If you want me to take those out, take them out.
10 seconds.
Roger.
Impact.
Oh, dude.
During the exchange, neither the US F-16 pilot or controllers asks whether the people were armed or posing a threat.
Though the existence of the footage has been known for some time,
the broadcast by Channel 4 News is believed to be the first time a mainstream broadcaster has shown the video.
You're listening to Free Speech Radio News, I'm Deepa Fernandes.
As voters went to the polls in Kashmir today for by-elections,
turnout was low in the Kashmir valley and eight people were seriously injured as violence marred the day's voting.
Police say separatist guerrillas triggered a landmine in an effort to scare people away from the polling booths.
These actions, however, have some Kashmiris pointing out that in the ongoing unrest in the small South Asian nation,
the Indian government itself has favoured a group of surrendered militants called the Ikhwan-al-Muslimin to fight their battles.
In the mid-90s, this group managed to tilt the conflict in India's direction, becoming notorious for their terror tactics.
Yet, as Shahnawaz Khan reports from Srinagar, today the Ikhwanists find themselves at the receiving end.
Over the years of armed insurgency in Kashmir, many voices have emerged
with demands ranging from uniting with Pakistan to independence from India.
Towards the mid-90s, apart from fighting the Indian army, the militant outfits in Kashmir started fighting each other,
with pro-Pakistan group Hizbul Mujahideen trying to dominate most of the groups.
This infighting led one of the militant groups, the Jammu and Kashmir Ikhwan-al-Muslimin or the Ikhwan, to join hands with the Indian army.
I was a member of the militant Ikhwan-al-Muslimin.
I surrendered with my group as the Hizbul Mujahideen were troubling us and killed many innocent people in our village,
so we joined hands with the army.
Maqsood Ahmad is an SPO or a special police officer with the Jammu and Kashmir government.
Most of the Ikhwan activists are now enrolled with the government as SPOs.
Hizbul Mujahideen was a fierce group. They were not flexible and would kill people for minor mistakes.
While these men surrendered to save their skin, the Indian government used them to hilt to crush the militancy in Kashmir.
Headed by Khookha Parve, they became the most dreaded people in Kashmir, roaming as unaccountable gunmen patronised by the army.
Extortions and tortures were their hallmark.
Maqbool Vire is a journalist from South Kashmir.
They killed Jamaat people, Jamaat-e-Islami people. They killed HM people.
They killed their brothers, their fathers. They burned down their houses.
They were very rough. Very, very, very harsh.
Even innocents were tortured.
And at 7 o'clock, you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
It's time for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bonded Libon for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bonded Libo!
Bonded Libo.
Off The Hook
It has to happen once in a century.
No, but it's getting pretty close.
Just a couple of programming notes.
We're not going to be on next week, because the fundraiser begins next week.
And we're not on that particular week.
We will be on in two weeks, though.
We'll be doing a one-hour show in two weeks, and we won't be on the week after that.
So just so everybody knows when we won't be on.
We'll be on a week from next week. In two weeks.
We'll go over it again, in case anybody's confused.
And the important thing to remember is that the radio station needs support,
as we do three times a year, sometimes more.
And we have all kinds of stories to talk about, to update people about.
A full cast of characters tonight.
Bernie, you're down there in Philadelphia, right?
The city of brotherly love.
All right, all right.
Well, hopefully nothing but good news tonight, but probably not.
We have a bunch of stories to update people on.
Bernie, why don't you start off? Do you have anything?
Actually, give me about a minute. I'm just getting out of a taxi cab.
Oh, he's taking taxi cabs.
Well, I can't miss the show.
Yeah, well, I'm not sure I see the connection, but fine.
All right, we have a lot of things here to update people about.
What do you want to start with? There's so many things.
I guess we can talk about the IMC thing.
The Independent Media Center has had their, I guess, co-location space raided in London last week.
The Independent Media Center is a global network of local collectives.
And so folks in this network maintain several servers,
one of which was hosted in London by a company called Rackspace, which is a U.S. company.
And the server in question was taken away by, I think, the FBI.
That's the thing. Nobody seems to know.
And that's what I think is really kind of worrying here.
People are saying it's the FBI. Some people are saying it's the Swiss.
Some people are saying it was local law enforcement.
Now, shouldn't we at least be able to know who was behind it?
Maybe not necessarily what they're after, but who actually did this?
This could all be a big prank.
It could be.
Maybe Rackspace just tripped over a power cable and was looking for any excuse.
Well, the story I see here from BBC says the FBI has shut down some 20 sites,
which were part of an alternative media network known as Indymedia.
That sounds very serious. It sounds like they raided 20 different sites.
They didn't do that. They went to one place and seized the hard drives.
Right. This one computer was hosting 20 different websites, 20 different Indymedia websites.
Those sites are back up now, right?
Many but not all are back up from back up.
Some are up from old back up, so they're missing several months' worth of news.
So the RNC hasn't happened yet for many.
Well, in France, the RNC never really much happened.
But the most credible explanation, and it's still based on a lot of guesswork,
is that there were some photographs on a French IMC's website of Swiss police officers,
undercover police officers.
The Swiss and possibly Italian authorities requested that the FBI get this out of there.
And this somehow got transmitted to the U.K.
Okay. See, this is where I'm really missing the bus here.
How is it that the Swiss and Italian authorities wanting to get something in England go to the FBI for help?
That's what I don't understand.
And that's what no one's explaining.
It's possible. One possibility, and I'm making this up,
is that since the Rackspace is a U.S. company, their headquarters is in Texas,
it's possible that the British authorities were never involved at all.
But no one knows because Rackspace isn't saying anything.
Because they're under some kind of gag order.
They're either under some gag order or they're being nice to the FBI.
I mean, they're not saying anything.
Well, here's a statement from the company.
Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen
and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities.
Isn't that sweet?
Well, you know, you can do that and still tell us what the hell is going on.
This cloak and dagger stuff is a little bit, you know, mystifying to people out here.
And it's also very ominous. You don't know what's happening.
You know, I rarely defend capitalism,
but common sense says they should be at least a little bit responsive to their customers.
Yeah. Bernie?
Well, and we don't really know what the process was by which these hard drives were allegedly seized.
I mean, was there a subpoena? Was there a warrant?
Or did they just go in and take the stuff?
Yeah, and I don't think that kind of information is subject to any kind of gag order.
I think they can certainly say what happened.
You know, if they kicked in doors, if they was very polite,
if it was done by way of a subpoena, something like that.
But by not knowing, by not having that information, your imagination runs wild.
You don't know who's going to be next.
You know, who's going to have their computer seized because somebody is looking for something,
but they won't tell you what.
Now, that gag order requirement in the U.S., coincidentally or maybe not coincidentally,
just last week, we reported, was shot down by not this particular gag order,
but the gag order in general where Internet Service Providers are prohibited from divulging
when they are divulging the fact that the FBI came and requested information about their customers.
Before that, it was illegal for them to tell anybody about it.
Now that was struck down by the federal court last week.
I don't know if that's related to this or not.
Probably not because this happened in the U.K.
But in other words, it's a good direction in the U.S.
Now you could talk about it, but in the U.K., you can't.
So give us an example of how that could apply here in the United States.
Well, suppose you're running an Internet Service Provider, and I'm the FBI,
and I call and say, we're going to come over and look at your logs
or get information about the websites that one of your customers has visited
or copies of email, whatever, or email logs, whatever.
You would not be able to tell anyone legally that you were required to do this,
that you were asked to do this.
Now, as of last week anyway, you can say, hey, the FBI asked me to do this,
and so people would know.
Now, of course, this is overturned, and they won't be able to talk.
So if anyone out there is subject to this, tell us now.
Speak your mind now while you have the opportunity,
because who knows how long this court ruling will stay in place.
And we don't know.
It's been a while, I think at least a year,
since Internet Service Providers were subjected to this gag rule.
So there's sort of a pent-up volume of information of cases
where the FBI has seized information from Internet Service Providers
and ISPs were prohibited from saying anything about it.
Now they can talk about all the times they were asked to do this
because it's been ruled not constitutional.
So it's not like they can't make it retroactive and say, well, before that,
you can't talk about anything that happened before then
because the federal court ruled it was unconstitutional.
So now you can talk about it, folks.
So what you're saying is if something happened a year ago
and an Internet Service Provider is not able to talk about it,
they can talk about it now?
Exactly.
Okay.
So that's definitely something newsworthy that people should know about.
Just so they don't take our word for it,
this is something that the decision is up somewhere, right?
You can just do a web search for FBI ISP divulge federal court
and you'll find stories on it.
Okay.
You wouldn't have to know which court it was that made this decision, do you?
It was a federal circuit court.
It wasn't the Supreme Court, I don't believe.
Okay.
And I think it was the federal circuit court in New York,
which would be the Second Circuit, but I'm not certain of that.
Now earlier this summer we had a situation where the New York City
Indymedia Center was being investigated also for information from their
Internet Service Provider, calix.net, I believe.
And that certainly was not under a gag order because they very publicly said
that the logs don't exist.
There was a very amusing cover letter attached to the subpoena from the
Secret Service that said,
we would really appreciate it if you wouldn't tell anyone about this.
And if you do, if you would let us know.
Oh, wow.
Did they say anything about making copies of that letter?
They didn't say anything.
So Calix called the ACLU and said, you know, what's with this,
which I think is a very good response from an ISP.
And that's something you have to sort of look at when choosing an ISP.
Will they do something like that?
Will they stand up to authority?
I, for one, will never do business with Rackspace after this.
Well, now here's an interesting story that was on Slashdot earlier this week.
Basically, members of the Bits of Freedom group conducted a test to see
how much it would take for a service provider to take down a website
hosting public domain material.
And they published their results.
They signed up with ten providers,
and they put online a work by Dutch author Multatuli,
who died over 100 years ago.
This is all in the Netherlands, you should say.
Yes.
Which people keep claiming is the bastion of freedom.
The Dutch part, right, might convey that.
They stated that the work was in the public domain,
and that it was written in 1871.
They then set up a fake society to claim to be the copyright holders of the work.
From a hotmail address, they sent out complaints to all ten of the providers.
Seven out of ten complied and removed the site,
one within just three hours.
Now keep in mind, this was being sent from a hotmail account
with absolutely no legal backing whatsoever,
but just the complaints alone were enough to get that taken down
from seven out of ten of the providers in Holland, the Netherlands.
Only one ISP actually pointed out
that the copyright on the work expired many years ago.
The conclusion of the investigation is definitely worth reading,
according to the Slashdot piece.
The three providers who didn't take down the materials
are Access For All, our friends over there,
UPC, and Freeler.
The company that came out the worst was iFast,
who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner
to the sender of the fake takedown notice
without even being asked to do so.
This, I think, would be a great exercise
for a lot of people to undertake,
to send out fake letters warning various sites
that they've violated copyright issues
and to please take down these pages
and forward all information about the person.
See how many actually comply with that
and never do business with the ones who do.
And the ones who complied, like forking over
all the personal information about the site registrant
without even being asked to do that,
should probably be deluged with fake responses
for taking other stuff down as punishment.
Yeah, well, I'm not advocating that kind of a thing,
but yeah, you're basically being put in a situation of trust
over users,
and to just give away the information like that
or to abuse their rights
because somebody is being intimidating,
you're in the wrong business
to give into that kind of a thing.
There's actually an interesting difference
between law in the EU and here in the U.S.,
where in the U.S. the law is slightly more favorable to ISPs.
In the EU, the ISP could actually be held liable
if they didn't respond very quickly
to a real takedown request,
so it's problematic.
Yeah, but at the same time,
that doesn't mean that you don't check out
to make sure that it's legitimate in the first place.
Here's something else that's going on in the EU, actually.
There is a drive to enable unprecedented levels of surveillance
on all forms of electronic communication throughout Europe.
Daniel?
If agreed to. Yes, Bernie?
Before you get onto that topic,
there's a more apt topic still
that the Supreme Court decision October 12th
regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
and ISPs not having to turn over information.
Okay.
Are you familiar with that?
Why don't you tell us?
Ah, okay.
Well, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal
by the Recording Industry Association of America,
and it let stand a lower ruling
that rejected a streamlined subpoena process
that the recording industry was using
to try and access customer information
at Internet service providers.
This is really about peer-to-peer file sharing, primarily,
where RIIA and the MPAA were arguing
that they should have the legal right to subpoena
and get information about subscribers,
Internet service provider subscribers,
who were sharing files.
And the Supreme Court has rejected that,
saying you can't just send a subpoena
and just willy-nilly, as some legislators would say,
just get this information about subscribers
who may or may not be trading copyrighted files.
So this is a victory and a notch taken out
of the people behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Would this have affected the case
that Verizon was fighting earlier in the year
as far as not wanting to give away
their particular subscribers' information?
This is the same case.
It is the same case?
Yes.
So Verizon has already given out that information, though,
for that subscriber?
No, they were arguing
that they shouldn't give that information out.
But I think they were forced to give it out in the end, right?
True, but now they wouldn't have to if it happened again.
Okay.
I'm not sure Verizon was arguing
for the same reasons we would argue.
I think they were more looking at the cost involved to them
if they were deluged with these subpoenas.
But perhaps they were looking out for their customers, too.
We don't know what was in the hearts and minds
of their attorneys.
Okay.
Moving on to what's going on in the EU.
This unprecedented level of surveillance
that's being, I guess, pushed for.
Basically, it's a draft proposal introduced by Ireland
along with France, Sweden, and Britain.
They'll see details of every telephone call
and Internet session logged and stored
for between 12 and 36 months.
Now, under this proposal, telecom firms
and Internet providers will have to store details
of all these electronic communications
to aid any future police investigations.
And unlike previous proposals,
which limited police access to records
to specific investigations or prosecutions,
the current plan would allow access
for the purpose of prevention, investigation,
detection, and prosecution of any crime.
This is really, this is the stuff of science fiction.
It really is.
The addresses of all email correspondents
will also be captured while mobile phone logs
already stored for three years in Ireland
reveal the numbers dialed and locations of users.
This almost reads like an April Fool's joke.
Besides the obvious privacy implications,
it's just a lot of data.
Who's going to pay for all the hard drives?
It's a lot of information to wade through.
But basically, a spokesperson for Justice Minister
Michael McDowell said work on a communications
data retention bill was ongoing.
He said no reasonable person is going to object
to the principle of retaining information
which can be vital in bringing perpetrators
of serious crime to justice.
What do you think?
Do you think any reasonable person
is going to object to that?
As an unreasonable person, I wouldn't really know.
I think we're reasonable.
I hope so.
I'm going to pass this around
so people realize I'm not making it up.
This is really happening out there.
I don't want to touch it.
And why is this coming from Ireland of all places?
I don't know.
It really came out of left field, didn't it?
Yeah.
But it just goes to show that, you know,
it's not all happening here in the United States.
It's happening all over the place.
And you've got to keep your eyes open
and realize that we must all be vigilant.
Well, France, Sweden, and Britain
also submitted this draft proposal.
So all four of them are in the axis of evil.
Ireland, France, Sweden, and Britain.
That's right.
I'm surprised Sweden is doing this stuff.
I am too.
I'm not surprised about China, though.
China is offering rewards for reporting pornography.
That's right.
And let's see if we can participate in this somehow.
Their police ministry on Sunday
handed out rewards of up to $240
to people who reported pornographic websites
in a campaign to stamp out online smut.
Some 445 people have been arrested
and 1,125 websites shut down
with the help of public tips since July.
The ministry handed out rewards of between $60 and $240,
but it's unclear how many people actually received them.
China encourages Internet use.
Apparently they only have one Internet.
For education and business,
but bans sexually-oriented content on its own websites
and tries to block access to foreign sites
deemed pornographic or subversive.
I wonder if you get a reward for reporting a foreign site
that's pornographic.
You can make a lot of money.
$60 per porn website you find.
Yeah.
You just set one up, report it.
There's the whole being sent to jail part, too,
that you've got to take into account.
But we're not in China.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
Television stations, video game makers,
and other suppliers of popular culture
have been ordered to reduce or eliminate
violent or sexually-oriented content.
That's in China, not here.
Well, maybe it's here, too.
Yes, and I did make a crack just now at George W. Bush.
You heard that, Jim, didn't you?
Yes.
You know, last week I advised them.
I said, look, Republicans,
stop making reference to the Internet.
Cheney, factcheck.org, and he said factcheck.com,
which turned out to be George Bush's site.
And then last week in a debate,
George W. Bush, when making reference to the Internet,
called it the Internets.
I mean, how much studying do you have to do to get that right?
One moment.
He was right.
What do you mean he was right?
There's the one we all use,
and there's the one Al Gore invented.
Nice try, Jim, but that's just not going to wash.
Is that the one that's switched through rooters?
Anyway, the final debate's on tonight,
and unfortunately it's on while I'm,
well, actually I guess I could go somewhere
and try to see it in a bar or something,
but they're all going to be showing the Yankee game.
No, it'll be on Fox News after the Yankees,
after the Yankees are having the late local news
and then the debate.
So watching delayed Fox News Channel,
is your idea of fun?
It's not Fox News Channel.
It's the local Fox Channel 5.
Oh, okay.
Well, I'm taping it anyway.
Just don't anybody tell me who wins.
It'll also be on C-SPAN.
Is it the debate or the game?
Either one.
Well, they're all a game.
Okay, and here's something interesting, too.
What's this we received in the mail?
Apparently there's a paper ballot, Mike,
that got all messed up.
Yeah, this is the absentee ballot
for the state of Michigan,
and usually people who listen to the show
have heard me say that pen and paper ballots,
you can't screw it up, it's so easy,
but the state of Michigan proved me wrong
they screwed up an absentee ballot.
How did they do that?
I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking at here.
I'm looking at a list of names
and then there's arrows next to all the names
except for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
at the very top.
Right, so what you're supposed to do
is you're supposed to fill in the arrow
of the candidate you want,
but if you're deluded and want George Bush,
there's no arrow to fill in.
What do you mean fill in the arrow?
How do you fill in the arrow?
I'll show you.
There's two halves,
or the rightmost and leftmost third of an arrow,
and what you're supposed to do
is fill in the middle with a pen
so that they know who you're voting for.
Why does this fill in an arrow stuff?
Why not just check a box?
I've never filled in an arrow in my life.
I don't even know what that means.
If there's a hole in the middle of the arrow,
you fill it in.
And they somehow forgot to put an arrow
next to those names which are at the very top
and nobody noticed this until they got sent out.
I guess not.
So they are re-sending absentee ballots
to all the people in the state of Michigan
who aren't supposed to get them.
All right.
Well, that's what's going on as far as elections go.
We're in about as good a shape as we were four years ago.
Okay, here's some interesting email
that people have sent us.
OTH at 2600.com is our site, our email address.
I recently saw the president speak
in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
It was free.
I was bored on a Saturday.
Yeah, you know, I'd go too.
It was pretty dull, but here's the interesting part.
Before the speech started,
they requested that everyone have their cell phones
turned on during the speech.
I'm honestly perplexed as to why this could be.
This obviously confused more people than just myself.
As someone else asked to clarify,
indeed, they wanted all of our phones on, not off.
Any insight on this?
Signed, Nick.
Bernie, I believe you had an answer of some sort to this.
Yeah, it seems pretty odd that that would be requested.
You'd think that they wouldn't want the phones
to be ringing and interrupting the president speaking.
But I have one theory,
and I don't know if it holds any water or not,
but equipment exists for the authorities
to basically capture information from phones nearby,
like the phone number,
which could be cross-indexed to names
and that sort of thing,
if the phones are turned on.
If the phone is powered off,
it can't be pulled or pinged by this equipment.
And I would suspect the Secret Service would want to know
who all is at a presidential rally.
And if they could see that the same phone number
pops up at all the Bush rallies,
maybe they want to take a closer look at this person
or cross-index that to names
and cross-index that to, like,
did this phone number that was at this Bush rally,
the person holding that phone number,
did they call any numbers
on a prohibited list of phone numbers,
like other people on the blacklist,
that sort of thing?
It really, it's kind of like this whole RFID tag thing
where you could just sort of be identified
by a transponder you're carrying around,
which your cell phone effectively can be used as.
All right, but Bernie, here's the thing.
Here's the thing that I don't understand.
If you were somebody that was up to no good,
why would you turn on your cell phone if they asked you to?
They can't tell if you didn't turn it on.
No, I mean, it's not going to grab everybody,
but, you know, a lot of people don't think about it.
They just leave their cell phone on all the time.
Right, but anybody who is a threat would think about it,
and they're the people
that they would want to get in the first place
by kind of tipping their hat like this.
They may not, yeah, exactly.
It's sort of, you know, you'd think,
well, it's kind of odd because, you know,
you don't really know whether them making the announcement
is going to make more people have their phones on
than if they didn't say anything.
But, you know, a bad guy hearing that would be like,
well, that's kind of strange, and maybe turn it off.
So I don't know.
I think it was kind of counterproductive, that statement.
But I'd be interested in anybody else
who's attended the Bush rally or presidential rally recently
to let us know if they've heard the same thing
because I'd like to hear if this is a common pattern
that goes on at other presidential rallies.
Yeah, it could be a guy, a simpleton,
who simply got the instructions wrong
and said on when he was supposed to say off,
and he just didn't understand what he was saying.
Bernie, you may know this.
I have an alternate explanation, which may not be viable.
Is there any way that an off cell phone
could be used to trigger explosives,
whereas an on cell phone could be jammed
by a cell phone jamming apparatus?
Well, cell phones that are on could be jammed, yes,
but cell phones have been used to set off explosives.
And I know for a fact,
at least from reading in various federal investigation sources,
that sort of thing,
that the National Security Agency,
in cooperation with the White House Communications Agency,
monitors all RF signals, all types of radio signals,
cell phone, walkie-talkies, two-way radio,
all that kind of stuff,
that's going on anywhere in the vicinity of the president.
24-7.
If you look, the second van following the motorcade
has like 20 antennas on it,
and that van's got everything in there,
the people in there,
or to monitor everything going on around the president
on the radio spectrum.
Because a cell phone or any kind of radio device
could be used as a means to threaten the president,
and it's their job to protect the president,
which is understandable.
So I don't know if that answers your question or not,
but they do monitor that.
Well, that I know, but what I'm saying is,
is there any way that a cell phone that's turned off,
that will not ring,
is there any way that that could be used to detonate something,
where it would be blocked if it was on?
No, it's definitely, when it's turned off, it's off.
Okay.
There's no, you can't make the phone do anything
if it's literally powered down.
At least not yet.
I'm sure they're thinking of ways to do that.
Now, if someone were to modify, like if someone,
if you were a target,
and if you were like a really important target of the government,
and they had access to your cell phone,
if they could like borrow it for a little while
without your knowledge,
they could modify it so that it would appear to be off,
but they could still track you and so forth
if they thought you were the kind of person
who would turn their cell phone off
to avoid being tracked, that sort of thing.
But you'd have to be a pretty high-profile target,
in their eyes, to warrant that kind of attention.
Now, also, the other thing that struck me here,
you know how when you go into an airport,
sometimes they say turn your cell phone on
to make sure it's really a cell phone
and not simply, you know, a bomb or something,
although I'm sure they can invent a bomb that turns on as well.
Maybe they were doing it in that context
where they wanted to make sure it was a cell phone before.
Maybe we're not picturing this properly.
Maybe they told people as they were walking in,
turn on your cell phone,
and not the entire crowd of people at once.
Is that possible?
We don't really know the context
of whether this instruction is given to the crowd in general
or as they were going through a security checkpoint.
You know, when you go through an airport or something
and they ask you to turn on the radio
or turn on the cell phone,
they're looking to see that it's functioning as a device
that it's supposed to function as,
as opposed to something that's hollowed out,
like a boombox that's hollowed out to be a bomb,
as in the Lockerbie plane explosion,
that sort of thing,
or a cell phone could be hollowed out
and replaced with explosives and a timer
and that sort of thing.
There's not as much...
If you kept it functioning as a cell phone,
there'd be very little room in there
for you to put the explosives and all that other stuff.
Or if you had an additional battery, you know,
I'm not trying to give people tips here,
but you could easily have an additional battery on there
that was hollowed out that was attached to the phone.
Yeah, but it's a simple way to diminish the chances
of a bogus device,
not that it's ever been found.
I don't recall ever hearing about a case
where something was found to be not what it looked as.
Oh, no, no, no.
There was an episode of...
What was that show,
that takes place out in Los Angeles, I think?
LAX.
Yeah, I think...
I don't remember.
I don't have my facts straight on this,
but they definitely did find it on TV.
Uh-huh.
All right, so it's got to be real.
Must be true.
All right, well, those of you out there
who have a chance to go to a George W. Bush rally
or even a Kerry rally,
rush down there and see what happens, all right,
and tell us all these little details
as to whether or not they tell you to turn your phone on
or, you know, touch your head to your forehead,
your hand to your forehead,
or whatever it is they tell you to do, you know.
Just let us know.
We need to know these things.
All right, another piece of mail here.
On the October 6th episode of Off the Hook,
you mentioned there were only two 6-pulse area codes,
6-pulse area codes being the old rotary system,
and I believe the two 6-pulse area codes we mentioned
were two...
213-312.
213-312, yeah, because you count the numbers.
I'm just trying to mention 303,
the original area code for Greater Denver Metro,
now supplemented by 720,
but most definitely a 6-pulse number.
Sorry to be the anal retentive nitpicking nerd,
but somebody's got to do it.
Great show, signed CID,
which I guess could stand for caller ID,
but Jim, you seem to have a problem with this letter.
At first thought, I thought he was right,
but then I remember my old rotary phone,
which I actually still have and use.
So this would not be a 6-pulse number.
What would it be?
Would it be a 16-pulse number?
16, because 0 is 10 pulses.
Not 0 pulses, 10 pulses.
Right, because if there are 0 pulses,
how does it know that that number had pulsed?
It doesn't.
That's why that doesn't work.
Okay, and this other writer asks,
where the hell is his off-the-hook T-shirt,
which he pledged for early this year?
Okay, we've sent out all the premiums.
Everybody should have their premiums now,
but it's possible.
It's possible there are some people
who just pledged for this shirt
and no other premiums,
and we didn't get those names from the radio station.
That is possible.
If that includes you,
please email us, othat2600.com,
and we'll take care of you somehow.
We'll figure it out.
But just if you have any kind of question whatsoever
about a previous fundraiser
that you did not get what you pledged for,
apart from this radio program,
please email us,
and we'll track it down and figure it out.
I promise.
What do you do if you didn't get the radio program?
You know, I don't know what we can do about that,
but you can listen to all our previous radio programs.
They're all online at www.2600.com
slash off-the-hook.
All right.
Okay, we have a new project
that we're getting involved in,
and this is actually something
that we've been involved in in the past,
but we're trying to get more information,
and I'd like to bring in a guest
to our radio station now, Redbird.
How you doing?
You're doing some research into MetroCards,
which we've talked about before.
Jamie's certainly talked about it as well.
But we're looking for information
for, I guess, research purposes
for both New York and Chicago
because Chicago uses the exact same system.
What kind of information do we have so far?
What we want to do is we want to get
as many samples as we can of uncommon cards
such as the student MetroCards,
senior MetroCards,
possibly test MetroCards
if anyone can get their hands on them.
What can we learn by having these?
Basically, we're going to try to figure out
what's on the stripe,
what happens when you swipe it,
basically how the whole system works,
see what we can do as far as reverse engineering it.
I'm amazed no one's done this yet.
The system's been in place, what, 10 years now,
and no one's quite figured it out,
reversed engineered it.
I haven't found anything yet.
What's that, Bernie?
Or they're not talking.
Or they're afraid or something like that.
So basically, okay,
there are different kinds of MetroCards out there.
There are the unlimited ride ones.
There are the pay-per-ride ones
which you put money into.
There are the single ride ones.
And then there are these other special type of people ones.
There are senior citizens.
There are students.
Employee cards.
Employee cards.
Are there handicap cards?
No.
There are, okay.
And I know there's an Airtrain card.
I'm not sure if it's any different,
but when you get the card at the Airtrain,
it says, when you swipe it through the thing,
that it's an Airtrain card.
It might just be a regular MetroCard with $5 on it.
I don't know.
But we don't need the cards with any value on them.
Is that correct?
No, they don't have to have any value,
just to get as many samples as we can.
Just to see if there's a difference in the format.
Right, different types of cards have different bits
set on the actual tracks.
Are there special cards that are issued to MTA employees
that allow them to come and go for free?
I believe so.
Yes, that's one of the ones we're asking for.
Well, we don't want one that currently works.
No, it doesn't happen.
We're not looking to get into the system for free.
You won't be able to get one that doesn't work.
They're removed from the possession of the employees.
What if the employee loses it before they're terminated?
Oh, well.
That could happen.
Lose, yes, in quotes, sure.
If you're, and I'm not advocating this.
We're just saying, theoretically,
if you were an employee and you were to lose your card,
it would obviously be disconnected somehow,
and that's the point where you could send it to us,
because we can't use it.
But we can learn something from it,
and I think this is a good indication of how,
if we pull information,
we might be able to learn how the system works,
because I know a lot of people are still interested in it.
It's been operating for 10 years now,
and there are some things that people seem to know.
There are some tricks to the system that I've heard about,
I've heard rumors about.
Also, don't forget the Chicago system as well.
Any cards from the Chicago system,
because being based out of New York,
we don't have very many samples at all.
So if you're in Chicago and you have...
Anything, any type of card.
What are they called?
Is there a MetroCard there?
Does anybody know?
Whatever it's called.
It looks like a MetroCard.
It looks just like a MetroCard.
I guess if you live in Chicago,
you wouldn't know what a MetroCard looks like,
but it looks like your card.
Yeah, we don't want people to send in the cards
that they find on the floor of the subway station,
because those are easy to find and anybody can get those.
We want the cards that actually might be a little bit different
that we might not be able to get our hands on,
so we can study them and figure out just how the system works.
And Chicago, because we don't know anything
about the Chicago system,
we can compare it to the New York system
and come up with all kinds of theories
as to how the system works.
And why do we do this?
Is this a destructive thing?
Well, it's basically what we've been doing since day one,
learning how systems work,
figuring out maybe how a better system could operate,
figuring out ways that this system
might be being abused currently in all different ways,
either by criminals
or by people running the system themselves.
There might be surveillance things built into the system.
You know, the only way to really know
is to have complete and open accountability
for how it all works.
And now there's a little time pressure on this
because the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA
has recommended that they go over to a smart card,
a sort of easy pass system,
where you would have something like a credit card
with a little smart chip in it,
and it would have proximity sensors,
and you could just walk through the turnstiles
without touching anything,
and it would automatically take it off at that point.
Well, I saw a story about that last week,
but I was under the impression that that would be something
that would be piggybacked onto the current system
for people that...
I mean, you know, not everybody has a credit card,
so that system obviously would be good for those people,
but for the people who just want to pay per ride
or get a card from a machine,
I think that would still exist for them.
I know they're implementing something like that
in Chicago as well,
so we need to know more about that particular system.
So anyway, if you have any kind of information whatsoever
about the system,
you can either e-mail us the information that you have,
or if you have one of those special MetroCards
so we can examine them and figure out how it all works,
mail them to us at 2600 P.O. Box 99,
Middle Island, New York, 11953.
We'll give out that address at the end of the show again.
But again, we're just looking for variety
so we can figure out how it works,
and I think this is a good indication
of how we can just use
all different sources of information
and figure something out.
We should have done this a long time ago.
I think the system was changed, though.
Weren't MetroCards a different color at one point?
Right, they used to be blue,
and I also believe that the data on the magnetic strips
were different as well,
but can't totally confirm that right now.
Uh-huh.
Well, if anyone has any old blue MetroCards,
please send those in, too,
because we certainly don't have access to those.
Interesting.
Would you like to receive,
in addition to the cards themselves,
maybe a narrative?
Exactly, the type of card it is.
Oh, yeah, tell us.
The receipts as well.
The receipts have some good information.
They have the serial number.
That's interesting,
because I was looking at a receipt the other day.
The receipts, these are what you get from the machines.
Right, they have the MVM number that you purchased it from.
What's an MVM number?
MetroCard Vending Machine.
MetroCard Vending Machine number, okay.
Right.
So you get that information.
You have the MVM number,
the station in text where it was purchased.
Okay.
Let's say you purchased it
at the West 4th Street station,
it would say that.
Uh-huh, and what else?
What else?
It tells you the type of card.
For example, type 000 is a full fare card.
Uh-huh.
000 is a full fare card.
Right.
Didn't know that.
There's other types of cards.
I think Leo has a receipt there.
He's uncrumpling.
I also have a blue card, a MetroCard,
and plus Russia.
You have a blue card?
Yeah.
You have a blue card.
Not on me, but I have it at home.
Okay, well.
I just have a whole stack.
Run home and get it.
Also, Russia, Moscow,
they use the proximity system
and a PATH-trained type of MetroCard system as well.
Okay.
I think that PATH-type system
is pretty common throughout the world,
but I know PATH now accepts MetroCards.
Do you guys know that?
Yeah, that's correct.
And they use different types of turnstiles,
so the system is interesting.
I have to say, you know,
10 years ago, I predicted it wasn't going to work,
and it works now.
You want to just read us from that receipt
that Leo gave you, what kind of information?
Just tell us what's on there.
All right.
What can you learn about?
The first thing it says is the station
where you purchased it from,
which is, for this one, the St. George Terminal.
Uh-huh.
The MVM number.
That's for Staten Island,
which isn't an actual subway station.
That's a ferry station.
Same receipts.
It's also the Staten Island Rapid Transit.
And they use MetroCard 2 at one station only.
Right.
All right, to get off at St. George,
and to get on, too, I think.
Right.
All right.
The next information that they give you is the date,
the time of purchase, the value on the card,
the payment mode, serial number, the type,
followed by what the type actually means,
which is full fare for this example.
Now, I understand people who are accused of crimes
can present these as evidence
that they were a certain place at a certain time.
I've heard about that, too.
I just don't know the credibility.
On NYPD Blue, that happened.
And, you know, I'm just wondering how easy it is
to make up that information.
Well, actually, there was a Daily News article
a few years back, I have it at home,
that actually they don't use the receipts.
They just check the system.
Yes, you have to have the card on you.
Uh-huh.
And they just run the serial number through the mainframe.
But what if you pick up a card that's lying on the platform?
How hard is that?
Not hard at all.
I guess you don't expect to be accused of a crime.
But you've got to know where it was used last.
Yeah, it may not have an L by you.
It probably was used last at that station.
Since it was on the platform there.
Sure.
Okay, well, again, this is a call for information.
And we're going to follow it up on this radio program
and other places as well.
Again, the address, 2600 P.O. Box 99,
Middle Island, New York, 11953.
And if you're outside the United States for some reason,
USA.
I guess people have MetroCards outside the USA.
We want any card having to do with the Chicago system.
And we want special cards in New York.
Student cards, senior cards, handicap cards,
employee cards, whatever.
No value.
We don't need the value on them.
We're not using this for fraudulent purposes.
We're using this to investigate, to figure it out,
and to share the information.
Okay, if you have information to share with us,
you can call us.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
And we enjoy hearing from our listeners,
as we do every week.
Not next week, though.
Next week we are not on.
We'll be on in two weeks.
Special fundraising edition.
That would be the 27th.
Would that be the 27th?
That will be the 27th.
All right.
We won't be on the day after Election Day, either.
Which I think is going to be...
I'm going to need some recuperation time,
no matter what happens that day.
So it's probably a good thing.
But we're back to normal in the week after that.
All right, let's take the phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, guys.
How are you doing?
Okay, how are you?
All right.
Listen, I just wanted to ask you something.
I was busted in the 70s for blue boxes that I was making.
I was making them in my college dorm.
Remember blue boxes?
Oh, yeah.
Steve Wozniak?
Well, I actually got the information from reading telephone manuals
back then that my college had in the library.
And I just wanted to know if any of these that I still have
would be possibly ripe for a museum
or maybe the Smithsonian Institute.
What do you think?
I know that in Boston there was a technology museum that had a blue box
as one of the exhibits.
I forget where.
I think it was part of MIT or something like that.
There is most definitely an interest.
I'm not exactly certain where.
I'm sure we'll hear all kinds of things from our listeners
as to where this might be.
I don't know if the Smithsonian is the proper place.
Maybe for the young ones out there,
maybe they should find out what a blue box is.
Yeah, well, it's certainly something that people should know about.
For those who don't know,
blue boxing was a way of routing your own phone calls
throughout the old Bell network using in-band signaling.
That's when the little beeps were sent over the same path as your voice.
And I imagine you blue boxed yourself, right?
Well, I actually got busted because I was also using it
to make a return change out of the coin box.
You can do that too.
I don't think I ever talked to anybody who did that.
That actually worked, huh?
Oh, yeah.
That worked, and you could call anywhere you wanted to
with the tones from a nickel.
Did you know how to do that?
Yeah.
Well, that's red boxing, right?
Yeah, red boxing.
That's not so much of an art form as blue boxing.
Blue boxing, though, you were able to route yourself
to all kinds of internal offices of phone companies throughout the world.
Did you ever make any wild phone calls
to various places that you weren't ever supposed to reach?
Actually, how I got busted was I was using induction
to be able to use the blue box through the walls
in, like, a lecture hall.
And we made a pact with each other not to tell anybody about it
or to call home.
But, of course, some idiot did call home,
and that was the end of us.
And we all got busted, and it's followed me since then.
I could never even get a job because I was busted.
You're kidding.
No, it was a felony, theft of services, interstate, wire.
It was really serious.
So what did they do to you back then?
Well, I was 19 years old, and I got charged as an adult.
I had to leave college.
I never graduated.
Wow.
The rest of my life, yeah.
Did you go to prison at all?
I served six months upstate New York,
but even my father, who, you know, he had a lot of money,
didn't help me.
He sort of let me rot in jail.
Wow.
Well, that's not a very good ending to that story.
And when he was buried, I put a blue box in his casket
just to make sure he remembered.
Wow.
That's quite a tale there.
I know.
Sounds like you've got a book to write about all this.
Or at least an article for 2600.
Well, with enough therapy, maybe by the time I'm 55,
I'll be okay.
But right now, it's just every time I think about a blue box,
I actually get an anxiety attack.
Well, not many people are thinking about blue boxes these days.
That's why I think it's important to write the history books.
What year were you busted, just out of curiosity?
1972.
Really?
Okay.
And you know what's funny is that Popular Electronics back then
was actually publishing circuits for it.
Of course, they couldn't recommend that you build one,
but, yeah, those were the old days.
Hendricks, blue boxes, and pot.
Well, except for the blue boxes, a lot of that's still around.
But I hope you share your story with other people
because I think understanding the past is the best way to understand
the present and future.
I love your show, by the way.
All right.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you, guys.
All right.
A tale from the past, the old blue box days, boy.
I only got to play with blue boxes a little bit,
but they were addictive.
They were addictive as hell.
You could just make calls, not just free phone calls.
You could talk to inward operators in Romania.
You could talk to people you were never supposed to be able to reach
and just explore how the system worked through MF tones.
And, I don't know, there's just kind of a magic to it
that has never been duplicated since.
With all the phone companies I've come into being,
I've never seen anything with that allure that the old Bell Network had.
Oh, well, enough misty-eyed remembrances.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
IP relay operator 6157 with a relay call.
Do you know how to use relay?
How long is this going to take, operator?
Operator, I'm sorry.
I can't be engaged in a conversation.
You have to speak directly to the person.
Okay.
I apologize.
All right.
Yes, can we help you?
Relay will begin now.
All right.
Hello.
I just wanted to thank you for a great show.
Okay.
Well, thank you very much for calling.
Where are you calling from?
Virginia.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Well, thank you again.
Good night.
Oh, boy.
Took a long time for him to type Virginia.
It was a long time, wasn't it?
All right.
Bernie, maybe you can tell us what the hell just happened over our airwaves there.
I apologize to our listeners for all the silence there, but we had to sort of let the dramatic
effects sink in, and that was what the relay call was all about.
All the state public utility commissions have required, and I think this is also linked
into federal law with the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, that each state must establish
a TDD or TTY relay service, which basically allows the hearing impaired to communicate
through a keyboard device with people who can hear.
So basically it's a portable device.
Sometimes it's portable.
Sometimes it's not.
Usually it's portable.
And as you type into it, audio tones, they're basically really slow modem tones, come out
of the device and into the phone.
The telephone handset actually sticks into this thing.
Sometimes you can find pay phones like at bus stations or public, like at malls and
so forth, train stations that have a TTY.
There's a picture of a keyboard with a phone over it.
Right.
Bottom line is when you call someone, you call a toll-free number for the relay service,
and someone answers.
If you're a hearing impaired person, you call the relay service, and the operator will type
saying, who do you want to call?
And then you tell them via keyboard who you want to call.
And then you get a call just like you received on the air.
So the hearing impaired caller can type while the relay operator then translates what they
read into what they're going to say to you.
And then what you say is then transcribed by the relay operator who types it back to
the hearing impaired person.
Now, there is no hearing test, though, done on the person using the phone.
Is there?
Anybody could do this.
It could very well have been a person who hears fine and was just playing.
I think this person called last week, too, right?
Well, we don't know.
We don't know.
Could have been another relay call.
Yeah.
No way to really tell.
But it's interesting.
I'm not allowed to talk directly to the operator.
I never knew that before.
That's right.
But it's also interesting is that the operator is by law required to transcribe and speak
everything verbatim.
So whatever you type on your TDD or TTY device, the telephone company relay operator must
utter the words that you type, no matter what they are.
Yeah.
Well, let's not tempt people too much, Bernie, as to what they can get away with here.
Well, I had some fun with that a few years ago.
But anybody can experiment with this using a TDY or TDD.
I encourage the next time you're at a train station, if you can't find a pay phone that
has a TTY, to ask the information booth, where is your TTY telephone?
Yeah.
And they will point you in the direction.
They're required by federal law to have one available.
But I believe there's a way to do this over the Internet as well.
There may be.
Ring PCS actually subcontracts this service with a lot of states.
And next week, if you want, I'll have that URL available.
Two weeks.
I don't remember it off the top of my head.
Yeah.
Two weeks from now.
It's not Sprint PCS.
It's Sprint.
It's Sprint.
All right.
Two weeks from now, I'll have that information available.
But I encourage everyone to find a public TTY and call the following number with the
phone.
Uh-oh.
Take the phone off the hook, and you put it into the little suction cups.
And you dial this number, 800-855-1155.
And that is not the relay service, but it's the toll-free directory assistance number.
You can call that number and get information and place calls.
If you have a card, you can place calls.
But the person at the other end has to have a TTY or TDD.
It's not the relay service.
I'll have that information a week after next.
Okay.
And when you say you can call information, you don't mean you can call information around
the country for nothing, do you?
Actually, you can.
You're kidding.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
You can get the lookups for free, but they won't process the call for you for free.
Okay.
It's a neat trick.
Instead of spending 75 cents or whatever the directory assistance call charge is, the ones
I have found in public places, you can call us, 800-855-1155, with a TTY or TDD, and get
any directory assistance information for free.
It's a little more tedious, but it's kind of fun.
And it's also interesting, too, because 800 information, at least for us people who aren't
hearing impaired, isn't open at night and over the weekends.
So you can't even speak to a human.
I imagine this, you can speak to a human over the keyboard 24-7.
It's always a human operator.
And what has always intrigued me is not only is it a human operator, but that human operator
then has a voice telephone next to them that they actually pick up another phone and call
by voice regular directory assistance and get the number and write it down on a piece
of paper and then tape it back to you.
It's an amazing combination of low-tech and high-tech.
It must be an interesting job.
I mean, they have to convey all kinds of information back and forth.
I'm sure there's stories there that they're not allowed to tell us.
You can talk with these people.
You can sort of social engineer them and ask them about their lives and so forth.
I've done that with those operators.
Well, they're not allowed to talk directly to you, but I guess you can fool them into
doing it.
Apparently, these services are very popular among certain people who like to commit fraud
also.
Really?
Because they can get the operator to place calls on their behalf and, you know, if there's
miscommunication, they can just claim it's through the operator.
Yeah, but I would imagine if somebody's suspicious of fraud, getting a call like this would be
all the more suspicious, thinking that this could be used in various ways because it's
unusual.
It's something you don't really expect to have happen.
Okay, enough talking about this.
Let's take a phone call.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, good evening.
I wonder if I might be able to make the Guinness Book of Records for abusing sexually more corpses
than any other individual.
Well, you know, you're calling the wrong station for that.
Do you want the AM band?
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, boy.
Let's try this one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Yeah, I was just calling about the...
Actually, two things.
I've got three student metro cards I can send you.
Oh, please do.
Please do.
Thank you.
So there's that.
And actually, could you read that address again?
Yes.
Because I missed it.
I will read it again.
I'll even read it slowly so that people can write it down as I read it.
It's 2600 P.O.
Box 99.
And that's in Middle Island, which is two words, Middle Island, New York, 11953.
And, of course, our address is also on our website, www.2600.com.
It might be a different P.O. Box number, but it'll get to us all the same.
Okay.
All right?
And I also wanted to say that one of the best things about the TTY service is not necessarily
that they have to say everything you say, but the TTYs on pay phones look really cool.
They do.
Yeah.
It's got a metal keyboard and stuff, and it's like weatherproof.
It slides out on a motorized tray.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you pick up the phone, you can't tell the tray to come out.
So it's a neat trick.
If you pick up a pay phone that has one of these TTY trays, it's just sort of a recessed
tray.
But if you dial the number, 800-855-1155, and then the device hears those tones, then
this tray will magically slide out by a motor.
Hopefully.
Hopefully.
A lot of times it doesn't work, but hopefully it will.
If people want to test this out, though, in Philadelphia, you can go to the 30th Street
Station.
I know they have a bunch there.
New York City, go to Penn Station, go to Grand Central Station, and play to your heart's
content.
We're out of time, so I want to thank everybody for calling in.
Remember, we're not on next week.
We'll be on in two weeks.
And taking your pledges, then, write to us, oth2600.com.
Have a good night.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
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