We'll be right back.
Please check your instruction manual or call the business office for assistance.
Now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
One billy bump, but the best is fake for worst.
I hope that's understood.
One billy bump.
One billy bump.
One billy bump.
One billy bump.
Out in Signal Land, we have Alex.
You do.
Good evening from London.
You're on the left side of the room this time.
Okay.
And also we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And we have Gila.
Good evening.
And I laugh when I say Signal Land because, boy, Signal Land is in the news this week, is it not?
Yeah, this story pretty much exploded a couple of days ago.
Funny thing.
Yeah, you know, Signal, it's an easy app to use.
But it's also, you know, it's fairly trivial to make big mistakes.
But you can do that with anything.
You can do that with, you know, a computer program.
You can do that with a nuclear arsenal.
You can, you know, do that with just about any tool that's out there and make it do something you don't want it to do.
That's why, you know, people should only be in charge of the things they can handle, you know.
So what are we talking about?
Okay.
For those of you in the future listening to this show wondering just what we're talking about this week.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this country, the United States of America, bombed Yemen as part of something that we just do every now and then.
And in the process of doing that, the conversation by the various people that are involved in decisions like this, you know, defense secretary and national security advisors, people like that, they had a conversation about this.
And this conversation took place over Signal.
Now, we'll discuss, you know, if Signal is, you know, a good idea to, you know, to have a conversation like that.
But what also happened, and it's hard to even be saying this with a straight face.
I'm not doing a good job of doing that.
A journalist from the Atlantic, the esteemed magazine, the Atlantic, was included in this conversation.
Why?
Well, that's the thing.
No one seems to know why.
Yeah.
I, you know, I saw the article that was actually in the Atlantic, was published online, that basically said, you know, I was included in the conversation about bombing Yemen.
I thought it was fake until the bombs started dropping.
And that's pretty much what happened.
That's pretty much what happened.
And the editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, of the Atlantic, was included in this conversation, which, as of today, has been published online with, I believe, one redaction, a redaction of a CIA representative, because they don't like having their names mentioned.
So that's been redacted.
But pretty much everything else is now out there.
It is a screw-up of a phenomenal proportion.
And the security implications, we won't even get to scratch the surface during this hour.
It's embarrassing.
It's really something that you'd expect an amateur organization to, well, I guess we got exactly what we voted for, didn't we?
Anyway, I've seen better security with high school kids, you know, doing group chats and knowing who's on the chat with you.
You know, it's common sense.
And these guys, they all missed it, every single one.
And, you know, if they missed that, who knows what else they missed?
You know, who else was on that conversation?
Who was on other conversations?
Who will be on future conversations?
What apps are they going to be using in the future for the most sensitive of information?
None of this has anything to do with, you know, whether or not we think it was right or wrong to do this bombing campaign.
That's a whole other discussion.
But this kind of a thing, you know, when you're running a country, you should have some degree of security.
You should understand how it works.
They do not.
That has become so clear if it wasn't already screamingly obvious.
Let's start by talking about the wisdom of using signal for something like this.
Now, I should point out, in fact, Alex, you and I had this conversation about six months ago or maybe more, maybe more like eight months ago on these very airwaves.
So we were talking about Telegram and I recall you telling me that a group chat on Telegram is not encrypted because it's a lot more complex to to encrypt all these different people as opposed to just, you know, a one to one conversation.
Signal, however, it turns out, by default, does encrypt group chats.
So they have that going for them, at least.
Is that an accurate statement?
Well, I think so.
But you have to remember, though, that end-to-end encryption in a group chat like that is really about protecting data in transit.
The endpoint, that is the device itself on which the data resides, always decrypts the data and makes it human readable.
So that means if you have access to the endpoint device, you have access to all of the signal chat data.
So let's pull on this a little bit.
So if the phones, let's say, if any of the phones at issue here, for any of the people that were part of this conversation,
if those phones fell into the possession of someone who wasn't authorized to have them, you know,
or more importantly, if those devices themselves were compromised, then those signal chats would also be compromised.
Now, I could go even further from this because it's really not clear at all from what I've read in the public reporting on this.
We have no idea about the specific devices at issue here.
Were they running iOS or Android?
Was the OS of the devices at issue fully updated and patched?
Did they have any compromised or questionable apps on them?
Were there any other signs that the phones themselves were exploited perhaps by a foreign adversary?
And I really believe that without a full forensic investigation of all of the devices used, that's going to be entirely unclear.
Now, separately as well, I think we should all know by now, and I think this is really important.
I haven't heard anybody talking about this, but we should all know by now that Signal does not just run on a mobile device.
All right, so there's a desktop client that can sync with chats that come in on a mobile device.
So why aren't there questions being asked about that?
Did any of the parties to the communications, including Jeffrey Goldberg, the reporter, the editor-in-chief from the Atlantic,
did anybody have Signal linked to a desktop client here?
If that's so, then that's a completely new vector of potential compromise of this classified information.
And, yes, I'm calling it classified information because I think it was classified.
And computers themselves, so if you have this desktop client linked to a computer, computers themselves,
whether it's a laptop or a desktop running macOS or Windows or Linux, it doesn't really matter.
They are far more vulnerable and exploitable than mobile device.
I'm sorry, you froze there, Alex.
They're far more exploitable than mobile device.
Sorry, yeah, my connection isn't great here.
They are far more vulnerable and exploitable than a mobile device.
Gee, I didn't know that.
You're saying a mobile device, i.e. a phone, is more secure to have this kind of a conversation on than, say, a laptop or a desktop.
Yes, absolutely.
No doubt.
And why is that?
Well, because the operating systems at issue, when you're running Windows, you're running macOS,
Windows in particular, has just got so many vulnerabilities inherent to it, right?
There are so many vectors that can be attacked on a Windows machine or a macOS machine.
There are so many exploits out there available.
So it's just there's so many more vulnerabilities, so many more vectors of attack.
And so they're far more vulnerable.
Phones are, especially iOS devices, right?
And this comes at a cost.
An iOS device, you don't have as much power over it unless you jailbreak an iOS device, right?
But that creates its own vulnerabilities there.
So Android devices, which you have more control over, the OS itself, are also known to be less hardened in many ways than iOS.
Now, are we able to tell, let alone if they were linked to another device, which device they were on by default?
Are we assuming they all were using their phones?
Because to me, it seems that if you're in the process of doing something like bombing a country,
you're sitting in an office somewhere.
You know, you're looking at a screen.
You're doing something that implies, you know, a permanent setting as opposed to, you know, walking down the street, tapping on your phone, not looking at the traffic.
It just seems like that's a very casual way of communicating.
I know what you're saying is that's actually more secure, at least in some regards.
But do we know, was anybody actually at a computer?
I don't think we do know that.
I think it's quite possible that somebody could have been using a desktop client and not on their phone.
It's entirely unknowable from just looking at the text itself as to whether the chat message that is being sent originated from a mobile device or from a desktop device.
I'm not sure if this is entirely correct, but I believe one of the principals involved in this, perhaps Mr. Waltz himself, stated in the hearing today that this software had been installed on a desktop machine at the beginning of his term as a means of communication.
But it may not have been him, but it was one of the people that testified, I think, mentioned that today.
Carl, if you're going to introduce characters, you have to tell us who they are.
You said Mr. Waltz.
Who is this?
I believe he's the national security advisor.
It doesn't really matter his job position, but basically he's the guy that screwed up.
Yeah.
That's all you have to say.
Isn't he the one that added the journalist?
He, for some reason, and I want to look into this as well, he, for some reason, added Jeffrey Goldberg into the chat.
Now, okay, we must have some kind of a theory as to how that happened, because based on the comments, and we'll get into that in a little bit, that these folks had about this particular journalist, it didn't seem like he was really tight with them.
So why, in God's name, was he added to this signal chat?
Any theories?
Go ahead, Gaila.
Did read a theory that, because so many people who were in this chat are going by their initials, that he initially intended, or someone in the chat intended to add someone whose initials were JG, who I believe was another member of the security community, and just added the wrong JG.
Is it that easy in Signal to add the wrong person?
Because, you know, what if, God forbid, there are two Jeffrey Goldbergs?
You know?
It's really easy to mix one up for the other.
It has to be more of a confirmation process than just, oh, autofill the name.
Go ahead, Rob.
It certainly can be.
Anyway, Signal, like on lots of messaging apps, you can choose a username, and that can be whatever you like, but it can also go by whatever you have that individual stored as in your phone's local contacts.
So if somebody had in their contacts been scrolling up and down and just clicked on the wrong JG, you know, how many of us have clicked on the wrong contact before or after the person we wanted to contact?
It could be as stupid as that, which is very interesting when you think about this being used by people in charge of all this stuff.
So, like, what you're saying is, if, say, in my signal contact, for, well, I'm not going to say who, but for one of you, it says do not answer.
If I were to start typing D-O, it would fill that in, even though you're also accessible by, and again, I'm not going to say who it was.
It sounds like there are multiple vectors, to coin an Alex phrase, to compromise this particular form of communication.
Kyle?
Well, I would also note that from the tenor of the article, it seems as though they had not been using complete names in their profiles to begin with.
Like, you know the icon, if you don't have a picture for it, it'll put just the first initials?
First initial, yes.
But the way the author of the article, Jeffrey Goldberg, stated, he was describing them and then, like, kind of, well, in the annotated article as well, they're basically theorizing which initial.
So I'm wondering if this is perhaps an ironic effect of them trying to obfuscate their full names in profiles.
Like, instead of entering in the signal contact as they set it up, instead of entering their full name, they just put their initials.
So it made it harder to actually discern.
You just have, like, a contact list full of initials.
Because in the article, he's basically trying to theorize or just is speculating which initial means which person.
There aren't full names in the chat or insofar as he could discern even being a member, right?
These guys' idea of security might be, instead of writing Pete Hegsev, to simply say PH and mask their identity in that way?
It kind of seems like that.
Like, that was a way of making it.
That's impenetrable, man.
I wouldn't be able to figure that out.
Just being, like, really minimal, which itself, like, okay, that's clever.
But lots of times, like, in communications, Unified and other communications apps like this, you're being social.
You're added to the various groups or lists or other people's contacts.
You want to be somewhat identifiable, especially if it's a service where people sort of can find you or it announces.
And that's something we've talked about before, where Signal sort of announces to people if you're already a contact.
So, yeah, I think it's a counterintuitive thing.
Like, they may have been trying to be a little sneaky, but it ended up leading to a little bit of confusion.
Might I suggest, in the hacker community, for many years, we have used handles.
It's not necessarily our names.
It could be, you know, an animal's name.
It could be a building's name.
It could be anything you want.
And that's how your friends know you and other people might not, although usually they find out at some point.
If these were all handles, we wouldn't really be able to tell who is whom except for the content of their discussion.
Only they are supposed to be able to tell that.
We're not supposed to be able to tell that.
It's all out there in the open.
Go ahead, Alex.
This is a very good reason why there should be an investigation into how this happened.
You need to have some kind of forensic accounting of what had happened on that particular phone.
This could be as simple as Jeffrey Goldberg's number was stored with a different name by accident.
He might have met him at a cocktail party, took his number and accidentally stored it as somebody else,
and then added that person that he intended to add, but actually added Jeffrey Goldberg.
But how this happened is really a matter of, I think, national importance because it's a matter of international embarrassment.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Are you saying it's as easy as me going to a cocktail party in Washington, D.C., introducing myself as Donald Trunk to a lot of people
and having them type that into their phone, and every time they let autocomplete finish,
I'm going to get added to their call instead of somebody else?
I guess, yes.
That is probably.
And I thought of that in one second, so there must be a lot of other more sophisticated things.
Yeah.
You just have to be invited to parties, which I know that doesn't happen.
No, that's always been the problem, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're too frumpy.
All right, so, yeah, we have the situation.
Go ahead, Rob.
You have something.
Yeah, just one thing I think we need to mention is the fact that, you know, for those unfamiliar,
these officials should not be using Signal for this, and that is directly down to a rule at the Department of Defense.
There is a memo I'm looking at, which was published on the 6th of October, 2023,
which goes into what these mobile apps are, referring to non-classified, unclassified systems,
which can refer to any chat apps that aren't, you know, government-approved for classified material.
And in accordance, I'm quoting here, in accordance with DOD instruction 5200.01,
DOD personnel will not use unclassified systems government-issued or otherwise for classified national security information.
You're not supposed to put Signal on your government-issued phone,
and you're not supposed to be using your personal non-government-issued phone to discuss this stuff.
So this is the huge point about this, where they were not using government-issued tech to do this government business,
and that does not leave them open to the accountability they should be,
that does not leave them open to the security, you know, levels that they should be.
This is a huge screw-up on massive proportions.
This goes well beyond but-her emails.
The thing is, this is not a screw-up.
This is something that has been planned for a while.
They're using Signal as an end-run around FOIA, very specifically.
And ProPublica published 14 hours of Project 2025 training videos that talk specifically about using this kind of protocols
to make sure this doesn't, I apologize, I did not have 14 hours today to watch all the ProPublica videos
about how to use Signal to avoid maintaining this kind of information.
But this is, all the stickers and all the warnings about Project 2025, none of this can be a surprise.
I am surprised by the extent of how much people are brushing this off.
That's part of what scares me.
Well, the people brushing it off are the people with something to hide,
and it's pretty clear that they're getting increasingly desperate.
But just to speak to what Rob said a moment ago, as far as using Signal,
I saw not 12 hours ago somebody, I believe it was from the Department of Defense,
being quoted saying, this is automatically installed on our devices.
So what gives here?
You're not supposed to use it, and yet it's automatically installed.
So something doesn't add up there.
Go ahead, Alex.
Alex, go ahead.
Yeah, look, I think that would be weird if Signal was installed on these devices.
I don't really understand it.
But, again, that's why we need a greater accounting of what the hell was happening here.
Why was Signal on these devices?
I mean, it doesn't seem to me at all reasonable that Signal would be installed on devices by default
for the specific purpose of conveying classified information here.
I mean, and look, what we're talking about, let's be really clear here.
We're talking about operational details of a forthcoming strike on a hostile foreign adversary.
For the Trump administration, or anybody in any administration, to claim that that's not classified is totally insane.
I mean, this is not exactly the type of stuff you'd see written on a bathroom wall, right?
I mean, how could this not be classified as beyond me?
In fact, I mean, the government, and remember, I had worked in the intelligence community
in access to classified information for quite some time,
and the government has always been overcautious when it comes to the classification of documents and information.
In fact, it's come under scrutiny and criticism.
There's been a tremendous amount of criticism for the government overclassifying documents.
So the idea that this would not be classified is totally nuts.
To me, this sounds a hell of a lot like information that should not have been discussed
outside of something called a SCIF or a sensitive...
Alex, you keep freezing up, so please try to improve your signal.
Yeah, it's probably not going to improve.
I'm going to be a little wonky here today.
But, you know, so my point is that this is information that should not be discussed outside of a SCIF
or a sensitive compartmented information facilities.
In other words, this is a secure room or some kind of facility that is designed to protect classified information
from unauthorized access, including things like electronic surveillance
and data leakage.
So this is highly, highly classified information, in my view,
and certainly not something that should have ever been addressed on anyone's personal mobile device,
especially if those communications are connected with a desktop device
in somebody's house in Fairfax, Virginia, or something.
It's totally nuts.
Well, to answer your question here, from a Politico article,
Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to House Intelligence Committee members yesterday,
actually today, that encrypted messaging app signal comes pre-installed on government devices.
So there you go.
That's where it's coming from.
And I think that kind of makes it official.
I mean, she's the person in charge.
So here you go.
Go ahead, Gail.
Wow.
But didn't she then also say that she wasn't in that chat?
Yeah, well, everyone's trying to cover their asses here, but, you know, they're all pretty much complicit.
Oh, absolutely.
I do want to say, though, that one thing that does make me sad about the current environment in which we live,
I mean, there are a lot of things that do,
but I think the fact that should Pete Hegseth find himself out of a job in the next few days,
which is a diminishingly likely possibility, but should that happen,
I am confident that he will, A, get on Cameo,
and, B, be selling T-shirts that say we are currently clean on OPSEC.
If they had a sense of humor, they would do things like that, but they don't.
They're incompetent.
They should not be in charge.
They're Fox News commentators, for God's sake.
They're not even journalists, you know, and I think, you know, that's why,
that must be one of the reasons why Pete Hegseth is so hostile towards Jeffrey Goldberg.
I mean, I was noticing this the other day before this story really got legs.
Why were they attacking this journalist who did the right thing and alerted people,
hey, you have a problem here.
You just texted me all this, you know, sensitive information, if not top secret information.
He could have easily just lurked back there for the next chat, but he didn't.
He did the right thing.
And Trump is calling him a sleazebag.
And, yeah, I mean, I want to read you what Hegseth said.
First of all, he claimed that nobody was texting war plans,
which obviously is a direct contradiction to even what the White House said.
But basically, he tried to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg by basically saying,
you're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist
who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes.
This is a guy who peddles in garbage.
Obviously, not able to really come up with more words than pedal.
But, yeah, super angry.
This is, you know, obviously he has been caught being part of a massive mistake,
and he's really upset at that point.
But, you know, I was trying to figure out what is it about Jeffrey Goldberg
that both Trump and Hegseth and it seems many of the people in the Republican Party
and in the MAGA world feel towards this guy.
Where is all this hostility coming from?
I might have found it.
I looked at his Wikipedia page.
It's filled with all kinds of incredible things.
I mean, you know, the guy has a very stellar past.
He had interviews with many Obama.
He had Obama interviews, which were really well regarded.
But here's something else that you might not know about.
In September 2020, Goldberg published Trump.
Americans who died in war are losers and suckers.
Yeah, that's where it came from.
According to Goldberg's article in canceling a 2018 visit to the Ayn-Mam American Cemetery and Memorial in France,
which contains the remains of 2,289 U.S. service members killed in combat in World War I,
Trump is alleged to have privately said,
why should I go to that cemetery?
It's filled with losers.
He also repeatedly referred to the more than 1,800 U.S. Marines who lost their lives at the Battle of Bollowood as suckers for getting killed.
Now, CNN reported that Goldberg's article immediately became a massive story with Democrats,
including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, rushing to condemn Trump for his alleged behavior
and the White House rallying an aggressive pushback against the article, including the president himself.
Trump tweeted, the Atlantic is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance.
The story already refuted.
Referring to Goldberg's blockbuster revelation, the Intelligencer said the scope and intensity of the pushback was nuclear.
It added, while it's impossible to directly prove any of these allegations,
there is an impressive amount of corroborating evidence.
Almost all of it supports Goldberg's reporting.
So there you go.
You have an accredited journalist coming up against a corrupt leader caught saying something that he definitely should not have said
and reacting with fierce anger.
And when that name came up again, and funny thing, that dying magazine still seems to be around,
seems to be doing quite well.
In fact, I hear they're going monthly again, which is great.
He must be really, really upset.
They must all be so upset because, God, they look so bad.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, every accusation is still in admission.
Going back to the subject of who was and wasn't on this chat and talking about personal versus government devices,
the envoy to the Middle East and Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, was in Moscow when this chat was going on.
He was included in the chat.
He was in a list of people on the chat.
He didn't make any comments during Goldberg's look at the chat.
But he later said that on his own, Steve Witkoff said on his own Twitter,
I only had with me a secure phone provided by the government for special circumstances when you travel to regions where you don't want your devices compromised,
saying, yeah, I wasn't on it.
I was in Moscow and I only had my government device, which means that his signal devices were his personal devices, device or devices, which he's saying he left at home.
So, yeah, there you are using your personal device with signal and admitting to that on Twitter.
I got really confused there.
So, he had his government device, his secure phone, running signal in Moscow.
Is that what you're saying?
Evidently, he had his secure phone with him in Moscow, which is why he wasn't active on the signal chat in which he was included.
This is what he is saying.
And by saying that, he is saying, no, my signal stuff, I use my personal phone for that, obviously.
So, that's why I wasn't on there when I was in Russia.
Well, the headline I see from CBS says, as top Trump aides sent text on Signal, flight data shows a member of the group chat was in Russia.
A member of the group chat.
So, that says he was on the chat.
Yes, he was included in the chat.
His name was in the list of users included on the chat, but he wasn't active on it.
He wasn't messaging anything in the string of messages that have become public knowledge.
Wait, you can be in a chat and not be active in the chat.
I don't do chats very often, obviously.
Okay, well, so.
Absolutely, you can.
Just as if we, you know, if one of us went on mute, turned off our camera, we'd be on this signal call that we're using to talk to you and to our radio listeners.
But we wouldn't be active in the chat.
Yeah, but you're there.
You're there, though.
If you turn off your computer and walk out the door, that's different.
Then you're not there anymore, you see.
But if I've been included in the chat, so as a comparison, I was in a wedding, and we were planning the bachelor party, bachelorette party.
So, all of the bridesmaids and maid of honor were in a chat together.
Some people were included, like they were texted, and their names were there, but they never responded because they were bad planners.
And they had been, like, sent the chat.
They just never acknowledged it, never responded to it.
And I think that's the kind of thing we're talking about.
If you send a text to nine people and three of them respond, nine people are in the chat, but three of them are active.
Does that make sense?
Sort of.
I'm still a little confused as to whether or not you know who is there and who is not there.
You remember idling on IRC.
Yeah, of course.
I'm doing it right now.
But it means I can go back to it at some point and see what I missed.
You know, it's being logged.
So, is this person who wasn't active, is he able to go back and see it later?
Yes, he was idling in the chat.
And that was because his signal was running at home on his personal devices.
That's the same thing.
He was in the chat then.
He was, you know, he doesn't have to be active right now to get all the juicy data.
So, that's, you know, it boggles the mind that, you know, people can be anywhere.
You can be looking over someone's shoulder.
You don't know who's actually reading the text.
Somebody could take a picture of the phone and save it for all posterity.
I know, you know, this particular signal chat, if I read correctly, the text disappears after a week,
which is a problem right there because there's no accountability, which is probably the intent of using signal.
But, obviously, you know, in this particular case, that did not last because of journalism.
Go ahead, Alex.
I like the way Rob has been thinking about this and the various deductions that he's been making here
with respect to the use of the personal devices.
And going back to this weird notion of signal being installed by default on government phones,
well, that does not necessarily mean that you should use.
You know, you always freeze at the most inopportune moments, Alex.
You really have to get a better connection.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
So, well, it's where I am terribly, but it's not going to get better until I get back to the United States, apparently.
There are other places in England you can connect to the Internet, but never mind.
We'll discuss that later.
Well, not here.
Not now.
Right now, this is the only thing I have available.
But, in any event, the point is that you don't necessarily have to use signal for communications just because it's on your device.
Now, there are legal reasons why you should not be using signal for these types of communications.
I mean, some of them may involve things like, well, you could be violating perhaps the Espionage Act
by mishandling national defense information through signal in this way.
Also, you could be violating the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act.
These are laws that mandate the preservation of certain types of government records,
and these communications are certainly records that would be mandated to be preserved.
And the use of signals disappearing messages features and the potential failure to archive these types of communications
could actually violate those two different laws, those various acts.
So, also, if you're trying to prevent records or you have an intent to evade record-keeping requirements
by using signal to conceal official records from the government, a form of criminal offense.
Take that sentence again, Alex.
That's really annoying.
Okay.
So, if you are actually trying to evade record-keeping by using signal to conceal official records from the government,
that in and of itself could be a criminal act.
Interesting.
Now, you know, one question I had that I asked you guys before, when you're using the signal group chat,
and again, I don't do this, so I don't really know,
how would you catch something like the Jeffrey Goldberg incident?
How would you know somebody's on there that shouldn't be on there?
And I saw a screen grab of what a group chat looks like, and I see people chatting, you know,
I see people talking, but I don't see a list of names of people who are on the chat at that moment,
like over to the side, like you would see in a desktop because there's space for it.
You have to actually select something that shows you a list of everybody who's there.
So, I can see all these people not doing that and not checking,
and this guy is able to just hang out there, and who knows who else is able to just hang out there for however long
and not be detected.
Rob?
Yeah, that's about right.
You can click over at any time during a signal group chat and see the full list of people who are on it.
You can see when people get added, when people leave the chat,
but nobody can really enforce any sort of,
hey, everyone, just make sure you know that such and such is on this chat now.
And when this chat was started, when it was put together, or at any point after that,
this person, someone added the wrong person into the chat, and, you know, hilarity ensued.
It certainly appears so.
Now, if you're interested in who the members of the chat were, of course, in addition to Jeffrey Goldberg,
we had Mike Waltz, who is the guy who, for whatever reason, brought Jeffrey into that particular conversation.
We have Scott B.
That refers to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, billionaire hedge fund manager.
There's Brian, just Brian.
That's Brian McCormick, former energy consultant, chief of staff for the National Security Council, serving under walls.
There's Pete Hegsev.
There's Dan Katz, the chief of staff for Besant, who identifies Katz as the Treasury Department's contact in the chat.
Joe Kent, Trump's nominee to run the Counterterrorism Center.
S.M.
Anyone want to guess who S.M. is?
Go ahead.
Nobody?
I mean, I bet it's Stephen Miller.
Stephen Miller, you got it.
Mike Needham, the counselor and chief of staff to Marco Rubio.
John Ratcliffe, the CIA director.
Oh, was I not supposed to say his name?
He's CIA.
I don't know.
Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.
T.G.
Any guesses?
The people use initials.
They're the ones that really are thinking security.
All right?
Stephen Miller is number one.
T.G., come on.
Tulsi Gabbard.
Tulsi Gabbard.
Yeah.
Not bad.
Vice President Vance.
Stephen Widkoff, the Trump administration's special envoy.
Alex Wong, Waltz's aide.
Walker Barrett, likely a senior staffer on Waltz's national security team.
I'm looking at TheHill.com.
They don't even know for sure.
And then there's Jacob.
And it's unclear who Jacob is.
That's literally what it says.
It is unclear who Jacob is.
Who is Jacob?
Can we find this out?
We should know who Jacob is.
He was on the call.
My goodness.
All right.
And here's one final bit of fun that Wired uncovered.
Yeah.
A Venmo account under the name Michael Waltz carrying a profile photo of the National Security Advisor connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him was left open to the public until this afternoon.
A wired analysis shows that the account revealed the names of hundreds of Waltz's personal and professional associates, including journalists, military officers, lobbyists, and others.
Information a foreign intelligence service or other actors could exploit for any number of ends.
I'm telling you, these folks are not qualified to be anywhere near the buildings that they currently occupy.
This is incredible.
I do want to ask one question, though, since this was open and everybody was able to peruse the hundreds of people, was Jeffrey Goldberg in that list?
That would be a nice clue.
No, but I did find one thing that I wanted to bring to kind of close the circle.
Are you saying, no, he was not in there?
You looked at the list?
At Pete Hegsitz's, I'm sorry, at Michael Waltz's Venmo?
No, I did not.
Okay.
I don't know what the no is for then.
All right.
Oh, I mean, I'm just guessing because here's the other thing I learned.
And I realized I mentioned this earlier and didn't get to finish it.
So this is why it's also probably really good to have contact photos.
Because Jameson Greer, who was confirmed last month as a trade something or another, was probably the second JG in Michael Waltz's phone.
And he meant to add Jameson Greer and just saw JG and went for it.
So I'm assuming that the smart money is on that.
This is just the incompetence is mind boggling.
I mean, I've never made that mistake.
I don't even know how to make that kind of a mistake.
I look at names of people if I'm going to be calling them, for instance.
And if it's not the person I'm calling, I don't call them.
You know, it's basically just simple checking.
And if these people aren't checking who they're talking to, they're sure as hell not checking what they're doing with the tremendous power that they've been entrusted with.
Alex, you're staring at your finger.
Hey, I'm back.
I keep freezing going in and out here.
But I want to talk about the mistakes here, right?
Because we're talking about this signal gate scandal as if it's some kind of one-off major catastrophe here.
I mean, this was, frankly, this revelation was really stunning.
It's amateur hour for operational security.
But there's real consequences here.
This is going to very seriously cause our allies to reconsider sharing sensitive and classified information with us.
I mean, you have to lead from the top down.
And this is not the first time that the Trump administration or its people have made massively significant intelligence or security blunders.
Think about what is happening.
We've forgotten what happened during the first administration and afterwards.
Hundreds of classified documents were found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, some of them in a shower, potentially accessible to lots of unauthorized individuals.
So this is not a one-off, right?
You remember way back in the first administration, too, when Trump's attorneys, they were overheard discussing various investigations into the administration by a New York Times reporter who was sitting, I think, at a restaurant next to them.
And Kyle, go ahead.
Well, as I'm sitting here thinking about some of the other aspects of this that are really interesting, I will point out that a lot of the critiques and - well, let's just say there's so many people just clouding on these people.
And they're like - they're like, hold my beer, OPSEC.
And I will say that in contrast to other administrations, let's say the last one, the kinds of jokes and media around this are very playful and very hilarious.
And I'd say much less conspiratorial because you don't need any kind of crazy harebrained conspiracies to absolutely assail them just for how goofy this whole thing is.
So I do want to suggest to our listeners, enjoy the playfulness of it.
That is - that ridicule is a loud speech.
And I think as long as it is not like really dark and conspiratorial and just really ugly as it has been, I think it's welcome.
I mean I'm really interested in what kinds of - what ways people are thinking about this.
This is very - going to be very hard for this administration to live down.
They've basically made bombing Yemen famous.
Like that was something that would just go on and no one would really talk about it.
They'd be like, what's going on in Yemen?
That's an interesting point.
What are we even doing?
This is going to be so in the forefront.
I mean now you have the rebels there or whatever adversary there coming back and responding and attacking our flotillas and stuff.
It's elevated this whole conflict way above the surface.
And the other thing I just wanted to add was we've laid it all out.
There you have it, everybody.
I mean a lot of people have been talking about this whole thing.
It's interesting what - the ways that they'd speak about this politically, the leveraging they're trying to do.
It's very instructive and it speaks to - okay, jokes aside.
The myriad of ways this is a revealing compromise of their in-communications, the ways they do it.
Just the use of signal alone I think opens up a really big - I mean it makes signal a target in ways it probably wasn't before.
And this was - and their excuse I think now is like, oh, this is just to like say when we're going to go like meet at the water cooler and like have a coffee break or when we'll be at the meeting or when the bagels are going to arrive or whatever.
Like that's not how they're using it clearly.
So it's going to - it's elevated signal and the use of these tools.
It's also, as we pointed out, laid out the avoidance, this as an avoidance strategy to have any kind of record of their discussions and planning, maybe not even in the immediate but in the future as we said for FOIA and other national archiving purposes,
which is traditionally been something that was respected.
Clearly that's not the case with this administration.
It's only been confirmed in this incident.
So those are some things I'm really interested in.
And just the projecting of like how far out they're planning, how they're using the media, not entertainment but like news and the cycles of things,
how to - the way they're using messaging to shape public opinion around their actions and excuse their transgressions.
Well, I found it really interesting that it's quite possible more people have learned about the bombing of Yemen, not from the bombing of Yemen but from this,
from this signal, a scandal, signal gate I guess they'll call it.
But the thing that really is telling is how they own it or how they refuse to own it.
They will not admit that they did anything wrong.
They will mock the people who ask them questions.
They will mock the person who they included on the damn chat in the first place.
No request of his.
They just did that and they're going to try and trash a well-respected journalist who just was receiving their errant messaging.
And basically you're seeing the MAGA followers and Trump's little group basically saying that there's nothing to see here.
This wasn't a big deal.
This isn't classified.
And of course we all know differently.
We all know this most definitely was a very big deal.
So I feel for the people that have taken an oath to put their lives on the line for us and for these people at their command.
It's embarrassing.
And all your serious obligations as a defender of this country and our ideals, this is the crew that's going to send you into harm's way.
Yeah, it sure seems that way.
And don't say we weren't warned.
Any final words from Signal Land before somebody intrudes on our conversation?
Go ahead, Alex.
Before I start to break up here.
Yes, please.
I think what really matters here in the context of discussing classified information, sensitive information like this, is that the setting really, really matters here.
For anybody who's a member of the intelligence community, it's like being in an episode of Severance.
As soon as you walk out the door of the CIA or...
Rob, Gila, any final words?
I mean, we're currently clean on OPSEC and I'm thrilled to say that.
All right, let's all chip in.
Maybe we can get Alex on Internet Connection someday.
Yeah, it must be at Heathrow or something.
I don't know.
I don't know.
All right, we are going to continue this conversation over on YouTube.
And Channel 2600 starts at 8 o'clock.
And you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
Please keep paying attention.
Keep letting us know what you hear.
And we'll try to do the same.
Good night.
See ya.
See ya.
See ya.
They got a shot.
Not anymore.
They got a shot.
They got a shot.
What shall we suced with?
They got a shot.
We might be sorry.
See ya.
See ya.
They got a shot.
They got one.
They got a shot.
And they got a shot with a shot.
I got a shot.
We'll be right back.


And welcome to everybody here on YouTube. This is Overtime.
Emmanuel, I think I made it. Kyle, did you make it?
Oh, I more than made it.
And I see Rob. You there?
I am there and here.
Gila?
Oh, there's Alex. Gila, are you there?
I'm here.
I am here. Sorry. We are here.
We are, we're also coming through on YouTube a little delayed, which is why they're in my headphones.
Well, we're always delayed. We're always delayed on YouTube. YouTube is well behind the world.
It is true. So that does get a little confusing when you hear talking to us, but you hear just beginning things and it gets very complicated.
But hello. Hi.
How do we have negative viewers? We have less than zero?
What?
Okay. Well, I must have misread that. Hold on.
I found our viewers usually are a pretty positive bunch. Kind of upbeat.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be the first time we broke YouTube.
But yeah. Okay. Welcome. Are we on YouTube? We can attest to that.
We are. Yes.
Okay. Good. So, yeah. Boy, that was something. What happened?
What do you think is going to happen next? Are people going to resign or is it just going to get swept under the rug?
I mean, you know, Democrats have absolutely no power. They, you know, they keep bailing.
They keep giving up. So I hope they have it in them to actually pursue this.
And maybe, maybe even some Republicans might have some, you know, some character and say this is unacceptable.
Like, apparently the editor of the National Review Online is calling for Hegseth to be bounced.
So.
Say what you will.
86.
Say what you will. And that is not a pun about George Will, who was a big part of National Review.
Uh, but, uh, say what you will about National Review. They do have integrity sometimes. Sometimes.
Stop clocks and everything.
Conservative publication. But, uh, you know, sometimes, sometimes they actually criticize themselves. And that's, that's a good thing to say.
Um, also do want to say hello to the 23 people who are streaming with us right now.
Individually?
Yes. Oh, no, it's 30.
I have to go around the room.
It went from 23 to 30.
You know what?
Personally, you know, I can do that, I guess, but.
I mean, Emmanuel, here's the thing. I don't know if Romper Room was a thing for you when you were growing up.
It's funny because I was actually listening to some old shows and we were talking about Romper Room.
We were talking about Romper Room and Sonny Fox and Sandy Becker.
And, um, and, and you were talking about how, I feel like, Dorothy and that Wizard of Oz at the end.
You were there and you were, you were saying, uh, that, um, um,
they would never see you and you were waiting for them to acknowledge your birthday.
And I was like, well, did you, did your mother send in a postcard at least?
How are they supposed to know you were there?
But what, what's, what's, what's new with Romper Room?
No, that's what I'm saying. Nothing's, I don't think Romper Room is on the air anymore, but that was the thing, right?
Like Miss Molly would say everybody's name.
She never saw me.
No, no. She didn't see me either.
Actually, I don't know if we had the same Romper Room.
Was Romper Room regional?
Or was it a national Romper Room?
No, it was functionally regional.
Well, but, um, Rob and I have learned that we had the same Romper Room because W.O.R. Channel 9 was airing in my part of the country as well.
Okay, well, that, that right there tells me that you're well behind my Romper Room because we didn't have stations airing in other cities when I was growing up.
We just had the stations that were in our city.
So we had Channel 9, W.O.R., wasn't W.W.O.R., none of that crap.
And, um, uh, I don't know where the Romper Room was.
I don't know what Romper Room means.
I don't really know anything about it.
Um, but, yeah.
Um, why are we talking about this?
Because we were talking about individually greeting the 32 people who were here with us now.
Yeah, I'm not going to do that.
You know, hi, everybody.
I, uh, it's good to see you all.
But, um.
Yes, our magic mirror has a busted modem and, uh.
It's been a long day and, uh.
A magic mirror needs a little windex.
Yeah.
Speaking of long days, Alex, I know you've had a long day because you're over in a different part of the world again, which you insist on doing.
And it just makes you more tired.
And when are you going to see that?
I know.
Well, I, I will be, I'll be back in, uh, New York tomorrow.
And I will be back home, I think, and hopefully not traveling for about a month or so.
Although, I, I don't know, I might be going to D.C., but that's at least in the same time zone.
And I mean.
You will somehow find the one place that doesn't have internet in D.C. and talk to us.
I know.
Yeah, this, this is really crappy tonight.
I don't know what, what's going on.
No, it's overtime.
It's shitty.
You can say that.
It's overtime.
It was pretty damn shitty.
I guess, right?
You know, I, some people have to class it up here, though.
Well, continue saying whatever you were trying to say at the end of the last show.
And, uh, we can maybe take phone calls.
Oh, God.
I don't even remember what that was.
But I, I think it was saying, like, look, you know, it's, the, the context matters here.
Like, where, where are you actually, uh.
See?
That's all it takes.
You just have to get them started and they'll freeze up.
Did it?
Fuck me.
Okay.
That came through loud and clear, though.
Maybe if you just, if you cuss all the time, the power of the cuss word will, will drive
you through.
Yeah, exactly.
It probably, it probably will.
Um, yeah, I won't even try.
I, I think we should just take some phone calls.
I really do want to troubleshoot this.
You know, we're watching you and we're seeing you freeze and we're all laughing and pointing.
It's great.
But we don't need to see you.
We just need audio.
Are you saying that you don't have an internet connection that can simply carry a damn audio
signal?
No, I think it's, I think it's just spotty.
I think it's, it's dropping packets and things is what I, what I think it is.
Can we ask you to call next time on the telephone?
Because I know that won't drop out.
That's possible.
But I'm, I'm actually, I'm, I'm not in the arts club tonight.
So I'm in an unusual place that has shitty internet access, as you would say.
But again, we don't need internet.
We just need a phone, you know?
So if this happens again, let's do that because, you know, you have things to say.
I want people to hear you.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Yeah, it was, it was really annoying.
And today I think was particularly important to, to get points across.
This is a really, really interesting story.
I think in situations like this, Alex, not that I don't enjoy looking at your face on
our, on our video call here, but I think maybe if things become too much of a problem, you
could shut your video off, leave your sound on and use less bandwidths and maybe then we'll,
we'll lose you less.
Yeah, I was thinking that too, but I'm, I think it's just a matter of like the, the network
dropping, um, devices and then reconnecting quickly.
That's, I think that's what's happening.
Not to open up this too much technically, but wouldn't this also be like an effect of
Signal using a little bit more substantial encryption?
So it does take a little bit more bandwidth.
Like it could be, uh, our end as well, more so than other platforms we use in the past.
I don't even know what, what, uh, um, tin cans and, and, and twine, uh, Skype used, but,
uh, I will say that, uh, the video resolution for everybody is actually a little bit lower than,
than ordinary, um, picture would have been.
So it could have been the comp, it could be the confluence of all of our bandwidth plus
whatever kind of, uh, uh, bandwidth the encryption takes for these kinds of calls.
Do we have to be encrypted on Signal?
Can we unencrypt?
I don't think it's supposed to work that way.
But I want to be in clear text.
I do.
I don't, I don't want secrets.
I want everything to be out and open.
I think that's just radio.
We're on the radio or we were on the radio.
You know, we're not trying to encrypt.
So I don't know if that solves the problem.
That would, that'd be cool.
Uh, Alex, you keep turning your video on and off.
So maybe if you stop doing that and just go with audio, let's test Rob's theory.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm going to do that.
I'm going to show you dropped again.
You were just staring at me dully because you know, you, you weren't actually there.
Yeah.
So I'm just going to keep talking now for a little while.
Be extra combative.
Yeah.
Let's just say something important because that's what seems to trigger it.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's usually what, what happens, right?
When, when, when we're, when we're, we're dealing with that.
You've discovered the meaning of life, Alex, do go on.
Well, you know, other, other than 42, right?
Life, uh, what was it?
Good one.
Didn't see that coming.
That's, that's, that's right.
You know, that was it.
Right.
You know, of course.
Right.
That's it.
That's it.
When you were approached by the, the God particle, what kind of questions, what was, what was the inquiry like?
And for those who don't know, the guard particle, you have to watch dark Higgs boson.
Um, we do have a, wait, you know, again, let Alex talk, let Alex talk for at least a minute.
Cause he hasn't done that yet tonight.
You're supposed to interrupt me.
Go ahead.
What am I going to, what am I going to talk about for a full on minute here?
I think what I was actually saying at the, at the end though, was that the context in which you receive and interact with classified information really matters that anybody who's in the intelligence community, you know, it's almost like an,
in episode of, of, uh, severance, right?
When you leave the CIA facility or you leave the NSA facility, you do not talk about the things that you were working on at work.
You don't address any kind of classified.
Are you pausing for thought there or did you really freeze on audio?
No, I think I froze.
God damn it.
See, I'm telling you.
Now we know.
Now we know.
Yeah.
We tried.
It's like bursts of, of, uh, connectivity and then it like drops a little bit and then it comes back.
It's definitely, it's definitely waves.
This is why I like wired connections more than wireless connections.
Well, I have a, I can do a test.
Maybe what I should do is actually tether to my phone and that might, that might actually be better than the shitty network.
Oh, so you're on someone else's.
Okay.
Yeah.
Maybe your service is better.
Yeah.
Do you have bars on your phone?
Uh, yeah.
I call them pups over there.
That was good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That was funny, Rob.
The entertainment never stops around here, but I am trying to get to the bottom of a serious matter.
Do you have signal?
We have a phone call.
I don't mean the signal that we use.
Oh God.
What a stupid name.
I do.
I do.
What is it with companies naming themselves things that are hard to differentiate?
Signal X.
It's like you can't find anything anymore because you keep getting the wrong results.
All right.
I'm going to try to connect to my phone.
Okay.
So I'm probably going to lose you while that connection happens.
We have a phone call.
This is an adventure.
You know who the phone call is.
It's got, it's going to be rebel.
He's going to put us on hold.
He's going to do all kinds of experiments.
No, I don't know.
You don't think it's rebel.
Well, it might be rebel.
We're not going to give out any information, but a caller, please hold on.
We're going to get to you in a moment.
We're just seeing what happens to Alex, uh, who either is or isn't moving.
I can't really tell.
I think he is moving.
He's just sitting very, very still.
Alex is a man in control of his own destiny.
Oh, no, he's moving.
Look at that.
He moved his head.
All right.
So what do you, how are you connected now, Alex?
Or are you connected?
Uh, well, it failed to connect to my phone.
So.
It failed to connect to your, how do you.
Okay, fine.
It's 20, it's 2025, you know.
Um, don't know how you can't connect to your phone.
Let's take this call.
Good evening.
You're on overtime.
Yeah.
Yes.
Mr. Goldstein.
How are you doing today?
Good.
How are you?
I'm doing fine, man.
I'm, I'm actually multitasking.
And I said, I had to call you guys to find out.
It's about something that I received through WhatsApp.
And I just wanted to find out from you guys to think of this as a scam, if I should leave
it alone.
Okay.
Tell us what, what'd you get?
Yeah.
Have you, have you guys heard of eClincher?
EClincher?
EClincher is, um, they say it's a data promotion platform that strategically partners with app
enterprises and helps apps improve their data, et cetera, et cetera.
Never heard of it.
No, it's a long past, I don't want to read the whole thing.
I would stay away.
I would stay very far away from any unsolicited messages from WhatsApp.
Yeah, if that came, if that came to you without you asking for it, I don't think that's
good.
You're better off figuring out some other service on your own, like look it up for independently
if you're concerned about like page rank or your search engine optimization or any, anything
they're offering, you could probably do better just researching on your own.
Yeah.
I've never answered an ad like that.
Well, actually what, what, um, it's actually, um, it's a, it's a money-making opportunity.
What it is.
Right there.
I'm sorry.
But when you say that right away, I know it's a scam.
Um, yeah, but, but check this out, let me finish though.
You basically, you click like 35 times out of 35 and, um, it's all types of different
apps and stuff.
And, and, and they have something called a combination package.
It's actually, what is each of the, um, each of the actions you do is considered a task.
And the combination package means, um, like if you click along the way and you stop at like
20 clicks out of 35 and you can't do no more, they tell you, you have a combination package
and that you have to, um, you know, you have to, you have, you have to go into cash app
and, um, purchase Bitcoin.
But when I first, when I first, um, signed up, the person, my contact on, um, on WhatsApp,
because they have a community, it's a whole bunch of people that's part of the eClinch
community, the eClinch community, eClincher, E C L I C. Okay.
All right.
No, we're listening.
We're listening.
Yeah.
I was trying to spell it.
Um, eClincher basically.
And, um, this person, they put the money up for you and actually I made a little profit,
but when they, you know, when they said, you know, when they, you know, when they said
I had made a comp, you know, I, I got a bonus or something like that, they wanted me to
put it, um, $130.
Uh-huh.
Um, again, uh, none of this sounds legit.
Yeah.
Seriously.
You just to get disentangled from this, like just disassociating yourself, you're probably
going to have to give up an organ or something.
Well, and also, you know, you will, uh, benefit.
That's how they pull you in.
You'll, you know, get some kind of gain, but then you'll want to put it back in.
And that's when you'll realize the loss and there's no coming back from that.
So, you know, at this stage, this early stage, I would just, you know, uh, warn other people
about it.
Like, I think you've warned a lot of people tonight.
Oh, okay.
All right.
But yeah, you guys, yeah, you guys, I mean, you guys, you guys have heard of it.
So we haven't heard of it.
We haven't heard of it, but we've, we've heard the wording and the general tone and that's
just alarm bells going off.
Yeah.
Cause it's like, they want to, it's, it's pulling you in.
It's like, Oh, this might be something it's working.
There's all this stuff.
They're trying to like get you comfortable doing like moving, moving money around or using
your cash or, uh, uh, transferring things into crypto.
So it could change very quickly to where you do something that seems like, Oh yeah, this
is legit, but you're doing something that is actually compromising you in a way like you've
been tricked or like set up to think it's, it's friendly and it's all good.
And you're, you're just, it's all worth it.
But then they pull it out from under you.
Like definitely if you are using this in good faith, like be extremely cautious.
If you're just trying to get us to talk about it and sell it too.
Well, nice one.
No, I don't think so.
But we'll also definitely like have people write in.
Like if anybody's heard of this, please write in OTH at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear if you, if you're familiar with this, if it is legit or something, please
tell us so we can share with the listener.
And Rob has something to add.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I, I just, just looking eClincher up.
Of course, I don't, I haven't used this thing.
I don't actually know anything about it.
I can't say for certain one way or another, whether it's any kind of legit, but I will
say a huge red flag I'm seeing is putting out a web search for it.
I am scrolling past pages and pages and pages of results, and none of these are on any reputable
sites.
About 99% of them are on eClincher's own site.
So nobody's talking about them except themselves.
And I think when things are trustworthy, you will see other people out there talking about
them on like verifiable human powered websites.
And I'm not seeing that here.
Maybe we should contact them and tell them how they can get search engine optimization
from us.
You know, it's an opportunity.
And the only reason why I brought up is because I'm in, you know, I'm in my late 40s.
And I remember when I was in college, we had, you know, we had, um, we have, you know, these
term it seems like, um, Amway and quick star and the American communication network.
Totally.
Good old days.
Yeah.
Prime, remember in prime America.
That was like the last one, you know, you know, yeah.
Now it's digital.
Well, exactly.
Exactly.
If you're insulating yourself and you're just a way, just be very aware what you're, what
you're giving up and you know, how it's playing out and, uh, tell other people about it.
I mean, like you are here, if, uh, if things don't turn out well or if, or if they do, I
mean, I, maybe you are putting this onto something, but.
And we, we have late breaking, uh, news from Gila.
Go ahead.
Uh, Gila, you're muted.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I muted you.
Go ahead.
Um, well, I was going to say I didn't think, um, 3.1 stars on glass door.
So this is not, it doesn't seem externally reputable and also, um, internally people are not super
psyched out about it.
I'm not going to attempt to read that username, but thank you to the, um, person who shared
the 3.1 stars on glass door.
Okay.
We hope that helps.
All right.
Okay.
Let me let somebody else call.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Be well.
You know, these things are very common.
You know, we get mail like this all the time, but we're kind of like trained to just ignore
certain things and not even realize they came in.
I was going to say this earlier when you talked about Venmo, I was like people, you know, this
is how I use Venmo.
I don't use that.
Yeah.
That's how, that's my Venmo interaction.
That's how social I am on Venmo social payments.
Yeah.
I don't do that.
That's how I use it.
And so I cannot believe hundreds of this man's like contacts.
That's the thing right there.
If that was real, I'm like, what is your social life?
Like where you are paying for things with this, this particular piece of software?
Like that's fine.
If you're like a freshman in college or something, or like, I don't know, you want to play around
with it in a very tight network of people, but just willy nilly like, oh yeah, Venmo everywhere.
Everybody, everybody.
Are you kidding me?
I know it works.
You know, people use it.
It sounds dodgy, but it does work.
But, you know, if you have a situation where just having someone's name potentially opens
up a door where you can see all their contacts and then be able to contact those people.
You know, I've, I've heard of people sending, you know, 25 cents to celebrities and getting
the celebrity to answer them for some reason.
And now you have your foot in the door with that.
So, you know, that's not a good system.
That's not how it's supposed to work at all.
I don't care what benefit it just, sorry.
Go ahead, Gila.
So two things.
First of all, Venmo always made me very nervous because you could see everybody's activity.
And that just always creeped me out real bad.
Our buddy Tim in Connecticut coming in clutch with some information saying regional beginnings
romper room originated as a regional, regional television shows across Canada with the first
show airing at CKLW TV in Windsor, Ontario.
I used to listen to CKLW radio on my AM radio.
And they would play big band.
They play all kinds of interesting music.
And that was one of the first things I did as a kid.
But yeah, romper room.
I'd like to know where it was taped in New York because that was a big part of my life.
I don't remember any of it, but I do know that was a major thing.
Anybody remember Mr.
Dress up?
No, none of you do because it's Canadian.
And Mr.
Dress up was like their Mr.
Rogers.
And he was really awesome.
He'd dress up in all these different outfits throughout a half hour.
And I think everybody in Canada knows Mr.
Dress up, even though he hasn't been on the air since he died, I guess.
But probably before that, too.
A little bit before that.
I'm unfamiliar.
I don't think I saw one episode of that.
I'm actually still ranting about Venmo in my head.
Like, sometimes people will say, like, oh, you take Venmo for buying a back issue or something.
Or, like, in certain situations.
And I have this sense of, like, anxiety or, like, FOMO or something.
Like, oh, maybe we should.
Maybe.
And then it completely dissolves.
I'm like, no.
Anyway, we have a phone call.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Go ahead.
Hello.
It's Lou Raichu from Washington, D.C.
Hey, how's it going?
Yeah, yeah.
I'm the one who did Gay Furry Hackers.
You created Gay Furry Hackers.
Wow.
Welcome back.
Yes.
Yeah, I wish more people would hop on to it.
It's not something that really took off.
I was the only one to create a quote-unquote musical interpretation of that.
But, yeah, I mean, the samples up there, there's a whole, there's so many decades of shows out there for people to sample.
That's true.
Yeah, you need to get, I think we as hackers need to get on that.
I think tonight's show is definitely filled with priceless samples.
Okay.
Yeah, seriously.
I mean, I don't have anything for the immediate future.
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's good for you to admonish people or let them know they need to get their sequencing chops up and, like, start taking some of this audio and making beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous soundscapes and art with it.
Yeah, people need to get their samplers tuned up for this one.
Uh-huh.
Cool.
So, what's, you're in the heart of all the activity, I guess, in D.C.
Um, yeah, just talking to people all the time about the signal thing, it's so hilarious, man.
Uh-huh.
This will happen again, okay?
We will keep having these kinds of idiotic, well, flukes under this administration.
I know that's a fair fact.
And maybe not all of them will make the news in this spectacular fashion, but it will happen again.
So, that's obvious, it's clear.
Well, you know, I think the secret is, first of all, you put idiots in charge, they're going to do idiotic things.
So, that's a good bet right there if you get the chance to take it.
Uh, but the fact that there are so many good people out there, too, that will do the right thing when, when, uh, circumstances throw things into their lap, you know, like Jeffrey Goldberg did, and, and, and share this information with everybody, rather than, you know, do what maybe somebody at Fox News would do and say, oh, hey, Mr. President, you don't want this to get out, uh, and we're not going to tell anybody.
Right, right.
You took a lot of guts to make a decision like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, and, and we might all find ourselves in a situation where, you know, a little bit of courage is, is, uh, is necessary to, um, to share something with a lot of people, and I hope that we meet that test.
Yeah.
And to address the caller, uh, previous to me, you know, they're just going on and on about what is the e-clincher.
Uh-huh.
I mean, that's, that's such an odd name, but I think what they, they need to realize is that nothing in life is free, okay?
It's not easy to make, uh, money.
You're used to, uh, because what they want is to basically put it in no effort and get a payout, and I mean, that's not how the system works.
Mm-hmm.
You should love, you should, I, you should, really should love what you do, and do what you love, and try to figure, uh, at least figure out a way to live, live off that, you know, just put, keep body and soul together.
That's what it's all about.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And then I have one more thing addressed to Rebel.
I don't know if he's listening right now, if he's going to call in the future, but you also need to get on that W3M.
I brought up W3M last time I called in, and he mentioned nothing about it.
Before that, he was always mentioning links.
There's two different links, there's L-Y-N-X, and then there's L-I-N-K-S, which is another one that can also do images in your browser.
So, just putting that out there, there's a lot of text mode browsers, and a few of them do images.
I didn't know there was an L-I-N-K-S, that's, that's kind of cool.
I knew about the L-Y-N-X one, of course.
Confusing naming, especially, uh, when we're on the radio, these sound identical, but.
They do, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, when we're talking about these on the internet, we're all, we're all using text so we can see the difference, radio, magazines, et cetera.
Well, we know that Rebel has a new machine, so, uh, maybe W3M is, is on his radar.
Can you just remind us what, uh, the features of that particular software are?
The text mode browser for Unix systems, and using the frame buffer, it can, uh, display images directly in a frame buffer terminal.
I explained it a bit last time, and I was a bit clumsy.
Yeah, I've been trying to work out on my thinking.
But, yeah, um, there's a little bit of configuration to set it up for graphical terminals, like if you're using a graphical, uh, which, uh, a terminal emulator, where you have the terminal in a window on the desktop.
There's a little bit more set up for that.
When I, I tried it on there, um, there's a bit of, uh, there, most of the graphics didn't display.
But like I said previously, there's a key code, what is it, a key combination you can use under Linux to get onto a frame buffer terminal.
And that way, you can display images using the frame buffer.
It's really neat and, uh, useful for embedded devices where you don't have the X server running.
You don't have enough resources and such.
Like, this is something that could be used to make, I don't know, like an old Pentium 2 or 3, not sure exactly, PC,
that can at least run Debian or another Linux distribution, whichever you want, in a terminal fashion.
And you could, and you could have W3M as a way to just have, uh, a basic way to read, look at webpages.
You know, not everybody, uh, in the world is as privileged as we are.
Uh, not everybody has the latest, uh, computing muscle.
So, there should always be alternative methods, no matter how, uh, cumbersome or masochistic,
if that's the correct word, these may seem to others who are on these new, latest new systems that can do all these things.
You know, we've got graphics cards now that can do instant, in real-time ray tracing, 60 hertz refresh rate, all that.
Yeah, I mean, personally, for me, I come from a, um, from a very, uh, you know, I don't, I don't like to take things for granted, is how I'd put it.
Yeah, and it's great that you point out the ability to use this in the sense of, like, retro computing or making older hardware.
Yes, I'm very active in retro computing, so that's why I come up with these things.
The flip side of that, you're talking about our privileges.
Also, a lot of the newer chips and microcontrollers and, as you said, embedded stuff are incredibly powerful,
and we all have access to those.
Those could be running the very same software that you're talking about, even when, in their limited capacity.
So, very, very good points as far as, um, being sort of, um, portable in terms of various platforms that you could make useful.
Yeah, I mean, there's a device for vintage, used in vintage computing, it's called a Wi-Fi modem.
And it's a micro, ESP-based microcontroller that, uh, can connect to, connect to Wi-Fi.
It's controllable over a serial port, which most old computers, uh, have.
And that thing, that little chip is powerful enough to log on to Telnet, BBSs, forward everything to the serial.
It can download files and send them over serial, and what else, what else it can do.
But, yeah, I mean, the, the, ESP, it's not an ESP32, it's, I forgot which one is, it's a ESP series chip with built-in networking.
But that might be more powerful than some of the, uh, computers we might be connecting to this to, like a Commodore 64 or a ZX Spectrum.
Absolutely. Great, great points. And, and, uh, there's just so much capability all around us.
We just have to.
They are really cheap.
Go ahead.
Yeah, and affordability is, whether it's old or new, it's, uh, it's just about thinking about repurposing and different uses and creating, um, steps to put those, uh, implement those applications for them.
So, so, great ideas.
Definitely.
Yeah.
All right, well, thanks for your call, and, uh, hopefully we, we see you at our next conference.
Oh, thank you. I'll, I'm, I'm thinking about it. I'm always thinking about it. Well, see ya.
All right.
Okay, and Rubble, you gotta get on that W3M, and everyone else.
Yeah, we're gonna, if he calls in tonight, we're definitely gonna bring that up.
Yep, yep, and everybody else, check out Gay Furry Hackers. I know a lot of people saw it, and that was pretty interesting.
But you gotta sample that. I want to people, I want to see people doing with it, because it's pretty funny. That's what I thought. So, anyway, see ya. Goodbye, and thank you for the show.
All right, take care.
Thanks.
Uh, we can drop the link to Gay Furry Hackers in the chat for people who are listening and are not familiar with that particular musical classic.
And can you drop the link to people who might be listening?
It's in the, it's in the, it's in the chat.
Yeah, but people can't look at the chat or are listening on, on, on, with their ears. Can't you read it, what you posted?
Oh, yes. Um, if you go to soundcloud.com slash luraichu, uh, which is l-u-r-a-i-c-h-u slash gay-furry-hackers.
All right. Cool. And, uh, let us know what you think. Again, you can write to us, o-t-h-at-2600.com.
Did Alex fall off the bed? I just see a bed there. No, I, I, I didn't look at the screen for a while. I'm concerned.
He may be, I think, I think he built himself a fort of, out of the pillows, and he's hiding from us.
All right.
I think he's doing, oh, there he is, he's back.
He's taking care of himself.
Oh, he, you landed hard on the bed just now.
I did. Yeah. All right. Yeah. No, I have been, uh, I get, I get a fly pretty early tomorrow morning.
So I am, uh, frozen. You're frozen is what you are. I'm sorry.
This is, did you notice not a single caller has dropped? Everybody who calls us is able to maintain their connection.
So telephones, telephones are the way to go.
It's a shitty connection.
We don't need this. We don't need to see each other. We really don't.
I think we'd actually still, it would be, it'd be pretty expensive to maintain a, an international call though.
Wouldn't it?
It's odd. Uh, I don't know. I don't know. I haven't made an international call in a while, but this is free.
So, uh, you know, this is video. We don't need video. We just need audio.
Yeah. Well, we've already established that it's not, it's, it's just the network dropping.
It's not the, it's not a bandwidth issue. It's a shitty network issue.
Let's plan in advance next time. Go ahead, Kyle.
Yeah. Oh, I was just gonna say, um, it would be interesting if you could implement something where you had like a local number that dialed into our Skype, uh, or excuse me, pardon me.
Did you say our signal?
Wow.
I just used a cuss. Uh, I, I'm sorry about my swear. Um, there is a phone call.
There's always a phone call, but I, I just want to exploit this a little bit more. You know, we are using signal. We don't have to use signal for Alex. At least I was thinking about hotspots. Like what if you had a hotspot? And then I was thinking about the, uh, there's that new thing that EFF has been promoting.
That's an MC catcher that loads onto a hotspot, but you could have some kind of like travel hotspot, but I think you need a cell plan, like a SIM card or something to power your hotspot. So it'd still be costly to some degree for international, unless you had a local UK one.
Or if it carried a cell tower, you know, a mini cell tower with him, uh, and yeah, well, I, I think it's just this particular location is not ideal. Obviously the network here is, is old or rickety or something like that, or just unfit for purpose in some way or another.
Or you could like load balance multiple, but see, if you're a customer, you're only going to get one, one login. So you can't have like four and like hog a whole bunch of channels and load balance. So you have a better connection.
Alex, if there is a feedback, uh, survey card, please be honest, be brutal, and make sure this doesn't happen to anyone ever again.
Yeah, it sucks. What are you going to do?
We have a phone call. That's what we're going to do. We're going to pick up the phone. Good evening. You're on off the hook overtime. Go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Uh, I wanted to recommend an article to you guys. Uh, it's from the German magazine, uh, Der Spiegel.
Der Spiegel, yes.
Yes. It's, it's somewhat related to what, uh, you guys were talking about. Uh, it says,
private data and passwords of senior U.S. security officials found online. It says now reporting by Der Spiegel has found that the contact data of some of the officials in the signal chat include, uh, including mobile phone numbers is freely accessible on the internet.
And they're referring to, uh, Pete Hegseth, uh, Waltz, and Tulsi Gabbard. They were able to find their, um, info, uh, phone numbers and some passwords.
That's that, uh, that's that thing where signal is findable is your contact, right? Right. Is this a new article color?
Yes. Uh, it's, uh, it's, it's from today actually. Yeah. Earlier today, pretty recent. Yeah. But, uh, I mean, it just, it just goes to what you were saying before. We have clowns. It's a confederacy of dunces.
Oh, if only we had clowns, they would be so much more competent. Well, these are malevolent clowns. That's true. Yeah. Well put. It's just so depressing. I mean, I hope we can make it two more years. I don't know. Till the midterm.
Oh, we, yeah. But I don't know if that's, you know, you're right. You're right. We, we have to be upbeat here. Uh, you know, we're having fun with this.
Definitely have a plan for this. It's crazy. It's scary. But, um, you know, they're more pissed off than we are right now. And that, that I get great comfort in that.
It says it was particularly easy for DeSpiegel reporters to discover Hegseth's mobile phone number and email address. They turned to a commercial provider of contact information that is primarily used by companies for sales, marketing, and recruitment. So these, these people are real dummies. I mean.
Guys, why didn't we do this? Why, why, why do we have to wait for, for DeSpiegel? It's not even their country. You know, we should have done this. I'm, I'm sorry, everybody. We fell down on the job here.
Do the work. Yeah. We got to do the work. Come on, everybody. We can dox these people. We can, we can make, just reveal all the information that they don't want out there.
It goes to the, it speaks to how, not amateur, but just how kind of, uh, subsumed in commercial culture they are. They're like super mainstream. They don't think, uh, about staying out of these systems and stuff like that.
And there's a lot of like posturing and like popularity in their circles. So of course they're like, you know, networking and be, you know, and using commercial this and being on that.
And they're not thinking about having small footprint or, you know, uh, uh, being kind of a low visibility or anything like that.
It's all about being brazen and like throwing weight around and stuff. Right.
Go ahead.
Article. It's fascinating. I'm going to send it to you guys right now. Um, apparently there were passwords from these guys that got found on, have I been pwned?
And they didn't change them. So, um, the information also led to Walsh's profiles for Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Signal.
Wow. Just wow.
Right. And Tulsi Gabbard's email address was found on WikiLeaks and Reddit.
Yeah, this is.
I mean, really disturbing.
Just, just for, for those, for, for those unfamiliar with Michael Waltz, he's a former Green Beret. He was a defensive, a defense advisor at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld, under Robert Gates.
Uh, he was a consultant to Dick Cheney on counterterrorism. He is a career national security dude.
And, and this is, this is what he's responsible for right now.
He's not a cybersecurity expert. That's, that's, that's pretty clear.
All right, caller. Thank you for that. That's, that's fascinating stuff. We're going to look into it.
Yeah, definitely check it out. Oh, and that interview you did with Jason Scott a couple of weeks ago, that was fantastic. That was one of the best shows you ever did.
Well, thank you very much.
That was really amazing. And I hope you get him back in, uh, you know, you should have him on like every five or six months. I mean, at least maybe two or three times a year, because he's amazing.
No, you're absolutely right. The hours just fly by.
We really love checking in with him and he is such a, a huge, uh, supporter and so speak so positively about what we do. It makes us want to do it, uh, even better, uh, in, in every regard.
And what their work, uh, over the internet archive and his passion for what he's doing is, and sense of humor about everything is just, it's really, uh, rewarding to be, to be a part of and to, to, to share with him about stuff.
So I'm glad you heard that in that, in that show.
And not to steer the ship back to hope with every call, but, uh, he is going to be at hope. He's going to be a big presence there. So, uh, more of the Jason Scott magic. You can, you can witness yourself.
Yeah. I look forward to it. Well, you guys have a great night. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for your call. Alex, I wanted to ask you about this, um, because you found another .gov site. I meant to ask about it on the, um, on the show, but boy, we were, we were, we were so talked out with the, uh, crazy signal stuff.
So what did you find this week or what found you?
Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was actually really quite interesting and it's, it hasn't been out there at all yet, but you know, part of the system that I wrote to track new domains in the, in the .gov zone file and any zone files, but I found something really quite interesting yesterday.
Inevitably this is going to break up as soon as I say what the domain is. Right. So, uh, it was really weird. It's trump card.gov.
That's, that's an odd one. Alex, you know, I appreciate a joke just like the next guy, but if you're going to sit there and tell me that this, this government, even though the clown car government we have right now, uh, check clown car.gov too, by the way. Um, you're going to tell me that they went and registered a site called trump card.gov. What am I supposed to do with that?
I have no idea. I have no idea. I mean, it's, it's, it's, I'm going to it right now to see if there's anything there.
No, I don't think there's, there's anything there yet, but there is a commercial enterprise.
enterprise. It's, it's, we all know the trump card. You froze again at the most inopportunity.
Oh, for fuck's sake. The, uh, the, there is a commercial enterprise associated with trump hotels, I believe called the trump card.
And what would be particularly interesting is that if this is a direct crossover of commercial interests in a.gov site, then that would arguably violate the.gov act.
Let me, let me stop you right there because every time somebody says this, yeah, this will be a violation. They say, we don't care. We're going to do it anyway. A judge rules against them. They ignore the judge.
So when do we actually, when do we actually get to do something about them, you know, flagrantly flatting the law? Yeah, this is a violation. Absolutely.
I agree. I mean, it would be illegal, but, uh, it would be against the law, but I think, you know, look, we're, we're, we're going headlong into a, a constitutional crisis perhaps in this country.
And the violation of the.gov act may seem, you know, really like a, just a, a very small blip here that, uh, nobody would care about.
But I think it, I think it's dangerous if we let these things go.
We have a phone call.
Yeah, we have a phone call. Okay. And good evening. You're on off the hook overtime. Go ahead.
Hi. Hey, what's up?
I was wondering last week when you took phone calls over the air and you told people who call in on the after show, not to call in because you wanted to have the phone lines open for people who listen over the air radios.
I listened to over the air radio, you know, for WBAI. I am actually within the broadcast area.
So I didn't call in, but I wondered whether, you know, that was quite right.
Oh, well, hold on a second. Um, the idea is not, you know, who listens where it's how many voices we want to get on the air.
So, you know, uh, let's use rebel as an example. Rebel calls all the time. He might be listening to the radio, so he's going to call the radio show too.
It's like we're hearing too much rebel calling in on the phone and somebody else isn't able to call in as a result of that.
And I, you know, I think that's pretty, pretty easy to understand.
Yeah. And also the caveat here is also, is having something to say.
Yes. Well, I didn't have anything to say, so that was another reason.
Right. You always have something to say, so that's, that's not a worry.
Well, right.
It's not, it's not, it's not judging the quality of the call.
Yeah, well, last week I didn't have anything I wanted to say, so.
Well, and it wasn't that we wanted to be so cut and dry, like, like the, I mean, yes, technically you may be right.
Yes, you, you listen on one or the other, but the point as, as Emmanuel pointed out is we, we just want to give an opportunity to people, uh, new voices so that we keep, we keep it a nice eclectic mix of conversation and those people have an opportunity.
We got a call from a leftist fireman.
All right.
And if we, if we had taken another regular call, we wouldn't have gotten that call.
That was a good call.
Uh-huh.
Anyway, what's on your mind this week?
Or is this what's on your mind this week?
Well, there's, there's so much going on.
What, where do I start?
Trump.
Uh, no, don't start there.
Don't start there.
No, I won't.
We're so tired of this.
I mean, it's just, you know, how do we live through the next four years waiting for, you know, his Big Mac heart attack?
Well, you know, you know what we do.
We wait for moments like, like the one that happened this week, because we know there are going to be more of them and the way, uh, the, the signal moment.
Yes.
But there are going to be more, uh, and if the right people are in the right place at the right time, um, basically, uh, it'll play out in a way that is very damaging to them.
Um, and, um, they will unravel like a, like a ball of yarn.
They will unravel.
Um, they're not cut out for this kind of thing.
They really are not.
And all we have to do is keep our integrity, uh, uh, stick with each other, support each other, uh, not do what they want us to do, which is basically, uh, descend into, um, uh, disagreements on minutia.
Uh, and, um, I realized that the, the, the, the goal here is to get democracy back and then fix it from that point on.
I know there's a lot that needs to be done, but right now, you know, we're, we're, we're being pushed down a hill and we have to all figure out how to get back up that hill.
Well, I've been thinking, you know, Trump was not the ideal person to be in office when COVID came around, but at least he did want to get those MRA shots done quickly.
If something, if some other disease comes around during his stay and, uh, Robert F. is in charge, what are we going to do?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Well, it's an opportunity for that unraveling because then they would be at loggerheads, right?
Or they would be, uh, uh, basically in conflict, right?
But people would be dying right and left everywhere.
Well, that's what, that's what happened during COVID.
A lot of people seem to forget that happened during COVID, uh, and, and the fact, and in fact, Trump is one of those people, what he did during COVID actually was good.
At least parts of it were, but he basically would not do that again.
And in fact, is, is trying to rewrite history where he wasn't doing the things that he actually did.
Uh, so I, I actually think they wouldn't be at loggerheads as much as we think they would be, but I think the average person would realize that these people are wrong.
They're crazy and they're going to get us killed.
And, and, and then something will happen and then people will, um, you know, you're, you're seeing with, with, with the Teslas, you're seeing, um, the people react, uh, they're reacting in all kinds of different ways.
But when, when, when you basically make it impossible for people to express themselves, when you, when you threaten them with, uh, being, you know, sent to a foreign country, I mean, they're doing that now.
They're, they're, they're threatening American citizens with being sent to El Salvador.
If you protest in a certain way, or if you commit a certain kind of crime, it's, yeah, of course it's illegal, but they, they're threatening anyway.
Marco Rubio is, is, is doing this.
If we let that become normal, if we let that become the kind of thing that we can expect, then, um, you know, all bets are off as to, as to what this regime is capable of.
So people need to react and sometimes they're going to react in ways that, you know, aren't the, aren't the, the best choice.
Like, you know, burning Teslas.
Yeah.
I, you know, I understand why they're happening.
Wouldn't do that myself.
Certainly would never do that to anybody that owns one because they're not the enemy, but the people who, uh, uh, who are pushing this agenda, they certainly are.
And if you make it impossible to, to raise your voice or to sign a petition or to vote, well, then people are going to burn things.
And it's going to get ugly.
And, and, you know, you have no one to blame, but yourself, uh, you know, the, the people in charge.
Yeah.
And they're already operating operating with like sort of extrajudicial punishment and in illegal modes, which is why, as he pointed out, when we talk about like domains or little nuts and bolts and, uh, uh, dotted I's and cross T's, uh, it doesn't really seem like any of that is going to amount to anything.
If they're already operating with impunity and trying to, um, and backing people into positions where expressing themselves with these sorts of, um, high visibility and, uh, relatively low, uh, low, low penalty actions.
I mean, they haven't yet made an example of anybody out of that that's done that kind of vandalism and, um, you know, that's, that's destroying property.
Uh, I think, uh, you and I were talking this week about what violence is versus vandalism.
I even, I even asked, uh, Elon Musk's AI bot is vandalism violence.
And it said, of course not, it's not, but it's totally different.
And you know what, uh, destroying a Tesla, it's not a hate crime.
No, it's not a hate crime at all because a Tesla is not a human being.
So, um, yeah.
If you have a government that's operating illegally and, and, uh, victimizing the entirety of its populace and in myriad ways, what honestly would you expect people to do?
What is the, the logical extent of that?
What kind of backlash should you expect to see?
And if you know that like mass actions are just going to get you, you know, uh, troops and national guard and rubber bullets and tear gas, you've seen that.
I mean, people on the left understand that they know what that is.
Uh, the, the flexing of the executive, then you're going to get a lot of like asymmetrical and unusual sorts of, uh, uh, uh, tactics and, and social warfare.
It's not just limited to the United States because this regime is making enemies all over the world.
And, you know, we've seen, uh, you know, watching Canadian television, boy, we see how they are, um, uh, basically energized by all of this and how they are finding themselves and putting aside their differences and uniting.
And we need to learn from them, do the same damn thing.
And also, dare I say, the people of Serbia, you know, standing up against corruption over there and, uh, uh, standing up against the, the Trump regime as well.
350,000 people rallying in Belgrade.
I mean, when do we do something like, we're a much bigger country.
We need to be doing things like that too.
I think even Greenland, we can learn something from because they're uniting against all of this.
So, you know, uh, there, there, there are going to be increasing numbers of, of, of countries and parts of the world that will join with us.
Yeah, I, I don't want to imply that a mass action is itself wrong because there will be a clampdown on it.
I just think that the American populace has been incredibly comfortable for a very long time.
And, uh, a lot of, of, uh, anticipation of, uh, what occurs in large groups like that and a preparedness that we just have not practiced in this country because of our relative comfort.
And, you know, being prepared for provocateurs, being prepared for, you know, taking care of people and, and, uh, what kind of messages are on signs and how to, how to, um, uh, communicate and coordinate.
All of those things that it would take to do that, take the kinds of unity we've seen in Canada, the kinds of tactics that have been used in peaceful protests.
Because it can happen, but it has to remain peaceful.
It has to have scale.
And we just, we've been too comfortable, like, you know, going and consuming.
And it just, there's, it needs to be a, of, uh, cohesive sense of discomfort that leads to an action like that to, for us to really approach that in a way that will work.
And not result in some kind of chaotic, uh, uh, thing with a lot of casualties and, and, um, uh, negative, uh, publicity, negative coverage and publicity.
And, and then, you know, having people turn on this sort of resistance that, that this, uh, administration deserves.
See what you unleashed.
But, but, um, thing is, you know, we saw a one day.
Civil war erupt on, on the, on that, on that day.
January 6th.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
And I don't want to see that happening elsewhere.
Things, the, the American people are, is not educated in how to do non-violent civil disobedience and keep it peaceful.
Yeah, it gets out of hand.
We, we, we, we need, we need to have massive education on how that works if we want to keep things non-violent.
It takes discipline.
It takes serious discipline.
And it takes education, training.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And we have this sort of, the sense of the individual.
People are very individualistic in our, in our country.
We're just, we're a different society than a lot of other places.
And, uh, and liberty and all of these sort of catchphrases that were, um, brought up on.
And they have an impact.
And we have to be a little bit, um, a little bit, uh, distinct from those things to, to be able to stick together.
And that is really it.
And you're getting it, like, even in the coverage of this, like, I've heard more from all corners of, of my life, unusual ways.
It's just in the discourse.
People are talking about this.
Uh, everybody knows about this.
And, and, and, and, and it's been funny to me.
I can't, I can't step into any conversation or, or, or, you know, talk to anybody without somebody joking about it.
And the immediacy of how aware people are of something, because it is eminently ridiculable.
But, uh, that's a, that's a start.
That's a sign, a good sign that people are at least aware.
And there's humor and good, good faith in, in that.
So, but, uh, but it, it will take that, um, awareness and, um, uh, people having the right response in these moments and make it something that other people can get behind.
Final word, caller.
Uh, I'm not encouraged by what I hear you say.
I'm, I'm not seeing it happen.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I could, I could, I could see that, but, um, we don't really have a choice, do we?
Well, we need to have non-violent civil disobedience training everywhere so that when things happen, people are already trained.
Yeah, but, you know.
Because they're liable to happen unscheduled.
Yeah, and I think that's what's going to happen.
I think it is going to happen unscheduled.
I don't think you can control something like this.
And I think if you try, it's just going to, it's just going to push it further down the road.
And it's, it's, it's kind of like the Democrats, you know, always filing petitions and, and motions and things like that and never actually getting things done.
And that's, that's what I think the people will teach us.
That reminds me, uh, Trump threatening all of the lawyers who filed things against him.
Uh, I'm wondering, will that have a chilling effect or is that like hitting the bees hive with a stick?
It depends on the quality of the lawyer, I guess, you know?
So, uh, we'll just have to see what their reaction is.
I'm sure Alex would not be one of them that, uh, is intimidated.
Uh, anyway, we're going to move on, but thanks for your call.
Okay, bye.
Take care.
Uh, you know, she really got us going.
Uh, but you know, I've, I've, I've been hearing all these things, you know, recently, like, um, I think it was, uh, Marco Rubio who was, uh, based.
No, actually it was, um, it was Mike Johnson who was threatening judges.
You know, how judges keep saying that Trump can't keep doing what he's doing and basically saying you have to stop, uh, deporting people without due process.
And, um, and, uh, Johnson the other day said that, uh, you know, Congress controls the budget of the judiciary and basically implying that they're going to just cut them off if they keep ruling against Trump.
Is that true, Alex?
Is that how it works?
Can they do that?
Because if they can, our system doesn't mean crap.
If it can be, if it can be, um, a thwarted that easily, then, uh, it's, you know, there's no power left.
Yeah.
It, it's a little crazy that you, you cut out for me there.
Cause I lose audio too.
When, you know, when this network is not functioning, when, when what cuts off?
Um, wait, I don't know when cut, what context.
When you just said, if it can be cut off that easily, what, what was the, it, it being the, the judiciary branch.
Like if, if, if they're saying Congress controls the, uh, the budget and they can cut off the budget, threatening these judges that rule against Trump.
Yeah.
Well, they can threaten the judges.
Um, the judges should, you know, they're, they're literally going to be perhaps the last bulwark of this Republic that we have at this point.
Um, and, and, and I think our caller was right to bring up the fact that it is extraordinarily terrible and scary that Trump has been targeting law firms with executive orders that would essentially punish them.
And, and, and, and, and is now demanding that they perform pro bono work on issues that, that he supports.
And this is an insane time here, you know, and if all these law firms are, are bowing down to him, then we're losing the defenders of democracy here.
We're losing the defenders of the bill of rights.
Um, you know, lawyers here are really the foot soldiers in this fight, because if you, the judiciary will have nothing to rule upon.
If there aren't lawyers to file lawsuits and complaints and motions and injunctions to stop Trump, it's a really insane situation.
And so, you know, most of the, the AMLA 100s, the big firms, especially the firms that have been associated with any kind of progressive causes, they all, I think right now are expecting more executive orders to come.
And the financial times has even reported that more executive orders were likely coming, perhaps even as soon as next week that could be targeting other law firms.
So all these firms, if I were their chairman, unlike the chairman of Paul Weiss, I would not, I would, I would not bend over for Trump here.
I would start preparing my complaint and my application for injunctive relief to, uh, keep the status quo and to prevent the executive order from having any effect.
And if an executive order comes out targeting my firm, what I would do is I would file that lawsuit immediately.
I mean, within the hour, be down and ready to, to, to get it done.
You're really prepared here. Um, and you, you can't wait until it happens. You have to start preparing for this now.
Exactly. Yeah. I, I agree with that. You know, it's one thing when you see, um, uh, major tech companies, uh, bowing down to Trump and, and, and yielding to him, um, that can't happen with legal firms that can't happen with journalists.
There are certain parts of society that have to stand up to this and, um, uh, they can't cave and we have to make sure that they don't, we have to make sure we support them, that they are strong enough to fight.
And, um, you know, that's how you get journalists like, like, you know, uh, Jeffrey Goldberg standing up to this crap, you know, and basically being able to, um, uh, act well under pressure.
And believe me, there's a lot of pressure that is being thrown his way now and the Atlantic and journalists everywhere.
And this kind of thing will happen again, as, as a previous caller said.
So, yeah, it's, um, you know, what, what, what also, um, uh, really got me this last couple of weeks is realizing that there are different levels of justice in this country.
And that just because you are in the country legally doesn't mean you have the same rights as somebody who was born here.
So people who have legal status or people who have lived in this country since they were a child, but they weren't born in this country, they can be rounded up in the street.
I've seen videos of this.
They can be rounded up in the street because they were at a demonstration.
I mean, this sounds like Russia, they, they, they were at a demonstration or they signed a petition or they did something that the regime does not like.
And now they're going to be sent to a foreign country.
They're going to be expelled from the only land they may know or from a land that they are, are, uh, engaged in studies and, or, or just, you know, it's a major part of who they are.
It is who they are and, and, and, and what we assume can never happen does happen.
If you are not pure, if you were not born here, if you're not somebody, and even those people I'm seeing, I'm seeing, uh, threats against people who commit violent crimes, but were born in this country of being sent to another country to be in a horrible prison there.
So don't think they're going to stop.
Don't think they're going to stop with the, they'll, they'll, they'll go for another crime after that, a crime that we all would say, oh, that's a horrible crime.
Of course you should get rid of those people, but then it'll start becoming more and more familiar to us.
It'll start becoming, you know, that person down the block and, uh, people who just don't know when they're, when to keep their mouth shut.
And, um, it's starting now, you know, I, I, I, I, I'm tempted to say that's how it starts.
No, today, that is how it starts.
What you're seeing today.
And that's why, yeah, we have to get our show on the road and, um, and, and prepare for this.
Absolutely.
No, one's going to argue with me.
No, one's going to say, yeah, I agree completely.
No, no, just, I think, I think it's just, yeah.
Go ahead, Alex.
Yeah.
It's, it's getting late here.
Well, yeah, you're lying down on a bed.
I know, but it's your choice to be in London, all right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The fight continues, Alex, no matter what time of day it is.
Or, or the country, I guess.
All right, we're going to take one last phone call.
And I understand this from a very special caller.
Good evening.
You're on, off the hook, overtime.
Go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel.
It is from a very special caller.
Rebel, you know, usually you're number one and today you're the last call.
I don't know if that's ever happened on any radio show.
Well, I mean, I just got, I just had hernia surgery the other day, so.
Oh, my goodness.
That's horrible.
I mean, it's good you had the surgery, but boy, that must have, that must have sucked.
Yeah, it really does.
Well, I mean, I'm recovering.
It's just good that I'm recovering, but, yeah.
Well, it just happens.
The hernia happens.
I mean, I guess, yeah, as you get older, I mean, but it's common.
I mean, my sister had it, my brother-in-law had it, and people have it, you know, and
sometimes happens.
People think of hernias as, oh, you lift something too heavy, but I didn't lift anything heavy.
I mean, I mean, it did work out.
Like, did, like, pull up the chest, or, like, hung from a bar, you know, like one of those
pull-up bars.
But I don't think that's it.
Well, you know, people have hernias that don't cause them problems that they have for
years.
Some people have big hernias.
Some people have multiple hernias.
The important thing is to have it checked out and to have it taken care of, because it
shouldn't be a big deal if you have it taken care of.
I was told that if I didn't take care of it, it was like a groin hernia.
It was, like, under my stomach.
But if I could strangle my intestines and you could die, is that true?
Sure, yeah.
If you don't take care of anything, it could definitely do something like that.
That's why you always pay attention to your health and don't worry about what this is
going to cost or anything like that.
You are entitled to be healthy.
Right.
I mean, the insurance pays for it, but of course.
Yeah.
And even if they don't, you know, figure that out later.
I'll just say that, you know, I'll just say, I'm sorry, that wasn't my thing.
Somebody had a, your hospital had a data breach.
Yeah.
I don't know how that happens.
If you have, you know, I remember when we were thinking of, I was looking at the hospital
computer that had a computer, a PC, like a monitor and a keyboard, but I guess they were
on Wi-Fi, because it wasn't connected to anything.
Interesting.
Yeah.
They can't prove you had a hernia.
How are they going to prove that?
There's no hernia anymore.
So, you know, yeah.
Good luck with that.
I'm fine.
Leave me alone.
Let's see.
What else has been going on?
Or has that pretty much taken up your world?
Well, it's been taken out in recuperating and like laying down and not working for the
next week.
And, you know, go on my computer and just, you know, and I could just watch you do videos.
Oh, we were supposed to tell him.
What was the thing called?
W3M?
W3M.
You know about W3M?
Did you hear the thing called?
I heard of it.
Is that the word browser?
Yes.
It's a graphical.
Well, it's a text-based.
Four terminal.
Yeah.
Four terminals.
So I go on my Linux Mint terminal and download, just do so after W3M.
I think you could try W3M.
That's the one with the graphics, right?
That's what the caller said.
Yeah, we don't have this.
We haven't used it ourselves.
But we hear good things about it.
And we heard them on this very airwave or whatever it's called.
We're passing along.
They basically...
Oh, when I go to Holtz.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Let me see if we change it at Holtz.
But...
I still have to get my tickets for it.
But I want to still go to Europe.
I mean, this year I'd like to go to Switzerland, Italy, like Milan, Italy this time.
And I'd like to go to an odd country.
You know, a country that people don't go to, like Uzbekistan or something like that.
Might I suggest Moldova?
It's an incredible place.
It really is.
Well, you know, you don't need to be there to go there.
That's true.
Yeah.
You go to Tajikistan.
What's wrong with Moldova, Kyle?
We were there.
It was a beautiful place.
And you go there through Romania.
And if you hang out in Bucharest, that's a fun place, too.
And you can get there by way of Hungary, which isn't so pleasant.
Well, I guess Switzerland's trains are very efficient.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And you know what?
If you take a tram in the streets, you know, you will not only see exactly when it's supposed
to arrive, but when you're on that tram at every stop, it'll tell you all the other trams
that are going to meet that tram at the stop that you're coming up to and what time they're
going to be there.
And if any of that is more than, say, 15 seconds past when it's supposed to be there, people
start getting agitated.
They really want things to be on time.
Right.
That's right here in Switzerland.
Where in Switzerland?
Well, I want to go to what's one of those cities called Zurich, Switzerland, and take
a train up to Bern, Switzerland, which is the capital, and take another train up to the
other part of Switzerland.
Basel?
Oh, no.
What's the one where they had the treaties back in the 70s?
Blanking.
I don't know.
Geneva.
Geneva.
Geneva.
There you go.
The Geneva Convention.
Yes.
Right.
Is there a Geneva Convention Center, I wonder?
That'd be kind of cool.
I don't know.
You know, Bern, Switzerland, that's where I got Geraldo Rivera's video camera stolen.
Well, I didn't get it stolen.
I was carrying it, and I slept in a hostel, and somebody stole it while I was sleeping.
And why would I have Geraldo Rivera's camera?
He used to do a program called Now It Can Be Told, and I was helping get footage of Dutch
hackers.
And why was I in Switzerland?
Because I was on the way to Holland.
I'll get too many questions here.
And unfortunately, that's what happened.
But we made up for it by having a Dutch hacker film, the Dutch hacking that was going on,
which resulted in the Dutch hacking tape that we released many years ago, back in the 90s,
I think.
So, yeah, that's a little bit of history there.
The train to Milan.
And you were talking the whole time, weren't you?
What's this about the train to Milan?
Yeah.
Then from Zurich, Switzerland, I'm going to take it, or wherever, Switzerland, Geneva,
I'm going to take a train to Milan, Italy.
Okay.
That's a good trip.
Yeah.
Yesterday, last year, I was in Rome, so.
And you'll be going through the Alps, and it'll be very scenic.
Right.
Well, that's why I take the train.
You know what, Rebel?
Rebel, you should take the Trans-Siberian Express.
I don't want to do that.
No, thank God.
I don't even want to take an Amtrak train to Florida.
Wait.
Hold on a second.
Nobody has ever said that I'd rather not take the Trans-Siberian Express.
I prefer to take Amtrak to Florida.
I don't know.
I said I'd rather not.
I wouldn't even take an Amtrak.
I wouldn't take a train overnight.
It's just so annoying.
Wait.
You're talking about all these train trips, and you won't take a train overnight.
I mean, I don't know how to handle it.
I don't know.
I did it once.
It's very pleasant.
I mean, I like taking trains.
It's very pleasant.
I like taking trains for a few hours, four hours or five hours.
But being on a train for days.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know, if you're an adventurer, this is the kind of thing you do.
It's, you know.
And you can also, you can break it up.
You can, you know, get off at a particular city, spend a couple of days there,
then get on the next train that's continuing in your direction.
That's what I did when I took it.
And, you know, you go through Russia, you go through Mongolia, you wind up in Beijing,
and then you find your way from there.
But it's all really interesting.
That's right.
I'd like to go to China one day.
Well, that's a good way to get there.
All right, Rebel, we got to go because it's late.
And you called us late, but we're happy to hear you're recovering.
Um, and, uh, don't, don't get another one.
No, I know.
Don't get it.
That's what I'm afraid of.
You know, you can, my sister said her hernia.
I don't know how that happens, but I really wouldn't want to know.
Well, just keep getting checkups, like maybe every six months, just have it, you know,
look at, make sure it's progressing nicely.
And that's the best thing you can do.
Right.
All right.
You know, taking pain medication, like I did not take the pain medication that the
hospital gives, like they get the opioids.
I said, I do not want that.
That's smart.
Good man.
Yeah.
You know, I, I told my friend, you know, maybe, maybe I could smoke some marijuana.
Yeah.
No, that's lots of marijuana.
That's actually good for you.
That actually will help.
You know, I, I, I could, you know, drink liquor and get drunk, but you know,
That's not good for you.
That won't help.
It won't help at all.
Did they tell you anything?
Is there anything you could do to prevent hernias?
Like, is there any light, like prevention guidelines?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It just happened.
I don't know.
Just out of nowhere.
It just, it happened like two months ago or so.
I was doing like some, like chin-ups with a friend.
I mean, I was, I don't think this did it.
Chin-ups and like I was hanging on a bar, like, you know, instead of doing chin-ups on
a bar, you just sort of hang there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think that did it, but I mean, like, for like a few weeks later, that's when
I started feeling a slump, you know, you know, by my dick.
I obviously went out on the air.
I could say that.
Yeah.
But, but should you?
I mean, let's say, like, I put it bluntly.
Yeah.
That's not as blunt as you can get, but okay.
Was it painful?
It was, it would be a little painful and then it would go away.
And then like, sometimes it would be not painful, debilitating people.
I could walk, but I had to walk a little slowly.
Maybe sometimes you have to sit down a little slowly and, you know, well, the important
thing is you went in, had it checked and they said you need surgery for this, right?
Right.
Okay.
So that's, that's it.
You have something checked.
Like I have a small hernia myself and the doctor says, yeah, it's not bothering you.
You're fine.
But it could one day and then, you know, then I'll deal with it then.
But now it had like a belly button hernia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of those.
So.
Right.
Yeah.
So that's.
Yeah.
Anyone else want to talk about their, their body and what's on it?
I had a, I had a hernia taken care of.
I believe I was three or four years old at the time.
You had a hernia at three.
My God.
Wow.
You came into this world on, on all fours, man.
Wow.
That is something.
Okay.
I did not smoke marijuana to deal with the aftermath though.
Well, it wasn't legal back then, but if you were a three year old today, I would recommend
it.
It's not a requirement.
No.
Well, not smoking.
I recommend the gummies, but no, no, I'm not recommending any of that.
I mean, I don't.
That's, that's not good for a three year old, but neither are hernias.
I wish you could hack our bodies, like hack the hernia, you know, like, you know.
I sense a hope talk here.
Hack the hernia.
Whoa.
Rerouted.
Hack your hard bodies.
That's a good talk for hope.
Well, we're, we're in an age where there's ever eminently more ability to understand all
of these things and, um, and tools and, uh, just the, uh, mystery of a lot of it is, it
seems like it's disappearing and shedding away every day.
So perhaps, yeah, your story could be something, a subject of a talk or, um, things like it
regarding it, the, uh, just, you know, bio, uh, biology and, um, yeah, there, there's so
much going on with that in general bioscience.
So please, uh, take note of your stories out there, everyone and, and share.
Yeah.
And now you can help other people too, are going through similar things with, with your
experiences.
But, uh, Rebel, we got to go because it's getting late.
Any, uh, final sentence, if you want.
I wish they had a thing like a, like a small portable x-ray or something that one could just,
if they're having stomach pains or cramps or whatever, put on their stomach or tummy or
whatever, see what's going on inside.
A doctor could say, oh, that's a whatever, or that's, you know, maybe you're earning
on it.
Hang on.
Okay.
Rather than walk around with a x-ray wand, which no doubt would be misused on your enemies.
But, but when you go to the doctor who tells you that he's probably got an x-ray setup where
there's one down the road that you can do pretty easily.
So that's, I think that's a better way to do it because x-rays, you're not supposed to
have a whole lot of those.
There's very small portable ultrasound now.
Right.
That you can walk around with.
I don't think it's like enough to fit in your pocket, but there are, the technologies
like that are getting smaller and more portable, especially for places that are far flung and
don't have larger systems.
I think the imaging places should be the places where those exist, though, not in people's,
you know.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You want someone trained to know how to use it.
You don't want to like see some, some shadow of something.
Let's see what's inside the cat.
No, we don't want to do that.
Come on.
And then, you know, you misdiagnose yourself.
You need someone who understands what that kind of imaging is.
Right.
But certainly the possibilities are, are changing all the time.
All the time.
And we have these very powerful computers.
And we have the internet.
God help us.
Yeah.
There's that.
All right, Rebel.
Pleasure hearing you and stay healthy.
Get better.
Okay.
All right.
And for the first time in history, Rebel is closing the show and we are done here.
Guys out in Signalville, Signal Lent, any last words?
In fact, I'm going to insist that you all have last words.
You decide who goes first and who goes last.
I'll jump in and I'll just say good night.
It's late.
See you all soon.
Safe travels, Alex.
You sure?
Thank you.
That's what you want to say, Alex, because that's kind of controversial there.
Before I start cracking up here.
I'm surprised you stayed the whole time.
I said you should go after 30 minutes, but you started.
I know.
I just said, you know, fuck it.
I'll just stick around.
But I am exhausted.
I'm going to hang up as soon as we drop here.
Well, you have to hear what Rob and Gila say.
That would be rude for you to hang up on them.
Well, I think all I'll say is I'd like to point out to everyone following the news that we were using a Signal group call before it was cool.
Two, three weeks before it was cool.
It's true.
And I will also say good night.
Thank you to the 49 people who hung with us the whole time tonight.
And, you know, shout out to the good folks at Ray Gunn for already creating a We're Clean on OPSEC t-shirt.
Very cool.
All right.
We're clean on OPSEC.
Hold my beer.
Unbelievable.
All right, everybody.
Have a good night.
Don't take things too seriously.
And we'll see you next week.
Good night.
Good night, all.
Bye.