yesterday. Congratulations to Elza Nyeri and Eric Klein from all of us here at FSRN. For
archives of this or any other FSRN newscast or documentary, you can check out our website
at www.fsrn.org. That's fsrn.org. You can also email us your comments or story ideas
to comments at fsrn.org. From KPFK in LA, I'm Aura Bogado.
And this is Radio Station WBAI New York. It's 7 o'clock. Time once again for Off The Hook.
Thank you.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you on this Tuesday evening along with a whole room packed full of people tonight.
Let's see if we can get everybody in. We've got Jim over there.
Hello.
And Mike.
Yes.
And Redbird.
Good evening.
And Seraf, you're joining us as well.
Hi.
How are you doing? Mojo, you're still here from California?
By your command.
Yeah. And still working for Battlestar Galactica. You've checked, right? They haven't...
They're still returning my calls, yes.
Okay, good. And we also have Arseny.
Hey.
And Walter.
Hi.
So many people. I don't know what the occasion is, but glad you all could make it.
Bernie S. is not here this week. He still has the Hungarian flu. Somehow he gave it to me,
even though I haven't talked to him except on the phone. I don't really have it, but I've got something.
I think I have what Mike had last week. Maybe you're the one who gave it to me.
Maybe. Everyone's getting sick this week.
Yeah, it's part of the conspiracy. Okay, you know what? We're not going to spend a whole lot of time
talking about the conspiracies, but we are going to, you know, read some letters.
How much time are we going to spend?
We got some good ones.
How much time are we going to spend?
You got the memo from the Department of the, well, never mind. You know how much we're supposed to spend on it.
No, I don't know. I didn't get the memo.
Yes, Jim.
Is there a conspiracy to deny me the memo?
Why don't we start with good news and go downhill from there for a change?
You have good news?
I actually have good news.
Okay.
There's good news from, of all people, the Federal Election Commission.
They've ruled that weblogs and similar things on the Internet are exempt from campaign spending.
This has been a sore point for a number of years, and people on both the right and the left were fearful
that the $2,000 limit would be applied to weblogs, assorted comments on the web,
people putting up sites supporting a candidate or position.
And quickly, $2,000 worth of work could be just one little page.
Well, the Federal Election Commission decided that, no, this is free speech.
Free speech triumphs on the net.
It's rare that we can say that, but in this case, we can.
So you can blog for whoever or against whoever you want,
and you don't have to worry about running afoul of the feds.
Well, I guess that's good for now until they figure out a way to have us run afoul of them in the future.
But interesting.
There's a new board game out, the Patriot Act board game.
It's true.
It's a send-up of Monopoly.
Players don't pass Go, they don't go directly to jail, they go to Guantanamo Bay.
Yes, instead of losing cash for landing on certain squares, they lose civil liberties.
And the Mr. Monopoly character at the center of the board is replaced by a scowling former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
We have to get one for Hope.
Yeah, oh, definitely, definitely.
Patriot Act, the home version, pokes fun at the historic abuse of governmental powers by the recently renewed anti-terrorism law.
And while it may be fun, creator Michael Kibosh, what a great name,
a graphic artist and Arab civil rights advocate is serious about how he feels the law has curtailed Americans' freedom.
You know what? We should invite this guy to come.
Hopefully, this is from Hamilton, New Jersey, so maybe that's where he is.
So maybe he's listening now.
Come to our Hope conference in July and we'll give a talk about this, maybe demo it, maybe have a tournament.
How about that? A Patriot Act board game tournament.
Sounds like a lot of fun.
I like it more.
Where can you purchase one of these?
I don't know. Why don't you browse the story and you tell us if there's some sales information there.
But, you know, maybe we can do some kind of, I don't know, mass contest with this game.
If this game gets enough publicity, maybe he can be sued by the makers of Monopoly.
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.
Patriot Act.
Yeah.
Okay, other things.
You hear about this? Online amateurs have cracked Nazi codes.
This actually happened a couple of weeks ago.
Three German ciphers unsolved since World War II are finally being cracked,
helped by thousands of home computers.
We can still fight the Nazis.
About 60 years.
It took a little while, but we did it.
The codes resisted the best efforts of the celebrated Allied cryptographers
based at Bletschke Park during the war.
Now one has been solved by running code-breaking software
on a grid of Internet-linked home computers.
The complex ciphers were encoded in 1942 by a new version of the German Enigma machine
and led to regular hits on Allied vessels by German U-boats.
Is there a reason why the Germans couldn't just tell us how to do it?
I mean, kept the secret this way, or can't they decode it either?
Maybe the only Enigma machines that solved this
are the only codes that were bombed, burned, destroyed towards the end of the war.
That's what they want you to believe.
I'll bet they're still making coded messages with these things somewhere.
Those Nazis.
It's probably Nazi gold or sunken Nazi subs full of little aliens that we can...
It just goes to show you, though, that if you have something that's unbreakable,
if you think you have something that's unbreakable,
and about 50 years or so, you might not anymore.
So that's something to keep in mind for all you people basically encrypting things.
Might not be as secure as you think.
Well, it's happened with a couple of algorithms so far.
But real quick about this board game.
You can get it online, and there's no URL here.
However, I'm sure if you Google for it, you'll be able to find it.
But only 2,000 copies have been downloaded since it debuted in 2004,
which is kind of unfortunate.
Wait, 2004? Why are we just talking about it now?
I think we've seen it.
This is what it says in the article.
So why is it an article, then, if it came out in 2004?
Oh, I don't know. I mean, the article date is March 18th.
Yeah, but it's one of these instances where the media decides something's a story,
and all of a sudden people talk about it like us, and it's actually two years old.
But still, it's a good idea, and I'm glad I'm hearing about it now.
So, all right.
Speaking about Germany, there's interesting, kind of amusing development
involving some closed-circuit cameras and a German chancellor
supposed to protect some of Germany's most famous antique treasures.
But the other day, embarrassed officials admitted
that a security camera on the roof of Berlin's Pergamon Museum
had instead been filming the chancellor, Angela Merkel.
The camera overlooks her private flat.
Over the past eight years, guards at the museum in Berlin's central Mitte district
have been able to spy into Ms. Merkel's living room.
The newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported the other day they could even zoom in on her sofa.
Reporters from the paper tried it for themselves.
They spotted her reclusive husband watching television.
It was like a scene out of the Big Brother container.
Unbelievable.
But I guess this just goes to show that surveillance affects everybody.
It seems to be happening a lot lately.
We had a story a couple of months ago, I think it was,
about the British doing a similar thing with all of their closed-circuit cameras.
Drawing on some poor woman in her apartment.
So keep your shades down.
Yeah, and you know, one day that's not even going to be enough,
because they'll be able to look through the windows.
It's already not enough. There's a suit against the NYPD.
A helicopter with advanced infrared technology
got a couple last summer on the roof of an apartment building.
It was dark, it was late, but the helicopter noticed what they were doing
and it was as good as normal lighting, what with the high-tech camera.
Didn't they notice the helicopter?
Well, yeah, but it was far away and they didn't think anything of it.
Here's a warning.
Taxpayers not paying attention to the forms prepared for them
by commercial tax preparers could find their personal financial information
being sold more widely to data brokers and marketers.
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, too,
where someone's social security number was actually being used
as part of the mailing label of, I think, Merrill Lynch.
This is slightly different.
The IRS is proposing to alter some privacy protections
that consumer groups say would allow tax preparers greater leeway
to sell personal financial information from the documents
or even copies of the tax return itself.
I think it's outrageous that they are even allowed to do this at all,
sell your tax return.
The IRS has scheduled a hearing for April 4th on the proposal.
Part of a package of revisions, the agency says,
are designed to safeguard information.
One, for example, would require written taxpayer consent
before a tax firm sends a return overseas for processing.
Wait, these are a package of reforms to safeguard information,
and by safeguarding information they mean sell it?
Yeah, well, no, this particular proposal they had
to get approval before they're sent overseas
because the people overseas are the threat,
never the people here in this country.
It's always if you send it to a foreign country,
that's what you have to watch out for,
so that's how they're getting away with saying that it's safeguarding information.
So I'll either tie another little thing to that...
Or Will would be so proud.
Well, I think he'd just be resigned that he was able to tell the future pretty well.
Tax preparation firms can already sell, with written consent from the taxpayer,
information from an individual's return to affiliated groups
such as any other part of a holding company affiliated with them.
The IRS proposal would drop the affiliation requirement
enabling anyone to buy the information.
Why would anybody agree to that?
Because their tax advisor gives them a pile of forms and says sign these.
Yeah, that's true. It says right here,
taxpayers often hastily sign documents and tax forms
prepared by commercial firms without reading them.
Well, I hesitate to say it's your own fault,
but you've got to read these things before you sign them,
and don't trust anybody.
Also, if some of these places charge by the hour,
then you don't want to be really spending all that time sitting there reading forms,
although I guess...
Can't you take them home and sign them there?
I don't know.
And then you have the case, this is hilarious.
I don't know if you guys saw this.
This was something that appeared on the register.
The Heartland turned vicious this week
when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI
because its website was hacked by Linux maker CentOS.
Problem is, CentOS didn't hack this particular site at all.
The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server.
The tail kicked off when the city of Tuttle,
their city manager Jerry Taylor,
fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff.
Taylor had popped onto the city's website
and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate
that appears with a new web server installation.
Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack
on the bustling town's IT infrastructure.
Who gave you permission to invade my website
and block me and anyone else from accessing it?
Three question marks, Taylor wrote to CentOS.
Please remove your software immediately
before I report it to government officials!
I am the city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma.
A few people would initiate a tech support query like this,
but these are dangerous times and Taylor suspected the worst.
Anyway, CentOS developer Johnny Hughes jumped on the case
and tried to explain the situation to Taylor.
I feel sorry for your city, he replied in an email.
CentOS is an operating system.
It is probably installed on the computer that runs your website.
Please contact someone who does IT for you
and show them the page so that they can configure
your Apache web server correctly.
That response did not go over so well.
Get this website off my homepage!
Five exclamation points.
It is blocking access to my website.
Five more with a dash for some reason.
Again, CentOS tried to jump in
and explain some of the technical details,
but that response didn't go over so well.
Unless the software is removed,
I will file a complaint with the FBI.
It went on for a long, long time.
I am computer literate.
I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation.
Now, can you tell me how to remove your software
that you acknowledge you provided free of charge?
I consider this hacking.
You can read the whole exchange at the following website.
I didn't have time to make a tiny URL of this, but here it is.
www.centos.org
That's C-E-N-T-O-S dot O-R-G
slash modules slash news
slash article dot P-H-P
question mark story ID equals 127.
And if someone makes a tiny URL of that,
we'll read that in future weeks.
Should you follow this URL with seven exclamation marks?
Didn't this guy read the page that came up
that said it worked, this is a test page,
you should ask your administrator to make it a real page?
Well, if anybody knows dealing with end users,
they're pretty stupid.
Well, now we're going to get a lot of mail from end users,
many of whom listen to our show,
but I guess it'll drown out the conspiracy people, Walter.
But this guy wasn't an end user,
he had 22 years of experience.
That's right.
He'd take exception to that remark anyway, Jim.
You know, I'm convinced that it was a purposeful attack
on Buttle, Oklahoma, but they mistyped it
and it was Tunnel, Oklahoma.
Is there a Buttle, Oklahoma?
No, no, that's the idea behind the movie Brazil.
Oh.
I mean, I would have actually been pretty clueless
if I was the person receiving this request.
What are you talking about?
I had a lot of fun with it, I'll say that.
The responses just were priceless.
But yeah, the person who sent this in to us
basically said some people just should not be using computers,
and I agree.
Just like not everybody should be driving,
not everybody should be using computers
because there's just so much that you're going to
waste people's time with asking ridiculous questions
like where's the any key and stuff like that,
which people still do.
Yes, but also there's an obligation
on the part of computer developers
to make things usable by people without advanced degrees.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Apache configuration isn't among those.
Our email address, oth at 2600.com.
Of course, we always enjoy reading your email.
In fact, we're going to enjoy reading a little bit of it right now,
and then we're going to get into a couple of rants and raves
from people, and then we'll take some phone calls.
But let's try and get through this quickly here.
First, a very important thing.
Dear Emanuel, you seriously need to do a retraction
from last week's show.
The guy who did 9-11 in plain sight
is not the Holocaust denier,
and yes, you're absolutely right.
I was wrong about that.
I besmirched the guy's name.
I confused.
There are so many different films out there now
that I confused one film with another,
and we've offered them all as premiums here at BAI.
But that's no excuse.
My apologies. I got it wrong.
The Holocaust denier is Eric Huffschmidt,
and his particular film, I believe,
was called Painful Deceptions.
The film that we were talking about last week
was 9-11 in plain sight,
plain spelled P-L-A-N-E,
and that was made by Dave von Kleist,
who is not, as far as I know, a Holocaust denier.
And, of course, we were also talking about
the film Loose Change,
which was done by Dylan Avery,
which I believe, Redbird, you have brought for me.
You didn't bring it again.
Folks, this is it.
You talk about conspiracies.
I do want to see this film.
I want to see it on my nice big TV screen,
not on my computer.
But your DVD player is broken.
No, I bought a new one.
I actually bought a new one.
It was Philips this time.
Not to give any plugs or anything like that,
but Philips actually makes a DVD player
which is region-free,
or you have to hit a few buttons
and it becomes region-free.
Yeah, maybe.
And it will get lost in the mail.
I see how this works.
So, again, apologies for that.
But my opinions still stand
on various issues.
Let's just quickly go through
a couple pieces of mail.
Dear OffTheHook, I'd love to hear
an extended rebuttal of the 9-11 conspiracy theories
from you and the others on the radio show.
Okay, you know what? I'll tell you what.
We'll do an extended rebuttal.
Get us more airtime.
Get us a two-hour show.
And I'll tell you what, for the first year,
we'll spend an hour of it just rebutting
9-11 conspiracy theories.
I resign.
We'll have more space in the studio, too, then.
Because half the people will walk out.
In many ways, you speak with much more authority
than the loose-change characters.
It makes it sound so bad when you put it that way,
calling them the loose-change characters.
The sloppy pulp conspiracy folks
don't stand up well at all to well-mannered critique.
Fox's flimsy moon-landing hoax program
being a chief example.
I never saw that. I heard about it.
They actually aired a program that sort of said
that the moon landing was a hoax.
Don't see it. It's really bad.
Yeah, well, you know, the thing is,
it was based on Capricorn 1,
which is about, I think, going to Mars,
and that was a hoax.
And they said, look at all the similarities.
But Capricorn 1 came out in 1978.
So maybe they were the ones looking at the moon landings
and imitating them, and that's why it looks similar.
Anyway, I was hoping also the 2600 crew
could create separate feeds for off-the-hook
and off-the-wall. It'd be so much more convenient.
It's fine, Peter. Yes, we have.
Have we done this? We have.
Okay, because I always see e-mails about this.
It's new. People might not know about it, but we have.
I didn't know about it until just now.
It's only for the high quality, the high fidelity.
I'll let people judge the quality for themselves.
But the high-fidelity ones have their own feeds,
and there's one for off-the-hook
and one for off-the-wall.
Joe, off-the-hook, I often tune into your show
on my way home from work because I turn on my radio,
and it's usually on...
You don't have to explain why.
You don't have to explain how it happens.
It's not a crime we're accusing you of.
Okay, you're listening to us.
No further information is needed.
Anyway, I enjoy you guys. You are bright, funny,
real off a lot of novel technical data
that is fun to listen to.
You know this is going to turn into something bad
when you get this kind of comment right away.
But I happen to be tuning in the week before last
when you fell into an unfortunate trap
over the 9-11 questions.
I've thought a lot about it
and couldn't resist sending you a note,
just like I couldn't resist reading it.
Obviously, it's not your area of interest or expertise.
And if only that was the qualification
to not speak about something.
And when the first call came in
suggesting that the movie coming out
about the alleged Let's Roll story is fiction,
it seemed to press a button in you,
and your normal pleasant demeanor dissolved.
I think I even said,
this is pressing a button in me.
So you don't get credit for finding that out.
It's an impossible task, even if you are right
and prepared to argue every point.
No, that wasn't at all what we were saying.
Yeah, I mean, we question the official story.
We really do.
To this day, I have questions.
How did they know everybody's name, the hijackers?
How do you know that?
It's kind of unclear as to how exactly
they figured all that out.
It wasn't really explained very well.
A lot has been covered up.
There's no question about that.
It's just my problem is when people have the answers
why should we believe you
when you don't even have the ability
to cover anything up?
You're just pointing out things
that are crazy hypothetical situations
and passing them off as the gospel.
Anyway, speaking in very general terms,
the whole group started characterizing
every person,
again, generalization here,
who puts forth one of the questions
floating around as a conspiracy theorist
and started ridiculing them all
as if anyone who questions any part...
which is completely wrong.
Paint everyone with a single brush, blah, blah, blah.
Your skepticism about any theory
is entirely appropriate
but is useless to attempt to discredit everything
all at once.
The theme is just wrong here.
You must know the Bush administration never played anything straight
so it's safe to assume that if you put yourself up
as a defender of its positions,
you're on shaky territory.
Again, not defending Bush administration,
defending what we see in front of us,
what is based on witness documents,
and all sorts of other evidence.
It would be appropriate to tell you callers,
this is an area I really don't know about
and don't really want to get into on the air.
Well, if that's the case,
if you want us to say that,
then shouldn't the people who are calling in,
unless these are experts in the field,
they shouldn't be saying anything either.
This seems like a way of just shutting everybody up,
which might be convenient to some people,
but I prefer to talk things out
and air whatever needs to be aired
and explain positions
and things like that.
You might even take a particular theory
and analyze it piece by piece.
That might really be helpful.
I think we've done that.
When you got so much mail,
you hardened your position
and became even more defensive and irate.
Obviously the whole subject irritates you.
No, it's a little irritating
because I get impatient.
It's just like when I'm driving
and people are going too slow in front of you
and they're blocking you
except for the ones that fall into holes in Brooklyn.
Anyway, this letter keeps going on
for multiple pages,
but basically the crux of it is
that we embarrass ourselves by even mentioning it.
I don't agree with that.
Emmanuel, my friend, it would probably be easier
for you to back into your regular format
and leave these theories to others to discuss.
They're not discussing them very well.
Stay from Hoboken.
We can talk about all sorts of things
and obviously this interests our listeners,
but it's not something that we want to spend
a whole lot of time on
only because we have so many other things to discuss.
But if someone puts forth a theory
that we have particular exception to,
we'll explain why.
There's nothing in here that explains anything
that tells us this is the fact
other than many people say this
or you're obviously allied with these people.
The major thing that we were disputing
was the silly stuff like
people who said that the planes didn't bring down the towers
and that planes didn't crash
where they said they crashed.
What's the point in that?
There's much bigger issues here
like the fact that most people
I talk to even today think that
Iraq had something to do with 9-11
and stuff like that.
There's so many other aspects to explore
that there's no point in focusing on these silly things.
That's your real conspiracy right there
is being able to successfully blame
an entity that had nothing to do with it
and being able to
basically just get the country
into war mode very easily.
That's a conspiracy.
Do they have prior knowledge?
I doubt it but that's something that we really don't know.
What we do know is that
certain things happened that day
and they resulted in other things happening
such as buildings collapsing
and fires and people dying
and not coming home again because
they were in the planes that did not go someplace else.
Some mysterious place.
Was it another planet? I don't know.
Aircraft hangers?
Cleveland.
Area 51.
Area 51 did come up in one of these, didn't it?
Did it? Oh God.
This person writes in
the real problem here is the fact that
there are so many lies that are being spread
I believe that these are being spread in order to destroy
any genuine debate about what happened on 9-11
and it's working.
This is the medic conspiracy theory.
The medic conspiracy theory?
The conspiracy theories are themselves a conspiracy.
The medics were conspiring.
That would be silly.
This destroys any genuine debate
about what happened on 9-11.
You can't question 9-11 without a group of fools
talking about missiles hitting the World Trade Center towers.
It's a shame that valid facts and questions
are being ignored because of this crap.
This is exactly how I feel.
This is exactly how I feel.
It's not questioning.
It is questioning everything that happened
but it's also mocking the ones that are silly
and easily disproven.
On things that are really insignificant
in the scope of things.
If you put explosives in the World Trade Center
you still have to get the explosives
into the World Trade Center.
Nobody saw that.
And why not?
Terrorists worldwide have concurred on this.
That blowing up the building from the inside
without using a plane is an acceptable form of terrorism.
So that would have worked.
That would have achieved their goals and everything.
Everyone would have been happy with that terrorist-wise.
Not merely terrorists worldwide.
They didn't need the planes.
They could have saved all that trouble.
It makes no sense when you analyze it.
Two questions that have to be asked.
Why would they not hit the White House?
There's an answer to that actually.
Supposedly the plane that hit the Pentagon
was supposed to hit the White House.
I don't know how they know this.
That's something to question too.
I've heard about that as well.
I think that plane was supposed to hit the Capitol.
They looked at the flight path of the plane.
It was very obvious.
It was heading for the Capitol,
but it just missed it and didn't get low enough.
They seemed very clear that the Pentagon
was the last minute.
So the one in Pennsylvania
was going to hit the White House.
The one that actually landed safely in Cleveland.
Why turn around and hit a side of the Pentagon
that had just been rebuilt and was nearly empty?
Why not strike?
That would explain that if that were in fact true.
Again, I say if that were in fact true.
One more letter on this subject.
Love the show.
My stack of zines is ever growing.
Nice to hear some critical discussion
of the 9-11 conspiracy theories on the air.
I guess you don't really hear that all that much.
Either hear the government view
or you hear the conspiracy theories,
but you don't hear a critique of the conspiracy theories
in this manner, I guess,
where we're still questioning the government view.
I was an early adopter of the very base theory
that something serious was being covered up
about the sequence of events that day,
though I've been peeling off bits
that got me thinking.
Operation Northwoods.
I would assume that at least one of you listeners
has brought this up in a letter,
but I have yet to notice its mention on the show.
It was a plan drafted in 1963
by Kennedy's Joint Chiefs of Staff
in connection with Operation Mongoose.
The document is publicly available
and details rather shocking ideas
for framing Cuba as a terrorist state
of sorts such that an invasion slash coup
would be justified.
Operation Northwoods would have involved friendly Cubans
in Florida and Washington
and the destruction of drone aircraft in Cuban airspace.
In one instance,
a civilian charter flight,
preferably loaded with college students,
and that's a quote,
was to be evacuated at an auxiliary base
while a drone was repainted to match it
and blown up via remote.
Another plan involved the use of planted media stories
and funerals for mock victims.
Now, say what you will about the crazy conspiracy theories
floating around, but for a team of people
to consider such a plan feasible in 1963
seems to imply that something similar and far more advanced
could have occurred in 2001.
I'm not one to believe our government shot missiles at itself
and blew up fake planes with fake people
to justify a shift in foreign policy and capital,
but Operation Northwoods
certainly makes one think.
But here's the thing, right?
The Pentagon is in the business of constructing plans.
They have a plan for what to do
in case Canada invades.
They have a plan to do for this, that, and the other.
They spend billions of dollars
on plans that they don't plan to implement.
The fact that one of the plans
they came up with in 1963
bears some resemblance
to what happened in 2001
is neither correlation,
certainly not causation,
and shockingly little correlation
to any sort of causal anything.
Well, I think a very simple way
of looking at this is,
well, they could theorize
all they want about this stuff
and it's not unreasonable
to think that certain people
in the government would have theorized
about this stuff,
but actually pulling it off
without anybody saying anything
and actually planning it
and going through with the whole thing?
Why Operation Northwoods never happened?
Maybe because they realized they couldn't ever
get away without somebody figuring it out
or seeing some bit of evidence
and 9-11 is just so much more.
Of course, we've advanced much more
as sneaky people, I guess, but...
Well, just think about how many people
have stayed quiet about it
and that's where it starts to fall apart.
And people can never stay quiet about anything.
That's one thing I've noticed.
Watergate had about 12 people in on everything
and they started talking inside of a couple of weeks.
Not much, but it kept going.
Everybody's got their price.
All right, interesting.
Keep the letters coming in,
oth at 2600.com.
We do like to hear from you
and hear all the different opinions
that are out there.
Let's hear a couple of stories.
I know, Sarah, you have an interesting story
about our good friends over at T-Mobile.
T-Mobile.
They put you through hell or something?
Yeah, they really did and then I put them through hell.
So we don't have to take care of them?
Because we will if you want us to.
Oh, no, this is one of those things
that just balanced out so perfectly in the end.
Really?
I was a T-Mobile customer.
I had a cell phone through them
and after being with them a couple of years
I had a classic cell phone death.
So I gave them a call
and I told them what happened,
calling from my landline.
I got a very nice fellow named Mark
who said to me,
your phone is still under warranty
so why don't you just arrange
for a new phone to be sent to you for free
and I'll actually ship you the new phone
before you even send yours back
and I'll send you a postage paid envelope
to send yours back.
What could be more convenient than that?
So that's what I did.
I traded phones and I got a new phone.
It didn't work great but it got the job done.
I was able to make calls again
and then I got my new bill for the next month
with a couple of unusual things.
First of all,
an unreal amount of overage on minutes
that I just couldn't understand at all.
I really didn't make that many phone calls
and then also a charge of a couple of hundred dollars
for a new phone.
Well, this is strange I thought
and so I gave them a call.
About the minutes, well, they said
you made a whole lot of calls.
I said, well, send that to me and let me see this itemized
because I can't believe I made that many calls.
And as for the phone, I said,
well, I thought it was under warranty
so it should be free.
Why am I being charged for a new phone?
And he said, well, it wasn't under warranty.
And I said, well, I spoke to this fellow
and I've got his name if you'd like it.
She said, well, we can't find him.
We can't find anybody.
And she said, well,
you're just going to have to pay for the new phone.
And so I spent some time arguing
with her about this and she eventually said,
well, here, I'll offer you a deal.
And this is the point where
they're saying to themselves, well,
we're not going to get this person off of the phone.
They're going to persist.
And at some point we're spending so much money
on this minimum wage person to argue with them
that we may as well just nip it in the bud
and give them some kind of an offer.
And so she offered me two options.
She said, well, you know, we can either
give you the phone or something like that
as a courtesy.
Never admit you're wrong is the first rule
of being a successful American corporation.
Yeah, the courtesy thing.
Or you can renew your T-Mobile contract
for another year and we'll give you
the new phone for free like we said we do
in the first place.
My God. They have no shame. No shame at all, do they?
No. And I'm thinking to myself,
why should I trust these people?
They already lied to me about the warranty
and they're charging me some ridiculous overage.
I don't want to renew my contract for another year.
In fact, I think I'll dump you as soon as possible.
But I'd happily take this
third off so that I can just pay my bill,
be free of T-Mobile,
and get out of this mess.
And so that's the deal.
And the next month
my bill comes
and
the charge for the cell phone
is completely gone.
And I say, oh, this is fantastic.
This is fantastic.
And so then I give them a call and I say,
hey, you know, it's time for me to cancel.
And they say,
all right, that'll be $265
for early termination.
I say to them, I'm not under a contract.
What do you mean early termination?
And they said, oh, no.
You renewed your contract just the other day.
Unbelievable.
So this is their
revenge on me for complaining
is to renew my contract without even
asking me whether I want to
and actually asking me whether I want to
and me saying no and them renewing it.
Wow.
Don't they have to provide some sort of evidence that you actually renewed your contract, though?
Well, that's what I said.
I said, where is this evidence?
You're saying I had a conversation
with somebody.
Is that really all it would take?
And she said, well, yeah, you know, that's all it would take.
I said, it doesn't have to be something written,
some kind of confirmation.
Wouldn't you send something to me that I would have to sign?
She said, no, no, no, it's a verbal contract.
I said, show me the verbs.
Can you give me some verbs over the phone?
Some verbs on paper?
Show me the verbs that I said that made this happen.
Well, it's a verbal contract, sir.
We can't, we don't record the conversations.
Verizon records the conversations.
Yeah, I've had many instances
where the contracts are actually recorded
in case they need to reference it.
Well, in this case, there wasn't anything to record, was there?
Walter?
Are you allowed to record the conversation?
Oh, in New York State, you can record any conversation you want
as long as one party knows about it.
It varies state by state,
but New York is called a one-party state
and that only one party has to know.
Yeah, Roger?
I don't know if it's any different with Verizon
or just in California,
but I recently changed my contract
and I was informed that even after you change it,
you have 30 days to negate it, change back.
Oh, really?
So you might want to look into seeing it.
I think that's pretty similar across the board,
that if you sign a contract,
you'll still have two weeks, 30 days
to say, no, I've changed my mind, I don't want this.
And that kind of protects you from the verbal agreement.
They probably don't tell you about it, though.
Is that a law?
I think so.
What eventually happened?
Well, I decided that I just wasn't going to give up.
So I stayed on the phone with this woman
and just repeatedly attempted
to learn from her how this had happened
and repeatedly insisted
that I had never agreed to having my contract renewed.
And she was just in disbelief
and kept talking about how as a courtesy
they would do this or that for me,
give me a free month of service.
I said, no, I just want to cancel
and get rid of this service
and I'm not going to pay an early termination fee
because I never renewed my contract.
And she was just having none of it.
And I think I must have stayed on
for a good 45 minutes with her
before the idea really came to me
that I should indicate to her
just how preposterous
in my situation it would be
to renew my contract because you see
I was a dying man.
What, you said this to them?
Why? Why, I said.
Why would I renew my contract
if I only had a few weeks to live?
Is this really the way that I'm going to spend my dying days
arguing on the phone
with T-Mobile?
My dying days.
And you were saying this in this nice calm voice?
No, I was getting pretty worked up actually.
Let me reproduce right now the way I was speaking.
But I would say that over the course of
really about half an hour with this woman
telling her that I was dying
I really started to get upset
and my heart was beating faster and I was sweating
and at one point I started crying.
Wow.
Yeah, thank you.
Method actor there.
Discovered a talent.
And she would keep going off the line and saying,
well let me consult with my supervisor
and she would come back,
Wow.
Yeah.
And so eventually.
The person in the call center is probably saying,
oh God, we got another one who's making up that he's dying
just to get out of the contract.
See, I don't know if this is a phenomenon or not.
I'm predicting that now maybe it will start
to be a phenomenon.
But eventually she goes off, talks to her supervisor,
I'm on hold for like 10 minutes, and comes back
and finally they give me the good news.
Not because I'm dying.
Not because they
fooled me by renewing my contract
without my approval.
But as a courtesy.
As a courtesy to me.
They're going to backdate
the contract
to make it appear as if I had said
yes to the renewal a year ago.
Meaning that today would be the day that it would be up
and I could cancel
and go to my deathbed in peace.
But wouldn't you have had two contracts at the same time then
if you had done it that way?
Who knows.
They usually do allow you to extend the contract
during a contract.
It's kind of weird.
Yeah, but the contract doesn't take effect again
until the first one stops.
No, no, no. It takes effect immediately.
So if you were to agree during your contract,
it would be extended to the point where...
Alright, well, whatever. The point is you got out of your contract somehow.
And I should mention too that she said that she had to do it that way
because if I was under
this contract that had been put into the system,
there literally was no way that the computer
would let her terminate it
without charging me the fee.
Right. It's all about what the computer will let them do.
Unreal Mojo.
This reminds me. I just got to tell this quick story.
Something that happened years ago when I lived in New York.
This was before the Do Not Call List, of course.
But I remember the Daily News, New York Times,
whoever would call you trying to get you to subscribe.
This woman from the Daily News called.
She sounded young. She was very, very sweet.
We'd like you to subscribe to the Daily News.
I'm not really interested.
Well, you know, you get Sundays for free and home delivery.
No, no thanks. Not really interested.
I didn't want to just tell her to go away
and be cruel.
I said, look, really, I get most of my news from television.
I don't read the paper. Well, if you order now,
we promise to throw in this and this week.
I said, look, I'm blind.
Did that work?
Sir, I'm so sorry. We apologize for calling.
We'll take your name off the list. No one will ever call you again.
Wow.
That's effective, I guess.
Times on tape? No?
I don't know. Maybe they'll come up with a Braille edition
and then they're going to call you back.
Moja, did you have some kind of other rant
that you wanted to express?
You were talking about your new DVD player before
and just made me start thinking.
I've been reading a lot. I'm sure everyone here has been about
the new high-definition DVDs coming soon
and, of course, the format war between Blu-ray
and HD DVD and everyone's
buckling down, getting ready for the big retail war
between the new formats.
I just thought about this. You know what?
I think they're really overestimating
the public's desire
for high-definition DVD.
The format DVD itself has been around for
13, 14 years.
Honestly, I think it's only been maybe the last
five or six years it's gotten total, widespread
universal acceptance where everybody
on the street's got a DVD player.
That transition in picture from VHS
to DVD for everyone, it's astounding.
Everyone walking down the street is astounded by the television picture now.
What's going to happen?
They're going to walk into Best Buy in six months
and they're going to say,
you need to get this new high-definition DVD.
Your picture will be four times better than a DVD.
They're going to say, well, my picture's pretty good right now.
I'm pretty happy with it.
The person finally agrees.
All right, I'll spend $500 on a brand new
high-definition DVD player.
Does that mean I have to buy all my movies again?
Yeah, you have to buy all your movies again.
That's attractive. That's great.
By the way, there's two different formats.
If you buy the blue area, you buy the HD DVD.
Half the movies on the shelf aren't going to work anyway.
That's going to really make people excited
about it. Ultimately, before they
walk out of the store, they're going to say,
I do have a high-definition television
capable of displaying that picture.
No, that's another two grand, at least.
I really wonder, who are all these people
going to be engaged in this format war?
It's not like you just buy a $100 DVD player
and you get a great picture.
There are video files and audio files, too,
who want something better than CDs.
I'm quite happy. I was happy with phonograph records,
to be honest, but I'm pleased as punch with CDs.
I don't feel the need to get something
even more amazing than that
or even more amazing than DVDs.
You're right. That's a perfect analogy.
The Super Audio CD came, and I guess
it's still out there, but nobody cares.
Super Audio CD? I missed that one.
It's like a 96-bit recording system.
That only requires a new CD player.
This requires a high-definition television
and re-buying every movie you've already got.
It's gotten as good as I think it should get.
Work on improving our lives now.
Work on reality. Make that look better.
The thing is, this is always said
when new technology is introduced,
this kind of stuff.
It's as good as it's going to get.
Come on. Crackling records
and skipping on vinyl,
obviously that was a problem.
VHS degradation, that's a problem, too.
There are different aspects
of the same sort of thing.
It's just the beginning of a progression
towards better quality media.
This is the beginning. It's not going to be
widespread any time soon.
What's not improving in quality is the content.
This is really Hollywood's major problem.
Their own studies show this,
that the reason people don't go to movies
is because they're bad.
How do they know they're bad if they don't go to them?
The people know.
We need to tap into that sixth sense
that they have as to what's bad.
Speaking of senses,
how about doing some smelling now
with something that you can smell
things in the movie.
They've been playing with Smell-O-Rama now
for how many years?
That's why I don't go to the movies.
Any movie in New York City is Smell-O-Rama,
I don't know.
They can be doing all sorts of other interesting things as well.
I think the picture's gotten about as good as it can get.
The sound's gotten about as good as it can get.
Let's move on and do something
a little bit more creative now.
One more letter.
Let's take some phone calls at 212-209-2900.
In reply to our discussion
last week about cell phones
and movie theaters,
my wife is on a transplant list.
Because of this, I need to be able to receive calls
even if I'm seeing a movie.
Sometimes it looks like a flashlight, as you described.
Sometimes a cell phone is very important.
You know, I think this guy
found the one reason
that you would want to have a cell phone on
in a movie theater.
The people that were sitting next to me in a movie theater
talking on their cell phones,
they're not on a transplant list.
Maybe they are now, after the incident in the parking lot afterwards.
No.
Most people are being inconsiderate.
There are some exceptions.
I could see how having a blanket
or a jamming device would be a bad thing.
But there's got to be
some middle ground here, Jim.
What about the old days?
If you look at movies from the 30s and 40s,
the doctor gives the number
of the movie theater to his nurse
so he can be called.
They call the damn theater first.
Wait. I just got a solution.
Give the person a beeper, a special transplant-less beeper.
Beepers work in more places than cell phones.
An even better idea.
That's why doctors and drug dealers still have beepers.
It's like a skin. That'll work.
I have to say, when you go to a movie,
is the most annoying thing in there really the cell phones?
I find the people a lot more annoying.
The people are the ones using the cell phones.
I think there's more of a social aspect to this than a technical one.
Obviously, people are behaving like savages.
There's no question about that.
That's why I think the greatest movie-going scene
in all the movies I've seen
is Charlton Heston in The Omega Man.
He's in the movie theater alone.
Everybody else is dead.
He can enjoy the movie.
We don't have to go that extreme.
Actually, I do have to address a couple of issues
that some people have written in about.
We're going to take phone calls.
212-209-2900.
I've already registered for Hope.
I'd like to book one of the special Hope rooms
as soon as possible.
Every time I call the reservation hotline at the hotel,
they tell me to call back in June.
I was able to get a room two years ago
for Fifth Hope in March of that year,
and all sorts of other good reasons why.
Mike, we've gotten the same complaint
from a number of people.
I looked into it today.
You're not going to like this. I don't like this.
The hotel has a computer system
that they're in the process of changing
in the next month.
They say that they cannot
generate a reservation number
now for something taking place in July
even though we have the special rate,
even though you can indeed register.
You just can't get a confirmation number.
But if anybody tells you
you can make the reservation,
let us know who they are
because literally that's something
that they should not be doing.
Tell them the hackers will generate
a confirmation number.
I was astounded by this,
but this is Hotel Pennsylvania.
This is how they work.
Can we just give the hotel a pile of numbers
and they just give one to each person?
If you register with the Hope Conference,
you will get a room,
one of the refurbished ones
with internet jacks that actually work.
You just won't get the confirmation number
until I think the end of April
or something crazy like that.
But again, if anybody says you can't register
for the conference, register for the special room rate
at the conference, let us know
because they're not supposed to be doing that.
Also, this other listener wrote in,
Guys, I made a pledge to your show over a month ago
and still have not received my shirt or TV begun.
I probably would have donated the money anyway
without getting something because I enjoy your show.
But if you're going to advertise the items
you're giving away, it would be nice to receive them.
Andrew, you're absolutely right about that.
What we're doing is trying to get the names
from the radio station.
I believe tonight we'll get the last of them.
Then we just have to confirm the people
who paid by credit card.
Those will go right out.
Those of you who haven't yet paid,
obviously we can't send those out.
But hopefully everybody has paid.
It's no fun.
We have to, at some point,
take care of all our business.
Again, our email address, oth at 2600.com.
Our snail mail address,
in case you don't have this computer thing handy,
is off the hook,
care of WBAI,
120 Wall Street,
10th floor,
New York, New York,
10005.
How often do you get snail letters?
We do, actually.
We get a few a week.
We'd like to get more because they're interesting.
You can't send a physical document
or a MetroCard,
wherever people like to send us,
in email.
You have to attach it inside an envelope.
Walter was right on target today.
He was right on target with the 10th floor.
I think it's time to start assigning.
Let's not devote too much attention
to the fact that he got it right one week.
That's over a couple of weeks.
Then maybe we can expand.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening.
Thank you. Are you still there?
I am, yes.
I was just listening to the scenario
that you expressed about the phone situation.
Are you standing near a monitor by any chance?
I am.
Move away from the monitor, please.
That's as far as I can go with it.
Is it still okay?
That is a conspiracy
between the corporate group
that represents that phone company.
Obviously, they've orchestrated a whole dialogue
for the employee.
They wanted to get a person to acknowledge
something that they didn't authorize.
If you made the original transaction
through a credit card,
you can write your credit card representative
and indicate that you did not make
or authorize that transaction.
They could just reverse it.
You wouldn't have to go through all that.
The contract itself,
there's no specific charge for the contract.
The only charge would be if you broke the contract.
I guess in that regard.
Was your bill being paid by credit card?
I wrote a check every month.
It was by check,
so it wasn't even a credit card.
It's best to do it by credit card.
You can easily reverse it just by indicating
that you did not make nor did you authorize the transaction.
I think
what Sarif did,
it takes a lot of energy,
but sometimes we have to buckle down and do that.
It's sad that you have to resort to such measures.
That is an example of conspiracy
by a corporation, by the corporate group.
They do it all the time.
This individual would have to waste hours.
Time is money.
If you tolerate it,
if you take it,
you're actually a part of the conspiracy.
Have a good night.
Thanks for calling.
Actually, I had a similar,
not as bad as you,
but I don't get very many calls from telemarketers
because I think word spreads as to what I tell them.
When this one particular one
kept calling literally at 8.30 in the morning
every single day,
if I'm sleeping, I just unplug the phone
and it doesn't bother me.
It annoyed me that somebody had the audacity
to call me every morning at 8.30.
It was from one of those 888 numbers.
It was obviously a telemarketer
because it wasn't a regular area code
plus phone number.
Finally, I picked up and found out who it was.
It was my bank.
Now, of course, I have a preexisting agreement
with my bank, so they get to call me
even though I'm on a do not call list.
But I told them,
I'm not going to say anything that you have to say
unless it's an emergency of some sort.
Even if it's an emergency, I doubt I can help you.
They said, okay, we're going to remove you.
The guy spent the next five minutes listing all the things
he was removing me from.
We're going to remove you from the better credit offer,
from the home mortgage offer,
all these trip insurance offers.
I said, fine, remove me.
It's going to take 30 days to take effect.
How in God's name does it take 30 days
for them to stop calling me?
I don't understand this, but I have to accept that
I'm surrounded.
Either that or find another bank, which probably does the same thing.
All right, let's take another phone call.
212-209-2900.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Well, that was your chance, and you blew it.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hi, how are you doing today?
Good, how are you?
Pretty well. I just wanted to talk about the cell phones a little bit.
Mainly, I'm wondering why they keep adding
all these features like MP3 players
and cameras and organizers and whatnot
for improving the audio fidelity.
Thank you, yes.
Because improving the audio fidelity costs them more money,
and they get to charge you for these other services
such as downloading MP3s and sending pictures and videos.
Do you know how hard it has gotten just to get a phone
that doesn't do all this other nonsense,
taking pictures and playing music
and God knows what else phones do these days.
It's so annoying.
I just want a simple telephone.
I want a phone. That's all I want.
If I want an MP3 player, I'll get that and choose the best one.
There's so many little icons and buttons and features,
God help you with all the rest.
I don't want a crappy camera. I don't want a crappy MP3 player.
I want a good telephone.
Your best bet is to get a GSM carrier
where you can swap out the SIM card
and buy your own GSM phone
from an independent carrier.
If anyone has...
With regards to the contract dispute,
wouldn't that maybe fall under anti-slamming laws
in your state?
I think it should.
I remember in Florida a few years back,
there was a big problem with telecom companies
for different long-distance plans.
But you see, the thing is, those are landline companies.
The regulatory agencies get really weird
when it comes to wireless.
That turns into something federal.
The FCC gets involved.
We're not really sure who we're supposed to complain to.
I would imagine the FCC,
Common Carrier Bureau or somebody like that,
Wireless Carrier Bureau,
if there's such a thing,
they would take an interest in this.
So if somebody does have something similar happen,
contact them.
If they report a verbal contract, it's worth bupkis.
Yeah, that's probably true.
If it's a signature on something
from somebody who's over the age of majority,
there is no contract.
And how many of us sign something
when we have a contract with a wireless carrier?
Exactly.
All right, interesting points.
Thanks for your call.
Good night.
I have to say, though,
the regulations for landline phones
are similarly confusing.
It costs more to call Buffalo
than anywhere else in the country.
Does it still?
It still does for certain kinds of phones.
Unbelievable.
All right, let's go up here.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, what's up?
Hey, you guys were talking earlier
about the encryption that was broken over there
from the Nazis and stuff.
Yeah.
Well, there is an actual method
called the one-time pad by Gilbert Vernum.
So you have 10 characters.
You also have a 10-character pad.
So therefore, when the pad is not known,
it could be anything
that those 10 characters could represent.
So theoretically, it's never breakable
because you could make whatever you wanted out of it.
Right, if it's completely random,
it's theoretically unbreakable.
However, it's relatively inefficient.
You have double the size of the data
that you're encrypting.
And then you have to store them separately
and keep them secure as well.
Real quick, I'll make this quick.
You encode with one key, you send it over,
he puts his key on, so there's two keys,
he sends it back, you take yours off,
and then you bounce it over and he takes his off.
And that way, you don't have to agree on a key,
thus not having the duplicates,
but it does take more legwork
getting it back and forth across the line.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Yes.
All this waving around.
The answer is no, that won't work.
Okay, he's just going to say,
no one looks smart.
You can't share encrypted information
unless you are also sharing a key.
Okay.
It's just the way it works.
Okay.
If I'm speaking French and you don't know French,
you can't understand me.
Well, if you're animated and waving your arms around,
you might be saying, get away from me,
or something like that.
All right, let's move on.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Yes, what's on your mind?
Speak up, please.
Hi.
You have something to say, Tony?
Okay, go ahead.
Okay.
I don't know how to take that.
We're going to have to think about that one,
and we'll get back to you.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Turn on your radio, please.
Okay, okay.
I'm going to turn it on right now.
Okay.
I have a problem with a cell phone.
Okay.
I call Jamaica quite frequently,
and I was charged
an enormous amount of money.
Okay.
I accept that, roaming charge,
whatever they say.
And I follow their directions,
where you would dial an access number,
and then you put in your PIN code,
and then you dial your number,
and you would get to speak
with the person in Jamaica.
However, what happened was,
I wound up getting a bill
for several thousand dollars.
Yeesh.
Yes, even though I used the card.
And this is a T-Mobile, by the way.
Oh, boy.
What do they bill you for?
Oh, boy.
What do they bill you for, exactly?
They said that when I dialed
the phone
using the card,
they must have pressed
something twice, or whatever.
But I didn't do that.
So,
I went ahead again, and I tried
to, with different cards,
find the precise...
Sir, we're almost out of time.
Were you in a foreign country when you did this?
No, no.
Was I in a foreign country? No, I was here.
And they charged you that amount? Redbird?
The only mistake I could think of here
is that a lot of the times, calling cards like that
have access numbers for both the country that...
for example, the United States and Jamaica.
So, you could have possibly called the access number
in Jamaica, and have been using
long distance via your
wireless carrier.
Do you know what I mean?
Even though I'm using...
What was the number that you dialed in this country?
What was the access number
for the calling card in this country?
Was it a 1-800 number, or was it a number overseas?
A lot of times, cards can be...
It was a 1-800 number.
We need some more information.
Unfortunately, we're out of time.
I wish you had called earlier, but try calling again next week.
We can try to analyze this.
But, yeah, there's scams all over the place,
and many of them are perpetuated
by the phone companies.
All right.
That's going to do it for us this week.
We'll be back again next week
with another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
Until then, stay alert.
Write to us. Let us know if anything
weird is going on with technology.
And our email address
is oth at 2600.com.
Of course, we still want you
to get involved in the Hope Conference.
We're organizing
for the speakers,
volunteers, things like that.
You can email speakers at 2600.com
if you're interested in giving a talk or a presentation.
Volunteers at 2600.com
if you want to take part
in actual organization.
Again, the conference is taking place
July 21, 22, 23 at the Hotel Pennsylvania
in New York City.
www.hope.net is our email address.
I'm sorry, it's our website.
Yes. Have a good night.
On Saturday, April 1st at 12 noon, join the Black Men's Movement Unity March at Rockaway
and Livonia Avenues in Brooklyn.
The Black Men's Movement is calling for 500 Brothers in Black to take back the hood, to
put the guns down, and to rename Lyndon Park in honor of the late Abubadika Sonny Harrison.
Speakers include Councilman Al Vann, ex-political prisoner Shosha Brown, Stan Kennard, Ali Lamond,
Coltrane Chimurenga, and Councilman Charles Barron.
That's Saturday, April 1st, 12 noon at Rockaway and Livonia Avenues in Brooklyn.
For more information, call 718-398-1766.
718-398-1766.
Take back the hood.