I'm WBAI 99.5 FM.
Oh, okay.
I've got questions about my computer.
And you've got questions about your computer?
Not my, um, coffee over in my keyboard.
Do you think that's a problem?
No, not for me.
What does it mean by working right, Jimmy?
I'd buy a new one, you know what I mean?
Okay, but you've really got to be there.
It's like the best.
It's the personal computer show.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is seven o'clock.
Time once again for Off The Hook.
It's like the best.
I hope that's understood.
Bundled it up.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hi there.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Bicycle Mark.
Hello.
You're here for the last time, this visit to the United States.
Correct.
Hello.
Good evening.
We'll make this a good show just for you.
And from someplace in Skype land, Bernie S.
Greetings from Skype from Philadelphia.
You sound awful, Bernie.
What are you using this week?
I'm using a WiMAX connection.
I can switch back to a cell phone if this is really bad.
What was so hard about getting him to not use a wireless connection?
The one thing I asked you guys to make sure
is that he was not using a wireless connection because it sounds awful.
I'm sorry.
I don't have a wired connection where I am right now.
Well, then you'll have to call him on the phone because the phone is far preferable to this.
All right.
I will do that.
Sorry about that.
You ask people to do one thing, just one thing.
This year is not getting off to a good start.
All right.
So, Mike, I'm going to hand you the phone here.
And when he calls in, press the right button and we'll bring him up on the phone line.
Happy New Year.
Yes.
Happy New Year, people.
Let's make it a year that has good sound quality because that's my thing this year.
It's good sound quality.
I should start now.
That should be the theme, right?
I think in certain horoscope calendars, this is the year of good sound quality.
So it's good to know.
I'm kind of killing time until Bernie calls in so that we can all discuss things together.
So I'll ask Bicycle Mark, where are you off to after this?
I'm back to...
Oh, I have to pass through Portugal.
You have to pass through Portugal.
How unpleasant for you.
It's a requirement in my family.
So and that's en route back home to Amsterdam, where I haven't been for a few months.
A few months?
You've been away from home for a few months.
I've been away for two months, the North Africa journey, the Middle East,
and then the North American journey.
Wow.
So in order, you left Holland.
I did.
And tell us the countries that you've been to before you returned to Holland.
The train passed through Belgium.
In order, yes.
Yes.
And then I went to France.
And from France, I flew to Tunisia.
All of this is very easy, by the way.
Any American or European can do this very easily.
You could have taken a boat, couldn't you, from France to Tunisia?
Yes, you can.
There are ferries.
I think there's more than one a day, in fact, from Marseille.
I've seen them leaving the port.
But I chose to fly.
And then from Tunisia, I flew to Cairo.
And from Cairo, I flew to Beirut.
All very easy again.
I just want to be clear about this.
And then from Lebanon, I flew to Paris.
Then I took a train through Belgium.
A lot of flying in the Mideast.
OK.
And then I flew from Amsterdam to Portugal.
I'd like to now apologize for global warming.
Oh, so you went back to Amsterdam.
So technically, you weren't away for months because you went back to Holland.
I did.
I had to make a connection there and drop off one suitcase in exchange for another,
the warm weather suitcase for the cold.
And so you actually went to your house then?
I did.
I saw it.
I tried to prove to people that I lived there and that I care.
So you weren't really away for months.
You've been away now for a couple of weeks.
Yes, that's true.
Trying to be technical.
I want to get things right this year as well.
Did you know, Emmanuel, first of all, that Bernie's on the line?
Oh, Bernie, welcome.
I hope I sound a bit better now.
Actually, you do.
I mean, you still don't sound great, but you sound better than you did before.
The other thing I learned is that the Thomas Cook overseas timetable is no longer a thing.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Everybody stop.
What?
What do you mean?
My Bible that I use for every single train in the world, you're saying that doesn't exist
anymore?
They still have the Europe version, but what they call overseas is everywhere that isn't
Europe.
And that has ceased publication two years ago.
And I just found out.
Well, it's interesting because that book that covers the whole rest of the world is
smaller than the book that covers Europe.
Yes.
So I think that.
And it's funny, too, because there are parts of the United States that are in that book
and you see random commuter lines like there's a Long Island Railroad line, but only one
of them is listed there.
It's very inconsistently edited and often wrong, but it is amazing to have a book that
contains most of the surface transport in the entire world and you can no longer get
it.
But you can get the European one.
Yes.
All right.
Well, that's a relief then.
OK, so now that we're all assembled here, FISA.
Yes, I said the four letter word beginning with F that we are going to be talking about.
No, it's not on that list.
And who would like to begin our discussion on FISA and why we should be mad as H about
it?
H, you can say.
That's not on the list either.
OK, mad as heck about it.
Doesn't feel right saying that.
Anybody?
Well, I can tell you that FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it's
actually been in effect for quite some time.
Yeah, it was.
Since when?
Since the 70s, I believe.
The 1970s?
Yes, it is.
OK.
In its present state?
No, no, no, no.
It is, you know, like Obama's view on other things, it has evolved over the years.
OK, and how has it evolved?
Well, I think Mike is probably the most knowledgeable about all of us in this, but I'll
just want to say that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was a was a law passed by
Congress and signed by probably President Nixon, I'm guessing if it was in the early
70s, that would allow for a secret court.
You're not allowed to go to these court hearings or trials where the government goes
before special judges who hear nothing but FISA cases to determine whether a wiretap
can be placed for a foreign target.
That's why it starts with an F for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
It was only designed for this court to for our government to surveil foreign targets,
even though one end of the connection could be in the U.S.
But since the Patriot Act, the FISA court powers or the rules involving getting wiretap
authorizations through the FISA court, which almost never says no, by the way, were changed
radically through the Patriot Act, courtesy of George W. Bush.
Well, yeah, that's what I wanted to focus on, because the way the story is being reported,
in fact, I'm going to read a quote as to how it's being reported.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which made it legal for the National Security Agency
to perform warrantless wiretapping, is something that originated under the George W. Bush
administration.
Now, this is what we're talking about as far as what has been extended, not something from
the 1970s.
Right.
So what Bernie described was the FISA court, but the FISA provides a whole bunch of procedures
for the government to spy on people all around the world.
And these amendments, one of the particularly offensive things about them is that they
permit warrantless wiretapping so that the government doesn't even have to go through
this totally rigged procedure that Bernie described in order to spy on people.
And that is, I mean, the government's spying on people all the time, but this particular
authorization is what is new and what has newly been extended while the government was
busy, while the Congress was busy not passing any bills that anyone wanted it to pass, it
found the time to pass this one.
Right.
So rather than be upset at its existence in the first place from the 1970s, we're supposed
to be upset at the fact that the thing from 2008 has been extended, which gave them even
more power.
Correct?
We can be upset at the whole thing.
Well, yes, we can be, but I just think it's kind of, you know, we might as well be upset
at the founding fathers then because-
Yeah, they did a lot of things wrong.
But you know what?
It sort of takes attention away from the more immediate things that happened a mere four
or five years ago.
And that's what was extended a few days ago by the Senate in an overwhelming vote.
Rob?
Right.
What happened in 2008 was the FISA Amendments Act, which instituted all the changes that
you talked about.
And what was recently decided was what Congress actually turned down, what would have been
a proposal to open things up a little bit, add a little transparency to this whole situation,
get some statistics on how much the activities that are being committed under this act, under
the guise of investigation, are aimed at basically ordinary Americans going about their business,
who's being inconvenienced, how much it's even being used.
And that was roundly rejected by Congress.
Yeah, I just want to clarify, or maybe just repeat what Rob said, which is there were
several amendments offered, most of them by Senator Wyden, who's, I guess, the only
senator who believes in civil liberties, or one of the few anyway.
And where's he from?
Is it Oregon?
Northwest, I think.
Yeah, I think it's Oregon.
I think so.
And so he had a series of amendments that were all voted down, some of which were to
like, you know, stop spying on people or stop spying on people without warrants.
But there was one to just provide a report so that the government would have to tell
the public, you know, how much they were using this power to spy on people without
a warrant.
And that was so controversial that the Senate would have none of it.
And it was, I don't know if you have the numbers in front of you, but it was overwhelmingly
voted down.
They would just rather we don't even know.
It was a significant number.
Unfortunately, my toner was fading really badly.
So I can't make out the actual numbers.
But it was more than two thirds, more than three quarters, I believe.
And very disappointing.
Can we say we're surprised?
I'm upset.
I don't know that I'm surprised.
But are you surprised that you're upset?
I'm not.
Bernie, are you surprised?
I, of course, had my hopes up that what Congress said should be sunsetted or ended this past
year was like a zombie brought back from the dead.
It's really, I think, disingenuous for Congress to pass laws saying we want this law to sunset
or end on a particular date because it's so controversial and so egregious that we have
to set a deadline where it ends and then for the keep renewing it.
That's just, you know, it's the height of disingenuousness, I think.
But, you know, I wish they had brought it back from the dead because then that would
have meant that it was dead at some point.
And I don't think it has been, has it?
It's been going pretty consistently.
No, no, they're very, this is a top priority for them, renewing this.
Yeah.
And I've got the figure in front of me.
Apparently in the Senate, the five more years of the FISA Amendments Act was reauthorized
with a vote of 73 to 23.
Now, do we know who the 23 were?
I was going to look this up before the show and I just ran out of time.
But maybe our local senators, do we know if they voted for it or against it?
Does anybody know?
Perhaps we could find out.
Okay, I'll get your smartphone to work there and maybe we'll have an answer fairly soon.
But yeah, it's disappointing.
I think the thing we can immediately infer is that this is not a partisan issue.
Both of the parties are voting in favor of these expanded government powers in overwhelming
numbers.
And that's quite frightening.
Well, do you think that represents what their clientele, what their constituents are telling
them to do?
Their constituents, no, but their clientele, yes.
Okay.
Well, yeah, which do you think they pay more attention to?
I think that's clear.
Yeah.
I can't say I'm surprised, but I'm pretty upset by it.
I mean, what's crazy is that if all this spying actually worked, if they were actually
able to catch terrorists, it would be the front page of the Times for everyone they
caught.
It's that same logic of all the things that didn't happen.
All the terrorist acts that didn't take place is because this law was in effect.
That's the smoke and mirrors that they pull to get these things to work.
The fact that we didn't have terrorist attacks means that we must be doing something right.
So therefore, let's keep it in place.
I think if there were any to be caught, they would be parading them all around quite a
bit.
Yeah, I do have those nays here.
I'm impressed.
Okay, Rob, what do you got?
If you would like to hear the nays, this is from the Senate's own site.
The people who voted against extending the FISA-
You're going to read all the nays.
Okay, let's do it.
I could read the nays.
I think they deserve some credit for that.
They deserve a little recognition.
Should we applaud after each one?
No, let's not do that, but let's read their party affiliation and the state they're from,
and maybe we can keep track of how many Democrats and how many Republicans.
We could.
Well, the nays are Senator Akaka, Democrat from Hawaii.
Senator Baucus, Democrat from Montana.
Senator Bigich, that's a Democrat from Alaska.
Senator Bingaman, who's a Democrat from New Mexico.
Senator Brown, Democrat from Ohio.
I've got to say, so far, it's Democrats 5-0.
Senator Cantwell, Democrat from Washington.
Senator Coons, Democrat from Delaware.
Senator Durbin, Democrat, Illinois.
Senator Franken, Democrat, Minnesota.
Senator Harkin, Democrat, Iowa.
Senator Leahy, Democrat from Vermont.
Senator Lee, Republican from Utah.
Senator Menendez, Democrat, New Jersey.
Senator Merkley, Democrat, Oregon.
Senator Murkowski, Republican from-
What's AK?
Alaska.
Senator Murray, Democrat from Washington.
Senator Paul, Republican from Kentucky.
Senator Sanders, Independent from Vermont.
Senator Schatz, Democrat from Hawaii.
Senator Tester, Democrat from Montana.
Senator Udall, Democrat from Colorado.
Another Senator Udall, Democrat from New Mexico.
And Senator Wyden, Democrat from Oregon.
Now, I'm shocked that Rand Paul voted against this,
but maybe I shouldn't be.
But only three Republicans voted against it.
Only three Republicans and one Independent.
Okay, all right.
Well, there you go.
But nobody from New York, right?
Yeah, I didn't hear Schumer on that list.
No, you didn't hear Schumer on that list.
And that's because he is a big, bold yay on this list.
Okay, well, I guess some re-education is in order.
And hopefully we can reach out and convince people
this is a bad idea.
This is something that should not continue to be extended.
And that we value our privacy and our warrants too.
You know, warrants are a good thing.
I mean, that's the crazy thing about this FISA court
is it approves substantially all of the requests
that are put in front of it.
And even that is deemed too much paperwork
for the security apparatus.
And that's pretty frightening.
Okay, well, that's all I have to say about FISA today.
But we certainly will say more about it in the future
as I'm sure we'll become victimized by it.
Yeah, okay.
So a new year basically means the beginning of new things.
But it also means the end of old things sometimes.
And there are many things that seem to be ending.
And I'm kind of sad by some of them,
but also kind of wondering what might happen as a result.
This one I'm not sad about at all.
Verizon has announced that they will no longer
handle 900 number billing.
Yes, remember 900 number?
Well, they still exist, 900 numbers.
Those are those numbers that, you know,
you call and get billed a monumental amount for.
All kinds of chat lines and sex lines
and customer support lines that rip you off.
And yeah, I guess they're going away.
But Verizon saying this doesn't mean that they're going away,
but it's a big blow against them.
They've been informed, these companies,
service bureau companies have been informed by Verizon,
it will terminate billing for all 900 number pay-per-call
programs in the United States affected December 31st, 2012.
So I assume they were notified well before then.
900 numbers enjoyed an astounding run in the 1990s
as businesses like Microsoft used them
for computer technical support.
The U.S. Passport Office also employed 900 numbers
for expedited passport requests
and a whole lot of money for them.
You could even listen to the astronauts
on the space shuttle via a 900 number.
I remember that.
Then there were the 900 number programs
that usually consisted of girls in hot tubs
saying call me on late night television.
And in most cases, when you did call,
you probably got a lot less
than you might've thought you were getting,
especially since the major carriers banned
billing for adult content within two years
of the mass introduction of 900 services back in 1989.
In fact, if you go back to the very beginning
of Off the Hook, we did a feature on this
because it was a new thing back then in the late 80s.
But the place where 900 numbers had the most lasting impact
in the minds of the consumers was in entertainment.
Singer Michael Bolton had a popular 900 number
for his fan club.
And WWF-
Wait, what?
Singer Michael Bolton had a 900 number for his fan club?
Yeah.
All right.
Would you deny him that?
I just-
What else does he have?
I would wonder who would call it,
but apparently his fans.
You know, if you're Justin Bieber or somebody
and you tell your fans to jump off a bridge,
they'll do it.
So calling a 900 number is not that big a deal,
especially if it's your parent's phone that you use.
Anyway, WWF, which tells you how old this is
because it's not the World Wildlife Foundation,
heavyweight champion Hulk Hogan had a 900 number.
That was the most called one in the nation.
Who could forget, even though I never knew it,
Dionne Warwick and her Psychic Friends Network.
Actually, I didn't know about that,
but I didn't know about the 900 number.
They supposedly earned $1 billion per year
back in the early 1990s
when people did not know what 900 numbers were.
Psychic Friends Network went bankrupt in 1998.
They did not see that coming, did they?
And well, that's a short history of 900 numbers.
So it looks like they're on the way out.
Could you ever call them from a cell phone?
I'm not sure, and I'm not going to try.
I don't know, Bernie,
it sounds like something you might have tried.
Well, I never tried calling from a cell phone.
Have you called a Psychic Friends Network
or called a 900 number from a cell phone?
Any 900 number.
I think I did once as an experiment.
It was an inexpensive one
just to see what would happen with the billing.
And of course, this was decades ago.
So you were able to call it?
Yeah, I was able to.
It was an interesting and novel way
for companies to charge for a premier service
that you just have to call.
And the phone company that you called from,
called through, would take care of the billing.
The problem is a lot of people complained of fraud.
Some guy's wife would find out
that her husband had called the hot tub number,
and then she would call to dispute it.
And then so with all these chargebacks,
which is one of the reasons that this is ending,
and the other reason that this is coming into an end,
900 numbers, is that no mobile carrier,
no cell phone company will handle 900 numbers,
probably because they just realized
there'd be a lot of chargebacks and everything.
So since most people seem to use cell phones now,
and with all the chargebacks on the landlines,
I guess Verizon decided
they're just not going to handle this anymore.
And Verizon, as we all know, now owns MCI
from a few years ago.
And that pretty much wraps it up.
There's not going to be any more 900 billing anymore.
What about local ones, like 976 numbers
and 540 numbers and things like that?
Do you think they're going away too?
Well, the article I read here did not address this.
This was a blog I read by a guy named Bob Bentz,
who is right nearby here in Philadelphia.
And it doesn't address the 976.
I think there's another exchange,
wasn't there like 540 or something?
Yeah, 540, 550, 970, 976.
I think that's just for New York,
but other places had different ones.
And that's why people got ripped off so much,
because 540, that's a legitimate exchange.
It might even be legitimate in New Jersey.
But in New York, you get charged $25 a call for calling it.
So yeah.
So I think this is just 900 area code that is going away,
or just won't result.
Which would be interesting to try to call some of those numbers
and see what happens, but it probably won't work.
Well, yeah, bicycle mark.
I don't see how it could have failed,
especially I'm looking at the Psychic Friends Network.
It still exists, by the way.
But they had a very affordable rate of $3.99 per minute
on that 900 number.
Wow.
And they told you the future.
So...
Did they tell you what your phone bill
is going to look like in the future?
If you know everything else, what does it matter?
Wow.
In Holland, do they have numbers like this?
You have a 09.
The nine prefix is used by a lot of countries.
I know in Belgium, in Holland,
sometimes if you leave the television on late,
you get those offers, people on screen saying,
call 09 and then a number.
So those are the premium numbers.
And those will continue to exist if people miss them
and they want to go over to Europe.
And it's all a question of demand too.
These days, if you want to call your psychic hot tub lady
or whatever, there are probably ways to do what you want
over the internet rather than over your phone line.
So that's probably where everything's going now.
According to...
They should have seen that.
They're psychic friends.
They should have seen this coming.
Yes, I already made that joke there.
I didn't hear that.
In fact, that joke is in the article that I was reading
from iMedia Connection blog,
who also state that mobile is the future.
I keep hearing that every damn day.
And clearly the future for the pay-per-call business
is with billing mechanisms.
Already the USA is running way behind Europe and Canada
and providing worthwhile new mobile billing mechanisms,
such as the pound code.
Does anybody know what the pound code is?
It's like a kilogram, but about half as much.
Hello.
This is not getting off to a good start this year.
Now, the reason I ask is because the article
does not explain what they are.
And again, I did not...
I'm sorry, I have time to look it up.
I mean, there's certain codes on cell phones
that you can dial, like on T-Mobile,
if you dial pound, B-A-L, pound, you get your balance.
I wonder if it's related.
Yes.
Okay, so it's probably some kind of...
Maybe it's like an SMS thing where you get charged a lot?
Does that not exist in the US?
Like if I take one of my local carriers
and I write pound, one, two, three, star,
or some combination,
I don't get functions from the phone company?
Because that's true in the rest of the world,
not just Europe.
I was using that in Egypt.
I know that's true for pay-as-you-go services overseas,
but is it true for regular services over there as well?
I experienced this with prepaid services
in the Middle East and in Europe.
Okay.
I'm not sure as a subscribed customer.
I think, yes, you can still use these functions.
Okay.
I don't know if that's the pound code.
It may be what Mike was talking about.
It sounds like it could be.
I'm talking about the same thing, aren't I?
Yeah, it sounds like it could be the same thing.
It's called USSD is what it's called.
What's called USSD?
The pound thing.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
USSD, okay.
Well, all right.
On Sprint?
I'm sorry.
On the Sprint mobile network, if you dial pound two,
you get customer service.
And if you hit pound three or pound five, I think it is.
No, pound three, you get the billing information,
like how much money you owe them.
Okay.
Well, I guess we're making our first steps into that world.
Until American Telecom gives us a pound code
for a psychic Hulk Hogan in a hot tub,
we're just lagging behind the rest of the world.
This is one thing I'm glad that we're lagging on,
that we don't have a way to rip people off with cell phones
other than the cell phones themselves.
So goodbye to 900 numbers.
And also, what else might be leaving us soon?
Payphones.
In fact, there was an article recently entitled,
what should the city do with 11,000 payphones?
Haven't we had this article like every year for the past decade?
Yeah, but apparently they're really going after them now.
The city of New York is really serious
about rethinking our payphones.
Not only are some phones being replaced with fancy touchscreens,
but recently the city announced a new competition
to help quote unquote reinvent the payphone.
Now, hopefully this will turn out better
than the Taxi of Tomorrow competition did.
And again, I don't know what that is,
but it sounds like a disaster.
The fact that it's open to the public gives us hope.
Now, basically the city has realized
that not only does it have 11,412 public payphones,
but the current agreements with vendors
to run them expires in 2014,
which means this year, 2013,
is the perfect time to figure out
if there's a way to make them a bit more useful
in the age of cell phones.
Hopefully still keeping the phone part
because the phone part was rather useful
after Hurricane Sandy.
Wasn't useful in any of the payphones I tried
because they were all broken,
but had they been working,
definitely would have been useful.
I did a couple months ago,
I was walking down the street
and I overheard some guy using a payphone
very loudly asking the operator
how many quarters he'd have to put in to call Brazil.
And I was wondering if he had used a time machine
to get there or something.
And that's probably the biggest audience.
Visitors, I mean, this holiday season,
I had to, I didn't have to,
I chose to give my mobile phone to visitors
who couldn't make a call,
but needed to call a hotel or a friend
and I just handed my phone over.
Were you standing in Times Square doing that for people?
No, I was in a union station in DC a few days ago.
And someone turned to me and said,
can I use your phone?
I have to call someone.
And I thought, yes, you may.
And I handed over my phone
and I stood there and waited.
And they were from India.
And I thought-
Was that where they called?
No, they called in the United States.
But this is the,
when they're planning this whole thing,
this is the audience they have to think about.
Well, and as we've discussed on this program before,
the payphones in this city,
the only real income there is from them
is by selling advertising on the outsides of the kiosks.
The phone itself is basically an afterthought
to justify the existence of all these billboards
that they can sell ad space on.
And so with the phones themselves
not being that much of an income source of concern,
there isn't the impetus to keep them working
or to do the proper maintenance
or to put in the infrastructure to run them.
So basically, I don't think we're going to get anything
like the payphones of old.
I think if they're going to do anything with them
to keep them useful
or just abandon any pretense of public utility
and just put up street level billboards everywhere
that they can keep selling space on.
But if they're going to be any sort of public utility,
it may be charging stations for cell phones
or maybe something that could interface
with your cell phone in some way to be useful.
You see, the thing is,
I know people that don't have cell phones.
They exist.
There are lots of people that don't have cell phones.
So let's say you're walking down the street
and you see a fire.
Now they've taken away the fire alarm boxes.
You can't pull those things anymore.
Payphones aren't working.
What are people supposed to do
if no one else is around with a cell phone?
Find a crowded theater and yell fire alarm.
Yeah, that's really what it comes down to.
I think, you know,
and this might sound a bit idealistic,
but phone companies make a lot of money in various ways.
They may not make money off payphones,
but they make money in so many other ways.
And I think if you want to do business
in a city like New York,
you should be required to provide a public service
in exchange for that.
And maybe it comes down
to not having a phone booth anymore,
which takes maintenance and upkeep and things like that,
but just attaching a phone to a lamppost
that could be used for emergency purposes
to reach an operator, to reach the police,
to reach the fire department, things like that,
or maybe to make some kind of phone call
if you don't have a cell phone.
There's always going to be a need
for something like this.
You just don't know when it's going to come up.
You don't know where,
which is why it's silly to get rid of them
in certain neighborhoods and keep them in others.
Yeah, but the people like
who have been running the payphones in the city,
they're not primarily a phone company.
They're an advertising company
who basically learned enough
about being a phone company
to do what little they do do
to maintain the payphones.
So maybe we should require this
of the actual telecoms
that are operating in the city,
the cell phone carriers,
the wired data carriers,
people like that,
to put up some sort of public utility
to replace what we had with payphones.
Yeah, but it could be like a C-SPAN of phones
where basically all the phone companies
have to contribute,
just like the cable companies do,
to keep that public service there
for people when they need it.
I think the technology that you see now,
and I haven't seen it in a while,
maybe I've been away a long time,
but I've seen it in the subway,
these emergency boxes.
I don't know how well they work.
We used to have these on college campuses.
They do still all over the United States.
But this kind of technology
out of the subway,
perhaps on the street,
could also take care of
at least the emergency aspect,
not that whole call a friend aspect,
I'm in trouble.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Well, we might see big changes
to existing payphones.
We might see the end of payphones
in the next year or so.
We don't know,
but we'll keep updated on that.
The other thing that we
might be saying goodbye to
is the landline phone network itself.
In fact, I've gotten this article
about 100 times in the last week
called the end of the public phone network.
And now it's kind of misleading
because it's not an announcement
of the end of the public phone network.
It's what a committee would like to do.
The 134-year-old U.S. public phone network
is dying, according to this article.
A third of all U.S. households
are already cell phone only.
Now, to me,
that tells me that two-thirds aren't.
So I don't know if dying is the right word.
Well, I mean, if you read on,
the demographics are such that
it's mostly or largely younger people
who are cell phone only.
So they're going to get older
and may or may not get a landline.
But also even a large percentage
of the people who do have landlines
essentially never use them.
They have them because they get a better deal
on their television service or something.
So if you count those people as well,
it becomes almost or possibly
even actually a majority of Americans
who are mostly cell phone users.
Interesting.
You can do that with numbers, huh?
Yeah, you can add them up.
Well, I don't know.
I'm not sure I agree with that
because I think there are a lot more
landlines in use still.
I think it's more than 50%
from the data I've seen.
But regardless, yes, it's definitely less
than there have been in the past.
But well, here's what they're talking about.
They say more and more businesses
and households are trading
their traditional switched telephone service
for voiceover internet protocol
or VoIP services.
And that supposedly,
according to this IEEE.org article,
has led to a paradoxical situation
where a huge number of phone calls
start out as internet packets
and end as internet packets,
but have to be switched to
and then from a voice circuit in between.
So what remains is to put
the internet protocol
in the middle of the network as well.
And that's supposedly
what AT&T has been supporting.
The transition from the circuit switched
legacy network to broadband
and IP-based communications.
They go on to say that transition
is underway already.
And with each passing day,
more and more services are leaving
the public switched telephone network
and plain old telephone service
as relics of a bygone era.
And the company called on the government
to give a date certain
for the last plain old telephone call.
Bernie, what do you think of this?
Well, I would just say
I almost started tearing up
when you just said
give a date certain
for the last plain old telephone call.
I mean, are we going to have a funeral
or a ceremony for the last
landline phone call?
That would, I don't know.
I have a feeling we're going to be
on that last phone call.
I don't intend to hang up.
So let's see what they do.
But they do say they do say that
this will lead to much better features
like high definition voice service.
But the thing is, they give
they give an example of the transition
from regular television to HDTV.
And I don't think that
really went that well.
So I don't think that's
the best example to give.
But if it works better, I'm all for it.
I'm just not for something
where you become more dependent
on things that could fail.
As we saw after Sandy,
many people did not have phone service
because they didn't have
plain old telephone service.
If you had something from Cablevision
or Time Warner,
odds are you lost your phone.
Whereas if you had something from Verizon,
odds are you didn't.
There are exceptions.
Wait a minute.
We're talking to Bernie
on the telephone right now.
How are we doing it?
Well, we were using Skype,
but that did not work out so well.
And now we're using a VoIP call
because the Verizon landlines
in this building still don't go anywhere.
Yeah, well, I've mentioned many times
that Verizon in lower Manhattan
is a disaster.
But on the island,
Verizon was really the landlines
were the only thing
working for a good long time.
Cablevision phones were not working.
Cell phones were not working.
I think Bicycle Mark,
you suggested using satellite phones
and that would have worked.
Yeah, that's an expensive option.
But yes, a lot of us travelers,
I don't mean that term in the negative sense,
but do turn to satellite phones
at emergencies.
I think if the technology
were a bit more robust,
if for instance,
there was a requirement
that cell towers
had to have backup generators
that lasted a good long time
rather than as soon as there's a power failure
or a couple of hours afterwards,
they all go down,
then it might serve the public better.
True.
Emmanuel.
Yes, Bernie.
One of the other things
is not only what I propose
support your idea
that mobile phone companies
have to have backup power generators
at their cell sites
that would maybe last for,
you know, provide power for days
for situations like the Sandy hurricane,
but provide a higher grade of service.
Grade of service is an old telecom term of art,
meaning like how quickly
you can get a connection.
And cell phone systems are designed
so only a tiny fraction
of the number of customers
can make calls simultaneously.
And that's why you can't make a phone call
when there's a big disaster.
Generally, it's because everybody's trying to use,
if the cell,
even if the cell phone network
is working perfectly well,
like at 9-11,
most of the cell phone,
very few cell sites
were actually taken out during 9-11.
You couldn't get phone calls through
because everybody was calling everybody.
And they're not required
like the landline companies
provide a grade of service
where, you know,
a certain percentage of people
are allowed to,
are technically able
to get calls through
at any given moment.
Well, in fairness, though,
landlines were clogged up
on that day as well.
Yeah, but I bet you the grade of service
on getting a call through landlines
was higher than cell phones.
It's just the way it is.
I don't know how many times
I've been in a crowded venue
with a lot of people
and I can't get a phone call through
because, you know,
everybody's trying to make a call.
It just has no service,
even though the network is fine.
Were you able, Bernie,
to suddenly provision an extra landline
and make a call on that?
No, but I have turned to pay phones
in a couple of situations like that
and they always worked.
What if everyone was trying
to use them all at once?
Well, maybe not everybody,
but I guarantee you
that the number of people,
cell phone systems are designed
to handle a much smaller percentage
of their total customers
than the landline networks.
But also, kind of paradoxically,
cell phones allow everybody
to grab a phone at the same moment.
You know, whereas landlines,
you have to be in the vicinity
of a landline to be able to do that.
That's true, that's true.
Bernie, I mean, Rob.
But at the same time,
I think there could be, you know,
as much as I would miss landlines
if they disappeared,
because I have lots of fond memories
playing with landlines.
But if they disappeared,
would it be such a bad thing
to have just one wire
you had to hook up to your house
to get connected
to everything you wanted?
More and more like broadcast
and cable TV are watching
the internet eat their lunch.
You know, people are using VoIP phones
instead of landline phones.
If you just had to hook up one cable
and it was called data
and you got everything
you wanted through it.
If you had a choice
as to who you wanted to use,
yes, that could be a good thing.
For instance, in fact,
this reminds me of something.
Time Warner is really
the only cable company
you can use in New York City, correct?
There are no alternatives.
In Manhattan, yes.
Yes, that's what I mean
when I say New York City.
People from New York always mean that.
So basically, you were at their mercy
if you wanted to get
a particular channel, for instance.
And in fact, I don't know
if you remember years ago,
we were pushing for Time Warner
cable to carry BBC World.
Guess what?
They finally did it.
Years later, Channel 156,
people in New York City
can now finally watch news from BBC.
Isn't that something?
But you had to wait for them
to get around to do it.
And that's, you know,
I prefer when people
have their own choice.
They decide what it is they want
on their television sets.
They decide what kind of
Internet service they want.
And if there was that kind of choice,
yeah, it would be a good thing.
And if we had that kind of choice
and if all the different
telecom companies
that have been fighting
over our phone lines
and our Internet service
and everything over the past,
you know, however many years,
we're just competing
on one level playing field
with one sort of service
that they were able to offer.
Then I think there could be potential
to have a better scene all around.
I mean, the problem is that
these companies
have very successfully fought
off any sort of regulation
about anything.
And they claim that the free market
will cure all ills.
But then they collude
amongst each other
explicitly and implicitly
to divide up the country
such that no consumer
actually has a choice.
And so the free market
is not in play
and government regulation
is not in play.
And that is why,
you know,
the Internet service
in the United States
and the cell phone service
and other services
is worse than in countries
that are similarly rich,
but better regulated.
And write your representative.
I'm sure they won't care.
Well, as long as we're complaining,
one thing that
just happened to me today,
in fact, I was talking
to somebody on my cell phone,
which, as most of you know,
is still an old fashioned,
non-smartphone.
I kept getting cut off.
And, you know,
I was understandably upset
that I kept getting cut off.
And my friend said to me,
yeah, the reason you're getting cut off
is because they've upgraded
their network to 3G, 4G,
and your particular phone
is just being supported
less and less.
So not only must you get,
you know, with the cell phone program,
but you have to continuously
buy new equipment
as they change the technology.
So just because you had something
that worked five years ago,
doesn't mean it's going to work today.
And you're going to be expected
to continuously buy new things,
sign new contracts.
You know, old phone service
is old phone service.
A phone from the 1930s,
1940s works today.
And that's something I'd like to see,
that kind of a system
where old technology
works along with new technology.
All right, enough about that.
Let's move to the iPhone now,
because the iPhone has been
in the news a bit lately.
I don't know why,
but apparently there was something.
Anybody here have an iPhone?
I'm sorry.
Maybe it got stolen
or smashed on New Year's.
Well, there's some of that going around,
but I'm talking about
involving telling the time.
Now, apparently when the first iPhone
was released on AT&T's network,
it was widely criticized
for being a lousy phone,
a lousy phone that is,
despite its powerful capabilities
as a tiny touchscreen computer.
Now it might gain a reputation
for being a subpar clock.
On the morning of New Year's Day,
a bug affected the
Do Not Disturb feature
for many iPhone users.
How hard is this to get right?
Apple designed the feature
to block incoming phone calls
and alerts for a set duration
from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
when the user is asleep, for example.
That's an example.
I imagine you can block
whatever time you want,
not just that set time.
But many iPhone users found
that it did not turn off
after the designated end time.
You're nodding your head vigorously,
Bicycle Mark.
Have you heard this?
Oh, I slept half the day
and people were trying to...
This did happen to me.
Actually, it's happened to me
before when traveling.
But yes,
on the morning of New Year's...
Wait, so you do have an iPhone?
I...
Yes, I do.
You didn't admit it when I asked.
It's in the room.
But you didn't admit
when I asked if anybody had an iPhone.
Why is that?
Why aren't you proud of your iPhone?
I confess now.
But so it does have
the Do Not Disturb option,
which I thought was one of the greatest
and most obvious inventions of the...
Because it only started this year,
or I'm sorry, 2012,
with the Do Not Disturb.
The idea that at night,
you don't want to be disturbed,
but you may want emergency calls
to come through from your family members.
Anyway, yes, on the New Year's Day,
I noticed that...
I usually have it set.
I might wake up at 9 a.m.
Please don't judge me based on that.
So I don't let my phone alert me,
no phone calls at least,
until 9 a.m.
But it was 10, believe it or not,
10 a.m. on New Year's,
I was still asleep.
And this thing was still
Do Not Disturb
the whole morning long.
Why don't you just put your phone
into silent mode when you go to sleep,
and then when you wake up again,
you turn it on.
That way you're not enslaved to your phone
and you dictate the terms.
Mostly because I want the alarm to function
and I want the option of calls
from the elderly in my family
to come through.
Then they know to call twice.
That's the secret code, by the way,
to breaking the Do Not Disturb.
Just call twice in a row.
Are you saying the alarm didn't work?
The alarm won't work
if you put it on silent.
Okay.
That seems like a fixable feature.
It's called the Do Not Disturb mode.
Didn't Apple have this exact problem
when they had a problem
with the time zone change?
They seem to have this problem
dealing with discontinuities
in the time scale very often.
And these are things that we've solved
many years ago,
so it shouldn't be that hard.
Slightly off topic,
but has automatic time zone changing
ever worked when you move country to country
on your current non-smart phone?
No, that only seems to work
in the United States.
I'm not sure.
That's one of the few things
that only works here.
But no, I have to set the time manually
when I travel overseas.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, I don't know why that is.
Some kind of setting they don't have.
But yeah, it seems to me
that if you set an alarm,
that should override the Do Not Disturb
because you set an alarm for a reason.
It does.
It's the silent mode
that the alarm does not...
You know, it's silent, the whole thing.
Any whistles and bells,
that includes the alarm.
This is like there was the guy
in the symphony some months ago
that was making all the news
because he couldn't turn his alarm off
or something.
He was in a symphony
and his phone was going off?
Yeah, his phone was in silent mode,
but the alarm can override the silent mode.
So the alarm went off
and he said,
my phone's in silent mode.
It couldn't be my phone
that's making all this noise.
Yeah, people who attend the symphony
are very powerful.
Who brings a phone onto stage with them
when they're in a symphony?
No, no, no, an audience member.
Oh, he was in the audience.
I thought he was in the symphony.
No, no, no.
Okay, that would have been embarrassing.
Now, also there's an MTA app for iPhone.
This is on a more positive level here.
Despite New York City
virtually revolving around
its mass transit system,
local subway riders haven't had a way
to check the next arrival in real time.
Well, some stations, I think we have that.
It's sort of stumbling into place.
But you're already in the station
by the time you can see the clock.
Oh, this is for people
that aren't in the station.
Yes, that's what's new.
Okay.
It only works on the lines,
which is mostly the RRT lines,
where they have the clocks
in the first place.
But now you can be in your office
and look and see if the train is coming
and run to meet it.
Yeah, well, you have to be pretty close,
I guess, because, you know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've returned to using Google Maps,
which for a short time
was not possible on the iPhone.
And now it's back
and you can still see the times
of the next trains and so on.
Well, but that is just the scheduled time,
which has very little to do with reality
on the subway.
This new thing is the actual thing.
It's interesting.
I'm reading here that the L train
is not linked into this iPhone app,
even though the L train was the first one
to have that service of telling you
when the next train was going to be.
It makes me wonder,
why can't they get that information?
It's the gray color of the line.
It's always made it kind of
between this life and another.
Yeah, yeah.
It must be something like that.
And yes, now, Bicycle Mark,
to get to the story
that you were talking about,
as far as theft.
Last year, major crime in New York City
inched up a little bit,
even though murders were way down.
But apparently iPhone
and iPad thefts were way up.
Yeah, a rise in thefts
of shiny Apple products
accounted for the slight increase
in the city's annual crime index.
Thank you, Apple.
You ruined everything
for New York City statistics.
Now, as of as of last Monday,
the police department recorded
3,484 more major crimes in 2012
than for the same period last year.
And the increase in Apple product thefts
was 3,890.
So I guess the advice
that they're offering,
and this is something
you should pay attention to,
don't have your devices out
as if you're showing them off
so that people might swipe them.
Of course, I know that takes away
the whole purpose of buying it
in the first place,
but put it in a pocket
in sort of a more body fitting
or tighter clothes
so you can feel if somebody
is actually trying to take it.
But don't put it
in an outside coat pocket.
Don't have it in your lap.
And everybody should be should be fine.
In the mid 2000s,
if we can say that mid 2000s
in Amsterdam, there was a campaign
and the signs are still out there.
It's called use it, lose it.
And it apparently says in tiny writing,
don't use your phone in this area
if you don't want to lose it.
I always use my phone in that area
because I'm trying to,
you know, start a revolution.
And with all this talk lately
of things like putting Wi-Fi
into the subway stations
and having this available
for people to use
in a place where it's not safe
to use a device
that you can put on your Wi-Fi.
So I don't even know.
Well, it does fill up that time
where you have nobody to talk to.
And nothing to look at
except the oncoming train.
OK, let's take some phone calls
in the time we have left.
917-580-6020 is our phone number.
That's 917-580-6020.
That's our temporary number.
And for those of you
that have heard the rumors
about the radio station,
I can say today
that, in fact, they are true.
That's all I can say
because technically,
I can't say anything
about what the rumors are.
But I can say that
exciting times are ahead.
Those of you who are
a part of this place,
I think we'll be thrilled
to be a part of this place
in future months and years as well.
And yeah, it's definitely transitional
and we're learning.
What are you talking about?
See, some people know,
some people don't.
That's just the way it is.
But, you know, you have to live with that.
Let's take some phone calls.
On 917-580-6020.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, hello.
Hi.
Yeah, hey, it's radio station.
This is radio station.
You're on the air.
Broadcasting to everybody.
Great.
What they're going to do
instead of pay phones
is they'll probably have
a vending machine
that has cheap pay phones in it.
Not pay phones,
cheap like track phones or something.
OK, but don't they want to know
who you are, though,
when you register for these phones?
No, in the United States,
you can still get cell phones
without giving your identity.
Well, now you can,
but do you think next year
you'll be able to?
Well, we'll see.
Yeah.
I mean, it's tricky
because you have to avoid
paying with your credit card,
but you can do it.
That doesn't really help, though,
if you want to report a fire
and you don't have any money,
because I think communication,
instant communications
is something that,
you know, we can definitely achieve
and it should be something we expect.
It could be like
the communications vending machine
and normally you can buy
a prepaid phone
or you can press here
to call the police.
There you go.
Or somebody else.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, hi.
Hi.
Speak up, please.
Hello.
Okay.
We don't have time
for confused people right now.
917-580-6020.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, I just got home
and my wife was on the computer
and somebody called her tonight.
Tell her that somebody
taking over her mouse,
her computer.
And I...
Wait, someone took over
your wife's mouse.
Is that what you're telling us?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Like a hacker.
Well, I don't know
if it's a hacker necessarily,
but...
No, I think he was referring
to the traditional...
Oh, hi.
Is this the person
whose mouse was taken over?
...computer working
and I get this phone call
on the house phone
and the guy said
he's calling
from the World Wide Web
and that somebody
is trying to hack
into my computer.
Every day,
someone is trying
to hack into my computer.
So he said,
go to the wrong page
and type in this,
you know,
and all of this situation.
Okay.
Rule number one,
generally,
if somebody is saying
they're calling
from the World Wide Web,
don't do anything
they say after that point,
because there are no phones
in the World Wide Web
headquarters,
as far as I know.
Anybody who says that
is trying to get you
to do something
that defies common sense.
So did you do anything?
Well, I did.
I started to,
but then he keeps going on
and he's getting
kind of aggravated
when I can't do it.
So then I said,
wait a minute,
you're the hacker.
Well, he's...
He cursed me out
and he hung up.
Actually,
would it surprise you
if I said you were the hacker
because you figured it out
and you used ingenuity to do it
and you outsmarted
what's a corrupt system
that criminals use?
Hackers don't generally
get you to do things like that.
He might have used something
known as social engineering
to get you off your guard.
Acting agitated
will make people
try and please the person
on the phone,
even if they're
a complete stranger.
But you can outwit that.
And just because
that's something that
hackers learn how to do,
it doesn't mean that
the person doing that was a hacker.
Well, he was
because I'll tell you what happened.
So after I tell him
that he hung up quickly,
but he had the nerve
to call me back
and curse me a second time.
How did he get your...
Anyway,
somebody who calls you
and curses you out
probably isn't a very
professional person to start with.
But how do you think
he got your phone number?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Did he know your name?
Yeah, he did.
He did.
Well, in situations like that,
if somebody calls you
and asks you to do
something strange,
get a number to call them back.
You don't have to
tell them the truth.
You can say that
you're not the person
they think you are.
You know, pass the message on
and get right back to them.
That way you get more
information about who they are
and you turn the tables that way.
Right.
All right.
Good luck with that, though.
That's...
But I had already
put in his information,
like team...
I mean, put in team view,
team viewers.
That's Tom.
OK, what team viewer is
is a program that lets
somebody else who's
using the same program
look at your desktop,
move your mouse around
and do what they want to do
with your computer
as if they were sitting
in front of it where you are.
And that's how your mouse
got taken over.
So if this person talked
you into installing that
and setting it up
so they could use it,
then they can use it
to move your mouse around
and do terrible things.
So what I would recommend
you do is find somebody
near you at a shop
or a friend,
a computer literate friend
or something to
take a look at that
and see if they can undo it all.
Because otherwise,
otherwise I don't think
it would be safe to continue.
Get rid of that program.
Is there a way to quickly
get rid of that program?
If you could,
if you can figure a way
to uninstall team viewer,
like maybe from the
Windows control panel
or something like that,
that would be a good thing.
Do you think they have
a little thing that says
uninstall this program
for that one or?
Quite possibly.
OK, good luck with that, though.
That's it's a real problem.
It does happen to people.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Go ahead.
OK, we don't have time
for these long pauses, folks.
I'm sorry.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
I can't believe that
you guys are just like
thinking it's OK to
get rid of landline phones.
Well, I never said that.
Yeah, you were like,
oh, yeah, it might be a good thing
if they could.
No, no, no, no.
Well, I said I'm open
to the technology
that landline phones use,
meaning internet
protocol instead of voice circuits.
If that improves the sound quality,
if you get more features out of that,
but you still have the the landline.
The landline is there.
Just the technology would be
a little bit different.
We want landlines like like you.
You did a landline alongside
with new technology.
That's what we want.
Because like you said,
when we have storms,
only those phones,
if you have an old phone
that doesn't plug in,
only has the wire jack,
that will still work.
Most people don't even realize that.
So they go, oh, my telephone
is not working,
but that's because they have phones
that, you know, have caller ID
and all that other stuff
that they need to plug in.
That's one reception
is not that good
all the time on cell phones.
So I much rather talk
on my landline phone
when I'm at home
and when I'm doing business,
you know, drop calls.
And and like, for example,
when I'm on Eastern Parkway
during Carnival,
it's almost like they turn off
the signals in that area.
You know, I wouldn't put it.
Nobody can get a signal.
It's not because everybody's
calling at the same time
because no one has signal.
But there's so many police around
and they're doing their own thing.
It's almost like they're
able to shut it off
and you can't get a signal
in that area.
And yeah, that's a very good point.
Actually, cell phone service
can be turned off
at the drop of a hat
by the authorities.
But bingo.
So can landline service.
When's the last time you've heard
of landline service
being cut by the authorities?
The reason they can't,
they don't do it is because
they they perceive that they can't
because the landline is set up legally.
This is a legal creation,
not a technical one,
that the landline system
is set up to be way more reliable
than the cell phone network.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Right.
But it is.
But it is.
And every every political
convention lately,
I've heard talk of the cell
service being cut off.
I have not heard talk of landlines
being cut off.
Yeah.
So I need you guys to champion
the fact that we need to somehow
do something to make sure
we keep our landline.
Not to mention the fact that we're
just going to get zapped more
with just cell phones running.
OK, thanks.
Thanks for that call.
Bicycle Mark, go ahead.
No, and I was in Egypt gathering
these stories from the revolution
over and over again.
You heard about how cell phones,
Internet were all shut down.
And it was networks of people
calling through landlines
to relatives, to loved ones
who found out what was going on
in the country and where to go
and what was safe
and what could be done.
Landlines did it.
All right.
Bicycle Mark, we're going to miss you.
Yeah, I'll miss you, too.
Thanks for letting me sit
in these weeks.
It's been a pleasure.
And we'll see you, certainly, at OM
in the Netherlands.
That's the Hacker Camp.
Mike, what's the address for that?
om2013.org
OHM2013.org
for information on the
Hacker Camp in Holland.
I'll be there.
First 2600 meeting of the year
this Friday, everywhere near you.
Absolutely.
Go to www.2600.com
slash meetings
for information on meetings near you.
This is Emmanuel for Off The Hook.
We'll see you again next week.
Good night.
You're listening to WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
Also streaming on the web at WBAI.org.
Also streaming on the web
at PCRadioShow.org.
And it is June the 2nd, 2013.
And this is The Personal Computer Show.
January.
January the 2nd, 2013.
That January the 2nd, 2013.
So much going on here in the studio.
All right, here we go.
Yeah.
I was about to say this is Joe King,
but if this is June the...
No, I...
This is...
Can we start all over again?
This is January the 2nd, 2013.
I wish it was June.