and Club Classics. I'm here every Sunday morning between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. on WBAI
99.5 FM. So make sure you stop by and take a listen and try to win a pair of
tickets during the ticket giveaways. That's Soul Central Station every Sunday
morning between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. on your Peace and Justice Radio Station WBAI
99.5 FM.
And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York where the time is just
about 7 o'clock on a Wednesday. That means time for Off The Hook.
And good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you on this Wednesday evening. Joined in the studio by Mike. Hi there.
And on the other side of the room, not Kevin. Hello. Down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia. You sound particularly low tonight, Bernie.
I mean, the pitch or the volume? The volume, mostly. Oh. Well, I'll have to stop
drooling into my microphone. Yeah, okay. Let's try that as a New Year's resolution. And the
program is Off The Hook. We talk about all kinds of interesting developments in
the technology world, in the hacker world, and all sorts of other fun things like
that. We argue. We bicker. We take phone calls. It's a lot of fun. Why don't you
stick around? We have a feature, which I think we should get theme music for,
called Data Loss of the Week. And this week the award goes to JC Penny.
Apparently, actually, technically, it should be a company called GE Money. I've
never heard of this company before. GE Money. I guess they're the same GE that
owns NBC, right? And the rest of the world. And apparently they own money now, too.
So I guess if you're spending money, it's GE Money that you're spending. These
guys, they handle credit card operations for JC Penny and many other retailers, up
to a hundred other retailers. Well, guess what? Personal information for about
650,000 customers has gone missing. Yes, they lost it. The missing information
includes social security numbers for about 150,000 of those people. It was on,
the information was on a backup computer tape that was discovered missing last
October. We're only finding out about this now. It was being stored at a
warehouse run by Iron Mountain Inc. You store your tapes with somebody called
Iron Mountain Inc. You think it's going to be safe, but no. You know, it might be
safe against a nuclear holocaust, but it's not safe against somebody losing it.
And apparently that's what happened. Somebody lost it. The data storage
company apparently looked for it, but was not able to, was not able to be found. Now,
of course, what they're saying is there's no indication of theft or anything of
that sort. No evidence of fraudulent activity, but a lot of evidence of
stupidity. I have a question. Yeah. If I had shopped at JC Penny, which I don't
think I ever have, would I be eligible for a year of free credit monitoring? I
suspect you might be, because that's almost always what they do. I'm looking
in this article now to see if they, if they mentioned that. But almost every
single time that this happens, they offer people one year free credit
monitoring, as if one year is going to be enough for somebody who actually takes
your information. And I don't know, does it happen when you, when you sign up for
that service, when you take them up on their offer, does it renew automatically
and bill you, or does it expire like it should? I, I subscribed to that myself
when TD Ameritrade screwed up. And with an account that I had discontinued like
five years ago, and they still had my information in their database, and then
oops, they exposed their database inappropriately. So I signed up for this. I
did not have to give them my credit card or any other information, so there's no
way they could bill me, bill my credit card after a year is up. But the price,
and after that, I'm sure they're going to beg you and bug you and spam you to, to
pay up for the next year, which is, I think it's like $60 or $99 a year for
this dubious service. Well you got to figure, whatever information the company
that lost your data had on you, now these people have on you. So they can call you
on your phone, or send you mail, or email, whatever. Yes. So it's more information
getting out there. It can be, it's kind of like putting yourself on the do not
call list. That list does get around to all the telemarketers, so they know who
not to call. And as we know, not every single one of those telemarketers is
ethical, so your information gets, gets out to people you don't want it to when
you put your do not call list. Do you ever hear of these guys, the Identity Theft
Resource Center? No, I like that. Sounds useful if I ever wanted to steal an identity.
Well they're growing. By the day, they're adding new buildings to their complex.
They say there was a six-fold increase last year, six-fold increase last year, in
the number of records reported compromised in the United States. 125
million. That's, that's almost, that's almost everybody in the country. That's
like a good percentage of everybody in the country, isn't it? Yeah, there's
probably a little less than half. That's, I mean, that means half the people in
this room. And one and a half of us had our data compromised. And probably like
small children don't have that much data to lose. That's true. You got to figure.
What's the population of the States? What, 300 million? Something like that. Yeah, 125
million last year. Of course, that's number of records compromised. Maybe some
people have more than one record. I don't know. So Bernie, when did it happen to
you? About three months ago, I got a, an email from TD Ameritrade, who I've
hadn't done business with for many years, and I think about five years. And they
said I'd been compromised, and I called them about it, and they offered me this.
Well, they didn't even offer it to me right off the bat. I had to, like,
complain and make noise about it. And then they offered me this three years of
credit monitoring service. I don't remember the name of the company. I could
look it up. And that shut you up? Well, you know, it's hard to claim. They also
said that it was very unlikely my data was in that database, because they haven't
done business with me for years. But they said there was a possibility, and, you
know, I don't trust them completely. So, I mean, what recourse do I have? I mean, I
could, I could probably sue them, but I research, and there's no class action
against them, so I didn't have a class to join. Well, why don't you just slowly, and
so that everybody understands, say their name very clearly, and that can be a
little bit of vengeance. TD Ameritrade is careless with its customers' data. TD
Ameritrade? Yes. Okay. And where are they located? I don't know. Or are they
everywhere, like a lot of these corporations? Well, you need to look them up online, but
I don't know where their headquarters is, honestly. I had a fun experience on my phone bill.
Everybody should do this. Everybody should look at their phone bill every
single month, because there's always surprises on there you don't know about.
In fact, in my case, sometimes I find phone numbers I've forgotten about, and
save a lot of money when I get them disconnected. But I looked at my phone
bill this month, and I actually saw something on the, on the billing page. It
was a Verizon line. This is your landline Verizon? Yes, this is a landline. And
basically, you have your charges laid out nice and clearly under new charges.
Verizon basic local services, and then you have Verizon optional services, which
in my case, apparently Verizon optional services includes Verizon Freedom
Essentials. So is it optional or is it essential? Which is it? How can, how can
something that's essential be optional? But apparently in the Verizon world, it
can be. So my Verizon Freedom Essentials include things like Call Waiting, Call
Waiting 2. What's Call Waiting 2? Does anybody know what that is? A sequel to
Call Waiting? Now, this time, this time Call Waiting is angry. I know what it is.
What is it? I think I know what it is. It's probably, uh, oh no, you know what?
Caller ID over Call Waiting. Yeah, you know, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. It's the toner on my
printer that's going bad. It's actually Call Waiting ID. It looked like a 2 with
a little closed parentheses, but actually it's an ID. Call Waiting ID. There's a,
there's, there's, there's caller, that, that allows, it's a different kind of
service, which they charge even more for, it's crazy, that allows your caller ID to
work while you're on the phone, and the call, the second call comes in through
Call Waiting. Right. And it'll still show up, still it up. Whereas if you don't have
this Call Waiting over Caller ID, or Caller ID over Call Waiting service, it'll
only work if it's the first call. Okay, and for some reason, I don't know why
they do this on the Verizon bills, they list anonymous call rejection as
something under services, and it's always got a price of zero next to it. It's not
something they bill for, but it looks like it's something they could bill for
one day if they decide to push that through the PSC. But in any event, all
these little services are listed, and then underneath that, all other charges,
then I've got something for Verizon Long Distance, and then the final category,
Discounted Telecommunication Service, for $18.47. Now, that looks
innocuous enough, you know, Verizon Long Distance, okay, I guess I made a call or
something, and then Discounted Telecommunication Service, well, I guess
it's a good thing that it's discounted, right? But then I asked myself, what in
God's name is it? What is Discounted Telecommunication Service? I turned to
the back page, and sure enough, there's a page for this company called Discounted
Telecommunication Service. It reminds me of the old days. Remember this, when we
used to have all these alternate operator service companies, AOS companies,
that would bill you, IntelliDial, I think was one of them, or IntelliCall, and all
kinds of other names that I haven't heard in a long time. Basically, anybody
could bill anything to your phone number, and you pay something like $5 a
minute for these third-party calls, and your phone company would bill you on
behalf of these companies. It was a real pain to get them taken off your bill. So
this reminded me of it. I saw two items underneath Discounted
Telecommunications, one dated November 29th, one dated December 28th, both for
directory assistance, both in the amount of $8.50, and so I had to
interrogate a number of people on this, and demand to know if somebody had
called overseas directory assistance, which I understand is expensive. I didn't
think it was that expensive. But it's discounted. Who knows? So after a couple
of polygraphs and things like that, I determined that it did not come
from us. This is not something that we did. So I looked it up. I put that company
name into the internet, which is a very handy utility to have, and found out that
this is a company in Ohio, and this kind of thing has happened before, where an
$8.50 monthly charge appears on phone bills without the knowledge of the
people that have the phones. And what the charge is for is for something known as
unlimited directory assistance, which I guess is a good idea. If you call
directory assistance a lot, you can call them and not be billed. You just have to
pay this $8.50 a month charge. But if you don't ask for it, that's kind of
unfair. So I called them up, and this time I had the foolproof excuse.
Usually when you call these companies, you have to argue with them. And they
say, well, somebody in your house must have ordered this. Somebody must have
dialed this. This is what you do to shut them up from the beginning. You say,
this is a fax machine. There isn't even a phone attached to it. There's no way I
could have ordered this. And there was nothing they could say to it. And it got
taken off immediately. Of course, they might have taken it off anyway. They
seemed pretty nice. But I'd like to know how it got on there in the first place.
Maybe one of our listeners put it on one of our phone lines. And if so, well, okay,
the jig is up. We figured out how to take it off. Now, why don't you tell us
how you put it on? There might be a security hole that allows people to
subscribe other people to this service.
8.50 is not even a good deal for unlimited access if you have the internet.
Well, the thing is, directory assistance isn't the way it used to be. It used to
be you could call a particular area code and get a directory assistance operator.
And it used to be free way back. But even after it wasn't, you still were getting
somebody who was local to the area and knew the area and could look things up and
tell you things. Now, you're pretty much getting the same automated service
anywhere in the country. And yeah, you're right. You can just look it up on the
internet or use that Google service. What is it? What's the free Google 411?
Yeah. And that seems to work. And that's free. I'm sure we're selling our souls to
Google, but it's something anyway.
There's another service I've used many times. And that is you just call some
number at random. Suppose I'm looking for a good florist. And this has happened
to me many times. I need to send flowers to somebody else in the country. And I
don't know anything about that area. And directory assistance doesn't. So I'll
just call, knowing that I can look up the area code and exchange it at the city.
I'll just call some number at random. And usually in the second or third try, I'll
get somebody who'll be very helpful and tell me, you know, I've used this florist.
They're really good. And you just have to social engineer them. And you can get
all kinds of great information out of people that are local to the area. If
you're just friendly and say, hey, this is my situation, maybe you can help me out.
The truth of the matter is, Bernie, we are all directory assistance operators.
We just have to awaken that part of our spirit and help each other out and just
join hands across this country.
I would do it.
Yeah, totally. And we'll give out your number later so people can call you to
get numbers in the Philadelphia area. Okay, here's an example of, you ever
have, I'm sure you're familiar with this, Bernie. You ever have a judge completely
not get something right?
No. I think that never happens.
Yeah, I think you've had more than enough experience with that.
A judge?
A judge.
I mean, judges are supposed to, by definition, be excellent, you know, at
judging.
Well, I've had a judge get it wrong. I'm sure you have, Mike. Have you ever had a
judge staring you in the face, getting it wrong? No, you haven't had that yet?
I've mostly avoided judges altogether.
All right, let's see if we can make that happen for you. Not Kevin, I'm sure you
haven't gotten to that stage yet, but you will.
Or have I?
You will. Maybe you have. Maybe you have.
There's no way to tell.
Yeah, there's a lot we don't know about you. This North Dakota judge really got it
wrong. He basically said, his conclusion was that people doing zone transfers of
domains were basically breaking the law.
The behavior in conducting a zone transfer of this defendant was unauthorized
within the meaning of the North Dakota computer crime law. The court rejects the
test for authorization articulated by the defendant's expert to find all access
authorized, which is successful, would essentially turn the computer crime laws
of this country upside down. The defendant has engaged in a variety of
activities without authorization on the Internet. Those activities include port
scanning, hijacking computers, and the compilation and publication of who is
lookups without authorization from Network Solutions. What do you think about that?
I ran into the same argument myself about 11, 12 years ago in my federal
criminal case, where I was charged with the possession of hardware or software
for the unauthorized access to telecommunications. Well, actually,
possession of hardware or software for the modification of telecommunications
instruments for the unauthorized access to telecommunications services. My appeal
really hinged on just a couple of key ideas. One of them is, what's the
definition of unauthorized? The statute didn't specify who does the
authorization. Even though what I was doing was just making people be able to
program a second cell phone on their same account, just like you can plug two
phones into your house wiring and have two phones, they're still on the same
account. You're not really defrauding anybody. You're still paying for all the
phone calls. This cellular phone company was saying, no, that's not
authorized. When you have this vague term about unauthorized, who does the
authorization? Did it even say the wireless carrier did the authorization?
It says unauthorized. If you, Emanuel, said it wasn't authorized, the
prosecutor would say, yep, it wasn't unauthorized. Emanuel didn't
authorize it.
Okay, but Bernie, this case in particular, though, this is something that you
don't have to have any equipment for to program anything. You don't have to
have any kind of technical knowledge of any sort. You just have to be at a
terminal and type a certain... I mean, Mike, maybe you could explain what a
transfer is for the uninitiated.
I'll try. So people may have heard of the domain name system, which
translates names like 2600.com or whatever into the numeric addresses that
computers actually use to talk to each other.
IP addresses?
Yeah.
Okay.
And so all the hosts in 2600.com, so www.2600.com, whatever else,
.2600.com, and so on.
That secret one, yeah.
We don't want to talk about that on the radio.
Let's move on.
All those comprise what's called the zone, the 2600.com zone. And there's
something called a zone transfer where you can basically say, hello, please
give me that whole list, all those things, including the secret ones. And
you can configure your server to say either, yeah, here it is, or you can
configure it to say, no, you can't have that. It's very straightforward to
set up.
How would someone get that information? What would they have to type? What
kind of thing would they have to type?
Dig, okay. And it's a simple command. Everybody uses it.
I'm sure there's a way to do it on the web as well.
Now, why would somebody object to somebody doing this?
Well, they might not want them to find out about their secret host or
what have you.
Okay. I could understand that.
But again, if that's the case, they could just turn it off, not talk about
it.
So this judge, his contention is that if you do a zone transfer, you have
to get permission first. You have to contact the person somehow and say,
I'm going to do a zone transfer.
I mean, what's the equivalent of for those people who don't really see what
this is all about?
I guess it's the equivalent of just going onto a website or something.
It's not much more difficult than that, is it?
No.
It's technically very similar to going onto a website.
It's a little bit less popular, so the software tools aren't as friendly.
And he seemed to also, he did also say that the compilation and publication
of whois lookups without authorization from Network Solutions,
Network Solutions, of course, being one of the biggest registrars,
one of the ones that really fouls things up sometimes.
We won't get into that.
But basically, you could type whois anybody, any domain name on the
internet and pretty much get information back.
It's not always the correct information.
It's not always provided.
But if it is provided, he's saying that you don't have the right to save
that information.
What exactly was this guy accused of?
That's something I'm not exactly sure because I'm reading this from a
kind of a blog site called CircleID.com.
And I'm not really sure what this guy was charged with.
The real story here is that a North Dakota judge says that zone transfers
and whois information is private and you can't access it without getting
permission.
It's kind of scary when people have that.
And this guy had expert witnesses testifying on his behalf,
but the judge still rejected it.
Were there expert witnesses or so-called experts testifying to the
contrary?
I'd like to know.
I'd like to know.
I don't see that here, but I'd certainly like to know if that is the
case.
And if you know of bad legislation, we'd like to hear about it as well.
Our email address, oth at 2600.com.
Now, this is interesting, too.
This came out of the EU just yesterday.
In fact, IP addresses, which we were just mentioning,
those are strings of numbers that identify computers on the internet,
should generally be regarded as personal information.
That's according to the head of the European Union's group of data
privacy regulators.
Actually, they said this on Monday.
Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr,
leads the EU group, which is preparing a report on how well the
privacy policies of internet search engines operated by Google,
Yahoo, Microsoft, and others comply with EU privacy law.
And he told the European Parliament hearing on online data protection
that when someone is identified by an IP or internet protocol address,
then it has to be regarded as personal data.
Now, Google, of course, disagrees with this.
They insist an IP address merely identifies the location of a computer,
not who the individual user is.
And that is true, but does not take into consideration that many people
regularly use the same computer and IP addresses.
Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be
personal or linked to an individual.
For example, some computers in internet cafes or offices are used by
several people.
Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications
for how search engines, of course, record data.
A privacy advocate at the non-profit electronic privacy information
center said it was absurd for Google to claim that stripping out the
last two figures from the stored IP address made the address impossible
to identify by making it one of 256 possible configurations.
According to Mark Rotenberg, who's been on this show in the past,
it's one of the things that make computer people giggle.
The more the companies know about you, the more commercial value is
obtained.
Interesting, I mean, this whole thing about what constitutes private
information.
You think an IP address is private information?
I think it certainly can be, but I'm more fascinated by the fact,
and we've mentioned this on the show before, that European actually has
a legislative privacy framework for debating this issue.
In the United States, Google can do whatever it wants.
Mm-hmm.
So.
That is true.
Also curious, they say that IP addresses are personal data.
Does that mean that you own them?
Does that mean you can take them with you wherever you go?
Like a name, like a social security number.
I don't know.
It's kind of interesting.
I'd like to follow that story in the months ahead.
Okay, what else has been going on?
The Church of Scientology, their website has been hacked,
according to various sources.
The Church of Scientology website being attacked by hackers,
of course, in the wake of the Tom Cruise video making it out onto the
internet.
Boy, that was a lot of fun.
This attack was launched last Wednesday by a user calling himself
Anonymous.
Yeah, I've heard about him.
And it was on the website Project Chanology, C-H-A-N-O-L-O-G-Y.
The history section of the site explains in a satirical fashion that
the incident was prompted by the Church of Scientology's attempts to
remove a promotional video featuring Scientologist Tom Cruise from
YouTube, and YouTube is complying.
You can't find that video on YouTube anymore.
I was looking for it.
It's still elsewhere on the internet.
It's hard to find.
Can we tell people where it is, or are they going to come for us?
I've forgotten, but I know I've seen some websites that have received
letters from the Church of Scientology and said, yeah, we don't care.
I mean, I saw the video.
I was trying to figure it out.
You see all this, there's music in the background, and you wonder,
are the people who put it up on the internet, are they the ones who
added the music, or is this the way the video actually plays out?
And it's kind of hard to find a straight answer to that.
So this can all be solved if somebody from the Church would just send
us the tape, and we'll look at it and be able to tell people the truth.
What's so controversial about the video?
There's really nothing that controversial, except that it makes Tom
Cruise look a little crazy.
But then again, okay, you know what?
Being a little crazy is fine in this day and age.
If you take everything he's been saying in that video, and it really
is worth watching.
All kinds of references to things that we have no idea what he's
talking about, all kinds of acronyms and things like that, and just
getting all crazy, enthusiastic, and jumping up and down.
You compare that to other religious outbursts of the past and present,
and it fits right in.
It fits right in.
So he's using a lot of Scientology jargon in the video?
Is that what's going on?
Well, it didn't make any sense to me, so yeah, I guess so.
He does have a lot of jargon.
Jargon?
Yeah, he must.
Anyway, so apparently this is showing up on sites like Gawker.com,
G-A-W-K-E-R.com.
The thing is, what you have to understand here is that whenever an
organization tries to stop something from getting out, that's when
the internet reacts, and they just sort of lash back, and it gets
out all the more.
And I'm certainly not condoning attacks like this where a website
is shut down, because I think that's always wrong.
It's always wrong to silence somebody.
But this is the kind of thing that leads to it.
You get the reaction from all kinds of people out there, and
unfortunately, this is one of them.
But I don't know.
It seems like more of the same thing that we've seen over the past
decade or so.
All right.
What else has been going on in the world?
Any news from you guys?
Time Warner is going to test internet billing based on usage.
I saw that.
Now, that means that people who use the internet more will pay more,
and people who use it less will pay the same.
Yeah, that's the thing.
It's not like people who use it less are going to suddenly pay less.
Then it might be fair.
But I'm sure this is just a revenue increase.
They haven't released the actual pricing yet, but it will be
interesting to see what happens.
This is very common, particularly in Australia, where you don't have
unlimited internet like we have for most broadband plans here.
You pay by the megabyte, and it gets expensive if you use it a lot.
Yeah, but when you say unlimited, do you really mean unlimited here?
If you have constant throughput on your connection, do they not come
after you and say, stop that, or cut it back a little bit?
Well, I remember a story we talked about maybe a year ago about
someone who's using unlimited internet on their AT&T cell phone,
and after they download about 300 gigs of bandwidth,
AT&T came after him and charged him with a ridiculous amount of money,
because actually their plan is not unlimited.
Yeah, so the way they define the word can differ.
So I'm not really sure that we get completely unlimited as it is.
They put caps on it.
Obviously they put caps on cable modems so that you can't go above a certain speed.
I'm still not familiar, and maybe our listeners will send me a link
and tell me that I'm wrong.
I'm still not familiar of any cable or DSL provider in the States
that just secretly has a secret limit of bandwidth that they charge you more.
There are some that will cut you off, but that will charge you more
I think is a new thing for the states at least.
I think both Time Warner and Comcast are both ISPs who have cut people off
for exceeding the secret limit, but they won't divulge what that limit is.
It's really a catch-22 situation.
They should at least be straightforward and say,
if you download more than this a month, then it's limited.
So it's not unlimited.
I guess the reason they can't say what that limit is
is because then they couldn't say it's unlimited.
True.
That does make sense in the corporate world.
Time Warner Cable, according to this Reuters article,
is hoping the move will not confuse consumers.
I'm not confused. They are doing exactly what I expect them to do.
This story has been bouncing around in various places with increasing shrillness.
The title, which moved on the Associated Press about a week ago,
Fed Sets Standards for Protecting Power Companies from Cyberattacks.
This is the latest big thing that power companies are targeted by cyberattacks.
Basically, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
has approved cybersecurity standards to protect the electric industry from hackers.
Because, as you know, we declared war on them last year.
The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities
that supply about 70% of the nation's electric generation,
had advocated for standards and welcomed the decision.
Federal regulators last Thursday approved the first cybersecurity standards
for the nation's electric industry,
following growing concerns about the power grid's vulnerabilities.
Everyone's talking about growing concerns, increased risk.
Listen to this.
The power grid generating plants and refineries
are increasingly threatened by hackers
who could cause major disruptions and economic chaos in the United States.
That's according to the Government Accountability Office.
Now, they're suddenly saying that it could happen.
We could be facing this because of the hackers.
It's all this theoretical nonsense that's designed to promote fear.
Well, I mean, on the other hand,
upgrading the security of their systems is probably a smart idea.
They shouldn't have to wait until the grid goes down to do it.
If they have no security, yeah, definitely get some security.
Definitely make it as good as possible.
The terminology is a bit odd.
They're casting blame at...
Well, here's something else.
This goes a step further, actually.
I found this on a site called michellemalkin.com.
I guess it's a blog of sorts,
but it's just an interesting quote that apparently she found.
Hackers literally turned out the lights in multiple cities
after breaking into electrical utilities
and demanding extortion payments before disrupting the power.
It's according to a senior CIA analyst
who told utility engineers this at a trade conference.
All the break-ins occurred outside the United States.
It's according to CIA analyst Tom Donahue.
The U.S. government believes some of the hackers
had inside knowledge to cause the outages.
Donahue did not specify what countries were affected,
I'm not sure why not,
or when the outages occurred or how long the outages lasted.
Or any information at all that we could use to verify this.
Accountability, you don't need that.
But he said they happened in several regions
outside the United States.
Okay guys, we've got something, let's go with that.
All right.
In at least one case, Donahue said,
the disruption caused a power outage
affecting multiple cities.
We do not know who executed these attacks or why,
but all involved intrusions through the internet.
Who in God's name keeps the power grid on the internet?
Does that make any sense at all?
Well, the people who do ought to upgrade their security,
is what I'm saying.
If you keep it on the internet,
is it not possible that some other foul up on your behalf
has resulted in the lights being turned out?
Rather than pointing the fingers at hackers.
This thing that is being said about extortion though,
I'd like to know more about that.
Shouldn't be hard to find out.
But anyway, the Bush administration
obviously is increasingly worried about
the little understood risks from hackers
to the specialized electronic equipment
that operates power, water, and chemical plants.
In a test last year,
the U.S. National Security Department produced a video
showing commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers,
having such a violent reaction
that an enormous generator shudders as it flies apart
and belches black and white smoke.
The recorded demonstration,
called the Aurora Generator Test,
was conducted in March by government researchers
investigating a dangerous vulnerability
in computers at U.S. utility companies
and as supervisory control and data acquisition systems,
the programming flaw was fixed
and equipment makers urged utilities
to take protective measures.
Okay, you know, a big prize goes to anybody
who can bring that video to the HOPE Conference
because, boy, I want to see that.
I want to see the Homeland Security video
showing simulated hackers taking down the power grid.
And if simulated hackers can do that.
Imagine what real hackers could do.
You know, we laugh,
but we could be seeing another witch hunt
where hackers are blamed for things
that they never even knew they could do.
Not too long ago, I happened to be watching Nightline
on whatever network that is.
That's Disney.
Disney.
And they were having a whole hacker show,
and one of the topics they covered
was a DOD break-in of all the power stations.
And they were actually able to take the solar panels
of one power station out in, I think it was Arizona,
and point them all at the control booth
and just blind everybody who was working there.
So it's actually possible that some of the things
that they're saying, you know...
This wasn't at TV-B-Gone, was it?
No, this was at TV-B-Gone.
All right.
Sounds like a TV-B-Gone gone mad.
But, boy, yeah, you got to separate the fact
from the fiction and the potential
and the fantasy and all that.
And then decide where the blame really lies
and where the risk really is.
Redbird.
Redbird joins us from outside.
How you doing?
How are you?
I don't know why...
Oh, here you are.
There I am.
There you are.
I'm sorry, Bernie, you were saying something.
I said the simulated hackers,
apparently this was a simulation
of this electrical generating plant
just exploding with black and white smoke.
Obviously it was a simulation.
It was a cartoon.
So basically we're having the CIA
justifying public policy changes
affecting what people can do
based on a cartoon.
Do you think it said kablam or something?
I think it had the Batman sound effects.
Wouldn't it be great if they just took
a Roadrunner cartoon or something
and used that to prove their point
of the dangers of dynamite or something?
It might as well have.
It's the same kind of thing.
A Roadrunner cartoon would be more detailed
than this guy.
There have been incidents somewhere in the world
in multiple regions.
Yeah, let's get him as a speaker at Hope
and we can grill him a little bit
with all the power that we steal
from the electrical grid when we take it down.
Okay, here's something kind of interesting and scary.
And again, we're taking phone calls
in just a few minutes.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
Two Baylor College of Medicine researchers
in Houston are working on a, get this,
cocaine vaccine they hope will become
the first ever medication to treat people
hooked on the drug.
For people who have a desire to stop using,
the vaccine should be very useful,
said Dr. Tom Koston, a psychiatry professor,
being assisted in the research
by his wife, Therese,
a psychologist and neuroscientist.
At some point, most users will give
into temptation and relapse,
but those for whom the vaccine is effective
won't get high and will lose interest.
And I just wonder, and we got this
from a couple of people, I wonder
how long before they start giving this
to people before they ever try any drugs?
Well, the only way that that could
work is, A, if the person actually
wants to get off of cocaine, right?
Presumably. Or, B, if the parents
do it before the kids ever try it, right?
And a lot of drug users don't necessarily
want to get off of it.
And if the parents were to vaccinate
their kids, that would be admitting
that at some point in their future
they're likely to try cocaine.
You know what I mean?
It's just a very strange cycle.
You just sort of slip it
into the Cheerios or something
and they won't get high from it.
Then they'll say, wait a minute,
there's something wrong.
I've got to get more.
And then they're just going to overdose
on it without ever realizing
what they're doing to themselves
or they're going to try some other drug.
I don't know.
There's always dangers with things like this.
So you have to recognize that as well.
And there's Orwellian implications too.
I'll bet they experiment in prisons
and in the military on people
There's drug problems everywhere.
Bernie, do you have something?
Yeah, there's an interesting
Supreme Court case.
Actually, not really a Supreme Court decision.
This is a decision to not take a case.
Which is pretty interesting
in itself.
Sprint Nextel emerged
and T-Mobile
were taking a case
to the Supreme Court
to fight against
an 11th Circuit
Supreme Court decision
that prohibited
wireless carriers
from listing
taxes and regulatory fees
separately
on cell phone bills.
Here in Pennsylvania
we have something called a gross receipts tax.
I think we also have it in Illinois.
It's a tax on businesses.
A business privileges tax.
Actually, not a privileges tax,
but you have to pay a tax based on your gross receipts.
on your cell phone bill
and charges the consumer for that.
It's really a tax on the business.
If they want to add it into the pricing of their plans,
that's fine, but that's not what Sprint's doing.
And T-Mobile and Verizon
and the other carriers,
they pull the same stunt.
Well, now the Supreme Court has declined
to weigh in on that dispute.
That means that states
may now, constitutionally,
tell wireless carriers
that they may not separately list
regulatory fees and taxes
that are supposed to be levied
against the carrier
as separate line items the consumer ends up paying for.
And the reason this is good
is it makes it easier for the consumers
to actually compare
rates.
So you'll actually know
what you're actually paying per month
when all these fees are built
into the annual rate.
I still think the consumer should be able
to see how much
the carrier is...
how much their cell phone bill
is going to these fees.
But they can't actually separately list them
as something that's now...
If a state says
you can't do that
to a wireless carrier,
the wireless carrier can't charge you back for those taxes
as a separate line item.
So it's an interesting thing that you have
that's going to affect cell phone bills in different states.
I wonder how many people actually take the time to look at their cell phone bills.
A lot of people just get them electronically.
Now they don't even get paper.
They just deduct it from their bank accounts
and they don't even know what they're being charged for half the time.
So yeah, it's a sad thing.
I get an electronic bill
but I read it very carefully
and I still have no idea what I'm being charged for.
You're also unusual in reading it at all
but you're not unusual in not knowing what you're being charged for.
In this case, it seems like the national carriers
would probably resort to
modifying their systems to show
the fees for the most restrictive state.
For instance, if Pennsylvania had
these restrictions in place,
any other state would probably benefit from that as well
because they're probably not going to change their system
so that bills just sent to that state
can't list these items separately.
Do you think that's true?
No, I think that the carriers
are large enough to operate on a state-by-state basis
and if they can charge
New York consumers
three dollars more than they can charge
California consumers,
they will take every advantage
to charge those three extra dollars.
I agree.
Okay, a couple of other
phone-related stories
to close out the news section of the program.
Again, phone number 212-209-2900
and these are both rather fun.
A team of four shoplifters
used cell phones to coordinate
their simultaneous thefts of three pricey TV sets
and a computer at a Walmart store
in Comac, Long Island,
according to Suffolk County Police.
The title of the story in Newsday,
Cell Phones Help Coordinate Heist at Walmart.
It's amazing how
technology is blamed for all sorts of things.
I guess they'll be banning cell phones
in stores next.
Wait, so is this the actual proof we've been waiting
since like 2000 that a cell phone is in fact
an instrument of crime?
Well, now it is.
The suspects used cell phones
to coordinate their crime,
according to the police report,
and left through a fire door exit
without paying for the items,
valued at over $2,000.
I don't know.
Yeah, they use cell phones
to communicate.
Wow, what a surprise that is.
Okay, and the other fun story,
and this we actually should have reported last week
because it happened a little while ago.
Telephone companies, and we mentioned this
a few shows ago, I was kind of surprised.
Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps
used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals
because of the FBI's repeated failures
to pay phone bills on time.
I was surprised that they had to pay
for the wiretaps put on suspects,
but apparently the phone companies
make big money at this.
A Justice Department audit released
a couple of Thursdays ago blamed
the lost connections on the FBI's
lax oversight of money
used in undercover investigations.
Poor supervision of the program
also allowed one agent to steal $25,000
by coordinating a robbery of TV sets
out of a Walmart.
In at least one case, a wiretap
used in a Foreign Intelligence
due to untimely payment.
FISA wiretaps are used
in the government's most sensitive
and secretive criminal investigations
and allow eavesdropping
on suspected terrorists or spies.
They also said that we found
that late payments have resulted
in telecommunications carriers
actually disconnecting the lines
established to deliver surveillance
results to the FBI,
resulting in lost evidence.
Yes, go ahead.
How much of your tax dollars
is actually ripped off
in these extremely inflated
prices that
phone companies charge
law enforcement agencies for wiretaps?
A single wiretap warrant,
depending on the length of time
the judge allows the wiretap to occur,
could easily be
five figures, like over $10,000
just for a single wiretap.
It could be tens of thousands of dollars
if it's a complicated case with a lot of suspects.
This comes out of your pockets, people.
This is a huge rip-off.
There's no way on earth
they could really justify these prices
because they're not really public,
even though I think we have quoted them
before on the air,
because they're not publicized much.
They get away with it,
because nobody really worries about it.
There's no accountability.
Verizon or whatever can just say
to the FBI,
if you want to wiretap these people
it's going to cost you $20,000.
It's a rip-off on two fronts,
because not only are you paying for it,
but a company is making a huge amount of money
from you paying for it.
It's not just you're paying the government to wiretap,
that's bad enough,
but you're paying and then this company
is profiting immensely from it.
It's like one hand feeding the other over there.
Your tax dollars could be more effective,
or at least the prices should be
reasonable based on the amount of work
they have to do to accomplish it.
There's a few keystrokes that have to be done.
The infrastructure is already in place
and paid for by your tax dollars.
The whole CALEA,
Communications Act for Law Enforcement Assistance,
wiretapping infrastructure we have throughout this country,
it's already in place.
There's not a lot that has to be done.
That's a tragedy in and of itself,
the fact that that exists and it's so easy to do.
The fact that you're being ripped off
in addition to that, that's something else.
Again, going to the phones in just a couple of minutes,
212-209-2900.
Please send us your letters to offthehook,
oth at 2600.com.
This is from Jay in Wisconsin.
I listened to your January 16th show and heard
Emmanuel read a story about Social Security
numbers being exposed
through the mail here in Wisconsin.
At the time of your show, it was the second time,
but it's happened again for a third time.
It's amazing to me that after this
happening three times in a little over a year,
it was suggested that Administration
Secretary Michael Morgan be fired
for not doing his job to fix this.
The Governor said that was ridiculous.
I'm not sure how ridiculous that notion actually is.
Now, a question. I was talking to my
dad tonight and he was on a landline
using a cordless digital phone.
I was on a Motorola cell phone.
He said that I sounded clear,
but he sounded terrible to me.
In fact, his old-fashioned corded phone
was much clearer.
I'm wondering if an analog cordless phone
would improve sound quality and if there was a certain
brand or type I should look for.
Oh, by the way, his digital phone was bought at Radio Shack,
which is half the problem right there.
Guys, any suggestions on how to solve this problem?
No, we have no suggestions.
I'm sorry.
It's possible that something was interfering
with the cordless phone.
If he has Wi-Fi in the house,
a lot of cell phones,
sorry, not cell phones, but cordless phones
will interfere with that.
Maybe try a different frequency band.
Different band, different frequency.
Maybe a different phone.
Maybe the phone is just bad.
That's possible.
Okay, one more letter, then we'll go to the phones.
212-209-2900.
If you get disconnected, just call right back.
It'll ring again.
You're off the hook.
I just finished watching a sneak peek
of the soon-to-be-released movie called Untraceable.
You guys hear about this movie?
I saw the preview.
Okay, well, this guy says,
I thought it would be appropriate to mention
how horrible this movie was.
The good part was the positive plot.
It was decent, at least from a thriller perspective.
The bad part was the propaganda
that was subtly a part of the film.
The movie played as if it was one large commercial
against net neutrality,
finding ways to demonize people
advocating net neutrality.
The movie displayed some of the most gruesome
and horrible violent acts,
all linking it to the unfiltered content
available on the Internet.
Throughout the entire movie,
there are comments and innuendos
about how this would ever happen.
But net neutrality was not the only target.
The NSA was brought in and refused to help
because it was domestic.
This movie was almost a primer
in recent telecommunications politics.
Fortunately, I did not pay for this movie.
I received free promo tickets.
I don't know how much better that makes you feel.
But starting this weekend,
millions across the country will be paying
to be influenced and programmed
against freedom of information
due to the imagination of Hollywood writers,
and their bosses.
Signed, Charles, from Minneapolis,
who says it's probably not even feasible
to boycott the movie,
but maybe we can at least raise awareness.
I don't know if I've subscribed to the idea
that the Hollywood filmmakers
are consciously doing this,
but I do think that it has,
that the companies
who are looking to implement
non-net neutrality policies
are, of course,
using their propaganda,
which sort of trickles down.
It's something that affects them.
It affects their opinion of the matter,
and so they make a movie
about what they think is actually happening.
It's like assuming that hackers
are taking down the electrical grid.
You say it enough times,
people start to believe that's reality.
I think we're seeing the same thing here.
I looked up Untraceable on IMDb,
and it's defined as such.
It's about a Secret Service agent,
Jennifer Marsh,
who, being what they are, both curious
and drawn to the dark side of things,
will log on to an Untraceable website
where he conducts violent and painful murders
live on the net.
The more people who log on and enter the website,
the quicker and more violently the victim dies.
Suspenseful, intense, and action-oriented,
Untraceable also has a relevant
and accurate message about today's society.
Why are we drawn to evil in our media, etc.?
Just look at the news or read a newspaper.
It's all bad news and often murder,
yet we are drawn to it and read about it.
This film explores that,
but not in a preachy way,
but in a way that is both intense, entertaining,
and thought-provoking.
Well, some disagreement, I suppose,
on whether or not it's preachy,
but Untraceable, that's the name of it.
It's also important to note that
in the internet's current situation,
if there were actually something going on
along those lines,
if you could actually conceive
that that could be true,
and law enforcement did get involved
and work with ISPs,
of course things would be traceable,
and the same effect that not having net neutrality
would have in terms of the ISPs
being able to cut off access to whoever that was
still exists.
I mean, that's still possible to do
if law enforcement had to go that route.
All right. We can continue talking about this
for quite some time, but we do want to get to the phones.
I'm surprised there's so many empty lines.
People complain they can't get through,
but right now, you know, it's quite easy.
212-209-2900.
We have a phone call over here.
And good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hi. Good evening, guys.
I have a question.
Can you guys tell me
why it is so difficult to find
an MP3 player
with an AM
rather than FM?
Ah, good question. An MP3 player that has an AM radio
and not just an FM radio.
I would like that.
I think it's maybe people have this sense
that because it's a music player
that you can't listen to music on AM
because it doesn't sound as good.
But, you know, I use my MP3 player
for all sorts of different things,
and I like the freedom to be able to listen
to not only AM, but shortwave
or all sorts of other frequencies.
Maybe it's something that
some AM radio stations would like to push for as well.
There is one I know of.
You know of an MP3 player that has an AM radio?
Absolutely.
It's called the Pogo Your Way,
and it's about the size
and shape and appearance
of an iPod.
But it has a
pretty decent AM receiver
built into it, and stereo.
What's also nice, it actually has speakers built into it, too.
It has stereo speakers.
You can listen to, not AM stereo,
but you can listen to FM and stereo
from speakers. You have it sitting on your desk
and listen to AM loud and clear.
There's actually a ferrite antenna in it.
So, you know,
it picks up good AM.
Where's the AM stereo? There's AM stereo.
Well, it doesn't have one of those
crazy AM stereo decoders in it,
which never really took off in the marketplace.
And what's really cool about this recorder,
and I'm not selling these things, but it's the only one I know of,
you can record with this, too.
And there's just a simple one-touch
record button. So if you're listening to something on AM
or FM, you can just press this button
and it'll start recording it for future
playback. And you can get it
from somebody called C-Crane,
who also sells these really cool and easily
hackable FM transmitters.
So go to C-Crane.com
and you can check out the Pogo
Eurowave. It's a pretty neat AM,
FM, MP3 player recorder.
And it has a microphone in it.
Does that answer your question, sir?
Okay, well, we'll just have to assume it does.
Thanks for your call.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
I dialed tone, so we're going to move on here. Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
I just wanted to mention
about that movie.
I'm not sure how often
Hollywood consciously engages
in propaganda, but unconsciously
there's a tremendous amount of
propaganda that goes into Hollywood
filmmaking.
In all our
media content, you know, it's controlled
by the wealthy and the
elite and the corporate
mentality seeps right through.
So that was my comment.
Thanks for calling. Of course, the hopelessly naive,
they always have their say as well.
I just don't think it could possibly be a coincidence
that the large media
conglomerates put out films
or other
expressive media
that reinforce the notion that it's good
to have centralized control over who
accesses what information when they
have a vested profitable interest
in being the ones to have that control.
Well, perhaps some of the Hollywood writers
currently on picket lines can
tell us and say that they were
told to send this message.
I don't think they have to be told,
but it's what they'll end up making.
Do you think the Hollywood writers will do this on their own?
I think
they get pushed in certain directions
in certain cases. But I don't think it's
in the form of an explicit order.
Okay. Well, again, inside information
we'd like to hear about it. OTH at 2600.com.
Let's take another phone call.
And good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hi. How are you doing?
Okay. I wanted to ask,
Trend Micro
is working on
an antivirus for
cell phones because I can
get my emails on my
cell phones. I wonder if you guys had heard
how that was developing
to avoid opening
files that could put viruses on smart phones.
This is probably more a question for the
personal computer show, but I think Redbird has...
I don't know how useful that'll be on your smart phone.
It's much more strategic to
have a good antivirus on your desktop
PC because very few viruses are
targeted for mobile platforms
like that. So, I mean, there may be
some threat, but it's not nearly as much as you would have
on your desktop. I'm sure that's going to change.
But do ask the personal computer guys about it.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
You know, we've really got to change this phone system so the
lines don't hop all over the place.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Go ahead. Hi.
What's on your mind?
Oh, hi. I'm sorry.
John, I have a question.
Go ahead.
Cell phones.
Okay.
The person who called just a couple
moments ago, she was saying how you
get viruses
in cell phones.
Is it possible
to get
a cell phone,
a wireless cell phone?
I mean, like you were talking before about
the FBI copying
lines. I don't know if it's possible
to do that on a cell phone.
Is it?
Yes.
All right. Well, Bernie, thanks for
answering that and making it quick.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
It keeps calling back.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Yes.
You know I love your
program and I love WBAI.
That's all we need to hear. Thank you so much for telling us that.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
It's torture.
It really is torture. You look stressed. I'm stressed
because every time I hit a button, the line
has gone on to the next line. I have no way of knowing.
This phone system is so... We have a new
phone. Badly designed. It still jumps, right?
This is a new phone? Yeah, I think it was
last month. It looks exactly the same. Anyway, we have another call. Good evening.
You're on the air. Hi.
I'm calling to see what you guys think about what's going
on in Texas with
Time Warner trying to charge
people different prices
for how much... Okay, we already
discussed this. You have to listen to the archive. We already
discussed this on the air. No point
going over old news. And good evening.
You're on Off The Hook. Hi.
I was wondering
when and where the next
meeting of 2300 would be.
We don't know about 2300,
those bastards. We're at 2600.
It's meeting every first
Friday of the month in various cities
around the world. Where are you located?
New York City. New York City. Okay.
So the meeting there
will be at the Citigroup Center, that's the building
with the little slanty roof on 53rd
Street in Manhattan, in the
lobby area between the hours of 5
and 8 p.m. First Friday of every
month. 53rd Street and...
Between Lexington and 3rd.
And the time
again? Between 5 and 8 p.m.
First Friday of the month.
We're out of time. We can't take
any more phone calls. We have a full bank of
calls, though. I want to thank everybody for
calling in. Again, write to us.
O-T-H at
2600.com. That's our email address.
And sometimes you even get a reply,
or sometimes it'll get right over the air.
We like to hear about various things that are going on.
Anything in the works for
this weekend? Meetings aren't this weekend,
are they? No. All right. Well, in that
case, we'll see you in a week,
and hopefully more fun, exciting things
will have happened. Stay tuned for the Personal Computer
Show. If you have those questions about
computers and phones and things like that,
feel free to call in with those.
I'm Emmanuel Goldstein for Off The Hook. Have a good night.
Go Giants! That's
all I can say.
That's right. Yay, Giants!
Hey, that's right.