[00:28.670 --> 00:32.330]  It's ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:33.190 --> 00:37.850]  I caught myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
[00:38.530 --> 00:43.150]  We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
[00:43.410 --> 00:45.870]  Bundle, we bombed, but the best expected was.
[00:46.590 --> 00:48.550]  I hope that's understood.
[00:48.830 --> 00:49.730]  Bundle, we bombed!
[01:24.210 --> 01:30.430]  Apologies to everybody for the repeating problems we keep having connecting to WBAI.
[01:30.610 --> 01:33.730]  I don't know what the technical issues are, and apparently nobody else does either.
[01:34.490 --> 01:35.250]  Again, apologies.
[01:35.810 --> 01:36.810]  Five minutes late.
[01:37.950 --> 01:42.070]  Hopefully we can go five minutes later and not have to get off the air at 55 after.
[01:42.470 --> 01:43.370]  Yeah, I'm really sorry.
[01:43.370 --> 01:44.210]  Unlike everybody else.
[01:44.390 --> 01:45.550]  I don't know what's going on, E.
[01:45.590 --> 01:46.090]  I'm sorry.
[01:46.390 --> 01:48.250]  This is, you know, go ahead, blame me.
[01:48.350 --> 01:49.230]  It is so frustrating.
[01:49.450 --> 01:50.630]  It's so incredibly frustrating.
[01:50.950 --> 01:52.010]  I'll take the...
[01:52.010 --> 01:54.710]  Just so people know, the show before us goes right up to the hour.
[01:55.130 --> 01:56.810]  We're told to get off the air at 55 after.
[01:57.250 --> 01:58.670]  This week, let's make an exception.
[01:58.670 --> 02:00.570]  Otherwise, I'll be in a bad mood for a full week.
[02:01.530 --> 02:02.450]  And you don't want that.
[02:02.550 --> 02:03.070]  You don't want that.
[02:03.510 --> 02:07.490]  All right, it's off the hook, on the air, at long last.
[02:07.670 --> 02:08.030]  Hallelujah.
[02:09.790 --> 02:10.490]  Emmanuel here.
[02:11.130 --> 02:12.290]  Kyle over there.
[02:13.630 --> 02:15.830]  Yeah, I was speaking earlier, yes, but I am here.
[02:15.950 --> 02:20.530]  Thank you for all the work you just put in, getting us going.
[02:20.530 --> 02:21.490]  It's very mysterious.
[02:22.010 --> 02:22.550]  Rob T.
[02:22.770 --> 02:24.190]  Firefly is joining us as well.
[02:24.530 --> 02:25.190]  Hang on a second.
[02:25.310 --> 02:26.590]  I got to bring this button up.
[02:28.550 --> 02:29.230]  Good evening.
[02:30.110 --> 02:32.030]  And I believe we have Gila as well.
[02:32.770 --> 02:34.210]  Greetings and salutations.
[02:35.370 --> 02:36.650]  And we're supposed to have a guest.
[02:36.650 --> 02:37.370]  I don't see a guest.
[02:38.370 --> 02:39.250]  We do have a guest.
[02:39.370 --> 02:40.190]  It's an invisible guest.
[02:40.390 --> 02:40.510]  Okay.
[02:41.330 --> 02:44.310]  Raphael Satter from Reuters, I believe, is joining us.
[02:45.590 --> 02:46.250]  Yeah, hi.
[02:46.370 --> 02:47.010]  Thanks for having me.
[02:47.430 --> 02:47.710]  Great.
[02:47.910 --> 02:48.630]  Welcome to the show.
[02:48.630 --> 02:56.330]  So, we're going to be talking about some very interesting things with you concerning Pegasus.
[02:56.650 --> 02:59.350]  If you haven't heard about Pegasus, boy, this is a story.
[03:00.090 --> 03:02.990]  A lot of new developments in the last couple of weeks.
[03:03.070 --> 03:06.670]  And Raphael is going to help us understand some of them, at least.
[03:07.550 --> 03:10.590]  But I want to start off with something on a more personal level.
[03:10.870 --> 03:15.110]  And you guys are free to jump in or not jump in as you wish.
[03:17.130 --> 03:19.230]  But this involves a friend of mine.
[03:19.470 --> 03:21.730]  This involves a story that we reported on a couple of years ago.
[03:21.810 --> 03:23.370]  A couple of years ago is when this started.
[03:24.630 --> 03:31.570]  My friend Virgil Griffith, who many of you know, many of you have heard, has been on the radio, he's been at our conferences, he's written articles for us.
[03:32.170 --> 03:32.890]  Amazing guy.
[03:33.030 --> 03:33.590]  Amazing hacker.
[03:33.910 --> 03:37.530]  Somebody that epitomizes what the hacker spirit is all about.
[03:38.790 --> 03:48.050]  He has been facing legal issues because he did something that many of us would do and have done.
[03:48.410 --> 03:49.830]  He went to North Korea.
[03:50.290 --> 04:02.690]  Yeah, he went to North Korea and disobeyed Donald Trump's decree that Americans will no longer be allowed to go to North Korea.
[04:03.990 --> 04:12.550]  He didn't so much just disobeyed, but didn't think it would be a huge deal because so many of us have already gone over.
[04:12.570 --> 04:17.350]  I went over there, I guess, about 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago.
[04:17.950 --> 04:21.470]  Reported there from North Korea to this radio show.
[04:22.070 --> 04:26.710]  Had all kinds of interesting encounters and experiences and things like that.
[04:26.810 --> 04:28.670]  And that's basically what he wanted to do as well.
[04:28.910 --> 04:29.790]  I'll tell you the story.
[04:30.110 --> 04:30.870]  I'll tell you more.
[04:30.870 --> 04:34.350]  But first, I have to give you the update because the update is why we're talking about this.
[04:34.470 --> 04:38.770]  The update is what's so disturbing about this whole chain of events.
[04:39.510 --> 04:45.190]  He has been basically living in hell since 2019.
[04:45.330 --> 04:46.510]  Actually, that's not entirely fair.
[04:46.590 --> 04:52.570]  He's been living with his parents in Alabama, which I guess maybe some people would think of as living in hell.
[04:52.630 --> 04:58.990]  But no, it's better than being locked up because he basically wasn't able to go back to where he lived.
[04:58.990 --> 04:59.690]  He lived in Singapore.
[05:00.330 --> 05:02.110]  He wasn't able to be free.
[05:02.290 --> 05:03.690]  He couldn't go on the internet.
[05:03.690 --> 05:04.610]  All these things.
[05:04.770 --> 05:12.650]  This is a guy who's so into technology, so into figuring things out, so into sharing information.
[05:12.790 --> 05:14.710]  And that is what did him in.
[05:14.750 --> 05:16.330]  The sharing of the information.
[05:16.510 --> 05:17.150]  The trusting.
[05:17.870 --> 05:21.850]  So many of us in the hacker world trust too much.
[05:23.670 --> 05:25.010]  And we'll get to that as well.
[05:25.410 --> 05:33.470]  But basically, in the last couple of weeks, they took him from his home and they threw him into prison.
[05:33.710 --> 05:35.410]  And why did they do this exactly?
[05:36.110 --> 05:46.570]  They did this because he accessed, or he was alleged to have accessed, his cryptocurrency account.
[05:46.570 --> 05:50.650]  Now, a lot of this story centers on cryptocurrency and how the U.S.
[05:50.750 --> 05:52.050]  government fears cryptocurrency.
[05:53.070 --> 06:10.950]  And the interesting thing with Virgil is that he worked for the Ethereum Foundation and was very knowledgeable about what cryptocurrency was all about, how to make it better, how to explain it to people.
[06:13.750 --> 06:16.190]  And he wanted to pay his lawyer's bills.
[06:16.670 --> 06:25.990]  His lawyer said it was okay for him to have his parents check to see what the balance was in his cryptocurrency account.
[06:26.310 --> 06:28.370]  And somehow, the U.S.
[06:28.470 --> 06:29.590]  government got wind of this.
[06:29.750 --> 06:31.550]  I believe Coinbase told them.
[06:32.550 --> 06:40.110]  And even though he wasn't the person actually typing the words, I'm not exactly sure what happened because I'm not privy to the information.
[06:40.950 --> 06:45.850]  But he basically lived up to the terms of his house confinement.
[06:45.850 --> 06:48.170]  He didn't actually go on the Internet himself for this.
[06:48.510 --> 06:55.630]  He had his parents simply check the balance to see if there was, you know, if it had gone up enough where he could actually afford to pay his lawyers.
[06:55.950 --> 06:57.790]  And his lawyers said this was okay.
[06:58.390 --> 06:59.570]  They said that.
[07:01.030 --> 07:01.750]  And the U.S.
[07:01.810 --> 07:04.050]  government said, no, no, it's not okay.
[07:04.690 --> 07:08.550]  And they basically just came and threw him into prison.
[07:09.590 --> 07:17.090]  And that's where he is right now for something as ridiculous as checking cryptocurrency balance.
[07:17.210 --> 07:29.970]  And that's what this case has been like pretty much the whole time, is lack of understanding, lack of knowledge as far as what the technology is all about.
[07:29.970 --> 07:36.710]  Now, his lawyers have filed a motion to get him out of prison.
[07:38.010 --> 07:39.110]  I'll read you part of it.
[07:39.290 --> 07:44.510]  Mr. Griffith has been out of custody, residing with his parents in their Tuscaloosa home.
[07:44.990 --> 07:50.990]  During that time, he has made all court appearances, has recently traveled to Los Angeles twice for critical trial preparation meetings.
[07:50.990 --> 07:52.170]  His lawyers are in Los Angeles.
[07:52.410 --> 07:53.770]  And I was with the court's approval.
[07:53.770 --> 07:59.730]  All these trips have occurred without incident, including his return to Tuscaloosa on July 10th.
[08:01.850 --> 08:09.530]  Given the impending trial date, which is in mid-September, I believe, Mr. Griffith may need to sell certain assets to fund his legal defense.
[08:10.030 --> 08:14.570]  He consults closely with his family on financial matters and did so even prior to his arrest.
[08:14.710 --> 08:27.970]  In connection with their strategy to assess and access necessary resources to fund his defense, and after consulting counsel, his mother made an online request to access a U.S.-based and regulated cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase.
[08:28.970 --> 08:38.230]  Defense counsel reasonably believed that Mr. Griffith's parents accessing an account on his behalf for this purpose would not violate any provision of the bond order.
[08:38.890 --> 08:49.890]  Mr. Griffith and his parents, therefore, acted consistently with their understanding of the conditions of the bond as informed by what they understood pre-trial services permitted and after Mr. Griffith consulted counsel.
[08:50.730 --> 08:54.290]  The matter has no connection to any risk of flight.
[08:56.350 --> 08:57.950]  It's just so...
[08:59.050 --> 09:12.730]  so incredible, so crazy that this kind of thing happens, that somebody is imprisoned because he followed his lawyer's advice, because he was trying to pay his lawyer.
[09:12.890 --> 09:15.390]  So that's the craziness that's happening right now.
[09:15.390 --> 09:20.590]  Now, the craziness that led to all of this occurred back in 2019.
[09:21.110 --> 09:25.650]  I'll read you part of the story that came out in January of 2020.
[09:26.090 --> 09:37.410]  Dr. Virgil Griffith, a longtime hacker characterized as the internet man of mystery, has been indicted and will stand trial for traveling to North Korea to teach cryptocurrency and blockchain.
[09:38.850 --> 09:41.470]  after his arrest on Thanksgiving Day in Los Angeles.
[09:41.650 --> 09:42.390]  And here's another thing.
[09:42.530 --> 09:46.890]  They arrested him while he was on his way to his parents for Thanksgiving.
[09:47.230 --> 09:49.530]  They didn't arrest him while he was trying to leave the country.
[09:49.690 --> 09:52.870]  No, they arrested him while he entered the country on Thanksgiving.
[09:53.950 --> 09:54.430]  Unbelievable.
[09:55.770 --> 10:04.750]  He now faces a trial that highlights what will go down in history as an immense technological disruption of the 21st century.
[10:06.650 --> 10:12.390]  Basically, the world's economic leaders face a disruption that is a game changer in the world economic stage.
[10:12.510 --> 10:26.450]  And that is cryptocurrency or currencies that exist only in digital form and powered by a decentralized form of trust where transactions can be verified anywhere in the world and are no longer reliant on a central intermediary such as a bank.
[10:26.450 --> 10:28.190]  For countries like the U.S.
[10:28.210 --> 10:32.750]  and China, cryptocurrencies pose major threats to their current position as world superpowers.
[10:33.370 --> 10:39.810]  And for North Korea, this technology presents an opportunity to advance its ambitions towards maybe becoming a superpower.
[10:40.990 --> 10:47.450]  As to the potential for cryptocurrency to be disruptive, 2019 definitely proved how serious policymakers in the U.S.
[10:47.490 --> 10:48.130]  view this threat.
[10:48.250 --> 10:57.530]  The uproar surrounding the Facebook Libra hearings in Congress with Mark Zuckerberg, the president's tweets, President Trump, that is, describing Bitcoin as coming out of thin air.
[10:57.910 --> 11:10.630]  And finally, the Secretary of State, Mnuchin, characterization of cryptocurrency as a national security threat, indicated there was a high level of concern how cryptocurrency might be a danger to the United States.
[11:10.730 --> 11:13.670]  So we're laying the stage for all the ignorance that's out there, right?
[11:13.830 --> 11:26.490]  And all the panic that greets somebody who might understand this, who might be able to tell people how it works and make things inconvenient for those who want the status quo to stay as it is.
[11:27.370 --> 11:37.170]  Continuing, indeed, the idea that Bitcoin, Libra, or any other cryptocurrency might become enough of a valuable digital currency that poses a threat against the greatest weapon the U.S.
[11:37.210 --> 11:42.290]  has in terms of handling foreign affairs, the potential to undercut economic sanctions.
[11:43.010 --> 11:44.490]  The dominance of the U.S.
[11:44.590 --> 11:47.210]  dollar around the world creates the opportunity that should the U.S.
[11:47.290 --> 11:51.890]  impose sanctions on another country, such as North Korea, the impact is real and painful.
[11:52.090 --> 11:54.030]  That's what this is really all about.
[11:56.650 --> 12:06.410]  The interesting thing about Virgil, I want to read part of a letter dated January 8th, before his bail hearing, this is in 2020.
[12:07.090 --> 12:07.790]  The U.S.
[12:08.050 --> 12:14.310]  Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York showed how concerned they were that he was a flight risk.
[12:14.470 --> 12:31.230]  However, as pointed out, by the defense, although Virgil Griffith has been involved with TOR, the Onion Router, another thing that a lot of people fear and are misinformed on, a way that you can communicate anonymously and securely, for the most part.
[12:31.450 --> 12:32.330]  And browse.
[12:33.250 --> 12:33.770]  Browse.
[12:34.290 --> 12:35.390]  Other parts of the web.
[12:35.390 --> 12:38.310]  Go to our SecureDrop location, things like that.
[12:38.550 --> 12:39.710]  But regardless, that's another show.
[12:40.230 --> 12:46.310]  He'd been involved with TOR, which is a way of using the dark web and a way of learning about the many things that are there.
[12:46.730 --> 12:47.810]  Some good, some bad.
[12:48.730 --> 12:55.070]  He ended up, Virgil that is, ended up supporting Interpol to help capture illegal activities.
[12:55.290 --> 12:57.610]  And that resulted in him being fired from TOR.
[12:58.250 --> 12:58.710]  Huh.
[12:58.970 --> 12:59.970]  How about that?
[13:00.810 --> 13:03.670]  Virgil is not the kind of person that commits crimes.
[13:03.670 --> 13:08.170]  He's the kind of person that basically figures things out and tells everybody about it.
[13:08.910 --> 13:12.030]  And that is the mistake that he made.
[13:12.130 --> 13:13.390]  I remember when he was in New York.
[13:14.750 --> 13:16.930]  It was actually before one of our shows.
[13:17.310 --> 13:22.490]  And he had gotten a call from the FBI to talk to them about his trip to North Korea.
[13:23.910 --> 13:28.230]  Now, Virgil had asked permission to go to North Korea before he went.
[13:28.470 --> 13:29.510]  He wasn't trying to hide it.
[13:29.970 --> 13:33.030]  And I think he was a bit surprised when it was turned down.
[13:33.170 --> 13:37.950]  This was after Trump's decree saying that Americans can't go to North Korea anymore.
[13:37.990 --> 13:42.130]  The only country in the world that Americans weren't allowed to go to at the time.
[13:42.130 --> 13:44.010]  We were even allowed to go to Cuba at that time.
[13:44.770 --> 13:46.050]  So he was surprised.
[13:46.210 --> 13:46.970]  He lived in Singapore.
[13:46.970 --> 13:50.510]  So, you know, he didn't take it as seriously as he should have.
[13:50.550 --> 13:51.210]  And he admitted that.
[13:51.670 --> 13:53.770]  Right off the bat, he admitted, yeah, I did that.
[13:53.910 --> 13:55.690]  He never tried to hide.
[13:55.830 --> 13:56.550]  Probably could have.
[13:56.630 --> 13:57.850]  Probably could have easily covered it up.
[13:57.910 --> 13:58.190]  But no.
[13:58.930 --> 13:59.830]  He did something.
[13:59.990 --> 14:00.990]  He owned up to it.
[14:02.290 --> 14:07.130]  Now, when he visited the FBI, he went against my advice without a lawyer.
[14:08.530 --> 14:14.050]  And with full trust in his heart that he would just explain things to them, they would understand.
[14:14.330 --> 14:18.290]  And I saw him later that day after he had met with them.
[14:18.410 --> 14:21.730]  And he was convinced that it was a friendly conversation.
[14:21.730 --> 14:22.610]  They understood.
[14:22.810 --> 14:28.630]  He gave them copies of North Korean newspapers that he brought back, pictures that he took.
[14:28.790 --> 14:31.230]  He told them everything that happened over there.
[14:31.350 --> 14:36.310]  Everything that has come about from this case is because Virgil told them.
[14:36.990 --> 14:38.750]  That's the kind of person he is.
[14:38.930 --> 14:40.570]  That's the kind of person he has always been.
[14:41.710 --> 14:42.930]  I'm not that trusting.
[14:43.170 --> 14:44.470]  I told them, don't trust these people.
[14:44.590 --> 14:46.650]  They will lay some kind of trap for you.
[14:46.730 --> 14:49.650]  I don't know how they're going to do that exactly, but they will.
[14:51.410 --> 14:56.350]  I also warned him against going to North Korea, saying, you know, that could be potentially dangerous.
[14:56.930 --> 14:59.690]  I was warning him about the dangers of North Korea.
[14:59.690 --> 15:04.350]  I should have warned him more about the dangers of America, unfortunately.
[15:04.350 --> 15:11.430]  Unfortunately, Virgil wrote a hacker perspective for 2600 back in the spring of 2019.
[15:11.430 --> 15:16.350]  I just want to read you a couple of things from that so you can understand something about his character.
[15:18.010 --> 15:23.630]  I love the ingenuity that goes into trying to think of the most perverse things you can do within the game.
[15:23.810 --> 15:24.490]  Talking about video games.
[15:24.610 --> 15:27.230]  That the designers would have never foreseen someone trying.
[15:27.710 --> 15:33.210]  This slowly extended into writing scripts within games to perform common tasks more quickly.
[15:33.870 --> 15:42.770]  Hacking has a certain mystique, but it was the search for the most advanced, insidious ways to get an edge on the online competition that brought me to the security mindset.
[15:43.090 --> 15:48.750]  And soon I was noticing compromising blemishes in all sorts of social and technological systems.
[15:48.950 --> 15:59.090]  I subscribed to 2600 Magazine, and at every issue, I understood two or three articles well enough to re-implement them or clean up any minor defects in their technique.
[15:59.090 --> 16:03.150]  At 17, I attended my first hacker conference, H2K, in New York.
[16:03.430 --> 16:08.990]  I understood almost none of the talks, but I made up for it by taking page after page of useless notes.
[16:09.270 --> 16:11.350]  In my senior year of high school...
[16:11.350 --> 16:12.050]  High school?
[16:12.170 --> 16:19.970]  I was inspired by an article in this very magazine entitled Campus-Wide, Wide Open by Ascitis, a sophomore at Georgia Tech.
[16:19.970 --> 16:26.330]  It was about flaws in the blackboard transaction system, the card access system used at most college campuses nationwide.
[16:27.830 --> 16:33.710]  This article made complete sense to me, and I felt it could have deep ramifications.
[16:34.190 --> 16:42.530]  Later that year, I graduated high school, enrolled at the University of Alabama, and met Ascitis, a.k.a.
[16:42.610 --> 16:45.310]  Billy Hoffman, at a local hacker conference in Atlanta.
[16:45.730 --> 16:50.270]  We started up a collaboration to fully flesh out and implement the ideas in his paper.
[16:50.690 --> 16:56.890]  Seven months later, in April 2003, I was excited to give a security talk together, my very first.
[16:58.150 --> 17:04.930]  But hours before our talk, we were served a temporary restraining order from Blackboard, Inc., the maker of the Campus Card System.
[17:04.930 --> 17:13.350]  This was followed by a civil lawsuit two days later, stating that our investigating the flaws in their system was, in fact, illegal.
[17:13.890 --> 17:15.430]  The suit didn't go so well.
[17:15.650 --> 17:19.790]  I feel we were completely in the right, but legal courts do not favor who is right.
[17:20.170 --> 17:23.050]  Oftentimes, they don't even favor who is on the right side of the law.
[17:23.190 --> 17:24.690]  They favor the prepared.
[17:25.010 --> 17:29.010]  We were woefully unprepared, and we settled out of court under sealed terms.
[17:29.530 --> 17:31.310]  Hopefully, you all can learn from this.
[17:31.430 --> 17:34.450]  Talk to a lawyer before you get too deep into your project.
[17:34.450 --> 17:35.670]  Boy, I wish you had listened to this.
[17:36.490 --> 17:41.510]  Although, judging from the recent history of hacker cases, it's unlikely you'll go to jail for trying to do a good deed.
[17:41.950 --> 17:52.910]  But unless your case is legally unassailable, the company will outspend you, successfully stop you, and your case will simply become yet another one of the many cases that fail to establish any useful precedent.
[17:53.750 --> 17:59.730]  Anyway, at this point, administrators at both of our universities were more than pissed at us for causing a ruckus.
[18:00.190 --> 18:03.430]  Throughout my sophomore year, I was politely encouraged to leave.
[18:03.430 --> 18:04.690]  So, I did.
[18:04.830 --> 18:06.090]  Wound up in Indiana.
[18:06.630 --> 18:14.590]  And while there, I somehow convinced one of the professors at Indiana University's School of Informatics to give me a job doing computer security research.
[18:14.730 --> 18:22.810]  I did a cute data mining project that cross-referenced birth and marriage records across the state of Texas to automatically discover mother's maiden names.
[18:22.810 --> 18:27.970]  As far as I can tell, not even bank employees know why that's still used as a security question.
[18:28.470 --> 18:30.630]  I called it messing with Texas.
[18:34.450 --> 18:36.450]  Yeah, I could read this whole thing.
[18:36.590 --> 18:41.550]  But basically, Virgil was involved in WikiScanner.
[18:41.730 --> 18:42.590]  He invented WikiScanner.
[18:42.710 --> 18:44.050]  Basically, he took two databases.
[18:44.230 --> 18:49.670]  This is a database of all of Wikipedia edits and another database which listed the registered owner for a given IP address.
[18:49.670 --> 18:56.830]  And users could then type in a company and see every anonymous edit that company had made from their offices.
[18:57.090 --> 19:03.510]  It was, as he described it, a bountiful harvest of public relations disasters for disinformers across the globe.
[19:05.750 --> 19:14.610]  Let me conclude with his definition of what self-described hackers have or who they are.
[19:14.830 --> 19:33.110]  The investigative journalists of the online world, playful jokesters, people whose mastery of technology has given them disproportionate influence on the internets, people for whom almost every social problem has an engineering solution, chaotic good,
[19:33.410 --> 19:44.070]  but occasionally chaotic neutral, vigilantes to the extent allowed by law, empowering the good and punishing the bad, and people with balls of steel.
[19:45.550 --> 19:51.550]  You know, he gave me credit in that for helping to raise an entire generation of disruptive technologists.
[19:51.710 --> 20:05.430]  So I guess I kind of feel, I kind of feel that there's a kind of responsibility here and I need to, I need to make sure the case is known, that people know what is happening here.
[20:06.070 --> 20:14.930]  Now, earlier, I believe this was in 2020, less than a year ago.
[20:14.930 --> 20:27.070]  So, they tried to get the case dismissed, saying that he had no intention of helping North Korea develop cryptocurrency or get around sanctions or anything like that.
[20:28.930 --> 20:30.150]  And the U.S.
[20:30.250 --> 20:33.030]  government referred to his argument as absurd.
[20:33.390 --> 20:35.610]  I did a little digging to find out what they meant by that.
[20:35.870 --> 20:36.990]  And here's what they said.
[20:37.370 --> 20:41.810]  A simple hypothetical lays bare the absurdity of Griffith's position.
[20:41.810 --> 20:57.090]  By his logic, the North Korea sanctions regulations would permit an American physicist to travel to the DPRK and explain the science behind nuclear weapons to a conference of North Korean physicists, so long as the science could be found on the internet.
[20:57.370 --> 21:03.610]  And he received no fee, and the regime's desire to build nuclear weapons was not economic in nature.
[21:05.390 --> 21:10.610]  Well, you know, apart from trying to scare us with nukes, this doesn't really hold water.
[21:10.610 --> 21:14.410]  Because North Korea already knows how to make nuclear bombs.
[21:14.590 --> 21:15.970]  They've proven that over and over again.
[21:16.370 --> 21:18.030]  They don't need help in that.
[21:18.550 --> 21:28.270]  And I fail to see the difference in looking something up on the internet, learning it that way, or talking to somebody, learning it that way.
[21:28.270 --> 21:35.970]  Maybe you'll learn something that will prevent you from doing something disastrous that would hurt many, many others.
[21:37.210 --> 21:45.230]  What Virgil did in North Korea was attend a conference that North Korea was holding on cryptocurrency.
[21:45.370 --> 21:47.570]  It did not give them any secret information.
[21:48.730 --> 21:50.390]  It was a way to go to North Korea.
[21:50.530 --> 21:53.090]  It was a way to explore, learn, communicate.
[21:53.090 --> 21:56.210]  But certainly was not conspiring in any way.
[21:57.330 --> 21:58.130]  The U.S.
[21:58.390 --> 22:05.070]  government has tried to make it sound as if he was intent on disabling the sanctions.
[22:05.490 --> 22:10.930]  He was intent on figuring out the security holes that would allow that to happen.
[22:11.090 --> 22:20.470]  And as was demonstrated in his trip to New York, to the FBI, he would tell everything that he learned to people who simply asked.
[22:20.470 --> 22:24.950]  And he assumed that that was, that was enough.
[22:25.210 --> 22:26.030]  Yeah, he was naive.
[22:26.230 --> 22:27.250]  There's no question about that.
[22:27.450 --> 22:35.050]  This is somebody that is not really that astute in how the legal world and the governmental world works.
[22:37.410 --> 22:43.930]  And you know, I just saw this story too, which might defeat my entire point here.
[22:44.270 --> 22:49.730]  North Korea has amassed $670 million in Bitcoin and other currencies through hacking.
[22:50.690 --> 22:52.950]  Oh my goodness, Virgil, what has happened here?
[22:53.450 --> 22:56.910]  North Korea has amassed upwards of $670 million worth of Bitcoin.
[22:57.150 --> 23:03.310]  That's according to a panel of experts reporting to the UN Security Council in March of 2019.
[23:04.830 --> 23:07.810]  That's before he ever even went over there.
[23:08.450 --> 23:10.130]  They already knew how to do this.
[23:10.230 --> 23:11.230]  They didn't need Virgil.
[23:11.690 --> 23:16.470]  This had nothing to do with fraud, had nothing to do with getting past sanctions.
[23:16.850 --> 23:18.630]  What this is, is ignorance.
[23:18.630 --> 23:19.970]  Ignorance, ignorance on the part of the U.S.
[23:20.050 --> 23:22.290]  government, and torture.
[23:23.030 --> 23:39.550]  Throwing somebody in prison, pretty much a guarantee of getting COVID-19, and having him face upwards of 20 years in prison for the simple act of visiting a place that so many of us have gone to and exploring something that every hacker would be interested in.
[23:40.190 --> 23:43.330]  And if there's a crime here, it's that.
[23:44.090 --> 23:56.570]  And I know there are a lot of questions, and people are welcome to write in to us, OTH at 2630.com, ask the questions, or call us while we do overtime at 8 o'clock on YouTube, and we'll talk directly.
[23:57.230 --> 24:03.290]  But I just wanted to make sure that story got out there, because, you know, it's like Kevin Mitnick all over again, except worse.
[24:06.150 --> 24:25.630]  Because Virgil didn't even think for a second that he was doing something that would arouse the ire of the powers that be so much, and has always appeared where he was supposed to be, has followed all the rules, and it's tragic.
[24:25.730 --> 24:26.770]  It's tragic what's happening here.
[24:26.970 --> 24:31.250]  One of the great minds of the hacker world, being silenced like this.
[24:32.130 --> 24:34.010]  You know, sure, he made mistakes.
[24:34.010 --> 24:40.030]  Sure, he did a couple of things that he shouldn't have done, not the least of which was talk to the FBI without a lawyer.
[24:41.670 --> 24:47.570]  But we need to do everything we can to make sure this doesn't end tragically.
[24:48.110 --> 24:49.090]  And September is a trial.
[24:49.270 --> 24:50.050]  He's in prison right now.
[24:50.050 --> 24:51.010]  He needs to get out of prison.
[24:51.050 --> 24:51.910]  He didn't do anything wrong.
[24:53.450 --> 24:55.690]  And that's all I'm going to say on the subject right now.
[24:55.870 --> 24:57.530]  Sorry for taking up a half hour of the show.
[24:58.630 --> 25:02.650]  And I want to talk about the Pegasus spyware.
[25:02.790 --> 25:08.010]  And for that, we have our special guest from the Reuters News Agency joining us.
[25:08.570 --> 25:14.470]  And I want to thank you very much, Raphael Sath, for joining us here on WBAI.
[25:16.170 --> 25:22.690]  Some of us have heard about Pegasus for the first time, but it's actually been known about for about five years or so.
[25:22.770 --> 25:29.190]  Can you give us a basic outline of what the Pegasus spyware is and who the NSO group is?
[25:30.750 --> 25:32.030]  Yeah, that's my pleasure.
[25:32.170 --> 25:33.590]  And thank you for having me.
[25:33.590 --> 25:49.790]  I first clocked Pegasus in 2016 when Citizen Lab, which is a research group based out of the University of Toronto, had found a phone belonging to an Emirati dissident.
[25:50.170 --> 26:03.430]  And they, along with another cybersecurity company called Lookout, started digging into this phone and they discovered this extraordinarily stealthy, very powerful piece of spyware that was planted on it.
[26:04.450 --> 26:09.270]  And that was the world's first big glimpse of NSO's capabilities.
[26:10.150 --> 26:12.070]  And you're right, that was about five years ago.
[26:12.710 --> 26:17.430]  Since then, Citizen Lab has come out with report after report after report.
[26:17.670 --> 26:22.810]  And there is a big section of the cybersecurity community that has followed those reports really closely.
[26:23.890 --> 26:31.910]  And Citizen Lab has outlined a kind of the global spread of this malware, particularly in Mexico and the Middle East.
[26:32.190 --> 26:41.090]  And it's shown over the past few years how this spyware has been turned against reporters and human rights workers.
[26:41.430 --> 26:46.770]  And in the case of Mexico, for example, even academics and people who are campaigning for a soda tax.
[26:47.590 --> 27:00.370]  And that picture that they've painted is completely at odds with what NSO says it does, which is that they say that they sell hacking tools to government to fight the worst of the worst.
[27:00.550 --> 27:03.850]  So terrorists, child molesters, that kind of thing.
[27:05.590 --> 27:16.730]  And that brings us to, I guess, the past two weeks where all of a sudden we have seen a cascade of new revelations about how NSO spyware is actually used.
[27:18.150 --> 27:23.310]  And it has not been particularly flattering as far as the Israeli company is concerned.
[27:23.890 --> 27:34.130]  In fact, it's been so unflattering that they announced, I believe it was the middle of last week, that they would no longer be taking any questions from the press, which was the first one for me.
[27:34.250 --> 27:38.090]  I've never heard of a company that says publicly, that's it.
[27:38.270 --> 27:38.970]  No more questions.
[27:39.170 --> 27:39.590]  We're out of here.
[27:39.710 --> 27:41.830]  Especially a company facing a scandal like this.
[27:43.510 --> 27:50.530]  You know, you'd think, you'd be eager to get, excuse me, you think you'd be eager to get your point of view across.
[27:51.410 --> 27:54.810]  And oddly enough, that hasn't really happened.
[27:55.630 --> 28:02.770]  So yeah, I mean, it's been, for those of us who followed Pegasus from the beginning, this has been an extraordinary story.
[28:03.110 --> 28:10.450]  But even for those of us who are just kind of waking up to it now in the past couple of weeks, it has been, you know, it's been full of revelations.
[28:10.670 --> 28:12.730]  Heads of state targeted by the spyware, right?
[28:12.990 --> 28:22.910]  Prime ministers, cabinet ministers, ambassadors, military figures, intelligence figures, on top of your usual bevy of, you know, human rights workers and journalists.
[28:23.190 --> 28:24.910]  So it's been fascinating.
[28:26.330 --> 28:26.850]  Yeah.
[28:27.610 --> 28:33.130]  And, you know, I'm looking at how it gets installed into phones.
[28:33.490 --> 28:40.010]  It used to be that you had to connect to something, you get an SMS message, and you'd be tricked into clicking on something.
[28:40.210 --> 28:51.590]  But now, apparently, you can have this installed on your phone by doing nothing, by simply having, I don't even know if they have to call you, or if it just somehow gets installed.
[28:51.730 --> 28:54.410]  Do you know how simple it's gotten at this point?
[28:56.650 --> 28:57.690]  Terrifyingly simple, right?
[28:58.310 --> 29:02.430]  I think that all of us have been habituated, especially in the hacker community.
[29:02.810 --> 29:08.310]  You know, you sort of think that if somebody gets hacked, they made a mistake somewhere, right?
[29:08.430 --> 29:10.750]  They clicked on something that they weren't supposed to click on.
[29:10.890 --> 29:14.150]  They opened a file that they shouldn't have trusted.
[29:14.930 --> 29:23.530]  And what makes the Pegasus revelations so terrifying is that this technology doesn't require any kind of interaction from the end user.
[29:23.970 --> 29:35.030]  You're just walking down the street in New York, or in Mexico City, or on vacation, or wherever you are, as long as your phone is on, and they know your phone number, you are vulnerable.
[29:35.490 --> 29:36.890]  So you got two choices, right?
[29:36.970 --> 29:42.110]  You either throw the phone in the lake, or you make it, or you don't give your phone number out to anybody.
[29:42.870 --> 29:45.830]  But, you know, it sort of defeats the purpose of the phone, I suppose.
[29:47.050 --> 29:57.250]  Yeah, I mean, it is a... I think that's the scariest part of this, this no-click interaction, where you will never know that you've been targeted, you'll never know that you've been hacked.
[29:57.950 --> 30:10.810]  And the only hint that something might be wrong is when you get thrown into prison by some dictatorship somewhere, or when somebody approaches you and knows a lot more about your life than they should have.
[30:10.990 --> 30:12.690]  So that's scary stuff.
[30:14.190 --> 30:16.790]  I had a quick question about the traceability.
[30:16.990 --> 30:17.710]  It's sort of related.
[30:17.990 --> 30:26.190]  I know there are some efforts to figure out where and what types and who may or may not have it in a forensic way.
[30:26.190 --> 30:45.870]  And part of that is actually that the software, once it's loaded, and the capabilities of your phone are sort of at its disposal, it can then disappear in that it is installing in memory, like something that would be erased upon like a reboot.
[30:46.090 --> 30:47.230]  That was something else.
[30:47.370 --> 30:48.570]  Do you know anything more about that?
[30:49.350 --> 30:54.310]  Yeah, so that's... I think the nature of the implant has changed over the years.
[30:54.310 --> 31:03.190]  When I first spoke to Mike Murray at Lookout about this back in 2016, I remember his description of Pegasus at the time.
[31:03.410 --> 31:09.350]  He said that it was one of the most fiendishly evasive pieces of software that he'd ever encountered.
[31:09.670 --> 31:27.190]  He described hair-trigger self-destruct mechanisms, where the software that would exist on your phone was keenly aware... and I'm sorry, I'm going to glaze over the technical details because it was five years ago now, but the... I think that this is normally described as,
[31:27.190 --> 31:29.370]  you know, counter-analysis techniques, right?
[31:29.710 --> 31:35.810]  So if the software figures out that it's being booted in a virtual machine, boom, it deletes itself, right?
[31:36.010 --> 31:42.290]  If it figures out that maybe it's being manned at all or something, then same thing.
[31:42.530 --> 31:45.790]  It's really, really evasive.
[31:47.230 --> 31:48.130]  I'll say.
[31:49.110 --> 31:55.150]  And, you know, I'm seeing all kinds of conflicting stories from the company.
[31:55.450 --> 31:58.910]  I know they're trying to gain control of the narrative.
[32:00.110 --> 32:05.650]  But according to this Tech Dirt article, their statements and responses have raised more questions than they've answered.
[32:06.050 --> 32:14.890]  NSO claims it has nothing to do with the list of 50,000 potential target phone numbers seen by journalists, which contains nearly 200 journalist phone numbers.
[32:15.090 --> 32:17.590]  And by the way, Rafael, I have to ask, because do you know if your number wasn't one of them?
[32:19.590 --> 32:20.950]  I don't believe so.
[32:22.110 --> 32:32.390]  The Amnesty and Forbidden Stories have said now, I believe publicly, that they have contacted all the journalists who they have seen, you know, on the long list of targets.
[32:32.390 --> 32:47.250]  You bring up this list, I think that that's, it's really good to bring it up, because the heart of the most recent set of stories has been a list of 50,000 odd phone numbers that Amnesty, International and Forbidden Stories have gotten their hands on.
[32:47.530 --> 32:56.990]  And there's a lot of debate, and some of it fed, frankly, by ambiguity, you know, from Amnesty and Forbidden Stories about what this list represents.
[32:57.450 --> 33:00.650]  And I fully, as a journalist, I fully understand this ambiguity, right?
[33:00.790 --> 33:04.630]  Because they, they have commitments to their sources, I'm sure.
[33:05.150 --> 33:08.930]  And so they, they want to be a little bit coy about where this comes from.
[33:09.090 --> 33:10.530]  That's, that's perfectly understandable.
[33:11.530 --> 33:19.970]  But, you know, into that ambiguity has, has crept room for denial and, and, you know, and legitimate questions.
[33:20.230 --> 33:34.850]  So you've got this big list of phone numbers, and Amnesty has determined that a lot of the numbers that are added to that list, get Pegasus on their phones within seconds sometimes, or I believe minutes of being added to the list, right?
[33:34.990 --> 33:40.450]  So there's, there's some form of correlation between the numbers that are on the list, and the phones that get infected.
[33:41.410 --> 33:46.850]  The way that it's been described by various journalists is that this is a kind of long list, right?
[33:46.950 --> 33:49.590]  In the same way that there might be a short list for the Oscars, right?
[33:51.310 --> 33:53.070]  This is the long list, right?
[33:53.210 --> 33:54.730]  So this is the long list for targeting.
[33:55.250 --> 34:00.010]  And, and it's a kind of, you know, prospective list for clients of NSO.
[34:00.270 --> 34:10.250]  And this is the, you know, we're, we're, we're going now into the realm of what analysts have described, you know, as this is, this is a list of kind of like a pre targeting list, if you will.
[34:10.410 --> 34:24.170]  And then within that list, are, are the targets themselves, and Amnesty and other groups, including Citizen Lab, which has done a lot of the peer review on this one, you know, have confirmed that, like, look, you know, a lot of numbers on this list, we've looked at the phones,
[34:24.350 --> 34:28.390]  and the numbers have Pegasus, and the phones have traces of Pegasus on them.
[34:28.710 --> 34:35.790]  Now, in some cases, so for example, one of the targets was the French president, one of the alleged targets, I should say, was the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
[34:36.410 --> 34:44.450]  Well, you know, forbidden stories asked if they could see his phone, and Macron did not, did not make his phone available.
[34:44.950 --> 34:48.530]  So, yeah, yeah, big, big surprise here, right?
[34:49.250 --> 34:52.370]  So, you know, they're laboring under certain constraints here.
[34:53.170 --> 35:00.930]  But, you know, one thing to keep in mind, because NSO has said, A, this list has nothing to do with us, and B, that number is way too high.
[35:01.110 --> 35:05.550]  You know, our clients only are allowed to infect a certain number of people every year.
[35:05.770 --> 35:09.450]  And that 55,000 or that 50,000 figure is way out of control.
[35:10.130 --> 35:11.570]  You know, okay, maybe.
[35:11.970 --> 35:22.230]  But just two years ago, WhatsApp said that over a two-week period, 1,400 devices were targeted with NSO software.
[35:22.410 --> 35:24.810]  That's over a two-week period two years ago.
[35:25.590 --> 35:27.930]  You know, extrapolate that over a couple of years.
[35:28.110 --> 35:28.730]  I don't know.
[35:28.850 --> 35:33.470]  I mean, that 50,000 figure, you know, sounds within the realm of possibility.
[35:33.710 --> 35:34.090]  Absolutely.
[35:34.470 --> 35:39.250]  And, you know, something else that kind of puzzles me here, and I'm sure it's mystifying a lot of people.
[35:39.910 --> 35:46.730]  But NSO claims they have, quote, no visibility, unquote, on their, how the customers use their malware.
[35:47.950 --> 35:55.930]  And they also claim they cut off governments who abused the product to target journalists, religious leaders, government officials.
[35:56.450 --> 36:01.370]  But how can they do that if they don't have any visibility over how they're using it?
[36:01.590 --> 36:03.090]  They're conflicting with each other.
[36:04.490 --> 36:04.930]  Yeah.
[36:05.210 --> 36:06.610]  It seems a little bit contradictory, doesn't it?
[36:06.710 --> 36:07.230]  A bit.
[36:07.390 --> 36:07.510]  Yeah.
[36:07.610 --> 36:10.890]  I mean, someone didn't run that sentence by a proofreader.
[36:10.990 --> 36:12.510]  But yeah, how can they know?
[36:13.230 --> 36:16.310]  You know, the other thing, we're talking about malware here.
[36:16.990 --> 36:24.050]  You know, in our culture here, right now, we're kind of taught that if you spread malware around, you're doing something bad.
[36:24.050 --> 36:24.470]  It's illegal.
[36:24.690 --> 36:26.250]  How is this company doing this legally?
[36:28.810 --> 36:29.830]  That's a really good question.
[36:29.890 --> 36:30.970]  Those are both really good questions.
[36:31.830 --> 36:35.710]  I'll tackle your first one first, because I think it's one that I may be a little bit more familiar with.
[36:36.310 --> 36:40.550]  So you have to see it from a... Let's forget about NSO for a second.
[36:40.690 --> 36:42.870]  And let's talk about spyware vendors more generally, right?
[36:43.930 --> 36:46.930]  Spyware vendors face a bit of a conundrum, right?
[36:46.990 --> 36:49.470]  Because their clients are intelligence agencies.
[36:49.690 --> 37:01.730]  And intelligence agencies don't like the idea of another... of a company, especially a company based in a different country like Israel or the United States or Italy or what have you, looking over their shoulder as they're spying on people.
[37:02.330 --> 37:06.870]  You know, that's just, you know, they'd rather have privacy while they surveil people.
[37:07.830 --> 37:17.610]  On the other hand, surveillance companies that want to make it big and that want to earn a lot of money, they need to... they either need to go public or they need to be bought out by some big hedge fund.
[37:18.050 --> 37:27.330]  And in order for that to happen, well, they need to have, you know, they need to abide by the basics of, you know, public accountability and scrutiny and that kind of thing.
[37:27.530 --> 37:30.210]  And some of them do it to a more or less degree.
[37:30.650 --> 37:35.390]  And NSO, I think, is one of several companies that's sort of caught in that vice, right?
[37:35.390 --> 37:44.690]  I think that on the one hand, there's a lot of pressure from their clients to get a guarantee that, like, hey, you're not spying on us while we spy on other people, are you?
[37:45.170 --> 37:55.730]  On the other hand, there's a lot of pressure from investors and just the public at large to say, hey, you know, you guys are monitoring your software, aren't you?
[37:55.890 --> 38:04.410]  You're not just like giving, you know, put it, let's put it in quotation marks, cyber weapons to, you know, various random governments and then letting them do whatever, right?
[38:04.530 --> 38:06.010]  You guys are monitoring this stuff.
[38:06.430 --> 38:17.010]  So they've, they're kind of caught between two chairs where on the one hand, they want to reassure people that, hey, don't worry, we're looking, you know, we're monitoring, we're babysitting, you know, we're seeing what these people are doing.
[38:17.130 --> 38:18.850]  And if they do bad stuff, we cut them off.
[38:19.210 --> 38:27.090]  On the other hand, they sort of have to tell, I guess, the kids that they're babysitting that like, I don't worry, we're not, we're not actually monitoring, you know, we're not looking at you that closely.
[38:27.370 --> 38:35.150]  And that may, and I emphasize may, be behind some of these contradictory statements that you're seeing from the company, you know, on the one hand, oh, no, no, we can't see anything.
[38:35.270 --> 38:37.510]  On the other hand, oh, no, no, we're keeping an eye out, right?
[38:37.750 --> 38:40.810]  And it's very hard for both of those things to be true at the same time.
[38:40.990 --> 38:41.590]  It's impossible.
[38:41.910 --> 38:43.430]  It's not, it's not possible for them to be true.
[38:44.490 --> 38:47.590]  So, well, look, let me, let's, let's play devil's advocate here.
[38:47.750 --> 39:00.870]  And this is the latest language that they have come up with, is that Shalev Julio, who is the, the S in NSO, has said that they cannot monitor their customers live.
[39:01.550 --> 39:09.710]  But retrospectively, if an issue is flagged, they can go back through the logs and try to piece together what happened, right?
[39:09.830 --> 39:17.050]  So that's, I think that that is, that's, that's their latest explanation of, you know, the degree of oversight that they have over their clients.
[39:17.610 --> 39:18.730]  They should have led with that.
[39:18.870 --> 39:21.310]  But I guess that's some, some good repair.
[39:22.090 --> 39:22.750]  Rob, go ahead.
[39:24.190 --> 39:30.250]  Raphael, the question I had was, like, I am really curious now, having followed the story a bit about NSO themselves.
[39:30.410 --> 39:37.310]  I mean, like, it's a very generic name, like you, you wouldn't necessarily pull someone off the street and ask them if they know who NSO is.
[39:37.450 --> 39:38.690]  Who are NSO?
[39:38.690 --> 39:40.550]  Like, what is this company that's doing this?
[39:40.990 --> 39:43.650]  I know you've been following what they, what they've been doing for a while.
[39:45.130 --> 39:45.610]  Sure.
[39:45.870 --> 39:47.510]  So it's, it's an Israeli company.
[39:47.650 --> 39:56.970]  And up until 2016 or so, when, when Citizen Lab outed them, they were operating, you know, deep beneath the radar.
[39:57.730 --> 40:02.610]  They, they, in fact, I believe, well, they changed names several times.
[40:02.750 --> 40:04.730]  At one point, they were known as QCyber, for example.
[40:05.650 --> 40:08.330]  They have various front companies.
[40:08.570 --> 40:13.030]  And by the way, this is not unusual for spyware vendors or even software vendors more generally.
[40:13.230 --> 40:14.930]  It's nothing necessarily nefarious.
[40:15.130 --> 40:21.930]  In the US, for example, their reseller is called, their reseller or subsidiary, there's some debate over that, is called Westbridge Technologies.
[40:22.970 --> 40:26.930]  They, the Luxembourg holding company is called OSY.
[40:27.730 --> 40:31.510]  They're owned by a British private equity fund called Novolpina.
[40:31.810 --> 40:37.510]  So, you know, like, a lot of these companies have very complex corporate structures, right?
[40:38.170 --> 40:48.050]  And, but at its core, NSO is these three people, Omri Lavi, he's the O in NSO, Shalef Julio, who's the S in NSO, and then a third person whose name escapes me, but he's the N in NSO.
[40:48.770 --> 40:53.390]  And these three guys came together in the early 2010s.
[40:53.870 --> 41:04.970]  And the, the story that's been reported in the press is that, you know, they, they, they tried various business ideas, and then they hit on this idea of kind of remote management of phones.
[41:05.550 --> 41:15.550]  And, you know, there's not a huge difference, or at least there wasn't at the time, between remote management of phones, and remote, quote, unquote, management of phones.
[41:16.510 --> 41:37.070]  And, and, you know, before too long, intelligence agencies and, and police forces came knocking, because as phones, as the encryption that protected, you know, the communications between different devices became stronger and stronger, there became, there began to be more and more of an incentive just to hack it to the device and,
[41:37.170 --> 41:38.410]  you know, get it from the endpoint.
[41:39.210 --> 41:45.030]  And by many accounts, they, they made quite a success of it, you know, at least up until now.
[41:46.590 --> 41:55.670]  Uh, I was curious, uh, what, um, has been looked into as far as countermeasures other than the, the forensic stuff?
[41:55.690 --> 42:09.110]  I know the list, as you described, is still sort of this thing that is, is, uh, it's uncertain what it exactly is defining, whether it's a customer list or some, or a compromise list that's been sort of gathered in, in various ways.
[42:09.110 --> 42:17.730]  And there is, um, very helpful stuff, I believe, for, uh, Forbidden Films and, uh, NBC International are, are implementing as far as tools.
[42:18.490 --> 42:24.150]  And I'm curious, are, are older phones, are obscure, um, operating systems, are they helpful in any way?
[42:24.230 --> 42:36.070]  Or, for instance, hotspots, if you're a journalist, um, and you need to communicate, but maybe you divert your communications to something that does not have as many sensors and cameras and so forth.
[42:37.510 --> 42:41.010]  Um, I'll tackle that first part of the question first.
[42:41.070 --> 42:58.290]  Um, I think that, um, a lot of your listeners have probably seen The Wire, um, and, um, and at some point, you know, if you really want to have a safe conversation, you take out that, you know, uh, 115-year-old Nokia brick, and you power it up, and you make that phone call,
[42:58.430 --> 43:00.150]  and then you toss the Nokia in the trash, right?
[43:00.470 --> 43:03.510]  Yeah, I was thinking, people, like, forget that sims are portable.
[43:03.710 --> 43:04.510]  You can move them around.
[43:04.710 --> 43:05.610]  It's very common with travel.
[43:05.690 --> 43:07.130]  There's even dual-SIM phones.
[43:07.830 --> 43:08.490]  Right, right, right.
[43:08.650 --> 43:23.390]  Well, look, this is beyond the scope of the, of the Pegasus and the NSO stories, but I will share an anecdote that a, um, that an Israeli who's in a position to know told me, uh, about a, maybe it was a year and a half ago, uh, over drinks.
[43:23.550 --> 43:36.350]  And we were talking about NSO, and we were talking about this very issue, and, um, and I asked him about the safety of, you know, taking out that old Nokia, and, you know, is that actually safe, is that actually going to be safer than using your iPhone or your Android?
[43:36.630 --> 43:39.530]  And he laughed, and, and bear in mind, this is just the anecdote, right?
[43:39.630 --> 43:41.250]  You know, no, no evidence for this, necessarily.
[43:41.430 --> 43:47.590]  But he said that, you know, before BlackBerrys came around, um, that was the golden age of phone hacking.
[43:47.750 --> 43:48.650]  That's how he described it.
[43:49.010 --> 43:57.510]  It used to be so easy to break into those old-fashioned phones that, um, you basically couldn't make a business out of it because everybody knew how to do it.
[43:57.850 --> 44:07.390]  Um, and you could just send a single silent phone call or a single silent text, and you'd get rude on the phone, uh, you know, like a single malformed text or something like that.
[44:07.530 --> 44:09.270]  And you'd completely own the device.
[44:09.850 --> 44:18.570]  So, I, I get the attraction, and there's a kind of romanticism to using that old phone, you know, and thinking like, you know, this, this is really going to protect me.
[44:19.210 --> 44:20.370]  Um, I'm skeptical.
[44:20.890 --> 44:23.410]  Uh, just, you know, just based on the conversations I had.
[44:23.590 --> 44:28.090]  And there's a second part of the conversation that you asked about countermeasures, maybe using a hotspot, that kind of thing.
[44:28.950 --> 44:31.990]  Um, I, I'm the wrong person to take security advice from.
[44:32.210 --> 44:36.970]  I think that you want to, you know, you want to chat with real security folks for, for an answer to that question.
[44:37.390 --> 44:47.210]  But I think that in general, the more hops that exist between your device and the, the wider network, the better.
[44:47.630 --> 44:50.150]  Um, I think that that's just, that's just as a rule of thumb.
[44:50.510 --> 44:56.390]  Um, and, and I, I know some people who are very security conscious, who never take that plane off airplane.
[44:56.550 --> 44:57.830]  It would never take that phone off airplane.
[44:58.990 --> 44:59.430]  Yeah.
[44:59.570 --> 45:00.690]  I appreciate your comments.
[45:00.990 --> 45:12.310]  So, um, certainly it just seemed to me, uh, the like mainstream, um, the, of course the OS that everyone's using that, that itself becomes a target.
[45:12.930 --> 45:16.470]  And, um, and I didn't want to romanticize too much the older stuff.
[45:16.590 --> 45:21.550]  I, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't want to give people the false sense that those are not something that could be vulnerable.
[45:21.550 --> 45:26.510]  I'm just saying it would eliminate the amount of information, e.g.
[45:26.750 --> 45:30.370]  sensors like GPS, et cetera, et cetera, make it a little bit more obscure.
[45:30.690 --> 45:31.250]  Who knows?
[45:31.350 --> 45:34.710]  Of course, some of that technology is set to expire next year.
[45:35.030 --> 45:37.210]  Um, and it's interesting you mentioned BlackBerry.
[45:37.330 --> 45:44.850]  I do think there are, um, some real virtues to the QNX model, um, and, uh, the operating systems that are implemented with that.
[45:46.510 --> 45:54.590]  Well, you know, BlackBerry has reinvented itself as a security company and, um, and I'm sure that their customers are asking them all kinds of questions right now.
[45:54.990 --> 46:04.330]  Uh, so, um, I mean, there's always, there's always some virtual, although it's poo-pooed, um, to, to kind of security through obscurity.
[46:04.550 --> 46:18.650]  Um, and, uh, and it's true that if you use a totally exotic model of a phone, you know, let's say that you're one of the seven people who bought a Windows phone back in the day, uh, there probably won't be much energy devoted to developing exploits from it because,
[46:18.770 --> 46:22.830]  you know, nobody's going to bother hacking the seven people in the world who use the Windows phone, right?
[46:22.990 --> 46:28.150]  There's a much better, there's a much bigger surface area for Android and for, for iOS, right?
[46:28.590 --> 46:31.170]  Um, so to a certain degree, what you're saying is, is correct.
[46:31.490 --> 46:46.270]  But, um, you know, there was, I, I think that if you're, if you're cracking out the old phone, there are still some old exploits for Symbian, you know, OS out there that, uh, that NSO can just go back through their back catalog and say like, oh, look,
[46:46.350 --> 46:47.370]  look what this bozo's using.
[46:47.490 --> 46:48.430]  Let's just, let's just hack.
[46:48.550 --> 46:50.010]  I'm using that old, you know, certainly.
[46:50.410 --> 46:50.630]  Yeah.
[46:50.690 --> 46:53.910]  They'll pick their favorite one just to troll you in the, in the process.
[46:54.130 --> 47:04.590]  But like, I also, um, would point out that a lot of the, the, I mean, the QNX model is it's cool with the, uh, BlackBerry tenants, all that, but it's emulating Android.
[47:04.970 --> 47:10.550]  So in, in, in, in, in, in a way to sort of allow you to run WhatsApp or allow you to run other things.
[47:10.690 --> 47:17.370]  So that in and of itself kind of defeats what, uh, what ordinarily might be a, a more obscure choice.
[47:17.630 --> 47:19.210]  What's wrong with a good old fashioned landline?
[47:19.430 --> 47:19.790]  Okay.
[47:20.070 --> 47:21.990]  We didn't have these problems back then.
[47:22.530 --> 47:28.070]  You know, but that's, but you know, that was, I I'm thinking of, of digging into the history of phone hacking.
[47:28.190 --> 47:35.570]  And I was looking through some accounts of, from the 1940s and 1950s of early phone hacking.
[47:35.850 --> 47:40.130]  So phones, so phones, then, and of course, you know, no cell phones back then.
[47:40.190 --> 47:41.830]  So we're talking, we're talking about landlines.
[47:42.230 --> 47:51.930]  Um, at one point, the phones at the U S embassy had received special signals that effectively disabled their ability to hang up.
[47:52.230 --> 47:57.370]  What it meant was that the, the phones be were, were hot all the time.
[47:57.390 --> 48:03.930]  You'd put the receiver down and you'd hear the kind of, you know, you know, which means that your, your call is over in fear.
[48:04.510 --> 48:08.990]  Um, but there's a caller who hasn't hung up and who basically will never hang up.
[48:09.150 --> 48:11.230]  And that recorder is running all the time.
[48:11.230 --> 48:15.690]  So even back in the forties and fifties with the landline, people were hacking those phones.
[48:15.810 --> 48:17.690]  You know, I might know what that's called.
[48:17.870 --> 48:19.210]  That might be called backhold.
[48:19.350 --> 48:21.950]  And it's something that operators had the power to do.
[48:22.070 --> 48:27.430]  If you ever got an operator mad at you, uh, she could, she could basically make it impossible for you to hang up.
[48:27.510 --> 48:31.430]  I know as a, as an eight-year-old that happened to me once and scared the crap out of me.
[48:31.910 --> 48:41.830]  Um, but you know, I, um, uh, Raphael, I would love to know about these 1940s hacking stories you're, you're finding out about because boy, that's, uh, that predates when I thought, uh, phone hacking began.
[48:43.170 --> 48:45.670]  Yeah, no, I mean, nothing new under the sun, right?
[48:45.950 --> 49:01.450]  Um, and I think we, we get further enough back, we're going to look at, you know, telegraph hacking and, um, and, uh, eventually get to clay tablet hacking, you know, but, uh, but this, uh, but, but I mean, phone hacking now, you know, the difference between what was then,
[49:01.570 --> 49:15.970]  uh, and what was now is that that rogue operator who was mad at you because you were, you know, doing something naughty over the, you know, over a copper line, uh, you know, at worst they might catch you in a frank conversation near the phone with a family member or a friend,
[49:16.090 --> 49:16.190]  right?
[49:16.290 --> 49:17.790]  And that's a snippet that they're going to get.
[49:17.910 --> 49:22.970]  And sure enough, that could be enough to be damning, could be enough to find out who you are, could be enough to get you in trouble, right?
[49:23.330 --> 49:25.410]  But there's a limit to the damage that can be done.
[49:25.690 --> 49:27.470]  Now our phones are our lives.
[49:27.610 --> 49:29.570]  Our phones are our souls, right?
[49:30.250 --> 49:39.130]  Um, baby pictures, uh, family photos, uh, sex photos, uh, you know, your, your email, your, your WhatsApp, everything.
[49:39.430 --> 49:43.070]  Your, your brain is on that device that gets hacked.
[49:43.690 --> 49:45.590]  Your, your soul, your mind gets hacked.
[49:45.830 --> 49:49.250]  That's, that to me is what makes this year so exciting.
[49:49.450 --> 49:55.070]  Of course, that's, that's why I'm increasingly believing that it's a mistake to have a phone become all those things.
[49:55.230 --> 49:59.770]  We see all the compromising constantly and we see the damage it does to us.
[50:00.090 --> 50:05.390]  There's got to be a better way to do this technologically so that everything isn't all in one place.
[50:05.850 --> 50:08.790]  It certainly makes the stakes much higher.
[50:09.990 --> 50:10.430]  Yeah.
[50:10.490 --> 50:14.450]  You have a, you have a single point of failure for your digital life and it exists in your pocket.
[50:15.630 --> 50:16.910]  Yeah, that's, that's exactly.
[50:17.050 --> 50:22.450]  And we, we tell people running computer systems, you know, always have backups, never have a single point of failure.
[50:22.750 --> 50:26.650]  I think we should, um, we should, um, observe that advice ourselves.
[50:26.970 --> 50:34.130]  We've been talking with, uh, Raphael Satter from, uh, from Reuters, uh, about, uh, the, uh, Pegasus scandal and all kinds of other things.
[50:34.450 --> 50:36.550]  And, uh, Raphael, you're welcome to join us in overtime.
[50:36.730 --> 50:40.690]  We, we continue conversation over on YouTube, uh, at eight o'clock.
[50:41.290 --> 50:47.050]  Um, you're, um, all welcome to write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[50:47.210 --> 50:48.070]  That's our email address.
[50:48.070 --> 50:52.210]  And we'll be back with this radio program on WBAI next week.
[50:52.770 --> 50:55.110]  Stay tuned to WBAI for more terrific programming.
[50:55.290 --> 50:58.430]  I want to go out with, um, the latest from negative land.
[50:58.810 --> 51:00.310]  This is called content.
[51:13.480 --> 51:14.040]  Participate.
[51:14.240 --> 51:14.720]  Content.
[51:16.720 --> 51:20.060]  Never forget the fact that we are all just content.
[51:20.800 --> 51:28.300]  That anything you put out there, your content, we are all just potential content for someone else's needs.
[51:28.300 --> 51:30.880]  I think people are happy to participate.
[51:31.300 --> 51:36.700]  They're just, you know, hundreds of people rolling their dice, throwing their hat into the content providing ring.
[51:38.220 --> 51:38.740]  Content.
[51:39.560 --> 51:40.080]  Forever.
[51:40.560 --> 51:41.420]  Make it mandatory.
[51:41.800 --> 51:42.120]  Content.
[51:42.400 --> 51:44.420]  You don't have to pay people to participate.
[51:44.880 --> 51:45.500]  Your content.
[51:47.120 --> 51:48.340]  You're forced to participate.
[51:48.680 --> 51:51.800]  Content is eternal.
[52:07.790 --> 52:07.930]  Content.
[52:08.190 --> 52:08.830]  Content.
[52:10.850 --> 52:11.410]  Content.
[52:12.050 --> 52:12.050]  Content.
[52:14.230 --> 52:14.870]  Content.
[52:14.990 --> 52:15.330]  Content.
[52:15.470 --> 52:15.650]  Content.
[52:15.870 --> 52:16.110]  Content.
[52:16.370 --> 52:16.490]  Content.
[52:16.690 --> 52:17.050]  Content.
[52:17.130 --> 52:17.450]  Content.
[52:17.630 --> 52:18.250]  Content.
[52:18.430 --> 52:18.590]  Content.
[52:18.870 --> 52:18.870]  Content.
[52:18.870 --> 52:19.050]  Content.
[52:19.090 --> 52:19.090]  Content.
[52:19.710 --> 52:20.090]  Content.
[52:21.130 --> 52:21.710]  ...forever.
[52:23.010 --> 52:23.590]  Eternity.
[52:24.310 --> 52:25.810]  You don't need people anymore.
[52:26.410 --> 52:27.690]  Nothing you can do about it.
[52:27.830 --> 52:28.190]  Content.
[52:28.330 --> 52:29.110]  Nothing you can do.
[52:29.390 --> 52:33.450]  Content will be matched up, cut up, repackaged for someone else's needs.
[52:33.490 --> 52:37.610]  The world's largest hotel chain owns no hotels.
[52:38.470 --> 52:39.810]  Are we manipulable?
[52:39.950 --> 52:44.750]  The world's largest retailer has no inventory.
[52:45.250 --> 52:45.830]  Manipulable.
[52:46.130 --> 52:47.030]  What's... I can't talk.
[52:47.150 --> 52:49.250]  And the world's largest media company.
[52:50.410 --> 52:51.570]  Creates no content.
[52:51.810 --> 52:53.330]  Yeah, we're not producing the content.
[52:54.050 --> 52:56.810]  We're allowing users to... to share.
[52:57.070 --> 53:00.150]  I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly.
[53:01.170 --> 53:02.210]  It's easy.
[53:02.390 --> 53:04.310]  You get all this user-generated content free.
[53:04.310 --> 53:05.450]  You don't have to do anything.
[53:05.610 --> 53:07.110]  I don't create it.
[53:07.230 --> 53:08.830]  I don't do any agency.
[53:09.090 --> 53:10.070]  I own it.
[53:10.270 --> 53:12.890]  I think people are happy to participate.
[53:14.870 --> 53:15.910]  It's expensive.
[53:16.070 --> 53:16.650]  You are content.
[53:16.850 --> 53:17.370]  You know what I mean?
[53:17.370 --> 53:20.650]  It's like the sounds that are used are not cheap.
[53:21.210 --> 53:21.770]  My content.
[53:21.910 --> 53:23.950]  They're very expensive sounding sounds.
[53:24.990 --> 53:26.250]  That sound, right?
[53:26.590 --> 53:28.150]  I just had to get used to it.
[53:28.210 --> 53:34.790]  It's the responsibility of the industry to figure out how to extract their value out of each generation.
[54:07.120 --> 54:09.920]  I want to know what they're talking about amongst themselves.
[54:16.040 --> 54:17.680]  I like being in the Vortex.
[00:00.710 --> 00:04.170]  And welcome to everybody on Off the Hook Overtime.
[00:05.070 --> 00:06.790]  I think we all made it over.
[00:07.750 --> 00:09.490]  Do we still have Raphael with us, Rob?
[00:11.230 --> 00:12.310]  We do indeed.
[00:12.610 --> 00:12.830]  Awesome.
[00:13.570 --> 00:14.810]  Great conversation, guys.
[00:14.970 --> 00:16.710]  Great conversation on Pegasus.
[00:17.290 --> 00:22.090]  And I'm glad we were able to get the word out about Virgil and everything.
[00:23.010 --> 00:26.350]  And I'm told we're actually on the air on YouTube, which is great.
[00:26.450 --> 00:26.930]  That's amazing.
[00:27.050 --> 00:27.650]  Everything is working.
[00:27.650 --> 00:31.950]  We didn't tweet out the link until just now, I understand.
[00:32.970 --> 00:35.950]  So it's possible not very many people know we're here yet.
[00:36.170 --> 00:39.370]  So maybe we should wait just a little bit for people to see that.
[00:40.710 --> 00:41.610]  It's on the main page.
[00:41.610 --> 00:41.990]  That's true.
[00:42.170 --> 00:43.530]  Well, who am I telling?
[00:43.910 --> 00:45.870]  I'm telling people I already know because they're listening.
[00:46.810 --> 00:48.470]  We need to tell the people who aren't listening.
[00:48.630 --> 00:49.450]  Made me feel better.
[00:49.610 --> 00:49.910]  All right.
[00:51.330 --> 00:58.290]  Our phone number, for those of you who want to call us, you can do that now, is 802-321-4225.
[00:58.290 --> 01:00.250]  That's 802-321-HACK.
[01:01.110 --> 01:03.830]  It's a Vermont area code, but we're not in Vermont.
[01:04.510 --> 01:04.930]  Yeah.
[01:05.150 --> 01:06.730]  That's just the number we happen to get.
[01:06.910 --> 01:10.210]  And the slimline is set to high.
[01:10.490 --> 01:10.810]  Uh-huh.
[01:12.110 --> 01:13.950]  Oh, you mean the ringer is set to high.
[01:13.990 --> 01:14.170]  Okay.
[01:14.370 --> 01:16.750]  So we won't have any trouble hearing the actual phone ring.
[01:17.410 --> 01:18.010]  That's good.
[01:18.010 --> 01:18.330]  Okay.
[01:19.650 --> 01:32.850]  Raphael, so anything else that you wanted to add about Pegasus or the shady figures that are behind the NSR group or governments or corporations or things like that?
[01:34.570 --> 01:39.510]  No, I think that this is just such a fantastic story to keep an eye on.
[01:39.710 --> 01:45.110]  I say fantastic, but, you know, like a lot of fantastic stories, the underlying fact pattern is actually quite disturbing.
[01:46.470 --> 02:03.410]  But, you know, one of the researchers who's been involved in this, a guy named John Scott Railton, he said something on Twitter that I thought was something that we should all keep in mind, which is that, you know, if heads of state can't keep themselves safe,
[02:03.870 --> 02:05.190]  what hope do we have?
[02:05.410 --> 02:05.710]  Right?
[02:05.710 --> 02:06.130]  Absolutely.
[02:06.750 --> 02:07.190]  Absolutely.
[02:07.390 --> 02:07.510]  Yeah.
[02:07.950 --> 02:08.990]  That is scary.
[02:09.190 --> 02:16.070]  And just the fact that we can be targeted so easily and never even know, never even know there was an attempt made.
[02:17.250 --> 02:21.110]  Is there a simple way to find out if you have been targeted?
[02:21.110 --> 02:34.030]  If you're not a government leader or a leading journalist, if you're just somebody who you think, you know, maybe I've been involved in human rights issues or something where I might have annoyed the wrong person, how would someone ever find out?
[02:34.030 --> 02:49.490]  Well, so I think that as far as this list that we were talking about on the show is concerned, this list of, you know, 50,000 odd telephone numbers that have been pre-selected for targeting, you know, as per these media reports, I would get in touch with Amnesty.
[02:50.010 --> 03:08.430]  You know, Amnesty International's major human rights organization, for the listeners who don't know it, it has a decades-long history of fighting against the death penalty and torture and other abuses, and has lately begun flexing its muscles in the digital sphere.
[03:09.110 --> 03:19.270]  If you get in touch with Amnesty and you supply them your bona fides and your telephone number, my understanding is that they are quite overwhelmed right now with people getting in touch with them to ask them that very question.
[03:21.610 --> 03:36.930]  And, you know, I understand that some of the governments that are accused of spying on journalists are now suing those very same journalists and activists that are looking into this.
[03:37.150 --> 03:39.390]  So the story just keeps getting more and more bizarre.
[03:40.850 --> 03:53.430]  Yeah, I, you know, I'm not aware of the ins and outs of it, and I haven't seen the text of the lawsuit, but I have seen the reporting out of France about the Moroccan government suing the French that were allegedly targeted.
[03:53.910 --> 04:01.210]  In India, you have also seen various forms of retaliation against people who have covered this story in various ways.
[04:01.330 --> 04:13.250]  In fact, one of the Indian newspapers, an online newspaper called The Wire, which is quite punchy and does a lot of investigative work, they were visited by police a few days ago.
[04:13.850 --> 04:20.010]  Allegedly, you know, they, so they put up, they put a, they sent out a tweet saying like, Oh, how odd.
[04:20.270 --> 04:30.730]  Police came to see if our paperwork was in order, you know, and when, what interesting timing, after they published, you know, a bunch of really, you know, explosive stories about domestic surveillance in India.
[04:31.290 --> 04:38.690]  And then the police, the Indian police said, Well, actually, you know, your sign, the signpost outside of your building was, was not visible.
[04:38.690 --> 04:43.050]  So we came to, to, to check out, you know, who the building belonged to.
[04:44.250 --> 04:46.650]  Yeah, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world.
[04:46.830 --> 04:46.990]  Wow.
[04:47.270 --> 04:47.570]  Sure.
[04:47.830 --> 04:48.330]  Yeah, exactly.
[04:48.770 --> 04:54.230]  What kind of a first, I'll make about the phone number again, our phone lines are open 802-321-4225.
[04:54.270 --> 04:59.630]  We'd like to hear from you either on these stories or on other stories, things that you like to bring up.
[05:00.150 --> 05:03.550]  We're here for you during overtime, 802-321-4225.
[05:04.670 --> 05:14.370]  But, Raphael, let me just ask you, what kind of response have you seen to this story from, from readers, from the public at large?
[05:15.510 --> 05:19.330]  Well, look, it's important to note that, you know, I've, I've not been directly involved.
[05:19.330 --> 05:25.250]  So I'm not one of the, I'm not one of the media organizations that have been working with Forbidden Stories on this.
[05:25.430 --> 05:32.530]  I'm just a Pegasus watcher who has been, you know, kind of keeping, keeping track of the story for, for a lot of these five years or so.
[05:33.790 --> 05:46.070]  I don't think, I mean, I, I note with some jealousy, because I'm, you know, I wasn't behind these, this latest batch of revelations, that these stories have moved the dial in a way that previous revelations have not.
[05:46.310 --> 05:54.610]  And I think that that's often what happens when you are able to put faces and names to targets of cyber espionage.
[05:54.610 --> 06:05.270]  I think that that's what this story has done, that so many other stories about spyware and about Pegasus in particular, have not managed to do, or not managed to do at this scale, let's say.
[06:05.870 --> 06:06.070]  Wow.
[06:07.070 --> 06:08.070]  We have a phone call.
[06:08.210 --> 06:10.010]  I think I heard the phone ringing a second ago.
[06:10.870 --> 06:12.150]  Is anybody out there?
[06:12.250 --> 06:12.550]  Good evening.
[06:13.470 --> 06:13.910]  Hello.
[06:14.490 --> 06:16.210]  This is Phil from Missouri again.
[06:16.430 --> 06:17.170]  Phil from Missouri.
[06:17.170 --> 06:17.810]  How are you doing?
[06:18.650 --> 06:19.250]  I'm okay.
[06:20.230 --> 06:23.850]  I haven't checked with my, so I caused my health problems, but...
[06:23.850 --> 06:24.630]  Sorry to hear that.
[06:24.810 --> 06:24.990]  That's all right.
[06:25.210 --> 06:29.670]  Any questions for Raphael from Reuters, or anything about what we were talking about tonight?
[06:30.170 --> 06:39.990]  Well, you know, when is spying, well, domestic spying, when is it justified?
[06:40.630 --> 06:46.990]  I mean, there's got to be at least a little bit of justification to cut down on terrorism and so forth, right?
[06:48.350 --> 06:50.770]  Some legitimate reasons for it.
[06:51.030 --> 06:55.790]  I believe that's how it's marketed, because that's exactly what they are allegedly trying to do.
[06:58.210 --> 06:58.810]  Yeah.
[06:58.810 --> 07:23.950]  Now, um, I just, um, the same with the malware on phones thing, I just, um, with companies actually selling this stuff now, um, sell malware, um, don't you think, um, maybe we should, like, have some kind of international treaty to prosecute on that kind of stuff?
[07:23.950 --> 07:31.130]  Um, you know, malware, as a, as a, as a basic thing, it's just pretty much just a kid prank, right?
[07:31.530 --> 07:49.270]  But the only reason it's destructive is because it tags servers and stuff like that, and it leaks data, or corrupts it, or does something like ransomware, but, you know, there's got, we gotta have some kind of common sense consensus on how to deal with this stuff.
[07:49.270 --> 08:07.190]  Um, uh, out here in Missouri, they keep talking about having a cyber justice, uh, cyber criminal, um, court system, to try to, um, you know, make the, uh, penalties for any laws broken, at least, for the crime, you know what I mean?
[08:07.450 --> 08:07.790]  Uh-huh.
[08:09.650 --> 08:19.550]  Um, I think, um, I'm saying, I mean, it's kind of hard to call it, you know, we need some kind of surveillance to look out for the bad guys, right?
[08:20.370 --> 08:21.330]  Yeah, well, uh...
[08:21.330 --> 08:23.270]  Uh, but it should be done with a warrant.
[08:23.590 --> 08:36.370]  Yeah, well, that's the thing, and this is, this is actually something I wanted to ask Raphael, because, uh, you know, we, we do have, uh, these kinds of investigative tools, but they, they, they, they, there's, there's, uh, uh, a trail, you know, a paper trail,
[08:36.610 --> 08:37.550]  there's warrants, things like that.
[08:37.550 --> 08:40.290]  But this seems to be bypassing all of that.
[08:40.570 --> 08:42.130]  Is, is, is, is that a, is that a fair assessment?
[08:45.510 --> 08:46.170]  Raphael, are you there?
[08:47.290 --> 08:49.590]  You know, it's, it's hard to say on that.
[08:49.950 --> 09:05.430]  Um, I, um, I, I think that I, like a lot of other people, think that any law enforcement action should be justified, proportionate, and, uh, wherever possible, reviewed by an independent and impartial judge, right?
[09:05.430 --> 09:10.970]  I think that that's, that's, that's kind of core bedrock of, of the American judicial system, or at least it should be.
[09:12.190 --> 09:18.910]  And, um, and I don't know what's happening with, um, the NSO spyware, or with other spyware, by the way.
[09:19.690 --> 09:21.590]  Um, I mean, I, I, I just don't know.
[09:21.790 --> 09:28.290]  The fact that I don't know, and that others don't know, is kind of, is sort of a concern in and of itself, right?
[09:28.290 --> 09:32.690]  Uh, we, you know, you, you, police need a warrant to get into your home.
[09:33.490 --> 09:35.710]  Um, shouldn't they need a warrant to get into your phone?
[09:36.010 --> 09:37.570]  Um, I think that's an interesting question.
[09:37.970 --> 09:40.250]  Um, I definitely think that that's worthy of concern.
[09:40.530 --> 09:53.410]  And, and inherent in this, I think, is a huge scope creep from maybe the mission of international terrorism, and sort of how we're changing and morphing definitions.
[09:53.410 --> 10:08.650]  It seems even NSO's, uh, business model itself was on, uh, was based on, sort of, the proliferation of, of, uh, counterterrorism and contractors and privatization around that, right?
[10:12.020 --> 10:21.720]  I mean, you know, I don't know exactly, you know, NSO has, of course, made some claims about, uh, well, our technologies used to fight terrorism.
[10:21.720 --> 10:33.160]  Um, I have not yet seen a, a single case in which we have a confirmed, the confirmed use of Pegasus technology to catch terrorists.
[10:33.720 --> 10:36.240]  Um, you know, I, I, I've not seen a single name case.
[10:36.440 --> 10:39.960]  Now, that could be because of the, you know, sensitivities involved.
[10:40.140 --> 10:41.060]  That's, you know, that's possible.
[10:41.500 --> 10:48.080]  But, um, but yeah, I mean, you're right to identify that rhetoric as something that's used often.
[10:48.080 --> 10:51.120]  And, uh, I just don't know if in practice that's the case.
[10:51.120 --> 10:53.120]  And, and not because I'm necessarily skeptical.
[10:53.120 --> 11:00.220]  I, I, I would be almost certain that such technology would be used against, you know, terrorists and other associated bad guys.
[11:00.420 --> 11:03.860]  If it could be, um, I just haven't seen any evidence of that.
[11:04.020 --> 11:08.960]  Uh, and that's, um, I, I don't know that, that's, that's a little bit thought provoking.
[11:09.060 --> 11:13.660]  But it's, it's always used as the, as the excuse, the reason to do something that's invasive.
[11:13.660 --> 11:17.980]  Uh, but then it's always, without exception, used against others.
[11:19.500 --> 11:23.980]  Look, I, you know, I, I'm not, I don't think I'm as categorical as, as you are on that score.
[11:24.140 --> 11:27.560]  But, um, but, you know, I, I certainly sympathize with that perspective.
[11:27.820 --> 11:32.360]  Because you, you do often see mission creep with this kind of technology.
[11:32.620 --> 11:33.560]  Very often, indeed.
[11:34.220 --> 11:35.940]  Uh, caller from Missouri, any other questions?
[11:36.980 --> 11:39.860]  Oh, nothing I can think of, but glad to have you guys back.
[11:39.940 --> 11:41.180]  Have something wild to listen to.
[11:41.180 --> 11:43.640]  All right, um, oh, we're glad you're out there.
[11:44.480 --> 11:45.860]  All right, you have a good one, okay?
[11:46.040 --> 11:46.620]  All right, you take care.
[11:47.360 --> 11:47.640]  Bye.
[11:47.860 --> 11:52.120]  And our phone number, once again, 802-321-4225.
[11:52.660 --> 11:57.320]  Somebody was calling during that call, because somehow we see caller ID, even on call waiting.
[11:58.020 --> 12:01.620]  And they were masking their caller ID, so it just showed up as zero.
[12:02.440 --> 12:03.560]  I want to talk to that person.
[12:03.600 --> 12:04.120]  It's the operator.
[12:04.440 --> 12:05.660]  The operator's calling us.
[12:05.760 --> 12:07.120]  The operator is calling us.
[12:07.500 --> 12:08.040]  The same operator.
[12:08.040 --> 12:08.480]  And you can't hang up.
[12:08.600 --> 12:10.540]  The same operator that backheld me when I was eight.
[12:10.540 --> 12:11.180]  Oh, my God.
[12:11.440 --> 12:13.120]  Well, they have more time now.
[12:13.320 --> 12:14.400]  You know, they're not as busy.
[12:14.560 --> 12:16.240]  There's, you know, automation and stuff.
[12:16.640 --> 12:18.040]  802-321-HACK.
[12:18.200 --> 12:19.360]  Off the hook over time.
[12:20.460 --> 12:23.500]  And I do believe I hear the phone ringing.
[12:23.720 --> 12:24.980]  Yes, the trim line is speaking.
[12:25.320 --> 12:26.220]  I'm so glad you turned that up.
[12:26.400 --> 12:26.660]  Wow.
[12:27.940 --> 12:29.500]  Maybe we can pick it up now.
[12:29.860 --> 12:31.720]  This is a private caller, so it's not the same.
[12:31.820 --> 12:32.460]  But go ahead.
[12:32.460 --> 12:33.740]  You're on the air.
[12:34.680 --> 12:35.400]  Hi, Emmanuel.
[12:36.100 --> 12:37.000]  Is this Rebel?
[12:37.860 --> 12:38.840]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[12:38.860 --> 12:39.660]  Wow, it's Rebel.
[12:39.660 --> 12:40.520]  Can you turn up the volume?
[12:40.720 --> 12:41.980]  Could you turn up the volume?
[12:42.040 --> 12:45.200]  Because on my computer, I have the volume all the way up.
[12:46.280 --> 12:50.020]  And your volume is not very high, so...
[12:50.020 --> 12:50.260]  Really?
[12:50.660 --> 12:51.840]  Okay, you're not alone, Rebel.
[12:52.000 --> 12:52.840]  I've been battling this.
[12:52.900 --> 12:53.760]  I've been looking at the board.
[12:55.360 --> 13:03.080]  We've been trying to even things out, and there was some suggestion things were a little hot in the past, but...
[13:03.080 --> 13:06.400]  Yeah, people told us we were too loud, so we turned it down.
[13:06.520 --> 13:07.240]  Now we're too low.
[13:07.300 --> 13:08.480]  We can never make everybody happy.
[13:08.660 --> 13:10.780]  We're just trying to find a nice, sweet spot.
[13:11.260 --> 13:19.660]  And Junce, if you're out there, you're the person who processes our shows and puts them online, maybe up the volume a little bit, so it won't seem like a problem to anybody in the future.
[13:20.280 --> 13:20.740]  All right?
[13:20.780 --> 13:21.600]  That's how you solve things.
[13:22.080 --> 13:23.080]  Rebel, how have you been?
[13:23.080 --> 13:32.100]  I mean, for Rafael's sake, Rebel has been calling this radio show for longer than it's been on somehow, and we haven't heard from him in a long time.
[13:32.420 --> 13:33.020]  He's basically...
[13:33.020 --> 13:37.920]  He's the guy that discovered that you could make free phone calls in chemical bank ATMs.
[13:38.680 --> 13:40.860]  Back in the 90s, when they used to have...
[13:40.860 --> 13:49.860]  Well, I was going to mention that, you know, it wasn't an ATM, but they used to have just a regular phone in the branches there that you used to call customers of.
[13:50.040 --> 13:52.220]  It was just a regular phone, anyone could just dial.
[13:52.220 --> 13:55.360]  Now they don't have that, they don't have chemical bank, they don't have any of that stuff.
[13:55.480 --> 13:56.800]  What have you been up to lately?
[13:57.560 --> 14:15.880]  Well, I mean, I was just, you know, on things that they don't have anymore, I was just thinking of the things that are happening with the virus and all these things that, I was just wondering, I mean, not wondering, but, you know, what would happen if this virus came about in like 2000 or 2001 or...
[14:15.880 --> 14:17.100]  Oh, that's a very good question.
[14:17.700 --> 14:26.440]  Before smartphones and before Zoom and before smartphones and before, you know, any of the things that we have today.
[14:26.440 --> 14:33.460]  Yeah, it's called the Spanish flu from 1919, which by the way was not from Spain, it was from Kansas, or allegedly from Kansas.
[14:33.980 --> 14:38.840]  Yeah, you know, having this degree of technology made it much more painless.
[14:40.100 --> 14:45.820]  Even 20 years ago, it would have been much more of a challenge to have our kids go to school and to be in touch with each other.
[14:46.660 --> 14:49.420]  So, you know, I don't know how we would have handled that.
[14:49.560 --> 14:54.960]  I maintain there would still be modes and methods and a variety of options to communicate.
[14:55.100 --> 15:06.180]  So I think all of those would probably have been deployed just as people were, you know, thinking about setting up ways to use video conferencing and so forth for their own work and life.
[15:06.380 --> 15:12.520]  We always tell ourselves that we can't possibly survive without the technology we have presently, but we always have.
[15:12.520 --> 15:19.720]  People would have read more books, perhaps, or just done more things that didn't involve the kind of technology we're used to now.
[15:19.860 --> 15:24.800]  I guarantee 20 years from now, people will wonder how we ever kept sane, assuming that's what we're doing.
[15:25.240 --> 15:32.440]  Right, but we didn't have Zoom, and we didn't have smartphones, and we didn't have some of...
[15:32.440 --> 15:32.760]  I don't know.
[15:33.100 --> 15:33.660]  Search engines.
[15:34.860 --> 15:35.740]  We didn't have what?
[15:35.920 --> 15:36.700]  Search engines.
[15:36.940 --> 15:39.600]  We had BBSs, and we had newspapers.
[15:39.900 --> 15:40.800]  We had all kinds of cool things.
[15:40.800 --> 15:42.840]  In 2000 and 1995 and all.
[15:43.020 --> 15:46.140]  If you get teleported back to that period, it's hard.
[15:46.140 --> 15:49.240]  But if you are living in that period already, it's what you're used to.
[15:49.420 --> 15:50.300]  So that's how people...
[15:50.300 --> 15:51.200]  I miss payphones.
[15:51.640 --> 15:53.340]  Okay, well, that came out of nowhere.
[15:53.520 --> 15:54.780]  But yeah, I miss payphones, too.
[15:55.220 --> 15:56.300]  I think we all do.
[15:57.040 --> 16:03.060]  And I miss operators, you know, that used to do things like collect calls, and person-to-person calls, and time and charges and all.
[16:03.180 --> 16:03.840]  All that stuff.
[16:03.840 --> 16:10.620]  But somehow, Rebels, somehow, people still send us tons of payphone pictures for the magazine, and we have no shortage of that.
[16:10.760 --> 16:12.180]  So I don't know where they're finding them.
[16:12.300 --> 16:13.200]  They're still around.
[16:13.440 --> 16:14.220]  Most of them don't work.
[16:14.340 --> 16:14.680]  But they don't work.
[16:14.900 --> 16:18.000]  No, but they're still relics, and they still look pretty cool.
[16:18.720 --> 16:19.940]  Well, yeah, they do.
[16:20.300 --> 16:21.160]  I mean, I think...
[16:21.560 --> 16:22.120]  Let's see.
[16:22.580 --> 16:23.600]  Do you remember...
[16:23.600 --> 16:36.900]  I remember back in the 70s, or maybe the 80s, back in the bill system days, one could pick up a payphone and dial a number or dial the operator and say, this is a police call, and give them four digits, which would be a badge number.
[16:37.060 --> 16:38.240]  And then they put it through.
[16:38.500 --> 16:38.740]  Wow.
[16:38.880 --> 16:40.560]  And I've heard of that.
[16:40.700 --> 16:41.800]  I think you told me this.
[16:42.680 --> 16:45.140]  I don't think I told you this, because I don't think I even mentioned it.
[16:45.140 --> 16:46.020]  You know what I remember?
[16:46.120 --> 16:48.780]  You told me something about having operator privilege.
[16:49.920 --> 16:50.280]  Right.
[16:50.420 --> 16:53.480]  That's when the operators used to not be able to dial...
[16:53.480 --> 16:55.580]  When they used to not connect you with 800 numbers.
[16:55.780 --> 16:56.160]  Uh-huh.
[16:56.920 --> 17:02.580]  Yeah, and then you just say, like, I have dial operator privileges because I'm, like, disabled or whatever, and then they would put it through.
[17:02.840 --> 17:04.040]  And that's all you had to do.
[17:04.160 --> 17:04.880]  That's all you had to say.
[17:04.940 --> 17:05.140]  Right.
[17:05.660 --> 17:06.020]  Amazing.
[17:07.100 --> 17:11.300]  Raphael, a rebel, would definitely be very interested in the 1940s phone hacking.
[17:11.440 --> 17:14.240]  As you can see, there's so many people in our community that I can follow.
[17:14.240 --> 17:20.560]  Raphael from Reuters wants to contact me to do a story or whatever.
[17:20.700 --> 17:24.780]  Is Raphael a Reuters newspaper or video news?
[17:24.960 --> 17:26.640]  Have you ever read Reuters newspaper, Rebel?
[17:27.480 --> 17:29.580]  Have you ever gotten a copy of Reuters newspaper?
[17:30.200 --> 17:32.020]  I mean, these days, you don't know.
[17:32.100 --> 17:35.380]  I mean, Reuters can, you know, you see video Reuters, you hear it on the radio.
[17:35.380 --> 17:42.300]  No, Reuters stories appear in newspapers, obviously, but, you know, Reuters... Well, I guess, Raphael, you can probably explain Reuters better than I can.
[17:44.640 --> 17:46.400]  Oh, I don't know about that.
[17:48.560 --> 17:52.320]  Well, Rebel, first of all, I'm always happy to have a chat.
[17:52.880 --> 17:57.640]  Second of all, as far as Reuters is concerned, it's a news agency, and it exists.
[17:57.840 --> 18:01.300]  I think most people these days will interact with it online.
[18:02.380 --> 18:10.160]  You know, traders and financial professionals might interact with it through the terminal, because Reuters appears on Icon terminals.
[18:10.820 --> 18:23.740]  But, yeah, I think for most people who kind of go about, you know, who are out and about in the world, they'll interact with Reuters either through their local newspaper, which will pick up some Reuters copy, or through the Internet.
[18:24.220 --> 18:26.760]  You know, you go to Reuters.com, and that's where you see our stories.
[18:27.820 --> 18:34.060]  Okay, well, if you ever want to do a story with me on, you know, like, the past and how things work, then I don't know.
[18:34.960 --> 18:40.040]  Well, if you do a story like that, Raphael, be sure to come to us for perspective and rebuttal.
[18:41.500 --> 18:42.120]  Yeah, of course.
[18:42.540 --> 18:43.980]  I'd be happy to.
[18:44.160 --> 18:44.780]  That sounds great.
[18:45.000 --> 18:45.300]  All right.
[18:45.480 --> 18:48.920]  Hey, Rebel, we hope to see you at a 2600 meeting again sometime, hopefully.
[18:48.920 --> 18:49.220]  Oh, yeah.
[18:49.360 --> 18:57.920]  I mean, they've been online, or not online, but on the building is being rebuilt, and all that other stuff.
[18:58.020 --> 18:59.940]  Okay, Rob can update us on all that.
[19:01.020 --> 19:03.220]  Yeah, we're still doing them.
[19:03.300 --> 19:09.860]  We did our first in-person 2600 meeting this month, this very month at the beginning of the month, and we're going to be doing it again.
[19:09.860 --> 19:17.140]  So, check out nyc2600.net for all the info on where we're meeting, how we're meeting, and everything.
[19:17.300 --> 19:18.460]  It's not where it used to be.
[19:18.540 --> 19:21.220]  It's not at Citigroup anymore, because they are still building that place.
[19:21.480 --> 19:26.820]  The remodeling work is years behind schedule, but we've been meeting around the corner.
[19:27.160 --> 19:29.880]  And, yeah, it's happening again.
[19:30.220 --> 19:37.980]  And if you have a meeting in your vicinity, or would like to start one, please either tweet at us.
[19:37.980 --> 19:39.820]  We have a Twitter account just for that purpose.
[19:39.820 --> 19:43.720]  It's called 2600Meetings, the number's 2600Meetings.
[19:44.260 --> 19:47.600]  Or you can write to us, meetings at 2600.com.
[19:47.660 --> 19:52.940]  You can also visit the website, 2600.com slash meetings, to see where the current meetings are.
[19:53.120 --> 19:54.340]  We're starting from scratch.
[19:54.500 --> 19:57.000]  We're not just simply putting all the meetings back.
[19:57.520 --> 20:03.940]  There's certain criteria we have to meet, a total vaccination rate of at least 40% in your area.
[20:04.340 --> 20:05.840]  And we have to hear from you.
[20:05.840 --> 20:08.060]  We have to hear that there's actual people there.
[20:08.620 --> 20:14.080]  And then we will put the meeting list back up on our website and in the magazine.
[20:14.520 --> 20:14.900]  So...
[20:15.380 --> 20:17.300]  I've been fully vaccinated, so...
[20:17.300 --> 20:17.740]  You've been fully...
[20:17.740 --> 20:18.280]  Well, good to hear.
[20:18.460 --> 20:19.200]  That's very good to hear.
[20:19.200 --> 20:21.840]  And by the way, I'm going to be going to Europe next in a couple of weeks.
[20:21.980 --> 20:22.400]  Oh, wow.
[20:22.520 --> 20:22.740]  Okay.
[20:22.960 --> 20:24.240]  Well, good luck with that.
[20:24.240 --> 20:27.140]  And be careful, because there are some places that are still hotspots.
[20:28.180 --> 20:28.400]  Right.
[20:28.540 --> 20:28.960]  I know.
[20:29.320 --> 20:30.120]  Take lots of pictures.
[20:30.400 --> 20:30.960]  Yes, please.
[20:31.180 --> 20:31.700]  I've paid funds.
[20:32.020 --> 20:32.660]  Yeah, lots of pictures and videos.
[20:32.760 --> 20:35.360]  They'll be going to Amsterdam and London and, you know, Germany.
[20:35.360 --> 20:36.320]  Have you been there before?
[20:37.120 --> 20:39.680]  I've been to Portugal, and I've been to Ukraine.
[20:40.060 --> 20:41.340]  Oh, that's an interesting combination.
[20:41.600 --> 20:41.800]  Ukraine.
[20:42.280 --> 20:43.440]  Well, I last year...
[20:43.440 --> 20:45.600]  Well, three years ago, I went to Portugal.
[20:46.120 --> 20:51.460]  Last year, I went to Ukraine, because that was basically the only place I could go at that time.
[20:51.500 --> 20:55.020]  And it was kind of interesting, because you can't get into Russia without a Viva in advance.
[20:55.020 --> 20:55.500]  How was...
[20:55.500 --> 20:56.660]  Wait, I'm trying to understand.
[20:56.660 --> 20:59.440]  How is Ukraine the only place you could go at any time?
[20:59.960 --> 21:00.860]  I know the feeling.
[21:01.180 --> 21:01.740]  Well, no.
[21:01.740 --> 21:03.780]  You don't need a Viva in advance to go to Ukraine.
[21:04.200 --> 21:04.440]  Okay.
[21:04.440 --> 21:05.900]  I guess that was true last year?
[21:06.060 --> 21:06.580]  I didn't know that.
[21:07.360 --> 21:07.660]  Right.
[21:07.740 --> 21:08.820]  But I mean, you had to be...
[21:08.820 --> 21:11.940]  You know, you had to take a COVID-19 test and do all of that.
[21:12.240 --> 21:13.480]  But it was very interesting.
[21:13.500 --> 21:14.520]  I really liked Ukraine.
[21:14.520 --> 21:17.500]  It was a very interesting city, and I really liked it.
[21:17.640 --> 21:18.860]  Very Soviet-type.
[21:19.000 --> 21:23.220]  And the tours were good, and the people giving the tours, and the restaurants were good, and the museums.
[21:23.360 --> 21:24.500]  You went to Kiev, I take it.
[21:25.020 --> 21:26.100]  I went to Kiev, yeah.
[21:26.100 --> 21:27.000]  No, it's a great city.
[21:27.580 --> 21:31.140]  It's a very hilly city, and very scenic, and it's great.
[21:31.200 --> 21:31.680]  It really is.
[21:31.900 --> 21:32.860]  I do recommend it.
[21:33.180 --> 21:34.480]  Rebel, great hearing from you again.
[21:34.660 --> 21:37.600]  Please stay in touch, and I hope to see you at a meeting sometime.
[21:38.520 --> 21:39.020]  Yeah, of course.
[21:39.260 --> 21:39.480]  All right.
[21:39.560 --> 21:39.840]  Take care.
[21:40.660 --> 21:41.260]  Okay, bye.
[21:41.660 --> 21:43.080]  Wow, so cool to hear from Rebel.
[21:43.400 --> 21:44.340]  Yeah, safe travels.
[21:44.540 --> 21:45.200]  Yeah, it's amazing.
[21:46.600 --> 21:55.300]  Raphael, I know we've been talking a lot about this particular story, about Pegasus, but are there any other stories that you think we should be focusing on these days?
[21:57.700 --> 21:59.040]  Man, so many.
[21:59.420 --> 22:00.840]  Well, I know that you're working on.
[22:01.460 --> 22:03.860]  Yeah, hard to say.
[22:05.220 --> 22:20.440]  I and my colleagues have been on a big kick about mercenary hackers, and I guess that you could say that NSO is a kind of mercenary hacking group themselves, but there's a whole universe, right, of hackers who are operating more or less professionally,
[22:21.280 --> 22:29.580]  more or less openly, providing their services to governments, to spy agencies, and sometimes even to private organizations, private citizens.
[22:31.400 --> 22:34.640]  And digging into that field is just fascinating.
[22:35.420 --> 22:41.760]  You know, if any of your listeners know anything about that, that's what I'm really into these days.
[22:41.880 --> 22:44.780]  I guess you kind of call that the white hat hacking.
[22:44.780 --> 22:46.760]  I hate the terminology, I really do.
[22:47.300 --> 22:56.500]  But a lot of people market it that way and say that, you know, you have to be an ethical hacker in the corporate world.
[22:56.680 --> 23:00.320]  To me, every hacker has ethics, so it's kind of an insult to even say that.
[23:01.500 --> 23:04.040]  But I think everyone believes they're the good guys.
[23:04.200 --> 23:07.460]  Everyone believes that they're helping out by doing what they do.
[23:08.120 --> 23:12.480]  But it's interesting how some are demonized and some are praised.
[23:13.620 --> 23:16.820]  And, you know, we've seen this evolve over the decades.
[23:17.700 --> 23:18.240]  Yeah.
[23:18.660 --> 23:19.140]  Yeah.
[23:19.280 --> 23:20.280]  And, you know, I don't know.
[23:20.400 --> 23:26.260]  I also have trouble with this kind of white hat, black hat, gray hat kind of, you know, stuff.
[23:26.520 --> 23:44.460]  It's especially because some of these hackers who are working for law enforcement agencies and intelligence services, I think as we've seen with some of the coverage around the Pegasus stuff, but also in other cases, you know, they end up going after good people and hacking good people.
[23:45.040 --> 23:48.760]  And that, you know, do they still count as white hats at that point?
[23:49.000 --> 23:49.920]  I don't know.
[23:50.060 --> 23:50.520]  I don't think so.
[23:50.660 --> 23:52.940]  Yeah, I think their hat gets a little dirty at that point.
[23:53.580 --> 23:54.180]  I think so.
[23:54.700 --> 23:58.600]  I like to call myself a no-hat hacker, even though I do wear a hat, though.
[23:58.740 --> 24:00.920]  But it's not a particular color.
[24:02.160 --> 24:04.280]  What do you think of this Freedom phone?
[24:04.580 --> 24:07.460]  By the way, let me give out the phone number again, 802-321-4225.
[24:09.320 --> 24:11.440]  It's targeting the MAGA crowd.
[24:11.720 --> 24:15.640]  And supposedly it had a huge amount of red flags.
[24:15.720 --> 24:16.360]  Are you familiar with this?
[24:17.120 --> 24:19.100]  You know, I've seen the coverage.
[24:19.440 --> 24:25.620]  This is not something that I've looked into in any kind of detail, but I saw a few security experts really tear into it.
[24:27.160 --> 24:29.720]  I mean, it seems like a bit of a joke in some ways.
[24:29.720 --> 24:41.400]  But, you know, if it's being marketed as, you know, kind of a new and amazing piece of surveillance technology, I think that, you know, those kinds of extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
[24:41.560 --> 24:44.640]  And I've seen a lot of evidence to the contrary.
[24:44.640 --> 24:46.540]  Yeah, it's a $500 smartphone.
[24:46.780 --> 24:48.840]  It's aimed at the MAGA crowd.
[24:49.520 --> 24:54.660]  It's the latest attempt to build an alternate tech platform for right-wingers.
[24:54.800 --> 24:57.800]  But this time with a smartphone instead of social media.
[24:58.020 --> 24:59.780]  It was announced back in March.
[24:59.780 --> 25:03.060]  The tagline was, a phone made for conservatives by conservatives.
[25:04.600 --> 25:05.720]  Okay, whatever.
[25:06.120 --> 25:12.300]  The device is being hawked by Eric Finman, the self-described world's youngest Bitcoin millionaire.
[25:12.980 --> 25:14.620]  That doesn't make me like you.
[25:14.780 --> 25:17.200]  It doesn't make me look up to you in any way.
[25:18.180 --> 25:21.020]  The phone is supposed to ship in August.
[25:21.020 --> 25:22.380]  So that's coming up.
[25:22.500 --> 25:23.060]  That's around the corner.
[25:23.660 --> 25:26.420]  The Freedom Phone's feature set is about what you would expect.
[25:26.420 --> 25:36.760]  The company, which seems to also be called Freedom Phone, claims to have made an uncensorable app store that won't ban Gab and Parler the way Google and Apple did.
[25:37.380 --> 25:39.380]  I don't know why they didn't just come up with an app store.
[25:40.080 --> 25:44.660]  Freedom OS is a free speech first operating system that the company claims to have developed.
[25:44.660 --> 25:48.900]  And it says the hardware is comparable to the best smartphones on the market.
[25:49.780 --> 25:55.680]  Based on the information that Freedom Phone has released so far, almost none of that appears to be true.
[25:56.500 --> 25:58.340]  This article, of course, comes from Ars Technica.
[25:58.480 --> 26:00.960]  We'll get into it a little bit more, but I think we have a caller.
[26:01.500 --> 26:02.920]  Do we have a caller on the line?
[26:04.260 --> 26:04.940]  We do.
[26:05.120 --> 26:06.300]  It's Nathan in Australia.
[26:07.220 --> 26:07.660]  Australia.
[26:07.940 --> 26:08.160]  Wow.
[26:08.400 --> 26:09.600]  What time is it over there?
[26:11.960 --> 26:14.680]  It's 10.25 a.m.
[26:14.780 --> 26:16.160]  in the mysterious future.
[26:16.740 --> 26:18.460]  And, yeah, it's, what, Thursday over there, right?
[26:20.040 --> 26:21.960]  Yep, yep, Thursday morning, yep.
[26:22.080 --> 26:23.540]  Wow, so what's on your mind tonight?
[26:23.720 --> 26:24.940]  Or, I'm sorry, this morning?
[26:26.380 --> 26:36.940]  Well, you know, I just rang to say g'day, but I was going to say before, I didn't hear the show, but I saw the tweets about overtime, so I thought I'd listen in.
[26:36.940 --> 26:39.280]  And a couple of things.
[26:39.760 --> 26:41.440]  Oh, what a blast from the past hearing.
[26:41.580 --> 26:42.400]  Rebel on the line.
[26:44.680 --> 26:45.640]  Also, the...
[26:47.900 --> 26:50.740]  Anyway, I've got more to say about that, but I won't.
[26:51.800 --> 26:52.280]  The...
[26:52.800 --> 27:12.340]  I was thinking about the journalism story, and I was thinking about how often Australians don't think about how, like in the U.S., you have your Bill of Rights sort of stuff and all your constitutional amendments, you know, First Amendment and all the different ones about search and seizure and stuff.
[27:12.480 --> 27:19.100]  And I think often, like, people forget that down here, we don't actually have that in our laws.
[27:19.300 --> 27:21.720]  So, you're...
[27:21.720 --> 27:46.000]  So, journalists and so on and other people can easily be sort of scooped up in intelligence gathering and raids of documents and seizure and stuff like that and have, you know, very little recourse because sometimes the laws have been passed through the Parliament and people don't really take much interest in it and they just sort of get through and without little resistance.
[27:46.000 --> 27:49.500]  Whereas in the U.S., you know, you have a lot of people very...
[27:51.000 --> 28:00.260]  very stridently sort of defending those rights to things like free speech and, you know, unlawful search and so on.
[28:00.380 --> 28:07.100]  So, yeah, I just thought I'd mention that, like, it's not all third world dictatorships and so on that can have problems with that.
[28:07.280 --> 28:13.420]  Even seemingly free countries like Australia can have troubles with that.
[28:13.420 --> 28:19.220]  Raphael, have you heard much as far as an Australian connection to all of this?
[28:20.880 --> 28:26.000]  No, not as far as the NSO and Pegasus is concerned, but maybe the caller can help refresh my memory.
[28:26.160 --> 28:31.100]  Wasn't there an Australian journalist who published some leaked material and got into a lot of hot water recently?
[28:31.420 --> 28:32.840]  Oh, I think I know who you're talking about.
[28:34.400 --> 28:36.080]  Yeah, it has happened...
[28:36.080 --> 28:45.960]  Yeah, I don't remember the particulars, but I think it may have even been like our national broadcaster, the ABC, the journalist...
[28:45.960 --> 28:46.380]  That's right, yeah.
[28:47.180 --> 28:50.840]  They've had, like, raids and they've had it when...
[28:50.840 --> 29:08.180]  and sometimes it can be hard to tell, you know, whether it's a politically motivated raid or not, like when they leak something about the government and then all of a sudden the federal police turn up and want to figure out where the raid came from.
[29:08.180 --> 29:11.080]  You can't always tell, you know, whether they're...
[29:11.080 --> 29:18.540]  whether the law enforcement are just trying to enforce the laws or whether they've been leaned on by the government or not.
[29:18.640 --> 29:29.900]  And, like, I think we tend to give them the benefit of the doubt here and don't really think that our law enforcement are too influenced by the government, but it's really hard to tell.
[29:31.020 --> 29:33.200]  So, Rafael, you weren't referring to Julian Assange.
[29:33.300 --> 29:33.900]  I thought you were.
[29:34.620 --> 29:36.960]  No, I wasn't, although, I mean, oh boy.
[29:37.980 --> 29:41.460]  You talked about somebody leaking from Australia who got into a lot of trouble.
[29:41.620 --> 29:42.100]  I mean, come on.
[29:42.660 --> 29:43.780]  Yeah, no, no, that's right.
[29:43.780 --> 29:45.580]  I suppose I should have clarified.
[29:45.820 --> 29:49.400]  No, I think that I was referring to the same case that Chakala was referring to.
[29:49.520 --> 29:58.400]  There was this journalist who I think was raided by police over disclosure and it ignited a big debate about press freedom in Australia.
[29:59.280 --> 30:01.020]  You know, I don't know enough.
[30:01.020 --> 30:01.680]  I've never been.
[30:01.920 --> 30:05.680]  And I've only very rarely covered stories out of Australia.
[30:05.680 --> 30:08.060]  So I'm not really qualified to talk about this kind of stuff.
[30:09.500 --> 30:09.820]  But...
[30:09.820 --> 30:12.300]  We had a great one a couple of years back where...
[30:12.300 --> 30:21.360]  I'd rather have the Bill of Rights Australian technology journalists that have played them at their own game when they were bringing in metadata retention laws.
[30:21.480 --> 30:23.980]  This is probably like five years ago at least.
[30:24.160 --> 30:24.880]  It might even be longer.
[30:25.320 --> 30:34.420]  And the journalist said, OK, well, from one of our main telcos, OK, I'd like to request my metadata because that's my right.
[30:34.740 --> 30:43.260]  And they didn't know how to do it and they ended up providing him with like folders and folders and folders of information like...
[30:43.260 --> 30:46.220]  And it went on and on like, you know, he was trying to...
[30:46.220 --> 31:01.000]  The government had passed these laws but without really like thinking about how the telcos would comply if a normal citizen wanted their metadata as opposed to law enforcement requesting metadata.
[31:02.800 --> 31:03.360]  Right.
[31:03.620 --> 31:03.840]  Yeah.
[31:04.060 --> 31:05.240]  No, no, I mean, I...
[31:06.980 --> 31:07.540]  It's...
[31:07.540 --> 31:14.440]  There are similar rules, you know, that are in place in Europe in terms of, you know, automatic retention of metadata.
[31:15.240 --> 31:18.660]  And those are the kinds of things that, you know, I've always looked to scans at.
[31:19.140 --> 31:20.160]  It's a...
[31:20.800 --> 31:22.720]  Metadata can be incredibly telling.
[31:23.320 --> 31:23.620]  Absolutely.
[31:25.420 --> 31:36.040]  And then I'd love to learn more about this Australian case in particular about the ability to request it because that's the kind of thing that you can normally do through GDPR in the European Union.
[31:36.860 --> 31:43.000]  Something that, you know, if the Americans listening in on this program don't know about it, I urge you to look it up because it's a...
[31:43.000 --> 31:46.960]  It's a very powerful tool for getting data that's held on you.
[31:47.200 --> 31:48.020]  And there's...
[31:48.020 --> 31:53.660]  And little by little, you're seeing similar laws being introduced in the United States, including the California Consumer Privacy Act.
[31:54.400 --> 32:00.780]  And, you know, maybe one day a national privacy legislation will allow us to get some of that stuff too.
[32:00.780 --> 32:23.300]  Yeah, it's emerging very, very slowly but at the state level and often that is how larger movements like this occur as soon as a groundswell of states have come up with plans and implemented stuff that's, you know, more or less successful or popular that then it takes on sort of more national emphasis.
[32:23.300 --> 32:37.600]  We're seeing that a little bit more with like right-to-repair stuff where a lot of states are really looking at it more seriously and it's going to start making a lot more sense as the people start realizing the impacts and implications.
[32:37.940 --> 32:48.600]  Yeah, on the subject of requesting records, I don't know if this still happens but I know in England or at least in London you can request your...
[32:48.600 --> 32:50.900]  every time you appear on CCTV.
[32:51.820 --> 32:53.020]  Rafael, have you heard about this?
[32:53.840 --> 32:54.780]  That's right.
[32:54.920 --> 32:55.860]  That's true.
[32:56.160 --> 33:00.880]  Very rarely employed but it is theoretically possible.
[33:01.280 --> 33:03.040]  Yeah, that's something I'd like to pursue.
[33:04.800 --> 33:14.300]  Did you guys do a thing I feel like years and years ago there was one where or maybe it was at CCC or somewhere where somebody had made a short film using that sort of thing.
[33:14.460 --> 33:15.140]  That sounds like...
[33:15.140 --> 33:23.000]  They put themselves in all different places and then they'd made all the requests for all the corresponding times edited it all together into a short film.
[33:23.140 --> 33:24.200]  Yeah, that's brilliant.
[33:24.400 --> 33:26.700]  That's exactly the kind of thing I would expect hackers to do.
[33:27.160 --> 33:28.520]  come up with a plot and everything.
[33:29.320 --> 33:29.720]  Wow.
[33:30.180 --> 33:35.220]  Anyway, I'll get off the line and I'll keep listening and great to hear you guys.
[33:35.420 --> 33:42.280]  Okay, happy Thursday to you and hope to see you sometime at Hope or us in Australia or something like that.
[33:42.400 --> 33:43.600]  It's great to hear from the other side of the world.
[33:43.780 --> 33:44.480]  Yeah, thanks for listening.
[33:45.460 --> 33:46.280]  All right, take care.
[33:46.480 --> 33:46.740]  See you.
[33:46.840 --> 33:47.060]  Bye.
[33:47.800 --> 33:59.020]  And our phone number again 802-321-4225 802-321-HACK Continuing with this freedom phone this right-wing freedom phone that's being introduced.
[33:59.200 --> 34:00.220]  I kind of want to get one.
[34:00.420 --> 34:02.080]  I kind of want to just have a freedom phone around.
[34:02.280 --> 34:04.020]  The french fry thing didn't work.
[34:04.320 --> 34:05.060]  No, that didn't work at all.
[34:05.180 --> 34:06.400]  They're going into phones now.
[34:06.520 --> 34:07.440]  The phone has...
[34:07.440 --> 34:11.880]  Going back to the Ars Technica story the phone has so many red flags it's difficult to know where to start.
[34:11.880 --> 34:15.180]  the website lists almost no information about the device itself.
[34:15.540 --> 34:19.700]  There's the name a picture and a price but there's no spec sheet of any kind.
[34:19.960 --> 34:24.440]  This is a $500 phone and its website gives you no indication of what you're actually buying.
[34:24.680 --> 34:27.200]  Actually, a $500 phone that's cheap these days, right?
[34:27.360 --> 34:29.240]  And it's crazy that I even say that but...
[34:29.240 --> 34:31.060]  It's probably even cheaper and they're marking it up.
[34:31.120 --> 34:32.520]  People pay $1,000 for phones.
[34:32.760 --> 34:40.400]  I'm using the same phone I used for the last like eight years probably which might put me outside of the reach of things like Pegasus.
[34:40.480 --> 34:40.860]  I don't know.
[34:41.040 --> 34:42.860]  Well, a lot of them are lasting longer.
[34:43.280 --> 34:43.520]  Not mine.
[34:43.800 --> 34:45.000]  No, mine's all messed up.
[34:45.040 --> 34:52.360]  Well, I put lasting in gigantic quotations but existing in a more or less functional state.
[34:52.620 --> 34:56.720]  But also, yeah, like $800 to $1,200 people don't balk at that.
[34:56.820 --> 35:00.360]  Maybe $600 that's like normal to people buying phones.
[35:00.380 --> 35:02.060]  I don't get it but whatever.
[35:03.280 --> 35:07.180]  Considering I spend most of my time cursing at the phone, you know, why would I spend...
[35:07.180 --> 35:07.500]  Whatever.
[35:07.700 --> 35:16.420]  The front page of the website looks normal but every button that should say something like learn more and link to more information instead says buy it now.
[35:17.600 --> 35:21.020]  If you didn't know it was a right-wing phone, now you do.
[35:21.560 --> 35:24.860]  There are 10 buy it now links placed all over the front of the website.
[35:25.040 --> 35:26.400]  Oh, I got to go to this website.
[35:26.540 --> 35:28.540]  And almost no important information about the phone.
[35:28.820 --> 35:38.200]  Plenty of manufacturers publish incomplete teaser pages for upcoming phones but they don't collect the full retail price from customers without providing detailed spec information first.
[35:38.420 --> 35:52.960]  Yes, but considering who we're dealing with here, these are the people that would click on support Trump sites and have the option to pay once or pay forever every single month changed for them and didn't complain about it.
[35:53.340 --> 35:54.020]  Rob, go ahead.
[35:55.360 --> 36:14.020]  The whole idea of this being a $500 phone and that being cheap for now is extra funny when you look at the bit of information that has come out in a lot of stories about this phone where people are fairly sure it is a phone called the Umidiki A9 Pro that can be bought from AliExpress for as little as $119.
[36:15.200 --> 36:16.060]  Hang on a second.
[36:16.140 --> 36:17.060]  What's it called again?
[36:17.380 --> 36:17.720]  The what?
[36:18.440 --> 36:20.640]  The Umidiki A9 Pro.
[36:21.000 --> 36:25.540]  You know, I don't want to make assumptions here but that doesn't sound like it came from Ohio.
[36:26.640 --> 36:28.360]  No, apparently it comes from China.
[36:28.680 --> 36:30.780]  You know, friend to America, China.
[36:31.360 --> 36:33.420]  And yeah, they sell these in bulk.
[36:33.420 --> 36:35.040]  You can get custom logos on them.
[36:35.160 --> 36:37.060]  You can, you know, get whatever branding you like.
[36:37.260 --> 36:38.380]  And it's very easy.
[36:38.540 --> 36:42.340]  It's the sort of thing that lots of companies do including, I guess, our pals at Freedom Phone.
[36:42.460 --> 36:47.820]  Not that there's anything wrong with it but the Freedom Phone marketed by conservative right-wingers is Chinese.
[36:48.580 --> 36:49.020]  Mm-hmm.
[36:49.200 --> 36:49.420]  Okay.
[36:49.600 --> 36:49.920]  All right.
[36:50.040 --> 36:51.200]  Well, that's something.
[36:52.140 --> 36:55.140]  Anyone buying a Freedom Phone is basically doing it sight unseen.
[36:56.120 --> 37:02.480]  You'd better really trust this upstart phone manufacturer because if you don't like what you receive, you're out of luck.
[37:02.640 --> 37:10.340]  The frequently asked question states if the device is already opened, we do not offer returns at this time.
[37:10.520 --> 37:13.480]  Other manufacturers stand behind their products.
[37:13.920 --> 37:15.240]  They're going to try something new.
[37:16.280 --> 37:16.840]  Yeah.
[37:16.960 --> 37:20.320]  Freedom Phone coming to an angry person near you.
[37:21.560 --> 37:23.960]  Okay, so should we take any more calls?
[37:24.600 --> 37:25.720]  Phone lines are open still?
[37:25.920 --> 37:27.940]  Okay, 802-3214-225.
[37:28.380 --> 37:32.400]  And by the way, Raphael, don't feel like you're sentenced to be with us until 10.
[37:32.600 --> 37:33.580]  You're welcome to...
[37:33.580 --> 37:34.140]  or 9, rather.
[37:34.660 --> 37:37.400]  You're welcome to skip out any time you need to.
[37:37.860 --> 37:46.780]  I may make a graceful or graceless exit but I appreciate you guys having me on and hope to chat with you guys again sometime soon.
[37:46.860 --> 37:47.760]  Yeah, we appreciate you.
[37:47.920 --> 37:52.200]  We've actually started your work a number of times on the show so it's an honor to talk to you.
[37:52.900 --> 37:53.200]  That's sweet.
[37:53.560 --> 37:58.660]  And any closing words as a journalist, as a Reuters reporter that you wish to leave with people?
[37:58.740 --> 38:05.100]  Perhaps something that they don't know about the whole world of reporting, what you guys have been going through in the past few years, anything at all?
[38:05.880 --> 38:06.540]  Oh, yeah.
[38:06.680 --> 38:06.960]  I don't know.
[38:07.060 --> 38:16.040]  I mean, you know, for those of your listeners who don't know reporters or don't know reporting very well, it's, you know, it's easy to demystify.
[38:16.320 --> 38:18.540]  You know, you've got a story, talk to a reporter about it.
[38:18.540 --> 38:26.360]  And if you think that a story is wrong, you know, I mean, a lot of people will read stuff in the press and they'll tear their hair out and say, like, this is ridiculous.
[38:26.640 --> 38:28.280]  You know, how could the reporter get it so wrong?
[38:28.880 --> 38:30.160]  Don't hesitate to get in touch.
[38:30.340 --> 38:33.720]  You know, I mean, some reporters are thin-skinned, but I'd like to think that, you know, many aren't.
[38:34.980 --> 38:43.240]  And if you see a reporter writing about a technical topic and you think that they're kind of misunderstanding something, you know, these are people and they're reachable.
[38:43.520 --> 38:48.300]  So send them a line, whether you've got a story or you think a story shouldn't be a story.
[38:48.540 --> 38:49.540]  Be in touch.
[38:49.960 --> 38:51.060]  That is so true.
[38:51.340 --> 38:52.580]  We've talked to many reporters.
[38:52.740 --> 38:54.040]  Many of them get the story wrong.
[38:54.500 --> 38:58.940]  You seem to be somebody who does their research and understand the basics of the technology down.
[38:59.120 --> 39:04.680]  And that makes such a huge difference, you know, to any story, but particularly in the world of technology.
[39:05.460 --> 39:06.220]  Go ahead, Rob.
[39:06.960 --> 39:14.880]  And, Rafael, for people who are listening and are interested in your work and want to get in touch or reach out, where can they do that?
[39:15.800 --> 39:19.140]  Well, luckily, I'm the only Raphael Satter around.
[39:19.520 --> 39:24.020]  So if you just go to RaphaelSatter.com, you've got about a zillion different ways of reaching me.
[39:25.360 --> 39:28.220]  But, you know, I think most reporters these days, they live on Twitter.
[39:29.500 --> 39:30.300]  So if...
[39:30.760 --> 39:32.660]  that's probably the easiest way to reach me.
[39:33.280 --> 39:33.940]  DMs are open.
[39:34.760 --> 39:36.420]  But otherwise, you know, just give me a Google.
[39:36.580 --> 39:37.360]  You'll find my website.
[39:37.520 --> 39:38.000]  They're about...
[39:38.000 --> 39:39.080]  You can send me an email.
[39:39.240 --> 39:40.280]  You can even send me...
[39:40.280 --> 39:45.200]  Probably find me on, you know, Weibo, you know, Vcontact, Facebook, whatever your poison is.
[39:45.240 --> 39:45.880]  You can reach me there.
[39:45.960 --> 39:49.200]  That's Raphael with a P-H Satter, S-A-T-T-E-R.
[39:49.860 --> 39:50.660]  That's exactly right.
[39:50.880 --> 39:52.180]  Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
[39:52.880 --> 39:53.820]  Thanks for having me, guys.
[39:53.960 --> 39:54.460]  Talk to you soon.
[39:54.460 --> 39:54.840]  Talk to you again soon.
[39:54.920 --> 39:55.200]  Take care.
[39:55.900 --> 39:56.000]  Bye.
[40:00.300 --> 40:01.780]  Great to have him with us.
[40:02.640 --> 40:03.120]  Fantastic.
[40:03.320 --> 40:09.000]  Yeah, I love the perspective and we absolutely would welcome more conversation in the future.
[40:09.220 --> 40:11.280]  There are so many stories out there.
[40:11.400 --> 40:20.220]  I love that even Rebel saw this and has so many stories to tell, I'm sure, and that would, I hope, be a fruitful connection.
[40:20.520 --> 40:26.120]  Missouri Rebel who basically isn't defined by location and Australia.
[40:26.380 --> 40:27.160]  That's really awesome.
[40:27.680 --> 40:32.000]  If there's anyone else out there who wants to call us, this is your last chance.
[40:32.160 --> 40:33.740]  802-321-4225.
[40:33.740 --> 40:35.760]  We'll sign off if we don't get any more calls.
[40:36.460 --> 40:43.440]  Let me get into another story very briefly here, which is, you know, we're watching the Olympics or some of us are watching the Olympics.
[40:44.600 --> 40:55.720]  In what is at least so far the biggest cybersecurity blunder of the Tokyo Olympics, an Italian TV announcer did not realize he was on air when he asked for the password for his computer.
[40:57.600 --> 41:04.140]  Do you know the password for the computer in this commentator booth, he asked during the broadcast of the Turkey-China volleyball game.
[41:04.280 --> 41:06.600]  So find that on your TVR if you need the password.
[41:07.260 --> 41:09.280]  Apparently not realizing he was still on air.
[41:11.720 --> 41:20.520]  He complained it was too hard to call the password Pippo, Pippo, Pluto, or Topolino, he complained, referring to the Italian names for Goofy, Pluto, and Mickey Mouse.
[41:21.340 --> 41:32.360]  The snafu was immortalized in a video posted on Twitter by cybersecurity associate professor Stefano Zanero who works at the Polytechnic University of Milan and apparently likes to make fun of people.
[41:32.980 --> 41:40.880]  A source who works at Eurosport, the channel which was broadcasting the volleyball game, confirmed that the video is authentic and so is the password.
[41:41.960 --> 41:53.120]  A colleague of the announcer can be heard in the background saying the password depends on the Olympics organizers and asking the announcer if it's on a paper or posted close by.
[41:54.280 --> 42:02.300]  Turns out the password was booth.03 capital B O-T-H dot zero three after the number of the commentator's booth.
[42:02.520 --> 42:06.000]  So, you know, it's likely that all the passwords are the numbers of the commentator's booth.
[42:06.220 --> 42:07.240]  Just pointing that out.
[42:07.940 --> 42:12.740]  Even the dot to make it more complicated as if it was NASA's computer he said on the air.
[42:13.000 --> 42:15.160]  Next time they will even put a semicolon.
[42:17.520 --> 42:24.700]  So, yeah, complaining about how authentic or how difficult the password is and giving out the password at the same time.
[42:24.740 --> 42:25.820]  Yeah, that's how you do it.
[42:25.880 --> 42:26.440]  That's how it's done.
[42:26.960 --> 42:31.460]  While the snafu is embarrassing, the actual impact of making such a password public is likely limited.
[42:31.660 --> 42:39.960]  Access to these computers at commentator's booths is likely restricted, especially because there is no public at the Olympics events due to COVID-19 risks.
[42:40.880 --> 42:43.800]  All right, yeah, but if you can figure out the IP address, who knows what you can do.
[42:44.340 --> 42:46.060]  All right, I think we're going to close things out tonight.
[42:46.520 --> 42:50.740]  You guys, Rob and Gila, anything you want to share, add, say?
[42:51.400 --> 42:58.900]  Well, I have to go change the password on my computer, which is also booth03, so thanks for the heads up there.
[43:00.000 --> 43:02.260]  Okay, well, I'm glad we could warn you, Gila.
[43:04.160 --> 43:12.680]  What he said, no, I actually had to send my supervisor her computer password yesterday.
[43:13.380 --> 43:15.240]  She said, it's on a Post-it in my office.
[43:15.240 --> 43:16.180]  Could you send it to me?
[43:16.240 --> 43:16.960]  And I said, sure.
[43:17.380 --> 43:19.640]  So, you know, that was super safe.
[43:20.300 --> 43:20.660]  Wow.
[43:21.100 --> 43:23.000]  You just sent it, what, on a postcard?
[43:23.000 --> 43:23.820]  How did you send it to her?
[43:26.300 --> 43:26.980]  Via email.
[43:26.980 --> 43:36.300]  She's actually working out of the country right now, so I went into her office, read the Post-it note with her password on it, and sent it.
[43:36.360 --> 43:37.600]  And you didn't feel good about this, did you?
[43:38.000 --> 43:38.640]  Not great, no.
[43:39.260 --> 43:44.140]  Okay, well, let's see if we can figure out a way people facing similar situations might be able to deal with them.
[43:44.200 --> 43:47.240]  Did you have any other way of talking to this person besides email?
[43:48.680 --> 43:50.960]  No, actually, because...
[43:50.960 --> 43:51.400]  Text message?
[43:51.800 --> 43:52.240]  SMS?
[43:52.440 --> 43:52.940]  Nothing like that?
[43:54.340 --> 43:56.420]  Not in that precise moment.
[43:56.600 --> 43:56.760]  Okay.
[43:57.060 --> 44:01.560]  I don't know if her cell phone is set up to work in the country that she's in right now.
[44:01.700 --> 44:01.980]  Uh-huh.
[44:02.600 --> 44:07.000]  And if she has a cell phone for that country, I don't have that information.
[44:07.260 --> 44:09.020]  Did she have the ability to change the password?
[44:10.300 --> 44:17.140]  She did say to me that she's working with the password that our IT department set up for her.
[44:17.260 --> 44:17.500]  Uh-huh.
[44:17.560 --> 44:23.520]  And she doesn't know why she hasn't changed it because it's not one of her standard passwords.
[44:23.660 --> 44:26.620]  Like, honestly, that is probably the most secure password she has.
[44:26.860 --> 44:27.120]  Uh-huh.
[44:27.640 --> 44:30.260]  And does she only have one email address?
[44:32.200 --> 44:32.700]  No.
[44:33.060 --> 44:33.760]  Oh, okay.
[44:33.820 --> 44:34.160]  There you go.
[44:34.260 --> 44:35.000]  That's the solution.
[44:35.240 --> 44:42.340]  So you send her a message saying, on one email account, saying, I'm going to send you your password, but it's going to be backwards.
[44:42.640 --> 44:46.800]  And then you send her the password, but you don't say it's the password.
[44:46.920 --> 44:48.840]  You just send her this string.
[44:49.360 --> 44:51.120]  She knows it's her password backwards.
[44:51.340 --> 44:52.020]  No one else does.
[44:52.260 --> 44:54.400]  Unless they're monitoring both mailboxes.
[44:55.160 --> 44:55.600]  Right.
[44:56.100 --> 44:57.060]  All I'm saying is...
[44:57.060 --> 44:57.680]  Or your mailbox.
[44:58.120 --> 44:58.560]  Right.
[44:58.860 --> 45:04.400]  No, all I'm saying is because I had to stand with this person to set up her out-of-office message before she went on this trip.
[45:04.620 --> 45:04.920]  Mm-hmm.
[45:05.320 --> 45:11.820]  I'm not sure if sending it to another email address would have provided the desired outcome is all I'm saying.
[45:12.020 --> 45:12.120]  Yeah.
[45:12.420 --> 45:14.780]  These are problems a lot of people face on a daily basis.
[45:14.960 --> 45:17.940]  But one of the solutions is, okay, here's your password.
[45:18.060 --> 45:19.400]  Change it as soon as you get it.
[45:19.680 --> 45:20.960]  You know, if it's your password.
[45:21.080 --> 45:23.460]  If it's the password of a department, then it gets more tricky.
[45:25.080 --> 45:25.400]  Yeah.
[45:26.020 --> 45:27.460]  This is just hers, but...
[45:27.460 --> 45:27.600]  Wow.
[45:28.120 --> 45:29.400]  Well, I'm sorry you had to go through that.
[45:30.020 --> 45:32.520]  It was rough going, but we're still...
[45:32.520 --> 45:38.260]  I have finally convinced my department not to send me full credit card numbers in emails.
[45:38.700 --> 45:39.220]  Mm-hmm.
[45:39.580 --> 45:40.920]  Yeah, that's a good idea.
[45:41.120 --> 45:42.160]  That's a good idea.
[45:42.460 --> 45:47.500]  Unless you want to collect credit card numbers and go on a spree, there's really no reason to send those to you.
[45:47.820 --> 45:48.800]  No, they...
[45:49.250 --> 45:50.420]  It was fascinating.
[45:50.420 --> 45:59.780]  I said, please do not send me full credit card numbers and CVV numbers and expiration dates via unsecured email.
[45:59.780 --> 46:00.820]  It's just a bad idea.
[46:01.060 --> 46:02.160]  And they said, but why not?
[46:02.260 --> 46:03.600]  And I said, don't do that.
[46:04.020 --> 46:08.380]  So I'm doing, you know, my little victory for security at my workplace.
[46:08.680 --> 46:09.220]  Uh-huh.
[46:09.820 --> 46:13.220]  Trying not to help people commit credit card fraud is my plan.
[46:13.920 --> 46:17.980]  Yeah, and just, you know, basically having that personal information floating around.
[46:17.980 --> 46:19.560]  It's never a really good idea.
[46:20.140 --> 46:20.380]  Nope.
[46:20.580 --> 46:21.460]  Not even a little.
[46:22.440 --> 46:23.000]  All right.
[46:23.060 --> 46:24.240]  Hey, did you guys have any...
[46:24.240 --> 46:32.040]  I didn't really allow people to comment on the Virgil story that I was reading earlier or I was talking about for the first half of the show earlier?
[46:32.240 --> 46:35.540]  And I wanted to know if anyone had anything they wanted to add or ask or anything like that.
[46:37.340 --> 46:43.600]  The thing that interests me about it is, yes, we know that Virgil was not divulging any secrets.
[46:43.600 --> 46:48.620]  He was over in North Korea basically telling them the same thing that anybody in the field would have told them.
[46:48.740 --> 46:51.640]  But I also feel like he was arrested in 2019 for this.
[46:51.640 --> 46:54.120]  and it's only two years ago.
[46:54.220 --> 46:55.400]  It doesn't seem like that long.
[46:55.540 --> 47:04.120]  But in the cryptocurrency world, it seems like now even the general public knows so much more about cryptocurrency than they did two years ago.
[47:04.400 --> 47:18.880]  It's much more of a mainstream subject that people tend to have some level of at least an idea of what it is versus two years ago when it was more of this magic future space money thing that people might not be as sure of.
[47:18.880 --> 47:31.860]  And so this does seem like another case of the powers that be not fully understanding something, just knowing that it could in some way be dangerous and therefore let's find this guy and basically Mitnick him.
[47:32.500 --> 47:32.700]  Yeah.
[47:32.860 --> 47:33.160]  Oh, good.
[47:33.280 --> 47:34.460]  Good use of Mitnick as a verb.
[47:35.480 --> 47:35.920]  Yeah.
[47:36.040 --> 47:42.360]  You know, in many ways this is cryptocurrency on trial as well because there is a lot of hostility towards it.
[47:42.460 --> 47:48.420]  There's a lot of fear of this unknown entity that came out of nowhere out of thin air as Trump said.
[47:50.040 --> 47:54.260]  And he shouldn't have to bear the brunt of that because what he was doing...
[47:54.260 --> 47:58.920]  Yeah, we say he told them things but he didn't go over there to tell them things.
[47:58.980 --> 48:03.260]  He went over there to attend a conference out of curiosity to see North Korea out of curiosity.
[48:03.860 --> 48:12.900]  And during that and the only reason I know this is because he told them this a couple of people asked him some questions and he provided very rudimentary answers things that you could find on the internet.
[48:13.080 --> 48:13.420]  That's it.
[48:13.780 --> 48:15.940]  And you know, I did the same thing when I was over there in North Korea.
[48:16.220 --> 48:17.340]  I wasn't talking about cryptocurrency.
[48:17.340 --> 48:18.560]  It didn't exist back then.
[48:18.880 --> 48:22.520]  But people asked me questions about, you know, my MP3 player.
[48:22.660 --> 48:24.320]  And I said, oh, this is how it works.
[48:24.440 --> 48:26.160]  I don't know if I was giving away any secrets there.
[48:26.980 --> 48:35.520]  But basically, the mentality right now seems to be if you help a North Korean out in any way, you're hurting your own country which is other nonsense.
[48:35.820 --> 48:38.140]  I mean, I held the door for somebody in North Korea.
[48:38.280 --> 48:41.580]  Was I hurting my country by helping a North Korean in that context?
[48:41.980 --> 48:50.440]  It just seems like you can really distort this and make somebody suffer because you want to follow the letter of the law to absurd degrees.
[48:51.340 --> 49:03.140]  And, you know, when it's a friend of yours, when somebody you know so well, when you know how they express themselves and how they won't see something that maybe some of us will see as very, very obvious.
[49:03.140 --> 49:04.800]  Like, this is a bad idea.
[49:04.800 --> 49:10.340]  This is going to be used against you because people won't understand what your true motivation was.
[49:11.420 --> 49:16.680]  you know, it's really frustrating to see that happen, to see someone taking advantage of that way.
[49:16.800 --> 49:18.800]  And that's exactly what's happening to them right now.
[49:18.980 --> 49:22.320]  Yeah, I think it's really short-sighted of the U.S.
[49:22.440 --> 49:41.640]  government in their position to look at this case as something that will actually be defining in other realms like export bans on cryptographic stuff or weapons and so forth.
[49:41.880 --> 49:45.380]  And it's a huge exaggeration.
[49:45.380 --> 49:56.960]  Even the things you referenced, I didn't even know about any of that, but the evangelizing is something that is just something Virgil's so passionate about.
[49:57.080 --> 50:05.880]  Anybody who was interested in learning about this was someone he wanted to teach and share and create understanding with.
[50:06.100 --> 50:20.360]  And in the future, as more and more people are coming into understanding this stuff, you have to be aware who's using it and have insight on how they're using it or how far along they've been.
[50:20.500 --> 50:21.840]  And he was willing to tell them.
[50:21.940 --> 50:29.300]  He was willing to talk about his experience and what types of things people were asking him about.
[50:29.640 --> 50:31.940]  And it was quite interesting.
[50:34.520 --> 50:43.000]  his case seems more like career goals for people that know they can get a...
[50:43.720 --> 50:47.280]  they will get a pass because there's so much fear.
[50:47.640 --> 51:02.080]  And ironically, from the government side, ironically, at a moment when, as Rob pointed out, so much of cryptocurrency has been validated by the markets, the private sector hedge funds.
[51:02.340 --> 51:02.700]  There is...
[51:02.700 --> 51:03.720]  There are...
[51:03.720 --> 51:19.740]  Not only is the cryptocurrency Bitcoin listed on some of the finance news networks, but there are funds around cryptocurrencies where people can invest but not actually buy specific cryptocurrencies.
[51:19.740 --> 51:28.540]  I mean, it's becoming so ubiquitous and so widely held that I find it...
[51:30.220 --> 52:01.080]  It's a particularly insulting thing to take someone who was just being incredibly open thinking he was talking to technical people who would appreciate what the future of this holds and what this means and how important it is to what's going on in the world right now to be used in a way and exaggerated as though he has done something to threaten international affairs in some way like actually
[52:01.080 --> 52:27.220]  participating in some transaction where the reality is the world itself is embracing the technology and anyone who wants to further that discussion is a friend of Virgil's especially and I think that his voice being so loud about how important And this technology is also part of that pass that the government's getting on this.
[52:28.280 --> 52:37.940]  Yeah, there is just so much... and I wonder if it's willful misunderstanding of the way he expresses himself, the things that he says and does.
[52:38.580 --> 52:50.660]  You know, for instance, talking about how cryptocurrency can be used to evade sanctions and phrasing it in a way to make it sound like that's what he intended to do.
[52:50.660 --> 52:57.940]  When in actuality, what he was attempting was to theoretically prove how this could be defeated.
[52:58.240 --> 53:02.260]  Something he was sharing with everybody that he talked to, including the U.S.
[53:02.360 --> 53:02.620]  government.
[53:02.800 --> 53:06.040]  Don't you want to know how your system could be defeated?
[53:06.260 --> 53:08.120]  He wasn't showing the North Koreans how to do that.
[53:08.140 --> 53:14.520]  He was basically explaining this is what could happen with this particular science, with this particular technology.
[53:15.040 --> 53:16.180]  It's called research.
[53:16.500 --> 53:19.420]  It's called, you know, security, investigation.
[53:19.420 --> 53:21.180]  Information, the sharing of information.
[53:21.180 --> 53:23.000]  These are things that you should be embracing.
[53:23.580 --> 53:25.760]  Virgil should be teaching.
[53:26.060 --> 53:31.440]  He should be in front of a class or working in a department for the government.
[53:31.700 --> 53:33.640]  You know, he would do that probably sooner than I would.
[53:34.520 --> 53:43.560]  Or any university that would basically value such a thing, which, you know, up until now, I thought was most of them.
[53:43.560 --> 53:44.480]  And now I'm not sure.
[53:44.860 --> 53:49.700]  The way that this has been kind of brushed under the rug and forgotten about.
[53:49.840 --> 53:51.240]  It's a tragedy.
[53:51.240 --> 53:57.960]  It's horrible that you have somebody of that caliber in a federal prison right now, literally for nothing.
[53:58.360 --> 54:00.760]  Just because he's too smart.
[54:00.880 --> 54:01.660]  You don't understand him.
[54:01.800 --> 54:03.840]  You question his motivations.
[54:03.840 --> 54:04.960]  You don't look at his past.
[54:05.060 --> 54:05.820]  You don't look at his record.
[54:05.820 --> 54:09.900]  You don't look at all the things that he has done that are good.
[54:10.400 --> 54:12.880]  And yeah, okay, he's a little strange, perhaps.
[54:12.880 --> 54:14.400]  He expresses himself differently.
[54:14.720 --> 54:18.460]  He might seem like he's a smart aleck and knows a little too much.
[54:19.240 --> 54:20.600]  I think these are good things.
[54:20.860 --> 54:23.160]  I think these are things that can help us all.
[54:23.820 --> 54:25.460]  Or you can destroy your life.
[54:26.040 --> 54:31.540]  You know, we really need to figure out what to do about this.
[54:31.540 --> 54:34.560]  Because I'm sure it's not the only case of its kind.
[54:35.020 --> 54:38.760]  But it's one that affects somebody that I know.
[54:38.760 --> 54:39.520]  I know quite well.
[54:39.620 --> 54:40.660]  I've known for some time.
[54:41.120 --> 54:41.640]  Yes, Rob.
[54:41.800 --> 54:48.420]  And also just the idea that you can regulate talking about how something that exists in the world works.
[54:48.520 --> 54:53.740]  I think that goes against so much, maybe everything that the hacker community has ever stood for.
[54:54.260 --> 54:55.280]  I mean, like, I'm...
[54:55.280 --> 54:57.420]  Personally, I'm not interested at all in cryptocurrency.
[54:57.920 --> 55:00.840]  I think it's, you know, I think it's got a lot to answer for.
[55:00.840 --> 55:02.240]  I'm not interested in using it myself.
[55:02.300 --> 55:04.760]  But I like hearing about how it works.
[55:04.900 --> 55:06.360]  I like hearing about the theory behind it.
[55:06.520 --> 55:09.660]  And, you know, the tech behind it.
[55:09.760 --> 55:12.760]  And, like, it's a thing that exists in the world.
[55:13.120 --> 55:15.700]  And I, you know, information about it is light.
[55:15.820 --> 55:17.140]  Information about anything is light.
[55:17.440 --> 55:21.840]  And as soon as you start telling people, you know, here's a thing that we're all dealing with.
[55:21.920 --> 55:23.000]  Here's a thing that exists.
[55:23.400 --> 55:25.120]  You're not allowed to know how it works.
[55:25.260 --> 55:27.420]  That rankles my hacker senses.
[55:28.200 --> 55:38.100]  You know, if you were looking at a car that somebody was driving around and you weren't allowed to look up how the engine worked or, you know, things like that, that would be ridiculous.
[55:38.600 --> 55:50.680]  But in this case, because it's something that is not so well understood among the mainstream that maybe governmental organizations feel threatens their power in some way, they start regulating it.
[55:50.980 --> 55:53.480]  And this is dangerous.
[55:53.720 --> 55:56.540]  This has never been a good idea, I don't think, this kind of censorship.
[55:56.540 --> 55:58.980]  You know, regulation, that's one thing.
[55:59.100 --> 56:00.400]  We expect them to regulate things.
[56:00.520 --> 56:06.100]  But to punish people for knowing too much or, you know, for explaining something.
[56:06.260 --> 56:12.480]  For instance, you know, somebody would write an article for 2600 about this very subject and we printed it.
[56:12.720 --> 56:15.480]  And let's say we have a subscriber in North Korea.
[56:16.120 --> 56:19.680]  Well, aren't we doing the exact same thing by sending the magazine to them?
[56:19.780 --> 56:20.440]  They can read it.
[56:20.600 --> 56:25.140]  Or, you know, if somebody in North Korea is able to access the internet and read the same information.
[56:25.880 --> 56:33.560]  It's just mind-boggling to me that you're going to put all the weight onto one person for all the things that you fear.
[56:34.760 --> 56:43.400]  And the articles we read tonight prove that they already knew how to manipulate cryptocurrency in nefarious ways.
[56:43.400 --> 56:45.600]  So he wasn't showing them how to do that in any sense.
[56:46.200 --> 56:49.300]  If anything, he was learning more than they were.
[56:49.680 --> 56:50.860]  That's what I'm convinced of.
[56:50.880 --> 56:51.760]  He went over there to learn.
[56:51.920 --> 56:56.480]  He went over there to see the closest thing to another planet that we have here.
[56:56.860 --> 56:59.700]  Because that's what North Korea is like when you visit there.
[56:59.820 --> 57:03.160]  And many, many hackers have visited North Korea because they're curious.
[57:03.220 --> 57:04.220]  And that's it.
[57:04.220 --> 57:12.760]  But when Trump issued his decree making it illegal for Americans to go to North Korea, a lot of people didn't take it seriously.
[57:12.920 --> 57:14.260]  A lot of people didn't take Trump seriously.
[57:14.540 --> 57:16.440]  Now, I know that's a mistake.
[57:16.440 --> 57:17.240]  You should have.
[57:17.560 --> 57:19.320]  And there are penalties.
[57:19.620 --> 57:21.880]  And, you know, they're rarely enforced.
[57:21.880 --> 57:22.880]  But they do exist.
[57:22.880 --> 57:24.140]  And you're supposed to obey the rules.
[57:24.140 --> 57:26.880]  And Virgil has never said that he didn't do that.
[57:27.700 --> 57:40.680]  But when that rule was enforced, when the decree came down, it wasn't so much to punish North Korea as it was to protect American citizens.
[57:41.160 --> 57:52.340]  We had just had the instance where somebody had died or was severely injured in North Korea at the hands of North Korean security.
[57:52.340 --> 57:57.600]  Or he came down with some horrible disease and died shortly after arriving back in the U.S.
[57:57.660 --> 57:58.460]  after they released him.
[57:58.620 --> 57:59.280]  Otto Warnberry.
[57:59.480 --> 57:59.620]  Yeah.
[57:59.840 --> 58:06.660]  So after that case, that is when Trump said, OK, Americans can't go there anymore for their own safety.
[58:07.320 --> 58:11.360]  And, you know, Virgil basically hadn't lived in the United States for years.
[58:11.360 --> 58:12.360]  He lived in Singapore.
[58:14.120 --> 58:16.360]  And he did what I wouldn't have done.
[58:16.500 --> 58:17.540]  I wouldn't have asked permission.
[58:17.580 --> 58:18.340]  I would have just gone.
[58:18.340 --> 58:25.300]  You know, I wouldn't have felt like I even had to answer to anybody in the United States if I didn't live there for many years.
[58:25.640 --> 58:27.360]  But he didn't feel that way.
[58:27.480 --> 58:34.320]  He felt like, you know, he had ties to this country and he should go and do it above board.
[58:35.320 --> 58:37.040]  Unfortunately, they didn't see it the same way.
[58:37.240 --> 58:38.640]  They said, no, you can't go.
[58:38.640 --> 58:45.260]  And in a lapse of judgment, he went anyway, which, you know, doesn't really make much sense because U.S.
[58:45.300 --> 58:47.540]  passports supposedly are invalid to get to North Korea.
[58:47.720 --> 58:52.380]  So somehow he hacked the system and got into a place he wasn't supposed to get.
[58:52.500 --> 58:58.060]  That's not worth throwing somebody in prison for, you know, maybe a fine or something like that.
[58:58.160 --> 59:01.000]  But you don't destroy somebody's life, not somebody like him.
[59:01.000 --> 59:10.100]  So I feel like it's an uphill battle now to make people understand why his life shouldn't be destroyed.
[59:10.920 --> 59:13.820]  But I feel this is something we need to get involved with.
[59:13.920 --> 59:18.940]  And especially with the trial coming up in September, I'm afraid of what they're going to do.
[59:19.180 --> 59:21.580]  I'm afraid of what's going to happen to him.
[59:22.780 --> 59:30.860]  Yeah, I can't go in the direction without the correct characterization, you know, and a proper defense.
[59:30.860 --> 59:49.380]  And it just seems like a lot of stuff has been put up against getting the real characterization of who Virgil is and the openness and intent behind his actions.
[59:49.380 --> 59:59.160]  Yeah, I feel like anything any of us say in particular situations can be distorted to make it seem like we're somehow threats.
[59:59.420 --> 01:00:09.260]  And that's something, regardless of how you feel on this, I think that's something we all need to look at and realize, yeah, you know, that could have been me in a different context.
[01:00:09.260 --> 01:00:25.980]  I could have been... I could have my words distorted, misunderstood, portrayed in a particular way that is easy for people to believe and then be condemned by them and never really have a chance to express yourself to them.
[01:00:26.480 --> 01:00:29.780]  And that is what I'm worried about, that people won't understand.
[01:00:31.060 --> 01:00:37.160]  So, I guess we'll be following the story in the weeks to come and hopefully we can figure out how to get something done.
[01:00:37.300 --> 01:00:44.140]  If you want to help in any way or have advice or connections or anything, write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[01:00:44.440 --> 01:00:46.420]  And I guess we're done for overtime tonight.
[01:00:47.200 --> 01:00:48.360]  Thanks to everybody who called in.
[01:00:48.460 --> 01:00:49.520]  Thanks to everybody who wrote in.
[01:00:49.740 --> 01:00:50.740]  Thanks to everybody who listened.
[01:00:51.060 --> 01:00:53.440]  And we'll see you again next week.
[01:00:54.180 --> 01:00:54.760]  Good night.
[01:00:55.400 --> 01:00:55.920]  So long.
[01:00:56.260 --> 01:00:56.500]  Thank you.