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It's time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
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A very, very good evening to you.
the program is off the hook rob t firefly here with you and i am joined here by gila good evening
good evening and out there in skype land we are joined by alex you are indeed good evening
everybody and we should have emmanuel and kyle guys are you out there i think we're out here
hi are we out here yeah sort of yeah we're uh we're currently uh traveling uh on i-287
somewhere in new jersey um we're actually returning from seeing the eclipse uh we got delayed quite a
bit um just um moving all around the country and uh exploring and seeing and listening listening to
a lot of radio i'll tell you um damn lucky to have a station like wbai because there are so few
outlets for what i perceive as sanity out there when you find them it's priceless but
boy um i'm ready to talk more about the state of radio in this country as well as anything else but
mostly happy to uh take contact again it's been a while it has it's been a while uh you've been
running around doing all sorts of exciting things and uh we've been here that the eclipse actually
uh reached here too so uh we we got to see that as well to a degree we certainly did um people on
rooftops certainly all over new york city uh looked over saw a couple construction workers on the building
next to my office building uh who had taken a break to watch the eclipse it was fantastic
indeed um you are you see the eclipse
was that was that a question for me it was a little garbled there i think so yes i did
yes i did see the eclipse i was actually out kayaking on a lake as it happened in pennsylvania
it was pretty cloudy but still uh really extraordinary to see everything get really dark
i was very glad that i wore a coat when i went out kayaking because when i left so that was
pretty warm i maybe maybe it'll get cold if it gets dark and lo and behold it did get cold
um but everything around the lake started to act very nocturnally when it got cold and dark and uh
it was it was really quite an experience it was very cool well we actually went all the way out to
texas um in the austin area but then it turned out to be rob the karate so we drove out to
emmanuel you're kind of cutting in and out a little there were there were four minutes
and um and we really uh got quite a show didn't get the entire experience uh the sun was behind clouds
then uh it emerged for a second everybody cheered that happened four times i got really really dark
so i'd say all in all it was
i think emmanuel is getting eclipsed a bit uh on this on this uh call that we're doing
i'm just entertained by where he's dropping out you know we drove to silence it was really
silence i'm sorry technical difficulties are never funny but they are happening at funny times right now
we can go back into this afterward and fill it in like a mad lib
emmanuel go ahead i need a quick version of your game well we drove out to texas and we saw the damn
eclipse and it was worth it it was cloudy but you know we do it again in 50 years thank you for the
clarification we appreciate that absolutely now alex uh where are you because uh you it seems to us
over camera here that you are somewhere unfamiliar yes i'm in a new location um i'm i'm in the country
uh i think we're all in the country as far as i can tell um but i'm in boston tonight actually i'm in
i haven't been here in the city in about 10 years but i'm here for a conference tomorrow the national
association of legal professionals and i get to speak on a panel about um a very exciting uh topic of
artificial intelligence in the legal profession and uh and using ai and business contacts all that all
that fun stuff so so they're uh trumpeting the the advantages of spicy autocomplete
yeah pretty much that that's it but i will say though since we do like to talk about trains on
this you know i took amtrak from the new penn station from the moynihan penn station and i would say you
know for every one time that i take the train north i probably take it south down to dc probably about
50 or 100 times and it is such a pleasant way to travel to boston on the train i mean you go along
the water most for a very long way it's really it's quite a beautiful journey i think up up to boston
and then you get to boston and you realize you know this isn't really a real like for me in my opinion
boston's a nice city but uh it's just too clean i think i need more dirt and grit around me in order
to feel like i'm really in an urban environment well um yeah come back to new york we have plenty of
that for you um kyle and i were in dc yesterday just to complete the story um and we actually
were um uh present at the house of representatives and the senate uh it was quite a quite a day because
in order to um to be part of the gallery of either of those legislative bodies you have to get a pass
from either your representative or your senator depending on which one you're going to and what
kyle and i did was we went to uh senate office buildings and house office buildings and visited
the offices of our respective representatives and senators kyle's from washington i'm from new york
and every door was unlocked of course we had to go through security of a whole bunch of times
for every building we went into i think it was six times um and when we went to the uh the offices
everyone was very happy to see us and we had no trouble getting passes and those passes allowed us
to get into the gallery um so i suggested it's it's really uh kind of interesting can be boring
obviously uh what they don't tell you with um especially the house of representatives is how few
people are on the floor you don't see that on c-span you only see the people who are talking
you don't see who's not there you don't see who's not paying attention i think maybe there were a total
of 10 people on the floor and of those five of them were on their cell phones so nobody's really
paying attention to what's being read when the person is groaning on and on
not even when they know that there's a gallery of the people they work for watching them
uh they don't care and in fact the um the gallery only had about five or six people at that point
uh this was this was actually in the evening on monday so i'm not sure how it wasn't one of the
most um um contentious appearance but it was a full house meeting and a full senate meeting uh it was
kind of cool to go to the senate and see all these senators just coming out you know we saw bernie
sanders and they were voting they're voting on something i wasn't sure what they were voting on
but you remember when mccain gave the thumbs down to um uh to getting rid of obamacare well that's
how the senators wrote they did thumbs up thumbs down they some of them open up the door and just
hold in hold up their thumbs up or down and and that's it and then they leave and their vote is
recorded that way there's a lot of weirdness going on in washington and it kind of it's kind of
charming in some ways kind of disturbing in others and by the way speaking of amtrak we took the auto
train yeah we we put our car on the train both ways uh down to florida and uh and that's how we got
around do i hear someone else in the car with you or is that uh is that an ai of some sort
that's the ways lady you know she's trying to get me killed several times she's told me to make a
left turn on a divided highway and has not backed down um so i can't really uh take her that seriously
but i'm trying to follow her advice now
a highway divided cannot stand um well we'd uh we'd like to talk about a little bit of news uh there was
there was something that uh caught our eye in this household this past week and uh that is
upcoming entertainment we don't talk a lot on this program about uh upcoming tv movies that sort of
thing although that's a that's an interest i think uh we all share to various degrees and there is a
show that uh is being that is being produced by the tv manufacturer tcl as in the people who made
our tv as in if you want to dox us like that but um the the uh the tcl manufacturer has their own
video concern because you can't you can't do anything today without having your own little
video streaming channel and uh begging people to install it on their on their smart tvs and uh tcl has
their own one called tcl plus and tcl plus you know there's uh there's various things on that channel
but uh one thing that's got a lot of people talking this week is a show called next stop
paris now gila yes rob if you if you hear about a show called next stop paris what do you think it's
about i would assume it's about people traveling around europe i would guess it's kind of like the love
boat except maybe on a train and uh what kind of writers would you expect to work on such a production
um television writers human television writers see now that's where that's where this all falls
apart because this show is made by ai wait what it's it's uh it's it's uh it's produced uh via use
of spicy autocomplete and the uh there is a trailer online that's a kind of uncanny valley i'm not going
to play it but uh it's it's kind of going all over the place um the lip syncing is widely off uh 404
media reported about this the scenes are not detailed walking animations don't work properly
people in environments warp constantly um this is an ai tv show wait a second though and i actually
am curious about this so tcl plus is a fast channel i'm assuming right free ad supporter television
tcl tv plus yes tcl tv plus excuse me is a fast channel but wasn't one of the things that came out
of the writers strike the resolution of the wga strike was that they you can't create a tv show
without human writers like isn't that a rule so is tcl tv doing a non-union production i have so many
questions it's uh it's unclear um chris regina the chief content officer for tcl because every
company that builds appliances for a living needs a chief content officer naturally um uh he says uh
we're not looking to replace people this is still very much a human practice we're using writers we're
using actors and animators we've been really fortunate to find a lot of great talent out there
who weren't working that have become part of our team but this this thing seems like they're
cutting many corners they're using ai to do it and if uh if this is the future of entertainment
it's it's kind of depressing um alex you were kind of uh shaking your head uh at this what what are
your thoughts on this uh the whole thing seems kind of ridiculous uh in in so many ways and and a
harbinger of of things to come i mean as you're you you like calling it this kind of spicy autocomplete
right i mean the the i i just it doesn't sit well with me the idea that artificial intelligence can
ingest things that happen before and and make some kind of recommendation about what would be
appealing or creative to human beings in terms of consumption of something new it just it feels like
the creative capacity of our species is being usurped in a lot of ways by something that we're
mistaking for intelligence but yet is is entirely artificial i mean we forget about that adjective
in in front of the noun right that is artificial it's fake it doesn't really um it doesn't have all
the characteristics of human intelligence human intelligence is real artificial intelligence is
basically putting a bunch of things in a blender and spitting it back out and on the basis of
uh statistical probabilities um and that just seems to me like if we rely on it too much it's going to
sap us or or rob us of our creative capacities and abilities in the future uh just as i think
smartphones have made us dumber people
i i think that's uh that's a that's a fair way to put it um we we are not going to go ahead out go
ahead man you know that it doesn't have the attributes of human intelligence but can we
really say that about a lot of what's on tv these days particularly the so-called reality shows
i mean you know occasionally this is one thing that i've learned from staying in cheap hotels all
across the country over the last couple of weeks but boy there's a lot of crap on tv and radio but
the things that pass for entertainment these days they're just you you would think that the same
person wrote them all you know there is nothing cutting edge there is nothing but much of a semblance
of intelligence it's basically the same shock value the same type of some daytime judge telling people
things that they listen to for some reason or some quote-unquote shocking talk show um there are good
things obviously in the media as in all media even social media but boy um yeah the artificial
intelligence thing is a problem but i think it's it's our lowered standards that's really the problem
where we can actually be fooled into accepting something that's not even human
yeah i mean a lot of us on this program have worked in various creative capacities um
and uh you know even even the stuff that uh kind of gets churned out like you're talking about
that doesn't seem to have a soul behind it at some point you know a movie or a tv show that is
lousy low effort whatever there are still people who put that together and maybe got something back
for their efforts the thing that it reminded me of when you were first talking about this was last
year we were visiting family and we were hanging out with a couple of little children and being told
knock knock jokes by a three-year-old is what i was reminded of when i was thinking about ai produced
tv right a three-year-old came up to me and said knock knock i said who's there and she said necklace
and i said necklace who and she said teeth because she knew that a knock knock joke was you said knock
knock and they said who's there and you said something and then something back and then you said a third
thing and then everybody laughed and that was how it worked it didn't make any sense but that was the
formula and that is the kind of sense that i even we're just watching the trailer on silent and
that's what's going on this is i i'm willing to out myself as a bit of a rom-com aficionado and
boy this is not it um this is utterly terrifying and soulless and i haven't even heard the dialogue yet
also i think it's very telling that the tcl tv plus youtube channel where this is hosted has turned
off the comments not not only have they turned off the comments the video seems to by the stats on the
youtube here it has 106 000 views and only 235 people have clicked uh thumbs up on it i am curious how many
people have clicked thumbs down on it but i think you can hide that stat yeah
wow hey um if i can uh steer the ship in a different direction um this is something that i i want to discuss
and i i think they'd like to hear uh alex's view on this but um we recently have had a lot of
activity with the um uh surveillance act i believe is what it's called uh 702 um and
not uh not the most recent action but a fairly recent action involved the former president former
president trump stepping uh stepping into um um uh the scene you know basically to his uh republican
reports that he wanted this bill to die he wanted the surveillance i'm sorry raise is going crazy now
uh to step in and kill the bill because completely wrong it was not used against him um but basically
what i've seen as a result of that are people normally intelligent people thinking that trump
understands um surveillance better than biden because trump wanted to to kill this bill and biden did not
i don't know uh i've seen people like edward snowden posting things saying we have to get biden out of
office not caring that getting biden out of office would bring trump into office um because of this
one issue and it really bothers me to see people falling for that because i can guarantee you trump does
not care about um uh your rights being violated it certainly does not understand how surveillance works
what is needed what is needed what is not needed um i'm just wondering alex if you have any feelings on
this yeah i i do have a lot of feelings on it it's it's really a a totally crazy and ridiculous
situation we have here with with trump essentially being what's likely on the right side of the issue but
probably for all of the wrong reasons and also it it seems as if he may be on the right side of the
issue because he's been laboring under an erroneous assumption that this was actually used against him
now what he's referencing is an fbi investigation into one of his close campaign associates by the name
of carter page and the the fisa statute was actually utilized to engage in uh judicially supervised
surveillance as i understand it of carter page if you recall correctly back in 2016 this bizarre
character who was very much pro trump and going around and and and preaching trump's gospel so to speak
was very closely connected with oligarchs in russia and russia himself and the fisa statute which stands
for the foreign intelligence surveillance act was uh um utilized in that a i believe in an fbi official
made some kind of declaration under oath and then the department of justice went to the fisc or the
foreign intelligence surveillance court and they made an application to a judge of that court
it sounds a little crazy but it's it's like a secret court and the judge had then authorized a
warrant to surveil carter page an american citizen because they believed that there was reason to
believe there was probable cause to find that carter page was the agent of a foreign power that's what
the foreign intelligence surveillance act uh is there for and in fact if we recall correctly and emmanuel
you probably remember this um project minaret and and things like that where where there was this
warrantless surveillance of many uh u.s citizens and and electronic communications were being monitored by
the government and it was being used to monitor activists during the vietnam war and martin luther king
and muhammad ali and there were you know a bunch of notables that were essentially placed on watch
lists and that was considered to be very anti-american at the time and so something
called the church commission was started and the church commission which was started by senator i believe
it was frank church senator church i can't remember the first name i think was frank church in any event
at the end of the church commission they decided that if there is going to be some kind
of foreign intelligence type of surveillance of u.s citizens it needs to be done according to law
and that's what the faiza act that's where the faiza act came from so faiza created the foreign
intelligence surveillance court and required some kind of judicial supervision of this this type of
activity so that's what happened with carter page they there was an actual warrant that was issued to
surveil him because he was thought to have been the agent of a foreign power
trump didn't like that that one of his associates was suspected to have direct links with russia and
even the judiciary had agreed with that so he just doesn't like faiza uh in general like now and
that's totally different than section 702 because section 702 of faiza which is going to be reauthorized
or i believe um i think it passed the house at this point uh it's 702 uh pertains to
this warrantless type of program where in order to collect intelligence abroad and remember the
constitution only applies to united states citizens it doesn't apply to everybody else people that are
abroad are legitimate targets of foreign intelligence collection whether you're in the united kingdom
whether you're in russia whether you're in saudi arabia if you are a foreign national you can be the
target of foreign intelligence collection by the united states intelligence community that's just
a simple fact you the constitution doesn't protect people in saudi arabia for example so section 702
authorizes the government to essentially hoover up a huge amount of communications from all around the
globe in the name of collecting intelligence on foreign citizens and foreign governments and foreign signals
intelligence and things like that but in so doing you incidentally collect a bunch of intelligence on
american citizens and so section 702 is about well what can the government do how can they access that
particular information and the amendments under i believe the safe act of section 702 were intended to
put some kind of greater sense of guardrails around that so that just like a faiza warrant that was
issued against carter page that you would have to go to a judge in order to access that repository of
data that was hoovered up ostensibly to collect intelligence on foreign nationals but has actually
wound up collecting intelligence incidentally on american citizens so if you want to access that with
respect to an american citizen and american citizens data it would make sense that you would need to have
some kind of judicial supervision so that's what trump is is is against he's against the reauthorization of
section 702 which allows that program to exist so in in the sense you know if you're a privacy
advocate or a civil libertarian uh it seems like trump is on the right side of the issues but his rationale
is totally screwed up the other thing that i think is really worth mentioning and then i'll stop my
diatribe after this is that as i understand it the speaker of the house went down to mar-a-lago
and spoke with trump about this and said hey can we get you on side to kind of reauthorize this at least
for a little bit in uh and we won't reauthorize it for another five years or so but what we'll do is
we'll have it sunset in two years and at that point it can be uh reviewed revised and and the the issue
can can come up again and whatever administration is in power at that point can then make some kind
of political decision about this so he's thinking that he's going to be back in power and this might
actually benefit him and as somebody who has promised that he's going to turn the power of the united
states intelligence community and law enforcement community and the courts against his political
enemies well section 702 might actually come in handy so uh and and diatribe there but yeah there's a lot
to unpack yeah the whole thing about um in two years like what would he have done in assuming he was
president in two years and this thing expired in two years what might he have done
well he could he could have done a lot i mean he could totally abuse this right i mean this this can
certainly be abused by uh any kind of administration right you know the the amount of data that is is
being picked up by uh the intelligence community in these programs is pretty extraordinary um it's in my
opinion it's really you know nothing new i think this kind of intelligence collection can really
go all the way back to um even world war one where military and diplomatic affairs were transmitted via
things like telegram and there was uh the precursor to the nsa was actually sitting in new york it was
called the the american black chamber and western union and the postal telegraph company used to
actually allow intelligence officers to go into their offices and copy telegrams at that point but
what we're dealing with now um and and this is actually something i argued in an article in the
intercept almost 10 years ago and uh an op-ed they don't usually publish op-eds but you know that
that we we have this moral or visceral reaction to this type of surveillance not because it's necessarily
wrong it's it's become par for the course in terms of how governments operate but because it's a
difference of degree in terms of how much information is being hoovered up by governments and how much
information about our personal lives is out there so yeah uh emmanuel i think this is really ripe and
rife for abuse so how do we reassure someone out there listening who is a privacy advocate
who sees joe biden pushing for this sees trump for whatever his reasons are pushing against it
um how do we convince somebody like that to not make a decision that could be detrimental
well i i i think we we have to call this out for what it is and i think the biden administration
is on the wrong side of this and you know if you're a privacy advocate and you believe in guard
rails around this type of sensitive data and especially if you're a technologist there are
easier and better ways for you to control or audit or even log who's accessing this particular type of
data as i understand it there were even some incidents a few years ago that may have indicated
that law the law enforcement community at the federal level the fbi in particular may have been
accessing and appropriately section 702 data so i think maybe even putting up some technical means
and measures some security controls and enhanced auditing capabilities to ensure that this type of
data is not being abused or misused and and making that data transparent would be the way to go forward
the biden administration seems to think that virtually unfettered access to this type of data without
transparency or some kind of audit trail like that is the way to go because of the exigent needs of
the intelligence and law enforcement community um and and that for us those are arguments that we don't buy
so i think it's perfectly fine to say we may not agree with everything joe biden says or does but trump
is going about this for the wrong reasons and he's totally mistaken he's he's blundering the whole
argument as he does with everything that requires nuance or intelligence and if he's back in power
this is something that he will undoubtedly abuse when it comes up for reauthorization
okay well that's that's the conversation i wanted to have on on this particular matter uh right now i'm
focusing on crossing the george washington grid without causing any chaos so um bob gila any any thoughts on this
i mean i guess my first question is is there anyone who is a one issue voter on this i guess is my
question and i admittedly don't know enough of the background or the issues at hand but you know
if alex thinks the biden administration is on the wrong side of this one that's enough for me that works
i'll take that but you know is anybody a one issue voter on this to the point where they're willing to
vote for not biden in the presidential election because of this i guess would be my question
yeah there there are one issue voters on all sorts of things it's an infinitely uh diverse world out there
and uh it this is definitely something to keep an eye on something to uh voice to those in power if you
feel one way or another about it um whatever side of the political aisle they may be on because that's
how it's all supposed to work and yes alex well i i you know you mentioned the word work right and
and and emmanuel and kyle were were were down in dc watching the sausage be made yesterday you know
these senators and these members of the house they they show up for work i don't think that it is
unreasonable for us to expect that they do the work that we pay them to do and that they should be
willing to take up these these issues like you know some form of comprehensive privacy legislation at
the federal level that perhaps preempts the patchwork of privacy laws that we have at the state level
not to say that you know they don't keep us busy as lawyers that's great but from a a national
standpoint what we need to address this issue is is not necessarily to give the president or law
enforcement community brand new powers under the uh to surveil american citizens without some kind of
auditing or transparency or even judicial gatekeeping what we need is congress to act to pass a law that
covers this section 702 data within it i don't think it's asking too much of our senators and our
congressmen to show up every day and to address these very difficult but yet bipartisan and critical
issues i think the fact that we're not doing this and we're lagging behind europe in many many years now
that's had gdpr in place uh is starting to make america look like this is not the place
of of innovation when it comes to to technology and and and and and it's not the the forum where you want to be
uh with respect to um anything that's forward-looking and innovative so i i think they need to get on the
ball they need to earn the salary that we're paying them and to
you're exactly right alex the fact that they did not amend this and they're kicking it down the road
so that could potentially be profoundly worse in 2026 is ridiculous i heard mark warner talking about
this in a really mealy-mouthed way about how if a citizen is under cyber attack from a fishing and
they're having a state actor victimize them let us help you help that you know it's like it's like a
mob tactic like oh the government's gonna step in and save you because you got fish i think that is a
that is a really really thin argument and it was really hard to believe that that's the defense
of warrantlessness warrantlessness to me is profoundly un-american sorry i keep saying profoundly
but this is a bad bad moment to screw this up because i gotta say we do have a lot of need
internationally to have some protections because there's a lot of messed up stuff going on from some
of these governments and we we ought to have some capacity to investigate this but i'm gonna tell you
what the saddest part about this for me is how little communication goes on and it has gone on and
gotten progressively worse in the last 10 20 years we are not talking and international friends of
ours aren't talking to us and that may be one thing for the the hacker world you know that and it's very
sad it's incredibly depressing to me how little people are willing to talk we talked about travel
being difficult to get into the u.s for other people in other parts of the world well they're now
reluctant to communicate with us we're doing less talking than ever with our friends overseas and
that extends to the business world and anyone else interacting with anyone from another part of the
world that is bad for commerce that is bad for society we are ever more connected and we need to have
trust if no one trusts us outside of the u.s we're not an active player in the world so that's that's all i'm
going to say but it is really sad where we're headed with this they have got to amend law that's their job
yeah i mean and and it shouldn't be crazy to expect that they do their job i mean it's it's really it's
totally nuts i think it's an abdication of their responsibility as congress men and women that that
they are not doing their job that they're not taking up this issue and the fact that trump is on
one side of it and you have republicans and democrats on on the other side of it this is a you know a real
bipartisan issue that i think affects people's lives is and is fundamental to how we view the fourth
amendment and our constitutional rights here uh this is a another issue where i think you know we don't
necessarily have to sacrifice security for liberty here i think we can have both if we think about it
and we create and craft uh you know well thought out legislation that balances these two like we can
have it all here we just have to hash it out we have to expect congress to sit down and address these
really really difficult issues and i think it's important for congress and the senate in particular to
stand up to the biden administration um and you know senators that simply because they're democrats
don't they shouldn't have to toe the line simply because this is something that joe biden wants
and i think that that's it's really admirable what we've been seeing from senators like
ron wyden who have stood up against uh and and have called out the president said you know we he thinks
this is wrong and that we should not be giving the president more powers when it comes to surveil american
citizens and i think it's i think it's absolutely wonderful when we see dissent amongst the party
pushing back against the president that tells me that democracy is at work here and that we can
uh talk and debate these issues uh even if trump happens to be in that debate for all the wrong
blubbering idiotic reasons well said well said everyone hey i want to make uh talking of putting
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we would very much appreciate it you can learn more about the buddy program at buddy.wbai.org
or just in general give to wbai.org that's the number two give to wbai.org uh there are all kinds of
fun premiums that exist um and we would any any little bit helps and again the more you give the less
we ask so everybody wins these are completely tax-deductible donations and you can write
off a whole bunch on your taxes next year if you give to the station now
absolutely
so what's next for us
what do we got i'm crossing the Washington Bridge right now at this very moment it's a little slow
but i think we're making it through but uh just to reiterate what you guys said it's so important
to support community radio when kyle and i were driving across the country
well i gotta tell you there's um there are good stations out there uh we we heard a number of
community stations uh even npr was a breath of fresh air uh in the desert of um of broadcasting
that you find in many places we heard one station where there's this guy literally reading
grocery prices for an hour uh for blind people it was a radio station for blind people that
couldn't do that on their own and um it was it was you know not exactly my first choice of radio
listening but still it's what radio is all about it's uh public service it's about providing something
to the public and obviously they've been doing that for a while and it resonates um we heard a number
of other stations like that but mostly what what we heard um well of course there's am radio uh where
it's either uh religion uh or sports or right-wing hate radio uh which is basically portraying anyone
that does not agree with them as the devil uh or a communist or whatever uh doesn't matter what the
facts are um and people believe this i really believe that people themselves are not um uh racist
um or hateful
but when they when they hear this constantly when it's reiterated constantly to them it becomes the
truth becomes a fact and that makes them make bad decisions and listen to the wrong people
anyway that's am radio fm radio well you know you have your usual uh mix of music pretty much the
same as everywhere else uh but then there's the non-commercial band now for those who don't know
below 92 on the fm dial is reserved for non-commercial stations we're not below 92 because well wbai it's
just weird how we got to be at 99.5 different story different time we'll we'll tell that story again
in the future uh but what we found below 92 instead of college stations instead of commercial stations
uh i'm sorry non-commercial um stations like npr or pacifica we found so many religious stations
and since religious stations are exempt from tax they qualify to be below 92 this was a problem
uh years ago when it began it's a lot more of a problem now because i would say nine out of 10
stations below 92 in various parts of the country are religious and that means that means that a lot
of commercial uh non-commercial stations or college stations that might exist are silent they don't
exist because those frequencies are taken up by non-commercial quote-unquote non-commercial
christian stations um and when you listen to them they're touting the same right-wing hate line
that you'll hear on those am stations and it's it's basically it sounds like a commercial station
except they don't have commercials because their product is religion and somehow that makes a
different it's sad you know as a as a corollary to that in our discussion uh emmanuel one thing that
comes to my mind and i know we've talked about this a couple of years ago during a fundraiser but
the idea that wbai exists on a radio station itself and not just the internet not just a podcast the fact
that this show is is live on the air is i i think it's something that that privacy advocates should
really take note of as well because if you think about radio itself it's so incredibly different
as a as a way of spreading information and getting information out than any other electronic form of
communication with which we've become uh accustomed these days because anybody who has a radio can just
turn it on and listen to the airwaves that are coming into their house you're tuning into a certain
frequency a radio frequency that doesn't require some kind of acknowledgement there's no handshake
there's no ip address this type of information this type of chatter if you value privacy if you are a
privacy advocate a civil libertarian you don't want this type of medium to go away because then
all forms of information receipt are going to be logged and audited and viewable by somebody else
that there will be a record in some log file somewhere that your ip address accessed a particular
website at this date and time and downloaded this html file or viewed this information with radio you
don't have that you turn it on you can be listening to country music wqxr classical stations you can be
listening to subversive radio talking about hackers and the societal ramifications of information
technology at 7 p.m on off the hook it doesn't matter there's no receipt of it and so i think in this
era where we may very well be creeping up to a second term of the trump presidency where our values
when it comes to privacy are going to be really stretched to the limit and put to the test
and and resistance is going to become critical once again that radio is going to play a very very
large part and if we lose it it will never come back you should think about that when considering
whether to support wbai absolutely in this era where everything seems like it's uh it's going
downward it's it's uh you know scary things are happening and the the continued existence of
a medium like radio in fact radio because there are no other media like radio in the modern world
um even your television is telling you know 47 000 different companies what you're watching when
you're watching it but radio is there and radio has a place and uh you could keep us doing what we
do here at wbai by going to give to wbai.org or buddy.wbai.org i want to thank the listener who sent
us an email uh showing us their donation receipt uh they didn't sign this so i won't uh read their
name but uh said good evening off the hook i donated to the wbai tower fund i selected off the hook as
my favorite show and uh they go on to say this is in addition to my continuing to be a bai buddy for
off the hook this this superstar and you know who you are um out there listening um is already a buddy and
made an additional donation to the tower fund and uh it's stuff like that that keeps us going that
also just keeps us i think feeling really really good about what we do here i think it warms our
collective hearts it really does because you know we could be sitting here we're talking to each other
we're talking into the world but knowing that what we are saying is reaching people and people
appreciate it and want to help us keep doing it both the us on this particular show and the greater us
of the wbai community it's really really touching it is um we will not be doing off the hook over time
tonight uh that will return in a future installment we're not on next week either we are uh taking a
break next week we will be back the first week of uh may that uh may may the first these days good
heavens yeah already but uh send us email at oth at 2600.com uh find us on mastodon off the
hook at hackers.town we are still on twitter at hacker radio show for the uh three or four people
who are still paying attention there and uh since we will not uh since we will not be around for a
couple of weeks you know maybe check out the back catalog a little maybe check out some other stuff here
on wbai and uh as we as we keep doing what we do and uh i also want to thank the uh submitter of
the music that will be closing the show this is jason didner um i have invited folks over on
mastodon to submit songs music that they make to uh to be our closing theme and uh we've gotten some
really good stuff we got uh we got one for last time we were on we got one for this time and if you
are a musician we know there are a lot of creative people out there in the wbai fam and the off the
hook fam let us know and uh if you'd like to share some music with our listeners we'll check it out
this is disinformation overload by jason didner for off the hook this has been rob t firefly
have a very good night very good week