Once again, the number is 212-209-2950.
Your help is greatly needed and much appreciated.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off The Hook.
Best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bundle it now!
Ha! Ha!
And a very good evening to everybody in the program.
Very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Good evening.
.ret.
Hello.
RedHack.
Hello.
And Kyle.
Hey.
In from Seattle.
Yeah.
Down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
Greetings.
And well, we are in week number three of the spring fundraiser, three of four.
We're not on next week.
We'll be on the following week to conclude it all.
And this week, as promised, will be completely different from last week.
Because we don't believe in repeating ourselves.
Except last week.
What?
Except last week.
Well, we didn't repeat ourselves last week.
We don't believe in repeating ourselves.
Oh, you repeated that.
I see.
That's funny.
That's good.
Yeah.
Well, we believe in things like that.
But no, last week we did sort of repeat ourselves, but it wasn't quite the same thing.
We had Steve Rambam on for two hours the first week.
Last week we had some premiums left over.
We also had Jell-O Biafra.
We did not have him the first week.
This week, however, completely different.
We don't have any of that.
We have new things.
New things for people.
Better?
Well, no, I'm not going to say what's better and what's not better.
But it's different.
It's just very different.
Because we have all kinds of different things going on.
We've got conferences to plan.
We've got magazines to put out.
We've got radio.
We've got all kinds of hacker-related things that are happening.
So, it's an interesting world.
And we want to reflect that with the premiums that we offer during the fundraisers,
but also in the content that we offer on those occasions when we're not asking for money.
And we're going to be hearing from one of them a little bit later on in the program.
So, yes, what Bernie says is quite true.
There are many people out there that put their money where their mouths are.
And I hope that some of them are out there listening tonight because that makes all the difference.
Well, let's start with any breaking news.
Mike, I believe you had some breaking news.
Yeah.
Byron Sonney was acquitted.
Well, that's fabulous news.
And it's really a shame we didn't cover his trial while it was ongoing.
Who exactly is, yeah?
He's a Canadian who lives in Toronto.
I did hear about this.
Yeah, see?
I did hear about this.
You should hear.
I don't know if you heard about it on this radio program, but you should have.
No, the Canadian who lives in Toronto.
I heard about it.
Canadian who lives in Toronto.
And around the time of the G20, which was a couple of years ago at this point, he decided to see, you know, how the security was set up.
And what he found out was that it had some holes in it, but that if you look at the security too closely, you'll get arrested.
He spent a year in jail awaiting trial and then another year on bail.
His wife divorced him as a result of all this.
And the crown, as they call it, the prosecution, made up all these things.
They said he had explosives, which he didn't.
And at the end of it, he's acquitted.
Well, Bernie, they said you had explosives, which you didn't too.
That's a pretty serious charge to charge somebody with explosives when they don't have it.
When they tried out the scary stuff like, oh, we think he had explosives when it's not true.
In this case, they said, we believe he had a C4 plastic explosives in my basement.
And while testing proved it turned out it wasn't, the fact that it might have been concerned them greatly.
So that's the kind of stuff that they do when they don't have anything on you.
It's crazy.
It definitely is.
And you have to wonder where their heads are at and also where the heads of the judges are at that allow this kind of thing.
It really is incredible.
Okay.
So charges were dropped.
He was acquitted.
I'm sorry.
He was acquitted.
He was acquitted.
Okay.
The judge wrote this very long brief explaining why basically everything the Canadian government said was not actually evidence of a crime.
And any good quotes?
Anything that admonishments maybe of the prosecution?
We always like to hear those.
You know, there weren't a whole lot of admonishments.
There was just this very long methodical decision explaining exactly what he did for the year or so that he was accused of committing crimes and explaining that, nope, that's not a crime.
Good.
Well, hopefully less people will be charged with things that aren't crimes in the future.
It would be very nice to know that.
We can hope.
Well, yeah.
Perhaps naively.
So that's a bit of good news.
Anything else?
Any bad news?
I have more good news.
More good news?
I don't think you've ever had two pieces of good news in one week.
I know.
It's rare.
The Pirate Party for the second week in a row got elected to a state parliament in Germany.
So they're now in a total of four.
I thought they ran the government by now.
Not quite.
Over there they get power.
I mean, it'll be good news when we have a single Pirate Party person elected here.
They got about 8% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, which is the most populous state in Germany.
Okay.
And so they'll have some seats in the parliament or the state parliament.
Okay.
So that's something.
It's progress of a sort.
So that's good to know.
Anything else?
I have no more good news.
Anything from Pennsylvania, Bernie?
Any developments of any cases we're watching or activities?
You know, I've been distracted lately.
So I'm going to have to pass this on to you folks.
I have no news.
Okay.
Sorry.
That's not like me.
No.
We've been very busy with all kinds of other things.
Dot Red, you have something.
You're raising your hand.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Well, as you can tell, this has been a bit of a slow news week.
Well, not necessarily.
It's just that we weren't paying any attention.
Well, as far as, you know, the computer world goes, I'm going to make that supposition.
Anyway, there are some charges that have been going out for, you know, the Rupert Murdoch
quote-unquote hacking case.
I did hear about that.
Yeah.
There are some arrests again.
Yeah.
You know, I hear they keep calling it a phone hacking scandal.
There's no real hacking involved.
At most, it would have been social engineering in terms of hacking, but I don't even think
you would say that because I think that, you know, I don't know.
What was it?
They knew someone that had some sort of access?
Bribery.
Bribery, yeah.
And bribery has nothing to do with hacking as far as I know.
It's basically they're just like lying.
Lying, yeah.
No, that's bribery.
That is the term we would use.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, people were hauled into court, I guess, and then, well, the story just never seems
to die.
Well, I was actually a little happy to see that to some degree.
I was a little worried that some other big news was going on in politics in that part
of the world might have made people forget about, you know, this sort of thing.
And this, it was serious and, you know, people should pay attention.
And hopefully, anyone who's done wrong might actually, maybe justice will pay attention.
Well, everyone's done wrong, you know.
We're all guilty of something.
I have nothing to say.
All right.
Well, speaking of that part of the world, we're going to be in, Kyle and I will be in
that part of the world next week at this time.
In fact, we'll be over there looking for, well, you know, we figured the United Kingdom,
there might be some examples of surveillance there.
It's a long shot, but we think that maybe for the next Hacker Calendar, whose theme
is surveillance, there might be some examples of surveillance in the United Kingdom.
I've since been told that, what, you're crazy, you're not going to find anything over there.
Madness.
I don't know.
We're going to look around.
And if anyone has suggestions on examples of surveillance, not just cameras pointing
at people, we know about that, other things, you know, microphones maybe in various places
or sensors or all sorts of, I'm sure we can think of examples.
Or really cool cameras.
Really?
Really cool cameras.
Okay, fine.
We have a short list of ideas that we might pursue when we're out there, but we're
interested in making that list a lot longer.
And basically, the types of things that don't involve a camera, because the cameras are
really a great example of surveillance, but it's pretty common.
We want sort of the counterintuitive, the stuff people haven't really thought of, or
that's salient, that you don't really think is surveillance.
But then, you know, when you really think about what it's doing, it's like, wow, that
is kind of watching or collecting information that I'm not particularly interested in sharing.
That is true.
That kind of stuff.
And also, well, a camera, I guess, if you don't see it, you don't know it's there,
and you say, oh, by the way, there's a camera in that picture.
And that's cool, if you can do that.
Oh, definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what about telescreens, or something like telescreens?
Are you venturing into the world of fiction, or real telescreens?
No.
Well, they don't really use that word, per se, in real life, but there basically are
screens that, you know, watch you.
Screens that watch you.
And they might modify the content they display.
It's being, it's new.
You know, there's actually, there's this company that's rolling out in a bunch of
bars, I think, this week in San Francisco, and in other cities in the U.S., that actually
uses cameras to identify the gender and ages of the people in the bar.
And based on that, it basically publishes it to some feed, so that if you're on a mobile
app, you can say, oh, in this bar, there's this composition of people, and in this bar,
there's this other one, and then you can go to whichever one suits your fancy.
So I heard about that this week, and that's actually pretty scary, if you want me to tell
you more about that.
What if somebody is on a list of people that they're trying to track down?
Would they be able to do that pretty easily?
I don't think, I don't think it's actually doing identification of people.
It's using algorithms to, there are, you know, different algorithms that can be used to determine
gender and kind of age ranges.
So it's not, it's not identifying people, but the fact of the matter is that it's not
something that you opt into.
I mean, you opt into it by walking into, you know, the bar.
And so it's nothing, it's something you don't have control over.
Can I fool this system?
Wearing an anonymous mask or something?
Well, yeah.
I'm sure you could.
I mean, you could always wear a hoodie with IR LEDs or paint things on your face to break
the identification algorithms.
So it looks at my face, and it's not about my clothing, but about my face.
Yeah, it's about your face, yeah.
Interesting.
Okay, well, if you have ideas for any bits of surveillance that Kyle and I should track
down while we're in the UK, please write to us, oth at 2600.com, and let us know where
we should go, and maybe we can meet with you or something at some point if we have
time.
We'll see.
We're planning on going to, you know what Menwith Hill is?
You know what that is?
Oh, yeah.
That's like the NSA.
Yeah, you're envious, aren't you, Bernie?
I also wanted to go there.
They actually had, I don't think they still have it anymore.
They had one of the infamous Roland Weber antennas there, also colloquially known as
the elephant cage.
Okay.
It's a massive antenna.
It's a massive antenna.
It's like a whole bunch of really long poles that stick way up in the air in a circular
pattern.
So they call it an elephant cage.
But what it was made, used for, and there was a handful of these across the planet.
They were all networked by the National Security Agency as part of the Echelon system for direction
finding of shortwave signals.
But various intelligence agencies are kind of shifting away from shortwave, or have been
for quite a few years now.
So I don't think there's a Roland Weber antenna there anymore, but they used to have one at
Menwith Hill.
Before we move on, I just wanted to go back and say that the name of that company is called
SceneTap.
And so you can look up on their website what bars they have their system in, in case you
don't want to go to those.
Mark, I just want to say, I hope people use that to find people that are different than
them, because I could really see people just hanging out with more people like them.
It's kind of boring.
Yeah.
No, that's cool.
It's an interesting idea for a close.
All right.
So that's a little bit of what's going on, the technology that we're surrounding ourselves
with.
Kyle, you just flew in a couple of days ago, and this is unusual for us.
You flew first class.
Yeah.
You upgraded to first class.
Yeah.
And you notice any weirdness with security perhaps, or just the way they treat people
differently?
I understand they give people sharp implements and things like that.
Yeah.
They stopped using metal silverware and stuff in first class after 9-11, but apparently
they have it now.
So I had a fork and a knife and a spoon and real silverware and stuff, which I thought
was cool, and real glasses, if you wanted to break a glass and make some sort of shank.
Did you stab anyone?
Anything?
He attacked an old woman.
Okay.
I dropped a full 32-ounce water bottle on this aged woman, and I thought I broke her hip
or something.
She could be listening now, because she landed here, and maybe she's turned on the radio.
Do you want to apologize publicly to her for bludgeoning her with a water bottle?
Well, I think the sentiment was communicated, but absolutely I wouldn't like to apologize
for being so clumsy and in a rush.
Well, because Kyle was rushing, I thought the plane was going to leave an hour later
than it actually did.
So basically-
Yeah, but I don't miss connections.
You made an entrance into first class that was not forgettable, and that's how it should
be, I think.
But no, it is interesting how they do give real silverware to people in first class,
because I guess they trust them more.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
The rest of us get plastic and just play school type devices.
But as far as other security things I would notice, I don't know.
I was there very late, and I was sort of impressed that all my bags made it.
They didn't hold anything up.
If I only gave them 45 minutes to check things, all my bags had notes in them from the TSA,
so they obviously opened stuff.
And I packed a bike, too.
Yeah, you brought your bike, and they actually opened that box.
Yeah, I brought a lot of stuff, and it was all gone through, but I was amazed at how
quickly they did it.
And then it all made it in the same flight.
And there wasn't any really-
I think it was more annoying when I went through security.
They were trying to get everybody to do backscatter, and I did my typical opting out with the film
thing.
And I had eight of those tubs, the whole conveyor belt full of security stuff, and then all
my boots and everything.
Then I walked through the metal detector, and then I did the hand inspection, but they
were already busy.
It took probably four TSA people to deal with me to go through security.
That's the way it should be.
Which is awesome.
Wow.
And then lastly, I guess, I noticed-
Man, I lost my train of thought.
Well, you had the TSA surrounding you, and basically paying all this attention to you
because of all your tubs, and you were going first class.
And backscatter.
Everybody was using backscatter?
Yeah, they were trying to shove everybody through the backscatter X-ray machines, and
a woman in front of me opted out, and I was like, yes, me too.
And so he's like, yeah, I need two, times two.
Okay, let's let our listeners know.
Backscatter is basically, how can you tell when you see the backscatter coming at you?
How do you know?
It's a big machine.
Yeah.
It's big and usually round.
Okay.
I mean, if it's not a metal detector and you have to hold your hands above your head, that's
the backscatter.
Okay, so if you see that, you can opt out of it.
All you have to say is, I don't want to go through that.
And then they pat you down.
Uh-huh.
And maybe invasively?
Yeah.
All right.
And that's your choice.
You have that choice to either go through that or not.
So yeah, there's two models.
One is very round, has some glass.
It looks like a tube.
The other types you'd see look like old, big mini computers, like big rectangle boxes,
and you have two on each side, and you kind of pass through them.
And by mini, you just mean not room size.
Not room size, exactly.
Like two half refrigerators.
They're like tall rectangle boxes.
But yeah, the old definition of mini computer.
And then the last security thing I noticed is something that has probably been talked
about a lot is the lines forming around the cabin.
They were really strict about that on this flight, and people would try to come up and
use the lavatory.
And especially when the captains would take their break and use the restroom, they had
two attendants.
One in the galley, one would go in the cockpit, and all that stuff.
They were really strict about it.
I saw that, too.
I was on an international flight a few weeks ago, and the captain wanted to come out, so
they basically took one of the, what do they call it, the thing that they use to serve
the food, the dolly kind of thing that they roll around.
The word is cart.
The cart, thank you.
Wow.
And they blocked basically the whole front of the plane with that, and then the captain
came out, and the flight attendant went in.
I saw a little of that, too, yeah.
I was surprised, Kyle, by what you said about the way the separation between first class
and the rest of the plane was that you could actually feel the person in back of you.
You were the very last row of first class, so you were at the bottom of the rung of first
class, but you could actually feel the person's foot in back of you from coach trying to feel
a bit of first class.
I just think that's unacceptable.
There should be some kind of a barrier there that is impenetrable, and that's just not
right.
Right, right.
One other thing about the block in the forward cabin is that you were not allowed to get
out of your seat.
If you're in the front row, you could not stand up at all while the stuff was going
on with the captain using the lavatory and stuff like that, which I thought was interesting.
You could not get up and get something out of your bag.
When couldn't you get up?
You could not stand up while they were blocking the forward cabin because the flight deck
was using the lavatory.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, so it was like you could not move.
You'd have to stay in your seat to wait for that to happen and all that.
Where was I recently where I was in the front of an airplane, and they were holding up a
curtain to block view of the cockpit because the pilot wanted to use the bathroom.
No, there's a combination on the door.
I saw the combination because they were very sloppy holding the curtain over it.
Right, right.
Then they have the intercom and all that, and the captain talks to the flight attendant
there, and then they eventually let him back in and stuff like that.
The guy sitting behind me, that was really weird.
I felt like he had his fingers or his feet kneading right in the little crack of the
back of the seat.
I was just really uncomfortable.
I kept looking around like, what is going on?
What are they doing?
That's how the lower classes infiltrate and occupy first class.
You've got to watch that.
I remember when I was a kid and you used to get to go look in the cockpit.
Yeah, those days are over right now.
You're not going to be looking in there anymore.
All you had to do was ask, and if you were a child, they let you.
Actually, it's very interesting.
In August of 2001, I don't know if people remember this.
We were actually doing radio.
I was stuck in Belgium, and there was an airplane that I was trying to get on that kept having
problems.
They kept trying to start it, and it would lose all power.
It's kind of disconcerting when you're on a plane that's about to take off when it suddenly
loses all power, and people have to shout announcements.
They say, okay, everything's fixed, and then it happens all over again.
People were saying, you know what?
I want the next flight.
Don't trust this plane.
It took me a while to get to that stage.
It took me maybe 45 minutes to say, this is ridiculous.
While that was going on, they were offering anybody who had doubts about the plane's safety
to come into the cockpit and check it out themselves.
This was August 2001.
That only lasted another month.
After that, that was not possible.
What do you check?
If they let me into the cockpit, I would have no idea what to look for.
I don't think they allowed you to play with the dials or anything like that, but they
let you look around.
That was really, even then, that was surprising to me.
I think it would be funny if they had a vote.
If people felt like, who really feels like this plane's the one?
We'll turn around if we get consensus.
What is it, 60%?
There was a vote, and I think about 40% of the plane left.
I eventually was one of them, too.
I wound up stuck in Belgium for three days, but worse things can happen.
Hey, you know what?
We can talk about this all hours, but let's first run down what we're offering tonight
because it is rather special, and we are in fundraising mode.
We have to be in fundraising mode because if we don't ask for money, then the station
doesn't stay on the air, and then we can't have these delightful conversations.
To make it quick, we have two packages tonight.
We talk about hackers and people who build things, people who make things.
They're called makers.
They're called builders.
They're called hackers.
They're called all kinds of things.
What we've done is we've assembled about 20 DVDs from the eight HOPE conferences that
have taken place since 1994.
Let me give you an example.
Back in 1994, there were a couple of interesting discussions, one of which has Bernie S. in
it.
It's all about TDDs.
What does TDD stand for, Bernie?
It's a telecommunications device for the deaf, and they're also sometimes known as TTYs.
Yeah.
Back in 1994, I guess the technology was a little bit different, but much of this remains
relevant today.
It's just interesting to see what it was like back then.
There's also a panel that we've added to this package called the cellular panel.
You can imagine cellular phones back in 1994 was very different from what it is today.
But we also have from all the other conferences, for instance, the next HOPE, the one that
just took place, how to bring your project from idea to reality, making a living doing
what you love.
I believe that's one that you picked out, Kyle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think Mitch Altman is in that one, right?
Yeah.
That's actually a talk by Mitch Altman about the progression of some of the projects he's
done through his company, Kornfield.
Mitch actually is going to be joining us.
I don't know how you could have known this, but Mitch is going to be joining us this evening
in just a few minutes as part of the rest of what we're offering tonight.
And you also picked a talk called Circuit Bending by one Jimmy Rogers.
Yeah.
That also is a very, very good one and was quite entertaining, had a lot of live demos
and artists, pretty cool musicians and stuff like that are involved with the circuit bending
community, which is kind of hardware hacking.
What does that mean?
I'm sorry, what?
What does that mean, circuit bending?
Good question.
Yeah.
It's basically taking like toys and like instruments, noisemakers, consumer electronics, things,
mainly toys, and then like modifying them, soldering in various electrical components
and then making them do different things or altering the sounds so they're not like the
original content.
It's connecting up parts that aren't, you know, that weren't connected in the original
circuit that may produce interesting results, you know, because of the signals getting clustered.
Right.
You're bypassing parts of the circuit.
Right.
We don't have enough time to go over all this because there are just so many different talks
that we're giving away here.
We also have from H2K2 2002, we have talks on access control devices, hardware question
and answer session, magical gadgets, the profound impact of yesterday's not so trivial electronics
on our digital world, proximity cards, retrocomputing.
From Hope No. 6, citizen engineer, consumer electronics, hacking and open source hardware.
Another Mitch Altman talk from the last Hope in 2008, hacking cool things with microcontrollers.
We have a hardware and electronics question and answer panel from 2000 from H2K, telephone
systems of the world hosted by Bill SF, a keynote address by Steve Wozniak from the
Fifth Hope, another retrocomputing panel, over 20 DVDs for a $75 pledge, 212-209-2950.
It's really a great way to get introduced to the hacker world and just see some of the
things that people have been building and playing with over the years.
And that retrocomputing panel from the Fifth Hope, I picked that one and it's really interesting
because Steve Wozniak actually participated in that.
That's right, he sat in on that.
And so you have Steve Wozniak who basically helped found the personal PC and built the
original ones from scratch talking about the history of all that.
So for a call to 212-209-2950, a pledge of $75, you get over 20 DVDs of really, I guess,
kind of a microcosm of the hacker world, just all these different devices and toys and projects
that we've been involved in over the years.
And there's no better way to get introduced, I don't think, right?
Yeah, it's a good primer to a lot of the projects and some of the attitude behind looking at
devices and technologies in sort of peculiar ways and trying to modify them and make them
do things that you'd like them to do and unintended things.
And also you might find yourself, if you got these and you went through them and watched
them, you might get really excited about these kinds of events and you might find yourself
hanging out with hackers and getting involved and doing fun things yourself, getting inspired.
And there are so many hacker spaces that have come into existence since these talks have
taken place.
We've really seen the birth of a movement, the birth of all kinds of people getting together,
working together on projects.
And again, we have the conference coming up in July where more people will be getting
together and making more such talks and trading information and things like that.
So it's an incredible world to be exposed to.
If you know somebody who perhaps is interested in this as well, it's a great gift.
Over 20 DVDs for a pledge of $75.
212-209-2950.
Okay, we also have a second deal here, and this is really pretty incredible too.
This is something that we offered once in the past, and boy, did it go fast.
So we have to see if the same thing happens tonight.
This is for a pledge of $125.
We have – and Bernie, please correct me if I'm wrong here.
I think I'm going to name it right, but I'll probably get it somewhat wrong.
This is what's known as the Super TV BeGone Pro.
Did I get it right?
Well, you were close.
The official name of this awesome device is the TV BeGone Pro Super High Power Gen 5.
Okay.
I wonder why I didn't remember that.
Okay.
Well, can I just keep saying the Super TV BeGone Pro because that's what's written
in front of me?
No, I know Mitch is going to get it straight.
Okay.
Mitch is going to be on in a little while.
We're going to call him in a little while.
But before we do that, we're going to actually talk to somebody who makes use of this device
quite a bit.
Now, let's just explain what the TV BeGone – well, what any TV BeGone is all about.
It's about turning off TV sets in various areas, public areas or schools or stores or
all kinds of places where you're basically subjected to this constant drone of people
talking at you, whether it be Oprah or Jerry Springer or some sports or news or commercials
or whatnot.
It just is pollution.
And if you want to turn that pollution off, you have the ability.
Now, TV BeGone came out years ago.
I'll ask Mitch about this later on in the show.
But it used to have a fairly good range.
You could turn it off inside a room.
What we're offering tonight is something that can turn off TVs from – what is it?
100 meters away?
Is it more than that?
I think it's about that, which is a football field if you know how long that is.
It's for – if you see a TV set on the other side of a football field, you really want
to turn it off.
Now, you can do it.
Yeah.
So basically, for any distance range that a TV could possibly annoy you, you should
be able to hit it.
Okay.
So the phones are lining up now.
212-209-2950.
If I pledge a 125, you will get one of these super TV BeGone Pro devices that can turn
off TVs from a great distance.
And this is kind of my thing.
I like to turn on TVs from a great distance too.
So if someone's TV set is off and you turn it on, they get just as perplexed as if it
suddenly goes off.
But it's mostly useful in those places where you're just confronted with this cacophony
of noise and flashing video.
That's just – nobody asked your permission to throw this in your face and you can just
turn it off.
It's really –
It's not even noise sometimes.
In a lot of places, there are just TVs that are on that nobody is watching.
Absolutely.
212-209-2950.
Again, for a pledge of $75, you get the 20 DVD set of Hope Builders and Makers and Cackers
and all kinds of cool things like that.
For a pledge of $125, you will get one of the exclusive super TV BeGone Pro devices
that has an official name that we will say again later.
That's for a pledge of 125-212-209-2950.
I should point out we don't have a whole lot of those.
So the first people who call in are the ones who are going to get them.
Joining us on the phone right now from Long Island is our friend, Scotty.
Scotty, are you there?
Yep.
Now, Scotty, you're 11 years old and you have had a TV BeGone Pro for a while.
I understand that you've made some pretty good use of it, have you not?
Actually, I turned off a TV in a restaurant.
Okay.
What happened after you did that?
People turned it back on.
They turned it back on.
And then what did you do?
After a while, I turned it off again.
Okay.
That's what you have to do, yes.
Now, I have found that when you do that, when you're in a restaurant and you turn off a TV
and then they turn it back on and you turn it off again, it'll take a little longer.
They'll turn it back on a second time.
But if you turn it off a third time, they will give up.
They will not do it a third time.
Yeah, I've discovered that.
That's the rule.
It works everywhere.
Sometimes I have to do it about ten times.
Wow, that's pretty good.
That's dedication.
So have you used it anywhere else?
Maybe with your neighbors or your school or anything?
Doctor's office.
You know, that's a great one.
That's a great one.
I used mine in a doctor's office too.
I'll tell that story later, but wow.
So what was the effect when you did that?
They replaced the TV.
They thought the TV was broken and they replaced it?
Yep.
Oh my goodness.
Wow.
How long was this doctor wait that they replaced the TV while you're still there?
People assume that they do that.
You know, we turned off a whole bank of TVs once up by Rockefeller Center.
They have them like blaring out to the street.
And they replaced some of those TVs.
I think they thought they were broken.
You know, does the TV begun work for like super screens that are like on New York City buildings?
No, because they don't have, what's the thing called?
They don't have remote control.
Infrared.
Yeah, infrared.
It's got to have an infrared device in order to.
Maybe you should make one for that.
Well, someone can design a massive screen for a side of a building that has an infrared sensor on it,
and they're able to sell that to a building.
Yeah, I'll be happy to turn it off.
It would be nice if we could turn off Times Square.
But, you know, there might be some things that you can turn off and have a lot of fun.
So, Scotty, let me ask you.
When you use this device, do you show it off to your friends?
Do they get impressed by this?
No, I actually have to hide it.
Otherwise, they get caught.
Oh, okay.
You might be able to help some other kids out there who use these devices.
How do you not get caught?
Well, you have to act casual.
Like you can't just go, oh, I turned off the TV.
Everyone, I turned off the TV.
You can't be like that.
Yeah, no, you're right.
You're absolutely right.
And too many people I know do exactly that.
And it's really embarrassing, and it's a surefire way to get caught.
And, yeah, at truck stops, you know, there's TV sets there.
You know, a friend of mine once did this.
And what was he doing when he turned off the TV?
He was wearing a big TV-begone T-shirt.
You know, how smart is that?
So, obviously, it was pretty clear what was going on there.
Boy, so doctor's office.
And did he have any retail stores ever?
Like, you know, a Circuit City or something?
Well, actually.
They don't have those anymore.
Speaking of retail stores, there was at Costco.
You know how there's a lot of TVs there?
I do.
I turned them all off.
Hey, Scotty, I had a question for you.
Now, what's the policy at school?
Can you bring your TV-begone on campus?
Have you had any luck keeping it concealed there?
I mean, they have TVs at schools often, so I'm just curious about that.
Have you had problems with it?
You haven't?
I haven't brought it there yet.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, well, that could open up all kinds of problems, I'm sure,
if you keep turning it off there.
All right.
I just want to say, you know,
children going to school may not want to bring these things to school.
I mean, in general, this is to, you know,
Mitch created these things to help get rid of very annoying devices around the world,
but school is a little different.
Also because you can get in trouble there is the difference.
Yeah, like in a restaurant, like, you know,
you were talking about how you turn it off a couple of times and they'll give up,
but if you do that, you know, a couple of times also, like, you know, visiting,
they eventually also realize it's you, but there they laugh
or they might ask you to turn it back on because they don't know.
However, college students with common shared areas.
You can get in trouble no matter what, though.
Student union or like a civic center where it's a cafeteria or something.
Yeah, absolutely.
It sounds like Scott is on the right track.
He's keeping out of school.
You know, he's got it under control.
He just takes it to where the community will appreciate him cleaning up the environment.
Let me ask you one more question, Scott.
Go ahead.
Yes, they will.
But let me ask you one more question.
Do you ever walk down a street, for instance,
and just sort of aim it at people's houses
and either turn on or turn off their TVs that are just sitting there?
Oh, I love doing that.
I've actually done it to my friend Jonathan's house, Nick's house, Shane's house.
And they're still your friends.
I've done it to about a million people I do it to.
All right, so if you're on some part of Long Island
and your TV sets keep either going on or off mysteriously
and you're friends with a kid named Scotty,
you may have just solved the question that's been plaguing you.
Scotty, any final words that you'd like to give to listeners
or to people thinking of getting a TV be gone?
A camera be gone?
Yes, so then for example,
you know that street thing that takes pictures of license plates?
Yeah.
Well, there you go.
Okay.
Yeah, no, it's called fighting back.
Well, technically speaking, well, first off,
just need to say that the method to deal with different technologies
isn't always exactly the same as, for instance, a little off button.
But for cameras, the equivalent would be using LEDs
and having some bright infrared LEDs somewhat close to your face.
As far as the camera is concerned, they tend to have a hard time seeing you.
Also, one for maybe smartphones would be kind of cool.
Oh, I like that.
I like that.
That would be really, really cool.
Yeah.
Scotty, you're still with us, right?
Yep.
Okay, Mitra, are you with us now?
Yes.
I am.
Well, Scotty, I'd like you to meet Mitch.
Mitch is the guy who invented the TV-B-Gone.
He's joining us on the telephone right now.
Hey, Mitch.
Hey, Scotty.
Scotty's an 11-year-old user of the TV-B-Gone,
and he's been going over the various places that he's been causing chaos
over the past however many months he's had one.
About a million friends.
I made about a million friends go insane.
That's a lot of friends.
The important thing is that you—
They're not my friends anymore.
You basically made the world a better place by turning off a lot of television sets.
I just want to say we need some phone calls.
We're telling great stories here, but we're offering this $125 pledge.
You'll get your own Super TV-B-Gone Pro that you can turn TVs off from a great distance.
We have a limited number, 212-209-2950.
We need to get some calls coming in so that we can keep this radio station on the air.
You can be as happy as Scotty is,
and you can show Mitch Altman, who's joining us now on the phone,
that these inventions really do serve humanity and are valued,
and it's a perfect example of what the hacker world can create.
212-209-2950.
Pledge of $125 gets you the Super TV-B-Gone Pro.
Pledge of $75 gets you the 20 DVD set.
Mitch, welcome.
Anything that you'd like to ask Scotty or tell us or anything?
I have not been listening to the previous conversation,
so I'm not sure what kind of chaos has been ensuing as a result of your activities, Scotty.
Of course, I created TV-B-Gone to spread peace in the world,
but, of course, mischief is often a lot of fun, too.
There's one word for you.
What's that?
One word for describing what I'm making.
What word is that, chaos? Is that what you said?
Yep.
Wow, this is the future. This is the future chaos.
It keeps going around in circles.
We do need to embrace the chaos in the world because it is part of our reality,
and that's why the Chaos Computer Club exists.
Do you know about the Chaos Computer Club, Scotty?
It's a group of hackers in Germany that have been around forever.
I've never even heard of it until now.
Okay, well, they spend all their time listening to Kraftwerk,
and I know you like Kraftwerk, so it all ties together. It's amazing.
We have three calls on the line. That's great. Let's get a few more.
212-209-2950.
Mitch, you want to tell us something about this particular model of TV-B-Gone,
what it's capable of?
Yeah, so this one, the original version has one infrared LED invisible light emitter,
which is what all remote controls use for TVs,
and it works really well, better range than most remote controls.
This is the TV-B-Gone Pro, which looks like a smartphone.
That's right. It looks just like an iPhone.
Well, some people say so, but it's a case that I designed myself personally,
and it has a sticker in front so that no one really knows what you're doing when you bring it out.
It just looks like you're bringing out a smartphone,
and you can press its one and only one button,
and the eight infrared emitters start blinking with very powerful batteries.
Two of them, actually.
I'm sorry, Scotty. Go ahead.
You have to make sure that they don't see the big logo on the back.
The big logo on the back, yes.
Well, there's a small logo on the back, and that's my company, Cornfield Electronics,
and it says TV-B-Gone Pro on it instead of smartphone model number X.
Most people don't even pay attention when you bring out a smartphone,
because how many people don't do it?
But anyways, the two rechargeable batteries that are in it are two cell phone batteries,
appropriately enough, that allow you to turn TVs off from up to 100 meters away.
That's pretty far. That's pretty far.
We were talking about how far away that is and what the power that you can achieve.
It's incredible. It really is.
Now, Mitch, this is the professional model.
Do you have to be specially licensed to use it,
or can anyone call and pledge $125 to 1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0
and receive one of these in the mail and start turning off televisions?
Well, you do need to be a professional to use it.
However, anyone who has one suddenly becomes a professional.
So please call the number that you just said that I didn't memorize
to support public radio and off the hook.
2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0. Go ahead, Scotty.
I know you mean by the professional thing.
Yes. Well, you became a professional as soon as you started to use it, for sure.
Hey, Manuel.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I understand this is the fifth generation TV-B-Gone.
We've had the various iterations of the TV-B-Gone, many of us, on the show.
But this latest version, the TV-B-Gone Pro, super high power,
it's the equivalent of a flamethrower.
This thing just spews, I mean, seriously, it's harmless.
But it's the equivalent of an infrared flamethrower.
It will just blast these infrared commands to turn TVs off,
like the distance of a football field.
And it doesn't have to be a straight line either.
It's so bright you can't see it because it's invisible infrared light.
But it'll bounce all over the place.
You don't even have to point it at the TV.
You can just be anywhere in the room, and it'll bounce all over the place and hit the TV
just because that's how light waves bounce around.
It is so cool.
Call 212-209-2950.
You've got to get this thing. It's awesome.
Yeah, I've seen people bounce it off walls and hit TVs that way.
You don't have to point directly at it.
If you know geometry a little bit, you can do that quite successfully at great distances.
So, yeah, it's an incredible toy.
You just point somewhere, and it turns them off.
Off the hook, after the Gen 4 Model Pro,
we were doing a drive-by from a bus through the bus window into a bar's window.
Multiple bars.
Multiple bars, yeah.
We were driving down, I think, First Avenue and just pointing the thing across the street.
We were watching the TVs going off.
And tonight there's a Ranger game on, and, boy, you know,
it could really cause all kinds of chaos if you drive around doing that.
But they use it responsibly, folks.
You don't want to cause too much grief.
Yes, with great power comes great responsibility.
Yeah.
Hey, listen, Scotty, we're going to let you go,
but I want to thank you so much for giving your input on this
and for using the TV-B-Gon Pro responsibly.
Thank you.
All right.
Yeah, it's been good meeting you, Scotty.
Go out there and make the world a better place.
Oh, by the way.
Yes?
I'm going to need 50 more.
You're going to need 50 more.
Okay.
Well, we'll see what we can do about that.
But that's definitely – you must have a lot of friends that want one.
Yeah.
I hope he keeps up the important research he's doing.
Well, once you use it, people do want one.
So if you get one of these, expect people to be crowded around you
expecting you to find one for them as well.
212-209-2950.
Remember, a pledge of $125 gets you a – what's the legal name of it, Mitch?
Super TV-B-Gon Pro?
What is it?
It's the TV-B-Gon Pro SHP, Super High Power Universal Remote Control.
Okay.
Gen 5.
Gen 5.
Amazing.
Gen 5, yeah.
And I'm working on Gen 6 now, by the way.
Wow.
It's not going to turn off TV sets as far away as a horizon or something.
Well, I'm aiming for a third of a kilometer.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
At some point, the government is going to get very concerned about your abilities.
Mitch, you live in San Francisco, which is a built-up place.
Where do you find a television a third of a kilometer away that you have a line of sight to?
Well, I do live on top of a house on top of a hill.
And one that's bothering you from a third of a mile away?
Mitch, is that version going to come with –
It's just an obsession I have.
You know, everyone has their perk.
Mitch, is that version going to come with a scope?
Laser sight.
Including a weak red laser pointer.
Right.
All right.
But I just figured that's the most powerful infrared light that I can do without hurting anyone's eyes.
They go, is this on? And then point it in their eyes.
Wow.
Can you – because with infrared in general, that also can transmit heat.
If you put your hand in front of the TV gun, would you actually feel that at all?
Or is it not powerful enough to heat up?
No, it's not powerful enough to feel at all.
It's a lot of light.
And if you point it in your eyes – the pro, if you point it in your eyes, your eyes will –
the irises will get small, but it won't hurt you.
So I want to make sure that I'm making the world a better place and not a worse place for any individual.
Yes, absolutely.
If you pointed it at a video camera, would the video camera be completely flooded?
There are a lot of people in the U.K. who have been playing around with things like that
to try to foil security systems, surveillance systems.
So if you pointed at a surveillance camera that has facial recognition,
it will see that there's a person there, but it won't be able to recognize the face.
I should point out, too, that this does work overseas.
There's a switch between Europe and the United States,
so you can just throw that switch and it will work on TV sets over there.
Previous models didn't do this, so you had to get a different model depending on where you live.
But this works everywhere.
It is professional, and it does work in China, too, of course, where I just was a week ago.
You know, this is very fascinating to just think about,
that this has gotten bright enough and goes for such an extended period of time
that the TV-B-Gon now is starting to double as a camera-B-Gon at the same time.
Indeed. Okay, we just had two calls come in. That's good.
But we have many more people down there.
So please, in our last few minutes on the radio,
we'd like to give away the remaining Super TV-B-Gon Pros that we have.
Remember, a range of 100 meters.
For Americans who don't know what a meter is, how is it?
It's sort of like a yard.
It's sort of like a yard. So a yard is like three feet, right?
Yeah.
So it's 300 feet. How about that?
A little more, yeah.
That's pretty far. That's far away.
212-209-2950, pledge at 125, you'll get your own Super TV-B-Gon Pro
that looks like an iPhone that you can just simply stand around and look innocent
and turn things on, turn things off, TVs specifically.
Or if you prefer to have the DVD set, 20 DVDs of various Hope Talks
concerning building things and making things and experimenting,
including the Steve Wozniak talk, including a couple of Mitch Altman talks,
a pledge of only $75 gets you more than 20 DVDs,
which are really good watching there.
And, of course, if you get both, you can use your Super TV-B-Gon Pro
to turn off the TV, which is playing those DVDs,
if you get tired of them, which I don't think you will do.
212-209-2950, join the calls on the line right now
because we won't be giving this away next week.
I guarantee that because we won't be on next week.
And in two weeks, we'll be doing something else entirely.
This is your only opportunity to get these amazing devices.
And you can be as adventurous and happy as Scotty was
just turning things off all over the place
and getting all kinds of puzzled people surrounding you
because they don't know why certain devices are turning off.
And you get the radio station.
Oh, yes, you do get the radio station. That's us.
It comes with it.
Yeah, you help keep WBAI on the air.
And any pledge also.
I mean, you don't have to necessarily pledge for these things.
If you want to pledge less or more,
any pledge is welcome and helps keep the radio station on.
There are different premiums back there.
This is what we're offering for this hour,
and it won't be offered past this hour,
which is why we pay particular attention to it.
But just to give you an idea, we need to raise $850,000,
and that sure sounds like a daunting amount of money.
It is. It's a lot of money, but it's how we survive.
And considering that we don't have commercials,
we don't have any advertising budget whatsoever,
we need that money to come in somehow.
And the tradeoff is, yeah, no commercials.
We can have programs like Off the Hook
and talk about all kinds of controversial issues
and offer things like TV beguns
because you certainly couldn't offer that on a commercial radio station
because, well, the TV people would be up in arms
because you're interfering with their hold over the populace.
Just that alone would be too controversial for them.
Anyway, with your phone calls, with your support so far,
in the couple of weeks that we've been doing this,
we've raised $327,806.
So we have a couple of weeks left,
and we're going to make our goal of $850,000.
With every single phone call that comes in, we get closer.
So right now we have two calls on the line.
Let's make that five calls.
212-209-2950.
$125, get the Super TV Begun Pro.
Be able to turn television sets on and off from 100 meters away.
$75, get the 20 DVD set.
$200, get both.
Yeah, RedHack makes a really good point
that if you're not interested per se
in anything that maybe is being offered,
you don't have enough money for $125,
we accept and are very happy for any amount of money
that you're willing to give
because it helps keep this station alive.
However, if you are willing to pledge at least $125
by calling 212-209-2950,
you will get one of these two amazing thank you gifts.
And conversely, we know also that there are many
wealthy people out there that don't know
where to invest their money,
and we can't think of a better place
to send a few hundred K.R. away,
or even just a handful of thick wads of cash.
It's tax deductible.
It's a very worthy cause.
And when you consider this particular radio station itself
was a donation.
It was a commercial radio station
donated to the Pacifica Foundation back in 1960.
What an incredible feat that was
just to be able to have a station donated for the cause
and to have it stay on the air for over 50 years
solely through listener support.
That is an amazing thing,
and you can help that tradition continue
by calling 212-209-2950
or join the three calls on the line.
We've got another two calls.
We'll reach our five-call goal.
Bernie, I think you're the person
to bring in that next call.
Well, you guys covered it pretty well,
but I just want to say
this is the radio station that will broadcast
stuff that you were afraid to ask
that you wouldn't be able to...
I'll put it this way.
Stuff you were afraid to ask,
but how can I even say this?
Hear about the stuff you were afraid to ask about.
We'll just say it without you even having to ask.
All kinds of controversial topics
in this particular show,
the Hacker Radio Show.
We're going to be giving away
over 20 hand-picked DVDs
of stuff that happened to the Hope Conference,
which we do every two years.
And it's a foreshadow,
which will be happening this July 13th, 14th, and 15th
at hope.net.
Check that out.
But this is great material.
We're covering all the kinds of things people do
that they're not supposed to do,
how to break things, twist things, bend things,
make things do what they're not supposed to do
in the electronics and telecommunications,
computer world,
stuff you're not supposed to be able to do,
but you can do it.
If you want to get in on this,
call 212-209-2950.
We'll send you over 20 DVDs of this kind of stuff.
Lend them out to your friends.
Expose them to the hacker world.
Or get yourself the flamethrower.
TV be gone.
Super pro.
High power.
And turn off TVs more than a football field away.
Impress your friends.
212-209-2950.
The actual flamethrower is not included.
Well, you know,
you could say infrared is a flame of sorts.
You can say anything you want,
but we're not offering a flamethrower.
We're offering a nonviolent peacemaking TV be gone
that will help you reduce the amount of noise and pollution
in your audio and visual environment.
People are calling asking for flamethrowers.
Maybe this is something we should be offering.
It's an infrared flamethrower.
I think they want a real one.
Okay, well, you got your other call coming in.
212-209-2950.
Thank you for that call.
And let's get a couple more before the end of the hour,
which is only about five minutes away.
212-209-2950.
Again, $75 gets you the 20 DVD set,
20 plus DVD set of various Hope Talks about building things
and creating new technology.
$125, you get an example of that new technology.
You get your own super TV be gone
that will turn off TVs from a great distance away.
It can lean out your apartment window
and turn off your neighbor's TV or turn it on.
And that's the noise that will greet you
once they figure out who did it.
It's people don't like it
when something unpredictable happens.
Bernie, are you okay, or is that Mitch,
or what's going on over there?
No, that was Mitch.
I'm in the big city here in San Francisco.
You didn't just turn off a TV, did you,
that you weren't supposed to?
Yeah, so hopefully, you know,
like, I made a TV be gone for me, you know,
and it turns out that what I loved,
other people loved too,
and I'm lucky enough that I'm making a living
doing what I love.
And I've been, you know, trying to inspire other people
to think of this as inspiration
for doing what you love, you know?
That's what we're doing here at Hacker Conferences,
like Hope, at Off the Hook,
Hacker Radio Show,
and at Hacker Spaces around the world,
inspiring people to explore and do what you love.
So, you know, think about what you love.
You know, carry around stuff
that other people have created,
but think about what you would create
if you could create something that you want.
You can do it,
and there are a lot of people
who are way willing to help,
and that's what Off the Hook is about,
and in many ways, that's what WBAI is about.
All right, we have four calls on the line,
and I don't think we have very many more of these left,
so if you think of calling,
you really need to do it soon
because we're off the air in five minutes,
and we might be running out of these things.
212-209-2950.
Again, two pledge levels, 75 and 125.
People picking up the phone
will be able to help you with all the details.
But do make your calls quickly
because, well, we are going to run out at some point.
Please call 212-209-2950.
For the $75 level,
you get 20 DVDs of hacking and making and breaking,
and then for the $125 level,
we're handing out these amazing,
super high-distance TV-B-Gone Pros,
and I just wanted to add
that what's really, really important
about being inspired
and being able to create things
is learning how things work.
I mean, yeah, breaking,
you're twisting the way things were intended to be used,
but in that process,
you learn how it's designed,
how it works,
what the physics of it are,
what the electricity is really doing,
and in that sense,
you can then apply it to your own projects
and take it from there.
Absolutely, and when you say breaking,
breaking is an important part of making.
Breaking is an important part of creating.
You have to test the limits.
You have to experiment.
It's like writing a computer program.
You have to see what happens
if you do this instead of that.
It's not destructive.
It's how you invent.
It's how you progress,
and that's a major part of what hacking
or just inventing in general is all about.
Yeah, and if you are thorough with that,
just like if you were building a plane
or a rocket ship or something,
if you're thorough,
you can then present it to other people
and they can enjoy it
and its reliability and durability.
Absolutely.
You know, Mitch, I was just thinking
all the HDTV nonsense
that we're being subjected to,
everything is being cut over to HDTV.
You should rename your TV-B-Gone
the HDTV-B-Gone
because it works on those too, right?
And you might as well.
Of course it does.
Yeah, jump on that bandwagon.
Yeah, it doesn't matter what form the TV is.
If it has a remote control,
TV-B-Gone will take care of the destruction.
All right.
Listen, we're out of time,
but I want to encourage people.
We have two calls coming in.
That might be all we have,
but give it a try.
If we have more,
we will certainly give you one of them
for a pledge of $125.
212-209-2950.
TV-B-Gone Pro for $125.
$75 gets you the 20-plus DVD set
from the Hope Conferences.
And we won't be here next week,
and if you have suggestions
for where Kyle and I should go in the UK
to take pictures of surveillance items
or whatnot,
email us, oth at 2600.com.
Email that address
for any feedback to Off The Hook.
Mitch, thank you so much for what you do,
and we'll see you in person
fairly soon.
Yeah.
All right.
In a few days.
Okay, cool.
All right, we'll see you in two weeks
for another edition of Off The Hook.
Have a good night.
Long distance operator
Placeless call
It's not for fun
Long distance operator
Please placeless call
You know it's not for fun
Gonna get a message to my baby
You know she's not just anyone
There are thousands
in the phone booth
Thousands at the gate
There are thousands
in the phone booth
Thousands at the gate
Everybody wants to make
a long distance call
But you know it's not for fun
Everybody wants to make
a long distance call
But you know they're just
gonna have to wait
Everybody wants to make
a long distance call
But you know they're just
gonna have to wait
Everybody wants to make
a long distance call
But you know they're just
gonna have to wait
Everybody wants to make
a long distance call