[00:00.000 --> 00:01.500]  ...at 6.30 p.m.
[00:02.160 --> 00:05.460]  Stay tuned for Off the Hook, coming up.
[00:05.540 --> 00:06.920]  It is now 7 p.m.
[00:10.350 --> 00:11.390]  We're sorry.
[00:11.670 --> 00:17.690]  The number you have reached, 99.5 WBAI, is now Off the Hook.
[00:23.150 --> 00:27.690]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:28.570 --> 00:33.130]  I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
[00:33.750 --> 00:35.990]  But we couldn't get much worse.
[00:39.910 --> 00:41.410]  Best is back from worst.
[00:42.190 --> 00:43.950]  I hope that's understood.
[00:44.130 --> 00:44.930]  One day we go.
[02:02.630 --> 02:03.870]  And a very good evening, Trevor.
[02:03.970 --> 02:05.530]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:05.730 --> 02:08.910]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:09.730 --> 02:10.750]  Hello, can you hear me?
[02:10.810 --> 02:11.870]  I see you, too.
[02:11.970 --> 02:12.150]  What?
[02:12.970 --> 02:13.710]  It's a little extra.
[02:13.970 --> 02:17.010]  It's on TV, because both you and Alex are running back to your chair.
[02:17.170 --> 02:18.310]  Do I look crazy?
[02:18.510 --> 02:19.410]  I look crazy?
[02:19.810 --> 02:21.650]  Alex, are you there as well?
[02:21.650 --> 02:24.190]  Kyle, you're both running back to your seats at the same time.
[02:24.210 --> 02:25.590]  It was comical.
[02:25.710 --> 02:26.870]  Well, we have a video show to start.
[02:26.990 --> 02:27.610]  Yes, I'm here.
[02:27.770 --> 02:31.230]  Why don't you just stay in the chair from the beginning, instead of making field trips?
[02:31.850 --> 02:32.790]  I think he's gone again.
[02:33.250 --> 02:33.850]  There we are.
[02:33.950 --> 02:36.450]  Nice NASA shirt you got on there.
[02:36.550 --> 02:36.830]  Wow.
[02:37.170 --> 02:38.950]  Oh, that's intentional.
[02:39.070 --> 02:40.130]  Why don't we have that, Kyle?
[02:40.390 --> 02:41.470]  Why don't we have a NASA shirt?
[02:41.530 --> 02:42.210]  We have enough.
[02:43.390 --> 02:44.710]  We've got our hands full here.
[02:44.770 --> 02:45.650]  Do we have friends at NASA?
[02:45.810 --> 02:47.170]  Does Off the Hook have friends at NASA?
[02:47.250 --> 02:49.150]  I'd like to know that, because you guys are cool.
[02:49.150 --> 02:58.290]  You know, you and JPL and all those SpaceX people getting out into space, I think it's the most inspirational, amazing thing that we have going for us right now.
[02:58.430 --> 03:01.590]  It's not saying a lot, I know, but it inspires me.
[03:01.610 --> 03:06.090]  So if you're out there, hats off to you, and maybe send us a hat as well.
[03:06.250 --> 03:07.790]  Or invite us to a launch.
[03:07.870 --> 03:08.390]  That would be cool.
[03:08.510 --> 03:10.030]  Wouldn't that be cool to broadcast from a launch?
[03:10.150 --> 03:11.830]  Oh, I think there's an open invite for that.
[03:12.030 --> 03:12.650]  Or from...
[03:12.650 --> 03:13.650]  For all space enthusiasts.
[03:13.650 --> 03:17.690]  From orbit, if you want to shoot us up into space, we would be open to that.
[03:17.850 --> 03:19.250]  Let's pump the brakes on that a little.
[03:19.350 --> 03:19.490]  Yeah.
[03:20.270 --> 03:23.310]  Well, you know, we have a special program tonight.
[03:23.510 --> 03:26.510]  No overtime tonight, because we are in fundraising mode.
[03:26.550 --> 03:28.230]  We haven't done this for like a year.
[03:28.910 --> 03:30.170]  You might have noticed that.
[03:30.390 --> 03:36.050]  BAI has a new way of doing things, where we do regular radio, which is what we want to do.
[03:36.050 --> 03:42.570]  And then we're preempted every now and then for fundraising that brings in more than we could ever hope for.
[03:42.870 --> 03:46.850]  But tonight, we're going to try and bring something in on our own.
[03:47.230 --> 03:48.890]  And for that, we need your help.
[03:49.170 --> 03:51.010]  Listeners, we need your help on that.
[03:51.230 --> 03:55.650]  The number to call is 516-620-3602.
[03:55.850 --> 03:58.950]  The website is give2wbai.org.
[03:59.030 --> 03:59.790]  That's the number two.
[04:01.290 --> 04:05.610]  And what we are offering tonight, we have one very special thing.
[04:06.490 --> 04:09.870]  And that is attached to our conference.
[04:10.110 --> 04:12.330]  Our conference is called HOPE.
[04:12.590 --> 04:14.930]  HOPE stands for Hackers on Planet Earth.
[04:15.470 --> 04:18.670]  Yeah, it all ties into NASA and space and that kind of thing.
[04:18.970 --> 04:22.750]  But we are a radio show about hacking, about the hacker culture.
[04:23.330 --> 04:32.730]  And this year was especially, or last year, was especially challenging because it was supposed to be our most recent conference.
[04:32.730 --> 04:37.170]  But of course, with the pandemic and all that, it became a big challenge.
[04:37.690 --> 04:42.610]  And we were faced with a number of questions as to what we were going to do.
[04:43.230 --> 04:45.750]  What we wound up doing, I thought, was awesome.
[04:48.490 --> 04:49.770]  We went online.
[04:49.990 --> 04:56.710]  You know, when we talked about going online, I thought that was kind of a lame way of doing things, you know, it just didn't seem right.
[04:56.730 --> 05:00.430]  But the way we did it, I really am amazed.
[05:00.570 --> 05:05.450]  And when I say we, I mean hundreds of people that got together and made this work.
[05:06.450 --> 05:07.910]  We had a nine-day event.
[05:08.030 --> 05:09.410]  Instead of a three-day event, we tripled it.
[05:09.490 --> 05:10.530]  We had nine days.
[05:11.630 --> 05:14.070]  And we had more talks than we ever had before.
[05:14.170 --> 05:16.310]  I think the total number of talks was 129.
[05:17.110 --> 05:18.330]  We had workshops.
[05:18.330 --> 05:19.490]  We had concerts.
[05:19.490 --> 05:23.090]  We had all kinds of social activities going on.
[05:23.950 --> 05:30.090]  And it really was a shot in the arm in the middle of the summer that I think we all needed.
[05:30.190 --> 05:31.290]  I know I certainly did.
[05:32.210 --> 05:37.470]  And what we're offering tonight is a double thumb drive.
[05:37.950 --> 05:40.370]  It basically means one for each thumb, I guess.
[05:41.270 --> 05:45.590]  It's filled with all of the talks in full HD video.
[05:46.210 --> 05:50.470]  All of the talks, every single one of them, MP4s, you can copy them, you can do whatever you want with them.
[05:51.570 --> 05:57.310]  And we also include audio files in case you're driving and you want to listen to it, you don't want to actually see it, you can do that too.
[05:58.630 --> 06:03.950]  Also includes all of the concert presentations that we had every night.
[06:03.950 --> 06:05.270]  We had midnight concerts.
[06:05.630 --> 06:06.910]  Those are all in there as well.
[06:06.990 --> 06:07.790]  We have some workshops.
[06:08.250 --> 06:14.050]  We have the music that talented composer Cameron Glass put together for us.
[06:14.190 --> 06:15.750]  Every day we had a different theme.
[06:16.310 --> 06:17.810]  It is an amazing package.
[06:17.990 --> 06:20.530]  And it's yours for a pledge of $100.
[06:21.750 --> 06:24.730]  It's called the thumb drive collection.
[06:25.470 --> 06:26.150]  Oh, you know what?
[06:26.390 --> 06:28.030]  You get more than that too.
[06:28.130 --> 06:29.050]  You get a tote bag as well.
[06:29.070 --> 06:29.930]  Yeah, don't stop there.
[06:29.950 --> 06:30.550]  I forgot.
[06:30.850 --> 06:31.090]  Wow.
[06:31.290 --> 06:32.450]  We're adding things into this.
[06:32.550 --> 06:33.570]  Do you want to tell us about the tote bag?
[06:33.570 --> 06:45.010]  Well, to carry this enormous collection of information, we're going to include one of the government seal tote bags that we've boasted about in the past.
[06:45.250 --> 06:47.770]  And it is included with this offer.
[06:47.890 --> 07:00.770]  So for that pledge, you'll be able to hold both of these thumb drives in a container, a fabric container with a white screen print of the infamous...
[07:01.590 --> 07:05.590]  Why would you put two tiny thumb drives in a big, massive tote bag?
[07:05.770 --> 07:07.190]  It would just look kind of silly.
[07:07.370 --> 07:08.450]  I thought that would make you laugh.
[07:09.430 --> 07:10.430]  Well, here's something else.
[07:10.590 --> 07:11.770]  There's one more item too.
[07:11.910 --> 07:13.790]  And this might fit in the tote bag a little better.
[07:14.290 --> 07:15.990]  It's an actual letter.
[07:16.990 --> 07:18.210]  Way to come up with these ideas.
[07:18.430 --> 07:20.370]  A letter from everybody at Off the Hook.
[07:20.550 --> 07:22.390]  A personalized thank you letter.
[07:22.690 --> 07:25.590]  A personalized thank you letter with all of our signatures.
[07:25.590 --> 07:27.010]  So you can steal our identities.
[07:27.430 --> 07:27.930]  No, no.
[07:28.370 --> 07:29.050]  Don't do that.
[07:30.010 --> 07:32.630]  We're going to sign them however we feel like signing them.
[07:32.750 --> 07:34.070]  Might not be our official signatures.
[07:34.210 --> 07:35.690]  I might use my foot to sign them.
[07:35.750 --> 07:37.770]  Yeah, but it's suitable for framing is what I'm told.
[07:38.210 --> 07:39.530]  Yeah, suitable for framing.
[07:39.630 --> 07:41.370]  Doesn't mean you have to frame it, but you could.
[07:41.850 --> 07:42.350]  All right?
[07:42.470 --> 07:44.050]  And that you can stick in your tote bag.
[07:44.690 --> 07:46.250]  I don't mean that to sound insulting.
[07:47.730 --> 07:52.570]  And also the two flash drives or thumb drives, whatever you want to call them, that come with it.
[07:53.490 --> 07:55.870]  And in the tote bag.
[07:56.010 --> 07:57.310]  So, yeah, that's amazing for $100.
[07:57.750 --> 08:01.370]  But you're supporting WBAI by pledging for this.
[08:01.910 --> 08:04.970]  The Hope 2020 Thumb Drive Collection with Tote Bag.
[08:05.210 --> 08:10.110]  Call 516-620-3602 and demand that.
[08:10.190 --> 08:10.850]  Well, don't demand it.
[08:10.870 --> 08:11.290]  Be nice.
[08:11.510 --> 08:13.050]  The people there know all about it.
[08:13.590 --> 08:16.410]  Now, I'm not sure if it's on the website.
[08:16.410 --> 08:26.790]  If you're not able to find it on the website and that is how you choose to pledge, send us an email, OTH at 2600.com, and we'll help you get through the process.
[08:28.210 --> 08:32.470]  But we have a limited supply, so it will run out.
[08:32.630 --> 08:33.630]  It won't last forever.
[08:33.630 --> 08:48.050]  This is so crucial to the thank you and the sincerity therein with this letter and gift we have for you is to match the sincerity, we hope, is behind your contribution to WBAI.
[08:48.050 --> 09:03.570]  It's just a critical thing to increase our operating funds so that we can continue to broadcast and operate the station as well as bring you amazing shows like Off the Hook.
[09:03.810 --> 09:21.030]  And it's just the least we could do to show our appreciation, to really drive home the point that every bit, the smallest to larger contributions, whatever number fits your budget, is so, so appreciated around here.
[09:21.110 --> 09:26.430]  It's a little more than the least we can do because, you know, the least we can do, we feel we should do a little more than that.
[09:26.570 --> 09:29.170]  So we're doing the least plus a little more.
[09:29.290 --> 09:31.290]  That's what I like to view it as.
[09:32.010 --> 09:33.930]  I'm not sure exactly how you qualify that.
[09:34.050 --> 09:35.770]  But, Alex, I think you have something to say?
[09:36.490 --> 09:45.230]  Along the lines of the signatures, I'll tell you a short anecdote here about signatures and sending things through the mail.
[09:45.390 --> 09:53.350]  And, look, this will be no small feat to send this around to all of the co-hosts of Off the Hook.
[09:53.370 --> 09:54.310]  Yeah, how are we going to do that?
[09:54.430 --> 09:56.950]  You know, our promotions manager, I don't think, thought this through.
[09:57.070 --> 10:01.830]  How are we going to get everybody to sign when we haven't seen each other in person in over a year?
[10:01.890 --> 10:03.390]  Well, maybe just under a year.
[10:03.770 --> 10:06.250]  But, what, are we going to mail it to every single person?
[10:07.130 --> 10:09.390]  Yeah, I think we're going to have to do it through the mail.
[10:09.390 --> 10:16.350]  And then, you know, by the good grace of the United States Postal Service, it eventually ends up in the hands of the listener.
[10:16.370 --> 10:19.790]  Do you know how much of a profit the post office is going to make from this one letter?
[10:20.350 --> 10:26.370]  You know, because it's going to be sent to at least four or five or six different people and then to the person who pledged.
[10:27.290 --> 10:27.870]  That's true.
[10:28.190 --> 10:29.610]  So, once again...
[10:29.610 --> 10:31.610]  If you support the post office, this is a good pledge for you.
[10:31.610 --> 10:32.590]  Please participate.
[10:32.590 --> 10:38.110]  We want to get as much business to them as well as pledges coming in.
[10:38.270 --> 10:41.610]  So, 516-620-3602.
[10:42.190 --> 10:49.830]  All you have to ask for tonight to get this premium is for the Hope 2020 Thumb Drive Collection with Totebag.
[10:50.250 --> 10:50.630]  Yes.
[10:50.770 --> 10:52.290]  And give to WBAI.org.
[10:52.410 --> 10:56.390]  And, again, if you don't see it there, email us, OTH at 2600.com.
[10:56.530 --> 10:57.430]  Yes, Alex, you had more.
[10:57.430 --> 11:05.650]  When it is my turn to put my signature on the letter, I do promise to the listeners that I promise to make it interesting in some respect.
[11:05.910 --> 11:17.470]  And I'll tell you, in 1994, I tracked down in Austin, Texas, the good old 512, Bruce Sterling, one of my favorite authors.
[11:17.470 --> 11:24.830]  It was also, obviously, the author of The Hacker Crackdown, which was very interesting to read as a teenager.
[11:25.490 --> 11:29.610]  And, actually, I redboxed a call to Bruce Sterling on Thanksgiving Day.
[11:29.750 --> 11:34.850]  I remember I skateboarded up to my local shopping center, redboxed a call to Bruce Sterling, and he picked up the phone.
[11:35.750 --> 11:38.350]  Can I just ask, Alex, what got into your head?
[11:39.070 --> 11:51.930]  You're in the middle of Thanksgiving, presumably with family, and you're like, I know, I'm going to get on my bike, go to a shopping center, redboxed a call to Bruce Sterling, who was also going through Thanksgiving, and that's going to be my day.
[11:52.930 --> 11:53.850]  That's exactly right.
[11:53.850 --> 11:56.410]  And we wound up spending about two hours on the phone.
[11:56.810 --> 11:58.530]  I mean, it was actually incredible.
[11:58.670 --> 12:05.650]  I think he really... I wanted the respite from Thanksgiving, and I think I gave him a perfect excuse to take a respite from Thanksgiving.
[12:06.090 --> 12:08.510]  And so we stayed on the phone for about two hours.
[12:08.710 --> 12:10.070]  We've been friends ever since then.
[12:10.130 --> 12:13.150]  This was, I think, 1993 or 1994.
[12:13.150 --> 12:24.750]  However, what I did afterwards, and this is what will inspire me with respect to this listener and fundraiser exercise, is that I became friends with Bruce Sterling.
[12:24.970 --> 12:29.050]  I sent him all of my books that I had, and he autographed them and sent them back.
[12:29.170 --> 12:36.630]  But when he sent them back, he apparently has a strange rubber stamp collection, right?
[12:36.770 --> 12:39.090]  And we know that ink stamp, rubber stamp collection.
[12:39.090 --> 12:44.490]  And so all the books that I got back had these bizarre images along his signature.
[12:44.790 --> 12:47.650]  One might be like a monkey with a space suit or something.
[12:48.010 --> 13:02.010]  So in that vein, a couple of years ago, I found a massive collection of strange rubber ink stamps that was available at Housing Works in New York City, which is sort of a second-hand store.
[13:02.190 --> 13:06.110]  They sell all these things to help people that are living with AIDS and whatnot.
[13:06.110 --> 13:07.850]  It's a wonderful store to support.
[13:08.530 --> 13:18.670]  And I bought so many of these strange rubber stamps that I promise to make this rather interesting with the rubber stamps, in the spirit of what Bruce Sterling did for me in 1994.
[13:19.630 --> 13:27.170]  So if that's any incentive to pledge for WBII, I hope it's some.
[13:27.950 --> 13:29.030]  I'll just leave it at that.
[13:29.110 --> 13:31.210]  It certainly tells something about our culture.
[13:31.210 --> 13:37.290]  And I think it's a good lead-in to our first excerpt from this package that we're offering tonight.
[13:37.910 --> 13:41.430]  All the talks, 129 talks... I can't believe we have so many.
[13:41.850 --> 13:48.110]  129 talks from Hope 2020 took place in July and August of 2020.
[13:48.730 --> 13:52.070]  We had all sorts of presentations from around the world.
[13:52.170 --> 13:56.230]  You see, the thing, by going digital, we were able to have presentations from everywhere.
[13:56.230 --> 14:00.210]  And we had a variety of recorded and live presentations.
[14:00.210 --> 14:01.510]  We had audience interaction.
[14:02.070 --> 14:05.470]  But we actually were able to have more participation than before.
[14:05.590 --> 14:11.110]  And I thought that was just simply an incredible positive side effect of all the negativity that was around.
[14:11.290 --> 14:19.710]  But one of the talks had to do with the Cult of the Dead Cow, which I believe has some Austin connections as well.
[14:20.550 --> 14:25.350]  It was a talk by the author, Joseph Menn, who I believe you're familiar with, Alex.
[14:26.010 --> 14:34.350]  He's a Reuters investigative journalist and author of the book, Cult of the Dead Cow, How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World.
[14:34.570 --> 14:40.450]  It was named one of the 10 best nonfiction books of 2019 by Hudson Booksellers.
[14:40.570 --> 14:42.110]  He's written on hacking for about 20 years.
[14:42.310 --> 14:46.130]  And I've written previous books on organized Russian cybercrime and Napster.
[14:46.130 --> 14:46.990]  Really interesting guy.
[14:49.790 --> 14:54.470]  About the Cult of the Dead Cow called Hacktivism Rides Again.
[14:55.290 --> 14:56.870]  We're going to play an excerpt from that.
[14:57.010 --> 15:00.930]  But while we're playing the excerpt, please get those phone lines buzzing.
[15:01.090 --> 15:03.710]  516-620-3602.
[15:04.250 --> 15:05.210]  Ask for...
[15:05.210 --> 15:11.110]  Ask for, yes, the Hope 2020 Thumb Drive Collection with Totebag at the $100 level.
[15:11.670 --> 15:14.090]  Operators are standing by waiting for that call.
[15:14.190 --> 15:14.750]  Please call.
[15:14.750 --> 15:21.810]  ...and 29 full-length videos in HD quality along with their counterparts in audio format.
[15:21.810 --> 15:23.350]  You'll also get the concerts.
[15:23.350 --> 15:24.610]  You'll get the workshops.
[15:25.290 --> 15:26.870]  You'll get a bunch of different things.
[15:26.890 --> 15:27.970]  There's a lot of great stuff.
[15:28.150 --> 15:29.130]  Let's hear an excerpt.
[15:29.530 --> 15:38.590]  Up next is a very interesting panel session where three star wars of the popular cult of the Dead Cow group join us at Hope 2020 again.
[15:40.050 --> 15:43.690]  The title of this panel is Hacktivism Rides Again.
[15:44.270 --> 15:50.310]  And our speakers, Oxblad Ruffin, Joseph Men, Omega, and Java Men, are here with us today.
[15:50.930 --> 15:59.450]  Friends, I'll let you guys take the stage and let us know the new initiatives and strategies to fight surveillance, racism, and disease.
[16:02.780 --> 16:07.700]  I'd like to thank Hope for having us and everybody who's watching at home.
[16:07.880 --> 16:14.540]  I had been looking forward to coming with members of the CDC to Hope in New York this year.
[16:14.920 --> 16:18.180]  But this way, hey, we get to reach more people.
[16:18.360 --> 16:20.440]  So I hope everybody's staying safe.
[16:20.640 --> 16:21.700]  I'm Joseph Men.
[16:22.680 --> 16:34.040]  I'm a longtime investigative tech reporter, and I wrote a book about the other gentleman you're seeing here called Cult of the Dead Cow, How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World.
[16:34.860 --> 16:42.540]  And if you don't know the Cult of the Dead Cow, it is the oldest surviving and most influential hacking group in U.S.
[16:42.660 --> 16:42.840]  history.
[16:44.100 --> 16:56.760]  They originated in 1984 when there were a bunch of teenagers running bulletin boards, and they were interested in finding people like them and being funny and writing text files.
[16:57.040 --> 17:00.820]  Some of them were interested in games or pirated software.
[17:01.540 --> 17:04.440]  And it evolved multiple times through the years.
[17:04.620 --> 17:18.600]  It became one of the top security groups in the world in the mid-'90s, most famous then for introducing BackOrifice and then BO2K a year later.
[17:18.700 --> 17:20.820]  These are both tools for hacking Windows machines.
[17:21.180 --> 17:29.180]  And they distributed them to all comers, which was controversial at the time, but forced Microsoft to take security much more seriously.
[17:30.080 --> 17:33.260]  This panel is called Hacktivism, There and Back Again.
[17:33.420 --> 17:44.460]  I'd say that the CDC is probably most famous for having invented at least the word hacktivism and sort of crystallizing the concept, though it had multiple definitions over the years.
[17:44.460 --> 17:49.660]  My favorite is it was hacking and security work in service of human rights.
[17:49.800 --> 17:59.140]  And this is something that has only gotten more important as tech has become more central to everybody's life and security has become more central to technology.
[17:59.140 --> 18:08.480]  So we have with us three 20-year members, at least, called the Dead Cow in their order of joining.
[18:11.060 --> 18:17.080]  Omega, giveaway of Omega, real name Michael Kubeka.
[18:18.920 --> 18:25.000]  Misha joined, well, I'll let him say, but he's here today because he's still doing interesting things now.
[18:25.160 --> 18:27.640]  But he's the man that came up with the word hacktivism.
[18:28.420 --> 18:30.640]  Next is Oxblood Ruffin.
[18:30.920 --> 18:32.760]  Give a wave, Oxblood, if you would.
[18:34.320 --> 18:35.040]  There he is.
[18:35.140 --> 18:35.900]  Real name, Larry Brown.
[18:37.000 --> 18:41.400]  Oxblood is really the bondfather, the godfather of hacktivism.
[18:41.400 --> 18:51.880]  He was its champion within the cult of the dead cow and launched a spinoff called Hacktivismo, which was devoted entirely to hacktivism efforts many years ago.
[18:52.260 --> 18:58.460]  And then Java Man, the last that you'll hear from today, giveaway of Java Man.
[18:59.440 --> 19:01.180]  Real name, Adam O'Donnell.
[19:01.860 --> 19:08.720]  He joined in the early 00s, making him the youngest of this particular crowd in terms of CDC tenure.
[19:09.240 --> 19:19.300]  But he has been very active in electoral politics, including fundraising for CDC member Beto O'Rourke, who you may have heard about.
[19:20.300 --> 19:20.820]  That's it.
[19:20.880 --> 19:28.400]  I'm going to let each of them give a little bit of an introduction to their own career inside CDC and outside of it.
[19:28.500 --> 19:33.340]  And then we'll go around and talk about hacktivism more properly.
[19:34.080 --> 19:35.360]  Oxblood, would you start us off?
[19:36.940 --> 19:37.380]  Sure.
[19:38.020 --> 19:39.800]  And thanks for the invitation.
[19:39.800 --> 19:41.760]  And hello to everybody at HOPE.
[19:43.220 --> 19:48.960]  I started my career well before the CDC working at the United Nations.
[19:49.720 --> 19:59.320]  I was there working with some NGOs and eventually went directly to the organization and was the co-editor of a book on the General Assembly.
[19:59.700 --> 20:07.120]  As a result of that, I learned all of the arcane features of the General Assembly and ended up doing some consulting there.
[20:08.240 --> 20:10.400]  Afterwards, I moved into...
[20:11.340 --> 20:20.280]  I worked in advertising in the early days of fintech and digital advertising, these kinds of things.
[20:20.280 --> 20:29.860]  I joined the CDC in 1996 after lengthy correspondence with the death vegetable.
[20:30.500 --> 20:31.720]  It was a lot of fun.
[20:31.720 --> 20:32.560]  I had no idea.
[20:32.560 --> 20:38.520]  My emails were being read by the rest of the crew, but apparently that's what sealed the deal.
[20:38.520 --> 20:46.180]  Actually, a funny story I remember is that I was corresponding with Veggie for about a year.
[20:46.400 --> 20:47.180]  It was a lot of fun.
[20:47.680 --> 20:58.440]  And then at the end of that period, I got an email from Grandmaster Rat, who runs the CDC, and said, okay, you're in the CDC now.
[20:58.460 --> 21:00.100]  And I thought it was a joke.
[21:00.280 --> 21:01.280]  I wasn't sure.
[21:02.280 --> 21:07.540]  And so I turned to one of my work colleagues and I said, you know, I just got an invitation to join the CDC.
[21:07.740 --> 21:09.760]  And he goes, no way, you're a moron.
[21:09.880 --> 21:11.500]  Those guys would never have you in.
[21:11.500 --> 21:17.300]  But it turned out that in spite of being a moron, I was actually invited to join.
[21:17.500 --> 21:21.800]  So I was always interested in...
[21:21.800 --> 21:24.880]  I mean, I thought the CDC was cool as hell.
[21:25.420 --> 21:33.660]  And at the same time, I was also very interested in developing some kind of online activism.
[21:33.680 --> 21:39.260]  I didn't know what that was, but I thought for some crazy reason, the CDC would be the perfect group to do that with.
[21:39.260 --> 21:47.660]  So as a result, I got permission to get Hacked of Eastmo together, started recruiting people internationally.
[21:48.220 --> 21:51.900]  The first few members were from Germany.
[21:52.800 --> 21:54.720]  Some American guys joined.
[21:54.880 --> 22:03.840]  And eventually we had about 40 people, I would say, who were very actively involved in the group from literally all over the world.
[22:04.060 --> 22:06.760]  Some even from China and Iran, believe it or not.
[22:07.820 --> 22:24.440]  But we developed circumvention tech and talked about national firewalls at a time when this was really not sort of public information in the sense that maybe academics and technical people and policy people were aware of these things.
[22:24.440 --> 22:28.400]  But it wasn't anything that was showing up in the press.
[22:28.400 --> 22:43.900]  And I'm actually proud that we used a lot of our style and swagger to publicize a lot of things that eventually, I think, led to a much broader public awareness.
[22:44.180 --> 22:54.740]  So it wasn't just the tech in Hacked of Eastmo, the circumvention tech, but also the style, the CDC style with which we did things, I thought was very important.
[22:55.660 --> 23:00.540]  Do you want to talk about your professional life at all, the things you've done since then?
[23:01.700 --> 23:02.260]  Sure.
[23:02.540 --> 23:06.160]  I mean, I've been working in the startup scene for the past 20 years.
[23:06.920 --> 23:12.140]  In Toronto, I worked with a company called Open Cola.
[23:12.400 --> 23:14.120]  We did peer-to-peer stuff.
[23:16.360 --> 23:20.160]  Then, thereafter, I moved to...
[23:20.160 --> 23:29.140]  Well, I did some more work in advertising, interactive, as it was called then, around fintech and did some consulting in Barbados.
[23:29.580 --> 23:31.860]  Then I moved to...
[23:31.860 --> 23:43.280]  I got recruited by a PKI solution firm in Munich, which I kind of think might have been one of the forerunners of blockchain.
[23:43.300 --> 23:45.800]  It operated very much in the same fashion.
[23:46.860 --> 23:49.020]  Went to India after that.
[23:49.400 --> 23:54.780]  Worked in mesh networking technology up in the mountains in Dharamsala.
[23:55.120 --> 23:57.580]  Did a lot of work with the Tibetan community there.
[23:58.580 --> 24:00.840]  Went to Bangalore for a couple of years.
[24:01.080 --> 24:05.020]  Worked on a documentary film on cybersecurity in India.
[24:05.020 --> 24:08.940]  And now, I've moved back to Germany.
[24:09.160 --> 24:10.160]  I'm based in Berlin now.
[24:11.000 --> 24:20.640]  One of the things that I really like about the CDC message, I guess, is that you can do really good work in any venue.
[24:20.920 --> 24:34.380]  Whether you're working inside a big company, a small company, you're off hours, volunteerism things, contributing to open source projects, or even in government, you can do really good stuff.
[24:34.380 --> 24:36.360]  And so I like that you sort of...
[24:36.360 --> 24:38.120]  You have, like, recognized...
[24:38.120 --> 24:42.200]  Like, I think a lot of people in tech could relate to some of your day jobs.
[24:42.380 --> 24:43.860]  Maybe not all of them, but some of them.
[24:44.000 --> 24:45.320]  You know, you're kind of...
[24:45.700 --> 24:51.660]  You know, you wear a superhero cape sometimes, and then you're kind of like a regular tech guy the other time.
[24:51.820 --> 24:53.340]  You know, I think that's interesting.
[24:53.540 --> 24:55.460]  I still don't know what Misha does for a living.
[24:56.140 --> 24:57.060]  Excuse me, Omega.
[24:57.760 --> 24:58.620]  He won't tell me.
[24:58.620 --> 25:03.540]  But I know what he's done in his private time.
[25:04.000 --> 25:04.820]  Omega, can you...
[25:05.240 --> 25:05.720]  Okay.
[25:05.920 --> 25:10.000]  I realize I'm just listening to this, and I can just listen to it all night long, but...
[25:10.000 --> 25:11.440]  You're not in that crew.
[25:11.440 --> 25:11.980]  Wait a minute.
[25:11.980 --> 25:13.740]  These are fascinating people.
[25:13.900 --> 25:16.800]  Listen to those resumes, and that's just one person.
[25:17.880 --> 25:30.900]  The Cult of the Dead Cow, Hacktivism Rides Again, just one of the 129 talks that will be coming your way in full HD video and audio as well, along with all kinds of other content.
[25:31.160 --> 25:39.080]  If you pledge $100 and ask for the Hope 2020 Thumb Drive Collection with Totebag, yes, you get a tote bag with that as well.
[25:39.660 --> 25:42.900]  516-620-3602 is the phone number.
[25:43.100 --> 25:44.960]  Limited number available tonight.
[25:45.220 --> 25:47.300]  Give to WBAI.org.
[25:47.480 --> 25:49.940]  Give the number to WBAI.org.
[25:50.640 --> 25:55.980]  And if you have trouble finding it on the site, write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
[25:57.020 --> 25:57.780]  Interesting stuff, huh?
[25:58.440 --> 25:59.440]  Oh, it's fascinating.
[25:59.440 --> 26:09.480]  I was getting really wrapped up in it, in fact, and was surprised to hear you and realized, yeah, we have to remind people how they can get this incredible content.
[26:09.760 --> 26:13.200]  Well, we're running out of time, and there's so much more that I want to show people as well.
[26:13.280 --> 26:13.540]  Okay, okay, okay.
[26:13.600 --> 26:14.460]  Well, listen up, folks.
[26:14.540 --> 26:16.860]  This is the Spring 2020 fundraiser here at WBAI.
[26:16.860 --> 26:17.900]  No, no, Spring 2021.
[26:17.960 --> 26:19.860]  It says Spring 2020 on our website.
[26:19.940 --> 26:20.980]  But that's wrong.
[26:21.440 --> 26:22.060]  It's 2021.
[26:22.500 --> 26:22.580]  Yeah.
[26:24.200 --> 26:26.900]  Somebody has to change the date, and that's a lot of work.
[26:26.920 --> 26:27.560]  Okay, all right.
[26:27.780 --> 26:30.720]  So, and that implanted in my mind that it's the wrong year.
[26:30.820 --> 26:30.960]  Yeah.
[26:31.040 --> 26:31.780]  It is 2021.
[26:32.140 --> 26:34.200]  We're also here to remind you of that.
[26:34.420 --> 26:37.060]  And we are fundraising for Community Radio.
[26:37.200 --> 26:44.440]  Yes, this very frequency is broadcasting to you by volunteers, by people like us who have unique perspectives.
[26:45.320 --> 26:48.740]  And we love telling people about our interests.
[26:48.920 --> 26:52.320]  We love this station for letting us tell you about our interests.
[26:52.520 --> 27:02.020]  And because it's here, you very well could share your opinion, or you could help produce another show if you so desire.
[27:02.160 --> 27:03.760]  That's what Community Radio is about.
[27:03.960 --> 27:05.100]  We stand for that.
[27:05.100 --> 27:13.980]  We want to make sure that your contribution counts, counts for the show, and counts for the type of media that you appreciate in your community.
[27:14.360 --> 27:20.200]  And one, the best, the most important way to do that is at this time during these fundraising events.
[27:21.480 --> 27:24.400]  516-620-3602.
[27:24.520 --> 27:25.980]  That's your way to act.
[27:26.000 --> 27:37.400]  If you want to use the internet, give to WBAI.org and ask for, at the $100 level, our Hope 2020 Thumb Drive Collection with Totebag.
[27:37.400 --> 27:41.380]  And you'll hear more and more of this incredible storytelling and information.
[27:41.480 --> 27:44.800]  You know, pulling off a conference like this even once is an impossibility.
[27:45.120 --> 27:47.760]  Doing it during the pandemic was a super impossibility.
[27:48.680 --> 27:53.800]  WBAI 99.5 FM in the middle of New York City, that is an impossibility as well.
[27:53.900 --> 27:55.140]  And it's been happening since 1960.
[27:55.140 --> 27:56.760]  Thanks to listeners like you.
[27:56.920 --> 28:00.720]  So please give a call to 516-620-3602.
[28:00.960 --> 28:01.440]  Go ahead, Alex.
[28:02.320 --> 28:09.000]  And let's not forget that WBAI being here is not a guarantee whatsoever.
[28:09.500 --> 28:18.840]  Shortly before the pandemic disrupted all of our lives, we should think back to what happened to this station in October of 2019.
[28:19.120 --> 28:19.820]  Do you remember that?
[28:20.660 --> 28:21.500]  That happened.
[28:21.540 --> 28:22.360]  That wasn't a dream.
[28:22.500 --> 28:23.160]  That really happened.
[28:23.400 --> 28:24.540]  It really happened.
[28:24.740 --> 28:25.940]  The locks were changed.
[28:26.140 --> 28:27.900]  There was a lawsuit filed.
[28:28.540 --> 28:30.840]  You know, went to the appellate division.
[28:31.140 --> 28:33.500]  I was there with a whole bunch of listeners.
[28:34.060 --> 28:46.280]  And I think, speaking correctly now, still the new General Counsel of Pacifica, Arthur Schwartz, who also has a show on this station, and spearheaded the lawsuit to reclaim the station.
[28:46.520 --> 28:49.200]  But I mean, the station was under siege.
[28:49.360 --> 28:49.960]  We were shut off.
[28:50.020 --> 28:50.940]  We were off the air.
[28:51.120 --> 28:55.000]  So there is no guarantee that we will be here without listener support.
[28:56.420 --> 29:02.640]  And I think another incredibly important point here is that we got back on the air.
[29:02.760 --> 29:09.740]  We fought tooth and nail in order to get the station back into the hands of the persons whom deserve it.
[29:11.180 --> 29:14.000]  And shortly thereafter, the whole world was changed.
[29:14.220 --> 29:15.400]  Our lives were disrupted.
[29:15.860 --> 29:17.700]  Everybody was working from home.
[29:17.880 --> 29:19.300]  Nobody was going out on the streets.
[29:19.300 --> 29:21.480]  But WBAI was on the air and we were here.
[29:21.480 --> 29:25.920]  And we've been here over this past year for our listeners.
[29:26.240 --> 29:32.980]  We've had to endure countless technical difficulties that we are still enduring almost on a weekly basis.
[29:33.260 --> 29:36.100]  And we're really hoping that you're going to be here for us tonight.
[29:36.620 --> 29:36.780]  Yeah.
[29:37.080 --> 29:38.400]  Kyle, what's that phone number again?
[29:39.940 --> 29:43.260]  516-620-3602.
[29:43.880 --> 29:46.880]  That's Country Cut 1 for those of you dialing from overseas.
[29:47.160 --> 29:48.740]  And yes, you can dial from overseas.
[29:49.460 --> 29:53.640]  Again, we're offering the Hope 2020 Flash Drive Package with tote bag.
[29:53.800 --> 29:58.140]  You'll get a tote bag and you'll also get a letter signed by everybody at Off The Hook.
[29:58.320 --> 30:02.220]  It's a special exclusive offer only being offered during this program tonight.
[30:02.420 --> 30:05.240]  516-620-3602.
[30:05.640 --> 30:14.420]  Give to WBAI.org and write to us OTH at 2600.com if you have any questions or problems doing any of that.
[30:14.580 --> 30:18.120]  I want to play another excerpt from one of our keynotes.
[30:18.120 --> 30:23.440]  Edelyn Bobet was an incredible speaker at our conference.
[30:23.740 --> 30:25.840]  She's the founder of techactivist.org.
[30:26.000 --> 30:36.020]  It's a grassroots organization that provides free technical training and political education workshops to activists, disruptors, working class youth, you name it.
[30:36.280 --> 30:46.100]  She's a founding member of the Popular Education Project, serves on the National Education Committee of the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, part of the People's Forum.
[30:46.100 --> 30:50.060]  An interesting person all around and perfect for hope.
[30:50.380 --> 30:54.740]  And I want to play you a part of her keynote address here on Off the Hook.
[30:54.940 --> 31:04.120]  Again, that phone number 516-620-3602 to a pledge of $100 gets you every single talk that was presented at the HOPE Conference in 2020.
[31:04.720 --> 31:14.180]  129 talks in full HD quality, along with concerts, along with workshops, along with music, and a special letter from us and a tote bag.
[31:14.360 --> 31:15.580]  What more could you ask for?
[31:16.540 --> 31:18.080]  Let's listen to this excerpt.
[31:19.280 --> 31:24.200]  Again, my name is Idaline Bobay, and I'm a Black and Puerto Rican movement technologist.
[31:25.180 --> 31:28.760]  I started talking at seven years old.
[31:29.920 --> 31:38.160]  I went through a lot of trauma as a child, and something happened to me that I couldn't use my motor skills.
[31:39.380 --> 31:50.200]  From the age of 8 to 18, I attended speech therapy classes on a weekly basis and officially was labeled as a student with a disability.
[31:52.060 --> 31:55.040]  Teachers and students barely understood me.
[31:55.480 --> 31:57.920]  I was known as the quiet girl.
[31:58.780 --> 32:09.040]  I recall watching television and putting the captions on the TV screen so that I can learn how to enunciate words as people were saying them.
[32:10.160 --> 32:17.760]  After a while, my family couldn't afford speech classes, so using the captions on the TV screen was my hack.
[32:18.340 --> 32:26.900]  That hack got me through college as it helped me increase my vocabulary and my understanding of how to say things.
[32:27.520 --> 32:32.820]  In all honesty, I still use the captions on my TV screen now.
[32:33.380 --> 32:41.200]  I share this story to say this is just one of many ways technology has helped me grow to who I am today.
[32:41.520 --> 32:51.580]  And I believe we all share a story on our first experience with technology and how we fell in love with it and wanted to use it for social good.
[32:53.780 --> 32:55.820]  Which further takes me on my journey.
[32:56.320 --> 33:05.540]  I grew up in North Philadelphia in a neighborhood called Badlands which is in the Kensington Fairhair area in Philadelphia.
[33:06.440 --> 33:17.620]  Today the neighborhood battles with housing, food insecurity, rates of unemployment up to 50%, over-policing and high surveillance.
[33:18.240 --> 33:30.680]  Though this story is not new, my neighborhood can be seen in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, and in cities all across the United States.
[33:31.580 --> 33:38.140]  I went to a high school, Thomas Edison, that had a 75% dropout rate.
[33:39.260 --> 33:52.320]  What that looked like was in ninth grade, my teacher told us as they packed us all into the auditorium room, look to your left, look to your right, one day one of you won't be here.
[33:53.520 --> 33:56.960]  We had more police officers than actual teachers.
[33:57.700 --> 34:19.860]  I, like Yashmi, who was the keynote speaker yesterday, survived the school-to-prison pipeline, which I just want to point out how often your speakers or people in a room who are a person of color goes through trauma because they survived the school-to-prison pipeline.
[34:20.540 --> 34:35.160]  However, I was still put in handcuffs several times for activities like missing detention because I came in late after spending 30 minutes waiting in line to go through a metadetector before I got into school.
[34:37.140 --> 34:40.800]  Graduating high school, I barely knew how to read and write.
[34:41.680 --> 34:50.200]  However, thanks to a community program called the Philadelphia Partnership, I was able to go into a state college, IUP.
[34:51.060 --> 34:56.020]  I can talk about the details of that program another time, but I want to focus on the facts.
[34:56.460 --> 35:00.880]  So when I started school freshman year, I didn't even know what a number line was.
[35:01.620 --> 35:06.480]  I attended IUP and my first year of school was very difficult.
[35:07.040 --> 35:09.720]  I struggled with academic probation.
[35:11.220 --> 35:19.300]  And if you could just fast forward to my senior year of college, I ended up actually graduating with the highest GPA as a person of color in my
[35:26.460 --> 35:33.640]  math, not knowing anything about math, not knowing what a number line was, graduating with a 3.86 and apply statistics.
[35:34.620 --> 35:36.160]  I blame the internet.
[35:37.340 --> 35:44.520]  No, not the music band, which if you haven't heard them, please go check them out, but the internet.
[35:45.120 --> 35:55.180]  I used online discussion boards frequently as I asked people to help me with particular questions that I was too embarrassed to ask in class.
[35:55.460 --> 36:04.000]  Or oftentimes when I did ask in class, the professor would say, you know, you should really quit school and go back to middle school.
[36:04.380 --> 36:17.080]  Or if I attended after class programs where they had tutoring, a lot of the other folks would like make fun of me or wouldn't want me to go.
[36:17.400 --> 36:24.080]  So to me, I felt safe on online talking to people who were willing to help me out.
[36:24.360 --> 36:34.060]  I will look up and learn from YouTube videos, ask people if they can help me find additional information on certain topics.
[36:34.560 --> 36:41.840]  Again, there were lots of self-study and online collaboration that really helped me propel in school.
[36:42.160 --> 36:55.260]  I left college feeling like a laptop with working internet was the winning combination to all success and wanted to put a laptop in every person's hand that was from a poor neighborhood.
[36:55.800 --> 37:04.840]  I saw my own development as a testimony of how a person can close their own achievement gap and felt the same could happen for others.
[37:05.320 --> 37:26.220]  I guess for so many years I thought it's bad to say but I did think I was dumb but in actuality I was never given the opportunity to learn and that passion to want to share education and the power of the internet led me on a phenomenal path.
[37:27.700 --> 37:40.860]  My first pivot away from corporate America where I had my first job and was struggling to climb the corporate ladder was to further my education.
[37:40.860 --> 37:45.700]  I ended up attending Mills College which is located in Oakland, California.
[37:45.700 --> 37:48.900]  It's a school for femme and non-binary students.
[37:49.420 --> 38:01.420]  The school was predominantly black and Latinx and I went to get my MBA and studied courses from the computer science program which is still where most of my connections lie.
[38:02.240 --> 38:11.240]  Before starting the program I never even knew of computer science never knew how to program and I ended up being the second top student in the class.
[38:13.340 --> 38:23.460]  While attending school I started community programs teaching young people about computer programming and basic digital literacy skills.
[38:23.900 --> 38:32.040]  I was invited to go to southern India and Tamil Nadu to start a computer program for women and youth to help with agriculture.
[38:32.680 --> 38:42.700]  I partnered with Kimberly Bryant who is the amazing founder of Black Girls Code to educate over 2,000 young girls in computer science.
[38:42.700 --> 38:54.820]  I connected with groups like Yes We Code and Kino Labs to create hackathons with ideas like what if an app could have saved Trayvon Martin?
[38:57.220 --> 39:03.700]  One of my proudest memories is seeing the shift of what happened to Google search engine after a
[39:12.700 --> 39:48.580]  you see angry bad bad fighting ugly but today and as of early as 2013 Black Girls Cold became the first or the second thing that pops up shifting the narrative completely of what a black girl could be and who we are in the world And that's an excerpt from Hedalyn Bovee's keynote speech at the HOPE 2020 conference in July and August of 2020.
[39:48.580 --> 39:51.440]  What an inspirational address that was.
[39:51.600 --> 40:02.080]  I just hope many people heard it and realized that they can succeed with the hacker spirit of questioning, persevering.
[40:02.080 --> 40:06.160]  So many interesting things to learn from that one talk.
[40:06.420 --> 40:07.060]  That one talk.
[40:07.340 --> 40:16.780]  One of 129 being offered tonight as part of our special package for a pledge of $100, 516-620-3602.
[40:17.020 --> 40:24.480]  Every talk from the HOPE 2020 conference, along with concerts, audio, music, workshops, you name it.
[40:25.120 --> 40:26.160]  What do you think, Kyle?
[40:26.800 --> 40:44.440]  Oh, I think of all of the possibility and inspiration and need, the eagerness to soak up all these interesting areas of interest and specialties and things that people didn't even know they might be good at.
[40:44.440 --> 40:55.060]  That is what sharing that learning process and then maybe contributing something, teaching what you might be able to bring to the subject matter.
[40:55.460 --> 41:13.740]  That's what sparks the kind of innovation and the cool projects and even products that we become so familiar with, especially in high technology and science and computers and telecommunications as well.
[41:13.740 --> 41:13.740]  Cool.
[41:14.020 --> 41:18.440]  Yeah, that talk really embodied the spirit of hacking, I think, in so many ways.
[41:18.540 --> 41:19.160]  Yes, go ahead, Alex.
[41:19.740 --> 41:20.700]  Oh, no doubt.
[41:21.600 --> 41:22.600]  The perseverance.
[41:24.000 --> 41:25.100]  I guess hearing an echo?
[41:26.380 --> 41:27.760]  Well, just your voice.
[41:28.740 --> 41:29.580]  Now there's no echo.
[41:29.760 --> 41:29.960]  Excellent.
[41:31.360 --> 41:31.860]  All right.
[41:31.940 --> 41:34.240]  Well, I'm hearing a bizarre echo.
[41:34.380 --> 41:36.600]  Okay, nobody else is, Alex, so let's not dwell upon it.
[41:37.080 --> 41:38.900]  All right, I'll try not dwell upon it.
[41:39.360 --> 41:43.440]  But I think that the spirit of that talk certainly embodied the whole conference.
[41:43.440 --> 41:54.180]  But more to the point, I think, is that conference itself, this nine-day period, and the ending of that conference, it was very emotional.
[41:54.660 --> 42:00.080]  It was, I think, a memorialization of what everybody had gone through that year.
[42:00.180 --> 42:02.280]  And it all culminated in the Hope Conference.
[42:02.400 --> 42:03.040]  We all came together.
[42:03.040 --> 42:04.080]  We put this thing together.
[42:04.080 --> 42:13.960]  And it was an amazing experience, lasting three times longer than any other hope in the past, which means that you're getting three times as much content.
[42:14.020 --> 42:25.380]  If you want to talk about this, you know, from the perspective of a value add here, this is three times more content and three times more talks that you're getting.
[42:25.380 --> 42:28.600]  And there were some really other amazing talks, too.
[42:28.840 --> 42:35.080]  We had the Chief Information Security Officer of the World Health Organization give a keynote speech, Flavio Agio.
[42:35.320 --> 42:41.080]  We had Cindy Cohn look back on 30 years of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[42:41.080 --> 42:59.880]  And I emceed that talk, and I gave a talk with some colleagues on manipulation of information on the Internet and why manipulation is inherent to the Internet's DNA, which was a bit of a weird precursor to what we saw happen with the election and the insurrection on January 6th.
[42:59.960 --> 43:04.100]  So all of these things, you're going to get all of them in this package.
[43:04.100 --> 43:09.540]  It's an incredible piece of history that you have on two thumb drives.
[43:09.900 --> 43:19.620]  And you'll be really, really helping out to support the station, to support hope, and make sure that we can continue to do this kind of thing and organize that kind of activity in the future.
[43:19.860 --> 43:24.680]  And just to be clear, though, the conference lasted nine days.
[43:25.500 --> 43:31.300]  But we don't have three times as much content because we had one track that went throughout the nine days.
[43:31.300 --> 43:32.800]  It lasted three times longer.
[43:32.800 --> 43:35.040]  We did have a lot more talks than we usually had.
[43:35.240 --> 43:37.540]  I'd say maybe about 33% more.
[43:37.760 --> 43:43.740]  And we also had things recorded that we never recorded before, like concerts and workshops and things like that.
[43:43.820 --> 43:48.740]  So this is by far the most that we have ever been able to offer for a HOPE conference.
[43:48.740 --> 43:52.040]  And I found that incredibly inspiring in the middle of a pandemic.
[43:52.860 --> 43:56.460]  And I'll tell you, I did a little experiment when we came onto the show.
[43:56.460 --> 44:06.980]  To a certain extent, the HOPE conference is still going on from this summer because the Matrix Element chat system is still up and running and people are still there.
[44:07.160 --> 44:10.480]  There is a channel after HOPE 2020.
[44:11.020 --> 44:14.620]  I sent a little ping to it and people have responded.
[44:15.020 --> 44:17.700]  So people are still gathering and organizing.
[44:18.200 --> 44:19.900]  What is it, eight months after the fact?
[44:19.940 --> 44:21.120]  Yeah, we couldn't get them to leave.
[44:21.280 --> 44:23.780]  And, you know, eventually we sent in a tank and that didn't go well.
[44:23.780 --> 44:27.900]  So we just decided they could squat there and, you know, do a sort of Christiania thing.
[44:27.900 --> 44:30.960]  And it's working out, you know, it's an experiment.
[44:31.540 --> 44:33.000]  No, actually, we endorse it thoroughly.
[44:33.160 --> 44:33.580]  It's great.
[44:34.040 --> 44:46.720]  There's so many, I was thinking, virtual spaces and this Matrix communication channel that we stood up and, as Alex indicated, ongoing in various forms.
[44:46.720 --> 45:01.400]  As well as so many other interest groups and people that are out in the world and other parts of the world who we were just able to catch up with, it felt like.
[45:01.880 --> 45:12.900]  And keep up with what was going on and break away from a bit of the isolation that had been so ubiquitous last year.
[45:13.700 --> 45:21.760]  So we're just really thrilled with this exciting package, the Hope 2020 Thumb Drive Collection with tote bag.
[45:21.940 --> 45:23.700]  516-620-3602.
[45:23.760 --> 45:27.480]  I've just been handed another premium that we can offer tonight.
[45:28.540 --> 45:30.620]  This has to do with bookstores.
[45:30.820 --> 45:31.860]  Remember those bookstores?
[45:31.960 --> 45:33.940]  You used to be able to go out and, you know, hang out in the bookstore?
[45:34.340 --> 45:35.300]  Wouldn't that be nice?
[45:35.440 --> 45:39.320]  Well, you might recall our friends over at The Strand have been on the show before.
[45:40.600 --> 45:44.980]  Particularly the owner of The Strand, as we were trying to help save the building.
[45:45.800 --> 45:50.800]  We have The Strand package for another pledge of $100.
[45:51.820 --> 45:56.200]  You will get a copy of Cory Doctorow's book, Radicalized.
[45:56.960 --> 46:07.440]  You'll get another type of tote bag, a canvas tote bag with a zipper, from The Strand, which is known as the undisputed king of the city's independent bookstores.
[46:08.280 --> 46:09.920]  Less and less of them every year, it seems.
[46:10.020 --> 46:11.120]  But this one is still around.
[46:11.460 --> 46:13.100]  That quote, by the way, from The New York Times.
[46:13.740 --> 46:18.620]  You'll also get an assortment of Strand memorabilia, including socks.
[46:19.020 --> 46:19.360]  You're guaranteed.
[46:19.360 --> 46:21.240]  You're guaranteed to get one pair of socks.
[46:21.240 --> 46:24.300]  You're going to get socks, buttons, stickers, and postcards.
[46:24.460 --> 46:27.740]  And I'm told the most recent edition of 2600 will be thrown in there as well.
[46:27.900 --> 46:28.360]  Oh, wow.
[46:28.420 --> 46:29.060]  That's a good issue.
[46:29.060 --> 46:41.080]  So if you call 516-620-3602, they're all good issues, Kyle, and ask for the Strand package is what it's called, you will get that.
[46:41.180 --> 46:42.700]  And you can also find that.
[46:42.760 --> 46:45.320]  That one, I know, is on give2wbi.org.
[46:46.540 --> 46:50.440]  You will be able to find the Strand package there.
[46:50.480 --> 46:54.540]  However, the copy of Cory Doctorow's book is not autographed.
[46:54.560 --> 46:55.460]  It says autographed copy.
[46:55.540 --> 46:56.480]  It's not an autographed copy.
[46:56.480 --> 46:58.440]  So don't look at that.
[46:58.720 --> 46:59.660]  My sheet has it.
[47:00.320 --> 47:01.040]  It's redacted.
[47:01.040 --> 47:02.300]  Yeah, we've been trying to get it redacted.
[47:02.400 --> 47:05.760]  But it's a long process at BAI to get a word taken off the website.
[47:06.760 --> 47:09.000]  But it's a copy of the book.
[47:09.300 --> 47:13.460]  It's a really good book, Radicalized by Cory Doctorow, along with the canvas bag.
[47:13.500 --> 47:15.180]  And this is a really good canvas bag with a zipper.
[47:15.360 --> 47:16.840]  You know, they don't have zippers, many of them.
[47:17.100 --> 47:18.360]  Well, it's a different style.
[47:19.080 --> 47:21.800]  We have the government seal one, which is an open top bag.
[47:21.900 --> 47:22.640]  This one closes.
[47:23.020 --> 47:23.160]  Yeah.
[47:23.160 --> 47:26.600]  So if you have items that might be...
[47:26.600 --> 47:26.740]  Escape.
[47:27.060 --> 47:27.580]  Try to escape.
[47:27.780 --> 47:34.340]  Large quantity of small items that could spill, like 20 pounds of marbles or something.
[47:34.480 --> 47:36.540]  A small child that you want to...
[47:36.540 --> 47:37.400]  Absolutely.
[47:37.620 --> 47:49.580]  If you're concerned about articles of clothing, matchbox toys, I don't know, whatever you carry around with you, maybe it's kidney beans, you will not spill them with this tote bag.
[47:49.580 --> 47:56.300]  It's a different style tote bag, and we're excited to offer this one as well, also at the $100 level for this pack.
[47:56.400 --> 47:56.840]  Go ahead, Alex.
[47:57.740 --> 48:08.560]  And insofar as tote bags go, I really feel, not sliding 2600 here, but there are no more iconic tote bags in New York than the Strand.
[48:08.780 --> 48:17.460]  I mean, you can go anywhere in the world and find people carrying around Strand bookstore tote bags, and you immediately have something to talk with them about, you know, the Strand.
[48:17.460 --> 48:18.320]  Everybody loves the Strand.
[48:18.640 --> 48:22.260]  And what's amazing to me, too, is that it was...
[48:22.780 --> 48:24.600]  This is another piece of history, right?
[48:24.680 --> 48:29.060]  This is another piece of what we all got together and fought for, the Strand bookstore.
[48:29.440 --> 48:39.140]  Can you believe that it was two years ago, almost to the day, that, you know, we fought the Landmarks Preservation Commission to try to prevent them from rubber stamping the bookstore?
[48:39.240 --> 48:41.380]  They did, in fact, rubber stamp the bookstore as a landmark.
[48:42.160 --> 48:51.840]  And look, it's a very cautionary tale, too, because the Strand, right before the pandemic hit, had opened up an Upper West Side location.
[48:51.840 --> 49:00.480]  The first time that they've had a second location in the city, so extended themselves, put themselves out on the line, and then, boom, a global pandemic hits.
[49:00.780 --> 49:02.160]  Nobody can go into the store.
[49:02.800 --> 49:10.720]  It's another massive blow to a bookstore that is 93 years old in this city.
[49:11.060 --> 49:11.420]  Wow.
[49:11.540 --> 49:17.320]  Older, a bit older than WBI, and so far as New York goes, is pretty damn old.
[49:17.440 --> 49:18.320]  But the Strand is older.
[49:19.100 --> 49:28.980]  And I think having this toe bag, supporting the station this way, is a way to hold on to that piece of history, remember that struggle, support the Strand as well.
[49:29.340 --> 49:31.540]  So these are things that go hand in hand.
[49:31.640 --> 49:38.220]  The Strand package is yours for a pledge of $100, 516-620-3602, or give to WBI.org.
[49:38.660 --> 49:43.820]  Or you can go for the Hope 2020 flash drive collection.
[49:44.380 --> 49:50.540]  Just a reminder to everyone, also, any pledge level is welcome and accepted wholeheartedly.
[49:50.560 --> 49:53.620]  That's at the $5, $10, $15, $25 level.
[49:53.800 --> 49:56.600]  You can become a voting member of the Pacifica Foundation.
[49:57.040 --> 49:59.300]  Those are all critical levels, too.
[49:59.580 --> 50:00.520]  Small and large.
[50:00.520 --> 50:01.400]  We accept it.
[50:01.600 --> 50:04.840]  This is how community radio sustains.
[50:05.500 --> 50:08.340]  And you're hearing the music of Cameron Glass underneath us.
[50:08.480 --> 50:11.180]  He did the themes for the Hope Conference.
[50:11.360 --> 50:12.320]  Every day has a different theme.
[50:12.440 --> 50:14.460]  It's all included in that thumb drive collection.
[50:14.620 --> 50:18.440]  If you call 516-620-3602, you get a different theme for every day.
[50:18.600 --> 50:21.140]  It's like reliving the conference all over again.
[50:21.800 --> 50:24.220]  I do have one last excerpt to play.
[50:24.420 --> 50:25.540]  Let's go out with this.
[50:26.140 --> 50:29.580]  This is actually about ring cameras.
[50:30.080 --> 50:34.580]  A talk about ring cameras, which I thought was extremely interesting.
[50:36.140 --> 50:45.300]  And you'll learn quite a bit about that technology, about all the different technologies that are out today.
[50:46.740 --> 50:47.920]  129 talks.
[50:48.240 --> 50:49.880]  Let's hear an excerpt from this one.
[50:49.880 --> 50:58.200]  There are Facebook posts and Instagram posts from cops that literally say on the image that's being shared, like, buy a ring camera today.
[50:59.020 --> 51:07.120]  In terms of the actual videos, and according to ring policy, police can request video recorded from any device up to 60 days back.
[51:07.620 --> 51:11.320]  Either that video is stored on device, or it's stored on a server somewhere.
[51:11.500 --> 51:12.500]  It's kind of hard to tell.
[51:12.720 --> 51:14.800]  It might change by the camera type.
[51:15.300 --> 51:26.040]  And if a camera owner refuses that request, police can still just subpoena the videos, same time span, up to 60 days back, if cops have probable cause.
[51:26.280 --> 51:31.360]  And there's no warning or notice into the owner at all if it's subpoenaed from Amazon.
[51:31.840 --> 51:46.740]  And this obviously isn't even to talk about the people recorded by these devices who really clearly, as the rollerblading example shows, never consented to their video being recorded in the first place, let alone shared on a public platform or with police.
[51:47.100 --> 51:53.220]  Sometimes those ring videos are used for advertisements themselves, again, with no consent for the person being recorded.
[51:53.700 --> 51:59.660]  And it's worth noting here and stressing that this 60-day policy is just that, a policy.
[51:59.880 --> 52:08.460]  There's no regulation on these devices, no oversight into how they're used or where they are, and no transparency into how police are using them in their everyday work.
[52:08.820 --> 52:18.220]  Amazon could just as easily switch their policy next week to have all this video stream directly into police fusion centers than we might not even know about it.
[52:18.640 --> 52:36.920]  So, in 2019, to understand more about Ring as a phenomenon, and to increase transparency and visibility into where these cameras are and where we're being surveilled day to day, I decided to try and download the app and, just as a first pass, try and find all the cameras near me.
[52:37.280 --> 52:47.380]  And it became really clear, really quickly, from, you know, you can just think back to that video of me scrolling through the Ring app, that I can't just poke around and find my neighbor's cameras.
[52:47.600 --> 52:48.580]  They have to post.
[52:48.740 --> 52:51.620]  And when they do post, the location isn't really clear.
[52:51.760 --> 52:55.380]  It's sort of this big circle around where the camera might be.
[52:55.660 --> 53:01.300]  There are three main things that basically stopped me from finding all the cameras in my city just by using the app.
[53:01.740 --> 53:07.020]  One, there's space limits that Ring puts on your neighborhood or area of interest when you sign up.
[53:07.280 --> 53:09.660]  In the app, it's limited to about five square miles.
[53:10.260 --> 53:11.400]  And that doesn't really...
[53:11.400 --> 53:15.120]  although Boston is small, it doesn't really cover all of the area that I wanted to see.
[53:15.500 --> 53:18.560]  And two, you don't really see where all the cameras are when you use the app.
[53:18.920 --> 53:28.520]  Unlike cops who get an active camera map when they sign up to partner with Ring, like this one with all these dots, normal users just see an approximate location of where alerts were posted.
[53:29.120 --> 53:31.180]  And that's usually in the form of like a circle.
[53:31.380 --> 53:33.420]  It's maybe a hundred meters in diameter.
[53:34.160 --> 53:40.740]  And three, you only see cameras that have posted on the app, not all the cameras that are recording video out in the wild.
[53:41.260 --> 53:46.720]  As I'll show a little bit later, there are plenty of people who use Ring cameras that never posted the app at all.
[53:47.520 --> 53:52.340]  Now, I'm a computational social scientist by training, not a security researcher.
[53:52.340 --> 53:58.600]  I don't have a lot of experience breaking down apps or reverse engineering, but I do know how apps work.
[53:58.820 --> 54:11.360]  So I decided to run a man in the middle attack to see how Ring's app was communicating with the servers, thinking maybe if I'm lucky, I'll be able to see all the alerts posted in my area and map them out a little bit.
[54:11.540 --> 54:19.180]  And right away, I noticed that when you interact with Ring's API, most of your requests are associated with some assigned area.
[54:19.180 --> 54:23.160]  And this area is just like a number, and it seems random at first.
[54:23.580 --> 54:29.220]  And so all the requests are doing things like pulling all the recent posts for a specific area ID.
[54:29.440 --> 54:30.640]  The API seemed really simple.
[54:30.880 --> 54:36.220]  And at first, I thought this area defined some kind of geohash for different areas around the United States.
[54:36.440 --> 54:43.360]  So one area here would be one number, and then you increment one and it would go over maybe a mile or be right next to each other.
[54:43.500 --> 54:46.400]  But the IDs didn't seem to correlate spatially like at all.
[54:46.600 --> 54:52.460]  Here's a map of a random selection of consecutive IDs, and you can see that they're really all over the place.
[54:52.820 --> 55:00.880]  I did a quick statistical analysis, and what I found is that the area IDs seemed truly totally random.
[55:01.320 --> 55:08.580]  Even if two IDs were right next to each other in space, or clustered around an area, they could be really anywhere in that number space.
[55:08.840 --> 55:19.940]  So my first attempt at scraping was literally to iterate through every identifier, starting from one that I knew and just adding one every time, then do API calls on that ID.
[55:20.680 --> 55:28.480]  And basically, to pull down data from the API, I just pretended that I was a user scrolling through that infinite feed.
[55:28.740 --> 55:40.500]  And the Neighbors app features that infinite scroll, and apparently there's no rate limiting, because I did this on 16 cores on a server repeatedly for every area that I could find.
[55:40.820 --> 55:46.580]  And in the end, I had data going back to 2016 for 236,000 areas.
[55:47.160 --> 55:50.180]  And that only took like maybe seven hours or something.
[55:50.700 --> 55:55.440]  So at this time, Ring really didn't have any security in their app at all.
[55:55.440 --> 56:01.800]  That is an excerpt from One Ring to Surveil Them All by Dan Kalachi from HOPE 2020.
[56:02.260 --> 56:08.820]  It's one of 129 talks that you will get if you pledge to 516-620-3602.
[56:08.900 --> 56:14.840]  A pledge of $100 gets you the full HOPE 2020 thumb drive package, along with a tote bag.
[56:14.840 --> 56:18.380]  You can also pledge $100 for the strand package.
[56:18.740 --> 56:21.180]  Again, 516-620-3602.
[56:21.300 --> 56:22.800]  Give to WBAI.org.
[56:22.920 --> 56:31.700]  We are out of time, but you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com, with your thoughts, opinions, and ideas.
[56:32.080 --> 56:35.400]  We'll be back next week with a regular program.
[56:35.620 --> 56:37.320]  Until then, good night, Alex.
[56:38.300 --> 56:39.340]  Good night, Kyle.
[56:40.100 --> 56:40.820]  Good night.
[56:41.080 --> 56:42.140]  Good night, WBAI.
[56:42.740 --> 56:44.340]  Good night, WBAI.
[56:45.260 --> 56:46.540]  Look up and live.
[57:11.860 --> 57:14.500]  It's the big turtle thing from...
[57:16.060 --> 57:17.660]  It's not a lion turtle.
[57:18.220 --> 57:20.500]  I want it to be the lion turtle, okay?
[57:25.140 --> 57:26.340]  I got six.
[57:26.800 --> 57:28.080]  I got six, too.
[57:28.800 --> 57:29.380]  So close.
[57:29.380 --> 57:33.740]  That one went down faster than the last one I was on with, uh...
[57:33.740 --> 57:35.100]  Yeah, it's a random chance.
[57:35.120 --> 57:36.340]  Callie, or whoever that was.
[57:38.220 --> 57:39.280]  Is that a random chance?
[57:39.280 --> 57:40.000]  Do you remember who I was with?
[57:42.440 --> 57:43.600]  I think it was Callie.
[57:43.600 --> 57:44.700]  Ohhhh!
[57:53.580 --> 57:54.980]  Aaaahhhh!
[57:54.980 --> 57:55.460]  That was...