through the year, then workers would get an extra $2 a month, which really, it's peanuts.
As unions and workers continue to push for improved real wages, business leaders caution
that if wages are pushed too high, many small and medium-sized companies will have to close
because they cannot afford a major increase in wages.
The government appears to agree with that view, so workers will have to continue organizing
to make their demands for decent wages a reality.
It won't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Fundidly bond for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Fundidly, no!
And the program is Off the Hook. I'm Mike. I'm joined here in the studio by Jim.
Hello!
By Redbird.
Good evening.
By Arseny.
Hello.
Not Kevin.
Yeah, hello.
Special guest Mitch Altman joins us.
Hello.
And Bernie S. is on the phone from Philadelphia. I think.
Somewhere.
Hello.
Hello, Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Okay, and we're now going to make use of the telephone again. Let's get a dial tone.
And we're going to call Emmanuel.
And as we wait...
He's somewhere in the world.
Your call is being connected. Please wait.
Particularly savvy listeners may be able to guess by the ring where he is.
You're really good.
Hi, could I have 217, please?
You want to speak with 217?
Yes, please.
Okay, give me a moment.
Hello?
Hello, is Emmanuel there?
This is Emmanuel here.
Oh, wow. Funny how that works. Where is here?
Well, actually, right now I am in the city-state of Singapore, if you can believe that.
I can't.
I hope you're not chewing any gum.
I'm sorry?
I said I hope you're not chewing any gum.
Well, actually, I have some very interesting stories to tell on just that subject.
But first I want to welcome you guys. I believe there's...
Ken is engineering our show again. Thank you very much, Ken.
You're quite welcome.
And Mitch, I see you're back in the studio again.
Hello.
Do you have one of those hypnotic devices?
I do. I never go anywhere without it.
I wonder if they are legal in the city-state of Singapore.
Well, I see we have most of the regular crew.
Yeah, actually, I'm here in Singapore.
And I said last week, I'm sorry, I said last week I was going to be in Malaysia.
And I will be back in Malaysia.
But I'm not in Malaysia right now.
I figured how many times am I going to get a chance to go down to Singapore
and see what this place is like.
And it's quite interesting.
It's rather surprising, in fact, in so many ways.
We've all heard the stories about how certain things are outlawed.
And it's kind of like this crazy place where there are so many rules and penalties
and things like that.
And there's a degree of truth to a lot of this.
But there are also some fiction that kind of needs to be dispelled.
For one thing, having just been in London a few weeks ago,
this place pales in comparison in so far as surveillance.
You do not see the amount of cameras that you see in London.
There are cameras, but there just aren't that many.
What you have instead is a rather orderly society where people are aware of the rules
and they tend to obey the rules,
and they're very aware of what the penalties are for not obeying the rules.
You see signs on the trains outlining quite clearly the financial damage
that you will incur if you, say, spit or if you litter
or if you eat or drink on the train.
It ranges from 500 Singapore dollars, which is about, I think, 65, 70 U.S. cents.
It ranges from something like $500 to $5,000 for, say, misusing the intercom on a train.
That's a $5,000 fine right there.
One of the first things I did was wander over to a 7-Eleven,
which they have no shortage of here, to see what the deal was with gum.
I figured I'd dispel that rumor right away that society couldn't exist without chewing gum.
Well, guess what? I looked all throughout so many stores at that little front-counter display
with all the candies and things like that,
and while they have chewy candies and all sorts of mints and things like that,
I could not find a single package of chewing gum anywhere.
It really kind of freaked me out a little bit that a society was able to just so easily
be turned away from something that, well, let's face it,
it's very important to the American culture.
We value, we cherish our gum, do we not?
The double-mint twins.
Well, to be specific, it's basically our society is very keen on gum rights,
and we've made that into kind of almost a political thing over the years.
I don't think we'd see our gum disappear quite the same way that it has here in Singapore.
It's really, really hard to find.
What else would you stick under the desks?
I'm sorry?
What else would you stick under desks?
I honestly can't understand what you're saying.
That's all right.
There's so much mischief you can get up to with gum besides just chewing it
that what do they do for mischief in that country?
Yeah, well, it's basically what I found out later was it's not so much the chewing it that's a problem,
it's what people do with it afterwards that's the issue.
And I guess what happened was somebody in a position of power,
someone probably not unlike our own Mayor Bloomberg,
just got annoyed one day and said,
Okay, I've had it, stepping on gum, that's it, no more gum,
and there'll be a fine if people get caught doing things with it.
That is not to say, though, that there is no gum here.
I actually did find gum.
In fact, I found a drugstore.
And while I was in the drugstore, there aren't very many of those,
but I found myself wandering through, and I asked myself,
well, what if I was addicted to cigarettes, and I wanted to get off that addiction,
and I wanted to chew that nicotine gum, would that be allowed?
And so I started looking around, and sure enough, behind the counter,
they have the nicotine gum that you can get for that particular purpose.
But do you know what else they have behind the counter?
I bet you'll tell us.
I will, I will.
That was my way of checking to make sure I wasn't disconnected.
Behind the counter, you can also buy regular gum.
There was only one brand.
Yeah, they only had one brand.
I won't tell you which brand it was, but I could see it right there.
Staring me in the face behind the counter was just regular chewing gum.
So I said, okay, I'll bite, literally.
Clerk or whatever, can I have a package of that particular gum?
She asked me what flavor, and I told her what flavor.
And then she sold it to me.
I asked her, though, okay, so is this legal?
Are there certain rules I need to be aware of?
Obviously I'm not from around here.
And she said, well, normally we're supposed to write your name down in a book.
There's a log book that they actually write down the names of people who buy chewing gum.
She decided to skip that formality, I guess,
because there's no reason to have my name on file for buying gum.
But she was very clear in telling me that she's trusting that I'm not going to stick it on a chair
or throw it on the ground or do anything else that would get me, and I quote, arrested.
So basically there was no waiting period or anything like that.
I was given the gum immediately.
I was able to chew it almost instantly, and I was trusted to act responsibly.
And it felt good.
I did something else yesterday, which I don't think very many people can say they did in Singapore.
It was not something I planned, by the way.
It was just something that happened.
I was sort of forced into the situation.
I jumped a turnstile in the subway system in full view of just about everybody there,
including the people behind the glass booth.
Now, the reason I did this was not to make any kind of a statement,
but basically the system they have here is actually very similar to the system they have in London
and also in Kuala Lumpur over in Malaysia.
It's an RFID system where basically you buy a card, and unlike London, it's simply a pay-as-you-go system.
There's no capping going on or figuring out how much a day pass is.
You pay every single fare.
It's cheap, but it gets deducted from a certain amount you put on the card.
And you have to show a passport in order to get the card in the first place, which is kind of interesting, too.
So basically you place the card onto the turnstile as you prepare to walk through it.
The turnstile opens, and you enter the system.
You leave the system the same way.
You simply place the card on top of the turnstile, and it opens,
deducting the amount that is suitable for the trip you just took.
Well, what happened last night was that I was going into the system, but it was very crowded.
There were people coming in, people going out, and I put the card down on the system.
The gate opened, and then some guy from inside the system ran out through my open gate,
and then the gate closed.
So there was nothing I could do because I had already put the card down.
It had opened for me, and as far as it knew, I was inside the system.
There was really no other choice but to jump over the turnstile.
What else could you do?
You should file a complaint in writing with the Singapore Transit Authority advising them of this problem.
You guys are really, really low.
I said that you should file a complaint in writing with the Singapore Transit Authority advising of this problem.
As it turned out, actually, there's more to this story.
I actually was in error when I thought that the guy had left on my particular entrance
when the gate opened.
What had happened was the sensor on my gate apparently wasn't working,
but there's no way to tell when that happens.
The way to tell it's not working is that the gate does not open.
However, when I placed my card down and the gate opened, I assumed that that was because of my card.
In actuality, it was the other guy, his card, that he put on after my card.
It was opening for him.
So when I tried to get out of the system later, there was a big red light and entry denied
and all kinds of fun things like that.
It was easily solved.
My friend simply handed me his card, and we just did a little switcheroo, and I got out on that.
Throughout all this, though, nobody really seemed to care.
There was nobody running around, no authorities, just a little bit of excitement at the turnstile, but that was it.
Again, in Singapore, you would expect to see police everywhere.
I haven't seen a single one the whole time I've been here, which is the third day I've been here now.
So like I said, it's an orderly society, but it does not have the hysteria of London,
does not have the over-the-top monitoring of London.
There are some very interesting things going on here as far as the rules and regulations,
and it's a little scary in some ways, but not as scary as I thought it would be.
What are some of the not-so-scary parts?
Some of the not-so-scary parts?
Some of the not-so-scary parts, whatever you feel like.
Well, I mean, it's a very different type of a place.
Basically, Singapore is a city-state.
The whole country is pretty much the city.
It's just to the south of Malaysia.
We're very close to the equator, in fact.
I think it's about 100 miles away or so.
And what that means is, obviously, it's warm.
Not quite as warm as I thought it would be, but it's pretty much the same temperature all year long.
Also, the sun comes up at the same time just about every day,
and goes down about the same time every day.
Days are about 12 hours in length.
I can sort of see how you might fall into an obsession with orderliness,
because everything is pretty much the same day after day.
You get the same weather.
You get the same length of days.
Basically, it's kind of a predictable place in many ways,
although there are a lot of enclaves of variety of various sorts.
For instance, I was in a part of Singapore last night called Little India,
which is not little at all.
Little India is massive.
It's probably much bigger than Chinatown in New York.
And it just goes on and on with all sorts of shops and restaurants and narrow streets.
Not the kind of thing you would expect to see in a place like Singapore.
There's also Little India in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur.
And the thing I found interesting about both of them was, for some reason,
and I don't know how this exactly happens,
but for some reason, instead of having the sewage flowing down underneath the ground like we're used to,
it's just right out there in the open, flowing down a narrow gully on the side of the street.
And I'm just wondering, this is Singapore, where there's all kinds of rules and regulations,
and people are very orderly, but for some reason in Little India, that doesn't apply.
You can have open sewage flowing down the street.
People cross against the light in Little India.
Most parts of Singapore, you'll have a red light, and nobody will dare to cross the street.
It's kind of like in Seattle, people do the same thing.
But in Little India, people just cross against the red light, and they do it without fear.
So you have different things going on here.
You have variety.
You have a very big Chinatown and all sorts of other little areas that I have yet to explore.
It's a lot more diverse than I ever thought it could be.
Now, having experienced both societies, one where they have excessive controls,
for instance, that don't allow you to buy chewing gum at a convenience store,
versus one where you're constantly monitored but have relatively more freedoms,
which one do you prefer?
Well, I'd have to say that in this particular society, I don't feel like it's being crammed down my throat so much
and that there's a hostile force watching every move I make.
That might very well be.
But I feel more in this place like I'm simply observing the customs that everybody has come to accept.
Now, I might have problems for people accepting those customs so readily
and giving up things like chewing gum and whatever else they've given up besides that.
But it seems to be the choice of the people.
And I imagine if they really wanted to change it, they probably could.
Something else that they have a lot of here are, I guess, signs similar to what we have in New York
anti-terrorism and things like that.
In fact, I was at an outdoor train station yesterday where they actually were playing a repeating video
talking about the bombings in Madrid, the bombings in London,
and how we must not let that happen here in our society.
It was kind of Orwellian, just the way it was repeating over and over again.
People were watching it.
People were pretty much transfixed by it.
And their little slogan for the SMRT, that's their mass transit system,
SMRT, Community Emergency Preparedness Program, they say,
Suspect it, report it, always be alert, nobody gets hurt.
And let me just read you a couple of things from a sign that was posted by the train station.
This is asking people to join the particular program.
All SCRP participants will undergo three hours of theory and four hours of practical sessions.
The theory lesson includes introduction to security, threats, and challenges,
such as chemical, biological, radiological, and explosive attacks,
training on how to be vigilant on SMRT's transport network,
training on reporting procedures and emergency response.
The practical training lesson comprises on-site role-playing,
identification and reporting of threats,
and a train evacuation using the detrainment ramp, I believe it says here.
It's kind of blurry, this picture.
Registration is free.
Application forms are available at all passenger service centers of the subway system.
And I guess they just are encouraging people to get involved and watch over and things like that.
So did you sign up?
Not yet, not yet. I'm still here a couple more days,
so I have plenty of opportunity to get enrolled in various programs and to be reported as well.
Now, Mitch, I know you've been to Singapore.
Does this sort of match up with your experiences?
Yeah, very much.
The way it seemed to me is that everyone there is just very well trained
It's a very small, dense society, so people are brought up to get along
very much the way Emmanuel just described.
The one thing, though, living there,
you really don't want to start an opposition newspaper or a cool zine.
It'll be looked poorly upon by the powers that be.
So people just know there that that's not the thing to do.
Hacking doesn't happen very often there because people just don't seem to break the rules
unless the rules that people agree are OK to break,
like prostitution or selling pirated software.
These are things that are necessary for their economy.
The software is just too expensive in general for people there to afford.
And prostitution, well, people go from all over Southeast Asia to go there.
But it does happen occasionally, and when it does, it's in the news,
so people are reminded, look what happens.
And this is kind of where I disagree with Emmanuel's notion
that it would be easy for them to make a change.
For instance, if everybody suddenly agreed that they wanted chewing gum,
well, how does everyone agree on that if there's not a small group of people
that say that, hey, this is something that we want changed?
And if they try to go about that, then Mitch just described exactly what would happen.
Well, I think a lot of the blame goes with the gum companies
because they need to make the gum available to the people
and get it into this country somehow.
And if they could do that, then people could participate
in a massive civil disobedience of gum chewing,
and the authorities just would not know how to deal with that.
It's not really in the culture of Singaporean people
to have a massive civil disobedience.
Yeah, that's probably true.
I think they're doing more important things than chewing gum right now.
But no, I understand Redbird's point there.
It is sort of ingrained in the mindset that authority comes from above
and they obey the rules.
And that's pretty much, as long as they agree with that particular way of doing things,
things will stay the same.
But if that changes for whatever reason, and I don't see a reason on the horizon,
if that were to change, the only way to affect change
would be people doing things en masse.
That's interesting.
Anything else you want to tell us about Singapore?
I saw a really cool machine, actually, yesterday.
Maybe we have this, but this is something I've always wanted.
I was in Chinatown at this dim sum place.
I don't know if you guys have ever seen this,
but it's basically a wireless device that sits at the table.
It has five buttons, and you simply press the button
and they act upon your request.
One button says, Order.
One says, Water.
One says, Bill.
One says, Service.
And the other one says, Cancel.
Cancel is what they hit when they come over to your table
to find out just what the hell you want.
And basically what happens when you press a button
is this LCD screen on the wall lights up with your table number
and the button you press, so they know exactly what it is you want,
and they're there within seconds.
It seems to me that when you're trying to get a bill at a restaurant,
this is a great button to be able to have,
because right away you don't have to wave at people.
You just press the button and they come and give you what it is you request.
Has such a thing ever existed in the States?
Believe it or not, I've seen one, and you're not going to believe where.
It's only in Chinatown, right?
No, no, no.
In the mid-late 90s at the Caesars Palace poker room in Las Vegas,
they had this at every table.
You could call for the waitress.
You could call for a floor man if there was a problem with the hand.
You could call for a chip runner if somebody playing needed more chips.
But other than that, I've thought of this as being a useful tool
for innumerable things, not just poker playing in restaurants,
but you should have this everywhere.
It makes perfect sense to light up a board somewhere.
Yeah, I've seen them at fancy restaurants too,
but it was just really to call the waiter over.
There wasn't a particular request that you could make from the button.
But either way, it's very convenient.
Well, the funny thing is, on the back of this device is an FCC compliance notice,
which I didn't know they had jurisdiction all the way out here.
But the actual device is called TableCall.
I'll give you the model number.
Maybe some of our listeners can look this up.
It's EC985 and EC988.
So hopefully that will give us some kind of a clue
as to what exactly is going on there.
I had some fun on the plane heading over to Kuala Lumpur.
This was the longest flight I ever took in my life.
It was in excess of 20 hours with one stop.
So I was pleased to see that they went out of their way to keep us entertained.
Because I have a lot of trouble sleeping on airplanes,
and that meant that one movie wasn't really going to do it for me.
They had an incredible system of video on demand
where you could basically order all kinds of films, foreign films, Indian films,
Bollywood things, and Hollywood as well, TV programs.
They had all sorts of games, basically a lot of things to keep you occupied for many, many days.
They should use this on the space station. I'm sure it will be very handy.
But one of the games they had was something called in-flight trivia.
I realized how little I know.
First of all, a lot of it seems to be geared towards a British audience.
For instance, do any of you know what stadium West Ham United plays in?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Why would we know this?
But apparently that's one of the questions that's being asked on this thing.
So I was kind of mortified by how little I knew.
But then after I played the game, which lasts about 15 minutes,
I guess they drag it out to make the time go by,
I saw the scores, and the high score wasn't really that high.
And sure enough, I was able to beat it after playing it for a few more hours.
And then when I looked at the high score,
I realized that it wasn't the high score on this particular plane.
First of all, they give your seat number and the flight number.
It turns out that this is maybe for all time or maybe for the last week,
because I saw different flight numbers and different seats.
So I figured this is kind of cool if they actually are keeping track of everybody
who flies and the scores that they get.
It's also interesting to have a chess program.
I was waiting for somebody else to come on so I could play a game of chess with somebody
on the airplane and find out what seat number they were
and go over and visit with them later and discuss the moves that they made.
It's the first time I've ever actually seen interactive entertainment
on that level on an airplane where you could actually converse
or compete against somebody in a different part of the plane.
Unfortunately, I didn't see a single other person play the trivia game
or the chess game while I was flying, which means either nobody cares
or the networking wasn't working the way I thought it was.
I was able to send an SMS from the flight.
Basically, this is kind of interesting, too.
You pass your credit card through the phone,
which is also the remote control on the device,
and then you can enter a phone number you want to send an SMS to
or an email address that you want to send an SMS email to.
It cost $1.50, which is not so bad, actually.
They can actually reply to you as well.
I wasn't quite sure how they were able to distinguish the seat number
and get the message to you, but I was able to test that out
and actually get a reply from the ground.
Now, by the time I'd landed in Malaysia,
my credit card had been turned off already
because whenever you have any kind of interaction with Malaysia
or Indonesia on your credit cards, they flip out.
I figured maybe I'd call the credit card company and tell them
I was going to Malaysia and please don't flip out over this,
but I knew that wasn't going to work, so I might as well just wait for it to happen.
So by the time I actually got to a phone
and found out that my credit card had been calling the number
that they had listed, what they did was
they called and they wanted me to verify some charges,
and one of the charges was the $1.50 on the plane,
which I thought was kind of silly.
And then another charge they wanted me to verify was my cable bill,
which is a monthly charge that comes every single month,
so it didn't make any sense.
Even if I verified all the charges,
it had nothing to do with me being in Malaysia and charging things there,
which is what they were apparently concerned about.
And not only that, the person picked up the phone.
Well, they wanted to be sure it was you.
I'm sorry?
They wanted to be sure it was you.
Well, that's just it.
They called the number that they had registered.
Somebody else picked up.
There was no verification at all involved.
All they had to do was say yes to the computer,
I recognized those charges, and that was that.
But not a single one of those charges actually was in Malaysia.
There was a $1.50 charge on the airplane and something else
and a monthly charge that's there every month.
So, of course, those charges were valid in the first place.
So it's really kind of silly how the credit card systems work.
But I knew they would be turning them off.
I brought plenty of credit cards with me,
so they can turn one off every couple of days,
and I'll still have enough to get through this.
And you're listening to Off the Hook on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
And Emmanuel is calling from Singapore.
Actually, you're calling me in Singapore.
And the reason I'm here, I'm giving a keynote address
at a conference called Hack in the Box,
which takes place next week in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
So next week, I guess, I'll be talking more about that.
It's kind of cool to see hackers in various parts of the world,
and this is one part of the world I've never been to before.
And it's just neat to know that no matter how many places you travel to,
there's always somewhere else where you get off the plane,
and it's just completely different.
And Singapore, Malaysia, they are very different places.
Oh, and by the way, Friday, this I did not know,
Friday is Independence Day in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
Unfortunately, I'll still be in Singapore then.
But while I was in Malaysia,
there were all these flags being flown everywhere.
And the flag from Malaysia looks very much like the U.S. flag.
It has the same stripes, but different stars.
So there were flags, there were fighter jets buzzing the city.
It was really kind of scary seeing these jets flying over very low
and then going straight up into the air
and then apparently falling and flipping and things like that.
So they're really getting into the whole Independence Day.
And not only is it Independence Day on Friday,
but it's the 50th anniversary of the country.
So I'm really in the region at a very opportune time.
In the region, but not the right country, I guess.
Not at the moment, no.
But Singapore was part of Malaysia up until 1965.
And then they broke away, apparently peacefully.
So I guess that kind of worked out.
Have you had a chance to play with the phone system in either of these places?
Well, the phone system is really interesting, actually, in both countries.
And this surprised me. This is a real surprise.
We were able to buy phone cards with little SIM cards, actually,
to put in our GSM phones.
And in Malaysia, the card costs about $20.
You might be able to get a card for less than that.
But for a $20 card, we're able to call the United States.
How much do you think it costs to call the United States
from your own cell phone using a Malaysian SIM?
80 cents.
80 cents what?
A minute.
80 cents a minute?
No, Mike, you're wrong.
That was Mike, right?
That was.
I'll go for 25.
I'm sorry?
25.
25 cents. Jim, no, you're wrong, too.
Anyone else want to be wrong?
7 cents.
Who said that?
I did.
Not clever.
Thank you, that's very helpful.
Well, actually, whoever you are, you're closer.
It's actually 8 cents a minute.
Wow.
Which is astounding, as far as I'm concerned.
Here in Singapore, for $10, we're able to buy a SIM for Singapore,
call the United States for 12 cents a minute.
And, of course, if people call you on either of those SIMs,
you don't pay anything.
They pay whatever it costs to call a cell phone in Malaysia or Singapore.
This is the best deal I've ever seen while traveling.
When we go to Europe, I don't know, Mike,
what's the best deal you've seen over there?
Well, they're actually introducing some new regulations in Europe,
so it'll be cheaper.
But in the past, I've paid in excess of a euro a minute on a prepaid SIM
to call the States.
Yeah, this changes the rules quite a bit.
The only disadvantage, of course, is that you no longer have the phone number
that you've given to people, your U.S. number.
But you're able to call them and tell them that,
or they're able to call you,
and you don't pay anything for that particular call.
Very different.
My T-Mobile phone, people call me,
I have to pay a huge amount in roaming charges,
even if they call me,
and if I call them, more than that as well.
Emanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
Emanuel, did you have to provide any form of identification
when you purchased this prepaid SIM card?
Yes, a passport must be shown.
However, I had a friend of mine go and get one for me,
and he simply showed his passport and got two.
Hmm.
So they might think you're him when you make the calls.
Yeah, I mean, I guess they can monitor you in some ways, but that's...
You can get him in trouble.
It doesn't seem so bad.
If you start an opposition newspaper with that phone,
you'll get him in trouble, not you.
I'm not here to start an opposition movement or anything like that.
I'm just here to observe and take notes.
Organize mass gum-chewing movements.
Is there anything else that we wouldn't have known of in the States
that's prohibited and is highly unusual?
Like, can you tap your foot in the bathroom or anything?
Well, wasting water is a crime.
I'm not quite sure how they tell if you're wasting water,
but that's something that's forbidden.
And spitting, you're not supposed to spit.
I imagine there's all kinds of other rules.
In fact, people here seem to take it with humor
because I passed through a marketplace yesterday
and they were selling shirts that had a listing of all the various rules and fines.
So they were doing it in kind of a humorous way.
I walked into a bank yesterday,
just basically an ATM kiosk,
and on the window was a big circle with a red line through it
and a picture of a helmet and a sun visor.
So you're not supposed to walk into a bank
wearing a sun visor, sunglasses, or a helmet.
I guess that makes them nervous.
I didn't see a listing of fines, if you did,
but that's one other thing to avoid doing.
I want to return to the United States for a moment, if that's okay,
and the surveillance we're being subjected to here.
And there was this news story in the El Paso Times,
was the one to break it.
They did an interview with Mike McConnell,
who's the Director of National Intelligence,
and he said all kinds of things that he had previously not said.
None of it was a surprise,
but he confirmed for the first time in public
that the phone companies are helping monitor people.
They're providing access to the NSA.
I'm shocked.
I know, aren't you?
Yes, shocked.
But what's interesting is that the government has said
that this is a top secret, a state secret.
They cannot either confirm or deny these allegations in court,
and then this guy just goes and tells the El Paso newspaper about it.
There's some question as to whether he knew the reporter was in the room?
I don't understand how that could be,
because there seems to be...
You can go to the El Paso Times and read the whole thing,
and it's question, answer, question, answer.
Either he wasn't aware he was being questioned by a reporter,
or he's really stupid, or what have you.
I don't know.
That is a possibility.
And he's claiming...
I heard a story...
I actually saw this before I left,
changing gears just a little bit.
This has to do with the iPhone,
and I heard that,
according to the Associated Press,
this is how they reported the story,
a 17-year-old hacker has broken the lock
that ties Apple's iPhone to AT&T's wireless network,
freeing the most hyped cell phone ever
for use on the networks of other carriers,
including overseas ones.
George Hotz of Glen Rock, New Jersey,
confirmed last Friday that he had unlocked an iPhone
and was using it on T-Mobile's network,
the only major U.S. carrier apart from AT&T
that is compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology.
In a video posted to his blog,
he holds an iPhone that displays T-Mobile as the carrier.
While the possibility of switching from AT&T to T-Mobile
may not be a major development for U.S. consumers,
it opens up the iPhone for use
on the networks of overseas carriers.
I thought it was interesting, in particular,
that the story refers to him as a hacker
in a positive way,
which I thought was actually a pretty good thing.
But the story goes on to say something
that I thought was kind of interesting as well.
There is apparently no U.S. law against unlocking cell phones.
Not true.
As if this was something that there's a need for,
that some people think there should be a law
against unlocking cell phones.
Can you believe that?
Emanuel.
Yes.
In fact, there is.
And it's United States Criminal Code,
Title 18, Section 1029,
which, and I'll quote it here,
whoever knowingly and with intent to defraud
produces, traffics, and has control or custody of
or possesses a telecommunications instrument
that has been modified or altered
to obtain unauthorized use of telecommunications services.
Now, I think we could probably all argue
that AT&T, singular,
whatever they're calling themselves today,
and or Apple,
did not authorize
this 17-year-old
to modify or alter
the iPhone.
However,
it was not with intent to defraud in all probability.
Ah, well.
Which is the first phrase of the law.
It is, but that mens re
Latin requirement is,
and I found this out from my own criminal case
a good 10 years ago,
that the U.S. Attorney's Office considers
depriving a carrier of
just the account revenue,
not of calls.
For instance, if you were to clone your own phone,
that's considered fraud.
And even if you intend to do that.
So, in other words,
AT&T is being deprived of revenue
if this phone is unlocked
and used on T-Mobile.
And if this person intends to do that,
I have to differ a little bit on this,
because it's my understanding
that the Library of Congress,
and in fact, it's even said that in this story,
the Library of Congress specifically excluded cell phone unlocking
from coverage under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Yes, but it's not excluded under...
I'm sorry, it's not excluded under
Title 18, Section 1029
of the United States Criminal Code.
Well, according to the story,
this guy, George Hotz,
collaborated online with four other people,
two of them in Russia,
to develop the unlocking process.
So now, with that information that you're giving, Bernie,
it makes it sound pretty much like a criminal conspiracy.
Well, all this stuff is...
You're spending a lot of time in the slammer
based on unlocking a phone.
Well, as we all know,
these laws are enforced very selectively.
And this is probably a very celebrated case
from the standpoint of
everyone considers the
17-year-old a hero, I think,
except for maybe the corporations.
So they may be a little hesitant to press charges,
and the U.S. Attorney's Office may be a little
reticent to do it.
But it'll be interesting to see if anything comes of this,
because the way I read the statute,
it's clearly in violation,
because if you unlock the phone,
you're depriving AT&T of the subscription revenue.
That's why we don't like to let you read statutes, Bernie.
Well, you're welcome to read it yourself.
My question, though, for the whole thing is,
why in God's name was the iPhone developed
without the ability to switch to a different phone company?
I mean, I know the answer as far as
profits and exclusive contracts and things like that,
but as far as making it appealable to consumers,
the whole point of GSM is that you can switch companies
and use your phone in different places
and regions and countries,
and to limit that in any way,
it just seems like you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Well, that's not really all that much of an issue
in the United States,
since most of the companies, well, not most of them,
but a large percentage of them aren't GSM anyway.
So when people are choosing a cellular company
in the United States,
it's mostly based on the best coverage
that whatever carrier has in your area.
Now, AT&T obviously wants their customers
to be using their service abroad anyway,
since they get to charge these outrageous roaming fees,
but I don't think that's necessarily something
that most U.S. consumers care about to begin with.
But the fact is the iPhone is obviously designed
to allow other SIMs at some point,
because AT&T is not going to have this contract
with Apple forever.
And if you look at what the hack actually was,
it was more trying to figure out how to modify the firmware
than it was actually, you know,
quote-unquote toggling the switch
that allows you to use other SIM cards.
Obviously, Apple will have the ability to do this themselves,
but that was really the main feat.
The main feat was really getting past all the controls
to be able to modify the firmware.
And the firmware modification
was really just changing a couple of bytes
that disabled the lock on the SIM card.
But another thing that I like about this,
the kid in particular,
is that he's very quick to give credit
to all the people that he worked with,
all the newspaper reporters are, you know, saying,
oh, this kid's a hero.
He's the first one to do it.
And in reality,
there were a large number of people he worked with
that developed equal, if not more,
code that allowed him to do this.
So I think that's pretty cool
that he's always very quick to mention other people.
Is that sharing the credit or is that sharing the blame
and trying to take the focus off of yourself
so you're not the one that winds up in front of the judge
facing hard time for changing the phone company on your phone?
Well, I don't really think that's, you know,
the first thing that people are thinking
when they come up with something like this.
It's usually, hey, look, I did this really cool thing,
and it allows me to do something
I've wanted to do with this device for a long time.
And, you know, that wasn't the first thing
that I was thinking of when I was working on, you know,
for instance, the MetroCard project.
Who am I going to piss off by doing that?
It was, hey, look, this is a really cool thing.
And I'm sure he was thinking the same thing.
You know, the first thing you think
is never how much trouble you're going to get into for doing it.
It's, you know, that this is a really cool thing
you're pulling off, so...
Well, that's sort of how I felt
when I was chewing gum yesterday on the subway.
I guess we're all brothers in arms
as far as figuring out how to stick it to the man
one way or another.
There's another story, too.
Maybe you guys can update me on this
because I read this on my way out.
But apparently taxi drivers in New York
are almost about a week away from a strike based on,
and this is rather interesting,
based on a controversial new technology
that's being crammed down their throats,
a GPS system, a satellite tracking technology
that the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission
is requiring on all 13,000 of the city's yellow cabs,
just one in a package of technology improvements.
It also includes a credit card reader
and a video screen in every back seat.
GPS, according to the TLC,
will allow riders to track their trip on an electronic map,
make it easier to recover lost property.
But the Taxi Workers Alliance calls it
an invasion of privacy,
arguing drivers' movements could be tracked
even while off-duty,
and that any technological snafu will cost them.
The technology, if it shuts down,
the meter shuts down.
If the meter shuts down,
the drivers cannot pick up a fare,
according to a spokesman for the union.
Has there been any change in this over the last week?
No, there hasn't.
But this is a very interesting situation
because apparently there are two rival unions.
One is the Taxi Workers Alliance,
led by an Indian woman named Bhairavi Desai.
And then there's Fernando Mateo,
the Hispanic Al Sharpton,
who is a spokesman for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers,
which actually has very few taxi drivers as members.
It's mostly livery cab drivers.
He insists that no walkout is planned.
The interesting thing is that
drivers complain mostly on two points.
Point number one is that this thing is highly annoying
and is a voice in the backseat every day.
They didn't like the seatbelt reminders,
which were on only when somebody got in and out of the cab.
And this is almost constant noise and words from the backseat,
whether or not you have a passenger.
The other thing is that the GPS system
not only enables the Taxi and Limousine Commission
to know where a cab is at a specific point when they want to know,
they know where a cab is at all points in time
and all points in space.
So this is an invasion of privacy.
Fernando Mateo says he dismisses the concerns of the drivers
that he obviously does not represent and says,
you don't have to be radical.
You want privacy? You shouldn't drive a cab.
That's an interesting quote.
I don't know how many people want privacy and drive a cab.
You don't seem to be, I don't know,
it's kind of a strange statement actually.
Is the strike still on?
The strike is still planned as far as is known.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
This is one of those rare instances where a tinfoil hat
will actually prevent you from being spied upon by unknown people.
Just a small tinfoil cup placed over the GPS antenna
on the roof of the taxi cab will prevent it from receiving the satellite signals
and reporting the cab's location through its radio system to the watchers.
So tinfoil hats can be useful at times.
Yes, but I'm sure that's a violation of some kind of contract
as far as modifying the taxi,
and if you do that you're going to wind up sharing a cell with a kid from New Jersey.
How would they know if the thing isn't just intermittently defective?
I don't know.
Probably somebody would see the tinfoil on top of the cab.
Or somebody could make a metal cap that looks just like the antenna
and just snap that on top and it wouldn't be that obvious.
Who knows?
I just want to repeat the earlier caution never to take legal advice from Bernie,
but I was reading an article the other day
that in some parts of the country taxi drivers are very unregulated.
New York is not one of those places.
There's a lot of regulations,
and the TLC is generally pretty into enforcing them.
So I don't know if you'd be able to get away with this.
As consumers, how do we feel about having GPS capabilities in a taxi?
I don't take taxis that often,
and I don't have so much of an opinion about the GPS,
but I really don't like this screen that's going to be displaying things
if I were sitting in a tab.
I was in a cab last night and had one of those screens,
and as the inventor of TV Be Gone and all, that kind of is irksome.
They're not remotely controllable.
After looking at it for a while, I was kind of torn
because I didn't want to look at it,
but I did want to look at it to find an off button,
and there is one.
So be aware that in the upper right corner,
there's a little red button, a touchscreen button off.
Just push it.
Hallelujah.
Yeah.
That's your thing, Mitch.
You come into our city, and you tell us how to turn things off.
Some things need to be turned off.
I agree.
Of course, you at your TV Be Gone have been turning things off
for years all around the world,
and maybe you can invent a device that will turn the screen off
in the back of a taxi cab.
The thing is, these screens started to appear in New York City several years ago,
and what I read is that there was enough complaints,
that people were upset enough that there were enough complaints
that they actually took them out,
and now they're starting to appear again.
Well, they're going to be required, apparently,
so they'll appear all the more.
Great.
Do we have time for some phone calls?
We do have a little bit of time.
The number is 212-209-2950.
No.
No.
Pledges again?
No.
No pledges.
I'm sorry.
That one's just stuck in my head.
But we don't have any on the line, so we'll wait a moment.
One of the other benefits that I see to having a GPS in a cab,
from a consumer level purely,
and I don't think it's necessary for the privacy invasiveness of the tracking system,
but in order to allow the customers who aren't familiar with the city
to ensure that the cab is taking them on a relatively direct route
to where they have to go I think is an important thing
because cabs are known for kind of circling around
and doing crazy stuff in order to increase the fare
and sort of rip off customers that aren't familiar with the area.
So I think that's an important thing.
Yeah, but you know what?
Cabs are also known for knowing the back roads,
for knowing the shortcuts,
for knowing ways to maybe go up a few blocks
because that's the entrance to the FDR Drive,
and a tourist from Idaho is not going to know this.
You're going to get constant backseat driving advice.
I can see why the cabbies might be a little bit annoyed by that.
But on the other side of that,
you have cabbies that are driving 25 miles out from the airport,
driving back in,
purposefully doing it to increase the fare
for customers that aren't familiar with the area.
So I mean there are definitely cabbies that do that,
and sure there are certain routes that you might want to take
that are slightly longer and much quicker,
but there's also a tradeoff.
All right, do we have any calls?
We do have some.
150-09-2900.
Yes, ignore me and listen to that number,
and we'll take this one.
Hello, you're on the air.
Oh, no.
All right, they're running away again as you are,
so hello, you're on the air.
Yes, peace.
Hello.
Yes.
What's on your mind?
In fact, there was a special three-hour,
the Irish crew who has the show on Saturday,
they did a special three-hour on this,
and they were soliciting help from hackers
in terms of finding ways to turn stuff off.
In fact, somebody, you know, even said,
well, you know, we've got a show here on BAI,
we need to get in touch with them.
So they're looking for help on this issue,
and that simple, they were asking, hey, you know,
if we throw a piece of lead over this, will this happen,
and that happened.
So they're very interested, and they had that lady, you know,
they gave a lot of good reasons, you know,
in terms of, you know, why this was going to be a problem for them.
So they're looking for help from you guys.
Okay, well, our email address is oth at 2600.com.
Anybody who needs advice or help or publicity, write to us,
but we'll certainly try and get in touch with them.
All right, peace.
Okay, thanks for your call.
And let's go over here.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hey, I've got to tell you about the banks and being overseas
and letting them know that before you go,
that it's a good idea to let them know.
I travel with some frequency to Korea,
and I've got three or four different cards,
some for emergencies that I keep separate from my wallet.
And I've always informed all of them,
and I've found all good responses.
Okay, did you try that, Emmanuel?
I didn't hear a word he said, I'm sorry.
He advised calling your bank before you travel,
and then maybe they won't shut your card off.
Yeah, I thought about that, but I don't know.
I have so many different credit cards, I have to make a lot of calls.
It might get more complex than I wish.
Well, has he got more than four?
I travel with four.
Yeah, I have more than that, but I kind of want to see what happens.
I'm sort of experimenting on that level.
I want to see if it gets shut down.
Okay, take care. Enjoy your trip.
Thanks.
And I guess we just have time probably for one more brief call.
Hello, you're on the air.
Not that easy.
You have to make it better than that.
All right, I'll try.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hi, there's a device called the GPS logger.
It's been available for a year now.
I bought one. It's $100.
It's smaller than half a pack of cigarettes.
It goes inside of a car, and it records the location up to every two seconds,
and it can be transferred the data via Bluetooth.
Now, what was to stop any cab driver owner from having that already?
Was there a law against it, or is this just a bargaining procedure for the taxi workers union?
Well, I think the difference here is that the city is the entity requiring it rather than the cab driver owners.
But we're just about out of time for this show.
I want to thank Ken for engineering, and we'll see you next week.
Ken, you've been listening to Off The Hook.
And I'd like to say goodbye from Singapore.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein. This has been Off The Hook on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.