We get tapes of the show, 1-888-31-RADIO.
Thanks, Eddie Magnuson.
Thanks, Christina.
Thanks, Dr. John Nutter.
And we're coming back next week.
We're not letting up, OK, folks?
Stand by.
And you're tuned to WBAI in New York.
And the preceding was Expert Witness with Mike Levine.
Again, you're tuned to WBAI in New York.
Are we on?
OK, in just a moment, off the hook.
I've got to make a call, which could be as much work.
But if they could, they would.
Don't they live on for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Don't they live, no.
Can you hear the phone?
All right.
And are you there, Emmanuel?
Yes, I'm here.
I just heard the magical burst.
It's 2 o'clock in the morning here in Norway, which means
it's time for off the hook over here.
I never realized how inconvenient our time is
for the poor people over here.
But it's definitely something that I think we should improve
upon.
We should be on at 8 o'clock in the evening over here as well.
That sounds good to me.
Where is over here exactly?
Well, right now I'm in a town called Tromso in Norway.
And everybody, run out and get your atlases.
And look it up.
It's spelled T-R-O-M-S-O.
And when you see how far north I am in the country of Norway,
you will know that other an obscenity that you don't want
your parents to hear.
So be sure you close the door before you look it up.
It's really far north.
It's really cold.
It's really dark.
I mean, we have maybe an hour and a half to two hours of light.
And by light, I'm really using the term very loosely.
It's kind of a very dim twilight type of light.
I haven't seen the sun since Sunday, and I won't see the sun
until Saturday at the very earliest.
And I'd say it's, you know, it can be kind of depressing, I guess.
But at the same time, it's a bit exhilarating
because I've never done anything quite like this before,
except, of course, the exact opposite that I did last summer
when I had 24 hours of light when I came up here last.
So it's definitely interesting,
something I highly suggest for people to do.
Tromso is a very interesting town.
It's a college town.
It's much bigger than you might think it is for being so far north.
And, in fact, tomorrow we're going to see the premiere of Lord of the Rings
at the theater they have here, which is quite big, in fact.
So it's a bustling place, and I quite like it, actually.
I've already been through Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm,
which is a city I've never been to before,
and that was a very nice place as well.
And then a 20-hour train ride, 20 and a half hours, actually,
from Stockholm to a town called Norvik, which is to the south of Tromso.
You know, a 20-hour train ride in the States, I think, would be a real ordeal,
but here in Norway and Sweden, it really wasn't unpleasant at all.
Very smooth, very relaxing, and not much of a hassle.
Very dark, though, very dark.
So that's pretty much what I've been up to,
and, of course, the culmination of this is arriving at the Chaos Communications Congress
in Berlin, Germany, that takes place on the 27th, 28th, and 29th.
That's a hacker conference that's been taking place, I believe, since 1984,
making it the by far longest-running hacker conference in the history of this planet, anyway.
And, again, if people have any intention whatsoever of having fun this winter,
I strongly suggest they go to the Chaos Communications Congress.
It's not hard to get to.
Traveling overseas really isn't that much of a difficult matter,
although there are some interesting things I could point to on the way.
But first I want to make sure we have our guest with us.
Is Bernie S. on the line?
I'm here in the barricaded city of brotherly love.
There you are. Okay.
Well, that's great. We have Mike there in New York.
We have me over here in Tromso, Norway, and you all the way down there in Philadelphia.
How about that?
We're truly spanning the globe tonight.
Well, two time zones, anyway.
This time zone is called CET. Do you know what CET stands for?
No idea.
It stands for Central European Time.
So that's yet another acronym that we can throw out at you and have you use in future conversations.
More trivia.
Yes, so I'm here in Central European Time, but very, very far north.
Well, I mentioned some security issues, and Bernie, I think you get a kick out of this, actually.
JFK, of course, was locked down like a drum.
What was?
JFK Airport.
JFK, yes.
Yeah. It's a very stressful situation, traveling.
There's no question about that.
But at some point you just have to sort of, you know, swallow your anxieties and just move ahead,
because the alternative is just it's not worth it to shut yourself up and live in fear.
So that's what I've been trying to do is just, you know, ignore all the nonsense that's going on
and just try to move ahead as best we can.
But JFK really was rather interesting.
I mean, there's National Guard people all over the place with really, really big guns.
They're not like the ones in the bridges and the tunnels.
They look all nice and 12 years old and that kind of a thing.
No, these guys, they look mean, and they don't smile.
They just stare straight ahead, and they don't look at you.
They look through you.
Their eyes just like kind of bore right through your soul, and you feel guilty,
even though you didn't do anything.
Do they have those X-ray glasses on?
I don't even think they had eyes, to be honest.
I'm not really sure.
It felt like I was being probed, like some kind of science fiction thing, you know.
But they were there.
And, you know, here's the thing.
Here's the thing that I can't really resolve in myself, and maybe you can help me understand this.
But while I was there in this stressful situation getting onto this, you know,
this tubular airplane that God knows what was going to happen to it,
I felt better having these people there.
I really felt somewhat secure that they were there.
I'm not quite sure why, because I know there are so many things that you just cannot prevent.
With all the mean-looking people in camouflage that you can possibly call together,
what is it that you can actually accomplish by doing this,
except to give people a somewhat false sense of everything being okay?
Well, I think Isaac hit it on the head a few weeks ago when he said that
these sorts of things are there to make people feel safer.
There's probably, I'm no psychiatrist,
but I imagine there's some reason why armed guards standing around like that might make you feel safer.
Personally, I don't think I'd feel safer or less safe.
I just would feel that it's kind of a waste of money,
because these guys are not going to prevent what happened before.
I mean, if somebody comes running through the airport with a gun,
yeah, they'd be very helpful, but it wasn't an overt action that happened.
So, I don't know.
Well, you see, Bernie, what you're doing is you're thinking too much.
I turned my thinking off when I was there,
and I just saw men with guns not pointing them at me.
Okay, that must make me safer somehow.
And I just kind of flew with that in my mind, and it worked out.
The thing was all right.
And you paid no attention to the man behind the curtain?
I tried not to, but it was hard.
There were some really kind of annoying, stupid things, too, though.
I had a letter, right?
I had a letter that I wanted to mail.
This is a simple thing.
You know, it should be a simple thing.
I'm taking the train to the airport, which, again, should be a simple thing, but it isn't, of course.
You have to take the train and take two subways to get to the airport,
but supposedly they'll fix that someday.
So I had this letter in my hand that I need to mail to somebody in New York,
and so I'm in the airport terminal, and I figure, okay, mailing a letter probably is going to be pretty simple,
as it is in any airport terminal in the world.
So I asked someone where the post office is.
I should have been tipped off by her answer when she said,
oh, there's supposed to be one down there to the right.
That's a strange way of telling me where it is.
So I followed her directions.
I went down the airport terminal and turned to the right,
and sure enough, there's a post office, except there's a slight difference to this post office.
They have a mailbox, and on the mailbox is all this tape and a sign that says,
for security purposes, do not put mail in this mailbox.
They did the same thing here in Philadelphia.
I was at the post office about an hour ago, and I noticed they had, well, I noticed it weeks ago,
but it's still there, brown tape all over the thing, and you can't open it to put mail in it.
This is my naivety speaking here.
What is the point of a mailbox that you cannot put mail in?
Well, it's too much effort to remove it.
I mean, I don't think you can even call it a mailbox anymore.
I don't think it's earned that distinction.
I think it has to be called just a stupid piece of metal that serves no purpose whatsoever.
You're not supposed to unwrap it until after Christmas.
And here's the other thing I don't understand.
I could put a bomb, I could cut through that tape.
I'm not going to do this, but I could do this.
Cut through the tape, open the thing, put a bomb in it, and it could go off.
It doesn't matter that it's not mail.
They might as well put a sign up saying, please don't put bombs in here.
It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
It certainly didn't make me feel secure.
And the result was I had to go all the way overseas to mail a letter locally to New York,
which is going to come all the way back again.
And I feel really like an idiot, and I have to explain this to all the people over here
who never do such stupid things.
In Philadelphia, they also did away with all the wastebaskets,
the trash cans inside the large post office lobby.
I can't figure out why, but I guess they have an armed guard standing in there too.
I guess they're worried you might put a bomb in the wastebaskets.
So they're not there anymore, which is a hassle for me.
Watch your reaction when you throw your garbage to the side of you as you walk.
Well, I usually get a lot of junk mail.
I get a lot of mail.
I probably get about two or three-inch thick stack of mail every day.
I read a lot.
And maybe a third or a half of that is just junk, and I promptly throw it out.
And there's no place to throw it now, so I have to take it home and recycle it,
which is probably a good thing, but I don't like walking a mile and a half
with a lot of extra stuff I shouldn't have to carry.
But anyway, that's what I have to deal with.
Well, it's definitely changed the atmosphere of traveling.
It's something that I think has gotten a lot more, well, silly is kind of a lighthearted word,
but it really is kind of ridiculous some of the things that you have to do
for no particularly good reason.
The security check was okay.
I was expecting a lot worse.
I was expecting all kinds of strip searches and embarrassing things.
You were looking forward to it?
Well, no, I wasn't looking forward to it.
Well, I guess in a sense I was because I was expecting it,
but it didn't really happen that way.
That's why it didn't happen.
They picked a couple of people who looked kind of Arab or something,
and they put them aside and searched them a second time,
which I didn't understand the point of that.
If they searched them right the first time, they shouldn't have to search them a second time.
But everybody got searched with a little wand.
They just waved the wand up and down, and it makes these little noises.
What I can't understand, though, is it makes the noises, and they act like it's okay.
And then sometimes it makes the noises, and they don't act like it's okay.
So the noises I don't think are what's telling the story here.
It's called going through the motions.
That's what it felt like.
Their comments during this whole procedure didn't really instill much confidence either.
Like, who left that door open?
I swear to God they said that.
I just really didn't feel that secure.
I'm sure everyone rushed to accept responsibility for leaving the door open.
They also made me take my computer out of the bag this time and show it to them.
Now, I don't know what that accomplished.
I had to show them my computer.
Yes, this is a computer, or no, it's actually just a piece of metal that looks like a computer.
Did you have to turn it on?
No, I didn't have to turn it on.
That surprised me.
I thought they'd at least make me turn it on so that I could prove that either I really have a computer
or I have a bomb that boots Windows 95 or whatever the hell I have on it.
Well, at least my laptop you could easily pull out the floppy drive and put whatever you want in there.
Yeah, there's a whole extra bay in there you could put something evil in.
Well, that's true.
You could put more in that bay than you could in an Altoids can.
Not to give people ideas or anything like that,
but the point is that let's not fool ourselves into thinking that things are nice and peachy keen here.
We have big problems.
We need to deal with those problems and not make band-aid solutions
and convince ourselves that everything's okay,
because that's how it happened in the first place,
and that's how it's going to keep happening unless we actually deal with the issues behind these things,
not just the security issues, the policy issues as well.
I have a feeling that we're just not going to do that.
Watching news coverage over here, as always, is a complete eye-opening experience.
September 11th is on everybody's mind here,
and I think I've come more in touch with the humanity of what happened on that day here than I do in the States,
and the States is pretty much gung-ho, we must kill these people, American flags everywhere,
but here, and by here I mean throughout Europe,
the focus is more on the tragedy, the human tragedy of what happened,
and you really feel that impact, and I think it's kind of ironic that I have to come here to feel the impact
of the horror that happened in New York,
and I just wish there was something that we could focus on some more,
because when you focus on that, you tend to want to search for real answers
rather than the transparent ones that I think we're reaching for now.
And that moment of silence will allow you to all think about what I just said,
but while we are thinking some more, Mike, you have some information on the Dimitri case,
which I believe, and I don't want to be too jumping ahead with a gun here,
but is it good news? Could it be good news?
I think it's good news. There's been a little bit of dissent, but it's good news.
Dimitri thinks it's good news.
Okay.
Basically, the U.S. government and Dimitri Sklaroff have reached a deal
which will allow him to go home to Russia,
and if he cooperates with the agreement, then in a year the charges will be dropped.
Now, how do you understand this agreement to actually be working?
He has to testify against his company. What will that entail?
Well, his lawyers claim it will just entail him telling the undisputed facts of the case.
He said he's willing to testify for the government, testify for Elcomsoft, his company,
and he'll be glad to tell the same story both times because it's what happened.
Now, is Elcomsoft, are they liable in any way? Can they be brought up on further charges?
They've already been charged, criminally charged, as the corporation.
They can face fines, but even if they're found guilty, the good news is that no one will be going to jail.
Well, how can they be tried if they're in Russia?
Are they being forced to come over here?
The Department of Justice works wonders.
Are they actually expecting him to come to the United States to face trial is what I'm wondering.
It's my understanding that Alex Ketelov, who's the CEO, is already here, so apparently they can do this,
or they'll just try them in absentia. They've done stranger things.
I remember reading a few years ago when I had a lot of time on my hands to do legal research
that I was reading through the volumes of United States federal criminal statutes,
and there was some obscure page I ran across that dealt with jurisdiction of the United States government
enforcing its criminal statutes.
And I kid you not, there was a sentence in there, a couple of sentences, that went into detail
about how it not only covered the United States, but covered pretty much anyone on the planet
and on other planets, discovered and undiscovered.
I'm not making this up. I literally read that.
Wait a minute. Hold on a second.
You're telling me that they actually have made provisions for new races on other planets that we haven't yet found?
Well, it didn't say anything about new races.
It just said on other bodies in space, on other planets, and planets that weren't even discovered yet.
There was even a clause in there to cover areas that we didn't know about yet.
I swear to God, I'm not making this up.
This is in the body of federal criminal statutes.
This poses the interesting legal question of when we find and make contact with alien races.
Will U.S. law apply to them?
It's already been settled. I don't think it's gone to the Supreme Court yet.
I wonder what they'll think of that.
It's quite possible that there are other races out there doing the same thing,
except they have a whole lot better weapons than us.
That seems to be the rule.
Of course, that reference to you having a lot of time a few years ago is a reference to you being in federal prison.
I had a lot of time on my hands.
So you know what you speak.
You know what you speak as far as that goes, that's for sure.
We can laugh about this. Maybe we should laugh about this.
Maybe we should just try to forget it's even happening.
But some of the things coming out of D.C. these days, it's so laughable that you have to wonder.
Do these people know what they're saying?
Do they know how ridiculous and absurd these laws and regulations and proclamations that they're making
really will be in the eyes of history?
In many cases, the answer is no.
They don't know what they're saying, self-admittedly in some cases.
They don't get to read the laws before they pass them.
That's something we read a couple of weeks ago, that they haven't even gotten a chance to read things like the Patriot Act.
I don't know if you've read any of these amendments.
A lot of these laws that are passed are amendments to preexisting laws,
and they don't really say what the new law is going to read like.
They just say, and we will insert in the fourth paragraph, the third sentence of the fourth paragraph,
the word and, and then we'll put a period here, and we'll replace the colon with a semicolon here.
And you have no idea what this law is doing.
Have you ever read any of that, Emanuel?
I've tried to, and really after a little while you don't want to go to sleep or slash your wrist, really.
It's that bad.
They're not for human consumption.
I don't understand what would possess somebody to take part in this kind of a thing in the first place.
We're not meant to understand, apparently.
Wouldn't understand that at all.
Now, Bernie, there's been another interesting thing regarding recellular phone companies, particularly, well, actually I think all of them.
Now, this concerns, on September 11th, there was, I guess, concern over the lines getting clogged, particularly the cell phone lines,
getting clogged with people, I guess, making the last phone call to their lives, among other things,
all the people calling in to find out what was going on.
Now, there is a push to make this not happen in the future.
Do you know something about this?
Yeah, I was actually surprised to hear a story on National Public Radio this morning about this.
We've all known that anyone who has a mobile phone, PCS, you know, GSM, whatever, knows that there are serious capacity issues,
at least in most parts of the United States.
And according to Tom Wheeler of the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, who you may or may not choose to believe,
the traffic, the cellular traffic in New York City on September 11th, that morning, was 1,300 percent, 13 times greater than normal.
And, of course, the system could barely handle what it was, what it normally is supposed to handle.
So, as a result, most of the calls didn't go through.
So, people are worried that, hey, in an emergency, we need to make our calls through.
And there's some very good reasons why calls need to get through.
What if you're trapped under rubble or something, but you have your cell phone, you need to call for help,
and you can't because the system doesn't have enough capacity.
It's a serious problem.
So, apparently, the...
How does it want to fix this so-called serious problem?
Well, the only thing that's going to really fix it is more bandwidth, more capacity for handling calls on the system.
And that's going to only...
It's only going to happen with more...
Either better compression, which...
Compression, digital compression of the phone calls, which I don't think...
I think they're pretty much compressed as much as they're going to be and still be understandable, if they are now.
It's going to require more radio spectrum being allocated to the different wireless carriers.
And the wireless carriers love this idea.
And they have been pitching to the federal government for more spectrum, electromagnetic spectrum, over the past few years.
But now they're saying it's a matter of national security that they get this spectrum.
I don't know if those folks are listening.
I remember back in the mid-'80s when cellular first started coming down the pike,
the FCC awarded about 40 MHz of spectrum in the 800 MHz band to each cellular phone company in every market.
And there were two companies in every market that were awarded these frequencies for free.
The local exchange carrier, in our case, we are...
It was 9X or Bell Atlantic.
And then there was one competing carrier, a non-wireline carrier, who was also given for free 40 MHz of UHF spectrum,
which is a huge chunk of radio real estate worth billions of dollars,
and has been worth tens of billions of dollars over the years to them.
They didn't have to pay a dime for that.
Later on, more capacity was added for other...
More capacity was taken from other users like amateur radio operators and business users and so forth
for a spectrum used by companies like Omnipoint later became...
Who did it become?
VoiceStream, I think.
VoiceStream, that's right.
Anyway, so anyhow, what's going on here is this is another land grab for the electromagnetic spectrum
that the wireless carriers are saying now is a matter of national security.
And they want to get free radio channels, free spectrum worth billions of dollars,
just handed to them because, you know, it's for our safety.
And they have a point.
People should be able to get their phone calls through, but why they should just get a giveaway, I don't know.
Unfortunately, the story that was covered, the way it was covered on NPR this morning,
was that there is no way to prioritize cellular phone calls or PCS phone calls or GSM phone calls.
That's what NPR was saying, that there's no...
When you make a call, the system doesn't know whether you're, you know, the police chief or fire marshal
or just somebody ordering a pizza, and there should be some prioritizing of calls.
And the cellular companies say they need lots of money to implement something like that.
Well, as I think you know, Emanuel, there's been a system in place since the inception of cellular
called the access override class that...
I've heard of that.
Yeah.
But it never has really been clearly explained.
But the interesting thing is the story that I read, which was almost a week ago,
had to do with the problem the government was facing because they wanted to be able to make phone calls,
and all these people kept getting in the way.
And they needed a way to sort of push all them aside so they could make phone calls.
It was kind of like a throwback to the Audubon system, which those of you old phone freaks might remember
comprised the extra four touch tones on a touch tone pad, A, B, C, and D,
and they were used for priority override and all kinds of categorization.
Priority, flash, flash, and flash override, which you practically had to be the president
or a four-star general to press the flash override button.
God forbid.
I don't know if it was ever actually used in an emergency situation,
but basically the idea was that you could prioritize phone calls and cut ahead of everybody in line to get out.
Now there's a system in place now, which you're probably familiar with, called the GET system.
GET, yes.
And I think that's a modern equivalent of that.
I think the two phone companies involved in that are AT&T and Sprint.
That's true.
You call a toll-free number, and then you have to enter a PIN code.
It's a 1710 number, I believe.
That's right.
It's not an 800 number.
You're right.
It is 710, and it's not a toll call.
Then you enter a PIN code, and then you can call anywhere you want.
Apparently it's a billed to or associated with your PIN code so they know who called who.
I'm not entirely sure how you get to the 1710 number without getting bogged down.
Let's say they're selling Met World Series tickets that day.
You might not be able to get past your dial tone to get out.
Supposedly there's some prioritizing going on.
I don't know how that really works at the central office, but those are routed with greater priority.
I've called that number.
I don't remember it off the top of my head, but I've called the GETS access number just to see what happened.
Yes, it's something GETS.
I forget exactly what.
710 GETS something or 710 something GETS.
I'm sure a lot of people out there right now know that.
I think it's a 710 GETSmart.
No, that's not really it.
No, it's definitely not that.
But the interesting thing was when the story first came out,
the problem was that the government couldn't make the phone calls they needed to make.
You have to wonder why they're using cellular phones in the first place.
Why aren't they using more reliable things like two-way radios
or things that you'd expect emergency personnel and government employees to be using
rather than consumer-grade cellular phones,
which are notorious for not being very reliable, even though we're using them tonight.
And the controversy centered on is it fair to cut off all these people,
especially people who literally talk to their loved ones for the last time on a cellular phone.
Imagine if their call was deemed not important enough to be passed on the network,
that something else had to take its place.
And how do you know from a content standpoint?
I mean, you can prioritize users.
Say a policeman or a law enforcement officer has a phone that has been prioritized.
How do you know they're using it for a high-importance thing
instead of just calling somebody to say hi or to order food?
Yes, quite clearly you don't, and that's part of the unfairness right there.
But the thing that struck me and what was lacking in the article that I read,
which was in the New York Times, was why are they so upset at this?
Why don't they simply increase the capacity so that there will be, say,
an emergency network for this kind of a thing?
And later, about 55 paragraphs into the story, they mentioned,
yeah, that was something that was considered, but it was dismissed because of the cost.
And I guess that's how the second part of the story has come out,
which is what you're reporting on, where the phone companies now want to hand out.
Well, the ironic thing is a system like this has existed since the inception of cellular.
It's called the access override class.
Every one cell phone is assigned a one-digit number from zero to nine.
You're in one of ten classes.
And I don't know whether the highest or the lowest number from zero to nine
makes you the highest or lowest priority,
but the bottom line is your call is supposed to be routed with cued in a higher priority
if you're up on the pecking order.
But the cellular companies have failed to ever implement the access override class
and have, instead of assigning you a priority rating,
have just assigned a random digit or like a last digit of your cell phone number to your handset
to just sort of even things out.
And apparently the FCC has never called the wireless industry to task
for failing to administer the access override class system.
Hang on.
You're saying that the last digit of your phone number determines your status?
Well, yes, because the wireless carriers have failed to administer the access override class.
In other words, they're supposed to find out whether you're just a consumer who has no rights
or whether you're a police officer or an FBI agent or whatever,
and depending on who you are, you should get a higher or lower priority,
and that will be assigned on a scale from zero to nine, and that's your access override class.
But instead of doing that, instead of bothering to spend the time and money to administer a system like that,
the wireless carriers just assign a random number like the last digit of your phone number,
which is going to be random, all things said and done.
So this system is in place.
They switched it on.
It's in place.
It's mandated as part of the cellular standards that the FCC has set down.
So it's pretty ludicrous that the cellular company is saying,
oh, we have no way to prioritize calls because we need all this money.
It's in place already.
It's mandated as part of an FCC regulation.
What the story is that people are missing is that the cellular companies have,
because they wanted to increase their profits by just not bothering to administer the access override class,
could have caused problems.
It still brings us back to the very first point and the very first problem,
which is how can you prioritize at all?
How can you tell people your calls will not be carried because we've determined that these calls are more important
without knowing what the content is?
There's no way to tell.
Exactly.
I think the whole idea is a stupid one, and it can only be solved by simply having, if necessary,
an emergency network which is separate from the existing network,
therefore it doesn't cut off that network completely if it does have to be used.
They're giving away enough bandwidth out there to easily be able to do this.
Again, it all centers on profits and carving up the electromagnetic spectrum as if it were property.
There's a finite amount of that, too.
It's not like they're making new electromagnetic spectrum.
There's only so many frequencies to go around.
You've got to take it away.
It's all been spoken for.
You've got to take it away from somebody else.
Yeah, well, it might be high time to do that, but as long as they don't take it away from 99.5 FM,
I'm sure we'll be happy here.
There you go.
Now, I wanted to ask you guys, or I wanted to give you a challenge before we move on to the next topic,
but I saw something here in Tromso, Norway.
I'm going to have to put you on hold for about two minutes.
I'll be right back.
Sorry about that.
All right.
You're not going to hear my questions, so I guess I'll direct it to Mike.
I'll be right back.
Okay.
What's the challenge?
Well, actually, I'm directing it to the listeners as well, anybody out there.
But walking around, unless you guess it, basically walking around the streets in Tromso, Norway,
which is very northern most, I saw something in the street that you simply would not expect to see at all.
Okay.
What do you think that might have been?
I mean, literally, the last thing you would expect to see.
That's a pretty vague question.
It's pretty vague.
I don't know.
The sun, I don't know.
Well, you know it's not the sun.
Well, that's something I wouldn't expect to see in Tromso, Norway at this time of year.
Okay, yeah, but I can tell you right now it was not the sun.
But imagine, and again, this goes out to the listeners as well, walking around at night,
of course it's night after 1 o'clock in the afternoon, in the city streets of Tromso,
I saw something that shocked me that I was not expecting to see at all,
and I literally would say it was the last thing I expected to see on the wintry streets of a dark town in Norway.
So if anybody can guess what that is, I'll try to reveal the answer, assuming I don't forget it later in the show.
But our listeners are welcome to call up and voice their suggestions.
Okay.
Do we want to take some calls from our listeners?
Well, we want Bernie S. to come back because we can't take calls as long as Bernie S. is online,
so we have to finish with the Bernie S. segment first.
Okay.
So hopefully Bernie will be back in the two minutes that he said.
Do you have any other news items there?
I'm being told that we can take calls, hopefully.
We can't take calls with Bernie S. on the line.
Apparently so.
I still would like to wait for Bernie S. to come back, though.
Okay.
Do you have any other stories that you want to share with us?
I have a rumor, but those are your stories.
Hello?
What?
We have a rumor from Rotten.com, of all places, that the FBI wants to get access to data that an Internet worm has been capturing from people.
Apparently this worm has been sending captured passwords and all that to this set of either 17 or 22 e-mail addresses, depending on who you ask.
So it's been sending all this data, and the FBI wants access to it.
This is obviously data they could never get legally, but they are demanding it now.
What has the FBI actually said?
The FBI?
See, that's the problem with reading stories from Rotten.com, is that we don't know.
Well, maybe we should be reading stories about the actual quotes.
Bernie, are you back?
Okay.
Well, I'm going to have to go into the next item, which Bernie was a major part of, unfortunately.
Here's the problem, and this is a problem that affects America in general.
Bernie is still at work, and he has to work like a dog in the holiday season.
How many of you out there have to work like dogs, like 20 hours a day, it seems?
It's insane.
I'm one of those people.
That's why I had to put you on hold.
Yeah, okay.
I had to lapse into that, Bernie, because you ran out of material.
I'm at work right now.
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
I talked to you this morning at like 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning.
You were hard at work then.
It's 12 hours later.
You're still hard at work.
Phew.
Hardly working.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
Mike, did you find that quote?
No, we don't have a quote.
Okay, rip it up and throw it away.
I have a quote.
You've got a quote.
I have a quote from the Department of Defense.
Oh, yes, you have a quote from the Department of Defense, and this is concerning the...
Well, we haven't talked about the story yet.
No, we haven't.
You can bring up the subject.
Then we can get the quote.
Basically, how many of you...
Actually, we should probably trigger Echelon first.
Let's do that, all right?
I'm on an international phone call here.
We're broadcasting over the radio.
Say some words that will get Echelon kicked in, okay?
Osama.
Osama, bomb terrorist.
Anthrax.
FBI.
Lloyd Bridges, Bin Laden.
Wiretap.
Okay.
All right.
Everybody's listening now.
Everybody's listening.
Dead drop.
Hello.
Microfilm.
Hello, listeners.
Okay, everybody's here.
How many of you saw the actual Bin Laden videotape this past week?
Did you see it, Bernie?
After seeing little excerpts of it in excerpts of the excerpts on CNN,
finally over the weekend I caught the entire Department of Defense version on C-SPAN.
Now, the interesting thing, I saw this live.
I forget where I was when I saw it, but I was watching it on BBC World.
Oh, I thought you were there when it was being taped.
You said you saw it live.
I was watching it live as it was being broadcast to the world.
Okay.
There's no misconceptions here.
And I have to say, this is exactly what I was asking for.
I was asking them to show some evidence, please, so we can judge for ourselves exactly what's been going on here.
And that's something that the U.S. government has really hesitated in doing.
And I think it's been very harmful, that hesitation.
This, I think, has been very helpful because it shows something which I think is pretty shocking.
It shows Osama Bin Laden and friends pretty much gloating over what happened.
Now, there has been some talk in various countries of this being a forgery, a fake tape.
To be honest, I don't buy it.
It looks very genuine to me.
It looks very, you know, real.
The motions, the words seem to match up.
Of course, I don't know the translation, so I can't say for sure that the words are exactly what was being said.
But in looking at the tape, I made some observations.
And I'd like to know if any of the listeners have had similar observations.
But at first glance, well, first of all, the tape was aired in a rather weird way.
First, you saw the end of a talk by Bin Laden with some friends.
Then you saw about 20 minutes or so of some outdoor frolicking, I guess,
among the wreckage of a helicopter that the U.S. must have sent over.
And then it was the beginning of the Bin Laden talk.
So, obviously, what had happened was the tape had been started to record the outdoor scenes.
All of a sudden, the Bin Laden thing happened.
The person scrambled, started their recorder, ran out of tape, and said,
I said, oh, my God, I'm out of tape, and this is Bin Laden, so I'm going to rewind it,
and started erasing over what I had taped before.
And that's the order they played it in, and it seemed to make sense to me.
Now, a couple of other things jumped out at me.
One, having worked in digital video for the past couple of years,
I've noticed what errors look like with digital video.
And I saw a couple of those errors on the tape as it was being played.
I said, wow, this is digital video.
And the thing that also told me that this must be digital video is the length,
which seemed to be about an hour and two minutes, which is about the right length for a mini-DV cassette.
But the other thing that also got me thinking this was mini-DV was the very last frame that they showed on television.
The very last frame froze for a second.
And that's a real signature of mini-DV format, for the last frame to completely freeze before it disappears.
Now, why is this significant?
If this is, in fact, mini-DV, digital video, that means that there is more information on that tape
than what we have seen, information that can easily verify the authenticity
or at least go a long way towards proving just how much trouble they've gone through
in the first place to make it look authentic.
But there is something known as a time code on those tapes.
The time code has the date and the exact time.
And there's other information, too.
There's information about how the camera was set, if the lens setting changes.
All this information is there.
And if, in fact, this is digital video, it's a very simple thing to make a digital copy.
And we can finally use digital technology to our advantage.
We make a digital copy of the original tape and distribute that with the time code information on it.
And that information will show a lot more than what we're seeing right here.
It will show the exact time and date, a lot of things that can be verified,
a lot of things that can be seen as forgery that somebody makes an edit.
Obviously, it's going to look kind of clumsy with the time code.
And as you mentioned, it's not just time and date.
It's a stream of data, the entire length of the tape.
So there's a lot of data there.
That's right.
And if there's a gap of some sort, that's going to show.
That's my opinion anyway.
Did you reach the same conclusion looking at the tape?
Well, when you first mentioned this to me, I talked to you the other day.
I said, I don't know if it's digital or analog.
But then when I saw the full thing being played on C-SPAN, I saw definite digital artifacts,
especially around the time when there were people singing around the helicopter wreckage,
like sitting around the campfire sort of thing singing.
That blocky, that sort of cubist kind of thing you get going on with the digital distortion.
And so it clearly was recorded on a digital recorder,
unless it was re-recorded onto a digital thing.
But that wouldn't have resulted in those kinds of artifacts.
So I think it was done on digital tape.
All right.
So what has to be done is a digital copy of that has to be made available
so the authenticity can be verified.
I happen to think the tape is authentic,
and I think it's in the interest of the people releasing the tape to show it's authentic.
Well, they don't seem to think so.
They don't seem to think so.
Did you actually talk to somebody in the government?
Well, yeah.
Your suggestion, I actually called the Department of Defense and asked.
I actually got through eventually to some people in their audio-video department,
the folks who come up with these things.
And I was told by Mr. Ken Carter at the audio-visual section of the Department of Defense,
and I'm going to quote Ken Carter here.
That must be an exciting department to work in.
Here's his quote.
We do not make available digital copies in the original digital format.
What we released last week is what's available.
Nothing else is available, end quote.
And that was the kind of tone I was into.
He wasn't the least bit interested in hearing any suggestion or any reason how
or why releasing a digital copy of the original digital tape might further bolster the DOD's credibility.
In fact, he seemed defensive, no pun intended,
at the suggestion that DOD could gain anything by releasing a digital copy in the original digital format.
He did confirm that it was digital, though.
Okay, well, we know that much now, so it doesn't matter if it's MiniDV or DVCam
or any of the other digital formats out there.
That means there is more information.
There is more information on this tape.
There is time code.
There are things on there that can prove its authenticity.
I have to wonder why someone would be reluctant to release this information.
Certainly there's no security risk now.
The tape is already out there.
It doesn't give the longitude and latitude and the ID of the person that made the tape.
It's simply more information about the tape that has been released.
And I know there are people out there, there are reporters,
there are people with influence who can get answers a lot better than we can because of the access that they have.
This is something that I think is important.
This is something that I think needs to be known.
And if it's not released, if it's something that they sit on,
then I'm going to change my opinion and say, wow, they must have really done a good job fabricating this tape.
Why would you not want that information to be released?
If any of these people you just mentioned are listening,
I have the phone number for the Department of Defense Media Affairs Office who could help them.
People listening could just call them and try to get a copy of this tape.
Should I give the number on the air?
Yes, it's a public number.
It is.
It wasn't something said.
It was unlisted or anything.
And also you can email us, OTH at 2220.com if there's any information that you can add.
That number is area code 703-697-5131.
Again, the number for the Department of Defense Media Affairs Office is area code 703-697-5131.
You might want to ask to speak with a Ken Carter, but my guess is you want to get a little higher than Ken Carter
to ask for a digital copy in the original digital format,
because if they dub it to a different format it's going to change the time codes,
a digital copy in the original digital format of the tape that was found in Afghanistan.
And that would really bolster the DOD's credibility to release a digital copy of this.
They don't have to send the copy to everybody who asks.
One person.
And that person can make a digital copy.
That's the beauty about digital data.
There's no loss in quality from one digital copy to the next.
And if they simply give a copy to C-SPAN or somebody and they play it,
every video expert in the country will be able to look at it and say,
aha, this is fake, this is real, this has been tampered with, this hasn't been tampered with.
It makes a lot of sense to me to do this, especially when your credibility is being called into question.
You know what, I think I know what they're worried about.
What's that?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Yeah, that's going to bite them, isn't it?
I think they're worried that Osama may invoke the DMCA.
That would be something.
It could drag out in court for years.
Reaches across the globe, doesn't it?
That's right, it has.
All the way to Russia, and that's not as far away as Afghanistan.
We don't have that much time, so we should take some phone calls.
Mike, what time is it over there in New York?
It's 847 now.
Okay, yeah, we definitely should take some phone calls.
Bernie, I asked a question before.
I basically said that I saw something in the streets here in Tromso, Norway,
that shocked and astounded me,
something that I was not expecting to see in the streets at this particular time of the year,
at this particular time of day.
It's probably the last thing I would have expected to have seen.
Mike is completely stumped by this.
What did he think?
I'm just asking if you might know what it was I saw.
I have no idea.
Okay, well, then you don't know either.
So we'll take phone calls with your suggestions on all kinds of other things
that we've been talking about tonight, as well as an answer to that challenge.
Now, I'm told that Sidney Smith has figured out a way to actually keep you on the phone
and take phone calls.
We're told that it works.
That's great.
It's going to be amazing.
So let's try it.
And hello, we should have a caller.
Hello.
Hey, I'm still here.
Wow.
Oh, yeah, hi.
Sidney, you're amazing.
I've got a thing about the tape, the Bin Laden thing, but I want to tell Bernie something.
I think there's something broken.
Yeah, I hear an annoying voice, but go ahead.
You have 30 seconds.
Bernie, I'm going to Philadelphia.
Did you know that in the Patco station, you could Redbox to have this little thing?
I'll make this quick.
Yes, I received your email.
Okay, you received my email.
You'll make it even quicker than that.
Thanks for that call.
Okay.
Always a pleasure hearing your voice, but especially hearing it go away.
Let's take another phone call.
Lemmings, the Northern Lights, Utrecht Lead.
All right, all right, all right.
We've gone through two of my favorite people so far.
Let's do a third call, see if we can keep our streak going.
Hello.
Yeah, hi.
I just wanted to tell you guys, in the September 20th New York Times, they had a big article
about the telephone line conversation that you guys was talking about, and it spoke about
how they handled the system and how they didn't and how they can improve it.
I thought it was a very interesting article.
What magazine was that in again?
September 20th, Thursday, in the circuit section of the New York Times.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, they had a very big article about it and the amount of voice calls that they handled
and the amount of lines that they allocated to the government during this process of the attack.
And they had something called call gapping, which enables them to type in some commands
into a computer, and what it does, it blocks everybody else's circuit and just allows a
certain amount of long-distance calls to come into New York City.
Interesting.
That article was written a lot closer to September 11th,
so I'm sure it has a lot of important information.
Yeah, it does.
It's a very interesting article.
I was waiting just to tell you guys about it because I was reading it last night,
and you guys happened to be talking about it today.
So there is some type of technology that they already have actually set up
in the event of this happening.
Interesting.
Well, thanks for the information.
Okay.
It reminded me of the very early days of the Internet,
where basically it was a Defense Department project,
and it was really one of the purposes was to link supercomputers together
for calculations of things that the Defense Department needed to make from time to time.
And they would basically shut out all the researchers sometimes
to do some massively parallel computing thing.
Basically everybody was shut out just so the folks in power could do whatever they had to do,
which is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes it's not.
I should point something out here.
I'm listening to the radio in the background.
I'm listening to the radio in the background,
and we're listening to it on the Internet in the other room.
The delay is so long that it's just getting to Monroe right now.
That's how long it took for it to cycle.
That's amazing.
I never knew it was that long.
Of course, I am over here in Norway, so maybe that's the reason.
Let's take another phone call.
Hello.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes.
Hi.
Let me turn this down quick.
I just wanted to – I'm on the air?
Yes.
Yes, you are.
No, the question was that I haven't really looked at the tape in detail,
but my question is who will tape this,
and why would they leave the tape in a particular place where somebody could find it?
That's a good question.
I'm not exactly sure myself why,
but I imagine it was somebody that didn't intend for it to fall into the hands of the United States.
It sounded like something that someone taped for their own archives.
A better question is wouldn't Osama bin Laden see the risk of having some guy with a camcorder
filming him saying these things?
Exactly.
He didn't know it was there.
Exactly.
All right.
That's all I have.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
When he – just a couple weeks earlier denying that he was involved.
All right.
People, when you call us, you have to turn off your radios.
It's kind of like our first caller anyway, so no loss.
All right.
Another call.
Take another.
Hello.
Hello.
You're on the air.
I'm on the air.
You are tuned to 99.5 on the FM dial,
wbai.org on the net.
Radio to change the world.
I'm out of here,