and that's give to wbai.org online all right enough dilly-dallying let's go into the next
program which that happens to be off the hook and it's 7 p.m here at wbai new york and wbai.org online
bing
bing
bing
bing
at the customer's request the line you were using has been toll restricted
only local calls will be completed thank you for listening to off the hook
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off
i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a cough
we couldn't get much worse
but if they could they would
i hope that's understood 
and a very good evening to everybody the program is off the hook
emmanuel goldstein here with you on this delightful wednesday evening joined tonight
by kyle over here and uh... over in skype land we have rob t firefly good evening
we have gila good evening and we have alex
uh...
alex you're very low
every week alex every
uh... it's a little low still can you turn up your volume
is this any better no it's it's it sounds like you're very far away
really far what okay that's that that that seems a little better now
yeah
okay
is it a new setup every week alex is
new microphones and
pretty much actually uh... this is a
slightly new setup today so
well um
uh... you know the old setups are fine
a programming note um... we will be off the air next week and the week after so
this is our last show for the next
three weeks so enjoy it while you can because
um... we're going to be uh... uh... doing other things
uh... as you may well know
um... but uh... there's plenty going on right now
um... gosh i don't know where to begin
uh... things are
well i mean it's the eve of july 4th
maybe it's the last july 4th
i don't know well it won't be the last july 4th it might be the last independence day
i don't know
uh... any
any uh... thoughts alex on uh... latest um
uh... rulings from
on high
that uh... have have changed
have pretty much changed that the um... the way this this country is governed
forever
yeah i mean there's there's so much
disappointment i think and is this any better are my levels any better by the way
well you're leaning way up close to the screen there and i see that you're very
close so i think
if it gets a little bit higher it might be good but um... this is sufficient
yeah
yeah i don't know what's going on here
but um... and i guess the same could be said for the supreme court
i mean the the late the trump immunity ruling was was really
uh... interesting and and disappointing in
in many many ways
obviously the the dc circuit seemed to have thought this was a
a nothing issue
issued its per curium opinion essentially meaning for the court
and it was pretty tight but yet
the supreme court decided to grant certiori to that particular case and issue
this
opinion from a few days ago
and
what they did was
was bifurcate the official and unofficial acts of trump during that time
and had then
claimed that well we don't necessarily know
what is an official act and what's an unofficial act
can i just break in
bifurcate is not a word that most of our listeners use in everyday conversation
certainly isn't one i use i have no idea what it means so please
um... you know talk talk down to us regular people
okay sure yeah i can i can use fewer syllables if you'd like but that means it
it split it into two
right so
um... you know the the trick is in the the the by
the two is in the that one
but i i you know i i think wbai listeners are very smart as a matter of fact
i i would imagine that most of them have a better vocabulary than i do
but uh...
well it's not about smartness it's about lingo it's about you know jargon it's
about using particular uh... words in your particular field in your case you're
you're a leading attorney in this nation
uh... perhaps beyond and um... you're the one that's going to explain just what the
hell's going on
uh... in in this in this country of ours
well so so really what they did was they they split this into two issues right
well you know for official acts the president is going to be immune from both uh... criminal and civil liability up and up until this point we'd only really talked about uh... civil liability and in many of these cases and so this was a totally new issue for the court to to talk about and to to opine on and and if you're going to have any kind of criminal liability for the sovereign here for the executive branch the president of the united states uh...
what the supreme court said was well we have to figure out which of his acts on january 6th were official acts and which were unofficial acts
where what was it an official act when he was exhorting
masses of people to go down to the capital and and
smash it up and break in to try to quote unquote stop the steal
uh... or was it an official act or an unofficial act when he was speaking with the attorney general about various things
so all of these are issues
i think quite frankly they're mixed questions of law and fact and those are the most difficult questions that a court has to
answer
because if it was just a question of a fact
well then you could have a judge or a jury
decide the fact remember juries decide
factual issues in the united states they don't touch legal issues
so
uh... if this was purely an issue of law
a judge could decide it and the supreme court itself could have decided it
so they must be seeing this
as a
as something that requires the
the record to be developed below
and
and by making it
something that requires the factual development of a record to determine whether or not something is an official or unofficial act
what they have done with that ruling is kick the can
far down the road
such that
trump really has no
chance whatsoever
of facing any kind of criminal trial before november
for for what happened on january 6th
now if we operate under the assumption
that
if he doesn't face any kind of criminal consequences before november or let's say
january of 2025 when he may very well
again
scarily
become the president of the united states
well then at that point
he can
probably exert some kind of undue influence on the justice department to drop those charges
against himself
so we're in this
really bizarre horrible situation where
what used to be considered the bulwark of our republic
the supreme court and the federal courts of the united states
are now playing partisan politics
helping a political candidate kick
a criminal trial down the road
so that he can then exert influence on the department of justice potentially
to drop criminal charges against him
i mean this is
what i think
it feels like to be part of an empire
in decline
well much of the analysis that i've been hearing over the past couple of days
points to
you know at first it didn't sound so bad
official acts unofficial acts
okay you know it's easy enough
to define that
but apparently
simply defining something as an unofficial act
say
no mr president
that's not an official act
you committed a crime
therefore you'll be held
liable for that
from what i'm hearing
that won't be possible
it won't be possible to define something
as unofficial
if that person in power says
it's official
because part
i mean maybe i'm getting this wrong
but part of
his
privilege
as president
is to be able to define
what is official
and what is not
is that
would you say that's accurate
i think so
i think he can
i think the executive can characterize
whatever
the executive wants
as official
or unofficial
but it would be up to
some kind of fact finder
to make sure
that that would be
a reasonable characterization
right
i mean
um
you know
is jaywalking an official act
or an unofficial act
i mean we
we don't necessarily know
right
i mean it depends on where you're going
right
were you running to rush into a fire
to save somebody
in in a burning building
while you are
acting in the capacity
of a firefighter
or were you just
crossing the street
uh
against the crosswalk
i mean it's like
all these things i think
are very factual
uh factually dependent
but this fact finder
would be appointed
by the king
and i'm sorry
i'm doing it already
uh by uh
uh the um
uh
president
and um
uh he would basically
have the final say
i'm just
the the way
i mean i'm looking at
uh justice on
sort of my ears words
and they are chilling
if you have not read
those words
please do
uh because
she is saying
and she is a justice
on the supreme court
who has been there
for quite some time
um that um
the president
now has
the power
or or you know
under this
will have the power
uh to um um
use seal team six
to kill his political
opponents
and get away with it
and that's that's
that's not some
pundit saying that
that's a justice
of the supreme court
there was a headline
in the nation
the other day
saying that the
president now
can officially
assassinate you
you know
and uh
we should keep in mind
you know
people on the left
people on the right
people for trump
people for biden
people whoever
everybody should be
concerned by something
like this because
um trump's not in
power now
biden's in power now
so does that mean
that uh he can
take out trump
and get away with it
he certainly shouldn't
be able to do that
but according to
what i'm hearing
from the supreme court
yeah you know
official act
now that is
something that he
is able to um
to get away with
i i what do you do
in the supreme court
has lost its mind
collectively
we don't seem to
have any system
in place to uh
to deal with this
well i i think we do
i think we do have a
system in in place
to deal with this
and and it was
designed in the
18th century
it's called the
constitution and the
separation of powers
the problem is it's
it's failing us now
and it's failing us
because of the the
tribal nature of this
type of politics
i mean you you
mentioned earlier
emmanuel and i think
it was an erroneous
assumption that you
know well the the
king who's going to
appoint uh the the
this this this king
appointed person is
going to become the
fact finder to determine
whether or not uh you
know something is an
official or unofficial
act but if these are
issues of fact it could
be done by a jury
right that could be
you know up to a jury
to find that fact or
it could be a judge it
could be a mixed
question of law and
fact like i had
mentioned but the
whole system the whole
system of federal courts
were designed to prevent
and protect against
this very level of
political partiality
by virtue of federal
judges being insulated
from the political
process because they
have lifetime
appointments and that
doesn't seem to matter
anymore because judges
seem to be just as
as influenced by
partisan politics these
days as anything else
and it's a very very
scary situation i think
we find ourselves in
because during the
first term of the
trump of trump so
scary even to mention
this but he packed the
federal courts the
federal district courts
the trial level courts
with a massive number of
his appointees he also
packed the supreme court
and we see how that's
working out and none of
this is supposed to
happen uh by the design
of the founders of of
this nation we're
talking about you know
this this i think really
critical issue of how a
system works and people
may be wondering well
how does this relate to
hacking right well
because the the framers
the founding fathers were
trying to design a
system that could not be
vulnerable to this type
of attack yet here we
are in the 21st century
and it is the whole
reason why federal judges
are appointed for a
lifetime appointment appointment
is to make sure that
they are not influenced
by some by the republicans
by the democrats by the
whigs by whoever it was
or whoever it will be uh
coming into power you
know it's it's an apt
comparison because um you
know this is a system that
has been ignoring updates now
for 200 years and it is
woefully in need of some
upgrades some some hardware
replacement a lot and if you
if you leave a computer
system uh running you know
without doing anything to
maintain it without um uh
saying is this still
relevant today can i do
better think of the kind
of system you're going to
have you have something
that's awfully slow clunky
and does not serve your
interests at all
i i think it it's hilarious
when we think about yeah the
constitution not having
received some kind of update
and for for so long but i
think part of the reason why
the system that was designed
so well in the 18th century is
beginning to fail is because
of technology and it's
because of the very fact
that that social media
propels a judge's decisions
way beyond the borders of
the jurisdictional limitations
of whatever that federal
district court is uh at the
moment a decision issues and
and a and a federal judge and
his clerks nowadays are very
often the subject of derision and
mocking and harassment and
intimidation uh and there's no
escaping any of that now
because of the proliferation of
social media so a judge i think
is going to feel more beholden to
the will of the people to the
will of the majority uh and and
to the will of the political
party that put him or her into
office in the first place than
they ever could have imagined in
the 18th century and so i i think
we lose that type that was that
insularity of the federal
judiciary that made it the
bulwark of this particular type
of of the republic but now
there's these new attacks on the
judiciary that that i think are
making them feel more vulnerable
and i think what we need to do in
terms of updating the system here
would be to try to protect the
judiciary and the judges in ways
that would make it i think wrong to
harass and intimidate them for the
very decisions that they're
issuing impartially
yeah but um you can't just accept
the things that are going on right
now in silence you know we we are
seeing our democracy attacked and
and dismantled in front of our eyes
and if you can't lead a
demonstration you know in front of
somebody's home for destroying your
country i don't know what hope is
left you know we we have to be able
to speak out and be heard and uh
yeah maybe feared as well because
there there are no leaders anywhere
that did not fear the public and i
think the public needs to speak in a
louder tone of voice we are we are
seeing rights taken away uh we're
seeing um uh fear and and and racism
and and uh sexism homophobia you name
it it's all out there and it's it's it's
um being ready to be used in round two
of this nightmare so yeah you know
people need to um uh voice their
opinions and know that their opinions
matter and not be fooled by what you
see on social media because social
media may seem like an overwhelming
force of opinion but uh it could be
artificial intelligence it could be
people who are nowhere near this
country even uh it could be somebody
uh saying the same thing 40,000 times
with different names uh it is not the
same thing as actual people speaking
out in person and making their voices
heard making their voices loud because
i don't know i maybe i'm just losing
patience in my age but i just feel like
we've been we've been way too quiet way
too patient and it's it's time that um
uh you know we we hear a different
point of view
well don't don't get me wrong i i'm not
suggesting that we curtail the first
amendment or the freedom of assembly or
speech in any way no no certainly
certainly not but i but i i do think
that there is uh basically starting
from on high here starting with with
trump you have this example of deriding
judges and their staff and and and in
particular their law clerks uh in such a
public and and shameful manner that it
become they become the the subject of
intense harassment it's that type of
activity that i think is is absolutely
wrong and we we need to protect the
judiciary from uh in many ways because
they're the ones that are ultimately
protecting us and our rights if they
cannot issue unpopular decisions without
fear of being harassed or stalked or or
hurt physically in some way we we've got
problems here well i think we we have
problems on on many sides of this um and
something that as you say is is quite
relevant to our community any community
this is relevant to because the very
future of uh our freedom is is at stake
here and as hackers we we know how um
how easily that can all vanish yeah i
think the the uh import of technology as
an accelerant uh combined with how um
broken uh our system is for so many
people across so many cross across the
myriad cross sections of our country is um
i think uh pushes people in a into a
position where they're um where they're
out of time there's it's too late for a
system we tend to um slow cook you know
we like to let things go very slowly and
go through all of this this this um really
uh wonderful process of deliberation and
and um uh legal process fascinating it's
quaint but unfortunately i'm curious uh
will it will it be able to um satiate
people that are on um across all of that
just sort of out of time and out of
patience right you know if it is so
broken and it takes you know it takes just
all of this sort of self-involvement and uh
and endless process you you get people at
at sort of they're they're um sort of at
wit's end right with the process and uh
when uh that takes takes hold for uh
something that is the actual place where
this stuff is sorted uh it it i think
becomes uh a lot more of a untenable
situation right you get people um uh
acting out you know like uh uh really
voicing and and um trying to work around
that system because it it is like alex
sort of suggested protecting itself you
know perpetually for just more process
go ahead alex
no another point here too and i think it
it dovetails with what carl is saying is
uh
when we're talking about judges here right
you know the the big difference in the
system that was that the founding fathers
had designed here to be insulated from the
political process namely the federal judiciary
and these lifetime appointments is totally
different than what happens at the state
level and for a lot of our our listeners that
may be overseas it should come hopefully as
some surprise to learn that at the state level
a lot of the judges that preside over cases
over trials in fact are elected
uh you know they're on political ballots
you know they run with a party and you select
them in local elections and so you would
expect them to be a bit more beholden to
certain policies and procedures you would expect
maybe you know republican candidates to be
tougher on crime and various things and and
democrats to be a little bit more lenient
etc uh but every judge is supposed to be
impartial but the reason why the federal
judiciary has these lifetime appointments is
to is to be in very stark contrast to what
happens at the state level where the judges are
political animals by their very nature
and uh it's it's a crazy system that we have now
where very often it seems like it's the state
court judges the ones that are beholden to
political wills of people that tend to be more
impartial than than even the supreme court of
the united states that's a really really sad state
of affairs what a time what a time to be
around um well okay i'm gonna i have something
that um might even top some of what we're
talking about uh a bizarre data point uh for this
growing movement i don't know if you know about
this movement but there's a movement to keep rap
lyrics out of the courtroom um yeah uh hot boys
rapper christopher bg dorsey was recently ordered
to provide the government with a copy of any song he
writes moving forward ahead of its release or
promotion he's currently on supervised release
uh from prison for a 14-year gun-related sentence
he received back in 2012 and now according to a
federal judge the government has the right to
determine if his future work is inconsistent with
his goals of rehabilitation and if so move to toughen the
terms of his release uh the the judge uh obama appointed by
the way as suzy morgan uh refused prosecutors request to
prohibit bg from promoting and glorifying future gun violence
slash murder in his songs and concerts entirely saying that
restriction could violate its constitutional right to free speech
um but um but this particular condition
that um he has to submit his writings uh to
to the government for approval before they can be released based on his
history that just strikes me as as so orwellian and scary
um and i think it's it's it's not getting the attention that it deserves this is
something that everybody should see
the um the threat of we're talking about
you know people writing fiction writing
something of that that comes from their imagination
and to say that well because you have a history
in this particular field you're not allowed to talk about that you're not
allowed to fantasize about that
now you know there are instances where uh lyrics in a song
are are uh confessions of a sort and that's a totally different matter
if somebody's stupid enough to confess to an actual crime in a song of theirs
and you have the evidence you need right there
but to tell somebody they're not allowed to express themselves artistically and
creatively um that should really bother everybody
am i am i wrong on this
go ahead rob yeah no as as someone who does uh creative work and puts it out
there you know the the fact you know i know
nothing about this artist or or his work but i know that uh any sort of
oversight of the things i were allowed to create would be devastating
i mean i can you know i i i don't necessarily want to go out and write a story
about uh you know murder or or or uh whatever but i should be allowed to
and you know the the fact that you're creating some work of fiction
should not uh you know figure in any way to
toward uh whether or not you're considered rehabilitated of doing bad things in real life
true true uh and uh by the way you might know his his work uh the the hit
bling bling from 1999 no okay oh that bg
part of a new orleans-based hot boys group uh which also includes lou wayne
juvenile and turk uh they have not been active since bg's arrest
uh but a reunion is in the works i hear um
so uh there's also the concern of um convicted felons performing on stage
together uh which violates probation in some cases
that i'm not going to speak to i don't know what the rules and regulations are
there but if you're sharing a stage with somebody
not exactly sure you're um you're hanging out with them but i i guess it's
kind of hard to you know join forces in a song without
having a conversation uh go ahead alex
i mean this is really crazy and in many ways i i didn't know about this
at all until you brought it up but i it it sounds
a lot to me like this is a well it doesn't sound like this is this is a prior
restraint on on the freedom of speech this is something that the government is
saying you need to be uh you need to be uh you need to submit this ahead of time
and get our approval before it's published in some way or another uh and anybody can
see it and this is directly affecting his freedom of speech and anytime you're
implicating a fundamental right like this you have to think the government has to
make sure that it's narrowly tailored right that you are affecting a right and
or or curtailing a right in the least restrictive way possible
so um i i don't think that this would survive that type of scrutiny
is it called strict scrutiny oh i don't know i mean you know especially these days look if if
if um you have parents think about them for a second think about how they would react to
uh this kind of a story where some some guy who sings rap music uh was in prison and is singing about
murder and violence and all that kind of don't you think you have to control that somehow don't you
think it's gone far enough it's not hard to make that argument to people and to get them to agree
to something that on the face of it they would say oh this goes against everything that this country
stands for but when you inject a little fear and misunderstanding and uh and generalizations
you can easily get people to believe this is right well it's also in the context of his supervised
release so i think that that must play a very very large role in the legal analysis here
because the the assumption there is that he's not necessarily in full possession of his liberty at
this particular point he's on quote unquote supervised release so the government still has some
level of control or an interest in exercising control over this particular person whether that level of
control extends to the ability to control this person's first amendment rights and curtail and then
approve what this person has has written and intends to speak about i think that's an entirely different
story and i think you perhaps you're right emmanuel on that you could convince your grandpas and
grandmas that this may be a good idea but again it goes back to the nature of the federal judiciary here
we're talking about federal judges who are supposed to uphold the constitutional principles embodied in the
first amendment and i think these this this restriction is really offensive to it well you know uh we know
many people who have been subject to supervised release and we've seen all kinds of restrictions
some of which you know were unheard of at the time such as not being allowed to use the internet not being
allowed to use a cell phone things like that uh at the time i know we argued this interferes with
someone's right to free speech and now that kind of thing it can happen and it's almost considered
normal i'm not saying it happens a lot but it does happen uh so i just think you know the more you
chisel away at it the easier it gets to do this kind of thing in the future that's why i think people
need to pay attention to the cases they may not quite identify with but which represent incursions
into the freedom we all take for granted um okay uh some more news the virginia department of
elections database may have been hacked according to rhc dark lab which apparently is a news source
and on google news now uh a serious security incident appears to have hit the virginia department
of elections causing the unauthorized dissemination of a large election database the attack claimed by a
user uh known as intel broker was made public through an online forum dedicated to data breaches
um the virginia department of elections is the body responsible for administering elections in the
state of virginia i don't think we needed that sentence uh this department ensures that all
elections are conducted fairly transparently and in compliance with state and federal laws
uh it oversees voter registration supervises local and state elections and maintains the integrity
of the electoral process through secure data management uh i don't know about that part maybe not
um currently um uh this um uh organization rc dark lab uh cannot precisely confirm the accuracy of the
reported breach uh as they have not yet um uh the organization virginia department of elections has not
issued an official press release um therefore uh this news uh should be considered as an intelligence
source uh and according to reports this compromised database contained detailed information about
electoral candidates uh intel broker the user who claimed responsibility for the attack stated that the
database had previously been sold on the forum uh however they decided to make it public to prevent
further fraud by new accounts that could have taken advantage of this information um okay well you
know enough said about all that but basically what we're looking at here they they print the fields
um they call 65 000 rows of data details such as um um candidate um uh candidate name uh total votes
party affiliation write-in vote locality code locality name precinct id precinct name district id district
type district name office id office title election id election type election date election name and number of
seats there is nothing in here that is not public information that i can see unless something is missing
from here when i when i when i first saw this story i assumed it was the um the database of voters
that was leaked it doesn't even seem to have been that it just seems to have been
a listing of candidates how many votes they got from what precincts and what localities all of this
information is something that is reported after every election and is accessible so i'm not really sure you
know maybe maybe this isn't a complete story but even if it were the um uh the database of voters in
the state of virginia even that is public actually i have to confess i'm not sure what the laws of
virginia are i know here in new york it's it's it's simple to get the voter registration list you find out
everybody's name everybody's address everybody's party affiliation their date of birth a lot of
information but it's all open to the public now some states have different rules some states don't
make it accessible some states charge a fortune for it but most states it's not hard and many states
it's completely free and some even have it posted online so um it's easy to get some concern with a
story like this it's easy to make people panic but you know this doesn't even appear to be the voter
database appears to be a list of candidates in virginia i don't know no big deal to me go ahead
this is such a ridiculous story uh if if it's really just those fields and we're talking about
public i know you're not calling google news ridiculous because they they forwarded this to
the very front of their news feed oh and i know they're not people i know they're just you know
machines doing this but still these machines know what they're doing well some somebody gave
those machines instructions at some point and um and and that they must be ridiculous themselves but
but it goes to my point here which is that this is such a non-story but if such a non-story can make
it to the front of google news like this most people are not going to investigate the story
like we're doing right now and look at the actual fields that are part of this breach and come to the
reasonable conclusion that this is absurd and is is really nothing and because of that it's this
what i find most dreadful about this whole idea is that it's the story itself that can damage the
electoral process it's the story itself this non-story about a breach that should not have been a story
in the first place that can cause distrust in the electoral system and can eradicate uh you know
essentially public confidence and our willingness to to even trust our data with local precincts
bingo you got it that's exactly the point that's exactly it this kind of a story makes it seem as if
uh everything is insecure everything can be compromised our votes mean absolutely nothing
and it's really really scary to have something like that um spread around um go ahead rob and then gila
yeah this is uh i think the real hack here would be uh if you know assuming this story is uh accurate
the real hack would be some outfit somewhere uh getting a bunch of publicly available data together
packaging it up like a leaked database and then selling it on dark web forums for uh for money i mean
that that would be uh kind of amazing it reminds me a bit of uh when uh a while back uh someone
started a a parody sort of scaremongering campaign about a chemical that's in all your child's foods
um called dihydrogen monoxide and uh you know talking about it's you know so many foods contain
it and you're there's tons of it in your in your children's bodies and of course what they're talking
about is just water but they package it up like something scary and put it in a scaremongering format
and people like who don't know better would would uh would hear this and think there's something
terribly wrong um speaking of things that are terribly wrong so we did find the original link
to this article which is on one site and we can't find it anywhere else um literally it's in one place
and it turns out that this is a bunch of random people from italy who like a blog this is a blog of
random people from italy and um nothing about this is good um the whole idea that you know the person
who claimed responsibility is like i'm putting this out so that nobody else there's nothing
like i'm not saying that anything and i'm not saying anything that everybody else hasn't already said
but just the and the fact that google news pushed this up seo and google translate could be very
very dangerous tools yes and i think as we get closer to november it behooves all of us
as an informed voter populace to be really really careful what we're reading what we're believing
what we're trusting yes exactly rob what was that ingredient you said was in our children's food
i'm very concerned about that dihydrogen monoxide it's scary stuff if you look into it really
you know it reminds me of when i was in grade school and people would come up to you and say
hey your epidermis is showing uh you know which you know kudos to kids for knowing what that was or
not knowing what that was but that simply means skin uh yeah um okay well this story let's let's focus on
corporate america and um how they're constantly making the world a worse place uh paramount you can be
hearing a lot about them in the future um they um basically just erased 20 plus years of news
archives all that's left is a placeholder site for reality shows uh mtv mtv news was um um
online it's not online anymore uh it's um basically just discarded because they're moving on they're
forming new alliances new companies new programming um and just uh some of these comments are really
heartbreaking um http colon slash slash mtv news.com no longer exists said one of the writers patrick
hoskin eight years of my life are gone without a trace all because it didn't fit some executives bottom
lines infuriating is too small a word metro clark wrote i don't even have the words i was just a
freelancer but i put so much blood sweat and tears into telling stories that i cared about the right
way on that platform what a gut punch uh as uh paramount destroyed the library of articles some
writers managed to save a few for the wayback machine.com archive.org which was just profiled
for trying to hold on to evaporating information on the internet but um a lot is lost and a lot of
people won't find it there a lot of people won't know where to look we have to help them find that
we also have to come up with a better way of preserving the data that's out there and never
trust it to these large corporations because they don't care we've seen it so many times where you
pour your life into some particular application or or system that you believe in and they decide
they're just going to sunset it in their words and um doesn't matter it doesn't matter what you put
into it it all gets erased it all gets wiped away geo cities uh google wave what there's so many we
could list we could go on for an hour about this and um if you don't save something yourself if you
don't have um a duplicate of what it is you're contributing to then you don't really own it it's
not really yours and it's subject to the whims of these people who just care about profit
uh um yeah i i just want to say like uh it is great that there are organizations out there that
are willing to do this and i think parts of what was taken down are already uh being being uh processed
and i think it's there's some of it is is now searchable from the mtv news archives through the way
back and other uh libraries but it's it's it should not be i mean it's an indication or it's like a
symptom of how broken this is like this idea that um you could be sort of uh lulled into thinking that
this stuff will last just because of a the stalwart brand um existing that's not the case and it it is
uh something that we talk about in parallel when we're talking about cloud computing because a lot of
people push for that but this could just as easily be a part of their infrastructure that's lost or
breached or you know falls by the wayside there are plenty of of drawbacks to storing things and
archiving things yourself it takes work it takes planning it takes power right but you do you do get
the upset upshot which is your the the ultimate uh say as far as what the the final um end of life
for some of this is and you can make sure that it's sort of shepherded on in ways that make sense not
this sort of crass just destructive um uh ending of of sites no we've seen this many times before i know
bbc destroyed a whole lot of programming back in the 60s and uh uh so much was lost just because they
they needed more tape or film or something and the reasons are always something that turned out to be
ridiculous in the end and what's lost is is irreplaceable so you know when when when um people
like us who like to save everything and archive everything see a story like this we feel a little
bit of um vindication about um maybe we're not wasting our entire lives by doing this um but also
anger because so many people are just creative people who don't think about okay how do i preserve
this and uh you know they trust the system and this is to let you know that that system cannot be
trusted we need a better system of uh snapshotting uh internet sites so that when somebody decides to
pull the plug they're still there someplace and your work is not forgotten or disappeared go
ahead rob yeah we're we're now generations into this media environment of the web in which a lot of
people make uh you know their livings full in fuller in part by creating content uh writing articles uh
you know putting up art whatever and they put it up somewhere else and just expect it to be okay
and you know we have seen so many times uh you know within recent memory of say a news site or
something just getting bought by the wrong person or just falling off the web because it ran out of
money or something and people lose their entire portfolios because they were just trusting that
material to just remain available and especially on something like the web where you know you have a
juggernaut like paramount and they run all these sites and it wasn't just mtv there was um scads of
material from comedy central old daily show episodes historical material there and uh things like that
that were just lost and you know hard drive space is not that expensive in the technical scheme of
things um you know they could always the bbc has sections of its site where if you um look up old
articles from say the early 2000s um the material will still be there there'll just be a little banner
on top saying this is this is uh you know very old material don't mistake it for something new
things to that effect and it serves the historical purpose of keeping the article up there but also
lets you know that you know you're not looking at the current uh stuff and i think that's that's a
great solution for this sort of thing yeah and also you know to not go hyperlink crazy and uh have
have links uh in all your content because guaranteed those links are not going to work after five or ten
years i see that all the time when when researching things uh we need a better way of archiving the
information that we reference as well otherwise it's completely useless we just have a bunch of
outdated links go ahead alex this this is just so sad and in so many ways i think another layer of
this too that i think uh is missing from most of the reporting that i've read on it is that
we we don't think about this in the context of the future we only think about it in the context of the
past and i think that the future of reporting is going to be a lot different than the past reporting
we've seen because all future reporting and all types of articles and content is going to be done
with the assistance of artificial intelligence all of these new stories from mtv content from tv
this is all stuff that human beings created in the 80s and the 90s and is a historical record
of what life was like what music was like and all coming straight out of the brain of a human being
this is a really interesting data set about really critical and pivotal times in the united states
and elsewhere so i think that we're all missing out on what could be i think a really interesting
historical archive uh and and a great data set from which a lot of insight could be drawn if it were
available to to researchers and others but the the reason for pulling this doesn't seem to make a lot of
sense to me either perhaps what what paramount is doing is some kind of play they seem to be saying
well if we can't make money by making it by we if we can't be profitable by making this available
then it's not going to be available to anyone yeah they don't see the value in it they don't see that
it it it does anything for anybody and no doubt they have copies themselves they probably have the
entire site preserved offline so you know my my ask to them is to give that to somebody who will
maintain it so that it can be preserved it costs you nothing to do that apparently the internet
archive has made some kind of massive database of searchable articles that from of mtv that go back
i don't think it's the entirety of it but every time this happens you can expect the internet archive
i have to come to the rescue and store and warehouse and identify and find all of this data
and keep it for historical records for mankind that's just that's not tenable okay a couple of
uh letters oth at 2600.com is our email address we love to hear from our listeners here's uh one
letter uh honestly you of all people oh boy letters that start this way you of all people know better
than to store a lot of data on your phone because if you're arrested when you cross the border a lot
of it can be held against you i believe this is in reference to our conversation about uh cell phones
filling up and having to be copied over to uh other sites and things like that first of all there's some
assumptions here that uh i'm not sure hold um the uh the writers assuming that uh sensitive information
is part of that uh phones are phones uh we use them as we see fit and if we want to fill them up
with videos and pictures that's all right or music um and to assume that um uh we're we're somehow
falling down on the job because we have a phone that got full uh the issue the story is that um
these phones are being sold with limited amounts of space and customers aren't necessarily being
informed of that when they get the phones because apparently um um sim cards and um expandable
um uh drives and cards are not a thing anymore and when you have a phone you have a certain amount
of storage space and you're supposed to use the cloud after that and of course we resist that now
this letter continues set up your own private cloud or sfdp service so you can access your own data
privately across the internet on demand and not keep it on your mobile phone okay so i love being told
what to do in simple form when it's not a simple thing at all um i would like to know you know
show us some um some services that provide this that are trustworthy that you control yourself
because it's a great idea it's but you just can't bark out an order to somebody and tell them to do
something a certain way without telling them what that way is and yeah this this is the solution for
people to have their own private clouds that they control but um i don't know are any of us aware of
such uh systems that exist uh you're you're raising your your hand out let's go ahead yeah i
in defense of the the letter writer here i i think i think he's right i think it's a great idea
uh it's not for everybody but there are these private clouds that exist there's things like
next cloud i used to use that quite a bit but you know for normal everyday people yeah it might be a
little over the top but for instance if you are going to a country that might be interested in trade
secrets that your company is holding and you don't necessarily want to have them on your phone
or you think you might be stopped at a border for some particular reason i i think the writer
is absolutely right to try to create some kind of gateway or barrier between you as a physical person
and your data i think that that point is is really well we make the same point that's not what i'm
disputing here it's just the assumptions that uh we're being careless or that uh the the solution is
simple and we should all take advantage of it i i want the solution to be simple i want to have
this system where we can tell people use this no corporation is going to have any control you're
not going to have to pay them to maintain your your data that's what i want and and if you give me more
information about this we'll talk about in weeks ahead all right i guess that's about it for uh for us
for now uh we will continue this conversation on overtime uh in um in just uh a couple of minutes
eight o'clock on youtube just go to channel 2600 i believe rob there are 2600 meetings this friday
coming up there are indeed uh 2600 meetings happening all over the world you can find one
near you you can start one near you uh the local one uh has information at a site called nyc2600.net
okay and these are hacker gatherings where people just gather in a food court somewhere trade
information get to know each other and have a great deal of fun that's what it's all about
we will see you in three weeks here on wbai and please support wbai give to wbai.org
see you in three good night