They Want to Read Your Mail
Okay, I'm having a difficult time here. I can't see, I can't coordinate and everything is happening late. I have posted a bit about what I think was the main topic for this program. I have more to post and I hope to post it soon and actually finish this Web page. You might want to check back of any updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday February 12, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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The Washington Post is reporting that a new, secret, U.K. law requires blanket access to cloud backups around the world. This would wipe out Apple's privacy pledge to its users. Basically the Brits want Apple to create a back door allowing the U.K. government to retrieve all the content that any Apple user anywhere in the world has uploaded to Apple's so-called cloud. The Washington Post says in the article that, The British government's undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies.
The Washington Post reports that the office of the Home Secretary has served Apple with a document called a technical capability notice which has ordered it to provide access under the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. That law is referred to as the Snoopers' Charter by some opponents of it. Apple can appeal the demand, but the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during the appeal.
Last year when this law was being debated Apple said, There is no reason why the U.K. [government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption.
So Apple is barred from letting users know that their information is open to snooping by the government of the U.K. It's even not allowed to let people who are not in the U.K. including non-British users know that their information is being spied on. And the Washington Post says that a former White House security adviser confirmed the existence of the British order.
This cloud storage [tell about cloud] is part of Apple's Advanced Data Protection product. The user actually does the encrypting. Apple has no control over it, that's why a back door would be needed, and then the storage would be in two parts, what's encrypted and what's plain text stored somewhere on Apple's systems. Trump has wanted to have such a back door for years.
The Washington Post has some quotes, Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was important for the United States to dissuade Britain: Trump and American tech companies letting foreign governments secretly spy on Americans would be unconscionable and an unmitigated disaster for Americans' privacy and our national security.
Meredith Whittaker, president of the nonprofit encrypted messenger Signal, said: Using Technical Capability Notices to weaken encryption around the globe is a shocking move that will position the UK as a tech pariah, rather than a tech leader. If implemented, the directive will create a dangerous cybersecurity vulnerability in the nervous system of our global economy.
Most Apple users don't even bother to use the Advanced Data Protection option. The important thing is that Apple at this time can't even decrypt the stored and encrypted information itself. This came out in 2016, when the FBI tried to force them to tell what a dead person had on his phone. Apple won that court case because there was no way they could comply.
Google has made the backups for Android phones encrypted by default since 2018, so it would be another target for U.K. officials. Meta which owns Facebook and other things, also offers encrypted backups for WhatsApp, and Google also can't access users' encrypted data.
The Washington Post says that were the U.K. get access to the encrypted data, then other countries that have allowed encrypted storage, such as China, might then demand equal backdoor access. The Washington Post speculates that in that case Apple might withdraw the service rather than comply.
A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights says that any law requiring companies to give a government the plaintext of end-to-end encrypted communications Risks amounting to a requirement that providers of such services weaken the encryption mechanism for all users,
and violates the European right to privacy.
As a result of major hacking attacks by the so-called People's Republic of China as part of a joint December press briefing on the case with FBI leaders, a Department of Homeland Security official urged Americans not to rely on standard phone service for privacy and to use encrypted services when possible. And the FBI, National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency joined in recommending dozens of steps to counter the Chinese hacking spree, including Ensure that traffic is end-to-end encrypted to the maximum extent possible.
I always say that you need to be the one encrypting your data, you can't trust anyone else to do it for you. This is an excellent example of why.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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