[00:00.000 --> 00:03.920] [______WBAI]: ...approximately 100 victims, 90 victims.
[00:04.180 --> 00:09.700] [______WBAI]: Domestic violence homicides in New York City increased by 29% between 2021 and 2022.
[00:09.840 --> 00:15.080] [______WBAI]: The increase was 57% in the Bronx and 225% in Brooklyn.
[00:15.320 --> 00:17.120] [______WBAI]: Paul DiRienzo, New York.
[00:17.480 --> 00:19.040] [______WBAI]: It is 7pm.
[00:19.040 --> 00:21.200] [______WBAI]: Stay tuned for Off The Hook.
[00:21.200 --> 00:28.900] [______WBAI]: Coming up on WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
[00:28.900 --> 00:29.880] [______WBAI]: Stay tuned.
[01:03.960 --> 01:08.020] [ROBVINCENT]: And the time is just about 7.01pm.
[01:08.340 --> 01:14.520] [ROBVINCENT]: You are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM here in New York.
[01:14.520 --> 01:19.120] [ROBVINCENT]: And it is time for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[01:37.980 --> 01:39.860] [BIG_AUD_DY]: We couldn't get much worse.
[01:40.580 --> 01:42.420] [BIG_AUD_DY]: But if they could, they would.
[01:42.700 --> 01:45.320] [BIG_AUD_DY]: Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst.
[01:46.000 --> 01:47.840] [BIG_AUD_DY]: I hope that's understood.
[01:48.060 --> 01:48.840] [BIG_AUD_DY]: Bum diddly bum!
[01:58.130 --> 02:00.770] [AIJOEBIDEN]: And this shrinkflation has gotten out of hand.
[02:00.770 --> 02:04.010] [AIJOEBIDEN]: When you have a smaller ring-ding than your parents grew up with.
[02:04.250 --> 02:05.570] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Folks are gonna be mad.
[02:05.890 --> 02:06.810] [AIJOEBIDEN]: It makes sense.
[02:07.130 --> 02:10.630] [AIJOEBIDEN]: I remember my father coming home from work with a bag of pretzels.
[02:11.030 --> 02:13.190] [AIJOEBIDEN]: And I used to count them every time.
[02:13.570 --> 02:16.590] [AIJOEBIDEN]: And there were always 151 pretzels in that bag.
[02:16.850 --> 02:20.170] [AIJOEBIDEN]: When I counted yesterday, it was down to 129.
[02:20.670 --> 02:21.550] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Give me a break.
[02:21.810 --> 02:22.330] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Come on.
[02:22.330 --> 02:25.310] [AIJOEBIDEN]: The big pretzel companies need to know we're paying attention.
[02:25.630 --> 02:26.930] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Look, here's the deal.
[02:27.190 --> 02:28.990] [AIJOEBIDEN]: These are the issues voters care about.
[02:29.290 --> 02:33.790] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Let me tell you a story about these people over in New York who run the Hope Conference every two years.
[02:33.990 --> 02:39.990] [AIJOEBIDEN]: They get hackers from all over the world to come to St. John's University and share their knowledge about technology.
[02:41.090 --> 02:43.650] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Computers, telephones, wares, and zero days.
[02:43.930 --> 02:45.890] [AIJOEBIDEN]: And that is what this country is all about.
[02:46.070 --> 02:47.290] [AIJOEBIDEN]: The sharing of knowledge.
[02:47.690 --> 02:52.350] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Developing high-tech to make something that my father would have called Totally awesome, dude.
[02:52.870 --> 02:54.730] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Listen, I'm not being facetious.
[02:55.130 --> 02:58.030] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Hackers play such an essential role in keeping this nation going.
[02:58.330 --> 02:59.250] [AIJOEBIDEN]: They work hard.
[02:59.390 --> 03:00.490] [AIJOEBIDEN]: They use their brains.
[03:01.050 --> 03:02.710] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Occasionally, they step out of line.
[03:02.890 --> 03:03.910] [AIJOEBIDEN]: But I'll tell you what.
[03:04.050 --> 03:05.350] [AIJOEBIDEN]: That is what America is.
[03:05.630 --> 03:06.710] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Testing the limits.
[03:07.150 --> 03:07.890] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Building it better.
[03:08.090 --> 03:10.110] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Being the first to figure something out.
[03:10.310 --> 03:12.250] [AIJOEBIDEN]: And hacking teleprompter screens.
[03:12.570 --> 03:13.290] [AIJOEBIDEN]: Wait a minute.
[03:13.550 --> 03:13.890] [AIJOEBIDEN]: What?
[03:16.250 --> 03:17.650] [ROBVINCENT]: Thank you very much.
[03:18.370 --> 03:20.870] [ROBVINCENT]: Fake AI-generated Joe Biden.
[03:22.090 --> 03:24.550] [ROBVINCENT]: The program is, off the hook, Rob T. Firefly here with you.
[03:26.610 --> 03:29.830] [ROBVINCENT]: And I am joined out in Skyp-eland by Gila.
[03:33.560 --> 03:34.040] [ROBVINCENT]: Gila?
[03:34.100 --> 03:35.020] [GILADRAZEN]: Sorry, let me try that again.
[03:35.160 --> 03:35.540] [GILADRAZEN]: Good evening.
[03:35.920 --> 03:36.460] [ROBVINCENT]: Good evening.
[03:37.040 --> 03:38.140] [ROBVINCENT]: Alex is with us.
[03:39.200 --> 03:39.800] [ALEXURBELS]: I am indeed.
[03:40.000 --> 03:41.020] [ALEXURBELS]: Good evening, everybody.
[03:41.740 --> 03:42.780] [ROBVINCENT]: Good to see you both.
[03:42.860 --> 03:43.660] [ROBVINCENT]: Good to hear from you both.
[03:43.840 --> 03:46.980] [ROBVINCENT]: And we are joined today by a very special guest.
[03:47.840 --> 03:53.940] [ROBVINCENT]: Listeners of this program will know them as one of the founders of Distributed Denial of Secrets.
[03:54.080 --> 03:55.060] [ROBVINCENT]: Emma Best is with us.
[03:57.460 --> 03:57.940] [EMMA__BEST]: Hi.
[03:58.180 --> 03:58.980] [EMMA__BEST]: Thank you for having me.
[03:59.460 --> 04:00.880] [ROBVINCENT]: Thank you so much for joining us.
[04:02.200 --> 04:03.380] [ROBVINCENT]: Let's get right into it.
[04:03.780 --> 04:08.080] [ROBVINCENT]: Kyle and Emmanuel are out on assignment doing various things that they do.
[04:08.180 --> 04:10.820] [ROBVINCENT]: And we have a lot to talk about.
[04:11.880 --> 04:15.120] [ROBVINCENT]: Emma, I'm going to get into why you're with us momentarily.
[04:15.240 --> 04:20.120] [ROBVINCENT]: But there are a couple of stories in the news that I would like to just touch on.
[04:21.620 --> 04:23.720] [ROBVINCENT]: Oregon has a reason to celebrate.
[04:23.740 --> 04:29.360] [ROBVINCENT]: The governor has just signed the nation's first right-to-repair bill that bans parts pairing.
[04:29.880 --> 04:31.720] [ROBVINCENT]: A story from Ars Technica.
[04:31.880 --> 04:35.900] [ROBVINCENT]: Starting in 2025, devices can't block repair parts with software pairing checks.
[04:36.620 --> 04:50.260] [ROBVINCENT]: This was a particularly devious sort of thing where you could not just replace a part in something because the something, say for example an iPhone, would check to see if that part is allowed to be installed in the phone.
[04:50.560 --> 04:51.880] [ROBVINCENT]: See if it's an approved thing.
[04:52.020 --> 04:55.260] [ROBVINCENT]: See if it should be replaceable by the user.
[04:55.480 --> 04:57.760] [ROBVINCENT]: And that's dirty pool in Oregon now.
[04:58.720 --> 05:07.300] [ROBVINCENT]: Oregon's bill prevents companies from implementing schemes that require parts to be verified through encrypted software checks before they will function, known as parts pairing or serialization.
[05:07.840 --> 05:13.220] [ROBVINCENT]: Oregon's bill, SB 1596, is the first in the nation to target that practice.
[05:13.900 --> 05:20.920] [ROBVINCENT]: Oregon State Senator Janine Solomon and Representative Courtney Niren sponsored and pushed the bill in the State Senate and legislature.
[05:21.480 --> 05:32.100] [ROBVINCENT]: This is pretty exciting stuff for lots of folks in the hacker community who we have long been talking about right to repair and why it's important on this here program.
[05:32.140 --> 05:34.520] [ROBVINCENT]: And I think we're rather excited about this.
[05:35.100 --> 05:36.220] [ROBVINCENT]: What are your thoughts, Gila?
[05:37.220 --> 05:43.180] [GILADRAZEN]: So, I'm making a face, which obviously Radio Land can't see, but my co-hosts can.
[05:43.540 --> 05:51.480] [GILADRAZEN]: And, I mean, it's great conceptually, but with all the carve-outs behind it, I don't know.
[05:51.480 --> 05:53.980] [GILADRAZEN]: Oh, this feels like a Swiss cheese bill.
[05:54.260 --> 05:56.840] [GILADRAZEN]: And I don't know how helpful it's going.
[05:56.940 --> 06:00.360] [GILADRAZEN]: I'm skeptical because I'm looking further in the article.
[06:00.820 --> 06:10.580] [GILADRAZEN]: There are carve-outs for certain kinds of electronics and devices, including video game consoles, medical devices, HVAC systems, motor vehicles, and, as with other states, electric toothbrushes.
[06:12.880 --> 06:17.500] [GILADRAZEN]: So, you know, there are things that will...
[06:17.500 --> 06:21.940] [GILADRAZEN]: The right to repair... the fact that the right to repair bill passed at all is super exciting.
[06:23.580 --> 06:27.860] [GILADRAZEN]: But I'm just a little apprehensive about the Swiss cheesiness of this particular bill.
[06:29.280 --> 06:29.920] [ROBVINCENT]: This is true.
[06:30.060 --> 06:30.260] [ROBVINCENT]: Alex?
[06:30.940 --> 06:42.380] [ALEXURBELS]: That was going to be my question about this, too, but I think you've answered, Gila, in that it sounded like, based on what Rob had read, that this Oregon bill, and if I understand this correctly, Rob, it's a bill.
[06:42.600 --> 06:44.280] [ALEXURBELS]: It's not necessarily a law yet?
[06:44.780 --> 06:45.600] [ALEXURBELS]: Or is it a law?
[06:45.700 --> 06:46.580] [ROBVINCENT]: The governor has signed it.
[06:46.780 --> 06:47.660] [ALEXURBELS]: He did sign it.
[06:47.740 --> 06:47.980] [ROBVINCENT]: Okay.
[06:48.180 --> 06:48.420] [ALEXURBELS]: Yeah.
[06:49.240 --> 06:49.960] [ALEXURBELS]: Okay, gotcha.
[06:49.980 --> 06:53.460] [ALEXURBELS]: We don't need to go into how a bill becomes a law on this program, right?
[06:53.540 --> 06:56.340] [ALEXURBELS]: I think there's other scientific-minded programs on that.
[06:57.080 --> 07:12.120] [ALEXURBELS]: I thought, based on what you read, that this would apply to a Tesla and would prevent car manufacturers from disabling certain things or requiring some kind of verification before certain components or features would work.
[07:12.240 --> 07:14.120] [ALEXURBELS]: But it sounds like that's completely carved out.
[07:14.260 --> 07:15.100] [ALEXURBELS]: That's really unfortunate.
[07:16.280 --> 07:16.800] [ROBVINCENT]: Wow.
[07:17.320 --> 07:20.380] [ROBVINCENT]: I'm less excited about this now than I was at the top of this show.
[07:20.520 --> 07:25.700] [ROBVINCENT]: Thank you, my esteemed colleagues, for revealing the Swiss cheesiness going on.
[07:26.760 --> 07:30.840] [ALEXURBELS]: Well, that being said, though, I mean, sometimes these things have to be good starts, right?
[07:30.960 --> 07:40.260] [ALEXURBELS]: And Oregon is certainly, I think, a state that leads the country in its liberality in lots of ways, right?
[07:40.320 --> 07:43.120] [ALEXURBELS]: I mean, Oregon is kind of very forward-looking.
[07:43.620 --> 07:53.820] [ALEXURBELS]: According to the show Portlandia, when it was on, it was a place where young people went to retire, which was, I thought, well, talking about Portland itself.
[07:54.160 --> 08:11.600] [ALEXURBELS]: But Oregon, in terms of data security, privacy, especially when it comes to the use of data, I think that Oregon's senior senator in Congress is really kind of on the ball.
[08:11.600 --> 08:17.120] [ALEXURBELS]: And I think maybe the state of Oregon is following Senator (((Ron Wyden's))) examples here.
[08:17.120 --> 08:20.000] [ALEXURBELS]: So I think that this may be a good start.
[08:20.200 --> 08:31.300] [ALEXURBELS]: It may be a model on which other states base their right to repair laws, but hopefully without the Swiss cheese of exceptions, as Gila had rightly noted.
[08:32.200 --> 08:34.080] [ROBVINCENT]: Well, we will certainly keep an eye on this.
[08:34.280 --> 08:40.620] [ROBVINCENT]: And similar bills have been passed in New York here, in California and Minnesota.
[08:41.060 --> 08:46.960] [ROBVINCENT]: And, of course, we want to hear about it if things like this, there are efforts to push for things like this anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world.
[08:47.180 --> 08:52.320] [ROBVINCENT]: If you know of such things, let us know, oth@2600.com.
[08:53.640 --> 09:02.580] [ROBVINCENT]: Another story, also on Ars Technica, is kind of fascinating to, I think, a couple of us here.
[09:02.660 --> 09:08.300] [ROBVINCENT]: Jails have banned visits in quid pro quo agreements with prison phone companies, according to lawsuits.
[09:09.160 --> 09:21.580] [ROBVINCENT]: Two lawsuits filed by a civil rights group allege that county jails in Michigan banned in-person visits in order to maximize revenue from voice and video calls as part of a quid pro quo kickback scheme with prison phone companies.
[09:21.580 --> 09:30.700] [ROBVINCENT]: We have spoken before on this program about this idea that you can replace a prison visit with a video call, basically.
[09:31.540 --> 09:38.580] [ROBVINCENT]: And, of course, phone calls to prisoners have long been a price-gouged thing.
[09:38.920 --> 09:44.640] [ROBVINCENT]: Very, very expensive for the friends and family of those incarcerated.
[09:45.160 --> 09:50.040] [ROBVINCENT]: And, Alex, I think you're familiar with how this stuff tends to work.
[09:51.480 --> 09:53.960] [ROBVINCENT]: And I'd like to know what you think about this story.
[09:55.500 --> 10:00.480] [ALEXURBELS]: Yeah, I think it's... you know, it sounds to me like it's a step in the right direction here.
[10:00.480 --> 10:17.920] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, I have the unfortunate privilege, I guess, would be the way to describe it in a kind of awkward or paradoxical way, of talking with our friend Virgil Griffith quite regularly from a federal prison.
[10:18.060 --> 10:21.720] [ALEXURBELS]: Right now, he's located in Milan, Michigan, or Meeland, Michigan.
[10:21.720 --> 10:24.980] [ALEXURBELS]: I don't know why they pronounce it that way.
[10:25.120 --> 10:30.240] [ALEXURBELS]: It's some kind of bastardization of the word Milan, you know, in Michigan.
[10:30.580 --> 10:36.620] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, just like how they say Montpelier instead of Montpellier in Vermont, and, you know, all these types of things.
[10:36.780 --> 10:39.700] [ALEXURBELS]: But, anyhow, it's spelled Milan, Michigan.
[10:40.400 --> 10:42.600] [ALEXURBELS]: But Virgil and I talk pretty regularly.
[10:43.940 --> 10:56.240] [ALEXURBELS]: It's interesting, I don't know exactly how much it costs him to call me, but it must not be cheap, and there's only a certain amount of minutes that he'll get every month as well.
[10:56.440 --> 11:02.120] [ALEXURBELS]: So we usually wind up running out of minutes towards the end of the month, based on all the phone calls and things that he's had.
[11:03.040 --> 11:04.440] [ALEXURBELS]: But it's gouging.
[11:04.580 --> 11:24.060] [ALEXURBELS]: And the idea that you're forcing people to talk or use these video programs instead of going and meeting face-to-face is really, really unfortunate, I think both from the standpoint of having the physicality of a visit being so important to a person's mental well-being,
[11:24.220 --> 11:27.880] [ALEXURBELS]: especially when they are locked away from society and their family.
[11:28.060 --> 11:36.860] [ALEXURBELS]: These are things that, you know, when I would go visit Virgil, in fact, Emmanuel and Kyle came with me the last...
[11:36.860 --> 11:40.740] [ALEXURBELS]: I think it was actually the last time I was there to visit him, before he was transferred to Michigan.
[11:40.740 --> 11:42.800] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, it's such a meaningful thing.
[11:43.380 --> 11:49.840] [ALEXURBELS]: And I think people that are in that situation are very much always looking forward to those types of visits.
[11:49.840 --> 11:55.400] [ALEXURBELS]: And it means that people are thinking of you, and they're making the effort to show up and be with you physically.
[11:56.040 --> 12:00.780] [ALEXURBELS]: And that's one aspect of it that is irreplaceable, I think, by anything electronic.
[12:01.260 --> 12:21.400] [ALEXURBELS]: And then the other aspect of these visits that is also irreplaceable from any form of electronics is that there's a privacy component to these visits that people don't realize, because most of the time we understand what it's like to make a visit to somebody in prison simply by watching television or a law and order or something like that.
[12:21.460 --> 12:34.300] [ALEXURBELS]: And you think that everything is happening through a screen or a wall or a phone and that there's people listening and monitoring and all this, which couldn't be farther from the truth in, let's say, a low or especially minimum security facility.
[12:34.900 --> 12:38.400] [ALEXURBELS]: When I go and visit Virgil, we're in a big open room.
[12:38.460 --> 12:40.000] [ALEXURBELS]: And there's lots of other people.
[12:40.260 --> 12:41.220] [ALEXURBELS]: There's families there.
[12:41.340 --> 12:43.700] [ALEXURBELS]: There's people, you know, I think very sad.
[12:43.800 --> 12:48.740] [ALEXURBELS]: I find it very sad when kids have to go into this situation and visit parents and things.
[12:48.920 --> 12:49.680] [ALEXURBELS]: It breaks my heart.
[12:50.680 --> 12:52.740] [ALEXURBELS]: But you're there amongst a whole bunch of people.
[12:53.100 --> 13:01.320] [ALEXURBELS]: And there's no way that anybody can listen in or monitor what you're saying, because of all of the din from the room.
[13:01.420 --> 13:09.400] [ALEXURBELS]: I mean, I guess if someone was really, really careful and used some kind of parabolic microphone, but in all likelihood, nobody's listening to what you're saying.
[13:09.480 --> 13:18.660] [ALEXURBELS]: So you have this measure of privacy that you don't have afforded to you when you're on some kind of electronic communication, whether it's a telephone call or a video call.
[13:18.840 --> 13:23.060] [ALEXURBELS]: That makes it incredibly easy to simply listen in on that singular conversation.
[13:23.340 --> 13:30.060] [ALEXURBELS]: So I think these are aspects of those types of non-electronic interactions that are so important.
[13:31.400 --> 13:31.880] [ROBVINCENT]: Yeah.
[13:32.020 --> 13:33.480] [ROBVINCENT]: And I want to mention the name of the group.
[13:33.620 --> 13:41.860] [ROBVINCENT]: This is Civil Rights Corps, who filed the lawsuits on March 15th against the county governments, two county sheriffs, and two prison phone companies.
[13:42.440 --> 13:51.120] [ROBVINCENT]: The suits filed in county courts seek class action status on behalf of people unable to visit family members detained in the local jails, including children who have been unable to visit their parents.
[13:52.360 --> 13:55.320] [ROBVINCENT]: And this is definitely something we'll be keeping a close eye on.
[13:56.900 --> 14:01.400] [ROBVINCENT]: But I want to get to why we are joined by Emma Best.
[14:01.680 --> 14:05.460] [ROBVINCENT]: Emma, would you like to talk a little bit about what you do and why you've joined us today?
[14:09.260 --> 14:12.080] [EMMA__BEST]: I'm a journalist and transparency activist.
[14:12.300 --> 14:18.600] [EMMA__BEST]: And like you said, I'm one of the co-founders of Distributed Denial of Secrets, DDoSsecrets.com.
[14:19.100 --> 14:21.020] [EMMA__BEST]: We publish leaks.
[14:22.640 --> 14:31.160] [EMMA__BEST]: And so we've been following the Assange case and the WikiLeaks case very closely since before charges were even filed.
[14:32.600 --> 14:50.840] [EMMA__BEST]: And we recently announced that we have a large database of about 100 gigabytes of data with tens of thousands of documents, hundreds of thousands of emails related to WikiLeaks and anonymous.
[14:50.840 --> 15:04.000] [EMMA__BEST]: And this gives us a lot of insight into what the government's case is, because I believe 99.9% of this should already be in the U.S. government's hands.
[15:10.020 --> 15:21.000] [EMMA__BEST]: However, because not everything that the U.S. government has is in the hands of every other government, that's one of the reasons why we're not simply putting all of this online for everyone to read unredacted.
[15:21.000 --> 15:33.540] [EMMA__BEST]: We want to go through it and work with other people to get out the most relevant parts, but not necessarily dox every journalist and volunteer that worked with WikiLeaks and the various sources and whatnot.
[15:34.420 --> 15:41.500] [EMMA__BEST]: So it's an extensive database that I've been doing my best to go through.
[15:41.900 --> 15:45.900] [EMMA__BEST]: And about two months ago, we gave Wired access to it.
[15:46.400 --> 15:49.680] [EMMA__BEST]: And there should be more reporting coming out from Wired soon.
[15:51.740 --> 16:09.140] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, Emma, this sounds like it could be a massively explosive treasure trove of information about the operations of WikiLeaks coming during an election year where we know that WikiLeaks played a pretty pivotal role in the last election cycle that involved Donald Trump.
[16:09.380 --> 16:23.860] [ALEXURBELS]: I wonder if there's anything that you can speak to about the timing of this, the provenance of the data, how it crosses over with other leaks or troves or, I guess, data sets that relate to WikiLeaks and Assange.
[16:25.460 --> 16:27.360] [ALEXURBELS]: And I've got tons of questions for us.
[16:27.400 --> 16:28.160] [ALEXURBELS]: Why don't we start with that?
[16:30.320 --> 16:31.080] [EMMA__BEST]: Sure.
[16:31.400 --> 16:34.660] [EMMA__BEST]: The data comes from a number of places.
[16:34.660 --> 16:40.360] [EMMA__BEST]: Some of it is from former insiders, people who were associated with WikiLeaks.
[16:40.840 --> 16:48.600] [EMMA__BEST]: Some of it is archived material, not all of which is still available in various places.
[16:48.600 --> 17:08.620] [EMMA__BEST]: One of the more interesting things that I've been going through is old forum posts on various WikiLeaks websites, including WikiLeaks forum, which some listeners may recognize for being controversial due to the people that were involved in running it.
[17:08.620 --> 17:11.600] [EMMA__BEST]: It initially had the support of WikiLeaks.
[17:11.900 --> 17:17.900] [EMMA__BEST]: And then later they decided, like, these are some bad things that are happening with it.
[17:17.990 --> 17:19.470] [EMMA__BEST]: We don't want our name on it anymore.
[17:19.640 --> 17:22.160] [EMMA__BEST]: And it spiraled out from there.
[17:22.160 --> 17:29.160] [EMMA__BEST]: But that forum has been deleted since, along with several other telegram channels that we have copies of.
[17:29.470 --> 17:38.120] [EMMA__BEST]: And this all... yeah, it gives a big insight into both how things progressed, the internal discussions that they had,
[17:41.340 --> 17:48.160] [EMMA__BEST]: and, you know, some of the documents that are from sealed court cases give us a lot of insight into what the U.S. government is thinking.
[17:52.780 --> 17:58.180] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, and that's really fascinating to me, because, you know, you say, you know, what the U.S. government is thinking here.
[17:59.380 --> 18:08.710] [ALEXURBELS]: If we go back to the original indictment of Assange, when I think it was 2019, it was for a single charge.
[18:08.850 --> 18:15.070] [ALEXURBELS]: It was one charge that was a... I believe it was a CFAA violation, essentially a hacking charge.
[18:15.270 --> 18:31.400] [ALEXURBELS]: And that charge pertained to Assange working with Chelsea Manning to utilize something called a rainbow table, which is a way of reversing hashes or taking what was a one-way cryptographic function and turning a...
[18:31.400 --> 18:33.850] [ALEXURBELS]: Usually passwords are... for our listeners that don't know this, right?
[18:33.960 --> 18:37.230] [ALEXURBELS]: So passwords are very ordinarily stored as hashes.
[18:37.660 --> 18:42.330] [ALEXURBELS]: And if you can match... and a hash is like a long string of numbers.
[18:42.330 --> 18:50.700] [ALEXURBELS]: It's a unique digital fingerprint of one bit of data, some kind of, you know, data thing, type, whatever it is.
[18:50.700 --> 18:55.070] [ALEXURBELS]: It could be... you could take a hash of something that's 100 gigabytes, or it could be 10 bytes.
[18:55.380 --> 18:57.460] [ALEXURBELS]: And the hashes are obviously going to be totally different.
[18:57.640 --> 19:03.090] [ALEXURBELS]: If you change one bit in that 100-gigabyte file, you're going to get a totally different hash.
[19:03.250 --> 19:15.810] [ALEXURBELS]: So using a rainbow table was a way to take those password hashes and reverse them by having this long list of, hey, let's say monkey equals this in a hash, and monkey123 is this as a hash.
[19:15.810 --> 19:29.140] [ALEXURBELS]: So I believe what Assange was charged with doing with respect to... in connection with Chelsea Manning, rather, was the attempt to utilize rainbow tables to crack Department of Defense passwords.
[19:29.400 --> 19:30.330] [ALEXURBELS]: And that was it.
[19:30.680 --> 19:32.730] [ALEXURBELS]: That was a very singular charge.
[19:32.990 --> 19:37.990] [ALEXURBELS]: Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom when he was ousted from the Ecuadorian embassy.
[19:39.290 --> 19:48.530] [ALEXURBELS]: And I actually wrote about that charge for CNN in an opinion piece where I had argued that this seems pretty straightforward, apolitical.
[19:49.100 --> 19:58.470] [ALEXURBELS]: There's nothing here that threatens journalists, that crosses the line, or would be inherently a political offense.
[19:58.730 --> 20:03.050] [ALEXURBELS]: So I thought, this is pretty narrowly tailored, and he's going to be extradited.
[20:03.270 --> 20:08.310] [ALEXURBELS]: But then, shortly thereafter, these 17 new charges were piled onto it.
[20:08.310 --> 20:26.510] [ALEXURBELS]: And a lot of that, journalists had said, and I also mentioned this in a separate CNN opinion piece, that a lot of these charges seemed really over the top and attacking what journalists ordinarily do, especially in the national security sphere.
[20:27.200 --> 20:31.180] [ALEXURBELS]: So tell us what you mean there, Emma, when you...
[20:31.180 --> 20:39.770] [ALEXURBELS]: Because you must be talking about these 17 new charges on top of the original charge that Assange is facing right now, and for which he might be extradited.
[20:39.970 --> 20:41.460] [ALEXURBELS]: So learning what the U.S. government is thinking here, this is entirely new stuff.
[20:45.030 --> 21:02.590] [ALEXURBELS]: And one other quick question for you is, and maybe this is a preliminary or threshold question, but in looking at distributed denial of secrets, it doesn't seem like you've announced this Assange, this new data from the Assange leaks anywhere yet.
[21:02.730 --> 21:05.700] [ALEXURBELS]: Is this the first time you're talking about it in public?
[21:07.470 --> 21:11.350] [EMMA__BEST]: Wired made a brief mention of it in their coverage last week.
[21:11.990 --> 21:15.380] [EMMA__BEST]: And like I said, I think that they're planning on doing more with it soon.
[21:16.620 --> 21:35.900] [EMMA__BEST]: As for what you brought up before that with the development of the indictments, one thing that I think gets overlooked a lot when discussing the charges against Assange is the second superseding indictment didn't add any new charges.
[21:36.770 --> 21:40.770] [EMMA__BEST]: What it did was add a whole lot of information and background.
[21:45.070 --> 22:01.500] [EMMA__BEST]: And the original indictment, if the U.S. government had been a little bit smarter, I think the original indictment would have looked a lot more like that, because it talks about how WikiLeaks supposedly collaborated with different hacker groups, how they incentivized things, how they tried to recruit people.
[22:03.410 --> 22:06.440] [EMMA__BEST]: And that's not really there in the original indictment.
[22:06.660 --> 22:12.920] [EMMA__BEST]: And to get any of the background on it, you mostly had to go to the affidavit that the FBI agent filed alongside it.
[22:15.090 --> 22:22.810] [ALEXURBELS]: Now that affidavit, was that a public document that was associated with the second indictment, or is that something that's part of the data set now?
[22:24.570 --> 22:30.780] [EMMA__BEST]: The FBI affidavit, I think, was with the original indictment, and it is public.
[22:31.260 --> 22:31.620] [ALEXURBELS]: I see.
[22:31.780 --> 22:32.200] [ALEXURBELS]: Very good.
[22:32.440 --> 22:32.590] [ALEXURBELS]: Yeah.
[22:32.830 --> 22:35.140] [ALEXURBELS]: So that was what supported the indictment.
[22:35.980 --> 22:41.260] [ALEXURBELS]: Or, I guess, maybe some kind of application to the court or something like that.
[22:42.550 --> 22:43.680] [ALEXURBELS]: That's really interesting.
[22:43.740 --> 22:46.720] [ALEXURBELS]: And learning more about what the government is thinking here.
[22:46.920 --> 22:52.440] [ALEXURBELS]: So tell us about this collusion with WikiLeaks and what these documents say.
[22:55.620 --> 23:13.700] [EMMA__BEST]: So, as far as their cooperation with hackers, one thing that needs to be made clear pretty much at the beginning is that, while it seems like Julian had at least some awareness of what was going on, and there are some people that have said, oh, he directly knew about this,
[23:13.700 --> 23:18.050] [EMMA__BEST]: most of the communications went through Siggy.
[23:18.640 --> 23:21.180] [EMMA__BEST]: Sigurdur Thurdarsson, he... formerly worked with WikiLeaks, later infamously became an FBI informant.
[23:28.900 --> 23:34.260] [EMMA__BEST]: He was the one who talked to Sabu initially about receiving documents.
[23:34.260 --> 23:44.220] [EMMA__BEST]: But he's also been credibly accused and, I think, convicted of sex crimes.
[23:44.440 --> 23:46.540] [EMMA__BEST]: And it's truly horrific stuff.
[23:48.480 --> 23:50.880] [EMMA__BEST]: And Siggy is a liar.
[23:51.240 --> 23:55.160] [EMMA__BEST]: This is what everyone knows him most for, aside from his crimes.
[23:55.160 --> 23:57.290] [EMMA__BEST]: He is not a reliable person.
[23:58.050 --> 24:03.050] [EMMA__BEST]: And we've seen reporting where he's gone back and forth and said, I lied to WikiLeaks.
[24:03.200 --> 24:04.760] [EMMA__BEST]: No, I lied to the FBI.
[24:06.680 --> 24:10.850] [EMMA__BEST]: So, there's a lot of debate over what was actually done and set there.
[24:10.850 --> 24:15.850] [EMMA__BEST]: But the logs are very useful for reconstructing that.
[24:16.070 --> 24:22.350] [EMMA__BEST]: And we can see things like, Siggy was talking to Sabu before Siggy became an informant.
[24:22.940 --> 24:29.480] [EMMA__BEST]: But it seems that Sabu got in touch with WikiLeaks within days of becoming an informant.
[24:32.380 --> 24:38.260] [EMMA__BEST]: We have Siggy talking to hackers and asking them to go after specific targets.
[24:39.550 --> 24:56.330] [EMMA__BEST]: One of the more interesting things is that WikiLeaks' contact at DataCell, who processed their donations for quite some time and later helped sue, I think it was Visa or one of the banks for not processing things.
[24:57.020 --> 25:08.460] [EMMA__BEST]: One of the higher-ups at DataCell knew about some of the LulzSec hacks before they happened and even suggested other targets that might be beneficial to him.
[25:10.600 --> 25:24.050] [EMMA__BEST]: One of the more interesting things about the involvement of hackers with WikiLeaks is they seem to cross the border between just being sources and having actual involvement in research.
[25:24.920 --> 25:26.120] [EMMA__BEST]: That was...
[25:29.520 --> 25:31.070] [EMMA__BEST]: Sorry, I started to cough there.
[25:32.180 --> 25:35.280] [EMMA__BEST]: That was one of the things that Siggy was talking to Sabu about.
[25:35.280 --> 25:41.570] [EMMA__BEST]: He actually sent a CV at one point, a resume, and they were talking about signing him on as a contractor.
[25:41.830 --> 25:46.440] [EMMA__BEST]: Same with one of the hackers in LulzSec.
[25:46.700 --> 25:47.760] [EMMA__BEST]: He went by Kayla.
[25:48.050 --> 25:48.830] [EMMA__BEST]: I think that was Ryan.
[25:51.100 --> 25:55.600] [EMMA__BEST]: And even Gnosis, which was Lorelei Bailey.
[25:57.140 --> 26:11.810] [EMMA__BEST]: And she was involved with research specifically for the Gitmo detainees, where WikiLeaks was in a massive rush at the last minute to get this out because they felt like they were being scooped.
[26:11.810 --> 26:13.360] [EMMA__BEST]: And so...
[26:14.100 --> 26:18.830] [EMMA__BEST]: Sarah Harrison contacted Siggy and said, we need you to do this.
[26:18.920 --> 26:20.020] [EMMA__BEST]: We need you to go to Wikipedia.
[26:20.020 --> 26:26.960] [EMMA__BEST]: We need you to copy the names, the prisoner numbers, the basic information, put it into a table, organize it this way.
[26:27.500 --> 26:33.830] [EMMA__BEST]: And Siggy turned around and passed that research task on to Lorelei Bailey of Gnosis.
[26:38.320 --> 26:39.330] [ALEXURBELS]: That's interesting.
[26:39.660 --> 26:54.790] [ALEXURBELS]: So there's a lot of line crossing here, perhaps, between being a journalist and gathering the actual information itself, which is at root what I think the government was really charging Assange with, isn't it?
[26:57.300 --> 26:57.900] [EMMA__BEST]: Yeah.
[26:58.160 --> 27:05.000] [EMMA__BEST]: And the government really did just a terrible job of explaining that in even the second superseding indictment.
[27:05.200 --> 27:05.920] [EMMA__BEST]: And they're not...
[27:06.590 --> 27:12.960] [EMMA__BEST]: You know, per usual, they're not talking about cases that are in progress or where someone hasn't even been extradited yet.
[27:14.960 --> 27:20.200] [EMMA__BEST]: But, for the U.S. government, as far as I can tell, the...
[27:20.700 --> 27:31.180] [EMMA__BEST]: And I don't want to say this is the reason they want to go after Julian and WikiLeaks, but the reason that they feel like they're able to do is because WikiLeaks did more.
[27:32.000 --> 27:32.520] [EMMA__BEST]: They...
[27:33.260 --> 27:36.980] [EMMA__BEST]: The most wanted list was always going to be a problem for WikiLeaks.
[27:37.620 --> 27:44.790] [EMMA__BEST]: Saying, oh, we'll pay you this much money if you come forward with this data was always going to be a problem for WikiLeaks.
[27:45.420 --> 27:48.280] [EMMA__BEST]: Things like that are not great.
[27:48.720 --> 27:54.690] [EMMA__BEST]: And then, one thing that I think most people have overlooked in the second superseding indictment especially...
[27:55.290 --> 27:56.020] [EMMA__BEST]: Excuse me.
[27:58.440 --> 28:00.070] [EMMA__BEST]: Sorry, my lungs aren't so good.
[28:00.550 --> 28:01.000] [EMMA__BEST]: Um...
[28:01.810 --> 28:10.040] [EMMA__BEST]: One thing that people tend to overlook is there's repeated references to WikiLeaks trying to recruit CIA administrators.
[28:11.660 --> 28:14.540] [EMMA__BEST]: The indictment never goes anywhere with this.
[28:14.740 --> 28:23.020] [EMMA__BEST]: But at the time that the second superseding indictment was found, Joshua Schulte's trial, or his retrial, was underway.
[28:24.120 --> 28:28.680] [EMMA__BEST]: And he was the CIA administrator who gave WikiLeaks the Vault 7 data.
[28:29.720 --> 28:35.780] [EMMA__BEST]: So, I think when we look at things like that too, we get a little bit more of an idea of what WikiLeaks was...
[28:35.780 --> 28:36.860] [EMMA__BEST]: Not WikiLeaks.
[28:37.460 --> 28:40.810] [EMMA__BEST]: What the government was setting up for in regards to WikiLeaks.
[28:41.640 --> 28:45.680] [EMMA__BEST]: They put that there in the second superseding indictment and...
[28:46.670 --> 28:57.880] [EMMA__BEST]: It seems very clearly a setup for what happened in 2015, 2017, with Shulte contacting WikiLeaks, handing over all the CIA data.
[29:00.620 --> 29:04.600] [ROBVINCENT]: We are speaking with Emma Best of Distributed Denial of Secrets.
[29:04.810 --> 29:07.180] [ROBVINCENT]: That's ddosecrets.com.
[29:07.330 --> 29:17.330] [ROBVINCENT]: You're listening to Off The Hook on WBAI, which you can keep going with by throwing in what you can at give2wbai.org.
[29:18.180 --> 29:28.520] [ROBVINCENT]: Emma, I wonder if you could speak a bit more about just as a journalist, obviously, you're going through this raw data and incredible amounts of it, responsibly redacting it, of course.
[29:30.880 --> 29:38.100] [ROBVINCENT]: But that puts you in a unique position to just form an overall picture of what was going on behind the scenes of all this.
[29:38.520 --> 29:47.600] [ROBVINCENT]: And I wonder if you could talk a bit more about just the things about that that people should know that they don't.
[29:51.000 --> 30:07.820] [EMMA__BEST]: Well, one thing that I thought was very interesting when going through this, WikiLeaks basically put together enemy lists with opposition research on people that were not good for WikiLeaks or who had been critical.
[30:08.180 --> 30:19.840] [EMMA__BEST]: This included politicians, former WikiLeaks members, Julian's accusers in Sweden, along with the lawyer and prosecutor for that.
[30:21.440 --> 30:34.320] [EMMA__BEST]: It's interesting that, you know, in 2010, 2011, they're already listing Hillary Clinton as, you know, she's the first name in shitlist.pdf.
[30:36.360 --> 30:40.280] [EMMA__BEST]: You know, Sarah Palin is also in there, along with Joe Biden.
[30:41.200 --> 30:49.920] [EMMA__BEST]: But the fact that WikiLeaks was doing this and pulling together what they felt was negative information on people.
[30:50.300 --> 31:02.300] [EMMA__BEST]: And in some cases, especially with the accusations against Julian, looking at it, in hindsight, there's a lot that is very questionable or outright inaccurate.
[31:05.580 --> 31:16.800] [EMMA__BEST]: There's one quote that I don't really want to go into the contents of the opposition research for obvious reasons, but there's there's one quote where they're talking about what they had just described.
[31:17.180 --> 31:25.040] [EMMA__BEST]: And they said, no media quote available, of course, but it's something they are assumed to be behind completely.
[31:26.860 --> 31:28.020] [EMMA__BEST]: And that's...
[31:29.440 --> 31:34.340] [EMMA__BEST]: that's the level of attribution that they're putting for this, but then they believe it fully.
[31:34.800 --> 31:38.300] [EMMA__BEST]: And this is how they then craft later messaging.
[31:38.300 --> 31:44.980] [EMMA__BEST]: And you can see that a lot in conspiracy theories about the the Swedish accusations against Assange.
[31:48.340 --> 31:58.400] [ALEXURBELS]: That's very interesting and really, really crazy background to think that they had Hillary Clinton in their and their sites way back when.
[32:00.220 --> 32:01.180] [ALEXURBELS]: It just...
[32:01.180 --> 32:18.160] [ALEXURBELS]: It almost seems like this was, you know, a long-standing vendetta against her and brings me back to the point that I had raised earlier, which was that the last time we saw WikiLeaks extraordinary act it was during the 2016 election when Trump was up for election.
[32:18.160 --> 32:22.420] [ALEXURBELS]: Now we see Trump is up for re-election and it's 2024.
[32:23.310 --> 32:25.560] [ALEXURBELS]: Eight years later from 2016.
[32:25.560 --> 32:27.720] [ALEXURBELS]: I can't believe it was eight years ago.
[32:28.180 --> 32:30.400] [ALEXURBELS]: It feels like the blink of an eye, quite frankly.
[32:30.980 --> 32:37.480] [ALEXURBELS]: But do you think that there'll be political ramifications for when you release this data set?
[32:43.050 --> 32:44.370] [EMMA__BEST]: I'm not sure.
[32:45.010 --> 32:50.010] [EMMA__BEST]: The data overall raises questions about everyone who's involved.
[32:52.590 --> 32:59.770] [EMMA__BEST]: And there's... there's a lot in there that you can point to with the data and say about WikiLeaks, oh, this is questionable or that is questionable.
[33:01.850 --> 33:06.310] [EMMA__BEST]: But when you use some of the data to examine one of, like, the...
[33:06.310 --> 33:10.270] [EMMA__BEST]: the quotes that were in the second superseding indictment, they...
[33:10.270 --> 33:14.130] [EMMA__BEST]: They talk about, at one point, um...
[33:14.130 --> 33:20.710] [EMMA__BEST]: Siggy, I think, was talking to Gnosis and described WikiLeaks as the largest hacking organization in the world.
[33:21.510 --> 33:22.870] [EMMA__BEST]: And that is an accurate... that is an accurate thing from the chat log.
[33:27.050 --> 33:27.610] [EMMA__BEST]: But... when you look at the chat log, that sentence ends with a quotation mark.
[33:32.810 --> 33:34.650] [EMMA__BEST]: And there's no beginning to it.
[33:35.310 --> 33:38.670] [EMMA__BEST]: And that sort of thing raises questions about, oh, well...
[33:40.270 --> 33:42.890] [EMMA__BEST]: was Siggy quoting someone, or was that his description?
[33:42.890 --> 33:45.890] [EMMA__BEST]: And that sort of thing is a very important distinction.
[33:47.550 --> 33:48.070] [EMMA__BEST]: Um...
[33:48.070 --> 33:58.090] [EMMA__BEST]: There's other instances where one of the things they talk about in the indictment was WikiLeaks and Assange suggesting putting a Trojan on a former... on a former volunteer's laptop.
[34:04.550 --> 34:06.550] [EMMA__BEST]: And... again, this is something that happened.
[34:06.710 --> 34:13.250] [EMMA__BEST]: But when you look at all of the logs together, it looks like Siggy is lying to people and manipulating them.
[34:14.250 --> 34:19.610] [EMMA__BEST]: And this doesn't change the fact that, you know, everyone said all these things.
[34:20.310 --> 34:23.470] [EMMA__BEST]: But it raises questions that are really important to get into.
[34:25.550 --> 34:26.230] [EMMA__BEST]: Um...
[34:27.350 --> 34:28.970] [EMMA__BEST]: And one thing that I thought was... was very interesting is... after WikiLeaks released the Iraq data, um...
[34:37.750 --> 34:41.650] [EMMA__BEST]: Denmark, their Defense Department requested a copy of it.
[34:42.230 --> 34:49.030] [EMMA__BEST]: They wanted access to investigate their own military activities, I believe it was.
[34:50.510 --> 34:53.090] [EMMA__BEST]: Denmark is a founding member of NATO.
[34:53.550 --> 34:55.250] [EMMA__BEST]: But it is a foreign military.
[34:56.450 --> 34:56.820] [EMMA__BEST]: And...
[34:57.190 --> 34:59.170] [EMMA__BEST]: WikiLeaks gave them access to it.
[35:00.570 --> 35:01.990] [EMMA__BEST]: And that's...
[35:03.290 --> 35:05.830] [EMMA__BEST]: That's a very gray area, legally.
[35:06.230 --> 35:15.910] [EMMA__BEST]: And on the one hand, it's morally defensible if everyone was acting, you know, on the motives that we believe.
[35:15.930 --> 35:19.010] [EMMA__BEST]: They wanted to investigate their own military for abuses.
[35:19.670 --> 35:22.830] [EMMA__BEST]: That's something that we all can and should get behind.
[35:23.530 --> 35:32.270] [EMMA__BEST]: But directly giving classified, unredacted data to a foreign military, that's...
[35:32.910 --> 35:37.670] [EMMA__BEST]: That's the sort of thing that's outside of typical journalism lines.
[35:41.850 --> 35:44.930] [ALEXURBELS]: That's a really shocking revelation here.
[35:45.810 --> 35:59.670] [ALEXURBELS]: So, Emma, can you talk a little bit more for our listeners about the types of data that this new data set that distributed denial of secrets has in its possession and presumably will make available to the public at least, or... or to journalists and... or the public in some limited form.
[36:04.010 --> 36:15.770] [ALEXURBELS]: Can you talk a bit more about the types of data that this information indicates WikiLeaks provided exclusively to the Danish military?
[36:18.850 --> 36:19.490] [EMMA__BEST]: Um...
[36:19.490 --> 36:39.630] [EMMA__BEST]: In terms of what they gave the Danish military, military, all that I can be positive of is that they listed contact at the planning branch of a naval commander as having unredacted access to the Iraq military or the Iraq files.
[36:40.510 --> 36:41.390] [EMMA__BEST]: Um...
[36:41.390 --> 36:48.390] [EMMA__BEST]: It's unclear from the data if they were also given access to the Afghanistan files or Cablegate.
[36:51.430 --> 36:52.370] [EMMA__BEST]: The...
[36:52.370 --> 36:56.370] [EMMA__BEST]: One thing that's very interesting about this, though, is...
[36:56.370 --> 36:58.170] [EMMA__BEST]: So, at the end of...
[36:58.970 --> 37:02.130] [EMMA__BEST]: Julian Assange gave an interview with Al Jazeera.
[37:02.310 --> 37:11.110] [EMMA__BEST]: And in that interview, he said that WikiLeaks had been approached by Russian intelligence and that Russian intelligence wanted to cooperate.
[37:12.750 --> 37:13.430] [EMMA__BEST]: Um...
[37:13.430 --> 37:17.670] [EMMA__BEST]: And according to Julian, they just didn't engage with Russian intelligence.
[37:18.650 --> 37:29.470] [EMMA__BEST]: A week later, WikiLeaks sends this email to the Danish military and says, thank you for your email and please accept my apologies for the delayed response.
[37:29.830 --> 37:32.310] [EMMA__BEST]: We have limited resources which often take up... which are often taken up with various attacks on our system.
[37:35.830 --> 37:40.310] [EMMA__BEST]: We would be delighted to provide the Danish investigation with the necessary information.
[37:40.550 --> 37:44.370] [EMMA__BEST]: However, we are investigating ways of delivering the information in a secure manner.
[37:45.150 --> 37:49.790] [EMMA__BEST]: So, the scope of the Danish investigation isn't spelled out there.
[37:49.950 --> 37:55.090] [EMMA__BEST]: In the original email from the Danes so far, I haven't found it.
[37:56.110 --> 38:01.510] [EMMA__BEST]: But, the other documents show that a username and password was generated for them.
[38:02.110 --> 38:07.650] [EMMA__BEST]: They made contact with someone else at the Danish military who they gave the access to.
[38:08.210 --> 38:10.530] [EMMA__BEST]: And, um, yeah.
[38:13.110 --> 38:15.290] [EMMA__BEST]: It's one of those very surprising things.
[38:16.390 --> 38:17.350] [ALEXURBELS]: I'd shocking.
[38:17.610 --> 38:18.850] [ALEXURBELS]: I would say shocking.
[38:19.170 --> 38:32.470] [ALEXURBELS]: And, and really, providing exclusive access to a foreign military to a, a data set that contains classified information from the United States government is really, uh, an extraordinary revelation.
[38:32.670 --> 38:50.630] [ALEXURBELS]: If, if this is something that WikiLeaks did on a one-off basis, I think it's extraordinary and shocking, but it sounds like this might have been something that perhaps, this is, I'm extrapolating here, total speculation, I should know, but, maybe this is something that WikiLeaks engaged in on a regular basis.
[38:50.630 --> 38:58.790] [ALEXURBELS]: Do you think that, that, that the, the manner, the tone, or the documents themselves would indicate that, whether this was a common practice?
[39:00.510 --> 39:02.650] [EMMA__BEST]: I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
[39:02.970 --> 39:09.250] [EMMA__BEST]: And, there's a lot of other things that are suggestive, but, this is the only clear-cut instance of that.
[39:10.050 --> 39:25.530] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, you know, we, we mentioned 2016 a little bit earlier, and just a slightly similar thing, uh, shortly, WikiLeaks made an announcement that they would give a reward for the Goldman Sachs speeches, Hillary Clinton's.
[39:26.030 --> 39:36.430] [EMMA__BEST]: And, a few hours later, Russian hackers started the phishing campaign that penetrated Podesta's email, and, got access to those, those transcripts.
[39:37.310 --> 39:42.630] [EMMA__BEST]: So, when you look at the broader context, there's a lot of things like that, that raise eyebrows.
[39:43.250 --> 39:48.770] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, especially when you look at the 25-year history between, Assange, WikiLeaks, and Russia.
[39:49.510 --> 39:54.530] [EMMA__BEST]: But, there's nothing else that, so far, is, is clear-cut for this.
[39:55.410 --> 40:16.030] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, but it is, it is, it is, very, notable, I suppose would be the best word, that, when WikiLeaks decided to make all of CableGate available unredacted, the way they defended this, and the way their supporters defended this, was by saying that security services already had access to the data.
[40:16.970 --> 40:24.630] [EMMA__BEST]: And, the surface reading has always been, well, because they're intelligence agencies, they compromise things, they get a hold of stuff.
[40:25.290 --> 40:26.510] [EMMA__BEST]: It's what they do.
[40:27.230 --> 40:42.710] [EMMA__BEST]: But, knowing that, a related data set, from the same source, at about the same time, was given, to foreign security services, again, it raises, it raises a lot of questions.
[40:44.470 --> 40:49.290] [ALEXURBELS]: Well, one question, that it raises for me, in particular, is, why Denmark?
[40:49.650 --> 40:51.250] [ALEXURBELS]: Why the Danish military here?
[40:52.270 --> 41:02.550] [ALEXURBELS]: I don't think, Julian Assange, or WikiLeaks, was an organization, that did things, as a matter of, Christian charity, or, out of the beneficence of their, their own hearts.
[41:03.170 --> 41:10.010] [ALEXURBELS]: It seems to me like, there was probably, some kind of motive, or some kind of reason, why they did this, for Denmark.
[41:10.890 --> 41:13.990] [ALEXURBELS]: Perhaps, some kind of, quid pro quo, arrangement.
[41:14.330 --> 41:17.050] [ALEXURBELS]: Is there any indication, what WikiLeaks, got out of that arrangement?
[41:19.550 --> 41:20.030] [EMMA__BEST]: No.
[41:21.830 --> 41:34.750] [EMMA__BEST]: And, I do want to mention, that, prior to WikiLeaks, responding, to Denmark's, email, there had been, a public statement, from Denmark, where they called on WikiLeaks, to give them, the information.
[41:35.330 --> 41:39.290] [EMMA__BEST]: And so, that public appeal, may have played, some role in it.
[41:40.110 --> 41:49.130] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, I did say, a few minutes ago, that there, that there are no other instances, where we know that, that WikiLeaks, gave a foreign government, information.
[41:49.970 --> 42:00.210] [EMMA__BEST]: And, I just remembered, that that's not strictly true, because, at around the same time, Israel Shamir, was, delivering cables, to Belarus.
[42:01.150 --> 42:08.570] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, and, Israel Shamir, is also, the infamous, anti-Semite, that worked with, with WikiLeaks.
[42:08.730 --> 42:10.030] [EMMA__BEST]: He was a friend of Julian's.
[42:11.050 --> 42:17.730] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, they've, they've denied, the extent, to which they coordinated, with, Israel Shamir.
[42:17.830 --> 42:23.850] [EMMA__BEST]: But when you look at the documents, he's one of the core people, that they planned out, the release of, of articles with.
[42:23.850 --> 42:34.090] [EMMA__BEST]: And, uh, it was Israel Shamir, that helped, Julian, apply for the visa, in Russia, back when WikiLeaks, was potentially, going to relocate there.
[42:37.010 --> 42:37.610] [ALEXURBELS]: Wow.
[42:38.030 --> 42:38.250] [ALEXURBELS]: Wow.
[42:38.410 --> 42:39.670] [ALEXURBELS]: That's, that's incredible too.
[42:39.790 --> 42:43.610] [ALEXURBELS]: So they shared, diplomatic cables, and, with Belarus.
[42:43.610 --> 43:01.750] [ALEXURBELS]: I mean, this is a country too, not necessarily known for it's, uh, it's, uh, it's democratic principles, or, beliefs that would, comport with, what we would consider to be, liberal ideas, and liberal being, in the sense of liberal democracy, not conservative or liberal, of course.
[43:03.010 --> 43:11.150] [ALEXURBELS]: But, um, that, that's, so where were those, I know we, we, don't have too much time left in the show, but I'm so curious about this.
[43:11.510 --> 43:16.550] [ALEXURBELS]: Do you know what diplomatic cables were provided to Belarus?
[43:18.930 --> 43:23.350] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, I would have to check, I don't remember that off the top of my head.
[43:24.150 --> 43:34.710] [EMMA__BEST]: That particular saga is mostly public, it has been discussed before, and it was one reason that James Bull decided to leave WikiLeaks, was because of what Israel Shamir was doing.
[43:35.510 --> 43:43.050] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, the cables that he gave to Belarus, were, then republished, seemingly by the government.
[43:43.610 --> 43:48.150] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, they set up their own Belarusian WikiLeaks, and started publishing the cables.
[43:48.770 --> 43:59.190] [EMMA__BEST]: And, the degree of impact, that, that, that, that has had, is somewhat debated, where some people say, oh, well, all the major leaders were already rounded up.
[43:59.610 --> 44:08.230] [EMMA__BEST]: And so, naming the dissidents in these cables, didn't have a big impact on, on them, and it didn't allow them to be arrested.
[44:09.090 --> 44:27.330] [EMMA__BEST]: Other people have disputed that, and I've also seen, very credibly, people say that, the direct impact that it had, in terms of getting people arrested, was, not as bad as it could have been, but that it, created, a, chilling effect, for those dissidents.
[44:27.670 --> 44:31.950] [EMMA__BEST]: And that was part of, uh, what happened, with the, with the election cycle in Belarus.
[44:34.820 --> 44:50.650] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, we would be, horrified to learn, of, any media, or journalistic organization, in the United States, picking favorites, and sharing classified information, with a foreign military, or a foreign government, that is, is known to be run, especially in, such an autocratic, and authoritarian manner, as Belarus.
[44:53.850 --> 45:14.170] [ALEXURBELS]: Do you think, Emma, that this, undercuts, that this, data set, that you will be, uh, presumably releasing, in some, limited capacity, undercuts, the, notion, of WikiLeaks, being a, a journalistic organization, itself, being part of the media, because it seems to me.
[45:14.330 --> 45:26.370] [ALEXURBELS]: Like, they're playing favorites, and playing sides, and operating more, almost like, some, form of, intelligence, agents, like, freelance intelligence agents, as opposed to, actual journalists.
[45:28.770 --> 45:30.630] [EMMA__BEST]: So, that's a really good point.
[45:30.990 --> 45:41.250] [EMMA__BEST]: And, um, I want to start off by just saying that, you can be both, an intelligence organization, and, a, a journalist.
[45:42.130 --> 45:59.790] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, you know, we've, I think it was, uh, William Casey, it was one of the CIA directors, who got his start, as a journalist, and, it was, doing that, and interviewing Hitler, that started him on his path to, you know, rising through the ranks of intelligence.
[46:00.590 --> 46:06.710] [EMMA__BEST]: And, there's, there's no reason that, a spy can't be a journalist, or a journalist, a spy.
[46:07.290 --> 46:19.210] [EMMA__BEST]: You know, if, if someone at CIA, or, FSB, or, MI5, or wherever, says, I'm a journalist now, I'm gonna write articles and publish them, that might be true.
[46:19.490 --> 46:21.430] [EMMA__BEST]: But that doesn't change the other thing.
[46:21.590 --> 46:23.190] [EMMA__BEST]: They're not, they're not self negating.
[46:23.990 --> 46:30.430] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, and I think that that's one really important thing that, most of the discussion has missed out on.
[46:30.610 --> 46:31.870] [EMMA__BEST]: It's not either or.
[46:32.410 --> 46:36.390] [EMMA__BEST]: But, WikiLeaks has always described themselves as an intelligence agency.
[46:37.410 --> 46:39.330] [EMMA__BEST]: That's been on the website from the beginning.
[46:39.330 --> 46:42.610] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, or it was on their website in the beginning.
[46:43.510 --> 46:47.270] [EMMA__BEST]: They, sold merchandise, with that for quite a while.
[46:47.630 --> 46:57.510] [EMMA__BEST]: They, described themselves as, doing all the things that an intelligence agency does, while talking to Manning, and getting, getting documents.
[46:58.650 --> 47:06.990] [EMMA__BEST]: And, you know, they even launched what they called a counterintelligence unit, in 2013, as part of the spy word files.
[47:07.730 --> 47:12.210] [EMMA__BEST]: The goal of WikiLeaks has always been a form of counterintelligence.
[47:12.870 --> 47:20.350] [EMMA__BEST]: Using the exposure of secrets to degrade the, the operations of a government, military, or corporation.
[47:21.650 --> 47:26.330] [EMMA__BEST]: The ideal has always been that this is limited to corrupt activities.
[47:27.090 --> 47:30.870] [EMMA__BEST]: And that that's where the secrecy tax, as Julian described it, would come in.
[47:31.730 --> 47:34.790] [EMMA__BEST]: But the reality is, it applies to just about everything.
[47:35.890 --> 47:38.410] [EMMA__BEST]: And, yeah.
[47:39.210 --> 47:42.070] [EMMA__BEST]: So to answer your question, WikiLeaks is both.
[47:42.530 --> 47:45.810] [EMMA__BEST]: They're a journalist organization, and an intelligence organization.
[47:46.290 --> 47:48.210] [EMMA__BEST]: And they admit, they admit as such.
[47:49.530 --> 48:01.830] [ALEXURBELS]: You know, I, I love, I love that answer too, because there, there are, you know, having spent time in intelligence myself, and, there are obviously such parallels between journalism and intelligence collection.
[48:01.830 --> 48:13.110] [ALEXURBELS]: In fact, some would say that the, the activities themselves are very, very similar, especially when it comes down to the protection of, of an intelligence community, we would call it the protection of sources and methods.
[48:13.510 --> 48:20.370] [ALEXURBELS]: And, in the journalistic world, the media world, you know, there is this very high premium placed on the protection of sources.
[48:21.250 --> 48:37.630] [ALEXURBELS]: And, and so the, the tactics and the techniques of journalists and intelligence agents are, I think are, and the priorities of both are, are very aligned in so many interesting ways that create unique parallels and, and perhaps even paradoxes like we're seeing here.
[48:37.630 --> 48:44.930] [ALEXURBELS]: But, um, I want to pass it over to you to talk about what are the next steps with this data leak?
[48:45.190 --> 48:47.210] [ALEXURBELS]: Um, how do we get in touch with you?
[48:47.430 --> 48:50.890] [ALEXURBELS]: How do our listeners keep track of distributed denial of secrets?
[48:51.150 --> 48:53.970] [ALEXURBELS]: All that type of thing that I'm preempting Rob T. Firefly from asking here.
[48:58.760 --> 48:59.460] [ROBVINCENT]: Yes, indeed.
[48:59.620 --> 49:02.000] [ROBVINCENT]: But, just, we just have a couple of minutes left.
[49:04.880 --> 49:08.200] [EMMA__BEST]: Okay, hopefully we'll be launching, uh, the new version of our website soon.
[49:08.380 --> 49:12.900] [EMMA__BEST]: And that'll come with some updates, including the updated listing for Assange leaks.
[49:13.360 --> 49:25.120] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, in the meantime, if journalists are interested in going through the, the data or accessing the database, they can find the contact information on DDoSsecrets.com.
[49:26.080 --> 49:29.720] [EMMA__BEST]: Um, unfortunately you cannot tweet about us.
[49:29.900 --> 49:47.200] [EMMA__BEST]: We have been banned from Twitter since we published the blue leaks, the law enforcement documents, but, um, yeah, you can, you can still, you know, email people about it, even if you can't go on Reddit or Facebook or Twitter to talk about us.
[49:48.180 --> 49:49.480] [EMMA__BEST]: Too much transparency.
[49:50.540 --> 49:52.600] [ROBVINCENT]: Emma, thank you so much for joining us today.
[49:53.160 --> 49:56.420] [ROBVINCENT]: Um, again, that's DDOSsecrets.com.
[49:56.920 --> 50:03.760] [ROBVINCENT]: Um, and, check out, hope.net for the latest on what we're up to outside of this, uh, here radio show.
[50:03.980 --> 50:12.700] [ROBVINCENT]: Uh, our conference comes up in the summer and, uh, Gila, you had, uh, how things go over here at WBAI.
[50:13.060 --> 50:14.020] [GILADRAZEN]: I sure do.
[50:14.260 --> 50:17.860] [GILADRAZEN]: So we wanted to thank the listeners of off the hook.
[50:18.320 --> 50:22.900] [GILADRAZEN]: Um, we have gotten a lot of new WBAI buddies, which is amazing.
[50:22.900 --> 50:28.440] [GILADRAZEN]: If you want to donate to the radio station, keep us on the air and keep asking you for money less.
[50:28.440 --> 50:32.340] [GILADRAZEN]: You want to give us a call at 212-209-2950.
[50:32.340 --> 50:37.160] [GILADRAZEN]: Pledge what you can, or visit give2wbai.com.
[50:37.920 --> 50:43.680] [GILADRAZEN]: And, um, you can become a WBAI buddy, a sustaining member of the radio station.
[50:43.680 --> 50:48.300] [GILADRAZEN]: And again, the more you give us, the less we have to ask you for everybody wins.
[50:49.120 --> 50:50.940] [GILADRAZEN]: Um, it's a great thing.
[50:51.080 --> 50:54.460] [GILADRAZEN]: Also, don't forget this Friday is the first Friday of the month.
[50:54.460 --> 51:08.780] [GILADRAZEN]: So get out and meet your 2600 buddies in three dimensions, uh, at a meeting near you and check out 2600.com/meetings to find out where to find your local hacker meetup.
[51:09.840 --> 51:10.360] [ROBVINCENT]: Absolutely.
[51:10.740 --> 51:15.880] [ROBVINCENT]: And, uh, you happen to be listening to a track called, uh, press the yellow key by Todd Maziersky.
[51:16.080 --> 51:26.880] [ROBVINCENT]: If, uh, you're, if you're a creative, uh, if you'd like us to consider something you've made as an outro, um, send us email oth@2600.com.
[51:27.160 --> 51:30.300] [ROBVINCENT]: Find us on Mastodon, Off The Hook at hackers.town.
[51:30.860 --> 51:34.100] [ROBVINCENT]: And, uh, take care of that crazy world out there.
[51:34.760 --> 51:37.640] [ROBVINCENT]: We all put a lot of work into it for Off The Hook.
[51:37.760 --> 51:38.320] [ROBVINCENT]: This has been Rob T. Firefly.