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Let's honor each other.
And it's 1900 hours.
You're listening to WBAI in Miami.
It's time for Off the Hook.
And good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
I'm told I made a mistake.
It's WBAI New York.
I was confused by the weather, which is insane for New York in January or February.
It's the first day of February.
It might as well be the first day of June for the way things are here.
I think it's disgusting.
Welcome Mike.
Hi.
I'm sorry.
I'm annoyed by this.
I like winter.
I like cold in the winter, not warmth.
That's good for you.
All right.
You know, you have a snowstorm in June.
That's the equivalent of what we're having right now.
Okay.
And I want to see how people react to that.
Everyone's saying it's a beautiful day.
No, it's not a beautiful day.
There's something wrong when it's almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the winter.
There's something wrong with that.
Dot Red.
Yes.
Good evening.
Yes.
Hello.
Well, to be fair, it is beautiful.
No, it's not.
But it's not supposed to be this time of year.
It's not.
Beautiful is cold in the winter.
It's not.
It's not.
You know, we can talk about this the whole hour.
Jim, you're also here.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Bernie S. down there in Philadelphia.
Greetings from very warm Philadelphia.
You're getting it too, huh?
I like it.
Is this where I advise you to go to hell if you think it's too warm here?
Okay.
You know, I've been through that.
I went to hell twice, which is in Norway.
And it gets cold there in the wintertime.
I'll say that.
And the sun stays out in the summertime.
So yeah.
Maybe I will go back to hell.
Okay.
We have a busy show tonight because, yes, it's the first day of the Winter Fun Drive.
And usually the Winter Fun Drive takes place when it's cold outside.
So people are inside listening to the radio with their checkbooks open, hopefully, or
their credit cards out on display.
Because you know that you have to call in quickly to take advantage of the amazing things
that we offer.
Tonight will not be an exception.
We're not on next week.
And I hope people call in and keep this place going.
Because boy, no matter what the temperature is outside, it's always amazing inside here
at this radio station.
It's a very unique place.
It exists in New York City.
It has existed since 1960, broadcasting off the top of the Empire State Building with
all kinds of alternative ideas and thoughts.
It's magical WBAI.
And our pledge number is 212-209-2950 in case people are so inclined to already call in.
But let's first look at some news items that have taken place this week.
Then we'll get into our special guests for tonight.
We're going to be talking about leaks, and confidential things, and controversy in general,
I guess.
And government reaction, and making corporations angry, and all those things that you couldn't
talk about on any other radio station.
Why don't we start?
Well, there was just some, speaking of chaos, which is what these actions often cause, there
was chaos in the German parliament this week.
And I really like this.
I like the way this transpired.
Listen to this Reuters story.
The German parliament's email system was hampered for several hours for more than 4,000 staffers
and deputies when hundreds of workers responded to an errant email sent by one staffer named
Babette to all 4,032 coworkers.
This reminds me of the 1990s, where things like this happen all the time.
The flood of emails began when Babette accidentally replied to all a Bundestag email list with
a short answer to a colleague, which basically said, please bring me a copy of the new directory.
Well, their exchange quickly multiplied when hundreds of colleagues responded with comments
ranging from, please remove my name from your list, to, I'd like to take this opportunity
to say hello to my mother.
That's a bizarre way to respond to that message.
Does the mother also work in the Bundestag?
I don't know why somebody would say that.
I do know why people would say, please remove my name from your list.
And every time I get mass cc'd on things, there's always some joker someplace or some
idiot someplace that responds to the entire list saying, stop emailing me, and emails
everybody else to say that.
Anyway, it was a rare moment of lighthearted confusion in a country with a reputation for
doing things with precision.
Many Germans working in the parliament remained uncharacteristically relaxed.
One member of parliament for the Greens party, Volker Beck, said, one mistaken click and
the parliament's email system is turned into a new social network.
One anonymous staffer in the usually anonymous parliament building wrote, I think this is
great.
We should do this once a month.
It'll help us grow together.
A spokeswoman of the Bundestag confirmed that there had been a flood of emails in response
to the errant email and that it was possible, as German media reported, that emails in the
parliament were delayed for up to half an hour due to the high volume.
I just think it's great occasionally to just have something like that happen and everybody
sort of pause.
It's like having a fire drill in the middle of school.
But what exactly happened?
They have an email alias, I assume, that just goes to the entire staff.
And someone sent an email to that alias, which has, I assume, existed all this time.
This doesn't make any sense.
You know, you want to dig for facts.
You can dig all you want.
But the important thing is that half an hour of time was wasted, at least.
And people had fun.
And they went outside, I guess, and sort of hung out for a while.
I don't know why they would go outside.
I'll do that.
I'll do that right then, Bernie.
I just love that one person was actually able to start all this mayhem.
I bet.
Yes.
Well, we should interview her.
Bernie, go ahead.
The best example that I can recall of an inadvertent mass CC emailing was when the MPAA or its
legal counsel inadvertently CC'd all the defendants in a case.
Do you recall that?
Was it our case?
Well, it was a whole bunch.
Do you remember this?
This was, like, a good ten years ago.
There was a case where a lot of people—it may not have been our case, but it was an
MPAA-related case for the whole DMCA thing, where someone from the law firm that was against
all these people for allegedly violating copyrights—there was a whole bunch of Jane Doe's or whatever.
They had a bunch of email addresses.
They just emailed everybody.
This was discussed at, like, H2K or H2K2.
It was probably Proskauer Rose, their attorneys.
Yes.
Right.
So that way, all the defendants suddenly had each other's email addresses, and they could
all compare notes and get on the same page, and it was great.
Good fun.
Okay, this other story that's more serious concerning Mega Upload, the site we've been
talking about the last couple of weeks, a site in New Zealand that was shut down somehow
by the U.S. government, and they're hoping to extradite.
Somehow they went in and seized the servers from the data hosting facility.
Yeah, well, somehow they got permission to do that.
That's the mystery.
Yeah, that's a big mystery, but that's what happens.
Anyway, so all this data was seized, and the way the media would have you believe it, everything
that was on Mega Upload was piracy, but it's not the case.
There was all kinds of information up there because people were storing all sorts of data.
Well, Mega Upload has received a letter from the U.S. attorney informing the company that
data uploaded by its users may be destroyed within a matter of days.
The looming wipeout is the result of Mega Upload's lack of funds to pay for the servers,
and I guess having been rated as they were, they wouldn't have access to a whole lot of
funds at the moment.
Behind the scenes, Mega Upload is hoping to convince the U.S. government that it's in
the best interest of everyone involved to allow users to access their data, at least
temporarily.
But when you think about it, there are all kinds of things that people have stored on
this particular site, archives of personal information, things that are completely legal,
and to have it seized and then destroyed by a foreign government seems to me like not
a good thing to do.
So there's actually a bit of good news, or at least potential good news in this.
The big hosting provider, which is a company apparently called Carpathia, has teamed up
with the EFF.
They created a website called Megaretrieval, and you can go to megaretrieval.com, and they've
promised to delay as long as possible destroying the data.
So hopefully there will at least continue to be some chance of getting it back.
Why do they have to destroy it in the first place?
It's on drives that don't belong to them.
Why can't they just preserve it until the case is resolved?
That's what they're going to do.
But I'm saying, why does the U.S. government say they need to destroy it in the first place?
It doesn't make sense to me.
Well, I mean, so the drives are owned by Carpathia, which could use them for some other customer,
but they've promised not to.
All right.
Well, good.
Good.
A little pressure sometimes is important.
And if you are one of the people who has your own content in Mega Upload and you can't get
it out, you can go again on megaretrieval.com, and you can email the EFF, which will try
and help you.
Now, Bernie, this is a story that you posted to our list, our off-the-hook list here, which,
by the way, you can mail us, othat2600.com, if you have a story or opinion that you'd
like to share with everybody on the radio show.
This has to do with Twitter and with travel, Twitter and travel at the same time.
I cannot believe this story.
This just blew me away.
Two 20-somethings arriving from the U.K. learned a harsh lesson about the American government's
sense of humor on January 23rd when they were detained and then forced to return home
because of comments they made on Twitter.
Basically, Lee Van Bryan and Emily Bunting were going through customs when they were
detained.
They spent the next 12 hours locked up in a cell being grilled by homeland security
officials.
Bryan was charged with intending to come to the U.S. to commit crimes, while Bunting was
charged for traveling with him.
I didn't know that was an offense, being charged with traveling with somebody.
A paperwork for the incident indicates that Bryan's name was on a one-day lookout list
maintained by homeland security.
First I'm hearing about a list like that.
According to the New York Post and World News Daily, this refers to an auto-generated temporary
list of inbound travelers that are already in the official terror watch list database.
The paperwork also referred to Bryan's tweets, and they referred to them as tweeters.
They can't even get the name of Twitter right.
They call it tweeter.
Now, from the official paperwork, during secondary examination, Mr. Bryan was placed under oath
and his sworn statement was taken by CPP officer Wallman.
Mr. Bryan confirmed that he had posted on his Twitter website account that he was coming
to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe.
Also the Twitter account of Mr. Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America.
The tweets had been sent a week before their trip, indicating the U.S. government had flagged
the pair well before their arrival.
Both claim the messages were lost in translation.
And keep in mind they came from the U.K., so they still managed to lose it in translation.
The translation was from English, the language that we and the people in the U.K. share,
and whatever bizarre perverted language the CBP speaks.
Kind of my point, yes.
Now they asked why we wanted to destroy America, and we tried to explain destroy meant to get
trashed and party, sort of how I interpreted it when I read it the first time.
Bryan also said he was asked about a tweet that he says is a quote from the television
show Family Guy.
Family Guy just keeps causing problems everywhere.
Three weeks today, we're totally in L.A., pissing people off on Hollywood Boulevard
and digging Marilyn Monroe up.
Now, apparently that's a quote from Family Guy, and everybody who has majored in English
should know this.
I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Lee's lookout while
he dug up Marilyn Monroe.
Bunting told the Daily Mail, it got even more ridiculous because the officials searched
our suitcases and said they were looking for spades and shovels.
But things quickly became less humorous to Bryan and Bunting.
Speaking with the Daily Mail, Bryan said officials told him, you really effed up with that tweet,
boy, before handcuffing and putting him in what Bryan described as a cage inside of a
van.
He then was transported to a prison with other border offenders.
It's just so ridiculous.
It's almost funny.
But at the time, it was really scary.
The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist.
We just wanted to have a good time on holiday.
That was all Lee meant in his tweets.
You know, all that notwithstanding, folks, I really hope people do come to the United
States for the Hope Conference this summer.
But man, how do you tell people that, you know, it's not that much to worry about when
they're looking at your tweets from weeks ago, misinterpreting things that are written
in the same language and just basically acting like real jerks?
Now, Bernie, you posted this.
What are your thoughts about it?
I think it's interesting that the Customs and Border Protection or the Department of
Homeland Security is looking at, apparently, everybody's tweets.
Or they have various filters and scanning tools to look for keywords like destroy in
America and Marilyn Monroe, things like that, so that they would, you know, detain a couple
of obviously innocent teenagers who are just having fun and joking.
20-somethings.
Let's be real here.
Did I say teenagers?
Yeah, the 20-somethings.
Not teenagers.
Yeah.
Significantly more dangerous.
Much more dangerous.
You know?
Dangerous with every year.
But it just seems so Orwellian that they have the resources to devote to this sort of nonsense.
Well, what if everybody visiting America tweeted that they were going to destroy America or
dig up Marilyn Monroe or something else that would cause them concern?
They would be so taxed.
They'd have to hire all kinds of new people.
The economy would benefit from the creation of new jobs.
I think a lot of problems could be solved.
There's so many more serious things that are absurd with this story.
But the thing that keeps getting me, they searched the bag for shovels.
They didn't think you could buy shovels in L.A.?
It just doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
A lot doesn't add up here.
And plus, I don't think you can bring shovels on an airplane.
Can you?
In your checked bags.
I don't know why you would, because you're flying to L.A., which I understand has shovels
for sale.
Yeah.
Well, maybe if they found the shovels, then they'd have the intent or whatever.
I don't know.
I can't get into the brains of these people.
You'd need some kind of microscope to do that.
But who knows what they were thinking.
Got it right.
Yeah.
I don't think, I don't really think we can analyze this too deeply, because obviously,
whoever was in charge wasn't really thinking things through.
But that's the entire department, all right?
Every time I come into the country, I get interrogated.
God knows what they're looking for.
This is what they did.
This is their M.O.
But the thing is, if you fight it, if you let people know what's going on, that sort
of, maybe things will get corrected.
Maybe.
Well, I agree that the whole department seems to be a little screwy.
I mean, this one-day watch list, if someone's dangerous where they're not supposed to be
allowed in the country, how are they only dangerous for one day?
Well, maybe the mood will pass.
Maybe they won't want to dig up Marilyn Monroe anymore.
So terrorism's now a 24-hour phase?
There's just so much we can learn from this, and so much that, you know, I just, I'm sorry
that their whole vacation was ruined.
But keep in mind, folks, I mean this.
We do want lots of people to come from overseas, and we always get some pushback from people
saying, I don't want to be fingerprinted, I don't want to have my picture taken.
It's, you know, it sucks.
It's horrible what they put you through sometimes.
But remember that you're amongst friends.
When you finally do arrive, you'll have an amazing story to tell and to share with a
few thousand of your best friends.
And if the worst happens and somehow you get sent back, well, we'll tell that story too
and we'll get some satisfaction for that.
The thing is not to be cowed into submission and not to let the bad guys win, you know?
Not to let them scare you into not coming in the first place, not being a part of something
that is something you want to do.
Now on the subject of hope, hope number nine, we have announced our first in a series of
keynotes.
And the people in this room know, I believe, but maybe the people on the radio don't.
We are getting the Yes Men to be one of, yes, yes, Bernie.
The Yes Men will be one of our keynote, well, two of our keynote speakers, but for one keynote
address that will be taking place the weekend of July 13th, 14th, and 15th.
And boy, I cannot think of a more perfect match for hackers on planet Earth because
these guys are incredible hackers.
They hack the system, they hack the media, and they do it in a very clever and positive
way.
Very briefly, they've impersonated people from the World Trade Organization, from Dow
Chemical, from, I think, ExxonMobil.
And basically what they do is they do it in such a way that it's believable that people
who really don't think too hard about this trust them and allow them to speak on behalf
of corporations they have absolutely nothing to do with.
And once they do this, once they do this, they actually speak intelligently, but they
say things that make you think and make you realize that, wow, these corporations that
they're supposedly speaking for really are kind of evil.
Like speaking for Dow Chemical and saying, yes, of course, we'll take responsibility
for the horrible tragedy at Bhopal that killed thousands of people, thousands and thousands
of people killed by a gas leak or a chemical leak, and of course the corporation has to
take responsibility.
And then the corporation has to go public and say, no, we're not going to take responsibility
for that.
We don't think we're liable.
So what better way to get people to show their true colors and to impersonate them and make
them seem like good guys so they have to stand up and say, no, we're actually bad guys.
That to me is genius, and that's why we asked them to be a part of it.
And it's going to be a great talk.
I think it'll inspire a lot of kids, a lot of hackers in general to think of ways that
they can be clever, change the world a bit, and educate people at the same time.
They've been at Hope before.
They have been at Hope before.
But they've become more and more famous.
They're really famous now.
They've got two movies out.
The whole world knows who these guys are.
So we're pleased as punch to have them be part of Hope.
Okay, but tonight we're pleased as punch to welcome two very special guests into our studio.
We've been promoting this kind of mysteriously since last week, saying we're going to have
someone on who's responsible for a lot of leaks.
And believe it or not, there are people that have been doing this for quite some time.
And it's my pleasure to welcome John Young from Cryptome and Deborah Natsios from Cartome,
the I guess affiliated site of Cryptome.
Welcome to WBAI.
Good to be here.
So now, Cryptome.org, when did Cryptome actually start?
It was a while ago, wasn't it?
1996.
June of 96.
Wow.
And what you guys have done is basically what has gotten a lot of publicity over the last
couple of years in other ways.
People give you, I guess, sensitive information and you clean it up, make it presentable on
the web, and is that pretty much how it works?
That's it in a nutshell.
We don't clean it up.
We just put it up.
Whatever comes in, we put it up.
I mean, make it formatted so that it actually...
Yeah, we format it and put it up.
And that's the only reason the site was set up to do that.
So now, at what point did you decide this is something I'd like to do, this is something
that needs to be done?
We were involved in a group called Cypherpunks.
And there were people there that had information that they wanted delivered to the public without
being identified as a source.
So we offered to do that.
We had the resources to do it in the time and some scanner material to scan hard copy,
because most of this was in hard copy in those days.
And so we said we would do that.
And so people started sending us material, usually dealing with cryptography or communication
security or intelligence or things like that.
It was a fairly narrow focus, primarily around cryptography and communication security.
Now, do you remember what the first thing that you posted was?
Yes, it was some encryption code that a cryptographer had access to on a confidential basis and
wanted to make it public because he knew it was going to be used by corporations to get
access to encrypted information that was going to come to the public.
And he wanted to let this be known that it was coming because he was still under an NDA
to not disclose it.
But he knew that he'd be losing his job because the Cold War was winding down.
And a number of these highly skilled cryptographers knew that they would be losing their jobs
and wanted to know that this material, which once was restricted to the military, was going
to become commercial.
And commercial people would start exploiting it.
And so they wanted to alert the public to what was coming.
And so this was the great battle over encryption in the mid 90s.
And we were fortunate to be around to help publish that material, most of which we did
not understand, fortunately.
So we were happily ignorant of what we were doing.
And that was our defense that we said we'll do it because we don't know any better and
let the public decide whether it should be out there or not.
So we've never tried to editorialize material.
We put it up and let the public decide what they want to think about it.
So you put that up back in the mid to late 90s.
What was the initial reaction?
Well, people in the crypto field were quite happy.
And they started sending more because they knew this was coming.
And so they started sending us more material.
But not long thereafter, we started getting a boat from NSA every day coming in to see
what we were putting up.
And it was called the NSA boat or that's the title we gave it because we traced the address
and it was from NSA was tracing this because.
And so we so we published that information that because we learned to read logs and could
see who published the log of who was visiting you from the NSA.
That's right.
As another entry in Krypton.
That's right.
And so we tried to be as open as we could about how this was working, hoping that others
would learn from it and start doing it.
And they did.
And others started doing this as well.
And so we learned from others who were doing it.
And it continued thereafter.
And so that we were sort of a test case of seeing what would happen.
And so we weren't sure what would happen.
We've had some visits from FBI several times and phone calls and stuff like that.
But it turns out none of it.
Nothing we did was illegal.
It was all done by chilling people's ambition to not do this.
And so they used a number of chilling effects.
And we published all that and say nothing has happened.
They just showed up and talked and we said, what's your basis for coming?
They said, well, you haven't done anything illegal, but it would be good if you didn't
do this.
We said, thank you.
And could we have your name, please?
And so we published their names and they said, please publish their names.
And so we because we said, this is part of the story.
We think the public needs to know who you are, your public servants.
And we have a kind of important role to get the full story out.
Not to say the FBI was here and we're going to disappear now.
We wanted to say, no, actually you can respond to these folks because they were always very
polite, but they knew how to drop these little hints that as they said, you know, that would
be good for the country if you didn't do this.
And we said, and why not?
And that works with most people, right?
Most people would buy right into that and say, okay, I want to be a good citizen.
That's right.
Have you ever had to remove anything from your site?
Well, a couple of times.
But one of the interesting things is, is that there's been no reason to remove it.
Nothing we did was illegal, but now we're going to get onto copyright issues.
The only time we've ever removed anything was under a threat of copyright.
But in one case, we refused to remove and our site was shut down for 12 hours.
But then the Microsoft, who was the one that filed the DMCA complaint, withdrew it saying
we did not intend to shut the site down.
We just wanted them to remove one file.
And so the DMCA backfired, and so they said, we withdraw our complaint, and so the site
went back up.
Now, that must have been as a result of public outcry once your site was taken down.
Absolutely.
And where did that public outcry come from?
Well, it came from people who saw what had happened because we, just before we were shut,
we put up what had happened and published the DMCA notice, the notice from the ISP,
and what the procedure was and saying, this is what's going on.
And a few hours later, the site was shut because it's an automatic process.
If you don't withdraw it, they shut it.
So people knew what was coming, and so the public took it from there.
And some stories were written, a number of things were written, and we heard from people
with inside Microsoft saying they were raising hell too, saying that this was overreaction
and that because there was no human intervention, that's the way the DMCA is written.
If you don't take it down, it's an automatic shutdown.
Yeah, that's what makes it so.
And that was their intent, not to have humans involved.
But there is a response.
And so we've now seen others take that approach too.
Do you remember what the actual document was in that particular case?
Yeah, it was called the Microsoft Global Law Enforcement Guide, where they instructed law
enforcement how to ask for information about Microsoft's customers, specifically who to
talk to, how to phrase it, who to send it to, the entire procedures.
And that was for global law enforcement.
Global law enforcement.
Yep.
That sounds so evil.
And Microsoft Corporation and...
Yeah, yeah.
And we've since gotten several dozen of those because all these online corporations have
such guides now.
And so we publish all that we get and they're still popping up, usually hidden behind privacy
policies.
Debra, I want to bring you into this now.
You have a sort of a sub-site off of Kriptome called kartome.org, and I think that lets
people know exactly what that's all about.
It's about map-making technology or...
Yeah, that's right.
And it was actually...
It was active for...
It built up an archive over the course of a couple of years and then it's gone on to
be an umbrella under which research projects have been transacted.
So it's a kind of a think tank environment.
But John Young and I are both trained architects.
We're professional architects.
And so our involvement in technology and in the politics of information really emerges
from this kind of architectural environment that is information dense and rich.
Architects just don't do glossy facades and design formally pleasing surfaces.
They are coordinators of huge troves of information from all the consultants, from the technology
consultants, structural, HVAC, mechanical, plumbing.
And so it's this task of understanding that the built world comes out of this bed of information
material that intrigued us in projecting that interest into the new technologies and information
milieu.
And so Cartome takes off, projects off also from the architectural dimensions into more
geographic and spatial interests and therefore cartographic.
So the scale of cartography being not so much one quarter inch equals one foot of architectural
scale but projecting into global and globalization sorts of scales.
And so our interest with that links into security issues, what with the geographic
information systems being powerful tools for sensing, reporting, tracking, and delineating
risky populations, risky mobilities.
They're very powerful tools for locating and demonizing, if you will, in the spatial sense.
So now how controversial would the things that get posted in your particular part of
the site, how does that compare to some of the things on Krypton in general?
Well, I would say it's educational in a more straightforward way than the provocations
of controversy because there's a lot of material to cover and it doesn't need the agitation
of controversy to be engaging as far as I'm concerned.
I still imagine it might be a bit sensitive for the authorities.
Well, it is because the material is so dual use.
It has the incredible military policing potential at the same time as others use it as tools
for resisting or for activism.
But in the policing and military domains, it's very provocative.
I would add that Krypton started an eyeball series as a result of Deborah's work in the
visual area, which has been quite controversial, where we started publishing satellite photos
of sensitive sites before Google Maps was set up.
What sites?
Before Google Maps was set up.
What sites were you publishing?
Sensitive sites.
Oh, sensitive, okay.
Yeah, and because there were some popular commercial program, one of them called MapQuest,
that started making free satellite photos available.
So we started looking for sensitive sites, forts, all the military sites, intelligence
sites, and started publishing those photos and describing what they were.
Apparently people didn't know that was readily available.
So we got a lot of complaints about that.
So that was a spring off of Deborah's cartoon work.
Wow.
Well, I need to break in here just to let people know that we're speaking with the founders
of Krypton.org and Cartoon.org.
How many, John, how many, if you can even fathom, documents or releases have you had
over the years since you started in the 90s?
Well, it's up to about 70,000 documents.
70,000 documents.
What we are offering tonight is the entire collection on four DVDs for a pledge of $75.
A lot of sensitive information here, a lot of information that certain authority figures
would rather you not have.
All available to you, all instantly available on your computer, on four DVDs for a pledge
of $75.
212-209-2950.
This is only being offered for this hour right now.
If you're really into the whole intelligence scene and all kinds of controversial talk
about sensitive information and spying and U.S. government reaction to various things,
you might want to consider our $125 package, which includes the entire Krypton archive
and also about 25 talks that have taken place over the years at the HOPE conferences that
have dealt with such issues.
It'll keep you busy for quite a while, 25 talks plus four solid DVDs filled with data,
sensitive information, things that have been posted on krypton.org over the years since
the 1990s.
212-209-2950.
Please give a call now.
Show your support.
Keep this kind of conversation going.
Keep this radio station going because you might not have ever heard about this before.
You might have only heard the subject of leaking information framed in the context of the mass
media, but how often do you actually get the chance to listen to the people that have
worked in this field and hear their own words?
70,000 documents.
We say 40 DVDs and it sounds like, you know, not that much.
I could carry it in my hand, no problem, but 70,000 documents that you're not supposed
to have.
That's a lot.
If you read one document, well, no, you wouldn't be able to ever finish, I don't think.
It's a lot.
It really is.
It's presented in a way that is very educational.
I've looked at the site over the years and it's not just documents though.
I mean, you published something a few weeks ago, which I thought was fascinating.
It was basically a list of all, well, pictures of telephones in the White House and that
really is a subject close to my heart because I love phones and I'm fascinated by the White
House, but to see phones inside the White House and just to basically have an explanation
ongoing as to, well, this is this particular type of phone.
This is this phone system here.
It's very well laid out so that you're not just getting data dumped on you, but there's
actually something that shows you what it is that you're getting and that's a part of
this whole thing.
Did you get much reaction to that particular?
Yeah.
That was very popular and it gives me a chance to say that, to pick up what Deborah's talking
about, that our training as architects has been very helpful in how to handle information
that comes from others and that we gather like this, which is to put it in a comprehensible
form and that we consider what we're doing educational in character and not controversial
and so that while we do leak material, it's a public education initiative is what we call
it and we call ourselves public scholars rather than affiliated scholars and so this is all
in the educational field rather than the media field or the news field.
So we do this in a very patient, thorough way and let people study this material on
their own rather than us telling them what to think.
And so we don't see this as a commercial product, we see it as an educational product.
But these days, education is controversial, you tell people things and there are people
that don't want that to be known, want to cover it with copyright legislation or various
other Patriot Act nonsense.
Absolutely, or contained within universities or other control forum.
Now I think this is very important and actually here you have, just from what you've seen
in the media, you'd think there's maybe very few players out in this field of getting sensitive
information out to the masses, information that you might have a hard time aggregating
on your own.
Meanwhile, there's actually, you know, there's more than just a few people that have controversy
swirling around them.
You have sites like Cryptome which go back to the mid-90s and have a very, very long
history of information that you might not be, that you would have a very hard time finding
elsewhere and it's, I think it's great that they're here in the studio today and actually
offering to the listeners four DVDs with 70,000 at least.
I'm not sure if people are realizing the magnitude of this, this is something that's never been
offered on our airwaves before and it's something that really is educational, shows all kinds
of things that are not in the public eye until they get into the hands of John Young
and Cryptome.org and released to the world and people become educated as a result.
This is all here for you to now have delivered to your house, 212-209-2950, we got two calls
on the line right now.
I know we have room for a lot more than that and we would like to see those phone calls
come in.
John Young was telling me earlier that he saw eight people in the pledge room and I
don't know if they're all still there but let's find out.
Make them busy.
Yeah, that's right.
212-209-2950 is the number.
We have room for at least another six calls to come in and again, as I said, this is only
being offered for this hour, $75 you get all the, the whole Cryptone archive and for 125
you get that plus about 25 talks dealing with intelligence issues that have taken place
at the Hackers on Planet Earth conferences, all eight of them since 1994.
You say hour but really there's 23 minutes left in this hour.
Yeah, we got so caught up in talking about this we kind of forgot to ask people to call
in and that's very important, that's essential in fact.
If we don't have people calling in to support the radio station, the radio station doesn't
exist anymore.
It's as simple as that.
That's how our bills get paid, 212-209-2950, four calls on the line so we only have four
more to go to make sure everybody has a job down there.
So if you're out there, yes, Bernie, please, yeah, you always can bring in another call
so go ahead.
I just wanted to thank John Young and Deborah Nanceos for their work over the past, what,
a decade and a half for being the nation's archivists for sensitive government information
that we're not supposed to see.
I mean, this is a treasured public service, in my opinion, and it's obviously a labor
of love.
They don't do this for money.
They're professional architects.
They do this on their own time as volunteers and these are some of the finest examples
of American citizens I can think of and I just want to thank them for doing this work
for year after year under, you know, all kinds of pressure from government agencies and corporations
who yell and scream and pressure them and try to take their website offline.
I mean, this is patriotism at its finest, in my opinion, and I encourage our listeners
to also become patriots and obtain this massive archive of 70,000 sensitive government documents.
We never know.
I mean, something could happen.
God forbid something could happen to Kryptom again and it just could never reappear.
We've seen other websites being taken down.
I think it's critically important that our listeners and other people try to obtain local
copies of this information.
It's not guaranteed of staying online forever.
I mean, I know John and Deborah will do everything they can, but I think it's critically important
to have your own copy of this information.
It will give you a much broader picture, sort of a bird's eye view of what your government
is doing.
I mean, it's a lot of really controversial...
Bernie, you haven't brought in another phone call yet.
You've got to give out that phone number.
I'm going to...
Okay, well, I've got to say, if you want to become a patriot and obtain a copy of this
70,000 documents and four DVD-ROMs, call 212-209-2950.
Not only will you be supporting this effort of John Young and Deborah Nantes, who are
doing this incredible public service, but you're supporting a radio station that will
promote this sort of activity.
212-209-2950.
WBAI is the only radio station I know of that's going to promote this kind of activity, which
is highly frowned upon by government agencies and major corporations that don't want us
to see this information.
This is really important stuff.
212-209-2950.
And the thing is, by having the DVDs in your possession, you have a degree of anonymity.
You aren't being watched on the internet by somebody that sees you're reading particular
documents, and that's always a fear.
It's always a threat that we have to contend with.
When you have this information, and I'm going to give this call to you, Bern.
I think this is your call that is coming in right now.
Thank you for the person calling in.
Actually, two people calling in.
212-209-2950.
But by having it actually in your possession, you are free to do whatever you want with
that.
You can take it and put it on different machines and just spread it around.
That is the power of what people have when they have data.
They can spread that around, spread the knowledge, keep it from being outlawed, and that must
be something that is in the back of your minds whenever something happens, whenever a new
law is passed, or whenever something is deemed controversial, that they could just go and
erase it and make it like it never happened.
Very Orwellian.
All right.
That way.
Well, I completely have to agree with what you're saying, Emmanuel, because I'm sure
that there's many people who don't visit some of these websites because they're scared of
how the authorities looking at their traffic might, you know.
Or they're blocked.
They're blocked from work sites or schools.
Right.
Or even worse.
Or even worse.
That they're not even allowed to see it at all.
And here you have a means by which you can get, not just have the access to see it, but
now you won't even, you don't have to worry about being tracked.
Some people might say, well, if I pledge for this, then they'll be able to see that I'm
pledging for this.
But it's like visiting a website just this one time for that portion of documents at
least.
Five calls on the line.
212-209-2950.
Join those.
We only need three more to fill up the phone bank and make sure everybody has a job down
there in the tally room.
For $75, you'll get the entire Cryptome archive on DVD that you can load anywhere.
And for $125, you'll get the entire Cryptome DVD collection plus selected talks from the
Hope Conferences starting from 1994 and going all the way to 2010, about 25 talks having
to do with intelligence issues, some of them by Robert Steele, some of them by legal experts,
all of them controversial, educational, enlightening, and that's what we're all about.
That's what we've always been all about.
And I really hope that you guys are at Hope No. 9 and that we hear something from you
too because, boy, you've got so much to say and so much to share.
Now, you must constantly be worried about what might happen next, what kind of new tactic
the authorities might take to shut you down or to silence you or just scare you into submission.
And I have to wonder, what is it that you find motivating that keeps you standing up
when so many other people would not?
Well, I want to, at this point, give credit to the readership of Cryptome and Cartome
and their participation in the project because there's an incredible feedback loop from these
people who not only send in material but are also evaluators of what's put up and there's
a constant back and forth and inputs from them that are essential.
As soon as there's a faltering, you know, if Cryptome is threatened in any way, their
response is so extraordinary.
And when you say, what gives one courage?
It's the fact that there's this swarming energy and support mechanism.
So it's not at all a top-down dispensing of the 70,000 files.
It really is a looping mechanism that is participatory and very variegated.
You know, it's not a linear.
It's got huge redundancy in it.
It's a wonderful parallel to this place, to WBAI, because that's where we got our power
from too, all these people showing support, being there in case we're in trouble, in case
something happens, if authorities, God forbid, try to shut us down someday for saying something
controversial on the air or for allowing someone controversial to speak.
We think it's impossible.
Well, it's not that impossible.
It could happen.
Laws change all the time.
You guys must have seen things change, the whole landscape after 9-11 changed to make
things more difficult to publish and to share.
So what might have been easy to do back in 1996 could be considerably harder now.
You could find yourself facing charges for something that seemed like it was completely
acceptable back then.
And I guess you have to be constantly vigilant about that.
Well, that's true.
And the key here, and Deborah's made the most important point, and we give credit on the
DVDs to all the people who've given us this information to publish.
All the sensitive stuff came from other people who were willing to take the risk to send
it to us.
We promised anonymity.
They've gotten it.
And so that we don't dig this up on our own.
They give it to us, and we put it up, and that's the backup, and I know that they do
the same thing for you.
And so the key here is that not to think of us as the originator of this.
We're just the people who run the ship to put it up, and so it's other people's publication.
We say it's their publication.
If you want to be identified, we'll identify you.
But we say the default is no one is named.
But we're always named.
We have our home address down.
You can find us at any time.
And by the way, it's spelled C-R-Y-P-T-O-M-E dot O-R-G, and Cartone, C-A-R-T-O-M-E.
Now I have to ask, and I'm sure this is on the minds of many listeners, we've heard a
lot about leaks in the last couple of years, leaking sites, and it was a different site,
Wikileaks, that got the vast majority of attention.
What would you say is the difference between a site like Wikileaks and a site like Cryptone?
Well it's specialized in leaks, and we don't.
Leaks is something we do, but the bulk of our work is not leak material, only because
we know that leaks is a marketing term, and so that we don't exaggerate what we do, and
we don't publicize it, we don't seek publicity, we don't talk about ourselves, we just put
documents up.
You decide what to call it.
And so Wikileaks set out to be controversial by using the concept of leaks, and that's
all they say they do.
We do other things besides that, and so we commend them for what they're doing, but we
also say that if you only depend upon leaks, you won't get enough information, because
so much of leaks are phony leaks.
They're deliberate misleaks, and they will shape public opinion by over-dramatizing it
and take you away from more thoughtful and deliberate studies.
So we think leaks need to be put in a broader understanding of information, so you're not
inflamed about information, but in fact learn to think about it.
Now, we've noticed that Wikileaks makes the same message.
They talk that way too, and so we concur with that.
But their marketing is different from ours.
We just don't do marketing.
Now they say they do to in fact get the information noticed, and they're very good at that.
And so if we did more of that, we might be more noticed too.
The price for that, though, is then you become more like the mainstream media, and we know
the shortcomings of that.
So we like the quiet library approach.
We like people to inform themselves, decide for themselves, and talk among themselves,
and not be told or overstimulated by that.
But it's a good approach, though, nonetheless.
So we have no complaints against what Wikileaks is doing, and they have gotten a lot of good
attention.
A lot of sites have popped up to emulate them, and that's good, because the more leaked sites
are, the less likely any particular site will be taken down.
So that's a good thing.
And of course, they've given credit to Krypton for helping them with this idea, or at least
Julian has.
And so this helping each other, and we've named several hundred other sources like ours
that do the same thing, and so we think it's important to spread this around so it doesn't
seem like one or two people are doing this.
And that's an interesting point, because while Wikileaks has been around for a few years,
you guys have been around for over a decade, and you're consistent.
You're always there, quietly posting the information that you get.
And it's, except for that 12 hours that you were shut down, you have not stopped.
You've kept going, and I think that's good.
I imagine all the publicity over the last couple of years concerning Wikileaks and the
controversy and all that, was that a help to what you guys do?
Did it make things harder?
Well, we spent a lot of time giving interviews about Wikileaks.
Mostly people looking for dirt on Wikileaks, and they thought that we would provide that.
It gave us time to think about how to respond to these inquiries, because we haven't dealt
with the media very much, and they bombarded us with inquiries about Wikileaks.
Mostly they were looking for controversy and tried to foster conflict between us and Wikileaks.
It's funny that that's what the media focuses on, instead of what controversy is actually
in the contents of the websites themselves.
And there is so much of that that should be focused on.
Instead of looking at the collateral murder video and saying, who did this?
Who leaked the information?
They should be looking at what's in the video and dealing with the horrors that were perpetuated
and captured.
But too many people miss that.
Too many people just want to find out who's responsible for leaking the information in
the first place.
And I imagine you've seen that a lot as well, people just missing the message.
Well, not only that, but they get angry at you if you don't gossip, because that's what
they thrive on, is gossip.
Nothing's very deep about this, and so that's what the term leak often does, it's meant
to be transitory.
They were not interested in any deeper story.
We tried like hell to, excuse me, and they just wouldn't go there.
Okay.
I'm sorry, we're just so engrossed in this conversation, I didn't notice the calls have
dropped off.
We only have two on the line right now.
What we're offering, for those just tuning in, we're here with John Young, Debra Nazios
of Cryptome.org and Cartome.org.
We're offering an entire archive of Cryptome, it fills up four DVDs filled with data, 70,000
documents, for a pledge of $75, 212-209-2950, only available for the next nine minutes.
And for a pledge of 125, you get the entire Cryptome archive and about 25 talks from the
HOPE conferences dealing with intelligence issues and spies and all kinds of fun things
like that, how it relates to the hacker world and the world sort of, I think they balance
each other out rather interestingly.
Now, John, I know you were around when we were on trial back in 2000, fighting our old
enemies, the MPAA, in the first DMCA case in federal court.
So yeah, we keep kind of sharing stories and fighting the same battles, it seems.
It feels really right that you guys are on the right side of everything here.
You can join us by pledging, by showing your support, by keeping us on the air, by keeping
freedom of speech alive here in New York City and beyond.
212-209-2950, one call coming in, let's get another five calls coming in so that we can
have a good night tonight.
It's essential.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just want to say, I think Krypton is one of the finer examples of the democratic process
with a small d, the democratic process of citizens, Americans, looking at what their
government is doing, looking at sensitive government documents.
This is all open source information for the most part.
It's not really classified information, but information that's very hard to define, that
would not have become available if there were not people like John Young and Deborah
Natchez at Krypton and Khartoum storing this information, being the librarians for the
curious public who really want to know what their government is doing, and making people
start talking about policy, domestic policy, foreign policy.
This is all in this amazing volume of information, 70,000 documents.
If you were to print this on paper, this would fill several hundred books in your personal
library, but it's on four DVD-ROMs, which you can have in your own possession without
worrying about government agencies looking at what IP address was visiting their website,
by calling 212-209-2950, and getting a copy of this.
It's really part of the democratic process, in my opinion.
It's history.
It is history.
It's valuable information.
It's not just history.
It's from 1996 all the way through January of 2012.
This is really up-to-date, current information, but it's important to look at the history
and see where we've been, where we are now, and have a huge volume of information that
will give you a bird's-eye view of what our government is doing.
It's not just dry words, too.
It's all kinds of other things, pictures and various other ...
Sure.
I don't want to say entertaining, but enlightening, something that would not bore you.
That's for sure.
212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line now.
I'd like to see us go out with about six or seven.
Is that too much to ask for?
I don't think so.
Eight.
I know.
Eight?
Someone say eight?
Let's go out with eight.
All right.
I know that if anyone else, any other radio station in this city, in this country is
asking for funds, they're not offering something as dynamic as this.
I will go head-to-head with anybody to show us something more controversial.
I know, John, you don't really like the word controversial to describe Kryptone, but it
is educational, and education equals controversy in too many eyes, unfortunately.
This is stuff people need to see, need to know, need to educate themselves about, and
need to spread so that other people know what's going on out there.
It's vital.
Dot Red.
Well, in terms of how controversial it might be, I'd definitely like to echo what was being
said earlier about how information in general tends to have dual usage or more, and so much
information that's very important, that is invaluable, that you'd be less without, can
be construed to be negative as well, and that's where people start getting this whole controversy
thing from.
But the service that they provide by continuing to offer these sites for well over a decade
is fantastic.
Five calls coming in.
Please, another three calls, and we'll have a full switchboard, 212-209-2950.
You know, we were talking before the show about how we just keep seeing the same players.
We mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, how it's 2,600 fighting the MPAA on one issue
or another.
Back in 2000, it was over DMCA.
More recently, it was about SOPA and PIPA and those acts.
And Debra, before the show, you told me something very interesting about our old friend Judge
Kaplan, who ruled against us in the DMCA case back in 2000.
He's still doing things and doing things in ways that we might object to.
What was the most recent thing?
That's right.
Dear Judge Lewis Kaplan reared his head once again just last week by handing down a decision
to forbid the Occupy folks from doing an action down at the 500 Pearl Street courthouse over
which he presides.
So he prevented the public domain use of that public institution and the space in front
of it by claiming there was no public space sufficient in front of the courthouse to allow
a group demo.
So the equation between the public domain in the physical realm as well as public domain
in the informational realm came together in an intersection at that point under the robes
of his honor.
Incredible.
It just keeps recurring and it's all so relevant, so important.
Please add your voice to it.
We're out of time.
212-209-2950.
You still have a couple of minutes to get this amazing premium, a full archive of Cryptome.org,
all kinds of information to savor, to share, to learn from.
Pledge of $75, 212-209-2950.
Pledge of 125 gets you that, plus about 25 DVDs of Hope Talks about intelligence and
information.
Guys, John, Debra, any last words from you to our listeners?
Please support Off The Hook.
All right.
Well, I say please support Cryptome as well.
Let's support each other.
Let's stay strong and keep freedom in mind all the time.
Thanks everybody for calling in.
Please, you have a couple of minutes, 212-209-2950, 212-209-2950.
We're not on next week, but we will be back next week, two weeks, the week after that
we'll be back with more information and fun things.
212-209-2950, othat2600.com is our email address.
Stay tuned for The Personal Computer Show.
Good night.
All righty, all righty, WBAI.