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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
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and a very good evening to everybody the program is off the hook emmanuel goldstein here with you
on this wednesday evening joined tonight by kyle hi hi um new york and everyone listening
what's with the voice oh no everything's fine i'm fine over here you sound like casper milky toast
what's what uh are you okay there oh no yeah i just uh made it in uh last minute here everything
going all right sport oh yeah oh i'm fine oh gee yeah i'm all right uh-huh take a drink of that
coffee that'll uh that'll perk you up um out there in signal land we have rob t firefly good evening
uh we have gila good evening and out in super signal land we have alex you do indeed hello
it's uh it's it's thursday here yeah how am i not surprised um where are you this week
uh i'm in geneva i'm uh coming at you from switzerland i think this is a first for me despite
having been in geneva many times have left and have you um but have you bought a sandwich yet
in switzerland sandwich no try it you'll uh you'll get what's known as sticker shock
oh well yeah pretty much everything here is obscenely expensive especially in switzerland i'm sorry
especially in geneva where you basically have to be either on the expense account of an ido an oligarch
or a money launderer to afford anything except for the people who live there alex um it's very
americentric what what you just said there that is obscenely to them that's normal and we're cheap
all right that's that's how it works yeah it is you know yeah when when when i traveled to
switzerland i was amazed by that but then when i went to former yugoslavia i was amazed at how cheap
things were um it's um it's it's it's pretty amazing how the world works in in different ways
yeah it was crazy i was at a bar earlier this evening and i think a negroni was around 21 swiss
francs for a drink i don't even know what that is in u.s dollars but it's obscene well you don't know
it's obscene if you don't know what a swiss franc translates to but i can tell you it's it's very
expensive everything is very expensive the dollar is not doing exactly well right now no no it's not
doing very well over here either so uh it's not doing well anywhere um yeah but yeah okay uh so
you're over there we're not doing overtime this week um but uh we are doing a show and um we um
of course accept your letters oth at 2600.com last week we had a call-in show which was pretty lively
um but this week it's back to the um uh same old um news uh summaries and things like that you guys
hear the story uh out of seattle but i think it's out of a couple of places where um somehow you know
those crosswalk signals where you press the button and some obnoxious voice says wait well apparently
somebody figured out how to make them say something else because um they're hackable did you know they
were hackable yeah um last week this happened uh crosswalk signals began broadcasting uh an unusual
political message now whoever hacked this not only did they hack it they were clever about it because
they made an ai generator jeff bezos who uh started criticizing local tax policies while having people
standing next to the don't walk sign uh basically waiting for him to shut up uh so uh this was this
was shared all over social media uh one message um appeared to mimic bezos saying hi i'm jeff bezos
this crosswalk is sponsored by amazon prime with an important message please don't tax the rich
otherwise all the other billionaires will move to florida too uh yeah uh these unauthorized recordings
apparently are part of a political protest they targeted multiple intersections in seattle's
tech heavy south lake union neighborhood and the bustling university district yeah i've been to the
university district it doesn't always bustle it's bustles during business hours but uh yeah you know
you want bustling uh midtown manhattan that's bustling still but anyway um the timing aligns with
recent discussions in the state legislature regarding a proposed tax increase on residents with
financial assets exceeding 50 million dollars that's um according to uh seattle abc affiliate
como komo uh senate democrats in washington state are advocating for tax hikes targeting some of the
wealthiest okay well that's that's a whole other story uh we're interested in the um in in the tech
behind this now seattle department of transportation said it responded to the locations where the fake audio
messages have been used saying it had removed the recordings uh in all locations where the tampering
did they need to bring a truck to remove the recordings i mean i don't know what what was
involved here um the audio recordings they say at crosswalks play a critical role for people who are
blind or have limited vision helping them to cross streets safely we are concerned that someone would
disregard people's safety to make a political statement we take this matter seriously and have been
working as fast as we can to respond to the situation uh we are also working with our vendor to
explore stronger security measures to prevent future hacking now that's what i'm interested in what were
the security measures how was this done i have uh i asked ai for some help on this because people
weren't much of help of help on this particular subject but but artificial intelligence proved to be a
little bit but i just want to address the issue of um this could cause hazards and danger yeah it can if
you're if you're stupid about it if you say something like oh it's clear to go now when i actually it's red
yeah that's very dangerous uh but if um if you're not irresponsible you can you can play a humorous
message and it won't hurt anybody certainly it kind of reminds me of that day back in 1997
guys remember this when somebody somebody hacked a sign on the new york city subway escalator at the
city group center um you know the one that said have a nice day and instead they made it say
2600 magazine and that basically was our it was our masthead which we used for the next issue
um and uh all of the media reported on this as if it was some some kind of terrorist infiltration
uh people were saying nobody was injured uh the signs said have a nice day it said something else for
a few minutes and everybody freaked out this obviously there's going to be some um overblown reaction
to something as um uh what i consider to be harmless you know anything can be used in a dangerous way but
i don't think that was the intent here i don't think anybody was at risk it is interesting that
they are working with the vendor so it kind of tells you that there isn't really much they can do
at the moment other than respond and like remove the messages i'm also curious if there's any way to
actually look at what is sent to them or stored in the form of a recording what what that file looks
like and if that's something of interest to them and how um boring it was made by the author of it
uh-huh any uh any thoughts or theories out in the second one rob yeah there is um i mean for folks
curious about uh how you could have fun with these uh crosswalk buttons specifically um deviant olum who
is a security researcher a lot of us know uh put a video on his youtube about it uh back in august of
2024 you could find that if you go onto youtube and search for hacker fun with traffic controls
and crosswalk buttons that's the title of it oh so we can blame we can blame him then right everybody
can blame him because he's the one who got the knowledge out okay all right absolutely i think i
think we can all safely blame deviant it's hacker tradition hacker tradition blame the messenger but go
ahead i want to hear yes and um but i do i do uh i am sort of of two minds about this because i love
messing with uh you know things in public like this i love the technical hacker aspect but on the other
hand this is a safety device that is uh critical for people um in certain communities the the blind
community and things like that who depend on being able to hear the audible signal so i would just uh
say if anyone is going to mess with these make sure to also put the intended signal of like uh weight
or cross or whatever sound clip you're you're uh replacing in there um keep it functional while having
some fun with it isn't there also a beep that goes on either while it's safe to cross or while it's
not safe to cross i don't know the difference myself but i'm i'm i don't know if the beep is
hackable that's something people definitely shouldn't touch if they are able to touch that
yeah or maybe you could make the beep play uh some chip tunes or something i don't know
well i asked artificial intelligence how this happened uh because i didn't find the page that you found
um and basically i i got a pretty good um explanation i've been getting some good explanations
recently for some really um obscure references of various things uh from artificial intelligence so
um yeah uh basically the primary method seems to involve a mobile application reportedly once
freely available from polara p-o-l-a-r-a a leading manufacturer of pedestrian signal systems
this app was intended for convenient configuration of the crosswalk units by authorized personnel
uh now there's also a possibility of a bluetooth connection uh the app connecting to nearby crosswalk
systems via bluetooth uh there's default password possibilities critical security flaws use of
default pins or passwords a player's own documentation reportedly states that the default passcode is one
two three
four four yeah no i wasn't sure i wasn't sure it went to the other page uh and it's the purchaser's
responsibility to change it it's highly suspected that other installations never bothered to update
this um now um as far as gaining access with the configuration app and a default or easily guessed
password unauthorized individuals can likely gain access to the settings of the crosswalk audio system
uh the app allows users to configure the spoken messages triggered by button presses this includes the
standard wait walk or walk light is on prompts i i don't know why you need more than that amount of
time because apparently somebody was able to put a whole political spiel in there when does the walk
sign ever have to say something that lasts 30 seconds you know it's either you walk or you don't walk
um then hackers are are able to upload their own audio files including ai generated voices mimicking
celebrities and satirical messages the app also reportedly allows for the installation of language
packs uh which in this case appeared to be the custom audio um and as mentioned the uh the altered
uh messages featured voices that were spoofed by artificial intelligence we think we i mean you know who
knows you don't know who did this um so um uh the basically that's uh that's that's the method i think
that uh falls in line with what people are are saying so far i'd like to know you know are there
default passwords how do we uh check these things to make sure they're safe um i i you know i see a road
trip ahead go ahead alex well one of the things that strikes me is is um i guess a bit of a surprise
is that all of these crosswalks seem to be locally managed at the crosswalk themselves and there isn't some
kind of overarching central management by which all of the recordings are are made uniform it seems
like there is a way to have individual recordings and individual crosswalks that's that's really
interesting and neat to me and and i think would really be the only way that you could do this unless
unless the the breach was of some central system and they only decided to implement these spoofed voices
at certain crosswalks for whatever reason i actually i actually can address that because
what i've noticed pressing pressing some of these buttons is that it doesn't just say walk it says
walk across and then it gives the name of the street so apparently the people who designed this thought
it would be a good idea to let people know what street they're crossing even though you can never hear
it over the traffic uh just uh to me it seemed kind of absurd that uh you wouldn't know what street you
were crossing if you had walked all the way to it uh or you know it's it's on a street sign i guess
yeah if you were blind and you you didn't know what street you had walked up to it's it's convenient
so um uh for that purpose i i suppose it's a it's a good idea but that's probably why it's a locally
recordable um um file at least i don't know if they record it there or if they um uh transport it
via some kind of telecommunications technique um i don't know we need to learn more about this
go ahead yeah that i mean that makes sense to me uh i i think you're probably right about that that
that's why it would have this this local management um of the of the audio and then the ability to
upload certain videos of certain audio there but it also seems to me like then you might be able to
accommodate rob's concern here which would be that whoever's hacking these or decides to hack these in the
future and replace the audio could then also put some kind of preface in the hacked recording that
says you know hey wait the light is red don't go anywhere but by the way this is jeff bezos or this
is mark suffer again um uh or elon musk or whatever yeah and if anything is going to make you run out
into traffic it's hearing that you know that's true yeah yeah quite quite possibly however i do have
to say though that um in as dangerous as it might be i i think that you know probably certainly low
risk that somebody who heard that voice would then decide to cross the road though i can understand
where you're coming from rob but but hopefully you know nobody's running into the street when they when
they hear jeff bezos complain about taxes it's probably something they've probably heard before
but i do have to say this is i think a particularly ingenious and funny and very kind of hacker spirit
oriented it hacked to me and these kinds of shenanigans bring me great joy to hear this is
the kind of hacker spirit that i like to see people engaging in it's definitely illegal in some respects
i'm not promoting illegality in any way but i do think this is a certain kind of civil disobedience
and hacktivism that um we should be encouraging yeah i mean it's it's it's funny it's not it's not uh
completely irresponsible uh and keep in mind uh how long have we had uh talking don't walk signs
you know we've survived pretty long without that uh in fact uh many places we didn't even have walk
signs or even traffic lights you know we're resilient we can get past these little hurdles so
having a temporary change or something that makes you just stop and think for a moment um that's uh
it shouldn't be something we panic over i do want to know exactly how it works though and i intend to
find out one way or another okay something else that happened which uh probably a lot of people in
new york city don't know about but uh you might be interested because it could happen to you out in
suffolk county long island uh everybody seems uh within a 50 mile radius uh and i believe unless
somebody corrects me i believe this only applies to landlines everybody last week got a phone call
at about 12 30 in the morning from the suffolk county police department and basically it was an
automated notification went out as what they call the silver alert system formerly the code red system
and uh it was about um a missing person a non-verbal autistic teen uh and uh basically they were
telling everybody to look out for this kid and woke everybody up in the process uh so obviously it had
a bit of a backlash uh in that uh many people thought that wasn't exactly the best way to go about
this um the thing is i didn't know that suffolk county police could do this could simply call
everybody also you know i have to ask if this only went to landlines that's not very smart because
obviously uh most people have cell phones these days i think we all know that uh if you're trying
to reach everybody you're only going to reach the people that you're waking up at 12 30 in the
morning who have landlines and are pretty cranky about it uh so you know the the thinking here seems
to be a little backwards um and uh you know i i just wonder how how else you can get the word out for
something urgent like this and by the way they found the kid they found the kid before they started
making the phone calls so clearly clearly the system has uh much to be desired the people running
it have much to be desired but did you guys know the cops can just call everybody in a certain range
in a matter of seconds that could happen in manhattan imagine calling everybody in manhattan every phone
you know i have so many questions i i want to know did um uh did offices get called did the cops call
themselves did uh did students in dormitories get called as well um you know basically um uh how did
this thing work i think there's something else we need to know about any any any thoughts guys
i would be really interested to know the uh the thought behind this i'm thinking like
the reason they might have just gone for landlines is there are i think historical rules on the books
regarding things like telemarketing and stuff where landlines and mobile phones are a completely
different deal because mobile phones uh in the past have been um every phone call you received also
charged you uh versus just uh landlines where you pick up a call and it doesn't cost you anything
unless it's a collect call or something like that so there might be some connection to that for the
reason that they only went for landlines but i would really be interested to see the numbers of how
many people they're actually reaching um with this because it is um the year of the common era 2025
and i think a lot of their a lot of their target audience don't have landlines anymore but you know
rob think about what you're saying here that only landlines would be targeted because uh it's it's
not right to call cell phones based on some old billing practices that really no longer apply but cell
phones are the phones that people who are outside will have whereas the landlines are where the people
who are sleeping or they say you know so they're not going to see a missing person but the people
more likely to see a missing person are the ones with mobile phones now of course since we've messed
up area codes and 631 no longer means suffix county necessarily and you can have all kinds of area codes
on your cell phone uh you know this has to be done through a geographical system not an area code system
it's going to be effective kyle yeah and in the case of cell phones i'm surprised or i'm wondering
if uh sms is what it would default to instead of a voice call because cell phones are capable of receiving
those kinds of messages and we are familiar with weather alerts and other sorts of regional um messaging
that's done on a different um mode of of that but is text-based and people may not be as startled or
they might have uh uh the ability to change the the alert settings and not be interrupted in the
middle of sleep or something yeah yeah but it does anybody know if cell phones were they were not at
all they were excluded from the list i don't i don't think so i don't unless you have like forwarding
or something i should know somebody with a 631 cell phone but i haven't found them yet and um um i i
haven't heard reports and i've seen it said that this goes to landlines so until until there's any
evidence that i am a little curious why uh it wasn't augmented or that why those numbers didn't
instead of getting a voice call receive messages because because like you said they're out in in
in the uh the outside of where they would see something they're mobile they're they're going
to be on the roads and so go ahead rob i i can address that because i used to live in suffolk county
and that's when i got my phone number that i still have now on my cell phone it's in the 631 area code
and i did not get a call about this or i don't live in suffolk county anymore so um you know it's
it's uh it's an out of place area code but uh if it were just going by area codes i would have gotten
it i think interesting you didn't get any kind of sms regarding this incident either right or any kind
of alert no nothing okay and okay so we can say that if you have a 631 cell phone number and you
weren't in 631 at the time you likely did not get an alert we can also say that people who had
uh cell phones with different area codes in the 631 area code physically did not get an alert so all
we need to know now is people with 631 area code cell phones who were also in the 631 area at the
time i suspect they probably didn't get alerts but it would be nice to confirm that gila i am looking
right now at the suffolk county new york web page their office of emergency management talking about
suffolk alert uh the official emergency notification system used by the suffolk county
emergency managers which appears to be different than the system that was activated suffolk alert seems
to be opt-in um they wow there's a whole safety alert profile situation you can sign up for
they talk about leaving messages um but again it's an opt-in system so i'm not like i'm looking i don't
see anything i looked for silver alert and they're giving out bracelets so if you live in suffolk county
and you have someone who lives in your home who has dementia or something similar and has a tendency
to wander you can put a bracelet on them that will whoever finds them can call the police and they'll get
them back to where they need to go but um yeah i'm just not this is very strange yeah i think the
strangest thing about this was that nobody knew about it and it just happened in the middle of
the night the worst possible time and um you know basically the suffolk county police uh department's
reaction to this is that uh yeah we're going to we're going to change the system so that somebody higher
up in command has to approve it not at all addressing people that were upset or scared you know
your phone rings in the middle of the night you tend to get a little terrified uh and i'm sure a lot of
people did and you know that's that says nothing about the person who is missing obviously you want
that person to be found but you know is waking somebody up the way to do that i don't know alex
did you have something go ahead yeah i mean what why couldn't they use an amber alert for this i mean
isn't this the whole purpose of the amber alert i think there is something here it wasn't it wasn't an
amber alert it was a silver alert silver yeah there is a color code for it even though the person was a
teenager it has nothing to do with the color of your hair yeah it's like they're lost and amber is
named after a girl too it's got nothing to do with a color there either i don't know why all these
misassigned color names are so it was coded it and this was a tool they used the landline call
function yeah yeah but imagine how this could be abused imagine how you know somebody you know if
the person who hacked the traffic lights can figure out how it didn't hack the traffic lights actually
i'm sorry i hacked the audio signal in the the walk signals uh if they were able to hack this and
make funny phone calls in the middle of the night that uh yeah it wouldn't be so funny then would it
go ahead gila sorry i did find a little more detail um i'm on the long island subreddit right now
people are talking about this and someone said i work in a hospital overnight and every line in my
offices rang simultaneously okay that answers one of my questions cool okay i didn't think to go to
reddit why didn't i go to reddit stupid stupid someone else on reddit says they got the phone call
on a cell phone um the number was from greenport but the message was ai generated yes about the
missing autistic teen um no no mention of teen on the amber alert site um people are saying that
they have a landline but it's hooked up to a fax machine and that's just they kept getting the fax
number um message so the thing that's interesting to me is that suffolk county police is saying we
didn't do this they did they said they did it when they said they didn't do it so apparently the fire
department did it and i saw something in the article that you had open rob that said they had
found the the youth the youth and um they okay police said detectives were notified of the missing
teen about 6 30 p.m thursday and had suffolk fire rescue issue the calls though some residents received
calls as late as 1 a.m friday go ahead your turn uh the police of the missing teen was identified as a
19 year old male was located unharmed on little east neck road in west babylon just before midnight
thursday so we have the same story
but i think the fact that this needs to be coordinated and it needs to be something that
lives in one place i think and the fact that it didn't and then it am i allowed to say
never mind i'm not even gonna try um it got completely um confused and again like i can
imagine every phone line in a place ringing that's terrifying at 12 30 in the morning
12 30 in the morning 12 30 in the morning after they found the guy that's that's that really is is
the ultimate irony so i don't know um i'd like to know if other places around the country around
the world have similar systems you know it's one thing um i know there are phone chains of say you
know there's a school shooting or something that uh the school district calls the parents and things
like that but it's on a much smaller scale this is an entire entire county it appears uh and um
it doesn't seem to be any limit i was i was impressed by how quickly all the calls went out
and you know also was the phone network able to handle that because you know back when i really
was playing with phones uh i could tie up the entire phone network pretty easily just by tying
lines together you know they used to be these recordings that would tell you that the number
you have reached has been disconnected and then it would it would basically um transfer to nothing
and if you were able to say transfer that to another line that did the same thing you'd be
tying up two lines and i don't know what it took to reset those lines but it would take a couple of
days to reset those lines i know because in my you know a prankish days i did that maybe five or six
times pairing lines together and sending them away into the ether and then when you call that
disconnected number you didn't get a recording anymore you got a fast busy signal because
they couldn't access the recordings because they were all tied up by no more than 10 phone calls
so for something like this to be able to happen so quickly and throughout the entire county although
you know how many so how many uh landlines are left i don't know maybe there aren't that many
uh it just seems like um uh it was an impressive feat even though it was an annoying one yes alex
well apropos of your misspent youth tying up lines i think it's it's right to then bring up
the the real issue here is i think you know if you if you think about this in the context of current
events and what happened with the salt typhoon hack where we saw chinese threat actors compromising u.s
telecommunications infrastructure in particular the access that the calia system would afford to
law enforcement calia being the communications access to law enforcement of communications
lawful uh god damn what the hell is the name but uh what is calia basically calia is the law that says
that um uh law enforcement has to have some kind of lawful access to a a telephone line if there's a
judicial warrant for them to access particular communications right and that's what these chinese
threat actors did was they access these particular systems so what if this system in suffolk county
or air or any place had fallen into the wrong hands right now imagine the chaos that you could cause
imagine emmanuel what would happen if rebel had access to the system and what he could do
to telephone lines and radio shows and overtime that he could make all the lines ring at the same time
maybe this is what he used to do the wbai back in the 90s and how he always got on uh and how he
ended up being the first caller for so many years every single week that's um that's that's uh definitely
something to uh to think about and uh and live in fear of uh and by the way uh calia uh for those of
us who are able to visit wikipedia communications assistance for law enforcement law enforcement act yeah i
remember but you know it also stands for commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies
that's a that's a different and there's also a calia plant did you know that boy wikipedia
that's a deep dive down wikipedia we could spend the whole hour on it but we don't have a whole hour we
only have a few minutes left and you know i i can't believe i have to repeat myself but um
yeah uh apparently um the uh defense uh chief defense secretary pete hegseth um
gave out a whole lot of um information he shouldn't have given out on a signal call yeah
we talked about this a couple of weeks ago it happened a second time he did it again except
this time he did it with his brother and his wife and his lawyer and a whole bunch of other people
yeah but basically he um he he took the information from a secure communications channel that the u.s
central command used and then he posted it into this signal chat he was having with dozens of other
people you know like it was some kind of kegger that they were all hanging out at and hey look at
look at what i found out of what we're going to do next uh nbc news reported this and um basically
um the launch times bomb drop times of u.s war planes that were about to strike huti targets in
yemen um details that multiple officials have said is highly classified hegseth insists that they're
not uh they were taken from secure u.s central command communications and uh that was uh confirmed
by a second individual uh that the information that was posted in the second chat was identical
to the sensitive operations details shared in the first chat which included members of trump's national
security council and the editor of the atlantic by accident supposedly uh yeah so basically the
second chat group where hegseth posted the yemen airstrike information the first leaked signal chat
accidentally included uh the editor as mentioned now he has not directly acknowledged that he set up
the second chat which had more than a dozen people on it um and uh he continues to attack anyone who
brings it up i said repeatedly nobody is texting war plans he told fox news i look at war plans every day
what was shared over signal then and now however you characterize it was informal unclassified
coordinations for media coordinations and other things that's what i've said from the beginning
and that's what he's going to say to the bitter end question is when is that bitter end going to come
i've already i've already predicted on a different radio show that it'll be within a week
but i'm open to all kinds of other counter uh counter bets here
maybe we're only 99 on opsec rather than the full 100 at this point
i don't think i don't think right now we're close to 100
i'm still stuck on the commission to become a accredited law enforcement agency since like pretty
much nobody's nobody's really doing that with cyber security now like like how much is the
application if we want to like you know do some policing good question i want to be the web police
you know it just seems like nobody in this administration really cares anymore
you know the rules just gone out the window they're doing whatever they want
there's definitely definite loafing yeah because trump has said you know i'm i'm not going to do
anything about this he has my support although you know there's um there's thinking in in you
know the um the hallways that maybe he's actually looking to get rid of him uh but he hasn't yet
and this guy has access to a lot of sensitive information can cause a lot of harm uh not leon
panetta you might remember uh leon panetta former defense secretary um he said it's unheard of to
have a secretary of defense committing these kinds of serious security breaches developing attack plans
for defensive reasons is without question the most classified information you can have whatever you
think of panetta whatever you think of the system this can't be right this this is not something
that um is is good for anyone you know and uh maybe the people that you're about to bomb if they
somehow get wind of it but uh it's not likely uh but other people getting access to this information
getting access to other information getting um their foot in the door of sensitive private information
that um should not be shared with adversaries i'm sure alex you can you could go on about this and
really scare the pants off us i i could i could talk about this for hours and about how inappropriate
it is and and how there's literally no parity with how a government government employee who has access to
to to classified information and and especially classified information of this nature an imminent
war plan for an attack that's about to happen i mean it's just absolutely insane to me that the
secretary of defense would mishandle this type of classified information in such an egregious manner and and not
just broadcasting it out on to one single group but now on to two and it doesn't make any sense to me
why he would be sharing information with his personal lawyer about these particular types of plans
either that's what's just so mystifying but but let's talk about what would happen if you were an ordinary
government employee and not somebody who was a a directly hand-picked servant of the president of the united states
here somebody who had i think demonstrated time and again fealty to the president and um and and would do
his bidding if you were just an ordinary dod employee and you did this you would have your security
clearance immediately removed you would be probably the subject of a criminal referral over to the
department of justice for a violation of the espionage act you would never be able to hold the security
clearance again for the rest of your life you would be terminated you would i think find it very
difficult to ever work in government again and i think the rest of your life would probably be
compromised in some way or another because of this massive black mark on your employment history
now what do we get what do we see on the other hand we see higset the secretary of defense with the
president coming to his rescue and coming to his defense and justifying this egregious
mishandling of sensitive information that could have put lives of american service members at risk
the other thing that comes to mind as well is the fact that this president of the united states has
repeatedly in the past made statements about u.s service members who had lost their lives or
service members who were war heroes people like john mccain prisoners of war who gave their blood for this
country and essentially called them losers he does not have respect for the service members of this
country in in a way that the commander-in-chief should and i think the fact that he's standing
so squarely behind pete higset and emmanuel i this is where i get back to your initial question here is
what's the alternate prediction i think the prediction is higset's going to ride this out i don't
think he's going to be fired i think it's going to be totally fine because what matters is fealty
not any kind of um misconduct misconduct doesn't matter if you're loyal and you know when you
mentioned that quote about um um veterans or or people who are captured being losers uh i believe it
was um jeffrey goldberg of the atlantic who revealed that quote that he being the person who was added in
to the first signal chat uh supposedly by accident yes rob go ahead yeah and on the terms on the
subject of security clearance uh you know we probably remember uh not too long ago when trump
very loudly revoked the security clearances of a bunch of people on his crap list um that includes
president biden uh kamala harris uh the former secretary of state anthony blinken um a new york's
attorney general letitia james who had the audacity to uh investigate trump and uh you know prosecute
him um and a whole bunch of other uh politicians and uh government workers who at one point had
security clearances it's so important that they have their clearance revoked because trump saw them
as a threat but we can have a signal chat where some guy's lawyer just happens to get all this uh you
know highly classified highly dangerous information and uh you know a wrist might be slapped if that
well you know i think we've uh proven the case that uh the people running things are inept uh they
don't care they are bullies and they're trying to intimidate everybody uh the question now is what
do we do about it and i think continuing to fight back is really the only thing we can do we're seeing
it now a lot more than we were seeing it weeks ago we're seeing harvard fighting back we're seeing a
bunch of universities finally stepping up to trump and refusing to be intimidated by him he's getting
more and more irrational and i think it's important to push him into as much irrationality as we
possibly can so that he basically is unable to continue doing what he is doing now um just today
um actually it was yesterday uh a federal judge and yes federal judges are still doing their job
despite the fact that trump is intimidating them as well or trying to uh basically remember the voice
of america got uh taken uh taken off the air and shut down well a judge undid that yesterday and
said that um yeah you can't do that uh and ordered the administration to uh halt its effort to uh
continue shutting them down as well as radio free asia and the middle east broadcasting networks uh did
not apply to um uh radio free europe however um and uh radio liberty i believe um not sure exactly why
that is but um the interesting thing is that uh and this is something that hopefully our listeners
can help with um i like to listen to shortwave radio you know what is still out there and that
means you know voice of america is going to come back at some point i want to hear them when they do
i want to find the frequency that they're going to be broadcasting on they don't broadcast to this
country they broadcast all around the world but you can pick them up since they broadcast out of
this country yeah you're you're not the intended recipient if you're an american but if you're
traveling you often do hear them on local stations absolutely yeah that's well that's true they they
do air some some content yeah rebroadcast on fm but they're not supposed to aim it they aim their
signal at the united states but the interesting thing and for those of you who say oh this is just
you know u.s propaganda no real loss well consider this trump has basically defined the voice of america
as the voice of radical america he accused the outlet which delivers news to countries limited press
freedom uh of spreading anti-american and partisan propaganda uh so um yeah you know you might call
it um um propaganda for the united states but that's not how the people running the united states feel
about it right now uh as far as as um um outlets from particular governments voice of america was not
one of the worst and um it'll be good to hear them come back on and be able to say something to the
people the rest of the world because you know we're cutting ourselves off an awful lot from
the rest of the world go ahead rob yeah voa news is a really interesting uh entity because it's uh it's
actually part of the u.s agency for global media that is a government agency that oversees all non-military
uh united states international broadcasting and it's funded by congress it is it's not it's not uh
you know it's not your standard media outlet it is a function of the government
and uh on their own site uh they they note the voa firewall um and saying an essential guarantee of
the journalistic credibility of voice of america content is the firewall enshrined in the 1994 u.s
international broadcasting act the firewall prohibits interference by any u.s government
official in the objective independent reporting of news thereby safeguarding the ability of our
journalists to develop content that reflects the highest professional standards of journalism free of
political interference and it goes on and on along those lines and i i have found voa fascinating for
a long time you can actually listen to a lot of their programming in uh in podcast form on their
website um and uh you know it's it's it's been interesting to listen to it through the first trump
administration the binded the biden administration uh administration and uh what's going on now
and uh yeah the it's it's not really in my estimation it's not seemed like any sort of
lackey thing or propaganda thing it's just been kind of no frills reporting and i i'm really interested
in why uh the administration sees it as a threat the administration sees anything as a threat that
criticizes it or does not follow blindly you can only imagine what they think about us what they think
about this radio station that's why we need our listeners to support wbai you know they're going
to come after our tax-free status that's what they're doing now that's what trump is his latest
um um uh now the the way he is he is uh you know utilizing his strategy uh is to take his enemies
and just try and get them to not be tax exempt anymore you know like the aclu uh and and um um amnesty
international whatever so anybody he does not agree with he will go after and try to make things as
hard as possible and you know these groups losing their their tax-free status it could be the end of
them and he knows that so um yeah it's uh it's bullying tactics we have to stand up to it we have
to be aware of it we have to not back down and not be afraid even though it's scary it absolutely is
scary uh go ahead oh it's just an important time to remember your roots remember what you're about
uh your core principles and and uh and stick with those keep your uh work and and uh value uh
available to people and uh and stay as independent as possible i think that a lot of different
institutions in in learning and in communication and um press are are reminded of that and in all of
these obsessions go ahead alex yeah i i think that uh i want to echo what kyle is saying here and i
think you know this is important to remember that we're a community here we're we're listening
together we're broadcasting together it's so important to support wbai to to keep us here you
don't want the radio station to go the way of the trilobite you don't want us to be extinct we don't
want to be a relic a thing of the past and that's what will happen if you think that other people are
going to support the station and keep it alive it's it's we who have to do it the people are
listening right now this community those of you who are listening on a podcast you're listening live
you know you're you're here for a reason we need your support rob gila do you have uh info on how
people can show their support absolutely people can give at buddy.wbai.org and you can become a
regular donor uh this will help you become a member of the station it will help us have to ask you for
money less because when we have regular income we know is coming in we know it's coming and we
don't have to ask you for it if you'd rather call us uh if you'd rather make your pledge by phone
please feel free to give a call to 833 wbai and the nyc but if you just want the numbers that's 833
922 4692 um please feel free to make your donation also at the moment we are a non-profit 501c3
and if you have tax advantaged ways to give to us if you have an ira that you need to make a
required minimum donation from we can take that off your hands if you have a donor advised fund we're
happy to help you distribute those proceeds as well um you're giving to wbai is tax deductible
in a really wonderful way to help the community we only have two minutes left so i want to quickly
just read this this headline we won't really have time to discuss it but i do want people to know
a whistleblower complaint says that billionaire elon musk's team of technologists may have been
responsible for a significant cyber security breach likely of sensitive case files at america's federal
labor watchdog uh basically the complaint was addressed to republican senate intelligence
committee chairman tom cotton and his democratic counterpart mark warner and made public last
tuesday by the group whistleblower whistleblower aid draws on the testimony of daniel berulis
an information technology staffer at the national labor relations board uh basically uh the nlrb a new
deal era agency that is tasked with protecting workers rights to organize and join unions has for
years been a target of america's corporate titans including elon musk some of whom are now seeking
to have the agency's power declared unconstitutional in an affidavit berulis said he had evidence that
doge staffers were given extraordinarily sweeping access to the nlrb systems which house sensitive
case files he said that beginning in early march logging protocols created to audit users appeared
to have been tampered with and that he had detected the removal of about 10 gigabytes worth of data
from nlrb's network sometime thereafter there's a lot more to say about this story it's super disturbing
but also really really typical the kinds of things are happening now with doge with the trump
administration uh with the inner workings of this nation right now and uh here at off the hook here
at wbai we hope to continue to be around to report on them as they happen and warn people before they
happen final words
yep keep doing what you're doing out there and uh let us know of your projects that uh that you're doing we
love to hear about them oth at 2600.com find us at uh off the hook at masto.hackers.town or off the
hook at uh on blue sky and uh any and elsewhere other places yes yeah we're in some places that we've
lost track of so you might you might find us in places that we've forgotten about let us know if you
do uh stay hopeful and curious and support hackers yes your fellow and um unknown hackers around the
world and in your locale please do just like in a movie they may be your final hope i don't know
it's uh it's worth thinking about uh also uh to listen to this show uh i know that bai archives have
been having a bit of trouble uh recently so uh be sure to go to 2600.com slash off the hook for
basically a list of all the shows we have ever done and no gaps oth at 2600.com see you next week
now there are no words to describe how you feel there's no even keel i've run out
like the film in my fax i know i'm gonna end up on my jacks there's so much to say that can't be said
so i don't want to get out of bed why would you throw it all away just to come to see me
so dismayed if they could see how i played the game i put my dead relations to shame and now that
everything is wrong how long do you think that i can go on
there's a hundred reasons that i know
to take the towel to take the towel and throw it in to the ring and try to make it in but i can't let
them down who upon me depend if they could see how i played the game i put my dead relations
to shame and now that everything is wrong how long do you think that i can go on i tried to put on it a
positive spin and ended up with nothing in my life to do one good thing if i could think of something
so the rain falls and i should shamble back with all around my head air raid flag think that i might
jump off the pier so whatever you do don't let me go near and if they could see how i played the game
i put my dead relations to shame and now that everything is wrong how long do you think that i can go on i tried to put on it a positive spin and ended up with nothing in my life to do one good thing if i could think of something
and ended up with nothing
if i could think of something
there are no words to describe how you feel and there's no even clear i've run out
like the film in my facts i know i'm gonna end up on my jacks and if they could see how i played the game i put my dead relations
to shame and now that everything is wrong how long do you think that i can go on
the whole day
okay
and that's it
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and that's it
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and that's it
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