And this is a relatively weak but very useful policy to make up for a little bit of that
difference and it is really truly unconscionable to take it down.
For Free Speech Radio News, I'm Suzanne Sawsville in Boston.
This newscast was produced at Pacifica Station KPFT in Houston, Texas by Kata Mester.
Headlines were produced by Randy Zimmerman at Community Station WMNF in Tampa, Florida.
Jay Padgett-Seekins is our technical producer at Pacifica Station KPFA.
With technical assistance from Pauline Bartolone and Sasha Lilley, I'm Nell Abram.
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, if they would,
so they'd be bound for the best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, but didn't it know?
Good evening and welcome to Off the Hook on WBAI-FM 99.5.
Emanuel, are you there?
Emanuel?
Now are you there?
I'm here.
Okay, good.
You got off to a little shaky start.
We're still trying to...
Please let me know if we're going on the air because I hate being on the phone not knowing
I'm on the air because I cuss up a storm, you know.
Okay.
All right, well, that's true.
But we're any second now.
All right, we'll try to get to the bottom of that.
We're still trying to get Bernie S. on the air.
Just let me know when the show's about to begin, that's all.
Well, the show has started.
Oh!
You couldn't hear the theme, could you?
I couldn't hear anything.
I just was sitting here minding my own business on hold on the telephone.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, but you know, I'm on a landline, which is kind of unique for me.
And a wireless phone.
And you sound so much better.
Do I?
Absolutely.
Wow, how about that?
Well, yeah, it's something, you know, over the years, technology changes and you forget
how things used to be.
And I remember when I used to drive into the city to do the radio program, if I needed
to make a phone call, I'd have to pull over to one of those roadside pay phones that you
could, you know, lean out the window and talk at the same time or sometimes even pull into
a small town or hamlet and, you know, make the call from a pay phone at the side of the
road there.
And I didn't have a cell phone.
You'd get beeped, you know, and you'd have to stop and return to beep.
Totally different culture.
Things have changed so much.
Now I can drive around anywhere in the country, talk to people on one of two cell phones that
I have.
I can even go out of the country and use my GSM phone.
I just wonder what it'll be like in ten years.
It'd be very interesting if we're still in the air in ten years to fast forward ahead
and see just, you know, how things turned out.
I'd rather take our time and get there slowly.
Yeah.
Everything's moving too fast.
You said yourself the weeks are going by.
They are.
I mean, it seems like just yesterday that we did a show and actually it was seven yesterdays
ago that we last came to you over these airwaves.
Right now I'm in San Francisco, still in California.
I was in California last week too.
I'm making it my business to get back as quickly as possible because, you know, the festivities
are over as far as Kevin Mitnick becoming free.
So the point of us being out here is pretty much gone away, you know.
But we're in a rental car, you see, so it takes time to get these things back to where
they came from.
And I got to tell you, you know, if you want to travel and you can somehow, you know, make
the time or just, you know, wake your work schedule, revolve around things.
I mean, I'm able to work on the road.
I can take my laptop with me.
I can connect to the Internet from Motel 6s and things like that and get, you know, work
done like I have to.
Communicate with people over the aforementioned cell phones.
If you can do that, it is so much better than being in airport terminals and, you know,
taking taxis around.
Just drive through the country and see it and experience it and, you know, visit people
and see how things change.
Because, you know, we spend time complaining about the homogeny of the United States, but
there are, you know, differences.
People are unique in various locations.
And plus, it's just good to, you know, to breathe different air.
Especially in a hydrogen-powered car.
That sounds like the voice of Bernie S.
Did we get Bernie?
Yes, we've got Bernie.
Wow.
What was that about a hydrogen-powered car, Bernie?
Did you listen to the President's State of the Union address last night?
I heard him promise $15 billion in help for AIDS, and I'm holding him to that.
Yes, he promised $1 billion for hydrogen-powered car development research.
How about that?
Very unusual.
Well, do you think we'll get $15 billion for AIDS aid in Africa, or $1 billion for the
hydrogen-powered car, or war?
We have $1 billion for the hydrogen-powered cars.
I want to know how many billions of dollars for the oil war-powered cars.
Hundreds.
I've got to tell you, traveling across the country, there is so much opposition to this
war, and it hasn't even started yet.
I can't think, and if anybody out there listening to the station or in the studios can help,
has there ever been a war in our history where there has been so much opposition to it before
it began?
Civil War.
I suppose.
I did see gangs in New York the other day, and there seemed to be some opposition to
it there.
How about in modern times?
World War II.
How much opposition to World War II was there?
Previous to Pearl Harbor, there was a lot.
Until Pearl Harbor, there was a lot of opposition.
I think Bush would like to hear that.
Maybe we should think a little bit more about what we're saying.
It was right after Pearl Harbor that things went downhill.
This 9-11 thing happened a year and a half ago, so it's not quite the knee-jerk reaction
anymore.
The circumstances were so much different in World War II.
There was no debate about what was going on in Germany and Europe.
People were dying.
People were suffering.
Horrible things were happening, and a madman was on the loose.
Here you have a madman, but he's fairly contained and not really posing a threat that I can
see anyway.
Of course, I don't have access to all the intelligence reports, but there just seems
to be a lot more doubt as to what's really going on.
There was a well-defined target back in World War II, and now it's the war on terrorism.
Where is it?
It's kind of hard to define and put a goal.
When will it be over?
What defines the end of this war on terrorism?
Here in San Francisco, there was a very large march a couple of weekends ago.
A couple of hundred thousand people.
I understand there were a couple of hundred thousand people in Washington, D.C. as well.
Is that correct?
I wasn't there, but I heard there was a lot of people.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Was anyone in the studios at any of the protests anywhere else in the world?
There's supposed to be a protest next Wednesday in New York City.
Next Wednesday in New York City?
A week from today?
Yeah, and there was one also today.
I heard on the news when we were in the studio.
I was actually in Las Vegas a couple of weekends ago when the demonstrations were taking place.
Would you believe it?
Right there on the strip, there was a small demonstration against the war.
To have any kind of activism in a city like Las Vegas, I thought was simply unbelievable.
When you pass a demonstration, maybe the customs vary.
It's one of these differences in culture that I was talking about.
But when you pass by a demonstration that you support, isn't it traditional to honk your horn?
Yeah.
And then they all cheer and wave their signs?
Well, they don't do that out there.
When you honk the horn, they glare at you.
The people in the demonstration?
Yeah, they were glaring, and I was waving and smiling, and they just glared back.
I mean, I don't know.
You waved at them?
I waved.
I waved.
I honked, you know.
Well, what you should have done is to the next casino, park the car, run back to the demonstration,
and say, hey, you know, when I honk, I'm supporting you.
What gives up the staring?
I didn't want to get into a fight with them about it.
I think when you explained yourself to them, they would have come around to your attitude and said,
no, that's what New Easterners do, or whatever.
Yeah, and around these parts, this is how you have it.
I just didn't want to get into a big to-do about the whole thing.
I just thought it was kind of interesting.
Maybe some of the culture I'm not quite getting.
Let's see.
What else?
I should also mention that there's going to be a large set of peace rallies on February 15th here in New York
and all over Europe and the world.
I was in Berkeley today and I saw a lot of mention of that, in fact.
February 15th, is that a Saturday?
That is a Saturday.
Okay, so that's bound to be pretty intense.
I've also spent a lot of time listening to Pacifica out here.
And I have to say, I was in Los Angeles a couple of days ago,
hanging out with Kevin and doing all kinds of fun things.
KPFK has really turned around since the last time I listened to them.
I don't know if people remember, but back a couple of years ago,
things were looking pretty dismal for the entire network.
So I'm happy to say, not only do they have a new station at 98.7 in Santa Barbara,
but they just have a lot of good programming.
Kevin did an interview, in fact, on KPFK.
I was pretty much glued to the set, listening to all kinds of anti-war coverage
and political issues and interviews and things like that.
It wasn't people just playing music or doing middle-of-the-road type things.
It really was very intriguing radio and worthy of the Pacifica network.
So that's something good.
And, of course, here in San Francisco, I can hear KPFA and KPFB.
And when I was in Fresno, I could hear KFCF.
So Pacifica is really kind of covering California pretty well.
I hope we're able to keep expanding that.
There is a real interest now.
There's a real need.
And I guess I should probably save that speech for the fundraiser in two weeks.
Are you able to stream their audio over the net?
I believe so.
In fact, you can probably go to KPFK.org or KPFA.org or WBAI.org
and find all kinds of interesting things that way.
We talked a couple weeks ago about the metric highway.
In fact, the whole show turned into a discussion about the metric system.
We got a lot of e-mails about that.
A lot of e-mails.
It's amazing how certain topics really make people come alive.
Last week we had Kevin Mitnick on the day a couple days after his freedom began, true freedom began.
I think we got more e-mail about the metric system.
We got more e-mail about the metric system, that's true.
But we didn't have time to discuss it last week.
I did look into it.
I did travel on I-19, which goes between part of Mexico and Arizona.
There's a side story to this, which I also want to get into.
I went to the show two weeks ago.
I believe I was in Bisbee, Arizona.
I said I was going to drive down to a particular part of Arizona and then loop around
and come back up at Nogales using a Mexican highway known as Route 2.
I'm going to get into Route 2 in a second.
Route 19, though, is the interstate that connects from Nogales and goes north, I believe to Tucson.
For some reason that we were not able to figure out, all of the signs on that particular stretch, I-19,
are in the metric system instead of in the traditional, what do we call it, the English system?
The imperial system.
The imperialist system, or whatever system.
The imperialist.
The miles are, you know, that's the thing that nobody else uses.
So I went on it, and, yes, it is, in fact, in the metric system.
The metric mileposts, or what you call them, kilometer posts, are up.
The speed limit, however, is given in miles per hour.
I pulled over.
My question on the air, Emanuel, during that show was is there a petrol station that sells petrol in liters?
Well, that's a good question, and I did, in fact, try to pursue that.
I pulled over to the first petrol station, and I walked in.
They had, you know, gas prices, usual, you know, in U.S. dollars and U.S. gallons, all that kind of thing.
But I asked them, you know, hey, how come this interstate that you're on, how come this interstate is in metric?
And it was amazing.
I asked a bunch of people there, and everybody said, you know, everybody asks that question, and nobody knows.
And, you know, I asked them, well, didn't you ever try to find out?
Nobody seemed to care.
Nobody seemed to want to pursue it.
Okay, wait a minute.
Challenge to the listeners.
Somebody with a Web connection.
There's got to be a Federal Bureau of Highways or something.
Well, actually, Jim, I do have a Web site, which people can go to.
And it doesn't really explain the why very much, but it does show a lot of nice pictures and things like that.
www.ArizonaRoads.com slash interstate slash I-19.html.
On there, you'll see all kinds of pictures of I-19, and you'll see, you know, the metric system signs.
I did talk to a customs official, or a border guard, actually,
because they stopped everybody on the road a little further up to look for Mexicans.
And when the guy didn't find any, I asked him, hey, do you know why this road is in metric?
And he said, well, this is only a rumor.
But when this road was built, they were planning on making the entire United States metric,
and this was the first one they did it on.
They just never finished.
I don't really believe that because the signs are too new.
The signs don't look that old, and it looks like they're maintaining it in a metric system.
So short answer, we still don't know why this particular one stretch.
It might have something to do with the fact that it connects directly to Mexico.
It says on the site that I just gave out, I-19 is one of the two interstates in Arizona that don't go between U.S. states.
It does, however, go between countries.
I-19 connects the major border crossing at Nogales with I-10.
So that might have something to do with it.
But as far as I know, it's the only interstate road like that that has kilometer markings.
Now, let me get to the story as far as what happened to us in Mexico.
We decided – I've been to Mexico three times now.
Each time is intriguing.
Each time is really interesting.
And the first time we went all the way down to Monterrey, which it's in, I believe, the state of Nuevo Leon.
This is something else that bothers me.
I didn't know most of the states in Mexico, and I dare say probably with the exception of Jim there.
Right, Jim?
You know all the states in Mexico.
No, I don't.
I would say I know a few, but I don't know all of them.
Nobody knows the states of Mexico.
We should know this.
They're right next door to us.
They probably know the names of our states, even though we probably don't know the names of all states.
We know most of the provinces in Canada.
There are a lot of different states in Mexico, and they're all unique.
Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Baja, Northern Baja, Southern Baja.
It's just fascinating, and I could spend lots and lots of time there just exploring.
So the second time we went in, I figured we'd do a little bit of that and connect between one part of Arizona and another.
When we got onto this Route 2, we realized pretty quickly that this was not a big highway.
This was a little two-lane road.
And quickly after that, we realized that, in fact, it's a mountain pass.
It's one of these little winding mountain roads.
Now, they do things a little differently over in Mexico.
They don't believe in what I call the guardrail system, which basically installs guardrails along the side of twisty, windy roads.
It's more like an honor system.
Yeah, very much an honor system, and a lot of people have not had that.
The road you're either on or off, or is that what you mean?
Many people have gone off.
I can tell you that because of the number of crosses that are on the road.
In fact, they have so many crosses that they almost have guardrails in some places.
It's unbelievable. It really is.
And not only that, when you're driving on these roads, everybody else is driving fast.
You're driving like you're scared out of your wits because you are on this road where you're supposed to be doing the equivalent of about 60 miles an hour.
It's a tiny road, no shoulder.
You look over the edge, and it's probably about 20 stories.
It's not an exaggeration. That is how far down it goes.
And it's not a rolling hill or anything like that.
It's pretty sheer.
We passed, at one point, a giant rock.
And on that rock was just basically painted names and tributes to all the people who had perished in that area.
So it was extremely scary.
The person I was with, actually, I should say at this point, Dave says hi to his mom.
The person I was with was looking over the side of the passenger.
Because he was on the passenger side, I was on the driver's side.
And he occasionally looked over, and he just had this kind of a...
It's like a gasp that you don't usually hear from somebody unless it's very close to the end of their lives.
And I asked him to please stop doing that because it was making me nervous.
I had bus drivers and 18-wheel trucks passing me on these winding roads and being very impatient with me.
And literally, the second that ended, the second that we got to a place where there wasn't a sheer drop,
we saw a sign that indicated big, huge rocks falling onto trucks or cars.
So literally, we had one second to breathe before there was another danger.
So at that point, it was just so outrageously funny that we were hysterically laughing the rest of the trip.
Until we got to a checkpoint.
In Mexico, there are many checkpoints.
You sometimes are stopped by the army.
You sometimes are stopped by police.
There's all kinds of different checkpoints.
And lots of times, you don't know what it is they're checking for because they don't speak any English,
and you might not speak Spanish.
Well, this time, we stopped at a checkpoint, and it seemed to be some kind of a customs inspection.
And we were about maybe 20 miles from the exit back into the United States.
And they looked at our car, and they said, you don't have a permit.
And I said, well, what permit am I supposed to have?
And he said, well, you don't have the permit you need to get by this barricade here.
And then he said the words that really made me freeze in horror.
He said, you'll have to go back to where you came in and get a permit.
So that meant that we had to literally, because we tried to even bribe the guy, you know, a mild bribe,
which we said, you know, can we buy a permit here?
And he said, no, no, you have to go all the way back.
I said to the guy, you know, that road is really, really scary.
You know, that Route 2 is really scary there.
And he said, well, sir, all the roads here are scary.
So, yeah, I had to turn back because I didn't have a permit I was supposed to get,
which I didn't know anything about, that allowed me to drive that far into Mexico.
And we turned around, and we went back on the same road.
And wouldn't you know, as soon as we got to that point where I mentioned the sign with the huge boulder falling into the street,
there was a huge boulder that had fallen into the street right where our car had passed not ten minutes earlier.
So Mexico is a fun place where there's danger at every turn.
But the people are great.
The food is amazing.
I definitely suggest going there.
But check into the permit situation before you do.
And don't be afraid when the Army stops you with machine guns and asks you questions that you don't understand.
When you got back to where you had to buy the permit,
did you see a sign that you missed or something that would have alerted you to the fact that you needed a permit to get to the other side?
No, absolutely nothing.
In fact, later on when I went to Ensenada, that was the most recent time,
I even asked, this time I decided to go to the car rental agency and tell them I was going to Mexico.
Because the last couple of times I didn't actually tell them that.
They said, no, you don't need any permit to go to Mexico.
And they didn't even tell me I couldn't go to Monterrey either.
So I don't feel guilty about that anymore.
One thing, though, when we went down there, we have the GPS system.
And it doesn't include Mexico.
So when you're on the map and you go into a place that doesn't include it, it just turns completely black.
And you just have a little indication of your car driving in blackness.
There's no road anywhere near you.
So that was kind of fun, you know, in a time when we were completely off the map.
But that's it.
No, no, no. That was just the last.
Ah, okay.
What state are you in right now?
Right now I'm in San Francisco, which is in California.
And I'm no more Mexico this trip.
So we're just going to head straight back across the north.
And it's kind of ominous, too, because the road that we've chosen to head back on, it's not an interstate.
It's a U.S. highway.
But it's called U.S. Route 2, which is the same number as the Mexican road, which was very scary.
This one looks like it might be a mountain pass as well.
There's snow in the northern U.S., too.
That's what I'm hoping to find, because, you know, I hear you guys were getting a cold snap.
I've been stuck in places where it's been like 80 degrees.
You know, some people like Southern California.
It drives me crazy, and I couldn't wait to get further north and hopefully back east as soon as possible.
With any luck, I'll be back for the show next week, certainly for the meeting next week, and definitely for the fundraiser.
Okay, good.
Speaking of the meeting next week, we're hoping that our security guard, Big Frank, shows up.
He's been in the hospital.
He's had an operation, and we just want to send out a get well from the group.
Yes, definitely.
And I think he's doing fine.
I've had a couple of e-mails.
I think the operation was a success.
He keeps referring to Mike here as Fatso, so I'm guessing it went well.
Well, that's something I've got to see.
Yeah.
Mike's put on a lot of weight.
He's taken off a bit.
But either way, I'm looking forward to seeing that.
What's this I hear about the RIA being hacked?
Oh, they weren't hacked.
Denial of service attack.
Oh, denial of service.
You see, I just saw the headline.
And, of course, if someone gets, you know, bombed off the Internet with a denial of service attack, that's considered hacking.
It's really kind of frustrating.
Right, but it doesn't use the word hacker, so they can't make us look bad by saying, we've been denied service.
You know, it's like, conned, shut you off.
Weren't they also countersued in a lawsuit?
Tell us about that.
I don't know much details about it, but I heard that one Kaza, I believe, had been sued by, I believe, the RIA, countersued the RIA.
Something along the lines of restraint of trade.
Does anyone there know about it?
I only know those facts.
The Kaza song, the RIA for, I think it was the fact that RIA prevents competition by trying to shut down all the online music sharing services.
And so far the suit hasn't been thrown out.
I don't know how new the suit is.
I don't know when it was filed, so I don't know when it's going to actually go to court.
Hopefully it will.
It'll be interesting to watch.
It just hit the mainstream news a day or two ago, so it may have been just filed recently.
A more pressing problem for people who have been file sharing even more innocuous files is Verizon has now lost its efforts to keep its subscribers anonymous.
They were sued by, I believe, the RIA to give the names of people who had engaged in file swapping.
And they had said, no, we're not going to do that.
And the courts ruled that they have to turn over their lists.
So now the RIA says they're going to go after people.
And I believe the maximum damages is $150,000 per file you've shared for copyright infringement.
So there are some people out there who are looking at fines in the tens of millions of dollars, supposedly.
Very dangerous precedent for the carriers as well as the users.
It's interesting because I found myself on the same side as Verizon in that particular fight, as did many of us, because it seemed like they were standing up for subscriber privacy.
Not necessarily for the right reasons.
Not necessarily for the right reasons, but you can't really be too picky in a situation like that.
But the funny thing is that a number of people, that particular suit had to do with, I think, a single subscriber who was downloading something like 600 songs a day.
And they wanted to keep his name confidential.
And the RIA wanted it to be well known.
And a number of people wrote in saying, well, that might be me.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure who it is that they're looking for.
But it would be interesting to see who that person was when they do find out.
I don't know who would download 600 songs a day.
Were they downloading or uploading them?
Yeah, I thought it was downloading.
I'd heard downloading.
I've heard it's someone named Hillary, what, Rosen?
Uh-huh, Hillary Rosen, yeah.
Now, she's resigning from the RIAA.
And going over to the dark side?
No.
Yeah, she is resigning.
The job might be taken by one William Clinton, you know, because he was supposed to succeed Jack Fellini.
And since Jack Fellini, you know, is going to live another hundred years, maybe he'll take that job instead.
Yeah, speaking of Jack Fellini and lawsuits, we've got another bit of news here about the tech firms fight copyright protection laws.
This is from CNET.
It's interesting that Apple, Microsoft, Dell Computers, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Intel,
they're all joining together to oppose the legislation backed by the movie studios.
There's an interesting quote here from Jack Fellini.
Let's see, MPA President Jack Fellini said last week that he was continuing to weigh approaches like the Hollings Bill,
which is called the Consumer Broadcast and Digital Television Promotion Act.
And, of course, they've got the Ackerman.
In a statement Thursday, Fellini accused the tech coalition of warmongering.
I found that very interesting that he would choose those words.
He's just taking the words of the day and using them for his own use.
Let's see, what else do we have here?
This is legislation that would require that all home, well, any kind of equipment,
whether it's a computer or a TiVo-type device or a VCR, all have copyright protection built into it
so the content producers can control not only what you watch, when you watch, but how and what you record.
Yeah, yeah.
Even your hard drive would have to be compliant with this law.
It would have to have a chip in it to prevent you from downloading a piece of copyrighted music.
That's right.
This is the famous Hollings Bill, which was introduced in the last session of Congress.
And if we're unlucky, it will come back again to haunt us this time.
You know, we've spoken about this before, but I just thought of another danger of this.
A repressive government arises, and let's not make comments about whether this has happened in the past or not,
and decides that, well, too many people know about the Constitution, so we can't just throw it out,
but they secretly treat it online as if it was a piece of copyrighted material.
You can no longer download it to your computer and print it.
You can no longer, you know, all that sort of thing.
If it's on your computer, they can go in, hack it, take it away.
It becomes 1984-ish.
You know, things you can't speak of, you can't discuss, obviously.
But information is outlawed. Only outlaws will have information.
I like that.
There's a lot of good bumper stickers here in Berkeley.
That's one I think that could be made as well.
Like, you know, a closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose. That's another good one.
Now, Jeff, I think you had some news out of England, was it?
Yeah, there's basically a chain of Internet cafes that, in London,
a high court judge Tuesday found that easy Internet cafe chain,
guilty of copyright infringement for allowing customers to download music from the Internet
and copy it onto a CD for eight dollars, or I guess eight euros.
In the summary, judgment is the latest development in an 18-month feud
between the major music labels and the popular Internet cafe chain.
And it says here it's built by a Greek entrepreneur.
I'm not going to attempt his name.
He's also the founder of the low-cost airline EasyJet. Pick.
Oh, so it wasn't Aristotle or Nassar.
Oh, PLC, I'm sorry. I'm sorry?
Yeah, PLC, Public Limited Corporation. I pick.
Bernie, what did you say?
Oh, I said, I guess it wasn't Aristotle or Nassar.
No, no.
Well, hang on a second. You said EasyJet? Is that what you said?
Yeah.
Isn't that the same person that runs EasyEverything?
Yeah.
The same person that blocks 2,600 websites?
Right. EasyEverything, 42nd Street in Manhattan.
Huh. Interesting.
I don't know what's making that noise. Do you hear that noise?
Yes. Are you being pursued by British Ambulance?
No, I'm in someone's house, and they let me use the phone.
And you're playing with the toys.
That's not what it's supposed to do.
But I'm going to try and turn that off, whatever it is.
It may be annoying, but it's musical.
Okay, I'm going to cut off for a second.
You guys continue with the show, and I'll be right back.
All right.
There's an interesting theme in a lot of these cases
where we're kind of relying on one giant corporation
to defend us from another giant corporation,
which is nice while it lasts,
but we see a lot of these corporations are just, you know,
growing and growing and losing concern for their customers.
So Sony was one of the people who fought for the right
for consumers to have VCRs,
but now Sony is not just an electronics manufacturer,
but they're a record label and a picture studio
and whatever else they do.
So, you know, we couldn't,
or at least I would be reluctant to rely on Sony
to defend me from the other part of Sony.
So we're entering this kind of nebulous realm
where I think we really need to get, you know, our own rights
rather than having these companies try and do it for us.
Well, there's a big battle within Sony itself
between both sides of this argument
that the divisions that manufacture
the personal audio and video equipment
are at odds with the content-producing divisions,
the movie side and recording side of Sony.
And so there's an internal,
there's a civil war going on within Sony about this topic.
Yeah, but it's not just Sony.
I mean, they found that, I think it's BMG
is one of the big five recording studios
that has, when Napster was around,
they invested $9 million in that.
I think it was Bertelsmann.
Bertelsmann?
Yeah, a German company.
Yeah, yeah.
Also, Wired Magazine has a whole article
about the whole Sony thing,
and the part that's against RAAA of Sony
is much more powerful than the recording part of Sony.
So the recording part of Sony is getting very envy
because it's being ignored by the larger company,
which is good for us.
It's bad for them.
Yeah, they've made twice as much money
as I think the entire music industry had made
just in selling the pieces and parts to copy the music.
Okay, I'm back.
There was an alarm on the computer
that was overheating, apparently.
So we've turned that one off,
and I'm powering up another one.
Yeah, it was pretty scary.
I had no idea what was going on there.
We're being pointed at the clock,
which wants us to announce
that this is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
The clock wanted us to announce that?
Yeah, now the clock's happy.
Well, good for it.
What I had on the other computer,
which I'm trying to get back again,
is the latest attack on the Internet.
You know what I'm talking about?
Sure.
Worm, which is always being reported by the media
as a virus, which it's not.
The SQL worm,
which took advantage of a security hole
in the SQL database
created by Microsoft,
and the patch of the security hole
that was available since June or July.
And the funny thing is that Microsoft itself
didn't have its own patch installed on its own servers.
And government agencies as well.
Yeah.
And Bank of America, in fact,
ATMs were actually affected by this.
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
How on earth are they running ATM financial data
over the public Internet?
Clearly that's what's going on now.
It's even better than that, Bernie.
I'm going to tell people something here,
which hopefully people won't abuse too much,
but it's kind of fun.
You know, fun in sort of a...
Some people will find it annoying.
In much the same way that in the past,
and maybe even today,
pay phones can be disabled by dialing a three-digit code.
I know on Long Island, you used to be able to dial 480
and the pay phone would go dead for about five minutes.
You know, it was kind of fun,
unless you were like robbing a bank or something
and you did that to all the phones in the area
and nobody could call out,
and then it's not fun anymore.
So, you know, obviously the intent is something
that you have to look at.
But at certain ATMs,
particularly the kinds where your card
is actually sucked into it,
it's easy to disable them
simply by holding onto your card.
So when the card is being pulled,
you pull back or you just hold onto it.
And some ATMs get so furious at this
that they completely shut down,
turn off the light, everything.
For how long?
It depends.
It depends on the particular brand of ATM.
Some come back up in five minutes,
some come back up in 20 minutes,
some don't come back at all.
But, you know, software needs to be upgraded
in some of these things,
and hardware, too, in some cases.
I found a bank, Wells Fargo Bank, in fact,
that had one of these machines.
I always like to test it out.
I tested this overseas once
and different things happened there.
But this one rebooted.
However, it rebooted into NT.
And you could see the entire boot process taking place
as if you were just watching a PC boot up.
Did you try keystrokes as it was rebooting?
Well, if I had really been taking notes,
it happened very fast and it was a busy street.
But if I had been taking notes,
I could have found out a lot of information
about that particular machine
and its capabilities and possible flaws
and things like that.
These things are just PCs.
They're just PCs,
and so I connected to the net.
Well, Jeff and I were touring Germany and Amsterdam
about a month ago.
We noticed that a lot of the airline terminal displays
that showed you what planes were arrivals and departures,
many of them were based on NT
and were mysteriously rebooting.
Uh-huh.
Blue screens of death and everything, huh?
Yeah.
Well, anyway, the slammer worm is what they're calling it, right?
Yes.
How'd they get the name slammer exactly?
You got me.
Okay, nobody knows.
Probably the same people came up with the telephone term
for slamming when your long-distance carrier was changed
without your permission.
Uh-huh.
Crazy.
So basically, anyone running SQL,
Microsoft SQL,
was a possible target for this.
We're talking about websites and various services,
and they say that it started, I think, in South Korea.
No, in Hong Kong.
Not Hong Kong?
Uh-huh.
Okay.
In South Korea, so I guess there would be...
South Korea was hit harder than any other country, apparently.
I also read recently that South Korea
is the most net-connected country in the world,
where three out of four people are online.
It's also the country with the most people on broadband.
So, yeah.
Yeah, and Singapore, too, is way up there,
things like that as well.
So they probably got hit hardest just by sheer numbers.
But if you look at the news stories here,
invariably, it goes into the damage that hackers caused.
In fact, I'm looking at a CNN story right now
where after they talk about the slammer a little bit,
they talk about the cost of hacker attacks in 2001
was $455 million.
And, of course, then somebody else comes along and says,
well, we need more laws,
and this could be cyber terrorists,
and all kinds of things like that.
So it just basically instills these things into people's heads.
And every time something goes wrong with their computer,
it's those evil cyber terrorist hackers.
And, you know, I was looking,
in fact, we all were looking in the newspaper
and on the news agencies and things like that
for any mention of Kevin.
Because, you know, Kevin, obviously,
had just started using the Internet last week,
and this happened, I think, two days after that.
We wanted to see if anybody would actually go and say,
you know, the whereabouts of Kevin Mitnick were unknown at this time.
In fact, I was with him at the time,
and I can probably tell you exactly where he was.
But nobody actually made that leap.
But it's not too far a leap that they did make,
assuming this has anything to do with hacking.
Besides, you probably have it on tape anyway.
That's true. That's true.
Yes, of course.
Yeah, so, you know, I think there's a quote Bruce Schneier made on CNN,
which I think makes the most sense of anything I've seen so far,
where basically he's telling you that this is, you know,
this is what the net is.
This is kind of like the price of, you know, having the Internet.
Things like this happen.
We could ground all airplanes, he says,
and not have any more airplane crashes.
The key is whether the good uses of the net outweigh the bad.
Life is like that.
You just have to take the good with the bad.
And I think that's a nice reasoned approach.
And we can maybe figure out ways that the bad doesn't have as much of an effect,
like installing patches and, like, you know, reading security bulletins.
And what's ironic is this patch has been available for the better part of a year,
and people just haven't updated their database servers with a commonly known,
you know, to fix a commonly known bug.
It's gross incompetence.
If system administrators were reasonably competent, this wouldn't have been a story.
Yep, that's right.
Absolutely.
What do you think? We should take some calls?
Yeah, it seems to be, what, 38 minutes past the hour?
Exactly.
Wait, wait, Jim wants to say something.
Before the calls, we have one bit of news, a sad bit of news.
You're on the Mitnick Liberation Tour,
but we have news of our friend Red Balaclava,
who sadly next week is going to probably have to cop to a felony plea.
We're talking about the transit case, right?
Yeah.
Tell us the developments. What's going on there?
Well, apparently it hasn't gone to trial yet.
The DDA has been offering a plea bargain for a year, classy felony,
a few years of probation, a few assorted other things.
The evidence, although it doesn't point to the crime that he did not commit,
but it would look bad to a jury.
That's what it boils down to.
And this is what lawyers are saying.
Yeah.
It seems shady, so it must be.
A lot of people have been through similar things
where they know they didn't do something,
yet they have to plead to something to avoid something even worse.
Yeah, that's what it boils down to, I understand.
The question is, is this going to be something that involves
any kind of prison, any kind of financial hardship,
other than what's already been suffered?
No, Larry said it's a few years of probation, as far as I know,
and possibly a fine.
Uh-huh.
Are there any losses long-term?
Well, you're a convicted felon.
You don't get to vote.
You probably have a lot of difficulties associated with that.
Is that true in New York?
What about pension?
Oh, that's a long one.
Jim, is that true in New York, that you can't vote if you're a felon?
As far as I know.
I don't think it is.
Do you know anything about this?
It was, well, I don't know about New York.
It was illegal to register to vote in Pennsylvania
up until about two and a half years ago
when I participated in some hearings in which the ACLU argued
this was unconstitutional, and finally we got this law overturned.
In Pennsylvania?
In Pennsylvania.
So you're welcome to move down to Pennsylvania, Jim, if you'd like to vote.
Oh, thanks for blowing my cover.
Not that people didn't know.
Yeah, well, the problem is you're the only person I know there,
and since you're an ex-felon, technically.
No, there's no ex.
It's kind of like being an ex-Marine, ex-homosexual, ex-CIA agent.
You know, it doesn't change.
But, hang on, you bring up an interesting point.
Now, if, in fact, Jim, you're going to be on probation,
does that mean you're not allowed to talk to Bernie S.?
I believe that would be the case.
I don't know about talk to, but I think it would be the case, yeah.
Or Kevin, or virtually anybody in our little circle.
Well, no, there's still lots of people who haven't done anything.
Well, wait a minute, I haven't done anything either, technically.
It's a diminishing list.
Yeah.
But it's all up to your parole or probation officer
and what conditions they set upon the parolee or probationee
or probationer as to whether they want to say
you may have any contact with someone who's been convicted of a felony.
Sometimes they do that, sometimes they don't.
I'm curious as to whether or not they're going to put any restrictions
on computers or BAI radio shows.
Well, that would be interesting if they put a restriction on radio shows.
I've never heard that one before.
Or the MTA.
You can't use the MTA for three years.
How's that?
Oh, that would be tough.
That would be very tough.
How else are you supposed to get around?
I'm seeing a bicycle in your future.
This is one of the only shows I think I've ever actually had
Internet access while I'm doing the show.
I don't like to do that normally because I think it's too distracting
and you get caught up in things.
But since I'm over here in San Francisco anyway and I'm distracted,
I'm going to look for any information on voting rights for felons in New York.
And if any listener out there is able to beat me to it, please let us know
because I don't think you lose your voting rights in New York.
I could be wrong, but I'm going to look into that.
Well, it's not so much voting.
In Pennsylvania they did it in a sneaky way.
They didn't say it was illegal to vote.
They said it was illegal for you to register to vote.
I'm already registered.
Well, see, you fall into the loophole that I fell into here in Pennsylvania.
So since I had already been registered to vote, I could continue to vote.
But there were tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who,
for one reason or another, had been convicted of a felony
that had not been registered already, and they were basically disenfranchised.
So not anymore, fortunately.
But we'll have to find out about New York.
That's an important state electorally.
Well, hey, I'm old enough to run for Congress.
Oh, you can't run for political office.
Oh, really?
Yes, that's definitely.
You can't run for president.
Well, presidents, what about lower office?
It depends on the state laws.
Each state has its own election laws.
Look that up as well, Manuel.
And I think basically you have to be in office before you can commit crimes.
That's the way that works.
Well, no, that's just tradition.
And you can't be a lawyer either.
That I know, and that's not so much a big deal.
Doesn't most of Congress have a lot of felonies on them?
No.
There are many unindicted felons in the Senate and the Congress.
But you have to be officially stamped as a felon.
I have found a lawsuit, Hyden v. Pataki, that's currently taking place in New York.
That, however, seeks to restore the right to vote for prisoners and parolees in the state of New York.
It doesn't say anything about people who have a felony conviction not being allowed to vote.
And I think it would say that if that was true.
But I'm going to keep looking.
Okay.
By the way, let's go to phone calls, I think.
Yeah.
All right.
The number here is 212-209-2900 if you would like to call us.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yeah, I have a question.
Now, the unfortunate incident that happened in City Island, Manuel may not notice.
Actually, I do.
I did read about this.
But I have one call that wasn't logged.
Right.
I mean, I don't want to get into the details.
I mean, you know, 33-degree water, I'm assuming, you know, I mean, you know, you've got about 15 minutes.
Right.
But the upshot is, at least according to the local, like I read him this morning when I buzzed in,
he was listening to CBS and that was driving me nuts.
But they want to have the tower set up so they can triangulate phone calls,
just in case you're out there in Long Island South.
Now, I guess this wouldn't take effect if they wanted to triangulate any other sort of phone calls.
Well, you know, they've long argued that that's a safety issue,
knowing exactly where you are when you place a phone call.
And this, you know, it's hard to argue something like this,
where knowing where those kids were might have saved their lives,
might have saved lots of lives if people know when someone calls 911.
And if the call came in to 911 and they were able to do it from an incoming call,
then it does make sense.
No, Eric, I want to sidestep that issue.
What I'm saying is they want to have it where they can triangulate phone calls of mobile phones,
which is what we're talking about.
Now, naturally, a home phone is a home phone and it can trace that back in a heartbeat.
Well, here's the thing.
Today's Daily News has a column in which someone, I don't know why we have an echo,
in which someone mentions that the enhanced 911 charge on your phone bill
goes to the state of New York supposedly to put this into effect,
to be able to track cell phone calls to 911 and pinpoint their location.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, please.
Enhanced 911 is basically it provides a lot of information to the 911 operator,
such as a map of your house, if dangerous chemicals are involved, things like that.
What we're talking about here is something involving cellular phones, mobile phones,
that will actually give you a geographic location of where the person is calling from.
Right, that's what I'm driving at.
I'm not relating this to the issue of the 911 as such.
Don't get me wrong.
That's unfortunate.
A 911 is a necessity.
But what I'm saying is who's to say that the limit is drawn at a 911 call?
Right.
You see what I'm driving at.
Yeah, and that's been a concern since this was announced.
Right.
I mean, you know, give them an inch and they'll be glad for it,
and why not give them another mile, too?
They'll take the mile.
Uh-huh, exactly.
And as you said about the parolees and felons and voting,
as I understand it, Maine will allow people in prison to vote
because they consider that to be an essential part of the constitutional process.
Well, actually, I've tracked down an article for the New York Times November 3, 2000,
and this particular phrase is of interest.
A majority of states, including New York,
automatically grant voting rights to felons once they have completed their prison and parole terms.
Right, right, right.
There are states, other states.
I won't denigrate the South.
They can do that on their own.
Right.
But, you know, once that's it, that's it.
Well, you know, we're not debating this.
We're not debating other states.
We're asking if New York did this.
No, but New York will, upon, what do you call it,
your completion of your sentence, including your parole period,
will, what do you call it, you will have the franchise reinstated to you.
Right.
Now, New Jersey and Connecticut do not do this.
Well, when I joined the Navy back in 69, I was told right off the bat,
that's where we dump our garbage.
I'm sorry.
I was a guy in the Navy.
All right, on that note, I'll leave you for other phone calls.
Okay, we'll leave the Navy to deal with you.
Thanks for your call.
Yeah, okay.
Wait, we just, okay, we're back.
Yeah, Leo.
Like, I think it was two or three months ago,
I read a news article about how a few states had passed the E-911 laws,
that's the laws that give the states the right to triangulate on cellular phone calls,
the call to 911.
Almost all the places that passed the law, which was like two years ago,
have not implemented the actual system in place.
So while they can do that, the technology isn't there for them to actually make it,
but it's used.
Some handsets also have a GPS built into them,
and there's a requirement in that law that says that the carrier must either track the handset
via triangulation by, you know, figuring out using trigonometry,
depending on which antennas you're connecting through in the cellular system,
you can track your position that way,
or by a GPS satellite receiver built into your handset.
And there are several on the market now that have this GPS receiver built into the handset,
which brings up interesting opportunities for hacking
and sort of playing games with the GPS data stream
and spoofing your location from your handset.
Taking another phone call.
Okay.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
Come on through.
You were talking about South Korea and why it was hit the most by the worm.
Yeah.
I heard that it was because there was an extreme amount of pirated SQL copies in South Korea,
and almost all SQL copies in South Korea are not legitimately purchased.
That throws an interesting light on the whole thing.
So this worm was possibly designed to attack pirated copies?
No, I don't think that was his point, but it is interesting.
Maybe we can call it the karma worm.
Why it actually done the damage is because it was basically just like the RTM worm from the 80s.
It wasn't meant to do damage.
When it replicated, it sent out so much copies of itself that it clung down the systems.
And that's why it did the damage.
I don't think the damage was intentional.
I think it was an unforeseen side effect of whoever wrote the worm.
In other words, it propagated too much.
Yeah.
RTM, for those who don't remember, is named for Robert Morris.
Son of a prominent NSA cryptologist.
Yes, he was.
All right.
We'll move on to another call.
Thank you.
Hello, you're on the air.
Yes, I'd like to mention two quick things.
I'd like to mention you took away my copyright.
I wanted to watch the Super Bowl at Applebee's, you know,
because they advertise watch the Super Bowl here.
And guess what?
I'm sitting at the bar, you know, watching the game, and I can't hear the game.
I mean...
Oh, my God.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
We've been through this.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Rebel, you went to the Applebee's again.
You already called us about telling us that they refused to turn up the sound
because they have a contract with their music people
that they only play music in their restaurants.
Is that right?
Right.
So you went there expecting to hear the Super Bowl, and instead you heard music?
And not only that, but instead of...
You know how they play the TV, the Super Bowl was on,
but there was that caption, you know, the caption thing?
Oh, captioning, yes.
Right.
You can't even see the score.
I mean, people are scoring, the teams are scoring.
It's not like a regular bar where you see people cheering that, you know,
the Raiders score or whatever this person scores.
You don't hear that because...
They sell these radios that pick up the sound on TV channels.
And nobody works it easier.
Remember when you used to go to...
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on, Rebel.
Before we launch into a new topic, which we're not going to do,
this Applebee's, did a riot break out?
Were there a lot of people there watching the Super Bowl, or were you the only one?
No, there were people in there.
Weren't they demanding the sound be turned on?
I don't know.
Not really.
You couldn't hear.
Okay.
Well, maybe that's the problem, then.
But nobody works it.
You see everything.
Remember when people used to work it easy, everything?
Well, people worked there because every time I go in there,
one of them annoys me, so I know there's people working there.
Yeah, but nobody's here anymore.
The jobs have gone because of NAFTA to Mexico.
Can I have a Super Bowl story if we could free up the line a little bit?
Sure.
Sure.
Oh, Ebeko.
How nice.
Sorry about that.
It's gone.
It was totally, you know, nonplanned.
I wound up in San Diego on Super Bowl Sunday, late Super Bowl Sunday.
I was actually in Tijuana, and we decided, okay, you know,
most of the morons should be gone by now.
Did you run across Oakland Center?
Well, no.
Actually, we've avoided that where, you know, people are rioting about.
I think, you know, a riot would have taken place whether they won or lost.
No, no, no, no, no.
The guy who snapped the ball for Oakland was in Tijuana right when you were.
Oh, really?
And they obviously hacked him because he disappeared right before the Super Bowl.
That must have happened.
But, no, I didn't follow anything.
I almost didn't know who was playing.
I tried to avoid it.
But we crossed the border pretty late.
In fact, we got searched, too.
The very last border crossing, the customs people got very suspicious of us
because we had T-shirts in the back of our car, you know,
26-toner T-shirts that we'd been giving out along the way.
Apparently, they think that we went down to Mexico
and smuggled out a bunch of shirts made by Mexicans that say Made in Bangladesh on them.
So that was a good half hour there of confusion.
We found out that people who are searching your car,
the new method is to use a screwdriver.
They hold on to the blade of the screwdriver,
and they tap your car with the handle to see if you have any hidden compartments.
So that's a method there for you people looking for hidden compartments.
But, basically, we crossed over the border into San Diego.
And, yeah, there were still a lot of lunatics running around.
The people we had the most problems with,
and this has really kind of surprised me, were the police.
We were walking around, a bunch of us, people in San Diego that we'd met up with,
and we were crossing a street.
And all of a sudden, these people start hollowing at us.
You know, looking around, who are these people yelling at us?
And it was a bunch of cops.
It was maybe five or six cops that were standing in a group.
And they were yelling at us because we were crossing against the light
on a road that was closed to traffic.
They demanded that we walk back to the sidewalk.
And when we walked down the street, instead, they started taunting us.
They started yelling things at us, wanting us to come back and fight with them.
These are cops, cops in San Diego.
And what they were doing was they were out there to prevent trouble after the Super Bowl,
but instead they were trying to incite trouble, you know?
Let people cross at a don't walk sign if there's no traffic.
It's not a big deal.
It's not the end of the world.
Instead, they try to get people to engage them in some kind of discourse over it.
And then they yell after you as you walk away.
It's really bizarre.
Never seen anything quite like it.
We're running out of time, we're being told.
We need to wrap it up.
Oh, boy.
Where did the time go?
No time for even one more call, eh?
I don't think so.
No, we're getting that head shake again.
Oh, that's a shame.
Watch this.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hello?
Hello.
Yes, I'd like to know about this.
I was around the area of the World Trade Center during 9-11.
And I'd just like to know this.
I was talking with a friend.
I happened to mention it would be a shame if these terrorists ever used a computer
or sent a worm or a virus into the Wall Street area.
That was very unlikely.
Are we talking about science fiction or is it real?
Well, I mean, you know, it's a totally different type of a thing.
You know, the kind of disaster that results in thousands of people dying
and a little bit of confusion and inconvenience with regards to the Internet.
We really don't have enough time to get into this right now, I don't think.
No, we're going to go.
But anything could happen, and thank you for the call.
Sorry we couldn't get into more.
Call next week.
All right, Emmanuel, we'll say goodbye to everyone.
We'll see them next week.
I hope to be there next week.
If not, I'll be closer.
Okay, good.
We'll look for you.
All right, then.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
They told me it must work, but if they could, they would.
One didn't live long, but the best is paid for worse.
I hope that's understood.
One didn't live long.
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