And that wraps up today's program. The newscast was produced by Katherine Komp.
Headlines editor was Jess Burns. Washington DC editor was Tanya Snyder.
Today's technical production team at KPFA and Berkeley includes Rose Katopshi and Scott Pham.
You can visit us online at fsrn.org. You can send questions,
comments, or news tips to comments at fsrn.org. Thanks for listening.
In New York, I'm Dorian Marina.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
The time is seven o'clock. Time once again for Off The Hook.
Uh-oh.
I'm Renaud de Winter at ETH Zero with the binary voice news of August 12, 2001 at 1 a.m.
The district attorney in the Netherlands has announced the prosecution of Dutch journalist
Bert Bressen. Last week, it was announced that Bressen is suspected of threatening right-wing
and conservative politician Geert Wilders. When a Muslim extremist posted the threat
on Twitter, the journalist decided to cite the tweet by retweeting it and posting it on his blog
with the notion that this is apparently the way to threaten Geert Wilders. Last week,
the police contacted Bressen, asking him to remove the blog post. When he refused,
he was charged and summoned for interrogation yesterday in The Hague. After confusion whether
or not he was allowed to be represented by a lawyer, he and his attorney were informed of
the additional charges. Geert Wilders is known for his anti-Muslim stance and continuous level
of threats he receives. Later this month, he is expected to join a protest in New York against
the plans for a new Muslim center close to Ground Zero. Bressen will be responding on this
hacker show tomorrow. Yesterday, during a radio show on Binary Voices, FOIA expert and litigator
Roger Vleugels, who did over three and a half thousand FOIA cases, stated that the efforts of
the Association of Cities to entice cities to charge for disclosing information is an ending
game. The Netherlands is a non-signatory of the European Transo Agreement, which arranges freedom
of information in Europe. Amazingly, Holland was chairing the committee that drafted the
agreement. There is no doubt in my mind that ultimately we will sign the treaty and the
harassment of citizens is over, Vleugels said. The Dutch were one of the first nations to have
a FOIA in the Netherlands and now are becoming one of the countries that is falling behind.
A KLM employee has been arrested on charges of fraud. The 44-year-old customer service
representative ordered damages payments for non-existent customers. The arrest is amazing
because the Dutch never expect any service from the national airline. Today at 10 pm local time,
this station will feature the launch of Hackerspace Radio. People can find more
information at Hackerspaces.org.
It's really cool. It's fun to listen to and you can listen to yourself on the internet. If you
simply look up ETH0 and radio, you'll track them down. This is Off the Hook. Manuel Goldstein here
with you, joined tonight by Mike Redhakt. Hello. Jim, there you are. Hi. I was looking for you.
Voltaire threw me off there. Hi. Rob T. Firefly. Good evening. .Ret.
Hello. Bernie Esdown, Philadelphia. Greetings from Philadelphia. RenderMan is here from Canada.
Hello, New York. And Nick Farr is here from DC. How's it going? Wow, we got a lot of people here
tonight. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of time to actually talk amongst ourselves. We will
sometime. We will get into a rousing debate, I'm sure. But we have to face facts. We have to face
something that's rather unpleasant and true. And that's the fact that we did terribly last week.
Last week, we were doing a fundraiser here and we did awful. It was the worst I think we've ever
done. And we need to make up for that this week or we might not be here next week. So what we've
done is we've scrambled and thrown together some brand new packages for people to partake in,
to help ease the burden of pledging to the radio station and keeping us on the air.
The phone number to pledge to, if you just want to call and pledge right now because you hear
the dire straits that we're in and you want to help us out, that number is 212-209-2950.
And what we're offering tonight are DVDs from The Next Hope, the conference that just ended
in New York City. And wow, they're available really quickly this time, but they're amazing
talks. And yes, you guys already have something to say about this.
Can I say how funny it sounds now? And we knew that this was coming to say that
these are from The Next Hope.
Oh, because it sounds like it's in the future.
Well, that should make it all the more valuable then, shouldn't it? Yeah,
we already have talks from The Next Hope available before the conference even happened. Yeah,
I can see it might be a little confusing, but this is not the last hope. Those are old. Yeah,
this is The Next Hope. So for a pledge of $75, you'll get 15 of the top talks at The Next Hope,
15 hours, 15 DVDs. And we're going to do some excerpts of a couple of those in just a moment.
For $125, you get 30 of those DVDs, which is an incredible deal. 30 DVDs for a pledge of $125.
And if you were at the conference or if you weren't at the conference, it's a great deal
because there's no way you could have seen all those talks. And certainly, if you weren't at
the conference, you didn't see any of them. And they're all really interesting and enlightening
and provocative. For a pledge of $125, you get 30 DVDs. Now, for a pledge of $250, you get
everything, all 100 or so. I'm not exactly sure how many there are. Some of them are in several
parts. So it's more than 100. And plus, you get the audio discs as well. So that's for a pledge
of $250. $212, $209, $295. We're going to play an excerpt of one of them in just a moment.
And there's definitely no way that you saw all of them. It's not physically possible.
I might have, having put the things together. But no, even I didn't do that.
There's just so much. And I keep hearing great things about various talks and panels that people
have seen at the conference. This really was the best one yet, I think, from what people have
been telling me. And even if you were there, first of all, obviously, you'd be supporting
the radio station, which is important. But also, I was there. And I didn't see all the talks that
I wanted to see. There are just so many things going on at a conference like this, that even if
you participate in it, even if you're there for the whole three days, there's things you missed,
there's things that were interesting that went on that you didn't see. And so this is a way to kind
of catch up on that and find out what it was. I'd like to quickly get into, if you guys make
some really quick comments, I'd like to quickly get into an excerpt so people know what we're
talking about. Dot Red and then Voltaire. And let's get into the first excerpt. Go ahead.
Yeah. Also, just not even thinking about what stuff you might have missed out on,
which is a great thing to have to hold on to then to be able to go back to and refer and,
you know, learn stuff that you might have even forgotten, even if you did see a lot of stuff.
Absolutely. Voltaire.
How many parallel talks were there?
How many parallel talks?
Parallel sessions.
I mean, how many things are going on at once?
Yeah.
Three main tracks and one unscheduled track. You were there. You know this.
Yes, but it's a rhetorical question. So you'd have to clone yourself.
It's a rhetorical question. I don't have to answer it then.
Oh, never mind. But you're supposed to clone yourself four times in order to see all these
fantastic talks.
Right. Well, we have all the talks from track A, B, and C. Tesla, Lovelace, and Bell are the
rooms that we named them as. What we're going to excerpt now is something from
what I consider to be a very interesting talk, Cats and Mice, the phone company,
the FBI, and the phone freaks. This is a talk by Phil Lapsley. It was done on Sunday.
And basically what he's doing here is playing an excerpt from one of the first ever phone freak
recordings ever made. What year do you think this was? Anyone want to hazard a guess? And if you
already know the answer, don't guess. But go ahead.
500 BC.
All right. You're not going to be listened to anymore. Anyone else? Anyone else have a
serious answer here? No? Nick? Sorry, go ahead.
1974.
That's a good guess, Nick. That's very good. What made you say that?
Just around the availability of commercial recording equipment right after the... And it
was after the decision. What was that? The phone recording decision. I forgot the name of it.
That's very good. Very good. But it totally is not right.
That's an example of using factual evidence to come to the wrong conclusion. Yes.
The first recording is actually from either 1960 or 1959. And that's what we're about to hear now.
Some high school kids basically routing calls through inward operators all around the country
and having a great time doing it. And this was presented at the Next Help. 212-209-2950.
This DVD plus nine others is yours for a pledge of $75. This DVD plus 29 others is yours for a
pledge of $125. This DVD and 100 others is yours for a pledge of $250. We want to see those phones
start lighting up. 212-209-2950. Let's go back to 1960.
So, this map came from a group of folks who are known as the Harvard 5. And you've got three of
them here. Harvard 5 is actually a misnomer. It's actually the Harvard 4 and the MIT 1. But Harvard,
I guess, is better at marketing. So, they get the... So, these guys were all freshmen at Harvard
in 1962. They were sort of the first... They weren't necessarily the first phone freaks,
but they were the first real group of phone freaks, at least that I'm aware of, of a group of
people who pooled their talent and imagination in playing around with this stuff. Now, that
timeline chart that you saw there, back there, this was... They discovered this by a very old
and venerable phone freak technique, which is picking up the phone and dialing. You pick up
the phone, you get a dial tone. I wonder what happens if. This is how phone freaks always get
into trouble. I wonder what happens if. I'm going to pick up the phone and dial. So, they had been
doing a lot of stuff like this. But it turns out that a couple of them had actually been doing
stuff even earlier. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to play you a tape recording of a phone
call. This is from 1960. And in order to get this, to make sense of this recording, there are a
couple of things you have to know. In the old days, in the long-distance network, direct
distance dialing, the idea that you could pick up a phone and dial a long-distance number was a
relatively new invention. And inside the phone company, they had these folks called inward
operators. And an inward operator is basically an operator's operator. So, every big city would
have one. And so, if you were trying to make a call, say, to San Francisco and it wasn't going
through, you might call your local operator. Your local operator would call San Francisco
inward. The San Francisco inward operator would place the call for you. And inward operators
were great because they could basically do anything. Now, if you show up, customers can't
call inward operators, right? But you can if you have a blue box. So, if you show up on an inward
operator's position, pretty much you're with the band, right? We assume that you got to be a phone
company person. Except for one niggling detail, which is that in those days, because it's the
phone company, all operators are women. You don't see a lot of women in this group, right? So,
they can't quite pretend to be operators, but they can pretend to be on a test board, which is
essentially a testing position because in those days, again, the phone company, test engineers
are all men. So, the final thing you need to know is these guys are starting out in Boston. And
with that, here's the call.
Milwaukee, this is Boston test board. Could you get me Portland? Inward? Portland, Oregon.
Portland, Oregon. Thank you.
He saw the social engineering panel last night.
Portland. Portland, Oregon. Yes. Milwaukee test board, could you get me Denver inward, please?
Sensing a pattern yet? Denver. Denver inward? Yes. Could you get me Little Rock on the inward, please?
Little Rock on the inward? Yes, please.
Little Rock. Little Rock.
This is Denver test board. Could you get me New York, please? Inward?
New York. New York, could you get me Boston inward, please? Boston. Boston.
Who are you looking for? Little Rock test board. What? Little Rock test board, Arkansas.
Little Rock? Little Rock, Arkansas test board. I'm sorry, I can't say Boston inward.
Boston inward is on the left side. Boston. Hello, Boston? Yes. Could you give me a number in
Marblehead, please? Deptoon 1-9819.
Hello? Hello, Charles. Hey, what's your routing? All the way. Good, good, good. How are you copying me there?
Pretty good, pretty good. No trouble on this circuit. Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, thank you very much.
I'll see you when I get back. Right out. Roger out. Yeah.
Could I get a round of applause, please, for the Harvard five?
So that's 1960, roughly. The person who made the tape was not sure if it was 1960 or 1959.
He was actually in high school at the time. Wow. Now that's some history for you.
That's probably the oldest phone call we've ever played on this show.
And that's part of the DVD package that we're offering tonight.
212-209-2950, pledge of $75, gets you that DVD with all kinds of phone freak history
and recordings and things like that, along with nine others.
If you want 30 DVDs, pledge $125. If you want all of the DVDs, which is $100 plus, $250,
212-209-2950. And, of course, everybody gets an off-the-hook T-shirt, as is tradition here.
We really need to see the phones light up, though.
This is a recording that was just made less than a month ago at the Next Hope conference.
Not the recording you just heard. Obviously, that was made a long time ago, 50 years ago. Wow.
And this is an example of the kind of thing that we have going on at the conference.
This is one of so many talks that we had, and just about all of them were simply riveting.
Wouldn't you say, Mike?
Yeah, well, most of them were riveting.
I was just looking through the program, and you checked off the ones that will be included in this package.
And I was looking through it, and I was like, why didn't he include that one?
Why didn't he include that one?
And it's just because there's so many good talks.
If you take 15 of them, you can't possibly get all the good ones.
Yeah, unfortunately, this is going to result in bitter fighting.
There's a competition in bitter fighting amongst us for picking out which ones are in the top.
We're not trying to say these ones are better than others.
We just have to at some point draw the line.
And the ones that we're picking are ones that we've gotten a lot of feedback on,
and we're trying to make it available to as many people as possible.
So among the 15 that you will get, in addition to the phone freak talk, is the Privacy is Dead, Get Over It with Steve Rombaum.
So that right there is worth the price for admission.
You'll get the Grand Theft Lazlo, How Hacking is Both the Death and Future of Traditional and Interactive Publishing,
Journalism and the Media with our good friend Lazlo.
You'll get the Social Engineering Extravaganza, which is always a lot of fun,
where we make phone calls to various people around the country and try to get them to do things they really shouldn't do.
You'll get the Lockpicking Talk.
You'll get Robert Steele and his State of Global Intelligence.
You'll get both keynote addresses, both Dan Kaminsky and the WikiLeaks keynote by Jacob Applebaum filling in for Julian Assange and a bunch of others.
But please, you've got to give us a call, 212-209-2950.
We had two calls on the line a moment ago.
As I said, we did really badly last week, and we need to do really well this week.
Or you'll be hearing something else next week to raise funds for the radio station.
It's vital that we do this.
I know it's unpleasant to have to ask for money.
It's unpleasant to have to spend money.
But when you think about what it's going for and what you're getting out of it, think of the history you just heard.
And where else will you ever hear anything like that?
Where else would the community be there to actually preserve something of that nature?
Things just get lost all the time.
A radio station like WBAI allows things to be preserved and to be spread around and to turn other people on to the knowledge.
212-209-2950.
Nick?
It's way too hard to decide which talks.
You should just get them all.
And how much of a pledge is it to get them all, which you should do?
250 gets all the talks and an off-the-hook t-shirt.
I should point out that these are being sold online as well for much more than that.
And they are selling for much more than that.
So this is a very good deal.
Not only are you pledging to the radio station, helping us out here, but you're getting an incredible amount of DVDs.
And you're getting them at a cut rate, much less than what they're usually offered for.
So it's a win-win on so many levels.
And the only way we don't win is if you don't call.
And we slink out of here with our tail between our legs again like we did last week.
212-209-2950.
I know there are people out there because people are constantly talking to me about the conference, how amazing it was, and how they wanted to see more talks and how they want to get the DVDs.
Well, this is your chance.
We're donating DVDs to the radio station.
This is your chance to help the radio station out, keep off-the-hook on the air, and basically get a whole lot of DVDs as well.
Voltaire?
If you get the 100-plus pack of DVDs, it sounds like a lot of money.
But when you think about it, you can divide it up into as many friends as you have and give them each an equal share of DVDs.
That's right.
And these are not DRM'd in any way.
You can copy them to your computer and basically use them wherever you feel fit, wherever you feel is needed.
212-209-2950.
I know there are people out there.
Let's see those phone lines light up.
.Red?
Yeah, I just want to echo what Nick Farr said.
If you want, 15 will not give you the whole glory of the conference.
And if you can throw it, you'll be saving yourself a lot of money in the long run.
But if you can't, 15 is fantastic.
And I just want to say about the last talk we just heard, for me, I don't know about you guys, but that's fascinating.
It actually reminds me of stories from my grandmother who actually was one of those operators.
Your grandmother was a phone freak?
She was a phone freak?
No, she was one of those operators.
Oh.
And you say, oh, so this makes sense.
But this was strange for me because I didn't know about this until years after getting into the whole hacking freaking world.
And then to hear these stories and to listen to recordings like this, I can't help but think, what if she was unwittingly a participant in one of these games?
Wow.
Yeah, this could make somebody very angry if they heard it today and realized they were playing a part of that.
Wow.
Yeah, and that's just one segment of one talk of the 15 you'll get or the 30 you'll get or the 100 you'll get, depending on how much you pledge.
212-209-2950.
Mike?
I mean, let's be blunt here.
This is the premium that you've been waiting for.
If you were thinking of pledging sometime this Fund Drive, you didn't pledge last week because you didn't like what we were offering for whatever strange reason.
This is what you've been waiting for.
Give us a call, 212-209-2950.
You will get so much content, 15 hours, 30 hours, like weeks at a time if you get the whole package of interesting talks.
I really don't really understand why more people aren't pledging.
We do have one call on the line, so that's good to know.
We need five.
We need five, and you're right.
This is the premium people have been waiting for.
Last week, apparently, they didn't like – I really thought the bags of fertilizer would go over well, but apparently, there isn't much demand for that these days.
We got the message loud and clear, so now we have something new, something really new.
This has never been offered before, and it's never been offered at this low price, and you're helping out the radio station.
It's a no-brainer.
That means that there's no reason not to that I can think of.
Use your credit card.
Divide the payments up however you wish.
The important thing is to keep this place alive.
212-209-2950.
Rob T. Firefly.
It is worth knowing, as always, that this is the only thing that keeps this station afloat.
This station has been on the air for decades, for generations, in fact, and this is the only thing that's kept it on.
We don't have bake sales.
We don't sell anything.
We don't have any income except what generous listeners like yourself.
Actually, I think we do have bake sales, but they don't really – we have things out in the lobby, but I don't know if we make any money off that.
We just invite people.
We're supposed to pay for those?
I might be in a lot of trouble right now.
We invite people, and they have pie and cake and things like that.
Bernie, I know you have something to throw into this.
I was just noting that the audio clip you played from – recorded by some phone freaks back in 1960 was recorded about the time this radio station started, WBAI.
Isn't that right?
I believe – yeah, the radio station began in 1960s.
We're 50 years old this year, so yeah, right around that time.
Wow.
I just see a lot of synergies in here, that there are very few or any radio stations, especially in New York, that are going to play an extended audio clip of some phone freaks experimenting with a telephone system back in 1960, which really is probably of interest to most of our listeners, and that that was recorded about the same time this radio station started.
This radio station has a history of broadcasting stuff that no other radio station is going to broadcast.
It's gone all the way to the Supreme Court, challenging its right to exercise First Amendment rights to broadcast material that other radio stations won't touch, and that's why listeners to this station right now really ought to pledge to support this type of radio station.
We have four calls on the line right now, Bernie.
I know you can work your magic and double that, so get those calls coming in.
Well, I was just saying that our listeners, obviously, are listening right now, know that WBAI is the only kind of radio station they can hear this kind of material on, and we're very lucky to have a program on this radio station that no other radio station is going to air this program.
So, please, listeners, call 212-209-2950.
Five calls on the line.
No matter how much you pledge, it's really important to support this station, and this is a great gift that we're giving you for pledging support for this station.
You can't buy these DVDs for anywhere near this price.
This is a tremendous value.
Even if you were at the HOOP conference, there's no way on earth you could have possibly heard all these talks.
Nick and you and myself and all the other volunteers that made HOOP happen, hundreds of volunteers, were just simply too busy to take in all these talks.
And if you were just not a volunteer, because we had two or three talks going on at once, it's impossible to get all this information, which is really many, many hours of planning, scores of hours of planning into each talk.
So you're getting distilled knowledge, distilled knowledge, 212-209-2950.
Join the people on the line now.
Again, the pledge levels for $75, you'll get 15 DVDs from the next HOOP, 15 different talks, at least one hour in length each.
For $125, you'll get 30 talks, and for $250, you'll get all the talks, which is 100 or so.
And everybody gets an off-the-hook T-shirt in the size of your choice.
Join the six calls on the line now, 212-209-2950.
Remember, we take Visa, MasterCard, American Express, all of that.
And where else can you get something like this, as Bernie said?
Okay, we have another excerpt we're going to play in just a moment.
But first, I want to stop in and visit with our friends over in the Netherlands who are broadcasting now on Binary Voice Radio.
Guys, are you there via Skype?
Yes, we sure are.
Introduce yourselves. That sounds like Kyle there.
Yeah, this is Kyle.
Welcome back to Off The Hook. You're over there at the camp right now.
I am.
How are things looking?
Things are really great. The camp is in full swing.
There's been talks. There's been a little bit of barbecuing, some really good weather.
We've got a wonderful lounge going.
There's a retro tent full of old-school gaming consoles.
There's hardware hacking. We have a hackerspace village.
And there's a radio station.
Yeah, Binary Voice. It's this incredible streaming radio station.
And we've been going pretty steady through the night hours with different kinds of content and a lot of really great music.
And it's put together really well.
People are just having a lot of fun with it all.
And it's quite an amazing experience to see everything sort of functioning, and people have relaxed.
I was here a little bit earlier for the build-up and putting things together.
And now everything is working to the best of what I can see.
I think it's great.
Who else is there with you in the studio right now?
Brenno, I believe, is there?
Yeah, I'm Brenno de Winter. Good evening.
How are you doing?
I'm doing excellent.
How many other people are there right now?
Next to me is Koen Martens.
Hi, Emmanuel. This is Koen. Nice to be on the show again.
Hi, how are you? Yes, you've been on before.
Yeah.
And then opposite of me is Jan Klopper.
Hi, I'm Jan. I'm the conference organizer.
Conference organizer, prime suspect, as they call it in Holland.
Prime suspect. That's awesome. Well, congratulations on putting this all together.
And then there's still Psychic who is running the technique here.
And he did a marvelous job. Good evening, New York.
Yeah, it's great to hear from Holland, especially live like this.
We were listening to your newscast earlier in the program.
Now, this conference that you're running right now is not as big as HAR.
HAR was a few thousand and this is a couple of hundred.
What are some of the main differences you encounter when you have a hacker camp
that's smaller than this?
I'd say less stress. There's less people, less volunteers, less power, less everything.
And that kind of helps get it together for me because I'm kind of new at this.
And I did help at HAR, but I can manage this. I couldn't manage HAR, I think.
Well, it's good training.
I've been doing this since, what, 2008 now?
So this is the third year, including helping you at HAR.
Right. And I assume you guys will be at the German camp, the big German camp next year as well.
You mean like Camp Holland with the Germans next to it?
Well, no, the CCC camp.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
We'll allow the Germans there as well.
Yeah, we're gearing up for a nice event in Germany where they are allowed as well.
Great. That sounds awesome.
Now, let me ask you, you guys, you're in your radio studio right now?
Yes, we are.
So then who's broadcasting the radio station now?
Psyche is doing the technique, and then I've been setting up a lot of things.
And then there are so many volunteers who love to do an hour.
And we start in the morning with bringing news,
like the real news that's happening in the Netherlands as well,
things that are happening on the camp.
We do a hacker interview.
Then we've got an hour on digital rights.
Today, for instance, on the FOIA, that was part of the news as well.
Tomorrow we've got a journalist that is being prosecuted.
And then there are a lot of music shows and other shows.
So it's really hanging out there, having a good time,
and do what we think is best.
I myself am a journalist, and I love to bring news.
That's great.
Now, what would happen if I brought up the audio for the radio station right now?
What would I hear?
You would hear yourself, because you're on our radio station as well.
I have to try this. Hang on.
What would happen if I brought up the audio for the radio station right now?
What would I hear?
You would hear yourself, because you're on our radio station as well.
I have to try this. Hang on.
Hang on.
Okay, okay.
There will be a lot of lag.
This is gonna be funny.
Hey, you would hear yourself because you're on our radio station as well.
I mean...
I have to try this.
I have to try this.
Hang on.
Okay.
Okay.
There will be a lot of lag.
This is gonna be funny.
Hey, you would hear yourself because you're on our radio station as well.
I mean...
I have to try this.
Okay.
All right.
Wow.
That's really cool.
That's a great way to waste an hour.
Well, guys, any final words?
Because we have a fundraising show we got to get back to here.
But it's great talking to you.
I wish I was there.
I wish we could all share these fun times.
But we will in the future.
But last words from you guys?
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's for the people.
Tomorrow, hackerspaces.org is organizing their weekly radio
show.
And they are starting off tomorrow night,
10 PM, Dutch local time.
So subtract six hours, and you've got US time.
OK, and how can people listen to your radio station?
What's the best way to get to it?
The easiest way is to go to it's a signal.hackerspaces.org.
The information is on there where the stream is.
And people can just tune in.
Signal.hackerspaces.org.
That's for the show tomorrow.
Hackerspaces radio, our radio station,
can be contacted using binaryvoice.org.
OK, guys, from ETH0, live in Holland,
where it's about 1.30 in the morning, great talking to you.
Look forward to seeing you again in the future.
Yeah, and we're signing off from Wieringa Berghof.
Be free.
OK.
See you at Camp Holland next year.
And maybe CCC this year.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
And we're signing off from Wieringa Berghof.
OK, now they are signing off again on the computer.
Be free.
See you at Camp Holland next year.
How many times are we going to hear this?
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Wow, that was fun, wasn't it?
It's like putting two mirrors against each other
and, you know, it's fun.
It really is.
It really is.
But with audio.
But you know what happened while we were talking?
All our calls went away.
Well, I guess they finished pledging.
But the new calls have to come in now.
And what I'd like to do to get those new calls to come in
is do another excerpt from The Next Hope.
Now, this one is a bit more of a contentious talk.
I think you know the one I'm going to play an excerpt from.
This is the whole WikiLeaks controversy.
The front lines of it all.
We had on this panel myself, Bernie S., Kevin Mitnick,
FiberOptic, and informant Adrian Lamo,
the guy who turned in Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker
to WikiLeaks.
And it was an interesting scenario,
having a crowded room full of people,
and somebody who could be defined
as the most hated person in the hacker world at the moment.
So what we did was we did some intros.
We brought Adrian out.
We made sure the crowd was going to behave themselves.
And for the most part, 99.9% of them did.
So there were some people who shouted out and things like
that.
But it was a model to contentious subject matter.
And what I'd like to do is play an excerpt of that.
This is one of the talks you will get for a pledge
to 212-209-2950.
You can hear the bitter debate here.
But it's nothing like seeing it, nothing
like seeing it on video.
212-209-2950, a pledge of $75 gets you this and 14
other videos.
A pledge of $125 gets you this plus 29 others.
And a pledge of $250 gets you all the videos, 100 or so.
And everybody gets the off-the-hook t-shirt.
212-209-2950.
Let's listen in on the informants panel.
The State Department activities put other people.
OK, you'll have your say.
You'll have your say.
We'll take some questions.
I'll be open for a Q&A. And I think
the Q&A is probably the most important thing.
Because you guys know better than I do what you want to know.
We'll be handing out darts and bows and arrows.
So don't worry.
Also, if anybody thought to bring pitchforks and maybe
some torches, that would be cool, too.
If people want to ask questions, they
can line up behind the second microphone there.
The second microphone.
And leave your weapons behind.
But let Adrian finish first.
As I was stating, State Department operations
throughout the world involve both American intelligence
activities and the activities of American tourists and travelers
abroad.
If you assume the most innocent possible scenario,
that it would do nothing but make the US look
bad in countries abroad, that would still
leave people sitting high and dry
if they needed consular assistance,
if they were arrested abroad by a country that suddenly
decided that they weren't too friendly with the US anymore.
If you assume the worst possible scenario,
that it actually does expose the identities of people involved
in intelligence operations, or even
have the appearance of being involved in intelligence
operations by being employees of consulates, missions,
and embassies abroad, then you have the very real possibility
that lives will be lost.
Adrian, can I ask you a question?
If it had just been the video, just
the video that had been released a few months ago,
and not the 260,000 classified documents,
what would you have done then?
Absolutely not.
And I'm not going to win any friends in the federal
government by saying this.
But in some ways.
You wouldn't have turned him in, you're saying?
Say again?
You wouldn't have turned him in based on just the video?
When I knew about the video, I did not
contact anybody regarding his activities.
I didn't think that there was anything to be gained by it.
When it was the documents, I thought
that there was a possibility that they could be recovered,
or at the very least that there could be a reduced probability
that they would be released if the government had
the opportunity to take prompt action.
And I know that this isn't a crowd that's always
friendly towards the government.
Hell, I haven't always been friendly
towards the government.
To this day, I'm not friendly towards all arms
of the government.
Thank you.
And I explicitly requested that no FBI agents that
were involved in investigating hackers,
that nobody that was involved in anything
except for investigating computer crimes involved
in being classified national security systems,
be involved in the investigation.
Those are my terms.
That was the only way that I was going
to sit down with any investigators and talk to them.
And they're like, that's it?
Well, sure.
And it was a surprisingly pleasant undertaking in the sense
that I was never coached.
When I didn't remember something from the logs, nobody said,
well, are you sure it couldn't have been this way?
Are you sure it couldn't have been that way?
They simply said, OK, we're going to redact that
from the affidavit then.
I think that the government behaved themselves
better than a lot of people would give them credit for.
To set the record clear, I'm not an informant.
I'm a witness in a criminal case.
It's not that different, in my eyes,
from being a witness in any other case that could involve
potential loss of life.
Even though it's been a pleasant experience for you working
with the government on this, I guess.
But Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker,
is currently sitting in prison in Kuwait, I believe.
And he could be locked up for the rest of his life.
How do you feel about that?
I think that it's a little bit ludicrous
to say that Bradley Manning is going to be tortured.
We don't do that to our citizens.
That's still open to debate, let's put it that way.
And it depends on your definition of torture.
Let him answer the question.
How do you feel about whatever state
you think he's in right now, because of your actions?
He's not far from where he was to begin with,
when he signed up for an all-volunteer army,
signed the forms indicating that he would handle
classified material appropriately.
He took, even if you're just talking
about the video, the colloquially called
collateral murder video, he took it
from a JAG, the Judge Advocate General's Office,
Officer's computer.
That indicates that they were investigating it,
most likely, at that time, and he could
have compromised that investigation.
So if there was a war criminal involved here,
they could walk free because evidence
was compromised as a result of Mr. Manning's actions.
I'm not sure what people are applauding for there.
War criminals walking free, or, I don't know.
Adrian.
People, okay, listen, no shouting out.
If you want to ask a question, step up to the microphones.
No one's at the microphone now.
People on the panel, ask Adrian whatever you want.
Yeah, I'd like to interject for a second.
There's one thing that I'm not really understanding,
that I'm dying to know, and I'm sure many people
in the audience are dying to know,
is why you're a witness.
A person that, I mean, in my estimation,
is of no particular import to this case whatsoever.
Why did this soldier approach you with this information?
That's what I'm not understanding.
I think only Mr. Manning can really answer that question.
I don't know what was going through his mind, necessarily.
He indicated that, well, I'm gonna backtrack
a little bit again.
Didn't he contact you because you were in Wired Magazine
and he saw you and thought that you'd be a friend to him?
He indicated that he had seen my name
in a search on Twitter for WikiLeaks.
And the reason for that is that I have been
a long-time supporter of WikiLeaks and Amt this day.
I believe that the mission is important.
I think that they should continue to go forward,
and I think that they should focus on oppressive regimes
throughout the world.
Is anyone in this room being oppressed right now?
Yes!
Well, not by us, I hope.
All right.
We have some audience questions.
Let's start with the first one,
and please, no speeches.
Make it short, succinct.
Let's try not to shout anybody down.
Let's hear what we have to say.
Go ahead.
So, I appreciate your willingness to stand up in front
and talk to us, but the stuff that I'm hearing you say,
and I'm talking to Adrian here, in case that wasn't clear,
the stuff that I'm hearing you say
has a lot of American exceptionalism in it.
Like, you seem to think that American lives
are worth more than the lives that, for example,
were being taken in the collateral murder video.
I want to know how you justify that.
Actually, I haven't said that at all.
What I've said is that there may have been
war criminals involved, those being the helicopter pilots.
I wasn't there.
I can't say for sure,
but that there was apparently an investigation going on
based on the fact that the video was found
in the computer of an officer
of the judicial branch of the military,
and that that investigation may have been compromised.
So, if anything, I'm saying that there were Americans
involved who may have been involved in misconduct
based on looking at the video.
I would encourage people throughout the audience
to look at it in its full unedited form,
but nevertheless, even in its unedited form,
it does appear somewhat damning.
You're not answering my question
about why you think that the potential American lives,
say, tourists in other countries,
who might feel worse or might be more scared
because people think Americans are jerks
because our actual activities are being exposed.
All right, we're not listening to you.
My question is, why you thought those were privileged
above the lives that we are taking every day
in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Why are you willing to privilege the lives of?
Because those are the lives that I have the opportunity
to try to affect positively.
I am not holding a machine gun.
I'm not sitting in Afghanistan.
I'm not shooting at people
that are in their own hearts and minds
trying to follow their own conscience,
be it a misguided or be it a correct action.
I don't have standing to say.
There's a very good quote that a friend of mine
who of all things is a little league umpire
uses very often when one of his calls is questioned
and that's, well, okay, I appreciate your input,
but what did you see from where I was standing?
And generally speaking, the answer is not a damn thing
because they were in the bleachers.
All right, let's move on to the next question.
Okay, so I'm pretty much like stepping up as a follow-up
because I do not think that you understood
what the guy before me asked.
The problem is that your political viewpoint,
your viewpoint and why you acted like you acted
is highly US-centric.
That's the point.
It's not about that you want to, whatever, it's US-centric.
It's I'm from Europe.
I do not care about the US government
and actually I do not care.
And I don't give a shit about my government
because I think that nation states are crap, okay?
And we should not in any way support nation states
in whatever they do in their bullshit, okay?
I mean, we are a community of hackers.
We are internationalists, okay?
And we should work together and cooperate
and not just like blame some guy
because he actually really did the right thing.
The right thing means, I mean,
we didn't start the stupid war here.
Come on, it's their shit they did, okay?
All right, all right, quiet back there.
So I might sound a little bit naive here,
but I think that we should focus
on an international point of view
and not about what's good for the United States, okay?
Okay, we're gonna break in here.
We've got a much longer excerpt,
but we don't have enough time to go through it all.
We wanna be able to explain what it is
that people are hearing here on the radio.
And this is the talk, the most controversial talk
I think we've ever given at the HOPE Conference
where Adrian Lamo, the guy who turned in Bradley Lamming
to the military.
I'm sorry, all these names are getting to me.
Bradley Manning to the military officials
for allegedly being the leaker to WikiLeaks
of the collateral murder video among other items.
Yeah, he was there in front of an angry crowd,
but he did have his supporters too.
I don't know if you're able to hear that,
but there were people who were actually applauding
some of the things he said.
So I think that just goes to show
this is a highly contentious issue.
And here we are right smack in the middle of it.
It's front page news everywhere around the world.
And we had scheduled our keynote address
to be given by the head of WikiLeaks.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to make it to the country
because it was not safe for him to travel here.
And it still is not safe for him to travel here.
But Adrian Lamo did show up and defended himself
why he did what he did.
And of course, took a lot of questions.
We're offering that video along with 14 other videos
for a pledge tonight to 212-209-2950.
You can find out what our friend Johannes really said
behind all those beeps that we had to insert there.
That was Johannes from Austria
who had the last question there.
But there are so many others.
There's the entire presentation that Adrian gave.
There's also presentations by Bernie S.
and FiberOptic and Kevin Mitnick
talking about what it means
to have an informant in your midst,
the prevalence of informants in the hacker world
and snitches and narcs and stool pigeons
and all kinds of things like that.
And wow, our number's just shot up.
How about that?
I hope that's not a typo.
Well, that's great.
That might make up for last week then.
But our switchboard is empty right now.
You just heard one of the most riveting talks,
I think, that we've ever had at a HOPE conference.
It's yours for a pledge of $75 along with 14 others,
which is simply incredible.
And they're all really good.
212-209-2950.
And in addition to that, you get the Off The Hook t-shirt.
Now, if you want 30 of the talks, 30 DVDs,
actually a little bit more than 30 DVDs,
it's 125-212-209-2950.
And you get the Off The Hook t-shirt.
And if you want everything,
you want the entire HOPE experience, 100 plus DVDs,
212-209-2950 pledge, $250.
And you'll get that plus the Off The Hook t-shirt.
What do you guys think of what you just heard?
Anybody wanna, Mike?
Well, I just wanted to remind our listeners
that we got 10 minutes left,
and I see no reason why we shouldn't get 10 pledges
in that time.
212-209-2950.
There's our first one right there.
There's one.
Okay, Mike got one.
Now, who wants to get the second one?
Come on, come on.
All right, Nick, go ahead.
Well, let's not forget that in addition
to getting all of the talks for HOPE
for roughly $2 a talk,
you're supporting this program,
which has been around for how many years now?
Well, we first started in 1988 as a special,
and we've been around pretty consistently
since the early 90s.
And without your support, will we be around next week?
Well, you know, that's the thing.
If we did badly tonight,
we could get preempted with one of those programs
that has been proven to raise money.
And what we're trying to do here
in our particular time slot,
and I know there's all kinds of people
that walk up to me and say,
I can't believe I just heard on the radio station,
I can't believe what they're offering as premiums.
Okay, but during this hour,
how do you feel about what we offered?
And is it worth supporting that?
And if a lot of people support what we offer
and you think that's a good thing,
does that not send a message?
It sends a pretty good message, I think,
that quality premiums, quality programs
are things that are valued.
So if you believe that either of those hold true here,
that we're offering quality premiums,
that we have a quality program in Off The Hook,
give us a call now, 212-209-2950.
Your call is a vote for that kind of thing,
a vote against something else
maybe replacing us next week or in the future.
212-209-2950, we have all kinds of Hope DVDs tonight,
and we wanna hear from you,
we wanna know that you're out there.
Voltaire, go ahead.
No, no.
No, okay, change your mind.
Dot Red.
I think what you said, though,
really highlights why people should actually pledge.
You know, you're getting so emotional
about something you hear.
If you listen to a lot of the other stations on the air,
just fly around the dial,
most of what you're hearing,
any of the opinions you hear,
or even the music you hear,
is the exact same thing over and over again.
Two calls.
The fact that listening to WBAI,
you get to hear things that you won't otherwise get to hear,
and a lot of times it might be contentious issues,
like the panel you just heard.
Yeah, and that's sort of what the hacker world stands for,
is open debate and addressing issues head-on
and not pretending that something doesn't exist
when it clearly does.
We were in a situation at The Next Hope
where we had all these elements sort of coming together,
and we decided to just sort of throw it all into the mix
and see what happened,
have the discussion right there in front of everybody,
and a lot of minds were not changed,
but at least we had some open dialogue,
and I think that's always a good thing.
Nick?
There's an off-the-hook listener out there
who has never pledged to WBAI.
Yes.
I know you're out there.
I know who that is.
And I know your conscience is now weighing down upon you.
If you've never pledged before, now is the time.
And when are you ever going to get
such a ridiculously great deal on the Hope DVDs
and have a clean conscience
knowing that you've done your part
to not only keep off-the-hook on the air,
but to keep WBAI on the air?
We're up to $1,900.
That's really, really good.
Much, much better than last week, that's for sure.
But let's get it over the 2,000 mark,
and you can help us do that by calling 212-209-2950,
getting the DVD you just heard,
the Adrian Lamo and the informants panel,
and the Wikileaks.
You'll get the Wikileaks keynote address.
You'll get the Dan Kaminsky keynote address.
You'll get social engineering and the phone freak panel.
You'll get the food hacking talk.
What else we got here?
We've got privacy is dead, get over it with Steve Rambam.
You'll get own your phone.
You'll get the lockpicking talk,
all sorts of things like that.
That's for a pledge of $75, you'll get 15 DVDs.
For a pledge of 125, you'll get 30.
For a pledge of 250, you'll get them all,
which is over 100.
Bernie, I know you have something to say.
Yeah, I wanted to also thank you
for putting that panel together
for 90 minutes of really stimulating debate
about really current affairs going on
that affects all of us.
And I wanted to say that every one of these talks
that was given at HOPE expands on some topic
that we probably touched on here on Off The Hook.
We only have 60 minutes
and only about five minutes to go for this show.
So I just want to remind listeners to call 212-209-2950.
But we can't spend a whole hour
talking about one topic on this show.
There's just not enough time.
But here, you have an opportunity to get DVDs
from the HOPE Conference
that really distill a whole topic down
into one hour of really interesting information
you're not gonna be able to get anywhere else.
There's three different levels.
You can get different DVDs.
But the main thing is to support the station,
which is the only venue that's gonna broadcast
this kind of information.
Please call 212-209-2950.
We only have a few minutes to go.
And we have three calls on the line.
So thank you, Bernie,
for bringing in an additional call there.
Now, Mike, I believe you said you wanted 10 calls.
And I think if we count the ones
that have already been processed,
we've gone through about five so far.
So we're halfway there.
We're halfway through the time allotted.
So we're on pace.
Well, we're on pace.
We only have five minutes left.
And time is, of course, our biggest enemy.
I wanted to play more
of the Adrian Lambeau Informants panel.
I wanted to play more excerpts from different panels.
And, of course, in the panel itself,
we could have had this panel for six hours,
but it was only 90 minutes.
But we do the best we can.
Help us out by giving us a call
on the time that we have left, 212-209-2950.
We have a small number of people to thank
because they're so overloaded down there.
Ken Gale, who's dealing with the premiums this week,
walked in with a big pile of papers,
and he said, all these people wanna remain anonymous.
And then he handed me three names
that I can read on the air.
He always does that.
He brings in the anonymous ones
and tells us not to read the names.
I guess we can just wave the paper in the air or something.
Well, I sent them away,
so we didn't read them by accident.
But we do wanna thank Robert,
who's from Bloomfield, New Jersey,
Jesse, who's from Astoria,
and a special thanks to William
and the 2600 Group in Omaha.
All right, and thanks to all those people
still down the hall.
Your paperwork hasn't made it down here yet,
and probably won't before we're off the air tonight.
But our number is 212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line right now.
Let's make that five in the time that we have left,
which is not much time at all.
Once again, $75 pledge gets you 15 DVDs
from the recently concluded Next Hope Conference,
including the informants panel and the phone freak panel,
the keynotes and social engineering, various other things.
A pledge of 125 gets you 30 DVDs,
30 hour-long DVDs, and a pledge of $250
gets you over 100 DVDs from the Next Hope.
212-209-2950, all pledges, 35 and above.
Get the off-the-hook t-shirt in the size of your choice.
Nick.
For those people who are listening
after the live broadcast, can they pledge afterwards?
Can they call the same number and?
They can pledge afterwards,
but they can't get this premium afterwards,
unless it's within five minutes of our show ending.
We can only offer this during this period.
That's one of the sad facts
of offering something this good.
And that's a very big point to make,
is that after five minutes, you may not be able to get this.
You may not hear this premium again next week.
Yeah, you have to strike while the iron is hot.
And if you're one of the people that Nick talked about
who's listened to the show for years and never called in,
these last five minutes might be your last chance
to get these talks for so discounted.
Yeah, yeah, it's an incredibly good price.
Okay, we've crossed over the 2,000 mark.
We wanna thank those people.
We have four calls on the line.
There's still time for you to take advantage
of this incredible deal, 212-209-2950.
Nick, I know I wanted to very quickly have you mention
this crazy project you're involved in,
but you have to do it in like 30 seconds.
Can you do that? Oh, that's fine.
I'm gonna be traveling across the country,
dropping off cases of Club Mate.
And for more information on that,
you can go to hackersonaplane.info.
And if we get your pledge in the next minute,
I'll deliver it. Don't, don't, don't.
Okay, I won't, I'm sorry.
I was going to.
Yeah, there's no way that can work out for you.
But what's the address again is hackersonaplane.info.
Okay, and it's actually at Club Mate
throughout the entire country.
All right, and a bit of sad news to close on.
Our good friend, Ted Stevens was, as you heard,
killed in a plane crash.
Yeah, he was the guy who called the internet a truck
or whatever.
And we wanna go out with this,
even though I've already played this piece this year.
All right, we'll see you next week.
212-209-2950, oth at 2600.com.
Good night.
Something that you just dump something.
The internet is not,
the internet is not a big truck.
The internet.
Streaming stuff under the internet.
Why?
Tubes.
The internet is tubes.
Connections, consumers, massive commercial purposes.
Big truck, long distance.
It's tubes, tangled up tubes.
Enormous series of tubes.
Your own personal internet.
World wide web.
The internet is tubes.
Tubes can be filled, and if they're filled,
the internet is gonna be a series of tubes.
The internet is not,
the internet is not a big truck.
The internet is not something
that you just dump something on.
I wanna make sure people understand my position.
This system,
these people are asking for regulation, okay?
I just the other day got internet,
was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday.
I got it yesterday.
So if we wanna talk about the consumer,
let's talk about you and me.
Mr. Chairman.
Yes, sir.
I'm sorry.
I thought you were finished, I'm sorry.
No, I'm not finished.
These people are massively invading
this world of the internet.
Why?
Tubes.
The internet is tubes.
Providers, consumers.
Movies delivered to your house.
Big truck, small business.