Welcome to the The Confab, the term derives from "confidential talk", which was commonly used in the Prohibition Era for meetings and conversations that took place in the smoky, rule-breaking speakeasies of that time.
The informal, privacy focused and clandestine nature of Ungovernable Misfits lends itself to these discussions. So, grab a seat and a stiff drink from the concealed bar, listen and revel in the conversation.
In this episode, Max speaks with Will Jager from The Rage to discuss the ongoing battle for privacy in the digital age. They hit on the complexities surrounding the Samourai Wallet case and the broader implications of government overreach on software developers. Will shares insights into the challenges faced by independent journalists in covering these critical issues and the importance of supporting platforms that strive to maintain journalistic integrity. They also touch on the evolving landscape of privacy legislation in the EU and the potential consequences for encryption and personal freedoms.
Visit The Rage: https://www.therage.co
Support The Rage: https://geyser.fund/project/therage
Follow Will: https://x.com/WillisJager
IMPORTANT LINKS
VALUE FOR VALUE
Thanks for listening you Ungovernable Misfits, we appreciate your continued support and hope you enjoy the shows.
You can support this episode using your time, talent or treasure.
TIME:
- create fountain clips for the show
- create a meetup
- help boost the signal on social media
TALENT:
- create ungovernable misfit inspired art, animation or music
- design or implement some software that can make the podcast better
- use whatever talents you have to make a contribution to the show!
TREASURE:
- BOOST IT OR STREAM SATS on the Podcasting 2.0 apps @ https://podcastapps.com
- DONATE via Paynym @ https://paynym.rs/+misfit
- DONATE via Monero @ https://xmrchat.com/ugmf
- BUY SOME STICKERS @ https://www.ungovernablemisfits.com/shop/
FOUNDATION
https://foundation.xyz/ungovernable
Foundation builds Bitcoin-centric tools that empower you to reclaim your digital sovereignty.
As a sovereign computing company, Foundation is the antithesis of today’s tech conglomerates. Returning to cypherpunk principles, they build open source technology that “can’t be evil”.
Thank you Foundation Devices for sponsoring the show!
Use code: Ungovernable for $10 off of your purchase
CAKE WALLET
https://cakewallet.com
Cake Wallet is an open-source, non-custodial wallet available on Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.
Features:
- Built-in Exchange: Swap easily between Bitcoin and Monero.
- User-Friendly: Simple interface for all users.
Monero Users:
- Batch Transactions: Send multiple payments at once.
- Faster Syncing: Optimized syncing via specified restore heights
- Proxy Support: Enhance privacy with proxy node options.
Bitcoin Users:
- Coin Control: Manage your transactions effectively.
- Silent Payments: Static bitcoin addresses
- Batch Transactions: Streamline your payment process.
Thank you Cake Wallet for sponsoring the show!
[00:00:04]
Unknown:
Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.
[00:00:11] Unknown:
Bitcoin.
[00:00:16] Unknown:
Now what's the Bitcoin?
[00:00:19] Unknown:
Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah.
[00:00:22] Unknown:
Oh. The greatest scam in history.
[00:00:25] Unknown:
Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero. Welcome back, you ungovernable fucks. Back again for more. And today, I have a confab with Will Jager from The Rage. Most of you will already know The Rage. You're already gonna be reading their articles. But for anyone who hasn't already, definitely go through the show notes. Click through. We've got links in there. It's well worth a read. They've been covering the samurai case and many of the other crazy goings on with this whole attack on privacy, whether that be from some type of mixers, coin joins, encryption.
They've been covering it all. And if you fancy tuning out of all the stupid opp return arguments and listening to something that really matters, Will really lays things out in such a clear and concise way. Things have changed a little bit since we recorded this. There's lots of rumblings going on that things might finally be going our way, but I won't hold my breath. I did record this about three weeks ago. We had a bit of a backlog with other episodes coming out, but all of this information is still very much relevant. Before we jump in, I just wanna go through the boosts from the last confab episode with Barn Miner.
John with 21,420 sats. Why wind me up? What purpose could that serve?
[00:02:10] Unknown:
You two could be spending your time and energy on far more productive pursuits. Snip. Snip.
[00:02:16] Unknown:
Late stage huddle, 10,000 sats. This episode made me realize I hadn't had any spicy beef jerky in a while. Get to work, Barn. Oh, and thanks for fixing my bit ax. Be sure not to tell John all the efforts. He won't understand the decentralized hash that is single ASIC brings to the network. Rod Palmer from the Beagle News with 10,000 sats, spicy beef jerky, and forty hours per week. Chet with 5,021 sats, prelisten boost, Barn Miner, aka Fiat Faggins, is such a fag. L m f a o. I can't disagree with you, mate. I really can't. Bubba with 2,000 SATs. How can a goat show up without a piss bottle? I guess trucking is completely out of the equation or out of the question.
Yeah. I don't think he he shouldn't be driving anyway. FOMO chronic with 1,001 sats, no message. Riven Stokes or even Stokes. More of boiling eggs with s 19 heat, less of shit axe. Oh, I couldn't agree with you more, mate. Pies with a hundred sats. Biz. Gene Everett. I've sent out 56 lightning payments the last two days and all worked perfectly. I think it's you, bro. Yeah. That's probably fair with both of us. And then another hundred and 1 sats. You guys have ensured I reduced your value received by 99% because you shit in, like, I guess, shit on lightning. You don't shit. Because you shit in lightning, not calling out problems, but telling us it's garbage.
So I won't risk sending you a higher percentage boost, ass clowns with a little clown emoji. And then another hundred and 1 sats. So you guys trash lightning for an hour, but expect payment through it, a. Here's a hundred and 1 sats instead of a hundred thousand or instead of 10,000, for crapping on it, legit making it sound like a scam. I'm sorry Jean, it's obviously upset you, but lightning is quite shit a lot of the time. If you want like a breakdown of why and what's going on and what's the problems are, then maybe listen to the episodes that I do with Q, because we go into that quite often. But yeah, appreciate your 101 sats, appreciate your message.
Wartime with three thirty three sats, biz, and, like, a little TNT thing, and then another 333 sats. I stopped listening halfway through. Too much bitching and complaining about lining. We've upset some people here, Barn. Nosta Gang with a hundred sats, British Wigger. Also thanks to Cas Peland, streaming 1,692 sats, Plebter Polymath, nine hundred and seventy five sats, and Garhead six zero two one, five hundred and eighty five sats. Thank you everyone to streaming and boosting. We really do appreciate it, and it helps keep this show going. I also wanna say a big thank you to Black Coffee, who's been holding my hand through some technical issues, been very helpful.
And to say thank you, I wanna do a little ad read for sx6.store. They make seed plates, very affordable, very high quality. There's really only three ways you can back up your c phrase onto metal. You can go and you can get some washers and a nut and bolt, and that works pretty well. You can go and spend a hundred dollars or more on some of these wanky posh types with little cutout things or some sort of gimmicky stuff and overpay for them. Or you can go to sx6.store, and you can get the highest quality plates I've seen for either seventeen pound forty nine or twenty four pound forty nine for the new larger plate size.
The large plate size is about the size of a postcard, and the other one, I haven't got the dimensions, but it's about 30% smaller than that. That's the ones I've had before. They're incredible value. I don't know what more to say. If you're not backing up your seed phrases onto steal, I think you're a bit of a cunt. You don't lose all your Bitcoin that you've worked hard for. So if that sounds good to you, if you haven't already done it, if you're onboarding new people and they haven't already done it, go and buy them a nice present. $17.49 for the smaller one, $24.49 for the larger one. And if you use the code Ungovernable, you get an extra 10% discount. This is the only ad rate he's getting, so please listen. Please go and do it. Sx6.store.
We'll put a link in the show notes. Go and support our good friend, Black Coffee. I also wanna say a huge thank you to Foundation. Foundation make my favorite hardware in the space. It's fuckwit resistant. Literally, anybody can use this and keep their seeds offline. It's simple to use. The UX is amazing. The team's awesome with the exception of q and a's, but of a cunt. They have a really good companion app that makes it easy to do labeling. And as I was just saying, you wanna have your seats backed up into still in an ideal world. With the passport, you can actually do a backup onto a micro SD and have that encrypted. This is amazing to have backups that are easy to hide, easy to store, easy to travel with. So you could travel across a border with them encrypted. You have a separate code that you can have somewhere else, and then you can restore when you go to the other side, so you don't have your coins yanked for any reason. They've got loads of features like this, and it's all simple to do. Q and a has all these different videos on the website to talk you through it, and if you get stuck at any point, I use this thing all the time. You can reach out and ask me. It really is incredible.
Check them out at foundation.xyz,
[00:08:26] Unknown:
and you can use the code ungovernable,
[00:08:29] Unknown:
and I think that gives you a 10% discount. And finally, I wanna say thank you to K Wallet for supporting the show. Cake Wallet is used by around half a million users, maybe a little bit more at this point. You can use it for Bitcoin and Monero for swaps to buy gift cards. You can use Cake Pay. They've got all sorts of incredible features. A lot of my friends and family have started using this, and actually, one reached out to me yesterday just saying how good Cakepay was. And as someone who uses Monero a lot, this has been really helpful for him. So they've got Sephora privacy on the team, a good friend, and ungovernable misfit who's always there making sure that things are private and secure. If you haven't already used this, you can download it onto any operating system and begin using it today. Again, any questions you can reach out to me. And if they're really technical, you can reach out to Seth. But if you actually use your Bitcoin and Monero and you want a really good software wallet, check them out at cakewallet.com.
Right. Let's jump into this confab with Will. I think you're gonna really enjoy it.
[00:09:38] Unknown:
Can you hear me now? Yeah. That's better. I think that's better.
[00:09:42] Unknown:
Okay. I got your, audio coming into my headset, and my, voice is going into a speaker on my desk. How's that? It's
[00:09:53] Unknown:
we're getting there. This used to be, like, the joke of this show was audio issues for, like, years and years. We're starting to get better, but, yeah, it's always been an issue.
[00:10:05] Unknown:
Well, with writers, it's always, it's formatting issues. Yeah. Getting hyperlinks to work correctly, getting pictures to show correctly, you know, things like that. So it it goes around for everyone.
[00:10:19] Unknown:
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on. I have to say that we were pretty excited when we got a message from you guys saying, a, you were listening to our show and, b, you wanted to have a chat with us. And we're pretty excited because in the circles that we run-in in Bitcoin and, like, FreedomTech world, the rage is very highly respected. So it's a pleasure to speak to you and to have this conversation, really. You guys do some work.
[00:10:46] Unknown:
Thank you. Thank you very much. So I guess, we'll start with the introduction. My name is Will Yeager. I'm a researcher at The Rage, also an independent journalist. Most of my work deals with technology, privacy, government overreach, the intersections between all three. You can look at my work on Bitcoin Magazine, At The Rage, and I do self publish on Nostra as well.
[00:11:15] Unknown:
From my understanding, you're doing the digging to create these articles and put the pieces together.
[00:11:21] Unknown:
Well, I mean, every, journalist does their own research, but my job is well, I mean, it's really in three parts. The first part is exactly what you would expect. They come to me and, like, hey. I'm doing a story on x y z. Dig up anything you can on them. Or it could be extremely specific. This court case drops Monday. I need the papers from the trial the minute they're available. Or this person referenced this article or speech, and this article, I can't find it. Dig it up. So Mhmm. Backtracking things. So hunting down specific information, finding, documents, government documents, court documents, and doing general background, open source intelligence on whatever topic we're currently, you know, investigating.
And that that's all part of it. Also, tool building. So I I write the scripts for web scraping or specific, websites. We have custom RSS feeders that look for certain keywords that we're looking for, making sure we're not missing anything out in the Internet sphere as a pile in. I build stuff that helps us just stay organized, tickler files, other files. Latest example, I just built a we can use now Google documents on our phone. You can do voice to text. It immediately goes up to the cloud, built a cloud AI agent with, Google Cloud. It pulls that, throws it to a local running AI unit on a desktop, synchronizes it, takes out all the ohms and the ohs and the, you know, that you get from speaking out loud. Cleans that all up, puts it in order, bullet points it so you have a direct transcription of an interview, a discussion with someone.
So you don't have to record it, go back later, do it by hand. It it's all right there. It uploads it right back up to the cloud and it's available. So that should be a nice little addition to our toolbox. And then on top of it, the back end, I act as a human bot. So I filter through, all the information and all the web ways and what's pinging around. And if I find something interesting, I'll throw it to our orders and say, hey. You know, this looks like it's right up your alley. Or sometimes I grab them and say, hey. I wanna ride on this. So it it does vary every single day, and your podcast actually pinged on my webway. That's how I knew. You mentioned the rage. You talked about our coverage of the, samurai case, and it, it pinged up. So that's why I was like, hey. Let's reach out.
[00:14:08] Unknown:
Oh, very cool. So these tools that you're using, they must make a massive difference to, like, how much information you can gather and organize. Is AI made a big difference to that, like, the amount of content that you can put out?
[00:14:24] Unknown:
Not really. We haven't really I I probably could. This last tool that brings in our interviews, this is the first time we've actually really applied AI to any of our tools. Most of our stuff is custom, like Python scripts or using existing, like, RSS feeders that we that that I have adapted to do what we want it to do. And Mhmm. Our usual Google dorks and all those kind of things that we use to hunt down information. Having an AI agent do some of the stuff that I do currently would probably be a good idea, but we haven't actually gone that far yet. You need a fairly decent size processor and DRAM to to run those kind of units that would handle in volume of of information.
And to do so, you basically have to do it nonlocal, which we don't wouldn't like to do because, obviously, privacy and, we have to protect our sources and things of that nature.
[00:15:23] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. So how did you get into this weird and wonderful world of freedom tech and privacy and anti surveillance and all this kind of stuff? Like, were you always having an issue with this type of stuff and, like, from a kid, or was it an interest in tech? How did you find your way here?
[00:15:47] Unknown:
Yes. All the above. So it's the intersection of of of being a little shit and, you know, not liking authority and being a nerd. Obviously, I'm a big tech nerd. Looked through all that stuff and just sort of fell into it. Wanted to be able to contribute. And this was one way, started working in the background doing other things, quickly proved myself as a researcher, showed those, skills are extremely valuable, especially in this Mhmm. Term, and then got, pushed into writing, which really was never my intent, but it is nice to get your voice out there into the public sphere and people talking about it. So I've tentatively
[00:16:32] Unknown:
done that as well. I think that's a a similar story with a lot of the people who are kind of in and around the ungovernable misfits and the groups that I associate myself with is, like, dislike for authority and extremely frustrated and angry when you have people trying to control your life or your family's lives, and some of them break through and find some tools to protect themselves and fight back when necessary and such an interesting group of people to deal with. It's so different to everything that I like, in my normie, Fiat, outdoor world.
You just don't really meet people like that. It's kind of like nodding along into oblivion and going along with whatever everybody else does. And if I spend too much time in that world away from my people, the people who care about this stuff, I don't know. It kinda gets quite dark. So every time I meet someone who cares about this stuff, it makes me happy. It makes me excited that there is this, like, fight back. Well, it also, it that is entirely the purpose of journalism,
[00:17:43] Unknown:
to point out what's going on to the masses and explain or at least give references to why this is important. I mean, a good example, you do have chat control in the EU that comes up like a zombie. It will keep killing it, and it keeps coming back over and over and over again. You're just listening to, you know, the government's explanation. You know, it sounds extremely reasonable. You know? Mhmm. We just wanna put, you know, a little backdoor on your phone to be able to check. You don't have to do anything. It's it's not intrusive. You don't have to worry about it. Only people are gonna have access is the government. And it's it's to catch pedophiles and sex offenders. I mean, you you don't want to help pedophiles, do you? I mean, come on. Agree. Exactly. And it sounds extremely reasonable. You need people to get out in the public sphere and point out all aspects of what that involves.
That it's not just criminals that would, I mean, it's not just the government that would have access to this backdoor. It gives us a straight porthole. You're breaking your encryption. Mhmm. And then there's always a slippery slope. You know, it starts with, oh, well, it's just sex crimes. Well, you know, also, we already have this door, so we're gonna also look for money laundering and tariffs. You know, you don't wanna help terrorists. We gotta stop the terrorists. Not. Yeah. And then, you know, if we're gonna stop the terrorists, we might as well stop the any government people too. You know? They Mhmm. Yeah. And then we're gonna you know, anybody who might be blogging or tweeting against the government, and then you're like, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. What? What? It's it's a very slippery slope. It always seems very reasonable until you're there.
[00:19:24] Unknown:
Yeah. And it's scary how reasonable it seems to people who aren't looking at it with, like, a critical through a critical lens. The biggest wake up for me like, I was always in and around Bitcoin and doing this stuff. But over the COVID time, like, 2020, '20 '20 '1, '20 '20 '2, like, all of that time, it really opened my eyes to, like, oh, okay. You said earlier, the importance of journalism is to show the people the truth. And, yeah, in theory, it is that, but it's only really, like, I don't know, for me, the last two, three, four, five years where I've had any trust in any type of media outlets at all because you have this growth in independent media and people who aren't owned and controlled and bought and paid for. It was shown so strongly. And so, obviously, through that COVID time, it was, like, blatant lies on thirst for control, you know, like, 90% of people just nodding along like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know, if people don't have a vaccine, absolutely, they shouldn't have any access to hospitals. I mean, they're dirty and disgusting. I mean, it was getting to that kind of level where people were were comfortable to have these conversations openly, and the media are controlling this narrative.
It was completely reasonable until it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Which is absolute lunacy because a couple of years before, you'd be like, no way would people you know, no chance would people do that. But that's kind of the power of the media. Luckily, it seems like less and less people, especially in, like, the younger generations, have trust in legacy media. They're going to you guys or to podcasts or to the more independent stuff because,
[00:21:12] Unknown:
yeah, the trust has gone there. Yeah. I mean, a lot of lot of the media has been captured by corporate interests. Let's be honest. I mean, was it free moneyed interest control, mace, the media in The US? Mhmm. They may not be coming in and saying, hey. You will not write about x y z, but maybe that article didn't get picked by the editor because, you know, it might piss off his boss or a certain advertiser that we're holding to because, you know, this is cut for an industry. You gotta get the paper out. Gotta get the news report at 10:00, whatever it is. So, yeah, there's conflicting interest there. And then you have to if you want access to the government, you gotta tow the line. I mean, you see that recently with the this whole ridiculousness with the, the Gulf Of America thing.
AP News didn't didn't go along with it, and so they were banned from the White House. So that could directly took away their access to, to that that source of media. And that that hurts. When you can't, when you can't
[00:22:17] Unknown:
get it have the source, you can't report on it. It's a tricky one. That's where I see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as particularly useful for this kind of stuff is, like, for the direct funding because you have to spend a huge amount of time on research and putting into making something a quality product, and then someone's gotta pay for that. People have still gotta feed their families and pay their bills and survive. Having the ability for people to fund independent media is like a it's hugely important. We see it with us.
Listeners are are very generous and and support us and help us, and we saw in the middle where we do have sponsorship, but sponsorship is very well aligned with what we do and what we care about. But with you guys, I think you are completely you don't think you have any sponsorships at all, do you?
[00:23:10] Unknown:
No. We it's a % donor, covers some of our costs, most of our costs. We are looking at a newsletter that we may have sponsors for, but never Sure. It will it'll never be a sponsorship on our our articles and, you know, that kind of thing. You gotta stay independent.
[00:23:29] Unknown:
Exactly. With the newsletter and stuff, I mean, there are companies that are aligned with what you care about and what you do. There are companies out there that care about freedom and and build products for it. Are these the sort of things where you can look at and you can say, like, for example, with us, when I have the conversation with, foundation or with cake, it's like, look. I'll talk about your stuff because I use it, and it's really good. But if you do anything that I think is dirty or country or shouldn't be done or you're doing something that I really don't agree with, I'm gonna say it. And they're like, yeah. That's cool. They know our shit on them if necessary. I assume you you're gonna find people who would take the same agreements with you guys. There are a lot of shit companies out there, but there are good ones too.
[00:24:17] Unknown:
Hopefully so. We hadn't been an issue yet because we haven't gone there yet. But, yeah, we we do get the random emails from, hey. Promote our crypto
[00:24:29] Unknown:
something something sponsored. I I will, like, never heard of crypto
[00:24:34] Unknown:
token thing. Yeah. We we get those emails. We get those DMs on Twitter or x or whatever the hell we're calling it now. And, yeah, we just trash.
[00:24:45] Unknown:
Yeah. You yeah. Would you like to have our CEO on who's an AI blockchain something something is yeah. Yeah. And so your team, how big is it? I mean, obviously, you've got you and Lola. Who else have you got?
[00:25:01] Unknown:
People come in and out. It's we're less a solid org structure and and more of a a terrace collective where people come in and out.
[00:25:10] Unknown:
Okay. I like that.
[00:25:15] Unknown:
We stay in Morpheus. And we were trying to add more riders and stuff, but it as you mentioned, it it it's hard. Mhmm. You know, luckily, we didn't get into this for fame and fortune. We do have, Morris and all them are doing a fantastic job covering, the trials for, tornado cache and samurai. But, obviously, those trials got pushed out, so they're kinda in waiting. But, yeah, they're doing a great job as well.
[00:25:41] Unknown:
Yeah. Let's talk about that for a minute because, samurai is a case that's very close to my heart and same with q and a and and all the rest of young couple of misfits. They were the guys that when I first came in, held my hand and taught me about privacy. And they're the people I've looked up to the most in the space for a very long time, like, unyielding, willing to stand up and fight against everything right to the end, which they've proven with their arrest. Very, very dark. It's been a year now. They had the best tools. They stood up and said what needed to be said, and watching them go away was one of the biggest injustices I've ever seen. Like, they were very good people creating tools that were very much needed and protecting people's privacy. And to see them be treated the way that they have been has been disgusting.
Obviously, you guys have been covering much more of the legal side of it. Haven't really wrapped my head around it too much because I'm like, although we cover it, I'm kind of like, well, it's the government. It's legal system. Like, fuck knows what's gonna happen. Like, what's just and what's right and what's moral. That's not who wins. So you obviously have been covering this a lot. What's your kind of view of the whole thing?
[00:27:01] Unknown:
It is it's a whole case, and, obviously, the, maybe people don't know about the tornado cash as well, but that very much ties into this. Same charges, same defenses. Yeah. It's been going on longer. And, unfortunately, the charges they're pushing against tornado cash are the ones against samurai or they have a better case, unfortunately. So if the government wins tornado cash case, more than likely, samurai is also gonna, be found guilty. So tornado is gonna be our canary in in the coal mine. Mhmm. The case has gotten very convoluted over the last year because there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of changing things. So I guess to to back up, Tornado Cash is a a Ethereum chain mixer from, like, 2019.
They've been accused of laundering more than 7,000,000,000, including, like, 450,000,000 from Lazarus, which is a North Korean sponsored, hacking group. Mhmm. They did end up on the treasuries OFAC sanction list in '22. Circle froze all their USDC. GitHub canceled their accounts. You know, it's it's went full on. And, unfortunately, the cofounder, Alexei Persif, he, received five years for, money laundering in Holland Amsterdam. Excuse me. So, I mean, the the Dutch court ruled that they did not pose any kind of barrier for people with criminal assets, laundrom. Just because they said, you know, it's a legitimate tool, it wasn't a legitimate tool that was unintentionally abused. It was a tool developed to reform and conceal needed for money laundering. And, unfortunately, that's much the same case that the government is making against Trader Cash here, Roman, Storm, and also, samurai developers because they're not really charging them with money laundering. They're charging with conspiracy, which goes to the whole hub and spoke conspiracy. So really, it applies to any offenses that they involve the transportation, transmission of funds that they may have known were derived from a criminal offense or supported unlawful activity. They don't have to actually have done done the thing. They just had to have known it was happening, and they, enabled it, unfortunately. And so in the tornado cache, they have some, internal chats that they're using as evidence of that that spoke about that they knew that illegal funds were flowing through tornado cache. In the samurai case, they've taken some of their, you know, tweets and other things where they promoted, like, hey. Welcome Russian oligarchs, Things of that nature, which you can make the argument is, trolling or, you know, creative marketing. But out of context, in a courtroom, just black and white paper, it's not gonna play very well.
So it's gonna it it's gonna be tight. It's gonna be tight all over the place, and then it gets even more confusing. I mean, just, so just Monday. Well, so you a month ago or beginning of the month, actually, the April 7, deputy attorney general, Blanche released a memo. Basically, reversing a lot of what we've seen out of DOJ saying that we are not going to go against mix search. We're not gonna go against exchanges, offline wallets for the acts of their users and not, you know, not themselves. They he completely shut down the inset, the National Crypto Enforcement Task Force.
[00:30:39] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:30:40] Unknown:
Everybody said, hey. This is, this is gonna free tornado. This is gonna free samurai. Not exactly. Mhmm. There's gaping loopholes in there. And and like I said, it it doesn't really apply to what they're accusing. They're they're accusing them of of conspiracy, and that's that's where the problem lies. Monday, they took a sixteen day delay, and people are making a lot of hay out of this because both the prosecution and the defense in the samurai case agreed to the sixteen day delay to the judge to go to, to see if they can, drop the charges. Because obviously, after that memo dropped on the seventh, it was within three or four days, the defense for samurai reached out and said, hey. Based on this, we should drop the charges. It's been three weeks. The Southern District in New York is basically ignoring it. They've could've dropped charges at any time, and they haven't. They completely have buried the defense in discovery. They released, like, what was it, eight terabytes of data that they just dumped on the defense, Like Mhmm. 25 or 27 devices that they they took from William and 15 of the 44 they took from Kiani.
And there's another there's a third batch of discovery that they're still going to release on. So, obviously, drown them, delay, distract is one of the prosecution's actually key things of this trial that they're gonna use, a tactic. Mhmm. So with them agreeing to a a a sixteen day delay in the pretrial with the defenses, not the glaring, oh, this is all over that some of the, outlets have been reporting, unfortunately.
[00:32:27] Unknown:
Yeah. I saw a lot of that going around, and although I had, like, a little bit of hope, it was also still like, nah. Like, with all this stuff, I'm like, they don't want this to go away. To me, at least, it seems like they're trying to set a precedent, particularly with the samurai case because of their presence on social media and the fact that they're very vocal about the fact that they believe everybody should have the right to privacy and, some of the ways that they, go about saying that. I do worry because it's, as you said, from an outsider perspective, it's so easy to just look at that and be like, oh, yeah. They're bad people doing bad things. It's only if you know them and their ways that you'd understand.
Most of this is being brash and tongue in cheek to some extent, and that really the majority of people who are using these tools are just people who wanna protect their privacy. And they're using a tool that makes it very, very easy to track and trace, and it can be potentially very dangerous for people. And so Whirlpool was really the best tool out there in my opinion and something that I used all the time and people around us used all the time because it's pretty dangerous. You go and pay your plumber, they suddenly see, oh, that comes from a UTXO. This amount. Oh, okay. I might come back later.
And there was no real simple way or good way of, stopping that from happening without Whirlpool.
[00:33:56] Unknown:
Right. And remember what the Dutch court ruled that the tool was developed to perform concealment needed for money laundering. That's basically what they're arguing here that privacy is not legal if you follow that to the end of the conclusion. You gotta see what what's at stake here. David Morris did a fantastic piece on the rage if you wanna read about what actually is at stake here. So the judge in the tornado cache has kinda gone back and forth. In an earlier case, they ruled that was a civil case against Uniswap for fraud.
And they ruled that, yeah, Uniswap doesn't really have control over those coins and the the protocol when there's people are swapping in and out. So, yeah, dismissed the case. Now here, same judge in the tornado cash case kinda leaning into the financial agency task force, kinda guidance, making the argument that, well, Roman Storm and the developers had control over the UI. Mhmm. So therefore, they do have some control of access. They could have put in KYC, but they chose not to. Even though all the stuff that's, you know, the the mixing and all that is happening in with immutable contracts and background. They've been in prison and tornado cash is still running. It's still up and doing just because it's code. Yeah. But if they can make that thing, then that destroys Bernstein versus US, which was the Seminole case in '96 when the cyclophones won. It said code is Mhmm. Is free speech.
If they're arguing well, they did have control over this part versus this part and this and that, it's gonna basically null and void that. It'll allow judges to say, well, this speech is allowed and this speech is not. And noncustodial services basically are liable for not KYC and their customers.
[00:35:55] Unknown:
Which is extremely dangerous.
[00:35:58] Unknown:
It's extremely dangerous. So that's where these cases end up going depending on how the court things, and that's why this is so important. I mean, obviously, we care about samurai. We care about Roman storm. We don't wanna see injustice, but the case is bigger than even them. This is gonna impact if it goes forward, it would impact every developer of software everywhere. It'd be liable for anybody using their the judge even made a comment about WhatsApp. So people, you know, use that encryption. And they used it for criminal activities. Does that make WhatsApp liable for it? It's so crazy as well. It's like, where does it end? You know?
[00:36:37] Unknown:
Everything is a weapon or a problem if used by the wrong person in the wrong way, whether it's a magazine or a car or a ballpoint pen, everything is can be used by someone who has bad intentions. Right. Once you start going down that road and saying what's good speech and what's bad speech, and there's, like, an arbiter of truth. It gets to a really, really dark place very quickly. And like you rightly said, like, this is extremely important case, and it's why it's been quite disheartening to see so little talked about with the exception of you guys and a few others.
And what frustrates me is that most of the rest of the Bitcoin world is lapping around, fucking around, trying to, almost forget that this is happening. I'd say it as, like, quite stupid to do that even if they don't like samurai or even though they don't care about that case specifically. It's like, you know, this is gonna destroy your, like, industry and, like, everything that you care about if they get their way. A lot of this potentially goes away. A lot of freedom goes away because when? And, like, they're just not talking about it. I just don't understand it. Yeah. I mean,
[00:37:50] Unknown:
like I said, if you're liable, it means you have to KYC every customer that uses your software or or unit. So, yeah, that's every hardware wallet. That's every software wallet. That's every transfer. It it and not just crypto. That's across the board for any any software.
[00:38:07] Unknown:
I mean, is it even talked about, like, in these courtrooms and cases? I I really don't understand how it works in that world, but, like, is it ever talked about the dangers of funds being tracked and how someone can be attacked because of it, because of the way that Bitcoin works and you have this open ledger, is there any understanding of that? Is it ever discussed, and is it discussed why something like Whirlpool is very helpful to normal good human beings who are doing normal stuff and just, like, trying not to be attacked and keep some privacy? Is it discussed, or is it just, like, they don't care at all?
[00:38:50] Unknown:
A bit of both. Because, obviously, we'll bring it up. There's, you know, some letters from congress they use to try to show that, you know, this software is not just for criminal activity. It is also for, you know, privacy and human rights and, you know, how how tornado cash she brought up, you know, donating to Ukraine and some other things, you can't do it and it's part of political speech. If money, you know, the Seminole case and, United where money was speech from the, Supreme Court. So if money is speech, shouldn't we be able to have free speech, money? Well, that doesn't seem to track well. So those arguments do come out from the defense, but it's not their primary defense. It it's that's more of a supplementary because that particular case is worried about particulars of what's going on in its case, not the broader implications.
It it is a part of the defense, but it's not the main main point.
[00:39:49] Unknown:
It feels like it's been tracking on forever, like a year for the samurai case. And Yeah. I mean, they're still in pretrial. They're just now doing discovery. Which is you know, Minh Q talked about this a lot. When you have a a problem in front of you where you have multiple outcomes all the time and you're very like, there's a lot of uncertainty, that's the most stressful part. Like, once you know, like, this is the outcome of the thing, and now I've got to deal with this, that almost is a relief either way that it goes. You know, the longer this stuff goes on for, the more stress and problems it puts everybody under. And cost. And cost. Yeah.
[00:40:30] Unknown:
Unfortunately, law craft is is a real thing. You can drag even you can drag something out long enough that you just completely break somebody financially, and they can't fight back anymore or just give in because, you know, now they're broke.
[00:40:47] Unknown:
Yeah. Which is why it's so important to keep funding and keep supporting these guys and doing what we can. It's difficult, though, isn't it? Because it's like, if normal people fully understood how important this was and what it meant if it doesn't go our way five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years down the line, like, where does it lead for their children and grandchildren? If they grasp that, most people would wanna support this, but it's really difficult to understand. From the outside looking in, you're like, oh, yeah. They're just criminals doing criminal things. I know that if I went and spoke to most people in, like, normal world and just go, yeah. This is the case. They'd be like, yeah. Well, you know, they were doing money laundering, and that's bad. They just that's just what people think. So it's very hard to find the funding.
[00:41:36] Unknown:
Yeah. It it's like our earlier part of our conversation. It's reasonable and sounds completely reasonable until it's not.
[00:41:44] Unknown:
Well, everyone who listens to this will continue supporting them, and we appreciate your coverage on everything as well. Is there anything else at the moment that particularly is grabbing your attention? You mentioned about the encryption stuff in Europe.
[00:41:59] Unknown:
That's something we've kept a a close eye on. I personally have written several times on encryption.
[00:42:05] Unknown:
What's your thoughts on that? Do you think that that's something that just eventually they do ban and backdoor most things in Europe, and then it's a case of just using different tools? Or do you think that there's a chance that, actually, we can win that one?
[00:42:27] Unknown:
Possibly. It's at a stalemate now.
[00:42:29] Unknown:
Mhmm. The
[00:42:30] Unknown:
EU seems bound and determined to break encryption. I mean, they they are France just arrested the, CEO of Telegram
[00:42:41] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:42:42] Unknown:
For people kinda like what we were just talking about. People using that service for some illegal things possibly and, holding him accountable for it just because he provides the service that's being used for it. It keeps getting killed, and then it comes up again, and then it gets getting killed, and then it comes up again. Like I said, it is a zombie that refuses to die. Personally, I thought we had, you know, the cypherpunks had won the encryption wars back in the nineteen nineties, but it's now back and hot and heavy. The governments do not like encryption. They want to be able to see who you're talking to, what you're talking about, and all those kind of things, which is kinda ridiculous because the Internet wouldn't even be possible without encryption, you know, HTTPS.
And it's just it's we take it for granted when, you know, people even normally used to connect to their local bank and, you know, the AT and transfer funds or their 401 or whatever else. That's all enabled because of encryption. Otherwise, you'd be cleaned out one second. But somehow people speaking to one another encrypted through Telegram or Signal or WhatsApp or whatever the the application is is horrible. And that has to go because someone somewhere might use it for illicit purposes. And that's, obviously, that's true. But where do you stop? Either everyone is free to discuss and that's a police matter that you deal with in police matter, or you watch everyone all the time. There is really no middle ground.
[00:44:23] Unknown:
Mhmm. Yeah. And how does that change behavior? Like, the people who really wanna do bad things, they're gonna find a way around this. They're gonna use different tools.
[00:44:33] Unknown:
There's always a way around everything. And Yeah. The US has had a war on drugs for decades now since the eighties, and I can walk down the street and see a tent city with people high as I'll get out. So, obviously, there whatever laws they put into, police, boats, through intelligence, through enforcement of the borders, through shipping, whatever else. It's not working. Mhmm. All it's done is make everything more difficult for normal people. Well, maybe it is working.
[00:45:02] Unknown:
Depends what they really want. It depends who's really supplying the drugs and who's profiting and whose back's getting scratched and all that kind of stuff. But for normal people, it's the idea of being watched everything that you do, every message you send, every picture you save. It's disgusting. Like, it would change people's behaviors. It's proper 1984 stuff, like hiding behind the bookshelf, trying to get a second of privacy to write in a diary. It isn't human. That whole, like, privacy is the ability to selectively reveal oneself to the world. Well, that's gone. You know, like, as soon as you, near a device, it's gone. It's horrible. It's trust the government. You know, they're just there to protect the kids. It's like, well, a lot of those people in governments are fucking disgusting pedos and everything else. It's like, do you really want the pictures of your kids on a cloud which can be accessed by these sick fucks?
Certainly not. I don't know. It just it would be nice to see more people wake up to it because there seems to be a disconnect with I say these things to you, and we have this discussion, and we're on the same page of, like, yeah. It's obviously fucking mental. But it doesn't seem that that's the way with the majority of people to we lose each other. I think I lost you. You got me now? Or
[00:46:21] Unknown:
Can you hear me now? I can hear you now. Can you hear me? I can. I can. I'm sorry. I think that was on my end because I got some kind of notification from my headset.
[00:46:31] Unknown:
No problem. I keep getting a million pinging up constantly about some problem, but I think I think we're alright.
[00:46:40] Unknown:
That's just the government listening, and don't worry about it.
[00:46:43] Unknown:
Yeah. I'm sure they are. Hi, FBI agent. You should be ashamed of yourself.
[00:46:49] Unknown:
You you wanna talk about being on the list. So here here's a story for you, the dangers of open source intelligence. I believe it was chain analysis or someone had done a a a bit on, you know, terrorists are using Hamas or some of the terrorists were using, crypto for funding, especially Bitcoin and Tether and some other things. And as evidence, they showed some propaganda, some terrorist propaganda that where they, you know, had a a wallet address and some other stuff on it and which they had filtered out. You couldn't see it on the thing, but this was their proof. So, of course, for my job, I was asked to find this.
[00:47:29] Unknown:
Right.
[00:47:30] Unknown:
So I so here I am, you know, at first, I've checked to see if I could remove the filtering that they had put on it. No. They actually did a decent job. So I had to find the original image. So I had to dig through, you know, Telegram and other terrorist funding channels Yeah. And propaganda networks before I finally could find it. And then we found the the web address. There are other propaganda ones where they were asking for donations. You know, it's on chain, so we can actually track how much. And it was like they got, like, $20. I mean, are you seriously making this argument and that, you know, where however much it was. But I still remember having to dig through all those, back channels with terrorists and propaganda, and I'm like, I'm on so many lists now if I wasn't before.
You're at the top of the list of actual Probably so. I it's it's gonna come up. We have here evidence that you visit terrorist
[00:48:27] Unknown:
sites. Hey. Well, listen. You're on the a list. You're an a list terrorist now. Probably so. Dangers of the job. The dangers of the job with a lot of this stuff, like, I was talking with Seth for privacy yesterday. We're doing a show on Monero, and we're talking about do you know, Zach xBT? Does a lot of the trend analysis stuff?
[00:48:48] Unknown:
The name sounds familiar, but I'm not thinking right now. Kind of like tracks
[00:48:52] Unknown:
when there's been big hacks then tries to follow criminals and makes this stuff public when there's a large theft or or something like this one where there was just the other day, there was a a huge one, and then it's flowed through EXCH exchange or what whatever it is. We were saying, like, a lot of this investigative journalism, you're either reporting on the government and their cronies and what they're doing to take away freedom. Or on the other side, you're reporting against criminals who are actually stealing, not just normal users. Whichever one you choose, you're on some list, And I don't know which one's worse.
Like, your privacy and security becomes extremely important because you're going against people with a lot of power and sway and who are desperate for power and control, and it's a tough situation to be in sometimes.
[00:49:47] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, being a journalist means you have to speak truth to power, hold people accountable. Often, these are people that don't want to be accountable. And there's a reason in, countries when authoritative take over the government, the first thing they do is take over the media and start arresting journalists. That Yeah. That that should tell you right there. So
[00:50:11] Unknown:
Control the narrative.
[00:50:13] Unknown:
Correct.
[00:50:14] Unknown:
Well, I'm very happy that there's people like you and Lola and others out there who are putting this information out there. It's really important going through all this information and making it accessible to other people who who maybe don't have the time to do the crazy amount of research you're doing. Thank you for what you guys do. We'll keep talking about the articles you put out and the coverage that you have there. And I would just say to anyone who's listening to this, definitely consider going and supporting the rage. Where can people go to support you guys?
[00:50:45] Unknown:
Directly to the site, therage.co. You can read all our articles. There's no paywalls, nothing of that sort. We do have a request that, you know, if you'd like the content, you wanna keep seeing it, make a donation. Don't have to. It's all on the site. There's nothing to stop you. So but please support if you can. It's not free and cheap to, do some of the reporting that we're doing. No. It certainly isn't.
[00:51:11] Unknown:
How can people support can lightning Bitcoin Monero? Like, is there anything?
[00:51:16] Unknown:
No. Whatever you have, we'll take, we'll make it work.
[00:51:21] Unknown:
You'll make it work.
[00:51:22] Unknown:
Alright. Well, well, it's been a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you very much for reaching out. I'm very glad you did. And as I say, we'll keep covering what you guys are doing. And Yes. Please please keep reading. It it sometimes feels like we're screaming into the void. You know? You don't get a lot of, feedback. You put the articles out, and you assume people are reading them, but you don't know how much impact you're actually making. So it it's nice to hear from people.
[00:51:47] Unknown:
Excellent. Alright. Well, thanks a lot, and, hopefully, we'll speak again.
[00:51:52] Unknown:
Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that. I love talking to Will. I'm gonna have to get him on again. I think some of the things that the rage you're covering are incredibly important. As I said at the beginning, there has been a lot of updates since we recorded this, specifically on the samurai case, which is the case that's closest to my heart, and we will see how things progress. But it's really important that the rage is supported financially. If you click in the link in the show notes, you can support them to help keep them going. There are not many independent journalists who actually cover the topics that matter.
Please go and read, go and donate, and help them keep covering what matters. Thanks again to everyone who's been boosting, sending XMR chats, sending messages, questions, everything else into the show. I really do appreciate it. Welcome to all the new listeners. We've had quite a few recently. If you are new and you haven't checked out our website, go to ungovernablemisfits.com. We've got articles, news, clothing coming back very soon, sticker packs, all sorts of things on there, and obviously the pod.
Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.
[00:00:11] Unknown:
Bitcoin.
[00:00:16] Unknown:
Now what's the Bitcoin?
[00:00:19] Unknown:
Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah.
[00:00:22] Unknown:
Oh. The greatest scam in history.
[00:00:25] Unknown:
Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero. Welcome back, you ungovernable fucks. Back again for more. And today, I have a confab with Will Jager from The Rage. Most of you will already know The Rage. You're already gonna be reading their articles. But for anyone who hasn't already, definitely go through the show notes. Click through. We've got links in there. It's well worth a read. They've been covering the samurai case and many of the other crazy goings on with this whole attack on privacy, whether that be from some type of mixers, coin joins, encryption.
They've been covering it all. And if you fancy tuning out of all the stupid opp return arguments and listening to something that really matters, Will really lays things out in such a clear and concise way. Things have changed a little bit since we recorded this. There's lots of rumblings going on that things might finally be going our way, but I won't hold my breath. I did record this about three weeks ago. We had a bit of a backlog with other episodes coming out, but all of this information is still very much relevant. Before we jump in, I just wanna go through the boosts from the last confab episode with Barn Miner.
John with 21,420 sats. Why wind me up? What purpose could that serve?
[00:02:10] Unknown:
You two could be spending your time and energy on far more productive pursuits. Snip. Snip.
[00:02:16] Unknown:
Late stage huddle, 10,000 sats. This episode made me realize I hadn't had any spicy beef jerky in a while. Get to work, Barn. Oh, and thanks for fixing my bit ax. Be sure not to tell John all the efforts. He won't understand the decentralized hash that is single ASIC brings to the network. Rod Palmer from the Beagle News with 10,000 sats, spicy beef jerky, and forty hours per week. Chet with 5,021 sats, prelisten boost, Barn Miner, aka Fiat Faggins, is such a fag. L m f a o. I can't disagree with you, mate. I really can't. Bubba with 2,000 SATs. How can a goat show up without a piss bottle? I guess trucking is completely out of the equation or out of the question.
Yeah. I don't think he he shouldn't be driving anyway. FOMO chronic with 1,001 sats, no message. Riven Stokes or even Stokes. More of boiling eggs with s 19 heat, less of shit axe. Oh, I couldn't agree with you more, mate. Pies with a hundred sats. Biz. Gene Everett. I've sent out 56 lightning payments the last two days and all worked perfectly. I think it's you, bro. Yeah. That's probably fair with both of us. And then another hundred and 1 sats. You guys have ensured I reduced your value received by 99% because you shit in, like, I guess, shit on lightning. You don't shit. Because you shit in lightning, not calling out problems, but telling us it's garbage.
So I won't risk sending you a higher percentage boost, ass clowns with a little clown emoji. And then another hundred and 1 sats. So you guys trash lightning for an hour, but expect payment through it, a. Here's a hundred and 1 sats instead of a hundred thousand or instead of 10,000, for crapping on it, legit making it sound like a scam. I'm sorry Jean, it's obviously upset you, but lightning is quite shit a lot of the time. If you want like a breakdown of why and what's going on and what's the problems are, then maybe listen to the episodes that I do with Q, because we go into that quite often. But yeah, appreciate your 101 sats, appreciate your message.
Wartime with three thirty three sats, biz, and, like, a little TNT thing, and then another 333 sats. I stopped listening halfway through. Too much bitching and complaining about lining. We've upset some people here, Barn. Nosta Gang with a hundred sats, British Wigger. Also thanks to Cas Peland, streaming 1,692 sats, Plebter Polymath, nine hundred and seventy five sats, and Garhead six zero two one, five hundred and eighty five sats. Thank you everyone to streaming and boosting. We really do appreciate it, and it helps keep this show going. I also wanna say a big thank you to Black Coffee, who's been holding my hand through some technical issues, been very helpful.
And to say thank you, I wanna do a little ad read for sx6.store. They make seed plates, very affordable, very high quality. There's really only three ways you can back up your c phrase onto metal. You can go and you can get some washers and a nut and bolt, and that works pretty well. You can go and spend a hundred dollars or more on some of these wanky posh types with little cutout things or some sort of gimmicky stuff and overpay for them. Or you can go to sx6.store, and you can get the highest quality plates I've seen for either seventeen pound forty nine or twenty four pound forty nine for the new larger plate size.
The large plate size is about the size of a postcard, and the other one, I haven't got the dimensions, but it's about 30% smaller than that. That's the ones I've had before. They're incredible value. I don't know what more to say. If you're not backing up your seed phrases onto steal, I think you're a bit of a cunt. You don't lose all your Bitcoin that you've worked hard for. So if that sounds good to you, if you haven't already done it, if you're onboarding new people and they haven't already done it, go and buy them a nice present. $17.49 for the smaller one, $24.49 for the larger one. And if you use the code Ungovernable, you get an extra 10% discount. This is the only ad rate he's getting, so please listen. Please go and do it. Sx6.store.
We'll put a link in the show notes. Go and support our good friend, Black Coffee. I also wanna say a huge thank you to Foundation. Foundation make my favorite hardware in the space. It's fuckwit resistant. Literally, anybody can use this and keep their seeds offline. It's simple to use. The UX is amazing. The team's awesome with the exception of q and a's, but of a cunt. They have a really good companion app that makes it easy to do labeling. And as I was just saying, you wanna have your seats backed up into still in an ideal world. With the passport, you can actually do a backup onto a micro SD and have that encrypted. This is amazing to have backups that are easy to hide, easy to store, easy to travel with. So you could travel across a border with them encrypted. You have a separate code that you can have somewhere else, and then you can restore when you go to the other side, so you don't have your coins yanked for any reason. They've got loads of features like this, and it's all simple to do. Q and a has all these different videos on the website to talk you through it, and if you get stuck at any point, I use this thing all the time. You can reach out and ask me. It really is incredible.
Check them out at foundation.xyz,
[00:08:26] Unknown:
and you can use the code ungovernable,
[00:08:29] Unknown:
and I think that gives you a 10% discount. And finally, I wanna say thank you to K Wallet for supporting the show. Cake Wallet is used by around half a million users, maybe a little bit more at this point. You can use it for Bitcoin and Monero for swaps to buy gift cards. You can use Cake Pay. They've got all sorts of incredible features. A lot of my friends and family have started using this, and actually, one reached out to me yesterday just saying how good Cakepay was. And as someone who uses Monero a lot, this has been really helpful for him. So they've got Sephora privacy on the team, a good friend, and ungovernable misfit who's always there making sure that things are private and secure. If you haven't already used this, you can download it onto any operating system and begin using it today. Again, any questions you can reach out to me. And if they're really technical, you can reach out to Seth. But if you actually use your Bitcoin and Monero and you want a really good software wallet, check them out at cakewallet.com.
Right. Let's jump into this confab with Will. I think you're gonna really enjoy it.
[00:09:38] Unknown:
Can you hear me now? Yeah. That's better. I think that's better.
[00:09:42] Unknown:
Okay. I got your, audio coming into my headset, and my, voice is going into a speaker on my desk. How's that? It's
[00:09:53] Unknown:
we're getting there. This used to be, like, the joke of this show was audio issues for, like, years and years. We're starting to get better, but, yeah, it's always been an issue.
[00:10:05] Unknown:
Well, with writers, it's always, it's formatting issues. Yeah. Getting hyperlinks to work correctly, getting pictures to show correctly, you know, things like that. So it it goes around for everyone.
[00:10:19] Unknown:
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on. I have to say that we were pretty excited when we got a message from you guys saying, a, you were listening to our show and, b, you wanted to have a chat with us. And we're pretty excited because in the circles that we run-in in Bitcoin and, like, FreedomTech world, the rage is very highly respected. So it's a pleasure to speak to you and to have this conversation, really. You guys do some work.
[00:10:46] Unknown:
Thank you. Thank you very much. So I guess, we'll start with the introduction. My name is Will Yeager. I'm a researcher at The Rage, also an independent journalist. Most of my work deals with technology, privacy, government overreach, the intersections between all three. You can look at my work on Bitcoin Magazine, At The Rage, and I do self publish on Nostra as well.
[00:11:15] Unknown:
From my understanding, you're doing the digging to create these articles and put the pieces together.
[00:11:21] Unknown:
Well, I mean, every, journalist does their own research, but my job is well, I mean, it's really in three parts. The first part is exactly what you would expect. They come to me and, like, hey. I'm doing a story on x y z. Dig up anything you can on them. Or it could be extremely specific. This court case drops Monday. I need the papers from the trial the minute they're available. Or this person referenced this article or speech, and this article, I can't find it. Dig it up. So Mhmm. Backtracking things. So hunting down specific information, finding, documents, government documents, court documents, and doing general background, open source intelligence on whatever topic we're currently, you know, investigating.
And that that's all part of it. Also, tool building. So I I write the scripts for web scraping or specific, websites. We have custom RSS feeders that look for certain keywords that we're looking for, making sure we're not missing anything out in the Internet sphere as a pile in. I build stuff that helps us just stay organized, tickler files, other files. Latest example, I just built a we can use now Google documents on our phone. You can do voice to text. It immediately goes up to the cloud, built a cloud AI agent with, Google Cloud. It pulls that, throws it to a local running AI unit on a desktop, synchronizes it, takes out all the ohms and the ohs and the, you know, that you get from speaking out loud. Cleans that all up, puts it in order, bullet points it so you have a direct transcription of an interview, a discussion with someone.
So you don't have to record it, go back later, do it by hand. It it's all right there. It uploads it right back up to the cloud and it's available. So that should be a nice little addition to our toolbox. And then on top of it, the back end, I act as a human bot. So I filter through, all the information and all the web ways and what's pinging around. And if I find something interesting, I'll throw it to our orders and say, hey. You know, this looks like it's right up your alley. Or sometimes I grab them and say, hey. I wanna ride on this. So it it does vary every single day, and your podcast actually pinged on my webway. That's how I knew. You mentioned the rage. You talked about our coverage of the, samurai case, and it, it pinged up. So that's why I was like, hey. Let's reach out.
[00:14:08] Unknown:
Oh, very cool. So these tools that you're using, they must make a massive difference to, like, how much information you can gather and organize. Is AI made a big difference to that, like, the amount of content that you can put out?
[00:14:24] Unknown:
Not really. We haven't really I I probably could. This last tool that brings in our interviews, this is the first time we've actually really applied AI to any of our tools. Most of our stuff is custom, like Python scripts or using existing, like, RSS feeders that we that that I have adapted to do what we want it to do. And Mhmm. Our usual Google dorks and all those kind of things that we use to hunt down information. Having an AI agent do some of the stuff that I do currently would probably be a good idea, but we haven't actually gone that far yet. You need a fairly decent size processor and DRAM to to run those kind of units that would handle in volume of of information.
And to do so, you basically have to do it nonlocal, which we don't wouldn't like to do because, obviously, privacy and, we have to protect our sources and things of that nature.
[00:15:23] Unknown:
Yeah. Definitely. So how did you get into this weird and wonderful world of freedom tech and privacy and anti surveillance and all this kind of stuff? Like, were you always having an issue with this type of stuff and, like, from a kid, or was it an interest in tech? How did you find your way here?
[00:15:47] Unknown:
Yes. All the above. So it's the intersection of of of being a little shit and, you know, not liking authority and being a nerd. Obviously, I'm a big tech nerd. Looked through all that stuff and just sort of fell into it. Wanted to be able to contribute. And this was one way, started working in the background doing other things, quickly proved myself as a researcher, showed those, skills are extremely valuable, especially in this Mhmm. Term, and then got, pushed into writing, which really was never my intent, but it is nice to get your voice out there into the public sphere and people talking about it. So I've tentatively
[00:16:32] Unknown:
done that as well. I think that's a a similar story with a lot of the people who are kind of in and around the ungovernable misfits and the groups that I associate myself with is, like, dislike for authority and extremely frustrated and angry when you have people trying to control your life or your family's lives, and some of them break through and find some tools to protect themselves and fight back when necessary and such an interesting group of people to deal with. It's so different to everything that I like, in my normie, Fiat, outdoor world.
You just don't really meet people like that. It's kind of like nodding along into oblivion and going along with whatever everybody else does. And if I spend too much time in that world away from my people, the people who care about this stuff, I don't know. It kinda gets quite dark. So every time I meet someone who cares about this stuff, it makes me happy. It makes me excited that there is this, like, fight back. Well, it also, it that is entirely the purpose of journalism,
[00:17:43] Unknown:
to point out what's going on to the masses and explain or at least give references to why this is important. I mean, a good example, you do have chat control in the EU that comes up like a zombie. It will keep killing it, and it keeps coming back over and over and over again. You're just listening to, you know, the government's explanation. You know, it sounds extremely reasonable. You know? Mhmm. We just wanna put, you know, a little backdoor on your phone to be able to check. You don't have to do anything. It's it's not intrusive. You don't have to worry about it. Only people are gonna have access is the government. And it's it's to catch pedophiles and sex offenders. I mean, you you don't want to help pedophiles, do you? I mean, come on. Agree. Exactly. And it sounds extremely reasonable. You need people to get out in the public sphere and point out all aspects of what that involves.
That it's not just criminals that would, I mean, it's not just the government that would have access to this backdoor. It gives us a straight porthole. You're breaking your encryption. Mhmm. And then there's always a slippery slope. You know, it starts with, oh, well, it's just sex crimes. Well, you know, also, we already have this door, so we're gonna also look for money laundering and tariffs. You know, you don't wanna help terrorists. We gotta stop the terrorists. Not. Yeah. And then, you know, if we're gonna stop the terrorists, we might as well stop the any government people too. You know? They Mhmm. Yeah. And then we're gonna you know, anybody who might be blogging or tweeting against the government, and then you're like, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. What? What? It's it's a very slippery slope. It always seems very reasonable until you're there.
[00:19:24] Unknown:
Yeah. And it's scary how reasonable it seems to people who aren't looking at it with, like, a critical through a critical lens. The biggest wake up for me like, I was always in and around Bitcoin and doing this stuff. But over the COVID time, like, 2020, '20 '20 '1, '20 '20 '2, like, all of that time, it really opened my eyes to, like, oh, okay. You said earlier, the importance of journalism is to show the people the truth. And, yeah, in theory, it is that, but it's only really, like, I don't know, for me, the last two, three, four, five years where I've had any trust in any type of media outlets at all because you have this growth in independent media and people who aren't owned and controlled and bought and paid for. It was shown so strongly. And so, obviously, through that COVID time, it was, like, blatant lies on thirst for control, you know, like, 90% of people just nodding along like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know, if people don't have a vaccine, absolutely, they shouldn't have any access to hospitals. I mean, they're dirty and disgusting. I mean, it was getting to that kind of level where people were were comfortable to have these conversations openly, and the media are controlling this narrative.
It was completely reasonable until it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Which is absolute lunacy because a couple of years before, you'd be like, no way would people you know, no chance would people do that. But that's kind of the power of the media. Luckily, it seems like less and less people, especially in, like, the younger generations, have trust in legacy media. They're going to you guys or to podcasts or to the more independent stuff because,
[00:21:12] Unknown:
yeah, the trust has gone there. Yeah. I mean, a lot of lot of the media has been captured by corporate interests. Let's be honest. I mean, was it free moneyed interest control, mace, the media in The US? Mhmm. They may not be coming in and saying, hey. You will not write about x y z, but maybe that article didn't get picked by the editor because, you know, it might piss off his boss or a certain advertiser that we're holding to because, you know, this is cut for an industry. You gotta get the paper out. Gotta get the news report at 10:00, whatever it is. So, yeah, there's conflicting interest there. And then you have to if you want access to the government, you gotta tow the line. I mean, you see that recently with the this whole ridiculousness with the, the Gulf Of America thing.
AP News didn't didn't go along with it, and so they were banned from the White House. So that could directly took away their access to, to that that source of media. And that that hurts. When you can't, when you can't
[00:22:17] Unknown:
get it have the source, you can't report on it. It's a tricky one. That's where I see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as particularly useful for this kind of stuff is, like, for the direct funding because you have to spend a huge amount of time on research and putting into making something a quality product, and then someone's gotta pay for that. People have still gotta feed their families and pay their bills and survive. Having the ability for people to fund independent media is like a it's hugely important. We see it with us.
Listeners are are very generous and and support us and help us, and we saw in the middle where we do have sponsorship, but sponsorship is very well aligned with what we do and what we care about. But with you guys, I think you are completely you don't think you have any sponsorships at all, do you?
[00:23:10] Unknown:
No. We it's a % donor, covers some of our costs, most of our costs. We are looking at a newsletter that we may have sponsors for, but never Sure. It will it'll never be a sponsorship on our our articles and, you know, that kind of thing. You gotta stay independent.
[00:23:29] Unknown:
Exactly. With the newsletter and stuff, I mean, there are companies that are aligned with what you care about and what you do. There are companies out there that care about freedom and and build products for it. Are these the sort of things where you can look at and you can say, like, for example, with us, when I have the conversation with, foundation or with cake, it's like, look. I'll talk about your stuff because I use it, and it's really good. But if you do anything that I think is dirty or country or shouldn't be done or you're doing something that I really don't agree with, I'm gonna say it. And they're like, yeah. That's cool. They know our shit on them if necessary. I assume you you're gonna find people who would take the same agreements with you guys. There are a lot of shit companies out there, but there are good ones too.
[00:24:17] Unknown:
Hopefully so. We hadn't been an issue yet because we haven't gone there yet. But, yeah, we we do get the random emails from, hey. Promote our crypto
[00:24:29] Unknown:
something something sponsored. I I will, like, never heard of crypto
[00:24:34] Unknown:
token thing. Yeah. We we get those emails. We get those DMs on Twitter or x or whatever the hell we're calling it now. And, yeah, we just trash.
[00:24:45] Unknown:
Yeah. You yeah. Would you like to have our CEO on who's an AI blockchain something something is yeah. Yeah. And so your team, how big is it? I mean, obviously, you've got you and Lola. Who else have you got?
[00:25:01] Unknown:
People come in and out. It's we're less a solid org structure and and more of a a terrace collective where people come in and out.
[00:25:10] Unknown:
Okay. I like that.
[00:25:15] Unknown:
We stay in Morpheus. And we were trying to add more riders and stuff, but it as you mentioned, it it it's hard. Mhmm. You know, luckily, we didn't get into this for fame and fortune. We do have, Morris and all them are doing a fantastic job covering, the trials for, tornado cache and samurai. But, obviously, those trials got pushed out, so they're kinda in waiting. But, yeah, they're doing a great job as well.
[00:25:41] Unknown:
Yeah. Let's talk about that for a minute because, samurai is a case that's very close to my heart and same with q and a and and all the rest of young couple of misfits. They were the guys that when I first came in, held my hand and taught me about privacy. And they're the people I've looked up to the most in the space for a very long time, like, unyielding, willing to stand up and fight against everything right to the end, which they've proven with their arrest. Very, very dark. It's been a year now. They had the best tools. They stood up and said what needed to be said, and watching them go away was one of the biggest injustices I've ever seen. Like, they were very good people creating tools that were very much needed and protecting people's privacy. And to see them be treated the way that they have been has been disgusting.
Obviously, you guys have been covering much more of the legal side of it. Haven't really wrapped my head around it too much because I'm like, although we cover it, I'm kind of like, well, it's the government. It's legal system. Like, fuck knows what's gonna happen. Like, what's just and what's right and what's moral. That's not who wins. So you obviously have been covering this a lot. What's your kind of view of the whole thing?
[00:27:01] Unknown:
It is it's a whole case, and, obviously, the, maybe people don't know about the tornado cash as well, but that very much ties into this. Same charges, same defenses. Yeah. It's been going on longer. And, unfortunately, the charges they're pushing against tornado cash are the ones against samurai or they have a better case, unfortunately. So if the government wins tornado cash case, more than likely, samurai is also gonna, be found guilty. So tornado is gonna be our canary in in the coal mine. Mhmm. The case has gotten very convoluted over the last year because there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of changing things. So I guess to to back up, Tornado Cash is a a Ethereum chain mixer from, like, 2019.
They've been accused of laundering more than 7,000,000,000, including, like, 450,000,000 from Lazarus, which is a North Korean sponsored, hacking group. Mhmm. They did end up on the treasuries OFAC sanction list in '22. Circle froze all their USDC. GitHub canceled their accounts. You know, it's it's went full on. And, unfortunately, the cofounder, Alexei Persif, he, received five years for, money laundering in Holland Amsterdam. Excuse me. So, I mean, the the Dutch court ruled that they did not pose any kind of barrier for people with criminal assets, laundrom. Just because they said, you know, it's a legitimate tool, it wasn't a legitimate tool that was unintentionally abused. It was a tool developed to reform and conceal needed for money laundering. And, unfortunately, that's much the same case that the government is making against Trader Cash here, Roman, Storm, and also, samurai developers because they're not really charging them with money laundering. They're charging with conspiracy, which goes to the whole hub and spoke conspiracy. So really, it applies to any offenses that they involve the transportation, transmission of funds that they may have known were derived from a criminal offense or supported unlawful activity. They don't have to actually have done done the thing. They just had to have known it was happening, and they, enabled it, unfortunately. And so in the tornado cache, they have some, internal chats that they're using as evidence of that that spoke about that they knew that illegal funds were flowing through tornado cache. In the samurai case, they've taken some of their, you know, tweets and other things where they promoted, like, hey. Welcome Russian oligarchs, Things of that nature, which you can make the argument is, trolling or, you know, creative marketing. But out of context, in a courtroom, just black and white paper, it's not gonna play very well.
So it's gonna it it's gonna be tight. It's gonna be tight all over the place, and then it gets even more confusing. I mean, just, so just Monday. Well, so you a month ago or beginning of the month, actually, the April 7, deputy attorney general, Blanche released a memo. Basically, reversing a lot of what we've seen out of DOJ saying that we are not going to go against mix search. We're not gonna go against exchanges, offline wallets for the acts of their users and not, you know, not themselves. They he completely shut down the inset, the National Crypto Enforcement Task Force.
[00:30:39] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:30:40] Unknown:
Everybody said, hey. This is, this is gonna free tornado. This is gonna free samurai. Not exactly. Mhmm. There's gaping loopholes in there. And and like I said, it it doesn't really apply to what they're accusing. They're they're accusing them of of conspiracy, and that's that's where the problem lies. Monday, they took a sixteen day delay, and people are making a lot of hay out of this because both the prosecution and the defense in the samurai case agreed to the sixteen day delay to the judge to go to, to see if they can, drop the charges. Because obviously, after that memo dropped on the seventh, it was within three or four days, the defense for samurai reached out and said, hey. Based on this, we should drop the charges. It's been three weeks. The Southern District in New York is basically ignoring it. They've could've dropped charges at any time, and they haven't. They completely have buried the defense in discovery. They released, like, what was it, eight terabytes of data that they just dumped on the defense, Like Mhmm. 25 or 27 devices that they they took from William and 15 of the 44 they took from Kiani.
And there's another there's a third batch of discovery that they're still going to release on. So, obviously, drown them, delay, distract is one of the prosecution's actually key things of this trial that they're gonna use, a tactic. Mhmm. So with them agreeing to a a a sixteen day delay in the pretrial with the defenses, not the glaring, oh, this is all over that some of the, outlets have been reporting, unfortunately.
[00:32:27] Unknown:
Yeah. I saw a lot of that going around, and although I had, like, a little bit of hope, it was also still like, nah. Like, with all this stuff, I'm like, they don't want this to go away. To me, at least, it seems like they're trying to set a precedent, particularly with the samurai case because of their presence on social media and the fact that they're very vocal about the fact that they believe everybody should have the right to privacy and, some of the ways that they, go about saying that. I do worry because it's, as you said, from an outsider perspective, it's so easy to just look at that and be like, oh, yeah. They're bad people doing bad things. It's only if you know them and their ways that you'd understand.
Most of this is being brash and tongue in cheek to some extent, and that really the majority of people who are using these tools are just people who wanna protect their privacy. And they're using a tool that makes it very, very easy to track and trace, and it can be potentially very dangerous for people. And so Whirlpool was really the best tool out there in my opinion and something that I used all the time and people around us used all the time because it's pretty dangerous. You go and pay your plumber, they suddenly see, oh, that comes from a UTXO. This amount. Oh, okay. I might come back later.
And there was no real simple way or good way of, stopping that from happening without Whirlpool.
[00:33:56] Unknown:
Right. And remember what the Dutch court ruled that the tool was developed to perform concealment needed for money laundering. That's basically what they're arguing here that privacy is not legal if you follow that to the end of the conclusion. You gotta see what what's at stake here. David Morris did a fantastic piece on the rage if you wanna read about what actually is at stake here. So the judge in the tornado cache has kinda gone back and forth. In an earlier case, they ruled that was a civil case against Uniswap for fraud.
And they ruled that, yeah, Uniswap doesn't really have control over those coins and the the protocol when there's people are swapping in and out. So, yeah, dismissed the case. Now here, same judge in the tornado cash case kinda leaning into the financial agency task force, kinda guidance, making the argument that, well, Roman Storm and the developers had control over the UI. Mhmm. So therefore, they do have some control of access. They could have put in KYC, but they chose not to. Even though all the stuff that's, you know, the the mixing and all that is happening in with immutable contracts and background. They've been in prison and tornado cash is still running. It's still up and doing just because it's code. Yeah. But if they can make that thing, then that destroys Bernstein versus US, which was the Seminole case in '96 when the cyclophones won. It said code is Mhmm. Is free speech.
If they're arguing well, they did have control over this part versus this part and this and that, it's gonna basically null and void that. It'll allow judges to say, well, this speech is allowed and this speech is not. And noncustodial services basically are liable for not KYC and their customers.
[00:35:55] Unknown:
Which is extremely dangerous.
[00:35:58] Unknown:
It's extremely dangerous. So that's where these cases end up going depending on how the court things, and that's why this is so important. I mean, obviously, we care about samurai. We care about Roman storm. We don't wanna see injustice, but the case is bigger than even them. This is gonna impact if it goes forward, it would impact every developer of software everywhere. It'd be liable for anybody using their the judge even made a comment about WhatsApp. So people, you know, use that encryption. And they used it for criminal activities. Does that make WhatsApp liable for it? It's so crazy as well. It's like, where does it end? You know?
[00:36:37] Unknown:
Everything is a weapon or a problem if used by the wrong person in the wrong way, whether it's a magazine or a car or a ballpoint pen, everything is can be used by someone who has bad intentions. Right. Once you start going down that road and saying what's good speech and what's bad speech, and there's, like, an arbiter of truth. It gets to a really, really dark place very quickly. And like you rightly said, like, this is extremely important case, and it's why it's been quite disheartening to see so little talked about with the exception of you guys and a few others.
And what frustrates me is that most of the rest of the Bitcoin world is lapping around, fucking around, trying to, almost forget that this is happening. I'd say it as, like, quite stupid to do that even if they don't like samurai or even though they don't care about that case specifically. It's like, you know, this is gonna destroy your, like, industry and, like, everything that you care about if they get their way. A lot of this potentially goes away. A lot of freedom goes away because when? And, like, they're just not talking about it. I just don't understand it. Yeah. I mean,
[00:37:50] Unknown:
like I said, if you're liable, it means you have to KYC every customer that uses your software or or unit. So, yeah, that's every hardware wallet. That's every software wallet. That's every transfer. It it and not just crypto. That's across the board for any any software.
[00:38:07] Unknown:
I mean, is it even talked about, like, in these courtrooms and cases? I I really don't understand how it works in that world, but, like, is it ever talked about the dangers of funds being tracked and how someone can be attacked because of it, because of the way that Bitcoin works and you have this open ledger, is there any understanding of that? Is it ever discussed, and is it discussed why something like Whirlpool is very helpful to normal good human beings who are doing normal stuff and just, like, trying not to be attacked and keep some privacy? Is it discussed, or is it just, like, they don't care at all?
[00:38:50] Unknown:
A bit of both. Because, obviously, we'll bring it up. There's, you know, some letters from congress they use to try to show that, you know, this software is not just for criminal activity. It is also for, you know, privacy and human rights and, you know, how how tornado cash she brought up, you know, donating to Ukraine and some other things, you can't do it and it's part of political speech. If money, you know, the Seminole case and, United where money was speech from the, Supreme Court. So if money is speech, shouldn't we be able to have free speech, money? Well, that doesn't seem to track well. So those arguments do come out from the defense, but it's not their primary defense. It it's that's more of a supplementary because that particular case is worried about particulars of what's going on in its case, not the broader implications.
It it is a part of the defense, but it's not the main main point.
[00:39:49] Unknown:
It feels like it's been tracking on forever, like a year for the samurai case. And Yeah. I mean, they're still in pretrial. They're just now doing discovery. Which is you know, Minh Q talked about this a lot. When you have a a problem in front of you where you have multiple outcomes all the time and you're very like, there's a lot of uncertainty, that's the most stressful part. Like, once you know, like, this is the outcome of the thing, and now I've got to deal with this, that almost is a relief either way that it goes. You know, the longer this stuff goes on for, the more stress and problems it puts everybody under. And cost. And cost. Yeah.
[00:40:30] Unknown:
Unfortunately, law craft is is a real thing. You can drag even you can drag something out long enough that you just completely break somebody financially, and they can't fight back anymore or just give in because, you know, now they're broke.
[00:40:47] Unknown:
Yeah. Which is why it's so important to keep funding and keep supporting these guys and doing what we can. It's difficult, though, isn't it? Because it's like, if normal people fully understood how important this was and what it meant if it doesn't go our way five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years down the line, like, where does it lead for their children and grandchildren? If they grasp that, most people would wanna support this, but it's really difficult to understand. From the outside looking in, you're like, oh, yeah. They're just criminals doing criminal things. I know that if I went and spoke to most people in, like, normal world and just go, yeah. This is the case. They'd be like, yeah. Well, you know, they were doing money laundering, and that's bad. They just that's just what people think. So it's very hard to find the funding.
[00:41:36] Unknown:
Yeah. It it's like our earlier part of our conversation. It's reasonable and sounds completely reasonable until it's not.
[00:41:44] Unknown:
Well, everyone who listens to this will continue supporting them, and we appreciate your coverage on everything as well. Is there anything else at the moment that particularly is grabbing your attention? You mentioned about the encryption stuff in Europe.
[00:41:59] Unknown:
That's something we've kept a a close eye on. I personally have written several times on encryption.
[00:42:05] Unknown:
What's your thoughts on that? Do you think that that's something that just eventually they do ban and backdoor most things in Europe, and then it's a case of just using different tools? Or do you think that there's a chance that, actually, we can win that one?
[00:42:27] Unknown:
Possibly. It's at a stalemate now.
[00:42:29] Unknown:
Mhmm. The
[00:42:30] Unknown:
EU seems bound and determined to break encryption. I mean, they they are France just arrested the, CEO of Telegram
[00:42:41] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:42:42] Unknown:
For people kinda like what we were just talking about. People using that service for some illegal things possibly and, holding him accountable for it just because he provides the service that's being used for it. It keeps getting killed, and then it comes up again, and then it gets getting killed, and then it comes up again. Like I said, it is a zombie that refuses to die. Personally, I thought we had, you know, the cypherpunks had won the encryption wars back in the nineteen nineties, but it's now back and hot and heavy. The governments do not like encryption. They want to be able to see who you're talking to, what you're talking about, and all those kind of things, which is kinda ridiculous because the Internet wouldn't even be possible without encryption, you know, HTTPS.
And it's just it's we take it for granted when, you know, people even normally used to connect to their local bank and, you know, the AT and transfer funds or their 401 or whatever else. That's all enabled because of encryption. Otherwise, you'd be cleaned out one second. But somehow people speaking to one another encrypted through Telegram or Signal or WhatsApp or whatever the the application is is horrible. And that has to go because someone somewhere might use it for illicit purposes. And that's, obviously, that's true. But where do you stop? Either everyone is free to discuss and that's a police matter that you deal with in police matter, or you watch everyone all the time. There is really no middle ground.
[00:44:23] Unknown:
Mhmm. Yeah. And how does that change behavior? Like, the people who really wanna do bad things, they're gonna find a way around this. They're gonna use different tools.
[00:44:33] Unknown:
There's always a way around everything. And Yeah. The US has had a war on drugs for decades now since the eighties, and I can walk down the street and see a tent city with people high as I'll get out. So, obviously, there whatever laws they put into, police, boats, through intelligence, through enforcement of the borders, through shipping, whatever else. It's not working. Mhmm. All it's done is make everything more difficult for normal people. Well, maybe it is working.
[00:45:02] Unknown:
Depends what they really want. It depends who's really supplying the drugs and who's profiting and whose back's getting scratched and all that kind of stuff. But for normal people, it's the idea of being watched everything that you do, every message you send, every picture you save. It's disgusting. Like, it would change people's behaviors. It's proper 1984 stuff, like hiding behind the bookshelf, trying to get a second of privacy to write in a diary. It isn't human. That whole, like, privacy is the ability to selectively reveal oneself to the world. Well, that's gone. You know, like, as soon as you, near a device, it's gone. It's horrible. It's trust the government. You know, they're just there to protect the kids. It's like, well, a lot of those people in governments are fucking disgusting pedos and everything else. It's like, do you really want the pictures of your kids on a cloud which can be accessed by these sick fucks?
Certainly not. I don't know. It just it would be nice to see more people wake up to it because there seems to be a disconnect with I say these things to you, and we have this discussion, and we're on the same page of, like, yeah. It's obviously fucking mental. But it doesn't seem that that's the way with the majority of people to we lose each other. I think I lost you. You got me now? Or
[00:46:21] Unknown:
Can you hear me now? I can hear you now. Can you hear me? I can. I can. I'm sorry. I think that was on my end because I got some kind of notification from my headset.
[00:46:31] Unknown:
No problem. I keep getting a million pinging up constantly about some problem, but I think I think we're alright.
[00:46:40] Unknown:
That's just the government listening, and don't worry about it.
[00:46:43] Unknown:
Yeah. I'm sure they are. Hi, FBI agent. You should be ashamed of yourself.
[00:46:49] Unknown:
You you wanna talk about being on the list. So here here's a story for you, the dangers of open source intelligence. I believe it was chain analysis or someone had done a a a bit on, you know, terrorists are using Hamas or some of the terrorists were using, crypto for funding, especially Bitcoin and Tether and some other things. And as evidence, they showed some propaganda, some terrorist propaganda that where they, you know, had a a wallet address and some other stuff on it and which they had filtered out. You couldn't see it on the thing, but this was their proof. So, of course, for my job, I was asked to find this.
[00:47:29] Unknown:
Right.
[00:47:30] Unknown:
So I so here I am, you know, at first, I've checked to see if I could remove the filtering that they had put on it. No. They actually did a decent job. So I had to find the original image. So I had to dig through, you know, Telegram and other terrorist funding channels Yeah. And propaganda networks before I finally could find it. And then we found the the web address. There are other propaganda ones where they were asking for donations. You know, it's on chain, so we can actually track how much. And it was like they got, like, $20. I mean, are you seriously making this argument and that, you know, where however much it was. But I still remember having to dig through all those, back channels with terrorists and propaganda, and I'm like, I'm on so many lists now if I wasn't before.
You're at the top of the list of actual Probably so. I it's it's gonna come up. We have here evidence that you visit terrorist
[00:48:27] Unknown:
sites. Hey. Well, listen. You're on the a list. You're an a list terrorist now. Probably so. Dangers of the job. The dangers of the job with a lot of this stuff, like, I was talking with Seth for privacy yesterday. We're doing a show on Monero, and we're talking about do you know, Zach xBT? Does a lot of the trend analysis stuff?
[00:48:48] Unknown:
The name sounds familiar, but I'm not thinking right now. Kind of like tracks
[00:48:52] Unknown:
when there's been big hacks then tries to follow criminals and makes this stuff public when there's a large theft or or something like this one where there was just the other day, there was a a huge one, and then it's flowed through EXCH exchange or what whatever it is. We were saying, like, a lot of this investigative journalism, you're either reporting on the government and their cronies and what they're doing to take away freedom. Or on the other side, you're reporting against criminals who are actually stealing, not just normal users. Whichever one you choose, you're on some list, And I don't know which one's worse.
Like, your privacy and security becomes extremely important because you're going against people with a lot of power and sway and who are desperate for power and control, and it's a tough situation to be in sometimes.
[00:49:47] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, being a journalist means you have to speak truth to power, hold people accountable. Often, these are people that don't want to be accountable. And there's a reason in, countries when authoritative take over the government, the first thing they do is take over the media and start arresting journalists. That Yeah. That that should tell you right there. So
[00:50:11] Unknown:
Control the narrative.
[00:50:13] Unknown:
Correct.
[00:50:14] Unknown:
Well, I'm very happy that there's people like you and Lola and others out there who are putting this information out there. It's really important going through all this information and making it accessible to other people who who maybe don't have the time to do the crazy amount of research you're doing. Thank you for what you guys do. We'll keep talking about the articles you put out and the coverage that you have there. And I would just say to anyone who's listening to this, definitely consider going and supporting the rage. Where can people go to support you guys?
[00:50:45] Unknown:
Directly to the site, therage.co. You can read all our articles. There's no paywalls, nothing of that sort. We do have a request that, you know, if you'd like the content, you wanna keep seeing it, make a donation. Don't have to. It's all on the site. There's nothing to stop you. So but please support if you can. It's not free and cheap to, do some of the reporting that we're doing. No. It certainly isn't.
[00:51:11] Unknown:
How can people support can lightning Bitcoin Monero? Like, is there anything?
[00:51:16] Unknown:
No. Whatever you have, we'll take, we'll make it work.
[00:51:21] Unknown:
You'll make it work.
[00:51:22] Unknown:
Alright. Well, well, it's been a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you very much for reaching out. I'm very glad you did. And as I say, we'll keep covering what you guys are doing. And Yes. Please please keep reading. It it sometimes feels like we're screaming into the void. You know? You don't get a lot of, feedback. You put the articles out, and you assume people are reading them, but you don't know how much impact you're actually making. So it it's nice to hear from people.
[00:51:47] Unknown:
Excellent. Alright. Well, thanks a lot, and, hopefully, we'll speak again.
[00:51:52] Unknown:
Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that. I love talking to Will. I'm gonna have to get him on again. I think some of the things that the rage you're covering are incredibly important. As I said at the beginning, there has been a lot of updates since we recorded this, specifically on the samurai case, which is the case that's closest to my heart, and we will see how things progress. But it's really important that the rage is supported financially. If you click in the link in the show notes, you can support them to help keep them going. There are not many independent journalists who actually cover the topics that matter.
Please go and read, go and donate, and help them keep covering what matters. Thanks again to everyone who's been boosting, sending XMR chats, sending messages, questions, everything else into the show. I really do appreciate it. Welcome to all the new listeners. We've had quite a few recently. If you are new and you haven't checked out our website, go to ungovernablemisfits.com. We've got articles, news, clothing coming back very soon, sticker packs, all sorts of things on there, and obviously the pod.
