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Are things a little slow for you on Friday night?
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Well if things are slow, tune into Home Fries at 8pm, where we pick it up a little bit.
A man goes to a psychiatrist, he says nobody talks to me, he says next.
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Join me, Fred Hershkowitz, on Friday nights where we'll get you going on listener sponsored
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Night shift, Thursday mornings from 3.30 to 6am on WBAI.
Hello, you're on the air.
You're tuned to hi-fi, WBAI 99.5 on your FM dial, New York.
Okay, this is Joe Franklin broadcasting on radio station WBAI.
It's 99.5% all natural and preservative free.
WBAI FM in New York.
I love this radio station.
And it's 2 o'clock in the morning where I'm standing in Amsterdam, 8 o'clock in the evening
in New York City where you're probably listening.
Time for Off the Hook.
Off the Hook
Well, this is going to be kind of an unusual radio show.
Porkchop, are you there in the studio?
Yes, I am.
Okay, I learned from last week.
I can't hear the theme, but I believe there's a theme there.
Yeah, you hit it right on the nose, right in the right place.
Because I haven't memorized it.
I've been doing this for many years.
I had the theme playing in my head, but I can't hear it in my ears
because apparently the mechanism we use to play the theme doesn't actually go overseas.
Or something like that.
Something like that, perhaps.
But I'm wandering around the streets of Amsterdam, which is in Holland, the Netherlands.
And it's 2 o'clock in the morning here.
There's a lot of people out.
We're still kind of recovering over New Year's, as I'm sure people in New York are as well.
And we're going to try to do a couple of things tonight as far as linking people together.
First, we're going to try to hook up with Bernie S. over there in the Republic of Philadelphia.
The Republic of Philadelphia, huh?
Yeah, we can call him up and hear the sound of him answering the phone.
And then we can bring in some other people as well.
What's new from your end of the woods over there?
My end of the woods, huh?
Not all that much, actually.
It was a quiet New Year's, which almost surprised me.
But the ball dropped, and here we are, 2002.
You know, the last couple of years I spent in Times Square,
and I have to say, being in Amsterdam this year, it blew Times Square away.
It really did.
That sounds like Bernie S.'s phone.
Sounds like Bernie S.'s phone to me.
Philadelphia Locking.
Bernie?
Hello?
Is that you, Bernie?
Who?
I don't think that's Bernie.
You're not Bernie, are you?
No, I'm sorry.
Okay.
No, we're sorry.
We'll redial.
That was rather odd.
Yeah, maybe your handwriting is particularly bad or something.
Our engineer didn't dial the right number or something.
Yes.
We just reached a total stranger someplace.
Yeah.
All right, hang on.
Let me rewrite this number.
Okay.
And there it is.
Well, we just have our new visitor into the studio.
Hello.
Hello, over there.
This is all coming to you live over the radio.
Yeah.
You would never know.
All right.
It's fun to play with the phone system live on the radio, too,
because people can see how things work and how they don't work sometimes.
But hopefully the next sound we hear will be Bernie S.'s phone.
That was wrong.
Yeah, all right.
Well, we know what the problem was.
Okay.
My handwriting.
Okay, yeah, that's always been a problem.
Yeah, ever since grade school.
Yeah.
I'm about to launch into what Amsterdam is like during New Year's,
but I know Bernie S. is going to join us as soon as I start,
so I'm going to wait for the phone to actually ring.
And that way we'll be able to start fresh.
Where are you?
Yeah, so I do have this report that Dimitri is back in Russia.
That's good.
As of a couple of days ago.
I was just told that before the show.
Apparently he wasn't there beforehand, so that's good news.
So he was released.
He just hadn't actually boarded the plane yet.
I'm not sure exactly what he had left to do here,
but from what I am told, he is actually back in Russia now.
And that is very good news.
Of course, the trial will be coming up next year.
Oh, this year, actually.
It's now 2002.
So the trial will be coming up.
All right.
So is there trouble reaching Bernie?
There appears to be.
Oh, here's a ring.
Here's a ring.
There we are.
I'm sure Bernie's listening to this on the net right now.
We'll have to get her.
I have no confidence.
Hi.
Sorry, I can't take your call now.
Okay, that's just great.
Well, we're the victim of Sprint PCS one more time.
Let's try to reach the other person.
The other person is our mystery guest.
All right.
We're going to try and reach that person.
Boy, this is really turning out well, isn't it?
Yeah, this is almost like last time.
Oh, I'm pacing the streets of Amsterdam.
And actually, I'm going to be attempting to get Euros live on the air.
It's a very dangerous thing, especially at 2 o'clock in the morning.
But I am going to try to do it.
So you've actually seen them now?
I've seen them.
I've held them.
I've bundled them.
And they are pretty cool.
They really are pretty cool.
Many different kinds of coins.
Many different kinds of actual paper money.
And it's been a very interesting day.
I imagine throughout Europe, but certainly here in Amsterdam,
where I try to get used to this.
So were you able to write,
this is money on a piece of paper and hand it to someone?
I guess that didn't work.
That didn't work out as I thought it would.
I thought it would be a lot easier to fool people
into thinking that something was a Euro when it wasn't.
But apparently they had distributed pictures of what they would look like.
So that didn't really work out all that well.
Didn't fly.
Yeah, but it actually went pretty smoothly.
I saw lots of people looking confused.
But they seem to have gotten the hang of it rather quickly.
I don't think I could work in the States.
I don't think that would happen quite as easily.
We seem to be having problems contacting
absolutely anyone outside the studio.
Isn't that nice?
Hello, I'm here.
Oh, there's someone there.
Oh, okay.
Raph is here.
Raph from Amsterdam.
Hello there.
You're in some other part of Amsterdam.
And I'm walking around in the streets right now,
but you're probably comfortable at home.
Yes, quite comfortable.
That's good.
Yes, Raph, well you can only join us for a little while
because, as I mentioned, it is 2 o'clock in the morning here.
I'm sure a lot of us want to get to sleep,
especially after what's been going on the last couple of days.
But we actually just got out of something
called the Chaos Communications Congress,
which was a hacker gathering that took place in Berlin.
And I found out, actually, something I didn't know,
that it takes place the same day every year.
That's why it appears to be in totally different random days of the week.
This time it was Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
It's always on, what is it, the 27th, 28th, 29th?
Correct.
Okay, so that's when it takes place.
You've been to these things for how long now?
I went to my first Chaos Congress in 1988,
and I haven't missed a single one since.
And the very first one was, I believe, in 1984?
I think so, yeah.
Wow.
So now, did this one stand out in any particular way for you?
I think the Berlin crowd,
because the Congress started in Hamburg.
The Chaos Computer Club is actually from Hamburg.
And of course, with the reunification of Germany,
Berlin became the most important city.
And lots of hackers from other cities moved to Berlin
because there was lots of interesting things happening there
and cheap space to be had.
So, the center of the hacker culture in Germany
moved to Berlin, basically.
And it took them a few years to get the hang of it,
to really do it well.
And the venue that they have now,
the Haus am Koenigseggpark,
it's nice and big.
They've had that for, I think, three years now.
I should point out, that's the former headquarters
for something that the Communist Party was doing in East Germany?
What exactly was it?
I'm not precisely sure,
but I think Haus am Koenigseggpark was used
for international gatherings of youth organizations
that had something to do with agriculture.
They sat in on really boring meetings
where optimistic statistics were presented
about how agriculture had met its five-year objectives
and basically applauded a lot.
And you can tell by the way the room is put together
and the building is structured
that that's exactly what it was for,
for boring meetings and predictable statistics
and things like that.
But it's certainly a different picture now
when a bunch of computer hackers take it over
for almost a week
and present all kinds of interesting panels
and discussions in different languages, too.
I saw a great film there,
a great film that I'd like to show at H2K2
coming up in July.
I believe it was called Codes
that aired on European television.
That's the other thing,
you can't actually air these things
on European television.
The idea that we can air Freedom Downtime
on American television
is something that I don't think
we'll ever be able to do.
But here in Europe,
such things are possible.
I'm not quite sure why,
but they just seem to be.
A lot of the impossible seems to happen
not only at hacker conferences,
but just in general.
One of the things that particularly impressed me
at the Chaos Congress
was the takeover of an entire building
by the CCC,
the Chaos Communications Club.
Rob, could you describe
sort of what that's all about?
How did they do that?
What are they doing with this building?
You mean the Haus des Lehrers
on Alexanderplatz?
Yes.
They have created an installation
which is called Blinkenlights
and basically picture a really large building
that is completely central in this town.
It's on the most central spot of Berlin
at Alexanderplatz.
And it's a huge building
which used to be the teaching union
or the teaching organization.
This building is 19 windows wide
and 9 windows high.
And they put a light behind each of these windows,
painted the windows white from the inside
because the building is going to be demolished.
Paint the windows white from the inside
and then have all the lights
individually controllable by a computer.
So they can scroll text on it
or play animations on it.
Now imagine going down a main thoroughfare in a city
and seeing a game of Pong on a skyscraper.
That's exactly the kind of thing
that you see on this building.
They've written all sorts of cool stuff for it,
Pong and Breakout.
And you can submit your text over SMS
and have it played.
Of course, there's a human screening the text.
But you can have your text on the building
if you type your code.
So you can have like a love message of sorts
and then have it played
when you and your girlfriend or boyfriend
sit watching this building.
It's really...
There's all sorts of interesting things they've done.
But yeah, they basically display
a 0190 number,
equivalent of a 900 number.
And the first two people that call
get to control the left and right back of a Pong game.
And as soon as one of them hangs up,
the number displays again.
And people can play Pong from six kilometers distance.
A long-distance game of Pong.
That's interesting.
And it's not run by some kind of weird corporate entity,
but it's run by this fairly loose club of computer hackers.
So there's actually some interesting text scrolling by.
It's an interesting experiment
with sort of interesting political texts
and strangeness that you wouldn't normally expect
on such a building.
Now, if you're familiar with Berlin,
Alexanderplatz is the former center of East Berlin.
A huge square where thousands and thousands of people
can pass through at any one particular moment.
So this building is not in some hidden part of the city.
We were out at a restaurant right before the Congress began,
and the building was in the background.
It was impossible not to concentrate on what was going on.
You saw all kinds of things.
At one point, simply the number 42
just stayed on the building for about 30 seconds.
Another point, there was...
Well, you can do all kinds of interesting things with ASCII graphics.
At one point, they imitated a fly buzzing around the entire building,
and eventually there was a big fly swatter,
and the fly got really big.
Imagine this building went live
pretty much the day before the September 11th events.
Imagine Bundeskanzler Schröder
and all the important German politicians standing on that square
in a commemoration of the victims and whatnot,
and this building goes through its normal loop of displaying its things,
and exactly at the moment that this is all going down,
it says,
They set us up a bomb.
All your base are belong to us.
Oh, boy.
That could backfire, I suppose.
I realize that, but it's funny.
It's just funny because you realize
that you're not used to space that central
and that wanted to be controlled for completing noncommercial interests.
Yeah, and it's something, you know,
I don't want to spend the entire show saying that this could never happen in America,
but this is yet another example of something that could not happen in America.
I don't know why.
I don't know what the big threat is to have a noncommercial interest
take over a building in this way.
I'm not quite sure how we would do something like that in the States,
but it sure does add to the spirit of this free expression
and overall, I don't know,
it just seems to make life a lot more pleasant to see things like that.
You see humor in the strangest places,
and people just seem so much more relaxed
and not living in fear,
which I think is the way people should be living.
It's not in fear and dealing with, you know,
day-to-day life in that way.
I just think you have a very strong inner European.
Well, that may be true.
Ralph, basically you're at this Congress.
Now, something that I noticed,
I'm not sure if you noticed this too,
but we were talking about the upcoming H2K2 conference in New York,
and a lot of people, more people than before,
and there always were people that said this,
but a lot more people than before said
that they're afraid to actually come to the United States now
because, not so much because of the terrorist acts,
but because of what the government is doing
to people that, say, write computer programs,
like Dimitri did,
or people who might get involved with encryption
or basically all kinds of things
that are being equated with terrorist acts.
It seems to have become a rather scary place.
I spent a good amount of time trying to convince people
that that's precisely why they should come
because, as our leaders have said many times,
we can't let fear dictate our lives.
We have to stand up to this kind of a thing,
and perhaps this is a war of some sort in a different way.
I was wondering,
did you have similar types of conversations with people?
I would say that these developments are true.
They are happening, but they're pretty much global.
Hacking has been defined as a terrorist offense as well in Europe
and in the cybercrime treaty as it has been in the U.S.
I think the world is becoming one place even more rapidly than it has been,
so pretending that this is a U.S.-only thing
or that you might get arrested if you go to the U.S.,
I think not doing anything and just sitting there
and hoping this will pass is, in the long run,
the best way to make sure that they win.
Exactly, exactly.
I think that people need to not only show up at HGK2,
but show up at all the conferences
and be vocal about why you believe in what you're doing,
why you believe that exploration and experimentation with technology
is an important and vital part of the developing world.
I think we have to continue to draw the public's attention
to things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
that certainly has done so much to disrupt and stifle freedom
and basically keep technology from developing in a natural state.
People need to hear about these things.
If we don't show up, if we don't become part of it,
if we don't participate in the conferences
and have lots of people from around the world take part in it,
then we might as well just give it all up right now
and say, okay, you win, you can run this thing however you want,
and all the advances that we've made through the Internet,
through developing our own technologies and spreading ideas
and sharing information from around the world, it'll all be for naught.
Correct. Yeah, you're right.
I think what's most problematic about travel to the U.S.
or through the U.S. at this moment is mostly the hassle,
the emulation of security that's happening all over the place
where you're made to X-ray your bags three times instead of just once.
But who better to observe all the fallacies of security than hackers,
people who will say, well, look at how they did this to me,
look at all the security holes that exist here,
look at the ridiculousness of this person's statement, etc.
I've shared many stories with people who have traveled over the past couple of months,
and it's always very entertaining, the things that are there.
For instance, a friend of mine was able to travel with an electric razor.
You can't bring a razor that's not electric,
but you can bring an electric one for some reason, as if they're not sharp,
as if they can't be used as a weapon.
It's really pretty silly, some of the things that are going on.
I heard today, I read something in the paper saying that the National Transportation Board
is deciding not to go ahead with strengthening security as far as having workers
that earn more than, say, a McDonald's worker,
deciding whether or not you're going to get on an airplane.
So basically, they're going to continue paying people minimum wage
and then wondering why they don't have the necessary training.
It's really pretty sad.
Brock, is there anybody else there who wants to talk to us?
I think Lucky wants to talk.
Lucky?
Lucky Green is also here, and I think he's dying to get on the air.
Okay, well, put Lucky Green on.
Here he is. Hang on.
This is Lucky.
Hey, Lucky, how are you doing?
Not too bad. How goes it?
Oh, it's Emanuel. I'm here in Amsterdam in Port Sharp,
and I believe, Seraf, we're back in New York?
That's right. Here we are.
All right, and basically, I guess, well, you're an American in Amsterdam.
I'm not sure if you heard the things that Brock and I were talking about.
Basically, we're kind of exploring why it's important for people to take part in this kind of a thing,
the Chaos Communications Congress, the upcoming H2K2 conference,
and just, I guess, questioning, exploration, all that kind of thing in general,
why, with all the increased security and all the increased fears that seem to go with American culture right now,
why it's particularly important to take part in the discussion, take part in what we've always been doing.
Sure, absolutely.
What you certainly will find in attending events, not just within the U.S.,
but opportunities, for example, at the CCC Congress in Berlin
and similar events that have been and will be again hosted here in Amsterdam,
is perspectives that allow you to be presented outside the particular national filters governing certain topics.
For example, now, of course, with the terrorism hype in the U.S.,
certain topics that are considered to be potentially of interest to terrorists,
such as secure communications, will be discussed less, perhaps, in the popular media and even in some trade press.
On the other hand, here at CCC Congress,
one of the most interesting topics and perhaps most pervasive topics in the official program of the Congress
was, in fact, signal interceptions.
Signals to ostensibly suppress terrorism, to ostensibly suppress crime,
but that even in the words of the implementers of, for example, digital telephony interception systems,
it's become quite clear just looking at a marvelous presentation, by the way,
on the specifications of telephone interception services that are being mandated by ETSI,
the European Association of Telephony Providers and Telephony Equipment Manufacturers.
You will quickly find that some of these designs require multiple law enforcement agencies
and other agencies to be able to spy simultaneously and, interestingly enough, to spy on each other.
So you have this hierarchy of regular police dealing with criminals,
and above that you have at a higher level the political police that, in turn, is entrusted not just with spying on the individual citizens,
but also with spying on the regular law enforcement to ensure that law enforcement stays in line with the political objectives of the government.
And it's quite clear looking at specifications that this is really how the systems are being designed.
It's the type of discussion that you don't typically find in the U.S., where, for example,
interception capabilities are typically couched in terms of law enforcement,
not as blatantly, perhaps, in terms of political control as has been explored here.
Wow. It certainly does seem like there's a lot to talk about, a lot to focus on.
Mikey, you've been involved in all kinds of projects. I believe you're somewhat of a GSM expert. Is that correct?
That's correct. In fact, I was on your show a few years ago after my reverse engineering and publishing
and then breaking together with my colleagues Ian Goldberg and David Wagner at UC Berkeley at the time,
the GSM Comp 128 authentication algorithm.
My team later then also reversed the GSM A51 and A52 voice privacy algorithms,
showing that all GSM protection mechanisms really were fundamentally flawed,
and GSM was both subject to cloning as well as eavesdropping.
Speaking of GSM, the probably second very fascinating presentation at CCC
was by a representative of Deutsche Telekom, the remnants of Germany's former telecommunications monopoly,
which for the first time in public acknowledged in his presentation the existence of a so-called MC catcher device.
An MC catcher emulates a GSM cell base station that allows you to determine,
by querying all the GSM phones within radio range, what the international mobile subscriber number of a particular phone is.
The idea here being that you can follow a suspect around in, say, a van,
and as GSM phones fade in and out of reach, various numbers will be displayed.
But if you follow the subject around all day,
the only number that you've seen on the screen all day continuously would presumably be that of the suspect,
which you then can take to the telecom provider to obtain a phone number
and then with that phone number to a judge to get a warrant.
The existence of such a device had been known to the hacker community for many years.
It had long been rumored that Roth & Schwarz in Germany,
it's a fairly well-known instrumentation provider, high-end electronic instruments,
was in fact manufacturing such a device.
But this is the first time that fact was acknowledged.
Even pictures of the device were included in the presentation.
Interestingly enough, the device, which to me was not known before,
not only sells for 300,000 Deutschmarks a pop, which is fairly substantial,
but the device comes in two versions.
One, it's a device that purely logs the mobile subscriber identification of a phone,
but in a second, perhaps more ominous version,
which supposedly is only available for export, meaning it can't be used in Germany,
but certainly could be exported to other countries, such as the U.S.,
emulates a base station to permit those who are interested to intercept,
at the very least, outgoing GSM calls.
It's somewhat fascinating that here we had the former telecommunication monopoly provider
and still one of the largest GSM providers in Germany actually speaking out against the device.
This is one of those cases where perhaps the anti-corporate interests
and the hacking interests and some of the largest corporations may have some common objective.
Now, ours tend to be more on the political side and on the civil liberties side,
but here we have telecoms speaking out against the device because, as it so happens,
the MC catcher blasts at a solid 25-watt output, disrupting regular GSM communications across several cells,
which, of course, causes problems with quality of service, upset customers, and so forth.
So this is motivating telecoms to speak out against the device
and seek its use to be prohibited in Germany.
We probably should look at similar opportunities where the interests of the multinationals
and the larger nationals and our interests align and explore those
to perhaps make the interests of the interceptors a bit more difficult to realize.
Well, Loki, I think you've proven quite admirably that there is so much of interest to explore here,
and I certainly hope to see you in New York expanding on some of these theories and revelations at future conferences,
and hopefully we can do this again in Berlin and Amsterdam and all over the world,
and get a lot more people involved and excited about this.
Certainly, I'm looking forward to that, and I share your enthusiasm in trying to link
and combine the various at times perhaps localized themes in New York, the West Coast, Amsterdam, Berlin, and even in Eastern Europe.
Okay, Loki Green, thanks so much for talking to us, and say good night to Rob for us as well.
Will do.
And we'll speak to you again soon.
Thank you, ma'am.
Okay, Loki Green speaking to us from Amsterdam, where I'm currently standing as well,
in a different part of Amsterdam.
Shall we try to get Bernie S. one more time?
Yeah, let's try to do that once more.
All right, let's give it one more shot.
I think Bernie's from Philadelphia, and unfortunately phone coverage in the States,
especially with Sprint PCS, isn't as good as here.
As you know, Porsche, I've been riding around on trains a lot,
and whenever I'm on a train I seem to be able to talk to people nonstop on cell phones,
even going through mountains and forests and things like that in the middle of nowhere.
Not a problem.
But walking around a city like Philadelphia, I guess you can lose the signal occasionally.
Pretty sad.
Yep.
All right, it does sound like Bernie's ring again.
Hi, sorry I can't take your call.
And that sounds like Bernie's voice.
Oh, well, we tried.
It's interesting.
You know, I'm standing on this street, and I found a clock that actually says 8.30.
Really?
It's really 2.30 here, but this clock is off by six hours somehow.
Is it a bank?
I guess it's a New York clock.
I'm sorry?
Is it a bank?
No, it's a street clock.
Really?
Something else we don't have in the States, just clocks on the street.
And unfortunately it's showing the wrong time, but it's exactly six hours off.
So I know what time it is in New York.
I won't have to do that mathematical calculation.
So since Seraf has joined us, Seraf, do you have anything that you brought into the studio to share with us?
Well, I don't have it physically with me, but it's certainly in my head.
Spit it out, man. Spit it out.
Our conversation just now reminded me of it because it's about telecoms manufacturers and interception and things like that.
Fox News wrote a story that was on their website a couple of weeks ago, and it was in four parts.
And it was about Israel and two companies.
One is called Amdocs.
The other one is called Converse, not Converse like the sneaker, but with an M.
And these are companies that are based in Israel and that are part of the American telecommunications system.
And Amdocs is a company that does billing for most of the major residential and business providers.
And pretty much every time you make a phone call, according to this Fox report,
your number that you've dialed is registered in an Amdocs database somewhere.
And the other company called Converse became somewhat successful because of CALEA,
the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act,
which, of course, is the act that forces telecommunications providers to effectively install interception systems,
whether or not there's interception presently going on,
so that law enforcement can walk in the door of your local phone company
and plug in their little interception machine and not have to worry about splicing wires
or worrying about setting up infrastructure.
It's just right there.
It's a little law enforcement jack for them to plug into.
And it turns out that the company contracted by all of the baby bells or RBOX
or whatever you want to call them now is this Israeli company called Converse.
And what the report focused on were allegations that these companies are using their leverage
in the American telecommunications system to get intelligence for Israel.
And according to this, the NSA had briefed both the FBI and the CIA on the potential risks of these databases.
The report could have been ignored as Israel bashing or as mere speculation or things like that,
but what made it a little exceptional was that the report was only up for a few days
before Fox pulled it down with no explanation.
So I decided to do a little bit more digging,
and it does turn out that none of the investigations into either of these companies have been fruitful,
but it's also apparently true that there has really been no technical analysis of these Calia computers
that are installed all over the place as to whether or not they might have back doors or things like that in them.
When you say that the story was pulled, are we talking about a website story?
Right. It was pulled from the website.
The four parts were essentially transcripts of news items that were broadcast on television first
or simultaneously with their posting on the Internet, but they were pulled down from the Internet.
Now, what is the exact URL? Does that no longer work, or is this simply no link to it anymore?
The URL's no longer work, and I've done searching and just snooping around on the Fox site,
and there seems to be no semblance of those stories,
and I've emailed them and gotten no reply as to why they might have disappeared.
How about a Google cache?
Well, I mean, I had it in my personal cache, so I just went back there,
and John Young from Cryptome.org has also been nice enough to put a transcript of it up online on his site.
Yeah, he gets a hold of everything, so that's definitely good.
That just goes to show that you can't put out stories and then retract them without somebody noticing.
But good work there. That sounds fascinating, and we'll certainly keep following up on that one.
Part of the sad thing about this whole situation is that whether or not it's true,
the root cause here isn't that it's a foreign organization doing these or this or that,
but really that it's a closed system.
Of course, hackers have become notorious for being proponents of the whole open source movement,
and of course if this system were open source or if it were developed in an open manner with real discussion going on,
there wouldn't be any question. You wouldn't have to perform analysis later.
Everyone would be able to see right on the surface whether or not it was something compromised or not,
and it would be more difficult to compromise it in the first place.
True. Let me get out the listener phone line so that people can call us as we wander around the world here.
Country Code 1 if you're outside the country, of course. Area Code 212-209-2900 is the phone number last I checked.
We'll take phone calls in just a couple of minutes.
I found an ATM. I'm walking up to the ATM right now, and I'm going to try to get some euros out of it.
I should point out that I'm in an area where there are people around, but they look kind of, I don't know.
I don't know if I trust these people, but if anything happens, it's going out live in the air,
so let's insert the card here.
Do bank cards work the same over there, like you can use your United States bank cards in the same fashion that you would here?
Please re-enter your card with the magnetic strip down. Okay, I'm sorry. I did it wrong.
Yeah, they work the same way. I believe this is the Cirrus network that I'm tying into right now.
At least I hope I am. I'm not sure exactly what's going on with this machine.
Okay, I'm trying to put the card in the way they told me to, and it's not working.
Let's try that again.
Inserting the card.
I'm doing it the right way.
Okay, now it wants to know what language I'm speaking. I'm speaking English.
Crowd's gathering behind me.
Okay, see, the one thing about this country, you know there's no guns, so you can take out.
Transaction canceled. Why would they cancel my transaction?
I'm not quite sure.
Okay, there's four people behind me now. I guess I'll have to wait until something else happens.
But yeah, I have handled euros today.
Basically, if you pay somebody in guilders, which is the former Dutch currency, you will get change in euros.
And it's interesting, too. Actually, this guy is no longer on the line, because this is an interesting point that I'd like him to expand upon.
But it was discovered that the two-euro coin, there are different coins.
There's a one-cent coin, a two-cent coin, a five-cent coin, a one-euro coin, a two-euro coin, and more as well.
But the two-euro coin is an exact duplicate of a coin in Thailand, which is actually worth only 25 euro cents.
So basically, eight of these coins equals a coin that it's a duplicate of here in Europe.
I'm not sure what the coin is called, but there's a bit of a scandal going on, because apparently people didn't do their homework,
and there's the potential for massive fraud now as a result of this.
So that's just one of the things that I guess is a risk when you introduce a new currency throughout multiple nations.
But it's really, it's been fascinating just watching people's reaction to this.
Because every time you go up to somebody and pay for something, there's always this pause.
They try to figure out exactly, you know, what, okay, I've got guilders, I have to convert that to euros.
These are euros, they're worth how much?
It's just, it's funny, everyone's trying really hard.
You can tell that everyone's just, you know, trying to get it right.
But it's, you know, they're very patient.
They, you know, I think it's going to work out.
And I've heard that even in England, where the euro is not being used, that 70% of businesses will be accepting them.
So it's a very interesting thing.
There are a lot of counterfeiting measures being put into these new notes.
And I saw a report on television here that said that the United States dollar is looking really bad compared to this as far as counterfeiting measures.
And even though we've just reintroduced all the bills, put the, what they call the big head president bills on there,
we're probably going to seriously look at redesigning them all over again because it's just not enough.
I've constantly wondered about whether or not we'll actually get electronic currency and whether or not that'll be uncounterfeitable or whatnot.
But it just seems that constantly encryption and all of its value is just constantly being degraded.
So it doesn't seem to me like we'll ever be able to switch over to an electronic currency.
That's true.
Okay, I've gotten back to the ATM now and I'm trying to, there's no crowd behind me.
Although it just rejected my card again for a second time.
I think I see how this works.
You put the card in once, it rejects it.
You put it in a second time and it doesn't.
Some kind of weird security measure here.
Now it rejected it a second time.
Okay, I'm not quite sure what's going on here.
I don't think it likes the way you read.
I don't think it looks, I'm just not going to say it.
My mouth doesn't want to.
All right.
Okay, I put the card in a third time and this time it seems to be working.
You have to ask me for the language.
I said English.
I'm entering my code, which there's no letters on these keyboards.
It's very hard to remember what your code is.
Okay.
Press the green button.
Okay, I'm going to, what should I get?
Should I get 20 euros, 50 euros, 200 euros, 250 euros, or another amount?
Well, if the crowd behind you is angry, get more money.
There's no crowd behind me, so I'm going to like, I'm going to see how many I can get.
I'm going to try to get 500 euros.
I don't even know if I have that much.
There's supposed to be a 500-euro bill, isn't there?
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping to get.
All right, I just entered 500.
Hopefully nobody is listening on the Internet and knowing where I'm standing.
Do I want a receipt?
Yes, I would like a receipt for this.
Okay, please wait.
It's funny because there are pictures in the background of Netherlands money.
You cannot withdraw insufficient funds on this.
All right.
Well, now we know what my bank account is.
I'm going to try and put some more.
Maybe take out a couple of hundred instead.
Well, while you're doing that, I thought I might remind everyone that the first Friday of the month is coming up,
so across the world there will be meetings.
You can check out, well, the back of any copy of 2600 Magazine will have a listing of meetings,
or you can go to the website.
Please take your card.
Please take your card and wait for your money.
Hold on.
I hear money.
Half a world away, I hear money.
Okay, I don't know if you heard that, but I got my money.
And I have 550s here.
Yes, I have 550-euro notes in my pocket now.
Yahoo.
Well, it might not seem like much of a thrill to you,
but I guarantee you when I come back to the States and start handing these things out,
they'll be pretty popular because these things are – they look very nice.
They really do.
You think they're going to – well, right now you can go pretty much anywhere in the world with a dollar, right?
You can pay in dollars, you know, in any large – or any airport, basically anywhere,
any other large stores, as I've noticed in all of Europe.
But do you think the euro is going to sort of kick the dollar out as far as that goes?
I don't think it's going to kick it out, but I do think it's going to rival it.
I think it's going to be something that will be acceptable in many, many places.
Basically, I don't think people in America understand just the monumental undertaking that was in place here
to replace the currency of so many countries on the same date, at the same time,
with one matching currency.
Just the mathematical figuring out that you had to go into that in the first place,
but also just the logistical things,
being able to get everybody to agree to do this at the same time and have it work smoothly.
And so far it seems to have worked very smoothly.
I don't see any real problems.
It seems to have been planned out really well.
No shortages.
We'll see, though.
It's only the first day and it was a holiday, so there could be all kinds of complications.
All right.
Well, shall we go to the phones?
Yeah, let's go to the phones.
Let's see who's out there.
All right.
Is this our first listener phone call?
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello there.
That's a dial tone.
Yeah, it's a friendly dial tone.
Try another one.
Hello, you're on the air.
Yeah, I'd like to know...
That's...
Yeah, that doesn't work out.
Yeah, well, we'll try another one.
Okay.
Hello?
Go ahead.
Yo, I'm on the radio!
Well, you know, we don't have to take phone calls.
No, we don't.
It was some kind of wild animal.
Yeah.
212-209-10...
Good evening, you're on the air.
No, there's no one here.
Well, if you want to call in...
If you don't have too much New Year's fever.
Yeah, let's try this once more.
Okay.
And...
And...
Button turns red.
And hello.
Yes, you know, you can...
Yeah.
Okay, fine.
No phone calls then.
It's that hyena.
Well, maybe people need to dial a little bit more aggressively
so that morons don't get in instead.
But in any event,
I seem to have wandered into the red light district.
I don't know quite how I did that.
Oh, yeah, sure you don't.
No, well, it happened a lot faster.
I was standing in front of an ATM,
and now all of a sudden I'm here.
And I didn't know it was right next door like that.
But maybe this would be a good opportunity to describe
what it was like yesterday.
Because it certainly was...
I mentioned that I'd been in Times Square
for the last two years.
In fact, we talked about this on the radio.
And this year was completely different
because obviously Amsterdam is a smaller city,
and it's not in the United States.
First time I've ever been outside the United States for New Year's.
Basically, there was no real one organized event
of, you know, a countdown or a ball dropping
or something like that.
It was just a lot of people gathered in various squares,
various parts of the city.
And fireworks everywhere.
Not coming from any particular one place,
just coming from everywhere.
I don't know if you ever saw Chinese New Year in New York City
before Giuliani banned all the fireworks.
It was something like that, except much, much bigger.
Basically, walking down the streets,
there'd be explosions going on all around you.
And the thing is, the thing that I can't seem to resolve
is how nobody seems to really be worried about this.
The fact that things are exploding all around them,
all this noise, all this firecrackers, fireworks everywhere.
I was terrified.
I think I've ever been more scared in my life than nobody else was.
Everybody else was just kind of calmly being part of,
standing in the middle of all these explosions
going on at the same time.
And I just think that might be something
that is ingrained in our culture
that we're always worried and afraid,
and maybe rightfully so.
I'm still not entirely convinced
that that wasn't an extremely dangerous situation,
but people seem to get through it just fine.
There don't seem to be any real problems.
There could be...
No, thank you.
I don't need any cocaine.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Yeah, so that's pretty much where I stood.
It was an eye-opener for me.
Frightening.
Very frightening, very loud, very noisy,
but very festive at the same time.
And I just came away from it feeling that
maybe we shouldn't be so worried and concerned
all the time about everything.
There are some things to be worried and concerned about,
but for the most part, people take care of themselves.
People are mature enough to not be stupid,
to not be destructive, to be trusted.
I saw four cops last night.
Four policemen.
That's it.
In a crowd of tens of thousands of people,
four policemen.
Compare that to Times Square,
where I think you would see mostly policemen.
That's about right, yeah.
And the mood is just so completely different.
It's like you're under occupation.
And I think if you start living like that,
you've lost something amazing.
You've lost freedom.
And this freedom is something that they have here.
I've seen it in Berlin.
I've seen it in Amsterdam.
You know, there are many cities here.
And forgive me, I'm going down a rather loud alley
where there seems to be some loud discussions taking place.
I've just seen a far more open type of scenario
where people just don't seem to worry as much
about the things that we're constantly worried about.
Not to say there aren't things to worry about,
but it's just we seem obsessed by them.
For instance, afterwards, we walked down some streets.
And the streets were icy.
The streets were not sanded.
They were icy.
They were slippery.
You have to be careful walking.
Can you imagine in the United States,
walking down icy streets,
there would be all kinds of lawsuits and threats
and people really hurting themselves.
But here people are just kind of, you know,
they walk carefully and you slip occasionally,
but you don't really hurt yourself.
And people realize that when ground freezes, dangerous.
So act accordingly.
I feel in the United States, we kind of need to be guided.
That's sad.
We seem to be losing the ability to trust ourselves.
Or at least trust others.
Yeah.
Shall we give the phones one more try?
We'll try once again, I think.
Please, people, if you're out there,
we need you to call in.
We need you to show an interest.
Don't let stupid people dominate
because stupid people will dominate.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
What?
All right.
We're going to try another line here.
Okay.
All right.
He's out in force tonight, isn't he?
Listen, you know,
if we have to get a court order against this person,
we'll do that.
Hello.
Yes.
Yes, I want to thank you for a wonderful New Year's program.
Just the best.
Really enjoying this, you know, the guy talking from Europe.
Oh, good.
You're listening to BAI.
That's great.
Oh, yeah.
I've lived in Europe, and I live here now,
and I agree with you totally that we're losing a lot of our freedoms,
and it's so much nicer over there
when it comes to just being able to do what you want.
Where have you lived in Europe?
Amsterdam, London, and London.
You see, the thing is, we say a lot,
and we're guilty of this ourselves,
that our freedoms are being taken away from us,
but in many ways we're just letting them be taken away.
We're asking to be taken away.
Exactly.
And, you know, we're basically crying out,
someone take care of us, someone keep us safe.
And people, most Americans don't realize that in Europe
they're living that way.
They're living a way that's so much better.
But, you know, most Americans don't travel,
and they just think, well, it has to be this way.
It doesn't have to be this way.
This is horrible, especially New York.
Just horrible.
New York actually is, I think, one of the shining beacons, actually,
of the United States as far as just having, you know,
the courage and the individuality to keep moving forward.
But I think we need to expand on that.
I think people need to conquer their fear of traveling,
conquer the cultural divide that always seems to be separating us
from the rest of the world, and just see, you know,
what the rest of the world is like.
And, yeah, there are things that we're better at in the States.
There are things that are better here.
And we compare, and we share information.
Kind of what the hackers have been doing for a number of years,
share information, trade tactics and abilities,
and all kinds of things, just learn.
I want to thank you guys.
This is the best program I heard on the radio.
I listen to you regularly, but this is just so upbeat for New Year's.
I love it.
Oh, thanks.
Thanks so much.
Well, I thank you guys.
I mean, you put on, you know, I've heard Grandpa Al
and all these disparate group of people that say your program
is one of their favorites because it's just all over the place.
You just deal with so many different things, personal freedom, computers.
That's a real compliment coming from Grandpa Al.
I'm happy to hear that.
Oh, yeah.
He says he listens to you and Gary Poe all the time,
your two favorite programs.
So, I mean, and those are my two favorite programs.
But, I mean, just to show that people that aren't even into computers
love your program.
Okay.
Well, thanks so much for the call.
My pleasure.
Thank you for the great show.
How are we doing on time, guys?
We are at 850, so probably.
Well, see, there are very nice calls out there,
and you just have to sort of hunt a little bit.
But together, I think we can get over the mediocrity
and get the people who really have something to say.
All right.
Well, let's try one more call if we can.
Hello?
No, I don't think anybody's there either.
I'll just keep trying.
Are you on the air?
Hello, how are you?
Hello, how are you?
Yes.
Go ahead.
I'd love it if you would describe the physical structures
that you're passing by.
Well, right now, I'm walking down a street with a canal in the middle of it.
And all the buildings, all the buildings in Amsterdam,
they tend to be brick structures.
They tend to go in very, very deep.
What that means is when you walk into a building,
you'll find the staircase is extremely steep,
and that allows for kind of a false sense that the storefront is all there is.
But in actuality, there's so much more space behind
because the space is not taken up by a staircase that goes at, say,
a 45-degree angle.
It's more like a 70-degree angle or something like that.
And that's another thing.
After walking through the icy streets,
after living through the fireworks all around me,
I went to someone's house where we literally had to climb straight up
into the air onto a staircase, and you just had to be careful.
There was no special safety net or something to catch you.
If you were clumsy, you just had to be careful.
Doing that in the middle of the night with no lights, that was fun.
And how high are most of the buildings?
I'd say about maybe four or five stories maximum, mostly made out of brick.
And the funny thing is, this is something that's very interesting,
almost every building in Amsterdam has a hook in the front at the top of the roof,
and that's meant for hauling heavy furniture such as a piano.
Because of those steep staircases, you can't possibly bring it up that way,
and there aren't elevators.
So the only way to move material in and out is out the window using a rope.
You know, it's interesting that you said that because it reminds me,
I lived in Africa a little while, and there was one part that I lived in,
in a place in Tanzania called Bagamoyo, and on the doors, there were these huge doors,
wooden doors, two leafs, right?
And on the doors they had these huge metal things like spears,
and I asked them, well, why are those things on the doors?
And they said that it was for the elephants, because sometimes the elephants would attack,
or they would use elephants to attack your household, you know, to take over your territory or turf.
And so that was one of the ways that they stopped the elephants from being able to do that,
and also therefore stopped the use of elephants as a way of taking over an area.
Isn't that...
Okay, so tell me something.
When you were talking about going into the red light district,
and obviously someone asked you something while you were walking through that area.
Right.
Are you still in that area?
Yeah, I just started hanging out here.
So tell me what...
While I was talking, I didn't realize this at the time, but while I was talking,
I was literally standing right outside one of those windows where people stand.
Could you describe it?
That's one way of putting it.
I've got to warn you, we're at the tail end of the show.
We've got to close this up.
Thank you.
Basically, it's just a very serene...
Even though you're in a place that's radically different, it's a very serene type of an atmosphere,
and something that I really think people should just experience.
All right, then.
Well, do us a favor, Emmanuel, and bring back a little piece of Europe with you.
Well, I'm going to bring back those Euros.
I'm going to get changed for the 50s I got and bring back different types of currency,
and I'll be at the meeting on Friday in New York, hopefully.
Probably jet lagged, but I can show people what Euros look like there.
Yeah, we'll see you there, then.
Thanks.
All right.
Well, then, for Emmanuel over in Amsterdam, for Sara sitting next to me,
and for me, I'm Porkchop, we'll see you next time.
Have a good night.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a call
We couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
Van Dilly Bonk for the best, expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Van Dilly Bonk
Van Dilly Bonk
Van Dilly Bonk