Shannon Young is our headlines editor.
For archives of this or any other newscast, please visit our website, www.fsrn.org.
In Berkeley, I'm Brian Edwards Teagard, sitting in for Auro Bogato.
And it's just past 7 o'clock on WBII New York, time for Off The Hook.
Best Expect the Worst
I hope that's understood
One minute more
Off The Hook
And the program is Off The Hook. I'm Mike. I'm joined in the studio by Jim.
Hello.
And Walter.
Hi.
Ken Gale is behind the board. I don't know if he has the technology to say hi.
Hi, everybody. Hi. And we have Bernie S. in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
And we have Emmanuel who's somewhere.
Yes, I am in Amsterdam.
That's somewhere.
It is. It is indeed. We are wrapping up after the 23rd CCC Congress, Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.
We broadcast from there last week.
It was incredibly successful, one of the most fun hacker conferences that exist on the planet.
And we'll be talking a bit more about that this hour as well.
And in addition, we're coming to you tonight for the first time over a rather different kind of technology,
something known as Skype. We're talking to you completely through the Internet.
And we have the ability through Skype of conferencing in all kinds of people.
Right now I'm sitting in a building in Amsterdam, but I'm going to be able to call other people as well
and bring them into the conversation.
I should also point out that we're coming to you on a phone line.
Skype has the ability of using a computer. I'm holding a microphone right now.
I'm not talking on a telephone. And that microphone is plugged into my computer.
And I'm talking to you over the Internet.
Now, what we could also do is we could have the program set up in the radio station as well.
And that would be completely free. It would not cost even the three cents a minute that I'm paying right now.
And it would sound almost as if I was right there in the studio or in a different studio.
So it's really kind of cool.
What I'm going to do, I'm going to bring in a couple of people in other parts of Amsterdam
that are hanging out with us right now. I'm conferencing in Redbird right now.
Let's see. I've got to click on his name here.
And then I click on Invite to Conference.
And in a second, you should hear the voice of Redbird.
Let's see if this works.
Good evening. Can you hear him over there in New York?
We can over here in New York.
All right. So I just clicked one button instantly. I was connected to him.
Now I'm going to do the same thing for Junt.
And the only reason you're hearing a pause here is because I'm a bit of a klutz as far as figuring out how to get everybody in.
But okay, I found Junt's name now, and I'm going to invite him to the conference now.
And you should hear him in a second.
It's been a second, I would say.
It really has been. I don't see anything changing by his name.
His name is there, but it's not doing anything.
Oh, there.
Oh, he is there. Okay.
It doesn't say in progress for you for some reason.
No.
Okay, but Junt, you're there, and Redbird, you're there.
Yes, I'm there.
Okay, great.
And now what I'm going to do as a final trick is conference in Rob, who is actually sitting right next to me,
which might cause some delay issues, and if that's the case, we'll move him somewhere else.
Wouldn't you rather conference in a rabbit or something?
Here we go.
Rob, are you there?
I'm here. Hello there.
Okay, I hear Echo because he's sitting right next to me, but do you guys in the radio station hear Echo?
Well, yeah, we do.
And, in fact, the sound quality seemed to start degrading with Junt's and is getting even worse with Rob.
Well, Rob, do you have an explanation for that?
Well, we are the conference master, and we're pretty fast at ESL, so that shouldn't be the problem.
Rob really does not sound good.
Okay, you know, I think part of the problem is that I am sitting so close to him.
Yeah, move away from each other.
You're hearing feedback.
Yes, we're going to have to do that.
What I'm going to do is, Rob, I'm going to drop you.
No offense, but I have no choice.
And we can move him someplace else where there won't be quite as much feedback.
Everybody else is here?
Yes.
All right.
Rob, do you have another place to go?
Would you like to come over here?
You can come over here and talk on my microphone if you want.
We can't hear you all the way through there.
You'll have to either come over here or go somewhere else.
The microphones are obviously very wide.
You'll hear it off the hook.
We do not ever make phone calls the easy way.
Guys, we've got to not talk over each other.
Rob, tell me what you want to do.
Rob's on the other way over here.
He's coming back now.
Call me on the Skype, and then I'll turn off my microphone, and then I'll come over to your microphone if I want to talk.
I can hear over the headphones.
Okay.
That sounds like a good idea.
So we're going to add him again.
Hang on.
Write him to the conference.
All right.
Rob is now part of the conference again.
And turning off your microphone so there shouldn't be any feedback.
All right.
We're all here.
Sorry for the confusion, folks, but this is new technology.
It's exciting technology, too, because there's a lot that you can do with this.
Actually, that's something that I'd like Rob to talk about is what you can do with Skype.
What, Rob isn't with us?
Okay.
We're really having some technical issues here.
I did add you to the conference, Rob.
I don't know why you can't hear anything.
All right.
Well, he figures that out.
Maybe, Redbird, you can talk a little bit about Skype, because you're the one that actually got all this together for this show.
Yes.
I've been using it for almost the entire time I've been here, mainly as a way to make cheap phone calls to the U.S.
But what Skype basically is is just a pretty well done, as far as I'm concerned, voice-over IP service,
and you can make free phone calls from Skype to Skype and whatever.
It's really nice for that.
But it's also a gateway to the standard telephone network, and they do it very cheaply.
It's really only three cents a minute or so for most landline calls, including all calls to the U.S.
I've been using it to stay in touch with quite a few people at home, and it just comes in really handy.
According to what I'm looking at on my screen, there's 2,702,303 users online right now.
And if I knew their IDs, I could simply hit a button and connect to any one of them,
and, of course, they would have to choose to pick up the phone and talk to me.
And if I did that, it wouldn't cost me a penny.
And they could be anywhere in the world, and that's really pretty incredible.
If you add on top of that the fact that I can call a phone number anywhere in the world.
Someone's making a lot of noise, so please, whoever's doing that, you're going to have to turn off your mic.
Part of the problem with Skype is that it picks up all kinds of sound in the background.
So the potential is simply incredible, what you can do with this kind of technology.
And this is only the beginning.
The day is coming when this is how we will communicate all the time,
and the days of the phone bill will be at an end.
There's also a number of other voice-over IP technologies,
some of which are a bit more open than the Skype protocol.
A lot of work has been done on this protocol called SIP,
which if you make a phone call, it might be connected over the Internet,
and you might not even know.
Yeah, that's good, too.
So we've been playing around with this quite a bit,
and, again, it would be great if we were able to actually talk computer to computer,
and I think you'd see that what we've been talking about over the years
is how phone calls still don't sound all that good.
In fact, they sound worse than they did years ago.
Isn't that right, Bernie?
Yeah.
I think people are just sort of being dumbed down on the quality of service for their phone calls.
You know, back in the day when it was analog, public switch telephone network with analog switches,
you had a good, clear analog signal,
and then it just started getting chopped up in bits and more and more digitized,
and now there's latency, and we're not even hearing actual voices.
We're hearing sort of mathematical models replicated by things called vocoders,
and it's just I fear in 10 years how much worse it's going to get.
It will be interesting to see how the technology evolves.
It might get better, but my guess is the trend over the past 10 years
is the fidelity of most telephone calls you make has gone downhill.
Part of the issue is that we no longer ever make phone calls just from one landline to another.
If you do, I'm sure you'll find that it sounds just as good as ever,
but if not better as more and more things get connected digitally.
But these cell phones and these weird internet calls and all this stuff uses a lot less bandwidth,
and in the process you lose a lot of quality.
But it's still understandable.
It is understandable, but I mean it's bound to just get better over time and cheaper as well.
So in a way this is something that we've been fighting for for a long time.
It's just a way to communicate with people all around the world for next to nothing.
Rob's having trouble with his computer,
so I'd like to just give him the microphone for a moment so he can address these issues
because he really has been playing with Skype for quite some time.
We consider it a new technology because it's something that we haven't really been using at the radio station,
but it's been around for quite some time actually.
I think he can speak to the history of Skype and things like it,
but also to the future and what that's all about.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to hand you the microphone and my headphones
so you can hear the guys back in the studio. Here's Rob.
Hello there.
Hi Rob.
I've been playing with Skype for a while as Eric just said,
and there's a lot of interesting aspects to it.
It's free for one. It gives you excellent sound quality,
and it's a way to use the Internet.
There are even nicer ways to use the Internet for telephony.
There's something called SIP, which is the Session Initiation Protocol.
There's a wide range of SIP telephones, both in software and in hardware,
that you can hook up and then you can talk to other SIP telephones on the Internet.
It's not such a nice…
Sorry?
I was going to say I've been experimenting with some of those.
We're installing new phone systems at my workplace,
and some of the SIP phones are quite good.
Yes, and there's a whole private exchange called Asterisk,
which is completely in software.
You can actually run this Asterisk software on any Linux machine,
and then that acts as a PADX for a whole set of SIP phones.
Then you can hook that up to this telephone system,
these providers that will offer you IP telephony.
You can basically take this little Linux box somewhere,
tell it to get connectivity over the Internet,
and then route in like a block of 100 phone numbers,
and use SIP phones to distribute it within your building
or within anywhere in the world,
possibly putting encrypted VPN underneath.
You can actually have secure telephony that spans the world
on your own sort of internal phone system, which is nice.
There's even a project which is called the Free World Dial-Up,
which connects all these Asterisk boxes together,
so everybody gets their own little prefixes.
You can actually all dial each other,
and then everybody starts offering the calls
that they can make for free from their local exchange,
like all the calls within an area code or a city.
Everybody's sharing what they can dial for free,
and then it becomes even more interesting.
Will this ever be integrated, do you think, with the crypto phone?
Oh, yes. There's work in progress offering products that do IP telephony,
not just by us, but all the vendors of secure telephony
are working on the same thing.
Do you think they'll be interoperable with each other,
or everyone will have to buy their own kind of secure telephony?
Well, interoperability doesn't seem to be the interest
of many secure telephony vendors
because they all want to do proprietary crypto.
Lots of secure telephony vendors happen to be owned by the same people
that also sell the interception hardware
or run some country's interception service.
That would be, for example, Verizon, yes, the phone company.
Well, it's more the intelligence bureaucracies
that try to sell secure telephony to their customers,
but they also want to make sure that their customers
can still listen to everybody else.
See, that's why Europeans are not as advanced as Americans.
Here in the States, we have the phone companies
do the wiretapping for the government,
which puts it in the hands of the private sector,
which they would have us believe is more efficient,
whatever that means.
Well, there's plenty of wiretapping going on here,
and the phone companies are very happy to provide assistance
to whoever wants phone tapping done here as well.
How fast of an outbound Internet connection do you need to use this?
I think Skype itself, if you have just one voice connection going on,
takes something like 40 or 50 kilobits.
But you want a little bit of headroom
so that not the first little bit of extra data
that comes along on the first web page somebody in your house browses
messes things up.
So I would say any ADSL line, no matter how small it is,
will do the trick, but any modem connection
is actually on the edge or just not enough.
According to Skype's web page, it's 3 to 16 kilobytes per second.
That's not what we've seen.
We've seen it take more like 30 or 40 kilobits.
Can you adjust the quality by assigning more bandwidth?
Because actually, I mean, I'm not really impressed with the quality.
Particularly, I think, you said you were on a fast connection,
but Redbird and Junes, to me, sound very distorted.
I don't know why that is. I can't test that right here.
They sound fine to me.
That's kind of strange then.
So it seems like the technology for integrating with the phone network
is maybe not up to par.
This may be the case, and it's also maybe the case
that we are the conference master for this Skype.
So any two parties hearing each other through us
may experience less quality than us hearing the party.
Oh, that makes sense.
Anything else you wanted to share with us, Rob?
No, not right now. I'll just give you back to Manuel.
All right. Always good to...
Actually, I'd like to just ask Rob a question or two
concerning not so much Skype,
but the event that has just finished,
the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.
We were at that last week for this show, and now it's over.
And I think it was one of the more successful
of the 23 German conferences that have been taking place
in December of every year since 1994.
I liked it. I liked it a lot.
The building wasn't as full.
It had a really good smoker policy,
which basically asked smokers to go outside whenever they could,
which really helped, because last year
we had almost 4,000 people in that building.
Everybody was smoking.
You have to understand German hackers are 90% smokers.
So the air in that building was so thick
you could actually cut blocks out of it.
And that was much better this year,
and there was just fewer people there.
I heard that overall there wasn't so many fewer people
because it was four days instead of three.
It was always three days.
Lots of people didn't come for all four days,
but they came for one or two days.
So overall the number of people was sort of the same,
but at any given time
there was fewer people in the building.
But just the fact that you would even consider
having fewer people would make it more successful.
I think that puts you very much in a different position
than most conferences.
I feel the same way about Hope.
I don't want it to get much bigger.
I don't want to have 4,000 or 5,000 people
at the conference center in New York.
When we do these things,
I think we sort of lose the community feel.
Maybe we could hold a few more people,
but I think at a certain stage we're enough already.
Let's do what we came here to do, have fun,
and not worry about crowd control so much.
What the hack event last summer
could have done with a thousand more people,
but that's because we had so much space
and there were so many different things going on
in different corners of the field.
But if you want people to all be part of the same experience,
all go sit in the same room or tent,
then yes, a few thousand people really is enough.
You don't need many more.
It becomes this mass thing.
We talked about the network last week
and the ridiculous amount of bandwidth
that was going into that building in Berlin.
In fact, what later came out,
I believe at the closing ceremonies,
which I wasn't at,
was that the bandwidth going to the Hacker Conference in Berlin
was more than the bandwidth for the entire continent of Africa.
Is that correct?
Yes, it's correct.
It's a pretty sad statement, but it's actually true.
We overdid it and we overdid it on purpose
because we had lots of contacts in the provider scene in Berlin
so we could easily get all this bandwidth
from appearing sponsored,
also as an experiment to see
if we could actually saturate the bandwidth needs
for such a Hacker Conference, and we did.
In fact, we did by a factor of more than ten.
I think at its peak, the conference used 1.3 gigabits
and we had 16 gigabits of actually available upstream.
We had a 20 gigabit link, but we had 16 gigabits
of available upstream ready.
Now, you know, that's gotten me wondering,
is it even possible for us to approach anything like that
in New York for hope?
What you guys are able to do over here
is simply what it seems to us in America
as completely impossible,
and I want to bring something back from here,
back to the States, where, you know what?
It's not impossible.
We can do this, but how in God's name
can we pull something like that off in the States?
It all depends on the contacts.
I mean, we used to get our Internet link from New York.
Amsterdam was this tiny little thing off the May East,
which was located in New York.
So there must be bandwidth there.
It's just a matter of talking to the people,
having the contacts,
and making sure you can plug into it.
Now, what I don't understand, Rob,
is it seems like if we tried here in New York,
we could get some ISP to donate us
a sizable amount of bandwidth.
But the issue is getting that bandwidth
from the ISP to the conference facility,
and that involves this company
which you've heard us talk about called Verizon,
and they are not very friendly.
Is the situation different in Europe,
or do you just know someone at the local phone company?
Were you able to hear that?
I was able to hear that fine.
The situation is different here
because the hacker community
and the technical people at the providers
are often the same people,
or they're in very close contact.
We know people at all the providers,
and we have our contacts.
I guess maybe my question isn't clear
because it seems to me the hard part
is the so-called local loop,
which goes from the provider to your site.
In most European cities,
there's many different companies
that have fiber running between buildings,
fiber running between exchange centers, manholes.
There's lots of different ways to go from A to B.
I see.
Choice.
Yes.
Choice is a good thing.
Well, now let's talk about
other highlights of the conference.
Redbird, Jones,
anything that you'd like to focus on?
No?
I'm not sure who's going to talk here.
Okay.
Well, I mean,
the aspect of the conference that I most enjoy
is mainly,
and this sounds weird coming from hackers,
is the social aspect of it
because you get to talk to all sorts of people
from all over the place
who have different ideas about everything.
You could be working on a project
and get into a discussion about it,
and all sorts of ideas pop up
that you may not have even thought about previously.
So that's always the aspect about it
that I really enjoy.
And it applies to the CCC,
it applies to what the hack,
it applies to all the HOPE conferences.
It's all really great to kind of
be able to throw ideas back and forth in person
and really get very interesting responses
from people from all over the place.
Jones, how about you?
Well, I think this time
I actually got to enjoy a conference
instead of being stuck behind the table most of the time.
So I went to as many talks
as I thought were interesting.
I got to look around and see
the types of people that show up
at a German hacker conference,
and it's an interesting mix of people.
Very friendly.
Everyone seems kind of laid back,
and everything worked well at this conference, it seemed.
Everything was well-oiled and organized and efficient.
So I think that was just the best part.
It was very relaxing,
and we got the flow through the whole event
without any hassle.
And, you know, we always come here
and get inspired to do things back home,
so I'm hoping that you guys coming here,
you'll be inspired to do some really cool things for HOPE,
which is coming up in July in New York City.
So more Americans need to go to these things.
Next year there'll be
hopefully a German hacker camp someplace.
There'll be information about that
in the summer of 2007.
But this summer the event is HOPE in New York City.
So maybe we'll figure out a way
to get huge amounts of bandwidth.
I don't know if we'll get more than Africa
or more than even Rob's house here.
Probably not, right?
You probably have more bandwidth
than we have at the conference in your house.
I have an 8-megabit ADSL,
which is quite normal here.
That's pretty depressing,
for Americans, anyway.
Okay, Bernie, you've been at these things too in the past.
I guess you regret not being here, huh?
I wish I could be there.
I had other obligations here in the States.
Listening to you, I was sort of nostalgic
for the other conferences I've been to
where there's just such an amazing free-flow,
real-time social network going on
with just so many fascinating ideas
with kindred spirits
who are just interested in a lot of different things
that seem to overlap.
And it's just like nothing else I could describe.
So all our listeners really need to try
to make it to one of these conferences,
either here in the U.S.
or especially in other parts of the world,
and try to learn stuff
that you don't even know that you don't know.
Well said.
It sounded like something Rumsfeld once said.
Yeah, it's something that's hard to put into words
because you really have to experience it to know.
And that goes for so many things over here,
and I think Jim's going to attest to that,
where you're just in a city,
whether it be Amsterdam, whether it be Berlin,
or just Europe in general,
you're at a hacker conference,
you're meeting with these people,
you're seeing how things are put together,
and you realize that it can be done differently,
it can be done well,
it can be done effectively,
and hopefully we can bring something back to the States
where we can figure out ways of making it work better
and having more fun at the same time.
Sounds like a good idea.
When are you all coming back?
We're coming back tomorrow.
So we're probably good and depressed
by this time tomorrow night.
So I guess this is as good a time as any
to remind people that you will be...
Actually, one of the...
I was just saying this is as good a time as any
to remind people that you will be at the 2600 meeting,
which is this Friday.
The 2600 meeting is this Friday.
That's correct.
So hopefully we'll see a lot of you there.
Well, Rob, anything further?
Because you don't have your own Skype set up right now,
so it's a little inconvenient
because we have to listen to my headphones through my head.
Any other final words you'd like to say about the conference?
Maybe hopes for New York or anything like that?
I'm just looking forward to seeing everybody this summer at Hope
and see you all there.
Okay, great.
Okay, folks,
do we have some news that we'd like to get to this week
before we actually try and bring more people in
by taking phone calls?
I hope we have that technology,
but we have a lot of news about this.
There's been a lot of publicity about this domestic spying program
that the NSA has been going.
The fallout just continues and continues.
Okay.
The Justice Department is opening an inquiry into the issue,
but they're not opening an inquiry
into the people who actually broke the law,
namely the president and the NSA and the subordinates.
No, they're interested in investigating the whistleblowers
who told the public about the program,
which is kind of frightening.
The investigation apparently, according to the New York Times,
began in recent days following a formal referral from the agency
regarding the leak.
Federal officials said on condition of anonymity,
so maybe they'll be prosecuted too.
It's really, I mean, we've seen this sort of thing before
from the Bush administration
and presumably other administrations
where they're not interested in stopping the actual bad acts that go on.
Their primary problem is that we know about the bad acts,
and it's very strange to me.
There's an irony going on.
You might have heard about it, Mike,
and that is the Justice Department
that's supposedly investigating this leak
is headed up by none other than Mr. Gonzalez,
who apparently, as reported by the New York Times,
was at the former attorney general's bedside
trying to get him to sign a document to extend permission
to do this illegal wiretapping of American citizens without a warrant.
How many years ago was that?
It was after September 11, 2001.
I'm not sure of the exact year.
I don't have it here.
But, yeah, the Justice Department, in a rare show of backbone,
may or may not have failed to approve this program,
but the man at the helm of it now
certainly seems to be a supporter of the program.
Staunch.
I think Bush said some pretty interesting things pretty recently.
I think he said something,
Bernie, I think you sent us mail about this,
where he says frequently law enforcement methods
don't work in anti-terrorism efforts,
yet he claims he was talking about using
warranted law enforcement wiretaps against terrorists in 2004,
not warrantless wiretaps.
Can you explain that a little better?
Well, yeah.
I think it really shows some hypocrisy
and some sort of shell game going on here with this administration.
What's happening is we've all heard this administration,
this president, saying that conventional law enforcement methods
and checks and balances,
with our three-legged system here,
don't work well for fighting terrorism.
And he's frequently said they just don't work,
yet now he's claiming that when he said that,
I think it was, what was it, last week,
the president said that,
what was he saying?
He was saying the enemy is calling someone
and we want to know who they're calling and why.
Oh, he said something at a press conference about a year or so ago
that when we're talking about wiretaps,
and I'm paraphrasing,
when we're talking about wiretaps,
we're talking about court-ordered wiretaps to wiretap people
and so forth.
And now he's saying that that's not necessary to do this.
So he seemed to be playing both sides of the fence.
He did something really tricky.
He said, well, you know, I was talking about the Patriot Act then
and I wasn't talking about the secret program
that I wasn't telling you about at the time.
I have to disagree with you a little bit, Bernie,
and you say that there's hypocrisy here.
I think there's absolutely no hypocrisy.
I think the Bush administration has been very consistent
in their position,
which is effectively we can do whatever we want.
But they still are lying.
Well, yeah, but, you know, whatever.
Give them that.
They are still liars.
They can have it.
Okay, well, now we're lapsing into what some callers
or listeners will complain is politics, I suppose.
In fact, I'd like to read a couple of pieces of mail,
and I don't know if we have any other news stories.
We can get to those as well.
But here's one entitled Stick to Technology.
I'm a programmer and a strong conservative,
and I have a problem with the highly liberal rhetoric
contained on your show.
That aside, I have a question for you.
If the government stops monitoring its citizens' contact
with foreign peoples and an American joins with a foreign terrorist
to detonate a nuclear bomb in New York
and succeeds due to the government not knowing it is coming,
would you blame the Bush administration
for not doing enough to stop the catastrophe?
Signed, Nathan.
Bernie, do you have an answer for this?
It's kind of hard to argue with people.
But it's such a strange hypothetical to begin with,
just to use this as a nuclear...
If you don't wiretap American citizens,
then we risk being blown up by a nuclear weapon in this country.
I don't know.
But I think all Americans should be monitored and listened to at all times
to prevent any possible terrorist act ever.
No, the problem with that, Walter, is that it won't work.
There are plenty of lone wolves out there
who really are just being indoctrinated
by what they see on the Internet and on television
and really never talk to any terrorist groups,
and they would be acting alone.
So consequently, what the government should do to prevent this
is actually break into everyone's house in the United States
and make sure that there's absolutely nothing in the houses
that could be used for a terrorist act at all,
including paring knives, fingernail clippers, everything.
I mean, don't just look for that at airplanes.
Look for that in people's houses.
I mean, if you want to guarantee this,
it takes extreme measures.
And of course there's no way to guarantee anything like this.
Exactly.
It's smoke and mirrors.
It's just a way of making people feel secure.
But the intelligent people in the crowd will know
that there's no way to be 100% secure.
You'll never achieve that.
There's no way to stop terrorism completely.
It doesn't mean you're endorsing it.
It just means you're being realistic.
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in according with company policies and procedures,
as well as state and federal laws,
such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,
the FISA Act, and the CALEA,
and the agreement between Celco, slash Vodafone,
slash Airtech, slash Bell Atlantic,
and the Department of Justice, slash Department of Defense,
and FBI to 911 or other life-threatening emergency calls
from law enforcement.
Must submit to and pass Verizon Wireless Background Check.
Position is confidential.
This position is responsible for maintaining
the highest level of confidentiality
and is on call 24-7.
Act as liaison between company
and the law enforcement community, and so on.
This is an excellent job opportunity
if you would really like to know
how the wiretapping programs are going.
I have a question.
What does it mean the position is confidential?
I don't know exactly.
Because you just talked about it, so I don't know.
What does that mean they can't?
There's a URL.
Bernie S. actually sent this to us.
There's a URL where you can go to get this,
or you could go to get this job opportunity listing,
but if you click on it now,
it says the listing has been removed
at the request of the company.
Wow, they found somebody.
Maybe it is.
Maybe.
I would think confidential means
you wouldn't be able to tell anyone
that you have this job.
You wouldn't be able to talk about your work either.
Well, we can talk about other people's work
because we don't have the job, right?
Some of us have our job, but that's another story.
All right, here's another letter.
Dear Off The Hook,
I'm a longtime fan of the radio show and magazine.
I don't much care about the recent discussions.
I seem to hear more and more on politics.
For what it's worth, the magazine is not a true representation
of the radio show.
It's not supposed to be, actually.
But that's my opinion.
I do not wish to stir up any trouble.
Wow, that's your first mistake.
Of course, you should be stirring up all the trouble you can.
Anyway, the reason why I'm writing is this link,
www, actually, you don't need the www,
tinyurl.com slash 9A as in apple, 4B as in boy, Y.
Note the PDF file.
I know you discussed the rights of photographers in the past.
Perhaps it will have some use.
This is basically the legal rights of photographers.
And that's signed,
Corndog Charlie and the Eleven Sisters of Soul,
P.S. Verizon sucks.
Well, Charlie, I should point out that
talking about the legal rights of photographers
would be considered a political issue by many people
who are activists trying to get rights of photographers
to be respected, to be protected.
So, you know, it's really hard to decide
what is politics and what is not.
You know, we can't always be talking about
some kind of technical system
or the latest virus that's gotten out
or some kind of security hole.
It all ties together,
and very often social issues are part of the whole equation.
There's some good news on the photography front.
That's right.
Do you have this, Bernie? Do you want me to read it?
Yeah, actually, I do have this story.
One of our listeners, Michael Finfer,
was kind enough to forward this to us.
Apparently the director, the executive director
of New Jersey Transit, the top guy,
George Warrington,
apparently received so many public comments
about the proposed rule changes
to basically make it illegal for anyone
to take pictures of New Jersey Transit facilities
that he decided that this was just completely unenforceable
based on all the calls and letters and e-mails he received.
And he's saying effective immediately,
and I'm quoting,
we will return to our historic practice,
which enables hobbyists and other noncommercial photographers
to take pictures in public areas
throughout the New Jersey Transit system
without obtaining permission or providing prior notice.
There will also continue to be no restrictions
on journalists in public areas of the system.
And this is really refreshing,
because I was threatened with arrest just 2 or 3 months ago
by a police officer in a New Jersey Transit facility
when I was taking pictures of just the lobby.
Nothing like some secret track or something.
It was just the lobby.
And he said if I took another picture,
he'd have me locked up.
And I asked him to...
This is a sergeant, Leonard, I believe,
with the Delaware River Port Authority,
although he was guarding a New Jersey Transit facility.
I asked him what law this was he was citing,
and he said, well, there's a law,
and I had him call into his command,
and they said, well, they couldn't find the law,
but he assured me that there was a law,
it just wasn't in writing.
So we had a good argument about it,
and he finally let me take a couple more pictures
after I convinced him that I wasn't a threat.
But I just didn't like being threatened with prison,
and now it's good to carry around one of these letters
and hand it to someone who does that,
but we shouldn't have to carry around letters
and permission to take pictures of public facilities.
It sounds like this law or this rule
was defeated in a similar way to how,
as far as I can tell, the New York City transit rule
against photography was also defeated.
And that is there's these really kind of
small-time bureaucrats at these agencies
who are responsible for these rule changes.
And I think if they get as many as 10 letters on a subject,
it's considered to them a massive public outpouring
of something, because no one really ever pays attention
to what these people do.
So I think if they get 10 or 100 letters,
they seize up, they don't know how to respond.
So I think that's really how these things got stopped.
Well, this is actually the director.
Go ahead.
Well, it's just that you see these petty bureaucrats,
people on a fairly low level,
who take it upon themselves to go an extra step
above what Homeland Security is doing
because they want to feel even safer.
So they're going to make up some kind of law that says,
well, let's not allow photography on trains anymore.
Let's, you know, add all these extra security precautions
that are completely unconstitutional.
But, you know, we want to feel safe,
so we're going to just bypass that anyway.
And, yeah, you're right.
When people object to that, and it's on a smaller scale,
so fewer people can make more of a difference,
it really can stop something bad from happening,
something really bad.
I think it's a testament to the people
who use New Jersey Transit
and like to take pictures of trains
and train stations and things like that.
They spoke up, and they were able to get their voice heard,
and as a result, they were able to save a little bit of our rights,
at least in that particular area.
That's why it's so important to act locally,
because it does affect things on a national scale.
If anyone wants a copy of the New Jersey Transit executive director's letter
saying that this rule has changed,
because I'm sure they haven't gone around
and educated all their enforcement officers
on this new rule, this new announcement,
you could email us at oth at 2600.com,
and we will send you a link
where you can print out the letter for your own handy carrying around.
I'd like to read one more letter,
and then maybe we can take some phone calls at 212-209-2900.
This listener writes in,
First of all, I cannot express how much I enjoy your shows.
Your perspective on things going on around us
is very valuable and entertaining,
so this is not an angry email.
Shucks.
However, I'm concerned because on the 28th,
one of the speakers gave out two numbers,
one to the NSA, one to the White House.
Now, I want to make the calls just out of curiosity
to find out if my line is being tapped by the NSA.
It is frightening to think that my phone
could possibly have been tapped at some point,
but it's not all that surprising.
It does not really affect me too much, since I have nothing to hide.
However, although most people think I'm white,
many people wouldn't know that my family is, in fact, Middle Eastern,
and I'm currently stationed at an Air Force base in North Dakota.
Considering all this focus on the Middle East,
the fact that my grandparents come from that region,
coupled with the fact that I serve in a nuclear base,
there's very little doubt in my mind that my phone has been tapped.
Hell, I've been in this dorm for two years,
and they've recently installed a surveillance system.
Three floors, two cameras per floor,
one per day room, three per floor total.
And why not, right?
My question to you is,
would you suggest I satisfy my curiosity and make the calls,
or, now that you understand my situation,
suggest otherwise?
Thanks for your time.
Well, I don't think your curiosity will, in fact, be satisfied by calling.
I highly doubt that they'll tell you if your phone is tapped or not,
but it might be a worthwhile experiment.
If you call them using Skype, will they know who you are?
Well, I sure confused Mike when I called him with Skype before.
What did you see, Mike?
I received a telephone call from...
You called me on my cell phone to inform me that you would be calling the studio,
and the number that you called me at was 0000123456,
which is not a number that I think I could call you back on, for instance.
No, I think what that is is somebody being lazy
and not programming the number.
You don't really need to program the number
if you're calling from the Internet anyway.
But, yeah, if you get that kind of caller ID,
that's probably somebody on Skype.
All right, shall we take some phone calls now?
Let's take a couple.
Our number again is 212-209-2900.
And, hello, you're on the air.
Hi.
I'm so glad that I got on,
and I doubt the person who sent in that letter
is in a hypothetical situation about someone launching a nuclear attack against us.
He's listening.
But it's idiots like that and mindless boobs
that continue to put people in office like George Bush,
who have the whole world hating us.
This hatred against the United States government did not come out of nowhere.
It did not come out of thin air.
It came out of our policies that have us thinking
that we can do whatever we want to whoever we want,
invade countries, overthrow leaders.
And this dates back a long time.
We overthrew Mossadegh in 1953.
We put the Shah of Iran in power.
These people still live with the fallout from everything we've done over the years.
So for the boobs who want to paint us as being totally innocent
and everybody in the world that hates us,
I think they should learn how to read books.
That's my comment.
I'll hang up and I'll listen to whatever you have to say.
Thank you very much.
Make sure you call.
Whoa, whoa.
What is that noise?
That's the BAI phones.
Are we back in planet Earth?
We're all here.
Wow.
Whoa.
I hope that doesn't happen every time we take a call.
But yeah, you know, this caller is probably going to be accused
of contributing to the political discussions that we have here on this radio show.
But, you know, it happens.
It's part of life.
No further comment than that, I guess?
I don't think any further comment is needed.
All right.
Then we'll take another call.
Hello.
You're on the air.
Yes.
Did you get my email, Bernie?
Okay.
Did you get his email?
I think you're going to take another call.
Yes, I did.
Oh, that's good.
Hello.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Yes.
I was wondering if you guys recommended any other cell phone companies besides Verizon
for the New York greater area?
They're all terrible.
When did we recommend Verizon?
No, but I'm saying that besides Verizon, if there's a good one to sponsor, you know,
if you're going to boycott the big guys or one to promote.
They're all big guys.
There are no small cell phone companies that I'm aware of in New York.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Okay.
Well, I'm sure that's not the answer you wanted to hear, but I don't know.
Who do we recommend?
Did we ever recommend anybody?
I didn't.
If we did, it was a mistake.
I wouldn't recommend any of them.
There have been weeks where we haven't condemned one of them.
That could be seen as a recommendation, I suppose.
It's about the closest we get.
Maybe we should suggest the GSM company, something that works outside of the states.
Well, here's the thing.
A few of us are using GSM providers like T-Mobile or was it Singular?
Singular.
But I kept my SIM in my phone because I have been making a whole lot of phone calls.
Other folks here have gotten Dutch SIM cards or German SIM cards.
How has that worked out for you guys?
It's worked out great for me.
I haven't used it for voice, but for SMSing, it's not a bargain, but it's not terribly expensive.
I can still keep in contact with people that way.
That wouldn't be possible using your SIM from the United States?
Well, I could, but I think it's actually cheaper for me to SMS with this Dutch number.
I think I figured it out.
It's not much cheaper, but on the order of $0.10 or $0.20 less.
You also had to pay something to get the SIM in the first place, right?
Well, yeah.
We had to purchase the SIM card, and that came with a certain amount of credit on it,
but it was a small amount.
We had to buy a refill card immediately to add more credits to it.
All in all, I'm actually glad I got it because I didn't add international roaming to my card until later on.
I have yet to see if it actually worked.
It wasn't working almost a week after Christmas.
You're talking about your SIM back home.
You didn't have international roaming on that.
Right.
I added that after we got here, thinking, well, let me try that instead, and it didn't work out.
So this is the only way for me to communicate.
Okay.
So I guess in that regard, it makes a degree of sense, but still, we're talking about an investment of, what, $20, $30 that you had to make just to get the thing?
Well, yeah.
But for communications, for me, I think that's worth it.
Other people may disagree.
Well, just to get an idea.
Go ahead.
Just to get an idea, it's about 75 euro cents to call the United States per minute using these prepaid phones,
which isn't all that bad because what I found is it's a similar price from the public telephones.
But when you have access to the Internet everywhere you're going, like we did,
it's certainly not worth it not to use a service like Skype, which, again, is only 3 US cents per minute.
And it's really, really worth it.
But when you're walking around the streets, having a device that's able to SMS is certainly worth it.
So just for the SMS capability, I would say the prepaid SIMs are worth it.
Hang on one second here.
You're saying it costs 75 euro cents to call the United States using a Dutch SIM?
Per minute, yes.
Well, that's almost exactly what I pay using my American SIM.
Almost exactly?
My American SIM is just under a dollar.
I mean, you know, it's a little more, but I figure it would be a lot more.
Let's not be under the illusion that paying a dollar a minute to make a phone call between two sort of industrialized nations is a good deal.
No, it's not.
And considering we're paying 3 cents a minute right now to have all these people together online,
I think we need to look at alternatives.
Couldn't one purchase a prepaid calling card in Germany, there, or in the Netherlands,
and call in as a local call from the GSM phone, and then call the US that way, much more cheaply?
I tried purchasing a prepaid card for public telephones, and it was about a euro a minute on that as well.
I got a 10 euro card and was able to talk for about 10 minutes before all the funds were depleted.
Wow, I've found much cheaper ones. That's kind of strange.
Okay, let's move on and see if we can take another phone call.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hello?
Hi, what's on your mind?
Is this like a pre-screening?
No, no, no.
I'm live.
You're live on the air, so say something.
Really? Maybe I'm getting a delay off of the shoutcast, I guess?
Yes.
Well, nonetheless, I wanted to know how you guys feel about Microsoft's response to the Windows metafile vulnerability,
and how they've yet to really release a patch for that.
And how do you think that large companies such as Microsoft, who support so many users, take so long to deal with large vulnerabilities?
You asked us for our opinion on Microsoft's response. I was unaware that there had been a response.
No, there is no response. I apologize.
Are you referring to the flaw found in Windows?
Go ahead.
They hope to have a patch ready next week. I think that was their only response so far.
How do you feel about that kind of stuff?
90% of the world, well, maybe not 90%, but a large portion of the world uses this product, right?
And they can't even support it with live patches, right?
I've read something, although I didn't understand it well, and maybe somebody in Europe can help me with this,
that apparently this sort of problem where you look at or open a picture in your mail or on a web page
is very difficult to get a patch for because it takes advantage of a feature in the operating system rather than a flaw.
Anybody have anything?
Well, I was reading a post recently today and they said that actually third parties were releasing patches before Microsoft was.
Yes, there are third-party patches available.
I mean, doesn't that kind of defeat anything?
If third-party people are patching operating systems that a large company can't protect or can't support, right?
Isn't that a bit of a problem?
Well, I would at first think, who are these third parties?
Because, gee, if you're a hacker and somebody else posts an exploit, wouldn't it be brilliant of you to put a patch up?
Well, let's just take into consideration that not everyone is out for an evil way, I guess.
That's true, that's true.
But the point is, without knowing who these third parties are, you can't really comment on that.
Yeah, Jim's point is that a lot of large businesses won't trust third-party patches like this.
They only depend on Microsoft and only trust Microsoft, and they have to cover themselves in these cases, so they won't be applying it.
I think it's Microsoft.
Microsoft did say something of value.
They said until they release their patch, users should be careful not to visit unfamiliar websites.
Yes.
Well, I think that's something we could all live by, isn't it?
Well, I don't know.
Thanks for taking the call, guys.
I really appreciate you guys talking about something besides the politics.
It's good to hear you guys talking something a little technical, even though I had to bring it up, right?
Okay, well, that's what we need our listeners for.
Thanks for calling.
See you later.
And speaking of large companies, there's a rumor going around that Google is going to come out with a cheap off-the-shelf computer in the $200 range.
I heard that same rumor.
Anyone have anything insightful to say?
Google has denied the rumor.
Well, then.
Well, Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab has come up, of course, with that cheap $100 computer with the wind-up handle for Africa and other third-world nations and the open-source software within it.
And allegedly, it's going to be sold by them in the United States at $200 to $300 to subsidize it for the emerging economies.
So this may or may not be related.
High speculation in all this.
Do we have time for any more phone calls, Mike?
Maybe if it's very, very brief.
Okay, because I'd like to give out the address first and then end with a phone call, if that's possible.
We've got a call, sorry.
Okay, let's take the call then do the address.
Hey, it's Bruce from the Bronx. How are you doing, guys?
Hi.
Listen, I have a question. Do you nerds ever get any pussy?
I think we should give out the address first, like I planned on, Mike.
Yes.
All right. If you would like to write to us at OffTheHook, you can do so by sending an email to OTH at 2600.com.
Our snail mail address is OffTheHook, care of WBAI, 120 Wall Street.
10th floor.
New York. New York.
1-000-5.
Boy, the audio sure sounds weird through this thing.
Okay, well, do we have any time for any more calls at all, intelligent or not?
I don't know. We're running very close to the edge.
All right. Let's see if we can take a 20-second call.
All right. Hello, you're on the air, but only for 20 seconds.
I won't talk about anything political.
You won't talk. That's a true statement from Rebel.
He will not talk about anything political.
Hello. We have a very brief moment to talk to you.
Hey, how are you doing? Great show. I love your show, guys.
I work for a very large telco.
I want to share some information about some of what we call trapping and tracing for call intercepts.
You got a minute for that?
Oh, boy.
If we run out of time, call us next week for sure.
Call us next week.
Yeah, but quickly, please. Very quickly.
Okay, well, basically, we can. I work at a not-for-a-large telco.
We can do what are called trap and traces for both VoIP calls and traditional TDM calls.
As long as your call gets switched on the PSPN, on the traditional phone network,
we can fulfill, we do fulfill, you know, FBI requests and stuff like that.
So, you know, if I had more time, I could get more into it, but it's pretty cool.
All right.
Please call us early in the show next week or write to us at OTH2630.com.
All right. Yes.
Writing would be better because then we could call you perhaps.
Well, I don't think he wants that.
All right. Okay.
So we're just about out of time.
We'll see.
You'll be back in the studio next week, Emanuel?
I hope to be, and I hope to be at the 2600 meeting in New York on Friday.
Check www.2600.com slash meetings to see if there's meetings in your area this Friday.
All right.
Oh, we have a special song, right?
Yeah.
You want to tell us something about this?
It's German.
It's called – I forget the title.
It's some German word.
Die Warteschleife, which means the hold music or the hold pattern.
And I think, you know, I think that people should just listen to it and maybe learn German.
Mike, you found this song.
This is what we played last week by accident on hold.
But the funny thing is some of the lyrics say things like you're in a hurry.
That's not my problem, though.
Great hold music to hear, especially if you know German.
Und sie sind dran
Telefonieren sie mobil
Ach, das kostet wirklich viel
Und jetzt hängen sie hier fest
Ja, das ist ein Neventest
Jetzt hat sie sich ja schon ne Krise
Immerhin bin ich nicht für Elise
Diese Melodie ist nur für sie, sie armes Schwein
Please hold the line
Ich bin die Warteschleife
Und ich bin endlos lang
Ich bin die Warteschleife
Und sie sind dran
Ich bin die Warteschleife
Bin so unendlich lang
Und ich fang nochmal von vorn an
Und sie sind doch hin-dran
Adios