drew on or the inspiration that I drew on was things that she talked about when she was defending the NYT's newsroom.
[39:43.340 --> 39:57.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, Windo Snyder, certainly some of her experience, and she's doing a live event with me along with Runa, you know, her work and her writing and her speaking really helped me think about this as well.
[39:57.700 --> 40:14.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: As have all the women who've come forward with Me Too stories about the hacker scene, and who've described what it's like to be a woman in that male-dominated world, and who were, you know, brave enough to, uh, to talk about, you know, this, this difficult situation,
[40:14.960 --> 40:20.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: where coming forward could really do, uh, career and reputational damage to them.
[40:20.240 --> 40:36.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, in addition to the story being told from a female perspective, um, the novel has, um, a preponderance of, uh, strong female characters, uh, let's see here, we have Carrie Johnstone, uh, Tanisha, Ilsa, Christina, Masha, Masha's mom.
[40:36.420 --> 40:46.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's really awesome, and I just wonder, do you see us moving more in that direction overall with books, movies, TV shows, and, and if so, what's helping to drive that?
[40:47.340 --> 40:54.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I think there, there is something to that, but I also think that you have to take into account that there is a high degree of homophily, right?
[40:54.320 --> 40:56.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: That people hang around with people like them.
[40:56.340 --> 41:04.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, you know, it's not unusual for men to be surrounded by men, and for men to have been mentored by men, and for men to work with other men, and so on.
[41:05.040 --> 41:07.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Likewise, it's not unusual for that to be on the other foot.
[41:08.220 --> 41:15.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: And in particular, one of the things that, um, you see with women who are successful, is they tend to seek out other women to mentor.
[41:15.020 --> 41:21.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, one of the things that she grapples with is the fact that neither of her mentors are very nice, right?
[41:21.200 --> 41:32.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: That both of them, you know, one is a former East German intelligence colonel, one is a beltway bandit who wants to clean up by, you know, soaking Uncle Sam for surveillance services.
[41:32.800 --> 41:45.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, uh, and, and both of them have taught her a lot about her sources of strength, and how to navigate a man's world, but neither of them are good people.
[41:46.120 --> 42:02.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, and one of the, one of the journeys she's on is to figure out how to resolve the way that she thinks about these women who've been in some way mothers to her, including her own mother, who, like so many of us, she holds with a lot of affection, but also a kind of dismissive contempt,
[42:02.080 --> 42:06.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: as someone who's out of it and doesn't understand what she does, and so on.
[42:06.160 --> 42:11.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, and, and, and that's one of the major themes of the story, is her resolving these mentorship relationships.
[42:12.340 --> 42:20.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: And if I could, and I know other people want to ask questions, I just want to stick with the narrative style just for a little bit longer, because it really is, is that unique.
[42:20.560 --> 42:36.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: Um, you could be in the middle of, of some really, um, incredibly tense drama, whether it's Oakland or Iraq or Sovstakia, and suddenly Masha will just explain to the reader how Tor works, or, or how a particular exploit functions.
[42:36.160 --> 42:43.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: Uh, it's almost like you've combined an adventure with documentation on how to be a, a, a smart cyber citizen.
[42:43.440 --> 42:44.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: Is that what you intended?
[42:44.820 --> 42:48.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's, I mean, that's a thing that came at a little brother, and it's a kind of techno realism.
[42:49.060 --> 42:59.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, uh, uh, one of the things that you'll be familiar with is the, um, tendency of storytellers to treat computers as metaphors, right?
[43:00.040 --> 43:04.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: Where, where they, and, and not just storytellers, Congress, to treat computers as metaphors.
[43:04.880 --> 43:09.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: And to project their desires, and their fears, and their hopes on them.
[43:09.480 --> 43:13.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and the shorthand we have for this in, like, policy circles is nerd harder, right?
[43:13.720 --> 43:19.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, whenever someone says, I'm sorry, we can't design a computer that can detect copyright infringement.
[43:19.280 --> 43:21.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: The answer is, nerd harder!
[43:21.360 --> 43:23.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I have faith in you, right?
[43:23.680 --> 43:39.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, and, um, instead of doing that, instead of doing a story in which someone needs to decrypt a thing that is well unciphered, that turns out to be impossible until there's only 10 minutes left, and then turns out to only take 9 minutes and 59 seconds.
[43:39.820 --> 43:45.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to start with the things that computers do in the world as real things.
[43:45.500 --> 43:48.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: Not computers as metaphors, but computers as they are.
[43:48.920 --> 43:51.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Computers that are so important to our lived experience.
[43:51.600 --> 43:56.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then find the stories that fell out of the real capabilities and constraints, right?
[43:56.340 --> 43:58.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: To trust that computers were actually interesting, right?
[43:58.960 --> 44:10.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: Rather than to write Moby Dick, in which, like, whales can fly if that makes the story better, to write Moby Dick the way Melville did, where you actually, like, lean into the logistics of harpooning a whale, right?
[44:10.340 --> 44:13.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Where the actual technical detail becomes significant to the story.
[44:17.320 --> 44:17.840]  [SPEAKER_10]: Walter?
[44:18.740 --> 44:26.220]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, um, I think that's something that, um, Mr. Robot was, uh, so applauded for with their, their attention to detail.
[44:26.220 --> 44:30.220]  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think you're, I think, Little Brother is 2009, so that outdated that.
[44:30.840 --> 44:30.920]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[44:31.080 --> 44:43.520]  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and then, speaking of, uh, Givers and Machine, Little Brother, and, uh, this, uh, and this book, later in the series, like, Little Brother was, um, told from the perspective of, uh, Marcus, who's, uh, an activist, outsider.
[44:44.140 --> 44:50.960]  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and whereas this book is told from a, the perspective of a collaborator, uh, in the surveillance industry.
[44:50.960 --> 45:03.960]  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I remember you, uh, I feel where, uh, it's one of your interviews where you talk, discuss, uh, speaking to, um, uh, a young person that said they wanted to make a change from the inside, um, in the surveillance industry.
[45:04.200 --> 45:12.460]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you explained to them that, um, how Edward Snowden tried to go through numerous, quote-unquote, official outlets and kept getting turned down at every step.
[45:12.460 --> 45:20.700]  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I was wondering, A, have you heard any, um, updates on that story and what they decided to, their action they decided to go?
[45:20.860 --> 45:33.740]  [SPEAKER_02]: And, B, have you heard, um, from any outside collaborators that have, had their views changed, or people that are, uh, inside the surveillance industry that have had their views and, uh, career trajectory changed?
[45:34.280 --> 45:36.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
[45:36.560 --> 45:52.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, Little Brother, definitely, uh, one of its legacies that I'm very proud of is the number of people who've come up to me and said, you know, I was, read your book in high school or middle school or as a young adult, didn't know what I wanted to do.
[45:52.520 --> 46:06.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: And when I read Little Brother, it convinced me, on the one hand, of the transformative and liberatory power of technology, and, on the other hand, of the urgency of keeping it from being used for control and, and ensuring that it was used primarily for liberation.
[46:07.560 --> 46:13.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, there's, like, cyber lawyers and security researchers and human rights activists who, who said this to me.
[46:13.780 --> 46:23.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, at first, it was shocking because time had gone by, and I was, like, how can this grown-ass human be referencing this book that feels to me like I wrote it last year?
[46:23.280 --> 46:35.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: But then, over time, it just became this, this incredible sense of, of honor and responsibility to, to those people who, who came into the field with an ethical center as a result of this.
[46:35.120 --> 46:41.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, the story that you related, I was, uh, one of the places where they teach Little Brother is the Cyber Institute at West Point.
[46:42.340 --> 46:46.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, I was invited in to give a talk, and it's not my normal milieu, right?
[46:46.540 --> 46:56.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I grew up in the anti-nuclear proliferation movement, I was arrested protesting an arms bazaar as a kid, uh, and, you know, I, I, I never would have had anything to do with the military.
[46:57.440 --> 47:08.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, but, you know, they're teaching it as, um, a book to think about insurgency and cyber warfare, and they invited me in, and they're really interesting characters and incredibly gracious and generous hosts.
[47:08.680 --> 47:10.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the kids were whip smart.
[47:10.820 --> 47:12.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, one of the things about the U.S.
[47:12.980 --> 47:21.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: military is that, um, it's, it's universities, it's elite training institutions are the only meritocratic institutions in America, right?
[47:21.800 --> 47:24.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, to get into an Ivy, you need to be rich.
[47:24.300 --> 47:27.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: To get into West Point, you need to be willing to die and very smart.
[47:28.320 --> 47:36.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, if you want to look what, if you want to know what America would look like if all of its elite institutions of higher learning were meritocratic, go to West Point.
[47:36.840 --> 47:37.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's full of brown kids.
[47:37.860 --> 47:40.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's full of smart, poor brown kids, right?
[47:40.380 --> 47:45.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, and so this kid came up to me after I did my talk, and he, and he hung back, because I'd signed everyone's books.
[47:45.620 --> 47:49.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: And he hung back, and he said, look, I just think you should know I want to join the NSA.
[47:49.880 --> 47:55.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, I, I heard everything you said about the risks of our badly secured cyber infrastructure.
[47:56.180 --> 47:58.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: My family don't understand this stuff at all.
[47:59.180 --> 48:03.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they're in enormous jeopardy as a result, and someone needs to protect them.
[48:03.880 --> 48:06.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I figure I can reform the agency from within.
[48:06.520 --> 48:10.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I, as you say, I said, like, okay, but you need to look at Snowden, right?
[48:10.320 --> 48:19.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, it's fine to go and, and try and do something ambitious, but you have to look at what other people who've tried to do it before have done, and see how they fared.
[48:19.960 --> 48:31.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, and like, if you're just going to do the same thing that Snowden tried to do, that ended up with Snowden basically being willing to face a firing squad because he couldn't see any other way around it, then I think you're going to be heartbroken.
[48:31.840 --> 48:33.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: I've never heard from that kid.
[48:33.240 --> 48:35.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: I hope someday he gets in touch with me.
[48:35.880 --> 48:49.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: But this book is aimed at a different audience, because, you know, a lot of those people who read that book, at least by their own account, they read that book, and their approach to their field was changed, and they've spent their careers trying to build liberatory technology.
[48:49.640 --> 48:57.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: But there are a lot of people who use computers, experience the liberatory power of them, because that's why we get involved with computers.
[48:57.180 --> 48:59.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: You use them, you're like, hello, beautiful, where have you been all my life?
[48:59.660 --> 49:02.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: I write code, and the computer executes it perfectly.
[49:02.420 --> 49:06.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: I get on the network, and it's a society of the mind where I can meet anyone in the world.
[49:06.860 --> 49:15.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, and you're so enthralled with this, and then you get into the industry, and your career somehow becomes taking away that from other people, right?
[49:15.880 --> 49:18.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: Making sure that no one else has the experience that you had.
[49:18.100 --> 49:22.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: You turn it into a system of control and manipulation and surveillance.
[49:23.360 --> 49:27.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: And those people are, are starting to ask themselves what they're doing, right?
[49:27.580 --> 49:37.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's the tech won't build it movement, that's asking technologists to just down tools and not do facial recognition, not do mass surveillance, not do predictive policing.
[49:38.340 --> 49:43.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: There was the Googler walkout last year, 20,000 Googlers walked off the job last year over workplace conditions.
[49:44.100 --> 49:48.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: So many of these moments, right, where technologists are confronting themselves.
[49:48.180 --> 49:58.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I thought, we need a story about redemption, about technologists who have talked themselves into a gilded cage, right?
[49:58.780 --> 50:07.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Into a place where you're very well compensated, and you get massages at work, and there's kombucha on tap, but your day job is figuring out how to destroy people's lives.
[50:08.420 --> 50:10.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: And how do you come back from that?
[50:10.140 --> 50:22.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, there's one part in the book that I thought was ingenious, where you describe using technology to change politics, and using politics to improve tech, and comparing the whole thing to parallel parking.
[50:23.080 --> 50:23.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[50:23.740 --> 50:24.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: I thought that was brilliant.
[50:25.420 --> 50:28.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: You just have to keep moving a little bit each direction.
[50:29.200 --> 50:33.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's a riff I took off at Lessig, you know, at least a little bit.
[50:33.180 --> 50:42.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Lessig talks about how the world changes through code and law and norms and markets, the things that are legal, the things that are technically possible, the things that are profitable, and the things that are socially acceptable.
[50:42.880 --> 50:52.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: And as someone who's a transplant to L.A., who's really bad at parallel parking, I spend a lot of time yanking the wheel as far as I can in one direction to get a half an inch, and then yanking in the other direction to get a half an inch.
[50:52.800 --> 50:58.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I just want to... and I think that sometimes we're like trying to change something with tech and we just run out of headroom.
[50:59.060 --> 51:07.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: But if we can make like a legal change, just even a little one, we can open up the space for more tech and then the tech can open the space for more law or a new normative conversation.
[51:07.260 --> 51:08.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: Anyway, I see Rob wants to get in on this.
[51:08.700 --> 51:09.640]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, go ahead, Rob.
[51:10.440 --> 51:11.340]  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much.
[51:12.040 --> 51:29.540]  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm really interested in the passage of time around this because the... like other notable book series we could mention, it seems the characters and the world, you know, time passes when we're not reading about them and things are still going on and we get to the next book and we're catching up with all these old characters and what's going on in that world.
[51:30.080 --> 51:39.880]  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm wondering what made what made this a story that you wanted to go back to the little brother homeland world and tell with those characters versus starting it just as its own self-contained thing?
[51:40.560 --> 51:42.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's an excellent question.
[51:42.340 --> 51:47.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, those are my favorite kinds of series, the series where the time passes in the series as well as in the world.
[51:47.500 --> 51:53.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a British series of comedy books called The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole, age 13 and three quarters that I grew up on.
[51:53.780 --> 51:56.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I first read it came out when I was about 13.
[51:56.620 --> 51:58.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: So I was the same age as the protagonist.
[51:58.420 --> 52:07.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Sue Townsend, who wrote them, who was just one of the most brilliant satirists of her generation, she would just every five or ten years just pop one off.
[52:07.400 --> 52:10.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: And Adrian would have aged up with me and it was in the form of his diaries.
[52:11.180 --> 52:16.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, you know, the last one came out, I guess I was probably about in my late 30s and it was his last one too.
[52:17.100 --> 52:18.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: She died shortly thereafter.
[52:18.500 --> 52:23.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: She actually lost her eyesight to diabetes and dictated the last two or three of the books.
[52:23.100 --> 52:25.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's really... they're remarkable books.
[52:25.280 --> 52:28.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I loved that experience of aging up with the characters.
[52:29.380 --> 52:36.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: I think that, you know, the little brother, like, made an intervention in the world, right?
[52:36.600 --> 52:40.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Little brother actually, like, changed the way a bunch of people think about their technology.
[52:40.020 --> 52:53.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a scene in Citizen Four, the Academy Award winning documentary that Laura Poitras made about Snowden, where you see him fleeing his hotel room in Hong Kong, and he's gathering up the things that he needs to go into exile.
[52:53.520 --> 52:56.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things he takes is his copy of Homeland.
[52:57.160 --> 53:01.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, it was a force in the world that changed the world.
[53:01.740 --> 53:05.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: And whenever I think about the problems of little brother, I think about...
[53:05.420 --> 53:07.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: that little brother grapples with.
[53:07.360 --> 53:10.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: I think about those characters and ask myself how they would be reacting.
[53:10.920 --> 53:13.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: And in particular, you know, like, you guys go to the same things I go to.
[53:13.940 --> 53:22.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: You go to HOPE, you go to CCC, you go to DEFCON, and you meet these people who seem like right-on people, right?
[53:22.280 --> 53:26.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: They're like our tribe, you know, black t-shirts that say things that judges don't understand, you know?
[53:27.120 --> 53:33.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you ask them what they do, and they're like, oh, I work for Palantir, right?
[53:33.200 --> 53:35.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: Or, like, I develop malware for the NSO group.
[53:35.980 --> 53:44.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, like, I wrestle with the question, first of all, if I had taken another turn, is that where I'd be?
[53:46.240 --> 53:49.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: I started at .com in the late 90s, the way everyone did.
[53:50.000 --> 53:52.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: And at one point, Microsoft wanted to buy it.
[53:52.300 --> 53:53.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: It was like this weird thing.
[53:53.740 --> 53:58.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the job that they had for me, if the sale had gone through, was to be a DRM evangelist for them.
[53:59.280 --> 54:06.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, instead, the sale fell through, and I was, like, ready to leave San Francisco and move back to Toronto.
[54:07.360 --> 54:13.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the moving van was on its way from Toronto to San Francisco to pick up my stuff and move me home.
[54:14.400 --> 54:16.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: And EFF offered me a job.
[54:17.120 --> 54:22.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I was flying back to Toronto to scout the apartment I was going to live in when I moved back.
[54:22.180 --> 54:25.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I got the job offer in the airport.
[54:25.380 --> 54:40.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I flew back to Toronto and spent the weekend looking at this house, seeing my family, thinking about whether I was going to move back to Toronto and work for this company where I almost ended up a Microsoft DRM evangelist or stay in San Francisco and become an EFF activist.
[54:41.580 --> 54:46.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I look at these folks and I think, you know, I'm not morally better than you.
[54:46.480 --> 54:49.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not a, you know, I'm not a better person than you.
[54:49.920 --> 54:57.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: What would it be like to rationalize your way, one tiny decision at a time, to working for the NSO group, right?
[54:57.460 --> 55:03.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: To, like, helping the Saudi government kidnap and dismember Jamal Khashoggi, you know?
[55:04.540 --> 55:09.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: As you mentioned in the book, it's very easy to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing.
[55:10.540 --> 55:12.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I see that all the time.
[55:12.520 --> 55:17.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: I see people making decisions, and I can't fault them because you don't know what people are going through in their lives.
[55:17.760 --> 55:20.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: You don't know the situation they're in where they can't...
[55:20.400 --> 55:24.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: They don't really have any choices or any lucky breaks that come through.
[55:24.440 --> 55:27.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: But as you conclude, it's about making good choices.
[55:28.300 --> 55:30.460]  [SPEAKER_10]: And there's a certain value.
[55:30.720 --> 55:41.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can't take back the bad things you've done or the evil you've participated in, but you can do positive things and become a better person and help others based on that.
[55:41.360 --> 55:48.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're speaking with renowned author Corey Doctorow, who has a new book, Attack Surface, coming out.
[55:48.660 --> 56:03.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: And to help support WBAI, we are offering it here tonight, only tonight, if you call 516-620-3602 or go to give2wbai.org and ask for Attack Surface.
[56:03.140 --> 56:05.580]  [SPEAKER_10]: Pledge of $50 to become a WBAI buddy.
[56:06.320 --> 56:08.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: Keep WBAI on the air.
[56:08.060 --> 56:14.740]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've been on the air since 1960, no commercials, and all kinds of interesting conversations like this.
[56:15.020 --> 56:24.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: We've been speaking to Corey since 7 o'clock, and we can speak to him until midnight, except we have a vice presidential debate that's going to get in the way, so we can't really do that.
[56:24.420 --> 56:25.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: But we could.
[56:25.740 --> 56:32.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: There's so many fascinating things to talk about, and it's such an honor to be able to share these ideas and these experiences.
[56:33.440 --> 56:39.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: But please, if you support WBAI and this kind of talk and technology in general...
[56:39.040 --> 56:41.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: And by the way, today is Off The Hook's 32nd anniversary.
[56:41.860 --> 56:42.440]  [SPEAKER_10]: Do you know that?
[56:42.580 --> 56:44.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: We went on the air October 7th, 1988.
[56:45.720 --> 56:47.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, that's kind of scary.
[56:48.240 --> 56:53.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: So if you support all that, 516-620-3602, please show your support.
[56:53.420 --> 56:56.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: And, of course, also support Corey's Kickstarter.
[56:57.380 --> 57:04.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: Look for Corey Doctorow, Kickstarter, and help support non-DRM audiobooks, and just non-DRM in general.
[57:04.900 --> 57:06.580]  [SPEAKER_10]: We struggle with this all the time.
[57:06.800 --> 57:14.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: You know, we come out on the Kindle, and we're kind of forced into DRM as a magazine, but we print information on how to bypass it.
[57:14.220 --> 57:20.260]  [SPEAKER_10]: So I think we're the only Kindle book on DRM that tells you how to defeat it.
[57:20.960 --> 57:24.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: So that hasn't gotten us picked off yet, but we'll see.
[57:24.440 --> 57:30.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think you should know for your listeners that being a hacker radio show, that you only celebrate anniversaries that are powers of two.
[57:31.100 --> 57:34.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is the last birthday you're going to celebrate until you turn 64.
[57:34.540 --> 57:35.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, wow.
[57:35.400 --> 57:37.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay, well, that makes it especially significant.
[57:37.520 --> 57:38.680]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's an important one.
[57:38.920 --> 57:39.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: Give a call now.
[57:39.760 --> 57:40.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: It's a special event.
[57:41.440 --> 57:43.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: 516-620-3602.
[57:44.040 --> 57:45.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: Alex, I believe you have a question.
[57:47.040 --> 57:51.760]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want to say I'm so delighted with this conversation this evening, Corey.
[57:51.900 --> 57:53.440]  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we need to have you back more.
[57:53.680 --> 58:00.660]  [SPEAKER_01]: I try to get these guys to talk about philosophical things like morality and doing the right thing and justice.
[58:00.780 --> 58:02.980]  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's like pulling teeth sometimes, let me tell you.
[58:03.240 --> 58:04.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: But we have no morals.
[58:04.800 --> 58:05.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: Alex, we've told you this.
[58:07.760 --> 58:08.400]  [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[58:09.140 --> 58:13.180]  [SPEAKER_01]: But I was really taken by what you said about West Point, though, Corey.
[58:13.180 --> 58:16.280]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to sort of jump back to that and that it wasn't your milieu.
[58:16.560 --> 58:22.700]  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, having grown up with Emmanuel, you know, hanging out with him since I was about 15 years old, right?
[58:22.780 --> 58:24.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: So about 27 years now.
[58:24.900 --> 58:35.060]  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, when I wound up going and working for the Army, the Army JAG as a civilian, it wasn't where I had expected to end up as a 15-year-old hacker either.
[58:35.060 --> 58:44.600]  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, having joined the intelligence community after that, you know, was also not where I expected to be in every single day that I went into the CIA.
[58:44.820 --> 58:54.860]  [SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't believe that they were actually letting me into this place, especially since part of the polygraph was I had to discuss misuse of information technology, which is quite interesting.
[58:55.020 --> 58:55.540]  [SPEAKER_01]: That was a bit long.
[58:56.500 --> 58:59.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: Did you try clenching your anus to defeat the polygraph?
[59:00.880 --> 59:02.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you know that they...
[59:02.320 --> 59:04.340]  [SPEAKER_01]: I used no countermeasure to what you want.
[59:04.780 --> 59:05.260]  [SPEAKER_01]: No!
[59:05.820 --> 59:07.760]  [SPEAKER_01]: What an opportunity squandered!
[59:09.100 --> 59:21.180]  [SPEAKER_01]: However, though, however, though, they did try some nonsense on me when they claimed that, you know, they didn't believe my statements about drug usage, and then I wouldn't answer the control questions.
[59:21.420 --> 59:22.920]  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's how...
[59:22.920 --> 59:26.600]  [SPEAKER_01]: That was the countermeasure that I employed, was that, you know, I refused to answer the control questions.
[59:26.780 --> 59:27.580]  [SPEAKER_01]: I knew what they were.
[59:27.720 --> 59:35.300]  [SPEAKER_01]: I thought at the end of the day, there's no way I'm going to get a security clearance, certainly not TSSSCI, but I did, shockingly, in any event.
[59:35.920 --> 59:48.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: The point I wanted to make, though, about it is, you know, the character that you mentioned that was over at this point, and what I had in my mind at the time, too, was that sometimes there is an argument to be made that you can do more good from within than from without.
[59:49.000 --> 59:55.860]  [SPEAKER_01]: If you had taken that DRM evangelist role with Microsoft, perhaps you might have had a chance to change their mind.
[59:56.060 --> 01:00:04.980]  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look, I think it's a fat chance, of course, but, you know, ultimately, I decided not to go back into the government for a number of different reasons.
[01:00:05.200 --> 01:00:06.300]  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, pay was one of them.
[01:00:06.660 --> 01:00:19.280]  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think this is like a running theme, you know, within the book as well, and it sort of starts out there, and it's almost like carbon offsetting, right, where you're doing some harm, and so you need to go and help activists, you know, on the side.
[01:00:19.280 --> 01:00:28.920]  [SPEAKER_01]: But then there's this great line that I remember, and it stuck with me, and it was something about, I don't want to give too much of the book away, but it was something about when a hobby becomes a moral imperative.
[01:00:29.380 --> 01:00:34.140]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like that almost describes the hacker community itself, right?
[01:00:34.560 --> 01:00:49.100]  [SPEAKER_01]: Wherever you find yourself, you may be doing good, you may be doing bad, but at the end of the day, that hobby of yours has become who you are as a hacker, and it is your moral imperative to do some good, whether it's from within or from without.
[01:00:49.560 --> 01:00:56.880]  [SPEAKER_10]: Corey, I'll let you address that in a second, but legally, I have to say, this is WBAI New York, and you are listening to an extended edition of Off The Hook.
[01:00:56.980 --> 01:01:00.380]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're going to be on until 8.30, at which time Gloria J.
[01:01:00.500 --> 01:01:15.640]  [SPEAKER_10]: Brown Marshall comes on with a special pre-vice presidential debate edition of Law of the Land, so stay tuned for that, and stay tuned after that for the actual vice presidential debate, where you will hear live over FM radio, Mike Pence getting his ass kicked.
[01:01:16.240 --> 01:01:17.180]  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm looking forward to that.
[01:01:17.360 --> 01:01:28.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: Although you should tune in, because they're going to use that spectrum of lasers to spot all the aerosol droplets moving from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris' side of the screen and back again.
[01:01:28.000 --> 01:01:29.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's going to be awesome.
[01:01:29.380 --> 01:01:30.240]  [SPEAKER_10]: You said Joe Biden.
[01:01:30.300 --> 01:01:31.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: You meant Mike Pence.
[01:01:31.560 --> 01:01:32.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I meant Mike Pence.
[01:01:33.040 --> 01:01:33.720]  [SPEAKER_10]: Freudian slip.
[01:01:34.260 --> 01:01:38.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: Corey, can I ask you that little trick about defeating the polygraph?
[01:01:39.920 --> 01:01:41.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: Did you get that from the Americans?
[01:01:41.600 --> 01:01:42.840]  [SPEAKER_10]: I saw that recently.
[01:01:43.040 --> 01:01:47.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: No, I got it from... so the polygraph.org guy, or defeatpolygraph.org, I forget what it's called.
[01:01:48.140 --> 01:01:49.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's that there is a guy...
[01:01:49.900 --> 01:01:50.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he gave a talk at HOPE.
[01:01:51.000 --> 01:01:52.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: He gave a talk at HOPE, I believe.
[01:01:52.220 --> 01:02:09.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he's the 2600 DeCSS guy of polygraphs, who, you know, is like, God damn it, I'm going to publish how to defeat this thing, that it's illegal to publish information about how to defeat, and become a cause celeb, which, you know, he has and does and is very committed to.
[01:02:10.040 --> 01:02:12.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, it's interesting.
[01:02:13.840 --> 01:02:23.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean no disrespect when I say that the people who get into this kind of trouble tend to be cranks, like you and me, right?
[01:02:23.720 --> 01:02:35.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, the kind of person who's like, God damn it, my digest-sized magazine needs to explain how to crack DVDs, and I'm willing to, like, risk felony prosecution for it.
[01:02:35.540 --> 01:02:40.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: That is not the activity of a normal person who goes along to get along.
[01:02:40.540 --> 01:02:51.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: And a lot of the times when we see people who do these extraordinary things, they are a little off, you know, present company included.
[01:02:53.020 --> 01:03:00.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: And sometimes we focus on that, and I want to, and maybe this is getting back to Snowden, sometimes we focus on that, we're like, look at this weirdo, right?
[01:03:00.420 --> 01:03:02.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: As opposed to, look at this revelation.
[01:03:02.400 --> 01:03:16.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're like, look at this weirdo who's being a weird guy, not look at the information he's brought us about how the polygraph is a house of cards, how we, you know, ground our national security and junk science and witchcraft and ruin people's lives with it.
[01:03:17.180 --> 01:03:25.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, one of the things about Snowden that was amazing, and that makes me have so much respect for him, is he kept himself out of the story.
[01:03:25.720 --> 01:03:43.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: That he actually, he is, of all the whistleblowers and cranks and, you know, glorious freaks who've come out and made the world as good as it can be under the circumstances, he is the one that seemed to understand best that the story needed to be about the leaks and not about the leaker.
[01:03:44.200 --> 01:03:46.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: And he took such pains to stay out of the public eye.
[01:03:46.940 --> 01:03:53.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: And when he came in, he was at such pains to, like, reveal the parts of himself that he knew were compromising and say, look, this is me.
[01:03:54.100 --> 01:03:55.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: It is who I am.
[01:03:55.120 --> 01:03:55.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: I am imperfect.
[01:03:55.920 --> 01:03:58.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's talk about the leaks and to bring it back to the leaks.
[01:03:58.620 --> 01:04:04.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if you read Permanent Record, if you read his memoir, he is really clear that this was a deliberate strategy.
[01:04:04.960 --> 01:04:15.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I remember when the leaks happened, you know, sitting around with other EFF folks and other people who cared about this stuff, not knowing who Snowden was yet, and just going, oh, please, please don't let him be an a-hole.
[01:04:16.140 --> 01:04:22.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, please, you know, just, just because, not because it matters, but because that'll make this story about him.
[01:04:22.960 --> 01:04:24.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And these leaks are so important.
[01:04:26.160 --> 01:04:36.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, not only was he not an a-hole, but he, it wouldn't have mattered if he was, because he was smart enough to stay out of the story and make the story about the leaks and not him.
[01:04:37.160 --> 01:04:43.740]  [SPEAKER_04]: One other parallel story is Chris Wiley's book about working for Internet Research Agency.
[01:04:43.740 --> 01:04:46.060]  [SPEAKER_04]: I find some parallels there as well.
[01:04:46.200 --> 01:04:56.340]  [SPEAKER_04]: But Snowden lays out so perfectly the contractor element of work for entities like the CIA and the government.
[01:04:56.340 --> 01:05:12.180]  [SPEAKER_04]: And one point I would put forth, kind of in response to what Alex was saying, is that this stuff has grown when you start getting into ad networks and private entities trading in people's information and so on.
[01:05:12.200 --> 01:05:16.700]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not necessarily something you're duty-bound to do.
[01:05:16.700 --> 01:05:19.720]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's more about will I be employed or not?
[01:05:20.960 --> 01:05:33.660]  [SPEAKER_04]: And the kinds of sacrifices people are sort of having to make to go for their dream of being involved in X or Y industry, then realizing halfway down, oh my gosh, I'm building something awful.
[01:05:33.780 --> 01:05:42.360]  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think another thing that leaps out in this audio book is the compartmentalization, because that's how the workers are treated by these entities, whether it's government or a private company.
[01:05:42.500 --> 01:05:47.740]  [SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, I don't know if there's a question there, but I really felt like, what is this doing to us?
[01:05:47.740 --> 01:05:48.640]  [SPEAKER_04]: That would be my question.
[01:05:48.820 --> 01:05:52.420]  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I know so many of these people that really don't have a lot of opportunities.
[01:05:52.440 --> 01:05:56.780]  [SPEAKER_04]: They get clearances, they get involved in private or government entities at a certain point.
[01:05:56.780 --> 01:06:00.980]  [SPEAKER_04]: But I felt like, is this further dividing us?
[01:06:01.020 --> 01:06:07.240]  [SPEAKER_04]: Is this just more heterogeneous fodder for our hacker community?
[01:06:07.240 --> 01:06:09.980]  [SPEAKER_04]: Or are we able to get past this?
[01:06:09.980 --> 01:06:13.440]  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, is this something we're getting away from?
[01:06:13.440 --> 01:06:28.100]  [SPEAKER_04]: Or is it something we're only beginning to see as people have really fewer and fewer careers, or they're not really inspired enough to go out on their own and do, like, run a magazine or do something on their own?
[01:06:28.280 --> 01:06:28.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[01:06:28.860 --> 01:06:31.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you're definitely getting into an area that I'm really concerned about.
[01:06:31.580 --> 01:06:36.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: I just want to go back quickly and say, Wiley worked for Cambridge Analytica, not Internet Research Agency.
[01:06:36.360 --> 01:06:36.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry, yes.
[01:06:37.060 --> 01:06:38.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: That was a great slip.
[01:06:38.620 --> 01:06:39.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: That was an awesome slip.
[01:06:41.520 --> 01:06:50.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: The, you know, one of the things that gets people to do the wrong thing is a foreclosing on their opportunities.
[01:06:50.500 --> 01:06:55.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the areas where opportunities have been thoroughly foreclosed upon is in labor markets, right?
[01:06:55.080 --> 01:06:59.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, there's a great quote by the New Zealand software developer, Tom Eastman.
[01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:05.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm old enough to remember when the web did not consist of five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four.
[01:07:06.440 --> 01:07:24.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the transformation of the web and all its related industries, and so many other industries from beer to pro wrestling to eyeglasses into these monopolized markets, mean that you can't tell your boss, take this job and shove it, because there isn't anywhere else to go.
[01:07:25.080 --> 01:07:31.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: When you look at, say, the entertainment industry, you know, I live here in Southern California.
[01:07:31.860 --> 01:07:33.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: I live in Los Angeles County.
[01:07:33.660 --> 01:07:50.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And for more than a year, the Screen Readers Guild was on strike against all of the big talent agencies, because the four big talent agencies, they bought all their competitors, which is a thing that used to be illegal until the Reagan era.
[01:07:50.600 --> 01:07:56.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: They bought all their competitors, they took a bunch of private equity money, so there's just four big games in town.
[01:07:56.920 --> 01:08:12.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then they started structuring these deals where they would be your agent as the writer, but they would offer the studio a break if they would also bring in a director and a star who they also represented, and they would take a piece out of all of your paychecks,
[01:08:12.580 --> 01:08:19.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: rather than as a commission, they would just accept a lower fee for you, and then take a packaging fee from the studio.
[01:08:20.150 --> 01:08:24.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is your agent, who's agreeing that you should get less money so they can get more money.
[01:08:25.620 --> 01:08:28.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: And two of the four agencies have caved.
[01:08:28.840 --> 01:08:33.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: All the mid-sized agencies, which are really small, cave pretty quickly.
[01:08:33.660 --> 01:08:35.070]  [SPEAKER_05]: But two of the big four agencies have caved.
[01:08:35.160 --> 01:08:35.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: Two of them haven't.
[01:08:36.490 --> 01:08:39.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: William Morris and CAA are still not in there.
[01:08:39.910 --> 01:08:43.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, if there's only four big agencies, why would they cave?
[01:08:43.650 --> 01:08:44.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: Why should they?
[01:08:45.260 --> 01:08:48.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, those four big agencies, they do business with four big movie studios.
[01:08:49.500 --> 01:08:55.490]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, you know, that, like, it's not like there's a lot of ways to shop around or get around them either.
[01:08:55.800 --> 01:08:59.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: So when there's only a few games in town, it becomes a really big deal.
[01:08:59.920 --> 01:09:18.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, of course, you know, the big news today, apart from the presidential election and all the rest of it, is that Congress dropped a 420-page report on market concentration in the tech industry, proposing to really, like, break up tech giants and start doing trust-busting the way FDR did with Standard Oil 100 years ago.
[01:09:18.960 --> 01:09:21.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Which, you know, that's exciting and wild.
[01:09:21.940 --> 01:09:29.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's really an acknowledgement that our labor markets have become places where you have to accept these compromises to work.
[01:09:30.150 --> 01:09:33.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: And there's a term from labor economics called chickenization.
[01:09:33.420 --> 01:09:35.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it comes from the poultry industry.
[01:09:35.650 --> 01:09:39.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the poultry industry, they divided up America the way the Pope divided up the New World.
[01:09:40.000 --> 01:09:41.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's only three big chicken packers.
[01:09:41.650 --> 01:09:51.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if you're a poultry farmer, there's only one meatpacking plant, poultry processing plant, within range of you, that you could get your birds to within the safe travel distance.
[01:09:52.270 --> 01:09:57.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that company has an exclusive arrangement with you as their independent contractor.
[01:09:58.340 --> 01:10:01.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they sell you the chicks or the eggs.
[01:10:01.620 --> 01:10:03.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: They tell you what kind of coop you have to build.
[01:10:03.960 --> 01:10:05.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: They tell you what sensors go in it.
[01:10:06.080 --> 01:10:08.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they get to see the telemetry from the sensors.
[01:10:08.190 --> 01:10:14.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: They tell you what to feed the birds and how often to feed them, when the lights go on, when they go off, which vet you can use and what medicines you can give them.
[01:10:14.880 --> 01:10:16.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: They experiment on you.
[01:10:16.160 --> 01:10:20.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: So they do A-B splits where one farm will have one schedule and the other farm will have another schedule.
[01:10:20.880 --> 01:10:25.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: And only when you're ready to sell the birds do they tell you how much they're going to pay you for them.
[01:10:25.480 --> 01:10:36.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: And because they're the only game in town, they know exactly how much they can give you so that you keep growing birds, so that you keep farming for them, but that you never get ahead and you can never get independent.
[01:10:36.360 --> 01:10:39.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: And suicide rates in chicken farmers have taken off.
[01:10:40.400 --> 01:10:43.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: And industry after industry, we are chickenizing workers, right?
[01:10:43.650 --> 01:10:52.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're turning workers into independent contractors, shifting the risk off of the balance sheet of the employer and onto the balance sheet of the workers.
[01:10:52.400 --> 01:10:53.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, that's just how Uber works.
[01:10:53.860 --> 01:10:56.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Uber is a chickenization outfit, right?
[01:10:56.440 --> 01:11:15.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: You may have seen ProPublica did this huge thing on Arise, this big work-from-home phone center, where if you call Disney or Comcast, or Airbnb, or many other big blue chip companies, you think you're talking to a phone bank, you're actually talking to an independent contractor working in their living room.
[01:11:15.580 --> 01:11:17.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: They have to pay for the job.
[01:11:17.520 --> 01:11:19.150]  [SPEAKER_05]: They have to pay to be trained.
[01:11:19.660 --> 01:11:27.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then if they only get these half-hour shifts, they're spread out through the day so they can't do another job, they're only paid while they're talking to you.
[01:11:27.730 --> 01:11:31.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: They're not allowed to hang up if you start sexually abusing them over the phone.
[01:11:31.600 --> 01:11:36.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: Most of the people who work for them are women, and most of them are women of color, mostly black women.
[01:11:37.210 --> 01:11:44.190]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if they get sick of this because they've gotten into debt working for you in this chickenized call center and they quit, they have to pay to quit.
[01:11:44.480 --> 01:11:47.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: They have to pay an early contract termination fee.
[01:11:47.240 --> 01:11:51.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they can be fired at any time with no notice because they're independent contractors.
[01:11:51.540 --> 01:11:55.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: So chickenization forces us to do things we don't want to do.
[01:11:55.040 --> 01:12:03.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: The ProPublica article quoted these women who were like, I had the company I worked for, AT&T, would just listen in on my calls.
[01:12:03.780 --> 01:12:07.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if they could hear my kids in the background, I would get docked.
[01:12:07.800 --> 01:12:10.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if I got docked twice, they would kick me off.
[01:12:10.650 --> 01:12:14.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the money I spent to be trained in as an AT&T operator, I would have to forfeit.
[01:12:14.510 --> 01:12:22.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: So as we lost more and more money with me doing this job, we had to move into successively smaller homes to the point where there was nowhere my kids could be that they couldn't be heard.
[01:12:22.900 --> 01:12:28.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so what I had to do was make my kids be totally silent so that I could do my job.
[01:12:28.270 --> 01:12:30.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: It was like Anne Frank or something, right?
[01:12:30.960 --> 01:12:39.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Except it's AT&T chickenizing you over the wiretap while you're taking calls from angry people they've screwed over, right?
[01:12:39.660 --> 01:12:41.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, you're right.
[01:12:41.730 --> 01:12:52.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: There are many labor markets in which people are corralled into taking choices that are not choices that they would take if they had the freedom of choice.
[01:12:52.900 --> 01:12:57.340]  [SPEAKER_10]: You know, I never thought we'd be talking about AT&T and chickenization.
[01:12:57.950 --> 01:12:59.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: That is a revelation.
[01:12:59.740 --> 01:13:01.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: I had no idea.
[01:13:02.190 --> 01:13:02.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you know what?
[01:13:02.840 --> 01:13:06.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: Tech workers built all that technology that lets them chickenize.
[01:13:06.440 --> 01:13:10.020]  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think I'm hearing a lot of like some of the mental health issues.
[01:13:10.060 --> 01:13:12.190]  [SPEAKER_04]: This is arising in the hacker community.
[01:13:12.320 --> 01:13:13.060]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's been ongoing.
[01:13:13.300 --> 01:13:19.800]  [SPEAKER_04]: We're looking at a lot of these issues a lot more and recognizing and wanting to look at sources of this stuff.
[01:13:19.800 --> 01:13:24.900]  [SPEAKER_04]: But I think also what it's doing is weaponizing a lot of the skill.
[01:13:25.360 --> 01:13:35.230]  [SPEAKER_04]: And I got that as a takeaway from this particular story because it's basically taking something that hackers might share and say like, okay, this is how that works.
[01:13:35.230 --> 01:13:36.800]  [SPEAKER_04]: This is how you do this thing.
[01:13:36.800 --> 01:13:41.400]  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's neat because you're subverting this or you're adjusting that.
[01:13:41.560 --> 01:13:42.500]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not supposed to do that.
[01:13:42.920 --> 01:13:57.920]  [SPEAKER_04]: Those attitudes disappear when you're obligated to keep to your, you know, 50-page NDAs or some felony that the government's going to come back at you for disclosing what you actually do.
[01:13:57.920 --> 01:14:00.240]  [SPEAKER_04]: So we end up having people doing all of this stuff.
[01:14:00.320 --> 01:14:01.920]  [SPEAKER_04]: They can't actually talk about what they do.
[01:14:02.020 --> 01:14:06.100]  [SPEAKER_04]: And you see that in their resumes or even job postings.
[01:14:06.240 --> 01:14:11.060]  [SPEAKER_04]: Like everything is so vague because no one really wants to disclose the actual kind of work they're doing.
[01:14:11.160 --> 01:14:18.960]  [SPEAKER_04]: And I just look at this and I think of this huge push to like hire the hackers and like how we can maybe, you know, it was almost a rebrand maybe.
[01:14:19.100 --> 01:14:19.380]  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[01:14:19.480 --> 01:14:20.280]  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to say that.
[01:14:20.280 --> 01:14:38.270]  [SPEAKER_04]: But it's like 10 or 15 years ago we get like a push to like, well, this is how we make, you know, big companies secure is that we have all these different talent pools to use as, you know, exploit their understanding of all this sort of newfangled stuff.
[01:14:38.270 --> 01:14:59.240]  [SPEAKER_04]: But yet it's just to set them out to the playground, as your analogy said, for the bullies, in this sense, you know, a boss or a sort of autonomous entity in a corporation wielding so much control over, again, the only game in town.
[01:14:59.360 --> 01:15:02.360]  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's just so much there that I really brought away.
[01:15:02.440 --> 01:15:05.270]  [SPEAKER_04]: And I really thank you for your insight on some of that stuff.
[01:15:05.730 --> 01:15:06.400]  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[01:15:07.000 --> 01:15:09.920]  [SPEAKER_10]: Corey, a couple of chilling things from the book.
[01:15:10.060 --> 01:15:13.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're speaking with Corey Doctorow, author of the forthcoming book, Attack Surface.
[01:15:14.620 --> 01:15:27.380]  [SPEAKER_10]: There is, on the subject of the corporate landscape as far as employment, at one point, Masha gets a visit from her corporate representatives, I guess, a security force.
[01:15:27.600 --> 01:15:35.700]  [SPEAKER_10]: They do this really invasive search of her apartment where she can't even leave the room and they're going through all her personal effects.
[01:15:36.400 --> 01:15:38.040]  [SPEAKER_10]: So that was a nightmare.
[01:15:38.160 --> 01:15:42.100]  [SPEAKER_10]: And it was all in her contract that she had to abide by that.
[01:15:42.230 --> 01:15:46.160]  [SPEAKER_10]: And there was nothing she could do to get out of it without incurring substantial penalties.
[01:15:46.660 --> 01:15:48.360]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's still fantasy, right?
[01:15:48.520 --> 01:15:50.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: Or is this based on something real?
[01:15:52.510 --> 01:16:00.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, I think that, like, there are lots of people who work in industries where that is the rule, but they tend not to work in white-collar industries.
[01:16:00.100 --> 01:16:06.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, if you're crew on a cruise ship, that's the regime you labor under, right?
[01:16:08.170 --> 01:16:16.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you're, you know, if you're a contractor in a forward operations base, that might be the regime that you labor under, right?
[01:16:17.290 --> 01:16:34.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's... and, you know, digitally, it's becoming far more common, you know, the growth of workplaces that expect you, even before the pandemic, that expect you to be on call 24-7, that issue you a laptop and a phone like they're doing you a big favor.
[01:16:34.420 --> 01:16:49.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then, you know, put man-in-the-middle certificates, intermediate certificates that let them intercept your encrypted traffic on that device, add spyware, add bossware to that device to do the digital equivalent of it, right?
[01:16:49.560 --> 01:17:01.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: To, you know, and today, you know, with the lockdown, there's been a boom in bossware, which is software that remotely operates the camera and the microphone, takes screenshots, plunders your hard drive.
[01:17:02.750 --> 01:17:08.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, they say, well, you know, just don't use your work device for this, but it's not your work device at that point.
[01:17:09.160 --> 01:17:16.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's this thing you're tethered to all day long, and that is in your home, which you have turned into a rent-free branch office for your boss.
[01:17:17.960 --> 01:17:27.920]  [SPEAKER_10]: Now, the other chilling thing that really resonated with me, and it gave me a legitimate nightmare, too, by the way, this is when the autonomous cars turn against people.
[01:17:27.920 --> 01:17:31.840]  [SPEAKER_10]: Basically, they're programmed by the authorities to mow down demonstrators.
[01:17:32.780 --> 01:17:32.860]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[01:17:33.160 --> 01:17:34.930]  [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, your mind, I just...
[01:17:35.750 --> 01:17:37.770]  [SPEAKER_10]: Did you worry about giving people ideas?
[01:17:38.420 --> 01:17:40.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is my response to the trolley problem, right?
[01:17:41.040 --> 01:17:43.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: So that, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with it.
[01:17:43.190 --> 01:17:47.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, every idiot who thinks they're smart about AI says, well, what about the trolley problem?
[01:17:47.190 --> 01:17:53.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: What if your Mercedes has to decide whether to kill the millionaire behind the wheel or the six kids crossing the road?
[01:17:54.540 --> 01:17:58.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, maybe it decides to kill you, and maybe it decides to kill them, or whatever, right?
[01:17:59.290 --> 01:18:10.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: The problem with this whole conception is it starts from the prospect that we're going to have autonomous vehicles that will periodically decide to kill their drivers, and that this will somehow be stable.
[01:18:10.840 --> 01:18:16.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the only way this can possibly be a stable situation is if it's illegal to modify your car.
[01:18:16.560 --> 01:18:21.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because the rule, the circumstances under which I want my car to kill me is never, right?
[01:18:21.840 --> 01:18:23.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: That is the rule I want for my car.
[01:18:23.200 --> 01:18:23.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: Never kill me.
[01:18:24.060 --> 01:18:43.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so if you design a car that runs programs that the person who is trapped inside the car can't override, then anyone who can figure out how to take control of that part of the car that runs programs that the person in the car can't override can do terrible things to that person.
[01:18:43.480 --> 01:18:45.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's such, like, an obviously terrible idea.
[01:18:45.880 --> 01:18:48.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we talk about backdoors and switches being a bad idea.
[01:18:48.270 --> 01:18:51.690]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, having cars that have, like, a ring minus zero, right?
[01:18:51.780 --> 01:19:05.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Having essentially robots, you know, 6,000-pound robots that you trap your wet, squishy body inside of to travel at 100 miles an hour down the highway that is also, like, pre-route-kitted, and anyone who can, like, seize control of it.
[01:19:05.900 --> 01:19:23.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, like, the closest analogy, you probably saw Pentest Partners just release this report that there's this bondage toy where you lock your subs' genitals in this cage, and the cage is made out of hardened steel, and it needs an angle grinder to remove it,
[01:19:23.040 --> 01:19:27.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: and the only person who can open it is you with the app, and it's for, like, you know, BDSM play.
[01:19:27.320 --> 01:19:32.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they just didn't bother to secure it so, like, anyone could just hack into it and lock it forever, right?
[01:19:32.960 --> 01:19:44.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, that's the only thing I can think of that is in the same range of stupid as designing a car that is deliberately designed so that the driver can't override the software.
[01:19:45.290 --> 01:19:48.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And so as soon as I... you know, I wanted to dramatize that.
[01:19:48.120 --> 01:19:56.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: I wrote something else for Deakin University in Australia called Car Wars that was just a series of vignettes about this, and I knew I wanted to put it in the book.
[01:19:56.770 --> 01:19:58.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: Voltaire, I think you had a question.
[01:19:58.460 --> 01:19:58.690]  [SPEAKER_10]: Go ahead.
[01:19:58.960 --> 01:19:59.690]  [SPEAKER_05]: Or an intervention.
[01:20:01.340 --> 01:20:03.020]  [SPEAKER_10]: We're down for our last two minutes, by the way.
[01:20:03.940 --> 01:20:04.200]  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[01:20:04.900 --> 01:20:05.420]  [SPEAKER_02]: On the...
[01:20:06.010 --> 01:20:16.320]  [SPEAKER_02]: discussing bossware and chickenization, especially, like, chickenization maybe seems to happen to, say, typically blue-collar workers, and bossware you see even with white-collar workers.
[01:20:16.560 --> 01:20:21.500]  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that it's not just a problem of, like, monopsony when it comes to employers.
[01:20:21.500 --> 01:20:24.920]  [SPEAKER_02]: It's also a question of labor laws and lack of unionization.
[01:20:24.920 --> 01:20:27.380]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's why it's encouraging.
[01:20:27.580 --> 01:20:33.540]  [SPEAKER_02]: We see organizations like Tech Workers Coalition, and here in New York we have DSA Tech Action Working Group.
[01:20:34.020 --> 01:20:45.930]  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you mentioned earlier the 20,000 workers showing Google walkout, and that was able to cancel their AI for the Defense Department initiative.
[01:20:46.650 --> 01:20:55.230]  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a really important reform, too, not just monopoly power, but also labor law.
[01:20:56.870 --> 01:20:57.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, 100%.
[01:20:57.580 --> 01:21:00.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, there's a crappy technology adoption curve.
[01:21:00.740 --> 01:21:05.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you want to know what technology blue-collar workers are going to be subjected to in five years, look what we're doing to students.
[01:21:06.020 --> 01:21:09.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you want to know what students are going to be subjected to in five years, look what we're doing to prisoners.
[01:21:09.520 --> 01:21:13.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if you want to know what white-collar workers are going to be doing in five years, look what we're doing to blue-collar workers.
[01:21:13.980 --> 01:21:16.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's the gradient that our bad technology ascends.
[01:21:16.840 --> 01:21:23.980]  [SPEAKER_10]: We have been talking with Corey Doctorow, author of the forthcoming book, Attack Surface, which will be... when is it officially coming out, Corey?
[01:21:24.650 --> 01:21:25.770]  [SPEAKER_10]: October the 13th.
[01:21:25.900 --> 01:21:26.150]  [SPEAKER_10]: All right.
[01:21:26.190 --> 01:21:26.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: That's right around the corner.
[01:21:27.150 --> 01:21:33.600]  [SPEAKER_10]: You can get your autographed bookplate copy from WBAI by calling 516-620-3602.
[01:21:33.600 --> 01:21:43.190]  [SPEAKER_10]: If there are any left, we only have a dozen, and pledging $50 or becoming a WBAI buddy, go to give2wbai.org if you'd rather do it that way.
[01:21:43.700 --> 01:21:47.880]  [SPEAKER_10]: Corey, any links or sites or things you want to give out?
[01:21:47.980 --> 01:21:48.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: Go right ahead.
[01:21:48.560 --> 01:21:48.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: Totally.
[01:21:49.200 --> 01:22:03.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, if you go to pluralistic.net, that's my daily writing on the web, and one of the things you'll find in every day's edition this week is a link to the upcoming Attack Surface virtual tour, eight nights in eight bookstores, including at the Strand,
[01:22:03.500 --> 01:22:08.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: with guests from across all the different disciplines that the book touches on.
[01:22:08.950 --> 01:22:20.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Every one of those tickets to those events comes with a signed book, so if you can't get one of the copies that Tor was kind enough to donate to WBAI, you can get one from one of these tour stops.
[01:22:20.650 --> 01:22:22.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: They're all going to be super dope.
[01:22:23.330 --> 01:22:26.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're talking about intersectionality, surveillance, and race.
[01:22:26.300 --> 01:22:27.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're talking about science fiction.
[01:22:27.660 --> 01:22:28.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're talking about tech.
[01:22:28.690 --> 01:22:30.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're talking about all the good stuff.
[01:22:30.650 --> 01:22:32.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: Corey, it has been a delight talking to you.
[01:22:32.380 --> 01:22:33.690]  [SPEAKER_10]: We could talk to you all night long.
[01:22:34.340 --> 01:22:35.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: Thanks for everything you do.
[01:22:35.660 --> 01:22:40.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: Thanks for that great keynote you gave at the HOPE Conference this summer, one of nine keynotes that we had.
[01:22:40.400 --> 01:22:44.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: And we look forward to seeing what you come up with next, but I hope lots of people read this book.
[01:22:45.020 --> 01:22:46.660]  [SPEAKER_10]: It really is an incredible piece.
[01:22:47.380 --> 01:22:48.280]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, thank you.
[01:22:48.440 --> 01:22:49.650]  [SPEAKER_10]: Best of luck in everything you do.
[01:22:49.880 --> 01:22:50.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Thanks, guys.
[01:22:50.650 --> 01:22:51.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: Everyone wear a mask.
[01:22:52.020 --> 01:22:55.200]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yes, and stay tuned for the debate and for our special programs.
[01:22:55.300 --> 01:22:55.480]  [SPEAKER_10]: Good night.