So, good morning or good afternoon. My name is Chris Segoian. I'm the principal technologist for the speech privacy and technology project at the ACLU. I started last September. I'm the first ever technologist that the ACLU has had who's focused specifically on surveillance and privacy. I finished a PhD last year, specifically focused on the role the internet and phone companies play in spying on their customers for the government. It's an extremely timely topic. So, I started last September. The ACLU has been very busy in the last year on surveillance issues. Shortly after the Snowden revelations, we were the first organizations to file suit against the national security agency. Although we were... Thank you very much. Although we are not the last, several other great organizations have also sued the NSA and hopefully those will keep coming. So, today I'm going to be talking... I'm going to be telling a story. I'm going to be telling a story of how law enforcement and the government have responded to technical change. This will be a story in, I guess, three acts and really delves into the relationship between the companies and the governments and the different kinds of relationships because not all companies are the same. Some are friendlier than others to the government. So, the first crypto wars. Those of you who are a little bit older may remember there was a time when you couldn't export strong cryptography from the United States. In the mid-90s, then FBI director Louis Free went before Congress on numerous occasions and warned Congress about the threat of encryption. The widespread use of robust, non-key recovery encryption ultimately will devastate our ability to fight crime and to prevent terrorism, free said at a congressional hearing in 1997.  In the mid-90s, encryption was a technology that the government sought to demonize. They sought to control the spread of encryption and ultimately to pressure companies to modify their products. So, Free also said, the only acceptable answer is socially responsible encryption products that permit timely law enforcement and national security access and decryption pursuant to a court order or otherwise authorized by law. The socially responsible crypto that the FBI backed in the mid-90s looked like this. This is called the clipper chip. Thankfully, the clipper chip failed. Professor Matt Blaise found several significant security vulnerabilities in the clipper chip that meant that it actually wasn't even good at protecting people from everyone other than the NSA. And so ultimately, the first wave of the crypto wars failed. Congress and the executive branch ultimately did away with the crypto export control rules. In 1996, President Clinton signed an executive order reclassifying cryptography and in the years that followed, the rules were further relaxed. Ultimately, companies like PGP were allowed to export their technology around the world. Web browser vendors like Microsoft and Netscape were allowed to export full 128-bit crypto to anyone except people in Cuba and Iran and a couple other countries. And so really, the FBI's initial attempts and the FBI and the NSA were sort of collaborating there. Their initial attempts to control crypto failed. Their previous strategy was let's stop everyone else other than Americans from getting this stuff. If we make it difficult for them to get the technology, they won't use it and then we'll easily be able to monitor their communications and get their data. But even after the crypto export control rules were weakened and you could download PGP no matter in which country you were, it didn't actually lead to the widespread use of PGP. Hands up, everyone who uses PGP on a daily basis. And for this audience, that's not really that good. I'll confess, I only use it with a handful of colleagues and journalists. Most people who contact me don't know how to use it. And the reason is PGP is really difficult to use. There's a major important study by Alma Witton, who's actually now at Google, 10 years ago pointing out the usability failure of PGP. Turns out that when a tool is ridiculously difficult to understand how to use, people either don't use it or they use it wrong. They think they're encrypting when they're not encrypting, which is actually worse because then they will say things that they might not have said if they thought their emails were going through the clear. And so the widespread availability of encryption really didn't frustrate the FBI in the way that they thought it would.  They're lazy and they're not experts at difficult to use obscure technology. And so PGP wasn't the threat that they thought it would be. HTTPS, the lock icon that we see in our browsers is easier to use because it doesn't really involve anything from the user's side but even that wasn't widely deployed. Where SSL was widely used was in e-commerce, online banking. If you were sending your credit card over the web, your communications would be encrypted. But if you were sending your emails, social networking messages, private photos, backing up files, very few of these things would be protected with SSL. And so again, the government had a good time. They didn't have to worry too hard. Although the technologies existed, no one was using them. Or at least they weren't using them for the things the FBI cared about. This is a slide that the Guardian published this week. It's from the latest deck that Snowden provided them. This is a deck from Xkeyscore which is the program they have or the intelligence platform that allows them to monitor vast amounts of communications and then search for it later. Now this deck is from 2008, 2007. So it's a few years old but what you can see clearly outside of law enforcement and in the intelligence space, these folks appreciated that communications were going over the network in the clear. Whether it was Yahoo or Facebook or Twitter or your emails, they were there easily available for the government to grab with the assistance of their friends at the backbone internet providers. And so things were good for a while. It didn't really matter that your browser could do strong crypto. It didn't really matter that you could download tools from a website and configure them and then have a key signing party because no one was doing that. But that didn't stop the FBI from worrying because down the road they saw that things were going to get bad. And it wasn't going to be because people could download tools. But it was going to be because companies were going to start building crypto into their products by default. This is Valerie Caproni. She was until I think a year ago, the general counsel for the FBI, the top FBI lawyer. She's testified before Congress on numerous occasions and in 2011, at a congressional hearing, she warned Congress about what the FBI was calling the going dark problem. Going dark is the FBI's term for what happens when everyone uses encrypted communications. The FBI has coined this term and spent lots of money researching this issue because they're worried about a day in which all of the communications that users are sending are going to be off limits to the FBI. This is in 2011, quote, the FBI and other government agencies are facing a potential widening gap between our legal authority to intercept communications pursuant to a court order and our practical ability to actually intercept those communications. The FBI says that they can get a court order, but when they actually try and get the communications, either the company doesn't have the capability because they haven't built wiretapping systems into their networks or the company cannot provide the data. She added encryption is a problem. It is a problem we see for certain providers. And so what she was describing there was the fact that over a couple years, starting in 2010, companies in Silicon Valley started rolling out SSL encryption by default. In a Washington Post story just last year, a former FBI official described this to the Post. Officials say that the challenge was exacerbated in 2010 when Google began end to end encryption. That made it more difficult for the FBI to intercept email by serving a court order on the ISP whose pipes would carry the encrypted traffic. In 2010, Google was the first of the big free web mail providers to turn on SSL by default. Google had always offered SSL as an option, but it was an option deep in several layers of configuration screens. I think it was the last of 13 options after the vacation auto away message, after Unicode, there was nothing less important in the Google configuration screen than SSL. And so, of course, no one used it. When the option was hidden and disabled by default, no one's emails were secure between the user and Google. But in January of 2010, Google flipped the switch and enabled SSL by default. And in the years that followed, several other Silicon Valley companies did the same. It was Twitter. Then Microsoft, with their renamed hot mail to Outlook, and they turned on SSL at the same time. Facebook started doing it last year, started rolling it out, and I think just this week announced that all Facebook communications will be SSL encrypted from the user to Facebook servers. In addition to that, several companies have started rolling out perfect forward secrecy, an improved algorithm that makes it much more difficult for government agencies to go to companies and demand private keys. They're upping their key sizes. These Silicon Valley companies are making passive interception much more difficult. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that the government can't get things from Google. Your communications between your computer and Google servers are encrypted. But once the files actually arrive at Google, whether it's your emails or your private photographs or your instant messages, they're sitting there in plain text. This is Vint Cerf. He's Google's, I think, their chief internet evangelist. He's also sort of the father of TCPIP. I was on a panel with him in 2011 in Nairobi, and we started talking about Google's lack of stored encryption. And he said, quote, we couldn't run our system if everything in it were encrypted, because then we wouldn't know which ads to show you. This is a system that was designed around a particular business model. So this is a very honest statement from a Google executive. And I don't begrudge Google, right? They offer a fantastic, easy to use service, and they don't charge people for it. And neither does Twitter and neither does Facebook. These companies all offer one and only one product. There's no way to pay for Facebook. There's no way to pay for Twitter. There's no way to upgrade your Gmail account to a corporate account, a Google apps account. They have the accounts for users and then the accounts for businesses. And when the only accounts they offer are free ones that are supported by ads, then it makes sense why they're not encrypting your data in the cloud with a key that only you have, because it would be very difficult to monetize that. Now, if the companies could, and maybe will at some point, switch to a business model where you give them money and they give you a secure service, but that isn't the business that they're in right now. And so what this means then is that the companies can and do receive requests from law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. Even before the prism revelations, we've known that Google gets thousands of requests a year from law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This isn't a surprise. But what we've seen in the last few years is a transition. We've seen a migration away from telecommunications companies to Silicon Valley companies. In years past, your private messages, your metadata would be accessible through a backbone provider, through a telephone company, through one of the mob bells, right? And like it or not, the telephone companies have been providing wiretapping assistance to the U.S. government for more than 100 years. The first wiretaps were around 1895 in New York City. For 100 years, these companies have been providing interception assistance to the U.S. government. And it's a relationship that everyone is sort of comfortable with. Everyone, and by that I mean the companies and the government. And so these companies don't just provide targeted access. They don't just provide access to an individual user's data. They provide, when the government asks, access to all user's data. The assistance of the phone companies is what enables drag net surveillance. When the government wants to search through every email or search through every phone record, that is only possible because the phone companies provide access to everything. If you take the internet companies at their word, the Silicon Valley companies, they only provide targeted access. If the government goes to Google and has a court order with my name on it, Google will hand over my data. But if you take Google at their word, they will not provide access to everyone's information. And so what's happened over the last few years is that consumers have started to migrate their data from the old telecommunications carriers to Silicon Valley companies. I mean, in many ways, the telcos haven't had people's email for a while. I mean, no one's using a Verizon or Comcast email anymore really. But when those email messages were going over the network in the clear, it meant the government could still go to the backbone providers. It meant they could still go to the AT&T's and the Verizon's of the world, even if you were using Yahoo or Google or Hotmail. But as these Silicon Valley companies have enabled encryption, you can no longer spy on someone's emails. You can no longer collect bulk information with the assistance of Verizon or AT&T. And I think a great example of this is what Apple did with iOS version five. In one day, they just flipped a switch and suddenly a new version of iMessage was rolled out to users. And if you were an iOS user and you were sending a text message to another iOS user, your messages would go through Apple servers instead of the phone companies. And overnight, millions and then billions of messages started flowing through Apple servers. And those were messages that the government cannot get with the assistance of Verizon or AT&T and Sprint. Now, again, this was a leak that was, this is a document that was leaked to Declan McCulloch, CNET suggesting that the government can never get messages sent through iMessage. I actually don't think that's the case. I think that Apple provides access on a targeted basis, but I don't think they are providing wholesale access in the way that the phone companies do. And I think what's happened here is that there's a difference in culture between the companies. It's not that Google is trying to make the government go dark. It's that Google has 350 people doing nothing but security and only security. It's that Apple has a dedicated security team. It's that Facebook has a dedicated security team. And before you can launch a product at one of these Silicon Valley firms, particularly if it's storing sensitive user data, you have to have crypto. There's no way to secure your user's data against hackers without crypto. And so these companies have, you know, it's a corporate policy to encrypt data not because they want the government to go dark, but because that's what the security teams that the companies demand of them. And realistically, the phone companies don't have a tradition of security. Your voicemail isn't secure. You're not getting OS updates to your smartphone if you're using Android, which is by the way something we filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about earlier this year. The phone companies just aren't interested in security. And so what's happening is consumers are giving their data to companies that finally invest some resources in security and that's making it tougher for the government. So what is the solution? How does the government respond to a world in which they can only, they can only get selective data from companies and in some cases they cannot get data at all if the companies are using end-to-end crypto? The answer is backdoors. The answer is compelled access, forcing companies to modify their products and provide the government with a way of getting data. Starting in sort of 2010 we started seeing leaks to the press suggesting that the FBI and others in the law enforcement community were floating these ideas. They were floating legislative proposals expanding KALIA, which is a law mandating backdoors and communications networks and expanding that to internet companies, to websites and apps and and other providers. We saw sort of these trial balloons floated in 2010 and then ultimately there was a congressional hearing in the spring of 2011 where our friend Valerie Caproni from the FBI testified, quote, no one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order. They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text too. Right? And this is what the FBI wants. They want the power to go to a company secretly and force the company to quietly insert a backdoor in their own product. As recent as this year, as recent as April of this year, it looked like proposals were coming. It looked like there was a multi-agency working group in Washington and they were getting ready to drop a bill that would empower the Department of Justice to find Silicon Valley companies that refused to provide the assistance demanded of them. And then something happened. KALIA II, which is the DC nickname for this backdoor proposal, for now is dead. It is dead in the water. No politician wants to touch that kind of surveillance for now. So thank you very much, Edward Snowden. All right, so if they can't force Google to put a backdoor in Android OS, and if they can't force Apple to put a backdoor in their software, what are they going to do? How is the government going to get your communications? What about when they want to listen into a conversation you're having in your living room where you're not even using your device? Right? Are they supposed to break in in the middle of the night and install a microphone like they did in the 1970s? No. Right? They want other ways to access data. Particularly as consumers have started using services like Skype and we'll talk about Skype later, but services like Skype that have some form of encryption, governments have been having problems. And remember, the government isn't one big beast. The FBI or NSA may have tools to access certain applications, but that doesn't mean they share those toys with local law enforcement agencies. NSA doesn't share their secret backdoors with the likes of local cops in Arizona or Nevada. Those folks have to do things the hard way. It's also important to note that not all governments are the same. So Google has an office, in fact it's main office in California and Microsoft's headquarters is in Seattle. Google and Microsoft have to take orders from the U.S. government. When there's a valid court order, the companies have to provide access to the U.S. government. But Google doesn't have an office in Iran. Microsoft doesn't have an office in Libya. And so if those governments want to get their citizens' communications, now that Google and Microsoft and others are starting to use SSL, those other governments are really going dark. In the countries where Google and Microsoft don't have offices and don't respond to requests, those governments are having a really tough time because of the use of services like Skype, like Twitter, like Facebook. They used to be able to get access through their local, in many cases nationalized telephone company. And now they're going dark. And so those governments are turning to hacking tools too. What we're seeing is an emergence of the private sector helping companies, helping governments. The ones that have gotten the most press, the first is a company called Gamma. They make a software suite called FinFisher. FinFisher has gotten a lot of press in the last couple of years starting with a dump of documents by WikiLeaks and then the excellent work of the Citizen Lab in Canada have exposed the use of their software. They have a really cheesy sales video online that I recommend you look at. So this is the target using iTunes and then getting a malicious man in the middle to update through iTunes and then the police officer sitting at the remote operating center can spy on the calls and text messages and emails of the user. This is the president or I think a CEO of Gamma. His name is Martin Munch. You may not know Martin's name but you probably know Martin's work. Before he was in the government surveillance business, Martin created a Linux distribution called Backtrack, which is very popular with this community. So Martin pivoted from providing open source security tools to providing closed source government interception tools. This is my favorite photo of Martin. He's a German guy. Without any shame sells this software to governments around the world. One of the things his software can do is to remotely activate webcams without the target's knowledge. You can see that he's concerned about this capability because if you zoom in on his laptop you can see he has a little post-it note over his webcam. He clearly knows what his own software can do. So because of the work of the folks at CitizenLab, we know that Gamma's software has been exported to Mexico, Ethiopia. It's been used by seriously oppressive regimes in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. Now, the company says that it's used for lawful interception and targeting of terrorists and pedophiles and criminals. But from what we know it's been frequently used to target journalists and human rights activists and dissidents. And so Gamma is one of these companies providing these off-the- shelf tools to governments. The police don't have the resources to develop this stuff in-house and so they just buy this off-the-shelf spyware from companies like Gamma. Through the last couple years the newspapers have covered this. The Times and Bloomberg have described the spread of this stuff. And the sale of this technology is really unregulated. Basically any government except for the ones on international blacklists can buy it. The other big company is a company called Hacking Team. They're an Italian company. They make something called the Remote Control System, otherwise known as DaVinci. They have a sales video too that appears to be targeted to 13-year-old boys. Their marketing stuff says defeat encryption, total control over your targets, log everything you need, thousands of encrypted communications per day, get them in the clear. And this software really is sold to law enforcement agencies who are trying to deal with things like Skype. Right? If you're the government of Turkmenistan and there are journalists in your country who are using Skype to communicate, how do you get the contents of their calls when you need them? The phone company in town can't help you. You go to Gamma or Hacking Team and they provide you these tools. This is again from Hacking Team's literature. They say that they can get encrypted voice, location, audio and video spying, web browsing activities, relationships. They get anything that is on a computer without the knowledge of the target. Hacking Team in recent years has expanded into the U.S. market, I believe. In the spring of this year, they hired this man. His name is Eric. He used to be a spokesperson for Verizon. And now he is the U.S. Council for Hacking Team. They have an office in Annapolis, Maryland, just an hour outside of D.C. We don't know whether Hacking Team has successfully sold any products to the domestic U.S. law enforcement market. But they are showing up at conferences that are only open to law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Washington, D.C. They also went to a conference in Chicago this April, the Law Enforcement Intelligence Units Association. Not only did Hacking Team give a talk at this conference, this is a conference targeting local cops around the country. Not only did they give a talk at the conference, but they also sponsored the coffee break in the afternoon. And so if Hacking Team hasn't sold a product to a local law enforcement agency yet, it's not because they haven't been trying. They've been showing up at these conferences for several years. They are actively targeting the law enforcement market. And I think if they haven't succeeded already, they will succeed soon and get a sale in a small town. Now, Hacking Team and Gamma Software is the kind of stuff that local cops and governments without too much money use. This is, you know, a couple hundred thousand or maybe a million dollars. It's the kind of thing you buy with a DHS grant. This is not what you use if you are a sophisticated law enforcement agency with big bucks. And the feds have the big bucks. Federal law enforcement agencies in the United States have enough money to use bespoke custom malware. They don't need to use the same stuff that the Egyptians and the Turkmenistan governments are using. They can use their own custom spyware and they can buy zero days if they need them. Again, our friend, Valerie Caproni, there will always be very sophisticated criminals that are virtually impossible to intercept through targeted means. The government understands that it must develop individually tailored solutions for those sorts of targets. And when Valerie says individually tailored solutions, what she means is hacking. She didn't use the word hacking when she spoke to Congress, but what she means is hacking and malware. In 2009 or so, I think EFF filed one of their many Freedom of Information Act requests to look into the FBI's claims that they were going dark. And after a couple years later, they got hundreds of pages of documents, most of them heavily redacted. This is one that I found, so I read a lot of the documents that groups like EFF produce and documents that the ACLU obtains. And this was one in several hundred pages that the EFF obtained. And most of it was redacted, as you can see, but there was one line that stuck out to me. This, the remote operations unit. So that sounded really interesting. I didn't really know what the remote operations unit was, but it was in a document about going dark. This was a document sort of describing each unit checking in and saying what their progress was. So I thought, okay, let me see what else I can find about the remote operations unit. And so I spent the last six months researching this unit, mainly using open source intelligence, basically just googling and using LinkedIn. And what I found is that the FBI is in the hacking business too. So I found a conference, the materials for a law enforcement conference that happened in April of this year. This was a training session, a training seminar for prosecutors around the country. And in the list of attendees and speakers at this conference, I found the information for this guy, Eric Chang, who's the unit chief of the remote operations unit. And so I searched a bit more, and I found the Zoom info page. This is like a data mining company that collects information from elsewhere on the web. And Eric Chang's Zoom info page mentioned that he was the unit chief of the remote operations unit and said that the unit provides lawful computer collection capabilities in support of FBI investigations. Well, that sounded interesting. So then I turned to LinkedIn and I started researching the remote operations unit. What I found is that there are a couple of contracting companies, a couple of contractors who supply people to the ROU. And contractors, like everyone else, they want to keep their resume up to date in case they get a new job. And so they list things in their resume, maybe things they shouldn't be listing, revealing what they did at their old job. So I've not included the names of the line, or the low-level contractors, but I will be quoting from the LinkedIn pages of several of these contractors because I think what they describe is fascinating. So this is a deployment operations analyst at a company called James Biman Associates. They're a small boutique contracting company in Northern Virginia. So this person performed testing on software used as a critical function for counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases. Okay, that sounds interesting. He worked with FBI case agents with our surveillance imagery software that is currently installed on criminal subject machines in the field. Oh. Okay. That's even more interesting. They test case-specific implants against various OSs and platforms. Good to know. So if you're using Windows or Mac or whatever, they have a tool for you. And then they create documentation for the various technologies and methods that we use to gain access to subject machines. All right, so it's clear. It's clear from this profile what the remote operations unit is doing. I also found another person. This is a remote operations deployment analyst also at James Biman Associates. Her profile was fascinating. I thought this was good. She created policies, guidance and training materials to protect the deployment operations tools from being discovered by adversaries. Those are us. We're the adversaries. So Biman Associates is one of two companies that provides hackers to the FBI. It's my belief and understanding that the companies, the contracting companies actually supply the people who sit at the keyboard and are launching the tools. You know, there hasn't been a debate in Congress about the FBI getting into the hacking business. There hasn't been any legislation giving this power. This just sort of happened out of nowhere. And had it not been for the sloppy actions of a few contractors eagerly updating their LinkedIn profiles, we would have never known about this. So the president of James Biman Associates is a guy named Jerry Menshoff. He used to work at Booz Allen Hamilton, which is also the same place that Edward Snowden used to work. And so this is the president of the company and his LinkedIn profile was pretty bare. But it did describe one of his interests. And so he's a member of the Metaspoit framework users group. I thought you guys would get a chuckle out of that. So I gave Jerry a phone call a few weeks ago and asked him some questions. Of course told him who I was and I said I work for the ACLU and he wasn't very nice. He didn't want to answer any of my questions. So I gave some of this information to the Wall Street Journal and last night they published a story on this unit. The nice part of giving these documents to newspapers once they have a bit of information then they can go and report it and get other stuff too. And so the Wall Street Journal reporter was able to find former law enforcement officials who would be willing to talk on background about this practice. One former law enforcement officials she spoke to said that, quote, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones, Android phones and laptops without the user knowing. It's pretty interesting. But she also added that the FBI is loathe to use these tools when investigating hackers out of fear that the suspect will discover and publicize the technique. So I guess that means you're all safe from FBI malware. So the FBI has this team of agents who are doing nothing but delivering malware to the computers of surveillance targets. We only have a couple cases where these tools have come to light. There was a case in Texas this summer where the FBI sought a search warrant allowing them to target a computer and remotely enable the webcam, collect location data, collect emails. In this case they went to what you could probably say is the most pro-privacy judge in the country in Texas and he said no.  What's clear is that if you have this capability, if you build this team that does nothing but developing malware, the first time you attempt to use the team you don't go to the most pro-privacy judge in the country. And so presumably they've had this team for a while and they regularly use it to deploy malware. So on one hand we have the FBI basically being in the hacking business and then yesterday I noticed that the FBI's official Twitter account issued a warning saying pirated software may contain malware, be aware. And so I guess we only have to worry about the malware made by other people not the FBI's malware. All right. So the government is using hacking tools. The government is trying to penetrate people's computers. They have tried and have up until now been unsuccessful in their attempts to obtain legislation allowing them to force tech companies to put back doors in their products. What are they going to do in the future? Because hacking doesn't scale. You can break into one person's computer. You can break into a thousand people's computers but you cannot break into a billion computers without getting caught. You can do it temporarily but you will get caught and the government doesn't want their tools to get out. So what are they going to do in the future? What are they going to do when Silicon Valley companies actually start delivering end-to-end crypto? Not Google, not Facebook but companies who actually sell services to users. While Microsoft, you know, owned one of those companies for some time Skype was advertising itself as a service that didn't have back doors. They were advertising itself as a service that couldn't provide access to law enforcement agencies but we learned last month that the government was able to go to Skype before Microsoft bought them and convinced them to modify their products and provide access to the government. Quote from the Guardian story, Skype was served with a directive to comply by the Attorney General. Now we don't know what kind of directive this was. We don't know if they went to court, if Skype said no and they fought it or if they did this because they could negotiate some better deal. We really know very little about the ins and outs of how companies can be compelled under existing law.  And by the time Microsoft bought them, all their claims of being wire tap proof had disappeared. Skype was no longer a service, even if it ever was. It was no longer a service that advertised itself as the way to securely talk to your friends and family. Instead, Skype was a service that you use to talk to your friends and family for free. But Skype is not the only company offering VoIP services or video. There are now companies that are selling services to users. So one of them is a company called Silent Circle, co-founded by Phil Zimmerman, the guy behind PGP. And they charge 10 or 20 bucks a month for encrypted VoIP and text messages and video. Now, I'm not telling you to go out and use this company services, but they've clearly said in their marketing materials, we have no government mandated backdoors. You know, I've spoken to the CEO of the company and he said, you know, if the government comes to us and tries to force us to put a backdoor on our product, we'll close up and move to a different country. I mean this is a company, the only reason you use their product is for the security. You're not using Silent Circle because it's crystal clear audio or because it's cheap and easy to use. You're using them because they're secure. Likewise Spider Oak, which is a competitor to Dropbox, you only use Spider Oak and you only pay for this service because they provide encrypted backups with a key only known to the user. And this, again, Spider Oak makes clear statements to users. We've created a system that makes it impossible for anyone to reveal your data, impossible for us to reveal your data to anyone. That's it. The only reason you use these companies is to protect your data and this is the only reason they're in business. And so the question right now is, and I don't have the answer to this, the question is can the government force these companies to modify their products? Because if Spider Oak were forced to have a back door and it became known, they'd go bankrupt. The only reason you're using them is for the security. And so there's this law that I mentioned before in passing called CLEA and it's normally thought of as a bad law. It's called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. CLEA is the law that forces telecommunications companies to put law enforcement interception interfaces in their networks. The reason that AT&T has very easy to use fast wiretapping capabilities is because CLEA forced them to buy a bunch of equipment. But CLEA has a provision in it that most folks don't know about. And I'm going to read it to you. It's very short. A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting or ensuring a government's ability to decrypt any communication encrypted by a subscriber unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to encrypt the communications.  This section of CLEA protects the right of companies that want to offer encrypted end-to-end services with a key only known to the user to the general public. And it is my belief that when the next crypto wars come, if they do come and when they come, that this section of the law will be the thing that the government targets. I think that down the road we are going to see consumers using services that offer end-to-end crypto. I think we will see people paying for these services. And I do think that the government is going to target these because without it, they cannot engage in dragnet surveillance. Thank you very much.


Chaya Rychik of Libs of Tiktok is the queen of defamation who routinely doxes and slanders LGBTQ plus people and their allies All for views clicks and clout on the internet But now she's mad and ironically she's threatening other people with defamation lawsuits Because they're daring to point out that her rhetoric sometimes leads to violence against LGBTQ plus people They're daring to point out that what she's doing is fostering a climate of hate and bigotry towards queer people that sometimes manifests in violence And as a result she's trying to silence them by threatening them with defamation lawsuits Now said violence materializes in a variety of ways For example when she falsely accuses pediatric hospitals of doing sex change surgeries on minors or Claims that schools are grooming kids by distributing LGBTQ plus books to them Well her followers sometimes get so worked up that they end up harassing or even making bomb threats to whoever's in her crosshairs 21 and counting so far according to a report by NBC news But now people are pointing the finger at Chaya Rychik once again because the anti LGBTQ plus environment that she helped to cultivate at a Particular school in Oklahoma led to bullying and ultimately ended in the death of a non-binary teenager Named next Benedict after they were beaten by three girls in a school bathroom But before it got to that point they were bullied Relentlessly and the independent reports the bullying had started in earnest at the beginning of the 2023 school year a few months after Oklahoma's governor Kevin Stidt signed a bill that required public school students to use bathrooms that match the sex listed on their birth Certificates a few weeks ago on the 7th of February The bullying allegedly erupted in violence when next suffered severe head injuries during a physical altercation at a waso high school According to the waso police department now during the physical altercation next was badly beaten and bruised and at one point They hit their head on the ground when they were knocked over and the school called their mom But didn't call an ambulance which is mind-boggling to me and their mom ended up taking them to the hospital later on for treatment They were subsequently dismissed in the evening and the next day Well, they weren't actually better. They collapsed and by the time EMTs arrived They had already stopped breathing and died shortly after a 16 year old child Died they lost their life in a likely hate crime that occurred at a place where they were supposed to be safe at school But in Oklahoma the bathroom usage of trans children is policed Thanks to a law signed by Oklahoma's Republican governor Which can and often does lead to bullying when students suddenly are using different bathrooms than the ones that they were using and further Here's where Chaya Rychik comes into play the independent continues in a waso high school teacher who next had greatly admired Resigned in 2022 after they were featured in one of Miss Rychik's posts quote next was very angry about it Miss Benedict said miss Benedict said that teachers who encouraged debate about gender issues were not promoting sexualized content Quote they're allowing the students to be who they are now what exactly did that teacher do that was so bad You ask well in a now deleted tweet libs of tiktok shared a video of him telling LGBTQ plus youth quote If your parents don't accept you for who you are fuck them I'm your parents now in a small town that led to controversy and that teacher resigned Let me just say this the fact that that teacher resigned is absurd Because that is what adults should be doing affirming the identities of LGBTQ plus youth can be life-saving Queer youth especially trans youth are disproportionately at risk for suicidal ideation So to have someone there to us to accept them and affirm their identity is really important But queer students lost an ally at that school who dared to defend them next lost someone who they cared about Who cared about them who could be there for them as a mentor? Now I haven't seen anyone blame Chyreichik directly for nexus death But people have said that adults Politicizing trans issues and policing every aspect of their existence is going to have a ripple effect right when Politicians and parents demonize trans people their kids hear that and adopt the same hatred towards their peers who happen to be trans or Non-binary which then results in bullying and after Chyreichik harassed nexus teacher into resigning Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walter appointed her to the Oklahoma Department of Education's Library media advisory committee Meeting that this person who doesn't even live in that state with no children is going to be able to police content for students in Oklahoma schools and here he is with the picture of her tweeting on February 6th Making schools safe ie purging schools of LGBTQ plus affirming material and adults a day after that photo was taken We learned how safe the schools are being made in Oklahoma, especially if you're a non-binary student So when a stochastic terrorist who made a name for herself on the internet by smearing and doxing innocent queer people and their allies is Appointed to a position of power over students in Oklahoma schools It's not unreasonable to ask whether or not the adults here share some culpability Not just Chyreichik, but everyone here the politicians the people at the school I mean, this was a failure.  I think put it best far-right Republican rhetoric Contributed to the beating death of a 16-year-old student in Oklahoma Just a few weeks ago Ryan waters the superintendent of schools in Oklahoma Added the creator of libs of tiktok to the school library board and it was too much even for the people of Oklahoma There was no benefit to putting a woman from California who has no children in the Oklahoma school system on the school board When the entire ethos of her social media account is to attack Dehumanize criticize and docks queer people and that hateful rhetoric and dehumanizing of queer people Coupled with the broad attacks on trans children Resulted in the death of a child. That's exactly right This outcome was inevitable given how hyperbolic and vitriolic and outrageous the rhetoric about trans people has become in This country not just in Oklahoma all around the country But that mild criticism there from that one tiktok creator was I guess too much for Chyreichik Because she is now threatening to sue her for saying what I think everyone sees as obvious She writes here's an account with three million followers just casually blaming a teen's death on me She says I contributed to the death and my rhetoric resulted in the death Defamation doesn't even begin to cover what this is. This is a straight-up libel I will not tolerate this and then the emojis indicates that she's planning to sue now It's incredible that Chyreichik of all people would cry about defamation for the fact that that is her favorite thing in the world to do She defames people all the time She defamed nexus teacher and accused him of grooming all because he said he would accept queer students rejected by their parents So she loves defamation, but all of a sudden she thinks defamation is bad. But here's the thing This isn't defamation. She's not being defamed here But the goal here in threatening to sue people who are criticizing her is to intimidate them into silence bully them into shutting up and that's not me saying this even though that's generally what cowards tend to do She basically admitted that this was the goal. She she knows that she doesn't have a case But she just wants them to stop criticizing her I'm discussing I'm discussing it with a legal team like it's off the table and I mean it's also like There's another aspect of like, you know, even if you can't win the defamation case Or like there's a very likely chance you won't win Like sometimes it still might be worth it to take action just so that they stop this behavior And that my friends is what we call a slap suit and thankfully many states now have protections against these kinds of lawsuits So people who frivolously sue critics don't only get their cases dismissed But they're also on the hook for legal fees as well If it's determined that the lawsuit they brought forward was indeed a slap suit This would be the case with these threats that she's doing right now So it's a dangerous game to play honestly if you're chai arachik Especially for the fact that queer people she defamed could actually have legitimate defamation cases against her So you would think that she'd want to save for money For those cases in the event, you know, one of the people she defame chooses to sue her But I mean if you want to pay the legal fees of people who you're planning to sue Go ahead do it because you're going to be the one who loses But I mean this is what she tends to do She weaponizes her large platform against innocent people and directs hate and incites harassment against them And if that doesn't sufficiently get them to back down or shut up She then threatens to sue for example journalist emily lee bird of the cut reached out to rychik for a request for comment about our article that she's writing about next and uh, this is what rychik did She tagged her and accused her of doing a hit piece all because she's reaching out for a request for comment Beyond the pale But I mean if she didn't feel responsible in any way whatsoever Why wouldn't she respond? Why not defend herself and answer the questions of these journalists? Why not at a minimum offer condolences to nexus family to show that you're not a complete monster? Well, it's because chai rychik is a monster She's an immoral person who's opportunistic who doesn't care about the people that she hurts But I want to take a moment to talk specifically about nexus because They seemed like a really great kid and it's so sad that we no longer have them in this world The independent reports that they were a straight a student with the cat named zeus And they were really into video games specifically arc and minecraft And their life was made a living hell All because of who they were Because they were non-binary The school failed them politicians in their state failed them another queer trans and non-binary students probably see stores like this And feel hopeless and I understand why you feel this way But there's a really important message that I want to share with you from the tiktoker who rychik is threatening to sue And I'm going to leave you with what she has to say because what she says now Is really important and if you're a kid out there right now who identifies as non-binary and you're seeing this kind of stuff And it's making you feel very hopeless Just know that there are people out here who are fighting for you who are fighting to make sure that this never happens again You will get to grow up You will get to be who you want to be and we will not let them take that away from you So stay with me


Hi everybody, welcome. Now we're gonna for some house cleat keeping to take care of. There's a question that Joe had as far as is that Northern Empress Elm available. It's going to be widely available in 2019 and some special qualities of it besides that burgundy fall color is that it's nearly a seedless tree, so there's no litter prongs. That's great. So look for that in your garden center in 2019. Okay? The other thing to talk about is that handouts for tonight. Greg Morgensen gave me permission to modify his handout so you can see all those beautiful slides and all that text that goes with it. And so you can look for that. I'll have that posted on the Spring Fever website tomorrow and also I'll alert agents out in the counties to the availability of that handout so it gives you a much more expansive look at Greg's presentation, which we appreciate tonight along with Joe's. Now we're going to talk about tough sights. Tough sights. My goodness. I would say tough sights. The whole state of North Dakota can qualify for this, especially tonight. Here we are in April. Come here in Fargo. Cars and ditches. Blizzard in April. My Lord, what a tough place to live. But we're going to take that even a step farther and we're going to talk about some trees that can take the harshest of conditions in North Dakota.  And so here we're going to talk with the head of the Woody Plant introduction for North Dakota State University, Todd West. So please welcome Todd to the forums. All right. Thank you, Tom. With this presentation, though, the caveat is that all these plants are going to be hardy across North Dakota. Also, they're going to be alkaline tolerance. So we're dealing with pH. So I'm not going to talk about pH tolerance because that's an issue that all of us have to deal with. So tough sights. Here's a tough sight. Not what we're worried about. Another tough sight. You know, these are some pretty tough sights. What we're looking at is more of these type of tough sights where we have very limited root space. You know, our yards are not going to be quite as limited as this. Same thing here with these tree pits. You can see the dieback. There is issues to deal with because of the architecture, not necessarily the site itself. You know, this is more of what we want. These boulevards and into our yards. But then we're going to have some issues with them depending where we are in North Dakota. The neat thing about trees, they can adapt. You know, here's a tree that came out of the pit and it's following along the cracks of the bricks. Kind of fascinating. It's amazing what trees can do. So the first area I want to talk about is shape tolerance. Remember, we're dealing with all pH tolerance. We're dealing with all hardy. Here is a tree that is very underutilized. We'll go to Dogwood. It's one of the few medium, small to medium-sized tree that can handle a good heavy amount of shade. Zone 3 US native has really nice scaffolding branches. The picture lower right is not very large, but it just shows its size. It does show the white flowers that it will get. It does develop a nice purple fall color. It has blue fruits. One of the few trees, you can really put on that north side of the house, get some height out of it. It's really, really nice. Wind resistant. Now I'm not going to show all of these. We're just going to hit some highlights, but European Larch is one that does well in wind. It's used pretty extensively in windbreaks. Hackberry, more so into our interior type plantings. Here's Hackberry, also a native, really nice structured tree. Again, very cold hardy, tolerant of a lot of different conditions. Very urban tolerant as well. You see a lot of these in our urban centers, Bismarck, Bargo, Grand Forks, et cetera. About 40, 70 foot, so a bigger tree. We don't have a lot of trees that will get to a really big size, but Hackberry is one that does really well. I do want to talk about a few cultivars as we go along. There's some unique opportunities here. Prairie Sentinel Hackberry out of J. Frank Schmidt out of Oregon made this selection. It's a really nice fastigiate upright tree. Only gets about 12 foot wide, which is very atypical of Hackberry. Now we can put in a tree into some really tight spots. Can handle drought. It can handle the wind. A lot of these trees that we're talking about do have a lot of crossover. They're not just wind tolerant. Hackberry is drought tolerant as well. It's very adaptable to different soil types. They do cross boundaries. Drought tolerant. We're dealing a lot with drought lately. Here's a pretty, not in a huge extensive list, but Hackberry again. We have Northern Thornless Honey Locusts, Kentucky Coffee Tree, Flowering Crab, Amer Cork Tree, Burroke, Japanese Tree Lilac, American Linden, Eastern Red Cedar. A lot of these you probably have seen on boulevards because boulevards are quite dry and they're often then approved for these lists. I just want to hit a couple of them. Thornless Honey Locusts, NDSU has by far the hardest selection into a zone three. If you see on my bullets there, I've got zone three in parentheses. That's because it could be a little iffy overall, but with the proper genetics, we're fine. Northern Acclaim does great in a zone three. Also a native as well. Get that nice dappled shade. It's turf friendly too. Kentucky Coffee Tree, this is one that is a really ugly tree when it's first planted, but it develops into a really, really nice high quality tree over time. It's also a US native too. It virtually is completely pest free and also tolerant of urban conditions as well as drought. So really, really nice selection. Here is a cultivar espresso. It also is seedless. It's a male selection. And so we don't have to worry about those big chunky pods that they'll have, but they're heat tolerant, drought tolerant, and cold tolerant. This one's zone four. So we're trying it out in the zone three to see how it will do. This is one of my favorites is Amber Cork Tree. It too is a solid zone four, potentially zone three with some testing. We're testing this across the state. It is a non-native 40 by 35 foot. It also is pest free too. So these are the things we want to look at. Not only plants that do well in these harsh conditions, but also have that compounded benefit such as being pest free. So a really nice one for drought tolerance as well. A couple cultivars. His Majesty, that's one that's been around for quite a while. That's a nice selection. There's also a newer one out of the University of Wisconsin called Eye Stopper. It too is a really high quality cork tree. Bur oak. I think we can all agree that bur oak is an extremely adaptable use throughout the state. It's the only oak that's native in North Dakota. It is in the white oak group. Just again to talk about a few cultivars to add some variety now to the bur oak because most of them have been grown as seedlings. We have urban pinnacle oak. So a much narrower upright form, only 25 foot wide. And then this newer one cobblestone. It's been selected for having the accentuated corky bark. And so it just adds that extra feature. It's still pretty standard size 55 by 45, but does extremely well. These on the boulevards, urban pinnacle, much better choice for boulevards. This is one out of Canada, out of by lens nursery called Top Gun. It too is also a much narrower selection. So 55 by about 15, maybe 20, but super cold hardy. Again, much better choice for boulevards than seedling. Japanese tree lilac. You see these popping up all over in yards and on boulevards. Hardy zone three, not native. 25 by 20. This is one we'll talk about a little bit later, utility friendly. You can see in this picture, utilities running above it. Also pest free. And there is a cult of our snow dance that is completely sterile. So it will flower quite prolifically and at a young age, but it doesn't produce any of those seed pods. Wet soils. Again, not a completely complete list, but just a couple selections. We have Box Elder, Ohio Buckeye, and then Naiobi or the Golden Weeping Willow. There's some good choices. Acer Nogando, the sensation Box Elder. Box Elder typically does not get a nice fall color. I'm always looking for trees that have more than one benefit. And here now we have a U.S. native that decent size 35 by 25, but it gets a red fall color, which is not typical for Box Elder. Not only is it tolerant of dry soil, but it also can do wet soil too. So it's a full gambit. So here we're talking about wet spots, but this could also have gone into our dry soils as well. It's a male clone, so you don't get all of the fruit produced and all the little seedlings. So great choice, sensation, seed list, and fall color. Sailing soils. So now we're not talking about necessarily pH, we're talking about salt. And so Baroque, Thornless Honey Locusts again, Black Walnut, Eastern Red Cedar, and American Elm. We've heard quite a bit about Elms tonight, so we'll hit a little bit on Elm. We already talked about the others. So I want to bring up Juniper here. This is the Eastern Red Cedar, but it's also called a Juniper. And this specific cultivar is Taylor, Taylor Juniper. Hardy Zone 4, Possibly Zone 3. We're looking at that in a more northern planting as well. 30 foot by 3 foot. And completely deer resistant, which again we'll talk about a little bit later here too. Drought resistant, dry soil tolerant as well. So just a really nice selection. It can handle that salt. It can handle it dry. Picture on the right is just showing several of them grouped together. Center picture there showing it basically standing as sentinels on either side of this high end home. And they'll get as tall as that root line and just filling quite nicely and requiring no pruning whatsoever. American Elm Prairie Expedition. This is an NDSG release. It's one that is DED resistant. I like to say DED tolerant because all Elms can get Dutch Elm, but it has the ability to fight it off. So it won't kill the tree, but it will maintain a good quality tree. It is by far the heartiest of all the American Elm cultivars. This is the one that should be used. It is still going to be a big tree. It has the traditional cathedral style of form to it, which is quite nice. And as all Elms are, very fast growing. You do have to maintain a good amount of pruning scheduled with any of the Elms. Compacted Sites. So here's the list. We've got Prairie Horizon, Menture, and Alder. That's also an NDSU release. River Birch. Silver Maple. Hackberry again. American March. So we have a different species from the European. This is our native species. It can do very well in compacted sites. Flowering Crab Apple. And then Arborvite. So here we have another Evergreen that we can use. So here is the Menture and Alder. This is approved on a lot of the Boulevard lists throughout North Dakota. Hardy Zone 3. It's non-native, but it can withstand just about any condition you throw at it. Wet, dry, compacted. It just does really, really well. It is in the Birch family, and so it does have these cone-like structures that do persist into winter, which gives it another ornamental value to it. Fall color is not very exciting. It's kind of a green, yellow, but these cones do persist and add some character to it, but really, really die-hard tree. A newer one that is just hitting the market now finally is Northern Tribute River Birch. River Birch is not considered to be hardy, but this one is. This is a selection that Dr. Herman, Dale Herman, selected. Zone 4 definitely. We're testing it in Zone 3 as well. It's a U.S. native, and typical of River Birch would be chlorosis in compacted soils and our high alkaline soils as well, but this one is pH-tolerant. So we don't see the chlorosis. We get a nice lustrous dark green leaf during the growing season. Nice yellow fall color, but then we get that exfoliating bark as the added winter feature. It can be planted as a single stem or a clump. We don't want to have suckers because then we get that included bark and poor structure, but what is typically done with the clump forms is that the nursery will put in three different plants into a single pot to make this clump, and that's what. If you want clump form, make sure you go for that. Utility-friendly. So we want to have a maximum height of 25 foot. Fortunately, a lot of communities are burying their utilities now, so it's not as much of an issue, but it still is an issue in many places. So again, there's a much more extensive list, but in lieu of time, I just wanted to hit a couple of them tonight. So here we have Flowering Crab, Japanese tree lilac again, and then Prairie Gem flowering pear, which I believe that Greg talked quite a bit about these small trees, so I did not want to go into detail. I just wanted to hit a couple highlights. I'm not sure if Greg talked about this one, but this is one of my favorites, is Mary Lee Flowering Crab. There's a big trend now for these upright columnar type form of crab apples. You know, these are not your grandparents' crab apples anymore. They're quite wide, and they're fitting into some really nice tight spots on boulevards. Again, much better choice, because less pruning is required, but they just fit into these spaces quite nicely. This is zone four. We're testing it in a zone three as well right now. That's, again, why I have those parentheses there. About 24 by 10 foot has that narrow upright habit to it. The buds come out, they'll be budded pink, but then open up as a double white, and it's also fruitless, and it has really good disease resistance to scab, to fire blight, and so just a really nice selection. Actually, this is not an NDSU release, but it's an NDSU alumni release, so I'm pretty excited about that, but this is readily available in the trade now, and doing very well for us. Prairie Gem flowering pear, again, this was already mentioned, but Pyrus usuriensis, this is one of the species that's hardy here, also pH tolerant, has a really fast growth rate. The lower right picture there, you can see its form. This has not been pruned. It's about the most perfectly shaped small tree that you can possibly get.  Also, it's very tolerant of urban pollution as well, so it often shows up on our boulevard list. More information about our program can be found at these websites. This presentation, obviously, will be online, not found at these websites, but if you want to know more information about our releases that have been selected and do very well for North Dakota, please visit these websites, and then my contact information if you ever need any information. Thanks. Okay, thank you Todd, and you just mentioned about how this presentation will be available in the future online, and we have Bob Burge to thank for that, our web technology specialist, who does everything here at the Spring Fever. He is the nuts and bolts of the operation, makes a run so smoothly. Just so appreciate Bob's efforts, and we've been getting those YouTube videos up in a day or two, so you can tell your friends tomorrow about all the great talks that you saw tonight. Please share with your friends so you can watch a repeat version of it, or an encore performance. Todd, I've got a few questions for you. How about this person likes that Amur cork tree you talked about? Oh, yeah. Is that common for a nursery to carry? It's probably a little bit more on the rare side, but they are definitely available, so if you ask any garden center nursery to get one in for you, they definitely can. So let's go over that, because this is a common question. So if you like one of these kind of unusual trees, you can go to your local nursery and specifically ask them to order a tree, this cultivar for you, and they will order it for you, and then how does that procedure work? Exactly, because nurseries are a business, so they're in the business to sell trees, and they're going to sell trees that everybody wants, and so if you want one of these more rare trees that people don't know about, you just simply go in, and some nurseries are a little bit more adventuresome than others, and so you have to go in, you may find it, but if you don't, you just talk with one of their nursery workers there, and they should be able to get one on the shipment pretty quick, because all the nurseries here in North Dakota will get several shipments during the growing season, so it's not like you go in spring, and that's all they have. That's right. Okay, how about, here's a general question, they were an American wind, and it's eight years old, the rabbits got to it, and now it looks like a bush. What would you do if that was your tree? Would you just keep pruning it, trying to keep a single leader, or would you just start all over?  How about, how do you prune a pagoda dogwood? Good question. Really, with a pagoda dogwood, you don't have to do a lot of pruning. The nice thing with pagodas, they don't sucker extensively, like most of the dogwoods do, they get minimal suckering, but that's something you want to pay attention to, but for the most part, it really develops a good structure on its own. You may have to thin it just a little bit, or do some minor structural pruning, you know, branches that are crossing over each other, but very little pruning is really required with a pagoda. Yeah, that natural horizontal. Yeah, that layered pagoda look. Okay, our linden lover with a hungry rabbit has a follow-up. He says that base of that linden tree is really thick. Are you sure he should still start over? Do you want to send Todd a photo? Yeah, yeah, definitely. He could send me a photo. You mean you can select a single leader and let it go again. It just kind of comes down to your choice. When a leader comes out like that and you prune it to a single leader, will that be developed into something as strong as a plant that was never cut back? It really kind of depends on the angle that the branch is coming off, because in a sense, it's really not much different than the way trees are produced clonally anyway, because they're often budded, and you'll have that kind of a croaky kind of angle coming up out of the tree, so it's not very different from what's being done in production anyway. So it's definitely doable. Okay, so there's hope for that linden. It sounds like you really love it, so there's hope. How about that sensation, that box elder? Does it keep its leaves long enough to color or do they drop like the other box elder? Well, the only experience I've seen with sensation is in Bismarck and in Fargo, and that being the banana belt that we are in North Dakota, that it does color pretty decently, and it's more of a cold selection, so it colors better in the colder climate than it does in warmer climate. So it seems to do fairly well. We don't have a lot of them here in North Dakota to get a good sense yet. And it does not have any seed pod, so it would not attract the box elder bugs as much. As much. That's important. Still wouldn't put it necessarily right next to my house. Okay. How pH tolerant is that Northern Tribute River Birch? That is extremely pH tolerant. It's kind of scary how pH tolerant it is, because River Birch is not known to be able to grow in compacted sites really well with that pH aspect, and has performed very well for us. It was selected in soil that was above eight, and it's been growing and tested in above eight. The cultivar is Dickinson, so this is actually a selection that was made from a parent tree in Dickinson, North Dakota. Okay. How about that prairie jam flowering pear? Is that a fruitless pear? No, so with that species, it's just like the calorie pears as well, and your edible pears, that if you have another pear nearby of a different clone or a different species, it will produce some fruit. They're generally quite small, but generally, let me say generally, it's going to be fairly fruit-free. There's one question that nobody's answering tonight. All right. There you go. You've got an angry customer out there. Your demanding answer. How about you've got drought hardy, tough trees, but really, how long do they live? Do you have some that are like, I know Greg talked about the choke cherry. It wasn't one of those favorites. That's a relatively short-lived tree. Do you have some that are especially long-lived or maybe some of the extremes? Sure. No, there definitely is quite a wide variety when it comes to life expectancy of a tree. Actually, Tom and I were talking about this, about how a lot of people want fast-growing landscapes. They want that instant landscape. Whenever you look at a tree that generally grows fast, it means that it has poor wood structure, so it falls apart easy as well as short-lived.  All the elms are known for extremely fast growth rate when they're young, but they're actually a long-lived tree. They do slow down. They get really good structure to their wood compared to, say, a silver maple. Silver maple that grows extremely fast. There are those trees where you'll plant it and take it down in your lifetime. Silver maple, you get good 40, 50 years out of it, you're doing well. Boxel, they're the same way, but the hopes is then you're either dead when you have to go to remove it, so don't worry about it then or move. Right, and the other person can deal with it. There you go. They'll never be the wiser. But there is quite a bit of variety. Generally, with a lot of the smaller trees, they tend to be a little bit shorter-lived. The barokes, long-lived, slower-growing, there's a lot of variety.  Exactly. Okay, how about an Austrian, a U.S. tree goes, Australian pop or super poppers? Any comment about them? Every plant, right plant, right place. Poppers have their spot. Again, not next to my house or where I park my car. But if you do need something that will grow quick and established to give you a little bit of a windbreak or some shade, there's nothing wrong with it. But realizing that in the future, in the very quick future, you're going to be dealing with limb breakage. If there's a bad storm that comes through, weak-wooded, short-lived, and again, that's one of those trees that myself, I'm 45, a five-plant one, I'll be taking it down when I'm retired. Okay, well, talking about a fast-growing tree, this person, it's an unusual question as far as they want to replenish their fireplace wood supply. Oh, we got a good tree for that. Well, actually, there's a lot of great information online. I'm not going to tell you what the best are because I don't know that off the top of my head. But there's a lot of great information online for the BTUs that wood actually does put out. So you can definitely find that online very readily. This person has a comment about the off-tree that attracts a lot of A-fit issues, and that was deep. Then they got out the chainsaw, sounds like. There you go. I'd say if A-fit is your only issue, you're doing well. Well, I think this guy, you're just an ounce of prevention. So I saw the mistake earlier. Cut your losses, maybe that's before it gets too bad. An ounce or a quart of chainsaw fuel. Okay, this is going to be a hard one to ask. Okay, there's two trees that are growing out of an overgrown lilac patch. When these two trees grew, they ended up becoming arched or slanted. The lilacs are gone now, and the person's trying to strap the two trees together that are slanted to make them more upright, and they keep tightening the strap every six months, a couple inches. Is it realistic to think that these trees are ever going to grow upright? That's a very difficult thing.  And you are trying to break a habit that has been created, but now you're also fighting compression wood, which has that strength that the tree has actually put on that had to compensate for that angle, and you're fighting compression wood, which is very, very difficult fight. Yeah, you know, this could be a good one, Judy, that yes, if you take a photo of it, that could be helpful. And also, if we put a type of tree it was, that might make a big difference too. Okay, any last questions out there for Todd? I'm just going to give Todd's email. So that can help with your photo questions. Okay, I don't see any of the questions. So I'm going to say thank you, Todd. That was great. And we're all on time. That's even better. So thank you, Todd, for that really interesting talk. It was wonderful. Okay, we're just going to wrap it up here. I want everybody to get home tonight with the terrible weather and all, especially in the southern half of the state. Just talking a little bit about next week, next week, we're going to wrap it up. Hopefully we won't snow next Monday. That would be amazing if we could just have one Monday when it didn't snow. We have a series of special topics that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about, first of all, about some of the bugs that, exotic bugs that are invading North Dakota or right on the border ready to enter. So we got to find out how to identify these bugs and how to combat the bugs or slow their spread. We're going to talk about disease management too. And then I don't know if a lot of gardeners know that, is that NDSU has a plant health clinic available to you that can help you identify and manage diseases. So we'll learn about what the features that they offer to gardeners. And lastly, we'll wrap it up by a research summary about some of the major high value crops that we're doing research on, including grapes and hops and Juneberries, potatoes and blackberries. So we got all that next week at Spring Fever Garden Forms. Tell your friends about it and everybody have a good night. Thank you everybody. It's great.


Let me explain to you What's the white boy? Um, Donald sir. Donald sir. He had a team. They caught him on tape calling Say nice.  It was more than it was worth Because he knew it you wasn't getting it unless you paid him for it cuz you can't take money from a being there And listen man, this guy right here y'all when I first interviewed this guy, man, I was green as hell man I figured it out afterwards though. Man listen I'm in the middle of a Thank you for coming on my show man, we done man I fell face on dinner. I'm talking man. It's nigga here know everything. I want to know so I know I love talking to phase on he go. He go he go and teach me a lot. Yeah, man Man, thank you for coming on the show man. I and you know me man I'm always just trying to figure out like man, you know The the media game is different man.    I think they can count on let me explain to you What's the way boy? I'm Donald sir. Donald sir. He had a team They caught him on tape calling saying they don't want to be around Shit, I won't be around on Vegas. They told him you cancel but first You're to sell your team for 60 billion dollars Daniel 60 billion how much the Donald Turner tell us he for it was something crazy. It was a wild number. It was more than it was worth Because he knew it you wasn't getting it unless you paid him for it because you can't take money from a being there You can't do it.   He took a big you can't take a billion dollars for me in a day So when you see people saying he lost a billion did he must then have it is to start with now It's all papered up It's all Forbes. It's a it's a it's a scheme It's not like a projection. You're projected to make this amount by the end of the year and that's where they use that He can't make a billion in a year if you have a billion you you have a billion It ain't like I can't say I'm you know next week. I'm gonna be worth for 37,000 It ain't gonna happen what do you do with the billions did I make the 37,000 or am I gonna make it? So it's a projected number.  It's almost that boy name.  No, they got it So I got this came out said I want none of you niggas buying hamburgers You didn't take a billion dollars worth of McDonald's No, not at all the business might in but that money wealth ain't going nowhere They have the money that they already made but No, anything I'm thinking about where people always talk about that like a lot of those fortune companies already project for the No, no, no, no, you don't have a projection. I'm talking about what's in the pocket. What's in the right now? Okay, no No, you can't eat up for next week. What am I eating over right now, right? Yeah, boss talk Yeah, we on boss talk one-on-one. Yeah, we gonna talk