...festivals in Buenos Aires before the legality of the fat-teen-packed cooperative expires.
For Free Speech Radio News, I'm Marie Tregona Enelken.
Free Speech Radio News is a worker-run collective produced at Pacifica Station's WBAI in New
York, KPFA in Berkeley, and KPFK in Los Angeles.
In Berkeley, I'm Brian Edwards Teagert, sitting in for Aura Bogado.
And this is Radio Station WBAI in New York.
It's seven o'clock on a Wednesday night, time for Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this...
This is Wednesday, right, Mike?
I think so.
Well, where is everybody?
All of a sudden, everybody's decided not to show up.
We, uh...
I don't know.
It's just you, me, and Jim.
Hm.
Astonishing.
And, of course, Bernie down there in Philadelphia.
It seems no later than Tuesday.
Yeah, maybe...
I mean, I wasn't on last night on my other show, so maybe that sort of messed everything
up, or it's that 4th of July thing where you don't know what day it is.
Could that be it?
Maybe.
It's also Monday, even though it's really Wednesday.
How is it Monday?
It's the first day of the work week.
Wasn't Monday work?
Yeah, it was, wasn't it?
I'm thinking people are stuck in New Jersey.
Uh, okay.
How would that happen, exactly?
I don't know.
Maybe there was some place that closed because of the state going, uh, having budget problems,
and...
Well, considering the people who aren't here aren't really from New Jersey anyway, but
they haven't shut down the transit, have they?
I don't think so.
Doesn't seem smart.
I mean, uh...
The whole thing isn't very smart.
What, they ran out of money or something?
Is that what they did?
Right.
Who really knows?
So, they shut things down that make money?
Like the casinos and lottery, yes.
That was the first...
They shut down the casinos?
Yes.
Awesome.
Wow.
So, okay, if we were to go to New Jersey right now, what would we see?
Just a bunch of people?
We'd see pretty much the same thing we'd normally see in New Jersey.
They didn't, like, fold it into anything or take things down, but there's no gambling
going on in the casinos.
Okay, fine.
But they're nowhere near us.
Would you notice...
It's 120 miles.
Would you notice anything in Newark, say, or Jersey City, or Hoboken?
They wouldn't let us in the state parks.
We could go to the local parks, the city parks.
And beaches, it's interesting, because there are state beaches, and then, of course, there
are beaches in New Jersey that are the provenance of the cities there.
And the boardwalk sometimes is private if the beach is state, which is odd.
So you have these people who can't go on the beach because the state beach is closed.
They're not letting tourists or residents on the beach.
But the boardwalk is open, but no one's going there because it's a state beach.
So all these people on the boardwalk with concession stands are losing money.
The sad part is I understand that.
It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but I understood it.
Bernie, you're also bordering New Jersey down there in Philadelphia.
Yes, I'm right across the river.
In fact, I can see New Jersey from where I'm standing.
I'm walking home from work.
Are you able to signal to people over there and tell them that we're thinking about them?
Well, I'm happy for them, because this is all a political maneuver to push an increase
in their state sales tax.
And I hope it's delayed as long as possible for their sake.
Okay, well, that's something, I guess.
It's one of these bizarre things.
Does this ever happen to New York?
We've had fiscal troubles.
Yeah, but we have fiscal troubles.
Have we ever shut down the state?
We shut down the City College.
I was going to City College when the city ran out of money and they closed it for a
few days.
Wow.
Okay.
I just want to say something that you wouldn't be expecting from a Republican.
It's when multi-millionaires get into office that you have trouble.
Mike Bloomberg, Annie Rockefeller, and John Corzine now in New Jersey.
Okay, well, that's your political opinion there.
We have interesting news.
This has been going on all week, actually.
Seems the North American Aerospace Defense Command, otherwise known as NORAD, which I
guess you got to figure out how to get those letters to work out.
Wait, where did the O come from?
I guess the North.
No.
That's silly.
Yeah.
Wait, N-O-R, that's where the R comes from, too?
Yeah.
Okay.
It must be N-O-R-A, defense.
No.
North American Aerospace Defense.
Look, I don't know.
This is what's always been called, and it's called NORAD.
All right.
Sorry.
I never looked at it so closely before, but it doesn't make any sense on that level, too.
Anyway, they've been placed on heightened alert.
NORAD monitors the skies for threats to North American security.
And the funny thing is, this isn't necessarily related to the North Korean missiles that
got thrown up into the air yesterday.
This happened on Monday.
They were placed on ... Does anybody know what it's called, the heightened alert?
Bernie, perhaps you know?
I don't know.
What do you think would be a good name for it?
DEFCON, is it?
No.
That's something else.
That's something else.
This is a word.
The kind of word they like to use.
It means slightly higher than a medium threat level.
Does anybody know?
Elevated?
That's very good, Jim, but it's totally wrong.
Oh.
Mike?
No.
I don't know.
Bernie, any guess at all?
I think enhanced, but who knows?
They probably have better ones.
Enhanced.
Unless it's orange or something.
Excited?
No.
No.
Bravo Plus.
I get that channel.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are on Bravo Plus.
Yeah, Bravo Plus would be a good channel like it used to be with no commercials and cuss
words.
Okay.
I spoke to NORAD, US Northern Command, which is responsible for defending US territory,
in case you didn't know, announced that.
There's a lot going on.
They say the safety of our people and resources is our top priority, hence Bravo Plus.
What's the Southern Command?
Is it like the part of NORAD that is involved in plotting to take over Mexico or something?
It's the part that keeps the Mexicans out, I think.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But yeah, North Korea is throwing missiles up in the air.
Are we sure they weren't just fireworks?
We're sure about that?
It was very close to the 4th of July.
It was.
I mean, you know.
It was on the 4th of July.
It was on the 4th of July.
We shot off rockets and they shot off rockets on the same day.
Well, we shot off a Discovery, the space shuttle, a really big rocket.
Israelis are shooting off rockets.
Everyone's shooting off.
It's a big celebration.
What's the theme here?
Bravo Plus?
Discovery?
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Everything is a channel, Jim.
That's how it works.
Okay.
So that's what's going on in the world, heightened state of alert for no particular reason.
But this is a story that I think, Bernie, I think you'll especially like this story.
It's something incredible.
It comes out of New Hampshire.
This guy from Nashua, Nashua, New Hampshire, is charged with violating state wiretap laws
by recording a detective on his home security camera while the detective was investigating
the man's sons.
Michael Gannon was arrested last Tuesday night after he brought a video to the police station.
Get this.
He brings a video to the police station to try to file a complaint against Detective
Andrew Carlis.
Now, from personal experience, I happen to know that if you go to the police to file
a complaint, you're lucky to get out of there because they...
It's funny.
You have to file it with them.
You have to file it with the cops.
You have to go there in person and file it and have them all threaten you in various
ways.
In New York City, we have the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is not part of the police
department.
Now they exist.
They didn't always exist.
Well, they exist now.
Yeah.
That's one thing.
You can get to them by calling our friends at 311.
Yeah.
Hopefully.
Police instead arrested Gannon, charging him with two felony counts of violating state
eavesdropping and wiretap law by using an electronic device to record Carlis without
the detective's consent.
Now, keep in mind, these are cameras mounted on his home, and they record whatever goes
on around.
You know, it's kind of interesting here.
Janet Gannon, Gannon's wife, said the family plans to hire a lawyer and expects to sue
the police department.
The couple's 15-year-old son also was arrested, charged as a juvenile in an unrelated robbery
case.
That's according to police reports and Janet Gannon.
The Gannons installed a video and audio recording system at their home, a four-unit building,
to monitor the front door and parking areas.
They installed the cameras about two years ago, buying the system at Walmart, according
to reports filed in court.
The Gannons have owned the property.
I don't know why they're giving us the assessment value, but here goes $382,700 for the past
three years, according to city records.
I guess this paper, the Nashua Telegraph, believes in being very thorough and went to
the city clerk and found out how much the house was worth and everything else like that.
Now, Janet Gannon spoke with this newspaper by phone last Wednesday before going to bail
out her husband.
Before going to bail out her husband, she took the time to speak with the Nashua Telegraph.
That's a paper that intimidates people, I think, and that's how they get all this information
out of them.
Anyway, she said they installed the system in response to crime in the neighborhood and
at their house.
Okay, we've had two break-ins.
One guy came right up our stairs and started beating on my husband, and we called the cops.
Another time, after someone broke into a camper on their property, Janet Gannon said an officer
suggested they were too rich for the neighborhood and should move.
The security cameras record sound and audio directly to a videocassette recorder inside
the house, and the Gannons posted warnings about the system.
On Tuesday night, when Michael Gannon brought a videocassette to the police department,
he asked to speak with someone in public relations.
He wanted to lodge a complaint against Carlos, the detective, who had come to the family's
house while investigating their sons.
She said Carlos showed up late at night, was rude, and refused to leave when they asked
him.
He was just very smart-mouthed.
He put his foot in the door, and my husband said, excuse me, I did not invite you in.
Please leave, and he wouldn't.
We did not invite him in.
We asked him to leave, and he wouldn't.
I see what the problem is here.
These are people who know their rights, and that's always a problem when it comes to cops.
After the police arrested the Gannon's sons, for some reason, they quote-unquote secured
the house and told her and her sister-in-law they had to stay out of it from around 8.45
p.m. Tuesday until around 4 a.m. Wednesday.
Police said they were waiting to get a warrant to search the house.
They were waiting for a warrant to seize the cameras and the tapes in my house because
they said having these cameras was against the law.
They're security cameras, she said, adding, they said they could do that.
They could seize my apartment.
Now, Bernie, are you listening to this?
Yeah, the crux of the matter here is the audio portion of this recording, not the video.
Okay.
In federally and in many states, including Pennsylvania, where I live, it can be a misdemeanor
or a felony in a federal standpoint to record, to do a surreptitious recording of someone's
conversation when there's a reasonable expectation of privacy.
And that's the crux of this issue.
They're going to say, the defendants here are going to claim, the homeowners are going
to claim that they posted a sign saying audio and video is being recorded here, and the
police are going to say, no, there wasn't such a sign.
And the police are also going to be in control of the evidence of the tapes, which sometimes
mysteriously get erased or disappeared or whatever.
Sometimes?
Okay.
There's also the...
Or there'll be a mysterious 18-minute gap in one of them.
Yeah.
There's also the question, and I don't know the law in New Hampshire, but in many states,
it's legal to record the conversation if you have the consent of one of the parties.
And I'm going to assume that the homeowner's sons or whoever the policeman was talking
to would consent to this recording.
Well, of course.
I mean, that's designed so that people don't plant bugs in other people's homes.
Right, right.
Are we saying you don't have the right to bug your own house?
In Pennsylvania.
Well, Pennsylvania.
Okay.
This is a good...
Well, I'm most familiar with Pennsylvania laws because of where I live, but there is
an exception for Pennsylvanians.
You can surreptitiously record audio or conversations if it's a crime that's being committed.
Now, if New Hampshire has that same kind of law, they could argue that a crime is being
committed because they told the police to leave and they didn't, and there you go.
But if it's going to be a New Hampshire case, I imagine it's all going to get thrown out
because the cops clearly violated their rights, and in order to get that charge dropped, the
other charge will be dropped and they'll just all go home unhappy.
One second.
In Pennsylvania, it's legal to record if a crime is being committed?
Does that mean you're committing a crime if no crime is being committed and you record
it?
That's a good question.
You get in trouble if...
I didn't understand that.
What?
Okay.
In Pennsylvania, if a crime is being committed, you have the right to record.
Right.
What happens if no crime is being committed?
Can they then arrest you and say, aha, you made a recording, no crime was committed,
therefore you yourself committed a crime?
Also, you could record it then.
But you can say that because you were committing a crime by recording it, you could...
That's great logic, Jim.
That's the best you've ever come up with.
You could get off saying, I was recording a crime.
That wasn't what I was getting at.
I'm sorry, Bernie, what?
But you could get off.
You could say, I was recording a crime.
And it was the crime of recording that I was recording.
No, that's not what I was getting at.
What I was getting at is, do they then, if you present this tape that has no crime on
it or it becomes public somehow, do they then lock you up for taping without there being
a crime being committed?
All I know...
I haven't read the case law on this, but I read that law just the other day and I thought
it was intriguing.
If someone comes up to your house and starts berating you and insulting you and otherwise
just being a pain in the ass, you're telling me it's even an issue that you can record
that person or not?
Of course, it's your property.
You can do what you...
Short of hurting them, you can videotape them.
You can audio tape them.
You can sketch their portrait if you feel like it.
It's your house.
You're allowed to do these things.
I mean, that's just my version of the law.
I think portraits...
I think if the homeowners had started sketching the portrait of the police, the situation
might have been resolved a lot more amicably.
I think it would have gotten a lot more ugly, but that's just my paranoia kicking in.
But wow, that's something.
I mean, how else do you prove that somebody is being abusive?
I know people...
I'm not going to say who they are, but I know people who have their cars bugged.
They have little tiny microphones so that when they're pulled over by cops, there's
a record of what the cop told them, what they said to them.
And if there's any kind of abuse whatsoever, there's proof.
Now, I guess they'll get in trouble for doing that.
In New Hampshire, at least.
The thing is, do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars?
Isn't that being used against us because now we can be searched without probable cause
in our cars?
Hasn't the Supreme Court said that in public streets now, you don't have a reasonable expectation
of privacy?
That's one of the justifications for all these surveillance cameras.
So if that goes, you should be allowed to tape as well.
The standard for audio taping is different than reasonable expectation of privacy.
I'm not sure exactly how it works.
Well, that's a good point.
Well, I don't know.
But one of the new things going around, of course, are these police cars that can scan
all the license plates they pass by when driving down the street, all the parked cars.
So instantly, you're a deadbeat dad.
They got you right away.
Well, moving cars, too.
Moving cars, too, obviously.
But I just think it's incredible that they can go zipping down a street and get all this
information so quickly.
It goes bleep.
If they see a car whose registrant is wanted for even an overdue library book, it goes
bleep, and they pull you over.
Yeah.
Well, or they do something to your car when it's already pulled over.
Okay, well, more good news.
Senate committee last Wednesday rejected rules that would bar telephone and cable providers
from charging new fees for priority access to their high-speed networks.
The Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee decided in an 11-to-11 vote against
attaching the so-called net neutrality measure to a bill making it easier for telephone companies
to sell television service.
A measure must have a majority of votes to pass.
And I guess that's sort of an echo of what the House had done the week prior, correct?
Yeah, so it still has to be voted on in the full Senate.
But, you know, who knows what will happen.
All right.
And as a sequel to last week's story about the controversial New York Times piece that
has caused such a furor, it seems to have died down a bit this week.
Now we're talking about North Koreans, but last week it was all about the New York Times
endangering national defense by revealing a secret program that the Bush administration
was engaged in where they were spying on people's bank accounts and things like that.
The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site
seven months before the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Lawyers claimed that in court papers filed in New York federal court.
The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company,
as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon
and Bell South customers.
The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush,
violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution and seeks money damages.
The Bush administration asserted this became necessary after 9-11.
According to plaintiff lawyer Carl Mayer, this undermines that assertion.
And this, of course, is different.
This is not the bank program.
This is what I consider a cousin of the bank program, but it just goes to show.
This is a separate lawsuit from the one the EFF has filed in the West Coast?
I believe so. I don't see any mention of EFF in this story.
It might be connected or it might be one of many lawsuits.
There should be hundreds of lawsuits at least.
So you never know how many of these.
I mean, it's patently obvious that this is not connected to 9-11.
This is what the NSA was founded to do, and they've been doing it all along.
To spy on American citizens?
To spy on everything that they can spy on.
Well, up until fairly recently, we assumed they were spying on overseas operatives or whatever.
I mean, we assume this at our own self-delusion.
Right, but they would never admit that they were spying on American citizens.
And now, of course, we're spying on American citizens.
Again, if you go back to history, I'm sure Bernie can tell us all about Project Shamrock.
This is nothing new.
Go ahead. Tell us about Project Shamrock, Bernie.
Well, in a nutshell, I believe that was an operation to—
Was Shamrock the one where it just intercepted all the telegraph communications across the ocean?
Or was Shamrock the one that was wiretapping many of the war protesters during the Vietnam era?
I was talking about the first one, but the second one works, too.
It goes way back.
So even before there was a lot of overseas phone calls, Operation Shamrock, headed up by the predecessor of the NSA,
basically used IT&T's facilities to basically vacuum up all the telegraphs, telegrams, going back and forth across the oceans.
And they harvested this and data-mined it using human computers, not real computers, because they didn't exist yet.
Wow. Okay, that's our little bit of news for the week.
Of course, we have the announcements of various Hope things coming up.
The Hope schedule has been released. It's out.
It's on our website, www.hope.net or hope6.net.
News of the future.
News of the future. What do you mean?
That's in the future by two weeks, and we have news of it.
Well, it's coming up in two weeks, yes.
Right, it's the future.
We're announcing it, right. We're announcing something that's going to happen.
We have news of it.
We find it's better to announce things before they happen rather than after they occur.
It's news of the future.
Well, so is most of the stuff we talk about.
All right, all right, all right.
In any event, that all aside, yes, the schedule is out.
We have close to 80 speakers, 80 panels, talks at this point, over 100 speakers.
And that's not even including the unscheduled track, which will be set up at the conference itself.
HOPE No. 6 takes place July 21st, 22nd, and 23rd at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York.
Preregistration, it's almost over.
In fact, it ends on Monday, next Monday.
Oh, that's soon.
Yeah, and then you'll have to pay more at the door.
So go to www.2600.com and click on the HOPE things, and you'll see how to preregister.
It's in there someplace.
You guys get a good look at the schedule?
I took a glance through it.
It's a lot of stuff.
A lot of stuff, yeah.
We have three keynotes.
We've got Jello Biafra.
We've got Michael Hart, the Project Gutenberg founder.
We've got Richard Stallman, the free software mogul, I guess is the best word for him.
I don't know if he'd appreciate being called a mogul.
Yeah, well, I was trying not to say open source.
No, don't even think of saying that.
If you do meet Richard Stallman at the conference,
feel free to ask him what the difference is between open source and free software
and be prepared for the evening to pass with that explanation going on for quite some time
because there is a difference, a very big difference.
It's great to have him there to talk about that.
The topic will range from all different things,
hackers and free software and various things like that.
Of course, also Jello Biafra and Michael Hart speaking on Saturday and Sunday as well.
We've got a retrocomputing panel.
We've got urban exploring, the latest on the crypto phone.
We've even got how to make hacker food.
I'm not quite sure what that's going to be all about.
That should be interesting.
We have the new engineers of graffiti, binary revolution radio.
Kevin Mitnick will be there.
We have a lockpicking, not only a lockpicking panel, but a lockpicking village.
Come and see what that's all about.
The Life and Times of Alan Turing, how to steal someone's implanted RFID.
And it just goes on and on and on.
There are so many things here.
Of course, Robert Steele, our first keynote speaker from 1994,
will be back talking about spying, intelligence, the government, all sorts of things like that.
We have a really interesting group of people known as the Geek Comedy Tour 3000.
They're going to be doing a comedy show for us on Friday night.
That's going to be all sorts of fun.
The movie I was involved in making called Urchin is going to be previewed on Saturday night.
That has me, FiberOptic, Bill from Arnok, all sorts of other people involved in the hacker community
and the independent film community.
It's our first look at it as well, so that's going to be a lot of fun.
Definitely come by, and it will be a weekend to remember.
You didn't mention the special edition of Off the Hook.
I didn't mention that.
Okay, I will mention that.
We are doing a special edition of Off the Hook,
but it's most likely not going to make it to these airwaves.
It can't.
It can't, and the reason for that is because we're doing this to make sort of a point.
We're calling it the indecent version of Off the Hook.
See, I had an alternate title, but I can't even say it right now.
Yeah, well, you shouldn't, because this is something that—
We're doing this in what we consider to be very good taste,
and I happen to take personal exception at being labeled indecent in any condition that—
I don't think I'm being indecent.
I mean, who is the FCC to tell us this is decent, this is not?
They're not the Commission of Decency.
They're the Commission of Federal Communications, and they should stick to that.
And what we intend to do is do a program where we're not restricted by speech
and where it doesn't adversely affect the radio program, or maybe it will,
and we'll learn that, but we'll have the freedom to explore it and learn.
So that's Off the Hook, the indecent version,
and that takes place on Saturday night at 8 p.m. there at the hotel,
Saturday, July 22nd, so that's going to be fun.
Again, all the info, www.hope.net.
You'll see summaries of the panels and what they're all about
and ways to register and all kinds of fun things like that.
Bernie, anything that stuck out in your mind?
There was so much information there.
I was dreading not being able to absorb all the information I could
because there would be two or three different panel discussions going on at once for three days.
So what's a curious person to do?
Well, one thing we are going to have for the first time ever is online recording—
what do I mean by that?
Online recording, not online, on net.
There at the conference, we'll be recording things
and making them available on DVD almost immediately afterwards.
So we've never done that before.
It usually takes months and months for us to get it together,
but we found some people who can actually do that,
and we're looking forward to that for the first time.
Like a Grateful Dead concert.
Is that what they do? I don't know.
Yeah, I went to a Grateful Dead concert a few years ago,
and they were recording there live,
and you could buy the recording of the concert before you left.
I'd never heard of that. Wow, that's something.
They're pretty high-tech.
But yeah, we've finally reached that stage apparently,
so we can do that as well.
And we'll have the whole second floor with all sorts of displays and games
and what's known as a hack center.
Basically, that's people bringing their computers, setting them up,
hooking up to the incredible connection to the Internet,
which is really going to be an incredible connection to the Internet,
30 times faster than what we had last time,
and I think more bandwidth than many countries have in total.
Not that we're proud of that. It just happens to be the case.
Well, we are proud of that.
Well, we're proud of the fact that we have a lot of bandwidth,
but we think, I think anyway, countries should have lots of bandwidth,
so that there's no excuse for a country to have a 1,200-watt line
going out of its borders.
No, but if you can beat it, it's a good thing to do.
No, it's good. It's good.
But we'll never beat the Germans at the U.S. Communications Congress
They had more than the entire continent of Africa.
And also, I've known you for years,
so I think I know what's bothering you here.
By us having a lot of bandwidth,
we're not taking it away from underprivileged countries.
No, we're taking it away from the people of the city.
That's right. If you don't come to the HULP conference,
you won't be able to connect to the Internet
because we will have it during that weekend.
We're taking your bandwidth.
We're just borrowing it. We'll give it back Monday morning.
We're taking it from closed offices.
No, we're not doing that either.
If you want to be part of the mobs of people
that are hooked in, come join us.
I guess that's pretty much all we have to say about HULP.
It's coming up soon, though.
It's very soon. Too soon.
And I was hoping more people would have updates,
but they're not here, so we can't have updates.
But we'll have updates in the weeks to come,
which aren't very many weeks to come.
Only two of the weeks, and then we'll be there.
That's right.
Okay, so we have letters, as always.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
This listener writes in,
Dude, I was shocked to hear your reaction
to eBay providing Skype service.
I think it's a good idea to be able to communicate
in a human way if I'm purchasing a significant product.
I recently bought my son a laptop over eBay.
He's only two, so why are you buying
your two-year-old a laptop?
For God's sake, man, what's wrong with you?
Get him a desktop first.
He'll migrate to the laptop later.
Jeez.
I think it's a...
Get him a pencil first.
A what?
A pencil!
What's that?
I agree with Bernie.
Sounds socialist to me.
Okay, so it's not a late model,
but it's still only a couple...
I put the only in there, sorry.
It's still a couple hundred dollars,
and it would have made my transaction easier
if I could call the seller.
I can use Skype in my PDA over the wireless network
in my kitchen, which makes this feature super cool for me.
Anyway, your show rules.
I'm retro-auditing the entire history of the show.
I'm almost at 9-11.
Well, bless you.
I don't know.
I stand by what I said.
I don't want to be Skyped at every possible opportunity
if I'm selling a CD or something on eBay
because people just...
I mean, you know, they'll be calling left and right,
not even when you're selling something,
but after you're finished selling it to say,
I didn't like the third track on that album or whatever.
It just seems like another way that people
are just going to be constantly barraging you
with communications, and I think we've had enough of it.
We fear the same thing, the instant messaging of Skype.
And it's true.
And it happens, yes.
People are riveted to their screens,
all that stupid beeping and musical tones
when people are getting messages.
They don't get any work done.
They don't get anything of worth done.
All that Skype will do is add another conduit
for people to say nothing 90% of the time.
Yeah, absolutely.
Hey, Emmanuel?
Yes.
When I first heard about this Skype tie-in with eBay,
my thought was that they're extending
the auction model full circle.
They'll be using Skype teleconferencing,
and everybody who wants to bid on something
can just yell, you know, they're bidding.
Oh, my God.
And they'll have the Skype auctioneer saying,
hey, you know, and everybody can bid that way.
It's become full circle.
You're pretty good at that, Bernie.
Maybe we should have a hope auction.
Yeah, we should do that.
That's a good idea.
That's a very good idea.
We've got to talk about that afterwards.
We need a good auctioneer, though.
No, you're the auctioneer.
I think you just demonstrated that.
Okay, here's a letter from Juan.
What's up?
Great work.
I don't know if you've noticed,
but Skype keeps a record of all calls on the Internet.
In the My Account part, the problem is
apparently this history cannot be erased.
And if it can, it's difficult,
since I couldn't find any links.
You guys know anything about this?
I know that the POTS phone network does the same thing.
Well, is it available that easily, though, online?
Well, it's available to the people you don't want to have it.
Yeah, that's true.
It's not available to you.
Well, I mean, if you print a bill at any point,
I would imagine that somebody can choose not to erase it.
But with Skype, do you ever get billed for a number that you call?
No, it's all part of the same thing.
So there's no reason to even itemize.
If you're using the thing where you call phone numbers,
you have to pay.
Well, he's referring to calls on the Internet, so I imagine that.
Skype to Skype.
Yeah, Skype to Skype.
So you would know who was talking to whom,
and that's kind of yet another way
that the NSA can track the circles of influence,
MySpace being another.
Okay, let's see what else.
I know you guys talk about the random bag searches
on the New York City subway.
Well, I was the one who was picked at random
to have my backpack searched,
only it was a scam.
Well, it was always a scam,
but this is a different kind of scam.
This person posed as a transit cop,
and not until my wallet and other items were missing
did I realize this.
Oh, goodness.
I then heard on the news that there was a person
or persons out there
preying on unsuspecting people,
taking advantage of this random search policy
to impersonate a cop and rob people.
This happened about a month ago.
I am now getting bills from a hospital in New Jersey
I never went to.
I called this hospital and told them my wallet
and my license was stolen,
and they said I would have to come and prove
that I was not there.
I went to motor vehicles and reported my license stolen,
and they did not change my driver ID.
I asked why, and they told me that I did not have to worry
that they know the new number.
Not quite sure what that means.
I don't know how to resolve this,
so I'm asking you and maybe Jim,
since he used to work for MTA.
I'll be at hope, and hopefully I'll have this cleared up by then.
Signed, Simon, from Laurelton, Queens.
Well, I'm going to assume absolutely nothing here
and be overly simplistic, but hopefully not insulting.
For heaven's sakes, it doesn't sound like
you reported this to the police
when you realized what had happened,
which obviously was a couple days at least afterwards.
You should do that.
He already got searched by the police.
No, this guy was impersonating the police.
So he says. Okay.
Let's not go to multiple layers of paranoia.
We have enough trouble with the first layer, guys.
No, report it to the police,
because once you have a police report,
and they may not want to take it
because you're probably not going to find
the correct place to report it at first,
the right subway district,
but you could do it with a little work
or you could go into any precinct
and eventually you'll be able to report this.
You'll get hopefully what's known as a CN number.
Once you have this,
you have an official record of this having happened,
yes, maybe a long time in the past,
you might be able to, but very doubtful,
get insurance reimbursement for something.
But like I said, that's very doubtful.
It doesn't sound like you had anything valuable
that was insured, stolen, just money and ID.
But with this, you can then say to that hospital in New Jersey,
look, here's the police report number,
okay, that my ID was stolen.
Here's a photocopy of my current ID.
You might have to get notarized.
Send that to them.
You don't necessarily have to traipse all the way to New Jersey.
And they should be able to figure out
that you weren't the patient,
especially if you're, say, let's, you know, at random,
I'll say 5'2 in black and the guy was 6'3 in Asian.
The hospital will be able to tell the difference
between the two of you.
All you have to do is have some sort of ID
that says you're whatever.
Okay, well, what do you suggest, though,
for people being searched on subways
other than to say no?
If the guy's in plain clothes, ask for ID.
They have to show you not only the badge,
but a police ID.
It's funny because I saw a guy ask for ID
at Union Square and get arrested for asking.
It's incredible.
Really?
Oh, that was during RNC.
Oh, well.
Everybody was a little crazy then.
I mean, the advice to say no is
here's another reason why it's good advice.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, even if somebody does have ID,
it doesn't mean they're not going to steal your wallet anyway.
I never could understand that.
You know, when the cops are at your door
or, you know, pulling you over or something
and they're in plain clothes and you say,
show me ID, and they show you this thing
that looks like it came out of a gumball machine.
How do you know that's real?
All badges to me look the same.
You don't actually touch it in your hand
and feel the lettering and see
if it's actually authentic or not.
There's no way to really know.
It seems pretty simple to impersonate a cop
along those lines.
Okay, here's...
Actually, Bernie, you sent this to the list.
Woody Allen's new film, Scoop,
which is set in London,
has him driving a smart car around the UK.
No doubt this will boost popularity in the US.
Is that really true?
Yes, I saw a preview the other night in the theaters
and I thought, hmm, this is probably
some form of product placement
for this American film
to pre-push demand for smart cars
when they're eventually brought to this country.
Well, I don't know if Woody Allen is that true.
I also don't know if this is a Woody Allen film,
if he's just in this film.
But, of course, the news has hit
that smart cars will be coming to this country
in about a year or two.
And I swear, everyone keeps sending me mail about this
and everyone knows about smart cars now,
so it's no longer something
that no one knows what it is.
So, yeah, it's going to be interesting
when they finally do make it over here.
I won't have the only smart car in the city.
Maybe I'll actually...
You'll have to get something else.
I'll have to get something else, won't I?
Yes.
But it's so much fun driving this one around
and parking it in places people think you can't possibly fit.
And I do think it's going to be very successful,
especially in the cities.
What I'm worried about, though,
is in reading about all the changes...
Get this.
These are some of the changes that you have to make
to make a smart car American-friendly.
Okay, you have to replace kilometers with miles.
Okay, fine.
I guess we have to do that.
But why in God's name do you have to replace
the international symbol for the brake
with the word brake?
Who in God's name reads the brake before they apply it?
It's there.
It's in the same place.
Nobody reads it.
Can't we live with the international symbol of the brake
and save a few thousand dollars on the car?
Is it imprinted on the brake itself?
It's imprinted on the brake itself, yes.
I didn't even know brakes had anything on them.
Yeah, well, they do.
Go stick your head down there and you'll see.
It's one of those things.
You're sure you're not talking about the light
that comes on when the brake is broken?
There might be one there, too.
There might be one there, too.
But what is so hard about learning
these international symbols?
Every country in the world, including Cuba,
has no parking signs that are international.
It's just a circle with a slash through it.
Everybody knows what it means.
We don't.
Why is that?
What's in our interest to not know
the way the rest of the world talks?
I don't get it.
You know, I have the strangest feeling of deja vu
that we had this discussion about the brake
a year or two ago.
And if anybody is going through the archives
and finds this, send this to us and let us know.
Yeah.
Well, I knew about it then, too,
so I might be repeating myself.
But that's just one of the things.
And it brings the price of the car way up,
almost double, in fact.
So I'm afraid that might make it not as popular
as it could be.
I think that's just the excuse they use
to double the price.
I'm sure it's just greed that does it.
Your reference to the MTA cancelling credit card
purchases and billing the customer
sounds like it could be a theft issue.
Maybe one of your legal minds could look
into a class action suit against the MTA.
I know in London that the London Underground
had ticket machines that accepted exact change only.
Overages would be kept by the London Underground.
It's pure profit.
The system should have issued a valid ticket
for carriage and a second card with the amount
of overpayment printed on it so a customer
could take it to a man booth and exchange it
for the money overpaid.
Wow, what a revolutionary idea that is.
It should.
The TA here does the same thing.
If you are getting more than six coins
back in change, it won't give you the excess change.
If you buy an $80 metro card with a $100 bill,
you get six Suzy Bees back.
Why can't you get bills back,
like every other country?
I don't know.
Not every other country, obviously,
but the ones that know how to use technology.
They spit bills out and it's fast
and it's easy and it works.
And why don't buses take bills?
Explain that to me too.
Every city I've ever been to,
buses take dollar bills.
Look, they have a primitive machine on the bus, okay?
No, in Boston, until very recently, they didn't.
All right, well, Boston,
yeah, they still use tokens for their subway.
They're actually transitioning to something
called the Charlie card.
Yes.
And they're transitioning not very well
from what I've heard.
There are some stations that are transitioned
and some that are not.
So if you wish to take a round trip voyage,
you may have to use two different forms of payment.
I have a weird image
with the use of the word transition there.
Ooh, ooh, there's a new mass transit fare system
going in place in New Jersey.
Oh, what, right now as we speak?
Yeah, they're putting machines in right now.
I just saw them.
Okay.
It's PATCO, which is sort of a strange system.
It's PATCO, Pennsylvania.
It's between New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
It goes from Philadelphia.
Philadelphia area transportation, I don't know.
Company.
But most of the PATCO system,
by far the majority of it is in the New Jersey area.
It goes out to Camden and Lindenwald
and north and south.
There's a lot of different lines.
But they're getting rid of their classic,
old mag stripe system,
which, Emanuel, you and I saw several years ago
being repaired.
And it was very interesting,
old circuitry that was hand-wired, wrapped.
Correct, yes.
And this is the place that has the pay phone
that's not a pay phone.
It's a regular pay phone,
but it's not hooked to the central office.
It actually is wired to the PATCO operator.
And you can, well, someone actually,
one of our, I think it was Rebel,
who confessed to red-boxing his way
through the PATCO system
by spoofing the PATCO operators
he was putting quarters in the phone system.
Just because he confessed, that doesn't mean...
He might have been making that up.
I don't know.
In any case, it's a new,
very high-tech looking system
that the readers,
I can't tell if they're chip cards
or mag stripe cards,
but the dispensing machines
and the readers look very high-tech.
And I'll be getting information on this shortly.
Okay, cool.
Let's read one or two more letters
and then take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
This is from Kylanol.
Thank you, Kylanol, for writing in.
I love Off the Hook.
I anxiously await the next broadcast each week.
I'm not sure if you already know about this,
but Canada is about to get screwed over.
Apparently, there's a bill that's been resurrected
that will allow investigators
to retrieve ISP logs
on anyone's internet activity
without requiring a warrant.
That's sobering news.
In other news,
I work at a company
that produces enterprise content management software
for huge corporations.
And unfortunately, they've blocked 2600.com
with their firewall-slash-filtering-hardware-slash-software
they've got running.
More research into this resulted in the discovery
that they're using Blue Coat system-filtering software.
Blue Coat at www.bluecoat.com
had classified 2600.com
under illegal-slash-questionable-material-and-hacking.
I can understand the hacking category,
but the other category is a word we cannot say.
After contacting Blue Coat
to try to get the illegal-questionable-material
categorization removed,
they responded saying that people have tried
to have this reclassified in the past and failed.
They were sticking to their original classification
and still are.
Luckily, after a lot of grunt work and persistence,
I've actually managed to get this classification removed.
Thank you very much, Carl and all.
So all the corporations worldwide
that have blocked 2600
with the category illegal-questionable-material
using Blue Coat,
they should no longer fall under this category.
They will no longer be filtered.
Not much we can do for the guys in IT
that decide that hacking should be blocked,
but at least 2600.com is properly classified.
This goes to show you can make a difference.
But what I'd really like to know,
I'd really like to know,
of all these companies that classify us
as illegal or questionable,
what specifically are you talking about?
What's on that site that's illegal or questionable?
We have radio shows.
We have announcements of upcoming conferences.
I just don't see what's up there.
We have the Bernie S. story.
We have the Kevin Mitnick story.
We have all sorts of interesting things.
Nothing is illegal.
Nothing is questionable.
I don't even think there's any hacking stuff up there
unless you consider the audio of the radio shows
to be hacking because we talk about what hacking is.
Is that what they're considering?
If you ever get bored,
it might be interesting to sue
some of these filter companies.
I'm considering it.
I bet the lawsuit won't make it as far as the trial.
Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
No, I think it's a good thing.
I think these companies,
if they get served with papers,
I think at least half of them will back down.
How about a cash settlement?
I don't know if you can get that.
Well, for wear and tear,
not wear and tear,
duress, emotional duress.
Slander, libel.
You can claim that people aren't coming to the store
and spending money if they can't get to the website.
I'm being maligned.
We're all being maligned.
I think you'll have a much tougher case is all I'm saying.
Called indecent and questionable
and all sorts of other things.
Maybe the radio show at Hope is not such a great idea
if it's going to be indecent.
Maybe their definition of questionable
is that it raises questions.
Maybe we do all the time on this show.
Maybe we need to define what indecent actually is.
That's what I'm hoping to achieve.
Okay, 212-209-2900.
During the last show,
you mentioned that there was a CCC camp event
coming up next year.
Yet, I cannot find any information about this online.
I'm wondering if you're referring to another event
like 23C3,
or am I looking in the wrong place?
Well, you're referring to the congresses
which take place every December.
Could you give us more information about this event?
I missed what the heck,
and as far as I understood,
these events only come around every four years.
2009 is a long time away.
So, if one is happening next year,
that would be fantastic.
Well, that has been the case.
That has been the history
that every four years is a German event,
and every four years is a Dutch event,
and every two years is a Hope event,
and they all sort of alternate.
So, 2007, we're due for a German event.
Now, it has not been announced officially.
Maybe at Hope they'll be announced.
Who knows?
But that is the history as it has happened in the past,
and we certainly hope that it will happen again.
It's definitely interesting.
A lot of people have asked.
Okay, 202, 209, 2900.
One of our listeners wrote in
with something interesting for us to play.
He put this together.
In fact, there's another number station out there now.
It's got...
This is the fourth one that I didn't make.
Yeah, you didn't make this one.
So, there's a fourth one out there.
Go to homelandstupidity.us,
and there's all sorts of conversations about it.
Maybe you can help figure out just what it's all about.
It's kind of a weird message this time.
It says, what is it?
Mein Freund, you are...
Don't despair.
You are more popular than you think
or something like that,
which tells me that this person knows.
Whoever's making these coded messages,
this person knows that people are getting frustrated
and hang in there, and you're almost there or something.
I don't know.
Maybe you can figure it out.
Maybe somebody will figure it out someday.
I don't have the time.
But this listener, known as GK4,
put together a little piece to get people to call in.
Why don't you just listen to it?
I think it's self-explanatory.
Group 995.
Whiskey.
Bravo.
Alpha.
India.
2122092900.
Group 995.
Whiskey.
Bravo.
Alpha.
India.
2122092900.
Oh, yes.
Thank you very much, GK4, for putting that together.
Am I wrong, or was that me saying zero?
That was you saying zero.
That was you saying...
Apparently...
I didn't recognize the other voices.
Well, there were certain numbers I guess we didn't say,
because those are some of the other voices.
But I don't know what the noise is between the 99 and 5.
I guess it's supposed to mean point.
Like a whip or something.
But that's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool.
So call WBAI, 2122092900.
Let's go over here and take a phone call.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Oh, sorry.
I've got to turn the radio down.
Yes, you must do that.
Yes, okay.
There's a delay.
Yeah, I made a secret tape recording,
which is legal, by the way,
because one party is cognizant of the call.
It's legal to make the recording of a doctor who mutilated me.
Oh, dear.
But when I called the lawyers
who are responsible for these doctors who steal bones and do all sorts of things,
they told me it wasn't admissible in court.
Now, we know they got gaudy.
The feds use secret recordings.
But it's like it's not a two-way street with people.
Suddenly I got the evidence, this unscrupulous doctor,
but I can't use it in court.
Although it's legal to make the tape recording.
It's ridiculous.
What state do you live in?
Right here, New York.
I'd seek a second opinion.
It seems kind of strange to me.
If you have a recording...
We had a secretary who goes,
this was a big company that was...
No, get the lawyer to tell you this.
Don't get the secretary to tell you this.
Well, this is the receptionist there, but...
No, no, no.
I've talked to other lawyers, too,
and they say sometimes it's a problem.
Rule number one, receptionists do not know the law.
I mean, I don't want to diss the receptionist or anything like that,
but talk to a lawyer, get it from him.
The other thing is you should talk to your own lawyer.
The opposing lawyer is, of course, going to tell you whatever they tell you
to get you to weaken your case.
Were you talking to the opposing lawyer?
No, no, no.
But it was actually my cousin that was responsible
for the law being changed in three states.
He was actually a criminal lawyer who was defending this mafia guy,
and the guy he killed had a secret recording.
He said, my client didn't give permission to be tape recorded.
Then they changed the laws in all the states because of that case.
Interesting.
Yeah.
He must be proud of having...
Okay, thanks.
Good luck with your suit.
Boy, that's an indication of why these things are important sometimes.
202, 209, 209.
You know, there's nobody on the phone line either.
People aren't in the studio.
People aren't on the phone.
I think everyone's just recovering from July 4th, whatever they were doing.
I was working all July 4th, okay?
I don't know.
People took off Monday.
They took off Tuesday.
They took off Saturday.
They took off Sunday.
I was working every single one of those days.
Well, then.
Yeah.
Getting this conference ready.
So I don't want to hear it.
I don't want to...
I mean, I want to see response here.
I want to see people, you know, in person and on the phone.
All right.
That's better.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Oh, hello.
How are you?
Good.
I was wondering if you guys are going to try to squeeze in another fundraiser between now
and hope.
Oh, you're looking forward to that, aren't you?
Well, you must have some inside information because, yes, in fact, as it turns out, there
is going to be another fundraiser, the special summer drive that we have sometimes.
Actually, we've had a lot lately.
Yeah, there's all kinds of financial issues going on.
All we can say is keep the station here.
And if the station needs to have a fundraiser, you know, it's a pain in the ass for a lot
of people I know, but it's a necessary evil.
It's better than the alternative, which is to have a country music station at 99.5.
Actually, I shouldn't pick on them because there is no country music station anywhere
in the city.
I think a digital station may be like one of those second channels of some stations
as a country.
But there is no over-the-air that everybody can get station.
So, okay, maybe, you know, another hip-hop station or something or another middle-of-the-road
station or something like that.
You know, that's what it would turn into if we weren't able to succeed at the fundraiser.
Okay.
Thanks for the question, though.
It's an important fact.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, dear.
Maybe that answer was disillusioning to some people.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yeah.
Speak up, please.
Hi.
This is Bob Jobson.
Hello, Bob.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
Am I on the air now?
You're on the air now.
Yes.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry I'm on delay here.
You were talking about a lack of bills, not being able to pay using bills.
I ran into the opposite problem last night.
I arrived at Newark Airport from overseas, and the port authorities now increased its
record for avarice by making you pay for the carts.
Well, don't you just pay a deposit, and you get it back when you put the cart back?
No.
Really?
You have to pay now?
Pay.
And what's more is you have to pay with $3 bills.
I thought it was a quarter.
It said $3 bills?
$3 bills.
They have two people.
Of course, nobody has changed, and so they have two people to handle just putting money
into the machine.
What's worse is if somebody comes from overseas, there's no exchange machine.
Yeah.
There's no windows.
Most airports in the world have carts for free, and now they've decided to put in addition
to the $40 landing fee per passenger or something they're charging, they're requesting dollar
bills from people who come from India or someplace.
They make it really hard and uncomfortable for people arriving for some reason.
I don't know why that is, because it's very simple to make it a lot more pleasant.
For instance, when I got back from Cuba, I landed at LaGuardia.
It was impossible finding a MetroCard that I could use.
I could only buy a weekly MetroCard.
I didn't need that.
I wanted a regular MetroCard.
That meant I had to use change on the bus, which meant I didn't get the same kind of
transfer that I would have gotten normally.
For somebody who is not familiar with the system to start with, why not make it easy?
Why not make it as simple as you possibly can, let alone having buses and trains going
to the airports in the first place, but at least being able to buy what you need easily?
Or signs and announcements in more than one language.
That'd be cool, too.
Yeah, which is amazing.
I read a study that cab drivers at JFK are more than half likely to rip off someone if
they appear not to speak English.
Oh, yeah.
That's been going on for decades, I'll bet.
It's a lot.
Thanks for your call.
You're welcome.
All right.
Yeah, we have time for a couple more.
212-209-2900.
That's our phone number.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Yeah, how you doing, you guys?
How are you?
We've been having a very good show, and I'm a cab driver that the guy was talking about
who ripped off.
That's long and gone.
But anyway, I just want to say that where I live in Queens, there's a whole bunch of
people that don't secure their networks, and I disconnected my modem, and I use Wi-Fi
off of people that live close to me, so every day I log on to somebody else's network.
Yeah, well, you know, that's a very common thing, and it's a very easy thing, and the
question is, is it a legal thing as well?
Is it breaking the law, or is it something that, you know, if people don't secure their
network, is that implicit permission that, yes, anybody can hop on?
Well, I'm just alerting so people that do have networks there to secure it, because
if they don't want nobody lurking around on their connection and on their computer, all
they have to do is secure it.
That's true.
That's true.
All right.
Thanks so much for your call.
All right.
All right, guys.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
That's one of our cab driver listeners.
And look at this.
The phone lines are lit up now with only a couple minutes left to go.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, thank you for taking my call, Emanuel.
No problem.
And thanks, guys, for doing all the work you do.
Did you hear anything about a new study with regard to microwave and cell phone usage?
I haven't heard anything about a new one, Jim.
The only thing I heard is that they said that cell phone usage early in the morning
stimulates your brain and gets you going better than a cup of coffee.
Holy God's name said that.
I read that in the newspaper, and I said, I want to find out what's behind this, because
this is insane.
Which newspaper was that?
I don't know.
It made the networks.
You don't know.
It was the New York Post, wasn't it?
It probably was.
Yeah.
But it also made the daily news.
The reason I brought it up is because I caught the end of one of the health shows on BAI,
and unfortunately, I don't have the information right in front of me, and I know you're getting
ready to go off.
But I really would—will they be addressing that at HOPE, or is that an issue at all,
especially with more Wi-Fi and more microwave energy being concentrated in different areas
for different reasons?
It's definitely an issue, and it's something that I'm sure someone at HOPE will know something
about.
Yeah, I would say it's going to be addressed someplace.
And could you give the name, not only of the website, but of contact for both the show
and the magazine, please?
Yeah, well, you can email us.
You'll get to the magazine as well if you email oth at 2600.com.
And for the conference, just go to www.hope.net, H-O-P-E.
Thank you so much for your help.
Okay.
Stay well.
Take care.
Yeah, go ahead, Bernie.
Quick comment for the listener.
There's a—the best book I've ever seen on this subject—it's actually published several
years ago—has a weird title called The Zapping of America.
Actually, it's a very well-written scientific treatise showing all kinds of studies, and
it seems fairly balanced.
And it's got a lot of good information in there about the microwave energy and what
it does to the human body at different power levels.
Okay.
Thanks for the info.
Reminder, 2600 meetings coming up this Friday, so we'll see you there.
And pre-registration for HOPE runs out on Monday.
We'll see you in New York City July 21st, 22nd, and 23rd.
And next week here.
Good night.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.