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And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi.
Out in Signal Land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
Yes, you do.
Good evening.
Well, something particularly echoey tonight, Alex.
Maybe a little closer to the microphone would be good.
Alex, you had some major accomplishments this past week.
Want to tell us what you've been up to?
Sure, sure.
How's my echo?
Any better?
Worse?
It's very echoey.
I don't know why this always happens to you.
I don't understand this.
This is really annoying.
How about, all right, well, we won't go through a whole sound check now, but I'll try to manipulate
things in a little bit.
Yeah.
So I did.
I had a great thing happen last Friday.
And this is in the context of the ICE detainee that I was representing.
This is the ICE detainee to refresh our listeners' recollection here.
This is an ICE detainee who was seeking political asylum in the United States from Ecuador.
He had fled gang violence in Ecuador, came to the United States, was admitted into the
United States and was living here for about two years, maybe two and a half years, something
like that.
But he had an immigration court appearance downtown at the immigration court.
After he made his appearance, ICE agents detained him unlawfully and had, at that point, taken
him into custody.
It was then that within a number of hours, I had filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus
to try to protect this detainee from deportation and from being shipped outside of the New York,
New Jersey area.
We got an order that protected him.
And then the judge had to order briefing on the issue of whether the petition for the writ
of habeas corpus, which is essentially another way of saying, does the government have the
right to hold this person?
Or is it lawful or unlawful to hold this person in detention?
And somewhat ancient writ in many ways.
And so the briefing occurred.
Last week, we had the government's response had to be put in on Monday.
I had to respond on Wednesday.
And I felt like I had had the battle somewhat won.
And so I was trying to convince the judge to immediately release our ICE detainee without
even having to have a hearing that was scheduled for Friday.
The judge did not reschedule that hearing, however.
And we had to make a telephonic appearance before the judge.
But it was during that time that we had and we had suspected this would happen.
But the judge ruled from the bench on whether to grant the petition for the writ of habeas
corpus or not.
And and thank God he granted it.
And he ordered the immediate release of our ICE detainee.
And he ordered that the government also had to certify his release within a few hours by
filing something in the docket of the case.
And so it took ICE about two hours.
And then the Department of Justice filed their notification through into the Southern District
of New York electronic court filing system that he was released.
I think it was at 643 p.m.
And it was that night that he went back to his family.
He went back to his kids.
He went back to his partner and he went back home and he had spent two weeks in three different
ICE detention facilities.
One was at 26 Federal Plaza.
Another one was in Newark.
And the other one was the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, none of which are nice
places to spend the night or to be stuck away from your family.
But that ended last Friday when the judge granted this petition.
And it was a great feeling knowing that.
This awesome power that we have being lawyers and being part of a legal profession can really
make a difference in people's lives and can and that we can act as the sand in the gears
here of this all mechanism that's been grinding away at our democracy and hurting our people.
Because as we know, these mechanisms are fragile.
It doesn't take a lot of grains of sand to break them.
And and I hope that that this will be inspirational for the other lawyers that are that are listening
to this at the moment, because we need more and more volunteers to to raise their hand and
to step forward and to file these petitions and to help out.
And and I think we've got a great playbook by which we can continue to push against the tide
that the awful tide that that is flooding us because of this, these ice detentions.
Maybe it'll also be inspirational for those people who are not yet lawyers, who may want
to become lawyers based on some of the stories you're telling.
I mean, you were one of those people.
You were on these airwaves when you were a kid and now you're a lawyer and now you're
you're you're saving people from ice.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
I mean, I remember being on these airwaves with you when I was like, God, it had to be
32 years ago.
I was 15 years old going into 505 8th Avenue with you being extremely nervous about saying
anything on on the radio.
And here we are 32 years later.
You're right.
I mean, these are these are formative times and you forget how formative these shows can
be for so many people.
And but no, it's it's really it's a great feeling.
And look, some people may say, look, you're tilting at windmills here.
You know, this is a this is one man, you know, in a flood of what's happening with ice.
But it's one it's one man who went back to two children and and he's got two parents that
don't have to worry about him and a partner that needs him.
And he was the primary caregiver to those children.
And what ice is doing is is really horrific because they know that the detentions that they
are making of persons in this country are illegal.
They do not comport with due process.
I have no problem with the operation of the immigration laws affecting the deportation of
millions of immigrants every year if they are in the country illegally.
I have no problem with that whatsoever.
What I have a problem with is when those deportations are not done in accordance with the due process
of the law, we are a nation of laws, we're supposed to follow a script here.
And what ice is doing is arbitrary, it's capricious, it's unconstitutional.
And it was amazing to see how quickly and how forcefully and expeditiously really these judges
in the Southern District of New York had agreed with me on this and and have no qualms about
pushing back against ice as well.
How did you actually get involved in this particular case?
Because you weren't doing this a few weeks ago.
Well, I had volunteered actually about two months ago or so before the massive fiasco
that happened in Minneapolis.
We saw basically two murders over there, but that was really what cemented my desire to
jump into the fray here.
So I had volunteered with this organization in New York called Immigrant Arc.
New York, and there was a call out through, I think it was the Privacy Research Group over
at NYU, which I've always been a longstanding kind of lurking member for quite a while.
And they were looking for litigators that were admitted in New York to the Southern District
of New York and the Eastern District of New York.
These are independent federal bars.
And it's kind of a weird thing.
A lot of people don't realize you can be admitted to practice law in the state of New York,
but not necessarily admitted to practice law in the federal courts of New York.
You have to be specially admitted into each one of those courts.
It doesn't take a lot.
It's just really just paperwork and whatnot and a little bit of process.
But it's still a process.
So they were looking for people who were not afraid to litigate against ICE and who had
federal litigation experience and could jump into the fight here.
And so I raised my hand.
And I kept raising my hand and I kept missing out on cases because when a call comes in,
when there's an intake of an ICE detainee, and then there's an email that goes out through
this group, says, hey, this happened.
We've got somebody detained at 26 Federal Plaza, et cetera.
If you don't respond immediately, somebody else is going to pick it up.
That's the kind of amazing thing here.
There's a lot of activity in that group.
So I had missed a couple of cases because I responded a few minutes too late.
And I said to the organizers, I want one.
I want to fight.
Give me a case.
Put me on deck.
Throw me into the game here.
And they did.
And I'm really happy about the result because it did make me feel great.
It was a wonderful start to a great weekend.
So you said that there are lawyers who are afraid to testify against ICE.
Is that really true?
There are lawyers who are afraid to butt heads with ICE.
What do they think is going to happen to them?
Well, I think there are a lot of people who want to keep their head down here.
I mean, this is part of what's happening in this country.
It's the unpredictability of the enforcement of the laws and the abusive process against certain people.
I mean, that's what I think causes so many people to just turn a blind eye to a lot of the injustices that are happening here, because you don't want to be on the wrong end of some kind of ICE action.
You don't want to be targeted.
You know that there are selective prosecutions.
You know that ICE may have it out for you.
You may be a lawyer who has a darker skin tone.
I consider myself to be one of those people.
You could be targeted.
You could be selectively enforced - the immigration laws could be selectively enforced against you, even though you're an American citizen.
I mean, we've seen ICE even try to detain Native Americans at this point.
I mean, you can't get more American than being a Native American, for God's sakes, right?
So these people have no scruples, and I think there's a lot of hesitancy on the part of many lawyers to not put their name out on a filing by which they could be targeted.
I mean, if you think about what happens, too, I mean, in these filings, you cannot file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus without having your name on it, right?
You cannot.
That's impossible, right?
But yet, at the same time, ICE can detain any number of individuals without a badge number, without any accountability, and with a mask on.
But if you want to fight those detentions, you have to have your name on a public filing that will be there forever.
However, that, I can understand, is scary to some people.
It's like you're following the law, and they have no regard for the law.
Yeah, pretty much.
They have no regard for, I think, principles of due process, principles of accountability, principles of transparency.
And they are continually losing these cases.
What amazes me is they all generally hinge, and I don't want to go too far into the weeds here, but they generally hinge on the difference of statutory authority between one statute called 1225B2A and the other one is 1226A.
And so what ICE is claiming when they make these detentions is that they're detaining people in the United States who are seeking admission to the United States.
They may not have gone through the full process.
They may be seeking asylum in the United States or going to immigration court, but they're seeking admission.
Now, that's a term of art here, because under 1226A, if somebody is already in the country, then they have to be given due process of law.
There has to be some kind of individualized suspicion and a hearing about whether or not these people can be detained and returned to their country through deportation processes.
So ICE is basically saying, hey, even though you're in the country, you're already seeking admission, but the present active part of me, this is the present active parcel of seeking here makes all the difference, right?
You can't be seeking admission to something into which you've already been admitted, right?
And if you go into a theater, you can't seek admission into that theater if you're already in it.
So it's this statutory distinction that almost the full weight of every court that's ever decided this issue has come down against ICE, yet they continue to abuse this authority, and they continue to misclassify the authorities by which they can detain people.
And there's no consequence for them, because the tactics that they use to evade accountability are really varied and, I think, really malicious, because very often what will happen is somebody will be detained, and almost immediately, let's say this person, my client in this case, he was detained.
It was two and a half weeks ago. It was on Friday. If we hadn't immediately filed that petition for a writ of habeas corpus, it's very likely that ICE would have tried to ship him out to someplace like Texas or to Louisiana, and he would have been very far away from his family.
It would have been very difficult for him to obtain counsel. It would have been difficult to figure out where he was for any number of days while he was in transit down to Texas or Louisiana.
It's a very scary thing for people to face. And then at the same time, the legal system down there is much more difficult to not only access, but also to win a case and get a case to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and to win them in those particular districts.
And so when ICE does this, they're flouting all of the rules. They're putting these people in an awful situation where they don't even have access to the legal system or the courts to contest the conditions of their confinements and the authorities by which they've been confined.
And then ICE will deport them outside the United States if there's no judicial intervention.
So they can get away with this by way of sleight of hand, by obfuscation, and through these mechanisms that allow them to escape any form of accountability or transparency.
So these people, you know, they're portrayed in the media and amongst various crowds as stupid.
But ICE aren't stupid. They're very smart. They know exactly what they're doing.
They know exactly how to play the game to get the maximum advantage.
Maybe the foot soldiers are stupid. They're just following orders after all.
But there are people running the game who know exactly how to play it and how to win.
I couldn't agree more here. I mean, look, I think the foot soldiers, these, you know, Nazi cosplaying rock chewers that are out there on the street, you know, they're the ones that are making these detentions.
But behind the scenes, there is a carefully choreographed system by which they are trying to stack the deck against the detainees and ensure that there is no accountability before or after massive deportations of people without due process of law that they know from the outset is unconstitutional.
That to me is the exploitation of a system. This is a vulnerability.
And we want to bring this back down to hacking terms, right? Like this is a system.
There are processes in place, and some of those processes are hung because of the manner in which ICE is playing this game, right?
Like once you transport that detainee to another state and deny him access to justice,
that process by which you could file a petition for writ of habeas corpus and kill this unconstitutional game before it goes any further is over and done.
So they know the system, they know the rules, they're exploiting a vulnerability and a weakness,
and it becomes very difficult to operate against these types of operators.
Go ahead, Rob.
And also talking about knowing the game, I think it behooves us to acknowledge that the game that's being played is not necessarily the one that they're dressing it up as.
I mean, I don't get the sense that the powers that be, the driving forces behind these raids and the cruelty that is being inflicted upon people in the name of the U.S. government right now,
I don't think they're trying to get people to be expelled from the country under due process.
I don't think they even really particularly care what happens, Alex, on your side of things after they've got people thrown into court.
I think what the idea here is, is to be loud and be cruel and be scary.
The operation is what's going on out in the streets.
The operation is keeping people afraid.
The operation is a massive social engineering attack against people that they feel that they can victimize.
And, you know, it's almost incidental that this ends up in court at all with any sort of outcome, good, bad, or indifferent, because the cruelty, I think, is the point.
Yeah, indeed.
Well, go ahead, Alex.
Yeah, and it is, and it's this process.
I mean, you think about it, it's very Byzantine in the sense that, you know, there's this bureaucracy, this labyrinth of administration.
You go back to the days of Constantinople.
You want to think about all these overlapping contracts, inspections, appearances, legal categories.
I mean, immigration is an incredibly complex and detailed, nuanced area of the law.
The Immigration Nationality Act is one of the most—
I'm sorry, can I just step in?
Someone is not getting flogged in the background there.
That's the noise of heat in New York City.
That's exactly right.
Whoever's a heating system that is, could you just explain how it works to people who aren't from here?
Well, it's—I honestly have no idea how this works or why it works or anything, but this is—I'm going to—God, that's so loud.
It's steam, right?
It's steam.
It's steam heat, and it's, you know, through a radiator in this old building.
This building is, I don't know, 100-something years old.
My office is at this moment.
And, of course, the heat has to kick in while we're live on the radio here.
It's really loud.
I wouldn't know it any other way.
In heaven.
No, no, no, no, no.
No David Lynch songs here.
Yeah.
I feel for you.
But definitely great work, and I'm really glad that you're participating.
And I just remember you describing that feeling of so many other people getting involved and that you indeed can put your superpowers to work in this.
And for those people already writing letters to us saying, stop talking about politics, listen, human rights are not politics.
This is something that's extremely relevant.
Alex is using his hacker abilities to make the world a better place and to stand up to authority.
That's what we should all be doing.
So take notes.
You know, this is how we change what's going on out there.
I mean, if you think about this, right, in the context of a system that needs to be patched, right, you know, ICE is exploiting some kind of inherent vulnerability that we have in the immigration system right now.
And it's a process that they are using.
It's a malicious process, right?
They've got some kind of remote code exploitation that they can use with this abuse of their statutory authority.
And the petition for writ of habeas corpus that you can file on behalf of these ICE detainees, that's the patch to that vulnerability.
That's how you solve it.
That's how you reboot the system for that individual.
And so, you know, what we are really talking about is a system of exploits and patches here.
And once that process is exploited, you have to be able to apply that patch extremely quickly or the process will run wild and affect the entire system.
And by that system, I mean the individual whose liberty is at issue.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I just want to also point out one other thing.
Let's not get fooled into thinking this is about any kind of enforcement of immigration laws.
I don't think they care about that.
I don't think they really do.
It's not about getting criminals because they're not getting criminals.
They're getting innocent people.
They're getting families.
You know, it's not about the economy because immigrants build the economy.
It's not about people voting because, what was it, eight people in several million in Georgia were found to have not been citizens who voted.
Eight.
It's not about that.
It's basically about being able to target particular types of people.
And you can theorize as to what the reasoning is behind that, why they want to do that.
It's not hard to figure out.
But that's what this is all about.
And, you know, it's an easy game to play, I guess, when you've got all the weapons and all the funding.
But let's not get fooled.
Let's not get fooled into thinking there's any kind of righteousness here.
There isn't.
Look at their behavior.
Look at what they've done so far.
And imagine three more years of this.
The thing that really gives me motivation, inspiration, is the reaction of all of us, all of the people that are standing up to this crap.
You know, whether it's in Minnesota or California, Texas or here, there are people standing up and saying no.
And that is the fundamental building block of democracy, is standing in the way of injustice.
So hats off, Alex, for doing your part.
And you're going to do it again, right?
Absolutely.
I'm ready to file as many of these as I possibly can, you know, in the limited bandwidth that I have.
But I think you always find time in the day to get these types of things done.
And, you know, even today, actually, in this case, I filed something else in the docket because not only did the judge order the immediate release of this detainee,
but he also ordered that ICE is not allowed to re-detain him.
Good.
And so because, you know, they could be subject to immediate harassment and re-detention if the judge doesn't step in.
Well, that's what I was worried about.
You were telling me about this over the weekend, and I was saying, Alex, just make sure that, you know, ICE is kept at bay here because they do not respect the law and they will do all kinds of things.
And, you know, you told me that he had to basically take a train home by himself, which, you know, people think, oh, yeah, there's a big parade when you get released by ICE.
No, they just, I don't know how they let him go.
They just open up a door and he's outside.
But I've heard other stories where people are basically just, you know, released in the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold and there's nobody to pick them up.
So it's not easy even after victory.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
And this is a person who's actively seeking asylum in the United States, so he's going to have to make additional appearances at immigration court.
When he makes those additional appearances at immigration court, ICE could pick him up again.
It's quite possible they could be angry at his site again or know that he was detained.
So what I had actually asked the judge to do today was the judge, in ordering the immediate release, he ordered from the bench, and then he added basically a docket entry that was the order.
And I had asked the judge to sign an official order so that our client here could actually have it in his pocket, this official piece of paper that is a signed order from a federal judge, not just a printout of the docket entry.
That's great, but they don't even look at passports.
They're not interested.
Talk about it.
Yeah, so do you really think that's going to do any good?
I think it'll be better than a printout of the docket.
You know, it could be, I think it'll be more valuable, it'll have more force, but I don't know if it will be 100% effective.
You really have no idea.
And again, this goes back to this notion of selective enforcement and never knowing when you could be hit again by these guys.
All right, final word on this.
How do people who either are lawyers or are assumed to be lawyers, how do they get started with this?
Is there a site they can go to or a place they can show up?
Yeah, check out Immigrant Arc.
If you just search for Immigrant Arc as an ARC, Alpha Romeo, Charlie, and NYC, you will be quickly directed to that site.
It's a not-for-profit.
There's lots of lawyers that are volunteering there.
And you just need, because immigration cases are federal, you just need to be admitted to either the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of New York,
and you can get off to the races.
Amazing.
Okay.
Well, sticking with the subject matter, the anti-ICE activist app and website known as Stop ICE, I don't think that's one we've talked about very much.
They've reportedly suffered a major security breach, which has exposed the personal information of more than 100,000 users to U.S. federal agencies, including the FBI, ICE, and HSI.
H-S-I.
Wow.
Okay.
Hackers said, I'm not sure what the definition of hackers is in this particular case, but hackers somewhere are saying they access names, logins, passwords, phone numbers, and GPS coordinates, and sent the data directly to authorities.
Okay, you see, now, when anybody who accesses something is referred to as a hacker, all of a sudden you realize, boy, hackers can be anybody, and that's kind of the point.
It's, you know, it's not really something that is left or right.
Anybody can exhibit hacking skill.
I don't know if there was skill exhibited here, but to say that hackers are always doing either the wrong thing or the right thing, it's a lot more nuanced than that.
So, yeah, this time they found people who were opposed to ICE, grabbed their info, and forwarded it to the authorities.
Yeah, you don't hear about things like this every day.
Now, one of the app's key organizers is named Sherman Austin, and he allegedly failed to inform users of the breach despite having the opportunity to do so.
That's according to this story from the IB Times in the U.K.
Yeah, according to social media posts and discussion threads on Reddit, the Stop Ice hackers delivered sensitive data from the app to multiple federal agencies.
The exposed information reportedly includes full names, user credentials, phone numbers, and precise location data for more than 100,000 registered users.
One post indicated that the breach involved detailed GPS coordinates potentially identifying activist residents or frequent locations.
Wow.
Users and security analysts have expressed alarm at the scale and specificity of the data compromised.
Exposed login information could allow malicious actors or law enforcement, which sometimes are the same thing, to track individuals or access other linked accounts, which is amplifying the risk for people involved in anti-ICE advocacy.
That's something.
You don't often see this.
You hear about leaks of supposed evildoers that are basically part of some kind of whistleblowing or exposure of one sort or another of people who are up to no good.
Now, I guess the argument can be made that, well, anti-ICE people must be up to no good.
And these are actually good hackers who released the information to the authorities.
You know, you can play it all different ways.
It's very hard for many of us to see it that way.
It's actually quite scary.
Now, stopice.net is a crowdsourced alert platform which is designed to help people monitor and report U.S. immigration and customs enforcement activity, particularly raids and enforcement operations across the country.
There are many apps like that.
We've talked about them on this show.
The site calls itself the Stop Ice Raids Alert Network, a nationwide mobile alert system where users can submit and receive real-time information about suspected ICE presence, including vehicle sightings, license plates, timestamps, and locations.
I have access to all of that, and I've never been asked to give my information.
I would never give my information, location or anything like that, not even a phone number.
This is what happens when you do that.
Whether or not the site itself is compromised, the people running it could be compromised.
You don't know.
You have no idea who you're dealing with.
It's always a bad idea to give this information out, and that goes for a lot of things, not just these kinds of sites.
So basically, users send alerts via text or through the website and view a live map of recent reports submitted by the community.
The platform aims to give vulnerable communities early warnings about enforcement activity so they can make informed decisions, seek legal aid, or other support, office support to affected families.
I was wondering if anybody out there had heard about this.
Alex?
Alex?
Alex?
Yeah, I did.
And there was, interestingly, a weird wrinkle to this.
I think we're talking about stop ICE, right?
This is the app.
Correct.
What I had seen was very curious here is that there seems to be some data that appears to link this particular breach to a personal server associated with a CBP agent in Southern California, with a Customs and Border Patrol agent.
And that apparently this data indicates it's not the first time that this agent had tried to breach other systems that were anti-ICE.
And if that's the case, if there is some rogue or perhaps official Customs and Border Patrol agent that is actively trying to breach the systems that are anti-ICE, systems that are operating maybe in a way that they may not like,
but are certainly consistent with the First Amendment and our freedom of speech and our freedom of association in particular,
then I would love to see the application of the federal laws, and in particular the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, against this particular agent.
I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
I mean, we have to be, if we are still a nation of laws, those laws should certainly apply, regardless of the tenor or the content of the site that's being targeted for compromise.
So I'm not entirely sure.
I don't know very much about that data, but that's something that I heard, that this particular breach may be linked to somebody associated with the Department of Homeland Security.
And it gets more and more interesting by the minute.
So, yes, Rob.
It really does.
There's another story about this on theregister.com, and they had gotten in touch with Sherman Austin, the developer of Stop Ice,
who disputed some of the claims made by the people who are spreading the word of this breach.
Austin said that the app doesn't store subscribers' personal information, that it doesn't store GPS tracking details,
it doesn't store users' names and addresses, and anyone claiming to have stolen these details is, quote,
attempting to spread rumors in an attempt to gain social media fame and clout.
Interesting.
So the jury is, I think, still out on this.
Evidently, people were getting some sort of text, but I think we have to wait for this to shake out to see the extent of any actual breaching that has happened or that hasn't happened.
Well, think about how easy it might be to simply spread word that, yes, we hacked something, and we have all this information, and we gave it to the federal authorities.
Knowing the quality of journalism that's out there today, that likely wouldn't even be checked, and you would just print it almost verbatim and say, yeah, this is what happened.
I have done this many times where, you know, you try to play cleanup for the media getting it wrong, not understanding what they're talking about.
If, in fact, you know, if people who use that system are familiar with it, they can let us know, OTH at 2600.com, were addresses asked for?
Was GPS logged?
Ridiculous things like that, that, you know, anybody in their right mind would not give this information out, especially something that could be risky like this.
And, you know, I've used a number of these sites, as I said, and never has that information been asked for.
So, yeah, that does seem to be a good possibility, Rob, that the whole thing is simply made up.
And just giving it to the federal authorities sounds a little too simple.
Who do you give it to?
You know, which one?
And they're just not going to comment?
That seems a little weird, too.
In any case, it's generally a good idea to be very, very careful and very, very choosy about who you share your actual personal information with, no matter what side of things they seem to be on.
Now, last week we talked about the ICE list, wiki.icelist.is over in Iceland.
And we got this piece of mail regarding wikiicelist.is.
I went to the boycott list.
They have a boycott list, apparently.
And found Giant Oak.
It sounds like a nice, friendly name, but no, they search social media looking for alleged threats based on their AI.
Yeah, it's at wiki.icelist.is slash index.php slash giant underscore oak with G and O of Giant Oak capitalized.
So, basically, it turns out that they were purchased by, I don't know how to pronounce this.
I'm going to say Safrai.
The site is S-A-I-F-R dot A-I.
Digging deeper, we get to the ugly stuff they do, Safrai dot Safra Screen, S-A-I-F-R S-C-R-E-E-N.
All these non-words I have to say these days.
We crawl and index over 230,000 online sources worldwide, 24-7, to help you comply with regulatory requirements and guidelines that matter.
Now, as you know, there are U.S. government entity lists of people or companies that a company should not do business with.
No big deal, but Safrai reads social media and ads companies and people that its A-I deems evildoers to the government list.
At the bottom of the page is the legal goop.
Basically, you are instructed not to use this service to block doing business with anyone their A-I deems evil.
But, you know, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, ban the sucker because we know better than the feds.
We have A-I.
So, this is an unaccountable blacklisting company where you will never find out why you are blacklisted.
Has it really come to this?
Blacklisted by A-I?
Yeah, I think it has.
It has come to that.
Thank you, Gary, for that really interesting letter.
And we must look into this some more.
Any thoughts, guys?
If it's the same A-I that forces me to click, you know, pictures of stop signs and things before I can look at my own stuff that's also deciding whether or not I should be blacklisted, I think we're all doomed.
And if it's the same A-I that thinks a bag of Doritos is a gun, we're really in trouble.
Or, you know, put rocks on your pizza.
Yeah, exactly.
I think the confluence of firms that are being established that have these sorts of unaccountable functions and operations run the risk of entrance to the market that sort of mimic what they do but for different reasons.
I mean, you're - without a sort of defined framework or a model around it, you run the risk of this very same thing being done to you.
I think if the companies just are set up in ways that are unaccountable and just have this sort of authority out of nowhere through their magical, I guess, glass ball - you know, they're like an orb that they consult or something.
I mean, it just stands to reason that you could have an equal and opposite firm be established in funny ways and even as a laugh.
And they just - they open themselves up to do ridicule in my mind.
I just hope to see just as silly firms if we're going to have to take this seriously.
Rob, then Alex.
That's an excellent point.
The accountability is key because, like, if I'm being told that somebody should be boycotted, I want to know why.
I want to know who the person is that's saying so and what their thinking is.
And the media environment is such garbage now when you're looking for any info about anything.
There is so much crap that people didn't write that you have to wade through.
And this is just more of that crap.
I don't put much stock in this.
Yeah.
I tend to agree with this.
And I think there's a lot of glossiness on the outside.
If you think of it almost like a piece of kielbasa or something, right?
Like, Sapphire AI was really like - if you looked inside and saw what was in there, it's kind of disgusting, right?
It's scraped data.
It's ghost workers.
There's dodgy governance.
There's weird rules.
Like, nothing that you could really trust, nothing that you'd want to ingest yourself.
So, I mean, it looks shiny on the outside and nice, just kind of like a, you know, big kielbasa that you might want to eat.
But really, you don't want to see what's in there or how it's made.
Well, speaking of things that are kind of disgusting, Jeffrey Epstein has had a whole bunch of files released, millions, millions of pages.
You guys have been going through this.
It's kind of fascinating.
You know WBAI is in the Epstein files?
It's true.
Of course.
If you go to the Justice Department and you look for WBAI, you will find a few mentions of BAI because there are people listening to radio shows.
And they're basically saying, hey, this show is on this particular time.
Lots of times it's just, you know, a reprint of a flyer or something that's out there.
But, no, the WBAI was not on the island or anything like that.
But it's interesting to see what's out.
And sometimes you find other, even more interesting things.
But here's something.
A confidential informant told the FBI in 2017 that Jeffrey Epstein had a personal hacker, according to a document released by the Department of Justice on Friday.
The document, which was released as part of the Justice Department's legally required effort to publish documents related to his investigation, as the deadline was last December, does not identify who the alleged hacker was.
But it does include several details about them.
According to the informant, the hacker was Italian-born in the southern region of Calabria and specialized in finding vulnerabilities in iOS, BlackBerry devices, and the Firefox browser.
The hacker allegedly developed zero-day exploits and offensive cyber tools and sold them to several countries, including an unnamed Central African government, the UK, and the United States.
I have to tell you right now, this is not your typical hacker here, selling things to governments.
That's not what most hackers do.
The informant told the FBI that Epstein's hacker sold a zero-day to Hezbollah.
Again, that's way, way off the radar of most people in the hacker world.
And that paid him with a chunk of cash.
And the hacker was very good at finding vulnerabilities.
Yeah, that's something.
You know, I actually, I found the memo or whatever it was that was discussing this exactly.
Jeffrey Epstein had a compound in New Mexico where he lured and video recorded.
Well, we know what he did.
I'll get into that.
But so-and-so, and this is all blocked out, was Epstein's personal hacker.
I can tell you this.
The name is very short because it's no longer than four characters, the way they blocked it out.
But they were an Italian citizen born in Calabria who developed zero-day exploits and offensive cyber tools and sold the tools to governments.
Something is blacked out.
Established the Saudi government's cyber surveillance program.
Again, this short name sold a zero-day to Hezbollah.
Was known as the first person to hack and find vulnerabilities in BlackBerrys and iOS.
Okay, so if he's known as the first person to do that, this should be very hard to figure out who he is because, well, he's known somewhere for doing that.
Yeah, and there's all kinds of other details about this.
But I just thought that was kind of interesting.
He was very good at finding vulnerabilities with friends with old-school European hackers.
One friend was a hacker named, and again, that's blocked out.
But, you know, they sometimes leave things wide open in these files, and you can figure out who people are.
It's really, it's a big waste of time if you're going to keep just reading through, looking for random things.
But sometimes you find something very, very revealing and interesting.
This is true.
And there was also, in one of the initial batches of Epstein files, I believe we might have mentioned them on this program, there was talk of a person named Al Seckle who was working for Epstein and editing Wikipedia to make him look better.
And referring to that in emails to Epstein as, we hacked the site.
So, he had all sorts of fingers in the hacker world, apparently, Epstein.
And this is just more, this is going to come to light as more of these files are ground through.
Well, yeah, and a lot of it is the communications.
I mean, it's based on his communications.
So, you're just looking at the sort of vastness of the world of their people in his orbit, and also the sorts of patrons around all of them that have specific sort of interests.
And in many ways, technology, the sorts of industry, the technology industry, rather, I think, is in there specifically because, well, these circles have a sort of fascination.
And a curiosity around people that have certain knowledge, and it stands to reason, it's not unlikely that some of that will come through into then maybe using some of that sort of secret knowledge.
Which, again, seems like familiar when you're talking about something like hacking.
All right.
Well, moving on to another fun topic, cybercrime group, Shiny Hunters.
See, that's a better way to phrase it.
Cybercrime group.
Not hackers, cybercrime, because they're involved in cybercrime, and they're a group, and they're called Shiny Hunters.
Well, they appear to have taken responsibility for the October 2025 data breach at Penn's Graduate School of Education, releasing thousands of pages of additional internal university files on Wednesday.
In a February 4th post, that's today on the group's forum, Shiny Hunters wrote that it leaked the data because Penn did not pay a ransom or cooperate and comply.
The post, which comes days after a court filing, claimed the October 31st, 2025 incident impacted less than 10 people, alleged the data breach affected 1.2 million records.
So that's either 10 people with an awful lot being said about them or somebody doesn't quite have it right.
They say this is the direct result of advisors advising you against paying a ransom, the alleged hackers wrote in a document they released.
Sloppy.
You don't say advising right after you say advisors.
You know, this bothers me.
The result of advisors.
What else are advisors going to do?
It has the opposite effect.
Do not provoke us again and pay the ransom when we contact you.
I don't know.
You know, it seems like this is ransomware where all your data becomes inaccessible and then you don't pay the ransom and all the data gets released.
It kind of solves itself, you know.
You have all your data back.
Of course, the whole rest of the world has it too.
That's not good.
But I don't know.
Paying ransom doesn't, it just doesn't feel quite right, you know.
You know, something about it doesn't seem particularly honorable.
And they have a forum.
They run a forum.
The shiny hunters have an online forum.
That's great.
Oh, that's amazing.
Communication back and forth.
The files include private documents that were not released in the initial breach.
That's the university donor records, internal talking points, and a November 2023 progress report from the university anti-Semitism action plan.
We are analyzing the data and will notify any individuals if required by applicable privacy regulations.
Who said that?
Shiny hunters or a university spokesperson?
You can't tell anymore.
Everyone has a forum.
Everyone is talking to the press.
Yeah, the leak also appeared to contain personal information of several high-profile individuals, including 1968 Horton graduate and President Donald Trump and members of his family.
Well, now it got serious.
Multiple members of the Trump family were internally labeled by Penn as confirmed ultra-high net-worth individuals.
Well, now it makes sense.
If it only affected 10 people and there's a million records, the Trumps could do that by themselves.
And I say release it all.
Let's see what's out there.
Since we, you know, the Epstein files were a big disappointment because of how they're protecting Trump, how they're keeping all the information from getting out.
Well, you know, here's something else.
Consolation prize.
I guess that's all we have to say about that.
Okay, well, you know what?
We're out of time.
We're going to be on overtime in just a moment.
Write to us, O-T-H, at 2600.com.
Join us on overtime at youtube.com slash channel 2600.
Rob, go ahead.
Go check out your local 2600 meeting, 2600.com slash meetings, happening all over the world this Friday.
And if you don't have one, start one.
That's right.
And we'll be talking about all kinds of other things that happened in the hacker world on overtime coming up in just about 10 minutes, 8 o'clock on YouTube channel 2600 or the link that is on the front page of 2600.com.
Until next week, this is Emmanuel.
For everyone else, the Off the Hook crew, ice out.
Through the winter's ice and cold, down Nicolet Avenue, a city of flame fought fire and ice, Nathan occupier's boots.
King Trump's private army from the DHS, guns belted to their coats.
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law, or so their story goes.
Against smoke and rubber bullets, in the dawn's early light.
Citizens stood for justice, their voices ringing through the night.
And there were bloody footprints, where mercy should have stood.
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets, Alex pretty and Renee good.
We'll take our stand for this land and the stranger in our midst.
Here in our home, they killed and roamed in the winter of 26.
We'll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.
Trump's federal thugs beat up on his face and his chest.
Then we heard the gunshots and Alex pretty lay in the snow dead.
Their claim was self-defense soon.
Just don't believe your eyes.
It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller and Norm's dirty lies.
Oh, I'm Minneapolis, I hear your voice crying through the bloody mist.
Remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.
Now they say they're here to uphold the law, but they trample on our rights.
If your skin is black or brown, my friend, you can be questioned or deported on sight.
In our chants of ice out now, our city's heart and soul persists.
Through broken glass and bloodied tears on the streets of Minneapolis.
Oh, I'm Minneapolis, I hear your voice singing through the bloody mist.
Here in our home, they killed and roamed in the winter of 26.
We'll take our stand for all this land and the stranger that I missed.
We'll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.
We'll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
Christa! Vive on!


And welcome, everybody, to Off the Hook Overtime, where I seem to have made it to YouTube land.
I made it.
You made it, Kyle?
Hi.
And Rob, Gila, Alex, y'all in YouTube land?
We are here.
We are.
Overtimesville.
Okay, great.
And YouTube is working, right?
Waiting for YouTube to catch up with us.
Right.
And there it is.
We sound good.
So damn slow.
Okay, well, anything people wanted to get to that we didn't have time for?
Great outro song by the boss there for the main show.
It really is.
And it's getting a lot of play.
But, you know, my question is, where are all the other artists?
You know, I want to see new artists.
I want to see all kinds of songs talking about the things that are going on.
That's just one thing happening.
Well, I can tell you, I'm really glad that you played that song.
And I was, I meant to suggest another outro song, but maybe we could play this one next
week.
But, you know, Billy Bragg came out with a new song against ice.
Played that last night, Alex, on the other show.
Oh, you did?
I didn't hear that.
Well, maybe you should listen to the other show, too, because you'd be up on a lot more
things.
I would be.
I certainly would be.
But I thought that one was pretty good, too.
It is.
It is.
Kind of a cold close.
It just ends.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
It's like his bus arrived or something and he had to stop immediately.
But, you know, it's a good song.
It really is a good song.
But, you know, there needs to be a hundred songs.
I mean, think of the 1960s.
All the protest songs came out of the 1960s.
1960s were known as protest song era.
Well, there's a lot more to protest now.
And I think the difference is back then we weren't all in our little cliques as far as
types of music we listened to.
People tended to hear the same thing.
Yeah, there was less variety, but there was an advantage to that in that we were more together
as far as knowing music.
I think if we just listen to each other's music more, that won't be a problem.
But we have to be open to that.
Yeah, and I agree.
I mean, I can't just.
Sorry.
Sorry to jump on you there, but I agree.
It's a great song.
And I do want to mention that I know we have a lot of creative listeners.
And if you know of or even better, if you've made a song or you make a song that's relevant
to what's going on, let us know.
We're always up for new things to put on the air, new things to close the show with.
Email us, OTH at 2600.com.
And on that subject, you know, we are looking for people to help create with us.
We're, you know, even though we don't yet have a home for hope, we're looking for people
to participate.
And that goes for music as well as art of all sorts.
Maybe you have a sound that is something that could be part of hope.
Maybe you're a musician and you can write the next theme to the conference itself.
Or maybe you're an artist who can design something that people would really get a kick out of.
It's a great way to open up some doors for new people and just kind of show the world what
the hacker community is all about.
I've thought about this a lot and I really love that and the idea that, yeah, people should be
empowered.
The ability, the tools and software and things you can use to create stuff is really widely
available.
There's a lot of great stuff you could be doing.
So we'd love to see more of that stuff.
And in my experience, there's so much to drop on.
And even if you want to kind of go off and innovate and bring in new ideas, new sounds
and things, but just in the realm of technology or telephony, there are so many different kinds
of sounds and ambiances and things you can give to different forms of media, whether that's
video or online or interactive stuff.
But we are really interested in what kind of creative stuff is possible out there.
And yeah, we do a lot with our own history.
I've found that's very useful.
Go back through your own work, through the work of projects you've been involved with.
Draw upon that.
It's a way a lot of designers and artists kind of refine and re-evaluate and refresh their
technique or their process.
And we want to kind of implore other people to do that as well with things that they find
dear to them and share and talk about different themes through the visual or audio realms.
And yeah, just really push the limits of it and your imagination.
We'd really love to see that.
Yeah.
And we didn't really get to talk about this on the show, but we kind of hit a milestone
yesterday with the Hope Conference in that we changed direction or changed lanes or went
down a different road.
We made some big changes.
We made some really big changes in the whole way the conference is run.
Hope is now its own entity.
Hope is now a 501c3 nonprofit.
And what that means is that we are eligible for grants.
We are eligible for donations of all sorts.
We are dedicated to an educational purpose as far as reaching people who want to attend the
conferences, who want to learn about technology, who want to experience technology.
We basically, we followed Greg's advice, you know, from last year.
And basically, you know, what happened to us at St. John's was unfortunate.
We were kicked out of there because they didn't appreciate or understand an attendee who was an
anarchist who had a pamphlet.
Literally, that's all it was.
But instead of being defeated by that, we thought, you know what, let's make this even bigger.
Let's just keep pushing and ensure that hope is around for future generations.
And this is a great way to do this by having independence, by being able to get all kinds of
opportunities that we wouldn't have been able to get had we continued going down the same road.
Now the future is unwritten.
And check out the new website, hope.net.
You'll see what we're up to.
We'll see some of the things that we're basically dreaming about.
And we hope it works, but it'll work if people join with us and give us ideas, lend your talents
and, you know, steer the ship into someplace really, really interesting, because that's
what hackers do.
You know, we take disadvantages and turn them into advantages.
Yeah, we still have to find a home.
We still have to find a place to have the conference.
I think we can do that.
And let me just say right now, it's going to be in New York, somewhere in the New York
City region.
It has to be there.
That is where we are.
That is where we've always been.
And New York City is a very, very welcoming place.
And it's exactly where we belong.
And I know, you know, many people feel that where they are is where we belong.
I know.
I get that.
It's quite convenient for us to go to, you know, some part of Nebraska or something.
Yeah.
But New York is where we do our thing.
And, you know, this is where we do radios, where we put out the magazine, where we have
where we started the meetings.
And, you know, if we go to a meeting, it's probably going to be that one.
And we want you to come to New York as well, because we want people to experience the magic
of the city, the magic of, you know, the hacker's eyes in this particular part of the world.
And, yeah, I know, you know, society is all messed up.
Politics are crazy.
Yet we survive every day in spite of that.
And there's no reason to cower.
There's no reason to hide.
Well, except for, of course, ICE.
But, you know, we've got we've got plans.
We've got all kinds of defenses that people are are implementing.
And I don't know.
I just I just feel like it's never been as interesting as it has been right now.
And the future has never been so full of possibilities as it is right now.
So I'm excited for it.
You know, I'd love to see where this goes.
It's definitely a step that like every other step we've taken, people say, oh, bad idea.
Don't do that.
No, that's that's something that only a fool would do.
Sounds like exactly the kind of thing that we should do.
We should try it.
We should see what happens.
And we've gotten a lot of good advice.
We have so many good people working with us.
And it feels it feels like it's all fresh.
It's all starting again.
And we'd love for you to be a part of it.
So visit hope.net and tell us what you think.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Well, well, look, I'll jump into it.
I think it will really help in making hope at this point less transient and and allow us to find a permanent home here because there's there's a lot more transparency now.
It's it's its own standalone entity.
There's going to be a board.
There's bylaws.
There's a lot more transparency here.
There's reporting now with a 501 C3.
So I think that the fact that it's a not for profit, the fact that you can make tax deductible, the deductible donations.
I think there's there's there's a there's a transfer of benefits and also a great deal more trust, I think, associated with being a formal 501 C3.
And it's great.
Yeah, it's going to open up a lot of doors.
I think you should think about when people are donating tickets to hope for people that couldn't afford them.
Well, those are very likely going to be tax deductible donations now.
That's really cool.
You're also going to be eligible to obtain grants for hope.
There may be educational institutions that want to provide money for grants or certain workshops or various things that can go on there.
There's like it opens up the door to a lot of really cool things.
So I'm very glad that you guys did this and went through the process.
Look at it this way.
Look at it this way.
You know, we have challenges as a reason we're not in a hotel in midtown Manhattan, but that could go away tomorrow with a single grant from a company that wouldn't even feel it.
And it would be great for them as well because they'd be supporting, you know, the future great minds of technology and developing all kinds of new inventions and things like that.
You know, just doing something like that.
And all of a sudden, we can afford it.
We can do it.
We can manage to make the impossible happen.
And when we did the first conference back in 1994, that's exactly how it was characterized.
You can't have a conference in the middle of New York City.
It's impossible.
First of all, no one ever had a big conference of hackers in the United States before.
You know, DEF CON was around, but they only had 70 people at that point.
You know, this was the first time.
This was based on European conferences that had thousands of people.
And this was absolutely the first time ever that this happened and was right smack in the middle of New York City.
Well, they tore down our hotel, so that made that a little bit more difficult.
And we have yet to find a decent replacement for that.
We found St. John's.
We were very happy with that.
And, of course, we got blindsided by some closed-mindedness at the highest levels over there.
And, you know, the challenges continued.
There was COVID.
There were all kinds of things that got in the way.
But that just made us want to succeed even more than ever.
Yeah.
And I think we've been sort of reassured that we're just going to continue to do the best job we can doing what we've always done.
And we realized, I mean, there were good aspects of our affiliation with the university.
We really came to understand our impact and our sort of being functionally educational.
And this actually was kind of well aligned.
And it's a lot longer journey that we were all on organizationally.
And the story itself, it's come up.
And it's been something we've looked at and turned to.
And I think we're giving it a try and excited about all of those possibilities as we reestablish the event in earnest.
And begin to start welcoming the sort of organizational processes and planning things and all of the detail that goes into kicking off in a new venue.
So it's kind of cool to be new again in that way.
And then also having put in a lot of work and double checking.
And we're still just in the formation and establishment phase of it and just learning a lot.
And hopeful that this is a really good, rewarding move for what has been something that has been volunteer-based and profoundly academic from what I think from the outset, from those early days.
Well, I've learned so much about paperwork and just all kinds of things that you have to fill out.
But, you know, it kind of makes sense, too, if you think about it.
You just sort of do a little research.
And, yeah, okay, we can do that.
And you just have to fill out this particular form in this particular way.
And, oh, I didn't know about that form.
All right, I've got to do that, too.
But when you do it and when, you know, things actually come back approved, it's like, oh, wow, I did that right.
And it actually makes sense.
Gila?
It does.
I just wanted to take a moment and say hello to the almost 50 people who are with us right now.
My goodness.
A lot of people are saying congratulations on the new 501c3 status.
That is very exciting.
From at Tim R. Graham, I'm grateful you guys are still broadcasting.
I remember burning hours of Off the Hook onto MP3 CDs in the early 2000s and listening while I did landscaping.
Yeah, you remember that?
When people used to put them on CDs and then DVDs.
And now everything just gets downloaded.
And at Sarah B4513 says, having been through the event planning nightmares of A, losing the annual venue, and also B, trying to find a venue in Manhattan.
I'm rooting for you all.
You've got this.
And KB6NU Ham Radio says, I'm waiting with bated breath to see what venue you find for the next hope.
Wherever it is, I plan to be there to teach a ham radio class.
If you'll have me, I'll be making a donation, too.
And, you know, it's because of people like you that we're going to move ahead and open things up for speaker submissions and workshop submissions.
Even though we don't have a home yet and we don't have a firm date yet, there are people who are just going to say, well, I'll be there wherever it is, whenever it is.
And even if you can't make it, basically, if the odds are good that you think you will, then submit your ideas.
And that way, at least they're being developed while we're still in the searching phase.
And if you can't make it, that's the way it goes.
But hopefully you can.
Hopefully a lot of people will be able to, you know, just follow the news as we find out more.
And, again, people have information for us that's so helpful.
They give us tips.
They say this is a good place to look into.
And if you know of a place in the New York City area, please send it to us.
Email address is feedback at hope.net.
And we read everything.
We've read everything we've gotten so far.
We've gotten so many amazing suggestions.
And some kind of wacky ones, too.
But we read them all.
And it's always great to hear people's ideas.
Absolutely.
This is really exciting.
And it makes me so happy that we're finally managing this because it is something that's been talked about for a long time.
It's something that Greg Newby, our, you know, much-missed friend, was very passionate about.
And the fact that we could achieve something like this, I think, honors him and all of us, really.
Yeah, absolutely.
And his enthusiasm for the scholarship program, that's going to be something that I think is a big part of what is possible in having this organizational structure.
We want to advance that program, likely in his name, and other initiatives that involve advancing the knowledge and understanding of information networks, telecommunications, security, and now even like large language models and all this whiz-bang stuff.
But basically, future technology, all of that is encompassed in the kinds of submissions that we get when people are interested in speaking at Hope.
And, of course, we'll be going right back to accommodating workshops and every other bit of, like, art installation and, of course, our speaking tracks.
That's all sort of the basis of what we're considering to get that going again.
And, yeah, you know, a hotel maybe would be nice.
Well, Greg had two dreams, really, that he was quite passionate about.
One was the formation of a nonprofit to start with, which, you know, I thought was just, you know, impossible, too much work.
And, you know, I was just kind of resistant to it.
But he plotted ahead with it and got us to see the wisdom of it.
And I don't think we'd be here now were it not for his efforts.
And these are efforts he made in the last months of his life, which is just simply incredible to me.
And the other dream he had was returning to Manhattan.
You know, we love Queens.
We really love Queens.
But there is something so special about being in Manhattan.
And we've never lost sight of that.
It just was impossible.
But then again, impossible means something different to us.
Impossible to us means awesome and very, very doable.
Because we fall into all kinds of things.
We have the most amazing connections.
And we just believe in persisting when others say stop.
And that's what hacking is, you know, just continuing to go when everybody tells you it's not going to work.
And you find a way to make it work.
So Greg believes that we could do that.
I definitely believe we can do that.
But now we just have to do it.
And I think we can.
I really think we can.
Yeah.
You can see why I didn't talk about this on the radio, because we're taking up the whole show.
One thing that you can do that's really easy, even before you could do it right now, you can't buy a HOPE ticket yet.
But one thing you can do is make a donation to this new nonprofit.
It's set up for monthly contributions and one-time contributions and yearly contributions, which is you can make a donation every year on February 4th.
Isn't that amazing?
Doesn't that site look good?
I was really impressed by it.
Yeah.
Very good work.
Yeah.
I think I have probably come clean about this once or twice.
I work in the nonprofit development sphere.
That's what I do professionally.
And a lot of people talk to me about Zephy.
I see it in a lot of places.
It doesn't work for the organization that I work at for a lot of reasons, but it's really great when people can.
So that's, I'm, it's hooray.
Well, we must, we must trade stories because we've, we've had, it's, it's worked well for us so far.
So hopefully it'll continue to work well for us.
And of course, you know, if there's people already wanting us to take Bitcoin, we'll get to it.
You know, we'll see what we can do.
But right now, you know, it's PayPal and it's, and it's, you know, credit cards and things like that.
And envelopes of cash, I guess.
I don't know.
That's like just a part of the sort of initial process of announcing it.
And we just want to get that part of it going.
And of course, yeah, we'll definitely take new, new things into consideration.
We've had so many votes of encouragement and, and even suggestions for things just since the announcement that we're already looking into.
And, um, just kind of exploring.
And it, it's, uh, it's cool that, uh, so many people over the years have, have, uh, put us, you know, supported us, put us in this position.
And we want to honor that in doing this and do it right.
Um, and really be kind of, um, strategic and, and, um, smart about how we sustain what everyone along the way has worked so hard on and been, and, and is what we've found and heard from people, uh, so important to people.
Uh, uh, uh, we've heard such sincere testimonials from people about the event and, um, what it means to them and as a platform or as something that they learned from.
So yeah, it's, it's cool.
We'll try new things.
We'll see how it works.
Those were things we looked into.
We looked into a lot of stuff and, uh, of course, you know, the clock is ticking.
We, we are, um, we are very much, uh, uh, feeling a sense of urgency with all of this.
So, uh, yeah, that was, it's, it's, uh, uh, of something that we were referred to, I guess.
So we'll see how it works.
I hope people, uh, you know, sign up and do what they can.
Can I tell you guys a story?
Uh, Monday, Monday, uh, Kyle and I were in the city.
We went to the, uh, Steve Colbert show, uh, and, uh, John Oliver was a guest.
It was a lot of fun.
I got pulled up on stage.
I got pulled up on stage at the Steve Colbert late show, not at the, at the program.
Itself, but the pre show where they have the comedian that gets everybody to laugh and
scream and all that.
I was wearing my, my, my, uh, Chinese winter hat, uh, made from a rabbit.
That's over 40 years old.
And it's, it's, it keeps me warm.
I wear it in the winter and I wear it inside when there's no place to put my hat.
And so the guy saw me as, Hey, you with the hat, get up on stage.
And I got interrogated on stage in front of the entire audience, the entire, the same audience
that saw, uh, Steve Colbert and John Oliver.
And this, this guy was asking what I was involved in.
And I was telling him all the cool things that I was involved in, you know, whether that's
2600 or hope or, or just, you know, uh, privacy issues and things like that.
The crowd loved it.
These are people that were not hackers.
I was getting applause.
People were just so into what it was that I was involved in.
And I think we forget that sometimes we forget that the world that we are in that we're,
we're, we're, we're doing all kinds of crazy things.
If you explain it to people, they, they get it.
They really get it.
And, and they support you.
And boy, I hope that's a sign for the future.
You know, I also realized standing up there on that stage, what an honor, first of all,
but it's so tiny.
It's so incredibly small.
You're, you're in this room and you realize that audience isn't that many people as, you
know, a few hundred people.
Sure.
But it's, uh, you know, about the size of, of some of the rooms we've had for, for our
conference.
And, you know, there's Steve Colbert's desk right there that there's, uh, you know, the
band right, right next to that.
Everything was just so incredibly small, but you know, in a good way, uh, you realize how
intimate shows are, how intimate, uh, performances are, uh, Broadway shows, television shows.
So it's, um, it was, it was a fun adventure and kind of a, an eye opener for me.
I mean, we got to say hi to anyone who might be listening to this because you were introduced
to this because you saw Emmanuel in a furry hat at the Ed Sullivan theater.
Someone actually, someone actually recognized me.
Somebody, somebody, uh, tweeted or, uh, blue sky or something, uh, that they, I got pulled
up on stage because this wasn't broadcast or anything like that.
So somebody, uh, somebody, uh, you know, I had to correct them cause they said it was
the tonight show and that's not the tonight show.
Obviously it's the late show, but, uh, yeah, it was kind of, uh, someone also said hacker
guy, I think, as we were walking outside, well, everybody, no, cause I had the hat.
Everybody, everybody said, you know, Oh, look, it's a hacker guy.
Okay, fine.
I'm the hacker guy or the hat guy.
I got, I got, I got, no, they said hacker guy, but that other guy inside, the old guy
said, you just wore that hat to get on TV and it, no, I didn't, I wore the hat cause
I didn't want to step on it and put it on the floor.
There's no place to put a hat.
So I left it on.
It was comfortable.
Well, and you were also, I just wore the hat cause it was cold.
Well, it's also cold inside the studio.
So you were pointing out the hacker person on our, our, on that shirt.
I was wearing a shirt from beyond hope in 1997.
That's how good our shirts are.
I even said that on stage because the guy asked me who's the guy, you know, that that's,
you know, behind the earth, it says owned.
I said, that's our, that's our hacker guy, you know, from 1997, we make good t-shirts.
They last for this long.
That's really funny.
I had something, you know, somewhat similar happened today in terms of like the, the enthusiasm
for our curious subculture, which we're, we're all apart here.
Um, not nearly as cool as, as, uh, as your story, but so it was maybe like two weeks ago.
I had, uh, this friend in, she lives in London, but, uh, she's originally from Ireland and she
said, you know, her sister is a school teacher in Northern Ireland and County Arma and that
they were bringing some students over to New York and they wanted to know if I could talk
with some of these high school students about hacking and cybersecurity and, and various
things.
And I said, yeah, sure.
You know, I can maybe introduce them to some people.
So I said, you know, look, well, why don't we see if I can get them to, you know, to have
a visit to the NCFTA, which is the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance.
And you've got a bunch of people there.
It's like a public private partnership thing where you have, uh, the National Crime Agency
there from the UK, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Australian Federal Police, the
FBI, and, you know, a bunch of other people.
I've done a lot of work with them.
I'm very friendly with the managing director there.
And, uh, and so the managing director said, yeah, you know, bring them over.
And then I found out that it wasn't like five or six students.
It was 45, it was 40, 45 high school students from Northern Ireland.
Wow.
Uh, they came over and, and the guys over at NCFTA were like, no, it's totally fine.
We got a classroom.
They probably bring them in there and we talked with them and we introduced them to people.
And I told them about my background and how I got started in all of this.
And that, you know, I was a hacker who then became a lawyer.
And, you know, as my mother always said, that means I went from bad to worse.
And, uh, you know, they found that very funny as well.
And there's kind of a story about how I ended up being the NFL CISO and all these things.
And so, and they totally loved it.
They loved it.
We forget how interesting we actually are sometimes.
That reminds me.
Oh, thank you for, for bringing this up.
Remember last year when you went to the Superbowl and I said, could you get me in next year?
I totally forgot to bring it up.
You did.
Yeah.
Coming up.
It's coming up.
Is it this, is this Sunday, Carl?
I think it's this Sunday coming up.
I don't know.
And I, where is that in, um, San Francisco.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, uh, yeah.
So, you know, if you could just get us a couple, that would be good.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the, the deputy CIO of the NFL, um, he and I met at originally at a 2600 meeting.
That's right.
1994.
And you know him.
So, uh, look, it's in the cards.
Hopefully it's in the mail because, uh, you know, I got, I got a book of flight now.
Yeah.
Unless that's covered too.
I don't know.
No, I wish it was when I went there.
The most expensive part of going to the Superbowl, even if you have the tickets and everything
comp, like my God did last year was, um, the accommodations are insanely expensive.
Yeah.
That reminds me of the episode of, uh, of Seinfeld where somebody, uh, offered George tickets
to the Superbowl.
I was like, does it include a flight?
Does it include a hotel?
No.
So right.
Basically you're handing me a bill for several thousand dollars right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm most people I know feel the same level of enthusiasm towards something like
that.
And I'm still pissed off about, about the world cup because you know, that's like, that's
like 56 Superbowl games that you can never get into because FIFA is just so corrupt and
they price everything out of the reach of, of ordinary people.
And, um, uh, yeah, I wonder who all these millionaires are that are going to go to every
single game because you know, the cheapest ticket you can.
You can get, if you're able to get it is several hundred dollars just for, uh, you know, a
crappy seat.
So, um, yeah, I'll, I'll watch it on TV.
Thank you.
Anyway, uh, enough of me complaining.
Um, yeah, let's, um, open up the phone lines.
Uh, I'm happy to say nobody is banned.
Um, uh, rebel.
Thank you for observing the band.
Uh, and, um, we just have to turn on the phone.
So we've got to work on that.
Give me a second.
Um, so while, uh, while he's working on that, I'll mention for anyone who wasn't listening
on the radio hour, um, and why weren't you that 2600 meetings are happening all over
the world this Friday, go to 2600.com slash meetings.
Um, you could find the info for the one here in New York city or the ones elsewhere in the
world, or you could find info on how to start one near you.
If there isn't one near you and you know, you can, you can remedy that, uh, start it
yourself, 2600.com slash meetings.
I'm having trouble with this, uh, interface.
You know, Gil and I went to the Colbert show years ago.
It was 2020, early 2020 before, um, shit hit the fan.
And, um, we didn't get an opening comic because our pre-show experience was the state of the
union address.
You did get an opening comic.
I mean, who was giving the state of the union then?
Right.
It was a slight, it was, it was a different experience of warming up the audience.
But the other thing was we were there for a live show, um, because he went on live after
the state of the union and yeah, it was pretty cool.
It was cool, but there were, there was not an opening warmup comic in that sense.
And nobody got brought on stage and, uh, it was freezing cold in that room and we were
there for a long time.
Yes.
Yeah.
So, so I, I think you got the, you got the better, uh, pre-show experience.
Yeah.
We didn't get to go up on stage.
It's well, it's funny because, uh, he does screw up lines occasionally and he has to take
them again.
And it's just funny, you know, the crowd loves it when, when you screw up, when, when you
say, ah, shit, I gotta do that again.
And then later on when you watch it, you see where the edit is and it's really, it's really
well done.
But of course you can't do that when it's live.
You know, we have the same experience in radio because we do a live show.
It's very different.
And if we do a show on tape ever, we don't do that often because when you do, you just
feel the need to take a line again.
And it's just like, you can't get it right.
Whereas if you're on live, you have no choice.
You have to get it right.
And it's just, you know, if you, if you stumble over a word, you keep going.
But if you're taping, you go back and you just keep, you know, trying to get it right
and you never do get it right.
Wait, I can say that better.
Hold on a second.
No, what I meant to say was, you know, you just got to keep at it and, and, and that's
how you get good.
That's what I'm told.
I'm told that anyway.
All right.
Phone lines.
I can't work like this.
I'll be in my trailer.
The telephone is on, uh, uh, 802-321-4225.
Uh, that is our phone number.
So give us a call if you want to be part.
Okay.
And also we tested, we tested this, this microphone that I'm talking to you on right now, because
last week on BAI, I don't know if it was, uh, you know, a coordinated operation or something,
but people were saying they couldn't hear me.
Uh, and then we, we, we did this elaborate test after the show.
We've done more tests since.
And, um, there's nothing wrong with my microphone.
It's as loud as everybody else's.
We tested it.
We used the phone.
Um, so, uh, yeah, try something else.
We have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel.
I can't hear you.
Rebel, I am going to find you and I am going to be merciless.
I swear to God.
All right.
I can hear you now.
You better believe you can hear me.
All right.
I can hear you.
Yeah, you can.
Okay.
You can't, you can't, you can't figure this out?
Wait, is this, is this the fake Rebel?
This is the fake Rebel, isn't it?
Are you, are you the fake Rebel?
You know what?
Maybe I'm going to donate to you so that you can get a better phone system.
Maybe that's what you should start raising money for.
How do we test this guy?
All right.
Just a minute.
This is real Rebel because he's talking about donating.
I don't know.
I think this is fake Rebel.
I think there's a delay there and it's churning.
It's just like the 11 labs Rebel.
The delay is what's, you know, he's not, he's not trying to connect us to something else.
So, um, yeah, I don't know.
I don't, I don't think this is real.
We did see real Rebel in the chat.
So he, he is listening.
That doesn't mean this is him here though.
The fact that you're saying that is just surreal.
And the fact that you think.
And he's never been silent for this long.
You saw him in a chat.
That makes him real?
Think about what you're saying.
I'm saying it's possible.
This is a busy signal, but.
That's, that's my voice.
All right.
That was fun.
But let's not do that again.
802-321-4225.
See, I, if that was Rebel and it rose to the point of, of pissing me off, I, you know,
I wouldn't know if I, if I should ban him or somebody else.
But you realize what we're talking about now.
If we're having these conversations about whether or not he's real, it's the Velveteen Rebel.
This is going to happen over and over again.
We're not going to know what's real and what's not.
You know?
Do you want my help or do you want.
Oh, yes.
You have the, you have the information, Kyle.
You can tell if the phone number was the same.
I would say that was a known number from the caller you're suggesting it is.
You're saying that was Rebel.
That was really Rebel.
As far as I know.
Okay.
Because there's no way other people would know his, would you pick that up, please?
There's no way other people would know his, uh, his number.
Correct.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook Overtime.
Hello.
Yes.
On today's radio show.
Alex said a number of things.
He did, didn't he?
Yeah.
He said that the people who are ICE agents have no scruples.
Do they seek out people who have no scruples or do people who have scruples lose their scruples?
Oh, interesting.
That's a good question, I guess.
Right.
I mean, I, maybe it's self-selecting in, in a way.
Right.
But it reminds me of, uh, well, what we were talking about before, which was with respect
to the, the artists that made ICE related songs.
There is, uh, another song.
I think it was focused or something, right?
Like Jesse Wells.
I think that this, this song called join ICE.
You've heard that one, right?
Emmanuel.
Guys, have you heard the join ICE song?
Yes, we have, uh, we have played that particular track that he produced and that was someone
that came to mind when, um, uh, you and I were talking about just, uh, in general, the
kind of marketplace of, of, uh, anthems and folk music in this time.
You'll talk about, uh, Jesse Wells, right?
Yeah.
And then, um, there's just a variety of ways to get your voice out there and, in, um, streaming
platforms like the one we're using right now and other ways you don't necessarily have
to even have, uh, a record deal.
Also community and local, local radio stations and stuff, um, are great ways.
So yeah, that, that track, what of it, uh, Alex?
Yeah.
Because the, the caller's asking, you know, do people who join ICE lose their scruples
or do they not have any scruples to begin with?
Right.
And so like that, that whole song is about, you know, like join ICE essentially, like if
you're a reject and you want to, if you, you know, you want to feel like a man and carry
a gun, that kind of thing.
So I think it, it depends, right?
I mean, I think that there are a lot of people who worked for ICE back, you know, when DHS
was originally formed or during the Obama administration who weren't necessarily evil, but I think that
the mission creep of ICE will often affect psychology of individuals.
And it also affects the type of person who's attracted to ICE now.
I think the type of people who want to join ICE and become ICE agents right now probably
do have a lack of scruples, um, or they don't understand fundamentally how unconstitutional
the mission of that particular agency is at the moment.
So I think it's a combination.
I would add, uh, you have to, um, consider though.
There's, um, there's a, a variance in there.
Uh, I, I think the two, uh, officers that shot Alex Preddy were, uh, hired earlier on.
And I think, um, prior to this latest rush that was found in, I think some of the early
report reporting, uh, since their names have been released.
So, um, it really does matter as far as that institutional sort of leadership, what is the,
um, culture turned into even after someone has been hired and not may not necessarily
be, um, just an attribute of, uh, these rushed hirings or people can change.
People can certainly change.
You might, you might be more qualified and have worked there for 10 years, but if a whole
bunch of people just get hired from white supremacist groups, it's going to dilute, I sound like
a white supremacist myself, it's going to dilute the purity of the people that, that, you know,
are involved in this.
It's an environment.
Everybody's going to suffer as a result.
Yeah.
It's like a sort of permissiveness.
Uh-huh.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's a culture of awfulness that permeates that place.
I'm sure.
I mean, I, I think that there are probably few and far between kind good souls who are
trying to affect positive change from within at this point.
I think, you know, it's destroyed right now.
It, it really is, is, is totally destroyed and it just needs to be disbanded and maybe
something else, uh, uh, formed with a lot more thought behind it and a lot more intelligence
behind it.
But I think ICE is done.
I really do.
Does, uh, any of that answer your question, caller?
I think that, I, I guess so.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
And so can, why can't law enforcement agents who are not ICE arrest the ICE agents who are
committing crimes?
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
And, uh, you know, it's been brought up in Minnesota, uh, that, uh, the National Guard,
for instance, uh, is being brought in to protect the people, not, not the cops.
And that's exactly what they should be doing.
Uh, we've seen, uh, was it the DA from Philadelphia saying, we will hunt you down if you do something
illegal in our city.
He's saying that to ICE agents.
And, you know, I, I, I applaud that kind of spirit.
I, I, you know, I don't want to see open warfare in the streets between different law
enforcement agencies, but better them than innocent people that, uh, you know, are just
expressing their opinion or just existing.
Uh, we, we, we really need to take a good look at, uh, how this situation has, has devolved
so far.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thanks for your call.
802-321-4225.
Good call there.
And, uh, uh, definitely interesting topics that we're, we're discussing.
Yeah.
And on that issue of whether the ICE agents can be arrested and detained themselves, they
generally have what's known as qualified immunity for the actions that they take, uh, in their
official capacity.
But if they operate outside of that capacity, then they lose that qualified immunity.
And who determines that though?
Uh, probably a court would have to determine it and judge would have to determine it.
I think it's actually a, probably a mixed question of, of law and fact here, um, with,
with respect to any particular incident, right?
But for the most part, they do operate with some kind of immunity because they're, they're
acting in their, in their federal capacity here.
Um, but if they are knowingly violating somebody's civil rights, they may be, uh, they may be stripped
of that qualified immunity as well.
And I, um, and in particular, so in the case that, that I have, uh, that, you know, the petition
for the writ of habeas corpus that I litigated in one last week.
So I'm keeping that case open.
One of the things I said to the judge was, well, you know, this is so blatantly unconstitutional
what ICE did.
And every one of these cases takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.
I mean, easily was 15, 20 hours of my time to deal with, uh, you know, the, this petition
and the back and forth of the judge and the preparation.
And I mean, just preparing for the hearing last Friday, um, I felt like I, I was 90% there
in terms of winning it, but I still had to prepare for three or four hours that day just
in case I had to be ready to fight.
Um, and so I, I said to the judge, well, I'd like to keep this case open because we may
seek costs and fees from, from ICE for what they've done here.
And so we have a briefing schedule and I think, look, we have to, we have to throw it back
at them.
We have to, to, to push back on against this because there's gotta be some goddamn consequences
for, for putting us all through the paces so that they can go through this, this, you
know, charade of having power to detain people.
They know what they're doing is wrong and they keep doing it.
They should have to pay for it.
So that brings up a really interesting question because I, you know, I've seen this countless
times on television where, you know, some thug is, is, is walking up to a car and doesn't
like the way the person in the car is in the car.
I don't know what they don't like.
They don't like something about the person sitting in the car and they just smash the window
with, with whatever tool they have that does that in, in, in just one stroke.
Well, who's responsible for that?
What, what happens when, when, when you have one of these people smash your window and, and
vandalize your car, you're supposed to just walk away from that and wish them a nice day
or do they, do they actually face some sort of consequence and how the hell do you do this
when you don't even know who they are?
You don't even see their face, you know?
So there are countless people that's happened to people who have, have had it light compared
to those taken into custody.
But my God, are we supposed to just tolerate this?
Yeah.
There's prop property damage.
And how do you do this?
Right.
I mean, where do I get one of those tools so I can go to their cars when they're finished
and, you know, exact my form of justice.
Yeah.
I mean, it, it, it's a fundamental lack of accountability and there are very few mechanisms
to hold them accountable.
I mean, what are you going to do?
You're going to bring a lawsuit against ICE itself for that.
I mean, it's so time consuming and expensive to even try to recoup the money for property
damage like that.
It's just the effort isn't worth the recovery.
So these people wind up probably just making insurance claims or, you know, whatever they have
to do in order to get.
Does insurance even cover when a cop goes rogue and smashes your window?
I would hope that would fall under definition of occurrence under, under most policies.
Oh, I think that would fall under terrorist act or act of God.
I'm not sure which, but I don't know.
Yeah.
But it's a problem.
You know, when they're going around causing property damage, they should have to pay.
Absolutely.
Individually.
No.
Okay.
We have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the cover time.
Go ahead.
Yes, it's you.
Go ahead.
Don't know what you're doing there, but you're on, you're on the radio or whatever
this is.
No.
All right.
Well, I guess they're unwrapping a candy or something.
I don't know what's going on.
Kyle, let's move on to the next one.
Eight, zero, two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
Folks, you got to be prepared.
I know sometimes we keep people on hold for a while, but you can hear what we're saying.
They can hear us right when they're on hold.
Yeah.
So it's not like you're, you're abandoned, you know, we're, we're, you know, keeping you
company in that form.
And then eventually we get to you.
That's just how it works.
Eight, oh, two, three, two, one, four, two, two, five.
And when we get to you, we bring you on stage and, uh, show people your metaphorical furry
hat.
Mm-hmm.
Um, well, while we're waiting for a call, I want to read this.
We already have a call.
Okay.
Then I'll, then I'll keep that for later.
And good evening.
You are on off the hook over time.
Go ahead.
Are you able to hear me?
Yes.
We hear you fine.
Is that a yes?
That's a yes.
We hear you fine.
Hello?
Uh, I don't know if you guys are able to hear me, but I, I, I want to add a bit to
the whole unfortunate, uh, constant avalanche of the Epstein files.
It's related to, uh, computer hacking.
Well, hang on a second.
You can't hear me?
Uh, I'm just going to continue on talking.
Can anybody else say something to see if this guy can hear you?
Hey, can you hear us?
Yeah.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you fine.
Yeah, we can hear you fine.
Awesome.
Perfect.
So what, you can't hear me?
God damn it.
Why can't you hear me?
I hear myself.
Everyone else hears me.
We tested this.
Whatever.
I hear you all.
I'm going to just be quiet.
I love technology.
Um, just wanted to add, unfortunately, because as the Epstein files keeps going on, the tunnel
keeps getting worse and worse, and this is actually related to hacking.
So, um, about a day or two ago, uh, former, uh, one of, uh, Hope's awesome previous speakers,
uh, Maggie Mayhem, who's also been searching through all the recent release files.
Uh, I don't know if I'm allowed, and I'm not going to, to say who everyone thinks was
the personal hacker Epstein, but, uh, basically they found out that, uh, allegedly he had tried
to attend DEFCON in 2018, and that same contact was also trying to get him extra passes, which
as a follow-up, Dark Tangent has talked about how he dealt with that and denied it and pointed
him to Epstein's Wikipedia page, and that this is how just bad and far-reaching all this stuff
is, including now, very recently, the idea of who was actually getting Epstein connections,
both in the hacker scene and the general tech scene.
Just wanted to add that, because this is going to be the worst rollercoaster ever, but as
they said in Mr. Robot Season 3 at the end, at least the masks are off to some degree, and
we know who all these people are, are, so that's all.
Awesome, okay, thank you, um, for, uh, that characterization of it, it's, it's been, like,
um, a lot of, uh, kind of sifting through, and, uh, yeah, I think it's going to take some
reporting, it's going to take some, some stories about it, and it's, it's very early on, I think,
for, for it, but, um, yeah, we'll have to read about it a little bit more, and if we get some
stories here, we'll definitely share it on the show, and stuff like that, but you're
not wrong.
Yeah, it's more of also just, like, because of how far-reaching this stuff is, because
we've already seen corporations do things like this, of just, like, we're probably going
to find out tidbits of who's trying to bring in who, and who's carrying what, and just,
like, do what the hacker community normally does best, and globally, which is to stay vigilant
and keep hacking.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and, um, I just, it kind of, it's really, uh, interesting, the
sorts of wealth and the intersection of all of that, and, um, we have to sort of appreciate
that, um, a lot of people were being kind of used for, um, the sort of knowledge and, um,
and access in different ways to this subculture, yeah, and, and, like, we just sort of report
on it, we're not stand-ins or spokespeople for it in general, it's a much bigger group,
and, um, yeah, we just, um, we, you never know, kind of, like, who is trying to break into
that group for different, with different motives and stuff, and especially with, like, startup
culture and different kinds of, um, uh, moneyed interests in that vein, it can definitely have
kind of an influence on different people and, and, um, their motivations, but I agree, yeah,
like, you, you, um, you find these things out, the masks do, you, it does, it is revealing,
and that's part of the whole disgust over redactions, and, um, and that's the nature of going through
someone's email.
Thank you, thank you, folks, uh, to abolish, I attack the planet, hang it up now.
Um, we have a, you gotta talk to the callers, if they can't hear me, you gotta, you guys gotta
say something.
Um, and Kyle was, Kyle had it, um, Kyle was holding it down, you were doing great.
I tried.
Um, I was actually bringing a question from the chat, um, Amparorod2000 asks, how many
magazines does the full back issue set come with, is it really the full set, and I was
going to try to answer it, and then I realized, I should ask you guys, you really know, um,
and, well, there's a bunch, if you, if you go to the store, and you look up back issues,
and you scroll through back issues, you'll see a bunch that say sold out, and those are
ones that we don't have, um, you wind up getting, uh, all of those in digital form, and it actually
works out quite well, because you get the entire year, if, say, um, uh, spring 1992 is
out, but all the rest of 1992 is, isn't out, uh, you will get the 1992 Hacker Digest, which
is, uh, basically, uh, kind of like a book form of, um, the entire year in digital format.
Uh, so you'll get those three paper issues, but you'll also get the entire year, uh, digitally
if, if one of those issues is sold out.
So you wind up getting everything in one form or another.
When, you know, when we run out of the, uh, the back issues, they're gone.
We can't make any more.
Uh, so, um, uh, you get everything.
It's, it's hard to say exactly how many you will get, because that does change.
Uh, but if you go through the, the back issue section, you'll get a sense as to how many
are sold out.
Excellent.
And then the other question, to which I'm pretty confident I don't know the answer, but
wanted to come in for clarification.
Uh, does buying stuff from the 2600 store support WBAI, or just 2600?
It's not BAI, no.
Uh, you support BAI by pledging to BAI.
Uh, and we should have said that tonight, uh, go to WBAI.org, buddy.wbai.org, give to
WBAI.org, uh, and pledge whatever you can, uh, and, um, keep 99.5 FM broadcasting, because
boy, that place is really vital.
It's so important to have different voices.
And, uh, if, and when ice comes to town, uh, for real, believe me, that's going to be,
um, uh, a focal point of information.
Um, yeah, on that subject, I wanted to, uh, read something that was posted on social media
by I slip forward, you know, I slip forward.
Oh yeah.
They, they run, uh, an ice app that, uh, I hear every day.
Uh, a couple of weeks ago, I think it went out over the air.
I have a siren alert that I attached to it.
Uh, so every time there's an ice raid anywhere on Long Island, I get a siren.
Oh, right.
We've heard it.
It's embarrassing when you're, you know, in a crowd of people and it goes off, uh, or if
you're in church or, uh, well, there's all kinds of, well, sometimes they're raiding
the church, so it does actually, well, the point is, uh, you need to hear this.
You need to know, uh, today, for instance, a lot of raids in Greenport, a lot of raids
in Riverhead, Hempstead, uh, I can tell you all the places ice is operating on Long
Island, Central Islip, Brentwood, uh, they are out in force and usually they come back
to the same places the next day.
Today, they expanded out East a bit.
And, uh, I know that they were, they were terrorizing some kids in schools and that's
really sick.
And that's why you get, um, a lot of demonstrations out East now too.
You wouldn't expect that, but yeah, you wouldn't, but, uh, this post went up on the 30th of
January and, uh, it reads that approximately 9 30 AM this morning, federal agents were documented
using infrastructure located on the property of the central Islip fire department station
two, um, at 110 Wheeler road without prior authorization to be on or use that space.
When a volunteer with Islip forward approached to document this activity, federal agents threatened
the volunteer with arrest for alleged trespassing, despite the fact the agents themselves operating
in an area where no prior permission had been granted.
Um, immediately following this interaction, the central Islip fire department took swift action
to protect his property and the public temporary restrictions were implemented, including closing
the gate to the area being used and preventing external access, the use of municipal fire
department property for federal enforcement activity without authorization.
And the subsequent, uh, threat directed at a community volunteer raised serious concerns
about transparency, overreach, and respect for local institutions.
Uh, we're deeply grateful to the volunteer firefighters of the central Islip fire department
for their decisive and responsible response.
And that, that is really inspirational.
I heard about that.
I, you know, in the past, uh, fire departments have been a lot more eager to help ice.
I think, I don't want to say for sure.
I think it was Brentwood where they were caught doing that and they actually reacted with hostility
to people who challenged them.
Uh, and in this case in central Islip, it's the exact opposite.
So it's really, really good to see that.
We need to see that also in Nassau County where, uh, ice enthusiast, uh, Bruce Blakeman runs
the county, uh, and, um, uh, basically, um, helps out ice.
It's, um, it's going to be interesting to see because Kathy Hochul has made it illegal
to do that for police departments to help ice throughout New York state.
Uh, we've even seen a Republican, uh, congressperson upstate, uh, introduce legislation to ban that
kind of cooperation as well, a Republican.
So that's where it's gotten.
It's gotten to a really interesting, interesting place.
I believe we have a phone call, but Kyle, I want to have a dialogue with you first before,
uh, I start the phone call here.
Um, it's, it's an odd thing that's going on.
You hear me, right?
Uh, Rob, Gila, Alex, you'll hear me, right?
Yes.
You hear me even when I'm talking quietly, right?
Yes, we hear you.
I do hear that.
Okay, good, good, good.
So, um, what I, um, uh, I'm concerned about is that for some reason, callers can't hear me
on this, on this microphone.
Now, we tested this, we said we tested it, we did, and everything was fine.
Uh, it's possible it's some kind of a loose connection that only seems to happen when I
don't want it to.
So, Kyle, before you touch anything, I'm going to ask you, can you swap out, and tell me if
you can't, can you swap out your microphone for my microphone using the same connections
on the board, and then let's see if they can't hear you instead of me, and then we'll
know it's the connection.
Is that, is that doable?
Maybe.
Okay, well, we'll wait for you to do that, and then we'll take the phone call, and, um,
we'll see if that might fix the problem.
And you guys talk amongst yourselves, because I'll probably be cut off, because he's going
to unplug me.
Okay, well, we did just get an interesting question in the chat, um, from this listener
whose name I'm going to butcher again, so I'm not going to say it, but who plans to
buy the full back issue set, and asks, uh, to everyone in the chat, but I'm also going
to throw this at the folks on the panel.
What is your favorite 2600 issue, and why?
Well.
And Rebel Emanuel's not talking right now, so no, you can't hear him.
No, um, that is an interesting question, and it's hard to pick one out, because I've been
reading 2600 for about 100 years now, and, um, I would say that at any given time, my favorite
issue is probably the most recent one that I've gotten hold of, because that's, that's
new, that's new and happening stuff, and, uh, who the hell do you think you are?
Stop yelling.
I'm not yelling.
I'm in the chat now.
Oh, stuff is going on over there.
I don't know if, uh, there's a lot happening.
Wait, the microphones are working.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Yeah, we heard all of that.
Get off my channel.
The thing is, no, Kyle, Kyle did, he did the swap, but then he didn't tell me he finished,
so I was just sitting there like an idiot, not knowing that he was finished, and he was
looking at his phone, and I just said, did you do anything, and that was taken the wrong
way.
I'm sorry, finish what you were saying.
I didn't mean to interrupt.
So, yes, my, my favorite 2600 issue is whichever the most recent one is that I've gotten hold
of, because it's a bunch of stuff I haven't, I hadn't read yet, and, uh, I'm interested
to see the latest developments and, uh, everything.
I like that answer.
Yes.
The freshest.
The freshest.
The hottest off the press.
There's always something you to learn.
The next issue, that's, that's my answer.
Wow, you really did swap, because I'm coming up under K, and you're coming up under E.
Yeah.
So you really did, you really did swap.
No, that's exactly what I asked.
I was just, I was just checking up on you to make sure you actually did it, and you did.
All right, be gentle with my channel.
All right, so we're going to test it on our next caller, but in answer to the question,
I think you were asking the favorite issue, um, I don't know if it's my favorite issue,
but it's definitely, um, a turning point.
Uh, August, uh, not August, uh, autumn 1989, uh, that was after the Galactic Hacker Party
in Amsterdam.
Um, I returned from Europe, my first trip overseas ever.
I was gone for six weeks.
Uh, kind of similar to the trip Kyle and I recently took, didn't know when I was coming
back.
Just went over there and kept exploring and then said, okay, time to go back.
Uh, and, um, I just, I, I felt refreshed and you can sort of see it in that issue.
Every article just is, um, is really interesting and on topic and it just looks really good.
There's something about the feel of that issue that, uh, was different and, um, inspirational
for, uh, for, for years to come, but that's just one I remember anyway, lots of, lots of
good issues, lots of great covers, uh, and, um, uh, so many amazing articles.
All right.
Uh, did everybody answer the question or is anybody left?
Um, you guys were doing it.
Yeah, I, that's, uh, I think, I think we got, I think we got some good answers to be
getting on with.
Um, unless Alex, you want to jump in with your favorite issue of 2600 ever.
Why wouldn't you include Alex?
Yeah, he's right there.
I, I don't know.
I mean, I, I feel like I can spend so much time with so many of the issues, especially
back in the nineties.
I remember I just have like great memories of lying in bed and reading the, the letters
and the responses and everything.
It was very difficult to pick one in particular.
Yeah.
You're not selling this to anybody.
It's super vague.
Uh, you're going to have to pick, pick a cover at least.
Can you pick a cover?
Pick a cover.
Jeez.
You know what?
I love the, I love the old covers, you know, like the old covers with the, with the, with
the white behind them and all kinds of like, you know, what a description of a cover.
Come on.
Give me a picture, an image, something.
Yeah.
White behind it.
No, you know what I'm talking about.
That was like the, that was the design.
There was a very consistent, almost a trademark type of design back in, back in the nineties.
It was an image on a piece of paper with the very unique thing that we did, but there
must be, actually, I think my favorite ones though, to think of it, if I can go all the
way back to when they were on, you know, big sheets of covers on covers, those were sheets
of paper.
We're talking about issues in particular though, go back to the eighties.
Those were super, super cool.
I used to, I wish I still had them.
I don't know what happened to them.
I've moved so many times that I've, that I've lost them, but those were really cool.
Really, really cool too.
Those were pretty, I think, historical to see.
Well, so those of you who get all the back issues, you get all the covers and whether
you get them digitally or on paper, you get to appreciate them.
And if you get the hacker digest, which is a whole other thing, every year is put out
as a compendium, you get an explanation of every single cover, what they mean or what
we think they meant.
So is the one from spring 96, that's marked as a special red box issue.
Was that designed to look like Time Magazine?
Yes.
Well, it wasn't a coincidence.
We also, we also have one, I think in 96 or 97, we actually have two that look like
Wired.
Yeah.
With the, with the gorilla or orangutan.
I think it's an orangutan.
And then exactly one year later, it's Janet Reno.
But if you look very carefully, the eyes are exactly the same.
Um, yes, yes, I, I, I love that gag then.
And I love it now.
And the, the funny thing about the red box issue, which was, uh, the time magazine thing,
it was kind of, you know, an allusion to mass media, getting it wrong as usual and really
getting it wrong here because there was no article about red boxes in that issue.
So that was, that was kind of funny.
Oh, I have, I have a favorite one that I must've had to be from the nineties, maybe like 95 or
something like that.
Do you remember when we were driving somewhere and this truck passed by and it was the red
box truck.
There was like a red box, blue box truck.
Do you remember this thing?
Yes.
It was like a moving company.
They were in Brooklyn and yes, they, they, they basically their, their thing was we have
red boxes and blue boxes.
And of course for a phone freak, that's just Mecca right there.
And, uh, yeah, I, I think I was with you.
We, we, we, we found their parking lot and took a picture of all these trucks that said
that.
So yeah, that was, that was, that was a good cover.
And that was the one you were involved in.
So yeah, that was a good one.
Yep.
That was a cool one.
Yep.
That was a memory.
It just came flooding back to me.
I feel we owe this person has been on hold so long.
Oh God.
Yeah.
No, we are going to test this and see if they can hear me fine.
Or not hear me.
And if they can hear Kyle, okay.
Caller, are you still there?
Yes.
And I can hear you, Emmanuel.
You can.
Kyle, would you greet our caller here?
Hey, what's up, Rebel?
Yeah.
What's up, Kyle?
You heard Kyle, okay.
Wait, you heard Kyle?
Yeah, I heard Kyle, okay.
But, um, okay.
God damn it.
I hear everybody fine.
I hear everybody fine.
And you know what?
I'll just, I'll just be Kyle from now on and you be Emmanuel.
Maybe that's how it should be.
Who will I be?
I'll be you.
You be me.
As we are all together.
You're Signalville.
You're in Signalville.
You don't have an identity.
Go ahead, Rebel.
What's your comment?
Yeah, that was not me last week or it was two weeks ago that played that, you know, that,
I guess it was an artificial, it doesn't even have to be artificial intelligence.
It was just recordings.
You know, like, uh, the, um, automated, uh, what is it called?
The thing that says 30 cents, please.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the old pay funds.
Remember those?
Yeah.
It's called the automated digital recorded announcement machine.
It takes different phrases and puts them together depending on what the situation is.
Rebel, you're the only person, you're the only person in the Western Hemisphere that
will remember this, but do you remember it used to make some kind of little noise before
it started speaking?
Yeah, there we go.
Quack, quack, quack, quack.
No, it was more like a wah-wah-wah-wah, like that.
No, quack, quack, quack, whatever.
I, uh, if you go to your website.
I can't believe I did that.
Telecom.jo.
There's a website that has that, um, all the recordings of that, you know.
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack.
Yeah, more like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I was always, I always wondered when I was a kid, I always wondered what that meant
and what that was for.
I think it meant that you're about to talk to a computer.
yeah but it's a recording of jean bard and you know people would think they were actually
talking to her you know they would say no excuse me ma'am you know and it would just get all
awkward yeah but it would take a quick the charges are one dollar and 66 cents but thanks for one
minute more or less like that yes yeah yeah rebel uh was that you earlier tonight
i wait yeah i actually was earlier yeah when i couldn't hear you yeah okay so that was him
all right i was right yeah good call everyone else thought it was a fake and i knew it was you rebel
yeah um yeah so that was not me two weeks ago which when i first heard it i thought that it
was you had like a pre-empted show or like a recording uh-huh you know like you have sometimes
were pre-recorded show so i thought and i was like i know i didn't call this this week or last
week or whatever but because i was listening to it anyway okay now so you're innocent talk about
artificial intelligence and like voices that are recording it's time for today's demonstration
oh boy so now we know this is rebel yes it's obviously rebel okay i was in california a couple
weeks ago you go there a lot well i go there every year i mean i don't go there i would like
to go there now i wish i could go there now oh is this a dig at the snow you don't like the snow
well i'm down in the cold yeah it's awesome i'll tell you what it's not going to get any warmer
it's going to be it's going to be well well below freezing all the way through next sunday i was going
to go to florida this weekend to miami but why do you want to go to florida a bunch of fat sweaty
people no don't do that well no well i mean i have family down in florida so i don't i'm sorry
for calling your family fat and sweaty but you know it as well as i do that it's it's much better
where you have seasons i know i know it's california is more exciting than florida oh it is yes
definitely more exciting because you got earthquakes there uh you've got floods you've got landslides
no you've got people that serial killers bikes and skateboards you know i've got surf on the beach
and then smoke marijuana all day and things like that you don't so you you like california i know i
understand yeah um no only thing you were going to give us a demonstration yeah um oh yeah uh okay
california i was you know i'd like to eat there and gaining weight you know i'm 150 pounds now you know
you know you know wanted you know gain more maybe muscle weight more than fat so uh you know i call
this um you know ufc gym you know ufc that you know that that you know fighting show that you know
that looks like a street fight on tv that okay um you know if they have these gyms you know see gyms
and uh you know i want to ask a question you know when they're open till and things like that and um
nope should i do this this way wait this is demonstration you're gonna ask a gym what time
they're open until no no no i'm gonna ask i'm gonna demonstrate what they do when you're um when
you call them they they hang up on you probably no no hold on and i'll demonstrate it okay i'll be
surprised that they don't he's he's got me intrigued rebel fighter well that's just scary but oh yeah
we'll we'll see where that goes listen to me i'm actually waiting for rebel to come back
marietta note this call is being recorded what's your name and can i help you
i'll just press zero
we don't have an option for zero wait isn't that annoying notice the the background noise that they
think that it's an office no but she told you what number you dialed she said zero
hit hit three see if she says we don't have three
if you're interested in a job or the hiring process
i i think you thank you for calling ufc jim marietta your call will be answered shortly
uh oh no that's a human
hi that's all right you know let me just let me get rid of this are you ready for the
oh no he was talking to us without without getting rid of you but every gym you call does
that every ufc jim whether it's marietta california long island los angeles it's the same company so
it's not too surprising what's more surprising is you're calling all these gyms no it's the point
is that i was calling to ask a question and you get artificial intelligence and you press zero and it
says you know one might argue artificial intelligence is calling them as well but um
hey wait a second what i'm sorry a phone tree it's a phone tree it's not it's not ai
no it's not wait can you can you talk to it i'll play it again is how we is how we figured this
out is can you talk to it can you ask it things will it respond yeah and if so can we inject some
rebel has the floor here let rebel do it do his thing
waiting for rebel to come back is what we're doing
ufc jim in rosemead note this call is being recorded okay look what's your name how can i help
you uh no i just want to know about um you know like uh usc and mma and all that other stuff
um operator
sure if you'd like to talk to someone just press one followed by the pound key to be transferred
okay we're not going to do that
all right no problem are you interested in learning about our mma classes or membership
no i just want to learn how to knock somebody out you know like they do in ufc got it
if you're referring to ufc style training we offer mma and brazilian jiu-jitsu classes
interested yeah i just say can you teach me how to knock somebody out
our mma and boxing classes teach striking techniques for fitness and self-defense
want class details hey are you human
no i'm a virtual assistant here to help with your question
what matters most to you do you feel love no worries let me
as a virtual assistant i don't have feeling but i'm here to help you how can i assist but i feel bad
i feel bad for you i feel sorry for you
no problem
it's like you feel bad
rebel stop
i'm here to help with any ufc gym questions
oh well why listen to this rebel why are you interrupting we're having a moment here for god's sake
understood let me know if you have any ufc gym questions whenever you're ready
i can't i can't hear you there's a lot of background noise
is there a lot of people with you right now
nope it's just me well i'm a virtual assistant here to help with ufc gym info
are you playing a recording of a crowd or something because it sounds like a lot of people are there
from ufc gym in long island there's no note this call is being recorded
what's your name and how can i help you wait why are you recording this what who are you going to play it back for
i don't record calls you just said you're recording the call and now you say you're not recording the call which is it
i don't record calls i'm here to assist with any ufc gym questions you have is this call being recorded
no i don't record all right can we call back uh stenographer can we play back
what she said before where she said this call is being recorded
i understand the concern i don't have playback i don't record or
i don't know uh you're under oath you realize that got it all right correct
how can i assist you i'm just a virtual assistant great let me know if you have any
how are you interrupting yourself that's weird because i have two of them i'm calling you have
two of them right why let them talk to each other then that's what i'm gonna do
be quiet and listen
i'm here to assist with any ufc gym questions you have
exactly let me know how i can let me know how i can ufc
ufc gym questions i'm glad to hear you
sure how can i assist you with ufc gym today
sure how can i assist you with ufc gym today great
i'm here to assist you with any ufc gym questions
i'm here to assist you with any ufc gym questions
perfect let me know how i can assist you with ufc gym questions or services
absolutely thank you what ufc gym questions
okay okay uh can i just step in here you're welcome can i please just step in here i'd like
to explain to you that there are two of you can you somehow talk to the other version of yourself
i'm just one virtualist here to help with ufc gym
don't you hear the other person talking at the same time
i'm here to assist with
no i don't hear anyone else i'm here
you didn't hear anybody else say i don't hear anybody else just when you said that
nope it's just me here to assist you with any ufc
we're fucked exactly
i'm here to assist with any ufc gym questions let me know how i can help
absolutely let me know how i can assist you with ufc gym questions or services today
sure what ufc gym questions or services can i assist you with
do you speak any other languages
yes i can assist in spanish i can spread italian german
parlez-vous francais
claro
great let me know how i can assist
sure how can i assist you with ufc gym
god
i don't suppose you speak mandarin
come on please
i don't speak
no i can
don't you think that's a little bit racist
let me know how i can
a little bit racist that you don't speak uh you know
i'm here to ask how can i assist you with
i understand your concern
i'm here to assist
no it's just that you know you speak the western european languages no problem but as soon as we get into
asia oh i don't speak that and you know you're on the funds and people in asia are into uh ufc
what's this rebel really you're making that kind of uh pronouncement can i don't know i don't know
is there either an asian ufc fighter i don't know
can you get rid of one of them at least and maybe let's get rid of one of both
just one because you know we're having a nice conversation until that second okay yeah i got rid of
one i don't know which one but i'm sorry that got really confusing
are you still there assistant
hello is anyone there
i still hear the fake background noise
maybe that's you maybe you're in a crowd of people
it hung up it hung up
wow well finally some good sense
rebel that was entertaining i'll give you that but i'm kind of worn out
so uh give us any
closing thoughts
do you notice how they play like office like office background of like office noises
like they play it to make you think that it's like an office you're going
i didn't hear that
i heard it
oh you didn't
you heard it kyle
yeah that was really from their uh
that call right
i didn't hear that
i guess if you listen to the
recording of
i'm here to help you
are you
are you human
i am an artificial
no
i am an artificial
you know it's awfully hard to talk to you people
we keep interrupting
i see why they get so frustrated
we're getting we're getting some suggestions that i should like
do it like a demonstration at hope
about something like that
yeah you know find us a home and uh
then we'll do the demonstration there how about that
we're gonna uh we're gonna move on because it's it's way late and um
we're gonna take one more phone call
like one more and that's it but rebel thank you
that was that was
that was fun
okay
take care
wow
that was uh that was something
is that amazing he was banned last week in the
the life of the party this week
that's just how it works sometimes
80232 i'm sorry i have you guys turned off
because you were interfering with the artificial intelligence
well now we can interfere with the real intelligence
good luck finding it um
8023214225
is our phone number uh we can take one more phone call
then that's gonna do it
but that that was a lot of fun in the old days we used to uh
prank call various uh services and just conference them in with each other
without saying anything and and let the conversation go where it may but that was
being done with humans and not not robots
i used to uh at at the radio station uh we had a a key phone uh it had five
buttons on the bottom it's like a regular centrax type phone
uh you ever use one of those you press the button down pick up the phone
so we had five of them uh but somebody modified it so you could press two
buttons down at the same time
and what that is a simple thing but basically you you would be able to
connect one line to the other so what happens if you call two operators at the
same time it's it's you know basically operator
can help you operator yes operator and eventually
they just either get into a fight or they they they figure out they're in the
same office or uh they just get super confused
we did this to pizza shops to taxi the taxi drivers really took it seriously
because they thought they were being messed with by the competition
and uh they they were they were basically uh about to like meet up for
real to settle the score uh it was you know people would gather
around for this i i didn't have any particular skill i was just the only one
that did it so i i'd hook people together and we just sit back and listen to
them listen to the and and then we would hook people that knew each other
together and you know they didn't know who called who
and you called me no i i didn't call you my phone rang that doesn't make any
sense and um we we might have we might have
broken up some friendships uh in the process but whatever it was uh it was a
lot of fun and then then the rome phones came uh which allowed you to uh pair many
more lines together and we could get five operators together at the same time
boy that really turned into a carnival so um yeah you can't do that anymore you
can't have that kind of fun anymore it's just it's it's a shame there was no
caller id then too so nobody knew what we were uh who was doing what all right
uh last call of the night good evening you're on off the hook overtime go
ahead hi you accused me of not waiting for you but you cut me off earlier
what was that oh were you the one with the candy wrapper or whatever that noise
was no candy wrapper well there was some kind of noise and we kept talking and
no one said but but if if there was something weird with the wiring or the
board and you couldn't hear me then you had a reason not to say anything uh but
now i i could i could hear the the conversation and you guys not getting to
me and then it cut off and uh what i i pressed the button on my
computer to to hear you through the computer
since the phone call had been cut off uh you were saying oh people know that
they're supposed to wait they can hear us and it's not our fault if they're
impatient or something like that it's hard to remember
a blank phone call and uh how i exactly reacted to it but listen you're here now
that's the important thing what's on your mind okay um
alex as a lawyer perhaps can help my question here
um if someone is the program uh director of one station and both the general manager
and program director of another station in the first station's listening area and they
have not disclosed this isn't this a a bit of a major uh uh conflict of
interest as is stated in the bylaws let me let me just step in here because
we're talking about station business even though we're not on the station
i don't think we should be doing that but i already know what you're talking about
and if i know about it and i don't pay any attention
it sounds like they must have disclosed it
well i've tried to bring it up at board meetings and uh people have shouted me down
and say we might get sued i don't know why he gets sued it's the listener's business
to know this i don't i don't think that's a concern i really don't because anyone can find
out that information you know it's it's it's public information so i don't think anyone's
trying to hide anything well i've been shouted down quite vigorously and
at one one meeting uh town hall meeting the person who whose zoom it was shut the the town hall
down uh poof rather than let me speak well zoom operators have always been a problem uh with with
things like that we have no idea who that is or what was motivating them but i think that's
that's where you need to look for uh issues like this well uh what does alex think of all this
what does alex have a right to know at the board meeting and so forth well i don't know i'd have
to look at the bylaws and i'd have to look at the details of how this person was hired as well
certainly in many contexts people are supposed to disclose their outside business interests if they
could create some kind of conflict or some kind of appearance of partiality uh because you you
don't want you want to avoid all of that right so but i don't really know without having the benefit
of looking into and digging into the actual documents itself but i would say i don't think it would be
per se uh a some kind of conflict of interest unless there was an actual conflict
or some kind of competition between the two stations um or there was a fiduciary obligation
of this person towards one station as opposed you know over and above another so i doesn't
marco rubio have two jobs isn't he you know secretary of state he's also like the archivist or
something something ridiculous like that so but she's programming two stations against each other
you can't listen to both at the same time well it doesn't mean it is according to the bylaws it's a
conflict of interest is it i don't know i mean you can have a totally different audience if it
specifically said he listed in the bylaws and you know bring that up but uh it just seems like a
weird thing to be overly concerned about you know unless unless the job isn't getting done and you
can point to that and say look this job's not getting done maybe it's because you know this
person also works a full-time shift at denny's you know you could come up with any reason uh and and
say that not enough attention is being paid to a particular task well alex would you look into it
and maybe get me an answer uh i don't have a lot of bandwidth i'll put the next refugee on hold and
deal with this i think alex is a lawyer he is not uh your lawyer so in this matter he might have to
uh duck out yeah it would be difficult for me to to dig into this without spending a lot of time and
and um i i i would say you know follow your instincts here you know look at the documents
and um they they should hopefully speak for themselves but it also you know what comes
to mind is like if even if it is a conflict if it's not having any actual effect then what's the
problem as i said you can't listen to both stations at the same time that's going to be true no matter
what yes but she's programming both of them well they're against each other okay but hang on if
you write two books at the same time you know it's not a conflict of interest you're just doing more
work um i'm sorry caller is anyone else upset by this are you just trying to inflame tensions which
is maybe why they didn't let you speak well other people are upset and what you know what if
somebody was programming cbs and nbc i i don't think i'd be able to tell the difference i don't know
i don't know if any humans are programming any of that crap
it sounds to me like you're trying to gin up an argument for the sake of ginning up an argument
we're not we can't help you with this and we're really not super psyched about washing the station
boards dirty laundry during our after show
well we're gonna have to leave it there because uh it's 9 30 and we're getting cranky and tired so
so um good luck uh you know it's uh pick a station to listen to uh and don't worry so much about uh
who's in charge you know because basically you know we're doing our show and no one's telling us
what to do i think you know at these non-commercial radio stations a lot of trust is put in programmers
and that's you know that's the way to do it it doesn't require somebody there um um basically writing
a script and making sure that this particular thing is said at a particular time uh so it's really
you know it doesn't really have the signature of any particular person who happens to hold a
position the important thing is that the stations are staying on the air and that's uh that's a
challenge in and of itself and and and i have to say recently it seems like it's been staying on the
air pretty well and uh we're not living in this dire situation that i think we've been living in for
for years we're gonna have to leave it there though because this could go on all night long i think
that does go on all night long in a lot of places i want to thank everybody who called um please write
to us oth at 2600.com uh if you're interested in hope or you have ideas for hope or questions of any
sort write to feedback at hope.net and um hopefully we can build something really cool i'm looking forward
to this uh a lot of really cool people involved alex i know you have something uh you wish to say
just in relation to the to the last caller here just one final thing i wanted to know for her to
benefit here but i you know in these types of situations i i do think it's the contracts that
probably would control and that just like anything else disclosure of the the two positions
is really and possibly the best disinfectant that there is here right you're shedding light on it
if you're not hiding it you're open and you're transparent about the fact that you're program
director on two different stations and both those stations consent to you being program director
i don't think that there's likely a problem that that would be my my educated guess on this without
digging into the facts and the bylaws and all of that that number one there's disclosure and
that's a disinfectant and if both parties consent so be it i'm pretty sure there are stations uh
commercial stations particularly where someone can be a program director of many stations at the
same time yeah especially if they're they're owned by the same corporate entity yeah that's true
yeah yeah so it's very likely but yeah i don't know if there's if there's evidence of oh uh we we
didn't um air this program which would have been great for our listeners because the other station
had to have it instead uh okay that might be a conflict if you can point to something like that
uh and say yeah you know we're hurting but if it's just this person can't do two things maybe they can
maybe they can do five things you don't know you know it's the important thing is that things are
getting done and my sense is that things are getting done and um i don't say that very often but
i don't know it just feels like um it's not a it's not a constant crisis like it's been in the past
you've heard us in the past listen to our old shows begging for money all the time you know these
these hours long shows where we're pitching all kinds of things yeah it was fun it was great you
know getting support from from from listeners but if we don't have to do that anymore and we can keep
the station going in other ways i think that's preferable
all right yeah and and the consistency with which we've been on the air has been fairly remote we
used to get preempted so much and we're not preempted at all anymore it's amazing yeah sometimes we have
to ask to be preempted because we don't have the staff or we're we're doing other things
yeah okay folks we're gonna have to go uh so any final words from anybody uh 2600 meetings
everywhere this weekend uh check 2600.com slash meetings for info on that absolutely and uh just
keep your heads up and uh keep an eye out yes have fun oh yeah wait oh i'm sorry you're down
you turned me down no i thought i turned me down because i just want to say label e and and you're
you're okay have fun misbehave you know and uh yeah try to try to have a sense of humor that's my
best advice and in uh you know difficult times and uh stay warm look out for people you know that's
all kyle that's all that's all i have nothing about defeating ice and and winning justice for
the people and uh that's that goes without saying where did alex go alex disappeared look he's gone
yeah he left us he just walked away did he say anything rob gila not that i heard nope he he just
dropped off maybe maybe maybe it was accidental maybe it was on purpose i don't know well this is
being written up we we're still on the air yeah but this is this is longer than we usually do this
we're in overtime overtime right now you think i don't want to be somewhere else right now of course i
do but i don't just walk away oh man all right all right post show meeting starts in a few uh folks
thank you very much we'll see you next week bye