Hi, I'm Bernard White, Program Director here at WBAI, and I'm taking this moment to thank
all of our faithful listeners and let you know that we appreciate your support.
In fact, we could not survive without it.
However, looking back through our records, we see that there are some of you who have
not yet honored your pledges from the last Fund Drive.
Therefore, we're requesting that those of you who pledged in the October 2004 Fund Drive
take this opportunity to honor your past pledges.
We know that sometimes things come up that make it difficult to follow through on your
commitment.
However, we hope that things have kind of straightened themselves out, and you will
take this moment to honor your pledge.
We appreciate your support.
Thank you.
Okay, we've asked nicely, so you don't want to hear the second speech.
It's 7 o'clock here on a Wednesday night.
You're listening to WBAI in New York.
It's time for me to find the right button.
It's time for Off The Hook to begin playing at this moment.
I hope that's understood.
One, two, three, go!
Oh, oh, oh.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you for the next hour or so, along with a cast of others here
in the studio.
We're going to try and get Bernie S. on the telephone.
He's over in Prague, which is in the Czech Republic.
Mike, what's the country code for the Czech Republic?
420.
Three-digit country code.
Yes.
Very, very nice there.
Yeah, there are a number of countries that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the
Soviet Union and all that, a lot of country codes somehow were needed.
East Germany used to be 37, and now 37X is used for various other countries.
So it's always a challenge, and it's always a challenge calling overseas from here.
We're going to try that first.
We have a couple of methods of doing this.
First, the method I don't think is going to work is using our own BAI phone system.
Prefixing with the 011 and the country code.
And all kinds of other numbers.
Let's see what happens.
We're calling a hotel in Prague.
And that silence, I think, means that the call is not going anywhere.
The music doesn't sound much like Prague.
No, and the music isn't coming from the phone either.
So it would be nice, wouldn't it, if they gave you a little music to keep you entertained
while the call was being processed?
But I think, you know, the way things work here at BAI, if you get silence, it means
nothing's happening.
And that's true.
An interpersonal call is not going anywhere.
Things work here at BAI.
If you get silence, it means nothing's happening.
And that's true on interpersonal things as well as phone things.
If you talk to somebody and you're met with a blank stare, it means that you're not going
to get anywhere.
So we're met with a blank stare of the BAI phone system.
So we're going to try the alternative that we have devised ourselves.
Of course, it means that we pay for it ourselves.
But, you know, it's really not that much money.
We're using that magical system, AI telephone.
Is that what it is?
American International Telephonics.
It allows you to program your own toll-free number and have it forward anywhere in the
world for fairly low prices, including the cost of the toll-free call, which I think
is, what is it, something like $0.10 a minute?
You know I didn't look it up.
Let's say it's like that.
Something like that.
And Bernie asks if it's worth at least that much.
So we're going to call him using that particular method.
And hopefully the buttons on this thing will work at least.
Now, the next voice you hear should be that of a hotel operator in Prague.
Well, actually, you'll hear a recording from the phone company first.
Your call is being connected.
Please wait.
Now you'll hear a Prague hotel operator.
Reception.
Hello.
Room 214, please.
You can call it from your own phone.
Actually, I can't because this number routes only to the hotel.
Yeah.
OK.
I'm sorry.
No problem.
All right.
Thank you.
He's probably right.
They probably do have a DID line to their room.
Unheard of here, but we can't reprogram.
We could reprogram the number to call there, I guess.
But then we'd have to give the number out over the air.
And that's not good for anybody.
Yeah, the official language in the Czech Republic is English, by the way.
Did you know that?
It's true.
What's going on here?
Hello.
Hello.
Bernie.
Oh, hello.
How are you doing?
We didn't wake you, did we?
It's like 1 in the morning here.
What are you doing?
I thought we had this worked out.
No.
All right.
We have to talk to the producer of this show.
No, Bernie, we were supposed to call you, as arranged before, to talk on the air.
Well, Laszlo was supposed to pick up the phone, but I guess he's too soundly asleep.
No, Laszlo usually sleeps through these things.
Well, try and splash some cold water in your face, because it's airtime and a time for
us to entertain the people with news of telecommunications, hacking, and international travel, which is
what you're engaged in right now.
All of the above.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sounds like you're having a great time over there.
It's pretty exhausting, but it's an amazing place here, Prague in the Czech Republic.
Did you climb the hill and see the castle and all that kind of thing?
Yes.
It took about a day to see even a fraction of this amazing structure.
I think I boiled it down to one thing, and that's kind of about a 5,000-year history
of human habitation of this hill.
Over the past 5,000 years, people have been playing king of the hill to keep power over
that hill, and it's quite a story.
It's a good hill, too.
It's a good hill.
You can buy ice cream from the vendors up there on top of that hill and look over the
rest of the city and just reminisce about what it used to be like however many thousands
of years ago, maybe.
Did you go to Kafka's house?
We did.
It's a good place, too.
I can see why someone would get inspired to write stories of oppression and doom.
Yes.
Many of us have experienced such stories ourselves.
Now, isn't this an anniversary for you today?
Oh, actually, yesterday.
Yesterday was the 10th, believe it or not, 10th anniversary of my arrest by the United
States Secret Service outside of Philadelphia.
Laszlo thought it would be appropriate to have us check into a hotel here in Prague,
which is the former offices of the secret police under the communist regime here in
Prague.
There's prison cells here, one of which housed Vaclav Havel, the now president of
the Czech Republic.
Back in those days, he was an activist, like yourself and many of our listeners, and he
was locked up for his activism.
May I ask, what do they use the prison cells inside the hotel for now?
You can actually stay in them as hotel rooms.
Oh, boy.
For a nominal fee.
I hope you didn't do that.
No.
It's pretty cheap, but they didn't have any that had enough room for it.
They're quite small, as you can imagine, as prison cells, but it's kind of a hostel
now, so youth stay there.
It's bunk beds.
You can get the youth to stay anywhere, can't you?
Pretty much.
You can stay in a prison cell.
Wow.
Got some great pictures of this.
I'm in the same building where Vaclav Havel was imprisoned.
Well, when I went to Romania, I found out the day after that I'd stayed in the same
hotel that their particular secret police had used to record the telephone conversations
of most of the population of Bucharest, and it was right across the street from where
Ceausescu gave his final speech and where the Civil War actually began, the short-lived
Civil War.
So, yeah, I can understand the feeling of kind of weird memories of the place that you
must be feeling.
I did have a flashback of the United States as I was walking down one of the streets here
near the top of the hill here in Prague.
Laszlo and I were walking downhill on a street, I guess it's sort of like our embassy row
in D.C., but it's other embassies here in Prague, and they all looked like nice embassies,
and then we came across one building, and there were all these, like, flak-jacketed
police with machine guns and, you know, jackboots.
Well, not jackboots, but, you know, black, you know, oppressive-looking people with machine
guns down in front of one building.
Like, what's going on here?
I'll bet I know what building that is.
Police cars, police cars all over the place, and, like, a screening area where cars coming
up the street had to be stopped, and, like, mirrors wheeled underneath the cars looking
for bombs.
It's the American embassy, right, Bernie?
I don't know how you could stand the suspense.
It's the American embassy, right?
There was the American flag right there.
Right, of course.
That was the centrist of all this paranoia of people searching for bombs and cars, and
none of the other embassies were worried about this at all, except the American embassy.
And it reminds me of when I was in Estonia, wandering through the streets of Tallinn,
and there were these houses similar to what you described.
I was taking pictures of all kinds of things, and the only time I was, in my entire trip
going through Belarus and the ex-Soviet Union, Russia, Poland, all kinds of different countries,
the only time I was ever threatened with arrest and had the cops called on me was when I took
a picture of the American consulate.
And it's great that an American is who's threatening me with arrest when I'm in Estonia,
but that's the way it goes, I guess.
There were bars over all the windows.
I mean, it looked like a military encampment, only it was a nice house that had been converted
into this fortress with all these armed guards.
It's sort of a parallel to what's happening in the country.
It's a nice country, nice scenery, but it's being converted into a prison.
Very strange.
All kinds of mind control going on.
But let's not get too depressed here.
You are in Prague.
It's a cheerful city now.
On a positive note, there's some political graffiti here, which we did not see here in
– we don't see as much of this in the U.S.
But there was actual political graffiti in various places, including bathroom stalls.
There's actual political graffiti with intelligent statements.
So it's really kind of interesting.
Is there a particular statement you'd like to recall for us?
Oh, I don't know.
I remember some of them were about the United States and there was another one about freedom
for the Basque Republic and things like that that you just don't see.
That's kind of odd.
People come to the Czech Republic to write graffiti about the Basque region of Spain?
Mm-hmm.
I guess that's intelligence for you.
People are aware of what's going on.
People from all over the world here.
I was surprised at just such a huge mix of people from all over the world here.
All kinds of different languages.
I was in Prague once and met people from the Basque region, so they must be there all the time.
Yeah, I guess so.
All right, Bernie.
Well, if you can stay with us for the hour, if we're not keeping you up too late.
We have all kinds of good.
Now that I'm awake.
When do you return to the States?
Tomorrow we're finally heading back.
It was a nine-day trip to Hanover for the CIPA conference, and then we went to Leipzig.
Then we went to Dresden, which was really—both Leipzig and Dresden were really fascinating,
much more than we even expected, and Prague the past three days.
So it's been a whirlwind tour.
Okay, great.
Okay, well, let's update folks on various things that are going on.
First, a couple of news stories.
You might have heard about this one.
This is concerning what's going on in Germany.
Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping
by placing their finger on a scanner at the checkout.
I couldn't make this up, could I?
Saving the time spent scrambling for coins or cards.
An Edeka store in the southwest German town of Reuschheim has piloted the technology since November,
and now the company plans to equip its stores across the region.
All customers need do is register once with their identity card and bank details,
then they can shop straight away, said store manager Roland Fitterer.
The scanner compares the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database
along with account details.
And they say over at this supermarket chain they're confident the system will not be abused.
There are just so many ways the system can be abused.
It can be abused on the consumer level.
It can be abused on the store level.
It can be abused on the government level using fingerprints to buy groceries, to buy anything.
The system is inherently an abuse, so maybe they mean that it can get no more absurd than it already is.
I mean, do we have anything to hide really when we're buying things at the store?
Think about it.
It is incredibly convenient, no fumbling for change or credit cards,
just you put your finger there and you get whatever it is.
Your money is deducted from wherever you have your money, assuming you have money that is.
What if you don't have money?
If you don't have money, you have to get somebody else's finger.
We've always been giving the finger to people without money, so it shouldn't be hard, right?
It's true.
Jim, you have a…
I can see how a 16-year-old who otherwise might be responsible will now,
with the fear of being exposed to his parents, not buy prophylactics.
It's going to backfire in the most interesting and unbelievable ways.
It's always prophylactics that are the issue, right?
Always buying rubbers at the store.
Not everybody can go online.
These wonderful advances of technology that are designed to make our lives easier.
Yeah, you have to go to the pharmacist and say that you're going to fill them with water and throw them off the building.
Wow.
We probably have heard about this.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has won the support of parliament for a new anti-terrorism law
that will allow the government to act swiftly against foreign terrorist suspects who have been granted bail.
That's right.
The House of Lords approved new powers, and they fought about this for quite some time.
It took a number of weeks for compromises to be reached,
but they finally approved new powers to order house arrest, impose curfews,
and use electronic tagging without trial after the government made concessions to end the bitter parliamentary deadlock.
Now, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill,
which also allows the government to ban terrorist suspects from meeting certain people or traveling
and to restrict their access to the internet or telephone,
later received the formality of royal assent to become law.
That's the bizarre little customs they have over there.
The new control orders are likely to be used first against the eight foreign nationals,
including radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, who is suspected of having ties with al-Qaeda.
However, they did release him without any charges.
Apparently, now there's going to be another level where you're not charged,
but you're still suspected and treated as such.
Well, here's the thing.
If this guy actually did something which is wrong, then they couldn't.
The laws already exist in Britain as in the United States to arrest the guy and lock him up or whatever,
so this kind of silliness where he hasn't done anything wrong but maybe one day he might is really…
Yeah, it's pre-crime or something like that.
The other thing that seems really redundant about this is that when judges release a defendant on bail,
the judge always sets conditions on that defendant,
and it should be up to the judge to decide what those conditions should be.
In this case, any of the conditions they're imposing on people by this new law could just as easily be conditioned,
dictated by the judge at the request of the government.
But this law is really completely unnecessary because the judge can make it as part of the bail conditions.
Well, it just tells me that they don't have strong cases
and they no longer have confidence in the legal system as it stands now,
and that's why they need to cheat.
They need to get around any restrictions.
Basically, this is what happened.
Justice Duncan Ousley had set strict bail conditions on the people who were released,
the eight people, including a nighttime curfew, restrictions on whom they can meet,
on their access to mobile phones, the internet.
Qatada was banned from preaching at mosques or leading prayers.
But that law expired,
and the government wanted new powers that would allow them to do similar things
or extend that particular way of treating people.
So under this law, the government must apply to a judge to issue house arrest orders,
but in an emergency, a government minister can immediately order the lesser measures
and seek court approval within seven days.
Believe it or not, conservatives, I guess things are completely different over there,
say it would infringe on civil liberties,
and they demanded a sunset clause that would require the law to expire after a year.
The government refused, saying such an amendment would send a message
that Britain was soft on terrorism.
Jim.
Bernie, and anybody else who might think this,
don't think that just because judges could put these same restrictions on people released on bail
that this makes this law right.
It doesn't.
In other words, it takes this out of the hands of the judges
and puts it in the hands of the police and security forces.
In other words, if you are able to get a judge to put these restrictions on, fine,
and if the judge doesn't, you can put them on anyway with this law.
Very dark days.
We'll be keeping an eye on that one and all the other ones, I'm sure, that will be taking place.
Cheshire Catalyst sent us a couple of stories.
I'm wandering around the southeast section of BBC News,
and he tells us about a mobile telephone protest in Bangladesh.
That's right.
Mobile telephone users in Bangladesh have demonstrated in the capital, Dhaka,
to demand that operating companies reduce their call charges.
We can't even get people to demonstrate against the war here.
They're demonstrating against phone charges there.
It's amazing.
The protesters say the charges they face are more expensive
than other operators in the South Asia region.
The protest organized by the Citizen Rights Movement,
rather generic term, isn't it,
was attended by dozens of mobile subscribers.
All right, it wasn't millions.
It was dozens, but still, you know.
We could probably get dozens to protest Verizon if we really put our hearts to it.
We had a couple of dozen protesting the Kevin Mitnick film by Miramax.
Right.
Yeah, it did make a difference.
That's true.
But it didn't get this kind of coverage.
I don't think Verizon would care if we had a couple dozen people, though.
No, no.
Although, you know, Verizon might care that VerizonReallySucks.com is about to expire.
And I haven't decided yet if I'm going to renew it.
Yes, I'm open to bribery.
All four mobile companies operating in the country
say they are trying to reduce the cost of calls.
The protesters said the mobile telephone companies charge prepaid subscribers
just over 11 US cents a minute,
a rate which they say is far higher than in neighboring India.
It's always about what the Indians are doing, isn't it?
Bangladesh, India, always, you know, comparing whose grass is greener
and that kind of thing.
So, yeah, I guess they have a better rate in India.
Eleven US cents a minute, though, for prepaid.
That's not so bad, is it?
Well, when they –
It actually seems reasonable to me.
I mean, what do we wind up paying?
Something like 35 cents a minute prepaid?
Well, the employees are probably paid more in this country.
Except there are no employees in this country anymore.
They're all in India or Bangladesh.
It's true.
Anyway, they refuse to back down.
They say they will continue their campaign for lower rates
until their demands are met.
So these are hardliners here that we're dealing with,
demanding lower rates in Bangladesh.
Also, thousands of people in Nepal have been queuing
to re-register their cell phones after mobile services were cut
when the king seized power in February.
Don't you just love these kind of stories?
The king seized power,
so that meant that all mobile services had to be cut off.
Applicants must provide personal details and photographs
for security reasons, the authorities said.
Coups d'etat are always causing trouble.
Yeah. Is that the right term? Coups d'etat?
The coup is the noun, right?
I guess. Yeah.
Yeah, but I've seen it pluralized in English
with the etas pluralized.
All right. Well, it's one of those little things.
I agree with the theory, yes.
In a foreign phrase, you generally –
or a multiple compound phrase, you pluralize the noun.
What's the other one? Attorneys general?
Yeah, that's correct.
Okay.
Anyway, phone and internet links to Nepal were cut
when king – oh boy – king Gyanendra, is that right?
I would just call him the king of Nepal.
King G, let's call him that,
took power on the 1st of February
but have since been restored.
Nepal had almost 90,000 mobile users before the royal coup,
which has been heavily criticized at home and abroad.
The king sacked his government because, he said,
it had failed to tackle a bloody uprising by Maoist rebels.
Mobiles have remained banned in the kingdom,
as well as Maoists, for security reasons,
according to the authorities who say
the Maoists used them to communicate.
Oh my god, really?
Mobiles? You mean the hanging sculptures?
No, no, no, mobile phones.
Apparently, Maoists are using them to communicate
amongst themselves and possibly to others.
Wow.
That's pretty shocking news right there.
Apparently, the king figured this out,
sacked the government and maybe a few other places as well.
Apparently, he's been more effective, though,
at banning mobiles than he has at banning Maoists.
Yeah, yeah, it seems that way.
The thousands of users seeking to re-register their mobiles
must submit an application,
which officials will then scrutinize
ahead of the planned resumption of services.
I'll bet one of the questions is,
are you a Maoist?
Have you ever been a Maoist?
Now, how about a Trotskyist?
I guess I could ask all kinds of questions.
Trotskyite.
Oh, okay.
That's another variation.
There's different factions of Trotskys.
Anyway, long queues formed outside the offices
of state-run Nepal Telecom,
the kingdom's sole mobile provider,
when it opened its doors to applicants
in the capital on Tuesday.
The re-registration process is expected
to last for five days.
And only mobile users on contracts are affected.
There are no current plans to allow people
with prepaid mobiles to use them.
So that's from the BBC on that particular issue.
Now, Bernie,
you had some trouble last week in Germany.
In fact, we had a listener comment on this.
Basically, you were asked to show identification
to register your SIM card,
your prepaid SIM card in Germany.
This reader from Frankfurt named Oliver says,
this has always been the law in Germany
that phone users need to register
with a name and address.
Buying a SIM is similar to this.
Bernie is correct that this has not been enforced
in the past.
I guess this is a result of 9-11.
He made a comment that we've gotten used
to the minor quality of cellular calls
in reference to Sprint.
In my opinion, I cannot really find a difference
between my ISDN landline and a call on our GSM system.
I prefer the 1800 band over the 900, though.
The U.S. 1900 also rates high.
Do you see a difference between T-Mobile
and Sprint in the U.S. on call quality?
Any comments on that, Bernie?
You've used both of those carriers, haven't you?
I have.
Maybe it's my phone,
but it just sounds like I'm using a cheap phone.
I have not really used T-Mobile before,
but as a longtime Sprint subscriber
for the past, I don't know, almost seven years now,
I found that the voice quality
is nowhere near toll quality.
I've made voice-over IP calls here from Europe
that were of stunningly good quality
and just were way better than Sprint PCS.
I guess the vocoders are just compressed
more and more these days by Sprint.
So when you use the cell phone that you have now,
the Thai phone that you brought from Thailand
and inserted a German SIM into,
you're saying the voice quality on that
is noticeably better than your Sprint PCS phone
back here at home?
No, no.
I was talking about voice-over IP calls
I made from internet cafes here in Germany and Prague.
Okay.
I actually think the voice quality
of my Sprint PCS phone is slightly better,
but only because it's smaller.
It's not because of the network necessarily.
It's just because my Sprint handset is several years old
and it has a vocoder that uses
several thousand more bits per second
to model my voice
and the voice of the person I'm talking to,
whereas the new phone I bought
that's used on telecom,
which is the European equivalent of T-Mobile, I guess,
or the mother company of T-Mobile,
it sounds more tinny and more constrained
because it's probably like
a three or four kilobit per second vocoder.
But I mean, it's usable,
but it's just nowhere near toll quality
that we should come to expect.
I've yet to find something that matches
the phones that I grew up with,
the old Bell system phones,
where, you know,
it really depended on the line quality,
but if you got a good connection,
you could hear somebody very, very clearly.
And I have not encountered something
of that nature with cell phones.
It just seems like it's a lot cheaper sounding.
Maybe the guy who wrote it
just has a bad landline.
That's true.
Maybe his ISDN line is awful,
but he seems to be satisfied with it,
which is interesting.
But, you know, when I was a kid,
I figured by the time I was an adult,
we'd have FM sounding phones,
you know, where you could actually,
it would sound as good
as if you were listening to the radio
or like talking to somebody in person,
but we have not achieved that.
There's no reason it couldn't.
It's just it's not the limitations
of that technology.
It's that there's no limitation
to the greed of the carriers
who want to squeeze everyone's voice
into a smaller and smaller bit stream,
which can only replicate
a meager representation of your voice.
So it's greed.
It's not the technology.
We could have really stellar sounding
voice quality over cell phones.
They're just too greedy
to let that happen.
Well, maybe there's a non-greedy
startup company out there
that will use that as its selling point,
and we can only hope.
We're talking to Bernie S.
live from Prague in the Czech Republic.
You're listening to Off the Hook
here on WBAI.
And let's look at a few more listener letters.
You can write to us,
oth at 2600.com,
if you have anything
that you'd like to comment upon.
And we'll be taking phone calls
a little bit later in the hour,
212-209-2900.
You're off the hook.
Do you guys have any tips
about social engineering by email?
Is it possible?
I'd really like to know.
And how effective is it?
Well, I guess you could basically lie
sending an email.
That's basically what social engineering is,
committing somebody to give you information.
Right, Jim?
Isn't this the same guy
that sent us a letter saying,
I'd like to go fishing,
PH, fishing,
and could you tell me how?
I mean, come on.
What is this,
social engineering by email?
What are you trying to do?
I mean...
Well, I mean,
I don't want to call into question
someone's motives
just because they ask a question.
But basically,
social engineering involves fooling somebody.
It involves getting information from someone
based on cleverly impersonating somebody
that you aren't, obviously,
or just getting them to trust you in some way.
Well...
Email is...
You don't have that kind of contact.
You don't have the voice
going back and forth.
I can't see the words
social engineering and email together
because of this fact.
You would have to lie about your email address.
And that's a technical thing
that is on the verge of clear fraud.
In other words, it can be done.
You can make it so that it looks like
you're sending it from Bill Gates at Microsoft.com.
But if you know anything about email
and you have a normal email account
on the receiving end,
you can easily see that it's not from Microsoft
in most cases.
One of the better ones that I got recently,
I was almost fooled by,
was an official-looking piece of email from eBay
saying that there was a fraudulent transaction
that was made in my name
and I needed to click on the link
to make sure that I wasn't involved in it.
And the mail had come from eBay.
The link was to eBay.com.
But the thing that was not true
was that, yeah, it said eBay.com,
but when you actually clicked on the link,
it went someplace else.
Very well done.
But all you have to do is look at the headers
and you can see where it's really coming from.
But people don't take the time
to examine these things
and they get fooled
and dragged into all kinds of horrible things.
All right, let's move on to another letter.
And this actually is based on something
Rebel said last week.
Dear OffTheHook, I just wanted to know
if dialing 0 then 9 to get emergency
is quicker than dialing 911 or not.
I was at an international airport
and I had to contact 911
and never spoke to a real person.
For five minutes, I had,
Please hold.
We understand this is an emergency.
Please do not hang up.
We will respond shortly.
Personally, if this had been a big emergency,
what would have happened?
Signed Samuel.
Well, I doubt it's any faster.
What Rebel called in to tell us about
was that there's a new feature
when you dial 0
where after you dial 0
and get James Earl Jones,
you get an option to dial 9 for the police.
I would imagine all they're doing
is transferring you to 911.
So I don't think you're going to save any time.
I really don't know what the purpose of that is.
It seems kind of silly.
Nobody has 911 blocked.
So it's rather silly.
Speaking of airports,
this listener writes in
with a couple of stories
involving airline airport security.
This is a story that apparently he had heard about.
A former pilot and his wife were traveling
and after getting screened by airport security,
sat down to get a bite to eat inside the terminal.
Lo and behold,
they were presented with metal knives and forks
more than enough to set off the alarms
at any security theater venue.
The writer was shocked
that such a thing is even possible
due to the emphasis placed on security
at airports these days.
He called the TSA later
only to be met with little care and enthusiasm.
He decided to call back another time
thinking the woman on the phone was having a bad day.
However, he was greeted with even less concern
on his second attempt.
This reader is not quite so shocked
seeing the purpose of all these security implementations
is really not for the purpose of our safety
but rather for the security
of the government's public image.
I remember I was traveling through an airport
and there was a sushi bar
after you went through security
and they have all kinds of sharp knives there
that the cooks use
and they are walking away from their posts,
leaving all the equipment there.
It's very, very simple.
It could have been easily smuggled onto the airplane.
I suppose they could have an extra security checkpoint
but they didn't.
On our flight from Kennedy Airport to Paris
and we had a connecting flight to Hanover,
we were given metal knives
by Air France flight attendants
to cut our food with.
They're like butter knives, right?
No, these were...
They're like stabby knives?
They were blunt
but they had sharp edges,
really quite sharp edges
for cutting steaks and stuff.
It's also possible to make sharp edges
out of all kinds of things
including your fingernails if necessary.
Yeah, it's a false perception of security to start with.
This person also sends in a second story,
a personal story.
My family and I traveled
over the Thanksgiving holidays.
My wife, daughters, ages four years
and seven months at the time
and I flew round trip on Northwest.
I don't recall if we had the infamous four S's
on our boarding passes
but we were all marked to be hand-searched.
That's right, not only my wife and I
but both my four-year-old
and seven-month-old daughters
were scrutinized as well.
My wife literally had to hold the baby up
at arm's length
while the security fellow scanned her with the wand.
We all had to remove our shoes,
empty our pockets, etc.
Funny thing though,
they never found the false floor in my backpack
which only held a pair of shoes
and they didn't even bother to open up
my metal SD card case,
sort of like Emmanuel's Altoids, Tim.
I guess if you're going to smuggle a weapon,
hide it in a metal container
in an obvious zipper-accessible
false floor of a backpack.
The most amusing portion of this search
came when the next four S victim came along
while we were putting our shoes back on.
This was a large elderly woman in a wheelchair,
obviously very terrorist-ish in her appearance.
The person wheeling her was not allowed to help,
had to go through the normal checkpoint and wait.
The security fellow instructed the woman
to remove her shoes
which she did with what seemed to be
significant pain and struggle
and was then instructed to lift her feet
while he scanned them with his magic wand.
Now being in a wheelchair,
it's pretty obvious that this woman
had reduced capabilities in her lower extremities
so she was literally forced to pick her leg up
with both hands and hold it there
while it was blessed by the big black magic
scepter of the airport security theater gods.
The same went for the other leg.
She then had to put her shoes on,
again painful and difficult.
So relieved I don't have to worry about
elderly wheelchair-bound terrorists
unless, of course, they get their hands
on some silverware.
Signed Simi from Michigan.
Unbelievable.
How can a metal detecting wand work
when you're sitting in a metal wheelchair?
I would imagine she had to hold her leg
away from the metal wheelchair
so that didn't happen.
Maybe they asked her to get up
but she did refuse to.
Who knows?
I mean, what if she's sitting on some metal knife?
I mean, you could never tell
it's in the middle of the chair.
It's both so absurd in how ineffective it can be
and absurd in how they're trying to
make it seem effective
in the most bizarre ways.
All right.
We also had a lot of feedback
on the MPAA discussion that we had.
This comes from the director
of a non-profit arts and exhibition space
in Rhode Island.
A few notes about the MPAA.
We were talking about our own rating system
that we'd like to start.
MPAA ratings are an attempt
by the industry to police itself
which replaced the old production code in 1968
in an attempt to squell public outcry
over increased nudity and language in films.
The industry knows that if they don't do it,
the public will push a government agency
to do it for them.
When we say public, let's be clear.
We mean certain elements of the public,
people that carbon copy letters
and make it seem like there are millions of them
when there are actually probably about six.
You've seen this self-regulation move recently
in TV's voluntary rating system
and video games
and in the tippagore era by the record industry.
Broadcast TV and radio are fined, as you know,
by the FCC for objectionable content.
Movies, video games, and music
are something people choose to purchase
so they are not regulated by the FCC.
Same rationale as cable TV, sex, violence, and language,
although the FCC wants their hands on that as well.
There are no laws that prohibit films
from being made or being seen.
However, all the chain movie theaters readily comply.
This isn't some conspiracy,
but simple common sense that if a manager
of a local theater allows 10-year-olds
and by inference markets to 10-year-olds
to view a movie like Showgirls
or Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
then the community will boycott the theater
and will demand the manager's head.
Communities indirectly enforce the rating system
by forcing adult theaters and art house theaters
out of town or into bad neighborhoods.
For instance, they may pass a local zoning law
banning an adult theater from within 100 years,
I think he means yards, of an elementary school.
Maybe years as well.
Movies don't have to be rated anything.
No law or regulation says that a director
has to submit a movie to the MPAA board.
They can make up their own rating,
but they can't use anything similar to G, P, G, R, etc.
because these ratings are registered trademarks.
They can use NR.
You see NR on DVDs a lot.
A movie is originally rated R,
but the director's cut is rated NR
because the studio didn't bother going
through the ratings board again.
Each newspaper has its own guidelines
about what it will and won't advertise.
If a newspaper's editors choose not to run ads
for NC-17 movies, they won't.
Obviously, The Village Voice has different
movie advertising guidelines than The Christian Chronicle.
There's no such thing as X anymore.
It's been replaced by NC-17.
Originally, X didn't have anything to do with porn.
Midnight Cowboy, Clockwork Orange,
they were both rated X for adult themes and content,
but sexually explicit films like Deep Throat
got the X too, forever linking X to pornography.
Then the porn industry came up with Triple X
and history was made.
A good source for all this is the Jack Valente book,
How It All Began.
Yes, the former president of the MPAA
talks about the rating system.
I highly recommend, by the way,
if you want to read this book,
try and find it online.
Don't give Jack Valente your money.
That's from Damon of Rhode Island.
Thanks very much for writing in.
Any comments, Arseny, on all this?
All of those are very insightful.
The only thing I wanted to say
was about the video game industry,
and I do think that it's regulated
by people in the industry rather than anybody.
I'm pretty sure that's the way it works with them.
Other than that, very good letter.
We've got another letter too.
First, I'd like to say I enjoy listening to your show.
I get information and a perspective
I wouldn't otherwise receive,
and that's good to know.
But about the MPAA ratings, guys,
I think you fail to understand the rating system.
All the ratings are geared towards
children and their parents.
I think that's sort of the point we're making,
is that we're kind of sick of that,
children and parents always being the issue.
There's a lot of other people out there too, you know.
All the ratings except NC-17
still allow parents to bring their children
if they see fit.
Since the ratings are for children and their parents,
it makes sense that all the members
of the committee are parents.
The MPAA isn't telling any adults
what movie to see.
Adults can see any movie they want
no matter what the ratings are.
I disagree because when you have ratings like NC-17,
it's very easy to say this theater
will not show any movies with NC-17 ratings.
Then the adults are not able to see the films.
Also, as we just mentioned in the previous letter,
certain newspapers will not advertise NC-17 films.
Now, whenever you have ratings of this sort,
once you start categorizing things,
it's very easy to simply make blanket statements
resulting in certain films being cut off from the public.
Well, directors usually try to cut their films down
to get R ratings.
Like there's a big hype that the new Star Wars film
is going to be PG-13.
Everyone's going crazy saying,
oh no, Star Wars is going to get so violent
that it has to be restricted.
So NC-17 films are basically restricted by the MPAA.
And also, you know, what you just said,
they cut their films to get the R rating.
They're changing their work of art
to comply with what these parents are saying
in some theater someplace in Los Angeles.
I don't think that's right.
I mean, you know, fine.
Have a children's version.
Have a children's version of everything.
I don't care.
Fine, put out, you know, 50-cent CDs
and have them geared towards five-year-olds.
That's okay.
But don't affect it for the rest of us.
All right?
Some of us want to see things
the way they were intended to be seen,
and we don't care how many times they say the F word
or, you know, show things
that other people might find offensive.
Let us have that choice at least,
and we don't have that choice right now.
There's also an inherent contradiction
in the notion that these ratings are merely advisory
and for the benefit of parents,
and this rule that no children may see an NC-17 film
even with their parents' permission.
Presumably they're, you know, parents who, you know,
saw some film and said their kids can see it.
And then Jack Valenti, in cooperation with NATO,
which we learned about
is the National Association of Theater Owners.
They don't possess any fighter planes, so...
Not that we know about.
Not yet.
We'll, you know, enforce this rule.
So it's...
There's some contradictions going on.
I have a real problem with a theater owner
telling a parent that your kid is not allowed to see it.
You know, you might have a really intelligent 15-year-old kid,
but he's not allowed to see a particular movie
because these parents in some distant city
have said that your child may not see this.
To me, that is definitely, you know,
a violation of somebody's freedom
to view what they want to view
and make their own decisions.
On the other hand,
you have laws that state that adults cannot show children
even if it's their children.
Pornography.
But this isn't pornography.
That's the whole point.
You know, NC-17 is not pornography.
You know, it's certain themes
that these guys have trouble with.
The point is that there are legal restrictions
as well as these.
We're not exactly sure what the NC-17 restriction is,
if it's a law in various jurisdictions.
Well, it's theater policy,
and this letter writer continues,
theaters are private property,
so if the theater wants you to show ID
and you want to see the movie, show it.
They're not copying it or storing it
on any kind of database,
so I feel it's okay.
I'm not sure how you know that, but never mind.
We'll assume it's true for now.
I'm 30 years old,
but I get carded every time I buy cigarettes
or go into a bar.
I don't mind showing my ID,
and neither should you.
Well, I think that's a whole other kettle of worms,
but let's avoid that one for now.
By the way,
could you possibly extend your show by another hour?
You know, that's a good idea.
Why don't we do that?
Okay, we'll be two hours from now on.
I'd love to do a two-hour show,
but actually what he's suggesting,
I know the radio station only gives you an hour,
but could you record an hour after the show
for internet-only streaming or downloads?
Signed, Thurman from White Plains.
Well, Thurman, thanks very much for your letter.
You know, I'm of the belief
that internet radio is all fine and good,
but it is not a replacement
for regular broadcasting radio,
and that's what we want more than anything
is to be broadcast
so people driving in their cars,
people listening at home who don't have computers
can actually listen to us,
find us by accident, that kind of thing.
So if there are radio stations out there
that want to carry us,
please, you can write to us as well.
We do have ways that you can simulcast.
We do have ways that you can get
a high-quality version of this radio program
so that you can,
not high-quality as far as discussion goes,
high-quality as far as the sound quality
because when you listen online,
it's not as good as over the radio.
Write to us, oth at 2620.com
if you're interested in that,
and I should also point out
that we're simulcast on shortwave,
WBCQ 7415 kilohertz,
and I guess you can hear us right now
across North America.
Is that right, Bernie?
North America and most of Canada
and into South America,
and I even heard it once in South London.
South London, England, not Ontario?
That's right.
Wow, how about that?
That's pretty cool.
I'm taking a listener poll,
and this poll is very unique
because there may be no listeners
eligible to respond,
but if you're a listener
and you're not listening
either on WBAI or WBCQ
or on the internet,
but if you're listening on some other station,
we want to know
because there are some stations
which have said they want to carry us,
and we like that.
It's not a problem,
but we're just curious
if they actually are or not.
Yeah, I mean,
there's no complicated forms
to fill out or anything like that.
I know a couple of low-power FM stations
were interested in doing that,
so yeah, we do want to know.
It's important,
and it's also important
to get new stations on
so that people can listen to us
over the radio.
In this day of the internet,
these things are now possible.
Okay.
Sorry, if you're listening,
email us oth at 2600.com.
We want to take some phone calls,
212-209-2900,
but first I just want to ask
the panel here and on the phone,
if anybody knows,
this is sort of a trivia question,
this happened today.
Actually, it didn't happen today.
It happened very recently.
The FCC has allocated
a new telephone number,
a new nationwide telephone number,
8-1-1.
Do any of you know
what they have allocated 8-1-1
to be used for?
That silence tells me
that nobody has a clue.
I will guess.
I've heard nothing about this,
nothing at all,
but I will guess.
Does it have anything to do
with the emergency broadcast system?
No, it does not.
Oh, well.
Playing games of Crazy Eights.
Leo, do you have a guess?
I'll guess it's a terrorist hotline
or something.
Well, it has to do
with Homeland Security in a sense,
but not that kind of sense.
Nobody else?
Bernie?
No, I was just going to guess, though,
that 7-1-1 is going to be co-opted
by the Southland Corporation,
which owns all the 7-Eleven stores.
That's actually kind of a good idea,
but no, definitely not true.
I heard 7-1-1 was going to be
Las Vegas Tourism and Convention Bureau.
I'll reveal the answer
after our colleagues
have a chance to weigh in on it.
Also, I want to extend congratulations
to FCC Commissioner Kevin J. Martin,
who has been designated
the next chairman
of the Federal Communications Commission.
And now I'd like to condemn him
immediately after saying that
for some of the remarks he made
in front of the parents—
yeah, it's always the parents—
the Parents TV Council, I think it was,
where he basically tore apart
an episode of South Park
that used the S-word a number of times,
saying that this kind of thing
is outrageous and must be stopped.
Of course, you know, it's on cable TV.
People pay for it.
People make the decision,
but now they apparently
want to regulate that as well.
So I don't think this guy's going to be
much of an improvement over Powell,
but we'll just have to see.
All right, 212-209-2900.
Let's take some phone calls.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, is 7-1-1 for pirate radio?
No, I wish it were, but no, it's not.
The mystery number is 8-1-1, right?
Yeah, 8-1-1 is the, yeah.
Let's not confuse people.
I don't know what 7-1-1 is.
Let's try a dial 8-1-1 and see what happens.
Bernie, I hope you don't get cut off by this.
Hold on.
Let's get a dial tone here.
All right, we're going to dial 8-1-1.
Let's see what happens, if anything.
We're going to be being met with the BAI silence again.
All right, let's assume that's what we're being met with.
Can we just leave it there?
No, because we can't take another call
if we do leave it there.
So Leo, you already had a guess.
You can't get another guess.
Okay, we're going to move on to another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, Emmanuel.
Hi, how are you doing?
Hi, good.
Listen, first of all, the 8-1-1,
that's something about an emergency contact
for contractors' cable lines or utility lines or something?
You are very correct on that.
Did you know that yourself,
or did you just do a Google search?
No, no, no.
Oh, you're doing Google searches
on the other side of the room.
That's not fair.
No, I heard it on the news earlier.
But I wanted to ask you,
I heard you and Bernie talk about your Sprint PCS phones
a couple times.
Forgive me if you already know about this,
because I haven't had a chance to listen,
but I use mine a lot for text messaging.
And if you go right to Sprint's website,
messaging.sprintpcs.com,
you can send a text message to any Sprint PCS phone,
and there is a field for a return number.
And if you put another Sprint PCS phone number in that field,
then the caller ID from the phone you sent it to
receives that number
and acts as if it really came from that number.
Yeah, that's actually pretty old.
In fact, that used to be the case,
I know with OmniPoint, VoiceStream,
you were able to leave voicemail messages
and basically define whatever number you wanted.
And then when the person got alerted to the voicemail message,
it would appear to be coming from that number.
And people had all kinds of fun
leaving messages from the White House and things like that.
Oh, okay, okay.
But yeah, it's fairly easy to do that kind of a thing.
I'm kind of surprised they haven't done anything to stop it.
Oh, okay, okay.
I wasn't aware that it was that old.
I just happened to come across the site not too long ago
and thought it was kind of fun to play around with my friends.
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Okay.
All right, thanks for your call.
Just to give more information on the 811,
this is what the order from the FCC reads.
We designate 811 as the national abbreviated dialing code
to be used by state one-call notification systems
for providing advanced notice of excavation activities
to underground facility operators
in compliance with the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002.
This order implements the Pipeline Safety Act,
which provides for the establishment of a nationwide toll-free
abbreviated dialing arrangement
to be used by state one-call notification systems.
They rejected the alternative of pound sign 344.
They basically said we're not in favor of using a code
with a leading star or a number sign
for access to one-call centers.
Basically, AT&T asserts that discontinuing the use of pound 344
will require a re-education process
for users who have been using pound 344.
Has anyone used pound 344?
Can we use pound 344?
I don't think that's going to work.
Let's try that.
Hang on. Can we get a dial tone?
No, we don't have a dial tone.
Let's try over here.
Everybody's calling in.
That's why it's very hard to get a dial tone.
Pound 344.
Say we want to do a little digging.
I'd be interested if that actually works.
I don't think it's going to.
So pound 344 is out.
I don't know if anybody has actually used that particular number.
I don't think it connects now.
So 8-1-1.
Can you imagine all the people who are dialing 9-1-1
who are going to get these people
that expect them to tell them where they're going to be digging?
Because that's what happens when you dial it, Mike.
I dialed the pound 344 on my mobile phone
and was welcomed shortly thereafter
to the Long Island and New York City one-call center.
Oh, really?
All right.
So it works from cell phones at least.
All right. Let's try to take some more calls.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, hi.
Let me just get this.
Okay, the plug got on here.
I want to know, when do you meet?
Every two weeks, is it, in New York?
2,600 meetings are the first Friday of every month.
I don't hear you too well. Go slowly.
The 2,600 meetings are the first Friday of every month in various cities.
Oh, it's the first Friday?
Yes.
In New York, when?
First Friday between 5 and 8 p.m. at the Citigroup Center.
Where is that, Logan?
That's on 53rd between Lexington Avenue and 3rd Avenue.
53rd?
Yes.
Between Lexington and what was the other one?
3rd Avenue.
Okay, 53rd. Okay.
And Lexington and 53rd.
And let me ask you this.
You just mentioned before, I'm not too familiar with all this stuff,
but I heard somewhere about, you just mentioned text messages.
And I heard on the news somewhere, whatever they're listening in,
the company is retaining your messages.
I don't know anything.
I don't bother with these things at all, really.
I just listen to your show from time to time.
Uh-huh.
And they mentioned that Sprint holds it.
It seems like most of these companies hold it without people knowing it.
For a day or two, they gave the companies the amount of time they hold it
from a day to two or three.
And Sprint was a whopping two or two-and-a-half weeks and all that.
You know about this, Jim?
Yeah, I saw the news story.
I don't remember what local affiliate of the network news did it.
But essentially, yeah, I'm not sure if Sprint is quite that long.
I thought the longest was two weeks.
Most of them, three or five days.
Yeah, it was up there.
No, it was.
Okay, I'll take your word for it.
It's a whopping, whopping news story.
Except for the text messages in case there's some crime involved,
that they get subpoenaed, that they have to hand them over.
But after three weeks, pretty much they're gone.
Yeah, but still.
Hey, like an encrypted SMS message.
Exactly.
Like anything else, you have to be careful.
Send it in a code.
Oh, and they do listen.
I'll tell you another time maybe about that.
Let me ask you something.
Epsilon, anything about viewing Epsilon?
Epsilon?
Yes.
Epsilon?
Where they can view through your house and all that, like radio waves?
We would need several hours to get into all the various stories about that.
A quick answer.
Yeah, Bernie.
Do you believe it is a reality?
Let Bernie answer.
A quick answer to the listener's question is to go out and borrow
or buy a book called Chatter, which just came out,
which is an excellent exposé about the entire Epsilon system.
And it's not used domestically by our government ostensibly,
but it is used by our allies who then readily trade that information with us
to get around with the laws that we have against our government spying on us
via telephone tapping and that sort of thing.
Get the book Chatter.
It's really a good read.
Okay, let's try to take some more phone calls.
Oops, I hit the wrong button.
I'm sorry about that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, just a quick question.
A friend of mine received a phone call on his cell phone
and before answering the call it said area code 999,
and then the phone number was 999999,
and he answered the phone and it was 911 calling him,
but they were saying hello like he was calling them.
And then they called him back and was like,
why are you calling 911 and whatnot?
Wow, that's interesting.
Well, I mean the caller ID can easily be spoofed.
That's not an issue.
Maybe somebody three-way to 911 and that kind of a thing is possible.
It's also possible, and maybe this is more like it.
Did you leave off a number
or were there only six numbers in the phone number?
No, no, it was full nine across.
Okay, so ten digits of nine.
Yeah.
It's possible when a 911 switchboard operator calls,
that's how their PBX is programmed to send the number.
I would not be surprised because all nines in England used to be emergency.
In fact, I think it still is.
So it's possible that they called him.
I don't know why they would call him saying that he called them.
Right, that's the question, yeah.
All right.
Great, thanks.
I hope that helps a little bit.
Yes, Leo.
Well, two things to answer the caller.
Sven had a Nokia phone.
Even if your keypad is locked, 80 will dial 911.
80 will dial 911 on a Nokia phone.
Why?
There's a bunch of them.
I don't know why.
I actually called them an ass
and they gave me a list of all the numbers that dial 911.
And 711, by the way, is TTY in a lot of states.
That is true.
I don't know if it's a nationwide mandate.
I don't believe it is, not yet anyway.
All right, let's see if we can squeeze in one more.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Yeah, hi.
I was calling to discuss about the security at the airport.
You guys were covering this issue, I think, about a few months back
with the SSS on the boarding pass.
Yes, the four S's.
What I noticed was if you print your boarding pass online
before you go to the airport, that doesn't show up on there
and you don't go through the extensive security search.
You mean if you print it at your house?
That's correct.
Online, if you go to the airline's website, whichever you're flying,
and you print your boarding pass,
you don't get that SSS code on the boarding pass.
But if you appear at the airport and go to the counter,
based on your looks,
I think that's when they decide to put the SSS on your boarding pass.
Well, it's interesting because I had that happen to me
and I didn't go to a person.
I went to a computer there at the terminal.
I guess the computer didn't like my looks or something
because I got four S's printed out there.
But yeah, interesting idea to print it out yourself,
and I guess your computer won't print out the S's.
Maybe you could write them in and see how people react to that.
I don't know.
Anyway, that's going to just about do it for us.
Bernie, we'll see you back in Philadelphia, I guess, next week?
That's right.
All right.
And I want to thank everybody for listening.
Again, you can write to us, oth at 2600.com
or off the hook here at WBAI, 120 Wall Street, New York, New York.
1-0-0-0-5.
We'll see you next week.
Dexter's truancy problem is way out of hand.
The Baltimore County School Board have decided to expel Dexter
from the entire public school system.
Mr. Kirk, I'm as upset as you are about Dexter's truancy,
but surely expulsion is not the answer.
I'm afraid expulsion is the only answer.
It's the opinion of the entire staff that Dexter is criminally insane.
That boy needs therapy.
Psychosomatic.
That boy needs therapy.
Purely psychosomatic.
That boy needs therapy.
Lying down on the couch?
What does that mean?
You're a nut.
You're crazy in the coconut.
What does that mean?
That boy needs therapy.
I'm going to kill you.
That boy needs therapy.
Brandy kazoo.
Let's have a cheese.
How about I count three?
That, that, that, that, that, that, that, that boy needs therapy.
He was white as a sheet.
And he also made false teeth.
Oh, oh, oh
Avalanche is above.
Business continues below.
Did I ever tell you the story about
Cowboys
The Indians
What frontier survival
People
My whole life felt strangely hypnotized.
I was in another world.
The world of twenty...
Twenty thousand girls.
And pills.
And rectangles.
To an optometrist!
A man with a golden eyeball.
And titanobotics.
Or juice on your chin.
I promised my girlfriend I could play the violin.
Frontier Psychiatry.
Frontier.
Frontier.
Frontier.
Frontier Psychiatry.
Frontier.
Frontier.
Frontier.
Frontier Psychiatry.
Frontier.
Frontier.
Frontier Psychiatry.
Frontier.
the
hey hey hey hey you're listening to wb in new york ninety nine point five f
families beautiful wednesday
to new
evening
march sixteenth two thousand and five at exactly eight o'clock