Get ready to rock the planet.
Get ready.
Digital Dogpong presents Binary Revolution Radio.
Now launch the base.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Yeah, go planet.
Captain system.
Magnus Unity Time.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Hack the planet.
Hack the system.
Hack us unite.
Get ready.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Let's go.
We play track the system.
Magnus Unity Time.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Hack us unite.
Hack the planet.
Hack the system.
Hack us unite.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Get ready to rock the system.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Hack the planet.
Get ready to rock the planet.
Rock the planet.
Go plane to rock the planet.
Get ready to rock the planet.
We'll be right back.
I was a dick with my 56.
Now with my cable, I'm able to get that stable.
On the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo.
On the digital highway, my name is Neo and I'm a Nero.
In a flash, I'll screw you on burning dream cats.
You need some ISO?
Let me through my hard drive rifle.
Our exchange you could never stifle.
And a digital hug.
You just caught the love bug.
I bootlegged your CD.
I caused the fight between Un and Jay-Z.
Your CG, it's all gonna be free.
Whether we take it by force or we take it nicely.
You feel that rattle in your bones?
When I tell you we just hacked out Jones.
And NASDAQ leaves you flat on your back.
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Serial codes, source codes, ISOs, RAMs, SIFs, SIFs.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the crack.
I am not going to start the show by saying all right today.
I think that might be the first show I've ever started off without saying all right.
But I didn't do it this time.
But, I will say welcome to Binary Revolution Radio episode number 14.
We have a returning guest this week.
And he goes by the name of Not Theory, In Theory.
What's up?
Or whatever else you want to call him.
Not Theory, In The Heezy.
In The Heezy.
It's easy.
We have already been on the phone for an hour and a half before we started recording the show.
So, I don't know what material we have left in us.
Nothing.
It's going to feel like we're going over the same conversation again.
Right.
Exactly.
Actually, I'll probably start off the show with kind of a housekeeping section, emails, things like that.
And, first thing I'm sure everybody noticed, we had a different intro.
We still have the same theme.
I'm not going to get rid of the theme song.
I'm still going to have the same opening theme.
But, in front of that, we had a new theme that was sent to me by none other than Epiphany himself.
Our good friend over there producing Radical Future.
Longtime friend.
Sent us that mix, which is very, very cool.
So, we open the show with that.
Give us some lead-in music.
And, try to use that.
I might start using that.
And then, I don't know.
Should I...
See, we're not really a freaking show.
Should I start putting in some phone calls or something at the beginning?
Should I start recording some?
But, I don't know.
That's more a duels thing.
I think every once in a while it would be fun to go out and do something like that.
Eh, I guess maybe once in a while.
I do have...
I still have a telephonic craptacular coming up whenever I get my lazy ass together to edit it.
So, anyway.
Thank you, Epiphany, for that.
Very cool.
We also got a lot of feedback, generally, on the virus episode last week.
Which surprised me, actually.
I really didn't know what people were going to think about that.
But, hey.
Apparently, it was interesting and very timely, from what I understand from the forums.
I thought that was kind of interesting, kind of funny.
And, this past week, also, were 2,600 meetings.
So, for those of us who were conveniently located...
Well, not that I'm...
I'm really not all that conveniently located, actually.
It's a good 45-minute drive for me to go to my local 2,600 meeting.
But, I did go.
We had a very good turnout.
There was probably...
Might have even been over a dozen people this time.
Somewhere around a dozen at our meeting this time.
Some people we'd met before from previous meetings here and there.
You know how people come and go every month or two.
So, we had some repeat customers come back this time.
We also had some totally new people.
So, pretty good meeting, all in all, I'd have to say.
And, we didn't get hassled by security for a change.
Actually, we haven't had too much.
Last month, we did have problems with security.
And, I know Duel, they've had problems.
Duel and Rax, they had some problems with security that they're meeting, especially the last time.
And, they've actually switched locations.
But, they seem to be okay with us.
The only problem they have with us is using their electricity.
They don't like us plugging our laptops into their power outlets on the floor.
I mean, that's the worst they got.
I didn't notice a couple people, like, sitting unusually close to our meeting area.
Usually, people avoid us like the plague.
But, I couldn't help but notice a couple people that just kind of, like, sinned to be leaning back in their chair with their ear cocked towards our conversation.
That was kind of surprising.
It was kind of interesting.
Of course, we didn't really change anything because of it.
I figure if they want to listen, let them listen.
You never know, man.
They could be fed.
Got to look out.
Yeah, I guess be careful what you say.
Yeah.
You know, actually, I...
Hmm, speaking of that, should I bring this up on the show?
Am I going to get myself in trouble for this?
No, I don't think so.
At our meeting, my activity this time, we didn't really...
We were thinking it was going to be a very small meeting.
So, we didn't actually plan any topics of discussion or any particular meeting specifics.
So, we were just kind of winging it, playing.
And, I fired up my wireless sniffing program.
And, there is a wireless access point, a couple of them in the mall.
They're not encrypted, but they do authenticate somewhere.
And, this is actually a good tie-in to one of our big topics later on.
You do have to authenticate to get on the system.
However, well, let me rephrase.
You have to authenticate to get out of the system, to get onto the internet.
You'd have to authenticate.
And, it turns out that that access is being provided by a kiosk.
Some company has put a kiosk in there that will allow you to connect to the internet for so much per minute.
Or, so much per hour.
I don't know.
I know where the kiosk is, and I've seen it.
But, well, it's definitely what I was picking up.
But, you have to put money in and get a password or something to authenticate onto that system.
I did not go that far.
Probably next month, that's going to be, I'm going to try that.
I'm going to go over there.
I'm going to see exactly how it works.
Pay for a minute or two just to see how it works.
Log in.
See what kind of name and password it gives me.
And, while I'm in there, unfortunately, it's a shell.
I can't really root out of it.
I tried.
I can't really root out of it to see what kind of network settings they give me and what bridge and what gateways and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
If so, I could get that and take it back to the laptop.
But, what I could do is I could access anything within their intranet, anything within their allowed network areas, which is basically the service provider itself.
Well, by poking around their system, and really not that hard, poking around their system, I actually found the software that you install on the kiosk.
Yeah, so I downloaded the software through their free net access.
Again, it was inside of their allowable area, so I never had to authenticate.
If they want to resolve it, all it does is it looks like it came from a locally, internally assigned DHCP address, a 10 dot, you know, whatever.
So, I downloaded it and installed it, and basically, sitting there in the food court, I turned my laptop into a kiosk.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it was really pretty fun.
I couldn't do anything with it again because I still could not authenticate with it.
So, and by that time, it had taken me a little while to get that far.
But also, part of the package is I have all the documentation.
So, that's the first thing I tried.
I'm reading through the documentation, saw how to get, saw in controls, ran over to the other side of the mall where the kiosk was, and tried the default name and password.
They were smart enough to change that.
Damn it.
I almost had it.
They were smart enough to change the default user login and username and password.
So, if I could have got into that, I could have rooted the system and gotten that information, but alas.
But it's unencrypted, you said, so you can just sniff somebody else's.
Yeah, but nobody ever uses it.
That's the other thing.
I've never seen anybody use it.
That's true.
What's the name of the company that does it?
Do you know?
I have it in the laptop, of course, and it's not handy with me.
So, no, I do not know it off the top of my head.
Yeah, I'd be really curious.
The only ones I've seen ever are, like, T-Mobile hotspots, and that's about it.
No, this was definitely a local company.
I'm sure they, like, worked out some kind of contract deal with the mall to give them some kickback or something.
It's definitely not a big-name company.
It's a local thing.
And I think they were piggybacking on DSL.
Oh.
Yeah, when I was doing Traceroute to see how far back I could go and see where it was stopping along the way so I could scan each one of them.
Right.
Of course, it hopped along some DSL lines at the closest hops.
So, that was kind of unusual.
Yeah, that's pretty interesting stuff.
Yep.
So, that, you know, I had fun.
I probably zoned out doing my own thing there for a little while.
So, anybody that's listening, I apologize for that.
We did have a lot of people there.
I probably should have been a little bit more polite.
And, actually, that's another thing I wanted to mention.
It's something that Rax actually brought up on RFA last week.
And that is the topic of professionalism.
Not necessarily politeness.
I guess I can be a jerk as long as I'm professional.
I guess it doesn't quite work out that way.
But, actually, people that have listened, even from episode one, even, I've tried.
Especially, especially more recently, people know that I'm trying my best to control my language.
And, Rax is absolutely 100% right.
He mentioned it on RFA last week about being professional and trying to control the language.
And, you know, somebody said that they want to be able to play this for their mother or play this for their parents or teachers or something like that.
You know, ideally, that would be great.
But, you know, another thing I said in episode one is this is a show by hackers for hackers.
It's not really for parents.
It's not really for teachers.
I mean, they're welcome to listen to it if they're open-minded enough to understand what we're talking about and hear an occasional four-letter word.
But, that being said, I am, just for my own reasons, going to try to cut back.
Because, when you start overusing them, it becomes, I don't know, obscene.
And, it just becomes very unnecessary.
So, I'm going to try, as usual, to cut back and use them at an absolute minimum, if at all.
I mean, sometimes I go off on the RAAA.
I go off on some of these just asinine topics.
And, I can't help, but I want to get the point across so bad that I just can't help but throw in an F-bomb on occasion.
So, I'm going to make a conscious effort, as I have been.
And, I think I've been getting a little better.
It would be interesting to compare from the first episode back to this most recent episode if I've gone down in my number of vulgarities.
But, anyway, I'm going to try to keep them at a minimum.
And, Rax, and other people have kind of mentioned it before, too.
They're absolutely right.
And, it's not a radio, you know, I'm not limited by the seven words you can't say.
This is not something that the FCC is going to tell me what I can and can't do.
Rant Radio is very free, for the most part, in letting us, allowing us to speak our minds.
I mean, that is kind of what they're about.
But, I'm going to take it upon myself to try to step the show up a little bit.
And, what do you think?
Am I, is that, should I just go all out?
Or, I mean, do I really, should I really rein myself in?
You know, I think some restraint is not such a bad thing.
I think the person who mentioned it originally was Gluco.
That sounds right to me.
And, he said that he wanted to play it for people.
And, you know, maybe not expand the audience, but at least show people what the whole hacker thing is about.
And, you know, maybe the foul language is a barrier to that.
But, if you want to do it every once in a while and make it sound nice and professional, that's great.
But, if you're going to hold yourself back from what you really want to say,
then it's probably counter to the whole point of doing a radio show,
especially on radio, because they don't really hold back anything on any of their shows.
Amen.
Well, we're going to try to make it through this show without it, if I can help it.
I don't have anything about the RIAA this time, so that'll help, or the MPAA.
Thank God.
Well, we have a lot of other, we have a lot of good topics this show.
I hope, you know, we probably just jump in.
I mentioned this week that I had my 2600 meeting, but also, this past weekend,
I took another trip to my favorite place, one of my favorite places,
at Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios up in Orlando, Florida.
They have something called Halloween Horror Nights.
I don't know how familiar the listeners may be, but it's really a cool concept,
and I'm sure other theme parks around the world do it as well.
At least, I assume they do.
So, they basically shut down the park, and they redecorate the whole thing with a Halloween theme to it.
But it's not simple.
It's not just a corny, you know, hang a couple ghosts like people do for Halloween in their yards.
They go all out.
They send people out in costume to scare the bejesus out of you,
and they have them, like, themed every different area.
Like, for example, last year, they have something called Superhero Island,
and the theme of it was that when the Halloween Horror Nights,
which starts at 7 p.m., by the way, and goes till 2 a.m.,
so it's all night when it's dark and everything.
Majority of the lights in the park are turned off, so it's dark.
They have fog machines everywhere.
And, for example, the Superhero Island in the daytime turns into Supervillain Island at night.
So, it's really kind of a cool environment.
You're walking through, and they have these costumed supervillains running around with chainsaws and masks on
and a couple different, you know, actual real supervillains from the comics and stuff that was really cool.
So, you really felt like, you know, they put on a theme and everything to it.
Well, all the lights are off.
Fog machine's going.
It's pretty, not chaotic, I guess, controlled chaos.
They all have their jobs.
They know what they're supposed to do.
But, they're a little bit lax in security, I guess you'd say, because I was able to find my way.
Actually, I should back up.
When we first went in, I shouldn't say they're lax on security.
When we first went in the park, when you scan your ticket in at the front,
they, A, search anything you might be carrying.
You're allowed to take in video camera or something, but they'll check the bag.
But, this time, also, they checked.
You have to empty your pockets from change and take off your watch and anything like that.
And, walk through a metal detector to get into the park this time, which I thought was really strange.
They didn't do that last year.
You know, it's not like a September 11th change.
I don't know, I don't know why they started that this year.
But, anyway, you know, it wasn't that big a deal to me, I guess.
I don't have anything to worry about.
All I had to do was take the stuff out of my pocket and put it back.
Somebody behind me, they actually said that the magnetic strip on their pass set off the metal detector.
I don't know if that's possible or if that was just a line.
But, anyway.
So, they did actually have security going into the park.
So, that was a misstatement earlier.
However, once you're in the park, it's dark everywhere.
There's fog everywhere.
There's so many people.
Their job is to scare you.
They have people hidden in the bushes and all the lights are off.
And, they'll come up and jump up and scare you and come up behind you or blow fog horns or chainsaws, etc.
Well, we were all kind of hanging out to the side deciding which direction we were going.
I went with a group of friends.
And, I turned around and noticed that the gate behind me was kind of cracked open.
So, being the nosy person that I am, I kind of weaseled in there.
Me and, actually, Mr. Vitek and I kind of inched our way back there.
He noticed it and pointed at it.
So, we inched our way back and walked in.
Sure enough, there was not a soul in sight.
Wait, I had to use the restroom anyway.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
So, I walked back there on my quest for the restroom.
Great excuse if you're ever in some place like that.
Always looking for a restroom.
Very easy or you're lost.
Two very easy things.
And, actually, to be truthful with you, I did use the restroom.
I found the employee's restroom back there.
But, it was kind of funny.
We went back.
It got you to pretty much the center of the park where you can get to any of the,
internal levels.
It's where all the costume people travel.
It's where the concessions area, the ice machines, stuff like that were.
So, had a little urban exploration of my own to go along with Duel having some urban exploration
down in Texas.
Had a little urban exploration of my own in Florida.
Wow, there's no card swipes or anything on doors once you get down there?
No cameras?
No, it was a good old-fashioned latch.
Big wooden fence and just slides open.
And, it was already cracked open.
So, I didn't actually open or change anything.
I just walked into a gate that was already kind of cracked.
Right.
But, once you get all the way back to these other areas you're talking about, there's
no security there either?
Well, I got back to, I just wanted to really, I was just being nosy.
I just wanted to see what it looked like back there, to be honest with you.
I just wanted to see what was back there.
You know, I had no intentions other than being nosy.
Flat out.
So, I didn't really check much.
I saw the bathroom.
They allowed me in that.
I didn't need a key for that.
There was no special card swipe or anything to get in the restrooms.
Right next to the restrooms was a big walk-in freezer to the back of, I think it was the
back of like a restaurant, one of the restaurant themed things.
And, it had a, what looked like a lockable handle.
If you've ever seen a walk-in freezer, it's a big heavy handle.
It looks like it could have been locked, but I didn't test it to see.
But, also right there was a whole wall of about a hundred of those little square lockers,
which I assume were employee lockers for them to put their stuff in.
Some of them had locks on them.
Some of them didn't.
Wow.
I didn't touch any of them.
I wasn't there for that.
I was just checking it out.
But, yeah, I did peek my head back and go, wow, look at all these lockers just wide open
unlocked.
They're probably unlocked.
So, yeah, and there was also several doors to several different buildings and stuff,
but I didn't do that.
I went in and just kind of looked around.
And, we laughed a little bit and then headed back out.
Laughed at how we got back there so easy.
And, as I was coming back out, busted.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Some chick was coming the other way.
In costume, in some witch outfit or something.
I don't know if she was on a break or taking a potty break or what was going on.
But, she came by and she just, you know, act natural.
Just act like, again, you're looking for the bathroom or act like you belong.
Just kind of walked by and kind of nodded and smiled at her.
She gave me the funny look.
And, she had a shirt on.
Oh, gosh.
See, can I say the bad word if it was written on the shirt?
She had a shirt with a bad word on it.
A funny shirt.
A funny shirt with a little slogan on it.
And, I said, nice shirt.
And, she just kind of gave me a look.
And, then she sped her walk up a little bit faster.
So, I realized she might be going back after security or going back to call somebody.
So, we just double-timed it out of there.
And, went back in the park.
And, once you get back out there mixed in with all the dry ice and fog machines and darkness,
they'll never find you again.
So, my little urban exploration adventure, if you want to call it that.
I don't know how urban that is.
Oh, that's cool.
I've heard a lot about those amusement parks and all the infrastructure that they have
that you can't see and tunnels all over the place.
And, that's definitely a cool place to do some UE.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
And, we did the good old-fashioned juvenile line hopping.
And, you know, this is kind of stupid.
This is, gosh, this is a non-hacking rant, but I'll make it short.
This is a theme park.
It's a big, loud place.
When you buy a house and live next to a theme park, I don't really think you have a whole lot of right to complain about the noise.
It's stupid.
Even though the park is open until 2 o'clock in the morning for this, they had to close the two big roller coasters down at 11 o'clock at night
because it's too loud and the neighbors complain about the noise.
That's ridiculous.
They passed a noise ordinance, so they had to close them down at 11 o'clock.
Now, why do you buy property next to a theme park?
I have no idea.
And, the theme park has been there.
It's not like it built up around the houses.
The house is built up around it.
Right.
So, that's just, oh, good grief.
But, anyway, right around 11 o'clock, we went and hopped back over into the line a few times
and snuck in behind the security guards back a few times to get a few extra rides in.
That was good stuff.
But, nobody wants to hear about that.
Let's go back to some hacking.
Let's talk about some, I tell you what, you're a perfect person to have on to talk about this
because I have this idea that I've been kicking around for a while.
All right.
You know, they make video accelerator cards.
You know, for the games and stuff like that,
that'll handle a lot of the function calls and stuff like that.
They'll come with DirectX support or back of the old ones they had,
even back to, what was it, MMX,
that they would build those instruction sets onto the chip.
Well, I've always kind of thought about the possibility of making a piece of hardware,
a card that you could slide into your computer,
to handle things like, along the same logic, anyway, as those video cards,
and even sound cards, you know,
something that does encoding and decoding of MP3s,
but the instruction code is written on the chip set, on the card itself.
Or not just MP3s, but even video encoding and decoding,
like MPEG-2 compression or DivX, even,
if they would quit changing it all the time,
if they release a stable version of DivX,
and put that onto a chip set that you could put into your computer
and take the load off of your CPU itself.
Right.
Does that sound feasible?
Has that been done before?
Similar things have been done.
Actually, Creative Labs used to advertise that they had the Sound Blaster MP3.
And for people who don't know,
the Sound Blaster Live has a processor on it called the EMU-10K1,
which is a programmable DSP, which stands for Digital Signal Processor.
And they always bragged that they could download code onto this processor
and feed it MP3 data.
MP3 data, it would decode the MP3s outside of what your processor was doing.
So it would take all the load off, just like you're talking about.
So people have done things like that.
But as far as boards that accelerate video encoding,
the only ones I've seen do maybe MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video,
but nothing like DivX.
And like you said, because it keeps changing all the time,
you can't really design a chip and then deploy it millions of times over,
because by the time you get it out there, it's going to be changed.
Yeah, unless you work out a way to somehow flash the ROM or flash the...
Well, see, that's the thing.
It's too big. It's way too much.
Well, there are companies that sell boards that are populated with these chips
called FPGAs, which stands for Field Programmable Gate Array.
Basically, you can write a piece of software,
and it translates it into this chip.
And this chip essentially reorganizes its internal logic, kind of,
and it's almost like you're making a hardware accelerator
by programming this software.
So you can do some really fancy stuff.
You write a little bit of code in some weird programming language called Verilog,
and you can create really optimized hardware to do whatever you want.
And they make development kits where you can take whatever algorithm you want and see,
it converts it to Verilog or whatever format it needs,
and you can download it to this code,
and then you can offload all this processing to this board with multiple FPGAs.
And the boards are really expensive, but it does exactly what you're talking about.
So people are thinking along these lines,
but it's not really the consumer-type application just yet.
Well, I think there's demand for it in the consumer market,
so I hope they do figure out a way to reach the masses,
have a price drop, make it available to people.
Well, I know, obviously, you know, we have an interest in it here for Hack TV, of course,
but not only that, I mean, it's a very,
it's an interesting phenomenon going on right now online
where people are becoming, well, I'm not saying they're becoming creative.
They've always been creative, of course,
but there's a big surge in online movies and clips and videos and stuff like that
that people are making
that I think could benefit.
Like, I mean, there's plenty of people that do anime music videos.
That's very popular and has been for a couple years now,
and I think they could benefit from something like that
because right now I know people who get into that
and they end up going out and having to buy
or choosing to buy
dual processing, you know,
specialized AMD,
I forgot what they were called,
MP, it was like an XPM or something like that,
a specialized chips.
Right, right, right.
And, or just buying, you know, super high processors
because it takes so much power
to do what they want.
So, seems like there's a market for it out there.
Yeah.
People making their own music videos.
For a little external coprocessor or something like that,
I think people would do it,
but, I mean, these chips,
these chips even in bulk,
some of them cost, you know,
a hundred bucks a piece
so that the actual end user cost
is going to be pretty high for something like that.
But, you know what,
like everything else,
eventually the price is going to come down
and they're going to do it.
Well, hopefully sooner than not later.
One other thing I wanted to mention, too,
is go to,
we've talked about this before.
I don't know that I've ever,
I know we've talked about it in the forums
and maybe in passing on the radio,
but I'm actually going to give some air time
to this site
because they've got a lot of good stuff
and the site is
networked.net.
N-E-T-T-W-E-R-K-E-D dot net.
And if it sounds familiar,
it's because they're the people
that put out K-Line Zine.
And they just released issue 41
and it's really good.
It's a really good online zine.
Go check it out.
Again, you can listen back to the URL,
but we'll put it up in the show notes also.
But this is a really good zine.
It had a lot of material this episode.
They've gone quarterly now.
They realize that it's kind of tough,
as everybody does.
They start putting out a zine
and they realize how hard it is
to do it on a regular basis.
So they've switched it to quarterly.
And this one was just loaded,
packed with all kinds of good stuff.
So go check that out.
Definitely want to give them a shout-out and a pimp.
Check them out.
Radical Future, I know also, is coming out soon.
I was kind of hoping to hear something to announce that,
but when we do, we'll also announce them.
And really, I think that's about it for me this week.
That was enough.
I've been on the go all week.
This is actually the first day
I've gotten to sit down and relax.
Doing the show again is my release.
It's kind of my relax.
So why don't you,
I know you had brought up an interesting topic
in the forums.
Are you in mute?
Actually, we're emailing this back and forth,
I believe.
I don't think you mentioned it in the forums,
but about the new, that software radio.
Yeah, you mentioned to me
this piece of hardware called Flex Radio.
And the website is just www.flexradio.com.
Let me just double check that.
Yeah, it's actually www.flex-radio.com.
And for people who aren't familiar
with software-defined radio,
you can just do a Google search for GNU radio.
Their project gives you the rundown of it.
But the really, really basic way to explain it is,
let's say you buy a ham radio or something like that,
and it can transmit, you know,
you've got a microphone you plug in,
and it can transmit FM or AM.
And the FM and AM transmission
is controlled by these analog pieces of hardware.
So if you want to add an extra, you know,
type of modulation or extra fancy features,
you either need more hardware or a new radio.
Well, what this piece of hardware does
is it hooks your radio, you know,
it hooks a radio receiver transmitter
up to your sound card,
and then your computer from there
can do all the modulation.
So if you want to transmit an FM signal,
you get a piece of software
that creates an FM signal,
sends it out through this box.
You want to do AM, same thing.
So now this box will do up to, you know,
between 0 and 65 megahertz.
You know, you can transmit and receive
anything you want.
You know, you want to decode
some cordless phone information
or something like that,
or descramble something.
You know, you can just write
a piece of software to do it.
So I think with a tool like this,
a lot more hackers are going to get
into the whole aspect of hacking radio.
Because until now,
it had been a really,
you know, you really had to be
into electronics to be able
to make a dent in it.
But this is really going to lower
the barrier, because you don't need
to know electronics anymore.
All you have to do is be able
to program a little bit of software,
and you can do some really,
really cool stuff.
So, uh...
Of course, it would help
to know some electronics,
I'm sure.
Oh, yeah, of course.
If you wanted to make some modifications
or something like that,
or add on amplifiers,
maybe design your own antenna
or something like that.
This box itself only puts out
two watts of RF energy.
So you'd probably want to put it
into some type of amplifier,
which you could build yourself or buy.
And then you'd want to, you know,
put it into an antenna, obviously.
Otherwise, you're going to blow out
the whole system.
But, yeah, you could, you know,
design your own antenna.
And you could really get into that
in both the electronics
and the software aspect.
But if you just want to do software,
if you're like me,
I personally, I can't deal
with electronics.
Something always goes wrong.
Something's always, you know,
something's always just not quite right.
I like to deal with software.
So I could buy this box.
I could buy a little amplifier
and antenna.
And I could just, you know,
I could go to town.
I could just start writing software
to transmit any type of data
that I want on any of these frequencies.
Now, there's FCC limitations.
You're not supposed to transmit
on certain bands.
You have to be licensed for...
I was actually just getting ready
to ask that.
Right.
You know, all the electronic engineers
out there are probably saying
the same thing about us.
No, the hardware always works fine.
It's the software that never works.
Right.
Well, here's the thing, you know,
and if I'm designing,
and not really designing,
but let's say I'm just putting together
a simple piece of hardware
and I make a mistake,
I can't hit Control-Z and fix it.
True.
So that's, you know,
as a career programmer,
that's what I've gotten used to.
Like, if something goes wrong,
you know, I can go into the source tree
and I can just, you know,
I can back up to where I was previously.
Whereas if something goes wrong
with hardware,
it's not quite the same.
Maybe if you're doing a simulation
or something like that,
you can back it up.
But once you start actually building it,
you know,
you're stuck if you make a mistake
and you can, you know,
you break a component
or something like that
and it's a physical, you know,
it's something you have to go back
and buy if you destroy it.
Whereas my computer,
something messes up,
you know,
I just reboot it
and hopefully it comes back up
and I'm done.
Well, and that's actually
the second thing
I was going to bring up too
is I would imagine
that the hardware required
to transmit
is probably very pricey.
Which would be another reason
why the most hackers,
like you said,
probably couldn't have,
wouldn't have been into it
because it would cost
a lot of money.
Basically, you're buying
the same equipment
that a radio station would buy
to do that kind of stuff
or at least on a smaller scale.
Yeah, definitely on a smaller scale.
Actually, the funny thing is
I heard about
GNU Radio at H2K2,
the guy who runs
the whole show
for GNU Software Radio Project.
His name is Eric Blossom.
And I talked to him
about it a little bit
and he said,
yeah, if you want to get
into this type of software
to find radio,
you should get this card.
It's called the PCI-4020-12
and it's basically
this really super high quality
analog digital converter
and it does everything.
It's amazing.
And that's all great and dandy.
It's very programmable
and all that.
But the problem is
that it's $1,500.
The problem on top of that
is that you need
even more support hardware
to get it up and running.
So unless you have $2,000
to throw out the window
on a whim,
it's not the type of thing
you're going to do.
But is that still
a piece of hardware
that's part of the software radio?
Yeah.
How much?
What I was saying
was the cost
of all analog hardware
in the old-fashioned way.
Analog hardware itself
is not cheap either.
That's what I was getting at.
That's probably
majorly expensive.
So, yeah,
what you're saying,
that's not that $2,000
is cheap.
That's still pretty expensive,
but I still think
that's a drop in the bucket
compared to the
old analog equipment prices.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, if you just want
a simple radio,
like I said,
a ham radio that does FM,
AM,
maybe even some of these
other modulation schemes
like single sideband,
something like that,
you can get something
for a couple hundred bucks,
maybe $1,000.
But if you get
this flex radio thing
that Mute told me about,
it's going to cost you $500.
But, you know,
$500 in comparison
to spending $600
on a radio
that you can't upgrade
in software,
it's not so bad.
You know,
once you have this box,
any type of modulation
that somebody comes up with,
you just implement it
in software,
and bam,
you have,
you know,
your hardware's like brand new.
Very cool.
I wouldn't say,
you know,
I wouldn't say it's,
you know,
obsolescence proof,
but definitely,
it raises the bar significantly.
Yeah, well,
you know,
it seems long overdue.
I mean,
it doesn't seem like
it's that much of a
new breakthrough.
I'm actually kind of surprised
they didn't come up with it,
you know,
five,
ten years ago.
Yeah,
I think people had the idea for it,
but it wasn't until recently
that there was enough
free software for people
to, you know,
get together and do it.
And the other problem was,
you know,
maybe ten or fifteen years ago,
the processing power
to do it was just not there.
Like,
some of these,
some of these audio
processing algorithms,
they're not really
that expensive,
but to do them in real time,
you know,
and not real time
for like two seconds
and then,
you know,
have two or three seconds
to recover
so you could,
you know,
kind of buffer it
back and forth,
but I mean,
to do full-on real time
a hundred percent of the time
takes a decent amount
of processing power,
but now computers,
you know,
if you,
if you get a one gigahertz
machine,
there's a lot of processing
you can do with that.
Very true,
very true.
When people got this first idea
and they had 25 megahertz
386s,
they weren't really,
they weren't really thinking,
oh yeah,
you know,
I can do FM audio processing
in real time.
It's just not possible then,
but now it's,
it's just a joke.
That's why I think
in the next year or two
this stuff is going to come down
in price a lot
and you're going to see
the whole aspect of,
of software radio
just explode.
Now,
is this something
that is,
it's probably not targeted
per se at all,
but is this something
that obviously
people like us
are interested in it,
but do you think
radio stations
that are currently using
big,
bulky,
and expensive
analog equipment
will be using this
or will they stay
with what they've always
had and been using?
I think honestly
that the radio stations
are going to stick
with specialized hardware
for the simple fact
that most of these
companies that do
any type of broadcasting,
they want to keep
their setup as simple
as possible.
They don't want to have,
you know,
it's nice to have a box
that does all these
things in one,
but they don't want to have
a single point of failure
and if something
actually does break,
they want a simple fix.
They don't want to say,
oh,
maybe I should reboot it,
maybe I should upgrade this,
maybe I should upgrade that.
They like rack mount hardware
that you slide in,
and you plug it in
and it just works forever.
So I think it'll probably
be a long time
until it gets adopted
by the broadcast industry,
but like anything else,
people will say
it's never going to happen.
Eventually it's going to happen.
They're going to have
stuff like this
because I think people
are going to stop making
just basic analog radios.
I think, you know,
maybe in 30 years from now,
the only radio you can get
will be a software radio
because there'd be no point
in them designing
these analog circuits
in the way they do anymore.
Well, you know,
there's something
very valid to be said
about the old adage,
if it ain't broke,
don't fix it.
You know,
and I guess if I owned
a radio station,
yeah,
I probably,
I might use it
for certain things
or for some things
but probably not rely
on it completely,
you know.
they really have to see,
you know,
a reason to upgrade.
Somebody's got to say,
you know,
maybe it'll save you money
or it'll let you
deliver more services
to your customers
or increase,
like,
your customer base
or something like that.
Right.
Until you prove that
to somebody,
like you said,
it's not broke,
don't fix it,
they're not going to
want to make the change.
They're not going to want
to invest money
for no return.
You know,
it all comes down
to dollars and cents
for the broadcast industry.
Right.
Also,
you mentioned briefly earlier,
let's go back to the FCC
and their role in this
because technically
what you are doing
is sure,
you're doing it
via software
but you are still
broadcasting a signal.
Right.
So,
what are the limitations
or what are the,
and I don't expect you
to know these
off the top of your head
but just to throw it out
and think it over,
you are still broadcasting
a radio station
which there are FCC rules
and limitations against.
Right,
right,
of course.
Like I said,
this box only does
65 megahertz and below
so there are a couple
of bands
where you're allowed
to do some
unlicensed operation
like the 49 megahertz
cordless phone band
and the 27 megahertz
CB band.
You can do,
I wouldn't say
whatever you want
in there
but for the most part
people don't really
make use of those
frequencies for anything
important
so if you want
to play around there
you're not really
going to get busted
but there are definitely
a lot of frequencies
underneath 65 megahertz
that they're not
going to want you touching.
There's a lot of
ham bands
and stuff like that
so if you really
want to get into it
you're going to end up
if you want to do it
legitimately of course
you're going to end up
having to get a ham license
and learning all these
regulations.
I mean if you just
want to mess around
and you don't care
you know that's one thing
but there are regulations
and there's a lot
to look into
because some places
you know the fire
departments still use
frequencies that this
box will transmit on
and that's not the type
of thing you want to
start around with.
That's definitely
not cool
but shouldn't the
hardware manufacturer
also have to limit
that somewhere
that this is an
external box
that yeah it's
software driven
but it is an
external box
shouldn't that
or is there a way
for that to not
allow you to go
in those reserve
bands?
Don't they have to
meet FCC regulations
on what they create
and build?
Not necessarily
because they can
always say that
there's legitimate
use like let's say
a fire department
in the middle of
nowhere some rural
town decides they
want to use this
you know for their
base station they
have every right to
do that so basically
when you buy a box
like this they'll
tell you you know
you have to follow
all the rules and
regulations for your
area but since the
ban plans aren't
really you know
perfectly defined
some places may use
certain frequencies
for fire some may
use them for police
some they just may
not be used at all
so they can't
really they can't
really go in there
and block out all
these frequencies
and say you can't
use this because
these people use it
there's not really
an easy way for them
to do that so
basically they tell
you you know use
common sense follow
all the rules if
you're not sure about
whatever frequency
you're transmitting
on you know look
it up you can always
get in contact with
the FCC and find out
who owns what
frequency or you can
buy from Radio Shack
a book called
Police Call that you
can look up your
town in it and
it'll show you
whoever has paid
for band allocations
in your town and
from there you can
look through and
say okay nobody's
using this nobody's
using that and then
play around a little
bit but I would
still recommend only
playing around like
I said maybe in the
CV band and maybe
in the maybe in the
cordless phone band
and at first you
know play around
with receiving signals
and seeing what you
can decode out of
them before you start
moving into
transmitting because
as soon as you get
into transmitting
it's a whole different
ball game you've
got to be really
careful you're not
messing with something
that's really
important
right well and
can do you have any
idea how far out of
the box how far that
will transmit as far
as physical distance a
radius around
are you talking like
within the house
within the block
within a you know
well here's here's the
thing you're it's going
to depend largely on
the antenna that you
get like I said it'll
do two watts that they
claim that those two
watts output on any
frequency below 65
megahertz okay now ham
radio operators have
contests where they
broadcast or I won't
say broadcast they
transmit um in order
to make a two-way
connection with somebody
around the world they
can transmit with less
than one watt and get
around the world um the
conditions aren't always
there to do it but if
you have a really good
antenna and uh and
you're on the right
frequency or something
like that something very
low something like you
know below 27 megahertz
something like that you
can get really far on
two watts so if you
think you're gonna set
up an antenna and
transmit two watts on
on 15 megahertz or
16 megahertz or something
like that and nobody's
going to hear it you
might be surprised
because people around
the world can hear
those those types of
low frequencies on
extremely low power so
two watts two watts
will do a lot wow
well very very interesting
stuff I I learned more
while doing this show
than uh than I ever
thought
oh you know we are
well into the show
and we haven't really
hit on any news topics
I mentioned at the
beginning and this is
not necessarily a news
topic this is just kind
of a subject I wanted
to address um we were
talking about
authentication earlier
um I thought I'd kind
of talk a little bit
about single sign-on
and about what single
sign-on is and how it's
used and what it's used
for um well like for
example the big the
biggest and most
commonly used example
for single sign-on is
from our good friends
at Microsoft and that
would be MS Passport
Passport yay
now anybody that goes
to um anybody that goes
to um Hotmail will
notice the passport log
logo you're actually
logging in and
authenticating not to
Hotmail per se but
you're authenticating
through Microsoft's
Passport I think it's
required through
Hotmail now so what
that means if you're
only using Hotmail
what that means is
really it's you don't
notice a difference
there's really no
change you're logging
into your email account
checking your email and
then you're done you're
logging out of your
email account well it's
not really what it's for
um single sign-on is
exactly as the name
implies it's signing on
one time a single
username and password
to authenticate to
everything that that
sign-on has access to
so as you also know
Microsoft not only does
Hotmail but they do a
lot of other things the
Microsoft Passport can
tie into a lot of
different Microsoft sites
um any of the groups
pages um the uh what do
they call it the user
information where you
look up people's uh user
information and screen
names and stuff like
that uh the my MSN the
customizable like my
yahoo.com they have a
my MSN.com where you can
customize headlines and
stuff you go and you
create this passport
account and fill out as
much information as you
want to or have to or as
much as you feel like and
I'm sure they might add a
little bit of their own to
it but that's a whole
other story and that's
that when you sign on
you're actually logging
into authenticating I
should say onto that
one authentication source
that gives you access to
all of the other things
combined yahoo has one I
think I don't know if
they have a name for it
they used to call the one
of the very early ones was
yahoo wallet which if you
went to any one of the
yahoo sites it
authenticated through
yahoo store sites it would
authenticate through yahoo
wallet instead of you you
could go to one store and
yahoo store that is and
order something and then
go to another one and
still be authenticated and
still have that information
in there instead of having
to retype it in over and
over again so obviously you
can see the usefulness of
it it actually can be very
convenient but at the same
time it can be very
dangerous it's a single
point of failure and that's
that's exactly why I'm
scared of it it's and it's
it's it's one of those
catch-22s where yes
admittedly it has there's
nothing wrong with
convenience to a certain
extent anyway there's
nothing wrong with
convenience especially in
technology we strive to be
more efficient we strive to
use technology to make our
lives easier and I have to
admit that single sign on
one single point of
authentication can do that
it's all about the
delivery now the big
example like I just said
is Microsoft Passport you
can get into your MSN
messenger you authenticate
through it MSDN Hotmail
my MSN yada yada yada all
with one authentication but
do you really trust the big
M do you really trust
Microsoft I mean security is
not their middle name these
days I remember a story about
them claiming you know
somebody broke into their
machine and had their
machines and had access to
the Windows source code but
all of a sudden they said oh
but we knew about it and oh
we were watching them yeah
yeah you know something
that's all great and dandy if
they're if they're looking at
source code but if these guys
have my personal information
they say oh yeah we knew he
accessed your personal
information we were just you
know we were just watching him
to see what he did well after
he got my personal information
what did he do with it you
know yep so and if they're
just going to say well you
know we were looking out for
you that that doesn't cut it
that's the type of stuff that
you need to react right away
and not give any excuses and
say oh you know we were doing
what we could not quite and
with all of the exploits they
have for for Windows coming out
all the time I you know I don't
really have all that much faith in
Microsoft security yeah
absolutely and technically they
they had security issues with
hotmail a while back and I'm
sure they've also had some
security I can't think of any
specifics offhand but I know
they've had some issues with
passport I don't think they've
had any serious ones yet I could
be wrong but I don't think
they've had any serious ones yet I
think that they had early
troubles with hotmail and hotmail
security before passport came
along where people did get in and
they learned from that and
incorporated those changes into
passport when they went that way
I'm I'm not certain I'm hoping
that when you authenticate
first of all there's some
encryption involved second of all
the server with it actually stores
your information is separate from
the net there's a proxy on their
end hopefully that interfaces to
look up the information itself
translates it to some machine code of
some sort or even just some flags or
fields that it sends back in the
form of a session variable or a
cookie temporarily encrypted to give
you that information on a technical
level I think that's the very
fundamental basics of how it works
hopefully but again what kind how
strong of encryption is it the
possibility of spoofing or forging
and is it really is that server or
server farm I'm sure do you know how
many users how many users that
Microsoft passport has I have
absolutely no idea Microsoft passport
meaning hotmail and all of them have
200 million users now I don't think
that's just somebody's p2 500 I'm sure
that's a lot of hardware to keep track
of all that and to do the enormous
amount of reads and writes for every
session open live session going on
that's a lot of people that's a lot of
accounts if that were to be hacked if
somebody were to get into that I mean
that the damage is is just insurmountable
it's just incalculable that's insane I
didn't realize they had anywhere near
200 million accounts on that that that
and that was this is actually I got
that statistic maybe a month or two
ago so of course it's constantly going
up right so I don't know the in that
particular example in Microsoft example
yes there's a lot of cost and for
concern and it's a an issue of
balancing the good versus the bad is it
worth that convenience is it worth having
that centralized versus the danger and in
Microsoft's case it may not be but I'm
I'm going to I guess play play the foil to
my own argument here play the other side
of my own argument there are good things
about single sign-on in the right
environment in enterprise environments in
companies and universities and more
private smaller not small mom-and-pop but
in smaller businesses or normal sized
average businesses where it's an internal
feature something internal to your
network that doesn't go out to the
internet that doesn't go have access to
people coming and probing at it and
playing with it if you're on an internal
network with single sign-on oh it's it's
just such such a wonderful thing does it
still have security concerns absolutely of
course everything and anything does but
for example using something like Microsoft
active directory or any type of directory
service Microsoft's just the most like
everything else they're the most popular
the most well-known for because they're
Microsoft but just having one single
point of authentication where you can log in
imagine you come in and actually some of
you might not have to imagine some of you
may go into work or going to school and a
you have to log on to the computer first of
all and your permissions of what you can
and cannot do and are allowed and are not
allowed to access on that computer are set by
permissions on the local computer also you
have permissions of what you can and cannot
map to or access on the network then you
have to fire up your email client and
you'll have to authenticate on an email
server with your email account and email
password and any client server application
that you may use you're going to have to
log into the client of that and probably
sign on with another you can easily start
adding up to dozens and dozens and
dozens of name and password combinations
and you've got to understand we make a joke
of it sometimes about don't write your
password on a post-it or don't read it on
the side of your screen but at the same
time you can understand why some secretary
that has 14 different usernames and
password you know you can understand why
they do it well single sign-on is a
solution to that in an enterprise in an
enclosed self-contained environment it's
wonderful you can log in to your local
system log into a domain and authenticate
in one single point of presence one single
spot and then when you go to check your
email instead of authenticating on the
email server you're already pre-authenticated
because you've been set up on that directory
service you've been set up on that single
sign-on that says yes you can access his
email and you don't have to ask for the
password because I already trust him he is
already designated as a trusted person to
this email account you can tie it together
oh he wants to map to the end drive he
wants to map an end drive to this folder no
problem he's already pre-approved you can
think of it as being pre-approved he's
already pre-approved to access a b c d e f and g you
don't have to log in all those different
times it's already done for you so in an
environment like that where you don't
you're not necessarily open to the network
it's wonderful it's absolutely wonderful
soon as you add the internet in factor in
it becomes that much more open that much
more dangerous and possible to to get in
to get hacked to get information found out
you know just you're opening yourself to
the world I mean that's what the internet
is so it's even worse when you have 200
million users obviously the the size you
know if you have a company of 50 to 100
people and you open yourself up to the
internet you know your losses are limited
but if you have 200 million obviously that's a
much greater factor and then when you have
you know if if somebody like oh I don't
know a security consulting firm opens
themselves up to the internet they're a
little bit more trustworthy you hope they
know what they're doing and they cannot
sure they may have opened it up to the
net but hopefully they have everything
locked down pretty well encrypted and
protected as opposed to Microsoft who's
quite frankly famous for poor security
yeah have they even made any mention of the
data and how it's stored on these servers I
know you said that you know hopefully
hopefully it's done like this but there
has to be an article or some white paper
somewhere saying like this is how your
data is stored and this is how we ensure
it's safe by by this type of encryption or
something yeah I can't say a hundred
percent but I'm I'm 90 to 95 percent sure
that I've read that they keep that
information separate and it is kind of how
I described where you access one server
and it communicates with its internal server
farm to find the information out and then
pass it back out in the form of encrypted
data in a session variable that's why you
know it's an it's an HTTPS connection you
know it's there's it's supposed to be now
whether it's actually true and and and the
other thing is who's to say and who's to
trust the white papers they put out frankly I
mean I may be getting way too conspiratable
conspiracy theory now but who knows
yeah that's that's true and who really
knows anyway again I think it can have
wonderful wonderful uses that I guess
that's the that's the summary it can be
really really good when done right and I
guess that's true for everything though
isn't it yeah I think one thing that that
I'd like to throw into the single sign on
thing is that you know single sign on I
don't know it may may be good or bad but
there's another thing that that a lot of
places need to need to include with this
and and and nobody I know does this with
the exception of the place that I work which
is require you to change your password
sometime maybe not every every couple of
days or something like that but once a
month once every two months or something
like that I think if something like that
was implemented everywhere if it was the
default for single sign on I think I
might have a little a little more faith
in it but I don't I don't know that
that that's that that's necessarily the
case with with the way that it's
configured by default yeah and I think
the the reason I'm not that I'm
justifying it but I think the reason
that they don't is because of what I
mentioned earlier the whole point is to
kind of give the users the poor secretary
who has 10 passwords you're trying to
make it easier on her and easier on your
users by not having them remember all
that stuff and by having them go back
and start changing it every few months
you're making it difficult on them again
and kind of defeating your purpose now I
think that's the logic behind the
argument I'm not saying that that's
right I agree with you actually but the
real the reality the logistics of
actually doing that it's a lot more
difficult yeah I could I could see that
that you know remembering 10 passwords
for 10 different machines like you said
is a real hassle but you know forcing
the change of password you know if they
still only have to remember one
password not so bad but then again you
know the average you know the average
person is not a computer user like like
people who listen to the show or like
you and I that not to that not to that
level or extent they're they're not
going to want to they're not going to
want to keep remembering new passwords
exactly and they're going to get
confused and lost and this is where the
x-factor comes in that we all know
about but you got us you got to apply
it and here here's an example of where
you apply it it comes back to money and
let me explain what I mean by that
these people if you make them change it
every month and let's say they only
access it once a month or some people
only access it once every three or four
months they're just plain and simply not
going to remember it they're going to
forget it they're not going to remember
it they're not going to write it down if
they do that's bad if they don't they
forget it and what that means is it
ends up as an increased number of calls
to your help desk it costs money to run
and maintain a help desk it costs money
to run and maintain services for users
and if it can save money they will cut
the service out if it means if you if
they see the bottom line when management
sees this and I've seen I can tell you
as a matter of fact I witnessed it in a
couple places if it will save them money
on the bottom line they will sacrifice
that bit of security to save that money
right and I've seen it a million times
money is the x-factor in everything you
can relate money into every conversation
and every decision that's made in the
world it's all hinges around money and
anybody that says otherwise is naive
anybody that says I just I won't even
go into that I could go into a rant but
I'm not going to I'm I'm enjoying this
show I'm just having a nice light
informational show this time yep I haven't
even cursed yet I don't think I don't
think I'm sure somebody will tell me if
I did but I think I'm doing good so far
and actually we're starting I think
we're let's see how far away into I
forgot to start my timer well we'll hit
one more topic here anything particular
strike your eye here not that I can
really I tell you what since we're
talking about data and scattered data and
different you know authenticating on
different places again you haven't you
might have an authentication for email
you might have an authentication for some
client server customized application you
might have to access a certain database
well can you imagine how many databases
that the government has it's probably an
unbelievable amount multiple terabytes
scattered everywhere and and and that's
the problem that is the problem it's
kind of a catch-22 actually you don't
really want it's kind of a scary thought
of the government having one big
centralized database of everybody and the
FBI is trying to do that they started
you know it's September 11th they
really started trying to have this
registry of potential you know it's
been it's been talked to death that
topic um but that's just one of many
many databases that that the government
has and well think about see this is
something that's always escaped me I
don't even understand why they have a
census I don't understand why that
exists I really don't we have to fill
out taxes every year what information
don't you get from the taxes that you
need to put on the census report yeah
that's a good point I hadn't really
thought about it every single year I
mean unless somebody doesn't obviously
they don't fill out taxes but you know
there's three things that you're
assured of in life you're born you die
and you pay taxes I mean it's going to
be as close to complete as the census
takers I hang up on them I got better
things to do yeah I think it's a census
sounds sounded like an okay idea um you
know to kind of get an idea of how the
population expanding and you know do
future planning for the government but
like you said you get even more
detailed information from from uh from
taxes so every bit and then some yeah
you know all about you know everybody
who's working well everybody who's
actually paying taxes all of you know
their kids uh how much money they're
making where they live all of that
stuff you know all of their assets um so
I don't know what they what they're
really trying to achieve with it but
there was I the reason this is kind of
popped into my head or why I've been
wanting to talk about this is because
there was a there was something I saw
on CNBC and um on the website that is
um there are it doesn't give a number but
there are lots and lots of big databases
kept by the federal government obviously
we mentioned to the census and the IRS of
course FBI we just mentioned they since
September 11th they've started to try to
gather a database um obviously the like
the FCC is going to have a database of
anybody related to that um anybody that
um gosh putting it put me on the spot
I can't think there's the CIA has
databases of people you know foreign
and domestic any any type of branch of
the government's going to have huge
databases okay here's and automobiles
there you go driver's licenses um any
social security I mean there's a huge
one there are all these huge databases
out there with every bit of information
on people and we've it's been seen time
and time again it's only a matter of
social engineering to get that
information it's all you got to do is
call up certain knowing who to call and
how to call and how to act with them on
the phone you can find out anything about
anybody it may take some time and it'll
work some trial and error but you can
find out just about anything you want
well this article I'm going to read a
little bit of this because it's kind of
I want you to think about this as I read
it um if you'll indulge me for just a
minute here I'm gonna I'll try to skip
through some of it um it said poll
Americans on the issue of privacy and
most will recite a litany of aggravations
that include digital spam persistent
telemarketers and plain old-fashioned
junk mail only a few will mention risk
from their own government which collects
data on millions of citizens and then
fails to protect it adequately so
they've got this information but they
don't protect it but only a few people
are concerned and scared about that I
mean I don't quite understand people's
priorities there that doesn't maybe a
lot of people just don't even really
realize or know at all is it that they
don't know or is it that they don't
care well I'm sure plenty of people
don't care but I have a feeling that a
lot of people who aren't computer savvy
and who are into technology aren't
going to know that not only is this
information there but it's easy to
gather as much information as you want
you can store it forever and it's easy
to aggregate no problem
well the first line of this article says
the feds are collecting more and more
personal information about you and its
mammoth piecemeal databases are poorly
guarded and wide open to hackers that
that would be us it's not wide open to
anybody else it's only wide open to
hackers of course instead of big
brother Americans find their privacy
threatened threatened by bumbling uncle
actually it's not just one uncle but
many there seem to be almost as many
information-gathering efforts as there
are agencies and sub agencies in the
executive branch of the government that's
what we just said there are tons and
tons of databases out there and it is
just a matter of social engineering
whether you want to label it as
hackers you know whether you want to
get whether it's terrorists whether
it's somebody who's just legitimately
trying to find information out they do
not protect the data properly and you can
aim it at hackers you can aim it and
blame it on the bad guys all you want but
that's just diversion tactics diversionary
tactics oh yeah it's hackers that are
causing the problem it's hackers that are
breaking in no you are not protecting the
data properly you're not doing your job
you're not you're not providing the
security that data of such a sensitive
nature deserves and it even says what
unites these fragmented efforts is the
generally low level of protection afforded
the information that's collected with a
few exceptions agencies now listen to
this agencies fail even the most basic
tests of security and cannot meet
standards to which they hold the private
sector
yep they make rules and they don't
follow
does everyone listening hear what i just
said they don't it's called practice
what you preach
they can't even meet their own required
standards of security that's that's
that's beyond scary that's beyond scary
that's ridiculous do as i say don't do
as i do oh yeah we're going to hold you
guys if you guys have any information or
any day we're going to make you do this
and encrypt that and protect that and
you have to buy these servers and you
have to do oh but don't worry about us
no we'll just we're just going to put it
into an excel spreadsheet and upload it to
the web don't worry about us we're fine
oh man it that that i'm that is like
the most scary thing i mean junk mail
sure it's annoying telemarketing calls
yeah that's kind of annoying too but i
will take an extra couple telemarketing
calls to assure my privacy of my data
maybe if they had privacy of my data i
wouldn't get the telemarketing calls
yep oh but there's nobody that can
stop them nobody can say well yeah you
should fix this because there's nothing
you can do you know here's here's an
let's see here's a quote it says most
people think of social security we got
that one the irs we got that one and
medicare i hadn't thought of that one
yeah medicare when they think of
personal databases but they're all over
the place now we yeah we just said we
listed several other ones as well um it's
just all this data out there there's no
standards that they're being forced to
keep up with but everyone else is and
it's it's just it's just like a theme for
every episode that i do there's always
something in there about incompetence and
this is i guess this episode's incompetence
story there's no standards in the
government there never has been on
anything not just this particular story
but anything because they have no
accountability and no motivation to do
anything the way that they're supposed
to yeah that in here's a quote here
that says there is no uniform idea of
what should be reported and what
shouldn't be the situation is very
confused right now if the volume of
information is striking so are the
disparities in the way it is classified
and safeguarded by the various agencies
that collect it now here's here's the
quote this is not my quote this is from
the article saying this i just said it a
second ago but this is the article from
cnbc it says much of the poor security
however is attributable to sheer
ineptitude
sheer ineptitude they just don't know what
they're doing
they do everything halfway and who loses
out
we do we the american citizens who
deserve and are entitled to privacy we
have a right privacy is a right in this
country and people have forgotten that it
is a right it is not a privilege we have
a right to privacy
and whether it's taken away by heavy
handed laws which again is a topic we've
beaten to death patriot act patriot act
2 etc etc even if it's not taken away by
the heavy fist of the government it's
being given away by the open palm the
other open palm of the government one
hand is crushing us the other one is
holding our information out and giving
it away
i mean actually it's scary visual that
would make a great anti uncle sam poster
that would make a good poster a good
visual maybe we should use that for the
cover of bin rev
that's that's just that disgusts me
incompetence ineptitude whatever word
you want to use is one of my biggest
pet peeves if you're going to do
something do it right and if you're
going to make someone else follow rules
you should follow them yourselves you
can't tell someone else don't do
something you can't do yourself or
wouldn't do yourself that's something
that i've always done through management
through people that i've worked with i
would never ask someone else to do
something that i couldn't or wouldn't
do myself
unfortunately
here's my big problem now now that
we've you know normally you can say
okay this person is inept and they
can't do this and they can't do that
like the ria they you know we're just
going to boycott them because they
have no idea what they're doing
whatever
but when it comes to the government
like the especially the u.s.
government the world's largest
monopoly
what can you do
well there's one thing that you can
do
and everybody thinks that it doesn't
matter and it doesn't count
and because of that thought it
doesn't kind of count sometimes and
that's vote
that's true
and that's only limited control
right
you know i'll i don't want to go into
a political thing but i'm just going
to say that voting does count
if everybody exercises that right
and if you're not going to
exercise that right your right to
vote and to make change then you
can't really whine too much about
your other rights being taken away
you didn't do anything
you deserve what you get if you're
not going to vote
exactly
so that's all i have to say about
that
and i think that's really all we
have to say about the show today i
think we're out of time
um i thank you again for coming on
during the show it's always good to
have you on
yeah no problem anytime
um do you have anybody you want
to shout out to
um the only person i can think of
is decoder
yep got a shout out to decoder
he's i'm sure as we speak and as
this is streaming
he's on the socal bridge
no doubt
he's on the bridge
i should call that right after the
show
absolutely
um i'm gonna shout out to uh
mr v tech my friend went to
halloween horror nights among some
others
sito
um shout out epiphany for that
opening theme song very cool
again
i'm gonna start using that more
often
and
despite
what zapper link has to say
i'm gonna give a big
fat shout out
to my chicago cubs
into the championship series
thank you very much
nlcs against the florida marlins
too small
well i guess chicago's not really a
small market team but
feels like a small market team
it's better than the braves
so shout out to my chicago cubs
hey last week i did it and they
made it through the first round of
the playoffs i'm gonna give it to
them again
baseball is a very superstitious
sport so i'm gonna go with it and
hopefully next week
i can do it again and we can go on
to the world series so
uh silly corny whatever you want
to call it that's my shout some
email us letters at binrev.com
everybody knows that and
our closing music tonight is another
track from auditory
it is called the way we ride
i think we're gonna wrap it up
so we will see you next week
same hack time
same hack channel
bye
Thank you.