And so it is unforgivable that they have become the most powerful weapon the Pentagon has
ever deployed, more powerful than any bomb or any missile, is the U.S. media.
Tune in this October for The Voices of WBAI, a membership drive with a difference.
Pacifica Radio, a unique voice in New York City for more than 50 years.
99.5 FM and online at WBAI.org.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock. Time once again for Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Mike.
Hi there.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Alex.
Good evening.
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
And boy, we have a special show for you tonight.
It's two hours. Two hours long.
And it's going to focus on some pretty interesting things.
And we're going to be offering some very amazing premiums to people who support us over this two-hour fundraiser.
And a very important two-hour fundraiser at that because, as we've mentioned in the past,
this station is in a very transitional stage, and I don't think events of the past week could have proved it any better.
Thirteen programs on this radio station.
Thirteen weekday evening programs have been canceled.
And we are not one of them. Not yet, anyway.
And it could still happen.
It's unfortunate that we can't have a continuation of some of the really amazing shows that have been on our airwaves over the past bunch of years.
But the creditors are knocking at the door, and we have to figure out how to get them to go to another door or pay them what they're owed and move on.
This radio station will survive one way or another with your support, and hopefully we can rebuild.
So if you know of anyone who owes the creditors more than WBAI does, give us their address so that we can send them over there.
That's a good idea. That's a pretty good idea.
But so much has happened in the past few months.
It's really pretty historic, groundbreaking, and controversial.
And we've moved in the last year, okay, this radio station has moved from our posh Wall Street offices.
Well, they weren't that posh, but they were on Wall Street, and they cost a lot of money.
Well, we moved up here.
We're currently sharing space with our friends at WHCR, our Harlem community radio here at City College.
And we've unfortunately had to lay off, I think, about 75% of the staff, making things a lot more challenging to operate.
And now some very painful programming changes have taken place, with more undoubtedly on the way.
We absolutely have to have our listeners there for us to help guide this ship into something positive,
into something that is exciting in these controversial times.
And we're going to try and cover that in the next two hours.
We'll try and cover the simply unbelievable, unimaginable developments that have been taking place over the past few months in the world,
and things that this particular radio program, since its inception 25 years ago last week, it's the kind of thing that we're fascinated by.
It's the kind of thing that keeps us awake, that keeps us alert.
And I know the listeners feel the same way, because the only reason we've been on the air for 25 years, this particular radio show,
is because listeners have been there listening and supporting.
We don't have commercials.
If we did have commercials, we couldn't talk about the things we're going to talk about tonight.
Could not do that.
So listeners are the sponsors, and tonight we hope to be able to prove that.
We hope we get a very strong response.
We didn't.
We got a good response last week, but it could have been better, and we hope tonight makes up for that.
The fundraiser is about midway through, maybe a little bit less than midway, and we do need to pick up some steam.
If we do that, if we do that, then all sorts of things become possible in the future.
We're talking about our new Brooklyn building.
We're talking about reworking everything and starting again, starting from scratch almost,
to get a really decent community station going here in New York City, talking about the controversial issues.
There are so many of them.
There really are.
There have been.
There always will be, and I think radio is something that's always going to be extremely pertinent.
Mike?
You know, you mentioned that we could have maybe done better last week, which is true.
We did well, but we could have done better.
But one thing that did excite me about how we did last week was that we got quite a number of people to sign up for the BAI Buddy Program,
and this is the program that you call.
The number, which do you remember?
Yeah, 516-620-3602.
I'm happy to say that I now say that number in my sleep, so it has finally settled in my brain, 516-620-3602.
Now, you can call in and become a BAI Buddy for $10 a month or however much you want to pledge per month,
and what you'll get when you do that, you'll get the 8-gigabyte thumb drive with 100 different speakers that have been highlighted here in WBAI over the years.
You can also get a Best of WBAI thumb drive for a pledge of $50.
There's all kinds of levels, and we're going to have something very, very special we're going to announce in just a couple of minutes,
but the thing to write down, the thing to start spreading and tweeting and whatever else you can do, that number is 516-620-3602.
We're going to be saying it quite a few times over the next two hours because without that number, we don't have a future.
Try running a radio station and operating off the top of the Empire State Building in New York City,
which is where the Empire State Building is, and broadcasting to four different states over the air,
and this doesn't even count what you can hear over the Internet.
There is a lot involved in that, a lot of expense involved in that.
We've cut so much of the expense by not having the Wall Street rent, unfortunately,
by not having 75% of our staff and various other painful cuts that have had to be made,
and that hopefully will keep the place from sinking completely into debt and woe and all kinds of horrible things like that.
Your support is what will get us above and help us move forward.
Again, 516-620-3602, but we're going to have some very interesting things to thank people with in just a moment.
I wanted to focus, maybe preview a little bit what we're going to be doing over the next two hours.
Mostly, we're going to be focusing on the incredible revelations that have come our way through Edward Snowden,
the NSA leaks, but also some of the things that have happened through Bradley slash Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks,
and just the history of leaks, revelation, freedom of information, that kind of thing,
and how important that has been over the years, over the decades to keep democracy alive.
I think we're seeing a real battle right now between people that get that and people that think it's a threat.
Now, it was only a few months ago that the name Edward Snowden was mentioned for the first time in the mainstream media
when the NSA scandal began, when he basically left Hawaii for Hong Kong
and released a whole bunch of information that has the intelligence world spinning to this day.
Bernie, do you think a day like that could have come?
I'm really surprised. The NSA has, for many decades, kept a very, very tight lid on what it does.
It's a really interesting continuation of a trend, maybe even starting earlier than the gentleman who leaked the Pentagon papers.
Help me out here.
Daniel Ellsberg, thank you.
Daniel Ellsberg, thank you. Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, and there's been other people as well.
I don't want to leave out the other players, but this has been such a significant development
with Ed Snowden leaking NSA documents that it has risen to the highest levels of government around the world.
World leaders around the world are agonizing, pontificating, and this is really interesting.
A lot of world leaders are squirming about how this is affecting geopolitics
and what people are finding out about what our governments are doing.
Speaking of squirming, there was a bit of squirming today, actually, by way of the Director General of the Royal United Services Institute,
Andrew Parker, the Director General of Military Intelligence Section 5, known as MI5.
Widespread leaks of official secrets, such as those passed on by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, are a gift to terrorists.
Yes, that's what the new head of Britain's Security Service said in a rare and frank speech.
It actually took place late yesterday.
Now, this is his first public outing since taking over as MI5's Director General back in April,
and Andrew Parker said the leaks caused enormous damage to the British equivalent of the National Security Agency,
which is known as, anyone want to guess who that is?
Very good, Bernie, 20 points for you.
Government Communication Headquarters, GCHQ.
We are facing an international threat, and GCHQ provides many of the intelligence leads upon which we rely, said Parker.
He's been with the agency for 30 years, so his mind is pretty much theirs.
In the speech for a London think tank, that's who I mentioned before, the Royal United Services Institute, that's where these comments come from.
Now, he did not mention Snowden by name.
He said that the security capabilities made public by media reports based on documents he stole were incredibly harmful.
It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques.
Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists.
Parker led MI5's response to the 7-7 London bombings.
He said it's a gift they need to evade us and strike at will.
Unfashionable, as it might seem, he added.
That is why we must keep secrets secret.
Well, folks, what do you think?
Do secrets have the right to remain secret?
I've never been a slave to fashion myself, Emmanuel.
That's true, that's true.
I mean, I think this guy, like all these people in his position, positions like his, do not understand that there are people who wish to keep secrets from the government who are not terrorists.
This is just a category of person that does not exist in this gentleman's mind.
And I really wonder how to change that.
As for the specific claim that terrorists are being aided, there's no evidence for it.
If these guys had the slightest bit of evidence for such a claim, they would be plastering that on the front pages, not these weird un-based-on-anything assertions.
So I think the fact that they have all the information and they haven't leaked or stated publicly or any other way shown that terrorists are enabled by these actions is a real strong clue as to exactly how much the terrorists are benefiting.
You could basically say that a terrorist could benefit from any bit of information that is given to them.
And it's a clever way to try and just have people write you a blank check and agree with everything you say that, okay, yeah, we trust you.
Keep things secret.
And as long as the terrorists don't find out, even if it's, you know, how many floors are in the Empire State Building, yeah, keep that secret because if they found that out, they'd have an advantage.
It's nonsense.
It's insane how many secrets were kept.
And I think the American public is much better off knowing the extent to which they are being watched by the NSA than being ignorant of that.
And if that helps the terrorists somehow, I can't imagine how it helps us.
And sometimes it feels like the American public are being thought of as the enemy by these agencies.
Alex?
Well, you know, last week I was over at the International Association of Privacy Professionals meeting in Seattle at the Privacy Academy.
One of the keynote speakers was Stuart Baker, who's a very prominent lawyer, former general counsel of the National Security Agency.
And I should mention as a caveat, there'll be lots of caveats to this comment, but I used to work at his law firm in Washington.
And he's a lawyer in private practice.
And he made the argument, and this is his argument, it's not mine, that this did in fact hurt our defenses because it gave terrorists a kind of playbook in the sense that, you know, instead of talking about marriages and instead of talking about these big parties that they're going to attend, now they realize that it makes it more difficult for intelligence agencies to collect their communications if they start talking about a lawsuit or some kind of, you know, medical assistance.
Some kind of privileged communication.
But I have to say, I mean, I don't necessarily buy that argument, but it is the first time that I've ever heard somebody speak with any specificity about the type of data that could be harmful to the United States.
And quite frankly, I don't necessarily buy the argument.
I think that they probably had this argument ahead of time.
But it was an interesting argument to hear.
Well, I should point out at this stage that to sort of counter what we read just now from England, there's another side to all this.
And you might have read about this as well.
Edward Snowden, who is the quote-unquote fugitive American former intelligence worker currently living in Russia, has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov Prize.
That's Europe's top human rights award.
Edward Snowden was nominated by green politicians in the European Parliament for leaking details of U.S. surveillance.
Nominees also included Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head for demanding education for girls.
And former recipients of the prize include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mr. Snowden's nomination recognized that his disclosure of U.S. surveillance activities was an enormous service to human rights and European citizens, the Parliament's green group said.
Snowden, who has sought asylum in Russia, said in a statement read out in Parliament that he was grateful to Europe's politicians for taking up the challenge of mass surveillance.
The surveillance of whole populations rather than individuals threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time, he said.
Now, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is awarded annually in memory of Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet scientist and dissident.
And you know what? They're going to be announcing this tomorrow, October 10th.
The winner of this year's prize will be announced tomorrow.
By the way, the third nominee for the award is actually a group of people, Belarusian political dissidents who were jailed in 2010 for protesting against the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
So, whoever wins the award, what really matters is being recognized, nominated, I think is quite a statement right there.
And it shows that there are many people all around the world who realize that revealing information is a courageous act.
It's a necessary act and it's something that we need to keep our free society free or to restore it to freedom.
With that in mind, we would like to announce what we are offering tonight as a special thank you to people calling in to 516-620-3602 and supporting WBAI through Off The Hook.
What we have done, and this has taken quite a long time.
Let me just start by asking around.
We've heard about these leaked documents.
We've read about them in the newspapers.
But how many of you actually have them?
How many of you have actually grabbed them yourself and have a notebook with them or have some kind of a listing?
We know about them.
We've read the news accounts.
But putting them all in one place, that's more of a challenge than it should be.
And I can attest to this because I was witness to our friend Kyle who was basically looking all over the place, finding the actual documents and trying to get them into one place.
Well, we have succeeded, or we're 90% there, in getting all of the leaked documents that have been revealed so far in however redacted a form they might be and sticking them onto a single thumb drive.
So what we have, we have a compilation of all of the publicly leaked NSA documents that Edward Snowden has revealed.
And it includes also the full video interview.
And you can basically access this now safely, anonymously.
You don't have to worry about anyone spying on you on your computer, watching where you go, what websites you visit.
Because it will come to you on a thumb drive that you can download and copy at your convenience and spread throughout the world, which is the intention of leaking these documents in the first place.
So not only do you support WBAI, you support the original intention of Edward Snowden to get these documents to as many people as possible.
That's a pledge of $75.
516-620-3602.
I think this is pretty amazing and creative and different and a little scary.
A little scary because here we are basically helping with this courageous act.
We don't have the courage that Edward Snowden has.
Let me make that clear.
To make the sacrifices that he made to give up his life and to be thought of as public enemy number one by so many powerful entities.
That's the kind of courage I don't think any of us could touch.
Manual.
Can I submit it as my sentence at least?
Sorry.
We basically can help in whatever way we can by offering this.
This is our gift to people who call in and pledge $75 right now to 516-620-3602.
All of the NSA documents, including the slideshow about PRISM with all its ugly graphics, they all will come to you on an NSA thumb drive and the video interview as well.
516-620-3602.
Yes, Bernie, what would you like to say?
Not only did Ed Snowden give a lot by his own admission in a video, which I believe is going to be on this flash drive, is it not?
Yes.
Explaining that he gave a lot of thought, soul-searching to determine whether he wanted to risk his life to make the world aware of how their privacy is being so grossly invaded by the U.S. through the National Security Agency.
That's how serious this is.
You mentioned that Ed Snowden is now up in the short list for the Sakharov Prize.
There's another prize he's been nominated for by the ex-NSA CI chief, General Hayden.
Didn't he in the past week just joke about putting Snowden on another short list?
Yes, I believe it's called a kill list.
Is that right?
Was he head of CIA?
He was the former head of the NSA and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Yes, he still has a lot of phone numbers that he could call and make things happen.
It's got to be really, really scary for someone even to make a joke like that because who knows how many people out there take that seriously, really believe that kind of thing.
It's something I cannot even fathom, that kind of courage to stand up to that.
Us doing this, us talking about this is just a small tribute to that kind of inspiration.
I know there are other people out there because a few years ago we were talking about Bradley Manning and how courageous and inspirational that was.
Now we're talking about Edward Snowden.
In a couple of years, who knows who we're going to be talking about in the future.
516-620-3602.
I also wanted to add something to this because we have an additional premium that we'd also like to offer.
We have the WikiLeaks thumb drive package.
What that is, is basically a compilation of documents and video, totals around 4 gigabytes.
That's what was released by WikiLeaks since the year 2008.
It includes the Afghan War Diary, which is more than 70,000 Afghan war log entries.
The Iraq War Logs, that's about 400,000 log entries.
That's a lot of reading from the Iraq War.
More than 2,000 secret U.S. Embassy cables, known as Cablegate.
The Collateral Murder, two different versions of Collateral Murder.
Unfortunately, they both end the same way.
That's also yours for a pledge of $75.
You can get both of them.
You can get both thumb drives.
I'm not sure if everything can be crammed onto one big thumb drive.
I guess we'll try.
Basically, you can get all the information, WikiLeaks and the NSA leaks, for a pledge of $125.
516-620-3602.
It's kind of premium that we don't usually offer here at WBAI, but it's the kind of thing that WBAI is here for.
It's great to be able to figure out a way to share the information and to spread the information
and to be a part of all this, to help out in whatever small way we can help out.
Your help is what keeps this place going that enables all these voices to be heard.
516-620-3602. Rob.
If you're the type of person who believes it's worth your time to be able to take a look at these things,
just look at stories that this media outlet or that media outlet are saying that, quote,
maybe a line or two from one or two of the pages of one or two of the documents that are in this massive pile.
When you have your own copies, you can look at it for yourself, draw your own conclusions without any filters in between.
And spreading that kind of information is what we've been about on this show and on this radio station.
And if you call 516-620-3602 or if you point your Web browser while supplies last to give the numeral to WBAI.org
and put your pledge through that way, we can send you one of these to thank you for helping to keep this information source out there to keep us able to do this.
Is the supply of Web browsers limited?
The supply of Web browsers may or may not be limited, but the supplies of stuff that we have, the number of these that we have to give out,
unfortunately are limited because we have to get them made.
So if you go to WBAI.org, you may find some left after the fact.
If you're listening to this on an MP3, on a podcast, on a cassette tape, what have you, then you can try it that way.
Or while we're on the air, you can also call 516-620-3602.
That's the best option is to call now.
Obviously, if you're in the future, you can only call in the future.
But if you're listening now, you should call now.
And whenever now is for you, I don't know.
Or if you're listening in the past, you should call in the past as well.
I just think it's a really handy thing.
And I didn't realize how difficult it was.
And this is kind of typical of computer nerds that basically, I don't know if I should say we or they, organize things, do amazing work.
But sometimes it's all over the place.
Sometimes you really have to go crazy trying to figure out how to collate everything into something that's easily read by a layman.
And there's laymen all over the place, people who really would benefit from all this.
But if you call your parents or call your relatives or call your kids or whatever and ask them, hey, where are all those WikiLeaks files?
Or where are all those NSA leaks that we've been hearing about?
Hard press.
You can find news stories about them, sure.
But to find the actual documents, which is the meat of all this, that is harder than it should be because, well, we just get distracted by so much.
Things are basically released at different times, different dates.
And here we have something that can fit in your hand that will have all that information.
Imagine, imagine intelligence agencies hearing this right now, how they would be basically sighing in dismay that it's this easy.
Well, I guess they're not sighing in dismay.
They're probably saying all kinds of words and maybe they're aiming drones at us right now.
But you know what?
We have to do something.
We have to save this place.
And if we have to use leaked documents from the NSA to do it, I think that's poetic justice.
516-620-3602.
Please join the people on the phone now.
Show your support for WBAI.
I pledge $125.
Get you everything, both packages, the WikiLeaks package and the NSA package.
I pledge $75.
Get you either one, both on thumb drives.
And for those of you who aren't as computer literate as you might think we are, thumb drives are basically – who wants to explain what a thumb drive is?
Anyone?
Mike?
I don't really know how it works, but you plug it into your computer and it's USB so you can't plug it in the wrong way.
It's really simple.
You plug it into your computer and the files are just there.
It's magic.
It's magic.
Except it's not.
Well, it is.
To some people it would be magic.
It's magic to me.
It's as simple as it can possibly be.
It's about the size of your thumb.
That's why it's called a thumb drive.
It's called other things too though.
Are there other words?
Small thumb, yeah.
Is it zip drive?
No, zip drive is something else.
That's something else.
Technically it's called a flash drive, which is a term of the type of memory that's in the device, flash memory.
And it's non-volatile memory, which means you don't have to keep power to it.
It will stay there as long as you want it to.
You could, if you want, you could put other things on this flash drive.
If there's some extra room where you could delete files from there you don't want and replace them with other files.
But it's kind of like a portable hard drive from your computer, but it's really small.
Like you said, it's the size of your thumb.
You can put it in your pocket and your friends can say, hey, are those classified NSA documents in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Oh boy.
And you know, the thing is there is no DRM on these documents at all, much to the chagrin of those intelligence agencies.
Yes, you can copy them as many times as you want.
You can put them up on your website.
You can print them out and put them in everyone's mailbox in your neighborhood.
You can do anything you want with these because they're there.
They're open.
They're out.
And they're all going to be in one place, one very small place.
But it's an incredible amount of information all brought together.
And I really think this is something that those people who do take a stand, whether it's Julian Assange, whether it's Edward Snowden, whether it's Chelsea Manning,
these are people that I think would, I hope would approve of this effort of ours to help get the information out there
and help save this radio station from falling silent or turning into something commercial that would never talk about things like this.
And that's kind of, I think what intelligence agencies want us to become is a safe voice or something that just plays the hits or just reads the press releases or various things like that.
Well, you know what?
As long as we're here, we're not going to do that.
We're going to keep speaking out.
We're going to keep revealing information.
We're going to keep analyzing it and figuring it out because those people who keep the secrets, what gives them the right?
We do.
We give them that right and we can review that right and revoke that right.
Your call to 516-620-3602 is a vote in that direction.
Again, $75 the NSA package on a thumb drive, $75 the WikiLeaks package on a thumb drive, $125, you get them both.
And boy, what a lot of information that is, hundreds of thousands of documents.
Well, we have a special guest joining us tonight.
That's right.
The king of the magic and the wonders of technology.
We have a very special guest with us tonight, Michael Genke, the CEO of Silent Circle.
Michael, can you hear us?
I can, gents.
Thanks for having me on.
Fantastic.
Well, welcome.
It's a pleasure to have you.
You know, a couple of weeks ago, and I think you and I spoke about this earlier, but a couple of weeks ago, we had the pleasure of having Phil Zimmerman on.
And he kind of wowed us with his technical know-how and wonderful phraseology of things like computational infeasibility of decrypting data and whatnot.
And so for the people that didn't listen to that particular program, can you give us a little bit of background about Silent Circle and how Silent Circle fits into this whole debate about privacy, security, surveillance, and the surveillance state?
Sure.
Well, Phil is my co-founder, as well as John Callas, the creator of Apple's whole disk encryption.
We are a very unique global encrypted communications firm doing encrypted phone, video, file transfer, text, mobile, desktop video, and the calling plan.
You know, it's an interesting time to be doing what we're doing.
We built an all-star team of literally who's who in, you know, Internet Hall of Fame, encryption, and VoIP.
We're at about 73 employees now.
We've been launched less than a year.
And we've become kind of the worldwide brand on secure communications.
Of course, timing is everything.
You know, we built this under the auspices that the NSA and the Chinese and the Russians and everybody else was grabbing everything out of the air and surveilling us.
And now since the summer of Snowden, we now know that to be true.
We've had about a 400% increase worldwide in customers, and we're growing faster than we can actually handle it.
But, you know, the interesting part about what we're doing, we really have three customer bases.
We have private citizens from 131 countries around the world subscribing day in and day out.
We have enterprise.
We count 18 of the Fortune 50 as customers.
And believe it or not, we have government.
We count groups and agencies from about nine different countries as customers, such people as the Dalai Lama.
So it's an interesting time to see this reaction of people now that it's rubbed in their face to want to take back their privacy.
And not just here.
It's in Tibet.
It's, you know, it's in Tunisia.
It's all over the world.
It's really interesting that you say that.
And I love the phrase the summer of Snowden as well.
I have to say, fantastic phrase.
One thing that's interesting, you mentioned the uptick in security.
As you know, I'm a lawyer.
And it's my understanding that there's an uptick in law firms using Silent Circle in certain parts of the world.
Is that right?
Yeah, it's been eye-opening for us to see how the magic of technology has transformed the lives all over the world.
You know, we were always a pretty big product over the last year with law firms.
But we had this really large uptick in law firms calling us from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand.
And, you know, one day I had asked our customer service people the next time these law firms from this region calls in to please grab me.
And I'd like to ask them because, you know, we don't have information about our customers.
We don't retain customer names, data, metadata so that we can't be forced to turn it over.
So I got on the phone.
I introduced myself.
And I said, you know, appreciate you buying, sir.
And they buy in bulk.
And I said, we've had a rash of law firms from this region in the past month buying.
Can you tell me?
Is there something going on?
He said, well, what's interesting about where we are in our law firm in this area is that it's legal for law firms to hack each other.
And that data can be used in court.
It's not inadmissible.
So over the last several months, law firms began stocking up on hackers.
And the law firm with the best hackers wins.
So they've been buying silent circles to try to cover their mobile communications.
It's absolutely fascinating.
It is really incredible.
I mean, this crossover between law and technology and, you know, they used to be at loggerheads.
Now I think it's you even have these kind of analogies of the crowbar, the legal crowbar.
So the fact that the evidence derived from the exfiltration, the unauthorized exfiltration of data is actually admissible in court in certain Southeast Asian countries is really incredible.
Completely changes the game.
But, you know, speaking of legal issues here, I mean, I think it's hard to talk about silent circle without also getting into lava bit a little bit, you know.
And last week documents were unsealed that basically demonstrated that Ladar Levinson, the founder of LavaBit, had closed the doors on LavaBit's accounts because the government was actually demanding.
We suspected this and you suspected it, I'm sure.
They were demanding LavaBit's encryption keys, you know, despite Mr. Levinson offering them the kind of more targeted alternative of just focusing on one individual user or several individual users.
Can you just tell us what LavaBit is?
Oh, of course.
So, yeah.
Mike, do you want to go into LavaBit a little bit, the background of it, because it seems to be an analog to what silent circle was?
We're good friends with Ladar, so I feel comfortable in discussing this.
You know, Ladar was a email provider who had about 400,000 customers, you know, basically 10, 12 years of his life building this business, and he offered encrypted email capability.
Well, as we now know, you know, email is fundamentally broken.
So, even though the email in transit is encrypted, there are keys held on a server, which means that the holder of that server can be coerced by the government to turn over and decrypt everything.
And what we understand is that it's alleged that Snowden was one of his customers, and the government came in in force and said, you know, we want everything.
And the letter that they gave him basically stated, you know, in legal jargon, but what they told him was that this letter allows us to take everything and give it all to us.
Well, it took them about a week to find a lawyer competent to handle this, and as they reviewed it, that wasn't what the letter said, but they had tried to force him into doing this.
They wanted the data on all 400,000 customers, and they wanted to put real-time tap into things.
Well, that's not admissible, or that's not allowed, you know, with that type of court order.
So what was funny to us about it – a lot of people don't know this – the FBI told him, well, you will go to jail if you don't turn over your master encryption key to the server.
So what he did, he had it typed out in something like 72 pages in four-point font, basically unreadable and unusable, and sent it to them.
Wow.
So then they threatened $10,000 or $5,000 a day.
Every day he didn't turn it over, so he just shut it all down.
You know, the amazing thing is that there's a lot that he can't even talk about.
How can these courts force you to do things that aren't necessarily the letter of any law, but they can force you, threat of jail time, from even mentioning it?
So that's a mess.
That's scary, what I'm hearing, because it's funny, it's great to see somebody show that rebellious spirit, but what this agency is doing, what a series of agencies are doing, is basically chipping away at any remaining freedom.
And you had better play ball or you're going to be in a lot of trouble.
That's what we get out of this, right?
You know, I would say this to that.
Although that is very dire and it is absolutely true, we at least have some sort of systematical approach where we can – you and me, gentlemen, can talk about this in a public forum.
The massive scale of global surveillance pales in comparison when you think about that there are 72 NSA-like organizations in the world with billion dollars and more of funding, with the exact same mandate, and with not as open type of laws and public laws.
And then you add onto it the massive corporate, large internet firms, internet technology firms that are robbing your data through what I call app and stupidity surveillance.
Literally, you're not the customer.
The new gold coming out of the ground is your data, and you're under barrage from everything.
So although we talk about this in the shades of the NSA, it's a global issue.
Not only is there a $100 billion business in corporate espionage, but there are trillions of dollars in sucking up the data of private citizens and packaging it and reselling it.
Anytime you hear freemium or a free service, it's not for free.
You're paying with your privacy.
I imagine you're referring to organizations like Google when you say that.
Oh, absolutely.
And there's probably about 1,280 of them, to be exact.
Not to mention, if you want to really know who knows about you, go to the credit card companies.
You want to see a stack, a file on you?
Go to the credit bureaus and LexisNexis and these places that package and they deal in the commodity of data.
What do you say to people who, and there are a lot of them, who say that,
I'm not doing anything illegal, I have nothing to hide, I don't really care if these people are watching what I'm doing, and it's okay with me if it makes things safer?
Well, first and foremost, that was an easy excuse a year ago.
Today, we're hearing a lot different, although you do get people who say that.
The fact of the matter is that ounces of their personal privacy are being robbed of them week by week, little by little, siphoned off.
And I always tell people, when was the last time you had a phone call with your wife or husband and you did not expect it to be private?
Everybody expects that when they pick up the phone and they call, that it's between them and their attorney, their doctor, their loved one.
It's literally taking the centuries, thousands of years right of humans to whisper in somebody's ear, to walk out behind the mud hut and have a private conversation.
That's gone.
Emmanuel.
It's down to that basic, primitive human right of the ability to take what's in your head and privately transfer it to somebody else without fear of retribution, imprisonment, or affecting you.
Let me give you an example.
You take a look at the Moore's Law as its effect in technology.
Well, government and big data are compiling everything.
I have school reports, her medical reports.
Think about genetics.
As her father, if my medical data is compiled by a medical firm and kept in some database, 10, 15 years from now when she goes to apply to school or a job, they're going to be able to say, well, your insurance premium is 3x because we show your dad had a genetic predisposition to whatever.
So it can be used against you.
It will be used against you in subtle ways, and we just don't know it.
Emmanuel.
Bernie, go ahead.
What Mike just alluded to, Mike from Silent Circle just alluded to, was pretty compellingly and eloquently expanded on by Ed Snowden in the video that's on one of these USB flash drives we're offering tonight.
Ed Snowden pretty much made it clear that if you think you're one of those people who's got nothing to hide so you shouldn't have to worry about your privacy, like who cares, my life is boring, whatever, Ed Snowden said that there are tens of thousands of federal laws in the United States.
Tens of thousands.
And if someone has the ability, the power to cherry pick little pieces of information about your life here and there and put together a story that could convince a prosecutor or a jury that you're guilty of violating any one of these tens of thousands of federal laws, your freedom is at risk.
That happened to me a few years ago, a law that hadn't been even published in law books yet was used against me, but that's neither here nor there.
It's real.
It can happen.
And if you don't think it can happen, there's plenty of people it has happened to before, and that's why your privacy is important, even if you think you have nothing to hide.
So that's why I want to encourage our listeners to support privacy, to support what we're trying to bring to people about what's going on here by calling 516-620-3602 and you can learn more about that.
Yes. If you call that number and I'm looking at the results so far, maybe we haven't gotten all of them, but we need more people.
We need more people to call in to support the radio station.
If we're going to have conversations like this in the future, in the very near future, we need a lot of calls.
516-620-3602.
What we're offering you tonight is unprecedented.
We're offering you all of the leaked NSA documents.
If I could have heard myself saying this even 10 years ago, I think I'd be shocked.
But basically, yeah, we have a bunch of leaked NSA documents that have been published and they are now all compiled, put in one place with the various redactions that journalists have gotten together and agreed upon to really protect security and people's individual identities and things like that.
It's not some kind of irresponsible leak that just basically exposes all kinds of innocent people like the intelligence agencies might have you believe.
This is what has been revealed to the public.
However, it's never really been brought together in one cohesive unit before like this.
Certainly not as cohesive as a thumb drive.
516-620-3602.
A pledge of $75 gets you all of the NSA leaked documents from Edward Snowden, including his video interview.
And a pledge of $125 gets you that plus a plethora of WikiLeaks documents.
Hundreds of thousands that have been released since 2008 having to do with the Iraq War, having to do with the Afghan War, having to do with all kinds of abuses of freedom.
On the WikiLeaks thumb drive, for instance, we have the Afghan War diary, which we said was more than 70,000 Afghan War log entries.
The Iraq War logs from 2004 to 2009, about 400,000 log entries from the Iraq War.
More than 2,000 secret U.S. embassy cables known as Cablegate.
And I believe that goes all the way back to 1966 into 2010.
Both the full 39-minute and the shorter analysis version of the collateral murder video that reveals the murder of journalists by U.S. armed forces.
You also get, this is kind of interesting, the insurance file that's meant to protect WikiLeaks in the event it's taken down by the authorities.
And if the day comes when WikiLeaks has no other option, that password will be given out and this file will reveal all kinds of sensitive information.
Pretty exciting, James Bond stuff here.
It's all yours.
Pledge of $125, you get everything.
But you've got to call now, 516-620-3602.
I'm very disappointed by what I'm seeing so far because I expected the phones to fly off the hook.
And for all kinds of people to be taking advantage of this unprecedented offer.
I know it's scary.
I know it's frightening because you are actually pledging for something that federal agencies really wish that you would not do.
But it's also a voice of support for freedom of information and for those courageous people that risk their lives to expose wrongdoing.
To expose information that Americans and citizens worldwide have every right to know.
516-620-3602.
Again, two pledge levels, $75 and $125.
You'll basically have a volunteer on the other end that will help you out.
Just ask for either the WikiLeaks and NSA thumb drive package.
Or if you just want the WikiLeaks thumb drive or the NSA thumb drive, indicate that.
It's all about thumb drives, but really it's all about information.
Information is power.
And that's what keeps us going here at Off The Hook.
516-620-3602.
Rob?
And if for some reason you don't want your copy of the WikiLeaks files or the Edward Snowden files, that's okay.
You can still support us.
You can still support the station and the show by calling 516-620-3602 or by going to WBAI.org.
There are some other premiums up there that the station has for you to choose from.
And most importantly, the biggest premium is the station itself and your membership in it.
And that's what this fundraiser is really all about.
WBAI is really the only station that will, in the same breath, offer you leaked NSA documents or maybe a coffee mug.
Which would you prefer?
It's up to you.
You make the final choice as far as that goes.
But it all goes to the same place and it all keeps us on the air.
And just think of all the ideas and controversy that have come forth over our airwaves concerning everything in the world, including ourselves.
516-620-3602.
I really think it's a place worthy of support, worthy of preservation, and a place like no other because you won't find this kind of thing.
And nobody would dare to talk about this or to offer these kinds of things.
So that reason alone.
516-620-3602.
Yes, Alex.
And I think when you're supporting the station, you're also supporting the kind of shenanigans that Mike Janke had just mentioned to us with regard to the production of the encryption key in a four-point font.
I mean, this reminds me very – it's a very, very similar story, I think, to what 2600 did about 13 years ago in a DCSS case.
It was very, very similar where those of the listeners that don't remember this, there was an injunction that was imposed upon 2600 that prevented them from linking to a site that contained the source code for DCSS, which was the decontent scrambling system, which allowed you to decrypt the monument to stupidity type encryption algorithm that was protecting DVDs.
Am I getting this right?
Well, yeah.
So I want to make it clear that it wasn't protecting DVDs against copying or piracy or anything like that.
That's right.
It was protecting DVDs against being played on quote-unquote unauthorized players.
That's right.
In other words, the Linux operating system was not allowed to play DVDs.
And what the DCSS program written by Johansen from Norway did was basically allow you to play it on the operating system of your choice.
It was that simple.
And it just showed that these people that want to control things, they're most worried by that loss of control.
Not necessarily piracy or people copying things.
They want to be able to tell you where you can watch something, how you can watch it, all kinds of rules and regulations and control.
And since then, we have seen that skyrocket in almost every single imaginable field.
And most importantly, it also controlled whether or not you had to watch the ads that were otherwise mandatory.
So if you were watching with DCSS, you could skip past the ads that if you put your DVD in a regular player, you would have to sit in front of and watch without any choice.
And I think that's really where a lot of the anger behind that whole thing came from.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, we lost the case.
And we've seen all kinds of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act used in so many different variations ever since.
We've seen so much control of technology and everything from automobiles to DVD players to anything you can think of that's technologically based is being controlled somehow.
And there are certain rules and regulations on how you may do something.
You don't own the content.
You're only leasing it.
You're only agreeing to their terms temporarily.
And then you have to buy it again.
You guys got off on such a tangent.
You didn't even let me get to the punchline here.
That's right.
The punchline was that so the injunction prevented Emanuel and 2600 from actually linking to this particular source code.
So they just kind of parsed the language a little bit and removed the hyperlinks and then kept the text to the link up there.
And that caused a bit of what we would call, you know, off the air illegal doo-doo storm in the courtroom.
Well, I mean, basically, and that sort of speaks to what Michael was saying before.
What we did was instead of having links, we had a list.
We just had a list.
And the intention was, OK, we're not allowed to have links.
Tell us we're not allowed to have a list.
Then we'll just put it in conversational speech.
Then we'll be told we're not allowed to speak about it.
You know, basically pushing it further and further and further until we're not allowed to even think about it.
Fortunately, didn't get to that stage.
We were allowed to have the list.
They didn't push back on that.
The judge did not rule against us in that particular battle.
But we did lose the case.
I think, though, we got the word out.
And that's the important thing is just being able to talk about this and spread the information.
And so many people learned about Digital Millennium Copyright Act from that case back in 2000.
And I think that was more important.
Emanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
Continuing that point, maybe an even more relevant connection pertaining to encryption and Phil Zimmerman and PGP,
I think some of us probably recall a few years before the DCMA case or DMCA case,
when it was a federal crime to export encryption programs like PGP,
a bunch of hackers realized that it's not illegal to export printed text.
So they printed the code out for PGP, then took it overseas,
and then manually at an outdoor hacker camp conference,
manually transcribed thousands and thousands of lines of code
and reconstructed the program overseas.
And then it circumvented, and then it was out.
I mean, it had already been out.
It was kind of, from a practical standpoint, it didn't accomplish anything.
But it proved that the government's attempts to criminalize the export of encryption software like this was futile.
And then the government pretty much dropped the case, and Phil Zimmerman was off the hook.
How many of us remember that?
That's such a great story, and there are so many tangential lines off of that,
how hard they came at him with the full force of the Justice Department.
And ultimately, Phil prevailed.
And we now have everything from encryption in your ATM machine to everything in life.
Ten years ago, if you were walking around and you had encryption on your laptop or something,
people would ask, what do you got to hide?
Well, today, if you don't have encryption, people say, what are you, stupid?
Everything we touch today, from buying online to online banking to your ATM to your visa, your passport,
everything has encryption.
So the government always looks in the past instead of what can be in the future.
And I think we're at that kind of event horizon as it relates to privacy and our mobile and data lives where,
on some levels, I don't fault the NSA.
They're, on some levels, like a wild animal.
They're programmed to do what they do.
And if there's no leash, well, it's going to run rampant.
Ever since 9-11, the Patriot Act was really a social contract between the citizens
and the government to suspend some of our rights for a short term to do what needed to be done.
Well, that suspension has never stopped.
And, in fact, it's been increasing and increasing until you wake up one day,
and your entire freedoms as they relate to privacy are gone.
So I don't want suicide bombers on the street just as much as somebody else does.
But we've gone 100x beyond that need to basically worldwide surveillance of everything all the time,
every data bit of every human.
And the hard part about this, gentlemen, is if you could show me a single time in the point of history
where, when government ever granted itself a power, that it's ever rolled it back.
So, you know, you've got folks in Silicon Valley, big tech firms, and governments around the world
with their head down hoping this blows over.
I don't think it will, but I also don't have a lot of faith in, you know,
societies that get their politics from 10-second sound bites on CNN.
So I don't know how it will end up, but you've got to push back.
And it's not just against our government, it's worldwide.
You fly anywhere, you try to do business anywhere in the world,
the minute you turn on anything electronic, you're owned.
Michael Janke from Silent Circle, I really want to thank you for being part of the program tonight
and for your inspirational words, if not very scary words.
But I think there's hope out there.
If we stay awake and we stay alert and we communicate amongst each other
and we figure out ways to communicate securely and keep the prying eyes from watching us.
Thanks for having me, John. It was a pleasure.
All right, take care.
That was Michael Janke from Silent Circle, a very interesting guy
and somebody that I think is playing an important part in all of this.
We are going to continue for another hour,
a special two-hour edition of Off the Hook here on WBAI in New York.
The Personal Computer Show will be back next week with their two-hour special.
We need you to call in.
We do not have nearly enough phone calls.
And for what we're offering, I am shocked.
I'm shocked by maybe people just aren't entering information fast enough,
but I don't want to blame the people in the call center.
We can't see them. They're in a different place.
And we can't see the phones ringing live.
The old system, we could see the phone calls coming in,
so we could tell when we strike a chord with people.
And I just feel like we should be striking a chord with people
because what we're offering tonight is simply something so exciting and different
and rebellious that I don't know who could resist calling.
Of course, it's kind of frightening.
Yeah, you might think that if you call up, your name is going to be put on a list
and the NSA will come visit you.
Yeah, you know, it's not quite that cloak and dagger at this stage, I don't think.
And plus, the more people who call in and take advantage of this amazing offer
for the leaked NSA documents or the WikiLeaks documents
or both of them together on a thumb drive,
the more that information is out there.
That is your way of helping to spread the information around
to keep a copy someplace.
Imagine if all the copies somehow got taken off the Internet
and you still had your thumb drive.
Imagine that power, that satisfaction of knowing that you're keeping
the freedom of information, those values a little bit more safe
just by having a copy.
How many times have you lost something electronic,
whether it's pictures or some kind of reading material,
because you kept it on a computer, you forgot where you put it,
it's on some other drive, you thought it was backed up but it wasn't.
Well, in this particular way, you have a thumb drive
that you can always plug into a computer and copy it and share it
and you can be the most popular person on your block with this information,
the most respected person perhaps.
516-620-3602, pledge of $125 gets you all the WikiLeaks and NSA documents
that we've been talking about tonight, pledge of $75 gets you either one,
but we need those calls to start pouring in.
516-620-3602.
I know, Bernie, you're always good at getting the calls to come in.
Well, I don't know.
I think my appeal may be wearing out, but I just want to tell our listeners
that this is not just an idle request.
This radio station, WBAI, is literally on its last legs
if this thumb drive does not do well.
I know there's been a lot of hyperbole in the past, but this is the real deal.
The station needs to pay its $50,000 a month
to rent space for its transmitter atop the Empire State Building,
that massive antenna up there that we use to breach the signal to four different states
and get out to the rest of the world over the Internet.
This is key.
This station has very few paid employees.
None of us get paid a dime.
We donate all our time and goods to this station
to keep this worthwhile resource on the air.
So please call 516-620-3602.
We have an amazing premium that's unprecedented.
There is no radio station in the country that is offering this as something you can get.
Yeah, I would like to see another radio station try this.
Certainly not in New York.
Nobody has the guts to try this, right?
BAI is always leading as far as doing something cutting-edge,
and I think offering leaked NSA documents, that's cutting-edge enough for me.
516-620-3602, be a part of that.
This is history.
They will write books about this someday,
and you can say, yeah, I was there.
I was a part of it.
I helped WBAI stay on the air.
516-620-3602.
So we know that secrets are kind of obsolete,
so I'm going to share with the audience a secret of mine,
which is that I really actually don't enjoy coming on the air and asking you to donate.
But the only alternative is that we have to ask someone else for money.
The transmitter is expensive to run, and the people who would give us money,
there are people who would give us money if we would, you know,
say the name of their product or service on the air.
There's lots of such people, and we could hire salespeople and get them.
Then we would lose our editorial independence.
The sorts of people who would want to advertise on this program are the sorts of services
that we want to critique on this program,
and we would not be able to critique a service if we rely on it to stay on the air.
So we'd much rather annoy ourselves a bit, annoy you a bit, and ask you for money.
Call 516-620-3602 because it is the only way we can retain our editorial independence.
So one thing that will really help, we've mentioned before this BAI Buddy program.
You can call, you donate a small amount of money, say $10 every month,
and the money just comes to WBI so we don't have to ask you for it every month,
and you don't have to give us a whole bunch of money all at once.
And it will really allow us to reduce the amount of time we have to spend fundraising,
and it will allow us to feel a little bit secure in our future.
So if that's interesting to you, give us a call, 516-620-3602,
and say, I want to join the BAI Buddy program.
If you feel like your finances are a bit uncertain or you just don't want to do that,
you feel like the quality of our program is a bit uncertain,
and you don't want to commit to funding us in advance, that's fine.
You can give a lump sum donation, and we have all these premiums that we've discussed.
Again, the number, 516-620-3602.
But your support is what lets us stay on the air and what lets us say what we want on the air.
That's right, 516-620-3602.
Mike is struggling through.
It sounds like you've got some kind of cold there.
Flu is it maybe or something contagious?
Whatever I have is a small stew. You're going to have it next week.
Yeah, I know, and we're all accepting that sacrifice,
that risk of contagious diseases that we will gladly share with each other
just because we want to come in here and keep this place on the air.
It's so important to make whatever sacrifice you can.
Well put, Mike, because that is important to show support for this place,
to keep this voice on the air.
You don't know what you have until it's gone,
and things are always in danger of disappearing.
This place is in danger of disappearing.
I don't like to cry wolf.
I have not said that very often,
but I have seen a lot of things that have been happening,
and we are at risk, and the one thing that will pull us out of that,
the one thing that indisputably will get us through these dark periods
is a strong showing from our listeners.
Now, I know that there are many things on the radio that are controversial
or maybe things that are distasteful to you,
things that you don't like on WBAI, and that's fine.
There are things on WBAI I don't like.
There are things everybody doesn't like at some point or another
during the broadcast day.
Think about the things you do like,
and if there is something on this radio station,
and it might very well be this program since you happen to be listening to it,
is that not reason enough to keep the radio station going,
to vote for that and to say, I want more of this?
Well, you very well might get more of that if you call in,
516-620-3602, but one thing that is for sure
is if you don't call in, and if other people don't call in,
you won't get any more of this or the things you don't like.
It's that simple.
It's a very basic form of economics,
probably the only form I understand,
that if you don't have money to pay your bills,
you can't keep operating.
And we need to reach that level, and we can reach that level.
This particular fund drive is a little different.
You might have noticed it's got a different sound to it.
We're not offering as many premiums throughout the broadcast day.
This is something that we worked long and hard on
to basically collect, put together,
and it doesn't cost a huge amount.
We don't have to buy books or videos or things like that.
This is data that we can put on a thumb drive.
And basically the fundraiser this time is not focusing so much
on those items that the station has to invest in.
Therefore, the actual goal of the fundraiser
is less than the goal of previous fundraisers
because that expense isn't there.
And I think that's actually a better way to do a fundraiser
because then people are calling in
because they really want to support the radio station,
not because they want to get a bargain,
not because it's the shop-at-home network.
That's not what we want to be.
We want to be a voice of relevance, of controversy,
something that will make you think.
And if the premium you call up for,
like the NSA leaked documents, like the WikiLeaks documents,
if that is something that excites you, that makes you think,
then you're calling for a very good reason.
You're supporting the radio station.
You're getting something that makes you think in exchange.
And it's basically one hand washing the other.
We all benefit from this.
Of course, the intelligence community,
they might be a little cranky about it for a while.
But you know what?
I think they're going to get over it just fine.
I think there's plenty more secrets for them to keep hold of.
And of course, there's all the spying on us
that they don't want us to know about,
which I think that's hilarious
because whenever you reveal anything
about the people who spy on you, they get indignant.
But you're not supposed to get indignant
that you're being spied upon.
That is incredible irony to me.
So for a pledge of $125,
you can get as much of the information
that they don't want you to have
as I think humanly possible right now.
516-620-3602.
For a pledge of $75, you can get just the NSA documents
or just the WikiLeaks documents.
516-620-3602.
We're going to take a very quick break,
and then we're going to come back.
We're going to have another hero of all of this
on the airwaves live to share some more stories.
Stay tuned.
We'll be back right after this important announcement.
Hey, Tom Harbin here.
WBAI is important.
Radio for the 99%.
Unlike commercial radio,
WBAI does not have rich corporations as sponsors,
no deep well of corporate support to keep them on the air.
But they do have something better.
You, the listeners and members of WBAI.
You are our sponsors and our community.
WBAI can't do it without you.
Please help keep this honored and beloved station on the air.
You won't find movement politics and social justice
anywhere else on the radio.
We can't do this without you.
I'm here for you.
WBAI is here for you.
Please donate now.
Call 516-620-3602
or go to give2wbai.org with the digit 2 in there.
Tune in weeknights at 9 p.m. for Tom Hartman on WBAI.
Thank you.
It's odd that they, the enemy,
believe that we're stronger than we don't or think we are, right?
The other part of the equation is that they believe
that people who watch it on TV or watch it in the movie theater
or read this book will do nothing.
So it's safe.
It's safe to put this out to the American people.
They're so sure of that because they know
that they have dumbed down and numbed out the minds
of the American public to such an extent
that once TV Nation or The Awful Truth or Roger Me is over,
people can just turn the dial,
go to everybody that's raining, and not think about it anymore.
Now, I've always believed something different.
I believe that this will actually grow to be something very large
because the American people are, at their core, good,
and they have good hearts and they have good souls
and they have a conscience.
Tune in this October for The Voices of WBAI,
a membership drive with a difference.
Pacifica Radio, a unique voice in New York City
for more than 50 years,
99.5 FM and online at wbai.org.
And you are listening to an extended edition of Off The Hook
on this Wednesday evening.
The Personal Computer Show will be back next week
with its two-hour special beginning at 7 p.m.
But tonight it's us until 9 p.m.
And if you missed it, we are offering an incredible premium,
516-620-3602.
We are offering all of the NSA leaked documents
from Edward Snowden that have been revealed so far,
and we're offering them all in one very small,
compact device known as a thumb drive.
And I don't believe this has ever been done before.
516-620-3602 for $75, that's all yours.
And if you want the real package
with hundreds of thousands of WikiLeaks documents thrown in,
a pledge of $125 will get you that.
516-620-3602.
We are seeing a number of people call in, and that's great,
but we need a lot more.
If you want to keep this place alive,
what better way to voice your support
than to pledge and get some leaked documents in exchange?
I think it's just marvelous. It really is.
And it gives me hope that we just might make it after all.
I was on one of my favorite websites earlier today,
and of course that site is Cryptome.org.
And actually there was something on it
that I think deserves to be shared with people,
if I can find it. I printed it out before.
This is a statement by Chelsea Manning
that was revealed today, that was shared today.
I'm still looking for it.
It's around someplace. Hang on.
There it is.
No, that's not it. That's another story.
How do I lose so many papers? It's incredible.
All right. Well, you know what I can do.
I can go to the website and...
Manuel, I can probably bring it up here.
I'm opening the document.
Okay, please do. Yes, that's the amazing part of the Internet.
I'll keep looking for it while you...
Cryptome, that's C-R-Y-P-T-O-M-E.org,
is an amazing website that's been up for, what,
like probably 20 years or so.
And we all use it as a resource here on Off the Hook,
and I think a lot of other news media outlets use it as well,
but it doesn't get nearly the attention that it deserves.
There's a lot of key information there,
and John Young, who runs it, is an amazing person
for volunteering to do all that work.
And you know why I couldn't find it, Bernie,
is because I didn't print it. I put it on my laptop,
so I'm holding my laptop here.
Oh, you should have put it on your flash drive, Emanuel.
Yeah, you know, I wouldn't have...
This is how quickly you can lose things.
We're demonstrating it unintentionally here, folks.
But, Bernie, I would just like to read this,
because I think it's important.
It's a statement for public release,
and basically it comes from Chelsea Manning,
formerly known as Bradley Manning.
Unfortunately, I'm very concerned about a substantial disconnect
I discovered between what I've experienced in the last few weeks
and what's occurred in the rest of the world
since my arrival at the U.S. disciplinary barracks in August.
Unfortunately, I've been largely left out of the loop
when it comes to details about what's been occurring
over the last several weeks.
This is partly due to my limited contact with the outside world
during the in-processing phase of my arrival,
but it's also because I've been trying to decompress
and focus on other things
after a lengthy and exhausting court-martial process.
The most obvious disconnect I discovered
has to do with the 2013 Sean McBride Peace Award
that was supposedly accepted on my behalf by Ms. Anne Wright,
a retired colonel in the U.S. Army.
I say supposedly because I had absolutely no idea
that I received this award, let alone accepted it.
In fact, I first found out about the award
when I began receiving mail containing quotes
from Ms. Wright's acceptance speech.
Now, please don't get me wrong,
I'm absolutely flattered and honored to receive this award,
or any award for that matter,
but I was shocked and frustrated about what's occurred here,
that it seems that I've been left out of the process.
And to make matters worse, now there exists the possibility
that there might be more false impressions out there
in regards to how I feel about the award,
or how it ties to my actions in 2010 and who I am.
For example, Ms. Wright states that
when I was told by my lawyer, Mr. David Coombs,
that IPB, International Peace Bureau,
had selected me as a recipient of this year's award,
I was overwhelmed that such an organization
would recognize my actions as actions for peace.
There are a few issues with this sentence.
A, the conversations I've had with Mr. Coombs
have been somewhat brief and heavily focused
on the common legal and logistical minutia
that needs to be worked out after a large court-martial.
There's little room in our scheduled time
set by the U.S. disciplinary barracks
for discussion of anything not focused
on the authentication of court-martial documents and transcripts,
or my ongoing request for a gender dysphoria treatment plan
that follows recognized medical standards.
B, from my perspective at least,
it's not terribly clear to me
that my actions were explicitly done for peace.
I don't consider myself a pacifist, anti-war,
or especially a conscientious objector.
Now, I accept that there may be peaceful
or anti-war implications to my actions,
but this is purely based on your subjective interpretation
of the primary source documents released in 2010 to 2011.
I believe that it is also perfectly reasonable
to subjectively interpret these documents
and come to the opposite opinion and say,
Hey, look at these documents.
They clearly justify this war,
or diplomatic discussion, or detention of an individual.
This is precisely the reason why I avoided
overbroad and unnecessary redactions on my end
while providing and attempting to provide these documents
to media organizations in early 2010.
I'm a transparency advocate.
I feel that the public cannot decide
what actions and policies are or are not justified
if they don't even know the most rudimentary details
about them and their effects.
In the next sentence, Ms. Wright says that
I know the history of the McBride Award.
Well, as embarrassed as I am to admit this, I don't.
In fact, I only learned of its existence in the last few days.
I certainly know who Sean McBride is
and what Amnesty International is.
I even vaguely know what the IPB is,
but I had no idea of the award's existence.
I simply don't know what's happened here.
I absolutely don't believe that there was a conspiracy
or any bad intentions on anyone's part,
but whatever has happened, I don't believe it's productive,
and I believe it would be totally dishonest
if I don't make the public aware of this disconnection.
So, to avoid any disconnection or miscommunication in the future,
all of my official statements and position coming from me
shall be in the form of a signed letter or release,
similar to this one, with my letterhead and date
at the top of the first page
and my signature at the bottom of the last page.
Statements or positions filtered through my attorney
or other representatives should be considered unofficial,
unless they deal with purely legal issues and positions,
or they are accompanied by a signed official letter or release.
And lastly, I'd like to clarify that, as far as I'm concerned,
I no longer have any rank.
While I still have a pay grade of E1, with total forfeitures of pay,
I do not have an associated rank while in confinement.
I prefer to use Ms. or no title,
instead of using SPC, PFC, PVT, or other military titles.
And I'd like to thank everyone who has avoided misgendering me
and switched to using my new name and feminine pronouns.
Thank you, Chelsea Manning.
And I'd also like to give the address,
because I know a lot of people might want to send something,
and I believe the address has to remain Bradley Manning
because of the confinement.
So for now, you would write to Bradley E. Manning, 89289,
and the address is 1300 North Warehouse Road,
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 66027-2304.
And I'm sure Chelsea would appreciate all support
and just knowing what's going on in the world,
because being confined is really a horrible, horrible thing.
Anyway, this particular document is what I saw on Cryptone.org today.
And as Bernie mentioned, that is C-R-Y-P-T-O-M-E dot O-R-G.
Incredible site with all kinds of documents exposed
and information that will make you more educated
and aware of what's happening in the world.
And we have the guy who runs Cryptone.org,
who started it all here in our studios.
And I refer to him as a hero because I believe that's what he is.
John Young, welcome to WBAI.
Glad to be here.
Well, tell us something about when Cryptone started
and what you had in mind, and are you surprised at where it is now?
It was started in 1996 thanks to Cypherpunks, a mail list group.
And we set it up to provide an archive of documents
that people were not willing to put up in their own name.
And so we decided to do that as a public service,
and that's still what we do primarily, is provide documents.
And you've been threatened a number of times for putting up these documents,
have you not?
Yes.
For those people that might be new to this,
as far as doing something controversial,
dealing with leaked information, spreading it to the public,
what would you say to them as far as standing up to authority?
Well, it's what citizens do.
The basic definition of a citizen is to defy authority in all forms.
And so if you don't defy authority,
then you don't get the privileges of citizenship.
Yeah, I think that definitely says it.
And reading that piece by Chelsea Manning,
I felt the same thing, what you were saying about releasing information,
being in favor of transparency, letting people decide for themselves.
That is something that I think we take for granted way too much these days.
We assume someone else is going to do it for us,
and nobody takes the stand.
And when you do take the stand, you're subjected to unimaginable penalties,
and other people are scared into not doing anything.
But at the same time, others are inspired to do more,
and I think that's what we've seen in the case of Edward Snowden
and the leakers of the future.
I believe there are many leakers of the future,
both corporate and governmental, that we are going to see.
That's correct.
There have been hundreds that have appeared since we set up in 1996.
We have a list of them.
There are several hundred people leaking information these days.
WikiLeaks is just one among these several hundred.
Many of them you don't know about, and that's great.
You don't need to be known about.
Just get the information out there.
We think that's actually better than to have a centralized repository.
We think the more people that are out there doing this,
the safer we all are so that no single site can be taken down.
And that is what the authorities would like to have,
easy targets or centralized repositories of information.
I think what you've done is really worthy of note because you've managed.
The headlines don't focus on Krypton all that often.
There aren't movies about Krypton coming out.
But you guys have survived.
You guys keep doing what you've been doing since 1996,
and do you attribute that to having lots of different sources?
In fact, 90% of what we publish that's controversial comes from other people.
We dig up some non-controversial stuff ourselves,
but the most interesting stuff comes in from anonymous sources.
Let's say there is an anonymous source out there listening right now.
How would they send you something?
Well, just about any way that you can think of.
We've got a paper up on how you can do it anonymously,
and it will probably scare people away.
But it's actually hard to do anonymous contributions these days,
particularly via the Internet because it's just a huge spying machine.
We actually recommend that you not use the Internet to communicate in any form whatsoever.
In fact, a few days ago I had lunch with someone from EFF who handles security for EFF.
I said, it's time to go back to 2600 and consult what they're doing.
They've got means and methods that you folks are not aware of
because you're completely obsessed with the Internet.
It's about the worst system that's ever been invented for spying on the public,
and that most people think that it's just a wonderful machine for pleasure and education
when in fact it tracks everything we all do.
And so we think that your thumb drive motion is a brilliant solution.
We think there should be more thumb drives, more letters, more face-to-face,
and just gradually wind down use of the Internet completely
because right now commerce and government is using it to exploit us all,
and we think we need to go back to radio, thumb drives, mail, face-to-face, couriers.
Don't forget that everyone we've been talking about tonight,
Manning, Snowden, WikiLeaks, all the good people did it by sneaker net.
They did not trust the Internet.
The military does not trust the Internet.
No one who's serious about communication uses the Internet for communication.
And so that if you use it, you are going to be tracked meticulously.
And so I think that your thumb drive is a brilliant move.
We, in fact, encourage EFF to move away from Internet obsession
and to look at some of the older technologies and methodologies
that ordinary people can use without needing a computer or ISP
or any kind of service like that.
Encryption does not work. That is part of the scam.
We'll get into that in a second, but now you mentioned sneaker net.
Is there a particular definition to that?
You just walk.
That's it, okay.
Manning walked out with his DVD.
Snowden walked out with his laptops.
Copies have been distributed by sneaker net.
They did not use any Internet means to distribute that among people.
We would like to see more people using thumb drives for distribution.
Of course, while there are mail spy programs,
you can walk this over to someone,
and you should learn to walk and get away from the computer.
And I think a thumb drive is a great tool.
But, you know, it's interesting you say this, John,
because in the information security circles,
there's a lot of talk in what Mike Janke has termed
the summer of Snowden and post-Snowden about these insider threats.
And Snowden and Chelsea Manning
and anybody who walks away with data is considered an insider.
And so there are these technological methods that have been developed,
certain software suites known as data loss prevention,
that try to wall off data or try to prevent you from doing certain things with data,
printing it, sending it, moving it from one network share to another, that kind of thing.
But you mentioned the sneaker net because none of this software
could ever prevent somebody from very, very simple tradecraft,
like they used to do in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and probably still today,
which is you have something on the screen or you have a piece of paper there,
take a picture of it and walk out with it.
No software can stop you from using the sneaker net.
So I think it's an interesting thing that you mentioned.
And you also mentioned a central repository of data.
And this is what governments want.
And we're starting to see governments misusing these Snowden revelations
and misusing these revelations about the extent of U.S. surveillance
to try to wall off their own data.
So we had Brazil a couple of weeks ago, they made a proposal to wall off the data
that flows from Internet Exchange Point to Internet Exchange Point within Brazil
and to keep it all nationalized within Brazil's borders,
this sort of balkanization of data within Brazil.
And what does this create?
It creates a central repository of data.
It may be more difficult for foreign intelligence agencies
to get into that data and track it, possibly.
But what does it do for the Brazilians?
It makes it a hell of a lot easier to be spied on by the Brazilian governments.
So I think it's important that we don't let this data that Snowden has revealed
be misused by governments as well.
Well, I think one way to not misuse it is for people to take it and have it for themselves.
And you can do that by calling 516-620-3602,
pledging your support and getting a Snowden thumb drive in return
with all the NSA documents on it.
516-620-3602.
Ask for the NSA thumb drive or ask for the WikiLeaks thumb drive
or ask for the NSA and WikiLeaks thumb drive for a pledge of $125.
516-620-3602.
Be a part of this and you'll feel really good.
You'll be supporting the radio station and also plunging right into the middle of all this
and seeing for yourself what it is that folks like John Young are talking about right now.
And, John, I want to ask you, as far as basically the surveillance that we find on the Internet,
how much of that is because people just give it all away themselves?
They say where they are at all times.
They're tweeting. They're posting on Facebook.
They basically are revealing all their personal information.
And it seems to me like that's something the government would just love
because it makes it so easy for them.
Well, one of the things that's not commonly known is that throughout history,
spies have been assisted by commerce.
They need commerce to do spying, and the same here.
The NSA cannot do what it's doing without the assistance of the people who invent
and promulgate this technology.
And more spying is done in the world by commerce than by all the intelligence agencies combined.
They call it data gathering.
Educational institutions gather it and siphon it, launder it, and sell it to the spy agencies.
And so this kind of blaming of NSA is actually a diversion from the ones who are actually doing the spying.
And that is what is being done very effectively right now.
And, of course, NSA can't say that.
But Snowden revealed just a tip of how many corporations are actually helping NSA do the spying.
They can't do it by themselves.
The entire infrastructure of the Internet is run by commerce, not by the government.
And they do that for money.
And so we have been lulled into thinking that the Internet is a wonderful machine
when, in fact, it's a way to spy on us.
And I like to use the word spy rather than data gathering or opinion polling or all that
because I think that they don't want the word spy used against them.
But I think that's what it is.
Scholars are doing it.
Commerce is doing it.
Individuals are doing it.
Hackers are doing it.
Lawyers are doing it.
Architects are doing it.
And they all say we can't believe our good luck.
The Russian mafia never had it so good.
The architects of the Internet, I think, had no idea what it would turn into
and the value it would—the role it would take in society.
And when people like you and like our previous guest mentioned things like email is not safe,
it was never meant to be safe,
the original web was not built to keep anything really secret,
the original protocols just didn't have that built into them.
Do you think that there's anywhere to go from here to be safe?
Like can we create email 2.0 and build safety into it somehow
and have that as accepted as email is today among the mainstream?
Well, there is an initiative now to redesign the Internet.
It turns out that it's being run by the same people who designed the first one.
So we should not expect radical change.
That, in the end, we have to find a way to start over.
These folks are too locked into their own way of thinking.
And they do like control. It's called technological control.
And, of course, law follows the technological control.
And so it almost reminds me of the invention of nuclear weapons.
Those folks actually thought they knew more than anyone else
and that no one knows how to do this better than us.
And so that kind of arrogance is what's going to keep them from doing a trustworthy system.
They think they are the most trustworthy people in the world,
just like the nuclear scientists.
They're not. They're wrong.
They don't know the harm they're causing.
And they're blinded by vanity and pride.
And so I think that we have to be skeptical of the experts,
whether it's encryption or whether it's running of the Internet.
I think we have to be aware of the fact they have a stake in this.
They're actually making a good bit of money off of it.
And so I think we need to find a way to communicate among ourselves without their assistance.
Now this is back to defying authority.
All forms of authority should be defied, particularly authorities on the Internet and ComSec.
That's because it's human nature to cheat.
And so then I think those who want to run things should be suspected.
You mentioned earlier that encryption doesn't work.
And I imagine that's what you're saying here,
is that people who design these things have their own agenda
and they cheat and they make shortcuts or they have other alliances
and you can't really trust anyone unless you know exactly what it is they're doing.
Do I have it right?
Well, if you subscribe to the crypto discussion list, they admit this.
They say that while the math may be secure, the implementation is always faulty.
And they're always trying to tweak it to make it a little bit better.
And so that they're as much a quandary as we are.
And so they keep honking that we can make it better.
We can make it better.
We apologize.
And so throughout our experience with it, they've always apologized for screwing up
and say that's the best we could do.
The market required it.
We had to get it out the door, i.e. we had to make some money.
The best ones say don't make promises.
They do not make promises to the public.
In fact, they say we're embarrassed at what we said 10 years ago to the public.
We didn't know what we were saying
because they're really good people who do not go out and make these kind of rash promises of security.
Now they're talking about this openly, and they're very embarrassed at what NSA has come out with.
They thought they were on top of things.
They can't believe how stupid they were.
And they're admitting this.
And they're almost in a crisis mode right now.
And many of these crypto lists won't talk about politics.
They say we have to restrict ourselves to technology.
And, of course, they got beat politically.
And that's why we think cyberpunks like 2600 has the right approach.
You cannot walk away from politics, and you can't walk away from technology.
But, John, what would you say to the politicians who have made the argument,
well, you know, there are all these negative implications of the technologies that have been developed and are being developed,
but they're foreseeable, and we have rules to prevent things from going haywire.
This stifling of political dissent won't actually happen because nobody's going to misuse this data
because we've had our lawyers.
This is General Alexander's argument, basically, that there were lawyers within the NSA.
There were lawyers within every single intelligence agency, within the White House, within the Department of Justice,
within the Department of Defense, that all of these lawyers have okayed the program,
and that these programs were then ratified once again by a federal court.
And so we have these rules, and we have these systems in place to prevent them from going awry.
So what would you say to them?
I'd say they're lying, and Baker in particular lies.
These lawyers in these agencies are trained to lie.
That's their purpose.
They lie to the public, ball-faced lies, and that is what intelligence people do.
They are trained to lie to the public.
They're trained to engage in criminal activity without accountability,
and this is why it has to be kept secret, the fact that they're lying to the public,
and they're lying to Congress, and they're lying to the president.
It turns out this is such a historical way of operating, they think it's okay.
Do you think they don't even know that they're lying?
They don't call it that.
They call it the best we can do.
They twist it around, yeah.
Of course, that's what liars always do.
Liars never admit to lying.
You have to call them out.
That's why I call them spies.
Spies are trained to lie, and the ones who are honest about it say that's right, that's what we do.
Now you may remember that a few of these ex-directors of these agencies have admitted that after leaving office.
That's why it's comical to hear this MI5 guy lie in his teeth.
And so Alexander's lying.
All the people in office right now are lying about what they're doing.
That's what they're paid to do.
But watch what they say after they're out.
Many of the British ex-spies are saying, well, that's right, we did abuse.
We did make a mistake.
We got to have a public discussion, but not while they're in office.
They can't say that.
And I think another response to the question I posed is to say, look,
there have already been incidents where this data has been misused.
I mean we talked about it a couple of weeks ago
when we talked about this ridiculous thing called Love Int, right,
where NSA analysts were literally using the metadata or data that was collected
and spying on their ex-girlfriends.
So there are methods.
And we know, and I don't remember the statistics,
but I think we talked about them several weeks ago about the sheer number of errors there were.
But so these things have already gone haywire to an extent.
And I think to go back to what Mike Janke had said earlier was,
look at the powers that governments have granted to themselves,
and they've never rolled it back.
They've never rolled it back.
But then you take Obama's position.
It would be very, very difficult, I think, to be a president
and to be granted all of these legal authorities
and the power to do certain things to supposedly combat the war on terror.
And if something happened on his watch
and he didn't use all the powers that were at his disposal
to stop whatever it was he could have stopped,
then he's really in a lot of hot water, I think, politically and historically.
So do we share any responsibility, in your opinion, John,
for giving the president these powers?
I mean, there was a FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
There was the Patriot Act.
All of these laws are passed by Congress,
and Congress is supposedly the embodiment of our political will as a nation.
So do we share responsibility in this mess?
What we do as citizens, and I think that we have to have the guts to say,
well, we need to stop the entrapment of presidents in Congress
by secrecy agreements, that they can only have access to the secrets
if they agree for a lifetime to never reveal them.
Therefore, once they're in, there's no way out,
and we citizens have to break that logjam.
They cannot do it.
And so it's an interesting system that's been brought up
to read people into the world of secrecy,
and for their lifetime, they can never reveal everything they know.
That's why you never find an ex-spy.
They're always still under a lifetime secrecy agreement.
And so that's why Snowden is such an unusual case here.
He's actually a contractor.
But if you were an official member of one of these spies,
you could not do what he did.
And that's why, while I respect a number of the ex-spies,
they do not reveal everything they know,
and they're careful to say that
because they can be severely penalized if they do,
much more than Snowden can be.
We're talking with the legendary John Young from Cryptome.org.
I say legendary because you have inspired many, many people
and I think many, many websites
and people who really want to reveal information
and spread truth to fellow citizens, world citizens,
and all kinds of people like that with the Cryptome.org website
and your other speaking engagements and words
that just simply inspire people.
I'd like to ask you, though, John, who inspired you to do this,
to get involved to this level, to do this kind of thing?
Cypherpunks.
Everyone know who Cypherpunks is?
This strange group set up in 1992 of engineers, scientists, cryptographers,
all sorts of people set up this mail list.
You're not saying cyberpunks. You're saying cypherpunks.
That's right. It's all about cryptography.
And I think that it's still one of the most significant things
that came out of the Internet,
and it's still alive and kicking and obstreperous and hard to get along with.
Now, what's happened, though, is a number of people broke away from it
to set up other cryptography lists that are much less political,
much less controversial,
and that it takes a gut to do what cypherpunks are doing.
They're still there.
They are still around, because we don't hear as much from them
as we used to back in the 90s.
Maybe they're just off the grid a little bit?
They are off the grid, and they're working on stuff that is very effective.
All right. As I said, we're talking with John Young from Cryptome.org,
and we're also talking to you, our listeners out there in Radioland.
We're asking, appealing to you to help this radio station stay on the air
with conversations like this.
We've been talking about the Edward Snowden leaks.
We've been talking about NSA and privacy issues,
and we're offering to our listeners a very unique package,
a thumb drive with all the NSA documents
that have been leaked by Edward Snowden and revealed to the public,
but they're all here in one place,
one little convenient package that has all these readable files
that you can do whatever you wish with.
You can plaster them on your wall.
You can wrap gifts with them.
Basically, do anything to drive the NSA berserk,
because this information now is out there,
and the only way it'll really be out there is if you help get it out there.
Spread it around.
With hundreds of thousands of documents,
if you get the WikiLeaks part of this as well,
there are so many words that have been spoken and written
that have not really been analyzed,
and it takes a lot of people to look this over
and see something significant that maybe everybody else has missed.
There's no way anybody, any journalist, could have covered it all.
So by getting these packages,
you will get access to a lot of primary information
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With this amount of information,
there is something significant that I'm sure everybody has overlooked.
But in order to get this, you must call 516-620-3602.
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The NSA thumb drive is what you should refer to it as
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the NSA WikiLeaks package, thumb drive package,
we'll get you both of these, hundreds of thousands of documents,
at least 8 gigs of data for a pledge of $125.
516-620-3602 and update.
Our tally has improved tremendously.
We're getting a bunch of calls now.
We need to keep that momentum up until the end of the hour
because we are doing an extended program this week,
two hours of off-the-hook,
and this is a very special deal that we're offering,
something quite unique because this is a unique place.
We want to support it with creative, imaginative,
rebellious premiums like this.
And we like to hear all kinds of suggestions from our listeners
as to what we could do differently or better
or ideas for different kinds of premiums we can offer in future weeks.
You can write to us, othat2600.com,
with those suggestions and feedback.
But for now, we really need to see a flurry of calls to 516-620-3602.
You heard John Young himself say that this is a courageous act
to have these kinds of thumb drives out there, spread around,
and it's something that is not on the Internet
because we are sending it to you.
You plug it into your computer,
and nobody can watch you do that
unless they're already bugging your house or something like that.
They cannot see what websites you go to
if you simply plug a thumb drive into your machine
and copy files and print them out
or do whatever it is you want to do with them.
They are yours to copy, to save, to share.
516-620-3602, definitely a one-of-a-kind premium.
Bernie, we haven't heard from you in a while.
Well, I've been listening with rapt attention to John's words
because he's maybe soft-spoken,
but he has an amazing amount of wisdom
pertaining to why it's important for people
to share controversial information
from governments, corporations, and other large entities
that would like to control our lives in almost every way
in order to extract their power over us
and extract money from our pockets
or, in some way, using us as a product,
chewing us up in their mouths, so to speak.
So I'm inspired by him and by all the other people
that have, over the years, hundreds, as he said,
hundreds and hundreds of people,
probably thousands over the...
I would imagine, John, would you think that 500 years ago,
1,000 years ago, there were people like Ed Snowden
leaking information?
Sure.
There always has been, and it drives authorities nuts.
That's why they have so many spies out there
trying to catch them,
but there's just too many people sharing information directly,
and so that's what was the promise of the Internet.
Unfortunately, it's become quite hierarchical now
by control of the infrastructure,
but I'll just say that I think the thumb drive thing
has got a lot of potential.
First of all, less than 2% of Snowden's stuff
has been published,
but already the stuff that has been published,
there's an enormous amount of analysis
of those slides that have come out.
There's new things being found every day
that the journalists missed.
They didn't understand what they were looking at.
So there are technicians looking at these few slides
that have come out.
Only a couple hundred have come out,
and they're finding stuff the journalists overlooked,
and they've done the best they could.
They just don't know what they were looking at,
and so we think there will be more of this stuff leaked
in small packages, perhaps by thumb drive,
so get used to it.
This choke point of journalism is not working.
WikiLeaks found it doesn't work,
that you cannot control this
because you've missed too much.
You need more eyeballs looking at this,
more analysis.
Someone put up a post just yesterday
saying that Greenwald's ass was saved
from being smeared by full release
of the H.B. Gary stuff
because they were setting out to smear him
and plant child porn onto his computer,
and it's because all that was released at once
that people discovered this was in the works,
so this kind of controlling it for commercial purposes
can hurt you,
and so we need to get it out where more people can see it,
so the sooner it comes out, the better,
but I think it'll come out in bits and pieces
because no one's going to use the Internet anymore
to distribute this stuff.
The insurance files actually are a ruse.
Those have been set up to make you think
that's what that is,
and the stuff is being done cypherpunk-y in ways.
It's coming out in ways that you would not believe,
in small parts,
and so it's not being done by the Internet anymore.
You could even say the Internet is a ruse now,
except for those people wise enough
to plumb its darker side
and use the technology to find their way around,
and it takes some skill with that,
so I think that it's important that your listeners
at least expect more like thumb drives,
small pieces of things that you can look at on your own,
look at with your own interpretation.
Don't wait for someone to tell you what it means.
Take a look at it yourself.
Absolutely, yeah,
and what you say really rings true
because so many eyes looking at this information
is the biggest weapon yet.
Only 2% of the Snowden documents have been released.
Is that because it takes them that long
to even get a rudimentary idea
of what it is that they're releasing?
I don't know.
I've been asking that question from day one,
and all we hear is that it takes time to go through it.
It's disorganized.
It's not obvious what it is.
We don't want to release it all at once
because that would diminish its impact.
We need to stretch it out,
but that's been shot down.
All those arguments have been shot down.
We think that at least the Guardian
is under control of MI5.
Interesting.
We don't know about the other ones,
but they've admitted it.
In fact, all the outlets have admitted
that they've been checking with governments
on what to publish.
Not a single one of them has denied that
because they actually don't know what they've gotten
or do they know what the consequences might be.
Well, that means they've been read into the system.
That's how you get read in.
You said, if we tell you this,
you can never reveal it ever.
People will be harmed.
Blood will be on your hands, yada, yada, yada.
So one of the ways that you suck people into this
is they come asking you the question,
is it okay to do this?
And they say, well, we can answer this
if you never tell what we're about to tell you,
and that's drinking the Kool-Aid.
And so they're showing all the signs of that.
All national security reporters have to drink that Kool-Aid
or they don't get access.
And so that's Baker.
That's all these very smart lawyers
hooking you with this.
Well, we can tell you, but it can't leave this room.
Or we can show you the paper,
but you can't walk out with it.
Show us what you got, and we'll give you an answer.
So that's all how you're lured into thinking
that you're somebody important.
And this sense of self-importance is corrupting.
But the thing is, the worst thing about it
is totally corrupt process
because once you're in, you cannot get out anymore
without severe penalties.
And most people don't know what they're getting into,
and that's what the ex-spies say.
You don't know what you're getting into
because once you're in, you cannot believe
that you didn't know what you didn't know.
But that, of course, is part of the apologia.
And so I think that that's why we need innocent eyes
to look at this stuff.
We don't need trained, experienced eyes.
Trained, experienced eyes have got a problem.
All right, well, then, if you have innocent eyes,
we want you to call right now, 516-620-3602,
and have those innocent eyes peruse all the documents
that we have been able to obtain,
the ones that have been publicly released
by Edward Snowden and the various WikiLeaks documents
that have been released since 2008.
All yours, a pledge of $125 or a pledge of $75
if you want just the NSA documents
or just the WikiLeaks documents.
But you must call now in the next few minutes
because we are almost out of time.
516-620-3602, an incredible amount of data
that will arrive in your mailbox on a thumb drive.
And the best part of it is that you get this
without going onto the Internet
and possibly being watched by some agency someplace.
It's entirely possible.
We've seen so much evidence of it.
And, of course, you'll see all kinds of references to it
on the thumb drive itself
as you'll witness the agency's words
that they really didn't want you to see.
516-620-3602.
Most importantly, though, that phone call that you make
will support WBAI, will keep off the hook going,
and who knows what kind of conversations
we're going to have in the future about this sort of thing.
And that's why I want to ask you, John Young,
for somebody out there who has not yet leaked something
but has access and just needs to be inspired
in one way or another,
what would you say to somebody like that?
Well, one is it's a good chance
that the kill switch on the Internet will be flipped.
I think that they are, in fact, going to shut down
a lot of the sites that we now treasure
as sources of information.
I think that they are actually lulling us
into thinking that we need to debate.
We'll talk about this.
But I think they're going to quietly start
shutting these sites down.
And so that I think that our site, Wikileaks,
and a number of other sites will be quietly shut down.
You won't know that it's happening.
It'll be a slow squeezing of the process.
That's happening to The Guardian right now.
And I think it's going to be happening to The Post,
Der Spiegel, El Globo.
And because they don't do this in an ostentatious way,
it'll be a special operation.
They'll start to shut it down.
You'll start to have outages, unexplained.
We have some unexplained outages.
And so I think that it will be done
in a way that you won't know it's happening.
But in the end, the internet is a threat to control right now.
And they're going to get control.
So I think that radio is important.
I think old-style number stations are important.
I think Sneakernet.
All the technologies that we thought has been surpassed
by the internet should be taken another look at.
And I think 2600 has a lot to offer.
I wish you had mentioned your own collection
as part of this deal.
Yeah, well, I'm kind of bashful about that.
But yeah, we've been around.
The Hacker Magazine since 1984, ironically enough.
But it's the voices, the voices that contribute to that,
the people who know so much more than any of us
and also have the desire to share that information.
That's what defines the hacker world.
And that's something that I'm just honored
to even be able to share through the magazine
and through the radio show.
And people like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning
are inspirations because they revealed information
at great cost to them, to their personal freedom.
And what you were talking to just a moment ago, John,
about they are going to take action.
They'll be taking down websites, and you won't even know it.
I think it goes beyond that.
I think they will do things, and you will know it.
I think they will take action against the Ecuadorian embassy
at some point when we stop paying attention to it.
I think they will go after Edward Snowden
when we forget who he is or what he is currently doing,
which is why we have to not forget these people
that are basically sacrificing their lives for this.
We have to always be focusing on how they're doing,
where they are, are they safe.
And there are going to be so many more of these people out there
that have not yet stepped forward, that are inspired by this,
that want to do the right thing.
And in the eyes of these extremely powerful agencies,
they are not doing the right thing.
They are a threat.
And they could be arrested, imprisoned.
They could have a drone fired at them.
All kinds of horrible things that the average member of the public
will say, yeah, you know what, that was necessary for our freedom.
And we're here to tell you that there is another side to that.
It's a lot more complicated.
And the best way for you to understand it is to read as much as possible,
to have access to the information that's already out there.
And you can do that right now in the next couple of minutes
because we are out of time, 516-620-3602.
Pledge 125, you'll get all the information,
hundreds of thousands of documents from the NSA,
from Edward Snowden, from WikiLeaks.
Or you can pledge $75 to get a partial thumb drive
of just the NSA documents or just the WikiLeaks documents.
But you must call within the next five minutes
because we are off the air after that, 516-620-3602.
Does anyone want to issue last-minute appeals to our listeners? Alex?
Well, I'll tell you, the implications of the Snowden revelations
are very, very far-reaching.
We just mentioned drones.
Manuel just mentioned them.
Literally, the front page today of the Financial Times
has a short story about the failing drone sales
and attributes it to the Snowden revelations.
It literally says,
the political revolt against surveillance that Edward Snowden leaks
have helped to spur his exacerbated fears about the risk to privacy
from extensive use of drones in the U.S. airspace.
Dozens of states have proposed bills to limit the use of drones,
restrictions that some industry executives believe
could stifle the potential domestic market at birth.
This was a conversation we weren't having before.
And also, on that note, I see a story here from Russia today.
NSA public records requests are up 1,000% since Snowden's spying revelations.
It basically shows you the results that people revealing information can have.
Folks, we're out of time.
Once again, the phone number is 516-620-3602.
Thank you so much to John Young for being here,
for being a part of all this,
and for doing what you do,
because that's something that not many people do.
And also, of course, we want to thank Michael Jahnke
for being part of the show as well.
Earlier, thanks to everybody who called in.
Please continue to call in, 516-620-3602.
Take advantage of the thumb drive offer.
And we'll see you in two weeks.
I believe we have another two-hour show.
Next week will be the Personal Computer Show.
And coming up next is Tom Hartman,
our new daily program at the 9 o'clock slot.
You know, today is somebody's birthday,
somebody very inspirational,
who I think would have approved of this.
And I think this message today is particularly apropos.
And that's where we're going to go out with.
Have a good night.
Big-headed politic
All I want is the truth
Just give me some truth
No short-haired yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dick
He's gonna murder her for topsoap
Meagher's just a pocket full of hoes
Money for dough
Money for roads
Whoo-hoo!
guitar solo
No short-haired yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dick
He's gonna murder her for topsoap
Meagher's just a pocket full of hoes
Money for roads
Anger.
Anger, the most misunderstood and most frightful emotion.
Tune into The Positive Mind every Wednesday in October
for a series of two-hour specials on understanding rage.