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And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York. The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off The Hook.
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.
Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
And very good evening to everybody.
This program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
Joined tonight by Alex.
Good evening and happy new year.
Spoiler alert. I was going to announce that later.
Oh, well, you know.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening, and this is 2020.
Okay, great. I have nothing left to talk about now.
Kyle, how are you doing?
Hey.
And you've had a rough night last night.
No, no, no.
In the back there is Voltaire.
Hi.
And Gila.
Hello.
And they'll be joining us as I move through the studio audience to get to the front of the studio.
Just a word of warning.
Our headphones aren't working for the, well, mine are, but nobody else's.
So that's going to make things a little bit awkward later when we take phone calls because that's how we hear the calls.
But we'll get through it because that's what we do.
We adapt here at WBAI.
We're constantly adapting.
And yes, it's a new year.
Happy new year, everybody.
January 1st, 2020.
How about that?
The idea that it's 2020, I mean, I remember being just freaked out by this last night when I think I'm in a similar boat to Kyle over there in that we were probably both over-served last night.
Yeah, it wasn't my fault.
Yeah, exactly.
How was it not your fault?
You kept asking for more.
I sent a message to Alex.
I blamed him.
And then he was, I'm assuming, blaming me.
I have some alcoholic amnesia as to what my response was to that message this morning.
You too?
Yes, exactly.
I remember something to do with the stout or something.
But to go back to the original point, it's 2020.
I mean, this feels like a date out of a science fiction novel.
It really does.
And you know what?
I learned something on the other radio station.
I learned this yesterday.
You know that Ramone song, I Want to Be Sedated, where the line begins, 2020, 24 hours to go, I want to be sedated?
It actually means 2020, 24 hours to go.
So it only works on January 30th, 2019.
I had no idea.
No, that's not what it means at all.
But that's one way to listen to it.
And it's kind of cool.
And again, it only works that one day.
And we heard somebody play it on that one day.
Actually, no, they played it the day after.
But they were talking about it the day before.
You know, you got me today.
You're usually full of this useless knowledge.
I confused myself.
But, okay, so what we're going to do tonight, we're going to have a little bit of a theme going.
We're going to invite our listeners to be a part of this as well.
We're going to look back on 2019.
And hopefully each of us will have something that we remember from 2019.
And then we're going to look ahead and hope for something in 2020.
So we're required here in the studio to do both.
Look back on 2019.
Talk about something significant that happened in the world of technology.
And look ahead into 2020 and say, yeah, this would be nice if we were able to do this or if this were accomplished, etc., etc.
Callers, when you call in later, hopefully you only have to do one.
You can do one or the other just in the interest of time.
And obviously you've had less time to prepare for this.
So, Alex, would you like to be the first to do either one?
Sure, absolutely.
You saw me with my hand up?
Yeah, I did.
Okay, very good, yeah.
Well, I mean, 2019 was, I think, a very big year in a lot of respects.
What sticks out to my mind is actually something that started at the tail end of 2018, which was something we talked about quite a bit on the radio, which was the case in the battle for the Strand Bookstore.
Okay.
With Nancy Bass Wyden.
We had her here, I believe, twice, actually.
And, in fact, they had donated some premiums.
I think we may even still have a few of those left.
But this is something that started and really kicked off in 2019.
In February, we had our second public hearing.
And then in June, after a protracted battle over freedom of information law requests, we had a massive amount of data dumped on us less than 24 hours before the City Landmarks Preservation Commission decided to, against our will, without our consent, landmark the Strand.
And we're still fighting this battle.
We're still duking it out with respect to documents from the city councilwoman, Carlina Rivera.
And this is going to kick off again in 2020.
We are still preparing the ground to launch a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the landmarking of the Strand without its consent on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.
Which would lead me to one of my wishes for 2020, which would be that the Penn Central case, which established landmarking in New York.
Okay.
Hold on.
I got to step in.
You can't use the same thing for both your wish ahead and the most significant thing that happened in 2019.
They have to be different things.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I'll shift it up then.
I should have said that.
I'm sorry.
Because that's what we do here, apparently.
We adapt, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
One of my wishes for 2020 is that we end once and for all this nonsense about the creation of back doors for encryption-related technologies.
Okay.
This is something that Attorney General Barr and the Department of Justice has been hammering on about and banging on about for it seems like eons now.
And they're really insistent that private industry needs to come up with some kind of technological solution that would allow a lawful intercept of an end-to-end encrypted communication without compromising the endpoint, namely the device.
And they keep threatening that if private industry does not come up with its own solution, they will have to regulate this area.
And they will force this regulation down the throat of the technology companies.
And yet, on the other hand, anybody who knows anything about the creation of back doors, and I think we saw a physical manifestation of this in the news over the last 24 to 48 hours, is that it's just a bad idea.
Any kind of back door is always going to be misused.
It's going to be identified and misused not by hackers, right, by criminals.
Foreign intelligence services, anybody who has access to those types of keys or that type of technology that could create some form of lawful intercept will abuse it in one way or another or there will be function creep.
And I think we saw this over the last 24 hours or so with some news articles about some criminals here in New York that somehow got their hands on the United States Postal Service keys for mailboxes, the master keys.
And they've been running around the city and they're on CCTV.
That's still a thing, huh?
It's still a thing.
Wow.
It is, yeah.
That is a physical analog of the digital problem that I really hope is going to go away.
And I've got one more, if you don't mind.
Okay.
But you think that will happen or you're hoping that will happen in 2020?
I hope so.
I mean, I can't – you know, look, I'm optimistic but cautiously optimistic about it because we have been saying the same thing.
We mean the security community, the hacker community, information security specialists have been basically saying the same thing, the same argument over and over and over again.
It just doesn't really seem to sink in.
On the government side, I think they're hoping that their arguments will sink into our heads.
But we seem to be at loggerheads right now.
I'm hoping, though, that this will be abandoned and that the technology community itself, not just the information security community but the technology companies themselves will have to band together and come – you know, and really do something like unionize against this, this kind of nonsense.
If we all stick together and lobby against this kind of ridiculous regulation, I think it would be a great step forward for our privacy, our right to free expression, freedom of association and – you know, which are all fundamental human rights recognized under the constitution, the European Declaration of Human Rights as something that affects the whole world.
So yes, I'm optimistic about it but I won't be surprised if I'm claiming the same wish in 2021.
And you had something else?
Yes.
One other thing.
I'm thinking about this over the last several months and this was something I wrote about for CNN as well, which is that the United States will be judged now and in the future as to how it treats its whistleblowers.
And right now we see whistleblowers being threatened with prosecution, whistleblowers being threatened for fraud by the president of the United States when everything that were in the reports that were given to the inspector general have come to fruition.
All of the facts are now known.
So I think we need to see some policy changes there.
I think that this – if we have these additional protections, even if it's just minor policy changes that can create these protections, that will go a long way to stamping out fraud, waste and abuse.
Abuses of power by our elected officials and non-elected officials, appointed officials as well, and I think would do a tremendous amount towards increasing governmental transparency.
So all that through whistleblowing.
All right.
Well, I sense some optimism there.
Yeah, a little bit.
Let's hold on to that desperately.
Rob, how about you?
Anything to remember from 2019?
One thing I remember and I'm particularly interested in happened in 2019, exactly one year ago from today.
That was when it became public domain day for the first time in over 20 years.
That's right.
Because of the weirdness – and I spoke about this on this program in our first episode of 2019, and I'll mention it again – for the first time in 20 years, over 20 years, on January 1st, 2019, things fell into the public domain in the United States again.
They hadn't since 1998.
But it was from, what, 1923 or something?
Yes.
Works from 1923 entered the public domain.
I got the year right.
Wow.
Yes.
Which means today is public domain day again, and works from 1924 have entered the public domain.
1924 now!
Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there.
You know, I am happy, but this is pathetic.
Really?
This is what we have to do?
We have to wait almost 100 years before we have public domain access to things?
These are the breadcrumbs we're getting because of the machinations of very powerful companies who are interested in owning things.
So, to those of you in, what is it, 2116?
Yeah.
Welcome to our stuff in 2020.
I guess that's how long they have to wait.
That's about, you know, all our heirs will have to stop making money off of it, I guess.
What is the fear, exactly, with people having access to these works long after the creators are gone, long after they've profited, probably, you know, they've done many other things?
When you create something, you're an artist, you want people to be able to have fun with it and share it and build upon it.
I mean, every work of art is built upon another work of art.
Absolutely.
Art is constantly built upon what came before it.
I mean, some of us artists, like myself, I put out a lot of stuff under Creative Commons licenses, which means people are allowed to do, you know, are allowed to reuse my work despite the crappy laws that are in place.
It's a little in-run around it.
But, you know, if you want to reuse stuff now, we all now own, in the United States, we own Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator, a couple of Harold Lloyd films, Girl Shy, Hot Water.
There's still silent films.
Yeah, there's still silent films.
There's an old film of Dante's Inferno, which should be nice and cheerful.
Lots of books.
E.M. Forster's Passage to India.
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.
A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young.
Agatha Christie's The Man in the Brown Suit.
Who doesn't love Agatha Christie?
When does Winnie the Pooh come up?
Winnie the Pooh is a very interesting animal, no pun intended, because Disney has its dirty hands in that.
Oh, for God's sake.
I was listening to a podcast recently where Kenny Loggins was the guest, and he did a song about the house on Pooh Corner.
And he almost wasn't able to put it out, but because he happened to be dating at the time someone whose father was the CEO of Disney or something, he was able to get the right strings pulled so he could release this song.
But otherwise, they would have squashed it.
And here's a point of trivia.
This is the very first time we have ever mentioned Kenny Loggins on this radio show.
And it might be the last.
It might be the last.
Kenny Loggins.
It wasn't the last.
For those keeping track.
But talking of music, if you want to record Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, now you're allowed to do that without paying anybody.
Lazy by Irving Berlin.
If you have the energy to do that, you can cover that.
I thought you meant Lazy by Deep Purple.
I was getting excited.
Okay.
There's lots of cool stuff.
What's your hope for 2020?
My hope for 2020 is something a little different.
Social networking has taken up such an amazingly huge chunk of all of our lives.
Whether you're involved or not, it affects you now in a big way.
We've seen it sway elections for better or for worse.
And the companies that are behind most of the social networking that happens are basically 800-pound gorillas.
Your Facebooks and your Twitters and all these massive companies that maintain all sorts of control over your data, make all kinds of money off of your data.
And they don't share it with you.
That's not what they're all about.
And I would really like to see, for 2020, the people who are into social networking, myself included, rediscover what it was like to maybe have social networking as sort of smaller things, sort of federated things, decentralized things, things that aren't about making one company very rich.
Instead, things that the users themselves have the actual control over.
So, I would like to see further adoption of things like Mastodon, an open source Twitter alternative.
Really, really make some more headway in the world.
I'm having a lot of fun over there now.
We're at Hacker Radio Show on mastodon.social.
If you're a Mastodon user, you can find us there.
And I would like to see more of that and less Twitter, less Facebook, less Instagram.
Just go back to things that basically you control and that don't control you.
You know, I discovered today that there's some 10-year-old kid whose parents run his Twitter account.
And that Twitter account is verified.
And I'm trying to figure out how in the world are you verifying an account that's not run by the person you're saying it's verified to.
And there's another one, too.
Someone posted this.
Thoughts of a dog.
It's literally thoughts of a dog.
And that's verified.
I can't get verified.
I'm real, Twitter.
I'm out here.
I've applied and everything.
Years ago, they said they were processing it.
Then they changed their rules.
And they never got back to me.
But thoughts of a dog?
Really?
I mean, it's just so sad.
It's so sad.
And 10-year-olds that aren't even on Twitter get verified.
It's just, it doesn't matter to me that much.
But it's just kind of, it's annoying when someone else dictates the rules as to what and who is relevant.
And when Twitter says, this person is real, this person doesn't really count, it does affect, like, your interactions.
Because a lot of people say, I'm only going to pay attention to people with that little blue check next to their name.
And it kind of drives the conversation.
And in a weird way, they are dictating what is important and what is not.
And certainly, celebrities are so important.
Every time some celebrity stubs their toe on something, it becomes a trending topic.
And what I would like, this is not my official wish, but I just thought of it now.
What I would like is some kind of an anonymized Twitter-like service where people say things, but you don't know who said it.
All right?
You basically, you rate it based on if it's interesting.
And then you find out later, oh, by the way, somebody over here said that.
That was, you know, somebody down the block.
That was a celebrity who said something incredibly stupid that nobody cared about.
You know?
That way, you're basing it on what is said rather than who said it.
And I just think there was way too much attention on all platforms.
Broadcast and social media, everything.
On who the person is, who they know, what they wear.
And that's utter nonsense.
But that's just a thought that I had.
I mean, I couldn't agree more with that.
And, you know, again, I think within the last 24, 48 hours, there's been some news reports about marketing companies and brands in particular rethinking the influencer-type advertisements that they've been making over the last several years.
I don't like influencers.
I don't know if I've ever met an influencer, but I wouldn't like them if I did.
I'm pretty sure of that.
They're horrendous.
But apparently, there just isn't a lot of return on investment from this form of advertising.
But another point I think that is important to make, because Rob's wish for 2020, I think the undercurrent of that was about, you know, taking back control over our data.
You know?
And we being the ones that own it and control it.
And as it turns out, today is the effective date of what's known as the CCPA, or the California Consumer Protection Act, which, you know, caused quite a stir in 2019.
And this is a new state law.
It's similar in some ways, but very dissimilar in other ways to GDPR and the EU.
And the CCPA allows you today to go to those social media companies.
If you are a California resident, you can go and you can submit a CCPA request for all of your data together with disclosure of where your data has gone.
And that just started today, right?
Today.
That's pretty.
And I understand that a lot of entities throughout the United States will be following that California law, even though it doesn't apply to them, just to make it simple for everybody.
Well, absolutely.
I mean, you generally engineer your compliance programs to the, you know, the most onerous requirements of any one particular state.
And right now it's California.
So even if you're not a California resident, a lot of companies are not necessarily going to be checking to see, you know, that you are, in fact, a California resident.
But, you know, as of today, there should be portals and, you know, social media companies, even banking institutions.
So many companies are affected by this that allow you to make the CCPA requests.
And weirdly enough, the other way in which it was mandated by law that you have to be allowed to make a request is through an 800 number.
So all of a sudden, 800 numbers have become really relevant again.
And I'm wondering if some companies got some interesting ones because they've sort of, you know, fallen off the radar for a long time.
So all these CCPA 1-800 numbers have come into effect today.
But that—
When you say 1-800, it calls to be 877, 86—
Exactly, a toll-free number.
A toll-free.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
I was sort of using 1-800 in the same way that you—
8XX is probably the best way to say it.
Oh, I'll keep that in mind.
Except for 8-1-1.
That's not going to work.
No, that wouldn't work, wouldn't it?
No.
No.
All good points.
Actually, 8XX isn't going to work either.
It has to be a repeating—how do you say that in letter number speak, whatever you call that?
Repeating?
Yeah, it's got to be repeating 877, 866, 855.
8XX is any integer.
Oh, so 1 plus a double digit, I guess, generally, right?
Yeah, double digit.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true because otherwise it would be confused with an area code.
But there must be a way of writing that out, like in algebra, that somebody could come up with.
Perhaps.
All right.
And this is another wish, I guess, for 2020, is that the companies buy this law, which
is really rushed through the legislature, and it had good intentions.
What they have to tell you is not the specific companies to whom they have given or shared
or sold your data, but the categories of the companies to whom they've given, shared, or
sold your data.
So if they sold it to a shady data broker, they could just say, you know, we shared it
with an advertiser's affiliate or something like that.
You don't necessarily know.
So you don't yet have the knowledge to take back control of that data because the idea
behind this, I think, was to give you the clues as to where your data has gone, and
then you could make additional requests all the way down the line for your data.
But you don't have that yet.
So that's another wish for mine in 2020.
I think you've had enough wishes, Alex.
I'm hoping a genie pops up somewhere.
Voltaire out there in the stands, make your way up to the stage here and see if you have
something that you can share with us.
How about your significant event or events of 2019?
For me, one of the most exciting developments was tech workers, employees coming together
as a class against their employers to demand political changes.
At Google?
Yeah, probably most prominently at Google.
We saw that with the Project Maven, which was their deal with the Defense Department
to basically build AI for drones, which would be terrible.
And they forced their employer to cancel the entire contract, which is huge for them.
We also saw walkouts in lots of tech companies against sexual harassment, and that's been
really encouraging as well.
But it hasn't been without conflict.
We've seen recently Google actually fired five employees, and one of them, their justification
was that they were informing other employees of their right to organize.
Yeah, I mean, wasn't that not so much for an injustice of what Google was doing, but
for just simply trying to organize a union, which seems to be a real injustice to fire
somebody for trying to make things better?
Exactly.
Lots of tech companies have actually been fighting against their unions.
Even here locally in Brooklyn, we have Kickstarter, which is like fighting the owner of the Kickstarter
trying to stop their employees from unionizing, which is really disheartening.
Wow.
But not at all unexpected.
There's nothing special about tech companies.
They run their businesses the same way that other big businesses run, so I'm not surprised
by that.
Any hopes for 2020?
I guess a hope, or something I want people to be aware of, I guess it's a hope for Chelsea
Mann to be released again.
We had her at the last ...
Circle of Hope.
Circle of Hope.
Yeah, in 2018.
Yes, and nine months ago, she was sent back to prison for totally unrelated to what she
had done in the past.
This was for a reason to testify at a grand jury, which is basically just a way to entrap
people.
So she spent the last nine months in prison, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has
twice called the conditions she'd been detained under tantamount to torture.
And when you consider the people who are out walking around freely, who should be confined
and kept away from other people, to have Chelsea locked away just for standing up for her principles,
it's shameful to even think about that.
So that's definitely a good wish for 2020.
Let's hope that one comes true.
Anything else?
Freechelsea.com.
He's in a position to have her released, and follow her on Twitter.
She's xychelsea.
So that's F-R-E-E-C-H-E-L-S-E-A.com.
Okay.
All right, great.
Good choices there.
Now, Aguila, you're going to come down, let's pass each other on the way up to the stage.
It's a very big studio.
Welcome.
I wish there was space for everybody here in the front.
We're going to expand, I hope.
So what do you have for memories of 2019?
I will be that personal sappy sucker and say this room we're sitting in was kind of a big deal in 2019.
Okay, not bad.
I will say the fact that this show is going out live at all was kind of a big thing that happened in 2019.
Recognizing that they're kind of somewhat painful memories to dredge up.
We're referring to the coup that took place in October, and we're still dealing with that.
In fact, we've lost some of our space because of that.
Because people came in from the Pacifica organization, who have since been let go,
but told our landlord that we wouldn't be paying rent and they should look for other tenants.
There are some consequences to that, and we're going to have to work with less space as a result of those actions.
But there was so much good.
You see the people that are working hard.
You see this new studio, and you realize if you look at the dire financial outlook,
if you look at it in one way, you can make it seem really bad.
If you look at it another way, you realize, hey, we're doing all right.
Democracy Now is one of the best programs out there.
That came from WBAI.
That is an example of the kind of thing that can be produced at a radio station
and then eventually become independent and make its own way.
There's no reason why there can't be 10 more programs like that in the years ahead.
That's what creativity, that's what radio can do, and we need to think along those lines.
We have listeners supporting us, and those numbers are good numbers.
We are out of horrendous deals, again, at the behest of Pacifica.
We had no control over this Empire State Building.
We were paying something like $60,000 a month, and we had studios on Wall Street.
Why was BAI on Wall Street?
It was nice, but for God's sake, we're BAI.
So that was huge.
That was a huge expense, and Pacifica signed the lease, and we had to pay the bill.
And guess what?
We started losing money as a result of that.
So both of those things are no longer the case, and the ship is righting itself.
What we need is a way to keep going forward and to realize, to believe in ourselves.
So yes, I think you raise a very good point there.
And we have a weather window.
That's right.
We can look outside.
There's an outside now, and it's quiet.
I mean, it's all just very overwhelming.
I did have a question that your wish brought up for me.
I haven't given my wish yet.
Well, I know, but you're talking about anonymity on social networks.
Oh, okay, yes.
Because I think there have been attempts at that,
and I think everything that has become that kind of anonymized social network
has turned into utter disaster and anarchy.
Well, that's because people are idiots, and they say stupid things.
Right.
Because I was thinking about Yik Yak.
Particularly, I was thinking about Yik Yak.
I don't know what that is.
Yeah.
But with a name like that, I wouldn't want to find out.
It was bad.
It was like an anonymized social network, and it turned into this hotbed of high school bullying,
and it was terrible.
Yeah, but why are those the comments people remember?
People should ignore stupid comments and only upvote the ones that say something.
I guess I'm hoping people would be like that.
See, I think that's the thing, but it also does kind of dovetail very nicely with my wish,
which is a little bit of sanity and a little bit of belief and critical thinking.
And I was talking to Rob about this earlier.
I saw on my social networks today no fewer than 10 different times something warning
everyone to, when you sign and date things this year, to use a four-digit year to make
sure that people don't try to lock you in to backdate your signature.
So don't write 1-1-20.
Write 1-1-2020, because a bad actor could go in, and if you just write 1-1-20, could
go in and say, oh, 1-1-2017.
You signed this three years ago.
Oh, what a good idea.
Oh, thank you.
Yes, this will be very handy.
So a lot of what I've talked about has been this sort of group think hysteria that's been
a big thing.
You know, juice jacking.
I'm going to keep pushing on juice jacking.
And all of these crises that get manufactured in social media, and especially as we're heading
toward the election, my wish is critical thinking for the masses.
That is what I would like.
That's a good wish.
Thank you.
All right, Kyle, what do you got?
Well, it's tough to follow so many good ones there.
Is that hot water bottle to be refilled?
Oh, no, I'm fine.
You good?
I'm fine, thanks.
Can you turn that loud humming off?
That's just air.
I can't do anything about that.
All right, and the strobing of the light.
You know what?
Forget it.
I'll be fine.
Brooklyn, if you could keep it down a little bit just for Kyle, that would be nice.
It's radio.
I can close my eyes.
I have sort of an amalgamation of some of the thoughts here.
I think we're all kind of in similar frames of mind.
I think the biggest thing that I've, just in thinking about this briefly, has been disruption,
taking on a new meaning, having a new light, especially when it's used in technology, and
also, and sort of related to that, in other words, disruption not being king always.
It has consequences sometimes, and what I mean by that is how has this promise of the
gig economy, how has it failed?
Because what we realized, I think, in 2019 is it really doesn't work for everyone.
Being an Amazon driver, or whether you're talking about Uber, how many suicides were
there from taxi drivers who are not a part of that economy or could not maintain their
business, even if they were also Uber driving?
I mean, there's a lot of aspects to that, but as examples, those came to mind when I
was thinking about this, that just disruption is not always the best thing.
And it, I think, really came to a crescendo with the CEO or founder of Facebook being
at a hearing, basically, in front of authorities, him testifying, and, you know, whatever he
said, forget that.
I mean, just the fact that he had the answer to his actions, and all of that moving fast
and breaking things, I think it affected people, and it did disrupt, and it's not always good.
And especially, more often than not, it's not always, it's mostly not good for everyone.
It might be good for a couple people, but it is the same hierarchical structure, excuse
me, structure, and the same kind of power play that is age old.
And so those were two things.
You're seeing these companies as the disruptors, or the people who are challenging them as
the disruptors?
Oh, that's a good question.
I wasn't really even thinking about that.
I was just thinking about the term being, having been popular in popular culture, having
been in the lexicon of, especially in tech companies, as a good thing.
And I think reflecting not only this year, but also the decade, or just at all in the
history of tech, as we know it, computers and telephones, I think it's taken on much
different meaning for a lot of people.
And it's not quite as cool as we may have overblown it to be.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So I'm seeing that word as less of a good thing.
And I think, you know, there's been entire shows.
I mean, Silicon Valley is one of them we enjoy, and it pokes fun, but a lot of this got really
serious.
I think it took on a very serious tone this year.
And to that end, also, it's this sort of intersection of social media and government, thus the testifying,
but also in relation to whistleblowing.
I think Christopher Wiley's book, if you haven't read it, is worth reading.
His words about being gung-ho, and by this, I mean the Cambridge Analytica leaks and the
scandal.
And he also testified in a closed session this year.
But his book came out this year.
And I think people reading that, really smart people of all political, you know, spectrum
across it, should really take it in.
Because, again, that's serious.
And it's the story of a young person who's excited and wants to do something.
And just as the saying was, you know, moving fast, breaking stuff, doing all this stuff.
And honestly, the first couple chapters, I hate him.
Anyway, I won't get into the book, but I'm just saying that you can have an epiphany.
You can look back and say, you know, I was wrong.
And you can try to atone for it, or at least you can try to tell the truth about what happened.
And I think he did the best he could in the face of a lot.
I think you touched on something really thematic here.
Young people challenging systems, breaking things.
We know so many people like that.
And if anything is the theme of changing technology, it's that.
Exactly.
And we don't want to discourage that.
But I think that it needs to be a thoughtful, a more thoughtful thing.
And especially, you know, do you want to explain to your colleagues in a meeting?
Or do you want to, you know, blog about something that is concerning?
Or do you want to do that sooner?
Or do you want to go and explain it to senators?
I think you have to make mistakes.
And I think, you know, Facebook is a big mistake.
And I think that needs to be explained now.
What were you thinking?
It's always going to come down to somebody saying, what were you thinking?
And realizing that, okay, yeah, I shouldn't have done that.
But now I know not to do that again.
And other people know not to do that again.
I think if we take that away from all these developments, you know,
whether it's breaking into a computer on the stock exchange,
or starting a social networking craze that turns out to doom our civilization,
it's a learning process.
We can't take it so seriously.
What do you have for your wish for 2020?
Yeah, I won't expound further.
That's a great, great summation.
It's kind of exactly what I was thinking.
So for this year, my wishes are for net neutrality to get another look.
I am so sad at what's going on.
It's really sad.
All these things you guys have mentioned, y'all have mentioned, is so crucial.
And something we're experiencing.
And I just think that monetizing access to information beyond being a neutral carrier
has, again, coming back to consequences, profound consequences.
And it's also the antithesis of what I think a lot of the early pioneers of the internet
and hackers have always felt is that this is an incredible tool that will liberate,
that will empower.
And I think what we've seen a lot more of is actually the monetization
being something that disempowers.
So I'm hoping that my wish is net neutrality gets cool and people really speak to it
and have fresh examples.
The other thing is Patriot Act.
It's gotta go.
And I know it's the USA Freedom Act now or whatever it is, but it has been 20 years
or 19 years since the attacks here in New York.
And more people have died in that war.
So many more.
Young people have died in that war.
Basically from a reflexive response, an impassioned, I would say blind rage
from the most powerful country in the world.
And it has been wrapped up in all kinds of liberty and freedom
and all these sort of buzzwords, but it is so much more than that.
If you actually talk to someone who's served, and I know young people that aren't here
because they couldn't handle the trauma coming back.
And I just, again, it's like these are not games.
And we're treating it like that.
And we're raising kids to think they are, whether it's guns or fighting.
And honor and stuff can come in a lot of forms.
And it doesn't always mean murdering the enemy.
And I just think that the Eddie Gallagher situation with the Seals,
there was a really good piece on the Weekly that the Times did.
That was incredible.
I saw that too, the Weekly, the New York Times Weekly show that I think is on FX and Hulu.
Yeah.
If you see anything, you should watch the episode about that.
Yeah, the most recent one is it stuck with me all week so far.
I mean, I haven't been able to shake it.
And I am just, it's incredibly sad because I know that he's probably not the only service member
that is walking around amongst us.
It's teaching your kids that may have done stuff like that.
And for his colleagues to draw the line in a group that elite, that is so laudable.
And I'm so sad that it was not actually met with justice.
And I could say a lot of things I'm not allowed to say about it.
But anyway, I just think that that's all stuff that is aside from the fact that we're constantly surveilled
and it's legal and we're pumping all of our data into either government or private data centers
as a result and really not, and then raising people to think that this is normal and it's not.
All right.
So that's a good wish.
Hopefully we become less numb to these things, less accepting of them.
All right.
We'll be opening up to our listeners for your assessment of either something memorable from 2019
that touches the world of technology or your wishes for 2020 and beyond.
What I've been thinking of as far as significant events for 2019, it's more of a theme.
It's kind of a depressing theme, actually, because I keep coming back to this.
I keep coming back to the conclusion that no matter what happens, the powers that be always seem to prevail.
They always seem to win despite the number of times they lose.
And you don't have to look far to see so many examples of this.
You really don't have to look at one person who currently occupies the White House to see how many times somebody can be found to have done something incredibly wrong, irresponsible,
but keeps coming out ahead and keeps getting more and more power.
And it's almost like watching a car crash in slow motion.
This has to stop at some point.
This has to start getting better.
And I just feel like 2019 was the year where no matter what, it just never got better.
We had the Mueller report come out, and that was supposed to change things.
And it really didn't have any effect on anything.
You had a whistleblower come out and come out with all kinds of evidence that has since been proven to have actually happened.
So you don't need for the whistleblower to even be identified.
But we're sidetracked by these shouting heads on television saying the whistleblower must be identified and prosecuted, etc., etc.
Things that are horrendous even suggest.
We had an impeachment.
We had a president impeached and hasn't lost anything.
Maybe he's even going to benefit from this somehow.
We have people like Netanyahu and Giuliani who no matter what they do, they remain in power.
They remain with all these privileges and all this control.
And meanwhile, as Voltaire said, you have Chelsea Manning in prison.
You have Julian Assange in prison.
You have the same people always winding up being victimized.
And no matter what you think about Julian Assange's behavior during the election, helping out Trump in various ways, it's not right what's happening to him now.
It certainly is not right for someone like Chelsea Manning to be in prison simply for refusing to testify against Julian Assange.
And we have countless other examples of people like this who are prosecuted while other people are walking around who have been found to have committed crimes and are able to talk their way out of it or buy their way out of it.
And it's just it's kind of depressing to see this happen over and over and over again where the people with the power just hold on to it.
Doesn't seem to matter what they do.
And the people who are challenging, they are the ones that pay the price.
They lose vital programs that they need to survive.
They lose their houses.
They lose their health care.
And they're expected to deal with it.
And it just never seems to turn around and result in a victory, even though we're so long overdue for a victory.
I'm hoping, and this is not my wish for 2020, but I'm hoping that next year or this year, actually, now it's this year, we get past all of that and that we, for God's sake, that we stop focusing our laser pointers on ourselves, on the people we agree with.
You know, stop coming up.
This is something that the left has a real problem with coming up with.
Oh, my God, the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans.
Look how hypocritical they are.
Yeah.
You know, everybody who has been paying attention to politics for five minutes can tell you there's hypocrisy in every camp.
And it's it's it's the height of idiocy to focus all of your attention on the people that you agree with more rather than the people that are really damaging things.
If Democrats and Republicans were 100 percent equal on every single political point, but the only difference was the Supreme Court.
That would be reason enough to support one side over the other.
But there are so many other differences.
Yeah, it's not perfect, but we have to we have to really pull out all stops to to change the direction.
Alex, I know you have something to say.
I do have my my wish for 2020 coming up, and that might seem depressing.
It's just kind of it's it's annoying and it needs to be addressed.
And I think, you know, the more we focus on that and stop falling into traps, the more of a chance we have for actually getting something done.
Assange has come up a couple of times in the last bits of dialogue we've had.
And I think with Kyle and yourself, Emmanuel, and one thing I just want to note with respect to 2020 is in about two months, actually.
February 24th is when the extradition hearing for Julian Assange in London is set to go forward, at which Assange's legal team has indicated they may call as many as 21 witnesses.
And that will determine whether or not he is extradited to the United States to face a plethora of charges.
And Sweden is no longer an issue.
Sweden is no longer an issue.
That's absolutely correct.
This is something to watch coming down the pipeline very shortly in 2020.
It's going to be an exciting year.
And we haven't even mentioned a presidential election or impeachment.
Whoops.
Yeah.
We just did.
212-209-2877 is our phone number if you want to say what your wishes for 2020 are or your memories of 2019.
Here's here's my wish for 2020.
And this is on a slightly different topic.
We have seen the fragmentation of communication over the last few years where it's become almost impossible to communicate with people.
All right.
You send an email to somebody and they say, oh, I don't read email anymore.
You have to contact me on Facebook.
But if you don't do Facebook, then how do you get in touch with them?
Or maybe they only read tweets or or maybe you have to use Signal to get their SMS attention.
And it's just it's gotten ridiculous.
I hope 2020 is the year we figure out how to communicate with each other again.
It doesn't have to all be the same thing.
It doesn't all have to be encrypted.
It should be.
But if it's not, OK, let's figure out a way to get past that so we can at least talk to each other.
I can't tell you the number of people I'm trying to get a hold of right now that aren't seeing what I'm saying.
And it's because they stopped reading email.
Email has become a wasteland.
It's like, you know, the use net of personal communications now.
Nobody wants that.
Email was great.
It was it was an amazing way to keep in touch with almost anybody in the world.
Why would you would you forsake that for some company like Google or Facebook or somebody who's tracking your every movement and simply use them and expect other people to use them as well if they want to talk to you?
No, it has to be something.
The platform has to be completely independent of any company, and it should be universal so that we can talk to people all over the world.
That was the promise.
That was the magic of the Internet.
So let's bring that back and 2020.
It won't be soon enough.
So that's my wish.
OK, let's take a phone call.
And again, we won't be able to hear.
We won't be able to hear unless I turn my microphone off so that you guys in the studio can hear.
So I'm going to go to the first phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Yeah, thanks.
I totally agree with you that the government does not want us to be verbally talking to each other or physically talking to each other face to face because they cannot intercept that kind of conversation.
So just remember, if you want to go back to the old school ways, you are speaking to the man.
Yeah.
So I have my let's see, technologically related memories that were awesome.
One of them was really awesome.
The WBI one was the one that sucked.
Negative one.
And that's technologically related, I guess, because you guys are on that station and you're a technical show.
And it did suck.
It did suck.
But we did get the station back.
Yes.
But the coup was scary as heck and it was really horrible.
And we had to fight like hell to get it back.
Well, I'm glad you found this again.
And I hope it doesn't happen in the future.
So I met the child.
My most memorable in a positive way experience for me this year was I met I ran into a child who was on his way to get interviewed at WBI in Battery Park.
As I saw Greta Thunberg on September 20th for the big global climate strike.
His name is Zane Cowie and he guarded.
There's a YouTube video that's 40 seconds long of him guarding Greta from cameras.
Wow.
Yeah.
He's a total hero and he's nine years old and he's been holding down the fort at City Hall during the Fridays for Future demonstration.
And I had no idea.
Wait, hold on.
Greta had a nine year old guarding her from cameras.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
She was down in D.C. at a press conference and she was just sitting on the side with some other kids.
And these camera people could not get enough.
And, you know, one picture wasn't enough for them.
And that's a technologically related thing as well.
Like, you know, relax people, you know, with that whole stuff.
Wow.
Those those are great.
Those are great.
Thank you so much for sharing those.
Thanks.
I have a couple of wishes to go right ahead.
Okay.
So one is that I hope that technologically related women will take over the automobile industry in 2020 all over the world.
Yeah.
Especially because after I saw the World Economic Forum report on closing the gender pay gap,
I looked up some stuff and found that Finland is no, Iceland is the closest to closing that gap.
And they have these they have seven laws that could if we enacted them in the United States,
they're like seven laws that are like feminist related laws, you know, for equal rights.
And if we enacted them in the United States, that would help, you know,
start the ball rolling on women taking over the automobile industry here.
Yeah.
And then let's see.
I think one more.
Oh, yes.
All the Pete Seeger people, all the very white.
I have to totally just say it and generalize them into that category.
Clearwater activist people for every time that you mentioned Pete's 100th anniversary.
Can you 10 times as many times before August 18th, 2020 say that women have not been had the right to vote for 100 years yet?
So until August 18th, 2020, which is when we got the right to vote when the 19th Amendment was passed,
we can just I'm hoping that everybody will milk the heck out of that fact.
And Pete Seeger, do you see these bumper stickers saying what would Pete do instead of what would Jesus do?
I think Pete would have definitely said to them, you know,
you need to relax on my 100th year birthday and anniversary.
I thought those stickers were Pete Buttigieg, but I guess not.
Well, Happy New Year, guys.
Happy New Year.
Thank you so much for that call.
And we're going to move on to another one.
And good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Hi.
As far as remembering 2019, I'd say the legacy of Randy Seuss.
More people don't know who he is.
He was the co-inventor of the first online bulletin board.
And according to Jason Scott, everything we do in terms of communicating with other people online can be traced back to Randy and his bulletin board.
The only difference is that now it's all a little slicker.
And that quote is in the New York Times obituary for Randy Seuss.
Wow.
I wonder what he would be wishing for the future as well.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But I have one wish for 2020, actually.
Okay.
Go ahead.
That is that Sam Esmail is the keynote speaker at Hope.
Will that happen?
Well, we've tried to get him a few times.
He's always been so busy.
Now that Mr. Robot is over, maybe we'd certainly have him if he is interested in doing that.
And if anybody out there has shortcuts to get to him, by all means, extend the invitation.
If you have not seen Mr. Robot, the four-season series that aired on USA Network, I envy you because you have it to look forward to now.
It is a really, really good portrayal of one aspect of the hacker world and New York City and subways and all that kind of thing.
It struck close to my heart in so many ways.
It was just masterfully shot and acted.
It's an incredible experience.
I hope you can get him.
I want to mention, too, that if you go into Mr. Robot cold right now, avoid all the spoilers.
Don't read a damn thing about it.
Just check it out.
Yes.
All right.
Anything else, caller?
Well, I've seen him on YouTube, Sam Esmail, and he's a really compelling speaker.
So I really hope you guys can make a serious effort to get him to reach out to him because I think he'd be fantastic at Hope.
Okay.
We will redouble our efforts.
Thank you.
And everything else, Hope involved, we'll have more information on that in the weeks ahead.
Let's see if we can squeeze in one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Can you speak up?
Yep.
Here I am.
Okay.
We can hear you.
Let's speak a little louder.
Yep.
Calling from the end.
Great to talk to you guys.
Happy New Year, by the way.
Happy New Year.
It's been a wild year for me, at least.
It's just been a lot of infighting from what I can tell in the hacker community especially.
Well, why should the hacker community be any different than every other community that's infighting as well?
Yeah, right.
Right now, things are really messed up, but it doesn't have to be.
Hopefully, 2020 will be a little bit better.
Okay.
So you're hoping for more, I guess, community and less infighting?
I guess when it comes down to it, there's always going to be infighting, but I just think a lot of infighting lately has been very petty.
A lot of very egotistical infighting, way too political.
I just care about quality code and cool and fun stuff, especially fun.
I think a lot of people forgot the fun.
I think you're right.
I think that's exactly it and a great note to end on.
Let's remember to have fun.
That is something that is so important.
Thank you, everybody who called in.
Please write to us if you have more ideas you want to express.
Maybe we'll read them on the air next week.
That's othat2600.com.
Yes, we use email.
We're proud of it, and it's a great way to communicate.
Yeah, try us on Facebook.
You won't find us.
Well, we're there, but it's hard to find things.
You know what?
Just stick to the email, othat2600.com.
Rob, you got something to say?
Yeah.
Another great way to communicate is face-to-face,
and you can do that at your local 2600 meeting all over the world.
Do you need an app?
Any kind of app to log into that meeting?
You don't need an app to log into that meeting.
You just need your face and the face of the face-to-face person you're with.
I see, and you don't have to verify your identity or submit to any DNA testing or anything like that.
Not as yet.
Amazing.
This is a whole new way of doing things, isn't it?
Face-to-face meetings.
Absolutely.
First Friday of the month, except in Israel, which is first Thursday.
The whole list of meetings, www.2600.com, slash meetings.
It's all there.
We will see you back here again next week when we'll be one week into 2020,
and we'll see how that affects us.
And keep listening to WBAI New York.
Good night.
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And if you're wondering who died in the year 2019,
you're about to find out as we take a shortcut through 2019 with Peter Beauchesne.
Boy, the levels are cocked on the air.
Is that a word that I can say on the air?
All right.
It's time for a shortcut with Peter Beauchesne.
At 9 o'clock, a new show, Black Star News.
We'll be here live, so keep your dial set to WBAI-New York.