Hi, I'm Ken Gale. On Tuesday, June 20th, my guest on Ecologic will be meteorologist
Tom Weissmuller, who will predict this summer's weather and hurricane season, and explain
how El Ninos and La Ninas in the Western Pacific Ocean and storms in the Western Sahara Desert
will affect our weather. That's Tuesday, June 20th at 8 p.m. here on WBAI-New York,
99.5 FM and WBAI.org.
Thank you, Ken. And you are listening to WBAI. The time is just after 8 p.m. on a Wednesday
evening. That means it's time for Off the Hook.
And as soon as I find our theme, there's all kinds of interesting things going on on this
board. Let's give this a try.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Von Diddley-Bohm for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Von Diddley-Bohm!
I do so love our theme. It doesn't feel like the show without it.
Yes, the program is Off the Hook. This is Rob T. Firefly here with you, and I am joined
in the studio by Voltaire. Good evening.
And by Alex.
Hello.
Emmanuel and Kyle are not here. They're not here, so we can get away with anything.
Where they are is an assignment pretty much all over Europe. They're doing all kinds of
exciting things. If you listen to Off the Wall, their other program, you can get the
more regular updates on that. Most recently, they did an interview on Italy's Radio Popolare,
which was quite good. Even if you don't understand Italian, there's some good stuff going on.
They have upcoming stops, which you might like to know about. They're going to be in
London, they're going to be in Edinburgh, Scotland, they're going to be in Reykjavik.
And if you're a listener and you're in any of those places and you'd like to maybe say
hi or see what's what, get in touch with us. OTH at 2600.com. Very exciting things going
on out there in the world.
So, it's just us. The substitute teacher is in charge. There are no rules. You don't
have to have your homework done.
We did all pledge loyalty, though.
Yeah. Well, of course we pledged loyalty. I mean, this wouldn't be a proper radio show
if we didn't take care of that. I mean, that little formality. But yeah, there's a lot
of stuff that's going on, stuff to talk about. Some stories going on. Maybe a story or two
involving this guy. What does he do? He's the president of America. This guy, Trump,
who it turns out is maybe under some kind of investigation.
But leading to that, there have been some interesting updates on things we talked about
last week involving the Russian threats on the U.S. electoral system, the possibility
that this was Russia, the leaks that released this information by someone called Reality
Winner to The Intercept, the fact that The Intercept kind of dropped the ball when it
came to protecting their sources. All kinds of interesting stuff going on.
Well, yeah. I mean, there's a lot there to unpack, isn't there? I mean, it's been quite
an exciting week. And I think right before we came on the air, I received an alert from
CNN that stated that President Trump was, in fact, under investigation for obstruction
of justice by special counsel Robert Mueller. That's quite interesting, but also not really
surprising, because if Mueller did not investigate that, there would be very serious questions
about the legitimacy of what he did investigate. So it's breaking news, but also not really
all that surprising. But nonetheless, good to hear. Good to hear they're doing their
job. You know, on that subject, though, another story that has been touted by various mainstream
media over the last couple of weeks has been the legal team that Robert Mueller has been
assembling. And he really has been assembling, you know, quite fine legal minds from Washington,
D.C., a lot of old hands from Washington, D.C. And what I'm a little bit concerned about
as a lawyer is that, and this could, I guess, come off as a bit ageist, although I don't
really intend it to be, but a lot of these guys don't necessarily seem to have a great
understanding of technology, which is where people like we come in. And I'm afraid that
when we're talking about communications and we're talking about data and metadata and
the flow of information across borders and an investigation into the legitimacy of the
arguably greatest nation's electoral system in 2016 that resulted in this morass that we have
in the White House now, and that was two words, actually. It could have been one, but yeah.
In any event, I feel like they may be missing some technological expertise on that particular
team. I mean, what do you guys think about that?
I certainly agree. We also talked about Comey in the news recently, and as much as people
want to see him as a friend because he's testifying against Trump, I think it's important to
recognize him as instead just an enemy of one's enemy, but not necessarily a friend.
And the perfect example of this is he's, even as recently as yesterday, according to a detector,
he called again for a, quote unquote, compromise in the crypto war 2.0, where he says that,
oh, we have to, quote unquote, nerd harder and find some, quote unquote, compromise where we can
put a backdoor that only the Americans can use in cryptography. And anybody that knows the basics
about technology and information security knows that it's impossible to have a backdoor that only
one party understands. And we saw that where even the NSA wasn't able to keep their stuff
secure. So what chance is there that if we put a backdoor in communication, that only the Americans
will be able to use it? And here we have Comey wanting to basically, he calls it a compromise,
but it's just a way to ban everything that's not fully encrypted.
Yeah, pretty much everything the FBI has done for the past however many administrations that
aggravated the hacker community. It's important to remember that this guy was the boss of them.
Well, that's true. That is true. I mean, I do think, though, when he testified last week,
it came across as very candid. And I think, for the most part, sincere,
in stark contrast to Attorney General Sessions' testimony yesterday. But to get back to this
Russian hacking thing, one thing that's very interesting to me is that we all seem to have,
you know, very short memories these days. And there's been so much happening, it's hard to
place it all in context. But, you know, we learned very recently that the Russian hacking activities,
they weren't necessarily really attempts. These were actually completed actions. And I think 37
states had indicated, perhaps 37 states, something around that number, had indicated that they had
found evidence relating to Russian actors and their systems, whether it was state voting databases,
whether it was election-related software, things of that nature. There's been a huge amount of
information that's come out. And other information that's come out as well indicates that the Obama
administration knew about this as early as the summer of 2016, and was extremely concerned about
it in October of 2016. Now, rewind our memories back to the immediate aftermath of the election.
And when, you know, everyone woke up one day and realized that there was somebody called
President-elect Trump, and we didn't know what to do. So there were a lot of efforts for recounts.
And Jill Stein, excuse me, Jill Stein was one of the main proponents of these recount lawsuits.
And they all pretty much failed. And in large part, because either she was found to not have
standing to contest the election. And that's a point I do want to go back to. So maybe I should
have made it second. But first of all, she was found to not have standing to come into federal
court and demand a recount because she didn't command a significant portion of the vote in
the United States. And secondarily, no recount or no forensic examination could be ordered because
there was no evidence of tampering in the elections. Nobody could produce to a federal court
any evidence that there was any tampering. Yet now we know that evidence of tampering
was in fact in a possession of the administration. And they were in fact really concerned about it.
I'm just going to push back on you because there are revelations that have come out.
There's been no actual, there's no actual evidence of tampering. What we've seen is
penetration into voting rolls and voting systems where basically like finding out how it works.
But I mean, which is pretty common for intelligence agencies. But there's been no
documented case of voter tampering. And I think if that had come out, we would have seen it
leaked by now because just because it's so explosive and that the intelligence community
isn't exactly good friends with Trump and they might want to leak that to undermine him if
that was the case. Well, I totally agree with you there, Voltaire, that, you know,
but I think it all depends on what you define as tampering, right? And, you know, an intrusion into
these state registration databases, I guess arguably could be considered tampering. It might,
if that information was in the possession of Jill Stein and produced to the panel of federal judges
that was deciding this, it may have in fact tipped the scales though, for them to at least
order some kind of forensic examination of these particular systems because what they were faced
with was a chicken and egg type of scenario where in order for them to order some sort of forensic
examination, they needed some form of evidence of tampering or some indicia that some foreign
actor was meddling. And this I think could have been that tipping point. If we had that information
come out into the public sphere in the immediate aftermath of the election, those recount lawsuits
may have been decided differently. And to go back to the other point, and I think this will be
somewhat unpopular on this particular station, but the standing issue is something that always
bothered me about these Jill Stein recount lawsuits as well. And that's because these were
federal lawsuits and under the federal rules of civil procedure, there is a particular rule that
says if you don't have standing, if you're not the real party in interest in a lawsuit,
then you can substitute the real party in interest. And who was the real party in interest?
The real party in interest was Hillary Clinton, but she didn't stand up. She didn't. She could
have come in to federal court and made a motion to intervene in that case as the real party in
interest and said, yes, please recount these votes or order a forensic examination because I think
something has been askew with these particular results. But she didn't do that. And I think that
we are remiss if we don't comment on it in this context as well. And I don't think really anybody
has. So yeah, I think there's a lot to be said with respect to the Russian hacking revelations
lately and with respect to the intercept, as you mentioned, there's a lot of controversy there too
because they have pushed back on the notion that they did not properly protect sources and methods
when they released the particular memorandum allegedly provided by Reality Winner, I believe
is the name. Is that right, Rob? Yeah, Reality Lee Winner, I think is the name of the person
who's been taken into custody. And we did have an email from a listener last week,
someone called Julio who wrote, you guys haven't even looked to the intercept and you're just
parroting the government dealt narrative. This is when we were criticizing the intercept for
kind of dropping the ball and protecting their source. And Julio asks, why are we criticizing
the intercept if we haven't even asked them what the heck happened? You should at least mention
that what you guys said is the government narrative. That's actually absolutely critical
to that discussion. Well, there was really nothing available beyond the intercept posted the
following statement on June 6th, which was the day after they published their story
involving the leaks. Their statement reads, on June 5th, the intercept published a story about
a top secret NSA document that was provided us completely anonymously. Shortly after the article
was posted, the justice department announced the arrest of Reality Lee Winner, a 25-year-old
government contractor in Augusta, Georgia, so on and so on. While the FBI's allegations against
Winner have been made public through the release of an affidavit and search warrant, which were
unsealed at the government's request, it is important to keep in mind that these documents
contain unproven assertions and speculation designed to serve the government's agenda and,
as such, warrant skepticism. Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The
same is true of the FBI's claims about how it came to arrest Winner. And they go on to say
they'll make no further comment on the running investigation. But a blog called Errata Security
that day posted, with very illustrative images, the invisible dots, basically, the micro dots
that were in the leaked documents which the intercept posted, which can be traced right
back to not only the individual printer they were printed from, but when it was printed.
And if you work in a government facility and you know where the printer is that was used,
you know when it was used, you can pretty much follow that lead to who was using the printer
at the time. And so it's really kind of, I think, easy to see. Voltaire?
Yeah, it's kind of disappointing to see the intercept not own up to their mistakes.
I mean, I still maintain that reality would have been found out even if they hadn't,
or at least the micro dots printed evidence. But it's still upsetting that they, like,
were being defensive about it. Yeah, I completely agree. And in the
interest of full disclosure, I have written for the intercept in the past. My name's on
their website. You can look it up. But, you know, I think all the facts need to come out.
And we have to also remember that, you know, the mission of journalistic organizations is very,
very similar to the mission of intelligence agencies in a lot of respects. They're there
to collect information, and they need to protect their sources and their methods.
And in this particular scenario, the release of that information that contained the micro dots
appears to have been an oversight, regardless of whether or not it actually led to the
capture of Reality Winner or led to critical evidence that indicated that Reality Winner
was, in fact, the person who had printed this document. And so, you know, they're performing
some form of internal investigation at the time, at this time, and they claim to try to be as
transparent as possible with the results of whatever this internal investigation is going to
be. And a lot of criticism has been heaped upon the, one of the security researchers and analysts
over at the intercept, I think, Micah Lee, about their inability to protect sources in this
particular story. But apparently, what the intercept has come out and said is that Micah Lee
and others, upon whom lots of criticism have been heaped, didn't actually have any interaction with
the story whatsoever. But then that, frankly, raises another question, which is, why didn't they?
If these people were there to help protect sources and methods, then this is a really important story
whose sources really deserve protection. And before anybody divulges anything over to a federal agency,
they should have input as to what should be divulged. If a photo, I mean, this could have
possibly been very easily manipulated, and the content could have been given to the FBI or to
DOJ or whoever requested it, without the provision of the microdots. You could redact the document,
you could crop it, you could take a picture of it and then reprint it. There's lots of different
things that you could do that could have protected this information from being disclosed.
I think the intercept finds itself in a sticky situation right now. I think, for the most part,
they're a pretty fantastic organization. They do a lot of great reporting, but that doesn't
mean that they're beyond reproach and beyond criticism. Quite so. And talking of these microdots,
just to explain them for the listeners, they are dots that are printed on the document that are
not on the document you're printing. The printer adds them. They are just barely invisible to the
human eye because they're small and done in yellow ink. But when you scan an image, when you
use image editing software to further analyze it, you can find these patterns of dots, which are
basically a dot matrix sort of code, which would work similar to maybe a barcode or things like
that. erratasec.com is a site with a really interesting blog post, which not only explains
this, but also goes into ways that not only this source could have been protected, but that you can
protect yourself if you're doing something that involves printing off copies of things, things
like printing it on a black and white printer, which doesn't have the yellow ink, or printing it
and then making a copy of it, a photocopy or something. Just all these different things to
consider when you're engaging in stuff like this. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And again,
I maintain the position. I think that the protection of sources and methods is so incredibly
important to journalists. And these organizations are really under fire that, you know, this raises
larger issues for other journalistic organizations as well, and that it is so incredibly important
for them to be able to protect sources and methods. You know, one of the news organizations
that I've done a good amount of work with in the past is BRIC, here in Brooklyn. As a matter of
fact, in fact, we actually talked a lot about the Russian hacking, or the potential for Russian
hacking, when I debated the Executive Director of the New York City Board of Elections prior to the
election. And then they had me on back at BRIC, because some of the things I said, unfortunately,
had rang true, and now even truer. But for a small organization like BRIC, that's here in Brooklyn,
you know, this is something that, you know, is extremely important to them. And unfortunately,
I think a lot of larger organizations are really overlooking these types of protections, and how
easy it is to unmask the identity of somebody. Just for those unfamiliar, BRIC is the public
access television station here in Brooklyn that's spelled B-R-I-C, I believe. That is absolutely
correct. Excellent. Moving on to other stuff going on in the world. This is a story that I wanted to
just spend a short minute on, because it's fun, and we need some more of those. This past Saturday,
the world had to say goodbye, sadly, to Adam West, who was the actor who played Batman in the 1960s.
And he played the mayor of Quahog, and family guy, and all sorts of other things.
Basically a great comic talent, in my opinion. But he was also a bit of a comedian in his own life.
There's a post on Boing Boing, written by Rusty Blazenhoff, which goes into how Adam West hid a
little prank in his local telephone book. Remember telephone books? Rusty writes,
a few years back I was in Sun Valley, Idaho for a conference. I learned Adam West lived in the
area, and I wondered if he was listed in the phone book. So I pulled it out of the nightstand in my
hotel room and checked. Flipping to the W page, I spotted his name. His listing prompted, this is
under West Adam, his listing prompted, see Wayne Bruce, millionaire. Which, you know, that's pretty
great just on its own. But then when Rusty flipped to Wayne Bruce, millionaire, under there it said,
please consult Crime Fighters in the yellow pages. So moving on to the yellow pages,
looking up Crime Fighters, under the category of Crime Fighters, it says, see Batman, white pages.
And if you're following along, this is pretty great. Under, you go back to the white pages,
and you look up Batman, and it says, see West Adam. So well played, Mr. West, well played.
Interesting, interesting. I mean, I do remember phone books, you know, they're still often
distributed to me. And it's amazing when you walk around Manhattan after phone books are
distributed. Actually, I haven't seen them recently, so maybe they aren't distributed
regularly anymore. They still are. In multiple buildings in which I've lived, they basically,
they drop a huge pile of phone books in the front lobby of a building, and it's up to you whether
to take one or whether to wait for them to just start absorbing ambient moisture and turn into
mush. But yeah, there's really, I think, a dwindling market. But they do keep delivering
phone books everywhere in the country, because the companies that make the phone books have
fought for this right for it to continue happening. They call it a free speech issue,
because, of course, they make their money by charging people for ads, those sorts of people
who still pay to put ads in phone books. Voltaire? I was just going to say that. I think my hunch is
the same reason that it's just the advertising revenue that they're getting. And I bet,
just like AOL makes a lot of its money from people that have auto-renewing old AOL dial-up
accounts, the same thing with these advertising. Small businesses don't even realize they're being
charged monthly for these advertisements. Absolutely. And people don't know that they
have other internet service which they use, and they don't actually need the AOL subscription
anymore. It's an interesting sort of conundrum. I used to make papier-mâché out of the phone book
pages, because there was a ready supply of very cheap and squishy paper. Did you ever
make a papier-mâché blue box out of that? Unfortunately not. I couldn't get the right
frequency paper crystal, but I'll work on that. So they're a thing that might keep happening where
you are. It might just make for a nice little break in your day. You pick up your phone book
that's been delivered, and you have to take the walk over to the recycling bin to drop it again,
and maybe along the way you see some sights or something. I don't know.
I have a friend that I grew up with who used a phone book in an interesting way. It was somewhat
psychological, actually. It was a sort of psychological balancing tool,
in that no matter what went wrong in his life, he felt like he could steady himself
by looking up one particular name in the phone book, and if that name was still in the phone
book, it somehow made him feel okay. This person's name, and it was out on Long Island,
was Barry Barracuda. If that name was still in the white pages, no matter what was going
on in his life, it's sort of like saying no matter what happens, you can always break a
plate with a hammer. Barry Barracuda was always still in the white pages, and I wonder if he still
is. Mr. Barracuda, if you're listening, get in touch with us, oth2600.com. There's the old
gag in the Steve Martin film, The Jerk. He found his name in the phone book and realized that he
had become somebody because his name was in print. Of course, this used to mean something
back in the days when people still used phone numbers, let alone needed to look them up.
Nowadays, you just flip to whoever it is in your phone book, and you're done with it.
But before I chase all the Rapscallion kids off my lawn due to being terribly, terribly old,
we can talk about something else that's going on with the UK. Our friends in the UK
have a whole lot going on this week. One of the many things is Theresa May, the Prime Minister,
whose party, the Conservative campaign, lost pretty big in the most recent election that they had.
She has decided to go on with her plan, which we spoke about a little on the previous weeks
on this program, to launch wide-ranging internet regulation and security changes.
Basically, she wants to have a tighter grip on the internet. A story from The Independent in
the UK says that in the speech in which she committed to keep governing despite calls to
stand down, the Prime Minister made reference to extending powers for the security services,
those powers which include regulation of the internet and forcing internet companies to
let spies read everyone's private communications, were a key part of the Conservative campaign,
which failed to score a majority in the House of Commons. So her party has been told no,
but she's still banging on with this. There was a statement that came out of Number 10 Downing
Street, which is their seat of government, in which the UK and France announced a joint campaign
to, as they put it, tackle online radicalization. Ahead of the Prime Minister's visit to Paris
today, this comes from Number 10, where she'll hold talks on counter-terrorism with French
President Emmanuel Macron. The UK and France have announced a new joint campaign to ensure that the
internet cannot be used as a safe space for terrorists and criminals. This posted the 13th
yesterday. Crucially, plans include exploring the possibility of creating a new legal liability
for tech companies if they fail to remove content. That's a bit onerous. This could, for example,
include penalties such as fines for companies that fail to take action. The two countries will
lead joint work with the tech companies on this vital agenda, including working with them to
develop tools to identify and remove harmful material automatically. So the UK and France
want to be able to just take things off the internet, because we all know how easy it is to
take things off the internet. This quotes Theresa May herself as saying, the counter-terrorism
cooperation between British and French intelligence agencies is already strong, but President Macron
and I agree that more should be done to tackle the terrorist threat online. In the UK, we're
already working with social media companies to halt the spread of extremist material and
poisonous propaganda that is warping young minds. And today, I can announce that the UK and France
will work together to encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility
to step up their efforts to remove harmful content from their networks, including exploring the
possibility of creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable
content. We are united in our total condemnation of terrorism and our commitment to stamp out this
evil. I think this is problematic for two aspects. The obvious aspect is the censorship one,
and who's to say what counts as extremist content. And the other less obvious one is the issue of
monopolization, where by making sites liable for a user-submitted content, it's going to restrict
the sites. They'll only be able to create new sites that are able to afford to have all these
censors to pay them, and that will make less independent sites that create independent content.
I mean, I completely agree with you. And I think another problem with it, well, there's so many
problems with this. I mean, it's very difficult to figure out where to start. But I think I'll
just build on Voltaire's comments. It's the most logical thing to do. But it really creates a
problem for companies in this way, because when you're, let's say, if you're not Google or
Facebook and you're a smaller company, you're faced with daunting regulatory regimes. And we help
companies deal with regulation all across the globe. And part of what you need to do
when you're allocating your resources is figure out, you know, with which rules am I going to comply?
And if you don't have the resources to have different sets of operations in every single
jurisdiction, you tend to go with the most restrictive type of regulatory regime that
you can think of. In the United States, you know, when it came to privacy laws, that was for a very
long time Massachusetts. So everybody took Massachusetts's privacy laws as the gold
standard with which they had to comply, and any other state's laws, they were on the books, but
they weren't really as strict as Massachusetts. This is going to happen internationally,
especially when it comes to the creation of content and user-submitted content. So if we
are going to regulate the lowest common denominator, which happens to be, well, or rather will be,
the United Kingdom, that becomes a real problem for everybody else. And then secondarily,
what Theresa May is implicitly stating here, aside from the freedom of expression issue,
which Voltaire, I think, very rightly pointed out, is that these expressions of terrorist propaganda
are somehow effective, and somehow perhaps valid, or able to radicalize people rather easily.
So what she's saying there is that the citizens of the UK are susceptible to this essentially
because they're weak-minded, and we can't trust them. They're going to be convinced by this kind
of thing, or rather they shouldn't be offended by it. And if they are offended by it, then there's
another problem that we have with this particular set of proposed regulations, which is the very
point of free speech is to be confronted with different viewpoints, not necessarily just a
viewpoint of the United Kingdom or the United States of America that oppose terrorism. We
should be presented with opposing viewpoints. In fact, if you look at the history of case law in
the United States that is protective of the First Amendment, it's all about the clash of ideas.
And if we believe that our ideas are valid, and stronger, and should be believed over this
offensive terrorist propaganda, then we shouldn't really have to worry about it, unless we believe,
as I said before, that we're so weak-minded and unable to think for ourselves that this is going
to have some kind of deleterious effect across the entire nation. And I think that's frankly
ridiculous. Yeah, very true. There is a group, if you're familiar with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation and the important work they do here in the United States, over in the UK they have
a group called the Open Rights Group, which is sort of along the same lines. It's an organization of
technically educated individuals who are trying to fight bad regulations and that sort of thing.
And they posted a response on their site, openrightsgroup.org, to the post from number 10.
And among other things, they say that the UK and France would work with tech companies to develop
tools to identify and remove harmful material automatically, quoting the original post.
May and Macron's proposal is to identify and remove new extremist content. It is unclear whose rules,
as you said, they want internet companies to enforce. They go on to say context is king when
it comes to judging content. Will these automated systems really be able to tell the difference
between posts that criticize terrorism while using video of terrorists and posts promoting
terrorism that use the same video? Questions abound. What incentives will the companies have
to get it right? Will there be any safeguards? If so, how transparent will those safeguards be?
Will the companies be fined for censoring legal content as well as failing to censor illegal
content? And what about the global picture? Internet companies like Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube have a global reach. Will they be expected to create a system that can be used by
any national government, even those with poor human rights records? I mean, certainly there
are things that we all do on the internet that in certain countries in the world would be illegal,
or at least very dodgy, or at least get you looked at. And so will they be expected to create?
Well, they go on to say it's unclear whether May and Macron have thought through whether they are
happy for internet platforms to become an arm of every state they operate in.
Now, when we think about the internet, which operates in pretty much every state that
has access, I mean, this is pretty wide ranging. Voltaire?
I think what's interesting is they've taken something out of China's playbook where
on sites like Sina Weibo and WeChat, they don't actually, the censorship isn't actually done by
the Chinese government. The Chinese government has just mandates the, or basically deputizes
these companies to regulate it and doesn't give them clear guidelines of what's illegal
and what's not. And that causes them to overregulate it beyond what the Chinese government
says. And then people criticize the government for censorship. They say, oh, it's a company
decision. And that's the same playbook that May and Macron seem to be doing here, which
outsourcing to the tech companies to say, oh, you decide what's too extremist. And then in that case,
they're going to regulate way more than the government would.
Alex, you operated in the UK for a bit in the legal sphere. I mean,
what, based on your experiences and such, what do you feel about the chances of something like this?
I think they're pretty good. You know, think back to the Investigatory Powers Act that actually,
you know, became law in the United Kingdom. And, you know, if that became law, I mean,
it was also known as the Snoopers Charter. Then I think these particular proposed regulations
do have a good chance. And, you know, the one thing that the British are very good at doing
is using the English language. And I mean, it is called English after all. It's theirs.
And the way in which Theresa May phrases her arguments, they become very, very difficult
to argue with because, you know, who's really opposed to stamping out terrorist propaganda
on the Internet? Who's opposed to limiting that? Who's opposed to requiring companies take that
kind of nonsense down? I mean, we can all agree we don't want to see it. We don't want it there.
And we don't want it affecting us or our children. And they're playing really to their base. They're
taking, I think, a playbook not only just out of China, but in the United States where politics
are so divisive and people are so polarized that there really isn't there or rather there really
aren't many people who are undecided. And the way to win your way politically is to activate your
base. And they're playing to that base. They're playing to the same base that voted for Brexit,
that votes for UKIP. And they're playing to the base that's just going to take these words at
face value and not unpack them in the way that we did and not unpack them in the way that the
Open Rights Group did. So if you think back to the UKIP Act now, not just a bill, the Investigatory
Powers Act, I mean, there were some really scary things that that particular act now requires
companies to do. I mean, for instance, communication service providers, they now have to retain
a listing of all of the websites that people visit in the UK. If you're a communication service
provider, you don't have to retain the actual pages or anything within a particular website,
but a listing of websites that people visit are going to be available to law enforcement,
to intelligence agencies upon application of a warrant to a judge in the UK. That's a really
scary thing to think about. Your entire browsing history isn't going to be available, but a
listing of every single website and at which date and time you visited it can be tracked and
retained for at least a year in the UK. That's some pretty scary stuff. You know, that's a
major regulation and a major intrusion when it comes to privacy. And not to mention,
if these things are going to be regulated in such a manner, there's also going to be a chilling
effect on the freedom of association. What we have enshrined here under the First Amendment,
but in the unwritten British Constitution, I think it's equally applicable.
And if these ideas are to be eradicated or just regulated in any way, especially when it comes to
fines and possible criminal prosecution, nobody is going to want to interact with anybody who's
on the fringes of society because you may become guilty of association. And this sort of bleeds
into another somewhat unrelated story about the United States now requesting, as part of visa
applications from certain countries, information about social media profiles, which would have the
same sort of chilling effect on our freedom of association. But by definition, I would imagine
that the people that are applying for these particular visas are not protected by the
Constitution because they are outside the United States and they're not necessarily
on US soil when they're making these particular applications. So their freedom of association
is frankly, you know, not our government's problem, but that doesn't mean that we should
completely ignore it. Absolutely. So we've got all these regulations going on. And yeah, as you said,
it's noted in the independence story regarding this. Theresa May refused, outright refused to
rule out Chinese style internet censorship as part of her plan, suggesting that she might look to
shut down or ban companies that didn't comply with her proposals. So yeah, this is all very
fascinating. And as we've mentioned, the UK and England are seen as sort of a leader in the fields
of surveillance and all this sort of thing. So other countries will do whatever they end up
doing. And so it's worth keeping an eye on this, even if you're not in the UK, even if you're in
the United States, because whatever they do, we won't be far behind. You know, and this, I guess
it does bear mentioning that this does seem to even extend to the regulation of pornography
as well. I mean, part of this, this Tory manifesto, the conservative party's manifesto
indicated that they wanted to sort of regulate how Google would direct people to pornographic
sites. I mean, but this again, raises another issue of how effective is this really going to be?
Because companies like Google are not going to kowtow to the lowest common denominator. It would
be destructive of their entire business model to do so. So if you're in the UK and you want to avoid
these types of restrictions, what's the easiest thing you can do is to get a VPN or utilize a VPN
that pops you out outside the United Kingdom where these restrictions don't take place.
I mean, it seems like it's a fairly ineffective and obtrusive way of trying to regulate the
internet that can be very easily defeated. Absolutely. And it's the sort of thing that
we're already kind of slipping on the slope towards because of the recent threats against
net neutrality and what's going on there. There's still the site on battleforthenet.com
that's being backed by all sorts of organizations who want to fight to keep net neutrality going in
this country. There's a day of action coming up and there are all sorts of organizations that have
signed on to this, not only EFF, but like Mozilla, Netflix, Reddit, just reading a couple here,
Demand Progress, AVG, the antivirus company, Boing Boing, of course, Fark.com, all sorts of
other sites that you use every day. Wikia, which is, of course, a wiki site. Pornhub, yes.
Kickstarter, all sorts of things going on. And really, it's kind of mind-blowing
how much of a knife edge this is all sort of leaning on. There's all kinds of
reading to go on and stuff. So battleforthenet.com will keep you updated on this by the organizations
Fight for the Future, Demand Progress. You can find this all over the place. And yes, we will be
keeping an eye on what happens on this day of action, which is coming up on July, what is it, the 25th?
It doesn't seem to be. July 12th. July 12th. Thank you, Voltaire. So yeah, this is
something we will be keeping a close eye on and that we will remember the date of.
What kinds of other stuff? We're going to take phone calls in just a little bit,
but before we do that, we have a couple of listener emails regarding things we've
talked about. Bob in Minneapolis writes to us about the Russia stuff that we were talking about last
week. Bob writes, first of all, Russia is awesome, enough said. Yes, it has problems and so does every
other country. I suggest for those who have not done so, visit Russia. Moscow is wonderful. Go
and see what it's like for yourself. Yes, I spent a lot of time there in another life. Excellent.
As for privacy, it is not that we have something to hide, it is that we have information we want to
control and keep private, i.e. sexual preference, drug and drinking problems, pregnancy, other
health conditions, and certain websites we may look at late at night, none of which may be illegal,
but something we want to keep private or at least control who knows what. And I think we can all
agree that we should be granted the agency to decide what details of our lives are generally
available. So it's something that we definitely need to, I think, address. Another listener,
Barry, writes about the Fios and Copper action that we were discussing last week, where a caller
had had their landline phone taken away and replaced with Fios. Barry writes, they did that
to a woman in her 90s on the Upper West Side last week. She thought her phone was, quote,
broken and still thinks that. She naively went to the Verizon store nearby and they came and
disconnected her Copper and gave her Fios. She doesn't know what any of this means and doesn't
even have any digital devices or online devices or Wi-Fi or anything. She's stubborn and distracted,
doesn't know how to care if it's Copper or not, too stubborn to even get a computer.
I don't want this to happen to me. How can I prevent it? My Copper landline phone is
indispensable and the only telephone I have. So this is a heavy question. And I don't know,
what do you guys think? Is this something that people should be able to or are able to hold on
to if they want to sort of resist the upgrades? I absolutely think that they should be allowed
to do this. I mean, POTS service, plain old telephone service, has been critical to our
infrastructure for a really, really long time. It's the only thing that can get us ready
communications in the event of some kind of disaster, whether it's natural or unnatural.
But it's a really big, big problem here. And Verizon just doesn't really seem to care very
much about Copper anymore whatsoever. Everything is a push towards Fios. This is like the
subscription model of businesses that is proliferating these days. They want people
to sign up for Fios. They want to be able to justify to, let's say, if there is going to be
a merger or some particular or some form of acquisition of even a component of Verizon,
that they have X number of subscribers that pay this amount per month. And this is part of this
particular component. And Copper just doesn't fit in anywhere anymore. And it's very, very sad. It
will eventually be entirely phased out. But there are some really adamant crusaders out there who
are fighting for this, fighting to keep Copper. I'm not sure if I should really name some names
right now, but I know there are a lot of people filing lawsuits. I know there are people doing
really good things when it comes to the protection of Copper. And maybe it's something we can talk
about again next week or maybe even have some of these people on the line with us.
But I think it's a really important problem. And there doesn't seem to be an easy fix to it.
And it is, unfortunately, the elderly who are really suffering here.
Another reason why Verizon is so eager to switch people from Copper to Fios is because,
not because Fios is necessarily technically better, but because it's far less regulated.
So I think if we are in a situation where we had a stronger SEC that was willing to
regulate internet utilities like the phone lines with the strong regulation,
we wouldn't be in this situation.
Quite so. Okay. I'd like to take some phone calls. Our call in number
is 347-335-0818. Call us here in the studio. So call in and we'll pick you up if we can.
I also wanted to mention for New Jerseyites, there is a DEF CON 201 meetup this Friday
at Maker Bar in Hoboken. For more info on that, you can go to DEF CON 201.org or DEF CON 201NJ
on Twitter. And talking of Twitter, how's that looking? Are folks talking to you at
Hacker Radio Show and pinging us?
I was just encouraging our listeners to, in addition to calling in, you can tweet us
at Hacker Radio Show. Somebody noticed that the EFF guy that we mentioned and that was mentioned,
Rob Graham, he wrote a security post. It's actually not being uploaded anymore,
but he still has a list of printers.
Quite so. Okay. Doesn't look like anything's happening on the phone switchboard. 1347-335-0818.
If you're ringing, we can't hear it. So hang up and try again.
In the meantime, while we're waiting for a call here to come in, or perhaps somebody to get their
copper line working again in the Upper West Side before a call comes in. Actually, it looks like
we have a call, but I was going to say, I would love Voltaire to provide me some kind of
explanation as to what the hell has been happening in Qatar over the last couple of days. But,
you know, do we want to take that call? Did we lose the call?
No, we have the call and we'll get back to that. But for now, good evening caller,
you're on off the hook.
Yeah, hello, can you hear me?
Yes, indeed. What's on your mind?
Hello?
Yeah, hello?
Hi there, you are on the air.
Yes. Last week, I caught the tail end of your show and I was just wondering,
what happened to your old music? Why did you change your intro and outro music?
Our outro music, thank you for asking. It changes every episode. We use something
different every night. Our intro is the same when we can get it working. So yeah,
we play something different every night and we like to switch things up that way.
But thank you for asking.
Okay, that's it. Thank you.
Excellent. So you can get in touch with us at 347-335-0818. We still only have the one phone
line. So it might ring busy or it might ring out because somebody else is on. But we can only pick
up one call at a time. So if you'd like to be that one call, give us a ring or send us a note
at hackerradioshow on Twitter. Looks like we've got another caller coming in. Good evening,
you're on the air.
Hey, let me just lower my radio, please.
Please, how are you doing?
Not bad. Thank you.
I'm in Brooklyn. And over here, I don't know if I haven't, I don't think I've seen it in
Manhattan or elsewhere. We have a new fleet of experimental MTA buses. I don't know if you've
seen them. They're deep, deep blue with, you know, different decals. And the thing is,
is that these buses have Wi-Fi technology, Wi-Fi in the bus, excuse me, and they have
charging, little charging stations on the backs of the seat in front of you.
So I have like two questions for you. The first question is, if you plug your phone
into the charging station, how do you not know whether you've just given consent? I mean,
maybe some phone information. I'm not into technology. I'm just kind of worrying out loud
that maybe when you connect, you're kind of, you're kind of agreeing in exchange for their
electricity to charge your phone. Maybe they could read some of your phone's data. I don't
know if that can happen. And then the second question is, most of us have by now, we have
smartphones with, you know, unlimited 4G service, at least I do, and it's pretty cheap
in terms of cost. So why outfit the buses? Isn't Wi-Fi really almost a thing of the past now?
Why put Wi-Fi on the buses? I mean, the expense and the upkeep and everything,
when everybody pretty much has unlimited 4G, which is probably faster than Wi-Fi.
So what do you think?
That's an interesting couple of questions. Walter?
Unfortunately, with the 4G, that's actually not becoming a thing of the past. Because the FCC
doesn't regulate the telecom companies and force them to compete, the plans that they
offer is quote-unquote unlimited. Well, A, their unlimited plans are extremely expensive, and
they only started offering them recently. And B, they come with usage caps, if you read the fine
print. So anything that's data-heavy, people will want to use under Wi-Fi. And a lot of people,
like tourists or low-income people, don't have access to that. And Wi-Fi is a lot more
accommodating to them. Quite so. And also, regarding the power sockets,
it's interesting. A lot of the newer sort of generations of smartphones, when you plug it
into a computer, it will pop up a thing on your window, would you like to allow a data connection?
And you can deny that and then just use the electricity. But of course, you don't know
what's going on at the operating system level if there's still data exchange going on. You can get
what's entertainingly known as a USB condom. And what this does is it's an extension to your USB
plug, which cuts off the data transmission, because there are four wires inside the USB cord,
and two of them are for data transmission, two of them are just for electricity. And what this
will do is block the connections of the data lines while still leaving the power lines open,
and let you just use it as if you were charging off of an AC. Yes, Voltaire.
I know New York gives out New York City branded condoms, so maybe they should expand to New York
City branded USB condoms. Yes, indeed.
Yeah, that's quite true. I think I'm definitely in favor of that. Also, to go back to our caller's
question, what's the point of Wi-Fi? Another point of Wi-Fi here is, think about what the
bus companies, or I'm sorry, the MTA is doing, is they are generating their own data at that
particular point. Once you connect to their Wi-Fi network, they are going to have data about where
you go, what you do on the bus, what browsing habits of people are in traffic, what browsing
habits of people are who are on the bus for a short period of time. And if they want to begin
popping up ads or selling space for advertisement, that's how they do it. So they're generating their
own data set here based off of the commuters' activities while they're stuck on the bus,
which we inevitably always are because, at least in my neighborhood, it is generally much faster
than taking the bus to just walk. Absolutely, and this is something that the MTA already does with
the Wi-Fi they put in the subway system. Most of the subway now is outfitted for Wi-Fi, and when
you sign into it, you are also being shown ads. You are also being directed towards various things
that they want you to see. And so, yeah, it's, I think, reasonable to expect more of the same.
Thank you for that call. It looks like we've got another one here. Let's see. That does not look
like we've got another one there. So if you would like to get in on this action, you've got a few
minutes left. 347-335-0818 or at Hacker Radio Show on Twitter. Let's see how this one is. Good
evening. You're on off the hook. Hey, good evening, guys. Steve calling from New Jersey. I called you
last week. Hello, Steve. Yeah, good evening, guys. Much nicer tonight than last night. It's like 20
degrees cooler with a nice breeze tonight. It's like a like a September night. What's on your
mind? I called you last week. My phone got shut off a week ago, Tuesday. And when I called Verizon,
it said because I didn't switch to Fios. So it's still shut off. And people say now when they call,
it says a different message. It says, instead of being temporarily disconnected, it says
temporarily disconnected due to upgrade something. Wow. So you're the one who called us about this
last week. And I talked to you last week. Yes. So yeah, we talked about it a little bit. And
yeah, if this is very interesting, because if they if they have a recording now, that's also
touting how this is an upgrade, then this is definitely. So the advice that we've given you,
can you remind me of that? Well, you said maybe give the BPU, the Board of Public Utilities,
a call and report it. Absolutely. That's been done a lot in Jersey because of older people
in the farming community, because, you know, they've been giving us poor service. So actually,
they just want a lawsuit, a couple counties like Cumberland County, Salem, Gloucester County,
because they were giving people such poor service when they had the Fios to offer because they want
you to upgrade. But there's nothing ever wrong with the copper lines, you know? Of course. So
this is that. I just wanted to give you an update. Excellent. So please continue to keep us updated.
If you could call the number, if you want me to give it to you off the air,
and you could hear the recording yourself. You know, I would love to hear that. Why don't
you email us at OTH? I don't have any of that. Okay. Okay. I can give it to you off the air if
you want. I don't think we can. We can hang around for that. But do continue to call us up.
And I'll call you again next week and let you know what's going on. Okay. And also,
if you know someone with email who would who you could get to email us with that info.
Oh, yeah, I can have any of my friends. Yeah, sure. That would be very cool. Our email address
is widely available. It's OTH at 2600.com. And with that, I think I'll need to wrap things up
because we're just about out of time. This has been a very interesting week, and I'm sure it's
going to continue to be interesting. So for Emmanuel and Kyle out on their adventures,
for Voltaire and Alex and for me and for you and for all of us here at WBAI,
have a great week. Send us email OTH at 2600.com. And keep an eye on what's going on out there.
For Off The Hook, this is Rob T. Firefly. Have a good night.