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That's 212-209-2950, or go to give to the number to WBAI.org online.
All righty, let's get ready for Off The Hook coming up at 7 p.m.
All circuits at the location you are calling are busy now. 078-T.
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, stay on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. I'm really bound for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. One minute, go!
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi there.
And way over in Skype land, I see Rob T. Firefly. Rob, are you there? Okay, Rob's not there. Alex, are you there?
I am indeed here.
Okay. Well, it's good to have you with us on this, again, technical problem-filled show.
Kyle, what's going on?
Everything's fine.
We tested it before.
Everything's going great.
All right, so is Rob with us?
He's with us.
No, he's not with us.
He is with us.
He was muted, now he's with us.
Oh my God, can we at least try to hit the right buttons?
We're doing our best, yes.
We've been testing before the show to make sure this doesn't happen again, and yet we somehow still managed to not come across.
Okay, so everyone's here.
I don't see Gila, though. Where's Gila?
Gila is on her way. She will be here in about three minutes or so.
Wow, so even the MTA is getting involved tonight.
Okay, well, you know what?
Oh, yes.
We have an MTA story, so it kind of fits, but we'll get to that.
All right, let's dive right into it.
We're on the air first time in two weeks, and a lot to talk about.
We have overtime at 8 o'clock on YouTube.
You can follow the link, which is at 2600.com on the main page, or just go to Channel 2600 on YouTube at 8 o'clock.
But for now, you might have heard about the Missouri Trans Snitch Forum that was taken down.
Emmanuel, I'm going to interrupt you for one second.
I would like nothing more.
Before, because what I have here in my hand, I just want to congratulate you.
This is Volume 40 of 2600 Magazine, which means that you have been at this as a magazine publisher for 40 years,
which I think bears, you know, is justification for an interruption and a congratulation.
So here's to 2600 for 40 years, Volume 40.
Now you can get on with the show.
My God, has it been 40 years?
Yeah, 40 years.
Pretty amazing.
I mean, to think about it, 40 years doing anything is extraordinary.
Yeah, that's true.
You've created an institution.
You've created a magazine that is read around the world.
You've been, I think, a dutiful protector of the hacker subculture,
and we all owe you a debt of gratitude and appreciation for everything you've done over the last 40 years.
So here's to you.
Well, not to bask in this too much, but I could not possibly have done it all on my own.
There was simply so many people, such an amazing community, and it continues to this day.
It's really an incredible group of people to work with, and they make it possible.
They make it happen.
So thank you to everybody who got us there.
So, yeah, 40 years.
It's amazing.
Right.
Well, sorry for the interruption.
Yeah.
Okay, so now we have phone.
I know this phone is going to start ringing, Kyle, because I did not mute it beforehand,
and the other line is going to forward to it, so please try and bury it or something before that happens.
Okay, so the story I've been trying to read is about the Missouri Trans Snitch Forum,
which you might have heard about as part of the crazy lives that we're living today.
The Missouri government has decided to put up a tip site to submit complaints and concerns about the trans community
or gender-affirming care that they might be aware of, but that site has not been up.
That site has been down because, well, because of hackers.
At least hackers are getting the blame or credit for it.
Yeah, all kinds of TikTok, Twitter users have been spamming the site with gibberish.
The tip line has been removed from the Missouri government site entirely.
If you're looking for it, you're not going to find it.
Instead of the online forum, the link to the tip line now says the page no longer exists.
In fact, I have it right here.
It says, 404, file or directory not found.
The resource you're looking for might have been removed, had its name changed,
or is temporarily unavailable.
There's a fourth option that they didn't include.
How about permanently unavailable?
Because this is a promise from many of us in cyberspace.
And Missouri, listen up.
Missouri government, that is, listen up.
Try it again, it'll go down again.
It'll keep going down.
It'll stay down.
And the people who have worked together in doing this are quite unified and quite passionate about this.
And you'll find that this emotion, this determination exists on a variety of fronts.
So hit us with whatever you got, you know, whatever state, whatever crazy laws you want to come up with,
you're going to meet resistance.
And it will win.
It will win.
Even if we don't know who we are, we don't know each other,
we don't know one person who's helping in a different place, different country even,
we will achieve the goal of maintaining freedom and not persecuting people,
because that's exactly what this particular snitch line was doing,
as so many other laws, restrictions, and just hate-filled diatribes have done.
Yes, Rob.
Well, Missouri is the show-me state.
Missouri has been shown.
Yeah, we showed them, all right.
Now, you posted a story earlier about Pornhub.
They have gone and blocked users in Utah because Utah now has some crazy age verification law
that means Pornhub can be held liable if somebody from Utah connects to their website.
Do you know more about it than that?
Yeah, basically they want Pornhub to go through the expense of verifying somehow
that people who are looking at their website who happen to be in Utah are legal adults.
This is new and strange and more than Pornhub is willing to deal with,
so Pornhub has just blocked IP addresses originating in Utah wholesale.
This is an interesting story in that it is a bit of a business judgment call, right,
because they're removing potential customers, but the perils of this burden are just too much,
and it's a calculation they've made and thus have blocked a certain segment of American Pornhub users.
Well, what a spokesperson for Pornhub says is,
giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform
is not the most effective solution for protecting our users.
I can certainly see why that would be the case.
According to the bill's description,
SB 287 Online Pornography Viewing Age Requirements imposes obligations and liabilities
for a commercial entity that provides pornography or other materials harmful to minors.
Specifically, the bill requires a porn site to verify that a user in Utah is at least 18 years old.
It also imposes liability for publishers and distributors of material harmful to minors
who don't comply with the age verification requirements.
Now, as the law has written,
a website like Pornhub that does not verify a user's age shall be liable for damages
resulting from minors accessing the material,
including court costs and reasonable attorney fees,
not crazy attorney, just reasonable attorney fees,
as ordered by the court.
Pornhub said a better solution is to identify users by their device.
I'm not sure that's really a great idea either.
It seems like another way of monitoring people and over-restriction,
Orwellian, looking over your shoulder.
Look, people are always going to be able to lie.
They're always going to be able to input fake information.
And to have this kind of a restriction imposed upon a company that's not even in your state,
it seems like a really bad step to take.
We don't want that as the rule that we now have to follow.
Absolutely.
One funny thing about this is when somebody in Utah tries to go to Pornhub to access the service,
instead, since they're blocked from the service,
they get a video message from a spokesperson for Pornhub explaining,
this is why you can't see the porn, because your government did this.
And it really, I'm wondering what the reaction is going to be like,
given enough time and enough people getting tired of seeing this message.
Kila's here.
Yes, Kila, welcome.
Hi, thank you.
So this law went into effect today.
Oh, it did, today.
I didn't know it was that important.
Today.
Signed into law on the 14th of March, takes effect today.
So I'm curious to see how things are going to go forward.
And the thing I was thinking of, I was laughing while we were talking about this story,
because in Utah, unless I'm very much mistaken,
I'm thinking about things that require age ID.
Places where alcohol is sold in Utah, like liquor stores,
I believe are owned by the state, are controlled by the state.
So this is very interesting, like,
state regulation of particular vices and age-restricted material.
And, I don't know, how can you claim that you want smaller government
if you're controlling this kind of situation in that particular way?
That's all I'm saying.
Go ahead, Rob.
We can speak to the purely technical end of this, which is they're using,
I'm assuming, GOIP information to determine what IP addresses come from Utah.
And many people who work in networking will tell you that GOIP information is good
if you want sort of a vague area.
It's not always exact.
It's very often flawed.
Often you'll come up as being in the next town over or something.
And so this now has the potential to affect people who are not subject to Utah's law,
like people just over the state line, possibly.
And I'm also curious about how VPN subscriptions in Utah,
if we'll see a spike in those.
Oh, I'm sure we already have.
I mean, for those who don't know,
a virtual private network allows you to disguise your IP, come from anywhere.
So I guess theoretically we could come from Utah if we wanted to.
Has anyone ever wanted to come from Utah on the Internet?
Well, okay.
If a VPN service allows you to change your IP so it appears you're going somewhere from Utah,
we could try to access Pornhub that way and see if we can figure out another way to get around that restriction.
But for people who are in Utah, all you have to do is get onto a VPN.
There are free ones and there are ones that you can subscribe to that are more professional.
Pick any place else and just go to Pornhub.
I'm told we're not allowed to.
Okay, we have to make sure that if anyone is listening to us in Utah that they didn't hear what I just said,
because apparently what I said is a felony in the eyes of some people in Utah that seem to think they're in control.
Yeah, it's that easy.
This is a ridiculous restriction.
And we have to fight this just like everything else has been fought,
just like the Missouri snitch line.
We're just seeing more and more crazy restrictions and attempts to control people's lives that we can't let become the norm.
Yes, Kayla?
I suppose my other question is if they're going to court costs and reasonable attorney fees and damages
if someone who's underage accesses something that they're underage for,
are there also similar repercussions when this trove of PII gets leaked?
Because God knows it's going to get leaked.
Yes.
And I'm very curious what the repercussions for the site would be
and are they less or more onerous than the damages that would be required for, oh no, a 17-year-old gone onto our website?
Go ahead, Alex.
I mean, I think the answer to Kayla's is no.
Only the laws that are already preexisting would apply to this.
Any kind of state data breach law would apply too.
I think this information about whether or not somebody is a minor or not could be considered part of PII
because it can partly identify somebody or PII being personally identifiable information.
But I think the notion of creating this private right of action against a website
for damages resulting from a minor's accessing material is really bizarre in so many ways.
I mean, it's particularly peculiar, especially when there's just so much nonsense on the Internet
that can harm people and is offensive in so many different ways.
Pornography being something that is now subject to a private right of action
where you can be called into court in Utah to answer for this and then have to pay attorney's fees is really, really damaging.
It doesn't surprise me whatsoever that Pornhub would be taking some kind of reasonable precautions
to limit access to citizens of Utah.
I mean, they're the ones that are going to suffer here.
They're the ones that have to pay an extra couple of bucks for a VPN in order to access pornography now.
It's really bizarre.
But I want to also go back to something that – and I think it was you, Kayla, that mentioned this –
the IP address block assignments.
Well, those come from something called IANA.
IANA stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
It used to be part of ICANN.
They've separated and parted ways now, but they are still intimately connected.
And IANA assigns IP blocks to something called ASMs or Autonomous System Numbers.
And they generally stay static.
They stay the same for most of the time, but then every once in a while they get switched around.
And you may not get notification when an IP block is switched around.
So, you know, what IP address assignments belong to Utah right now tomorrow might belong to California.
And so you might have this kind of bizarre blocking of people that don't necessarily need to be blocked.
So, once again, in response to some idiotic law, we're going to have overblocking of material that shouldn't be happening.
And then one final point here is that – like I agree to, you know, we need to protect minors and all of that.
But any kind of age verification system is creating more data for whoever is doing the age verification.
That's information that can be bought, packaged, and sold.
And it's interesting and valuable information because it means, you know, you can more accurately target your ads.
But, obviously, people are going to lie about this.
If you're a 15-year-old and you are accessing pornography, you're not going to claim that you're 15 years old either.
So just from a logical perspective, it is idiotic.
And then it just tends to undermine the concept of anonymity one level farther on the Internet,
which is, you know, we've seen this just being chipped away at for decades now.
Yeah, I can't even conceive of a 15-year-old lying, but apparently that happens.
But my question to you, Alex, is as far as this law, as you understand it, let's forget about the minors for now.
Let's just assume the minors will figure out a way to get pornography one way or another.
What about adults? What about people who are older than 18 or 21 or 35, whatever age Utah decides is an adult?
Do they have to verify their age? Do they have to identify themselves every time they visit a pornography site?
I don't know if it's every time. There may be some kind of...
Or ever? Do they ever have to identify themselves?
Yeah, I think initially you would.
I would imagine that if you're in Utah right now and you try to go to a porn hub, you're going to be blocked.
But I think they're just not servicing Utah at all.
But there are a million porn sites.
So are all these porn sites supposed to be asking people for their real identification?
Well, I think there's going to be some kind of affirmation or certification that you make,
basically stating that you're over 18 years old.
You're saying it's just a button that says I'm over 18? That's it?
I would presume so.
I think it's more than that. I think it goes beyond that.
You think it actually requires you to upload a license or something?
I don't think we'd be talking about it if it was a simple thing of just the cannabis sites
where you have to say you're over 21 before you can look at the prices.
Well, if that's the case, then Gila's question about the information that's collected,
if they're collecting IDs and things,
well, then these pornography sites are certainly going to be subject to the panoply of data protection laws.
And look, those laws apply wherever the affected parties are.
So if there's some kind of breach of this information and there's licenses that belong to the state of Maryland,
New York, Maine, you're going to have to comply with those laws, not just the laws of Utah.
Or else what?
I mean, if somebody from Utah decides they don't like something that is on a website someplace
and they try to prosecute somebody in a different state or a different country,
do those people even have to acknowledge them?
Well, yeah, they might.
Let's say it's a parent who has a child who accesses a pornography site that was available in Utah
without some kind of affirmation or certification, verification, whatever process they're utilizing.
They would have to answer to that site or they would have to answer to that to that court case that was filed in Utah
or they would face some kind of default judgment.
Gila, it looks like you just found something out.
I just found the text of the bill and it is utterly fascinating.
So, OK, this bill provides definitions, requires a commercial entity that provides pornography
and other materials defined as being harmful to minors as a substantial portion of the entity's content
to verify the age of individuals accessing the material, establishes requirements and liability for retention of data,
imposes liability for publishers and distributors of material harmful to minors who fail to comply with verification requirements,
and provides that an Internet service provider or hosting entity is not liable for hosting
or transmitting material harmful to minors to the extent that it is not the creator of the material.
Now.
Yeah, if you can interpret that.
That was just the introduction.
So the thing I found very interesting was digitized identification card means a data file available on any mobile device
which has connectivity to the Internet through a state-approved application that allows the mobile device
to download the data file from a state agency or authorized agent of a state agency that contains all of the data elements visible
on the face and back of a license or identification card and displays the current status of the license or identification card.
So basically it looks like you have to download like a file of your state identification to be able to blip it to any site you may wish to visit.
It also defines what they're talking about in terms of what would be harmful to minors if they happened into it.
So it's a hell of a lot more than a simple button to say you're over 21 or 18.
Yeah.
I think by choosing this tact, they're actually making it much worse as far as a precedent and then, of course, immediately in their state
because the burden and this mechanism maybe could have been worked out so that it wasn't as onerous or there were other novel ways
of having a pass-through or some kind of gateway through to their private corporate site.
And now it's like basically blown up in their face.
It's being reframed because they're just saying, well, no, you're giving us homework for something that is ostensibly not really our responsibility.
And I actually I think that it's a missed opportunity for the state to actually get what they want because the actual material isn't going anywhere.
It's not going to get any better regulated.
If anything, it's going to be in seedier far corners still getting through.
My point, though, is that this in general, it's not going to gain them the effect.
And they've instead basically tried once again, and this is a bigger subject, but I think it's the overarching structure of this,
is that they're trying to claim that the Internet itself is a place for children.
And I think it is, in fact, there's a stronger argument for quite the opposite, that it is much more of an adult environment than it is a kid's space.
I really, truly think that is what we're looking at as we've covered this stuff.
And just one more one more thing I want to impart in saying that there are multiple layers before a child gets to this particular private company site and this idealized gateway where we're devising in these very rough deliberations.
But let's be absolutely honest.
There's the physical access to a means of getting onto this adult space.
I'm arguing it is very much an adult space.
This was never designed for children.
And to fool everyone who is an adult into thinking it's for kids is bizarre.
And I think really backwards in this day and age.
We need to be we need to confront that.
And basically, the physical access, the operating system access, there are sufficient controls in browsers.
There are many settings that you would have to recklessly not employ as a parent.
And I don't know, Alex, weigh in.
Am I crazy here?
Or was this always supposed to be as burdensome?
You're a parent.
You understand this.
Like, you wouldn't just set your kids free with, you know, power tools or something, right?
Like adult equipment or an adult in an adult environment.
Yeah, I think I don't know if I entirely agree with you, because I think that kids and young people definitely form a critical mass and a pivotal part of the Internet and are going to be crucial to how how it evolves.
But I do tend to agree with you in that, you know, not everything needs to be made a safe space for kids.
And the Internet certainly is, you know, on a whole, you know, not a great place to be hanging out if you're a child in an unsupervised manner.
You know, I think a lot of this is, frankly, paternalism.
You know, and the type of paternalism that should get the libertarian types that live in Utah really angry, right?
Because this is government coming in and telling you how to mind your children, how to raise them, what you can see, what you can't see, and asking you to verify your yourself with some kind of actual piece of identification every time you want to look at porn.
I mean, that's totally insane and paternalistic.
I mean, you know, we talk about gun ownership and regulation, things like that.
I mean, the idea that the government wants websites to track you together with your browsing habits of pornography is beyond the pale crazy.
And this should get people really, really angry, I think, on a number of levels.
And it's paternalistic in, I think, the most insulting way.
So I think that, you know, that's really my takeaway from this, Kyle, is that I think the farther we stray into this overregulation of content and the Internet, the more these libertarian types should be really getting angry about this.
But we don't necessarily see that.
Well, you know, what I think we really should focus on here is the fact that Utah's sense of responsibility is being foisted onto external parties such as Pornhub.
Utah apparently thinks it has a problem with its underage kids obsessed with pornography and disobeying rules and lying online.
Okay, Utah, you think that's a problem?
It's your problem.
It's not Pornhub's problem.
So maybe we should transfer the responsibility back home so that every time somebody turns on a computer, they have to identify themselves.
Okay.
And, oh, yeah, that's a pain in the ass.
That's a government overreach.
Now you get it.
Now you see it because you're confronted with it every time you do anything involving technology.
Rather than simply saying, okay, porn people, it's your responsibility.
No, it's not.
It's not their responsibility.
They're running a website.
You're the ones with the kids that you're worried about that are doing all kinds of horrible things on the Internet.
So control your kids.
See how that works out.
Go ahead.
And I think we need to insist that they do that.
I don't know how to do it legally, Alex, but I'm sure, you know, a courageous stance of defiance is what we need in this case rather than compliance.
Go ahead, Rob.
This also, looking at how this bill defines pornography, it's falling into the same pits that every time someone tries to censor pornography, regulate against pornography,
where it defines it completely vaguely in terms that this is going to cut off, say, you know, material on breastfeeding, material on sex education,
probably queer studies, you know, things that teenagers would need to know about themselves in adolescence as they grow up,
things that queer teenagers specifically would need to educate themselves about, and things like that.
So this is, I think, coming up against a lot more than just, oh, you know, grown-ups want to look at porn and they should be able to.
This is really censorship in a bad way.
Yeah, I mean, I'm still looking at all of the definitions.
This is fascinating.
Material harmful to minors is defined as all of the following, lots of different pieces, but very important.
The material taken as a whole lacks seriously, serious, excuse me, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
And Utah is going to define that for us.
The government of Utah is going to tell us what's scientific and what's got value.
Better, better, because this is also, I think, probably getting us close to the snitch line a little bit,
because any material that the average person applying contemporary community standards would find taking the material as a whole
and with respect to minors is designed to appeal to or is designed to pander to the prurient interest.
That word prurient, again, that just reminds me of the FCC regulations involving obscenity and indecency
and the nonsense that that has fostered over the years.
I truly think a lot of the framing in this by talking about, oh, what is so specific to minors in this,
again, it frames it as though there's anything that they need to qualify, like this is a big issue that they're taking on,
and no one is making that argument, necessarily.
But there are adults that do want to have the freedom to have any kind of information they want,
and that's partly the purpose of the Internet itself as a resource.
So I don't know.
I just think the language in what Gila has been recounting is it's great,
but a lot of that can be handled at the multiple layers I kind of pointed out along the way before you even get to this private site.
Go ahead, Rob.
Also, and maybe Utah is looking for an opportunity to sue other states of this particular country,
but the Internet is outside this country as well.
That's right.
Someone in Sweden posted a picture of their butt online.
What's Utah going to do about it in this case?
Well, that's my question.
Do they have authority to go after people not only in other states but in other countries as well?
Using their logic, well, how about we make some crazy laws in New York and start suing entities in Utah
for not being pornographic enough?
I don't know.
You've got to fight fire with fire.
Well, you can also extend the logic out.
We've already seen the criminalization of data in the context of abortion access and data and apps and so forth there.
What if anyone who's ever consumed traffic from Pornhub who enters the state of Utah is all of a sudden ticketed or something,
like an easy pass for your private traffic somehow?
Or maybe you're a performer, you were identified with some kind of recognition technology,
or worse yet, someone faked you in some act that's publicly available,
and now you're targeted by the state just because you wanted to watch the last of the Salt Lake dry up.
I mean, it's insane.
We're getting into a place where it's becoming illegal for trans people to walk down certain streets in certain states,
Tennessee being one of them.
It's illegal for doctors to perform medical procedures or even to advise about medical procedures.
It's illegal for people to visit certain websites.
It's illegal for people to talk about history that paints the country in an unflattering light.
If we accept all of this and we don't fight back and refuse to obey this nonsense that's being shoved down our throats,
it's going to become normal, and we're going to have to live with it and realize that we let it happen.
So yeah, people are going to have to go to jail.
People are going to have to shout at each other, and it's going to get ugly, but the alternative to that is far, far worse.
Alex, go ahead.
I just think that this whole situation really underscores why it's so important to vote in off years
and for your state officials as well because this is a state law.
This is your local state legislature, your assembly, your state assembly, your state senators that came up with this crazy,
cockamamie nonsense in Utah right now, but they did it in a really crafty way.
Gila, I want to ask you, that definition that you read that referenced Purian interest and whatnot,
that was directly from the law, wasn't it?
Correct.
So what they did was pretty crafty here because pornography, to a certain extent,
actually does encompass sexuality and literature, and a lot of pornography is actually protected by the First Amendment.
There are, however, two types of pornography that are not protected by the First Amendment.
One of them is child pornography, and the other one is obscenity,
and the definition of obscenity that's not protected by the First Amendment is a sort of narrow category of unprotected speech
is exactly what Gila read, and so they're taking this definition of obscenity
and trying to read that into pornography in general because they're trying to make this,
if you have a Venn diagram of obscenity and pornography, they think that they exactly overlap, but they don't.
Not all pornography is obscenity.
There's a small subset of pornography, I would argue, that's obscenity that would not be protected by the First Amendment,
so with that understanding, I can see there being challenges raised pretty quickly,
hopefully by people like the EFF and the ACLU on First Amendment grounds, perhaps, to try to destroy the statute,
but I think more importantly for the people of Utah, if you don't want to be dealing with this,
not everything requires a litigation-focused solution.
The best way to change this law is to vote out the people who created it.
And it's all fine and good to say that, and I would never tell people that voting doesn't do any good,
but surely, Alex, you're aware of the many, many, as you say, crafty ways that Republicans have set things up
so that even if you do vote in a majority, they somehow don't get the power through gerrymandering,
through all kinds of tricks that the Republicans have used to their advantage
that Democrats don't seem to quite have a handle on.
It's not that easy.
I would argue a contrary point there, Manuel.
I would suggest to you that viewing certain types of pornography and pornography that borders on obscenity
would very likely be far more important to Republicans than Democrats.
That's probably true, but I don't know if it's important enough to get them to vote for the evil Democrats.
This should be a truly bipartisan issue.
All right, to be continued.
We said we had an MTA story for you, and we do.
You might already know about this.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who are responsible for getting Gila here on time,
will no longer be posting service alerts for the LIRR, Long Island Railroad,
and other agencies such as the subways, buses.
They will not be posting that on Twitter anymore.
Their statement says the MTA does not pay tech platforms to publish service information,
and it has additional tools that can provide alerts in real time.
They have been using an API to get this information out to people via Twitter.
Now, thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter is demanding $50,000 a month for that service, a service that was free.
So I can certainly understand why the MTA does not want to play ball as far as that goes.
It's just another example of how Twitter is completely falling apart.
You know, I lost my verification.
Yeah, my blue check is gone.
And I got to tell you, man, it's been hard to adjust to it.
I'm seeing people I haven't seen in a couple of years, you know, I haven't talked to because, you know.
But it's, you know, I'm humbled.
I'm humbled.
I realize that life goes on in the unchecked world, and now I'm one of them again.
And that's fine.
That's fine.
That's okay.
You know, apparently I'm not paying $8 a month for a blue check,
because all it does is identify me as somebody who's stupid enough to pay $8 a month for a blue check.
Yeah, there's consensus around that.
I think a lot of people have decided not to.
And then they started giving blue checks back to certain people,
but then saying that they paid for it, even though they didn't.
So that, to me, is even worse.
That's astroturfing.
I guess that's astroturfing, yeah.
And now Elon Musk is...
Oh, this gets me.
You can't even take a...
What?
You can't even take a break.
The inactivity...
I don't know what you mean.
Apparently you can't be inactive, or your accounts are...
Okay.
Yeah, this is part of the NPR story.
I think it was in that story.
Well, first of all, NPR stopped using Twitter as well,
because they were being defined as a state-affiliated media outlet.
And that's what Chinese news agencies and RT in Russia are defined as.
So it was kind of inaccurate.
NPR is listener-supported.
I believe we discussed this before.
So now Elon Musk has taken to emailing people at NPR,
because he has nothing better to do,
saying things like,
so is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again,
or should we reassign NPR to another company?
This is mere days after they stopped using Twitter and PBS as well.
When asked who would be taking over the NPR account on Twitter,
he replied National Pumpkin Radio.
Yeah, the guy is just a barrel of laughs.
And this news outlet, Engadget,
reached out to Twitter for a statement on this,
but the company doesn't have a communications team anymore,
so they weren't able to get a response.
Under Twitter's policy,
the company said that users can simply log in once every 30 days
to keep their account active.
I do believe that's...
I think that's what I was reading.
Yeah, okay, that's what you were referring to.
It sounds like homework.
Well, it's definitely different than it was,
because it was a lot longer than that.
And I can tell you why.
We have been trying for years to get the Twitter account HOPE
for our Hackers on Planet Earth conferences.
It's available.
It's right there.
H-O-P-E hasn't been used in years,
goes to a website, it no longer exists.
And we run the HOPE conference,
so it would be great to have the HOPE Twitter account,
and nothing, crickets.
So if this were the case,
we should be able to get that account without any problem.
But we can't.
We can't.
And here Elon Musk is saying,
yeah, every 30 days, if you don't log in,
you can lose your account.
Accounts may be permanently removed due to inactivity,
and that's policy.
So policy seems to be whatever he wants it to be at the moment.
Yeah, they can also be permanently removed by you.
Well, that's true too.
From disinterest.
But hey, prove me wrong, Elon.
Give us hope, and maybe there will be hope then.
Yes, Eva.
So speaking of things seem to be changing on a whim,
23 hours ago, the Associated Press reported
that Twitter basically said,
oh, psych, if you're a government organization
or providing a public good,
you can still have the API for free.
Ha ha.
Oh, boy.
Nothing about this makes any sense at all.
Well, it does, if you know some medical terms
and are aware of people who just feel the need
to be accepted and think they're funny
and actually aren't ever telling the truth.
But that's just...
Well, it's testing for a reaction, right?
I guess so.
It's just like low, low, low, low-fi market research.
As someone who's launching rockets to Mars,
they need a reaction from people on Twitter.
I don't get it.
I don't get that need for attention.
I don't know.
Okay, here is an interesting story
that's probably more controversial
than anything we've discussed so far.
It involves the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo
over there in Indiana.
They released a statement concerning
a website hack that gave away false free tickets.
Yeah, that was the news story,
false free tickets because of a website hack.
Their statement says,
officials with the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo
said on a week ago Tuesday,
it was a faulty promotional code
that caused the free tickets to be distributed.
After a thorough review,
officials said there was no security breach
on the website,
and any personal information shared
with the zoo's website is secure.
Yeah, now the post on Monday night said,
earlier tonight,
the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo's website was hacked,
resulting in the false sale of free tickets.
As one of only a handful of non-profit zoos
in the United States
that does not receive government funding,
we rely heavily on admission sales
to provide for the 1,600 animals in our care.
All tickets given away for free tonight
are not valid and cannot be used to visit the zoo.
We are disappointed that this happened,
and we apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you for your understanding
and continued support of the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.
Tuesday, they said,
we are still working through the details
of how this incident transpired,
and we're putting processes in place
to avoid future issues.
So, which is it, Fort Wayne Children's Zoo?
You say you've been hacked,
you're blaming hackers,
and then you say it's the result
of a faulty promotional code
that resulted in this.
You know, I hope you treat the animals
better than you treat hackers,
because apparently nobody hacked the site,
it was just bad programming,
and now there's a bunch of people
with free tickets that can't go to the zoo.
You know?
There's a lot of lessons to be learned here,
but truth in your claims
is what I hope you get out of this.
Gila?
I mean, truth in claims is important,
but with a name like the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo,
do we know that it's animals on display?
Oh, yeah.
I'm just saying,
they do not define their terms well to begin with,
so I am skeptical of pretty much anything
they have to say.
Wow.
Yeah, again,
they're still working through the details
of how the incident transpired,
and we're putting processes in place
to avoid future issues.
No apology,
no retraction of blaming hackers for something.
And no puns about monkeying around with things,
and, you know, animal puns.
Yeah, we could have helped with that as well.
Okay, you know,
we only have five minutes left,
but you guys heard about this latest thing from Google
where they're trying to eliminate passwords?
They want to have something called passkeys.
They say they're a safer and easier replacement
for passwords.
With passkeys,
users can sign into apps and websites
with a biometric sensor,
like a fingerprint or facial recognition
pin or pattern.
Isn't a pin a password?
Well, it's kind of like a password.
Which frees them from having to remember
and manage passwords.
A passkey can replace a password
and a second factor in a single step.
The user experience can be as simple
as autofilling a password form.
Passkeys provide robust protection
against phishing attacks,
unlike SMS or an app-based one-time passwords.
Since passkeys are standardized,
a single implementation
enables a passwordless experience
across different browsers and operating systems.
Yeah, it sounds great.
You know, it sounds like something
that could be really handy
until you lose your device
and then somebody is able to get in with,
well, if they can get into your device
and they can hijack that.
I don't know.
I have doubts about this.
Do you guys have any thoughts?
Yeah, I mean,
biometric ways of getting into things
are routinely shown to be kind of garbage
in the sense that, like,
facial recognition is still bypassable
sometimes with a picture of the person
or a video of the person.
And that's if it works on you to begin with
because a lot of facial recognition algorithms
still have trouble with people who aren't white.
Yeah.
And fingerprints, you know,
somebody could always take your finger
and put it on something.
The rest of this, it's just, you know,
the power of two-factor authentication
was that it was a combination of two things,
something you have and something you know.
And when you boil it down to just one or the other,
you're losing the protection.
Yeah, I mean, everyone has to come up
with their own security system
that they're comfortable with.
I'm just not really thrilled
with sharing biometric information with Google
or having that be the only method
of unlocking something.
It just seems like you're giving out too much.
I'd have to look into it some more,
but I'm always wary when Google decides
to change the rules and call something legacy
and phase it out
because they do that an awful lot
and oftentimes something good
is left behind as a result.
Go ahead, Alex.
I mean, I think two points here.
I mean, past keys are all well and good,
I think, right,
when they're device-based or, you know,
and they work.
But there's got to be, you know,
some system for setting up a new past key
on a new device that can be exploited
or a recovery of some kind of past key
that undoubtedly will be exploited
in some other way that, you know,
we thought two-factor authentication
or multi-factor authentication
was the be-all, end-all.
Now there's, you know, a number of ways
and kits to get around two-factor authentication.
So, you know, I'm always skeptical
of there being some universal panacea.
But I think more generally, though,
this whole issue is about identity
and who controls identity on the Internet.
Google wants you hooked.
Google wants your identity to be part of Google.
They want you to use Gmail.
They want you to use Google Docs,
Google Drive, Google This, Google That.
Facebook wants you to use Meta.
They want you to use Meta to sign in for this,
that, and the other thing.
And your identity, as we've discussed
on this program numerous times
in the last few weeks, in fact,
does not necessarily belong to you.
That service can go away.
That service can be terminated.
Your identity belongs to you
only if it's in some kind of, you know,
self-custodial sense.
And that's why I think services like ENS
or the Ethereum Name Service
are really, really important
and are going to be critical
to how the Internet evolves
because that puts your identity
and everything associated with your identity
in your own hands
and not the hands of a company like Google.
We're going to have to leave it there
and continue the conversation over on YouTube
on Overtime, Channel 2600, at 8 p.m.
Go to the link on the 2600.com webpage.
Write to us, OTH at 2600.com,
with your feedback.
Rob, I believe you have a reminder for us
for this coming Friday.
Yes, Friday is the 2600 meetings.
Go to 2600.com slash meetings
and find or start one near you.
Go to MYC2600.net for info
on the local one here in New York
where we'll be celebrating Volume 40.
And we will see you here next week.
Good night.
The autonomous Komi Republic,
which is part of the Russian Federation,
is situated in the far northwest of Europe
and spreads up to the Arctic part
of the Ural Mountains.
It's crossed by nine northern parallels.
Ten fair-sized European states
could be placed on its territory.
Besides indigenous residents,
that is, the Komi people,
there are also Russians, Ukrainians,
Nenetses, Chuvashis, and Tartars.
And now let's go back into history a little bit.
A boy lying on skims behind our backs
was turning the knobs of a small transistor radio.
And the tent was suddenly filled
with an announcer's voice speaking Komi.
Then went music from Moscow
followed by English and French speech.
The recording was made at the Moscow Theater
of Musical Miniatures.
Now back to modern times.
Your attention, please.
At the recommendation of the International Time Bureau,
commencing at 23 hours 59 minutes 60 seconds UTC,
an extra second will be inserted into the NBS time scale.
This adjustment is required
to maintain internationally coordinated universal time
as broadcast from these stations
in close agreement with UT1 or astronomical time.
WA-6-0DB with a question.
And, uh...
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
And about power.
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Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?
We've got so much power now.
That's ridiculous.
Do you m...
Do you know how many time zones
there are in the Soviet Union?
Power.
And all that.
That's power.
We've got so much power.
That's ridiculous.
We have power...
Power, power, power.
Power, power...
Now, it's ridiculous.
We've got so much power now.
Do you know how many time zones
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It's not even funny.
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