We need a media that strengthens democracy, not a media that strengthens the government.
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Hi, I'm Jane Fonda, and this is WBAI, listener-supported, non-commercial radio in New York.
Hi, my name is Lati.
When I'm in New York, I always have my radio tuned to WBAI 99.5 FM.
And when I'm back home in France, I listen on the web at WBAI.org.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
The time is exactly 7 o'clock. Time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Fondue Liban, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Fondue Liban!
And the evening show by the program is Off the Hook.
It's a pleasure to be here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Back in the studio, back in New York, back in the USA.
Joined tonight by Mike, Jim, Rob T. Firefly, RedHack, DotRet, and Kyle.
Hi.
Does your mic not work? Try that one.
Hello?
Yeah, it works. That's great.
So, yes, we've been traveling for quite a while.
The last three weeks in the form of Yugoslavia.
We'll get into that maybe a little bit later on.
And Bernie S., Bernie, are you there?
I'm here somewhere in rural Pennsylvania.
Rural Pennsylvania. Wow.
Okay, what in God's name are you doing there?
I'm heading west. I'm heading west to get some club latte.
Okay, I guess you can spill the beans. What does that mean?
Well, I'm headed to the annual mecca of communications geeks,
which is the Dayton Hamvention,
which I believe the 2600 van and friends will be heading to tomorrow.
It's a gathering of a few tens of thousands of communications geeks.
There will be radio communications, telephone communications.
There's a lot of phone freaks that go to the Dayton Hamvention and are fans of 2600.
And I understand that there will be some sharing of club latte.
So that's why I'm headed there.
The 2600 van is currently downstairs,
and it's filled up with all kinds of goodies,
including copies of the best of 2600, some back issues, T-shirts, sweatshirts,
and yes, you're right, a whole bunch of bottles of club latte,
which we will be sharing with people in Dayton, Ohio.
If they come to the Dayton Hamvention,
we'll have them available for really special deals.
Let's put it that way.
And I think people will get hooked.
I see people getting hooked on this all the time.
When Kyle and I were in the former Yugoslavia,
people were expressing their frustration at not being able to get a hold of this.
Some of them had gone to CCC,
and they were trying to figure out ways to get it imported into Serbia, into Croatia, into Slovenia.
And, you know, it seems so easy because they're fairly close,
but it's actually a challenge there.
So it's quite a challenge for us to import it into this country.
So, wow.
I'm sorry.
Four people talked at once.
Mike.
It's harder because it costs a lot of money to move things over land.
You have to pay truckers.
They cost money.
But, you know, we actually—this is something people don't know about.
We had it imported into this country by freighter over the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean.
And then one of the pallets, a pallet being—how do you describe a pallet, Mike?
A pallet is a wooden thing with a lot of stuff on it.
Yeah, that's basically what it is.
If you ever see those wooden things that don't have a lot of stuff on them,
that's a pallet that's being thrown away because they took all the stuff off of it.
Yeah.
That's a technical explanation.
I know that probably went over the heads of a lot of people.
But, yeah, pallets hold, I think, 800 bottles of Club Mate.
What we did was we sent a pallet of Club Mate out to Seattle where Kyle is.
And, in fact, he's been handling sales of a pallet of Club Mate out there in Seattle.
Now that was also a challenge because we had to, as Mike said, ship it over land,
and that's very expensive to ship over land as well.
So, yeah, it gets—the price goes up, obviously, as it gets into the country.
It's a lot cheaper when you're in Germany already where the stuff comes from.
I don't think it would be that expensive to get it into Slovenia or Croatia.
But what do I know about importing and taxes and all those other things?
You better know something about it.
I know a little bit about it.
What's that, Bernie?
I said you might have to bribe some people.
Yeah, yeah.
Did we have to bribe anybody, Kyle, when we were over there?
Any bribing going on?
No, I don't know.
We almost had to bribe a guy at the airport to get your film through without X-raying.
Have you guys ever tried this?
Ever tried—we talked about this last night on Off the Wall,
but have you ever tried giving somebody at an airport X-ray machine something
and telling them don't put this through the X-ray and seeing their reaction?
All the time.
Yeah, Bernie, it must—have you done that?
You've never even been to one of those places, have you?
No.
All right.
Bernie, you must have done this.
Have I gotten film through an X-ray machine?
Or just any—have you handed anything to somebody at an airport screening terminal
and said don't put this through the X-ray machine?
Actually, I never have.
It's a lot of fun.
I want to try it.
I want to try it.
Well, it really is a lot of fun.
See, what Kyle was doing was he was taking pictures at ultra-high speed,
which—what were the numbers?
3,200, I think?
Yeah, the film I had was 3,200 ISO film.
And you can't put that through X-ray machines.
It says on the film do not do this.
It says on the TSA website do not do this.
However, in Belgrade, Serbia, they didn't seem to know this,
and they were saying everything must go through the X-ray machine,
and one of the people there said look at my eyes.
They're not X-ray eyes.
I can't see what's in there.
I have to go through the X-ray machine.
Yeah, she was really funny.
It was a blast.
Yeah, but the upshot of it was it didn't seem like we would be able to get onto the airplane
without destroying Kyle's film because the film would be destroyed if that happened.
So we had to just hold our ground and keep escalating the situation,
being pleasant but being firm,
and eventually this big security chief guy came out,
and he was in a good mood that day apparently.
Yeah, he was way more agreeable than some of his staff made him out to be,
and he turned out to be our biggest ally.
There was a secondary screening right before getting at the gate before boarding,
and we actually used him as a reference.
The security guy said it was okay.
Yeah, exactly, because he was our good pal by that point,
and it was actually really, really kind of him to, I mean,
he did look at it and shake him and squeeze him and do everything he had to do,
but it was really smooth after that.
Yeah, but I was thinking how nerve-wracking it must be to go to somebody and say,
this cannot be X-rayed.
It just seems like you're up to something when you're not,
and I could see how their minds work.
You go up to someone.
You had a cardboard box filled with these things, filled with these canisters.
You're walking up to them slowly, holding it in two hands,
saying this cannot go through the X-ray,
and their reaction actually was much better than I thought it might be.
Yeah, actually I stopped clutching my box.
Yeah, you stopped digging your fingernails into it.
I switched to my passport and my boarding pass because that was the end goal,
and I sat it down and was a little more calm at that point
and tried to appear a little more relaxed because I was trying.
This was an exercise in winning people over and getting our goal accomplished.
Social engineering.
It really was because you have to get somebody on your side,
and then you tell somebody else, this person said it was okay,
and just keep going from there, and before you know it,
you can do anything you want almost.
Yeah.
Why would you bring something that can't go through an X-ray
through several airports?
Well, how else do you get it home?
Well, why would you bring it out in the first place?
Why would you take pictures? Is that what you're asking?
No, why would you bring film that can't go through an X-ray machine?
This is the kind of thing where if I—
Okay, this is a good question.
Kyle, tell us why high-speed film is so important.
I mean, why would you do this?
If you know you're going to be going through this post-9-11 airport security world—
We live in a different world, yes.
Very good question.
All right, Kyle, take it away.
Basically, they suggest lower-speed films can go through, and that's great.
But you don't want to X-ray film.
What it does is fog the film, and with the higher-speed film,
it's really good for low-level lighting, indoor photography, and it's versatile.
Basically, my reason is I didn't want any of my film to be fogged and go through any sort of X-ray.
But I think what he's asking is, what's the advantage of high-speed film?
No, what I'm asking is, why would you bring something so vulnerable out in the first place,
knowing that you're going to have to go through airports carrying boxes of canisters,
saying, don't put this through an X-ray machine?
You would have—
I would have totally avoided the practice altogether.
I would have used digital cameras or something.
Okay, well, why not use digital cameras?
I think that's the question here.
Film is something that's disappearing.
People aren't using it as much.
And I work at a school, and I've been working in an analog photography lab for quite a while.
So I want to get some practice.
It's sort of like retro at this point.
And this is a really comprehensive adventure, and I really wanted to document it.
I brought digital as well, but to me it was crucial to have medium format.
It's artistic. It's high-resolution.
You can do fine art.
You can make extremely large enlargements.
And there's a lot of attributes that people are sort of forgetting that film photography has.
And you can even do digital things.
I've seen people do cross-processing and just different developing techniques
and then scan them and then have digital backups, negative backups, and then they just print film.
It amazes me that this is still an issue because I remember flying 25, 30 years ago,
and it was a matter, of course, that people's film would not go through the X-ray.
So why is this still mystifying the people who are running the machines now?
And also I think you're allowed to.
I mean, right, you look up the TSA regulations.
They say that you don't have to have the film X-rayed.
So you're asking why not bring it.
Well, you're allowed to bring it, so bring it.
If it's something that you – that's like saying –
But there's a difference between the rules and what the people in the security tags actually do.
But they're wrong, so why would you not stand your ground and bring that then?
The TSA doesn't run airports outside of the United States.
That was the problem.
That was the problem, and this is what we faced because at first it was Kyle going up to the people
and saying, this cannot go through, and then saying, yeah, it's going to go through
because we're in charge and you're not.
So we basically – that round ended.
The bell rang.
We went back to our corner and sort of conferred as to what to do next.
And I said, Kyle, this is what we do.
We go downstairs, and we get online, and we go to the TSA website
and maybe a film company website or something like that,
and we just have something in front of us we can point to that says this cannot go through the X-ray.
Now, that couldn't happen here because you couldn't get on the internet here.
But there, there was a free access point in the airport.
We got on immediately.
We were able to get exactly the page we wanted to and went back to the people.
And that did count.
That did matter to be able to point to the TSA website and say, look,
they're saying here you cannot put this kind of film through an X-ray machine.
TSA regulations, you say that's – even in Serbia, that rang some bells.
So, yeah, you have to stick to your guns.
Bernie.
Yes, go ahead.
I have a question.
I may be dating myself here, but back in the day,
I remember people used to put other things inside of 35-millimeter film canisters,
especially the aluminum ones.
And I'm wondering how many people put things still in 35-millimeter film canisters other than film
just to get it through without X-ray scrutiny?
Well, I mean, it would still probably go through the metal detector.
So, as long as it's not metal, yeah, you might be able to get away with something.
If it's drugs, a dog might find it.
You know, it's really metal, what they're looking for,
or electronic equipment that the X-ray would find.
I mean, do they still use those aluminum film canisters?
Remember those things?
Yeah.
I don't think these were aluminum though, were they?
The 120-millimeter does not have any metal, so it would not set off a metal detector.
And we talked about this as a solution afterwards.
But basically, it's something that, you know, people aren't generally going to X-ray.
Right.
Now, it went through some other kind of scrutiny, right?
Did they, like, sniff it with a thing?
I mean, I know that that happened in certain airports.
I'm sorry.
I lost my train of thought.
Yeah, exactly.
Most modern airports are going to sniff it with something.
But if you are packing something in a metal canister and you're trying to claim it ought not to be X-rayed.
They'll swab it too.
We held up an entire airplane.
I think we talked about this in Czech Republic where it was a small plane going to Zagreb.
And they didn't have the swabbing machine.
They had to wait for it to get from the other side of the airport.
And everybody was on a bus going to the airplane, which was a propeller plane.
And it was on the other side.
And nobody could get on the airplane until that machine arrived.
So we held everybody up for 20 minutes.
It felt pretty good.
Remember that the X-ray machines and the metal detectors are, you know, the easiest and fastest way.
But that doesn't mean that there's other ways to test things if you're working for airline security.
And so that being, you know, it's just a matter of, okay, if this can't go through this one method of testing, there are alternatives.
And, you know, you have to push for those.
That's all.
I mean, it's just like when you're taking, say, a prescription medication with you on a plane and it's in a liquid format.
I had to do this once.
You know, they just have this little other device that they use because you're not supposed to take liquids.
But they test it, you know.
But if you're bringing a Gatorade, they say throw it out because we're not going to waste our time testing that.
Right, right.
It's not an exceptional case.
You will occasionally meet people that don't know the rules that will challenge you and will get you to think about backing down.
And I think what we learned here is not to do that because if you're right, you're right.
And eventually somebody will listen, hopefully.
Okay, well, that was a bit of fun.
But tonight we have a lot of fun to involve people with because it's the first night of the spring fundraiser.
Yes, that's right.
It's May.
Yeah, this happens every year.
And here we are again asking for people's support.
And what we have tonight is, I think, some pretty interesting stuff, including something we've never offered before.
And I'm not sure if we're ever going to offer it again.
I'm not sure if this is something that's going to be – in a way, I don't want this to be too popular.
And obviously, I don't want it to not be popular at all.
But we kind of have to put a limit on the premium we're offering tonight, the super premium we're offering tonight.
Should we talk about that first or should we talk about the other things first?
Mike, what do you think?
Suspense.
Let's keep people in suspense.
Keep people in suspense.
Okay, that's fine.
Keep people in suspense for a little while.
I mean the premiums which are not the exceptional premiums are still really good.
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
Let's run them down.
First of all, the phone number, 212-209-2950.
And that's the number to call if you just want to make a pledge and you don't really care what it is that we send you as a thank you.
Or if you just want to make a pledge without even being thanked, we can accept that too.
But no, we do want to thank you.
We do want to send you things.
Because whatever you pledge, you get the greatest premium of all, which is the radio station.
Right.
And it takes a little while to send you things.
I know the Cory Doctorow book still has not gone out because he's signing those later this month.
And they're going out.
We promised you a signed book and you're going to get a signed book.
So that got delayed a little bit.
And everything goes out.
Everything gets to people.
It just takes a little bit of time to process.
But you will get what you pledge for.
No question about that.
And more importantly, you'll get the radio station.
You'll get that every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
So that's the reason to call, 212-209-2950.
So every pledge of $25 and above gets the brand new off-the-hook T-shirt in a variety of sizes, which we have not offered in the past.
This is something fairly new for us.
We have sizes of small, medium, large, extra large, double extra large, and triple extra large, 3X.
Yes.
And that's all for a pledge of $25 and above, 212-209-2950.
Now, Rob T. Firefly, you designed the off-the-hook, the brand new off-the-hook T-shirt.
Do you want to tell us something about them?
I did.
It's an exciting new design.
It's a nice sort of turquoise and white color on a black T-shirt.
And it's an emblem that engulfs a lot of what we do here in that it's a picture of a phone.
A telephone.
Yes, a telephone.
You say it like it's just a phone, but it's so much more than just a phone.
It's a stylized telephone that also has our title and some information about the radio station and our URL.
And it's a neat way for listeners to kind of pick each other out of crowds.
Yes.
Anyone who came to this Friday's meeting in New York would have seen it.
Ah, yes.
Yeah.
I happened to be wearing one, didn't I?
Yes.
Yes, he so did.
Many people are starting to wear them as they begin to be distributed.
And we should point out that the only way they are distributed is through people who pledge.
Well, actually, Rob, you designed it, so you got one.
But people who pledge to the station are the only people that get these things.
And so they're the only ones that can wear them proudly, unless they give them to somebody else to wear proudly.
But in any event, a pledge is involved.
It is an exclusive item.
You cannot purchase this at any price.
You can only get it as a thank you gift.
Go to the 2600 store.
You will not find it.
It's not there.
So if you're walking around on the street and you see someone wearing one of these off-the-hook T-shirts,
you know that they are a fellow off-the-hook listener.
Pretty much.
And that they have called 212-209-2950 and pledged to get one.
$25 or above.
Now, keep in mind, we say $25 and above.
That means that if you pledge for any of the other premiums we're offering tonight, you're going to get one of these shirts.
So there's no way around that.
You're going to get a shirt no matter what.
You could say no.
You could say no.
But you know what?
We're probably just going to send you one anyway because we don't know how not to do things like that.
We don't know how not to thank people.
We really don't.
So it's a problem.
Okay.
So for a pledge of $75, what we're offering are the last five years of 2600 magazine.
Now, unfortunately, there's a typo here.
It says 260 magazine.
That's 2600.
We have nothing to do with 260.
2600 magazine is the Hacker Quarterly.
It's a magazine that's been coming out since 1984, dealing with all kinds of issues about computer hacking and phone freaking, privacy issues, Orwellian Big Brother aspects, all kinds of things involving technology and how it affects people like us, how we can take control of technology,
how we can make a difference, design things that are better for the future.
We've been doing this for a while and the technology has changed.
A lot of the technology has changed as a result of people like you who read the magazine.
You don't have to be really technical.
You don't have to be that technical to understand the basic premise of what goes on in these pages.
So basically the last five years of 2600 magazine will be yours for a pledge of $75.
Now, these normally go for, I believe, it's either $20 or $25 a year.
I don't even know the prices.
So that's significantly less than what you would pay on the open market.
So that's 20 issues you get.
Five times four is 20.
Correct.
Yes.
Very good.
Now, also, there's another additional item we have for a pledge of 125.
You know what you get?
You get the entire 21st century of 2600 plus the year 2000 because 2000 wasn't technically the 21st century.
How about this?
Everything the year 2000 up till now.
That's like 10 years.
That's a little more.
A little over 10 years.
Wow.
You'll get for a pledge of $125.
So going back to the year 2000 and going right up to the spring of 2010,
you'll get all of those issues for a pledge of 125 plus you'll get the off-the-hook t-shirt.
212-209-2950.
It's history.
It's incredible time capsules of things that are going on.
A lot of the articles, even from the year 2000, are very applicable today having to do with privacy issues,
having to do with the latest developments in technology, having to do with where things are going in the future.
It's all there for you, and it will all come your way for a pledge of 125 or 75 depending on how many of these you want.
212-209-2950.
We had one call on the line.
Let's see if we can get a bunch more, and then we're going to tell you about the other premium we're offering.
I don't know if people are waiting for that, but Rob, why don't you pitch in?
I'm looking through the stacks of magazines that we have here as an example of what we're giving away,
and it's really obvious to me that it's not just a technical thing.
You don't have to be technical to appreciate what's in here.
There's lots of op-eds, and there's our letters columns,
which are a great, great snapshot of what's been going on in our community at any one moment.
There's a lot anyone can get out of these.
You're all pouring through the issues, and a lot of you are sort of being distracted
and not really paying attention to what's being said over the air.
That's a testament to how powerful these words are,
but I'm just wondering if some of you who are looking at the magazine right now,
is there anything that's jumping out at you, anything you want to read, anything you want to quote from, titles?
Go ahead, .red.
Well, I think that's actually a really good thing to point out
because every one of these magazines that come out have something really great in them,
have a whole series of really great things in them actually,
but the thing is one issue might focus more on software-related things
and the other might focus more on hardware, social,
and by getting a full stack of this, you're getting basically the full gambit,
and they otherwise would have to wait every three months before you could get them.
Yeah, absolutely.
Not to mention you kind of see the development of technologies over time,
and if you think back to 2000, that was, I mean, I don't even think Wi-Fi was,
if it existed, it was very, very early stages,
and smartphones were a thing that didn't exist yet,
and you just kind of see this development over time of the technology
and the associated problems with it and the associated flaws in it,
and you can just kind of watch this progress over time.
Talking about Wi-Fi, I have the Summer of 03 issue,
which actually has an article about Wi-Fi, 802.11b.
Wow.
Reception.
Yeah, well, there's all kinds of things you can learn.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I was going to say that a lot of people I've met over the years,
lucky enough to meet, who are just part of the hacker community,
oftentimes because they've stumbled across 2600 Magazine,
either in a newsstand or they read about it somewhere,
somebody told them about it,
and it really inspired these people who tell me it inspired them.
It helped shape how they think about things,
how they look at things in the grand scale,
because the magazine covers a lot of ways that people have figured out ways around things,
and it's an important way to think, to think about ways around things,
not because you necessarily want to circumvent them,
but because you need to protect yourself,
because sometimes people who don't have good motivations
will figure out ways around things to victimize other people,
but it's just really good to look at.
It's just a hacker mindset.
How would you put that?
Anytime you question something or try to figure out a way around a system or a rule,
you're using the hacker mindset.
You're using ways of challenging authority,
ways of figuring out methods of bypassing.
It's a skill.
It's a very valuable skill that you can use throughout your life.
Carl and I just demonstrated how we used it in Belgrade a couple of days ago.
It's something that is extremely valuable
and something that will stay with you for your entire life,
and we're offering that to you for a pledge of either $75 or $125.
212-209-2950.
Join the caller on the line now and help support the radio show
because it all kind of ties together, very much so, in fact.
The magazine, the radio show, the conferences, they all are related.
They all bring people together, and we all share our methods and educate each other.
Emanuel, I think the reason we're not getting more calls
is that we have a very cautious audience.
They want all the information before they make their pledge,
and they want to know about this other premium that we've been hinting at.
Yeah, all right. I guess we have to do that.
All right, fine.
We're going to mention what the other premium is just so you know.
Like I said, this is something we've never offered before,
and I'm not sure how this is going to go
because if it's—we're going to offer this probably each week we're on,
but in a very limited number.
All right, out with it already.
I don't think we can offer more than two,
and there's a very good reason for that, which I'll get into in a moment.
All right.
For a pledge of $500.
5-0-0.
Do I have your attention? Good.
Okay.
$500 to 212-209-2950.
You will become a featured guest on Off the Hook for one half hour.
In fact, no, no, not a guest, a host.
You'll be the person asking us questions
or deciding what it is that we're going to be focusing on,
what subjects we're going to talk about,
and we can't hang up on you.
We can't disconnect you.
That's the rule.
Now, obviously, you have to live by WBAI rules.
You have to live by FCC rules, certain things like that.
You can't have commercials.
You can't cuss and swear, things like that.
But for 30 minutes, I think from 7.15 p.m. to 7.45 p.m.,
you're the one hosting Off the Hook.
Yeah, and you can say to us,
I want RedHack here.
I want .red here.
I want Mike here.
I want Emmanuel to keep his mouth shut.
You can say things like that,
and we have to follow what you tell us to do, all right?
And, you know, I have faith in our listeners
that you guys can put on a good show,
but the important thing is that you're supporting the radio station.
You're keeping this particular program on the air,
and you're getting something, a once-in-a-lifetime thing for it,
for $500 for half an hour.
Off the Hook is yours.
212-209-2950, the number to call to get any of these premiums.
Now, obviously, we can't have too many people do this,
because if we have a whole lot of people calling in for that,
yeah, we'll do great.
We'll raise a lot of money,
but we're not going to be able to do a normal show for quite some time.
So, yeah, and this is a premium you'll get pretty quickly.
As soon as you're paid up,
we'll be able to put you on in the week of your choice,
and it'll be interesting.
I think this will be fascinating.
Can this person do it over the phone if they don't live in New York?
Yeah, no, we are doing it over the phone.
Oh, okay.
That's how it works, yeah.
212-209-2950, give us a call and pledge for that and make history.
Jim, you've got a lot of cash there.
You're already in the studio.
Jim, you don't have to pay to be on the show.
So $500 is what we're asking for this premium.
Jim apparently doesn't have it on him,
but $500 is what we're asking for this premium,
but I do think it would be appropriate if you can afford it to pledge more
if you're going to get this.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Something to think about.
Let's not push people too hard, though.
212-209-2950.
So, again, we have, I guess, four pledge levels.
$500, half an hour of off-the-hook where you're in charge.
You're in charge as far as what we talk about and asking us questions
and basically talking about things that you feel are important.
New York City, airtime, wow.
Getting out to the entire world and being archived forever on the Internet.
That's something that doesn't come along very often.
Maybe in the Library of Congress, who knows?
Probably the Library of Congress, yeah.
212-209-2950.
I know there are people out there considering this,
and, again, this is something we're not going to be offering very often.
I mean, obviously, if it flops and nobody wants it,
we're not going to offer it again.
And if too many people want it,
we're going to have to be a little careful
and not give away the show too often to people
that may be doing a very good job.
But, I don't know, maybe this is the way to go.
Maybe having a guest host every week is something listeners want.
But let's try it.
Let's see what happens.
We're willing to try different things,
and this is an example of what we try here at this radio station,
different experiments.
212-209-2950, $500.
You get a half hour of off-the-hook.
And I guess, you know, you can tell all of us to shut up
and just speak for yourself for 30 minutes.
Sound good, Rob?
Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
I know a lot of people that would do that.
We get a lot of email from listeners, you know,
commenting on what we talk about, what we don't talk about.
We should have talked about this.
We didn't talk enough about that.
Now's your chance to put your money where your mouth is, quite literally.
A Cuba guy could call.
I'm a bit afraid of what could happen, I have to say.
Basically, we're challenging.
We're challenging people out there who have something to say,
this is your opportunity to say it.
I mean, obviously, we're not saying only people who pledge $500 can speak
because we open the phone lines all the time.
But this is a fun way to actually kind of do something as part of the show
for a significant amount of time and make your mark.
And also, most importantly, helping the radio station.
This is something we've never tried before.
And I think it'll be an interesting experiment.
212-209-2950.
But if that's not to your liking, we have the five years of Off the Hook,
we have the five years of 2600 Magazine,
the ten years of 2600 Magazine for pledges of $75 and $125 respectively,
and we have the Off the Hook t-shirts for every pledge, $25 and above.
And that's yours, 212-209-2950.
You guys finding anything interesting in the magazines area?
I'm looking at some of the older issues around 2000, 2001.
And I mean, that was a really, really interesting time
because you had a lot of trials going on.
You had the MPAA trial about DCSS going on.
That's right. We got sued. We got sued by the MPAA.
That's all in there.
And some great covers too.
Really, every cover we have is a work of art.
It really is.
And to have that in front of you, to have that on paper,
I mean, yeah, you can look at our images on our website of the covers.
They don't do it justice.
Having it actually the way it was printed,
and this goes to what Kyle was saying before about film and enlargement
and printing things, there's no substitute for that.
I'm sorry.
Digital just doesn't cut it as far as having something printed out in front of you
and looking at the magic of it.
It's actually—
Emmanuel?
Go ahead, Bernie, then Red Hat.
Okay.
You know, you touched on this, Emmanuel,
but people don't maybe understand that this isn't just a podcast show.
This is the only major radio station in the United States that has the courage,
WBAI, has the courage to broadcast a live weekly hacker radio show.
And on top of that, it's in the biggest radio market in the United States,
New York City, from atop the Empire State Building,
with an effective radiated power of 50,000 watts that reaches four states
just from the sheer firepower of the radio energy.
It reaches New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
It's also simulcast on International Shore Wave from time to time at 5110 kilohertz.
It's streamed live over the Internet.
It's archived.
So if you're the guest host of this show,
you will be heard far and wide internationally and on the archives forever.
This is really quite an opportunity,
and you'll be able to feel what it's like to be on a listener-supported,
noncommercial radio station that is really unique.
And we're lucky to be on WBAI because they recognize that this is the kind of show
that really interests a certain niche of people,
and you out there listening know who you are.
Now, you raise a very good point, Bernie, because, yes, this is a very powerful radio station.
It's reaching many, many people right now
and is archived both on the WBAI site and on our 2600 site.
So, yes, it's a fantastic opportunity for somebody to be heard who has something to say.
And really, you know, I have two words for anybody who doubts the power of being heard by an audience.
Those two words?
Justin Bieber.
Yeah.
He started on YouTube.
YouTube.
Everybody's on YouTube, but this is WBAI.
This is FM radio in New York City.
You already have thousands of people listening at any time,
and you can have that voice for a half hour to basically say what's on your mind,
to show your talent, to get to people, and help the radio station at the same time.
It's an amazing opportunity, so please don't let that go by.
212-209-2950.
We take credit cards of all sorts,
and it's really something that I think is almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
We'll see how many people actually spring for this.
So, like I said, I'm looking through some of the older issues.
This would be in the 10-year collection.
And, you know, it's kind of funny because it's bringing back a lot of memories.
Some of the stuff is making me laugh.
Specifically, in terms of memories, there's an article in, which issue is this,
Spring 2001 called Declawing Your QCAT.
Yeah, I remember that.
And for anyone that remembers, the QCAT was an experiment by Radio Shack
in which they gave you a free barcode scanner that only worked with their magazine.
It was some special barcode format.
And so the idea was you plug this thing.
I think it was USB, right?
You plug this thing into your computer.
There was a USB version and a PS2 version.
Really?
So you plug this into your computer, and you had the software,
and when you scanned their magazine, it would take you to their website.
The thing about it was, though, that people realized that
with a little modification or some stuff in software,
you could use it as a regular barcode scanner.
So suddenly you were getting a free barcode scanner,
which you could use to catalog CDs, books, whatever you wanted,
or just to play around with.
I think I had, like, three of these things,
and I just remember having a lot of fun playing with them.
And Radio Shack wasn't too thrilled with people using them in manners they weren't intended.
I think they lost a lot of money on it, on the proposition.
Just that article itself brought back some memories.
I also saw another article.
Actually, this wasn't really an article.
Let me just say, two calls on the line right now.
212-209-2950.
Five years of back issues of 2600.
From now until, I guess, what, 2005?
For a pledge of $75.
A fantastic deal.
Even better deal for 125.
Everything from spring 2000 up until the present.
212-209-2950.
Remember, don't forget about the $500 pledge.
Half hour off the hook.
All yours.
212-209-2950.
We have two calls on the line.
Let's make that five calls.
We need those calls to come in.
They haven't updated the number in quite a while,
but we need to see that number go way up.
212-209-2950.
I see also in the fall 2000 issue,
this is around the time of the DCSS case,
and you have a couple of reprinted letters from different broadcasting and movie companies.
We had been sued by the Motion Picture Association of America under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
and it seemed like all of America was against us at that point.
So, yeah, those letters are really interesting.
And so one of them is actually from Warner Brothers.
At the time, they were creating a movie called Swordfish,
and they were asking for your permission to use the magazine as a background or a prop.
Three calls.
Three calls on the line.
212-209-2950.
While simultaneously suing you.
Yeah, isn't that something?
They sue you with one hand, ask permission to use your magazine in another hand.
It's great fun, and you get to witness it all.
You get to witness our layout artist getting arrested in Philadelphia at the Republican Convention,
and then, of course, the same thing happening to me four years later in New York City.
It's all in the pages of 2600,
plus all kinds of payphone photos from around the world and funny pictures and leaked memos and columns.
It's amazing.
If I wasn't the editor of the magazine or the publisher of the magazine,
I would probably be a subscriber because it's just so much fun.
Another funny letter in here is at the time you decided that for some broadcasting companies,
you were going to make domains that had a certain four-letter word in front of the company's name.
Don't say that on the air.
It was a test of freedom of speech.
Then you have letters sent to you from their law departments telling you that they're infringing on their trademark by doing this and et cetera.
Yeah, and we also got sued by Ford because we pointed a site like that.
Actually, we pointed a General Motors site at Ford,
and Ford sued us saying we didn't put that nasty word in front of General Motors,
and you're making it seem like we did.
We won that case.
It was a lot of fun for everybody.
We had to drive to Detroit though to win that.
I mean one thing that you won't find in this magazine though is paid ads,
and it's something you won't find on this radio program either.
I think these are like two of the only media that I know about that don't have ads on them.
So when you pledge to WBAI, supported by the listeners only, no commercials,
and then as a thank you gift, you get 2600 Magazine supported by the readers only.
It's kind of amazing.
Yeah, and that is the theme.
No commercials, no advertisement, just content,
and that's hopefully what you guys are pledging for is content because that's what we want to bring you.
212-209-2950.
We have two more calls on the line.
Please, let's make that four.
Let's make that five.
212-209-2950.
This is important.
This is something you will not find anywhere else.
I have one more thing I wanted to point out, an article I found, and this is from ten years ago,
and it's kind of interesting because it shows what was the promise of a certain technology
that eventually didn't go anywhere really and hasn't to this day.
So the article is actually an introduction to biometrics,
and biometrics has been around apparently for ten plus years, which I didn't realize,
and the author here says biometrics is not just to be used in access to buildings or computers
but will soon be used for access to your bank account, your credit cards, or even to make a phone call.
So they thought it was going somewhere.
Those people back then in 2000, they knew their stuff.
But in the meantime, you've had all of these vulnerabilities and problems,
and they really haven't solved them.
I mean fingerprint identification now is just as bad as it was ten years ago.
It's amazing the parallels and the things that are the same now as they were back then.
By the way, we have four calls online now.
That's great. Let's keep them coming in.
212-209-2950.
It also got me thinking about how the author here in the hacker way kind of imagined things getting better
and more secure when really the opposite is true.
I mean five, six, seven years after this, instead of having, say, biometrics or pin codes
to use our bank cards and our credit cards, they made them easier with RFID chips.
And so we kind of went in the opposite direction than what this author foresaw, unfortunately for us really.
People use the magazine for all kinds of papers and theses and things like that
to learn where society is going, what we've done in the past, what has happened, what has not happened.
So, yeah, there's all kinds of gems in here, all kinds of interesting material.
Now, Kyle, you've been looking at some issues, and I know 2600 has meant a lot to you over the years.
What can you offer to get people to recognize the value of this?
Yeah, I just wanted to speak to what RedHack was saying about looking back at certain kinds of technology.
I'm thinking of mag stripes, how they work, and a lot of this technology becomes really ubiquitous.
It's everywhere, and people sort of forget how they work.
And you can look back in some of these issues and actually get an explanation of how they work.
And it's like the collective memory forgets what makes these things run,
and I'm getting kind of tongue-tied trying to explain film.
People forget how that works because it's replaced with something else.
And that's the real value for me is seeing all these things as brand new in the magazine.
And then they're everywhere, and you can look back at explanations
and understand what all these things around you are doing.
212-209-2950. Call up now. $75. You'll get the last five years of 2600 magazine.
The Hacker Quarterly, the magazine that's systematically banned at schools and prisons throughout the world.
And where do they know that you don't?
Ten years, from the year 2000 until the present, for a pledge of 125.
That's a lot of issues. That's a big box you'll be getting with a lot of content.
212-209-2950 or the Master Premium. $500.
You'll get half an hour of airtime on Off The Hook where you're the host.
You're the person keeping the show going and talking to us and asking us questions.
Mike.
Well, I think I've been trying to pay attention to the radio program,
so I just was able to look through one issue while everyone else was looking through a whole bunch of issues.
And this is the first issue I picked up. It's from 2007-2008.
And there's an article by our friend Rob about voting machines and how he got them taken out of the Netherlands.
There's an article...
Electronic voting machines.
Electronic voting machines.
He went back to pen and paper.
Oh, they do pen and paper.
Yeah.
All right. It almost sounded like you got...
No, he didn't get rid of voting. He got rid of voting machines.
That's next.
Oh, no.
No, some people might think that, but no, that's not true at all.
Okay, yeah, that's fascinating.
There are some people that have written for the magazine and have gone on to do amazing things.
Really amazing things.
And just also in the same issue, there's an article about Facebook.
You know, some of the early privacy holes in Facebook, which have now exploded,
and there's like a new privacy hole every day.
There's an article about hacking your mind with various drugs, over-the-counter drugs.
And I haven't even managed to look at half the other issues in here, and that's just one issue.
And you'll get either 20 or 40 of them, 20 or 40 issues, each with all these articles.
And on top of everything, you'll keep the radio station on the air.
You'll keep Off the Hook on the air.
So give us a call, 212-209-2950, and pledge your support.
Now, we've got to point out that for those of you who are worried that the magazine is super technical
and only computer geniuses can understand it, it's not true at all.
Because I don't know if anyone in the room can be considered a computer genius.
We're all rather intelligent in various ways.
But I'm certainly not a technical person, and that might surprise you to hear that.
But I've never taken a computer course, and I don't intend to.
And, you know, I use these things as toys and tools at the same time.
And I think that's something that a lot of us may have forgotten how to do is how to enjoy technology,
how to play around with things and experiment and just see what happens if you press this button and do this thing.
That's the spirit of a typical article in 2600 Magazine.
It's just basically experimentation and sharing of information,
gathering all kinds of experiences and telling people about them.
It's an ongoing saga, and you absolutely do not need to be a computer expert to appreciate this.
There are many, many people who don't understand computers at all who love 2600.
The letters alone, people read the letters religiously every issue,
and that's a whole range of experiences from people all around the world who write into us,
and we respond however best we can.
It's all yours, 212-209-2950.
Yeah, you've got a range.
You have things that are technical and that go into the specifics about how something works or how to do something
or how to connect remotely to a heating system and play around with it, things like that.
And then you've got the flip side.
You've got editorials.
You've got things that give you an overview of a technology that somebody who is not necessarily technical
or doesn't want to dial into a heating system can understand.
And like you said, you have the letters,
and you can see people's thoughts and opinions over time and over the past five, ten years.
And the fact that so many people are constantly trying to sue us and shut us up, that's got to mean something.
It's got to mean that we're on to something.
We're saying interesting things, things that they don't want you to know about.
Yet every quarter, we put out another issue, and it gets somebody angry.
It gets some corporate executive into a hissy fit because they don't know how to keep this information compressed
and away from people like you.
Well, 2600 exists to bring that information out to the public,
and there are so many people around the world who have been inspired to write for the magazine
and are sharing their particular perspective, and you can support all of that.
You can support the radio show, which is another means of communication.
You can support the radio station, which is a clearinghouse of information,
just by calling 212-209-2950, pledging whatever you can support, whatever you can afford, that is.
We have one call on the line. We need to make that four or five before we get off the air tonight.
It's super important that we get a bunch more calls in.
212-209-2950, again, five years of 2600 for a pledge of $75,
10 years of back issues for 125,
a half hour of your own off-the-hook where you're the host for $500.
212-209-2950, everyone pledging 25 and above gets an off-the-hook t-shirt.
Rob?
And there's only 10 minutes left because next week we'll do something else.
But I'm just flipping through the Spring 2000 issue here,
and I happened upon the article A Taste of Freedom by Kevin Mitnick.
And this is the piece he wrote when he was freed from prison
and just cataloging what was going on in his life then.
Talk about history. That's something right there.
Yeah, this is history being written down as it happens,
and this is what you're getting with these magazines.
If you can't make it to the conferences and if you're afraid to go to 2600 meetings,
the 2600 magazine is the safest way to peer into the world of hackers
and see just what they're up to and learn the thought process,
learn how it all is put together,
and ask yourself if you might have hacker qualities yourself.
I bet you do.
If you're listening to this show, you probably are hacker curious at least.
So it's worth checking out, you know, to see if you've got it in you.
I think a lot of our listeners do.
212-209-2950.
Jim pointed out to me this interesting article from Spring 2005,
and way back when there was this trick you could do with MetroCards
where if you bent them in a certain place, you could get onto the subway for free
or it would seem as though it thought there was value on the card.
Nobody knew why.
They just knew if you bent it between, I think it was like the E in the corner or something.
Yeah, amazing how people find out these things.
And so Redbird, who used to be part of the show, actually figured out what was going on,
and he had taken the MetroCards and tried to run them through commercial readers,
and they didn't work, so he came up with a way to decode them himself.
It was very clever.
It was using a magnetic read head and connecting it to the microphone port of his computer
and decoding the actual waveform as audio.
And so that full write-up was in this Spring 2005 issue.
It was really interesting.
And actually, this is five years ago, right?
Now, just recently, there's a company out there, a commercial company,
that as far as I can tell is using the same exact technology
to do point-of-sale kind of credit card readers on like an iPhone.
So in five years, it's gone from this way of figuring out how the MTA MetroCards work
to an actual commercial thing, and it's kind of interesting.
You can see all that and how that worked in this issue, and it's very interesting.
212-209-2950 is the phone number to call to pledge your support to keep us on the air
and to get these premiums.
Any pledge $25 and above, you get the Off the T-shirt.
If you pledge $75, you'll also get five years of 2600 Magazine.
If you pledge $125, you'll also get ten years of 2600 Magazine.
If you pledge $500 or more, if you like, you will be the host of Off the Hook for half an hour one week.
212-209-2950, country code 1 if you're calling from abroad.
I don't think anyone has taken the $500 pledge based on the numbers I'm seeing,
which means that I don't know if we're going to offer it again.
It was an idea.
Maybe it's not a good idea.
Who knows?
But it also means that it's still available because we only wanted to offer one or two of those this hour.
212-209-2950.
So if you're thinking about that, your time is running low.
We only have eight minutes left tonight.
We do want to thank some people.
We have an anonymous donor in Kings Park, New York we want to thank.
We want to thank Sean from Chicago.
Thanks very much for your pledge.
And Ronald from Stanford, Connecticut.
Eric from Cleveland, Ohio.
And Robin from Gladstone, New Jersey, I believe.
Thanks so much for your pledges of support and for keeping this radio station going.
And not to at all belittle these pledges, but they're not enough.
We need more.
We need more to keep going.
It's very expensive to run a radio station in New York City, and we need those calls to come in.
We have one call on the line now.
We really need about five in order to walk out of here with our heads up.
212-209-2950.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just wanted to point out, as all of us on the show right now know, we rack our brains every time these fundraisers come up,
trying to come up with a thank-you gift that our listeners will really appreciate
and provide a little extra incentive for people to support WBAI, which is a worthy cause and an assault by all means.
But if any of your listeners have some ideas for premiums and thank-you gifts we could offer listeners,
please send them in to OTH at 2600.com, because we're very open to any new ideas.
And sometimes our ideas work out.
Sometimes they don't.
But we're all about ideas on this show.
That's what we're talking about.
Please call 215.
I'm sorry.
I'm talking about Philadelphia.
You don't give out your phone number.
212-209-2950.
Pledge your support to WBAI at any level.
It's not really important how much necessarily, although it does help.
It's important that you show your support for a non-commercial listener-supported station that will embrace a hacker radio show like this.
Absolutely.
212-209-2950.
We still have one call on the line.
It might be a different call, but I'm not sure.
We need more, folks.
We're not kidding here.
If we don't do well, it reflects badly on this show.
It reflects badly for the entire radio station.
And we're offering you some real quality material here.
We're offering you the back issues.
We're offering you a chance to become a star on the radio.
This kind of thing doesn't happen every day.
Of course, we're offering you the shirts.
Mostly, we're offering you the radio station.
And all you've got to do is tune around on the FM dial or the AM dial or any dial, shortwave even, and you'll see all the crap that's out there.
And I'm not kidding about that.
It's garbage.
It's so much garbage.
What you're listening to now or anytime on this radio station is alternative views.
You may not agree all the time.
It may make you angry sometimes.
You may think people are idiots on the air.
Yeah, and that might apply to us.
It's true, but it's something different.
It's something that makes you think.
It's something that makes you listen.
WBAI is not the kind of station you have on the background while cash registers are going.
No, that's not the kind of station we are.
That's why you don't hear us in Walmart.
We say things that get people angry.
We say things that commercial radio stations are not allowed to say.
That's why we need you to be out there for us because you're our sponsors.
You're the people that invest in the place.
You're the people that keep it going.
The premiums are great.
What we offer you is what we rack our brains, as Bernie said, to figure out ways to thank you.
The most important thing is the phone call you make to 212-209-2950 to keep the radio station on the air
so we can continue to bring you programming 365 days a year.
We've been doing this since 1960.
We want to continue doing this until FM radio doesn't exist anymore,
which hopefully won't be for a very, very long time.
212-209-2950.
Running over the pledges one more time.
Pledge of $25 and above gets you the Off The Hook t-shirt in the size of your choice.
Pledge of $75 gets you the last five years of 2600 Magazine,
the Hacker Quarterly, the most dangerous magazine in the world, I think.
Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but it is pretty dangerous.
$125, you'll get 10 years, the last 10 years of 2600 Magazine.
And for $500, you'll get half an hour of Off The Hook all to yourself
where you can ask us questions and program the show as you wish.
$500 pledge, that's really a big deal.
212-209-2950.
Join the three callers online now and help the radio station continue.
We'll be offering these premiums up until 8 o'clock.
After that, they're no longer available.
That's just the way it is.
212-209-2950.
Any last words from you folks in the studio or Bernie as you're driving to Dayton?
If any of our listeners are in the Midwest or want to head out to Dayton, Ohio,
this weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,
we'll be at the Dayton Hamvention.
Hamvention.org has all the information about it.
Tens of thousands of communications geeks.
But I'm hoping before you hang up your radio tonight
that you call 212-209-2950 and pledge support for WBAI.
212-209-2950.
And, again, these are being offered until 8 o'clock.
And one other note.
Those of you who think HOPE tickets are going to be offered this fundraiser,
no, they're not going to be offered this fundraiser.
So don't hold out thinking that we're going to be offering tickets to the next HOPE
any time during the WBAI fundraiser.
That's not going to happen this time.
We're offering different things this year.
But the price of HOPE tickets is going up in two days, right, Redhack?
On the 15th, I believe.
On the 15th.
Okay.
So we can't say the exact numbers,
but we can say that if you want to go to the conference
and you want to pay the lowest price, you better do it soon.
If you're sure you're going, now's a good time to buy your tickets
because the price is only going to go up from here.
All right.
Thanks to the four callers on the line.
Please keep those calls coming in until 8 o'clock or a little bit beyond,
and we'll be happy to offer you all kinds of fun things.
Good night.
We'll see you next week.
Hello, computer.
Ich greife in die Tasten.
Ich spiele, zeichne, schreibe mit dir.
Doch du weißt aber nichts von mir.
Ich klicke darunter fahren an.
Und was dann?
Aufstehen, rausgehen.
Ciao, computer, ciao.
Aufstehen, rausgehen.
Denn ich weiß genau.
Draußen warten Hund und Katz und Freunde auf dem Fußballplatz.
Das weiß ich genau.
Ciao, computer, ciao.
Hallo, computer.
Du hast schon was im Kasten.
Hallo, computer.
Ich greife in die Tasten.
Ich spiele, zeichne, schreibe mit dir.
Doch du weißt aber nichts von mir.
Ich klicke darunter fahren an.
Und was dann?
Aufstehen, rausgehen.
Ciao, computer, ciao.
Aufstehen, rausgehen.
Denn ich weiß genau.
Draußen wird's zum Spielen Zeit.
Auch wenn's stürmt und wenn es schneit.
Das weiß ich genau.
Ciao, computer, ciao.
Hallo, computer.
Du hast schon was im Kasten.
Hallo, computer.
Ich greife in die Tasten.
Ich spiele, zeichne, schreibe mit dir.
Doch du weißt aber nichts von mir.
Ich klicke darunter fahren an.
Und was dann?
Aufstehen, rausgehen.
Jawohl! Aha!
Yes. All right.
It's 8 o'clock on the dot here at WBAI New York 99.5 FM.