When I listen to the radio, it's always tuned to 99.5 FM WBAI.
When I go back home and visit my family in Hanoi, Vietnam, I listen on the web at WBAI.org.
Hello everyone, I'm Ngo Tung from Vietnam and I'm a student in New York.
I'm a regular listener of WBAI on FM 99.5.
When I go back to Vietnam, I can listen to WBAI on the web at WBAI.org.
And as you may have heard from our Vietnamese friend, the time is just about 7pm
and you are indeed listening to 99.5 FM New York WBAI
and it's just about time for Off The Hook.
Good evening to you.
The program is Off The Hook.
Rob T. Firefly here with you in the studio.
And I'm joined in said studio by Mike.
Hi there.
And by Jim.
Hello.
And on the phone, we've got some noise.
But in addition to that noise, we've also got Emmanuel and Kyle.
We should.
We should.
I've heard all this noise.
Yeah, guys, like I told Mike, Rob, we cannot hear you at all.
So you're going to have to raise your volume.
I'll do what I can over here.
Okay, well, while you're doing all that action,
I'll also note that we have Bernie S. on the phone as well.
And I am stationary here in a 215 area code.
We've actually been on, this is our fourth train,
not counting the Long Island Railroad, which was by far the most frustrating.
We've gone from 212 down to 202, 202 up to 312, 312 down to 213,
and now we're on the 213 to 206 leg.
What is that?
I guess our audience is just expected to know all area codes.
Yeah.
Or all classic area codes, I guess.
It's not really fair to expect the audience to know some of the newer ones.
But that set seems fairly reasonable.
Well, I deliberately didn't mention anything like 630 or even 818.
That would be a little too new, I think, for most people.
That's a challenge.
Okay, fine.
If you want to go all analog, then we'll do that.
Basically, we've been on four trains.
We started at Penn Station in New York, went down to Washington, D.C.,
hung out there for a little while, took a train up to Chicago,
spent about six hours there just talking around
and doing all kinds of fun things.
Then we took what's known as the Southwest Chief,
which is a two-night ride, three days, I think, to get to Los Angeles.
Totally new route for both of us.
Yeah, we've never taken that one before.
Then the final leg is going up the coast from Los Angeles to Seattle, which is 206.
We're leaving Portland, Oregon right now, which is 503.
We spent basically the better part of today
traveling through the Willamette National Forest.
Why, Emanuel, did you feel the need to give us all this information twice?
We got it the first time.
Say it again?
I'm just wondering why we're repeating ourselves all the time
is exactly what I was wondering, to be honest.
What do we know about this adventure you're on?
What's the occasion?
I don't know.
It's an adventure, sure, just like every day is an adventure,
but we just opted to travel.
First of all, Carl's got a vote in the Seattle caucus, which takes place on Saturday.
So we figured, hey, let's get to Seattle to do that.
There are methods of going cross-country,
and the train is a perfectly viable method.
Yeah, we could have gone more directly.
We could have gone from New York to Chicago, from Chicago to Seattle,
and it would have taken one less day.
But we figured why not go this way because we'll see other places,
we'll get to hang out in other places as well.
I spent some time in Los Angeles riding on their new subway system, the Gold Line,
and it's just so much more pleasant than, well, what do you guys,
you guys usually like go in the sky and get places quickly.
Is that the preferred method these days?
I'm just saying, you know, if I had a radio show, for instance,
to do on Wednesday evening and I needed to be in Seattle on Saturday for some reason,
you know, I could take an airplane on Thursday and still have Friday to adjust to the jet lag.
Well, yeah, we don't get jet lag, and there's no adjustment period.
We're just basically living our lives.
There's nothing I haven't been able to do on the train, able to connect.
Most people don't even know I'm gone.
I'm able to connect and talk to people.
But the most amazing thing is you're able to connect with other people you don't know
and share experiences with people from all over the world, literally, and meet them on the train.
What happens is you have three meals a day, which is also unusual for me.
I usually have all kinds of bizarre hours, but when you take a cross-country train,
you get breakfast, lunch, dinner, it's all included, and you sit down with strangers,
and you invariably, even if you're antisocial like me, you wind up talking to them,
and you really meet some interesting people from all different backgrounds
and have some great conversations.
I don't do that on airplanes.
I never talk to the person sitting next to me.
I just want to get it over with.
It's nowhere near as stressful as flying.
People who run a train are extremely friendly.
They've got a great sense of humor, and I really recommend it.
A lot of people say it's expensive, but when you consider you're getting room and board,
you're getting your meals like that, and you're getting travel,
it's really no more expensive than other methods of travel.
What is the most interesting person you met?
Most interesting person, who would you say that would be?
We talked to a guy from Brazil yesterday who was involved in,
what was he involved in apart from having five dogs?
He was going on a tour of the Emerald Triangle,
which is a famous cannabis-growing area in California,
and also just going all throughout different parts of that state for a vacation
with a significant other and just basically exploring places he had never really spent a lot of time in.
He was very keen to inform us about all the news with various things involved with cannabis growing,
and he actually knew a bunch of different people involved with that industry
and had a lot to say about the changes that are going on there.
We also spent some time with a couple who had never been on a train before,
and they're from Texas, which is interesting,
and we had a lot of interesting things to share and funny situations with them.
It was really eye-opening.
They really didn't know much about the train,
and we felt like we could share some of our good experiences and knowledge,
and they really got into it.
I think they were really inspired,
and we saw them a little later, and they seemed like they were having a lot of fun.
In fact, they were commiserating a little bit.
I wish they had eaten a meal with us again because they had met some people that,
well, they were from Arizona, or California.
I can't remember which, but they were a little shocked by some of the righteousness that occurred.
It was interesting because they were from Texas,
and they were upset all these people could talk about guns and nationalism and things like that.
The way that we might view people who come from Dallas,
and in fact it turned out to be completely reasonable, interesting people to talk to
who enjoyed talking to other people from other parts of the world.
So there's all this cross-pollination of cultures that go on.
You wind up recognizing people from different parts of the train.
You have the three coach cars in the back where people sit in pairs.
You have the sleepers up front.
You've got the little roomettes.
You've got the bigger rooms.
You've got the dining hall.
You have a lounge.
You have a sightseeing dome car.
This train, the last one we're taking, is supposed to have what's known as the Pacific Parlor car,
and that's a car that was built in 1956.
Unfortunately, it's out of service, so they just replaced it with a modern car.
But to ride something like that would really have been an amazing experience as well.
There's just so much that you learn by riding on a train.
And not only that, the best part is what you see.
You pass through all kinds of amazing parts of America.
We've seen the entire country in just a few days.
You don't see that driving.
The guy from Brazil actually was very clear on that.
When you drive, you don't drive through what we might.
You don't drive through an Air Force base and see the things we saw yesterday.
You don't drive through people's backyards unless you're a really horrible driver.
And, of course, you don't see any of this when you fly.
So a train is the most amazing way to see the country.
It's so incredibly relaxing.
But on that subject, I know we saw some interesting things yesterday.
And you sent some pictures to Bernie.
Maybe you guys can sort of share what the technological things that we witnessed yesterday were.
Yeah.
Oh, well, it was really fascinating.
The coastline, I didn't realize it, but the Starlight Coastline route goes right along the coast.
It's aptly named.
But the interesting thing about the route is it goes right through an Air Force base
that is primarily involved with stuff space-related, satellites and missiles, these kinds of things, and testing.
And you would not be able to get onto this base in a car, really, unless you were invited or enlisted.
So it was really unique.
And it was funny because we were in one of those observation cars where you have a lot of glass,
and everyone was looking out at the water and the surf and the waves.
As soon as I realized we were on this 94-square-mile Air Force base involved with space,
I turned right around and was staring at all this equipment.
And it was one of these bases where you can't really tell what's what.
It's just a lot of tan buildings.
Some are really old.
Some are brand new.
But we did see some interesting signs of, let's just say, high technology or futuristic stuff.
We saw a big space X-Hangar.
I think they share a time there on the base.
And they're very proud of who they are.
They want people to know that.
So everybody passing by on the train would see this big space X-Hangar.
Yeah, they're very, very tall hangars, the kinds that you would have a launch system in,
or the arm, I guess, whatever you call it, that would maybe lift a rocket into a vertical position,
stuff like that, really, really tall hangars and a lot of smaller buildings and other interesting surfaces.
We also noticed a lot of what we had seen in the U.K. near Menwith Hill.
I guess we've described it on the show before,
but there are these big golf ball, I believe they're called radomes,
or they're like a dome covering for communications satellite or radio telescopes and so on,
which were sort of speckled all across this enormous base, which was also intriguing,
as well as a bunch of different antenna arrays.
And I actually saw one that was really peculiar, and I thought to just snap a brief picture,
and Bernie was very helpful.
He immediately identified it and told me a lot more about what it might be used for.
Yeah, what was that, Bernie?
Oh, well, I mean, the picture Kyle sent me was a couple of these giant antennas
that are on a giant tower, and there's three arms that stick out horizontally,
each one about 120 degrees from the other thing.
And I recognized it.
I'd seen them before, so I looked up who made them, and I sent him some more pictures of it.
It's made by a company called Antenna Products.
It's a giant, rotatable, high-frequency or short-wave HF antenna.
It covers from 2 to 30 megahertz, and they're used for long-range global communications.
And the advantage of that is that between military bases that they use these to communicate with,
there's no infrastructure required.
No fiber optics, no wire cable, no satellites.
They can communicate from any two points in the globe with these things
with no infrastructure in between them.
And that's what's fascinating about short-wave or HF communications.
But that particular type of antenna is pretty unusual.
I've only seen them on military bases.
So Kyle was kind of lucky to see them, and I'm glad he sent me those pictures.
Thanks, Kyle.
Yeah, absolutely.
I immediately thought of you.
I said, oh, I've got to send Bernie a picture of this.
I want to know what this is.
It was really just that, the diversity of communications facilities and equipment.
And, I mean, there's a lot of interesting stuff that goes on at Vandenberg.
It is also a launch facility for the West Coast.
I'm talking about missile defense systems as well as intercontinental missiles and so on.
I believe Minutemen are stored there, and they've had a big historic program there.
You end up noticing this really wide diversity of communications methods
because these various systems must have backups and all kinds of different support mechanisms.
And you really don't get exposed to that.
I mean, if you see sort of general commercial and private infrastructure or public infrastructure,
it's not quite as fascinating as these really bizarre massive arrays just sort of sitting lonely,
and it just makes you wonder.
And if you're a curious person, it's really a treat.
And we've passed through all kinds of other scenery as well.
We passed a massive steel plant.
I think that was in, was that Pennsylvania or was that Maryland, the first night?
We saw some incredible things.
Yeah, yeah.
It was an enormous foundry, I mean, with mountains and mountains of coal to keep the crucibles hot.
But this facility stretched for, I don't know, several miles, and it was, I think, U.S. steel.
One of these major U.S. steel, yeah.
Old steel manufacturers.
And we were thinking, you know, this is what we're up against when we were trying to go green
because this thing is so embedded into the landscape.
It looks like it's been there for 150 years.
But this is the thinking that we have to change as far as changing the way that we manufacture energy
and just treat the environment better.
Yeah, and it made me think that, like, we really need to work on material sciences
and understand better processes because these are the people that buy large amounts of coal.
So when we think about coal in these sort of dirty, quote, fossil fuel industries,
we attack them, we think they're the problem.
It's not them so much as the people who are their customers.
And so when you buy steel, you know, or you purchase these things,
you are supporting someone who buys fossil fuels in enormous quantities.
I mean, I think it's fair to lay at least a large portion of the blame on the people who are actually burning the fuel.
I'm curious, though, Bernie, if antenna identification is a service you offer to the general public or how it works.
Yes, it is. In fact, anyone who wants to email OTH at 2600.com, Unusual Antenna Pictures,
I'll be happy to respond with my best guess as to what that antenna is.
In fact, I registered the domain name antennasightings.com.net.org years ago.
I haven't put anything up on them yet, but I plan to in the future.
I'm just sort of really enthusiastic about antennas and what they do,
because you can glean a lot by looking at antennas and figuring out what they're used for.
But it has to be an interesting antenna. You won't accept, like, cell towers and stuff like that.
Unless it's a special cell tower.
If somebody sends us a picture of a cell tower, I'll tell them it's a cell tower with antennas for probably this company and that company.
I'm just fascinated by antennas because they give you a window on who's using them and what they're using them for.
Like the antenna pictures that Kyle sent me via BlackBerry Messenger yesterday were for a very specific purpose.
It's a backup communications method.
If all other methods go down, like if somebody shoots a U.S. communication satellite out of orbit,
they can still use these antennas to communicate globally.
It's just a view into what the world of communications, and I just like antennas.
That's an awesome idea, Bernie.
Yeah, please, if anybody's got some interesting stuff, send them in, because we're as curious and we may have some answers.
We can definitely find out what these things are used for, and we'd love to see them.
Although I think we'll have to draw the line at Novelty Headbands with the springy things on them.
But, Jim, yes?
Question. Las Vegas. Yes or no?
Las Vegas?
Yeah.
Oh, actually, Jim, I think you're referring to Las Vegas, New Mexico.
No.
The train we took, the Southwest Chief, actually stopped in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Now, if you recall, in the movie Freedom Downtime that we made a number of years ago,
we kind of had a mistake and we stopped in Las Vegas, the wrong one,
and couldn't find any of the casinos or dancing people or anything like that.
Would I ever see that again?
No, but okay.
Close enough.
But one thing that I think you can get everybody, almost everybody on this train to agree on,
and there's hundreds of people on this train right now, and all the trains we've taken before,
is that rail travel really needs to be improved in this country.
We need to be able to have more routes, faster speed.
It's really good the way it is now.
It's a smooth ride, a fairly quick ride, great service, all that.
But it can get so much better if you're on a European bar
or just on par with other parts of the world as well.
The things we could do would be amazing.
Everybody who we have sat down with and talked to has been blown away by this.
This is the most amazing way to travel, the most amazing way to see this country,
and so much better than flying.
It's not about the destination all the time, it's about the journey most of the time,
and I think that's what people who take trains get.
In this day and age, when you can do all your work from your digital device of one sort or another,
you don't need to be at point A and point B immediately.
You can do your work from wherever it is you happen to be.
It's a much more relaxed setting, and you wind up being a lot more productive.
At least that's been my experience.
Some of us like airplanes precisely for the ability to get away from our work for a few hours,
but everyone's different.
Yeah, and I would just also note that from this experience,
it just reminds you that the foundation's there.
Everything's here, and there's so much possibility,
and that's something we're reminded of on these trips.
With all the things you see and the way it works and really experiencing that journey,
you get really impressed with the possibility.
What could we build?
How could we support this and make it better as only Americans could do for our system?
Look at that.
We're pulling into Vancouver, Washington.
I guess people have figured out what train we're on because there seems to be a bit of a mob here.
I assume they're here for us.
They're waving.
They're waving back.
Folks, be safe.
If you're meeting the train, if you're waving at us as we go by,
make sure that you stay safely away from the moving train.
It's always nice to see some of our off-the-hook listeners.
But we have other things to talk about tonight as well.
One thing that I noticed as kind of a last item on this trip, when we stopped in Chicago,
we had about six hours to wander around.
We took the Yale, the subway.
And I was blown away by how much their subway lines have advanced in a relatively short amount of time.
I think New York can learn a great deal from them.
They used to have the system, the same exact system that New York has with the MetroCard,
the same machine and everything.
Now they use an RFID card, a paper RFID card.
Yeah, we referred to them as Oyster cards in the past.
That's what they were called in Holland.
But, yeah, it's a wireless chip with an antenna in it that you simply tap
and it checks and verifies you've paid and then allows you to go through the turnout.
And I know we're moving to something like that in New York,
but they have other things, too, that they've accomplished.
Every car has a color display in the back that permanently has the time.
It tells you the next station.
An announcement tells you what side the doors open and run.
They have countdown clocks that are accurate.
They have color signs that show you the next five trains,
and they don't alternate with trains you don't care about or just go back to flashing the time like we do in New York.
There are such simple things that we can get right.
We just follow the lead that other cities have done already that have done it right.
I think Chicago is one of those.
Yeah, it was totally different from what I had remembered,
and they really, really made huge leaps and bounds insofar as retrofitting the rolling stock that they have
and making it really, really profoundly integrated.
It just blew us away.
We felt really comfortable as soon as we got into that system and had a really good time exploring.
We went up to the north side and all around the loop a bit and really just had a really enjoyable time
and thought, gosh, this would be great in New York City.
It's encouraging to hear that Chicago has acquired 1980s technology.
I do share your hope that New York will acquire it as well one day.
Well, in this country it's 21st century.
I'm not being sarcastic when I say I'm excited to hear that they have it.
I just wonder what's taking us so long here in New York.
A quick correction, though.
You mentioned Oyster cards, and that's what they're called in the U.K., not Holland.
I'm sure I'm stopping our listeners.
Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry.
It's similar technology.
I was also impressed with Los Angeles.
We went to the site, going back to Freedom Downtown, at the beginning of that film,
you might recall that we're standing across the street from the Metropolitan Detention Center
waving at Kevin Mitnick, who was inside, and he was basically pressing his face up
against a very narrow pane of glass.
We were standing in the mobile station across the street.
I tried to find that mobile station in the time that we had between trains.
I couldn't find it.
Instead, what I found was another train, that train bridge,
that outdoor train that goes right where that mobile station used to be.
It's part of the Gold Line of the Los Angeles Metro,
and they have really expanded there.
They're continuing to build the mass transit in that city.
I'm very impressed by that.
They're doing it pretty quickly.
And we took, basically, we just got another easy-to-figure-out card
and rode that for a little while in each direction.
So, Emmanuel?
They also were a wireless card, by the way, but they were plastic tap cards.
Really amazing, though.
It was called the Gold Line, and it's just really interesting to see.
And they're still building it.
I mean, they're not even closing down there.
They're adding more stuff down there.
But it was neat, too.
I hadn't really explored L.A. as much,
but they do have a pretty substantial mass transit as far as being able to get around the city,
and that was quite enjoyable.
And the stops are really neat, too.
They're really trying to upgrade them and update them.
Emmanuel, I'd like to ask you a question.
Can you wave at, can people on the train now wave at prisoners in that prison as they go by and vice versa?
Well, yes, theoretically they could, but the train goes at a pretty good clip,
so you'd have to time it really well.
And I know from experience of just standing there at the gas station
and figuring out when somebody you talked to on the phone a few minutes earlier
is going to press their face up against the window, that's a lot of coordination and luck.
So I don't know how many people are actually going to try and do that,
but that would be the only way you could do it now.
Yeah, the gas station would have been where basically that track curves and comes around to a platform.
However, the platform's too far forward to actually see those windows again,
so you would have to stand on the track on the curve, which would be very dangerous,
and you probably wouldn't have a good way to get ahold of someone in between dodging a train.
What I would suggest people do is hang a giant sign on the left-hand side of the train
as it's heading from right to left, and greet the person that wants to see you in the prison,
and they would see it that way. But that, again, involves coordination.
Do the ALA trains have graffiti-proofing technology, or could you paint a train to get this effect?
Well, I didn't say paint a train. I said hang a sign.
No, no, I know what you said. I'm just expanding on your theory, giving people more options.
I think they are paint-compliant. They will accept paint, the trains.
All right. Well, that's an option if you want to join your friend in jail, maybe.
Yeah, it's a little hard for us because they're making announcements.
If you heard yesterday's show off the wall, we had another show from a little earlier in this trip,
and you could hear the constant announcements they're making on the train.
They do this around dinner time because you make reservations to what time you want to be down there,
and they're calling all the different, 645, 7 o'clock, etc.
They're just calling all these different times.
So we're hearing two things at once, so we sound a little confused.
In addition to the usual reasons, that's why.
But one thing I really want to talk about tonight, since we are talking about technology and privacy and all that,
are the developments in the Apple case that have happened in the last week.
And I thought this was really interesting hearing it from various news sources,
that the FBI in its quest to get Apple to write software to break into its iPhone has said,
you know what, we don't need you to do that anymore, and we found somebody who can do it anyway.
I thought that was an amazingly brilliant way to sort of give Apple the middle finger and say,
yeah, you know what, we can get it anyway, and your system is not secure.
And at the time, kind of leave it a mystery so that people would lose confidence in Apple.
Now we hear that it's an Israeli company called Celebrite.
Forgive me if I'm pronouncing that wrong.
And I understand they have quite an interesting history, don't they?
Oh, yeah. Are you asking me, Manuel?
I'm asking anybody who's listening.
Okay. Well, yeah, I've seen products from Celebrite at mobile telephone companies like Verizon and Sprint stores.
Even Radio Shack stores have these boxes from Celebrite.
And you've probably seen them.
If you ever bought a new phone at a cell phone store that is connected to a carrier,
you'll know that they can transfer your contacts list from your old phone to your new phone
by connecting both phones to this box with this octopus arrangement of cables.
And these boxes have been around for more than a decade.
Celebrite is providing all these phones to all these companies.
I thought, wow, this company really has this market locked down for transferring contact lists from one phone to another.
Well, it turns out now it's being widely reported that Celebrite is cooperating with the FBI
to basically hack this iPhone for the FBI to bypass the limit on the number of attempts you can enter on a pin code
to get into your phone's information before it wipes everything.
But it occurred to me, this Israeli company, Celebrite,
I mean, I got my BlackBerry phone a couple of years ago at a Verizon store,
and I had them transfer everything from my old BlackBerry to my new one.
And I didn't really think twice about that data.
I just assumed it was going from my old phone to my new one.
But now that I know this is an Israeli company that's in bed with the FBI,
I would not at all be surprised now if Celebrite, this Israeli company,
is keeping copies of all these contact lists and they know who the subscriber is
because that's evident from the phone itself,
and maybe keeping it for themselves, maybe sharing it with the Mossad and FBI and CIA.
I mean, Israeli intelligence is very good,
and this is a perfect opportunity to harvest contact lists for cell phone subscribers
every time you transfer information from an old phone to a new phone.
So now I'm really paranoid that this is happening.
Yeah, the sky's the limit, so to speak, right, Bernie?
I mean, it's just pretty much right there as a middleman, literally, in these stores when people are trying to upgrade.
Wow. So this could be a really big story.
I think we need to look into this further.
If anybody knows about Celebrite and, you know,
maybe somebody works at a cell phone store who has used those machines,
are they connected to a network in any way where information that is the contact list
that are transferred from your old phone to the new one,
is there any way that data could end up in a third party's hands, primarily Celebrite,
and it's the FBI who they're in bed with now, reportedly?
We'd be interested in hearing about that.
Well, Bernie, I've got a question about this.
Now, you say that Celebrite has been cooperating with the FBI,
but apparently the FBI didn't know about them because initially,
I believe they referred to Apple as having the exclusive technical means,
I think that's an exact quote, to get the information out of an iPhone,
and they didn't even think about these people until, as far as I know,
they came forward and said, oh, yeah, we can do this.
Is it possible the FBI wasn't aware that they had this ability?
Well, I don't know if the FBI was aware that Celebrite had this particular capability.
It wouldn't surprise me if they suspected it,
but I think we've been reporting here on Off the Hook since this story first broke
about the iPhone that the FBI wants to hack into
from one of the San Bernardino shooters' cell phones or their blind employer.
You know, we've long said that we believe the FBI has long had this capability
or could have this capability of getting into this,
but they just wanted Apple to write us a new version of the operating system
to make it really easy for them, make it easier for them.
But, you know, Israeli technology companies,
Israelis are very clever with technology,
and they have a long history of working with American law enforcement
and intelligence agencies, and so this does not really surprise me,
but it astounds me that now I realize, oh, Celebrite,
they have transferred my information from my old phones to my new phones
whenever I buy a new phone at a cell phone store.
So this is really eye-opening, and people should think twice now
before they have their phone book stuff transferred from their old phone
to the new one through some box made by Celebrite
now that we are reading in a lot of news stories that they're in bed with the FBI.
It is very interesting in this particular case
because, I mean, we have the FBI,
we have them using the services of a foreign technology company
that can do this stuff behind the scenes with your phone.
This situation does not scream proper oversight to me.
I mean, let's be clear, there is no interesting data on this phone.
This is all about muscle flexing.
And apparently the FBI thought they were about to lose the court case,
but their legal position here was, in my view, quite weak.
So they want to get out before they lose, which is an entirely reasonable thing.
I don't know what data is on the phone, though.
That's really kind of unbelievable.
Let's assume there is interesting data
because they are going to want to get to a phone that has interesting data at some point.
Oh, yeah.
The only thing is how secure are these things.
Yeah, and to speak to what Emmanuel had said,
we're also very interested in technically what techniques are they using
that are so different from what Apple is saying they would have to do.
It's not clear in the reporting so far if they have anything proprietary
or what specifically they're doing differently
and why the FBI wouldn't be doing that in-house.
Even hinting that a company can do this must be doing all kinds of awful things to Apple stock.
And I think that's a great way for the FBI to get back at them for not cooperating.
Maybe.
I mean, I don't really care about stocks,
but it seems likely that either they're just lying, which is entirely possible.
The FBI is just lying.
This company is just lying.
Someone is just lying.
Who knows?
But just discounting that for now because it's not very interesting.
What seems likely is that they have discovered some bug in Apple's software
that enables them to get into phones they're not supposed to be able to get into
rather than report this bug or use it for the good of humanity.
They are selling access to this bug to the FBI and their other government clients,
and that's not good for anybody.
I think it's important to point out that Steve Wozniak said on national television a week or two ago
that this is a really terrible case for the FBI to pick as a test case
because, as Steve Wozniak said, Verizon, who was the carrier that was this phone
that used by the San Bernardino shooter, was the carrier.
Verizon already provided the FBI with all the SMS text messages that it had received.
And so that would be a, you know, that alone and all the cell phone bills as well,
so all the incoming and outgoing calls and all the SMS text messages,
that's all the information that they would probably need.
The text messages and the phone numbers of calls received and sent,
that's the mother load right there.
Whatever, maybe there might be some pictures on the phone or something,
but like Mike said, I don't think there's a lot else on there.
Bernie, have you used, and no, you haven't, but if you buy a newer model smartphone,
there's all kinds of things they can do other than send and receive text messages over the SMS protocol.
In particular, there's many ways to send text messages in cipher
such that your cell phone carrier can't read them.
And the FBI's claim, which is actually one of the least crazy parts of their claim,
is that it is possible that this shooter used Apple's built-in encryption functionality
to send messages that Verizon could not read.
So there's likely to be some data on this phone that Verizon can't see.
I think for reasons that we've gone into on this show in the past,
it's unlikely that there's any information relevant to their investigation,
but that's not the same thing as no data at all.
Agreed.
I think this is a very interesting move on the FBI's part.
One assumes they're just temporarily withdrawing to regroup.
I'm curious what you think they'll, you know, what's step two?
Or step 20?
From this point on?
I mean, so this case is going to go away, but this issue is not going away.
I'm curious what you think the FBI's move is going to be.
I don't think, well, I think they will make another attempt at this when they have a better test case.
But for now, they're going to get the information from the phone,
probably through Stellabright, this Israeli company.
Reportedly, they're going to be able to get it.
And, you know, and then we probably won't hear much about new information
that was gleaned from the phone because, as you say,
there probably wasn't much of value on it other than what they already got from Verizon.
But I think they are not done with this.
I agree with you.
They're going to make another stab at this.
They've already gotten the support of a lot of politicians who have been saying,
oh, we must prevent the FBI from going dark and not being able to see everybody's communications at will.
So they're definitely going to make another stab at it.
They've been trying this for decades, everything from the Clipper chip and on.
They're going to keep trying this, and next time it may be a better case,
and it'll be harder for the tech companies to resist.
I think another thing that's interesting about this vulnerability here
is it reinforces the point that many people in the security community have been making,
which is that making a secure device is really, really hard.
Apparently, even Apple can't do it.
So the calls to deliberately weaken device security so that governments can get in on demand
and do that in such a way that it doesn't even still further compromise the device security
and other unauthorized actors can't get in,
they're really asking for quite a lot.
I'm worried.
Computers and cell phones, which are a type of computer, are already way too insecure.
Government mandates to make them less secure I don't think are what we want,
and the FBI has inadvertently, I think, given more weight to that argument.
I agree.
Certainly an interesting case.
There was a piece that came down regarding a conference that Edward Snowden had spoken at.
He had spoken at the Free Software Foundation's Libra Planet 2016 conference
on basically this subject regarding free software, cybersecurity, privacy, and so on,
and explicitly warned against the wisdom of trusting privacy to tech giants like Microsoft or like Apple,
particularly because things like this would happen,
and they might be compelled to reduce their levels of protection at the behest of those in power.
So this is definitely a subject that is worth keeping a very close eye on.
This is a story that is still worth keeping a close eye on, and where it goes from here.
I mean it's important to note there are vulnerabilities in free software as well.
Yes, indeed.
They can be seen eventually with some luck.
And you can kind of be somewhat assured that they weren't put in there by government mandate.
That's actually less clear.
There's definitely been the occasional vulnerability in free software that got there under slightly suspicious circumstances.
Most of the time it's just a mistake.
I want to be clear.
A lot of people who work on free software work very hard on it and do their absolute best,
but there have been a few cases where it's not quite so clear that that's what's going on.
Yes, but the end result is the same where the end user,
the average user of these devices and these operating systems and things,
cannot just by default expect themselves to be protected,
expect their privacy to be protected,
expect their security to be secure,
because there's all this going on in the background,
and we have to take additional steps to properly protect ourselves.
It looks like we lost Emmanuel and Kyle.
I think they've possibly gone down a train tunnel somewhere,
and we may never hear from them again.
But assuming we do, we'll get them back.
But until then, it's just us, Bernie.
Hey there.
I hope maybe they'll come out of the tunnel soon and be able to re-engage with us.
There's a lot going on in the world in addition to their train,
so maybe we'll talk about some of that.
Yeah, we can talk about some other things.
What else is going on this week?
Go ahead.
A lot of news stories came out this past week,
but you have a good list of them there, don't you?
Indeed I do.
Speaking of Edward Snowden,
a government error last week revealed that Snowden was the target in the Lavabit case.
This is something that we'd spoken about at length on other episodes of this program.
Speaking of secrets that were known to a lot of people, but go on.
This was pretty much the worst-kept secret on the planet for quite a while,
where the Lavabit case in which Ledar Levison, who was operating Lavabit,
which was a secure e-mail service,
shut down said service rather than grant access to the government
to investigate one of Lavabit's clients.
And a redacted, but badly redacted, document from the government
has revealed that, in fact, they were investigating Edward Snowden himself
and trying to get hold of his information that was on the Lavabit service.
So it's basically everyone in the field knew this already
and had just assumed it to be the case and, of course, was proven correct.
It's very interesting how this got revealed.
Where did it go?
I guess they were redacting a document of some sort
and they failed to cover up the one piece of information in this document
that they wanted to keep a secret, which was the target of their investigation.
There was a sheet in this, let's see,
it's entitled an appeal transmittal sheet,
which reveals the e-mail address as belonging to Edward Snowden.
Apparently the U.S. government redacted with too much confidence.
There's an NSA document that came out many years ago called Redacting with Confidence.
I love that one. Mike loves that one, too.
It was one of my favorite NSA documents.
But they forgot to redact the e-mail address, ed.snowden at lavabit.com.
And what I find interesting about this story is that the FBI has still not listed
the national security letter gag order against LeVar Levinson,
the owner of the now defunct e-mail service Lavabit.
For years he's been unable to say that the FBI had requested information
about communications using the account ed.snowden at lavabit.com.
And he still can't, even though the government has revealed this itself.
However, unintentionally, they still basically have their boot on his throat
and saying that if you utter this, you can go to federal prison
for saying what we have already said by a slip of the tongue.
And I find that amazing.
Well, not amazing. It just says a lot about our government
that they won't lift the gag order against LeVar,
even though they have themselves let the cat out of the bag.
This is de facto public information now.
I can talk about it, you can talk about it, the rest of us can talk about it.
LeVar Levinson is the one fellow on the planet who's not allowed to talk about this.
It's crazy.
Him and some people in the government who I don't feel bad for.
It looks like we've got Emmanuel and Kyle back. Guys, are you there?
We're just going over mountains and inside mountains and things like that.
So it's a miracle that we can still connect at all.
But yeah, we're on this train heading to Seattle
and we're talking about some very interesting things, I think.
Yes, indeed. There's some other things going on this past week.
Quick note on something we've heard a lot from our listeners about.
We have some listeners who have not yet received their premiums
from our past fundraisers, and we are aware of this.
We appreciate you letting us know.
If you have a premium that's outstanding, let us know, oth2600.com,
and let us know your name and what you pledged for, the date and so on,
the information from your pledge.
And we are following up on these.
There are a great many pledges in the storage room here that are being packaged.
Our friend Jim was helping them do some of those today.
And they are being sent out.
They got a bit backlogged, but they are in progress.
So thank you very much for your support.
Thank you for bearing with us, and your stuff should be on its way very soon.
There's a lot of other stuff going on in the world.
There's this weird story that's been going on out of France.
The attackers, the violent attackers a few months ago in France,
their phones or something were taken, and there was no information on these phones.
And so the New York Times has decreed that this was due to the presence of encryption,
which is an interesting but telling, I think, lack of understanding.
But there wasn't any encryption, isn't that right?
I mean, so what encryption does is it's not magic, all right?
It doesn't prevent someone who has the device from knowing that communication took place.
It just prevents an eavesdropper from seeing the content of the communication.
That's what encryption does.
So if you have a phone and there's nothing on it, it's not because the phone is encrypted.
It's because there's nothing on it.
But the New York Times apparently doesn't have anyone on staff who could tell them this.
So they just quite literally made up the idea that this was evidence for encryption.
And to be clear, to give the credit to the French police,
even the French police didn't come up with this nutty theory.
It is straight from the Times.
And it's worrying that the newspaper of record which policymakers read
in order to decide how to set policy could make really fundamental mistakes like this one.
There's a story about this on TechDirt, which quotes the Times.
TechDirt says,
And TechDirt goes on to say,
But that's not how encryption works.
As Mike just said, if they're using encrypted emails, the emails don't disappear.
They're just unreadable.
And there's a further quote from the Times that they present.
One of the terrorists pulled out a laptop, propping it open against the wall,
said the 40-year-old woman.
When the laptop powered on, she saw a line of gibberish across the screen.
Quote, It was bizarre.
He was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code.
There was no image, no internet, she said.
Her description matches the look of certain encryption software,
which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks.
End quote.
All right.
So this woman just spoke a whole bunch of utter nonsense.
But that's fine.
She's not an expert.
She doesn't know what presumably some sort of Linux-y computer or whatever
looks like, she's never seen one before,
and she just went through a traumatic experience, whatever.
What's worrying is that the government and the media
are repeating these claims as evidence for anything at all.
The New York Times, in its quest for all the news that's fit to print,
decided to print this woman not knowing the difference between
somebody looking at lines of text on a screen and encryption software.
The other thing that's interesting about encryption software,
that I guess if you think encryption software is magic, you might not know,
but if you have ever used encryption software, you do know,
is that the whole point of the encryption software is that
it turns the unreadable gibberish into readables,
something or other that you can actually look at,
because you, the end user, want to be able to communicate
in English or French or whatever other language.
And this is funny to us.
We're laughing, but this is actually quite serious
because this is the sort of thing that's being presented to the layperson
as correct information to base such a guess on.
When you're looking at something encrypted,
you're looking at ostensibly the decrypted version of it,
so you can read it.
You're not just reading gibberish and somehow knowing what it means.
This is a case I once personally, I was using my laptop on a train,
and somebody sitting next to me looked at my screen
and looked nervous and moved to another seat
because my screen contained just text and no graphics and no images.
Is that all you have to do to get a seat to yourself on the train?
Well, I was playing Zork, so maybe she was just frightened by the game.
It's a fairly intense game, but this is what's going on.
So, yeah, if you think something on someone's screen is scary,
maybe ask them what they're doing or just continue to shoulder surf,
but maybe don't tell an international news outlet that they're using encryption
because that's something completely different.
This reminds me of the logic during World War II
after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese military.
The fact that we had, I think some Congress people were saying
that because we haven't caught any Japanese spies yet in this country,
that means they must exist and they're especially dangerous and hiding very well.
And use that as a reason why all Japanese people of Japanese descent,
including Japanese Americans, should be locked up in internment camps.
So this kind of logic is really dangerous and has been used before
to commit really egregious acts.
And I fear this kind of really flawed logic is being used again
to try to justify having a backdoor to our communications.
Bernie, you need not fear this logic is being used again.
You can read it for yourself in the newspaper.
Okay, it is happening and it's just scary.
I mean, let's be clear, it's not quite the same, of course,
but yeah, you can read the Times yourself and see what they have to say.
Emmanuel, as a journalist, what do you think of all this?
Gosh, well, I could barely hear most of it.
I think that I know we're talking about the importance of encryption
and how it should be used and how it should be perceived by those who aren't technical.
And I just believe it should be something that's the norm, not the exception,
something that is easy to use, something that requires all kinds of technical knowledge
that most people can't hope to achieve and are thus intimidated into not using it at all.
I think we've failed up to this point to get most people to use it as a common thing.
I think that's the biggest challenge we have ahead of us
because obviously the authorities want to be able to see everything that we write,
everything that we think, and can't let them do that because they've never been able to do that before.
What's suddenly different now, there are so many ways we can be spied on
that were not possible even 10 years ago.
We have less privacy now than we ever have had before,
so we cannot just give this up in the name of security and say,
oh yeah, I've got nothing to hide, here, take a look at all my email.
No, you do not have to do that. You should never have to even think that way.
Yeah, and I'd just like to add that some people, I think,
even if they're not saying I don't have anything to hide,
they know they have maybe some things they'd like to keep private,
but because it's not approachable or easier or it's not default,
they run on the assumption that whatever they do is just not going to be private,
and then it's simply too complicated for them to be possible.
And that's a real shame because you'll have this gap of people
who are wandering around thinking that privacy is just,
it's not something that we can build anymore.
It's just not possible, and I think that's a dangerous precedent,
especially for journalists.
Hey, come join us at the HOPE Conference.
We talk about this and so much more, and if you're knowledgeable about the subject,
you can give a talk on it as well, www.hope.net for all the information.
Absolutely. Just less than four months, it looks like, until the HOPE Conference.
We're certainly cracking down on things behind the scenes,
and there's still time to submit your talks, submit your projects.
All that information is on the website.
There's also still time to get your hotel rooms at the Hotel Pennsylvania at the group rate.
The link to that is now functional despite difficulties in the past,
and that also is on the HOPE website.
I think we have just a little bit of time left.
Yeah, we've got a couple of minutes left.
But this music is playing.
I just want to mention to our listeners who aren't aware,
the 11th HOPE Conference happens this July 22nd, 23rd, and 24th
at the Hotel Pennsylvania right in New York City,
and we're going to have about 100 speakers and all kinds of workshops and projects
and just films and all kinds of amazing stuff for three days
that you just can't learn anywhere else.
And HOPE.net has a lot of information, including links to all the other
previous HOPE Conferences going back to 1994.
It's an incredible trove of fascinating information on all kinds of topics
you probably wouldn't hear about anywhere else.
Absolutely. Send us an email, othat2600.com.
Stay tuned for the personal computer show.
And yes, join us at HOPE, hope.net.
For Off the Hook, this is Rob T. Firefly.
Have a very good night.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
We are the masters of the game, we are the masters of the game
Whatever