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One day, let it go One day, let it go And a very good evening to everybody The program is Off the Hook Mayor Goldstein here with you Joined tonight by Kyle Hello Out in Signal Land We have Alex You do Hello Welcome And as you can see We have a skeleton crew tonight We are not doing overtime And in fact We likely will not be on at all next week Reason for that is Very sad Because our good friend Greg Newby Who has been on this radio show so many times And has been a part of our lives A part of the Hope Conference A part of the magazine He is not in good shape Those of you who are at the closing ceremonies of Hope 16 Know that he appeared on video from Whitehorse in the Yukon And he was diagnosed in March Late March with pancreatic cancer And it has progressed relentlessly And he has tried everything And held out hope And been one of the strongest people I think I can ever recall having known And he entered hospice today In Whitehorse And by all accounts does not have much longer to go So Kyle and I are going to head up there Hopefully we can hang out with him one more time And I don't think we can do radio I just don't think we can do that next week We'll see, we'll see Alex, I know you've crossed paths with Greg many times This, you know, it's just weird Seeing this happen Of course it happened with Kevin Mitnick Several years ago The exact same damn disease That we seem to know so little about It's so relentless It's so unforgiving And it's so unpredictable Something, you know Beginning of March Greg was healthy as ever You know, one of the healthiest people I think I know Took care of himself He was the guy that ran the multi-marathon Over the course of days in Alaska Kyle and I were his support team It's an ultra-marathon Ultra-marathon, yeah I can't even get the word right Let alone pull something like that off This is somebody who walked miles every day Had a vegan diet Was just somebody who paid attention to his health And, you know, sometimes Sometimes fate has different ideas And it's just really hard to wrap your head around So, you know, we had a very emotional connection At those closing ceremonies Where everybody in the audience was waving at Greg It was so moving And so beautiful I don't know how we move forward Without his wisdom His strength His perseverance I'll tell you, you know We never would have found a new home without him He is the one who found St. John's University As a venue for a conference like Hope So We have a lot to remember A lot to be thankful for But a lot to be angry about too Because he had so much So much ahead of him So much So Yeah, that's That's the story for next week And of course If you're out there And you want to send a message to Greg We will relay that to him Just email us OTH At 2600.com OTH At 2600.com Go ahead, Alex I want to echo What you said, Emmanuel About Greg And being such an extraordinary guy Such a special part Of the Hope Conference Involved in so many things That I think really Personified The values of The hacker subculture That we've We've come to love and know So well And I'm talking in particular About Project Gutenberg He's been involved in For many, many years You know And it's It's basically a volunteer Digital library And, you know Not just lending out Digital books And things like that I mean They were fighting Legal battles Greg and I had many discussions About copyright And illegal battles That they had fought And that were ahead of them So, I mean This guy is Not only I think Strong as an ox But he's a fighter As well And I think he Embodies that Fighting spirit That's within all of us But I also want to Correct something You said About Greg As well Emmanuel Which is That you don't know How we're going to Move on Without him We're not going to Move on without him He's always going to Be with us He's always going to Be part of The HOPE conference He's going to be Part of this community He brought so much to it And I think Has imbued us With so much wisdom And so much spirit Greg will always be Part of this culture I think So I just want to Correct you on that Yeah, no, absolutely Absolutely Yeah, I remember When When we first Met him Online We were asking For volunteers For the conference To help out With all the things That it entails And this new guy Just wrote in And his last name Was Newby And if you're part Of the hacker community You know that A newbie is basically The lowest rung Of the ladder And we thought We thought it was a joke We thought somebody Was having fun with us But of course It was not a joke It was serious And we met One of the Most productive Creative Imaginative Talented people We are ever Going to be graced With knowing So yeah You know I have no idea How we're getting up there I have no idea Exactly what What the plan is But I just know We have to do something And hang out with him If we If we have that opportunity We're going to take it I don't even know If airplanes are going To be flying Because of government Shutdowns I don't know About borders I don't know About any of this And I don't care I don't care We'll push through We'll do what We have to do Okay So that's That's our mindset Right now As you can see Probably Not the best mindset For radio In the weeks ahead However tonight We're here At WBAI And we'll be taking Phone calls tonight No overtime Just phone calls Not yet Not yet We'll let you know When the time is right To dial in Because we have Some other things To talk about as well There's been A bunch of news You know Not just the thing We were talking about Last week Which boy That sure I think we might Have been the first Show to cover The Jimmy Kimmel story Because it just Happened right before We went on the air And you know We received A bunch of pushback From some listeners I don't have it In front of me But I know We got a bunch Of letters In fact If we were gauging Listener feedback We would have to say That the vast majority Of people Do not want us Talking about Freedom of speech issues They call it politics They call it Just Trump bashing And they think We should not do that And some of them Think we should be Prosecuted for doing that I'm not kidding Does that represent The majority Of WBAI listeners Because it represents The majority of people Who write to us So the rest of you Hmm Maybe this is something To look at Because Sometimes people Are very quiet When we need them To make noise And I can't think Of a time in history Where your noise Has not been more needed You know I hear plenty From the other side I hear plenty Of becoming a victim A victim of diversity And equality And freedom And things like that And I just hear Not a whole lot From other people That really Should be making Their lives challenging As challenging As our lives Have been made By all the craziness Going on And that's That's not really A controversial statement Or something Worthy of arguing We are living In crazy times now If you don't see that You're intentionally Not seeing that There's just no other way I can phrase it So OTH at 2600.com Send us your feedback If we're doing things You hate Let us know that And so far That seems to be The majority But if we're doing Things that you like Or you want to add to it In some way Also write to us And let us know that You know Your words matter And that's a good way To prove it And boy The days, weeks, months, years ahead Are going to have A lot of history A lot of history Attached to them So okay That story We are not focusing on tonight Because we focused on it last week And it's It's kind of run its course It's You know The whole thing is not over Obviously But That particular episode is But we have something new To talk about Anybody catch this Secret Service Press release yesterday Yeah Basically I'm going to read it I'm going to read it Word for word Because I love reading Press releases The U.S. Secret Service Dismantled a network Of electronic devices Located throughout The New York tri-state area That were used To conduct Multiple telecommunications Related threats Directed towards Senior U.S. government officials Which represented An imminent threat To the agency's Protective operations This protective intelligence Investigation Led to the discovery Of more than 300 Co-located SIM servers Yeah SIM servers That's a thing And 100,000 SIM cards Across multiple sites Okay You know If you don't know What that means Welcome to the club Because You know We haven't usually Talked in those terms before In addition to carrying out Anonymous Telephonic threats These devices Could be used To conduct A wide range Of telecommunications Attacks This includes Disabling Cell phone towers Enabling Denial of services Attacks And facilitating Anonymous Encrypted communication Between potential Threat actors And criminal enterprises So What I'm hearing Here is that These things Could be used To communicate Between people And they could be used To disable Cell towers And establish Denial service Attacks And things like that They could be No evidence That they have been But these things Could be I could probably Walk into a Circuit City Or I'm sorry Best Buy I keep thinking Circuit City Is still open And find enough Equipment to do that But Well this is a good point Because the way That it was The way that something Could be used And that's I think the crux Of it How is it being used In this particular Case Is part of What you would Conclude From an investigation All the basic uses Because how you Might use it One way Would Probably necessitate The equipment To do a variety Of things So If you're using it For testing Or for something else That you could Access the network En masse In another way That is Maybe more heinous Or scary For the headlines Doesn't necessarily Mean that's The conclusion Of an investigation So you raise A good point Well you know I'm just really Really doubtful Anytime I see Any kind of Government Release these days Because it's Almost always Filled with Bravado and lies So I have to Assume that There's a fair Amount of Both in this Anyway While forensic Examination of These devices Is ongoing Early analysis Indicates cellular Communications Between nation State threat Actors And individuals That are known To federal Law enforcement You really have To read between The lines here Okay so they Know some of The people Involved here And they know That they're Talking to People in Other countries Again I'm looking For something Really exciting Here and Hasn't exactly Been expressed Yet U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran Said the Potential for Disruption To our Countries Telecommunications Posted by This network Of devices Cannot be Overstated The U.S. Secret Service's Protective mission Is all about Prevention And this Investigation Makes it clear To potential Bad actors That imminent Threats to our Protectees will Be immediately Investigated Tracked down And dismantled Okay well The bad actors Might get a Clear message I'm not getting The clear message You found Rooms filled With sim Servers and Sims I'd like to Know more How did you Find them I mean What led you To this What makes You think They're about To be used What's going On guys Tell us Let's continue These devices Were concentrated Within 35 Miles of the Global meeting Of the United Nations General Assembly Now underway In New York City Okay there Were also 35 you know Within 35 Miles of every Decent pizza Place you know I don't know What does that Prove Okay yeah They were within A certain distance Between things That were happening Well given the Timing location And potential For significant Disruption To New York Telecommunications Post by these Devices The agency Moved quickly To disrupt This network Okay again Timing You were Dictating the Timing You're the One who Rated them So that's The timing What were They What's their Timing Were they Was there A ticking Clock or Something Was somebody Saying they Were going To do Something at A certain Time on A certain Day The U.S. Secret Services Advanced Threat Okay I'm Embarrassed Now I don't Know how to Pronounce Inter Interdiction Interdiction Interdiction Interdiction Okay I've Never said That word Before It's a weird Word I'm Sorry a New section Of the Agency Dedicated To disrupting The most Significant and Imminent threats To our Protectees is Conducting this Investigation This investigation Is currently Ongoing Okay first Of all whoever Wrote this Don't say this Investigation twice In a row That just Sounds really Bad The Department of Homeland Security's Home They got a Problem here The Department Of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Investigations That's Their Name Oh lord The Department Of Justice The Office Of the Director Of National Intelligence And the NYPD Oh wait There's more In the sentence I'm sorry That was a comma As well as Other state And local Law enforcement Partners Oh I'm sorry Another comma Okay Provided Valuable Technical Advice And assistance In support Of this Investigation You know I think We could Have provided Better advice Because I'm as Puzzled Starting That As I As I As Puzzled Ending That As I Was When I Started Well the Secret Service Has Specific Goals So they're Not Going to Be as Interested In answering Some of The Questions That You're Talking About And then Of course The People That They Partnered With To Help Reach Certain Conclusions Aren't Going to Want to Talk about Their Methods And Source Maybe They're Not The Who How And Why Maybe They're Not The Right People To Write The Press Releases Then Because I Have Questions All The Media Has Questions And Questions Are Good And People Need To Know And It's It's Also Strategic Because If They Do Know Some Of The Answers To Some Of These Things That May Not Be As Useful For Future Investigations Or Or For Additional Parts Of This Well This Has Never Happened Before At As Far As I Know But You Know One Thing I Did Get Out Of This Press Release Is That Okay All These Horrible Things Can Happen To The Cell Networks Well You Know What If We Were Using Landlines This Wouldn't Be An Issue So Maybe That's The Solution Maybe That's The Lesson Here We Keep Saying This Week Did Happen Or Was Imminent At Least Not That They Revealed But Weren't There Like Clandestine Like Switching And Call Centers And Stuff In The Days Of Wired Phone Systems I Mean People Did Similar Types Of Things Well It Wasn't Quite Like This No Not As Capable Because People Weren't Walking Around The Streets At Demonstrations And Things Like That Having Their Location Or Their Communications Intercepted True So This Is You Know I'm Curious What This Is I'm Not Saying It's Nothing I'm Just Saying We're Not Really Being Told What's Going On I Was Really Interested In The Pictures Just The Way They're Arranged Assuming Everything Was Still Connected The Way They Were Found Very Nice And Neat Yeah And You Can Kind Of See And Think About The Pathways Of Connection And It Looks Like All Of The Different Devices That Hold The Sims Are Connected Through A Smaller Switch And That's Connected To Something That Looks Maybe Like Part Of A Mesh Wireless Like A Backend Network But It's I Guess Stuff That A More In-depth Story About This There Is There Is In-depth Story That I Just Picked Up Here From Bloomberg I Believe The U.S. Secret Service Investigation Into A Suspicious Network Of Communication Devices In The New York City Area Came After Threatening Phone Calls Were Made To Two White House Aides And A Top Law Enforcement Official That's According To People Familiar With The Matter Would Have Nice To Have That In The Press Release The Calls Which Originated With A Network Of Phone Technology Through The New York Area Spurred The Secret Service To Mount The Investigation That Uncovered The Clandestine Telecom Ring That Was Revealed On Tuesday Boy What a Sentence That Is The Nature Of The Targets And Their Proximity To President Donald Trump Convinced Investigators They Were Facing A Coordinated Campaign Rather Than Ordinary Harassment A Secret Service Intelligence Team Known As The Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit Found A Network Of 300 Servers 100,000 SIM Cards Scattered Across The New York Area Concealed In Unmarked Buildings And Apartments So Called SIM Farms Allow Bulk Messaging That Can Be Used By Cyber Criminals For Fraud Swatting And Other Illicit Activity The Equipment Was Concentrated In Affluent Suburbs Including Greenwich Borough Of Queens And Northern New Jersey Forming What Officials Said Was A Circle Around The Metropolitan Region's Cellular Infrastructure Or The United Nations If You Feel Like Saying That Investigators Said The System Had Been Used Both By Foreign Governments And By Criminal Groups Inside The U.S. What They Banded Together Okay And Was Capable Of Sending Out Mass Spam Messages Placing Anonymous Calls And Overwhelming Emergency Lines The Discovery Came As More Than 150 World Leaders Were Arriving In Manhattan For The United Nations General Assembly When New York Becomes One Of The Most Heavily Secured Places In The World Matt McCool This Guy's Name Is Actually McCool He Is That Cool He Was On TV And Everything The Special Agent Who Was In Charge Of The Secret Service New York Field Office Said People Close To Trump Began Receiving Threats Immediately After His Electoral Victory In November Howard Lutnick The Then Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Who Now Serves As Commerce Secretary Received An Email Warning Of A Bomb At His Upper East Side Home Brooke Rollins Our Old Friend Lee Zeldin And Pete Hegseff Who Were Also Chosen By Trump For Cabinet Positions Reported Threats As Well Some In The Whether The Sim Farms Could Have Produced The Disruption Suggested By Officials The Number Of Servers And Sim Cards Seized Wouldn't Likely Disabilize Networks Built To Handle Millions Of Users In The New York Area Said Alexander Herbelis Chief Information Security Officer Of Ethereum Name Service It's Common To Confuse Proximity With Intent And Find Conspiracies In Coincidence He Said Finding A Sim Farm Of Focusing On High Volume Fraud Through SMS Phishing Rather Than On An Operation Interested In Disrupting The UN General Assembly Wait A Minute This This Was You Alex My Goodness You Slipped Into The Story I Was Reading That Was I Nice Hack There Okay Well There We Go Do Go On Then Tell Us Give Us Some More Of Your Insight Well Yeah I Think That This Well First Off I Didn't Realize That Special Agent McCool Had Used The Same Word That I Had Used In My Quote Namely Proximity So When I Said It's Common To Confuse Proximity With Intent It's Basically Like Saying Special Agent McCool You're Totally Wrong And Even Though I Do Believe That I Didn't Mean To Be Such A Jerk About It Doesn't Make Him Uncool You Know He's Still Cool He's Still Cool He Could Still Be Wrong That's Right And I Think He'd Be Even Cooler If He Acknowledged That He Was Wrong Right Because That's A You Know That's I Think That's Fundamental To Being Cool I'm Sure By The End Of The Hour We'll Get A Statement Yeah We Very Well May But From The Outset I Thought This Was Such A Totally Bogus Story Because Just Like You Said It's Very Difficult To Unpack What The Hell Is Going On With These Particular Details So A Bloomberg Reporter Contacted Me Yesterday And I Gave Him That Quote About This I Said I Don't See How Or Why This Type Of Sim Farm Would Be Used To Disrupt The Communications Network When There's Quite Literally Like 10 Million Other Phones In The Area That Are Active At Any Particular Time Maybe You Could Try To Swarm And Overwhelm One Particular Cell Tower But The Types Of Resiliency And The Capacity That's Built Into The New York Telecommunications Infrastructure Probably Is More Stronger Than Any Individual Sim Farm Or Sim Farms Around Armunk And Greenwich Connecticut Could Actually Facilitate So My Thought On This Was That This Is Probably Something That's Used For Massive SMS Phishing Fraud Right So Or Smishing You Know Those Types Of Messages You Get That Tell You Like For Instance That You Have Some Kind Of Overdue Toll Bill And Try To Impersonate You Know The Vermont DMV Or The New York State DMV Or The Connecticut DMV And They Try To Use Local Numbers With Local Exchanges In Your Particular Area To Convince You That This Is More Real Right And That You're Actually Dealing With Your Local DMV Or It Could Be Used To Impersonate Organizations Like Coinbase And Say Something Like Your Withdrawal Code Is 123456 If You Haven't Asked For This Call This 800 Number And You Begin To Get Scammed By Some More Sophisticated Scammer Who's Going After Your Digital Asset So I Think This Is Just Run Of The Mill Fraud I Think That They Triangulated If That's Even The Right Way That They Came Across This Because It Seems Like Somebody Sent A Threatening Message To Some Trump Aid Or Some They What They Mentioned They Are Protecting Their Protectees They Have Their Charges Are Certain Government Officials And Cabinet Level Members That Secret Service Has To Protect So They Investigated These Threats Triangulated On These Locations And Found Server Farms Sim Farms I'm Sorry And They're Not Really Familiar With This Technology So I Think That They Got It All Wrong That's That's My Guess Here I I Wonder If I'll Be Proven Wrong This Week When Some Massive Telecommunications Attack On The New York Telecommunications Infrastructure Happens But I Would Doubt It I Think We're Right And I Think History Has Proven That We're Usually Right Well That's A Pretty Heavy Statement There But We'll Go With It And See You Know I Kind Of Would Like To Have Seen What Would Have Happened Had This Thing Been Unleashed I'm Very Curious But You Know And One Other Point I Want To Make Here Too Is The Crazy Thing Is You Have The Sim Farm Right And They Mentioned All These Different Locations And 300 Servers Right But They Don't Talk About Any Kind Of Forensic Analysis Of These Particular Servers You're Not Going To Know Really What These Things Are For And What They've Been Used To Do Without A Forensic Analysis Of These 300 Servers Secret Service I've Worked With Them Numerous Times In The Past On Forensic Analyses And They're Very Good They Have A lot Of Experts There But This Stuff Takes Time I Think They Got Ahead Of Themselves With A Press Release And A Forensic Analysis Of These Machines Will Very Likely Reveal That They Were Used In Ordinary Sim Fraud And Not As Part Of Some Coordinated Attack On The Telecommunications Infrastructure To Target The UN General Assembly I Think You're Right I Think They Were Trying To Get Credit Ahead Of The UN General Assembly Had They Waited We Have A Decent Line Go Ahead And Hit A Button Yeah That Sounds Good Okay So The Line Quality Is Good We Are Going To Open Up The Phone Lines And We're Going To Give Out The Phone Number And The Phone Will Not Work Until I Finish Giving Out The Phone Number So If You Know The Phone Number Already In Our Dialing It For People Listening On WBAI And Just Tell Us Anything That's On Your Mind Concerning The Stories We've Talked About Or Maybe Something Else Going On In The World Of Technology Or News Or What Not And We Can Continue Talking About This Until Phone Calls Start Pouring In So Did You Have Anything Else Alex Or Kyle I Was Just Wondering Like It's Not Necessarily That Anyone Block Can Handle 10 Million Calls So I'm Curious If We're Actually As Sure As Alex Is Saying But I Don't Know Either Necessarily I Mean Yeah Maybe It Wouldn't Shut Down The City But An Area Close To The UN Where A lot Of People Are Trying To Use The Network It Could Make Spots Where There Isn't Service Anyway I'll Pick This Up Yeah We Have Our First Phone Call And I Should Tell People It Might Be Hard For You To Hear Alex Please Speak Up If You Are Talking To The Caller Otherwise The Caller You Might Just Have To Talk To Kyle And Myself Let Me Say Good Evening You Are On Off The Hook Go Ahead Okay I Think It's Kind Of Cynical To Talk About That Thing About The Cell Phone Hacking And So On Without Talking About What Happened With Netanyahu Military Hunter Using Pages Right Blowing It Up Never Is That Mentioned Now Right And And Not Only That Also What Happened To Our Data In Health Health From Health Care From From All Our Government Agencies That Were Stolen Basically They Packed Nothing Is Mentioned Well We Only Have An Hour But The Thing Is It Has To Be Put In Perspective We Cannot Just Pick Out One Single Item And Dance Around That We Have To See The Whole Picture And The Whole Picture Is Much Bigger Much More Behind It And That's What I Want To Say Okay All Thanks Thanks For Your There You Know All This Use Of Technology In Ways It Was Not Intended To Be Used There Has Been A lot Of Bad Things Successively Going On So It's Not Just Me Okay Yeah All Right Yeah That's A fair Assessment I I Think He's On To It Yeah I Mean That That's Definitely A Factor 802 3214 225 We Are Taking Phone Calls Here On Off The Hook Up Until We Go Off The Tonight And We'll See What Happens In The Future Good Evening You're On Off The Hook Go Ahead Hi Emmanuel Okay Okay Reville Let me Just Say You You Call Every Week On Overtime So Let's Make This Extra Quick So That Other People Listen To The Radio Show Get A Chance To Call You Have One Minute I Hope You Were Listening To Me When I Said That Because I'm Not Saying It Again Sounds Like I'm On A long Distance Call Anyway I Was Wondering How Did Things Like Network Like You I 2600.com You Have Your Own Server You Don't Use Cloud Computing What Is That I Say I Avoid The Cloud Like The Plague It's Like A Plague Cloud So You Have So Come In To Just Not Like When You Go To 2600.com It Goes Right To Your Site At Your Location The Files And The Pictures Oh I See I See What You What Rebel Is Doing Here Is Demonstrating Social Engineering Trying To Get Me To Give Out Information About Our Site So That He Is Armed With More Data That He Can Use Well I'm Not Falling For That Trick Because I Wasn't Born Yesterday So Rebel I'll Just Say Yeah We Have A Unique System How It Works What I Don't Think He He He He He He He He You Have Ten More Second Okay So Basically You Could Have A PC Like You Guys Have A PC You Know That Does It And So How Does Like A Big Like You Still Have Like A Mainframe Too Yeah We Have A Mainframe And An IBM XT That We We Can't Possibly Get Into That I'm Sorry We Can't We Can't Possibly Give You The Specifics But You Can Set Up Your Own System On Any Kind Of Box That You Decide To Get Run Linux You Know Run All Sorts Of Different Things Set Up Mail Servers Set Up Web Web Pages But It Takes Study It Takes Time It Takes Commitment And Collaboration Do Not Do The Try To Do I Mean Try To Do Everything Yourself Definitely Get Help Find Find Ways That You Can Offload The Learning Curve Because It Does Take Some Reading And Some Understanding Of It Absolutely And There's Lots Of Ways To Go About It If You Would Like To Tell Us Your Favorite Mainframe Operating System Or Your Favorite Mainframe To Hack Please Write Us At OTH At 2600.com Yeah But You Know Let's Move Away From Mainframes Because It's Kind Of Passé People Can Do This Kind Of Thing Through Laptops Now It's Not Hard I Mean It Is Hard It's It's It's Not Easy But It's Also Not Impossible You Know That's Kind Of That The Hacker Way That We Take On Things That Are Challenging And A lot Of People Think Are Impossible But We Do It Anyway And If You're Having Trouble Go To A Meeting Talk To Some People Ask Around Yeah You'll Get People Who Might Make Fun Of You For Asking Questions They're Not The Right People To Talk To Obviously But There Are Lots And Lots Of Other People Who Are Happy To Teach And Give You All Kinds Of Information But I Think The Important Thing Here Is Just Not Do It Like Everybody Else Not Simply Use The Cloud For Everything And Trust Them My God You Can't Trust The Tech Companies You Know Google Today Or Was It Yesterday Announced They Were Letting Everybody Back Onto YouTube Who Was Basically Spreading All Kinds Of Dangerous COVID Misinformation Back In 2020 And Election Denial And All That Kind Of Thing It's Okay Now Because They Want To Get Closer To Trump They Literally Said That They Want To Get Closer To Trump So Don't Trust Them You Cannot Trust These Companies You Can Only Trust Yourself So Learn As Much As You Can All We Have Another Phone Call Good Evening You're On Off The Hook Go Ahead Speak Up Go Ahead You're On Hello Yes Hello Yes You're On The Air Go Ahead Oh I'm Sorry I Just Wanted To Say I Used To Work At Cable Vision Oh Wow Back In The Day Uh Huh When Napster And People Downloading The Music And All That Stuff Yeah Charles Dolan He Used To Be Really Nice Into His Son Well Anyway I Won't Even Go There That's Fascinating We Had To I Was A Customer Service Rep Right And They Laid Off All The American Engineers And They Trained Us About The Motherboard And How To Ping A Modem And How To Check The Nodes And I Don't Know What DHCP Serve Or Whatever Anyway Whenever I Got That Call They Said Transfer The Call To Me Because He's Networking But Make A Long Story Short I Think They're Trying To Make America Poor Again Because I'm Looking For Work And Every Time I Call About My Mortgage Or Make A Payment For Chase I'm Getting The Philippines Or I'm Getting Somebody In India But We Need To Work Here I'm Out I'm Out Of A Job And You Know I Know How To Do These Things When When IP Config I Don't Even Think They Do That Anymore But What I'm Saying Is We Need To Have People Working Here Absolutely Have a Great Day Thank You Thank You For That Call And That She Raises A Great Point Because Outsourcing And Paying People Next To Nothing That's What These Companies Will Always Do It's The Easy Way For Them It's The Cheap Way For Them They Do Not Care About The People Over There And They Certainly Don't Care About The People Over Here Just Let's Not Treat Those People Over There As If They're The Enemy Because They're Not Going Through The Same Struggles The True Enemy Are Those Who Are Making Money Off Of Them And Us And Reaping The Benefits And Not Sharing The Rewards At All It's It's Really Sad Go Ahead And I Think This Is About To Get Worse As Well As The Caller Indicated Everybody Is Looking For Work For The People To Whom These Jobs Have Been Outsourced Overseas In The Philippines And India And Ireland Etc They're About To Lose Their Jobs Too Because As As You'll See And Probably Have Experienced Many Companies Don't Even Like To Push You Through To Some Call Center Now They Want You To Go And Use Their Website And They A U.S. Person Because We're Now Using AI Powered Chatbots To Handle All These Types Of Requests So You're Not Even Going To Be Interacting With A Chatbot In Many Cases You Probably Already Have Been Interacting With Chatbots And Just Thought That They Were Humans I Think There's Really Room For Policy I Know That's Like An Ugly Way To Go With Solutions But There Really Should Be Kind Of A Standard Way And I Think That's A Fair Point That Automation Is Now The Sort Of Shiny Thing That Everybody Wants To Deploy To Add Efficiencies And Ultimately Find New Sources Of Revenue I Don't In Getting Rid Of These Jobs I Think People Should Have Those Jobs Maybe These Automated Things Should Offload Some Of The More Mundane Or Things That Can Be Handled With Automation But There Should Always Be A Way To Contact Someone And As The Caller Said Having Someone That's Local Someone That's Friendly That Might Understand What's Going On Exactly And Understand The Context Of The Thing Is Always Crucial I Think To Really Finding A Quick Resolution To Vexing Issues Technical Issues Or Otherwise Well It's It's Gotten Worse And Worse It's It's A To Solve Problems Online With Big Companies You You Cannot Reach A Human A Friend Of Ours Got Hacked On Xbox You Know We Don't Play Xbox Here But A Lot Of People Do And Somebody Got Into Their Account And Wiped It Out And Took All The Games That They Had Accumulated Over Years And They Can't Even Reach A Human Being At Microsoft Microsoft Apparently Owns Xbox Didn't Know That And I Mean This Is What People Have To Deal With Has This Ever Happened To Anybody We Know Other Than This Poor Person Has To Deal With This It's It's It's Crazy How Do You Get Through To A Human Being How Do You Do That How Do You Get Somebody On The Phone Who Will Say Yeah I Can Take Care Of That Something That You Have Paid For Something That You Have Proof That Belongs To You And You Can't Even Get A Human Being All You Get Are These Bots That Will Pass Judgment And Say Wait 20 Days 30 Days Whatever And We'll Make A Decision Even Though It's Not A Human Making A Decision And You At The Mercy Of Them You Can't Do Anything You Can't Do A Thing And By The Time You Get To The Point Where You Can Appeal Whatever Their Decision Is It's Too Late You Know Too Much Time Has Gone By This Is Insane This Is Orwellian This Is The Nightmare That We've Been Warned About I Am Fearful Of Our Future And On So Many Levels Yeah There Should Always Be Levels Of Recourse You Shouldn't Just Have A Totally Unattended Customer Service Non-existent Customer Service Option And These Sort Of Sort Of Reviews And Things Like That Where You Have To Go Through A Process And You Get Kind Of A Yes Or No There Should Be Like Really Clear Appeals And Other Ways To Seek Recourse This Has Come In Into A Lot Of Situations When People Are Trying To Recover Things If They Got Locked Out Of Something With Their Family I Haven't Played A Video Game In A Long Time I Just Assume People Were Getting Those Cartridges And Saving Them And You Know When They Want To Play A Game They Just Take It Off The Shelf And Inserted And But No Everyone Everyone Is Connected To Some Portal Some Place And You Don't Have Control Over The Things That You Bought And That's Okay That's Normal It's Really Expensive And These Are Kids Being Victimized By This So Yeah Xbox Should Hang Their Head In Shame I'm Sure They're Not The Only One Alex We Have A Caller Go A Yeah So I Just Wanted To Say That They Like The Caller Had Mentioned There's A Human Element To This And I Think As Our Caller Really Indicated She Had Empathy She Felt The Pain Of These People I Guess When They Couldn't Get On The Internet And They Were Trying To Configure And Had To To To Technical Support And Could Understand Chatbot But Speaking Of Callers Why Don't We Take Our Next One And Our Address OTH At 2600.com If You Want To Write Us With Your Questions Or Anything Like That And By The I Should Point Out She Was Talking About Cable Vision That Became Known As Optimum Now It's Known As Altice You Know When Companies Change Their Names That Many Times They're Up To Something I Think Yeah All Right We Have A Caller Go Ahead You're On The Air Hi Can You Hear Me It's Pete From Queens Yes How You Doing Go Ahead Good How Are You I Had A Question Maybe More For Alex About Legalities Of Encryption Going Forward If Some Antagonistic Administration Tries To Make All Types Of Encryption Illegal To Slow Down Communications Between Individuals Don't Want To Monitor What Risks Are There For Encryption For Individual Use Okay First Alex I'm Going To Ask You To Say A Sentence And See If The Caller Can Hear You If If They Can Continue And If Not Caller Please Listen On The On The Radio Go Ahead Alex Okay Great So This Is A Sentence I'm Going To Say Did You Hear Did You Hear That Caller It Was Jumbled But I Heard Him Say Well That's How He Talks But Okay Go Go Ahead Alex Let's Give It A Shot But Have Your Radio Handy In Case You Can't Hear Yeah Sure I Think These Are Battles That We Had Really Kind Of Fought And Won You Would Think Back In The Ninety When You Go Back To Things Like The Clipper Chip Which Was That The Key To Decrypt All Of This Was Escrowed With The Government So That They Would Be Able To Decrypt All Your Communications And Essentially Perform A wiretap On Anybody That They Wanted And So I Think That Was A Terrible Idea Way Back In The 90s And The Hacker Community And The Cypher Punk Community And I Think The Community That Generally Has Common Sense We All Proposed This And It Was Defeated And So I Think We're Seeing Now Law Enforcement Attitudes Towards Encryption Changing And Seeing It Now As Something That That's Really Bad That Can Hide Criminal Activity And That Phones Should Be Subject To Automatic Decryption We Have Laws Like CALEA The Communications Assessment To Law Enforcement Act That Mandates That Telecommunications Providers Have To Have Some Form Of Way Of Authorizing A Lawful Intercept If A Warrant Has Been Issued On Probable Cause By A Judge To Intercept Somebody's Communications So There Are Some Laws That We Have On The Books That Mandate The Compromise Of Our Communications But When We're Talking About Email Messages And We're Talking About SMS Communications I Think It Be Very Hard For The There Are So Many Ways That We Can Use Encryption There Are So Many Apps That Use Encryption By Default This Public Key Cryptography Is A Thing That That's Used In Signal It's Used In Wire It's Used In Telegram It's Used In All These Apps That Are Bog Standard That You Can Get On Your iPhone And You Can Always Revert Back To PGP To Pretty Good Privacy So I Think Our Chances Of Getting Around This Are Really Good I Think The Toothpaste Is Out Of The Bottle And I Really Hope That This Is Not One Of The Situations Where I'm Proven Wrong And I Really Hope The Caller Was Able To Hear You Were Able To Hear That Caller I Think I Heard The Of It I'm Glad To Hear That Alex Is That To Get Messages Passed By Sneakernet Or Something Right That's All Thank You Take Care I Think We Have Time For One More Call 802 321 4225 The Only Thing I Would Add To That Alex Is That Just Because It's Difficult For Them To Prove This Or What Not Doesn't Mean They're Not Going To Try I Mean They're Suing Harvard They're Suing The New York Times They're Suing ABC For The Programs They Put On It's It's Crazy What This Administration Will Try To Do Even Though There Is Absolutely No Sense Behind It So It's Entirely Don't Take Tylenol Either I'm Told So There's Just So Much Nonsensical Nonsense Yeah That's The Thing Nonsensical Nonsense Going On At I Can't Say They're Not Going To Try They Won't Succeed They Can Succeed Technically And I'm Certain Legally As Well Okay One More Phone Call Good Evening You're On Off The Hook Go Ahead Hey It's Hurricane Season So I Heard Starlink Who Swooped In To Save The Day For All The People Who Became Off Grid And Perhaps Wanted To Stay Off Grid Down Like Asheville Kind Of People That Is I Heard Community Among Many That Were Like Hmm Maybe We Could Start Fresh And Just Be A Completely Off Grid Community So Mesh Net How About You Guys Telling The World The Great News That People Are Ready To Be Deployed To You Know Set Up Mesh Net For Everybody During The Next Disaster Relief Mobilization Uh Is Is That What You Are Telling Us I'm Hoping You'll Tell Me Who's Ready Oh We're Ready We're Ready And Willing And Able I Think Yeah Absolutely We need Guides And Maybe Someone Can Put Together And Organize Information Around It Maybe Parts Lists Things That People Have Found Helpful Or Common Common Challenges When Connecting Or Otherwise Building One Of These But Certainly For Disaster Relief And All Kinds Of Alternative Networks There Was I Believe A Talk Or Some Some Vending That Went On At Hope That Talked A Lot About Mesh NYC Mesh And Other Mesh Networks So It's A Fantastic Technology And It Is Not Just For Criminal Gangs It's For Everybody Absolutely These Are Our Airwaves I Think That's What We Have To Remember These Are The Public Airwaves And We Can Use Them How We See Fit Within The Guidelines And Those Great Idea Those Videos Will Be Coming Online Fairly Soon We've Just Been Swamped But I'm Glad That Came Up And Mesh That Is Something We're Going To Continue Talking About It's Interesting Never Having The Slightest Hint That He Will Be Facing Such A Much Greater Threat With Pancreatic Cancer This Year So Alex I Know You Had Something Else To Add Before We Sign Off Tonight Yeah Well You Know To Mention Greg There But I I Really Hope That You Make It Over To Him And Send Him My Love And I Love What The Kohler Said As Well I Think Decentralized Internet Access Is Awesome And We Need To Support Projects Like NYC Mesh Even More Yeah I Mean Are We Equipped For A One Minute Description Of Mesh Net For Anybody Who Might Not Know What We're Talking About Yeah Sure I Mean Mesh Nets Are Basically Like Physical Networks Of Interconnected Devices Antennas It's Usually Run By Community Members People Connect Directly To Each Other Rather Than To Some Kind Of Centralized Server And Internet Traffic Is Routed Through That Mesh Network That Is Created Through Volunteers And Each Participant's Node Would Then Relay Messages To Other Nodes And Then Ultimately Over To The Wider Internet So It's Basically Like Community Driven Internet That's Decentralized Rather Than Centralized It's Awesome Yeah It's Really Helpful Because You Can Build So Many Services So Many Things Temporarily Or Permanently On Top Of That Business Models People Get Access Through Their Community And It's Got A lot Of Possibility And In All Kinds Of Situations So Absolutely Great Ideas And I'd Love To Talk More About That In The Future I Think This Is The Time For Mesh Net To Shine Along With Many Other Ways That People Are Being Empowered Through Communications Means And Not Have It Rely On Billionaires Not Have It Rely On Centralized Sources As We've Been Doing In The Past Because They Always Seem To Let Us Down All Right That's Going To Have To Be The Last Word Please Write To Us We have A message For Greg At 2600 Dot Com We Probably Will Not Be On Next Week As Kyle And I Will Be He He Updates Through Our Various Social Media Platforms And Things Like That In The Meantime Please Support WBAI Give To WBAI .org Buddy .wbai .org And For Off The Hook This Is Emmanuel Good Night As See That This Is Not The World That God Intended It To Be Oh No No No No No That's Why You Hear Me Say Now I Got To Find A New World Where The People Understand How To Treat One Another Throughout Their Land Yeah Oh Yeah Everybody Pack up And Go With Mean I Got To Find A New World Where The People Get Along You And Me Where Everybody Loves Each Other Every Day And Me Yeah Yeah Yeah Hey Come on in Come on, come on and go with me I want to hear people say Can I help you? I got to hear people say Come on in I want to hear people say Say anything I can do for you I got to hear people say Let me help you I want to be able to walk when I'm on my I got to be able to talk when I'm on my I want to be able to love when I need it Yeah, yeah, all right Come on and go with me Have a lot of fun Oh, got to find a new world, baby Got to, got to find it