January 27, 2017 • 57 mins
Since the 1950s, the National Security Agency has been responsible for collecting, analyzing and verifying a vast amount of signals intelligence, ostensibly to protect the people of the United States. Over the decades the agency has grown to become one of the world's premiere repositories of intelligence -- everything from internet search histories to phone calls and texts, as well. In the final days of President Obama's administration the NSA was quietly allowed to share this information with every other US intelligence agency. So what happens next?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:25):
and welcome back to the show. My name is my
name is Noel. I'm Ben, and we want to start
this in a little bit of a different format today.
At the very top of the show, ladies and gentlemen,
we have a very important correction. Can you guess what
it is? It's a single vocabulary word. It is. It's
(00:47):
a very important one too, five syllables. It is not,
in fact pre lapsarian. That means before the flood. That's
a different word. It's anti Deluvian relapse. Arian means before
the fall, and you know, in other words, before the
fall of Lucifer and the various rebellious angels in biblical war.
(01:09):
Thank you to everyone who wrote in. This was on me.
This is just on me, guys, not on Maturnal. And
I'm grateful for everyone who wrote in to help me
out with this. Dufe I caught it too late as
we were as we were queing and stuff, and and
we Matt Nolan, I often like to point out that
you our listeners not a general. You, specifically, you are
(01:31):
not just as much of a part of this show
as we are. You are the most important part of
the show, and we all of us are incredibly lucky
to have you here, specifically you helping us make this
show the best thing it can be. Just a little
peek behind the curtain que a ng as when we
we all listened to the edit to make sure that
NOL didn't miss anything, any any goofs. So you know,
(01:52):
there are layers of of of a blame to go around,
And I am first to admit my part in this. Um.
I was gonna say, if you all only knew how
many things get through my watch, Uh, that imprized that
I let a lot of things get through. Matt, So well, yeah,
that's what I'm saying all the time. It's not your fault.
You have to edit while you're recording. That's true. Well, okay,
(02:16):
it's always true. We're taking all this out. Oh let's
keep it in. Uh. The point the point being here
is that you keep us honest. We try our best,
and I personally rely on you to help us stay accurate.
We Matt, Noel and I and you are accountable to
each other. So thank you to everyone who wrote in.
(02:37):
We appreciate it immensely. And everybody was so like, very
supportive too, you know, and that even more so I
appreciate and I love that they took that tone of
like you poor idiots, bless your little hearts, mixing up words.
I thought y'all have the best words. It turns out
you did not. Every one of those emails we read
(02:59):
in that little sun their lady voice. So just so
y'all know, that's how you sound to us, no matter
who you are. We have a list of words we
say to ourselves before we read the email to help
us getting that genteel Southern approach. A delicious mint, oh oh, Jeff,
(03:20):
good gravy? You are? You are mixing up some That's
how I do it, though you have to. You have
to let them kind of combine together. We like to
have fun. Yeah, And you're an award winning method actors,
so you really live in the characters, you know. Actually,
as it turns out, today we're talking about an entire
agency staffed with award winning method actors, and we're not
talking about the studio audience of inside the actor's studio, right,
(03:43):
So let's explore today we're talking about a much much
more powerful group, one that affects your life again, specifically
you in profound, immense and often invisible ways. It's an
organization that you support, that you pay for with a
percentage of every paycheck you receive if you were an
American citizen or heck, even a resident, A group that
(04:05):
may know almost everything about you. A group that is not,
unlike this show, accountable to you, even if you're one
of the people paying for it. And you've probably heard
the name of this group before, the n s A
or National Security Agency. It sounds so nice. Who doesn't
want to be secure today? Whether you live in a
(04:27):
foreign country or the good old US of A, we
guarantee this organization may know an immense amount of stuff
about you, and it probably has dirt on numerous government
officials as well. So how did we get here? Well,
let's take a look at the history. So while the
n s A was officially founded on November four, nineteen
(04:49):
fifty four, its roots go much much further back, all
the way to nineteen seventeen, and that's when a man
named Herbert oh Yardley became the head of this newly
creative thing called the Cipher Bureau of Military Intelligence, which
he's just a wonderful name. I feel like we should
have stayed with that the entire way through. People would
(05:11):
get cyber and cipher mixed up. Now, Oh yeah, I
guess it's true. But Cipher Bureau, Cipher Bureau, it's a
comic book. It does sound like a comic book. It's
very hell boy. So this was just three months or
so after the United States had declared war on Germany.
One of the major factors that brought the US into
the war was a thing called the Zimmerman Telegram, and
(05:33):
that's a situation where the Foreign Secretary of Germany tried
to get Mexico to enter into war against the United States,
but British codebreakers intercepted the message and they told their
friends in the US. You know, they said, oh, the
Yanks should probably hear of this, which is apparently how
they sound. Uh, And the government finally acknowledged the US
(05:57):
government acknowledged the value of what is called signals intelligence.
That's correct. By the way, we're speaking about World War
One there when talking about going to war with Germany. Yes, yes,
so signals intelligence were We're we've all seem spy movies
were familiar with the idea of intelligence, which in some
cases may seem paradoxical. According to the Office of the
(06:19):
Director of National Intelligence, there's six types of intelligence sources
or what they call collection disciplines. Now all list these
off along with their shorthand, sort of an acronym. I
guess um, not quite an acronym now, just shorthand, that's better.
So first we have imagery intelligence, which is I'm going
to pronounce it, I meant, but I think immant maybe
(06:42):
I don't know. Uh. Then we have measurement and signature
intelligent or massens. Next we have human source intelligence or humans.
Then we have open source intelligent O SENT and geo
spatial intelligence geo iNTS. And then the first two that
we mentioned communications intelligent comment uh no comment and electronic
(07:08):
intelligence ellent elent perhaps. And then we have foreign instrumentation
signals intelligent my personal favorite fisent. Yes. And those those
three comment, elent, and fisent are all under the umbrella
of SIGAN signals intelligence, and that essentially just means the
(07:30):
interception from signals, whether those be electronic communication, maybe short
wave radio interceptions all around the world, foreign and domestic
and sigan can be any of those three things on
their own, or a combination of any any of those three.
Is there communication occurring via a signal? We need to
(07:54):
hear it, right, And so these other things that these
other things were mentioning, like human source and intelligence is
what a lot of people think of when they think
of spy movies, you know what I mean, Like Noel
goes and sits on a park bench at twelve oh three,
someone sits with their back to them and says, you know,
the proper code phrase, which what would that mean? That
(08:17):
the cranberry sauce was quite fragrant last afternoon, it was, indeed,
And they like, yeah, they just agreed in that in
that kind of human environment, you know, who knows, they
may be just agreed to an arms deal. Sauce is
(08:38):
the target. Yeah, and the fragrancy, like the amount of
that's that's the state of the the condition that's like,
you know, conducive to doing the deal. That is the
affirmative of the target is prepped and ready for interception. Yeah,
we're all just pulling this out of our ears. But
(08:59):
is also pretty yeah, totally, you guys, I actually had
the uh, the pleasure of UM going to the International
Spy Museum in Washington, d C. This past weekend. Yeah,
they had a whole section with UM all of these
amazing like iterations of various intelligence gathering devices, you know,
(09:21):
a main one being tape recorders. And it never never
really occurred to me that like the same companies that
make tape machines now still they use in the film
and you know that have now got versions that are
electronic digital. Rather are the ones who made the best
tape machines that they would use that could conceal, and
they got progressively smaller and smaller. The first ones that
(09:43):
would be like these, you know, about the size of
a laptop, but obviously much thicker, and you would have
to put it inside a big giant suitcase to be
that guy on the park bench. And then they would
have a little wire that would run up a coat
and through your sleeve, and that would be the remote control,
a little clickie button to stop and start the recording,
and then the microphone would often be picked up into
(10:03):
a wrist watch, so the wrist watch would have the
mic in it, and the cord would have to go
all the way up from the suitcase through your coat
down around and up your sleeve and then plug into
your wristwatch. You know. Obviously, just consumer electronics nowadays are
much more concealable and higher quality than that, um, but
it was fascinating to see the way they progressed to
(10:23):
these tiny, um little they almost looked like microcassette recorders,
but they still are ultimately real to real um. What's
the name of Naga Nagarra was a company and they
they're still around. In fact, they make really really high
end um field recording devices that are used in film
and television, um, you know recording. So that was super cool, uh,
(10:45):
not to go too far off track, but that they
had a whole section with like concealed weapons, one of
which was like an umbrella that you could shoot a
poisoned dart out of by like you know, doing the
umbrella mechanism, and it kind of had a cross section
of it. But super super fun. Uh, you know. I
was in d C for another show that I work on,
and I was there the day of the inauguration and
(11:06):
walked around the National Mall by myself and actually posted
some a couple of good creepy picks on the stuff
they don't want you to know Instagram accounts, so if
you want to check those out, conspiracy stuff show, conspiracy
stuff show. Um, but let's get back to uh Intel. Ah, yes,
and we I'd love to go to that museum in person.
It was really really I recommended anyone that's in the
(11:27):
DC area. It's right by the Gordon beersch So you
can go over there and get you a sausage platter
and then check out some some you know spycraft and
also check out our interview with Robert Mazer where he
discusses his whole setup that yeah, sire, what you're describing
with a big tape recorder inside a briefly previous audio podcast.
(11:47):
And while we're talking about history, uh, let's go back
to in nineteen nineteen, when the war ended, the cypher
Bureau moved all the way up to New York City.
I've always am going to remember that Salsi commercial whenever
I say New York City. Every time advertising is in cities,
New York City and they shift up very forceful. It's
(12:10):
much more of a New York City. Oh, I guess
you're right. I thought they got angry, like you got
more and more angry. It depends on which it was
a very successful act content. If you ever feel like
wasting your time on YouTube, go check those out, and
then also stay for that Egyptian panda commercial for cheese.
(12:32):
That's my favorite. And that has nothing to do with
the Cipher Bureau because in nineteen twenty two, uh they
had shifted from two from military intelligence where the tanks
were the planes, to diplomatic intelligence, and in twenty two
they proved their worth because they served they intercepted Japanese
(12:53):
communications that helped American diplomats negotiate with Japan on naval
arms limited sations. But the thing was, even at this point,
the Cipher bureaus methods were always questionable, and if the
public had been more aware, they probably would have noticed
that these are technically illegal or you know, everything the
(13:16):
public knows would indicate these are illegal. And we've heard
a lot of well, let me just paint this picture
and tell me if this sounds familiar. The Cipher Bureau,
working for the federal government, made a deal with private
telegraph companies, you know, Western Union and the like, and
these companies gave the Cipher Bureau unprecedented access the messages
(13:38):
entering and exiting the United States all telegrams and the
Secretary of State Henry Stimpson closed the agency nine and
he thought he had some moral issues with the increasing surveillance.
But then also it's pretty expensive at that time to
pay off these companies, right, even if they are making
(14:02):
what they feel is a patriotic decision, and to have
the just the people power to double or you know,
copy every single message that goes in or out of
their systems, read every telegram. Ultimately, the Hoover administration wouldn't
see the need for peacetime surveillance, like why do we
(14:24):
have this if there's not a war, why are we
monitoring this and we don't have any active enemies, then
why are we wasting all his money? And it's seductive
to have that much power, you know, So we'd like
to think they saw the danger of this agency monitoring
all citizens in peacetime. After the end of the cyber
(14:45):
Bureau cipher bureau every time, I'm just going to call
it the beurea cyber man. The cyber is tough cyber
and stuff. After after the end of that era, you're lee.
The man we mentioned the beginning was not only out
of a job, he was very, very bitter and a
(15:07):
ninety one he published a book called The American Black Chamber,
And this was the first time that much of the
public knew the activities and exploits of the Bureau. The
Saturday Evening Post published an excerpt. And the thing is,
not only was the public and Saturday Evening Post readership
(15:28):
astounded and no small part uh Terror terrified, the intelligence
community was also having a gigantic WTF moment. So the
founding father of American surveillance in many ways, you'll you'll
hear this quote around I was gonna say around town,
(15:49):
you'll hear this quote around this topic. The founding father
of American surveillance also became its first trader. Now, by
the time you published this book, it was already out
of date on American spy programs. That's because five months
before the end of the Cipher Bureau, before they closed
it down back in May of n the United States
(16:11):
Army decided that it was going to start up its
own version of an agency of this sort, its own independent,
let's say, State Department spy agency. So it's a military
intelligence instead of diplomatic. Yes, And in nineteen thirty William
Friedman began building this thing called the Signal Intelligence Service
(16:31):
or SIS. SIS. It's a sweeter name, not quite as
you know comic bookie as the Cipher Bureau. But it's okay,
well we'll we'll roll with it. So it's unclear really
to what extent the end of the Cipher Bureau um,
like how that went into the birth of this new agency,
(16:52):
like because it ended, was this one created or was
this one created? Uh? And that one killed off simultaneously?
Like was that the thinking? Well, you know, every new
beginning comes from some other beginnings. And man, it's a window.
The door was closed. The window was opened. But in
October nineteen twenty nine, Friedman did go to New York
(17:14):
and obtain all of the files of the Cipher Bureau.
So whether or not they were related bureaucratically in terms
of archives and contents, they were even more comprehensive. Wait,
so he was he sent or was he just like
unilaterally like I'm gonna have that, give me those files,
I'm gonna do whatever I want. How to be sent?
(17:36):
I mean that the power of the Cipher Bureaus library
at that point is pretty significantly. Think it makes so
much sense. You you have to it's It's kind of
like in our Human Experimentation episodes, we discuss how it
is scary and terrible the way some of that information
is obtained and the way the experiments are carried out,
(17:57):
And in the same way with the Cipher Bureau. It's
things that look down upon by the public and perhaps
even by some government agencies. But you have the information,
and do you just let it go away or do
you use it to build this new thing? That's a
that's a very good comparison. It's already sort of a
sunk cost at this point, and we're not even the
World War two so CIS big SIS expanded rapidly in
(18:21):
the nineteen thirties, uh and open bases to help it
concentrate on the Pacific theater so Alaska, China, Australia, and
this was in response to the expansion of the Japanese
Empire during World War two. Uh SIS played a crucial
role in helping to crack some of these Japanese codes.
(18:43):
After the war, President Truman reorganized the the entire American
pursuit of this sort of intelligence under something he called
the National Security Agency. In ninety seven, the NSA moved
to Fort Mead and May, Maryland. It began as a
secret organization. Uh in many ways. I mean they're keepers
(19:07):
of intelligence, right. Uh. And it was half jokingly referred
to by a lot of people as uh not national
security agency, but no such agency, no agency here. And
growing up, my father had a had a running joke
with within his his field where it's such a bad joke,
(19:31):
do you guys want to hear it? I do want
to hear it. I live for your bad jokes. Ben, Well,
let's uh just the joke. So so, the the old
joke that people would tell all around these various circles,
right was, how can you tell the extrovert at the
n s A. It's one in the elevator looking at
(19:53):
someone else's shoes. It's that bad. It's what passes the
humor in those circles. Hold on, I'm trying to get
it though, okay, because they're also controverted. That the little
intributed that they're all staring at their own shoes. That
is their form of reaching out, like to look at
the other shoes. I said it was a bad no,
(20:15):
But I think I think I think it's appropriate. Yeah,
it works. I guess you have to be in those
circles to go. Yes, you gotta be in an elevator
with a bunch of n ss A agents. Oh man,
I know, don't put me in there. You know, I
would like to avoid that. So this made the U.
The n s A grew to a peak of more
than nine employees in sixty nine. This made it the
(20:38):
largest intelligence organization in the US and possibly in the world.
People known, oh good call. So the n s A
did contribute valuable intelligence to help the US anticipate UH
several things, especially during the Cold War, like the foundation
of Berlin Wall, the Q and Missile crisis, but they
(21:01):
weren't always successful. In nineteen sixty four, the n Essay
was considered largely responsible for the Gulf of Tonking incident,
which drew the US into the Vietnam War. They say
it was faulty intelligence, They say, you know what not
everybody gets everything right all the time. But the big
(21:21):
question here is whether or not it was truly faulty
the intelligence they had or was it something else? And
what are they up to today? We let feel as
though these things are all right for exploration. But first
a word from our sponsor, So the n s A today,
(21:48):
what are its goals, what is its purpose? What is
it doing with all that stuff it has? On you? Again,
specifically you that's here, You ask Ben. Aren't those the
tell us what listen to my phone calls? Yes, asked,
and U you shall receive the answer. Uh. They are
the people who run the computers that listen to the
(22:10):
phone calls. And if the certain conditions are met, yeah,
there will be a person on there. I do declare
if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to hide,
and you can riffle through my phone calls. Hivot and
pivoted sea ladies and gentleman. We told you Bett, it's
gotta crack it up here. Part of it's the costume.
(22:33):
Part of it's also the nerve gas that's slowly filling
up this chamber. Um that the n s A is
clearly employing. Yes, so before they cut us off, before
we pass out. Officially, the National Security Agency slash Central
Security Service leads the US government in cryptology that encompasses signals, intelligence,
(22:53):
and information assurance products and services, and it enables computer
network operations UH to gain what they call a decision
advantage for the nation and its allies under all circumstances.
That gobbledegook in in English means that they're both receiving
intelligence and they're making sure that it's real so it's
(23:16):
not incorrect or purposefully misleading. And then their their networking
computers together so that the US and the us IS
friends and the rest of five eyes or whatever will
all have the best information going into any sort of
(23:36):
any sort of geopolitical situation, ultimately to to gain a
decision advantage, right, right, And did you notice that part
about the h air quotes Central Security Service. That's a
tricky thing that a lot of like I missed as well.
The Central Security Service affiliated here includes elements of the
(23:59):
armed forces that that performed code making and code breaking
work with the n s A. This was established in
two and the n s A directors also the chief
of the CSS. So members of the c s S
work side by side with the n s A around
the world and we do mean literally around the world,
(24:20):
so that there's not as much of a barrier between
civilian code cracking and military code cracking. Sort of an
efficient way to uh to streamline efforts and get the
most bang for your cryptographic buck. Essentially, think of these
folks almost as intelligence agencies. Embedded in the armed forces. Yeah, well, okay,
(24:42):
so that's the official goal decision advantage. So if it's
just collecting information making sure that information, whatever it is,
is accurate, how do they use use it for multiple purposes?
From assisting in trade negotiations, you know. So let's say
Matt is an ambassador gets a hot tip from the
(25:03):
n s A right before he goes into negotiate some
sort of deal about tea in China or whatever. Then
he knows essentially insider information or something that got leverage.
Who's got leverage exactly. But then it also can go
down to what to blow up when it's a dirty job.
(25:24):
But it would be disingenuous to not admit it's one
of the prime reasons that the US achieved hedge, became
a hedgemony, you know, the most powerful of the nation's
currently for for for the moment, for the months. Oh boy,
did you guys feel that chill that went through the room?
I really did. I noticed that are we dripping? Is
(25:47):
there something dripping up here? Because oh, I feel like
we have been invaded by some kind of foreign uh
intelligence here with this water that doth dripped down. Oh
my goodness. Okay, yeah, all right, you guys, this isn't good.
The n s A is a floor above us and
(26:08):
it's poisoning the roof of our building. It's right around
the valve for the fire um system. Yeah, sprinkler system.
Was that that siren that was going off? Do anybody
else hear that? I just just well, I'm usually actively hallucinating,
so I didn't know. I don't I still don't know
the best way to check. Put your arms up and
(26:28):
go just a spin a top and if it stays spinning,
then you know you're hallucinating. If it falls down, then
but if the camera cuts away before it falls, then
you don't know what I do without you guys, well,
before we drown or die from nerve gas, we should
mention that the n s A is full of controversies,
(26:52):
a little bit historical controversies. We mentioned the Gulf of
Tonkin already. It's commonly it's it's common acknowledged outside of
the US by various organizations as a false flag operation.
And that would be someone purposely pretending to be an
enemy to create the circumstances for their own aggression. Right,
(27:17):
so then something becomes a war of defense or retaliation.
Rather than an invasion. It helps to make the populace
agree with the reason for going to war. Another one
would be UH the U. S. Senate when they formed
the Church Committee in nine to investigate possible abuses by
the n s A as well as the CIA, FBI,
(27:40):
I R S. UH. This went on for nine months. UH.
The committee chair, Frank Church, who was a military intelligence
officer at one time in his life, got kind of
freaked out by their tremendous surveillance ability. And he has
a great quotation here from The New York Times in
nineteen seven A five that capability at any time could
(28:03):
be turned around on the American people, and no American
would have any privacy left, such as the capability to
monitor everything, telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would
be no place to hide. And boy was it ever
turned around on the American people. Uh. I feel like
(28:24):
we're living in a time where, because of various leaks Mr.
Snowden and the like, we are painfully aware that this
technology is impact and has been used on us. And
at the same time, as as outraged as many of
us are, a whole lot of us also very willingly
(28:45):
participate Uh, in feeding this beast by giving our own
personal information out higgody pigody, as Matt would say, via
various social media networks. I mean it's it's like turning
on location service arning on location services, Like we are
exchanging the convenience of being able to know that there's
(29:05):
a burger king nearby for basically seven monitoring. And you know, again,
as Matt said earlier in his delightful voice, uh, we
many people feel like they have nothing to hide, so
who cares? And honestly, I'm one of those people? Do
You guys are not so much? You guys both have
the tape over your phone. I'm I'm I'm just like,
(29:28):
what am I? What are you gonna do? What are
you gonna see me doing? I'm I'm very boring. I
know that's not the point, but it is kind of
how I justify it because I like all the tech
the technologies. Yeah, and there's a larger conversation the concept
of privacies. We understand it is fairly recent in the
span of human civilization, and I've heard you've been before
(29:49):
say that you feel like, further down the line, privacy
will be not a right at all. It will be
a luxury afforded only to the super rich. Yes, I
do believe what m I won't get on a soapbox
quite yet. Well, okay, you know what, No, we're halfway there.
Let's just walk up the box. So what we are
(30:10):
facing as a country and as a species is not
so much the end of privacy or the erosion of privacy,
but the rise of an inequality in privacy. This means that,
just as Noel said, the one of the most precious
resources of the future may be the ability to have
(30:31):
an unmonitored thought. Will that happen within our lifetimes? That's
a tough call to make. But do you want to
live in a world where, based on your income or
your family, you may or may not have the privilege
(30:51):
of holding your thoughts to yourself. It's a it's a
scary question, and some of these past controversies have just
been have been escalating to the point where that's less
and less of a matter of science fiction. Now. I
know that sounds alarmost and to a degree it is,
but it is not as impossible as it was just
(31:13):
a few decades ago. Well again, let me read this
quote again one more time. That capability and anytime could
be turned around on the American people, and no American
would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to
monitor everything. It doesn't matter. There would be no place
to hide. Yeah, I mean, that's that about some style.
Unless you can encrypt things really, really efficiently, which great point.
(31:38):
That's another controversy. The Data Encryption Standard or d e S.
It's an algorithm developed by IBM in the early nineteen
seventies to encrypt sensitive electronic data. By the late nineteen
seventies it had become the worldwide standard. Everybody was into this.
It was the new It was like when Pokemon Go
first came out. But think encryption that didn't work. I
(32:02):
think it's fairly obvious. They don't play Pokemon God, right.
So what happened is some civilians who were affiliated with
this movement alleged that the n s A had really
become involved in the development of the algorithm, and they
convinced IBM to change some things to shorten the key
(32:24):
to make it possible for the n Essay to decipher
every message, and he keeps going in The BBC reported
a story that they said sounded like science fiction. They
claimed that the n S A, along with partner agencies
in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, operated a
worldwide surveillance network capable of intercepting every international phone call,
(32:48):
facts and email. This was called Project Echelon. The U S,
Canada and the UK still deny it officially, but Australia
and New Zealand officials there say that it is a
real thing, and warrantless surveillance went mainstream under some previous
(33:08):
presidential administrations, believe Bush. But it's existed since the days
of the Black Chamber. And then of course the bomb
that dropped which Noel mentioned was when Edward Snowden revealed prism.
That was a crazy day. Yes, you remember, we were
(33:30):
in the office. That was a crazy day. We're not
going to we of all people are not going to
judge you, ladies and gentlemen, but we would say that
at this point, I think very carefully before sending inappropriate
pictures to your friends, or even taking inappropriate pictures with
(33:55):
something that's connected to the internet, right, even taking appropriate
pictures to be careful, oh boy, yeah, some things can
come back to haunt you. So here's where it gets crazy, though.
Legislation passed quite recently in the final days of President
Obama's administration um and also passed relatively quietly. Uh. You
(34:18):
may not have heard of it because it was sort
of slipped in under the radar. But here's here's how
it went down and why it's important. From the New
York Times, the n s A can now quote share
globally intercepted personal communications with the government's sixteen other intelligence
agencies before applying privacy protections. Yes, so the way it
(34:44):
used to work until now. The way it used to
work is that the n s A would do some
things to protect American citizens privacy, so they could share
intelligence about something happening, but not you know, necessarily attached
it to Matt Frederick, who is just a guy who
happened to be on the conference call and didn't do anything,
(35:05):
has no idea you know of, has no nefarious plans
because you'd be dealing with IP addresses and numbers. And
so now what's happened again, very very recently, is that
these new rules significantly relax those limits. Now the surveillance
operations are beyond wire tapping regulations, and they're shipping out
(35:30):
raw data. So they're shipping out the data with your
personal information. And again, of course there's the old idea
of you know, well, why should I be worried. I'm
not I'm not moving, you know, I'm not illegally smuggling
iguanas in and out of theo's arks. I don't know
(35:51):
much about the iguana smuggling tree. Nobody does. It's a racket.
It's a racket. Uh So, there's not gonna be any
warrant necessary, there's not any privacy baked into it, and
perhaps more importantly, there's no real oversight. Uh this, this
raw intelligence it shares is derived from mass surveillance under
(36:16):
Executive Order twelve three three three, and that's been in
effect since it's raw intelligence would be stuff like emails,
phone calls, not just the metadata of the phone calls,
not just NOLL called this number at three two pm
or something. Can be very very useful in and of itself,
but taking it to the next level, you know, it's
(36:37):
pretty much godlike. Yeah, they're not minimized, they're not redacted
to mask identifying information. Previously, the n s A filtered
this stuff before they shared it with you know, the
CIA or the FBI or the d e A, and
the analyst at the n s A, who are very
very intelligent people. Uh, passed on information only if they
deemed it pertinent, and they could tell if someone's innocent
(37:02):
usually But because the way, So this is supposed to
be foreign communication, right, But here's the scary thing. Because
of the way the Internet works, you might be surprised
at how much of your personal communication activity accounts as
foreign communication. Like, let's let's think about it this way,
all right, if you imagine our office, Matt, you and
(37:23):
Noel sit relatively close to each other. Yeah, just just
across the room. Yeah, you'll literally maybe twelve feet from
each other, fifteen ft And that's really busy on something.
So we sends Nolan email. By the time the email
travels to Noll's inbox, it might have gone to a
server across the country or even outside of the country
(37:46):
before landing with him. So that young Pope meme that
you just sent became foreign communication, which makes it fair
game for the n s A. And I thought you
would appreciate a young pope shout out. Thanks, but I'm
still excited to still haven't seen an yet. I like
the concept of it, though, Matt, Well, yeah, it's we
(38:06):
don't have to get into more young Pope stuff. This
is not a young popecast young popecast. Yeah, that's pretty good, Yes,
but I've watched it. I watched some of it. Well.
Since we've derailed the conversation yet again, should we go
ahead and break for a sponsor you approve? Sounds great? Good,
(38:34):
So there we are. There we are an innocent meme
has traveled around the world between two innocent people, and
because it's traveled around it now counts as foreign communication,
which means that now the FBI, the CIA, the whole
Uncle Sam Alphabet can check it out. If Matt has
accidentally or purposefully included certain words or phrases, or if
(38:55):
he has already been flagged as someone to keep an
eye on, then the US may also and share it
with the other five eyes countries the echelons, and years
later on vacation that might just land at the airport
in Australia to be refused entry and he might never
know exactly why I got put on a no fly
list and nobody even told me about it. We're not
(39:17):
saying this will happen, but we are saying that right now.
The scary thing is, there's not a solid way for
someone to tell if abuse occurs. And the definition of
foreign communication is even more deceptive. Check out this this
great quote from Slate. Foreign intelligence is really a catch
(39:39):
all that can include most anything happening abroad. Executive Order
twelve three three three defines it as information relating to
the capabilities, intentions, and activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons.
Don't let the quote organizations or persons part of that
definition hide behind the more important scene term foreign powers. Exactly.
(40:03):
This definition means that quote unquote for an intelligence includes
speech about political and human rights activities. So if you
send an email as part of a nonprofit thing to
free political prisoner, uh, it can include stuff impacting the economy.
One of the great examples that Slate has is what
(40:25):
about an email that talks about a business trip to
Europe to get the finest French chocolate for your cookies?
Then that would qualify technically. And there's one last note here.
William Benny, who we have mentioned on the show before,
is one of the highest level whistleblowers to ever come
from the n Essay. He was a leading code breaker
(40:47):
against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but after
the events of September eleven, he resigned. He saw that,
in his opinion, Washington was moving toward mass surveillance and
it disgusted him on a profound level, surveillance of its
own people. Right on en He's spoke in London at
the Center for Investigative Journalism and revealed that people in
(41:12):
general had no idea about the scope of these programs
under their growth under the President Bush and President Obama administrations.
And his quote, he says, at least of fiber optic
cables globally go via the US. This is no accident
and allows the US to view all communication coming in.
(41:33):
At least of all audio calls, not just metadata, are
recorded and stored in the US. The n s A, Ben,
he said, lies about what it stores. And he said
that the ultimate goal of the n s A. We
talked about the official goals, all understandable said the ultimate
goal is about total population control. And it's disturbing. Yeah,
(41:55):
it's disturbing because it means the information gathered on people
could be used to theoretically suppressed the scent. Let's say
you're a senator and you're gunning to stop programs like these.
You got elected on this is your main platform, and
all of a sudden you receive notice, subtle notice that
you're passed in. Discretions, perhaps ideological or sexual, or financial
(42:17):
or something else will be made painfully public if you
persist in this mission, if you pursue this line of investigation,
what would you do, ladies and gentlemen? So blackmail? Huh? Yeah,
that seems like a good way to use this information. Well,
it looks like we're going to find out how people
(42:39):
answer that question, perhaps sooner than we all would like
to think. We are to be completely clear in no
way saying that we have proof this has occurred. We don't.
The three of us have not found an example of
a senator who was out gunning for the n essay
and then got some weird, you know, compromising photos and
(43:02):
then turned off the search or anything. But we're saying
with this increasing move, with this move, it's increasingly possible.
It'll be interesting to see how Donald Trump's seeming animosity
um that between himself and the intelligence community. There's no animosity.
There's definitely animosity. Now, did you not see a speech? Yeah,
(43:25):
that doesn't exist. I maybe, let's say between the intelligence
agencies and the president, I kid, you guys, I mean
he clearly had a little bit of a Twitter feud
with the CIA and the n s A. I mean
about he accused them of having shoddy intelligence when finding
weapons of mass destruction and things like that. You know,
(43:46):
I'm I'm interested to see how that relationship plays out.
It goes to it goes to a larger conversation, of course,
about what the deep state is, you know, who holds
the reins of power and who functions more in a
figurehead uh manner. And I'm not, of course, seeing that
the president or any president is necessarily a figurehead. I
(44:10):
am saying that there are groups of unelected people who
wield tremendous amounts of power. And also, in defense of
the n Essay, to be absolutely fair, the n s
A has done immense amounts of work and successfully accomplished
(44:30):
intelligence goals for the United States. And I just want
to put this out there. This maybe an obvious thing
to too many listeners, but a big difference between the
n s A and the c I A is that
the n s A they don't have field operatives. You're yeah,
you're not. You're not gonna see an n ess A
age or n s A squad, you know, like kicking
down the door or something. And we are, as Matt said,
(44:55):
and we're in a very fascinating and unpredictable time. It's
quite possible that within a few months this podcast could
need an update, at which case we will endeavor to
do so. But for now, as always, whether or not
an organization like this exist, whether or not you are
(45:18):
concerned or unconcerned about the state of surveillance, I think
very carefully about what you put out there. It's not
just a black box. The stuff does not disappear, and
if you have information that you would like to share,
(45:40):
if you're affiliated with the n s A. Remember how
he's always joke about if the n Essay was monitoring us,
it had to be some poor, unfortunate intern, painfully familiar
with the intern that poor guy, buddy. I hope if
you're listening, I hope things are all right. You've seen
me at the worst, uh joking joking. Aside of the
(46:03):
stuff they don't want you to know, here is perhaps
the extent of the monitoring that is occurring, and it
is not a theory. It is happening. So let us
know what you think we would I would like to
hear your opinions on the n s A. We'd like
to hear if it's um a bunch of you know,
alarmists ado about nothing, higgotty pigoty, if you will or
(46:31):
should people be concerned? And speaking of listener mail shout
at corners two days. First shout out goes to Miguel.
Miguel says, you guys should make a video on Seth
rich a person who worked for the d n C
who was randomly murdered when someone tried to rob him
(46:51):
but took nothing. At the end, Wiki leak said someone
leaked the information of the d n C and it
wasn't Russian hackers, but the news went with Russian act
just the same. The guy who ran against Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
Tim Canova, made a video talking about the situation, and
he didn't seem convinced it was a robbery gone wrong.
Are either of you fellas familiar with this incident? Yes,
(47:15):
very familiar with Seth Rich. Um. You know there's an
interview with Juliana sand where he'd discussed it. He doesn't
say Seth Rich was or wasn't the source of the
leaks from the d n C. But I would say
if you watch it very closely, it seems perhaps that
(47:36):
he's leaning in that way without saying it. Yeah, it's interesting.
I read about this story when it first emerged. But sadly,
there are apparently a lot of unexplained murders that have
been happening or deaths that have been happening in the
past decade or so. I always remember the British intelligence
officer who apparently committed suicide by what shooting himself and
(48:01):
zipping himself into a bag that was locked on the outside.
That's what I would do. We talked about that. But yeah,
I'm gonna dig into this and and thank you so
much for writing. Our next message comes from Eric says, Hey, guys,
I was listening to your podcast about Grimoire and I
was surprised that you didn't mention the malius maleficarum. Is
(48:24):
that how you say that? The witches hammer? That's how
I know it, which is hammer. It was a text
published in four six on how to identify and interrogate witches.
That is good information to know. Always have that information
with you. I went to school at California State University,
Long Beach, and they have the They have an original
edition from that year when it was published uh in
(48:46):
their Special Collections archive. Anyone can go to the Special
Collections and actually sit down with the text and look
through it. It makes your skin crawl just looking at it.
Does it have a big bald, green lady witch face
that pops out of the spinal I don't know about that,
but there are sections that are underlined with notes in
the margins that could have been made by interrogators. I
(49:09):
just thought if there were listeners in southern California, they
might wanted the chance to go and see something like
that in person. Thanks keep up the good work, Eric.
Thanks for Ryan. Eric, it seems like we're off to California. Yeah, Noel,
you and I had talked a little bit about some
of these different grimois off air when we were kind
of talking about what makes something a grim wi, and
(49:32):
we we went back and forth on some of this
because one of the one of the questions would be
is it just a collection of perhaps lore, yeah, pagan
text or something more of um a compilation or is
it anything related to magical signs? And if this was
(49:53):
written for the purposes of witch hunts, still counted as
a grimoire. And I was after we were off the
arrow is reading intensely in that and I appreciate you
writing in Eric, because I want us to travel to
southern California. What do you think, guys, I'm all about
some travels. Hey, what a science textbook be considered a
(50:18):
grimoire in the future perhaps where maybe we've lost some
of what some of these scientific experiments that are now
we would consider normal and regular. Now something as simple
as using baking soda to make a volcano, But then
it's magic again if we've lost that knowledge that there's
(50:40):
a book that tells you it's a spell of how
to do it. And that was the thing that I
was saying, is like, what constitutes a grimoire is largely
determined by what you considered to be magic. Right, that's
a very good I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm
reaching there, but it just feels to me like you
could be absolutely right. It could be a collection of procedural,
(51:00):
you know, steps to create a battery. Oh right there.
I don't know. I think it's interesting the way we
interpret the contents and the intent. Yeah, that's great. So
in that case, if there was someone who considered themselves
a practicing magician or someone who would consider themselves adept
(51:22):
at witchcraft, and they were using this book by which
hunters to you know, enact some kind of magical process.
Then wouldn't the fact it would become a groom ware
Well that was the thing too, that book that I
brought up, the name escapes Me where it was one
of the early collections of witchcraft lore, and it was
kind of meant by the writer to um make it
(51:43):
appear foolish and frivolous in some way and to not
lend any weight to it, and to kind of degrade
the Catholic Church for the part that it played and
killing so many of of what the writer considered to
be innocent victims potentially practicing witchcraft, which was a complete
really harmless. What ended up being the use of this
book was much more in the witchcraft community, people trying
(52:06):
to find remnants of spells and different things. So again,
I think it's also the intent of the user that
determines whether or not sagramore since how it seems to
me and a lot of magical working is about ultimately intent.
There you go, it's pretty interesting. We have one more.
We have one more shout out today, and that is
(52:27):
from Michael. Michael says, hey, guys, love the podcast, listen
to it every week. Downloaded all the episodes from iTunes.
Thank you, Michael. Have you ever thought about doing a
video episode, as in just having a camera in the
studio set up and we can see what happens when
you're doing the podcast? Can I please have a shout out?
If you guys are ever in Brisbane, Australia, I can
(52:48):
be your tour guide and you've always got a free
room to stay in nice Michael, I would say, I
kind of don't want to do that because I'd have
to put a shirt on. I guess I don't know.
Do you know only podcast in the nude, the nude
in the nude with the mint, with the mint julip,
(53:08):
A cold mental Julip in my hand. I do declare
it's a bit hot for Lennen's. Somebody's gonna get so
offended by us doing this, and we're totally just having
fun with it because we're in Atlanta, we're Southern boys.
I don't think it's offensive. It's somebody's gonna be upset.
Please don't be upset if someone is offended by that,
(53:29):
by that character that we're hatching up, then please send
us an audio version of your complaint and tell us
how we should do the voice. Thank you to Michael,
thank you to Eric, and thank you to Miguel. This
concludes this week's edition of Gosh. And before we get
(53:51):
out of here, Holy cow, you guys, we got some
plugs to plug. I want to get pluggy. We have
one huge plug. We're doing it. We're doing it's so big.
We're going to New York City, New York City. That's
what I said, basbic content TM. We're going April eight,
New York City as part of the Podfest. We are
(54:15):
going to be doing a live show with a cavalcade
of other podcasters and we would love it if you're
in the area and want to come by and say Hi,
we're we're I was gonna say, we're normal people. We're
fun to hang out with. Yes, it's a fun thing.
Though it's a three day festival. Um Ticket info is
(54:38):
available online at the Bellhouse in y dot com um
and the events are from the I will leave the
sixth no the seventh, which is a Friday through the
ninth Sunday, and we are on Saturday, April eight with uh,
The Majority Report with Sam Seed. Really looking forward to
hanging out with Sam. Yeah, another great podcast that has
(55:02):
pretty ancient roots in the podcasting in radio world. So
check you're definitely gonna want to listen to that and
watch that, and then you know we'll be there too,
And Michael iam Black's podcast is going to be there, Yeah,
Lore and Kevin McDonald, Kevin McDonald and smattering of other
podcast Illuminaire, the Book of Ya if you're into Kanye West.
(55:24):
So we're really excited too. We're really excited to be
a part of this, and we would I would love
to see you there. And if you can't make this one,
right in and let us know where we should travel next,
because apparently we've got a budget now for this kind
of jazz. Watch out just sign out here. It's twelve
dollars in advance if you buy your tickets now. If
(55:45):
you want to wait till you get to the door,
it's going to be an extra three perfect but I
believe we get a solid hour, so you will get
a live podcast from us, and you also get to
see the Majority Report, and I think they let you
drink during the show. Pretty sure that if anyone's on
defence about that, also unlimited high fives from that from that. Yes,
(56:07):
So that's our that's our show for this week. We've
gotta show coming up in April. And if you want
to take a page from your fellow listeners, book right
to us and let us know what you think we
should cover in the future, what you think about the
state of MAS surveillance, where you think we should go
on tour, or any of the other questions that we
asked throughout this podcast. You can write to us directly
(56:30):
on Facebook and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff. Check
out some of those awesome and somewhat frightening pictures that
Noel has from Washington, d C on our Instagram. It
was weird, man. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna wax
too poetic about it, but it was just like walking
around in a weird, foggy, gray dream. Uh. And I
(56:52):
hope that the pictures reflect that, so let me know. Hey,
and guys, also, if you're interested, I've really I've started
getting into glitch art. I've been glitching out videos and
making weird music to it. Uh. They're kind of weird
and reflective and meditative in a sort of disturbing way.
So if you're interested in seeing any of that, hit
us up and well maybe we'll post some you had.
You should post some right now, the one you just
showed me. Yeah. Well, and if none of that quite
(57:15):
stirs your jewelupe, you can write to us directly via
the old email and stay hi to whatever poor unfortunate
and essay intern has to read it. We are conspiracy
How stuff Works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:25):
and welcome back to the show. My name is my
name is Noel. I'm Ben, and we want to start
this in a little bit of a different format today.
At the very top of the show, ladies and gentlemen,
we have a very important correction. Can you guess what
it is? It's a single vocabulary word. It is. It's
(00:47):
a very important one too, five syllables. It is not,
in fact pre lapsarian. That means before the flood. That's
a different word. It's anti Deluvian relapse. Arian means before
the fall, and you know, in other words, before the
fall of Lucifer and the various rebellious angels in biblical war.
(01:09):
Thank you to everyone who wrote in. This was on me.
This is just on me, guys, not on Maturnal. And
I'm grateful for everyone who wrote in to help me
out with this. Dufe I caught it too late as
we were as we were queing and stuff, and and
we Matt Nolan, I often like to point out that
you our listeners not a general. You, specifically, you are
(01:31):
not just as much of a part of this show
as we are. You are the most important part of
the show, and we all of us are incredibly lucky
to have you here, specifically you helping us make this
show the best thing it can be. Just a little
peek behind the curtain que a ng as when we
we all listened to the edit to make sure that
NOL didn't miss anything, any any goofs. So you know,
(01:52):
there are layers of of of a blame to go around,
And I am first to admit my part in this. Um.
I was gonna say, if you all only knew how
many things get through my watch, Uh, that imprized that
I let a lot of things get through. Matt, So well, yeah,
that's what I'm saying all the time. It's not your fault.
You have to edit while you're recording. That's true. Well, okay,
(02:16):
it's always true. We're taking all this out. Oh let's
keep it in. Uh. The point the point being here
is that you keep us honest. We try our best,
and I personally rely on you to help us stay accurate.
We Matt, Noel and I and you are accountable to
each other. So thank you to everyone who wrote in.
(02:37):
We appreciate it immensely. And everybody was so like, very
supportive too, you know, and that even more so I
appreciate and I love that they took that tone of
like you poor idiots, bless your little hearts, mixing up words.
I thought y'all have the best words. It turns out
you did not. Every one of those emails we read
(02:59):
in that little sun their lady voice. So just so
y'all know, that's how you sound to us, no matter
who you are. We have a list of words we
say to ourselves before we read the email to help
us getting that genteel Southern approach. A delicious mint, oh oh, Jeff,
(03:20):
good gravy? You are? You are mixing up some That's
how I do it, though you have to. You have
to let them kind of combine together. We like to
have fun. Yeah, And you're an award winning method actors,
so you really live in the characters, you know. Actually,
as it turns out, today we're talking about an entire
agency staffed with award winning method actors, and we're not
talking about the studio audience of inside the actor's studio, right,
(03:43):
So let's explore today we're talking about a much much
more powerful group, one that affects your life again, specifically
you in profound, immense and often invisible ways. It's an
organization that you support, that you pay for with a
percentage of every paycheck you receive if you were an
American citizen or heck, even a resident, A group that
(04:05):
may know almost everything about you. A group that is not,
unlike this show, accountable to you, even if you're one
of the people paying for it. And you've probably heard
the name of this group before, the n s A
or National Security Agency. It sounds so nice. Who doesn't
want to be secure today? Whether you live in a
(04:27):
foreign country or the good old US of A, we
guarantee this organization may know an immense amount of stuff
about you, and it probably has dirt on numerous government
officials as well. So how did we get here? Well,
let's take a look at the history. So while the
n s A was officially founded on November four, nineteen
(04:49):
fifty four, its roots go much much further back, all
the way to nineteen seventeen, and that's when a man
named Herbert oh Yardley became the head of this newly
creative thing called the Cipher Bureau of Military Intelligence, which
he's just a wonderful name. I feel like we should
have stayed with that the entire way through. People would
(05:11):
get cyber and cipher mixed up. Now, Oh yeah, I
guess it's true. But Cipher Bureau, Cipher Bureau, it's a
comic book. It does sound like a comic book. It's
very hell boy. So this was just three months or
so after the United States had declared war on Germany.
One of the major factors that brought the US into
the war was a thing called the Zimmerman Telegram, and
(05:33):
that's a situation where the Foreign Secretary of Germany tried
to get Mexico to enter into war against the United States,
but British codebreakers intercepted the message and they told their
friends in the US. You know, they said, oh, the
Yanks should probably hear of this, which is apparently how
they sound. Uh, And the government finally acknowledged the US
(05:57):
government acknowledged the value of what is called signals intelligence.
That's correct. By the way, we're speaking about World War
One there when talking about going to war with Germany. Yes, yes,
so signals intelligence were We're we've all seem spy movies
were familiar with the idea of intelligence, which in some
cases may seem paradoxical. According to the Office of the
(06:19):
Director of National Intelligence, there's six types of intelligence sources
or what they call collection disciplines. Now all list these
off along with their shorthand, sort of an acronym. I
guess um, not quite an acronym now, just shorthand, that's better.
So first we have imagery intelligence, which is I'm going
to pronounce it, I meant, but I think immant maybe
(06:42):
I don't know. Uh. Then we have measurement and signature
intelligent or massens. Next we have human source intelligence or humans.
Then we have open source intelligent O SENT and geo
spatial intelligence geo iNTS. And then the first two that
we mentioned communications intelligent comment uh no comment and electronic
(07:08):
intelligence ellent elent perhaps. And then we have foreign instrumentation
signals intelligent my personal favorite fisent. Yes. And those those
three comment, elent, and fisent are all under the umbrella
of SIGAN signals intelligence, and that essentially just means the
(07:30):
interception from signals, whether those be electronic communication, maybe short
wave radio interceptions all around the world, foreign and domestic
and sigan can be any of those three things on
their own, or a combination of any any of those three.
Is there communication occurring via a signal? We need to
(07:54):
hear it, right, And so these other things that these
other things were mentioning, like human source and intelligence is
what a lot of people think of when they think
of spy movies, you know what I mean, Like Noel
goes and sits on a park bench at twelve oh three,
someone sits with their back to them and says, you know,
the proper code phrase, which what would that mean? That
(08:17):
the cranberry sauce was quite fragrant last afternoon, it was, indeed,
And they like, yeah, they just agreed in that in
that kind of human environment, you know, who knows, they
may be just agreed to an arms deal. Sauce is
(08:38):
the target. Yeah, and the fragrancy, like the amount of
that's that's the state of the the condition that's like,
you know, conducive to doing the deal. That is the
affirmative of the target is prepped and ready for interception. Yeah,
we're all just pulling this out of our ears. But
(08:59):
is also pretty yeah, totally, you guys, I actually had
the uh, the pleasure of UM going to the International
Spy Museum in Washington, d C. This past weekend. Yeah,
they had a whole section with UM all of these
amazing like iterations of various intelligence gathering devices, you know,
(09:21):
a main one being tape recorders. And it never never
really occurred to me that like the same companies that
make tape machines now still they use in the film
and you know that have now got versions that are
electronic digital. Rather are the ones who made the best
tape machines that they would use that could conceal, and
they got progressively smaller and smaller. The first ones that
(09:43):
would be like these, you know, about the size of
a laptop, but obviously much thicker, and you would have
to put it inside a big giant suitcase to be
that guy on the park bench. And then they would
have a little wire that would run up a coat
and through your sleeve, and that would be the remote control,
a little clickie button to stop and start the recording,
and then the microphone would often be picked up into
(10:03):
a wrist watch, so the wrist watch would have the
mic in it, and the cord would have to go
all the way up from the suitcase through your coat
down around and up your sleeve and then plug into
your wristwatch. You know. Obviously, just consumer electronics nowadays are
much more concealable and higher quality than that, um, but
it was fascinating to see the way they progressed to
(10:23):
these tiny, um little they almost looked like microcassette recorders,
but they still are ultimately real to real um. What's
the name of Naga Nagarra was a company and they
they're still around. In fact, they make really really high
end um field recording devices that are used in film
and television, um, you know recording. So that was super cool, uh,
(10:45):
not to go too far off track, but that they
had a whole section with like concealed weapons, one of
which was like an umbrella that you could shoot a
poisoned dart out of by like you know, doing the
umbrella mechanism, and it kind of had a cross section
of it. But super super fun. Uh, you know. I
was in d C for another show that I work on,
and I was there the day of the inauguration and
(11:06):
walked around the National Mall by myself and actually posted
some a couple of good creepy picks on the stuff
they don't want you to know Instagram accounts, so if
you want to check those out, conspiracy stuff show, conspiracy
stuff show. Um, but let's get back to uh Intel. Ah, yes,
and we I'd love to go to that museum in person.
It was really really I recommended anyone that's in the
(11:27):
DC area. It's right by the Gordon beersch So you
can go over there and get you a sausage platter
and then check out some some you know spycraft and
also check out our interview with Robert Mazer where he
discusses his whole setup that yeah, sire, what you're describing
with a big tape recorder inside a briefly previous audio podcast.
(11:47):
And while we're talking about history, uh, let's go back
to in nineteen nineteen, when the war ended, the cypher
Bureau moved all the way up to New York City.
I've always am going to remember that Salsi commercial whenever
I say New York City. Every time advertising is in cities,
New York City and they shift up very forceful. It's
(12:10):
much more of a New York City. Oh, I guess
you're right. I thought they got angry, like you got
more and more angry. It depends on which it was
a very successful act content. If you ever feel like
wasting your time on YouTube, go check those out, and
then also stay for that Egyptian panda commercial for cheese.
(12:32):
That's my favorite. And that has nothing to do with
the Cipher Bureau because in nineteen twenty two, uh they
had shifted from two from military intelligence where the tanks
were the planes, to diplomatic intelligence, and in twenty two
they proved their worth because they served they intercepted Japanese
(12:53):
communications that helped American diplomats negotiate with Japan on naval
arms limited sations. But the thing was, even at this point,
the Cipher bureaus methods were always questionable, and if the
public had been more aware, they probably would have noticed
that these are technically illegal or you know, everything the
(13:16):
public knows would indicate these are illegal. And we've heard
a lot of well, let me just paint this picture
and tell me if this sounds familiar. The Cipher Bureau,
working for the federal government, made a deal with private
telegraph companies, you know, Western Union and the like, and
these companies gave the Cipher Bureau unprecedented access the messages
(13:38):
entering and exiting the United States all telegrams and the
Secretary of State Henry Stimpson closed the agency nine and
he thought he had some moral issues with the increasing surveillance.
But then also it's pretty expensive at that time to
pay off these companies, right, even if they are making
(14:02):
what they feel is a patriotic decision, and to have
the just the people power to double or you know,
copy every single message that goes in or out of
their systems, read every telegram. Ultimately, the Hoover administration wouldn't
see the need for peacetime surveillance, like why do we
(14:24):
have this if there's not a war, why are we
monitoring this and we don't have any active enemies, then
why are we wasting all his money? And it's seductive
to have that much power, you know, So we'd like
to think they saw the danger of this agency monitoring
all citizens in peacetime. After the end of the cyber
(14:45):
Bureau cipher bureau every time, I'm just going to call
it the beurea cyber man. The cyber is tough cyber
and stuff. After after the end of that era, you're lee.
The man we mentioned the beginning was not only out
of a job, he was very, very bitter and a
(15:07):
ninety one he published a book called The American Black Chamber,
And this was the first time that much of the
public knew the activities and exploits of the Bureau. The
Saturday Evening Post published an excerpt. And the thing is,
not only was the public and Saturday Evening Post readership
(15:28):
astounded and no small part uh Terror terrified, the intelligence
community was also having a gigantic WTF moment. So the
founding father of American surveillance in many ways, you'll you'll
hear this quote around I was gonna say around town,
(15:49):
you'll hear this quote around this topic. The founding father
of American surveillance also became its first trader. Now, by
the time you published this book, it was already out
of date on American spy programs. That's because five months
before the end of the Cipher Bureau, before they closed
it down back in May of n the United States
(16:11):
Army decided that it was going to start up its
own version of an agency of this sort, its own independent,
let's say, State Department spy agency. So it's a military
intelligence instead of diplomatic. Yes, And in nineteen thirty William
Friedman began building this thing called the Signal Intelligence Service
(16:31):
or SIS. SIS. It's a sweeter name, not quite as
you know comic bookie as the Cipher Bureau. But it's okay,
well we'll we'll roll with it. So it's unclear really
to what extent the end of the Cipher Bureau um,
like how that went into the birth of this new agency,
(16:52):
like because it ended, was this one created or was
this one created? Uh? And that one killed off simultaneously?
Like was that the thinking? Well, you know, every new
beginning comes from some other beginnings. And man, it's a window.
The door was closed. The window was opened. But in
October nineteen twenty nine, Friedman did go to New York
(17:14):
and obtain all of the files of the Cipher Bureau.
So whether or not they were related bureaucratically in terms
of archives and contents, they were even more comprehensive. Wait,
so he was he sent or was he just like
unilaterally like I'm gonna have that, give me those files,
I'm gonna do whatever I want. How to be sent?
(17:36):
I mean that the power of the Cipher Bureaus library
at that point is pretty significantly. Think it makes so
much sense. You you have to it's It's kind of
like in our Human Experimentation episodes, we discuss how it
is scary and terrible the way some of that information
is obtained and the way the experiments are carried out,
(17:57):
And in the same way with the Cipher Bureau. It's
things that look down upon by the public and perhaps
even by some government agencies. But you have the information,
and do you just let it go away or do
you use it to build this new thing? That's a
that's a very good comparison. It's already sort of a
sunk cost at this point, and we're not even the
World War two so CIS big SIS expanded rapidly in
(18:21):
the nineteen thirties, uh and open bases to help it
concentrate on the Pacific theater so Alaska, China, Australia, and
this was in response to the expansion of the Japanese
Empire during World War two. Uh SIS played a crucial
role in helping to crack some of these Japanese codes.
(18:43):
After the war, President Truman reorganized the the entire American
pursuit of this sort of intelligence under something he called
the National Security Agency. In ninety seven, the NSA moved
to Fort Mead and May, Maryland. It began as a
secret organization. Uh in many ways. I mean they're keepers
(19:07):
of intelligence, right. Uh. And it was half jokingly referred
to by a lot of people as uh not national
security agency, but no such agency, no agency here. And
growing up, my father had a had a running joke
with within his his field where it's such a bad joke,
(19:31):
do you guys want to hear it? I do want
to hear it. I live for your bad jokes. Ben, Well,
let's uh just the joke. So so, the the old
joke that people would tell all around these various circles,
right was, how can you tell the extrovert at the
n s A. It's one in the elevator looking at
(19:53):
someone else's shoes. It's that bad. It's what passes the
humor in those circles. Hold on, I'm trying to get
it though, okay, because they're also controverted. That the little
intributed that they're all staring at their own shoes. That
is their form of reaching out, like to look at
the other shoes. I said it was a bad no,
(20:15):
But I think I think I think it's appropriate. Yeah,
it works. I guess you have to be in those
circles to go. Yes, you gotta be in an elevator
with a bunch of n ss A agents. Oh man,
I know, don't put me in there. You know, I
would like to avoid that. So this made the U.
The n s A grew to a peak of more
than nine employees in sixty nine. This made it the
(20:38):
largest intelligence organization in the US and possibly in the world.
People known, oh good call. So the n s A
did contribute valuable intelligence to help the US anticipate UH
several things, especially during the Cold War, like the foundation
of Berlin Wall, the Q and Missile crisis, but they
(21:01):
weren't always successful. In nineteen sixty four, the n Essay
was considered largely responsible for the Gulf of Tonking incident,
which drew the US into the Vietnam War. They say
it was faulty intelligence, They say, you know what not
everybody gets everything right all the time. But the big
(21:21):
question here is whether or not it was truly faulty
the intelligence they had or was it something else? And
what are they up to today? We let feel as
though these things are all right for exploration. But first
a word from our sponsor, So the n s A today,
(21:48):
what are its goals, what is its purpose? What is
it doing with all that stuff it has? On you? Again,
specifically you that's here, You ask Ben. Aren't those the
tell us what listen to my phone calls? Yes, asked,
and U you shall receive the answer. Uh. They are
the people who run the computers that listen to the
(22:10):
phone calls. And if the certain conditions are met, yeah,
there will be a person on there. I do declare
if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to hide,
and you can riffle through my phone calls. Hivot and
pivoted sea ladies and gentleman. We told you Bett, it's
gotta crack it up here. Part of it's the costume.
(22:33):
Part of it's also the nerve gas that's slowly filling
up this chamber. Um that the n s A is
clearly employing. Yes, so before they cut us off, before
we pass out. Officially, the National Security Agency slash Central
Security Service leads the US government in cryptology that encompasses signals, intelligence,
(22:53):
and information assurance products and services, and it enables computer
network operations UH to gain what they call a decision
advantage for the nation and its allies under all circumstances.
That gobbledegook in in English means that they're both receiving
intelligence and they're making sure that it's real so it's
(23:16):
not incorrect or purposefully misleading. And then their their networking
computers together so that the US and the us IS
friends and the rest of five eyes or whatever will
all have the best information going into any sort of
(23:36):
any sort of geopolitical situation, ultimately to to gain a
decision advantage, right, right, And did you notice that part
about the h air quotes Central Security Service. That's a
tricky thing that a lot of like I missed as well.
The Central Security Service affiliated here includes elements of the
(23:59):
armed forces that that performed code making and code breaking
work with the n s A. This was established in
two and the n s A directors also the chief
of the CSS. So members of the c s S
work side by side with the n s A around
the world and we do mean literally around the world,
(24:20):
so that there's not as much of a barrier between
civilian code cracking and military code cracking. Sort of an
efficient way to uh to streamline efforts and get the
most bang for your cryptographic buck. Essentially, think of these
folks almost as intelligence agencies. Embedded in the armed forces. Yeah, well, okay,
(24:42):
so that's the official goal decision advantage. So if it's
just collecting information making sure that information, whatever it is,
is accurate, how do they use use it for multiple purposes?
From assisting in trade negotiations, you know. So let's say
Matt is an ambassador gets a hot tip from the
(25:03):
n s A right before he goes into negotiate some
sort of deal about tea in China or whatever. Then
he knows essentially insider information or something that got leverage.
Who's got leverage exactly. But then it also can go
down to what to blow up when it's a dirty job.
(25:24):
But it would be disingenuous to not admit it's one
of the prime reasons that the US achieved hedge, became
a hedgemony, you know, the most powerful of the nation's
currently for for for the moment, for the months. Oh boy,
did you guys feel that chill that went through the room?
I really did. I noticed that are we dripping? Is
(25:47):
there something dripping up here? Because oh, I feel like
we have been invaded by some kind of foreign uh
intelligence here with this water that doth dripped down. Oh
my goodness. Okay, yeah, all right, you guys, this isn't good.
The n s A is a floor above us and
(26:08):
it's poisoning the roof of our building. It's right around
the valve for the fire um system. Yeah, sprinkler system.
Was that that siren that was going off? Do anybody
else hear that? I just just well, I'm usually actively hallucinating,
so I didn't know. I don't I still don't know
the best way to check. Put your arms up and
(26:28):
go just a spin a top and if it stays spinning,
then you know you're hallucinating. If it falls down, then
but if the camera cuts away before it falls, then
you don't know what I do without you guys, well,
before we drown or die from nerve gas, we should
mention that the n s A is full of controversies,
(26:52):
a little bit historical controversies. We mentioned the Gulf of
Tonkin already. It's commonly it's it's common acknowledged outside of
the US by various organizations as a false flag operation.
And that would be someone purposely pretending to be an
enemy to create the circumstances for their own aggression. Right,
(27:17):
so then something becomes a war of defense or retaliation.
Rather than an invasion. It helps to make the populace
agree with the reason for going to war. Another one
would be UH the U. S. Senate when they formed
the Church Committee in nine to investigate possible abuses by
the n s A as well as the CIA, FBI,
(27:40):
I R S. UH. This went on for nine months. UH.
The committee chair, Frank Church, who was a military intelligence
officer at one time in his life, got kind of
freaked out by their tremendous surveillance ability. And he has
a great quotation here from The New York Times in
nineteen seven A five that capability at any time could
(28:03):
be turned around on the American people, and no American
would have any privacy left, such as the capability to
monitor everything, telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would
be no place to hide. And boy was it ever
turned around on the American people. Uh. I feel like
(28:24):
we're living in a time where, because of various leaks Mr.
Snowden and the like, we are painfully aware that this
technology is impact and has been used on us. And
at the same time, as as outraged as many of
us are, a whole lot of us also very willingly
(28:45):
participate Uh, in feeding this beast by giving our own
personal information out higgody pigody, as Matt would say, via
various social media networks. I mean it's it's like turning
on location service arning on location services, Like we are
exchanging the convenience of being able to know that there's
(29:05):
a burger king nearby for basically seven monitoring. And you know, again,
as Matt said earlier in his delightful voice, uh, we
many people feel like they have nothing to hide, so
who cares? And honestly, I'm one of those people? Do
You guys are not so much? You guys both have
the tape over your phone. I'm I'm I'm just like,
(29:28):
what am I? What are you gonna do? What are
you gonna see me doing? I'm I'm very boring. I
know that's not the point, but it is kind of
how I justify it because I like all the tech
the technologies. Yeah, and there's a larger conversation the concept
of privacies. We understand it is fairly recent in the
span of human civilization, and I've heard you've been before
(29:49):
say that you feel like, further down the line, privacy
will be not a right at all. It will be
a luxury afforded only to the super rich. Yes, I
do believe what m I won't get on a soapbox
quite yet. Well, okay, you know what, No, we're halfway there.
Let's just walk up the box. So what we are
(30:10):
facing as a country and as a species is not
so much the end of privacy or the erosion of privacy,
but the rise of an inequality in privacy. This means that,
just as Noel said, the one of the most precious
resources of the future may be the ability to have
(30:31):
an unmonitored thought. Will that happen within our lifetimes? That's
a tough call to make. But do you want to
live in a world where, based on your income or
your family, you may or may not have the privilege
(30:51):
of holding your thoughts to yourself. It's a it's a
scary question, and some of these past controversies have just
been have been escalating to the point where that's less
and less of a matter of science fiction. Now. I
know that sounds alarmost and to a degree it is,
but it is not as impossible as it was just
(31:13):
a few decades ago. Well again, let me read this
quote again one more time. That capability and anytime could
be turned around on the American people, and no American
would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to
monitor everything. It doesn't matter. There would be no place
to hide. Yeah, I mean, that's that about some style.
Unless you can encrypt things really, really efficiently, which great point.
(31:38):
That's another controversy. The Data Encryption Standard or d e S.
It's an algorithm developed by IBM in the early nineteen
seventies to encrypt sensitive electronic data. By the late nineteen
seventies it had become the worldwide standard. Everybody was into this.
It was the new It was like when Pokemon Go
first came out. But think encryption that didn't work. I
(32:02):
think it's fairly obvious. They don't play Pokemon God, right.
So what happened is some civilians who were affiliated with
this movement alleged that the n s A had really
become involved in the development of the algorithm, and they
convinced IBM to change some things to shorten the key
(32:24):
to make it possible for the n Essay to decipher
every message, and he keeps going in The BBC reported
a story that they said sounded like science fiction. They
claimed that the n S A, along with partner agencies
in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, operated a
worldwide surveillance network capable of intercepting every international phone call,
(32:48):
facts and email. This was called Project Echelon. The U S,
Canada and the UK still deny it officially, but Australia
and New Zealand officials there say that it is a
real thing, and warrantless surveillance went mainstream under some previous
(33:08):
presidential administrations, believe Bush. But it's existed since the days
of the Black Chamber. And then of course the bomb
that dropped which Noel mentioned was when Edward Snowden revealed prism.
That was a crazy day. Yes, you remember, we were
(33:30):
in the office. That was a crazy day. We're not
going to we of all people are not going to
judge you, ladies and gentlemen, but we would say that
at this point, I think very carefully before sending inappropriate
pictures to your friends, or even taking inappropriate pictures with
(33:55):
something that's connected to the internet, right, even taking appropriate
pictures to be careful, oh boy, yeah, some things can
come back to haunt you. So here's where it gets crazy, though.
Legislation passed quite recently in the final days of President
Obama's administration um and also passed relatively quietly. Uh. You
(34:18):
may not have heard of it because it was sort
of slipped in under the radar. But here's here's how
it went down and why it's important. From the New
York Times, the n s A can now quote share
globally intercepted personal communications with the government's sixteen other intelligence
agencies before applying privacy protections. Yes, so the way it
(34:44):
used to work until now. The way it used to
work is that the n s A would do some
things to protect American citizens privacy, so they could share
intelligence about something happening, but not you know, necessarily attached
it to Matt Frederick, who is just a guy who
happened to be on the conference call and didn't do anything,
(35:05):
has no idea you know of, has no nefarious plans
because you'd be dealing with IP addresses and numbers. And
so now what's happened again, very very recently, is that
these new rules significantly relax those limits. Now the surveillance
operations are beyond wire tapping regulations, and they're shipping out
(35:30):
raw data. So they're shipping out the data with your
personal information. And again, of course there's the old idea
of you know, well, why should I be worried. I'm
not I'm not moving, you know, I'm not illegally smuggling
iguanas in and out of theo's arks. I don't know
(35:51):
much about the iguana smuggling tree. Nobody does. It's a racket.
It's a racket. Uh So, there's not gonna be any
warrant necessary, there's not any privacy baked into it, and
perhaps more importantly, there's no real oversight. Uh this, this
raw intelligence it shares is derived from mass surveillance under
(36:16):
Executive Order twelve three three three, and that's been in
effect since it's raw intelligence would be stuff like emails,
phone calls, not just the metadata of the phone calls,
not just NOLL called this number at three two pm
or something. Can be very very useful in and of itself,
but taking it to the next level, you know, it's
(36:37):
pretty much godlike. Yeah, they're not minimized, they're not redacted
to mask identifying information. Previously, the n s A filtered
this stuff before they shared it with you know, the
CIA or the FBI or the d e A, and
the analyst at the n s A, who are very
very intelligent people. Uh, passed on information only if they
deemed it pertinent, and they could tell if someone's innocent
(37:02):
usually But because the way, So this is supposed to
be foreign communication, right, But here's the scary thing. Because
of the way the Internet works, you might be surprised
at how much of your personal communication activity accounts as
foreign communication. Like, let's let's think about it this way,
all right, if you imagine our office, Matt, you and
(37:23):
Noel sit relatively close to each other. Yeah, just just
across the room. Yeah, you'll literally maybe twelve feet from
each other, fifteen ft And that's really busy on something.
So we sends Nolan email. By the time the email
travels to Noll's inbox, it might have gone to a
server across the country or even outside of the country
(37:46):
before landing with him. So that young Pope meme that
you just sent became foreign communication, which makes it fair
game for the n s A. And I thought you
would appreciate a young pope shout out. Thanks, but I'm
still excited to still haven't seen an yet. I like
the concept of it, though, Matt, Well, yeah, it's we
(38:06):
don't have to get into more young Pope stuff. This
is not a young popecast young popecast. Yeah, that's pretty good, Yes,
but I've watched it. I watched some of it. Well.
Since we've derailed the conversation yet again, should we go
ahead and break for a sponsor you approve? Sounds great? Good,
(38:34):
So there we are. There we are an innocent meme
has traveled around the world between two innocent people, and
because it's traveled around it now counts as foreign communication,
which means that now the FBI, the CIA, the whole
Uncle Sam Alphabet can check it out. If Matt has
accidentally or purposefully included certain words or phrases, or if
(38:55):
he has already been flagged as someone to keep an
eye on, then the US may also and share it
with the other five eyes countries the echelons, and years
later on vacation that might just land at the airport
in Australia to be refused entry and he might never
know exactly why I got put on a no fly
list and nobody even told me about it. We're not
(39:17):
saying this will happen, but we are saying that right now.
The scary thing is, there's not a solid way for
someone to tell if abuse occurs. And the definition of
foreign communication is even more deceptive. Check out this this
great quote from Slate. Foreign intelligence is really a catch
(39:39):
all that can include most anything happening abroad. Executive Order
twelve three three three defines it as information relating to
the capabilities, intentions, and activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons.
Don't let the quote organizations or persons part of that
definition hide behind the more important scene term foreign powers. Exactly.
(40:03):
This definition means that quote unquote for an intelligence includes
speech about political and human rights activities. So if you
send an email as part of a nonprofit thing to
free political prisoner, uh, it can include stuff impacting the economy.
One of the great examples that Slate has is what
(40:25):
about an email that talks about a business trip to
Europe to get the finest French chocolate for your cookies?
Then that would qualify technically. And there's one last note here.
William Benny, who we have mentioned on the show before,
is one of the highest level whistleblowers to ever come
from the n Essay. He was a leading code breaker
(40:47):
against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but after
the events of September eleven, he resigned. He saw that,
in his opinion, Washington was moving toward mass surveillance and
it disgusted him on a profound level, surveillance of its
own people. Right on en He's spoke in London at
the Center for Investigative Journalism and revealed that people in
(41:12):
general had no idea about the scope of these programs
under their growth under the President Bush and President Obama administrations.
And his quote, he says, at least of fiber optic
cables globally go via the US. This is no accident
and allows the US to view all communication coming in.
(41:33):
At least of all audio calls, not just metadata, are
recorded and stored in the US. The n s A, Ben,
he said, lies about what it stores. And he said
that the ultimate goal of the n s A. We
talked about the official goals, all understandable said the ultimate
goal is about total population control. And it's disturbing. Yeah,
(41:55):
it's disturbing because it means the information gathered on people
could be used to theoretically suppressed the scent. Let's say
you're a senator and you're gunning to stop programs like these.
You got elected on this is your main platform, and
all of a sudden you receive notice, subtle notice that
you're passed in. Discretions, perhaps ideological or sexual, or financial
(42:17):
or something else will be made painfully public if you
persist in this mission, if you pursue this line of investigation,
what would you do, ladies and gentlemen? So blackmail? Huh? Yeah,
that seems like a good way to use this information. Well,
it looks like we're going to find out how people
(42:39):
answer that question, perhaps sooner than we all would like
to think. We are to be completely clear in no
way saying that we have proof this has occurred. We don't.
The three of us have not found an example of
a senator who was out gunning for the n essay
and then got some weird, you know, compromising photos and
(43:02):
then turned off the search or anything. But we're saying
with this increasing move, with this move, it's increasingly possible.
It'll be interesting to see how Donald Trump's seeming animosity
um that between himself and the intelligence community. There's no animosity.
There's definitely animosity. Now, did you not see a speech? Yeah,
(43:25):
that doesn't exist. I maybe, let's say between the intelligence
agencies and the president, I kid, you guys, I mean
he clearly had a little bit of a Twitter feud
with the CIA and the n s A. I mean
about he accused them of having shoddy intelligence when finding
weapons of mass destruction and things like that. You know,
(43:46):
I'm I'm interested to see how that relationship plays out.
It goes to it goes to a larger conversation, of course,
about what the deep state is, you know, who holds
the reins of power and who functions more in a
figurehead uh manner. And I'm not, of course, seeing that
the president or any president is necessarily a figurehead. I
(44:10):
am saying that there are groups of unelected people who
wield tremendous amounts of power. And also, in defense of
the n Essay, to be absolutely fair, the n s
A has done immense amounts of work and successfully accomplished
(44:30):
intelligence goals for the United States. And I just want
to put this out there. This maybe an obvious thing
to too many listeners, but a big difference between the
n s A and the c I A is that
the n s A they don't have field operatives. You're yeah,
you're not. You're not gonna see an n ess A
age or n s A squad, you know, like kicking
down the door or something. And we are, as Matt said,
(44:55):
and we're in a very fascinating and unpredictable time. It's
quite possible that within a few months this podcast could
need an update, at which case we will endeavor to
do so. But for now, as always, whether or not
an organization like this exist, whether or not you are
(45:18):
concerned or unconcerned about the state of surveillance, I think
very carefully about what you put out there. It's not
just a black box. The stuff does not disappear, and
if you have information that you would like to share,
(45:40):
if you're affiliated with the n s A. Remember how
he's always joke about if the n Essay was monitoring us,
it had to be some poor, unfortunate intern, painfully familiar
with the intern that poor guy, buddy. I hope if
you're listening, I hope things are all right. You've seen
me at the worst, uh joking joking. Aside of the
(46:03):
stuff they don't want you to know, here is perhaps
the extent of the monitoring that is occurring, and it
is not a theory. It is happening. So let us
know what you think we would I would like to
hear your opinions on the n s A. We'd like
to hear if it's um a bunch of you know,
alarmists ado about nothing, higgotty pigoty, if you will or
(46:31):
should people be concerned? And speaking of listener mail shout
at corners two days. First shout out goes to Miguel.
Miguel says, you guys should make a video on Seth
rich a person who worked for the d n C
who was randomly murdered when someone tried to rob him
(46:51):
but took nothing. At the end, Wiki leak said someone
leaked the information of the d n C and it
wasn't Russian hackers, but the news went with Russian act
just the same. The guy who ran against Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
Tim Canova, made a video talking about the situation, and
he didn't seem convinced it was a robbery gone wrong.
Are either of you fellas familiar with this incident? Yes,
(47:15):
very familiar with Seth Rich. Um. You know there's an
interview with Juliana sand where he'd discussed it. He doesn't
say Seth Rich was or wasn't the source of the
leaks from the d n C. But I would say
if you watch it very closely, it seems perhaps that
(47:36):
he's leaning in that way without saying it. Yeah, it's interesting.
I read about this story when it first emerged. But sadly,
there are apparently a lot of unexplained murders that have
been happening or deaths that have been happening in the
past decade or so. I always remember the British intelligence
officer who apparently committed suicide by what shooting himself and
(48:01):
zipping himself into a bag that was locked on the outside.
That's what I would do. We talked about that. But yeah,
I'm gonna dig into this and and thank you so
much for writing. Our next message comes from Eric says, Hey, guys,
I was listening to your podcast about Grimoire and I
was surprised that you didn't mention the malius maleficarum. Is
(48:24):
that how you say that? The witches hammer? That's how
I know it, which is hammer. It was a text
published in four six on how to identify and interrogate witches.
That is good information to know. Always have that information
with you. I went to school at California State University,
Long Beach, and they have the They have an original
edition from that year when it was published uh in
(48:46):
their Special Collections archive. Anyone can go to the Special
Collections and actually sit down with the text and look
through it. It makes your skin crawl just looking at it.
Does it have a big bald, green lady witch face
that pops out of the spinal I don't know about that,
but there are sections that are underlined with notes in
the margins that could have been made by interrogators. I
(49:09):
just thought if there were listeners in southern California, they
might wanted the chance to go and see something like
that in person. Thanks keep up the good work, Eric.
Thanks for Ryan. Eric, it seems like we're off to California. Yeah, Noel,
you and I had talked a little bit about some
of these different grimois off air when we were kind
of talking about what makes something a grim wi, and
(49:32):
we we went back and forth on some of this
because one of the one of the questions would be
is it just a collection of perhaps lore, yeah, pagan
text or something more of um a compilation or is
it anything related to magical signs? And if this was
(49:53):
written for the purposes of witch hunts, still counted as
a grimoire. And I was after we were off the
arrow is reading intensely in that and I appreciate you
writing in Eric, because I want us to travel to
southern California. What do you think, guys, I'm all about
some travels. Hey, what a science textbook be considered a
(50:18):
grimoire in the future perhaps where maybe we've lost some
of what some of these scientific experiments that are now
we would consider normal and regular. Now something as simple
as using baking soda to make a volcano, But then
it's magic again if we've lost that knowledge that there's
(50:40):
a book that tells you it's a spell of how
to do it. And that was the thing that I
was saying, is like, what constitutes a grimoire is largely
determined by what you considered to be magic. Right, that's
a very good I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm
reaching there, but it just feels to me like you
could be absolutely right. It could be a collection of procedural,
(51:00):
you know, steps to create a battery. Oh right there.
I don't know. I think it's interesting the way we
interpret the contents and the intent. Yeah, that's great. So
in that case, if there was someone who considered themselves
a practicing magician or someone who would consider themselves adept
(51:22):
at witchcraft, and they were using this book by which
hunters to you know, enact some kind of magical process.
Then wouldn't the fact it would become a groom ware
Well that was the thing too, that book that I
brought up, the name escapes Me where it was one
of the early collections of witchcraft lore, and it was
kind of meant by the writer to um make it
(51:43):
appear foolish and frivolous in some way and to not
lend any weight to it, and to kind of degrade
the Catholic Church for the part that it played and
killing so many of of what the writer considered to
be innocent victims potentially practicing witchcraft, which was a complete
really harmless. What ended up being the use of this
book was much more in the witchcraft community, people trying
(52:06):
to find remnants of spells and different things. So again,
I think it's also the intent of the user that
determines whether or not sagramore since how it seems to
me and a lot of magical working is about ultimately intent.
There you go, it's pretty interesting. We have one more.
We have one more shout out today, and that is
(52:27):
from Michael. Michael says, hey, guys, love the podcast, listen
to it every week. Downloaded all the episodes from iTunes.
Thank you, Michael. Have you ever thought about doing a
video episode, as in just having a camera in the
studio set up and we can see what happens when
you're doing the podcast? Can I please have a shout out?
If you guys are ever in Brisbane, Australia, I can
(52:48):
be your tour guide and you've always got a free
room to stay in nice Michael, I would say, I
kind of don't want to do that because I'd have
to put a shirt on. I guess I don't know.
Do you know only podcast in the nude, the nude
in the nude with the mint, with the mint julip,
(53:08):
A cold mental Julip in my hand. I do declare
it's a bit hot for Lennen's. Somebody's gonna get so
offended by us doing this, and we're totally just having
fun with it because we're in Atlanta, we're Southern boys.
I don't think it's offensive. It's somebody's gonna be upset.
Please don't be upset if someone is offended by that,
(53:29):
by that character that we're hatching up, then please send
us an audio version of your complaint and tell us
how we should do the voice. Thank you to Michael,
thank you to Eric, and thank you to Miguel. This
concludes this week's edition of Gosh. And before we get
(53:51):
out of here, Holy cow, you guys, we got some
plugs to plug. I want to get pluggy. We have
one huge plug. We're doing it. We're doing it's so big.
We're going to New York City, New York City. That's
what I said, basbic content TM. We're going April eight,
New York City as part of the Podfest. We are
(54:15):
going to be doing a live show with a cavalcade
of other podcasters and we would love it if you're
in the area and want to come by and say Hi,
we're we're I was gonna say, we're normal people. We're
fun to hang out with. Yes, it's a fun thing.
Though it's a three day festival. Um Ticket info is
(54:38):
available online at the Bellhouse in y dot com um
and the events are from the I will leave the
sixth no the seventh, which is a Friday through the
ninth Sunday, and we are on Saturday, April eight with uh,
The Majority Report with Sam Seed. Really looking forward to
hanging out with Sam. Yeah, another great podcast that has
(55:02):
pretty ancient roots in the podcasting in radio world. So
check you're definitely gonna want to listen to that and
watch that, and then you know we'll be there too,
And Michael iam Black's podcast is going to be there, Yeah,
Lore and Kevin McDonald, Kevin McDonald and smattering of other
podcast Illuminaire, the Book of Ya if you're into Kanye West.
(55:24):
So we're really excited too. We're really excited to be
a part of this, and we would I would love
to see you there. And if you can't make this one,
right in and let us know where we should travel next,
because apparently we've got a budget now for this kind
of jazz. Watch out just sign out here. It's twelve
dollars in advance if you buy your tickets now. If
(55:45):
you want to wait till you get to the door,
it's going to be an extra three perfect but I
believe we get a solid hour, so you will get
a live podcast from us, and you also get to
see the Majority Report, and I think they let you
drink during the show. Pretty sure that if anyone's on
defence about that, also unlimited high fives from that from that. Yes,
(56:07):
So that's our that's our show for this week. We've
gotta show coming up in April. And if you want
to take a page from your fellow listeners, book right
to us and let us know what you think we
should cover in the future, what you think about the
state of MAS surveillance, where you think we should go
on tour, or any of the other questions that we
asked throughout this podcast. You can write to us directly
(56:30):
on Facebook and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff. Check
out some of those awesome and somewhat frightening pictures that
Noel has from Washington, d C on our Instagram. It
was weird, man. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna wax
too poetic about it, but it was just like walking
around in a weird, foggy, gray dream. Uh. And I
(56:52):
hope that the pictures reflect that, so let me know. Hey,
and guys, also, if you're interested, I've really I've started
getting into glitch art. I've been glitching out videos and
making weird music to it. Uh. They're kind of weird
and reflective and meditative in a sort of disturbing way.
So if you're interested in seeing any of that, hit
us up and well maybe we'll post some you had.
You should post some right now, the one you just
showed me. Yeah. Well, and if none of that quite
(57:15):
stirs your jewelupe, you can write to us directly via
the old email and stay hi to whatever poor unfortunate
and essay intern has to read it. We are conspiracy
How stuff Works dot com
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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