Tune in tomorrow for a special Thanksgiving Day documentary on America's black farmers.
Thanks for listening and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
In Washington, D.C., I'm Leigh Ann Caldwell.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI-New York.
The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
So tell us how many people from the states took part in this and what was your agenda
for the most part, itinerary?
Yeah, so there were 10 of us from around the world.
People from Belgium, Vietnam, Australia, and the United States.
And it was put together by Hackers on a Plane.
Nick Farr has been organizing these for a while to try to bring hackers together from
around the planet to collaborate and move the whole scene forward.
And it's been amazing what he's done.
And this trip, I think, really helped a lot of Japanese hackers realize that they're not
alone.
So that was part of our agenda to push that and also to do a fundraiser for the Tokyo Hacker
Space.
They have about maybe half the number of members they need to break even at this point.
And we did a fundraiser day for them.
I did a workshop where a whole bunch of people came who wouldn't have otherwise.
We had an auction that raised a lot of money with a bunch of things that people donated
of hacker interest.
And then we had a dinner and a party.
So all together, we raised over 130,000 yen, which I think is over $1,500.
You had me standing up for a second there.
Wow.
That was awesome.
But that's good, too.
That's really good.
Yeah.
So yeah, it was a lot of fun.
It got a lot of attention around Japan, got a lot of buzz.
I got national TV coverage while I was at the Maker Faire, interviewed by TV.
I just love it that someone who turns off TV for a living gets interviewed on TV a lot.
That got good coverage and mention for the hacker spaces as well.
A question for you, Mitch.
I assume you watch yourself on TV after you've been interviewed.
Do you get really enraged if somebody turns it off in the middle of that?
Oh, no, no.
I encourage it.
Okay.
All right.
I'll remember that.
Yeah, yeah.
Please do.
So actually, the only way I watch it is if someone sends me a link and it happens to
be on YouTube, which is the case this time.
If you're interested, do a search for Tokyo MX, Mary X-Ray, on YouTube.
So yeah, and so we went to a bunch of places around Tokyo and a bunch of places around
Osaka.
And there was like going to Hiroshima, even though I'd been to Japan a bunch, it was
the first time I went there.
Wow.
Talk about emotionally powerful.
One of the things that's really interesting there is there's just one of these little
statues with a red bib that survived the blast right at ground zero a few meters away.
It just happened to be right under it, so it survived.
And there's a shadow of the blast still there.
And for some reason, that's just this very peaceful little statue sitting there in the
midst of all that chaos.
And then there were a bunch of Japanese school kids.
Every time they saw a foreigner, they'd come up and ask us to write a message of peace
on these sheets that they have.
And it was just really wonderful that people have taken something so tremendously awful
and turned it into a place of hope.
Wow.
Well, I hope we can learn something from that and do similar such things maybe in places
around here as well.
So it sounds like an awesome time, very educational and inspiring to many people to hopefully
do similar things like that in years to come in other parts of the world.
And I'd certainly like to see what's going on over there as far as hackerspaces.
On the subject, GMC here from Holland has been touring the United States, visiting all
number of hackerspaces, an incredible number.
Have you counted how many you've actually seen?
Someone asked me how many I visited, but that's a while ago.
Then it was 15.
So I think I must be on 20, 25 or something, actually more than I ever visited in Europe
in total.
And you've basically, you've done the West Coast.
You drove all the way across the country, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and now New York.
And now I'm in New York.
Yeah.
And it's not over yet.
No, no.
I've got two more weeks.
I'm going to go down to Washington, D.C. and some places in between.
And then finally end in Miami, where there's also a space apparently.
Wow.
That is something.
Are they in particular that stand out, memorable places?
What I especially liked were the smaller hackerspaces.
There was one in Portland, Brain Silo.
That was a really great space with a really fun group.
I also liked L.A. a lot.
There's a hackerspace there, Null Space Labs, and they are really good at electronics.
We walked in there and, well, before we knew it, they had this soldering SMD electronics
and we had the blinking beds and that was really cool.
That was one that really stood out.
Actually, what I'm seeing is that it's mostly the smaller towns, the smaller cities where
there's the most community around the hackerspaces somehow.
So that's something I've been noticing.
Now, you're involved in a hackerspace called, I believe, RevSpace in The Hague in the Netherlands.
Tell us something about how that came about.
Well, as you know, I've been involved with Hacking at Random, HARA 2009, an event last
year in the Netherlands.
One of the co-coordinators, I believe.
Sorry?
One of the co-coordinators, I believe.
Yeah, right.
We're one of the prime suspects, yeah, and we're already planning for the next one.
So when that was done, I basically fell in sort of a black hole and I thought, well,
wouldn't it be cool to have something like HARA, but then every day where I could go.
So I just started the hackerspace and asked people in my town.
You just started the...
I mean, how do you just start a hackerspace?
What's involved?
Oh, it's really simple.
You come up with a name.
You email people you know that are interested in electronics, hacking, computer, IT sec,
whatever.
And, well, somehow they show up at the first meeting and you make plans and before you
know it, you have a space and things kick off and basically it's like HARA.
Things start to happen once you do the first step.
Is that what you found happened in places around the States where people just started
hackerspaces pretty much the same way you did?
Oh, definitely.
Yeah.
It's basically you need two or three people who, well, think it's a good idea and that
will attract other people.
And before you know it, it starts rolling.
That's the general pattern.
As far as expense though, because that's always the primary issue for most people, how do
you get over that hurdle of paying the rent, finding the space in the first place, whatever
other expenses come up?
Oh, there's a lot of ways to go about it.
Sometimes the building is owned by one of the co-conspirators, so to say.
That's handy.
The building's owned already by one of the...
Exactly.
Yeah.
Or they have, like in Las Vegas, it was a really cool group.
They just start a hackerspace within their garage, which is a great space and they already
had a lot of equipment.
And that's a nice stepping stone, so to say.
Once you have a space, members will come and at some point the garage will be too small,
but then that means there's membership dues that you can use to actually rent something.
And so you can expand that.
That's one way.
Another way is to get the building for free, which is what I did in The Hague.
You see, you can do things like that in Holland.
You can just get a building for free and you can just plop yourself someplace and all
these things, all these nice things keep happening.
Here in the States, it doesn't work that way.
You get all kinds of penalties and you're encouraged not to do certain things like this.
I would love to have a building for free.
That would be great.
So if anybody out there has buildings to give us, we'll start all kinds of hackerspaces
and better things too.
Email oth at 2600.com.
Let us know the dimensions of your building and where it is and how to get there and we'll
scope it out.
What's better than a hackerspace?
Radio stations.
Radio stations and hackerspaces.
You can combine them.
Yeah, you can have a radio station.
A big Lego room where you can build all kinds of things.
All this is possible in a hackerspace.
Something like rocket ships.
We could do some experimentation with those.
We've done it.
Yeah, those cars that you drive with radio remote things and those helicopters that you
can use to spy on people now.
Or no, a play pit like at Peggy Chase's.
You can have one of those too, Voltaire.
I promise.
Yeah, all sorts of things.
So, okay, so you get buildings given to you in Holland.
Well, yeah, we are lending it from the city.
It's a long story, but...
You mean they're lending it to you.
At some point...
The city says have this building for a particular amount of time and you can actually...
They wanted to tear it down, but the economy went down.
So all the plans for the area that we are in were put on hold.
So they have a lot of empty property there and empty property attracts problems.
So they say, well...
So this isn't a case where it was a squat.
You didn't just move in and refuse to leave.
They actually gave it to you.
We have a contract and everything, but things like that, maybe not in New York.
If you look at, let me think, Buffalo, also in New York, state of New York.
Every building is vacant in Buffalo.
Exactly.
So...
No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
Oh, but it's true.
Buffaloians are going to be writing in now.
But you got to admit there are a lot of vacant buildings in...
And Detroit.
You've been to Detroit, right?
What do you think of that city?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I know we have listeners in Detroit and they're great listeners, but
boy, you know, that city, I think we can all agree, could use some sprucing up and some
new life injected.
That's interesting.
But the good thing is that the Hackerspace gets a lot of cool equipment for free or for
really cheap.
I can't imagine just dumpster diving in that city alone.
You'll probably find all sorts of things.
Yes.
My great aunt or my mom inherited her house in Buffalo and instead of getting money for
selling it, she had to pay somebody to buy it.
She had to pay?
That doesn't make any sense.
She sold it away for free.
But with legal fees and everything, it came to like $1,600.
Really?
To get it off her hands.
Yeah.
Why didn't the person who was getting it for free pay the fee?
Because they were supposed to pay rent, but they were not even paying the rent.
Welcome to America.
All right.
It's the rest of us.
That's how things work here.
Okay.
So today is Opt Out Day.
We all know what that means.
No.
Yes.
Do we know what that means?
Yes.
GMC, you don't know what that means?
No, I'm not familiar.
Basically, we have this wonderful organization known as the TSA.
Oh.
It was part of bigger government that Bush made with Homeland Security and TSA and all
that.
He basically expanded government beyond belief.
Wait, I thought the Republicans were part of smaller government.
Republicans do it all the time.
I can't keep track of these people.
And this is a perfect example.
If Republicans want to get rid of big government, start with Homeland Security and TSA.
And gay rights.
That's not a government department.
No, but they wanted to remove gay rights and they said they're for small government.
We'll get into that.
Anyway.
Another show at another time.
But today was the day when people were basically going to refuse to go back to work.
They were going to go back to work.
They were going to go back to work.
They were going to go back to work.
They were going to go back to work.
And what you're supposed to do, or what you were supposed to do, was simply say, no, I'd
rather not go through that.
I'd rather go for the invasive groping instead, which the TSA has given as an alternative.
Now, I've talked to a number of people today who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
I've talked to a number of people who have been traveling.
to the building where WBI is host.
Yeah, somehow none of us were on the list tonight.
And we had quite a time getting into the building.
But you had an easier time getting through security.
I was through it in like 15 minutes.
I got to the airport two hours early
because I'm like, I'm flying to the United States.
It's the day before Thanksgiving.
It's going to be terrible.
And I was through it in 15 minutes.
Now, I had a friend who went to Costa Rica today from JFK,
where they were doing all the groping.
And I know that sounds horrible, but it's true.
And he basically arrived very early
and reported that there were three people in front of him
in line.
Everybody was very polite.
There were no backscatter machines anywhere
and no groping.
And he had four hours to kill at the airport as a result.
Well, I don't know why you got there that early.
Because of the media.
Because of the media has been saying
that it's going to be madness.
And it can be madness, certainly,
if they implement silly security schemes like this.
I flew out of JFK not that long ago
to get to the place where I flew back from today.
And there were no X-ray naked scanners in sight either.
Obviously, not every airline is going to have them.
Not every terminal is going to have the same machines.
It would be nice, actually, if we reported
where the machines were.
And then people could book their airline tickets
based on what kind of security they prefer to go through.
That would be kind of nice.
Well, they are not, at least presently,
in terminals two and three at JFK.
All right, we can report that.
Terminals two and three, you heard it here.
Whatever airlines fly out of there,
if you don't want to deal with backscatter
or if you want to pack something into your underwear,
apparently.
Someone clear this up for me, please.
The underwear bomber of December 25, 2009
packed explosives into his underwear.
Are we saying there's no way to detect that
with current security measures?
Yes, that's true.
You can stick explosives somewhere
and nothing will detect it?
Well, what he did is he filled a cylinder
and put it in his crotch filled with PETN, which
is a plastic explosive.
And these X-ray scanning machines
cannot detect PETN plastic.
They do have, in some of the airport, all the airports,
they have these sniffer things.
I mean, they don't sniff your crotch.
They take, like if they think some of your luggage
has explosives, you've seen them do that.
They rub a swab across it and they put the swab
into this sensor machine, which is like a dosimeter or something.
I don't know, a mass spectrometer.
And it sees if you have any traces of explosives
or whatever.
But if you're wearing them in your body,
there's no way to test this, nor is there any way
to test this if it's inserted into a body orifice, which
was done in Saudi Arabia recently to blow up somebody.
So this is all security theater.
It's really pointless.
Couldn't I hide something in my socks just as easily?
They don't grope your feet, do they?
You know, they put their fingers around your ankles
and move all the way up to your crotch.
So if you don't like it.
Yeah, but I'm saying the soles of my feet.
What if I had all the explosives there?
Couldn't they, couldn't that get?
Oh, they take your, when you have to take your shoes off.
Yeah, but not my socks.
That's my point.
I'm not trying to give ideas to people.
I'm just saying this is ineffectual if this
is what they're going for.
That's a good point.
A good place to hide stuff is in your socks.
Oh boy, I didn't mean it to come out like that.
But all right, Voltaire.
What if you have a prosthetic foot?
Well, people do have prosthetic feet
and all kinds of other things.
And they apparently are being forced to take them off
and have them inspected and all manner of things like that.
There are a number of challenges, of course,
going on with this.
I know Electronic Privacy Information Center
is fighting this kind of thing.
Bernie, do you know something more about what they're doing?
Yeah, several weeks ago, actually a few months ago,
Epic, Mark Ruttenberg's outfit, Electronic Privacy Information
Center, they sued TSA on various grounds,
including it violates people's Fourth Amendment rights
to be scanned by these x-ray machines, which basically
provide the government with an image of your naked body
under your clothes.
And they were able to obtain the specifications of these machines
and indicate that these machines have a built-in feature that
allows the image data to be stored and exported.
Yet, despite that, this morning, TSA director John Pistol,
that's right, it's spelled P-I-S-T-O-L,
pronounced like pistol.
That's really his name.
His name is Pistol.
You better not utter the director of the TSA's
last name at an airport check-in,
because you'd be trying to get a handcuff.
But anyway, he said on Good Morning America
this morning, he said that these scanners are not
capable of storing images or transmitting the images.
And then during the same interview,
he said the images are deleted once the TSA officer determines
the passenger is not a threat.
Deleted from where?
From his imagination?
They have to be stored someplace to be deleted?
Exactly.
Both statements can't be true.
The TSA, I think, is lying to the public
to mollify our legitimate privacy concerns.
They can't even get their story straight.
Never trust a guy named Pistol.
That's what I get out of this.
What a pistol he is.
We actually had that in the Netherlands as well.
We've been having these scanners for a while already.
And in the beginning, they said, well, we
are not storing any images.
But then it turned out they are.
And so there's a big database with all kinds of naked images.
How did people react to that in the Netherlands?
Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of uproar, actually.
That's strange.
Same here.
A lot of people say, oh, it's worth it
for the price of security.
And I have to wonder, at what point do they say,
no, this is going too far?
I disagree.
This has been the whiniest response I've heard out
of Americans in a long time.
Well, I'm quoting the polls, that if you
ask people at airports, the majority of people
apparently say, oh, it's no problem.
I have nothing to hide, apparently.
That's because it depends how you phrase that question.
If you say, if you phrase it as enhanced pat-downs,
then people are fine with it.
Because they think that's just what they've been doing before.
But if you phrase it as actual groping,
where they actually touch your junk,
then they're not OK with it.
Interesting.
Daurad.
Yeah, but with all this going on,
I think that's kind of what they're expecting.
I mean, yeah, Mike says, this is a pretty whiny response
we've gotten.
But so far, there hasn't been outrage over it.
I think they're hoping that, like elsewhere,
it's just going to take it, and then they'll just
be told later that we're doing things
we didn't tell you about, that we lied to you about.
But it's OK.
Again, I disagree.
I've heard far more outrage over this,
which is bad, than I've heard over far more egregious things.
Yeah, we were talking about this recently,
where it just seems that it's because people
are being touched in private parts
that everyone is outraged about this.
And they let the First Amendment things go a lot easier.
And that's unfortunate.
I think it's actually because this really directly affects
people with the means to fly, which
is a different class of people than the government usually
focuses its nastiness on.
Well, then that leads me to my next point.
How come we're just limiting this to airplanes?
What about trains?
What about buses?
What about schools?
What about churches?
People can blow themselves up there as well.
And isn't that just as bad?
But schools already have a lot of these features.
You know, a lot of these things you're talking about,
I already was going through in high school every day,
going through metal detectors and getting pulled aside
by somebody having my shoes taken off, my belt taken off.
Well, actually, I just took the belt off
before you go through the extradition.
Did they grope?
Was there groping involved?
They tried not to touch you, because everyone, they're
minors.
But they would get as close as they possibly could
with various implements.
It is very interesting.
GMT?
I haven't actually taken a train in America.
But when I was in Toronto in Canada,
the station looked a lot like an airport, actually.
There were lines where you had to check in
and gates where you had to go through.
So maybe, maybe, I don't know.
You're touring the US, and you went to Canada,
and you came back to the US as a Dutch citizen.
Did you have any trouble doing that?
Actually, no.
Well, they went through my stuff,
but that's all, actually.
How come you, a foreign citizen, has
less trouble getting into this country than I do,
and I live here?
I heard the story.
I don't understand that.
Yes, Mitch?
Yeah, so in Japan, while I was there, APEC was going on.
And all of the train stations had notices everywhere,
and announcements saying that we were on heightened security
level high, which sounds to me a lot like threat level orange
here.
Heightened level high.
I like the sound of that.
And they have those in red letters.
So APEC going on, they decided there had to be high security.
After APEC was totally over, they
kept the signs up and all the police around with huge sticks.
I guess they don't carry guns there.
The police don't carry guns.
But huge sticks, and they stand on these high stools
politely and look sort of threatening.
But after it was all over, they kept all the signs up
and all the police with their big sticks,
but they didn't say any reason now.
They just said we're at a heightened security level high.
So just like in the United States,
every time I've ever been to an airport,
and I've been to a lot of them, it's
always at a security threat level orange.
And I don't know anyone who's ever heard of a different threat
level color.
It's just part of the game.
It's mission creep where they say it's only temporary,
and then they keep it.
Yeah, that's pretty much the modus operandi of most
governments, I think.
So I took a train in Spain last week,
and they have a big, really large, actually,
x-ray scanner that you have to put your luggage through.
But there's no metal detectors, so you can carry anything
you want on your person.
It seems very half-baked.
And they only have these scanners
in the major stations.
You can board the same train in a smaller station
without even the x-ray.
I don't really know what they're thinking.
They're making theater.
Yeah, they certainly are.
OK, I'd like to actually address Mike's point
about the whiny response and have some more whining here,
because there is a lot of backlash against this.
But in the interest of equal time,
I'd like to give some airtime to our conservative friends, who
are also outraged by this, and hear what they have to say.
This is an important angle to look at.
All caps.
This is from my conservative action alert
that I get on a regular basis.
This is happening right now in the United States of America.
Men, women, and children at US airports
are being fondled, groped, and humiliated
by TSA agents working under the direction of our government.
I know you may be packing right now
to head out to see family for Thanksgiving.
Maybe you are taking a break from getting
the house ready for guests.
Whether you are traveling or staying at home,
please take a moment to read this
and let all of your loved ones know what is going
on at our nation's airports.
Quite simply, our freedoms are slipping away.
Little boys and girls are crying.
Mentally ill passengers are confused.
Parents are outraged.
And grandmothers are being touched in ways
they never could have imagined.
And the only crime they have committed is having a need
to board an airplane.
If you've been reading the news or watching television at all
over the past few days, certainly you've
seen some disturbing footage of TSA agents employing
state-sanctioned assault against American citizens.
There's a special button for you to click to blast faxes
to Congress telling them to stop the random, useless,
and unconstitutional abuse of American flyers.
And there are some examples here that I've
heard in the mainstream media.
A woman is forced to drink breast milk
to prove it isn't dangerous.
A man is left shaking and covered in urine
after an agent broke his urostomy bag
during an aggressive pat-down.
A breast cancer survivor is forced
to remove both prosthetic breasts for inspection.
An ABC News employee is demeaned as an agent
feels around in her underwear.
A small child screams, don't touch me,
and cries while an agent frisks him.
And his father stands around helpless.
I've heard many of these examples
right here on these airwaves on various other programs.
However, it continues.
Whether or not our government wants to admit it,
most terrorists are Middle Eastern males
between the ages of 18 and 35.
They're likely to have a paper trail
and travel back and forth to countries
that sponsor terrorists.
Using intelligence to find out information
about a passenger before they get to the airport
and employing behavioral profiling techniques
like they do in Israel would be more effective
than harassing legitimate American travelers.
Instead, the Obama administration,
his incompetent Homeland Security Secretary,
Janet Napolitano, and clueless thug,
John Pistol of the Transportation Safety Administration,
are pretending there is no U.S. Constitution
and trampling all over the rights of American citizens.
So as you see, what's happened here
is it's been turned into a political issue
against the Obama administration
where you know the same exact things
would have been happening, if not worse,
under the Bush administration.
What do you guys think of, a lot of hands raised, Rob.
Yeah, excuse me.
Can I assume that the same sort of messages
were going around four years ago
when it was their guy in charge
and the same stuff was happening?
I'm having trouble tracking those down.
I'm sure these people would not simply
have a partisan attack against only one side
and they, you know, against this
no matter who was doing it, Voltaire.
The conservatives that are pushing this issue are,
as you can see in the articles,
they had an agenda to institute racial profiling.
Well, I mean, I've heard this said by lots of people
from all different political spectrums
that look who the terrorists are.
Just profile these people and subject them
to the intensive searches and the invasive searches.
I've even heard liberals say this kind of a thing.
Mike, you have a response?
But it doesn't even work because you can have people
of any ethnicity with crazy ideology.
Timothy McVeigh is a great example.
Exactly. Or a terrible example.
And so it doesn't work.
How do you catch Timothy McVeigh?
How do you catch people who kill abortion doctors?
How do you catch all manner of terrorists
who don't fit that description?
The underwear bomber was not a Middle Easterner.
From the Sudan or something.
What was it, Nigeria?
Kenya or something.
Kenya?
Yeah, it was definitely not.
He was the son of a Nigerian banker.
Maybe we should profile it for that.
Yeah, so profiling, you know, if profiling did work
and you were a terrorist, don't you think maybe
you'd start changing the profile a little bit
so that you would catch them unawares?
It's not hard to do.
The conservatives that are peddling this,
making this shit out of this,
are forgetting that the head of the lobbyists,
the chief lobbyist for the company
that sells these machines is Michael Chertoff,
who is the head of Hulam Security.
Just to respond to Voltaire's statement of ulterior motives
is I don't think it's necessarily, you know,
people trying to use this situation as a way
to create rage against, you know, say, Obama administration.
There's something happening that annoys a lot of people
and different groups are looking at it
from their particular perspective.
Yeah, conservative people, they're not gonna like Obama,
but you're gonna have liberal people
that don't like what's happening as well.
It's just simply perspective.
Liberals will do just about anything
to distract you from the truth.
They want to avoid upsetting Muslims
and live in a politically correct world,
but they have no problem putting their hands down
women's pants, scaring little children,
or fondling grandparents.
I mean, it's just insanely funny, I think,
to see how they're attacking something that's a very basic,
something to be objecting to.
I don't know what the actual word for it is,
but yeah, it's being used for very partisan purposes.
Bernie, what do you think?
I think there's an opportunity here for all travelers
to send a message to the TSA.
I did a little bit of research.
Obviously, x-rays do not penetrate lead,
and I found that for $3.99,
you can get a roll of adhesive foil lead tape
that's a half inch wide,
and you could form that into alphanumeric message,
alphanumeric character strings,
and tape them inside your laptop bag,
inside your lining of your clothing, or whatever.
So when you go through the x-ray scanner,
you'll be like a billboard,
and you can send messages to the TSA.
And if enough of us do this,
we'll be playing our part in this security theater.
Well, if enough of us do this,
but do you really want to be walking through as a billboard,
get enough undue attention as it is?
Well, you know, we have to play along with the theater.
I think we should send messages that way.
It's not illegal to put messages in there,
but it's gonna give pause.
I think it would be fun.
If anybody wants to know where to get this lead tape,
you can email us at ot8 at 2600.com for $3.99.
Let me respond to that
with another story that happened fairly recently.
You might've heard about this.
There was this prank at Washington State University
where basically a bunch of students
and information technology staff members
were given another reason to remember the 5th of November.
Students and instructors arriving for class
on a Friday morning were greeted by a video message
automatically beamed onto projector screens
in more than two dozen classrooms.
The message was delivered by a hacker dressed up as V,
the Guy Fawkes-inspired antihero
of the 2006 movie, V for Vendetta,
and of course, real life.
After hacking into the university's academic media system,
which manages classroom presentation
and distance learning technology,
distance learning technology, I love it.
The as of yet unidentified culprit or culprits
programmed motorized screens to unfurl themselves
and schedule projectors to broadcast
the five minute long video once every hour.
The video, ostensibly a diatribe against campus squirrels
and a call to end student apathy,
interrupted lectures and cut off access
for distance learning students
until the IT staff was able to shut down the program
in the early afternoon.
They say traditional methods of shutting down
the software would not work.
Now they were afraid that the video was a precursor
to a larger system breach or even Guy Fawkes-esque violence.
Campus officials responded immediately to the hack.
They said the infected media system
was not attached to databases of students'
personal or financial information
and the threat to the larger university system
was quote unquote not very serious.
And although the video did not appear
to be threatening terrorist action,
the administration had to consider all the possibilities.
Now listen to this.
Listen to this quote by one of the administrators.
They say the investigation is still ongoing.
The responsible parties could face quote serious charges
unquote for their prank.
Here's the quote.
Childish pranks just don't have a place anymore.
What may have been seen as cute and clever years ago
really doesn't get that kind of reaction today.
Really, there's no place for childish pranks anymore.
Have we become that kind of a society
where we have no sense of humor
and because some of us have the wits scared out of us
on a daily basis, we can't do anything
that's even remotely prankish or fun or silly.
Rob.
If there's no longer a place for cute and clever,
then really who's one?
Not the cute and clever people, that's for sure.
Voltaire.
Whoever said that quote in the article deserves a pie.
You know, that would be perfect.
Do people still, you'd probably be arrested as a terrorist
if you pied somebody these days.
They pied Thomas Friedman a couple years ago
and that was pretty funny.
You know, I met Pie Man not too long ago.
He's the guy that actually,
I don't know why there was only one guy,
but he was the guy back in the 60s
that used to pie politicians and all kinds of people.
Was he the one that pied Bill Gates?
I don't know if he did.
He might have been retired by the time that happened.
Voltaire.
Not right.
This statement reminds me of the reports
we've been getting that people who oppose
this sort of stuff are getting flagged
on Department of Homeland Security lists
as disruptors and whatnot.
What's the term, Bernie?
Some new term they've come up with.
Oh, I read it.
I'm trying to remember.
It was something like-
Domestic extremists.
Domestic extremists.
Domestic extremists, yes.
We're a new label.
We're probably all on that list, by the way.
Actually, by the definition,
all of us here would be considered
these domestic extremists
because anyone who advocates or disrupts
these enhanced security feed.
I want to consider myself
more than just a domestic extremist.
Is there a way to expand that
to be just a global extremist, perhaps?
You technically are domestic and a foreigner
at the same time, so who knows?
Okay, I can live with that.
Mike?
As an extremist, I'm just curious
if there's more than one source for this story.
It seems to have appeared in this publication
that I've never heard of before.
That's why I say alleged reports.
We're talking about, you're not talking
about the Guy Fawkes stuff, you're talking about-
No, no, no, the Guy Fawkes I'm convinced about,
but the extremists.
Dead.
Well, I guess we can Google the name
and see how many other places,
not just quoting that story, pop up,
and maybe it's fiction.
Maybe it's simply another childish prank,
which there's no place for, folks, no place.
We just love being afraid nowadays.
That's much more fun than childish prank.
Well, fear is profit.
If you get people to be afraid,
you can get people to pay lots of money
to not be afraid.
Of course, it never actually works,
and then they keep paying more.
Isn't there a special word for the type of person
who tries to get other people to be afraid?
It's in the news a lot.
It's a politician, I thought.
It's a terrorist.
That's the one.
Oh, wow.
Never thought of that.
Okay, well, we have,
sticking with conservatives just for a little while,
this is something else that I think is just fun.
A listener sent this in.
This comes from Guppy.
I listened to the podcast of your show
from November the 10th.
In the segment where you talked about net neutrality
and the recent election defeats
for all the candidates who are net neutrality advocates,
yes, not one candidate running
who was in favor of net neutrality won.
Not one.
I wonder who was left in Congress
who was a friend to net neutrality.
Not all seats of Congress are up for grabs each election.
So yeah, there are probably a few people left there
that might dare to say something good about net neutrality.
While the defeats in the recent election
are certainly bad for net neutrality,
this week's show made it sound like
there is now zero support in Congress for net neutrality
as a result of the election.
I hope that's overstating the case,
but I'd really like to know who's left in office
who is on our side of this issue.
Does anybody, Voltaire, do you have the facts on this?
Yeah, there are quite a few people, actually.
By quite a few, do you mean the majority, or?
Three out of the five FCC commissioners are.
Yeah, but they're not in Congress.
Yeah, the entire Progressive Caucus in the House, which is.
How big is the Progressive Caucus in our government?
They have like 65 members now, even after the election.
Well, I don't think it's big enough.
It's not big enough, but the FCC has to do this stuff.
Let me continue with this letter.
I agree with the sentiment that was expressed on the show
that most voters don't know what net neutrality is,
and as a result, don't care about it.
Would somebody like to, in several sentences,
Bernie, how about you?
You're elected.
Describe what net neutrality is, several sentences, remember.
I don't think I could do it.
It would be difficult.
You gave a really good explanation the other show,
a couple, three weeks ago.
Can you just repeat that?
But I want to give somebody else a chance.
You did a better job than I could, frankly.
Dottred, how about you?
All right, fine.
Basically, companies who, I'm sorry, ISPs.
It's not so easy, is it?
Yeah.
All right, well, but basically you have ISPs and whatnot.
They send, you know, they're like the infrastructure
for sending your stuff around,
and they can charge people to-
They can charge you a premium rate to go to certain places
or not charge you a premium rate to go to other places
and basically give unfair advantages.
People who don't pay these premiums could, in theory,
have their traffic sidelined.
So you could be a subscriber of, say, Time Warner,
and Time Warner has issues with some other company,
and then all of a sudden you can't get on any websites
that maybe use this other company as an ISP.
You know, something horrible like that.
And unless the traffic is not biased, is neutral,
which is what net neutrality is about,
there are fears that the internet
will not be very cohesive anymore.
Would you say net neutrality is the same thing as communism?
No.
No?
All right, well, we're gonna prove you wrong here.
The misinformation campaign equates net neutrality
not only with communism and filistulism
and that kind of thing,
but with the old FCC fairness doctrine,
which this reader says I'm sure most people remember
was an old policy for broadcast mass media,
which said that television and radio
should try to provide equal time for opposing viewpoints.
Of course, this is not what net neutrality is about,
but most conservatives oppose the fairness doctrine,
and thus ill-informed conservative-leaning voters
tend to oppose net neutrality.
I'd like to play a video, some audio from the video
that this listener sent us about basically
the equating of net neutrality with the fairness doctrine
and all sorts of other nasty things.
Take a listen to this
and how this particular correspondent
views the liberal point of view.
It's from Pajama TV, this is what this is called.
And it's loading now.
Okay, and we can't hear it for some reason.
Let's try this one.
Some conservatives are arguing
that the beginning of the Obama era has been a disaster.
They argue that the president's soft approach to tyrants
over decades has elicited predictable displays
of aggression, voting far worse to come.
They feel the president's high-blown ethical rhetoric
has given way to his appointments of political hacks.
And of course, there's the gazillion dollars
in spending and taxation that conservatives feel
is a radical attempt to destroy our free market system.
That's the conservative argument,
but today I'd like to explain the liberal argument.
Shut up.
Shut up is the central rationale behind the leftist program.
We've heard it expanded upon recently by Democrat bigwigs
who want to bring back some version
of the misnamed fairness doctrine
to try to knock guys like Rush Limbaugh
and Sean Hannity off the air.
See, Rush and Sean argue forcefully against liberal policies
and Democrats want to explain to them, shut up.
A book called A Manifesto for Media Freedom
by my city journal pal, Brian C. Anderson
and Adam D. Therrer describes how high-level Dems
also support a plan with another Orwellian name,
net neutrality it's called,
that would try to force conservatives
to shut up online as well.
But even if the left can't turn shut up into law,
they've worked hard over the years
to make it the custom of the country.
It's the essence of politically correct phraseology
and university speech codes,
say it our way or shut up.
It's inherent in the media's demonization
of conservative commentators,
the way they try to turn names like Limbaugh
and Ann Coulter into bywords for intolerance
so they'll just shut up.
And why were there more than half a dozen movies
attacking the war on terror and not one in support of it?
Oh wait, I know, shut up.
The left here has been making the shut up argument
at least since the 70s when it became clear
that all their other arguments had failed.
Since it was the only argument remaining to them,
they had to invent different ways to say it.
If you pointed out that their weakness
allowed the murderous tyranny of communism
to expand for instance,
well, you were a McCarthyite, shut up.
If you proved that their leniency toward criminals
turned our cities into cesspools,
you were a fascist, shut up.
When you pointed out that their welfare policies
destroyed black families
and created a social disaster of vast proportions,
you were a racist, a sexist, uncivil, worse than Hitler.
All just different ways of saying shut up.
All around the world, as leftism has failed everywhere,
shut up-ery has been called to its defense.
The full-blown leftists, the communists,
say shut up with prisons and guns.
But Western leftists,
laboring under traditions of freedom, are subtler.
In Europe, they've had more than 50 years
of the sort of soft socialism
the Democrats are now bringing here.
Their anti-individualist, anti-religious,
and anti-patriotic policies
have so sapped the energies of the European nations
that the continent's once great cultures
are now flaccid and passive,
fit for nothing but to be conquered in slow motion
by the violent, intolerant, Islamist invader within.
But when people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
Geert Wilders, or Oriana Falaci
have the temerity to decry the left's empowerment
of Islamist hatefulness,
they're the ones brought up on charges of being hateful,
not because they're speaking falsely, mind you,
but because shut up.
So now, the left is in charge of America,
and shut up is on the march.
Watch for that fairness doctrine.
Beware of net neutrality.
Pay attention to the ways
the liberal mainstream news media
distort, mock, insult,
and exclude the conservative opposition.
Listen to the people they don't want you to listen to.
And whatever you do, don't shut up.
This is Andrew Klavan on The Culture.
Ah, shut up.
No, I mean, I think it's good
that we heard the whole thing through,
but it's incredible to me that they're actually serious,
making net neutrality out to be so evil
with this particular ideology.
Rob.
Yeah, I'd just like to ask,
what in the blue hell did any of that
have to do with net neutrality?
Absolutely nothing,
and when they showed net neutrality on the screen,
there was a slogan that said,
all bits are created equal.
Why is that a bad thing?
All bits are created equal.
I think that's something that,
it doesn't make any sense.
I don't get it.
I think it's great that they actually.
I'm sorry, dot right then, Mitch.
I think it's great you actually play that,
because it actually demonstrates
the argument that's been made
against net neutrality very well,
instead of just talking about it,
and listeners can listen to that.
What it basically is doing is,
instead of actually creating a logical argument,
they're just simply attaching it
to something else that people
have a negative feeling about,
and then making an emotional argument,
when in reality, net neutrality
is the exact opposite of telling people to shut up.
It's saying, let me speak.
Exactly, yeah.
How is it that it's stifling Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity?
If net neutrality was actually defeated,
then you could, in theory, have ISPs say,
you know what, we don't wanna have Rush Limbaugh's
content streamed over,
so we're gonna block Fox,
you know, or just at least give it a lower precedence.
Okay, Mitch, then Voltaire,
then now phone calls, 212-209-2900.
Go ahead, Mitch.
Yeah, I'm just wondering,
clearly this person is not coming
from a place of sincerity.
It's just cynicism on its own part
to try to get its own programs through.
But how many people actually believe
what this guy is spouting?
It just doesn't seem like,
if anyone has any shred of ability
to think for themselves,
they would just have the same response
that we all just had.
Yeah, that guy is just insane,
like saying that black welfare programs
are bad for black families,
or saying that socialism has made Europeans flaccid.
Like, I've been with plenty of European guys,
and they're anything but flaccid.
Well, you're sitting next to one right now,
and I'm sure you two can discuss that later.
No, thank you.
But basically, yeah, it's using a lot of linchpins
to kind of get people riled up
about something, and they just throw that in.
They can say strawberry ice cream
and get you riled up against that.
It's just basically, I don't think this guy
understood anything about what he was talking about.
Cleveland on the Culture is the name of the program.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
And you know, this is proof that
we don't tell you to shut up.
We wanna hear what you have to say,
and we wanna let you sink yourself
with your own logic.
You played the whole thing.
We did play the whole thing.
I'm sure he has a lot more to say as well.
But I would like to pie this guy.
Well, maybe we can get Pie Man out of retirement
to pie him as well.
One thing that I would like them to stop
was that weird sound effect they kept using.
If they could shut that up, I'd be happy.
Well, they were playing films in the background,
and they were using a film projector sound effect,
and it's not very good to have the audio
of other people speaking while you're speaking.
It kind of gets in the way of things.
But then they said shut up, and it all stopped.
Yeah, he told them to shut up.
He was the only one saying shut up there.
GMC.
Well, I mean, I'm not from around the country,
so I have to ask this.
But you were attacked in this video
just as much as everybody else.
But I have to ask this.
Are there people who take this serious?
Yes.
There are, okay.
Oh my God, you just traveled across the country.
I mean, did you not see them?
They're all over the place.
I did not meet them, no.
Well, they're not in the hackerspaces, apparently.
No, they're not in the hackerspaces.
You have to go to the malls and various other places.
Oh yeah, Rob.
It just strikes me that he might know full well
what net neutrality is,
but he's just assuming his audience doesn't.
And rather than explain it to him,
he's using a big, scary buzzword that's out there
and that people might have heard and not understood
to supplement their fears
and get them around to his point of view on other things.
So it's all a matter of a lack of education.
Find out what net neutrality is,
actually is, before you go and make a decision.
And that's true of any issue.
Find out the facts before you just listen to anybody.
Don't just listen to us.
Find out the facts and judge based on what you learn.
All right, we're gonna take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
First, I just wanna very quickly look at this crazy story
that came out today.
Listen to this.
This is unreal.
In an apparent show of support for Google,
several houses in Germany were pelted with eggs
over the weekend.
The vandals singled out houses which were blurred
in the company's Street View service.
Yeah, so anybody who opted to have their house blurred
had a crowd of fascist Googlers come
and start throwing eggs.
I mean, this is scary.
If you don't toe the company line and play by their rules,
this crowd of people is spontaneously
gonna come to your house and throw eggs.
I don't know, something about this
really rubs me the wrong way.
And I'm one of the people who doesn't like
to have everything displayed at all times,
but it seems like people are being forced into this.
Then we should start a movement
and have everybody get their houses blurred.
Uh-huh.
I'm also not against secrecy.
Yeah, this kind of thing makes me wanna do that.
Voltaire, then phone calls.
I feel really complacent about this.
I mean, obviously, I'm against throwing eggs
at individual houses,
but when you have cases where Dick Cheney has his private,
he was one of the first people to have his private.
Okay, public figures are one thing.
Private citizens, maybe you want your privacy.
Maybe you think this is a way to gain your privacy.
You should have the right.
But yeah, I agree about Dick Cheney.
I'll always support throwing eggs at his house
if he can get close enough.
Let's take some phone calls.
Mike, you're gonna be in charge of the buttons this week.
Press a button, and hopefully it won't be
who we think it is.
Good evening, you're on Off the Hook.
Yes, I'd like to-
Good job, Mike.
How do you do it every single time you get him?
How do you, unbelievable.
See, I don't do that when I press the buttons.
Good evening, you're on Off the Hook.
Hi, I have an idea.
Do share, share with us.
Okay, if the president and his cabinet and the Congress
is very much in favor of all these security measures,
I think Mr. Obama, his wife, his daughters,
and the members of his staff,
and every member of Congress and their family
should go to the airports and have their bodies x-rayed
and or their daughters and wives and themselves groped.
And this way, they'll show the nation and the world
that this is an American effort to make the world safer.
But they have to start with them.
So we, the regular people, at least will see
our leaders who are talking about all of these things
are willing to go through it themselves.
Otherwise, it'll be just us.
And they are going to fly in their own,
either private jets or very secure, beautiful airlines.
Yeah, I would like to see Sasha and the president's wife
go to the airport.
Well, we've heard this said before.
And yeah, theoretically, it sounds like a great idea.
Of course, people that high up in the government
will never go to a public airport.
And even if they did, you really think the TSA person
groping them is really gonna do an effective job
groping them just for show.
They'll say, oh, it's not so bad.
And it might actually work against any opposition
because people will say, oh, look, it's okay.
And they actually went and did it themselves.
So it's an idea, but I don't think it's the idea
that's gonna make a big difference.
I just wanna say one thing to our two people on the phone.
One of you is breathing into the phone.
I'm not saying stop breathing.
Just if you could maybe direct your mouth
away from the phone, that would be good.
Emanuel?
Yes, is it you, Bernie?
Are you breathing?
I was breathing, but I can hold my breath.
Yeah, stop that.
Five minutes if you want.
All right.
There's a historical precedent for this.
Back in the early 70s, I believe,
President Gerald Ford, when there was all this controversy
about the swine flu vaccines.
He got a swine flu shot.
He got a shot.
He went on national television
and he got a swine flu shot.
Pre-empted mash or something.
I remember, just to see the president get a shot
in his arm, it's just, wow, that was dramatic television.
Let's see if we can fit in a couple more calls.
Good evening.
You are on off the hook.
Oh, hi.
Hi.
I just wanted to comment on your-
Please turn down your radio.
Yes, yes, I'm sorry.
I'm gonna do that right away.
I just wanted to comment.
Yes.
Turn down your radio.
And try to have your radio close to the phone too
so you don't have to walk across the room.
Go ahead.
There, I turned it off.
No, it's fantastic, that clip that you played.
And I was starting to get a little pissed off,
but as you said, it was a good thing.
It's a normal reaction.
Don't worry.
It's a great representation of conservative double thought
because the Fairness Doctrine was actually used
in the beginning to basically mitigate
the dissenting arguments by saying,
you have to present both points of views.
You have to give equal time to both points of views.
And by and large, the Fairness Doctrine
is seen as unnecessary today because access to media
through the internet and various other means
is a lot easier than it was, say, in the 60s
when the Fairness Doctrine was really in force.
So I don't think very many people,
certainly not politicians, are pushing
to have that put back into effect.
No, but now that conservative rabid dog that you played
was saying that that was the left's way
to get their point across.
And at the same time, that reminded me
of sometime this millennium, around the millennium.
Remember the better that than red philosophy?
Sometime, you know, at sometime during this millennium,
it became, red became the color of the Republican Party.
When did that happen?
I don't know.
That was quite a hack right there, however that happened.
Because it could just, can you imagine if it was the,
if it was the Democrats that were red,
that all kinds of slogans that we'd have today.
But yeah, maybe liberals should adopt that phrase.
Not that it's a very nice phrase,
but better red than, wait, no wait.
Better dead than red.
Okay, I reversed it for the Republicans just now.
Better red than, whatever.
Thanks for the information.
Let's see if we can take one more.
And good evening.
No, okay, good evening.
You're, no, no, we gotta get one that's live.
Let's try that.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Yes, hello, let me, hello?
Yes, go ahead, quickly.
I had a question.
Is this exclusively about the airport?
No, ask your question quickly, though.
Yes, my landlord wants to put in
one of the intercom systems that go through your telephone.
Is that any privacy issues about that?
That's a bad idea.
Mitch, you have a lot of those in California, don't you?
Yeah, those are really standard
because it's much cheaper than putting an intercom system in.
It dials your phone number out there in the street.
Everybody can hear your phone number, for one thing.
And it can record it and then call you back.
And if somebody is able to forward
your phone line someplace else,
anybody can let anybody into your building
just by hitting a couple of buttons on a touchtone phone.
It's not the most secure system in the world.
That's gonna do it for us here tonight, though.
We are out of time.
I want to thank everybody for calling in.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight.
GMC, good luck with your continuing voyage
across the country.
And Mitch, welcome back to your home.
Hopefully you'll be there for more than a week.
And we'll see the rest of you next week.
Same time, same place.
Good night.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving, yes.
♪ When I get older, I will be stronger ♪
♪ They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag ♪
♪ When I get older, I will be stronger ♪
♪ They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag ♪
♪ And then it goes back, and then it goes back ♪
♪ And then it goes back home ♪
♪ Born to a throne, stronger than Rome ♪
♪ But violent prone, poor people's zone ♪
♪ But it's my home, all I have known ♪
♪ Where I got grown, streets we would roam ♪
♪ Out of the darkness, I came the farthest ♪
♪ Among the hardest, survival ♪
♪ Learn from these streets, it can be bleak ♪
♪ Accept no defeat, surrender, retreat ♪
♪ So we're struggling, fighting to eat ♪
♪ And we're wondering, when we'll be free ♪
♪ So we patiently wait, for that fateful day ♪
♪ It's not far away, but for now we stay ♪
♪ When I get older, I will be stronger ♪
♪ They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag ♪
♪ And then it goes back, and then it goes back ♪
♪ And then it goes back home ♪
♪ So many wars, settling scores ♪
♪ Bringing us promises, leaving us poor ♪
♪ I heard them say, love is the way, love is the answer ♪
♪ That's what they say, but look how they treat us ♪
♪ Make us believers, we fight their battles ♪
♪ Then they deceive us, try to control us ♪
♪ They couldn't hold us, cause we just move forward ♪
♪ Like buffaloes hold us
♪ So we're struggling, fighting to eat ♪
♪ And we're wondering, when we'll be free ♪
♪ So we patiently wait, for that fateful day ♪
♪ It's not far away, but for now we say ♪
♪ When I get older, I will be stronger ♪
♪ They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag ♪
♪ And then it goes back, and then it goes back ♪
♪ And then it goes back, and then it goes ♪
♪ When I get older, I will be stronger ♪
♪ They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag ♪
♪ And then it goes back, and then it goes back ♪
♪ And then it goes back, and then it goes back ♪
♪ And everybody will be singing ♪
♪ And you and I will be weaning ♪
♪ And we all will be singing oh, oh, oh ♪
When I get older, I will be stronger They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag
And then it goes back, and then it goes back And then it goes back, and then it goes
When I get older, I will be stronger They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag
And then it goes back, and then it goes back And then it goes back, oh
When I get older, when I get older I will be stronger
Just like a waving flag, just like a waving flag Just like a waving flag, flag, flag
Just like a waving flag
Bravo, bravo here at WBAI New York 99.5 FM
These people are off the hook, I tell ya!