On the next hour, featuring Richard Bowes reading There's a Hole in the City.
This is Phil Donahue, and you're listening to WBAI-New York, 99.5.
And this is WBAI-New York.
The time is seven o'clock.
Time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I can't make a call, I can't make a call.
I managed to know what's going on here.
Why do I keep getting cast aside and put into this room
for secondary screening?
And they gave me this little green piece of paper,
white piece of paper with green writing on it called
What is DHS Trip from Homeland Security?
It sounds like a bad drug experience.
It sounds like a bad drug experience.
You have DHS Trip going on here.
The wire that they string in front of you so you fall into the secondary screening room?
It feels that way.
But here's how they explain it.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
Travel Redress Inquiry Program,
which coincidentally spells T-R-I-P,
provides a single portal,
has a portal involved here, for travelers to seek redress.
Am I saying that right? Because that's not a word I usually say.
It's not redress, redress.
To seek redress for adverse screening experiences
and to resolve possible watch list
misidentification issues.
For example, travelers may seek redress because they have been delayed or denied
boarding, delayed or denied entry into the U.S.
at a port of entry, or been subject to additional
slash secondary screening or inspection.
It is important to understand that travelers may be referred
for additional screening or inspection
for reasons other than information in law enforcement databases,
such as the circumstances of their travel or
random selection. Individuals who receive
redress through DHS TRIP may still be referred
for additional screening for unrelated reasons in the future.
If you have concerns about other elements
of your travel experience, such as damage to goods,
please contact the agency under whose jurisdiction the problem
occurred. Now, under this section,
on how to submit a DHS TRIP inquiry,
to initiate an inquiry, please log on to DHS
TRIP's interactive website at www.dhs.gov
slash TRIP.
There, you will be prompted to describe
your particular concerns and experience, provide contact
information to which a response will be directed, and be assigned
a case number to help you monitor the progress of your
inquiry. In addition, depending on your inquiry,
documentation may be required. The United States makes
every effort to ensure that travelers' records
are accurate, their privacy is protected, and the
treatment they receive from DHS officials is professional and
fair. Information submitted through DHS TRIP will be
protected and will only be shared in accordance with the provisions
of the Privacy Act of 1974 and as provided
in the Privacy Impact Assessment published
for DHS TRIP. Now, when and how you will receive
a response, DHS TRIP will process your request
completely, accurately, and as quickly as possible.
In certain cases, supporting documentation may
be required. We encourage you to submit any additional information
within 30 days to facilitate the processing of your request.
And you may check the status of your request at any time through the
DHS website, www.dhs.gov
slash TRIP. If you want more information about the U.S. government's
privacy and redress policies and procedures, and to
access frequently asked questions, please visit the website also at the
same address, www.dhs.gov
slash TRIP. And so I filled out
the form, I answered, I did a little
checkbox thing as to the things that applied to me.
Here are some of the possibilities. I am always subjected to additional
screening when going through an airport security checkpoint. No,
not true. Doesn't always happen to me on the way out. I was
denied boarding. No, I wasn't denied boarding. I am unable to print a
boarding pass at the airport kiosk or at home. No, I've learned
how to do that. I am directed to a ticket counter every time I fly.
Again, not applicable. The airline ticket agent stated that I am on a
federal government watch list, if only, but I've never
gotten anything that direct. I was detained during my
travel experience. Bingo! Yes, that's definitely the
theme of my travel experience. A ticket agent took
my identification and called someone before handing me a boarding pass.
No, that did not happen either. That happens in the movies a lot, though.
I missed my flight while attempting to obtain a boarding pass. You would
have heard about it, believe me, through other circumstances if
that had happened, but no, that didn't happen either. I am repeatedly
referred for secondary screening when clearing U.S. Customs and
Border Protection. Yes, that applies to me very directly.
I was denied entry into the United States. That's coming.
That day is going to come at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.
I am a foreign student or exchange visitor who was unable
to travel due to my status. No. I was told my fingerprints
were incorrect or of poor quality.
Is that an earthquake or is somebody just
shoving somebody near the studio? Okay. The whole room just
shook for a second. It sounds like construction or
something. Or destruction. Yeah, maybe. We're preparing for a special
9-11 celebration downstairs, I'm sure.
I was told my fingerprints were incorrect or of poor quality.
How can your fingerprints be incorrect? I feel
my civil rights have been violated because I was discriminated against
on the basis of my race, ethnicity, religion, disability, or gender.
Well, I can't say any of that was applicable in this case,
but maybe because of the way my brain operates or something,
but that doesn't really count. I mean, they won't tell you why you're being
held up. No, they won't. It could be for any of those reasons.
But did I feel that my civil rights were violated because of that?
I can't say that it was on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion,
disability, or gender. I don't think so. I feel my
civil rights have been violated because my questioning or treatment
or screening was abusive or coercive. They've always been pretty nice.
I mean, Kyle, when we went across the border in Canada, they were
kind of nasty there. But
I'm talking about this particular case where they don't even ask any
questions, really. They just sort of look you over and
check things and delay you.
Did they damage your book? No, those were the checks.
Those were the checks. And those bastards I'm going to get to
in due time. Yeah, that was because I had the four S's in my
pass and they tore my luggage apart. Same trip, too.
Imagine that, being subjected to this on the way out
and when you get welcomed home as well. It's simply
unbelievable. Okay, so
I feel my civil rights have been violated because a search of my personal
property violated freedom of speech or press.
I'm not sure I can say that they violated freedom
of speech or press. I feel that there's a violation of some sort, but I
can't say specifically it was that.
I feel my privacy has been violated because a government agent has exposed
or inappropriately shared my personal information. Well, I don't know about that,
but maybe that's happening. I was given an information sheet by
a CBP officer.
I wasn't given any sheet. I was given that little card.
I was told by CBP at a U.S. port of entry
that my fingerprints need to be corrected by a U.S. visit.
And no, that did not happen either. Other travel-related
issue. I didn't check that one either. I just want to get this over with.
I filled out the form. I explained what happened. I said that I really
want this to end. I want to find out what's going on here.
And I got a little page with a
redress control number, which I'm not going to read over the air.
But I will say that they said afterwards to
complete the process, you have to mail or email copies of the
following documents to DHS.
A copy of my passport. I assume a copy of the page
that has my name on it, and that if may not copy every single page on it.
And a signed copy of this page.
And you can either email that or send it via mail.
I have it here in an envelope. Here it is. I have not yet mailed it out.
But I'm going to mail it out as soon as I get the okay from the people in the studio
that this is a good idea to do this. In this envelope is
a signed copy of that page and
a copy of the page of my
passport that has all my information on it.
It doesn't count unless you actually stick it in the mailbox.
But as you can see, it's a tension control number
and there's my control number. So my control number is now part of the address.
I'm not giving it to you. But yeah, that's what you get.
You get a piece of paper and
within 30 days they're supposed to receive this and then they're supposed to respond.
So we're going to find out something. We'll find out if they actually say anything.
I bet they don't. You think they won't say anything?
I mean, I think you should try, but I'm not optimistic. What do you think, Bernie?
I think this is probably a waste of time, but it could be
entertaining to see what happens. I don't think you're going to find out
anything about why you're being detained. Well, that would be unfortunate
because then I'll have to just keep asking and raising the volume of my voice,
which is something I'm prepared to do.
But it's annoying. It makes you not want to travel.
It makes you not want to come back.
I think there are a lot of people that are experiencing things like this and they'd like to know why too.
So it's an educational experience for all of us.
I was chatting at the CCC conference with Jake Applebaum
who's got this phenomenon times like 100.
Whoa, whoa. You had talked directly to him? You're on the list now too then.
Yeah, well, I'm apparently not, and they won't tell him why either.
So I don't know what your odds are.
Yeah, well, he seems to go through the same thing too.
I mean, he gets it times 10, but, you know.
The thing is, I was never part of Wikileaks when he was,
and I'm not sure exactly what the connection is.
I'm a little optimistic. I hope this leads to it actually stopping.
Like, forget why. I mean, that'd be great if they told you why,
but I hope it just stops because, like you said,
they're not really doing very much.
It's just going through motions that are kind of needless.
And even in Canada when we were driving,
it was really late and they were just sort of bored
and thought they could, it was just sort of like a
wear them out with the clock kind of thing.
Like, how long can we make them sit here until something credible
is something we can twist into something?
But it's all just motions that are needless.
So I really hope that what comes out of this is that it stops
so you can travel freely and do the good things that we've been doing.
You can always find something on somebody to detain them
and ask them a whole lot of questions.
In the last case, when we were going over from Canada,
it was, well, you're in a smart car with Quebec license plates
and it technically belongs to somebody else because you don't live in Quebec.
But we were getting a lecture about, well, you know,
if this is your primary car and you're driving around in New York,
you can get in a lot of trouble for that and it's not the primary car
and we know this and there's no reason to keep us for an hour
to give us this lecture and eventually they let you go.
Another time, I had a Canadian satellite receiver in my trunk.
There's nothing wrong with that either.
But that led to a whole lot of third degree.
Years ago, having a credit card with a pseudonym,
which is also completely legal as long as you pay the bill,
that led to a whole big thing as well.
They can always find something, something unusual about you.
And you remember when we were there, they just kept asking us
the same questions over and over again.
There would be a period of maybe 25 minutes when nothing was said
and all of a sudden they would say, Kyle, how do you know this other person?
Where did you meet? And we had already answered this question several times
and they just keep hammering away.
I agree with you in the sense that you're at the mercy
of their interpretation of the circumstance.
But in the long run, I think it doesn't help
that there's some checkbox in some system somewhere
that's just aggravating the situation because, again,
you're needlessly pulled aside in the secondary screen.
I'd also say that the way you filled that out sounds pretty good.
You didn't exaggerate and I personally probably would have been tempted
because it feels awful, all that emotion.
I feel like you approached it fairly rationally
and that you answered exactly like this is what's going on.
This is what I'm sick of. I'm sick of being pulled aside at secondary screen
when I'm coming into the country. So please stop it.
And I had no choice but to wait because I was without power for a full week.
So I wasn't able to actually easily do this.
So plenty of time to contemplate and look at the dark sky
and figure out just how it is I want to approach this.
And now we're going to see what happens.
Checks are next. They're going to get their comeuppance for ripping my bag
and hurting the book I was trying to protect
and just treating me like a terrorist.
Do you realize I was the most dangerous person on that airplane, according to them?
It was incredible. A full-packed airplane, probably in the airport as well.
It was really bizarre and weird.
I mean, the thing is it may be true because
for all the security hoopla, there really aren't that many people out there
who are that dangerous.
At least they're not finding them, if there are.
Alright, enough about my problems.
The ongoing story that never seems to end.
We have some fun things coming up in the next couple of weeks.
Do you remember, guys, a year ago?
What was going on about this time of year?
Well, Kyle, you weren't here. You were over in Seattle.
But Mike, I know you were around. And Voltaire, you were around.
And Jim, you were around too.
I'm referring to the leaves turning colors, of course.
Of course, I'm referring to the turning of the leaves.
I'm referring to the Maker Faire, which is coming back to New York City.
It's coming back to the New York Hall of Science,
the former World's Fairground area of Queens.
And we went there last year
with the 2600 van, hung out,
met a lot of listeners.
A lot of people came by and just hung out,
talked to us.
And there were a lot of different science projects going on.
A lot of kids showed up, learning all kinds of things.
It was really festive.
And I've got to say, for the first time since I think I was...
There's that noise again.
Someone's thumping.
Maybe it's a science experiment here in this building as well.
But a lot of people just learned a lot that weekend.
It was really cool to see all that.
So that's coming up.
Not this weekend coming up, but the weekend after that.
And we have one of the chief organizers
of the Maker Faire in New York City.
Sherry Huss joins us from California.
Sherry, are you with us?
I am. Thank you.
How did last year play out?
Absolutely. We were incredibly thrilled.
We had about 25,000 people over the course of the weekend.
And a lot of great diversity
in families,
in ages,
you name it.
We had a lot of folks there.
And it's part of the reason that we're back this year.
And it seems like we're on in full force
to make this a great event this year.
Can we just take a step back and ask you, Sherry,
for maybe some of our listeners are living under rocks or things,
what is the Maker Faire?
You bet. So Maker Faire is part of...
We're actually a division of O'Reilly Media.
So I would assume most of your listeners
probably have had some O'Reilly book in their library
or have used O'Reilly.
We're just finishing our seventh year.
And Maker Faire is the festival that celebrates folks that make things.
So we kind of think of it as a newfangled county fair.
And we try to incorporate not only technology,
but folks that actually like to kind of get physical
and hands-on with projects,
whether it's electronics or crafting or food.
And that's why it sort of seems like it is a new world's fair.
And it's great to be back in New York
since it seems like it's a really good location for us.
Yeah, it certainly does.
And I'm amazed that 25,000 people just showed up last year
when it was the first time this had ever been held.
How do you reach out to all these people through the magazine?
You know, part of it is that we kind of aggregate
and pull together such diverse communities
that a lot of those communities market to their communities.
We also have a good partner with the New York Hall of Science
and activities in the schools, a lot of different connections.
And finally, this will be actually our 12th Maker Faire since 2006.
12th overall throughout the world.
12th overall, kind of a big Maker Faire.
So I anticipate that by the end of this fair,
we should probably have touched about a half million people
over these 6 years.
And that would be 2 events in New York, 2 in Detroit,
2 in Austin, and 6 in the Bay Area.
I think that there's a movement out there,
and we're trying to put out mini Maker Faires
and let communities kind of roll their own, if you will.
So if you're a school, a church, a community,
and you want to put a Maker Faire out in your community,
we have a way for that to happen now, and we've created a playbook.
And we really all just want to encourage folks making things.
Now, the website is MakerFaire.com.
That's spelled M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.com.
And there's a New York section there,
and you can find all kinds of information about exactly when and where and how to go.
We're going to be giving away some tickets to this in just a little bit,
so stay tuned and be ready to call in.
But Sherry, do you know some of the highlights,
some of the things that people can look forward to this year?
For this year, absolutely.
I'd say there's 3 things, and I think at least 1 or 2 of them
I think your audience will be interested in.
Arduino is incredibly hot this year.
Yeah, I'm looking at that right now.
Massimo Bonzi, who's the co-founder of the Arduino Project,
will be on-site, and he's going to actually be making some announcements,
I think talking about the next generation of the Arduino boards,
as well as we'll have an Arduino tent.
And actually, many of you may know Phil Terone,
who's one of our senior editors.
We know Phil well, yes.
Earlier in the year, an Atmel makes the microprocessor on the Arduino card
and said, hey, where are you? The community wants you to be here.
And so Atmel is actually coming, which we think is really great.
Would somebody in the studio like to just quickly explain
what Arduino is to the uninitiated listener?
Anybody? Kyle, go ahead.
I would be a bit uninitiated, but I know vaguely
Arduinos are microcontroller project boards.
You can basically build all kinds of things
and control them with software.
That's about all I know. I actually should probably take
one of these workshops and get introduced to it myself.
But that's kind of it in a nutshell.
Arduino 101 sounds like it's for you.
We'll actually have beginning, intermediate, and advanced
Arduino sessions on-site.
And actually, as I said, there'll be a whole Arduino area,
so people doing kind of interesting things.
And as I understand it, you don't have to be a programmer.
So for more of the creative community that really wants to figure out
how to drive motors or how to make things work without really
spending time learning to be a software programmer,
that it's fairly easy to make things happen.
So that's a pretty big deal.
We have Health 2.0, which is kind of
an interesting take on folks and
companies and students kind of looking at
sort of new ways where you can kind of monitor your health through
a variety of different platforms.
The Connect platform will be used quite a bit.
We have a few student projects from NYU ITP program,
which will be kind of cool.
In fact, NYU ITP program has a whole ITP cafe,
so a lot of student projects there.
And then we have Young Makers.
One of the big efforts last year that happened in New York
and with our partner, the New York Hall of Science,
we had Tom Kalil, who's there from the White House
Office of Science and Technology Programs, that came and was part of
the program last year and will be part of it this year,
where they're really starting to say, hey, making is a really important part.
And Dale Dougherty, who's the founder of our group,
is really kind of working to make this happen and kind of shake up
the school systems a bit to get kids
working and hands-on again versus just taking tests.
Well, how has the reaction been from schools,
from teachers as far as getting young people involved in this?
You know, I think they love it.
I think a lot of teachers are probably fairly frustrated with what's
happening in the schools.
So those that are sort of enlightened will be there.
The New York Hall of Science on a regular day, I think,
puts through about 5,000 kids.
And after Maker Faire and as part of the Go Forward,
there's a company called Cognizant, which is a very large
engineering company.
They'll be making an investment to have a year-round makerspace
at the Hall of Science, and they want to start rolling these out
into other communities as well.
So I think that that's kind of a cool thing that happens from this.
Another cool thing that you're going to see this year, and actually,
your van is going to be an area, is we have a whole area
of hacker spaces.
Yes, I heard about this.
You'll see.
And in fact, yeah, more cool stuff kind of keeps coming in every day.
But in addition to kind of New York's Alpha One and NYC Resistor,
we have the folks coming in.
I3 Detroit is coming in.
We've got Third Ward.
We have groups like HTINC that are going to be actually having a
whole kind of a racetrack area, and I'm not even sure I understand it,
but they've got a lot of crazy things happening.
They usually do, yes.
We have the 3D Printing Village, and they'll have like over 35 different
kind of hobby-level 3D printers there.
They told me that last year they had 12,000 people that visited their
booth alone, which was pretty cool.
So I think you're going to see a lot of interesting things happening.
And Willow Brew that you may know from, I think,
the Space Foundry, they're coming in.
They're kind of just to help get hackerspaces going,
and they'll be sort of a lead in that area as well.
So many, many hackerspace activities and a lot of hands-on.
And then, of course, we've got the folks from Tool coming in with
lockpicking, which is always a favorite of just about everyone.
Well, you know,
it sounds a lot like a hacker conference there with all these people
with hackerspaces and lockpickers and a lot of kids running around
experimenting and building things.
It's really awesome to have this kind of spirit and to have so many
people involved.
No, it's absolutely great.
And that's just kind of one component.
We actually still have – we kind of break things into arts and crafts
and science and sustainability.
Some of the bigger companies there that want to get involved in this,
Radio Shack has kind of made a pledge to get back into the kind of
So they'll be having kind of builds for people to actually think that
they'll have a flashlight that has like four or five components to put
together, so to kind of get people doing that.
We've got – I mentioned Cognizant.
We have General Electric there, and they've got their healthy imagination,
eco-imagination campaign.
They're there with a solar-powered 1939 carousel.
It's going to be all tricked out, so a little bit of a festival fair
roundabout as well.
We have makers that are doing really cool things, too.
We've got the Water Swing, which comes out of Brooklyn.
It's from Dash 7 Design.
Michael O'Toole and Drew have created this like 11-foot-tall kind of a
basic swing that you swing through, and when you – there's some sensors
that are in there.
It's usually pouring down water, but when you kind of break the sensor,
the water stops when you go through, so that's a hot day.
That's going to be a lot of fun, too.
Circus, which is a group out of Queens that we found that actually teach
people, you know, if you want to become a circus performer,
this is where you go.
They'll be showing folks how to do that.
We'll have a lot of kids' activities.
We've got the Tornado Interceptor Vehicle.
You've watched Storm Chasers.
Sean Casey has created this vehicle.
That will be there.
It has this old Volvo that has probably hundreds of Billy the Bass fish
and lobsters, but actually it's all wired together with LEDs,
and so when songs play, it goes off, and it's incredibly cool.
We've got Gone Kirin, which was just a recent entry that's a project
between Ryan Doyle and Teddy Lowe, who actually – it's a 90-foot dragon.
We showcased it.
It's a fire-breathing dragon.
It's at the Maker Faire in Detroit, and they want it to be in New York,
so they're bringing it.
Fire-breathing dragon.
Okay.
Yep.
I think it started as a Burning Man art car project, and it's pretty awesome.
In fact, if you look at the Maker Faire Detroit pictures,
you probably will see it in some of the pictures, but that's happening as well.
Did you mention the thing from last year?
I forget what it was.
It had a jet engine.
For spectacle, performance, and whatnot.
The thing from last year had a jet engine, I think,
racing around.
What was that?
Oh, yes.
That was Madagascar Institute.
Madagascar – actually, Hackett will be there.
Hackett, who's the founder, who maybe you guys have noticed,
he's got a show called Stuck with Hackett.
He's going to be giving a presentation on Saturday.
They didn't get it all together this year,
but I suspect we'll see them back next year.
But they did have the jet ponies,
which they had made kind of a jet engine pony ride.
That was amazing.
They either loved it or they hated it,
because as soon as it started up,
it created this incredibly loud sound.
But I will say, in some strange way,
it kind of got everyone paying attention.
Well, that's the thing.
It was incredibly loud.
You could hear it from space, it sounded like,
but nobody minded because it was just part of the whole magic
of the event itself,
and people were sort of drawn to it.
A friend of mine had his project not too far from there,
and he did mind.
Well, some people are grouchy,
but other people just kind of take it all in stride.
Yeah, that's why we'll probably do it every other year.
But there will be other surprises this year
that we'll just notice and say,
oh, wow, that was the one from 2011,
and all kinds of fun things will happen as a result.
Wow.
Exactly.
Then we have the architect.
I don't know if you made it last year,
but in the Great Hall, which is, you know,
the New York Hall of Science is a pretty special place.
Are they going to be there?
The architect is going to be there?
The architect will be back.
Oh, good.
Okay.
He'll be in the Great Hall,
and I'm not sure what's happening.
There was a whole conversation about them
wanting to put their Tesla coils up on,
what are those called, kind of like forklifts,
and they were going to rewire the panels,
and I'm not sure what's happening with that,
but I guarantee Joe DiPrima will be putting on a great show.
Well, last year I was put in the Faraday cage,
so I can attest to that.
Oh, you did?
Yep.
We'll certainly be talking to them this year.
And every show I see, Joe continues to outdo himself,
so people will not be disappointed with that either.
Wow.
Boy, it's really something to look forward to.
Again, it's not this weekend coming up.
It's the weekend after that, Saturday.
17th and 18th.
Yep.
17th and 18th,
and it's easily accessible on the number 7 train
for those of you coming from Manhattan
or other parts of Queens,
and it's at the New York Hall of Science.
And full information is at makerfare.com,
M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.com.
Now, what we're going to do,
we have six – well, this is kind of awkward to explain.
I'm going to try to explain it as best I can.
Either six pairs of tickets for one day
or six individual tickets for two days.
So, in other words, if you win one of the tickets,
you can either go Saturday and Sunday as one person,
or you can bring a friend for Saturday
or bring a friend for Sunday.
Is that right?
You nailed it.
Okay.
You can come the next day, too, but you'll have to pay.
Yeah, of course, you can come any time you want.
Anybody can come.
Absolutely.
And what we're going to do,
because otherwise I think it might get a little crazy,
we're going to ask people to email us,
O-T-H at 2600.com.
And, of course, this is for local listeners,
people who are in the area.
If you're in California, it doesn't make much sense
unless you're going to fly out for –
I guess you could do that,
but then, okay, then you're probably listening now anyway,
and maybe you'll do that.
Email us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
At around 11 o'clock tonight,
what we're going to do is take all the emails that we've gotten
and pick six at random and email you back
with a special URL that will get you the passes
that you need to get in.
And if you don't have –
first of all, you're going to need an email address
because we have to email you the URLs,
but if you don't have Internet access,
you're going to have at least three hours now
to go out to a coffee shop or something
or find a friend with a computer and get access.
Everybody's got access, but you have three and a half hours.
BAI listeners are very enterprising,
and I'm sure that you'll be able to do that.
O-T-H at 2600.com.
We'll pick six at random and email you back by tomorrow for sure.
How does that sound?
That sounds amazing.
Amazing? Okay, good, good.
Bernie, any questions from Philadelphia?
I thought Maker Faire was great last year.
I enjoyed it except for the part about my car breaking down on the way,
but at least it broke down right across the highway from Maker Faire.
Bernie has a tradition of going to out-of-town conferences
and having his car break down on the way at some point.
You've done that in Dayton.
You've done that at Hope.
You've done that at Maker Faire.
Now I think there's other – was it Nauticon?
Did it break down on the way there too?
It's more exciting that way, Emanuel.
It is.
But I had a great time,
and I enjoyed the giant mousetrap game that was set up last year.
That was really awesome.
What was the name of the group that did that again?
It's the Lifesize Mousetrap, and they will be back.
They're great.
This year, instead of smashing a taxi cab,
they're going to smash a New York police car.
Now, wait a minute.
Hold on a second.
I want in on that.
How exciting does that work?
Well, the mousetrap is actually Mark Perez, who is from San Francisco.
They're on tour this summer,
and he's created this life-size version of the mousetrap game
that we all played as kids.
So the playing piece is a bowling ball.
The bathtub is actually a clawfoot bathtub.
There's a 5,000-pound safe that they crank up,
and through a series of mice and clowns and marks,
sort of walking people through what it is,
it's kind of a great spectacle and a lot of fun for folks.
So it's called the Lifesize Mousetrap.
And I think that it goes five times a day,
11.30, 12.30, 2.30, 3.30, and 5.30.
Okay, wow.
I want to know more about the smashing a police car bit.
Yeah, that perked our interest up here at the radio station.
The idea is if everything goes well, you know,
it's a large Rube Goldberg device,
if the ball goes through this, you know,
it's laid out on about 6,500 square feet,
if the ball goes well at the end, it will release the safe,
and the safe will come down and smash something,
and people tend to like cars being smashed.
And so last year they had a taxi cab,
and this year they decided, you know, in true New York spirit,
they're going to do it on a New York police car.
Now, if there's a particular police car
that I'd like to suggest for this, how would I submit?
I'm sure Mark would love to take any input on the car.
Okay, I have a few possibilities there.
There's something I'm looking at here on the website
which really caught my attention.
Hacking autism using technology
to give people with autism a voice.
That sounds fascinating.
Yep, you'll find that's actually a group
that's actually kind of working, doing a lot of research,
helping kids that have autism.
HP is sort of one of their parent or corporate sponsors for that,
and they'll be in the Health 2.0 pavilion.
So pretty interesting stuff, and it's kind of great to see
that this community is actually kind of making a difference
in those areas too.
Yeah, it's really cool to see that.
So again, we're talking about the Maker Faire taking place
the weekend of the 17th and 18th
here in New York City in Queens
at the New York Hall of Science.
Again, we're giving away six pairs of tickets
to either one day or individual tickets to both days.
Just write to us, oth at 2600.com.
It doesn't matter if you send something in an hour from now.
It's not first-come, first-served.
It's going to be random.
We're going to write a little routine
and do a randomized thing after the show,
and we'll pick six lucky winners and email them back.
And for those of you who don't win,
you can still come to the Maker Faire.
It's very affordable.
We can't give out prizes over the air,
but we can say it's very affordable and accessible
and just a lot of fun literally for the whole family
and then some.
I've seen very old people and very young people
each participating, and I was especially impressed
by all the young people that showed up last year.
Absolutely.
I think that one of our goals is to make makers,
and there's probably no better group of folks
to get engaged in things than the kids.
And we're finding that actually even families
are kind of coming together over making again,
which is actually a really cool thing.
In the Maker Shed, there's something as simple
as learn to solder for a dollar,
and they do thousands of those pins,
and usually a family will sit down.
I actually had two really great stories from last year
at the New York Maker Faire in particular.
One is a 13-year-old boy learned to solder with his family,
and he was savvy enough to reach out and contact Luis,
who's our show producer, and say,
hey, I learned to solder last year,
and this year I want to become a maker
and I want to teach people how to make a robot.
So within one year from that little kid
learning how to solder, he's now going to be a maker this year,
showing other kids his age how to do something with that.
So that's really wonderful.
Another great story was another mother had called me,
and it was one of those calls like, oh, boy, what does she want?
And when I started talking to her,
she had said that they're from New Jersey.
They had a boy that's, I think, like, I don't know,
he's going in seventh grade,
so he was out of elementary school going to middle school.
He was a train wreck in school.
He had cerebral palsy and autism,
and they weren't even sure what was going to happen.
It was just one day they decided let's just go to Maker Faire
and how bad can it be.
It turns out he saw the Diet Coke and Mentos show,
and when he had gone into junior high that next year,
his teacher didn't know his background, didn't care,
said we've got a science experiment.
It's a science fair coming up.
You guys all need to go home and do something.
And he went and created his own little video, a viral video,
doing his own version of Diet Coke and Mentos,
and it turned out that he submitted it
into the regional science fair,
and now the moms said they're talking about him going to college
which she said he was completely out of everything before
and just sort of one experience that made it happen.
So that's sort of the one really great thing about Maker Faire,
and I think you guys all know it
because you're all into sort of getting hands-on
and figuring things out and being part of the community,
and I think that that's probably what's missing in a lot of places,
and that's probably what people will be able to find
at Maker Faire this weekend.
We hear that kind of thing from the HOPE conferences
that we run every year, all the time,
people who come to New York for the first time
and just experience something and meet other people
that are into the same things they're into,
and it just kind of changes your life.
It inspires you to do more things,
and it's great to hear that happening on this level as well
with so many other people.
I agree. I agree.
That's really incredible.
Well, we've been speaking with Sherry Huss.
You're the director of the Maker Faire, right?
I am the director, and I'm maker and chief of the whole Maker Unit.
So we've got Make Magazine, we have Maker Shed, we have Craft,
we have Make Online, and Maker Faire.
I don't know how you found time to talk to us
with all those projects you have to work on.
Well, it's good.
Actually, we've got a really great group of people here working on stuff.
It was a blast last time, and we're not just saying this.
It really was something that so many BAI listeners showed up,
and it was just really cool to meet so many of them.
So anything else that you'd like to add or let people know about?
No, I think it's great.
Thank you for reaching out, and we're glad to support you guys
in any way that we can, because what you're doing is really valuable as well.
And we're glad that you'll be part of the event,
and hopefully you'll get many more new listeners and followers.
And check us out on the website.
As we get closer to the event next week, more things will be coming up,
and you'll see a great – there's a lot of speakers there too,
although it's so hard to compete with a lot of other things that are going on.
But we've got a couple of little guest surprises in there,
like John Hodgman, who's going to show up and do –
he's the resident expert on The Daily Show.
He's going to do our magic tricks, really magic,
and so you'll see him around.
For the women in your life, there's the Bus Craftacular.
So for people that want to shop, we'll have that.
There's just – I don't think anyone will be disappointed.
And for those that want to volunteer, we can still use volunteers,
and then you can get in free and be part of it as well.
And I think it's nyvolunteers at makerfair.com.
So don't let money keep you out of not participating.
We'd love to have you there in any way, shape, or form.
Yeah, I want to thank you guys for being so inclusive
because, yeah, you do say that very prominently on your website
that we're looking for people to really plunge in and get involved
in helping us organize that.
And that's what drives successful events
is getting people to be a part of it themselves,
not just be attendees.
Exactly, exactly.
So we'll take any and all help that we can get.
And thanks again for having us on the show
and look forward to seeing you guys at Maker Faire.
All right, Sherry, thanks very much for talking with us,
and we look forward to seeing you there.
Great. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.
And that was Sherry Huss,
who is one of the main people behind all of this.
And, wow, it's a lot of fun. It really is.
For those of you who have not been there, we hope that you show up.
And either if you win the tickets or if you just come on your own,
it's going to be a blast.
I guess we should give people one more chance to hear our email addresses.
We can give them several more chances.
We can give them chances all the way up to the top of the hour
and we're not going to be reading the emails until after the show.
All right. Well, one of the chances.
Here's the first chance.
Maybe not the final chance to hear our email address.
The first of the final chances. Yes, go ahead.
OTH at 2600.com, and if you email us there
and you're one of the lucky six,
then we will tell you how to get your free tickets.
Yes, we'll be sending you an email back with a lucky URL
that will basically what you do is you go to that URL
and you select however you want to get your tickets,
and you'll be on a list. I think that's how it works.
We'll make sure that you understand everything about it.
Again, OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
And if you just want to go and buy tickets yourself or learn more,
you can go to makerfair.com.
Right. Spelled the way we've been spelling it.
M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.com.
I don't know what happens if we leave off that last E,
but just put it in there to be safe,
and I'm sure everybody will have a much more pleasant time.
Now, Carl, you have not been to one of these things yet, have you?
But I think you will be.
Yeah. I remember hearing about how much fun you had last year,
and since I'm in town, I think I'm going to try to make it this year.
And I'm blown away.
She just kept going and going with so many activities
and so much cool stuff.
And being a part of events,
going and seeing what other people are doing,
that's how I got involved,
and it's really had an impact on my life.
And I can't wait to kind of share some of the things we're doing
and see what other people are doing
and just mix it up and have some fun.
And it's good that it's raining so much now
because that means it won't be raining then, probably.
But as mentioned, yes, we'll be there as well.
The 2600 van will hopefully make its way into Queens
and be able to be on display there in all its fine glory.
And that was a big success last year.
A lot of people had fun taking pictures of it and things like that.
Okay, so there's other things that happened this week,
other things that are still going on that we want to focus on.
Of course, we also want to take phone calls as well.
Okay, let's quickly delve into this
and get as much out of it as we possibly can.
The Wikileaks thing, Wikileaks back in the news again.
Have you guys heard about this?
So basically there's a whole big fight now going on with The Guardian,
the newspaper over in the UK, allegedly giving out a password.
Not allegedly.
Well, okay, I was going to say more, but go ahead.
They printed the password to a Wikileaks encrypted file in their book.
The Guardian wrote a book and the password was published in it.
And then so in order to decrypt the file, of course, you have to have the file.
So there's all this kind of blame passing about whose fault it is.
But anyway, the file is out there and the password is out there.
So lots of people got access to the complete unredacted cache of all these cables.
A collection of diplomatic history since 1966 to the present day, pound sign.
Then there's some underscores and capital letters.
Underscores between the words and capital letters at the beginning of each word.
That's the password.
Well, actually there's no underscores there, right?
No, just some places.
The grouping is intentional.
So you can search for it.
We're not going to tell you where the underscores are.
Let that be the last challenge to figuring out the password.
But, yeah, the password is out there.
Is this the insurance file?
Is that the file we're talking about here?
Apparently it's a different file.
It's a different file.
So maybe we don't have copies of this file.
But you don't need a copy anymore.
Now the unencrypted stuff is on Wikileaks' website.
Yeah, but I want to decrypt it.
The fun is in the decrypting of it all.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I'm wondering, did nobody at The Guardian, or at least this reporter,
understand that publishing a password like that was a really bad idea?
And I think, didn't they say that they thought it was only a temporary password?
Well, how can there be a temporary password for an encrypted file?
I don't understand their rationale.
Okay, but let me agree with you but take that one step further.
Isn't it also an incredibly bad idea to give a password out to something so sensitive to any media organization?
What were they thinking?
Well, I think there was some speculation that it could have been given to them verbally,
and can you remember to do this?
But then it would be maybe a less secure password from a standpoint of fewer bytes for your characters in it.
But the whole thing was just handled really badly, I think, on both sides.
Yeah, because if you give the file out, that's one thing.
You give the file to The Guardian and then they leak the file themselves, they give it out, that's obviously on them.
But if you give the password, and it's the same password to every single copy of the file that's all over the world,
you've lost control as soon as you've given them the password, right, Voltaire?
No, it was only the password to one copy of the file, but if the file was publicly accessible.
One copy of the file, but the file has been copied all over the world, hasn't it?
Well, that's a really confusing part of the story, because that wasn't until after WikiLeaks' infrastructure went down a year ago,
people basically made copies available on BitTorrent and stuff.
This is not the insurance copy.
Okay, so it's not the insurance file, but copies were made available.
Yeah, and they included basically all the WikiLeaks root folder and all the subdirectories.
There's a lot of speculation as to how this file got out.
We know how the password got out there, but the file, one story is that it was on a hidden directory on a WikiLeaks server,
which someone could find it just using a brute force attack to find all the directories on there.
But for The Guardian to pass, I mean, what was the whole point in publishing a verbatim password?
What I don't get is they published the password, but months went by before anybody realized that there was any harm caused.
That's funny. In other words, there was a stink at the CCC camp about this, apparently.
The guy who was trying to get OpenLeaks off the ground apparently had a hand in this controversy
and got kicked out of CCC right around the time of the CCC camp.
There's rumors before for apparently telling other people that this was out there.
It's just a whole lot of controversy and gossip and rumors going on,
but the bottom line is there are now hundreds of thousands of files out there that are unredacted.
This is U.S. State Department classified, considered confidential messages, like they call them cables,
with sources of people, confidential sources of people that could possibly be harmed physically by their governments
for now knowing that they were providing confidential information to the U.S. government.
The drama of how all this data got out there is frankly not very interesting as the data itself.
There's allegations, of course, that these people will be harmed.
There's as yet no evidence of anyone being harmed, which is not to be totally dismissive of the future possibility,
but what is in this document dump is all kinds of evidence of the U.S. government and other world governments harming people,
and no one's talking about that.
Well, I'm sure they'll get to that.
I know WikiLeaks has been releasing a lot of these documents and calling attention to what's in them,
but I think nothing hurts the reputation of WikiLeaks more than an action like this, regardless of who is behind it.
Like we've been saying, it's a combination of errors on a lot of different sides,
and it's exactly how not to handle this kind of information in the first place.
Well, WikiLeaks really had no choice.
The most unfortunate thing is the media has been able to say, oh, this is what WikiLeaks wanted all along,
because a year ago they were saying WikiLeaks indiscriminately dumped 600,000 cables when in fact they hadn't,
but now they're saying, oh, look, they actually did this time, but that's not the whole story.
The whole story is that their hand was kind of forced to, because before WikiLeaks put this online themselves,
once it was available like an open secret, it was put on Cryptome, which is kind of like the proto-WikiLeaks.
Kind of like the what?
Proto-WikiLeaks.
Proto-WikiLeaks, okay, yes.
Yes, and basically it was an open secret, and the people's lives were in just as much danger as if WikiLeaks themselves hadn't released it,
because the documents were already released thanks to the Guardian.
Well, as far as the public perception of WikiLeaks, it seems like it's out of control.
It seems like nobody is in charge of keeping things from falling into the wrong hands or being redacted badly.
That kind of thing just is a black eye to everybody, and I think we all need to take a good look at how to do this better,
because obviously this is not the way to do it.
Anyway, we only have a few minutes left.
We're going to take some phone calls.
212-209-2900 if there's anything that you'd like to join in the conversation with.
This is Off The Hook here on WBAI.
Again, our email address, oth at 2600.com if you want to be one of the six lucky winners of Maker Faire tickets for the weekend after next here in New York City.
Again, our phone number, 212-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hi.
I called last week just about the facial recognition software of Picasa, and you only had a few seconds,
and you said that if I upload anything on the Internet, then it's probably not completely private.
I understand that.
All I did was download Picasa 3, and I'm wondering if I haven't made anything public.
I'm wondering if I can undo it some way, if I should put fake names for everyone's tags.
The main reason why I'm concerned is because on the forum, somebody said something about something,
and the answer was if your tags are safe, even if you have to uninstall and reinstall Picasa, that info is on the JPEG themselves and on the Picasa.ini files.
Do you have any idea how I can undo this?
I can say I know nothing about this.
Anybody in the studio?
Bernie?
Nobody?
Just because I violated so many people's privacy,
I don't really know if I even did, if I didn't make any of the files public.
Go ahead, Mike.
I mean, I have not worked with Picasa in particular,
so I don't think any of us are going to have a specific advice for you in this circumstance.
But in general, if you give your data to a big company like Google, which makes Picasa,
they'll do whatever they please with it, regardless of what they say they'll do.
And by giving it, that means just downloading their stuff and not uploading anything?
Well, you put the pictures into it.
No, I didn't.
Then I don't understand what happened.
Well, it took four hours to download, and while it was downloading,
it was automatically capturing pictures.
It was taking pictures off of your computer?
Yes, it was.
It was taking them, and what it did is it created a people file,
and then it had up-close pictures of everyone's faces and said,
Tag these people.
It sounds like the lesson here is maybe don't download Picasa.
It will do strange things like this.
She's learned that lesson.
I don't know that I have.
I'm sorry.
I have used Picasa before, not recently, so I'm not sure what newer versions do.
But what it does is it automatically just scans your whole hard drive for image files
and organizes them so that the program can easily find them.
But if this is uploading this information to Picasa's website, which is Google's,
that would be a real security concern or privacy concern.
Something else wasn't pointed out in your question, but should be raised,
is all those photos, if any of those photos were taken with a, say,
with a phone that has GPS like an iPhone, the geotags,
like the physical location of where those pictures were taken,
maybe at a person's home or a business or something,
that information is embedded in the exit data in the photo file, in the image file.
Okay, here's a test.
I know.
Here's a test.
I don't have to worry about that, I don't think.
I tagged two of them and then went offline and went back online
and I looked up those people's names that I tagged them with,
very distinctive names, and nothing came up under any of the Picasa.
I went to Picasa.com and looked up their name and their pictures didn't come up.
I would definitely encourage you to research software before you install it at all
and be mindful that a lot of photos these days do have tags and information on them.
I actually stopped.
I tried Picasa once and I stopped using it because it was really kind of slow
and I have no idea what they're doing now with the facial recognition.
That sounds really interesting, but be mindful of, like,
if you're connected to the internet while you're installing something new,
even if you've researched it and you're aware that it does these kinds of things,
maybe disconnect from the internet while you do that
and also check into your operating system.
See if you can disallow that application from communicating with some central location.
If you're really concerned about it.
But there's a ton of software out there and, honestly,
I would really take your concern and evaluate if this software is really helping you
more than it's hurting you and if you really want to use it in the end
because there's a lot of stuff out there.
Just kind of dig around on Wikipedia and look into some of these things.
This is advice that I think can apply to any software from any of our listeners.
I think this listener has given us some valuable insight on what to look out for.
Thanks for the call.
We do have to move on and try to take a couple of others,
but very interesting circumstance here.
Let's take this call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Is this Emanuel?
Yes, this is Emanuel.
Hey, Emanuel.
I'm a customer.
I paid for TV Be Gone, but they said you guys haven't got it yet.
When are you guys going to get it?
Oh, TV Be Gone.
I believe it's arrived in New Jersey.
It's the newest version, and they haven't yet been delivered to the radio station.
As soon as they're delivered to the radio station, though, they will get sent out.
That was the one for the 10th limited, right?
Yes, there are only 10.
Well, I'm just one of those people.
Okay, if you're one of those people, then you will definitely be getting it.
Okay, so I'll be getting it soon.
Yes, you will be.
Thank you.
All right, take care.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Okay, you've got to go faster than that.
That's how it works.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
I don't know what's going on out there today, but let's try one more.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
I will always listen to you guys.
I'm just calling to listen.
Hello?
Go ahead.
The lady just called.
I think she called the wrong state, the wrong program, because there's another program that
comes on.
It's a computer program, and that's the one she called.
I listen to you guys always, and I listen to the other program, and I know who she is.
She calls all the time.
When you guys said you didn't know what she was talking about, you were right.
This was the first time she was calling.
I just want to let you know that.
Okay, well, thanks for taking more time talking about that person who called in before.
Let's take another phone call.
No, let's not take another phone call.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Make it quick.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yes, you were talking about Maker Faire, and I came in at the end.
I just want to know where and when.
Okay, it's taking place not this weekend coming up, but the weekend after that, the 17th and
the 18th of September at the New York Hall of Science where the World's Fair used to be.
All the information is at makerfaire.com.
If you email us, oth at 2600.com, you have a chance of winning some free tickets.
Okay.
All right?
Thanks a lot.
All right, no problem.
That's going to just about do it for us here on this Wednesday evening.
I want to thank everybody for being a part of the show.
As we go out with Buzz Aldrin.
Do you want to tell us something about this, Kyle?
Because you picked this out.
Yeah, it was done for charity, Buzz Aldrin's rap song.
Snoop Dogg is involved in this.
Yeah, it was produced by Snoop, so this is a jam.
All right, good.
We'll see you next week.
Again, if you want to win those tickets, email us by 11 o'clock tonight, oth at 2600.com
for the Maker Faire taking place in two weekends.
This is Emanuel for Off the Hook.
See you next week.
Good night.