and WBAI.org online. A listener-sponsored community radio station providing you a Pacifica state of mind
since 1960. Stay tuned for Off The Hook.
What?
Hello? Oh, it's 7 p.m. and it's a Wednesday,
and that means if you're listening to WBAI New York, it's time for Off The Hook.
That's
off the hook.
So
and a very good evening to our program is
Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you joined tonight by Kyle.
Yeah, I'm over here.
Over in Skype land, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gila.
Good evening.
We have Alex.
Following suit. Good evening.
And that was the smoothest intro I think we've had in months. Boy, let's just relish that for a
moment. We are on for an hour tonight, and we are doing at least another hour afterwards on Off The
Hook Overtime over on YouTube. You can get the link by going to 2600.com and looking at the top
of the page or just going to our YouTube channel, Channel 2600. There's been a lot of activity on
Channel 2600 lately. We have been listening in to those guys up north, the truckers that are
causing all manner of mayhem.
It's called the Freedom Convoy.
That's what they call it.
That's what they call themselves.
Not what I call it.
They identify as a free convoy.
Well, they can identify as whatever they wish, but it doesn't make it necessarily true.
Freedom to maybe stop a billion dollars in commerce.
I guess there's a special note of patriotism there.
But okay.
Let's look into this just a little bit because there is a hacker angle to this.
And what we have been doing over at 2600 is listening in to their communications because
they're using something known as Zello.
Now, Zello is an app.
It's kind of like a two-way radio.
You guys over in Skype land ever use this?
I've heard of it.
Yeah.
And I've heard that they were using this.
It's quite interesting that you were listening in.
Yeah.
The funny feature that I remember ages ago when you and I were playing around with this.
Years ago.
It was a really long time ago.
And since I think ran over one of the handsets that had it, but you still are familiar with
it and reminded me, hey, this is something we've used before.
Like, this is not unfamiliar.
And my account still worked.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the feature that is striking is the PTT function, the push to talk.
And does anybody remember Nextel cell phones?
Oh, God.
Yes.
Yeah.
Those were the most annoying phones in the world.
And people would chirp and they'd have the little push to talk.
It was like sitting next to a cop everywhere you went.
Yeah.
Because it would do the little like the Kindar or whatever kind of tone it was.
People somehow thought it was cool to have their conversations broadcast for everybody
here on both sides instead of just sitting next to somebody who was being annoying
as hell in a restaurant talking to somebody on the phone.
Now you got to hear the person on the other side as well.
Well, it started on, like, construction sites and places where nobody cared.
But yeah, it worked its way into everybody's phones.
You know, when Nextel was hurting for customers and needed everybody to have this function,
everybody started using what happened to them.
I haven't heard about that in a long time.
They got devoured by Sprint ages ago.
Also, ancient history.
But anyway, but they don't have that feature anymore.
I don't know if there was intellectual property.
I don't know how Zello adapted it.
It's basically the exact same function, though.
You press, like, the camera picture taking button, and it works similar.
It's different because you can talk to a whole bunch of people at once.
I guess Nextel, you could probably do the same thing.
But this, it's meant to be sort of like a two-way radio, except you're broadcasting
to many people with two-way radio, which you can do with a two-way radio.
I know that.
But this is all over the net, and it's digital, and it's powerful.
Yeah, and you can play back the audio there, which is really interesting.
It's, I think, similar to some of the voice chat rooms like Clubhouse that got really
popular a while ago.
It's tricky because they have a proprietary format.
So you can't record what is being broadcast.
No, yeah.
There's no way you can, like, download it or have an SD card or anything.
No.
So we've downloaded it.
We've recorded it.
But you're not supposed to be able to do that.
We got some help, and what's important is that it's being recorded.
Would you like to hear some of what was broadcast today?
We're listening into some of the coordinators of the convoy up in Ottawa, but they're actually
spread out throughout not only the country, but the world.
But there are people who are in Ottawa, in trucks, talking on this thing.
And you can just sort of get a sense as to how they think, what they plan for.
And no, go ahead, Kyle.
Oh, no, no.
Just look at us.
Look, you're giving them a voice.
They want to be heard.
And look how supportive we are.
I don't know if they want that kind of a voice, but we have been posting this both on our
website.
If you go to the 2600 Twitter account, which is 2600, you'll see we post links several
times a day to the most updated announcements or, I guess, just recordings of their conversations
for that part of the day.
We're also putting them on our YouTube channel, on channel 2600.
You can find them.
Just click on the video section, and you'll see a whole bunch of upside down Canadian
flags, which is what they're flying up there.
And you'll hear how they communicate amongst themselves what they're thinking today.
Now, today was a big day.
Yesterday was a big day, too, because the Emergencies Act was basically started by Trudeau.
And it's getting quite a bit of pushback, obviously, by these people.
But today, the Ottawa police took the next step.
And, of course, we know how these demonstrations go.
The next step being that they handed out flyers.
Man, I love Canada.
They handed out flyers.
That was the big deal.
So there's all kinds of reaction to that going on up there right now.
And who knows what's going to...
There might be a memo next.
Who knows?
Well, I'm matching the absurdity.
Like, the escalation being so well muted really contrasted and was complemented with the outrage
that a document like this would be circulated and that the emergency powers would be invoked
because they had shut down a city and the borders and everything else.
Well, now, okay.
So this recording that we grabbed today, it's an example of how they're basically scaring
themselves and coming up with rumors and then basically reacting to those rumors that
they themselves come up with.
And you'll hear basically the tone.
It might surprise you.
It might seem a whole lot friendlier than you expected, a whole lot more like listening
to your parents or something like that.
And it is.
It is.
But that's kind of how these things go.
Let's take a listen to the Canadian Freedom Convoy recorded earlier today.
I heard they're actually, if your children are found in the convoy or the protest or
whatnot, that they're actually just coming and taking your kids away, as far as I know.
I could be wrong, though.
Any way we can get that fact-checked?
Yes, that would be a good idea.
Yes, that would be a good idea.
I don't know where.
I don't know where to find it.
I read it somewhere or somebody told me somewhere.
But like I say, I could be wrong.
But if somebody else has the proper facts, absolutely.
In my mind, it's another scare tactic to try to scare people and not going over this weekend
with their kids and all that.
Is it a scare tactic that's going to lead to something else?
Like, are they saying we're going to take your kids if you bring them here because they
actually plan on getting aggressive?
Like, is that why?
I think, well, it seems the weekends that they're doing the most action.
So I would say, yeah, the weekends, I'd probably, just in case, be safe.
Take your kids out to somewhere else on the weekends, because that seems to be when the
most action happens.
It's an extremely sad state of affairs when the police warn you, you can't take your children
or you shouldn't take your children, and try to install a fear in you that, well, if you
do, there might be a problem because your kids might have the crap kicked out of them
when the police come to attack you guys.
So yeah, it's real sad.
I grew up in the system when I was young.
I'm not anymore, obviously.
But they do have, they can walk into anybody's home and take out your children whenever they
want, with police supervision, of course.
Possibly, I'm not sure if it's with a warrant or without a warrant or something like that,
but with this Emergency Act, I'd definitely look in to see whether or not they can just
walk in and take if they find you a part of this.
Just to cut in there, I tell them to be real careful that they're not touching any Indigenous
children, it's against the law.
So they better be real careful, and I'm a youth care part social worker by trade, and
I was in the system for all of them, the SCOOP, residential and foster care, so they need
to be real careful.
If I was anybody with a child, I would just take them to Grandma and Grandpa's, and then
they can be proud of Mom and Pops for fighting for freedom.
And there you go.
That was recorded today on one of the Zillow channels that the Canadian Convoy People Organizers
are communicating on.
And I thought it was just very interesting how they basically made up this scenario where
your kids, I heard that your kids are going to be taken away from you.
Wait, did you hear it?
Somebody told me or I read it somewhere, I don't remember, we should verify.
And then they just kept building on that as if it was fact, and then the kids were getting
the crap kicked out of them and all sorts of things, scenarios, and this is how panic
and defensiveness and regrettable actions happen.
It's because of this kind of thing being spread around.
Now, it's not always like that.
Lots of times it's just convivial chatter, but you can see how after three or so weeks
of this, it could be building up to something unpleasant.
What do you guys over in SkyPlanet think?
It's wild.
Like you said, they're sort of building their own mythology from whole cloth while they're
just having these chats.
These things that they were theorizing about when you were recording this by now are completely
canonical in everyone's mind, just as sure as like pizza places are hiding children in
the basements or whatnot.
It's wild to just listen to this happen and everyone sounds completely reasonable about
it.
They don't sound like raving lunatics shouting on street corners.
They're all just like, yeah, they're definitely going to come and take your kids away and
they better not.
And it's wild.
Yeah, you know, you touched upon something really interesting because, yes, they do start
sound very sane, very friendly.
I like these people.
I listen to them and they seem so nice and pleasant to be around.
But then they start talking about various things in society.
And when the subject turns to, say, Black Lives Matter or to anti-fascist, the hatred
is just there.
It sounds very friendly, but the hatred is just right there bubbling under the surface.
And it's the thing that really is incredible is that when they're complaining about certain
things in society that are happening as a result of the pandemic, they only go after
those people in a particular political party.
When the same exact thing happens under different leadership and whether it's a Republican
governor or premier, somebody who's conservative, they don't get any of the vitriol.
They don't get any of the hostility.
It's always the liberals, the Democrats, the people that vote differently.
And that, to me, is what negates the entire thing.
If you're upset at vaccine mandates or mask mandates or things like that, be upset at
everybody because the vast majority of people support this.
If you're only upset at one particular sliver of the political spectrum, then it's a political
issue.
It's not a pandemic issue in my eyes.
Yeah, you should have come up there to talk politics instead of pandemic.
Yes, absolutely.
Alex, do you have something?
Yeah, what's interesting here is there's a lot of parallels, I think, between the
polemical nature of the political divide here in the United States and what's been
happening over in Canada as well.
And if you recall last week, we talked about some particularly problematic security issues
that GiveSendMe had with regard to data being leaked from their site.
And within the last week, there was another data leak.
Hang on, Hang on, GiveSendMe or GiveSendGo?
Which is it?
GiveSendGo.
I think it was GiveSendGo.
Yes, GiveSendGo.
That's right, GiveSendGo.
So there was apparently another data leak from GiveSendGo within the last week, which
had identified the source of many of the donations for the Freedom Convoy in Canada as
originating from the United States.
I don't get this.
We talked about this last week.
We talked about the data breach.
How did they have another data breach after this, after it was known by everybody?
Is this a remnant of the first data breach or was it actually another data breach?
Best I can tell, I think it was a different data breach.
I think it was a completely different data breach.
And they took themselves completely offline earlier this week.
They got redirected last week to...
If you went to GiveSendGo for a minute over the weekend, it was actually playing over
a video from the movie Frozen, saying this site has been frozen.
It's pretty great.
I think that might have happened on Monday.
I'm looking at a story here.
It says GiveSendGo's website on Monday said it was under maintenance hours after the site
was hijacked and redirected to a page believed to be controlled by hackers, which no longer
loads.
The redirected page condemned the truckers who descended on Canada's capital to oppose
mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, causing widespread disruption to traffic and trade for more
than a week.
The page also contained a link to a file containing tens of thousands of records of what was
described as raw donation data about those who donated to the Freedom Convoy.
A short time later, non-profit leak site, guess who?
Distributed Denial of Secrets, said it had received 30 megabytes of donor information
from GiveSendGo.
Not from GiveSendGo, not from the people who run that, I don't think.
But certainly from the website, including self-reported names, email addresses, zip
codes, and IP addresses.
Now, of course, Distributed Denial of Service, I'm sorry, Distributed Denial of Secrets,
who we've had on this program, they're a site known for hosting sets of leaked data,
including far-right groups.
They said that the data would only be provided to researchers and journalists.
That's rather responsible, I think.
GiveSendGo co-founder, Jacob Wells, did not respond to a request for comment.
Hasn't been talking to anybody.
Probably doesn't have much to say.
Well, what can you say?
What can you say?
I picked the wrong line of work.
The breach is separate.
So that answers our question.
Separate from an earlier security lapse in which GiveSendGo left exposed to the internet
an Amazon-hosted S3 bucket.
I don't know what that is.
It's a virtual server.
They refer to them as buckets.
Yeah, it's like a VPS, or it's an instance of a computer in the cloud.
I don't like the use of these words, instance, buckets.
I like the old use of the words, but whatever.
Okay, fine.
They had an S3 bucket, which tipped over and spilled about 1,000 identity documents.
It got kicked.
Yeah, it sure did.
The Boston, Massachusetts-based GiveSendGo is cursing the Canadian truckers now forever,
I think.
They became the primary donation service for the Freedom Convoy last month after GoFundMe
halted the crowdsourcing campaign and froze millions of dollars in donations,
citing police reports of violence across Ottawa.
Over the weekend, a Canadian court issued an order halting access to the funds collected
by GiveSendGo, which the company said it would defy.
Yeah, and the protesters raised more than $8 million for the Freedom Convoy,
and that's no small bit of change.
It raises some questions and concerns, obviously, when something like this happens,
whether it's the Emergencies Act or some other bit of law that prevents
certain groups from raising money.
I don't know, Alex, as a lawyer, do you think this is something that
is a potential threat to civil liberties or other groups that might not be causing such mayhem?
So are you asking if this is going to be a slippery slope type of situation?
Yeah, I think that's what I'm asking.
Yeah, I think it certainly has the potential to be that, given what political party is in power.
I think it's always tricky, though, when you're dealing with donations to these types of causes
that are going for disruptive purposes.
And I think, ultimately, what we need to look at, whether it's the right or the left,
is what's the goal and what's the intention of the use of these particular funds?
And here it was to support this Freedom Convoy effort that was highly disruptive.
It was illegal in lots of ways, in terms of a protest.
And incredibly, I think, just obstructive with respect to commerce,
which is why the Canadian government invoked the Emergency Powers Act,
which is not something that they would invoke in the first instance or the second instance.
This is something that they would invoke really only as a last resort.
And so I think we do have to be very careful about seizing funds, seizing money, et cetera.
But looking at a lot of the data is really interesting here, too,
because the majority of the donations seem to have come from Americans as opposed to Canadians.
And I think it's certainly a curious phenomenon.
Whenever you see foreign money pouring into a domestic civil unrest issue,
that certainly would raise red flags for me as an American,
if Canadian money was pouring in for somewhat disruptive purposes.
And also, I think anytime money is flowing between hands and certainly across borders,
we have to be extraordinarily careful about the source and origin of that money to make sure
that it's not dark money, to make sure that it is money that's not coming from,
let's say, a sanctioned individual or a designated person who's on the U.S. sanctions list.
And so there's a lot of, I think, checks and balances that go into
how we handle the flows of money.
All right. Go ahead, Rob.
Another thing that strikes me about this whole thing is we know they ended up on Give, Send,
Go because GoFundMe kicked them. The big names, the big established names in this industry
wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. And here comes Give, Send, Go, which I don't think
anyone really heard about before this whole mess. And it strikes me that it's not just
one interesting thing to keep an eye on is like, where's the grift?
And I don't think anyone's going to go broke if they get into the trade of like
looking at the white supremacists who are being driven off the traditionally used services and
going, hey, guys, I'll just put up a fresh new site for you. And you can put up,
as Give, Send, Go has proven, you could put up any old garbage site that doesn't work.
And you could probably come away with that with a lot of money that was destined for
white supremacy and whatnot. So this is another thing. These people may find themselves especially
vulnerable to being fooled into sending their hate funds to the wrong place.
It just to kind of piggyback on what Rob was saying, Give, Send, Go is trying to differentiate
itself in the space. I'm going to disagree with you for a second and say that people had not heard
of it before this mess because they had. Give, Send, Go is really priding itself on stepping
into the crowdfunding space where the big players won't. Before the Freedom Convoy,
the biggest crowdfunding campaign on Give, Send, Go was for Kyle Rittenhouse's Defense Fund.
This is a crowdfunding site with a very particular point of view
and a very particular audience they're working for. And you can tell they're not saying they're
the biggest crowdfunding site. They're saying they're not the best, not saying they're the
best. Excuse me. They're not saying they're the most secure. The way they're promoting themselves
and please do not shoot the messenger for this, but the way they're promoting themselves is by
referring to themselves as the number one Christian crowdfunding site. And that is in the very narrow
definition of Christian that's also walking the line in terms of like it can be sort of white
nationalism. It can be white supremacy. And it's very specific about don't tell me what to do.
I'm raising money for this. I am. I'm really curious as well about
how much this smacks of some of the like how much of this might have been astroturfed and how much
is really grassroots. Like what kind of media were the people that are involved watching
in the run up? You look at some of the terms and the language, the talking points.
Has this stuff been market tested? The smacks of like the psychographics and some of the other
stuff that we saw stateside. So the money is coming from out of the country. There's sympathetic
people who are getting whipped up into a frenzy with all of these talking points and localized
grievances. And the whole point is to disrupt and and shut down a government that is is basically
considered an adversary to the people involved. How much of this has been orchestrated and how
much is just a chance confluence of like minded individuals who happen to be carrying all the
same slogans? And, you know, it's sort of a learned thing. I'm curious how much social
media stuff and and other kinds of nudges got these people there. Well, it's interesting because
that makes me think of Canadian media in general. It's never been a better time to have a Canadian
TV dish. Believe me, I've been glued to the to the networks up there. There's basically there
are three networks as CBC, which you've heard of. It's a government run and then two commercial
networks, CTV and Global. And they don't have a fox. There isn't some crazy right wing TV network
that is spreading lies. They all do a fairly good job of being in the middle of which in their
middle. It's a bit more to our left, I guess, but that doesn't make them biased to the left.
It just means that we're we're hopelessly on the right in this country. You also have CPAC,
which, as I mentioned before, is not the same thing as in this country. It's Canadian Public
Affairs Channel. It's like their C-SPAN. And they broadcast the the parliament hearings and various
other things as well. So that's where you might get some exposure to some of these
viewpoints that don't really align themselves with facts. And it's even an example of of how
some of the people on the Zillow chats are talking about this, having the fundraising,
the crowdsourcing dry up or be blocked. They're saying, what about the Montgomery bus boycott?
This would have been used against those people. And it's just it's incredible to listen to their
logic and basically trying to equate themselves with people fighting for civil rights in the
1960s or worse, fighting the Nazis. I've I've heard this so many times where, yeah,
we're we're just like the Jews being persecuted. And yeah, it's I don't know. Does anybody have
a good comeback for when that particular bit of logic, either the civil rights or the
Holocaust parallels, is inevitably brought up? Gila, go ahead.
OK, I'll jump on that. It is so frustrating, so scary. It is it has curdled a lot of my feelings.
And I just want to go back to something you said a minute ago, because you said it wasn't
about the pandemic. It was about politics. And I agree. The whole thing has been so
emphatically this is all politics anymore. And, you know, people don't want to believe that
there's still covid. They don't want to believe that it's still a thing. It's all politics. When
people talk about it, when people show up wearing yellow stars that say not vaccinated.
Which is offensive to the world, really, and offensive to the memory of all the people who
were murdered in the Holocaust, which, again, not just Jews, a lot of people. Because.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to collect my thoughts. It's very, very frustrating.
Use the idea that you could be spreading something with impunity. And this is they're saying,
oh, well, you know, people thought the Jews had diseases. People convinced the whole entire world.
People convinced themselves that the Jews had diseases. And it's the same thing for us.
And it's not. And if they're not willing to see the difference in terms of science,
like there's actual science. This is an actual thing. And it's not.
Like there's actual science. This is an actual global pandemic. There is an illness. And if you
choose not to believe that it exists, if you choose not to believe that you can spread it
just because you don't think you have it, it's not anything that people believe they're being
persecuted for their beliefs. First of all, they're not being persecuted. Full stop. Let's
just get that out of the way. And I'm sorry, I have a lot of emotion around this and I'm
having a hard time vocalizing a lot. Of course, it's an emotional issue. But you said a very
important word just now. You said if you choose choice, they have a choice. They're trying to
tell us that they have no choice, that they're being forced. No, nobody is forcing you to do
anything. But if you make certain choices, there are consequences to those choices.
Maybe the consequence is getting the disease that you're trying not to get by not getting
vaccinated. It's not fair, but that's how it works. Or maybe the choice is that you can't
participate in this activity because there are other people there that you might infect if,
in fact, you are carrying that disease. You are making the choice, though, and that has never been
taken away. Right. And there are lots of belief systems to which people adhere that give them
meaning and keep them from doing certain things, right? Like certain beliefs,
you don't eat certain things. If you believe certain things, you don't
watch certain entertainments. This is the same kind of thing. But people, I believe that people
are attempting to say that they're being persecuted for their choice not to do something, which is just
emphatically not what's happening. And again, we need to talk about what the word persecution
actually means. I am willing to provide dictionaries for anybody who needs one.
This is not persecution. No one's coming to kill you. No one's taking away your property.
No one's taking away your children. No one's taking away your rights.
And we need to remember that. That's very true. Very well said.
Another angle that really disturbed me in their discussions was the comparison.
They're trying to equate counter-processors. They call them anarchists or leftist anarchists or
whatever and basically blaming on them and making them responsible. Anything that happens is probably
an agitator or an instigator. And they're the real problem here. We heard the same thing with BLM in
the States and that it was all people that were agitators or that somebody paid for them to be
there or whatever trope they were running out then. But the problem with that, I find, is that
the far-right ideologies that underlie this thing have a proven track record that is horrible.
And to try to compare that history and the neo-fascist white supremacist movement
to counter-protesters, people who are willing to stand up to that and push back and say,
no, this is not actually what a pluralistic society is about and we will not let this
continue unconfronted, is really insulting. And it's just a completely false comparison.
Tell me anything an anarchist group has done over time, and I mean modern anarchist movement or
political action that has confronted groups like this, that compares anything to what happened in
World War II. I really find that that is insulting to my intelligence and so many other aspects of
this. It's vile, it's foul. And to just constantly run that you're fighting the good fight because
there's so many people against you up there. Well, maybe that's the problem. They're against
you because what you're promoting is abhorrent. And that's why they're against you.
And if you listen to these communications, you just hear how it's ingrained. And this
goes beyond the convoy. This basically speaks to the entire right-wing movement.
They are convinced that everybody who thinks differently is violent, is destroying all
kinds of things, property, society. We are unsavable. We're filled with hatred and all
kinds of things. And there are instances where we make the same assumptions about people
on the other side, absolutely. But it's scary to hear it directed towards you.
When you know the facts, when you know the people that you surround yourselves with, and you see how
it's being so willfully distorted. And basically, this is their mantra. This is what they
say to each other to reassure themselves and to gain more followers. And it works because, boy,
they sound friendly. They sound pleasant. They sound like the kind of people you want to hang
out with. Not like those horrible anarchists burning down buildings and entire cities.
And we kind of let them set the narrative. When you talk about Black Lives Matter,
you have to be defensive. Yeah, you'll see all kinds of Trump flags and banners and pickup
trucks and things like that. But you'll be afraid to fly a BLM flag because that's how the narrative
has been set. And the majority of people, I would say, are believing it. They're being taken in by
it. And it's scary to see how information can be manipulated in this manner and from the bottom up,
too. Yeah, I hear you so loudly with that. This goes with gender and sexual orientation as well.
That's why you hear a lot of condemnation and accusations. But people who identify or are
marginalized are afraid to confront those who are violent and say really awful things about
what they are capable or what their intentions are in the world when it's completely unfounded.
What that does is it paints you with a broad brush and then you become ripe for attack and become
someone who could be victimized by someone who's grossly misled. But think about this,
the issue of vaccines and masks and things like that. It's not something that only people on the
right wing are concerned about. And if this was such a worthy movement, a worthy goal that
everybody up there is involved with, then why wouldn't there be BLM representation? Why wouldn't
people who believe Black Lives Matter also be marching with these people saying, yeah, you're
right. Why wouldn't you be welcoming them? And that just tells me this is a very polarized thing.
It's a very political thing aimed at one specific part of society. Go ahead, Alex.
On that very point, there is a clear pathway by which this information is funneled to users and
users and recipients of this information are radicalized. And this is something actually that
one of our former guests here on Off the Hook has detailed to the media over the last week
in several different variations. I'm talking about Dr. Welton Chang, who when he was here on
Off the Hook with us, he was the CTO of Human Rights First. Now he runs a company called PIRA,
which tracks and monitors extremist activity. And I helped him out in some small respects with
that. But what Dr. Welton Chang was talking about, and I think that we have all seen this,
is the pathway here usually starts with Facebook, with a Facebook group, or are we calling it Meta
now? I don't know. But let's just for the sake of clarity, call it Facebook. So these ideologues
will start a Facebook group or Truckers for Freedom or something like that. And Facebook,
because it's such a popular platform, and because of the way in which the algorithms work, it's easy
to amplify this misinformation once there's a lot of engagement with that particular content,
with that content. Once that content gets a lot of traction, and those Facebook groups get a lot
of attention, you can have them start to grow exponentially over a matter of days. It might
start with 100, and then 9, 10 hours, you might have, you know, 2000 users. The next day, you
might have 10,000 or 50,000 users in a particular Facebook group. But Facebook has gotten wise to
the fact that their groups are being misused to mislead a lot of users and spread misinformation.
And so what Facebook does is they enforce their own policies, their acceptable use policies,
and they shut down these groups. However, it's too late. Because they've started the Facebook group
that these the persons who are behind these groups and originated them know that the group
full well is going to be shut down in a matter of time. And by the time they're shut down, they've
already funneled the users into a Telegram channel. Now you have 1000s and 1000s of users in
a Telegram channel. And the Facebook group doesn't serve any purpose anymore. You might start another
Facebook group and radicalize and funnel more users into the Telegram group. But Telegram being
an overseas entity doesn't have a lot of enforcement with respect to this. And let me tell
you some of the stuff. I'm in some of these Telegram groups, and I've been watching them for
the last, you know, week and a half or so. And you know, don't forget, I, I have a keen interest in
the NFL as their former CISO. And these, these freedom convoy truckers had clear designs on
trying to disrupt the the Super Bowl on Sunday, which did not materialize. I'm glad to say I think
DHS and a lot of other security precautions probably scared them off. But right now, in this
Telegram group, within the last two hours, I'm talking about monitoring what these guys are
saying, is they are amassing a lot of people to go after a Washington Post reporter by the name of
Aaron C. Davis, an investigative reporter at the Washington Post, who I believe today reported that
the donations through give, send, go, whatever the hell it is, give, send, go, I think that's right.
Once I came back online last night, there's within the last 24 hours, I believe something
like $1.2 million has been again, funneled over to these freedom convoy truckers. And what the
Washington Post was doing was actually investigating, I think, using a lot of the leaked data
and looking at and contacting some of the donors themselves. So what these people in
a Telegram group are talking about now is going after him, emailing him, somebody is saying,
you know what, this is a quote, you know what, everybody should email this turd and tell him
exactly why people have donated. One word, freedom. Blow up his phone, email, everything, make it so
it takes him days to get through them all. He wants a story, let's give him one. And it's going
on and on and on. And they're start talking about trashing him smartly and publicly with the press.
You know, they're organizing really against this reporter for reporting on their very own
activity. So these Telegram groups where people really fester and foment this kind of misinformation
are extraordinarily dangerous. Because if you scroll through these Telegram groups, you will
see that it's not just misinformation and vitriol about reporters and stories. They are promoting
your run of the mill crazy conspiracy theories about human trafficking, about 5G networks,
about, you know, the dangers of the political left. It's really a scary tunnel and funnel
that these people find themselves in. Wow. So we're all kind of monitoring all these groups
of people. And I guess we're having nightmares as a result of this. But it's important. And you can
do it too. You know, anyone out there has the ability to track down these groups or apps that
will help them monitor what's going on. The important thing is pay attention. And I think
that's what we always say here on Off The Hook is pay attention and share your information.
Yeah. And if you found out a way that Telegram is broken,
you can always write to us at OTH at 2600 dot com.
Absolutely. Now, Alex, you posted a story earlier today. I don't want to spend the whole time
talking about the truckers. Let's move on to this. This this is about people in Florida
paying traffic fines. And apparently when they went to the website to pay traffic fines,
they were directed to pro Trump merchandise. Did I read that right?
Yeah, you did. It's a it's a really bizarre story that I think a long term listener had
directed me to on Twitter. And it's really fascinating, too, because the the website that
is listed on these tickets that I guess a lot of law enforcement officers in this area of Florida
have been handing out is a typo and it has the wrong domain name on the ticket. So the the domain
name that is that is supposed to be on the ticket. And presumably these are in and around
the Miami area that these tickets have been handed out because the domain name that is
supposed to be on the ticket should be Miami hyphen Dade clerk dot com, where you can go for
information about how to pay your ticket and whatnot. But the ticket was printed with the
domain name Miami Dade clerk dot com. So the difference there being there was no hyphen
between Miami and Dade and Miami Dade clerk dot com takes you to a site where you can
buy Trump merchandise. OK, so my question then is, did the people selling Trump merchandise
notice this and register that domain and make this happen? Is that how it played out?
Interesting is, you know, and that's that's really quite a good question. And that's actually
the question. Because if they did, if they did, they get all credit for that. That's that's
clever. All right. And it's a stupidity of the people who printed the tickets.
Well, I think there is certainly an element of that regardless. But what's interesting here
is if you look up the who is records of Miami Dade clerk dot com, this is the site that's
printed on the tickets that it has omitted the hyphen. It wasn't registered recently.
It was registered on December 14th, 2007, really a really long time ago.
This this domain name has been in existence, so it's probably taken lots of different iterations
in that time. And what's really curious about it, too, is that and I'm wondering, actually,
maybe I'll pose this question to you guys. Could you guess what domain name registrar
is used for this domain name? Well, I'm going to guess GoDaddy because I always do.
But failing that, I'll say something like Namecheap.
No, it's none other than Epic, which is known for hosting a lot of extremist and far right
politically websites and also is a domain name registrar that suffered a massive data
breach last data breach last year as well. Well, OK, so my question to you is, are you
able to tell if the registrar has changed in a certain amount of time? In other words,
can we go back, say, two years? Was Epic the registrar at that point?
I will be able to look into that and I'll get back to you in about 30 seconds.
OK, well, because I will tell us if this is something that was a long game that was planned
out in advance or somebody did see an opportunity and maybe bought the domain from the whoever was
holding it at that time. I imagine you can't tell who actually owns the domain because everybody
keeps that information secret now. Yeah, that's correct. That's it's behind a proxy at the moment.
But if I go into the who is history here, I may be able to find some some additional information.
Also, go on the Wayback Machine on Internet Archive and check the site from a year ago,
two years ago, see where it went then. Yep, that's absolutely correct. You might
have some some additional screenshots and things like that. While you're looking at
Let me quickly read this other story. Missouri Governor Mike Parson, remember him? His wacky
but chilling public persecution of a journalist he accused of hacking a state education website
has thankfully been put to an end, according to this story from Gizmodo. Despite all the
ruckus, apparently Parson still does not know what hacking actually means. Cole County Prosecutor
Locke Thompson has decided not to pursue criminal charges against Josh Renaud, a journalist for the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch who discovered a gaping cybersecurity hole in the Missouri
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website and published a story on it last October.
The cybersecurity flaw left the social security numbers of more than 100,000 school teachers,
administrators and counselors exposed to the public. And by reporting on that,
the governor accused him of hacking by looking at source code of a website. In a statement
published on Friday, Thompson thanked the governor for passing along his concerns and said
his office had a zero tolerance policy for the unauthorized taking and using of the personal
information of any person. There is an argument to be made that there was a violation of law.
However, upon a review of the case file, the issues at the heart of the investigation have
been resolved through non-legal means. As such, it is not in the best interest of Cole County
citizens to utilize the significant resources and taxpayer dollars that would be necessary to
pursue misdemeanor criminal charges in this case. The investigation is now closed and the Cole
County Prosecutor's Office will have no further comment on this matter. To me, that's just
basically they're trying to cover their asses and get away from this embarrassing incident
without actually admitting that the governor was completely wrong.
And this was absurdity to the highest degree.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to go back to the Miami Dade issue? I've got an update for you there.
Yeah. But I find this other story really fascinating too. So in investigating this,
this domain also existed way back in 2004. It seems MiamiDadeClerk.com, which is the
website, the domain name that's hosting the Trump content. It seems like it probably expired in 2005
or at least sometime before 2007. And it was in the possession of a registrar known as Fabulous
during, I guess from 2007 to about 2018 is what it looks like. And Fabulous is a registrar
that is known for servicing domainers or people that have a huge portfolio of domains.
And I think you have to have a certain worth of domain names, a certain bucket, if you will,
of domains that is amassed to a certain value in order to even to use the Fabulous registrar.
But in 2018, this is when it probably changed hands. Somebody probably bought this from the
domainer because in 2018, let's see, on 11 June 2018, that's when Epic became the registrar. So
it was very likely transferred from a domainer at Fabulous over to Epic. And then my guess is
in June of 2018, just ahead of the midterm elections, in fact, if you think about that,
it probably started hosting Trump content. That would be my guess.
And my guess would be that these tickets probably were printed at about that time with the wrong
domain name on them. If somebody down in Florida can get one of these tickets for us, just,
you know, drive on safely for a few blocks and get a ticket. And let's look at the bottom,
wherever they have the URL and tell us, actually, that's not going to be because we know it's there.
But at some point they had to reprint the tickets. They had to basically... Well,
sometimes they have a date on the ticket of when they printed it. So there might be a year on
there. So yeah, get that ticket and let us know if you see a date as to when it was printed.
And that'll tell us. I'll bet it's 2018. I'll bet it's 2018 when they reprinted them.
It strikes me this story about the domain view source page thing. The very thing that he was
trying to get a case built on would have prevented them from having that stuff. In other words,
if an engineer was viewing source and they saw that stuff and said, oh yeah, this is probably
a bad idea. We shouldn't have this. Then they would have gone back, rewritten the site or
otherwise built their CSS or whatever people are doing with webpages these days. They would have
done a better job and it wouldn't have been invulnerable. So he's basically doing the classic
thing of like, let's have less information and that'll make things more secure. Utter stupidity.
You're back in Missouri now. I was in Florida. You went to Missouri. I just want to make sure
people are aware that we're hopping all over the country. Rob, which story are you commenting on?
Well, I have something else to talk about while we've got a few minutes left in the show.
It's some sad news. Those who have been listening to this program for a long time will remember
our friend Jim, Jeopardy! Jim, also known as Red Balaclava, who was on this program for many,
many years until he had a stroke in 2008 from which he's been recovering since then. We just
have the quick news from his family that he has been dealing with long-term illnesses that have
recently taken a turn for the worse. He is in care. He is getting the treatment that he needs.
He is getting medical help, but he could use some cheering up. If any of you listeners would
like to send messages, he can't receive flowers or things, but if you would like to send letters or
cards, send us an email, oth2600.com, and we will reply with the mailing address where you can get
things like that to him. Or if you just want to send your message via email, we will pass that
along and make sure it gets relayed to him. If Jim is listening out there, we send all
the best to you. There are certainly challenges that he has been facing, and boy, the fortitude,
the courage he has shown over the last number of years since suffering that stroke. He's been on
the radio since then as well, which was always awesome. Yeah, he was sitting in at Atlantic
Avenue when we were back at the station and always out on an evening making the trip to try to come
see maybe after the show and stuff. So we sorely miss him, especially in the last couple of years
and stuff. We've been following along, but feeling like we need to share this and not bear it
ourselves because we're a small group. We care for each other, and it's a lot. It's a pretty
heavy thing for him and everybody. He's got that hacker spirit and always finds a way. So my hope
is that this is no exception and that all of us in the community can band together and send
our best. And as Rob mentioned, email us if you want to send something to him. Again, oth
at 2600.com. Alastair, do you have a closing thought? Because we are about to go over time
over on YouTube. We can continue the conversation over there. Yeah, I think we should do that.
Okay, then we will. Again, the registration for HOPE is open. People, if you want to attend the
conference taking place July 22nd to 24th at St. John's University in Queens, it's going to be
awesome. Just go to hope.net and all the information is there. We're looking for speakers, people who
can give all kinds of talks. We talked about a couple of issues today, but there are so many
things in the hacker community that you can discuss and share. It doesn't matter what your
background is, what your qualifications are. It doesn't matter your age. There is an audience
that will be welcoming and will learn something from what you have to share. So again, hope.net.
Help us build a truly awesome conference. It's difficult. I know it's the first time since
the pandemic, and we're hoping it'll be basically starting to become a memory at that point.
It's also the first time in a new location, so it's going to be a challenge.
It's going to be particularly difficult, and that's why we need as much help as possible. So
again, hope.net. I guess we can talk more about that in overtime. We'll be on overtime at 8 o'clock,
youtube.com slash channel 2600, or go to the link on top of 2600.com.
We will be back here next week at 7 p.m. See you then. Good night.
Flying like birds, high in the sky above my deck chair.
I don't like anchovies on top of strawberries and cream.
I don't like anchovies on top of strawberries and cream.
I don't like anchovies on top of strawberries and cream.
I can't pretend to be someone else. Also, my pretend friend tells me.
Unfinished words, flying like birds, colliding circles in the sky.
Left is right and right is wrong.