Hi, my name is Elitza.
When I'm in New York, I always have my radio tuned to WBAI 99.5 FM.
And when I'm back home in Bulgaria, I listen to the web at WBAI.org.
Hi, my name is Elitza.
When I'm in New York, I always have my radio tuned to WBAI 99.5 FM.
And when I'm back home in Bulgaria, I listen to the web at WBAI.org.
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.
Bon diddly bonk for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bon diddly bonk!
Bon diddly bonk for the best!
And Good Evening Territory, the program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined this week by Mike.
Hi.
Voltaire.
Hi, Mom.
Gus.
T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Dot Red.
Hello.
Bernie S. down there in Philadelphia.
Reading from steaming Philadelphia.
Yeah, it's pretty steaming here too, Bernie.
It might be more steaming.
And we have Kyle here, again from Washington State, visiting us.
Hi.
You're actually here for the whole duration now.
Yeah.
For the HOPE conference and all that.
As many of us are, people just popping into town from all around the world.
Because HOPE is, what, a week and a couple of days away.
It's really getting close.
Can we delay it a little while?
I'm not quite ready.
I'm ready.
No, I'm ready.
I've been ready for a while.
And I want the show to go on.
The button on the board doesn't work for that delay.
Yeah.
It's not going to work.
I would accept a seven second delay.
I should point out that there are several things that are coming up.
One of them is the deadline for pre-registration.
You will not be able to pre-register after, I believe, Sunday.
Sunday is the cutoff, this coming Sunday.
And that's actually interesting because usually the cutoff would be much, much sooner.
Because we'd be mailing tickets to people in the U.S. mail.
And now we've made it to the modern age.
And your ticket comes via e-mail.
So what you do is you get a ticket.
It comes via, what is it, a PDF?
Is that the kind of file it is?
Mine came today.
Yeah.
And you print it out.
And that's your ticket.
You send it to the conference and hand it to somebody.
They scan it and you get a badge based on that.
You don't get anything in the mail.
Now some people are thinking they're going to get their badges in the mail.
No, it doesn't work that way.
You don't get a ticket in the mail.
You don't get a badge in the mail.
Don't even stand by the mailbox.
Nothing is going to come there.
It will go via e-mail.
So make sure you give us a valid e-mail address.
And if you don't print it out and bring it with you, you don't get in.
Yeah, that's very true.
Okay, so that will be happening.
The cutoff is this Sunday.
Go to www.hope.net and you will find all the information on how to do that.
And what is it that they're pre-registering for?
Anybody?
Bernie, maybe you could describe it in a few words.
You get a special prize if you pre-register.
Well, I meant the whole conference, not just the special prize.
Well, in addition to the whole conference, which you get even if you show up
and get your ticket, you know, on Friday,
you will be getting, if you pre-register, an active RFID badge,
which is amazingly cool.
I got to hand it to Travis and the whole crew that designed the badge
and the artwork on it by Rob T. Firefly.
It's awesome.
And this badge talks with everybody else's badges,
and it talks with a wireless network that will be running throughout the
conference.
If you want it to, it will track you or your name of choice.
It's a three-dimensional social networking experiment,
and it's really amazing.
And there's a good video on hope.net explaining what it's all about.
And this is where you learn what technology is capable of,
how you can manipulate technology and do your own thing,
and what privacy is all about.
Yeah, there were talks about privacy,
but this you can actually get your hands on it and play with it yourself.
And if you pre-register, you'll definitely get one of these badges.
They're while supplies last, and we will fill them up at some point.
And then you'll get badges after that point,
but they won't be the really special cool ones.
So if you want to get those,
definitely pre-register for the Sunday deadline.
Neither of you guys is really selling this the way it ought to be sold.
I mean, who needs?
We don't need no stinking badgers.
I mean, okay?
I mean, like,
what you're getting when you register for HOPE is three days of unadulterated awesome.
It is absolutely the most action-packed conference that I go to.
It's the reason I'm actually helping organize this year.
It is just fabulous.
You don't have to be super technical to go.
You're going to get a lot out of it anyway.
You're going to write a segue.
It's going to be rad.
You're going to learn how to pick a lock.
I think one of the most interesting things this time is we've got a guy
who's going to be talking about how to wear particular face makeup
in order to fool security cameras, which I think is just absolutely great.
And hopefully, do we have the face painting booth to go along with that?
No, we couldn't swing that.
Although, if you bring your own makeup, I'm sure he will assist you in applying it.
We can make this happen.
We've made things happen before.
I remember a couple of conferences ago some folks showed up with a really great T-shirt
that was in relation to Senator Ted Stevens saying the Internet's a series of tubes.
And there was a shirt that said, Senator Stevens, don't tie our tubes.
And there was a giant womb on the front of it.
And they were actually screening shirts for you at the conference.
This is a do-it-yourself kind of a conference.
It's not too late to get involved with that if you have an idea for a project like that.
Because is our vendor area completely full or is it getting there?
It's not quite full yet.
Not quite full yet.
Okay.
So how would that work if somebody wanted to do something like what Gus just described?
They would come to the website and register as a vendor,
and then they'd be able to do what?
Yeah, send us an email, vendors at hope.net.
Okay.
And vendors, give us an idea what kinds of things vendors can do.
They can sell things.
They can distribute literature.
They can stand on the table and evangelize.
Has that happened?
No, but it could.
I'd be careful about standing on the tables.
It's very low ceiling clearance.
No, no, no.
The ceilings are way high.
The ceiling's 100 feet up in the air.
On the second floor?
Really?
Yeah.
It used to be a sports authority, so I think it's pretty high up.
Okay.
Yeah.
High ceilings, that's what we have to offer.
We don't offer too much judgment as far as what we approve of and what we don't.
If you feel that your audience is several thousand computer hackers
and you can reach them and they'll get something out of it,
then we're going to let you try at least.
I want to be clear about one point.
We don't guarantee the table.
If you stand on the table and you fall, it's your own problem.
Yeah.
We're not in charge of gravity.
That's not how it works.
Voltaire?
Hypothetically speaking, if you had a T-shirt that said stop snitching,
this would be a good place to sell it.
Okay.
Tell us something about that because that's interesting.
I saw that going around.
I know that we tweeted about it on 2600, this whole stop snitching campaign.
Now, is this related to the whole WikiLeaks, Adrian Lamo thing
that we're right smack in the middle of?
I assume so.
I hope so.
I noticed there's a talk that's going on about that.
That seems very timely.
I wasn't really sure.
We are having a talk about that very subject.
Yes.
This is an addition to the keynote by Julian Assange from WikiLeaks.
But on Sunday, we're actually going to have a talk addressing these very issues
because there's a lot in the community about, well,
is it okay to rat somebody out if they're up to something bad?
This has been going on for decades, if not longer, these questions.
What you have to understand is in the hacker world, in the phone freak world,
it was always understood that every fourth person was an informant of one sort or another
leaking information to either the phone company or the government or something like that.
So you have to ask the question, what would it take for me to be that person?
And do we all have the right to condemn people for doing certain things
when we don't know ourselves if we would do those certain things?
All kinds of questions constantly being asked in the community.
And we felt it was just a good idea to just plunge into it headlong.
Oh, RedHack, welcome.
I would have been on time had it not been for the 10-person line that greeted me in the lobby.
That's a lot of demand to get up here.
A studio audience.
It's never happened before.
It was quite shocking.
But I was going to say, along that line, there are often pressures that certain people have
that we ourselves don't have.
And so to kind of cast judgment on them and say, oh, well, why did you snitch
when you don't really know what's going on and other factors that influence it
because there could be pressures like if you are a convicted felon and you're under probation
or things like that, these are different things that you have to consider.
What if you're a communist, for instance?
What if you're a communist and the federal authorities know this?
And they say, we're not going to tell your friends and family that you're a communist
as long as you give us information.
That's a compelling argument, especially in this day and age, you know?
My mom's going to beat me if I'm not a communist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rob?
I think it's important to have these sort of discussions about these types of things
that people can go to because if there's one underlying trait I think that most
of the hacker community shares and also most of the most brilliant people I know,
it's that we're willing to get all the information we can from both sides about a situation
and then draw our own judgments rather than just believing what we're told to believe.
Right, yeah.
Anytime somebody tells you to believe something, that's when you start questioning.
And if their reaction to you asking questions is, well, why do you want to know that?
That's a danger sign right there.
They should be completely open to you asking as many questions as possible
and reaching the same conclusions that they have, hopefully,
because if logic is on their side, that won't be any problem for you to do.
Is that right?
Yeah, it's true.
That's like the exact opposite of the whole hacker mentality.
So if we weren't asking those questions at Hope, you know, what kind of hacker conference would we be?
Especially since, like you said, we're right in the middle of all this.
Absolutely.
Gus?
And in regards to this idea of we're in the middle of all this,
so what we're talking about is Bradley Manning, private first class, private from the Army,
leaked to WikiLeaks the video, apparently, or was accused of WikiLeaks the video.
Yeah, so we're supposed to say allegedly.
Allegedly, right, exactly, allegedly.
And so this, of course, especially with the government paying attention to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks,
what we have is what we frequently have at Hope,
which is the possibility that somebody will get arrested before they go and speak.
We're not sure. Are we sure?
Or as they speak.
As they speak.
So this is always part of the drama of coming to Hope is who's going to make it on stage before they get taken down?
Yeah, it's always a bit of drama and sometimes some slapstick comedy.
But this is a very serious case, though, because this guy is looked upon as a hero by so many because of that video,
because of that video in itself that showed these people being killed by U.S. troops
against what we're being told by the mass media and the U.S. government.
And to have that person arrested and charged and who knows, facing what,
because of somebody within the hacker community saying, no, I'm going to turn you in.
Now, from what I'm told, this is not because of the video that he was turned in.
It was because of something else, because he said he had given 260,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks.
These are different stories being bandied about.
The upshot is the guy who allegedly did this is now in a lot of trouble.
And what do we do about that?
This conversation's been very meta, but I think I kind of can't believe we're defending Lamo if that's what we're doing.
See, that's what I mean.
You jump to a conclusion.
No, I'm not jumping to any conclusion.
Where do you get defending Lamo out of this?
How do you get that?
Because we're making up all these potential excuses that Lamo himself and he has been yammering.
We're analyzing the case.
We're asking questions.
And it's this hostility to questions that makes me question you.
But at some point, you can ask the questions of something that can give you the answer, read the answer, and draw a conclusion.
And isn't that what we're doing?
We're trying to get to the answer.
We're trying to look at the documentation, see what's being said, see what's out there.
Voltaire?
I think that Mike is right in that there should be a settled issue where Lamo clearly basically entrapped this guy,
made him believe that he had—
Allegedly.
Aren't you going to say allegedly there, too?
No, because if you read Lamo's Twitter feed or his whatever, he's actually admitted to these things and verified the chat logs that have been published.
And if you read the chat logs from Manning, he verifies it, too.
These things are not—
No, they verify the same thing.
But anyway, the point is that even though this might be or should be a closed case, I think it's a good conversation to have about ethics in a more general sense, even after—
I think we should be able to have this debate without going back and being like, well, maybe Lamo was not guilty, because it seems kind of shut in that respect.
All I'm saying is you have to consider all possibilities and ask questions.
If you're told not to do that, that's wrong.
Nobody's saying that, A.P.
Yeah, they are.
After you read the data.
Yeah.
Well, the data comes from all different sources.
You have to read a lot of data.
You have to talk to a lot of people.
You have to hear what those people have to say, then reach your conclusions.
That's all I'm saying.
That's all I've always said.
That's how you develop conclusions.
Go ahead, Bernie, and then Gus.
I just want to say that I don't think any of us are necessarily defending Adrian Lamo.
He has himself written online that he prefers to protect many over one, and apparently his justification is that the information that was allegedly leaked put many at risk.
And to prevent more of that, he would rather put one at risk than many.
Now, unfortunately, this private first class Bradley Manning, who's an intelligence analyst for the Army, is now being charged with eight federal felonies and four violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
One of the federal felonies he's being charged with is espionage.
This 20-year-old kid, I think he's 20, could conceivably spend the rest of his life in prison if he's convicted for doing what he allegedly felt was his duty to make the public aware of military wrongdoing and government wrongdoing.
So he's being looked at as sort of a modern-day Daniel Ellsberg, the gentleman who, back in the 70s, released, after quite a lot of angst, classified Pentagon papers indicating that the American public was being lied to about the Vietnam War and casualties and why we were in it in the first place and all that kind of stuff.
Voluminous information.
And it looks like this is going to be a very interesting and huge case.
Absolutely.
I think we're right in the center of this at the HOOP conference.
I think it's excellent that we're going to be having a talk about this.
In fact, more than one talk, I think, will be touching on this topic.
But it touches this community because WikiLeaks is an organization that was sort of built by hackers to provide information that the public should have a right to know, according to many people.
And to give you an example of this, the first file in question, the video, was encrypted, I believe, in WinZip or something like that.
And it took all kinds of hacker abilities to decrypt that, not knowing the password.
And that's how the video got released.
So, yeah, you're right.
It's definitely hacker involvement on a number of levels here.
Doug, did you have something?
Well, yeah.
A question that I know is on my mind and probably many others is, was this guy doing what he thought needed to be done morally or was he just acting out of malice?
I mean, as we know, he bragged to somebody he didn't know.
And that's a pretty big thing.
That's another issue.
That's another issue with the hacker community.
People are talking like crazy to show off or for whatever reason.
They trust people too easily.
This is true of society in general.
And this is the result if you trust somebody and they're not who they appear to be in your eyes.
Well, there could also then be the question about that phrase, a hacking is 10% work and 90% bragging.
I've never heard that before.
I read a lot when I was young.
All right, go ahead.
Having read the transcripts, it seems like this isn't so much a case of a hacker boasting bravado as much as it was of him contacting Andrew Lima.
I think this is going to be a huge issue and it hasn't been talked about much.
But what's really happening here is it's a wider issue of the don't ask, don't tell policy.
Genie Jordan has published briefly about this after reading the transcripts as well.
Manning's Facebook page was briefly opened, as was his friend, I forget his name, but who he stayed with during his time in the States.
And they both have fan pages of lots of gay organizations.
Even the transcript seems a little flirty.
Him contacting Limo seemed to be, and then they blocked out portions that were quote unquote personal information.
They being who?
Wired.
Wired, okay.
The ultimate federal authority.
Well, they were the ones that published the Limo.
I kind of think we're speculating a little too much in that case.
If they really blocked things out, then we really don't know.
But what we do know is what people claimed to have done, what was told, who leaked on, I mean ratted on who.
But aside from, you know, if somebody is maybe getting punished because they were gay or not.
No, that's not the issue.
So the reason why he would go to contact Limo is because Limo is bisexual and he's open about that.
So it seemed, reading the transcript before the portion that was cut off, it seems like he was asking him, trying to find out support from him.
This is relevant how?
Because it's not an issue of hacker bravado of him just going out randomly and saying, we're looking for like the most lead hacker and saying like, oh, let me list my contributions.
So what, you're saying that saying that he's leaked 260,000 documents was flirtatious?
No, that came, actually that comes towards the end of the conversation at the logs.
The beginning of the logs is him talking about how distressed he is.
Well, okay.
I mean, there's all kinds of aspects to the story for sure.
And no doubt this is going to be one heck of a panel.
As you can see, it's a very, it's a very passionate subject in the hacker community.
But, you know, are we wrong for wanting to confront this head on and talk about it?
I think it's very valuable to confront things like this head on and from every angle we possibly can.
I mean, it's my privilege to come here to the studio and talk to some of the most brilliant people I know for an hour every week about these things.
What, we're the most brilliant? Oh my goodness.
Some of the most brilliant people.
Where are they?
Some other ones are listening.
The point is that if you multiply this by a couple of thousand, that's what you have at Hope.
You have a huge sampling of the hacker community of people who share that little spark of curiosity with you.
And you're going to be able to discuss this issue, any issue you like.
And there are people that sort of share their interests in all sorts of things, whether it's issues like this or whether it's, you know, some technical pursuits or anything.
You're going to be able to get that at Hope.
And let me tell you, this is not a conference that stops for niceties like lunch, for example.
Lunch? What's that?
Seriously.
Or sleep.
Or, you know, what do we have, five minutes between panels?
If that.
At most, yeah.
This is not a conference that's going to waste your time with breaks.
And the panels go.
We're going to go solidly from 10 in the morning until midnight at least.
Concerts in the evening.
Three tracks.
Three tracks.
Stuff all night.
Downstairs concerts.
It is hands down the most valuable conference I go to, simply monetarily.
And it's one the mass media generally ignores, which I think is a good thing.
It's nice.
Read about us in Wired.
You won't, because we're not there.
And that's fine with me, because we have at least 3,000 people showing up and all kinds of speakers and events.
And it's in the middle of New York City, Hotel Pennsylvania, right across the street from Penn Station.
It's the most awesome fun we have every two years.
I was going to say, if you're planning on coming to the conference, don't plan anything important for Monday.
Yeah, and don't get married on Saturday or something like that.
You probably will get sucked into being up many hours the entire weekend, and you won't be able to do much on Monday.
But you will relish the experience.
This is the best thing you could do.
Listen to the off-the-hook shows that surround previous HOPE conferences.
And you'll see both what it's like the show beforehand and what it's like the show afterwards.
And undoubtedly, that will be the mood that you'll be in as well.
And it's worth it.
It really is.
For all the people who say, I don't know if I can pull this off.
Yeah, you can.
Anybody can.
And you just have to be determined and figure out a way.
All kinds of things you can share to cut down on expenses.
It's probably the most valuable experience a lot of people will have this year.
And if you can't come Friday, come Saturday.
There's always things going on the whole time that are interesting.
You don't have to be there for the entire conference, but you should at least experience part of it.
Even if you come for half of one day, it's still a bargain compared to what other conferences charge
and for what you get out of those other conferences.
And I'm not just blowing smoke here.
Look it up.
You'll see.
And if you're in New York, you have no excuse.
That's true.
You don't have an excuse.
Even if you work, you can still figure out a way to get there.
And get work to pay for it too.
They'll do that.
They will.
Absolutely.
In fact, some people, get this, some people say, our conference is too cheap for work to pay for.
It has to be ten times the cost for them to write some kind of voucher request.
Yeah.
People have actually come to us asking, I don't know if we've ever actually done it,
but people want us to write some kind of voucher for $1,000 or something like that.
As long as you give it to us.
Or a really expensive hotel room.
Yeah, we could include the hotel room in there.
If people need a more expensive corporate cost, I'm sure we could work that out.
Let's sort this out over the years.
I'll help us work this out.
All right.
Kyle, now you're going to hope for, how many hopes have you been to?
This will be my third hope.
Well, you might just cut out when you said that.
Somebody doesn't want to hear this.
Say that again.
This will be my third hope.
Third hope.
There you go.
Okay, so third in a row?
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
And have we said things that are pretty much true?
Mostly true?
Oh, absolutely.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's full of all kinds of things.
The talks are the main event, I think, but there's so many other things going on.
There's going to be the Hackerspace Village is huge this time.
Hackerspace Village.
That's something that Nick Farr is putting together.
Yeah.
And it involves hackerspaces from all around the planet converging in one massive space
downstairs in the space that we have.
We really have a lot of space, too.
Yeah.
And you'll be able to walk from location to location, visit various hackerspaces as they're
here in New York and learn what they're doing, figure out how to start a hackerspace in your
area or maybe find one that already is in your area.
That's just, yeah, one thing.
One thing.
One attribute that's really grown and gotten really, really big, and I'm excited to see
that.
There's so many other things.
I don't even know off the top of my head where to start, but it's going to be incredible.
I'm really thinking, especially with these kinds of issues and this conversation, just
giving people the opportunity to speak and share and see each other face-to-face as a
community.
I think that's going to be really, really valuable.
We do have so many different points of view being expressed, so many different people
coming from around the world.
If you want to see for yourself just what it is we're talking about, if you go to www.hope.net,
you'll see the schedule is there and you'll have a chance to look at all the speakers.
Yeah.
I was just telling you, I look through every talk on the schedule and there's not one that
I don't want to see.
I'm incredibly excited about it.
I mean, they're all just awesome.
You're going to be pretty frustrated because there's no human way that you can see.
Even on video, it's hard because we have 100 talks for the course of three days.
You've got your work cut out for you.
Yeah, start right there.
Oh, yeah.
Coming back to that whole hackerspace thing, in my opinion, it's one of the best parts
on the men's and women's level.
You have all the things you learn there.
If you come to Hope and you're one of those people that doesn't know a lot about, say,
messing with hardware or doesn't know how to solder, things like that, that's the kind
of thing you learn there.
Or in this case, we're going to be showing people how to mess around with the RFID badges
themselves.
And we have an entire mini village dedicated to that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yes, right there.
That's kind of one of the interesting things that I've seen develop since I started going
to these kinds of conferences.
And it's kind of in the hacker community as a whole.
Electronics has gotten kind of easier for anyone to get involved in.
And so nowadays, back in the day, you really had to know everything about all the components.
Nowadays, you have simpler platforms to work on, like the Arduino, that you can build off
of.
What is that, what you just said?
Arduino is kind of a programming environment that you can—it's a programming language,
essentially.
It's C-based, that you can write code on a computer, if you can program, and then use
that to kind of control electronic components on this special kind of system that you can
buy.
And you can buy them pretty cheaply, too.
And so a lot of people who aren't necessarily electronics wizards, like myself, can actually
make pretty cool electronic projects as a result by just kind of this transfer of knowledge,
where it kind of bridges the computer science electronics gap.
Interesting.
But yeah, so I think that electronics on a whole are a lot easier for people to access.
And definitely, if you come, there are definitely people who are willing to show you things
and help you build stuff that is really cool, that you maybe didn't think that you could
build, but it is possible.
Exactly.
Okay.
Bernie, I think you had something.
Yeah, I just wanted to point out that Kyle is coming from across the country to attend
the HOPE Conference, his third one.
So obviously, he's thrilled about doing this again and again.
But we have people coming from on the other side of the planet.
We have people coming from Australia, New Zealand.
I got an email from somebody in Italy today.
He's coming all over Europe.
I mean, it's incredible.
Anybody who's within listening range of WBAI Radio has no excuse for not coming to the
HOPE Conference, when there are people coming from the other side of the planet and spending
many thousands of dollars to experience what they know as, to paraphrase Gus, is going
to be three days of awesomeness.
In all fairness, we do have people at Rikers Island to listen to us.
Okay.
So they have an excuse.
I'm not sure about the excuse, but they definitely have a reason that would prevent them from
coming.
And all due respect, we sometimes have challenges that are hard to get over.
If your challenge is surmountable, consider it because it is a lot of fun.
We're talking about Hackers on Planet Earth Conference coming up July 16th through 18th
at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
Information at www.hope.net.
We're off the hook.
We're on the air for two hours tonight until 9 o'clock.
And we'll be taking phone calls from people a little bit later on in the program.
If you have any questions about the conference, let's try to stick on topic this week.
Try something new.
And all kinds of theoretical questions about the panels or discussions or people or events
that will be happening there.
Go ahead, Gus.
Actually, I was just thinking that if somebody wanted to call in, I was thinking one question
I had about the whole Adrian Lamo, Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks situation is, how did Daniel
Ellsberg get out of hot water once he released the Pentagon Papers?
Like, how did that happen?
And I imagine there's some WBAI listeners who actually know that.
It would be great to have that discussion.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I think Bernie might know that himself.
Go ahead.
The government screwed up.
The government, the Nixon White House, actually had hired, like, government burglars to break
in to his psychiatrist's office and try to steal his file to discredit him.
And this became, this got out somehow.
And anyhow, a federal judge saw all the dirty deeds that the government was doing and trying
to ruin Daniel Ellsberg's life and discredit him, that they threw the case out.
So he won.
He could have spent his life in prison for this.
But because the government screwed up yet again, and in this case, trying to just attack
this guy through the back door and through the justice system, he's a free man.
And I'm glad of it.
And I would only hope that something like that would happen to Bradley Manning.
But I'm afraid the government probably learned their lesson with Daniel Ellsberg.
And he's going to handle this case very carefully.
Bernie, what was Daniel Ellsberg's line of employment?
He was employed with, I think it was the Rand Corporation or one of these think tanks that
the government hires to come up with ideas.
And he had access to large, you know, thousands and thousands of internal Pentagon documents,
like troop counts and casualty counts and strategies and just stuff that really gave
you the big picture of what was really going on there versus what Nixon White House was
telling the public.
And he felt so strongly about it.
He had like a nervous breakdown about this when he saw these papers.
And really, he actually listened to an activist speaker who said he was, the speaker said
that he was willing to go to jail for his beliefs.
And that had such a profound, according to Daniel Ellsberg, it had such a profound effect
on him that he decided that it was his duty to release this information to the public.
And he took the step, the same kind of step that Bradley Manning allegedly took.
And it's really interesting.
There's some good videos online for Daniel Ellsberg's, with two L's, talking about,
in fact, there's a good interview on Democracy Now! of Daniel Ellsberg.
So if you check out that website, it's really worth listening to.
He's an interesting guy.
He's about 80 years old now.
But there's a lot of parallels with both cases.
So it's really going to be interesting how this plays out.
And of course, we hope nobody has to spend their life in prison for doing what they think is right.
If you want to get all the details about Daniel Ellsberg, there's a really great documentary
called The Most Dangerous Man in America about it.
It goes through all the details on the case and interviews him and such.
It's actually, I know a lot of people can find documentaries to be rather dull,
but this one is actually very exciting.
There are plenty of exciting documentaries out there.
Well, I agree.
But even for people that have a low tolerance.
And we'll be showing a bunch of them at the conference as well.
So we're going to have, we might show that one.
We're going to have a bunch of variety for people to witness.
Also, we're going to have the folks from Prometheus Radio joining us at the HOPE conference this year,
as they do every year.
And we have on the phone with us Pete and Maggie from Prometheus.
Are you with us?
We are.
We sure are.
How are you doing?
Great to be here.
Thanks so much for having us.
Well, now, you guys, tell us something about what Prometheus does, first of all.
Yeah, sure thing.
Prometheus basically started in 1998 as a bunch of radio pirates,
people that there really is no station like WBAI in New York that is here in Philadelphia.
And so some of us started a pirate radio station.
And then we just strangely got more than we expected out of it,
because after a few years of cat and mouse, the government actually changed its mind about pirate radio
and started issuing low-power FM licenses.
So what Prometheus for the past 10 years or so has been doing is we've been actually building legal low-power radio licenses
and haggling back and forth with the government about their policies about who should own radio stations
and who should have access to the airwaves.
So that's kind of what we do.
And so our origins are in pirate radio and very closely connected to the hacker community.
And now a lot of what we do is we just try to demystify technology
and also try to demystify the political process,
which ultimately ends up having a big impact on how we're able to use technology in communications.
What kind of people tend to be interested in becoming part of a radio station?
All kinds of people.
We try to work with people who are in some way not already represented in the media.
So, for example, somebody who lives in a city that doesn't have any radio that talks about the issues that are important to them,
people from communities that are generally marginalized,
or people who are just really excited about making radio and don't already have a place to do that.
I see.
Now, what kinds of stations are getting started as a result?
Any success stories you can point out to us?
Yeah, there's some really great ones.
Some of the ones we're proudest of are some of the ones that we've done with farm workers organizations.
And a lot of immigrant farm workers are really relatively voiceless in this country.
Many of them speak Spanish as a second or even third language.
And commercial Spanish radio really does very little for them.
And so we've built stations with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida
and also with Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Nuestre in Oregon
that have really made a difference in those movements' ability to build power in the fields
and change the working conditions of workers.
So that's one group.
We've also built stations with civil rights organizations, with environmental groups,
and also just a lot of groups where the station becomes something a lot like WBAI,
a place where many different people from many different walks of life come together
because they feel like they have something to say that is not said on the mainstream media.
And so we have worked with a lot of people in small towns
that just when they were first handing out radio licenses back in the 30s,
they didn't get a community radio license,
but they've heard a station like WFMU or WBAI or one of those,
and they really want to bring something like that to their town.
Interesting. Now tell us what you're going to be doing at the HOPE Conference this year.
Okay. We're doing a talk at the HOPE Conference.
It's titled Snatch Those Waves, Prometheus Radio, and the Fight for Popular Communications.
And our goal in the talk is just to give a little background on what we do
and then talk about some of the issues that we think are really important right now.
So for example, we're working with a lot of our allies to pass a bill in Congress right now,
and it's something that's already passed through the House of Reps
and is being talked about as we speak in the Senate.
And that's a bill that would change the rules about spacings of radio stations on the dial
and open up a whole lot more spaces for low-power community stations.
We also work primarily on analog FM radio,
but we're really interested in bigger picture changes that are happening to the spectrum
and new technologies that can get more voices on the air.
So we want to talk a little bit about what's going on in the regulatory world,
how spectrum use is changing, which things are good, which things are bad.
Okay. And you've done this before at a bunch of HOPE Conferences.
What do you see as changing over the last few years?
Well, one thing that I really appreciate about the HOPE Conference that wasn't as evident
maybe the first time I came, which was, oh, gosh, maybe five conferences ago,
is there was a big common perception in the early days of the Internet.
Like a lot of techies said, oh, well, you know, the Internet automatically routes against censorship.
You know, technology is going to solve all these problems, and politics is sort of a waste of time.
And I think that there's been more and more consciousness,
and I think it's owed a lot to the Speaker Committee to realize that, you know,
the tools themselves are not censorship-proof,
and the structure of the Internet does not, you know, by definition suddenly make all the problems go away.
And in fact, the politics around it, even though they're incredibly frustrating
and our political system is incredibly broken,
a lot of decisions get made by politicians that don't understand technology,
and they're often really suckered by the big corporations that provide a lot of the infrastructure.
You know, you go back to the Ted Stevens Internet as a series of tubes and so many things along those lines.
And so I feel like the HOPE Conference is a really great place for people that are really technically inclined
to actually understand, you know, that just being a whiz is not necessarily going to solve every problem,
but that you have to be involved and aware in order to make sure that the rules by which all of the technologies are deployed
are really a lot closer to fair or at least not as incredibly stupid as they might be.
I think Pete's just basically summed up what it is that brought me to HOPE
and what brings a lot of people to HOPE, which is that it's a very politically conscious conference.
There are tons of talks on digital rights, on privacy, on, you know, alternative forms of media.
We've got somebody talking about indie media this time.
We've got some people talking about anonymous and 4chan.
I'm on a panel about libraries and schools, and there's a lot of stuff about building hackerspaces
and doing community-oriented stuff.
And I think that's really what makes this conference stand out
and what makes it valuable to people who don't feel like their technical skills are really enough
to go to what would traditionally be called a hacker conference.
This is really a broadly appealing conference, I think, and that's how I got here.
Yeah, I got to say, I love what you're doing.
And you mentioned demystifying radio for new people that want to get into it.
And I think that's really representative of one of the major factors in the way hacker culture has evolved,
where those of us who were around in maybe the 80s and 90s
remember when everything was sort of intentionally mysterious
and everyone played their cards very close to their chest
and we want to keep to ourselves and not let the outside world know what we're up to.
But the way the community is involved to sort of demystify itself and get more people involved
and go, OK, here's what we're doing, here's how we're doing it, now what can you do with it?
And that's why we have 2,600 meetings and conferences and this show and everything,
because you really can't get too much information out there,
because there's always going to be something who can think of something else to do with it
that would benefit everyone, I think.
Interesting. Yeah, very interesting. DotWrite.
Yeah, that's so true. You can never not put out too much information.
And like Pete just said, talking about that whole idea of the Internet originally being viewed as uncensorable
and how that's not really so true, that's something that I know of personally, I've said a lot.
And that just shows how much we need to pay attention to things like the politics.
We need to make sure that this information to people who are maybe not so technical get out,
that people in our hacker community understand how this stuff works,
so that way we don't have a system that eventually becomes,
whether you're talking about the Internet or radio, that promotes censorship instead of rising above it.
Are we getting close, guys, to what it's all about?
Almost.
I'm asking our guests on the phone.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, good.
One thing that I think that we're going to – we have two big activities.
One, we have a talk where we're going to talk about some of the future of radio,
which we're really excited about.
We work primarily now with analog radio stations because 90% of Americans are still using analog radio,
whereas some of the new alternatives that are coming out, they're in the 10% and 15% and 20%.
So there's definitely a big future in Internet transport of audio,
but where the listeners are right now and probably will be for the next bunch of years
is really still in FM.
So we're going to be talking a bunch about that,
but we're also going to be talking about the new technologies because I think, for once,
I would really like to see progressive voices
and independent voices really out front of the new technologies that are going to be used to transport audio.
So we'll be talking a bunch about that and some of the potential
and also some of the incredible drawbacks of the way that that digital transition for radio is being planned out now.
How is that going to work when radio goes completely digital?
Is it going to be as confusing and annoying as the television cutover?
Well, if the current situation is any indication, it'll be at least as bad.
The current state of the transition to digital radio is that we're using something called hybrid digital,
which means that you send an analog radio signal and you also send a digital radio signal on your sideband,
which doesn't seem like a terrible idea except for a couple things.
One of the big problems is that you're only allowed to do the digital radio system using equipment
that's made by one particular company and it's proprietary.
And so there's really no way to fix something that's wrong with it
and no way to really put a lot of pressure to start improving it and pushing the technology as far as it'll go.
So everyone is forced to use technology from a particular company
and there's nothing they can do about it and it's completely closed off. You can't analyze it.
Yeah, there's only one way that you can legally do digital radio
and also only one way that you can decode the signal that's going out if you want to hear it.
So you can only receive it on a radio that's made with the equipment that has the proprietary decoding.
And what is this company?
The company is IDIQUITY and the name of the product is IBOX.
Okay.
Yeah, which stands for Three Band On Channel.
This is the HD radio we've discussed, is that right?
Yes.
And that does not mean high definition.
Yeah, HD at some point was used to refer to hybrid digital and the company now claims that it's not even an acronym.
Uh-huh, it just stands for something completely random.
Yeah, it's just their trademark.
Who comes up with these ideas? Whose idea was that to have a company have a complete monopoly on this?
Well, it's a real shame and it's a good example of how companies get to do what they want
when no one else is looking and when nobody's watching the policy.
There was, back in the late 90s, people realized that there was going to be enormous potential
from the digitization of radio.
Basically, you can fit about five times more information on the same amount of bandwidth when you use digital.
Now, to me, that looked like an opportunity for five times more radio stations to be on the dial
and an end of the scarcity that makes it so that there's only one station like WBAI in New York
and we've all heard on WBAI all the people that are squabbling for the good air slots and whatever
because there is only one. There really should be five stations like WBAI
and maybe people could be a little nicer to each other.
But basically, once the broadcasters figured out that there could be five times more radio stations,
they said, wait a second, we don't want five times as much competition.
So they formed this corporation, iBiquity, with the goal of making sure that that potential
of five times more radio stations was taken up by their technology.
So under the current scheme, every broadcaster gets to make side channels,
which they own and they control on their HD radio,
and there are no new channels for anyone else that would have liked to start a radio station.
In fact, the technology was designed to keep radio exactly the way it is
and to squander the opportunity of digitization.
And the FCC basically just went right along with it because they basically were like,
oh, technology equals good. New digital equals good.
And they didn't ask all the right questions about the proprietary nature of it.
They didn't ask about all the people that are left off the dial right now
that would like to be starting radio stations but would have no opportunities under HD radio.
And yeah, it was just a very unfortunate thing.
Is the FCC of today more progressive enough so that they might be able to revisit this?
Well, the most recent change to the rules on HD radio happened recently.
It happened under the current FCC, and it was a set of changes that was actually proposed
by iBiquity and a lot of the bigger broadcasters.
So as far as we can tell, they're still letting the people who are going to benefit
from not having new voices on the air still make the new rules.
It sounds like part of the reason that they made it proprietary was so that they could price out organizations
like BAI and radio stations that won't be able to pay the license fee
because obviously they'll make it out of the roof so that maybe not even NPR could afford it.
And I know that in Europe they have a digital radio module system that's not proprietary for their FM systems.
Could BAI and lots of community stations across the country theoretically adopt that standard
and have a competing standard throughout the airways?
Oh, theoretically, there's no reason that that wouldn't work.
Legally, at this point, you're not supposed to do it that way.
The problem is that the receivers that people have won't really be picking it up.
So the receivers that are marketed as digital radio today, they only take iBOK.
And in fact, the iBiquity company, they actually end up getting about $5 or $6 for each receiver
just in their intellectual property, plus they get several thousand dollars per year
for their intellectual property from all the radio stations.
See what we can learn so quickly from these folks.
And they're going to be at the conference the whole weekend, and there's all kinds of things you can learn.
You guys will be running a workshop, right?
Yeah, that's right.
So we talked a little bit about demystifying technology,
and one of our favorite ways to do that is to build the simplest radio transmitters that we possibly can.
So it turns out analog FM radio is fairly simple,
and we've been building radio transmitters with a set of 14 parts that cost a little under $5.
So we'll be set up with those parts Sunday at noon, I think,
and people can come by, take a look, and build the transmitter.
Going back to the question about the channels being distributed,
like the new channels being distributed to the existing companies, are you guys fighting that?
Is anybody fighting that at all, or is it just, at this point, too late to sort of fight that kind of distribution?
Well, unfortunately, with iBiquity, it's already pretty taken hold.
We have fought it quite a bit over the years,
but unfortunately it's such a deep technical issue that it's a hard one to get people in the streets with signs like,
you know, we need alternative modulation schemes, or something like that.
When do we want them now?
So it's tough, because when, in the way that the politics work now,
when an issue is sufficiently complicated that it's not graspable within five minutes by, you know, a Senate legislative staff,
it often just gets won by the big companies.
There are some things, though, that we do think are pretty good alternatives.
I think that the battle on IBAC for right now is lost,
although, you know, the company is having some financial problems because of some larger things.
So there is some opportunity there.
But on a broader level, I think that there may be some other opportunities in the expansion of unlicensed radio allocations,
and also in the opportunistic sharing and software-defined radio.
Really, there is the potential over the course of the next 10 or 20 years for us to really get away from licensing altogether.
And devices are getting smart enough that they can actually, instead of doing what we do now,
which is every user gets assigned, like, a lane in the highway.
So, you know, there's the BAI lane, and then there's the KROC lane, and everything else.
And then there's a whole other set of lanes that are, like, the TV lanes and the garage door opener lanes and all that.
Basically, what radios can do now is the transmitters you can build a receiver in,
and the receiver can listen to hear what channels are empty, and then it can choose a channel to convey information over.
And so what could happen is that the airwaves could start looking a lot more like the Internet and less like a highway.
So there would be a web of potential frequencies and many, many different routes for information to go from one place to another.
And so your future radio dial might really look a lot more like a website than it looks like, you know, 95.7 or something like that.
Hey, Pete.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Go ahead.
So that's really exciting, and that could be done.
I mean, ultimately, we could be in a world of ubiquitous communication that is free and unlicensed.
That's one way it could go, but there's also the way that the cell phone companies would like it to go,
which is that all of those airwaves get set up as toll roads, and you pay the cell phone company by the minute for all of your use.
So those are some things that are going to be debated over the coming years that we think people should really, you know, step up and talk about.
I wanted to interject something here, Ron.
Just this past week, the Obama administration through the FCC has, and I know you're aware of this, Pete,
said that it hopes to ‑‑ the FCC wants to reclaim 500 megahertz of spectrum.
That's a huge swath of the finite radio spectrum that's out there.
It's massive.
They want to recover this, like 125 megahertz of it, from the TV broadcasters who are sitting on channels that aren't being used in different markets
and not being used by other various services that use the radio spectrum.
But I think this is a great opportunity for people to get involved in the near future to argue that some of this 500 megahertz should be allocated,
500 megahertz worth of new spectrum, which the government says they want to make for broadband communications,
which would describe the kind of new radio stuff you're talking about.
I think people should really be aware of what's coming and voice their desire that some of this 500 megahertz of spectrum be allocated to the public.
It's the public airways to begin with.
The government is saying that we should just auction it all off to the highest bidder,
and then the public is going to have to pay the companies who pay billions of dollars for this public spectrum,
so the public can use the spectrum that was theirs to begin with but have to pay a lot more money to use it.
It's a big shell game as far as I'm concerned.
So the people, I think, should really stand up and say,
we want some of this spectrum to be given back to the people to provide for unlicensed services like you're describing
so that you wouldn't have to pay a huge premium to offset these big corporations' multibillion-dollar high bids to purchase public spectrum,
which is really ours to begin with.
Hi, guys. I've got to break in here.
This hour went by extremely fast, as it always does.
The good news tonight is that we have another hour right after this one, but we do have to take a break.
We're speaking with Pete and Maggie from the Prometheus Radio Project,
who will be at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, July 16th through 18th, along with all kinds of other people.
We're going to be talking with some people running their own radio station here in New York at the conference
and all kinds of other people that will be presenting things as well.
That's in the next hour.
And, of course, we'll be taking your phone calls too, phone number 212-209-2900.
We'll let you know when we're opening up those phone lines.
But for now, we're going to break for about five minutes to tell you some important information about the local station board and the upcoming elections.
So, please listen to this, especially if you're a listener, especially if you're in the area and want to get involved,
because that's another way that you can make a big difference.
And we'll be back right after the top of the hour.
Politics. I don't have time to run for local station board.
And even though I'm shy, I want to be counted.
Free speech is your right.
And it's time to exercise those vocal muscles now by voting in the WBAI local station board elections.
You may be too shy or too busy to run, but your voice is still very important.
You can still be a key part to WBAI and what that is by voting in the local station board election.
What is the local station board election?
The local station board election is a unique fusion of media and democracy.
It's the only listener-supported network for which a mechanism for getting involved exists.
You have the opportunity to run as a candidate and to vote.
Why have a local station board election?
I like WBAI, but I don't see that an election will make a difference, as long as I can listen to my favorite shows.
Well, freedom of the press is declining worldwide, with only 17% of the world's population living in a country with freedom of the press.
You have to exercise your right to vote and make your voice heard by participating in these elections as a voter.
We need your voice to make sure that the right people fill the job to continue WBAI's excellence in serving all people of our community.
But what kind of power does the local station board have?
They make important decisions as professionals who love WBAI.
They advise the station in its decision-making process, and they bring new listeners to the station.
And who are the candidates?
Well, it's too soon for that. The nomination period is still open until June 30th.
Well, what can I do now?
It's as easy as one, two, three.
Step one?
Make sure you're a member in good standing with WBAI.
To be a member in good standing, you have to donate a minimum annually of $25 between June 30th, 2009 and 2010.
Or you must perform at least three hours of volunteer work at WBAI.
If you're not already a member, you can become one or renew by visiting WBAI.org and just make a donation.
Step two?
Continue to listen to WBAI throughout the summer for statements from the candidates
and to learn all about the elections by visiting PacificaElections2010.org.
Step three?
Vote, vote, vote.
In August this year, you'll also be able to participate in our green elections by voting online.
More information on voting is to come.
Additional note?
More information about voting and the candidates is right around the corner.
But right now is the time to make sure that you are a member of WBAI so you can vote in August.
Get heard.
Participate in the WBAI Station Board Election.
Visit PacificaElections2010.org for more information.
Or contact the local election supervisor at 94533.
Or email her at les-wbai at pacifica.org.
Hey, Gary.
Politics, politics, a waste of resources.
That's what I think about the so-called local station board election.
No matter what the truth, it always seems to get drowned out by never-ending drama.
Battles for power, I want no part in it.
Stu, I feel you.
In this world dominated by multinational corporations, it seems like trying to push forward a cause is impossible.
But if you give up, you let the system win.
WBAI Local Station Board Election is a unique fusion of media and democracy.
And it's the only listener-supported network for which a mechanism for getting involved exists.
You have an opportunity to run as a candidate and vote.
Yeah, but does the local station board have any teeth?
The local station board has the power to make or break WBAI.
They make important decisions with respect to the budget, evaluating management, overseeing programming, and creating policy.
It's essential that the candidates running bring their expertise to the table, be it in fundraising or technology or community outreach.
There's a slew of local station board duties outlined in the Pacifica bylaws, which you can find on PacificaElections2010.org.
Well, I'll believe it when I see it.
The impression I have of the local station board is a bunch of s**t, just wasting precious resources.
Well, all the more reason to be proactive.
Run or vote in this year's election to change the downward spiral.
For all of you listening, please visit PacificaElections2010.org.
Contact your local election supervisor, Nicole Justice Hilton, at LES underscore WBAI at Pacifica dot org.
End 347-329-4533.
Remember to renew your membership by donating $25 before June 30th in order to participate as a candidate or voter.
Candidate nomination packages must be received before June 30th.
And, yes, we know it's beyond June 30th.
That's outdated.
It has been extended.
I don't know exactly until when.
I think mid-July or something like that.
So you still have time, but not much.
So follow those instructions.
You're listening to WBAI New York.
The people usually here at this time, the personal computer people, are not around.
They were kind enough to give us their hour for this expanded edition of Off the Hook, and that's what we're going to do.
We're going to use that hour to talk about the Hackers on Planet Earth conference coming up in one week and two days, July 16th, 17th, and 18th at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
The personal computer folks will be back next week at this very time.
We're joined again by the people in the studio and our friends at Prometheus, Pete and Maggie.
And now also joining us in the studio is one of the people behind Radio Statler.
Radio Statler is the radio station that the folks at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference ran last time and are going to be running again this time.
I want to introduce Tech Darko, who's going to be running, helping to run things.
It's three of us, really, running right now.
Three, but there's so many more people that are going to be on the actual radio.
Yeah, right now we have 43 shows scheduled.
Some of them are live shows that are being done by hackers and the like in the studio.
We're also streaming a couple of the larger talks, the keynotes, and, of course, the social engineering panel.
Of course.
Yes, and we also have a couple of recorded shows coming to us from people who could not attend Hope this year.
One's coming from a guy out in California who does Ryan vs. Dorkman, who was one of the creators of that, and a couple others from around that area.
So now tell us how the concept for a radio station at a hacker conference developed.
It developed back in 2008, early 2008, and it got kicked around a little on the Hope Wiki.
And Lex was one of the first people to kick it around.
I actually run a radio station for an educational facility in New Jersey, so I stepped up and offered to help, as did Nick Godd, who is a data center guy down in Washington, D.C.
And a couple other people stepped up, and we got involved, and we started planning it, and we realized there was a lot more we could do than we originally thought,
which was just a couple of people getting some interviews, doing a couple of little talks about Hope and things.
And we found a lot of people really interested in doing small talks on the radio, getting to reach out to people at Hope and abroad.
And it really exploded from there.
Now, of course, this is not something that is technically being broadcast over radio waves, at least not that we know of.
This is something that is happening strictly on the Internet for people at the conference, for people around the world.
I know at HAR in Holland, they actually were able to get a license to run a radio station, a real radio station that the whole town could hear.
And people were doing shows and reading news and playing music and all kinds of things like that.
And boy, that would be great if we could broadcast to the entire city and everybody could hear what the hackers are up to.
In this particular case, what we're doing, I assume the quality is still going to be just as good,
but it's going to be available to people on their laptops and various other electronic devices, but not actually broadcast.
Yeah. We are actually streaming at higher than FM quality.
So we're going to be broadcasting multiple feeds, a high-quality feed for people who have special ears and need to listen to better feeds,
a low-quality feed for people on cellular modems and stuff.
And we also have a low-fi mono feed going out for people who want to listen from cellular devices or lower-end cell phones.
And we are offering all of our audio up after the fact in high-quality downloads and CD-quality downloads.
So everything will be available for everyone.
We've tried, actually, to get an FM license or to get special permission from someone.
Unfortunately, being in Region 1, which is the densest in the entire world, nobody wants to listen to you unless you have lots of money to throw around.
Pete, Maggie, what do you think of this particular flavor of radio?
Well, it's very cool.
And in a lot of countries, they do actually allow for an event radio where they'll give a 30-day permit or a weekend permit for a station.
But unfortunately, the United States is just not one of them.
The United States has always chosen instead to give out all the licenses to commercial entities and just leave a couple over for non-commercial entities.
But even those are permanent.
So there have been a few proposals at the FCC over the years to allow for an event radio.
But they've just never had any big senators or anyone behind them, so they've never gone anywhere.
But I'm definitely looking forward to it.
On the subject of event radio, with this new digital format that's being forced down our throats, would it be possible for a station, maybe a station like BAI,
if they in fact had five channels, to simply have one of those channels be something called event radio,
where it's turned over to people like us having an event for three days so that they could broadcast?
Do you think that's something that might be a positive development here?
Yeah.
And that's actually something that is possible under the current version of digital radio also.
So if you're broadcasting in hybrid digital, you get a couple of channels, and one channel is a duplicate stream of whatever you're broadcasting in analog,
and you can put extra content on the other channel.
So it is a good way to get extra content there as long as people can hear it.
It doesn't give new people control of the airwaves, but it gives the people who have control of the space to do a couple more things with it.
I saw at a rally at the School of the American's Watch, they were using FM transmitters to translate the speeches into Spanish,
and I know that they were people that were affiliated with Prometheus Radio.
I don't know if it was an official project or not.
I haven't seen that since.
Is that a common use?
Well, I believe that was Maggie that did that, wasn't it, right?
I have done it.
Other people from Prometheus, I think, have also done that in the past.
Yeah.
Yeah, and we actually recently started a connected cooperative that we've been developing little translation systems that are just –
they only basically go for one room, very, very low power.
It's something that we learned when we were working with farm workers on building their stations,
was that the systems that they use for interpretation are incredibly expensive.
Often, they can only afford to rent them.
They can never afford to buy them, so maybe they'll use one of these interpretation systems once a year when they have a meeting with the mayor.
It was one thing that kind of inspired us.
We realized this was a technical problem we knew how to solve,
and so we started playing with very, very low power radio stations, radio transmitters that really could just go inside of a room,
and just very typical, cheap $7 or $8 receivers that people could listen on.
We actually started a group.
It's called Intergalactic Interpretation Cooperative.
We just actually provided interpretation for the United States Social Forum,
which was a gathering of about 15,000 people from around the country that basically were able to listen to many of the workshops
and the big plenary events in Spanish over FM.
I have to say, this is one of my favorite parts of HOPE,
is hearing people like Pete and Maggie come up and talk about these things that they've actually done themselves.
They'll be there.
They'll be able to talk to you, probably, and talk about how this might work in your own community.
I also wanted to thank Pete earlier for the metaphor that you were using about lanes,
about you're talking about the radio having a KROC lane and a WBAI lane.
That's one of the other things that I've really gotten out of HOPE is this understanding of the airwaves
that I think is presented in a very, very accessible fashion with metaphors that make a lot of sense.
I'm looking forward to having more of that at HOPE.
Speaking of radio, I know, Bernie, you're aching to tell folks about the various amateur radio activities that are taking place this year.
Aren't you?
He's speechless.
I'm sorry. I had my cough button on. Sorry.
That was one hell of a cough.
Tell us about the amateur radio opportunities.
I'd actually forgotten all about this, but with all this talk of radio, I just get so excited.
Yes, the FCC has granted a special event license for the amateur radio frequency bands.
The call sign is N2H, for sort of next to HOPE.
It will be transmitting from the 18th floor, right outside the bell room, which is where the conference is,
some of the conference rooms.
We're going to have ham radio operators or amateur radio operators from around the country, around the world,
actually, demonstrating the art of radio.
I know Pete has picked up a lot of his technical skills from reading amateur radio magazines,
which go into a lot of really interesting technical tricks on the art of radio and how to build circuits that do radio stuff.
We'll be putting certain antennas up on the roof.
We'll be setting up contacts.
Now, as opposed to broadcast radio, which is what, like FM, we've been talking about in the streaming from Radio Statler,
amateur radio is not a broadcast medium.
It's only communications between individuals.
It's all noncommercial.
Music is not permitted under federal law.
But it's amazing because you can communicate all around the world,
basically global voice data communication, without any infrastructure.
You can literally talk to people around the world, send low-speed data, pictures, voice, voice code, all around the world, locally.
It's very useful in emergencies when the communications networks go down.
Also, Sunday, 10 o'clock, we're going to be offering amateur radio exams.
So anybody who is interested in getting into ham radio, stop by the station up on the 18th floor and check out N2H.
We'll be happy to talk to you a little bit about it.
And you can come to the sixth floor and go to the amateur radio exam room.
We'll be offering exams for three hours from 10 o'clock to 1 o'clock.
It's an amazing hobby.
I recommend anybody who's interested in getting into even low-power FM broadcast stuff,
it's worth it to get your amateur radio license because you will learn so much talking to other hams about the art of radio,
the technical art of radio.
Guys, can I assume since you're bouncing all over the room here that you're actually going to be one of these people?
I'm going to get my license.
You're going to get a license.
I'm going to get my license so I can get my great-granddaddy's call numbers
and I can talk to my dad during the apocalypse, even if my dad is in Michigan and I'm here in New York City.
Okay.
But there are certain things you're not allowed to talk about, right, Bernie?
No, you're not under FCC rules.
You can't use profanity, I believe, and there are certain modulation modes you can't use,
certain encoding schemes you can't use.
It's not an anonymous medium.
But who listens to see if you're doing that?
You know, amateur radio, that's a very good question.
Amateur radio is very well self-regulated.
So there are snitches out there that people will snitch on.
There are.
There are.
Yeah, seriously.
I mean, why is snitching okay in ham radio world?
I don't think that's right either.
It's for the public good.
But seriously, the FCC does have monitors just like they do for the broadcast spectrum.
They listen and look for violations.
But by and large, the amateur radio communication is self-policing and does a very good job of it.
Even the amateur radio exams that are being given are being done by volunteers.
It wasn't a conflict of interest.
Ham's just getting, giving tests to other hams.
It's not really because these are highly ethical people, just like in the hacker community,
that have to pass certain certifications.
They have to have the highest grade license, amateur radio license, extra class.
So it's a really good model of a self-regulating community, the amateur radio community.
But it's a good question you asked.
Also, this is Darko again.
As another ham, so a lot of people I know who turn around and say it's too hard, it's too much work to learn.
It really, really isn't.
There's a lot of free sites online to go through and get your technician's license, which is actually really simple.
It's a lot of common sense.
I want to know, are you allowed to sing on ham radio?
Because you said there's no music.
But what if you're just singing to someone you know and you want to talk to?
Yeah.
I have heard people sing a bar or two.
I don't think you're going to get any complaints about that.
Have you heard Mike sing?
You're not going to hear it on this radio station, I'll tell you that.
That's probably best.
Let me ask you something, Bernie.
We did this before.
We had the station.
Was it the same call signs last time?
No, actually last time it was H2.
You know, I can't remember the special event call sign that the FCC issued last time.
It was something to do with the last hope.
It was a good acronym that our friend Lynn in Atlanta was able to pick out.
You can pick available call signs, and we found one this year, N2H, which seemed apropos.
Three letters or three characters.
Well, yeah, the call signs for individuals are not one-by-one calls.
Like, they're not a letter followed by a number followed by a letter.
The numbers in an amateur radio call sign indicate which region of the country you're in.
The two in N2H means we're in an area that includes New York.
You know what other areas, what other states are included in Zone 2 in amateur radio?
I believe New Jersey, southern Connecticut, and I believe eastern PA and a little bit of Delaware.
I know one is the northeast, and then it goes down.
I didn't know this.
Wow.
Okay.
We'll have a map up on the wall there at the station showing the different regions of the country.
Now, I'm here in what's called Three Lands here down in Pennsylvania.
Three Lands.
Yeah, well, you can call it Three Lands because we're in the part of the national map that's the number three in amateur radio call signs.
My call sign is N3KOW.
And a lot of other people, I'm sure Tech Archive owners want to give out your call sign.
But hams generally know each other by their first name and or their call sign.
We're the last three of your call.
I'm KC2MXB.
And he's Cow.
N3Cow.
That's you?
Yes, I'm a big cow.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, interesting.
Well, my question, though, was the last hope we had this other station, what kinds of things were transmitted?
Did we talk to anybody interesting?
Was anything interesting said?
I wasn't operating a lot.
I just made a few contacts with people in the New York City area.
But we had an HF rig, meaning high frequency, which operates really in the low end of the spectrum, like from 30 megahertz down.
There are various amateur radio frequency allocations that will allow you to communicate very long distances
because those low frequencies bounce off the atmosphere, the ionosphere.
We'll have an HF dipole up on the roof.
We made some contacts in a couple European countries.
I don't know what they were.
But they were just done right there from the hotel.
The amazing thing about radio is there is no infrastructure.
There's no one between your radio, no one between your ears and mouth and the other person's ears and mouth to shut you off.
There's no bail bill you have to pay.
There's no infrastructure that can fail to mess up your communications.
It's a wonderful art to learn, amateur radio, because when all the crap goes down,
say there's a hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake and the phone systems go down,
the landlines, the cell phone systems, amateur radio operators are there to provide communications routinely.
They practice for this kind of stuff.
It's a neat hobby.
Now, how do people out there in the rest of the world who might want to communicate with you guys
doing the amateur radio thing at Hope, how do they find you?
We are making available on the Hope website.
There's a wiki that explains what we're going to be on.
We should probably mention that.
But they don't have any infrastructure to look at that, Bernie.
Well, that's a good point.
I'm sorry.
I couldn't resist.
Typically, HAMS, don't set up SCEDs.
I mean, it's a central SCED where you can set up a schedule.
You can be at a certain frequency at a certain time, and then you'll communicate with that person.
There's many, many thousands of frequencies.
Typically, most amateur radio communications are random.
You will listen.
You hear some station at some location.
It could be halfway around the world.
And you'll be announcing their call sign, and they want to talk.
They'll just say CQ, which means they're trying to reach anyone.
And you can reach out to them and have a conversation with somebody in a completely different land.
And it may seem kind of quaint, but it's magical.
It's very exciting.
Well, there's nothing wrong with kind of quaint, I don't think.
And honestly, as someone who was part of my high school and my college's amateur radio club,
and some of the fun sometimes of actually going out on HF and actually trying to find a distant contact is
you spend all this time calling and calling, and finally you end up getting someone.
For example, we got somebody in China one time.
I just want to say as somebody who was not on my high school's HAM radio team
and who at the time thought it was all just made up of a bunch of dorks,
I now see that this is an incredibly valuable thing.
When everything goes down, this will be an incredible skill to learn.
You will be in touch with all those people who are very far away.
It'll be good.
All right.
Well, that's just one of so many things that are going on at the HOPE Conference.
We've been speaking with Tech Darko and our friends down at the Prometheus radio project.
Am I getting it right, guys?
Okay.
Okay.
Pete and Maggie, I want to thank you guys, too, both for talking to us tonight,
for what you've done in the past and for what you're going to be doing in the future,
just all the inspiration.
Let me just conclude this part by asking Tech here.
Tech or is it Darko?
Darko.
Darko is better.
Okay.
Darko here.
Can people still get involved in Radio Statler?
Yes.
Very, very much so, yes.
We are still looking for volunteers.
We're looking for anybody who would like to do a show
or record a show or content to send to us.
We're still looking for producers who are working with the talent on the shows
and making sure everything is set up and planned in advance.
And we're also looking for engineers who are going to actually be running the audio equipment
and the streaming equipment during the event.
Okay.
It's a great way to learn some radio there.
Now, you said that you're accepting programs that can be sent to you as well.
I imagine it's preferred that they be there live but they don't have to be.
It is.
We prefer people to be there broadcasting live from the event,
but we do realize that there are some people who either cannot make it for, as you said,
maybe they're currently in a penal facility or in a job that won't let them have off on.
Most penal facilities don't let you do radio shows either or record your own radio shows.
But you could do something on the phone, I suppose.
On this very radio station, we broadcast from death row all the time.
Oh, I know that.
I know Mameo Boujamal does that, but he's not the one controlling it.
He has to call somebody.
I'm saying there's always a way.
There's always a way if there's a will.
So, yeah, I know RFM last year in Holland, they broadcast different programs from people.
There's a show about British hackers or a show about people from all different countries.
So maybe somebody out there either has a show or wants to try out doing a show,
this is a great way to get an audience.
And as far as people at the conference and people not at the conference, how will they listen?
Anyone who's interested in listening, you can go to our website, radio.hope.net,
and we have all of our links up there for listening to the conference.
We also have our links up there for downloading our audio that we have up.
You can contact us if you have any questions or wish to volunteer at radio.hope.net,
and we'll be glad to get back to you and answer any questions you have,
whether it's about volunteering or just about the station in general.
Okay.
Hey, Darko?
Yep.
A quick question for you.
I'm not sure if this was done at the previous HOPE with Radio Statler,
but I think it would be a great idea if you had a wireless microphone to just sort of do,
like, man-in-the-street interviews, sort of a woman-in-the-street interviews,
just walking around the conference and asking them, you know, just interviewing people.
Like, why are you here?
Where are you from?
What do you find interesting about this?
And have this go live out over Radio Statler.
Does that sound like a good idea?
Actually, we do have three different teams who are set up to go around and do man-on-the-street interviews,
and we had two teams last time.
And along with doing interviews with con attendees, we're also going to be interviewing vendors,
other speakers, people out and about on the street in front of Hotel Pen, asking if they know about it,
just anything we can really think of at the time.
Can this be transmitted live back to the end?
We can normally.
We won't just because of the fact that if people have a lot of pauses,
if people say things that they then change their minds and say something different, it sounds a lot better edited.
True.
I agree with that.
But there might be breaking news.
Maybe somebody is getting arrested on stage upstairs.
Yes.
In that case, we actually have worked with the streaming team to set it up
so we have live audio from every talk space.
It was great listening to Hara FM, not to always bring them up, but I think they did a really good job.
When something happened at another part of the conference, they hopped on a bicycle.
A reporter hopped on a bicycle to get over there and report back within a couple of minutes,
and you heard a live report.
It sounded really professional and very informative and that kind of thing, I think, really serves the community.
It's exactly what the folks at Prometheus are talking about.
Yes.
And we need more of that kind of thing.
We're currently having it set up.
We have a hybrid for people to be able to call in, so we're also taking calls for the shows,
but that way we can also have someone on a cell phone broadcasting back straight to the booth from me if we do need to.
Radio.hope.net.
If you hear it on a major FM broadcaster, it's not us doing it.
Somebody else might do that, but we have no control.
Radio.hope.net, though, over the weekend.
When do you guys start up?
We're starting up 9 a.m. on Friday with our intro talk from the staff,
and we are closing at 5 p.m. on Sunday with our kind of wrap-up and review of the entire event.
We're aiming to broadcast the closing ceremonies again this year.
But, you know, they start at 6, so if you wrap up at 5, you're going to miss them.
Yeah, but we like to go upstairs to the closing ceremony, so we leave broadcasting and go ourselves.
Ah, okay.
Broadcasting solo.
All right.
Good, good.
Okay, guys, I want to thank Pete and Maggie from Prometheus, and we look forward to seeing you at the conference.
Thanks so much for having us.
We'll be there.
And, you know, we just learn so much at Hope every time, so we'll be there for the whole conference.
So looking forward to being there.
All right.
See you there.
All right, take care.
And those guys are just one of so many different groups of people teaching and experimenting
and just doing creative and fun hackery-type things.
I mean, every time we do something like this, it really strikes me that this is one talk.
We have 100 talks, and we were able to talk to them for an hour about content that won't even be at the conference.
So every one of our 100 talks probably has at least as much to say, and it's just so much.
What talks are we in the room involved with, and what events?
Anything that comes to mind?
Actually, can I—
Yeah, you're involved.
Gus, you're involved in something.
I'm on one, but actually—
It's not a talk, but it's something.
What I wanted to say first, though, was that being on the speaker committee was awesome.
There's one of them that was just sort of like, blah, blah, blah, blah, bat echolocation, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, he had me at bat echolocation.
We are accepting this talk.
I will take no no's on this one.
This is—we're going to—yeah.
So there is always one or two random talks that you're just like, that is so fabulous.
They're going to find some way to relate this to technology, and it's going to be great.
I want to thank you and Mike, Greg Newby, and Bernie for joining me on the speaker committee to actually hash out a whole bunch of these things
and pick out, from a wide variety of people sending things in, the ones that we think will work this time.
And for those people that aren't on the schedule, you still can give talks.
You still can give talks at the unscheduled track that we have, and we also have the lightning round
where you can give a five-minute talk if you apply for that.
There's all kinds of ways to reach out, and people do that every single time.
Yes, Darker?
Also, anyone whose talk was rejected, we'd be happy to have you come down and do a show on Radio Statler about what you would have given your talk on.
We still have spots available, and we still have a few more we can make available.
And do you want to hear from people whose talks were accepted, too?
Yes.
Actually, we have a few people.
For example, Tool is coming down and giving a secondary talk on Radio Statler.
The open organization of locksmiths?
Yes.
Wow.
Lock pickers.
I'm sorry.
Lock pickers.
I always get one word wrong.
I know, Kyle, you're doing a talk.
Yes, I am.
I'm doing a talk.
Hidden all the way in the corner.
I'm over here, though.
I promise.
I can barely see you, but you're giving a talk on the Telephone Pioneers of America.
Now, who are those people?
We mentioned this last week, but tell us something firsthand about who they are.
The Telephone Pioneers of America are an organization of people who have been involved in the telecommunications
industry.
Most of them are retired, but they've been working in the industry for over 25 years.
And they've evolved.
They started in 1911.
And it's basically a trade organization and a social group for people who've worked in
the telecommunications industry.
They evolved into chapters, and they do various forms of social activities, and they have
their own meetings and stuff.
And they're also involved in the community with projects, and a big part of their mission
is fellowship, giving back to the communities that they're involved with.
And generally, the Pioneers stay close to the chapter where they were spending their
careers in telecommunications.
And they're really, really bright people, and they know a lot about the telephone system
and want to share and teach.
And so I really want to bridge the gap, because I think there's a lot of parallels between
communities.
And you're right.
I mean, there is a gap.
People today, a lot of people today, aren't aware of the history of the phone network,
of old hardware.
I mean, at Dayton, you were at Dayton, and the guy next to us was selling an old phone.
You want to tell us this story?
Because this is incredible.
Yeah.
I bought a Model 500.
It's actually a Model 501 rotary telephone.
It's a Western Electric from 1957, I believe.
That's a phone we've all seen throughout our entire lives.
Yeah.
It was black, and it had a really damaged coil handset cord, and so it was sort of unusable.
And I'm going to be bringing it to my talk.
And basically, I took it to my local Pioneer chapter, where I have a team of 10 pioneers
that can find me parts, and I basically rebuilt it, and it works great.
I've talked to you several times on it, and it's a lot of fun, and that's kind of the
thing you can do.
You can get 10 feet of shielded telephone cable and throw that on the end of your Model
500, and I got a new coil cord for it, and it's awesome.
I mean, this is really good stuff.
The guy wanted $5 for it, but he only had $3, so he accepted that.
That's right.
And now you have a phone that sounds better than anybody else I know, because it's an
old landline Western Electric.
And people just don't realize that, that things that age last forever and are of high quality.
Yeah.
And you can repurpose this.
I mean, you don't necessarily have to have a landline if people are setting up all kinds
of phone systems.
I mean, it's just a very robust, standard specification.
So, I mean, you could use it if you had some sort of high-tech system as well as like an
older landline.
So, these pioneers, they're everywhere.
They're people that used to work on poles, operators.
Are they all pioneers?
Yeah.
You got linemen and troublemen.
Troublemen?
Oh, yeah.
Troublemen.
Okay.
They're the guys that they find trouble.
No, no.
They fix trouble.
We're the guys that find trouble.
Yeah, exactly.
Or make the trouble.
No, there's people that were operators, I guess.
All kinds of jobs.
I mean, every job within the traditional telephone system.
And, of course, the companies have changed.
And so, they broadened.
They originally started out with Bell System employees.
But, yeah, anybody who's worked in telecommunications can become a pioneer.
And I think they have honorary positions as well.
They've broadened their membership and how they allow people.
But they still have that kind of structure.
And for, like, you must have worked for so long and that kind of thing.
But they really are a neat bunch of people.
And they want to share because there is actually some concern about younger generations
that are working for some of the more modern telephone companies.
Yes.
They're not joining.
And they're concerned that the things they know about how the telephone systems work,
either old or modern day,
they're concerned that they're not going to be able to pass on some of that information.
So, it's not just the equipment.
It's a lot about what they have, the wisdom they have to share.
You know what's incredible about this?
The concerns that you're voicing about how it used to be back in the day
when there was one phone network and everybody understood how it worked
and the people today don't have that same appreciation.
The phone company employees, the pioneers, have that concern.
So do phone freaks, people who abused the system and figured out ways around it.
They have that same concern that people today don't have the appreciation,
the understanding of the system because it's all these different fractured systems
and nobody really pours their heart into it anymore.
In addition, I'd just simply add that that's how the phone system started.
Bell didn't understand electricity.
He understood sound.
And once the company got several years in,
the fledgling beginnings of this industry, this service,
they didn't really know where to take it, what direction to take.
They didn't really know how it worked as it matured to having many subscribers
and these newfangled switching machines that did instantaneous call switching,
that kind of stuff.
They really didn't know a lot of the stuff.
So it's that inquisitive, constant, like being a perpetual student
that I think that is going to cross a lot of or will speak to all people involved.
I think the communities can really be bridged that way.
Kyle?
Go ahead, Bernie.
I'm really glad you're doing this talk because I've always thought that the whole community,
the telephone pioneers, they really need to be more connected to the hacker community
and the free community, phone-free community.
So I'm really glad.
I hope you're bringing or encouraging some of your fellow telephone pioneers to the HOPE conference
because I think it's a great possibility for symbiosis.
You mentioned that Alexander Graham Bell, the American inventor of the telephone,
there was apparently a Russian inventor of the telephone too.
Sure.
He didn't consider the telephone to be his most significant invention.
He thought the photo phone was a more significant invention.
He didn't see the telephone being connected to like a vast network of telephones.
The photo phone?
The photo phone, yeah.
He actually invented something around the same time.
Is that coming out soon?
Well, I think it's still very high tech.
He basically was able to use, he built something around the time he invented the telephone
that allowed you to beam your voice wirelessly over a beam of light through like a reflector
to someone at a distance away who could communicate with you over a beam of light.
Optical communications he invented like over 100 years ago,
and he considered that a far more important invention than the telephone.
All these technologies are fascinating,
and you can talk to the telephone pioneers like Kyle about this stuff when you come to the HOPE Conference.
Yeah, and there might be telephone pioneers listening right now because they're all over the place.
Kyle, what would you say to telephone pioneers?
Should they come to this Hacker Conference in the middle of New York City?
Oh, absolutely.
I would love to see some there, to hear from some either by email or phone,
or just at least clue them in that we're going to be talking about what they do
and really trying to define who they are and who they've been as an organization.
I want to promote how awesome members of the community they are.
They're just really incredible, and if you've ever met a telephone pioneer,
they're just really enthusiastic and, again, want to teach and share.
Well, we've met a bunch at Dayton. At the Dayton Hamvention, we've met a bunch.
Yeah, there were a couple.
And any time you've had a lineman in the neighborhood, you ask questions,
and they tell you a big, long story about how things used to be or how things actually work,
you're getting a taste of it there.
So hats off for pulling this off and linking the old with the new, history with the current day.
We do need to do that more. That's how we learn.
I really wanted to have a couple speak.
There's a wide age group at my local chapter.
One of the projects of the local chapter is basically a museum, which is a meeting space.
And I try to test the interest, see who might be interested in coming,
and I would support them or introduce them.
But it was sort of hard because a lot of these guys are a little older, and they don't travel as much.
But what I did get from them, and I want to thank them very, very much, is a lot of support.
And when I told them the level of enthusiasm and the fact that I was going to be able to speak about this
or share their community, they had all kinds of ideas.
They really allowed me to take a lot of cool pictures and share with me some of the things
that they think are most important and some of the coolest things.
They gave me a lot of printed materials and some good books on the history that they've created over the years.
Can you get any video of them that you might show at your talk, do you think?
I don't have any video of them.
Let's let him plan his talk. I'm sure he's going to come up with something amazing.
We'll see. Maybe someone will get in touch with me with some video.
Yeah, holographic images, who knows.
Yeah, holographic telephony.
You're reading this book now called The Telephone Pioneers of America,
and there's all kinds of history out there that people are going to learn about.
It's fascinating, inspirational.
Again, thanks for doing that.
Telephone Pioneers of America, just one of many talks at the HULP Conference,
one organized by somebody in this room.
First of all, I want to give out the phone number in case people have questions
about anything we've been talking about over the last hour and 40 minutes or so.
212-209-2900.
Going to go to the phones in just a couple of minutes.
Please keep it on topic.
We're talking about the HULP Conference.
We're talking about the various other issues, the WikiLeaks issue.
We're talking about radio and telephone pioneers and things like that.
Now, Gus, I know you're involved with some other aspect of the conference as well.
Do you want to tell us about this?
Yes.
We actually have two nights of 8-bit music concerts,
so that's music that will sound to most people like it's from early video games.
It's chiptune.
It's sort of a limited form of electronic music that the people who are involved in it say
is one of the most punishing forms of music around, and I've tried it.
What does that mean when they say it's the most punishing form of music?
I've tried.
It's freaking difficult to make it sound good, and it's very sensitive music.
I have a little simple synthesizer that I use or a sequencer that I use,
and rather than sort of making a big effect by turning one knob entirely in one direction
or entirely in the other direction, if you just tune it by one or two little clicks,
you end up coming up with some really weird effects.
So you're going to hear some really great stuff.
Some of the best artists in the scene from both New York and Philadelphia
will be coming out for this, and I'm really excited about it.
I'm looking forward to the concert.
Interesting.
So that's going to be happening both Friday and Saturday night?
Yes.
Beginning at, I think, 11 o'clock.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Well, all the information is going to be on the website, www.hope.net.
So we have music, we have film, we have dance,
we have everything you could possibly imagine at this thing.
Go ahead, Rob.
I have a panel.
That's right, you do.
Let me give out the phone number one more time, 212-209-2900.
Ask us a question about Hope.
Go ahead, Rob.
The panel that I'm on is I'm doing it with my friend Gray Frequency,
who is my co-admin for nyc2600.net,
which is the website for our local 2600 meetings here,
and also aided by our friend Gonzo,
and Bernie S. has offered his assistance as well,
and we're doing a panel on 2600 meetings.
Basically a short intro to them, a little history, where they've been,
where they are now,
and how you can get started with one that's near you,
or if there isn't one near you, how you can start one yourself.
And it goes into what I think the Prometheus folks were saying
and what I was saying earlier about doing our best to demystify
and get new people involved and keep the community growing,
and I really think it's something we feel strongly about, I think.
Well, great.
And what I would also like to ask is anyone out there
who has sort of interesting experiences or memories
from their local 2600 meetings,
please get in touch with us through nyc2600.net
and let us know because we'd love to add as much as we can
from as wide an area and as wide a span as we can.
So if you go now, if you used to go, if you're thinking of going,
yeah, get in touch with us, let us know your feelings.
All right, listen to an expanded edition of Off the Hook,
the show about hacking and privacy and all kinds of fun things.
We're talking about the Hackers on Planet Earth conference.
If you tune in for the personal computer show,
that will be back next week at its regularly scheduled time.
Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
I'd like to hear who's out there and what's on their mind.
Let's see what this person has to say.
Good evening. Yes, you're on Off the Hook.
Oh, no, I just want to say what a great show.
Why, thank you. Thank you so much.
Now, go to Cuba where you belong, you commies.
Oh, okay. That's a suggestion. You want to go to Cuba?
Who wants to go to Cuba?
I'd like to go to Cuba.
Unfortunately, the embargo prevents me.
Well, yeah, Mike and I went, though.
I don't want to go when it's this hot here.
I can only imagine how hot it is there, but maybe in a few months.
I think it was this hot there when we went.
I know, and it wasn't July.
I don't think it can get hotter than this.
One word, mojitos.
It only does so much.
We had plenty of those. Let's try this other call.
Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
Hi, there. I wasn't going to call,
but I just wanted to say that for anybody that has a TV connected,
an old-style analog television,
that when you start getting radio interference,
like when you're trying to listen to FM this time of year,
if you turn on your old TV, you might see Cuba.
Really? On a particular channel?
Channel 3, specifically.
One night I watched it all the way until it signed off.
They show pretty recent movies down there between midnight and 2,
and then they go off the air.
They weren't showing that when we were there.
They were showing some pretty boring things.
There was a geometry lesson that I watched.
Remember the roundtable program?
Oh, that's awful.
Well, we don't know what they were talking about.
No, it was pretty bad.
They were sleeping themselves, so I think it was kind of boring.
Redhack.
Perhaps we can get off Cuba and get back on topic.
Cuba seems to be a hot topic.
Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
How are you doing?
Hi. What's on your mind?
I just wanted to know what frequency will N2H be transmitting on
if we can get that while we're driving in.
Yeah, Bernie.
That's a very good question.
We haven't gotten around to choosing a call-in frequency yet,
but that's a good question.
If you check out the Hope.net website and click on –
I'm on the site now, and I was looking for it.
There's a wiki. Just go to the wiki.
You'll see a button on the main website that says wiki,
and then go to the amateur radio section.
We will probably in the next day or so put a call-in frequency up,
probably just for the 2-meter band or maybe 440, 440 megahertz band.
You can choose a frequency, Bernie?
Oh, yeah.
You will probably be better off on the 440 since it's in the city.
Right.
Okay.
No, you can choose.
Amateur radio operators can choose.
That's the thing.
It's not a broadcast station.
You can choose between any of –
You go 10-meter, 6-meter, 2-meter, 7-centimeter.
Those are the most popular ones to use.
Well, can you choose something ending in 2600 or at least 26?
No, that's not.
You see?
It never works to my advantage, ever.
No, that's not true.
You could.
You could like 146.2600.
1337?
Okay, well, whatever.
Red Hat, go ahead.
I was just going to say that, I mean, obviously, Bernie,
as soon as you pick that, you should update the wiki,
and next week we're on the air, right, so we can announce it then as well.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
I wanted to ask the caller something.
Caller, are you with a local ham radio group or an out-of-town ham radio group?
Yes, I am.
I'm out in Pennsylvania, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania,
and I'm with their ham.
Are you listening to us on the radio or on the Internet?
I was listening to you driving in.
Now I'm at work, so I'll throw you on the Internet
so I can continue listening to you.
Isn't it great you can get us all the way in Pennsylvania?
Sometimes, actually, sometimes I can.
Years ago I could.
Now it's kind of iffy.
Okay.
Well, thanks for your call.
No problem.
And, actually, you reminded me of something,
something important about being on the air next week.
I know we've mentioned, I think, three different things now,
or two different things.
First, we thought there would be a hearing about Hotel Pennsylvania
being torn down at the end of the conference,
not being torn down at the end of the conference,
but that's when the hearing would have been,
or right after the conference.
Then we heard that the hearing was going to be on the 14th,
a week from tonight, before the conference.
Now it turns out the hearing was in May and nobody knew about it,
so the public hearing is over.
We have no say at this particular level,
and what they're going to do in a week is make a decision.
I think the city planning commissioner or something like that.
The city council still is going to have a public meeting.
We don't know exactly when that will be.
Hopefully we'll find out about it when it's still in the future
and not in the past.
But for now what we know is that there is nothing we can do on the 14th
in one week other than report what they conclude,
which at this point I've got to fear the worst.
It's crazy to think that things that are supposed to be public
are so hard to find out about.
Yeah, and they really are.
Of course they're going to schedule them for horrible times.
Anybody who works or goes to school can hardly make,
but to find out about something you're interested in
two months after it happened,
that tells you it's really not that open.
Anyway, so we're fighting.
We're doing everything we can.
Hopefully people at the conference will help out as well
as far as keeping Hotel Pennsylvania standing
so we can continue having these conferences.
1,700 rooms a night can be filled with people from around the world
seeing New York maybe for the first time.
I just wanted to mention quickly before we take any more calls
about the ticket system.
Oh, yes, yes.
Let's give the phone number.
212-209-2900.
Go ahead.
So basically we've taken kind of a hint from the Europeans this year
and we've issued essentially electronic tickets.
They're tickets with 2D barcodes on them.
And the idea will be that rather than you coming to the conference
and us having to page through things looking for your order,
they'll scan your barcode and then give you your badge
and you're on your way.
So it's important if you have pre-registered
that you bring the ticket with you.
So we've emailed you a ticket, printed it up, bring it with you,
and you should be able to check it in a breeze.
I'm working with Joontz to make sure everything will be ready in time.
What if they tattoo the barcode on their arm?
Can they get in that way?
If it scans, sure.
Yeah.
If we can scan it, sure.
I don't know how tolerant the scanners are.
It only works once.
The tickets are only good for one use.
So if you are trading your ticket with someone
or buying it off someone for whatever reason,
you shouldn't have to because you can still buy them from us,
but it will only be valid once.
The HXX Foundation in the Netherlands was kind enough to lend us their
very powerful barcode scanners that they used for HAR.
So we'll be using those.
So it might be able to scan a tattoo.
I don't know.
I haven't tried it.
I'm sure we're going to find out.
I would suggest that if you already have a QR code tattooed on you,
maybe you can email us that code and we can put it in the database
and that can be your ticket.
I would be willing to do that.
That was actually going to be my question,
was for those of us who do prefer not to waste as much paper,
if they could bring it in on a digital device
and have it scanned as compared to having to print it out.
Good question.
You know what?
I'll test that and report on it next week.
I don't know.
I haven't tested it on a phone.
I don't know about the reflections.
Kyle and I had an interesting experience in Prague with this question
as to whether a bus ticket could be seen on a computer and not printed out.
And we had one hell of a time finding a printer in that city
where we could actually print it and show it to the bus driver.
They did not want to look at our computer screen.
So I don't know.
Why wouldn't you want to do it that way?
Well, the only reason I could think of is, you know,
with a smartphone or something, the reflection.
So it's using light to basically read the bar code
and it makes a very kind of strong red light.
So it might reflect off the screen and you won't actually be able to pick it up.
I got the feeling they didn't want to do that even if it did work.
There was some kind of security issue, I thought.
Yeah, I've had to deal with this.
Last time I traveled, I flew to Vegas, and they now have the check-in.
You can show on your PDA or your smartphone.
And they tried to scan it at the security gate and it wouldn't work.
And they tried it and tried it again.
They go, well, this isn't really allowed.
And I said, you know, but it says specifically on your website
this is what you should be doing to save paper.
And they said, well, yeah, it says that, but, you know, it's a security risk
because then you could just copy this and modify it and not really have a real one.
And my response to them was, well, if I modify it, I could print the thing out as well.
So what's the difference?
Wow, they never thought of that before, I'll bet.
Apparently not.
This is why you should never know more than the TSA.
It doesn't help you.
Go ahead, Bernie.
RedHack, I have a question.
In addition to the bar code, people who purchased a preregistered for HOPE
were issued like some long key code made up of hexadecimal numbers.
Can we bring that code alone and get into that?
We could punch it in, but that would defeat the purpose.
It would be a lot of work.
I mean, you know, yes, it's possible, but I'd prefer it if you didn't.
For those people, though, that registered and don't have the means of printing out
for whatever reason, maybe they're stranded in a foreign country
and everybody's being unreasonable, or maybe they just don't have access to a printer,
who knows, what can they do?
You could write that.
So basically on the ticket that you're sent, it has the QR code,
which is essentially just a representation of the very long string at the bottom.
So if you bring just that long string of numbers, then, yeah, that'll work also.
But, you know, someone will actually have to sit there
and punch every single one of those numbers in or letters.
Yeah, you won't make many friends.
Yeah, it'll take a while.
We'll send you off to a little side station to do that.
And if you don't have a computer, you don't have to worry about that either.
We will be accepting registrations from the street as well starting, I think,
actually Thursday afternoon we'll accept some of those.
You can obviously buy your ticket at the door, but the price is higher.
Slightly higher, yes.
So if you can and you know you're coming, I would definitely recommend pre-registering.
And I think the cutoff is going to be Sunday, right?
Sunday night, yes.
So then that gives us a chance to make sure that everyone gets their tickets
and there's no issues with that.
www.hope.net for all the information about pre-registering as well as the conference.
Voltaire?
The best part about pre-registering is that you get a badge.
And I remember the last time I was doing registration
and there were a lot of upset people that were registering at the door
that were begging to get badges.
And I was like, come back the next day.
And they all disappointed because there's no badges left.
Yeah.
Well, that's true.
If you want the badges, the populated badge, you will get a badge,
but it won't be the one that has all the amazing gizmos on it.
That's while supplies last and the first ones go to the people who registered first.
Just the way it goes.
So, yeah, that's reality.
212-209-2900.
Let's see who else is out there.
And good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hey, Manuel.
How are you doing?
Hi.
What's on your mind?
Hey, guys.
I'm really looking forward to the Hope.
I got my ticket way back in December.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
We had a very special deal with absolutely no information given out about the conference.
We had a very low price.
Blind faith, I think, is what we called it.
If you want to just register based on blind faith, we'll give it a special rate.
And you're one of the early ones.
It was way early, so I got a good deal.
This is actually going to be my third Hope going in there.
Wow.
And I wish I made all of them, but, you know, I was just starting to get on.
Hope number six was the first one I went to.
Uh-huh.
Well, you haven't missed one since then, so that's great.
I'm looking forward to it.
And you know something?
Now with all this news about the Hotel Pens, I hope it stays around.
I'm actually staying at Hotel Pens this time around.
Yeah, it's an experience.
This time I have to stay there because there's just so much news going around about Hotel Pens.
I hope it never goes away.
Here's something really interesting that we discovered.
I was talking to Kyle about his talk coming up, the Telephone Pioneers of America.
Turns out they had meetings all over the place, all over the country, way back in the early part of the century.
Where did we find that, Kyle?
Oh, yeah.
There was a Telephone Pioneers of America conference at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Yeah.
Isn't that something?
Kindred spirits, they gravitate towards a particular place.
It might even be in the same room where you're giving your talk.
Yeah, I think it was 1931.
1931, October of 1931.
We're going to try to get some more information and find out if it is in that room.
We actually tracked down a book from an old bookstore, an ancient bookstore, a bookstore that specializes in old books,
of the proceedings of that particular meeting that took place in the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1931.
Hopefully, we'll get that before the actual conference.
Thanks for that call.
Let's see who else is out there.
Red Hat, do you have something?
I just wanted to add one more thing on the tickets before I forget.
If you haven't received your ticket yet and you placed the order more than a few days ago, maybe a week ago,
definitely email tickets at 2600.com and we'll look into that.
If you ordered in the past couple of days, we may not have processed it yet, but we will.
We are getting a flurry, a rush of people.
Wait until the last minute.
That's fine.
We're ready for you.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yes.
Hello.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
How are you doing?
I wanted to tell you that this phone I'm calling from works on a hesitant will program,
meaning I'm hesitant to pay my cable bill, and when I do, it wills that it continues to work.
Okay.
I guess that's kind of good.
Anything else you have for us?
Yeah.
I'm interested in coming to the conference, and I'm interested in helping.
So I don't want to waste your time on the radio, but I'm under the impression I can get on your website
and sign up for it because I was looking at your HOPE conference website,
and it did mention that you still need help.
Yeah.
Well, we always do because the way these conferences work
and the reason why we're able to have them at such a drastically lower price
than comparable conferences around the world is because everybody gathers together
and helps out however they can, whether it be helping us at the door or helping with security
or helping with AV or all kinds of things that a conference of this sort needs.
Email volunteers at hope.net.
There's a whole section about this on the website as well,
and we like to say that everybody at the conference is a volunteer one way or another.
When you have 3,000 volunteers helping out in a common way, you get a lot done.
You get a lot of things done that would not be done ordinarily.
I have an announcement.
Go ahead.
That was announced this week is that if you'd like to plan really in advance
the Chaos Communications Camp for next summer,
they just announced the dates of August 10th to 14th of 2011.
Really?
That's awesome because what we do is we alternate with the Europeans.
We have HOPE on the even years and the odd years as a camp overseas.
Last year it was HAR.
So they just announced this.
Yeah, just today or yesterday, someday.
So August 10th to 14th.
I guess you could buy.
Can you even buy plane tickets that far in advance?
I don't know.
Probably not, but that's where I'm going to be, August 10th to 14th.
And it's going to be at the same place that it was three years ago.
Okay.
That's never happened.
They've never had it at the same place twice.
So that's in Phenofort, which is near Berlin.
Okay.
We're going to have a lot of Germans at the conference,
so if you have any questions about this kind of thing, they'll be happy, I'm sure,
to answer just what's involved in a camp, and we can go over ways to get there.
I'd say that the HOPE conferences are modeled very much after the European ones,
both the inside ones and the outside ones.
But we don't go outside.
Well, we go outside sometimes to get food and things like that.
Oh, come on.
New York City is not really outside.
Bernie, yes?
Go ahead.
Yes?
Go ahead, Bernie.
Oh, I didn't say anything.
Oh, I thought you...
Oh, maybe our caller is still there.
No, no.
It's the other guy on the phone.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought...
Thanks for staying.
Okay.
I met Bernie.
We met over some equipment that went over to the hacktory.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, come on down, dude.
Yeah.
How you doing, Bernie?
All right.
Okay.
We're going to let you guys reminisce, but we're out of time here,
because we've been on for two hours.
Any final words before we're gone for the night?
Hope.net.
www.hope.net.
Gus, you have something?
Bat echolocation.
Yeah, bat echolocation.
Actually, a talk about bat echolocation we're giving.
Among so many other things, the whole schedule is at hope.net,
as well as information on pre-registering, volunteering,
becoming a vendor, whatever.
It's a weekend two days away, so you've got to start moving around.
If you can, please print your tickets.
You'll make me and June very happy.
Apologies to the forest.
Yes.
Darko?
I'd just like to remind people they can go to radio.hope.net to volunteer,
and shout out to both Bunny and Nick God to thank them for all the work.
Voltaire?
Will there be Club Mate?
Oh, yeah.
You know, it's interesting you should say that.
The Club Mate has arrived.
It's still in port, though.
It's on a big boat somewhere in the Manhattan area,
and I believe it's going through customs,
and there are five pallets of the stuff ready for hacker consumption.
Watch out for people dressed in Native Americans that may have poured into the sea.
Okay.
That would be fun.
Yeah.
We'll see about that.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'll be back again next week at 7 for a one-hour show.
The Personal Computer People will be back next week from 8 to 9.
Keep listening to WBAI New York.
We'll see you next time.
Good night.
I said okay, let's make a date to chat privately
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
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It's getting serious
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Computer to chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I never thought I could find this kind of love
But now it gets me serious
Me and this guy chatted into the night, it seemed so right
I followed all his links and showed him all my favorite websites
I met all of his online friends, they were all so cool, it's true
I guess I started to fall for him right there in the chatroom
And it's true, the online world is full of lonely girls
Yeah, lonely girls
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
Computer to chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I'm in, I'm online, I know I'm falling in love
It's getting serious
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
Computer to chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I never thought I could find this kind of love
But now it gets me serious
Oh no, I never thought I'd come to this
Oh no, my online experiment has come and swept me far away
In my computerized days
It was getting late, it was time to go home
He asked me if we could chat again tomorrow
I should have told him I was not ready for relationships, you know
But his smiley icon was so irresistible
And it's true, I was a lonely girl
In an online world, in the online world
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
Computer to chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I'm in, I'm online, I know I'm falling in love
It's getting serious
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
Computer to chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I never thought I could find this kind of love
But now it gets me serious
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
Computer, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I met him online and now I'm falling in love
It's getting serious
Computer, love, love, love, love, love, love
Computer, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat
Computer, I never thought I could find this kind of love
But now I get mysterious