And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York, it's 7 o'clock, time once again
for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
It's 7 o'clock, time once again for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
It's 7 o'clock, time once again for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
It's 7 o'clock, time once again for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
Good evening everybody, the program is Off The Hook, Emmanuel Goldstein here with you
on this Wednesday evening, first week of June, and welcome tonight to Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Mike here in New York.
Hi.
Joined by Gus, Redhack, Rob T. Firefly, Matt Kevin, and Voltaire.
Yeah, we have a lot of people to thank, we really do.
Let's get right to this, because we had an amazing fun drive over the last four weeks.
Not just us, but the entire station.
We did very well.
We actually went over our goals, and it's a good sign of things to come, that we're
going to be strong and have all kinds of improvements and good programming ahead.
And it's only because of our listeners that this is possible.
So what in God's name is going on down there, Bernie?
You have a theme now?
Oh, I'm sorry, that won't happen again, my fault.
Well, I kind of liked it.
What was it?
Your musical theme.
No, it's not.
It was just computer sounds.
Yeah, I think that's Bill Gates' musical theme.
That's some proprietary software there.
Yeah, we might have to pay a fee for that.
That's for the next show.
Okay, we divided this up into four weeks, and basically we're thanking everybody right
now.
So let's just go quickly through the list.
This is for week number one.
We want to thank Stanislav from Pelham.
Oh, sorry.
Brian from St. James, New York.
We practice this, Gus.
I thought it was going to be piece of list.
I thought it was going to be a piece of list.
I thought it was going to be a piece of list.
I thought it was going to be a piece of list.
Okay, go ahead, Rob.
Joe from Mountainville, New York.
Oh, and from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Eric from Caledon, Ontario, Canada.
Kathe from New Rochelle.
I'm sorry if I pronounced this wrong.
Marius – M-A-R-I-U-S.
How did you pronounce that?
It's fine, I think.
It's not fine if that's how you pronounce it.
I know Marious.
You know, in that one song.
I'm going to try to be functional, because it sounds a little bit uncomfortable.
Marius, he pronounces it Marius.
Marius from Oslo, Norway.
Adam from Holmdel, New Jersey.
Susan from New York, New York.
Michael from Darien, Connecticut.
Also Michael from Queens, New York.
Another Michael from Westbury, New York.
Three Michaels in a row, what are the odds?
Kevin from Southport, Connecticut.
Bernice from Plainfield, New Jersey.
William from New York, New York.
And John from Patterson, New Jersey.
That's the first week.
The second week.
Why don't you start, Gus?
Patrick from Brooklyn, New York.
Rondell from New York, New York.
Gail from Roselle, New Jersey.
I've never heard of Roselle, New Jersey.
Craig from the Boogie Down Bronx.
John from Norwalk, Connecticut.
Well, that's really Jaan, it's J-A-A-N.
J-A-A-N, is that Jaan or?
And if it's not, then we've misspelled your name,
so you might wanna let us know that.
By the way, if you hear your name on this
and you had no intention of donating to the show,
actually, I guess you wouldn't be listening either,
just let us know that.
But, and if you don't hear your name
and you donated during the show, let us know that too.
But in all likelihood, we got your name.
If you donated after the show,
you're on a whole different list.
I wanna thank Adam for the second time
from Holmdel, New York.
He pledged during the first show as well.
And McNeil from Jefferson Valley, New York,
who appears to have pledged twice.
And Jimmy from New York, New York.
On the subject of McNeil from Jefferson Valley,
I believe, Rob, you took that pledge
and he did pledge twice in a row for the same thing,
which is gonna confuse people no end,
but we're gonna try our best to duplicate that.
Thanks for keeping us on our toes.
Yeah, and Michael from Teaneck, New Jersey.
And Jim from Paramus, New Jersey.
All right, Rob, why don't you start week number three?
We'd like to thank Thomas from Helsinki, Finland.
Helsinki, Finland.
How about that?
Paul from Boynton Beach, Florida.
Oddbjorn from Bergen, Norway.
Oddbjorn, that's a great name.
That's awesome.
Mark from Union, New Jersey.
I wanna thank Adam a third time from Holmdel, New York.
I'm sorry, Holmdel, New Jersey.
Wait, here it says Holmdel, New Jersey.
And is it Holmdel, New Jersey or Holmdel, New York?
That's a floating township.
I typed this myself and I got it wrong.
It shows up in a couple of cities,
all depending on the day.
Adam, we promise we'll figure out what state you're in
and get your premiums to you in the right state.
Daniel from Albany, New York.
Susan from Railway Northwest, Washington.
Is there really a town called Railway Northwest?
Are you saying that our donors are liars?
No, I'm just asking for more information.
I'm fascinated.
It's probably some sort of originally railroad town.
Or maybe our donors are freemen
and they have their own towns.
Yeah, maybe that's it.
Gary from Springfield Gardens, New York.
I didn't know about that place either.
Aneb from Jersey City, New Jersey.
Jimmy from New York, New York.
Margaret from Bronxville, New York.
Joseph from Greenwich, Connecticut.
And Patricia from Bedford Hills, New York.
And in our final week, last week,
we wanna thank people who donated to the show.
Michael from Suffern, New York.
Terrence from Highland Park, New Jersey.
Ramona from Brooklyn, New York.
Robert from Youngstown, Ohio.
John from Edison, New Jersey.
Jeff, oh, I'm sorry.
I wanted to thank Jeff.
Yeah, go ahead.
Thank you, Jeff, from Scarsdale, New York.
John, that's what I meant to say,
from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Cynthia from Brooklyn, New York.
Alfred from Boca Raton, Florida.
Christian from Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Cyril from Brooklyn, New York.
That's my buddy.
Hi, Cyril, how you doing?
Marcus from Bloomington, Minnesota.
You know, it makes everybody else feel bad
if one person gets special treatment.
I have a friend.
Oh, I thought you meant in the studio.
Sean from Astoria, New York.
Bernard from New York, New York.
Sydney from Montclair, New Jersey.
Michael from Chicago.
Jamie from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Adam, again, from Homedale, New Jersey.
Adam, you pledged all four weeks.
That's amazing.
Dude is dedicated.
Can you imagine if everybody did that?
We'd be in such good shape.
We'd be on every day.
We'd be on for two hours every day
if we got that kind of response.
And I think this pretty much verifies
that he is in New Jersey and I'm in New York.
I made one typo, I'm sorry.
John, is that me or you?
Who said Adam?
I lost.
Did you say Adam or did I say Adam?
Let's just all say them together.
I said Adam.
Okay, so I say John from New York, New York,
and you say Robert from Lindenhurst.
Robert from Lindenhurst.
My fire has been stolen now.
Sorry for the spoilers.
What state is that in?
Thank you, David. New York.
Yeah, Lindenhurst is in New York.
Assume New York is a default.
Yes, thank you, David, from Cliffside Park, New Jersey.
Keefe, and is Keefe spelled the cool way, K-E-I-F?
Sort of like Keefer Sutherland, I guess, but cooler.
From Maspeth, New York.
Michael from Astoria, New York.
Robert from Manchester, New Hampshire.
John from Bogota, New Jersey.
Now, is there really a Bogota, New Jersey?
I think it's actually pronounced Bogota, as I've heard.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, in Columbia, they say-
Bogota, but this is not Bogota.
This is Bogota.
I always pronounce it wrong no matter where it is,
but okay, you get the last word.
Arthur from Glendale, New York.
Thank you, everybody, for your generous pledges,
for making this the most successful fundraiser
in a long time, and bodes well for the future, I think.
So we have an action-packed show tonight.
We have all kinds of things to discuss.
We're gonna be getting into that.
We have a couple of special guests who'll be joining us
in just a little bit, but first, let's go over some things
that have been happening in the world.
Bernie, I know this was a story
that you were particularly interested in.
This is a story about a 62-year-old man in Carrollton.
That's in Pennsylvania, right?
Ohio.
Carrollton's in Ohio?
This came from a Pennsylvania newspaper.
Oh, I just assumed.
Oh, you're right, it is in Ohio.
He was found unconscious, an unresponsive Thursday morning
during an intense search, and why are we talking about this?
Well, apparently, the cops attempted
to use the man's cell phone signal to locate him,
but the man was behind on his phone bill,
and because of that, you wanna tell us
what happened after that?
Yeah, well, actually, I originally thought
they were, police were trying to,
well, basically, there was a domestic disturbance dispute.
It was a 911 call, so the sheriff's deputies rushed
to the house, and the guy had taken several bottles of pills
and then fled the scene, so they knew he was gonna die,
and they needed him, and there was a huge rescue effort
out with all these sheriffs and the helicopter
and police dogs trying to find him before he overdosed,
and the sheriff thought, well, why don't I call
his cell phone, and our deputies might hear
the phone ringing, but it was disconnected,
and he called Verizon and said, hey, this is an emergency,
and the law enforcement, please ring this phone,
and Verizon wouldn't do it.
They said, well, you gotta pay his phone bill
before we're gonna ring it, and the guy was out there dying,
so Verizon finally got their sheriff
to pay $20 to the bill, and-
Okay, wait, first of all, there's a number of things
wrong with this story here, that Verizon can act
like such jerks and get away with it,
but a sheriff actually paid the guy's phone bill
so that he could get the information
from the phone company?
Well, the sheriff was actually in the process
of making the payment when his deputies found the guy,
and then the sheriff was incredulous about this later.
He said, you know, he was really concerned
for the person's life, and it would've been nice
if Verizon had turned on his phone for five or 10 minutes,
just long enough to find him and save his life,
but they would only turn it on if we agreed
to pay at least $20 of the phone bill.
He thought it was ridiculous.
So, you know, obviously he reached the wrong person
at Verizon who wasn't thinking, but, you know,
this is the kind of thing that can happen
when you rely on technology to save someone's life
or you rely on a big phone company
to help save somebody's life.
If this man was a quote-unquote terrorist
and it had been a question of not saving his life
but ending his life, I'm sure Verizon
wouldn't have minded about him not paying the bill.
Well, I mean, I think Bernie brings up an interesting point
that they reached the wrong person at Verizon.
How much power does a single person have,
if you call them on the phone, at a big company like that?
Can they dictate policy?
Apparently, you have to go through several levels
of bureaucracy to get somebody to do something
at Verizon or any other of the big carriers,
and he just obviously wasn't speaking to the right person,
but it's hard to get the right person
when you're in a hurry and it's a life or death situation.
It's unfortunate, you know, it could've been tragic,
but as the sheriff said, it looked like
it was a very serious medical condition
and they found him before he overdosed,
but he was unconscious, you know,
if they hadn't found him for a few more hours,
that would've been it.
Didn't we once call on this very radio program
the special telephone line if you are law enforcement
and you can actually reach someone?
That was for Sprint, I think, wasn't it?
It was for Verizon, it's Pound Door.
Pound what?
D-O-O-R.
Pound Door on a Verizon phone?
Yes. Is that true, Bernie?
That was Verizon.
That was Verizon. That was Verizon.
What somebody else is referring to was
on the show several months ago,
we called a Sprint hotline for law enforcement
so they could just go through sort of a surveillance menu,
a Sprint surveillance menu where you could choose
to set up a wiretap, you can choose to have the phone pinged
and get the location instantly over the phone,
that sort of thing.
It was kind of scary hearing this menu
of surveillance options, but this was not it.
This was just a sheriff calling regular Verizon
customer service saying, look,
this is a law enforcement official.
It's a life or death situation.
Please ring his phone and they wouldn't do it
unless the sheriff paid.
I just tried on a Verizon phone to dial Pound Door, D-O-O-R,
and I get a recording saying that number does not exist.
Now, how is the sheriff actually going to pay?
Was he going to mail a check for $20?
Yeah, maybe it was PayPal or something
or credit card or something.
Credit card, probably.
Yeah, we should get that guy on the show and see.
I wonder what happened to the person at Verizon.
I mean, I'm sure they got fired.
I mean, there's no excuse.
I mean, even if they were following policy,
that's kind of like use some common sense.
Well, I mean, things get very annoying
with phone companies sometimes
when you owe them money.
Sprint, for instance.
I think they have the worst record
as far as harassing people.
When the bill hasn't even arrived yet,
they call you to remind you to pay the bill sometimes
when it hasn't even been delivered,
if it's a particularly large bill.
I have it on my phone if you want to hear it.
You have?
The Pound Door.
Are you saying you were able to get through the Pound Door
and I wasn't?
So I'm doing something wrong when I use my Verizon phone.
Yes, you're not a Verizon fan.
Okay, go ahead, play it, if it actually goes through.
Do you have a speaker on that thing?
Here we go.
I don't hear anything.
It's ailing.
Welcome to the Verizon Wireless Knock IDR.
Yeah, I'll put it on.
For the intrusion system, select zero.
For Bedminster Knock, select one.
For Southlake Knock, select two.
For ATAC, select three.
For Vendor Access, select five.
For Subpoena and Court Order, select nine.
To disconnect, select star.
You know, I doubt Star Door instead of Pound Door.
But you see, if this was an emergency,
I might very well mix up star and pound then too.
So it's something to consider.
It's a weird thing.
But okay, thanks for sharing that with us.
Oh, for our English listeners,
this is not the dollar sign, it's the hash mark.
Yeah, the tic-tac-toe board or whatever.
Okay, so that's an interesting story
and kind of ominous as well.
Also kind of ominous, I don't know if you guys saw this,
but that guy Ashton Kutcher, one of my favorite people,
the Twitter idiot who got a million people,
apparently has two million people now
on his Twitter thing.
He's warning he may pull the plug.
This is what, yeah, this is what it's all about.
This is what it's all about as far as like,
you know, getting publicity.
Now he can threaten people.
He may pull the plug in his tweeting
if the microblogging service partners
on a reality TV show.
Here's what he says.
It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked.
Now explain something to me.
Why is it famous people object to a reality show
about Twitter when they're on Twitter in the first place?
It's a stalker's dream.
Obviously they want attention for themselves.
They're telling people when they're out to lunch
and when they're like on a particular street
and things like that.
But all of a sudden someone does a TV show about it
and oh, it's an invasion of my privacy.
These people are doing it to themselves.
Yeah, and since it was already on Oprah,
it's not like it doesn't have publicity to the masses.
Yeah.
And for those unfamiliar with Ashton Kutcher,
he's the guy who got famous
doing a hidden camera show on MTV.
Really?
I didn't know that.
Wow.
Oh, I think that we should maybe pull the plug on it for him.
Recently there was, P Diddy tried to get a lot of followers
and he tried asking his followers
to ask for more followers.
Then there became a Twitter trend
where it's called Unfollow Diddy,
where it's basically people-
Unfollow Diddy.
Yeah, and everybody would post,
everybody that followed him stopped following him
and they'd post things telling their friends to unfollow him.
I mean, it's all exhibitionism,
but I don't get what people complain about it
after they voluntarily enter into it.
So we should do this for Ashton.
We should start a tag.
Everybody do a hashtag that says Unfollow-
A plus K.
Yes, A plus K.
Well, that'd be nice if people were intelligent.
I continue to contend that this just simply doesn't matter
because I have people coming to my blog saying,
because I mentioned Ashton Kutcher's name once,
they say, dear Ashton Kutcher, we think you're so hot.
Here is our home address in Tennessee.
We're 12.
So ultimately, people who are fans of Ashton Kutcher
think that he appears at random all over the internet anyway
so I don't think it matters.
Here's something else.
I heard this story too on the news somewhere this week
that this family, I think it was a family,
had their home burglarized
because they posted on Twitter they were away on vacation.
And they think maybe that has something to do with it.
And they have something like 10,000 followers.
I don't know why exactly.
This is what Steve Rambam has been warning us at Hope
for the past X number of years.
I just don't get why people weren't able to figure this out
from the start.
If you tell the world that you're not gonna be home,
yeah, you're telling the world that your house is empty
and that's something that could possibly be a problem.
It's like we're reinventing the wheel.
So it's just kind of wacky right there.
And one final Twitter story and then I promise I'm done.
Apparently, there was a security nightmare involving Twitter
and they say, and this is one of those
quote unquote hacker stories,
marks the first time hackers have taken to using
the microblogging site for profit.
All right, who in the room was using Twitter for profit?
Yeah, it wasn't a worm, said a senior antivirus researcher
with Kaspersky Labs in Moscow.
For some reason, they were consulted on this story.
It's the first instance of hackers serving up scareware.
Scareware, I can't believe we've never used that word before.
Fake security software that once installed nags users
with so many alerts that some fork over $50 or more
just to register the program and get rid of the warnings.
Now, apparently over the weekend,
and let me know if anybody here who's on Twitter got this,
Twitter users began receiving tweets
with the phrase best video and a link to a Russian domain.
And among those who clicked on the link,
those who clicked on the link were directed
to a site with a video,
but they were also served with a malicious PDF document
via an iframe on that site.
The PDF contains a number of exploits
and tries each in turn.
And if it's able to compromise the computer
using one of those exploits,
the malware then installs phony security software.
And basically they say,
Saturday, Twitter warned users of the tweets
with the best video link
and noted that it suspended compromised accounts.
Now, I happen to have a Twitter account.
Yes, I'll admit it, I do.
I never got any warning,
but I'm told that the only way to get the warning
is to follow Twitter.
And I'm not gonna follow them
because I don't wanna get all their commercial notifications
and things like that.
And I think, wouldn't it have been nice
if they put the warning on their page?
They have a nice little thing there
for buy a Twitter t-shirt,
but they don't have a thing saying,
oh, by the way, our system has been compromised
and you might get infected if you click on something.
Yeah, and the fact of the matter being that also,
since it's sort of a personal thing,
or at least you know or know of the people
that you're following,
if somebody tweets something like that,
you might click on it.
I actually saw one of my friends
just got infected with that malware.
But I looked at it and I said, that's kind of,
I mean, I saw the domain and I was like,
I don't think that's something I should follow.
So what would you advise to people?
I mean, a PDF, you can click on a PDF and get infected.
And a lot of people don't know that.
Never ever click on anything from a .ru domain.
Yeah.
Just don't.
You know, that's a bit nationalistic there.
There's plenty of good Russian sites.
Well, here's the problem too, because you can,
well, I guess they probably just posted the straight domain,
but I mean, in theory,
it could also be wrapped in something like a tiny URL,
which has made it shortest, and then you can't tell.
And there's plenty of people in the States
that'll do this thing too.
So you can't not click on anything.
You can't just not click on anything you don't recognize.
I mean, you know, I look at PDFs all the time.
You have to learn to read a certain way.
Like there are ways that people will sort of talk about it,
where it's like, check out this grade or just anything.
And it's stuff that just never quite sounds
like your friends.
One of these days, I'll do a linguistic analysis
and come up with like actual rules,
but there's ways to read.
You're saying if the request is phrased badly,
that's a suspicious thing.
Yeah, or phrased just really simply
and it doesn't give any more explanation.
Your friends ought to give more explanation.
Because I got an email from the head of the treasury
this week saying that he had several million dollars for me.
And I figured it probably wasn't.
I did too.
I got that email too.
Two and a half million, right?
Yeah, I don't know the exact amount,
but I was immediately suspicious
because of the large amount.
And the fact that, of course, the head of treasury was-
Wait, you didn't give him your bank information?
Emailing me directly.
It just didn't seem right.
I don't, you know, I'm sort of wondering about this.
I can't help but wonder whether it's also a matter
of people who have public Twitter accounts,
where I think people can just follow them automatically.
I would think that might make you more vulnerable,
although I suppose it's not.
It doesn't also-
It's who you're following, right?
It's who you're following, right?
So it's basically you see somebody-
And that's not automatic.
This goes beyond Twitter, though.
It goes to what sites you visit, you know,
and what you click on.
Don't we have anything else to talk about than Twitter?
Yeah, I said I didn't want to spend too much time on this.
I'm going to abort this conversation
and move on to something a lot more important than this.
And namely, that's something that happened last Friday.
Obama gave an interesting talk, I guess,
or he's basically, what he's doing right now,
he's appointing a cybersecurity chief,
or actually they call it a cybersecurity czar,
and that always makes me worry a little bit.
And we're going to talk about this in depth,
but I just wanted to focus on a couple of things he said
in his remarks on cybersecurity.
He mentioned hackers a couple of times.
Now, the 40-page document,
the 40-page document did not mention hackers once,
to its credit, you know, and that's a good thing
because whenever you mention hackers in this context,
you're going to say something like, you know,
hackers did this and did that.
And, you know, it really could be anybody
that has a criminal mentality using a computer
doesn't make them a hacker.
Now, here's what Obama said in his spoken remarks.
I know how it feels to have privacy violated
because it has happened to me and the people around me.
It's no secret that my presidential campaign
harnessed the internet and technology
to transform our politics.
What isn't widely known is that during the general election,
hackers managed to penetrate our computer systems.
To all of you who donated to our campaign,
I want you to all rest assured
our fundraising website was untouched.
Laughter, lots of laughter.
So your confidential personal
and financial information was protected.
But between August and October,
hackers gained access to emails
and a range of campaign files
from policy position papers to travel plans.
And we work closely with the CIA,
with the FBI and the Secret Service
and higher security consultants
to restore the security of our systems.
So basically, he seems to have this view
sort of similar to what Clinton had
in a famous quote of his,
where he says that hackers break in
and do all kinds of evil things.
Here's one other disturbing thing that Obama said
in that talk there.
Every day we see waves of cyber thieves
trolling for sensitive information.
And that's fair enough,
but listen to how he describes them.
The disgruntled employee on the inside,
the lone hacker 1,000 miles away,
organized crime, the industrial spy
and increasingly foreign intelligence services.
Now, all of those, yeah,
all those I can see the evil,
but a lone hacker 1,000 miles away,
why is that by default something that's bad?
You know, am I being overly subjective?
I think the problem is just the use of the word, right?
I mean, we disagree on the meaning of the word hacker.
I mean, there's definitely people out on the internet,
even individuals who have malicious intent
and use tools or exploits or whatever to get what they want.
We have words for those people already.
We do have words for that.
And unfortunately the media has publicized the hacker
as that word.
Right, and the media does this,
the president doesn't have to do this.
And it was not done in the report.
So I'm just saying, you know,
he needs to read the report and describe these people
as the way they describe it.
It's our job to do publicity too.
I mean, I think the sort of definition of hacking
that comes up in Stephen Leafy's book,
where it's more like, you know,
being curious and looking into things
and knowing how things around you work
is not something that most people really know.
I mean, mostly everybody knows on TV.
Okay, joining us on the telephone is a senior staff attorney
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lee Tian.
Lee, are you with us?
I still am.
Wow, welcome.
And I know you played a part in this statement,
in the report.
I believe there was a letter from you
that advised the White House
on this whole cybersecurity policy, right?
Yeah, it's not really very interesting
since I believe the cybersecurity team
went out and talked to just about everybody in the country
and said, gee, send us white papers
about anything you want.
So we did come up on it.
What did yours cover?
Well, we primarily hit, you know,
as you might expect, civil liberties type issues.
We were very concerned about the, at the time,
you know, Rod Beckstrom's resignation letter had come out.
And so we were very concerned about the continued NSA,
potential NSA dominance or intel community dominance
in cybersecurity.
And we argued rather strenuously that the problems
that the government certainly has
in terms of cybersecurity have nothing to do
with any kind of special expertise that the NSA has.
And that frankly, that, you know,
most of what they need to practice is hygiene and patching,
which doesn't require any kind of incredibly
special expertise.
We also talked a little bit about our concerns
about the way that the whole cybersecurity drumbeat
since really, I guess, since the election
has been really connected very strongly with cybercrime.
And we wanted to make sure that privacy
and civil liberties were going to actually be observed
in terms of the cybersecurity push.
And we also put in a pitch for open source code
and talking about ways in which we thought
that the government could do a little bit more to support.
Well, I assume you read the report too.
I looked over it as much as I could.
And I noticed that there seems to be a bit of a good emphasis
on civil liberties being observed
while these policies are followed.
You think that's right?
Because I mean, they've paid,
they certainly utter the words
and pay far more lip service
to the importance of privacy and civil liberties
in a cybersecurity context than anyone else ever has.
I'll give them credit for that.
So how that actually works out, we'll see.
Go ahead, Brian.
Emmanuel, I just wanted to point out
that our previous president, George W. Bush,
he also had a cybersecurity plan,
but unlike Obama, Bush just classified his.
So nobody could read it outside of the ivory towers
of the White House and the NSA, I guess.
But so at least we have to give credit
for Obama being slightly transparent
or at least accepting other people's viewpoints
and putting the report out there.
Now, this is just sort of a, Lee,
isn't this sort of like just a preliminary announcement
that's been made?
This is all gonna be hashed out in Congress, I assume.
Are there any particular parts of the original announcement
that concerned you?
Well, you're right.
I mean, I agree with everything you said
about this being way better than the Bush situation.
And Bush, of course, really had sort of two plans, right?
Because he had that first 2003 report,
which really was mostly exhortation
that everyone should do a better job.
And then he had the classified stuff that no one could see.
But yeah, this is really the beginning of the beginning.
Melissa Hathaway, who ran the security review,
was really open.
And the process was, I think,
about as open as this has ever been.
But you've got a lot of vague pronouncements
in the actual cybersecurity review report.
You've got some things that I consider troubling,
such as the continued focus on identity management
without any clear sense of what that really means.
Can you tell us, can you tell us for our listeners
what that could mean?
Identity management.
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know,
the kinds of things that they referred to in that section
included, you know, HSPD-12,
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12,
which is one that started this sort of
uniform standard government ID card.
That a number of people have been really upset about
because it combines some sort of smart cards
along with some biometrics.
Biometrics is another thing that pops up in that section.
So we are, and we have seen from the CSIS report,
that's the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
I think they're a pretty hawkish group
that published something in the fall,
which really got us concerned.
They were talking very much about the need
to really batten down the hatchet on who is who
on the internet, which, you know,
is not something that's, you know,
really good for civil liberties,
where we consider it the ability to be anonymous
or on the internet to be still pretty important.
So that's a problem.
The bigger issue though, the even bigger issue is,
is as you mentioned, Congress.
I mean, you, you know,
whatever one might say about the White House report,
boy, when you put it next to something
like the Rockefeller Snow Bill on cybersecurity,
then you know, it's, there's really no comparison.
Congress and the folks who are pushing stuff in Congress
get very, are very, very scary
in terms of what they are willing to do
in terms of cybersecurity.
Since the like so-called civil war
between the, between Russia and Estonia,
where it's blamed on government actors,
but I'm pretty sure that it's mostly
just like individual civilians
in English nationalist script kiddies.
We've seen like the same type of thing happen in the US
where the White House has said
that they've been under like daily attack
from like Chinese spies and they,
and they'll like specifically name
or imply that it's government agencies.
But do you find that it's mostly not government agencies,
but just like the same spam people
that send that request to anybody
that would have it there on server?
Honestly, I just don't know.
I mean, it's, it's pretty hard to come out
from where we sit, you know,
because we don't run any intrusion detection systems,
you know, to really have an idea
of what the, what those big threats out there are.
We do think that it's a little,
actually, you know, it's kind of, you know,
funny to have Stuart Baker, you know,
talking as he was at CFP, I think yesterday
about how, well, you know, the big, big threat
that we've got to worry about is China.
I mean, China is becoming a really convenient scapegoat
for a lot of what people are trying to achieve
in the cybersecurity slash cyber warfare arena.
I mean, I wish we knew more about what the facts were.
The rhetoric is so disturbing.
I mean, the rhetoric, and that's unfortunate,
where policy usually ends up being made
in Congress is based on the rhetoric
and they've really amped up the China slash warfare
slash, you know, cyber attacks.
Well, I mean, do you think that, I mean,
rhetoric is par for the course in something like this.
Do you think they're just using rhetoric
so that they can sell a plan of any sort
and maybe get people to be taking it more seriously?
Well, I think they is not a monolithic entity.
I think that when you, that, you know,
I didn't know, you know, when you let off
talking about Obama's use of hackers
and those incidents in his speech,
I hadn't realized that he'd said those things.
That's annoying.
I do take some comfort.
They don't appeal to that kind of rhetoric
in the report itself.
But when I hear this coming from the congressional side,
or I hear it coming from CSIS and other folks
who are known to have taken very hawkish approach
towards things during the Bush administration,
that does worry me.
It worries me that they will use
all these kinds of security concerns
precisely in order to make the cyber crime laws
harder and tougher and to create more sort of,
and, you know, basically treat it more like a fear of war.
Bad enough that there's a lot of,
we're always throwing criminality around,
then they add the war on, on, on hacking.
And, you know, it just gets worse.
You have to add the war bit onto any word
to get people to take it seriously.
But I'd like to focus on one positive view
of what happened on Friday.
This from a website called savetheinternet.com.
President Obama has done it again,
reaffirming his unyielding commitment to an open internet.
It happened this time during an announcement on Friday
of a new initiative to beef up the nation's defenses
against cyber attacks.
The web-savvy commander-in-chief
said he planned to select a new cyber czar,
but he also said that he was supporting net neutrality.
And the quote goes,
let me also be clear about what we will not do.
Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not, I repeat,
will not include monitoring private sector networks
or internet traffic.
We will preserve and protect the personal privacy
and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans.
Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality
so we can keep the internet as it should be open and free.
Now, Lee Tian, do you think that's something
that we should be encouraged by?
Only very cautiously.
You know, so many people use net neutrality
to mean different things, especially in Washington.
And it's one of the hottest, hottest,
biggest money issues around with a lot of stakeholders
and a lot of different sort of battlegrounds,
not just the White House and cybersecurity,
but also Congress itself, along with the FCC.
I mean, there's so much money chasing that issue.
You know, I really, the jury's really out on that one.
Okay.
Well, overall, I guess, you guys have any views
on whether we should be optimistic about this?
Gus?
I was sort of encouraged by the fact
that there was a mention
of providing the research community access to data
to facilitate developing tools, testing theories,
and identifying workable solutions.
So to me, that sounds like the kind of thing we see
and hope is when people are testing out
whether voting booths are secure,
when they're testing out other security things,
just, you know, to check that out.
So I think hackers should be encouraged by that,
most likely the ones in academia and the ones in industry.
But, you know, just about anybody, I think,
should be encouraged by that.
Go ahead.
Can I mention sort of a trickle-down effect
that I've heard in terms of the policies
that are kind of happening in our government
with regards to the internet?
I was actually at the New York Tech Meetup last night,
and one of the presenters was the NewYorkSenate.gov,
NYSenate.gov.
And basically what's happened in New York
is the person who took a,
is the majority leader in the Senate,
they hired a CIO, they made a new site,
they made everything new,
where they're actually trying to emphasize transparency
with the Senate using technology.
So all of the kind of committee documents are online,
the data that they're going through is being put online.
This is totally useless,
because in New York State,
the Senate committees don't actually meet.
So the fact that they're transparent about this is like.
Well, but it's, okay, fine.
But the fact of the matter
is that they're actually putting this kind of stuff online,
and they're trying to use technology
in a way that makes the government more open.
Ultimately, sort of the last word in any of this
is where the money is allocated.
If money is not allocated towards this,
obviously he's hiring somebody, you know, as a czar,
and that's promising.
But if the money's not allocated towards a policy,
it's just not gonna happen.
So that's ultimately gonna be the proof of this.
Okay, we're gonna keep an eye on this.
Obviously, very interesting developments
from Washington, D.C.
But we have more to talk about tonight as well.
In fact, joining us on the phone
is someone else from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And please tell me if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly.
Corinne McSherry, are you with us?
I am, it's Corinne, actually.
Corinne, I'm sorry, Corinne McSherry.
Now, you've been involved in something that,
uh-oh, did we lose somebody?
I think we lost somebody,
you figure out who we lost.
Let's make sure we don't hang up on Corinne.
I hate this phone system.
Okay.
Nope.
All right, so apparently we lost Lee.
All right, Lee Tien, that was Lee Tien.
I guess he disconnected
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Bernie, are you still with us?
No, he's not, but we'll call him back.
He's not with us either?
It wasn't his fault, I just guessed.
All right, but Corinne, you're with us.
I'm with him.
Corinne, am I still pronouncing it right?
Okay.
Corinne, don't worry about it, everyone does it.
Corinne, I'm so sorry.
You are involved in something really fascinating,
I find fascinating, an actual teaching curriculum
for schools on copyright,
but not the kind of teaching curriculum
that you would see from the various copyright associations,
MPAA, RIAA, things like that,
this from more of a civil rights freedom type of perspective.
You wanna tell us something
about the EFF teaching copyright curriculum?
Sure.
It's helpful to know a little bit about the background.
What happened is in California a couple of years ago,
at the behest of the RIAA and the MPAA,
and similar organizations,
the California legislature passed a law
that requires public schools
that receive technology funding,
which is pretty much everybody,
need to teach about copyright.
You need to add some kind of aspect to their curriculum
that addresses copyright issues.
So we got wind of this and we said,
well, okay, that's not such a terrible thing,
but we need to make sure that copyright is taught correctly,
which means that you teach
the whole picture of copyright.
You look at, so you don't just talk about,
well, copyright forbids, which is plenty of things,
but also what copyright law permits
via adoptions like fair use.
And we thought it was pretty important
that students really get that full picture
because unfortunately,
I think there's a lot of propaganda out there
telling young, the people who are gonna be innovators
and creators of tomorrow
that there's all this stuff that they can't do
and focusing on what's forbidden.
And of course, there's all kinds of things
that they can do and they need to understand that as well.
And another thing that we thought was pretty important
is it seemed to us that it was really important
that people who are future voters
and people who are gonna be rewriting copyright law
down the line, which is done almost every generation,
they need to really understand copyright law
so that they can sort of fulfill their duties as citizens.
And it seemed like a really great opportunity
to engage in some civics lessons
as well as understanding copyright.
I think this is really great, I have to say,
because I do some work with teachers
and one of the things we know
is that unless they actually have lesson plans to use,
they don't tend to want to implement any curriculum.
So I think it's fabulous
that the EFF is coming up with these curricula,
especially also seeing as there was a study
that came out last year from Renee Hobbs,
who I think is at Temple University,
showing that educators at all levels
are really, really confused about copyright
and fair use law and what this tends to lead to
is a chilling effect where they don't actually
do any teaching about it at all.
And like Corinne said,
it's the stuff that's being put out
by business associations is really pretty creepy.
I have an example here, can I share it?
Is this the pro-copyright propaganda
that's already in the US classrooms?
Yes.
Yeah, the Copyright Alliance is behind this, right?
In this case, it's the Business Software Alliance.
Oh, there's more than one.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure everybody's got
their own curriculum coming out.
Do share.
I also know of a curriculum that was developed
by just a textbook publisher.
And a lot of the times textbook publishers will just say,
well, yeah, let's take some English BAs
and throw them at this.
So it's people with no content knowledge
writing these curricula
and they come up with stuff that's complete crap.
Are these the people that give the merit badge
in respecting copyright to Boy Scouts?
Because they actually do that.
That's disturbing.
Yeah, there is.
But that's an interesting thing.
One of the things that you find a lot
in the businesses side of things is it very much,
whereas the EFF's curriculum is very toned down
and it's just like, here's what the law says.
The business stuff says,
we have to teach kids to respect the law.
We have to teach them to be good citizens.
This is about citizenship.
So there's this really,
I mean, it sounds like patriotism education
from the 30s or whatever going on in the business stuff.
But anyway, I'll read an example here.
Here's something from a worksheet for middle schoolers.
And it's, so I'll give you the question
that's given to the kids or the prompt
that's given to the kids and the answer that's suggested.
So in this case, kids are supposed to be responding
to questions from, in this case, from Panicked, for example.
That's the name given here.
And this prompt says, this is serious.
I've been getting email receipts for all kinds of things
I didn't buy, jewelry, cameras, even a big screen TV.
It's thousands of dollars
and these things are being shipped to people
I don't even know.
I think it all started after I found a free copy
of a computer graphics program I wanted to try.
What should I do?
And the answer says, oh, the problem here is spyware.
What?
I thought they were gonna say the problem was hackers.
They are.
Wait, they're gonna say that too.
The student's example would have to uninstall
the illegal computer graphics program.
It's an illegal program.
And use antivirus software to eliminate spyware.
And then all the free merchandise
will stop coming your way.
The student should also install a firewall
which will protect his or her computer
from unauthorized access and use by hackers.
Where are they supposed to get the antivirus software
and the firewall if they're a poor student
without any money?
There's some online resources here
that direct you to the business software.
Download it for free from the site of Malaysia.
I think that the thing that this really points to
that's really concerning to me
is it seems to be fundamentally disturbing
that we're asking our public school teachers
to be spokespeople for a particular point of view.
And that's what we tried very hard
to present a balanced curriculum.
So, for example, on peer-to-peer file sharing.
You know, people feel very strongly
about peer-to-peer file sharing in all kinds of ways.
So what we tried to do is our lesson
as the students kind of look at the positions
of the different stakeholders
of independent musicians who are against file sharing
or, you know, any kind of file sharing.
Musicians that are actually in favor of it
and actually, you know,
just sort of try to encourage downloading of their music.
You know, industry executives, lawyers, you know.
So that they can sort of see
that there's a lot of different perspectives
on this issue and really think it through.
So, again, it's trying to be balanced about it
as opposed to just telling them one story
and kind of blending using education
as sort of a vehicle for intimidation,
which I just think is not,
that's not what school is supposed to be about.
It's supposed to be about learning to think.
And we thought,
that was really one of the major motivations for us
is we thought, you know,
this copyright education
could actually be a really great vehicle
for encouraging students to sort of think about law
in creative and interesting and critical ways,
which is what they're supposed to be going to school
in part to do anyway.
So that seemed pretty important,
but, you know, it's not easy to combat
the power of the propaganda against, I have to tell you.
That's really something I noticed
as I was going over this curriculum
was that they're not telling kids
that the adults still haven't decided yet.
The business curriculum treats this
as if it's something that's said and done
that the laws are not currently still being made.
I think that's really interesting.
What I'm remembering is when I was in high school,
and they didn't even touch the 60s
because that controversy was so close and so recent
that they just didn't even want to touch it.
But in this case, they're like,
yes, we do want to touch the controversy, and we're right.
So.
Okay, Bernie, quickly.
Yeah, Corinne, I just wanted to ask you,
all these content producers have their ax to grind
and they're spending millions of dollars
to force their viewpoints on teachers
so that it will be forced down students' throats.
What age groups or grades is this curriculum geared towards
and how is EFF making teachers and other educators
aware of its availability?
Well, this current curriculum
is geared towards high schoolers.
It can be adapted for middle school.
Many of the lessons can be,
but we just haven't quite gotten there yet.
We started at the high school level.
And in terms of outreach,
we're doing a few different things.
We're going to conferences and talking,
teacher conferences and kind of getting the word out
in that kind of traditional way.
We've done our usual sort of email blasts.
And also we're doing kind of a grassroots thing,
sort of asking folks, you know,
if you know a teacher, pass this on, tell them about it.
I mean, a lot of teachers don't realize
that there's this requirement
now that they have to teach copyright,
at least in California and some other states as well.
So, you know, get this out to them, point them to it.
You know, it's CC licensed.
So anyone could just go to our website,
download the sites.
You don't have to register or do anything tricky.
It's all right there.
It's very easy to look at.
And we've had, happily, had some good feedback
from folks who are EFF members,
said, yeah, my kids in school,
I'm going to tell the teachers there about it.
So we're trying to sort of proceed that way.
So Corinne, how can our listeners
who want to make teachers in their area
aware of this curriculum, make them aware of it?
Well, let me first give the website for the curriculum.
That's the first thing to know.
It's simple.
It's teachingcopyright.org,
or you can go to the EFF website, which is EFF.org,
even simpler.
And there's a link right there.
So what they can do is they can reach out to teachers,
you know, when they do parent-teacher conferences
or whenever they interact with teachers and say,
hey, you know, you might want to check out this curriculum.
It's right here.
And just point them to the site.
And we, you know, like I said,
we've really tried very hard to make it very accessible
and easy to review quickly
because we know that teachers are busy
and they got a lot on their plate.
And adding the curriculum
is not going to be the easiest thing for them.
All right, so-
Are these your actual lesson plans?
These are actual lessons plans
that were drafted for them to use?
Absolutely.
They're all right there and you can use them together
or you can break them apart.
We have the most fun exercises,
sort of the final exercise where they do a mock trial
and they get to watch a really funny video about fair use
and then do a mock trial
where Disney basically sues the creator of the video
and they have to sort of defend him.
And that's good fun.
And it's a good way for students to understand fair use.
Fair use is one of those things
where it's a little complicated
until you get some practice applying it.
And then once you apply it,
you can sort of understand what it is,
which is really, I think, crucial.
These guys, these students today,
they're going to go out and do amazing, cool things.
And understanding fair use
is going to take them a long way
towards being able to do those amazing, cool things
without going over the line
and getting themselves in trouble.
We're talking with Corinne McSherry
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
about the EFF's teaching copyright curriculum
now being made available to teachers all around the country.
Information at www.teachingcopyright.org.
Taking phone calls, 212-209-2900.
If you have any questions on this subject
or on the subject we were discussing previously,
please give us a call.
We only have a few minutes.
Voltaire.
I think some of our best activists
in terms of civil liberties and the internet
come from free culture clubs at colleges,
but there doesn't seem to be many at the high school level.
What would you recommend,
or how could free culture clubs at colleges,
universities help spread this curriculum?
Well, that's interesting.
I think, not something that I had thought about,
but it's actually, it's a very good point.
I think that the people at universities,
the university students are unlikely
to sort of have the direct connections
with high school students,
but I know that there are sort of mentoring relationships
that sometimes happen.
So that might be a way of reaching out.
I think it'd be fantastic if a free culture club
at any university sort of wanted to take it on
as a project to reach out to the schools
and the local communities and connect to teachers
and point them to this and sort of explain the background.
I think that would be a fantastic project.
And the thing about it here is,
you know, EFF just does not have the resources
that the RIAA has.
I mean, that's just the reality.
So we really are gonna have to count
on that kind of grassroots activism
to spread this stuff around.
Okay, and remember those guys,
they are by default in the classroom already,
folks like the Copyright Alliance.
They describe themselves as a nonprofit,
nonpartisan educational organization
dedicated to promoting the value of copyright
as a means to make money.
They describe Professor Lawrence Lessig
as a hypocritical demagogue,
whose book imposes a quasi-socialist utopianism
while demonizing copyright.
So-
Yeah.
Well, I know you disagree,
but that's what kids are being taught.
That's what kids are being taught.
And this is a great way
to get a different perspective out there.
So teachingcopyright.org.
Let's take some phone calls,
see if listeners have any questions.
Yeah, it's pretty funny.
I know Lawrence Lessig, he's not a socialist.
Is he a demagogue?
No, he's not a demagogue either,
but it's pretty funny to describe him as a socialist,
believe me.
Yeah, let's take a phone call.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Let me just turn my phone off.
Yeah, turn your phone down, please,
or you'll get very confused.
What question do you have?
Yeah, switching your phone from one to,
say you want to switch from Sprint to Boost,
and you want to keep your-
Okay, I'm sorry, but let's stick to the subject right now.
We don't want to talk about phone companies.
Let's talk about the curriculum or the Obama thing.
I don't mean to cut people off,
but we only have a couple of minutes left.
So please stick to the subject that we're discussing now.
212-209-2900, good evening, you're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Okay, nobody there.
Is this line working?
It's got a piece of tape over it.
It's been blinking all hour, I don't trust it.
Okay, you don't trust that one.
Okay, you know what?
Let's wait for some more calls to come in.
Did the guys in the studio have any points?
Corinne, I wanted to ask you, the term fair use,
a lot of people think, well, it just means it's fair,
but fair use is an actual legal term of art.
Can you in a nutshell tell us what fair use is?
Sure, I mean, what fair use is,
is basically a great big exception
to the sort of default rule in copyright law,
which is that if you make a copy
that you're without the permission of the copyright owner,
then that would be infringing.
And fair use says, well, no, it's not,
as long as it's fair use, it's not infringing,
it's not a violation.
And for something to be a fair use,
you basically apply four factors.
You look at whether the second use harms the market
for the first use.
So for example, an entire copy of a song
that you then you repost,
well, that might harm the market for the original song.
You look at what's the purpose of the second use.
Are they doing something non-commercial
or are they changing it up?
Are they doing something different?
So like a remix is a really good example,
or especially like a remix that engages
in some kind of social commentary.
That's probably gonna be
what's called a transformative purpose,
and that's gonna tend to weigh in favor of fair use.
You look at whether the original work is factual
or fictional because we give less protection to facts
than we do to, well,
we don't give any copyright protection to facts,
but the closer something is to being fact
as opposed to fiction,
and it's something really creative,
the less we protect it.
And finally, you look at how much did you use
of the original work.
So did you take just a few seconds
or maybe of some news footage,
or did you recopy an entire broadcast?
So you look at those four different factors,
and I realize that it can be a little confusing,
but again, that's why it's really useful
to spend some time practicing,
applying them to specific situations.
So it's easy to, you know,
we have little videos and we'll have people look at those
and say, you know, is this fair use or not?
Why is it fair use or why wouldn't it be fair use?
So students get accustomed to sort of thinking about it
in an intelligent way.
One of the things that we think is really important
is a lot of people think that if it's non-commercial,
it must be fair use.
People will call me up and say,
why didn't make any money off of it?
It must be fair use.
And well, now that's not how it works.
That's not the answer,
but it actually isn't that hard to figure out
a lot of times whether something's a fair use or not,
as long as you get accustomed to it
and lay people can, you know,
get some basic skills in this area that will help them.
I think another great way to learn about this
is to look at the quiz that's up on the website,
teachingcopyright.org.
I don't want to give,
is it okay to give away the answers or will people,
will students get an easy ride if I do this?
I think it's okay.
All right, well, let's read a couple of questions here.
The sole purpose of copyright is to make authors money
and protect them from getting their work stolen.
Anybody want to?
True.
What, true?
No, you're wrong, Voltaire, it's false.
Yeah, copyright was established
to encourage the growth of science education and the arts.
How about this?
Amy tells Daniel about her summer vacation
and he says he'd love to see her pictures.
Amy uses a peer-to-peer file sharing program
to upload the photographs she took at camp
so he can download them.
That's copyright infringement, true or false?
And terrorism.
Illegal.
Yeah, it's false.
Sharing your own original work using peer-to-peer
file sharing technology is totally legal.
Here's one more.
Here's one more.
The Motion Picture Association of America
has anti-piracy sniffing dogs.
True, very true.
That is true.
According to the MPAA,
they've trained two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo
to sniff out DVD piracy.
It just shows you what we're up against here, folks.
It's unbelievable.
There's a whole curricula actually
all about Lucky and Flo.
So you don't have any little cute mascots, do you?
Well, we actually have a couple of dogs in the office,
but we don't use them in the curriculum.
But it is actually one of the points
that we try to make about file sharing
and throughout the curriculum is,
and again, I think it's where we're trying to attain balance.
It's not that the technology in and of itself
can be used for a variety of different things.
So I think too often people come away with the notion
that if you hear the word peer-to-peer,
you think, oh, it must be illegal.
Well, that's not the way it works.
It's not true at all.
And students really shouldn't be led to believe that.
All right, Corrine McSherry from the EFF.
Thanks again for talking to us
about this amazing curriculum the EFF is offering.
You wanna give out the contact information
for once again, for teachers or anybody in a school
who might be interested in teaching their kids this?
Sure, so the curriculum is available
at www.teachingcopyright.org,
or you can just go to www.eff.org
and there's a link right there.
And while you're on EFF.org, send them some money.
Yes, absolutely.
I'd rather send us some money.
Thank you.
All right, thanks again for joining us.
Now, Gus, I believe you had something
to tell us about as well.
Yes, if you do are looking for a mascot for fair use,
I would volunteer my puppet, Weena,
on our show, The Media Show.
That's youtube.com slash user slash The Media Show.
We did a short piece the other day about fair use
after one of our videos got taken down by YouTube.
And James Grimmelman, who's a professor
at New York Law School, came on and talked to us about that.
All right, I want to thank everybody
for being a part of the show.
And write to us, oth at 2600.com.
Sorry, we couldn't get to any calls,
but I think the phone system's all kablooey.
2600 meetings this Friday, so we'll see you then.
Good night.
♪ It's a reckless world ♪
♪ And it's a reckless world ♪
♪ That lets itself be guided by its tools ♪
♪ But what our eyes can see we believe ♪
♪ The truth is meant for fools ♪
♪ Is there nothing between us but plastic and wire ♪
♪ Will some odd invention prove you a liar ♪
♪ All the time you were saying this is it ♪
♪ It was that and you didn't get that scratch from the cat ♪
♪ I'll be stripped to the skin ♪
♪ You'll be stripped to the bone ♪
♪ You'll be stripped to the bone ♪
♪ And we won't say no ♪
♪ I won't say no to the picture phone ♪
♪ And I'll be stripped to the skin ♪
♪ I'll be stripped to the skin ♪
♪ You'll be stripped to the bone♪
♪ And you'll be stripped to the bone ♪
♪ And we won't say no no ♪
I won't say no to a big triffle
And you have come to depend
On your right to pretend you're alone
Would the star of the screen ever wish to be seen?
Red-eyed and dying through the morning call
And the president's friends, would they live for long?
If they saw down the riot, what really goes on?
When you hope to relax till the police should attack
In a breeze as a man's down now
And I'll be stripped to the skin
You'll be stripped to the bone
I won't say no
I won't say no to a big triffle
Cause I'll be stripped to the skin
I'll be stripped to the skin
You'll be stripped to the bone
You'll be stripped to the bone
I won't say no
I won't say no to a big triffle
Early morning calling in
Trying to beat you
Early morning calling
Trying to beat you
Early morning calling
Trying to beat you
You'll be stripped to the bone
I won't say no to a big triffle
I'll be stripped to the skin
I'll be stripped to the skin
You'll be stripped to the bone
I'll be stripped to the bone
I won't say no
I won't say no to a big triffle
Cause I'll be stripped to the skin
I'll be stripped to the skin
You'll be stripped to the bone
I won't say no
I won't say no to a big triffle
Yeah, hey