We are going to monitor what the Air Force Academy is doing about this and we're going to speak to witnesses and people who were involved in getting attacked or being discriminated against. We will work with our attorneys at Americans United and see what our options are. We may even sue the Air Force Academy. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, I'm Maria Cecile Collier for Free Speech Radio News. Free Speech Radio News is produced at Pacifica Stations WBAI in New York, KPFK in Los Angeles, and KPFA in Berkeley. And this is Radio Station WBAI in New York, where 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. Bondedly bond for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bondedly bond! And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook. Maria Goldstein here with you for the next hour or so. With a special fundraising edition. An extra fundraising edition, if you will. We had our fundraiser a couple of weeks ago here on the station. We did great, thanks to everybody who called in. But we've received a number of emails from people, and phone calls, and visits even, that people wanted to pledge and they missed the show. Now is your chance, we'll be giving you details in just a few moments. We have a full cast of characters tonight. I use that term pretty lightly. Jim is here. Hello. And Mike. Hi. Redbird, Walter. Good evening. Joonce is here. Hello. Joining us on the phone, Bernie S. from Philadelphia. Greetings. I'm just recovering from my sunburn at the Dayton Hamvention. And Rob from Amsterdam also joins us. Hello there. And you're on a very strange phone connection of some sort. Redhacked is on his way back from New Orleans. And Arsene is at the Kraftwerk concert. You bastard. But that aside, yes, we had an interesting time out in Dayton, Bernie. We certainly tore up the town, I guess. Any highlights that you'd like to recount? It's just great meeting hundreds or thousands, really thousands of people. You met thousands of people? Well, there were probably 20 or 30,000 people there. I'm sure thousands of people stopped by the 2600 van. And it's just good to talk with readers and listeners to the show in person. It's just a lot of fun meeting kindred spirits. Yeah, we did meet a lot of kindred spirits. And we got to wander around the town. We saw Star Wars and had all kinds of fun occasions. Redbird, you were there too for the first time. What are your impressions? They don't have sidewalks. Dayton doesn't have sidewalks. I never thought of that, but you're right. It's true. We had to walk from one mall to another. And it was not possible unless you wanted to jump on plants and whatnot. But, oh yeah, there's all kinds of neat cheap stuff that you can grab there. And it's definitely a one-of-a-kind experience. At the Hamvention. At the Hamvention. Not just in Dayton. No, not just in random places. You can grab cheap stuff in Dayton, I'm sure. But we didn't do that. And, of course, we want to thank our friend Lurid out there in Dayton for showing us around and keeping us safe. Because it's a very dangerous place sometimes. Yes, it was very fun. Yeah. So you guys all walked away with radios and scanners and things like that? And radiation detectors. Walter, you got something too, didn't you? Yeah, I got a survey meter, an old civil defense survey meter. A survey meter? Yes. Is that something that they use for polls or something? It's like the Nielsen device. It's something, well, something like the Nielsen device. It measures radiation exposure. Radiation exposure? Yeah. Oh, that's very trendy. What have you found so far? I actually haven't found anything. I've been very disappointed. I've been walking around the city with this device and I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Everything looks not radioactive to me. Only you would be disappointed by a result like that. Very disappointed. But you once found radiation in your dishes. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. A lot of old dishes, things like that. And bathroom tiles, specifically, were glazed. Bathroom tiles are radioactive. Why in God's name would they be radioactive? My sister's bathroom. Uranium oxides have this nice yellow color and they use them to glaze bathroom tiles and dishes. You know, your survey meter has this nice yellow color. It does. Yeah, that's it sitting on the table. It looks like a traffic light almost. Yeah. It's pretty big. It's very noticeable. So I don't want to scare anyone on the subway. I kept it in my bag. You know, just thinking, walking around the subway with that device, my goodness. It's too bad this is radio because, picture this big rectangular device, almost a foot in length and half that in width. Maybe a little smaller than that. It screams radiation. It does. What's on the front? Oh my goodness, it's like a handle coming out and a little round dial with a meter. It's got this really cool civil defense logo on the side from, you know, the 60s or so. So after this show, we're going to go over to the New York Stock Exchange and get the cops nervous. And we'll take a survey. You may do that. You may do that. Without the device. Oh boy. Have you done anything else with it besides scare people? Yeah, I've been looking around. My sister had radioactive bathroom tiles. It's true that a lot of, you know, Fiestaware is famous for this. It was glazed. The glaze, the coloring in the glaze had uranium in it. So plates, dishes are radioactive. I actually had a friend who had a kind of heirloom dishes from her grandmother that were radioactive. And you got those dishes for a song, I believe, after she wanted to get rid of them. I got them for free, yes. And the best thing about them is they keep your food warm. It's a great negotiating tool there to get something for cheap. Oh yeah, your car is radioactive. Take it off my hands. Now, Jint, you also attended Dayton. Any comments from you? I was surprised. I didn't realize it would be as much fun as it was. I figured, you know, Dayton. Hanging out with us, no matter where you go, it's going to be fun. I was told where I was going. They're like, well, what's in Dayton? Why are you going there? But I had a really good time. I think I'm a lifer now. Even the trip back where we had to stop on I-78 for over an hour and watch as something happened up the road. That was interesting. That was fun, yeah. And congratulations to Walt, who got his license there. I got my FCC license at Dayton. Your FCC, your ham license. I'm licensed by the FCC to transmit on the amateur bands. Well, then go ahead and transmit away. Not here, though. Okay. Any other thoughts on Dayton before we move on to other subject matter? No. Okay. Well, Rob from Amsterdam joins us. And if you've been reading the 2600 website recently, you might have noticed a story there about a problem that has come up with regards to the upcoming What the Hack conference in July. Now, there have been updates. There are all kinds of details to fill in. So I'll just let Rob do that. Tell us what happened and what's happening now. Okay. Can you hear me? I hear you just fine. Okay. We're organizing the What the Hack conference. Your listeners may know a little bit about it. It's a continuation of these every four-year conferences that we've been doing mostly since 1989. And every edition has seen its problems. Every edition has seen its sort of antagonism with the Dutch authorities. In 93, they tried to sort of antagonize the people that were renting the campsite to us, which is sort of the Dutch automobile association, I guess you would call them. In 97, the National Forest Service, the Dutch National Forest Service, got a visit from people that said they would be accomplices to any crime that could possibly be committed there, which the National Forest Service said, no, we won't be. Sorry. Then in 2001, they tried the same thing with the university. And now they're trying it with the Boxtel municipality, where this estate is, where we're going to be having this year's edition. What we've received from the mayor of that municipality is a nice letter that says, in light of the fact that there is grave fear that this event will endanger law and order as well as public safety, I in my capacity as an authorized official am herewith informing you that I will not issue such a permit, which we felt was sort of uncalled for. So we organized a small protest, wrote some letters, got other people to write lots of letters. And I think we're in the process of resolving it. In fact, tomorrow, which is a mere nine hours from now, I'll be having a meeting with these people. And we're going to straighten the last sort of details out. And I expect to have a permit for the event in my hands really soon. Now, Rob, you say this happens every time. Is there a reason why it happens, I don't want to say at the last minute, but pretty close? We're two months away from this thing. Is this a tactic of theirs? Last time it happened much closer. Last time it was two weeks before the event that they tried to scare the College of Deans of the university into becoming accomplices again to all these horrible crimes that we would be committing. And how many horrible crimes did you actually commit? Well, that's the fun thing. We haven't had any incidents since 1989. We have a 16-year incident-free event, which bothers them to no end. And I should point out that's simply because that's when you started the events, not that there was a horrible crime in 1989. No, no, no, no. We started the events in 1989 and we haven't had any incidents since our inception. Okay. They've been sending ever more cyber cops to look at us, to study what we do, to sit around and show that the Dutch state cares about law and order. But much to their dismay, they haven't been able to uncover any crimes. And I think the realization just won't set that we're not committing any. Mm-hmm. Well, now, of course, we all have a perception of the Netherlands as a very sort of a liberal oasis where you can pretty much do whatever you want. Everyone's all laid back. There are no problems whatsoever. Are we mistaken in that assumption? I would advise anyone with those sort of ideas in their head to read up on the last 10 years of Dutch history because whatever was there that resembles that is going down the tubes really, really, really fast. Mm-hmm. Unfortunately. You guys just had an election today, actually, where I think a lot of people said no to the current government. Is that true? Well, it was a referendum, actually, on whether or not we should ratify the treaty that is mistakenly called the European Constitution. And people voted overwhelmingly, in fact, voted no, which is more seen as a statement against the current government than it is as a statement against this particular treaty. Now, are those people who are against the government because they're not clamping down enough on law and order or people more along your lines? Well, that's the weird thing about a referendum where you can only say yes and no is usually the opposition to whatever the government point of view. The government is a coalition from the center, so the opposition comes from the two extremes, left and right, of that center. So it's really hard to say what that no means. In France, it's more clear that the no, because they had a referendum about a week ago, and it was also, the outcome was also no. And there you can sort of say, well, that's linked to xenophobia. It's more coming from the right. It's Front National, which is the sort of extreme right in France. And here it's, I would guess you would say it's more from the left. So it's hard to say what it means. Well, the thing is, people are expressing themselves, and hopefully that will lead you in a positive direction. But with regards to this kind of event that's coming up in July, you've had several of them. You've always been challenged close to the last minute. What can we expect to happen next? Well, my fear is sort of that for lack of any crimes being committed there, at some point they'll just make crimes happen there. How so? Well, they've tried really, really hard to stick crimes to us. They've tried really hard to look at everything that was happening to sort of beg system administrators to please report whatever they saw that they even thought was suspicious that could be coming from us. And my fear is they'll just send somebody to do something horrible and then sort of point the finger at all of us and say, see, they're evil hackers. But that didn't happen in the past. That did not happen in the past. No, but they, I think, sort of my general feeling is they're sort of tired of looking at us really, really closely to see if we maybe commit crimes. So either they should, by now, have accepted the fact that we don't commit any, that we're just there to learn from each other and that the word hacker just means so much more and that this is not, in fact, about causing World War III, but that this is about sharing and it's about some political issues, that it's about whether or not the content industry owns it all. It's about European software patents. It's about all these things. And either they should have gotten that by now or they're just out to get us. And I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist. I don't really want to believe that my government's out to get me. It's just that it becomes harder and harder to see what the objective could be otherwise. Well, do you think it's limited to just your government? I think this thing is mostly limited to my government, yeah. The opposition to this particular conference is some people in Dutch government being either scared or... You could think of all sorts of things. You could think of people just not wanting to have to go here with a bunch of cyber cops at the end of July because they want to be on a campsite in France. It doesn't have to be a complicated conspiracy. But it's abuse of power, that's for sure. So, now, what do you say to the people that want to go to this thing, people who have already bought tickets, people who are considering buying tickets? Oh, we've had massive tons of support and it's going to happen. We've pretty much resolved our issue with the Boxel Local Council. Boxel, over the past week and a half, has been answering media calls from all over the world, literally, from the New York Times to all the Dutch national newspapers. They were on the radio. They were everywhere. And they want out. They want this thing to happen. As they say on their own website, they have additional information now and they're looking at our application favorably. And it is my impression that they're doing everything now to help us to get this permit really quickly. Okay, so that's good. We've received lots of support. Members of Parliament have written. Writers, journalists, professors, people from all walks of life. I only spoke briefly, but I spoke to a general practitioner, a doctor from Denmark, who on the very first day that we put out a press release had been on the phone with the mayor of Boxel for over an hour. How does a doctor in Denmark call the mayor of a town in the Netherlands? That was my question exactly, but apparently this doctor in Denmark that I don't know had spent an hour on the phone with the mayor of Boxel telling him that he was indeed also going to this conference. This is the hacking GP. He was also going to this conference and that he was in no way an evil hacker and sort of describing what he, sort of his whole background and educating the mayor as to what kind of people we are. And I think that's all been helpful. I think the Boxel municipality has gotten the message. That's amazing. I do want to meet this doctor from Denmark that was able to have this long conversation with the mayor. Things like that are pretty unheard of here where you can actually reach a government official and talk to them and engage them in conversation for a lengthy period of time. But I agree. I think it's going to take place. I think it's going to be a great success. It's just a shame that we always have to have these hassles from some uninformed people that think it's just going to be a complete madness and mayhem. Yeah, yeah. I agree. We have the same thing here in the States of course when we do the HOPE conferences but they always happen. You know, we always... You don't know what goes on behind the scenes but a lot does. And in the end we always figure out a way to make it happen. Okay, Rob, I have to apologize now because what we have to do is beg for money on the air. And unfortunately that's a necessary part of our survival. And that's what keeps this radio station alive. So let me quickly tell people what we have available. And again, this is only available for this airtime period between 7 and 8 p.m. here in New York City. So after 8 o'clock you will not be able to get these premiums. All right? You'll still be able to pledge to the radio station but for different things. Yes, Jim? It's available outside of New York City though. Wait a minute. It's available outside. You said it's available only between 7 and 8 in New York City. No, I was referring to the time in New York City. It's available there as long as you call us within the next 40 minutes I'd say. 212-209-2950. Let me tell you what we have. Will we pay the shipping to Pluto? Well, yeah, if you calculate it. Sure, why not? All right. We have a bunch of different things. First of all, everybody who pledges $25 or above gets what, Mike? They get an off-the-hook T-shirt. That's right. None of you are wearing an off-the-hook T-shirt. I'm surprised. I'm stunned. I'm shocked. Maybe on the phone, Bernie, are you wearing one? I'm not wearing one tonight, but I wore one last week. You know, you could have lied so easily and told me you were wearing one. I wore one to a radio transmitter reconstruction project this weekend. People were familiar with the show. Okay, well, that's the kind of thing that happens. If you wear the shirt, people come up to you and talk to you and say, why? What is that? And you can have conversations like that, too. 212-209-2950. That's for every pledge of $25 or above, but it gets better. It gets much better. For a pledge of $75, you'll get the off-the-hook DVD. Now, what that is, that's a special DVD that has every single radio show that we've done between the years 1988 and the end of 2004, last year. They're in MP3 format, and, yes, they are all available on the web, but it would take you the better part of a lifetime to download them all. Well, maybe not, but a long time. It's a real pain to do that. It's a real pain to download them all. It's a real pain to download them all. It's a real pain to download them all. It's a real pain to do that. Here, we have them all on one disc, on one DVD, and you can listen to any show you want in that period of time. That's for a pledge of $75, and you also get the shirt. You also get the shirt with that. You could remix the shows into something even more exciting if you want. Yeah, that's called fair use. I think so, while wearing the shirt. Yeah, you could go crazy with that. Oh, hey, even more. If you want to pledge $100, you have a choice. There's two things you can get for a $100 pledge. You can get a copy of the Freedom Downtime DVD, and it's autographed, a special autographed copy of this. We were selling these at Dayton, and they were very, very popular, extremely popular. You will get a Freedom Downtime DVD signed by myself and Kevin Mitnick along with the off-the-hook T-shirt. That's for a pledge of $100, Freedom Downtime, of course, being the documentary that we made a couple of years ago concerning the whole Kevin Mitnick story, the hacker world, traveling across the country, all kinds of fun things like that. Also, for $100, you have this choice. You can get the new Kevin Mitnick book, which is The Art of Intrusion. In fact, I have a couple of words about The Art of Intrusion from a local newspaper in just a moment. That book will be signed by Kevin Mitnick. That's for a pledge of $100, and again, you get the 2600 T-shirt on top, not 2600, the off-the-hook T-shirt on top of that. Now, if you want everything, you want the DVD, you want the book, you want the off-the-hook DVD as well, off-the-hook freedom, downtime, Art of Deception, I'm sorry, Art of Intrusion, and the off-the-hook T-shirt, for a pledge of $150, you can get it all. All right? 212-209-2950. That is our phone number, and we have a roomful of volunteers down in the tally room, people who have sacrificed their Wednesday evening to be down here to take phone calls to keep this radio station going, and we've donated $100, and again, you can get And we've donated all this material to the radio station so that we can help incite you to call. I see one caller on the line, and that's good, but we know that there are a lot more of you than, a lot more of you out there than just one person. 212-209-2950. Two quick things. First of all, not only do you get the premiums when you pledge, but you also have the satisfaction of helping support esoteric thoughts, ideas, and facts that are presented on this show off the hook, and have been for the last 15 some odd years. And secondly, in with those premiums, there's a hidden virtual premium when you get the DVD. You can enter the DVD Easter egg contest. That's right, the Freedom Downtime DVD Easter egg contest, which I believe has a deadline of September 1st for all entries to be submitted. We have so many Easter eggs on this thing that I think we've lost track of them ourselves, and we're going to have to figure out where they all are. You're guaranteed to find at least one. There's no question about that. And there are many on there. There's a double DVD set. We have all kinds of fun things going on. The rules to the contest are on the website and in the magazine. And the prize is something really wondrous, I think. It's like a lot of stuff. I forget what the prize is, but it's really, really cool. 212-209-2950. Again, for a pledge of 100 bucks, you'll get that Freedom Downtime DVD signed by Kevin Mitnick and myself for a pledge of $150, you'll get that plus everything else we're offering tonight. The Art of Intrusion, the Off the Hook T-shirt, and the Off the Hook DVD collection. Two calls on the line. 212-209-2950. Up to 25 bucks. We need to raise that substantially in the next hour or so. And again, this is the last time we'll be doing this during the fundraiser. And only about 35 minutes left. 212-209-2950. Now, there was a story in the Newark Star Ledger, Newark being over there in New Jersey, all about spoofing caller ID. It was a pretty interesting story, actually. It was a page one story. When a hoax led sharpshooting SWAT teams to shut down a new Brunswick neighborhood last month, the world learned about a dangerous new game called Bombing. Yeah, prank phone calls. Wait, wait. What is this new game? It's been going on for a long time. In this context, I think it might be. Prank phone calls once a summer pastime. Actually, I'd make prank phone calls in the winter. I did. They have morphed into a blood sport. Details are still unfolding on how the New Brunswick emergency call and others like it were faked. Experts on privacy and security warn that internet technology and legal handling hoaxters a powerful weapon to dupe everyone. Caller ID spoofing. Now, Kevin Mitnick, the co-author of The Art of Intrusion and a reformed hacker himself, says you can't trust caller ID. There is no assurance that it is coming from the entity that's displayed on the device. In fact, this was demonstrated at one of our conferences back in 2002, H2K2. We demonstrated how caller ID can be faked. There's companies that do it now. Now, Kevin basically in this interview demonstrated it by calling a reporter's cell phone and making it seem as if he was calling from the reporter's office. And the reporter freaked out and ran away. Came back later and finished the article, but the point was made. Now, spoofing 911 calls over conventional phone networks is much harder, they say. They deploy an embedded billing technology called SS7, which automatically calls with the physical address of the telephone. Not always, but we won't get into that right now. Oh, look at all the calls. About four calls on the line. 212-209-2950, please help bring some support to this radio station and get some really nifty things as well. So, yeah, Kevin has been talking quite a bit about this over the last couple of years. In fact, we demonstrated that at the Fifth Hope last year, it allowed us to enter a phone number that we wanted to call from, and we called somebody else's phone number, and sure enough, that's the number we were calling from. So there are companies now that offer this. There are all kinds of different companies. Are you surprised? No. Should I be? I don't know. You know, there's, I'm trying to find the list of companies here. They basically, okay, SpoofTel. SpoofTel is one of them. Star 38 is another. Now, Star 38 is interesting because that's only offered to police. Yeah, the police are supposed to use Star 38 to help the good guys hunt the bad guys. Does it say that in the article? That's what Star 38 says. Okay, we call up SpoofTel, and we have them call Star 38 for us, and give the phone number of the NYPD. Is it going to work? I don't know. I don't know what the phone number of the NYPD is, actually. I don't know what the phone number of the NYPD is, actually. But, yeah, a lot of these companies are popping up, and it's really kind of strange and bizarre to see this happening. SpoofTel was born in Vancouver two months ago when a computer security specialist named Ryan Perita got bored. There was no hockey season on TV, and he was looking for something to do. He thought the Star 38 service sounded cool, but was miffed it only served cops, so he cooked up SpoofTel and says it now has about 800 active users who use it between 5,000 and 5,000 minutes a day at a dime per minute. Canadian. He promises to deal swiftly with any reported abuses, but defends caller ID spoofing. We're offering a service. If someone is using it illegitimately, what can we do? That's the internet. They still sell crowbars, don't they? They can be used for many different things. I don't see anybody being stopped from selling guns. I would guess more people are killed by guns than from spoofing caller ID. You know, he's probably right about that. I would imagine so. I've heard this analogy before, but, yeah, it's pretty interesting. Now, this is all feasible because of free software called Asterisk. It turns a PC with a fast internet connection into a full-fledged telephone system with features that once cost thousands of dollars. The barrier to entry became very low, they said. And Asterisk was hatched in 1999 by Mark Spencer, an Auburn University computer engineering student who was also bored with no sports on TV. He also ran a tech support business for a number of years in the United States. Now, Asterisk is a free software and a tech support business for people using the free open source Linux computer operating system. I needed a phone system, I couldn't afford to buy one, so I decided to make one, recounts Spencer. And, well, the rest is history. But, yeah, you see sort of how these things develop. People just write their own software, develop technology, and before you know it, you know, the powers that be don't know what to do. That's what it's all about. Yeah, I mean, as they touched on in the article, you used to, in order to do this, you needed to control a PBX, which was something that not that many people did. Mm-hmm. But now, with this free software, you know, IP telephony, you can set this up literally for free and make calls for pennies with your choice of caller ID, and it's getting very, very easy. 212-209-2950. Keep those calls coming in. We have lots of pledge levels. If you find this conversation interesting, then I think you'll find everything that we're offering tonight interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Well, I think we demonstrated it at the H2K2 Conference to show how well the caller ID spoofing works. We were able to project it on a big video screen, and it basically overlays the caller ID digits over any video source. You know, your TV set, you can run it in series with your cable box or your T Vo, your DVD player, or whatever. And when the call comes in over your phone line, a little pop-up window at the bottom of the screen comes up the caller ID, name, and number, which is kind of neat. Although it could be annoying. I imagine it would be very annoying after a while, especially if you get a lot of phone calls. Well, you can always turn it off. You can always turn off your TV for that matter. Yeah, that's true, too. Definitely true. We did a lot of that in Dayton. Yeah, in fact, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Again, one more time, the phone number, 212-209-2950. We have one call on the line. Let's make that five. Go ahead, Bernie. Oh, as far as turning off TVs, yeah, a bunch of us there came into the possession of a small electronic devices which will shut off TV sets in their vicinity. We found giant video screens in movie theaters that mysteriously were shutting off and store windows and all kinds of places. Wherever there was a TV screen, they were just mysteriously just shutting down. I think we talked about this a few weeks ago, but these TV-begone devices are pretty neat. We've all played with them now since you had a bunch of them in Dayton and we were walking around the streets. Yeah, they are fun, but I got to tell you, after walking around the streets of New York with one of these things, it's also very frustrating because there's so much you want to do and I just wish they were more powerful. I was in one of those big mega stores yesterday or actually two days ago and I was trying to get all their TV sets. I really was, but it took a very long time. I was able to get maybe two at once and I had to wait for it to recycle, get two more. I had to be fairly close to the sets. This thing would be so great if it was more powerful like your standard TV remote that has AAA batteries, which means it would have to be bigger. The other thing that I find annoying is that you don't know what stage it's in in the whole cycling phase. Every time you hit this thing, it cycles through all of the possible codes. That means that it's going to eventually hit the vast majority of TV sets, but let's say you hit it and you're not sure if you're at the right angle and you want to reposition yourself and hit it again, you're not sure if 60 seconds have passed or 50 seconds or however long it takes and there's no way to really tell. I've spent a lot of time just standing somewhere waiting for something to happen and eventually it happens usually, but other times you're frustrated because you want it to be better. I have noticed that too. On the way back from Dayton, Walter was kind enough to drive Redbird and myself back. We were discussing a way to increase the infrared output of one of these devices with an array of high brightness infrared LEDs, like maybe 20 or 30 LEDs, which would be sort of like an infrared flamethrower from the standpoint of infrared. I think we're going to work on that. I already have a whole bunch of high output infrared LEDs and we're going to experiment with that and see how many hundreds of feet we can work this from. Yeah, now you're talking because that's the kind of thing that ... I had fun walking up to one of those display windows that have big screen TVs that they leave on all night long and that's easy. You walk right up to it and you stand there for a second and you turn the thing off and you walk up to the next one. That's great, but if you like ... You're saving energy. Yeah, you're saving energy and light pollution and all that kind of thing. Let's say you're in a bar and the TV's annoying you. You kind of have to get fairly close and noticeable. It's risky to your health, among other things. But yeah, it's a great idea. We're working on it. Not only does it turn them off in closed storefront windows, but it also turns them on, which can probably freak out the people once they open the store again. Yeah, Rob, do you have anything like this in your country? I know lots of people that have gotten this TV-B-Gone device, which I think is what you're talking about. Yes. But we were thinking about something similar years and years ago with sort of a hat with lots of very bright infrared LEDs, just like what Bernie was cooking up, and put it all in a hat so they were shining in all directions and transmitting off all the time. You could also build it in the shape of a gun so you could actually shoot the TV to turn it off. Yeah, that would be very popular here in New York. We have no end of conversation about that, I'm sure. The MTA has a solution for this that they put on every single LED screen that they have in the subway. Black tape. Which is duct tape. Yeah. Oh, this is duct tape. Yeah. And that's what you have to do. But I imagine, how are people going to deal with this? I mean, yeah, we're playing with this technology. We're figuring out ways of turning things off because they're annoying, and they really are annoying and intrusive in many situations. But how are people going to respond to this? How do you make the technology so that somebody can't just come in and turn off your TV set whenever they feel like it? No ideas? Duct tape works very well. Yeah, but then you can't do it yourself. You put a little individual code on each remote. A pin code that you have to program the first time you introduce a remote to your TV set, a universal remote. You have to enter a four-digit pin code or something like that, and then that remote is allowed to turn off and on your TV set. Well, even more interestingly, that code is transmitted to the TV, and it's transmitted with every command. So in other words, every code would have, let's say, for argument's sake, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then off, which would be whatever other digit it is for off. A different digit for louder, a different digit for softer, a different digit for channel up, channel down. But it would be unique for every remote. Right. But keep in mind that people don't even program their VCR clocks. But some people do. That's the point. Some people would do this to the remote. Those that don't do it to the remote, you can turn it off with TV on. Those that do do it, they're protected. You're real fancy with the challenge-response system. Yeah. Well, you know, it's evolution. That's what it's all about. All right. Again. Fingerprint recognition on the remote. Fingerprint recognition. There you go. The fingerprints. You know, we were given fingerprints for a reason, and that's for verification so the government knows where you are. No. No, no. We weren't given fingerprints. Why? We weren't given fingerprints for libraries. Well, the government runs the libraries, right? In Naperville, Illinois, they're installing fingerprint scanners on 130 library computers this summer to prevent unauthorized users. The library. Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, unauthorized users? What is an unauthorized user in a library? That's what I couldn't figure out, you know. But anyway, the spokesman for the library named Mark West said, a fingerprint is just a barcode, but it's built in. You know, he may be, you know, on acid saying that, but he does have a point because it's unique for every person. I said this at H, what was it, H2K, you know, it's the mark of the beast on the right hand. It's the sign of the apocalypse. You know, I did that tongue-in-cheek, totally tongue-in-cheek. I'm starting to believe it when you get idiots from the Naperville, Illinois library saying it for real. Usually librarians are pretty open-minded, but this one is not. I couldn't believe it when I read it. I still can't believe it. All right. Well, I can't believe there's no calls on the line, actually there's one, but we need more. 212-209-2950. We have 480 bucks. I hope they haven't added up all the numbers yet because we really should be breaking 1,000 in this hour. 212-209-2950. We're offering a lot of interesting things and they won't be available after 8 o'clock. In the next 14 minutes, they will be gone. We won't be on again with another fundraiser for the foreseeable future. Now, Mike, you have some names of people to thank. Yes. The names belong to people who we want to thank. People are our best contributors. Yes. These folks are James, who is in Springville, Indiana, Mark, who is in Rahway, New Jersey, Kevin, who is in Monroe Township, also in New Jersey. We always get a strong New Jersey response. Some New York people. Yes. To the east. Long Island. Where are you guys? Connecticut. We know you're out there. We have Anthony from North Augusta in South Carolina. Okay. That's down there. Yes. We have Jeffrey from Kirkland, Washington. That's way out there. Indeed. We have Gregory from Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Again, New Jersey. New Jersey. There's nothing wrong with New Jersey. Nothing wrong with New Jersey. Well, I wouldn't go that far. There's Brad from Madison Heights, Michigan, and Earl from Vernon, Connecticut. Am I right in hearing you that there's not a single New York contributor there? I think so. I think you're right. There's no one in that list from New York. There's something wrong here. Something seriously wrong. Nobody from New York has called in to support this radio show. Not that we don't love our New Jersey listeners, but we would have to change focus of the show to appeal to a more New Jersey- I mean, should we just turn the transmitter and point it west? Maybe that's what we have to do. 212-209-2950. Come on, New Yorkers. Your honor has been challenged here. We need to hear from more people. And New England, too. We've got a Connecticut person. That's great. Okay. And we're getting people from South Carolina and Washington. Nobody from out of the country yet, though. No. Unless they're being anonymous. There's always all these anonymous people. That's true. There are anonymous people that don't like their names being read. But again, you have 12 minutes to call us, 212-209-2950. Off the Hook has been on the air since 1988 in one form or another. And we've tried to cover technology, developing technology in all sorts of interesting ways. And throughout the years, I've been spending a lot of time listening to the old radio programs, neatening them up, archiving them, that kind of thing. And just the history that we have covered over the years, just the way things sound differently, just the way people are, the events that we've been a part of, the governments that have changed, the world events that have happened. It's a fascinating time capsule. And this radio station has made all that possible. Rob, I've heard your voice a number of times on radio shows dating back to the 80s. And we're always talking about something interesting, something that's changing in the world. And it's just it's really cool to be able to sort of check in and hear that. Yeah, there's been some interesting stuff, some interesting events. And of course, Bernie, we heard your whole story back in the mid 90s when you were incarcerated and going through hell. That certainly made for some riveting listening as well. I felt like I was riveted to the floor, actually. I think that was one of the suggestions that they were imposing sentence on you. So yeah, you know, that's that's part of the whole off the hook package. Every single show from 1988 to 2004, pledge of $75, 202-209-2950. But more importantly, your call keeps the radio station on the air and keeps this radio show possible for the foreseeable future until they come for us, which will probably be one of these days when we when we cross over the line and say something we're not supposed to say or talk about technology that they don't want us to know about. Well, they've already come for us, haven't they? Yeah, but they couldn't find us. Well, they've come for us many times and they end up going away, actually, don't they? Yeah, they do. They do. Because we have a lot of friends. We have people out there. We have our listeners. We have our readers. Who just know what is right and what is wrong. And those are the people we're here for. So if you have not already called up, please do so now, because strength is in numbers. And that's the only reason this place exists is because of listeners. Now, we don't have commercials in this radio station, and it's annoying, I know, to hear people begging for money, and it's really annoying to be begging for money. But it's essential. If we didn't do it, we'd be off the air and the station would be another Clear Channel station. And let me just say something about Clear Channel. There's a story that came out very recently about Radio Free Ohio. Now, everybody thought Radio Free Ohio was a pirate radio station. For weeks, it sounded as if amateurs had been bleeding their voices into the broadcast of stations in Akron, Ohio, owned by Clear Channel, the corporate radio giant. At the website, www.radiofreeohio.com, there was a manifesto about corporate-controlled music playlists that took potshots at several local Clear Channel stations, but there was no information about who had posted the screed or what exactly Radio Free Ohio was. Last week, it came out that Radio Free Ohio was not a prank on Clear Channel, but in fact, a prank by Clear Channel. Yeah. So, at AM station, the company owns in Akron is switching formats from sports talk to quote unquote progressive talk, and Clear Channel would very much like anyone suspicious of corporate media to tune in. Now, I mean, you know, where else but in the United States can you have corporate radio operating a station that's anti-corporate radio? It's a mirror image of the elections that we have in this country. I think you're giving them a little bit too much credit. You're saying it's a station that is actually anti-corporate radio. It's a station that purports to be anti-corporate radio, which is a key difference. Well, they say Clear Channel is dedicated to entertaining radio and to getting results for our advertisers. There's a hole in the market here, and we're going to fill it. Everything to them is a market. Well, that's the key is the advertising, and we don't have that, so we can say what we want without having to worry about anything. Yeah. When we say Clear Channel sucks, we mean it. You know, we really do because we're not trying to sell you something. We're expressing an opinion, and we have phone lines so our listeners can express opinions as well, and that's something you don't really have in Clear Channel land. You have commercials. You have marketing. You have all kinds of fakeness and lying, but, you know, an opinion might get out occasionally, but the only reason the opinion gets out is so they can sell a product and get attention. It will shock somebody. Here we talk about issues. Here we learn. Here we teach, and if you want to be a part of that, we really do need your help. 212-209-2950. We have five calls on the line. Make that six. We have a whole lot of people down there that are ready to answer your phone call. Again, pledge of $25 gets you a shirt. Pledge of $150 gets you everything, and there's all kinds of levels in between. I just want to go briefly to a story that we've talked about before on the show, which had some interesting developments. We've talked about this company called Covance, which I guess tests drugs for safety, and in so doing, they seem to manage to abuse a lot of animals, breaking the law in the countries in which they operate generally, and just being kind of not nice to the animals. We talked about some evidence that they did this in Germany, and now, to no one's surprise, an investigation in the United States has found they're doing the same thing here. This group called covancecruelty.com is their website, has put this video footage of this animal abuse in Vienna, Virginia on its website, and this is all a bunch of Americans. Covance, as we've mentioned before, is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, and for some reason, they're suing this time in the UK courts. They're always suing overseas. They're always suing overseas, so in the UK courts, they're trying to get this video out of the UK, but you can still see it in the US, and you know, we kind of joke why they do this, but their own lawyers in court say that independent advice had been given from the US council to the British council that placed a question mark over whether injunctive relief could be achieved in the US. He described it as debatable under US law as to whether an employer could obtain an injunction acting in this way because of a concern that such relief would infringe the First Amendment of the US Constitution. So here we have the lawyers for Covance saying in court in the UK that this sort of thing is quite probably legal in the US, and so I would encourage US residents and other people who, you know, might want to go there to check out this footage at- But did they mean for us to see that comment, or was that only for the British people? I don't know. Wow. It's pretty telling right there. They usually, they don't say that. So you know, we do have the First Amendment, we should take advantage of the First Amendment and express views, that's what it's all about, because you can see how they really want you not to, and they will go to any length they can, and fortunately they don't have that ability here, but they would if they could. The original website for the footage is covancecruelty.com, and if you are not in the UK and would like to make a copy of this footage, you can come to my website, which is mlcastle.net slash covance. How do you spell covance? C-O-V-A-N-C-E, and there will be a copy, but please don't look at it if you're in the UK. Now, Raph, have you heard about this over in Holland? No, I haven't. It sounds like an interesting story, though. Yeah. And it's another thing that we would have never been able to mention if we had advertisers, because there are tons of people that are testing these products, and certainly we would have had an advertiser if we were Clear Channel or any other company that would be testing products. Oh, they'd be mad. They would be very mad. Yeah, because we're criticizing what they do, their very reason for being. Bernie, you had something? Is this the one with the pigs? I think they have everything. They have all kinds of animals. I know they have monkeys. I don't want to say what else they do and don't have, because I'm not quite sure. Yeah, we talked about this last year. We wouldn't want to upset our sponsor, Jimmy Dean Sausages. Well, that's more than experimentation on animals. All right. 212-209-2950 is our phone number. If you support anything that you've heard, any of the ideas that we've been expressing, we're pretty much out of time now. Now, we want to thank these people. Sure. We want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.