Go, go, go go, go, go.
Go, go, go go, go, go, go, go, go.
and a very good evening to everybody in the program.
Coming up next is Off the Hook here on WBAI New York.
It's 7.01.
Stay tuned.
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And a very good evening to everybody in the program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And Kyle.
Hi, I'm here.
And down in somewhere, Bernie S. on the phone.
Greetings from Portland, Maine.
You're kidding, right?
No, I was just camping for the past few days.
I'm in Portland, Maine right now.
That's a surprise.
I didn't know you were traveling.
Okay, but Portland, Maine.
What's the area code there, Bernie?
What's the what?
Area code?
Yeah.
You know, I would guess it's 917.
I know it's 907.
No, I don't know.
I haven't been using the phone for days.
907.
That's Alaska, Bernie.
We were just there.
You could have picked a better one than that.
So what is it for Portland?
You should know.
It used to be people would know these things.
People would know the area codes for geographic areas.
And nobody knows us anymore.
Sad.
We'll have to call Mike Uhas.
He'd do it now.
Yes, expert of days past on area codes.
But, you know, when the area codes stopped being geographical and started having all
kinds of digits in the middle, it got a lot harder.
But, you know, Maine is no excuse because I think Maine still has one.
And it's an interesting bit of folklore here.
It's not folklore because it's true.
If your original area code in your state had a zero in the middle, it meant that was the
only area code for the entire state.
So, for instance, oh, I don't know, New Mexico, 505.
Colorado, 303.
Alaska, 907.
Hawaii, 808.
Only one area code.
And the zero in the middle indicated that.
I don't know why they felt it necessary to do it that way.
But a place like New York, a one in the middle, 212, 914, 516, 315, 518, 716.
I'm only listing the old ones, not new ones like 718.
And then it got crazy.
And they started introducing 347 and 646 and, you know, ones that didn't make any sense
at all.
And that rule went out the window.
But if you go back to the old days, you'll be able to figure out how many area codes
were in a state just by looking at the middle digit.
How cool is that?
It's very cool.
And I've noticed that they don't have 10-digit dialing here.
It's just seven-digit dialing.
Because all the local businesses signs and billboards and business signs all have a seven-digit
phone number with no area code.
And I've noticed that there were no Verizon trucks up here.
Because I think about five or six years ago, Verizon sold their entire landline plant to
a company called First Choice or something.
That is the incumbent local exchange carrier for the entire state of Maine.
It's not Verizon.
I love it when they come up with a name that doesn't apply.
First Choice.
It was No Choice.
It didn't have...
Only Choice, they should call it.
Only Choice.
Wow.
Well, that's interesting.
So here we are again on this particular day of the week.
And this station turns me into a liar sometimes.
Many times, actually.
Because I said two weeks ago on these very airwaves that we would not be doing more fundraising
because we were only on for one week.
We were preempted last week.
And sure enough, we were.
However, we were told that the fund drive was extended.
I believe it's extended through tonight.
Tonight's the last night?
Is that...
I believe so.
It's the last night.
So this is the home stretch.
And we're a part of it.
So I'm sorry, people, for lying.
I didn't know I was lying at the time.
But we are still in fundraising mode.
And to make matters even better or worse, depending on your outlook, we're on for an
extra hour.
So the personal computer people managed to get off scot-free tonight.
But we're staying for an extra hour and hopefully getting your phone calls as far as pledges.
But here's something else that might make the whole thing a little bit more palatable.
We are actually going to be taking phone calls from listeners on the air, even though we
don't have an incoming phone line.
We're going to pull that off.
So we told people when we came in, you know, we're going to do this.
We're going to take phone calls tonight.
And they were like, how are you going to do that?
And we said, did we say watching?
No, we said listen, right?
Listen.
Yeah, because we don't want them watching.
We want them to listen.
And yeah, we'll do it.
We will take phone calls because we're hackers and that's what we do.
So yeah, we apologize for that.
But we have a couple of premiums.
Let's go over the premium we had last time, which was the hacker calendar, which I happen
to have a copy of right here.
So we can actually look at certain dates.
Rob, why don't you pick a date at random and tell the folks what happened in the hacker
world on that particular day.
And then we'll tell people how they can get their very own hacker calendar.
Autographed.
Autographed by all of us here at Off The Hook.
Okay, well, randomly turning to the 16th of April.
That was a few things happened that day.
That was the day the original specification for the file transfer protocol was written
by Abhay Busan in 1971.
FTP.
FTP.
Oh, that's a good one.
Also that day in 1977, the Apple II was introduced at the West Coast Computer Fair in 1977.
You see, these are things that are not on any other calendar.
These are things that are of interest to hackers.
And you'll get to know certain dates and what they mean, the significance.
And you'll remember certain things, too, that you can't believe were so long ago.
Yes, indeed.
Also on that date, the 16th of April 1993 was when the White House announced the ill-fated
Clipper chip.
Remember that?
Yes, I sure do.
Bernie, I know you do.
You blew one up once.
That's right.
We blew one up at the first...
Was it the first?
Was it the very first conference?
It was the very first one.
It was almost the very last one, too.
Yes, we used it in a sense.
You know, we didn't talk about the Clipper chip, but it was a backdoor encryption algorithm
built into a chip that was supposed to be mandated for all secure phones or so-called
secure phones in the United States.
And we didn't talk about how bad an idea this was.
At the end of the conference, at the closing ceremony, we actually detonated it with an
M-80.
It made a big bang.
I wanted to go off with a bang, and it did.
Yes, and actually that's captured for all time on video.
I believe if you go to our YouTube channel, channel 2600, you can find that particular
talk.
It was the closing ceremonies of the first HOPE in 1994.
And boy, what a lot of fun that was.
And hopefully we will have another HOPE next year in 2016.
We are starting the process of figuring out if we really want to go through with this
again, and if so, then we'll get all the details to you over the radio waves, as well
as over our website, hope.net.
Okay, so lots has happened in the last two weeks, since we were here last, including
this rather major news story about how every Android phone is woefully insecure.
Millions of phones, in fact, they're even saying a billion people, are running Google's
Android operating system can be hijacked by a malicious text message.
It's a reminder of something that became clear a long time ago.
Google made a mistake when it created Android that endangers the security of people who
entrust their personal lives to devices running it.
Those opinions are not necessarily ours.
They come from one Tom Simonite from the MIT Technology Review, who goes on to say,
the problem is not that Android has security holes.
All software does.
The problem is that Google lacks an effective way to fix them.
When security problems are discovered in Microsoft's Windows operating system, or
Apple's mobile or desktop equivalents, those companies can push out an update to affected
computers.
You get a message telling you to install the update direct from the company who made the
software, but in the case, I'm sorry, in the case of Microsoft's Windows, in addition,
Microsoft's Windows 10, which is being released, I think it was actually released already,
wasn't it?
Yes, indeed.
Okay, such updates are automatic and mandatory for home users.
Now, the model doesn't always work perfectly.
Apple has been accused of being too slow to roll out important security patches, but Google
cannot push you for an update for Android.
It hands out the operating system to device manufacturers for free.
They get to tinker with it, to add features or apps of their own, and are the only ones,
along with cellular carriers, in some cases, that can push updates to the devices they
sell.
Google does bind companies that use Android with some restrictions, for example, things
having to do with using its app store, but it does not require them to push out security
updates quickly.
So that leaves users of Android devices unable to avail themselves of what security experts
say is the most important strategy for staying safe, at least according to researchers at
none other than Google itself.
They reported recently on a survey that asked computer security pros how they stay safe
applying security updates emerged as the expert's number one priority.
So basically, there's a bunch of workarounds that Google has come up with for what is described
here as their flawed security model.
It has shunted many key functions into apps that it can push updates to via its app store,
but that doesn't cover all of Android, and the app store doesn't have a way to signal
to you whether an app wants to update for security reasons or just to add new features.
The text message vulnerability that was revealed very recently cannot be fully fixed by
upgrading apps, and it's not unlikely that most vulnerable phones will never get the
security patches for Android that Google has developed and will offer up to manufacturers
and cellular operators.
Interesting.
I'm kind of scared just reading this, seeing what the potential is for just getting this,
I think it's disguised as a multimedia message of one sort or another.
And if you get this message, you don't even have to open it.
Just getting this message will allegedly, according to these reports, infect your phone.
And of course, the news reports say hackers will be able to do all sorts of things
as if hackers were the only people that would do something.
Criminals of all sorts, governments, corporations, you name it, anybody
can take advantage of this gaping hole to do nefarious things.
And they say there's no evidence that's actually been used yet,
so I guess we have to see if all the fear is warranted.
Bernie, I know you don't have an Android phone, right?
No, neither I nor Kyle have Android phones.
We have BlackBerry phones, which are allegedly more secure.
One fix I've heard for this, a temporary workaround, is to disable your phone's
ability to automatically download MMS messages as opposed to SMS messages.
There is a setting you can say, don't automatically download MMS messages.
That will allow you to peruse them and see if they're from someone you trust,
and then you can download them individually.
It'll just take you a half hour to find out where that setting is on your phone,
but once you do that, you can just turn that off.
Speaking of updates to Android phones, I've noticed
that many times I'm alerted that certain apps want to update.
And many of them say, this app needs your permission to update.
And I never give permission.
Never give permission.
Just swipe it away.
And then I find out later, those apps updated without my permission.
How do you like that?
So if this didn't happen, I would have a whole lot of apps that were still wanting to update,
and I have none that want to update because they all did it behind my back.
And I've caught them in the act, too.
I've caught them.
I've turned on my phone, and I see 50 different things updating,
in the process of updating, nothing that I've given permission for.
Now, I don't know if I just have a bad relationship with this phone,
or if that's standard operating practice.
I'd like to hear from other people who may have experienced similar things.
Generally, when you have an app that just updates itself without asking permission,
that's an app that doesn't need any additional permissions for your phone.
Each app on your phone needs permission to use certain parts of your phone,
like the ability to see your call history, or your contact list, or your saved files,
or other stuff, depending on what the app is and what it needs to do.
So, when the requirements of the app change from version to version,
that's when it's supposed to ask you permission, I believe, is the way it works.
But if it doesn't need to ask you permission for any changes,
then it'll just update itself because it doesn't care,
because it needs the same permissions it always did.
Well, just continuing with this story, just for a moment,
to give more details as to the specifics.
The particular flaw exists in Android's media tool,
which is called Stage Fright, and I've never used it.
So, I don't know.
That doesn't make me safe.
But it's just interesting.
Now, this is one of these articles.
This comes from a site, inquisitor.com,
where inquisitor is spelled wrong, and you have to figure out how.
But it's one of these news stories that basically points the finger at hackers as,
again, the only people that could possibly take advantage of this.
Hackers only need to have a victim's Android mobile phone number
to send a remote code execution bug that exploits Android's Stage Fright flaw.
The Android hacking code would be written
into a seemingly innocent multimedia message that gets sent to the phone.
And while the hacker would then be able to snoop around areas of the phone
that Android's Stage Fright's security permissions allow,
a hacker...
Boy, I don't like this place.
I don't like this site at all.
You just keep pounding it into your head that hackers are evil.
And you hear that so many times, so many different places.
Yeah, there's enough places in the world saying that.
Yeah, well, I'm going to say it again, just so I can prove how many there are.
A hacker would still be able to access stored photos and videos,
including those stored in an attached SD card.
They could record audio and videos.
They could access the Android devices, Bluetooth, all sorts of fun things.
And you know what?
My view on this is that if it's possible, you should do it.
If you know how to do this, go crazy.
Hack away and figure out how to be as nefarious as possible.
Have your voice come out of people's phones.
Change their background picture.
Download their contact list.
Let us know, though, when you do it.
Instead of...
Half the articles that you read these days on hackers,
I don't know if people notice this, but half of them simply come from PR pieces
that are put out by people either selling something
or people who want you to attend a conference or something like that.
If you look in just about every single story, you don't get the full story.
You get up to a certain point and then...
By the way, the details will be released at a future date.
In other words, the details have not yet been released, yet it's a major story.
When the details get released, that is when I really take an interest.
I want to know about this.
I want to see how it works.
I don't want to have to buy some guy's corporate security software package to figure it out.
Lots of times you read these stories and it's a security expert talking about something
and they give his website and that particular website when you go to it
will tell you how you can be more secure and not scared to death like you just were
reading the story and hearing him describe how insecure things were.
Bernie, do you think I've got it right as far as that goes?
Yeah, it's pretty much how it is, Emmanuel, and I agree with you.
People should exploit this thing because the more it's exploited,
the more likely that Google will pressure mobile carriers to push out rollouts.
As the article you originally read stated, the mobile telcos, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile,
and AT&T Wireless, they typically don't push out small updates like this.
They wait for a major operating system upgrade before they push these out to the Android phones.
So you're not going to get any results soon unless you call your mobile carrier and say,
what are you going to do to fix this?
If they see that it's a real problem that's happening
more frequently, they might actually do something about it.
Very, very true. Go ahead, Kyle.
There's two things here. I think one is clicking things erroneously. It's a classic
thing with spam and malware and things in the past. It's for quite a while been
a good rule of thumb is be very vigilant about things that pop up and things that
you receive in all user interfaces on all devices. It's prudent to be very critical of things,
especially things that come out of nowhere or seem overly friendly or a little too perfect or not.
So that's one thing. The other thing is the encouragement of diversity or at least
the consistency like what Bernie said about pushing updates.
The platform itself, Android specifically, is fairly open. It's fairly
capable as far as people designing things, modifying it, and building it the way they
want it to be built or to run and on devices of their choice. But part of that disconnect,
like that lack of coordination or the freedom of it that they're in, I think, keeps it from being
consistent or consistently supported as far as updates go. So it is a little bit
sort of, I think, early still for that operating system to get really mature to a point where it's
maintained, especially given the amount of people that depend on it.
Yeah, that's part of the problem with the Android platform right now is that
the install base is completely fragmented because, as you said, each company, each provider,
each manufacturer gets the updates and then, when they're good and ready, pushes them to
their customers. So what that means is that you've got all sorts of different versions of Android
running around out there in the wild. And with most other platforms, computers, what have you,
you can upgrade your operating system when an upgrade comes out, whether it's a commercial
product like Windows or whether it's a free one like Linux. If an update comes out, you can go
and get that update and apply it. But with Android, you don't always even have that option.
Unless you've done things like root your device and use alternative ROMs and things like that.
So it's kind of troublesome for Android users now who maybe want to upgrade and try and stave off
vulnerabilities like this, but don't even have the option because whoever happened to build their
phone hasn't gotten around to providing it for them. One other comment. This really reminds me,
I don't know, Rob, if you feel the same way, but it reminds me a lot of 90s stuff with
the ubiquity of Windows machines being then a target because so many people have it. And you're
likely to see a little bit more of this kind of stuff because it is such a huge target. There
are tons of Android devices out there and people I think that would like to exploit this or have
a motive to are really going to exploit this fragmentation and kind of disparate installation
base. It just is sort of, I guess, discombobulated. It's out of sync. It's not all sort
of moving at the same pace. But in this case, it's exaggerated. It's quite a bit different than
the sort of stratification of Windows installs and stuff that we did see back in the 90s.
I just wanted to bring up one other story before we move on.
And that comes from a site known as Kim Commando. I don't know if you've ever heard of that
particular radio. Yeah. This is just another example of what I'm talking about. They're
talking about the dangers of using Wi-Fi, the dangers of using public Wi-Fi at hotels,
coffee shops, other places. A hacker on the same network, yes, a hacker, only a hacker,
can snoop on your internet browsing if you aren't careful or even slip a virus onto your computer
if it's set up wrong. Now, what if the hacker didn't even have to be in the same building?
What if they could be miles away and high up in the air? That's the dream of the Italian company,
wait for it, the hacking team. So what this particular hacker expert or technology expert
is saying is that the hacking team is composed of hackers. That is the definition. It's so ironic.
It's really making me grit my teeth so hard. If you haven't heard the name, they mistakenly
say the hacking company, but they mean to say the hacking team, specializes in digital spying and
sells the information it finds to governments around the world, including governments trying
to silence dissidents and committing human rights abuses. So at the end of this story,
what winds up happening is that they refer to hackers as the threat here. Instead of
needing dozens of hackers roaming around the canvas of cities, Wi-Fi hotspots, you just need
a few drones and no one at any hotspot would be the wiser. If that's a worry for us in America,
you can imagine it would be a nightmare for political dissidents in a less free country.
In other words, hackers are the threat to dissidents in these foreign countries because
they're the ones that are eavesdropping on them and selling these exploits to oppressive
governments. It is just so frustrating because that is exactly what hackers do not do. That is
what corporate drones, if you forgive the expression, will do when they're trying to
ally themselves with those in the technological world who look up to hackers. They say,
yeah, we're hackers. We'll do this. We'll sell you this. That's not what a hacker does.
It's just so incredibly frustrating to see corporate America just buy into this
and to see the name get subverted even more than it already was.
Any thoughts on that, Bernie?
Yes. I've lost count of the number of talks we've had at HOPE conferences over the past 20 years
of hackers who've developed some means or technology to empower whistleblowers and
activists and dissidents, political dissidents, to remain private and not have their communications
eavesdropped by some evil foreign government or domestic government or so-called hacking team
company. As you pointed out, this is exactly the opposite of what hackers typically do.
Just because a company calls themselves the hacking team doesn't mean they're made up of
hackers. They're made of greedy people who thrive financially in endangering other people's privacy,
frankly.
Yeah. I think a good test of these sort of things, if you hear of something being done or
being presented by hackers and you want to verify the veracity of this term,
see if they're trying to sell you something that you don't understand,
or see if they're trying to help you understand something. Because I think the kind of hackers
that maybe fill up this room right now and maybe do the things that we talk about here,
that I think there is a whole community of hackers out there that will not just try and
sell you something incomprehensible and make some money and keep you scared. Because that's not what
the hacker community is all about. Correct. Yeah. And yes, it's extremely
frustrating and annoying. And we need to speak out against that whenever it happens.
Yeah. I think the amount of information about how things actually work is really low by comparison
to the fear and the kind of hyperbole that we've heard in the context. I mean, really,
you want people to understand how to use these networks safely and how to use machines and
software safely, not scare them away from the resource or from the technology itself.
All right. I mentioned the hacker calendar before. I don't think I gave the phone number out on how
you can get your own copy. That phone number is 212-209-2950. A pledge of $50 will get you
an autographed copy of the 2016 hacker calendar that features all kinds of interesting facts.
Rob, you got another date to read to us as far as something that happened in the hacker world?
And in addition to virtually every day of the year having some bit of history attached to it,
we have no less than 14 full-color glossy pictures of payphones from around the world.
And that's really, really cool. I know, Kyle, you were involved in the selection process.
Yes. Heavily, heavily involved. And these submissions are lovingly sent to us from
people all over, really, just who travel, who maybe are from one place or the other.
They visit someplace. They bring back these incredible, gorgeous photos. And really,
we get so many that it is hard to get them into our regular section of the magazine. So,
we tend to go through and find the best. And this is really the fun part, is digging through,
sifting through many different locations, coming up with themes, sub themes, parallel themes.
It really is an art to come up with this collection. And it ends up being 16,
14, I think, really gorgeous photos of really hundreds, maybe more that we go through.
And then we come up with some information about each location and the submission,
who sent it to us. We definitely notify everyone who's involved. And then
we populate the days with really fascinating hacker-related milestones in history.
Yes. And virtually every day of the year has something that happened in the hacker world.
So, that's what makes it really, really interesting. Again, 212-209-2950 is our phone
number. For a $50 pledge, you will get the 2016 Hacker Calendar autographed by everybody at
OffTheHook. And you will never again wonder when something happened in hacker history,
when a particular site was hacked, when a particular product was started that everybody
uses today, or when a bit of freedom was signed away into some horrible bill. We have it all. We
have all kinds of really, really interesting things. And you'll benefit from all that
by calling 212-209-2950. But most of all, you'll be supporting the radio station and
keeping shows like OffTheHook on the air. And I'd point to also the fact that we've
kept this very fresh, very current. I know you worked really hard and got a lot more real
prescient, recent stuff that is important to reflect on over the next year. And it's a good
reminder of the kind of work that hackers are involved with and the kind of important
steps that technology and society's conception of technology, their use of it, it's how it's
been influenced and how that direction has been shaped by hackers.
There are dates in there from 2015 and from last year, 2014. It's updated constantly. When
something major happens, we either know about it or we're alerted to it. And we simply add it into
the list of dates. And it's my hope that in the next year or so, we will fill in any blank dates
that are left because there are a couple, but less and less every year. And if we know of a blank
date, well, maybe we should make an extra effort to make sure something gets hacked on that day.
Yeah, that's what I think we've been encouraging, especially young people that are on the verge of
their first big triumphant hack. We like to schedule them and let them know what dates work
for them. Yes, but we want to be careful. We want to make sure people are responsible
because we want people to do the right thing as well. Be mischievous and learn how technology
works. I'm embellishing it. We got a letter from somebody who said we're radicalizing people
here on the radio. Yeah, we got a letter saying that we're radicalizing. How do you like that?
We'll read that letter. Is this radical in the 1980s sense of like, wow, that's radical?
No, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. You have a date for us?
Well, I do. I opened this randomly to February 2015 and there's all sorts of good things going
on. Of course, this is the 2015 calendar I'm holding in my hand. You'll be getting the 2016
calendar. But we have things like the first telephone book was a single page published by
the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut on the 21st of February, 1878.
We have things like the 10th of February, Deep Blue becomes the first machine to win a chess
game against a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov, 1996. What date is this? That's the
10th of February, 1996 this happened. On the 10th of February, 1996 also, takedown.com was hijacked
by the Mitnick Liberation Front. Oh, wow. I remember that. Yes, indeed. As a spectator,
not as a participant. As a spectator. But whatever, there are so many different categories
of things you'll find in here. Things of just scientific interest like the 19th of February,
Soviet Union launches the Mir spacecraft, 1986. There's stuff particular to hacker history. The
first bulletin board system goes online, established by Ward Christensen, 1978 on the
16th of February. It's all here. The new, the old, all over the world, all kinds of history.
Let me ask you, Rob, do we have an entry for today? Do I know what month it is?
This is the 5th of August today. This is the 5th of August already.
Wow. There is nothing here for the 5th of August. So today is one of those days. Folks,
you have about, well, I guess if we count the West Coast, it would count as today. But you have
about four and a half hours or so to hack something and get it into the papers and make it something
really monumental so that it'll go into the 2017 calendar when that's done. As of when the 2015
calendar was printed, there was nothing listed for the 5th. But for the 6th, the World Wide Web
Project was announced on Usenet by Tim Berners-Lee, 6th of August, 1991.
Now you know you can celebrate that fact tomorrow. Right in early. Celebrate the birth of the World
Wide Web. You can also celebrate the anniversary of the first chaos communication camp in
Altlandsberg, Germany, 1999 on the 6th of August. Really?
Yes, indeed. I think we have the one that's about to begin
in there as well. Is that the same date or is that another day further in advance?
Oh, you know what? You're looking at last year's calendar.
I'm looking at the 2015 calendar.
But okay, if you were looking at the one that doesn't exist yet because it's being printed
right now, then you would see that particular date.
Which you might be if you're listening to this on MP3 in the mysterious future.
212-209-2950 is our phone number. $50 pledge gets you the brand new 2016 hacker calendar filled
with all kinds of dates and amazing images of payphones. Tell us something about the
payphone that you're looking at right now, August 2015. What payphone is that?
This is a payphone in Morocco. The photo is by Leo, I'm going to say this wrong, Leo Guetier
Whiting. But it's a beautiful looking phone kiosk in Morocco. Very obviously sort of
Moroccan wall behind it. And it's a very interesting design of payphone. It looks
like something out of the Jetsons. I mean, you guys can see this. It's sort of nice and orange
and blue. And it's got this saucer looking thing on top.
Oh, hold that up a little bit. You did a little glare there. Okay, yeah, that's really not...
Look at that folks. That's something else. And that's the kind of image you will get. You can
have that in your kitchen. You can have it in your bedroom. You could hang it up in your car
if you want. We don't care where you put it. But it's a calendar, a full size wall calendar that
you will prize and treasure every day of the year. And you know what? It even works this year too.
The last four months of this year are in there just in case you want to get a head start.
Yeah. And these photos are very high quality, very sharp, very pretty. I mean,
you could take these pages and save them when the month passes and just have
some nice posters because they are beautiful images. And pay phones are,
I think, a beautiful piece of technology that deserve another look.
Yeah. It's the largest that we can print in any publication we do. These photos are the largest
ones that we've done. And we pay special attention to make sure that they're cropped in the right way,
make sure that they're filling out the space that we've allocated for them and that they are of high
quality. So, because we get kind of a range sent in, but it really is cool how they come out. And
just a lot of the beautiful, beautiful color and stuff that you've just different shapes and
designs are amazing. There's a huge variety with pay phones around the world if people aren't
familiar. And what's amazing, you alluded to this earlier, Kyle, is that people send us these photos
from around the world. Now, we've been publishing the magazine since 1984 and the pay phone photos
evolved over time. And it's a really mainstream, it's really popular now. There's got to be like
five, like half a dozen different pay phone dedicated sites. Oh, yeah. And I'm pretty sure
the magazine and it started here with 2600 and off the hook. I mean, it's a very popular thing
now to photograph pay phones. But yeah, absolutely. I believe it started with the magazine, definitely.
Well, that's really the only place people could have their pay phone photos printed
and have anybody actually take it seriously. But what we found out back in, I guess it was in the
90s that this really started. Yeah. How did that emerge? Well, someone sent in a pay phone photo
and we said, hey, that's cool. And we decided to print it. And, you know, what's funny about that,
and we learned this going through the archives and digitizing them, which is part of a whole
big project we're involved in now. But we printed that on, I think, the inside back,
inside front cover, I think we printed a pay phone photo. And at that point, we had gone color on the
covers, but we didn't realize we could go color on the other side of the cover as well. Of course,
we could. But it took us literally years to realize, hey, we could be printing these pay
phone photos in color. And then we started doing that. And it really exploded at that point.
Now, we're always employing people to send us things, send us interesting pictures,
pay phone photos by far, even to this day, when pay phones are supposedly dead and being
pulled out of their existence, wherever they happen to be. That is still the most popular
thing that we have at the magazine, which is incredible. In fact, if you have a pay phone
photo that you'd like to send us anywhere in the world, payphonesat2600.com. But, you know,
we also, also love to get articles from people, because that is how we learn what's going on.
People out there are playing with all kinds of technology. And sometimes the technology
is really low tech as well. But you have a hacker mindset that's attached to that.
And that's why we employ people to send us articles as well. And I know,
you know, it's 2015 and nobody writes anymore. I hear that all the time. I hear nobody reads,
nobody writes, everybody just communicates by text message. And I don't believe it. I don't
believe it's true. I know there are exceptions out there. And if anybody qualifies to be an
exception, it's a hacker. So please email us your articles, articlesat2600.com. What's an article?
An article is something where you basically focus on a particular device or operating system or
telephone or anything that you have a passion about. And you tell us everything you can about
it and include all kinds of security holes, security exploits, ways that you can get around
certain systems. If you know of a security operation that's going on as far as say,
I don't know, TSA or something, and you have a secret password that'll get you around all
the security or something like that. It's probably not the best example, but send it to us. Because
we believe in printing information like this. We're not going to hold it over people's heads
and say, yeah, you can get this if you come to our seminar or if you become a client of ours.
Yeah, we'll say, you know, buy the magazine and you'll get it that way. Sure. But after it's out,
it's out whether you get the magazine or not. We believe in the information getting out there.
So please, if you have this kind of knowledge and you can put pen to paper or
finger to keyboard, articles at 2600.com. If you have something shorter to say
and you want to join our infamous letters columnist group of people, which probably is
in the thousands by now, letters at 2600.com. It's magical. It continues to this day and beyond.
And I know things are very troubled in the publishing world. Believe me, I know that.
But this is something that I think is a tradition that we are going to carry on for
a very long time. But pay phones, yeah, pay phones are right in front of everything.
That's always been something I loved about the magazine was it is fueled directly by
its readers and its community. The articles are written by people who read the magazine.
The articles are written by people with something to say who want to put it out there. And every
time I've heard from somebody, you know, oh, you should write about subject XYZ in the magazine.
It's like, well, you write about it because, you know, if you know about it and you want to share
that knowledge, that's where 2600 gets its stuff. I mean, you're the editor and, you know, you write
a bit in the beginning and stuff. But like the bulk of the magazine is fueled directly by the
readers and the people who submit. And it's something that I still love about it is, you
know, you pick up an issue from any point in its publishing history and you flip through it and
it's such a vivid picture of everything that was going on in all sorts of corners of the scene.
Just what was going on socially, what was going on technologically, what was going on,
you know, in the activism spheres or any of these sort of corners of it. It's a really good
picture and it's a good snapshot of whatever was going on. And your ideas, your glint of insight
is only real if it's portable. And in this language that happens to be English or some good
prose. Use your words. You know, those letters, those articles are really crucial to moving
dialogue, to getting other people's ideas involved, getting other eyeballs on certain
systems and really pushing the limits and also evolving the conversation and people's understanding
and thinking around technology. But your words don't have to be perfect. You know, if English
is not your first language or if you know you have some grammar issues, we generally correct
all of that. It takes time. But if the content is of interest, that's what we really want to
focus on. And there were so many people out there who couldn't do it without the readers.
Absolutely not. And we shouldn't even try because it would be rather presumptuous to assume that,
yeah, we know everything about technology and we're just going to write about what we're told
either through those press releases and PR pieces or by our own limited exposure to it.
I mean, I could write about Android phones, but there are so many people that know
so much more about it and can say all kinds of things that I would never even dream of exploring.
That's what we want to see. We want to push the envelope a bit. So, again, articles at 2600.com
and letters at 2600.com and pay phones at 2600.com are ways you can contribute to the magazine.
212-209-2950 for the Hacker Calendar.
That's how you can contribute, yeah, to this radio station and keep this
radio show and station on the air. And $50, you'll get a Hacker Calendar autographed.
212-209-2950. That's 212-209-2950. Support WBAI and Off The Hook and this kind of discussion.
And you could also go to give2wbai.org and you can go for the calendar. You can go for
other premiums that the station has, just some WBAI stuff. Just indicate that you're donating
on behalf of Off The Hook because donations count toward the particular show that brings them in.
And that helps us out here and helps us keep this particular show on this particular station
on the air. So, 212-209-2950 or give2wbai.org. And it's not just during this show that we're
broadcasting. You can go there any time and support the station, support the show, help us
keep doing what it is that we love to do. Emmanuel.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just want to say, I want to congratulate you for the many years of documenting these
payphone photos, or rather, publishing them. The readers document the existence of these
unusual payphones around the world. But you're putting them in a magazine, 2600
magazine, the Hacker Quarterly. And now in the annual Hacker Calendar, I think this
deserves merit. I mean, there is nobody else doing this, to my knowledge. And
this is technology that connects people around the world, these payphones, believe it or not.
They still exist around the world. But I have a question for you. Is it a conscious decision
to not publish the payphone's phone number in a magazine? Or is it in the calendar? I just think
it'd be neat to have the phone number along with the picture, although maybe the people who submit
the pictures don't send you the phone number? I don't recall an instance where someone has
sent us the phone number along with the payphone. But in most cases, if they did that in New York,
it wouldn't work because they don't take incoming calls. The idea really is to print the picture,
not necessarily have the payphone wrung into oblivion by people calling it,
wanting to speak to somebody interesting. There's a caveat. I just say that we will
consider talking about it if it's a part of why that phone is unique. If it's a part of the story,
we will include it. And we've done that in the magazine a lot. We've talked about
payphones that work for free of charge, different ways you can use a phone, if it's part of why it
is unique. But we've never wiped out a phone number that might be visible. In fact, I think
there are a couple of photos where somebody has written the phone number behind the phone in Magic
Marker or something like that. And we don't edit any of that out. What drives me crazy watching
various television programs these days is how much is digitized out. They make that little digital
jumbly image because they don't want you to see a logo on somebody's t-shirt. They don't want you
to see somebody's face way off in the distance because they didn't get a signed certificate from
that person or something like that. And most of the things you're seeing these days are cut out
in one way or another. So we try not to do that. Yeah, we stick to pretty pure photography. We
take it as it's given to us and we do very, very little modifying of any of the photos.
Oh, and I know people out there are asking, sometimes I can sense when people are asking
something en masse, how they can contribute to a future Hacker Calendar. Well, if you contribute
to the payphone section of the magazine, you automatically are also entered into the Hacker
Calendar possibility. So if your photos don't get printed in the magazine, they may show up
in the Hacker Calendar. We notify you either way and you get all kinds of cool things in exchange.
Just make sure if you've got a digital photo that it's high enough quality where we can print it,
not web resolution or anything like that. Yeah, exactly. Something that could be blown up and
printed. And please don't pose in front of the payphone because while you might be an interesting
person, it's not you that we want to print, it's the payphone. So make sure that it's just the
payphone you take a picture of, not your darling little niece or something in front of you.
You can pose with it if just for yourself in a separate photo.
If you want to send us a photo of yourself, sure, go ahead. We're not going to stop you.
We'll take anybody's photo of a payphone. And if they were willing to include themselves,
that's fine. You can send it to us. But there's a myriad of things,
guidelines that we could go over as far as what works and what doesn't. But
suffice to say, do your best work and send it to us. We'd be happy to share it.
We have another premium that we are also offering. This is not one of our premiums,
it's one of the station premiums, but we want people to call in regardless.
And it's going to provoke a bit of an interesting conversation. It's a DVD, it's a documentary.
It's an investigative documentary called Mobilize. It explores the potential long-term
health effects from cell phone radiation, including cancer and infertility and all
kinds of other fun things. The film examines the most recent scientific research, follows
national legislative efforts, and illuminates the influence that technology companies have
on public health. Mobilize features interviews with numerous doctors, politicians, cancer patients,
and technology experts. Now, I know this is a controversial topic. Whenever we discuss it,
some people are livid that it's all a bunch of nonsense. And there are other folks who are just
as passionate saying that we don't talk about it enough. I'm kind of on the fence myself,
to be honest. I realize that we're using these devices more than we've ever used them before.
And I think it's a bit presumptuous to say that, yeah, there's definitely no health effects
from this. We know for sure. I don't think we know anything for sure. Not at this early stage
of the game. We haven't been using these things longer than, say, a decade in their current form.
Now, I know they're low power. Okay, great. It's probably better than holding a high power
transmitter next to your head. But it's quite possible that something could be there that we
don't know about yet. I'm always open to us being ignorant. Anyway, if you want a copy of this film
to decide for yourself, please call 212-209-2950 and ask for the Mobilize DVD. That's for a pledge
of $100. 212-209-2950. And now let the discussion on this premium begin. Bernie, how about you?
Well, I mean, I have my doubts, too, that cell phones can cause cancer. The key thing,
it's not a matter of dispute, is that, yes, cell phones do emit radiation, but it's not the kind of
ionizing radiation you get from an x-ray or something. This is just radio signals. No
different than the WBAI emits from the top of the Empire State Building. It's about 4,000 watts,
4,300 to be specific. Cell phones emit radio signals anywhere from 800 to a couple thousand
megahertz, and at extremely low power, a tiny fraction of a watt. But this radiation is no
more different than radiation from, say, a light bulb. As far as radiating, it's something,
radiating means something comes out of something. But people hear the word radiation, they think
x-ray radiation, the kind of ionizing radiation that would cause people to get cancer.
That's not the kind of radiation that we're talking about with cell phones.
Whether non-ionizing radiation of the type that cell phones emit can cause cancer or not,
the jury is still out, and I agree that the cell phone companies, the manufacturers, and the
carriers all want to prevent people from being afraid to buy cell phones. But at the same time,
I have yet to see a serious study that shows that they are dangerous. But the jury is still
out. I haven't made up my mind yet. Yeah, that's sort of what I think,
is the jury is still at lunch, and when they get back, maybe they'll have time to actually
look at the evidence. The evidence is still coming in. This is, in the scheme of things,
new technology. They said all kinds of things about how insecticide wasn't harmful and all kinds
of other technology that turned out, or products that turned out to be very harmful. We just
blithely went along. Cigarettes at one point. Doctors were recommending cigarettes back in the
1950s. That's not that long ago. I don't think it'll take a long time for the jury to come back
with some evidence one way or another. But let's not close ourselves off to the discussion,
and that's what we're talking about here. That's what we always talk about at WBAI,
and that's why we agreed to offer this tonight, because it provokes discussion. Whether you agree
with it or not, at least know what people are saying about it, and maybe you can come up with
a really good argument against it, or maybe you'll be convinced and find more evidence.
212-209-2950. The film is called Mobilized. It's asked for the Mobilized DVD pledge of $100,
and you'll have all kinds of controversial and exciting things to talk about.
Yeah. The jury is still out.
All right. Let's stop saying the jury is out.
The jury is way out. It's far out. It's so far out, man. What I think about this is that, okay,
I have my feelings about the issue of cell phone radiation. I don't think it's a big deal. I don't
think I'm worried about it. But at the same time, what I respect about this is the ability to have
that discussion when the mainstream basically doesn't, and that's what we do here at WBAI.
We give voices to people with concerns that might not be generally accepted or might not be
fashionable or what have you, and we enable those discussions to continue to happen.
If you call 212-209-2950 or go to give2wbai.org and show your support for this station,
you can help those discussions still happen. Whether or not you agree with them, that's
something about this station. If you switch it on, whether it's something you agree with or
whether it's something you disagree with, whether it's something that you think is completely
sensible or something that you think is wackadoo, it's still something that I think is interesting
and worth putting out there just for the discussion value. The venue that we have here is intensely
precious and valuable, and if we lost, nothing like this would ever come up again to replace it.
So 212-209-2950 or go to give2wbai.org, show your support for this show, for this station,
and help us keep doing what we do, and help others on the station keep doing what they do,
and help the station keep existing.
Yeah, call in 212-209-2950 and pledge your support for Off the Hook and WBAI and one of these great
gifts. I haven't seen this disc about RF stuff, but it sounds fascinating. It's definitely something
you should research instead of just buying a bunch of products, access points, and handsets,
stuff that do radiate stuff. You should look into it.
Nothing annoys me more than people who dismiss things out of hand. Well, actually, maybe something
does annoy me more than that, and that's hearing a position put forth without any kind of questioning
whatsoever. So if we were to be saying that Mobilize is gospel and this is a fact and you
have to believe it and you're stupid if you don't, without allowing any kind of discussion,
that would annoy me even more. And that's not what WBAI is about. We're about,
well, at least that's not what we should be about. I know there might be exceptions,
but we should be talking about controversial things and debating them and having opposite
opinions. I don't mean crazy opinions, you know. I mean opinions that are logical, that have
different ideas, different conclusions. They're all kinds, you know, this is how we wound up with
the right wing in control for so long, is that we legitimized so many wacky viewpoints,
and before you knew it, it became something legitimate, and Fox News was born. You know,
we don't have to go down that road. We can have intelligent conversations about all manner of
things. That's what makes the hacker scene and what we do and this station such a good fit,
is that the hacker mindset basically is about being inquisitive. It's about exploring. It's
about doing what you can to learn all you can about something, whether or not it's, you know,
it's something that you're generally expected to question. And that's what this station does,
and that's what we do. And so, you know, 212-209-2950, give to WBAI.org, help keep this
going. I mean, we've, this show has been on the air since the 1980s. This station has been on
the air since the 1960s. And this is the only thing that has kept it on the air. You know,
we don't, we don't have, you know, we don't have paid commercials on here. We don't tell
you what brands of beverages to drink or anything like that. What we do tell you is simply that
this radio that you're listening to, if you enjoy it, support it, help it keep happening,
212-209-2950 or give to WBAI.org. And if we see a flurry of calls come in, we are going to rack
our brains and figure out how we can take your phone call on the air. Now, I should point out,
we do not have the means to do that right now. This studio is not set up to do that. We have
Bernie on the phone. Bernie, say hi. Hi, I'm here, but we only have one line and it's only
for outgoing calls. And you're on it. Yeah, there's absolutely no way you can share that
line with anybody. It's crammed. There's no room. So don't even try, folks. You're not going to get
on the phone that way. We'll think of something else because we have technology here. We have
all kinds of buttons and knobs and connectivity and various things like that. So it might not work.
It might end in spectacular failure, but at least we're going to try because we have not
talked to our listeners since we were in Harlem. And that's a long time ago. We have not heard the
cheerful voices of our listeners. So we want to hear that tonight. We want to hear your voices.
But first, we want to see your pledges. Now, we're not holding the show hostage. We're not,
you know, doing anything like that. But if we don't get the calls we need, we will kill.
Well, I guess that is sort of like a hostage thing, isn't it? There's a better way I can
phrase that. If we don't get the calls that we want to get, it shows us that there's not
enough support out there to continue the conversation and open up the phone lines and
have a nice little dialogue with our listeners. So please, why don't you prevent that from happening
and be nice and pledge to us? 212-209-2950. Now, you're not pledging ideology. You're not pledging
your firstborn or anything like that. You're just pledging either $50 or $100 or $150 if you want
items. We have the Hacker Calendar autographed by off-the-hook staffers and we have the mobilized
DVD all about the potential dangers of cell phone radiation. Yes, it makes a terrific gift. 212-209-2950
is our telephone number. We'd like to see people call in in the moments ahead. Now, we are on for
an extra hour tonight. So the first hour is rapidly coming to an end. But during that second hour,
we would like to take phone calls and actually hear the cheery voices of our listeners. Wouldn't
that be nice? It would be nice. I miss that. It's not that I'm tired of just hearing the same
voices on the radio all the time, but I would like to hear some new voices here. All right. And
Bernie, hopefully you can hear the voices too, but we're not sure you'll be able to hear them. But at
the very least, you'll be there. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead. Oh, I said fair enough. Okay. I
think you're on some kind of delay. Are you? Well, I've been turning the mute button on and off so
you don't hear foghorns and seagulls here in Portland, Maine. We want to hear foghorns and
seagulls. Have you met us? Come on. Of course, sound effects. Let's hear them. Okay, well,
I'll leave the mute button off then because there's seagulls flying around here. And foghorns.
And foghorns. There was just a big ship that blew a big horn. But not foghorn leghorn.
No, he's my favorite, y'all. All right. Moving on here. We do have listener mail,
and sometimes we threaten to read it on the air, and this is one of those times we're going to do
just that. We alluded to one before. We'll get to that in a moment. Our email address, oth at
2600.com. Although this guy wrote to oth at 2600.org and it somehow got to us. I guess we own
that domain as well. Hey, guys, I'm a frequent listener of the show. Just want to thank you for
such a great program. Also, I want to know if you guys have watched the new USA Network series called
Mr. Robot. If not, I highly recommend it. It's about hackers and hacking stuff, but without so
much bull. And thank you, Antman. No relation to the Marvel superhero, they claim. Well, thank you,
Ant, for writing in. And you know what? Kyle and I actually did, based on many of our listeners
writing in, we did sample that program on USA. I haven't watched USA Network in forever.
I know. I think MacGyver was the last show I watched on USA.
That's not even from the USA Network. This is an original. And I just didn't like the sound
of watching the USA Network, even though USA probably doesn't even stand for United States
of America. Does anybody know what USA originally stood for? It's probably one of those, like MSNBC
stood for... United Studio Artists.
No, CNBC is the one. Cable News and Business Channel. Even though it's an NBC channel,
the NBC didn't stand for NBC. It doesn't.
And MSNBC probably stands for something else. So USA, who knows what it stands for? Point is,
it's a channel I didn't watch very often. But a lot of listeners said...
A lot of people recommended the show.
Mr. Robot's a good show, they said.
I don't think it disappointed.
It's a good show. I agree. We've watched a few episodes now and...
It's got its own aesthetic, its own pace, its own feel. Definitely dark. It's a little
surreal in some ways, I think.
As it should be. Life is dark. Life is surreal. And life takes place in the Lower East Side,
which is where a lot of this takes place.
You like that, don't you?
Coney Island. Yeah, absolutely. It's well done. It's got the right mood to it. And I think it's,
for the most part, there are a few things, but for the most part, it's technologically accurate.
It's very accurate. Whenever they're working with machines, whatever they're doing is
pretty well what you would be doing if you were trying to do what they were doing.
We've watched CSI Cyber, so we know of what we speak.
Yeah, we know. We know the good stuff.
We've been to the other side of the mountain, and now we're coming back to the good side. And
I think, hopefully, it's been renewed for another year, but hopefully it'll keep up
the high quality we've seen so far. Robert, have you seen it?
I have not, but I've been told by many, many people that I should be watching it.
I'm telling you right now, again, that yes, you should. How about you, Bernie?
I have not seen it yet. I watch very little television, but
if a TV was near me and it was on, I would watch it.
Okay, new rule. I think this should be something that everybody affiliated with
the show should do, is watch every program having to do with hacking. I know that every
program has to do with hacking. Could we have a vote?
Every single program has a hacker in it someplace.
Could we vote?
But how about the shows that focus on hacking? We know how bad they are or how good they are,
and we can tell other people, because our listeners look to us for this information.
We were told by our listeners, thank you, listeners, for letting us know this.
We should be a cultural well of new and interesting stuff that we see coming on the horizon.
And speaking of listeners, listeners, you are listening to Off the Hook on WBAI New York.
You are not listening to The Personal Computer Show, because they are on vacation this week.
I don't know where they wound up going off to. They go on these
wild, extravagant trips, and we have to fill the gap that they leave behind.
Okay, so that was a sound effect, Bernie.
Sorry about that. It was another phone ringing.
Another phone. You have another phone. I've long suspected you.
No, it wasn't a seagull.
It was someone near me whose phone happened to ring.
Didn't sound like a seagull, didn't sound like a foghorn, sounded like a cell phone. Okay.
We're learning more and more. Did you guys have any more thoughts on television?
I will catch up on Mr. Robot, because I am a connoisseur of hacker-themed entertainment,
probably more than is good for me. So I will have to check this out now.
Yes, yes, you will have to.
It definitely embellishes a little bit. I mean, it is not every story we've ever read
in any kind of filtered sense. And it's amalgamation, right? It's not
something I think you would take verbatim. But there are so many parallels and so many
stories in there and attitudes, ways of being, ways people are involved in the community and
involved with the media and the outside world. There's so many of those things that I think
speak to and are instructive and really get to the heart of a lot of the issues we've covered
in the past. So it's certainly, I think, something you want to go into, maybe a little
critical eye. You probably might know more about one thing or the other of things they cover,
but it really does encapsulate a sentiment. It really does put things together in a pretty
well-thought-through way. I mean, it lays it out.
I was surprised. I was actually very surprised by how well it did so far. I'm always waiting
for the other shoe to drop. And there certainly are a lot of instances where that's not the case.
I mentioned CSI Cyber. There's at least one other out there that really makes me wretch when I see
it. And then there are other gems. Silicon Valley is a real funny program on HBO, which is worth
tracking down as well. A lot of people in the technology world think it's too real,
and they don't like it for that reason. Or they think it's too insulting.
But I have critiques. I mean, I don't like the main character in Mr. Robot that much. There,
I said it. It's not about popularity in the hacker world, is it? No, it isn't.
The best hackers are the most unpopular people. I think he has a very irritating personality.
But maybe that's the character building on me. That's part of watching and experiencing stories
like that. I'm spending most of my time trying to figure out what subway line he's riding,
because it seems like a short line. It looks like a shuttle on the Lower East Side they used to run.
And I think it's got a red letter on it, which is also kind of weird. The old style trains. But
that's the kind of thing I worry about. I think he's a little cocky.
Is this show about somebody whose name is Mr. Robot?
Well, yes, but he's not the protagonist. That's as much as I'll say.
Yet. Okay.
As far as I know. Maybe he is. I don't know. The person we follow and who experiences him
is introduced to a Mr. Robot. So there is a title character.
There are decent programs. You don't know who's going to make it to the next episode.
That's right.
And the last episode we saw, he very well might not have made it to the episode afterwards.
It's possible. I don't know. Hey, hear that? Fire engines. We have sound effects, Bernie,
because we don't have soundproofing in our make-do studios.
I think it's a seagull.
It's a seagull driving a fire engine. That's what I thought.
No, it was a real fire truck going down Atlantic Avenue. That was exciting. Okay. Also,
Halt and Catch Fire. That program.
Okay. Yeah. So Silicon Valley, I think, is good and hilarious and spot on. And I love
that people don't like it because it reminds them of themselves. But also Halt and Catch
Fire. Very good-ish, but I think it lacked in some areas. You didn't feel it quite so well.
Didn't care for it that much. I just didn't like anybody in it. And I know that shouldn't
be a requirement for a program that you like people in it. I mean, one of our favorite shows,
Happy-ish, got canceled because people didn't like the characters. But it was supposed to be
annoying characters dealing with annoying things. But lots of times people don't get that. It was
brilliantly written, though. That was the important thing. Halt and Catch Fire is not
brilliantly written. I'm sorry. It doesn't excite me. The characters don't excite me.
Yeah. I liked a little bit of the retro stuff, but the cohesion of the group, the way they
interacted, just, I mean, there were some pretty decent individual characters, but it didn't come
together that well. And the aesthetic was, again, it was very dark, kind of dingy, 70s. I don't
really like that. For those who don't know, it's about the early days of the microcomputer.
Yeah. Early generic. Developing a new product, being first at a conference to have this particular
item. Totally. All the things that don't excite me at all. But you can make things that are
unexciting interesting if you do it right. They carry it really well. The story, they push it
along and it shows cool topics and cool equipment. And really the dawn of that kind of
semiconductor, early, early microchips and all the stuff that really sped up the rate of
development and research because people were able to then cheaply use these machines and it just
built from there. So in that sense, I think it's really important history and it's cool to
watch a bit of a drama about it. But I don't know that I'm with you a little bit. I think
the characters, like the one guy reminded me of the American Psycho main character or something.
He was supposed to be the Steve Jobs type. I forget what his name was, but he was too
polished. I forget everybody's name. He was too slick. And I was waiting for that to wear off.
It was the whole series. He was just this slick sales guy that I just hated. Anyway, but that's
the cool thing to be critical and watch it. Yeah. This is our occasional critique on hacker
programs on television. And I'd like to hear your feelings. OTH at 2600.com or hey, you could even
call us in a few minutes when we tell you how to do that. And tell us about other shows. If you see
other media out there about hackers, about your community, maybe some local programming, maybe
you've made a show yourself with your friends. You have stories to tell about hacking, about
technology, about maybe some legal stuff, stuff that you've run into in your time. Share that.
That's really, really critical. It's so fascinating to get turned on to new programming,
new storytelling, new channels and places where people are doing some of that storytelling.
And then we will in turn share it with the rest of our audience and other people that would benefit
from checking it out too. And that helps the discussion about what hackers are, helps us
define our ideology and tell our story in as accurate a way as possible instead of other
people telling our stories badly. All right. Again, the phone number to donate 212-209-2950.
We have the hacker calendar, 2016 hacker calendar filled with hacker dates and payphone photos.
That's for a pledge of $50. It's also autographed by all of us here at Off The Hook. For a pledge
of $100, you'll get a copy of Mobilize, the DVD documentary about the dangers of cell phone
radiation. You can believe it, you cannot believe it, but it's important to open yourself up to the
conversation. That's the best way I can describe it. That's for a pledge of $100, 212-209-2950.
Let's read another letter. Then hopefully we'll get some phone calls and then we can figure out
how to take phone calls on the air. Here's a listener that wrote to us telling us that he
disagrees with promoting hacktivism in the manner that you do. And this is what happens. He said,
when hackers take liberties with morality and points us to the recent hack involving a planned
parent. Are you guys familiar with this? This is basically- They had a bunch of conversations
leaked that had been videotaped. They were like a dinner or a lunch with somebody who was-
That's something else. That's a videotape that got heavily edited and-
Oh, this is the takedown and-
And released, but their-
Internal stuff.
Their website was hacked. It was, I believe, last Sunday night.
Okay.
A group of hackers who apparently oppose the healthcare non-profits abortion practices released
Planned Parenthood's website databases, as well as names and email addresses of the
organization's employees. Anyway, I'll get to that story in a second. Let me finish this letter.
You have been radicalizing people I know who are now currently in prison.
That's signed Angela. That was the letter I alluded to earlier. We were accused of radicalizing
people.
Yes.
So now, this is a hard subject to respond to. I'm not sure if he's accusing us of radicalizing the
kind of people that hacked Planned Parenthood, or if we're radicalizing the kind of people that
hack Stratfor, or all kinds of other organizations out there. But I think we've always said on these
airwaves that there are good hacks and there are simplistic hacks. And I think just denial of
service attacks are not the best hacks in the world. That basically just shuts up your opponent
or somebody that you want to wipe off the net. Releasing people's private information, never
really a nice thing to do. But going into a site and uncovering scandals and basically
showing public policy, governments, corporations, things like that, things that affect all of us,
that's almost a responsibility. If you can figure out a way to get that information,
you should get that information. I don't know if that's radicalizing. I know that that might
step outside some people's boundaries. But we've always pretty much said to people that
just shutting something down, it's not really a legitimate hack. And in fact,
that kind of thing will be used against you when somebody disagrees with something you say.
It doesn't get us anywhere. And at least that's my viewpoint as far as how that goes.
I think my attitude, and just in reading that and hearing that, I mean, I think I would say,
yeah, I mean, we would accept that characterization as radicalizing people to be
radical, right? To speak their minds, to think critically, to stand up when there is wrong
going on around them and no one else is doing anything about it.
So you're okay owning the word radicalizing as long as it means something?
I think we should own that. I mean, I think running away and saying like,
trying to defend ourselves, I think definitely we do. We should accept that on a certain level.
What I don't think we should bear the responsibility for is people messing up or
doing things badly themselves. I mean, we're not telling people specifically what to do in any
particular context. If they make up some plan themselves and do something, I think that's on
them because that's correlation without causation. I don't know. You're trying to tie us into some
individual friend that maybe decided, oh yeah, I love hacking now and now I'm going to do this.
Your interpretation of that as hacking, I think, really drags us into
stuff we have absolutely no control over. If people are inspired, that's great. But if they
are inspired and then do something that's hurtful or wrong that we ourselves wouldn't
really participate in, I think that's unfair. Also, this is kind of all speculation because,
not knowing more about the cases Angelo is talking about with these people he knows who are now in
jail, we don't know what they did or why they did it or how they did it. These are all very
important pieces of data when judging whether something is okay. But one thing that I can say
that I think has been a central aspect of the things this show has reported on since day one
has been unfitting punishments for offenses that might be termed hacking.
Again, I don't know what these people did, what these individuals are responsible for,
but I will say in general, there are still very, very severe punishments being meted out for
undeserving, what I would maybe say is a minor offense. Angelo, if you want to write back to us
with more info on these particular cases you're talking about, or these particular people you're
talking about, we could address it then. But in general, I would say that there's probably a very
good chance that these people probably don't deserve to be in jail for whatever it is they did,
just given the prevailing trends. I think they would be specifically, writing us to tell us that
specifically, you'd be hard pressed to find another example of a show or institution,
at least for comparison, but to this end, that has been as proactive about informing hackers
about the right way to handle things and examples of people messing up. And I think we've done that
time and time again. There's plenty of people in the magazine that write in about their situations
who have found themselves imprisoned or whatever, but we definitely try to tell as many of these
stories as possible to get it out there that these are the kinds of consequences. And that really is
the crux of this. You must consider consequences, just like they tell you in grade school,
consider the consequences of your actions. And I think we've been as vigilant about telling the
stories of what people get into when they are the effect of these fancy new laws here.
And the thing to remember too is that when something, a website, a corporation gets invaded
or hacked or has private information released, I don't think we can fairly say this is good,
this is bad. It's always incumbent on the people who are holding on to the data to keep it safe.
And in the case of Planned Parenthood, they did not do that. Now, I know I've been watching the
stories on this, and I think it's a little two-faced in some ways, because the stories
are calling the people who hacked the site extremists and radicals too. I've heard, you know,
right-wing radicals and things like that, and that might be the case. They may have
certain unpalatable views in your eyes and in our eyes perhaps. But the fact is the same as
when a big evil corporation gets hacked. That information should not have just been lying out
there. There was no security. And if there is a particular method to be used against one entity,
that method is going to be used against a different entity regardless of what side of a particular
issue they're on. So some responsibility has to be carried here, and we have to realize that
nobody is immune from this kind of thing. And the only way to protect yourself is to learn a thing
or two about security, learn what to keep on your servers, what not to keep on your servers,
and expect the unexpected. And in this particular case, it doesn't look like they were
expecting this to happen. Lots of times there are either people with a political motive,
which makes it an interesting conversation either way, or they're people just looking to have fun,
mess things up. The case of New York Magazine. Their website was hacked last week. They had
problems for hours right after they put out a story about Bill Cosby. Now, it had nothing to
do with Bill Cosby. It had to do with some bored kid someplace known as Threat King. He disclosed
the incident through a Twitter account. He told the Daily Dot that he hates New York City because
of a recent visit. That is why he hacked New York Magazine, because he hates New York City because
of a recent visit. Here's what Threat King had to say. Many stupid people at New York. I have not
even seen the cover, LOL. Yeah. And if you go to that person's SoundCloud page, you'll hear a
recording saying, we are going to destroy state websites, city websites, agency websites, and
court websites of the United States. You have took away our country and it's time to get it back by
destroying the United States. And then the story that I'm reading goes on about Bill Cosby, because
it has absolutely nothing to do with Bill Cosby or New York Magazine. It has to do with some bored
kid someplace latching onto something and spouting a bit of rhetoric. We should not be taking these
stories this seriously. And unfortunately, every single day in the news we do. Websites are always
open to being compromised one way or another and won't always be compromised by people who know
what they're talking about or who even know what you're talking about. Here's a case right here.
The website for the Attoah County Sheriff's Office was hacked on Saturday. Do any of you know where
Attoah County is? I haven't a clue. Now you will because of this story. So some education is
possible. It's in Alabama. Alabama. Yes. And according to WBRC and the Gadsden Times, a hacker
posted the following. Hacked by Muhammad Ahmad, long live to Peshmarga. Posted that right on the
sheriff's website. Also included Kurdish hackers was here. A picture of the Kurdish flag and a
profane message to, you guys want to guess? Obama. New York Magazine? ISIS. Oh. Yeah, because the
Kurds don't like ISIS, do they? So the poor sheriff's department down there in Edoa County,
Alabama, somehow is in the middle of this fight between ISIS and Kurds because somebody decided
they were going to post that message on an insecure website. This is what happens when you
have an insecure website. It's been since taken down, but according to the sheriff, it's going to
come back up in a couple of days. Bigger and stronger than ever. All right. And, you know,
speaking of of hacks and political awareness and various things like that, brings us to
the case of one of the many cases of Anonymous. And this is actually very sad news. One of the
leading people in Anonymous, you don't really know them by name, but if you pay attention to various
stories that come out, names do float down occasionally. This guy's name was Owen,
and he was one of the people that really was able to explain things in a way that many people would
not take the time. He was one of the anti-copyright hacktivists that was recently sentenced in
Virginia, recently within the last couple of years. And he was part of the whole PayPal thing that
happened a number of years ago where they were hacked. He faced a potential five-year prison
sentence up to $500,000 in fines and restitution if found guilty of conspiracy to attack a protected
computer. However, he had a terminal illness and he fortunately was not sentenced to anything quite
that severe. His real name, Dennis Collins, Toledo, Ohio, passed away a couple of weeks ago.
And I just felt we should mention that because there are hackers who do get it. There are hackers
who know what they're talking about and who know what their targets are all about. And
those are people to be admired, I think. I know it's controversial. If you don't agree with what
they happen to be saying at the moment, you won't see it that way. But I believe the same is true
even for people that say things I vehemently disagree with. If you do it in a proper way,
a way that has conviction and has merit behind it, no matter where that's coming from,
then that's something worthy of recognition. Yeah, a central tenet of freedom of speech,
if you truly believe in it, you would also believe in it for speech you don't agree with
or speech that you think is maybe not worth saying. Exactly, yes. And then there are morons.
There are all kinds of complete and total morons out there. You heard about Hitchbot, right?
Yeah, really sad news. Hitchbot was a hitchhiking robot who was built in Canada and was able to
hitchhike his way all across Canada and across much of Western Europe. He went across all of
Germany and I believe the Netherlands as well. Oh, Canada. And basically the way it worked
was he'd be on the side of a road and someone correct me if I'm wrong, total strangers would
pass by and simply pick him up and be able to converse with him. I think he would say
where he wanted to go or read off something from a bucket list of things he wanted to do,
such as go to a particular ball game or wind up in a particular tourist attraction,
and pictures would be taken and he'd tweet from there and then go on to the next random person
who would pick him up. I think it was random. It almost sounds too good to be true the way things
worked out as far as the places he went and the people he saw and the images he captured.
Also because I think this was all being published online in real time where he was,
where he wanted to go. So if you were following the story of Hitchbot and he turned up in your
area, you could go then look for him and hope to be the one to pick him up to take him to his next
destination. Well, after Canada and after Europe, he was programmed to go across the United States.
And as you may have heard, that did not go well. He made it as far as Philadelphia, Bernie.
And that's where he met a violent end. Someone tore him to pieces. And I don't know if they
sent the picture or if somebody who happened to see him sent the picture, but you just
see him beheaded and just lying on the street. Somebody apparently thought that was the right
thing to do. Then there was a surveillance video that came out that showed somebody
basically swinging one of his legs around or doing something that kind of implicated them.
Keep in mind, the people who build Hitchbot have no interest in prosecuting the person
behind this or people behind this. But it was very interesting to see that, hey,
there's video footage of somebody vandalizing Hitchbot. And wouldn't it be nice to figure out
what exactly happened? There was an update to that story
that surveillance video has been pointed out as a fake.
Yes. That was my next sentence, Rob. Thank you. Video bloggers have faked a surveillance video
showing the destruction of Hitchbot, the hitchhiking robot. Basically, these two guys
known as Jesse Wellens and Ed Bassmaster were the last people to see Hitchbot in one piece when they
took the robot on a ride in their truck on Friday night slash Saturday morning. These guys are minor
YouTube celebrities. Is there anything worse? They're minor YouTube celebrities who filmed
their interactions with Hitchbot for the V-log. I'm not even give the name of their vlog. That's
the last I'm ever going to say that word, too. On Saturday night, Wellens tweeted that he was
going to try to obtain any security footage from the area where Hitchbot was allegedly destroyed.
By Sunday night, he claimed to have gotten the surveillance footage, which basically he put up
on one of his YouTube channels. Turns out it's fake. It shows a man believed to be Ed Bassmaster
or Bassmaster, I don't know how you pronounce that, and then kicking what we're led to believe
is Hitchbot sitting on a bench. The problem is we can't see Hitchbot because he's obstructed
by a trash can, though we can see Bassmaster rip off what appears to be Hitchbot's arms.
Now, basically, they thought it would be funny to make a fake video of
Hitchbot being attacked and destroyed. You know, the limits of stupidity, I think,
are being expanded every single day. We might as well give these guys the title of the people that
destroyed him because it's just so ridiculously stupid to fake something like this. So you get
more hits on your stupid YouTube page? It's absurd. You are probably as stupid as the person that
destroyed this. If you're not already the same person that destroyed it, you were the last
people that saw Hitchbot alive after all. The whole thing just really disgusts me that people
are that dumb and ridiculous and that they get all this attention. And I'm only giving them the
attention just so I can make the point that there are smart hackers out there and there are stupid
people out there that would love to be called hackers that don't deserve it. Yeah, if you're
a certain grade of YouTube celebrity, I think the name of the game is do whatever you can to get a
bunch of hits to your stupid YouTube page. And yeah, that includes trolling people who care about
a robot that's been destroyed. So is this guy's name Bassmaster? I don't know what his name is.
That's a fishing show. You see, the whole thing is probably a joke. Everything's just a big joke
to them. It's, you know, okay, whatever, guys, have fun. But I hope the guys in Canada build
another robot. I hope it does better. It's just so embarrassing when your own country is the one
that keeps destroying good things. No problems at all getting across Canada, no problems getting
across Germany and getting across the Netherlands. I think, Bernie, we're going to need an apology
from you being the closest we have to a direct link with Philadelphia right now.
I am sorry and embarrassed that my home city, Philadelphia, was the site of the Hitchbots
beheading and raping. But I'm a good alibi. I was 500 miles north of Philadelphia when it happened.
Still, it's a sad thing. I'm not surprised, frankly, that this happened in Philadelphia.
But I think it says a lot more about our country than other countries. I mean, this thing made it
across Canada, across Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. And in Philadelphia, it meets an early
demise. I'd still like to know how exactly it worked, you know, how they were able to just
leave it on the side of the road and how it interacted with the people in the car. I haven't
read enough about that and how... It was not a mobile robot. It didn't have the ability to
ambulate on its own. Right. It had to be carried. It was kind of like a rag doll with a speech
interface that you could talk to it. Okay. And people just would do whatever...
Would it tell people, I want to go here now, or would it just say things repeatedly?
Yes, it would tell... It would notice people picking them up or looking at them or something
and it would say where he wants to go. He would introduce himself, tell people where he wants to
go, and then pictures would be documented and sent online. And the hopeful thing is that the people
who would pick up the hitchhiker would take the hitchbot to where it was going, or at least
somewhere else. What would have stopped me... That's a neat idea. What would have stopped me
from picking up Hitchbot and just driving all the way to California and just keeping Hitchbot
and hogging him for myself? Nothing. Nothing at all.
I'm surprised that didn't happen. You could put Hitchbot in the trunk.
I'm surprised nobody did that or just FedEx Hitchbot somewhere. It's all kinds of things.
You could and you have DHL take him or somebody. All right. Hey, our phone number for pledge is
212-209-2950. Rob, would you like to go over the pledge levels again?
For a pledge level of $50, you can get the 2016 Hacker Calendar with beautiful pictures of pay
phones and all sorts of wonderful happenings on most days of the year. Landmarks in hacker history,
that's for a pledge of $50. And for a pledge of $100, you can get the movie about cell phone
radiation, which is somewhere in here. It's buried under all these papers, I'm afraid.
But you can get the movie about cell phone radiation or you could just give us a donation
and get all sorts of... Oh, here we are. Mobilize is the name of the DVD. Mobilize,
dangers of cell phone radiation. If that's something you're interested in watching,
you can contribute $100 to the future of this show and this station. And you can do that on
give2wbai.org. You can do that by phone at 212-209-2950. Or you could just go for other
WBAI gifts that they have on the website or on the phone. You can ask the person and make sure
you specify that you're donating in the name of Off the Hook, which is your favorite show,
I'm hoping. I have a date from the Hacker Calendar here, June 3rd. I just wanted to
read a couple of exciting things that happened. What happened on June 3rd?
June 3rd, the 414s hacked Sloan Kettering in 1983.
I remember that.
What was that all about?
Well, they were a bunch of Milwaukee hackers, 414 being their area code. And by the way,
you know Wisconsin has more than one area code because it's one in the middle right there.
Yeah, we talked about that.
Yeah. So they hacked into Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and got all kinds of headlines.
And there was this one guy, I think his name was Neil Harris. He was the leader of it. And
that was before Neil Patrick Harris was a thing. And he wound up testifying before Congress,
was in all the headlines. And our particular hacker group back then
got raided shortly after these guys.
Interesting.
But fortunately, they took most of the heat.
Nice. It's always good.
But it was the year before the 2600 came out. So hackers, again, were in the news and being
demonized for all sorts of things. And I don't think they caused any harm on that particular
computer, but they showed how wide open it was. It's amazing how things don't change.
Especially in a place like that, like Cancer Center. That's interesting. I
don't know what Sloan Kettering was. But anyway, War Games was released then.
That's on that date.
June 3rd, yeah, in 1983.
On that very day.
So the same day. Yeah.
Do you think those guys were going out to see War Games and then got raided?
They probably had planned to see it that night. And if they didn't make it to see it.
Maybe they did see it and they came home and got raided and said,
oh, what a perfect night.
What a bummer.
Yeah, this is incredible.
Also, Baba Atomic Research Center in Mumbai is hacked by Millworm in 1998.
More recent, but still some history there.
It's all there. Hacker Calendar, pledge of $50, 212-209-2950.
Or the Mobilize DVD documentary on the dangers of cell phones, 212-209-2950.
That latter one, a pledge of $100.
Please, let's have those calls come in.
And now, as promised, we are going to attempt, and that's all we did promise,
is to attempt to do this. Take phone calls from our listeners.
Okay, we don't have a phone that you can call.
However, we did put together a phone number with the help of a particular service
who we're not going to mention unless it works.
I think that, you know what, if it doesn't work, we'll definitely mention them.
And we've given out this number once before, actually, when we,
I think it was post-Sandy, we used this last.
And what we're going to do is we're going to forward this to one of our cell phones.
We're going to hold our cell phone up to the microphone and put the speaker on the cell phone,
and the person calling in will be able to speak on the air.
And maybe us in the studio will be able to,
I certainly will because I'm holding the phone right now,
will be able to respond to the person.
And Bernie, you probably won't be able to respond to them because I don't,
you know, there might be a way, but let's not test it too much.
Let's see if we can get somebody to call in.
And we might not have any more listeners, any more callers.
It's been so long.
No, we've got lots.
They're all out there.
How long has it been?
It's been at least six, five months.
Months?
Something like that.
We've been here for months?
It has been a couple of months.
We've been transitioned.
Yeah, this is...
Is anybody logging this?
When did we move to Brooklyn from Harham?
Somebody must...
Well, you know, if you go to the Off the Hook site,
there's encapsulations of all the shows.
I'm sure on there is the exact date we moved.
Yeah.
I'm not going to do that right now because I'm busy with this.
It's been a whirlwind.
It's been a while.
It's been a whirlwind.
It's been a while.
And things are improving here.
I did want to mention that earlier.
We were talking about donating and you still can.
212-209-2950.
You know, you mentioned that things are...
This is different, isn't it?
Or at least it's a better position.
The setup here has been worked on a lot.
What happened is I think they got a bunch of desk chairs and some nice desks in here,
which really helps guests and producers spread out.
So bravo.
Thank you, everyone at the station.
And I'm sure there's a turntable.
There's everything, most everything that we would need,
at least for temporary configurations here.
And it looks great.
So we're really thankful for that and excited about more improvements in the future
as WBAI grows into our new space here.
Yeah.
And we're going to continue growing and they won't be able to stop us.
And we'll have more and more week after week.
We figured it's the least we could do for our listeners to open up phone lines again.
Or try to open up phone lines because it's such a vital part of what we do.
And we want to hear those voices.
We want to know you're still out there.
I mean, we know you're still out there because we hear from you,
but we want to hear live from those people.
And if there's stuff you've heard that we didn't cover,
we would love to catch up to you.
You may have your ears tuned to stuff that we just didn't catch.
And it really is amazing.
Sometimes people can put us onto stuff that we hadn't even knew was going on.
Known was going on.
Well, okay.
We are a bunch of hackers and we experiment things.
And we experiment on the air.
And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Are we going to do this?
We're going to try and make it work and see what happens.
And maybe it'll work.
Maybe it won't.
You have to be unafraid of failure.
Because failure is going to be a part of anything you try.
But let's see.
Only one person at a time, obviously.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to enable this.
And then as soon as we get a call, I'm going to disable it.
So that if you call after we're connected to somebody,
I think you'll just get a recording.
And you know what?
You can leave a voicemail.
And maybe we can play the voicemail on a future week if it's clean.
And then when we're finished with the first person,
we'll enable it again, give out the phone number,
and hopefully that'll work.
And I'll just point out that if you're listening to this on an MP3 in the future,
we're only enabling this for this live broadcast.
So don't use it to call in later.
How could they possibly do that?
Yeah, it's always going to be recorded.
Anyway, be synced, everyone.
Yeah, all right.
Give everybody an opportunity to get on the air.
So here we go.
The phone number.
Get ready, folks.
And again, one person is going to get through.
Area code 331.
I don't know where that is.
I don't know where 331 is.
Area code 331-223-WBAI.
That's 331-223-9224.
And it'll take a few seconds.
And the first person to get through will reach this cell phone that I'm holding in my hand.
I will then pick up the cell phone.
I will then turn the speaker on.
I'm not sure if it defaults to that.
And hopefully, we'll hear a voice of somebody.
And if you are that caller, be a little patient with us.
It might be hard to understand us.
OK, we are getting a call.
So let's turn the speaker on and answer this.
And good evening.
You're on WBAI.
Hold on.
It's not working.
There we go.
OK, please say that again.
This is Alec.
I love your show.
I just wanted to let you know that it worked and people still are listening.
Excellent.
OK, we are getting that call waiting to tell me because they didn't hit the button fast enough.
But we do appreciate your call.
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Muncie, New York.
Muncie, New York?
That is in Rockland County, yes.
OK, great.
914 area code, right?
Or is it 845?
It's 845.
OK, you got to know these things.
OK, well, go ahead.
I read a Wired article on hackers hacking a car, hacking into the system.
I think you guys had mentioned it.
I don't know if you guys are aware.
I don't remember his name right now.
But there was a famous reporter who I think he broke the story on Patreon.
And he died.
His car was very mysterious.
It was traveling at extreme high speed.
And people have speculated that it was possible that his car had been hacked
and that he had been murdered.
In your world, is anyone talking about that?
That's interesting.
I know what you're talking about vaguely.
I think it was a Mercedes he was driving in L.A.
And there was speculation because of the forensics of the scene,
how the motor of the vehicle had been thrown really far away.
Just the car broke up in a really catastrophic way.
And after that, there was some speculation around that.
I haven't heard anything recently.
But I guess we could look around maybe for some updates.
And if you have anything you could send us, that'd be great, too.
So oth at 2600.com.
Okay.
All right, thanks.
Thanks very much for that first call.
And we're going to try and do it again.
I'm going to re-enable this.
And hopefully we'll get a second call in a matter of moments.
Bernie, how did that sound to you?
I could hear the caller pretty well.
They were a little faint.
But the point is, it worked.
And as you put them closer to the microphone or raised their...
I don't know what you did, but I could hear everything.
We have another call.
So let's take this call now.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hang on, I'll make sure the speaker is on.
Hang on.
Yes, HackerMentality said he wanted to call and comment on the HackerMentality.
Yeah, you know, but I'm trying to figure out this damn phone.
I'm hitting the button and nothing's happening.
Hurry up.
You know what?
Somehow I lost him.
Are you still there, caller?
Yep, still here.
Okay.
Well, the screen...
Oh, you know what happened?
I have to decline this.
Bobson from Bulgaria is calling.
I can see that.
But yeah, you know what?
Okay, now we're back.
You're from Pennsylvania, are you not?
See, people's caller ID is being sent.
That's...
We can show people how to block it.
This stupid phone, it keeps going out.
And yeah.
Hit the top button there.
You know, I'm trying.
I'm trying.
Folks, fill some time with the talk while I get this working.
I can mention that the 2600 meetings are happening all over the world.
Yeah, you could do that.
2600.com slash meetings.
Find one near you or start one near you.
Okay, I think I got this figured out.
Caller, are you with us?
Are you with us now?
Yes.
Okay, we hit the right...
See, what happened was call waiting kicked in as soon as your call was answered.
And I couldn't hit the speaker button because it was onto a different screen.
And I wasn't able to...
I was almost answering another call.
It was really, really frustrating.
But you're from Pennsylvania because you did not block your caller ID, is that correct?
Correct.
Okay.
You're on Illinois area code, it looks like.
Okay.
And you had a question for us.
Oh, yes, indeed.
I just...
More like an observation about the hacker bunch a lot of people pick up when you're
talking to them.
And sadly, it seems to be the implication that it's meaning and more nefarious than
criminal intent.
And it's just kind of sad, particularly when you're talking to people and then they run
into a bad situation or dispute.
And then they'll come up to you, they're like, hey, I heard you're good with computers.
So can you log into somebody's account for me?
They're like, think about that for a minute, though.
If somebody was mad at you, do you want them logging into your account and like going from
there doing anything?
Yeah, but this is...
You leave on like the personal beef level.
It's just weird.
It's different.
It's different when it's you, though, isn't it?
Oh, absolutely.
And nobody really has that anymore.
You encounter people, be it on the street, the Internet, wherever.
They just don't have that personal ability to say, hey, you're a person, too.
I know what you're doing.
You're saying, you know, trying to have a good day.
Maybe you'll have a better day for not trying to give other people a bad day.
Everybody seems to step back from that, it seems.
Not everybody, but predominantly.
You just don't have that rapport with people.
Yeah, people are very quick to be on the offense and not empathize with other people as much.
I definitely see that.
I see where you're going with that.
That's a good point.
I mean, we really do have to empathize in the course of our daily lives and be considerate
about how we use knowledge.
Yeah, if I make a bad comparison, I'd say like, you know, if you go to the mechanic,
the mechanic isn't necessarily every time trying to break your car and charge you a
ton of money.
That's a good analogy.
You know, a traceman.
And then the traceman, you know, like the friend, people will just call them up and
normally it won't even be a regard for their free time or the fact that maybe their work
is in car repair because they're a mechanic.
So when they're not at work, maybe they're not into doing something immediately all the
time or it's like, you know.
Yeah, I would guess there's a large segment of our audience who's used to being sort of
the computer guy for their friends and family or things like that.
But yeah, it's do unto others.
Another aspect of that is people have these preconceived notions, so they presume certain
things.
It's up to you to tell them, you know, what your ethics are like, how you feel about certain
things.
And that's an individual thing.
People derive their ethics and stuff from their own identity and upbringing and so on
and so forth.
So definitely, yeah, it's good to correct people when they're making a presumption about
you and your willingness to do certain things, violate, you know, all that kind of stuff.
It's definitely up to you to let them know how you feel about that.
Yeah, the best is always like at something like a 2600 meeting or like when I'm just
wandering around out in the world wearing a hacker t-shirt or something and a complete
stranger will walk up to me and say, you know, hey, I'd really like to get into my significant
other's email or can you fix my credit or something?
Can you hack my Facebook?
Yeah, exactly.
Not my Facebook, someone else's Facebook.
So somebody basically is willing to go up to a complete stranger and ask, hey, will
you go commit a crime for me?
All right, listen, I want to thank you very much for your call and we're going to open
up to somebody else.
All right.
Excellent, thanks.
Have fun yourself.
Okay, take care.
It's so funny.
I heard some guys, I was at a bar the other night, I just overheard them talking and the
one guy was telling the other guy just about all this stuff they can do, they can do.
And I knew it was a good conversation because there was the ubiquitous they.
That, by the way, is the sound of Bernie S somehow getting disconnected in Maine.
I don't know what to do about this.
Are you sure that's not a seagull?
It's a robust seagull, if it is.
I can't do anything about this because I'm caught up in the digital world here with taking
phone calls.
And since Bernie can't participate, I think we might just say goodnight to him for now.
And goodnight, Bernie.
All right, he's fine up there in Maine.
Yes.
And let's take another phone call.
The phone number again is 331-223-WBAI.
If you don't want your caller ID sent to this cell phone, dial star 671st or call from
a line that you know is blocked.
But if we see caller ID, we're not going to give out your number, but we'll mention that
we're able to see it so that you have that information and you're better prepared that
way.
All right, we have a phone number coming in and it's Bobson again from Bulgaria.
I can tell from the caller ID.
Hey, Bobson, how are you?
Good evening, folks.
Isn't it cool?
I knew who you were before you started speaking.
When it's night around here.
Hey, there were some things you spoke of earlier that I wanted to mention.
I will make it quick because other people are waiting as well.
Yeah, about Hitchpot, that was disassembled violence in Philly.
There were people in Philadelphia who offered to rebuild it.
It was the last thing I heard.
Rebuild Hitchpot.
Yes.
Not unreasonable.
You also mentioned Mr. Robot and CSI Cyber.
The things I could say about these shows are not going to be on that list of words I'm
not supposed to mention on the radio.
So I'm not going to.
Bobson, you're saying you don't like Mr. Robot.
Is that what you're saying?
Much more so than I don't like CSI Cyber.
OK, I got lost in that.
CSI Cyber.
Yeah, we were embellishing a little bit, but definitely.
There are some things to be desired with a lot of the programming out there about hackers.
Yeah, well, you know it.
I know you know it, but it's...
Oh, well, have a great night.
Thank you for the good show.
OK, thanks.
Thanks for that call from Bulgaria.
It's interesting, too, because we disable the forwarding to get to the cell phone as
soon as we pick up, but the calls keep coming in anyway.
So that tells me that this service, which I guess we can say is Google Voice, doesn't
work right away.
It takes a little bit of time for it to actually kick in.
So we're going to give out the phone number again.
331-223-WBAI.
That's our telephone number.
331-223-9224.
I'm going to try and take another call as soon as one comes in.
I think it's working all right.
It's definitely working better than having no listener phone calls.
Yeah.
What do you think, Barney?
Oh, that's right.
He's gone, isn't he?
All right.
Let's take this call coming from the 718 area code someplace.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up.
Yes, go ahead.
Speak up.
I'm a clerk.
Okay.
Well, that's exciting.
And I just want to say justice and unity rules.
Okay.
I think you won't find much of an argument.
I support them 100% against all those racists who don't like justice and unity.
Okay.
Well, I guess that's...
We're talking about the concepts of justice and unity.
Sure.
So what should I call you?
You know how they said, you know, Kurdish?
They should have a website and say justice and unity rules.
I mean, I'm not saying they should do that, but you know what I mean?
I think we do.
I think we do.
But thanks for that.
That was enlightening.
All right.
And you know what?
I left the thing on.
I left the button on.
So we're going to continue taking phone calls.
331-223-WBAI.
By the way, this phone number is not going to work after this show.
So don't try calling it.
You'll just get a...
You'll get voicemail.
You can leave a voicemail.
Like I said, we'll maybe play it and that'll be fun.
Yeah.
But it's not a WBAI number.
So it won't get you through to other shows that are on.
Exactly.
We can probably make funny transcripts of your voicemail too.
Well, I know Google does that.
They actually try to make transcripts and it doesn't always work out.
331-223-WBAI.
Lines are open right now or line is open right now.
331-223-9224.
Again, star 67 if you want to block your...
This person blocked their number.
Congratulations on blocking your phone number.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Few points.
I was the guy who called up some months ago about MP3 quality.
And I've done some experiments at three to six percent.
Pretty trivial in the face of the subject matter you've talked about.
Why don't you bring a connected cable and wire that cell up to the board?
And in New Jersey, 201 was an original area code.
But they also had 609.
That's because 609 was not an original area code.
That was an expansion at one point.
Really?
Okay.
And as far as the hacking, the politics of hackers, we all who are listening and talking
here tend to be what the commercial media might call left wing.
But in reality, isn't hacking just being a soldier of some kind?
I mean, you can imagine soldiers on opposite sides killing each other one day and being
nice the next, like in World War I.
But the Soviets and the Nazis, probably because of the Nazis and their racism, would never
get together.
Well, I mean, I think it couldn't be more different, an individual and a soldier.
A soldier is supposed to be one part of a massive unit to carry forth some kind of an
operation.
Hackers are not good soldiers because they ask questions.
They reveal things.
Look at Bradley Manning.
What happened there?
It's not a good concept, I don't think, to foster of hackers being part of some kind
of army.
The media is always trying to do this.
They're always trying to say the Chinese have this army of hackers.
But if they really were hackers, they'd be a bunch of people questioning the rules and
bending them as much as possible domestically and internationally.
Okay.
So you're referring to the term hackers.
In other words, whoever it is that works for the federal government at NSA listening to
this phone call directly and in higher fidelity than you can get on a cell phone.
And those people from the anti-abortion side, those do some of the same things, but they
don't deserve to be called hackers.
Well, I mean, first of all, NSA is probably not any one human actually listening to answer
that.
And then I would say that people who do things that use hacking skills or elements of hacking
attitudes and so on can also be criminals.
We've said this a lot in the past to make the distinction.
So definitely there are people who use elements and things that hackers have found out or
trademarks of hacking skills and techniques.
But they may serve different, very, very different ends.
And that's, I think, why you will not see a lot of things modeled after military and
so far as this community in the broadest sense of it.
What I meant to say was that the people who are anti-abortion and hacked the Planned
Parenthood could very well be in someone's employ.
The more I listen to BAI, the more dirty I see things around me.
And of course, I have personal knowledge of lots of dirt over the years.
And then when I put it together, I realized, oh, it was loads more dirt than I ever looked
at.
There's always more dirt.
Yes, we know that.
So to answer that, actually, that's actually a really good distinction to answer that.
OK, so they could have been in their anti-abortion circle, the hackers of the group.
They could also have been apathetic, objective, completely disinterested hackers who did it
for hire.
Yes, those two scenarios could be very much a possibility.
But I don't think in my circle of friends or other groups of hackers that they would
say that those people were hackers necessarily.
But maybe in their circles, they might consider themselves hackers if that's their community.
We want the term hackers to be used for people like us and those guys to be called something
else.
Wait, wait.
Could you repeat that last sentence?
We want the term hackers to be used to describe people like 2600 and not to be used to describe
people like those guys.
Well, no, no, I would not say that at all.
In fact, there are many people that I disagree with politically on a massive scale that I
still consider to be hackers.
You said many of us are left wing, and that might be true of this room, of this station.
It's not true of the hacker community.
There might be a left wing contingent.
There's also a right wing contingent.
It's not about political ideology.
It's about curiosity.
It's about individualism.
Maybe one side lends itself more to that than another.
I'm not going to make that distinction.
But I'm also not going to assume that everybody subscribes to the same ideology, because that
would be wrong.
It's just, then, the distinction is getting murkier and murkier because it's becoming
more like the soldiers.
The soldiers, frankly, in many cases, I mean, given World War II, the World War II analogy
I gave, the Soviets theoretically were defending their homeland, so you would look at them
as an outside observer and say, well, I'm a little bit more on their side because they're
the underdog, they're the defender.
But soldiers in other wars, amazingly enough, recognize that they had more in common with
each other than they did with their officers.
So in World War I, you had a little bit of crossing the line in Christmas one of the
years.
There is an element of that being quite true.
Hackers do get together and work in incredibly different parts of the world and for different
entities around the world and often do not get along.
There are lots of personalities within that spectrum and attitudes and ethics and so
on and so forth.
So, but again...
It sounds like there's a lot more to discuss here that I don't want to eat up your time.
Yeah.
It's, yeah, this is a good debate.
An hour long we could talk about.
Yeah, there's a couple...
I want all of the AI listeners to go get four buddies.
You can do one a season.
That's what I do.
And the other thing is, though, I think it can be agreed that the news media and the
government are using the hacking label.
They're carrying on, like, endlessly.
It's going to be to justify more surveillance and it is irrelevant for whom the hackers
work.
If they work for them, obviously, they're not...
You know, excuse me.
If a technical pro is going to work for them, a corporation, government, or people that
they pay off or whatever their dirty thing is, obviously, they're not going to talk
about it.
They're not going to mind.
But all of this business of the threat of technical inquiry is going to be displayed
as a threat to justify more surveillance.
Yes, yes.
And that's...
My story earlier was about people who are dismissing technology outright because of
all the reports they're hearing about hacking.
They're like, oh, you can do this, you do that, and then they can make you out to be
this kind of bad guy.
So I just tell all my buddies, I don't touch a computer.
That's a wrong way to be.
You need to embrace how to properly use these things and educate yourself and not just be
afraid and have visceral rejection of tools and resources and information.
Yeah.
And I think the main distinction is if you're doing something as a soldier, you're doing
it because someone told you to.
If you're doing something as a hacker, you're doing it because your own investigations and
beliefs led you there.
Yeah.
And the one thing I wanted to finish with here very quickly is a story that really disturbed
me from England.
A young computer hacker from Birmingham in England has been named as number three on
the United States kill list of key ISIS operatives.
Junaid Hussein fled to Syria in July of 2013, is now believed to be leading the cyber caliphate,
the terrorist-owned branch of hackers from the Iraqi city of Mosul.
U.S. officials have reportedly said there is an intense desire to assassinate Hussein,
who tweets under...
Well, I'm not going to give his Twitter handle.
Point is, this guy is basically known for hacking into websites and taking over Twitter
accounts, and they want to assassinate him because of that.
You know, this is...
He may be doing other things.
Maybe he's doing really evil things.
But the fact that that is something that we can say with a straight face is U.S. policy
is really, really disturbing.
I want to spend more time on that.
We're out of time now.
So we're going to have to say good night for now.
But let's give out that phone number one more time for the for the pledges.
2-1-2-2-0...
I'm sorry, I didn't have your mic on.
Go ahead.
2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
That's 2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
We've got the hacker calendar.
We've got the RF DVD.
I got the fire engine going by.
Yeah, we've got the hacker calendar, autograph, $50 pledge.
We've got the cell phone documentary.
Mobilize on cell phone radiation and the dangers for $100 pledge.
2-1-2-2-0-9-2-9-5-0.
Or give to WBAI.org.
Absolutely.
Hey, I want to thank everybody for participating in the experiment tonight.
And I think it worked out all right.
I think we did.
We did OK.
We'll try to do it again if we don't have regular phone lines in here.
Good to hear our listeners.
Write to us.
OTH at 2600.com.
We'll see you next week.
Good night.
Hi, I'm John Profitt.
I'm the recently appointed executive director for the Pacifica Foundation.
And I'm delighted to be here visiting WBAI in New York, an incredible community resource
that I hope that every listener will support.