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And you are listening to WBAI-New York. The time is 7 o'clock time once again for Off The Hook.
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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. Rob T. Firefly. Good evening. Kyle. Yeah, I'm here. And Bernie S. Greetings from Philadelphia.
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Yeah, yeah, you know what? We're not doing that. Not doing that again. That's from our April Fool's show of 2009. Brings back some memories, doesn't it?
I don't want to hear that again. I don't want to hear that again, either. I don't even know how that happened. No, folks, this, you know, I know it's April Fool's. I really do.
And I appreciate that. I'm just not in the mood. Is anyone else in the mood for this? Because, you know, a lot of jokes, a lot of buffoonery going on.
But there's also a lot of serious things to talk about. Don't you agree? There are. I'm sorry, Bernie, what? I think we should stick to the facts.
Well, someone has to. You know, it's important that people know they can turn to us. And especially, you can't turn to us next week. That's not an April Fool's joke.
We won't be on next week. There's some kind of town hall thing that's being broadcast instead. But we'll be on in two weeks.
So that makes this week all the more important as far as covering news items. And a bunch of us have some news items that are important to share with people.
Mike, you want to start? You have something there?
Yeah, sure. I have the latest on the Silk Road saga.
Oh, boy.
It's from Andy Greenberg, who, if you'll believe me, he writes for Wired now.
OK, that's believable.
And so it's about this DA agent whose name is Karl Markforth IV. I can't even say that.
Mike, at both the Monday and Tuesday night pre-show meetings, we were very, very clear as far as not having any silly stories tonight with silly made-up names.
I'm not making anything up.
I'm just cautioning you. If you're going to do something like this, at least be imaginative and use a name that is somewhat believable.
Karl Markforth IV. I mean, with a name like that, you sort of have to be a DA agent. What else can you do?
The story is from Monday. It's not an April 1st story.
I'm going to humor you, but I'm cautioning you as well to tread lightly. Go ahead.
OK, so Mr. Forth IV, who's at the DA, and Sean Bridges, also a real name, from the Secret Service, were investigating the Dread Pirate Roberts from the Silk Road.
But they themselves were arrested on Monday and charged with wire fraud and money laundering.
I guess they took some of the Bitcoins that were coming from the Silk Road, and rather than depositing them into the government Bitcoin account, which I guess is a thing that exists, they took it for themselves.
So Bridges accused of placing $800,000 of Bitcoins into a personal account and charged with, I don't know, what else would they be charged with?
Theft of government property, conflict of interest.
You know, I was reading the affidavit into this, signed by Mr. I guess it's a minister.
Yeah, this ought to be good. What's his name?
IRS agent, and actually I don't know the person's gender, Tigran Gambaryan.
All right, I'm going to stop you right there.
Yeah.
Rob, you have a serious story, hopefully, for us.
Emmanuel, this is a serious story.
OK.
The DA is stolen all this money. This guy's got some serious jail time ahead of him.
Serious jail time, yes.
Serious.
I mean, I can see why you would think it's a joke, right, that like police officers would ever get in trouble for being corrupt, but that's what's happening here.
Mr. Force, he once sent a message, signed it.
His first name is Carl, and he once signed a message, Carl, which is not a great thing to do if you're trying to hide from your employer.
So he made up a pseudonym, Carla Sofia.
OK.
Which, also known as the French maid.
And he's got another pseudonym, Death From Above.
Are you about done?
And so he tried to like sell information.
It's not a comic book show here. We're talking about serious issues here.
This is serious.
Death From Above?
This is Wired Magazine, a very serious publication, despite their new weird typography.
Thought so until now.
OK.
Anything you want to sum up for this little escapade here?
You should read the criminal complaint.
It reads like a novel, but it's really filed in court, and it's quite some stuff.
All right.
Well, if you want more information on that, go to Wired.com and find out.
Yes?
I think this just teaches us all not to trust French maids called Carl, Mark, Fox, Force, Five, the Fourth, or-
Death From Above.
Death From Above.
It's a good name.
You know, we could have done so much better than this.
We really could have.
If we had decided to go this route, we would have-
It's a serious business.
I mean, the facts of the names, we could have come up with more realistic names.
But the facts of the case, I don't know if I could have come up with.
There's murder for hire.
It's a lot of stuff.
I don't think he's lying.
All right, fine.
Rob, I hope you have something a bit more serious than this.
I do.
Some time ago, civil asset forfeiture was in the news, where if you're accused of a crime, or even if you're not accused of a crime,
the authorities can basically take your stuff and have it for their own.
And the President of the United States, Mr. Barack Obama, has basically decided that this is actually a good tool,
that we should be using it on the national level, not only to punish minor criminals,
but we should be using it to punish hackers who are cyber threats.
And not only that, but hackers who are cyber threats from foreign lands.
See, Rob, if I was going to be as cruel to you as you were to me, I would say Barack Obama is a made-up name.
But enough people have heard of Barack Obama, I think, at this point.
You keep saying cyber, which makes me not want to believe you either.
Well, cool your cyber jets, because there's more to this story.
The cyber president, Barack Cyber Obama, has decided to sign an executive order that basically lets the federal government
sort of seize the assets and transactions of people who are perpetrating cyber attacks against American interests.
Cyber American interests.
Cyber American cyber interests.
The actual President of the United States said cyber this many times?
He cyber damn well did.
I mean, we agreed to cover serious stories.
I cover a serious story.
But now you're coming up with this utter cyber nonsense.
Well, this is cyber serious business.
When was this announcement made?
This announcement was made today, on the 1st of April.
Why would they make such a cyber serious announcement today on the 1st of April?
This has come from multiple cyber sources.
The President himself made a post to Medium.com, which you might know is a popular cyber site.
Medium, like the psychics.
Correct.
Or like in between large and small.
And he wrote on here a whole thing about this executive order that he has signed, saying that cyber intrusions and attacks,
and this is a direct quote,
cyber intrusions and attacks, many of them originating overseas, are targeting our businesses, stealing trade secrets, and costing American jobs.
Iranian hackers have targeted American banks.
The North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures, this being a story that we've spoken before of on this program,
destroyed data and disabled thousands of computers.
In other recent breaches that have made headlines, more than 100 million Americans had their personal data compromised,
including credit card and medical information.
And so we now have an executive order signed by the President himself,
which blocks the property of certain persons engaging in significant malicious cyber-enabled activities.
Blocks the property.
Yes.
I'll only accept this, Rob, if he cyber-signed it, like a digital signature or something.
If he did it with a pen.
I think it might have been an auto-pen, but this was, you know, the actual title of this,
and you can find it on the White House official cyber site,
is Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities.
Cyber-enabled activities, you guys.
Okay, you know, you got greedy.
Cyber-blocking.
Yeah, I mean, cyber-enabled activities, a phrase like that would never come out of government.
No, I'm sorry.
That's a good one.
Yeah, come on, Rob.
Well, you guys are, you know, I'll be the one laughing when you guys get your cyber assets cyber-seized
because you threatened American commercial interests like those delicate flowers at Sony Pictures.
You know, I gotta say, you guys really put one over on me.
I thought we were going to do a serious show here tonight, but apparently there was some conspiring in the background.
Bernie, you're in Philadelphia, so I know you can't possibly be a part of this.
Do you have anything that might add some seriousness to this?
I do, but I hope you don't cyber-block.
I'll try not to.
We'll see, though.
Okay.
Well, today Verizon announced, quote, Verizon takes customer privacy seriously.
Bernie, that is the kind of thing they would truly say, but you don't expect us to believe that Verizon takes privacy seriously.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, if I say something else, how about if I say Super Cookie, does that make you hungry?
Super Cookie?
I ate before I came, but okay, Verizon takes our Super Cookie cyber-privacy, cyber-seriously.
I want to believe you.
Go on.
We've talked about this Super Cookie on this very show more than once.
And over the past year, and I'm just documenting what we said earlier this year about this story, so you know I'm not making it up now for April Fool's.
Bernie, can I ask a question?
If you stop breathing helium, yes.
I don't know what you're talking about.
The Super Cookie, are you serious?
I think the Super Cookie has helium nuggets in it.
That doesn't make any sense.
Well, for the past year, Mr. Helium Inhaler, is that still legal, by the way?
Verizon has been inserting a unique identifier into the headers of all the web traffic that its mobile users make.
Like if you go to any website using HTTP, not HTTPS, Verizon was inserting this long unique string of characters that was assigned just specially for you.
And unlike a regular cookie, you could not change your browser, configure your browser to reject, to not accept cookies.
You could not delete these Super Cookies.
They were embedded in any HTTP traffic you did over a Verizon mobile phone.
Bernie, what I don't understand, there is a thing called a cookie in real life, but there isn't a thing called a Super Cookie in real life.
So what is that parallel to?
What is a Super Cookie parallel to?
I know what a cookie is.
I don't know what a Super Cookie is.
A Super Cookie is one that you can't shed yourself of.
You cannot eat it.
You cannot break it into little crumbles.
You cannot dip it into milk.
It is stuck on all your web traffic.
Whenever you visited a website via a Verizon wireless cell phone, you could not get rid of this.
Verizon would always send this unique identifier to any website that you visited if it was HTTP.
So the story I'm going to announce today on April Fool's is that after a year, including angry letter from several U.S. Senators to Verizon CEO, that they were going to stop inserting this unique identifier called a UIDH on all of our web traffic.
And that there is a phone number that subscribers can call to finally opt out of this.
After a year, you could not opt out of this.
And I'm saying...
Wait, hold on.
Bernie, you have the phone number?
I do.
All right.
Guys, do you want to hear the phone number?
I would love to hear a phone number.
All right.
You guys all want to hear it?
Yes.
Okay.
I only want to hear it if it's a real Verizon phone number.
I don't want you giving out, like, random people's phone numbers.
I mean, it could be dial-a-joke for all we know.
Definitely give it out.
Definitely give the phone number out.
All right.
So it's unanimous.
The phone number is, to opt out of the Verizon Super Cookie, if you use Verizon Wireless,
is toll-free 866-211-0874.
Call before midnight tonight.
866-211-0874 to get rid of your Verizon Wireless Super Cookies.
087 what?
Four.
0874, right?
I think that's what it is.
All right.
866-211-0874.
Yeah.
All right.
Hey, Bernie, thanks for that.
That was the least silly of the stories, even though you did get into that whole thing about
Super Cookies, which I think...
The silliest part of Emanuel was Verizon saying, Verizon takes customer service, customer privacy
seriously.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
I suppose that is a bit humorous.
Kyle, okay.
It looks like you have something a bit more serious, hopefully.
I just want to get this in.
This is quick, but important.
I wanted to update people.
They've announced in London, the UK will have its first micro pig cafe, and it's going to
be opening, offering visitors a chance to eat and drink alongside cute little piglets.
So, yeah.
It's pretty cool.
Wait, wait.
I guess they're having their first event, and that's going to be kicking it off.
Cute little what's now?
Pigs.
Okay.
All right.
Pigs.
It's a micro pig cafe.
All right.
I'm trying to finish this.
Tiny pig.
Yes.
Very tiny pigs.
They're well behaved, I think.
There's a phone ringing here, and I don't know where the phone is.
You hear that?
Where is that phone?
Can someone find the phone and unblock it, because there's not supposed to be a phone
in here.
Oh, I get it.
This is another April Fool's thing.
Very funny to everybody.
Everybody.
Yeah.
The joke's on me.
In any event, the event will have three rooms, including a picnic area, and a pig film will
be screened at the end of the night.
A pig film?
Yes.
How is this in any way related to anything?
These aren't even real pigs.
No.
I'm glad you asked.
Most people aren't aware of this, but owning a micro pig is complex.
It's a challenging thing, and it takes the spirit of a hacker to, I don't know, to get
through.
There's a lot of milestones in a piglet's growth.
Okay.
A piglet, a little pig, a baby pig?
You're saying micro pig.
That's a thing.
I think these are an actual breed that is a micro, a very small dog, but it's a small
breed of pig.
They're very in right now.
Pigs are already kind of small, unless you feed them a lot, and then they get huge.
Yeah.
I've seen ... How big are these?
Is that a picture you're holding up?
I think you can fit half a dozen in your shopping bag or so, but they're teacup size.
Teacup size pigs?
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
Yes.
I'm amazed.
Are these dwarf pigs or midget pigs?
I don't think you can use that word, Bernie.
I don't want to get into too many of the linguistic attributes, because I don't want to mislead
people, Bernie, but that is a good question.
I'll leave that to other people to research, but people are buying them apparently as accessories,
kind of like you would have a headband or jewelry or something, but they don't realize
that they grow, and that's actually a big problem.
But this way, you can go, you can visit, you can have your cup of tea with the pigs, and
you're not actually taking on this creature as a pet and so on.
Absurd and ridiculous, as that story you just read is.
It is, I think, the least silly of the stories that have been read in the last few minutes.
I don't know how to interpret that myself.
They've got plans for penguins in the future, by the way.
Oh, I'm sure they do.
Yes, Mike?
So, Kyle, you're claiming this is like a cat cafe, but with micro pigs?
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, I don't-
No, that's exactly what it's like.
I mean, I see a photograph here, but I still don't know what you're talking about.
Hold that up to the microphone.
Yeah, it's a pet piggy.
The hat is really cute.
The piglet's wearing a little sun hat, which is really adorable.
Nature would never have created this.
No, a pig should not be that small.
I'm sorry, but I can tell by the pixels this is fake.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
No, this is like incredibly serious.
I'm not- no, I'm not doing that.
Pictures or it doesn't exist?
There's a picture right here.
Look at the pixels.
Just look at them.
Look at this.
There's a teacup.
There's like four little piglets in that teacup.
I don't know.
Go ahead, Bernie.
Are these pigs, because they're so tiny, are they light enough to fly?
Oh, I see what you're doing there, Bernie.
No, no, no.
I'm not going to fall into that trap.
You guys, I said I wasn't going to do this.
I know it's April Fool's, but I am only sticking to the real stuff with this show.
I mean, no, you can't get me to do it.
We're not trying to get you to do it.
We're trying to get you not to do it.
I don't want to-
We all picked our own stories, and this is-
No.
I don't know.
This is real news.
I'm dubious about this.
I like, you know, a little honey in my tea, a little lemon.
I don't like piglets in my tea.
Okay, you know what?
No, no.
You eat with them.
You don't eat the piglets.
If this is how it's going to be, if people are going to take this as non-seriously as
you seem to be, when I thought we had something serious planned, sure.
I can just go on the internet and do the same thing.
I can tell you that the NSA is claiming that it really wanted to stop the phone spying
program, but then Edward Snowden came along and leaked all that information, and they
couldn't do it anymore.
Huh?
How's that?
How's that for a joke?
Yeah, funny, huh?
Not so good coming from the other side, does it?
And now they're facing a real problem with recruitment for some reason that they can't
figure out.
Huh?
I don't know.
You can do better than that.
Yeah.
That seems pretty believable, actually.
All right.
I actually do.
I have a better story that I just found on an Onion-like site.
Remember the Hillary Clinton thing with the emails and all that?
Yes, indeed.
She apparently had about 60,000 emails that were sent on that private server of hers,
and through a Freedom of Information Act from the Associated Press, a total of four have
been released.
I know.
This is really-
It wasn't working very well.
Yeah.
It's kind of-
I know.
They could have written this better.
Four?
That's just so unbelievable.
Okay.
The four emails were obtained by the Freedom of Information Request.
Let's suspend our disbelief for a moment and offer one of the first looks into Clinton's
correspondence at the State Department.
This is what we're going to do.
We're going to look at her email and see what she said.
Okay.
In reply to a message sent in September 2011 by Advisor Huma Abedin, and you can look that
up.
That's a real name, to Clinton's personal email account, which contained an AP story
about a drone strike in Pakistan.
This is real.
Okay.
Serious.
Clinton replied, I like the idea of these.
How high are they?
What would the bench be made of?
And I'd prefer two shelves or attractive boxes slash baskets slash containers on one.
What do you think?
All right.
Yeah.
Okay.
It feels good to make a joke.
I agree.
It does.
I mean, that's, I think, a real story.
Well, you think all these stories are real.
I mean, no.
The ones that other people have told are clearly fake, but I read a real story and you read
a real story.
I think we should conspire against these liars.
It goes on.
It goes on.
Abedin replied, did you mean to send that to me?
And Clinton responded, no, sorry.
Also, please let me know if you got a reply from my iPad.
I'm not sure replies go through.
Well, I guess you can't make that up.
I mean, frankly, that seems too boring to make up.
All right.
I'm going to make one more attempt and then I'm out of ideas.
Here's a story that I thought was very poorly done because it's just so contrived and the
kind of thing that we see on television all the time.
You got this guy, right?
His name, let's just call him Neil Moore.
All right.
It's a good name for just a guy, a bloke over in England.
Yeah.
He was in prison and he basically, he got himself an illicit mobile telephone, created
a fake email account and then made a website that was very similar to that of the court
service's official address.
He then emailed the prison's custody inbox with instructions for his release and then
he was released.
How is that for a story that, if you had taken just a few more minutes, you probably could
have made a much better plot out of that.
But that is what this April Fool's story is claiming happened.
Neil Moore, really?
Neil Moore.
Yeah.
Isn't that something?
I guess there's a joke in there too.
And they only found out about it when his lawyers went to talk to him in prison and
he wasn't there.
And the whole ruse kind of unraveled from that point.
Emmanuel.
Yes, Bernie.
Do you expect us to believe that he did all this?
No.
Created a website from a mobile phone?
And do you expect that the prison officials in the UK would fall for such a stupid thing?
Do you really expect us to believe that?
You know what?
I'm sorry because I don't expect you.
It was a half-hearted attempt on my part to join in the fun, which obviously I was not
a part of.
I'm sorry.
It obviously was a poor story and lacked imagination.
Exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to see on primetime TV.
I mean, this is from the BBC, this story.
And usually when they make stuff, it's better.
Like the spaghetti, the classic spaghetti thing.
That was at least funny.
This is just...
Yeah.
What can we say?
We tried, folks.
We tried.
I can't tell what's real and what isn't.
Well, one thing I can tell you that is real.
Okay.
All right.
It's not funny anymore.
Fine.
We have letters.
We have real listeners who really write to us and really want answers because we don't
seem to give enough answers out there.
And we're going to read some of those.
And we'll also take phone calls later on.
212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
Hey, guys, I'm catching last week's show a bit late.
You know what?
It doesn't matter when you listen, as long as you listen at some point.
Astounding story about that fine levied on the small television station.
We talked about that.
For quite a while.
Huge.
Yes, we did.
Well, it was a good conversation about the TV station that inadvertently showed an erect
penis on the air.
And the FCC was not very much amused by that.
What's that?
Well, the point is they didn't see it themselves in their editing bay because their screens
apparently were smaller than the screens of people with fancy television sets who did
see it.
Right.
So it lasted about three seconds and shocked that particular part of the country.
And now there's a huge fine.
I'll probably put that station out of business.
Anyway, continuing with this letter, your discussion about aggressively suppressing
mature content reminded me of a book first published in 1899 called Studies in the Psychology
of Sex by Havelock Ellis.
And that is a real name.
So you can stop laughing now.
Have Havelock.
All right.
Those of you searching for a name for your kid, Havelock.
Spelled the way it sounds.
I've never heard that name before.
Havelock will travel.
Yeah, he's going to have one fun school time.
That's for sure.
Kids like you to hound him.
Havelock Ellis.
Anyway, he makes incredibly brilliant remarks in the preface concerning the reticent approach
to discussing sexuality.
And this is what he said back in 1899.
Let my friends try to transfer their feelings and theories from their reproductive region
to, let us say, the nutritive region, the only other which can be compared to it for
importance.
Suppose that eating and drinking were never spoken of openly, save in veiled or poetic
language, and that no one ever ate food publicly because it was considered immoral and immodest
to reveal the mysteries of this natural function.
We know what would occur.
A considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members
possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts
on the subject.
They would have so many problems to puzzle over.
How often ought I to eat?
What ought I to eat?
Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like?
Ought I eat to...
Oh, they talked weird back then.
Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like?
Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed
in eating reasonably and wholesomely.
The sexual secrecy of life is even more disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be,
partly because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing or misdirecting it,
partly because the sexual impulse normally develops at the same time as the intellectual
impulse, not in the early years of life when wholesome, instinctive habits might be formed.
And there is always some ignorant and foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle
things, eat a meal every other day, eat 12 meals a day, never eat fruit, always eat grass.
The advice emphatically given in sexual matters is usually not less absurd than this.
When, however, the matter is fully open, the problems of food are not indeed wholly solved,
but everyone is enabled by the experience of his fellows to reach some sort of situation
suited to his own case.
And when the rigid secrecy is once swept away, a sane and natural reticence becomes,
for the first time, possible.
And you can read that whole book on Project Gutenberg.
I want to thank that long-time listener from the Pacific Northwest for writing in with
that study in The Psychology of Sex.
Havelock Ellis.
I think he makes a lot of sense.
He does.
And in some ways, it's good to know that people were even discussing that sort of thing back then.
But in some ways, it's like, how much further along are we in that particular conversation
116 years later?
Not as far as I would like to be.
Not much further.
But I think the one thing to keep in mind, especially with these, is social mores and
people's sensitivities and the ideologies of the time.
They vary over time a lot.
And they can ebb and flow, kind of go one way and then the other.
Just something to point out.
Well, here's a story that actually happened, really happened.
I'm not trying this again.
But there was another television station, this time in San Francisco, KRON.
For six minutes on Friday, they had a scroll going underneath a story that I can't say
on the air, but you can figure out what I mean.
Effing BS.
Scrolling across the bottom of the screen along with other news items.
This is while Hulk Hogan was being interviewed in preparation for WrestleMania weekend.
And you can see it right there.
It's not an April Fool's joke.
That happened.
And I can't find any mention of this anyplace.
And maybe we just got KRON into a whole lot of trouble.
So someone who was programming that was somehow able to, or was dissenting while this guy
was being interviewed or something?
Or that's a breaking news item of some sort.
But I kind of doubt that.
Yeah, these things do happen.
And, well, actually, I decided why not look at the way a different country might do something?
I looked up Canada's rules on this.
They are a nation to the north.
I mean, Canada's not an independent country.
Well, it's independent enough as far as I'm concerned.
And sometimes they get things a lot more right than we do.
In this particular case, I think this is one of them.
They have something known as the Broadcasting Act.
That was made in 1991.
Actually, a prior version of the Broadcasting Act received royal assent in 1936, subsequently
updated in 1958 and 1968.
The 1958 Act created the Board of Broadcast Governors to replace the CBC as a regulatory
arm for broadcasting in Canada.
And in 1968, the CRTC was created to also keep track of all this and be the equivalent
of the FCC.
Now, basically, the Act imposes a Canadian-owned and controlled system of broadcasting, includes
provisions regarding Canadian content and programming and production, which is kind
of silly in many ways.
It's the reason why you can't hear CBC Radio 2 on satellite in the States, because it doesn't
have enough Canadian content, so they can't broadcast it on satellite.
But a lot of that is kind of defensive against the Americanization of broadcasting over there.
But looking up their rules as far as indecency and obscenity, it's really, really hard to
find any examples, because it's not as big a deal for them up there.
They rely more on voluntary self-governing by the stations themselves.
They have what's known as a watershed, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Now, basically, Canadian broadcast stations, they can broadcast sexually explicit or violent
programming under certain circumstances, albeit with viewer discretion advisories and at adult-oriented
times on the schedule.
There's a commercial network up there called CTV.
They have aired controversial series like The Sopranos, Nip-Tuck, The Osbournes.
Yeah, some real cutting-edge stuff there in prime time without editing, and that's not
something we can do here.
Some Canadian television broadcasters, such as City TV, have aired soft-core pornography
after 12 midnight, which can therefore be viewed as early as 9 p.m. in other parts of
Canada.
The Code of Ethics of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters defines the late viewing period
as the hours from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Outside this period, the Code of Ethics prohibits programming containing sexually explicit
material or coarse or offensive language.
The association also publishes a voluntary code regarding violence in television programming.
They take that more seriously, actually.
Now, enforcing these two codes, enforcing these two codes, rather, the Canadian Broadcast
Standards Council permits nudity to be broadcast during the day as long as it's considered
non-sexual.
For example, they permitted a 4 p.m. broadcast of the movie Wildcats containing male frontal
nudity in a locker room scene and female nudity in a bathtub.
And they've also permitted the film Striptease, which contains scenes of bare female breasts,
to be shown at 8 p.m.
So, yeah, you know, in Canada, it's a bit more sane, and I think that's something we
need to look at and not be so freaked out over what are obvious mistakes or just simply
different values.
Go ahead, Barney.
Did you know that the United States of America also has a Broadcasting Board of Governors?
Well, who are they beholden to?
If the United States government operates or has, it is the Broadcasting Board of Governors
of the United States of America.
The broadcasts that they govern, though, are the international shortwave broadcasts that
the United States, like Voice of America, Radio Saba, which is a CIA front for Arab
stations in the Middle East.
And you know who's in charge of the United States Broadcasting Board of Governors?
I'm not even going to try to guess.
Tell me.
A guy named Jeffrey Schell.
He's the former chairman of NBCUniversal, and before that, he was the president of Comcast
Programming.
So this is the guy, he's the chair of the United States Broadcasting Board of Governors
who oversees what kind of programming he thinks is appropriate for the United States to be
broadcasting to foreign lands.
Isn't that interesting?
It's interesting.
I'm not sure how many people actually listen to shortwave anymore.
Yeah, I do.
Okay, so what besides crazy religious garbage comes from the United States?
Well, by federal law, for many years, shortwave broadcasts to U.S. citizens are prohibited.
However, there's a number of shortwave stations in the United States that broadcast to foreign
countries, like WBCQ up in Maine on 7490 kHz, broadcast to Mexico.
It's really a free station.
We actually used to be simulcast on WBCQ years ago.
I listen to Radio Havana, Cuba on a great frequency, 6,000 kHz, 6-0-0-0.
Okay, but we don't broadcast, do we?
No, we don't broadcast.
That's them, they're doing that.
As far as what we broadcast, we used to have...
Do we broadcast in shortwave to other countries?
Yeah, Voice of America and WBCQ.
Voice of America, WBCQ.
There's a station down in, I forget the call letters for it, but there's a station down
in Florida that broadcasts a variety of content.
It's not bad.
But you're right.
It is.
Bernie, it is bad.
It's pretty bad.
I mean, even WBCQ has crazy religious stuff on because they pay for it.
They gotta pay the bills.
Yeah, and it's not the way shortwave used to be.
It used to be very interesting.
You're right.
You're absolutely right.
But it's still an interesting medium, and what's interesting is when you're listening
to shortwave, unlike internet streaming stuff, you know that no one knows what you're listening
to and what you're listening to and when.
As long as you keep it to yourself, that's...
There's no super cookies involved on the radio.
The broadcasting board of governments in particular, but the U.S. government funds a lot of propaganda,
not just Voice of America, but also Radio Martí, which is targeted at Cuba, although
mostly blocked by the Cuban government, so it's not clear who's listening, but we're
paying for it anyway.
They're very busy in the propaganda department.
Radio Saba is a big...
It's very popular in the Middle Eastern region, but it's funded by the U.S. government and
not supervised by the CIA.
One quick fun fact about Voice of America is their facilities aren't actually fully
used at the moment.
They've been shutting things down, and there's a ship, a Blackbeard's ship, Queen Anne's
Revenge, is being restored in one of the warehouse buildings at the site.
I think that's in Ohio, Bernie.
Do you know where that's from?
No, but this is really interesting.
Yeah.
I was reading up about Voice of America not too long ago, and basically I was researching
that site and looking at some of the pictures of the antenna arrays, and they've been slowly
shutting down some of the broadcast facilities there.
I think just one of the arrays is working currently, but if you do a little research,
there's kind of an interesting fact that on that very site, Queen Anne's Revenge, that
shipwreck, which was found on the East Coast here, is being restored, or it's otherwise
being located there.
Interesting stuff.
They can turn it into a radio ship, I think.
I thought that was ... Yeah, I was like, oh, that's such a hilarious connection.
I mean, do they realize the sort of irony that this pirate ship is on this broadcasting
site?
Okay.
Actually, I'd like to move on to another letter that somebody else wrote in to us concerning
the topic we were discussing.
I listened to your March 25th, 2015 show.
I'd like to make a few comments regarding your reporting of the FCC fine imposed on
WDBJ TV.
I think that any reasonable person would conclude that the station did not intentionally broadcast
the offending image.
I'd be interested to hear from a legal expert regarding the likelihood of the fine being
successfully contested.
I did find it a bit distasteful that you would bash George W. Bush for signing a law passed
by both houses of Congress.
Why didn't you bash Barack Obama since he was president when the fine was imposed?
The FCC is an independent agency of the US government.
Its commissioners are equally divided by Republican and Democratic employees.
Any bad decisions that they arrive at are not the fault of any one party or any one
president.
Neither party is more to blame than the other.
They share the blame.
Instead of grousing about government officials assaulting our freedoms, why don't you invite
onto your show local politicians who are running for office and are championing issues of freedom?
I know you don't want to hear this, but you have more in common with the Tea Party than
you think.
Yeah, I just love it when people tell me who I have something in common with that I don't
know.
I'm a libertarian.
I'm a conservative.
I'm all sorts of crazy things.
You know, George W. Bush is the guy who signed the bill, okay?
Yeah, Barack Obama was in office when this fine was handed out, but you can't just unravel
all this.
If he tried, then he'd have all kinds of people coming after him, and I don't think we'd support
him because he's not going far enough.
The whole thing is really silly.
What you missed is that I bashed George W. Bush for creating ISIL.
He didn't mention that, and how this guy is still walking around free is beyond me.
You know, he started this war that killed, I think, over a million people and threw the
world into turmoil that I don't know how we're ever going to piece back together.
That is something that I think is worthy of discussion.
As for politicians getting on the radio, I don't think so.
Not on our show.
We have more important issues to talk about.
Even the micro pigs are more important than the politicians, as far as I'm concerned.
Mike?
I would just say that I don't think any regular listener to this show would fail to notice
that we're perfectly happy to criticize President Clinton when he, as he so often does, does
things that are wrong.
And President Obama, too.
President Obama.
All the presidents, really.
President Clinton, yes.
President Coolidge, if he's doing something wrong.
All of them.
All right.
Well, anyway, thanks for that letter, though.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
Rob, you have something?
I should also mention that we're not opposed, in general, to having politicians on the show
who are willing to answer the questions that we would ask them.
I'm reminded of the last time we had a mayoral candidate on the show, Billy Tallon, also
known as Reverend Billy.
And I think that was a good episode.
You can find it in our archives.
Great.
Oh, Emmanuel.
Go ahead, yeah.
I just want to say, I was in a Verizon wireless store today, and I talked with a customer
service representative named John.
And he actually is an off-the-hook listener.
And his sister turned him on to the show.
We have listeners everywhere.
Is that your final try for an April Fool's joke?
That you just happened to run into somebody who listens to the show?
I know.
It's implausible.
All right.
I thought I'd try.
212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hello?
Can anyone hear me?
Yeah, listener, you're on the air.
We're taking calls.
Go ahead.
I just wanted to say that I agree with everything Emmanuel just said.
Okay.
Emmanuel was just commenting about...
I think a lot of listeners are going to say the same thing.
Emmanuel, was that you somehow?
I mean, I see you right here, so I don't know how you could have done it.
But no one agrees with everything you say.
Well, there are people out there who do.
And a lot of them are Tea Party people, apparently.
212-209-2900.
Let's see who else agrees with me.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Whoops.
I've got to go.
Bye.
That was me.
All right.
Man, I thought he'd never leave.
212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
Let me shut my radio.
Okay.
It's off.
I'm going to finish what I had to say about the Hillary Clinton thing.
I'm the guy who was referred to as a chap by the guy named Dave.
Boy, this is going to go on forever, isn't it?
I'm going to try to wrap it up unless I get more responses.
If you say something tonight, you will get more responses.
But we can't keep going forever.
But give us a summation, and then we'll comment on it afterwards.
Okay.
Real quick.
He misquoted me somewhere along the line.
But anyway, I still say that clintonemail.com is in Palmetto Bay, Florida,
where I said it was in the first place.
It points to inbound10.mxlogic.net in White Plains, which is owned by McAfee.
And basically, oh, and according to mashable.com,
Hillary's server wasn't with MXLogic until after she left the State Department.
And they questioned the security on that site.
I didn't know about before MXLogic, but the only thing I can say is McAfee's servers are very well secured.
Even if they don't use encryption to try to port scan it, they drop packets left and right.
So basically, I think that the email servers are very secure, and that's about it.
There's nothing more to say.
I don't know where else it points to.
That guy Dave was correct about the load balancing on the big IP server that Hillary has in Florida.
So that's basically it.
That's the last I have to say about it so far.
Thanks a lot, Denali, for the update.
Definitely, it sounds like you've gone as far as you can go in that direction,
insofar as understanding how that is set up.
But definitely good to check all the possibilities there.
I don't want to discourage anybody from looking into this,
but we have to be open to corrections and additional information being sent in as well.
And I think what this caller has done is gotten people talking about it.
That's the important thing.
And some of you out there, you've got to ease up a little bit
because not everybody is going to instantly understand every aspect of this
at the level you might understand it.
And if you are an expert on this, tell us something.
Tell us not just that this guy doesn't have all the information.
Tell us the information you can figure out.
Here's something that our own Junce wrote in, which I think is pretty helpful.
FYMXLogic, which is now McAfee Security as a Service, S-A-A-S,
is exactly what others have already mentioned in response to this chap's assertions.
Are we going to refer to him that way from now on?
It's weird phrasing, but is it an insult?
I don't think so.
It's what the caller last week referred to him as repeatedly.
So I guess that's his name now.
Anyway, it's only the first stop on the route to their actual mail server.
You still have to run your own mail server somewhere,
but you point your MX record at McAfee S-A-A-S' IP
so they receive your mail, scan it for viruses, spam,
whatever else you can configure it to scan for.
If I was working for McAfee, I'd be scanning it for all kinds of secrets of security
and international intrigue and things like that, but I don't.
Then it gets passed along to your real mail server,
and I don't believe we know where that is exactly.
They don't exactly—that's me saying that.
They don't actually store any of your mail on their systems,
nor do you access it from there.
At least you hope they don't store it on their systems.
They certainly could because it's passing through their systems,
and I'm not in any way saying that they do this.
I'm just saying that whenever you have mail going to a service anyplace,
that's a point where something could happen if it's unencrypted.
Anyway, Jens goes on to say that this guy's looking at whatever the MX record points to
and making the incorrect assumption that it's Hillary's mail server.
Unless he can hack into McAfee's system and get the Hillary's account info
to determine the IP of the actual mail server, all of this is a pointless exercise.
I don't know if it's a pointless exercise.
I think it's an exercise.
I think it gets us talking and thinking about what we can do to figure out
where exactly this is and just how upset we'll get people
when we try to figure out how Hillary gets her email.
I also want to point out that it's never cool to just criticize somebody
who's putting something out there for being wrong because they're still exploring,
and that is the way to go.
That's the hacker spirit.
That's the hacker mindset.
That's what we're all about around here is exploring to the best of your ability,
and if you see somebody doing that and you maybe think they're not going down the right path,
then rather than just try and tear them down,
the best move is always to contribute what you've got to add to the discussion,
and everyone benefits and everyone wins.
So I'm very happy this guy has taken the time to look into this and get us talking about it,
and I hope he continues to do that to both this and other things,
and I hope other people do the same.
In fact, this might be a great opportunity to mention that there's 2600 meetings this Friday
where you can meet people that do that kind of thing all the time, right?
Yes, indeed.
We meet here in the city at the Citigroup Center, 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue Friday night,
and they're happening all over the world.
Check 2600.com slash meetings for one near you.
All over the world except in Israel where they happen on Thursdays.
Yes, indeed.
But everywhere else Fridays.
And go to 2600.com slash meetings and you'll get all the information there.
And if there isn't one going on near you, you can always start it, and the info for that is right there.
That's right, absolutely.
Okay, let's take another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, I heard that there are...
Do you remember this voice?
Wow, talk about someone calling from the past.
FM antenna that can pick up FM signals like radio stations.
It hasn't changed at all.
Is this true?
And if it is, what...
Because I had a cell phone one time that was like...
Instead of...
Before Bluetooth, it was one of those flip phones that you broadcast.
It would be a broadcasting thing where you play your MP3s through, like, an FM little transmitter in the cell phone
that you tune to, like, 88.1 or whatever they can station.
It doesn't have anything on the air.
Bernie, you wanted to answer that.
Rebel, what's your question, concisely?
Why would you ask him to do that?
Can a smartphone have a chip that is actually an FM antenna?
Because I know that I've heard this on the radio that cell phone companies do not want the FM antenna to be activated
because they want people to stream music online and use their data plan.
There's an interesting battle going on between the National Association of Broadcasters...
That is a good point.
...who's trying to push Congress or bribe Congress to pass a bill that would mandate,
would require the FCC to mandate that all cell phones have an FM radio chip in them
so they could receive FM radio broadcasts.
The ostensible argument behind that is that for, you know, when the cell phone networks go down,
you could pick up emergency messages over the FM radio band.
But most phones, my BlackBerry Z30 has an FM radio in it,
and you do have to plug in earphones to use as the antenna.
My mother has a track phone with an FM radio in it that you don't need to plug an antenna into.
It just works fine.
It's actually a pretty good little FM radio.
So to answer your question, there are some cell phones with FM radios in them.
You have to plug, like, earphones into the antenna and others.
You don't have to.
And I'd like more phones to have FM radios in it.
I just don't think it should be mandated by the FCC.
I have a handset that has the exact same thing.
Basically, the headphones act as an antenna.
I also had a very old Nokia, like, very small, like, candy bar form factor,
which had a FM radio in it as well.
Really an old phone.
It's probably almost 10, 12 years old by now.
But it was the same idea.
You plug in your headphones and the antennas.
Then the functionality works, but it uses a separate chip or antenna to pick up those waves.
Anyway, thanks to Rebel for calling in.
Good to hear his voice again after all these years.
Was that some recording you played as an April Fool's joke?
No, it was not a recording.
That was real.
Well, I think it was real.
Someone else could have been playing a recording, I suppose.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Now that's a recording.
All right.
Let's take this one instead.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Oh, okay.
Hey, how you doing?
What's on your mind?
I just wanted to turn off the phone real quick.
Are you guys familiar with NSPD number 16?
We can't really talk about that on the radio, can we?
No, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Tell us what this is.
No, no, because you just spoke about it with, you know, I don't know if it was April Fool's
or you said something about...
Specifically, what was it?
Well, you were talking about cyber warfare, right?
Yes.
I believe that was you, Rob.
We were talking about cyber threats and from overseas threatening American cyber interests.
What's your question?
Well, my question is, this is National Security Presidential Directive 16, which orders or
allows the president to launch, check this out, secret preemptive cyber warfare against
any number of foreign countries.
And they've been doing this since 1996.
Secret preemptive warfare, you say?
No, secret preemptive cyber warfare.
Cyber warfare.
Cyber war, sorry.
Yeah, okay, cyber war.
I mean, that's a great phrase right there.
Right, and I mean...
It's like double secret probation, really.
Yeah, and this is John Arquilla.
He's an associate professor of defense analysis of Naval Postgraduate School and an expert
on unconventional warfare.
And he says that back in 1996 that we take this very seriously when government does cyber
warfare.
So you're saying right now that the president, our POTUS, is freezing other people's assets
because they're, I guess, hacking us?
The executive order, which is something that started today.
It's not from 96.
But it's basically the president announcing that he has the power to seize the assets
of overseas interests as well as people seen to be supporting those overseas interests
that are threatening American cyber situations of all types.
So it's like if you're supporting them in any way or if you could be seen to contributing
to them, then your assets are also subject to just being grabbed without you being tried
and convicted of anything.
I mean, I agree with the caller that if what Rob was saying were true here on April 1st,
which it was cyber true, then it would be a cyber shame.
And cyber hypocrisy.
Cyber get on with it.
But I don't know if I can believe anything Rob says.
You know, is it possible, and thank you caller for that point and that question, is it possible,
and it's April 1st at the White House too, that Obama does have a sense of humor and
this could just all be a joke?
Well, and is it also, I mean, it's no wonder that we're in a day and age where this is
kind of standard protocol.
I mean, I think we'd be quite upset if our country wasn't able to do these things.
Golly, I mean, that would really get the pundits and the analysts and stuff barking and shouting
on TV and so on.
So I would just point out that it's always been a bit of a wild place, that darn Internet.
It's out of control.
With those anonymous people, you know?
Nobody knows who they are.
I don't want to be too flippant, but it is a huge set of protocols and a massive network.
And if you're a private actor, I mean, even private security companies, people acting
on behalf of corporations in the US have to be very careful about the kinds of testing
they do because of networks here in the US.
So there's a lot of careful treading if you are involved in security consultancies and
stuff like that, as well as you have nation states out there, you have private companies,
you have private security people that are doing things for hired.
It's a very complex situation and there are a lot of entities interfacing on that network.
So it's no wonder that this is now kind of a regular news story or development.
All right.
Well, that's going to have to do it for us here tonight on this special April 1st edition
of Off The Hook.
If you can't tell what's serious and what is not, welcome to our world because it's
just as crazy for us.
Hey, we're going to go out with this piece from a group known as ISIS.
Yes.
ISIS.
They were an all women band formed out of the ashes of the earlier groups, Goldie and
the Gingerbreads.
I'm not kidding.
Couldn't make this up.
And this came out in 1974.
It's called April Fool.
It seemed appropriate enough, didn't it?
ISIS.
Yeah.
No one.
No one remembers this group.
We'll be back again in two weeks.
Write to us.
O-T-H at 2600 dot com and enjoy the sounds of ISIS until then.
Have a good night.
Bye.