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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bundilly Bump are the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bundilly Bump!
Bundilly Bump!
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It is off the hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Yes, on occasion.
And out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
You do.
Good evening.
Well, it's a nice, hot, steamy night here in New York.
So let's try and get through this together without anyone passing out.
Good story that I just saw not too long ago.
And it's kind of, you know, it's one of these stories that sort of gives you renewed hope that things might be okay.
You know what?
We might get through all this and triumph in the end.
You know, don't we all need a feel-good story like this?
Well, okay, here it is.
There is a bill.
There is a bill in Congress.
Yes, Congress to the rescue.
A bill that would prevent ICE from detaining or deporting U.S. citizens.
Huh?
Huh?
Okay, who can disagree with that?
Well, you'll never guess.
All right, first of all, a little bit of background here.
U.S. citizens, for those who don't know, aren't supposed to be deported.
They're not supposed to be sent out of the country.
However, there are reports, many reports, of citizens of Latino descent being detained, stopped, asked to prove citizenship, and even sent to foreign countries on occasion.
Now, U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal.
This is your representative, Kyle.
Am I pronouncing it right?
Jayapal?
Yes.
Okay.
Pramila Jayapal.
Yes, I said yes.
Okay, if I'm getting it wrong, it's going to be on you.
Just get to the story.
From Washington.
Okay, I want to get it right.
But she introduced legislation to formally block immigration and customs enforcement from detaining or deporting U.S. citizens.
Dubbed the Stop ICE from Kidnapping U.S. Citizens Act, the bill would set penalties for ICE agents who unlawfully hold U.S. citizens and place them in immigration proceedings.
Yeah, see, it's sponsored by several other Democrats as well.
This is where it gets a little puzzling.
It will likely face a long-shot bid in the GOP-controlled House.
Did they maybe not read it?
Did they maybe not understand what this is saying?
It's saying that ICE cannot arrest U.S. citizens and subject them to immigration proceedings and possible deportation.
I mean, I mean, how would you disagree with that?
How would you think that that is something that is at all permissible?
In May, ICE briefly detained Florida-born Leonardo Garcia Venegas from his job at a construction site in Foley, Alabama.
They alleged that his real ID was fake.
He alleged agents forced him to his knees and handcuffed him.
Immigration officials held U.S. citizens and U.S. citizen and Albuquerque resident Jose Hermosillo for 10 days in Arizona's Florence Correctional Center after arresting him and didn't believe him when he said he was a citizen.
Two U.S. citizen children in April were deported to Honduras after ICE detained their mother during a routine check-in.
Now, Jayapal, in the statement, said ICE is acting like a rogue force, kidnapping and disappearing people off the streets with no due process.
When ICE is conducting immigration enforcement, arresting and detaining U.S. citizens is illegal, and deporting U.S. citizens is illegal, full stop.
Now, to counter this, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said that these recent reports are false.
They're false.
What I just said to you didn't happen because she said it didn't happen.
They're false.
Everyone say it.
They're false.
Fake.
Didn't happen.
This is how we have to live, you know, whether we like it or not.
This is the reality of the situation.
Okay.
So, yeah, clearly her statement is what's false.
Now, in May, House Republicans killed a measure in Trump's big budget bill that would have stopped ICE from being able to deport or detain U.S. citizens.
Okay, so what this tells me is that clearly the Republicans in Congress are the enemy of freedom.
Because if they're saying that U.S. citizens can be deported, what's left?
What exactly is left that they will defend?
So, this bill should be voted on and passed unanimously.
Instead, it's not going to pass because there are people who are elected, who have power, who believe it's okay to grab people off the street and deport them regardless of whether or not they're a citizen.
I mean, what do you think, Alex?
Do I have that fairly close to interpreted right?
I think so.
Well, I mean, this is such a bizarre thing for the Republicans to oppose, but I guess it's just not beyond them to be a witherward friend to the Constitution here.
I mean, this is really unbelievable in many ways.
I mean, the only thing I could see being a blocker for the Republicans here could be something like, well, we want to leave it open to the government to perhaps strip people of their citizenship and then deport them.
I mean, maybe that's the idea here is that, you know, ultimately they want to retain that kind of authority and don't want to hamstring ICE from deporting U.S. citizens after their citizenship is revoked in some way.
But this also raises the issue of to where would any U.S. citizen even be deported if they're a U.S. citizen?
It's so mind-boggling.
And obviously ICE's ability to enforce immigration laws against U.S. citizens should be without question ultra-veras or beyond their powers.
So, you know, the whole thing is rather mystified.
Yeah, it's, I think it's time that we stop just acting bewildered and incredulous at how far they're willing to take this.
Because what you say is absolutely true.
Yes, they are moving to a stage where they can strip citizenship of somebody who was born here, whose parents were born here, anybody.
Look, if they can go after Rosie O'Donnell, they can go after any of us.
Believe me.
So this is something that we have to pay close attention to because it's frightening.
It's frightening.
Yes, Alex.
Yeah, I think, you know, once again, I think we really have to think about the evolution of the authorities of ICE.
ICE was created with the Department of Homeland Security after 9-11.
And it was really there to address terrorism and to deport terrorists.
And then the focus was on serious crimes during the Obama administration.
And then during the Trump administration, we have, you know, the expansion of these powers.
They started to shrink a little bit during Biden, but now they're being massively expanded again.
I mean, this is really, to bring it back into technical terms, the definition of function creep.
And, you know, we need to stop this now.
It's going to get out of hand.
It is out of hand.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, it's absolutely out of hand.
I mean, when, you know, there's a very old saying about things like this, which is, like, when a single person in this country doesn't have basic human rights, nobody does.
Because if they come for anybody, they can come for you next.
And this is no longer hyperbole.
This is a thing that is happening.
People are being kidnapped and disappeared, whether they're immigrants and now, as we've seen, U.S. citizens.
And there has been no accountability.
ICE has deliberately thwarted any attempts to hold them accountable, to, you know, track and, you know, judge their efforts fairly.
And this is absolutely terrifying.
This is, this is, and anybody who votes against this bill, I want to look at those voter rolls when this is over and when this bill is killed.
Because every single name that votes against this, the people represented by those people, this is being done in your name.
And you need to, you need to be aware of this.
You need to relieve those people of their jobs while we still have even the, the, the, the dream of an ability to do so.
You know, it's, it's interesting.
This week I learned that, uh, Trump can indeed feel fear, uh, and, uh, his, his, his, um, cronies can as well.
And it came through the whole Epstein, uh, saga, uh, when he saw that MAGA was starting to revolt against him, it was, you know, a Nicolae Cisescu moment, you know, where he gave the speech in Romania.
And all of a sudden people started to boo and he just didn't have the capacity to interpret what that meant.
And he was out of power and executed, uh, within a couple of days.
Now that's a very different situation, obviously, but it goes to show that there's, there's a line for everybody.
There's a line for everybody.
And, you know, whether it's Epstein or Elmo or, or, uh, uh, ice, uh, there is something that is going to say, okay, folks, this, this, this can't stand.
This is just too, uh, too far gone.
Now, um, I wanted to ask Alex, uh, something else here, because this is bothering me, bothering a lot of people.
You have this, um, paramilitary force, uh, unleashed on our streets, uh, and, um, it's starting to become normal, starting to be something that people almost expect to see.
But if these people, and, and they never respond, uh, you, you mentioned that, um, uh, there are, uh, basically, um, we're waiting for comments from ICE, we're waiting for statements, and they never come.
If you watch any TV broadcast, any news item about, uh, an ICE raid someplace, they always have a call in to ICE to get a comment, and the comment never comes.
They're silent.
It's like, it's like some crazy invading force that doesn't even, um, uh, speak human.
Um, so basically, you have this force.
They, they wear masks.
They cover their faces completely.
They, uh, don't have name tags.
Uh, oftentimes, their vehicles are unlabeled.
Why should you do anything these people say?
You know, they, they, they have not demonstrated in any way that they have any legitimate authority.
So, just because somebody is shouting commands at you, and they, they, they look intimidating, is that enough?
Is that all it takes?
Now, Alex, I'm asking you, you know, as far as when a law enforcement agency identifies themselves to somebody, you know, if, if a cop pulls you over, you pull over.
Because it's a cop.
They have a cop car.
They have a, you know, a cop uniform.
They have a cop face.
You know, you know it's a cop.
But here, you just have, you know, they could be Chechenian rebels.
You don't know what they are.
They're wearing camouflage.
They're wearing masks.
They don't have name tags.
They don't have license plates.
Why, in God's name, are we doing anything they say?
It's, it's another bizarre situation where ICE agents don't necessarily, under federal law, have to display identification or provide badge numbers or identify themselves during any kind of enforcement.
Hang on, hang on.
So what, what's going to stop me from going out there and saying I'm an ICE agent then?
How would they, you know, that's a, that's a great idea.
When there's an ICE raid going on, you're already dressed up and you're camouflaged in a mask.
You just blend in.
How are they going to know you don't belong there?
They can't, they can't see your face either.
And then you just basically direct everybody to, to freedom somewhere.
I'm joking.
Don't do that.
It's dangerous.
But think about it.
Yeah, it's, it's bizarre to me why, or even frankly how, they remain exempt from the identification requirements that most commonly would apply to local police or really almost any kind of law enforcement officer as well.
So it's, it's like they're in some kind of special category or case because they may be endangered.
This is the perception that, you know, they're so fragile.
They, they, we can't allow them to have badge numbers or identify themselves.
But really to go back to your, I think, almost rhetorical question here, Emanuel, there really is nothing preventing anybody from impersonating an ICE officer.
Who knows?
Maybe they have some kind of safe word or code word or something like that when they're on their raid so that they can identify each other.
But, you know, right now, I think there may be some kind of internal guidance with respect to ICE that states that they should identify themselves when they're making some kind of arrest when it's safe to do so.
But in reality, there's no way to compel them to do so.
There's no standard.
There's no transparency.
And, and there's, there's really no accountability.
That's really what this is all about.
I think that these standards are designed to ensure that there is no accountability.
If the law is on your side, you know, if, if, if, if you're in the right, why would you want no accountability?
Why would you want to just, you know, sidestep that?
Well, nobody wants accountability, Emanuel.
Well, nobody wants people like us asking questions about them or reporters asking what they've done or these, you know, nosy people on the street or the public, for God's sakes.
What if the public really knew what they were up to?
I mean, this would be terrible, wouldn't it?
I mean, accountability is, is, is a very powerful thing, quite frankly, right?
You know, and I think that there are a lot of members in Congress who, if they had the right information and were empowered to do so, would be asking more difficult questions, would be asking the right questions.
And we would have more accountability, but we don't have the information.
We don't have the names.
We don't have the badges.
We don't have really any information about these particular raids when they're happening.
And therefore, it becomes even more difficult, I think, to request information under laws like the Freedom of Information Act.
You know, so the ability of the public to force some kind of measure of accountability, even way after the fact, like a FOIA request would, is severely turtailed.
Well, now what kind of right do you have if, say, you know, a cop gives you a ticket to know the name of that cop?
It's on the ticket, right?
So I assume somewhere it's written that you have the right to that information.
Is that a fair assumption?
Yeah, I think, I think it's mostly codified likely in local laws that police have to identify themselves.
I'm not entirely sure of the exact legal authority there, but that's, that's my understanding is that police generally have to identify themselves and they willingly do so.
They wear numbered badges, I would say, most of the time.
And that makes accountability much, much easier.
So if that's what law enforcement is expected to do, and ICE is purporting to be law enforcement, are they not compelled to identify themselves?
Are we not compelled to get that information if we need to?
Well, how do you mean by compel?
What, what do you, what's the, the...
Demanding it, filing whatever kind of paperwork, you know, writing Chuck Schumer strongly worded letters, I don't know, something.
But, but we are entitled to know who these people are, I think.
But these agents aren't acting as though they are civil servants.
This is a removal operation.
It's like an operation.
They're claiming to be law enforcement.
They're, they're treated the same way and given the same protections.
So they should follow the same rules.
Well, I guess maybe there's analogies to be made to perhaps undercover officers here.
So, I mean, obviously undercover officers and local law enforcement don't necessarily have to identify themselves.
Maybe that's the analogy that ICE is making for itself.
But really the only way to change this would be to enact some kind of federal law.
If Congress were able to pull itself together and enact a law that required this type of accountability and identification, that would be one way of doing it.
Another way would be for DHS, DHS itself, engage in some kind of rulemaking or internal agency policy, ICE itself, or an overall DHS mandate that all of its law enforcement officers.
Remember, there's lots of law enforcement officers in DHS, not just ICE.
There's Homeland Security investigations as well.
I mean, even, you know, TSA, I guess, could be considered law enforcement officers in many respects.
So perhaps an overarching rule coming down from DHS on high about the identification of its law enforcement officers could have the same intended effect.
Yeah, I think it's this operation or the type of order they're working under and the way they're, I think the way they're able to do this is it's sort of an extension of a certain type of action to remove people or otherwise carry out these kinds of immigration.
And, like, execute these actions.
And the rub, I think, is that it's being deployed as a matter of course under the auspices of sort of regular police activity, whereas the permission to obfuscate and hide and do all this sneaky stuff is under this sort of umbrella of a special certain circumstance, like you said, undercover or a special investigation.
Well, it isn't so special when it's across the board every day, everywhere we look.
So I do agree.
There's some has there has to be some sort of codification if they want to so normalize it.
Right.
Yes, there is.
And in fact, I'm just looking this up right now.
There is, in fact, something that was introduced in the Senate called the Visible Identification Standards for Immigration-Based Law Enforcement Act of 2025.
I could live with that.
That sounds that sounds very specific.
Yes.
Which, of course, stands for visible.
They used, you know, the I guess the acronym for visible here.
Senator Alex Padilla and 14 co-sponsors, Senator Alex Padilla introduced that along with 14 co-sponsors, and the bill aims to amend immigration, the Immigration Nationality Act to require federal immigration enforcement officers, including those from ICE and CBP, to display visible identification badges.
So exactly what we're saying is, in fact, before Congress right now.
So I think we're on to something.
I think they're on to something.
Whether this has a snowball's chance in hell and getting to the president's desk without being vetoed and actually signed, I think, is another story, though.
Well, he's never going to sign it.
We know that.
The only hope is if it's able to be overridden.
But at this stage, we don't even know if there are the votes to carry something so elementary as this.
And it just makes you conclude that, you know, there really is no Congress anymore.
It's just a rubber stamp agency.
Go ahead, Gila.
I mean, I think, excuse me, there's very little Congress anymore.
But I think there's also a question of even if a law gets passed, gets signed, becomes a law, what kind of enforcement is there?
There is this significant reluctance to listen to laws being enforced.
It's all very much, well, we're not doing anything wrong.
And even if the even if these laws are enacted, who's to say that anybody's going to follow them?
You know, I guess that's it's hard for me not to just throw up my hands because it's very clear that people are going to do what they want to do.
And I suppose it always brings me back to, you know, we keep saying that in a lot of ways, every accusation is an admission.
And for years, it was like, we don't need new laws because people who break laws aren't going to pay attention to the laws anyway.
So there's no point in making them.
There's no point in limits on gun ownership, for example, because if somebody wants to kill someone with a gun, they're going to find a way to get a gun.
And even if the law says you can't buy one within 48 hours of a background check or what have you.
And yeah, every accusation is an admission.
We're looking for the opportunity to go and do whatever it is, regardless of what the structure of the law may be.
Yeah, I mean, you know, that that logic that they use, you can you can use that to justify not having any laws at all.
Not to, you know, I mean, if only criminals are going to commit crimes and yeah, they're still going to commit crimes, even there's a law against it.
There still should be a law against the crime that makes that makes a lot of sense.
But yeah, I think, you know, they're throwing up your hands.
That's that is exactly what we are expected to do.
That is the desired outcome.
And when we give up and we when we don't have a means of actually fighting this and insisting on our rights, well, then they have won and they have changed.
The way that we think.
And that is the ultimate goal.
You know, we we say they're going to do what they what they're going to do.
Well, so are the people.
The people are going to do what they're going to do to preserve democracy, to preserve their freedom.
And I think if it's a given that this information is going to get out, whether through hacking.
Yes, I got there.
Or through a leak of one sort or another.
Uh, that's something that we should expect, because just sitting back and tolerating what's happening now, that is something that should not be acceptable under any circumstance.
Kyle.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for experimentation and people that go to these actions.
I don't think necessarily all need to be holding a sign or out there on the front.
There's many people that can observe and I think fill in a role for gathering information on just how leaky these sorts of operations are.
There's a lot of ways to sense who is there the same ways that they would do this with a protest group.
I think the same tools should be implemented to just see how noisy, how big of a footprint do these forces have when they show up.
And there are all kinds of tools.
People are already recording the sort of silhouettes of these people that are arresting people.
So, how long does it take to process a lot of that imagery and use, like, the myriad of image search and other tools that there are to cross-reference and do our own sourcing of, like, who it is?
We were talking about this the other day.
Is there technology that can see through these masks and start to figure out who these people actually are?
Yeah, it sounds evil, but we're dealing with evil.
And information is our friend, knowing what exactly we are dealing with out there, knowing who the people are that are putting on these outfits and terrorizing neighborhoods.
I think that's important to know.
I think it's important to try and stop that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like, every wavelength, visual, every bit of it you could capture and, you know, provide.
And I think that should be the promise from the public in the interest of accountability, is that if you do not volunteer this, as per the legislation we've put up, we promise that this will be made available by other means.
This is exactly it.
That's the empowerment.
We need to make that promise and say, we will get this information.
ICE, you can't hide your identities.
You can't just anonymously raid neighborhoods and intimidate people.
If what you are doing is justified, then I think most people will support it, i.e. getting criminals off the street.
That was the original intent, wasn't it?
And if it's not, then you'll be held to account.
But either way, we will find the information.
You know, we can't say exactly how at this point, I don't think.
But I do believe that developments of technology can be used in both directions, but against us and against them and, you know, to the advantage of individual people.
The ways that work will go unspoken until the information is had, right?
Like, you're not going to talk about what will work in advance of actually getting the information.
So, yeah, eventually, one or the other combination of these things, it's not that hard.
They are existing in space, showing up on people's blocks, doing this to them.
And they're not the smartest people either.
So, you know, it'll be pretty, it won't be that much of a challenge, I don't think.
That's what I mean by experimentation.
Like, come on.
And there are databases and spreadsheets everywhere just waiting to be shared.
And, yeah, it has to be done.
I don't really see any other way.
Although, you know, you can't just wait for somebody to enact legislation because we see what happens.
Even something as basic as don't send U.S. citizens to countries they have never been to as punishment for demonstrating against ICE or something like that.
If that's what we're dealing with, then we have to up the ante as well.
Yes, Alex, then we're going to move on.
Yeah.
One comparison I think we should make here is with the FBI.
What do you, or rather who, who do you think has a more dangerous job?
Would you think an FBI agent has a more dangerous job or an ICE agent?
I believe an FBI agent absolutely has a more dangerous job.
And why would you say that?
Well, because they're involved in all kinds of things, organized crime and terrorism and just a lot of things.
And they're showing their face every day.
They're doing the job the way the job is supposed to be done.
I can't believe I'm standing after the FBI.
But, you know, when it comes down to comparing it to ICE, yeah, it's a world of difference.
Yeah, and I would tend to agree with you here as well.
And FBI agents really are supposed to identify themselves when they're making an arrest.
In fact, really, they have to identify themselves when they're making an arrest or conducting any kind of law enforcement action.
The idea behind that is because it ensures transparency, it allows for legitimacy, and it protects the constitutional rights of the persons that they are arresting because they know who's there.
There's accountability.
And, in fact, it's been found that, you know, failure to identify yourself as an FBI agent when conducting an arrest could actually be a Fourth Amendment violation.
So how do we justify that, on the one hand, where FBI agents are supposed to identify themselves in nearly every situation?
They don't have to, of course, if they're undercover or if revealing their identity would compromise their safety in some way.
But how do we square an FBI agent being required to identify themselves and carry identification and show it while we don't require the same of an immigration and customs enforcement officer?
It's impossible.
It's impossible.
You cannot square that.
You just have to avoid the subject and never be held accountable.
That's the way around that.
But let me tell you, you know, if Agent Cooper were an ICE agent, Twin Peaks would never have been a hit, okay?
There's just, there's a reason for these things.
I want to read a letter.
This is from Kevin.
I tried calling during your YouTube overtime show, which, by the way, follows us at 8 o'clock tonight, channel 2600.
I kept reaching voicemail, and that does happen.
We only have one phone line.
I wanted to mention to Joshua Aaron, who we had on last week, who is the author of the ICE block app that is used to warn people about ICE raids going on within five miles.
He wanted to bring up a few additional points that he can make when countering criticism of his app.
If you think the ideas are helpful, perhaps you can pass them along to him.
We're going to read them, and, you know, maybe he'll hear that, or maybe someone will get word out.
There's no way for me to offer suggestions through his app.
Only tech support complaints.
And I might not get through to him personally, even if I joined Blue Sky.
All right.
One incontestable justification for the app is that ICE agents operate unpredictably and in openly disruptive ways.
This can present a problem for people in cars who don't want to encounter delays on the way to important things like doctor's appointments.
So they need to know where to avoid driving in order to not be delayed by ICE taking over a street, something they won't necessarily learn from Waze.
Another similar reason is that these things come out of nowhere, I'm sorry, thugs, not things.
These thugs come out of nowhere, wearing masks, carrying weapons, often out of uniform and with no identification.
So they can appear to be a gang of criminals to most people, including to local police officers who may quickly respond with their own weapons to what appears to be an abduction or robbery.
And, you know, that makes me wonder, are the cops tipped off?
Do they know this is ICE, or are they as in the dark as everybody else?
It's a decent question.
The ICE block app, therefore, additionally helps its users avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time where they might be shot in the crossfire.
No matter what, we are all justified in wanting to know or report what can be seen happening in public while we ourselves are on the same street.
And it's truly unbelievable that the Trump administration is condemning Joshua, condemning the app, making all kinds of accusations just for saying what is happening on a public street.
Continuing here, there's nothing wrong with wanting there to be accountability for how our tax dollars are being used for these ICE operations or for anything else our government does.
And finally, as for people being offended by comparisons of Trump with Hitler, hey, even Hitler himself wasn't Hitler when he first rose to power.
What Trump and his MAGA team are saying and doing is what Hitler said and did in his early days.
It took some years before Hitler went further and did things like murder six million people in concentration camps.
So, of course, Trump right now is no more Hitler than Hitler was for a while.
But this time we must stop a great evil before it's too late.
And that means calling it out for what it is and not being afraid of criticism that the warning is premature.
Thank you, Kevin, for that letter.
And, you know, every dictator, every fascist, they go down different roads.
So you don't know exactly what road this will go down.
It might be something completely new.
It might be something that's been done a thousand times before.
But the important thing is to be honest, to speak out, to say something while you can.
And that's what we will continue to do here on Off the Hook, here on WBAI and, dare I say, here in New York City.
Alex.
I think the listener in writing in and bringing up these points is raising a really interesting issue here.
Because to my mind, I don't know, and I invite the listeners to call in during overtime or to write to us about this.
But I have never heard of local law enforcement intervening to stop an ICE raid.
I would imagine that something like this could potentially happen, though, in sanctuary cities where ICE raids are ongoing.
And I think that there is great potential for some clash like this to happen in the near future.
I think it would be really quite chaotic to see local law enforcement squaring up against federal officials to protect their own citizens, to protect their own denizens of the local city.
And, you know, this is not beyond the realm of possibility right now.
And it's really a sort of terrifying prospect.
Also, though, I believe I mentioned this last week, if police really want to be treated like heroes, they need to act like heroes and protect their people from things like this.
It may come to that.
It would be unprecedented, but it could come to that.
And so many things have been changing lately that, you know, but, you know, this scenario that you mentioned makes me think of a different scenario where a group of people that is armed to the hilt and even has, you know, their own military vehicles, they could easily stage a fake ICE raid and get away with it.
How would you know the difference, you know, in some backwards part of the country or even, you know, in some major city, somebody could do something like that and maybe even lie and say they're ICE.
And if the cops don't know the cops don't know, and God knows where they wind up taking people.
Gila?
You're muted.
Sorry, let's try that again.
I actually just found an article from Ms. Magazine, actually, titled Men are Impersonating ICE to Attack Immigrant Women.
MAGA emboldened them.
There are stories about women being attacked, robbed, raped by men dress up as ICE agents, even if they're not.
In Maryland, in Maryland, in North Carolina, in Brooklyn, and because they don't know where to go, apparently in Brooklyn, New York, a man told a 51-year-old immigrant woman that he was an ICE agent.
She says he attempted to rape her and he took her phone, purse, and jewelry at the time of publication, which was last week.
He has not yet been arrested.
They, people are, again, beginning to dress up as ICE agents and commit all kinds of crimes.
Quick question, quick question there.
Why are we assuming this person wasn't an ICE agent?
That's also very fair.
Just give me the evidence, you know.
How do I know he's not an ICE agent?
True.
No, it's nearly impossible to distinguish between real and fake agents.
You see, ICE, you know, identification, being forthright with what you're doing, it helps you, too.
Otherwise, you're going to be accused of every single crime that takes place by somebody with a mask.
Yeah.
Yeah, think about it.
Kyle.
I just heard in the conversation that this is an example of where we need to be more cohesive and more in agreement.
If the tides are truly shifting, if the American populace, writ large, is itself fed up with this kind of action and the means with which are being used to do this kind of,
to accomplish this political goal without sorts of checks and balances or any kind of redress in government,
then I think police forces will be much more likely to stand up for their populace if it's not seen as so polarized.
In other words, in being divided, we actually put the civil servants in that awkward position.
Whereas if we're in agreement as a citizenry, they have a lot less interest in serving a sort of feigned political end.
If the lion's share of people say, what's going on, you're supposed to be protecting us, these are our cities, these are our localities, do your job, that's a different posture.
And if other civil servants support local police in those actions, I'm talking city leadership, even down to other public safety offices.
If they act in solidarity in the interests of the public they serve, they would take a look at their legal authorities and maybe exercise some things they haven't thought of in the current moment.
So when political, when the winds shift and if the populace is saying our streets are not protected because of federal agents, I think that's a different tenor.
You're asking, you're calling upon your local leadership to defend the state, defend the city and do a job that a large cross section of their taxpayers,
if you just want to look at money, but of their people want, and they will do the will of the people, even if there is no redress in politicians or in state politics or something, the people's voice matters.
And if a civil servant truly feels their city isn't being protected or has the sense that they're not meeting the moment because there's everybody and their kid sister, everybody at the barbecue and they're off moments,
no matter how far out of town they're from, is telling them this is wrong.
They might take, like I said, they might take a look and see what's in their toolbox to maybe at least slow things down a little bit and have the kind of oversight that's needed.
I would, you know, this brings to mind, I'd like to see a different scenario play out when there's, say, a demonstration against ICE in a city that did not necessarily move on to something at night where people are fighting the police.
You know, I'm not for a second discounting the problems that police pose and the many things that they have done wrong,
but I'm asking if we can just look at things a little bit differently and say, what if they played out so that the police, as you were saying, protected those people from ICE,
from these federal agents that are swooping into their towns and it wasn't a given that this protest in the daytime is going to turn into fighting the cops at night?
How about fighting with the cops to keep these people the hell out of our city or village or whatever it is that they're invading?
Because what they're doing is they're tearing apart our day-to-day lives.
They're kidnapping our neighbors, whether they have the right papers or not.
That's not what people care about.
They care about getting criminals off the street.
They care about, you know, feeling like they can live safely without being swooped up by one person or another.
I just wonder if we'll ever get to that stage where we're fighting a common enemy instead of fighting each other.
I think we can, but we cannot do it with the appearance of being divided or actually letting national politics divide us locally.
Like that really, it makes the perception of actions like that become a polarized issue like, oh, only those people are out on the streets.
You know, if everyone is out doing something collectively, then I think it can't be cast as something that is some anomaly.
It is what is actually being called for.
This is something that has included people from all different political backgrounds.
And I think that's where the hope is.
A lot of people are upset seeing the guy at the deli be taken away.
A guy who's been there for 30 years, who hasn't committed a single crime, who has done nothing but help the community.
People on the left and the right are upset by that.
That's not what they voted for.
And this whole Epstein thing, seeing how people are reacting against that cover-up, that gives me hope as well.
That maybe, you know, at least to get the darkest part of whatever is happening today out of our lives.
You know, maybe there is a chance that we can unite on that.
I want to just touch upon one other story before we run out of time, which we're going to do very soon.
And again, you can join us on YouTube, channel 2600, or the link that's on 2600.com at the top of the page.
We take calls, we talk more, starts at 8 o'clock.
And next week, next week is our monthly call-in show here on WBAI, where we'll be taking phone calls between 7 and 8.
So mark that on your calendar as well.
But mobile network anomalies, consistent with cell phone surveillance, were detected at a July 4th protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Washington State.
Those anomalies, according to an independent analysis by this news agency, because I've seen this story about 50 times, Straight Arrow News, never heard of them before, but that's what I'm reading this from, suggests that a device known as an IMSI catcher may have been used to collect identifying information on cell phones at the protest site.
ICE did not respond to requests, because they never do, for comment.
It's not clear whether ICE or any other law enforcement agency obtained a warrant to use an IMSI catcher, commonly referred to as a stingray, to conduct surveillance.
Do we think that they would go through channels?
You know, they're above the law.
They'll do whatever they want.
The ICE field office in Tukwila, Washington, which is a Seattle suburb, has been the site of repeated protests over Trump's immigration policies.
When an estimated 200 protesters gathered outside the facility on June 14th, local police officers used pepper spray to break up the demonstration.
You see, that's the kind of thing that has to stop.
Don't use the pepper spray on ICE.
Don't use pepper spray on the people that pay your salary.
Federal law enforcement agencies may use IMSI catchers without a warrant only in exceptional circumstances.
That's according to a 2023 report by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General.
Those circumstances include immediate threats to national security and situations where a person is in danger of death or serious injury.
I'm sure they're going to make this up.
That's the auspices under which I think a lot of this stuff's happening, is that they're just saying this everyday stuff is all this big national crisis or whatever special circumstance makes it, gives them a green light.
To use this to use this or use that tactic or this, where on the books, it's some special, unique circumstance that when written would, in most people's minds, was some anomaly, some very rare circumstance and a special privilege.
They're just extending that to every single day, every part of the country, everywhere you look.
So, yeah.
And when I hear this, I think of people that are technical and I'm just, we are sitting on so much processing power, so much know-how.
People have so much ability to, like, put together code and make novel tools themselves.
I really hope that some of that ingenuity goes into mirroring their tactics.
When you combine technical ability with people who really care, boy, you have a lot of power there.
And that's who I hope we're speaking to here.
Now, just to go into some detail here in the moments we have left, an IMSI catcher is a type of cell site simulator designed to mimic a cell tower.
When activated, it can force a connection with mobile phones as far as a third of a mile away, tricking them into revealing their IMSI or International Mobile Subscriber Identity.
That's a unique 15-digit number tied to a cell phone SIM card that cellular networks use to identify users.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies use IMSI catchers to pinpoint the location of a specific phone or to record the presence of all phones in a designated area.
Criminals have also been known to leverage the technology which can be built with publicly available components and software.
They can deliver malware to targeted devices, potentially compromising sensitive information and enabling further attacks.
More advanced IMSI catchers can force cell phones to downgrade to less secure protocols, such as 2G, enabling the collection of unencrypted text messages and phone calls.
Now, Straight Arrow News analyzed LTE cellular traffic at an anti-ICE protest in Tugwila using a tool called Marlin that was developed by teams at the University of Florida and Switzerland's ETH Zurich.
About 20 people attended that protest organized by the local chapter of the Progressive Grassroots Organization, Indivisible.
The analysis uncovered unusual bursts of data known as IMSI-exposing messages across several LTE frequency bands.
Normally, cell phones are provided temporary international mobile subscriber identities, or TIMSIs, by networks for privacy purposes.
Legitimate cell towers rarely request a cell phone's permanent IMSI, which can be used to identify and track individuals.
So, they saw that this was actually happening, that they were requesting this information, and that's suspicious.
That means they're up to something, and this is the kind of thing we need to do, more investigative reporting like this.
All right, we are out of time.
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Give to WBAI.org or Buddy.WBAI.org.
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You can write to us at OffTheHook, O-T-H, at 2600.com, with your comments, opinions, thoughts.
And we welcome disagreement.
We welcome debate.
In fact, you can listen to Overtime, which follows, on YouTube in just a few minutes, 8 o'clock, on channel 2600.
And you can let us have it there when we give out the phone number.
Again, O-T-H, at 2600.com.
We will be on next week with a call-in show.
We'll be taking phone calls on WBAI between 7 and 8 o'clock.
In the meantime, please stay tuned and support this place.


And here we are on YouTube. I seem to have made it. Kyle, are you here in YouTube land?
Enough.
All right. And let's go out to Signal Land. Rob, you there?
I am here. Hello.
And Gila is there as well?
Yes, I'm here.
And Alex, you're with us in addition.
Yep, yep. I'm here.
Can we verify we're on YouTube?
We can. We are on YouTube. We're sounding okay.
Okay, good. I want to sound better than okay, but we'll deal with that.
Okay, we did some testing beforehand to get rid of our friend the hum.
Shaking your head, Kyle.
We tested this right before the show.
It was such a nice-sounding dial tone.
And we're going to just lift up the phone again and see if it's still there.
Go ahead.
All right. That sounds good. Right now, hit a button.
I mean, it's a slight hum, but that's...
Come on. You're going to give me a hard time over that?
This is fine. This is fine.
So that's the proof that you need, that we tested it.
It works.
If it doesn't work, you're bringing it in.
All right? You're bringing the hum with you.
I don't know. I don't know how to explain it.
But does it sound okay to you guys?
It sounds good to us.
We're not really getting a hum here.
Okay, good.
Now, also speaking to other complaints,
that people can't hear other people,
you know what?
I don't know what we can do about that
because we hear everybody
and you should be able to hear other people as well.
You sound okay on YouTube.
We sound okay on YouTube, I believe.
Yeah.
So if it shows up on our board,
you should be able to hear it.
And I can't honestly figure out why.
But, you know, that's another reason to keep the call short
so that you can just tell us the point that you want to make
and we will pass it along to everybody
and then we can discuss your points
and various things like that.
Yeah.
And thanks for supporting what we do.
Yes.
Because that's how we improve things.
So I just want to throw that out there.
You know, when you're happy, we're happy.
And we want to stay motivated
and not be demotivated by complaints.
So we're still budgeting
and going through what it will take.
Some of the instructions we got for how to fix a hum
were so comprehensive.
They really were.
We might have to, like, open a lemonade stand or something
like just to get the materials ready.
There was that one guy who wrote to us a few weeks ago.
I feel bad that we didn't acknowledge him.
It's somewhere.
We still have all the instructions you gave us.
It was just we're so busy with other things
we just haven't had time to even do all the steps,
which probably, you know, this is like AI's type of help
where it goes into such detail.
Except I'm truly convinced this is a human
that gave us all these helpful suggestions.
Yeah.
And I will look at it.
We're just, I mean, imagine that, yeah,
we've kind of, we're doing the best with what we have,
I guess is all I'm trying to say.
And, you know, we're busy as hell.
Not to yell, but, yeah, we've got this conference coming up,
which is taking every waking moment.
And it's a month away.
So, yeah.
I digress.
Support what we do so that we can grow,
so we can get better at what we do,
so we have more time and energy and help
and volunteers and everything.
We are not saying we're like perfection in broadcast
or whatever you call this.
Like, we are doing the best that we possibly can,
and we appreciate all the suggestions,
but we just want to talk about stuff,
let you get to talk,
and not spend the whole time talking about
what we could do better,
because we know we could do a lot of things better,
and that is not the point of this.
Yeah.
We do want to improve.
But a couple of points,
a couple of things to update people on conference-wise.
We just found out today the local hotel,
you know, the one down the block by the Emerald Pub,
the dive bar that we love hanging out in.
That place is awesome.
That place is so cool.
And I think that's where we're going to have,
like, this whole big frack release party,
I think, Saturday night.
I heard about that.
Yeah, that's going to be awesome.
I'm pretty sure that's the location.
It's going to be wild.
I got a little insight.
I can't say anything, though.
Frack, by the way, I mean, everybody knows,
Frack is the electronic hacker newsletter
that's been coming out since 1984.
Wow, same amount of time we've been coming out.
That's kind of weird.
And Cult of the Dead Cow, also 1984?
I don't understand how everything started at the same time,
and we didn't know each other back then.
Summer Olympics in L.A.
It was all going on.
Anyway, there's two hotels there.
They know about each other.
In fact, I think they're both run by Marriott.
I don't know why they have different names, but they do.
And they contacted us today and said,
Hey, you know what?
You've got some discounted rooms still.
You know, they previously told us that they were sold out,
but today they said, No, there are a few left.
And, okay, so how long do we have these for?
Tomorrow?
They expire tomorrow.
Can we have at least another day so we can tell people?
Nope, that's it.
Tomorrow, that's it.
Okay, so, folks, this is the situation.
We have discounted hotel rooms we didn't know about
that have suddenly become available
or maybe always were available.
I don't know.
But if you click on the link,
and in order to get to that link,
I think the only way to do that,
unless somebody here can figure out a better way,
is to go to one of our social media presences.
Wait, no one told me about this.
I'm going to do this.
I want a room.
You've been working in a different part of the facility.
Why doesn't anyone say?
Because we don't communicate.
We don't communicate well.
We talk over each other,
and we don't let each other know vital things.
I don't want someone else to get it before I do.
Let me get my device.
Hold on, hold on.
The ice cream truck was here, too.
I didn't tell you about that.
Why don't you tell me anything?
Because I was busy.
And now he's mad.
Anyway, the point is,
okay, so to get that particular link,
and Kyle, I hope you're not planning on reading that link
over the air because it's an awfully long link.
No, I don't want to help them.
You could tiny URL it if that's what you're trying to do.
Well, somebody can.
I'm out for myself right now.
They might have sold out by now.
I don't know.
This is about me.
But you go to the 2600 Twitter or Blue Sky
or Mastodon instances.
Read what was said on there.
And also, I believe,
the Hope account on Twitter,
if that's still around.
And maybe the other Hope accounts.
I don't know.
I can't keep track of them all.
But there is a link that will enable you to get a discounted hotel room
if you do it by tomorrow.
I don't know if I can be any more helpful than that.
The other thing, the other update,
which is really kind of cool,
and this wasn't my idea.
This was a bunch of people suggested this.
See, people sometimes can't make it to the conference,
but they want to support the conference.
And what several of them came up with,
and this has turned out to be something that's rather popular,
buying a ticket and then donating it to either a student
or somebody who just can't afford the admission price to the conference.
And in so doing,
you're not only supporting the conference,
but you're changing somebody's life.
And I say that without much fear of being contradicted
because we've talked to so many people who have gone to Hope over the years,
and their life has changed almost invariably in a positive way
because of the people they meet,
because of the talks they attend,
the workshops they take part in,
just the overall experience of spending a weekend
with all these really cool people
and hacking things and building things.
It's truly awesome.
And we want everybody to be able to participate in that,
but we also have to pay the expenses as well.
So we do have to charge a fee to get there.
But if you can afford to sponsor somebody,
or just basically donate a ticket to somebody else,
we've had a big number of people write in saying,
yeah, I'm a student.
I really want to go, but I can't afford it.
Or I'm just somebody who doesn't have that kind of money at the moment.
And it's not a huge amount compared to other conferences, obviously,
because we try and keep things as bare bones as possible.
But it is significant if you're between jobs or just starting out
or all kinds of other reasons.
So it's basically the community supporting the community.
And that will come back and reward you in the future.
Absolutely.
You will definitely be changing someone's life.
Yeah, there's just no other way to say it.
It's one of the nicest things that you can do.
And again, we have been trying to get more people to come to the conference
so that we're able to cover our expenses as well.
And this has been a hell of a year for international travel, obviously.
I know the economy is crap, and there's all kinds of reasons not to go.
But that makes the reasons for going all the more precious
and keeping hope alive, literally keeping hope alive.
Because if this succeeds, then we can do it again.
If it doesn't succeed, then that's that.
But we definitely want to try.
We want to do the best that we can.
And boy, do we have an amazing lineup.
The schedule is about to be published.
But we also have a listing of the talks that we have so far on the website, hope.net.
And you can peruse that.
But there's more coming as well.
So it just never seems to stop.
It's a magical time.
It really is.
This is the time I like where it's all kind of coming together.
And there's a lot of enthusiasm.
But there have been so many challenges, so many incredible challenges this year.
And I just hope that we can get through them all.
Again, hope.net is where you can find information on that.
If you want the information on the discounted hotel rooms, just check out one of our social media presences,
Twitter or Mastodon or Blue Sky.
And you can also stay in the dormitories.
We have all kinds of options on the hope.net website.
Dormitories are cheap.
I think it's under $100 a night per person, which is really, you know, that's pretty low for New York City.
And you wake up and you're on site right away.
It's pretty awesome.
And a very unique thing to do.
It's kind of like camping out in Queens.
All right.
Anyone else have anything to add to any of that?
I got a magazine in the mail recently.
Well, go ahead.
Share.
Oh, it's 2600.
Did that come out again?
That came out.
That summer issue came out, didn't it?
It did.
Volume 42, number two.
And I think you want to speak with the cover artist, though, because it appears to be upside down.
Well, you could say that, but it's not really upside down.
It might be upside down, but you might not be looking at it in exactly the right way.
You know, I'm going to have to investigate this further when I'm not on the air.
But there's definitely a lot in here I'm interested in already.
And, of course, you know, I think we do also want to mention the conference option.
If you don't want to travel to the conference, if you cannot travel to the conference, virtual tickets are still available.
And they help out the conference, you know, a major amount as well.
Get yourself a virtual ticket.
You can have access to all the speaker sessions, the online workshops.
There are live chats with other attendees.
You can submit questions in speaker Q&As and all of that good stuff.
Absolutely.
Yes.
And just want to say hello to the 44 people who are currently with us in the live chat.
And, yes, Tim in Connecticut, you make an excellent point.
If you are driving to Hope, an amazing perk of attending is that there is a gigantic parking lot at St. John's, and you can put your car there for free, which is rare in this city.
So, yeah, if you're coming to Hope, you want to, you're in car distance and you want to drive to campus, put your car there and leave it there for a couple of days, that is also an option for you.
Did you see the story of this, of this fight that took place somewhere in Queens over a parking space?
There were like five or six people involved in this video of it, too.
And people are really, you know, it gets serious.
There's kicking, there's punching over a damn parking space.
Parking spaces are precious commodities in the city, okay?
And having a free parking space, I mean, you know, even if you're not going to the conference, that's something that you don't turn down, all right?
But having the conference as well as a safe place to put your car for the weekend, wow, that, I don't think there's any other conference that can offer that.
I really don't.
Yeah, even if you're, you know, at a hotel in the middle of suburbia, I think they're going to charge you for that.
So, it's really cool.
Alex?
Well, I would go further than that, and I would say it's probably more economical if you're parking in a garage in Queens to just buy a ticket to Hope,
park your car there for the weekend, and forget about it.
Oh, my God.
Even if you're at the conference, just park the car.
Hang on.
So, if you, okay, let's think about this.
I'm not trying to dissuade people from going to the conference, but if you were going to have a night on the town, meaning in Manhattan, you know, Broadway shows and all that kind of thing,
and you were going to park your car in a parking garage for the weekend, I dare say it probably would wind up costing you more than the conference would,
where you get free parking and a conference.
So, that's what a good deal it is.
That's what a good deal it is.
Wow, I didn't even think of that.
Yeah.
I mean, look, you get yourself a parking deal.
You don't even have to come to Hope.
Just come for the parking.
And, you know, I'd like to also just address, you know, some people send us feedback, and we have seen this complaint a few times.
It pales in comparison to the people who are happy with where the conference is, but there are people who are upset that it's not in midtown Manhattan.
Hey, you know, I feel that.
You know, it's kind of cool to be able to open up a door, and there you are in the middle of Manhattan, but, you know, you need a hotel that doesn't charge an arm and a leg to do that.
And unless you want to pay over $1,000 for a conference, it's not happening.
You know, Hotel Penn, that was the exception.
They tore it down.
We can't do anything.
We can't have a conference on a vacant lot, which is all it is right now.
I don't know what they got out of that.
They had a profitable hotel, but for some reason, corruption won, and they shut the whole thing down and destroyed it.
But, you know, there's no reason why you can't also visit Manhattan while you're in town.
Stay an extra day.
Don't see a Broadway show in the middle of hope because, yeah, that's going to cause all kinds of conflicts.
You're going to miss talks.
You'll see a nice show, sure, but you can see that show on Monday or even Sunday night when things are over.
So combine it, you know, and you'll find that New York City is a lot bigger than just Manhattan,
and sometimes it's a lot cooler as well.
You guys live in Queens.
Talk up your borough.
We do.
I mean, Queens is generally known as the most diverse part of this city,
and possibly it's one of the most diverse counties in the world, I think, or at least in this country.
And, you know, there is so much of it gathered around St. John's University.
There are different kinds of food to go and get and different kinds of people around it,
all within, you know, walking distance of a few blocks.
And it is really, really a lovely place to explore.
You know, I lived in Manhattan for a long time.
Now I live in Queens.
And when I did, before I lived here, I didn't appreciate all the things about it that I do nowadays.
You know, it's really kind of a, it's a thinking person's borough, I think, if you're traveling to the city.
Yeah, check it out.
There is the Midtown tourist trap and all that cool stuff in Manhattan.
And I do kind of miss when our conference was right there among it all.
But, you know, there was no way we were going to park for free.
There was no way we were going to have the access to the amount of space that we have now.
And there is just so much to be said for this venue that has been, you know,
that we found in kind of a swirl of chaos after we lost the hotel.
And it's been nothing but good to us for the years we've been using it now.
And I think they're, we are, they appreciate us.
We appreciate them.
And, yeah, it's a good spot.
It's amazing to be in the city and have space because, you know, you have wide open space.
You have fields, you know, places you can walk around and converse and socialize.
But you also have conference rooms that have working AV equipment and just a perfect location for a gathering of minds because it's a university.
It makes perfect sense.
And they are very into what we do and very supportive, as you said.
And it's the perfect location.
It really is.
It's wonderful.
And as an added bonus, there's one thing you can do in Queens that you certainly cannot do in Midtown Manhattan.
Hang on.
Let me try to guess.
Let me try to guess.
Hold on.
Hold on.
You can sometimes see the stars.
That was what I was going to say, actually.
That was it?
Wow.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
To when you first moved out here, Rob, when you were, we would walk outside and be like,
whoa, you can see the stars and we're in New York City.
Um, yes, Queens is an incredibly diverse area.
It, like Rob said, is generally recognized as the most diverse county in the country and lots of places to go, lots of things to learn.
And it is true that while New York is the city that never sleeps, um, certain parts of Queens do go to bed a little early.
But hold on, hold on.
Not that, not that Chinese restaurant I went to in Chinatown at four o'clock on a Sunday night.
All right.
So there are places that are open.
You just got to know where they are.
Exactly.
And that's the thing.
You are not far from the flush Chinatown, which is the largest Chinatown in the U.S., I think.
I think it might be, um, where I know in the Tame Graham mall, there's a conveyor belt sushi place.
I've always wanted to check out.
Oh, yeah.
Um, and I was like robots.
There's a robot something.
Um, no, there is.
So we were, my family was in town the last couple of days and our nephew who's six.
I said, listen, the number of languages you will hear people speaking around you just as people walk by you, listen to what they're saying.
And, yes, and then this is just a wonderful, you know, meeting of the minds that hope is.
So come join us in Queens next month.
It's an adventure.
And again, all the details, hope.net.
Um, and, uh, boy, there's a lot going on.
Uh, and that's why we are kind of frantic and, um, um, not communicating as well.
Uh, but, um, yeah, uh, we have a couple of stories that, uh, we didn't get to on the air that I just wanted to get to here.
Uh, and then we'll, uh, open up phone lines and they're not open right now too, by the way.
So if you try calling, you won't, you won't reach anything.
Yeah, we, we've, um, uh, upgraded a little bit.
Uh, there's a security vulnerability on American trains.
Uh, it was discovered in 2012, but the American Association of Railways, known as the AAR, uh, has refused to act on it until the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, published an advisory recently.
According to hardware security researcher, uh, Niels on Twitter, they first discovered the issue back in 2012 when software-defined radios started becoming more popular.
Uh, all American trains were equipped with end-of-train modules attached to the last carriage, uh, which reports telemetry data to the front of the train wirelessly.
Well, um, back when it was first implemented in the late, late 1980s, it was illegal for anyone else to use the frequencies allocated for this system.
So the system only used the BCH checksum for packet creation.
Unfortunately, anyone with an SDR, uh, software-defined radio, could mimic these packets, allowing them to send false signals to the EOT module and the corresponding head of train, HOT partner.
Uh, this would not have been an urgent issue if the EOT had only sent telemetry data.
However, the HOT can also issue a brake command to the EOT through this system.
Front of the train can send a brake command to the end of the train.
Thus, anyone with the hardware, which is available for less than $500, and the know-how, can easily issue a brake command without the train driver's knowledge, potentially compromising the safety of the transport operation.
Now, what's frustrating for this guy named Niels is that the AAR refused to acknowledge the vulnerability back in 2012, saying that it was just a theoretical issue and that they'd only believe if it happened in real life.
Uh, unfortunately, the Federal Railway Authority, known as the FRA, uh, lacks a test track facility, which is hard to believe, and the AAR has not permitted any testing due to security concerns on their property.
It has gotten to the point that the security researcher published their findings in the Boston Review, only to be refuted by the AAR in Fortune magazine.
Why are you refuting in a different magazine?
You know, if you publish in the Boston Review, uh, you know, the person should refute the allegations in the Boston Review, not a different one.
I mean, what if they weren't even reading Fortune?
Anyway, by 2024, the issue still had not been resolved.
The AAR's Director of Information Security said that it wasn't really a major issue and that the vulnerable devices are already reaching their end of life.
Because the AAR continued to ignore the warnings, the CISA had no choice but to officially publish an advisory to warn the public about it.
This has got the AAR moving forward, with the group announcing an update in April.
However, implementation is going at a snail's pace, with 2027 being the target as the earliest year of deployment.
So, isn't that a fascinating story?
That, uh, apparently...
And I believe this, this, uh, is, is only, um, uh, freight trains that are affected, I believe.
I don't know for sure.
But that story comes from Tom'sHardware.com, which is an unlikely place for me to get a story, but it's a fascinating story about trains.
And I just couldn't resist.
Yeah, interesting usage of the term end of life, which I think applies multiple ways into, uh, the, the possible repercussions of a vulnerability like this not getting fixed.
And I think if we were a country that, like, actually prioritized rail travel to a reasonable degree, this would have been taken care of long ago.
Yep.
Uh, and the other story that I've gotten more times than I can count is, of course, the Elmo story.
My God, get over it already.
Elmo got hacked.
Big deal.
Sesame Workshop has regained control of its Elmo account on the Twitter platform on Monday after a hacker...
Yeah, blame the hackers.
It could have been anybody.
I mean, I don't know what Elmo's password was.
Uh, someone gained access, posted a string of racist, anti-Semitic messages, um, as well as demands to release the Epstein files and all kinds of other things.
Um, Elmo's, uh, account was compromised, uh, by an unknown hacker, again, accusing the hackers who posted disgusting messages, including anti-Semitic and racist posts, Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street, and Elmo said in a statement on Monday.
Uh, the account was, you know, I can't help but hear that in Elmo's voice.
Elmo's ex-account was compromised, because he always talks in the third person, you know?
But, uh, no, that's serious, folks, serious.
The account was compromised over the weekend, and instead of the usual posts of encouragement and kindness, Elmo's 650,000 followers were given anti-Semitic threats and a profane reference to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Um, those tweets were soon deleted.
Wait, if the tweets were soon deleted, how come it took them until Monday to get access to their account?
If they could delete things, they should be able to get access to their account.
Um, Elmo's social media account has lately become a place for mental health awareness.
Uh, last year, the Red Fuzzy Monster, um, eternally three and a half, caused a sensation when he asked,
Elmo is just checking in, how is everybody doing?
And, boy, that, uh, unleashed a tidal wave of responses, including from, uh, Joe Biden, Chance the Rapper, the list goes on.
Yeah, Elmo, that's the number one story.
Okay, so I am a big Sesame Street enthusiast.
I follow a lot of their, like, the Sesame Workshop official stuff.
Stuff, and one of the most prominent responses I've seen is people saying, why are you still on Twitter?
Uh, Twitter is no, Twitter is a Nazi bar.
It's no place for a three-year-old to hang out.
This again.
But, um, yes, and my mom was like, well, Elmo's password security should be better.
Your mom said that?
My mom said that.
Wow, good for her, good for her.
It was actually quite funny.
Um, so, yes, we also have people guessing in the chat what Elmo's password might have been.
Um.
Yeah, Elmo could tell us.
I mean, it doesn't matter now.
Tell us what the password was.
But the interesting thing is, they do maintain accounts for, like, every character.
So I can only hope that Sesame Workshop and their social media team extrapolated from this and tightened up everyone's security.
Lest, next to it's Bert.
Hang on.
Or Ernie.
Or Cookie Monster.
Uh, I'm one of the few people who knows how to spell Snuffleupagus.
So, that gives me an advantage for trying to hack their account.
Do you know what Mr. Snuffleupagus?
And yes, I did use the proper pronoun for Snuffleupagus, by the way.
Yes.
Did you know, do you know what Mr. Snuffleupagus's first name is?
No, but I don't need to know that.
Yes.
All right, then I'm not going to tell you.
Okay, and I'll be fine with that.
Go ahead, Rob.
Well, another aspect of this that should lead to some discussion of just the social media sphere in general is that, of course, the worry about something like this is that kids will be on social media following Elmo and find themselves subject to the terrible things it was posting.
But social media is not a safe place for children, and this might be a reminder to folks who would think otherwise that, no, you shouldn't let your kid have a Twitter, even though they can follow just the, you know, cutesy character accounts, because Twitter is going to feed you other things, whether intentionally or not.
You start up a brand new Twitter account with no history on a new email address, and you're going to get fed, like, you know, all kinds of terrible things.
And that holds true, I think, for a lot of the centralized social media sites out there.
And so, yes, it's not a safe place for kids.
Parents, keep an eye on your kids.
Everything they're doing online, even if you think it's something safe and kid-friendly, there's always the danger that it might not become so.
I agree.
Kids should not have a Twitter.
But should kids have a Fox News?
I'm serious.
Should you plop your kid down in front of the TV with Fox News on?
Is that going to poison their mind with all kinds of hatred and, you know, prejudice and things like that?
It's another argument for just having a home video collection so you can completely control what your kids are watching.
Alex, if we may intrude on your personal life for a moment, you have kids.
What's your TV policy?
They barely watch TV.
Why is that?
What's wrong with them?
Nobody watches TV anymore.
I mean, what are you living in the night?
Streaming services, then, whatever you want to call it.
Okay.
Yeah, streaming services.
But it's better.
I mean, but then they choose whatever they want to watch.
They don't plop down in front of the news or anything.
We don't really keep the news on either.
Yeah, but they could choose Newsmax or something.
You don't know.
They could.
They could choose Newsmax.
They don't really watch.
They don't watch any news, really.
I mean, they're not that old.
But when I put on the news, which is rare these days, too, I don't really watch the news anymore.
Actually, it's been quite a few years now, I think, since I've, like, sat down and religiously watched the news.
I like to read the news as opposed to watch it these days.
But they're kind of mystified by watching even CNN.
You know, and they watch it curiously and I think really skeptically.
So, but we never have Fox on.
But, look, I think it's not a great thing to have any news station on when, you know, just blaring out at children these days.
They're all pretty bad.
Okay.
I guess that answers my question.
I guess so.
Yeah.
But I would say one other comment, though.
You know, we're 31 minutes into the show and it's supposed to be a call-in show.
No, it's not.
It's a show that has a call-in attached to it.
But it's also an extension of Off the Hook.
So if we have a whole lot to talk about, you know, it kind of overflows.
And I have one more story.
And we will open our front lines after this.
Now, talking about anti-Semitism online and all that brings up Grok, of course, the Twitter AI.
And they have been rewarded for their outburst of anti-Semitism with a hefty Pentagon contract.
Yes, the Pentagon has signed on to use Grok, the AI chatbot built by Elon Musk's company, XAI, as part of a new $200 million agreement that opens the door for its deployment across the federal government.
Good Lord.
The announcement comes amid Musk's public breakup with President Trump and days after Grok generated anti-Semitic responses and praised Adolf Hitler.
The rollout is part of Grok for Government.
And a newly launched suite of tools designed for use by federal agencies, local governments, and national security operations.
XAI said its products, including its latest Grok 4 model, will now be available for purchase through the General Services Administration, allowing any federal office to adopt the technology.
The move aligns with the Trump administration's push for more aggressive adoption of artificial intelligence across the government.
Since taking office in January, Trump has championed AI as a pillar of national security and innovation.
Thoughts?
Oh, boy.
We have to use words.
We can't just sigh.
Can't we, though?
There is just so much to unpack here.
Yes, this is going to, this is hugely enriching Elon Musk, who, you know, I don't know how broken up he and Trump are, or whether it's all a work like pro wrestling, where, okay, we can watch them fighting and have a good guy and a bad guy, but either way, they both work for the same, you know, causes and are probably still pals behind the scenes.
But the whole adoption of things like Grok into government, I mean, they're not even putting effort into the anti-Semitic tirades anymore.
They're going to outsource that to a robot.
Yes, Alex.
This raises some, I think, really curious issues here, too, because if Grok is going to be used across the federal government, it's going to have access to lots and lots of information.
Well, what is it doing with that information, number one?
How is it processing it?
How is it storing it?
Is it segregating it?
Are these going to be individual tendencies?
I mean, I don't trust in AI to just work across federal agencies and safeguard our data so it's not regurgitated in some way in response to some specialized prompting or something like that.
But aside from that issue, if Grok is going to become a federal contractor, there are a massive amount of compliance requirements with respect to cybersecurity for government contractors.
There's the NIST 800-171 standard.
There's the cybersecurity maturity model certification that is going to apply if you're touching controlled but unclassified information, which is what it sounds like this certainly would be.
There's lots of marking requirements for that.
There's incident reporting requirements.
There's requirements to flow all this down to subcontractors.
I mean, to get in cybersecurity compliance for any government contractor is a really, really tricky thing.
This is going to be working in the defense capacity as well.
There's going to be a lot more oversight from the Department of Defense.
So this could be like a total nightmare for Grok to comply with these things.
But it also gives us a way to hold them accountable because these are very, very clear rules that apply to all government contractors across the world, quite frankly.
It's not just across the country.
There's contractors all over the world.
And Grok should not be exempt.
It sounds like they think they are, though.
Well, you know, I don't I don't use Grok.
I don't know.
I don't really know how to use Grok, to be honest.
Does anyone here actually use this?
Do you have to use Twitter to use it or?
No.
Yeah, I think it's through Twitter.
I think there is an option at the bottom of tweets now to look something up with Grok or ask Grok to explain something.
And does everybody see you doing that or is it only you and Grok?
There's one way to do it, but I don't know.
I think there's a way to do it privately, too, I would hope.
Yeah, that that would be weird.
But, you know, the irony here of having Doge go in, decimate these federal agencies and now basically having Elon Musk's artificial intelligence basically replace them.
I mean, that's not something I'm seeing talked about a lot, but that's pretty much what happened.
Am I wrong?
I mean, wasn't that basically the plan?
Well, not so many words.
I don't think he said, yeah, I'm going to replace it with my own artificial intelligence.
And I don't know.
But it seems to be what's what's what's happening right now.
And it's, you know, I think humans are probably better for answering questions and conversing with people on the outside.
But I guess we'll find out.
And this is another aspect of what we were talking about on on the FM airwaves about accountability in our authority figures in our government.
And when some of this government's agenda is being enacted by artificial intelligence mimicking people who is responsible when it does something awful, who is responsible when it screws something up in a big way.
It's it's it really it really boggles the mind.
And anyway, you were asking about using rock.
If you're signed into Twitter, among all the tools that you see available to you, in addition to like tweeting and, you know, all of that is there's a rock button now and that will take you to a screen that's that's just like any of the other LLMs now like chat GPT or anything else.
You can ask rock to do things or, you know, tell talk, talk, talk to you about things or create images or edit images or whatever.
It's it's just another one of them things.
And it's only between you and rock and broadcasting it to the world, because a lot of people got confused when Twitter first came out and they thought they were, you know, just talking to the person that they addressed with the at sign, not realizing that anybody could see that.
And it's not the same thing as a private message.
I would not place much faith in the privacy of anything you do over this.
Yeah, that's a that's a very good point.
All right.
And that's that's going to do it for the stories.
So we're going to open up phone lines in a second.
But first, before we do, we're going to test that phone line one more time just to to get it as close to to airtime as possible.
I'm going to lift the phone up.
Go ahead.
Yeah, it's that's good.
That's not bad.
That's not bad.
All right.
And now we're going to click a couple of buttons and turn on the phone.
802-321-4225 is our telephone number.
You can call us and ask us questions or issue statements or argue with us or whatever it is you want to do.
And hopefully we'll be able to hear you clearly.
And hopefully you'll be able to hear us clearly.
And hopefully this is working because I don't know for sure it is.
And hopefully someone else has something to say because I'm kind of absolutely 802-321-4225 or 802-321-HACK.
Or you could get us toll free at 833-755-2600.
And while we're waiting, I'll just throw in another shout for give to WBAI.org, which keeps us doing what we do on the air,
keeps the radio stations lights on and broadcasters broadcasting.
There are all sorts of interesting things happening on BAI besides our own show.
And you can be a part of making all of that happen at give to WBAI.org or buddy.wbai.org for that matter.
Yeah, it's important that somebody call because this is how we know if the hum is gone for sure.
And if something else is causing it, then maybe we can figure out what's causing it.
But we need somebody to call 802-321-4225.
Not you, Alex.
No, someone else, someone out there.
And for what it's worth, it does appear that our regular first caller is out of the country right now.
So if you're waiting for Rebel to call, don't.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And if you're waiting for Rebel not to call, well, this is your opportunity.
So 802-321-4225, you can replace him tonight.
We have 56 people out there right now.
Why don't you give us a call?
Absolutely.
Be the call you want to hear in the world.
Yes.
Shouldn't be so hard.
I wouldn't think so.
Do people know how to use phones?
I mean, you know, I know we don't do that very often anymore.
Country code one.
Oh, here we go.
We have a phone call.
All right, let's see what happens.
Very excited here.
And good evening.
You are on off the cover time.
I'm calling upon request.
This is Tim in Connecticut.
Hi, Tim in Connecticut.
And you know what?
You sound pretty good.
I don't hear a hum.
I do, unfortunately.
Well, I don't know what to say.
I mean, you know, we all hear the phone line here.
How is there a one-way hum?
How does that work exactly?
Yeah, I don't know.
Even if I had to physically make it to that, I don't know how that would work.
Okay.
Well, can you hear us enough to be able to have a conversation?
I hear you, Emmanuel.
I haven't checked the rest of the everybody.
Well, they have to talk.
Alex is about to say something.
Alex, please speak.
Let's give it a shot.
How are you, Tim?
Wow, that sounds like you're on the far end of another room.
All right.
Let's try Rob and Gila now.
Hey, Tim.
It's good to hear you.
And just for the sake of analysis, I will say that I don't think the hum is going out
over the YouTube stream, as far as I can tell.
Probably not.
I can't tell because I have that muted, so we don't have the clash.
Hang on.
You didn't say anything about Rob's quality, and you just conversed with him.
His quality was better.
Okay.
And now let's try Gila.
Let's try Gila now.
I would be shocked if my sound quality was radically different from Rob's, but hi, Tim.
Right.
Yeah.
It's about equal.
So, Alex...
Emmanuel, your quality is best.
Well, of course.
But, Alex, once again, you are the problem, and we need to boost your voice somehow.
Now, that's hard for us to do because you're coming in the same channel as Rob and Gila.
So, you're either going to have to shout or get closer to the microphone.
What about this?
Is this any better, Tim?
Not really.
You sound echoey.
Now, Rob, what kind of microphone do you have where you don't sound echoey?
We have a basic sort of a podcaster, Mike.
It's a Yeti, is what it's called, that we're using at the moment.
There you go.
Yes, Alex.
Oh, wait.
Let me try this now.
Is this any better?
You sound the same.
Yeah.
I really couldn't say that there was any difference there.
Oh, all right.
What about now?
Is now any better?
You didn't do anything.
No, but I mean, the volume of the hum has stayed constant.
Yeah, I don't know why the hum would go up.
We're not talking about it.
What about this?
Is this any better now?
I'm switching the inputs.
Sounds like you got closer, yes.
Yeah, it sounds pretty annoyingly loud, but I guess that's what people want.
Okay, so this is probably better then.
I'm just switching the inputs.
Yeah, that's actually better.
Right.
Okay.
Hang on.
I hate to weigh in here, but this is exactly what I asked we not do.
What?
Is troubleshoot and analyze the sound quality.
I don't care how well it sounds to you.
Well, we determined Alex is the problem.
Okay?
We're learning.
We're learning.
And also, we learned that the hum is a one-way hum to Tim, and it goes nowhere else.
Okay.
Great.
I knew this, like, a month ago.
I would just prefer that we get the questions out, like, let's have the convo, and then,
like, take another call, and, like, repeat that process.
It would be fantastic.
Like, stating the obvious on top of having stated the obvious after being told not to
state the obvious is really contradictory.
It's not helping.
We know we're not fixing this right now.
I don't know.
Here's the thing, Kyle.
Am I being heard?
Well, here's the thing.
Is my microphone on?
Here's my problem.
E, can you hear me?
I hear you fine.
Do I exist?
You see, um...
I'm waving my hands.
Do you see me?
You're basically critiquing us for talking about the hum.
However, you're talking about...
I'm going to drop off.
You're talking about us.
I'll allow somebody else to call in.
Okay, guys?
You're talking about us talking about the hum.
Thanks, Tim.
We appreciate you.
Thanks, Tim.
Yeah, so I don't know, you know, which is worse.
Talking about the hum or talking about people talking about the hum, but I don't think we
have to talk about the hum anymore because we kind of determined that it's not going
over YouTube.
Only the callers seem to hear it.
And you guys hear the hum at all when we were talking just now?
I mean, I heard a slight hum, but not much.
You're so stupid.
And shut up.
And Alex, I think you wanted to say something and then give it.
No, I'm fine about the hum anymore.
There's a phone off the hook.
I'm ready to move on.
Yeah.
There's a phone off the hook, so we can't take any calls.
Oh, I should...
Hang on.
Reach over here.
There.
I did it.
We do have a listener with a theory about the hum who said, what if after all this time
and all these shows with the hum, the team just comes out with a small servo motor that's
been making the noise, and it's been a trick the whole time.
Wow.
That's surprisingly close to the truth.
We have another phone call, and we're going to take that, and we're not going to talk about
the hum at all.
For a Serola Hum Club.
Yes.
It's beside the point.
Yes, it's beside the point.
Good evening.
You are on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hey, how's it going, everybody?
Pretty good.
How are you?
Okay.
So, I don't know if you guys saw in the news or heard, like I did, and then rejoiced
tremendously.
Alex doesn't watch the news, so he doesn't know anything about this, I guarantee you.
Ah.
Yeah.
Well, I had it on when I was driving, running errands, so it was just 92.3, like the news,
the regular news.
10-10 wins.
And 31 NYPD cops got fired all at once.
No, I heard about that.
I heard they were hired under suspicious circumstances.
But then I heard that some court said that NYPD can't fire them, and it just seemed like,
you know, this ridiculous dance going back and forth of trying to fire cops and not being
able to.
So, I don't know where it stands right now.
Well, it's my fault for pausing.
I should have not let you say the second part, because for like a whole week, I've been on
cloud nine, thinking anything is possible.
Mm-hmm.
So, 31 cops got fired all at once.
Who's ever heard of such a thing ever before or since our lives?
Well, I think they're rookies, too.
I think they're new cops, so they were just hired wrong or something.
I don't know what the story was.
I didn't really care that much, but...
I don't know if they're new cops or not, and I don't know who they are, and I thought
maybe I would start looking at, like, who are the 31 cops?
And then I thought of Micah Lee and Blue Leaks.
Uh-huh.
So...
Who will be speaking at Hope, by the way.
Micah Lee will be at Hope, just so people know.
Yeah.
So, he's going to have...
He is inventing an app that people can get all their stuff off of Twatter and archive
it so that they can go back to more ethical ways of conversing, like email and phone and
phones, yeah.
Person and websites.
But anyway, so yeah, back to the cops.
Yeah, so they wound up...
They did wind up getting rehired, and since, you know, phone numbers aren't a thing as
much as they were, and I have low vision, I would love to get in touch with Micah because
I did go to his workshop on Blue Leaks to try to learn how to use it, because I would
love to be able to just easy-peasy look up those cops that are still on the force that
all have questionable records, and that's why they were not supposed to be hired in
the first place, all 31 of those cops.
They were all hired by one guy, and they all lied on their applications.
Wow.
So that's why they were supposed to be not on the force, and so they're still on the
force, so I would love to know what kind of complaints, et cetera.
And so I went to Micah's workshop, and Micah had a thing of like, yeah, here's what to bring.
And a Windows computer was an option.
I do have a different kind of computer, but chose to bring the Windows computer for reasons
that might not be appreciated, if I say.
So I'll keep that to myself.
But yeah, and I also had to sit in the front row because of my low vision, and proceeded
to fail at almost every step.
He set up the Blue Leaks for Linux computers.
Like, in general, that's what happened.
So I fell behind and was not able to figure out how to access Blue Leaks.
And so I'm just very sad.
So I hope that he'll have, you know, whatever, his app completed by the time that this hope
comes up for folks to be able to use to get their stuff off of water.
And anyway, so I just wanted to say the moral of the story is keep up the positive thinking
at all times, because anything really is possible.
That's an awesome sentiment.
Rob, did you have something to say?
Yeah, caller.
Just in case you do want to get in touch with Micah Lee, who is a very fascinating individual.
Can I turn you up?
Because I can't figure out how to use the volume on here.
And I have it up all the way.
And I don't, I don't know.
Let me see.
So if you would like to contact Micah Lee, you can get hold of him through.
Maybe, Emmanuel, you can repeat this.
One caller can hear you, and one caller can't hear you.
How is that possible?
I found out where the speaker is on this phone.
Go ahead.
Okay, so caller, can you hear me?
Yeah, barely, but go ahead.
Awesome.
Maybe, Emmanuel, you can...
I'll translate.
Fine.
Go ahead.
Okay, so you can contact Micah Lee via his website, which is Micah F. Lee.
That's M-I-C-A-H-F-L-E-E dot com.
And he's got a contact me page on there with his social media, email, signal.
Stop talking, Rob.
Micah F. Lee dot com is the website.
M-I-C-A-H-F-L-E-E dot C-O-M.
You can contact him through there.
Rob, resume talking.
Yes, he's got social media.
He's got email, signal, everything.
And you should be able to ping him.
No, he doesn't have everything, though, because he doesn't have a phone number, and I have low vision, and I'm not going to do communicating via typing.
Well, there's only so much we can do.
It's another person.
No, that's what I'm saying.
So, that's what I'm saying, is I wish that I could, but I can't, because out of all the people that were in that workshop, I probably would have been the one to use the Blue Leaks the most.
Uh-huh.
So, it's unfortunate, you know.
Luckily, there's plenty of corrupt cops out there.
You will have your hands full, I guarantee it.
And you'll get all the information on them.
I know you will.
Yes.
Caller, may I ask whether you use assistive tech?
Yeah, I would need a giant screen to have all kinds of visual assistance and visual aids.
And still, what would happen is I would wind up communicating via typing.
And my low vision is just one reason.
There's a lot of different reasons why communicating via typing stops compared to more in-person stuff.
And so, I come from a subculture of people who have high standards, and unfortunately, that causes limitations in my life.
So, I prefer to be more real than communicating via typing.
I don't like it.
It's fake.
I don't know.
It's kind of masked.
I mean, it's good for people who, like, have trouble communicating verbally.
I understand that that is a good tool for people like that.
And, but, to encourage everyone to communicate via typing, I think, is causing a lot of problems these days.
No, you raise a very good point.
And, you know, I think Hope, in particular, is a place where people can talk about being differently enabled in all sorts of ways that many of us can't even conceive.
And it's really a great way to be educated on that and to find other people that share concerns.
Rob, did you have something else?
Yeah.
There's also a big community at Hope that works in fields like accessibility and making, you know, technology, making technology more usable for more people.
And I think that would be, that would be a very fascinating, like, I want to hear more about how you, how you would use these things or what, what methods work best for you.
And, and also, you know, others with similar issues.
And, yeah.
I don't understand.
You would like to what?
I'm sorry.
I would like to know more about how you, you, you would prefer to communicate.
And, you know, yes, there, there are ways to voice call people.
There are also like voice typing apps that a lot of people find useful if you've got a mobile device or things like that.
And, you know, this is, this is a field that the hacker community can add so much to.
And the commercial community is kind of not great at.
Yeah.
Well, I could just tell you the most recent thing and then I'll go because I want to give other people a chance.
Um, so I tried for six days straight to get, uh, text to, to get, to get speech to text.
It's a, it's a, most times people want text to speech, but I wanted speech to text because I was working on a presentation.
So it took me six days in Linux to get my, to try to get a speech to text, um, um, thing working so that I could read into my computer and it would type it for me.
Right.
And, um, I failed after six days.
So then I went to, uh, the Satan computer, I like to call it, which is the Microsoft, uh, Google piece of poo windows computer.
Right.
Which, you know, again, there's my higher, higher standards that come into play that make me have like self limitations that please nobody compare yourself to me because, um, that's not cool.
Everybody's different and has their positives and negatives.
And, uh, don't make me into a bad person just because I choose for moral reasons to not to, to not to do a lot of stuff because it's very limiting.
So, um, there's a lot of different, there's a least two ways of looking at everything.
But anyway, yeah.
So it took me 60 to, to figure that out.
So if, so Lennox still has that to work on, I think, as, and that was as of last summer.
Um, and then I wrote a speech in the beginning of May and my, and the Google one stopped working.
I literally wrote it with one eye.
I wrote a speech all night with one eye.
Okay.
Not, I'm not like that, that I can totally do many, many things, but sometimes when it's not, not doing well and I'm pulling it all nighter, I have to close one eye in order to focus.
Right.
So, um, anyway, um, I said, I sat there and I wrote this speech and I muted it in the Google horrible Satan computer.
And, um, the, and that's when even that one stopped working the speech to text.
So it was, I'm sitting here like, you know, biting the bullet, like totally like thinking I'm earning like tremendous amounts of bad karma by just using the Google speech to text.
And, um, then that happened.
So it, so it just wouldn't, so I wound up typing more than half of the speech anyway.
And it was a half an hour speech.
So, but I was able to do the speech.
At a demonstration and it worked out and somebody videotaped it.
So now I have to find a video editing software that's going to take out all the metadata.
That's awesome.
Congratulations on that.
All right.
Well, Rob, you have one more thing to say?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I, I just want to put out there that, uh, I don't think any hacker worth their salt would, uh, look down upon you at all for using, you know, the Satan computer when it's the tool that's working for you.
I think a central tenet of, uh, the hacker spirit is using whatever you can get your hands on in order to accomplish what you need to.
And in a case like yours where, you know, the tools might be, you know, significantly better in one place than the other, you know, yeah.
Use the Satan computer.
Don't, don't be down on yourself about it.
And, uh, don't, don't take any shit from anyone for, you know, for, for the fact that you have to use that.
But then it stopped working anyway.
So everybody's happy.
Yeah.
I grew up.
Yeah.
And then it stopped working.
All right, guys.
Well, I'm having trouble.
I want, I want to value every single word that comes out of all your mouths like I always do.
So I'm going to hang out.
All right.
Thank you.
And, um, hopefully I'll test the phone next time, make sure, um, and I won't call for a while and I'll be respectful of other people.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thanks for your call.
Thanks for sharing.
Have a good night.
Go ahead, Kyle.
Oh, I was just going to chime in that like, I grew up like kind of thinking that stereotype about hackers.
And I mean, it may be true, but I'm sure there are some like judgy people out there that would scoff at you using one or the other system.
But I kind of gave myself a break a long time ago that, um, for me, I'm interested in OS diversity, having a familiarity with all kinds of different computer systems and architectures and whatever you want to call them menus, user interfaces, just knowing all of it, especially the, like how graphical everything has become.
Um, there's certain symbols and things now that you just, you're, it's taken for granted.
You're sort of expected to understand this sort of visual, um, a world that we interact with on screens and, and tablets and, and throughout all these different ecosystems and stuff that are hurled our way.
Uh, even like ordering at a fast food place, you have to like touch some kind of big, uh, obelisk or monolith, like to get your, your food to like come out the other end.
I, I, I, I just find it hilarious to, uh, because I felt that way.
I felt judged, but as was said, it's not important.
It's not as important as getting the thing done that you're trying to accomplish, whatever your interest is.
Um, it is beside the point how, and in fact, people might find it, um, kind of endearing if you use something that's pretty commonly used, but maybe not used in the way that you've used it.
So take, take pride in just seizing the, the means of, uh, communicating or whatever technology is around you and, uh, bending it to your will, making it do what you, what you need it to do in that moment.
And in the process, yeah, like giving those other, uh, systems and other tools a chance, but if it doesn't work for you, abandon it, you know, find something that actually accomplishes what you're setting out to do.
But don't be afraid to waste time, uh, for a while, uh, just, uh, trying to figure it out.
You know, people won't get it.
They won't understand why you care so much.
Well, I, I would like try to, I really wanted to learn other operating systems and some of the free stuff that was coming around,
but it took a quite a bit more skill to actually install it and have it function on hardware.
And to me, like early on, that was, that was the challenge in and of itself was like actually getting a system to boot that is not a proprietary system.
And it took years for just the way, um, a lot of that stuff was packaged, the way, uh, installers worked, um, the need of the need to compile something, uh, to then create something that you could actually load.
That took a really long time.
It's, it's come a long ways.
It still requires a fair amount of tinkering and stuff, but it was daunting back, back when I was learning it and wanting to have access.
So just that high bar of getting onto a system that you could explore took all this extra knowledge that now you don't necessarily have to take on just to get going.
So there, there are a lot of advantages as things have become more user accessible and, and easier to understand and, and get off, you know, get going and running on whatever hardware.
When you have difficulty with anything, um, just asking AI, believe it or not, can be very helpful as far as, uh, you know, how would this command work with, I want to accomplish this on this particular OS, uh, you can get a really good explanation in a, in a decent, uh, AI setting.
Uh, and, and, and, you know, you can ask as many questions as you want without pissing somebody off, uh, which generally tends to intimidate people.
They feel like they're being, you know, slow or stupid or something and, uh, that they're apologetic.
They don't have to be, you spend as much time as you want on something until you either are sick of it or until you get it.
And then when you get it and you learn it well enough, you can be lazy about, uh, fixing things.
Like I have this one system that I was trying to upgrade and then it like broke during the upgrade.
And so Debian system, I don't even want to get into it, but like, I know I have to go and fix it.
I basically have to start over, but I, you know, certain things are working and are installed the way I want it.
And like, I just don't want to go do that, but like, I have to, like, I should at some point, but it works.
It works great because I learned about different parts of it that allow me to roll it back to a certain state of functionality.
And now I don't have to worry about it.
And, you know, some of the programs are actually starting to work again the way I wanted just from, you know, casual maintenance.
But yeah, like play around with stuff, tinker with stuff, make mistakes on systems that you aren't relying on and you'll become familiar enough.
You'll become much more comfortable moving across one system to the next and yeah, you can get around to things and, and yeah, never stop trying to like explore and make things better.
But if it's working, yeah, maybe you don't need to upgrade it right away because it might get more broken.
You learn those lessons.
We have an article in the new issue about North Korean operating system called Red Store OS.
I saw that.
Yeah.
I saw a headline, a subtitle in the contents.
Yeah.
I was just flipping through that, that issue.
So a lot of interesting stuff going on with that.
And yeah, I, there, there are so many different options out there too, that it's, it's almost laughable to like try to have an OS argument because they all serve different purposes and there's so many of them.
There could be one for every, like every person in a room filled with 200 people, you could have a room filled with like three or 500 people.
There's a lot of OSs.
So like, I just, I, I look back at that with, uh, uh, a warm sense of humor.
Well, uh, warm sense of humor is what we're going to need for one more call.
Uh, eight, zero, two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
We'll give it a couple of minutes, uh, and see if we get one more and then we'll close it out for the night.
And again, remember next week we're doing the call in on WBAI, which means there won't be an overtime.
So this is the last overtime for two weeks.
Uh, eight, zero, two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five is our telephone number.
Uh, two things really quickly.
Number one is I did pick up a nickname from speech to text.
Um, someone attempted to send me an email in speech to text and didn't look at it before hitting send.
And I received an email that said, Hey, killer, uh, that's not my name, but it did sort of sound like it.
And, uh, we had a question in the chat that I thought would be a fun one to push to the whole group.
Uh, Tim in Connecticut asked the chat, and I would like to ask you, what was everybody's first computer?
Aloysius.
Aloysius?
All right. Is that how you pronounce it?
That's how you pronounce it. Yeah.
Snuffleup is his first name. Yeah. We came back to it.
Yeah. Aloysius.
Nicely done.
Um, but yeah, or we don't have to answer cause we have a phone call.
That's kind of tough. Like, is it first one that you use first one that you own first one that you bought first one that you ever had control over?
I don't know that, that, that's kind of a tough one for me.
Cause I, there's, I've had a lot of machines.
The first one I had control over, uh, technically belonged to the U S government.
Um, I don't really want to go into that, but, um, as far as, you know,
I have to remember, I have to remember, but, uh, yeah, Alex, maybe you have something.
Yeah. I mean, mine, the one that was mine, I mean, I had an Apple IIe for a little while when I was growing up.
I was very young though, but then the first machine that was really mine, it was quite outdated at the time, uh, that I had it was an XT.
It ran at four megahertz, had a 30 megabyte hard drive, only 640 K of conventional memory, no, no Ram whatsoever.
And it had a CGA monitor.
And it was with that machine that I installed a 2400 baud modem and got into the world that we find ourselves right now.
I mean, the first computer that I really spent a lot of time on, uh, not counting the, um, the timesharing computer that was a, um, uh, a PDP 10, uh, run by digital, um, the first actual personal computer or, or, um, uh, microcomputer, I guess is the right word.
Uh, Heathkit H89 or Zenith H89 running CPM or HDOS, uh, two hard sectored floppy drives and a 10 megabyte hard drive, which had a fan that was very loud.
It was huge. You know, it was, it was hard to carry. Uh, and I think it had an eight inch floppy drive attached to it as well.
So good times. Yeah. Computers meant something back then.
I think, I think the one that I owned, let's see. I, I grew up around like old PCs. So like a, an IBM, like 80, 86, I think it was the chip.
And, uh, I don't know what machine every, everyone would, would, they're like a big rectangular box, but that was like a family.
That was like, that wasn't even a family computer. I think there were other, um,
other, uh, PC, other PCs, but they were kind of like salvaged or like old ones that came home from,
from the office that no one wanted or something. Uh, but the first one that was actually mine was a power book.
Oh, wow. Yeah. A power book 5,300 C, which was a lemon, terrible computer. Uh, but it was mine and it had a color screen.
Very cool. That's cool. Yeah. It took a while to get to color for me. And it was just, you know, fun having a 300 slash 1200 baud modem and, uh, thinking that was fast.
And, you know, when, when, when modem connections went faster than the speed at which you could read, that's lightning fast.
That really, that was a high tech.
All right. We have a phone call. That's been waiting patiently. Good evening. You're on off the hook over time. Go ahead.
Speak up. You're on the air or the internet.
Did they fall asleep?
All right. We're going to, that's rude.
I'm trying to wake them up.
Wow. Is anyone there?
Okay. You realize this counts. This counts as the phone call.
Yeah. So you have, that's the second to talk and, uh, all right, Kyle, let it go.
It's gone.
That's going to do it for us.
I'm sorry.
Maybe they were waiting for Gila and I to tell what our first computers were.
Go ahead.
Um, mine was a TRS-80 color computer too.
Um, which was, uh, awesome.
And I used it with a black and white television.
Um, even though it was a color computer, it was stolen when my house was burglarized, but, uh, my family pulled it together and replaced it with a color computer three and a color TV with extended color basic.
And we, uh, had a TI-99 for a, and then, um, when I was, uh, tears after that, my dad brought home a compact portable, um, which we took on vacation.
So he could get work done.
And he was known to say, you can put a handle on a Mac truck and call it portable.
Uh, that thing was unwieldy.
Um, but yeah, I would go back to the TI-99 for a, and the basic on it.
And the first, uh, computer that 2600 had was the, um, Zenith Z100, which was built from a kit.
Well, you know, most Heathkit Zenith things were built from kits back then.
Uh, and that computer still exists to this day, believe it or not.
It doesn't do much, but it's, uh, it's an inspiration.
Very cool.
Is that the one that you, uh, brought at, at, uh, Hope, uh, some time ago?
It's been to Hope, yes, a couple of times.
Yeah, it's actually refurbished and, um, functional.
I'm told it will be making an appearance at Hope this year, but not the way you think it's going to.
I don't know what that means.
I'm just reading the press release.
Mysterious.
Yeah.
All right, well, that's going to do it for us tonight.
Thank you, everybody, for calling in, and thank you to those who are currently writing letters to us.
OTH at 2600.com is the email address, so make sure you send it to the right place.
Uh, we'll happily read that, and, uh, maybe we'll talk to some of you next week on WBAI between 7 and 8.
Uh, again, OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
Write to us with whatever you have on your mind.
Uh, and, uh, more information will be, uh, announced about Hope.
Hope.net, with all kinds of new talks being added,
schedule, uh, workshops, uh, activities of all sorts, please help us spread the word.
Uh, you can donate, uh, a ticket to somebody who can't afford to go otherwise.
All the information is there under scholarships on the Hope.net website, as well as, uh, ticket information and all kinds of other ways to get involved.
Housing information, whether it's a hotel or a dormitory.
Uh, again, that, um, that discounted hotel rate, uh, expires tomorrow.
Uh, and I don't think we found an easier way for people to get the link.
Um, yeah, well, go to, uh, 2600's, uh, Twitter account or Macedon account or BlueSky account and, uh, click on the link that was posted there.
And do it before tomorrow.
That's it.
Good night, everyone.