and the peaceful completion of the voting process.
According to the mission, more than 20,000 people
are registered to vote in the Darfur states.
Deanne Penn at the United Nations.
And that's the program for today.
Thank you for staying with us during these difficult times.
Please visit www.fsrn.org.
In Washington, D.C., I'm Leigh Ann Caldwell.
And you're listening to WBAI 99.5 New York.
The time is just about 7 p.m.
Time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
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And a very good evening to you.
The show is Off the Hook.
Rob T. Firefly here with you.
I am joined in the studio today by Dot Rett.
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Let me try that again.
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Okay, I am joined in the studio by Dot Rett.
Can you hear me now?
I cannot hear you now.
Well, RenderMan is here.
How about now?
Now is better, yes.
RenderMan is here from Canada.
Hello.
Gus is here.
Oh, hi, Johnny. You're my favorite customer.
Jim is here.
Hello.
And I'm joined by Mike.
Hi.
And on the phone, have we got a manual?
Oh, we're working on it.
Okay, and have we got Bernie? Yes.
Yes, I am greeting you from Philadelphia.
Fantastic.
So we're still working on a manual.
Who is where?
He's still in Europe.
I talked to some very verbose hotel person
in many languages.
We may have them now.
Emmanuel, is that you?
Yes, can you hear us?
Yes.
Okay, great.
Yes, you thought that we had hung up on you,
but really I just had to be quiet
because Rob was introducing the show.
Well, no, actually it did hang up on us
because we were just sitting here by the phone
and all of a sudden it went beep, beep, beep.
And that in Europe means that you've been hung up upon.
Well, that's very disconcerting.
It is, it is.
Let's hope it doesn't happen again, Mike.
Yes.
We are here in Zurich, which is in Switzerland.
And I'm here tonight with Kyle.
Hi.
And Maxim.
Hello.
Maxim is from Switzerland.
He's originally from Basel and now resides in Zurich.
Tonight, we're a part of history.
We were at the first Cast Computer Club-Zurich meeting,
which took place in a brand new potential hacker space.
And I'd like for Maxim to tell us something about that.
But first I want to make sure that you guys are hearing us.
Yeah, we're still hearing you for now.
Okay, great.
Maxim, take it away.
Tell us something about who these people are
and where they were meeting.
Right, okay.
So the Chaos Computer Club in Zurich,
as a club, exists about since 2007.
They have their places where they meet
outside of Zurich so far.
And like Emmanuel said, tonight was the very first time
they're meeting in this place
from a different organization called Revampit.
Now, Revampit has been there for about two to three months
in downtown Zurich.
And what they do is they recycle computers.
So when we went in there, it was quite an impression.
There were tons of PCs.
Oh my God, no, it was unbelievable.
We walked in and there were all these people
having a very animated conversation.
We could barely get in the door.
It was a fairly small room with a dozen or so people
hanging out there.
And then we went through another door
and there was a huge room with computers
stacked all over the place.
And then we went all the way to the back of that room
and guess what?
In back of that room was another huge room with computers.
It was like being in Home Depot
with computers stacked up to the ceiling that high.
And we're talking really old machines from,
what kind of machines did you see, Kyle?
Really old things.
IMAXs and all kinds of desktop towers
and weird ones that you'd never see before,
like little terminals, like Siemens terminals
and Mac stuff.
They had a whole wall of toner cartridges
still in the boxes and a bunch of laser printers
stacked up in the middle of the room
and just all kinds of stuff.
And they say that it took them a few weeks
to move all this into this facility,
which seems incredible in and of itself.
And what they're doing is they're accepting
all these old computers as donations from corporations,
from people, and they're fixing them,
they're putting open source software onto them,
and then they're sending them
to all kinds of third world places
where there are people there
that are actually going to use them,
not throw them into a landfill or anything like that.
And it was real history seeing this,
seeing this place in the making
and very fortuitous for us to be in Zurich
at just that moment.
So why are you in Zurich anyway?
Why are we in Zurich anyway?
Well, we were at the CCC Congress in Berlin last week
when we spoke to you off the hook.
And since then, we had New Year's happen over here.
And then after that, we decided
we must go someplace else.
And we basically decided that Switzerland
was an interesting place to go to.
And we weren't mistaken on that
because we've been wandering around this town
for the last few days and seeing these people tonight
and learning a whole lot about Switzerland
and the process, a country right smack
in the middle of Europe that's not part of the EU,
that only joined the United Nations a few years ago,
that has all kinds of interesting customs and habits
and a whole lot of trains.
And basically Switzerland makes Germany look inefficient.
We arrived very late at night on Sunday
and had to figure out how to take a tram a great distance.
And it was so simple to learn the system.
Basically you're on a tram
and there's a video display inside
that tells you what the next stop is,
what other trams will be at that stop,
what time those other trams are expected to be there
and where they go.
It's really impossible to get lost or to get confused.
So I'm very impressed with the place on that level alone,
but there are so many other things to talk about
insofar as what Switzerland is all about,
which I don't think we're gonna have time for,
but it's an amazing place.
It's fascinating.
And just seeing the hacker culture
start growing here as well,
I think is really fascinating.
Maxim here, by the way,
was part of Chaos Computer Club in Zurich back in 1985.
In 1985, you wanna tell us something about those years?
Well, back those years,
there weren't that many hackers around
or at least not that many that we knew.
We were probably around five or six people.
And we didn't have internet.
We had BBSs and X25 or Telepak or Timnet
or DatexP or whatever it was called
and hung around those networks.
However, some of those people then left
and all of a sudden we were only two people left
and two people, you can't be a club anymore.
So it kind of dissolved.
And tonight when I was talking to the people
from the Chaos Computer Club in Zurich,
that was very cool.
They were talking about what should they call the club?
And somebody said, yeah, let's call it CCCCH
because that's Chaos Computer Club, Switzerland.
And they did some research on the internet
and somewhere they found the files
and the reference to our old club that we used to have.
So I'm gonna go on the internet later
and see if I can find that.
So it's sort of a rebirth.
Yeah, it is.
And a lot of things happening pretty much at the same time,
people being in the right place at the right time.
Yeah, I think it's really cool
that they were looking for this older generation
and you were able to connect up with them
and I don't know, say, hey, I was from the original group.
And so now this is like the inaugural meeting night.
They're gonna be meeting midweek on Wednesdays
and so I guess you're gonna be going back.
Absolutely, I already said I'll be back there next week.
I also know still people from that old CCCC
so I'm definitely gonna try to bring those people along.
I know they don't live in Zurich
so it might be a little more difficult
but we'll definitely be back there.
And yeah, it was a lot of fun there.
There was also a pirate party meeting here in Zurich tonight
which we weren't able to get to
but that's a fairly new development in Switzerland
and something that's spreading throughout Europe
which I think is pretty cool
and we hope to have those people on the show
at some point as well.
I have a question about the, am I on?
Yeah, a question about sort of focus.
I know a lot of times when people come
to 2600 meetings in New York,
they're kind of surprised that there's sort of
less actual hands-on code stuff
and a lot more sort of social and political organizing.
What's the focus of the group in Switzerland?
It was kind of the same thing, just like you said.
I mean, you did see people sit in front of computers
but that's because there were computers everywhere, right?
And they were really more socializing,
talking about the revamp stuff,
talking about the Chaos Computer Club itself
and how this should be going on.
It was really exciting that this was the very first night
at that new place, so I guess that was the topic du jour.
But even like, I'm involved in the Pirate Party.
In the Pirate Party, it is more about politics,
net and digital politics,
as opposed to hands-on computer stuff.
And how has the reaction been from people
when you're starting this out
and trying to gauge interest in it?
I didn't hear that.
Could you repeat that?
I'm sorry, what has the reaction from people been like
just in general when you're starting something like this up
in a place that's not had it before?
Um, well, I think people are open to that.
It's not like it's something unheard of,
but well, definitely the computer recycling,
that's something that people appreciate.
And especially in that area we were at in Zurich,
there's a lot of like artist meets and stuff going on.
I mean, there was a theater in the same building, right?
A theater with your name on it too, by the way.
The Maxim Theater, that was kind of weird.
That was kind of weird.
You were in the right place.
It's a huge building too.
I mean, a huge courtyard, I think a six-story building
filled with all kinds of activities,
hackerspace being just one of them.
Yeah, and I think it just totally fit into that whole area.
Yeah, it's in a mixed use, like old industrial building
that's being sort of remodeled.
And I don't know, the energy was really, really good
in the space with Revamp doing their work.
And then the fact that they're moving in
and so they've got all this stuff,
it made it so that there was very, very little room
to move around, but ended up being really good
because everybody's just sort of brushing shoulders
with somebody else and socializing and talking.
You sort of had to say, hey, hi, what's your name?
Because you're standing right next to them.
There's like literally standing room only.
So it was a really cool kickoff.
And I don't know.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun, the whole thing.
And Kyle and I have been wandering around.
As you know, we've been in Scandinavia before,
into Norway and Sweden and Denmark,
and then into Germany, now Switzerland.
In fact, yesterday we went to a country
we never went to before.
And boy, that was an incredible experience.
We just basically took a day trip and wandered over there
and met with some of the people,
talked as much as we could,
tried to talk about America and learn about their land.
And what it was all about, very picturesque,
very nice, a little colder than it is here in Switzerland.
What country are we talking, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg?
I mean, is it what, Monaco?
Where are we talking here?
Sounds like a very cool place you haven't been before, right?
Yeah, no, we've never been there before.
And it was really pretty fascinating.
They had a very loud church bell at one point,
which I thought was very interesting.
Not much in the way of food.
Is he having me on?
What's he talking about?
Am I out of the loop on something here?
I'm sorry?
What country?
I don't think you're, no, you're not out of the loop.
It's just, well, I mean,
not everybody gets to go there, obviously.
It's kind of like, not a privilege so much,
but just something that you have to kind of work at.
But I'm sure you could go there if you wanted to.
It's not forbidden or anything like that.
But, you know, Kyle and I,
do you have any comments on it, Kyle?
Because I was pretty amazed by it.
Yeah, it was really neat.
It's sort of a small town,
but also, you know, its own sort of independent place.
Big city, too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the country and urban is kind of, yeah.
A lot of the architecture is very modern, but it's-
But there's history, a lot of history.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I would recommend it to anybody listening
to definitely go there.
It would be worth your while.
Are you talking about some state of mind
you entered by some chemicals or something?
Is this the state of my imagination?
Oh, no?
What's the name of the country?
Thank you, Bernie.
Hi, Bernie, how you doing?
Where are you?
I'm in Philadelphia.
I'm asking what's the name of the country
you're describing?
Philadelphia, it's in the United States.
Are you okay?
Country you were just describing,
what is the name of that country?
I don't understand him.
Okay, well, no, we did have,
if you're asking what other countries we've been to,
they said we've been to Scandinavia and Germany.
Okay, on the subject of Germany,
since apparently that's what you wanted to talk about,
we had an adventure with a cell phone,
a cell phone provider,
and we'd be happy to discuss that.
No, we want you to discuss the name of the country
you were just describing.
Yeah, okay, well, we can talk about that then.
Basically what happened was we went to Germany
and stopped in Hamburg on the way from Denmark.
By the way, Bernie, we took that boat train
that we were discussing a few weeks ago,
and it was very nice.
The train actually went onto the boat,
and we took that.
And once we got to Hamburg, we had a bit of a layover,
so we said, hey, wouldn't it be a good idea
if we bought a SIM card for our phones
so that we can make phone calls back to the United States
or throughout Germany,
and basically not have to worry about
racking up a huge bill on our American phones.
So we went to this store,
and I'm gonna say the name of the store
because I think people should know the name of the store.
The store is named Rossmann's.
And we went to Rossmann's,
and we asked a very nice gentleman there.
Emanuel?
I'm sorry?
Isn't Rossmann's like a drug store?
It's sort of like a supermarket drug store
type of a thing, yeah.
That's very important when you're telling these stories
to tell the names of things,
and that's what I'm trying to do here
is identify everything that we've gone through.
So forgive me if I'm being too specific
on anything that we're talking about.
No, specificity is never a problem on this show.
Good, okay,
because I want to make sure that we're absolutely clear.
So the store that we walked into in Hamburg,
which is in Germany, was Rossmann's,
and what we did was we walked up to,
I believe Carl was the gentleman's name.
I didn't get his last name.
He told us the best deal was this company called Phonic,
that's F-O-N-I-C,
and he explained how it worked.
He had sold us the SIM cards for 9.99 each,
nine euros, 99 cents each,
and told us it was very simple to activate
and no problems whatsoever.
Well, we wound up basically trying to get the things to work.
We opened up the package and not a word of English.
Now, of course, we're in Germany.
We should speak German,
but the guy who spoke English to us,
he knew that we didn't speak any German.
He sold this thing to us,
and there was absolutely no way to understand
how to activate the thing
just by looking at the instructions.
There was absolutely nothing there,
and plugging the SIM in didn't seem to work either.
There was no signal.
So what we did was we waited till we got to Berlin,
and then tried to activate it online,
tried to call the number that was affiliated with it.
Neither of those things worked.
So the next day, we went to an O2 store.
O2 happens to own Phonic.
It's their discount service.
They would not help us at all.
They said, nope, it's not our company.
We can't do a thing for you.
And all we were trying to do is find out
how do we activate the damn thing?
We went to another Rossman's, which was in Berlin,
and we said, you know, here's the receipt.
We bought this from you.
How do we turn this thing on?
Would not even answer any questions.
Would not entertain the notion
of getting a refund for this thing
since they sold us a product
that apparently doesn't work or is incomprehensible to us.
It was very perturbing just to be treated that way
and to realize that in America, you know,
the customer is always right even when they're wrong.
And in Germany, the customer really isn't treated
very well many times.
Eventually, we wound up making a phone call
from a pay phone, which lasted about 45 minutes,
to somebody at the helpline.
We hit random numbers till we found a person.
And that person, whose name was Herman, I believe, right?
He was in some part of Germany,
and he was the only person in the whole call center
that spoke any English.
He was able to help us,
but we had to give him a German address.
And that's another thing that Carl in Hamburg
at the Rossman's there when he sold us the phonic card
didn't tell us that he needed to have a German address.
We had to actually run inside a post office,
get the postal code for the BCC,
the Berlin Conference Center,
yeah, which is where the conference was being held.
That's the address we gave,
because that's where we were spending the most time
in Berlin, at the conference center.
So we gave that address,
but we had to get the right postal code.
So we had to run into a post office
to find out what the postal code was for that,
because we couldn't just give them a random one.
They checked.
So after 45 minutes, we got the thing to work.
But boy, that was not a pleasant experience.
So now, New Year's in Germany.
I imagine that was sort of a low-key,
very subdued sort of event.
Yeah, well, if you imagine
tens of thousands of people lighting fireworks
at the same time as being low-key,
that's exactly what it was.
We actually found ourselves at Brandenburg Gate,
because the party we were supposed to go to
apparently wasn't actually happening.
And we just sort of wandered around,
and it was actually quite nice.
It wasn't like Times Square,
where it's so completely packed and mobbed,
and there's overabundance of security
and a police state atmosphere.
We got frisked once, I think,
and had to go through two checkpoints.
But once we were through that,
it was pretty smooth sailing.
And we just hung around till midnight,
when all these fireworks went off,
and people were drinking all kinds of substances,
and fireworks were going off everywhere.
So it was funny.
I've been in Germany many times for New Year's now,
and you get used to it after a while.
It's really not like the States,
but it's fun any way you go.
I mean, I imagine you guys had fun in New York.
Oh, yeah, lots of fun.
Around 2 a.m., I attempted to go to Times Square
just to get a look at the crowds and everything.
I told you not to do that.
Yeah, I was curious,
but I was told Times Square was closed,
and they didn't let me in.
Really?
They do that now?
Times Square was closed due to people, yeah.
They won't show you that on TV.
Can we make it permanently closed?
That would be awesome.
How would people get to the Disney Store then?
They could stay in their home suburbs.
What a loss.
Go there.
It would work out just fine.
Yeah, for all of those of you not in New York
or any place where there's no huge celebration,
I'm from Pasadena originally,
where we have the Rose Parade,
and the big thing to do as a kid
is to camp out on the route,
and people lick marshmallows
and throw them at you in the middle of the night,
so you basically wake up at eye level
with the horses that are pooing on the parade route
and sticky marshmallows in your hair,
and it's one of these things
that you really look forward to as a teenager,
but as a grownup, you're just like,
I don't need to do that anymore,
and Times Square's kind of the same way,
so don't be jealous.
It's not worth it.
No, Times Square is not.
I never want them to do that.
I'm jealous of Germany, though.
It sounds like a good time.
It was fun.
It was interesting.
I suggest people check out other scenes
on New Year's and other holidays, too,
because you learn a lot.
Tomorrow, actually, is a holiday here in Switzerland.
Maxim, what's it called?
You get a special cake,
and it's like that cake you get in New Orleans
that has the baby in it.
You know what I'm talking about?
I was about to say,
is it the cake with the baby in it?
Yeah, you got it.
That's exactly what it is.
You basically, there's some kind of cake,
and inside it is a little doll or something,
and if you get the piece that has the baby in it,
then you win something.
Here in Switzerland, it's something very similar.
Three kings holiday, you have a cake,
and the cake has a little king baked into it,
and whoever has the piece with the king inside
gets to wear the crown all day.
And there's a little paper crown,
apparently, that comes with it.
So tomorrow, January 6th,
some kids in Switzerland will be wandering around
with little paper crowns,
and others will be very angry for not getting that.
And how much dentistry is involved after this,
after somebody's bit into the little baby
or king or whatever?
Yeah, you have to tread carefully there.
You don't want to choke on the king, obviously.
That's disrespectful in addition to being dangerous.
Speaking of special events,
there's one happening today,
which I thought was kind of neat.
Today happens to be the 71st anniversary
of FM network radio.
Ah, yes.
Now, Bernie, I know you know a little something about this.
Oh, Mr. Armstrong, you're speaking of.
Yes, indeed.
Oh, yeah, well, I guess, was it 71 years ago today?
It was, yes, 71 years ago, January 5th, 1940.
That's Dr. Armstrong.
He was a professor at Columbia.
Also Major Armstrong.
Major, yes.
Yes.
Yeah, well, he invented frequency modulation,
when amplitude modulation
was the standard form of radio broadcasting.
He figured out that frequency modulation
enabled all kinds of other things,
which is used not only for radio to this day
on this very station,
but is used for television
and all kinds of other modulation, cellular phones.
FM became a major technology of importance,
but he also developed,
Armstrong developed other radio technologies,
like the regenerative receiver,
the super regenerative receiver,
and the heterodyne and super heterodyne receiver.
So this guy invented all kinds of radio stuff,
and unfortunately, a lot of his ideas
were stolen by Mr. Sarnoff at RCA,
and in ensuing patent battles,
the guy just went nuts and killed himself,
but it was really a really tragic, tragic story.
But Armstrong was a true hacker.
He enjoyed the joy of figuring stuff out
and showing people things.
He liked to climb these tall radio towers
that he built,
and he'd dance on top of the radio towers
just to show off.
It was quite a character,
but a major figure in the technology
that we owe this very radio station's existence to
from a standpoint of FM, frequency modulation.
So Armstrong was the guy.
So is it true that 71 years ago, is it?
Yes, indeed.
71 years ago, the first FM station went on the air?
The first FM network simulcast,
it was Major Armstrong himself
was working with the Yankee Network,
which was a group of affiliated radio stations
through the New England area,
and this was the first time they took,
they were able to use FM
to distribute the signal simultaneously
between five different cities.
And this was, of course, a major deal back then.
Armstrong afterward went on record as saying,
Boston observers report the program went into that city
with tonal quality never before heard,
and the operators atop Mount Washington
reported it clear as next door.
The broadcast went from Yonkers to Mount Washington
without using an inch of wire.
Imagine that.
That's one of those things we really take for granted now,
you know, with wireless everything.
How do they not use an inch of wire in the antenna itself?
Don't you need some wire?
Well, you would have ruined the whole thing
for them back then.
It's a good thing for us all I wasn't around.
Wow, well, hey, can we speak about some other new technology
or just new ways of doing things?
I'm still waiting to hear what city you were in.
I'm sorry, we're in Zurich.
We're in Zurich, calm down, we're fine.
Yes, new technology.
Yes, boy, back here in New York, they really are dramatic.
Yeah, we have some new technology.
Well, it's kind of new, I think.
Max, you've been working with us for a while.
Tonight, he showed us something, it looks like a SIM card,
but it's much thinner than a SIM card.
And what you do is you put it in your phone
next to your SIM card.
And Max, can you tell us, what does this thing do?
All right, so it's, if you search for SIM dialers,
you can find it, like Manuel just said,
it's a very thin SIM card that goes in between
the SIM card and your phone.
And one thing it does, first of all,
you can put in any SIM card into a locked phone,
which is nice.
So if you have a locked phone,
you don't even need to unlock it,
you just put that SIM card in between
and use whatever SIM card you want.
However, what it also does is it can intercept
the calls that you're making and dial them through
like a dial-through number or a calling card service
or a callback service or even whatever,
even your home asterisk box.
So basically, you put this thing in your phone,
you turn your phone on and you get a whole different menu
that allows you to make all these settings.
And basically, I mean, the coolest thing is that
you can put a SIM in your phone
and even if your phone is locked, it'll work.
And that, believe me, is a major pain
when people are traveling to have a locked phone
and not be able to use a SIM from a different country.
Right.
So this is really a computer that interfaces
between your cell phone and between your mobile phone
and your SIM card or any SIM card.
And it does a lot of stuff in between.
That's a brilliant idea.
And they've made it small and thin enough
to sandwich in between your SIM card and your phone.
Yeah, at the worst, you have to like clip
your little SIM card a little
because it does have a really small chip on it.
And you know how the SIM cards has a little dent
on one of the edges?
You just clip off a little more of that
and you have enough space for the chip
on that little plastic SIM card.
What is this thing called
and how can our listeners find out more about it?
So it's called a SIM dialer.
You can search for it on the network and you will find it.
SIM dialer.
Yeah.
And is it put up at one particular company
or is it available?
I mean, is it in America?
No, there are several manufacturers that do that.
Most of them, at least the ones that I've played with,
they're all made in China.
Are there any SIM dialers that have been developed
by hackers to do really interesting things?
Well, what would you like one to be able to do?
I'm sure people will be able to develop those.
Well, the mind boggles.
I mean, if you could get a computer
in between your SIM card and your phone,
there's all kinds of things that could be done.
It sounds like a great opportunity
for people to explore cell phone technology.
So I would like to see a hackable SIM dialer chip
or kit available soon.
It sounds like a great way to customize your cell phone.
Yeah, any way to enhance this platform?
These things, how much do they cost, Maxim?
Well, if you're in China,
they'll be like two bucks each, right?
If you find them on the internet,
they'll probably be selling around 12 or $15.
Yeah, you mentioned that if you're going to buy it
at like $2 at cost, that you'd have to buy it in bulk,
like a group buy, which is pretty common
in a lot of hacker spaces.
When they're buying technology, they'll do a group buy.
It is individually sold for quite a bit more.
So I guess it would be interesting, like Bernie mentioned,
to maybe create an open design or our own design
with maybe different capabilities or additional capabilities
and have it be something that's available for less,
either domestically or otherwise, to reduce the cost
and maybe have some other features.
I mean, a lot of spaces, a lot of hackers around the US
and around the world, but in the US,
are making their own boards and that kind of stuff.
So it's definitely ripe for hacking.
Very cool.
Absolutely, I think, and with the chip,
like Bernie said, the sky's the limit.
Yeah, it's always struck me that mobile phones
are one of the most ubiquitous platforms
that are the least hackable out there.
And so anything that sort of opens that up
for people to have some fun with, I think is a good thing.
Well, let's hope nobody gets prosecuted in the US
for possessing a SIM dialer,
because it's probably illegal
because it's not specifically authorized
by the wireless carriers.
But if enough people do it, then the cat's out of the bag.
Yeah, I'll happily walk around with one of those things.
And you pay your phone bill,
I don't see what they can say.
It's your phone.
You can do whatever you want with it,
but I'm sure somebody will have a different interpretation.
That's right.
Yeah, it's interesting to me,
considering that jailbreaking your iPhone is now okay,
and there's a number of DRM things that we won this year.
Going forward, are we just gonna see the same old reactions
where the first response is shut this down,
or are we gonna start seeing stuff
where people actually go, let's let that cat out of the bag?
Why am I even hoping?
This is probably ridiculous.
Yes, it probably is very ridiculous.
On the subject of cell phones,
I saw a story out of California that was forwarded to us,
which has to do with a California Supreme Court ruling
a couple of days ago saying cops don't need a warrant
to search your cell phone if you're arrested.
In other words, they can go through your entire cell phone,
read all of your messages, look at all your contacts,
get all the phone numbers, whatever else is on your cell phone
and God forbid it's a smartphone.
This is significant, isn't it?
Yeah, I mean, it sounded to me
like something that would be particularly bad
in catch and release arrests.
I mean, they'll just go trolling.
They'll basically sort of say, oh yeah,
let's just pick this guy up,
see what he's got in his phone,
see what we can charge him with.
Yeah, what the California Supreme Court actually decided
was that the loss of privacy upon arrest
extends beyond the arrestee's own body
to include personal property.
So they can look through your phone,
they can look through whatever you've got on you.
It's interesting that the Ninth Circuit,
which is where California is, decided this,
but that contradicts a different federal circuit's decision
on the same topic.
So now you have two different federal circuits in the US
that have basically come to a different conclusion
about what's constitutional and what isn't.
Bernie, just to clarify, this is not a circuit court,
this is not a federal court,
this is the California State Supreme Court.
Oh, okay, good, good.
Well then, this is contradicting
what another federal court had ruled
in a different circuit, pardon me.
So this is probably gonna be challenged,
and I'm hoping this goes to Supreme Court
and things get ruled that this is protected
by the Fourth Amendment,
that you can't have your cell phone searched
without consent or probable cause.
But it's a scary thing, because as Gus pointed out,
police could just sort of arrest you temporarily
and then release you after going through your cell phone,
and that would be really bad.
This also, I think it has implications
beyond just cell phones.
If you're carrying a laptop with you,
they can now, I guess, based on this,
look through your laptop
and examine that as much as they want.
Well, now, what if you have a password on your phone?
I mean, we have cell phones
that have pins and passwords of all sorts.
Are they going to compel you to give that information out?
You're already under arrest.
So what is it that they can hold over your head?
It may not be what they can access
through the phone directly.
I mean, if your phone is backed up,
like what happens at the border
when you come back to the United States
and they go through your cell phone and laptops,
they basically clone the contents of the memory.
If they do that, the password you put on your phone
may not offer you any protection
if they're not trying to access the information
through your phone itself.
If they just copy all the data out of your phone
and send you on your way, as Gus said, catch and release,
they may still have free access to all that information,
even though you have a password-protected phone.
Bernie, I wanted to ask,
so do we know of cases where border guards
have actually just copied memory at random?
Has it happened to one of us or is?
Well, it's happened to Jake Applebaum,
who's been a guest on this program
and is one of our friends who's been a keynote speaker
at the most recent, at the Next Hope conference.
His three cell phones, he was in possession of
when he came back.
You know, he left to go to Europe
right after being a keynote speaker
at the Next Hope this past July,
and then on his return to the United States.
At the border, coming back in the U.S.,
three of the cell phones were rifled through,
and in fact, I think they confiscated them.
I'm not sure if they returned them right away,
and his laptop.
So even if they were password-protected,
the phones, I believe that if the contents
of their memory is copied, that does not prevent
the privacy invader, or in this case, law enforcement,
or customs, from still looking through the information.
Let me try to clarify this.
You're saying that the password on a phone
is not like the password on a computer.
If you have a password on a computer,
it's hard for them to simply copy all the data,
but a password on a phone, they could still copy the data?
In either case, they can still copy the data.
How easily?
If you have a password on your computer,
they have to do something internally
to bypass that, don't they?
No, you can just take the hard drive out of the computer
and look at it on a different computer
without entering the password at all.
Unless you've taken the additional step
of encrypting the data, which most people don't do.
Right, and a lot of cell phones,
most cell phones don't give you the ability
to encrypt the contents of the cell phone's memory.
So yeah, it's not a bad idea to password-protect your phone,
but it may offer no security at all
if you were arrested or picked up,
even on a catch-and-release kind of thing,
and the police just copied the data off your phone,
the password probably isn't gonna provide
any security for you.
Unless somebody writes a custom application
for a smartphone that allows you to encrypt that data,
you may not be able to protect it from being snooped.
Well, do we know of any phones or any software out there
that does enable encryption of someone's phone contents?
I actually believe some of the corporate BlackBerrys
have encrypted content.
That's why BlackBerrys are so hated
by certain governments, right.
Just to add, back in about middle of November,
Moxie Marlinspike, too, got stopped at the border
and had his laptops cloned and cell phones
and everything like that.
Basically, to the point where CPB said,
yeah, we're specifically targeting you.
We got a call saying, copy all of your stuff.
So this is just a random hacker we know, or?
Yeah, this is Moxie Marlinspike.
Did some interesting things to SSL
over the past year or so.
Basically, it's because he knows Jake Applebaum
and it was sort of a guilt by association thing
and they decided to clone his stuff.
All right, so I have two things then to say on this.
One is, as Gus just mentioned, at least in the US,
it's now considered within our right to jailbreak phones.
So if there's no way to encrypt the data on our phones,
maybe someone should, we should start looking into that.
But secondly, we talked about two interesting topics
about these phone security issues and the SIM dialers.
Can the two possibly go together to help protect us?
That's a really good question.
And I think the answer might be yes.
Let us meditate on this.
The answer to your question, Bernie, is Lichtenstein.
Damn it, I couldn't, ooh, I couldn't remember that name.
Ugh!
Well, I'm sorry, I just didn't realize
that's what you were asking until now.
But thank you for providing a great deal of entertainment
for us, Emmanuel.
Did anyone get the Christmas card from the White House?
No.
Changing gears a little bit.
I'm not on the list.
Was it also from Lichtenstein?
No, no, not at all.
It wasn't from the White House either, though.
Holiday email Christmas card from the White House.
It just looked like, you know,
I'm reading an AP story here.
Wait, you opened this?
And there's a lot of them, but this is really dumb.
An innocent Christmas card,
electronic Christmas card from the White House.
I mean, we all get those, right?
Just a typical innocent Christmas card from the president.
But this one apparently was a ruse by cyber criminals
to steal documents and other data from law enforcement,
military, and government workers,
particularly those involved
in computer crime investigations.
And this is where it gets really good.
Analysts who have studied the malicious software
said yesterday that hackers were able to use the email
to collect sensitive law enforcement data,
but so far there has been no evidence
that any classified information was compromised.
Basically, just go on to talk about
how hackers are behind this whole thing,
how it's being used to steal millions of dollars
using the Zeus malwares, that's Z-U-E-S,
well-known malicious code used to steal passwords
and other online credentials.
And basically, yeah, hackers are out there
trying to get all this information and destroy the world.
And the article just goes on
with misconception after misconception.
It's really kind of funny.
I was wondering if anybody got that actual email.
I don't know, I don't even open e-cards from my family,
so let alone the president.
Also, I'm not a government computer security worker.
Yeah, I don't think any of us would have been on that list,
if we didn't, most of us probably would have been caught
by our spam filters.
You do realize, Dart Red,
that it's not actually from the White House.
It's not like they actually sent it
to the White House's list.
Also, though, I wanted to say that the Associated Press
appears to have caused RenderMan
to have convulsions of a dangerous sort over here.
We need to, one of these days,
we need to get around to talking a little bit more.
Have we done that lately about what a hacker is?
We did that last time I was here, I think, didn't we?
It's possible.
I can tell you what a hacker is not.
You just read the AP story
and everything they say about hackers
is basically what people who are selling information
and being criminal, that's what they're all about.
A hacker might figure out a way
to defeat a security system,
but what they're describing here
is just silliness that any idiot could do, really.
I think now we actually have a good way
to define what a hacker is,
and not by saying anything over the radio,
but by simply telling someone,
if you want to know, go look for yourself.
There are hacker spaces everywhere.
We have conferences all over the place,
and even monthly meetings.
Yes, which are this week, by the way,
this Friday, 2,600 meetings all over the world.
So if you want to know, you can meet hackers and-
Come check it out.
Yeah.
So RenderMan, it sounded like specifically
the Zeus stuff there was some nice elite toolage
that was being used in this situation.
Well, I mean, the whole thing with e-greeting cards,
I remember 10 years ago, this being an issue
and that this was the big thing
that people were doing every holiday.
There'd be a new greeting card going out with-
Yeah, but RenderMan, 10 years ago,
they weren't from President Obama.
Oh, yeah.
Well, President whoever at the time,
but just as Rob said,
I don't even open e-greeting cards from my family.
It's to the point where it's like
the whole Nigerian 419 scams.
It's like, who are these people
who have not learned this lesson yet?
There is a much larger issue of education here,
I think, than anything else.
It's rather terrifying
that we keep beating our heads against the same wall.
I think it's rather entertaining
and it says a lot about our federal workers.
Well, it's entertaining in the way
of making you want to drink more sort of.
Yeah, they're talking about hackers
and all these misconceptions
that they're throwing out and about
when really what it sounds like
is people just falling for something
that many people are gotten so used to
that like RenderMan said,
we won't even open e-greeting cards from our relatives.
You know, Render, I have to take issue
with you're saying Nigerian 419 scammers
because I had something happen to me the other day
that just made me realize
that I need to be much more careful in talking about-
Please tell me you didn't send $14 million to some guy.
No, but this is the thing,
is in the past couple of months,
I've had a couple of very legitimate letters
from scholars from Nigeria
who happened to be studying technology.
And one of them made a comment on my blog
and linked back to hers
and she's doing media studies in England.
And another one was talking to me
about some discourse analysis kind of stuff
that he'd been doing.
And both of them said Nigeria in the email
and both of them had this very formal way of speaking.
And I just had to go, these are real people,
they're not trying to ask me for money.
And like, I was just thrown into awareness
of my own biases.
Was their spelling at least half decent?
It was impeccable.
It was absolutely, it's probably better than mine is.
There's your first sign that it's, you know, somebody-
I don't necessarily know that's the case,
but I think we, you know, Nigeria,
I do think is contributing a number by now
of very skilled and talented computer programmers to the-
I guess, but were they speaking in all caps?
No, they weren't.
That was what really tipped me off
that this was probably okay.
Yeah, you know, we're not trying to say
that, you know, everyone from Nigeria
are in on these sorts of scams, but unfortunately-
Oh, I know.
There are an insidious few who seem to have a home base
in places like Nigeria.
I don't know if I've mentioned this yet,
but I found out from Finn Brunton,
who studies spam a little while ago,
that not only is spam outside in the world
associated with Nigeria,
but within the Nigerian film industry,
which is known as Nollywood,
in case I haven't mentioned Nollywood in here before.
If you haven't heard about Nollywood, go look into it.
This is kind of cool.
There are, you know, there's a, like Bollywood in India,
there's this industry that caters very much
to the continent they're on, to Africa.
And specifically to Nigeria.
And in many Nigerian movies,
the sort of Al Pacino, Scarface-style gangster types
are spammers, and they're the heroes of these movies.
And so in Nigeria, you happen to have
a very active group of fundamentalist Christians
who are very anti-spam, because they see these movies,
these violent, nasty movies,
as corrupting the youth of their nation.
And since those movies are about spam,
you get fundamentalist Christians
who are saying no spam in our country.
So, Nigeria is really interesting.
Let's get to know it, shall we?
That's my PSA for the day.
Okay, you seem to be our tour guide on this.
I think I need to go to Nigeria and find out more.
And to our left, you'll see spam,
and to our right.
And it's a natural state.
We have just a few minutes left,
so if any of our listeners wanna participate
in the conversation, our number is 212-209-2900.
Yes, great idea, I was just about to ask
if we could take some phone calls.
And if Rebel is out there, please don't call us.
I'm sure there's other people out there
that would like to speak on the air.
Also, there's a story, I know, Bernie,
this is a particular bee in your bonnet here,
about the Albany police who have allegedly launched
an anonymous text messaging tip service.
Basically, if you dial 847-411,
which spells out A-P-D tips,
you can, according to all these news reports,
send an anonymous tip to a detective
that does not identify you,
and according to them, it enables citizens
who otherwise might be reluctant to contact police
or provide information to communicate anonymously
through a text message.
Bernie, is this, in fact, true or not true?
Well, it's true that there's this,
that the DEA in El Paso launched this drug texting tip line,
but it's certainly false
that any tips sent to that line are anonymous.
Was this the same one where they were sending
in their drug orders?
That'd be kind of funny if people were sending
drug orders into that tip line.
They have.
But the bottom line is that if you ever call
a toll-free number or send a text message
to something that a government official says,
oh, don't worry, it's completely anonymous,
they're lying to you.
It's not anonymous.
Now, whether they're deciding to protect your privacy
or not is up to them,
but simply when you call a toll-free number,
the called party will have your,
the ANI, the number you're calling from.
Likewise with a text message,
if you're sending a text message,
they'll know the mobile number
that that text message came from,
regardless of what the government official says.
Oh, it's anonymous.
Beware about anonymous tip lines.
Most of them, if they're a toll-free number,
if they're a text thing, SMS, it's not anonymous.
I think this is a symptom of the death
of pay phones everywhere.
That used to be the go-to place for anonymous calls
to the police or whoever.
There was even a phrase, a common saying,
drop a dime on someone.
That's when pay phones cost a dime.
That means that somebody would drop a dime
on their pay phone and snitch on them.
I totally did not know that was where that came from.
Drop a dime on someone, yeah.
We were just talking about that earlier today.
I was just doing a focus group
with a bunch of kids up in Harlem
who were talking about how the police
have been finding out things
about people in their neighborhood
through Twitter and Facebook,
and they mentioned that phrase,
and that totally slipped my mind.
Okay, well-
It's anachronistic in two ways.
If you would like to drop a dime in our direction,
212-209-2900, it looks like we've got
some calls on the line.
How's it looking over there?
It's blinking.
Should I press one of the buttons?
Do it.
Go ahead.
Hello, you're on the air.
Oh, dear.
We scared them away.
Try not to hang up on us, please.
I'll try.
I hope they got their dime back.
Let's try this line.
You're on the air.
Hey, how you guys doing?
How are you?
Great, glad to hear it.
I need Gus to teach my girlfriend
how to be a proper girlfriend
because she's absolutely priceless.
I don't know if we can help you with that.
I'm speechless, and you really don't want that.
She's blushing.
You know you have-
Actually, that's me.
I'm blushing.
I really appreciate the support, guys.
Thanks a lot.
You, too.
Not you.
Oh, him.
I see he's already blushing.
Let's try this call.
You're on the air.
Blushing.
If you could turn down your radio.
No, people keep hanging up on us.
We've already heard that part of the show.
Yeah, we did.
We don't need to hear it again.
Let's try this phone line.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Hi.
I am the last surviving lawyer
of a law firm that represented Major Armstrong.
No kidding.
Welcome to the show.
I was not alive when they represented him,
but we were-
With a firm.
A firm, Nolte and Nolte.
They were his patent lawyers.
It's now Nolte, Nolte, and Hunter,
and it's merged with a firm called Collard and Rowe.
Now, didn't his wife, Marion Armstrong,
eventually take on,
after Edwin Armstrong committed suicide,
jumping out of a high window,
didn't she take on RCA and Sarnoff
and prevail eventually?
I believe that's true, yeah.
Yeah.
She compromised a little bit,
which Edwin Armstrong was unwilling to do.
It was recommended that he compromise, too,
and he did control that frustrating litigation,
but he felt he was right,
and therefore he shouldn't compromise at all.
But she prevailed in the end,
so perseverance paid off for her.
What were the lawsuits about?
A patent infringement.
So is this-
He invented FM and Sarnoff.
It was a complicated series of patents,
and I don't remember exactly the whole story.
It was covered in Empire of the Air,
which was largely about Sarnoff and Armstrong.
So is this case well-known within your firm,
or did we just not so happen to catch someone
listening to our show who was part of the firm,
but also who knew of this case?
Well, I'm the entire firm at this point,
and I was born well after the case was done.
So everyone in the firm knows about it.
Everyone in the firm knows as much as I do,
which isn't a whole lot.
I'm glad to hear you're all in agreement on that.
It's a fascinating story, though.
I encourage our listeners to search for more information
on Edwin Armstrong, as well as if you look at
the history of FM radio in the United States,
pull up some Wikipedia pages or what have you,
and start digging, because there's some
really fascinating chunks of history in there.
I was also hosting a radio show
on an old haunt of yours, WUSB, yesterday.
Sometimes a substitute host for Long Island Liberty.
Wow, this is a small world, isn't it?
Very, as our caller pointed out,
that book Empire of the Air,
which was actually made into, I think,
a television series as well.
Yes, it was.
It's a really fantastic drama and information
about the history of radio and FM.
I highly recommend, pick up a copy of the book,
Empire of the Air.
And Jim is also nodding vigorously.
Yes, indeed.
Thank you very much, caller.
You're welcome.
We get great callers.
Yeah.
We do, some of the time, at least.
I bet this caller's gonna be great as well.
You're on the air.
Oh, there's so many things I wanna discuss with you guys.
But first of all, I'm waiting for a reply
from the email I sent you guys.
I sent you one on December 20th,
and I sent you one last night.
I'm putting a big event together,
and I'm hoping there's some way your organization
can be present at this event on January 22nd,
the Brooklyn Lyceum.
So I'm wondering if anybody saw that email, first of all.
Emmanuel?
Why don't you tell our listeners all about the event
so that people other than us wanna know about it as well.
Absolutely.
Well, my name is Jeremiah Hosea.
I'm a bassist, I'm a vocalist, I'm a producer,
I'm an activist, I'm an avid BAI listener,
love off the hook.
And I have the distinguished honor
of presenting one of the greatest bass players
in the history of the electric bass, bar none.
His name is Doug Wimbish.
He was in the house band for the Sugar Hill Gang.
He's the bassist for Living Color.
In the meantime, he's played on Seal albums,
Madonna albums, Carly Simon albums, Bjork, everybody.
He's gonna be there at this event,
and I really wanna move away
from the nightclub kind of scene,
and I want to start creating real human events,
real events where people could get together,
listen to some music, maybe share a little information,
so on and so forth.
And I'm very, very moved by what's going on
with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning,
and I think everybody needs to be talking about this
on the streets, in the workplace, so on and so forth.
So I'm hoping that somebody from your organization
could be there January 22nd,
whether it's with a pamphlet
or to speak for three minutes or at a table.
So that's the first thing.
Where can we find more information about this,
our listeners, the event?
Unfortunately, our web designer
has been in the country of Colombia
and hopefully can put the flyer for this event
on our homepage, which is earthdriver.org.
But in the meantime, look for earthdriver.org
on Facebook.
You can check out earthdriver.org
where you can listen to the music of Doug Wimbish,
you can listen to the music of Earthdriver,
you can listen to the music of Faith and Olu
or the two other excellent artists
who are gonna be on the bill that evening.
But definitely look us up on Facebook.
Hopefully the flyer will be there soon.
The Brooklyn Lyceum is on 227 4th Avenue in Brooklyn.
It's the R train to Union Street,
lets you out right in front of the venue.
I think that's one or maybe two stops
from that central junction at Atlantic Avenue.
And yeah, I really love what you guys are doing,
but I just think we need to just get to a place
where we can just discuss this stuff a lot more freely.
And it's not like a big deal,
like I'm a big hacker and a computer person
just to have a conversation about technology.
Okay, well, if I assume you're a local
to the New York area, sir.
Yeah, I'm born and bred, I live in Queens.
Okay, well, you might be interested
in New York City's 2600 meeting this Friday,
if you're free Friday evening.
And-
Absolutely, what time is it?
It's at the Citigroup building.
You can find all the information you need at nyc2600.net.
Any NY, okay, I'm supposed to teach a lesson at that time,
but maybe I could shuffle it around
because I would love to start linking up with you guys.
Okay, well, take a look
and thank you very much for your call.
Oh, look, Rage Guy has just joined us in the studio.
Hey, Rage Guy, how's it going?
Oh.
Okay.
He's real quiet today.
Yeah, let's take this other call, you're on the air.
Yeah, hello.
Hi.
I don't know if you guys talked about it or not,
but it really seems to be right up your proverbial alley.
There was a guy by the name of Wheeler
who was murdered about four or five days ago.
What, murders aren't up our alley.
Say again?
We don't do murders on this show.
We don't deal with physical bodies in the slightest, Harry.
In Delaware.
And this guy was involved,
he's a West Point grad, he's a Vietnam vet,
was involved with the Air Force Cyber Warfare Unit.
And the guy, I mean, so this is a real high-ranking,
not a nobody, and turns up dead in a dumpster.
And it's just being like flown way below the radar.
So this might be something you guys are interested in
if you're interested in hacking, which I know you are.
Here's a guy who did it for a living for the government
and just suddenly wakes up dead one day.
Do you have any ideas as to why him?
Me personally?
The hell do I know?
All right, sounds like something
that we should check out more,
but we're out of time for this week.
Absolutely, you'd be interested.
Thanks for the call.
All right.
All right, thank you very much.
Thank you very much, everyone.
We'd like to thank our guests and RenderMan and everyone.
And have a happy 2011, everyone.
Check out your 2600 meetings this Friday.
This is Rob D. Firefly for Off The Hook.
Send us email, oth at 2600.com.
Happy New Year.
♪ Dreaming connectivity ♪
♪ Future unremembered stars ♪
♪ Lacking electricity ♪
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♪ Baby just want us ♪
By the time I get to Ho-Chi-Minh
Shu-Hee crying
Sleeping in the frying pan
Somehow still not frying
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Hit the brakes, they'll fly right by
Is this your idea of fun?
Come on, here's some of our pilots
Heathrow, Congo, non-stop flying
Heathrow, Congo, non-stop flying
Hit the brakes, they'll fly right by
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Baby's sleeping in the frying pan
Baby's sleeping in
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It's just one fry per day
Baby just wants
Baby duff, duff, duff, duff
We're gonna have a good time
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Is this your idea of fun?
Baby's just one fry per day