and WBAI.org online. Stay tuned.
Why Hello there. It's seven o'clock and you're listening to WBAI in New York.
It's a Wednesday evening. And every now and then that means it's time for off
the hook.
The telephone keeps ringing. So I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Oh, Billy Bond, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. One, two, three, go!
And a very good evening to our program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Kyle. Hi, E. How you doing? Pretty good.
And out there on Skype land, it looks like we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening. And we have Gila. Good evening.
And my goodness, is that Alex? Alex has been struck dumb.
We see him. He's waving at us, but I can't quite seem to find the words.
I'm here. Good evening. There you are. Okay.
You look different. You look like you're coming in like PAL format instead of NTSC.
You know, it's, yeah, it's a different video standard,
which indicates to me that you're in a different part of the world.
I am indeed. I am in a much different part of the world at the moment.
Yeah, did you think you could hide that? I can tell. I can see. I can see that.
Yeah, nothing gets past you, Emmanuel. Let me tell you that.
Not really, no. You seem to be somewhere in the Western Hemisphere
where people drive on the right-hand side of the road,
and it's currently nighttime, and English is not the first language.
I'm just getting that from your eyes.
Yeah, that's all true. All true. Fantastic.
How about that? Yep. Yep. And could you tell him on an island?
You know what? That didn't come through. It did not come through.
It didn't come through.
Significance to the letter G, though. Does that mean anything to you? The letter G?
To the letter G? No, it doesn't. No.
Okay. Well, how about did you have a childhood?
Did I have a childhood? Yes. Yes, I did.
Okay. All right. Then I think we're zeroing in on your issues here.
Okay. Okay. Fine.
By the way, listeners, if you want a reading, it doesn't cost much.
We're here to offer that to you.
No, seriously, though, this is off the hook.
In case you're not familiar, in case you've been away, we've been away for a while.
We've been on for three weeks. Apologies for that.
Here's what happened.
We had transmitter maintenance that was going on, seemed to be going on forever,
and somebody thought, and it's not BAI, it's whoever maintains transmitters for most of the radio stations that are on four times square.
They thought the best time to do that is in the middle of the day, for several days in the middle of the week.
And while it was finished, basically, we had all kinds of other obligations.
For instance, there was a live broadcast from Nairobi.
And I guess the best time to do that is 2 a.m. their time, which was when we were on the air.
So we stepped aside last week for that, for the better interest.
So I'm sorry for listeners who might be confused, who might not have been able to find us over the last couple of weeks.
We're here now, and we hope you're there as well.
Of course, you can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
And, of course, you can always go to WBAI.org, and especially go there if you wish to donate to keep the radio station going
or call 212-209-2950.
I think that number always works.
That's how we stay on the air without commercials.
And we've been doing it, not us, but the radio station since 1960.
So we're on this week, and hopefully we'll be on for the coming Wednesdays.
And we're doing overtime tonight as well at 8 o'clock on YouTube.
Go to 2600.com, look at the top of the page for the link, or just go to our YouTube channel of Channel 2600.
One word, and the number's 2600.
So, Alex, tell us something about where you are right now.
Sure, absolutely.
And I'll say, you know, I'm at a place in the world where I probably won't join everybody for overtime because it will be late.
Because of the dictatorship that you're there, they don't allow overtime?
That's absolutely true, yeah.
They don't allow YouTube at all.
Oh, wow.
You know, I am in a part of France that is an island.
And in the Tyrrhenian Sea, I'm in Corsica.
I am on the eastern side of Corsica at the moment.
No YouTube allowed in Corsica.
Spread that around everybody.
This is straight from Alex, and as you know, he never gives out bad information.
That's true, exactly, yeah.
But have you ever been to Corsica?
I have never been to Corsica.
Yeah, it's quite a magical place, I have to say.
The mountains are tall and beautiful, and the beaches are incredible, and the driving is typically European.
It just always amazes me how narrow the roads are.
Despite the roads being new, for some reason, Europeans still have to make narrow roads just to make the driving feel more European and slightly dangerous at every single turn.
But I was in Italy last week, and I think we should mention too that our preemption last week was pretty sudden.
So we were ready to go.
I was ready to do the show from Italy last week, and then I took a ferry from Livorno in Italy over to Corsica.
One of the things that really struck me as uniquely un-American was that when we were waiting for the ferry, it was Corsica ferries, literally from the western coast of northern Italy.
Un-American, I can hardly wait.
Well, the ferry was a bit late, so all the cars were lined up waiting for the ferries.
It was a hot day, a humid day, the sun was beating down, and you just have this long line of cars just sitting there waiting for the ferry.
What was incredible to me was that nobody had their engines on.
Nobody was sitting in the car with their windows rolled up and had the AC on.
Everybody had their car shut off, was hanging out outside, doing various things, talking to each other, walking around, playing ball.
Nobody complained.
Nobody was upset.
The heat was just blaring down, and nobody was sitting there being ecologically unfriendly by just running their car.
It was absolutely incredible.
I feel like if this were in America, people would be raising hell about the ferry being late and the heat being what it was.
They'd be in their metal cocoons with the engine blaring and the carbon monoxide coming out the back.
Nobody was doing that.
It was really fascinating to me.
There wasn't even one person raising a stink?
No.
Not even you?
That's it.
That's it for me.
I would have really stuck out, I think, if I made any kind of stink.
Nobody would have listened anyway.
That's the thing.
Then the ferry ride over to Corsica is beautiful.
You're going across the internet.
Also, that was extremely hot inside the cabin of this ferry.
Yet again, nobody was complaining.
This is the kind of thing that would have caused some kind of civil revolt, I feel like, if it had happened in New York.
Hold on a second.
I don't know why you pick on New York.
New York has some of the most patient people I've ever seen, especially when it comes to traffic.
Yes, people do honk their horns sometimes.
But when people understand what the problem is, for instance, a half-hour backup on the BQE, sometimes people just chill.
They know what's going on.
They know they can't do anything about it.
I've seen that countless times in New York where people just take a chill pill and they relax a little bit.
That's it.
It does happen.
You do.
You very often see the opposite of people taking a chill pill.
Well, that's true.
But I wouldn't confine that to New York.
If you're going to say it's a U.S. thing, you see that every place.
I see a lot more impatients in other parts of the country as well.
I'm sure there are plenty of impatient people in France.
I've heard rumors.
Oh, yes.
Most certainly.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Very impatient people I've found in the grocery stores, especially if you don't speak French very well.
For instance, today I was in Bonifacio, which is towards the southern tip of Corsica.
It's an absolutely beautiful old city with a citadel essentially on the top of a mountain.
You have to pay for parking everywhere.
Space is such a premium.
You always constantly have to pay for parking.
We were running down to do this boat tour thing, my son and I, and trying to get out of this parking lot,
go have the ticket, go to pay on the way out.
Then we realized at the point at which you would ordinarily pay for the parking,
there was a message in French telling you that you had to go to the cashier first and pay for parking.
Meanwhile, there's a long line of cars that has lined up behind you in order to try to get out of this exit.
You put your car in reverse and then everybody has to go in reverse now.
Nobody was happy with me at that point.
I had no idea that you were supposed to pay for the parking before you actually left.
Then I went and paid for the parking, lined up to get out with my now validated ticket that I could use to exit the parking lot.
As I was doing that, about three people in front of me also made the same mistake.
Everybody had to go back out again and go into reverse.
It was just the most idiotic system for paying for parking I have ever seen in my entire life.
People were very angry. It was just very inefficient.
Maybe the lesson here is that people around the world are just angry with inefficiency and we need some change.
Hot wings, Super Bowl Sunday, placing an order two days in advance so that you have them in time for the big game.
Then you show up at the place and the place that sells the wings scheduled everybody for the same time instead of staggering them.
So you had something like 75 people showing up trying to get wings at the same time and get back in time for the big game.
That is something I went through last January.
I don't care about the game. I don't even remember who played.
But it was wintertime. It was cold outside. Everybody was out there and nobody was angry.
Everybody took care of each other. We shared jokes.
These are people that I probably disagree with on every political issue ever invented.
That is an example of patience.
So you see, Alex, it doesn't just happen when you travel overseas.
It can happen right in your own backyard.
The more you know.
I haven't touched this electric fence.
But can you imagine why we have an electric fence around the property?
To keep you in some place they want to know where you are.
To keep other things out.
Is there some kind of wild dog they have to keep track of?
Is this a form of child care?
I don't know these days.
There's an electric fence around the property.
What happens?
They must tell you what the electric fence is.
If you touch it, you die.
Would they tell you that?
They tell you not to touch it.
Don't touch it.
During those hours.
I've offered my friends staying with me in the house here lots of money to touch it.
Why would you want to touch the fence electrified or not electrified?
Wouldn't you just walk through a door?
That would be the best way to do it.
But this electrified fence, you mentioned wild dogs.
It actually is to keep out wild boars.
You have wild boars in your neighborhood?
And the wild boars are only around at a certain time?
They can come around during the day, too, I would presume.
But I think they're worse at night for some reason.
Okay.
I don't really understand it either.
It would be bad any time, I think.
Okay.
Have you seen a wild boar?
Yeah, we saw one.
We saw one wild boar.
And it was pretty massive.
It looked like it could do some significant damage.
So I can understand why that fence is electrified.
Okay.
Well, you're having an interesting time out there.
Yeah.
I'll tell you, it's absolutely great.
I've not been here.
I'm a big fan of this part of the world.
We're about 12 kilometers away from Sardinia earlier today.
That's another island in this.
Sardinia is Italian, Corsica is French, but Corsica used to be Italian.
So there's a lot of Italian culture and heritage here.
And one of the things that I found very fascinating about Corsicans is that they
have a lot of animosity towards the mainland French as well.
And the language here is that they speak as French, but they also have a French
version – I'm sorry, a Corsican version of French that seems to have a lot of
use in the words.
And as you drive around the island, you see that there's very often the French
version of a sign and then underneath it the Corsican version, so kind of the
local language.
And they don't like France or certain people don't like France to such an
extent that they have spray painted over the French version of a lot of the
words and the signs and just left the Corsican version, which I thought was
very kind of cool in a lot of ways.
This could explain – occasionally I've seen a foreign film on TV that seems to
be in French, but it has French subtitles.
So maybe it was in Corsican and they were giving French subtitles for the
French speakers.
Yeah, it's quite possible.
And a lot of the words look very, very different.
They're somewhat Italian-looking in origin and root and a lot of them end in
U for some reason.
And Corsica also, by the way, it goes back to the Carthaginian Empire and it's
where Napoleon was born.
So we were at Napoleon's house, not too far from here a couple of days ago.
So some pretty cool stuff, I have to say, and I would recommend any of our
listeners who would ever want to explore this bit of the world to really consider
Corsica.
It's a pretty fascinating place.
All right.
Well, now that we've gotten that out of the way, this update, we have upgraded a
little bit.
Kyle has been working hard on the studio, our studio out here, the remote studio,
and I am happy to say that we are now in stereo.
That means I'm in the – I should be in the left channel now and, Kyle, I think
you're in the right channel.
No.
I'm in the left channel.
You're in the left channel.
How are you in the left channel?
No.
It says right here you're in the right channel.
Okay.
It might still be backwards or your headphones might be backwards.
Yeah.
My headphones are backwards now.
Yeah.
It helps if you turn your speakers – if you take one speaker and put it on the
other side of the room and then take the other speaker and put it on the – that
will correct it.
So if you're listening to us on the radio, you should hear us in different
parts of your head.
All over.
Yeah.
But we're not going to do that whole show because it kind of drives you crazy.
And I don't think – folks out there in Skype land, I don't think you can hear
this.
Can you?
We cannot hear stereo over Skype, but I can take your word for it that we're going
over the airwaves that way.
Is Skype not stereo at all?
Skype is mono.
Really?
Wow.
Their feed is mono.
How 1950s.
I had to trade some things around.
Okay.
This cost us, okay?
Yeah, I'm sure it did.
You reserve the right to pan at will.
Or just run across the room and go over there.
Yeah, absolutely.
But we've played with it enough.
And this should result in a better quality, better technical quality at least.
I can't speak to the rest of the show.
Okay.
Had we been on last week, we certainly would have been talking about our friend
Mudge, who was in the news as the Twitter whistleblower.
You guys heard about this, I think.
Twitter's former head of security alleged that the company misled regulators about
its poor cybersecurity defenses and its negligence in attempting to root out
fake accounts that spread disinformation.
That revelation could create serious legal and financial problems for the
social media platform, especially in the midst of its battle with Elon Musk.
But Peter Zadko, who is known in the hacker world as Mudge, was Twitter's
security chief until he was fired earlier this year.
The thing is, he was fired, in their words, for not living up to the job or
not being effective.
If you know Mudge, and many of us do, that is the last thing that I think you
could ever say of him.
And the fact that he has revealed this information, well, according to a
representative of his, this is a last resort for him.
He said that Mudge had exhausted all attempts to get his concerns resolved
inside the company before his firing in January.
Now, among his most serious accusations is that Twitter violated the terms of
the 2011 FTC settlement by falsely claiming that it had put stronger measures
in place to protect the security and privacy of its users.
He also accuses the company of deceptions involving its handling of spam or fake
accounts, which, as we all know, is an allegation at the core of Elon Musk's
attempt to back out of the Twitter takeover.
Now, as I mentioned, Mudge is highly respected.
He's a cybersecurity expert.
He first gained prominence in the 1990s.
He was part of the loft.
He testified in front of Congress.
You might remember he was part of the group that said they could take down the
Internet in a half hour if they had the chance to do so.
Just to wake people up and say, yeah, it's not that secure.
It really isn't.
Now, Twitter said in a prepared statement a week ago that Mudge was fired for
ineffective leadership and poor performance.
I don't know what Mudge they're talking about here.
But they said the allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to
capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers, and its shareholders.
The company called this complaint a false narrative that is riddled with
inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.
Mudge's attorneys, Deborah Katz and Alexis Ronicker, said Twitter's claim about
his poor performance is false and that he repeatedly raised concerns about
grossly inadequate information security systems with top executives and
Twitter's board of directors.
You know, I would bet anything that is why he was fired.
The lawyer said that in late 2021, after the board was given whitewashed
information about those security problems, Mudge escalated his concerns,
clashed with CEO Parag Agrawal and board member Omid Qadistani,
and was fired two weeks later.
The 84-page complaint describes a broken corporate culture at Twitter that
lacked effective leadership and where Mudge said top executives practiced
deliberate ignorance of pressing problems.
His description of Jack Dorsey's leadership style is particularly scathing,
considering Jack Dorsey was the guy who brought him in the first place.
He described the Twitter founder as extremely disengaged during the last
months of his tenure as CEO, to the point where he would not even speak
during meetings on complex issues facing the company.
All of this sounds so believable and understandable, too, because of where
Twitter has gone and how it operates and the ugliness that comes out of it.
It all makes sense, but you've got to listen to the people, the whistleblowers,
the people telling you the emperor has no clothes, and when you punish them,
instead of listening to them, you wind up living a nightmare,
and I think that's what Twitter is going to go through now.
Absolutely.
If you look into Mudge's description of the state of things at Twitter,
it's believable if you're familiar with the tech startup Silicon Valley scene,
but at this point in Twitter's history, with the big deal to sell it to someone
who should probably not be named because he doesn't need any more free publicity,
but he's a very rich person with weird-looking cars,
the state of that deal is really in this strange flux at the moment,
which would be very much affected by the situation in Mudge's complaint.
I don't think we could see reasons that Mudge would really want to make this sort of thing up
and trash his career over there if this were not the case.
I find it all very, very believable.
Again, if you know the guy, and I know many, many people who do know the guy.
I know myself who's been on the radio show.
The words honor and integrity always bob up to the top when talking about him.
The hacker community judges harshly.
If there were any question of that, you wouldn't see such near-unanimous praising of his abilities,
basically what he believes in.
Not only that, I'm still over here.
I'm sorry, I'll move you back over to this part.
Permission to come back to the mid.
Just especially since he's got so much to say.
If he's so ineffectual, you'd think he'd slink off and their point would be substantiated,
but it seems less justified when he's got all of this stuff to describe and characterize
as to the real situation there,
plus a whole bunch of things that he relinquished to oversight or public officials and so forth.
Alex, it looks like you have some input here.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is something I think that's been bubbling over for the last week or so,
and I think we'll continue to do so.
I think Rob's right.
I'll mention his name, I guess, because it's easier,
but I think there are going to be clear implications to the Must deal.
We see that Mudge, I believe, this past weekend was served with a subpoena by Must's lawyers
so that they're planning on probably trying to elicit some testimony
or even possibly obtain some documents and records from Mudge with respect to their own claims.
But I think from Twitter's perspective here,
what's really concerning to me is that Mudge documented that Twitter might have misled US government regulators.
Let's say if that's true, assuming for the sake of argument that Mudge's allegations are true
and Twitter had misled the FTC and did so knowingly,
that's not really a good look for Twitter and there will be repercussions.
If they were not truthful with government regulators
and if they were not truthful with their investors, there could be massive repercussions
as well as if they were untruthful with their advertisers as well
because that's where their revenue is coming from.
This is something that dovetails with Must's allegations as well.
E, you were going to say something.
It's interesting that you bring that up because in 2011,
you might remember there was an FTC complaint
which said that Twitter systems were full of highly sensitive data
that could allow hostile government to find precise location data for specific users
and target them for violence or arrest.
You might recall earlier this month,
a former Twitter employee was found guilty in California
of passing along sensitive Twitter user data to royal family members in Saudi Arabia
in exchange for bribes.
Mudge alleged that Twitter knowingly allowed the Indian government
to place its agents on the company payroll
where they had direct unsupervised access to the company's systems and user data.
Twitter was also, according to the FTC complaint,
they were heavily reliant on funding by Chinese entities
and that there were concerns within Twitter
that the company was providing information to those entities
that would enable them to learn the identity
and sensitive information of Chinese users who secretly use Twitter.
So it's a laundry list of potential really, really serious compromising of data.
And even if you look at the Elon Musk story
that's been developing over the past few months,
you see there was a point where he was given full unbridled access
to all of the data in Twitter so that he could see for himself
just how many accounts were spam accounts or fake accounts,
which meant that, you know, from what I can gather from that,
he could basically find out anything about anybody if he chose to.
And I understand within Twitter a lot of people have that ability.
And that is scary.
It should scare all of us because of the private information
that many of us trust with Twitter.
I mean, there are people who communicate with direct messaging
thinking that that's completely safe and secure, trusting Twitter.
And it's not. It really is not.
And all sorts of other information is oftentimes entrusted to them
that could very well be abused.
I think you're right about this in a lot of ways.
If you combine so many of the points that Mudge made in his disclosures,
and I think it's important to note he made these disclosures,
I believe it was to the SEC, to the FTC,
and then to certain members of Congress.
And then it was through certain members of Congress
that had disclosed the report over to the Washington Post
that originated the first stories about Mudge
and his whistleblowing with regard to Twitter.
But if you combine all these points together,
for instance, the fact that Twitter might not have been utilizing
something that we call in the cybersecurity community least privilege,
which is making sure that users only have the privileges
that they need to have in order to do their jobs
and essentially granting access willy-nilly
to large-scale production environments that Mudge alleged in his report.
You combine that with a lack of patch systems
and some kind of central vulnerability management
that you would expect an organization like Twitter to have.
Add on top of that the fact that they might have turned a blind eye
to the fact that there are foreign nationals working for foreign powers
that may be on their payroll,
and you have a perfect storm for human rights abuses.
Like you had just described, Emmanuel, that take place,
where people can be identified.
Dissidents may be able to be identified by government agents
essentially on the payroll of Twitter.
And I think this was central to Mudge's motivation here,
not only in the disclosures,
but from what I understand to be his reasoning for going over to Twitter
in the first place was that he saw it to be a platform
that was central to the functioning of not only American democracy,
but democracies around the world,
and that making that a safer and more secure space
was certainly worth his time and his effort.
And so when he was pushed out for trying to do that,
that's why I think he resorted to the whistleblowing.
But we have talked about this so many times,
about the centrality of Twitter and the debates that happen on it.
And if you think about the fact that our prior president,
which maybe we'll talk about him a little bit later tonight too,
but our prior president was having discussions with other nuclear powers
on this crazy platform.
I mean there's so much that happens on it.
It has become this thing for which it was not actually intended to be,
this thing for which it wasn't originally intended to be created,
but this area and this platform for discourse between nations and citizens
and peoples that it has a place of importance in our society
that I think nobody really thought about.
Let's say 15 years or so,
we wouldn't have really imagined that Twitter would be what it was today.
And so the idea that it has these glaring security holes
that people are just trying to brush under the rug is really concerning.
I think you might want to listen to some of our earlier radio shows,
some of which you were on,
where we're always warning people about things like this
because the thing is Twitter is a tool.
It's not a tool to bolster democracy.
It's a tool.
It can be used to bolster democracy.
It can also be used to tear it down.
We've seen both.
And unless you have governance within the organization
that is strongly behind one of those concepts,
it's going to be used and abused by everybody to their heart's content.
And that is what we are seeing now.
And I think that's what Mudge is speaking to.
Kyle, you had something.
Yeah, we have to stop talking and thinking about new platforms like this
and technologies in only the most glowing altruistic terms
to boost interest and sales.
That's tempting in terms of making something viable or introducing it
and getting some support for it.
But we tend to kind of only want to continue to think about it
in those altruistic sort of salesy glowing terms.
I just see this repeat of presenting something
and then people on the side who are interested in something
might comment on it.
But the lion's share of the attitudes towards it
are that this is the best new type of phone
or this is the best new type of service or something
that you just sort of have to accept
only in the ways that it's characterized to sell it,
which are inherently all positive things, right?
All the great features.
And we never really absorb and internalize the bugs
that we are absolutely going to encounter.
And people like us keep saying it over and over again,
and it's like a running joke that it comes out,
something goes wrong, and here we come with a story about it.
It's like the abuse is a very common thing,
yet every time something comes at us,
it's presented as though it's a game-changer,
it's life-changing, it's going to do nothing but good.
Alex?
Yeah, I agree with you on that front, Kyle.
And the other thing, I think there's going to be
some unintentional consequences of Mudge's disclosures here too
in that we're realizing now as well
that every single one of these platforms has its issues, right?
Historical problems that we can point to.
You've got TikTok being beholden to China in lots of ways
and many concerns about its data flows
over the last weeks and months.
You've got Facebook, which has a number of woes associated with it,
going back to the 2016 election in Cambridge Analytica
and election interference.
You also have that happening, I think, to a certain extent, on Twitter.
Now you have these glaring security holes
that are well-documented by a highly respected member of our community.
And it makes you wonder what platform is out there
that hasn't been abused and misused in some way
and to such an extent that we now have to question
whether or not we can trust it with our data.
And so that's going to have, I think, some spillover effect in Congress.
And there has been a push, finally, for some overarching and overhauling
of the federal government stance
when it comes to privacy and data protection.
And I think that Mudge's disclosures here
are going to be pushing Congress to be in a position
of having much more oversight over these particular platforms
and I think will have a major impact
on this overarching federal privacy legislation that we see on the horizon.
But, Alex, do you think the bozos in Congress
have any better grasp of privacy and security than people in the industry?
Yeah, I do, to a certain extent.
Some of them are right up on there.
We always talk about Senator Ron Wyden.
He is, I think, at the top.
Okay, but I counted that with Ted Cruz.
Now what are you going to do?
That's true.
There are so many idiots out there
and I have a problem trusting them with anything
despite the number of good people that are out there.
It's not always just about the individual senators
or the members of Congress.
There's an army of staffers that work for them
that generally, and I think for the most part,
in many instances, are often smarter than that.
And these staffers are young people that are paying attention to this
and are getting it and are feeding, hopefully,
the right information to these representatives.
But they're still beholden to other interests.
That's what I'm worried about.
Who is it that's sending them checks and making donations?
Yeah, no doubt.
I think that's true.
But I do think that you'll have people leading the charge,
people like Senator Ron Wyden, I think that we can look to.
You need a second one.
You need somebody else in addition to him.
Yeah, well, it's hard to come up with somebody who I think is on that level.
But it's going to have an effect.
There will be an effect.
And it may not also be just at the federal level.
I think that this is going to give an incentive to lots of other state
legislatures to come and bring the hammer down, perhaps,
on these massive social media platforms
and perhaps regulate their data more at a state level than they had seen before,
which is certainly not what these platforms want
because the patchwork of legislation that we have when it comes to privacy
and data protection in the United States is kind of all over the map from state
to state and you have to regulate according to the lowest common denominator.
And so they're hoping for some kind of overarching federal legislation to come
through that would make their lives easier.
And if this results in an additional layer of patchwork legislation at the state
level, it's just going to make their lives much, much more difficult.
I think the states can be sort of like labs for this
and often end up trying things out, seeing how some of that stuff works.
And the effect I think that you're speaking to and I'm hearing in this is,
I don't know what Robert Gila might have to say,
but it's this organizing effect that a voice like Mudge,
somebody who gets it and has a real passion for making things right or getting
them functioning in a way that is safer, is better for the people using those things.
So I think the organizing effect is that the things that can be twisted around
and kind of veer off for political ends, I think those things can be separated out
or at least that organization can make going off with some detail for a political
reason less tempting for those political actors involved.
And I think that everybody has a job being involved in really making sense of these
big stories and as you said, that sort of underlying will and desire to get privacy
and some of the updates we need on the books.
So anyway, I think the political actors involved do have a role to play,
but it's a lot more about finding coalition and communicating that effectively to gain support,
showing things like bipartisan support, that kind of stuff.
Their understandings of it should be somewhat detailed,
but I think they oftentimes bite off more than they can really speak to without
interpretation from experts or from staffers, as Alex mentioned.
So it is definitely coalescing.
It seems like this is all the pieces of really breaking all of this down.
And voices like Mudge, who've got experience and want to say something about it,
may be able to really help define what are the pieces at play here.
How do they work?
What are the risks?
All of that kind of assessment, I think, we can have a better understanding of
after having learned so much about what's going on at Twitter.
Look, I think the evidence is in that data is not being securely kept.
We can't trust these entities.
And we just need to adjust our behavior to take that into account,
where our lives are not an open book on their platforms,
where every little detail is not something that we are storing on one particular system,
and that we do our bit to try and muddy the waters a little.
You don't have to have every bit of information about your personal life anywhere.
You really don't, except in your head.
And you can use different identities.
You don't have to give out specific locations.
You can speak in code.
Hey, it's fun to learn these things.
Believe me.
Just assume that when you are using a system that is not a system that you are running yourself,
that it's being looked at by hostile entities.
And I think that's a problem.
We haven't been doing that.
We've been too trusting.
And it doesn't mean you have to be negative.
It doesn't mean you have to assume everyone's out to get you.
It's a mental challenge.
It means just looking out, making sure that you lock the door behind you,
you turn the oven off, that kind of thing.
You just got to be careful with your personal data.
And if everybody just acted that way, didn't take Twitter so damn seriously.
I mean, there should not be official government statements made on Twitter ever.
I don't take it seriously enough for that to happen.
And by the same token, if somebody hacks into some official's Twitter account and says something funny,
they shouldn't go to jail for that.
It's a prank.
Don't take it so seriously.
We have the means.
We have the capability of communicating with people on official levels that are believable,
that are able to be backed up by all sorts of ways of knowing that you're actually listening to somebody who they say they are.
But it's not Twitter.
It's not Facebook.
It's not TikTok.
That's for damn sure.
Well, and speaking of official channels of communication and governmental interactions,
I think the evidence actually is not already in Emanuel.
I think we're going to hear a lot more from Mudge because he has been called to testify again before Congress,
and I think he's going to be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 13th,
so in just about two weeks, we probably will hear more and we'll be talking more about that particular testimony.
And what I find really fascinating about this whole story, too, is that, number one,
it is being propelled by the platform itself that is being criticized as well, which is really kind of fascinating.
If you think about it, the story breaks.
It gets onto Twitter.
It gets this momentum, and Twitter's response here, which seemed to be the kind of pre-canned corporate response,
which is to claim that the employee was fired for some kind of derogatory behavior or some kind of deficient leadership practice, etc., etc.
Performance.
Yeah, performance-based nonsense, right?
It's always now the person was terminated because of performance-based issues,
and now they're grinding this particular ax that they have against the company.
What came out against it, the contrary notions and ideas that all spread on Twitter,
and it was through the hacker community and information security, cyber security community,
where they came out and said, no, no, no, no, this doesn't fit your pre-canned corporate response.
Essentially, to blame the messenger here for having an ax to grind is not going to work
because Mudge is somebody that's so highly respected in our community
and known to so many to have really unimpeachable integrity,
and it was that notion that spread through Twitter itself to come through that I thought was particularly ironic.
But I'm really curious as to what his testimony is going to be before Congress in a couple of weeks,
what they're going to ask him, and I think if I were to guess,
they were going to be focusing particularly on this notion of hostile foreign nations having access to Twitter
and the types of influence operations that they may be able to get away with
because of those lax security concerns that Mudge had identified.
So certainly a hell of a lot more to come in this space.
Well, hopefully that'll be on C-SPAN because that sounds like it'll be riveting.
You say that's on the 13th of September?
I think that's correct. I think that's correct.
I mean, all this is obviously subject to being moved, but I believe it's on the 13th.
Because Mudge got a subpoena from Elon Musk, as you mentioned earlier,
and he's due to be deposed on the 9th of September, so it's going to be a busy week.
Well, it's one trip, you know.
How do you know Musk is in D.C.?
Oh, why wouldn't it be?
He could be in space. You don't know where he is.
Well, I don't know if he's going to be a part of it. I think it's just a bunch of attorneys and stuff.
Oh, okay, that's true. You know he wants to be a part of it.
I don't know. Where are they testifying? The space thing or the Twitter? No, it's a Twitter thing.
Polar opposites, Musk and Mudge. Polar opposites.
So is it in California?
I don't know. I don't care. It doesn't matter.
Delaware?
No, Delaware.
Yeah, Delaware.
The Musk battle with Twitter, that's happening in the Delaware Chancery Court.
He can be deposed anywhere, but look, Delaware is not too far from D.C.
Hey, we're almost out of time. We are going to be on overtime later.
I think, Alex, you're going to bail for overtime, not even for the first few minutes?
Maybe I'll hang out for the first few minutes.
I guilted him to that. Okay, great.
That will be at 8 o'clock on YouTube.
Just check the link at 2600.com on the top of the page or just go to Channel 2600 on YouTube.
At 8 o'clock, you can call us, talk to us, that kind of thing.
But I wanted to read a letter that we got from one of our listeners
because it has to do with something we talked about a few weeks ago.
That was the offense that Gila perpetrated on the Apple community
by saying that she could not download MP3s.
This is from Lobsterminator. I think that's how you say it.
We read his letter the first time, or her letter.
Hi again. I did not mean for the email to be quite an angry tone as you read it.
Let me just say, you have nothing to apologize for.
That was an entirely dramatic interpretation that we took on ourselves.
We're sorry if it caused you any grief or confusion.
Did not mean for that to be the case at all.
Unlike some world leaders, I don't hesitate to admit my mistakes.
I apologize for the perceived aggression.
No, again, you have nothing to apologize for.
That was all on us. We did that.
You were simply pointing out a difference of opinion on a technical issue,
which is completely valid.
Continuing here, I just felt that you should adhere to accuracy,
as you do with most subjects.
So I felt frustrated when nobody in a hacker radio show knew how to use Apple computers.
I've been listening to the Off the Hook Archive from the beginning.
You used to talk about breaking the phone systems.
Now none of you can transfer music to a phone.
See, I'm taking on the angry tone again,
even though you haven't gotten to the all-caps part yet.
It's incredulous.
There's no all-caps part.
But yeah, I love you.
Even if I sounded like an a-hole, I may have sounded like one again.
Oh, boy.
And as a token of goodwill, I became a WBAI buddy on behalf of Off the Hook.
Thank you, Lobsterminator.
I think I'm saying it right.
For listening, for donating, for challenging us, just for being there.
It matters.
And don't ever apologize for an opinion.
And if you want to become a BAI buddy, you can do so as well.
Simply go to the website.
I forgot the website.
Rob, help me out here.
Give2WBAI.org.
That's it.
That's the one.
Give2WBAI.org.
And the number two?
The number two.
Give2WBAI.org.
And you can become a BAI buddy.
Say that Off the Hook is your favorite radio show.
And you can donate every month, whatever amount you can afford.
You can also give a call at 212-209-2950.
Or you can go to WBAI.org as well.
I think there's a link there.
And we're going to work very hard to download all the music from iTunes to our phone.
Yeah.
Well, I use iTunes all the time, but I use it on a PC.
I don't use it on a Mac.
Yeah, yeah.
You can still make it function right here with various versions.
There are people that play with this stuff and have all the tricks and tips figured out.
So feel free to share those with us.
We'll read them on the air.
And Gila, since you started this whole controversy, is there anything you'd like to say in closing?
I mean, I would first of all just like to thank everybody who has reached out to the show to explain to me that all I have to do is use iTunes and it works and it's fine.
So thank you all.
I don't feel dumb in the least.
Good.
But on another note, I would like to remind everybody that tomorrow is the first day of September, which means that Friday is the first Friday of the month.
Find your local 2600 meeting on the web at 2600.org.com.
Or net.
Or net.
Or in car.
Or horse.
Look for the meeting link.
Big news for the New York City meeting this month is we're going in person only.
Okay.
Wow.
How about that?
Yeah.
And attendance is mandatory for everybody listening.
Forced socialization.
Once we said on April Fool's that there was a dress code at 2600 meetings and so many people got angry at us while we were just trying to improve the quality of the meetings a little bit.
But it was April Fool's.
Yeah.
We do things like that sometimes.
Okay, folks.
We are out of time.
Again, YouTube at 8 o'clock.
We'll be back again next week at 7 o'clock here on WBAI.
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
And don't forget, never, never, never, never believe the hype.
See you next time.
Good night.
Here's what I want you all to do for me.
Back.
Caught you looking for the same thing.
It's a new thing.
Check out this.
The brain.
Uh-oh.
The rope below the level.
Cause I'm living low next to the bass.
Come on.
Turn up the radio.
They're claiming I'm a criminal.
But now I wonder how.
Some people never know.
The enemy could be the French Guardian.
I'm now a hooligan.
I rock the party and clear all the madness.
I'm not a racist.
Preach the teacher.
Cause y'all ain't never had this.
Number one.
Never wanna run about the gun.
I wasn't licensed to have one.
The minute they see me, fear me.
I'm the epitome of public enemy.
Use, abuse without clues.
I refuse to blow a fuse.
They even had it on the news.
Don't believe the hype.
Don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype.
Don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype.
Yes.
Was the start of my last jam.
So here it is again.
Another death jam.
But since I gave you all a little something that I knew you lacked.
They still consider me a new jack.
All the critics, you can hang on my hold the rope.
But they hope to the Pope and pray it ain't dope.
The follow of Farrakhan.
He'll tell me that you understand.
Until you hear the man.
They'll book up the new school rap game.
Writers treat me like Coltrane.
Insane.
Yes to them, but to me, I'm a different kind.
We're brothers of the same mind.
Unblind.
Caught in the middle end.
Not surrendering.
I don't run for the sake of riddling.
So claiming that I'm a smuggler.
Some say I never heard of you.
A rap burglar.
False media.
We don't need it, do we?
It's fake, that's what it be to you.
Dig me.
Yo, Terminator X.
Step up on the stand and show these people what time it is, boy.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype.
Don't believe the hype.
Don't believe the hype.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype.
Don't believe the hype.
It's a sequel.
As an equal, can I get this through to you?
My 98 booming with a trunk of funk.
All the jealous punks can't stop the dunks.
Coming from the school of hard knocks.
Some perpetrate.
They drink borax.
Attack the blacks because I know they lack exact.
The cold facts.
And still they try to Xerox.
The leader of the new school.
Uncool.
Never play the fool.
Remember, there's a need to get along again.
I said I was a time bomb in the daytime.
Radio scared of me.
Cause I'm mad.
Plus, I'm the enemy.
They can't come on and play me in prime time.
Cause I know the time.
So stop getting mine.
I get on the mix late in the night.
They know I'm living right.
So here goes a mic site.
Before I let it go.
Don't rush my show.
You try to reach and grab to get elbow.
Word to hurt y'all.
If you can't swing this, learn the words.
You might sing this.
Just a little bit of the taste of the bass for you.
As you get up and dance at the LQ.
With some denial, defiant.
I swing polos.
And then they clear the lane.
I go solo.
The meaning of all of that.
The media is the wax.
As you believe it's true.
It blows me through the roof.
Suckers.
Liars.
Give me a shovel.
Some writers I know.
A damn devil.
From them I say.
Don't believe the hype.
Yo, Chuck.
They must be on a pipe.
Right?
Their pens and pads are set.
Cause I've had it.
I'm not an addict.
Fiended for static.
I see the tape recorder.
And I grab it.
No, you can't have it back.
Silly rabbit.
I'm going to my media assassin.
Harry Allen.
I gotta ask him.
Yo, Harry.
You're a writer.
Are we that tight?
Don't believe the hype.
Well, here's what I want y'all to do for me.
Don't believe.
Don't.
Don't.
Don't believe the hype.
Don't believe.
Don't.
Don't.
Don't believe the hype.
I got flavor.
In all those things you know.
Yeah, boy.
4-2 bum rubs the show.
Yo, Grim.
Get the green, black and red in.
Go down.
Countdown to Armageddon.
88 to 8.
The S1s will.
Put the less in effect.
And I still will.
Rock the hard jam.
Treat it like a seminar.
Hi, this is Julian Joiello and I'm a listener and supporter of WBAI.
I'm a student at NYU and I live in New York City.
And I want to shout out to the other young listeners of WBAI.
We have to help keep this station going.
And the easiest way to do it is through the WBAI Buddy System.
If you donate as little as $10 a month, you have proactively promoted free speech radio.
Go to the website WBAI.org, click the donate button, and make a difference.