Welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. This is one of many forums we are bringing you in advance of local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday in March, March 1, 2022. Town meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in town meeting television election forums. Town meeting television election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. If you're watching this live, we welcome your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can watch town meeting television on Comcast Channel 1087, Burlington Telecom Channel 17 and 217, as well as online at town meeting televisions YouTube page. My name is Elaine Haney and we're joined this evening by the candidates for Burlington City Council's Ward 3 incumbent Joe McGee, who is running as a progressive and Christopher Aaron Felker who was running as a Republican. We're going to start each with a one minute opening statement, and then I'll be talking to you with giving you some questions to answer that you'll have two minutes each to respond to. And we also are welcoming questions from the audience and so we will pause for those questions whenever they come in. So are there any calls on the line at the moment? No calls right now. Okay, so let's start with opening statements. Joe, you have two minutes. Thank you. One minute for opening statement. My apologies. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for moderating this evening. Hello everyone. My name is Joe McGee. I use he and they pronouns. I am proud to be your Ward 3 city councilor representing downtown in the western part of the old North End. I'm running for a full term on the city council to continue the work I started a little over five months ago, whether that's addressing the unfair reappraisal and property tax systems, or advocating for the basic needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. I'm looking forward to continuing this work. We need to push for safe affordable and accessible housing for everyone in our community. We have to increase investment in mental health services and in treatment for substance use disorder. And we have to go further to address racial disparities in an equity by removing the barriers that exist for folks running for office and serving on our boards, commissions and our MPAs. I'm proud to have started this work already and I look forward to continuing it with you all as we get going in this election and if I'm fortunate enough to be reelected in March. Thank you. Thank you. Christopher. Hi, thank you, Elena. Thank you for having us today. Thank you, Joe for showing up for this. I absolutely love debates and and it's part of the process and that's what our democracy is all about when it comes down to elections. So, as Elena said, my name is Christopher Aaron Felker. I am a nine year resident of right here in Ward 3. I've been your neighbor for the last nine years and a member at St. Joseph's Cathedral right down the street. My husband and I first moved up here and fell in love with the views of Battery Park and Burlington and Lake Champlain and we truly just never ever left the area. We are happy to make Ward 3 our home and we're happy to have this opportunity to run for office and bring voice to the voiceless here in Ward 3. Thank you, City Council to rebuild our public safety team to truly fight for an affordable city and to restore balance and civility to City Council to ensure conservatives independence and centrist finally have a voice in our government again. So, I've been building. We have two minutes. Okay. One minute for the opening statements. Okay. Okay, so any calls at this moment. No calls. Yes, can call in with questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'm going to start with a question regarding experience. What experience do you think you bring to bear that makes you qualified to be a Burlington City Council member. You'll have two minutes to answer. I have this 30 second sign. I'm going to hold up for you at one minute 30.  Thank you, Elena. So I have been working with the Burlington Republican Party for the, for the last few years and fortunately they elected me chairman of the Burlington Republican Party and as such I monitor and attend all city council meetings and I also contribute and participate in our local government through attending committee meetings or participating in our recent redistricting. I'm fully aware of all the situations and obstacles that our city is currently facing. And I hope to bring voice to the conservatives of this neighborhood in this ward that feel like our representatives do not listen to them. So as far as experience goes, I've worked in the government in the past. I'm a Navy veteran. I have worked as a I've studied and become a teacher. And so I understand how to work with people as a conservative. I want to be able to be on council to be able to promote compromise between the parties what we have right now the numbers that we have is resulting in dysfunction and the way that we have a city that will work together for all Burlingtonians is by ensuring that all of our voices are at the table. And right now we have not had that in at least two years and it's really important as part of the process that all of us feel and know that we are being represented in our government. So I hope to bring the leadership that I've been able to roll out in the Burlington Republican Party working together across the aisle with members of the Democratic Party and the progressive party to try and advance the causes of Burlington that will help make it a better city for all of us. Thank you, Elena. Okay, and Joe. Good evening. I have been proud to serve as word three city counselor for the last five months. You know, I think the experience that I have had over these last five months or the reason that I am running again to continue serving more three. Whether it's attending the NPA meetings and keeping folks updated answering questions late into the evening, or attending PTO meetings, meeting with neighbors downtown meeting with neighbors in the old north end and really engaging folks in these conversations is that word three does feel represented on the city council. I have made a point of showing up and having the conversation, whenever somebody reaches out to me I am there to have that conversation, and that's the kind of representative that I'll continue to be on the city council. And, you know, I think the experience that I've had shows that I'm willing to show up and address the affordability crisis, whether it's through my work on the resolution that addresses the reappraisal process and the property tax system, or, you know, showing up for committee meetings and in doing the work of moving the city forward and investing in our infrastructure so that we're making the improvements that we know that we need to make. And that's where streets and our sidewalks, or our electric grid, you know, I think we have a tremendous opportunity right now to make these investments, and, and I want to continue that work. So thank you very much. Okay. So, let's talk about the budget a little bit. How do you respond to the ballot item requesting a raise to the city tax rate of 4% this year. Do you want to go first. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. You know, I supported placing the increase in the tax rate on the ballot on March 1, because I think it's imperative that we continue to fund our city services so they're operating at full capacity. To ensure that our city workers are earning a little wage. I think that is vital, especially what we're seeing now with the pandemic and wages continuing to stagnate. I think it's also important to note that the school tax rate is going to be going down in the city this year, which will result in an overall decrease in our tax rate to 2.76%. So I know it's a hard time for for so many people and voting for another tax increase is a difficult decision to make. That is why I have been leading this conversation around whether or not the property tax is the best way for us to continue funding our city services. So I'm looking forward to continuing to have that conversation so that we can find different funding sources for our city services going forward, because we shouldn't lean on our schools to to decrease taxes so that we can continue to fund the city budget. That shouldn't be something that we do year after year, and I'll be committed to making sure that that's not something that happens in the future. Thank you. Christopher. So, no, absolutely not I wouldn't vote to support increasing taxes. On the backs of a property property house assessment. Last year that it just pounded old north end residents, especially single family homes. Those costs are going up. We've had 7.5% rate increase in the Burlington Electric Department. We constantly have our paying more in taxes were constantly being asked for additional bond votes that will increase our taxes. Currently this year there are three finance measures on the ballot. One is a little bond 2.0. This one that we're talking about right now is the property tax increase 4% and also a TIF measure. I promised and campaign for the last year to my neighbors that I would vow that I would fight to hold the line on property taxes to truly keep Burlington affordable. I am tired of the rhetoric coming from everybody in council and in government that talk about affordability, but every single time a resolution or budget comes before them, they don't hesitate to raise taxes. This results in increased taxes in our city. It results in increased rents and contributes to the unaffordability crisis. We cannot continue to raise taxes and the cost of living in town and then throw our hands up and act surprised when nobody can afford to live here anymore. So no, we will not support raising taxes on Burlingtonians. Okay, thank you. Speaking of raising topics. Where do you see opportunities for addressing racial justice in the city and how will you use the city council seat to meet this challenge? Christopher. We have a wonderful director director green at the REIB. I would like to present city council with plans and agendas for education and programs that the city can initiate. As city councilor, I would sit down and happily evaluate those and absolutely vote for the ones that will advance and provide concrete returnables to our city. I think it's important. It's undeniable that our black and brown neighbors have experienced unfair treatment for generations, if not centuries, and we should do our part to make sure that we live in a more fair and equitable society where everybody is welcome. Everybody is treated equally and everybody's guaranteed the same rights. As city councilor, I will absolutely advocate for that and ensuring equality across the board in McLean city. Thank you, Elena. Okay. Joe, please go ahead. Thank you. I think it is important for us to support the work of the Office of racial equity inclusion and belonging. I've been proud to serve on the REIB committee on the city council. We've gotten presentations on the racial equity roadmap that their office is working on. I'm absolutely committed to supporting funding for the programs that they put forward to ensure that we are as a city doing all that we can to address the injustice that has faced black and brown people in our city for so long. I am also committed. I made this promise during my last campaign and still committed to this work of removing the barriers that currently exist for black, indigenous and people of color for serving on our local boards and commissions for running for office to make sure that our decision making bodies truly represent our community. Right now they don't. And that is a real problem and we need to do what we can to solve that. Whether that's making sure that folks are compensated for their time, making sure that meetings are at times that address and acknowledge the different hours that folks work and making sure that we have childcare in the city that make it possible for folks to participate in our government. And these are crucial areas where we need to make more investment and acknowledge that this work will continue and has to continue and will not will not end. We have to examine every aspect of our city government, our policy making apparatuses to ensure that we're delivering on racial equity in the city. So we'll stay with you for this question. What is your opinion on the recent appointment of Chief John Murad or the vote to appoint Chief Murad and what is your vision for community safety and how will you support that as a city council. Thank you, Elaine. I'm glad to have the opportunity to address this. I voted no on Monday on acting Chief Murad's appointment for a number of reasons. I'll start with the process. The mayor engaged a search committee to aid in the process of finding a new police chief for Burlington. When it turned out that that process didn't yield qualified applicants that that we wanted or a large pool of qualified applicants. We did that himself. And, you know, our progressors put forward a an opportunity for the city to engage a search firm to truly get us the pool of applicants that we needed that are qualified and willing to lead on transformative policing here in the city, investing in public safety programs that are outside of policing mental health services and treatment for substance use disorder. So I voted no because the search committee did not have the opportunity to interview acting Chief Murad. I voted no because members of the police commission have outlined and described the ways in which that he is unwilling to be collaborative with them and has exhibited some pretty nasty behavior. And, you know, going forward my vision for community safety is one where we're meeting people's basic needs where we're investing in mental health services, rapid response mental health services with social workers and medical professionals and investing in meeting basic needs here in the city in a way that we we aren't right now. That means making sure that people have shelter making sure that they have housing and making sure that they have access to adequate medical care. We can do this we have an opportunity to do it right now and I think we need to invest in these programs and not just look at public safety is how high our officer cap is, I think we. Thank you. Thank you. Christopher same question. I absolutely supported Chief Murad confirmation this past Monday evening. I think that Chief Murad is exceptionally qualified individual he's also kind considerate compassionate. He's always willing to learn but most importantly, he's forward thinking and he's always open to how the police department can be better. It's true that Joe voted no on chief chief Murad confirmation but he also voted no on raising the officer cap and he is continually advocated for abolishing the police. We have been campaigning for the last nine months now on a positive policing policy for the Burlington police department that ensures our community is safe. It is adding to the department in three fold. We restore the officer cap, which we have done but we have waited so long that we actually have to wait the whole day the damage that they created on council, the amount of time it takes to bring officers through the pipeline. We should have added officers back in August, we will keep adding officers we will add funding so that way our officers are well trained and we continue adding CSL and CSOs to the police department. All these we've advocated for in August, when the citizen police commission recommended that we raise the officer cap and the city council failed to rise to the occasion and will lead our city by restoring the public. We will continue to advocate for the police department officer cap. We will continue to advocate for more CSLs. We will continue to advocate for more funding and we will continue to find resources for retention and recruitment of police officers that way we can laterally recruit officers from other departments to try and restore the public safety team that we desperately need in Burlington. Thank you. Okay. I mean if I could have a moment for a bottle. Frank. Thank you very much. I just need to respond to that. You know, I voted no on acting chief mirad because acting chief mirad has said that he doesn't think that bias plays a role in the racial disparities that we see in our police department. That gives me great pause when he says that he's committed to racial justice. And that does not say to me that he is committed to racial justice. And I see in his actions that he's not committed to transforming policing and addressing those disparities in a meaningful way. And I am at 30 seconds. It's 30 seconds. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We now have a call to ask a question caller would you like to identify yourself and ask your question of both candidates. My name is Dale Tillerson from Burlington, Vermont. I would like to ask the two candidates the following question. In my opinion, the six progressives on the city council have shown a bias towards policing, and they all seem to basically want to eliminate the police department, and they've proven that by their actions. My comment is, was that vote on Monday night, or my question is was that vote on Monday night, even on the up and up, because with the progressives showing prejudice towards your police department. They should have all recused themselves from voting, thus eliminating a quorum. Thus, making that vote. Not official. Could they answer that please. I'm not sure what your question is, could you try to rephrase that a little bit more succinctly. Yes. The progressives on the council have shown a prejudice towards policing. They do not want a police department. Thus, while they voted at the meeting on Monday night. They have been able to vote in confirming a police chief, because they have proven that they do not want a police department. Okay, thanks for clarifying that Joe you have two minutes. I'm not really sure what color is getting at here, but I'll try to answer the question. I don't think our actions have shown that we're trying to eliminate the police department. I think, to the contrary, we have shown up and said that we want to reallocate resources toward services that respond to the mental health and substance use crises that we're facing. That includes response capacity for mental health and medical workers. That would make up for the deficit of the police department. You know, I voted against raising the officer cap, because I don't believe that out of the 150 recommendations that were made by our consultant that I looked at policing in Burlington that our first decision should have been to raise the officer cap. I think we need to examine policing and give other programs the opportunity to work to really address racial disparities here in the city in a meaningful way. And I don't think just making the decision to reinvest that money in the police department is how we get there. Thank you. Christopher. Thank you. Thanks for the call, Dale. I think I think I'm following where you're going with this and I'll, I'll just do the best I can to answer your question. So I think, I think you're right. I think that the progressive counselors have have clearly been pushing an agenda to sabotage and and harm the staffing levels and and attack the Burlington police department. I think that you can very easily find each and every one of them quoted in our local press stating something very similar to that. So yes, and I think that's very troublesome. Do I think that they should have recused themselves from the vote on Monday. Probably not what you want to hear Dale but no they they should not have recused themselves absolutely they should vote. Because this is how our system of representative democracy works and elections have consequences you know. Councilor McGee was elected last August and therefore giving the progressive party a plurality on council and the ability to block things if you know, am I happy that that's the way that they voted. Do I think it's absolutely reckless and irresponsible and damaging to our city 100%. But if we want to do better Dale we have to convince our neighbors to go out and vote this time this town meeting day, our ballots will be mailed out next week and we have to engage in our community and have a conversation. You know I go around and talk to the neighbors and I know that they're all on everyone that I've been talking to wholeheartedly agrees that chief mirad is the leader to take over the helmet one North Avenue. And let's talk for one second about this this is an a mayoral appointment and it is a we're able to revisit this next year if we want councils also able to after confirmation try and find concrete. Oh, sorry concrete achievable for his office, and we can hold them accountable, but ultimately one North Avenue and our police department deserve a confirmed chief to lead them.  Thank you Elaine. Thank you. Okay, thank you caller for that question. Are there any other calls at the moment. No more college at this time. I think we have time for one more question and then we'll do closing statements. So what needs to be done to address housing concerns in this city. What are the biggest issues with housing in your opinion is it affordability safety access something else. Christopher would you start. It's undeniable that Burlington is in the midst of a housing crisis and it has been going on for quite some time whether we didn't acknowledge it until recently or not many of us have been able to feel the impacts of this. We are. We have under 1% vacancy rate in town, dangerously low vacancy rate which makes it extremely difficult to find and and secure a rental unit if you are looking to rent in Burlington. Also our housing market is upside down in most healthy cities. We have 60% home ownership and 40% renters were 60% renters and 40% home ownership. We have currently almost nothing in the entry level market for new families to purchase in Burlington. We are in the midst of a housing crisis and it is unfortunately caused by over regulation. One of the key ways that we can dig ourselves out of this is by responsibly relaxing regulations in our city to support infill development. We need to continue to bring residential densities from just duplex to potentially triplex and allow auxiliary dwelling units. This is something that we've been working on in the city for the last year and a half. And we need to continue along this process. We need to relax regulations to get out of this. This whole that we're in right now we need to find and build housing across the board. We need to find a way to reduce the risk of being home ownership and rental units that are market value affordable and for low income. We are in a deficiency that spans the whole housing spectrum. We put forward proposals that are actionable that we can relax regulations and actually stimulate growth in town. The only solutions I've heard from the progressive party and including my city counselor when it comes to housing is, hey, get yourself a tent and we'll find a way for you to sleep on a part. Okay, thank you. We have one caller coming up so Joe I'd like you to respond and then we'll go to the phone. Okay, thank you. I think if you read my statements that I've made over the past many months you'll see that I have advocated for housing at all levels. We have 79 families here in Burlington right now that are qualified for section eight vouchers have vouchers and cannot find units to them will run to them. We have a crisis in affordability. We have a crisis and rental housing safety. We have a crisis and numbers of accessible housing units, and we have a crisis in overall availability. We have to acknowledge that just building market rate housing is not going to get us out of this crisis. We have to invest in truly affordable housing. I would be open to looking at revising our inclusionary zoning ordinance to ensure that the rents that we're are actually affordable for folks. I think we know that the income levels that we set that at are higher than many folks are able to afford here in the city. And we have to do more to invest in in our shelter capacity here in the city. We have 700 folks around the state who are experiencing houselessness here. And we do not have enough shelter beds. We do not have enough emergency housing with the general assistance program, and we do not have adequate protections in the city right now for folks who are who are sleeping outside. So yes, I have advocated for our houseless neighbors and I will continue to do that, because they are the most vulnerable in our community, and we should not be displacing them and placing them in danger, more than they already are. We need to be investing in transitional housing, whether that is sober housing, or housing through BHA. We have programs that we know work for folks and we need to invest in those. Thank you. Okay, let's go to the caller. Can you tell us your name and ask your question of the candidates. Yes, you can. I'll turn my volume off. My name is Ray England. And the question is, Brunnen was just awarded many millions of funds for a completion of 289 through Pine Street to Battery Street. Deadlines have to be met, or the city could have to pay back federal funds awarded. Would you delay a project if the union contracts didn't meet your ideal scenario. Thank you, Christopher, why don't you go ahead first. So we're talking about the Champaign Parkway, an issue that predates even my birth on this planet. As it stands right now, I'm fighting for the taxpayers and fighting for an affordable city. And if, if push comes to shove in the cities on the hook for meeting these deadlines or failure to meet these deadlines resulting the city having to repay these federal funds, I'm going to vote for advancing the project. Because that ultimately that that bill will get passed along to the taxpayers and contribute to our rising cost of living in Burlington. It might not be the answer that you'd like to hear, but it is the answer that I'm proud to give. I will fight to keep Burlington affordable and I will allow this project to go forward. Okay, thank you, Joe. Thank you. I think that when it comes to the Champlain Parkway, we need to be absolutely certain that we are not increasing traffic in the poorest neighborhood in this city, which is partially in more three than the King Maple neighborhood. I would like to see first the really our enterprise project built which would extend battery street around to pine street, and ensure that that traffic isn't getting dumped into the King Maple neighborhood. Yeah, I think that we absolutely we're in a predicament with this with this project. It's it's a problem and we could end up owing more money to the federal government than the project is currently estimated to cost. That is a problem to me. I think that is a question of poor government. I think the plan that we currently have has tried to address some of the concerns that have been brought forth, but I still have serious concerns that this doesn't do enough to meet our 21st century goals of addressing climate change and making it more walkable more bikeable and more accessible for public transportation so I will continue to fight for that to make sure that this project works for everybody in Burlington and addresses the serious concerns that advocates have raised around racial justice and ensuring that marginalized folks are taken care of. Thank you. Okay, well we've gone through a lot of questions and we're at the end of our time together so I'd like to ask each of you to give a 30 second closing statement we'll start with Christopher. Thank you for hosting this and thank you for Jordan and everybody at CCTV for evening. I'm happy to run for Burlington City Council this town meeting day and I ask you to, to, I ask you to support my campaign and, and for your vote on the March 1 election day. It has been two years, two tumultuous years since our city council has had a conservative voice on and we're out of time aren't we. It's time to bring a conservative voice to Burlington City Council. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sorry, 30 seconds goes fast. It does. I've got a barking dog too that was distracted. Go ahead Joe. Elaine thanks so much for moderating tonight and appreciate CCTVs continued election coverage to essential service and I'm glad that we have it here in Burlington. You know I'm running for a full term on the city council to continue the work that we've done over the last five months to really address affordability and advocate for meeting folks basic needs and addressing racial equity here in the city. I have said from the beginning that I am always here to show up for a conversation, and I will do just that so please reach out to me. I can be reached at Joe McGee BTV at gmail.com or on the phone at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Thank you so much. Thank you both for being patient with the time restrictions and for being here this evening. So my name is Elaine Haney and this is Joe McGee incumbent and Christopher Aaron Felker Challenger running for the Burlington City Council Ward three seat. Thank you for tuning in to town meeting television ongoing coverage of local community candidates budgets and ballot items. And this and more forums at www.ch17.tv. Don't forget to vote on or before the first Tuesday in March town meeting day, March 1 2022 early voting by mail is available by contacting your town clerk's office polls will also be open from 7am to 7pm. Thank you for watching.


Hey, welcome to the Wing Chun Kit channel. Today I'm gonna show you knife defense. Three techniques against, knife! Three techniques against three common knife attacks that you encounter on the street. Here we go. Hey, so here's the first technique. Very common attack in the street is just this one. Okay? Now, it's not like in the movies, people present the knife, but here's the knife and then they attack. They're mostly likely they're gonna start from the hip, draw from their back pocket and just attack.  This is better, but in reality, people usually attack at night time and it's gonna be in a surprise situation.    So let's see an attack is coming, right?  So get your belly out of the way, get it out of the way because the target is your belly and then just use this to be to block it, okay? Get hold of it. Now I'll show you what to do if you can't get hold of it, but get hold of it and swing your baseball bat. So baseball bat that way, all right? From here, you open up this space.  So it'll be hard for him to move the knife and it's quite safe here. You can't really do anything with the knife.  Now, sometimes he goes downwards but this time I say he comes back up like he doesn't bend down that much. Go for the claw. And that's all that I showed you in another video. So your thumb goes in here and your other fingers go here. So you're grabbing the whole windpipe, all right? Step off to an angle, 45 degrees this way. Step back on his knee or take down, punch him. Maybe he doesn't let go, right?  From there, stop, walk away, check your flanks. Keep the knife here nice and close and then we're gonna grab from you. Okay, so that is the first technique. Let me show it to you step by step again. All right, so let me show you step by step how to do this. The first is knife. One, two, three, four, five. So notice I said knife when I realized that in a knife. What that does is that's everybody else around you know that it's a knife attack.  People don't even know it's a knife attack. So you can get people helping you out or calling the police.  And it programs you to gear up to the next level of force that you need to do in order to survive this knife attack. So hope that helps you. We'll go on to the next technique. Hey, here's the second technique for knife defense. So that's the second technique, common side slash very common on the street. We'll show you how to defend against that right now. All right, the second technique is against a side slash like this. So a slide slash is coming.  You don't wanna go this way because this is into the slash. So you wanna go this way away from the slash. All right, the second thing you wanna do is to block it with any part of this here as a wedge to block this at the same time, strike at the throat, fingertips on the throat or to the eyes or it could be to the chin or it could be just a punch doesn't matter. I like doing the finger because you get more reach and it makes them choke a little bit like that. Number three, same as the first technique, we're gonna grab this and deliver knees. Maybe block, that's okay, because he's worrying about that now and not about this. Okay, same take down, we're gonna grab the throat, push it down, step to the angle and do a kick. Same thing, we're gonna drop our knee down here, keep grip here off the knife and then do a circle. Okay, and like that, strip it, stomp again, check your flanks, move back. Okay, so here is the second technique in slow motion, step by step. So we got one, if you can grab it, great, if you can, you can just do that. One, two, three, four, five. If you don't have the knife, great, six. You got the knife, step on it first, then check. Now you can't grab it when you step on it. Kick him in the face, then pick it up when it's clear and check your flanks again. Hey, here's the third self-defense technique. Hey, give me your money. Okay, okay, I'll give it to you right now. Okay, that's the third technique. Very common, someone to hold a knife to your back, asking and robbing you, so I'll show you how to do that right now. Hey, here's the instruction on the third technique. So somebody is coming up behind you, you don't know what's happening, right? And you feel the knife. So if he doesn't have the knife, you're gonna look back. You wanna actually move back so that you can feel the knife on your back first.   Me, in the middle of the sentence, then you do the technique. So from here, I can turn this way or this way. But with this case, I'm just gonna turn this way. I got this here, do the throat, palm, punch, doesn't matter, eyes doesn't matter. And then from here, I'm gonna do the same thing. Grab here, do the knees, just like the other two techniques. And then from here, grab the throat, step onto his back corner, kick out the knee, keep the knife, and then strip it. If he holds it hard, he won't let me go, just knee him.  And then twist it out and check your flanks. So that's the third technique. Let me show you how to do that step by step. So you're just hanging out and then there's someone trying to take your money, okay? First of all, you want to back up into the knife a little bit.  So that's preliminary step, okay? Step one is turn and grab the arm and do a throat or a strike to the head, that's one. Number two, get hold of this arm and deliver knees. Number three, get hold of the throat, step onto angle and do a takedown. Number four, if he drops a knife, great, take it all the way, drop this on his ribs, okay?  So practice that, count the numbers and you'll get good at it. Hey, so I just showed you three techniques against three common knife attacks. We got the lower attack, we got the slash and the knife behind the back. So I hope that you can use those techniques. Now, notice that a lot of the techniques I'm using is the same for all three of the attacks. So when you're practicing, don't try to learn a hundred techniques, just find a handful of them that work for you and just keep using the same one. All right, so stay safe on the street because one out of five attackers are carrying knives or weapons. So you need to know how to defend yourself and you need to also make sure you call out knife whenever you see the knife or notice that it is a knife situation or even when the guy starts to put their hand behind their back, you can say knife right away. It'll just change your mindset and let everybody know around you that it's a knife attack and then you'll probably get some help or at least someone will call the police. So stay safe on the street, we'll see you soon in the next video.


Here is yours, Stephane. Yes? OK. So hello everyone. Yeah my name is Stepan. So the title of the talk is Make some noise unleashing the power of convolutional neural network for profile side channel analysis. So this is a joint work with Jahun Kim, Anjeli Hoyzer, Shivam Basin and Alan Hanjaric. So first let's start with motivation. Why do we do this? im rage stayed up. So, for the capitalization of elitution, what will be my profile yet? Yeah, what do I have to invest save in change in the competition between the outcomes in prišlično, da je preformacija na zeločenih analizov. V komolusijštih neuralnih netvokov v zeločenih analizov. In včasno, da se početno vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne vsečne.  Teh, da je dobliziran, vsečne analizov, to zeločenih analizov, zeločenih analizov. Poprav, da je iznamen na zelo, vse je celo zelo, je tako zelo mačno, je zelo, da je zelo, ta je zelo obržen. Učne, da je zelo, da je zelo. Tukaj da je vstavljamo zelo, da je zelo. Učne, da je zelo, da je zelo, tako zelo. Tako, da je zelo, da je zelo. Učne, da je zelo. Učne, da je zelo. tudi izz naliti začočniti, ki se pomejkamo, da je dejno, začo bilo, in kako se bo tudi zdajno? Kaj sem včunjeni? načečenje in však testov, da smo si svojali, da bomo zelo začeliti, da je bolj metod, da je to dobro nekaj, in vseh v 2016 početek smo odpočali, da se začeliti v komolusijstvih, zelo začeliti. I to se pričečenje. Vzelo, da smo se začeliti, da smo početek zelo začeliti, da je zelo začelit, da je dobro preformačne, da je dobro preformačne, da je dobro preformačne, da je dobro preformačne. O, tako so mi biti nekaj izgledanje. Tudi postojevali mesto izgledanje. Zdaj忘, nekaj se lahko, etni in nekatki. Protožitej, razmazitej, nekatke, nekatke, izgledaj se sahbiti, thej nekatki začelite, z tih rainy tunge nazivaj, bihca nekako vše, bihče zaradi. Bejte bozena. Svaj poččete jasnj, da ogledaj tih. But unfortunately, with something like this, we cannot do a lot. So we cannot calculate really complex stuff. So let's extend it a little bit. Let's add more of those neurons. So now instead of just one, we are adding many and we have many, many layers of those neurons. And actually, this is something that's called multi-layer perceptron. And this is already tip learning. So here we see input layer, output layer. So input is with x, output is with y, and then two layers in between, hidden layers. So usually we say if you have more than one hidden layer, it's already kind of deep learning. Then the options are quite, quite different. For instance, we could do something like this, where we would have many hidden layers, or we could do something like this, where we would have one hidden layer, but really wide hidden layer. Why all this is nice? Why all this works? Well, because there is something called universal approximation theorem, and basically a feed forward neural network with only a single hidden layer containing a finite number of neurons can actually approximate continuous functions on complex subsets. So what does it mean? Well, let's say with some assumptions, you have a neural network with only one single hidden layer, and you can do basically almost everything. So wow, from that perspective, yes, we would say we use this, we are able to get top results. Well, it's not so easy. First problem is, how do we really obtain that kind of neural network that works great? How many neurons would you have in that single hidden layer? So instead of having one huge layer, it's better to have a deep neural network with many smaller hidden layers. And then we come to the convolutional neural networks. So they were first designed for two-dimensional convolutions, like images. But they are actually really powerful in many, many domains. And they are similar to what they already said. So a number of layers, every layer, a number of neurons. We have convolutional layers, we have pooling layers, we have fully connected layers. So convolutional layer, we would have some input, we would do some kernel magic. So from something, we would map to some other value. So here we would multiply every value in the first square with the values in the second one, and we would get a number. And we would do some pooling. And here we can see, we just define some, again, some space to work with. And, for instance, this would be max pooling. So from each of those four separate squares, we would just take the biggest number. And that's what we call convolutional block. So convolutional layer plus pooling layer, convolutional block. So this is, let's call it like introduction for all section on machine learning talks. What do we do here? Well, we start with saying, how can we find a neural network that works really good for our side channel problems? And there we start with a design principle that is called, let's VGG like. So VGG is quite famous architecture, deep learning architecture used in image classification. And that kind of architecture has some rules. So it has small kernel size. It has max pooling with two times two windows. It increases number of filters per layer. Convolutional blocks are added, and the spatial dimension is reduced to one. After fully connected layer, we have the output layer. Convolutional fully connected layers use relu, output layer use softbox. So these are just some kind of, let's call them design rules. If you wanna do something that's VGG like, you would follow these rules. So, how did we actually come to this architecture that we are using here? Well, we were not really novel in that sense, but we said, well, it's fine, we are here working with side channel information, like information from oscilloscope. But that kind of data is not unique. For instance, if we consider speech, speech is kind of similar data. This regard the numbers, but the shape wise it's similar. So we said, let's take the most powerful, the most powerful convolutional neural networks using the speech recognition. So we started from that. And this is kind of the architecture. So we have a number of convolutional layers and pooling layers. And on that we built with fully connected layers, and on that we add softbox. I will not really go into details on all specificities here, but let's say we use some additional tricks, like batch normalization on every odd number player, on the output we use dropout, and so on, so on. These are all some tricks to make the most from your neural network. And this is the architecture that we had in the end. So we have the input, we have a number of convolutional blocks, we have the output, you use this, you get hopefully really good results. But can we improve the results and improve them, let's say it on a more general level. So of course, this architecture can be improved. Give me a specific data set, I will tune the parameters even more, and I will obtain something even better. But can I work with something that's, let's call it, as generic as possible, and still improve the behavior for many, many data sets? Well, to do that, we used noise. So, this is from where the title comes, make some noise, because we said, let's add noise to the input, let's add noise to the training data. And now this sounds a little bit counterintuitive, because in order to fight noise, to fight noise measurements, we are actually adding noise to the training data. Why it works? Well, simply because you can see it from the perspective, your convolutional neural network will learn stuff. But if it learns too much, it will start to overfit. So, I even, yeah, this is the depiction of overfitting, underfitting, and what let's say it's optimal. So we do not want our neural network to overfit, to learn every specific detail. And how do we prevent it from overfitting? Well, make the problem more difficult. Add noise, then for neural network, it will be more difficult to overfit. In one way you could see it, we wanna concentrate on big, important principles. I do not care about every small detail, I will hide small details with noise, and therefore my convolutional neural network will learn important stuff. What's important with measurements from oscilloscope, it's more difficult to see, but if we talk about images, well, and we talk about face recognition, it's important to recognize there is a face, but it's a little bit less important to recognize, aha, a person has blue eyes. So, regardless of the color of the eyes, you can recognize the face, but if you don't see the face, that's much, much more problem. So, there basically we just add noise to the input layer to the training data. It's simple Gaussian noise. Nothing specific, we do not care about the data set specificities, you just add noise, and you hope to obtain, well, you will actually have high, high chances to get much better results. Why? Well, theoretically you can see this as L2 regularization. So, now one can ask, well, so you are changing your data set. Is this data augmentation? Well, yes and no. Depends how you look at it. With data augmentation, we usually apply some kind of domain knowledge to deform the signal into something that's better, and then we use the original measurements and the form measurements as the new set. Our technique, well, it's not really ours, we were not the first one using the noise, but what we use here is a noisy training and data augmentation. Why? But at the same time, we do not change the data set and use original and changed. We just change the measurement and we work with that. So, we do not produce new measurements, additional measurements. If we started with 1,000, we still have 1,000. Only that 1,000 is a little bit different. So, what can we get? Well, first, what do we do? What do we test? We consider only the intermediate value models, so basically that means we are attacking AES as box output and we have 256 classes. Why is this important? Because we assume all the classes are balanced, more or less for each class we have the same number of measurements. We use, let's call them standard data sets, so DPAv4, something we call AESHD, no countermeasure, but a lot of noise. Then we use the data set. Well, the third one is AES with random delay countermeasure and the final one is ASCAT. So, despite means these features are more important. So, we see the first one and the last one are kinda looking easier while the second and third look difficult. And what do we see? Well, the blue line is the behavior if you add the noise. The orange line is without noise. So, what? And this is when we repeat experiments on the left is when we repeat experiments for a number of times. So, let's concentrate only currently on the right side. We see that our performance without noise is good. So, the guessing entropy, we reach guessing entropy of zero after, let's say, six, seven traces. But if we add noise, we reach that same value with four traces, something like that. This is so easy data set, the results are not really giving us so much. Let's go for something much more difficult. So, here we see again, if we add noise, we are able to get much, much better behavior on the right. Both of these settings are considering different convolutional neural networks. So, the first one is the one we proposed. This one is the one proposed by Emmanuel Prouf and others in ASCAT paper and ASCAT data set. So, they have one convolutional neural network. And what's interesting here, we see we just used that convolutional neural network, we added noise and it works better. And here is again, one nice example with our neural network for the random delay data set. We can see that if we don't have noise, we need 10, 11, whatever traces. If we have added noise, we need one max two traces to break guessing entropy. And finally, this is the result for the ASCAT data set with the ASCAT neural network where we see that if we add noise, it works much, much better. Why is this important? Well, it gives us some notion that we are kind of generic. We don't care exactly what kind of convolutional neural network you use. But you still can obtain better results if you just add the noise. So, what else is done in the paper? Well, we see that that addition of noise is quite stable. So, one can ask, yes, but how do you decide what kind of level of noise do you add? Well, we did a lot of experiments. Basically, you can add various levels of noise, it works good. And you can also, that it does not seem that you can have a single best convolutional neural network for all your side channel problems. Interesting, we showed that if you have really good neural network, attacking a data set protected with countermeasure can be even simpler, easier than attacking a data set without countermeasure. Depends on the data set. And finally, we showed that if you use this trick with adding noise, you need less traces in the profiling phase to obtain each performance. So, what does it mean? Well, you have only a limited number of traces and your attack is not so powerful. You can add noise and make your attack much more. Finally, just something additional. Once you're doing your training, there is different ways how you can select your training set. So, I select it like this, I select it like that. And then in the end, we all report somehow some average results. We also showed in this paper that your behavior, your convolutional neural network will depend a lot how you select that data set. For instance, in the first picture on the left, you see, well, one way it's good, well, orange one, your faults are not so good. And then on the other picture, you can even see that some faults depending how you select your training set can even have really, really bad behavior. So, that means often it's not enough to say, I just use 20,000 measurements. Yes, but if your data set is 100,000 and you used first 20,000, your results from second 20,000 could be really different. To conclude, VGG-like architecture seem really good for side channel. And by the way, Ascat is also VGG-like. There are other domains that use machine learning, deep learning. We can learn a lot from those domains. So, we do not need to reinvent new stuff. There is a lot of new stuff, at least from our perspective already done. We just need to recognize it and use it. And if we do that, we can actually reach the performance for side channel. And finally, yeah, we propose this noise addition procedure as relatively standard procedure to do in your machine learning profile attacks because we also showed even template attack, pool template attack, can be improved if you add noise. And thank you for the attention. Come to this micro. Any questions? Cool. Thank you for the talk. I have a quick question. So, you showed that if you add noise, it works with side channels. Yes. I tried on other tasks, like image recognition or... Sorry, sorry. So, your addignode works well for side channel cases? Addignode works for all the domains. It's not something that we invented for side channel. It's something that's done actually in many domains and it's recognized as a good thing to do. So, addignode is, as L2 regularization, it should work always. And I had another question. So, I think if you don't add noise, you are kind of overfitting. Have you tried with smaller network and in that case, do you also overfit if you don't add noise? And can you repeat? Sorry, and I, okay.  Have you tried with smaller network and see if you still overfit with the amount of data you have? Yeah, so, do we still overfit if a network is smaller? Yeah, depends. This is an interesting tradeoff. Goes little bit beyond the scope of this paper, but if your network is much smaller, you will overfit much less because your network does not have the expressive power to really recognize the data. But where is the level where you say, okay, I need this expressive level to have something. So, we did not really go into that direction in this paper. This is something we are doing in some other work. Okay, thank you very much. Yeah. So, we have time only for a very quick question. Otherwise, we have to take it off. So, I think you were first. I will try to answer fast. Thank you. Yeah, you said that what you are proposing is not to the documentation and the documentation is totally clear. On that point, my question is, did you test the efficiency of your proposal if clearly I use the adding of noise as the documentation, meaning that you don't add noise after the batch normalization, the first batch normalization, but you just take the initial databases and you create an increased database just by adding noise and then you execute the classical VGG model on that. Did you compare the two? In this, we did compare, we did not really put the results in the paper, but actually in the second presentation, it's more on that direction with other techniques. What's the most important message with this data augmentation? You often need to be really precise. How do you do data augmentation? So, you need to have domain knowledge. So, we really wanted here to work without domain knowledge. Yes, but if I add noise exactly as you do. Yeah. But just before the batch normalization? Yeah, we did it after batch normalization because of the batch normalization, it behaves just like a feature scaling. So, just from that perspective, you could move it a little bit if you know what will happen then with the layer. Thank you, Stefan, again for the nice talk. Oops.


But I'm thrilled to speak to you on the happy occasion of the Mises Institute's 30th anniversary. I'm so delighted that Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano have been able to join us for this wonderful celebration, along with our great Mises Institute faculty from universities all over the country, some of our excellent students, and you the generous supporters who have made everything possible. My sincerest thanks to you all. Three decades ago, when I was contemplating the creation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Austrian School of Economics, and its Misesian branch in particular, was very much in decline. The number of Misesian economists was so small that all of them knew each other personally and could probably have fit into Mises's small living room. This is a world that young people today, that young people today who find Austrian economics all over the place, can hardly imagine. I wanted to do what I could to promote the Austrian School in general in the life and work of Mises in particular. Mises was a hero, both as a scholar and as a man, and it was a shame that neither aspect of his life was being properly acknowledged. I first approached Mises's widow, Margit, who was what Murray Rothbard called a one-woman Mises industry. After her husband's death, she made sure his works stayed in print and promoted the translation of them into other languages. She agreed to be involved and to share her counsel as long as I pledged to dedicate the rest of my life to the Mises Institute. So I've kept that pledge. When Mises became our first chairman, how lucky we were to have on her passing the great libertarian businessman, Bert Blomert, who also was a wise advisor from the beginning to service her successor. When I told Murray Rothbard about the proposed institute, he literally clapped his hands in glee and of course said he would do whatever he could to support it. And he became our academic vice president and general inspiration. Ron Paul agreed to become our distinguished counselor and was also a huge help in assembling our early funding and also acting as a general inspiration. Murray would later say, quote, without the founding of the Mises Institute, I'm convinced the whole Misesian program would have collapsed. Of course, we can't know how things would have turned out had we made different choices. I simply wanted to do what I could with the help of dear friends like Murray and Bert to support the Austrian school during some very dark times and I was prepared to let the chips fall where they may. When I look back at all we've accomplished over these past 30 years, I can hardly believe it. Naturally, we promoted and kept in print works of Mises, the Nobel Prize-winning works of FA Hayek and the indispensable catalog of Murray Rothbard. Beyond that, we've made available to the world free of charge an enormous library of the most brilliant and important works ever written on Austrian economics and libertarian theory. Our own library and archives, based on the massive collections of Murray and Bob LeFave's Freedom School, are incomparable. Then there's the entire run of the quarterly journal of Austrian economics and its predecessor, the Review of Austrian Economics, which the Institute publishes. Murray Rothbard's Journal of Libertarian Studies and the publications, the many publications he edited during the especially dark days of the 1960s and 1970s, we also keep. Add to that many thousands of articles on every subject under the sun, thousands of hours of free audio and video from our seminars and other events, and you have a program of self-education that one time would have required access to major university libraries and a huge investment of time and money. The world now has access to all of this for free thanks to you. At Mises.org you can even hear recordings of Murray Rothbard teaching economics to engineering students at the former Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. But instead of teaching a room of 30 people, Murray's audience is now worldwide. Justice has been done. In fact, thanks to all these resources, the Mises Institute has become an intellectual foundation of the Ron Paul movement. When Ron inspires all those kids to look into Austrian economics, they flock to the Mises Institute. There they find the knowledge that Ron has given them a thirst for the pure, undiluted message of the Austrian school. Of all the things we do, I'd like to make special note of three in particular. Our Austrian Economics Research Conference brings together scholars working in the Austrian tradition from all over the world for what always turns out to be one of the intellectual events of the year. Our Mises University Summer Program has trained literally thousands of students in the Austrian school, including scholars who address you this weekend. Finally, our Summer Fellows Program gives rising Austrian scholars the opportunity to do original research under the supervision of Institute faculty and gives them a leg up in the job market as well. And I can tell you this. Graduate students, the graduate students coming out of the Institute's programs today would have thrilled Murray Rothbard. These are some of the sharpest young scholars I've ever seen. And you noted to take my word for it. You'll be hearing about them in the months and the years to come as they make their inevitable imprint on the world of ideas. Mises was confident that the ideas he championed would triumph someday if only because reality could not be postponed forever. But like Rothbard and so many other geniuses, he did not live to see his own vindication. Of course that makes his courage all the more admirable. Spurned by the establishment and ignored by his peers, Mises made no effort to cater to them nor to corrupt his message to advance his career. And of course neither did Murray. The conservative movement spurned Rothbard for the same official reason it spurned Ron Paul. We love him on economics, they protested, but we just can't stand his foreign policy. As early as 1956, Murray was coming to believe that war was the critical and defining issue, quote, the key to the whole libertarian business, as he put it. His essay War, Peace and the State that Tom and Walter both discussed provided a theoretical grounding for the libertarian position of non-intervention abroad. But Murray went beyond theory and became a full-fledged revisionist historian of war. This of course was what doomed him on the American right. Murray even rejected the US government's military interventions during the Cold War, which so many conservatives claimed was an exceptional case that required a massive global military presence. Bill Buckley even said it required a quote, totalitarian bureaucracy, unquote, here in the United States. But this would all be scaled back when the communist menace was defeated, conservatives assured us. Sure it would, Murray said. And in fact with the Soviet archives now open, Murray's been vindicated. The preposterous claims of Soviet capabilities and intentions find no support in the records, which show a Joseph Stalin who far from looking for a fight was still licking his wounds after losing 27 million lives in World War II, and of course presiding over a desperately poor socialist economy. Standing up against US foreign policy was just about the most unfashionable thing Murray could have done. He was a very great economist, and if only he had shut his mouth on sensitive issues like this, he could have been the well-known and celebrated figure he deserved to be. Instead, he followed his principles and his individual conscience, excuse me, he followed his principles and his conscience, reached whatever audiences cared to listen, and never felt sorry for himself. To the contrary, Murray was about the most cheerful ambassador the libertarian movement has ever had. Henry Haslett once told me that the greatest thing I'd ever done was to give Rothbard the platform he deserved by creating the Mises Institute. Now Murray could reach an audience that vastly exceeded anything he'd been able to garner in the past. And thanks to our fellowship programs, he can even, at long last, advise graduate students. So many of us wish Murray could have lived to see both the Internet Revolution as well as the victories of the past few years in particular. We can only dream of what the ongoing Austrian rebirth would have meant in practical terms for Murray. But students today are reading him to a far greater extent than ever before. So a genius who once edited newsletters that reached a handful of people would today be addressing packed lecture halls over the country and the world, and undoubtedly internet TV audiences too. And I feel sure the excitement of instantaneous commentary on current events would finally have pushed Murray, who famously used only a typewriter for his books and all his other writings, into the world of computers and technology. Everyone in the libertarian world, friend and foe alike, would have read his commentary every day and non-libertarians would have been drawn to him in greater and greater numbers. It was not to be. But these extraordinary men, Mises and Rothbard, paved the way for the intellectual triumphs which the experiences of the past few years are only a taste. Mises institutes have been formed spontaneously and without any direction from us in countries all over the world, including Brazil, Poland, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, Estonia, Ecuador, Finland, Israel, Portugal, Ukraine, Romania, Sweden, Belgium, Colombia, South Africa, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. We've accomplished all these things without a billionaire and without an obsessive eye to mainstream respectability. We have achieved them thanks to you and thanks to a faculty and staff dedicated to the cause of truth. The works of Rothbard and Mises and the contributions of all the other greats of the Austrian school are the patrimony we have been fortunate to inherit. But that patrimony carries with it a tremendous moral responsibility. We have flourished for the past 30 years thanks to your help, but this is truly a critical moment in the history of the Austrian school. Thanks to Ron Paul, more young people than ever are interested in the venerable tradition of the Austrian school. More of them than ever are skeptical about their professors are teaching them. And more of them than ever want to absorb everything they can of the Austrian school even to the point of becoming teachers and professors themselves. Will we be able to help this huge cohort of budding Austrians? Will the renewed interest in Austrian economics continue and strengthen or diminish and fizzle out? These are questions we have to answer together. A tremendous opportunity greater than anything I've seen in my lifetime lies in our hands. Some of the brightest young kids are committed to the world that Mises and Rothbard work so courageously and without fanfare to bring about. We have already witnessed so many early victories. Help us build on them and make these men's dream a reality. Thank you.