You are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM, and it's time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook. 
Off the Hook. 
Hello, hello, hello. 
A very good evening to you. 
So, the program is Off the Hook. 
Rob T. Firefly here with you live from Skypeland, where I am joined by Gila. 
Hello. 
And over in Skypeland Squared, which is Skypeland via Skypeland, we should have Alex. 
Let's try that again. 
We should have Alex. 
Good evening. 
Can you guys hear me? 
There you are. 
And we should also have Emmanuel and Kyle. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, we're here. 
So enthused you sound. 
I've got to tell you, Rob. 
This has not been a good day. 
This has been one of these massively frustrating experiences where you're just trying to get the Internet company to do the right thing, and they don't seem to understand how to do that. 
You know, there's a big gap in our listening area, a gap of access. 
You know, there are people who have good access, and there are people who have very bad access. 
Many people have no access, but right now I'm in the very bad access realm. 
Some people get fiber connections. 
They get one, maybe two gigabyte upload speeds. 
What I'm happy with is 35 megabytes. 
That's right, 35 megabytes. 
I am happy with that. 
While there are people, neighbors, friends, enemies, who get a gig or more. 
You know, it's a massive, a massive difference there. 
But I can't even get the 35 megabytes now. 
Or is it megabits? 
I don't even know. 
Right now I just did a test, and instead of my upload speed being 35 megabits per second, it's 0.19. 
That's what I'm dealing with here. 
So the reason we're coming to you this way over the air is because that's not enough to maintain a connection and do radio without us sounding like a bunch of choppy robots. 
And I don't think our listeners want that. 
So it also accounts for the rather terse tone I'm going to be taking tonight because I'm just about fed up with trying to get these people to do their job and just connect us to the damn Internet. 
The amount of money we spend for these horrible connections is simply insane, too. 
So I'm at wit's end at this point. 
They say they're going to figure it out in the next couple of days, but, boy, they are dragging their asses on this one. 
And it's just been an exercise in frustration. 
And you do sound a bit terse and upset, but justifiably so. 
Obviously, we would usually control this show from where you are at Off the Hook Central over there, and instead we're sort of in the backup, the battle bridge. 
The second stringers are running the show. 
And, yeah, I mean, not that I don't enjoy doing this, but I would much rather have everything working. 
Obviously, because of this situation, we cannot do Off the Hook over time tonight after the show where we would normally be taking your phone calls. 
But we would still love to hear from you. 
Send us emails at OTH at 2600.com. 
And you can tweet at us, too, Hacker Radio Show, if you feel like doing that. 
You can. 
And you can become a WBAI buddy. 
And you can donate to WBAI at WBAI.org, assuming that they have Internet. 
But, you know, there are other people with problems, too. 
And we're going to focus on them just for a little bit. 
And, for instance, people in northwestern British Columbia, they had an Internet outage. 
They lost their Internet. 
They lost their landlines. 
They even lost their cellular service for more than eight hours. 
And that happened on June 7th. 
You know why it happened? 
Anyone want to guess? 
No? 
No way. 
I have a hunch, but I think I already know. 
Yeah, I think you did, too, because you handed me this story. 
It's not really what you think it is. 
But I just figured, you know, you might want to check this out, because everybody's talking about it, so we might as well bring this up. 
Alex, do you have a guess? 
No. 
I feel like my guess is going to be wrong. 
It's British Columbia. 
I'm sorry, what? 
Is that something to do with Russia, by any chance? 
No, nothing to do with Russia, I don't think. 
It was a beaver. 
A beaver gnawed, a single beaver, one beaver gnawed its way through an aspen tree, which then fell on both BC Hydro lines and a TELUS fiber optic cable that was strung along BC Hydro poles between Topley and Houston. 
Now, only 21 customers were affected by this outage, but it affected TELUS customers in - it's a power outage, actually. 
It only just affected 21 customers. 
But the fiber optics damage affected TELUS customers in Burns Lake, Grand Isle, Hyda, Quail, the Hazeltons, all of them, Kitimat, Prince George and Prince Rupert, the two princes, Smithers, Terrace, Thornhill, Houston, Topley. 
You know, we all know. 
We all know the places that were affected. 
So, yeah, you know, it could be worse, I guess. 
We could have beavers running around cutting out our Internet service and more than just the tech companies. 
So that I thought was kind of interesting. 
It's interesting. 
It sounds like you got British Columbia magnetic poetry and just kind of grabbed a handful of stuff and read it. 
But, yeah, no, I was going to guess it was an animal, and I said, no, that's a crazy guess. 
I'm not going to guess that. 
Never doubt yourself. 
Always come up with the guesses, even if you think they might be wrong. 
Kyle, did you ask me? 
Well, the frustration, I think, for all of those people is a shared experience. 
We've all been there. 
And, you know, you never can quite be certain until you investigate what is the matter with various utilities. 
So I hope that everyone is back online, including everybody here tonight. 
You know, I'm sorry, I can't let this go. 
You know what's frustrating, though, about our situation is that, you know, we filed a complaint about this days ago to get it fixed. 
And they made an appointment to send some guy out to come and fix it. 
And then they said, here, call this number. 
This is our advanced technical team. 
They can maybe walk you through something, and we can skip the visit. 
And, you know, so we did another radio show yesterday, and by the time I got to call them, they had gone home for the day, so I wasn't able to reach them. 
But then I did a speed test, and everything was fixed, so I canceled the appointment. 
And then today, it went back to the way it was. 
It was broken again. 
So I had to re-enable the appointment, except the appointment was no longer available. 
And now I have to wait more time to get somebody to come out to look at this thing that nobody can seem to figure out. 
And you know what? 
It might even be working then, and then the guy's going to say, hey, there's no problem here. 
And then he's going to leave, and it's going to go back down to zero again. 
But there's so many things wrong with this situation, and it's so crazy and typical. 
Don't go, you know, that's our last line. 
You've got to be careful of the equipment. 
Yeah, I keep dropping the phone. 
I don't know what's going on, but it's slippery. 
Have you thought about setting traps for beavers? 
Yeah, you know, there's all sorts of possibilities here. 
Hey, Alex, I know you had something that was gnawing at you. 
Speaking of beavers gnawing at fiber optic lines, the, what is it, CFAA, what not? 
Yeah. 
You know, this was a story from just fairly recently, just a couple of weeks ago. 
And I think that it's just of such relevance to our listeners and the community that I think we would be remiss if we didn't discuss it. 
But so a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice actually revised its prosecutorial guidelines for charges under something known as the CFAA that you referenced, which is an acronym for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 
And the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, you know, this is a very old law that's been around for quite a while, since 1986, when Congress actually enacted this law that criminalizes essentially hacking or accessing a computer without authorization or by exceeding your authorization. 
And then Congress enacted this law in direct response to the movie War Games, believe it or not, you know, in a cult classic hacker movie from the 80s. 
I think War Games came out in about 1983. 
Yeah, I think the CFAA proposed in 1984 and then enacted into law by Congress in 1986. 
So the turnaround time, you know, for the legislators was actually fairly quick. 
But these new guidelines are really important because if you think back at the actual literal language of the law, there were very few exceptions and there were a lot of case law barnacles interpreting this language in one way or another. 
And the CFAA, as I mentioned, generally made it illegal to access a computer without authorization or to exceed authorization. 
Now, these new guidelines establish that federal prosecutors should not pursue Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges if the available evidence indicates, quote-unquote, good faith security research. 
That's a massive change of policy that I think is tremendously going to be of importance and affect the hacker community and the cybersecurity research community. 
Now, for those unfamiliar, what does good faith mean in this context? 
Well, that's a very tricky issue. 
I think, you know, good faith security research, it's kind of bizarre in that the guidelines actually instruct DOJ to utilize a definition of good faith security research. 
That's located in none other than the DMCA, another law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 
And Emanuel, do you remember that law? 
I would imagine. 
I know it well, being the first person to be tested under it in the MPAA lawsuit back in 2000. 
That's right. 
That's absolutely right for the anti-circumvention provision, I think, right? 
So there's a part of the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law under which you were sued by the MPAA in 2000. 
I think it started in 1999 maybe, though, right? 
It went into 2000. 
And then I remember that case even going to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals where you had Dean Kathleen Sullivan, the dean of Stanford Law School, argue the case. 
And so anyhow, we digress. 
Good faith security research means under that definition from the DMCA, quote, accessing a computer solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigation, or correction of a security flaw or vulnerability, where such activity is carried out in a manner designed to avoid any harm to individuals or the public, and where information derived from the activity is used primarily to promote security or safety of the class of devices or machines or online services to which the access computer belongs, or those who use such devices, machines, or online services. 
That's the definition that's going to be applied. 
So things, I think, are still going to be a little bit murky here. 
And I think it's really important to note that this is a change in policy. 
It's not a change in the law. 
Only Congress can change federal law. 
So this doesn't create any new rights. 
It doesn't destroy any old rights. 
And the law itself is unchanged. 
But the DOJ generally follows its own guidelines. 
And because decisions have to turn on facts and viewpoints, we really need to remember that different prosecutors are going to come to different conclusions based on different facts and different circumstances and possibly different geographies. 
I think prosecutors in Kentucky might interpret the guidelines differently than prosecutors in California. 
And the CFAA, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is going to really continue to be a pretty complicated and nuanced law that's going to be subject to multiple interpretations based on any set of changing facts and circumstances. 
So this doesn't give people carte blanche to do whatever they want when it comes to good faith security research. 
Unfortunately, I still think there is a need for lawyers and legal advice. 
So, Alex, are you surprised by this? 
Yeah, I am surprised by it. 
I think, you know, it's quite a radical change in policy. 
I mean, especially when you consider, you know, the history of charges under the CFAA, you know, you go back to cases, you know, that had really tragic outcomes, cases, you know, like Aaron Swartz's case. 
He was charged under a pretty aggressive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something that arguably should not be brought under the current guidelines. 
And that ended horribly for Aaron Swartz when, after the government rejected, I believe, his plea offer, he had taken his own life. 
And our community lost a brilliant soul that day. 
And I think, you know, we're all still reeling from that. 
So, you know, in one sense, you know, I guess people can make an argument that, you know, it's too little, too late. 
But on the other hand, this is the government coming to the table and making an effort, I think, to right past wrongs and to go forward on the right foot. 
So I think there's a lot of ways to look at this. 
I am surprised that this of this radical policy change, but it also does reflect where the Supreme Court was going and narrowing the expansive interpretations of charges brought under the CFAA. 
So that has been happening over time and even fairly recently with a couple of cases that were handed down by the Supreme Court. 
So I think the the changes, in a sense, embrace that progression of case law from the court. 
But it's also a radical departure, and I think one that we really should welcome. 
And do you think there's a particular force behind it? 
Is somebody pushing for these positive changes? 
You know, it's hard to say. 
I think generally this administration and the Department of Justice has been fairly, I think, progressive and enlightened when it comes to trying to better community relations, when it comes to cybersecurity, when it comes to the hacker community. 
I mean, I think we're realizing that we're all part of the same really important and critical ecosystem here. 
So it could be a direct reflection of that. 
But it's hard to say, for me, who hasn't been on the inside of these policy changes, exactly where they're coming from. 
Interesting. 
But it sounds almost like we're flirting with something that could be considered to be maybe good news. 
Yeah, I think so. 
And, you know, I think it might be a good time to announce that we're going to be talking about this directly at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, at the HOPE conference. 
And can I can I announce that, Emmanuel? 
Yeah, sure. 
Go right ahead. 
All right. 
Yeah, so I'll be moderating a panel with some DOJ and FBI guys on the one hand and some private practice and some digital civil libertarians on the other hand. 
And I think it's going to be a really, really interesting conversation for the community and one that will be really important, hopefully, in bringing people together so that we can better understand these new guidelines, better understand the parameters and and have a real frank discussion of what is good faith security research? 
And, you know, what constitutes that and what's what's outside that definition? 
So I think it's going to be a fascinating conversation at HOPE. 
And I think it's going to be the first public conversation on this very topic. 
And on that topic, on the HOPE topic, that is, we are adding talks and speakers every day, workshops as well. 
If you go to HOPE.net, you can look at what we have so far. 
We're still in the confirmation stages. 
If your talk was accepted, please make sure you get back to us with your final details. 
We'll be putting together the schedule pretty soon. 
It's really something. 
We're at that stage now. 
We're about five weeks away. 
And it's starting to come together. 
And we're realizing that, hey, there's no turning around now. 
Basically, planning out where we're going to be and what we're going to be doing, it really is turning into an incredible event already. 
But we are going to need a lot of help. 
We are going to need so much help in the way that volunteers, people who come to the conference and help us in various ways. 
So if you have any interest in doing that, we could really use your support. 
Hey, you get a free T-shirt out of it, too. 
Volunteers at HOPE.net is the email address. 
And there's all kinds of information on the HOPE.net website on various ways to get involved. 
And it's so worth it to not only attend the conference but to be a part of the operation of the conference because that's what makes it magic. 
That's what makes the impossible possible. 
And that's how we've done it for the last 13 conferences. 
This is the 14th one. 
And it's really going to be something. 
The first one at St. 
John's University in Queens, we have so much extra space. 
We have outdoors, all kinds of things like that. 
It's really going to be amazing. 
One word, though, that we do have to pass along due to recommendations and the current health situation, we will be requiring people to wear masks when they're inside. 
It's a safety issue. 
There are a lot of people who are getting sick. 
We hear about it every day. 
We've heard about recent conferences that have not taken these steps where people have gotten sick en masse. 
It's not a big deal. 
We've been to many places where having a mask on inside is expected, and we get through it. 
It's not something that we embrace, not something we want to do for the rest of our lives, but for now, it's vital. 
We don't want people to get sick or to be exposed in any way at Hope. 
And also, please bring your vaccination cards. 
They will be checked when you enter the premises just to make sure that we're not exposing you to something that would be unfortunate. 
But we've made that clear from the beginning that that is something that is likely to happen, and it seems as we are approaching that, in fact, that will be the case. 
Absolutely. 
Yep, we're taking the precautions because it is in keeping with recommendations. 
It is the smart thing to do, and, yeah, why the heck not be safer? 
That is the question I have. 
And also regarding the schedules, yes, we are now at that point that I warned you all about a couple of weeks ago when we were saying the deadline was coming up, we are now at that point where if you ask us, hey, is it too late to get my talk in there, it is too late to get your talk on the schedule. 
But we will have an unscheduled track where you can sign up on the day to give unscheduled talks on whatever you want. 
That will be available. 
That has been a feature of Hope for a very, very long time, and we are keeping it. 
We are going to continue doing that. 
Yeah, it's going to be madness and chaos, but in a good way, and we're very much looking forward to it. 
It's going to be very different. 
We've never done this before. 
This is a bit of history. 
If you didn't come to the first Hope back in 1994 when we did this for the first time at Hotel Pennsylvania, well, this is your chance to be at the first one ever at St. 
John's University. 
It's another bit of history and something that people will remember forever, and it's going to be a very positive event, I'm convinced. 
Getting back to what's been going on in the tech world over the past week, I know, Gila, you shared this story with us earlier about Facebook. 
They're reportedly collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online in violation of its own policies and promises. 
This story seems almost too fantastical, fantastically horrible to be true. 
Is this, in fact, what's going on? 
This does, in fact, appear to be what's going on, and I don't know if anyone else is spending every morning glued to, obviously, the Internet, specifically information about the Supreme Court to see what decisions are coming down every day. 
A lot of people are waiting with bated breath to hear about the decision that the draft was leaked of a couple of months ago to see what the future is going to be. 
And yes, apparently this data is, in fact, being leaked, and then it is winding up in the hands of anti-abortion clinics, the crisis pregnancy centers that really... 
Okay, I'm going to get political here for a second. 
The crisis pregnancy centers that masquerade as clinics where people can procure abortion services, and then they don't do that. 
And, yeah, Facebook is... 
I'm having a hard time saying, sorry. 
Facebook is sending this information. 
They're coding, thank you. 
2,500 crisis pregnancy centers, and at least 294 of them are sharing visitor information with Facebook. 
This is not good. 
This is a very, very bad thing. 
Yeah, it sounds like a nightmare, and certainly not something that should be legal. 
No. 
No. 
There's an advertising tool. 
There's a Facebook advertising tool called Metapixel, and it tracks, and it can, if it sees you're near a place, it will pass that information along. 
And I am horrified by this whole entire situation. 
Policies and filters are supposed to block sensitive personal data, but the filters have often proven to be porous against the vast amount of information they take in every day. 
Essentially, that means that the company is putting the onus on its advertising clients to monitor themselves. 
Ooh, what could possibly go wrong? 
Right? 
Wow. 
Well, now, what do we recommend? 
Can people just turn off their phones? 
Will that solve the problem? 
Turn off location. 
Yeah. 
And create tools or employ tools that can eliminate the ability of those, I guess, cookies or whatever it is, the Metapixel, you said? 
Mm-hmm. 
I mean, one way is to... 
Go ahead. 
One way is to just take measures to block connections to Facebook and their advertising functionality with things like ad blockers, you know, DNS filters, that sort of thing. 
But, of course, that's a hassle. 
And also, some people use the services. 
Alex, you've got something. 
Yeah, you know, another way to protect your privacy if you still want to use Facebook. 
It's unclear exactly how many data points that will prevent Facebook from collecting. 
But instead of using the app on your phone, you can remove the app from your phone because it's your phone that has a lot of this data, that collects a lot of data, especially geolocation information, and simply use the web version of Facebook. 
So, log in from your desktop computer only, or log in using the web version on your mobile device. 
That's going to provide less information to Facebook because they're not going to have access to your actual mobile device. 
Yeah, all the sensors. 
The other really important thing that we can do is speak up. 
The fact that we're talking about this is really important. 
And a scholar from California is saying that he thinks the best thing that we can do is speak up. 
Because you remember, like, Instagram for babies that was supposed to happen last year? 
And there was enough of a backlash that Metta said maybe now is not the time. 
So, be vocal. 
Be as vocal as you can be. 
Also, apparently, there is a new bill coming out called the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which I don't know if we've spoken about. 
And according to this article, if passed, it could increase the Federal Trade Commission's power to regulate and enforce how companies can use sensitive health data. 
Until then, however, it remains up to state legislatures to enact consumer privacy protections. 
Now, I don't know much about the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. 
I'd like to learn more. 
But again, speak up about this sort of thing. 
In addition to taking steps to safeguard your own data, but also make a lot of noise about this, because this is not okay. 
This story we're reading from is on RevealNews.org. 
Alex, you had something? 
Yes. 
Yeah. 
Sorry. 
It takes me a little while to unmute sometimes. 
But with respect to this new overarching federal privacy law, I think it's unlikely that it will pass immediately. 
But I think it's really important for us to continue to track the bones of this law, because very often what will happen is by the time it's actually passed into law, we'll go through many different iterations, and it will have lots of different considerations thrown into it from different legislators. 
It might look a lot different than it looks right now, but the framework itself and a lot of the major provisions that it contains might continue to be the same. 
And so that's why I think it is important to really watch this thing now, especially with regard to the federal preemption of state laws and its intention to preempt certain state laws. 
So that means the federal preemption of doctrine means that if there's legislation on point at the federal level, if it intends to preempt state legislation that would otherwise regulate the same subject matter, then those state laws are no longer applicable and the federal law would control. 
So this overarching federal privacy legislation, some kind of American version of what the European Union has with the GDPR, and will look a lot different from GDPR, is really, could be a radical shift in how we regulate the use and transmission of data in the United States. 
Yeah, this is definitely a story worth keeping an eye on. 
You know, we've talked about many, many stories over the years about what happens when you trust the famously compassionate and humane advertising and metadata industry to regulate itself. 
That does not tend to go well. 
And so, yeah, just looking at what's out there about you and what you're giving up when you use certain services and, yep, just be aware that this is going on. 
And I was trying to get a little bit lighter. 
Maybe we can be a little more jovial as far as stories tonight. 
This comes from a paper called Whales Online, from Whales in the U.K., where research, and this is something maybe I should think about, research has revealed that 4.3 million Brits are guilty of hacking their neighbor's Wi-Fi when their own Internet has gone down, or even in a bid to avoid paying for their own Internet connection. 
4.3 million people are doing this. 
Now, a total of 1.6 million of those who are piggybacking onto their neighbor's Wi-Fi have held on to passwords after getting permission on a previous occasion, but there's another 2.7 million who hacked their way in by guessing passwords with combinations so simple that one-third cracked the code within half an hour. 
And a fifth of the perpetrators spent over two hours and, in some cases, weeks trying various password combinations before they got through. 
And they help you out here, too. 
The Wi-Fi owner's name is 30% of the solutions. 
Pet names, 28%. 
Children's names, 24%. 
These are some good guesses for Wi-Fi passwords of your neighbors. 
Once accessed, time spent piggybacking neighbors' Internet stands at a huge 52 days on average, with 1 in 20 even admitting they've been connected for over a year. 
Having annoying, unreliable connections in their own homes was given as the justification for hacking neighbors' Wi-Fi by 55%. 
You know what? 
I don't know why I've been so patient, why I haven't even thought of that as an option, but there are several good possibilities that I think I'm going to look into now. 
I know the kids' names. 
I even know a couple of the pets' names. 
And I certainly know the people's names. 
So I've got a good shot here. 
This is a wonderful, wonderful story, and I love it so much. 
I wonder if it's more of a thing over in the U.K. 
Hey, some years ago there was a Doctor Who story, and the entire plot revolved around people connecting to a random Wi-Fi network that they just saw and used, and it ended up pulling them into some alien dimension thing. 
So that's something to worry about, that and Beavers. 
But Alex, yes? 
The reasoning, though, research to look into this, I find it fascinating. 
Here are some first-person accounts. 
After my phone broke while I was on holiday, whilst I was on holiday, I insisted upon being driven to the closest city to buy a new phone so that I could connect to the Internet during the rest of my holiday. 
Okay, so people do that. 
This person went to their local supermarket to connect to Wi-Fi. 
I traveled 30 miles to my office. 
In order to gain a Wi-Fi connection, I knew it was reliable. 
I traveled 60 miles to my exes. 
I went to a McDonald's to download TV shows. 
One time, when my Internet went down, I traveled almost two hours to my parents. 
I stayed with him for three days until my connection was restored. 
Yeah, so this is the desperation that so many people are faced with on a daily basis. 
And, you know, especially in our country, you really need to have more reliable Internet service. 
And on some places, you know, Kyle and I have traveled to various countries, it's just assumed that you're going to be connected at, you know, very fast speeds. 
And, you know, even when our Internet is working, it tells in comparison to what other people are used to. 
But then, by the same token, there are so many places, both within our country and in other places, where people get very poor, if any, Internet service. 
It's really something that we need to study. 
We need to figure out how can we make this reliable for everybody, or at least accessible for everybody. 
Yeah, and in a moment when we're relying on it, we're counting on generations of people to be skilled at computer security. 
We've been locking them up for 30 years. 
You know, we need people to perform and work and interact on the Internet, and we're nickel and diming them with service that rarely works. 
I mean, this is all stuff we've been talking about for 20 years or however long, ad nauseum, and it just never seems to get the attention it needs. 
So, yeah, you want your, you know, cyber warriors or whatever, you know, you want any kind of innovation and development and economic promise in this country, we're going to have to get it together and for cheap. 
Absolutely, absolutely. 
You know, they're wiring a lot of places with fiber, and I'm certainly hoping that we can take advantage of that at some point and actually see gigabit upload speeds, which I've never experienced. 
Right now, you know, like I said, I'd be happy with 35 megabit, and currently we're experiencing 0.1 of that. 
I think we actually have a connection now equivalent to something in the early 1990s. 
Yeah, it's kilobits. 
It's, yeah, it's retro. 
What we're doing is retro. 
Actually, what I'm doing is very retro. 
I'm speaking to you right now on my grandparents' phone that I still happen to have. 
It's the actual phone that I grew up with. 
You know, I saw this in their home many, many times. 
It's got the phone number on it. 
It's from Queens, but it's area code 212 before the 718 area code moved in. 
And it's rotary. 
You know, I'm on a trim line on the same line, and it flashes the glowing dial pad when you do that. 
Oh, you've got a trim line, Mr. 
Rockefeller. 
Wow. 
How about that? 
Well, I just had a rotary phone here. 
It turns me well. 
Well, yeah, and I have a few things I can do. 
That sounds like what our internet connection sounds like. 
Yeah, it's really great. 
Well, you know, while your internet connection is in this state of affairs, see if you can log on to, like, AOL or CompuServe or something like that, because maybe you've actually gone back in time with your speeds, and you can connect to those services again. 
I have a floppy. 
I'm just trying to figure out where to put it. 
That's like 23 hours, right, that you can get? 
I think so. 
I think so. 
Yeah. 
Speaking of the past, phone boxes, as we know, they've been closing. 
Oh, did you see Rebel sent us a picture of a payphone in Rockefeller Center that's still there? 
So all those stories about the last payphone being taken out of Manhattan, it's wrong. 
They're still there in various places, just maybe not outside in a booth. 
We have talked about this a lot, but this story from - it's another story from the U.K. 
about these phone boxes, and I found that really interesting. 
We got that email to the show from Mike, and this is a matter of the organization or the regulator, Ofcom, which regulates telecoms in the U.K., has stepped in to stop British Telecom, the phone company, from shutting down phone boxes in areas with poor mobile signals if they're needed by the local community. 
1,400 of them. 
1,400 phone boxes. 
Yeah, and this is awesome because they are assessing the actual need for these things. 
When they're finding that need, they're leaving well enough alone and leaving these things active and usable. 
It's a good thing. 
It really is because, you know, in an emergency, you need these things to be there, and certainly in an area that doesn't have good service otherwise. 
You have to have this. 
You can't simply say, it's not making us enough money, and we're just going to get rid of it, and people can deal. 
So it's, you know, there's a responsibility involved when you work in the communications industry. 
Alex? 
Yeah, I'm going to jump in in a second just while we're on the subject of phone boxes in the United Kingdom. 
You know, it's a really interesting phenomenon about phone boxes is that they are - they often have dual purposes, and one of those purposes has nothing to do with telecommunications, but has, I think, more to do actually with fornication. 
And it's a fascinating story in the sense of you think about almost from a philosophical sense whether or not the law should legislate morality, right? 
Should things that are immoral necessarily be illegal? 
And I think, you know, legal philosophers will disagree about that. 
But one thing unique about the United Kingdom in this respect is that prostitution is not necessarily illegal in the United Kingdom, but the public solicitation of prostitution is actually illegal. 
So you don't see people on the streets, you know, offering themselves for sale. 
You don't see sex workers and things like that. 
But you do see a lot of sex workers advertising in London phone booths. 
And most phone booths in London have - the walls are filled with ads for sex workers. 
And it's a really unique phenomenon, I think, that probably only exists in the U.K. 
or London. 
I'd love for some of our U.K. 
listeners to call up and hear their thoughts on the matter. 
Yeah, this article has some numbers which are really interesting. 
One of the things that they're doing is they're enacting rules to protect boxes not only where there are poor signals, but also in areas with high frequencies of accidents, high frequencies of suicides, or where a lot of calls are being made to services like Childline, which is a counseling service for children and young people. 
It says here that in the year to May 2020, 25,000 calls were made to Childline and 20,000 to Samaritans. 
It's another volunteer organization. 
And almost 150,000 calls made to emergency services from phone boxes in the U.K. 
So these things are still vital. 
These things are still needed in emergencies. 
So the rules that they have, which are eminently logical, a phone box will be saved if it fits one of the following criteria. 
It is located in an area not covered by all four mobile networks. 
It is located in an area with many accidents or suicides. 
More than 52 calls have been made from it over the past 12 months. 
And it's otherwise providing a vital service such as being used to make calls to Childline or Samaritans. 
This is a very humane and caring way to deal with these, I think. 
Well, just think about a scenario where you're walking down the street and you witness something terrible that needs to be reported immediately. 
And either you don't have your phone with you or the battery is dead and you don't have a way of making that phone call. 
If you go back decades, almost a century, you'll see that it was always fairly easy to get access to a phone at some point. 
And many times you wouldn't even have to put a coin in. 
You get a dial tone, you can call emergency numbers without paying. 
But now, if you don't have a phone or if your phone is disabled or if you don't have a signal or if the phone network is down, because that's what happens in power failures now, you're out of luck. 
There's absolutely nothing you can do unless somebody else happens to be around that can help. 
But if you witness something on your own and you don't have that particular device with you, good luck trying to find a way to communicate. 
Absolutely. 
And these are run as a public utility for the benefit of the public. 
Unlike this city where they took all the pay funds that were out on the street and sold them off to an advertising company years ago and went from there. 
So, yeah, it's about actually doing nice things for people. 
There's another story that I really would like Alex's perspective on this. 
The title, and this is almost hard for me to even understand the title of it, Anonymous Hacker Gets Served with Landmark NFT Restraining Order. 
Law firm Holland & Knight has become the first to serve a restraining order as an NFT. 
The asset recovery team of the firm issued the NFT on behalf of its client. 
LCX, yeah, they just had to be another three-letter acronym, to an anonymous hacker that exploited the platform back in January. 
In a press release, LCX also gave an update on the investigation into the hack that saw it lose around $8 million, noting that the case is now being handled in several jurisdictions, including Liechtenstein, Ireland, Spain, and the United States. 
Additionally, it has been able to track down and freeze around 60% of the stolen funds. 
These include 500 Ethereum and $1.3 million worth of stolen U.S. dollars. 
LCX says it used algorithmic forensic analysis to track down the transactions, which were obfuscated using Tornado Cash, which is a digital currency mixing tool. 
Circle Consortium, an organization founded by Circle, the issuer of USDC. 
I'm sorry, I said U.S. denomination before. 
I thought that's what it stood for, but USDC. 
And Coinbase helped freeze the USDC based on a New York Supreme Court court order. 
At the same time, a Liechtenstein court order served by law enforcement in Ireland to Coinbase Europe was used to freeze the Ethereum. 
The wallets that the exchange's investigations traced the funds to will also be reported, marked and flagged by digital asset security firms, including Elliptic, as well as Etherscan and other public blockchain explorers. 
The law firm says it airdropped its service token or service NFT to the main wallet the investigation identified. 
The method was approved by the New York Supreme Court and is an example of how innovation can provide legitimacy and transparency to a market that some believe is ungovernable. 
And after reading all that, I think it's almost impossible to understand half of what I said just now. 
Alex, does this make any sense to you, an NFT as a restraining order? 
Yeah. 
I mean, you've got to think about the point of this, too, right? 
So what they did was they authorized, what the court did, the New York State court did, was it authorized service, you know, by way of essentially the blockchain, right, by way of an NFT. 
And as I intended, it was some kind of service token that would contain a notification. 
And going back generally, I mean, why do we have things like service of process, right? 
You need to be served with certain papers so that you are apprised of what they say and you can respond to them. 
This is part of our traditional notion of fairness and due process in the United States, is that if you're going to be served with some kind of judicial order or some kind of papers that somebody is serving, trying to freeze your assets, you need to be given notice of it so that you have an opportunity to respond and an opportunity to be heard. 
That's due process. 
So the court, recognizing that the potential defendants in this case couldn't ordinarily be served in the usual route, you don't know where they are, you can't hand them the papers, you can't nail and mail it, as we call it in New York, if all else fails, you go to the last known residence and nail it to the door and then also mail it. 
And this really, I think, builds on this idea of court-ordered substituted service, where courts have somewhat wide latitude to order some form of substituted service if the circumstances dictate it. 
And I think it was a wise move by the lawyers here and a wise decision from the judge to recognize that if anything was going to get the attention of the defendant in this particular matter, it was putting something out there in the blockchain that was designed for him or her to see it. 
And that's what they did. 
So by dropping the service token out there, my understanding is that's how the court agreed to accept service. 
That was the court-ordered substituted service. 
So really fascinating stuff and I think hopefully a trend in the right direction of the judiciary recognizing the reach and also the limits of technology. 
Definitely worth keeping an eye on. 
While we've got a couple of minutes left, there is one other fun story that I want to get in really quick before we run out of time. 
And that is America Online 3.0 has been reverse-engineered by hackers who are getting the ability to run basically a new AOL server that the old software is compatible with. 
The project is called Re-AOL, that's R-E-A-O-L, and it is a nostalgia trip, and it is such a nostalgia trip that one of the hackers behind the project announced it on LiveJournal, that old dusty site. 
So if you go to G, that's just the letter G, dot LiveJournal.com, you can see more info on this and screenshots of all of it. 
And it is really, I think, funny that they're doing this, but also really interesting. 
And they go into some of the tech details about reverse-engineering the original AOL and seeing where that takes them. 
We are indeed running out of time, but you can send us email at OTH at 2600.com. 
We will be preempted next week, but we will be back the week after. 
And again, we are unfortunately not doing AOL overtime this week because all those... 
AOL overtime? 
AOL overtime, off the hook overtime. 
I am sorry. 
AOL overtime is this project, but no, we are not doing... 
We're going to have a conversation post-show, Rob. 
Oh, I'm going to get wrapped on the knuckles for that one. 
The, yes, OTH at 2600.com. 
Go to give to WBAI.org to keep apprised of how you can help us keep doing what we're doing here. 
And, again, have fun. 
For Off the Hook, this has been Rob T. Firefly. 
Have... 
This is Emanuel? 
That is Emanuel. 
And Kyle, and Alex, and Gila, and for all you guys, have an excellent week. 
Thank you.