Your call cannot be completed as dialed. 
Please check the number and dial again. 
012T. 
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. 
If you need help, stay on the line and a hacker will assist you shortly. 
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call. 
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would. 
On Billy Bomber, the best is back from worst. 
I hope that's understood. 
On Billy Bomber! 
We'll be right back. 
And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off The Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yes, I'm here. 
How are you doing? 
And over in Skypeland, I believe we have Rob T. Firefly. 
He's on the laptop, but he's not on the board, Kyle. 
Why is that? 
It's like the laptop isn't plugged in or something. 
Is that possible? 
Okay. 
Now I'm not plugged in. 
Okay. 
Try that again, Rob. 
Now you're still over on the laptop. 
Okay. 
Growing pains here as technology adjusts to our needs. 
Well, fortunately, I'm prepared for such an emergency because I have a stack full of papers here. 
Unfortunately, our toner is running low, so it's going to be difficult for me to read from this, but I'm going to do the best I can. 
And we talked about the FTX story quite a bit last week. 
I believe we talked about it on the air. 
We might have talked about it on Overtime, Overtime being the show that follows this on YouTube. 
Kyle, do you have an update on our technical issues? 
Yes. 
What's the update? 
You can't just walk away and say there's no update. 
Okay, so basically, FTX was basically, I don't know how else to say it, kind of destroyed. 
Are we on or not? 
Yes. 
I'd like to introduce a couple of our guests. 
I think over there is Rob. 
Good evening. 
So it only works if you introduce him? 
That's how it is? 
Okay, fine. 
I'll give you the power. 
No, you do the introductions. 
It's the part of the show I dread the most. 
It was my mistake. 
It was a USB connection that was loose. 
But isn't that always the way? 
Beside, over there also is Gila. 
Hello! 
Joining us. 
Yeah, way to blast out my eardrums, Gila. 
Thank you for that. 
Yeah, looking good on the levels. 
I was going through trying to make some adjustments. 
And also with us this evening is none other than... 
Alex. 
Alex, his name is Alex. 
Alex. 
Yeah. 
You forgot his name? 
Yeah. 
Well, hello, hello, everybody. 
All right. 
Well, you know what? 
If we can get started any time this hour, that'd be great because we only are on for an hour. 
We do have another hour or so afterwards that follows at 8 o'clock on YouTube on channel 2600 there. 
And you can follow the link that is on our main 2600.com webpage. 
Or just go to channel 2600 and figure it out at 8 o'clock. 
So I was trying to talk about this story about FTX. 
Does somebody want to just explain quickly what FTX is? 
It's cryptocurrency. 
It's a... 
How do you describe it? 
It's an exchange. 
A exchange. 
A exchange is where people go to turn fiat money, cash, into cryptocurrency and trade cryptocurrency with others and, you know, generally gamble with cryptocurrency. 
But also do the opposite, right? 
That's true. 
Yeah. 
That's right. 
Also to cash out. 
Yeah. 
Well, as you may have heard, FTX collapsed, was basically destroyed. 
But this interesting story, FTX's new boss has accused the disgraced CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, of hacking into his own company while in custody of the... 
I've never said this word before. 
Bahamian? 
Is that how you say it? 
Bahamian. 
See, I knew I'd get it wrong. 
The government of the Bahamas, but the Bahamian government. 
Okay. 
While in their custody, they insisted that he hack... 
This is alleged. 
They insisted that he hack into his company to obtain digital assets that belonged to FTX after they filed for bankruptcy. 
That's according to a bombshell lawsuit filed on Thursday. 
John J. 
Ray is an insolvency expert. 
That must be fun. 
Who steered energy firm Enron through its infamous $23 billion bankruptcy following a massive accounting scandal. 
He alleged the unauthorized access transferred FTX assets into accounts outside the control of management, according to the Wall Street Journal. 
The Bahamian government is responsible for directing unauthorized access to the debtors' systems for the purpose of obtaining digital assets of the debtors. 
The filing also alleged that Mr. 
Bankman-Fried and FTX co-founder Gary Wang stated in recorded and verified text that Bahamas regulators instructed that certain post-petition transfers of debtor assets be made by Mr. 
Wang and Mr. 
Bankman-Fried, who the debtors understand were both effectively in the custody of Bahamas authorities, and as such assets were custodied, yes, that's a verb, on fireblocks under control of Bahamian government. 
I'm not quite sure what a fireblock is, but it's capitalized, so it must be important. 
Yeah, so basically what this means is that the people who lost money, the actual individual people, like you and me, are doubly screwed now because the money was taken and put someplace where they can not get access to it at all, where nobody can get access to it at all. 
And we don't really know who it is that did this, although the lawsuit alleges that it was Sam Bankman-Fried himself. 
I mean, the story just gets more and more bizarre as every day goes by. 
Alex, any thoughts on this? 
Is this making new ground in legal shenanigans? 
Yeah, I heard all about this over the last couple of days, and it's been the most interesting aspect of the FTX story by far, to my mind, because here you have a very, very unusual situation of a founder of a company being directed by a governmental regulator, in essence, to acquire unauthorized access to his own systems, which in and of itself doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense because if they were his systems, then he wouldn't have had to exceed any kind of authorization, but yet the assets didn't belong to him. 
So I would argue that there is some form of access authorization that's been exceeded because he's taken into a bunch of these digital assets into custody and put them into the possession of a third party. 
So how all of this is going to shake out is going to be extraordinarily weird. 
Then you also have competing bankruptcy proceedings between the United States. 
Whoa, sorry about that. 
Really, Alex? 
You let the dog in the room that you're broadcasting from? 
Yeah, that's my beagle on that one. 
And then you get him angry somehow? 
In a firm position on antitrust. 
I'm sorry for all the listeners who are just jolted out of our skin by this. 
Maybe there's another room the dog can go into. 
And now I also have a sick four-year-old coming over here to say he'll cuss. 
That's preferable. 
That's preferable. 
As long as he doesn't cuss. 
Hopefully he doesn't know those words yet. 
Yeah. 
Well, you never know. 
He doesn't look so bad. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
You know. 
You want to say hi? 
No? 
Okay. 
All right. 
Anyhow. 
While my son is on my lap here, I think the other interesting aspect of this is that the competing bankruptcy proceedings between the United States and the Bahamas and where these assets that were placed into the custody of the Bohemian authorities are going to end up going. 
I mean, are they going to have some kind of priority return to persons that were affected by this in the Bahamas or maybe those who have some kind of closer connection, let's say, to the Bahamas? 
Is there going to be some kind of priority given to them? 
All of this is really unclear at the moment, but this is very much uncharted territory and very strange for all of these facts and circumstances to come into play all around the bankruptcy filing, the hacking, the missing assets, the fact that there was no controls around the acquisition of these particular assets, their use, the governance principles. 
I mean, everything that's shaking out of the FTX story is just making this look worse and worse and worse, and especially because this was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. 
It's been a real eye-opener to see all these details shake out in the bankruptcy proceeding. 
I mean, things like private keys being stored in unsecured Gmail accounts. 
I mean, all kinds of just absolutely terrible things from a security practitioner's perspective, but then from the legal perspective of corporate governance, all of this was just completely foul and wrong, too. 
Can I just add something here? 
The guy I mentioned before, John J. 
Ray, remember, this is the guy who oversaw what was going on with Enron, Enron, through that $23 billion bankruptcy. 
What he had to say about this, about FTX, never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. 
Again, this is the guy that oversaw the Enron debacle, so wow. 
Yeah, I mean, it just shows that there really weren't any adults in the room, despite all of this massive amount of capital coming from very sophisticated investors. 
You would think that some of these investors might have had some oversight into the company or would have taken board seats, but I think all of them were gun-shy in the sense that if they did have a board seat, there would be some kind of liability for a board member in the event that the platform collapsed like it did. 
And I don't think there's an insurer out there who would give you a sufficient amount of coverage in an errors and omission policy to take care of all of that liability that would attach to being a director of this particular company. 
I've been impressed with the rapid changing dynamic. 
I mean, it was very, very fast the way a lot of this has transpired. 
Yeah, it's pretty speedy. 
And it gets weirder and weirder by the day, as I said, but in different ways. 
Here's a bit of a piece from VulcanPost.com. 
As if the billions lost by millions of people, the billions lost by millions of people and the collapse of the second largest crypto exchange wasn't enough. 
Turns out the hacker, quote unquote, who got away with close to $300 million worth of cryptocurrencies out of an estimated $477 million stolen during the turmoil from the failed company. 
That person, whoever they are, has now begun manipulating prices of Ether, dumping Ethereum, dumping it by as much as 7% within hours. 
And as of when this started happening, that person was the 35th largest holder of Ether in the world. 
Yeah, and just to sum this up in a rather eloquent way, ultimately, we now have a single anonymous crook slash madman making waves in the market, able to influence prices of even the largest cryptocurrencies by using stolen funds. 
Someone who has become a centimillionaire. 
What's a centimillionaire? 
C-E-N-T-I millionaire. 
A hundred million. 
That's what that means? 
I've never heard that word used before. 
So if you have a hundred million dollars, you're a centimillionaire. 
A hundred or hundreds of millions. 
Something to aspire to. 
Okay. 
Someone who has become a centimillionaire without putting a gun to anybody's head or, in fact, without even setting a foot outside their door. 
Well, you assume that. 
But, yeah, it just, it's nuts. 
It's, where does it end? 
Do you think this is the end of crypto, folks? 
No, I don't. 
I don't think it's the end of crypto at all. 
In fact, I think it's a new beginning of crypto. 
I know there's some static between the hacker community and the cryptocurrency community. 
And I wish that we could bridge that divide in some respects. 
And I think it's our job in a lot of respects to bridge that divide because there's so many aspects of cybersecurity that are so important to cryptocurrency. 
And I think that cryptocurrency is going to become more important to cybersecurity over the next coming months and years that we see this. 
But as we talked about a bit on overtime last week, I think that this is just going to be par for the course for a little while. 
As part of this cryptocurrency winter, we've seen Celsius declare bankruptcy. 
We've seen FTX declare bankruptcy. 
It seems like both of those places didn't have great corporate governance, leadership, security controls, et cetera, in place. 
And I think we're going to see a lot of these places that were shambolic on the inside but maybe looked okay on the outside going to continue to fall. 
Everything that was a house of cards is going to begin to tumble. 
And I think we're going to be left with maybe it'll be a bit of a wasteland for a while. 
But I think it will be time to rebuild, and I think we're going to rebuild on the basis of cryptocurrencies that have a better foundation and a better basis and more utility and more functionality than the existing crop of nonsense that's been out there for a while. 
And in particular, I'm talking about Ethereum itself, even though it's subject to some market manipulation because of this bad actor. 
I think Ethereum is going to be the one that stands the true test of time and is at the top of the heap. 
Yeah, I think inherent to any of these sort of value exchange systems, monetary, there's a level of trust at some part of it that needs to be there for people to - for there to be uptake of it, whatever currency it is. 
And there are many. 
There are many, and they're all feeling the pinch at this point, it looks like. 
But we'll stay on top of this as it gets weirder and weirder. 
Are you listening to Off the Hook here on WBAI? 
Please support WBAI by going to the website give2wbai.org, pledging whatever you can to help keep this radio station going because, like many others, we're in dire times and we need to get through them because voices are important. 
Voices of opposition, alternative viewpoints, and just investigative reporting, as well as alternative cultures and all sorts of other fun things that appear on our airwaves in a typical week. 
It's crucial. 
It's vital. 
It's unlike anything else heard, even in New York City. 
So the website give2wbai.org, the phone number 212-209-2950, and again, we accept any amount. 
We take credit cards and every bit counts. 
It's extremely important that we stay on the air, right? 
Yeah, everyone, please think of us as you're putting together gifts at the end of the year. 
We need you. 
This is community radio. 
It doesn't happen without the community. 
So please find one of the methods that we've mentioned and contribute what you can. 
And consider becoming a recurring donor and perhaps even a member of the station. 
It's a good slogan in there somewhere, community radio. 
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Now we need the community. 
So let's put the two together so we have community radio. 
I'm sure someone thought of that. 
Go ahead, Gila. 
So I just wanted to put in a quick plug. 
As I'm pretty sure most of our listeners know, tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the great old United States. 
Wait, that's this week? 
Wait a minute. 
I thought it was next week. 
I heard it was coming around. 
Damn it. 
You should be defrosting your turkey if you're not already here in big trouble. 
And, you know, there's kind of an unofficial calendar for the week after Thanksgiving. 
And, you know, everybody goes shopping on Black Friday. 
And now there's Small Business Saturday. 
And Cyber Monday was a thing. 
And now some places are talking about Stock Monday. 
And next week, a week from yesterday, is Giving Tuesday. 
And if you haven't thought about donating to WBAI and you want to wait until the official giving day that comes after the fiesta of purchasing that is the few days after Thanksgiving, please consider giving to WBAI on Giving Tuesday. 
I'm sure you've heard from a lot of nonprofits in your world and in your sphere. 
But BAI should definitely rate a spot on your list this year. 
So, you know, send money to BAI. 
Get the tax write-off for the end of the year. 
It's a win-win. 
Do what you can and help us stay on the air. 
Yeah, this is community radio, as you said. 
And without the community, there is no radio. 
And this, right now, is how the community keeps us on the radio. 
This is the only thing that's been keeping us on the air for, what is it, 62 years now. 
And, you know, we don't sell ads. 
We don't sell your ears to anybody who wants them. 
We don't sell your interest. 
We don't sell your data. 
All we can sell is ourselves and what we're doing and what we're producing and what we're putting out on the airwaves. 
And that's there because you want it there. 
That's there because you, right now, who are listening, can, you know, call 212-209-2950 or go to give2wbai.org. 
That's give, the numeral 2, wbai.org. 
And contribute what you can to keep us doing what we're doing here at WBAI. 
And thank you to all those people who we know are calling because we asked you to and because, you know, it's the right thing to do and because you value community radio and want to keep hearing off the hook on as many Wednesday nights as possible. 
So thank you. 
Give2wbai.org, 212-209-2950. 
Rob, you've been spoken to about posting killer robot stories to the list. 
And I'm told that you did it again today with a story from a place called missionlocal.org. 
And the title simply reads, Robots Authorized to Kill in San Francisco Police Department Draft Policy. 
You want to explain this? 
So there's killer robots now that San Francisco is going to unleash on the public? 
That appears to be the plan. 
According to a policy proposal that's headed for San Francisco's Board of Supervisors approval, this proposal would explicitly authorize San Francisco police to program their robots to autonomously kill people. 
Police departments all over the world have been using robots for all sorts of things, the sorts of dangerous situations you don't want to send a human police officer into or just to get the coffee or whatever. 
But the robots themselves, according to this proposal, will have the option to end your life. 
Okay, so Black Mirror has arrived. 
We are here. 
And I'm just looking at this story, pieces of it. 
The draft policy has faced criticism from advocates for its language on robot force, as well as, that's force used by robots, not like the Air Force. 
It's actually the force that the robot will use. 
As well as for excluding hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not including personnel costs in the price of its weapons. 
I'm not sure if that's related. 
Are they giving the assault-style weapons to the robots? 
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm in the United States, so I should probably believe it. 
Yeah, so here's a quote. 
Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to the police department. 
Now, I've heard that said by humans many times when killing unarmed people. 
Are the robots going to have the same level of judgment where they view certain people as a threat by default? 
This is a very interesting question. 
I mean, robots are like any other computer. 
They're very sophisticated idiots. 
They're very good at accomplishing exactly what's programmed into them, but they're not so good at making the sort of fuzzy decisions, the day-to-day decisions. 
How many times do you ask Alexa or Siri or whoever to play one song, and instead it does something completely different? 
Computers are not very good right now at distinguishing whether you want to hear the weather girls or hear the weather. 
And it's that sort of technology that's going to decide whether it needs to shoot you with a gun or not. 
And that terrifies me, and not just because I was raised on Robocop movies. 
Okay, yeah. 
Well, Alex, tell me, should we be really scared by what we're seeing here? 
I mean, it sounds like San Francisco should frankly know better. 
I mean, this is a city that, insofar as I recall, had banned facial recognition earlier than most other cities in the country, is heavily involved with technology, should understand the perils of technology. 
And I feel like technologists understand the limits of technology better than anybody else. 
I mean, this is the reason why most of us that work in cybersecurity don't have electronic locks on our doors and Alexa's in every single room of our house, you know, all these things, because we're distrustful of technology. 
And I think, you know, my little Ido here is also somewhat. 
Ido, do you like robots? 
You have to say it out loud. 
No. 
Okay. 
He doesn't like robots either. 
Smart kid. 
I mean, and the other thing is, I mean, think about robots and where they are, for God's sakes. 
I mean, my Roomba continually gets stuck on the edge of my stairs. 
I mean, we're going to be trusting robots to have some kind of judgment about lethal force. 
And, I mean, it really sounds like some kind of new Black Mirror episode in the making, where the notion or the idea of self-preservation of a robot can override a human life. 
I mean, this is just, you know, ridiculous science fiction-like stuff from the 50s and 60s that we're seeing play out now in 2022. 
Me too, yep. 
Okay. 
That's 60, 65. 
Oh, okay. 
All right, very good. 
Good point. 
All right. 
Kyle, go ahead. 
Oh, I just was imagining the logical extent of a lot of this, which is a sort of blameless environment where humans controlling them aren't necessarily at fault. 
It's a situation where the robot becomes the excuse or the reason, and it is that it went haywire or there was some error or malfunction, or the person didn't treat the robot the way the robot needed to be treated, that it is, you know, some thing that humans should inherently understand now and all of those sort of etiquettes. 
It is a whole different landscape of thinking about an authority that can be wielded against citizenry. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, and talking of technologists who have various feelings on this, I got into this story through a person called Kat Scott, who works with openrobotics.org and other such things and knows this stuff and has expressed the interest in anyone who wants to help put together a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. 
So you can find Kat Scott, if you're interested in that, at kscottz on Twitter. 
That's K-S-C-O-T-T-Z on Twitter or on Mastodon at kscottz at sfba.social. 
You know, I'm wondering if cops are going to be moving into using robots aggressively. 
I wonder if criminals will do the same, you know, have a robot rob a bank or steal things from a house or do God knows what else. 
It's, I mean, it's funny, but it's also really scary because there are people who are being paid to figure these things out right now. 
Gila, it looks like you have something. 
Well, I was thinking about robots, drones, where the line is. 
And yeah, will there be some time where a robot is robbing a bank and another robot comes in to stop it and then the whole bank blows up because the robot, like this does not lead anywhere good. 
I can't, is there ever a good sentence that starts with robots? 
There's some good songs that start with robots, but I don't know if there's any good scenarios that start with robots. 
But here's something interesting. 
This might make people feel better. 
If you're dealing with any kind of financial issues this holiday season, if you're worried about where, you know, your next check is going to come from, et cetera, et cetera, or how you've, you know, managed yourself over the past year or a bunch of years or lifetime, the Alexa, the Amazon Alexa, what we all consider it to be, we just talked about it now, we all consider it to be this incredible thing, big success. 
No, the headline reads, Amazon Alexa deemed colossal failure following $10 billion loss, $10 billion loss. 
They say in the first quarter of this year alone, Alexa lost $3 billion. 
I don't know how that's even possible. 
What is Alexa doing that's losing $3 billion in a single quarter? 
Apparently they wanted Alexa to be you. 
I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexa, I'm triggering by saying this so many times, but what they wanted Alexa to be able to do was get people to buy more things. 
And apparently it's not doing that so much, but it's doing something else. 
It's helping people in various ways. 
Yes, it's spying on you too. 
I know that it's bad. 
It's evil. 
Yeah. 
We're going to put that aside for the moment, but what people are using it for, they find to be rather convenient, you know, playing radio stations or telling you the temperature or God knows what else. 
They're getting these things to do, tying it into your house and turning on the lights. 
But somehow it's a colossal failure. 
Something we just assumed was working isn't. 
I don't know what they're going to do with it. 
If they're going to just make it suddenly stop working and everybody has paid for these things and they'll be upset. 
And plus, they're not the only one out there. 
You know, there's all kinds of other personal assistant devices. 
You guys have any thoughts on this? 
Yeah, I mean, the big thing for them is that from the beginning, they wanted this to be a tool that would bring in money. 
People would shop with the Alexa device. 
But as we reported early on in Alexa's life, we reported on this program about stories like when a kid, you know, ordered an expensive dollhouse, unbeknownst to their parents, and other mishaps were happening where Alexa was buying things that the owners didn't necessarily want. 
So they had to dial all that stuff back. 
But in the meantime, yeah, it is a convenient thing for like switching the lights on and off, listening to music, podcasts, whatever. 
And, you know, they basically put their eggs in a basket that no longer really exists. 
And it also connects to other issues with the quality of shopping on the Amazon site, which is not what it was five, six years ago when these things were new. 
So it's very interesting because I think the $10 billion loss is basically them calculating, like, what they're paying people on the Alexa side of their operation. 
It's not like they, you know, poured money down something that didn't happen. 
It's just, you know, what it costs on there and to keep this thing running. 
And it is an interesting question whether they will continue to do so. 
Alex, you now have two kids with you. 
I'm just wondering what the most expensive thing either one of them has ordered without your knowledge from Alexa or any other kind of device. 
Or do they even speak to these? 
Do they speak to these devices? 
No, they don't because we don't have them. 
We don't have an Alexa device, do we, Sasha? 
We don't trust them. 
That's right. 
Wow, okay. 
Good for you. 
Right. 
Why don't we trust them? 
Because they scan your whole house. 
Yeah, that's right. 
Yeah, there's something that they're always recording the ambient noise, right? 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
We don't want that. 
But these kids have ordered things, mostly video games on the PS4 that I've had to unwind with Sony. 
Well, Call of Duty broke my one for $76, so it probably was the most expensive game. 
Yeah, well, but we decided to buy that one. 
You know, that wasn't one that was an unauthorized transaction like your little brother has engaged in recently. 
But, yeah, most of these kids have been just buying video games. 
But, you know, to go back to this whole issue of Alexa being a failure when it comes to purchasing things, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it just seems like it's really badly designed to purchase things. 
I mean, it's a sound-based device. 
There's nothing visual about it. 
You want to see the thing that you're buying before you say buy it. 
I mean, I understand wanting to re-up your toilet paper or your paper towels, but, you know, that's something that you can just do automatically on Amazon. 
It just seems like it was perhaps a poorly thought-out business plan to capitalize on that. 
I intentionally make sure that any kind of account is not linked to it because, you know, if you just happen to say that you want to buy something, it might buy it for you. 
I don't want that. 
You know, if I want to buy something, yeah, you know, I know how to do it online. 
I can ask Alexa for advice or details or things like that, but I would not want to have Alexa just go out and make a purchase. 
That just seems unwise. 
Yes, Gila? 
I think there's also an interesting question about what the point of Alexa devices is and why it's managed to lose $10 billion, which is just a staggering sum of money. 
It's not like Alexa went and invested with FTX and lost $10 billion. 
See? 
Callback. 
It's good. 
Yeah. 
But, yeah, thank you. 
If you have an Alexa pillar, if you have an Alexa ball, if you have an Alexa dot, great. 
And I think the question is, do they want you to be buying things or do they want to be inextricably linked into the daily lives of so many of their customers? 
Because I think on that particular metric, it's been a massive success to the point where if we are on vacation and I want to know what it's like outside, and I will say, Echo, what's the weather? 
And stop. 
Echo, stop. 
Wait, what just happened? 
I accidentally asked it what the weather was, and it was about to start talking. 
But the thing is, I'm so used to asking this device in my home what the weather is, I am now incapable of finding it out from any other place. 
And we have been in hotel rooms in other cities, and I'm like, I don't know what's happening outside, and I can't ask the device in my room. 
Can't you look out the window? 
Yeah, I can look out the window. 
I can see it's sunny. 
Do I know what the temperature is? 
No. 
That's why you open the window, and then you find out. 
In a hotel where the windows don't open. 
Okay, then you call downstairs to the concierge and ask them what the weather is, and they'll be annoyed that you're wasting their time, but at least you'll get an answer. 
But I think that's the thing. 
I think that the sense of how intrinsically linked so many of us are to these devices now, for better or for worse, but do I want to get a pair of Echo glasses? 
I just came up with an idea, based on what you're saying. 
Hotel Alexas. 
Every room has one built in, and you can just have a dialogue. 
You know, maybe you're in a hotel room, you have nothing to do, you have a nice friend to talk to while you're there. 
You can play Jeopardy. 
It's not as pathetic as it sounds, and you don't actually have the device. 
It's like in the walls or something, watching your every move. 
Huh? 
That could sell. 
They're in vehicles, I think, as well now. 
Yeah, they are. 
They are in vehicles as well. 
Alex, are you okay? 
Your younger kid is smacking you in the face, full force. 
Is there something going on we should know about? 
I deserved it. 
That's it. 
That's all I can say about that. 
Patience, I deserved it. 
Now he has a fist clenched. 
Boy, what's going on over there? 
There's some animosity that I'm seeing brewing in your household. 
Okay, well, here's another story that is kind of of interest from the Daily Dot. 
Yeah, it seems WikiLeaks' website is coming apart at the seams, with more and more of the organization's content unavailable without explanation. 
I just tried going there myself, and I got a 502 bad gateway. 
WikiLeaks' technical issues, they've been ongoing for months. 
They've gotten worse in recent weeks, as increasingly larger portions of its website no longer function. 
Even attempting to visit WikiLeaks.org is a gamble in itself, often producing the very 502 message that I experienced today, which indicates an error was detected on the website's server. 
When the website does become available, problems still abound. 
The main banner on WikiLeaks, which includes the organization's logo, as well as links to subdomains, such as the About page, has been entirely missing since earlier this month. 
A similar banner at the bottom of the page, which once showed links to sites for Bitcoin and the Tor project, is now gone as well. 
A search bar that once scoured the site for information also appears to no longer work, and instead redirects users to the homepage. 
But the biggest issue relates to WikiLeaks' entire purpose, leaks. 
Many of the group's leaks have either vanished or become inaccessible to the public. 
Of the seven leaks highlighted on the homepage, three produce no content. 
Two of those redirect to error pages, while the third merely sends users back to the homepage. 
Now, some of the organization's most prominent leaks have also been affected. 
A cache of more than one million emails from hacking team released in 2015. 
The now defunct Italian surveillance vendor, they're all gone. 
An archive of tens of thousands of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email, inaccessible. 
The Democratic National Committee emails provided to WikiLeaks ahead of the 2016 election by Russian state entities posing as rogue hackers, also missing. 
Although WikiLeaks long boasted that it released more than 10 million documents in 10 years, at current, less than 3,000 documents remain accessible, according to an analysis by the Daily Dot of the website's leaks archive. 
The issues have become so apparent that supporters of the group are now voicing concerns across social media. 
It's even being read over a New York City radio station, according to this article. 
In a post on the WikiLeaks subreddit over the weekend, one user complained that every search request made on the website produced an error message. 
The site is completely down for me. 
Another responded, all I get is a 502 bad gateway error. 
And despite similar complaints on Twitter, many of which tag WikiLeaks' account, the organization has failed to publicly address any of the issues. 
WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Dot over Twitter direct message. 
And even organizations tied to WikiLeaks appear to be struggling. 
The website for Defend WikiLeaks, a group that raised funds for the legal defense of WikiLeaks and prison founder Julian Assange, has now been taken over by a Vietnamese sports blog. 
No kidding. 
The website for the Courage Foundation, which similarly raised funds for whistleblowers and journalists, including Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, was also taken over in the past week and transformed into a Japanese blog, selling knockoff designer merchandise. 
The domain now shows nothing more than a blank page. 
So, yeah, rather sad. 
And according to an update to this story, after this story was published, the websites for both the Courage Foundation and Defend WikiLeaks were taken offline. 
The Twitter account for the Courage Foundation also appears to have removed the link to its website from its bio in recent days. 
So, rather disturbing, I think, because WikiLeaks was, you know, a major part of the 2010s. 
And like it or hate it, having it disappear, that doesn't sound healthy to me. 
Rob, do you have something? 
Yeah, I mean, the WikiLeaks definitely had its important part to play in past history, but the writing has been kind of on the wall for this. 
WikiLeaks has published, for many years, they've published an Onion link where you can contact WikiLeaks via Tor. 
And that link has been a dead link for many years now, with no indication that they were looking to put it back up. 
And WikiLeaks, their purpose used to be leaks. 
The point of that site used to be leaks. 
But as anyone who follows WikiLeaks on their official social media, like their Twitter account, knows, WikiLeaks nowadays is basically just an organization that posts again and again and again how bad the situation is for Julian Assange. 
They haven't done leaking. 
They've kind of put that aside and become a full-on Julian Assange, you know, cheering section. 
And, you know, you can feel one way or the other about that. 
But the point is, they really kind of abandoned their purpose quite a while ago. 
And I think the fact that their old leaks have now fallen off the net to a degree, that's, you know, I tried bringing up the site just now and got the 502 bad gateway from NGINX. 
And it seems like that was just the thing that was going to happen. 
It seems like they're not interested, really, in being WikiLeaks anymore. 
In all fairness, there's not much to cheer about. 
I mean, when you're targeted by the U.S. government and by so many others throughout the planet, it becomes awfully hard to continue with your original mission. 
And, yeah, it has become a site mostly about what Julian is going through. 
And that's because Julian was pretty much WikiLeaks. 
And without him, he doesn't have the same kind of direction, if any. 
And attention does need to be drawn to what he's been put through. 
You know, again, you know, like him or hate him, is what he's going through, you know, being locked away for years and treated in barbaric conditions and facing God knows what for what he actually did. 
Is that fair? 
You know, the whole thing is lousy. 
It's lousy what's happened to WikiLeaks, absolutely. 
But we have to look at why this happened to WikiLeaks. 
It's not like they said, you know what, we're tired of this. 
We don't care anymore. 
Or they've been subjected to something we cannot even imagine. 
And, you know, it's anyone with any interest in human rights, I think, would be concerned by this. 
And it's just sad to see it falling apart. 
But I think we know why it's falling apart. 
You know, it's because of the way it's been targeted. 
And it's a message to anyone else who dares to try such a thing. 
And it's a very chilling effect. 
I know, Alex, you don't agree with my perspective on WikiLeaks, but, you know, surely you see that there's a human rights issue here as well. 
Yeah, and I've written quite a bit about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for CNN and specifically on the issue of Julian Assange's extradition to the United States. 
I don't think that the extradition proceeding in the United Kingdom was necessarily fair. 
And I think that the superseding indictment that the DOJ brought, the superseding indictment was the second indictment that included a mess more charges on this. 
I think it was something like 14 more charges as opposed to the first one that just dealt with essentially cracking a password hash with a rainbow table. 
But, you know, it does seem overtly political in a lot of ways, and it especially did during the Trump administration. 
But my thought on this was during the Trump administration, that superseding indictment, and this is what I wrote for CNN, I thought that the superseding indictment was deliberately designed to prevent the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States because the charges were so overtly political that extradition should not have been something, should not have been an option from the UK to the United States. 
But, you know, there you have it. 
But putting that aside for a moment, I think there's almost a more fundamental issue. 
And this is that tried and true lesson that's become a bit of a platitude on our show lately, which is don't expect any platform controlled by a third party to exist forever. 
So, you know, let this be a lesson to all of you. 
You shouldn't rely on a single website to host all of your exfiltrated data that you'd like to mine for OSINT purposes. 
I mean, the only place that you can trust is your local hard drive. 
And that, too, will eventually... 
Well, yeah, I'm not sure many people want to trust a local hard drive with everything. 
Make sure you back that up as well. 
But the other point, too, that I want to make a manual is that, you know, sure, it might be sad to see WikiLeaks fall apart. 
I'm not going to shed a tear for them, frankly. 
But I think that part of the reason why it's falling apart is that there are other outlets that exist right now that have taken up the helm of this is the place you go to when you want to leak documents, when you want to have them published, when you want to have them curated. 
And I'm talking particularly about some place like the Distributed Nile of Secrets. 
You know, and we've had Emma and Zan on the show multiple times. 
They've spoken at Hope. 
They're doing a tremendous job, a really risky job, of getting this information out to the public. 
And I think they're filling a void that WikiLeaks left behind when they became the cheering session for Julian Assange, as Rob aptly put it. 
I'd like to comment just in general, like, it is unfortunate. 
I think that we need to remember kind of along the lines of that, when this emerged, there was not much else. 
And it did have a bit of a vacuum for a while when a lot of the peers and manpower, so to speak, changed there. 
And it really ended up being beholden, you know, kind of under the auspices of one person's benevolence. 
And I don't think that's very good for a news gathering and a journalistic enterprise. 
But we've learned quite a bit, I think, since then. 
And there's been a proliferation of the sorts of tools and things that were very necessary in the modern age to protect sources, so to speak, or do various sorts of reporting and investigating that require you to interact with sources that may not want to be identified or could be at risk if they are and or if they're whistleblowings, et cetera, et cetera. 
So, I mean, that proliferation has made the options available for that kind of story to see the light of day are wide. 
And I think there are a lot of different outlets for different types of stories so that people have the luxury of maybe choosing one that might handle it or might have the skill with that kind of story that others might not. 
And it didn't exist. 
Yeah, and we operate one ourselves. 
SecureDrop is a great way to leak documents, information. 
In fact, if you go to SecureDrop.org, you'll find us. 
I think we're first on the list because we begin with the number, 2600. 
But you can leak documents securely. 
So, yeah, there's options. 
There's definitely options. 
And I'm not particularly sad to see a website disappear. 
But I am sad and angry at the way a human being has been treated. 
That's my point. 
And, you know, if you hate Julian Assange, understood. 
That's your right. 
That's your opinion. 
But if you want him to suffer, mission accomplished. 
He suffered. 
How much more do you want this to go on? 
How much do you want to drive that nail in? 
You know, at some point we have to look at ourselves and say, what are we doing? 
And I think we're well past that point here. 
You know, it's just, it's unspeakable the way he's been treated. 
Okay. 
So, any other closing thoughts on this? 
I would just say I agree with that. 
I don't necessarily support Julian Assange or what he did or, you know, and frankly, I think that the first indictment of him was for what appeared to be an actionable crime in the United States. 
But I agree with you. 
I think that the amount of suffering that the process of this extradition and his custodial requirements over in the United Kingdom especially have been really, really heinous, have been, and I think will be looked back on as one of the more notable stains on the human rights tapestry of the United Kingdom and the United States. 
And you remember what he was saying when he went into the embassy and everyone was saying, oh, you're paranoid that the United States is not going to charge you with anything. 
And he hid in there for years believing that the United States was going to charge him with something. 
And guess what? 
They did. 
They absolutely did. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Yeah, I mean, I think if had had there been like something crazy, like a public facing trial, which would have let it come to light, what exactly this person deserved for what he did or didn't do beyond a reasonable doubt, then that would be one thing. 
And you could see somebody being, you know, tried and punished for a crime. 
And the fact that that hasn't been allowed to happen, it's just, you know, been years off his life without any sort of due process that we can see or report on, you know, that's a shame. 
But if any organization like WikiLeaks or any other organization for that matter wants to be a valid thing into the future, it needs to be bigger than any one person. 
If WikiLeaks wanted to be WikiLeaks for longer than Julian Assange was hanging around, I think the rest of the people, you know, the people that are pushing the buttons on the social media and things like that, and people have been keeping the site up all this time, they could have continued the work. 
I think that would have honored what WikiLeaks represented far more than just being just becoming a cheering section for one person. 
Yeah, I can't disagree with that. 
But again, I think we might be overestimating just how big WikiLeaks actually is. 
And I think a lot of the enthusiasm has been punctured, you know, and it's really hard to keep that rebellious face, you know, when things like this have happened. 
We can continue this on Off the Hook Overtime, which will be happening over on YouTube in just a couple of minutes. 
I did want to say, though, on the subject of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, I saw Chelsea Manning on Hard Talk, on BBC's Hard Talk. 
That's a half-hour program without any commercial breaks where you get hammered and grilled by a journalist. 
And he was challenging Chelsea, and boy, did she hold her own. 
It was really one of the most impressive interviews I think I've seen. 
If you have a chance, go to bbc.co.uk. 
You can track it down there somewhere. 
I'm sure there's copies floating around. 
Of course, if you get BBC World News, it'll be broadcast on there every few hours, I think. 
In closing, our email address is othat2600.com. 
We're Off the Hook, the show about technology, hacking, privacy, all sorts of things like that. 
And we broadcast on WBAI, where we really hope that you call in to support the station, 212-209-2950, or go to the website, give2wbai.org. 
That's give, the number 2, wbai.org. 
And donate whatever you can to keep community radio alive in New York City. 
Any closing thoughts from people? 
No? 
Okay. 
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. 
We will see you on Overtime in a couple of minutes. 
Just go to the link on the 2600.com webpage, or just join us over on Channel 2600 on YouTube. 
Good night.