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The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
Yes, coming in loud and clear.
Yeah, we are.
And over in Skype land, we have Gila.
Hello.
Looking at your phone.
And Rob T. Firefly.
Hello.
Gila, give me your phone.
It's my turn.
And not on a train this week is Alex.
Good evening.
Hopefully coming in a little bit clearer.
We can hear you this week.
What a marvelous turn of events that is.
So, Alex, I take it when you were on that train heading back from Washington, D.C.,
you were actually finishing up protesting outside the homes of various Supreme Court justices?
Am I reading you right?
No, as a matter of fact.
You're not.
I was not.
That wasn't on my agenda for that first week.
Golden opportunity right there, you know.
Well, I would imagine that most of them don't live in D.C. proper anyhow.
I'm not sure about that.
Well, maybe they do.
They live in Cherry Chase, Maryland, Alexandria.
Well, you know, I can give you the addresses later.
That's not a problem.
Thanks.
And you can book your next ticket down there.
But, no, you know, I was actually talking to a bunch of people who were part of that.
And, you know, the Republicans are going nuts about this.
They're saying that these people, why aren't they being arrested?
It turns out there's a law.
There's a law against protesting outside a judge's home.
Did you know about this, Alex?
As a lawyer, you should know about this.
Because I'm sure many times you've been tempted to just get a couple of picket signs
and go outside a judge's house after they rule against one of your cases.
Yeah.
Well, that so rarely happens that I get ruled against.
Yeah.
Well, you might want to get used to it.
You know, we have some dark days ahead from what I'm led to believe.
No doubt.
In all fairness, yeah, it would sound somewhat appealing,
given the posture of some of my cases several years ago.
But, yeah, I was unaware of this law.
So, Ted, tell us more about it.
It's USC 18, subsection 1507.
You'd do well to read it.
However, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing,
or impeding the administration of justice,
or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer
pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States
or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness,
or court officer or with such intent uses any sound truck
I don't know why they picked that, sound truck,
or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building
or residence shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year or both.
That's the law.
Well, it's interesting.
It seems like it's tied to the intent to influence a judge's opinion one way or the other
in an active case.
Isn't that what you do every day in court?
Yes, that's exactly what we do every day in court.
Yeah, yeah.
But it also reminds me of way back when, I mean, God,
I don't even remember what year this was,
but it was probably before 2000 when we held a protest outside the U.S. Federal District Court,
the Southern District of New York.
Oh, my God, you're right.
We did that.
We demonstrated outside a courthouse.
That's right.
That was in what year was that?
Do you remember?
That's what I'm saying.
I don't remember.
It was a long time ago.
Okay, it was a very long time ago.
It was last century, wasn't it?
It was 1990.
The statute of limitations has to be passed on that.
Oh, it certainly has.
We're sorry.
We're sorry for expressing our opinion in federal buildings or in front of federal buildings.
I don't think that we would have violated that particular statute
because there wasn't an active case or controversy before the court in front of which we were demonstrating.
That's true.
Demonstrating for Kevin Mitnick, who was held in a very distant court.
That's correct.
I think that we were okay to be in front of the Southern District
when there was a case in front of a separate U.S. Federal District Court.
The thing that bothers me about this is that people really buy into the fear factor
and say that, oh, my God, this is against the federal law to be outside someone's house chanting.
You know what?
It might be.
This law seems to make it seem that way.
It seems to make it seem like if you're anywhere where there's a judge, you could be violating the law.
And I say, so what?
At a time like this where the Constitution is being dismantled,
where you're having rights for the first time taken away by a Supreme Court,
it's time to get angry.
It's time to act.
It's time to say, I'm going to express myself.
Law be damned.
If that's the kind of law that exists now, then the law is wrong, too.
There are people outside the homes of those justices
that are apparently intent on dismantling Roe v. Wade
and throwing the country back half a century at least
and just making life hell for so many people.
And no, I don't think we should stay quiet for that.
Of course we should vote.
Of course we should change things down the road.
But you see, you know, if we just rely on our elected officials,
you get more of what happened today in the Senate
where absolutely nothing got accomplished.
Basically the same old people voted against doing anything of substance,
and we just wind up saying, well, the Republicans beat us again,
even though there was less of them.
So, yeah, you know, don't be intimidated.
If somebody says, let's go to a demonstration outside Clarence Thomas' house,
take them up on it.
You know, be loud, be abrasive.
Don't be violent.
Don't be breaking things or vandalizing.
That's not what this is about.
It's about expressing yourself.
You should never, ever be afraid to express yourself.
And, you know, also this is kind of funny
because I was helping people basically find houses
because, you know, it's kind of a detective work sort of a thing.
It's not hard.
It's not that hard because there's always information somewhere online
linking people to certain places.
But the thing that got me,
the thing that was really, really funny about this,
the way to confirm where Supreme Court justice lives,
let's say you have the street or the neighborhood,
you just go on Google Maps and you move around a little bit
and you keep looking at the houses.
And when you get the house that's all blurred out,
that's their house every time.
It's simply incredible.
Another time, once I got the address,
I just plugged the address into the Internet
and I got a nice Zillow video,
a tour of their entire home inside and out,
just left online.
And the great thing is, at the end,
there was a realtor who was narrating.
He said, if you're excited seeing this online,
you'll be thrilled when you see it in person.
If that's not an invitation, I don't know what is.
Well, look, I think, you know,
I don't think we should advocate for people breaking the law.
I think, you know, to play devil's advocate here too,
I mean, as a lawyer, judges really are supposed to restrict themselves
to the consideration of things that are part of the record,
the testimony, the evidence that the parties adduce,
things like that.
And this law seems to be designed to try to insulate the judiciary,
in particular the federal judiciary,
from undue influence outside of the record,
meaning, you know, people going and shouting things
or presenting evidence that might be hearsay
or evidence that might be inadmissible in court.
And so you have these very, very strict rules of evidence
about what a judge can and cannot consider.
And I think that this law actually does serve a purpose,
so that if we start saying things like you did, Emanuel, you know,
in times like these, we should begin ignoring the law.
I think you're just inviting anarchy.
We should ignore those laws that work against us and are unfair.
You know, every fascist society of every era
always had the law behind them.
They always were able to point to that.
You know, 12 Years a Slave, watching that movie,
you realize how the slaveholders always pointed to the law
to say, I'm within my rights to have this person bound
and enslaved indefinitely.
So, yeah, the law is often flawed.
And when it is, you have to challenge it.
You don't simply blindly obey.
And, you know, I think maybe because of the magnitude
of what has happened here, people will see that.
And they'll realize that there are, you know, values
and then there are laws that thwart those values.
And in times like that, you have to speak up.
You have to be loud. You have to be out there.
But at the same time, you know, your values dictate
that you don't hurt people, you don't break things,
you don't break into people's homes or anything like that.
It's not what anyone I know is advocating.
But certainly, how do you express yourself otherwise?
What's left? It really becomes frustrating.
And that's a very unhealthy society if you're not able
to speak freely. That's Vladimir Putin's society.
And I certainly don't want that here.
Rob, looks like you have something to say.
Yeah, just one point that I've seen made a number
of different ways by a lot of people out there is
the very fact that the people in power are telling you,
no, you're protesting the wrong way, that in itself,
I think, is a pretty solid sign that you're protesting
in exactly the right way. You're protesting in the way
that gets their attention, that, you know, you don't want
to quietly just, are you comfortable with this?
I'm going to just protest you now. Okay.
No, I think this is a sign that the protests are having
an effect, are being heard.
Well, look, and to that point, I think, you know,
civil disobedience is a long and very storied history
in this country, especially with respect to things
like the Civil Rights Movement. We wouldn't be here
if people were not ignoring the law and flouting the law
and disobeying the law. I mean, you even go back to,
you know, the union miner strikes, you know,
people like Utah Phillips would remind us that, you know,
the reason why we have eight-hour days and laws
busting sweatshops and busting child labor,
these weren't benevolent gifts from enlightened management.
They were fought for, bled for, died for on illegal picket lines.
And so I agree with all of what you're saying,
but I think as part of civil disobedience, you know,
there is the component of punishment,
and that breaking the law comes with a penalty.
And when you disobey the law like that, even in a civil way,
part of that protest is to accept the punishment
that's meted out.
Yeah, but we're already living the punishment.
That's the thing that people are protesting.
Yeah, and to some degree, these laws are giving
the current court a lot of shelter in a moment
when the application isn't necessarily with what
the majority has in mind for society,
and they do have a right to redress their grievances
and so forth, and by, you know, and knowing the law,
you can work sort of around the strictures of it
in whatever kind of action you feel you're going to take.
And we all know that laws themselves are interpreted
by the public actually sort of along a continuum.
I mean, most people follow them in sort of the common,
widely interpreted way, but instances like crossing
against a pedestrian signal, there are signals and laws
and technical things that we don't necessarily
always abide by.
And in this case, someone is, there's power being exercised
against the will of many people with lots of grievances
to redress and give shelter to that process
of them voicing that.
There may be people that are going to want to work out
around the strictures of that law and perhaps in moments
outside a little bit to get the point across, right?
And so that's what I'm seeing and hearing in this.
Yeah, I think, you know, when you see on the right-wing media
this law being trotted out, it means that the people
showing up and protesting, holding signs, chanting,
it's scaring them.
It's scaring them a lot, so they have to find something
that's really never been enforced before to try
and scare people away from doing this in the first place,
because, you know, unlike what we're constantly being told,
and we're told this from people on our side
and on other sides, that our voices mean nothing.
And, you know, the people that we agree with
who tell us that, they're frustrated.
They don't believe that it's ever going to work.
They've been out on the streets so many times,
they voted, and still nothing seems to change.
So that's why they believe that doing this is pointless,
whereas the people on the other side,
they don't want you to do that because you're a threat
to their way of life, which they are succeeding
in enforcing on the rest of us.
Either way, you can't listen to that.
Listen to yourself, and do what feels right,
and use the values that you hold dear,
and I think that's the best way forward.
Gila.
Thank you.
I just want to throw this out there very quickly,
which is if you have a voice and you want to use it,
there are actions, there are protests that are planned
this weekend all across the country.
Find the one in your local area.
Get out there.
Make some noise.
There are protests this weekend.
There's a massive thing happening in Washington next week.
Find out.
Be heard.
Be part of this.
Don't sit and be silent and stoop.
Now, do you have the website?
If you don't, we'll find it,
because we were talking about this last night as well.
It's, I think, Planned Parenthood Action
or something like that?
Planned Parenthood Action, yes.
Okay.
And they will actually, if you go there,
they will direct you to your local event.
For those people who are in the New York City area,
which is probably everybody who's listening to us right now,
the event is starting in Cadman Plaza,
going to march over the Brooklyn Bridge
and finish at Foley Square.
Join us at noon.
Go to plannedparenthoodaction.org
to find your local information this weekend
all over the country.
And when I looked at the site,
there's a little dialog box for you to enter your zip code.
It didn't say zip code, but I figured it out.
But enter your zip code there,
and it'll tell you where the nearest demonstration is.
And, Gila, you mentioned something is happening
next week nationwide.
That's not this weekend.
Not nationwide.
There's actually something happening a week from yesterday,
next Tuesday in Washington,
actually mostly focused on the Jewish community,
but in Washington, sponsored by National Council of Jewish Women,
among other organizations.
You can find out more at ncjw.org.
I know of at least one chartered bus
that's going from New York to Washington
for this event next week.
And keep listening to WBAI,
because we are your source for information about this
and all sorts of other activities that are going on related to this
and so many other things that are happening.
WBAI is really a tremendous source for that.
And, by the way, I should point out,
please help support us.
Keep us on the air, because we don't have commercials,
and we piss off a lot of powerful people,
and they're constantly trying to shut us down, constantly.
Give to WBAI.org.
That's give2wbai.org,
or you can call 212-209-2950.
If there are people there,
just say, I want to pledge a certain amount,
and they'll find a thank you gift that's appropriate for that amount.
Stay plugged in.
Stay invigorated.
And thanks for sharing that information, Gila,
about actions in everybody's locality
and, of course, the information you had about laws.
Know the risks.
Stay safe out there.
But don't wait or feel like you're alone.
There are so many people that have taken immediate notice
and are mobilizing.
Yeah, I think that's important.
Don't feel like you're alone, because you're not.
Even if you are physically alone,
even if you're in some desolate place on Earth
and you feel like no one's with you, we are.
And we can get together in all different ways,
online, offline.
The important thing is to act intelligently
and to stay true to your own beliefs.
Hackers break the rules a lot.
We get into trouble because of that.
It takes the form of many actions, many experiments.
Here's one that took place on Monday.
Hackers replaced Russian TV schedules
during Vladimir Putin's Victory Day parade.
You guys watch the Victory Day parade?
I missed it.
Oh, it's fabulous.
It's worth seeing.
A lot of tanks, a lot of trucks,
a lot of people marching around.
We talked about this on the other radio show yesterday,
but everybody's walking and looking to the right as they walk,
looking at the leader.
I don't understand how they're able to keep walking straight
without tripping over each other.
I certainly don't know how they're able to drive tanks
and massive vehicles while staring to the right,
which they do.
Alex, I know you have some military experience.
Maybe you understand how that works.
Well, yeah, something like that.
I find the whole Victory Day thing fascinating, though,
because this was victory over the Nazis
we were talking about.
The original, the OG Nazis, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the Nazis, right?
I mean, not neo-Nazis, not anything like that.
And so you have this almost co-opting of Victory Day
over the last several years with Vladimir Putin,
and it's becoming more and more militaristic,
more jingoistic, more about these external threats
that are facing Russia,
and revisiting this whole notion of the threat of Nazis
that they've then misused and abused
through misinformation, propaganda, censorship,
and a strict enforcement regime domestically
to justify the war in Ukraine.
And it is really, really unfortunate,
and I think it was, I don't remember who it was from the UK,
but one of the ministers from the United Kingdom
had called it out and said,
it's really unfortunate because Russia and the Soviet Union,
in fact, held this really important place
in helping to defeat the Nazis.
I mean, it was they who were instrumental
and critical to the fall of the Nazi regime.
That's true.
Yet they themselves are committing these atrocities
that are going to tarnish and stain forever
that historical mark that they left on the world
with the defeat of the Nazis.
The amount of people that Russia lost,
or the Soviet Union at the time lost,
during World War II,
I think it's something like 20 million.
27 million.
Unfathomable for us.
And, you know, at that time,
not that I was around for it,
but at that time there was a certain camaraderie
between Americans and Soviets
at that moment where the war was over
because of our combined efforts.
And, yeah, a lot of that has been lost,
forgotten, tarnished.
And, you know, on both sides, too.
I mean, what Russia is doing
is absolutely terrible at the moment,
but our hands are not clean by any stretch.
Anyway, to get to what happened on Monday,
yes, Russian television schedules were hacked
to display an anti-war message
as the country celebrated the National Military Festival.
On-screen program descriptions,
we all have those now.
They were replaced with the hacker's text
when viewed on smart TVs.
How do we do this, folks?
I really would love to be able to do that here.
We'd probably be in prison for life,
but still, it's a worthy hack.
According to BBC Monitoring,
that sounds very Orwellian, doesn't it?
But I guess BBC is out there
and they're just watching what we're doing.
The message read,
The message read,
On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians
and their hundreds of murdered children.
TV and the authorities are lying.
No to war.
That is the most magnificent statement.
Yes, I'm sure it violates all sorts of laws,
but I am very happy
that somebody had the courage to do that
and very thankful.
Major channels, such as Russia One,
Channel One, and NTV Plus were changed.
Francis Scarr, who works for BBC Monitoring,
which is defined here,
the branch of the BBC that follows mass media worldwide.
They tweeted a short video of a screen
showing the TV schedules
on which every program showed the same description.
The hack came during Russia's Victory Day celebrations,
which is a national holiday and military parade
overseen by Vladimir Putin,
which was being televised all throughout Russia.
As we mentioned,
the annual event celebrates the Soviet Union's victory
alongside allied forces over Nazi Germany in 1945.
Under a near blackout of independent media
and social media platforms,
which exist today,
most Russian viewers can access
only Kremlin-controlled messaging
about the conflict in Ukraine.
The message in Monday's hack
runs deeply counter to Putin's claims
that his forces are in Ukraine
to quote-unquote liberate Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
It's unclear who was behind the alteration
of the schedules on Monday,
but the hacker group Anonymous retweeted
a message saying good morning Moscow
within hours of the hack.
So, yeah, not really an organized group,
just a lot of people pulling resources
and accomplishing incredible things.
And then you have Anonymous NB65,
their affiliated network battalion, NB65.
They allegedly targeted
a Russian payment processing platform
known as Kiwi, QIWI,
and leaked 7 million payment cards
as proof of a hack.
This happened on May 1st,
and they're defined by this story
in hackread.com
as one of the Anonymous affiliate
hacktivist groups.
They published a tweet in which
they claimed to have gained access
to Kiwi's databases for Operation OpRussia.
For further information,
Kiwi is a Russian giant
that provides, a giant company I imagine,
that provides payment and financial services
in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Those are countries that were former Soviet republics.
NB65 is the same group
that hacked Russian state-run television
and radio broadcaster VGTRK,
which is also known as All-Russia State Television
and Radio Broadcasting Company.
That happened back in April,
and they also leaked 786 gigabytes
worth of data online,
something we discussed here.
As for the attack on Kiwi,
NB65 also tweeted that it managed
to extract 10.5 terabytes of data
comprising 30 million payment records,
and they filtered 12.5 million credit cards
of Kiwi customers.
They also posted a statement
revealing that the attack was aimed
at disrupting the Russian financial system,
in case you couldn't figure that out.
Here's what they said.
Kiwi, in your last press release,
you clearly stated that the sanctions
against the Russian financial system
did not affect your business in any way.
Well, it will definitely affect your business.
Signed, NB65-Anonymous.
They also stated they encrypted
the platform's networks with a ransomware kit
Furthermore, the group threatened to release
one million records every day
after the three-day contract period expires,
and the platform fails to reach out to them.
So Kiwi, reach out to NB65.
They're trying to reach you,
and you're not answering.
It's important, and you're going to lose
a million records every day,
and your business will be affected quite a bit.
I'm not a fan of ransomware
or vandalism of this sort,
but in certain situations,
you go with what you got,
and this seems like an effective way
to show outrage
and kind of mess up the system a bit.
Thoughts?
In situations where there's persistent action
that's running unabated,
that is not being deterred,
and it just basically comes down to
maybe helping that attacker
change their priorities a little bit.
And if you're good,
you can protect yourself
against this sort of thing.
Sounds like they're not that good,
and that's how these things happen.
Of course, it happens in both directions, too.
The Russian hacking group Kilnet.
Wow, whatever happened to Fluffy Puppy
and the nice-sounding names
we used to have?
No, it's Kilnet.
They threatened to shut down ventilators
at British hospitals.
Yeah, they don't waste time, do they?
They're just going to go for the ventilators
and shut them down.
But this is in retaliation
for the arrest of an alleged member.
So try to catch up here,
because this has nothing to do
with what I was talking about before.
A 23-year-old supposed Kilnet member
was arrested in London on Monday
for the attack on Romanian government websites.
This gets complicated.
Kilnet has reportedly demanded his release
and threatened to target life-saving ventilators
in British hospitals
if their demands aren't met.
The message said,
if he is not released within 48 hours,
I will destroy your Romania,
Great Britain, and Moldova.
Yeah.
I'm not sure why Moldova got thrown in there.
I will destroy your entire information structure
and even your Ministry of Health.
All ventilators will be attacked.
Only then will you begin to realize
the mistake you have made.
Seems pretty serious there.
The alleged Kilnet member
was reportedly arrested
by National Crime Agency officers
alongside officials from Romania.
That raid took place at an address
in Tottenham, North London.
Go Spurs!
Where the hacker was detained
on suspicion of assisting with Kilnet's attacks
on the Romanian government and media
earlier this week in retaliation
for supporting Ukraine in the Russian invasion.
So it all comes back to Ukraine in the end, I suppose.
The hacker is reportedly a Putin supporter
with Facebook posts emblazoned with Russian flags
and the letter Z,
which is the invasion symbol
that you see on Russian tanks.
So, yeah, you know,
it's just madness and mayhem out there.
But what I wonder,
and I always come back to this,
why are ventilators accessible online
in the first place?
Do they need to be?
It seems like a fairly simple way
to keep them safe is to not have them
be able to be hacked in the first place.
Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't see
why that needs to be something
that the whole world should be able to alter.
Yeah, that's alarming.
Really, truly impressive.
And if it is a capability,
they're wielding and kind of
really trying to get people to
take pause and, you know,
confront.
Both Rob and Alex look equally thoughtful.
I'm not sure which one is more thoughtful
at the moment.
Rob, let's go to you.
Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing.
I'm wondering, you know,
if there's someone at a ventilator company somewhere
who had that eureka moment of going,
you know what we should do?
We should put this damn thing on the net.
That would be a great idea.
I just don't see the advantage.
I mean, are people not going into work
and keeping people alive?
You show up in person for that, right?
I could see some system
that works in conjunction
being vulnerable.
Go ahead, Rob.
Gila, I want to let you know
that this is my medical wish
that if I ever end up on a ventilator,
pay extra if you need to
to get one that's not Internet controllable.
Just turn off the Wi-Fi.
No, you can do the Internet of Things respirator.
Turn off the Wi-Fi on your respirator.
Go ahead, Alex.
Sorry.
Skype fell.
There was a mute.
How else are you going to remotely monitor
your battery
and breathing rates
and all these things?
Aren't you curious about that
when you're not on a ventilator?
Here's the thing.
You can monitor things.
I look out the window and I see the moon rising,
but I can't control it.
There's a nice moon out there,
and I can call you, Alex, and say,
Alex, look out the window.
Look at the moon.
We can both be looking at the moon,
except maybe you have more power over the moon
and you can do something.
Similarly, I can call the hospital
and say, hey, Dr. Intern or whatever,
can you please change the setting on this
since you're there and I'm not?
I can see it, but I can't change it.
Simple things like that.
What fun is life-enabling hardware
when you have aged firmware?
You're right.
I take all the fun out of hospitals.
I know.
I know.
I have worked in multiple places
that had air-gapped intranets
where something needed to be networked,
but they didn't want it to be accessible from outside,
so it was just an internal-only network,
and that was just protecting data.
There were no lungs connected to it.
Yeah.
It's common sense.
We all came up in the BBS era,
and I think a lot of kids
had better security than
major hospitals and corporations have today.
I think that continues, too.
I think a lot of kids running their system
probably have better security.
Please write us at OTH
if you know about vulnerabilities like this
because I think this is still an exaggeration.
You didn't finish the email address.
OTH at 2600.com.
Yes, it's important to finish the email address.
Go ahead, Alex.
Maybe I should just write in
with this information, perhaps,
but I have found an article
from 2016 here
about Philips,
and there is this trilogy of portable
ventilators that are slated
to be connected to something called
a care orchestrator,
which is connected to a care management application,
and the care orchestrator
program appears to be
a cloud-connected health app
designed to connect informatics
and intelligence information
for providers, payers, and patients
alongside clinical
management workflow information.
There's quite a few
mouthfuls for you there
justifying what was
a really horrible idea
nearly six years ago
when they had the idea of putting
ventilators on the
internet via cloud-connected apps.
That is something.
As if you don't have enough to worry about
going on a ventilator in the first place,
but being hacked shouldn't be one of them.
Yeah, okay.
If you know more things like that,
as Kyle said, write to us,
OTH at 2600.com.
Hope update,
today we announced virtual
ticketing.
You can be an attendee
at the conference
without coming to the conference
if you feel more secure
doing that. I know a lot of people
are still a little wary
of traveling and wary of being
with other people. I get it.
You might actually
be a speaker, too, that feels
more comfortable
putting in something that is
remote. We're in a transitional
period. I know it's not going to be
back to 100%.
It's going to be great
for those of us who are there.
I believe it'll be
a historic moment. It'll be
a new location for us at St. John's University.
But I don't want to exclude people
who can't make it for whatever reason.
On our website,
just check it out, hope.net and 2600.com.
There's information on how to participate
in various ways
virtually as well as
in person. We're going to have a lot more
information in the days and weeks
ahead with
speakers, talks, activities
that we're going to be announcing.
It's shaping up.
Full details at hope.net.
We have this
interesting update that we got from
a few different people.
Apparently,
if you type
the following,
and, and,
and, and,
and,
and each and should be
a capital A and have a period
after the D. So, five
instances of the word and with a capital A
and a period at the end.
If you do that in Google Docs,
according to
this Yahoo article,
that will
completely crash
your Google Doc page.
Apparently, it'll crash it permanently, too.
Wow!
Engadget was able to confirm
the issue on a,
I don't know why the size of the monitor
matters, a 16-inch 2019
MacBook Pro running
Monterey 1231 and Google
Chrome 100.0.4896.127.
And we were summarily greeted by the
something went wrong popover
as well as this loathsome
cousin unable to load file,
reloading the file, reloading the page
as prompted results in the same
popovers, in effect,
a death loop. Attempts to replicate
the issue on Firefox
99.0.1. Isn't it weird
that both Firefox and Chrome
are at 100 at this point.
100 releases. On a significantly older
and worse MacBook Pro,
maybe it's the Macs that's the problem.
Everyone's running Macs.
This one's running Big Sur 11.1.
That was not successful, but a
respondent on the Google support forums
claims to have experienced the same
problem on the same version of Firefox.
So what exactly is happening
remains a mystery.
Though the reporter on Yahoo
reached out for clarity on
what is likely a small if amusing technical
oversight. How this bug was even
discovered is itself an enigma.
Apparently it was part of somebody's
poem. He wrote a
poem that happened to have the
word and written
twice in just that format.
Yeah, it really
is something. Don't do
that then. If you have a Google Docs
document, apparently
you will
run into some regrettable
problems where you won't be able to access your
document anymore.
Anybody out in Skyplane
want to try this?
Actually, we've been trying
this while you were reading the story
and it is fixed now.
So sadly you cannot
explode your Google Docs by
typing this in a document now.
There was an update to the
Google support page about
the bug on May 6
where they say we have fixed an issue
in Docs related to repetitive use
of the word and this fix should soon be
in place for all customers.
So yes, this was taken
care of but my favorite thing about
this story is that one of the links
we got sent to us about
this was a new story on
yahoo.com and I'm sure
someone at Yahoo was very happy to
press the button on a story about
something messing up at Google,
the very company that ate Yahoo's lunch
so many years ago on the internet.
The update I was reading was
May 5, 6pm so
May 6 they fixed it.
Good for them but boy, I don't know
how these things happen in the first place.
Another reason I don't use
Google Docs.
Okay, Twitter.
I guess we've got to talk about Twitter
because what
Elon Musk said recently
is that
he plans on reversing
Twitter's ban of Donald Trump.
He said he would do that
assuming that
he follows through with the plans to buy
the social media company. I don't think there's any way out of it
now, right? It's pretty much happening.
He spoke
virtually at a Future of the Car Summit
hosted by the Financial Times.
He said Twitter's Trump ban
was a morally bad decision and foolish
in the extreme.
He said permanent bans of Twitter accounts should be
rare and reserved for accounts that are scams
or automated bots.
Hello? Were you in the country
during those four years?
That was a scam.
That was president scam right there.
It fits the definition
in so many ways.
Twitter banned Trump's account
in January 2021
for incitement of violence
and the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
I don't care
what Musk says or thinks
but unfortunately we're all going to be
at his beck and call
because he's the one that will be
making the rules.
I think that was a mistake
because it alienated a large part of the country
and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump
not having a voice.
Actually, it really calmed things down
quite a bit. I don't know if people
remember what it was like when he was taken
off Twitter but all of a sudden there was a lot
less hatred on the internet.
It did have an effect.
Musk continues, so I think this may
end up being frankly worse than having a single
forum where everyone can debate.
I guess the answer is that I would reverse the permanent
ban.
Now, Trump said he
has no intention of rejoining Twitter even if his
account was reinstated, saying that he's going to stay
on whatever platform
he's running this week. I think it's
Truth Social is the latest one.
Yeah, get this.
Musk also says that Twitter currently has
a strong bias to the left,
largely because it is located in San
Francisco.
I mean, where do you get this
nonsense?
How do you have
a bias to the left simply because
you kick people
off who are inciting violence, who are running
scams, who are spreading lies?
Maybe it's
because a particular
political ideology is doing that more
than another.
And not so much because the
entire platform somehow, like
all journalists are accused of doing,
is slanted to the left.
Maybe the left
is more straight ahead
than you think it is.
And these
people, entities that
are running afoul of the rules
are basically
peddling lies and things that
really we shouldn't be
spreading around. Here's where I
have a problem. If
I go on Twitter
and I say something that's false, nobody
really is going to care.
You know, a half a dozen people
maybe. I'll get called on it by a couple
of people. If somebody
with 10 million followers, if they
start spreading lies,
well then it catches. Then it becomes
dangerous, especially if it's
incitement or
spreading complete falsehoods.
You cannot simply
say everybody's got the same rights
because you don't by definition.
We don't all have the same audience.
And if you have
everything from institutions
to individual
people with massive amounts of
influence, just
basically being able to
spread whatever falsehoods they want,
unquestioned, and
they will be unquestioned because
if anyone here says
something to question them, no one's going to hear
about it. They only hear about the people
with millions and millions of followers.
If that becomes the norm
where everybody has the same rights but
very, very different amounts of power,
then it's
simply going to be one set of
lies.
Maybe some powerful people will debate
those lies, but
it's not a healthy environment.
Alex, I'm sure you want to play devil's advocate on this.
Well, I think
what you are advocating
for here in a sense is
something more akin
to algorithmic transparency
as opposed
to some kind of
rebalancing
of speech rights on a platform because
I think in essence what you're
driving at there was
about the power
or the amplification of certain
persons' speech over or opposed
to other persons.
I think as a matter of free speech though,
I think frankly both the
right and the
left have it wrong. I think on the right
maybe their pants are a little bit too tight
and on the left maybe
these long-haired hippies have to grab a scrunchie
and get the hair out of their eyes
because what we're talking about
here is
the First Amendment
as it applies to a private institution.
Twitter. Twitter is a
corporation. In the eyes of the law, Twitter
is, for better or for worse,
a person with its own
First Amendment rights
and it is a matter of the First Amendment
that they can establish their
own standards, their own community standards
and determine on the basis
of their freedom of speech
what they want to publish and what they want
to not publish, what they want to limit.
If we think about
this very fundamentally,
Twitter's free speech
rights should not be infringed
by the government, forcing these types
of community standards
upon them from on high.
As was recently just
done, I think this is probably something
we should address in overtime, but there was
a Texas law
that wasn't joined
meaning there was
an injunction preventing this law from going into
effect that I believe, I think it's the Fifth
Circuit now has reversed
this law and
allowed it now to take effect
which prohibits
social media companies and I think
anybody with over 50 million followers
any kind of web service
with over 50 million users
from discriminating
on the basis of viewpoint
what is and what is not published
which is just totally crazy.
When you think about how
much the right loves to
throw in our face
the rights of corporations to do whatever they want
the rights of corporations to not pay
taxes, the rights of corporations to do this
that and the other thing, well corporations
have First Amendment rights too
so I really
think we should
explore this new
regulation I think in more detail
on overtime
and not forget that
really at root
we have to be fair when it comes to the
First Amendment. Overtime begins at 8 o'clock
on YouTube, it's on channel
2600, you can click on the link
on the 2600.com webpage or
on our Twitter account
and we're going to be
on the air until 8 o'clock
Go ahead Aguila. That was what I was going
to say actually, thank you for bringing that up Alex
Emmanuel when you noticed I was on my
phone at the beginning of the show
I was looking at an article about this
decision, it was literally breaking news
an article was published 10 minutes before we went on
the air, so I was reading it
and that was what you caught me doing, I apologize
and I sent it to everybody
or I sent it to Rob who sent it to everybody
because he can email better than I can
but it was fascinating
and the Fifth Circuit
un-enjoined it
but there's a similar law in
Florida that is still
what's the word I'm looking for
un-enjoined
and thank you
no, it's absolutely
it's fascinating what's going to happen
and this is
I think an interesting question but the other thing
I was thinking about Elon Musk and this has less
to do with technology and certainly
less to do with law was
remember when people who were like having midlife
crises after breakups just went and bought a
fancy car and they didn't
buy a social media service
that's all I'm thinking, like could he not
do something less
publicly destructive
and publicly problematic
like, I don't know
can't he get a tattoo or something
in his midlife crisis
I just keep thinking
how is it that he's
gotta be the guy that's gonna fix it
because he has this naive viewpoint
that he's the savior, that he understands
what free speech is and the rest of us don't
we get it, we know what free speech
is, we just don't want that version
of it because it's disruptive
it's naive
it's basically saying oh everyone's opinion
is the same when it's not
it's like
discussions happen after every
news story that you read online
where people who don't know what they're
talking about are given basically
equal exposure to the person who wrote
the damn article in the first place and
researched it and did all the work
and then you have
some idiot who's writing
from their house
oh this is all
false, this is stupid
and they don't have any facts to back them up
but yet we're told that we have
to listen to them just as carefully. I don't believe that
I believe you
earn the right to
be respected as a source
and that we're not all
on the same playing field
we define what that field is. Go ahead Gail
Something that I've
been speaking about a lot in really
the last 20 years I would guess
is that really since, I would
say since the
growth of
reality TV
that
there's come this idea that if you say it
louder and more often you win the
argument. It doesn't matter if your argument is sound
it doesn't matter if your argument is true but if you say
it more loudly and
more frequently then you win
and it doesn't matter
where it's coming from it doesn't matter what
it's about and I
think about all the people who are like oh do
your research when you talk about
vaccines or whatever
I read an article on Google I
know what I'm talking about I didn't go to
medical school but I did my research
no
it's someone I knew aggregated
120 articles about
vaccines and I said
your college major was Spanish what
are you doing? And you know who did do
the research? The researchers
the scientists, the medical
people, the experts in
whatever field that you
are pretending you know something about
you know
I'm all for sharing theories
and ideas and arguing you know
but when the people who don't
know what they're talking about become the dominant voice
then you have a situation
like what we have right now in this
country where a bunch of ignorant
people are leading us down some very
dark roads. Go ahead Rob
Talking about doing the research and
not getting good info I'm looking at quotes from
the judges in this Texas case
that let this bad rule
get put back in place
and they're telling the
Net Choice and Computer and Communications
Industry Association which represents
Twitter and
Meta and Google and places like that
the judge told them your clients
are internet providers they're not
websites. At one point
Judge Andrew Oldham suggested that
if the platform
succeeded it would be the same
as allowing like Verizon to kick people off
their service because
they're getting very
confused about the whole common carrier end of this
which does not exist anymore because the
common carrier status thing was
reversed by the, that was put in
place by the Obama administration was reversed by the
Trump administration so
do with that knowledge what you will
It's not the same thing at all my god
they really don't know what they're talking about do they?
No
phone companies are common carriers you know you
could say whatever you want over a phone line
and the phone company is not allowed to
discriminate against you for saying
one thing or another over their service but
the social media companies are not
common carriers and they're being treated like they are by
these judges. Ah yes
and we're now
to look to them
please tell us how
to do culture right
and discourse we're obviously
doing it wrong so
please enlighten us. Alex in one
minute because that's all the time we have left what
can happen with this case is it's the
final word or can it be
can smart people take
Sure as Gila noted
you know there is now a circuit split on this so
I think it's very likely to go to the Supreme
Court but remember
you know in dismissing
a case as moot last year
Justice Clarence Thomas of all
people had in that
dismissal what is usually two or
three lines written a
long opinion that we discussed at length
here on off the hook
that essentially
argued that Twitter
was or should
be regulated as a common carrier because
it does have aspects of some
kind of public forum. I think that that
is an interesting
idea because we have
litigated cases where Trump has
blocked and banned people and said
that was unconstitutional from the perspective
of the user so how we
are dealing with these platforms I think remains
to be seen. We're dealing with them in a legally
inconsistent way but
unfortunately I think most of these laws
are performative in nature
that come from the state legislatures. They're designed
to galvanize the base. They're not designed
to survive strict scrutiny
by the courts. They're designed
to just get people out to vote in midterm
elections. They're going to be struck down.
Alright we're going to talk further about this
on overtime. It's
an interesting conversation.
We're not afraid of speech. Speech is great.
What I fear is the
power that certain individuals
will have to steer
the rest of us in a very
bad direction. Unimpeded.
Unchallenged. That is where the real
danger is. Join us
on overtime. Go to the link
on topof2600.com or just go
to Channel 2600 on YouTube.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com.
Please support WBAI. Give to
wbai.org or call
212-209-2950.
This weekend is
Euro 2022. Eurovision 2022.
That's where
all kinds of songs are played from
40 different nations and a winner is
chosen. There is only
one song of the 40
that is, in my opinion, rock and roll.
It comes from Bulgaria.
We're going to go out with that. Intelligent
Music Project. Good night.
I can move on from here
How simple life
goes on
Humble, that's how I feel
Sparking hot flames
on and on
Younger days run so clear
Through my mind we play
my crime
Tearing me up, spreading fear
Possession in my
own time
What lies taking away everything I've seen
Release it back inside
I don't know the thoughts
I'm missing
Just can't you even try
And in time I've always known
I'm never in a
safety zone
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war
And in time I've always known
I'm never in a
safety zone
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war
My intention
was strong and real
Only power steals
my will
The illusion of safety's surreal
Don't let it go
for the kill
What lies taking away everything I've seen
Release it back inside
I don't know the thoughts
I'm missing
Just can't you even try
And in time I've always known
I'm never in a
safety zone
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war
And in time I've always known
I'm never in a
safety zone
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war
I don't wanna
take all the pain
So I go seeking
a science or a calling
The more freedom I gain
The less real life
I'm recalling
And in time I've always known
I'm never in a
safety zone
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war
And in time I've always known
I'm never in a
safety zone
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war
I took the fight
but was I right
They were sending me to war