 I am dead addict. Welcome to Hangover Sunday. Hangover Sunday has been a tradition at Defcon for 12 years now. How many people here do not drink? A raise of hands? Okay, you all feel a lot less pain than everyone around you. So you win. There are advantages. Today I'm going to talk about hacking the media. And I actually had a media person walk up to me and a little bit of concern and they're like, you know, you're not going to talk about data poisoning, our networks, and inserting news articles, and don't know that. I'm like, wow, what a great idea. That would be my next year's speech. Rock on. No, no, when I'm talking about hacking the media, I'm talking about manipulating the media. And it's all legal. So if anyone thinks they're going to learn how to break the law here, I apologize. The gentleman with Google, the Google speech he spoke yesterday, I'll tell you the quick story behind that. He had a flight out today. He contacted me and said, hey, I need to switch with someone because I have a flight out. And I'm like, dude, you're going to mess with some speaker. It'll mess up someone's slot. I don't want to do that to any other speaker that's unreasonable. So I'm like, huh, OK, all right, I want him to speak. So I'll screw up me. So I switched slots with him. Do any of you do volunteer work here? Some of you? Some volunteer work? Right on. That's good. Any of you ever have any inclinations to go into a GM factory and to do some volunteer work on the floor and to help build some cars? Just for a couple hours because cars do need to be built and they have a business to run. So maybe you want to step into the GM plant for a couple hours and kind of help out a little bit. Anyone feel those inclinations ever? Strange. No hands. I'm kind of shocked here. But for some reason, when a reporter walks up to you and says, hey, will you help me do my job and give me content that will be paid for, that my company will make money from, you're kind of doing volunteer work for a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Hey, I'll help you out. And then that always feels that way, right? You're always helping the media. I'll help you out. Damn, I never helped GM out. I'm never like, you know what? You guys need cars. I need to help you. We need to make this happen. For some reason, though, there's some magic when a media person walks up to you. People, I think, feel an obligation or feel compelled to talk to them. You shouldn't feel that. You have no obligations for these people. Nothing. You owe them nothing. It's unreasonable to give away content for no reason. Furthermore, there's bad reasons to give away your content. If you're like, you know what? Damn, I'm going to be on TV. That would be cool. My friends will see me. They'll be like, holy cow, I'm on TV. That's nifty. So then your reason is ego. Now, I have an ego. You all have egos. I understand this. But if that's your only reason for deciding to agree to be interviewed by either print or video media, I propose that that's a very bad reason. And if you want to still have your ego stroke, you can have that. Because the fact they walked up to you, want to talk to you, and are interested in you, bingo. All that ego gratification could and should be satisfied right there. And then, if you want to, you can say, no, thank you. I really don't want to talk to you. Now, I'm going to talk a little bit about when you should say that and when you shouldn't say that. When is it a good time to actually engage the media? When do you want to gain their attention? When do you want to spend your time, your energies giving something to them? So if you don't have your own personal agenda, your own personal agenda, I propose don't talk to the media. If you don't have a reason and a message that you want to communicate, then there's a few reasons for this. A few reasons why you might want to talk to the media. I talked to someone who's somewhat well known here a few years ago, Peter Shipley. And I said, and I like Peter. I've known Peter for years. Some people don't like him. I like him. I said, Peter, why are you such a god damn media whore? Because you can only really say things like that to your friends, right? He's like, well, I'll tell you that, addict. I figured out that every time I stepped in from the camera and talked to the media, I ended up making about $10,000 more a year. I'm like, holy shit, that's a good answer. Oh my god, that's so reasonable. I'm done with that program. So, you know, and people have been labeled as media whores and sometimes I'm a media whore. I'll just flat out say it. But that's a very good reason. He's essentially intentionally furthering his own career and making his name out there so he can do his consulting work or whatever his business is. His bosses see him out there and are like, oh, you are important. Maybe we're not paying you enough. Maybe someone will try to steal you from us. So here's more money. I believed him when he told me this, but it actually happened to me too. I'll explain the anecdote and the interaction with the piece of media a little bit later. But I appeared on a national television program for a while. And man, in some respects I was really unhappy in the context I was portrayed. But about a week after that I was contacted and given a consulting gig outside of work that made me the kind of money that Mr. Shipley is talking about. It was really well. And that happened because someone knew who I was, but seeing my face on television reminded them, holy cow, that addict needs some money and we want to give it to him. That was great. One thing that's very important now, I want to talk to you, how do you choose and to some extent I blame the person that's bitten by the media who gets news bitten, who gets a sound bite. I blame that on the person. If they're burned generally I think it's the responsibility of the person that's burned. That doesn't mean the media that burns you is good or competent or all this, any of this sort of thing. But you need to do research. You don't go into a job and you don't work for a company knowing anything about them. You research your company and the same way you need to do the same kind of due diligence and a reporter that a good reporter should be doing on you in your stories. A reporter walks up to you and says hey, I want to talk to you. And you're like great, give me a Google. I need a net connection. Like give me 10 minutes with net connection. You want to look at two things. First, the output of the reporter in the past. I found in life that it's reasonable to judge people's future behaviors on their past behaviors. It's a reasonable thing for all human beings I think. If someone's behaved in a certain way throughout life they're going to behave that way in the future. So if a reporter's been writing bad hatchet jobs for 10 years and they give you their name and you say okay I'm going to talk to you without researching them well if you research them you'll figure out that they're going to destroy you. Right? So you can prevent this. And if a reporter isn't comfortable with you doing this like a little peripheral research on them before you talk to them that's probably not a good sign. And yeah, that's not good. So there's a couple of things. Print media versus video journalism. Oh, I'm sorry, some air quotes there. Video journalism. The television press. You can't tell a story in three minutes. You can add facts to something, a body of knowledge that people are already familiar with in three minutes, that's not a problem. But for this audience hacker and security community everyone is ignorant. The general public doesn't know anything. So if you want to attempt to inform them it'll take the context of something larger. And there is some video media that has a larger context to work within. But CNN? No, you're not going to you're not going to give them enough information to three minutes isn't enough to inform anyone about anything, really. No Chomsky. Anyone know that name? Chomsky? Hands? Okay. He's on the media all over the world and he's not on the media here so much in America and he is kind of a dissident against American politics. But one thing he says is they need sound bites, they need 30 seconds a minute or whatnot. But in order to convey the depth and the the amount of the perspective that's outside of the mainstream perspective to actually inform and educate people and give people a context on things, you need a lot more than three minutes. As a rule of the nightly news shows, all of those people they will not give you that context and no matter how good their intentions are and no matter how much integrity that journalist has, the constraints they're given won't allow for a good story to come out of it. A documentary, either a one hour or a two hour, these video formats, there's a possibility that a good story will be done. You can actually tell a story in an hour so there's a possibility of this. So there was two or three years ago I was approached by a reporter from A&E Investigative Reports and they were doing a thing, they told me the thing they were doing was cyber crime. I'm like, okay, cyber crime, great and they wanted me, they wanted some new footage to talk about this slew of attacks against Yahoo and eBay and at the time there was just a whole rash of e-commerce attacks. I didn't know anything in particular but honestly, most of the time in hacking stories you don't need specific knowledge, you just need to read the news articles and be informed on your own and then your perspective as a security person will sound informed and be intelligent and anyone could have done this interview anyone. Anyways I had them send me three tapes from previous shows this particular company produced because I wanted to know, okay, you want to interview me while Investigative Reports you could bury me, you could hatch at me so send me some tapes they sent me some tapes I reviewed them, it didn't look all that bad I talked to the reporter that was wanting to do the interview that was great, she seemed like she had integrity, that was great too I said okay, we'll bring you down you can come down, so they flew out and they set up in my house all sorts of stuff, we did the interview and they had integrity they very much had integrity they could have hatched at me, they could have someone takes an hour's worth of video with you you're giving them enough ammunition to destroy you if they want to as a rule, no matter how careful you are if you keep talking for a long enough amount of time that can be spliced together to make you look like an idiot or evil or anything they want you to but she had integrity and I believed in her unfortunately she was producing this for another company, not directly for ANE so she got done with all this, cut it all up sent it to ANE and then what's his face that hosts ANE has his little voice over I watched that story everything the voice over said was arguably incorrect the production company that did the thing he was doing the overlay for they actually did some research they tried very hard, they did a pretty good job but that got itself distinguished and has that authoritative voice and the voice over the host of the show everything he said, nonsense didn't bother me all that much, that's fine what did bother me is the show was not about cyber crime or theft the name of the show was ETERROR so I was thrilled about that, needless to say and I would have been completely upset and very very angry except I got a contract that made me a lot money over the whole thing so it's all good one second please gathering my thoughts and training on my notebook that has too long of a timeout, too short of a timeout for its hibernate thank you Microsoft I like to thank Microsoft in all of my speeches I'm a tester so I make money off bugs so thank you Microsoft so when a media person approaches you you need to look into their background and you need to do the due diligence that's very important also you need to understand what your agenda is the media, when they come to you they have an idea for a story they know what they want to do already as a rule they already have a formulated story and they're fighting you hoping you'll fit the piece that will help their story and reinforce the idea they already had going into it all so to think that they want and you know obviously they're interested in what you have to say because they're talking to you but they really as a rule when they talk to you they already have what they imagine what the story is going to be so it's really important to understand what this is and to get it from them what are you trying to say you want to find out what their agenda is they have an agenda, they really do and they'll be honest about it reporters have stories, they have deadlines they want to get something out that's great for them but you need to figure out what their agenda is because if you don't know what their agenda is walking into the story if you don't know what they framed in their mind as what is the story you'll be shoved in the context of the point they're trying to make which may be good and it may be very very bad often in the area of computer crime what sells is controversy is dramatic things they want a story that will really interest people and ignite people and it can be dangerous in cyber crime okay so one short thing this was the first bullet point I had yeah I'm at my first bullet point, that's right if you commit crimes actively, right now if you're what they call active if you're running around doing crazy stupid illegal things probably very very unwise to talk to the media just to tell you there'll be a point in your life when you're like you know what I have a job or I'll hack my own internal network anymore there'll be a time when you're not going to be one of the round committing felonies that could put in jail for 200 years just for the thrill of discovery your own personal risk analysis at some point in your life will say well that's a bad idea but if you're still running around doing crazy illegal things don't talk to the media do not talk to them the FBI watches the news the FBI watches the news even if there's a little handle underneath you and you're like yeah when I was in the city bank the other day the FBI had some due diligence and they'll figure out who you are so you need to have an agenda walking into the whole thing because they have an agenda and if you understand what their agenda is and then you have your own personal agenda say it's anonymity rights or you want to defend you want to attack some legislation about the severity of penalties for this or that or the other thing and there's a lot of good agendas to have there's a lot of reasons to talk to the press if you can figure out how to change your message to meet with what they need for their story so you essentially match agendas you meet in the middle ground so you give them what they need and people that are experienced or talking to the media have an understanding of what the media needs but you make sure that it's what you need as well otherwise you're being used by them and you're not serving yourself at all you're doing volunteer work for Vox, for Rupert Murdoch oh yes the glory of the slides they're not up there right now because I don't like people watching other things I like people watching me fumble around with my notebook that's much more entertaining so a brief note on the local media I'll just touch on the local media for one second I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings I'm sure there's local media there are good people probably some of them but as a rule they will never do you any good never ever ever ever actually if you want to talk about local school board elections or local matters and your political they'll make a difference in your region that might be worthwhile don't talk about larger issues to the local media because they don't know I was in Amsterdam a couple of years ago and there was a terrorist attack it was post 9-11 someone went off or something or an anthrax thing maybe lots of that stuff going on and I was walking down the street and a local Amsterdam journalist walked up to me and said hey are you an American yes yes yes I'm an American if you want your opinion your reaction to blah blah blah and I'm like oh really can you tell me that carefully a little bit more closely because that's all I know about it what do I know about it who the heck am I I'm a man on the street how can I gain an opinion that by definition is an uneducated opinion so tell me about the terrorist stuff and I'll give you my reactions to it and he's like oh yeah we need a different American that's not the right American for us there's a few questions I think it's getting better but years and years ago there were the common questions that if you were interviewed as a hacker that you would always get the mission of hacking man that's like I wish that discussion would go away I wish the hackers could get the word back and I'd be that but there's another one that is what's your most impressive hack and to me I translate this to what laws have you broken the most dramatic and critical ones that you can talk about on television yeah thanks guys you're looking out for me you get your interview I get my jail time that rocks so I have my answer to that though when the media asked me what's my most impressive hack and I'm not sure many of them get this that no media I've ever related this story to ever says wow that's a great hack they're all kind of frown and no one will ever print it this will not ever be printed as the greatest hack I had so the local media came to 2600 in Austin and I was there and there's a local crew and they had things for the cameras the lighting all sorts of things like three people and they're like yeah we want no about hackers and hacking this is 2600 girl a bunch of hackers great I want to start with local news cool so I'm a skeptical person arguably as a test I'm a professional pessimist I'm like you know I like interviewing the media I enjoy interviewing the media getting information about them getting their perspective this is interesting to me so I asked her a number of questions I asked her a number of questions I'm like can you talk to me about Kevin Mitnick I figured 2600 meeting minimal research is going to 2600.com so I'm like what are the top issues 2600.com off top of my head you know she should know something about some of these you know Kevin Mitnick you know Kevin Mitnick is no you know who Bernie S is that was also a very large issue you know who I went through a list of terms I tried to make it as basic as generic I wasn't drilling down it's not like I was doing an interview where I was trying to probe the depth of their knowledge I was trying to find any knowledge I was trying to find anything about any of the issues she might be reporting about that would have a recognitioner eye nothing eventually she was getting very defensive I didn't mean to put on defensive I just wanted to have an understanding of where she was coming in and she's like look I'm just blah blah blah blah and I'm like look you don't do a story on the global economy without knowing what the New York Stock Exchange is when you have a dumb look in your eyes when someone mentions the New York Stock Exchange doing a story on the global economy that's not a good sign maybe you're not the most qualified person to give that story so I decided that this reporter should not get a story scrutiny on the local hacker scene would not be a good thing I couldn't see any good coming out of it what she wanted on the press would not help us would not help our cause or the multiple of causes that people might have it would be bad so I went around to 30 people one by one and I showed them the list of little key phrases I came up with and I'm like there was a dead look on all of it she doesn't know any of this so what we need to do is after I've talked to everyone about this we all need to look at each other stand up and leave and kill the entire 2600 meeting after about 20 minutes so we did this and her stories walked out the door and mass everyone left everyone was gone and I'm like yeah that's the hack I'm most proud of and I can assure you if I told a story about breaking into some banking system instead that should have get printed every day all day long maybe like wow yes you hacked into blah blah blah cool again that I killed a reporter's story that was clueless and deserving of it honestly most media wouldn't even understand why I would call that a hack they wouldn't get it at all there is there was one person that stayed behind I convinced everyone to leave the room everyone left everyone went somewhere else to party one person stayed behind but he had a consulting business he was just starting up and he was trying to pimp it which is good he was sort of like Peter Shipley he's like ah media I have a point I'm selling something I can get on television people will know who I am and I can make money from it and at the time I was a little bit disappointed that he didn't run away like the rest of the people but in retrospect I understood that was very reasonable so there's another instance which I think it's inappropriate to talk to the media I think they're a good media and I'll tell you personally if I have my treathers I prefer to do background work I prefer to do background because and here's the reason why we should talk to the media at all I'm kind of drumming all these negative things but I don't want everyone walking away from here saying I'm not going to talk to the media they're going to screw me the thing is the problem is there's already these perceptions about what a hacker is how dangerous there what a threat to society there there's all these perceptions that are generally negative out there and if hackers never stand up and have a voice to counter that there will be no opposition to the people that have those opinions and our voice will be lost and the global conversation that is the media will be dominated by people that want to demonize and criminalize us so we really do need to be in the media to some degree and articulate clearly why we're not the bad guys and why we need to reclaim the word and why the laws are overharsh and people shouldn't go to jail for writing crypto code or hacking some hardware for fun and profit so for example let me tell you when I think I would want to refer a reporter to someone else I'm comfortable talking to the media but there's times when I think the thing about background is you're informing the person who's doing these stories and we'll do further stories you're giving them a background of knowledge that they will use in the future and the context because honestly if we could just inform all the media and educate them and get them on the right perspective none of us would have to come on camera ever because they would then start doing good journalism so background is the coolest thing and you can get information about these issues and hear reasonable people articulate about them and point them to academics that have reasonable opinions let me give you an example if I'm occasionally aware of black trench coat if I'm wearing this black trench coat and all punked out and looking like a freak and a reporter comes up to me and says hey we want to talk about library filters and keeping child porn out of the hands of people that go to the library I think I'll look at myself in the mirror and I'll be like did you just ask me to defend child pornography what no no no no no I'm against filters but no no hold on furthermore I look like a freak which is fine sometimes I look like a freak that's a lot of fun but what I think would be more appropriate partially because I'm not the expert on these things I know people that have made library filtering their cause and can name congressional sites that the filters won't let you get to and all this sort of things people that are really in depth and know what they're talking about I would refer them to someone else and I would not let them take the story from me and another example if someone want to talk to me about e-voting for example I would not at DEF CON if they hadn't talked to Rebecca Rebecca Mercury who did the presentation on it and knows all this stuff I wouldn't want to talk to him you're not looking to be informed on this the information is right there that's the expert source I'll give an opinion if you've already gotten the expert I'll be the man on the street for that one I haven't found a single security expert or hacker that thinks and let me know if you find one afterwards I'm interested in having discussion with them that should be lots of fun but if you can point the media to the right place and not through the story yourself you're still impacting the media in a good way you're still creating the story that you want created because we talked a little bit about PR firms and the influence of corporations on the media PR firms white press releases and those press releases get turned into news stories and the vast majority of everyone on the globe is lazy this also applies to journalists so if they can get spoon fed some stories they're all over it and hence you'll see stories that were essentially handed to them and even on television you'll see stories on television where the video footage is provided by a multinational corporation publishing their agenda and they're creating news and the news is very much event oriented there's nothing that happens for example I'll use the electronic voting as an example I think this is very interesting the state of the security and the voting systems has been poor forever since anyone ever attempted to do anything there has been some scrutiny and research that's shown this but this has been a known fact to anyone that's cared to investigate and for some reason apparently two days ago all of the media around was publishing stories about what happened at Black Hat and then at DEF CON regarding Beth Harris and Rebecca Mercury's speech on electronic voting this was an event for them nothing happened there was an explosion somewhere that happened suddenly voting was insecure now there's an event that happened which was they gave a presentation and suddenly the media wrote all these stories about something that was a constant condition there's this constant condition of what was going on but it wasn't news worthy until there was an event associated with it so they're very much event driven we're at an event right now obviously oh yeah I have to mention this this is the most mortifying media experience that ever happened to me at DEF CON I wanted to shoot myself like when the person introduced themselves but I'm hanging around pool whatever and someone walks up to me and they say hi I'm from a teen people like oh fuck no no no how did you get here what about this we want to talk to you about what you're wearing can you talk about some fashion trends in the hacker community so I told them no and then I asked them for a gun and a bullet so I could shoot myself when teen people are showing up at DEF CON showing up at DEF CON I don't know they shouldn't have gotten that memo they should not have gotten that memo they're like it'll be fun and you know I couldn't criticize them too much like to expect to expect to expect knowledge wisdom and perspective from a reporter from teen people then I'm an idiot right so that's another thing in addition to looking at the reporter and looking at the stories they've done be it newsprint or video also look at what they're doing the story for what's the publication so it's entirely possible the reporter has been like a reasonable person that's been doing freelance work that there's lots of great stuff they've been doing but right now their assignment is from some really bad paper some really I I don't want to give any examples Fox offhand if they're from a source that is is clearly unreputable or has a context of printing things that aren't inflammatory or irresponsible then while the person may be a responsible person and a good person their editor is demanding things from them in order to get something published and printed and so it probably won't be a good story so also look at the publication and look at the context in which it will appear I love silence silence is so much fun oh let me just give a couple practical tips for talking to video media and I really recommend video media it'll hit more people it will reach more people so that's an advantage but print media is in my mind the only thing that has a chance to educate people unless the format is of considerable length three minutes it's not going to work let me talk to video media and I've done it and I continue to do it for some reason it's probably my ego let me do some tips first of all the whatever the reporter says and they ask you a question you're on tape remember that that is not what is going to be on television their question will never appear anything you ever say to the media has to stand alone I would say every sentence that you speak expected to be chopped out and there's just that one sentence so try to think in complete thoughts in complete sentences construct them and this will help you from being taken out of context so and if you want to fuck the video or whatnot you just want to play with them a little bit they show a camera in your face and ask you a question just answer yes I think so or no not really and they can't use it and they'll try to explain no you really need to explain a little bit but yes I do another thing and I misspeak myself consistently continually if you find yourself saying something you didn't mean to say on camera obviously we're not talking about anything live and god I would never do anything live if you find yourself saying like oh wow what am I saying here stop yourself mid-sentence make the entire clip unusable and just say I'm sorry and then just start a new sentence because they know how to splice a clip so anytime you you're uncomfortable with what you just said or you don't think you stated it in the most effective in an appropriate way stop yourself mid-sentence and explain don't stay because that also won't be in the media and then try to do it again they'll understand this that's absolutely fine also I highly recommend thinking after they ask the question don't answer them immediately tell me about blah blah blah do not open your mouth at that point do not do that because the instinct conversational people and they they want to just react without thinking and words come out of people's mouths without thinking them through that can be very bad for you so you get the question sit on it for a couple seconds kind of construct not all the words but like construct a response in your mind and then give it back out to them and they won't mind this and if they do it doesn't matter you're just looking out for your own best interests you don't want to be a sound bit that's always very bad oh yes the glory of word I would like to talk a little bit about the evolution of covering hackers in the media and how everything has changed and I think for the better Defcon I believe was the first and I could be wrong, that's fine I'm often wrong I believe it's the first hackers conference and this wasn't there were some mixed feelings about this we also invited a prosecutor and the media and lawyers so we figured well feds are going to come anyways so we might as well invite them let everyone know upfront the feds are here but then if the feds want to bust us for something unreasonable we want press here to cover that so we'll check some balances going on and then if we really need one we want a lawyer on hand too lawyers and the press and the feds, I think that's a good idea I'm happy how that's worked out the coverage has changed a lot over the years and I don't know how many of you when you started getting interest in this stuff and went through every frack that was ever published and read them cover to cover I will tell you there's a hand up there, rock on dude have you done that in the last three years? because ten years ago that was doable ten years ago you could like go through and you'd have some reams of paper and stacks of paper but you could actually get through and read all this stuff now like a single frack issue is a friggin book so reading it all now is a lot harder I still think everyone should do it but there's a section in there about news coverage and I think it's really interesting to look at those old fracks and they reprint news stories and they show you what people were saying about hackers and it was abysmal it was scary there was no nuance it was all bad it was about criminal activities and it was about impressive hacks and people going to jail there's no one on the beat the media that were writing these stories weren't informed on the topics they were writing about and as time has gone by there are high tech crime reporters computer crime reporters who are clueless that know what they're doing and if you have a story if you have some information that is newsworthy and you want to give it to someone make sure you find the best reporter to hand it to the trustworthy one and people that have been covering the speed for some time and I must give some props to Kevin Polson's journalism I guess he has a bit of a perspective and knowledge on it that surpasses the average journalist so things are improving dramatically and there's a lot more balanced and fair coverage now so to speak and I think collectively we are the only ones that can really improve the situation further we are the only ones that have the power to change the public's perception of what it is to be passionate and curious and obsessive that doesn't merely have criminal connotations you know I don't know if the word hacker if we can reclaim that word to just mean you know obsessively curious, anti-authoritarian not a bad person really without hackers we'd be in trouble just a small thing that amused me about what the media was reporting without a one-sided report a few years ago virtually every company out there wanted to make a very public statement about hackers and their hiring policies and so there there was story in story in story written about how XYZ company does not hire hackers this does not happen it was unopposed, there was no opposing voice in the press there was no stories to counter this thing and therefore everyone that read any of this I mean these things you're like oh well Microsoft doesn't hire hackers ISS doesn't hire hackers by and few don't you know and I'm not those weren't necessarily companies that said it I was just picking random companies as examples the funny thing was though at the time all of my hacker friends were employed you know it was at the top of the dot-com boom they all had jobs and I looked at these people they were giving quotes about not hiring hackers and all my friends were working at them and so I don't know what that means I don't know what they meant when they said that either they were lying or the PR person that decided to give that quote to the media didn't know the freak that was actually keeping their infrastructure intact I'm not sure I assume it was a very deliberate misinformation and deception but it was unopposed there weren't people standing up and saying yeah I work for you know well that was the problem people don't want to jeopardize their job but if someone would have stood up and said hey all my friends are working at all these companies and everyone's a liar I think some I think the perception of hackers would be changed at that point in a small bit whittling away at people's perceptions and constant influx of reinforcement of the message so people in corporations are taught how to deal with the media they're given little classes, little one day classes and I talked to someone recently that speaks to the media I had a large corporation they speak to them quite a lot and one of the things she says and it makes complete sense it's all kind of conventional it's just intuitive it's to stay on point remember I was talking about their agenda and your agenda they say well what about the dangers of child pornography at libraries and you say well the problem with filtering is that all these things are blocked out and these first amendment issues and these freedom of speech issues are in the question at all they ask you the question and that response has nothing to do with their question but they still might use it it still might be useful for them they might be frustrated by this but they still have something they have some content at the end of the day they need to publish a story so it might get in so stay on point think of your agenda every time you open your mouth what is the point I'm trying to make what's in your question they say don't even just say think to yourself I can say anything I want now they appreciate it they'll probably get frustrated if they don't get anything they can use if you want to propagate your message you have to give it within the context to the story they're writing so you have to give them something they're going to use but always stay on message and on point it's terribly frustrating with politicians for example you ever see politicians interviewed and they're like wow the person asks a question the answer had nothing to do with it they're herping on, they're reading a script like they're ignoring the journalists what's going on there I don't know, in the interview it looks like the person is totally evasive and whatnot of course that's an interview setting as opposed to many other formats where the interviewer doesn't tell us whatever, get in the media unless we're sitting down with Tom Brokaw or whatever so always stay on point I don't know I have about 20 minutes of material on how to be an intelligent news consumer but I'm in about 5 minutes of time so I'll wrap it up and say how you are perceived is up to you we have impact on how hackers the whole are perceived being able to be given the opportunity to talk to the media gives you power but it can also place you in danger and don't get hacked by the media because it's not because they were bad people it's because your defenses were down and if you do it right you and we can hack the media successfully thank you