What? 
Hello? 
Oh, it's 7 p.m., and it's a Wednesday, and that means if you're listening to WBAI New York, it's time for Off the Hook. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough. 
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
Bumbiddy Bump, but the best is great, the worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
Bumbiddy Bump! 
Bumbiddy Bump! 
And a very good evening, Turb Arts program is Off the Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yeah, I'm over here. 
Over in Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly. 
Good evening. 
We have Gila. 
Good evening. 
We have Alex. 
Following two, good evening. 
And that was the smoothest intro I think we've had in months. 
Boy, let's just relish that for a moment. 
We are on for an hour tonight, and we are doing at least another hour afterwards on Off the Hook Overtime over on YouTube. 
You can get the link by going to 2600.com and looking at the top of the page, or just going to our YouTube channel, channel 2600. 
You know, there's been a lot of activity on channel 2600 lately. 
We have been listening in to those guys up north, you know, the truckers that are causing all manner of mayhem. 
It's called the Freedom Convoy. 
That's what they call it. 
That's what they call themselves. 
Not what I call it. 
They identify as a free convoy. 
Well, they can identify as whatever they wish, but it doesn't make it necessarily true. 
Freedom to maybe stop a billion dollars in commerce. 
I guess there's a special note of patriotism there. 
But, okay, you know, let's look into this just a little bit because there is a hacker angle to this. 
And what we have been doing over at 2600 is listening in to their communications because they're using something known as Zello. 
Now, Zello is an app. 
It's kind of like a two-way radio. 
You guys over in Skyplan, you ever use this? 
Alex, you're nodding your head. 
I've heard of it, yeah, and I've heard that they were using this. 
It's quite interesting that you were listening in. 
Yeah, the funny feature that I remember, ages ago when you and I were playing around with this. 
Years ago. 
It was a really long time ago. 
And since I think ran over one of the handsets that had it, but you still are familiar with it and reminded me, hey, this is something we've used before. 
Like, this is not unfamiliar. 
And my account still worked. 
Yeah, yeah. 
So the feature that is striking is the PTT function, the push to talk. 
And does anybody remember Nextel cell phones? 
Oh, God, yes. 
Boy, those were the most annoying phones in the world. 
And people would chirp and they'd have the little push to talk. 
It was like sitting next to a cop everywhere you went. 
Yeah, because it would do the little, like the kindar, whatever kind of tone it was. 
People somehow thought it was cool to have their conversations broadcast for everybody here on both sides. 
Instead of just sitting next to somebody who was being annoying as hell in a restaurant talking to somebody on the phone, now you got to hear the person on the other side as well. 
Well, it started on, like, construction sites and places where nobody cared. 
But, yeah, it worked its way into everybody's phones. 
You know, when Nextel was hurting for customers and needed everybody to have this function, everybody started using it. 
What happened to them? 
I haven't heard about Nextel in a long time. 
They got devoured by Sprint ages ago. 
Also ancient history. 
But anyway. 
But they don't have that feature anymore, right? 
This feature, I don't know if there was intellectual property. 
I don't know how Zello adapted it. 
It's basically the exact same function, though. 
You press, like, the camera picture-taking button, and it works similar. 
It's different because you can talk to a whole bunch of people. 
I guess Nextel you could probably do the same thing. 
But this, it's meant to be sort of like a two-way radio, except you're broadcasting to many people with two-way radio, which you can do with a two-way radio. 
I know that. 
But this is all over the net, and it's digital, and it's powerful. 
Yeah, and you can play back the audio there, which is really interesting. 
It's, I think, similar to some of the voice chat rooms, like Clubhouse, that got really popular a while ago. 
It's tricky because they have a proprietary format, so you can't record what is being broadcast. 
No, yeah. 
There's no way you can, like, download it or have an SD card or anything. 
No, so we've downloaded it. 
Well, we've recorded it, but you're not supposed to be able to do that. 
We got some help, and what's important is that it's being recorded. 
Would you like to hear some of what was broadcast today? 
We're listening in to some of the coordinators of the convoy up in Ottawa, but they're actually spread out throughout, not only the country, but the world. 
But there are people who are in Ottawa, in trucks, talking on this thing. 
And you can just sort of get a sense as to how they think, what they plan for. 
No, go ahead, Kyle. 
No, no, just look at us. 
Look, you're giving them a voice. 
They want to be heard, and look how supportive we are. 
Well, I don't know if they want that kind of a voice, but we have been posting this both on our website. 
If you go to the 2600 Twitter account, which is 2600, you'll see we post links several times a day to the most updated announcements or, I guess, just recordings of their conversations for that part of the day. 
We're also putting them on our YouTube channel, on channel 2600. 
You can find them. 
Just click on the video section, and you'll see a whole bunch of upside-down Canadian flags, which is what they're flying up there. 
And you'll hear how they communicate amongst themselves what they're thinking today. 
Now, today was a big day. 
Yesterday was a big day, too, because the Emergencies Act was basically started by Trudeau. 
So, and it's getting quite a bit of pushback, obviously, by these people, but today the Ottawa police took the next step, and, of course, we know how these demonstrations go. 
The next step being that they handed out flyers. 
Man, I love Canada. 
They handed out flyers. 
That was the big deal. 
So, there's all kinds of reaction to that going on up there right now, and who knows what's going to - there might be a memo next. 
Who knows? 
Well, matching the absurdity, like the escalation being so, well, muted, really contrasted and was complemented with the outrage that a document like this would be circulated and that the emergency powers would be invoked because they had shut down the city and the borders and everything else. 
Well, now, okay, so this recording that we grabbed today, it's an example of how they're basically scaring themselves and coming up with rumors and then basically reacting to those rumors that they themselves come up with. 
And you'll hear basically the tone. 
It might surprise you. 
It might seem a whole lot friendlier than you expected, a whole lot more like listening to your parents or something like that. 
And it is. 
It is. 
But that's kind of how these things go. 
Let's take a listen to the Canadian Freedom Convoy recorded earlier today. 
I heard they're actually - if your children are found in the convoy or the protest or whatnot, that they're actually just coming and taking your kids away as far as I know. 
I could be wrong, though. 
Is there any way we can get that fact checked? 
Yes, that would be a good idea. 
I don't know where - I don't know where to find it. 
I read it somewhere or somebody told me somewhere. 
But like I say, I could be wrong. 
But if somebody else has the proper facts, absolutely. 
In my mind, it's another scare tactic to try to scare people and not going over this weekend with their kids and all that. 
Is it a scare tactic that's going to lead to something else? 
Like are they saying we're going to take your kids if you bring them here because they actually plan on getting aggressive? 
Like is that why? 
I think, well, it seems the weekends that they're doing the most action. 
So I would say, yeah, the weekends I probably, just in case, be safe. 
Take your kids out to somewhere else on the weekends because that seems to be when the most action happens. 
It's an extremely sad state of affairs when the police warn you. 
You can't take your children or you shouldn't take your children and try to install a fear in you that, well, if you do, there might be a problem because your kids might get - have the crap kicked out of them when the police come to attack you guys. 
So, yeah, it's real sad. 
I grew up in the system when I was young. 
I'm not anymore, obviously. 
But they do have - they can walk into anybody's home and take out your children whenever they want with police supervision, of course. 
Possibly - I'm not sure if it's with a warrant or without a warrant or something like that. 
But with this emergency act, I'd definitely look in to see whether or not they can just walk in and take if you're - if they find you a part of this. 
Just to cut in there, I tell them to be real careful that they're not touching any Indigenous children. 
It's against the law. 
So they better be real careful. 
And I'm a youth care part social worker by trade. 
And I was in the system for all of them, the scoop, residential, and foster care. 
So they need to be real careful. 
If I was anybody with a child, I would just take them to grandma and grandpa's. 
And then they can be proud of mom and pops for fighting for freedom. 
And there you go. 
That was recorded today on one of the Zello channels that the Canadian Convoy people organizers are communicating on. 
And I thought it was just very interesting how they basically made up this scenario where your kids - I heard that your kids are going to be taken away from you. 
Wait, do you hear it? 
Ah, somebody told me or I read it somewhere. 
I don't remember. 
We should verify. 
And then they just kept building on that as if it was fact. 
And then the kids were getting the crap kicked out of them and all sorts of things, scenarios. 
And this is how panic and defensiveness and regrettable actions happen. 
It's because of this kind of thing being spread around. 
Now, it's not always like that. 
Lots of times it's just convivial chatter. 
But you can see how after three or so weeks of this, it could be building up to something unpleasant. 
What do you guys over in Skyplan think? 
It's wild. 
Like you said, they're sort of building their own mythology from whole cloth while they're just having these chats. 
And I'm sure this is - these things that they were theorizing about when you were recording this by now are completely canonical in everyone's mind, just as sure as like pizza places or hiding children in the basements or whatnot. 
It's wild to just listen to this happen and everyone sounds completely reasonable about it. 
They're not - they don't sound like raving lunatics shouting on street corners. 
They're all just like, yeah, they're definitely going to come and take your kids away and they better not. 
And it's wild. 
Yeah, you know, you touched upon something really interesting because, yes, they do sound very sane, very friendly. 
I like these people. 
I listen to them and they seem so nice and pleasant to be around. 
But then they start talking about various things in society. 
And when the subject turns to, say, Black Lives Matter or to anti-fascist, the hatred is just there. 
It sounds very friendly, but the hatred is just right there bubbling under the surface. 
And it's - the thing that really is incredible is that when they're complaining about certain things in society that are happening as a result of the pandemic, they only go after those people in a particular political party. 
When the same exact thing happens under different leadership and, you know, whether it's a Republican governor or premier, somebody who's conservative, they don't get any of the vitriol. 
They don't get any of the hostility. 
It's always the liberals, the Democrats, the people that vote differently. 
And that, to me, is what negates the entire thing. 
If you're upset at, you know, vaccine mandates or mask mandates or things like that, be upset at everybody because the vast majority of people support this. 
If you're only upset at one particular sliver of the political spectrum, then it's a political issue. 
It's not a pandemic issue in my eyes. 
Yeah, you should have come up there to talk politics instead of pandemic. 
Yes, absolutely. 
Alex, are you saying? 
Yeah, what's interesting here is there's a lot of parallels, I think, between the polemical nature of the political divide here in the United States and what's been happening over in Canada as well. 
And if you recall last week, we talked about some particularly problematic security issues that GiveSendMe had with regard to data being leaked from their site. 
And within the last week, there was another data leak. 
Hang on, Hang on. 
GiveSendMe or GiveSendGo? 
Which is it? 
GiveSendGo. 
I think it was GiveSendGo. 
Is that? 
Yes, GiveSendGo. 
That's right. 
GiveSendGo. 
So there was apparently another data leak from GiveSendGo within the last week, which had identified the source of many of the donations for the Freedom Convoy in Canada as originating from the United States. 
Mm-hmm. 
I don't get this. 
We talked about this last week. 
We talked about the data breach. 
How did they have another data breach after this, after it was known by everybody? 
Is this, you know, remnants of the first data breach or was it actually another data breach? 
Best I can tell, I think it was a different data breach. 
I think it was a completely different data breach. 
And they took themselves completely offline earlier this week. 
They got redirected last week to, if you went to GiveSendGo for a minute over the weekend, it was actually playing over a video from the movie Frozen saying this site has been frozen. 
It was pretty great. 
I think that might have happened on Monday. 
I'm looking at a story here. 
It says, GiveSendGo's website on Monday said it was under maintenance hours after the site was hijacked and redirected to a page believed to be controlled by hackers, which no longer loads. 
The redirected page condemned the truckers who descended on Canada's capital to oppose mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, causing widespread disruption to traffic and trade for more than a week. 
The page also contained a link to a file containing tens of thousands of records of what was described as raw donation data about those who donated to the Freedom Convoy. 
A short time later, nonprofit leak site, guess who, distributed denial of secrets, said it had received 30 megabytes of donor information from GiveSendGo. 
Not from the people who run that, I don't think, but certainly from the website, including self-reported names, email addresses, zip codes, and IP addresses. 
Now, of course, distributed denial of secrets, who we've had on this program, they're a site known for hosting sets of leaked data, including far-right groups. 
They said that the data would only be provided to researchers and journalists. 
That's rather responsible, I think. 
GiveSendGo co-founder Jacob Wells did not respond to a request for comment. 
Hasn't been talking to anybody. 
Probably doesn't have much to say. 
Well, what can you say? 
What can you say? 
Boy, did I pick the wrong line of work. 
The breach is separate. 
So that answers our question. 
Separate from an earlier security lapse in which GiveSendGo left exposed to the Internet and Amazon-hosted S3 Bucket. 
I don't know what that is. 
It's a virtual server. 
Okay. 
They refer to them as buckets. 
Buckets. 
Yeah, it's like a VPS or it's an instance of a computer in the cloud. 
I don't like the use of these words, instance, buckets. 
I like the old use of the words, but whatever. 
Okay, fine. 
They had an S3 bucket, which tipped over and spilled about 1,000 identity documents. 
It got kicked. 
Yeah, it sure did. 
The Boston, Massachusetts-based Gibson Go is cursing the Canadian truckers now forever, I think. 
They became the primary donation service for the Freedom Convoy last month after GoFundMe halted the crowdsourcing campaign and froze millions of dollars in donations, citing police reports of violence across Ottawa. 
Over the weekend, a Canadian court issued an order halting access to the funds collected by GiveSendGo, which the company said it would defy. 
Yeah, and the protesters raised more than $8 million for the Freedom Convoy, and that's another small bit of change. 
It raises some questions and concerns, obviously, when something like this happens, whether it's the Emergencies Act or some other bit of law that prevents certain groups from raising money. 
Alex, as a lawyer, do you think this is something that is a potential threat to civil liberties or other groups that might not be causing such mayhem? 
Are you asking if this is going to be a slippery slope type of situation? 
Yeah, I think that's what I'm asking. 
Yeah, I think it certainly has the potential to be that, given what political party is in power. 
I think it's always tricky, though, when you're dealing with donations to these types of causes that are going for disruptive purposes. 
And I think ultimately what we need to look at, whether it's the right or the left, is what's the goal and what's the intention of the use of these particular funds? 
And here it was to support this Freedom Convoy effort that was highly disruptive. 
It was illegal in lots of ways in terms of a protest and incredibly, I think, just obstructive with respect to commerce, which is why the Canadian government invoked the Emergency Powers Act, which is not something that they would invoke. 
And in the first instance or the second instance, this is something that they would invoke really only as a last resort. 
And so I think, you know, we do have to be very careful about seizing funds, seizing money, etc. 
But looking at a lot of the data is really interesting here, too, because the majority of the donations seem to have come from Americans as opposed to Canadians. 
And I think it's certainly a curious phenomenon whenever you see foreign money pouring into a domestic civil unrest issue. 
That certainly would raise red flags for me as an American if Canadian money was pouring in for somewhat disruptive purposes. 
And also, I think anytime money is flowing between hands and certainly across borders, we have to be extraordinarily careful about the source and origin of that money to make sure that it's not dark money, to make sure that it is money that's not coming from, let's say, a sanctioned individual or a designated person who's on the U.S. sanctions list. 
And so there's a lot of, I think, checks and balances that go into how we handle the flows of money. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Another thing that strikes me about this whole thing is we know they ended up on Give, Send, Go because GoFundMe kicked them. 
The big names, the big established names in this industry wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. 
And here comes Give, Send, Go, which I don't think anyone really heard about before this whole mess. 
And it strikes me that, you know, it's not just one interesting thing to keep an eye on is, like, where's the grift? 
And I don't think anyone's going to go broke if they get into the trade of, like, looking at the white supremacists who are being driven off the traditionally used services and going, hey, guys, I'll just put up a fresh new site for you. 
And you can put up, as Give, Send, Go has proven, you could put up any old garbage site that doesn't work. 
And you could probably come away with that with a lot of money that was destined for white supremacy and whatnot. 
So this is another thing. 
Like, these people may find themselves especially vulnerable to being fooled into sending their hate funds to the wrong place. 
Just to kind of piggyback on what Rob was saying, Give, Send, Go is trying to differentiate itself in the space. 
I'm going to disagree with you for a second and say that people had not heard of it before this mess. 
Because they had. 
Give, Send, Go is really priding itself on stepping into the crowdfunding space where the big players won't. 
Before the Freedom Convoy, the biggest crowdfunding campaign on Give, Send, Go was for Kyle Rittenhouse's defense fund. 
Oh, yes. 
This is a crowdfunding site with a very particular point of view and a very particular audience they're working for. 
And you can tell they're not saying they're the biggest crowdfunding site. 
They're saying they're not the best. 
Not saying they're the best. 
Excuse me. 
They're not saying they're the most secure. 
The way they're promoting themselves, and please do not shoot the messenger for this, but the way they're promoting themselves is by referring to themselves as the number one Christian crowdfunding site. 
And that is in the very narrow definition of Christian that's also walking the line in terms of, like, it can be sort of white nationalism. 
It can be white supremacy. 
And it's very specific about, don't tell me what to do. 
I'm raising money for this. 
I'm really curious as well about how much this smacks of some of the - like, how much of this might have been astroturfed and how much is really grassroots? 
Like, what kind of media were the people that are involved watching in the run-up? 
You look at some of the terms and the language, the talking points. 
Has this stuff been market tested? 
This smacks of, like, the psychographics and some of the other stuff that we saw stateside. 
So if the money is coming from out of the country, there's sympathetic people who are getting whipped up into a frenzy with all of these talking points and localized grievances. 
And the whole point is to disrupt and shut down a government that is basically considered an adversary to the people involved. 
How much of this has been orchestrated and how much is just a chance confluence of like-minded individuals who happen to be carrying all the same slogans? 
And, you know, it's sort of a learned thing. 
I'm curious how much social media stuff and other kinds of nudges got these people there. 
Well, it's interesting because that makes me think of Canadian media in general. 
There's never been a better time to have a Canadian TV dish, believe me. 
We've been glued to the networks up there. 
There's basically, there are three networks. 
There's CBC, which you've heard of. 
It's government-run. 
And then two commercial networks, CTV and Global. 
And they don't have a fox. 
There isn't some crazy right-wing TV network that is spreading lies. 
They all do a fairly good job of being in the middle, which in their middle, it's a bit more to our left, I guess. 
But that doesn't make them biased to the left. 
It just means that we're hopelessly on the right in this country. 
You also have CPAC, which, as I mentioned before, is not the same thing as in this country. 
It's Canadian Public Affairs channel. 
It's like their C-SPAN. 
And they broadcast the parliament hearings and various other things as well. 
So that's where you might get some exposure to some of these viewpoints that don't really align themselves with facts. 
And to give you an example of how some of the people on the Zello chats are talking about this, having the fundraising, the crowdsourcing dry up or be blocked, they're saying, what about the Montgomery bus boycott? 
This would have been used against those people. 
And it's just, it's incredible to listen to their logic and basically trying to equate themselves with people fighting for civil rights in the 1960s. 
Or worse, fighting the Nazis. 
I've heard this so many times where, yeah, we're just like the Jews being persecuted. 
And, yeah, it's, I don't know. 
Does anybody have a good comeback for when that particular bit of logic, either the civil rights or the Holocaust parallels is inevitably brought up? 
Gila, go ahead. 
Okay, I'll jump on that. 
Um, it is so frustrating, so scary. 
It is, it has curdled a lot of my feelings. 
And, E, I just want to go back to something you said a minute ago, because you said it wasn't about the pandemic. 
It was about politics. 
And I agree, the whole thing has been so emphatically, this is all politics anymore. 
And, you know, people don't want to believe that there's still COVID. 
They don't want to believe that it's still a thing. 
It's all politics. 
When people talk about, when people show up wearing yellow stars that say not vaccinated, which is offensive to the world, really, and offensive to the memory of all the people who were murdered in the Holocaust. 
Which, again, not just Jews, a lot of people, because, I'm sorry, I'm trying to collect my thoughts. 
It's very, very frustrating. 
Um, you, the idea that you could be spreading something with impunity, and this is, they're saying, oh, well, you know, people thought the Jews had diseases. 
People convinced the whole entire world. 
People convinced themselves that the Jews had diseases, and it's the same thing for us. 
And it's not. 
And if they're not willing to see the difference in terms of science, like, there's actual science. 
This is an actual global pandemic. 
There is an illness. 
And if you choose not to believe that it exists, if you choose not to believe that you can spread it just because you don't think you have it, it's not anything. 
People believe they're being persecuted for their beliefs. 
First of all, they're not being persecuted. 
Full stop. 
Let's just get that out of the way. 
And, I'm sorry, I have a lot of emotion around this, and I'm having a hard time vocalizing a lot of it. 
Of course. 
It's an emotional issue. 
But you said a very important word just now. 
You said if you choose choice, they have a choice. 
They're trying to tell us that they have no choice, that they're being forced. 
No, nobody is forcing you to do anything. 
But if you make certain choices, there are consequences to those choices. 
Maybe the consequence is getting the disease that you're trying not to get by not getting vaccinated. 
It's not fair, but that's how it works. 
Or maybe the choice is that you can't participate in this activity because there are other people there that you might infect if, in fact, you are carrying that disease. 
You are making the choice, though. 
And that has never been taken away. 
Right. 
And there are lots of belief systems to which people adhere that give them meaning and keep them from doing certain things, right? 
Like certain beliefs, you don't eat certain things. 
If you believe certain things, you don't watch certain entertainments. 
This is the same kind of thing, but people, I believe that people are attempting to say that they're being persecuted for their choice not to do something, which is just emphatically not what's happening. 
And again, we need to talk about what the word persecution actually means. 
I am willing to provide dictionaries for anybody who needs one. 
This is not persecution. 
No one's coming to kill you. 
No one's taking away your property. 
No one's taking away your children. 
No one's taking away your rights. 
And we need to remember that. 
That's very true. 
Very well said. 
Go ahead, Kyle. 
Another angle that really disturbed me in their discussions was the comparison. 
They're trying to equate counter-protesters. 
They call them anarchists or leftist anarchists or whatever. 
And basically blaming on them and making them responsible. 
Anything that happens is probably an anarchist, an agitator, an instigator. 
And they're the real problem here. 
We heard the same thing with BLM in the States and that it was all people that were agitators or that somebody paid for them to be there or whatever trope they were running out then. 
But the problem with that, I find, is that the far-right ideologies that underlie this thing have a proven track record that is horrible. 
And to try to compare that history and the neo-fascist white supremacist movement to counter-protesters, people who are willing to stand up to that and push back and say, no, this is not actually what pluralistic society is about and we will not let this continue, unconfronted, is really insulting. 
And it's just a completely false comparison. 
Because tell me anything an anarchist group has done over time, and I mean modern anarchist movement or political action that has confronted groups like this, that compares anything to what happened in World War II. 
I really find that that is insulting to my intelligence and so many other aspects of this. 
It's just, it's vile, it's foul. 
And to just constantly run that, you know, you're fighting the good fight because there's so many people against you up there. 
Well, maybe that's the problem. 
They're against you because what you're promoting is abhorrent. 
And that's why they're against you. 
And if you listen, listen to these communications, you just hear how it's ingrained. 
And this goes beyond the convoy. 
This basically speaks to the entire right-wing movement. 
They are convinced that everybody who thinks differently is violent, is destroying all kinds of things, property, society. 
We are unsavable. 
We're filled with hatred. 
And all kinds of things. 
And, you know, there are instances where we make the same assumptions about people on the other side, absolutely. 
But it's just, it's scary to hear it directed towards you. 
You know, when you know the facts, when you know the people that you surround yourselves with, and you see how it's being so willfully distorted. 
And basically, this is their mantra. 
This is what they say to each other to reassure themselves and to gain more followers. 
And it works because, boy, they sound friendly. 
They sound pleasant. 
They sound like the kind of people you want to hang out with. 
Not like those horrible anarchists burning down buildings and entire cities. 
And we kind of let them set the narrative. 
You know, when you talk about Black Lives Matter, you have to be defensive. 
Yeah, you'll see all kinds of Trump flags and banners and pickup trucks and things like that. 
But you'll be afraid to fly a BLM flag because that's how the narrative has been set. 
And the majority of people, I would say, are taking, are believing it. 
They're being taken in by it. 
And it's scary to see how information can be manipulated in this manner. 
And from the bottom up, too. 
Yeah, I fully, I hear you so loudly with that. 
I mean, this goes with gender and sexual orientation as well. 
Well, that's why, you know, you hear a lot of condemnation and accusations. 
But people who identify or are marginalized are afraid to confront those who are violent and say really awful things about, you know, what they are capable or what their intentions are in the world. 
When it's completely unfounded, what that does is it paints you with a broad brush. 
And then you become ripe for attack and become someone who could be victimized by someone who's grossly misled. 
But think about this, the issue of vaccines and masks and things like that. 
It's not something that only people on the right wing are concerned about. 
And if this was such a worthy movement, a worthy goal that everybody up there is involved with, then why wouldn't there be BLM representation? 
Why wouldn't people who believe Black Lives Matter also be marching with these people saying, yeah, you're right. 
Why wouldn't you be welcoming them? 
And that just tells me this is a very polarized thing. 
It's a very political thing aimed at one specific part of society. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
On that very point, there is a clear pathway by which this information is funneled to users and users and recipients of this information are radicalized. 
And this is something actually that one of our former guests here on Off the Hook has detailed to the media over the last week in several different variations. 
And I'm talking about Dr. 
Welton Chang, who, when he was here on Off the Hook with us, he was the CTO of Human Rights First. 
Now he runs a company called Pira, which tracks and monitors extremist activity. 
And I helped him out in some small respects with that. 
But what Dr. 
Welton Chang was talking about, and I think that we have all seen this, is the pathway here usually starts with Facebook, with a Facebook group. 
Or are we calling it meta now? 
I don't know. 
But let's just, for the sake of clarity, call it Facebook. 
So these ideologues will start a Facebook group or Truckers for Freedom or something like that. 
And Facebook, because it's such a popular platform, and because of the way in which the algorithms work, it's easy to amplify this misinformation once there's a lot of engagement with that content. 
Once that content gets a lot of traction and those Facebook groups get a lot of attention, you can have them start to grow exponentially over a matter of days. 
It might start with 100, and then 9, 10 hours, you might have 2,000 users. 
The next day you might have 10,000 or 50,000 users in a particular Facebook group. 
But Facebook has gotten wise to the fact that their groups are being misused to mislead a lot of users and spread misinformation. 
And so what Facebook does is they enforce their own policies, their acceptable use policies, and they shut down these groups. 
However, it's too late, because they've started the Facebook group. 
The persons who are behind these groups and originated them know that the group full well is going to be shut down in a matter of time. 
And by the time they're shut down, they've already funneled the users into a Telegram channel. 
Now you have thousands and thousands of users in a Telegram channel, and the Facebook group doesn't serve any purpose anymore. 
They might start another Facebook group and radicalize and funnel more users into the Telegram group. 
But Telegram being an overseas entity doesn't have a lot of enforcement with respect to this. 
And let me tell you some of the stuff. 
I'm in some of these Telegram groups, and I've been watching them for the last week and a half or so. 
And don't forget, I have a keen interest in the NFL as their former CISO. 
And these Freedom Convoy truckers had clear designs on trying to disrupt the Super Bowl on Sunday, which did not materialize, I'm glad to say. 
I think DHS and a lot of other security precautions probably scared them off. 
But right now, in this Telegram group, within the last two hours, I'm talking about monitoring what these guys are saying, is they are amassing a lot of people to go after a Washington Post reporter by the name of Aaron C. 
Davis, an investigative reporter at the Washington Post, who I believe today reported that the donations through Give, Send, Go, whatever the hell it is. 
Give, Send, Go, I think that's right. 
It's Take, Receive, Stay. 
Once I came back online last night, within the last 24 hours, I believe something like $1.2 million has been, again, funneled over to these Freedom Convoy truckers. 
And what the Washington Post was doing was actually investigating, I think, using a lot of the leaked data and looking at and contacting some of the donors themselves. 
So what the people in the Telegram group are talking about now is going after him, emailing him, somebody is saying, you know what, this is a quote, you know what, everybody should email this turd and tell him exactly why people have donated. 
One word, freedom. 
Blow up his phone, email, everything. 
Make it so it takes him days to get through them all. 
He wants a story. 
Let's give him one. 
And it's going on and on and on. 
And they start talking about trashing him smartly and publicly with the press. 
They're organizing, really, against this reporter for reporting on their very own activity. 
So these Telegram groups where people really fester and foment this kind of misinformation are extraordinarily dangerous. 
Because if you scroll through these Telegram groups, you will see that it's not just misinformation and and and vitriol about reporters and stories. 
They are promoting your run of the mill, crazy conspiracy theories about human trafficking, about 5G networks, about the dangers of the political left. 
It's it's it's really a scary tunnel and funnel that these people find themselves in. 
So we're all kind of monitoring all these groups of people. 
And I guess we're having nightmares as a result of this. 
But it's it's important. 
And you can do it, too. 
You know, anyone out there has the ability to track down these these groups or apps that will help them monitor what's going on. 
The important thing is pay attention. 
And I think that's what we always say here on off the hook is pay attention and share your information. 
Yeah. 
And if you found out a way that Telegram is broken, you can always write to us at OTH at 2600 dot com. 
Absolutely. 
Now, Alex, you posted a story earlier today. 
I don't want to spend the whole time talking about the trucker. 
So let's move on to this. 
This this is about people in Florida paying traffic fines. 
And apparently when they went to the Web site to pay traffic fines, they were directed to pro-Trump merchandise. 
Did I read that right? 
Yeah, you did. 
It's a it's a really bizarre story that I think a longtime listener had directed me to on Twitter. 
And it's really fascinating, too, because the the Web site that is listed on these tickets that I guess a lot of law enforcement officers in this area of Florida have been handing out is a typo. 
And it has the wrong domain name on the ticket. 
So the the domain name that is that is supposed to be on the ticket. 
And presumably these are in and around the Miami area that these tickets have been handed out because the domain name that is supposed to be on the ticket should be Miami hyphen. 
Dade clerk dot com where you can go for information about how to pay your ticket and whatnot. 
But the ticket was printed with the domain name Miami Dade clerk dot com. 
So the difference there being there was no hyphen between Miami and Dade and Miami Dade clerk dot com takes you to a site where you can buy Trump merchandise. 
OK, so my question then is, did the people selling Trump merchandise notice this and register that domain and make this happen? 
Is that how it's interesting is, you know, and that's that's really quite a good question. 
And now that's actually the question. 
Because if they did, if they did, they get all credit for that. 
That's that's clever. 
All right. 
And then it's a stupidity of the people who printed the tickets. 
Well, I think there is certainly an element of that regardless. 
But what's interesting here is if you look up the who is records of Miami Dade clerk dot com, this is the site that's printed on the tickets that it has omitted the hyphen. 
And it wasn't registered recently. 
It was registered on December 14th, 2007, really, a really long time ago that this this domain name has been in existence. 
So it's probably taken lots of different iterations in that time. 
And what's really curious about it, too, is that and I'm wondering, actually, maybe I'll pose this question to you guys. 
Could you guess what domain name registrar is used for this domain name? 
Well, I'm going to guess GoDaddy because I always do. 
But like that, I'll say something like Namecheap. 
No, it's none other than Epic, which is known for hosting a lot of extremist and far right politically websites and also is a domain name registrar that suffered a massive data breach last data breach last year as well. 
Well, OK, so my question to you, Alex, is are you able to tell if the registrar has changed in a certain amount of time? 
In other words, can we go back, say, two years? 
Was Epic the registrar at that point? 
I will be able to look into that and I'll get back to you in about 30 seconds. 
OK, well, because that will tell us if this is something that was a long game that was planned out in advance or somebody did see an opportunity and maybe bought the domain from the whoever was holding it at that time. 
I imagine you can't tell who actually owns the domain because everybody keeps that information secret now. 
Yeah, that's correct. 
That's it's behind a proxy at the moment. 
But if I go into the who is history here, I may be able to find some some additional information. 
Also, go on the Wayback Machine on Internet Archive and check the site from a year ago, two years ago. 
See where it went then. 
Yeah, that's absolutely correct. 
You might have some some additional screenshots and things like that. 
While you're looking that up, let me quickly read this other story. 
Missouri Governor Mike Parson, remember him? 
His wacky but chilling public persecution of a journalist he accused of hacking a state education website has thankfully been put to an end, according to this story from Gizmodo. 
Despite all the ruckus, apparently Parson still does not know what hacking actually means. 
Cole County Prosecutor Locke Thompson has decided not to pursue criminal charges against Josh Renault, a journalist for the St. 
Louis Post-Dispatch who discovered a gaping cybersecurity hole in the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website and published a story on it last October. 
The cybersecurity flaw left the social security numbers of more than 100,000 school teachers, administrators and counselors exposed to the public. 
And by reporting on that, the governor accused him of hacking by looking at source code of a website. 
In a statement published on Friday, Thompson thanked the governor for passing along his concerns and said his office had a zero tolerance policy for the unauthorized taking and using of the personal information of any person. 
There is an argument to be made that there was a violation of law. 
However, upon a review of the case filed, the issues at the heart of the investigation have been resolved through non-legal means. 
As such, it is not in the best interest of Cole County citizens to utilize the significant resources and taxpayer dollars that would be necessary to pursue misdemeanor criminal charges in this case. 
The investigation is now closed and the Cole County Prosecutor's Office will have no further comment on this matter. 
To me, that's just basically they're trying to cover their asses and get away from this embarrassing incident without actually admitting that the governor was completely wrong and this was absurdity to the highest degree. 
Yeah, do we want to go back to the Miami-Dade issue? 
I've got an update for you there. 
Yeah, but I find this other story really fascinating too. 
So, in investigating this, this domain also existed way back in 2004. 
It seems MiamiDadeClerk.com, which is the domain name that's hosting the Trump content, it seems like it probably expired in 2005 or at least sometime before 2007. 
And it was in the possession of a registrar known as Fabulous during, I guess from 2007 to about 2018 is what it looks like. 
And Fabulous is a registrar that is known for servicing domainers or people that have a huge portfolio of domains. 
And I think you have to have a certain worth of domain names, a certain bucket, if you will, of domains that is amassed to a certain value in order even to use the Fabulous registrar. 
But in 2018, this is when it probably changed hands. 
Somebody probably bought this from the domainer because in 2018, let's see, on 11 June 2018, that's when Epic became the registrar. 
So, it was very likely transferred from a domainer at Fabulous over to Epic. 
And then my guess is in June of 2018, just ahead of the midterm elections, in fact, if you think about that, it probably started hosting Trump content. 
That would be my guess. 
And my guess would be that these tickets probably were printed at about that time with the wrong domain name on them. 
If somebody down in Florida can get one of these tickets for us, just, you know, drive unsafely for a few blocks and get a ticket. 
And let's look at the bottom wherever they have the URL and tell us - actually, that's not going to be because we know it's there. 
But at some point, they had to reprint the tickets. 
They had to basically - well, sometimes they have a date on the ticket of when they printed it. 
So, there might be a year on there. 
So, yeah, get that ticket and let us know if you see a date as to when it was printed. 
And that will tell us. 
I'll bet it's 2018. 
I'll bet it's 2018 when they reprinted them. 
It strikes me, this story about the domain view source page thing. 
The very thing that he was trying to get a case built on would have prevented them from having that stuff. 
In other words, if an engineer was viewing source and they saw that stuff and said, oh, yeah, this is probably a bad idea. 
We shouldn't have this. 
Then they would have gone back, rewritten the site or otherwise built their CSS or whatever people are doing with webpages these days. 
They would have done a better job and it wouldn't have been invulnerable. 
So, he's basically doing the classic thing of like let's have less information and that will make things more secure. 
Utter stupidity. 
You're back in Missouri now. 
I was in Florida. 
You went to Missouri. 
No, I just want to make sure people are aware that we're hopping all over the country. 
Rob, which story are you commenting on? 
Well, I have something else to talk about while we've got a few minutes left in the show and it's some sad news. 
Those who have been listening to this program for a long time will remember our friend Jim, Jeopardy Jim, also known as Red Balaclava, who was on this program for many, many years until he had a stroke in 2008 from which he's been recovering since then. 
And we just have the quick news from his family that he has been dealing with long-term illnesses that have recently taken a turn for the worse. 
He is in care. 
He is getting medical help, but he could use some cheering up. 
And if any of you listeners would like to send messages, he can't receive like flowers or things, but if you would like to send letters or cards, send us an email, OTH at 2600.com, and we will reply with the mailing address where you can get things like that to him. 
Or if you just want to send your message via email, we will pass that along and make sure it gets relayed to him. 
And if Jim is listening out there, we send all the best to you. 
There are certainly challenges that he has been facing. 
And boy, the fortitude, the courage he has shown over the last number of years since suffering that stroke. 
And he's been on the radio since then as well, which was always awesome. 
Yeah, he was sitting in at Atlantic Avenue when we were back at the station and always out on an evening making the trip to try to come see maybe after the show and stuff. 
So we sorely miss him, especially in the last couple of years and stuff. 
And we've been following along, but feeling like we need to share this and not bear it ourselves because we're a small group, we care for each other, and it's a lot. 
It's a pretty heavy thing for him and everybody. 
He's got that hacker spirit and always finds a way. 
So my hope is that this is no exception and that all of us in the community can band together and send our best. 
And as Rob mentioned, email us if you want to send something to him. 
Again, O-T-H at 2600.com. 
Alex, do you have a closing thought? 
Because we are about to go into overtime over on YouTube. 
We can continue the conversation over there. 
I think we should do that. 
Okay, then we will. 
Again, the registration for HOPE is open. 
People, if you want to attend the conference taking place July 22nd through 24th at St. 
John's University in Queens, it's going to be awesome. 
Just go to hope.net and all the information is there. 
We're looking for speakers, people who can give all kinds of talks. 
We talked about a couple of issues today, but there are so many things in the hacker community that you can discuss and share. 
And it doesn't matter what your background is, what your qualifications are. 
It doesn't matter your age. 
There is an audience that will be welcoming and will learn something from what you have to share. 
So again, HOPE.net, help us build a truly awesome conference. 
It's difficult. 
I know it's the first time since the pandemic, and we're hoping it'll be basically starting to become a memory at that point. 
It's also the first time in a new location. 
So it's going to be a challenge. 
It's going to be particularly difficult, and that's why we need as much help as possible. 
So again, HOPE.net. 
And I guess we can talk more about that on Overtime. 
We'll be on Overtime at 8 o'clock, youtube.com slash channel 2600, or go to the link on top of 2600.com. 
We will be back here next week at 7 p.m. 
See you then. 
Good night. 


And welcome, everybody. 
It's Off the Hook Overtime here on YouTube. 
Did everybody make it over? 
I think so. 
Kyle, are you there? 
Yeah, I'm over here. 
Okay, yeah, I see you. 
Rob, Gila, Alex, you all here? 
Yes, indeed. 
And we're sounding good on YouTube. 
All right. 
That's amazing. 
Our phone number, 802-321-4225. 
Did I get that right? 
802-321-HACK is our phone number. 
You can join the conversation. 
You can be a part of Off the Hook Overtime. 
Good conversation about all these different social issues going on that are very relevant to technology and just to society in general. 
It occurred to me as we were talking, like, we, in the past, the tools of today applied to historic events are often, you know, spoken about in the most scary terms. 
Like, what if, you know, X, you know, leaders or fascists here or there had the capabilities? 
Well, I think we might be getting a call. 
Don't lose your train of thought, though. 
I'm not sure why Kyle's running to a different room. 
Something is up with the phone. 
You can come back, Kyle, and finish your thought, please. 
Let's knock over the computers. 
Well, as I think, oh, yes, the specter of, like, tools of now being applied to these ideologies. 
Well, here are the ideologies and here are the tools. 
So let's stop saying that that's a what if. 
It's here now. 
It's not as bad. 
I'm not comparing it to any historic atrocity. 
I am saying, though, people with this ideology are really trying to get good at tech and they need to be turned away from this and guided towards what is, I think, a much more healthy attitude towards what other people's ideas and their worth and contributions are for. 
Yeah, but you're not going to stop people that you disagree with from getting good at tech. 
It's just they're not doing a very good job of it right now, but that could easily change. 
I think that's foolish. 
It seems like they aren't. 
But this whole conversation around Telegram, I mean, with the health issues alone, I was seeing influencers or people that were on certain networks moving that way as soon as health info started getting flagged and stuff. 
So these these platforms where it's end to end, they're great. 
We're all for it. 
And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we need back doors and it should be broken. 
But I am saying that this feeling of safety they have should not be. 
OK, safety through technology, safety through encryption. 
But I mean, that same thing can be applied to anyone then. 
Yeah, I mean, it's it's tough thing to say. 
I think you should always feel like, you know, you could possibly be vulnerable. 
Well, in your reliance on some platform or software, I mean, our stand is that if you're vulnerable, it should be exposed. 
Well, you should prove it. 
And, you know, my vulnerability, my sensitive conversations aren't necessarily going to be like plans. 
I'm hatching about how marginalized people need to be further victimized by me because I have a grievance. 
That's not what's going to be found. 
Yeah, my pants will be down, you know, and proverbially, so to speak. 
I will have revealed all of my most intimate parts by trusting technology. 
But it won't be full of the kind of vitriol and even hate speech. 
That's me. 
But I'm saying that I think that we should not be smug about their hurdles with technology. 
Well, yeah, we should not be smug. 
I definitely, definitely agree with that. 
You guys in Skype land? 
Any comments before we go to this call? 
You know, you keep hearing about new social media platforms that keep getting rolled out and how this is going to be the one that's not going to have censorship. 
This is going to be the one that's going to be the place you can come and be honest. 
But also, you know, where those things are being pitched and to whom. 
And, no, Kyle, I'm 100% with you. 
And the sense of who knows how they're using it and, you know, when knowledge can be used for good or for less good. 
And who knows how to do what can you follow? 
Oh, certainly. 
And I think that it's the type of thing that we talked about with, like, administrations we maybe personally didn't agree with. 
We made those kinds of insinuations. 
I think a lot of people did. 
They were like, well, you know, this could happen and that could happen. 
There were a lot of interested and passionate people along the way to make sure that a lot of the resources and tools that could have imposed some totalitarian dystopia that we were all terrified of or that we might exaggerate about. 
But it was very much in the same frenzy of, like, well, you know, they're hilarious. 
They're buffoons. 
You know, this could never be. 
But we should be careful because this could turn into that. 
And I think that was something you always really pointed out, E, along the way in the last half dozen years in talking about the way sociology has been fragmented, society has been fragmented and bifurcated and polarized and so forth. 
And just express the sense of urgency that we need to pay attention and we need not just sit around and, like, think that it's just funny because it's not. 
I mean, like, as with, like, the January 6th stuff, this was, like, not the last time they'll be used. 
No, but there are funny elements to all this when you see people trip over themselves and basically give all the evidence that, you know, are bragging about going to the January 6th insurrection. 
Oh, yeah, it's hilarious. 
And getting themselves in trouble. 
I understand it as a coping mechanism. 
It's a way to cope with how crazily divergent people's opinions are these days. 
To accept that there is some humor in it is, I think, a good strategy to stay healthy. 
But I don't think that that is necessarily that that's the entirety of the picture. 
And, in fact, I think it's all quite a bit more serious. 
Well, I think I think I think people are getting that's why I say don't be smug. 
That's why I say, like, we definitely should be paying attention to these things. 
Well, that's that's my point is that this could easily switch and we could be the ones that don't have access to the technology we need and losing these battles. 
The tech companies could easily be on the other side. 
They could easily be supporting the state. 
And in many parts of the world, they are. 
So let's not think of this as a permanent status, because with literally the flip of a switch or a zero to a one, that can change. 
That can all change. 
I want to get to this phone call because they've been waiting patiently. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Hello. 
It's Philip from Missouri. 
Hey, how are you doing? 
I'm OK. 
I'm the first caller. 
You are the first caller. 
Yeah, that doesn't usually happen. 
Usually the second caller. 
Oh, OK. 
Well, we're talking about the social media stuff. 
A lot of these guys are looking for attention. 
This is their way of sticking it to liberals. 
That's why Telegram, all this stuff, really hasn't taken off like it should. 
Because there's not much of an audience to see them stick it to the lids, as you put it, you know? 
Uh-huh. 
But there needs to be a way for law enforcement to be able to look at logs for people who are planning things, you know what I mean? 
If they have a search warrant, I'm fine with people searching through people's logs. 
If the law enforcement's done properly and there's due process in it, I've got no problem with it. 
I think it's better to infiltrate. 
I think law enforcement should infiltrate the groups more so than platforms providing logs. 
I think that's the best way to build a case. 
Yeah, but in many cases, law enforcement agrees with these groups. 
There's that, yeah. 
But they've infiltrated it in that way because they already are those groups. 
Well, like I said, these guys are exhibitionists anyway. 
Yeah, I think they think of this as going viral. 
They think they're going viral about everything they do. 
Yeah, they think they're going viral because they're on the internet or something. 
It's like, oh, wow, we're getting attention. 
Yeah, it's like the school board stuff. 
All these people are showing up at the school boards all of a sudden, raising all kinds of grief and everything. 
And the first thing they do is smile in front of a TV camera called. 
The news says, well, who are you? 
And they put them on TV and they have no problem with going right in front of that TV and putting on as much of an act as they can. 
That's right. 
That gets them more followers and more people to show up. 
And sympathy. 
Exactly. 
It's like on Facebook. 
When I say something on Fox News, they'll read my profile and they'll say, oh, I saw this picture of you there. 
And I was like, and? 
I mean, it's Facebook. 
You're supposed to put up pictures you want up there. 
I don't understand what you're upset over and trying to get me with. 
But, you know, it's all about likes and shares with them. 
It's like nobody ever likes your posts and everything. 
It's like I'm not looking for people to like my posts. 
Yeah. 
And I'm just, you know, I'm just there saying, hey, I'm doing this today. 
And, you know, here's a picture of me doing something. 
I don't understand why you're reading my profile to try to get me with a picture of me and my dog doing something. 
You know what I mean? 
Yeah. 
This obsession with likes and follows, it's so unhealthy. 
And many of us have seen this from the beginning, but it's really gotten to be such an important part of many people's lives. 
And, you know, years from now, I'm sure there will be a lot of people in therapy as a result of that. 
It has made vapid, shallow people even more vapid and shallow. 
Yeah. 
And turn that into something that's a goal. 
You know, I can be more shallow than you. 
It's awful. 
And the thing is, you know, with technology, there's so much you can do. 
There's so many worthy things that you can create out of high tech. 
And we're, you know, it's like anything else, whether it's television, a great medium, but wasted on the idiots, on the lowest common denominator, making, just selling products and things like that. 
And the true potential is never realized. 
It's true almost of anything in society, but it really bugs me to see so much potential wasted in technology. 
Well, you know, we could kind of counter all this if we do something, I think, something like guerrilla activism. 
You know, like all the pictures of Trump as president is public domain, right? 
I'm not sure about all of them, while he's president, certainly. 
While he's president, I'm pretty sure. 
You know, you'd have to ask, maybe Alex would know that. 
You can find them. 
They're owned by the public. 
They're a government property. 
Yeah. 
It's like NASA pictures, right? 
Absolutely. 
So what's it? 
If I was like, you know, go to Amazon, go to print shop on Amazon, right? 
Take a picture of Trump, just plop him on like a t-shirt or something like that, or like a mouse pad and sell for like 20 bucks, right? 
But if I take the money from those sales and I donate it to something like the ACLU or somebody like that, you know, especially a blue line item, you know, it'll sell a bunch of money, get a bunch of money out of it, but there'll be fun in the cause they hate the most. 
Well, it only works if they know they're doing that. 
I think they kind of like the ACLU, actually. 
Who does? 
Fascists? 
Fascists like the ACLU? 
I don't know. 
Don't they always defend them and like, you know, make sure they can like talk their... 
The ACLU defends freedom of speech and things like that, but there is no way that fascists or Trumpers like the ACLU. 
Okay, but would it, would there not be a possibility of a coincidence that you're doing this and by the way, ACL is actually defending them on some other matter? 
Sure. 
That could happen in this reality. 
I just want to, that's where I was going with it. 
Alex, I believe you had, you had something to contribute? 
Yeah, going back to this, the general notion of the social media being such a horrible place and, you know, where all this misinformation and terrible things have been spread. 
And I think what we need to do in terms of combating this is to rethink, in a sense, what due process means in this context. 
Because we're dealing with a volume and a velocity of such utter crap that is being thrown around online. 
And in particular, if we go back to what we were talking about on the ordinary session of Off the Hook, which is this pathway of extremism and radicalization that starts with Facebook groups and moves on to telegram channels. 
And we need a way to address expeditiously the fact that these Facebook groups are easily radicalizing and amplifying misinformation or hate or speech in some way. 
And given the volume and velocity of it, we need some kind of abbreviated form of what due process looks like. 
Because having an opportunity to be heard and hearing both sides out on an issue doesn't seem like it's working out for us. 
Because it is just way too easy to overwhelm these platforms. 
It's way too easy to continue to astroturf with users and fake accounts and just amplify hate or misinformation in so many ways. 
That I think we need to have certain things like presumptions that we have in the law. 
And so if we take a physical analog, something that might seem a little bit crazy, like laws in New York City about carrying a pocket knife. 
This might be a good example here. 
I know it might sound like it's completely off the wall here, not to be punny or anything, Emmanuel. 
Did you get in trouble for carrying a pocket knife recently? 
No, but let me tell you, given how things have been going in the city, carrying a knife certainly has crossed my mind. 
But I don't do it for this reason. 
Because the laws about carrying knives and what types of knives and whatnot you can carry in New York are very strict. 
And you can't have a knife that locks in place. 
It has to be under a certain length. 
And even if you have a knife that conforms to these specifications, if a police officer stops you and you have this knife on you, he can presume that you have the intention of engaging in some kind of criminal. 
Uh-oh. 
Alex is frozen in place. 
Yeah, well, obviously he was treading into territory that is considered controversial. 
So that's weird because a lot of people use pocket knives in, like, warehouse work. 
You know, you carry a knife, you know, because you're breaking down boxes or you're doing, like, you know, all manner of stuff. 
Well, I'm not familiar with what the law actually says. 
And I also don't know, you know, a cop isn't just going to search you. 
You have to... 
Yeah, you'd have to brandish it or be in a place where they're checking you. 
Uh-huh. 
Look at Alex. 
Looks like he's in the middle of a thought and is never completing it. 
Well, does stop and frisk still exist? 
It's coming back because the Democrats elected an ex-cop. 
Isn't that nice? 
That's what we have in New York City now. 
So stop and frisk will probably be coming back in some form. 
Guys in Skype land, is there a way you can... 
Oh, here's... 
Alex is coming back, I think. 
There he is. 
Alex, you froze. 
So, all right. 
I don't know what was said in my absence here. 
I just said knives are common, and so that seems like a harsh penalty. 
Like, people working in warehouses always have knives, so you can easily run afoul. 
And then we made fun of you a little bit, but we moved on. 
Okay. 
All right. 
I'm not surprised. 
Yeah. 
I don't know what's going on with my internet connection today. 
Somebody's tossing me is what it seems like. 
But in any event, so you go back to this issue, you have a pocket knife on you, the police stop you, it conforms to the specifications that would make the knife legal to carry, but under New York law, a cop can arrest you because he can presume that you have the intention to do something illegal with that knife, in which case it becomes beholden on you to rebut that presumption in court to show that you didn't have the intention to do something illegal with that particular knife. 
So I think these types of presumptions could be really useful in terms of how we police and enforce certain norms or morals or standards of universal decency and fairness online. 
Let's say, you know, a Facebook group pops up that is somewhat related or looks something similar to something that was just taken down for promoting misinformation. 
Instead of going through the whole rigmarole and process of taking down that thing, looking at the users, giving them an opportunity to amass a following, and then funnel those people over to another platform like Telegram, let's shut it down more expeditiously by using certain presumptions of malicious activity. 
Yeah, recognizing a pattern. 
Exactly, recognizing this pattern, you know, and that pattern implies a presumption of malicious or nefarious activity, and it's beholden on the person who's running that group or running a particular account or behind certain content to then rebut that presumption. 
Now, of course, that can work against us because this is a presumption that can be based on viewpoint. 
And I will say, and going back to the discussion again we had on the regular off-the-hook session at the outset when we were talking about funding and give, send, go, thinking about that throughout the program, it is a little bit scary to think that funding and money in particular can be seized if we're talking just about things like viewpoint. 
It has to be, in my mind, viewpoint plus something else that crosses a line of legality in order for there to be, I think, a lawful seizure of the funds that were raised. 
And I think the same thing can apply to these platforms and allow us to police them better. 
And I think what we need right now is speed. 
So we need to combine presumptions, the expeditious enforcement, the concept of expeditious enforcement into what we perceive as an evolving notion of due process. 
Is there a way, Alex, that you could give a specific example of this with regards to online presence, how this would work? 
Probably not, but sure. 
You know, we can try, right? 
I mean, if we think about, you know, the Freedom Convoy Facebook groups that have been popping up. 
I mean, it was like playing whack-a-mole with these types of things. 
They'd go up, they'd go down, they'd amass several thousand followers, people would be funneled over to Telegram. 
And then once they're in Telegram, some of these groups would have tens of thousands of followers in them. 
And the persons that were behind the Facebook groups are now able and willing, of course, to push out all kinds of conspiracy theories, efforts to fund certain, you know, bizarre things, you know, 5G nutjob type stuff. 
But let's say if we can tie a Facebook group online to an account or to, let's say, a device ID, these things are all connected. 
They're all engaged in some form of activity or another that relates to the same types of concepts. 
We can imply a certain type of ownership. 
We can presume that all of these accounts are connected if they all relate to, let's say, the same IP address, the same MAC ID, the same device ID, or they have the same login pattern, something like that. 
There's lots of ways that we can track and trace people for advertising, for highly targeted advertising purposes that keeps these platforms afloat and makes them tons and tons of money. 
Why don't we use the same type of behavioral analytics data to tie together malicious activity so that we can better police and enforce misinformation and radicalization on these platforms? 
What is the tipping point, though? 
At what point do you say this is malicious, this needs to be dealt with, and who makes that decision? 
That's tough. 
I mean, that's definitely, it can be a judgment call. 
It can be based on certain local laws. 
It's hard to have a universal enforcement mechanism here, but I think that once things start to spill over and cross over into the meat space, into things that could reach physical persons and do physical harm, or they start violating fundamental norms of due, not due process, fundamental norms of decency, I think what we need more than anything else right now are universal values that apply across the spectrum. 
If we go back to this as a philosophical concept, this would be something akin to natural law, right? 
So what are the concepts and what are the values that we hold dear as human beings across all spectrums? 
I mean, almost going back to something like the Ten Commandments, right? 
You know, thou shalt not spread misinformation. 
Thou shalt not dox people online. 
I mean, I think we need to identify and figure out what are these universal values that we would like to enforce and have those set as a norm and a baseline for due process. 
And in fact, not surprisingly, I had written about this a little bit for a paper that I submitted yesterday to Yale Law School for a conference at which I'm going to be speaking and presenting. 
And it seems like it's going to be a really cool conference called Technologies of Deception. 
That'll be happening at Yale Law School on March 25th and 26th. 
And I responded to the CFP in the paper that I wrote about the inherent flexibility of the domain name system and how that's being used for deceptive purposes. 
The very tail end of that paper is when I get into these norms of fundamental fairness and how we can use them for due process purposes and things like that. 
So if anybody's interested in attending that conference, it's going to be - I think it might actually be an entirely virtual conference now, unfortunately. 
But, you know, contact us at OTH at 2600.com. 
Be happy to get you an invitation. 
Well, why couldn't we, like, take the token, like, on an NFT, right, and just assign said token to your profile so that way you have more of a fail-safe to make sure you don't get somebody, you know, spoofing your account that spreads stupid stuff on loan? 
Alex, I don't think he can hear you nodding. 
Yeah, I know, yeah. 
Yeah, look, I think it's interesting. 
And, you know, NFTs are another really interesting thing that's been popping up, too. 
And I'll segue into something completely different now, too. 
So, you know, but somewhat related, I guess, in the sense that it originates from the DNS or the domain name system. 
But one of the things I watch for on a daily basis are right-wing and extremist domain names that are popping up that relate to things like militia activities or white nationalism and things. 
And so I watch for all these domains that pop up with the word militia in them. 
And a really interesting one came up the other day that seemed bizarre to me. 
And I'll tell you what it is. 
It's UkrainianCryptoMilitia.com. 
Now, what do you think that could be for? 
I think it's just something like, say, for instance, you take a group like, let's say Black Lives Matter want to start a crypto coin, right? 
Maybe they want to, you know, undermine the U.S. economy by getting everybody into crypto coin, getting all black folks into crypto coin instead of using regular banks so they can undermine the economy or something like that. 
I mean, that's what comes to mind when I hear that, the Ukrainian, what was it, CryptoMilitia? 
Well, yeah, UkrainianCryptoMilitia.com. 
I picked this up the other day, and I said, well, this is so interesting. 
I need to navigate to this in a sandbox machine, of course. 
And so I took a look at it, and it was fascinating what I saw here. 
I mean, this is really neat. 
We could have spent the whole hour, I think, just talking about this. 
But I'm going to read to you what it says on the site. 
And within hours of that domain being registered, there was a massive amount of content up there. 
And the site is actually launching, it seems like, on February 19th. 
So it says, you know, public sales will also start on the same date. 
But here's a quote from the site. 
The people of Ukraine have shown their courage, ingenuity, and outright badassery when fighting for their homes, country, and rights. 
Because of recent events, they are now at risk of, and this is a typo, loosing. 
I think they mean to say losing all they have achieved and have their country as their main battleground for two superpowers to settle their disputes. 
When you purchase a Ukrainian crypto militia NFT, you are supporting their cause for national property and reducing the suffering of the civilian population. 
It goes on. 
Not only that, but you get a unique art piece and proof that you took action during an historical moment. 
Ukrainian crypto militia decided to help Ukraine. 
It's fascinating because if this is legitimate, they are using. 
An NFT, or sales of an NFT, to fund an actual wartime event. 
To fund the Ukrainian rebellion against a Russian incursion. 
And this is all created operating under presumption that a war starts. 
Yeah, what in there tells you that they have anything to do with the Ukrainian resistance, other than just kind of, you know, taking advantage of the situation to get the tension? 
Well, it certainly could. 
It absolutely could be a rogue band of people from, you know, Luxembourg, New Jersey, whoever. 
It doesn't really matter. 
It could be anywhere. 
Is the site actually in Ukraine? 
I don't. 
Well, I'll tell you in a second. 
I don't know. 
I need to go into a server. 
I doubt it. 
I doubt it, too. 
Yeah, I don't think that it was. 
Hold on. 
I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who registered this have registered other sites in other hotspots of the world trying to take advantage. 
Or, you know, I'm cynical about this, but, you know, I've seen it happen so many times. 
Yeah, well, we should be a little bit cynical of it. 
No, it's interestingly enough, it's actually hosted in Israel. 
It's hosted in Israel, you say? 
Yeah. 
It's hosted in Israel. 
I don't know. 
I don't know. 
I have my doubts about this one. 
But, you know, it sounds interesting, but it just sounds like they're grabbing at headlines. 
Well, they certainly are. 
But, you know, I haven't seen anything about this. 
It hasn't seemed to have launched. 
It does have a list of their team members, most of which do seem to be Ukrainian names or names that look Ukrainian to me. 
Oh, actual people. 
Okay, all right. 
Now they have a little credibility. 
They've had actual names and people on there. 
I wasn't aware of that. 
It's got to wait and see on it. 
Yeah. 
Well, Melania and Trump, here's my thing about NFTs. 
It's so prone to fraud. 
Like, Melania Trump's, like, little NFT, where she tried to get it sold for, I don't know, I think it was $75,000 or something like that. 
It's just like a picture of somebody drew her eyes or something like that. 
That was real? 
I thought that was a joke. 
What happened was that she started selling it to herself. 
So she started selling it to her own account to get the price up in hopes that somebody would be hooked to buy it for that price that's shown online. 
This really happened? 
Yeah, this really happened. 
Google, it's on CNN, I think, the first time I heard about it. 
She, like, invaded the value of a digital property just by promoting it and then bought it at the... 
That's not former first lady behavior. 
It's like an IPO, basically. 
Wow. 
Selling shares to yourself or something. 
Unreal. 
Yeah, it's... 
That's the whole thing about the NFT and crypto coin and all that is there's all kinds of pump-and-dump schemes going on with this stuff. 
Oh, it's rampant right now. 
Like, somebody will set up a coin one week. 
And this is all done in Discord-like service, right? 
And they'll set up a website for it. 
And they'll get a bunch of people to put some money into it. 
And, like, three days later, the site's gone. 
And so is the crypto coin. 
They, like, they catch it out in Ethereum or whatever. 
Uh-huh. 
Um, and they just disappear. 
Uh, but, uh, Melania Trump, yeah, she, um, whoever set up the NFT or she did, I don't know if she did or a person or an aide did it for her. 
But her account bought, start buying the NFTs to try to get the price up so people would buy it and show that there's interest in it. 
Interesting. 
Rob, I believe you had something to add? 
Yeah, I mean, that's, uh, that's been a major component of this whole, uh, NFT, you know, bullcrap world. 
Is that it's dead easy to get multiple wallets and accounts on these things and use them to sell yourself a thing you made for any exorbitant amount. 
And then there's a purchase history behind it, um, saying, yeah, it sold to somebody for X amount of money, so it must be worth that much. 
And then the idea is you use that to fool people into buying it for more than that. 
And, uh, so you've, you've made money off the top of that. 
It's, it's part of why this, this whole thing is just a big Ponzi, uh, it, it's, it's a big scam, uh, to begin with. 
Um, but, uh, but yeah, it's pretty funny to, to hear about Melania Trump, uh, involving herself and that sort of thing. 
That's, that's been part of this whole world since it, uh, since it popped up. 
Uh, reminds me a lot of, um, how you could, uh, buy like followers for social media accounts if you needed to have more than a thousand or more than however many followers. 
You remember when you'd have like, uh, farms of people that would basically like your, your, uh, posts or whatever. 
You could, you could hire basically a whole cadre of followers and that would then make you more substantial on the social network. 
This was like years ago, probably half a dozen, 12 years ago. 
I don't even know. 
It's like, it's probably not even that it's probably still done a lot. 
I pay my followers, but they're real people. 
I pay real people, not fake people. 
This, um, crypto product, this NFT, um, sounds like it's, it's the same thing as Rob described. 
It's like, yeah, you know, I'll make this look like there's interest. 
And then you, you basically count on or anticipate that rush of people through pumping and promoting it and saying, Hey, look how popular this is getting. 
People have FOMO. 
It's really, it's capitalizing on fear of missing out. 
And I can't tell you how many different things. 
That's a thing. 
FOMO, fear of missing out. 
I never heard that before. 
It sounds like something Alex would say. 
People. 
Yeah, they had a. 
I'm sorry. 
They had a Superbowl ad where it just showed like a, a QR code to go to a, a Bitcoin site. 
Yeah, it was Coinbase. 
Yeah. 
15, 15 free Bitcoin or whatever, um, 15 bucks worth of Bitcoin on it when you scan it in. 
Okay. 
And, um, I mean, it's just, it's not all just a scam. 
It's like the, it's like putting a collector's edition on, on a movie or something like that just to sell a million copies of them. 
Well, it's, it's, it's pumping out three or four million copies of them again with. 
And it's kind of a money grab. 
It's kind of like a, uh, quick way to get some cash and string people along, but it's not really the coolest way you could use this technology. 
Like, yeah, there's a lot of ways you can get money. 
If you could hop across all the mines and get into Fort Knox, I'm sure you could enhance some of your value there. 
But, you know, the, the barrier to entry is very high. 
So like for, for people to, um, for, for this, this kind of, um, let's just make money with this. 
It's like, well, is that really all we can do with NFTs? 
Like there's gotta be much more creative potential in this. 
They have mines outside Fort Knox. 
Yeah. 
The entire grass area is full of mines. 
I am so glad you told me that. 
Uh, caller, we're going to move on, but thanks, uh, thanks for calling us. 
And, um, and, and, uh, we hope to hear from you again. 
Okay. 
Later. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Our phone number again, 802-321-4225-802-321-HACK. 
We always love to hear from, from our listeners. 
I can't believe Melania Trump did. 
I mean, I guess I can, but how is that not fraud to, to, uh, to fake buy something? 
I mean, don't they ban that on eBay where you bid for yourself and, and drive the price up and, yeah, you're supposed to just list it really low and let other people have the auction, not bolster your own auction. 
So nothing happened, I guess, as a result of this. 
No, no penalties whatsoever. 
As if she needs money. 
My God. 
That's the other thing. 
It's celebrities. 
It's people who already have, who are paying tech bros or whatever people on Epic or on these NFT, uh, brokerage sites. 
They're like, yeah, I want to get in on this, you know, hook it up for me. 
And like, yeah, that's hooked up for them so they can go and make more money. 
I mean, who's really, how is the, like, how is this equitable? 
Like how, how, um, is this different than the society we're already enduring? 
802-321-4225. 
Rob, go ahead. 
And, uh, a big factor in this is that like in, in the cryptocurrency space and like, say the Bitcoin world, um, the, the things are still very sort of pyramid-y in, in the sense that the people who are holding onto large amounts of coins still need new people to keep throwing their money into the system in order to keep the whole cycle going and in, in order to be able to offload what, uh, they've got and get some money back without, uh, the whole system sort of collapsing in upon itself, like a run on the bank. 
And, uh, so like you're seeing ads on the Superbowl now and that Superbowl ad that was mentioned actually crashed the site, um, with the amount of interest that it got with the amount of clicks on that QR code. 
And, uh, so all these ads are, are, are like people, the big players, the money players in that whole scene, trying to just keep their position on the pyramid secure by, uh, by getting new people into it. 
It's, it's all, it's all just amazingly, like, it's amazingly fraud-y. 
It's amazingly fraud-flavored when you, when you look into it with any, with any sort of, uh, critical eye. 
And, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm amazed that the space seems to be still growing at a, you know, a roaring pace. 
Yeah, that's the, that's the fallacy there too, is it's backwards, uh, mentality because you are only looking at this as a source of value and, and it might, and it's only the highest value that makes it worth anything. 
If you look at it as though it is nothing, then it will grow like it should. 
Like, I like this art. 
I paid what I paid for it, but I truly like it. 
I'm not trying to flip it, but if everything in the NFT world is flipping because everybody's so afraid of, of losing on any one item or a portfolio of items, then yeah, everybody's going to be constantly trying to sell and to sell to someone else to leave them hanging. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
To play a devil's advocate or the NFTs advocate, I guess in this particular context, uh, I do think that there are legitimate uses and, and values to NFTs, but maybe not for just having an NFT bought and sold and transferred in and of itself. 
What an NFT or a non-fungible token can be is a record of some ownership of a third thing of another thing or an ownership interest in some other item and some third party thing that is recorded on a blockchain in some immutable fashion. 
And if we're talking about, and I think we've talked about this in the past, perhaps an NFT could be used to as almost like a deed recordation type of mechanism for property in a digital sphere. 
But if you think about it in the art context, this could be really kind of interesting because one of the perennial problems that we've had in regular physical art is let's say there's an exhibition that's happening at the Whitney Museum right now, hypothetically, and it's some kind of massive steampunk exhibition where, you know, it's one artist's conception, but lots of different ironworkers and costume designers and people, they all got together for this. 
But, you know, only one artist can really take credit for this type of thing in a real way, right? 
We have this problem of attribution for artistic creativity and artwork and collaboration in the real world. 
And what an NFT can do with respect to art, whether it's physical art or whether it's digital art, can be a way of recording who collaborated on a particular project, who has some kind of ownership right, and perhaps who has some kind of right to perpetual royalties based on transfers down the line and some kind of title of ownership. 
So I think there are a lot of usage here, usages here. 
A lot of them will relate to provenance. 
A lot of them will relate to attribution and collaboration. 
But I really do think that we're scratching the surface when it comes to NFTs. 
I don't think we should completely poo-poo them. 
I also see the way that children interact with the virtual worlds that they inhibit, whether it's Roblox, whether it's Minecraft, whether it's the quote-unquote metaverse, which I don't like to even use that word because of the association with meta in particular. 
But if it's some kind of VR world, kids these days don't think of ownership in the same way that we do. 
You know, they have a different concept of what it means to have something. 
Having a digital thing to them or having the right to display or the right to claim or the right to brag about having something in a digital sphere can actually have real concrete value in their lives. 
And so I think that we need to take a look at this from a more philosophical perspective and in particular the perspective of somebody like the American philosopher William James who espoused pragmatism and that, you know, whatever works for an individual or whatever works for a particular idea may be true and may be valuable to that individual. 
And so I think there are going to be many, many more subjective notions of value and ownership that may be alien to some and alien in particular to our generation, but completely native and understandable to the next. 
For unknown reasons, our phone lines remain open, so please give us a call. 
Is it still on the line? 
What? 
We still have a call on the line. 
We still, what do you mean we have a call? 
The phone didn't ring. 
No, we have no call on the line. 
The phone number is 802-321-4225. 
Do you know something I don't call? 
Caller, are you still there? 
Well, they're not up. 
Hold on. 
Okay, now they're up. 
Is there somebody there? 
No, there's nobody there. 
They hung up. 
Yeah, 802-321-4225 is our phone number. 
Rob, you had something. 
Yeah, just I work as an artist. 
I've sold a lot of my artwork. 
I've sold tangible items of artwork, paintings, drawings, and things, sculptures, and I've sold digital artwork. 
I've sold digital commissions and things like that, and I've also donated a lot of it for fundraising purposes like such at WBAI. 
But the fact of the transaction has always been somebody wants a piece of artwork, somebody gets a piece of artwork, and I get to have a little money in return, which is nice for me. 
But the minute it stops being about people wanting to have this piece of art, wanting to brighten up their room or what have you, and the minute it stops being an aesthetic item and starts being sort of an investment, something to lock in a vault and just gloat over the fact that you own and can drive up the price if somebody else wants it, I've always been very uneasy with that. 
And maybe that's why I don't have a more successful, aggressive art career. 
But after I'm dead, it'll all be a lot more valuable. 
But until this time, I'm quite happy just selling things for reasonable prices and not worrying about having to think of them as more than the piece of art they are, hanging the investment factor on it. 
Because I think it gets money market stuff where you're taking different kinds of money and playing them against each other to see if you can exploit the fluctuations in value between them. 
The money stops being a thing that you could pay your rent with and buy a sandwich with and starts being this thing with a force of its own and jobs that it wasn't designed for. 
And I am really not comfortable with all of that. 
And I see the whole NFT scene, the cryptocurrency scene, where this is all like not just about making your money fluid so you can buy things in different ways, but making the money itself the thing that people are trying to drive up and pump and dump and so on. 
It's just replicating. 
It's using the digital space to replicate all the worst things about meatspace capitalism without providing tangible benefits. 
I'm not into it, man. 
Well said and a healthy attitude. 
OK, we have a phone call. 
Good evening. 
Go ahead. 
Hello. 
They hung up. 
They hung up. 
OK, we got to stay on the line, folks. 
That's how it works. 
8-0-2-3-2-1-4-2-2-5. 
OK, let's see if they stay on the line this time. 
Good evening. 
You're on off the hook overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Oh, OK. 
Hi. 
My name's Sigflop from 612. 
How you doing? 
That's in Minnesota. 
Yeah, sure is. 
I'm a first time caller. 
I've never called. 
So I'm going to be off topic here. 
I just wanted to say I'm calling you on a Linux phone and a Ubuntu phone. 
Oh, nice. 
Yeah, it's kind of fun. 
Put it together the other day. 
Sounds great. 
It's working pretty well. 
Sounds really good. 
Yeah, cool. 
Well, that's about it. 
Just keep up the good show. 
Wait, that's all you have to say? 
That you're calling us on a Linux phone? 
Yeah, pretty much. 
I'm honored to be the test call. 
Yeah. 
I speak for everyone here. 
We're happy that it works. 
How long did it take to actually put this together? 
Yeah, tell us about it. 
Oh, a few days. 
It came with Minjaro. 
Swash over Minjaro. 
And the voice didn't work. 
It sounded like an unsigned carrier on a signed signal. 
It was like... 
So I eventually got Mobian working on it, which is sort of a version of Debian, but for phones. 
Uh-huh. 
And I've had some problems as well. 
Right now, I'm running a Badoo Touch, which seems to work pretty well. 
The GPS is kind of... 
It doesn't turn on right away, but aside from that, a lot of the features work. 
Well, it's not overly exuberant. 
Yeah, Badoo Touch is pretty fun. 
It's not overly exuberant GPS, which is a good thing. 
Rob, do you have something to add? 
Yes, indeed. 
Sigflip, it's great to hear from you. 
Just to let you guys know, I met Sigflip long ago at a Hope conference, and we've kept in touch somewhat over the years. 
And, Sigflip, you do our work. 
And, you know, I'm an owner of an art book you put out some time ago. 
And, you know, we were just talking about selling art and, you know, artist commerce and stuff. 
And, you know, just along those lines, I want to say I'm very happy to own that art book because it's something that I enjoy having and looking at now and then. 
So, you know, keep up the good work. 
Aw, thank you. 
Oh, thanks for liking it. 
I will keep up the good work. 
You keep up the good work as well. 
All right. 
Well, great hearing from you, and stay warm out there, Minnesota. 
All right. 
Bye-bye. 
All right. 
Take care. 
8-0-2-3-2-1-4-2-2-2-5. 
That's a Vermont area code, 8-0-2, but we're not in Vermont. 
Our phone number is somehow. 
And someone has called that number, and now we will find out who they are. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off the Hook Overtime. 
Go ahead. 
Hello. 
Hello. 
Speak up. 
Go ahead. 
Can you hear me? 
Sorry. 
It's a little low. 
I'm sorry to hear that. 
I'll try shouting. 
How about that? 
Can you hear me now? 
No, no, no. 
Okay. 
We got it sorted out. 
Okay. 
Hey, it's Kirby from Etobicoke. 
Oh, hey. 
How you doing? 
Not too bad. 
I'm up here in Ontario. 
We've got all kinds of truck conventions. 
Yeah. 
It's the center of the world right now. 
Oh, yeah. 
You bet. 
And you know what? 
The premier of the province lived like seven kilometers away from me. 
Like, we are in the center of the world. 
Wow. 
Doug Ford, huh? 
Oh, yeah. 
Dofo. 
We call him Dofo. 
Dofo. 
I love it. 
That's brilliant. 
Now, it's interesting because Doug Ford actually is sort of taking the side of Trudeau, unlike some of the other premiers who don't want the Emergencies Act, but Ford does. 
You know, Doug Ford's a fairly reasonable person. 
He's a businessman. 
He's not extreme to either direction. 
He'll do whatever it takes to be elected. 
But, you know, fortunately, over the course of the pandemic, he, I mean, he's just kind of realized that the faster we kind of sort this thing out, the faster we get out of it as opposed to ignoring it. 
Okay. 
I agree with that. 
So, I mean, I would never really talk really good about Doug Ford, but, you know, you've got to give him his credit. 
He was a leader. 
He told everybody to get vaccinated. 
You know, that kind of stuff. 
He was there when the worst of it was on, and he was the one that declared the shutdowns and so on. 
Well, it's important to acknowledge people, if you don't agree with them politically, when they get it right. 
It's important to do that and not say, because I disagree with them on other things, I'm not going to give them the credit they deserve. 
That's what I'm seeing by listening in on these communications with the blockade people. 
I literally heard somebody say, you can find this in the archive, that anything Trudeau does, I am against, no matter what it is. 
And with that attitude, you know, you're not really putting forth a reasonable argument. 
Well, and Trudeau doesn't really do a lot of things. 
But the other thing, like the government in general, I mean. 
It's fascinating to watch. 
There hasn't been really any extreme kind of declarations on either side of the fence in the last little while, you know. 
I mean, some of the goalposts have been moved one direction or the other, but like, we're not particularly extreme in our political endeavors here. 
No, I mean, it all sounds so polite and laid back, even though there is some ferocity there. 
But I mean, today, the big thing was that the police handed out flyers to the people that they're, you know, mildly threatening with arrest. 
Well, so this is the deal, like, they handed out some kind of, you're going to be arrested tomorrow kind of thing. 
Uh-huh. 
So I think this was, this was the, what happened was the Ottawa police chief resigned yesterday. 
Slowly, yeah. 
That's his name, slowly. 
Yeah, Mr. 
Slowly, or Captain Slowly, or, um, no, what would he be? 
Captain Slowly? 
Well, now he's ex-police chief slowly, I guess. 
Okay. 
I just don't want to be disrespectful to the position he held. 
No. 
Anyways. 
So, yeah, he's gone. 
Now, the RCMP and the OPP have taken joint command of the protest. 
And so, yeah. 
Ontario Provincial Police and, you know, okay. 
And RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 
That's the federal. 
And the RCMP. 
So, we'll see what happens. 
Okay. 
Yeah. 
It'll be interesting. 
You know, I hope it ends peacefully, but it has caused a lot of harm. 
And, you know, you see restrictions being lifted, and I'm just, you know, it annoys me to hear them taking credit for that, because they had nothing to do with that. 
That had to do with the science. 
That had to do with people getting vaccinated and the disease not spreading as much. 
The rates are going down all over the place. 
And that's a great thing. 
That's what we all want. 
Okay. 
So, let's have some context. 
First of all, we are in a provincial election in about four months, I think. 
Oh. 
Didn't know that. 
So, that's the first thing. 
Mr. 
Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, is up for re-election within six months. 
I think it's four months. 
So, suddenly, he's given everybody back money. 
He's going to cancel some kind of, you know, license plate renewal fee, 150 bucks a year. 
He's telling everybody he's fed up with masks. 
So, if you look into the story, the reason why he was so upset this week about, you know, like, how the pandemic is dividing everybody, is because his daughter has a cop husband, whose nickname is the Juggernaut, and he got, like, sacked because he wouldn't get vaccinated. 
Wow. 
That is context. 
So, the son-in-law of the Premier is, like, an anti-vaxxer who got, after 20 years in the police force, he, like, he got sacked because he wouldn't get vaccinated, and the daughter has been this vocal, his, Doug Ford's daughter is a vocal anti-vaxxer. 
But it's interesting to see they're not getting preferential treatment. 
Well, I mean, it's ridiculous. 
Well, it's in Ontario, like, 90% of truck drivers are vaccinated. 
That's the other thing. 
Like, everybody's vaccinated here. 
Yeah, that was a bit confusing. 
It was a bit confusing at the beginning, because people were asking, well, okay, are these guys actually vaccinated who are protesting? 
And nobody was really sure. 
But my impression is that the majority of truck drivers don't want any part of this. 
Well, I mean, I don't know, like, how many people are in Ottawa now? 
I don't even know. 
They're about 600 kilometers away. 
I wouldn't be heading over there to check it out. 
But, I mean, really, what's going on down there? 
They sacked the police chief, or he quit, I guess. 
He quit, yeah. 
But I told him to quit before he sacked you. 
Yeah. 
Because you haven't done anything in three weeks. 
People are trying to sleep. 
Apparently, they're honking horns. 
They have a train horn. 
Yeah, we heard that. 
Yeah, we heard that. 
We heard that down here. 
Yeah, and it's really making things unpleasant for the people who live there, and it's causing all kinds of a ruckus in the town, and costing a huge amount of money. 
And for what purpose? 
You know, that's the question everyone's asking. 
And pollution. 
Oh, yes, the pollution. 
Nobody's even mentioned the pollution. 
These idiots are driving around people to residential areas in big trucks. 
Uh-huh. 
How about I go into your place with some, I don't know, what it was, a wood chipper or something? 
They're a leaf blower, and they just walk around your house for three days. 
Uh-huh. 
It's toxic. 
Yeah, it absolutely is. 
Literally toxic. 
And what did these people in Ottawa do? 
They bought a house. 
That was their crime. 
They rent an apartment. 
Like, they're just in the town where just, and I mean, it's been mentioned before, but most of the mandates are provincial. 
They're not even federal. 
You don't go to Ottawa if you want to get things done in Toronto. 
You go to Queen's Park in Toronto. 
Right. 
Right. 
Where the provincial government meets, because they're the ones that make the mandates for the, you know, for the health department and stuff, just like in the states, you know, each province has their own rules, and the federal government might make a general kind of rule, but each province could do whatever they want. 
So that would be like going to, would that be like going to Washington, D.C. to protest a law in Wyoming? 
Precisely. 
Yeah. 
That's just so crazy to me that they don't get that. 
I guarantee you, Alex, I guarantee you, if it wasn't a liberal prime minister, they would not be doing this. 
And that's what it's about. 
It's anti-Trudeau. 
If you listen to the people on the radio, that's what they talk about constantly is Trudeau. 
You know, it's never any of the premiers who are, you know, with their political party. 
It's always the other political party. 
So that's why I don't think it's really about the issues they claim it's about. 
That just gets them in the vicinity. 
And mind you, yes, they're blocking off the street in front of parliament, and then the arterials coming towards it that are residential. 
Yeah. 
Okay, but let me just state something that's so shocking. 
Okay, let me state a shocking fact. 
Okay. 
Imagine people were so angry that they blocked up Ottawa because people in native communities around Canada haven't had drinking water for a decade. 
Wouldn't that be something? 
Like, imagine that happened. 
Mm-hmm. 
That's something. 
There's these losers, like, driving around. 
Yeah. 
That's something to really be upset about. 
That's costing lives. 
And it's something that can be fixed, that can be dealt with if it's taken seriously. 
They just don't get it. 
They don't get what they're fighting for. 
I don't understand. 
I know, you know, the political and this man's funded and these idiots. 
Like, I mean, honestly, are people dealing with mental illness? 
Are we dealing with a large proportion of these people that are dealing with mental illness? 
It's very possible. 
They were saying that on the radio, but I think it was a specific person that said that she just had to give up, had to go home. 
It was conveniently today when they're telling everybody they're going to get arrested, but she was listing off all her mental issues, and I was like, wow, this is actually explaining why you're there. 
No offense to people with mental health problems, but I did, in the back of my mind, hear that and said, gosh, you know, I mean, you would like to distance yourself from the derangement. 
No, but this is derangement when you really are there to decry everything, but you don't have any real grievance, and it's tied to these other things, and it just seems to be alarmism, and yeah, I didn't mean to pick on her mental illness, but it seems like people are generally very troubled, and they do not know how to express it, and the people that are telling them and trying to guide them to safety are, they are to them imposing a lifestyle choice, when that's not really what it is. 
It's about public health and public well-being overall, the greater good and all of those sort of altruistic things, but it's, yeah, it is just to be, for the sake of being there and being contrary to, like you'd said, the existing government and that particular party alone, and Trudeau's not doing himself a whole hell of a lot of favors. 
I saw him speaking yesterday. 
Well, he's awkward, you know, he's super awkward. 
Yeah, and it's just, you get yourself in that position. 
Well, he doesn't get a haircut, at least. 
He still has that going, where it's like, I have like a COVID haircut. 
Yeah, you have to be aware of these situations and think of a dignified way of getting past them, and I don't think he's very good at that. 
The Liberal government in Canada have historically established their, like, claim through the election, and then just pretended like nothing matters. 
And then eventually they get voted out by the Conservatives because everybody's, like, all angry and nothing happened, and they spent all this money, or we had some, they canceled some gas, natural gas plants in order to win, like, a seat 10 years ago, and it would cost like $3 billion to cancel them or something. 
You know, like, these guys are not doing themselves any favors. 
None of the parties are. 
The Conservatives in Canada can't hire a leader that anybody likes. 
Interesting. 
Interesting to hear all these... 
Doug Ford has a different story. 
Yeah, all these parallels between the two countries, but how do you think this is going to end, and when do you think this is going to end? 
Well, we got an election. 
People are now saying that Doug Ford might go for federal. 
Oh, you mean prime minister? 
Right? 
Because, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. 
Wow. 
Because he's the working man. 
Like, we have this joke at one of the places I work, and it's like, my friends, right? 
Because he always has this every man kind of conversation whenever he does a press conference. 
Folks! 
My buddy! 
Hey, everybody! 
You know, he's this guy that's in the trenches. 
Right. 
With you and the working man. 
So, I think that Doug Ford is the one to be beat. 
Well, he's going to have to make up his mind what he's running for, if it's premier or prime minister. 
It doesn't matter. 
Yeah. 
He was running for city council before he ran for this. 
So, he's just going up the... 
And remember, his brother famously, rest in peace, is Rob Ford. 
Right. 
Right. 
That's where it all started, isn't it? 
Well, yeah. 
I don't want to discredit the dead, but... 
The crack-smoking mayor. 
Yeah. 
That's just a historical fact. 
That's not really a... 
It's funny, too, because it was all around here. 
It's like, it's all... 
It's like what... 
Like I said, like, the guys at the restaurant my mom used to hang out for, you know, cooked at the restaurant where he was in the drunken video and stuff. 
It's like, oh, it's very surreal. 
Some Canadian history there. 
Wow. 
Well, it's a very small geographical area, I guess, in Toronto. 
Uh-huh. 
Final question. 
So, can I do a couple of shout-outs? 
Yeah, please. 
Can I do a couple of shout-outs? 
Go ahead. 
Nagu, my electronics mentor. 
Aroop, Mo, and everybody down there at the electronics shop I work at. 
A couple of my friends at Wald, they put together Kirby U, which is a weekly kind of training program. 
They've been trying to up my skills. 
Tuxedo, Sparrow, Fade, Critter. 
Who else? 
Sorry, my daughter's KPM. 
That's what we're talking. 
Yeah, I mean, that's pretty good for now. 
One final question for you. 
Who would you recommend that we listen to media-wise in Canada to get a somewhat fair sense as to what's going on up there? 
Oh, the media business in Canada? 
Yeah. 
Who do you trust? 
Actually, it's funny you say that, because one thing you have to realize is we have Bell and we have Rogers. 
Right. 
CTV and Global, right? 
And so these are the two big kind of media conglomerates. 
They do the cell phones. 
They do the cable. 
They do all, you know, the fiber, everything. 
But they run CTV and they run Global, right? 
The two broadcasts. 
They run CTV, they run Global, they run City News, they run everything, pretty much. 
They also co-own the sports teams. 
Right. 
Wow. 
It's quite, like, it's a real... 
Can you imagine that? 
It's a real... 
Getting the ticket revenue and then also getting the broadcast revenue. 
Mm-hmm. 
Yeah, exactly. 
They own the team and then they charge themselves to broadcast it. 
Oh, that's a sweet deal. 
Well, they had that in New York with Cablevision and the Knicks, right? 
Oh, no, they probably invented it. 
Mm-hmm. 
I don't doubt that. 
And there's CBC as well. 
Do you think they're somewhat balanced? 
Okay, so CBC is a government-funded network that's been around for ages. 
Their coverage is very fair, but they're underfunded. 
Mm-hmm. 
I think the best bet is, like you say, like, check it out, City News, CBC, CTV, whatever. 
You know, they're all... 
They all have their perspective. 
They all have their anchors. 
It's not particularly extreme one way or the other. 
Right. 
They have their slants. 
I like CTV News Channel. 
I find myself glued to that. 
And I like them especially because compared to CNN in this country, they don't have nearly as many commercials. 
Every time I turn on CNN, they're in a break. 
But CTV very rarely does that. 
Very rarely. 
Yeah, CNN, the programming is the commercials, and the commercials is the programming. 
It's just inverse. 
And how many diseases can one person have? 
How many pharmaceuticals can it be averaging? 
I know, right? 
It's always erectile dysfunction or some kind of, you know, mesophilioma or whatever. 
It's just constant barraging you with all these drugs or losses. 
I really hope that nobody watches CNN in, like, every single commercial. 
They're like, oh, yeah, that's me. 
Oh, that's me also. 
Oh, no. 
Now, CNN International is different. 
If you can get CNN International, much different programming, less commercial. 
So that's preferable. 
And then, of course, there's Euronews. 
There's BBC World News and Al Jazeera English, which is great. 
So they're out there. 
Oh, yeah. 
I mean, in Toronto, you get everything. 
For, like, I don't know, 100 bucks, you get, like, every channel in the world. 
Yeah, it seems that way. 
I wish we did more of that here. 
Anyway, thank you so much for calling. 
It's good to hear from you again. 
I hope this situation works out well up there. 
And we'll certainly be following it. 
I hope so, too. 
And one more quick thing was, the funny thing was, when they were driving through with their trucks and they passed through Toronto, all their supporters, you know, when you see a bridge over a highway, you know, it's the worst kind of bridge to cross. 
It's, like, it's skinny. 
It's steep. 
The railing is low. 
That's where everybody took their friends and family to support the truckers, up this icy bridge. 
You should have seen the shot of them all on this icy hill on the side of the 401. 
I mean, it's like, the 401 is the biggest, or I don't know if it's the biggest, but it's the most used highway in North America. 
Didn't know that. 
Wow, that's more than... 
Yeah, these guys are standing on the side of the road, waving Canadian flags at these idiots driving through town with their kids on an icy hill. 
Wow. 
Yeah. 
There's all kinds of memories that we'll have from this historic event. 
I can, yeah, exactly. 
Wow. 
Thank you, guys. 
All right, thank you. 
Talk to you. 
Talk to you next time. 
Yeah, speak to you again. 
Thanks. 
Yeah. 
All right, folks, any closing thoughts here? 
Where is that coming from? 
Who's playing music? 
That was OPP. 
Yeah, I know that was OPP, but like... 
Oh, not about nature. 
Okay, my question is, where was it coming from? 
I hope we had an OPP. 
Alex was playing OPP. 
Oh, Alex, you were doing this. 
Okay. 
Well, that's very funny. 
He's a... 
Moonlighting is a DJ. 
Uh-huh. 
Yeah, good luck with that. 
Good luck with that. 
I think we'll try something new. 
Surprise you all. 
DJ litigation. 
Oh. 
Do we want to take another phone call? 
Did you already take the phone call? 
What? 
That's my job. 
What am I sitting here for? 
I thought we were finished. 
All right, fine. 
Kyle has given us another phone call. 
People are not on YouTube for nothing. 
Back to the phones. 
Good evening. 
You're on Off Talk Overtime. 
We have no lies. 
Yeah, greetings from the Beijing Olympic bubble. 
It's the Beijing guy again. 
Oh, my God. 
Wow. 
How's it going there? 
Good to hear you. 
It's been an interesting week. 
Everything seems to come back to Russia. 
Well, we got your video. 
We got your video of the Chinese food machine, robot, whatever you want to call it. 
So that was fascinating. 
We can't show it on the radio. 
Yeah, one tried to kill me yesterday. 
I got served uncooked chicken, so that was fun. 
Oh, I thought it literally tried to kill you. 
Oh, wow. 
Like, reach out. 
Yeah, and I closed the hotel bar with some coworkers the other night, and as we're walking towards the elevator, a robot gets off the elevator, misting something. 
Wow. 
And I kind of, you know, walked my, you know, slid my way, and I had to back up and go around it. 
And when we got on the elevator and hit to go to our floor, it stopped on the eighth floor, and another robot was waiting to get on. 
And I asked it, how did you push the button? 
But it just, you know, sat there. 
Wow. 
The robots have been interesting. 
This is hard to believe, but boy, that's what's going on. 
I'm assuming the mist was some kind of sanitizing, cleaning thing they have. 
Do you think the robot communicates with the elevator? 
It must. 
They don't have to press the button. 
Yeah, it's got to be wireless. 
Yeah, they have their own communication with it. 
It's got to be a wireless call. 
Yeah, totally. 
Which means they can conspire and do things without us knowing about it. 
Yeah, they're probably already working together. 
Oh, scary. 
They didn't kill me in the hall, so they tried to get me. 
So you got the elevator riding robot? 
Seriously, for the most part, it's been really good. 
Just the security thing, and it's not the coverage that gets you, but the speed of which they did this. 
A co-worker was talking to a photographer from another media organization who had lost his wallet, and he went down to the help desk at the main press center and reported, hey, I lost my wallet. 
You know, this is what it looks like. 
They asked for his phone number, you know, contact, and that's what gets turned in. 
Within about 90 minutes, he gets a phone call saying, you put your wallet in the left pocket of your gray jacket, and we see that you've left your gray jacket in your hotel room. 
What? 
Whoa. 
Hold on. 
How do they know any of that? 
Every inch of public space here is on camera. 
Yeah, but the left pocket of your jacket is in public space. 
Well, he may have been walking. 
Well, it is when you're sitting on a bus or, you know, sitting in the cafeteria. 
So they, like, reviewed the video. 
That is. 
Yeah. 
Within 90 minutes, they were able to pull all of that together. 
And let him know, hey, you didn't lose your wallet. 
I wonder how many people that took, or if any. 
Yeah, the whole thing. 
It might not have been any people. 
It might have just been the first person to select the target and then, you know, follow this guy. 
Get a picture of the face. 
And then find the face. 
Okay, you need to lose your wallet and lose it in an imaginative place and see if they can tell you why. 
I almost lost my wallet in Paris coming here. 
You know, I had to put everything in the bin. 
And then coming through the security, it doesn't move very fast in Paris. 
Right. 
And I'm sitting at the metal detector, and I watch somebody reach in and take my wallet, and I tell the security person, hey, he's got my wallet. 
And they said, you wait, you know. 
So he actually fell out of his bin. 
It wasn't nefarious. 
It was just mistaken wallet identity. 
I see. 
Okay. 
Wow. 
So this is winding down in another week, right? 
Yeah. 
What's your rush? 
Yeah, by this time next week, I'll be deep sleep at home. 
Okay. 
All right. 
And has it been a fun experience overall? 
Yeah, it has definitely. 
I get to interact with a lot of people culturally. 
Waiting for the bus to go to figure skating the other night, I was talking to a couple of university students. 
And they were surprised to learn that I was from New York. 
And I said, well, you know, I trained a lot of my New York accent out in high school and early college because I was going into broadcasting. 
And I wanted to be able to speak on the radio. 
And, you know, at that time in broadcasting, you had to move around it. 
Somebody in Iowa doesn't want to hear somebody from Brooklyn or Queens, you know, enunciating words in the way they do. 
That's their loss. 
And she said, well, you know, aren't people tolerant in the United States? 
And I laughed a little bit. 
And, you know, like she didn't understand why I was laughing. 
I was like, well, you know, yes and no. 
You know, people are, yes, there's a lot of tolerance. 
But, no, there's also not a lot of tolerance. 
It was just an interesting comparison. 
Yeah. 
You know, it's funny. 
On that subject, people in China learn English from various teachers. 
It's always funny when I hear somebody in either who is Chinese or is in China speaking English and they have a Midwestern accent because that's who taught them. 
Yeah, so one of the people that I was exchanging pins with, she came in and, like I said last time, you can tell people who spend time in the West because they've got a bit of sass about them. 
Almost maybe a little jaded. 
And she's talking and her accent, it sounded like she was from Ireland. 
Wow. 
And I said, that's an amazing accent. 
Where did you get that accent? 
And she said, oh, I learned English in France. 
So I was like, well, that doesn't make sense, but it's amazing. 
It is. 
It really is. 
Has the, have the COVID safety protocols changed at all in the last week? 
No, they've been the same. 
Actually, all of us have been getting talked to on our way out in the morning to remind us to take our tests, you know, because people had missed them. 
And then there was some, some people were placed under guard for 24 hours while having additional tests taken because they did that. 
But every, you know, they're getting ready for us to all leave. 
And they want to make sure that we're going to be able to board planes and go where we have to go. 
So they want to make sure you have your exit procedures ready. 
So they're, they're, they're upping the marketing of, hey, make sure you get your test, but you have to get it every day or they're going to, you're going to have problems. 
And, and have the tests gotten any more pleasant or are they still invasive? 
Yeah, no, it's still, it's still the throat swab. 
It varies from tester to tester. 
Getting tested at my hotel in the morning is very gentle. 
Uh, if I go to the main press center, um, it's, it's a little more, there's, there's more depth to the swabbing and, uh, you know, I, I, I feel like I've had, it's not a sore throat, but I, I definitely feel where they, where they've like hit a tonsil. 
Oh my God. 
Wow. 
They, they go that far down. 
Yeah. 
Cause it's going to irritate. 
Yeah, they can. 
Yikes. 
It'll irritate the back of your, uh, your throat a little bit or something. 
If it's constantly being a braised by a kind of a pokey little foam swab. 
Uh, yeah, it's, you know, it's a part of the body that's not used to touch and suddenly it's, it's every day. 
Wow. 
So you, yeah, I can imagine you have, feel like you have a sore throat, but it's just from being, uh, prodded. 
Folks. 
Yeah. 
Which, you know, it's one of those things. 
Sore throat is a symptom that you're not supposed to go to public with. 
I'm just touching my throat. 
It'll be fine. 
Folks in, uh, Skype land, do you have any questions for our caller from Beijing? 
Uh, no, but I am, I am enjoying your neutral accent. 
You've, uh, you've done a good job on it. 
I'm sure there's a lot of New York there. 
You know, I still live in the state, but it's, uh, it's not what it was when I was younger. 
And it's different than, you know, all of my siblings. 
Alex, did you have something? 
Oh, I'm just, I'm just so fascinated about it. 
And I really appreciate you calling again and relaying to us what's happening. 
The, I was, I was on mute, but I was laughing out loud at the robot stories earlier. 
Thank you so much for, uh, for relaying that. 
It's just, it seems like it's such a bizarre, dystopian, strange world, strange little bubble that you're living in right now. 
And I'm so glad that you know, you think about the, yeah, you think about the strength of China and it's in the numbers of people, you know, they, uh, they want to do a project. 
They get the people that gets done. 
Um, whereas when I was in Tokyo, um, there's a shortage of people there. 
They, you know, they're, they're, they're not having enough children to keep the society going. 
They're importing workers from other places. 
And you would expect that the employment of robots would be, you know, it's, it's Japan. 
They, they have a robot culture, fetch the fascination. 
Um, nothing like what I'm seeing here in China. 
Like there might be a robot in your sushi restaurant, like, you know, dashing out rice balls to put sushi on top of, um, but here that, I mean, robots are employed in so many ways, cleaning the floors and, and, uh, like making food for us. 
And I'm sure this is just the beginning of their, uh, of, of their robot economy. 
If you see another one of those robots getting on the elevator, can you send a picture of them to us? 
Cause we'd sure like to see. 
Yeah, I got, I'll, I'll, I'll post that, um, to the email, uh, one getting on, getting off the way you're describing it. 
The way you're describing it, um, it just sounds like they're deploying these in every job and in every place they can. 
Anything that could be done by a robot is automated. 
Wait a minute. 
It's done by a robot. 
Robot cops. 
Yeah, yeah. 
They have robotic, uh, trash cans that will, uh, they'll stay against the wall in their charging space, but a couple of times an hour, it'll go do a, uh, uh, like a patrol and then you wave your hand over it and the lid opens. 
And, you know, it's, uh, the Star Wars fan in my, uh, from my childhood in me, um, really loves to see it. 
But at the same time, I'm not sure I want to live in a world where robots are, are doing people's jobs. 
Have, have you seen any robots doing law enforcement type things, robot cops say? 
No, um, I haven't seen that. 
There's definitely a lot of cops. 
Um, interestingly, uh, uh, no, no military that you would see, uh, like on patrols. 
There's a lot of checkpoints here because the closed loop is in the middle of a functioning city. 
Um, so at one point early, just before the games opened, there were some military vehicles, you know, kind of akin to a Humvee, uh, that were at some of the checkpoints, but that was only one day and then we never saw them again in Tokyo. 
As soon as we went into security lockdown at the press center, um, it was staffed with the, uh, the national defense forces, um, and they went through games and we walked the security gateways and it's a, it's a very different experience here. 
Wow. 
There's police on every corner where we're, you know, to the, uh, the area where we're driving through. 
Um, and, um, there's places where the public's able to come up to the edge of the closed loop and maybe take pictures in front of the characters at the park across the street from the NPC where we wouldn't be able to walk up and go to them. 
Um, also interestingly in the, uh, inside the venues, I went to figure skating the other night because one way or the other history was getting made. 
Um, I'm going to try to go again tonight. 
Uh, there is a section that is outside the closed loop where, you know, citizen spectators are able to come in and I'm sure it's, it's a select group of people. 
Um, but we're all in the same building, uh, but they're outside the loop. 
We can't get over towards where they are. 
Well, it's great that you're over there and just taking so many interesting notes and observing things and a true hacker spirit of just, you know, seeing the technology and, and, uh, just, um, you know, experimenting whenever possible, I would imagine, uh, and, and sharing that information because, you know, for those of us who can't be there, it's fascinating. 
Yeah. 
Talking to the university student, she asked about my background, you know, working in technology. 
Um, you know, I said what I was doing and she's like, Oh, how long did you go to university? 
I was like, well, a semester and a half. 
And then I just went to the job market. 
Um, you know, want to explain, Hey, I'm a hacker. 
I've been doing, I've been doing this my whole life, but I don't want to use that word here because I don't really know what kind of attention that would bring. 
That's true. 
It's kind of like the United States in that way. 
How it translates. 
Right. 
I just love that you're sharing and your, your deep, deep curiosity. 
Um, and, and, uh, observations, just bringing it and sharing it while you're there, just really taking in the experience the way you are, I think is so cool. 
I'm glad we're able to share it with other people. 
There's probably a lot of people who are watching and also curious what it's like there. 
So this is just, uh, such. 
Yeah. 
And it's, you know, um, I, I saw the, uh, the other day, um, the, uh, press organization had to debunk, uh, some claims that they were forcing people to ski at a nuclear power plant. 
We talked about that last week. 
Yes, we did. 
Yeah. 
Iron work. 
That's right. 
And then it became a big, massive story because, uh, you know, they, they had to spend their time to say, no, this is what it was. 
This is how long it was. 
It was closed to, it was closed to clean the air for the 2008 Asian Olympics. 
Yeah. 
Uh, it was one of the, uh, the moves they made to, uh, to get rid of some of the solution in the, in the sky. 
So it's, uh, my calculations are correct around 10 30 in the morning. 
Uh, what's, what's on your agenda today? 
Um, so, uh, yeah, I, I, I had a meeting I needed to take in my hotel, so I'm not in the press center, but, uh, after this, I, I think I'm going to do some laundry so I can get myself ready to leave. 
You know, I had the hotel be the laundry the first couple of weeks because I couldn't get back here. 
Um, and that ended up being about, uh, $258, uh, total. 
Oh my God. 
$268. 
They did hang it up in my closet for me, which was really nice. 
Yeah. 
But still. 
That was interesting. 
That's more expensive than any laundry load I've ever run. 
Yeah. 
So, uh, they have, uh, this hotel's got a very decent, uh, laundromat, uh, if you can get into it. 
Um, and there's no charge in the soaps available, not that, you know, minor details, but, uh, I like to go home with, uh, and not have to do the laundry in the air. 
Can, can you tell, I don't know if you've had, uh, you know, working in the media, I don't know if you've actually turned on the TV set, but do you know what, what, how many different channels you get? 
I know when I was in China, it was all CCTV, meaning, uh, Chinese state broadcasting. 
Still all CCTV in my hotel. 
I do have two additional channels that are not local. 
Uh, well, maybe three or four. 
There's, uh, there's, uh, CNBC has a, uh, has an Asia channel, uh, CNN international, um, which I can mention in a second, some interesting things there. 
And, um, HBO Asia, which, uh, seems to be broadcasting in English. 
I don't know if they've made a change to the TV I'm watching, but I'm able to watch that in English. 
Um, my TV has been on maybe twice in the room, uh, since I've been here. 
Um, you know, there's actually, there's an interesting channel where all it seems to do is show military drama, uh, like one-on-one, you know, an individual soldier's going through something, you know, and try to watch it and figure out what's being said because there's no secondary audio or, or caption, but it's, uh, it's just, it's just interesting. 
Are people making use of, I'm sorry, are people making use of translation devices, like the handheld translation devices at all? 
Yeah. 
You know, I, I had figured by this point and in a large way, cell phones have replaced all of it, but I've gone to a couple of restaurants where they had handheld translation devices, single purpose devices, and they're very good. 
Um, a lot better than my, um, you know, uh, they would speak into it and, and just turn it over and immediately it's, it clearly says, um, what it's trying to say. 
Yeah. 
We, we, we've seen the same thing in New York and they're very useful. 
Yes. 
I had, uh, I had someone put one in my face basically, uh, to get what I was saying. 
And it was impressive because it worked really, really well. 
And it was like you said, a single purpose device. 
And apparently they're, they're really advanced now. 
We were looking them up and, um, there's all different kinds. 
Some are a little, I don't know. 
It seems like they need you to be like logged in or paired with devices that doesn't tell me it's a single use device or single purpose, uh, and that it's, you know, kind of standalone doesn't require a backend that it self makes me a little leery of just buying whatever one I find, but it's fascinating. 
And as you said, the integration in phones, I'm sure this will just also emerge as an app that we all take for granted. 
Yep. 
I hope not though, because that feeling of understanding over just the most mundane things is the best part of travel when you're actually able to accomplish things and be understood. 
It's nice to fight for it, but it's also good to just have the ease of being understood. 
I like communicating with people just by pointing and smiling and things like that. 
That's a, we're good at that. 
Yeah. 
There's a skill to that. 
Yeah. 
And at the restaurants, they have pictures of all the food, so it's pretty easy. 
Um, I, I did a lot better learning minor Japanese prior to going to Tokyo, um, than I did uh, learning, uh, my, my, my daughter's in a Mandarin class and, uh, she was trying to help me out and it really didn't go well on my part. 
Uh, so, um, pointing and, and, and the fact that they just speak very, very good English here, uh, it's, it's worked out for, for most of us. 
What was your, uh, comment or observation about CNN international? 
Oh, so, yeah. 
So, um, early on when we first got into our office, we checked in, you know, a couple of weeks before everything started, uh, we set up our TVs and we're surprised to, you know, and, and pleased really to find out that there was, uh, Western media that we're able to get. 
Um, but anytime they covered something somewhat controversial here in China, it, you would see it go to, you know, signal problems. 
Wow. 
The picture would go off. 
Um, you know, and, and, uh, you know, it's after the topic started, they're talking about the, uh, the, I don't even want to say the words cause I'm speaking over the airwaves. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
We know some of the stories. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
So, you know, uh, non-Olympic related controversy and it would just, it would just go, it would just go to bars, uh, standby having signal problems. 
And then, you know, as soon as that guest was gone or they go onto the next segment, it pops back up. 
That would be a good thing to capture if you're at all in the position to be able to do that just, uh, because they'll, they'll wind up talking. 
As soon as they started talking about Ukraine, you know, I, I think, uh, a lot of the attention that was negative here has gone away. 
Uh-huh. 
And, um, somebody made a comment, um, you know, that China is really unhappy that this Ukrainian stuff is overshadowing their games and that the Russian doping scandal here is overshadowing their games. 
Honestly, I think they're probably thrilled, um, that there's, there's less management to be done over, over, you know, topics that they don't want brought up. 
That's true. 
Yeah. 
I can see that too. 
I absolutely understand that. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
All right. 
Well, we'll let you get your day started over there in Beijing. 
Uh, Skype people, any, any, uh, final comments for our caller here? 
I mean, we just appreciate that you stayed up to talk to us or got up early to talk to us. 
Um, yeah, no, I had a meeting before this, so it worked out really well. 
Regardless, but thank you. 
Thank you for scheduling your day around talking to us. 
And it's just, it's wonderful to hear from inside the bubble. 
Um, and it's great talking to somebody in Queens, um, a Queens boy. 
That's awesome. 
All right. 
Well, uh, be sure to contact us when you get back. 
We want to hear all the stories. 
Uh, we'll do so. 
All right. 
Looking forward to it. 
You guys take care. 
Take care. 
Safe travels. 
And that is our last call. 
I don't care if anybody else calls. 
All right. 
We're, we're tired and, uh, it's been a long day. 
Uh, guys, any, any final words for the listeners from, from you out there in Skype land? 
Um, uh, just a final word for anybody who happens to be listening to this, who, uh, may have missed the, uh, the radio part portion of our program tonight. 
Uh, our old friend, Jim, who was part of this program for a long time is, uh, suffering medical setbacks and, uh, could use some cheering up. 
So if you'd like to send him cards or letters, uh, write to OTH at 2600.com and, uh, we will get you the address in order to, uh, send, uh, send those things through the mail. 
Or if you want to just send messages via email, we'll see that they get to him. 
Um, yeah. 
I just want to say view page source. 
F12. 
In particular, anything just in general, just generally, I think we will have better web pages. 
Um, if everyone is looking at the source. 
Yeah. 
But in Missouri, you could go to jail. 
Well, sometimes F12 laws change, you know, uh, Alex, anything, anything from you? 
All right. 
That's it. 
Now we're done. 
He's playing commercials, playing commercials over YouTube. 
That doesn't happen. 
That, that can't happen. 
All right, everybody. 
Thank you. 
Write to us. 
OTH at 2600.com. 
We will see you next week. 
Stay safe, get your vaccine, do all that cool stuff and, and, and, uh, register your talk at hope and get your tickets to hope and we'll see you. 
Any topic. 
Yeah. 
We are wide open. 
Please send us what you're talking about. 
Anything from the ultra specific to the widest. 
Hackers have so much to talk about. 
So many different, uh, different things. 
I mean, just our callers alone had so many topics today that I would love to know more about. 
All right. 
We will, uh, we'll be back next week. 
Good night.