This is WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
The previous economic update with Richard Wolff will be back on the air at his regular time at 6.30 p.m.
It is one minute past, almost one minute past 7 p.m.
Stay tuned for Off The Hook coming up.
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
If you need help, stay on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum diddly bum for the best, just ain't the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
And a very good evening to everybody.
program is off the hook. Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined
tonight by Kyle.
Hi Emanuel, how are you?
I just spilled coffee on my laptop, but other than that, I'm fine. It was a much smoother
beginning than last week, except for that. It was going so well.
Don't worry about it, that makes it run faster.
Well, I don't know. I guess we'll test that theory, but fortunately I had a napkin and
I was ready. Who else do we have? Over in Skype land, let's go over there. I see Rob.
Good evening. I don't have any coffee.
I see Gila.
Hello.
I see Alex.
Good evening.
What kid show am I referencing? Remember they used to look in the-
Romper Room.
Was that Romper Room? I used to watch that as a kid. Okay, so that makes sense. That
makes sense.
She never saw me.
Huh. I've been having all these-
I never once heard her say, I see Gila.
Yeah. I don't remember. I could fool myself and say, yeah, she said she saw me once. But
how did you get to be seen? You had to write in or something, right?
You had to either write in or have a generic name that she would have a chance of saying,
so I was pretty okay.
Okay.
Every time she saw Rob or Robbie or Bobby or Robert or whoever, I took it.
I've been having all these childhood memories of things like that, but the other day I just
remembered the breakfast cereal Wheatina. Did anybody ever have Wheatina? See, nobody
remembers this. Any listeners out there that remember this cereal, it was the counterpart
to oatmeal. In fact, it might have even predated it. Spelled W-H-E-A-T-I-N-A. I think it was
spelled that way. I don't really know. Okay, well, that's my trip down memory lane, whether
it exists or not. I'm still wiping the coffee off of me.
Do you need a mop or something?
No, I'm all right. I'm all right. I've got these little notepads that I can use. They're
pretty absorbent. So how are you guys doing?
We're okay. We've been watching television for most of the afternoon and evening.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. By television, do you mean something educational like General
Hospital or do you mean something dark and sinister like C-SPAN?
The latter.
No, actually, it's really good that you are watching the trial of Donald J. Trump, the
second trial, because it is as educational as you can get on television and it's something
that I think everybody should see. They should be showing this in classrooms and early, too,
like second, third grade, I think.
It's amazing because they're showing so much footage that we'd never seen, so much footage
that had never been shared, and footage that we cannot really discuss because it has words
that would get us fined in it. And I'm still stunned by hearing that on like being played
in the Senate. I shouldn't be, but I am.
That is the incredible thing. And yes, you speak exactly to the things I've been thinking
about as well. But those films, very well produced. Who knew that Democrats could piece
together documentary footage so well, but they did a good job. Very riveting. But yes,
censored. The thing is, every broadcast network, except, of course, Fox, had this on live TV
yesterday and today, and there was no censorship whatsoever. They were using all kinds of foul
language. And, you know, I don't mean to dwell upon this because I think it's incredibly
petty to say, oh, what about the FCC? And aren't they in danger of being fined? But
we have to live like that all the time. Being at a radio station, we have to be very careful
about what we say. So I think we need some clarification as to when this sort of thing
is permitted and when it is not permitted. And somebody I know raised a very good point
that, well, you know, technically these are the FCC's bosses doing this and kind of,
you know, saying we're going to we're going to have this aired on broadcast television
and maybe even radio. And that's just the way it is. I don't know. Alex, what's your
take on that? I mean, I don't know. I, I think the, you know, well, I think there's
wisdom in getting this out to everybody. Right. But I don't know if we need to clutter the
airwaves with it, you know, 100 percent of the time, you know, that it's on. I feel like,
you know, people need need to make a choice, an informed decision. There's plenty of places
to see it. You know, I I have to say, you know, I followed it very, very closely yesterday.
But today I haven't been as engaged with the with the impeachment proceedings, primarily
because I've just been so busy. OK, I think it depends. Well, I mean, yeah, you can you
can you can see it any time you want. Obviously, it's it's all being recorded. But as far as
the importance of having it there, I think I think, you know, if the Democrats don't
succeed in getting a conviction, what they have succeeded in doing is getting this documentary
evidence out to the general public. And yeah, like you say, you can always find it someplace.
But I think it should be more than that. I think it should be something that people have
thrust in their faces so they can see exactly what happened on January 6th and they can't
ignore it or have to hunt it down. It's there. It's there on Channel two. It's there on
Channel four. And wow, maybe they had no idea that this is what was actually happening.
I was surprised. Like you said, you know, this was this was really compelling evidence
and and and video footage that so many of us had not seen before. Rob.
Well, of course, the FCC issue is close to all of our hearts here at WBAI, us being the
station that that had the landmark case that that dictated all that for the rest of eternity.
But another thing about this footage is how uncensored it is, not only not only because
it gets sweary, but because it gets violent. There are there there are the violent insurrectionists.
There was there was footage of a death, the shooting death that that happened.
And that's all part of the congressional record now. And that's also that is something that
every single voting human being should should see the people who it appears don't have to
see it are the Republican Congress, the Republican Congress members who apparently are just
like looking down at papers or something while these videos are playing.
I heard Rand Paul was looking at his iPad or something, which is is shockingly appalling
as far as I'm concerned to to to not be not at least pay the respect to look at what was
happening. It affected all these people, too. They were all in the building at that time.
It's it's just incredible to me. And I can't imagine the emotion that some people there
might be feeling at having to relive all of this, you know, to see it all playing out
and know that, you know, you were this close, you were there when it was happening.
Yes, one thing that I've been seeing today as I've been watching this incredible
footage, and I don't mean that in a good way, but it is it's amazing to see all of this and
how much of it was saved by the amazing Twitter user, Don Kenby, who scraped all of
this stuff from parlor before it went down. So it's here and it's in the congressional
record because of the work that she did. So we thank you again.
But it's amazing what one person can do to to help in situations like this.
And there are lots of one people out there that can one person's out there that can do
this, that can do different things, add their perspective, add their expertise.
We're seeing it every day.
So don't think that you don't count.
Don't think that that, you know, your opinions don't matter or that your skill set
doesn't matter. It all adds up just like just like donating to WBAI, which, by the way,
I'm just going to pivot into this quickly, please.
Five one six six two zero three six zero two.
Every person who calls that phone number and contributes whatever they can afford.
Is is one piece of the amazing, I guess, puzzle that WBAI is or just in the structure
that we are, we've been around since 1960, and it's all through listeners like you, all
through individual people.
It's amazing. Five one six six zero three six zero two or go to give to WBAI.org.
Alex, did you want to say something?
I thought you had your hand up.
Are you I think you're muted.
Yeah. Mute issue.
So over here, I think you were you were acting like an auctioneer, I think.
But I think to Gila's point here, this I think it is incredibly important to to see
this in the congressional record and to and to bounce off of Robinson.
What I was really shocked about was just, you know, the sounds, you know, when you hear
that, even if you had your eyes closed, you can imagine what was happening there.
It was terrible. It was really woven together, I think, very, very effectively.
It made a great case for.
Creating a nexus between the president's words and the actions that flowed very
proximately thereafter, and and this is the case that they're trying to make when you
saw the lawyers for the president take up their case, it was a completely different
story. You know, I don't want to cast aspersions on other members of the bar, but
those particular types of those presentations were rather disjointed, rambling.
And it seemed to me like the Democrats and I and I say this lovingly, the Democrats for
once really had their act together.
They were coordinated.
They were they collaborated together.
They put the messaging all together.
All the pieces fell into the right spot because it really, really matters right now.
And on the other hand, these lawyers for the president were rambling, and it was scary
to me to hear that rambling because they were acting as if it was already a foregone
conclusion. And and that's the most dispiriting part of all of this is that a good
portion of the Senate is not going to act as an impartial juror.
They're not going to review the evidence in a manner that an ordinary citizen, a
member of any jury would have an obligation to do so.
That to me is shameful.
It's an abdication of their oath of office.
And and I think, frankly, you should not be allowed in one way or another.
I don't think jury nullification by the Senate should be something that we can count
on as a nation during an impeachment.
Well, it's it's a unique jury set up that they have where all 100 senators are part of
the jury and many of them are not unbiased at all.
And what you say definitely rings true as far as as Trump's legal team and and the way
they're they're trivializing what has what has been presented.
It's worse than that.
If you look on Twitter, you'll see things.
You'll see senators.
You'll see representatives.
You'll see Trump's own son mocking and ridiculing the people who were the victims
here who were being hunted like animals and and threatened with execution.
And AOC was being was being mocked by by Don Jr.
at one point, saying that she was upset because a cop frowned at her, which was not at
all what this was about.
And all kinds of other trivializations of very real threats.
And if you did not believe the threats were real, then you need to see the films that
were played before the Senate today and yesterday and tell me that it doesn't scare
the crap out of you to just think of those people rampaging through the halls of
Congress. And God help the people that got in their way.
And, yeah, the Democrats really got it together, but credit where credit is due.
The Proud Boys, the white supremacists, the Nazis, they gave them a lot of good
material and they worked with that and they presented that to the American people.
And I think I think a lot of minds will be will be swayed by that in in the Senate.
Yeah, probably probably a lot of senators are stubbornly going to hold on.
Stubbornly going to hold on.
I can't imagine why other than than total fear of Trump, total fear of him coming down
on them if they say the slightest thing critical of him.
That is something if you find yourself in fear of anybody to that degree, you have to
let go of that somehow. I don't care if you're a senator or a 10 year old.
You cannot live in fear.
And if you can look at what what was presented over the past couple of days and not see
that something incredibly horrible happened and was perpetrated by the president.
And there's no disputing this because you see him speaking.
You see the people in the crowd repeating his words and you see the people in the crowd
acting upon those very words.
There can be no doubt.
I mean, unless there is some smoking gun that has not been presented by anybody, there
can be no no doubt that there is a cause and effect here.
So for senators to not take that into account when they cast their vote, that would be
shameful. And I fully expect a shameful outcome.
What I do think is a mistake for Democrats to keep saying, I don't know if they're the
ones saying this or if commentators on television are the ones saying this, but to make
it as if this is the reason for doing this is to keep them from running again in 2024.
That cannot be the reason, because that basically elevates him to the status of somebody
who is somewhat unbeatable, someone to be to be scared of.
No, the reason to put him on trial is for accountability of a very serious crime against
the entire nation. And he needs to be held to account.
And he's never been held to account.
And it's time that stopped.
Go ahead, Alex.
And I think that this goes farther back in time as well than the moments that were
proximate to the insurrection itself.
And this is part of, I think, the issue that we're seeing, especially with the social
media platforms. And the question is to whether or not they have any measure of
culpability in what happened on January 6th as well in that what Trump was doing since
the elections, literally since the night of the election, and in fact, before it was
calling into question the legitimacy of the results, refusing to acknowledge that a
peaceful transfer of power is what the country needed, refusing to acknowledge the
results as they were coming in, and then claiming that the only way that that he could
that he could have lost and the Republicans could have lost the White House was through
abject fraud.
And, you know, it just is incredible that I even have to say this, but, you know, words
matter and words that come from the office of the president of the United States have
held since the beginning of this nation a great amount of credence and credibility
associated with them.
And it has all gone out the window over the last four years that the lies and the fraud
that have come from the president of the United States and perpetuating this myth that
the election was stolen started well before January 6th, well before he told people to
march down Pennsylvania Avenue.
This was a slow degradation, once again, of the truth and an assault on the truth that
was allowed to propagate and was allowed to perpetuate itself through social media
channels until the last moment when it was too late, when people were dead, when there
was violence and insurrection on the streets.
That's the sad state of affairs for this country.
I think there's there is still some opportunity for the senators that are are in this
trial to hear things that they didn't really understand and see it reframed in this
trial setting. There's all kinds of evidence that was not something that punditry and
cable TV was going over in the days or hours and minutes after this thing had started on
the 6th. So I really feel like some of the things they're bringing forth, as well as
what was already known, is really rounding out the whole picture so that there there
really is an opportunity.
Maybe that's misplaced.
And I'm sure there's plenty of Republicans who will not impress insofar as their
integrity goes with this.
But I maintain that, you know, anyone people are still persuadable and they can they can
change. And as things come out in this trial, you know, we're not sitting there.
We're watching it.
They have to sit there and they can't say anything under pain of imprisonment.
I'm fascinated by that.
So if they say something, they can be imprisoned.
Yeah. Wow.
OK, that's that's interesting.
It's like, you know, worse than than elementary school.
I don't know. I can't wait.
A deadly insurrection to the Capitol, not be in prison, but you can say something in a
trial and be imprisoned.
That's interesting system.
It's a serious, a serious protocol, but it's really important that they sit there and
have to listen and have to pay attention to this.
As I said, this thing that was built out and is totally reframed after the fact, there's
less emotion.
There's still emotion, but I really like the cadence of seriousness and tone that's
bringing forth each part of that timeline and the place of the rhetoric in in how it
it substantiates the the article itself.
Well, I mean, that's what I hope is that they are listening and they are judging because
that is what they are supposed to be doing.
And it would be a very inspirational thing to see people say, yeah, I thought this way
before and I realized now I was wrong.
And some people have done that already.
Some Republicans have actually said that they're paying the price for it.
And incredibly, people who spoke out against this deadly violence are the ones who are
being targeted. But because that's happening, because there are angry mobs calling for
their heads, that should only make you realize all the more how right you are for saying
that. And I think the more people who stand up and say something similar, the weaker
those crowds will be, the lower their voices will will be heard.
We can't yield to this kind of thing.
If we do, then the country is lost and God knows what it is will turn into on the on
the subject of Twitter, according to the the CFO of Twitter, and I'll bet nobody knows
who that is. Ned Seagal, I'm mispronouncing it that way because I think that's how it's
pronounced, said that Trump's ban is permanent.
The way our policies work when you're removed from the platform, you're removed from
the platform. Whether you're a commentator, you're a CFO like me, or you form one way
pick CFO, you are a former or current public official.
Remember, our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence.
And if anybody does that, we have to remove them from the service.
And our policies don't allow people to come back.
Sounds so final and serious.
The statement comes amid Trump's impeachment trial in Congress.
And if he is acquitted, Trump would not be barred from seeking the presidency or another
federal office. Twitter took the unprecedented step of banning Trump last month after some
of Trump's supporters stormed the U.S.
Capitol. At the time, Twitter said it was permanently suspending Trump due to the risk
of further incitement of violence.
By the time of the crackdown, Twitter had already temporarily locked Trump's account
over several tweets that said contributed to an elevated risk of violence.
Now, Twitter's decision to ban Trump came amid a flurry of other tech company enforcement
actions against his account, including Facebook's decision to prohibit Trump from posting
indefinitely and YouTube's decision to begin issuing strikes to Trump's video channel.
And I don't think that's undemocratic at all.
I think that is basically in response to what people want.
And people don't want this crap.
They've said so in elections.
They've said so to the CFOs and to all kinds of other officials from these tech companies.
It's something that we need to really be responsible for.
Yeah, it's entertaining to have all of this craziness in front of us.
But I think we all see now how detrimental it ultimately can be.
Go ahead, Alex.
And it's also a question of business in the bottom line for these types of platforms as
well, because if they turn a blind eye to this kind of violence, this kind of fomenting
of insurrection, sedition, whatever you want to call it, that results in death and bodily
injury. You can damn well be sure that they're going to be named in a slew of lawsuits for
failing to do something, for knowing that there were reasonably foreseeable consequences
of allowing somebody to persist in inciting violence on their platform.
That's a very, very reasonable lawsuit that these platforms can expect.
And I do think it was the right thing for them to do, to pull these accounts.
I think we can all agree that once Twitter started flagging as misinformation and false,
some of the facts that Trump was spewing on his own Twitter page shortly after election
night, that was when this all started to really snowball.
And I think they took some baby steps.
And I think they're going to learn a lot from those baby steps that they took.
Hopefully they won't be taking baby steps again in the future, but hopefully this won't
ever happen again.
I really hope that this was a one-off situation that we're seeing as a country.
And maybe, you know, because it happened here, it won't be allowed to happen elsewhere where
there is a lot of civil unrest like Myanmar or Turkey.
But Emmanuel, you brought up an interesting issue that if the ban is permanent, and I
wonder about this now, if the ban is permanent and Trump does run for re-election and wins,
let's say, the doomsday scenario in four years, would Twitter give him the POTUS account?
Well, I think the POTUS account would be given to the White House staff.
And if it got usurped by a maniac, they'd shut that down, too, and rightfully so.
You know, you said that they did the responsible thing, and I agree they did the
responsible thing, but they did it four years too late.
You know, they should have been doing this when he was calling Mexicans rapists and all
the other horrors that he was spewing years earlier.
And instead, they waited until virtually the day he was out of office.
And you see the result, there was something like a 75 percent drop in all these lies and
falsehoods being posted on Twitter as soon as he disappeared.
So these things do matter.
I think one aspect where we will see this again is in other forms.
And I think we need to take a long, hard look at the social media platforms and the grand
experiment that it's been when new technologies come back.
So in distinction from where we might see this kind of thing repeated with this particular
type of technology, I think this just in the trial itself, these tweets are now evidence
like exhibit ABC, you know, and so on.
So, yeah, he's not there, but this is also becoming his Achilles.
At least it's showing him for who he was, if it doesn't actually have a consequence at
this time. And I think we need to really when when all that VC money is being thrown
around for the next technology that's going to save humanity and that we're dumping cash
into and telling everyone they need to move their lives to and sign away all their
rights, like we need to think back to this little experiment and where it went afoul
and not just pat the platforms on the head.
I know I say that a lot, but I just had to get that in here in this discussion once
again. Go ahead, Rob.
It also really strikes me how, you know, the right right now is is claiming censorship
when Twitter like blocks Trump's account or when Facebook blocks Trump's account.
You know, the rest of the time, they're the party of letting private industry and the
free market do what it wants, but until it does what they don't want.
But the other side of this is really questioning the not only the our dependence on
social media and the place it has in our media environment, but also the responsibility
of someone who puts up a social media site, how much of what their users do is a site
responsible for. That's something that's cursed every type of website since the public
Web started being a thing.
And as a publisher, there's there's there's all sorts of implications there.
Yeah, we've we learned all this in IRC back in the 90s.
You know, when somebody comes into your channel and they're all disruptive and causing
chaos, you kick them out.
If they keep coming back in, you ban them.
You know, there are steps you take.
And yeah, they're going to say, oh, you're you're censoring me.
You're keeping me from from saying what I want to say.
Now you can say what you want to say.
Just don't say it here, because this is something that we're in charge of.
And you're you're quite frankly screwing it up.
I agree, Rob.
Holy and this is what I'm what I mean also.
And to bring this back around to hacking and communications and telephony, the carriers
too, because they're the ones that bundle a lot of this software on devices.
They want all that data traffic.
I mean, again, beating something that I've already talked about over and over again.
I'll keep saying it, but this is mobile carriers wanting to sell you plans that have
some kind of service that you're going to be addicted to, to keep using all of that
data and do something with this needless technology that just keeps going and going
and going. We really, really, really need to look at this.
Alex, I think you had one more point.
Then we're going to move on to some other topics.
Sure, one of the things I mentioned this at Hope, too, that I can foresee happening with
these social media platforms, because because we saw the precursors of it around the
time that Hope was happening this past summer, is that Congress started asking them
questions, started asking the platforms, the big platforms like Facebook and Twitter,
what are you doing to combat misinformation ahead of the 2020 election?
In an election year, obviously, it's really, really important, given especially what
happened in 2016.
They want to make sure that the platforms are doing something.
I think instead of focusing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which at
Rob was alluding to, which gives the platforms and any kind of interactive computer
service immunity for the content that goes through their networks, they're not
responsible for the content and the speech that goes through their networks.
Instead of modifying that, which is a law, a provision of law that allowed the Internet
really to grow and to flourish, what Congress could be doing is expecting more now of
the social media platforms.
Just like cybersecurity is a growing compliance issue, I foresee reasonable measures
being required to be put in place by these social media platforms to make sure that
misinformation does not propagate to the extent that we've seen it propagate over this
last year.
All right, well, we'll continue talking about this in the weeks and months ahead, and
of course, if you want to write to us, oth at 2600.com is our email address.
We certainly would like to hear from our listeners.
You're listening to Off the Hook here on WBAI New York.
We're on until eight o'clock.
At eight o'clock, we are doing Off the Hook Overtime on YouTube.
You go to channel 2600.
It's one word, no space.
Channel 2600 on YouTube at eight o'clock.
And you'll be able to call us and talk to us in a podcast setting.
We'll give you the phone number now.
Why not? 802-321-4225.
I trust you unplugged the phone, Kyle, so it won't ring.
It will not disturb us.
Good. 802-321-HACK is the magical phone number to reach us starting at eight o'clock.
Here's an interesting story that I saw in the New York Times.
Hugh Ma is a 31-year-old software engineer for Airbnb.
He was stunned when he tried to make a coronavirus vaccine appointment for his
mother in early January and saw that there were dozens of websites to check,
each with its own signup protocol.
The city and state appointment systems were completely distinct.
He said, there has to be a better way.
So he developed one.
Yeah.
In less than two weeks, he launched TurboVax, a free website that compiles
availability from the three main city and state New York vaccine systems and
sends the information in real time to Twitter.
Not exactly sure why it's being sent to Twitter, but I'm sure if I experiment
with it, I'll figure it out.
It costs Mr.
Ma less than $50 to build, yet it offers an easier way to spot appointments
than the city and state's official systems do.
It's sort of become a challenge to myself to prove that one person with
time and a little motivation can do.
This wasn't a priority for governments, which was unfortunate, but everyone
has a role to play in the pandemic.
And I'm just doing the very little that I can to make it a little bit easier.
And that, that is a true hacker spirit is to be able to step in
and say, I can do this better.
And I think this is a time where we really, really need that.
Uh, Jeremy Novich, uh, 35 years old, a clinical psychologist in the
Upper West Side, uh, started reaching out to seniors after realizing that
his own older relatives could not have made appointments on their own.
Uh, he said the system is set up to be a technology race between
25 year olds and 85 year olds.
That's not a race that's elder neglect.
Uh, along with, uh, two friends on January 12th, he launched the vaccine
appointment assistance team, a person to person effort that began by helping
older people from local synagogues and expanded to help those who sign
up via a phone hotline or web form.
Uh, because of high demand, the service, which now has 20 volunteer
caseworkers has stopped taking new cases for now, and the founders
are thinking about partnering with a nonprofit to increase capacity.
Um, the most ambitious online volunteer assistance effort in the city is NYC
vaccine list, a website that compiles appointments for more than 50 vaccination
sites, city, state, and private.
About 20 volunteers write code, reach out to community organizations and
call inoculation centers directly to post the center's availabilities.
Dan Benami, a software developer for Datadog and one of New York's NYC
vaccine list founders, uh, said that when he was searching last month
for dates for his grandparents, he was struck at how labor intensive
the appointment system was.
I'm an engineer and an optimizer.
So I was looking at this and saying, it feels like we could maybe look at
pulling this data together and aggregating it so that it's faster
and easier to find vaccines.
He reached out to a couple of friends and got to work.
The site went live five days later on January 16th.
Now inspired by vaccinate CA, a volunteer run vaccine finder site in
California, NYC vaccine list, not only lists available city and state
appointments, but also allows users to click through more directly to some
available appointment times, saving precious minutes in which a
slot could go to someone else.
These are such great developments and a true testament to the power of the
individual, something we were talking about earlier.
Uh, and I just hope that, uh, hackers and people in the computer, um, industry,
uh, throughout the globe are, are brainstorming and trying to figure out
ways to make this, this, um, bureaucratic system work better to everyone's benefit.
Because I took a look at, uh, at some of those sites myself and boy, uh, they are
discouraging and, uh, with everybody pretty much looking for a vaccine, even
now, or in the very near future, we need those sites to work a whole lot better.
Rob.
Yeah, this, this is a great example of the hacker spirit and how it
can be used for the public good.
Um, just want to give a shout out.
It's NYC vaccine list.com.
Dot com is that a site you were just talking about and the Twitter account,
um, is TurboVax and what's really interesting about it being on Twitter
is it's kicking this data out in real time.
So if you go to TurboVax, uh, T-U-R-B-O-V-A-X on Twitter right now,
um, you can see, uh, six minutes ago, there was a post about four appointments
that opened up in Staten Island and, you know, three appointments, uh, before
that, and so, so like bit by bit as this data is coming out, um, you can get it
when you need it, um, you know, updated.
Uh, now, and this stuff is great.
I actually, I actually found that I qualify to get a vaccine.
And the reason I qualify is because I got locked up by the NYPD in 2004 for
the Republican convention when it was in New York city and they stuck me in
period 57, which was this horrible, dusty chemical filled place.
And I developed asthma after that.
And now because I have asthma, I can qualify.
I have a comorbid morbidity.
I never was thought to be happy to say that.
And, um, starting next week, I can actually apply to get a vaccine.
Does that make me first in this little group?
Yeah.
I mean, I had to be born with asthma.
You, you got yours, uh, given to you.
But wait, you qualify then too.
You call it.
If you have asthma, you qualify as well.
So that's, uh, that that's good news.
Actually.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah.
Well, one interesting point about this in the, in the turbo
vaccine in particular, I think is, is so important.
Great, great show of the hacker spirit.
I totally agree.
Uh, and that in monitoring what we've been seeing in the, in the global
DNS with regard to the vaccine, there are so many disparate vaccine sites
that do pop up that allow scheduling.
And I think I've mentioned this before, but some of them are also very
vulnerable in that they rely on these third-party sites like Eventbrite
to do the scheduling for the vaccine.
It'd be pretty easy to script a bot to take up all of those slots.
Let's say if you are some adamant anti-vaxxer and you didn't want
people to get the vaccine because you were affected mentally by
misinformation that was allowed to have been propagated, God knows
who know, you know, from God knows where.
Um, so I, I see this as incredibly important to have this centralized
place where hopefully, um, it's a little bit more secure and
it's a little bit more uniform.
What's also interesting about this from a DNS perspective is this was
developed a couple of weeks ago.
But if you, if you look up turbovax.com, that's a domain
that's existed since 2016.
Would you be able to guess why, Emmanuel?
Uh, what was the actual name of it again?
Turbovax.
And how do you spell vax?
V-A-X.
Is it related to the computer system vax?
No, that would have been my guess.
That would have been my guess.
Think about turbo vax.
Sounds like something else.
Turbo fax.
Turbo tax.
Oh, that was my next guess afterwards.
All right.
Turbo tax.
Was it now?
Yeah.
So turbo vax.com is not the actual domain name.
If you want to get to turbo vax, turbo vax.com will take
you actually to turbo tax.
Turbo vax.info is the actual domain name to which you must navigate.
If you want to get to the scheduling system.
Okay.
Turbo tax people, just as a public service, can you put something on
your website for those people who type turbo vax.com and get to you?
Because clearly they're not looking to file taxes.
They're looking to save their lives.
It's a simple redirect.
It's a simple redirect.
And they've held this domain for the last, uh, close to five years.
It was registered in 19, April, 2016.
So coming up to five years and they have it essentially as a
permutation of turbo tax, right?
You know, maybe somebody squatted on it and they reclaimed it, whatever.
But I think it's time to, to redirect that to turbo vax.info.
I'm going to the site right now to, to verify where it is.
It actually goes turbo turbo vax.com.
You're saying.
This is exactly the wrong season to be, to be making these
kinds of demands of turbo tax.
Yeah, it goes, it goes right to turbo tax.intuit.com.
Uh, and, um, yeah, I, I feel that, uh, either a redirect or notice on their,
on their site, uh, to direct people to who are looking for the vaccine type that
in an error or because it makes sense to type that in a good find there, Alex.
All right.
We, uh, we've been getting lots of mail lately.
We've just been getting more mail than ever.
And that's great.
We love to, let's get a listener mail.
Um, here's one from Alan.
I just tuned into your show, heard you discussing network solutions.
Four years ago, I tried to hire them as my registered agent
for my small LLC business.
They pulled some shady move where they changed the agreement and I wanted to
cancel with them and they made it so impossible that I had to call my credit
card and ask them to cancel them as a vendor, which they did, uh, to this day,
network solutions sends me emails straight to my spam box about unpaid invoices.
I'm sorry, but also relieved to hear I'm not the only person.
So thanks.
Well, thank you, Alan, for making me feel a little bit better, but they did
rip me off as well by charging me for something I never signed up for and doing
it every single year, complaining my credit card number got changed and then
somehow finding out my new credit card number, uh, which, uh, really, that was
very, um, uh, upsetting to me that they actually figured out to, uh, how to, how
to do that somehow.
Um, and actually there's another letter that addresses that from hack five, one,
nine, zero.
I had to laugh as you were describing that someone had guessed your new credit
card information years ago.
I had the same experience and that's when I learned about card updater services.
When a vendor updated my on file card information without my help for a service,
I want it to end.
There is a very good chance you agreed to allow this in the terms and conditions
that none of us, except for Alex ever read.
It does say that Alex American express MasterCard visa and discover all offer
such services.
Thanks for the laugh and keep up the good fight.
Well, I will keep up the good fight, but I wasn't intending to give you a laugh.
Uh, that's very serious.
So I don't know what to do.
I mean, uh, they're going to continue billing me for this.
I can't reach them on the phone.
Um, maybe I'll visit.
That's what I'll do.
I'll go down and figure out where they are.
They'll appreciate that.
Yeah, I'm sure they will.
Yeah.
Um, what else we have here?
Uh, OTH at 2600.com is our, is our email address.
Um, here's a mail from a long time listener.
First time emailer named Brandon.
He's from Seattle.
Um, the solution to your live YouTube show user notification problem.
Uh, yeah, we're not good at YouTube.
So we were trying to figure out how to let more people know about the, um, uh,
the, the podcast edition, the overtime starts at eight o'clock rather than have
people find out at eight o'clock what the URL is.
We found the URL and we tweeted it out on the 2600 account.
Uh, but we figured there's gotta be better ways.
This person says, uh, you start streaming in advance, say 10 to 20 minutes.
And in place of the actual show, you stream a countdown.
Then you share the countdown stream and let people queue up and
await you all coming online.
Uh, then when the time is up, you just switch broadcasts over to you.
Um, I use OBS.
I think that's what we use as well.
Uh, where this can be done by adding a countdown scene and a stream scene.
Uh, Brandon, it's a good idea.
The only problem is that, um, the, the machine that we use for the streaming
is also used for the broadcast.
And since we end at 55 after the hour and the other, uh, uh, podcast begins at,
at eight o'clock, it's not much time for us to, to do the countdown.
Um, but it's a good idea and we'll try to, maybe we'll get another
computer or something we could do.
Yeah.
Like if you were playing a clip that would go out over the countdown
because it also needs to go to a board or something.
It's not easy.
It sounds easy.
It's technically possible.
It's just, uh, you know, be mindful that, you know, it takes some configuration
and, uh, resources and sometimes those are not available.
Okay.
I want to talk about this, this, uh, water supply situation
because this is in the news.
Uh, everyone's, everyone's discussing this right now, uh, from the New York
times, hackers remotely access the water treatment plant of a small Florida
city last week and briefly changed the levels of lie in the drinking water.
Uh, in the kind of critical infrastructure intrusion that cybersecurity
experts have long warned about, I guess we sort of count in that group of people.
Uh, the attack in Oldsmar city of 15,000 people in the Tampa Bay area, uh, was
caught before it could inflict harm.
Sheriff Bob Galtieri of Pinellas County, uh, said at a news conference Monday,
uh, that the, um, level of sodium hydroxide, the main ingredient in drain
cleaner was changed from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.
Um, like somebody leaned on the one key a little bit dangerous levels.
I could have badly sickened residents if it had reached their homes.
This is dangerous stuff.
He said, uh, it's a bad act.
It's a bad actor.
It's not just a little chlorine or a little fluoride.
You're basically talking about lie.
Um, the authority said the plot of unfolded last Friday morning when an
employee noticed that someone was controlling his computer, he initially
dismissed it because the city has software that allows supervisors
to access computers remotely.
But about five and a half hours later, the employee saw that different
programs were opening and that the level of lie was changed.
Um, okay.
So my initial take on this and tell me if I'm, if I'm crazy and I've said this
before, I have been told that I am crazy and unrealistic for even thinking this,
but why in God's name does a plant like this need to be accessed
remotely in the first place?
Aren't there people there?
And apparently there were people on site who should be the only ones that are
able to access the network that changes chemicals in water.
Can someone just tell me why that's, that's a, a, a dream or
something that's impossible, Rob?
Yeah.
I mean, uh, it, it, uh, the, the articles about this, uh, specify that
they had team viewers set up and it was a normal thing for this person to
have their supervisor, uh, go into their computer for supervisory reasons.
But, um, yes, that could be easily put together on a company intranet and
not accessible from the internet.
Um, they, they, you know, when, when the only calls can come from inside
the house, as it were, um, you're, you're a lot safer with something
that could actually cause damage.
Um, by all accounts, this didn't actually change anything in the water supply.
It was somebody who moved a slider up, um, and it was immediately put back down.
But, um, and that's another thing.
Why, why can you move the slider up to poison an entire population
that should be disallowed right there?
If there's no logical reason to ever want to do that.
Yeah.
You're trying to turn down the volume on your computer and all
of a sudden everyone dies.
Um, but, but it is, it is crazy that this stuff would be intranet facing at all.
Mm-hmm.
Alex.
Yeah, I, I think a lot of it is expediency and we can certainly comment
after the fact and say, there are plenty of better ways to do this.
They could have used the secure VPN.
They shouldn't have access, but especially in today's world, where we
see these types of municipalities having a great amount of responsibility
with no regulatory oversight, the lack of funding and the need for their
employees to be able to do their job and administer the water supply, uh, in
the midst of a global health crisis.
So this is, let me just stop you right there though, in the midst of,
cause I keep hearing this a lot too, because of Corona virus, we're
blaming everything on Corona virus.
Um, so people can't go to a water treatment plant where I don't
think that thousands of people work.
I think it's, it's a fairly small crew of people.
I'm not really sure.
But, uh, for something like that, you're saying that people are
being encouraged to stay away.
It seems like that's a bad idea.
Well, I'm not saying it's entirely the cause of this, but it's
certainly part of the problem.
And that you have these quickly stood up it systems, remote access systems
that are put in place without afterthought to the security configurations
that, that may have been overlooked, right?
There are, there are certainly better ways to do this, but these things
are what's known as HMIs or these human machine interfaces where, you know,
they are pretty self-evident from the name.
It's, it's an interface that allows a human to control a complex machine.
Uh, and you know, we live in the 21st century.
We don't necessarily have to be there in order to do it.
I totally agree.
There should be greater security precautions.
And for something like TeamViewer to be used here, which is just, you know,
essentially remote desktop software, I can go and, you know, move the mouse
around on your screen by using TeamViewer.
Um, it's something that's used essentially for, for tech support.
You know, it shouldn't be used to administer a water supply, but from
some of the other stories I've been reading on this too, is that TeamViewer
can actually be considered an improvement to some of these public facing HMI
interfaces that are being put in place.
HMI interfaces that are just out there on the web, at least TeamViewer needs to be
discovered by way of an IP address or, or, or something like that.
So, you know, I, I think we, we, we shouldn't be too quick to, to criticize here.
I also understand that there were other physical safeguards in place that would
have prevented this from actually taking place.
Um, and I, I think that's important, but what's really worrying to me is that,
um, there are going to be more sophisticated adversaries that are able to do this.
And what I think that this, you know, may play into, if you think about the policies
that we had back in the Cold War of mutually assured destruction, uh, and,
and these types of mutually assured destruction was a deterrent for a nuclear
war, and what we have now is more of a race to find critical vulnerabilities
and proof of concept of those critical vulnerabilities between nations.
Uh, because we know that, you know, digital actions can have a kinetic effect.
And if the United States is very, very good at finding critical vulnerabilities
and other nations as infrastructures, then other nations are going to be trying
to find those same, those very same vulnerabilities in our infrastructures.
And this is the, the digital arms race that we're in right now.
And so what's scary to me is that this might, this looks like it could have
been some angry employee who did this.
We also know that there was a similar situation in Israel, you know, and that
may or may not have been connected, but Israel and the United States are
collaborating and sharing information about this, but what this could also be
is proof of concept of a foreign adversary that they have access
to our infrastructure systems.
Yeah, I think that's entirely likely.
And what, um, the actual, um, uh, vulnerability would, may have been,
may have been a completely other type of communication, meaning someone was
monitoring or something that wasn't taken that seriously, allowed someone
who was not authorized to understand that TeamViewer was being used, could
have been, um, sort of a, uh, email that was not handled right, but, but a part
of their regular operational security, not thinking that, um, a public email
or some kind of public communications or, or otherwise insecure communications
would lead to someone maybe getting a copy of that or a key or some, some, uh,
insight into how to get to another layer of, okay, now I'm, now I'm using the
remote viewing software to understand, um, stuff that is completely behind the
scenes, I think, and, and, uh, uh, an operational, um, bit of infrastructure
that has sort of this free software or this commercial stuff, uh, added on ad
hoc in, in sort of a security through obscurity type of way.
And I really think Rob's point and, and, uh, Alex hit it is, it is really hard
to have things offline when you want other things, um, to tell you what kind
of, you know, levels you have of chemicals and you want to have that tied
into procurement so that, you know, orders for things are done and also
maintenance of this stuff, you know, you're maintaining a water net water
system, the computers and equipment may have been introduced a long time ago.
And the budget is there to like buy valves and, and, uh, parts and pipes and
things, you're not exactly, uh, running new cable and upgrading this stuff.
You're sort of adding onto it layer by layer, thinking it won't really be of
any importance and you end up with stuff that's woefully out of date.
So I think it's a combination of all of these things.
And, uh, and, and of course, perhaps, um, increasing amounts of, of, uh, people
listening and trying to find these kinds of vulnerabilities in public infrastructure.
I know it's, it's convenient to be able to do these things remotely, but, uh, you
know, if you need to read things fine, you can read things, but if you need to
change something, you call somebody at the plant and have them do it, they're on
site, you know, sure.
It's easier for you to be able to do everything from your, from your iPhone,
but it's not smart.
It's not, it's not safe.
That's, that's my concern.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, I, I remember I worked in, uh, in production and there was a machine
there that people would use for browsing and stuff, and it's also running all of
the, the controls and systems for a production system that was, uh, you know,
a huge deal and people who are doing that got in a lot of trouble for it, but it
wasn't found out for a long time.
So there's probably a lot of other people who can relate with this story.
I have lots of stories about that.
Okay.
We're, but we're out of time.
Uh, we can continue this on overtime, which is starting up at eight o'clock.
If you go to youtube.com and go to channel 2600, one word, uh, you'll find us there
and we'll be able to take your phone calls.
802-321-4225.
Uh, meanwhile, write to us off the hook, uh, OTH at 2600.com.
We will see you back here next week.
Good night.
Electronic music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music,
electronic music, music, electronic music.
dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
We live in complicated times.
Sometimes it seems like important voices get left out and sometimes it's hard to
know who to trust. But one thing's for sure, for more than 60 years WBAI has
been your go-to for independent non-commercial free speech programming.
Join the WBAI family as a BAI buddy in the name of your favorite show today and
support radio you can trust.
All right here we are in off-the-hook overtime land on YouTube and Kyle you
made it over. Sure yeah I'm here. Let's go back to the Skype people. Alex, Rob, Gila
you're all here. And our listeners will be joining us soon as well at 802-321-4225.
I know we were talking about the the water situation. I just wanted to mention
one thing in in one of the summations which of course I lost in the in the
break. Hang on where was it? Basically it was a situation where somebody saw what
was was actually happening. Yeah the the intruders timing and visibility seemed
almost comical to cybersecurity experts. A supervisor monitoring a plant console
about 1 30 p.m. saw a cursor move across the screen and change settings and was
able to immediately reverse it. The intruder was in and out in five minutes.
I'm wondering if it was just an employee that made a mistake and was accessing
something hit the wrong key. You know I just suspect there's this more to this
story or less to this story than what we're being led to believe. Alex? Yeah I
think I think that's absolutely right. What's fascinating me about the story is
that first of all the only reason we know about it is because of this press
conference that was held for for every one of these things that we know about.
Right. God knows how many there are that we don't know about because not every time
this happens there's a press conference held by what was essentially the police.
So you know it's kind of strange in and of itself to have that and at first
there see they seem to be very forthcoming with the details of this
incident. But since then we don't know very much else. There hasn't been a lot
of other information. We have another another I guess here okay.
Yeah well you know there have been scant details since that that initial
conference about this and it shouldn't be too difficult to have additional
details about this because whoever connected to this particular machine
their IP address is going to be logged somewhere in TeamViewer. Exactly.
Pardon me? Exactly I agree. I smell some kind of a rat here because you know I'm
reading other stories that say this hack exposed vulnerability of cash strapped
US water plants. I don't know why water plants are cash strapped. If you sell
water to people they pay for it should pay for the plant but whatever. It seems
like this is a good opportunity to get word out that hey we need help. We need
we need funding. We need attention. And yeah you should but I don't know this
something about this it just seems a little too easy and convenient with as
you say a lack of real details. Well that and you know seeing the cursor move
across the screen what if this person hadn't seen that? What was going to
happen? I mean there were these physical safeguards that were in place. So then
why have this massive press conference for this minor incursion? I don't know.
There is definitely something off with the story. There's going to be
something more forthcoming and and maybe there is something more nefarious
coming which would explain that the scant detail since the initial press
conference. We'll keep watching it. We have a call. Good evening caller you're on
on the on the show. It's Bobson from Bulgaria. I assume you're in Bulgaria.
Yeah I am. Last week you talked about the green letterbox picture. Yeah the thing
that's that's on the actual YouTube channel right now the podcast that green
mailbox has been has been verified as being from Republic of Ireland. Yes have
you gotten any replies to that because I did some research last week about the
result about a hundred years ago in 1921 or 1922 when Ireland became
independent all the post boxes and it's not a mailbox because it has the word
post engraved on it the green thing on the picture so all the red post boxes
were painted green for the Irish mail in 1922 or 21 I think. Wow I'm impressed you
found that out. And this box is in front of a arched doorway with some
lettering which suggests that it says Dublin Castle. Well you're kind of
scaring me here you're figuring out exactly where this mailbox is. Soon
you'll know when when the picture was taken. The mailbox in front of Dublin
Castle was the first mailbox to be painted green as opposed to the red
boxes for the Royal Mail of Great Britain or what have you. Well if I ever
want to hide the facts about a mailbox I know I know you're not the person to try
that with. Well if you search Dublin Castle and mailbox things come up in a
search engine. Okay well anything else you want to tell us? No don't search for
mailbox search for post box. Post box yeah there's definitely a difference.
Bobson good as always to hear from you I know it's very late over there where
you are what time is it? Well we're about 7 hours in the future here which means I
have to do the work okay so that makes it 3.06 in the morning. The noontime
trial conferences at the Senate over there are shown in the early evening for
however long they decide to meet. 16 hours they said earlier today. You know
Bobson one day we have to do a radio show in in our morning or afternoon so
that you don't always sound so tired because I you know we've hung out with
you and you're very energetic and you don't talk like you're about to fall
asleep usually so we have to do an earlier show so we can hear the
energetic Bobson. I don't think it's worth the bother. Well we'll we'll we'll
decide that. I'm always up to doing a show live at the conference as we've
done in the past. All right well listen we're gonna move on to another phone
call but you get some sleep and we'll hopefully talk to you again soon.
All right take care. 802-321-4225 is our phone number. 802-321-HAC. 802 of
course is the area code for Vermont which we are not in but we just happened
to get that cool sounding phone number. We had a bunch of stories we weren't
able to to get to. That's always the case with every single program that we do.
This is the one I really wanted to to read though. Just because you consider
someone to be in your family even if it's not necessarily by blood doesn't
mean that they can't turn around and betray you or do things that work
against you. I know it sounds kind of dark but this story leads over to India
where a man was who was being extorted by what he thought was a group of
hackers found out that in fact it was his 11 year old son. Oh is this gonna be
one of these feel-good stories. The man claimed he was initially threatened by
the group to pay a large amount of money to them unless he wanted them to leak
his alleged obscene photos and family details. His email was hacked where the
password was changed along with the mobile number associated with it. The
hackers in quotes appropriately enough even claimed that they were watching him
and his family and continue to harass them. However when the man eventually
reached out to the police for help they discovered that the IP address of the
so-called hackers came from the man's own house meaning that the threats were
made from within the house. The police started to question the man's son who
later confessed that he was behind it probably pretty quickly being 11 years
old. He told the police that he learned what he needed to know from watching
videos on YouTube such as how to avoid getting caught. As you can see those
videos didn't work that well. The police say they are continuing to investigate
the matter. I don't know why. They pretty much have the whole thing solved. It's
unclear as to what might happen to the kid and if he could eventually face
charges. I don't know how that would go in court with dad there on the witness
stand and and the kid in shackles. Why would you try to do that to your own dad
inside the same house? I could see if maybe he lives somewhere else but you're
right there with it you're having dinner with him right after you threaten him.
It doesn't make sense. I mean can you really pull that off at 11? I mean I want
to see what this kid does in the future. All right let's take this phone call. Good
evening. You're on off the wall overtime. Off the hook overtime. Sorry wrong show.
Go ahead. Hello? I think they hung up. Nope sorry. Oh there you are. I'm on mute. Oh you are on mute.
That happens on the phone too. How about that? It's the times we live in. Hey I was calling to
see if any of your listeners could help me out with something. I've talked to
Alex about this. This is hack 5190 out in Wyoming and our legislature is
planning to propose a road usage tax. My understanding is that a few of the
states further west of us, California, Washington and some of them have them
and my concern obviously being a hacker is privacy information. I don't want
anybody sticking a device in my car that's going to know where it is 24 by
7 or how fast it's going or anything like that and I'm just curious since
these things are obviously in use in other states what your listeners or you
guys know about these things to kind of help fight against it so we don't
get one here. Kyle is from Washington. I gotta admit though I like kind of missed
this just by a little bit. In fact the last time I got to take one of those
roads was specifically the new tunnel that has replaced the viaduct on the
waterfront in Seattle. At the time it was still free. It has now since become a
toll use road and that requires that you have I think what's called good to go
and that is their scheme. The most exposure I've had to this type of road
use scheme is actually in New York with the E-ZPass system. I believe that's the
type of technology you're referring to right? No it's actually different.
E-ZPass is voluntary this sounds like it's not voluntary. But you're
talking about a device that has some kind of location based fare system that
sounds like a lot of what the road toll is it or it's a road toll or road use?
It's a road use so what it would actually do is it would have a GPS device
in it and it's going to track your usage of the roadway right whether you've
driven three miles or whether you've driven a hundred miles it's going to
know that it's going to know where you were when you drove those miles what
time of the day and how fast you went. Wow it's like a black box really. Yes sir
that's exactly what their plan and I know Alex and I spoke about this he put
me in touch with the EFF and the gentleman who he put me in contact with
is out on maternity leave. Now thankfully the state legislator
has not scheduled this for a hearing yet so it hasn't gotten out of the committee
but again I'm just trying to understand other states that have these because all
of the states outsources to some third-party company and and just like
Verizon you know I don't really want my data in a third party's hands and I
certainly don't want them to be selling it out of the back door. So are you for
sure you're saying Washington does in fact use this because I'm not aware of
it being in in use are you saying it is being proposed as sort of a next step in
in taxation for roads? Now from what I can tell it was it was looked at and it
was approved in Washington it was approved in California and I think that
Colorado actually looked at it as well I don't know if Colorado has approved it
Okay is it not implemented is it statewide or is it just different
counties that are implementing it in the state? I'd have to learn a lot more about
this I'm not aware I am a driver in Washington State and I am really
interested I've not heard of this and been notified by the the state licensing
about eligibility and I have about the the passes and I know that's a big deal
in like specific projects like I mentioned in in Seattle there and of
course the same goes out here with toll roads. Yeah so so from what I can tell
and you're right passes are slightly different as you guys have alluded to
you know that that's typically a voluntary system so I create an account
with some agency and on the East Coast where you guys are at it would be an
easy pass agency right they send me a transponder I put that on my vehicle and
then when I use a roadway as you enter or exit one of those gantries at a
plaza there's an antenna that's above your vehicle and what it does is it
activates it the device the transponder sends the information the various
agencies along the East Coast exchange information and whoever you have an
account and a credit card on file they charge you for the usage of that roadway
if you don't have a transponder then typically they take images of your
license plate OCR those images and then contact the appropriate state agency
where that vehicle is registered and we'll send you depending on what what
state or Commonwealth you drove through and what roadway it is you'll either get
a invoice or you'll get a fine yeah well the way it's it's it's happened now in
New York where toll booths have been eliminated not everybody has an easy
pass so I don't know if there's a penalty involved I think it's a higher
rate it will take a picture of your license plate and and mail you a bill do
you have any indication what would happen to somebody if they didn't have
this device on their car in Wyoming after this is put into place well
according to the legislation so far they realize that there are some people who
either don't have an OTP to port on their vehicle or do not want to have
this on their vehicle maybe they have something else in there like one of
those progressive safe driver discount dongles I was just going to mention
that that's exactly what this sounds like if it is OBD to it is OBD to so
their plan is to have some alternate method although that's certainly not
documented or described how that would work and I my guess would be that would
put the onus on me as the vehicle owner to report to the state how many miles I
drove and then I obviously owe the state so much money per mile for my usage of
the roadway now the reason they want to track it through a GPS is as you may be
aware Wyoming has a lot of territory but we do not have a lot of roads so there
are a lot lots of driving that occurs on BLM territory on private lands on farms
you know ranches those types of things they should they would not be taxable so
they need to know where your vehicle is 24 by 7 when it's moving what is BLM
territory Bureau of Land Management oh okay I totally misread that yeah I
thought Wyoming was a lot more advanced in that's what surprises me how are they
how are they implementing things like this with all this you know
individuality and and you know government is bad and all that kind of
thing and yet this this seems super Orwellian to me well I would agree with
it it is but the interesting thing is this state and and I keep wanting to say
commonwealth because I obviously moved here from Pennsylvania but we have no
regulations against PII right we have no protections for my PII so once the state
gets it they could give it to anyway anybody now back east and I presume New
York is the same as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where when you register
your vehicle it's registered with the state you obviously get a state license
plate and in Pennsylvania you pay a different fee whether it's a passenger
vehicle a station wagon a truck and based on weights here in Wyoming it's
very similar to California where your vehicle plates are based on the MSRP of
the vehicle when it was new regardless of what you've paid for it and not only
that the vehicles are registered by the county even though you get a state plate
rather than the vehicle being registered with the state that's weird it's a
different system because the county makes the bulk of that money that's how
the county operates sure they don't tax you yeah I had no idea the Californians
was so different I also want you to weigh in here go ahead yeah and hey
5190 I was thinking about this too and and it is unfortunate that my good
friend over at the EFF is on materially hopefully he will get back to us he's
very good guy but the other thing I was thinking about here and I may be able to
help you out as well is since this appears to be at the bill level it's
gonna certainly be a local issue and privacy activists civil rights activists
probably want to lobby the legislature to to kill this thing before does in
fact become a law because it does seem rather intrusive at least from the way
that you're describing it and so in my opinion I think this would probably be
an issue better suited for your local ACLU chapter the ACLU of Wyoming the and
I may be able to help you there because one of my law partners lives in Montana
and his wife is the executive director of the ACLU in Montana so I imagine she
probably knows who the ACLU director is in Wyoming and and and we can connect
you you know Montana and Wyoming are very very different well yes yeah they
are sure what they're very similar as well well that's a surprise okay that's
uh that's very revealing you know what what you're sharing with us and I'd
certainly like to know more about it as as a car driver myself yeah it's so
curious it makes me really have more questions like what is what is the
advantage why is why do I want this as a consumer what what is the the payoff for
giving this stuff up and I think it also kind of relates to some of the other
stuff we were talking about with privacy and we were talking about section 230
stuff where that might not even be the best route there's so many bigger more
philosophical privacy related things that have not been addressed and I think
modeling and and revisiting ideas and schemes like the GDPR in Europe which
was instituted not too long ago those ways of future-proofing a lot of these
kinds of laws and technologies and strategies would go a really really long
way to head this stuff off instead of us being reactive and saying oh let's go
and beg and plead with social media to try harder and you know maybe we'll fix
it after it's totally blown up in our faces I just think that's it's nice but
it's not effective well that's why we're having this conversation and hopefully
we learn a lot more about this I think there's a good article in this for sure
because I want to know more about that technology no Rob you have something to
say about this Rob you're muted Rob yeah you're definitely I just wanted to
invite any of our listeners who have direct experience of this if you're if
you're in a state where this happens or if you've had access to one of these
pieces of equipment anything you want to tell us we're interested in hearing so
either call us here or send us an email OTH at 2600 comm yeah I will email you
some links to PDFs for documents from the various states that have looked into
this and this isn't necessarily brand new technology this has existed on
commercial over-the-road vehicles for years right fleet operators like to know
where their vehicles are and and they want to know you know if somebody's
stopped along the roadway idling for two hours wasting time etc so this
technology has been around for quite some time it's just now that they want
to bring it down into the regular passenger vehicle and your consumers
level for lack of a better way to describe that but it is interesting
because as a resident they would know where I am and and this is supposedly
going to help pay for the fuel you know from the in the fuel taxes that the
out-of-state people drive when they come in they won't have these so they're
gonna they're gonna pay for their usage of Wyoming roadways through fuel taxes
but I buy my fuel at the exact same gas station and don't get a discount when I
go in as a consumer so I can say in Pennsylvania when I owned boats I used
to track how many gallons of fuel that I bought and used in my boats because the
Fish and Game Commission would get that tax money back from the Department of
Transportation here I'm gonna have to somehow track my fuel usage as well and
then my fuel usage on the public roads so that I can try to get that waived
against what they're charging me for the miles I've driven it's it's it's a
logistics nightmare for me as a vehicle owner and user of the roadway but more
to one of the points that Kyle had brought up I mean the only protections
we have here is a breach notification beyond that there is no PII protection
in this state yeah and I could see it easily be implemented as in the form of
an app I mean now that you brought it up and and like okay so you know drivers
that don't have smartphones okay you can sign up for $49.99 whatever you know
make it up and then then you get some device that is a part of this system as
you said like for the same style as trucking and has been implemented before
but it really is interesting that this is this is the solution perhaps to
sidestepping increases in gas taxation specifically on the table as well for
this year oh great yeah and like and and some and we're supposed to welcome this
and turn a blind eye at the same time because maybe we'll have nicer roads in
Wyoming I mean I don't know you would know better as a driver there but that's
always held out as as that's the carrot in front of somebody oh golly well let
me just sign right up yeah it's just it's a little cynical all right thanks
thanks for your call and for all that information all right take care Wow
Jun's writes into us saying Washington State website has multiple reporting
options including prepaying for blocks of miles and self-reporting of odometer
readings yeah I don't like where this is going I don't want to have a black box
in my car I don't want to be given you know tickets for doing slightly wrong
things at any time it just feels like utter surveillance and yeah it might
work for fleet operators and on massive 18 wheelers and things like that we are
working for somebody but as individuals no I'm kind of surprised Wyoming of all
places is pushing something like this but it seems like you know he had he had
a potential solution just by registering a car outside the state and
then you wouldn't have to do honestly that's really common in Washington
there's tons of people they get they get organ plates they they go wherever else
and then the car ends up being there constantly and you know that there's all
kinds of and that's big just from tabs on license plate registration people
don't want to pay whatever it is because it's rated based on the type of vehicle
and emissions I believe was part of it and so if it's a more environmentally
costly car you might have higher tabs so if you want the sporty car you have to
pay and if you don't want a tab Kyle like registration for the year okay we
don't use that word it's like a sticker uh-huh yeah so there's there's it's a
cat-and-mouse thing so it's really interesting eight zero two three two one
four two two five is our phone number line is open and when I say line I mean
it we only have one line if you aren't the person talking to us you get
voicemail and we can't turn it off we're sorry and that's that's just the way the
system is set up Alex looks like you have something to say you've got your I
always have something to say I probably forgot what it was at this point but I
you know I do think this is an interesting caller and and I think again
the local chapter of the ACLU may be best suited to deal with this but I'm
really surprised at this notion of individual taxation that you know it's a
very specific thing based on usage and maybe in a large trucking companies are
going to be paying more of their fair share but it just seems like a major
privacy invasion for a minor benefit yes you're gonna be paying a little bit less
in taxes perhaps but you have to give up all the privacy Alex it's not it's
not a minor benefit for the consumer it's it's a major benefit for the
government because they get to track everybody and people willingly go along
with this because of the promise of you know saving a few pennies then the issue
too is that if the government is tracking that how are they storing that
particular data with whom are they badly that's how it's gonna get leaked people
gonna find it it's got it's a nightmare we've learned this so many times but
more than people finding it sure it can be leaked but also if that data is
available on almost every citizen in the state and I say this every time we talk
about data repositories is that it's going to be subpoenaed people are going
to ask the government for it if they know that that data is there you're
gonna see subpoenas for that information and it will be shared because at that
point you're going to have to respond to legal process like the government is so
it's it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out I'd like to learn more
about other states that have implemented some kind of measure like this well if I
can as long as they're spewing out acronyms EFF and ACLU I think one more
might be helpful and that's triple-a they might take a very keen interest in
this in the state of Wyoming and maybe they're good at leading lobbying efforts
I'm just not sure exactly what direction they'll go in on this but I think with
enough consumer input they might make the right choice our phone number eight
zero two three two one four two two five we're gonna give it a couple of
minutes see if any more calls come in if not we'll sign off for the night
anything else happening in our lives we didn't get a chance to talk to on the on
the show talk about on the show no well I'm I'm here in Pennsylvania we've had
literally now within the last week and a half about four feet of snow in the
Poconos we've got snow here in New York we've got snow too we've had like three
this this is crazy this felt like I was living in another planet where it just
snows all the time I mean it was three days without the snow stopping I hope
you're not complaining I hope this isn't complaining I hope this is just you
expressing your your wonderment at the whole thing well it is wonderment and I
and it is absolutely gorgeous but you know there are there are some
inconveniences that go along with having you know to shovel out snow and
balcony and all these kinds of things it's you know it's really it's been
crazy and having lived in the 802 for three years myself I mean I'm no
stranger to to snow but I feel like this was really something extraordinary over
the last week and a half to see this and if we're not going to have a caller I
can tell a really interesting story about snow in the 802 and if you are a
caller you can interrupt Alex's story midway through so take of the fun go
ahead so my first year of law school in Vermont my girlfriend at the time has a
pitbull the pitbulls name was never don't there's another story you know
naming a dog in adverb but never any vet never yeah wait it's never an adverb
actually she was rescued from Brentwood she fell into the dive tank at the
Brentwood public pool and my girlfriend was a lifeguard there and she she saved
this dog and adopted her but in any event so never had never actually seen
snow this high when we came back from the Christmas break there was about
three feet of snow where I lived in in Vermont up this dirt road on a mountain
and it was she had a lot of difficulty Wow never is an adverb I'm sorry I just
looked that up yeah I learned something today okay I'm sorry continue well
because yeah look it's modifying a verb right you never do something you know
most adverbs end in L why but I'm not going to belabor the point sure yeah
well they they modify verbs right so you know this is a minor digression you
don't never ending wait never ending is not an adverb I don't I don't think now
so in any event never is unable to do her business she's unable to go to the
bathroom outside because the snow is so deep this poor pitbull is just sinking
into the snow she can't go so she's she's holding in the the this is poop
for for three days right and he hasn't gone good grocery shopping in New
Hampshire in West Lebanon I'm sorry I just had to break in because dogs for
some reason why is it that there's undue attention on how they relieve
themselves that's all they seem to be about you never have this with cats any
other animal in the animal kingdom they do their business you don't know about
it it just happens somewhere off-camera but with dogs front and center you know
I drive down the street there's a dog in the middle of a lawn you know doing
things and I'm getting triggered I grew up on the dog farm I just don't what is
it about these animals that that's what they're all about or is it us are we
doing it to them it might just be you fixating on it I don't know uh-huh yeah
dogs out walking why is the dog out walking because he has to defecate or
urinate or something like that you know why is the cat out the cats out because
it wants to be out they've been living with us for 10,000 years you think by
now they've learned to use a toilet I get it yeah so in any event never she
can't go to the bathroom she's she's holding it in for three days come back
from the grocery store and I lived in a barn actually was a barn that was
converted into a living space and who went upstairs you wait you lived in the
barn I lived in a bar that explains a lot I you were brought up in a barn then I
wish I was actually better but the in any event there was a that telltale
smell that she had gone to the bathroom finally after three days and so I go
into the little study area that I had with all my first-year law books and she
had done her business entirely and squarely without touching the carpet or
anything off the mark on one of my law textbooks and it was a textbook for my
tort class you know towards our non-civil wrongs so like a personal
injury claim would be a tort claim and the name of the book on which she
defecated I'm not kidding was accidental justice I hope Alex I hope because you
will never get this opportunity again I hope you took a picture of this every
legal seminar into into the the void of history in the future will will have a
picture of this if you took a picture you know I don't know actually I don't
remember if I had a picture this is way back in 2002 I would go out and buy a
camera to take a picture of that come on it's such commentary all right I
think we're we're out of listeners and out of time so I want to thank people
for for calling and for writing and for listening and for just being there and
we of course will be back next week for both off the hook and off the hook over
time see you guys
okay bye