Unmasking The Russians Who Hacked The DNC
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode April Glaser is joined once again by co-host Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. They start by talking about the Sri Lankan government’s shutdown of Facebook and WhatsApp after the Easter attacks on churches and hotels.
Then they talk to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a staff writer for Motherboard and producer for CYBER, a Motherboard podcast about hacking. In their conversation Franceschi-Bicchierai talks about the time he corresponded directly with hackers who infiltrated the servers of the Democratic National Committee. Those hackers initially tried to pass themselves off as a lone Romanian hacker named Guccifer 2.0.
Then slate writer Rachelle Hampton joins the show to talk about her cover story, The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:04.8 | I'm April Glazer. |
| 0:06.1 | And I'm Siva Vaidyanathan. |
| 0:14.7 | Hey, everyone. Welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership |
| 0:19.1 | between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:22.7 | We're recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 23rd. |
| 0:26.3 | You'll notice I'm joined once again by Siva Fidianathan, whose guest hosting again this week. |
| 0:32.1 | Siva is the director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. |
| 0:37.2 | He's also the author of a book called Anti-Ssocial Media, How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, and the book, The Googlization of Everything. |
| 0:45.5 | Siva, thanks for coming on again. |
| 0:47.3 | Oh, April, thanks again for having me back. |
| 0:49.4 | I had such a great time talking with you last week and being part of the show last week. And then |
| 0:54.3 | even better, the reaction and response I got from the listening audience was really outstanding. |
| 1:01.7 | And I got some emails, too, which I should forward you. People really did enjoy your |
| 1:04.9 | interview with Andy Greenberg. If you didn't catch that last week, please do and subscribe. |
| 1:09.2 | On today's show, we'll talk about how the Sri Lankan government |
| 1:11.9 | shut down Facebook and WhatsApp after the attacks on Easter Sunday that killed nearly 300 |
| 1:17.5 | people. After that, we're going in on a key part of the Mueller report, the Russian cyber |
| 1:23.2 | attack on the Democratic National Committee and the release of documents through WikiLeaks, |
| 1:28.0 | as well as an odd persona invented by Russian intelligence. Joining us to discuss this is Lorenzo |
| 1:34.4 | Franceschi Bikyera, a writer for motherboard who has corresponded directly with some of the |
| 1:40.1 | Kremlin-linked hackers. And as always, we'll end with Don't Close My Tabs, some of the best things we saw on the web this week. |
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