We've got our station back and we're glad about it, but now the really hard work begins.
We've started revising the bylaws and establishing the rules that we want for electing board
members locally and nationally.
The Interim Pacifica National Board and the local advisory board and all the WBAI listener
groups would like for you to join the Pacifica Bylaws Revision Committee.
We need your input, so Thursday, April 11th, please come to 75 Varick Street at 6.30 p.m.
and be a part of this process.
And this week, do your homework.
Go to www.pacifica.org and read the current bylaws and become an educated listener.
That's Thursday, 6.30 p.m. at 75 Varick Street for the next meeting of the Pacifica Bylaws
Revision Committee.
And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York, where it's just about 8 o'clock.
Time for Off the Hook.
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.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
Adam, good evening to everybody.
The program's Off the Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you, as we are every Tuesday at this time.
And HarderJack joins us.
Hello.
That's your cue to say hello, now you're saying that.
Mike is here.
I am.
Claude, you're here.
You had some trouble getting in downstairs.
Some.
America under lockdown.
Gestapo really did a number on you.
We're trying to get Claude into the building.
He's with us.
And they won't let him in because he doesn't have picture ID.
That's right.
You've been in the building a thousand times before, but they won't let you in because
you don't have a picture of yourself.
And I think in particular they wanted to be a government-issued picture ID.
Government what?
Does it matter which government?
State, federal, but United States.
We have to do something to the guy downstairs, a real joke or something like that, where
we bring in a full-size poster of us with a government stamp on it saying, yeah, here's
our ID for this week.
Or just come up with a crazy name that would not possibly be us.
Or just strange symbols or, I don't know.
Walk in with a mask.
That's probably illegal.
Is that illegal, Mike, to wear masks in the city?
No.
Oh, it's not?
Not if you're by yourself.
Walk in with some Klingon masks or something like that and with IDs to back them up.
If three people all have masks, then that's illegal.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
You can't congregate as a group.
And Jim's here as well.
Hello.
Hopefully you haven't been in places you're not supposed to be, like buildings with no
ID.
No, no.
I've been good.
I've been pretty good too, but something bad happened.
I got the letter.
The letter that I knew was going to come eventually.
Selective service?
No.
That one's been waylaid quite a bit.
No, this one comes from the friendly phone company that we know of called Voice Dream.
And I knew there was trouble right away because on the front of the envelope, I'm not sure
how many people got this, maybe it's only people that were affected like I was, on the
front of it is in red letters, Important Notice International Roaming.
For those of you who have been following the show over the past couple of years, ever since
Voice Dream took over OmniPoint, there's been either a problem or a feature with their international
service where when you go to foreign countries and you subscribe to a service called Free
International Roaming, which I interpreted as meaning free international roaming, you
don't get any kind of charge on your bill when you get an incoming phone call.
It's really pretty amazing.
So you go to France, you go to the Netherlands or England, and somebody calls you from the
United States.
They call a local number and you simply talk as if you're talking to an incoming phone
call, which is free over there if you have service in those countries, local service.
So we actually did some shows.
In fact, I think nobody benefited from this more than me.
We did some radio shows where people here would call the local number and talk for an
hour, literally, with me walking around streets of various cities.
And it would show up on the bill as a 60 or 70 minute phone call, but the charge would
be $0.00.
I thought it was great because it was amazing to be able to ride on trains all over the
countries and get phone calls from people and not have to worry about the bank account
being depleted from talking, just a nice normal phone call.
I kind of figured it was too good to be true, and sure enough, this letter backs that up.
The letter is entitled Billing of Incoming International Roaming Calls, so it can't be
more precise than that.
VoiceStream, this is the usual introduction to a letter like this, VoiceStream strives
to deliver to our customers the best wireless service and value in the entire industry.
We are continuing to expand our international coverage area and improve our international
roaming services.
All right.
In 2001, we worked to improve our infrastructure and network support for international roamers.
During that time, we did not bill most roaming customers for incoming calls received while
abroad.
Think of it as a thank you gift for supporting us during our growth.
Now it's back to business.
Effective April 15, 2002, we will resume charging for all calls placed and received while traveling
internationally.
I sense some kind of anger there.
We know you did something you weren't supposed to do, and there's nothing we can do about
it, but this is your warning.
It's not going to go on, so you got away with it for a little while, but it's over.
But according to this letter, we have until April 15th, so if we can get a plane over
to...
What's today's date?
Today's the 9th.
Today's the 9th.
Well, you know, we can't do a show because next week is the 16th.
Oh, well.
Well, if anyone is on a plane or at the airport and they have a GSM phone with them and they
subscribe to Voice Dream, give us your number.
We'll call you over and over again.
You can feel like you did something.
It's too bad, though, because it's probably going to go to some astronomical amount, like
69 cents a minute or something like that, and I'm just not going to talk on my phone
anymore when I go over there because who wants to do that?
If it was something fairly affordable, you know, like maybe 10 cents a minute or something
like that, then I think a lot more people would use it, and it's really cool.
Nothing beats using the same phone over there and getting phone calls from people that you
know and having them just call a local number and get you.
That's the marvel of GSM.
Unfortunately, greed tends to predominate.
Not that I don't appreciate what the incompetence that Voice Dream engaged in over the last
year, which resulted in no billing at all.
I don't think it was really a present.
I don't think they said, oh, let's be nice to our customers and not charge them at all.
I don't think that's what happened, but I just think they could be a little bit more
fair with the prices.
We'll see.
We'll see what they come up with, but I don't think it's going to be something like 10 cents
a minute.
I think it's going to be closer to a dollar.
Jim, you heard something about Voice Dream on TV today, didn't you?
Yeah.
It's kind of ironic that Voice Dream seems to be hitting the media.
WNBC Channel 4 in New York reported on its 5 o'clock show of a shocking lack of security
and disregard of customers' privacy at their store at 5th Avenue and 23rd Street.
Apparently, they left hundreds of applications out for the garbage, and they, of course,
were opened up and were blowing up and down 5th Avenue, according to this story.
Applications including people's credit information, Social Security numbers, which surprised me
because why do you have a Social Security number when you apply for a wireless phone?
And, in fact, photocopies of driver's licenses of people who had applied for Voice Dream.
These are people who applied as customers or as employees?
Customers.
Okay.
Customers.
So all the people that basically went into that store, 5th Avenue and 23rd Street, across
the street from the Sprint store, they had all their personal information disclosed in
the trash?
Well, I'm not going to say all of them, but NBC alleged hundreds.
They had big piles in the hands of the reporter, Kendra Farr.
NBC went trashing.
They actually went out.
NBC got a phone call from a Con Ed guy who was working right there who said, hey, you
know, I'm standing here and the garbage spilled over.
Uh-huh.
Just happened to spill over.
Well, maybe he went trashing.
And then they went there and they put this on the news just before 6 o'clock this evening,
earlier this evening.
This kind of thing has been going on for decades.
People walk around the streets and they find things in the trash that shouldn't be in the
trash.
You know, nobody seems to learn.
Well, speaking of that, wait till you hear what I found in the trash last week.
What did you find in the trash last week?
The blueprints for the 911 call center and police plaza.
Oh, hand them over.
I left them home.
Oh, how convenient.
Well, I'll bring them in next week.
They're not going to let you walk the streets, you know?
They're going to be waiting for you at your home.
Don't you realize what you've done?
Well, I was planning.
You put yourself in great danger, my friend.
Great danger.
I was planning on presenting them to the highest bidder.
Yeah.
Nice knowing you, Jim.
Speaking of the media, if I read Wired today, there's quite a story that broke on Wired
that's linking 2600 to a cyanide anarchist, according to the title.
Cyanide anarchist, a hacker too.
This is the kind of thing you would expect to see in Wired, actually.
They're basically saying that FBI agents swooped down on a public gathering, this is their
reporting, swooped down on a public gathering of hackers loosely associated with 2600 and
interrogated attendees about subway tunnels in Chicago, Illinois, where this guy who was
arrested I believe a month ago for storing cyanide in the subway tunnels over there for
some reason, they want to see what the connection is between him and 2600.
Well, I can tell you there is no connection because no one I know has ever heard of this
guy and the funny thing is nobody from the 2600 meeting in Chicago has told us that anything
like this happened in the first place, so I think it's kind of odd that Wired of all
people suddenly thinks that FBI agents are swooping down on our meetings when we don't
even know about it.
If they're swooping down on any meetings, they're not 2600 meetings, I can tell you
that because I think that if they were 2600 meetings, they would tell 2600 about it.
Doesn't that make sense?
I don't know.
I think that's sort of known that the 2600 meeting in Chicago was swooped down upon by
FBI agents.
Well, it's known now because it showed up in Wired.
I've gotten about 100 pieces of email now.
Before that?
Yeah.
Wait, what did you hear before that?
I forget his name now, Rob.
You know Rob.
He sent an email out.
I know about 5,000 Rob.
Okay, you're a popular guy, so you know lots of those, but who used between here and Chicago?
Okay, I'm not saying an FBI person or two did not come to a meeting and ask a couple
of questions.
I mean, people from law enforcement show up, but swooped down?
This implies interrogation.
This implies a repeat of what happened in Washington, D.C., where basically people were
detained, and I think if that happened, we would know about it.
We would have been told about it.
And to imply that this guy who stores cyanide in subway tunnels is somehow linked to the
hacking community is also inaccurate, and I defy anybody to prove otherwise.
Is this person somebody of the hacker community?
I think we would have heard about that, too, just because when people get arrested in the
hacker community, we tend to find out about it.
I have this feeling it was something particularly stupid, like he happened to have a cell phone
on him, and so obviously...
Well, again, it's possible that he showed up at a meeting once, because our meetings
are open to anybody, so yeah, you know, Bin Laden could have come to one of our meetings.
I suppose I'm going to get in trouble for saying that now, but, you know, if he's walking
through Citigroup Center on the first Friday of the month, then yeah, you know, Mario Cuomo
came to one of our meetings, you know, he was there in Citicorp back when it was known
as that.
I remember that.
He wasn't there for the meeting, but you could say he was there at the meeting, because it
was the same place, same floor.
Mike Wallace was there.
Mike Wallace?
Well, he was there for the meeting.
He was there to interrogate me, but that was another story.
He swooped.
Yeah.
He swooped down.
Yeah, he sure did.
Okay, so that's a bit of fun there.
So I'm sure we're going to get a thousand pieces of email about that.
This is what happens every time the mass media prints something that's inaccurate about hackers.
We'll learn more.
We'll know when we learn more, and we'll update people then, I guess.
We've gotten a lot of emails.
We also have a special guest we're going to be getting to in just a couple of minutes,
and we're going to be taking your phone calls.
This person writes in imploring us, imploring us to talk about the issues involving charging
internet broadcasters, internet streamers for content.
I'm not sure if people have been following this, but there's this organization.
I guess it's an organization called CARP.
They're a committee, right?
Is that what CARP is?
You're looking at me.
Well, you tell me about these things.
I figure you remember them.
Isn't that a semi-religious thing?
It's like something or other for the research of principles?
You know, I don't have what they...
I feel like a fool here because I don't have what they actually stand for.
Does that C stand for committee?
Yeah, it's a committee, which tells me that they're a group of people.
Something about recording hours...
What does CARP have to say, regardless of who they are?
Well, basically, they're trying to get anybody who streams over the internet, and that includes
us, that includes WBAI, to pay, not to pay a flat fee, to pay a particular amount per
song they play per listener.
The danger of that is, well, it's many fold.
First of all, it's retroactive to the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
So that means that...
When did that pass, 1999 or something?
That means that all of these radio stations that...
First of all, it's impossible.
How are you going to be able to tell how many people were listening to a particular song
three years ago?
How do you do that?
They expect stations now to keep track of how many people are listening, what it is
they're listening to, and to pay a fee for every single song.
It's the most insane thing I've ever heard of in my life.
And of course, it's going to affect WBAI, it's going to affect 2600, because we have
all of our shows on the internet.
What happens?
Are we supposed to know when somebody listens to a show back in 1989, and hears a song?
We don't even know when the songs have been played, or what songs they are.
People ask us...
What if they download it, but only listen to half the show?
People ask us all the time.
Yeah, that's true.
You don't know.
Or what if they're in the other room?
They're not listening.
Does this apply to little Billy, who's doing his little internet broadcast, and he happens
to play a commercial song?
Of course.
It applies to him, too.
Well, actually, the people who stream over the internet, primarily, wind up paying more.
They charge them a higher amount.
The amounts are kind of tiny.
I think it's a couple of cents per song.
It seems tiny, but if you actually are doing some serious streaming, and you have more
than 10 listeners, it adds up really fast.
It really adds up.
What's going to happen is, only the really big broadcasters will be left, and everybody
else will be out of luck.
Unless they choose not to play by these rules at all, one way or another, which I think
is what we're going to do.
This money, I assume it goes to the artists, right?
Yeah, right.
Well, you assume wrong.
It goes to the recording industry of America, and that has nothing to do with artists.
It's not a good thing.
Now, there's a public hearing, or a period of time for public hearing, and it's in here
somewhere.
I'm sorry.
I thought other people had information as well.
If listeners can call us and help us with that, otherwise, we'll be happy to give more
information on that.
You don't know what CARP is?
No, I don't.
This has been all over the place.
Nobody here knows what CARP is.
Is it a type of fish, maybe?
Yeah.
You see, this is what we get.
We have to get the word out about these things.
It's very important.
Otherwise, there will be no more internet broadcasting of any sort.
People ask us constantly about the music we play.
We're not playing any music right now.
It's not because of this.
We just don't have any.
If we listed all the music we play, it would make it that much easier for them to just
send us a bill and say, oh, you played this on this date, that means you've got to pay
us this amount of money.
It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous, because radio stations already pay for the right to play commercial music,
which when you think of it, a lot of people wind up buying music because they hear it
on the radio.
It's something that benefits them regardless.
It just gets me really mad.
We'll have more information on that, including what CARP stands for, when the hearings are,
how public comments work, and that kind of thing.
What else?
Senator Ernest Hollings and five other senators have introduced a bill that would prohibit
the sale or distribution of any kind of device that would let consumers make copies.
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, that's CBDTPA, formerly known
as SSSCA, would send people to prison for circumventing technology to distribute music,
movies, and other copyrighted works.
The bill is a result of pressure from the RIAA and the Hollywood movie industry, but
Silicon Valley is protesting the proposed new law.
According to Wired News, the CBDTPA's definition of any hardware or software is so sweeping
that it includes everything from processors, spreadsheets, and operating systems to unit
utilities like CP.
The definition will cover just about anything that runs on your computer except maybe the
clock.
That's according to Chapman University Law Professor Tom Bell.
So that's something that we're also keeping an eye on.
This person asked, I got a question for you regarding Off the Hook from April 2nd after
the theme song.
You play some nice beats.
What's the name of that track?
Well, you know, I don't know what it is, actually, to be honest.
I don't remember what we played.
And you're going to get billed, if you mention it.
Yeah, and if I mention it, we're probably going to get billed.
So, you know, this is the kind of silliness that we're entering into.
You know, maybe we should just play totally non-commercial music that doesn't have, you
know, it's not even on CD anywhere, although they'll probably figure out a way to charge
us for that as well.
I found a BBC World substitute for you.
Take a look at Deutsche Welle, http://dw-world.de.
They offer world news from all over Europe and Asia.
If you have a C-band, that's a big satellite dish, you can aim it at 103 degrees west,
which is AMC1, formerly GE1.
Switch to transponder channel 22 and you can receive it.
It's always unencrypted, so it's free to watch.
You can also get NASA TV for free on AMC2 at 85 degrees west and transponder channel
9.
Loads of free channels on C-band.
Even though I live up near Toronto, I listen to the show every week and I think it's awesome
to hear someone's input on current events on the radio without being censored on what
they say.
Keep up the awesome work.
From Decode.
Keyword being awesome.
Cool.
Digital theme songs from BBC World News.
We get more mail now about BBC World than anything.
It's like a lot of people want to hear this and see this, but unfortunately you can't
in the United States unless you go to their website and watch streaming.
This person found some theme songs online, which is www.tvhome.co.uk slash bbc underscore
world underscore sounds dot shtml.
So that's pretty cool.
This person writes in, I got AT&T digital cable in Chicago and one of the channels it
carries is called News World International.
This channel broadcasts translated newscasts that are taken from news stations in countries
around the world.
You can find out more about this station on its website, www.nwitv.com.
And you're right.
News World International is a great channel.
It's on direct TV as well as some cable systems.
It was part of the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Company.
It's been recently, within the last couple of years, bought by the USA network of all
people.
So far they haven't messed it up too badly.
I'm kind of worried about what they might do, but it's still a really good channel.
It still has foreign news and a lot of CBC content.
So hopefully that will remain because it's really the only channel that provides you
with alternatives in this country that even a few people can get.
This person suggests instead of waiting in the lines of the post office to mail a package
that is already postmarked, we were talking about oversized packages last week, just
walk up to the front of the line and hand it to the lady and say it's postmarked and
ready to go.
They are happy enough to take it.
That bit of advice coming from Nick.
Thank you for that.
And it is true.
You can do that, right?
You can walk up to the front of the line.
I don't know.
You might get shot.
Sometimes people get angry.
They think you're getting away with something.
But if you just hand it to them and say it's already postmarked, then I guess you can get
away with it.
This person's writing in about NASA's new policy.
NASA's new policy of keeping the timing of space shuttle launches secret is even sillier
than you suggest.
It went up yesterday, by the way.
We can tell people that now.
Okay.
Almost all flights nowadays, including the one scheduled to launch last Thursday, are
ISS rendezvous flights.
What that means is it's rendezvousing with the space station.
In order to rendezvous with the ISS, the shuttle must launch within five minutes of the launch
site's intersection with the orbital plane.
The Earth's rotation creates these intersections twice a day, one with the plane passing from
northwest to southeast and one from southwest to northeast.
The northwest to southeast window is never used, as it would mean launching over populated
areas, including Cuba.
All this means is that since the details of the ISS's orbit are publicly available from,
say, www.celestrak.com, anyone with the appropriate knowledge or a suitable computer program can
calculate the launch time within five minutes.
Obviously NASA thinks that terrorists aren't able to perform such calculations.
That letter coming from Risk-Taker, and you are taking quite a risk in sending such sensitive
information to us, but we feel people do have the right to know, and yeah, that's, I guess
if a terrorist can perform a calculation, he'll know what time the space shuttle will
launch, but NBC won't.
Okay.
This person's writing in about Sprint PCS.
Hi, I use Sprint PCS and was charged $0.99 for a call to 800-555-1212.
I thought that it would be a free call, as it is when you use a landline.
A call to Sprint was a waste of time, no surprise.
Do you know how they can charge for a supposedly free service?
Also to Sprint's credit, they let you bypass the voicemail message when leaving your message,
which saves time and minutes.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for the show.
Signed, Sam.
Well, you know, it's really an interesting thing about 800 information, because yeah,
you're right, 800 information is free.
But when you use a cell phone or, you know, any kind of wireless communications device,
you have to pay this thing called airtime, which, you know, it just, it's a fact of life.
You know, it's something that we've let ourselves get used to.
You don't pay wire time, you pay airtime.
That means you pay, sometimes you pay for busy signals, sometimes you pay for incoming
calls.
It depends.
So yeah, it would make sense that they would charge you to call 800 information.
What doesn't make sense though, is that they charge you extra for calling 800 information,
as if you're calling information, which costs money.
You see, if you call regular information, the phone company charges you a certain amount
of money.
They don't do that for 800 information for anybody.
So somehow the cellular companies get away with this, where they're able not only to
charge you for, you know, a wireless airtime charge, but they charge you for a premium
charge for calling information, even though it's free information.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
A couple of years ago, they started charging for 800 numbers.
If you had an AT&T calling card, and a number of co-cots started charging for 800 numbers
because they were being charged.
So actually there are cases where you are charged, quote, land time, unquote.
Well, that's a pay phone cannot charge you for an 800.
I mean, I know there were cases where co-cots were charging for 800 numbers, like $9.95
or some nonsense like that.
It's illegal.
They can't do that.
They can't charge you for a toll free number from a public phone.
Well, I'll have to check out the co-cots I know.
Yeah.
I mean, we'll certainly look into that.
But there is, what you might be thinking of is the charge that the FCC has, where they
charge people who own 800 numbers if somebody calls them from a pay phone.
And what some companies are doing is adding a surcharge, such as AT&T, if you use a calling
card from any pay phone, they add a 35 cent or so surcharge.
And that's, they're not asking for money at the pay phone.
In fact, what they're doing is they're charging the person that you're calling extra because
they called you from a pay phone.
It doesn't make any sense.
The logic that the co-cot industry used was that the phone was being tied up and wasn't
collecting revenue.
So I don't know why they don't charge for incoming calls.
Well, I guess they don't allow incoming calls.
But by that logic, this fee does not exist in Canada.
Oh, I know.
I know.
Yes.
So you can run away to Canada to make all your 800 calls.
Run up to Canada, watch BBC World and make a phone call.
You know, I think information is even free in some parts of Canada, you know, regular
411 information.
But I don't know.
Yeah.
It used to be.
I don't know if this is still true.
But years ago, it used to be that you could make a hundred calls to information from Canada
for free.
And people would actually go up there or call somebody in Canada and get a hundred calls
and then call somebody else, get a hundred more calls rather than pay 35 cents per call
here.
Okay.
There are still Verizon pay phones in New York City at which you can make a local call
for 25 cents.
Some of these are labeled 25 cents, some 50 cents and at least one 35 cents.
One phone in the Bronx, I recently spoke almost an hour for 25 cents.
There are others in Manhattan that I used today.
So that letter comes from Adam.
And yeah, there are lots of people out there using pay phones now and only putting a quarter
in.
Sometimes a quarter comes back afterwards.
I guess, you know, it keeps people on the phone.
And some of these phones, Claude, you were having a conversation with the phone before
you were yelling and screaming at it.
What was that all about?
Well, I wasn't yelling or screaming, but I wound up calling the station to get my barhead
stamped so I could walk into the place.
Wait, you mean before we ran into you, you were still trying to get in the building then?
You've been trying all day to get in the building?
All right, no.
I was, that call I never completed because I saw you when I yelled out for you.
Everybody turned around.
All of Wall Street came to a stop.
It was unbelievable.
Okay.
In any event, yeah, there was another pay phone there when I, later on after you went
up and I did it, I paid a quarter for the phone call up to the station.
So now the Colcats will truly be price competition for Verizon, for like the official pay phone
folks in New York City.
So they might actually do interesting things with that.
That's entirely possible.
All right.
Well, thank you for that update.
While I'm looking at other possible news stories here, for instance, the United States is going
to be issuing more secure passports.
Have you seen this?
I've heard about it.
Yeah.
The State Department last Tuesday unveiled a new state-of-the-art passport designed to
prevent misuse of American passports by terrorists, effective April 8th, which was yesterday.
All new U.S. passports will have digital photos.
So if anybody got a passport yesterday or today, please let us know.
We want to see them.
With the holder's image digitized into the passport, the documents will also have other
enhanced security features that they're not telling anybody about.
Yeah.
What are we going to find out?
Features in the passports have been designed to make this one of the most secure travel
documents in the world.
We're all aware that since September 11th, the security of travel documents has become
even more important.
Getting these more secure passports into circulation will help minimize the misuse of American
passports by criminals, terrorists, and others.
I don't know what it's going to do about someone getting on a plane and hijacking it and, you
know, blasting it into buildings.
You don't really need a passport for that.
You just need a, you know, kind of a sick mind.
American citizens overseas are encouraged to apply early for renewal of expiring passports.
All passport agencies in the United States already have the technology to issue the new
passport.
State Department officials have told CNN the new security features eventually will be used
in visas for travel to the United States.
These officials said a newly enhanced, more fraud-resistant document called a Lincoln
Visa will be rolled out in the coming weeks.
Lincoln Visa.
How about that?
Yes.
Speaking of secure ID, I came across a news story, but unfortunately I didn't pay that
much attention.
I was wondering if someone in New Jersey, hopefully Middlesex County, could help us
out on this.
Apparently, in New Jersey, you can get county ID if you have a birth certificate from absolutely
anywhere, and a piece of mail that proves that you live in the county.
And in Middlesex County, which covers New Brunswick, they're up in arms because it seems
to be, let's say, South American day laborers that seem to be getting this.
So you can read anything you want into that.
So they're up in arms and want to tighten up this security breach.
Who's up in arms?
The people who actually issue the ID.
But of course, you know, they're constrained by the laws.
If you have a birth certificate from anywhere, and some piece of mail mailed to you inside
the county, they give you a county photo ID.
This is only true in Middlesex?
I don't know if it's only true in Middlesex.
It should be true, I would guess, in every county in New Jersey.
But I'm looking for somebody who has this from New Jersey to call up and tell us about
it.
Okay.
Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
We'll be taking phone calls in just a little bit.
A couple of the news items, National Guard troops patrolling airports will be replaced
by uniformed police officers.
That's according to the new Transportation Security Administration government.
Isn't that nice how they call it, a government?
In a security directive to airports, the agency said the police officers will be stationed
at airport screening stations in place of the Guard.
Local police will be at the checkpoints until the security agency hires its own law enforcement
officials.
The federal government will reimburse the airports for the officers' salaries.
Spokesman Paul Turk said there was no timetable for replacing all the local police with federal
law enforcement officers.
He said the security agency would bring its own officers on an airport-by-airport basis.
So basically, this will happen by April 30th.
National Guard, which has been a fixture since at airports and shortly after September 11th,
will be withdrawn.
It should be out by the end of May.
Interesting.
I didn't see them at the bridge today, bridge crossings, tunnel crossings.
No?
Yeah.
They're starting to withdraw back into the shadows.
How about this?
You heard this one, porn movies and programs in Hebrew are being broadcast by Israeli troops
who have taken over three Palestinian television stations of Ramallah.
That's according to our residents of the besieged West Bank town.
And this comes from a French news agency.
The offices of three local television and radio stations were occupied by soldiers last
week, a few hours after tanks and hundreds of troops stormed the town in Israel's biggest
offensive against the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Yasser Arafat.
The soldiers started broadcasting the porn clips, considered extremely offensive by most
Muslims, intermittently from the Al-Ratan, Amwaj and Al-Sharraq channels.
The pornographic movies started on Al-Ratan television at around 3.30 p.m.
when 34-year-old Palestinian mother named Rima told AFP,
I have six children at home.
They have nowhere to go with what is going on here and can't even watch TV, she said angrily.
It's not healthy, really.
I think the Israelis want to mess with our young men's heads.
Anita, a 52-year-old mother of three children, complained about the deliberate psychological
damage caused by these broadcasts.
These are the people who are shooting at us that also play this disgusting trick on us.
We are desperate for news and constantly flipping channels and get these terrible pictures instead.
Adding the videos of the Intifada were also shown backwards with ideal terrorism written
in red across the screen.
Luckily there was no electricity in half of Ramallah, she said from her house in East Jerusalem
where the channels are also available.
A fourth local station, whose premises were not seized by the army, ran a written message
letting people know it was the Israelis who were behind the graphic scenes.
Anything currently shown on Al-Watan and other local TV channels has nothing to do with
Palestinian programs what is being broadcast by the Israeli occupation forces.
We urge parents to take precautions.
The Israeli military denied that it had anything to do with the pornographic programming
and instead blamed the Palestinian leaders.
I'm sure Yasser Arafat is directing it from the corner of the room that he's holed up in right now.
The Israeli security...
Yeah, Debbie does Dallas next guys, go ahead.
The Israeli military denied that it had anything to do with the pornographic programming.
Oh yeah, I just read that.
The Israeli security forces have no interest in putting pornographic and racist movies
on Palestinian television.
We're just interested in shooting people.
No, I added that.
The only reason we are in these buildings and in this city is to fight against terrorists
and their infrastructure after giving the Palestinians various chances to it themselves.
This guy really knows how to lay out a sentence, doesn't he?
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is willing to go low in order to make himself look better
in this uncomfortable situation, he said, which really...
I don't know how that has anything to do with pornographic images on TV.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emanuel Nashon said any such broadcasting was shameful,
but he said he was not aware of the Israeli army's involvement.
I cannot believe that Israeli soldiers would engage in such despicable behavior,
especially when there's so much other despicable behavior to engage in.
You know, I'll say this though.
If my town was being taken over and shot up and besieged,
I don't think I'd be interested in watching television.
I'd be interested in other activities, but not television so much.
We'll try to keep people updated on that.
In this besieged city, though, there's something horrible happening as well,
which I only found out about just very recently.
I don't know if you guys know about this.
New York City residents will need to get used to punching extra digits.
The so-called 10-digit dialing rule is taking effect.
I thought we were exempt from this.
I thought we somehow were able to tell people New York is different than the rest of the country.
We don't want to have to do this stupidity where we have to dial the area code,
even if we're in the area code, but apparently that's not the case.
Apparently we're going to have to do that anyway.
I don't know when the hearings were or anything,
but just all of a sudden this is the law.
As of next February, the law becomes mandatory.
You can do it now. In fact, you could do it for a long time.
Telephone companies are already reprogramming their switches, though.
As of February 1st, you'll have to dial the 212-917-646-347 or 718 area codes
for every phone call, even if you're inside that area code.
And, of course, you have to dial 1 in front of that just to waste even more time.
I don't know. I want to say rise up in the streets and get angry about this and do something,
but I don't know who to rise up against and who to be angry at.
Seems like the decision has been made for us.
It's unfortunate, but true.
Okay, we are going to, I guess, go to the phones, right?
Yeah, we have to do that.
Wait, didn't you have a special guest?
Yes, well, it involves going to the phones.
Oh, okay.
I tricked you there, didn't I?
So we're calling the special guest right now.
Actually, I have to get the phone number.
And also enter our secret code.
Do we have a line?
Okay, that's the prompt for the secret code.
You know, I don't like the sound of that static.
No, I don't like that at all, so I'm going to hang up on this.
What happens if you don't enter a secret code?
I guess it gives you a...
We're sorry.
You have not dialed enough digits for your call to be completed.
Please hang up and try your call again.
Seven.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Wow, well, that's interesting.
She sounded pretty sorry, but let's see if we can get...
It doesn't sound too bad.
See, it's a real experience making phone calls on this phone system.
All right, hopefully there won't be any static on this one.
That sounds much better, okay.
Hello?
Hi, it's Emanuel Goldstein calling.
Oh, hi, Emanuel.
How are you doing?
I'm doing okay.
You're our special guest for today.
I am?
Yes, you are.
You certainly are.
And for the benefit of our listeners who have no idea who you are yet,
this is Riba Vartanian, Kevin Mitnick's grandmother,
who joins us from Las Vegas.
And the reason we're speaking with her tonight is because she attended
the screening yesterday of Freedom Downtime in Las Vegas,
which was part of the New York International Independent Video and Film Festival,
which for some reason is showing in Las Vegas.
So you actually attended the screen.
I didn't know you were actually going to see the screening yourself.
I was absolutely delighted when I was told that it was going to be shown
at 10 o'clock at the Palms Hotel.
Actually, Kevin had called me several days before and said something was
going to be shown at the Palms, and he would call me back in two days
and give me all the details.
Well, I'm mad at him.
He didn't.
But I called the Palms Hotel and I found out all about it.
And I had such a wonderful time.
I took a friend of mine with.
The theater was almost full.
From all ages.
And it was a great film.
It took me back to times when I was crying all the time.
And I cried a lot yesterday, too.
But I also had a lot of laughter with it, too, because that's in the past.
And things are going good now.
Well, I have to say, Reba, you being in the film yourself,
you've been a pillar of strength not only to Kevin, but to a lot of us
that were following the case for so many years.
You always basically knew what was going on and said things as they were
and provided so much comfort in times of despair.
You say the crowd was, did they get the film?
Did they understand what was going on?
They were very, very receptive.
And people didn't rush to get out, which surprised me.
So many people still remained a little bit in their seats.
And then they start leaving slowly afterward.
But throughout the film, there were a little bit of laughter,
a lot of sighs, you know, as though they were seeing something,
that they were hearing something they couldn't believe.
But it was received wonderfully.
And I didn't notice anybody leaving the theater before it was completely over.
Well, that's certainly good news.
That was.
It was enjoyable, even if people didn't know who Kevin Mitnick was.
For instance, the woman I took with me, she knew very little of Kevin's plight,
whatever we went through at that time, because we're just sort of new friends.
But she got a different insight.
She has more respect.
And she just understands.
And whenever I bring up something, she understands what I'm talking about now.
And I don't know.
There's one thing, towards the end when you were interviewing someone,
I don't know how you kept your cool.
Because I just wanted to stand up and yell and holler and say things that were in my heart.
You know who I'm talking about.
Because I sincerely feel if it wasn't for this person having such a big part in Kevin's story,
his life would have been entirely different.
If he hadn't been publicizing things that were not true, that never happened,
and publicizing them on the front page of a well-known, well, the Times, the New York Times.
If he wasn't stating things that were not true and stating them as fact,
he wasn't saying, I think, or it was said to me, or it was alleged.
He was saying as though it was fact.
That's why the world, so many people did think Kevin was a Darth Vader type.
Anyway, I have very hateful feelings towards him because of that.
It ruined our lives.
Yeah, I mean, it certainly did not help the situation having a...
Kevin's life, no.
Having a newspaper like that spreading misinformation and not really attempting to...
I think one of the things we did in the film was show how there was no attempt made
to air any of the other stories.
I think one of the things said was, well, where's the story?
What story is there?
At the end of the film, that's one of the things that we had the New York Times reporter saying,
is, well, where's the story?
And, of course, you had just seen the story for the last two hours.
I should point out that, for those of you who have not seen the film Freedom Downtime,
which is a documentary that we have been working on since 1998,
we are going to be releasing it on video probably within the next week.
So keep watching the website, www.2600.com,
and there will be a news item on there,
and, of course, people will have the opportunity to get their own copies.
It has shown in festivals around the country, the most recent one being Las Vegas,
and there will be other ones as well.
We'll let people know where those are being seen.
Now, you say that there were a lot of people.
Was the theater full or close to full?
I don't know if it was actually full.
It isn't a really large theater because they have quite a large complex there.
So all the seating towards the back was full.
Down real close, I couldn't tell if way up close by the, you know,
those seats are not desirable, but way up close by the screen,
I don't know if that was full.
But people were talking about it, even as they sat in their seats.
There was a family or a couple in back of me that they must have known more than a lot of people
because they were constantly making comments.
And I turned my head to try to catch their faces.
I couldn't tell exactly which couple it was.
Did you try to tell them to shut up or something?
No, no, no.
I wanted to hear what they were saying because everything was so positive.
And when I left the theater, I went to where there was some publications about future events and such.
And I was standing there.
I wanted to ask some questions of the girl that was passing them out.
And there were two young women there.
I'd say one was early 20s, the other maybe a few years older.
They were smiling broadly at me.
And I did say something to them.
And I asked them, did you know anything about Kevin Mitnick?
They didn't know too much before.
But now they're so enthused, they want to know more about it.
And they even took my picture.
I was a celebrity because I was Kevin's grandmother.
But one of the women also makes, she's an independent filmmaker or perhaps she wants to be.
Anyway, the couple remarks I heard was something about people,
even my friend was saying that now we treasure more.
We see it could happen to us.
We value our rights and our freedoms and see how very easily it can be taken away from you and me and the guy next door,
not just the bank robbers and the killers.
So, you know, there were some very positive half sentences that I caught.
That's great.
It sounds like it touched people.
It might have woken some people up.
Well, it was done so naturally, Emmanuel.
It was, I felt like I was right there with you.
And when I saw Kevin at that tiny little window at the MDC and I remember those days.
So I remember them very, very much.
And if it wasn't for 2600 and everyone in your crew that worked so hard, I would have felt so much more alone.
Just put my head under the covers and try to sleep away that time.
But you and your crew and other people like you did give us a lot of support.
And God, I bless you for it.
Mariba, I want to thank you very much for being there for us,
because you certainly told the story in ways that so many people could identify with.
And I think you're one of the highlights of the film,
the periods where you talk to us and tell us stories about Kevin
and just the things that they were doing to him in prison
and just what it was like having this situation in your life.
And I really find it very inspirational.
I think you reached a lot of people as well.
Emmanuel, I know you were right there with us.
But, of course, there's so many things that you couldn't know
because you couldn't go into the jail to talk to Kevin.
And, of course, I knew every day the absolute agonies, the heartbreak,
people feeding off of Kevin, misleading him, just trying to get, well, whatever.
It was very frustrating in that time.
I think it was on his 35th birthday when we were across the street.
We couldn't get into the prison, so we were across the street at the gas station
waving at the window, and we didn't know what window to wave at
until we heard an actual tapping.
Isn't that incredible?
We were able to find it somehow with a zoom lens
and figure out which glass he was tapping on.
And that's a very heavy traffic street.
Yeah, and there were other people in the same gas station
waving at other prisoners too, but they didn't know who they were waving at.
They didn't do the tapping thing.
And they didn't have cameras either.
Well, I hope that you'll be able to do a documentary of Kevin after he got out.
Yeah, well, I'm sure there'll be a lot of interesting stories to tell.
Oh, he has a lot of stories to tell.
And hopefully he won't be harassed anytime between now and next January
when his probation ends, and he can actually really be free for the first time since 1988.
I keep my bumper sticker on all the time.
People say, well, Kevin's out of jail.
I said, he's not free yet.
He's still on probation.
Keep Kevin free.
Reba, thank you so much.
They're harassing him.
Okay, dear.
It was nice talking to you.
Thank you so much, Emmanuel.
Okay, we'll see you soon.
Bye.
Take care.
Hi, this is Danny and Kevin Mitnick's grandmother joining us on the phone here
talking about the screening of Freedom Downtime in Las Vegas.
You know, I didn't think it was going to be that well attended.
I knew that Las Vegas 2600 people would show up,
but it sounds like a lot more people showed up as well, which is great.
And I'm so happy that she got to see it in a big screen as well.
And you'll be able to see it too when we release it,
which hopefully will be within the next week or so.
Stay tuned.
Let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Let's pick a number from 1 to 12.
3.
All right.
3 is the only one that's not lit, and you knew that, didn't you?
No, I didn't.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Well, you don't get to pick again.
I'm going to go for 7.
How about that?
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi there.
Let me switch phones.
What are you calling from?
A vacuum cleaner?
No, I have a cheap radio shack.
Turn this off.
That's actually a phone?
No, it's just a cheap radio shack thing you put on the phone that you can...
Use to annoy people?
One of these voice things that you...
Uh-huh.
Headphone thing, but it's real cheap and it gets...
It changes your voice, does it?
Well, it gets radio interference from the radio station three blocks away.
And that's what it does?
Yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, let me ask you a question about BBC.
I guess there's a marketing...
Yeah.
BBC, with this shortwave radio, is not available here anymore, right?
That's true, but you can pick up other transmissions.
The question is why?
The reason they gave was because they felt more people were listening on the Internet
and more people...
Not enough English speakers.
I'm sorry, Club?
Not enough English speakers in North America.
Not enough English speakers...
Let me ask you a question.
I don't think that's the reason.
Only 280 million.
No, the reason is that they thought more people were listening over the Internet
and via FM radio at night.
Right.
Let me ask a question here.
Yes.
I went to a speech the other night by Gregory Palast.
You know who he is?
Tell us.
He's that reporter who cannot get anything published in the United States,
so he works for the BBC and for the Observer, I think it is.
I think I heard an interview with him on Radio Nation.
He breaks all this stuff about Bush and the Carlisle and all this stuff,
and Bin Laden's working with Bush and a whole butt-much of stuff.
He's from California, right?
Yeah, but he's living in London because he can't do anything over here.
He's got a new book out, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Yeah, he's down the hall, too.
Okay, we know him very well.
Anyway, he's on the BBC, and I've never heard him on the radio or anything,
but is what's on the radio the same as what's on the FM here at nighttime on WNYE?
I think it's different.
It's different.
I'm not sure exactly how it's different.
Could it be that it's a deal to not let him be heard in the United States?
Well, I don't think they've made an entire network just to keep this one guy off,
but I do think that there are certain ways that they program to different parts of the world.
The thing is, though, you can hear the BBC that's broadcast to other parts of the world.
Obviously, they're not broadcasting in North America anymore.
They have a transmitter in Moncton, New Brunswick, which transmits to most parts of the world,
and you can pick up not only broadcast to South America and I think Europe as well,
although I don't know why they broadcast out of Canada to get to Europe when they're from Europe,
but you can also hear things in different languages.
So it's possible you can hear things on shortwave.
You can hear different things.
You don't know the frequency you can hear in English?
I know 5975 is one of the frequencies, but if you pick up the radio database international,
the Passport to World Band Radio, actually, is the book,
look that up on the net and you'll be able to order that,
and I'll tell you all the frequencies of virtually every broadcaster.
Thanks for that call.
Let's take another phone call.
Up here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
I want to talk about...
What I want to talk about is ask you,
what is inconsistent with the peace process when you want to watch some videos?
And also, I guess, they don't feel very...
They don't look very much, after whining, to international forums.
They don't look or feel very much like Saladin.
Who is they?
I think you are aware, you know, the French is the Frenchman's favorite,
who they seem to have so much affection for.
But they don't look like Saladin very much.
Okay, listen, sir, I'll tell you, if I want to watch a David Lynch film,
I can go home and do it.
I don't need to listen to it on the radio.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, you know, nobody in this country talks anymore.
And you're one of them.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
That was too easy.
You're on the air.
Hi, this is Slipmote.
Who?
Slipmote.
Oh, okay.
And I just want to ask, I'm going to go to H2K, and I wanted to know,
what does it take to get a table?
I had a couple T-shirt ideas.
Ah, good question.
Actually, you're going to H2K, too, unless you're traveling in time.
That's right.
In July, that's our conference taking place here in New York City.
You're interested in being one of the people that has interesting T-shirts
and things like that.
Well, basically, we have a whole lot of space.
We have 35,000 square feet.
It's the size of an entire sports authority store, because that's what it
used to be.
And we're going to have all kinds of displays, displays of different kinds
of computers, displays of different kinds of merchandise that people
might bring with them.
It's not a commercial type of an event like, you know, Linux World or
something like that, where there's all these, you know, quote-unquote
vendors.
The vendors that we have are individual people such as yourself that
make, you know, interesting T-shirts that are of interest to the hacker
community.
So basically, all you have to do is just let us know.
There's an email address, vendors at h2k2.net, I believe, which would
work.
Okay.
I was there last year, actually.
I chatted with you for a brief moment, but out of all the people there,
I'm sure you won't remember me, but yeah.
Well, it's possible.
I just don't remember your voice.
Yeah.
But basically, we're trying to make it as open as possible to people.
We don't want a commercial flavor to it, you know.
Yeah.
It's in the hacker's spirit.
Actually, I think they're just really cool shirts, and I'm not really
there to make money.
It's just kind of an interesting idea, and I thought it would be fun to
kind of wear them myself and have anybody else partake in it.
Sure.
Sure.
It sounds great.
And if people out there are interested in speaking, we also are
accepting all kinds of proposals for panels and discussions and things
like that.
Speakers at h2k2.net as well.
And if you want to volunteer to help us, volunteers at h2k2.net.
We certainly could use them.
Cool.
Thanks.
All right.
Take care.
See if we can squeeze in one or two more.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Oh, hello.
Yes.
How are you doing?
Yes.
This is A.J.
Something you might be interested in.
Uh-huh.
I work in the Bronx in a school.
Okay.
Public school.
And I was online this morning, and I went to get BAI.
And I got to the website BAI, but I couldn't get the streaming of the
station.
What was happening when you tried it?
Well, you get an access denied because it's going through your 2600
thing.
Uh-huh.
And it says reason is crimes.
Oh, yeah.
Because we're criminals, right?
Well, it sounds like the school that you're going to has some sort of
silly block on it.
Yeah.
They have a block on it.
I also went through the Pacifica site and the same thing.
You can't get BAI.
Well, the reason being that the streaming goes through us.
Right.
We'll see if we can come up with a solution to that.
A couple of things you might try right off the bat is the IP.
If you find out the IP, which I don't have off the top of my head of our
website where we do the streaming, try putting that in instead of
2600.com.
You might try some other sites that link to us in different ways.
But I think you're going to run into the same problem that they have.
They have a filter there.
Yeah.
That's part of the problem with filtering is that you filter so many
things that you want to hear.
I don't know why we get classified in that way because if you look at our
website, if you're able to look at our website.
Yeah, I do that at home.
It's basically news and information.
If you object to the magazine, that's one thing.
But the magazine is not on the website.
It's the website of the magazine.
So you can't take the content of the magazine and apply it to the
website.
Well, you can never be too careful with young minds.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
Bye.
I really hate that kind of thing.
I really do.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening.
Channel 4 has been closed for some time.
Oh, it has.
Oh, yes.
Without warning.
But more importantly.
Maybe that's why all that information was thrown out.
Exactly.
They threw everything out.
And it must have taken them some time if this just happened.
It has been closed for at least three or four weeks.
That's about the amount of time it takes for Channel 4 to get a story.
Right.
But more importantly.
Go ahead.
Channel 4 had the reporter go in there supposedly today and confront the
manager.
Really?
Yeah.
He's the Voice Stream's national spokesman now.
All right.
Maybe we'll go over there and find out.
It's hard to find the manager in a closed store.
Okay.
Listen.
Sir, since you're familiar with the area.
To the left of that Voice Stream store, is there a cafe?
To the right.
This really isn't that important.
Okay.
We only have about five seconds.
So, sir, what was the main thing you called?
More importantly.
Lots of complaints about Voice Stream if you do an internet search.
They stole something like $285 from me with their deceptive deadlines.
They tell you you can renew on the prepaid plan.
You can renew on the day your credit expires.
Only the day ends exactly one minute after it starts.
Yeah.
We've read that story.
In fact, one minute after the day starts is when the day ends.
Yeah.
I've seen instances like that.
There's deception running rampant in the wireless phone industry.
Unfortunately, sir, we're going to have to stop there because we are out of
time.
But you've got to be careful with these things.
Sprint has a deal where I think it's, you see it on TV all the time,
4,000 minutes for $39.
But they divide it in such a way that if you make calls during the
daytime, you only get about 300 minutes.
And if you make a call past the 300 minutes, you pay a huge amount per
minute.
You pay something like $0.40 or $0.50 a minute.
So that's how they get you, folks.
There's always a way that they get you.
Anyway, that's it for the show tonight.
We'll be back again next week with even more fun.
Until then, it's Manuel Goldstein for the entire Off the Hook crew.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'll see you next week.
Good night.
Join a panoply of Pacifica people and a world mix of artists,
activists, techies, and friends at a fundraiser for WBIX
and Free the Media.
This is Zuul of Free the Media Collective.
This is Bernard White, Program Director at WBAI Radio.
Amrim Katkhuda.