Our newscast is produced by Catherine Komp and Vinod K. Joe's, thanks today to Christian
Schwartz.
Our headlines editor is Shannon Young, and our tech team at KPFA in Berkeley includes
Rose Katopchi and Oscar Hernandez.
Our interns are Robert Rosa and Peter Steen.
From the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, I'm Aura Bogado with
Stay tuned this week for continued coverage from the RNC.
And you're listening to WBAI in New York.
The time is 7.02, and normally at this time you would hear this sound, which would indicate
the beginning of Off the Hook.
And technically, we are here in the studio, but we are focusing tonight on the upcoming
Republican National Convention taking place here on these radio waves live from St. Paul,
Minnesota.
That will be starting in just about an hour, but what we're going to do between now and
then is discuss some of the issues involving the many candidates who are part of the political
process here in this country.
And we'll be talking with some people who have some interesting experience with some
of the perspectives.
Stay tuned.
And good evening to everybody.
The program is not Off the Hook.
It's a preview of the Republican National Convention, day two or day three.
It's I guess open to interpretation.
It's supposed to be day three, but day one was pretty much canceled by Hurricane Gustav.
Tonight we have a bunch of things coming up that will be broadcast live here over WBAI.
We have Governor Mitt Romney and Governor Mike Huckabee, both speaking between eight
and nine p.m.
And Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be giving the keynote address at around nine o'clock.
And we're also going to be hearing from Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin.
That's also coming up between nine and ten o'clock tonight.
You'll hear it all here live on WBAI as Pacifica coverage begins at eight o'clock.
What we have between now and then, though, is a bunch of different perspectives, focusing
on various candidates and their positions on certain issues and things like that.
And I'm told Minnesota's not Eastern time.
Oh, this is not Eastern time?
This actually?
All right.
The schedule we have is in Central time, so I guess everything I just told you, add an
hour or two, and we'll just simply...
So she's not going to be speaking until after ten o'clock.
All right.
It's kind of late for her, but we'll see how that goes.
Okay.
We have all sorts of interesting things that we're going to focus on that only people in
the hacker world can probably figure out, things about Sarah Palin and her internet
activity and various other positions like that.
We have Bernie S. joining us from Philadelphia.
Bernie, are you there?
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Yes, I'm here.
Now, I know you've been focusing your attention on the Vice Presidential Candidate for the
Democrats, who is Joe Biden, from the neighboring state of Delaware.
And you have some interesting information about things that he stands for or does not
stand for?
Yeah.
I live very close to the state of Delaware, where Joe Biden has been a senator for, I
think, about 20 years down there.
So he's in the local news a lot.
And I've always kind of liked his personality, and he seems to say what he thinks and so
forth.
But then I did some research over the past week when I heard he was going to be Obama's
running mate, and I found out some disturbing things that I didn't know.
His stand on ... Well, for instance, he doesn't seem to be able to say no to anything the
FBI requests or to anything the movie industry or the recording industry asks for as far
as special legislation, and for the latter two, as far as the movie and recording industry.
He's been a strong supporter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which we've talked
about on this show before.
Bernie, was there anybody, any elected official, who did not support the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act?
To be fair, that was almost unanimously ... In fact, I think it was unanimously enacted.
So to be fair, he has just gone with the flow on these things.
But he has been up front and center on things that the movie industry has requested.
In fact, he was only one of four US senators who was invited to a special party thrown
by that industry in Washington.
So that should give an indication of how strongly he supports that industry, which has really,
that industry has really been against fair rights use of intellectual property that consumers
like us and our listeners use on a daily basis.
So what else did you uncover?
Well, Joe Biden was behind the FBI back in the early 90s as far as being anti-encryption.
He didn't want ... Apparently he agreed with the FBI in saying that there should not be
any securely encrypted data over phone lines or over the internet.
And he pushed for a key escrow, which is something we've talked about on the show here before,
which a key escrow basically is where if you want to use encryption to communicate with
someone, you have to provide the key, the private key, to law enforcement agencies.
So that if they want to monitor what you're doing or listen to what you're talking about,
they can simply do so ostensibly with a warrant.
But nowadays after the Patriot Act, there doesn't seem to be that minor requirement
that they get a warrant.
And even before the Patriot Act was enacted in the early 90s, Joe Biden introduced a bill
that was staunchly anti-encryption.
So he doesn't seem to be for privacy as far as individuals using encryption.
His state is the home to major credit card companies like MBNA, who has basically been
behind legislation that Joe Biden has voted on as far as making it much more difficult
for people to declare bankruptcy, which the credit card industry didn't want people to
be able to do just before the bankruptcy laws were changed.
He's not the populist that some people may think he is.
But again, to be fair, neither are most politicians in either party or in any party.
Now it's interesting.
You mentioned all these things about Joe Biden and the disturbing types of positions that
he takes.
What I'm wondering though is, is this something that's unusual in an elected official?
Do they all pretty much...
For instance, the immunity for the telecommunications companies for spying on Americans illegally.
Everybody seemed...
Even Barack Obama caved in on that.
Who are the people who did not cave in?
I don't know how many did not cave in.
Very few did not cave in to that.
And Joe Biden was one of the senators who did not cave in to that.
So I respect and agree with his view on that.
Well, so that's interesting.
You're saying Joe Biden disagreed with Barack Obama on this, on the telecommunications immunity.
Yes, he did.
He seemed to be very much in favor of what the FBI wanted to do as far as wiretapping
people.
But when it became a more politicized issue more recently, when the Democratic Party was
using that as a big political issue with the wireless wiretapping program that had been
uncovered that this administration had been doing for years illegally and unconstitutionally,
he did jump on that political bandwagon and argue against it and, in fact, voted against
the immunity for telecommunications companies who broke the law to help the government wiretap
Americans.
Is there anything else that you uncovered that you find either disturbing or heartening?
Well, heartening from the standpoint of that if Obama is elected, Joe Biden will no longer
be able to sponsor legislation or vote on it in the Senate.
On the other hand, and on the other hand, a lot of vice presidents don't have a lot
of power, although more recently Dick Cheney has sort of dispelled that tradition.
It's hard to know.
I mean, there are certainly a lot of politicians who are far worse on these issues collectively
than Joe Biden, but I just wanted to lend some balance because a lot of people think
that he purports himself to be a populist and someone who's for the common man's rights,
and he isn't always standing up for what he says he does when you examine his record.
I'd like to also introduce Mitch Altman, who joins us in the studio tonight.
Mitch, you're here from California?
Yeah, I'm visiting.
I'm sorry.
I'm visiting the East Coast.
I was an artist-in-residence in Providence, Rhode Island for a while.
Does any of this surprise you as far as Joe Biden's positions?
No, it's not surprising at all.
You don't get to be a high position in American politics by being a populist.
It seems that way.
Now, moving over to Barack Obama, we have interesting technological type of things that
he's up to.
For instance, the whole text messaging, the announcement of his vice presidential candidate
when it was Joe Biden.
Does anybody have that?
Give them your phone number so that you actually got that message at 3 o'clock in the morning
a couple of weeks ago?
No.
A number of people complained about that.
It's funny that it was 3 o'clock in the morning again that we were focusing on who gets the
call at 3 in the morning, who gets the text message at 3 in the morning.
We have that.
That's rather unusual.
I don't think the Republicans did that with Sarah Palin.
We also had the fun going on in the stadium last week when Barack Obama gave his speech
Thursday night in front of 84,000 people.
He was encouraging people to use their telephones to send text messages.
Either of you know more specifics about that?
I heard.
I was listening to the convention and I couldn't give it my full attention, but I believe I
heard it wasn't Obama himself, but someone on the campaign was encouraging everyone in
the stadium to send a text message in support of Obama to 50 people in your phone book from
your phone and then encouraging those people to pass the same message on to 50 more people.
One can imagine how exponentially the traffic on the phone networks would increase with
this sort of election spam.
So wait, his people were saying, while you're standing in the stadium, send a text message
to 50 people, saying what exactly?
With the specific message, I don't recall what the exact words were, but obviously they
were in support of this ticket and platform, the Obama-Biden ticket, to encourage people
to vote for those candidates in the general election in November.
And the message was that they encouraged us and also encouraged anyone who received that
message to pass that message on to 50 people that were in their phone books.
So you can see how, if this message, if these instructions were followed, how that would
just exponentially reach into the millions in short order.
But I'm kind of curious as to what happened in the stadium when these people were asked
to do this, because it may have been so much additional traffic on the cell phone network
there.
I'm wondering if the Obama campaign made prearrangements with the wireless carriers in that area.
Around the stadium to increase their capacity to handle this kind of a thing.
Because typically, I know I've gone to really crowded events and I couldn't even get a signal
because there were too many.
I could get a signal, but I couldn't get a call out where there were just too many people
using their phones.
And I can imagine that was a high concentration of phone users right there.
Well, I know that I didn't receive any message from this exponential effect, and I would
think that by now I would have, or at least somebody I know would have.
We all have cell phones.
Did any of us get a message from Barack Obama's people?
Mitch?
When I was hanging out in a restaurant in Providence, someone got a call like that.
A call?
Yeah, it was actually a call.
It was from 000000.
And they listened to it, and it was a recorded message from the Barack Obama people.
And they said they didn't know how they got their number.
And then someone across the counter said, well, they're not going to call me.
And then two seconds later, they got the same call.
Interesting.
But that's different.
That's a call from the actual people, the actual campaign headquarters.
What Barack Obama's people were apparently attempting to do is get the attendees, get
the mass public involved in this, doing their work, and I guess becoming activists at the
same time for the cause.
Emmanuel?
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I'd like to point out that I imagine the wireless carriers are very fond of Obama right now
for his campaign for encouraging this, because text messaging is an eight billion, that's
with a B, billion dollar industry every year.
And a lot of people have to pay for every text message they not only send but receive.
I happen to have an unlimited plan, but a lot of people have to pay for every text message
they have, or even if they exceed a small quota.
So basically, this election spam that people may be getting as an SMS could well be costing
them money as well, as opposed to a phone call, which is waste your time.
So I have to consider the possibility that Barack Obama is being supported by the text
messaging lobby.
And we'll be keeping an eye on that in weeks to come for sure.
All right, we're going to shift gears now and look at another candidate, one who is
not gotten very much press attention, at least not this particular election cycle.
And of course, I'm referring to Ralph Nader.
Yes, Ralph Nader is still out there and still kicking.
And joining us tonight in the studio is a Ralph Nader supporter, Voltaire.
Welcome to the studio.
Hi.
So now, okay, here we go again.
He didn't learn his lesson in 2000 where he ruined everything for everybody.
Why is this guy running again?
And what kind of effect do you think he hopes to have?
Admittedly, I think he hopes to have a spoiler effect, but I think that's part of the part
of his appeal that he wants to have, be able to leverage his supporters to make his the
left wing side of the Democratic Party just as effective as the independents and the Democrats
having to get the support of the left wing Democrats, and that's what they have to do
to get the support of the centrists that are not part of the party.
Okay.
Who are the centrists?
Who are the centrists?
The ones that are the mainstream?
I don't know.
The centrists are just people.
I guess it's a term that the Democratic leadership would use, but it's something, it's people
that they themselves that aren't affiliated with parties and aren't going to vote along
party lines and that make the difference between the 50% that support McCain and 50% that support
Obama.
Well, let's look at some of the issues because Ralph Nader has never shied away from the
issues.
He talks about some things that are certainly of interest to us.
Back in 2000, it was all about Microsoft and how he opposed their monopoly status, and
he was more outspoken, I think, than most anyone else.
But he also, he spoke out against, well, here's a quote from him, actually, about domain name
registration.
The federal government currently contracts with Network Solutions, Inc. to manage domain
name registrations, including .com, .org, and .net.
NSI's monopoly on the valuable .com domain names has turned a tiny initial investment
into a firm with market capitalization of $2.5 billion thanks to control of the power
to sell the public the right to use their old domain names.
At no time did the government seek any competitive bids to determine the prices that consumers
and businesses should pay for domain name registrations.
Now, obviously, there are more companies providing domain name registrations now.
I'm not sure when that quote was from.
I think the quote, the date of the quote is on there.
Actually, yes, in tiny print.
1998.
So this is 10 years ago.
Yeah, and I think that's one of the most appealing things about Nader is that he's been tackling
these issues for 50 years, and the fact that in 1998, he actually is bringing these issues
to the table, and it speaks to, even though he's 76 years old and a lot older even then.
He's older than McCain.
Exactly.
But still, he understands, I don't know if he himself understands technology, per se,
but he understands the issues behind it.
Has he taken any views in the last 10 years about technology?
We have positions from 2000, we have positions from 1998.
I assume he was opposed to the MCA.
Of course, he's not an elected representative, so we don't get to see his voting record.
We get to see what he says in public.
But I'm wondering is, has he said anything in public more recently about things involving
technology, privacy, surveillance, that type of thing?
Well, his organization, one of the many organizations he founded was the Center for Public Technology,
which is a large organization that works alongside the EFF and is one of their, I
guess, coalition members.
So he, I guess by extension, he's done a lot to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
which does a lot to help civil liberties in growing technology.
Now what party is he running under?
Right now he's running under an independent party.
In some states, he's affiliated with state parties, and in other states, he's just an
independent.
Because in many states, it requires less signatures to get on the ballot if you're an independent
than being a third party.
And he's already on 30, so far I think it's 38 states he's on.
Now tell us personally, what do you think, I mean obviously he hasn't got much of a chance
of winning, but is he doing better than he was in 2000?
Are more people supporting him?
Will he get above 5%?
Does that matter anymore?
Well in 2000, I think it was like 3%, a little less than 3%, and now he has like 5% in terms
of polls.
So he's getting more now than in 2000.
But I think it's interesting because if the polls, not all the polls show him in it, but
the polls that show him in it also show Bob Barr, who has like 7%, the libertarian candidate.
And when you include the libertarian and the independent Ralph Nader, Obama ends up doing
better because Barr takes more away from McCain than Nader does from Obama.
And where does Ron Paul fit into all this?
Ron Paul, he's still in the Republican, he's still trying to fight his way into the Republican
Party.
Well he's in a different city, he's in Minneapolis and they're all in St. Paul, so they're just
basically shouting at each other across the Mississippi.
Okay, so now finally, what would you say to people that remember 2000 and actually
blame Nader for what happened with the country getting Bush as a result of Florida?
Do you think people should think that way when going into the voting booth?
Should they vote for somebody that doesn't have a realistic chance because they might
turn into a spoiler?
Should they worry about things like that?
I think it depends on your priorities.
I think Obama is, if people think that Obama is moving too far to the right with his support
for telecom immunity and getting into issues like that.
I assume Nader doesn't support that, he's spoken out against it.
No, exactly.
And if you want to prevent another Democratic race, another race where the Democratic candidate
moves too far to the right like in 2000, I think it's important to support Nader.
But I do admit that it has its side effects.
I mean, if you were in a state like Florida or Ohio or something like that, with the current
electoral system, it's all or nothing depending on who votes, you know, who gets the most
votes in that state.
Would you advise somebody to vote for Nader in that situation where votes for Nader could
take away from Obama and you wind up with McCain as a direct result of that?
I personally would, but I mean, it's not an easy decision.
Did Ralph Nader address that issue?
Yeah, well, that's just a central issue that he needs to be, that he thinks it's more important
to have your votes marked down as a protest vote, which states that I will not support
the Democratic Party if it moves so far to the right, as opposed to supporting them and
allowing them to move closer to the Republican Party.
Okay.
Very interesting.
And I think a lot of people don't realize that there are multiple candidates.
I mean, people who listen to BAI certainly do, but a lot of people don't realize that
in various other parts of the country.
It's Obama-McCain, and that's what we're going to do right now.
We're going to move over to McCain.
Dot Red joins us.
Hello.
Welcome to the studio.
Now, we've got some interesting material here on John McCain, and of course, this is his
week.
He's giving his acceptance speech tomorrow.
Let's look at his view towards technology.
Actually, this is kind of an amusing exchange between him and New York Times a while back.
What websites, if any, do you look at regularly?
McCain answered, Brooke and Mark, his advisors, his aides, show me Drudge Report.
Obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge.
Sometimes I look at Politico, sometimes Real Politics, sometimes.
At this point, Mrs. McCain, who is in the room, and Mrs. Buchanan, Babe Buchanan, both
interject Megan's blog in the background, and he says, yes, excuse me, Megan's blog.
We also look at the blogs from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper
there that are just part of your blog.
But do you go online for yourself, he was asked.
They go on for me, he answered.
He doesn't go on himself.
They go on for me.
I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on
myself.
I don't expect to be a great communicator.
I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point
where I can get the information that I need, including going to my daughter's blog first
before anything else.
Question, do you use a BlackBerry or email?
Answer, no.
And then Mark Salter joined in, one of his advisors.
He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.
So if he's basically, apparently he uses other people's BlackBerrys and doesn't have one
of his own.
What do you make of this?
Do you think he's technically savvy in any way?
Is that important?
From that, from what he said, it doesn't sound as if he's very technically savvy, which I
find very interesting for some of these strong points, which he does take on technology,
like being against the Net Neutrality Act.
Yeah, so now he has a strong position against Net Neutrality, which basically would preserve
what we have right now, where the net is fairly equal as far as access.
But it's disturbing in a way to see this position where an advantage would be given to those
companies that pay more money.
So you could find yourself unable to connect to a website that's a bit controversial because
there isn't enough money flowing to have that website connected to.
Do you have any feelings on the Net Neutrality issue?
Yes.
A lot of people are worried that it'll shift into what they call a tiered type of network.
But a lot of people also consider that to be preemptive, and they would prefer not regulating
it unless it becomes a problem.
He's taken that same stance on that matter.
Here's an interesting, from his website, from johnmccain.com, under technology, John McCain
is uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological revolution.
He is the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
The committee plays a major role in the development of technology policy, specifically any legislation
affecting communication services, the internet, cable television, and other technologies.
Under John McCain's guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that
spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology that enables Americans to
surf the web while sitting at a coffee shop, airport lounge, or public park.
We didn't know McCain was behind all that.
When you're surfing the web, he basically had a hand in that.
To maintain American leadership in the world, John McCain believes we must nurture the
conditions under which entrepreneurs can prosper, and the American people can reap the rewards.
As president, John McCain would encourage investment in innovation, develop a skilled
workforce, champion open and fair trade, reform intellectual property protection.
That's interesting right there.
Keep the internet and entrepreneurs free of unnecessary regulation, and ensure a fully
connected citizenry.
Let's look at a couple of those issues.
Keeping the internet and entrepreneurs free of unnecessary regulation.
How do you read that?
Well, generally, I read that as his stance against the net neutrality.
He does say elsewhere on his website specifically against that kind of term.
But that seems to be a common conservative move to deregulate as much as possible, even
the threat.
I can say that McCain's view on deregulating the internet, or having the internet be quote
unquote deregulated, is very nuanced, because he's also supported the bills which have outlawed
internet gambling based in the U.S.
Right.
Now, there's a couple of interesting issues related to that, the things that he has supported,
the things that he has voted for.
For instance, and Bernie, I know you take a particular interest in this, McCain co-authored
the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPA, C-O-P-P-A, right?
Governing the online collection of information about children younger than 13 years of age,
and giving parents greater control.
COPPA became law in 2000.
This is being pointed at as one of his crowning glories, one of his achievements.
Now, the interesting thing is that there's something else called COPA, C-O-P-A, and it's
the same exact year, 1998, I believe this was co-sponsored by such people as Trent Lott,
Jesse Helms, Rick Santorum, and John McCain.
And this was the Child Online Protection Act, and it has been ruled unconstitutional.
It is not in effect, but this is not on his website.
What is on his website is C-O-P-P-A.
Bernie, do you think the difference between those two, is this something that has a lot
of people confused?
Oh, it's gotten me confused.
In both cases, they were attempts by John McCain's party to basically regulate content
on the internet.
Not obscene content, well, they were against obscene content, but these laws didn't address
obscene content.
They addressed what is vaguely described as indecent content.
And that term was never defined in any of the legislation, so that's why it was struck
down as unconstitutional, because the term indecent was unconstitutionally vague.
So I really don't like politicians trying to control content on the internet that's
not illegal for reasons of obscenity or whatever.
All right, in addition on McCain's website, we see that he authored the Children's Internet
Protection Act, C-I-P-A, requiring libraries and schools receiving federal funding to filter
from their computers with internet access, pornography, and other material considered
harmful and inappropriate to minors.
And that was signed into law in 2000, and upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court
in 2003.
So I guess these are not considered unnecessary regulations by McCain, would you say so?
Yeah, he seems to be against regulation unless it has to do with enforcing the conservative
sense of morality.
Some cases you can agree with not being allowed to watch pornography in school, but terms
such as indecent can snowball into a more dangerous road of censorship.
Well then, I think that's pretty much all we have on McCain as far as these particular
stands on technology and freedom of speech and things like that.
Emmanuel?
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
Well, it was alluded to that John McCain does not use his...well, he doesn't allude to it,
he actually is quoted as saying that he doesn't have a BlackBerry and he doesn't get online
himself.
And I've heard it reported by several reporters in the mainstream media that Barack Obama
personally carries around five electronic devices like a cell phone, a PDA, some...I
don't know how I can carry around five, but supposedly a lot of reporters have seen him
with five different electronic devices on his belt for communicating with various people.
So that would indicate to me that someone has some technical savvy, and whether their
technical savvy translates into positions that we would be in favor of, I'm not really
sure.
But certainly complete ignorance of the technological issues makes one unqualified on the face of
it to take stands on issues related to technology.
Okay.
And Dott Redd, go ahead.
Well, I do think it's interesting that he says that he's uniquely qualified to lead
the nation in this technological revolution.
He does support interesting things like more access throughout the country for broadband
to the country.
Well, are there people against broadband?
Not everybody's for the government pushing such a thing.
All right.
So that's what we've been able to uncover on McCain as far as various bits of technology
and things like that.
Now we move over to Sarah Palin, the newcomer, the one that is on everybody's mind and has
been introduced in the last week as a surprise vice presidential candidate for the Republicans
this year.
Now, I was able to uncover a few things that are of interest.
For instance, when was this?
This was last year, September 20th of last year, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, declared
Cybersecurity Awareness Month, whereas many citizens, schools, libraries, businesses,
and other organizations use the internet for a variety of tasks, including keeping
in contact with family and friends, managing finances, conducting research, enhancing education,
and conducting business, whereas critical sectors are increasingly reliant on information
systems to support financial services, energy, telecommunications, transportation, health
care, and emergency response systems, and my favorite part, whereas internet users and
our information infrastructure face an increasing threat of malicious attack by viruses and
loss of privacy from spyware and adware and a whole lot of other things along those lines.
I declare Sarah Palin, governor of the state of Alaska, proclaim October 2007 as Cybersecurity
Awareness Month in Alaska, encourage all the citizens of this state to learn about cybersecurity
and put that knowledge into practice in their homes, schools, workplaces, and businesses.
So there you go.
She's right on top of the issues as far as that goes.
Now, interesting online development already.
The online site of intrade.com, go to www.intrade.com and you can actually look this up.
They are basically – they created a contract on Tuesday on the likelihood that John McCain
will drop Palin as his running mate.
Yeah, this is – it's an online prediction market based in Dublin and they basically
have all sorts of scenarios and this is one of them.
After opening at a probability of just 3 percent, the odds on Palin being cut from the ticket
climbed to 18 percent at around 9 a.m. and have since settled at around 12 percent.
So I'm not really sure if you can make money at this somehow or some other fun stuff.
Now, did they mention how they come up with these predictions?
You know, I don't know how any of this works.
It's just – it's magic, it's bells and whistles.
Voltaire, do you have some clue?
These types of websites are people basically gamble on whether or not something will happen
and the stock is – if the value goes zero, whether or not the event takes place.
All right.
Well, go ahead.
You could also draw into question that the people who participate in it may be gender
biased and thus the results could be polluted.
Very true.
Very true.
We can look at some things in the back – back in history with Palin by simply looking things
up.
There has been so little research done simply by the – well, by the candidates themselves,
by the Republican Party that you can still find some very interesting tidbits if you
look around.
And in Alaska – in Alaska, there are all sorts of oddities that don't take place
in other states.
It's kind of like a small community, the entire state.
I was listening to Fox News Radio on the way in and they're doing like kind of an infomercial
for McCain.
It's pretty much what they're doing all week actually.
And one of the things that they're saying about Sarah Palin is that she has successfully
been the governor of our nation's biggest state.
Now that's an interesting statement because yes, geographically, Alaska is the biggest
state.
But as far as population goes, I believe they're number 49, second to last.
Wyoming is the only one that has less people.
So yeah, interesting take on that.
I guess you can stretch things in all different directions.
Now if you look back a little bit, if you do some digging, you can find some small newspapers
that have reports on the gubernatorial race, on the mayoral race that she was involved
in.
And here's an interesting bit from only two years ago, from August 18th, 2006.
As the campaigns unleashed last-minute media blitzes on the airwaves, the Republican candidates
for governor faced each other in person Thursday night for a roundtable debate on public television
addressing a host of old and new issues.
Some of the livelier moments came when candidate Sarah Palin, John Binkley, and incumbent governor
Frank Murkowski were allowed to pose questions to each other.
And this is an interesting question right here.
What about the death penalty?
Well, Murkowski said he's not ready to make the leap to capital punishment.
Binkley reiterated his answer to an abortion question that he believes in the sanctity
of life from conception until natural death, and he said he believes in strong punishments
such as life without parole.
Only Sarah Palin, though, spoke up in this particular regard when mentioning extreme
cases such as, well, let's say the murder of a child.
Palin said, my goodness, hang him up.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So, we have that particular quote there, which is not being widely reported.
Now, also there was some controversy.
A glossy postcard promoting Republican Sarah Palin's candidacy for governor violates Alaska
law, according to state officials.
Even though it came from an outside group, Palin's Democratic rival, Tony Nowles, said
she's responsible for the violation.
The postcard features a picture of a smiling Palin.
It was sent out by the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Governors Association and has been
arriving in mailboxes this week.
Sarah Palin likes to cast herself as the most ethical candidate, yet she has repeatedly
refused to tell RGA to butt out of her campaign, despite assurances from the Alaska Public
Offices Commission that it's okay for her to call them.
A spokesman for the Palin campaign dismissed Nowles' claim as simple politics.
What would Tony Nowles have us do?
Have everyone give it back, said a spokesman.
Basically, they're saying the Palin campaign had nothing to do with the Republican Governors
Association or the postcard.
As far as I know, they sent this mailer out on their own volition.
The Republican Governors Association did not return calls to its East Coast office after
business hours and has no known Alaska office.
Alaska state elections bar outside groups interfering in Alaska elections and makes
campaign efforts, such as the RGA's mailer, illegal, and that's according to the executive
director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
It's a completely prohibited act.
The ban on outside money doesn't apply to advocacy of issues and doesn't apply to ballot
measures, but the RGA mailer, according to the Alaska Public Offices Commission, was
obviously intended to help Palin beat Nowles.
There's no way they could even pretend it's issues advocacy.
Basically there was that whole controversy.
That's only taking place a couple of years ago.
There was also one other interesting fact that was uncovered about an editorial in her
hometown newspaper, in Sarah Palin's hometown newspaper published about 11 years ago.
The Frontiersman was her newspaper.
Basically saying that she was not a good mayor, a lousy mayor in fact.
Now I looked at the website for the Frontiersman and they have a very good archive of all sorts
of material going back many, many years.
You can look up all sorts of articles.
That article, that particular article is not there.
That cannot be found.
I was able to find quotes from it, taken from different sources, however I can't be 100%
certain that all of these sources are completely accurate because it doesn't appear on the
Frontiersman.
I wonder why.
But here are some of the quotes that happened, that took place in 1997, February 7th, 1997
from the Frontiersman.
The mayor's administration has been one of contradiction, controversy, and discord.
While she will blame everyone but herself, we see mostly Sarah at the center of the problem.
Palin promised to change the status quo, but at every turn we find hints of cronyism and
political maneuvering.
We see a woman who has long since surrendered her ideals to a political machine.
Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple, the truth.
That was when she was mayor of a town with under 10,000 people.
I believe she won that election with 900 votes.
Now there's a whole other interesting perspective to Sarah Palin and that involves, and you
may have heard this story late last week.
On Wikipedia, some changes were made to Sarah Palin's page, a page that describes her.
And basically those pages were, I guess the mood was changed to be a lot more positive
and supportive.
Criticisms were erased.
Joining us on the phone from California, from high atop a mountain in California, is a fast
busy.
Okay.
Uh, Bernie, are you still there?
Okay.
Bernie.
I'm here.
Okay.
Uh, Bernie is not there.
So just, if you could disconnect that.
Uh, well, okay.
Uh, Virgil Griffith.
Are you there?
Virgil, are you there?
You disconnected the mic.
All right.
Well, we're sorry.
We disconnected everybody.
So we have, uh, we have nobody to talk to right now.
Um, all right.
Well, let me read something about this story.
Um, this actually appeared in the New York times in the 24 hours before the McCain campaign
put the finishing touches on a surprise announcement Friday that governor Sarah Palin of Alaska,
uh, would be the Republican vice presidential candidate.
One Wikipedia user was putting the finishing touches on her biography on the site.
Uh, beginning at 2am Eastern time on Thursday, a Wikipedia user with the name young trig
began an overhaul of the article, adding compelling stories about her upbringing, including that
she earned the nickname Sarah Barracuda because of her intense play as point guard for her
high school basketball team and that she and her family, uh, her father, I would sometimes
wake at 3am to hunt moose before school.
Um, yes, uh, many details were called from and footnoted to the book, Sarah, how a hockey
mom turned Alaska's political establishment on its ear by Kayleen Johnson.
Uh, soon enough, young trig pivoted from the biographical to the political, adding that
Mrs, uh, Ms. Palin had high approval ratings as governor and that as mayor, she had kept
her campaign promises, reducing her own salary as well as reducing property taxes, 60%.
As governor young trig wrote, her tenure is noted for her willingness to take on oil companies
and that she has been called a politician of eye popping integrity.
Both of those statements were attributed to a profile in the conservative weekly standard
magazine.
Uh, in total young trig, whose usernames are referenced to Ms. Palin's infant son, trig
made 30 edits to the article, all positive and largely unnoticed since they came at a
time when few were discussing her as a possible running mate of Senator John McCain.
Now last year, a graduate student, Virgil Griffith created a clever website known as
wiki scanner that made it easy to detect where anonymous editors of Wikipedia were accessing
the site in the process, companies, government agencies, and yes, politicians were caught
in the act of spiffing up their Wikipedia entries, even as many assumed that anonymity
would make them safe.
Wikipedia incredibly and mercilessly keeps a record of every change made to every article.
This from the New York times and the Virgil Griffith, I think joins us now from high top
of mountain in California.
Are you there Virgil?
Yes, yes, yes.
I am here.
Okay.
Uh, could you tell us maybe the, uh, the significance of these changes occurring so close, uh, and
in advance of the announcement of Sarah Palin?
Sure.
Well, there are a few things to say that the first thing is that, um, as a, I think the
New York times missed, uh, the, the main story here, but I'll get that in a second.
Um, so if you look at the number of edits to, to Sarah Palin's page just by day, uh,
there is, and there is a market increase, uh, right before her announcement.
So her announcement, uh, as, as, as, as a possible VP was on, was on August 29th.
If you look at the number of edits, uh, into the page, you're leading up to that.
Oh, let's see.
I got a list here.
Um, see, so, so, so on, on, on the 20th, it was four and on the, and on the 23rd, it was
16, 25th, eight, 26, seven, you know, so, and so on and, and, and, but, but, but then
on, on, on the 28th, it, uh, it jumps from six to two to, uh, 72.
And then after that, it had to be a story hits and it didn't, it jumps up, jumps up
into about a thousand, but you know, but that's, that's, they're not being very excited.
Um, but yeah, so it's very clear that on the 28th people knew that, uh, that, that, that,
that, that it was going to be the pick.
I mean, because I mean, I mean that jump is, I mean, I mean it's over 10 times.
Well, yeah, Virgil, it's interesting because apparently people in Alaska, elected officials
in Alaska didn't know this until, until the day after they weren't called.
She wasn't vetted in the, uh, in the normal way.
So, uh, how high up on the chain do you think this person had to be to have this information
beforehand?
I have no idea.
Um, I mean, I mean it, it, I mean it's possible.
It was a completely free chance, but that just seems so unlikely.
I mean, one day before, and you make tons of edits to her page, does the moment just
hit you?
It seems kind of odd.
So, it seems pretty clear that some people knew.
I know there was a bit of an investigation.
This really hasn't been reported in the media.
But when looking at these edits, the IP address apparently originated on an AT&T DSL line
in either Fullerton or Irvine, California?
Well, okay, so these are just some other edits.
So, we do not know where Young Trig was editing from.
We just simply don't know.
And I've tried really, really hard to find out, but sorry.
But there were some edits that were anonymous that took place on August 21st that are very
interesting.
And if you ask me, it's much better than the Young Trig.
August 21st?
Okay, that was a while back.
What were those edits?
That was a while back.
So, for those of you who want to write this, you can look at it on Wikipedia yourself.
IP address is 71.138.164.23.
And if you do a reverse lookup, you can trace it back to Irvine, California on the AT&T DSL line.
Okay, so this is not Young Trig.
This was somebody else, apparently.
Yes, well, this is somebody else, yes.
I mean, it's possible.
This could be the same person as Young Trig.
But we have no idea who Young Trig is or where they're editing from.
But these edits are really nice.
And I want to tell you about them.
So, this IP address made seven edits over ten minutes.
And I'll give you some of the highlights from them.
So, the first thing they did is that they did it all on Palin's page.
They made three edits to the section headers.
They changed Approval Ratings to High Approval Ratings and Commissioner Firings to Commissioner Dismissal.
And then they completely blanked a section called Investigations.
And the Investigation section was entirely properly cited and everything.
So, there's really no reason to remove it.
Yeah.
And then after that, they made a very nice change.
Oh, sorry.
So, and most of their changes other than this, they didn't remove anything bad about Palin.
But they took a lot of neutral things and made them sound, you know, like a little bit better.
It was more of a puff editing rather than whitewashing.
But, yeah.
But, no.
Go ahead.
Is this something that is happening all the time with all the candidates?
Or is this something that was unique in this particular case because she was a relative unknown?
I think it is unique in this case because it wasn't unknown.
I mean, so on August 21st, Palin's page had ten edits and was composed of six of them.
So, I mean, this is an extremely low importance, low traffic page.
So, anything remotely suspicious on this page, you know, it's probably targeted.
But, no.
There's actually one very nice one that makes me think this was like a professional job.
So, there was a section where it was describing Palin's dismissal of who she was.
Well, anyway, there was a person on her staff and she dismissed them.
And there was a citation to the local newspaper, ADN.com.
And the person kept the citation there but changed the link of the citation.
And it was for a much more positive link.
So, let's see.
So, these are all from what, the Anchorage Daily News, I think.
Yeah.
The Anchorage Daily News.
The previous citation was to an article titled, Monaghan says he was pressured to fire a cop.
Okay.
So, that's the first one.
And it changed the citation to an article written at the same newspaper written a few days prior with the title,
Governor offers Monaghan a different job.
Okay.
So, they knew what they were doing.
They obviously are pretty slick as far as getting a different impression out as to the same story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
I especially like that because they kept the citation.
The citation is the same and it's even to exactly the same newspaper.
But the tone of the article is completely different.
And that's just such a subtle thing that I can't imagine like a normal person doing that.
To what you were saying before about if other politicians possibly modify or someone that works to modify their pages on sites like Wikipedia,
I think that's probably something that's going to become possibly more common as we're starting to see that,
they're starting to realize that technology is extremely important.
People like Barack Obama sending out text messages and so on.
Right.
But I think what a lot of people don't realize is that it's so easy to have this traced back.
I mean IP, virtually IP is recorded someplace, right?
We don't have access to the IP, but Wikipedia does.
Right.
You are right.
So, Jimbo Wales knows where Young Trip was editing from, but we don't.
Okay.
Interesting.
Well, that's something that hopefully we can get more information on.
Maybe we can ask him.
Well, let's do that.
I think you have his number, so maybe you can give him a call.
Also, joining us on the phone right now from the state of Alaska is our own Greg Newby from the HOPE Conference.
Greg, are you there?
Hey, yeah.
Greetings from beautiful Phoenix, Fairbanks, Alaska.
Well, now, you must be pretty surprised.
Would you say people in Alaska were kind of surprised by this election of Sarah Palin?
I mean even more surprised than everyone else because most of us have actually heard of Sarah Palin,
and we woke up and there she was all over the radio and television with this surprise announcement.
Now, what's the average reaction of people on the street in various parts of the state?
They think it was some kind of a joke or was it something you expected?
I guess it's been sort of surreal because we live in a state that really is fairly obscure.
You've been hearing about in the news, you know, the news coverage of Alaska is something that happened with the Exxon disaster
and happens every once in a while with ANWR, but basically we're not in the news at all.
And here we've been a major portion of the news for the last several days.
So it's really very strange.
So it's been a conversation starter.
I don't think I've heard a lot of shared opinions on whether it's, as you hear in the local state, what we call outside.
All right.
Well, we only have a few minutes.
Has it been good or bad?
We don't know.
We only have a few minutes left.
Maybe you can tell us something that the rest of us down here in the lower 48 might not realize about what it takes to be the governor of Alaska.
What's different about that particular state?
What do you guys have that we don't have?
Well, as you hear, we have a lot of land, a lot of space.
We have huge, huge dollar pressure from the oil companies to do oil exploration in ANWR to keep the pipeline flowing and keep it secure and so forth.
But a very low population density.
And I think as a governor, the main thing that she's needed to do is try not to do things that are too illegal, like the previous administrations have,
and also try to make a little bit of progress.
But as a governor, you sort of steer direction a little bit, but she has not really picked up on too many issues.
There's only a few issues that the governors have control of.
One of these, there's a rumor, and I want to confirm, that when you live in Alaska, you get money every year from the Alaska Permanent Fund Distribution,
which is basically an oil sort of payoff scheme they have here.
And one of the things that she did do is she added $1,200 this year, so we're going to be getting an extra $1,200 with their annual payoff.
And where does that money actually come from?
Well, it comes from, as my understanding is, it comes from the same place.
Essentially what happens is the oil companies pay taxes for extracting oil from Alaska, and that money goes into a fund,
and every year there's a distribution from the fund, so it's a little like a trust fund sort of paying off interest.
And everyone in Alaska this year is expected to get about $2,000 per man, woman, and child from that fund,
plus an extra $1,200, which is going to offset the energy costs in Alaska, which are very, very high.
And I guess something like that, adding money to that, would instantly make her rather popular.
It does help, and I think she took a lot of credit for it, and my understanding is that she was at least the major proponent of the idea.
I don't know if it was originally her idea, but she did certainly get credit for bringing that extra $1,200 into people's pockets.
Now there are also a couple of things that, I guess being the mayor of Alaska, a state like Alaska, you don't have to worry about,
such as illegal immigration, for instance.
I think you pointed out to me earlier that you border the Yukon pretty much, and there's only 35 inhabitants over there.
Yeah, and Siberia on the other side.
Siberia, and then you have homelessness. That's not really an issue because, well, it's really cold up there.
You have occasional summer homelessness, but we don't have any winter homelessness.
So these are issues that Sarah Palin has not had to deal with, even though she's governor of a state,
and yeah, technically the biggest state of the nation, but also the 49th in population.
Yeah, and with a huge coastline, and the Coast Guard is present here.
I mean, it's very interesting. There's a lot of military bases.
So, I mean, you can look at things that do exist that aren't that different,
but you can look at a whole bunch of things that just don't exist in Alaska,
like the homelessness problem, the immigration problem, and a number of other things.
Okay. Well, we're pretty much down to our last minute.
So any concluding thoughts on where you think this is all going to head as a native of Alaska?
Well, as I said, I think the main thing that Sarah does have going for her is she's not anyone else.
She does have some unique standpoints, and her views are sort of out there.
Unfortunately, as you just covered in your research, she doesn't seem to have a whole lot of views
or any real skills or interests in technology, which is what we like to care about the most on this show.
Well, she did declare Cybersecurity Month or whatever that was.
You know, I was in Alaska at that time, and I wasn't aware of Cybersecurity Month.
I work at a supercomputing center at the university.
Well, some virus must have gotten in the way and prevented the message from getting to you.
Yeah, I didn't get that particular email, I guess.
But she certainly is not a major technology user or proponent.
Her view of technology is putting in things like roads and railroads and transportation and things like that.
That can be important, of course, but it's not email and privacy policy and that sort of thing.
Okay, Greg, we want to thank you very much for joining us and giving us perspective on what it's like to be an Alaskan.
With Sarah Palin, now Vice Presidential Candidate, Virgil Griffith,
thank you for speaking to us from the top of the mountain and enlightening us on Wikipedia and the various nuances.
I also want to thank Voltaire and Dot Red and Mitch Altman and Bernie S. down there in Philadelphia
for giving us all sorts of perspective.
Stay tuned now for live coverage from Pacifica National on the Republican Convention taking place in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Tonight we'll be hearing Rudolph Giuliani and Sarah Palin, among others.
Are there speakers?
Welcome to unconventional convention coverage from Pacifica Radio of the 2008 Republican National Convention.