At which time, the commission will land in Montreal, where a large demonstration
against racism is being planned. For Free Speech Radio News, I'm Stéphane Christophe in Montreal.
I'm Brian Edwards-Tegert, sitting in for Ada Bogado.
And this is WBAI New York. Time for Off the Hook.
For the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood, but really, no!
And the program is Off the Hook. I'm Mike. I'm joined in the studio by Redbird.
Good evening.
Bernie S. is on the line in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Greetings indeed. And now we get the magical dial tone, maybe.
That sometimes works.
There's the dial tone. All right, but we actually don't want you to hear, as we dial,
the secret phone number. And we should be connected momentarily.
I expect...
Your call is being connected. Please wait.
I wouldn't feel comfortable waiting without being told to wait.
We should hear some sort of ringing, I imagine, soon.
That's a great narration.
Yeah, well...
Who or what are we being connected with?
It's a secret, all right?
Ah.
If I told you, there'd be no surprise. This is an awfully long wait.
Hello?
Hello, is Emanuel Goldstein there, please?
Yes, this is he. How are you doing?
How are you?
Oh my goodness, is it Wednesday already?
It seems to be.
You know, it's incredible how fast time flies.
But yeah, it seems like only yesterday I was talking to you from Vienna.
Well, apparently you fly pretty fast, too.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Right now I'm in Rome. I'm wandering the streets, actually.
It's been a bit of a nightmare, actually, trying to figure out how to talk to you guys tonight,
because Rome is not exactly the most friendly city as far as, well, either Wi-Fi or cellular
phones goes. So I had to do a bit of scrambling to figure out a way to make this not completely
burst the bank, as it were.
What I have is a Rome phone number, an Italian phone number that I...
Basically, I got a SIM card, put it in my cell phone.
Otherwise, this would have cost a dollar a minute, and that's just a little bit too expensive,
even for this show.
I will note, though, that I did not have to dial you using Roman numerals.
I could just use the normal keypad.
And in fact, there aren't very many Roman numerals being used around here at all,
as far as I can see.
Well, actually, if you look at some buildings, you'll see Roman numerals everywhere,
but not on the phone dial. Definitely not.
That's good. I don't know what I would have done.
I'm a bit surprised, though, that we didn't get contacted by a single Italian hacker
anywhere in Rome that would come out of the shadows and see us here while we were in Rome.
I don't know if there's no listeners in Rome or what exactly that means,
but it's like you're here for somebody.
I'm standing here by the Rome Termini train station,
which is basically the main train station in Rome.
In fact, it's also the largest train station in Europe.
I didn't even know that until I got here.
And so if any people are in Rome that listen to the show,
now is the time to run out into the night and say hi.
You're on your way to Pisa, I understand?
Pisa is where the hacker gathering is taking place over the weekend, yes.
It was rather interesting because there was a hacker gathering last week in Vienna,
and then there's a hack gathering this weekend coming up in Pisa.
So the two sort of worked themselves out so that I could be around for both and get talks with both.
So maybe that's why there's no hackers in Rome.
They're all on their way to Pisa already.
Well, that could be, I guess.
I suspect, though, that they might wait until it actually begins, which is in a couple of days.
So again, if there are any hackers in Rome, Rome, Italy, not Rome, New York,
please come and say hi right by the Rome Termini train station,
which isn't quite as busy now because it is one o'clock in the morning here.
And I got to tell you, Rome is a really lively city.
There are surprises around every corner, literally.
You just walk down a street and all of a sudden, hey, there's the Colosseum and there's,
you know, there's the Sistine Chapel and there's Vatican City.
I was actually in another country today.
I went to Vatican City, which technically is not part of Italy.
And before that, I actually was going to ask Jim this.
Is Jim in the studio?
No, Jim is in hiding this week.
Jim's hiding, okay.
Well, basically I was going to ask him the three countries that I went to
since I was talking to you guys last when I was in Austria.
And of course, those three countries are Italy, Vatican City, and San Marino.
I was in San Marino a few days ago, and that's quite an interesting place.
Those of you who are fans of The Prisoner, you might like San Marino
because it's very similar to The Prisoner.
Of course, there are a lot of tourists just walking around
and making the streets all crowded constantly during the daytime.
But if you go outside at night, I went out at about one o'clock in the morning
and walked around for about a half hour and there was nobody.
I did not see a single person in the entire neighborhood that I was wandering around.
San Marino is a very interesting city in that it's on a mountain
and every street that you walk down has actually either
a 45 degree angle up or a 45 degree angle down.
And it just makes for a very interesting adventure when you're actually exploring a place.
But I did not hear anything at all when I was walking around.
Nothing like here in Rome, where there's constant activity, as you can hear.
Not a single soul to be seen in San Marino late at night.
So I recommend that to people if you want to see something kind of strange
and sort of live like a prisoner type of mentality.
Very picturesque and old, too.
The oldest republic in the world.
It was founded in the year 301.
Beat that.
I think I can't.
Bernie, yes.
Now that you're having visited Vatican City, were there any security checks?
Did you have to have your passport inspected getting into
or out of Vatican City or any special security requirements?
Well, at the end of St. Peter's Basilica, there were no security requirements whatsoever.
But to get to the top, which basically means climbing up about 360 steps,
you have to go through, I guess, a metal detector.
I was carrying my laptop with me at the time.
So I just put that in the x-ray thing and they didn't seem to care about that.
And it's interesting when you go through metal detectors,
when you're carrying cell phones and cameras and things like that,
everybody beeps when they go through the thing.
But nobody seems to care why you beep.
They just sort of look at you and you go on.
They don't ask to look in your pockets or anything like that.
And I guess my laptop bag passed muster.
So as far as going up to the very top of the basilica, that seemed to work just fine.
You know, not very much as far as hysteria with security here.
I guess just keeping an eye out for anything very strange.
Did you have a presence with the Pope?
I'm sorry?
Did you have a presence with the Pope?
No, the Pope actually was not around exactly where he was.
He might have been out getting dinner or something.
But he wasn't around when I was there.
And they were giving a service of some sort in the basilica, which was kind of interesting.
But nothing very formal.
It was a big history lesson because you could see how old these buildings are and how incredibly...
I don't know how they survived over the centuries.
And it kind of really is a humbling experience for somebody from America.
Because we're talking about a couple hundred years that these guys have been around with
the buildings and monuments and things like this for so much longer.
And it's just regardless of how you feel about religion or history or anything like that,
it's a really humbling experience.
I recommend people check this out.
It's amazing that while I've passed through Italy in the past, I've never actually spent time here.
And spending time here, you just sort of get to wake up and see
the reality of the cradle of civilization.
One of the cradles of civilization, anyway.
So tell us a little bit about the conference you're going to.
Well, actually, you know, it's funny.
I don't really know much about that conference.
I know it's the 10th anniversary of the first Hacker meeting.
That's what they tell me in the piece.
I'm not exactly sure what that means.
But it sounds like it might be interesting.
I mean, it definitely will be interesting in some way.
I know some people there and I'm looking forward to seeing them again.
I'll be giving a talk like I gave in Malaysia.
And other than that, I don't really know much except to say that
the Italian hacker scene is very different than the hacker scene that we're familiar with
in the United States or in very many other countries.
It's tied to all kinds of political scenes as well.
And I think that's rather important because politics plays a part.
And I think it's about everything we do to some degree.
I know Americans like to try to avoid politics whenever possible.
But I think it's a very important relation to just about every action we take.
There's some kind of a meaning to it.
And the Italians and also the Austrians to a very strong degree,
they think these things through very philosophically.
When I was in Vienna, I was being asked all these questions about,
you know, why people are interested in computers
and what it is that's going through their minds and how it relates to
Western civilization and to the current events of the world.
And, you know, in the States, we just don't think about these things quite as much.
We just kind of do it because we like doing it.
But I think there is a bigger picture to look at sometimes.
I'm not saying you should always look at the bigger picture,
but there is a bigger picture out there.
And there's a reason why people stand up to authorities,
there's a reason why people go places they're not supposed to go.
There's reason for all of this.
And I think it takes events like this to sort of, you know,
knock you on the head and make you realize that it's not just about having fun.
There's more to it than that.
Now, do they have the same kind of political influence
that groups like the CCC, for instance, have in Germany?
I don't know if they have the same political influence.
Last week, we talked about how the people in Vienna were getting 500,000 euros a year,
which I'm still stunned by.
500,000 euros a year to run conferences, to have a hacker space,
to make all sorts of interesting art exhibits related to computers and technology.
I mean, you don't even really need political influence
to have something like that being given to you.
But I think that that kind of shows the differences between the societies,
what they have over here in Europe and what they have back in America,
where basically you have to scrounge for every penny and justify yourself constantly
in the art world, period, let alone the hacker world.
I mean, I can't even conceive of a day where the American government will give
computer hackers hundreds of thousands of dollars to basically do what they do,
as far as setting up spaces or running conferences or things like that.
I'm still completely floored by that.
I think we're just dealing with completely different ways of living lives.
And I hope we move more in that direction in the future.
I kind of doubt we will because we're just so completely different the way we live our lives.
But anything's possible, I suppose.
If there's enough cross-pollination with different societies,
we might be able to learn something and maybe bring some of that back to the States.
Well, and you'll be back in the States next week, I think?
I didn't hear that.
I was asking, you'll be back in the States next week.
Well, that's what they tell me.
I've given up control of my schedule recently.
I go where I'm told now.
That's why I've been traveling all over the place.
I've been in England, in Germany, in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Austria, and now in Italy.
Someone told me recently I'm going to be going to Brazil soon.
If you tell me I'm going to be back in the States next week,
I guess that's where I'm going to be.
I've long since given up any kind of control over it.
Does this work in general?
Can we order you to lands we want invaded or something?
If you go through channels, yeah, I think you can pretty much make me go anywhere.
Myanmar.
I'd certainly love to see that at this time of year.
I hear it's beautiful, but we'll see how that transpires.
So what's going on back in the States?
Any good news, baby?
Good news.
Good news.
I have a lot of news.
We're going to have to flip through a lot of pages to find some good news.
I have some good news from Canada.
Okay, good enough.
The news from Canada is that you know the Google Streets view
that they have in some U.S. cities?
Well, in Canada...
I know it well, yes.
In Canada...
My block is on that.
In Canada, they have something called privacy laws,
and apparently these privacy laws require that the Google Street view blur out individual people
and individual license plates so that they can't be recognized in the Google Street view
before it launches in some of the larger Canadian cities.
And it's very interesting to note that there is privacy legislation just,
you know, a couple hundred miles to our north,
and they enforce these laws and it has an effect on the actions of large corporations.
It's amazing.
Now, what's interesting is that there are laws in place, for instance, for government agencies
who request that Google blur out certain sensitive research labs and stuff like that,
and you'll notice that the satellite view has many portions of, you know,
and it's been published online, sensitive research sites.
The one that I came in, the one that I saw most recently blurred out was the MIT Lincoln Laboratory,
which is pretty interesting.
You can't actually see much.
It's all blurred out, but it does take place in the United States.
The technology actually exists to blur out individual faces on Google Street view.
Is that correct?
I don't know if it's technology or a bunch of underpaid people with Photoshop.
I don't know how it works, but they're blurring them out.
Well, that's a lot of work to do.
Every single shot that I blur out people's faces and license plates too, from what I hear.
Yeah, it doesn't say how they plan to do it.
One interesting thing is that in Quebec, the provincial Charter of Rights and Freedoms
requires even more stringent photography protections.
So there, they might not even be able to launch it at all.
It's still up in the air.
Mike?
Yes.
I had a question about this, the privacy protection laws in Canada.
I don't know how familiar you are with them, but would this apply also to both commercial
and private webcams that just individuals might set up, like pointing a webcam out their window?
How would anyone like that be able to comply with these laws and blur out people's faces
and license plates in real time?
I don't know.
It doesn't say in this article.
Maybe if any of our Canadian listeners know the answer to that, they could send us an email.
It's oth at 2600.com.
If I can just say a word about that, where are you people?
We usually get a lot of mail.
And over the last couple of weeks, we haven't gotten...
I mean, we've got some, but we haven't gotten nearly as much.
I'm just wondering if people are being filtered out somehow as spam,
or maybe people have found lies and aren't listening to the radio anymore.
I'm not sure, but please write to us.
oth at 2600.com.
I expect to see hundreds of letters by tomorrow.
I mean, is that asking too much?
That might be asking too much.
Why is that asking too much?
Hundreds of letters, man.
People on commercial stations, they ask for a million letters and they get it like that.
I mean, come on.
Just because we're non-commercial does not mean that we're worth any less.
We're talking about things that nobody else talks about
and things that mean so much more than what the people on commercial radio do talk about.
So please write to us with your stories, with your anecdotes, with your comments,
with your opinions, criticisms, whatever.
oth at 2600.com.
I want to see lots of mail.
I'm very disappointed that people from Italy have not written in,
and I'm standing here by myself next to the big train station
where all these people are wandering around here in Rome.
It would be nice to hear from the world community because I know they're out there.
Speaking of our Canadian listeners and elsewhere,
there was an interesting story also out of Canada this week.
And Canada apparently has a federal privacy commissioner there.
I wish we had one in our country.
But in any case, their privacy commissioner made an announcement about an old case
where a big discount retailer in Canada called TJX
had very poor security of their customers' information.
In this case, they had a wireless system between point-of-sale systems
in their stores or within each store
without very securely encrypting credit card data
and other information of their customers.
And the privacy commissioner released the study stating that,
and I have a quoter here,
the company collected too much personal information,
kept it too long,
and relied on weak encryption technology to protect it,
putting the privacy of millions of its customers at risk, end quote.
Now, where do we have any U.S. government officials
who ever will go out and say something so damning of a company
in an effort to make the public aware of the risks they were subjected to?
I mean, that just seems like such an alien statement
of a federal privacy commissioner even existing in our country,
let alone one who's going to say something like that.
It's just a refreshing statement.
I wish you heard more of that from our own government officials.
And it's interesting...
I believe... Go ahead.
It's interesting, in this case, TGX is an American company.
I imagine most of the people affected by this data breach were Americans.
It's a company that owns TJ Maxx and all kinds of other stores.
And I think we reported on this breach when it happened,
but certainly there's, you're right, Bernie,
there's no U.S. privacy commissioner issuing statements
saying that this sort of thing shouldn't happen.
I believe, Bernie, you were the victim of some kind of a privacy breach,
and I think you weren't even aware that you were the victim.
You got some kind of a notice this week?
Oh, yeah, I got a letter from Ameritrade,
and I had a brokerage account with them over five years ago
when I discontinued it over half a decade ago.
And I got a letter from them this week saying that they want me to know
that they discovered unauthorized code was unable to bypass detection
from their antivirus software and other protective systems
that released certain information that made certain information
about me available to unauthorized third parties.
And I'm like, what is this about?
I haven't done business with a company for over half a decade.
So I went on their website.
It wasn't that helpful.
So then I called Ameritrade,
and I spoke with a customer service representative named Lynn,
who told me she had some interesting quotes.
She told me this incident was a big shock,
and quote, that it is fun here on the front lines, end quote,
because the actions of the security are revealing quite a bit of additional stuff now.
Bernie, I'm wondering if it's possible for you to walk somewhere
maybe with a little bit more cell reception.
You're very hard to understand.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought that was me.
I thought that was me here in Rome.
That's him?
Yeah, that's the Philadelphia, New York link.
Is it any better now?
Yes, yes, it is.
Sprint has been really terrible lately,
but I don't know how much of that quote from Ameritrade come through.
Was that audible?
You might want to repeat the whole thing.
Okay, well, I called Ameritrade after receiving this letter saying
some of my information has been potentially
made available to unauthorized third parties.
And I spoke with Lynn at Ameritrade, who told me that, quote, it was a big shock,
and quote, it's not been fun here on the front lines, end quote,
because the actual victims of the security breach are receiving,
quote, quite a bit of additional spam, end quote.
And apparently Ameritrade is worried about their current and former customers receiving
a lot of phishing-type spam, trying to convince people that...
Oh, can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Dammit.
All right.
I heard someone yelling.
I'm sorry.
All my stories just blew down the street.
I'm sorry.
I'm standing here in Rome, and apparently it's very windy,
and I just lost all my stories.
Well, most of my stories, anyway.
They're on the way down the street.
They have severe criminal penalties for littering in Rome, I understand.
Well, I couldn't catch them if I tried.
They're halfway down the block now.
I'm sorry.
So, Bernie, you were shocked by this, I imagine.
Well, I wasn't shocked, but apparently Ameritrade was shocked that this sort of thing was going on,
that the company's information was being targeted by criminals.
And there's a really amusing video.
If you go to the Ameritrade website,
and you can find a video from the CEO very nervously explaining how this possibly happened.
And I'm sure there's some really good outtakes from that video,
because he looks like he's probably had to do it 100 times.
And he just looks very nervous.
What's the website again?
I believe it's Ameritrade.
I'm sorry, it's amtd.com.
And right on the homepage, there's a link for what's called special announcement.
And there's a video there from the CEO,
very nervously explaining how this could have possibly happened.
But he assures, in the bottom of the letter, it says,
once again, please be assured that protecting privacy is a top priority at TD Ameritrade.
Go figure.
They were kind enough to offer me, when I called,
one year of free triple alert service from Experian,
from one of the top three credit reporting agencies, Experian.
And don't tell me, after several years, you'll wind up paying for this, right?
No, after only 12 months.
I only have to pay $59.95 a year for this protection.
It's a bargain net.
What a great deal.
I don't think there are any security breaches to start with.
I think these are just like ploys to get subscriptions to these agencies.
It could be.
But what's interesting is I asked, why are they holding my information
after I discontinued doing this?
I terminated my account with them over half a decade ago.
And they had a good excuse.
They said that it's a Securities and Exchange Commission compliance regulation,
that they have to hold onto all customers' information for seven years after the last
date of business.
So I have two more years of having to wonder
how insecure my information is with TD Ameritrade.
It's kind of exciting.
Incredible.
Or if you have a disconnect from a phone company,
you'll get mail from them for years afterwards, pleading for you to come back.
So they'll obviously hold onto your information for quite some time,
whether it's stock trading companies or phone companies.
They like to know who their previous customers were, and they do anything to get you back.
OK, I was able to rescue one of these stories before it went completely down the street.
It's a little bit dirty.
But basically—
You're listening to Off the Hook on WBAI New York, 99.5 FM.
Yes.
So basically, if you were one of the people—
we were talking about it a few weeks ago—
who altered their iPhones to actually make it work with other phone companies other than AT&T,
well, now Apple is issuing a warning.
They issued this two days ago,
saying that iPhone owners who have used unauthorized programs
to unlock the cellular service feature of their handsets
may end up with a phone that does not work after the company's next software update.
So they're going to be sending through a new update,
and it's possible that if you use some kind of unauthorized program
to fix whatever problems you saw within the first place,
the whole thing will be rendered useless.
And as with any Apple product,
hacking will void the warranty of an iPhone.
Unbelievable what these guys are getting away with.
Am I right?
Well, I assume that they're saying that because they have to say something
to that effect because of their contract with AT&T.
I don't think they can probably let that go idle
without having some problems with their partnership there.
But I think it's just as credible as the claim that they won't be able to—
that users won't be able to use the phones with other services.
Of course, people will eventually find a way around this.
And it's a big cat-and-mouse game.
So we'll see.
It's time for Apple to take the next step.
Do you think they're sending something down the line
to disable those phones that were altered in any way?
Do you think this is intentional on their part?
It's probably just a check that they have now
in a new operating system update or something.
They'll probably check to see if that flag is set.
And if it is, then this software won't be usable.
That raises a really interesting question.
If I've modified my iPhone—
and I want to get this clear, I don't own one.
If I modified my iPhone to work with T-Mobile instead of AT&T Wireless,
how possibly can AT&T or Apple force a software upgrade onto my phone
if it's not even connected to their network?
I would imagine that they do it through iTunes
or some other synchronizing software, if I had to guess.
Oh, because it has Wi-Fi capability.
There's an interesting thing.
There's actually in the United States a law that says
it's illegal to void customers' warranties
for modifications they make to their product
unless those modifications actually cause the failure.
So Apple's claim that making your phone work on all kinds of carriers
voids your warranty is actually an illegal claim,
but they seem to be getting away with it.
So I don't know what will happen.
Interesting.
Should I be counting the smart cars that pass by at one o'clock in the morning here in Rome?
Because I haven't been doing it,
and I think maybe about seven or eight have passed by since we started.
Well, you just gave us a count.
Okay, well, I'll keep an ongoing tally.
Because the latest one to pass—
oh, there goes another story.
The latest one to pass by was actually a four-door smart car,
which you don't see very many of anywhere.
But yeah, this city is amazing.
I've seen more smart cars here than I think any place I've been.
Vienna had quite a few, too, and even San Marino had some.
But Rome, wow.
You see them just everywhere,
because you can park the things almost in any position in any street.
And Rome is also famous for having all kinds of
little motorcycle, scooter-type things that the NYPD seems to like as well.
But they're everywhere here,
and that's what a lot of people get around on.
All right.
Well, I know, Redbird, you had a story from Cambridge?
Yes, I do.
And it was actually quite popular.
Most people have probably heard this on the news last week.
Now, okay, so of course there are going to be two stories.
But listening to the news last week, the headlines all touted,
student at MIT arrested for bringing a fake bomb into Logan International Airport.
And so this MIT engineering student, Star Simpson,
was actually arrested at Logan International Airport.
And the claim was that she was carrying a fake bomb,
which means that she was not carrying a bomb.
And the cops flipped out based on what they saw on her sweatshirt
and basically arrested her at gunpoint, issued statements to the effect of,
you know, she's lucky she's not in a morgue and stuff like that.
Well, Redbird, can I just read you what the story said at first,
when the story first came out in the Associated Press?
You should read that story.
The first couple of paragraphs.
Yes.
Okay.
An MIT student with a fake bomb strapped to her chest
was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport
and later claimed it was artwork, officials said.
Star Simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board
and wiring in plain view over a black hooded sweatshirt she was wearing,
according to state police.
Now, the story that came out after that,
the same URL and everything like that,
they just sort of, this is what happened.
It's kind of like a 1984 type of thing.
They use the same URL and they change the story.
So unless you copy it right then, you won't see what they said originally.
But all that about the fake bomb was changed to this.
The MIT student who walked into Logan International Airport
wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweatshirt
claimed it was harmless artwork,
but the troopers who arrested her at gunpoint, it was a fake bomb.
So at the very first story, they were basically saying it was a fake bomb
and now they're saying, well, the police thought it was a fake bomb.
So a very subtle difference there.
Right. And now there were a lot of false statements
issued by the media and whatnot about this event.
And I happened to actually be up at the MIT campus last weekend
and students organized a protest in response to one of MIT's claims,
which was that she acted recklessly
and they issued a press release stating that and whatnot.
So people were pretty upset about this and actually had a petition
and protested in front of the school.
And I actually have the text from that petition,
which would be interesting to read
because it definitely gives more of a true story than anything else.
So the title is What Happened to All Tech Men Carry Batteries?
We, the undersigned, are concerned about MIT's lack of support for students
during recent events,
even after the facts of the situation have become clear.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Institute's first and last reaction
is to distance itself from members of its own community
instead of attempting to diffuse misleading media hype.
The trend is especially disturbing,
given that many of these students are the same ones
that have been lauded for their creativity and innovation
qualities that are recognized and encouraged at MIT.
Clearly, MIT is not and should not be under any obligation
to provide legal defense for students in criminal matters.
However, we believe that MIT should wait to understand the situation
lest it issue a misleading comment or press release.
If, for whatever reason, a misleading comment is issued,
another statement should be released to correct it.
Failure to take these steps can only cause falsehoods and misrepresentations
to perpetuate themselves to the point where they are considered fact.
A recent example of MIT's failure to support a member of its community
occurred last Friday on September 21st
when Star Simpson was arrested at Logan International Airport.
We are particularly disturbed by the administration
labeling her actions as reckless without first speaking to her.
Furthermore, we now know with certainty that Star Simpson did not make a fake bomb,
nor did she go to Logan to perform a hoax.
The idea that she acted maliciously is a gross distortion of actual events.
Star built her LED name tag to stand out during MIT's annual career fair.
Facts like these are crucial in understanding what actually happened,
and once MIT discovers them,
it is obligated to issue a clarifying statement or press release.
To clarify, we are not criticizing the police's immediate response
to what they thought was a bomb threat,
and in that regard, they perform their jobs exactly as they should.
What we are concerned about is that MIT failed to issue a timely response
to explain the situation after everything had become clear.
Failure to issue corrective comments has undoubtedly hurt MIT's reputation as well.
Every article and report begins with the words,
an MIT sophomore, the front page of the Boston Herald,
ran an article on Sunday, September 23rd,
that had an acrostic with the letters MIT spelling out more idiotic tricks.
By failing to issue additional statements,
MIT allows sensationalist articles like this to tarnish its reputation.
We hope that in the future,
the Institute is more supportive of those who are part of its community.
Everyone knows that events are often misconstrued and distorted,
and as a result, MIT has an obligation to the members of its community
to correct any falsehoods that may arise.
So it's really nice here that the students are coming out to her defense,
and there are some really good articles published by the MIT newspaper
that clarify the issue and really explain what actually happened.
I gotta say, that's a very well-reasoned petition there,
because they don't jump on the bandwagon of saying,
oh, the cops completely overreacted and were stupid.
Here's the thing, and this might set me apart from a lot of people in the community here,
but the cops did exactly what they're supposed to do, okay?
The cops are supposed to, like,
look for things that look like bombs and react accordingly.
Now, if you don't want the cops to be doing that,
then you don't have them there.
You don't have them in a situation
where they're going to be looking for people with bombs
if you don't think they're going to be people with bombs there in the first place.
But that's what they're trained to do.
They're trained to completely, I guess,
exaggerate what we consider to be a normal situation.
It's sad that it's that situation in the first place,
but that's the way it is.
Templating them for seeing something,
somebody with wires strapped to their chest,
or whatever it is they saw,
and assuming that was something that it wasn't.
Emanuel?
I don't know. Yes, go ahead.
You said these police are trained to look for things that look like bombs.
Do you have any evidence that they actually have received any training whatsoever
to recognize what bombs look like?
In this case, it appears that they have no clue.
I imagine they're given some kind of training.
I mean, I don't know what kind of training they're actually given,
but I would hope that if people are stationed at airports
and various other sensitive areas,
that they at least have some semblance of knowledge
as to what a bomb might look like.
I guess it's a good one, I suppose.
Maybe something on a shirt with a blinking light,
like a blinking LED.
That would indicate that, you know, it must be a bomb.
In movies and TV, yes, it certainly is.
But obviously, that's not the way it is in real life.
I'm just saying, you know,
you can't blame the people who are put there and told,
look for these things, because that's going to be danger.
Obviously, it's nonsense.
Those things are not necessarily dangerous.
Things that are dangerous won't necessarily have blinking lights and wires.
I'm saying that the anger is misdirected
if it's directed at those people,
because they're just put there and told to do a particular job.
You want to direct your anger at the people
who make a situation where you put people like that
there in the first place and tell them to look for this,
because it's a meaningless thing to do, I believe.
Well, I think what will be interesting to see
is how this criminal case,
which I understand is still pending, moves forward.
I think what might have made sense is
that the police ought to have determined relatively quickly
this was not a fake bomb, not intended to be a fake bomb.
And you can't charge people with building a fake bomb
unless they actually intend to build a fake bomb
under the law as I understand it.
So it'll be interesting to see when or if these charges go away.
That will be, in my mind, the test of how this system plays out.
Now, why would charges be filed to begin with,
if it was very obviously a misunderstanding
between the police and Starr?
Well, when it became obvious,
obviously that's when the charges should be dropped.
It brings memory to the Appleton Hunger Force,
I think, also in Boston.
It became pretty obvious pretty quickly
that this was not any kind of a bomb threat
or a terrorist action of any sort.
I think the Boston authorities had a lot of egg on their face
in that particular case.
The question is will they realize
they've got the same situation here?
In the state of Massachusetts, the state law, the statute,
that I don't have in front of me,
but I did read it in a Senate for the Rescue folks,
it states that a hoax device,
that's a term of art in the statute,
a hoax device, the definition of it requires
that the possessor has to have the intent
of making other people believe
that it's a quote, infernal device.
In other words, a device that can cause
death and destruction sort of thing.
Infernos.
Exactly, cause infernos.
The thing that really angers me about this
is that the police obviously could see
that this was not a hoax device.
And still, at a later date, hours later,
she was charged with possessing a hoax device.
And law enforcement spokespeople continue to say
that she was carrying a fake bomb, a hoax device,
and there's no evidence whatsoever so far
that anyone has been reported that she intended
to make this device look like a bomb
or to make anyone think that it was a bomb.
Is there an actual picture that shows
what it looked like there at that particular time?
Well, from my understanding and the pictures
that I've seen, it looked like a breadboard
with LEDs in the shape of a star.
And obviously that's her name.
And so it was kind of a creative way
of having a quote unquote name tag
for the career fair.
And you have to understand a fact
that's always misrepresented
or not even represented at all in these stories
is that she was not approaching any security checkpoint.
She was waiting outside for a friend of hers
that she was picking up.
And maybe she was coming from the career fair
or maybe she had this on after the career fair.
I don't know when that was actually held,
but she was not approaching any security checkpoints.
She was not attempting to get onto a plane with this.
She was not attempting to show it off to anyone.
She just happened to have it on
and was waiting for a friend.
Well, the paranoia in airports extends
beyond the security region
and goes way out into the check-in region as well,
and even into the parking lot.
So I can't say I'm completely surprised
by the overreaction on the part of the authorities
in this particular case.
I'm not saying it's right,
but I can't say I'm surprised either.
I'm not surprised either.
Yeah, it's interesting.
One thing I was surprised by though,
there's a newspaper, Redbird,
I think you forwarded this to us,
a newspaper up at MIT called The Tech.
Yes.
Established in 1881.
And I just want to read you a paragraph or two from that.
Approximately 30 students gathered yesterday afternoon
to protest the administration's handling
of controversies involving students,
while the majority of the protest was focused
on the Star-Simpson 10 arrest.
The discussion also touched on administrative reactions
to the sodium fire on the Charles River
and the felony charges filed against hackers
found in the MIT Faculty Club.
I don't even want to know what that's all about.
But what's the Star-Simpson 10?
Are there 10 Star-Simpsons?
That's the year that she graduates, perhaps.
Well, that's funny because the AP story
called her Star-Simpson 19.
So they refer to her by age.
And this Tech magazine refers to everybody
by their graduation date.
It goes on, administrators,
including Chancellor Philip L. Clay, PhD, 75.
It's absurd.
Being that support staff were in or arriving at Pritchett
to attend the Chancellor's Summit
for student government leaders, blah, blah, blah.
Everybody apparently referred to in this newspaper
has a number after their name.
And that refers to the year they either will graduate
or the year they did graduate.
I just found that to be incredibly amazing.
That's fairly standard for university newspapers.
I've never seen that before at my university, anyway.
Well, you don't read enough campus press, I guess.
Well, anyway, it'll be definitely interesting
to see where this case goes.
And hopefully she doesn't have any problems in the future.
No, I think there has to come a time
where you realize, hey, the person did not mean
to cause that kind of mayhem.
And let's just get on with our lives
and not get all bureaucratic and crazy about it.
And that is precisely what I think the city of Boston,
both in this case and in the Aqua Team case,
is not succeeding in doing.
They are continuing to insist,
despite all available evidence,
that this was a hoax device.
And they'll probably wait a few months
for it to get out of the public mind
before they admit that they were wrong.
Yeah, well, it seems like they're trying to hold on
to some pride or something like that.
But in fact, that's the last thing
that they're holding on to in a situation like this.
I hear the Homeland Security computers have been hacked.
Is that true?
Hackers have compromised dozens
of Department of Homeland Security computers,
moving sensitive information
to Chinese language websites,
according to congressional investigators,
who said this on Monday.
I love when congressional investigators
tell you what happened,
insofar as technology goes,
because they always get it so completely,
bizarrely wrong.
They hacked into the Homeland Security websites
and they moved them to Chinese websites.
What does that even mean?
How do you move data from one website to another?
Maybe they used Wget.
Does anybody know what actually happened?
I think Mike said it, Wget.
I don't know.
Do you have?
I have no idea.
You're right.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
Of course, these articles are always terribly vague
and don't really support themselves
with any technical detail.
So it's up to us to play guessing games with them,
I suppose.
Well, investigators are pointing a finger
at a government contractor
saying the firm hired to protect DHS computers
tried to hide the incidents from the department
the FBI is investigating.
Two members of Congress have asked
the Department of Inspector General
to also launch an investigation.
The agency, the government contractor is Unisys
that they're pointing fingers at
saying that they weren't forthcoming
with the information
as far as what actually happened.
But yeah, maybe it wasn't Wget.
Maybe it was something very simple like that.
They always say that whenever something like this happens
and it's not,
there's no classified information involved.
And I think they want to ask,
well, okay, if there's no classified information involved,
then why are we even talking about it?
If it's unclassified,
then shouldn't everybody have access to it
in the first place?
Yeah, but not the Chinese.
All they have to do is come to the states
and look at it and take it with them
if they don't want to access it by the web.
I mean, it's silly.
It's ridiculous.
Did you hear about this company Media Defender?
I don't like them already, but go ahead.
Media Defender apparently is a company
that what they do is they set up
fake peer-to-peer websites
and they try and break existing peer-to-peer websites
and all kinds of crazy stuff
at the behest of the record industries.
And someone got a hold of all their internal email,
the whole company's internal email,
and posted it to the web last week.
And there's all kinds of crazy stuff in there.
People who are interested should really look it up.
But the reaction that I am most enjoying
is the Pirate Bay,
which is a large BitTorrent tracker site,
has found in these emails evidence
that Media Defender was trying to take down the Pirate Bay,
trying to make their website cease functioning.
And so they are suing the entire Swedish record industry,
which apparently somehow helps fund Media Defender,
and charging them with violations
of infrastructural sabotage,
denial-of-service attacks,
hacking and spamming on a commercial level.
So it'll be really interesting
to see if that lawsuit goes anywhere.
Now, what's also interesting is that
a lot of the tracker community, I guess,
have been sort of organizing themselves
in a way to prevent this stuff
by the use of membership-based tracker sites.
And one of the popular ones, I suppose, is Demonoid.
And there are others as well, I'm sure.
But there's a lack of anonymity
with that sort of a system.
But then you're also ensured
that people posting invalid trackers
or trackers designed to distribute bad media
or whatever it is that they're distributing
will obviously be kicked out
and not be allowed to post anymore.
So it's interesting how the user base
is sort of fighting back against this sort of thing.
And you can find all over a lot of the P2P networks
stuff like this,
where you'll find plenty of corrupt files that look real
and they get distributed all over the place.
And it's obviously a company like this
that's purposefully sabotaging the networks.
I did also see a related story
in the Wired News this week.
Media Defender is gonna be hired
by none other than the state of New York
to help go against child pornographers.
So it'll be interesting to see
what kind of wonderful tricks they pull in that case.
Oh, yes, the cyber continues.
Okay, so what's this I hear about the MTA
back in New York making a deal for cell phones
in all 277 subway stations,
underground subway station, that is.
They're gonna be wired for cell phone use.
Now, not the subway tunnels, mind you,
just the subway stations.
I have to ask, first of all,
I'm able to talk on cell phones in stations
that have a view of the street anyway,
so I don't think it's that much of an advance.
But the subways going by are so loud,
I can't imagine people being able to carry on a conversation
in the first place.
Does it even make sense to make such a big deal out of this?
Maybe they'll SMS each other.
It's a lot of money, I suppose.
It's a lot of money, also.
I think one of the concerns, perhaps,
is that a lot of the pay phones
are inoperable in the subways.
The Strathanger's Association and other organizations
have determined that a lot of the pay phones are inoperable.
And so this may be a response to that, I don't know.
And after this, they'll stay inoperable.
Well, exactly.
They'll never be fixed and perhaps removed.
Why did they fix the damn pay phone to start with?
It's interesting.
I read a good article, I forget where,
but the reason so many pay phones are still there
is because there's a law in New York City
that allows advertising to be placed
on the outside of the pay phone enclosure.
And this is a very large revenue source
to the tune of tens of millions of dollars
that the city gets as a result of all this advertising
being plastered on the outside of the pay phones.
The city really doesn't care if the pay phones work anymore.
They're just using them as billboards
and they're raking in the profits.
Well, here in Rome, people still do use pay phones.
I know because I had to wait online
to use a pay phone before
to see if we could actually make a phone call to a pay phone
to avoid some of the charges that we'd have to pay tonight.
And yeah, they don't have advertising,
but they still actually use them.
It's weird because people still,
they use cell phones as well,
but no, they're used a lot more than they are in states, I think.
The big concern I have about this company,
Transit Wireless, who apparently bidded
well over $34.5 million to have the right
to install these microcells on the subway platforms
in New York City,
is that this company has to have some business model
and how they're going to recoup
these several tens of millions of dollars
back from offering the service.
And I have three guesses
as to how they're going to recoup this money.
One, they're going to gouge subway cell phone users
with outrageous roaming and traveling charges
for calls made through the Transit Wireless network.
My second guess is they're going to harvest location data
from cell phone users' GPS-equipped phones
and then sell that information.
And three, they're going to spam cell phone users
with location-based and other advertising.
Somehow, they're going to have to make
these tens of millions of dollars back.
All right, some kind of computer is talking to us.
Oh, please hang up.
I don't know what that was all about.
We'll try and get Emmanuel back,
although we're running out of time.
Well, while you're trying,
I don't know if any of our listeners have an idea
of how these tens of billions of dollars
would be recouped by Transit Wireless
to offer cellular service on the subway platforms.
But to me, this looks like another disguised tax
in the form of allowing this company to operate.
It's going to come out of consumers' pockets, ultimately.
And ultimately, that money coming out
of consumers' pockets is going to end up
in the city's pockets.
So ultimately, this is just another tax.
Now, Bernie, is there any indication
of how they're going to do it technically?
Are they actually going to have microcells in there?
Are they going to have broadband repeaters
for the whole spectrum, or what?
It's a really good question.
I don't know whether this is going to be their own...
It appears that it's going to be their own network.
So whether they will have an outdoor,
above-ground network that microcells
will feed the signal down
to the subway platforms underground,
or whether they'll just have wired cell sites
going down underground alone
without any service available above ground.
I'm not sure.
There may be some requirement in the contract.
I'd really like to read the contract
that Transit Wireless signed with the city.
Maybe we should try to get a copy of that
if it's public information.
Can I just say one thing on that?
By the way, I'm sorry.
I guess if you call into an Italian cell phone
and for 45 minutes or however long you're speaking for,
talk after a time.
I'm back now.
Your first point,
for charging people an excessive amount,
roaming with a company that provides
self-service underground,
I don't think that's going to work out
because how are people supposed to know
when they're roaming in this way
and when they're not roaming on the street?
If once you're in a foreign country
or away from home
but you're in a city you live in,
you could very well pick up that signal
walking on the street as well.
I just don't think that's going to happen.
They're going to have some kind of business model.
I'm really curious how they're going to make
these tens of millions of dollars back.
It will have to be something
that we can take up next week
or again, our listeners can email us,
oth at 2600.com.
We've brought you back, Emmanuel.
Any last words for us?
Are we out of time already?
We are indeed.
Oh my god, how did that happen?
That's like a time warp.
I was just standing here and oh wow,
the hour went by, we can't even take phone calls?
Unfortunately, no.
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
Next week, I promise, when I come back,
there will be a lot of phone calls.
If we get a lot of mail, ot at 2600.com.
I want to hear from people.
And you've been listening to Off the Hook
on WBAI New York, 99.5 FM.
And coming up next is The Personal Computer Show.
Thanks for listening.
The lights go on, the lights go out ♪
When things don't feel right ♪
I run down like a tired dog ♪
Licking his wounds in the shade ♪