This is WBAI New York, and I am Bobby Cespedes.
Y quiero invitar a todos a que vengan a verme, más que nada.
Gracias.
Anoche me acosté pensando en ti.
Soñé y en mis sueños compuste esta canción de amor.
You are listening to 99.5 FM, WBAI New York.
It's 7 p.m., time for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
Pondidly bonk for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Pondidly bonk!
Pondidly bonk!
And good evening, the program is Off The Hook.
You're joining us here live in New York in the WBAI studio.
This is Redhacked here. I'm accompanied tonight by Jim.
Hello.
Mike.
Hi there.
Redbird.
Good evening.
Bernie S. is on the phone.
Good evening from Philadelphia.
And we are about to try to get Emmanuel on the phone, who is currently in Mongolia.
It's a very exciting process.
We have a dial tone, but you don't get to hear the number.
Unfortunately.
Well, there are only two numbers in Mongolia, so make a guess.
Okay.
And now we wait a few seconds for the connection.
Should be connected any moment.
We're using this toll-free service that we've talked about.
Your call is being connected. Please wait.
We are waiting, as the voice instructor is to do.
This is what happens when you call a satellite phone.
Okay.
Takes about 30 seconds.
We should hear a ringtone from Mongolia, which sounds like the European ringtones that I've heard.
I guess it's the same everywhere else in the world.
Or maybe they're still using the old systems.
And here we've upgraded to digital things. I don't know.
Are we calling a satellite phone or a landline in Mongolia?
We're calling a landline tonight.
Not the world's speediest landline.
There's a reason for this. Just listen.
We hope.
How long am I supposed to wait?
Well, it took about 30 seconds last time I called it.
We're getting there.
Your call was not completed.
That was very angry.
We'll try again because it's all we can do.
Mike will work on that.
And I guess we can start the show.
Does anyone have any articles?
I see Jim getting ready to talk about something.
Jim, what do you want to talk about right now?
I don't want to talk about anything. I'm tired.
No, but seriously.
Bluetooth.
Bluetooth pops up all over the place. It's in the news in a couple of interesting ways.
A number of cars.
Your call is being connected. Please wait.
Give it a second. Continue.
No, no. I don't want to miss this. I've heard stories about this.
Those are the tin cans that you're hearing.
They're running around, plugging wires in.
There we go. Now it's ringing.
Hello. Could I have 603, please?
And here it comes.
Scott Joplin.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes.
Do we have a manual there with us now?
I'm sorry. I only heard every other syllable of that. What was that?
We were wondering if we had you there. Maybe we don't.
Oh, you have me. Yes, you have me. I'm here. It depends who this is.
Maybe we should check to see if we have the right person or not.
Well, this is off the hook.
What are the chances of calling a hotel in Mongolia and getting an English-speaking person?
Well, quite good, actually, because there are many English people in this hotel in Mongolia.
I'd like to know who you think you are calling this place at 7 o'clock in the morning.
I'm sorry, 8 o'clock in the morning.
We're the secret police.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's about as funny as I would expect from you, Jim.
No, we're the secret police here in Mongolia, where it is, in fact, 8 in the morning.
And, you know, I've had to wake up for the show before, but this sort of brings new meaning to it,
because literally I had to wake up for the show.
Yes, it's Thursday morning here, 8 o'clock.
Actually, interesting thing.
In my travels around the world, I think this is as far off as I will possibly get.
Unless maybe I'm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or something, it might get a little wacky there.
But as far as being in a country, 13 hours off is as far as I can possibly go.
In fact, when I go to China, I think I'll be broadcasting from China next week.
I'm only going to be 12 hours off.
For some reason, we gained an hour back going to China.
And then when I go to Japan, it'll be 13 hours again.
So that's all kind of strange.
But in any event, Mongolia has been an incredible surprise.
We didn't know what to expect coming into this place.
I have to say, this is the friendliest country I've ever been in, outside of some Western European countries,
and certainly outside of, well, Russia I would not call a very friendly country.
It's a fascinating country, but you get yelled at all the time for things that you do wrong.
And believe me, you do a lot of things wrong.
Here, people are just extremely nice.
They smile a lot.
They help you out, even though there's a big language barrier.
It's still quite a nice place to go to.
And I think a lot of people don't even know it's here.
You basically have one major city in the middle of the desert, and that's Ulaanbaatar, the capital.
We're heading out to the country right after the show ends.
We're going to stay in a gear camp, which basically means we're going to be staying in a bunch of tents.
A lot of people in this country live in tents.
They move around a lot, so that'll be pretty fascinating.
And, of course, I'll be posting updates on that on the travel log.
I've been keeping www.2600.com slash travel.
It's a little bit out of date because connectivity has been a problem.
But, actually, connectivity here has been less of a problem than in Russia.
I'm able to purchase a phone card and an Internet card.
It's a rather interesting system.
They have Internet cafes everywhere.
But, of course, if I want to use my laptop, I have to buy what's known as an Internet card.
You call a four-digit number.
You get this amazing amount of handshaking.
I've never heard anything quite like this.
It takes about 30 seconds.
Basically, once it's all done, you're connected at a whopping 28.8.
That allows you to actually connect to the Internet from wherever you happen to be, which is a luxury I have not had in quite a while.
And it's been quite a long time since I've been on a 28.8 modem.
It really brings back a lot of memories.
In addition to that, there are all kinds of interesting little Mongolian ways of life, such as, you guys ever hear of a human payphone?
What's that?
Well, a human payphone basically is somebody who stands around in a square or on a street, usually wearing a face mask.
And the reason for the face mask is not to invoke terror or anything like that.
It's basically to ward off germs.
They stand there with a desk phone, literally a desk phone in their hands.
And people literally refer to them as payphones.
They say, yes, that is a payphone.
What you do is you go up to that person.
You pay them a certain amount of money.
I'm not quite sure how much it is.
And then you can place calls using that particular phone.
And that particular phone happens to be a CDMA phone that's tied into the network.
And it's all completely legitimate, too.
This is how people make phone calls on the street.
A lot of people use cell phones, too, of course.
But the human payphones are on virtually every corner.
In fact, you may very well see one in the foreign payphone section of a future edition of 2600.
Could be the first time that there's been a person in that section.
Well, we've had people wander into the photos occasionally, and we've always had to deal with that.
But in this particular case, yes, it's quite possible, quite likely that the human will be the payphone, will be the subject of the photo.
So that's going to be pretty interesting.
So it's been really great here in Mongolia.
I never thought I'd be actually recommending this place as a place to go to.
One word of caution, though.
It is the most pedestrian-unfriendly city I have ever been in anywhere.
You know how when you walk onto a street in most places, you know, it might be a little bit aggressive,
but pedestrians generally have the right of way.
Here it is the exact opposite.
When you walk into the street, you do not have the right of way.
If you're walking across a crosswalk, you had better yield to a car that is making a right-hand turn,
because that car will continue to go no matter what.
We were walking down a street yesterday in search of food.
And to get to the place, to get to a place with the actual open establishment,
you have to walk down this very, very long, dark stretch.
All right, that's bad enough, walking down a long, dark stretch where there's lots of construction,
lots of things sticking out of the sidewalk.
But then all of a sudden, I saw something that looked like what it was.
I couldn't believe it actually was.
But it was an open manhole cover right there in the middle of the dark sidewalk.
And the person I was walking with said, yes, that goes down about two meters.
Be careful.
How is the language barrier treating you as a tourist to Mongolia?
Well, it's not as bad as you might think.
There are a couple of issues.
It's hard to communicate a lot of things.
Like, for instance, I tried to get a wake-up call last night.
In fact, Mike had to be my wake-up call today, because when I called for the wake-up call,
they told me that I had to call in the morning to get the wake-up call.
And I really don't think they meant that.
It could be remnants of Soviet influence, but I think there was a real language problem there.
There have been other instances, too, and maybe cultural things.
Like, for instance, every time I want to call out to get to the Internet,
for some reason my phone is disabled, so I have to call them and tell them,
by the way, please turn my phone on so I can make the local call to the Internet.
And they say, oh, yes, yes, we'll turn it on.
And then I hang up the phone, and not more than two seconds later,
and this happens every time, my phone rings again,
and they just basically tell me the same thing, saying, you can now make outgoing calls,
instead of keeping me on the phone line and telling me that the first time.
They say goodbye the first time. Actually, they don't say goodbye.
They say yes and put the phone down and hang up, and then they call back.
So I don't know. There are definitely barriers and differences in ways things are done here.
But one thing I learned immediately upon entering the country
is that everyone here is extremely nice and friendly.
Even the border guards were smiling.
It wasn't that harsh environment that you have leftovers of in Russia,
where they basically have to take your passport as soon as you enter the hotel.
And I don't know if you read my journal,
but, boy, what an adventure I had in the city of Irkutsk with my passport.
The whole trip almost completely ended for me up there.
I've heard a rumor, and rumors from Mongolia sometimes get distorted on their way to New York,
but the rumor I heard is that if only you spoke Dutch,
you would be able to talk to all kinds of people in Mongolia.
If you spoke what?
The Dutch language.
I don't know about that,
but I do know that there are certain parallels between the Netherlands and here.
It's funny because when you talk to people who have lived here for quite some time,
they tell you that there is a long-standing tradition of Mongolians
simply not obeying the laws they don't agree with.
And you see that in various places where cars just have expired registrations
and they're not hassled,
or various regulations just are not really observed.
But then other ones are, so it's very unpredictable.
That's really about the best parallel to Dutch people that I can think of,
kind of the rebellious spirit.
The one thing that I'm trying to understand as you're talking
is what exactly does a city in Mongolia look like?
Does it look like New York, or does it look like nothing, or what?
It does look like a city in some areas as far as high-rise buildings, lots of construction.
But I'd have to say this is a city that definitely has to work on its infrastructure.
The people are in the spirit of moving forward.
They're playing around with technology and doing all kinds of fun things.
It's not a city where people are sitting around sulking.
It's a very active place.
The Japanese are pouring a lot of money into the place.
They're building roads. They're building buildings and things like that.
So I would say it's a city in transition.
It's a city that has a lot of remnants of Soviet architecture
and, I guess, an overall Soviet look to it.
But it's obviously a city that wants to move beyond that
and, I guess, become a lot more active, a lot more of a vibrant place.
And you wouldn't think that would be the case in Mongolia.
Even the Chinese say, why would you want to go to what's known as Outer Mongolia?
There's nothing there.
And it's not true.
Maybe in the rest of the country you might say that because it's a lot of desert.
But here in this city there's a lot going on, and it's a fascinating place.
There are all kinds of concerts and things to go to for tourists like us.
If you've ever heard Mongolian throat singing,
that's one of the most incredible things I think I've ever heard.
And a lot of people are practicing that if you go to various places around the city.
So all these cultural uniquenesses that you'll find just walking around the city.
So where do you go from here then?
Well, we go to the Ger camp at 9 o'clock, stay there for a couple of days.
And I'm not quite sure what to expect.
It's funny because throughout this voyage there have been certain times where I say,
I really don't know what to expect next because I've never been anywhere like this before.
And that was the case with Siberia.
There was a case with a good part of Russia.
There was a case with the Trans-Siberian Express and certainly Mongolia.
And it's going to be the case after we get back from the Ger camp when we go to China and then over to Japan.
So that's what comes next.
One thing that really surprises me is the fact that we're able to do the show like this.
If you recall last week, it was last week rather, I was on the Trans-Siberian Express.
Yes.
Well, I mean that surprised me right there that we were able to actually carry on the assemblance of a show
using a combination of GSM and satellite.
Here, though, not only do I have a form of connectivity, but I have a solid landline.
There's been less problems here connecting and communicating than most places I've been so far.
And that to me is a real surprise.
I don't expect that out in the middle of the wilderness.
But, you know, anything's possible, I suppose.
And that's why Mongolia is considered a land of surprises.
Maybe they all have Wi-Fi Internet access provided from some remote town.
Well, you know, Wi-Fi is not something I've seen in a very long time, actually.
Last time I saw Wi-Fi, gosh, where was that?
You know, I don't even remember.
I'm not sure if I saw Wi-Fi in Russia.
Yeah, I did see Wi-Fi in Russia.
That's right, in Irkutsk.
They had Wi-Fi, but it wasn't the kind of Wi-Fi that was actually connected to the Internet.
So I'd have to say back in Germany, that's where I've seen Wi-Fi last.
And I hope, I really hope that in China and in Japan I'll be able to play with that again
because it's really kind of nice to be able to do that.
For all you know, though, the infrastructures that you're using,
the telephone systems and all that, could actually be subversively connected using Wi-Fi.
I don't know about the city, but a lot of small towns are getting their whole kind of data pipeline that way
rather than running wires.
Yes, that's entirely possible.
You know, you live and you learn.
So whatever awaits us in our next place, we'll just have to report back on that.
So anyway, that's the latest from me out here in Mongolia.
I have to say it's probably the first time that Off the Hook has come to us from Mongolia.
We actually have a listener here.
Todd has been a great help to us.
He's lived out here for about five years or so.
He's from Canada.
Actually, Mike, if you recall, we were in Nova Scotia.
We issued the challenge to people in Halifax to meet us after the show.
He wasn't in Halifax at the time, but he heard that show a short while later.
And he thought it was really amazing that we were out there.
And it just shows what a small world it is that we actually ran into somebody here that listens to the program.
So Todd is our listener in two out-of-the-way places.
I'm sorry, could you say that again? You broke up.
I said Todd is apparently our listener who is in two of the out-of-the-way places to which you've traveled.
Yeah, well, you know, we didn't really call Nova Scotia out-of-the-way.
I mean, you don't really know the definition of out-of-the-way until you've been on a train for four days, four or five days.
You don't even know how many days we were on that train.
But it's just an incredible thing.
Just taking the train is worthy of lengthy discussion.
We're basically just in this community of people, and you're just constantly moving.
And you walk around, and you go to the dining car maybe, and then you go to sleep, and you read.
And just throughout it all, the train just keeps moving.
And you pull into these very strange stations where you get out on the platform,
and there are all these people selling you things, local people selling you all sorts of things at dirt cheap prices.
And you just get back on the train and keep moving.
And before you know it, you've traveled 1,000 kilometers, and you look at your progress on the map.
It was staggering to me.
You know, we started in Moscow.
If you look at the size of Russia, it's simply huge.
And then you wake up one morning, and you look at the station that you just passed through, and you're in Asia.
You're somewhere in the middle of Asia and continuing to make progress.
It's just the most incredible train journey I think I've ever been on.
Wow.
Anything else you wanted to add?
No, I'm just wondering if you're hearing the loud buzzing that I'm hearing.
No, we're not.
Okay, well, then I can continue with this horrible loud buzzing in my ear knowing that it's not afflicting anybody else.
But that is the latest for me.
Again, if you want to see the travel log or see pictures or anything like that, visit www.2600.com.
Or simply click on the globe, which is on the main page.
Also, we do another radio show called Off the Wall that airs on Tuesdays on WUSB.
And that also gets posted to the Internet.
What we're doing on that show is recording.
Thanks very much to Redbird for lending us his iRiver after mine blew up.
We're basically recording on site.
For instance, the last show was recorded on the Trans-Siberian Express.
And we walk around, you hear the sound of the train, and it's like you're there.
The week before that, we recorded a show in Red Square in Moscow before we actually got shut down by a member of the FSB.
And that was pretty scary, actually, because we were simply interviewing somebody.
The problem is we have this big, huge microphone.
And the reason we use the big, huge microphone is because, well, two reasons, really.
I have a clip-on microphone, but it's kind of hard to interview people when you have a clip-on microphone
because they sort of have to lean into your face to answer you.
And, you know, it's kind of odd and uncomfortable.
And the other reason is that there's a slight technical problem with that where we're getting static.
So using the handheld mic has been working out better.
But the problem is when you walk around public streets with a big, huge microphone, as Red Hat can attest in London,
you certainly draw some attention.
Just from the authorities, though, I didn't, I mean, they were the only ones who seemed to have a problem.
Oh, no, no, no, no, from the people as well.
You wouldn't believe the looks we were getting.
All right.
One of the things, speaking of looks, just walking around the streets of Olympic Tour, boy, do you ever get looks.
I mean, the people here aren't rude, but they're not used to Westerners.
They're really not.
So when you're walking down the street, people will stare at you in open-mouthed awe
because they've never quite seen anything like that.
I get stared at a lot, but this is something different.
Anybody who's a Westerner gets a good stare as they walk by.
Nothing hostile or anything like that, just real curiosity.
It's kind of cool in a way.
Does that make your filming project difficult if they're constantly agape when you approach them?
Well, you know, that's very interesting because there are lots of places where it has been a problem filming
because people are afraid to speak or afraid to, you know, very shy or just hard to approach.
Here it's been completely the opposite, and I was very amazed by that.
We just started talking to people in the square, and then more people came up to see what the commotion was.
And before we knew it, we had this crowd of people around us,
and a surprising number of them were perfectly okay going on camera and speaking in Mongolian,
talking about whatever was on their mind.
And I was flabbergasted by that.
I thought of all the places that I was going to,
this was going to be one of the hardest ones to get anything decent on film.
And it's been one of the easiest ones, no hassles whatsoever from the authorities,
just a very open and kind of adventurous, fun society that's developing before our eyes.
And on that subject, actually, we are making the documentary Speaker's World.
Basically, the concept is sort of the same as Speaker's Corner, Hyde Park in London,
where people stand on a soapbox and talk about whatever is on their mind.
The difference is we're going around the world, and we come to you.
We come to your city, and if you have something to say, you speak out.
And then we mix it all together and do all the translations from all different languages
and see what the world as a whole has to say.
It's going to be kind of an interesting project, and a very time-intensive one, too, I'm afraid.
But we're going to be in Beijing and Shanghai in the next week or so.
So if you're in those cities and you listen to us, please send email to oth at 2600.com and let us know.
We're also going to be in Osaka and Tokyo in Japan.
So please let us know if you're in those cities.
It also helps very much to have somebody who knows the language.
We had the help of Todd and his wife, who were able to speak to the people
and tell them what it was we were looking for.
It was such a tremendous help to have somebody there who not only could calm us a little bit
into thinking that we're safe here, we're not going to get hassled by the authorities or anything like that,
but also to explain to the people just who these strange Westerners were.
All right. Unless you have anything else to add, we should move on to some news, maybe.
Yes, by all means.
The first bit of news I have here is the Bush administration is objecting to the new .xxx domain name
saying that it will create a place on the Internet for pornography as though it currently has no place on the Internet.
What's particularly strange here is that the Bush administration was previously a supporter of the .xxx domain
because it would create a place where I guess they thought all the pornography would go
so that the rest of the Internet would remain pristine, pornography-free.
But that's not happening.
And now they don't want the .xxx.
And so their ICANN, they're trying to block ICANN.
It seems whatever ICANN does, they're unhappy with.
It's all very, very silly.
It seems that they selectively decide who to listen to.
I mean, they received 6,000 letters, which compared to other groups that have protested things, isn't that much.
I just thought that was an interesting statistic in the article.
That's the Department of Commerce that got those letters.
Are these letters coming from an organized group?
I wouldn't be surprised, but it doesn't state.
It just says that they received 6,000 letters and emails from individuals.
So that's what's happening on that front.
I just wonder where people are going to go for porn.
I guess they'll have to go everywhere for porn.
Everywhere else on the web.
Maybe it will be completely eradicated as a result of this move.
Sure.
There will be nowhere for it to hide.
Jim, you were talking about something before when we were talking.
Bluetooth is in the news once again.
You may have noticed that a number of automobiles, especially high-end ones,
offer a system whereby you have your telephone communicate through your car for hands-on use
so you don't run afoul of the authorities in your state.
Hands-off use.
Sorry.
Hands-off use for distracted driving.
Well, apparently a group of hackers from Europe called the Trifinite Organization
has developed what they call the Car Whisperer.
Just like the Horse Whisperer, and now the Ghost Whisperer, the Car Whisperer.
It's a Linux program that allows you to essentially hack into a Bluetooth system
that's been inadequately protected by the manufacturer
and listen in to conversations in the car
or to say things to the occupants of a nearby automobile.
So if you see someone attractive driving down the street,
you could say, hey, honey, why don't you park and come on over here?
Yeah, well, you know, what I guess people would expect if you saw somebody passing by.
Interesting. Very interesting story there.
I believe that was actually released at What The Hack.
Yes, indeed.
It was, if not released at What The Hack, at least promulgated.
And they have a website, of course, Trifinite, T-R-I-F-I-N-I-T-E dot O-R-G,
where you can get this.
And it also tells you the countermeasures to guard your car against this.
It seems a lot of manufacturers are using short, lazy security codes of only four digits
when they could use them up to 16-digit long.
And that's what makes it possible to quickly hack the system as the car drives by.
A longer system would take longer to hack,
and the target would be out of range by the time you got anywhere.
Now, I believe there is something in the news.
Yet another computer worm known as the Zotop worm was afflicting certain corporate computers.
Now, Bernie, I understand that you saw our friend Kevin Mitnick on television.
Yes, I happened to have CNN on last night, and I guess we're flipping channels.
And I saw Aaron Brown interviewing Kevin Mitnick live, talking about the Zotop worm.
And they talked for several minutes, and it was good to see Kevin again.
But he was wearing a suit and tie, which I had not seen him in before.
And he had some interesting things to say about this worm.
Kevin's theory was that this worm has found its way into many corporations
through laptop computers that telecommuters have brought into the workplace
after having connected them to the Internet outside of their workplace,
i.e., likely without a firewall.
And that was Kevin's theory, anyway.
And quite a few news organizations around the world,
at least around the United States, have been hugely affected by this.
CNN had to broadcast from their Washington bureau
because their Atlanta studios and their New York studios were down as a result of this worm.
I happen to have information that the Washington studio
is at least partially run on Macintoshes, so that may be part of the reason.
You're telling me that their entire broadcast facilities went down because of this silly worm?
That seems to be the case. CNN was brought down by a silly worm.
I really have to wonder what kind of company is so entirely dependent on the net
that something like that could actually affect them so much.
I'm sure I can ask most everybody I know.
Well, I'll start by asking you guys.
How many of you were completely taken down because of this worm?
Not I. Not me.
Not I. No.
I think you're asking the wrong crowd here.
Well, I think as I look out the window here to the morning breaking in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia,
I don't think I see a single person who also was affected by this.
Well, one thing about the virus itself was that it was designed for Windows 2000 machines,
which a lot of individuals have moved away from at this point.
But corporations don't want to pay big fees to upgrade and all that.
And also what I thought was interesting was that what it did is,
once it got into a Windows 2000 host on a local network,
it would have payloads designed for Windows 2003 and XP machines
for exploits that would only be possible if you were local to the machine on the network.
So even people that thought, well, primarily we run this machine, so we're fine,
found themselves to be mistaken.
Well, here's my question.
How exactly did the worm get executed in the first place once it was delivered to the machine?
Apparently it came in over the Internet,
and there was some hole in Microsoft that made it start running.
Was it something that involved opening an attachment?
No. It was just a flaw in the code of the operating system.
No interaction required by the user aside from not patching their machine?
I believe it was a NetBIOS port exploit.
I don't know the specifics of the virus.
Maybe some of our listeners have been affected by it.
That would be interesting to find out.
One news story I saw stated that this was written in apparently direct response
to a hole that Microsoft had warned about a week ago
and a patch that they had issued right afterwards,
but that someone had quickly written this to take advantage of that hole,
and if you hadn't downloaded the patch immediately, you were theoretically vulnerable.
A lot of the security pundits are yelling that we're getting closer and closer
to the day of the zero-day virus or the zero-day worm,
where as soon as the vulnerability is announced by Microsoft,
before anybody can apply the patches,
a worm or virus written to exploit that vulnerability is already out in the wild
and infect machines before people have time to even patch them.
This is being touted as the quickest worm to have been written
to take advantage of a vulnerability that Microsoft had announced.
This apparently was released within 48 hours of Microsoft announcing this vulnerability.
Again, it took advantage of a NetBIOS port opening
that really shouldn't be open on most computers anyway,
but apparently people leave it open anyhow.
It's interesting to compare this sort of development model with the open source model,
whereas if people do find a security hole like this right away,
they're most likely playing with the source code of the software
in which they found the hole anyway,
and so they patch it right away, submit the patch,
before an exploit even gets written where it becomes very easily publicly accessible.
Whereas with Microsoft software, where it's completely closed source,
the virus actually gets written before the patch is written,
so it's kind of interesting to compare these two
and why it doesn't affect open source operating systems nearly as much as it does for the other stuff.
Go ahead.
I think Bernie answered my question, because my question was,
does the user have to do something in the slightest bit, careless,
in order to have something like this happen to them?
I think by leaving ports open, is that really what you should not do
to be affected by this kind of a thing?
Yes.
This exploit was not a result of people opening email attachments
or clicking on something on a web page.
This was purely a port vulnerability, so it required no interaction.
No one had to do anything to cause this to happen
other than just to leave a port open on a server or a workstation somewhere.
Which is the default, if you don't do anything.
Yes.
Right, they didn't actually have to turn it on.
It was just there by default, and if it's a NetBIOS thing,
if they choose to use Windows file sharing as their primary mode of transferring things back and forth,
which for most people would be the easiest way to do it,
it would force the port to be open.
All right.
Well, I have a question.
Why did Microsoft announce a week before,
and they explained exactly what the vulnerability was before they patched it?
No, I think they released the patch at the time of the explanation, which was one week ago.
Okay.
And it's worth noting that Microsoft didn't specify the exact details about the vulnerability,
but people reverse-engineered the patch that was released by Microsoft,
and they did so very quickly, and that's how this happened, apparently.
I'm sure the people on the personal computer show following us will have much more detail as far as exactly what happened here
and ways of fixing it and what we can expect in the future,
but I think it is an interesting new development in warm culture.
All right.
Shall we move on?
Yes, let's move on.
I have an announcement from the No Subway Searches Coalition.
The announcement is that they are meeting tomorrow, which is Thursday, at 8 o'clock p.m. at Earth Matters,
which is 177 Ludlow Street at Houston,
where there will be a brainstorming and planning session to determine the most effective ways to convince subway riders to refuse to submit to unwarranted searches.
This is in coordination, sort of, with a lawsuit that the New York Civil Liberties Union has filed to get this subway search policy,
which we've talked about on the show before, stopped.
So it's good to hear that people are organizing and suing and otherwise working to end this policy.
I saw another NYCLU story all over the place.
Apparently they've spoken out against all the surveillance cameras that are popping up every place,
and it just goes to show that when a story gets out in the Associated Press, it really gets heard every place.
I must have seen about 14 different copies of this story mailed.
I hope the subway search story gets the same amount of publicity.
The NYCLU right now is resurveying how many surveillance cameras there are in the city.
When they counted in 1998, they found 2,397 cameras.
At this point, I don't think they're done counting, but they found 4,000 already.
The AP article, and I just kind of want to make a correction to it,
seemed to indicate that the website where they post the information about the cameras
and where there's some software to determine the least surveilled route,
if you want to go walking around in New York City, doesn't exist.
But it actually does exist. I don't have the URL off the top of my head,
but I'm sure if you do a search for it, I think it's—does anyone remember the URL?
I know we've spoken about it before on previous shows, and I can get the URL for next week.
But that site does actually exist if you're interested in finding out where cameras are.
That site has the old data or the new data?
Probably the old data. I don't think they've updated it yet.
But irrespective, the site does exist.
There was a tool developed that would allow one to plan the route of minimum cameras,
but it's probably highly out of date as they put up more and more cameras all the time.
I have a story in the airline stupidity department for this week.
This is kind of an interesting one right here.
At least 14 infants have been stopped from boarding planes in the U.S.
because their names are the same or similar to possible terrorists on the government's no-fly list.
It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights
while scrambling to have babies, passports, and other documents faxed.
You can't make this stuff up.
Apparently the Transportation Security Administration, TSA, or airport friends,
they have a rule that no one under 12 should be denied boarding a plane
because they're not capable of being a terrorist.
Yet that rule is being widely ignored, apparently,
because they're banning infants who have similar-sounding names to people on a watch list.
So this goes to show even the TSA can't follow its own rules.
Well, I think it's a good thing. No age discrimination.
I was a 12-year-old once, and I can attest a 12-year-old can be a terrorist, trust me.
But an infant's going to have an awful hard time.
Just getting the weapons in the first place, it's very hard to establish a line of credit.
I really think the infant, she can let go.
I'm able to confirm, by the way, that I am not on the U.S. government terrorist watch list.
I know this because when I flew here back from Europe,
I was able to look over the shoulder of this guy operating this bizarre PDA
as he asked me who had packed my luggage
and type my name into a form field called watch list.
And I didn't come up, so I guess that's good.
What I noticed upon exiting customs coming back into the country
was a TSA agent at the exit gate comparing the name on the passport
with a very sloppily written handwritten list of names.
And I was very curious as to what that was, but I have no further information.
Of course, we always welcome your letters at Off the Hook.
There are two ways you can send us mail.
One is by e-mail.
If you're not afraid of viruses and worms and things like that,
you can send us that e-mail, oth at 2600.com.
Or if you're more traditional and old-fashioned
and you want to send something via the U.S. Post Office on paper,
you can send that to Off the Hook, WBAI 120 Wall Street, 10th floor, New York, New York, 10005.
All right, and I have a letter here which I think is rather interesting.
And then I guess we should make some phone calls at 212-209-2900.
Dear Off the Hook, I was wondering if you could give me some advice
or solicit advice from your listeners on traveling to the U.S.A. from the U.K.
with a radio scanner.
Is it legal to do this?
What happens when I x-ray slash search my bag and see it?
Will I have the scanner taken from me?
And in which case, can I get it back when I leave the country?
What should I say I use it for?
And more importantly, is there anything I should avoid saying?
The scanner I have can scan the U.S. cell phone frequencies.
Will this cause problems?
Does the U.S. version of my scanner have these disabled?
Obviously they won't be able to tell me this by looking at it,
but if they ask me, I don't want to lie.
The scanner I bought was expensive, me being a student anyway.
It's an ICOM ICR-20 that cost me around $540.
So you can understand I don't want to bring it to the U.S.
and then have it taken away from me and then never see it again.
Signed, Daniel.
I think, Bernie, you have an answer for this.
Yes.
Daniel was pleased to hear that he's very, very unlikely to have a problem
bringing such a radio into this country from the U.K.
because I have found from personal experience traveling across the pond many times
that airport security people are extremely ignorant about radio technology.
So what I've often done is I've left my radio or my pocket scanner,
which receives all kinds of frequencies,
tuned to an FM broadcast band frequency so that if I'm asked about it,
I can simply turn it on and they can hear music
or something that sounds like something they can relate to with their narrow minds,
and then they realize, oh, okay, it's playing music.
It must be safe.
And that has gotten me out of more than one jam before,
not even a jam but just a suede suspicion.
If it makes the listener feel any better,
three of us on the show here brought back and forth our ham radio
with all the scanning ability that I'm sure this person's receiver has.
So I wasn't questioned once personally,
but I guess it does help if you're in that situation to follow Bernie's advice.
I would imagine also if you were kind of nervous
and didn't answer the questions properly,
you could be facing a problem with the source, couldn't you?
Sorry, go ahead.
I have always just said it's a portable radio and hear, listen,
and they hear the music and they get it,
or at least they get that, okay, it's a music radio,
and then they're like, okay, move along.
This is not to put aside the fact, of course,
that it isn't actually dangerous in any way.
They just might consider it to be for some reason.
We're not advocating that people who do carry dangerous things onto airplanes
to simply attach music to it to make people turn away,
as I think they actually did that on Family Guy once
where they simply danced show tunes
and terrorists were able to walk right through the scanners undetected.
No, no, that didn't air.
No, it did air, actually. It aired before 9-11.
It never aired afterwards.
Well, our telephone number is 1-212-209-2900.
There's not very many people on the line, but we have this one.
Hello, you're on the air.
Oh, not, see this thing is, hello.
Hello.
Hi.
How you doing?
We're well, how are you?
Good, my name is Pavel.
I have a funny story about the airport.
I was coming from Dominican Republic with my wife,
and this guy, the guy with the huge glasses,
I can tell the guy is almost blind.
He was asking my wife what's her name and stuff like that,
and he took her green card, and he was watching,
he took his glasses off, he was watching her fingerprint with eyes
compared to the one in the card.
And he was telling me, and I asked the guy, like, what are you doing?
And he's like, no, I'm trying to check if that's the same fingerprint.
And I'm like, do I need to use a machine or something?
No, my eyes are pretty good.
And he's like, this is ridiculous.
I'm looking at the guy like, how are you going to tell that's the same fingerprint?
And he's like, I will try to do it.
You better sit down and try to take care of this thing.
He actually did it by eye, I think, and then he let us go through.
This is in which country?
This is in here.
I was coming from Dominican Republic to the JFK,
and the guy was just, like, ridiculous with us.
Was there ink involved, or was he just looking at her finger?
He was looking at her finger, literally.
He got glasses, he took his glasses off,
and he's looking at her fingers, like, trying to find out, like,
if that was the same fingerprint that was in the green card.
We stood there for, like, an hour,
and the guy is, like, looking one finger at a time to compare.
And he's like, hey, man, what are you doing?
The guy's like, I have to make sure that it's the same person,
that it's the green card.
What if you had a booger or something on your finger?
Would that interfere with his ability to do that?
No, I mean, I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.
That's probably best you didn't.
All right, well, thank you for the call.
We're going to move on over here.
You're on the air.
You caught me by surprise.
All right, radio's down.
I was listening to, with great interest to Emmanuel
talking about this enormous train ride,
and I just, like, you know, I don't know if you want to say right now,
like, what on earth he saw out the window, like, what kind of sights.
I mean, he traveled across a huge expanse of the habitable planet.
And I'd like to hear that stuff.
So I'll tell you what, I'll hang up and listen on the radio, okay?
Right.
Okay.
Well, not only can you hear about this stuff,
I'll tell you a little bit about it here,
but you can see some pictures that I posted on the Internet,
again, www.2670.com slash travels,
a day-by-day travel log with pictures of just what I'm seeing.
But traveling in the train, it's pretty incredible,
because for most of the trip you're seeing wilderness,
you're seeing forests, you're seeing fields and small villages,
and you just wonder, you know, what is life like in these places?
How do people live out their lives from year to year, from century to century,
where it seems like things are pretty much the same as they've always been?
Is that a better way of life?
Is that something that is more peaceful than what we're used to?
Or is it something that people are trapped in and they want to escape?
It's just fascinating to have these thoughts as you go by.
You see endless birch forests.
You just see all kinds of expanse.
You realize how incredibly big and huge the world is
and how incredibly big and huge this one country is.
And then, as you head south, after you hit Irkutsk,
then all of a sudden the landscape starts to change,
and you see more prairie, and eventually you see some desert.
And before you know it, you're in the south of Russia
and crossing over into Mongolia, and everything is completely different.
So it's a transitional thing.
Time passes in a weird sort of a way.
An entire day goes by, and you realize,
hey, I've been on the train the entire day,
and I've been watching the scenery go by.
And your concept of time just doesn't work the same way,
where you're saying, oh, it's 2 o'clock, I have to be here.
No, you're on the train the whole time,
you're more relaxed, you're reading, you're writing,
and you're just watching the world go by.
It's something I really do recommend, although I do have to say also,
if you do go on the Trans-Siberian Express,
it's probably best to go with people you know,
because they do have a tendency of putting you in rooms
with up to three other people, and very, very small rooms.
It's basically two bunk beds.
And if you don't like those people, it's going to be miserable.
So it's important that you have at least somebody you can talk to.
And that's not to say that you won't like the people on the train.
I think everybody on the train that I talked to certainly was perfectly fine.
But there's always the possibility that you'll be uncomfortable,
and if you are in a confined situation like that,
uncomfortable could be pretty miserable.
But I didn't find that at all.
All right, we're running out of time, but let's take another call.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hi, guys, how are you doing? It's Winston Smith here.
Hi, how are you?
Okay, good. Hi, Emmanuel.
Hello, how are you?
Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, it's great.
Your phone system, it dumps you after a certain amount of rings.
It's weird.
Anyway, this is a bit off topic.
Do you guys know anything about PayPal and eBay?
If you're asking for specific questions about the services,
the Personal Computer Show is up next,
and they're probably better to answer those things.
All right, I love your show anyway, and keep up the good work.
Emmanuel, stay out of trouble out there.
I'll try. I really will.
All right, let's take this one.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
What's on your mind?
I just wanted to say to Emmanuel, I really appreciate him putting all the pictures up
and the information on his trip, and it's really interesting.
I'm going to probably never leave North America.
Why is that?
Why would I want to go to North America?
Yeah.
Financial situation.
Well, you know, one thing about where I've been,
I've been spending very little money, an incredibly little amount.
I brought more money with me than I'm ever going to use, apparently.
I figured I'd be, well, of course, when I go to Japan, I'll probably lose it all,
but going to these particular parts of the world,
you can buy quite easily under $10 a day.
My friend Jeff, who's in China right now actually,
has not spent more than $4 for a meal,
and we're talking about a meal with, like, soup, food, dessert, everything, the works.
So it's definitely cheaper in other parts of the world.
I always believed that tourist areas cost a lot of money no matter where you were.
Not a sin.
The initial ticket might cost you a fair amount, but not necessarily.
But actually eating and staying in places, that won't cost very much at all.
Really? Wow.
Well, I just wanted to say that I appreciate what you're doing
and hope you post more information soon.
All right. Thanks for the call.
And I think that about does it for the show.
We're about out of time.
Do you have any closing thoughts, Emanuel?
Well, basically, next week I believe I'll be in Beijing, which I'm told is in China.
And we'll see how the connectivity is over there.
I'm expecting to be fairly decent,
although I'm told that they block lots of things over in China,
and they might be a bit aggressive as far as—
we'll see if they block 2600 from there.
So far I've really had no trouble,
except that Easy Everything cafes where they block 2600 as a matter of course,
and that's over in Western Europe.
After that, we'll see.
We'll see how the trip goes.
Again, I'm involved in this round-the-world voyage by land and by sea,
which really has impressed upon me the size of the globe.
It's just incredibly huge.
And I'm looking forward to the 10-day crossing of the Pacific Ocean.
Boy, is that going to be fun.
All right. Well, we'll speak to you next week.
And that's it for today for Off the Hook.
Thanks for watching.