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Off The Hook
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And the very good evening for our program is Off The Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle.
Over here.
Alex.
Alex, you there?
Are you unmuting yourself?
No, there we are. I'm back.
Same buttons as every week.
Welcome.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening. I'm also here.
I'm here, too.
Welcome, everyone.
Some very sad news to begin the show with.
The death of our very first keynote speaker,
our very first speaker at the Hope Conference, Robert Steele.
I'd like to start just by playing those opening moments from 1994,
from, I believe, August 13th, 1994.
Here's how the situation had shaped up.
We were having our very first conference.
We were on the 18th floor of the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Some of you might remember this, actually.
We only had that section.
We only had one track, and it was chaos.
It was pandemonium because we had the bright idea
that we were going to take everybody's picture and put it on the badge,
and we didn't realize that it would take about five minutes
for the Macintosh to print out each one,
and we had 1,000 people there.
It got to the stage where people had to walk around
collecting cash from people and giving them temporary badges,
which were basically a piece of paper saying that I paid.
While all that was going on,
the conference was supposed to start at noon.
We obviously were delayed.
We were going to do an intro, and then Robert Steele
was going to give the keynote of the very first conference.
However, he started early because nothing was going on on stage.
There was pandemonium in the background,
so he, I think, did the right thing
and just started talking to the audience.
So there's kind of like a pre-keynote address
before the actual conference begins.
So I just want to play a couple of minutes
of the very first moments of the very first hope with Robert Steele.
The information continuum consists of K-12 universities, libraries,
businesses with enormous amounts of encyclopedic information
that is not proprietary.
Private investigators, information brokers,
media including journalists with in-depth understanding
of many topical issues that are of importance to economic competitiveness,
government including state, local, defense, and intelligence.
There are iron curtains between the sectors.
There are bamboo curtains between the institutions.
There are plastic curtains between individuals.
The content that those talented people are putting
into their localized databases is, as Al Gore once said,
rotting like grain in the silos.
Most employees, you know, Robert Reich, great book,
Worker of Nations, talks about the high-performance workplace.
What he doesn't talk about is the fact that the Knowledge Workers of America,
which includes all of you, are on a starvation diet.
You have to hack your way to information.
And I think one of the top parties in this country
needs to be getting content into the information commons.
My friend Lee Feldenstein at Interval coined the term information commons.
Well, that commons is in fact a cesspool.
And it's empty right now.
Most of what we know in these various distributed databases
is not easily accessible.
We got into a real nice conversation about ergonomics
and how the command line was really a way of making the human a slave to the computer
because the memory wasn't big enough in the computer
so they had to basically modularly plug in the human to run the command lines.
Well, now we're getting to the point where memory and all this stuff can handle this,
but the people building computers still aren't in an ergonomic mode.
I mean, for instance, there are no piano pedals.
I mean, why aren't we using our feet?
There's a lot of stuff you could do.
And unfortunately, most computers are still being built
by the people who grew up during command line times.
And lastly, or not lastly, the second, so connectivity content,
then you have coordination of research and development.
This would need some changes in the antitrust laws.
I'll give you an example from the intelligence community.
I was on the Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group
of the Intelligence Research Development Council,
and I formed the opinion that we had ten different what we call black compartments.
These are like ten different closed doors.
And they were each spending around $10 million a year
to build a desktop workstation for their domain.
This equates to $100 million a year to build ten different versions
of the same generic information handling requirement.
If you extrapolate that to the rest of government, to the rest of the private sector,
I think you're looking at $2 to $4 billion a year in this country
diddling with end user computers.
So coordination of research and development within industries,
within different government departments and so on,
I think that needs to be orchestrated a little better.
We need to work to move the common denominator of the tools up.
And lastly, security.
I mean, you know far better than I.
Rah, rah.
You know far better than I.
That's a person who shall remain unidentified.
Security in this country is a joke.
In fact, I love this book.
I just read a Unix hater's handbook,
and it talked about how Unix security is an oxymoron.
And I was told I might be stoned for that.
But it is.
Corporations that want to be secure,
government departments that want to be secure,
individuals that want to be secure,
cannot possibly achieve security when they're living in a cesspool.
We have a national information environment that is nothing more than a cesspool.
And that is the opening moments of the first Hope Conference 1994
with Robert Steele, our first keynote, giving a preamble to all that.
And Robert Steele passed away a couple of days ago.
Now, listening to that,
listening to the way he addressed the hacker crowd,
the way he ingratiated himself with this community,
I think you might understand what worked
between somebody who was formerly part of the government
and a bunch of kids who were breaking into computers
and figuring out the latest designs.
He appreciated the hacker world.
He was enthusiastic about it.
He was a mischief maker.
But something happened.
Something happened over the decades.
And he became almost unrecognizable.
And I'm going to read you what was in the Daily News,
and maybe you'll see what I mean.
A former CIA agent, actually, he was an officer,
which Alex can probably explain the difference to us,
who bought into QAnon conspiracy culture,
has seemingly died from COVID.
The death of Robert Steele,
a guest on the far-right program Infowars,
was confirmed by a friend of his on social media Sunday.
Steele prided himself as one of the first people
to identify COVID as a hoax.
The 69-year-old ex-Marine was reportedly hospitalized
in Florida earlier this month,
but remained skeptical about the virus that was killing him
until his dying breath.
I will not take the vaccination,
though I did test positive
for whatever they're calling COVID today,
he said on August 17th.
The bottom line is that my lungs are not functioning.
The good news is that I will survive with a few days off.
He did not.
Steele optimistically called his fatal illness
a near-death experience that mirrored
what he thought was happening in the United States.
He believed he'd pull through
thanks to a sound network of friends.
It will never be the same because now we know
that we've all been lied to about everything,
but now we also know that we can trust each other.
There's more, but to get the gist of it,
this is what we've been talking about over the past
number of months with conspiracy theorists,
anti-vaxxers, people who are denying the science.
This is the first time it's claimed somebody
so close to us.
I'm speaking personally, myself.
Somebody that we know,
somebody that we were all familiar with.
It killed him.
And the poison that got into his system
years before COVID killed him
is what made him so susceptible to this.
You know, Robert always thought
that there was something nefarious going on
in the halls of government,
and there always is.
And he took great joy in exposing it, sharing it,
figuring out ways around it,
and that left him open to ideas
that eventually would prove to be
self-detrimental,
something that would both lose him a lot of respect
from a lot of people,
but also, as we have seen, lose him his life.
You know, I saw him in a documentary last year,
I believe it was last year on Vice,
where he was talking about QAnon.
I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe the things he was saying,
but I still recognized Robert Steele.
I still recognized that glint of mischief in his eyes,
and I thought, you know,
he's just playing a game here.
He's just hacking the media,
trying to get them to go along with this story.
And one day, he's going to emerge from behind this cloud,
and we'll be able to have a conversation again,
the way we used to back in the 1990s and early 2000s.
And alas, that is not going to happen.
And, you know, if anything,
I think something like this happening
is really going to weaponize us to fight even harder
to stop the nonsense that is literally claiming lives,
to stop the lies that are being spread everywhere,
everywhere, in our schools,
in our workplaces, on the streets,
on the radio, even on this frequency.
It's everywhere.
We have to stop it.
We have to fight it.
We have to defeat it.
Just like we have to conquer this disease
and get back to our normal lives.
You know, a lot of people are making light of this.
I understand, you know, a lot of people are saying,
got what he deserved.
He didn't believe in COVID.
COVID believed in him.
There's a whole page full of comments.
And I get it.
I understand.
I understand the sentiment.
But I also feel something here.
You know, I feel something for somebody
that I used to hang out with.
I used to go to conferences that he would host.
He came to conferences that we would host.
It was a unique relationship.
He opened up doors
that we never would have gone through ordinarily,
and we did the same for him.
And I'm sorry those days are gone.
I'm sorry this person is gone.
He could have contributed so much more.
And I am damn pissed off that this poison thinking
has claimed yet another person.
I'll shut up now.
Anyone else have anything to share?
Alex, you had your hand up?
Yeah, sure.
This is just another tragedy, I think,
in a very, very long line of tragedies here.
It feels to me a lot like, in a sense,
it's an avoidable tragedy, but it's more than that.
And I think it's more malicious than that, too.
Because if you think about it, last year,
if it was this time last year,
if it was September 1st, 2020,
and somebody didn't believe in the virus or whatever,
just the virus took you.
You got sick.
You quickly went downhill.
You either recover or you go downhill.
And let's say somebody went downhill.
They became intubated.
They were on a ventilator, and they died.
It was a tragedy then.
And we were all eagerly awaiting on September 1st, 2020
the rollout of a vaccine, news of a vaccine,
wondering when it was going to hit.
And then towards the end of the year,
we got that light at the end of the tunnel.
So we kept saying, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
We're going to get out of this.
We're going to get out of this.
And when the vaccine became available,
a large part of us began to take it.
And now that there is a treatment,
there is a vaccine that makes it 29 times less likely
that you are going to get sick,
that you're going to get hospitalized and die from COVID.
It's eminently treatable.
This is absolutely avoidable now.
And because of that, this doesn't necessarily feel like a tragedy.
It feels like this person was poisoned
by whatever channels of misinformation were out there,
were poisoned by the floodgates of misinformation,
literal tidal waves of misinformation,
and established channels coming at him.
And then he began to proselytize and espouse
the same type of misinformation himself to others,
going around and, frankly, poisoning others.
And so to me, this feels a lot like an avoidable death
that is something akin, frankly, to manslaughter,
perhaps even murder,
because murder can come directly from the foreseeable consequences
of a reckless act.
And I think the spread of this misinformation,
the spread of this, frankly, this nonsense about the vaccine,
really borders on manslaughter, possibly murder,
because we know full well, damn well,
what is going to happen.
And, you know, three weeks ago,
I was on this show talking about a 29-year-old cousin of mine
who also was unvaccinated and who died.
And I remember saying that night that his mother was also very sick
and that she was unaware that her son had actually died.
They were afraid to tell her that her son had died.
Well, that night, three weeks ago on that Wednesday night
at around 10 p.m., she too died from COVID
without even having been told
that her son also died from COVID two days before.
So, again, you know, just another avoidable tragedy
is what I see the Robert Steele death as,
is something coming from these floodgates of misinformation.
And we absolutely have to fight back,
but it's more and more prevalent everywhere you look.
It's becoming more mainstream, I'm afraid,
to doubt the vaccine, to discuss it on social media.
And I believe that the more this is discussed,
the more people put it in writing,
go to pen and paper on social media,
actually put it out there and start arguing with each other,
I feel like the more psychologically entrenched they are to these positions.
And I don't know exactly what it is that needs to be done,
but I think you're right, Emmanuel, we have to fight.
Go ahead, Rob.
The thing is, he is a loss,
not just because he used to hang around with us,
but, you know, he is a human being and everyone's a loss in some form.
But he was not an unintelligent person.
So many of the people who we've lost to this
through their own disbelief of what was going on
are not stupid people.
And it's very easy for those pages of comments to gather and say,
well, they brought it on themselves, this and that.
And the term that's going around is COVIDiots,
for people who end up dying of this
because they refuse to get the proper protections.
But there is also just a level beyond misinformation.
And Robert Steele went over that line,
because not only did he disbelieve what was going on,
he was actively spreading this.
He was heading up and conducting a nationwide tour
where he was taking a bus from place to place,
he was having rallies, he was having gatherings.
There are pictures of him shaking hands at these things.
And it is so heartbreaking,
because we know not only did he pick it up somewhere in his travels,
but there is every chance that he spread it to others.
There is every chance that he is now responsible for other people
suffering the same fate as him.
And it is so sad.
It is so sad to see people who we know are not stupid
fall for this stuff and actively spread it.
And, yeah, it is tragic.
It is tragic, but it was also avoidable.
This did not have to happen.
None of this had to happen.
As Alex said, this is becoming more mainstream.
You are seeing this kind of talk,
this kind of disbelief of the scientific facts
in more and more places,
higher and higher up in government circles.
So I guess the question is, what do we do?
How do we fight this?
I know we have to fight this.
I know we have to get common sense back.
And there are still a number of people,
and as you say, Rob, he was an intelligent person.
He definitely was.
And there are so many intelligent people
that are somehow sucked into this world.
How do we get them back?
Or can we get them back?
I wish I had more answers.
There was this very story.
The other day I posted about Steele's death
to a forum that is run by some Hope attendees,
2,600 readers and stuff,
just a gathering online for hackers.
I posted this, and that very thing,
and posting how I felt about it,
much like I've just said,
that started an argument.
That started a flame war.
That started something that led me to back off
and not revisit that community since.
And these are hackers.
These are people who have every ability,
as does the hacker community in general,
to seek out the good data,
to find their way through the bad data,
and to make good decisions based on facts
and based on things that we find out and learn.
And yeah, it is, like I said,
it's very easy to make light of it.
It's very easy to say these people are stupid.
But that is not necessarily the case.
And in so many cases,
it's very obviously not been the case.
And I would like some answers
as to how to fight the disinformation more effectively
because it gets disheartening.
Go ahead, Kyle.
I'm not sure if it's on us to fight necessarily.
I don't know.
I find that had people confronted him in this case,
they probably, as Rob just said,
would have been attacked,
like ridiculously attacked,
maybe even woven into some new depth
of the insane conspiracy.
Oh no, we've already been woven into that.
We're part of the conspiracy.
But E, that's exactly why people
do not want to touch any of this stuff
because the poisonous rhetoric and attitudes
and then networks that are supporting it.
He talked about a network of people
that helped him finally get into the hospital.
But I think that these tour stops
and these networks of people believing the wrong thing
are doing this to one another.
The people that announced this
and are claiming some other conspiracy about it
or whatever else, they did this.
The people that affirmed his belief.
There was not enough challenge.
I don't know if it's a fight.
I think it's challenging bad data,
the poisonous information that people are believing.
Well, how about consequences then?
For the people that helped make this possible,
they're responsible.
They're held accountable for the deaths,
for the hospitalizations.
And that includes governors.
That includes congressmen.
That includes people who ridicule the science
and encourage people to act irresponsibly.
When there are consequences for these actions,
for this tremendous irresponsibility,
maybe then we'll see some kind of a shift.
But if we simply treat it as something that,
okay, we want to avoid that conversation.
It's not like talking to somebody
who believes the earth is flat.
It doesn't hurt you at all to let them have their say.
But when somebody believes that there is no disease,
when there is a pandemic going on,
that person could kill a lot of people,
including people close to you, including yourself.
So we don't have the luxury of just saying,
all right, I don't want to touch that.
I'm going to avoid that topic.
You can't.
They're everywhere.
We have to fight and we have to win.
Gail, go ahead.
One thing that I think is really interesting
is looking at the tour itself.
And I don't want to make too much of Robert Steele,
but at the same time,
that tour that he was on was kind of falling apart.
People didn't want to fund it anymore.
They had to return the buses.
People were not interested in going to it,
funding it, or being part of it.
So Robert Steele was driving around the country
in his sad little SUV and zooming people in
to these events.
And now they are trolling, not trolling,
but they're looking for donations
to cover this man's debts.
And finish the tour honorably in his memory.
And I think that's its own kind of statement, almost.
If the core audience of it didn't want it to continue,
how does it continue?
If the core audience was starting to get
turned off to the message,
were they getting turned off to the message?
I don't know.
I'd like to think so.
But at the same time,
I'm also seeing people who believe that,
you know, a quick Google search,
like someone I know posted a hundred links
about the vaccine and said,
I did a lot of research.
No, you didn't.
You cut and pasted a bunch of stuff.
You don't know anything.
And it's also interesting to juxtapose
this discussion against the law
that went into effect in Texas today.
If I sound rattled, it's only because I am.
And when people are saying,
my body, my choice,
and they're also enacting laws
saying the exact opposite to people,
you need to pick.
You need to pick.
And if you're going to say that
I can do whatever I want
and it doesn't affect anybody else,
then you have to let other people
do what they need to do.
And it's frustrating.
And I don't know how
we can turn it around at this point.
I don't know if there's a way.
I wish I knew.
You know, those people who say,
the anti-vaxxers saying,
my body, my choice,
it's an insult.
It's an insult to everybody who is pro-choice
because it's not your body.
It's the body of people around you,
your kids, your family, your neighbors,
your coworkers.
You are spreading the disease to them
by not being responsible,
by not wearing a mask
where it's advised that you do so
by not getting the vaccine.
So it's your body,
but you're choosing for everybody else.
And that's about the most selfish thing
I can think of.
Go ahead, Alex.
I think,
I tend to agree with Kyle in this.
Well, I acknowledge your point
and agreed with it originally, Emmanuel,
that I think we need to fight this.
I think we need to fight it in a different way.
And I've said this the last two weeks
on this show too.
But I think that we need to give people
the space to change their minds,
the space to go and get vaccinated
and not feel stigmatized by it,
to do it without fear, without reproach.
And if we don't have that,
if we have this stigmatization
of those who are unvaccinated,
who have changed their minds,
they're just going to continue to be entrenched.
I think a huge part of this problem
is that there are so many
publicly available records
of the positions, the idiotic positions, frankly,
that so many people have taken
with respect to the vaccine.
Once you start going onto Facebook
and arguing with your friends, family, relatives,
with whomever, about the vaccine
and you start pasting links
and spreading misinformation yourself,
this becomes part of who you are
and your identity.
It becomes part of you.
And it becomes very, very difficult
for anybody in any situation
to admit that they were wrong.
But in this situation,
to admit that you are so wrong
and that your errors have endangered
the lives of others
is extremely difficult to do.
That's like turning around an ocean tanker,
psychologically.
And instead of giving people this space,
I feel like the social media algorithms,
what we are fed through these content-pushing algorithms,
that foster nothing really but engagement
on their part,
are pushing us towards more of this polarization.
Because what I've seen when I peer into
the discussions and conversations
of people with whom I went to high school
who are unvaccinated
and are constantly ranting on Facebook
about how horrible it is,
is they're discussing this triumphantly now.
They are saying,
finally, people are coming around now
and seeing the truth about this vaccine.
And it's absolutely crazy to me,
given what's happening in places like Florida
and what's happening in places across the South
where there are barely any ICU beds left for anybody,
because they're all taken up by people
who have COVID and who are unvaccinated.
We lost Robert Steele a few days ago.
I lost two members of my family a few weeks ago.
And there's no end in sight here because of this.
We're gonna be ping-ponging back and forth
because of the high percentage
of unvaccinated persons here.
So to combat it,
I think we almost have to take
a Gandhi-like approach to this
and using more passive forms of combat
to fight this misinformation.
Because at root,
if we're talking about consequences
and accountability for this type of misinformation,
I think a lot of that is, unfortunately,
going to have to come from within rather than without.
If you criminalize the spread of misinformation,
we're going to run into, I think,
a lot of thorny issues in a liberal democracy like we have
because we're gonna be talking about
government content moderation of these private platforms.
We're gonna be talking about First Amendment issues
and the criminalization of what people
legitimately believed was the truth.
And once we venture down that path,
I think that really is a slippery slope.
I agree.
And I don't want to see us go down that path.
You know, there's a part of me
that is arguing with the other part of me
because I don't want to see that either.
I totally agree.
At this point, you know,
these are desperate times.
What do you do?
And I guess we're looking for answers.
Go ahead, Gaila.
I think, Alex,
your ocean tanker metaphor is really apt.
I'm thinking about the footage from last week
of Trump getting up at one of his rallies
and saying get vaccinated
and the entire crowd booed him.
Like, there's nobody who can come out
with this information at this point.
I think, not I think,
I almost know that there's almost no turning back
from the place where we are now
because the voices who said,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
cannot suddenly say yes
and people will hear them.
And we've gotten to a point
where people are so entrenched
in what they believe
and we're always there,
but it's only more so now.
And to hear what people are throwing around
in terms of what needs to,
I'm sorry, do people like not know
what the word impeach means?
This is the problem
because people are so set
in what they think they know
and they can't learn anything new
and people keep asking,
why is the science changing?
Why is what the scientists are saying changing?
Because that's what science does.
Science learns new things
and the science adapts because of new things.
And when people are stuck
in the cement of their ideas
and can't move forward,
there's no place to go
and it's absolutely terrifying
because how are we supposed to move forward
if so many people are standing in cement?
Where are the jackhammers of truth
to free these people from the cement?
I don't know if they even exist.
That's a great analogy.
But yeah, you know what else changes
apart from science?
Viruses change.
Viruses mutate.
Viruses,
I don't want to say get more intelligent,
but they definitely adapt
and they can become more dangerous
and that's what we're seeing
with the Delta variant.
This is all stuff that
if we had been listening to the scientists
the whole time,
we would know this.
There's nothing here that was not presented
as something that was indeed possible.
But I think to your point,
with people not changing their minds,
it becomes an issue of pride.
And if you suddenly go and get the vaccine,
well, then you're admitting you're wrong
and you'd rather be dead than admit you're wrong.
Is there some kind of way we can make it
so that they get the vaccine
and that proves they were right?
Is there some way we can just jump through
all kinds of logic loops
and just make it so that,
yeah, this is your victory?
I don't know.
It might have to come down to something like that.
Kyle, I know you had something.
Well, yeah.
I was thinking as we spoke
and I just feel that I'm hearing such sympathy.
I think that right now maybe isn't the best time
to go over various critiques
because I don't think that vaccination
was his only issue,
especially with this tour.
And that needs to be very clear.
It was not what he was talking about.
He hated Hillary a lot, this much, I would say.
Yeah.
And that's not hyperbole.
And when you're saying wild things
about entire political parties
or entire classes of people
making generalizations
and then citing your bona fides
as some sort of intelligence guy,
I think that that is incredibly hostile
and that contributed in a huge way
to his alienation
and the lack of filters on information
and especially with the advent
of algorithmic social media.
And that, I think,
just bringing it back to something
he was really passionate about,
which was open source intelligence,
was this ever something we asked enough?
How do you filter in an environment
where all information is considered?
Because he truly believed that was important
or it was a part of American intelligence
that was missing
or a part of the intelligence community
that was neglected.
And I could see in his embracing of hackers
and with all of the kind of leaking
and stories that came about
in the last 20 years since 1994
when he spoke,
I think he saw a lot of potential
in getting more information out there
and letting people digest it.
But I don't know that we fully explored
the consequences of not filtering
and not verifying
and not having sources.
So, anyway, I think that further alienation
just throwing around stuff,
it scares people from challenging ideas,
especially when you wind it into
violent or other kinds of movements
that are based on fear
and based on hatred.
And that is...
I don't want to explore that now.
Right now, I'm so concerned about his family
and how perhaps estranged
they might be from him
because of maybe many more years
of wild ideas that he had
floated around the house
or whatever his dynamic is.
I know he has children.
I know that they also may be dealing
with health issues as a result of this.
And those concerns, I think,
should be front of mind.
But I feel a lot of different ways
about how this went.
Well, you're absolutely right
that there was more to this
than just anti-vaccine talk.
I couldn't care less if he hated Hillary,
but I am deeply concerned that
he also became a Holocaust denier,
was defending January 6th.
Everything you could imagine
that QAnon stood for,
he was right there.
And it's part of the same poison.
And it's something that we're seeing
happen to a lot of people.
We have to figure out how to handle this
because it's a disease in and of itself.
All right.
I'd like to move on to a couple of other things,
kind of related, actually.
And this is just sickening to read about.
The Health and Human Services Office
of Inspector General has told ABC News
that they're receiving increasing reports
of individuals creating, purchasing,
and using fake COVID-19 vaccination cards.
Now, the proliferation of these cards
can leave victims' personal identity vulnerable
and threaten the nation's hard-fought game
against the virus.
According to a special agent
in charge of healthcare fraud,
we are seeing it be widespread.
And part of that is because it's being done
across social media and e-commerce,
where anybody who might run into it
could become a participant in it.
The illicit niche industry
for forged vaccination cards
is hitting its stride
just as new vaccine requirements
are rapidly being implemented
at the federal, state, and local levels
and in both the public and private sectors,
requiring proof of inoculation
in order to work at a hospital,
teach or attend school,
work out at the gym,
or eat inside a restaurant.
Yet despite the new policies
and the FDA's full approval this month
of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine,
some hesitant Americans
still refuse to be vaccinated.
And that's interesting
because that was the major argument
that a lot of people were using
against getting the vaccine.
It hasn't been approved by the FDA.
That means it's an experiment.
Well, now it has been approved.
So what's the excuse now?
There's another excuse.
There's always going to be another excuse.
Don't fall for that,
that we just have to fulfill this one condition
and then the argument is over.
No, that's not how conspiracies work.
That's not how cults work.
There's always something else
that they will fall back on.
We have to treat this as a disease itself
and figure out how
to pull these people out somehow.
It's so tragic.
So yeah, fake cards everywhere.
I don't know what we can do about that.
I really don't know.
People are going to forge all kinds of things.
It's just a horrible scenario
that people are willing
to put their own health
and that of everyone around them
in great jeopardy.
Kyle?
I wanted to add,
I heard a woman was arrested
and for an extra $50
with your fake COVID card,
she was entering you in the database somehow.
The New York Excelsior database?
Yeah, I don't think that's true.
I don't think she could do that
unless she worked for New York State
and somehow had access.
Some story.
I can't cite it right now.
No, I believe she offered to do that.
Is that what she was offering?
I don't know.
She couldn't actually do it.
I would like to know
if she actually could do that.
I doubt it.
People are being charged with crimes
as a result of this though.
They should be.
Absolutely they should be
and a lot worse than
underage drinking at a bar.
This is something that could kill people.
Rob?
Yeah, I saw that story too
and I think she was in Brooklyn
and they busted her.
I think she was selling the counterfeit cards
for like $250
and I just thought,
imagine paying that much money
to avoid getting free medicine.
Yeah, paying that much money
to avoid getting a vaccine
that will save your life.
I mean, I never thought
we'd be dealing with issues like this.
It's just so bizarre and absurd.
Alice, go ahead.
Yeah, sure.
Two points on this.
The first one is that
we knew this was going to happen
for a very long time.
We knew that there were going to be
fake vaccines, fake vaccination cards.
The whole supply chain
when it comes to the virus
from PPE to now the vaccination cards
has been, I think,
rife with forgery and fraud
since probably about March 2020.
For the last, I guess,
eight or nine months or so,
that's an effort in which
I've been involved
along with King's College London
and Department of Homeland Security
and the work that I do
with the domain name
is to track all of this type of activity
in the DNS.
I've been doing that for about,
I would guess, nine or ten months now
and there is a massive amount
of vaccine-related activity,
especially when it comes
to vaccination cards in the DNS,
I would say,
over the last month, month and a half.
Also, not surprising,
but on the fake vaccination card side,
what was really interesting to me
was the ability to have
not just a fake vaccination card,
but to have a fake entry
put into the New York State database itself.
That's what we're talking about.
That's what we're talking about.
Do you really think that's a possibility?
It is.
Yeah.
Oh, it absolutely is
and it was part and parcel
with some of these scams.
In fact, if I recall correctly,
and I don't remember which one of the bus
with which it was associated,
but there was a woman
who worked in a doctor's office
in Patchogue on Long Island
who was part of the scam
and for a fee,
she would enter the vaccination data
into the New York State database.
Scary stuff.
That is unbelievable.
I just have no words for that,
but it should be doable
to at least find all the people
that she entered into the database.
There must be a record of the source somewhere
and at least find out
how many of those people
actually got the vaccine
and how many didn't.
Here's another story out of Quebec.
They're set to implement
a vaccine passport system
in some non-essential services
today, actually, September 1st,
but cybersecurity experts are saying
the QR codes the province is using
and the app that's being developed
to scan them pose privacy concerns.
Patrick Matthews says
creating an app that can read
the contents of Quebec's
digital vaccine passports
isn't that hard to do.
He's the co-founder of Hackfest,
which is an annual hacker event
in Quebec City,
which for some reason
I don't know about.
I'd like to go to that someday.
It says two of its members
built an app that could access
a person's name, date of birth,
and vaccination status
by scanning the QR code
provided to Quebecers
by the health ministry.
Two people that are not experts
in this at all
built an application
where you scan the QR code.
He said they built the app
in about 20 hours.
Now, starting today,
Quebecers will have to show
to access certain
non-essential activities.
Businesses will have access
to a free app from the government
that simply tells the user
whether or not a customer
is adequately vaccinated.
But Matthews says
a less scrupulous business owner
or employee could build
or purchase a third-party app
that instead saves their data,
which also includes
where a customer received
their vaccinations
and if they have contracted COVID-19.
Now, there's no location data
accessible from the QR code,
but the risk exists
because the government
chose technology
that's not secure for privacy.
It's not just the QR code
that could be exploited.
Hackfest also found a bug
in the app
when it was being developed
that led to over 300,000 QR codes
being exposed online.
He says they notified
the developer, Akinox,
and the issue was resolved
in 24 hours,
but he doesn't have a lot
of confidence in the company.
Their development environment
is exposed on the web.
We can see their source code.
They have bugs.
Yeah, it's sad to say
that a lot of these systems
are as insecure
as a lot of other systems,
but let's not be fooled
into thinking that means
that the need for the vaccine,
the need for confirmation
that you've gotten the vaccine
is any less important.
It's hugely important
and this should not keep you
from doing that,
but yeah, we're going to see
things like this.
Again, not a surprise.
Okay, we only have
a few minutes left
because there's another
completely different topic
I'd like to touch upon.
There was a massive hurricane
that hit New Orleans.
In fact, she's visiting us
right now.
Ida is here in the
New York metropolitan area.
A little bit of rain,
nothing like what hit New Orleans.
They're still blacked out.
Here's the thing.
We've been talking on this show
for literally decades
about the need for landlines,
the importance of landlines.
What are landlines?
I think I might have to
explain that actually.
Landlines are those phones
that have wires connected to them
and they go through
the telephone network.
Telephone poles outside,
that's why we call them that.
Actually, I think they're owned
by the electric company,
but they connect to a central office.
Every community has a central office.
It's a brick building
that's owned by the phone company,
Verizon in our case.
It's kind of mysterious.
You don't see a lot of people
going in and out.
Sometimes they don't have windows
and that's where the
switching equipment is.
Inside those buildings
are massive generators
that kick in
when there's a power failure.
That's why you never
lose the landline.
We've been through
so many hurricanes
out on Long Island
where the power has gone out
for weeks.
In each of those cases,
blizzards too,
the phone has always been there.
Now here in New Orleans,
we're hearing that
not only did the cell towers fail,
AT&T, massive failure,
but with no power,
how do you charge your cell phone?
How do you do that?
I was watching local coverage
and seeing how the reporters
were frustrated
because they couldn't reach
city officials
because the cell network was down,
because the phones were dead.
There was no way
to reach these people
to get vital updates.
I'm hearing reports
of elderly relatives
that cannot be reached
because they only have a cell phone
and the cell phone is dead
and even if it wasn't dead,
there's no cell tower
to communicate with.
All they had to do
was keep a landline.
All the phone companies have to do
is maintain the landlines.
Yeah, I know,
it's old technology,
but if you abandon old technology
in favor of new technology
and conversely,
if you cling to old technology
and ignore new technology,
those are both very stupid things to do
and we wind up learning
the same lesson
over and over and over again.
This didn't have to happen.
And if you don't want
to keep a landline in your house,
fine,
but there should at least be
a means for you
to access the landline network
such as,
oh, I don't know,
a pay phone?
How about those?
Keep those maintained.
Keep those operational.
They do serve a purpose
in emergencies.
And right now,
if there were prevalence
of landlines in New Orleans,
I can tell you this,
a lot of people around the world
and a lot of people in New Orleans
would feel a lot better
because they would be able to talk
to people in other parts of the world.
Anyone else want to speak up
on behalf of landlines
or drive the nail into the coffin?
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we spoke on this program,
I believe it was last week,
about the complete inverse
of the situation in Australia
where the telephone company
basically kept all the pay phones out there
but just made them free
so you can use them in emergencies.
That's now their main purpose
and that makes complete sense.
You have this stuff,
you have this infrastructure
and it works.
I don't think it's an unreasonable cost
to maintain the landline network.
I think it's still very useful,
especially in situations like that.
I grew up on Long Island myself
and I remember those hurricanes
in which the power was out,
the phone kept working.
And yeah,
it stinks to not have that option.
If the phone companies
don't want to do it,
give it to the telephone pioneers of America.
I'm sure they've still got a lot of energy
and can climb those poles
and maintain things
and would be happy to do it.
And if not them,
then a bunch of hackers,
anyone who is just realizing
the importance of this technology,
of this means of communication.
It makes no sense
to simply turn that off
and rely on something
that is much, much less able
to stand an emergency like this.
Even fiber optic phone lines,
they have a battery
connected to the phone line
that will die in a few hours.
It's not in the central office
like the old copper lines.
So that's a tremendous advantage.
Kyle, go ahead.
Well, my point would be basically
that the viability of the older network
is really judged on a profit model.
And I think in emergencies,
that's not the issue.
There's not a whole lot
when it comes to regional
and local emergency communications
that is sitting around discussing
just what price point
they will deny people a means
to get in touch in an emergency.
So for whatever it costs,
I just think that
if the system isn't used,
it should be put in some sort of idle state
and reform in some way
with some kind of operations
that don't necessarily see its viability
only as whether it is profitable or not.
Because again, in an emergency,
that's not the point.
It doesn't matter.
And we are historically a country
with many means of communication,
a whole variety,
a diverse landscape of it.
Let's keep it that way.
Yeah.
And considering the network is already there,
it's not like you have to start from scratch.
So this is just, it's foresight.
We've been talking about this for so long.
I don't know if anybody is listening,
but really it's an important thing
and we're seeing it play out
as I think we all knew that we would.
All right, boys.
This is it. Over the hill.
We are out of time,
but we're going to continue
on Off the Hook All the Time,
channel 2600 on YouTube.
Write to us, othat2600.com.
See you next week.
Good night.
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