or even birth control. This must be stopped. Forced motherhood is female enslavement.
My name is Sunsara Taylor and I am calling on you to join me by getting on the bus January 22nd
and heading down to D.C. to stand up for abortion rights on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade.
Go to StopPatriarchy.org for more details and bus information. Be part of defeating the war on women.
And you are listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
The time is just about 7 p.m. and it's time for Off The Hook.
Now I can't make a call. We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Bondedly bond for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bondedly bond!
A very good evening to you.
A very good evening to you. The program is Off The Hook. You're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York
where it is 7 p.m. and I am joined in the studio by Mike. Hi there. And Bernie S. on the telephone.
Bernie, are you there? Bernie S. might be on a telephone somewhere. I'm here. Greetings from
Philadelphia. There you are. In the studio we're also joined by Jim. Hello. Hey, been away for some time.
And also on the telephone we should have Emanuel and Kyle. Yes, hi, we're here. It's Emanuel. Kyle,
are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Barely see you. We can barely hear him as well. We can barely hear
you. You're very, very low. I don't know what. I can try shouting or Rob's going to turn some dials
now. How's that? Yeah, if you adjust some dials, we might be able to hear you better. All right.
Dials have been dialed. Okay, that is an improvement. All right. I mean, I don't know
if me louder is a net improvement for the world, but you know, at least for audio fidelity.
I'm enjoying it. I apologize that we couldn't be there in person, but we had to buy lotto
tickets and we've been online now for six hours. That's really getting a bit frenetic.
Well, if you win, I expect you to share the prize with our audience or at least your colleagues.
Yeah, it's only $1.5 billion. I'm not sure how much we can spread around.
I mean, you have to consider taxes and all this stuff. It's true.
We can't hear, I assume Kyle really at all.
You can't hear him at all? No, very, very faint. I don't know what he said.
We can try a different phone, I suppose. How am I coming through?
You're fine. I'm fine. Well, let me point out,
actually, we're lying. We're not online at a lotto place. We're actually using landlines.
I'm using a phone from... What year is this from?
1937.
About 1937. And it still works. It works great. Kyle just picked up a phone from, I think, the 1950s.
Is this better?
That is better.
The problem was you were using a newer phone, Kyle, before.
Yeah, that phone was from the 70s.
Yeah, so you have to go back a few decades at least.
They didn't know how to make anything in the 70s.
Anyway, as long as we're talking about lotto, and I really don't want to talk about lotto,
but since you guys brought it up, the jackpot is at $1.5 billion tonight, right? That's what I'm told?
Yeah.
Thank you. Well, my question, my theory, my idea,
it's guaranteed that there's going to be $1.5 billion paid out. Now,
that is irrespective of how many people buy tickets, correct?
A total of that. Well, it's not guaranteed. I don't know.
No, you don't know. No one understands how it works.
If one person...
No, the total amount is paid. If several people pick the number,
then it's divided between them.
Okay, but, Bernie, my question is this. If only one person in the entire country
bought a lottery ticket tonight, or this whole period of time, and they won,
they would still get the $1.5 billion. It's not dependent on how many people
buy tickets this round, correct?
Right.
No, no, no, that's not true.
They'd have to pick all the right digits.
They'd have to pick all the right digits, but we know that the payout's going to be $1.5 billion.
No, no, that's not how it works.
Okay, how does it work then?
It's a share of the money that comes in. So if no one... The payout is an estimated
payout based on how many people they project will buy tickets.
I've never heard that before. So they're guessing how many people are going to buy tickets, and...
The lottery people, they're good at math. It's the customers, you know.
Oh, well, then my whole theory is shot to hell. Because I was going to say,
why don't we just take the $1.5 billion, since it's already there somehow,
and spend it on something cool for all of us?
Well, that's what the rest of the money goes to, you know.
He passes.
Emmanuel, I have a better idea.
Okay.
If you... The odds... The Powerball lottery people say the odds are $292 million to one
to winning, and the tickets cost $2. So that's a little less than $600 million to buy every
conceivable combination to earn $1.5 billion, assuming you're the only lottery ticket holder.
So all you got to do is go around and buy $292 million tickets, and you're sure to win.
Are you sure about that? Are you sure those numbers add up?
That's what they keep saying.
Well, then Trump could win this, couldn't he?
Yeah, but I guess you'd have to stand in line and buy tickets for a long time.
No, he's not going to do that.
One hopes that Trump can't win anything from this point forward.
He doesn't stand in line.
Anyway, we probably have better things to talk about.
Yeah, we definitely do.
Well, speaking of numbers, I just wanted to throw this story out there because this is
something that hit me like a hammer on the head.
But do you know that we've been following the demonization of hackers since the very
first episode of this program back in 1988, and it's gone on for longer than that?
And I think it's just getting worse and worse and worse.
I just saw the story that on Sunday, this 26-year-old hacker was sentenced for the
theft and sale of credit card information.
Now, the thing is, that's not what hacking is all about in the first place.
But I'm going to skip over that part for now, just because the sentence that this guy got
in Turkey was 334 years in prison.
Now, I think sending anyone to prison for that kind of a crime in the first place is
kind of silly.
But when you equate hacking to crime, and then you add these incredible number of years
to a penalty, you're basically causing irreparable harm.
People will see hackers and think they're the next worst thing since Charlie Manson.
334 years in prison for basically credit card fraud.
Hmm.
That's good behavior.
He could be out in 100.
I don't know about that.
I'm not really sure.
But this is what we have to speak out against.
They say he was part of a dozen strong black hat hacker collectives.
Again, these labels don't serve anybody.
The group allegedly engaged in a phishing scam, which had at least 43 bank customers
filing complaints that their credit card information was copied and stolen.
The scheme was carried out through expertly designed websites that replicated several
banks' websites, enabling him and his group of hackers to obtain crucial login information
of targeted banking users.
Look, this kind of thing, while not hacking, it's definitely a crime.
There should be some penalty.
334 years.
I think the people that are handing these things out now are basically just so afraid
and so ignorant of what it is that's going on that they just want to lock them away for
as long as possible so that they don't cause any more grief and hassle or confusion to
them.
It's not the answer.
I thought you had to be Kurdish to get a prison sentence that long in Turkey.
I can barely hear you.
I don't know what I can do.
Rob's going to fiddle with some more knobs.
Is this any better?
Not really, no.
You've gotten a lot worse since the last time you said something.
Oh, well.
I can stop talking.
I don't know what else to do.
Okay, you're better now.
Okay, I haven't done a thing.
But I just said that I thought you had to be, this is not such a good joke after so
many repetitions, but I thought you had to be Kurdish to get that kind of prison sentence
in Turkey.
Oh, no, anybody can get it in Turkey now.
Oh, well, I'm glad to see they're expanding their horizons.
Always a good thing.
Yeah, it's definitely kind of a lazy approach because they're not actually going after
their own systems and security practices and so on.
They're just sort of using a huge astronomical sentence as more or less a scare tactic, but
it doesn't really address anything technically.
And they're not educating themselves, I don't think.
I mean, not with that kind of reaction.
Just more to make a statement.
What do you think, Emanuel, is the appropriate response to this kind of thing?
The appropriate response, you know, I'm not somebody who's in favor of sending people
to prison for things that don't make society any safer.
You know, somebody who's a mass killer, someone who's violent, yeah, they need to be segregated
from society somehow.
Somebody who engages in some kind of a scheme, you know, obviously they can't pay back everything
they stole, but they can certainly spend most of their life trying to do that.
And I think, you know, somebody who steals needs to make up for that.
Just sending them away gets them out of our hair, yeah, but it doesn't really address
the crime.
It doesn't do anything to rehabilitate the person.
I just think there are so many better ways to deal with that kind of a criminal.
Also a sentence like 300 years.
I mean, there are very few things you could actually do as a human being that I think
actually warrant any 300 years of anything.
And of course, that's a completely unrealistic thing anyway, because no one would live that
long.
So, you know, why don't they just say life in prison for hacking?
Well, that's what they're saying.
And that's what they're trying to get people to believe is normal.
That's what the real danger is.
When people think, you know, I remember the day when a hacker going to prison was unheard
of.
That will never happen.
Why would they do that?
And now we're thinking lifetime in prison for hacking.
Okay, that's not that unusual.
And we can't allow that to become normal.
Uh, yeah, I agree with you.
I just wonder is maybe an aim of this.
So when they give the next one 200 years, that one will think, oh, they're being merciful.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's just a shame in general, because you've got some skill.
I mean, I'm sure other crimes, people could argue, have skill, but there's skill here.
It's just maybe like with what Emmanuel said, remarking about rehabilitation of some kind,
or at least getting people in the right direction, encouraging them to use some of their skill or
knowledge in more positive ways in society and get them back on their feet, so to speak,
instead of this huge sort of figure to scare everyone.
I think I would argue definitely cycles innovation to a degree.
Yeah, there's all kinds of things that happen to us.
That we get outraged at a couple of weeks ago, we were having a denial of service attack,
and we weren't able to do a lot of things we wanted to be able to do.
I don't want blood.
I don't want somebody to suffer or be in prison.
I want to figure out how to get around it, how to make it not happen again.
And, you know, if we find out who did it, then, you know, display that information.
But you have to say to yourself, okay, this happened.
How much of a big deal is it really?
Can I recover from it?
There was a story that came out in the last week about Time Warner.
Apparently 320,000 customers, and we're so familiar with stories like this,
found out that their email and password details were stolen, or a better phrase is copied.
Time Warner Cable said there was no evidence of a breach found in the company's systems,
but the details might have been obtained by directly targeting customers themselves,
probably going through phishing emails or malware,
reusing credentials obtained by a data breach of another company.
Anything but Time Warner is what Time Warner is saying.
This kind of a thing is common.
It happens all the time.
And we need to be able to take steps to protect ourselves by not
having easily penetrable accounts via passwords or things like that,
and by recognizing companies that don't protect
the data that you entrust them with and not using those companies anymore.
So, you know, it's basically educating ourselves as this technology evolves.
Yeah, I mean, what's your recommendation for people then?
Well, it depends. It depends on the specifics of the case.
I would say never use the same password for multiple accounts.
That way, if a weak link in something that you use is compromised,
then all of your other accounts aren't also compromised through no fault of your own,
other than the fact that you can't keep track of more than one password.
Don't use companies that have a bad track record.
Don't use companies that can't seem to ever say, yeah, we can do better.
There are many, many ways to do this.
And yeah, there are going to be some problems.
Hey, I'll give you an example of something that happened to me.
Maybe people can give me ideas on what to do.
I found out that my credit card had been used for fraud back in January.
However, since, if you recall, last year around this time,
Carl and I were over in Eastern Europe and doing all kinds of things.
And I was trying to use my credit card as much as possible to avoid
having to switch to cash every couple of days.
And I had like a five-page credit card bill.
And I didn't have a chance to itemize every single item.
In the middle of all that, somebody decided they were going to buy a toy train set
for some kid someplace through mail order.
And it just kind of slipped in there.
I didn't notice it until I was doing my year-end accounting.
And there it was, this charge.
I had no idea what it was.
I called Chase to ask them, can you tell me what this was?
They couldn't help me at all.
They said, the only information we have is what's on your bill,
which I know is nonsense.
I know Chase keeps track of purchases.
We have an online store.
We certainly keep track of purchases.
The thing is, they were covering their asses.
They just didn't want to help somebody because I might cause some kind of a reversal
or a question or something like that.
You have basically between 60 and 90 days to contest this.
So I kind of knew I didn't have much on my side.
But I still wanted to know who did it.
They wouldn't help me at all.
Finally, I called the company.
I tracked down a phone number for them.
And I asked them to look it up.
And they were most gracious.
And they did that.
And I have the person's name.
I have the person's address.
I have the person's phone number.
And since then, I've been able to get all kinds of information about this person.
And I guess what I need help with is, well, what do I do now?
If Chase isn't going to help me, they're not going to reverse the charge.
It's well beyond the period of time to do something like that.
But I have all this information.
And I share a degree of the blame for not catching it in the first place.
But I am very disappointed in Chase for not helping a customer when something obviously is wrong.
And for not detecting it.
The funny thing is, they had contacted me that very day to say,
there is evidence of fraud on your account.
However, the item they pointed to as evidence of fraud was a recurring monthly charge.
In other words, a charge that appeared every single month on that same credit card for a year.
They pointed to it, or their computer pointed to that and said,
this is evidence of fraud.
Do you recognize the charge?
And I said, yes, I do recognize the charge.
But they didn't tell me about the toy train being sent to somebody.
That, to them, was completely normal.
So I'd like to find out where the compromise occurred.
Because they used my name.
They used my billing address.
All of that.
Somewhere, someplace, there was some kind of a compromise system.
That's something they should take an interest in.
And they have not taken any interest in that.
And I'd like to know, what should I do with all the information I have for this person
that either was the recipient of a fraudulent purchase or the initiator?
Emanuel, why don't you simply ask that person how they did it?
Well, do you think they're really just going to say, oh, I'll tell you nothing?
Since you called me on the phone, I'm going to give you all the information.
They're going to deny it, of course.
Well, to say, hey, listen, I can't hold you accountable anymore,
because my window is closed.
No, no, no.
You know, hey, it's worth a try.
It could be worth the entertaining.
Why, in any situation, would they tell me that?
Well, how do you know it's even that person, anyway?
It could have just been their gift recipient.
They sent this gift at your expense to somebody else.
That's probably who it is.
Well, that's what I said.
I said this person could have just been the recipient of a fraudulent purchase.
I think that's what happened.
Right, but Emanuel, you've got...
She's basically, she's had a hard life, right?
She's trying to make it on her own.
I see her job applications.
I see all kinds of things that she's going for.
She seems like a nice person.
And the kid, you know, the kid deserves a train, obviously.
He's been through some crap in the last year.
But, you know, I just would like some say before I give somebody a train set.
That's all.
Emanuel, you've got all this information on this person now.
You're admitting to having all this personal information about somebody who didn't authorize
you to.
Are you trying to get sent to Turkish prison for 300 years?
Well, they're not in Turkey.
They're in Brooklyn.
Oh, yeah, I know that.
I know where they are.
In fact, you could probably get to them tonight, Rob.
It's not fraud to investigate charges on your card.
That's true.
You're right.
It's not.
Why should it be?
That's what they want you to think.
So I guess listeners who have ideas for what you can do with this information can send
us an email, oth at 2600.com.
And if you're the listener who got the train, let us know that as well.
And maybe we can have a personal conversation.
Yeah, send us a picture.
Yeah, at least let us come over and play with the trains.
Before we take it for your child.
You can repossess the train set.
I mean, I don't consider that getting hacked.
I consider that being a victim of a bad system.
Which, you know, I don't know if that system has gotten any better with the introduction
of chip cards on credit cards, because it's fairly easy.
In fact, there's a letter in the new 2600 about this.
It's easy for a card to simply be defined as not having a chip.
All you have to do is modify something on the mag stripe, and it'll say, no chip,
you have to use the mag stripe.
And all of a sudden, you can duplicate the card, and that's the whole point of having
the chip in the first place, so that a duplicated card can't be used over and over again.
I'm wondering what percentage of credit card fraud still uses an actual physical card
anywhere anyway, since so many purchases are made with just the info.
Exactly, yes.
I wonder, Emanuel, if the credit card companies on their side have some way of telling this
that you change in the mag stripe.
It seems to me that they would have on record whether a card they had recently issued had
both or neither, but I guess we'll have to look more into that.
I haven't seen that particular story yet.
Sounds fascinating, though.
See, as a hacker, I would want to see this exploited so that we learn what the weakness
is.
So if somebody is able to do that to a credit card, to make a supposedly secure chip credit
card completely insecure by modifying something on the mag stripe, they should do that.
They shouldn't go around ordering trains and sending it to random kids, but they should
at least do something in practice to demonstrate.
Maybe at a conference like the upcoming HOPE conference.
That would be a great way to demonstrate that.
I don't know if you want to be complicit.
They shouldn't use the modified card on a merchant account that you control.
Look, you need to demonstrate security holds.
And to do that, you cannot be timid.
You can't say, well, if I do this, I'll be liable, et cetera, et cetera.
You're doing something in front of a crowd of a few hundred or a thousand people to demonstrate
a weakness.
If somebody comes after you, you're going to have a lot of people on your side.
Maybe if they duplicate their own card.
Yeah, maybe.
Sorry, Mike.
There's also thousands of people.
Perhaps you could get volunteers.
Sure.
I mean, there's always that.
I mean, Steve Randolph has a good time getting people to volunteer their personal information.
They can get people to volunteer their credit cards and see just how much damage we can do.
But speaking of Hope, we opened up ticket sales on Monday, and I think we're almost
halfway completely sold out.
That's how quickly they've been going so far.
So it's something to consider if you want to go to a really interesting hacker conference
right here in New York City, July 22nd through 26th of this year.
The 11th Hope is what we're calling this one.
All the details are at hope.net.
And you might want to consider hurrying up because the interest in this kind of thing
has gone through the roof.
And it's really awesome to see because we have so many cool people, so many amazing
folks who travel from around the world to share their ideas and theories and experiments
and just meet all kinds of other people right in the middle of New York City.
So hope.net is where all the information can be found.
We've also opened up speaker submissions.
You'll find information about that, how you can get started submitting your ideas for
talks or panels and workshops as well.
I know, Bernie, you were very involved in workshop coordination last talk.
Can you tell us something about the sorts of things we get?
Yeah, Mitch Altman and I were very involved with that last time.
We found that over the years of doing Hope conferences that there was interest in having
workshops too, like a hands-on workshop where everybody sits at tables and participates
in building something or creating something.
And a lot of the talks, I mean, we have like 100 speakers at these Hope conferences every
three days.
A lot of these talks lend themselves very well to a follow-up workshop.
Like if you're talking about how to hack this particular piece of hardware or how to
build this certain thing, somebody can do a talk about that.
But then after the talk, you can all get together in a room and actually do the thing that was
just talked about, which is, I think, a great combination.
And we did a lot of workshops at HopeX a couple years ago, and that worked out really
well.
I'd like us to focus even more energy on that this year because it's just a great
confluence where you have people, you have a speaker talking about something, and then
you can sit down with that speaker and actually do what they were talking about and learn
about it hands-on.
And it's a very educational and enjoyable process and a lot of fun.
And it just makes the conference way better.
And Bernie, I just want to take issue with one thing you said.
I believe you said we had 100 speakers.
That is woefully wrong.
I'm sorry, I was probably short.
We had 100 talks, and some of those talks were 100 scheduled talks.
And some of those talks had panels of three, four, even five people.
And then, of course, there's the unscheduled track as well.
So it's probably more like 150 at least.
OK, I stand corrected.
There's just so much information there.
HOPE is much more than a passive experience where you're hearing people talking.
As you said, you get to meet other people and collaborate.
And there's all these workshops.
There'll be even more this year where you can actually get your hands on and work on
stuff, whether with a soldering iron or a keyboard or art or whatever.
There's always something to keep you busy at HOPE.
And at the 11th HOPE, there'll be more and more of that.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I accidentally dialed a six.
I don't know why I did that, but I love rotary phones.
As do we.
You are already on line six, Emanuel, on our device here in the studio.
Yeah, but there's no need to dial.
You're already connected.
Let me just ask you, Mike and Rob and Jim, comparing...
Bernie, you're on a cell phone, right?
I am.
OK, and I'm on a landline.
I'm using a 1937 phone.
Don't lift it up.
It might fall apart.
1937?
Yeah, OK.
And Kyle is on a 1950s phone, somewhere in the 50s.
How do our voices sound in comparison to each other?
Yeah, your voices sound good.
Your voice, Emanuel, I think sounds better than one would expect from an 80-year-old
piece of technology.
You're talking about the phone, I hope.
I'm talking about the phone.
But yeah, I mean, how many other household appliances keep working for that long,
just as well as they did in their heyday?
I mean, even my wall doesn't stay fresh-looking for that long.
You have to paint it every now and then.
I don't stay that fresh-looking myself.
But Kyle, you're also sounding pretty good.
Bernie, you sound like you sound every week.
It's probably I don't sound as well because I don't have a good carbon microphone in my
cell phone like those two guys do.
You know, all you have to do, Bernie, is just bang it on the desk really hard.
Yeah, right, that'll work better.
Wait, what kind of phones are you and Kyle using?
Kyle, what are these makes and models of these phones?
Yeah, so this is a 500 that I'm speaking to you on.
And it actually might be more towards the 60s.
It's a northern telecom handset.
It's got a little sticker on it.
It contains terraces, regulations governing the connection of customer-provided equipment.
So this is back when you were leasing them.
Hey, I remember that phone.
I bought that phone as a kid from Radio Shack.
I don't know how I got a northern telecom phone at Radio Shack, but they did sell them.
It was a big deal then to plug it in because people only had one phone and they had to
tell the phone company if they got a second phone.
So when I got this one, I was sort of like, am I going to get arrested now because I bought
a second phone and I figured out how to plug it in myself?
That's very shameful.
I hope you report yourself to Verizon immediately.
Strangely, Kyle, your voice quality just went down a bit.
I think your 1960s phone might have lost its cell signal or something.
Was that possibly from turning it around and looking at it?
Let's not manhandle the phones too much.
Yeah, the phones do require talking into them.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, now that you're doing it, it's a lot better.
No, okay, yeah.
I was just looking to finish the thought.
A 302 is what Emmanuel's on.
It's a Western Electric though.
It's much older.
Yes, not a Western Digital, Western Electric.
I've made that mistake before.
This phone could be used to kill somebody.
That's how heavy the handset is.
The handset is not made of plastic.
It's made of metal.
I have to say though, if you want a weapon, the modern cell phone which shatters on impact
might be better.
Well, if it shatters on impact, it's not going to hurt anybody, is it?
This phone will not shatter on any impact.
No, but the glass shards, those are dangerous, man.
Anyway, listen, we were talking about getting hacked and things like that.
This seems to have been a bad week for people whose initials are JC because James Clapper,
you might remember him as the former Director of National Intelligence and liar.
Remember, he lies in front of Congress.
And also Jeremy Corbyn over in the UK.
They both found themselves hacked in one form or another.
A teenage hacker allegedly got into the email of James Clapper.
Goes by the nickname of Cracker.
And basically, he was able to break into a series of accounts linked to Clapper.
They include his home telephone and internet, his personal email, his wife's Yahoo email account.
I don't know.
How could somebody have gotten into so many different accounts?
I don't know.
This is a fascinating cracker Clapper caper.
When you say it like that, it certainly is.
I mean, either they all use the same password or once they got into the email
account, they just use like the reset password on all the other services.
I don't know.
Well, you know, whoever did this is a clever person because what they did was
they changed the settings on Clapper's home telephone number, which is provided by Verizon Fios
so that every call to Clapper would be forwarded to the Free Palestine Movement.
So basically, they did that because of opposition to US foreign policy and support to Palestine.
So that's kind of cool.
Maybe they just don't like liars, the person.
I don't know.
That might be true as well.
I think we all have a problem with liars.
Anyway, as far as Jeremy Corbyn, his Twitter account, he's a labor leader, by the way,
over in the UK.
His Twitter account began tweeting a bizarre set of items and people realized that it wasn't
actually him.
Apparently, what happened was somebody left a computer locked on and as a result of that,
his Twitter account was accessed and somebody posted all kinds of funny things.
Again, you know, it's just a prank.
It's nothing really that serious and it's obvious three bizarre minutes on Sunday night
what they're saying.
The leader of the opposition's Twitter account was compromised.
You know, you have to look at this with a bit of humor, what real harm came from that.
Somebody had some weird things said in their name and it was quickly corrected.
So he got Pence-statist.
Pretty much.
What were the weird things that were said?
You really want me to read these?
Because I do have a list of some of them.
Can we read them on the radio?
Well, it starts with, here we go, with exclamation points.
David Cameron is a pie.
I don't know why you'd say that.
A pie?
That might be a British thing.
And there's a picture of him with a pie on his face.
All right.
Yeah.
All right.
If it doesn't get any better, then I think we can stop there.
There was expletive trident.
I think that's a reference to nuclear deterrence.
That could have been the labor leader himself, though.
Yeah, it's possible.
Yeah, there's no way to know.
There's all kinds of weird things with British words that I don't understand.
You know, I think if people gain accounts or gain access to accounts of people in a
nation-state leadership status, you should really take good advantage of that opportunity.
And like the guy that took over James Clapper's account, he's the director of National
Intelligence.
I think that was brilliant, forwarding things to the Free Palestine Movement.
It made a doubly good point.
But I don't see where this hacking of Brennan's Twitter account
in the UK was really making any useful point.
Sometimes you don't have to make a point.
You just have to do something silly and ridiculous.
Yeah, I think that also underlines that it is something silly and ridiculous.
It's just somebody having a prank, and maybe somebody gets embarrassed as a result of that.
Hey, you know what they'll learn?
Don't leave a computer logged on in a public place that somebody else can get access to.
And we move on.
We get more intelligent as a species.
Yeah, the old respected prank in the scene is called pants status.
And that's if you see someone left their Twitter logged in or their Facebook or something else,
just post as them their pants status.
Pants status comfortable.
Pants status on.
Know when something is a good idea.
Stop reaching for my phone, Mike.
Bernie, you posted something to our list this week, and you almost got me here.
I thought, oh, wow, that's really dumb.
And I realized, no, no, no, it could possibly be this dumb.
But apparently, the pranksters who wrote this fake news story said that there's something,
there's a company called First Response.
It's a pregnancy test company.
And they have something new for those who need to know if they're expecting or not,
a pregnancy test via Bluetooth.
The pregnancy test will be similar to what you can buy at any retail store.
The only difference is you won't see a plus or minus on it.
Instead, you'll receive the news on your iOS or Android device.
Use of this device is pretty simplistic as you'll just need to download
the First Response Pregnancy Pro app to the device, phone or tablet.
And then it goes into some detail there.
Yeah, come on, Bernie.
Who would be dumb enough to do something like this?
Hey, it's not April 1st.
So this is a real story.
And this company, First Response, they are a maker.
I checked the website.
They really do have this thing.
This is one of the things where you put your, if you're a female,
you put your urine on a stick and it has a plus or minus.
Well, now it has a little Bluetooth transponder that communicates
to the app on your smartphone.
And it says, congratulations, pregnant or not pregnant or whatever.
But my concern is that, you know, basically all these companies
that write apps, or many of them, I know Mike knows a lot about this
because he's involved with mobile apps.
A lot of these apps, they have access to the information that the app uses.
So this First Response company will presumably know if who is pregnant
or not pregnant based on their phone information and what the app
is telling the user.
And I think that's really over the top.
The instructions are unclear.
I just peed on my phone.
I mean, it's unclear if the data in this case actually ever
released the device or not.
It seems to me that this offers no advantage over not hooking it up
to your cell phone.
Other health metrics that you want to track over a longer term,
like a lot of people, their weight or people with long-term
chronic conditions who need to monitor something over time.
You know, computerizing that and having it digital so you can
analyze it over time, that seems useful to me.
And, you know, the privacy implications are real and really need
to be considered.
But at least there's a benefit in the cost-benefit trade-off.
For this particular device, I really don't see the benefit.
Maybe if some of our listeners have used this sort of thing
and can enlighten me, I'd love to hear it.
OTH at 2600.com, or maybe we'll take calls in a bit.
But I just don't get it.
It just seems like it's more expensive and not any better.
Yeah, it seems like it's adding extra steps to the whole process.
When for many, many generations now, we've had the technology to just
have the thing you buy be the thing that tells you the result without
looping your phone and some proprietary app into it.
It's $15 or $20, depending on where you buy it, which is presumably
more expensive than just the little chemical stick that
has a plus or minus sign on it.
It's not reusable, right?
No.
Wow.
But what this reminds me of is, okay, when some of us were younger,
when you would buy a bottle of soda, sometimes they would have contests
and you would look under the cap and it would say you won something.
But for a long time now, they haven't had that result under the cap.
They would just have a code number that you have to go put into some
website and sign up for a thing to find out if it wins anything.
And it just adds extra steps to the process and makes it less fun.
And I think this is maybe making pregnancy testing less fun.
Well, that's because a friend of mine figured out how to see under the cap
without buying the bottle and was able to find the winners every time in the store.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Yeah, that's why I told him that.
Speaking of things, though, that seemed like a good idea at the time
to turn out probably not to be that good an idea, this is a case that
we recently heard about from a Virginia circuit court judge last Thursday saying that a person
does not need to provide a passcode to unlock their phone for the police.
But the court also ruled that demanding a suspect to provide a fingerprint
to unlock a phone would be constitutional.
So all these people that use their fingerprint as their security device,
their security method, because who else would have their fingerprint?
Well, guess what?
Now, that can be used to compromise your security on demand without violating your rights in any way.
Now, it seems like something that we all could have figured out pretty easily at the beginning,
but so many people opt for convenience over security.
And here's the latest example.
Right. I should point out that it wasn't last Thursday.
This story is actually from the end of October.
So it would have been Thursday, October 29th.
But the story has just been making the rounds this week.
That's the story I'm looking at.
Oh, yeah, look, that date is so tiny and faded.
You're right.
OK, that's one of the problems with online news.
Sometimes they hide the date or they say this story is relevant and you read something that
says a hurricane is coming to New York and it's dated three years ago.
And yeah, thank you for correcting that.
Emanuel, I read this story and what struck me is that
law enforcement and corporations, they're collecting our biometric data increasingly often.
So, you know, anyone who would just use their fingerprint or any other biometric information,
like like maybe their their face or their iris, you know, their eyeball picture,
using that as a as a way to protect your private info.
It's kind of dumb, you know, presumably when the police arrested this guy,
I forget what he was arrested for, but it was something serious,
presumably. They already got his fingerprints when, you know,
when you get arrested, they fingerprint all your fingers.
So they already had his fingerprint.
And I remember seeing talks at various various hacker conferences around the world about
how to take a fingerprint.
We've read stories about this, how to take a fingerprint and make a fake finger with it
and access a fingerprint scanner to bypass it.
So presumably the police could have already done that if they had a half a clue,
but maybe they're just too stupid or ignorant to know that.
Bernie, I think like a more technically capable police force that's like better
at invading people's rights is not really something you should be asking for.
Well, it's going to happen at some point.
Yeah, of course.
So I use my finger to unlock my phone so that I could look up the details of this story.
The man in question was charged with trying to strangle his girlfriend.
And one thing that's interesting about my phone is that if you don't,
you know, you can go no longer than three days between entering your password.
So if you just unlock it with your phone with your finger,
keep unlocking it with your finger.
Eventually, it'll say you've done that too many times.
I need the password now.
So I wonder if there was some kind of rush to get this guy's finger.
Apparently, this person's device has a similar thing.
If you haven't used the phone for 48 hours, then you have to enter the password.
So I wonder, I don't know what I think about how that's affecting.
Can you set that time, like, say, more than an hour to require a password?
I don't know.
I'm going to try it.
I mean, that would be a worthwhile thing.
Yeah.
Also, I guess the moral of the story is if you have a smartphone that allows you to
protect your information with more than one thing, you know, the old security thing,
it's good to have something good to protect your account with something you have
and with something that you know.
You have your fingerprint, and presumably, the police have your fingerprint when they
fingerprint you, but they don't know what you know.
So if you could protect, I don't know, Mike, is your smartphone, can you protect
information with both, require both your fingerprint and a passcode or only one of the other?
You must have, on my phone, you must have a password in order to use the fingerprint
as a sort of backup thing in case the fingerprint fails,
but you only get asked for one at a time.
I think the password should be what they ask you for every time, and then the fingerprint
should be, are you really the person that the password belongs to?
That should happen every day or two as extra confirmation.
That's not the way mine works, but maybe someone can make a different phone that works
differently, I don't know.
Maybe once a week it should take a cheek swab from you and check the DNA.
I have to say it's super convenient to unlock your phone with your fingerprint.
I'm sort of addicted to it, but it is opening up a whole wide world of questions.
I agree, it is super convenient to unlock my phone with your fingerprint.
Well, it's apparent, at the very least, that multiple types of accessing your devices are
probably going to be important, and at least some good system that each person, just from
being aware of how these systems can be exploited, will go a long way in the future to keeping
these little computers that have so much about us stored in them protected, or at least
somewhat private.
I had a story, actually, going back to the stuff we were talking about regarding things
like this pregnancy kit that's now on your phone, and all kinds of devices collecting
stuff about us.
There was a story about the, I don't know if anybody heard this, it's called V2V, but
this relates to cars, and autonomous vehicles particularly.
The Department of Transportation is sort of finalizing some of the standards for what
would equate to like an air traffic controller for the roadway that's more or less automated,
and I'll just read a little bit.
I believe this can be implemented on any kind of communications protocol.
They are, there is some buying going on for Spectrum, I believe it was like 5.9 GHz, but
just to explain what V2V is, it uses technology similar to Wi-Fi, a la 5.8, 5.9 GHz, allowing
cars in close proximity to share information like speed and direction several times a second.
This allows the car to warn a driver before changing lanes about a hazard ahead, and so
on.
Some cars already come with a blind spot detection automatic braking to prevent collisions,
and it goes on and on and on.
And these systems also would be able to communicate with infrastructure like stoplights, letting
drivers know how long until an upcoming light changes, and so on.
And there's a quotation here from Jamie Kittman, the New York Automobile Magazine bureau chief,
agrees it's life-saving technology, but believes it will be a number of years before issues
like security against hacking and privacy are fully addressed.
Quotes, or says, you are going to be able to be tracked like you've never been tracked
before.
That has good uses, like charting traffic flows, Kittman said.
And then there's the issue that most of the data will be collected by private corporations,
and they will seek to use that for their benefit.
Wow.
And there's some other interesting characterizations.
Another article I read had some terrible quotations from another CBS reporter, Chris Van Cleave.
He basically said, there's one major hurdle, that's privacy.
How do you protect the cars against hacking?
And what about all the data that's now being collected by our ever-smarter cars?
Well, the hacking part is definitely a concern.
We don't want ISIS grabbing the wheel and driving us all to the caliphate.
Wait a minute, hold on.
Why, in God's name, there's always hackers are the threat, and hackers are tied to ISIS.
Why, I mean, for God's sake, these corporations are gathering all this private information,
we're being tracked every foot that we step now, and that's the threat that they point
to.
Hackers are the ones that are going to figure it out and tell you where the privacy implications
are.
Police.
Well, okay, Jim, yes, police will be tracking us all the time and know where we are and
how fast we're going.
And if you just pass a light by a fraction of a second, they'll have that too.
Right.
I don't know if I want to live in a world where every movement is scrutinized like that.
I've already lived that world many times in fiction.
In some ways, you already do.
There's a story in the Washington Post this week about the new way police are surveilling
you, which is calculating your threat score.
Basically, your credit score would be calculated based on a bunch of factors that no one will
tell you all that much about.
You now have a threat score if you're in Fresno, California.
What is my threat score?
How do I find out?
Yeah, I want to find out too.
Because you can get your credit report once a year or something.
Can I get my threat report?
Apparently you can't, but the software being used in Fresno is called Beware.
And the article opens up, while officers race to a recent 911 call about a man threatening
his ex-girlfriend, this is in the Washington Post, a police operator and headquarters consulted
software that scoured the suspect's potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit
report.
The program scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records,
commercial databases, deep web searches, and the man's social media postings.
It calculated his threat level as the highest of three color-coded scores, a bright red
warning.
And it goes on like that.
And of course, this is closed software run by some company, without oversight, without
opening up what data they're using or how they're using it.
But this article goes into some frightening detail about how much the police seem to really
love it.
I still want to know my threat score.
I want to know your threat score too.
I work with you once a week.
Yeah, but if I'm a threat and you don't know it?
Well, we'll find out.
We'll ask people to tell us what my threat score is.
It's fascinating.
I mean, with all of this stuff just being rushed in.
I mean, really, specifically this vehicle tracking that is going to be a part of this.
They're really, really excited about it in the context of safety.
But the rush into it kind of leaves a few questions.
I mean, it is being standardized through the Department of Transportation.
And essentially, it can run on any kind of network.
So it is that double-edged sword with these technologies.
Like, it's exciting to get new capabilities and features and all of that.
But this goes back to the core of something that we return to often, which is, how can
this be misused, misappropriate our information and our privacy and allow us to essentially
be free?
Anyway, it's something to follow.
V2V probably stands for vehicle-to-vehicle, right?
Yeah, that's kind of the jargon they're using.
What it actually is is a vehicular ad hoc network.
And they can be used on a variety of platforms and LTE, WiMAX, all that.
So this is something that we're going to see.
And this is sort of building on some of the automatic features you're seeing in vehicles
now.
But it's also sort of integrating the roadways, kind of in preparation for what we've been
talking about a lot with these autonomous cars, like Google Car.
We can go on and on.
There's tons of areas of research, even the DARPA projects for autonomous vehicles way
back.
So it's definitely interesting times in that realm.
Because, yeah, your car may be spying on you.
We're going to see so many changes in the years ahead with autonomous vehicles driving
all over the place and drones delivering packages and doing God knows what else.
So I'm glad we're here to kind of keep an eye on it, analyze it, and come up with all
the what-ifs.
We try.
We have a little bit of time left.
What do you guys think about trying to take some phone calls?
If you're up for it, that's a lot of phone lines you're juggling.
But let's see what happens.
I'm interested in trying this out.
If you're listening and you'd like to tell us something, you can call us at 718-780-8888.
And not you.
But while we're waiting for that to happen, I'll read a piece of email a listener sent
us.
Bob in Minneapolis writes, define TSA as you will, as we were talking about last week.
But all of the discussion about TSA and the methods, in my opinion, did not mention the
most important thing.
That is the failure of the TSA to stop certain items, contraband, through security.
In other words, they failed at security.
I understand this was not entirely the point of the conversation, but it is an interesting
fact.
Thank you, Bob, for that.
All right, we have some callers now.
So we'll press that one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello, tone.
Maybe this number is not a tone.
Hello.
Oh, yes.
Thank you so much.
And you guys are always right about North Korea.
That guy, that place is crazy, man.
They set off that bomb, man.
And I want to thank you because I used to give you a hard time.
But you're right.
We always are right about North Korea.
Thanks.
That's correct.
We try.
I admit it.
I'm trying to be man enough to man up.
You know what I'm saying?
Consider yourself man up.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Of course, by North Korea bomb, I assume he's talking about that film that came out when
Sony got hacked.
But all right.
But who else is out there?
All right.
This person is out there.
Hello.
Yes.
Hello.
We're calling from the Bluetooth Wi-Fi.
I'd like to talk about the new technology about Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
We have...
Hello?
Hello.
Rebel, is that you?
Is this Rebel?
Yes.
Hell yeah.
We're...
You know people have been writing and asking how you are and where you are and what you've
been up to.
Well, I've been, you know, doing things.
I have, you know, new computers and I, you know, I've been playing around.
I got a smartphone and, you know, I call it the everything phone because, you know, you
can just do everything with this, you know, with this Android, you know, type of phone.
You know, I, you know, barcode scanning and taking videos.
I sold all my video cameras and video cameras I have.
And I only use this phone now.
Mine can play music.
I've got two.
But the thing is, you've got it two integrated.
So you can't, like, do, I mean, everything's in one.
So if you want to record something and, you know, show something, you can't really, you
know, that's the thing about everything being in one place, you know, you use a remote control
and, you know.
Well, thank you very much for the info, Rebel.
And we'll...
Yeah, it's good hearing from you.
Yeah.
We always learn a lot when Rebel calls.
Yeah, we do.
Maybe we'll also learn from this caller.
Hello.
Hello?
Hi.
Hey, how's it going?
How are you?
What's on your mind?
I've got a couple of questions.
I'm currently in a Linux class and I'd like to kind of run off my Raspberry Pi 2.
Is it possible to load Fedora, PuTTY, and then the VM player on it?
This sounds like a personal computer question.
Yeah, you might want to hang out for an hour and listen to our, actually, for about five
minutes because our friends at the PC show will be coming in right after us.
And this sounds a lot more like a question for them.
But yeah, congratulations on taking a Linux class and playing with the Raspberry Pi.
I think both of these are noble pursuits.
Yeah, no, definitely.
So, awesome.
I love you guys' show and love the magazine.
So, thank you.
All right, thanks.
Sounds like a good project.
Yeah.
We have this person on the line.
Hello, how are you?
Oh, silent person.
Are you asking me how I am?
Well, I, you know, how are...
You can tell us.
It wasn't clear.
No, well, thanks for asking.
Well, I'm glad to learn that.
How are you?
And we learned as much as the silent person was going to tell us.
So, let's try maybe this person.
Hello.
How are you?
Yeah, hello.
Hi.
Okay, about the telephone with the police trying to get your information.
Use your finger, but don't use the right one.
Have it set so if you use the wrong one twice, all your information will go up into the cloud
and erase the tracks of putting it in the cloud.
That's an interesting...
There's actually something called a duress code that some security systems have,
where if somebody's forcing you to put in your code,
you instead put in a different one that alerts the system that something's wrong.
Like, I think home security systems and things like that have it.
So, that would be an interesting equivalent.
Of course, the police in this town tend to get very angry when you present them the wrong finger.
Yeah, but you can blame them for breaking your phone, you know.
You have a fake blue screen of death on it.
Yeah, you may want to consult with your lawyer before you, you know, destroy evidence.
Or you may not want to consult with your lawyer.
You didn't do it, blame them.
Take it easy.
All right, thanks for the call.
And consider the awkward conversation you'll have with a home invader
after entering the wrong code, too.
So, it might not be worth it.
Oh, you know what...
All right, it looks like we maybe have time for one more call.
Let's make it this one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, hello.
Hi.
Am I on the air?
You are, what's on your mind?
Okay, just, I wanted to just say something to Emmanuel
and offer a little advice about his credit card, the charge.
Yeah, please.
Okay, first off, I think that you're on a high threat level right now,
just because, I don't know, you seem a little grumpy tonight, you know?
Well, yeah, you know, it's been a rough week.
It's been a rough week.
And it wasn't like it was a $2,000 train.
I mean, it was some kid in Brooklyn got a train set.
So, you know, I just like to see the look on the kid's face when he got the train,
and I was robbed of that.
Well, how much did it cost?
About $250, I think.
Wow, that's a really nice train set.
So, write that off on your taxes.
But you've got to understand something.
You've got a 90-day window.
Now, I had a VoIP line that I canceled in August.
Now, the company, they keep billing me for this, you know, $50.
And so I went in my credit card statement, and I called up a nice fellow from...
All right, I think that sound means that's all the time we have.
Thanks for the call.
All right, yeah, that is about all the time we have.
But this has been a fun episode.
Thank you, Emanuel and Kyle.
Thank you, Emanuel's Rubik's Cone.
And that's it, you guys.
Send us an email, oth2600.com.
And stay tuned for the next episode of the show.
We're off the hook.
This is Brought to You By Earthquake.
Have a very good night.
Love is callous, and it's ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-c
Loving is all love, the priest that tithes the word and toll of love, how my God on high is all love, the reaching of my loneliness evolves by the blindness that surrounds him
Loving
Loving
Loving
Loving
Loving
And I didn't care
Loving
Love is careless in its choosing, sweeping over, crossing, babing, love descends on those defenseless, idiot love, what's worth a fusion? Inspirations, have I none? Just a touch, the flaming dove, all I have is my love of love, and love is not loving
And love is not loving
And love is not loving
And love is not loving
And love is not loving
Loving
Love