With reps of four groups currently working in New York City against the harassment of
women by men in public space, Girls for Gender Equity, Hollaback!, the Street Harassment
Project, the New African Women's Caucus of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, they'll
discuss their street harassment experiences, the different strategies being developed by
each group, their visions of freedom for women in a world without harassment.
That's August 17th, 9 to 11 p.m., the Street Harassment Summit.
These are our streets, too.
And the time is just about 7 p.m.
You're listening to WBAI New York, 99.5 FM.
And it is time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
That's August 17th.
Let's try that again.
And the time is just about 7 p.m.
You're listening to...
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
It's time for another exciting edition.
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 diddley bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum diddley bum!
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 diddley bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum diddley bum!
And a very good evening.
The show is Off the Hook.
Rob T. Firefly here with you.
And a bit of a full studio.
I am joined by Voltaire.
Hello, hello, hello.
And Joonce is here.
Hello.
And actually I was lying, the studio isn't that full.
But I should have people on the phone now.
Can you guys hear me?
We also have Jim.
Yeah.
Hello.
I'm here.
I don't hear the theme music though.
Is that Bernie? Yes, I hear.
But I do not hear the theme music.
There is no theme music, not anymore.
Oh, okay.
That's in the past, let's move on.
And we've also got Mike on the line.
Hello, what's new?
Not much is new.
And I'm going to attempt to contact our friend Emmanuel via Skype.
Let's see how this works.
This should be very exciting.
Is that Bernie? Yes, I hear.
But I do not hear the theme music.
There is no theme music, not anymore.
Oh, okay.
That's in the past, let's move on.
Oh, okay.
And we've also got Mike on the line.
Okay, I'm not sure why this is, but hello.
Are you there, Emmanuel?
Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you.
We're getting some strange...
I also hear two. Can you hear us both?
Yes, we can hear both of you.
And we can also hear ourselves in the past.
Because apparently something is going on in here,
of which I'm not aware.
But let's just roll with it.
I'm not sure why this is, but hello.
I think we should have tested this
before we went on the air.
Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you.
This is going to get really obnoxious.
This is sounding like a fuller studio than it is.
But okay, we've got someone going off
to see what's going on in the technical end.
Because apparently something is going on in here,
of which I'm not aware.
Hello, Rod.
Hello, Bernie, yes.
Okay, let's start with you, Bernie.
Where are you?
I'm calling from Belgium,
home of the hackerspace called Whitespace.
And this is a charming town.
And this is a wonderful hackerspace.
I'm here with a couple of friends
I've met at camp.
MP,
Sandblender,
and Jaroslav.
And we're having a good time here.
Let's start with you, Bernie.
Awesome.
Okay, and Mike,
you're online. Where are you at?
I'm in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland,
where it's past 11
and still not quite yet
fully dark.
I don't think there's a hackerspace here.
If there is, someone needs to tell me about it soon.
Awesome.
And Emmanuel and Kyle, where are you guys?
We're in
Warsaw, Poland.
Okay, and Mike, you're online. Where are you at?
I'm in Reykjavik,
the capital of Iceland,
where it's past 11
and still not quite yet fully dark.
This is fantastic.
I don't think there's a hackerspace here.
If there is, someone needs to tell me about it soon.
Guys, you know, we have a lot of vodka here
in Warsaw,
and I don't know how much of this is because of that
or how much of this is because of Skype
or whatever it is we're using right now.
But boy, I sure hope it
gets nice and clear soon.
I don't think there's a hackerspace here.
Hey, Emmanuel, are you using Skype to call in
using Skype out, or are you using Skype to Skype connection?
We have a lot of vodka here in Warsaw,
and I don't know how much of this is because of that
or how much of this is because of Skype or whatever it is we're using right now.
Skype to Skype, and apparently there's one too many Skypes here.
Boy, I sure hope it
gets nice and clear soon.
Yeah, but the Skype out I'm using through a phone line
is not going to cause any echo,
but your Skype to Skype connection is probably causing the echo.
We have a lot of vodka here in Warsaw,
and I don't know how much of this is because of that
or how much of this is because of Skype or whatever it is we're using right now.
Skype to Skype, and apparently there's one too many Skypes here.
Boy, I sure hope it gets nice and clear soon.
Yeah, but the Skype out I'm using through a phone line
is not going to cause any echo,
but your Skype to Skype connection is probably causing the echo.
We have a lot of vodka here in Warsaw,
and I don't know how much of this is because of Skype or whatever it is we're using right now.
This is a fascinating technical experiment,
but it needs to be fixed, I think.
Here's what I'm going to do.
Can everybody hear me?
Yes, indeed.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to reprogram our toll-free number
to call us here in Warsaw.
Okay.
What I'd like you to do,
well, I'm going to send you a message.
You can still read my Skype messages on the screen, right?
Yes, indeed.
Okay, so I'll tell you what to say
and how to access us
and when this thing is reprogrammed.
I'm going to disconnect our wonderful connection here,
and we'll come back on the telephone
in just a few minutes.
Well, I'm going to send you a message.
In that case, I think we're going to say goodnight to Mike.
Okay, so I'll tell you what to say
and how to access us
and when this thing is reprogrammed.
You don't have to say goodnight to Mike.
He can still remain connected
as long as you don't have to connect to him again.
I'm disconnecting now. Goodbye.
Goodbye.
In that case, I think we're going to say goodnight to Mike.
Yeah, that didn't help.
We did it.
That helped because I could shut the audio off
from the desktop workstation I have here
that Skype was running on.
So for some reason, the audio is doubling back through that.
Well, that's exciting.
Yeah.
Okay, and I'm getting a confirming nod
from technical staff here.
So that is cool.
So we've learned that we can't use
a Skype-to-Skype connection
without all kinds of audio problems.
But using Skype out, calling in
on a regular phone line at the WBA studios
works just fine.
Yes, indeed.
Okay.
This is fun.
So, Bernius,
why don't you tell us what you're getting up to over there?
Well, after
several days at the
DCC camp outside of Berlin,
which was an amazing event,
I spent a couple more days
in the city of Berlin
and then took a long train ride
to Belgium and the lovely town
of Ghent,
where there's one of four
hackerspaces in Belgium,
this one called Whitespace.
And it's a great space.
I've seen quite a few hackerspaces,
but this is a really nice one.
It's well laid out in a good location
in the middle of town.
And I'm really impressed.
I may tomorrow be heading to Paris
to check out Templab there,
another hackerspace.
But I was hoping we would have
a little retrospective this week
about our experiences since last week's show
was made from the camp.
But I personally had a
terrific experience.
It was kind of grueling
being outdoors for several days in a row
and the elements and so forth.
And there were elements,
but lots of amazing information
and ideas were exchanged.
Okay.
We are going to attempt
to reconnect with Emmanuel.
To do that, I have to
make a phone call.
So I'm going to mute the phone for a moment
and lose all you guys.
But I won't lose you.
You'll still be on the line.
In the meantime, how are you, Jones?
I'm good.
I got back from camp early, I guess.
Everyone else had other places to go,
but I decided that, you know,
I really didn't have anywhere else to go
so I just came home the day after.
But yeah, it was very good.
My first camp was two years ago at the Dutch camp
which, at least, is good.
So I've kind of resolved to go to every camp.
Every European hacker camp from now on.
Did you realize that was a big commitment?
Well, yeah.
You know, within certain parameters.
You're not going to the yearly HAR?
The what?
HAR has their yearly meetups.
Oh.
Yeah, like the Etho?
Actually, I just learned about those this summer.
It might be fun to go to.
They're a lot smaller.
This is a much bigger camp that we went to this year.
I think there were 3,500 people.
4,000 people, about.
It gets very crowded very fast.
There's a lot of tents in the field.
Amy Goodman said 25,000 people
but then she corrected herself to 2,500.
Yeah, I think it was certainly more than that.
And we're still waiting
for an annual
on the plain old telephone.
And on the phone
we're getting busy signals
so we have to keep trying.
Sadly, nothing happened in the news
these past couple weeks
so we have nothing to talk about.
So, food?
Oh, it's you.
Oh.
What was the food like?
Oh, the food at camp was great.
There was an Indian food place
and there was a place selling
burgers and pizzas
and there were crepes.
There was a pasta place.
Yeah, several bars.
It was all very...
Oh, and bratwurst, of course.
That was a big improvement over Harvard.
The alcohol was amazing at Harvard.
Not so much the food.
There was alcohol but not as much
of a variety.
There was some grappa.
It wasn't as free-flowing as it was two years ago
but it was there. You had to ask for it.
And there was a crepe-making
robot as well.
Yes, indeed.
Okay, I'm going to try this again.
Bernie mentioned there was a group
that had a crepe-making robot.
There was a commercially-available
crepe place, too.
So you had a couple of different choices.
There was also a food-hacking tent
that was right by the hackers on a plane.
It was one of the classes that they had
was how to make sushi that RedHack
and I both went to. It was very interesting
and the sushi we made
was very delicious.
I heard somebody had problems after that.
Somebody tweeted about having problems after that.
You guys, I think we have hold music.
Maybe not.
Maybe not.
I thought
Bernie said something about bad sushi.
I didn't have any.
All the sushi I ate was great.
Can you tell us more about the robot-making crepe?
I can't tell you a lot
because I didn't actually stand around
and watch it make a crepe.
We kind of glanced at it for a short period of time
as we walked by.
Did it have feedback as to how fast it was cooking the crepe
and how to put stuff in it?
I don't really know to be honest with you.
It's pretty amazing.
There's a lot of pieces to making a crepe.
You would think.
They had the actual hot plate thing
and there was a big arm
that did most of the work I suppose.
It didn't seem as complicated as you would think it would have to be.
I guess.
It still has to know when it's done.
It has to fold stuff in.
It has to slide it off.
It has to make it really thin.
I wouldn't want to build one.
When I saw it, it was not in operation
or at least not actively making anything.
I know it worked.
I know it was feeding people.
Like the early Xerox machines?
They would work for a day
and then they would get a jam.
Now they work really well.
That's the danger of hacker equipment.
It doesn't always work reliably.
Sort of like our phone calls at the show.
Hello, are you there?
Yes, I'm here.
Okay.
Can you hear us?
Uh oh.
Can anyone hear us?
I can hear you.
This is Bernie Essin.
I can hear you fine, Rob.
Okay, let's try this once again.
Hello, can you hear us?
Yes.
So, Bernie, tell us about Belgium.
Belgium?
This is my first trip to Belgium.
I've been to the Netherlands several times.
But right next to
the Netherlands is Belgium.
Which apparently used to be part of the Netherlands
many ages ago.
But this is a small town of
maybe
two or three hundred thousand people.
It's a college town, university town
that during school years
is a somewhat larger population.
But it's
one of the older cities here
that has not been having
its buildings destroyed during the war.
Apparently the
Axis and the Allies agreed to
not have it destroyed
because of its historical
significance.
Speaking of historical significance, I think we've got
Emmanuel back, have we?
Thank God, yes.
I'm finally connected on the telephone. Can you hear me?
Yes, indeed.
Okay, here we are.
Kyle and I are in Warsaw.
We're here
on our way to
places such as Belarus and
Ukraine
after having just gotten out of the
chaos camp a few days ago
in Berlin
or near Berlin, anyway.
Just so we know, who is still with us?
Did we lose anybody?
We lost Mike, unfortunately.
He's updated us on everything that
happened with him.
He's over in Iceland right now.
Bernie, you're in Belgium right now, right?
Yes, I'm in the town of Ghent.
Okay, and have you told everybody
what you've been up to?
We have, yes.
We've been updating you while you've been updating
our listeners while you've been
in hiatus there trying to get connected.
Okay, well, let's not even
talk about that right now.
That's really fascinating.
This is what you had to say later on.
I'm sure all the listeners have heard what you have to say.
We're in Warsaw right now
in Poland.
By the way, I'd just like to say for those
listeners out there that might be listening in these places,
if you're in
Iceland, if you're in France,
if you're in Poland,
Belarus, or Ukraine,
please write to us,
oth at 2600.com
and then maybe we can see
your country
through your eyes or just meet up
with some off-the-hook listeners
in various parts of the world.
It would be really cool.
It's sort of a continuation of what we've been doing
at the Chaos Communication Camp
over the past week or so.
I've got to say
what happened over the past
ten or so days
in so far as
setting up the camp,
participating in the camp, tearing down from the camp,
it's one of those
just an amazing experience
that a few thousand
people get to participate in
and then we
kind of come away from that with
fresh inspiration, new ideas,
and we start planning for the next thing.
And hopefully
the next thing will be
the Chaos Communication Congress
in December and then
Hope No. 9 coming up in July
in New York City.
But
I don't know.
Any particular questions as to what happened
in Germany that
perhaps we could help with?
Questions
about what happened?
Well, not from you, Bernie. Obviously you were there.
I'm talking about people in New York.
I see.
Is there anybody in New York?
Yes, there is.
There's lots of people in New York.
Anything you care
to ask us?
Do you miss it?
Because that's what all the blogosphere seems flooded with
is everybody just desperately misses the camp
despite the fact that it was very recent.
I wish I were still there, but
the elements got the best
of me.
It was
it seems, even though it was a five-day
event, it seems to go by very
quickly. Too quickly.
I just wanted to
mention some of my experiences.
I arrived at the camp earlier
and I've gotten to speak about this
a little bit. It was so brilliant
to see many
faces and people,
groups and projects that I've been
able to introduce myself
and familiarize myself with
at prior events.
I met many
more new people, but also was able to
rekindle and keep some of those
other relationships I've built
alive.
That's very helpful with
moving forward with all the projects
that we're involved with,
whether it's Hope or
other projects,
as well as some of the stuff that's
going on in the news.
Again, personally, maintaining
relationships and meeting new people.
There was one really cool
situation where I had met someone
who had never been to Congress
or any sort of event
in the U.S. or in
Europe.
They recognized me and
specifically volunteered because
they had trouble doing it at the Congress.
This was some two years later.
I ended up
working side-by-side with this person
and keeping that
relationship going.
I also
met some more
faces.
I've been to Congress a couple times, but
spending a week camping
with Germans, I was able to meet
a lot of Germans in a
situation that's a little different than what
we see at the more urban
Chaos Communication Congress.
Camping is a challenge,
especially adding volunteering on that.
It can be
tricky, but
as others have said tonight,
it's so worthwhile
for those
reasons and many, many more.
Without hundreds of volunteers,
events like
CCC Camp simply couldn't happen.
Basically, the city is built
in the middle of nowhere
by hundreds of hackers to support
thousands of hackers'
needs for about a week.
We're talking about every
conceivable need.
Food, water, sanitation,
internet connectivity,
telephone system,
power,
first aid,
everything you would need in a city
is there.
It's amazing that people can come
together in a short period of time
and build a small city
to support thousands of people
who all share a common goal
to share technical
information and how it affects our society
in a way to try to make it better.
It's really inspiring
these events.
It's a microcosm
of what I'd like to see our world
look more like.
I'd like to add one more thing
about that.
Just some
two years ago, I hadn't
any sort of concept of
how involved one could get.
I just want to put that out there
to anybody, whether you're a young person
or somebody who's been involved
or following the community for a long time.
Put yourself
out there. Go to a meeting
if you're in the States or try
going to a small event in the States
or maybe even venture
up north into Canada if there's something
you hear about or overseas
because I've got to tell you
it's exponential.
My learning process
and my own hacking, my interests
have just totally
exploded.
It is inspiration
and
contagious.
When you're around people, when you're working on
things, your own process
and your own projects and your own communities
are affected by that.
Really,
if I could say anything, get involved
soon and put yourself
out there. It's challenging and
it's hard, I think, as
hackers or people that are
into technology. It's a bit
hard to talk
about the technical things that you like but also
socialize. These events,
these meetings,
just getting involved
in a project, even if it's remote, but I
encourage face-to-face stuff too.
If you get yourself
out there and get involved, it becomes easier
just like anything else. Practice
makes perfect.
If you're sitting at home and you're listening
or maybe you're a reader or
you
just follow the news and stuff
and you've heard about this hacking
community or hacker spaces
and you just want to
start to see if maybe that's
a community for you, chances
are it is. Chances are
no matter what you're doing,
you've got a place in that.
You have something to contribute
and if you're
inspired,
you could see your own life and your
own world
just completely
thrive, just open up
by being around people that are
smart, that encourage you, that have
ideas. Again, it's work.
It's work. Relationships and
society is work, but I
think the cohesion
between individuals and
on projects and all of these kinds
of amazing things that are happening
with the hacker community and technology,
that's
lasting and gets
stronger and stronger. We're seeing
a lot of younger people, a lot of families,
a lot of people in
different artistic worlds,
all kinds of different things. Food
is this amazing thing that's
blossoming in the hacker community.
There's all these things that we can
pull in
and perfect
in the regular world, the world
that we may think ignores us
and the reality is
we're innovating it.
Kyle, I noticed that there was a whole
family village.
They're at CCC campus here.
Absolutely, and I heard that's one of the same kind of people.
Multi-generational
hacker families
ran into
folks
who had
pretty amazing
technical skills because
their parents were hackers.
This is really amazing to see
this community
growing and carrying on
for generations now.
Absolutely, and it's
just really inspiring.
You can have that impact.
Again, it's that
teaching and learning.
It's full duplex.
You teach as much as you learn
when you're in this kind of community
and I think
the biggest danger
is keeping yourself from that.
I just really encourage
people to get involved because
as someone like myself who's only been involved
for a couple years, I see
all this new stuff. Again,
maintain existing relationships
and really work on those because
there's many people that want to help
and a lot of projects I want to move forward on
and stuff, but
I'm seeing so much new as well
as we talk about families and stuff
but also
amazing art
and technical stuff
and especially in the news
as we all know
there's a lot of serious sides
to all of this stuff.
I wanted to also point out
that a lot of
our listeners who could not come
to the CCC camp this year
can get a good taste of it.
First, you can just search for
CCC camp
photos online. There are thousands
and thousands of them, but more importantly
you can
all the audio and video
and the dozens of talks and presentations
that were given at the conference are online.
You can just go to the CCC website
ccc.de
which links to where you can
see some of the content that was shared
at this conference.
Some really incredible presentations were made there
that we can't really
go into on tonight's show
but it was five days
of presentations and talks
which incidentally were held
in these huge
underground bunkers
not underground, but bunkers
that were covered with earth and trees
that were designed to protect
airplanes of the
German Democratic Republic
during the Cold War.
So this was an amazing venue
and we had a great
physical infrastructure for
these talks in these bunkers
but of course most of what happened was
outside. For the most
part it was tolerable weather.
This all
ties into something else I wanted to mention
tonight about someone who was
at the CCC camp.
This is a blog post
that was written by somebody who attended CCC
it's somebody who worked with Telecomics
if you're not familiar with that
Telecomics is sort of a collective
that insured things
like a group of hacktivists
who insured things like access for the
Egyptians during their rebellion
and revolution and stuff like that
and this is something
that takes a lot of work from a lot of people
and this
one individual, his name is Stefan
Urbach, I hope I'm saying that right
and he wrote
a blog post, with his permission
I'd like to read it on the air
as in he gave me
his permission. So I'm going to read this
it's a bit heavy but
here we go
it's entitled The Day I Wanted
to Die, A Personal Confession
or Why the Shutdown of a Cluster is Making
People Live
I have to make a confession, a very personal one
I wanted to die
I planned everything, I planned how to do it
I organized the tools to do it
I wrote down how to gain access to my email
account, my server, my IRC sessions
and who was to be informed
I was in a deep depression, I saw no way out
to stop this feeling other than to commit suicide
The pressure was too much
for me, I was working since January
on different projects with Telecomics and others
We were helping Egyptians to gain back their connection
to the internet, helped in Syria, Libya
and many other countries to give the oppressed a possibility
to speak
We made it possible that their voices were being heard
Literally, I fought for that
I fought against my sleeping cycle, eating habits
and my need for recreation
On some days it was normal to stay awake for 30 or more hours
I saw and read things I would never have considered
possible. In the last months we helped
many people get connected to the internet
to speak up and show the world what was happening
Some people got lost
I saw them again and I do not know if they just moved away from us
or if they got arrested or killed
I do not know and I will never know
Every day in the media we see so many bad news
from all over the world, news which are bad
but which do not affect us directly
The news about these people, or lack thereof
who were talking to me affected me deeply
The pressure arose to help, to help these people
who struggle hard for their right to speak freely
The more we helped the people
the more the responsibility I felt grew to a new level
I could not sleep anymore
I drank way too much, I smoked more than was good for me
I saw no more meaning in my life than helping other people
Over that I forgot what I needed for myself
Sleep, recreation, movies, music
hanging around with my friends
and not thinking about people on the ground
and what to do next
One day I realized that I was lost
Lost in this life that was not mine
Lost in a life where I only served others
People considering me a hero
No one saw that I was just a little boy who wanted to play around
with technology and write papers about the future of communication
Long story short
it all needed to end for me
I saw no other way than going, leaving
not being a hero anymore
I planned to commit suicide a day after the CCC camp
Everything was prepared
but there it happened
We closed down the activist cluster I was with
I met many great people for the first time in real life
and many of them have the same problem
My friends were there and showed me that life is worth living
With the reboot of the cluster
I will reboot myself
I am starting to make plans for my life again
I am not lost anymore
I have my place in the hacking and activist scene
And I have my friends all over the world
I am not alone
And the facts I considered a burden are not a burden anymore
But opened my eyes to what is important in life
To communicate what you feel
And if my communication of my feelings helps others to do the same
It was worth it
So shutting myself down to reboot
It's time
Reboot-h now
And that was a blog post dated yesterday
from stefanorbach.net
That's s-t-e-p-h
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Okay, so
we are in Warsaw, Poland
as we've said twice now
just exploring, kind of
checking out this part of the world
I actually have a little bit of
of
Polish in me
as it were, heritage-wise
so I'm very interested in that, but also
Poland's changed a lot
Warsaw in particular is
quite a bit different
I think Emmanuel can speak a little bit
more on that
I've never been to Warsaw myself
but they're doing a lot
with infrastructure because of this
big event
Euro 2012
and we're really fascinated by infrastructure
as hackers
and seeing people work
and build things
so we spent a bit of time today
familiarizing ourselves with what is a
quite complex transit system
but also just
exploring the city and seeing the
busyness and what's going on
and it really is quite modern
quite a bit different than the
coal-burning and sort of
grey that I thought
stereotypically was what
Warsaw was all about
but here's Emmanuel
Yeah, so
Euro 2012 takes place next year
and that's, for those of you who don't know
that's kind of like a mini-World Cup
involving European
teams
and it's taking place in both Poland
and Ukraine
so we're going to be checking out both countries
to see how their infrastructure is building
up for this monumental event
but the interesting thing is that
on the way between Poland and Ukraine
we'll be going through Belarus
with a team which actually
is almost qualified
I think to be in Euro 2012 next year
Belarus is known
as the last dictatorship of Europe
and
I've been there twice already
and Kyle and I are going back
this year
and we're going to sort of explore, look around
see what's going on, see how the country has changed
look at their
infrastructure, look at their
social scene
things like that and I just think it would be very interesting
if there were any hackers that actually were
in Minsk
in Belarus
or even any part of this region
or Ukraine
because it's always fascinating to see
countries and cultures through the eyes of hackers
as you've seen
in the last couple of years
actually, the hacker culture
has resulted in a lot of change
whether it be through
WikiLeaks
or groups such as
LulzSec and Anonymous
actually things are
basically
being I guess really
brought to the forefront
in the media
and people are
feeling empowered
as far as using technology
and social networking sites
and things like that
it's very interesting times to be a hacker
it always is interesting times to be a hacker
but in this particular period of time
it's especially interesting because
the entire world seems to be focused
on what it is we're doing
and at the camp, at the chaos communication camp
that just ended
I think that's something that we all kind of felt
we saw all these people coming around from
all different parts of the globe
and we all kind of
shared that
and it was a very international type of event
there were people from Bulgaria, there were people from Japan
there were people from Africa
and from North America and South America
and it was really amazing
to see all this and to feel all that
and you realize how big the hacker
culture has become and how all encompassing it is
it's inspirational
and that's why we
hope to stay in touch with
so many people from
different parts of the world
so if anyone out there is interested in
contacting us, any of our travelers
whether it be in Iceland or France or
Belarus or any of the other places
oth at 2600.com
is our email address, we'd sure love to hear from you
and of course that's also our email address
for those of you who are not traveling
or not in other countries
or simply want to ask us questions or
provide feedback
it's fascinating times we're in
I wanted to
say too that what a lot of people who come to
the Chaos Communications
camp do afterwards
is they take some additional
time off to travel
around Europe and visit other hacker spaces
which is what I'm doing here
at Templab in
Ghent, Belgium
and probably tomorrow I'll be heading to Paris
I said white space
I'm sorry in Belgium, I'll be heading to Templab
in Paris tomorrow probably
but we get involved in other things
too, I have to
give thanks to
Philip from Croatia for
a couple days ago taking me and some other
hackers from camp to an
abandoned NSA
signal monitoring facility
outside of Berlin
which was an amazing urban
expedition, we hiked for miles
many kilometers up
a mountain of rubble
made from
the remnants of
Berlin
thousands of train cars
in this big
pile of rubble which is on the outskirts
of Berlin, on top of which
now sits a former NSA
monitoring facility with these big
round golf ball shaped
ray domes
we spent hours exploring that place and taking photographs
and it was really
a pretty awesome
experience seeing what our
government was doing
to monitor
the east during those
cold war times and there's similar
stations around the world right now but
this is the first one and probably the only one I'll ever get a chance
to explore. Bernie, I'm a little
confused by this, now you went
to see an NSA monitoring post
correct, in Germany?
It's not currently one, it was, but it's
abandoned now. But
wasn't it in East Germany and how did they
manage to have that
going? No, it was in West Germany
but just near the border so that
all the
antennas can be pointed towards the east
I think one of the biggest
one of the primary targets
were the terrestrial microwave
telecommunications links
you may recall back in the
80s and earlier that
long distance telephone links
were not carried by fiber optic
but were primarily carried by
point-to-point microwave
not satellite. Those
cornucopia type forms you used to see on
towers in various cities
still do in rural areas but
NSA decided they
could monitor from
a distance these
point-to-point microwave links
in the German Democratic
Republic from this monitoring post
that I visited
and listen to lots of
phone calls and other official communications
and just gather whatever intelligence they
could from East Germany.
It was fascinating.
So I take it this was in West Berlin then?
Yes, but outside the city.
It was really out in the countryside.
We had to hike through fields and woods
and up this massive mountain
of rubble. It's fine.
You're going up this path
on this mountain and you see
bricks and
just brick after brick after brick
just pieces of bricks and
I was told that this
hill which you can see from
the center of Berlin, you can see it from
the famous radio TV tower
in Alexanderplatz. If you look out
you can see a strangely
shaped hill. It's like higher than anything else
around but it's not shaped like a normal
mountain. It is
piles of train loads
of what was Berlin
and on top of that sits this
big tower with
this giant golf ball looking
radome on it and there's about five radomes
there and you can climb
up inside them and see where they had
all their radio equipment
and where the analysts
sat. It's pretty chilling
seeing the scope
of the electronic surveillance that was
happening from the west
pointed at the east. I'm sure
they were doing it on the other side as well, pointing at us.
Well, I just think it's amazing
that you went from
being on an East German
airfield, pretty much run by the
Soviets, in one day to
going over to a former
NSA listening post and
exploring that. I mean, that's the true hacker spirit
right there, what you went through.
It was pretty amazing. So I've got to
thank Philip for introducing me to this. He planned
a great trip and we had to do some
pretty serious
circumvention to get
into the place. But we found
that other people, we ran into other people
from camp that we didn't even know
who were there at the same time. So it wasn't just
us. It was sort of like the mecca
for some of the
people at CCC
to check this out while they happened to be in Germany.
So that was pretty
great running into other CCC folks. But there
were some other people from the area that were there.
One person
we found at the top radome,
this is like a 30 foot high,
30, 40 foot high golf ball
that contained this big microwave
antenna at one time. There was someone
in there playing an acoustic
guitar with a couple other people
recording them because the acoustics in this giant
radome are so amazing.
You can just whisper at your lowest
tone of voice and
it echoes back into your ears
with deafening loudness.
It was just surreal.
I found
the remnants of a pirate FM radio
station in one of these radomes
as well. Apparently after it was
retired, back in
1989 when the wall
came down, the NSA decided to abandon
that facility since they could set up monitoring
facilities anywhere in Germany.
But apparently someone took
advantage of the high off the
ground location of this monitoring
post and set up a pirate FM radio
station. We found some of the equipment
from that station still there
with some antenna stuff.
It was pretty funny and ironic
finding that there.
What does a radome look like for someone who's never seen one?
It looks like a big golf ball.
How big?
Hello?
About how big is a radome?
The ones there, I'd say
the biggest one, there were about five of them,
the biggest one at the top
of the tallest tower was probably
I'm guessing
maybe
40 or 50 feet
in diameter.
It's made up of little triangles.
Instead of dimples in a golf ball,
it's made up of little triangles
of a special material that is
transparent to all radio frequencies.
But each triangle has to be mathematically
calculated to be dimensionally
unique because if any
two triangles are the same, you can lend
to a filtering effect
and not provide a transparent
RF enclosure
around the antenna.
The whole reason they cover these antennas is not just to
shield them from the weather, but to deny
the adversary from seeing
which direction the antenna is pointed
and what kind of antenna it is
which would be revealing
crucial intelligence.
That's why they have these radomes
around big satellite antennas.
By the way, I'd like to jump in
and invite our listeners to give us a call
because I know we haven't taken phone calls in a while
and we certainly have been through a lot
over the last few weeks, and we'd like to hear
your questions, your feedback, your responses
to the things that we've been reporting on.
Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
212-209-2900.
I'm over here
in Warsaw with Kyle.
Bernie is over in
Belgium. Mike is no longer with us,
but he is in Iceland.
He's still there, and of course everyone else
is over in New York.
I know Redhackt is in Prague,
in the Czech Republic, but I don't think we have him online
here. But I do want to say
just after having
concluded the Chaos Communication
Congress run by the
Chaos Communication
Club, Computer Club,
the CCC, the wonderful people of Germany,
there were so many people
to thank, so many different organizations.
Organizations like the
Italian Embassy, a bunch of people from Italy
that just get together and are just
extremely festive and generous as far as
handing out grappa
and handing out pasta and things like that.
It's just an amazingly
festive occasion.
A lot of fun
to be with them, to see them
every couple of years.
And people from all different other countries as well.
But in this particular case, I think
the United States
really was represented very well too.
Nick Farr did an amazing job
getting people to
basically
have a presence there at the camp.
And I think
so many people came by and saw
generosity of a
sort that was
really kind of cool.
As you mentioned, Bernie,
Philip was there from Croatia.
He visited the American tents
and was cooking all kinds of
interesting things for various people wandering by.
And Kyle and I were there with
the Hacker Calendars, which a lot of people
were really into and were
finding all kinds of dates and pictures and things like that.
That was fun.
All sorts of people were just meeting
and exchanging stories
and experiences and things like that.
Of course, there were so many other countries
represented as well. I don't want to
skip over it, but of course
I'm going to, because there were just
so many different people from Finland
and people from France
and England and various other places.
I just hope we get
that kind of representation at
Hope No. 9 in July
here in New York, because
it's what the hacker world is all about.
It's people from all different
hemispheres.
With that, we've got a couple of calls on the line.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello.
Am I on there?
Yes, indeed you are. What's on your mind?
You said earlier there wasn't any news
today, but I thought
that you might be talking
about the things that happened
in California, shutting
off the cell phone service at
public transit stations.
Yes, indeed. That was
the BART agency, wasn't it?
Yes.
I was being sarcastic, because
that was one of the biggest stories we've had
in the last couple of weeks.
I don't know if we have
enough time to give it justice tonight, but
it's a really important story.
For those that
aren't familiar with it,
there's a protest planned.
Police officers
in San Francisco shot
a homeless person.
The details aren't fully worked out.
We don't know who was at fault.
Protecting by their past record,
they don't have a good record on
shooting unarmed homeless people.
There's a
protest planned.
The
police officers,
the
transportation administration,
BART,
preemptively
shut down the cell phone towers
near the stations
so that activists
wouldn't be able to communicate with each other,
which has huge First Amendment ramifications.
Our friends at Anonymous
took to the streets to protest that.
Yes, indeed.
That is a huge story, and it's probably
far too complex for us to, as you said, give
justice, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Thank you very much for your call.
Let's see who else is out there.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hello.
Good evening.
I hope I'm not taking you too far off topic,
but I'd like someone
to discuss the phenomenon of
spoofing, where
people intend on concealing
their identities for
various purposes are able
to, I don't know,
key in numbers
in their computers that conceal
their identities from caller ID.
Are you familiar with that?
Not in the least, but if you have any information,
please let us know.
Thank you very much, and let's see who else is out there.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Okay, you've got to be quicker than that.
And a very good evening to you.
Good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
There is a flaw.
I know that there's a strike in Verizon,
but there is a flaw.
I'm not going to make sense out of it,
because Verizon's on strike.
They're not going to fix it.
Yes, wrap it up quick, Rebel.
718.225 and 229
exchanges in Bayside, Queens.
Only on pay phones, if you dial
106980,
which is the old New York telephone
carrier access code,
the operator will ask you for your phone number,
and you can give them any number
so long as it's in the 718 or 212
area code, so long as
it's not a pay phone.
And then you can make free phone calls that way.
You can get connected with long distance that way.
Like if you gave them
718.890.1300,
which was the old business
office number, that will work.
That sounds really interesting, and if anyone has
any experiences with that, please let us know.
And who else is out there?
Good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Yeah, I was cut off before I was
speaking about spoofing. Hello?
Yes, indeed. You're speaking about spoofing, but
it is far off from the topics we're on today, but
please send us an email.
And yes, the number is
212-209-2900.
And
I think we've run out of people.
More people should call us.
We should spoof some listeners to call us.
We should spoof some listeners to call us, yes.
Emmanuel, are you still there?
Yeah, we're still here in
Warsaw.
How are things down there?
Oh, they're nice.
It's a very busy city at night. There's a lot of
traffic
out here downtown.
And a lot of motorsport. These guys
really tear by quickly.
And I think they also work for the bus system
too.
Speaking of traffic, we've got some phone traffic going on now.
Let's see who else is out there.
Good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Good evening, sir.
Yes, one point.
Verizon is on strike,
so they will not
fix anything that is not pertinent
to anything.
Thank you very much for that.
Good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Hello, this is Emmanuel.
They're taking advantage of the substitute teacher, I swear.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Listen, if you guys are going to
take questions, don't do MSNBC.
You've got 10 seconds to answer.
That's absurd.
Thank you very much for that.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
You have 10 seconds.
They did it. Less than 10 seconds.
Yes, we'll do that.
Good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Yeah, this is my third call. I need to know
about, and the audience needs to know about
people who conceal their identities.
They key in the IRS
or the FBI phone numbers
to conceal their identity.
Surely somebody there is sophisticated
enough to know about this.
Okay, I don't think anyone here does, but if anyone does,
please send us an email, and we'll follow up on it.
Yes, the audience needs to know.
And a very good evening to you. You are on off the hook.
Hello.
Yeah, on
the labor show with Mimi Rosenberg
and Ken Nash.
This is not that show that you're calling.
Hello? Hello.
Yeah, they reported
there were
at least 22, I believe,
or 24 vehicles
hit people going through
a scab line, going through a picket line,
and, I'm sorry, not going through a scab line,
going through a picket line
at the Verizon strikes.
That's a little more violent and brutal
than we need the big corporations
that are making big money that don't pay
taxes and get what was also
reported on that show.
A whole lot of money, of tax money,
paid to them, to the corporations.
Thank you for that.
And a very good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Good evening, sir.
Thank you.
And a good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
And a good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Hey,
just a quick comment.
A couple weeks ago,
there was an off-the-wall show.
I just thought it was awesome, the one they did
in Seattle,
where they walked around town,
talked about the local airport and stuff.
I just wanted to say it was really cool.
I've listened to it like six,
seven times already.
It was cool, and I'm sure the guys appreciate that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Let's see who else is out there.
Good evening to you. You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
I think it's a distinct possibility.
If you're listening, what do you think about that?
Send us an email.
I think we've got time for
maybe one or two more of these calls.
Let's see who's out there.
Very good evening. You're on off the hook.
Thank you.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
I'm just going to go on assuming from now on
there's actually about a dozen of him.
I think the clock is ticking,
and it's coming up on time to wrap things up.
Bernie S. Emanuel,
Kyle, what do you guys think?
Absolutely.
Thank you
for your hard work there.
Everyone who's listening
and who participated in the events
over here, let's keep it up,
and let's move forward.
There's so much to talk about and so much to do.
Again, if you're in any of the
countries we've mentioned,
please contact us at
oth at 2600.com.
Good night from Warsaw.
How about you, Bernie S.?
How are you?
I'm great here in Gank Belgium.
I just want to thank the folks here
at Whitespace for hosting me.
I look forward to
getting in touch with them
and sharing ideas.
I want to thank you for
being a good substitute teacher there
at the WBAI studios
tonight, Rob.
Doing my best.
On that note, I think we'll wrap it up.
Once again, send us an email.
oth at 2600.com
For Off the Hook, this is Rob T. Firefly. Good night.
Good night.
Gank!
Ah, yes, Off The Hook has music that's actually off the hook.
Yeah, they've got great music.
They always do.