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And a very good evening to everybody, the program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Yep.
And out there in Skype land, we have Rafty Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
Good evening.
Well, folks, we're back.
We're back.
Unfortunately, the country didn't come back with us.
We left it behind and don't know what's going on, but we're not in the same place we were
two weeks ago when we were here last.
Yeah, I guess we sort of have to focus on that a little bit, at least, because we're
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The other thing to keep in mind is that you can give, you can give outright, you can also
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Be like Eleanor.
I like the sound of that.
That's the call to arms, 212-209-2950 or give to WBAI.org.
Yes, Kiela?
Also, don't forget, if you give at a minimum level, which I think is $25 or $35, you also
become a voting member of WBAI's audience, and that is very, very, very important, especially
given some of the things that have been going on in the broader world.
The more people who can vote in BAI elections, the better.
I'm not going to get too more specific about that, but keep that in mind, too.
It's so crucial with this model, with this community station, and a big heartfelt thanks
to everybody who was able to contribute and who's thinking about it and picking up the
phone right now and talking to the good people that are taking those pledges.
Everybody at the station, they do tell us when you're mentioning the show.
So that's passed along, and they're grateful, and we are, too, for all of your continued
support.
And yes, that number, just to be clear, is 25.
If you donate $25 or more to this station, you're a voting member of WBAI.
Okay, and occasionally something very important will come down the road that people vote on.
I think recently there was a vote basically saying, do you want your vote to count as
much?
Not in those words, but basically that was the gist of it.
Do you want your vote to count as much, or do you want maybe somebody else to take care
of it for you?
How do you think that went over?
Pacifica is no different than any other entity that has voting members.
It's constantly under threat of democracy going out the window.
That's why we have to stay alert, not only on a local basis, on a national basis, everywhere.
We have to stay alert, and we can't be dissuaded because we're going to suffer setbacks.
We sure have suffered some setbacks in the last week, but I like to think that just makes
us all the more determined to fight back and fight back hard.
We need to start doing that right now.
With that, let's start doing that right now.
Let's start talking about what happened.
Of course, Roe vs. Wade was overturned last Friday.
We weren't really surprised by this.
In fact, we even saw a draft of it a couple of months ago, and we've been warning about
it for years.
Okay, it happened.
I don't feel good about being right, but the question now is, what do we do at this point?
There was an interesting statement on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I'm just going to read a couple of paragraphs here.
Today's decision, written last Friday, obviously, deprives millions of people of a fundamental
right and also underscores the importance of fair and meaningful protections for data
privacy.
Everyone deserves to have strong controls over the collection and use of information
they necessarily leave behind as they go about their normal activities, like using
apps, search engine queries, posting on social media, texting friends, so on.
But those seeking, offering, or facilitating abortion access must now assume that any data
they provide online or offline could be sought by law enforcement.
I can't believe you have to say these words, but that's the reality right now.
Individuals should carefully review privacy settings on the services they use, turn off
location services on apps that don't need them, and use encrypted messaging services.
Companies should protect users by allowing anonymous access, stopping behavioral tracking,
strengthening data deletion policies, encrypting data in transit, enabling end-to-end message
encryption by default, preventing location tracking, and ensuring that users get notice
when their data is being sought.
And state and federal policy makers must pass meaningful privacy legislation.
All of these steps are needed to protect privacy and all are long overdue.
You can read a lot more on the EFF at their reproductive rights issue page.
Just go to EFF.org and you'll be directed over to that.
This raises so many important issues and I think we need to focus on every single one
of them and let people know the best ways that they can protect themselves.
All the training we've been doing over the decades, here's where it comes in handy.
Here's where it becomes essential because, yeah, they are watching, they are listening,
they are tracking.
It may not affect any of us in our various rooms right now, but it's affecting an awful
lot of people throughout this country and we have to help.
We have to fight back.
We have to figure out ways to use technology to basically defeat the Taliban that is now
running this country.
And yeah, it is the Taliban.
There is no difference as far as I'm concerned and we should fight them with as much vigor
as we would fight in someone else's country.
This is happening right here in our country.
Rights are being taken away.
Never happened before.
This has never happened before where constitutional rights have been taken away through a ruling
by the Supreme Court.
And I'd like to get into some of the particulars of the Supreme Court, maybe with Alex in a
little bit.
But you folks have any ideas on technology?
When I was reading about the basically encrypted messaging services, I'm thinking that's something
that we can help with.
I use Signal.
I use Signal on my phone and through computer communications.
It can be a real pain in the ass sometimes with notifications don't always go through
and sometimes messages get lost if people decide not to use Signal anymore.
But I do know that the messages are being encrypted.
So there's that at least.
But if there are better options, let's hear them as well or let's improve the ones that
we are using.
Yes, Alex.
You know, with respect to that specific point about Signal, I think it bears mentioning
that Signal when used on a mobile phone and especially an iPhone is going to be pretty
damn secure, especially with iPhones.
They don't have nearly as many vulnerabilities as, let's say, an Android device where you
have greater control over the device.
If you take Signal and you install it on your desktop, you've now installed this on an endpoint
that is far less secure than a mobile phone.
And so using Signal on some kind of desktop machine could really sacrifice a lot of your
privacy, in particular because it may be possible to reconstruct some additional bits
of data from your conversations, even if they're deleted, if they had persisted at one point
on a Signal desktop machine.
And a lot of this, I've done a bunch of forensic analyses with respect to Signal and the ability
to recover certain types of data.
And sometimes it may depend on the version of Signal that you're running on the desktop,
when it was last updated, when you were last rebooted, as well as if you had deleted Signal
from your machine, if you'd gone through the proper deletion procedure for Signal.
So all of these things can really have some massive impact on whether or not you're...
We're freezing occasionally, Alex.
Do you want to just repeat that last sentence?
Certainly.
I think, you know, all of these variances may have a massive impact on the privacy
of your communications.
But I think, you know, I want to go a little bit further here and more fundamental with respect
to what the EFF said, that all of this information about you, where you go,
your communications with whom you may be messaging,
all of this information may now be much more accessible to law enforcement than it was before.
And the reason behind that is because now that Roe v. Wade is overturned,
and abortion may be illegal in certain states, and facilitating abortion may be illegal
in certain states, those are now crimes.
It may be a crime to have an abortion, it may be a crime to help somebody get an abortion,
or to take somebody over, even near an abortion clinic.
So all of this, because they are crimes, they can be investigated by law enforcement.
Things that law enforcement can investigate, well, if there's probable cause,
then that means that they may be able to have access to your devices.
They may be able to have access to your homes.
They may be able to obtain access to your social media accounts, or your email accounts,
your geolocation information.
All of this data, all of a sudden, because now we're talking about potentially criminal activity,
can be accessed by the government on the basis of probable cause.
That's a really scary situation, which makes the security of those communications
much, much more important.
Can I just, I'll get you in a second, Rob, but I just, you know,
in my somewhat mischievous way, thinking of ways to screw these people up.
If you say you're pregnant, do they take you at your word?
If you spread the word that you're pregnant, and then suddenly you're not pregnant,
what if everybody did that?
What if millions of people who weren't actually pregnant started lying about it?
Would they be charged with crimes?
Would it confuse the system?
Would it slow down the system?
You know, we need to be creative.
This is, you know, maybe not the best way, but it's one way.
And I'm trying to think of different ways, at least once every couple of minutes.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think distorting the signal-to-noise ratio about who is, in fact,
violating the law and who isn't, making it almost impossible to mine that type of data
would probably be valuable in preventing the state from figuring out who, in fact, was
having an abortion and who wasn't.
But I think if you combine that with, let's say, Emanuel, with other data points, right?
Someone could say that they're pregnant and then says that they're not pregnant.
Those are two data points, but did that person ever venture near an abortion clinic?
Did they go near a pharmacy, perhaps, to get some kind of now illegal abortion pill?
You know, there's other data points, I guess, that you could match up with this, but it
would require, I think, a greater amount of effort on the part of the state to investigate.
So these types of things, I think, do have some validity.
Well, coordinated attacks, I think, is what we have to start thinking about.
Ways to really screw them up.
And as hackers, I think that that's something that sort of comes naturally.
Yes, go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I wanted to ask Alex, like this whole thing, I mean, Roe v. Wade was overturned
and that seemed to be rooted in sort of a reinterpretation of fundamental rights to
privacy that we thought we had and it turns out don't.
How does that relate to not only issues around abortion now and personal health, but also
other privacy type things that we can no longer take for granted?
Yeah, well, Rob, it's terrifying because, you know, let's just start at the beginning
here, right?
I mean, you think about the text of the Constitution, the text of the Constitution, and in particular,
we always think about the Fourth Amendment when we think about privacy.
Well, nowhere in the Constitution is the word privacy.
It just doesn't exist.
It wasn't a concept that was thought about by the founding fathers back in the 18th century.
Yeah, neither were bullets.
Neither were modern armaments.
Those weren't there either.
Yeah, bullets, AR-15s, a lot of things that we think are fundamental to our rights, we're
just missing an asset from the Constitution.
But with any explicit mention of privacy, yet the courts over time have derived this
right to privacy through a long line of decisions that goes back to like the 1890s.
There was a case, and I believe this was actually even cited in Roe v. Wade, I think the case
was Union Pacific Railroad versus Oxford, something like that.
That was a case where it was found that there was this personal zone of privacy that the
court did not have authorization to violate by ordering some kind of surgical examination
of a plaintiff.
That was what was at issue there.
So going back even to the late 19th century, the Supreme Court was finding that there was
this zone of personal privacy that even though it wasn't referenced in the Constitution,
it existed.
And then the courts over time, you go back to the late 60s and you find that they looked
at cases like Stanley v. Georgia and they found that there's privacy rights derived
even from the First Amendment, and then obviously the Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment,
the right against self-incrimination.
You can't compel somebody to say something that would incriminate them.
That's part of privacy.
And then you even have something from Griswold v. Connecticut, this concept that in the penumbras
and emanations of the Bill of Rights or the shadows of the Bill of Rights can be derived
this additional right of privacy.
The 14th Amendment in its concept of guaranteeing liberty to all people also guaranteed privacy.
But then there's a really long way of getting right back to your question here, Rob, which
is that derived from this concept of personal privacy are a whole bunch of other issues.
And all of these over time, the court had found that these are privacy rights that were
also fundamental to what it called the concept of ordered liberty.
And a lot of these rights were things like marriage, things like gay marriage, the right
to marry interracially, the right to marry with somebody of the same sex, procreation
obviously, that's what's at issue here, the ability to obtain contraception, how to raise
your family, how to educate your children.
All of these are fundamental rights that are premised on the concept of privacy.
And so if we start pulling out Roe versus Wade from this Jenga-like structure that houses
our privacy rights, it's going to be downright hazardous to our privacy rights.
Wow.
You know, as you were speaking, I was looking over this story that was on Bloomberg, the
story of a teenager in Florida who suspected she was pregnant and she went to a clinic.
And it turns out the clinic offered a free pregnancy test.
That's what drew her down there.
And she realized that it was actually an anti-abortion center that she had come to.
And as she started to realize this, she went into a panic and said to a receptionist, this
information isn't going to go anywhere, right?
This information isn't going to be shared.
And she was told, honey, that's what happens when you have sex.
That's what she was told.
And that's what we're talking about here, where people's privacy is just wantonly invaded,
abused.
Now, she was able to get an abortion from a different provider, but she also ended up
in a database.
And this anti-abortion center continued to call her every few weeks to ask for an update
on the baby and offer parenting classes.
Now, were that to happen now in certain states, she could be charged with a crime.
She could be pursued as if she were a criminal.
And these centers are popping up all over the place.
They've been using apps to get to teenagers and women in their early 20s.
They offer free pregnancy tests.
And they basically try to exist alongside legitimate reproductive health providers.
That's how they reach their audience.
Now, Google is now requiring providers to note whether businesses are accredited to
perform abortions or not.
But the deceptive centers still remain en masse in states where women may no longer
be able to find legitimate treatment.
Choose Life Marketing is a digital marketing company that works with anti-abortion clinics
in the U.S. and Ireland.
They said in training material posted to its website that Snapchat is a great place to
advertise to the younger generation.
It gives tips on how to include imagery with young people wearing baggy clothing or hairstyles
that reflect Gen Z.
Like Facebook and Instagram, it would accelerate the word of mouth that has brought clients
through your doors for many years.
That's according to the Choose Life Marketing site.
Snapchat advertisements were effective at getting clients to directly respond to the
ad and call pregnancy centers for appointments.
They've gotten more savvy about tracking their visitors and collecting information
that isn't protected by medical privacy laws.
Tara Murtha is communications director at Women's Law Project.
She said that if women in states where abortions are restricted visit a center and then fail
to have a baby, there's a record that could be passed into the hands of overzealous prosecutors.
So, you know, why doesn't everybody just visit these places?
Why don't millions of people go visit these places and have their names taken down and
then not have a baby?
Millions and millions of people.
That's only one.
That's only one possible thing to do.
We have to think of others.
Rob Gila, I know you have to take off now.
You'll be back for overtime later?
We will.
Okay.
We'll see you at 8 o'clock or so.
Thanks for your participation and we will talk to you again.
See you soon.
Now, Alex, you know, I said I want to talk about the Supreme Court.
I've got a problem with the Supreme Court, as you must know.
I think we all do at this stage.
Do you think they're still legitimate?
Do you think they're still a legitimate form of government?
I ask this because, you know, I was taught in school that there are three branches of
government, executive, legislative, judicial, right?
And they're all equal.
They're all independent.
But then I realized this judicial branch, it's picked by the president.
It's voted on by the Senate.
And in both cases, those bodies don't reflect the popular vote.
They're controlled.
That branch is controlled by another branch.
How is it independent?
Well, it's...
I'm not putting this on you, Alex, but, you know, these are serious thoughts I've been
having over the past couple of weeks, and it just seems like they've lost the legitimacy
completely.
Yeah, that's what I want to address first, and then we can go back to this independence
issue.
I think just in terms of the legitimacy of the court, there is this principle that comes
up a lot during confirmation hearings, and, you know, you learn about this in law school.
It's one of these fancy Latin words, stare decisis.
Stare decisis, literally, the verb stare means to stand, decisis is decision, so it literally
translates to something like, you know, decision to stand.
And that's the respect of precedent that had come before, and every Supreme Court justice
nominee before Senate goes out there and claims that, before the Senate, under oath, claims
that they respect the principle of stare decisis, which means that they will respect, you know,
longstanding principles and good cases and precedents of the court, and the most important
of which was Roe v. Wade.
And so there are a lot of arguments that these justices do not necessarily respect stare
decisis or the principle and lied under oath when they said that they would respect Roe,
but it'd be very difficult to hold them accountable to that kind of statement because every case
turns on individual facts.
Every case is a little bit different legally and factually, and so it would be tough to,
I think, hold a justice's feet to the fire for something that they said.
Well, didn't they say, very specifically, that they would respect Roe v. Wade as president?
I mean, nothing has really changed with Roe v. Wade.
They lied under oath in front of the entire world.
I don't understand why we can't hold them to that.
Well, I think it would be, look, we all know, I think, that they were not being entirely
forthcoming with respect to their actual views on Roe v. Wade.
That's one thing.
It's another thing to actually try somebody and find them on the basis of the evidence
that would be available for perjury because even though they overturned Roe v. Wade, it's
on the basis of this new case that may have brought some additional legal arguments to
light.
There's a lot of ways that you could wiggle out of that.
But I want to go back to, I think, the more important issue here, though, which is the
legitimacy of the court.
And the legitimacy of the court, I think, has tremendously damaged right now.
It really, really is.
And this, I think, leads to your other point, Emanuel, which is about how or why is the
Supreme Court independent of the other two branches?
And if these justices are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate by a
majority, how are they independent?
Well, they're independent precisely because our framers gave them life tenure and that
life tenure is supposed to insulate the nine justices of the Supreme Court from the vicissitudes
or the changes of political opinion.
They are supposed to be able to take the long view on what's right for the country, what's
right for the Constitution.
And so by reneging on that promise and essentially that bargain that you get a life
position if you are going to ignore the politics of the day and take the long view, that's
how this decision has destroyed the legitimacy of the court and not just undermine the
concept of stare decisis, but the very reason why the court exists and why justices have
life tenure, I think, is called into question by this decision.
Well, I mean, yeah, three of them were appointed in the last four years, so I don't
think they have much of a long view.
Maybe in 50 years we can ask them, but now they seem to be doing the bidding of the
person who put them there.
And instead of calling it the Supreme Court, it should be called Trump's court because
that's really what it is.
Now, this is all because of him.
Yeah, it is, and it just goes to show, you know, the power and the long tail that these
Supreme Court appointments can have.
You look at somebody like Clarence Thomas and who's been on the court for an
extraordinarily long time now and, you know, and has plans to do further damage.
I believe he was the only justice.
That guy is a menace.
I mean, he should be physically removed in my view because I think he's lost his mind.
He's got a psychopath wife who participated in January 6th.
How are these things even remotely considered?
OK, it's it's you know, it's like you want to draw a parallel to Ukraine with Russia
moving in. This is an invasion of a different sort.
This is the coup continuing.
All right. Yeah, the January 6 coup failed, but the Supreme Court coup succeeded.
That's an occupying army that we have sitting in that building right now.
I know there are there are good people on the court.
I mean, Roe versus Wade fell five to four.
One justice did this.
And, you know, I just think maybe we've outgrown these old guys telling us what's
right and what's not, because clearly they don't know what's right and what's not.
They don't even understand the Second Amendment.
They you know, they're putting the interpretation that was only introduced after
Reagan and ignoring everything that came before that when we sort of got it.
And there weren't mass shootings all the time.
You know, and now we live in this crazy world where basically anything goes and the
right wing minority gets anything they want.
Well, I think that, you know, it goes back to the life tenure issue, which is I think
that this concept of the Supreme Court certainly has, I think, great significance to
our republic. I think I think it's important to have, you know, not just an executive
and legislative body, but, you know, the judicial branch that can strike down things
that are unconscionable. I mean, just living solely by positive law, the law that is
created by legislatures is is frankly, you know, really what a lot of European economy of
European countries do.
They they don't have the concept that we do or do or to the extent that we do of the
common law, which is judge made law or having the law evolve by precedents being set and
opinions being written over the ages by judges.
But I think fundamentally this concept of the court with life tenure for justices that only
works if the justices themselves live up to the bargain there right now, they're getting
the benefit of the bargain without any of the burden.
Namely, they're getting a position for life that gives them tremendous power and
influence over the course of this country without.
What we expect from them, which is to take the long view, to respect precedent and to not
be subject to the political whims of any particular election cycle.
See, here's the thing. I don't see how you can get that if the choice is being made by
people who don't have that sense, the people who are as involved in present day politics
as you can possibly be, namely the president and senators.
Those are probably the worst people to be picking a judge.
Why not have the judge or the justices picked by fellow judges in some other coordinated
manner? That way, at least you have the hope that this isn't a political thing.
It's a judicial thing.
I mean, you have federal judges everywhere.
You have all kinds of other judges.
I don't know. It's kind of like electing a pope.
They could all get together and say, this is what we've come up with, then hand it over to
the Senate, see what they say about that.
But it's much less political.
And you might actually get somebody who is interested in justice, not politics.
Look, you make an interesting point.
I don't entirely agree with it, though, because if you look at history here, there have been
times when you can predict how a judge is going to rule on the basis of what president
appointed that particular judge.
But on the other hand, you know, there are plenty of times where you would expect a judge
to rule one way.
But because of the life tenure and the fact that the judge is not beholden to any political
party has ruled entirely against.
We're not living in those times, Alex.
Those times are gone.
That's right. I mean, that's the difference now.
I mean, we you can point back to history and show how many judges have defined the
political party by which they were appointed.
But now times certainly are are different.
And I don't know exactly what it is that's different about them.
I do think a lot of this has to deal with the feeling of the zeitgeist or the spirit
of the people that we have that emanates from social media these days.
And it is social media because that's the place you go to, to hear people say what you
believe and to have emphasized over and over and over again.
There was a really good documentary on Vice this weekend about people in Russia and how
they continue to follow Vladimir Putin, despite people dying, all the soldiers that are
dying, despite all the evidence that Russia is doing horrible things, despite all the
evidence that Ukraine is not a Nazi state, it doesn't matter as long as they keep
hearing it from their trusted sources.
And in their particular case, it's their it's their leader, but it's also their
versions of social media.
The facts don't matter.
You can you can show them all kinds of evidence and they'll say, well, that's fake or
that was that's not real.
That means something else very, very similar to what we have experienced in this
country when trying to convince people about efficacy of vaccines or the fact that
elections weren't stolen or any number of other things, because they can always go
back to their social media outlets and say, see, all these people agree with me.
Therefore, you're wrong.
You're lying. And despite the fact that gravity has been proven, I'm going to say
that it's wrong. You know, social media is really at the root of a lot of this, but you
don't need social media for people to live in mass hypnosis.
It just helps an awful lot.
Yeah, I agree.
I think it's hard to exactly pinpoint, you know, about what it is in social media that
that just infects every single aspect of political life and discourse these days.
But, you know, it certainly allows people to be whipped up into a frenzy, you know, just
like we were when the opinion was leaked.
And I think we should go back to discuss that for a moment or two as well, because if you
think back to when was it?
Was it two months ago?
I think it was just about two months ago when when the opinion was leaked, supposedly
leaked. I think it was obviously it was it was deliberately put out there.
And looking back at it now, I would not be surprised if if more of the if it was an
official leak, if this was something that was actually sanctioned by the court, because if
you think about what had happened last week, which this was just this massive fundamental
constitutional right being taken away from women, women being now forced to to carry
potentially to term the fetus of a rapist, something that's the product of incest,
dangerous types of situations that may affect the health and welfare of the mother, all of
these these things, it's frankly, it's just it's intolerable in so many ways.
And because we have had this this time period to adjust ourselves, our mentality to to
the reality of the situation that we are in right now, I think we what had happened here
is we got ourselves worked up into a frenzy two months ago.
There were protests back then.
We got worked up about it, but we knew it was happening.
It wasn't as if this fundamental right was just yanked out from under us without any
notice, because I think if it was yanked out from under us without any notice last week,
I think there would have been much more widespread protest.
I think that the protests would have been violent.
I think they would have erupted in counter protests.
I think it would have erupted in potentially a massive amount of people being injured and
potentially buildings being burned.
So I'm curious to what you guys think.
Wait, Kyle, what about you?
What about a backlash?
In what sense?
Something that isn't as immediate as two months ago.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think on both faith in the court and this issue.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, look, I think that the release of this disarmed us in a sense because it allowed
us to get the rage out over a certain period of time.
Now, when it hit us, we're not all that shocked by it.
And I think that is dangerous, too.
I'm reminded of the words of the great kind of poet, union organizer, folk singer, Utah
Phillips, who would often talk about fundamental rights and rights to organize and things
like that. And he said, you know, you can tell how fundamental a right is.
I'll butcher his words a little bit by having the right existing under it.
And then you wait for somebody to try to take it away from you.
And the degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
I think that's just such an important concept to think about here, because I don't think
that the degree to which we have been resisting has equaled the degree to which we were
free over the last 50 years.
Well, I think, you know, we've been somewhat culled into believing that our voices don't
matter, that our actions don't matter, that, you know, it's just going to happen anyway.
What's the point? That's, you know, when I encourage people to get onto the streets when
this was initially leaked a couple of months ago, got condemned from the left and the right
left saying, we tried that didn't work.
Right. Saying you're wasting your time.
You can't stop this.
You know, this is unhealthy because, believe me, when you get out there and when you make
yourself known and when you don't relent, things do change.
That's how the Vietnam War was stopped.
Let's not forget that.
And throughout the planet, that's how regimes topple.
That's how policies change.
And while voting is super important and we all better turn out and vote, as you can see,
that is something that is being attacked.
That's something that could very well be manipulated.
And it's also something that a lot of us lose faith in and don't show up for.
So it's important while you're feeling the anger to express that anger and, you know,
don't hold back.
It's super important to, you know, to express your feelings when you're feeling them.
You know, we had a situation out here on Long Island last week where a library, Smithtown
Public Library, announced that they were removing all Pride posters and books from the
children's section of their library, just like that.
This was the result of a bunch of right wing people being elected to the board in the wake
of the critical race theory hysteria that swept the nation last November.
A lot of these ugly people got put into power.
And this is one of the things that they did, taking away gay rights celebrations,
rainbows, anything relating to Pride, not appropriate for children.
The reaction that got inside of a few hours was simply phenomenal.
It got to the governor.
It got around the world.
And inside of a day, they were announcing an emergency meeting, a meeting that actually
took place on Zoom and very quickly hit the 1000 user maximum.
They reversed that policy.
They reversed that policy in a hurry because they realized the fury they had unleashed.
And, you know, I'm all for being civil.
I'm all for being civilized.
But you also have to show your fury and you have to make people who are changing your
life afraid sometimes if they're overstepping.
All right. If people's lives are being destroyed because of the actions of a few
people, those people need to feel as if their lives might be destroyed, too, because of
what they have done.
It's called consequences and no judge is above that.
So I just hope that we don't feel that our voices don't matter.
They do. Let's not second guess each other.
Let's figure out how to fight this, how to win.
You know, there's all kinds of legal ways, which I'm sure you know about, Alex.
It can be codified. Of course, to do that, you need stronger Democratic support
federally. You can also codify it state by state.
Of course, that's going to result in a whole patchwork of rules and regulations.
But the Supreme Court is not the final word, despite what people may think.
There are certainly ways to get around bad decisions.
And another way I think that we should mention here, too, is that a lot of this is
because of the way in which Roe v.
Wade was decided.
It's local, right?
So the decision about whether to make abortion legal or illegal goes back to the
states. And if you're in a state that is has elected to make abortion illegal, the
buck doesn't necessarily stop there, right?
Because the law is one thing, but then the enforcement of the law is another thing
entirely. And what are the practicalities of that enforcement?
As you mentioned earlier, Emmanuel, you may be able to make it difficult to enforce the
law by distorting the signal to noise ratio of the data that, let's say, you know,
that law enforcement would use.
But another way, and this is a way that I think it really shows that this is now a local
issue, is to perhaps contact your local district attorney, because there have been
numerous district attorneys in states where abortion will be legal.
I'm sorry, it's states in which abortion will be illegal.
And these district attorneys have vowed not to prosecute abortion cases.
And and that's that's using their discretion in a really powerful way to affect justice.
It doesn't change the law, doesn't change Roe v.
Wade, but it's a local decision to not enforce an unjust law.
That's really powerful.
Meanwhile, I'm hearing in Texas they're going to be enforcing a 50 year old anti-sodomy
law, a law that hasn't been in existence in 50 years.
So for every every good move, there are more bad moves, I think.
And we can't expect this to simply work itself out.
That's definitely not going to happen.
Here's a story about a hacking group targeting, this is from The Washington Times, so take
it with a grain of salt, a hacking group targeting pro-life supporters in states with
anti-abortion laws in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision.
Siege Sec claimed it victimized Arkansas and Kentucky and took government employees
personally identifiable information.
The attacks will continue in all caps.
Our main targets are any pro-life entities, including government servers of the states
with anti-abortion laws.
Keep protesting. Keep yourself safe.
F the government.
The group said it is leaking files totaling about seven to eight gigabytes from
government servers belonging to Arkansas and Kentucky that contain employees'
information. Screenshots were published containing personnel info, property data and
a link to a zip file containing the alleged government data.
Like many, we are also pro-choice.
One shouldn't be denied access to abortion, the group said on Telegram.
As added pressure to the U.S.
government, we have leaked many internal documents and files retrieved from
Kentucky's and Arkansas's government server.
OK, you know, I understand the sentiment.
It's kind of ignorant, though, because the U.S.
government is not. And I suppose the judicial judicial branch of the U.S.
government technically is at fault here.
But certainly the real problems will be in the states.
And, yeah, you know, there will be attacks.
There will be ways of fighting back.
There will be ways of showing your displeasure.
And it's not going to be pretty and it's not going to be polite.
And that's how it works.
That's how. So, you know, be prepared for that.
Be prepared for all sorts of nasty attacks.
But what I want to also see is some thoughtful construction.
Like, for instance, a well thought out series of Web pages or onion pages where
people can simply input their information, say you're in Louisiana or
something, and it goes through a series of questions.
How how far along are you?
Where is your location?
What is your income, et cetera, et cetera?
And then just like, you know, you're booking a flight or something, you get
options. You get options that are made as easy as possible and as anonymous as
possible. This is something the tech community can put together and do it in a
way where people's privacy is protected, where people aren't victimized further.
We are out of time, but we're going to be back on overtime at the top of the hour,
eight o'clock. Visit our YouTube page, which is Channel 2600.
And you can also go to the link, which is on top of the 2600 dot com Web page.
Write to us at 2600 dot com.
We'll see you back on WBI in two weeks.
Good night.
Oh, got to do now.
Spread yourself.
Whatever you do.
Do it.
Whatever you do, do it.
Good.
It's not what you look like when you do it, what you do it is what you do it, when
you do it, what you look like you do it.
Express yourself.
Spread yourself.
You're doing it on the moon.
In the jungle, too.
Oh, the?
Rule so let the heart do the.
Oh, oh.
Oh, oh.
Some people have everything that other people don't
But everything don't mean a thing if it ain't the thing you want
Express yourself, express yourself
Oh do it, oh do it
Do it to it, go on and do it
Y'all do it, get it
Express yourself, express yourself
Do do do do do do do
Do do do do
Do do do do do do do
Oh
This is Ralph Poynter.
Join me and others every Wednesday 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time on WBAI 99.5 on your radio.