And you're listening to WBAI New York where the time is just about seven o'clock
time once again for off the hook
and you're listening to WBAI New York where the time is just about seven o'clock
and good evening everybody, the program is off the hook, Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you on this Wednesday evening joined tonight by Mike Volter
Redhacked.free!!!
Marty- hello
and dottRett
Randall- hello
Marty- Kyle
Kyle-hi
And down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
Bernie-Greetings from Philadelphia
Marty- Well, this actually is our last fundraising week for the
Winter Fundraiser.
We are not on next week and the week after
that we're back to normal programming.
So I want to thank everybody who's called in so far,
and helped out the radio station, helped off the hook.
Done pretty well, I think, overall, especially
after last week.
Wow.
So if you liked the premiums from last week
and you didn't call last week, you can call now.
For a limited time, yes, you can do that during this program
to get the things that we are offering.
You have just 57 minutes left.
Exactly.
And the phone number, if you just want to get right to it,
is 212-209-2950.
And we are going to play some excerpts of the DVD set
that we're offering, which we'll do in just a moment.
First, any updates on any stories
that people would like to share?
There was a hearing.
Or sorry, the documents from the Twitter subpoena hearing
were released.
The Twitter subpoena sounds so serious.
So our guest from last week, Regitta Jonstadter,
as people will recall, was her tweets,
as well as those of our friends Rob and Jake Avelbaum,
were subpoenaed.
The government wants them and wants the related account
information.
Not just the tweets, but the private messages
that people for some reason use.
The credit card numbers that the government continues
to believe that Twitter has, all this stuff.
Well, obviously, it's not just Twitter, obviously.
It's all kinds of online services
that do use credit card numbers.
And Twitter is the one we know about.
Right.
We assume that that's the case.
But the one that we know about is Twitter.
And so there was a motion to unseal this search.
It's not a search warrant, but the request for the records.
Right.
And also to stop it.
And so there was a hearing this week.
And the result was they'll decide later.
That's the result, that they're going to decide later.
Bernie, you had something?
I just said IP addresses was one of the things listed
in the subpoena.
And I don't believe any judicial oversight is
necessary for a subpoena.
Is it, Mike?
Some judicial oversight is necessary for whatever
this process is.
There's subpoenas, and search warrants, and court orders.
And this is one of them.
But the original request to the providers,
like Twitter and others, was just a subpoena.
And it was, apparently, it was one step up from a subpoena.
Ah.
Well, that's.
Is it a subpoena?
Something like that.
So there's been a judge involved this whole time.
And now they're trying to ask the judge to, like,
please pay attention.
Got you.
All right, well, that's the update there.
And the last thing I heard on Julian Assange himself
is that he has a hearing, or a decision,
set for February 24th, as far as when,
if they're going to decide to extradite him to Sweden.
So we're following that story as well.
So we should, next time we're on the air,
we're going to have all kinds of updates.
And it might be a totally different world.
Who knows how many more countries will have
revolutions between now and then.
If you've been to the Egyptian presidency website,
it's www.presidency.gov.e.g.
This site is under development and reconstruction.
That's got to be a joke.
No, it's not.
I mean, it's really their site.
So it's definitely being changed as we speak.
For us to actually get something to happen in this country.
Did you check the web archive?
How long has that under construction page been there?
Oh, I don't know.
I didn't actually go that far.
And maybe it's been under construction
for a long, long time.
I don't know.
But something else, though.
Something else that was, something else that basically
started this week, the US State Department,
we talked about this last night on Off the Wall,
they started a Farsi Twitter feed.
You guys know about this?
That's nice of them.
Yeah.
Bernie, have you heard about this?
No, but I'm wondering about how does the character set work?
Well, if you go to twitter.com slash USADAR Farsi,
USADAR F-A-R-S-I, you can see the character set there.
It works pretty well, I think.
I mean, it's probably just using Unicode,
which nowadays you can actually send things that
are not just ASCII on the internet.
Yeah, it's possible.
There are standards.
Yeah, I think they've got that part down pretty much.
What I found to be interesting, though, I looked at that site.
And that site basically, they have several thousand followers
now, but they follow only about 20 other people.
And one of them is supposedly the Iranian president,
Ahmadinejad.
But if you click on his face, you
get a mock site where basically they're making fun of him.
They're saying that people were simply
outside for Valentine's Day.
Nobody was demonstrating against the government.
And I don't really run this country.
It's run by a bunch of old gray-haired guys.
Things like that, things that obviously is not
being said by him.
But you have the US State Department following this guy
and making it somehow appear legitimate.
And I'm just wondering, do they know that it's fake?
It was pretty funny.
Well, so yeah, by all means, check that out.
USADAR F-A-R-S-I is the Farsi Twitter feed
for the US State Department.
That's the latest thing that's going on there.
I should point out that we are in fundraiser mode.
And we do need people to call in.
And what we were offering last week was wildly popular.
And we're going to offer it one more week for the remaining
week that we're here for a pledge of $100.
Kyle, do you want to describe it for them
since you've been instrumental in putting this together?
Yeah, sure.
For $100, we'll be giving people four-gigabyte thumb drives
with all the WikiLeaks data that was released in 2010.
And it includes the Iraq war logs, the Afghan war logs,
the Cablegate documents, as well as the insurance
file, which is encrypted.
And then both versions, the extended version
and the analysis of the collateral murder video.
For those who don't know, that's basically
tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands,
of documents that will appear on this thumb drive.
And well, as you said, it was all released last year
by WikiLeaks.
So I guess the question I have for you
is why wouldn't someone just go out on the internet
and just grab all this right now?
Well, oddly enough, it's kind of hard
to find the documents being hosted by any of the mirrors.
There's a lot of mirrors for WikiLeaks.
But they're only hosting about a handful of the things
that were released.
The really popular things that were released.
So to find a comprehensive archive,
you have to go onto torrent sites and maybe
the main WikiLeaks site, which is directing to wikileaks.info
right now.
And that's the only place you can actually
get a comprehensive listing of each leak date
as they were released chronologically.
To give an idea, you've spent a good amount of time
tracking all this down.
It wasn't a simple question of going to a site
and downloading everything.
You had to actually search for it.
And I find that amazing.
We're talking about something that is so controversial,
so much in the news.
And yet, it's gotten so difficult to actually get
a comprehensive collection of all this.
That's what we're making easy for you here
by having it on a thumb drive.
And the other part of that is then
verifying that it is what it purports
to be, whatever you're reading, a description on a torrent site.
Or if it's from the main page, you
have to make sure that it's actually what it says
it is once you download it.
And then a lot of people are a little bit
afraid of downloading in general.
I think people are afraid of going to the WikiLeaks site.
Yeah, exactly.
Thinking they'll get in trouble if they even go there.
Right.
And you can tell your friends, your family about it.
But is people in your immediate family,
are they capable of going out and finding something
on a torrent site?
Or are they willing?
Ask yourself, do your parents have a copy of the WikiLeaks
files?
And odds are you're going to answer no, they don't.
Does your aunt, does your uncle, do your grandparents?
Do all these people?
Do they have this information?
And if not, well, why not?
Why doesn't everybody have a copy of this information?
And how easy will it be to spread this information when
it's a comprehensive collection as showing up
on our WBAI thumb drives?
212-209-2950 for a pledge of $100, you get it all.
You get all of 2010, the stuff that really hit the media hard
and changed the world, changed how
people view their governments and how
people view whistleblowers.
212-209-2950, remember, we're just
offering this for the next hour as part of the Off
the Hook collection.
You also get some other material as well.
You'll get the full video, Collateral Murder,
which is stunning.
It's, and I don't say that in terms of what it documents.
It's shocking and horrible what it documents.
But it's stunning in the effect that it will have on you
when you're watching what American troops are
doing to innocent people, what turned out to be innocent
people, and yet still trying to blame it somehow
on the innocent people.
It's really pretty shocking and horrifying.
And what does this have to do with a show that's
usually about hacking?
Well, it's about information disclosure.
It's about getting the truth out there.
It's about going into a system and finding something
that you're not supposed to have access to.
And that is what the entire world succeeded
in doing last year through the actions of a few people.
And by calling 212-209-2950, pledging $100,
getting the entire collection, you're
basically saying that that's something that matters,
that this wasn't done in vain, that people will actually
learn something from this.
And I think it makes you, the conversation with people
in your family and in your circle that
are involved in the military, it really makes you seek them out
and really look at them a little differently
and ask questions and maybe engage
in a little bit more conversation
about politics and war in general.
And I also think, I truly believe
that it's our responsibility to go through this data.
The people that have risked their reputation
or their career or whatever it took to get this information
out, I think now that it's here, it's
our responsibility to go through it, to pour through it.
And there's been some cool things
with making it searchable and making it easy to digest
and to understand.
But we need more and more people to have access to this stuff
and not to be afraid of it, but rather
to go through the data and understand
what it means for our country and for the world.
212-209-2950, join the people that are on the line now.
212-209-2950, pledge your $100, get you the entire WikiLeaks
collection.
Now, here's the real question is,
what happens if these purported US government
plots to damage or take down WikiLeaks
were to actually come to fruition?
Then what would happen to?
This information is already so hard to get a hold of.
Imagine if the source were to then disappear.
How hard would it be then?
It's hard enough with the sites up.
Just imagine if it's gone.
Just keeping track of it all.
But Kyle's gone out and collected it all.
Other people have done this, too.
But we're offering it to you on this thumb drive that
will plug into your computer, and then you'll have it.
You can do whatever you want with it
and just be another bastion of democracy by holding onto it.
Yes, this is fantastically important information.
I would say that it's not just something that you should have,
but maybe even your duty to have.
You should know what your government is doing.
And if you don't like it, you should tell them.
Otherwise, it's not a democracy.
There's one additional thing that you get with your pledge
that you, regardless of your level of technical skill,
you can't get anywhere else.
And that's off the hook and WBAI keeping us on the air.
We've been on the air as a show for decades,
as a station for even more decades.
But we can't do it without your support.
And we say that.
We say that every time.
But it's not hyperbole.
This station has no sources of income
other than our listeners, you folks.
So give us a call, 212-209-2950, and join the people
who are already calling.
Get the premium.
But more importantly, keep us coming to you.
Emmanuel.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I just wanted to point out that what Kyle said
is it kind of understated the risk that people took.
People literally, several people, or at least one person,
literally risked their life to provide this information
to the American public.
Espionage has a death penalty in this country.
A lot of other Westernized countries
do not have the death penalty, but the United States does.
And the people who brought this information
to the public through WikiLeaks literally
risked their lives to make you aware, not just you, Emmanuel,
but everybody who's listening, everybody in the country aware
of what our government is doing.
I guarantee anyone reading this massive stash of classified US
government documents can't walk away unchanged
after reading just a fraction of it
or watching the collateral murder video.
This is the first time that WBAI or probably
any other radio station in the country
has offered a massive stash of classified US government
documents to our listeners as a premium for supporting
the radio station.
So I really urge our listeners to call WBAI at 212-209-2950
and become part of what's going on all around the world right
now, with people becoming aware of what their governments are
doing and speaking up for what they really believe in.
212-209-2950.
Yeah, it was only a matter of time before somebody
did such a thing.
And I guess Off the Hook is a good place
to start with that.
We did it last week.
We made over $3,200 in a single hour, which was incredible.
And we want to give people a chance
to take advantage of this for this remaining
hour that we have here.
212-209-2950.
I should point out, too, that the phones are ringing.
But this new program that we have,
it doesn't seem to be reflecting that.
I see calls coming in.
But there's a light of lights.
And none of them are lit.
And I know the calls are coming in.
And we're just not seeing that.
So I don't know if anybody wants to play around
with this program on the computer screen
and maybe figure out how to get it to work.
But thanks to those people who are calling in.
We do appreciate it.
Voltaire?
It's important to remember that BAI
isn't like most of the other non-commercial stations that
are NPR affiliates.
Because unlike them, we have a lot more independent content.
And we're not funded by the Koch brothers.
We're just funded by listeners like you
and not by wealthy philanthropists and stuff.
Right.
All right.
Now, we're also offering some other items tonight.
We did this the first week we were on.
We had some excerpts, some DVDs from our various HOPE
conferences.
And what we have, we have a collection
of DVDs from not one, not two, but three separate HOPE
conferences.
HOPE number six, the last HOPE, and the next HOPE.
That's the order they actually happened in.
HOPE number six was 2006.
The last HOPE was 2008.
The next HOPE, 2010.
And what we have for a pledge of $75
is a collection of 20 of the most popular talks
that took place during that conference.
$75, $212, $209, $295, for a pledge of 125,
you'll get 40 DVDs.
That's four zero of the most popular talks
that took place at those three conferences.
Now, we're going to play an excerpt from one
of our favorite speakers.
And that, of course, is Robert Steele.
He actually was our first speaker at the very first HOPE
conference in 1994.
Let's take a listen to something that he
had to share with the crowd at HOPE number six back in 2006.
This is just one of 20 DVDs that you'll get for a pledge of $75,
one of 40 DVDs that you'll get for a pledge of 125.
And of course, we also have the WikiLeaks collection
for a pledge of 100, $212, $209, $295.
Here's Robert Steele.
This is reality.
Your government is spending $60 billion a year, 95%
of the cost, on what is arguably, at best,
20% of the value.
We are spending less than $600 million.
And in focused terms, with the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service, the new $20 million a year.
This is pissant stuff.
$20 million a year for the large scale internet exploitation
initiative.
We're talking here $250 million of focused open source
intelligence dollars.
This doesn't count research and all that other generic stuff.
What's wrong with this picture?
$60 billion for the 5% we can steal?
Less than $600 million for the 95% we really need to know?
I'm changing the rules of the game, but it's hard going.
We're in year 18 of a 25-year dogfight.
I have a small chance of winning.
The intelligence community today,
to monitor and predict the outcome of a baseball game,
will use clandestine human intelligence
to bribe one or two of the ball players out of 22
to either drop the ball or catch the ball at any given moment.
They're agents of influence.
The signals intelligence community
will put a bug in the dugout and try and overhear
the coach giving instructions.
The imagery intelligence community
will take a picture of the ball field every three days
and try and call the game that way.
The measurements and signatures community
will try and sniff the ball and the direction it's going.
And when it doesn't work, we'll ask for $10 billion more.
The open source intelligence community
says, yo, dudes, catch the ball.
He's out, and we pay.
It's about harnessing the distributed intelligence
of the whole earth.
I know you understand this.
People in Washington are very afraid of this idea.
If they bother to think about it.
This, by the way, is the assistant deputy director
of intelligence for open source, lipstick on the pig.
We have two differing views of OSINT.
His view is he wants to be a good boy
and fit in with the bureaucracy and have his office perks.
Unfortunately, he has no program authority.
He has no money to spend other than $5 million
a year on miscellaneous, and he has no permanent staff.
He's dog meat.
He is lip service.
My view is that we need to create
a robust open source intelligence community
outside of the government.
My second book, The New Craft of Intelligence,
is available at Amazon.
And it basically focuses on the obvious.
Maybe it's obvious to you and me,
but it's not obvious to the spies.
And I've been a spy, and I know all those problems.
Lessons of history.
Bush did not understand three months into the war in Iraq
that there were Sunnis and Shiites
and that the majority liked Iran.
And in this book I just read, The End of Iraq,
Ahmed Chalabi's role cannot be understated.
The man was a masterful manipulator.
I believe he was an agent of influence for Iran.
I believe that Iran has run circles around us.
And I believe, actually, that Iran
should be much more respected by the United States of America.
We tend to confuse nationalism and a desire
for alternative energy with conspiracy theories
and communism and all this other stuff.
I'm not at all convinced that Iran
is a major threat to the United States of America,
but there are a number of lunatics here in New York City
who forget that the CIA ran a coup in Iran
against the will of the people.
And we're now paying for that, as we're paying for it
in many other places.
Global coverage.
There's no one agency, no one country
that can see all information in all languages
all the time, which is my third book.
And we have to do a burden sharing thing.
There are 1,400 Middle Eastern experts in the United States
of America.
Washington talks to about 14 of them.
1,400, 14.
Why?
Well, these 14 are white.
They're in Washington.
They have clearances.
They maybe worked in the intelligence community
previously.
Believe it or not, when a CIA analyst
tries to call people in the country
they're responsible for, they are investigated
by the CIA security officers with high school
educations that got promoted after 20 years of check
and safes at night.
This is seriously poor stuff.
And then we still need spies and secrecy
for things like transnational criminal gangs and so forth.
You can actually eliminate most fraud, waste, and abuse
with statistical analysis.
We have one fellow that discovered $74 million
in crop fraud for a $4 million package of looking.
I have two other guys that not they don't own them.
I just know them.
Two other guys found $50 billion a year
in import-export tax fraud avoidance, tax avoidance fraud.
This is like $25 rocket engines going to China
and $3,000 pencils coming in from China.
This is advanced money laundering.
And oh, by the way, a pound of coffee from Colombia
actually weighs between 1 and 1 quarter and 1 and 1 half pounds.
So we need to go toward a national intelligence
endeavor that has shared unclassified information.
It has a help desk that shares best practices, best prices.
It has primary research and experts
on demand strategic forecasting.
So this is it.
I'm going to try and put this on my website
and model real soon.
OK, and I'm sure he did that as well.
That's Robert Steele speaking at Hope No.
6, one of 20 DVDs that you'll get for a pledge of $75
from the three Hackers on Planet Earth conferences
that took place since 2006.
If you pledge $125, you'll get 40 DVDs
from those three conferences, 212-209-2950.
And of course, in addition, we're also offering the Wikileaks
collection of all sorts of documents, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of documents on a thumb drive
that you can put on your computer.
You can print it out and spread it around.
You can do all kinds of things.
It works with any computer, right?
Yeah, a thumb drive, as long as you can put a thumb drive.
And as far as I know, every computer
accepts thumb drives these days, right?
So you just put the thumb drive in
and you'll see government secrets.
Well, yeah, pretty much.
That's pretty much what's going to happen,
the worst nightmare of the government.
Better yet, if you're someone who
wants to help spread this kind of information,
you know people who are maybe scared to go and find this
stuff, maybe you're not so scared yourself, but lazy.
You can just get this, all the work is already done,
and then you can just copy it onto other flash drives,
burn it on the disks, throw it at all your friends.
And before you know it, it's not so hard to find it.
Even if you have absolutely no interest whatsoever,
and I can't imagine you not having any interest,
but maybe you don't have time to go through hundreds
of thousands of documents, you have the data right there
and something you can fit in the palm of your hand.
You can simply copy it, give it to all your friends,
spread it around, and be an important part of that process
by not letting a story die, which is what the people
in power want to have happen.
So by calling 212-209-2950 and pledging $100,
you can take an important step in the most important story
of the last year, and maybe the last many years.
It's entirely possible.
Yeah, so just remember, the only way,
this is all fantastic stuff we're talking about,
the only way that this will actually happen
is if you dial 212-209-2950 and pledge $100 to the station.
Now, Mike, you went down to the tally room
because we're trying to figure out what's wrong
with the computer program here,
and you look kind of out of breath when you came back.
Is everything okay down there?
Is it getting frantic or what?
Well, not frantic enough.
Not frantic enough, okay.
Not frantic enough.
212-209-2950 is the number to call to make it frantic.
I see a lot of calls coming in.
Oh, good.
Just make sure that that's not just a ghost on the screen,
that it's really happening,
and you can make that happen by dialing 212-209-2950.
Interesting story.
Kyle, you found this on the internet.
Hillary Clinton basically talking about
boosting support for cyber dissidents,
and this certainly, it made me feel good.
Wow, she finally gets it.
The United States stands with cyber dissidents
and democracy activists from the Middle East to China
and beyond, but maybe not the United States so much.
So the Middle East to China and beyond,
does she mean like up to Korea,
or does she keep going across the ocean
and over to the United States?
She does not make it to the United States.
Basically, she said,
and she very clearly pointed to WikiLeaks.
She said, the WikiLeaks incident, though,
began with a theft, just as if it had been executed
by smuggling papers in a briefcase.
The fact that WikiLeaks used the internet
is not the reason we criticized it.
WikiLeaks does not challenge
our commitment to internet freedom.
Maybe because they don't have any commitment
to internet freedom, they don't have to be challenged, but.
So they have a very clear commitment
to internet freedom in countries they don't like.
Is that the way it works?
Pretty much, pretty much.
All right.
Voltaire.
It's kind of like during the Cold War,
when we'd send our support to check dissidents
and people in the Soviet Union,
and while at the same time, support dictator,
not just support, but instill dictators in Latin America.
Yeah, they support dissidents
as long as they're not dissidents of this government.
Yeah, interesting.
And there's a dynamite quote in here, too.
You ready for this one?
This is the quote of all quotes.
This is Hillary Clinton?
This is Hillary Clinton.
The US will, and here's a quote,
will help people in oppressive internet environments
get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors,
the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up
or imprison them for what they say online.
Somehow, Hillary Clinton has injected hackers
into the role of oppressive government.
I don't know how she managed to pull this one off.
This beats what her husband did.
But I'm gonna read it again.
The US will help people
in oppressive internet environments get around filters,
stay one step ahead of the censors,
the hackers, and the thugs.
Bernie, what's your impression of this?
I mean, I've been loving this the past few weeks,
just being highly entertained.
I'm sure you and our listeners have been as well.
Hearing our government spokespeople mince words
and trying to not sound hypocritical,
it's, you couldn't write this kind of entertainment.
They're such hypocrites.
And personally, I resent,
and I'm sure many of our other listeners,
being lumped in with thugs
who would physically beat people up.
That's not what hackers do.
Hackers make people aware of information
that they would otherwise not probably have access to.
That's what we do.
That's what we're here at WPAI to do.
That's why we're bringing you tens of thousands
of classified US government documents
on a thumb drive that you can get
by calling 212-209-2950
and sharing the wealth of knowledge
that you'd get by doing that.
We have some other great previews too,
but that's the gist of it.
It's important to point out that, yes,
we are sharing tens of thousands
of formerly classified documents.
They're not classified anymore.
They're out there.
And what the powers that be are trying to do
is suppress them and keep them
from continuing to be out there.
They're already out.
The story is happening.
And people need to be able to hear
what the rest of the world is able to hear.
That's what we're doing.
And you can debate whether or not it was right
to leak the things in the first place.
They're leaked.
They're out there.
And a lot of us seem to think
that that was an heroic thing to do,
to leak that information,
to tell people what their governments are actually up to.
And there are many thousands of people
in other parts of the world
that are very happy to find out
what their governments are really up to
because then they can finally make the changes
that they need to make.
You can be a part of this view.
You can be a part of valuing this kind of thing
by calling 212-209-2950, pledging your support,
and getting something really kind of interesting
and amazing in exchange.
Yes, Kyle.
Well, what really got me about this article
and the way it was phrased,
there were a couple of things that jumped out at me,
but basically, it's like the US government
supports cyber dissidents,
but now that WikiLeaks is really trying
to establish the perspective
that they've always really been based on,
which is that of journalism.
So they support cyber dissidents,
but not so much journalism,
which is kind of frightening.
And the other bit of the wording,
I guess, DotRet spoke to this a little earlier.
There's been a lot of talk about things being leaked
with the security firm and Anonymous
and all of this stuff going around.
And basically, what that speaks to
is that the Chamber of Commerce
has been recommending security and legal firms
to these private security companies
that are, and Bank of America, actually,
because Bank of America is concerned
about these finance leaks that are supposedly coming out.
And it's just a lot of irony
that you have this mounting legal
and corporate offense on journalism
and information being freed.
And yet, at the same time,
we're supporting all these cyber dissidents
and freedom of information and speech on the internet.
So I don't know.
I just think it's terribly ironic, and I don't know.
I just wanna jump in here and say
when you hear Hillary Clinton saying
that the United States not only supports,
but wants to help people get around
the blockages of information on the internet,
that just sounds like a flat-out lie
because then they wouldn't want
that kind of power being used against them.
They're trying to stop it with organizations
like Wikileaks.
That's why you redefine words.
You make hackers into thugs.
You make hackers into the censors and the oppressors,
which is a bizarre thing to try to do,
but she's apparently attempting to do that.
And it's, wow, I never thought I'd see something like this.
And they're trying to take it
even to the more disturbing level of saying,
well, with a lot of these high-profile cracks,
who else could possibly do it
besides big supernational governments or other interests?
And then you have these poor hackers
that are maybe being wrongly accused
or other people going into crazy shows
and people being put on for espionage
and things that never were supposed to be
in the conversation in the first place.
I think we're reading too much into this.
I think the only explanation for that crazy statement
is that, unlike her husband, Hillary did inhale.
Uh-huh, okay, maybe she did.
212-209-2950, that's the number to call.
We think calls are coming in.
It's almost impossible to tell
with this crazy computer program that we have running here.
And I certainly would understand if calls were coming in
because it's an incredible premium
that we're offering tonight.
And again, we're only on for another 27 minutes
and that's it for the fundraiser.
This season, 212-209-2950, again, a pledge of $100
gets you, I guess, more than 100,000 documents.
Basically, cables, they're kind of small documents
but they're significant.
They're things the U.S. government certainly
did not want to have released one way or another.
212-209-2950, Red Hat.
They're significant and insignificant, right?
I mean, I don't think there's...
Well, yeah, I mean, it's everything.
Some things are dull and boring.
Wow, I can't believe.
But that's fine.
It's better to be that way than just the...
I don't think your microphone's working at all.
Or it wasn't before.
You're gonna have to share with someone else.
Yeah.
I was saying that better to have everything
than just what might be the most important
because you never know what people might find important.
There might be things hidden in there.
There might be all kinds of things that are...
Give it all.
Yeah, exactly.
212-209-2950.
Now we're gonna play another excerpt
from one of the Hope conferences.
This is from a panel at The Last Hope
called Postal Hacking.
I'm gonna read you some of the synopsis of this.
A review of the United States Postal Service
discusses numerous mail-related issues.
What is the heaviest thing
that you can send in a flat rate box?
What happens if you mail a sphere?
What are the mysteries of digital postage meters?
A look at how modern automation
allows you to send a letter 3,000 miles
for back then was only 42 cents
and what security vulnerabilities
might exist in that infrastructure?
This is one of 20 talks that you'll get
for a pledge of $75.
One of 40 talks you'll get for a pledge of 125
to 212-209-2950.
And again, we have the WikiLeaks thumb drive,
four gigs filled with all kinds of information
of sensitive and non-sensitive,
interesting and boring,
all kinds of things that are out there.
For a pledge of $100,
you'll get that four gig thumb drive,
212-209-2950.
Let's listen to some postal hacking.
Now, a lot of people wonder
why the post office matters to them.
It's really important to our economy
because it's a universal delivery service
and it's really, really cheap.
Nobody in here is gonna take something to California
for 42 cents except the post office.
And a lot of banking, a lot of business,
medical supplies, books, libraries,
everybody uses the postal system.
And so it's really important to us.
It's also neat from a libertarian standpoint
because it's a fiscally independent government organization
and there's not a lot of these out there.
It is a private corporation,
although all the shares are owned by the Fed.
None of your tax dollars goes to paying
for postal delivery service.
They completely have to raise their own money.
And it'd be nice if a few other agencies
had to do that too.
It's also really useful for explaining hacking techniques
to managers because people are really familiar
with the postal system.
They know how it works.
Well, they know how to use it.
And there's a lot of ways you can abuse it
that are similar to techniques we might use
in the computer world,
but you don't have to be a computer person to understand it.
So let's start off by looking at how a letter
gets from point A to point B.
And when you drop your letter off in the mail,
one of the first things that happens
is it gets oriented and canceled.
Stamps glow under ultraviolet B.
This is not black light, quote unquote.
It's a shorter wavelength, higher energy.
But it allows the computing equipment
to see which side of the envelope is the address side
and also which direction to turn it.
Now, if you're gonna play with this,
remember that UV will burn your retinas.
You'll get a sunburn on your eye
and it doesn't really heal, so wear eye protection.
Just the cheap $2 safety glasses from Home Depot
leave a nice shadow where it blocks pretty much all the UV
and most sunglasses do as well.
So please don't hurt yourself.
So the next thing that happens
is they take a picture of your envelope
and then they spray an orange barcode on the back.
It's a fluorescent orange
and it doesn't show up very well on projectors,
but it uses different space instead of tall and short
in order to encode zeros and ones.
And the reason they take a picture of your envelope
is so they can run the address through an OCR system
and try to figure out what the whole address is,
including the zip code.
And if they can't figure it out,
like if you have a doctor's handwriting,
they send the images to Singapore
and they have armies of people working for,
I don't know, probably like 70 cents an hour
typing in addresses.
Now, you might wonder, why do we need the entire address,
not just the zip code?
And the reason is is they will take that
and they'll apply forwarding.
So let's say I'm here in New York
and I mail my friend in San Francisco a letter,
but he's actually moved to Miami.
Their computer will go,
oh, we have a forwarding order for this person.
There's no reason to truck this to California
and then back again.
We'll just send it straight to Miami.
So they save a lot of money.
And that's part of, I mean,
even though postage rates keep going up,
it's actually going down when you look at the inflation rate.
So a lot of these automations
and additional efficiencies in the postal stream
have helped it remain really competitive.
Now, after we figured out where it's going,
we apply carrier pre-sorting.
And the post office has this huge database
of all the addresses that they deliver to.
And this is what they use to apply those extra four digits
to the end of your barcode.
They also add two more digits
called the delivery point code.
And that's the actual stop number
that the mail truck makes as it's driving down the street.
So the computer system, after it sprays that barcode on,
uses it to route the mail and sort the mail
all the way down to the point
where the mailman just opens the box,
grabs the next bundle, and shoves it in
and doesn't have to do a lot of manual sorting.
The ZIP4 coding scheme, if you look at it carefully,
it's broken up into different sides of the street.
That's how we get odd and even number ranges.
This particular street that we drew a sample of
is a cul-de-sac, but it's intersected by another street.
So it changes about halfway through
where that intersection is.
I think the mail truck takes a right-hand turn.
And it's also interesting that whoever's at 815
is at the end of the cul-de-sac
and he has his own ZIP plus four code.
And there's a lot of addresses like this,
particularly post office boxes.
But it gets interesting because you can just write
ZIP plus four on an envelope and it will get delivered.
Now, I suspect that in the future,
the post office will come up with this really brainiac idea
that they can just hand out numbers
that have nothing to do with ZIP
and that you'll register your physical address
so that when you move,
you don't actually have to change your address
with all your magazine subscriptions
and all your junk mail.
You can just tell the post office,
hey, I'm number 5286753821119
and I've changed addresses.
Yeah, somebody suggested social security number,
but businesses don't have social security numbers.
And yeah, that would be a bad idea.
Yeah, it'd be neat if you could have multiple numbers
as well that point to the same person.
But anyway, this begs the question that,
well, what would happen if I just put the ZIP code,
just put the barcode on an envelope and mail it?
And the answer is it doesn't quite work that well,
but almost.
This was going to a post office box
and we sent several other pieces of mail
to the same post office box
that had various addressing problems.
And we got back this exact same stamp
with the broken E and broken R
and the slightly smudged upper finger
and the gunk stuck in the E.
So we know that this envelope made it
all the way to the destination post office box.
And I think what happened was that the postal clerk
who's putting it in the cubicles
couldn't figure out which cubicle it went in
and so he gave it the finger and sent it back.
All right, but these barcodes are just read by the computer
and it doesn't think anything of it.
This is our first opportunity to mess with the system.
So I was in Baltimore, as you can see by the post office,
the postmark at the top,
and we sent this letter to Atlanta.
But we used the tall and short postnet code
for Hilo, Hawaii.
And when we do these,
we always send a control envelope at the same time
that's perfectly addressed normally
so we can judge how much delay there is in the process.
This added two weeks to the delivery time.
And it's also nice that they postmarked it again
when they finally figured it out
and blacked out the barcode
so that their machine wouldn't keep sending it
back to Hawaii.
So in addition to this being an input validation issue,
because so many things rely on the post office
or use the post office as a benchmark,
this allows you to hack other things.
Now, I pay all my taxes electronically
so if there's any IRS agents in the office,
I've never done this.
But since your tax payment
only has to be postmarked by April 15th,
not necessarily received,
if somebody sent their payment to the Philadelphia office
but they coded it with,
I don't know, one of those fishing villages in Alaska
that only gets mail once a month,
your check just got floated.
So there's a lot of attacks like that
where you can use the post office to do other things.
And that's an excerpt from the postal hacking talk
from The Last Hope done by CypherGhost
that took place here in New York City back in 2008.
One of 20 such talks about hacking,
various forms of hacking,
that you will get for a pledge of $75.
One of 40 if you pledge 125.
Anybody, Bernie, did you go to that talk,
the postal hacking talk?
I did, it's actually one of my favorites.
I enjoyed that.
In fact, I played that back a couple of times
and listened to it.
So I've never actually,
I saw part of it in that, it's when volunteer work,
so I never actually saw the whole thing.
But these videos that we're offering on DVD,
and you don't have to actually watch them,
you can just listen to the audio in the background
while you're doing something else,
but it's an amazing value.
We're offering these talks from various Hope conferences,
20 of them, 20 DVDs for $75,
40 DVDs for what, $125?
That's correct.
That's like $3 and change
for a whole DVD of amazing educational
and intriguing programming.
I urge our listeners to call 212-209-2950.
It's an incredible information value,
and most importantly, you're supporting WBA-IFM,
which is the only kind of station
that can bring you this kind of information.
And it also speaks to the diversity in the hacker community
that we talk about all kinds of different subject material.
The post office is certainly something
that we all come in contact with quite a bit.
Isn't it nice to know how it works?
Is it nice to experiment and play around
and see what happens if you do certain things?
One thing, actually, somebody,
I know suggested this a number of years ago.
I've never actually done it myself, but I'd love to try it.
It's something called postman's choice,
where you have an index card,
and you basically stick a stamp on it,
and you write an address,
and then you flip it over
and do the exact same thing on the other side.
You have one in California, one in New York,
and you basically drop it in the mailbox,
and you see which it finally winds up in.
It's going to hit all kinds of machines
that are going to route it in one direction,
then it's going to flip over,
hit another machine, go in a different direction.
Eventually, it's going to wind up someplace,
and by the time it does that,
it will have been through so many
different postal sorting machines
that who knows what it'll look like.
Something I'd like to try and see what actually happens.
That's what hackers do.
Isn't some of the routing of the...
I'm sorry, none of the microphones seem to work.
Go ahead.
Isn't some of the routing of the mail
done with OCR these days,
where they actually recognize the writing on the envelope?
Yeah, but if the writing is on two sides of a card,
what does it do then?
I don't know.
Or if it ends up somehow getting two barcodes.
Bernie, it sounds like something we should try, right?
Yeah, you'd be thinking like a hacker on this,
why not just get a box?
You know, a regular box that has six sides on it,
and put a different address stamp on each side of the box,
and see where that goes.
You know, it's funny,
because we were going through a box actually
a couple of days ago,
and we saw somebody else's address on it, right, Kyle?
We were looking at some package that we got,
and all of a sudden,
it was from somebody else to somebody else.
And we were like, how did we get this?
And it turns out sometimes when you ship things
via FedEx or UPS,
they don't take the old label off.
And I don't know how they know
which one they're supposed to send to.
They have some kind of a system going there.
So it works that way sometimes.
We were able to see where it was distributed to as well.
So it was kind of interesting.
That mic doesn't work, so stop using it.
Yeah, I'm gonna put it away now.
I mean, they probably,
at least with UPS, right, with the tracking number,
they probably expire it when it's not valid anymore.
Yeah, but the post office is not that sophisticated.
If you simply write something on,
but anyway, this is just one thing
that you can do to experiment with.
It's sort of the hacker mentality.
It's fun, it's mischievous, it's educational,
and we believe in sharing information.
That's what we wanna do here tonight,
is share information and keep this place going.
So we'll be here to share information
for many years to come.
212-209-2950.
So you said you had 40 DVDs for $125?
You can't get your head around that.
That's a lot.
It's a lot of DVDs.
Yeah, it's shocking how many there are.
And so you could get that and the WikiLeaks SunDrive.
That would be what, $225?
For a pledge of $225,
you can get everything we're offering tonight, yeah.
And that is a great deal.
That'll keep you occupied for a year.
At least, at least.
So let's get these calls coming in.
I don't know if this program is working,
but I do see calls coming in.
And we're only on for another 13 minutes or so.
But I wanted to play an excerpt from something else, too,
while we still have some time,
just to show the wide variety of things we talk about
in the hacker world, one of which is graffiti.
This is an excerpt from 2006,
our friends from the Graffiti Research Lab.
Um, yeah, this is one we get a lot.
It's probably fairly relevant in that, you know,
the materials that we do, you know, use
do cost more money than, say, a can of spray paint
that someone, you know, stole.
You can also steal LEDs, too.
Spray paint is very expensive these days.
It's not quite that big a discrepancy.
But yeah, no, we do.
Yeah, I guess that's a good question.
The cost of covering the cube?
Well, it's somewhere between 25 to 50 cents per LED throw,
depending on how many we buy.
So something like the cube, where there were 600,
you know, you guys can do the math.
It's not, it's certainly not as expensive
as the shows that the art non-profit we work for puts on.
You know, it's not as-
So it's not funded, then?
Like, were you getting money to do that?
We are getting money.
We're funded by a number of, sort of,
very prestigious art grants to do this.
The MacArthur Foundation and whatnot.
Do people take a lot of your throwies?
They do.
I mean, the process for the first throwie video,
I think, laid out what would happen
for all the future ones in that, you know,
we go, we do this, you know,
we're up there throwing these throwies on the building,
you know, pretty lame, whatever.
And then a group of people
who are totally unassociated with us come up
and they immediately get it.
I like that young gentleman who ran up
and, you know, did the, like,
two-foot vertical grab of those throwies
right before that.
He had turned to me and said,
you guys are bombing this, yo.
And then he went and did it.
So he got it right away.
So that's actually the more cool part.
But so those guys don't actually,
they're not, like, on our agenda.
You know, they actually are more interested
in kind of getting something for themselves.
So they go out and they grab them,
they throw them back a few times,
and they're like, I'm just gonna take as many as I can.
And that's cool too,
because it's a bit like the subway system hacks
that graffiti artists did in the 70s and 80s,
in that they would use the subway to transport their,
you know, giant paintings all over the city.
So they would get the whole, you know,
all five boroughs using just, you know,
one train car.
And we've also had the joy to work with a lot of kids.
You know, kids are great because they're all anarchists.
None of them vote.
So, and I thought this was a very sort of astute comment.
And not only did they sort of predict,
you know, this, the youth of today,
their involvement in the graffiti tomorrow,
but they also predicted that they would eventually sell out
and allow their work to just be sort of co-opted
into the similitude of art.
Okay, so you saw a lot of the stuff that we do,
we're not particularly hardcore.
We're pretty soft core guys.
And people don't really take a lot of our stuff
very hardcore.
They actually tend to go in the opposite direction
as hard as they can.
So here's a site, Parent Hacks,
where people have figured out that they can use throwies
to mark their like soccer mom caravan.
And if we were really worried about looking like putzes,
like this would be really hurtful for us.
But we're not, it's totally cool.
I mean, it's really pretty cool
that people can find other ways to use it.
You know, not everything that other people have done
has made us sort of happy.
Sometimes we feel like Eric from Instructable said
that we have a lot of vanilla ice nemesis,
nemesis who are out there trying to take our projects
in a very sort of soft and fluffy direction.
But then again, when they do it,
they tend to innovate and they improve it.
Fridge Lights who refuses to attribute his electrograph
to our sort of work that we did preceding him
because I got in an argument with him in a comment thread.
Has actually brought a lot of innovations
to the electrograph.
He used AC power, he made a kind of different setup.
The only thing that sucks is that now I have to ask,
people ask me and like the guys from Solarbotics,
oh, that's awesome, you guys do these murals.
It's cool that you guys have learned
from Fridge Lights how to make them.
So, but either way, we suck it up.
Certainly there's other people that are out there
who are interested in our, you know,
little games and fun for their own commercial game.
And we actually buy LEDs from this company.
They're really nice dudes.
They're really like with it kind of guys.
They actually suggested they would give
the 2600 staff 10,000 throwies
if someone could get them root server error log access.
I really don't know what they were asking.
I forwarded it on to Emmanuel,
but there's like some promise of a lot of throwies.
I think if you could do something really legal
for this Chinese company.
This is close to home.
These guys are just in New Jersey.
We've done a certain, you know, who is,
this is the, you know, extent
of our digital deduction skills, but.
All right, about enough of that there.
This goes to show the crazy antics
that go on in the hacker community.
And that was James Powerly
from the Graffiti Research Labs
talking at HALP number six in 2006.
One of 20 DVDs for a pledge of $75 that you will get.
One of 40 that you'll get for 125, 212, 209, 2950.
But of course we also have
our special WikiLeaks thumb drive.
All the documents that were released in 2010
and made headlines all around the world
will come straight to you.
You don't have to connect to anything.
You don't have to risk the feds knocking on your door
because you connected to WikiLeaks.
Not that that would happen,
but a lot of people think it might.
And it could, I guess.
I guess it's possible that one day
we could live in a society
where you get your door kicked in
because you connected to the wrong website.
What do you think, Walter?
If you're in the military, you will.
If you're in the military?
Well, yeah, I'm not sure we should send this
to people in the military either.
It's already blocked.
Yeah, but if your net surfing abilities
are blocked from going to controversial places
like WikiLeaks, well, the postal service isn't blocked.
So you'll be able to get this in the mail at least
and put it on your computer and read to your heart's content,
copy it, spread it around, whatever strikes your fancy.
212-209-2950.
Of course, if you're in the military,
you might already have access to these documents anyway.
In that case, send them to us.
Well, a lot of people in the military
did have access to these documents, that's for sure.
And that's how so many people found out about it
in the first place.
But now we found out about it.
Now individual citizens know,
and that's kind of important that we have that information.
212-209-2950.
We're kind of cut off from the tally room.
The program isn't working properly.
Even our camera wasn't working properly for a while.
So we think we're doing well,
but we're not sure.
So please, if you want to help out,
if you want to get these amazing items,
if you just want to preserve freedom of speech
and alternative voices, give a call now.
212-209-2950.
Bernie, I know you're always great
at getting those calls to come in.
Well, yes.
I don't know if it's due to me
or people just wanting to make me shut up,
but I can't recall when we offered such a combination
of information treasure troves.
On one fundraising show,
two different DVD packages of amazing Hope Conferences,
and the entire WikiLeaks archive
over the past year or so of documents.
It's an amazing value.
Whatever you can afford,
what's most important is not the premiums,
but you support this radio station,
which is the only station I know
that has no commercials
and will bring you amazing information.
You're just not going to get anywhere else.
212-209-2950.
Please call and support this station.
It's important.
Thanks.
Before I get into the details-
Oh, and this is someone who just broke in
from The Last Hope, I believe,
talking about warrantless searches at borders
of laptops and things like that.
Let's listen for a moment.
I was on vacation, and unfortunately,
I had to cut my trip early
because I had death in my immediate family.
And so I flew back to the United States.
I was flying into LAX.
And me and my sister were randomly selected
for search at the border.
And needless to say, I was kind of in a bad mood.
And I've got these people
who have decided to go through my stuff,
and they're going through my bag, right?
And they hold up every single object in the bag,
every pair of underwear, every T-shirt.
They hold it up, and they say,
is this yours?
Is this yours?
Is this yours?
Is this yours?
And the way that that questioning worked
kind of freaked me out
because you get lulled into this sort of automatic response
after the 20th or 30th piece of clothing is held up.
You just kind of say, yeah, it's mine.
Yeah, it's mine.
Yeah, it's mine without paying attention.
And so if they wanted to grab something
under the table and show it to you,
you might say, yeah, it's mine
without really looking at it first.
And that kind of bothered me.
Why are they using this sort of system of questioning
that seems particularly designed
to elicit an incorrect or false confession?
So I was kind of pissed off.
And I'm thinking, I'm an American citizen.
I'm on US soil.
This is the US government that's searching my stuff.
All right, we're going to have to fade this down
because we're out of time.
But this is a talk by Decius took place at the last hope
about warrantless searches of laptops at US borders,
all kinds of fascinating things.
I want to thank everybody who's called in so far
and has supported us for this entire fundraiser
that's been taking place.
We won't be here next week.
We'll be here in two weeks.
And I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
I want to thank all of you for joining us.
We'll be here in two weeks.
But again, the phone number, 212-209-2950.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'll see you in two weeks.
Good night.
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I've got an answering machine.
I've got an answering machine.
I've got an answering machine.
I've got an answering machine.
You must be the dirty rat.
You must be the dirty rat who called last time?
I've got an answering machine.
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You live to recredit.
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beep beep beep beep
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This is the voice of the answer phone
There's nobody in
I'm all alone
You want to get
your message through
Just wait for the
and I'll get back to you
Uh-huh. Wow, that is a special show.
Hey, did you ever notice in
Grand Central Station
on the number
the Lexington Avenue line
and right above the Lexington Avenue line
there is a
say a map
on the floor, a compass
Did you ever notice that
that compass
is not facing north
but it is actually facing
west
Now, if you can't
put a compass down correctly
why put it down there
at all for any
reason
and did you ever notice that
the flag
on the
W Hotel over there on the east side
the W flag
is higher
and bigger than
the American flag
What kind of mess is
that?
Ahhh
Life in the Big Apple