I'm Loretta Ross, co-chair of the National March for Women's Lives on April 25th here
in Washington, D.C.
Everyone should join us because this march is about our lives, our human rights.
We have to march together to oppose racism, anti-immigration policies, the denial of health
care, the denial of welfare.
We have to march against unjust wars.
In fact, our very bodies and our right to control them are under attack by the Bush
administration.
For more information, go to www.marchforwomen.org or call 202-349-3838.
We have to march together on April 25th as if our lives depend on it because they do.
And it's seven o'clock, time once again for Off the Hook on WBAI New York.
And a
program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
We've got a packed house tonight.
Jeff, you're back.
Yes, I made a pack.
Well, that's good.
That's good.
We were worried about you last week.
Well, I got the call from my bus driver telling me that if I hadn't started, don't bother.
I would be late.
The city was closed, huh?
Exactly.
Okay.
Mike is here.
Hi.
Jim is here.
Yes.
Lynn is here.
Hello.
And Red Hack is here.
Hello.
We're going to have a great night.
He is busy with chaos and mayhem down in Philadelphia.
The good kind, I think, not the bad kind.
It doesn't usually stop him.
No, it doesn't usually stop him, but it stopped him tonight.
So we have the code, though.
The code does work.
I tested it.
I called some random person to make sure it worked, and it did go through.
So if we need to make any long-distance phone calls, we can do it.
We have the ability.
We have the means.
That's good.
And we have the desire, certainly.
Anybody have any stories that they'd like to share with the populace, with us here in
the studio?
I've got a couple of trivial things.
Jim, you have a whole stack of newspapers.
Well, yeah, yeah.
But only a couple are of amusement.
Some may be of interest, but only a couple are what I like to bring up.
You've got the funny pages there, I see.
The comics and...
Well, this is comic in its own way, especially if you dislike Verizon, as so many of us do.
Okay.
It seems that the city of New York is suing Verizon because Verizon hasn't paid its franchise
fees to be allowed to run telephone lines under the streets since 1881.
So...
You mean they have to pay since 1881?
1881?
1881.
So Verizon has to pay to have its wires underneath the streets?
Well, that's a good question.
In 1881, the city granted the authority to run underground telephone lines to a company
called the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company.
And...
MT&T?
Well...
All right, whatever.
They eventually were taken over, became...
Their successor now is Verizon.
And apparently they haven't paid.
Of course, it was AT&T, New York Telephone, 9X by Atlantic, now it's Verizon.
Exactly.
Okay.
You can see how things might get lost in the shuffle.
I don't understand.
That's one heck of a debt.
I mean, how do you...
What kind of collection agency did they have?
Obviously none.
That allowed it to go for 120 years.
It got lost in the shuffle.
I understand there was an agreement made that because they carried the 911 lines and, you know, it was a wash.
Some people are saying some things like that, but...
They have 911 in 1881?
I was going to say, 911 started what?
Late 60s?
How did you call the cops back in the 1800s?
Very loud.
I guess you shouted out your window or something like that.
Okay, but there were phone lines.
I was under the impression there were phone lines above the street for a good part of the time.
If you look at pictures of New York City at the turn of the century, you can't see the sky because of all the phone lines.
The blizzard of 1888 created the first push to put telephone lines underground because the blizzard took down an awful lot of lines.
Photographs taken a few days afterwards show phone lines down all over.
And there were power lines, too.
There weren't that many power lines, surprisingly.
Phone trucks were out night and day trying to fix all that.
Horse-drawn phone carriages.
Anyway, the case is in federal court, but a federal appeals court back in March sent a similar case
because it seems that the city of Rome, New York is also suing Verizon for the same thing.
And they sent that back to the state court, and that may happen to the Verizon case.
What happens if they win and Verizon doesn't pay?
Do they kick Verizon out of the city?
That would be interesting.
Remove their wires from underneath the street?
All right, well, you know, it's going to be fun to see what happens with that.
Whose idea was it to suddenly make this lawsuit happen?
I really can't figure, except Bloomberg is definitely supporting this big time.
Uh-huh.
And the interesting thing is...
Because it's crazy or just because it's...
Because it's a good source of money without raising taxes.
How many votes does Verizon have, right?
But the interesting thing is I read from the lawsuit, which quotes the resolution enacted December 18, 1881
by the New York City Board of Aldermen, predecessor of the city council,
pursuant to section 18 of the 1873 city charter.
Now, an aside here, they may argue that it was only Manhattan then, so it only applies to Manhattan.
But anyway, at that time, for each street opened and used by the company for the purpose of laying its lines
of electrical conductors, it shall pay a sum equal to one cent for each linear foot.
There are millions of phones in this city.
This is a lot of money.
Yeah, and assuming it even keeps at that rate.
Yeah.
That's a lot of things.
Even if the rate goes down by even a hundredfold.
I have a feeling, though, that Verizon might raise some rates in response to this.
All-time war of the centuries, two centuries.
If nothing else, it's interesting.
Actually, three centuries, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s.
And I just upgraded for another two-year plan with Verizon.
How about that?
I hope your rate's locked.
Okay, well, you think that's bad.
Major companies and government agencies are scrambling to ensure they are not vulnerable to an Internet flaw
that would allow attacks that could disrupt all communication.
This is the TCP brand-new flaw?
Yeah, but it will disrupt all communication, including the communication we're having here in this room, apparently.
Wow.
This is something big.
What do you know about it, Mike?
There's nothing new, as far as I can tell.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a technical cybersecurity alert on Tuesday,
and they don't do that every day, do they?
A technical cybersecurity alert.
Does that mean anything at all?
Well, it means that...
Did they just invent that?
Yeah, of course they did.
Anyway, they warned that sustained attacks on routers between networks could lead to a denial-of-service condition
that could affect a large segment of the Internet community.
And you say this is nothing?
It's nothing new, is what I said.
Okay, but if you quote after the nothing, it says...
All right, never mind.
That's how the Daily News gets their quotes.
Well, yeah.
All right.
We try and be a little more accurate, especially when the person we're quoting is in the room.
That's true.
But basically, it's possible on the Internet to spoof packets to pretend they came from anywhere,
and by doing so correctly, you can shut down connections, Internet connections,
or kind of logical, fake Internet connections.
And if you do this in the correct way, you can shut down real Internet connections, is the theory.
Well, according to Paul Vixie, he's the president of Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.,
he compared the risk to Internet users running naked through the jungle,
which didn't matter until somebody released some tigers.
I would imagine even if you're running with clothing through the jungle and tigers get released,
there would be a concern.
The bugs alone could eat you alive.
But only if you're naked.
I don't understand that metaphor.
It's a bad metaphor.
Paul Vixie, you can do better than that.
Try again.
He continues, it's a significant risk.
The larger Internet providers are jumping on this big time.
It's really important this just gets fixed before the bad guys start exploiting it for fun and recognition.
Was that a shot?
I think that's a shot at hackers.
Fun and recognition.
The bad guys.
What's that all about?
Criminals.
Yeah.
Well, I mean...
Not hackers.
More typical denial-of-service attacks involve large numbers of computers
sending huge amounts of data to routers and overwhelming them.
This particular one shows, it's said to allow an attacker to insert data
and trick routers into shutting down network sessions, disrupting a network's communication.
It all falls under the realm of Transmission Control Protocol, TCP,
which works in the background sort of like traffic laws to keep Internet data running smoothly.
So how hard is this to fix?
Well, I don't know.
I guess they're working on it.
That doesn't say anything about fixing it.
I think it's one of these things that is just such a flaw that happens all the time
that we just have to always live in a state of fear.
That's the impression I got from this.
Is that next to New Jersey, the state of fear?
No, it's all over. It's all-encompassing.
But as long as we're in the subject of fear and having to worry about things around us...
Mobile phones.
You hear about the mobile phone that exploded last week?
That's right.
April 13th, a mobile phone exploded today
and slightly injured the man who had been talking into it, according to local broadcasters.
This was in Hong...
Was this Hong Kong? I believe it was.
Yes.
The man was standing in line at a bank when the phone mysteriously blew up.
According to the ATV network out of Australia, which is reporting what happened in Hong Kong,
ATV showed footage of phone pieces laying on the floor of the bank lobby
with police gathered around the scene.
I was just calling my boss to say I would be returning to work a few minutes late
and when I pressed the button to hang up, the phone was suddenly flying everywhere, the man said.
I would say this guy's boss has an awful lot of power
and you don't want to anger this guy.
What happened?
Imagine, just saying you're going to be a few minutes late and your phone explodes.
Boy.
Are we sure that the guy didn't take a vacation to Israel and swap it with some poor Palestinian?
Well, apparently, he doesn't say he's an enemy of Israel or anything like that,
so they probably would have had a rocket land on him if he was.
The broadcast reports gave no indication about how it could have exploded,
but many similar accidents have been attributed to faulty or counterfeit batteries.
Counterfeit batteries, the ones that explode.
The man said he was only slightly hurt with some slivers of telephone parts
getting into his eye and scraping his hand.
He said he bought the phone secondhand, another no-no.
Counterfeit batteries, secondhand phone, being late to the office,
those are all things you want to avoid if you don't want your phone to explode in your head.
Are we talking about aftermarket batteries?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, we've discussed this before,
the bit where they were telling people don't make phone calls when you're pumping your gas.
Who's the manufacturer that insisted that it was gray market batteries and third provider batteries?
Might have been Motorola, but don't hold me to that.
The last line of this article, I'm not sure if it's a joke,
police did not immediately answer when the Associated Press rang seeking comment.
I don't know.
Hopefully, they weren't ringing them on their cell phones.
You just mentioned talking about the gas station.
One thing I've noticed, I make sure my car is unlocked and ready to just...
I cannot use a key in my lock without generating a spark.
And at a gas station, that would disturb me.
So don't start your car at a gas station.
No, I'm talking about the door lock.
Don't lock your car at a gas station.
Don't lock your car, because you've got to use the little piece to unlock it.
And you're creating a little connection there.
And when I put the key in, I see the spark.
That's good.
More people should do that.
This is a static spark?
If a gas station ever blows up around you, we're going to know what caused it.
I've never had that happen to my car.
You don't get a spark at all?
I don't get a spark, no.
In fact, I don't think I've ever gotten a spark in my car at all.
I get a spark all the time in my house when I touch things.
But in my car, I never get a spark.
Microphone? Is it on?
Why would you have to lock your car at a gas station?
At most, you're going to be like 10 feet away in the...
No, no, no. I realize that.
But sometimes you might go to the trunk to open something up
while you're waiting for the gas to pump, move something forward, whatever.
I try to maximize time.
But I'm getting...
Don't go to your trunk. There's a lock there.
You have to put the key in.
This is just yet another thing to be worried about, which I don't know if it's...
That's our theme for the show.
Yeah.
Okay, let's talk about the elections.
Mike, you had something to say about the elections in India.
It's taking place on all electronic voting...
EVMs, they call them.
EVMs.
Electronic voting machines.
Wow.
And if you want to get more information, they have a website, www.eci.gov.in
slash FAQ slash E-L-E-C-V-T-M-A-C-H dot H-T-M.
Or you can just go to the first part of it and click EVMs.
www.eci.gov.in
Yeah.
Okay.
And what's interesting about these machines is that they're kind of stupid machines.
They look more like 10-year-old electronic calculators
than the stupid fancy Windows machines that Diebold installs.
So they're a lot harder, as far as I can tell, to tamper with.
The Indian government asserts that they're impossible to tamper with,
which who knows if they're telling the truth or not.
But they're a lot more one piece.
I mean, they're an electronic device rather than a whole computer
that just happens to be running voting software today.
So they seem a lot more secure than the ones that are being proposed for use in this country.
What about mechanical machines that are already in use in New York?
I mean, I'm not sure that they're all that much worse
than the electromechanical machines that they use in New York.
I'm not really qualified to judge, but they seem about as hard to tamper with.
How do they transmit the results?
Do they carry them physically like they have to do with the mechanical machines?
The machines in India, there's two parts.
There's a control unit and a balloting unit.
And the control unit is in control of the election clerk,
and the balloting unit is inside the partition, the curtain.
And so when you press the button on the balloting unit,
it sends a signal to the control unit, which then registers the vote.
At the end of the day, they shut the machine down.
They press the close election button on the control unit,
and then they take it in full view of the candidates' observers
to the central location where they somehow do magic to get the votes out.
I see. And the only problem is, of course,
there are people that want to press those buttons early and stop the election.
So there's been some violence over there,
but you can't really blame that on the electronic voting so much,
or just people that don't like elections at this particular time.
The Ministry of Elections, or whatever they're called,
their FAQ is kind of actually informative
in kind of how different elections are there from here.
First of all, you have the worries that people pressing this machine
are going to get an electric shock because a lot of these regions—
There's going to be chips around. Certainly that's going to happen.
A lot of these regions don't have electricity,
so these are battery-powered machines,
but they're unfamiliar to a lot of the voters.
And you have how these machines are resistant
to if people with weapons come into the voting booth
and try and sabotage the election.
How will these machines prevent that?
I don't think any machine is going to prevent that.
I think it's a question of how quickly you can destroy it.
How quickly you can prevent wrong votes from being tallied,
as opposed to—
The only way to know for sure is to try and do just that,
to open it up to everybody and say,
okay, let's make a fraudulent election and see if we can get away with it.
That's really the only way you're ever going to know for sure if the system works.
We're supposed to be reassured because the microchips are made in the USA.
You've been assured by the Indian government it has to work.
Oh, if they say so, I guess that's true.
Let's see. Let's look at some listener mail.
Of course, you can send mail to us, othat2600.com.
This is from somebody who noticed that John Kerry showed up in their town of Pittsburgh,
ending his campus tour here.
I went to the event and it was full. Bon Jovi showed up and others.
Oh, boy, it was really interesting.
When I saw the Secret Service, I felt a bit of unease, though.
You mentioned that you received a letter from the Bush-Cheney campaign.
I received a similar letter a few months ago from the Republican National Committee, RNC.
By the way, Lynn, you saw a sign uptown about the upcoming Republican convention.
What did it say exactly?
It had a picture of Koch on it and it said,
The Republicans are coming. Make nice.
Go ahead.
Koch is the official spokesman for the city.
The city is looking for volunteers for the convention,
people to essentially guide Republicans who are from Oshkosh or wherever
to the various sites and tourist attractions.
To guide the Republicans to wherever the guy decides to guide them.
Hand out maps.
Well, theoretically.
Hand out maps, tell them where there's a Chinese restaurant or whatever,
the Statue of Liberty is, the Bronx is up, the Battery is down, that sort of thing.
Or introduce them to a nice little club called the Lincoln Tunnel or something like that.
Whatever.
Yeah, okay. I like that idea.
I didn't even know that Kerry had an album out.
Well, apparently, yeah, it's doing quite well, in fact.
But continuing here, this guy received a letter from the RNC,
signed by Ed Gillespie, the chairman, along with Bill Frist and Tom DeLay.
The letter insisted that I was a registered Republican
and that Bush needed my help to energize Republicans like me.
Also asking for a contribution of $500, $250, $150, or even $25.
So similar letters can be sent to other registered Republicans
so they can be registered.
It doesn't make sense, I know, but that's how the letter went.
It had my name and address, too, and I wondered where they got my info from.
I mean, yeah, how are people being labeled as registered Republicans when they're not?
This gets better, though.
Yeah, it does.
First of all, I want Bush out of the White House.
Second, I am not even a citizen.
I am one of the students who came from a Middle Eastern country
and was harassed by the INS.
What made them think I would want to help them out?
I am from Kuwait.
I supported the war because I wanted to see Saddam get punished
for the war crimes that he committed.
However, I was disappointed by the lies of the administration,
like claiming that there is somehow a link between Saddam and a terrorist.
And I am disappointed by the way the administration is handling the post-war Iraq.
They are doing a horrible job just for lying and disrespecting the minds of the people.
I think that's reason enough for getting him out of the White House.
But yet this guy is probably going to get more mail from the Republicans
saying we need more people like you.
Well, I agree with them on that, I guess.
Okay, this person writes in.
Good show on April 14th, last week.
I know you're busy, but I just wanted to make a brief comment regarding Mr. Bush's speech.
Let me say I agree with you.
I think that the leader of a country, especially a huge influential country,
should be able to speak coherently and argue cogently on at least a college freshman level.
It's embarrassing, if not humiliating, to have a man representing me
who simply cannot deliver a written speech.
And actually, I did a little research on this.
If you recall, last week we were mentioning this.
So we had a degree talking about a line that Mr. Bush said.
And I said if I was proven to be wrong, if it was just a typo that said something,
what was it, this has been tough weeks in that country.
I said that could be a typo, and if it was, I would admit it.
And I think I'm man enough to do that.
Good evening.
And before I take your questions,
let me speak with the American people about the situation in Iraq.
This has been tough weeks in that country.
Okay, and I'm also man enough to admit when I'm right.
So that's, it gets better, listen to this.
Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq.
Our military commanders report that this violence is being instigated by three groups.
Yes, a new word, instigated.
Go run to your dictionaries and look that one up.
Actually, if you plug instigated into Google, you'll find all these Bush links.
Apparently, he's responsible for the creation of a lot of words.
There are books being written about this.
But yeah, that was a bit of fun from last week's press conference.
Let me continue with this letter, though.
Then there's the cerebral spontaneity of effectively answering a question.
Sure, it's political policy to not really answer a question,
but to listen to him stumble and weave drunkenly through an evasive answer is like flesh on glass shards.
I've listened to him in Q&A sessions with Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin,
and every time, without exception, his answers are shallow, rambling, largely irrelevant,
pathetic when compared to those of the other fellows.
Is it too much to ask that the leader of a country be able to talk his way through things impressively?
But then again, Mr. Bush is the simpleton's president.
Who's he trying to impress? Signed, Justin Brain.
Thank you, Justin Brain, for your thoughts on that.
Interesting. Very interesting remarks.
It makes me want to listen to the president all the more to see what comes up next.
But this is something a bit more serious.
Bush is pushing for renewal of the Patriot Act pretty strongly now.
On Saturday, he urged the U.S. Congress to renew the Patriot Act.
The post-September 11, 2001 law that beefs up law enforcement powers
as he sought to highlight his national security credentials.
The president sees his pledge to keep America safe as a cornerstone of his argument for re-election,
but his image as a leader on fighting terror took a hit amid recent public hearings by the commission investigating 9-11.
Bush said in his weekly radio address, key elements of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.
Isn't it this year they're set to expire?
I think so.
He can't get the year right that they expire? I mean, unless he said it last year.
No, he said it this week.
Anyway, some politicians in Washington act as if the threat to America will also expire on that schedule.
Is that right? On that schedule? I'm not going to get into that.
That's right.
Is that right?
He could instigate his executive power and just make it stick longer.
You said instigate, didn't you?
Instigate.
You said instigate.
I said instigate.
Because the Patriot Act, if you look, CNN.com has a poll today,
was it today or was it yesterday, on whether or not the Patriot Act should be renewed,
and most people say no, by a large margin.
And I have a feeling this thing is going to sail through anyway,
because they're not really going to take people's thoughts into account,
or there's going to be some other major security issue or scare that we all have to deal with.
Well, why start now with the taking people's thoughts into account?
Well, you know, it's particularly important.
I'm not sure how long.
This thing was enacted in 2001, it's now 2004, so that was three years.
I don't know if it will be for another three years or another 30 years,
but that's something that affects everybody on all levels.
I was actually watching, I think it was CNN at work,
and I happened to tune in at a moment where Wolf Blitzer was talking to
some person in the Bush administration about the renewal of the Patriot Act,
and it was interesting to watch him sidestep around the questions,
like things about the library records, for example.
And he said, well, the word library never actually appears in it,
but if it hadn't been an issue, he said basically it doesn't appear in it,
so therefore it's a non-issue, but if they hadn't been asking for library records,
why would there have been such a big deal made about it?
So he was basically just weaving around the questions
to try and make it look as though it was a good thing.
But the impression I got, and I was glad to see that the media
was asking critical questions about it.
Look what it took, though, to get the media to actually ask
somewhat difficult questions about this, or challenging questions.
Basically, for years now, people have been upset by what the Patriot Act has done.
It gives federal agents a huge amount of power.
They can invade privacy without telling people, tapping telephone conversations,
searching without warrants, things like that.
And that's not even taking into account all the horrors going on
in places like Guantanamo Bay, where people are held without trial for years.
I was watching a story the other day on CNN, also CNN,
about British prisoners who had been held captive at Guantanamo Bay
for two years and released, and then questioned when they were released
back in England, and then released again.
They're free now.
And not even an apology for being held for two years without any kind of a charge.
And you have to wonder why the rest of the world is so annoyed with us right now.
Well, the British government has a policy of charging room and board
for people that it imprisons wrongfully, so they may not be the best example.
Well, no.
No, but the fact that these guys were apparently completely innocent
and were held for two years, you know, because of my government,
that's something that annoys me and something I think we need to do something about.
And I understand the accommodations aren't very nice.
They're not. They really aren't.
Lynn, you have a toy over there, if we can change gears for a second.
What are you playing with?
Yeah, do you want me to...
Yeah, I do.
Okay.
Tell us what you're doing first.
Well, basically, I've been talking a little with Bernie about soft phones and...
Soft phones, did you say?
Yeah, soft phones.
What's a soft phone?
It's a software-driven phone that works on your PC,
and it connects over the Internet to a...
Hang on a second, I'm dialing here.
Doing two things at once.
Yeah, I'm trying to do two things at a time.
Jeff has a question for you.
How different is this from the one that I had on a 486?
I think this is probably going to sound a little better, I hope.
All right.
You know, you mean years ago when people first started doing voice over the Internet type of chat?
This one actually is going to dial a telephone number.
No, this one works through the computer on the phone line.
Yeah, this isn't a new concept.
There actually used to be free sites that would do this, like dialpad.com.
You're talking about where you would actually dial the telephone number from...
Right on the computer.
It would go through the Internet.
Yeah, through the Internet.
You're talking about dialing the actual telephone line, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, this would be dialing the telephone line through a voice over IP.
Okay, yeah.
Through New Jersey somewhere and then back over into whatever area code.
So tell us what kind of service you're using right now.
It's actually from a company called Vonage.
Okay, I've heard about Vonage.
And they recently released a soft phone application.
Basically, people had been doing this with software-based telephone programs without their permission.
And now they finally decided that they would get with the program
and they licensed a particular copy of software from a company called Xprox something or another.
Now, this happens to be what the FCC is attempting to get wiretap privileges on right now, right?
Yeah, I believe they have, but I also believe that Vonage has already got the equipment installed in their system.
But Vonage is interesting because it's a company that you can pretty much choose your own area code.
Right.
And you can have a phone number that has, say, a 213 area code from California right here in New York City that goes to a phone,
which is kind of interesting.
It opens up a lot of possibilities.
And I think they just introduced a service in Canada, too.
Yeah, they just added it for Canadian customers, although they've had Canadian virtual numbers.
Virtual numbers, right.
Of course, you might.
Can you pick that up and we'll see what it does?
If not, you may just want to leave me on hold because I know what happens with BIA's phone system.
Listen to you.
I can hear your voice.
Yeah, I can hear your voice, too, but it's a little echoey.
It is a little echoey.
You know what?
I'm going to turn down your microphone and let's talk to you over the phone and see.
Of course, we'll hear you a little bit in the background.
Well, let's see how much the delay is there.
Can you detect the delay?
Well, I turned down the microphone so people couldn't hear, but it was kind of distracting.
There was about maybe a quarter second delay.
Do you want to say something out loud and we can see over the air?
Yeah, let's see.
How's that?
It's pretty annoying.
Yeah, pretty annoying.
But let's try and carry on a conversation where we're just talking on the phone and you interrupt me and say something over me.
Okay, what do you want me to talk about?
It's like talking to a reporter in Baghdad.
Right, exactly.
Well, but the sound quality doesn't sound so bad.
The delay is kind of annoying, but the sound quality is really not that bad.
And this is through the Internet over a wireless connection, and they add a pretty nominal fee to add this feature to your existing Vonage account.
Now, I don't think that you can just get the soft phone from them.
Okay, let's turn the damn phone off because it's annoying.
Okay, yeah, it's kind of driving me.
It's kind of like when you're on the show from – it's kind of the reverse of being on – calling into the show and still having the radio on.
I don't do that very much, but, yeah, I know what you mean.
I've heard about it.
People do it every week.
People do it, yeah, and I sympathize with them.
I really do.
And we'll be opening it up to people to do just that in a few minutes.
212-209-2900 is our phone number, so be prepared to dial when we give the signal.
I think the worst delay I ever experienced anyway was when we were in Amsterdam, and you were on the phone, and then you waved for me to come and get on the phone.
But we were listening over the Internet.
Right.
Oh, yeah, it was terrible.
There's a long delay on the Internet.
Thirty seconds.
Yeah.
So I had no idea at what point the conversation was when I joined it, so it was quite –
Actually, we can demonstrate that right now if I can figure out where the computer comes up on this board.
Do you guys know where it comes up?
Yeah.
Was it here at one point?
Yeah, it was.
At one point.
I don't think it's labeled anymore.
I think it's underneath your papers.
Underneath my papers.
Well, why don't you come over and take a look and tell me if you see it here because it doesn't –
but we're going to try and demonstrate what it's like to listen to the radio station on the Internet and how long that delay actually is.
And that added also – with Amsterdam, that added the oversee lag of the phone system, too.
You think that's it?
Yeah, I think that is it.
The satellite's right in the middle of the board there.
Right in the middle of the board.
Okay.
Let's connect to the 2600 website, which allows you to listen to WBAI Live, thanks to the good efforts of Joonce and many other people that –
Anywhere in the world.
Keep us going.
Anywhere in the world.
And other worlds, too, if they can figure out how to connect.
Okay, we're going to click on that link there.
If that one's full, then we have to go to one of ours.
All right.
While Mike is figuring out how to bring it up on the board, let's read a couple more listener emails.
This person writes in from Sweden.
I just did my taxes via SMS.
I could also have done it via the web phone or snail mail.
I just found this cool and thought maybe you would, too.
SMS?
How can you do your taxes via SMS?
I mean, those are short messages, very short messages.
Tax forms are very long.
Well, if it's the equivalent of your EZ, then all you're entering is your – maybe it polls you with a bunch of different questions.
They have just the E.
They just have the E.
It's not EZ.
Just E.
It's really, really short.
Or is it the SM – never mind.
What did you make last year?
How much is left?
Send that.
That's pretty much it.
Mike, are we having problems here?
We're having a bit of difficulty.
We can't even listen to our own show.
You might want to go to the specific off-the-hook section, though.
That might be easier to deal with.
You know, I wonder if you get a rebate, does it go to your phone bill?
That's a good question.
That could be a good idea.
I think it winds up in your PayPal account.
This person writes in to tell us about driver's licenses using social security numbers.
Louisiana apparently is optional, and if you say you don't want your social security number, you get all zeroes.
So I imagine a lot of people have the same SSN on driver's licenses.
I would think that would look like a fake driver's license.
Well, wait.
Your SSN doesn't – does it show on your driver's license in most states?
Because I know with New York, it's just an ID number they assign you.
There are some states that have it by default.
If you're a listener with a Louisiana driver's license that's all zeroes,
and you've had something strange happen to you when you've gotten carded, please call us and let us know.
Yeah, I guess some bouncers might take a dim view of all the zeroes.
I would be suspicious.
But I guess, you know, if you don't want to have the crap kicked out of you in an alley somewhere,
you might want to put your SSN on a license.
You see how the state reasoning works?
No.
Why would the social security number help keep you from –
Because the bouncer won't be suspicious, and he'll welcome you into the establishment.
As opposed to he's suspicious and he kicks the crap out of you?
Yeah, because you're giving him lip.
Because you think that you deserve to be in there since it's not a fake license.
But it gives reason for people to kick the crap out of you to perform identity theft.
Exactly.
To take your wallet.
Yeah, it's a complicated issue.
And the bouncer may have all zeroes on his.
He may be concerned about his security as well.
The one that concerns me the most is, you know, your health insurance card.
That industry is just kicking and screaming away from the social security number.
Well, here's the thing.
My health insurance had a typo on my social security number.
So they hit one digit twice.
And that's been my account number ever since.
And I feel no great need to update them and give them the right information.
I don't think it's tied to social security at all.
So it's worked out fine.
So I think any digits you give them, as long as they're unique, will work.
I can't wait until you hit Medicare.
Well, it's going to be an interesting period, I'll say.
Here's some more.
What are we looking at next year?
Yes, here's some more.
What are you saying?
I'm teasing.
I've got a birthday coming up next month, and I'm older than you, so don't worry.
All right.
Yeah, Medicare.
I was wondering if you guys need some hardware or a faster connection for the 2600.com server.
Every time right after a new episode of Off the Hook is posted, I try to download it,
and I'm unable to for five or six hours after it's posted.
The download usually freezes, and I guess this is because of a large demand for the files.
I have to wait until 2 a.m. Thursday if I want to listen to the latest episode.
Well, yes, there are some problems, some issues that we're working on,
and I think we'll be able to figure out a way to solve that problem.
I know there is a rush to get the shows after they get put up,
and that does cause a bit of a backlog.
But we're trying to open that up a little bit more,
and we're hoping within a couple of weeks to show marked improvement in that department.
Tell him we're willing to take whatever he wants to offer.
Oh, you can give us anything.
Yeah, we're not going to stop you from sending us hardware.
Absolutely.
And, you know, all kinds of things like that.
But if you really want to help, we could use the help with the conference,
because that's where people really come together and make something happen.
We can't even listen to our own show.
You might want to edit the specific Off the Hook section, though.
That might be easier to deal with.
Let's do this.
That's a several-second lag.
It is, it is.
A minute or so.
I'm going to start the timer.
I have a stopwatch. Hang on.
I have a timer here on the board. I might as well use it for the first time.
All right, all right.
Well, stopwatch, we can, like, mock 60 minutes.
All right, I figured out how to do it.
Does it tick?
Does mine make noise? No.
Okay.
It's useless, useless.
Sorry.
All right, I'm starting the timer now.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to release the button when I say the word now.
Okay, because when the word now comes over, that's how long it takes.
This is going to be several minutes.
It might be several minutes.
It doesn't sound that bad.
Talk about Louisiana driver's licenses again.
And then we have to go through health care and health care.
Wait a moment.
Well, we'll turn it down for a little bit.
I was just thinking that people who are going to be listening to this show on the archives,
or even some who are listening on the radio, are going to be horribly confused
because now there's two shows coming over the airwaves.
Right.
We meet ourselves when this catches up, and we're talking about the same thing.
But we were mentioning the conference, the fifthhope.org is the official website,
or just hope.net will work, too.
And that will give you all the information on the conference coming up July 9th through 11th.
So if you want to help out, you really want to help out the hacker community,
that's what you should pool your resources into.
And there's all kinds of information on that website as to how you can help out,
and there will be more in the weeks and months ahead.
All right.
Shall we read some more listener mail, and we'll take phone calls in just a moment.
This person is running an electronic experimental radio show out of College Station, Texas.
It's such a funny name for a town, isn't it?
College Station.
That's Texas A&M.
It might be a college radio station, too.
Anyway, I was wondering if it would be possible to broadcast recordings of Off the Hook on our station,
non-profit educational license.
Well, the quick answer to that is yes, of course.
Anyone is welcome to do just that.
In fact, we're simulcast on a shortwave station, WBCQ.
7415.
7415, yes.
And you can listen to them most places in North America.
I've yet to have that fail on me.
I've had bad reception, but I've used it.
It failed on me once, but I was in the Adirondacks between mountains.
Well, I guess that's a good place to be if it's going to fail.
I mean, I remember hearing certain pieces of words, and I recognized that it was this show, but that was it.
I know that the Queen Mary 2 is on its way here now from overseas,
so if anybody is listening to a shortwave radio on the Queen Mary 2 as they chug into Manhattan,
getting here, I think, 6 in the morning,
please let us know how the reception is on WBCQ.
If they don't know of us already, I don't think they're going to listen to us somehow.
Well, Jim, you know, there's several thousand people on that boat.
I'm sure somebody there has heard of us.
Do you think they're listening live?
I'm sure if they are, they're jumping up and down right now with glee,
realizing that we're talking about them on that boat.
Oh, you can give us anything.
All right. Send us an e-mail. Let us know how the trip was.
It's coming up, by the way.
All right. Let's listen.
We could use the help with the conference, because that's where people really come together and make something happen.
The conference is our own show.
You might want to get into the specific off-the-hook section, though.
That might be easier to do.
Let's do this.
That's a several-second black.
It is.
I'm going to start the timer.
I have a stopwatch. Hang on.
I have a timer here on the board. I might as well use it for the first time.
All right.
If I can find the stopwatch, we can, like, mock 60 minutes.
All right. I figured out how to do it.
Does it tick?
This might make noise now.
Okay.
It's useless. Useless. Sorry.
All right. I'm starting the timer now.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to release the button when I say the word now.
Is this the most it's?
Okay. And that was three minutes and 11 seconds after we started.
So now we know.
Now we know how long it takes people on the Internet to hear us.
So three minutes and 11-second delay.
Wow, that is something.
Now, shouldn't we start talking about the same things again?
Yeah.
Well, we'll turn it down for a little bit.
I was just thinking that people who are going to be listening to this show on the iPod
or even some who are listening on the radio are going to be horribly confused.
This is too much.
Yeah, this is too much. It really is.
It's too much for people to bear.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
Feel free to give us a call if you have anything to say.
This has been a tough week.
Not that. Not that.
And good evening. You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Yes, it's you. You're on the radio.
Hi, it's Jacob calling from Canada.
Canada. What part of Canada?
We're in British Columbia.
Oh, British Columbia, the western part.
Yes, we are.
Great. What's on your mind tonight?
Well, it's quite unfortunate that Bernie's not on the show tonight because, well,
I've been reading the public policy recently.
Mm-hmm.
And I've just found it absolutely fascinating.
My curiosity, though, is I remember a discussion on Off the Hook a while ago
where you were going to compare a first-edition copy
with a later-edition copy of The Fifth Hope.
Okay.
And I won't be able to attend, so I'm curious if there's some way
that I will be able to see those results posted somewhere, perhaps.
This is – give us more details on what this is exactly?
This is the Puzzle Palace. This is the book on the NSA.
Right.
And the first-edition copy has information that the U.S. government took out.
Oh, really?
Right.
Yeah, that's a very hard book to get a first-edition copy.
I've got three hardbound editions, and I don't think one of them are the –
it says first edition.
I think I might have one.
Yeah. Yeah, I think I gave it to you.
Yeah.
I gave it to you for your birthday.
And you regret that, don't you?
Not at all. I've got three more.
Well, wait. If that's the first edition, then what are we looking for?
No, we're looking at the revised first edition.
I've got a copy here with me that says nothing at all about editions on it to begin with,
so I'm assuming it isn't.
What is the date in the copy?
I believe it's 1982.
No, I think the ones I have are 81.
81. Yeah, this is 1982. Hmm.
All right. Well, in that case, I'm still curious about what the results of the comparison are
between the originals and the later ones.
Yeah, that's – it's something that I'm sure we can try to work on.
But, no, that's Bamford's book I think you're talking about there.
Yeah, it's James Bamford. That's right.
We could call James Bamford and ask him.
I'm sure he has a copy floating around if he's not floating around somewhere himself writing that book.
All right. Well, we'll look into that. That's fascinating.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thanks for calling.
Related, Morkai Vanunu, who spilled the secret that Israel has nuclear bombs,
was released from prison the other day.
I was up at 4 in the morning or 5 in the morning actually, and I just turned on CNN.
And there was this – I don't know if anybody saw this.
It was this crazy mayhem-filled news conference that he was giving as he got out of prison.
And this was kind of like the old CNN where they just basically let the story unfold
and they didn't have some idiot like trying to explain it to us.
It was the international edition of CNN too, so they just cut to that feed.
He was basically being very defiant, saying that he was treated horribly,
held captive for admitting that Israel had nuclear weapons,
and he said he's proud of what he did, he would do it again.
And he basically was just walking around flashing the victory sign
and the cops were trying to keep him from doing that.
But yeah, it was kind of inspirational to see somebody come out so strongly.
And of course Israel is doing everything they can to keep him quiet
and to keep him from talking to foreigners.
And they say he has this restriction for a year where he can't go out of the country
and he can't speak to foreigners.
Now what happens after a year? All the secrets evaporate?
They're afraid he's going to tell another secret.
He's already been in prison for 18 years.
Any secrets he has has got to be out of here.
And 12 of those years were in solitary confinement.
Can you imagine that? Twelve years in solitary confinement.
I mean Kevin Mitnick was in prison, and we're talking about eight months in solitary confinement.
Twelve years. That's insane. That's insane.
And why isn't there some kind of commission looking into that?
Anyway, 212-209-2900.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Go ahead, you're on.
Oh, hello. I have a few comments and questions.
First off, I was wondering about the 2600 online shops.
I was wondering, you accept credit cards and all these other things,
but why aren't you accepting PayPal?
I have a bad history with PayPal.
They tend to rip people off in many ways.
They withhold money that is not theirs to withhold.
We've heard so many complaints about them.
I would like to use a PayPal-type service, but PayPal itself I just have serious problems with.
I remember one time when I had a PayPal account, I was making a purchase with it,
and basically for no reason they said,
well, there's some sort of security alarm that's gone off,
and you have to now give us all your bank account information and a copy of your driver's license
before we'll ever let you use our service again.
So I said, you know, to hell with you.
I don't think that was PayPal.
It was PayPal.
And the thing is, they wouldn't even tell me what exactly had happened to cause them to do this.
I called, I spent an hour or so on the phone, and they were like,
well, once you give us the information, we'll tell you why.
I said, forget this. This isn't worth it.
See, this is funny and interesting.
This week I just signed up for my first PayPal account.
I want to try and use this stuff and make purchases and collect money on the Internet.
So I'm disappointed to hear this.
There are horror stories associated with them.
But for the amount of people that use it and the number of horror stories,
you have to look at the ratio and say, oh, okay.
It can't be all bad.
I didn't want to give them my bank account number.
All right.
Also remember they do take a commission off of anything that you get inbound.
Yeah.
It depends on whether or not you have a commercial account or a personal account.
If you tie it to a credit card, then yes, then every transaction gets hit.
I think even the commercial accounts, they take something.
Well, no.
The commercial accounts are the ones that they do.
The personal account, if it goes PayPal to PayPal, that doesn't get touched.
Ah, okay.
Okay.
Thanks for that call, by the way.
We have a late-breaking bulletin here.
You might recall a few weeks ago we talked about a telephone number
that was being marketed on the net, a very valuable phone number.
Does anybody remember what that number was?
8675309.
That's right, from the song.
And somebody was actually selling that number here in New York City for $80,000.
Or trying to.
Trying to, yes.
Apparently somebody bought it.
But listen to this.
Please dial 1, then the area code and the 7-digit number to complete your call.
Why would I need to do that when I'm in 212?
Is there a 10-digit dialing in 212?
Oh, you know what?
I don't dial landlines in 212 anymore.
Isn't that something?
Okay, hang on.
We have so many people calling in, I can't get a line out.
Okay.
There we go.
Hopefully we can still get through.
Hello.
Jenny isn't here right now.
She's busy listening to Default Radio at www.defaultradio.com,
Friday nights at 10 Eastern.
Also, be sure to check out the weekly War Dial at hbx.us.
And don't forget to pick up a copy of 2600 Magazine, The Hacker Quarterly.
Available at most bookstores and at 2600.com.
This message has been brought to you by a grant from the Tommy Hutone Foundation
and the financial support of listeners like you.
And make sure you don't leave your voicemail password on default,
like Jenny did or you might get hacked by Verizon.
We never stop tweaking for you.
Also, on the web at www.verizonfierce.com.
At the tone, please record your message.
Wait, we should leave a message for her.
I think we should walk away as quickly as we can.
Okay, just for the record, we had nothing to do with that.
Apparently, one of our listeners figured out how to do this.
And this $80,000 purchase, which I assume was made,
I heard somebody bought it for $80,000.
Apparently, they just routed it to a voicemail system
and left it on a default password.
Well, you heard what happened.
Yeah, that's 8-6-7-5-3-0-9. The saga continues.
I really think we should have left them a voicemail, though.
I'm sure they're getting tons of them right now.
I'm sure they're listening, too, so consider this a big voicemail that we're leaving right now.
Well done, well done, but we had nothing to do with it.
Yeah, come up to us at the conference at the Fifth Hope and say hello.
We'd love to know.
Put a bag over your head so nobody would know who you are.
Wear a balaclava. As long as it's not red, there's no problem.
That worked very well for you, didn't it?
Yeah, it's why I'm unemployed. But anyway, let's go on.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes, hello.
How are you doing?
Okay.
It's so good to hear your voice again. How have you been?
Yeah, good.
Really? Have you really been good?
Yeah.
Or are you just saying you've been good?
Because a lot of people say they've been good when they're not really good.
I'll think of what I want to say.
Well, you know, what you should say is the truth.
It is the truth. Everything I say is the truth.
All right. That's all I needed to hear.
Thank you for calling. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, hi. I have a question.
You know, I haven't heard a hum like that since the 1980s.
I know. It just happened today. I don't know what it is.
Bad bugging or what.
You're using Verizon, though, aren't you?
Yes, I am. This is a landline.
Where are you calling from?
What do you call it? Long Island 631.
Yeah, that's the Long Island hum we call that.
Okay, go ahead. What's on your mind?
I mean, I never had it before.
Two questions. One is a quick one, the original one.
Why is there a delay of a quarter of a second or whatever?
It means there are a lot of capacitors in the line.
And my second question vis-a-vis my trying to call you guys,
every five minutes my phone would hang up and give a busy signal
trying to reach you guys.
Well, that's not a busy signal. That's a fast busy.
It's called a reorder.
And what that basically is, that's Verizon being greedy
and saying that, well, you haven't connected in two minutes,
so therefore we're going to make you start all over again.
Used to be in the old days, long distance as well as local,
you could call something and as long as it kept ringing,
it would ring for days until somebody picked up.
You didn't get charged or anything.
Oh, right. I remember that, yes.
Now they've programmed it into their switches.
Even though there's a lot more capacity now,
they want you to pay for that connection.
And of course, you know, it's also cheaper to make phone calls these days too,
so you don't really have to pay many times.
But it is very inconvenient to have to constantly be redialing.
No, it seems to be fluky.
I mean, when I try to get to the station at times,
I'll go for like longer than five minutes or whatever,
and, you know, it'll still ring.
But tonight it seems to be very doctrinaire.
Well, do you always route the calls the same way?
Is it always just one plus the number and you go through Verizon?
You know, I just dial 1212-209-2900.
Uh-huh. That should go through Verizon if you're on Long Island,
unless you pick another company.
No, I didn't. It's a Verizon thing, you know.
So I don't understand, but...
And what was your first question again?
Okay, yeah. Wire delay.
Delay where?
Well, at first, when he was using that store phone,
there was a quarter of a second delay.
Oh.
Is there a whole lot of capacitors in the line or what's going on?
Well, I think the issue is we're going from Manhattan
down to somewhere in New Jersey or something
through the Internet through a bunch of routers
and then back to the telephone company
and making a call from, you know, wherever
and then migrating its way all the way back to the telephone system to here.
So you've got a lot of speed of light time, you know, to add up.
Yeah, and also, when you're talking to a cell phone, too,
I don't know if you've noticed this,
when you're talking to somebody right next to you,
which is a stupid thing to do, but a lot of people do it anyway,
you'll notice that there's a slight delay on that, too.
What's the reason for that?
It's the same type of thing, I think.
You know, you've got distance that you're covering
and there's slight delays and all that stuff.
I always thought it was processing.
That could be true, too.
That's kind of a processor delay.
The other thing...
The speed of light is 186,000 miles per hour or whatever it is.
Per second.
Yeah, it's pretty fast.
I don't think we're going to worry about that anytime soon.
So, let's see.
There's 40,000 miles of wire between the cell phone and the endpoint.
Well, and then also all the router delays
and all of that stuff that's associated with the Internet
is probably going to be the bigger one.
You know, that's going to be the bigger delay.
It's going to be all the times that it stores and forwards,
stores and forwards, stores and forwards through routers and the Internet.
Yeah, I think that's where the big delay is.
Of course, if you go up on a satellite,
then you're going to have, you know, a slight delay
as that's 22,500 miles up there and then back down.
Let somebody else have a chance,
and I hope you can get through to Albania anytime, Eric.
Okay, and I hope your home goes away.
Thanks for calling.
Of course, you can get through to Albania now.
He's referring to my trying to call Albania for most of the 80s and 90s,
and it was closed off to us.
The other night, because my sweetheart and I upgraded our phones
and got the family plan and so on,
we were testing phones, doing things.
Not only do you get the delay sitting next to each other,
but you also get an interesting feedback going on as well.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, this is great to do.
If you have two phones, call them and hold them mouthpiece to earpiece.
And say something.
You'll say something.
Just yell into the phone or something,
and it'll get louder and louder and louder,
and it's really kind of cool.
And bounce back in the echo, and yeah, it's wonderful.
It's great for parties.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, I don't know anything on my own,
but I have heard that the delay on the Internet increases
depending on how many people are listening.
That's an interesting theory.
I don't know.
I'm sure I've heard that from several sources,
and I can hear my radio in the background,
so it's driving me crazy.
I've got to go.
Bye.
Where are you calling from?
I think he already left.
I don't know.
I guess the only way to do that is to drive all the listeners away
and have one left.
We know who that one will be.
No, he'll be listening over the radio, won't he?
Oh, well.
Let's take another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, that delay that you were speaking about
is usually due to that it's only taking samples of your voice.
And so I think it's every ten seconds or tenth of a second
they take a sample and then they send it out.
So by the time the sample is sent out,
it gives that temporary delay.
Even if you're both coming from the same feeder
it's giving you the connection.
So if you study the fiber optics, that's exactly how fiber optics work,
and it's the same way wireless works.
It takes samples of the information or the data or the voice
and then it sends it out in a delayed manner
so it doesn't come out immediately.
So every time you're talking you're just getting what was said
a tenth of a second earlier.
Interesting.
And that's only because I work for those people
and they taught that in one of their classes.
Ah.
Okay, well thanks for the info.
No problem.
All right.
Yeah, that makes sense because most of these things are compressed.
You don't want to send raw audio out on the internet.
So most of it's compressed, and in order to compress anything
you're going to need to have some data to compress.
So you take a sample and then compress it and send it out
and then take another one and so on and so forth.
Another thing that, as long as we're on the subject of delays
and phones and things like that,
this is a fun trick you can try.
If you just basically make a sound, like a monotone sound over your cell phone,
talking to somebody else, and try to hold it as long as you can,
I know on Sprint at least it will blank out after a few seconds.
You know about this?
No, but with the Roam phone system that I know you used to screw around with in college,
if you try to record a voicemail message and there's not enough,
if you don't say anything for a while it will cut that part out in the middle.
Of course, yeah.
I assume if you held a similar tone.
But this isn't silence.
This is a tone or just a voice that is very monotone.
It will mute that or something.
It sounds almost like noise cancelling to try to make it sound clearer.
Yeah, I think that's what it's trying to do.
But there's all kinds of fun you can have with these phones.
Of course, with Sprint it could just be the traditional cutting out after a few seconds.
That's right.
Shall we take one more phone call?
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
It's Jones.
Jones, how are you doing?
Pretty good.
Wow, how apropos we should hear from you.
Yeah, well, you know, I can shed a little more light on the delay also.
Okay, well shed it quickly as we're almost out of time.
Well, a large part of it comes from buffering, both on the server side and on your computer side.
It can't play, you know, it doesn't want to risk losing the audio halfway through or whatever.
It usually caches a certain amount of data on your hard drive.
And depending on the compression used, that could be anywhere from a few seconds to a minute of audio.
So that also comes into play.
We had three minutes, 11 seconds.
Yeah, well, there's about a two minute, a little less than two minute delay introduced by the server itself.
On top of whatever delay your cache is adding from your player.
Well, Jones, let me ask you one quick question.
Is this ever going to get better?
It may someday, but, you know, it's never going to get as immediate as the radio is.
Okay, well, that's a sobering fact for those people listening on the Internet.
Jones, thanks so much for everything you do to keep us on the Internet and the station as well.
Absolutely.
All right, and that's going to just about do it for us here tonight.
I want to thank everybody for calling in and being part of the show.
I want to thank you, Jeff, and Mike, Jim.
I got to warn you, I can't make it next week.
All right, well, thank you for letting us know.
Thank you, Jim.
Thank you, Lynn.
Thank you, Red Hat.
And thank you, George W.
This has been tough weeks in that country.
See you next week.
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¶ Come on and take a walk with me ¶¶
¶ Through this green and growing land ¶¶
¶ Walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand ¶¶
¶ Walk through the valleys and the rivers and the plains ¶¶
¶ Walk through the sun and walk through the rain ¶¶
¶ Here is a land full of power and glory ¶¶
¶ Beauty that words cannot recall ¶¶
¶ All her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom ¶¶
¶ Glory shall rest on us all ¶¶
¶ From Colorado, Kansas and the Carolinas ¶¶
¶ To Virginia and Alaska from the old to the new ¶¶
¶ Texas and Ohio and the California shore ¶¶
¶ Tell me who could ask for more ¶¶
¶ Here is a land full of power and glory ¶¶
¶ Beauty that words cannot recall ¶¶
¶ All her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom ¶¶
¶¶