All right, thank you essential workers out there from everything from medical to transportation,
supermarket, you know the deal.
You know how we do here at WBAI and we thank you for that.
Stay tuned for off the hook on the air already.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
We forgot to make a phone call to make sure that we actually were connected to the station,
but I think we are.
We have somebody tuned in.
Actually, we have joining us, Rob and Gila, are you there?
Good evening.
Hello.
You know, you guys could tell us if we're on the air because you're within listening
range.
So can you turn on the radio and tell us?
Sure.
All right.
This is a high tech solution.
We'll find our radio.
Yeah.
And I believe Alex is joining us as well.
Alex, are you there?
I am indeed.
Your belief is correct.
Good evening, everybody.
Wow.
And where are you, Alex?
I'm still over in Pennsylvania.
You're still in Pennsylvania.
OK, we're going to get to that in just a second.
We're going to figure out what's what's going on with everybody now.
By now, we should know if we're on the air.
That is being investigated.
The tuning knob is being adjusted.
Yeah.
Ninety nine point five FM.
We are on the air.
All right.
Yeah.
We can't seem to make a phone call to the studio for some reason, which we're going
to get into after the show.
Yeah.
They're incredibly busy down there at the headquarters.
Just need to know.
We connect.
That's all right.
We are on me.
OK.
It's Kyle's fault.
Yeah.
Kyle's fault.
It's it's you know what?
The whole coronavirus is Kyle's fault, too.
Let's just throw it in there.
Trump.
He did that.
He did Trump.
Yeah.
Everything.
It's Kyle's fault.
We haven't been on for two weeks, so we have we have a lot of steam to let off.
The program is off the hook.
We're going to talk about technology.
We're going to talk about all kinds of other things that are that are happening in the
world.
And we're going to take your phone calls, too.
Yeah.
The most important thing is everyone's here and we can we can have this discussion and
and even take those calls.
Everyone's here, but also nobody's here because we're all over the place.
We're in three different locations, plus the studio.
OK, let's start with Robin Gila.
How are you guys been the last couple of weeks?
I got a new desk chair, so I'm a lot more comfortable these days.
OK, that's exciting.
Yeah, I helped build it.
And that's that's basically an update on everything that's happened in our lives.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gila is still working from home.
I'm still working part time as as an essential worker.
And yeah, we're we're just getting through this day by day like everyone else.
Exactly.
OK.
That sounds pretty exciting.
Have you have you ventured outside?
Yes.
We laid in a brand new stock of handkerchiefs.
We are mostly doing the DIY the DIY handkerchief mask situation.
And yeah, we put on masks and gloves and went to the post office yesterday.
We had to mail a couple of things out.
Yeah.
We regularly go shopping for groceries and supplies.
And all the local shops are basically it's the same story everywhere.
Social distancing on the lines.
They only let so many people in at a time and makes a lot of sense.
We did manage to find toilet paper yesterday, which was like striking gold.
Very exciting.
Tell us tell us where you found the toilet paper there.
We found toilet paper at Walgreens.
The thing I don't think we have mentioned yet is that we had gotten emergency toilet
paper.
It is pink, flowered, scented toilet paper from Mexico.
From Mexico.
It is all we were able to find.
The problem is when you go shopping in a face mask, you don't know that you're buying scented
toilet paper until you get it home.
And then all of a sudden your bathroom smells like perfume exploded in it.
Wow.
So as our official scented toilet paper correspondent, you you thank you for this reporting.
But yes, and that is officially the emergency supply because we were able to find some some
standard provisions.
But but yeah, beyond that, it's interesting seeing the same things cleaned off of store
shelves everywhere every time we go.
That hasn't that hasn't changed.
Not as yet.
Yeah.
No.
When we found toilet paper, it was in an open it was in a box that had just arrived from
the supplier and been opened and left in the corner of the store so people could claw at
them madly.
Yeah.
It wasn't even on the shelf.
It was just this one random box of regular toilet paper.
And we just kind of went for it.
Yeah.
Anything does the trick.
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
Right.
It's and it's this new territory of products you didn't even realize were out there.
Exactly.
I will say I am a little scared of the pink floral scented toilet paper.
And I'm glad that we found non-pink, non-scented toilet paper.
You know what?
I think we have to get past the different kinds of toilet paper that we're going to
deal with during this pandemic.
But, you know, we're strong people.
We can get through it.
I'm just I'm impressed that you were able to find it.
And what was the mood of the people like on the street?
Do you sense a change over the last month or so?
I think what we're seeing is basically general acceptance of what you're supposed to be doing,
keeping social distances, masks and gloves.
I think at the beginning, not everyone was totally on the same page.
We're still seeing the occasional band of fools gathering in this public park near us.
But it's it's less often than usual, I think.
And I think I think people are people are basically wising up.
And as you as you might have heard when the show started, if it if I caught it, the two
minute love happens at 7 p.m. every night.
And everyone just, I think, lets out a little steam out their apartment windows that way.
Someone had an air horn tonight.
That was me.
I had an air horn.
But I'm like, well, I don't know.
It's a big air horn.
But yeah, it gets people's attention.
That's for sure.
OK, Alex.
So now you're still in Pennsylvania, which I guess isn't too surprising because you pretty
much said that you weren't going to come back to New York for a while.
But have things gotten better on your front?
Yeah, I mean, I'm still isolated from my family.
That's that's one thing that hasn't progressed at all.
So if I can just break in, you you you thought you might have had coronavirus a month ago
and you still haven't been able to see your family.
That's correct.
We're being especially cautious here because my my wife and my children are over with my
in-laws.
My in-laws are they're they're past their 70s now.
And the consequences of getting this wrong and it could be, frankly, perilous.
So what we had decided was, well, if we if we get back together, then we have to essentially
stay together.
My wife works full time.
I work full time, both working from home.
We have a small child as well, at least at the in-laws.
She has some help with my my sister in law as well, who's a teacher at home.
So she helps with the kids that my in-laws help with the kids as well.
And it's easier for everybody at the moment if we were to get back together and they were
to come here to to our our place out in the mountains, then we would essentially be stuck
here together without the ability to go back, because what we know about the the contagion
of the coronavirus seems to be changing all the time.
And the advice of my other sister in law, who's an anesthesiologist on the front lines
of this thing in New York at Mount Sinai in Brooklyn, is that we should really not go
back to the in-laws at that point for for quite a while.
And that would make life kind of difficult for all of us.
So we're giving it an extra couple of weeks just to be safe.
I'm hoping that one more week will do it.
And then I think what we're probably going to do is have a schedule of, you know, we'll
be together for four days and then away for three days.
This way, we both have the opportunity to to put in as many hours as we need to with
respect to our jobs.
And this this is what it's come down to, quite frankly, you know, you're afraid of putting
your family back together because it could have life and death consequences.
And that's just that's just become normal over the last five weeks.
So here we are.
But on the other fronts, I'm feeling fine.
I feel great.
I was starting to get a little worried today that I might I've had a fever.
But ninety eight point six came back on the thermometer and I think it was just the general
the general malaise of a gray, rainy, cold, windy day up here that and not seeing other
people and having been isolated for the last six weeks.
So that's me in a nutshell.
Sounds like you're doing everything right.
It's everything humanly possible to to stay healthy and observe some of the sort of best
new best practices of of just simple little things.
But you sound great.
It's good to get to reconnect again.
Feels like forever.
It does.
And, you know, I have to say, you know, being on the radio and talking and chatting and
seeing you guys is is the most contact and most fun that I have during the week.
Every other call, every other phone call I'm on is, you know, it's very work related.
And as much as I love all my colleagues, you know, it's still work.
And it's good to see familiar faces out here again on a Wednesday.
And the only other contact I have is, you know, I try to go out once a week for food
and just down the road, I go to a an Amish market of of all places, an Amish farmer's
market.
And what's so fascinating to me is that the Amish guys, they seem perfectly fine.
They're there every week.
They're touching money.
They're interacting with tons of people.
And they don't wear masks.
They don't wear gloves.
They don't wear anything.
And every single week I tell them, you know, you guys should be wearing some gloves.
And their response is, well, do you think we really need it?
And my response to that is absolutely yes.
Hang on.
Why, Alex, hold on a second.
Why are you having back and forth conversations with people who aren't wearing masks in the
first place?
That's a good question.
I mean, I'm giving them my money so I can buy food from them.
Hang on, Alex.
Why are you exchanging cash with people?
You shouldn't be doing that either.
Exactly.
Do I have to spend the whole hour lecturing you here?
I mean, you've already been through this.
I can't explain why Amish people don't seem to be getting coronavirus.
I doubt that's true.
But if people are hanging out in large groups, that is not wise.
That's contrary to all the medical advice we've been given.
And if we can't follow these simple instructions, then it's going to be a very long summer and
a very long year, maybe a very long couple of years.
What you're doing, you're doing everything correct.
I know your oldest son probably doesn't think so, because you haven't seen him in a while
and he's probably very upset right now.
But one day, one day he will understand that you are doing the right thing by staying away
for so long.
That's correct.
That's absolutely correct.
You know, and just the idea of handling cash is just crazy to me.
And you know, it's one of the things where you give the cash to these people and you
tell them to keep the change.
I mean, you don't you don't want to be handling it.
I would go a step further.
I mean, you know, not to put anybody down, but I drop the cash on the ground and say,
there it is.
Go and take it.
Don't touch me.
I'm basically it's turned into that.
It's turned into that where you have these transactions where you're basically not in
the same place at the same time.
And the other day I was upset that I had to sign a credit card receipt with somebody else's
pen and I didn't touch anything all the way home.
I hope that these aren't lasting effects.
And I'm pretty sure they won't be, because if you look at our history, we have not had
to deal with this, this kind of a thing in practically a century on a global scale like
this.
So I'm hoping that old habits come back that, you know, the good old habits, not the bad
old habits.
For instance, driving.
I mean, we don't drive anymore.
We've had the same tank of gas in the car now for over a month.
And I'm kind of annoyed by that because gas prices are so low now.
I want to be taking advantage of them, but I can't because I'm not going anywhere.
So that's that's the life I'm leading.
Yeah, it's it's exactly right.
I mean, the the price of gas over here and diesel is is it's incredible to me.
And it's the same thing here.
I've had the same tank of gas for probably about seven or eight weeks now.
I just I haven't felt like it's crazy to me.
But I don't entirely agree with with what you said, though, Emmanuel, about going back
to normalcy, because I just don't see how we can avoid these types of crazy, drawn out
interactions without having some kind of immunity, whether it's herd immunity or some kind of
vaccine possible, because the virus is going to be here.
The virus isn't going away.
If we flatten the curve, if we limit the amount of people that we have in the in the ICUs,
that just means that there are fewer people getting sick.
But the virus is still there and the virus can still be transmitted.
So until we get a handle on how to treat this thing really effectively and and how to vaccinate
against it, I just I don't foresee us getting away from these crazy, ritualistic, you know,
sanitizations of our hands.
Yes.
Yes.
We have to get to that point where we're past it, where we've conquered it, where there's
a vaccine for it.
That's what I'm referring to.
When we get to that stage, I hope we're not still walking around with masks on because
we're afraid of the next one.
You know, obviously, when something happens, maybe we'll act quicker.
That would certainly be nice.
We could have prevented so much of this had it been taken seriously back in January.
But as far as as having to live like this as the new normal, I don't I don't see that
as a given.
And I think I certainly hope not.
And, you know, I think you're right about that.
That's something I've been thinking a lot about, because we we're all you know, everyone's
talking about, you know, when when things get back to normal, when this is over.
But I'm really wondering about how people are going to adjust to not having to do this,
like when that happens, when there's a vaccine, when when, you know, we're no longer in a
pandemic situation.
Are people going to feel OK with physical contact again?
Are people going to go out without masks again, or are they just going to keep it going?
I mean, going out with masks was culturally common in other parts of the world before
this all happened.
And I'm wondering if we're I'm wondering if we're looking at maybe a new normal popping
up around these things.
The death of the handshake.
Yeah.
Do you think we've seen the death of the handshake?
I think that's that's OK.
I think it's the the sort of institutionalizing of these these like phased reopenings because
there's an immediate need.
I don't think that works instead of relief.
I think there needs to continue to be relief effort because really things have stopped.
And so there already are fall on consequences around that.
And this encouraging folks to come back to work and even having mandates and orders to
keep things going doesn't follow the science as much as continuing whatever it takes to
relief people who are hurting or support efforts to get people fed at least the bare minimum
before we can really even come up with a scheme that actually works.
I think most and the reason I think it's I think most of those judgments are because
there's a thought that that the resumption of activity like normal activity will save
the economic side of it.
I don't think that should even be in the equation.
And any interim resumption of activity really won't be enough to like even come close to
any gains that were lost.
In other words, does that does that make sense?
Like it just doesn't seem like a rational science based approach.
It seems like a we need to cover our losses kind of approach.
And I think that that's like, holy foolish.
We should think about what ways to change and and what we can adopt long term.
And it's cool to see some of the innovation, but not every idea is a great idea.
And I think that that conversation is what's been happening the last week or two.
But it's no substitution for actual relief during the moment when things are frozen.
Yeah, I very much agree with that.
But it also brings up some more interesting points like the larger, the larger societal
implications of having gotten through something like this.
When we come out the other end, I mean, if you told people, you know, two, three months
ago before all this happened, exactly how much of the workforce can do their job from
home, exactly how many people don't need to be forced to come into an office for 40 hours
a week to do their job and, you know, to the to the most complete, you know, best of their
ability.
You know, the that we don't we don't have to necessarily go out as often as we do, like
just all these things like, well, will your average office type workplace adjust to maybe
letting people work from home more often if they would prefer to after this, now that
we know that everyone can do it, or at least everyone, everyone who can, you know, do do
their jobs remotely.
You know, we're seeing that work now in ways that that the larger, I think, society hadn't.
Yeah, just simple things like driving less.
Those observations certainly are things that we can look at going forward and say, like,
well, are there unnecessary trips?
Are there ways we can integrate healthier things like exercise into this and and and
let people telecommute so that they can have more time for things like exercise?
I mean, those are all outcomes and side effects that I think people are really, as you said,
are noticing and saying, why is this not a normal part of of activity or can I maybe
consume less?
Do I can I can I buy less and survive longer on less?
You know, I think these are the things that we're learning now.
And this is a horrible tragedy.
And we will be feeling the effects of it for a long time to come.
But let's not also lose sight of the good that we are learning about ourselves as a
result of this tragedy.
And that means driving less, as Kyle said, and the sky is cleaner and we're seeing short
term effects of cutting back on pollution, which is an incredible thing that we never
had the opportunity to to learn from before.
Now we do.
We are learning more about the value of us as individuals.
We're learning about how we can adapt just the fact that this radio show exists right
now in its present form and all the other radio shows on WBAI and all the other mass
media outlets that are doing things in a different way and pro sports is is is basically being
changed the way we feel about that mass culture of sorts.
All these things will come back in one form or another.
But we're learning where they stand in perspective and how we can adjust and how we can continue
doing the things that we love to do with different rules.
And this will be incredibly valuable in the future, learning how to accomplish things
such as space travel or just being in a hostile environment where you need to to change your
way of doing things.
Yeah, it's it's a terrible thing what we're going through right now.
It doesn't mean that we can't get some good out of learning more about ourselves and what
we're capable of.
And I just hope that we don't get too discouraged.
We don't get too impatient.
We're seeing signs of that, obviously, in various parts of the country.
And I just really hope people just hang in there longer, because that is what we're going
to need.
If you look at what happened back in 1918, the reason why the second wave was so deadly
was because people didn't take the right precautions.
We have so much more in the way of science now.
We have so much more in the way of foresight or hindsight.
And basically, we can stop this from becoming a truly horrendous stain on the history of
humanity.
You know, we can easily talk the whole hour just about about this, about our particular
situations.
But we're only on for an hour.
So we do need to go through some other things as well.
And we also want to take some phone calls later on.
I found a story that actually I noticed this first, and then I found a story about it,
which is kind of fun.
It turns out if you've looked throughout the world at the way other countries have been
dealing with this, some countries have done better than others.
But what's particularly amazing is discovering that those countries that are run by women
have done exceedingly well.
And I'm talking about countries like Taiwan.
They're a country of 24 million people, about the same as Australia.
And when Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen heard about a mysterious new virus infecting the
citizens of Wuhan in December of last year, she immediately ordered all planes arriving
from Wuhan to be inspected.
She then set up an epidemic command center, ramped up production of personal protective
equipment such as face masks.
She restricted all flights from mainland China, Hong Kong.
Taiwan's early aggressive intervention measures have limited the outbreak to just 393 confirmed
infections and six deaths.
Now, these numbers are probably outdated.
But let's look at Germany.
Now Germany has 83 million citizens.
They've had over 132,000 infections, very low deaths per million.
Angela Merkel has a doctorate in quantum chemistry.
She's seen her approval ratings soar due to her capable handling of the pandemic.
Then we go to New Zealand.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shut New Zealand's borders to foreign visitors on March 19th,
announced a four week lockdown of the country on March 23rd, requiring all non-essential
workers to stay at home except for grocery shopping or exercising nearby.
The country has carried out widespread testing, recorded over 1,300 coronavirus cases, but
only nine deaths.
New Zealand is only halfway through its lockdown, and Ardern says it won't end early.
Now, there are exceptions, of course.
South Korea's male president, Moon Jae-in, has deservedly received praise for flattening
the curve of infections in his country through widespread testing.
But many countries led by incompetent science denialist men have led to catastrophic coronavirus
outbreaks.
The true representative of the pandemic is now right here in the United States, where
President Donald Trump initially accused the Democratic Party of politicizing the virus
as a hoax and failed to heed multiple warnings from top scientists for months.
It's not a political statement.
That's a factual statement.
That is what happened.
So you have these situations where, I don't know, is there something to this, where women
leaders just seem to be a bit more level-headed?
Is that a fair statement?
Maybe there's something to the idea that a country that's level-headed enough to elect
a woman leader is also level-headed in other ways.
There you go.
OK.
I like that.
I mean, I can certainly get behind that.
OK.
I just, you know, when I when I when I mentioned this on Twitter last week, I got nothing but
crap in return.
People saying, oh, there's plenty of men who aren't.
I wasn't saying men aren't intelligent.
I'm saying this is interesting that the countries that are run by women seem to have have approached
this in a very level-headed way.
And there is something there.
There is definitely something that I'm not seeing many or any really women leaders who
are denying science or are turning into some kind of battle of wills.
So there is something to study here.
Isn't there also something to be said for there being a bit more of an egalitarian socialization
and that men tend to when they're in those roles have tend towards being being sort of
right or the voice of of an absolute decision?
And we see this in a lot of the rhetoric and in our current leadership that they know better
and they can overrule or they have good people that are then themselves making all those
decisions.
Decision making with females in leadership roles, I just on a on a gut level, look at
that as there's probably more listening going on.
There's probably more more in consideration instead of coming from one or the other head
that like sort of patriarchal leadership attitude versus a communal like a community and a group
that is is really dependent on good decisions for survival.
Yeah, it's less paternalism.
Literally, that is what it is.
I tend to, you know, agree with Rob here on on this, too, and that I think that there
is a there may be something fundamentally different about the constituents that elect
female representatives.
Perhaps they are more well read.
They they actually read and listen, look at the issues, dissect them, make rational
choices rather than going with their gut or, you know, essentially being part of somebody's
political fan base.
But also going to derail that with just one sentence, the people of Michigan elected a
woman governor.
Yeah, well, there's going to be exceptions to the rule, you know, that's that's that's
why you have a rule.
It's the same reason it's the same reason we're not pointing pointing out is saying
that you were saying men were stupid in these leadership.
Yes. Yeah. You know, to bring it around.
Yeah. Well, anyway, go ahead.
But there's probably something to it, too, with Kyle is saying to that, you know, there
may be something in the feminine style of leadership here is probably a combination
of the two. Quite frankly, it's it's an interesting phenomenon.
And I'm somebody who, you know, I acknowledge this and and I like to think of people as
being people without reference to gender, race, creed, religion, you know.
But, yeah, the statistics say say another thing.
And even female leaders working within a system that's based on that sort of paternal
setup is wholly different than like a matrilineal society or something that's that's
going to have that's going to derive that from female leadership in a sort of natural
way to kind of piggyback on that.
I think there is also a certain expectation in society.
And I'm not saying anything about our home or the division of labor here.
But what I am going to say is that often you find a lot of the balance of making things
happen and keeping people alive and keeping people fed falls to women.
So even then, when we step out of the home and our and our, you know, working in
whatever system it happens to be, we're still making sure that we're keeping people
alive and keeping people fed.
And I think in a lot of ways that can bleed over into politics, into business, into
whatever it happens to be.
And, you know, I think that there's a certain expectation of women as multitaskers that
can be to women's benefit wherever we happen to be.
But yes, yeah, it's a transference of that skill set.
Well, male or female, I hope whoever is leading your land is doing it the right way.
And you have faith in them to tell you what is going on.
And hopefully they're being honest.
Other things that have been happening include, obviously, all the digital get togethers
that we've been having. And Zoom is one of those.
A lot of people using Zoom.
Well, of course, a lot of people who aren't supposed to be using Zoom are using Zoom.
According to CBS affiliate WVLT, the Association of African-American Students was
hosting a virtual version of its annual spring cookout on Friday when neo-Nazis entered
the Zoom meeting and began using racial slurs.
At least one racist hacker.
OK, why? Why?
What makes them a hacker? We'll get into this.
At least one racist hacker was donning blackface and another prominently showcased a
Nazi flag behind him.
You know, in a tweet describing the incident, AAAS, the Association of African-American
Students, said during the cookout, unknown persons entered and proceeded to post a
plethora of images, videos and messages containing racist slurs and derogatory terms.
We are completely repulsed by the actions of these individuals and offer our support of
those who are subject to or in any way impacted by it.
These are things that are all too common in the digital world.
Basically, Zoom is saying that they've been contacted through that launch an official
investigation. They say our Office of Equal Opportunity Programs has been notified.
It's prepared to investigate in the event is determined that university students committed
these terrible acts. Actually, that's the spokesperson for the university saying this.
Here's a story kind of related, having to do with simple tricks that you can use to
prevent unwanted guests from hacking your Zoom meeting.
And again, I take issue with the word hack here, but video conferencing app Zoom, based
in Seattle, apparently, has become extremely popular of late during the stay at home
order orders as people work from home in droves.
It's easy to use, but it can also be easy for a hacker to jump into your online get
together. Yeah, how do they do it?
Well, OK, we're going to tell you.
War dialing trolls, as they are known, use a program called Zwar Dialer.
That's spelled Z-W-A-R-D-I-A-L-E-R, Zwar Dialer.
Does what hackers call a brute force attack?
Yes, hackers do call it that.
In fact, anybody calls it that.
That's what it's called.
A brute force attack on Zoom computers looking for meeting codes.
Essentially, it's a software program looking for your nine digit meeting number.
And thank you. You just gave out that information.
It's always nine digits.
See, that's how you learn things.
You read news stories.
So what Zwar Dialer is doing, I'm pronouncing it Zwar Dialer, I'm maybe supposed to say
Zwar Dialer, but I'm saying Zwar Dialer.
It's randomly trying to find those digits, find active or soon to be active meetings.
And when they find these, the invasion begins.
Yeah. Zoom CEO Eric Wan says, we clearly have a lot of work to do.
Really? You have a lot of work to do?
I don't see it here.
He basically admits the company has made missteps.
At first, Zoom blocked hackers just using one computer to Zoom bomb.
Yeah, that's a word, Zoom bomb.
But then came Zwar Dialer, which uses the Tor underground network of computers all over
the world to contact Zoom.
So Zoom thinks it's just a lot of people from different computers trying to get into the
same meeting. OK, it's not a Tor problem either.
We're circling in on what the actual problem is.
What I can promise, OK, he's taking these issues very seriously.
Of the most widely used video conferencing apps, Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and
Skype, only FaceTime provides end to end encryption, which I'm reading a mass media story
here. That's a technical word for most secure.
Did you know that's what encryption is?
A technical word for most secure.
Yeah, whatever. So Zoom is actively educating people on how to stop Zoom bombers.
But there is one simple trick that provides more protection.
If you have a password associated with your meeting, even if these bad guys can find it,
they are not going to get in if they don't have the password.
That is what the answer has been to all of this.
A password, that's been the answer since the 1980s.
Use a damn password on your meeting, then nobody can get in.
Wow. Who would have thought of this?
It's very much like Dropbox and like cloud storage things, like where you would have a
file in a place that is associated with a link.
You could password protect it, but maybe you don't care.
If you give the link out to everybody.
It's just an additional step is what I'm saying.
And it's the same. It's not hard.
It's not hard to give out a unique password to every.
And that way, you know who it is that leaked it.
If it's shared with somebody, if it's even able to be shared.
But I mean, guys, can you believe this is the answer that they came up with that they
made this into this huge issue?
And it is a huge issue if you have a bunch of Nazis invading a meeting.
But it's so easily solved if they would only tell people this is how you should use our
software. By default, use a password.
Use a unique password for every user.
And that way you can control who comes into your meetings.
Am I am I not seeing something here?
No, this is actually a discussion we had to have at my workplace.
We have a lot of Zoom meetings going on.
We have Zoom meetings of staff and we have Zoom meetings of education groups.
We have Zoom meetings of social groups and we have Zoom meetings of other groups.
And one of our IT staff was explaining that we're going to be defaulting to password
protecting all the meetings.
And someone said, why?
Why is that necessary?
And this poor young man had to explain what sounded to me an awful lot like phone
freaking, if I'm being honest.
He said, when I was a kid, I would just start randomly dialing telephone numbers until I
got through somewhere.
He said, if someone is doing that now and they randomly get to one of our meetings and
they put the right numbers in and they get to one of our meetings and then they randomly
guess the password, I thought we just let them in.
But if we can password protect, it was very funny when he said it that way.
But I was on a Zoom meeting last night and we had to go through the protocol for what
happened if we got Zoom bombed and had to stop.
Which I thought was sort of fascinating.
Yeah, the interesting thing about these meetings, too, is Zoom has actually and I've
used this many times now, hosted a lot of these and Zoom has been changing things up
along the way to improve what they're doing.
And I'm usually an open source guy, free software guy.
I would love to find a roll your own alternative to Zoom that was as dependable.
But right now, Zoom is killing it.
And so it's deep.
I'm defaulting to using it for the things that I need.
I mean, it works.
The system, they just need to modify it so that people use passwords by default.
How hard is that?
And they have been.
And also the meetings are no longer all nine digits.
I've seen I've seen 10 digit meeting numbers, 11 digit meeting numbers.
They're changing that up.
So so it's not easy to so it's not as easy to Zwar dial anymore.
But also the weakness there is when you get an invite to a Zoom meeting, it tells you
the meeting number. It tells you the password.
If there's a password and you've been invited, you're given the password.
But then it also gives you a link that's all in one piece that includes the password
basically includes a hash of the password.
So you just need to click the link and you'll be authenticated because it's sending
the password. People pass those links around.
People post those links on social media, not realizing that it's giving them the keys
to the kingdom, to anyone who sees it.
And that's that's where a lot of the trouble is coming from right now.
But otherwise, it's like it's like the old, you know.
I'm wondering, is there a mute capability in the program once this does happen?
If it's inevitable, it's going to happen, perhaps even an auto mute for specific
phrases we can agree maybe aren't suitable for any meetings.
Well, I mean, the person running the meeting can mute everybody so that they can't
speak. But of course, that sort of takes away the whole point of having it in the
first place. But it just it just it seems relatively simple that you simply modify
things so that you can't get in unless you have a unique identifier in addition to
the meeting ID.
These are the same lessons that we've been learning for decades.
What just annoys me is that every time something like this happens, it's hackers.
All right. The Nazis storming into into a barbecue online, which sounds interesting.
That's a hacker thing. No, that's not a hacker.
The hackers are people who tell you how to prevent that from happening.
These are just idiots and idiots exist in every community.
Well, I think if we can start popularizing the term malicious actors instead of
hacker, I think, you know, malicious actors are people who do bad things.
And, you know, initially I was thinking bad actor, but bad actor sounds like we're
about to give them Golden Raspberry Awards.
So if we go with malicious actor, I think that's an easy way to separate that.
We're just malicious idiot.
You know, I mean, I don't know.
It's just I get very impatient with this.
Yeah, I want to chime in here a minute or two because I've done a huge amount of
work on Zoom related security, excuse me, over the last couple of weeks, you know,
and you're right. But but again, this isn't the it's not only Zoom that's affected by
this reluctance to have meeting numbers, password protected.
Other services could be, you know, similarly, quote unquote, Zoom bombed as well.
If passwords aren't implemented, it's just Zoom has been the the focus of the ire of
these malicious actors and threat actors, interlopers, harassers, racists, whatever
you want to call them in joining all of these meetings.
Other other measures that you can put in place are things like blocking the meeting
down once it's once the meeting is going.
Don't allow anybody else to join or use your waiting room function so that you can
make somebody wait in a little digital waiting room while you authenticate them before
they enter your meeting.
It requires some extra steps.
But this is part of this perennial problem that we have, which is that efficiency and
security seem to be inversely proportional to each other and very often at
loggerheads. But going back to the issue of, you know, whether this is hackers or not, I
think whatever that article was that you were quoting, Emanuel, the one that bandied
about the term hacker erroneously over and over and over again, I think also got the
Z war dial function wrong as well, because the guys that were and gals perhaps that
were behind the Z war dial function that allowed you to iterate through all of these
numbers to find zoom meetings.
They never actually released that that that script, probably not that difficult to
replicate it. Now, you know, we know how it works, but they never really set out to the
public. And here's an interesting tidbit, something I found in that when I was looking
at the reporting on this a couple of weeks ago, there was a screenshot of this script
working. And it looks like an old school war dialer.
It actually has an ASCII telephone as part of the script.
When you load up the script, it shows this ASCII telephone, ASCII being, you know, your
regular characters that you would see on a keyboard.
For those that don't know what ASCII is, it's just, you know, characters that have
created a telephone and it's a rotary telephone because this works very much like an
old war dialer would when we were looking for 800 numbers to which there may have been
modems connected that we could then investigate and hack.
But one thing that was super fascinating to me was that in the middle of the dial of the
rotary dial on this phone was a was a number and the number was this six point five
five three six megahertz.
Do you happen to recall what that is?
Yeah, that's the that's the frequency for the crystal, isn't it?
That makes red box tones.
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
So in that Z war dial script was an old reference to, you know, the frequency of the
crystal that you would replace in your 33 number memory radio shack tone dialer and
create a red box.
And that's fine, but that doesn't mean they're hackers.
They can make an allusion to something in the hacker world or call it something that
sounds like a hacker tool.
Remember the days you're talking about, there are relatively few people doing this.
And now everybody is everybody is playing with technology and writing scripts and
figuring things out.
And that's great.
But but to simply say, you know, every time something malicious happens, it's a hacker
behind it. That's that's what gets me.
Oh, yeah. My point in this is that the people behind this, they're from Kansas City.
They're a security group out of Kansas City.
These are obviously people that appreciate hacker culture.
And if they were malicious actors, if they were criminals, they would have just released
this out to the public.
They didn't. They knew it would have been an absolute disaster to have this in the hands
of all these idiots.
Well, isn't it in the hands of all these idiots?
Isn't that the whole point? No, it's not.
They never released it. They never released the code for the war dialer.
So I think that article got it wrong.
Well, how does the article.
OK, how is the article bending about the name of it if it's not being used?
It's that's an error.
They're not whoever's war dialing is not using the script that this group in Kansas City
created, the Z war dialer script.
OK, well, obviously they're using some script.
If it's not that one, it's some script.
But it's weird that they would they would they would quote the name of an existing script.
Yeah, well, because that's the first one that came out, that's the one that was reported
that that has the red box reference in it.
But, you know, I think it was responsibly disclosed.
The vulnerability was put out there for Zoom to fix without allowing the public to make
a mass mockery of every single Zoom meeting during this global health pandemic that
we're facing. And again, you can just a password will prevent that.
That's right. And if anything, I think here again, the hackers are the heroes.
I'd like to think that I mean, hackers aren't always heroes, but they certainly aren't
always villains. Hey, I want to open up to the to the phones so that we can hear from
some of our listeners. We haven't been on in two weeks and I understand next week we're
going to start our spring fundraiser.
That's going to be a lot of fun.
Our phone number is 8 0 2.
That's right. It's a different phone number.
8 0 2 3 2 1 4 2 2 5.
That's 8 0 2 3 2 1 hack.
Yeah. And we'll take phone calls as they somehow come into one of our devices here and
hopefully everybody can hear each other.
Kyle, you're looking like you're you're rewiring things.
Is everything all right? Yeah, it's yeah.
I don't want to get into it. All right.
There was something charging that was making some other quality charging noises.
But you know what? I was making toast over there.
Everything is so engrossing.
I'm really wrapped by the conversation.
It's it's fascinating.
But I'm going to make it so that you.
So the callers can hear us.
Yeah. No, that would be nice because they've been able to hear us in the past.
It takes a little bit of time because we're on delay and then it takes time for us to go down the Internet.
Then it takes time to be able to walk over to their phones.
Then it takes time for them to call.
Then it takes time for the phone system to switch over and send the call to us.
But when all that happens, the phone will ring and we'll put it on the air again.
The phone number 8 0 2 3 2 1 4 2 2 5.
Well, while we're waiting for that, here's another gripe about about Zoom or just about meetings in general, while we're all working
from home and going from one conference meeting or Webex meeting to another.
What people often forget is that we can just call each other on the phone.
You can just give out, give out, you know, that you're calling your phone.
You don't have to. Not everything has to be through Zoom where there's delays and there's latency and there's bandwidth issues and connection issues.
And, you know, it is kind of annoying to me.
And it feels weird that we've forgotten this.
And it also harkens back to the fact that if we still had landlines, imagine how clear all of these conversations could be.
Think back to the 90s, back to the old phone freak days when phone freaks used to set up these AT&T teleconferences that would go long into the night and everybody was on the landline.
OK, I have to cut you off there, Alex, because we actually have been getting phone calls.
And for some reason, for some reason, we're getting more than one at a time.
I can't stop it.
And also, if you don't have the browser right in front of you, you can't see them at all.
So that's interesting. I think we have somebody on the phone.
Is anybody there? Hello?
No. OK, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do this.
I'm going to hang this up. We're going to try this again and hopefully we'll just get the next one.
Again, 8023214225, I'm sorry for those people that that may have been disconnected.
I see there's a whole bunch of calls coming in and we've done this before.
So it's I know it works.
So we'll just keep trying until we get it right.
Here we go. Here's a phone call coming in.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
No, I have to look at this.
This is a box that weren't there before.
I have to allow the microphone to work.
All right. I'm allowing the microphone.
Oh, here we go. Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now? They can't hear me.
What's going on? Something's different than the last couple of weeks.
OK, Kyle's trying to troubleshoot this right now.
We do have a caller on the line who apparently can't hear us.
Can you hear us now, caller?
No, they still can't hear us.
Well, while we're figuring this out, I'll also remind people that if you're on Twitter,
you can tweet at us at Hacker Radio Show and we're monitoring that.
Or you can email us OTH at 2600 dot com.
That's right. I'm sorry about this.
This is what happens when you print. Oh, can you hear us now?
Yes, I can. Oh, OK. They can hear us now.
Whatever you did, Kyle, don't undo it.
Where are you calling from?
Yes, I called. I got a call.
You got a call. My name is Christian.
I'm from the Bronx. Why am I getting more than one call at the same time?
This isn't happening right now.
It's really annoying. I'm hearing the chimes.
Yeah, I'm sorry about this.
OK, I closed the window, but that didn't happen before.
So something got changed and scared.
Yeah, I'd like to know what it is.
Anyway, sorry. What's on your mind?
Oh, you guys seem to be so infatuated with the landline.
I don't blame you. I miss landline.
Even though they're still around, though.
But, you know, about 80 percent of the world is on mobile.
But there's nothing there is nothing wrong with that line.
Like this morning, I think I had a brand new system.
So the first two shows I listened to 7, 8 a.m.
It was they you know, they had to stop early because it was there was echoing
and there was just so much
problems with the broadcasting.
So, well, I guess that's yeah, it's a combination to we're using
consumer gear as well as professional like radio station gear.
And building a remote radio station
really can't compare to the quality at WBA in the studios.
So we end up having to like have things at different voltages and values.
It's it's pretty complex what people are doing.
But it just shows how a little creativity can go a long way.
Carlo, are you still there?
Because you disappeared.
Yeah, they disappeared and then the call came in.
OK, this is really bizarre because we haven't touched this in two weeks
and it's operating in a different way than it operated the last time we used it.
So that's that's highly frustrating with with technology.
But we're trying to muddle through as best we can using Google Voice.
If you want to blame somebody, that's who to blame right now.
And if anyone has tips on how to make this not happen.
OK, we have one call coming in. Let's answer this.
This time, I'm not going to say I'm allowing the microphone to work
because I didn't have that dialogue before.
Carlo, are you there?
Another caller is there.
I guess I have to allow it then.
OK, so I've allowed it, but this is still coming in.
Carlo, are you there?
Let's continue. Hello.
OK, this sounds like a recording, so I'm disconnecting that.
All right. You know what?
I don't know if we can do this because our system is all messed up.
So, OK, we won't do this.
We'll we'll we'll do something else some other time
and we'll figure it out, we promise.
Yeah, it seems like when both of these connectors are connected,
it causes adds to the difficulty.
But it's an amalgamation of a couple of different systems,
plus all the hardware I was talking about.
And even in our discussion about platforms like Zoom,
I know we've tried other ones.
We've used things like Mumble and Jitsi is another one
where you can run a server.
But let's try this one call and see if this doesn't screw up too badly.
Hello, is anybody there where I was talking about?
OK, turn your radio down.
That would be helpful.
And there's the other call coming. OK, that's it. I'm done with this.
Well, we're all winging this and we thank you, listeners, for bearing with us.
And as we all figure this stuff out, thanks, Google.
And we thank Google.
We thank it so bloody much.
Well, talking of conferencing, I will mention that this Friday,
2600 meetings are scheduled all around the world, but it's a different world.
So like last month, we in New York City are going to be doing it remotely.
Go to NYC 2600.net for the instructions on how to get to the virtual.
And if I can add to that, everybody will be doing it remotely.
We are not sanctioning any meetings this month either.
It's just is not safe enough yet.
Hopefully next month it will be.
But it's not worth taking the risk and gathering in a group.
Despite what your local government may say,
we say differently.
We believe it's not safe yet.
And it's better to be safe than sorry. Right?
Absolutely. Keep keep flattening that curve and check the websites
and social media and stuff for your local meetings to see if your local meeting
is doing the same thing and having a virtual one.
If you're in New York City, it's NYC 2600.net.
If you're elsewhere, you can go to 2600 dot com slash meetings
to find the homepages of your local meetings.
Alex, I hope you've been reunited with your parents next week at this time.
And the parents, your your family at this next week at this time.
And and that things get better for all of us.
Thank you, sir. Yeah, yes, indeed.
I echo those sentiments and look, we're all on our way.
We're doing what we can.
I think there's a lot of coming together in the community.
And and that will continue.
All right. Right to us.
OTH at 2600 dot com.
And please stay tuned to WBAI.
Where we try to bring you as much of the facts as we possibly can.
We'll see you next week. Good night.
I look down and then the sidewalk.
There's what I see.
I look up and see the sky.
I look down and see the ground.
I look at you and sing a song about up and down.
Oh, I look up and see an airplane fly.
Yes, I do.
I look down and see my foot and then I see my shoe.
I look up and see the sky down and see the ground.
I look at you and sing a song about up and down.
Oh, I look up and see the ceiling and there's something more.
I look down and see on working class heroes radio.
We're seeing a lot of people step up who are either like independent producers
or just like regular Joe working class people step up.
And we're seeing basically none of these corporations step up.
Medics, makers and mutual aid will air this Thursday at 730 p.m.
right here on WBAI 99.5 FM.