Decades ago, George Bush the first threatened to bring forth a new world order.
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These commentaries are produced by Noelle Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News.
I'm Aura Bogado.
And it's 7 p...
You're listening to 99.5 FM WBAI New York.
It's 7 p.m.
Time for Off The Hook.
And good evening, everyone.
The program is Off The Hook.
We are here in the studio tonight, minus a few characters, but we have with us Jim.
Hello.
Redbird, who's next to me, I believe.
Have we lost Emmanuel?
Looks like it.
All right.
And Bernie.
Oh, and Bernie.
Do we have Bernie with us?
No, Bernie went.
All right.
Okay, well, Redbird's going to work on the phone there.
Always start the show.
Oh, and over here, we have Walter.
Hello.
How are you, Walter?
I'm doing good.
How are you doing?
I'm doing all right.
All right.
So a couple of us have just returned from Europe, from the What The Hat conference in
Boxtel in the Netherlands.
And I'm sure we have stories to tell about that tonight.
As soon as we get Emmanuel on the air, I believe he's in Berlin right now, right?
I can tell.
So he'll be able to tell a little about what he's doing out there.
But in the meantime, does anyone have any stories we can start with?
Well, yeah, there's a couple of things going on that illustrate our traditional themes.
In fact, classic themes from our past.
One of our favorite classic themes, one of the earliest shows I was ever at, we talked
about censorship of websites.
And that's still going on.
And this is a sort of fascinating twist on it.
Telus, the leading telecommunications company in Western Canada, does not usually block
websites, except when they're sort of involved.
They have a labor dispute going on.
The Telecommunications Workers Union is on strike against them.
So now, if you're a Telus subscriber, you can't get the strike site, which is
voices-for-change.com.
That's a pro-union website for the anti-Telus telecommunications workers strike.
This is apparently the first site that Telus has actually censored.
We used to think Canada was a bastion of freedom when it came to censoring websites.
But gee, I guess the realities of the world have caught up with them.
What does Telus say about the strike?
Telus isn't saying all that much as far as can be said, except that they're concerned
for the safety of their employees.
Apparently, these sites had managers' pictures and excoriating phrases about them, saying
that they were just like, oh, I don't know, white devils and slave owners.
And I don't know what they said.
I'm just making that up.
I thought it sounded good.
Anybody else got anything?
All right.
Well, we still don't have Emmanuel on the line.
I'll try to get Bernie.
I'm working on that.
Joe, how about you tell us about your leg of the trip or what you thought, your comments
on What the Hack?
All right.
Well, What the Hack was a great conference.
I started off in Switzerland, actually, and took a train over.
And when I got there, it was wet, to say the least.
Most of, actually, most of the night, it was raining.
So the field was very wet and soggy.
And most of us woke up in puddles.
But for the most part, it was very fun.
Nobody really complained about that.
And it was a very friendly environment.
And I gave a talk there.
So that was definitely cool and got a good response from that.
So overall, it was a great conference.
Unfortunately, only two of us here were able to go.
But yeah, it was an exciting conference.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to broadcast off the hook from there.
But we did do an edition of Off the Wall, which aired last night on WUSB and is available
on the internet, in which we got to interview some people who were there, including the
organizer of the entire conference.
So that was a lot of fun.
But it was definitely very interesting, a lot of interesting talks, a lot of meeting
new people.
It was a lot of fun.
I had a great time.
Mike, who is normally with us on the show, is currently exploring Paris, I believe.
So I'm sure he's having a good time.
Maybe he'll try to give us a call from there.
Who knows?
But thanks.
We'll see.
Unfortunately, we're having a bit of a difficulty with the WBA iPhone system, which I'm sure
most of you know is very decrepit.
But we're doing our best to get Emmanuel on the line and Bernie as well.
So we're stringing tin cans and string even as we speak.
We have people running down to Philadelphia to get the other end of the string to Bernie.
More traditional old time topics that have popped up back on the news.
We've talked about the dangers of being found out by your cell phone and not even by talking
on it, by simply having it on.
Well, at least this time, someone who seems to be someone who deserves to be caught by
their cell phone was caught.
One of the suspects in the London bombings, the second set, the ones that survived because
the bombs were not that good, was found in Rome because he left his cell phone on.
Apparently, with the cell phone on and the fact that his relatives had reported, or rather
they had traced the set of phone numbers that he had called.
So the common number to all the phone numbers of interest was his cell phone.
They managed to determine what cell phone was of interest.
They started looking at various carriers as to where this phone was coming from.
Where this phone was discovered it was in Italy and discovered that the relative strength
between the number of cell towers that he was between was such and he was closer to
one than to the other.
So they managed to find him physically in the city of Rome as opposed to just knowing
in what country he was.
We've warned you before to keep your cell phones off if you don't want to be found.
And this is a case of proof.
What's interesting is that they didn't even necessarily use the eGPS service.
They used triangulation with the cell phone towers.
Yeah, that is more primitive but probably gives you a better answer than trying to get
the GPS off the cell phone.
That seems a little too high tech to make it a feature, a regular feature of the cell phone.
I believe we have Emmanuel on the air.
Are you there?
Yes.
All these miscommunications aside, you finally called the right number and here I am.
All right, it's good to hear you.
We were talking a little bit about the What the Hat conference and also touching on the
fact that you're in Berlin right now, correct?
No, I'm in Warsaw right now.
Oh, you've moved on to Warsaw.
It's part of the whole heading east process.
Right.
Well, Walter has a Polish phrase for you.
What does that mean?
Good day.
Okay, well, I'll be sure to use that tomorrow when I'm struggling at the train station to
get out of this country.
Basically, I've been here for about a day now and I can only spend two days here.
So I'm going to make it to Moscow in time to meet up with the Trans-Siberian Express.
And tomorrow is going to be one heck of a challenge for me because I have to
catch a train to Belarus, which is the country directly to the east.
What I usually do when I go to these countries is I try to scope out the train station,
make sure I have the information I need to get the train the next day.
When I went over there today, though, they had no information whatsoever about the train
I was supposed to take.
I have a ticket.
I have a ticket.
It says what time the train leaves.
It says where it goes to.
But there is no information in the station anywhere to verify that such a train exists.
And when I finally went up to the ticket people and said, look, here's my ticket.
Where is this train?
They acted like I had caught them at something.
Oh, yes, you mean the train from Brussels.
And that train apparently isn't listed.
It's an unlisted train that I'm getting on tomorrow.
So apart from the fact that I'm only going to get a couple of hours sleep, I have to somehow
find a train that technically doesn't exist.
And it's going to a country where they use a Cyrillic alphabet.
It seems apt.
You have an unlisted phone number.
Now you have a train that's unlisted.
Yeah, well, it's in keeping.
So anyway, I'm sorry I missed the discussion about what the heck, because that's something
I really wanted to talk about.
There really wasn't much of a discussion.
We were trying to sort of vamp until you got on the line.
Why don't you guys continue and I'll just jump in when appropriate.
It was wet.
That was the discussion.
That's all you can come up with?
The guys who were there?
That's all you can think of?
It rained and there were good talks and there were good people and it was a lot of fun.
It was actually interesting to see the infrastructure of the whole conference.
You know, it's sort of like this used to be a field.
And then suddenly there was a whole town here, a town of a makeshift town, but the town with
a bunch of hackers just hanging out and talking, exchanging ideas.
It was a lot of fun.
And I believe we have Bernie on the line.
Yes, I'm back.
Everything's working now.
Finally.
Yes, I'm hoping I won't get hung up on again by the WBIA phone system.
I just got back from London myself here in Philadelphia a few minutes ago after quite
an ordeal in the underground tube.
What was that about?
Oh, there were security alerts.
I had to get back from London.
I stopped over in London to see our friend Russell, who gave a great presentation on
digital radio systems at What The Hack.
Great conference.
And so I met up with Russell and then got on the tube to head back and the tube was
closed.
The whole district line running out to the airport was shut down due to another security
scare.
And they keep announcing over the PA system, due to events of July 7th, we have to do whatever,
whatever.
So they were advising everyone to take buses.
But from central London at rush hour to Heathrow on a bus, I knew there was no way I was going
to get back there in time.
So eventually they got the tube running again, one stop short of Heathrow, where they're
doing construction and forced everybody on another bus, which only left every half hour.
So by the time I got to Heathrow, my plane was already boarded and I ended up sleeping
the night at Heathrow, which was an interesting experience.
Yeah, I was very lucky.
I understand you had some problems at Heathrow as well.
The problems didn't occur to me.
I didn't find out about them until I got to New York.
But yes, I did have some problems at Heathrow in that my luggage did not move from my
plane from the Netherlands to my plane to New York.
Well, one of the two bags did, which kind of confuses me.
But so I got here and an hour and a half after I landed, I was being told that, oh, well,
your luggage is fine, but it's in London.
So you'll get it tomorrow.
It's a coincidence.
It must be a theme because my London is also in London right now, on my London.
My baggage is in London right now.
But as of now, I have yet to receive my luggage.
So I guess I'm not getting it today.
I did have the most frustrating experience with the phone system because of this, though.
You know, those systems that you call nowadays that have the speech, you know, you talk to
it basically.
It's very nice.
And you have to say, oh, my name is this.
And, you know, I flew into JFK and all that.
So I got to call the system because I wanted to find out where my baggage was because it
had been they told me it would come today and it hadn't yet.
And I got to talk to this whole system.
And after about 10 minutes, it told me, well, I have no idea where your baggage is.
So I'm going to connect you to a real person.
So another minute goes by, hear some music.
And then another voice comes on and says, I'm sorry, all of our representatives are
busy.
Please call later.
And then I hear a dial tone.
So, I mean, I would have liked to have been put on hold, at least it would have been nice.
Right.
Well, if you if you want rudeness, you can come here to Poland because I'll tell you,
people, especially people who work behind counters are among the rudest that I've ever
met.
There was an instance today where I was waiting for about 10 minutes for somebody to answer
a question for me at the train station.
I just walked away.
They treated me like I didn't even exist.
That seems to be the default way of doing things here in many circles.
They're very nice people, too.
I don't want to give the impression that everyone is like this, but it seems to be kind of a
holdover.
As soon as you cross east of the border in Germany, things change and you get more of
sort of a post-Soviet style of kind of being angry all the time and not being very helpful.
And being very confusing, too, such as the ordeal I just went through at the train station
and the one I probably will go through tomorrow.
It's interesting, too, because this is my last night in a country with the Roman alphabet.
As of tomorrow, I'm going into a Cyrillic country and then from there on to Russia,
Mongolia and China.
So, you know, I think I'll probably be looking back fondly on my days in Poland, even though
I've been I've been sick.
Thanks a lot, Redhack.
I'm sorry.
Oh, the guy on the plane next to me, the guy on the plane next to me afterwards told me
I gave him my cold, too.
So you're not alone.
I'm not going to blame you, Redhack.
He knew within a couple of minutes that you gave him your cold.
No, he was fine at the beginning of the flight and coughing at the end.
Hey, Redhack.
Whatever you have, you should use it as a weapon because it's really potent.
I should go to the government.
They might want to use it.
Yes, Bernie?
Redhack, I'm not going to blame you for my being sick because it was my own fault for
buying a Philly cheesesteak sandwich at the London Heathrow Airport.
Ew.
Yes, I think it was.
I had to try it.
I had to see how close it was.
It wasn't even close, and it gave me food poisoning.
So I have nausea and a headache and temperature, and I thank the London or Heathrow Philly
cheesesteak company.
Well, it seems that all of us concur that the conference was wonderful, but the travels
afterwards weren't so great.
Everything was terrific until a couple of days ago.
Speaking of airport stories, I have a little bit of a funny story that happened at the
gate.
In the Amsterdam airport, there's actually two security checkpoints, one to get into
the departure area of the terminal and the other one to actually board your flight.
So at the second check, I was flagged because apparently I was a single traveler.
And they put this neat little sticker, which I took a picture of, on the back of my boarding
pass and sent me over to this very secluded area where they question you and ask you the
typical questions.
Is there any possibility that anyone could have possibly inserted any items into your
bag without your knowing, and et cetera, et cetera.
And I gave him all the right answers.
He said, no, of course not, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then he said, it's always possible, but you don't want to say that because then they'll
take you into the real back room and you know what they do there.
But so anyway, he started continuing along that question line, and he was getting very
frustrated because I seemed very happy to answer his questions.
And he goes, where were you staying?
And I said, I was staying at a friend of mine's house.
And he asked me for the name, and I give a name.
And he says, and what's this person's last name?
And I said, I don't know.
And he goes, well, how could you possibly consider these people your friends without
them knowing your last name, without you knowing their last name?
And I said, I consider them my friends.
I don't know what you're talking about.
And he asked for the other person that I was staying with and his name, and I gave a name
again.
And he's like, and what's his last name?
And I said, I don't know.
I don't know his last name.
You should have said, I don't know how to pronounce them because that's the case with
me.
Let me continue.
So he goes, how could you possibly have friends in which you don't know their last name?
And I said, well, even if I did know their last name, I wouldn't be able to pronounce
it for you, their Dutch last names.
And he was very, very frustrated by this.
So he took my passport and took my boarding pass and he brought it over to some other
high-tech security guy.
And they had a nice little conversation there.
And he came back and he asked me all the same questions again.
And at the end, he's like, are these questions making you nervous?
And I'm like, no.
And he goes, why are you nervous?
And I say, I'm not nervous.
What are you talking about?
And he goes, what are you thinking right now?
And I'm like, I'm wondering why you're asking me all these crazy questions.
And he goes, you know why I'm asking you all these crazy questions?
He didn't say crazy questions.
He said questions.
And he's like, I told you before.
This has happened before.
There's a possibility that someone could have inserted something into your luggage.
And that's why we're asking you these questions.
And I said, OK.
Well, I don't think anybody inserted anything into my luggage.
And Redbird, can I just turn here?
This was in Holland this happened?
This was in the, yes, absolutely.
If I might make a point here, I was actually shocked that the most security on my way back
that I encountered was in Holland.
I went through three metal detectors with x-ray machines in Holland.
I was padded down on the way in on one of them.
I mean, it was everywhere else.
And even on the way here, moving in and out of the London airport one time.
And they look at your passport.
In Amsterdam, it was the most thorough checking ever.
And I don't know if they were looking for drugs or terrorists, but they were looking
for something.
I've been searched multiple times in Amsterdam as well.
But I've never had stupid questions like that.
Oh, they were.
That kind of attitude exhibited.
There were ridiculous questions.
And he was he was getting very frustrated that I was answering them like, you know,
with a nice tone.
So so like his last comment was, have a have a nice flight.
And and one thing I noticed is that everyone who's any in any type of securities is looking
for eye contact.
I think that's one of the reasons why I may not have been flagged because I was shuffling
with papers while I was answering the first question, which is, are you are you traveling
alone?
And that's at the point at which you put the sticker on my boarding pass and said, OK,
you've been flagged over there.
And and I wasn't looking him in the eye.
But all the other people, all the U.S. customs people and all the and customs in other countries
are always looking you in the eyes and looking for that, you know, that you're doing the
same to them.
It's kind of it's kind of bizarre, but I didn't realize that until later.
So I think that's I think that's one of the things that that they seem to be looking for.
Anyway, you also had another challenge when you got back because your flight actually
was stopping at JFK and then going on to Philadelphia.
Now, of course, you don't live in Philadelphia.
There was no reason for you to get on the second flight.
Were you able to get off without a problem?
Yeah, you actually have to get off and go through customs before you can go to get to
your other flight.
And I didn't really know how that worked before, but it worked perfectly fine because I had
an option left go, you know, go out of the airport and right go go to the connecting
flight.
So I just went left.
Yeah, everybody has to go through customs.
I was they tell you this on the plane many times, even if it's not your final lesson,
it could be ending up in Canada and you still have to clear U.S. customs, which I guess
means that things that would be legal for you to bring it to Canada will get thrown
out in the States.
All right.
So it was interesting that, you know, I'm sure I delayed the flight a couple of whatever
because I didn't board.
But because I had heard people being called before, you know, so and so, please board
your flight.
You're you're delaying it.
So I hope that didn't happen.
And if any passengers are listening that had a flight delayed from New York to Philadelphia,
I apologize.
But I think that only happens if you have luggage going on the flight.
Oh, OK.
All right.
Yeah.
Like carry on.
I was that birdie.
I said, yeah, like me, my my my connecting flight flight from London to to JFK, my bags
were supposed to have been put on that plane.
But when I didn't get on it, they said they would take it off again.
And the next morning they said they're going to put it back on the plane to JFK again.
The second flight where I wrote standby.
But I think the punish me.
They didn't put it on that plane.
And my bags are still in London.
But I did learn an interesting trick when I left.
When I got to JFK and my bags, my big check luggage bag was not in the carousel.
I finally talked to a homeland security person or TSA person.
I said, who do I talk to if my if my check luggage is not is not here?
They said, I just walked through here.
I had my my shoulder bag, which was loaded with my stuff, wasn't searched at all.
I just walked right out.
And that was the end of it.
So apparently, if you just say your bag's not there, they send you over to luggage baggage
services and nothing gets searched.
It's a crazy system.
I don't know about that.
They just mind.
I actually my my luggage is in London, too.
So we're friends in that regard.
But they I think it's just they decide who they want to search at random anyway.
I mean, I walked through customs also and they just took my card.
I didn't say that my luggage was missing.
I just walked through.
So I don't I don't know that it's because your luggage was missing or because they just
decided that you weren't bringing any contraband into the States.
I think it's kind of funny that three of us who traveled from here to to go to this conference
came back without their luggage.
If you if you checked it, but you and Bernie and Arsene as well.
Oh, Arsene, I think I think he was taking home a tent.
Hold on one second.
What you're telling me is that that Bernie, Arsene and Redhack all went through London
and their packages all stayed in London.
They need extra time to search them.
I think their bags for for a city that that really doesn't like suspicious bags.
They're going to go into a lot of trouble to hold on to them, aren't they?
Yeah, well, they might be looking for something.
I mean, we were coming from the what the hat conference.
Were you all wearing what the hats?
I wearing you what the hat.
Yes, I was.
But we had we had all kinds of cool hats that we got at a conference.
The conference was great.
Let's get back to that for a second.
It did rain a bit, but, you know, rain is part of the Holland experience.
It's just, you know, it's an essential part of it.
I don't think it dampened anyone's spirits.
No pun intended.
A couple of us cold.
But yeah, you know, there were all kinds of talks, all kinds of events.
We just hung out in the restaurants and bars that popped up.
That Sudanese coffee place was amazing.
The bratwurst place and the and the fries place that popped up the what the bar and
the megabit bar and the food bar and the what the slack tent as well.
There were so many places that I could point to with fond memories.
And it's just amazing that you can take a field and just all of a sudden build a community on
there, have places that people go, establishments, hangouts, and all of this in the course of a
couple of days.
It's magic.
If you weren't there, you know, it's something to definitely fret about and make sure that
you come to the next one.
And there was a great picture that actually made it into a lot of news sources, including
CNN dot com that of a lot of a bunch of hackers hanging out in hammocks, which I thought was
really I spent like two whole days in those hammocks.
Someone had set up this, I guess, sort of artsy thing with a bunch of hammocks hanging
from poles and you could just sit there.
There was a switch there if you wanted to get online and lie down with your laptop and
do whatever you wanted.
It was great.
And there's nothing more relaxing than being in a hammock.
In fact, I can tell you that Rob was probably behind that, because when we traveled cross
country back in 1990, he brought a hammock with him.
And occasionally when I'd be looking for Rob, I'd just see in the distance a hammock
stretched between two trees.
And that's where he'd be hanging out.
So I'm pretty sure it's something that he added to the conference.
And it was just basically a hammock farm, maybe about a dozen or so hammocks all together.
Very, very artistically arranged.
Yeah.
Yeah, there was this whole metal structure they were hanging from that was definitely
something that was thought out or designed.
Kind of like a mobile, you know, one of those hanging mobiles with shapes that float around
from the ceiling.
But it was all a bunch of hammocks under this very interesting design of a cover.
It was sort of like a big four-piece, four-corner piece of plastic that was bent up at the corners
in this really cool-looking three-dimensional design.
Just whoever designed this put a lot of thought into it.
And it was a lot of fun, too.
One of the really cool things is how many different interests were there.
I mean, you could go to one corner of the field, which is a huge field, by the way.
And, you know, you have a ham radio tent on the other side.
You have some guy with a bunch of telescopes where you can look up at the stars.
You know, you go somewhere else and you have a wireless village and all sorts of different
wireless technologies there.
And just all sorts of different interests and their own little community set up in this
huge field.
So it's definitely something.
There was a group of squatters hanging out in the campfield, which was kind of interesting.
And they were in a section that I had not visited until, I think, Saturday night.
So this goes to show that the place was so huge that, you know, you just start to find
your way around.
And then you realize there's a whole other section that you hadn't been to.
I never made it to the ham radio tent.
I never got that far.
But there were so many places to visit.
You know, the time was just simply—we had four days.
It went by like nothing.
I read—
I've got to say, I've got to say that Joe made his—Redbird made his first European
contact from the ham radio tent.
He spoke with another ham radio operator in Russia, which was pretty cool, from a tent
with a 20-meter antenna that was strung up in the trees.
It was very interesting.
But yeah, it was a lot of fun.
You know, all sorts of different types of technology there to play with.
And, you know, the phone system there was amazing.
The network there was amazing.
Everything was just—everything was working, and nobody was complaining about anything.
And, you know, if something broke, people actually helped to fix it.
And there was no—none of this craziness that you find at some other places.
And it was just—it was great.
The phone system was something else.
I mean, that was—I think we've talked about it before, but basically they—there's
this kind of wireless, cordless handset in Europe called the DECT phone.
I don't think they're—
It's not here.
You won't find them here.
I don't think the frequencies are allowed here or allocated here.
Well, didn't you guys bring back a couple?
I didn't.
Yes.
Bernie may have.
Yes.
You can find them here now.
Yes.
Well, you can't buy them here.
But essentially, they were used to set up a whole wireless phone network for just—the
campsite so that, you know, instead of having to use cell phones and pay exorbitant roaming
charges, we could call each other by dialing extensions on this phone system.
And it allowed us, though, in the campsite environment to walk around and not worry
about if they're in their room or tent or whatever.
So it was really—it was really great.
And they had this really cool feature of this system which allowed you to connect to PBXs
all around the world, really, and make international phone calls for no charge at all.
It was completely free if there was a PBX in your area.
And for example—
You could receive calls, too.
Yeah, definitely.
And for example, 212 was one of the area codes where you could make free phone calls, too.
And it was just amazing to be able to do this in the middle of a field, in the middle of
nowhere, really, and make—
I think the deal was if an asterisk server was running anywhere in the area you were
calling, your call would get routed on that asterisk server, and that's how the call would
go through for free.
Right, as long as it was part of their network.
I'm not sure exactly how it worked, but that's something we should definitely find
more about.
But the event phone people organized it, so I'm sure you could find all sorts of
information on their webpage.
Yeah, it was amazing.
You could even use your cordless DECT phone, which they sold very cheaply there.
You could even use them to control some blink and light displays.
The Germans had set up the infamous or famous blink and light displays of years past, which
are big matrices of light.
You could actually generate different art displays or play Pong or all kinds of other
games using your cordless DECT phone as a control panel for these big matrix lamp displays.
It was just amazing technology that people turned into these creative and fun displays.
It was really terrific.
There was a lot of fretting and gnashing of teeth over the fact that we were preempted
last week and weren't able to bring you the special program from What The Hack.
However, we did do a special program for Off The Wall over on WUSB, and that program is
available online.
If you go to www.2600.com slash offthewall, you can download that and hear what it sounded
like on the second day as we did a kind of impromptu circle right out there in the thunderstorm
where we just interviewed people.
That show was a lot of fun.
I must admit, I've never done a radio show out in the rain before, but I think we should
do it again.
If you want to hear what European mud sounds like, that's the show to listen to.
There are all sorts of very interesting background sounds.
I'm in the middle of the round-the-world voyage that I've embarked upon.
Actually, the last show of Off The Hook that I did, I was actually on the Queen Mary 2,
so I've come quite a way since then.
I've been in London since then, the campground, Amsterdam, Berlin, and now here in Warsaw.
Tomorrow, I go to Minsk in Belarus, which is a dictatorship, which is always fun to
visit.
I kind of wish I was doing the show from there, because to do a show from a dictatorship
always drives the ratings up, I think.
And from there, what else do you have scheduled on your trip for the next couple of weeks?
Where are we going to hear you from?
Well, I think next week, I'll be at some point on the Trans-Siberian.
The Trans-Siberian Express leaves, I think, on Monday, and then on Wednesday, I'll be
in some eastern Russian town.
Now, I'm not sure how we're going to pull this off, because I actually will be on the
train next week, and I don't know if GSM coverage really will extend out to the Trans-Siberian
Express.
It might, you know.
They might have done a really good job.
If it doesn't happen, however, we'll probably use the satellite phone, and I'm not really
sure how using a satellite phone on a train is going to work.
I might have to stand, you know, hang off the end car or something so I get a view of
the sky that doesn't get obscured by trees or windows or whatever.
So it's going to be a challenge.
It's going to be good radio, I think.
This show is a true test of technology and its limits.
It really is.
It's too bad you couldn't get an external antenna and sort of stick it on top of the
train while you're going and get perfect coverage.
Well, you know, they might take a dim view of that.
I'm not sure.
But, you know, we'll do whatever we can.
The whole thing here is challenges.
Just somehow make the phone connect every week, which was a challenge this week.
And maybe, you know, more of a challenge next week.
We'll see.
But off the wall, the challenge is recording the show and uploading it so it plays as if
we're in the studio.
And next week, I'm going to have to upload the show from Moscow, which I'm not sure how
that's going to work.
It's fun.
It's interesting.
It definitely keeps you alert and awake.
And, of course, throughout all this, I'm recording little snippets for the film that
were, oh, the police are passing by outside.
I'm looking out my hotel window right now, and the police are passing by in this big
blue van.
I'm not sure what's going on here.
There's a lot of police present in Warsaw, I'll say.
Anyway, so what we're doing is we're recording pieces from individual people with their
opinions on all kinds of things, things that make them angry, things that involve the rest
of the world, whether they have a story to tell, whether they have a joke to tell.
And it's all being done in the native language of whoever is speaking at the time.
And we're calling the film Speaker's World.
We've gotten quite a number of submissions already in places like London and, of course,
What the Hack, Amsterdam, The Queen Mary 2.
And I find that it's immensely helpful.
RedHack, you and Arseny, we're helping out in Amsterdam.
It's so much easier to actually approach people when you have a couple of people to
help you.
So it's harder when I'm in a place like this.
Well, of course, it's impossible if I'm sick.
I can't even go outside.
But a place like Belarus, for instance, which is a dictatorship, I don't know if I want
to go around approaching people.
I might be putting their lives in danger just for having them talk to me.
So if you're in any of the cities that I'll be visiting, which right now include Minsk,
I really don't think we have any listeners in Minsk, but who knows, I could be surprised.
Moscow, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, Beijing, Shanghai, and Osaka in Tokyo.
Well, please give us a shout.
Send us email OTH at 2600.com.
We'd love to meet up with you, at least get you on camera, and maybe some other people
too that you might know or that we could accost in the street.
Emanuel, you're missing an appeal.
We probably have listeners who may not be in those cities, but who have friends or relatives
in those cities.
So email your friends and relatives in those various cities and have them get back to us
at OTH at 2600.com.
Of course, one of the barriers that you're probably going to encounter more and more
as you travel east is that people will be less likely to speak English.
I do know that, I remember that in Amsterdam, most people, we did have a little trouble
communicating with some Chinese girls that we interviewed, although I noticed that you
didn't know how to say thank you in Chinese.
That's one of the things I stuck onto for my Chinese course.
I can count up to, I think, four.
I can say thank you and I think I can say the word Chinese or something, but that's
about it.
But, I mean, the first words out of our mouth usually when we went up to someone was, do
you speak English?
Because that was the only way we could convey to them what exactly it was that we were doing
so that they would, I mean, they may not have spoken in English on the tape, but that way
they knew that we weren't just pointing a camera at them and what, you know, what we'd
like them to do is just say whatever they want.
So how do you plan on dealing with that?
The fact that they won't actually be able to understand what you're asking of them and
what the camera's for.
That's what makes having somebody who's a native almost essential because it is going
to be very difficult if I can, the irony is that we want them to speak in their native
language, but to convey that particular fact to them is very, very difficult, obviously,
if they don't speak the language.
So we're going to have to look for people that either can speak our language and their
language or just, you know, somehow get the idea across without using words.
Right.
All right.
Well, good luck to you with that.
It's a pelagic film to make, it certainly is.
Yeah.
Anyone have any comments?
No.
I guess not.
Emmanuel, so what have you been up to?
What have you seen in Warsaw so far?
Well, you know, I've got redhack syndrome here, so I haven't been able to do very much.
I've been inside most of the day.
I did, you know, take that walk down to the train station and have that little fiasco.
And I walked, you know, through the streets a bit.
It's a nice town.
It's very busy.
For some reason, everyone here screeches their tires when they drive.
I don't know what that's all about.
I've never heard so much car noise as here.
It's, you know, it's a big place.
It's very hot, too.
I think the temperature change also isn't helping as far as, you know, keeping me from
getting sick.
And I just, you know, I got to ask people about this.
I just got restored to buy some aspirin.
And the aspirin they gave me, I've never seen anything like this.
There are two aspirins in the envelope, each one the size of a quarter.
And they are the bitterest tasting things I think I've ever had in my life.
I almost got sick just by having the aspirin, which I don't think is the point.
And if anyone knows, did I just get poisoned, or is that what aspirin is supposed to taste
like?
No, aspirin does taste like that.
I was a chemistry major.
And that's the proprietary things, like bufferin, it's proprietary.
And also, coating the aspirin is also proprietary.
So outside of the United States, aspirin is a very bitter substance.
Oh, it certainly is.
Hopefully that bitterness will fight my sickness.
It's related to the bark of the weeping willow.
So imagine that.
I'm imagining it right now.
Yeah, so it's bitter.
I've been getting all kinds of horror reports from people in New York about the subway searches.
Has anybody in the studio has any first-hand knowledge about this?
I have yet to see a police officer.
I saw three today.
I haven't seen a police officer either, and I've been on the subways at least four different
days each week since it started.
So that's what, two weeks, two and a half weeks?
It's interesting.
The Port Authority between New York and New Jersey seemed to be doing the exact same thing.
I took the PATH train today, and there were three stands.
And a sign in between the three stands that said, all of your baggage is subject to search
by Port Authority police.
And they were standing there, and it was very funny watching them looking at people coming
down the stairs.
Because this was during rush hour, and the number of people that go into the World Trade
Center PATH station at that time is just enormous.
There's no way they can possibly look at a tenth of the people that are coming down the
stairs.
And they were just kind of looking and looking.
I didn't actually see them pick anybody out, but I'm very curious.
Maybe I'll ask one of them sometime what they use as the criteria to pick somebody out.
I have a question.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Okay, I'll go ahead then.
I just wonder, are they searching people going onto buses?
Have you ever heard of buses being...
I've seen film of it on the news, actually, that they've had people spread their bags
open.
And supposedly, the criteria is that they count off people.
And that's the only way that they're doing it.
So if...
And I've heard, and this is very anecdotal, I've heard stories of
shall we say, Arab-seeming youth being at stations with not a lot of traffic, but with
the search going on, managing to time it so that a number of them go in without being
searched, and then yell obscene things, or things to upset the cops, like jihad.
But that is very anecdotal, although I've heard it from two sources that I sort of trust.
I don't think that's a...
In the...
Go ahead.
Sorry, in the London Underground, Russell mentioned to me that this Thursday, which
I guess is tomorrow there, a few hours ahead of us, there is going to be extra, extra,
extra security with extra machine guns with the Metropolitan Police and so forth in the
underground, because it is apparently exactly a month after the first attacks, and exactly
two weeks after the second set of attacks.
So they're...
By that logic, they're planning for more attacks, or the authorities are planning to
be prepared for more attacks tomorrow in the London Underground.
Let's hope it doesn't happen.
Terrorists are just so predictable.
They're that predictable, yes.
So...
Except you're watched by them.
Yeah, apparently.
Every fortnight.
Although I believe that the police should be honest with the public in general, I think
in cases like this where they're predicting that an attack's going to happen, it would
be best if they...
I mean, I understand, maybe people will avoid the subway then, but then I don't think that
the terrorists who are planning an attack would...
You know, if they knew that their plans had been revealed, I don't think they'd go ahead
with it.
I think you have to realize, though, that...
I just want to point out, too, that...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I think you have to realize, though, that the whole concept of searching people going
into a subway system as large as the one in New York or London is just absurd.
I mean, it's not going to work, no matter what you try.
It's very, very easy to get whatever you want into the subway system.
Well, what's interesting to point out is that in London, they're very open about the
fact that they are racial profiling.
There's no question that they are going after people of Asian descent, Arab people, people
that they suspect might be the next suicide bomber, and I guess Brazilians, too.
Anyone with brown skin, I suppose, is a possible target, and the vast majority of people seem
to support this now, that that's on the way to catch these people.
In New York, they're saying that they're not doing that, but they are doing it in more
subtle ways.
What they do is they go to a neighborhood that's predominantly a particular minority
that they might suspect, and that way, when they do their random searches, well, you know,
the four out of ten that they search all turn out to be within that ethnic group anyway,
so they're getting around it in a kind of sneaky way.
Let me just point out a number of ways in which this is inane.
Method number one, you don't need to be on the subways to destroy the subway.
Hijack a gasoline truck, dump it down a subway vent.
Number two, you don't have to necessarily go to the station you want to bomb to bomb
that station.
The subway system has 468 stations.
Every one of them is interconnected.
You can ride for two, maybe three hours at the most, and get from any station to another.
Three, a lot of terrorists, I'm sure, either own or rent cars.
Well, what you do is you and your friends get together.
You have your backpacks all ready.
You park the car.
You go to a station.
If they're searching at that station, you go back in the car, and you drive to another
station until you find one they're not searching people at.
Then you go in.
It almost sounds like you had that scripted.
No, but I've been thinking about this for days.
It's like, how, why can't you people think of this?
I don't think...
Well, you know, the other thing, the other thing, Jim, is that we're assuming that people
only want to target subways.
We're written that terrorists can only target...
Please don't get me started on this.
Terrorists can target whatever it is they want to target.
They can target shopping malls.
They can target Fifth Avenue.
They can target taxis.
I don't know.
They can target anything.
You know, it's a wide open world there.
Terrorists have it all.
You know, it's only, it's only controlled by their imagination.
You know, that's the only boundary.
It's ridiculous.
That's why security things will never work.
All you can do is maybe make people think that they're somewhat more secure by the show
of force, but it can never have that kind of an effect.
I think the best way to prevent terrorism is to not stoke the fire and not piss the
people off in the first place.
Obviously, there's a reason that people want to attack us.
I think many of us know, I mean, I'm sure one of the reasons is the Iraq war.
I don't think that made very many people happy.
I'm sure that only ended with more recruits for terrorism.
So I don't think the way we're going about it by, you know, hunting more people down
and shooting people all over the place is the way to solve it.
I think it's...
Well, RedHack, my understanding was that we're involved in all this because they want to
take away our freedom.
And that's why we're fighting them, because they hate our freedom so much.
Yeah, and my argument with RedHack is that, gee, I thought all this happened big time
before the Iraq war when they flew airplanes into the World Trade Center.
We weren't at war in Iraq at that point.
Actually, Jim, that was after the Iraq war.
Do you remember the one in 1990?
Ah, yeah.
And they wanted to blow up things, according to the people who were caught after the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center, because we support Israel, OK?
I don't think we should change our foreign policy because of terrorists, OK?
You know me.
I have the other approach.
I think that we should nuke the major cities of Saudi Arabia in order to stop terrorism.
The point is this, OK?
We're not talking about the big picture here.
We're here analyzing the little picture, OK?
The local stuff, the New York City stuff.
You can say something like that and then be surprised when people want to destroy things
around you.
No, I'm not surprised.
OK, well, you know, this is the kind of world that we're being led into.
And it seems insane that we're just...
I don't think terrorism should dictate foreign policy at all.
I agree with that.
But I think stupidity should not be allowed to run foreign policy.
And I think that's what we have right now.
And that's why it has to be stopped.
Not because of the terrorists, because of the people.
Because the people think that this is not a good idea and it's hurting us.
Well, that's a different argument.
All right.
Do you want to take some phone calls, Emanuel?
Might as well.
Might as well see who's out there.
You know, I had some stories to read and some letters to read.
But I guess we can do that later.
I mean, if you have anything you want to get into, now's the time before we start.
Well, I think we've already gotten into it.
But let's give the listeners what they have to say because we haven't heard from them
in a couple of weeks.
All right.
So if you'd like to call in, the number is 212-209-2900.
And oh, no.
Sorry about that.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
No, you're not.
I hate this phone system.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
Well, one thing I heard on the news is that the constitutionality of the random searches
or whatever they are going on in the transit system can be challenged in the courts.
And if it's not found to be effective, then it won't be found.
It will be found not to be constitutional, at least on the Fourth Amendment or whatever.
If it's not effective, it won't pass constitutional muster.
So if they can't show that this actually helps, and it sounds as if they won't be able to show
that.
I'm not sure.
I don't know about that.
I mean, you know, if shooting people helps, you know, if shooting innocent people like
they did in London, if they can prove that somehow makes terrorism wane, I think that
would be ruled as something that's acceptable.
You know, I think there's a certain acid test that's performed.
It's got nothing to do with, you know, effectiveness.
It's just something I heard on the news.
And they're saying because, you know, normally you can't just search people because it's
unreasonable to search under the Constitution.
I think there's really no need to prove that it's unaffected because it really isn't.
Well, there's an echo there.
But I mean, you can keep in mind that you can always say, no, you can't search me and
walk out of the subway.
You can try going back into the same subway station, and they probably won't see you.
If they do see you, you can walk a couple of blocks and go to another subway station.
So you don't.
I'd like to hear what happens to people who do that, because I've heard from two of them
so far.
And both cases, the cops made some kind of snide remark, which I imagine was designed
to get some kind of response back and then maybe, you know, extend the conversation a
little further and lead to God knows what.
Right, because you can be very careful dealing with police.
You can be searched for cause.
And obviously, if the cop says something that makes you say something suspicious, you can
then be searched.
Right.
Legally, they can't search you without probable cause.
But in this case, riding the subway isn't actually a right of yours and mine.
So they can deny you that service.
Right.
So just be careful when you're talking to the police.
Don't get snippy with them.
Don't don't get frustrated.
Just say, you know, if you don't have a warrant and you don't have probable cause to search
me, then then I really don't.
I don't I don't agree with this.
And then just walk away.
Yes.
All right.
Now let's go to the next station and get on the same train.
Right.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, I think Manuel is taking an effervescent tablet orally.
He should have put it into a glass of water.
That could be the case.
Possible.
Oh, you know, I never thought about that.
Yeah, they do have in Europe.
A lot of aspirins are in effervescence tablets.
Yeah.
Did it foam up in your mouth?
I think it might have.
That's why I was so concerned.
So that's why they think you have rabies.
Mystery.
What do I do now?
I've already swallowed.
Drink a lot of water.
What happens if I don't drink a lot of water?
You're going to swell up like a balloon, Emanuel.
Oh, my God.
Do you feel really bloated right now?
Well, I will.
Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
No, I feel better.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, how you doing?
How you doing?
Hi.
Hey, I don't mean to sound paranoid, but I would think,
and I'm not going to ride the subway at all if I don't have to,
because I don't want to deal with it at all after this.
After this search bag search thing.
But I would think that if you go upstairs after saying, I refuse to search,
they're going to call your description in,
and you're probably going to be followed and tracked in some way.
I think that seems a bit much.
Keep in mind, they have cameras, and they'll have more cameras too.
That's one thing that the attacks of the 7th and the 21st have proven to the world,
is that surveillance cameras are great things to have,
because you can find people that way.
So expect to see those all over the place.
But I find it really interesting that people are avoiding the subways,
not because of the threat of terrorism, but because of the threat of being searched.
Emanuel, was that a tank of the police coming for you,
or are they just scrubbing the streets at whatever hour it is?
No, I'm at the window of my hotel, and there's a lot of traffic going by.
Any street in Warsaw, there's a lot of traffic.
What hour is it there?
It's about, let's see, what is it?
It's 1.49 in the morning.
It's horrible, because I have to be up very early to catch this train to Belarus.
And there's traffic?
Which hopefully exists.
So now, Warsaw is the capital of Poland?
It's the capital, right?
That's correct.
Okay, is there any form of mass transit?
Because of the fact that there's so much traffic, is there mass transit as well,
or is it just that people can only get around by car?
Oh, there are buses, there's a subway.
I don't think they're running this late, but there's always activity.
That's the one thing about subways in other countries,
they never run past a certain hour.
Whereas here in New York, they're 24 hours.
They kind of take that for granted.
Yeah, I missed that.
All right.
Let's take another call.
Right.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Nope.
I missed that.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello, turn down your radio, please.
Yeah, I turned it off.
I think Emmanuel should maybe look up the US Embassy, wherever he goes,
and get some advice on how to talk to people in English.
Who the locals are, and the people most likely to speak English somewhere.
And the other thing is, I just want to say I've been recently exposed to
all of the work you guys have done over the years,
and hacking, and I'm a sysadmin for a while now.
And I just want to thank you.
I think you guys have done a great job, and the show's awesome.
Thank you very much.
Thanks very much.
Emmanuel, that's an interesting idea, that you go to the embassy.
People looking for visas may be able to understand your English.
I don't know.
I don't tend to get along with embassies very well.
But also, the fact is, we're not looking for people that speak English.
We're looking for people that are native to the country that know people in the country.
And yeah, I guess if I can find somebody who speaks English,
who knows a lot of people in the country already who are natives, that would be a good thing.
I'm just hoping that our listeners will come forward,
and that we already heard, believe it or not, from somebody in Mongolia that listens to the shows.
So they are out there.
So please write to us.
You can definitely make a big difference.
Russell, in fact, who Bernie visited in London, was one of those listeners.
He listened off the wall, met me at Speaker's Corner,
and we hung out, did some interviews, and again, hung out at WhatTheHack.
And hopefully, we'll see him at Hope, too.
We'll see him at Hope.
You know, it's great.
This is how you develop long-term friendships with people all over the world,
just by listening to the show and meeting up with us when we pass through your neck of the woods.
So again, I'll be in Minsk tomorrow and the next day, Moscow after that,
then the Trans-Siberian, eventually winding up in Ulaanbaatar,
then on to Beijing, Shanghai, Osaka, and Tokyo.
And then I'm taking a freighter across the Pacific Ocean.
I don't expect to see anybody there.
But if you're in the Pacific Ocean at the time, you know,
feel free to send up a flare or something.
I'd love to see it.
All right.
Should we take another phone call?
Yeah, sure.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, good evening.
I have a question.
The person who said, who was the one who said that the problem is happening
because we're antagonizing the terrorists?
We went into their country.
We started a war.
That would be me.
Let me ask you a question.
Do you actually, if we wouldn't...
Hello?
Yeah, I'm here.
Hello?
I'm breaking up.
Yeah, you're fading in and out.
Yeah, it's T-Mobile.
What can I do?
Can you hear?
Now it's better?
We can hear you now.
You know, about 60 years ago, the Jews in Germany said,
you know, let's stay quiet.
Let's not antagonize these people.
It will just blow over.
Nothing will happen.
And you know what happened?
A million people died.
Don't you believe there's a difference?
Don't you believe there's a difference in justification for one fight over another?
That was a legitimate fight.
That was something you'd be a fool not to get involved in.
Same thing about Bosnia and, you know, the Kosovo situation, in my opinion.
Now this is nonsense.
And I like to use a different word than nonsense.
But to be sacrificed, we lost 14 Marines today.
That's insane.
And for one...
You know why?
Because I was born in Israel.
I came here when I was 12.
And I know Arabs a lot better than Americans know Arabs.
And the problem is, if you give them an inch, they would want a whole yard.
If you give them a finger, they would want a whole hand.
You can't...
It's a different mentality.
You're thinking with an American mentality.
You're thinking about totally different things in this world from what they are thinking.
And you cannot take that way of Western type of thinking and apply it to an Arab.
Because they do not think like you.
That just sounds like racism to me.
You think so?
You're an adulterated racist.
You know what it is?
That's the problem with America.
That's the problem with liberals in America, where they think, I am racist.
But what's going to happen 20 years from now is there's no going to be...
You just categorized an entire group of people.
You just categorized an entire race.
So yeah, I think that's racist.
That's insidious.
And you know what?
I go on the subway.
And if they want to search me, I have no problem with it.
You know why?
Because I'm not a terrorist.
If they want to check my bag, go ahead and check it.
Why should I care?
I'll bet you won't.
I look Middle Eastern.
I have dark hair and dark skin.
And when I go to Israel on flights, they actually talk to me and ask me questions.
Because I don't look Israeli.
I look Middle Eastern.
And you know what?
I always laugh and say, thank you for asking me a question.
Because that's what they do.
They don't come up to you and say, are you a terrorist?
They kind of say, hey, how are you doing?
What's your name?
Because they want to listen to the way you talk.
There is a lot of different ways of finding out who is a terrorist.
And by just talking to somebody, it's not only searching.
This is the problem here.
America doesn't know how to work against terrorism.
It takes time.
Israel's 40 years of experience.
Unfortunately, we're out of time.
Yeah, that's it for the hour.
You know, one other thing I just want to close on is that there are many
definitions of terrorism, too.
And I think that's something else that this call should look at.
Right.
Well, perhaps we'll call back next week and we have a more in-depth discussion.
But for this week, that's it for Off the Hook.
And the Personal Computer Show is up next.
See you all next week.
Bye.