There you can also make a donation or subscribe to free weekly podcasts.
My name is Moriah Glyden. Thank you for listening. Give us a call.
And you are listening to radio station WBAI New York. The time is just about seven o'clock.
Time once again for Off The Hook.
That's our new mix here on Off The Hook. We call it the Skip Mix.
This is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike. Good evening. Rob T. Firefly. Good evening. And Bernie S.
From a snowy Pennsylvania. Is it snowing in Pennsylvania? It is right now. Well,
good for you. Good for you. It's just windy and rainy here. Yeah, I got to say, the magic of
radio, one of the magical things about radio is that you never know what's going on in the
background. And for me to be here right now, it took a tremendous amount of miracle working and
prayer and just dumb luck. Not half an hour ago, I was stuck behind some idiot in Queens who had
parked his car, literally parked his car on an entrance ramp and blocked everybody from getting
onto the LIE, which is my shortcut to get into the city today. And never underestimate the power
of the individual. Because what this person was able to do by putting his car right there
was create all sorts of mayhem and pandemonium. People were driving up embankments. People were
going the wrong way on really fast moving traffic lanes. I called the cops. I had to call the cops
because it was a dangerous situation. At one point, all these people got out of taxis that
were sitting there for about 25 minutes because nothing was happening. And you saw maybe 20 people
with suitcases just marching up an entrance ramp to the LIE. It was a very surreal experience.
So, yeah, if you're out there and you think you don't have any power, you do. Just act like a
dumbass and block a major artery. And you will see. I heard the traffic backup went all the way
to Nassau County as a result of this one car. One car. Amazing. But somehow, somehow I made it here.
I had to park in a place I wouldn't normally park. But it's a miracle. And no one listening,
unless I told the story, would have known how crazily close I cut it.
Although if there's one thing I know from growing up on Long Island, it's that the LIE is never a
shortcut to anywhere. Well, this was in Queens. It was by the BQE. It was the exit from the BQE
onto the LIE. When you put those acronyms together, there's always going to be trouble.
What are all these letters you're saying? Yeah, basically, they're meant to save time,
which if you're driving on either of those roads, that's the last thing you're doing. So
I don't understand the point. But anyway, I'm here. I made it. Of course, we would have had a show no
matter what, because we have so many fine people here that can basically talk for an hour if
necessary without any notes or anything like that. I'm not sure how to respond to that. All
right, I'll just leave you in the room then. Bernie, any adventures on your end down there,
besides the snow? Well, in Philadelphia, we discussed this a couple weeks ago, but now
the legislature of the Philadelphia City Council has passed a law. Well, the mayor still has to
sign it for it to be law. It criminalizes the creation of any parts that might be used in a gun
using a 3D printer. Okay, so you took story number seven and moved it up to number one.
Yeah, what's number one in Philadelphia? Are people talking about this?
They are, and probably not as many people that should be talking about it, and probably not as
many informed people as should be talking about it. But it's a slippery slope. It's already
illegal to do what they're saying, whether you're using a 3D printer or not. It provides
ammunition to law enforcement who doesn't understand what they're looking at or doing,
which happens all too often with technology, to start raiding and grabbing 3D printers and stuff,
saying, aha, this could be used for blah, blah, blah. And it's not, just like it happens.
Now you see how he'll use the word ammunition in that metaphor there. That's what I'm talking
about as far as the quality of the people here, being able to work that into a sentence. And yes,
Bernie, I totally see what you're saying. Let me read the story as it came out.
Philadelphia City Council passed one of the first bills in the country banning the use
of 3D printers to make a plastic gun, saying he doesn't want Philadelphia to become the plastic
gun capital of the world, but would apparently prefer it to become the meathead capital of the
world. Councilman Kenyatta Johnson said his ban would allow only gunsmiths to use a 3D printer
to create a firearm. Yeah, okay. The bill would forbid the manufacture of firearms using 3D
printers. Recently, individuals have released via the internet how to make a working firearm
using a 3D printer. Currently, federal and state laws do not prohibit making a gun for personal
use, so a person could make one of these guns without violating any federal laws. What do you
say to that, Bernie? Actually, there is laws against that. I don't have them in front of me,
but you can't just make a gun and go out on the street with it. I mean, you could have it in your
own home, perhaps, but you couldn't go carry it around. That would be illegal. What about Texas?
What about Florida? What about places like that? That's a good question. I don't know.
All right. Well, it's something we should be concerned about, for sure, but this kind of a
ban, it just gives the gun control lobby a bad name, if this even is representative of the gun
control lobby. And also, what's next? Are we going to ban the actual printing of the plans? Are we
going to ban that? Because there are people that want to do that as well. We're using maybe
ban the possession of equipment that makes pipes or makes other metal objects. I mean, it's a
slippery slope. There's nothing evil about 3D printers. It's what you do with them. So I think
it's just using a fear, uncertainty, and doubt about technology. But Bernie, isn't the same
argument used by the gun people saying that guns aren't the problem, it's how you use them?
Yes, but we're not talking about guns. We're talking about 3D printers,
which are not dangerous.
All right. Well, I don't think anyone's outlawing the 3D printers. They're outlawing the making of...
They're outlawing certain uses of a 3D printer, which just gives the camel's nose under the tent.
It gives law enforcement the justification to start raiding people's homes because they see
a 3D printer and they think you could be doing something with it illegal, just like happened
in the UK recently when the Metropolitan Police grabbed a 3D printer in shapes and said,
these are gun parts and this is illegal, and it wasn't happening. In fact, a renowned Philadelphia
news organization, WHYY, reported on its website this story and put a copy of a picture that was
released by the Metropolitan Police in London a couple of months ago and said, with a caption
saying, this is a gun part manufactured by a 3D printer, when it wasn't at all. That story was
debunked months ago. So there's still misunderstanding about this, even by
respected journalistic organizations. And I believe, Bernie, you had a hand in
getting a correction put out. And so did Rob. Both of us contacted
WHYY and said, yo, why don't you do your research before you report on this? This is not a picture
of a gun part. This is a picture of a part that was from an extruder in a 3D printer.
And they didn't really do a full correction. They just said, oh, we previously reported
this and that. They never really admitted that they, the big issue was you had a journalistic
organization stating, regurgitating what a law enforcement organization or regurgitating what a
government spokesperson said as truth, instead of saying that the Metropolitan Police said this
was a gun part. And in fact, the organization said, it is a gun part. Just bad journalism.
Rob, you have some experience with the 3D printing industry.
Indeed, I do. Indeed, I do. I've worked in the industry for a couple of years,
up until very recently, earlier today, in fact.
Oh, wow. How timely.
Yeah, it was my last day. It was fun. But yeah, these pictures, which the case was a month ago,
the 25th of October, I believe, in the UK. And these two pictures were released. One of them
was captioned as a trigger for a 3D printed gun. When it wasn't, it was a lever for an extruder.
And I, in my work, had printed dozens of those. So, and I'm no gunsmith. And the other was touted
as a magazine for bullets when it was a hook to hang filament feedstock on the back of your 3D
printer.
This kind of reminds me of whenever there's a mass shooting someplace,
and I make reference to an automatic weapon. I get all this mail from people saying,
oh, it's not automatic, semi-automatic, you know, all these little piddling details that,
are they really that relevant to the story itself?
But it's central to what's going on here now, because having banned 3D printed
parts that could be used in guns, that extruder part was a lever. A trigger is a lever. It's a
very small, simple lever. And, you know, levers can be used for many things. It's one of the
simple machines that every engineer knows about. A screw can be used in a gun. A tube can be used
in a gun.
So these parts are so basic that we could be looking at simple levers being banned as a
result of it.
Indeed they are, because I don't think there's any other way around it. If you're going to
ban anything that could be used in a gun, you've banned, like, pretty much every simple machine
in the book.
Interesting. Well, Philadelphia, I guess, is where this battle is taking place. Any
predictions as to what's going to happen next?
Well, I can predict that the people that would want to possess illegal weapons are not going to
be hiding their 3D printers, because they're not using them. It's far easier just to buy an
illegal gun on the street for $100 or something than to pay $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 3D printer,
which isn't going to even make a gun that won't blow up in your hand, frankly.
Yeah. And if you really want to make your own gun, it's pretty common knowledge, or it's
pretty readily available knowledge, how to do that with about, like, something like $10 worth
of hardware store parts. I don't approve of guns, but, you know, are we going to ban hardware
stores? Are we going to ban plumbing?
You can build a gun with $10 of hardware parts? Really?
I believe so.
Well, too bad the hardware stores are closed. I'm just curious. I'd like to know this as much
as anybody, but why did—
I don't have experience with guns myself. I think some of our listeners might, though.
Oh, I'm sure they do.
If any of you budding gunsmiths out there have any input on this, let us know, oth2600.com.
Let me just ask you, though. Now, you say that, yeah, it's cumbersome and expensive,
and you won't get very good quality, but what if that changes? What if you, in the future,
have these really sleek printers, 3D printers, that can just churn out guns like nobody's business?
Would your position change at all?
Well, first of all, they would really have to be made out of metal, and we're a long way off.
Wouldn't you agree, Rob, we're many years off before the 3D printers, they can
just enter a file, and it will machine a CNC-ed gun that's anything close to reliable or workable?
Well, CNC isn't quite 3D printing. It's a related technology, but not the same.
But we're very close, I think, to a consumer desktop 3D printer. Most consumer-level desktop
3D printers that an individual or hobbyist would buy print in plastic, because that's readily
available, it's inexpensive, and it's what we have the technology to cheaply mess with right now.
But I think we're actually quite close to being able to do so with metal. There are 3D printing
technologies that involve metal. Laser sintering is one, where you shoot a laser at metal powder,
and it fuses it together into your shape, and things like that. And there are always
experiments and work being done on bringing down the cost of this stuff. I think we're actually
close to it. So, this issue does need to be thought of by people with brains, and it needs
to happen soon, because the toothpaste is very nearly out of the tube already.
Well, there was the case of MakerBot, I believe, banning anybody posting plans on how to build
guns, gun parts. Is that correct?
Yeah. They banned the uploading of models for printing guns to Thingiverse, which is their site
that is a library of user-created 3D files that anybody can share, and download, and remix,
and build upon. And they took the position that no, they didn't want those parts on their own
site. But of course, that spurred a group called Defense Distributed, I say a group, I think it's
one fellow, to start up an alternative site. And of course, being that it's a digital file on the
internet, anybody can put them up anywhere they want, and there's no one company or organization
that can make it otherwise.
A company saying, we don't want this on our site. It's not a government banning it and saying,
you can't even talk about this. Mike?
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Well, okay. So I guess, how close are we to making human organs,
though? I think that's more important than making gun parts. Are we getting there?
We should make sure that the human organ technology is at least as fast as the gun part
technology, because if we have all these guns, we might need the human organs.
Some part, somebody who has made a gun out of a 3D printer is going to kill somebody who has
a 3D printed organ inside them. In fact, that weapon will pierce that organ and cause a fatality.
That's my prediction.
Or if we could mash up these technologies somehow and make a gun that fires human organs.
You know, everything would work just great if they could figure out a way to make bullets not
work, like just change gravity. That's all you got to do. It sounds like a big challenge only
because you choose to look at it that way. But if we can change the laws of physics just a little
bit, a lot of problems can be solved. All right, moving on. And probably this is a bigger problem
to solve. Healthcare.gov. Who's visited healthcare.gov? I have. I've had a lot of fun with
that site, actually. What I try to do, and I don't think this is illegal. If it is, then I didn't
really do it. I go to different states and I register. I try to register and I see just how
it works. New York, I had no problem at all. Well, except for the first week when the site
didn't exist. But New Jersey, which you have to go through the federal site, healthcare.gov,
that did not work at all. You basically had to wait minutes and then said, sorry, we can't help
you come back another time. I find it amazing, though, that the places where this is a problem
are the states that didn't want to participate on their own. So they lumped it all into the federal
site. And yes, of course, the federal site got completely overburdened. It was not well thought
out. And apparently, there's going to be yet another healthcare.gov delay. Small businesses
will not be able to enroll online in the new health insurance exchanges until November of next
year. Online enrollment was originally slated to begin this month. However, businesses may continue
to sign up for the small business health option program through paper applications, as they have
been since October 1st. I guess this is just one of a very long string of problems the website is
having. Is this something that we could have seen coming? So I have a little bit of sympathy,
not a whole lot, but a little bit of sympathy for the contractors here who were given a very large
project on a very tight deadline. I heard they were fired in Canada because they messed up the
healthcare system up there. Right. But they're also, they were given an impossible project and
they're incompetent. So it's really hard to know. When I get an impossible project handed to me,
and I know I'm incompetent, I generally run away. Well, that's why you're not a federal
government contractor. Thank God for that. Okay. So it was an impossible, what made it impossible?
I mean, it is a huge, I don't know about impossible, but it is indeed a huge project
to integrate all these legacy healthcare systems all together and make it work on a really large
scale from day one. We have services that we all use every day that have really massive user bases,
but most of them or all of them grew from very small user bases and learned to scale up. This
project was destined to be very popular from day one. So this is a very difficult software
engineering problem. And that said, these guys really do not appear to have done a particularly
good job. Yeah. The thing is, I knew, you knew, everybody pretty much knew this is going to be a
massive job. And I was expecting denial of service attacks on the site by people who were
opposed to the healthcare plan in the first place. They didn't even need to do that. The site
denied itself service pretty easily. And yeah, when you launch a website for the entire
country and it comes out on a particular hour, on a particular day, yeah, you really do need to
expect some problems. Every time a video game is released, there are problems. Every time some new
product comes out, there are hiccups in the rollout. So the reasons I have sympathy for
the contractors, despite the fact that they're awful, corrupt federal government contractors,
are that I develop software professionally. And if I'm working on something and we are
playing with it and it doesn't work, what we do is we don't release it, we fix the bugs,
and then we release it. They did not have that option here. They had a very tight deadline.
And I also sort of feel bad for anyone who's being sort of armchair product managed by the
entire country and by the Congress in particular. But, you know, I don't have that much sympathy.
I find it really funny also that the people complaining the loudest are the people who
didn't want it to work in the first place. And they're the ones saying, oh, my God, it's not
working. Well, you know, they wish hard enough on something. It's probably going to happen.
Thing is, you say they had a tight deadline. And yeah, they did. But why didn't they just start
earlier? Why didn't they hire people to do this well in advance, knowing it was going to be such
a huge project? So part of the reason is that, you know, like I said, I develop software and
not in my current line of work, but in a previous line of work, you know, I would bid on contracts
and stuff like that. You can't bid on a federal government contract if you're a normal software
development firm. There's just too much paperwork, too much boilerplate, too much. It's not I don't
think it's bribes in the in the strictest sense of the word, but you have to have the right
connections and all this stuff. So only a very small amount of firms were really in a position
to even bid on this contract. So it's hard. You know, you don't get the best quality with
a process like that. And again, it's a website. It's not the health care system itself, but
it does have a lot of people concerned as to just how that's going to play out.
So, I mean, that's the thing. When people say it's a website and then there's like part of the
healthcare.gov website is just a website where it displays information about the health care law.
And that thing, I guess, was done by like three people in a garage on a budget of
like six figures or something. And it's open source and you can go look at it and it's amazing.
And, you know, good for those people, but that is way, way easier than building the part of
the website that actually does something. Emanuel. Yes, Bernie. I just wanted to point
out that we should try to look at situations like we have federal contracts for multi-billion
dollar weapons systems, which if they were required to work perfectly by a certain accelerated date,
which Obamacare was supposed to, none of those systems would work either. In fact,
they probably fail even worse. So anytime you try to scale a project like this so fast,
they didn't even have time to scale it, frankly. It's just bound to fail. So this was destined to
fail from the beginning, just as any huge government project would on a short deadline,
as Mike said. Well, you know, also there are sometimes very simple answers to what appear
to be complex problems. If you go to healthcare.gov or if you went there in the early days,
the main challenge for those states that weren't running their own websites was simply getting
registered, getting your name and address, just having that information. They couldn't store that
information. That was where it was failing. Now, I know that's not very complex to simply gather
people's information. And I think what they should have done, well, do you think it is, Mike?
But that's the thing. The requirements for the system were incredibly complex. So yes,
I could write in about an hour a webpage or a web service that takes your name and writes it down
into a file. But I could not do it in that hour if I'm required to comply with all the HIPAA
privacy guidelines. We have a couple of privacy guidelines in this country. If I'm required to
integrate that name and address with some other sets of data, other databases, and all this stuff
adds complexity. And it's really not fair without knowing exactly all the requirements to say, you
know, I could have met that in an hour. Well, you said that just now. I said I could have met a much,
much simpler set of requirements in an hour. But that's my point, is that the requirements
should have been simpler. Just gather the names and information, then start getting back to people
as you figure out how to run a website in the first place. But when I put my name in there,
because I did put my name in there, in the New York section, there was a pause and it debated
me for a while. It said that it could not confirm my identity. And I didn't know what it was checking
to try and confirm my identity. But for a while there, I was arguing with New York State that I
existed. And it just was pretty absurd that that was a conversation we were having. Now, New York
State did not have the same problems. They did have problems, but they didn't have the same
level as the federal system. But had they been having those problems, wouldn't it have been
so much easier just to simply get my information and then accuse me of not existing through an
email or something later on? And then from a PR point of view, it wouldn't have looked like
everything was falling apart. And I think that's very important when you roll out something like
this, is how it looks to people. But that's not the sort of functional change you can make in an
hour. No, but you could make it well in advance and not have to worry about this kind of
catastrophic fallout. Anyway, it's going to be fun to watch how this all transpires. I don't know
anybody who's successfully gotten through the whole thing yet, but... Kentuckians are... People
in Kentucky are very happy with how the state version of this is working down there. I wouldn't
have expected that, but... Yeah, who knew? This weekend, the federal system is supposed to get
hammered with all the people that are home for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. That's what
people are planning to do when they come home, is go on to healthcare.gov. That'll be Saturday.
Yeah, okay. Wow. Okay, we have some news that I saw posted on our list a little bit. And Bernie,
you had something to say about this, and I think maybe Rob too, the 844 area code?
This is a new toll-free area code. What's going on? Well, you know, we had the 800 area code,
which is the first toll-free area code that I know of, and then there was 888, 877, 866, 855,
and now they're running out of all these numbers. So now 844 is going to be the new area code,
I think December... What is it? December 7th or something, it's supposed to be released.
There's a bunch of brokers. The way these numbers are being doled out there, they're
being doled out to a whole bunch of different companies. So you can't just go to one company
and hope to get one number. It's a complex scheme. You have to bid for it.
You could probably expect to spend... You might end up spending a couple hundred dollars or more,
depending on the toll-free number you want. But this is the last chance you have for a while to
get a toll-free number, because all the other toll-free area codes are pretty much maxed out.
Okay, well, that's my first question. Who has a toll-free number in this day and age? Who
needs a toll-free number? Who pays for phone calls anymore? Does anybody here pay for phone
calls other than for your phone? I mean, I pay... I have a fixed allotment on my cell phone, and if
I go over it, I pay, but it costs the same no matter where I call, within the United States.
And probably the way cell phone companies work, if you call an 800 number, they charge you for it.
It costs the same to call an 800 number as any other number.
That doesn't make any sense.
I'm paying for the connection between my cell phone and the nearby tower. The rest of it is all free.
Okay, well, then that's just further proof of what I'm saying. Nobody needs a toll-free
number anymore. You don't save anything. So who are the people getting these things?
The operators. They get your phone number when you call.
The operators? You mean the people who run the...
Yeah, the companies that own the toll-free number. When you call a toll-free number,
the owners of that toll-free number, if their system is set up right, can get your ANI,
your automatic number identification. It's unlike caller ID, which can be blocked. ANI
cannot be blocked. They really know the number you're calling from.
Okay, but first of all, ANI can be blocked if you know what you're doing,
but we won't get into that.
The average person.
Right, right. We've demonstrated it at Hope, in fact, a couple of times.
But is that really the reason why all these area codes are needed? Because
companies want to find out the phone number of people calling them?
Maybe it's vanity, too. You want a toll-free area code and then something that spells out.
It's a good question, but I think it's a psychological thing. People just like the
toll-free. They just like that for some reason.
Okay, well, you know what? We can say, call us at WBAI toll-free 212-209-2900,
because odds are you're not paying any tolls because this is not 1986 anymore.
Can we say that?
No, you can't.
Where's the toll? Bernie, where is the toll on that call?
We had that recently when WBAI switched to a different area code for the pledge line,
and there were some people that complained that they could not call that for free because they
had landlines, but I agree.
Wait, I have a landline. I can call everywhere for free, so I don't understand that. Who has
the calling plans where you have to pay an extra rate to call one area code over?
There are some cheapskates that don't have long-distance plans on their landlines.
Well, I'm sure you'll be getting calls from people that you just described as cheapskates.
That's a good thing, cheapskates. I love cheapskates.
All right, well, you can have a lengthy conversation with the ones that call in.
I looked into this gear sometime, getting a landline phone for some research purpose,
and it costs like $2 extra to have unlimited calling over the cheapest possible rate.
Yeah, and these are through the real phone companies like Verizon and what's another
phone company these days? They're all changing their names, but the former Bell Systems that
desperately want to get out of the POTS business now, plain old telephone service,
they want to drop their landlines and replace them with Fios and simply cell phones and things like
that. Why do you think that is, Bernie? Why do they want to get rid of the landlines?
Yeah, why do they want to get out of that business?
It's more cost-effective for them to get rid of, to maintain. It's expensive to maintain
copper phone lines. They have limited bandwidth. They can deteriorate more easily than fiber,
like all the fiber lines in downtown Manhattan that got underwater after Hurricane Sandy.
They had to just rip all that stuff out. The fiber lines really were pretty much immune to
damage by that because it's just glass fiber, is one reason.
Well, the thing with old-fashioned copper phone lines is better sound quality,
and that's something that cell phones and VoIP have not yet been able to equal. I mean, sometimes
you are able to get very good sound quality on a Skype connection, but not always. In fact,
almost every time you see somebody corresponding on a cable news network via Skype, it ends in
disaster. Landlines, that doesn't happen. There's no reason you can't have good quality
audio over fiber. It's just the companies choose to be really chintzy and give you a very limited
amount of bandwidth over that digital fiber connection. It could be really high-fidelity
fiber connections. It's even possible to have really high-fidelity mobile phone call conversations,
but the cell phone companies just choose not to offer that. A couple companies are starting
to offer that. BlackBerry is starting to offer that. They have something called Natural Voice
on some other newer models, but then it's just BlackBerry to BlackBerry, but it's superb audio
quality. By the way, folks, when I gave out the phone number before, a bunch of you called in.
I wasn't really giving out the phone number to call in, but we will be taking phone calls in
just a little while. I want to make a call very quickly, if you don't mind. I'd have to catch up
on something. Let's get an outside line. Oh, let's not make that noise. Wow, that's horrible.
Does anybody know what makes that happen? When I have two lines, sometimes it's horrible. I'm
just going to hang this one up and press another line. Maybe that won't make that noise. Okay,
now I'm going to hit the nine. That's better. Now I'm going to dial one, eight, four, four,
and I don't know, a bunch of numbers. Let's see what happens.
We're ringing the future.
We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the area code and number
and dial again. Okay, so 844 is not yet ready, but we're going to call that area code many times to
find out when it actually is put into place. You can still have fun with phones. You can still have
fun calling weird numbers and area codes and seeing what happens when you do it. The FCC,
I think, is starting to move in a different direction. Very recently, in the last few days,
the chairman said that the agency is beginning a diverse set of experiments, their words,
next year, 2014, that would begin to move the nation's telephone system from its century-old
network of circuits, switches, and copper wires to one that transmits phone calls in a manner
similar to that used for internet data. The internet-based systems allow more information
to be transmitted at one time, making possible the addition of video to phone calls as employed
by services like Skype and Vonage. While consumers can already use those services, most of the legacy
telephone networks still use analog technology, employing an out-of-date system of physical
switches that are expensive to keep operating. Those old networks make possible what's known
in the communications industry as plain old telephone service or POTS. They use types of
switches that, in many cases, are no longer manufactured. The outdated switches limit the
ability of companies to expand the networks to carry more traffic and impede a company's ability
to refurbish equipment. Now, the FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, took over the post on November 4th,
announced in a blog post, because he's that trendy, that he expected the commission to approve a plan
in January to consider rewriting the legal policy and technical issues that govern telephone
service. He calls it the fourth network revolution, and he says, history has shown that new networks
catalyze innovation, investment, ideas, and ingenuity. Their spillover effects can transform
society. Think of the creation of industrial organizations and the standardized time zones
that followed in the wake of the railroad and telegraph. So, Bernie, we might see also the
phone companies get rid of POTS lines. We might see the Federal Communications Commission
encourage them to get rid of them. Well, I know a lot of people in rural areas that
would not be well served by such a thing. Besides, Tom Wheeler has been a mouthpiece for
both the cell phone carrier industry and the cable TV industry for many years. So, we know where
his heart lies, and his heart lies with ensuring that those industries maximize their profits.
So, I really don't know why our president chose Tom Wheeler to be an FCC commissioner,
but I think it was a bad move. Do you see the time coming, though, where everything is
basically VoIP, and there's no real landline service anymore? Sure, it'll happen eventually.
Wow, that's kind of sobering. So, here's the thing. The reason why the quality on a lot of
these technologies is worse than the plain old telephone network is that they're not regulated,
so people take the cheapest possible approach. Now, the government's going to write new regulations,
and I suspect what's going to happen is these regulations are going to be incredibly weak
because that's what the government does here in the 21st century. They don't offer consumer
protection. They don't offer quality of service guarantees. They don't offer anything. But I want
to separate this really bad regulation from the technology itself. If we spent enough money,
we could surely have amazing quality of service for not that much more money, but I don't think
that's what's going to happen. Well, there are countries with more money than us, better quality
of living that can do this, and has any country done that? I wouldn't know. No? Well, we could
hear from those listeners. I'd like to know if it is possible. Let's see it done before we start
making switches that we can't take back. Here's another switch that people are hearing about that
we won't be able to take back once that genie's out of the bottle, allowing phone calls on airlines.
Wow. As if it's not hell enough to be on a little tin can wedged between two fat people,
now you got to hear people talk nonstop, loud, boring conversations. And the solution,
if you don't like it, you wear earplugs. And that is something that I think is being suggested
into so many things in our lives today. If you don't like it, just stop listening.
Cover up your ears. Cover up your eyes. Just pretend it's not happening. What do you guys
think? Will you be able to ride an airplane with people yammering on their cell phones?
So, when I do sort of medium distance travel, I usually go by train, and the Amtrak has this
thing called the quiet car, where people are forbidden from using cell phones.
We're not talking about trains.
No, no, no. So, I'm wondering if airplanes are going to start to offer this kind of service.
There used to be smoking and non-smoking sections. Will there be cell phone and non-cell phone
sections? I don't know.
Well, if the airplane can attach by string or cable or whatever another compartment behind it
where all the people are talking on cell phones, I'd be happy with that. But as long as it's going
to stay in the same ridiculously cramped cabin, I don't see how you're going to be able to separate
with any effectiveness people who are talking and people who are not talking.
Because you've been in these situations on buses, even in the street. You just cannot
get away from it. And here, you can't get away from it at all. There's no place to go.
But what I do appreciate about this is that it will be getting rid of the whole pretense of,
your cell phone is going to crash the plane because science, or because the magic telephone
rays coming out of your phone are going to blind the pilot like a laser pointer or something.
But if anyone's been following the airline industry for the past 50 years or so,
they might've noticed that the industry has slowly been shaving back the quality of life
on a flight. Less leg room here, a smaller chair there, crappier food there. And so,
I think this will just be another step in that. Now, you don't have the silence of
being out of cell phone range anymore.
If this is something that results in more people taking the train, then I'm all for it.
And I cannot recommend that enough, taking the train, because you can just simply relax,
have your own compartment and real food and get away from annoying people and things like that.
So yeah, maybe it'll have that side benefit. That would be really kind of neat.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
If this happens, if people start using cell phones on airplanes and it becomes very
annoying to other passengers, it's only a matter of time before someone brings a cell phone jammer
on the plate with them. They may have to bring it through security. It may have to look like
a cell phone or something. It's only a matter of time before that happens. And then the whole
cabin is not going to be able to use their cell phone.
I think, you know, I'm not claiming to be an expert here. I do know that
even with this new law, if it becomes a law allowing it, or whatever you call it when you
change the rules, I do know that they're not allowing you to use cell phones on takeoff or
landing. So there is some concern about RF, about what it can do. Now, in the case of a jammer,
I think there'd be a lot of concern about what you might be jamming in addition to cell phone
signals. And I think that might not be a completely invalid argument or concern.
I think, I'm not saying it would be a good idea. I'm just saying it's a matter of time before
someone uses that technology to address the annoyance problem.
Well, I'm more worried about the technology of people's fists coming into play when they
have these arguments with people who won't shut up on their phones, having these loud
conversations while someone else is trying to watch a movie or something. It's already
crowded enough, and it's already tense enough. This just doesn't add to it. And, you know,
airplanes are loud. People have to talk loud to be heard. Why not install phone booths, okay,
on the airplane and just allow people to go in there with their cell phone? They can go in with
their cell phone, all right? You don't have to pay the outrageous charges that they have on those
air phone things. But just little compartments where people, sort of like bathrooms. In fact,
why not make it the bathroom? Have people simply sit down in there and talk on their cell phones,
because you're killing all kinds of birds then.
So one clarification about calls. The way these systems are proposed to work is not
that your cell phone will talk to the ground directly at the normal airtime rates.
You're going to talk to some complicated system inside the airplane that then communicates with
the ground at inflated rates. So there will be that sort of filter.
After making a stop at the NSA on the way.
All the calls do that. There's nothing special there. So it will maybe cut down on people who
don't have a lot of money to spend making so many calls, but that's no good.
So that's pretty much the way things work on cruise ships right now,
where they have some kind of network you connect to on the ship that's at an inflated rate,
and that we've seen with cases where people stream some data over their phone to watch a
ballgame or something and go home to a multi-thousand dollar bill for it. We've spoken about
that on this show a couple of times, I think. And so that could be interesting because it's like
the air phone things. When they had the air phones in the back of everyone's seats back
before the cell phone era really took over, everyone had a phone in front of them. But the
reason that you weren't among a bunch of phone conversations and being annoyed was that it was
just really expensive to use. I remember the phones on the trains. I remember being on Amtrak
and there was a train phone and same reason you wouldn't use it because it was too expensive.
And that was before everyone had a cell phone. Or if they had a cell phone,
it was an analog phone and it was pretty expensive by itself with roaming. Yes, Bernie?
Was it in a booth? Wasn't the train phone actually in a booth as well?
Uh, yes. Yes, it was in a little booth that was traveling with you in the car.
This is not really related, but I do want to say I sounded like a fan of the Amtrak quiet car,
and I do want some of the people in the Amtrak quiet car to calm down. There's some, like,
if you whisper, you might get shushed in the quiet car, and that is too extreme for me.
What if you snore? You're sleeping, you're in the quiet car, but you're snoring like a truck
downshifting on the highway. All right. And what do they do? They wake you up to tell you to shut
up? They might. There are some serious people in that car. This would make a nice film project
of seeing what people will tolerate and when they draw the line. All right. Like, you know,
what annoys me is the sound of whispering. People think they're being quiet when they whisper. It
just annoys me more than if they're talking out loud. And imagine people whispering really
aggressively on the quiet car. It would drive me berserk. So I think that might be a good
demonstration. So you might be one of the quiet car extremists. Oh, I would be. Yes,
I absolutely would be. All right. We mentioned the NSA. We don't have a whole lot of time to
spend with our friends down there to see what they've been up to this week. But quickly,
what has been happening? Well, there's a story about the NSA infecting 50,000 computer networks
with malicious software. Now, that sounds a bit preposterous. I know there's any truth to this now.
I wish it was outlandish. I wish the concept were not as believable as it might be.
This was part of another Snowden release that basically showed the intelligence service uses
computer network exploitation, CNE, in more than 50,000 locations. It's the secret infiltration
of computer systems achieved by installing malware, otherwise known as malicious software.
Now, one example, and, you know, it bugs me when these articles come out,
they say things like this is a type of hacking. I mean, figuring it out is a type of hacking,
but implementing it is criminal behavior, as far as I'm concerned. Now, one example,
according to this article, this type of hacking was discovered in September of this year at the
Belgium telecom provider, Belgacom. For a number of years, the British intelligence service, GCHQ,
has been installing this malicious software in the Belgacom network in order to tap their
customers' telephone and data traffic. The Belgacom network was infiltrated by GCHQ through
a process of luring employees to a false... fill in the blank page. What kind of web page do you
think they lured them to? LinkedIn. Did you know this already, Bernie? I did, but I mean...
Then you can't guess if you already know the answer from the story.
It's almost cliche, because this is a very common vector that malware users
use, is they send people a fake LinkedIn, like, hey, join me on LinkedIn, or I see my profile...
Yeah, you know, I must get about 30 of those a day, and I'm never tempted to go to any of them.
I'm tempted to go to LinkedIn in person, and I won't say what I'd like to do when I get there,
but I'm never tempted to go to their web page. So, I don't understand how people can... Well,
then again, you know, going to a web page, just visiting a web page, you wouldn't think that
would be something that would get the NSA watching everything you do, but welcome to the 21st
century. All right, what else has the NSA been up to? They're spying on people's porn habits?
Anybody know anything about this story, Bernie? Yeah, this is pretty funny. Yeah, they want to
discredit these so-called extremists from Al-Qaeda and other radical organizations,
or what they claim are radical organizations. So, they're basically spying on targeted
individuals' browsing habits and email, that sort of thing, and sort of recording all this stuff
for other organizations, presumably the CIA, to discredit these people.
Some of these organizations' religious beliefs are very, very strict, but if these people are
surfing porn sites, that's a great way to discredit them in front of their radical colleagues. So,
it's kind of amusing. I don't know what to think of it. I mean, this is the kind of thing when you
give the NSA basically unlimited money and unlimited resources to go after what is, after all,
a very small problem, you know, extremists who have the means to blow up the United States.
So, they do silly things like this because they've already spied on every other kind of data.
When are they going to start using this on legitimate, who knows, I shouldn't even use
the word legitimate, when are they going to start using that on more and more political speech,
including domestic political speech, or speakers, maybe some activists or someone who's very
involved in organizing political activism in this country and using these spying techniques to
gather dirt on them and discredit them? It's a slippery slope.
The thing is, how much does it discredit them? Because just going out and saying,
oh, look at the porn that such and such is looking at, I mean, how do we know that someone
actually sat down in front of a screen, tapped a line of communication and found this out? You
know, it strikes me as the equivalent of like a grade school kid writing on the bathroom wall,
Jimmy eats poop. Is there evidence that Jimmy does in fact eat poop, or is it just something
that somebody's saying to try and discredit them?
I think the answer is for every site, every computer by default, to simply go to a porn site,
so that there's basically so much noise out there that they can never pinpoint who went to what
site. It's ridiculous that this is what they have stooped to. And I believe this was from
the Snowden files, something else that we learned. And we have learned so much. It is incredible.
Do you know there are signs on buses in Washington, D.C. thanking Edward Snowden? Yeah,
there are advertisements. I saw this article on Russia Today. And it's basically a crowdfunded
thank you Ed Snowden bus ad campaign. It was launched this week, organized by the Partnership
for Civil Justice. Fundraising the bus ad in Washington cost $5,000 to run an ad for four
weeks. That's according to CBS Outdoor, which handles advertising on the Metro. And there have
been an inflow of donations. So I imagine if you want to see this sort of thing happen,
either do it yourself or donate to people who are doing it. It's great to see it on buses
and to realize that, hey, there are people that think differently in this country.
Not only are they thanking Ed Snowden, but these banner-sized posters on the buses,
they say, quote, say no to surveillance state. So it's making a political point in addition to just
thanking Ed Snowden. It's telling people to wake up and just say no to all this Orwellian
surveillance. Okay. Our phone number is 212-209-2900. We'll be taking phone calls as
soon as people start calling in. Our email address, oth at 2600.com. You're listening
to Off the Hook, the hacker program on the air here at WBAI since 1988. And boy, have we covered
a lot of interesting material. So I had an idea. I think I've mentioned it on the show before that
if we can force State Department employees to look at some of the leaked documents,
they'll all lose their jobs because they've been told, don't go to WikiLeaks, you'll lose your job.
So I was thinking we would get some paper and tape and put it outside the State Department.
But for only $5,000, can we put a classified document on a bus that just goes around the
city and causes random government employees to lose their security clearances? Great idea.
Why don't you just lure them with a LinkedIn account?
I'd have to go on LinkedIn to do that. I refuse.
That's true. All right. Let's take some phone calls. Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
Speak up.
I wanted to make a few comments.
Okay. You have to speak a little louder than that and turn down your radio.
Yes. Okay. Give me one second and I'll turn off the radio.
You have one second.
Again, the radios are always on the other side of the room.
Wow. Okay. Are you back?
Yeah. The radio's off and I'm here.
You have a big room.
Well, I wanted to say don't give major companies a lot of ideas. I have an old-fashioned copper
line, which I love. I have a paper call plan. I like it. I like to be able to call for free.
Someday you may do too when your cell phone runs out of power due to the next hurricane.
No. What kind of plan? We have the same kinds of plans, I think,
where you're not paying for your individual phone calls, right?
I am. I am.
You are? So what is this call costing you right now?
$10. Sorry. $0.10 and $0.10 and a half cents.
Really? And what company is this through?
We can talk until the next year or next decade.
That sounds like the old New York telephone rate. Are you on Verizon?
Indeed it is. Yeah.
Oh my God. They have the same rate from the 80s. Wow. 10 point whatever cents.
And you can talk forever because you're in the same region.
That's right.
But if you call a different region, it's 3.5 cents an additional minute?
No, I can call any other region.
Oh, you can. Okay.
This is just for local calls.
Wait. No, you're saying you cannot call other regions?
No, I cannot because I don't have a plan, as they say.
Well, what happens if you do?
Well, what I do is I call on Google, on Gmail.
Okay. Yeah. That's your solution. But what happens if you call another
region that you're not allowed to call?
Oh, the call doesn't go through.
Really? And what kind of message you get?
You're calling outside your zone or something?
You know, I haven't done it in a while because I pretty much know what the region is.
You know, it's basically the five boroughs in parts of Long Island, I think, and West
Chester that are still within the 718 area code.
Only parts of Long Island. So you can't call to 631 area code, for instance, even though it's...
That's right.
That is amazing. Wow. This is like talking to the past.
I know. Well, thank you very much.
Wow.
In the future, yes, I'm on your line as far as it goes for the quiet car. Quiet car means
quiet car.
I must say, though, the quality of your phone call is much better than most of...
Quality voice-wise is much better than most of the calls we get.
Ah, you just did say that the copper lines do give better quality.
And, you know, I also wanted to dispute that statement about, you know, the lines with
the cables and the fiber optics, because, you know, WBAI itself was without lines.
And presumably in the Wall Street area, there was a lot of, you know, recabling because
I saw it myself. I don't know if 120 Wall Street was, in fact, had all the new line.
But I think when you're under 20 feet of water, things can tend to deteriorate pretty fast.
Definitely true. Definitely true. Nothing is guaranteed to survive a storm like Sandy.
So please keep those 800 numbers. I love them. And, you know, occasionally you do still find
a public phone. And as I say, at some point you may need them. So it's good to have those
wonderful, you know, antiquated concept of free calls still happening.
All right. Well, listen, thanks. Thanks for the enlightening call.
My pleasure.
All right.
All the best to you.
Take care. That was interesting. I really feel like we were talking to a survivor of past ways.
You know, it's like talking to your grandpa about what it used to be like in the
back in the 30s or something. And wow. And still using the same system. You know,
I should have asked, is that a rotary phone you're on?
Well, I'm just flattered that we were worth the dime he spent.
Yeah. 10.5 cents. I can't believe that plan still exists. That's incredible.
All right. Well, now we know why it's hard to simply cut to a new technology,
because this guy is holding on to his phone until he lets go. No one else can.
OK. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Yes. How are you?
How are you doing? You must be the other person with an old Verizon line.
Yeah. I've got the landline. I'm calling it before it gets canceled.
All right. Best hurry up then.
The I'd rather have a landline. Don't forget the the other type phones,
you get that radiation, you can wind up with cancers and stuff with them.
Well, that's hasn't been proven, but you are transmitting something next to your head.
And you talk to Gary, no, no, no. Gary, no, has a lot of information on.
Mm hmm. And it's they they squat. They're squashing the information.
The the people that make them, they have false scientists out there. I mean,
people that are scientists, but they're paid mercenaries to say the other was.
Which is a horrible thought, you know? Mm hmm. Tell me this. Do you use a cordless phone at all?
No, not even that. You don't use a cordless phone inside your own house.
I do. Do you have the same concerns?
Well, I've I've plenty of people where I live have those phones here.
And you can wind up with secondhand radiation out of those things from your neighbors.
Yeah. But anyway, what are you going to do? You know, you try to do the best you can.
That's all any of us can do. Thanks. Thanks again for the call. Two one two two zero nine two nine
hundred. Are you all right, Mike? Pounding your head onto the table really hard.
Yeah. All right. You don't buy the whole cell phone thing, do you?
I mean, so when when cell phones and like consumer wireless electronics in general were like
new things and we didn't know how this stuff would work out, it was, I think, very reasonable to be
concerned. But we have had this stuff for long enough now that that if the claims were true,
we would see like massive skyrocketing brain tumor rates. And if we are seeing that and I don't know
about it, I'd love to be informed. But how do we know when enough time has passed? Because these
things have been around only since the 90s as far as digital cell phones. That's that's 20 years.
And, you know, they're changing frequencies all the time. So the rules are always changing as well.
Is 20 years enough time? I don't know. You know, like maybe it would continue to get worse
after 20 years. But I think in 20 years we would see some effect.
There are a lot of diseases that people get that we don't know why they get them.
And I just know there's a lot we don't know. So I'm not willing to simply say,
yeah, there's definitely no problem. There could be there could be.
But I'm dubious of just about anything, really. Let's see if we can take a couple more calls
in the moments we have left. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hello. Yes, go ahead, please.
How are you doing? I was calling about the cell phones on airplanes.
OK, go ahead. I work at Delta Airlines and just want to
let your callers know Delta does not plan to allow it even when it is it has become permissible.
Now, is there I heard this actually in a news report. Is there a reason Delta has taken the
stand? The actual reason is they just ordered a ton of new planes from Boeing and we're starting
to get deliveries of them and they'd have to be retrofitted in a certain way. And Delta is going
to is going to say, no, we're not allowing it. They don't want to spend money.
So it's not that they want to keep the customers from being exposed to all this,
not not at least outwardly. No, but I mean, the the end result
is the same on Delta will be probably the last people who ever do allow it.
Well, hopefully they'll they'll play upon that and say Delta, the only airline left that does not
let you use your cell phone. How do you enforce that, though? How do you keep
people from using their cell phones? Because the piece of equipment that
you're going to have to use to connect in the air is not going to be on the plane.
Oh, I see. OK, so it won't work. But but, Bernie, I know we've talked about this.
Isn't it likely that a cell phone would work in the in the air?
Well, not really. It depends where you are, how high you are and so forth.
Cell phones, you have to connect to different cell sites, which are usually not that far away
a mile. So if you're high, if you're at a very high altitude traveling at a high speed, like
you're in a jet airliner, it just doesn't work well because the cell phone doesn't know what
what cell site to connect to. But what does happen? I mean,
we haven't ever tried this ourselves. It actually causes problems with the cell
phone network because it gets all these stray signals bouncing all over the different cell
sites. And if a lot of people did that, it would it would wreak havoc.
So you hear that, Delta? That could that could happen.
Your passengers could inadvertently cause all kinds of mayhem on the ground.
Well, not that I know this, but once you're below about 6,000 feet in your landing,
your cell phone will work. But that's when they don't want you to
use it when you're landing or taking off. I know. Like I said, not that I know.
It's going to be so much fun in the skies. Thank you for that call.
And that's going to be it for tonight. We will be back next week with another
exciting edition of Off the Hook. You can write to us, OTH at 2600 dot com.
And for everybody at Off the Hook, have a happy Thanksgiving,
and we will see you next week. Good night.
Good night.
You're listening to WBAI New York 99.5 FM. Also streaming on the web at WBAI.org.