Free Speech Radio News is a worker-run collective. Our newscast is produced by Simba Rousseau
and Monica Lopez. Today's headlines editor is Mitch Jesserich. Our Washington editor
is Leanne Caldwell. Our technical production team at KPFA in Berkeley includes Eric Klein
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You can also email us your comments, questions, and story ideas to comments at fsrn.org.
From KPFA in Berkeley, I'm Andrea Lewis, sitting in for Aura Bogado.
And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York. It's 7 o'clock on a Wednesday night.
Which means it's time for Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you for the next hour, battling technology all the way. We've been away for
two weeks, but we're back now. And we have a full cast of characters here. And I don't
use that term lightly. Jim, welcome.
Cast of characters, and then you refer to me. Thank you.
And Mike.
Hi.
Redbird.
Good evening.
Red Hat.
Hello.
And Arseny.
Hi.
And is that Bernie S. I detect down there in Philadelphia.
Did you say that I have character or that I am a character?
Let's just leave that no comment for now. We're back. Another hour of talk about technology
and all sorts of other issues that are coming up. Anything interesting happen to you guys
in the last couple of weeks? We did well on the fundraiser. Thanks to everybody who called
in.
Yeah, they are our listeners.
Yeah, really. They really came through for us. It's amazing. We were so clear as to the
fact that we were giving away the premiums during our show, and that's it. And you couldn't
pledge for them during other periods. We got so much mail from people saying, can you
make an exception just for me? And it's call the radio station and pledge by all means.
But the premiums, it's sort of an enticement to listen to the program, listen to the program
live.
But yeah, there's all sorts of other things that we'll be having in future fundraisers.
So if you didn't call, feel free to call in the future. So yeah, we did great on the fundraiser
and looking forward to the next one, which will be here before you know it. Has any momentous
news happened? NSA spying on even more people? Jim, you have something?
There is momentous news for listeners in the United States. And ironically, the government
is going to help those of you who pledged recoup some of your money. That famous excise
tax on telephones from the Spanish-American War has finally died.
At age 108.
108 years of a tax that we're not supposed to be paying.
A luxury tax, which shows how long it was, aside from the fact it was started in 1898.
But if you didn't, a luxury tax on telephones would tell you that it was a pretty old idea.
And back in those days, telephones cost, according to the various articles, $100 a month, which
was an incredible, incredible amount of money.
They cost $100 a month back then?
Apparently, yeah. That's in current dollars though. So it was more expensive, but it was
not so outrageous as to be just for Rockefeller and Carnegie.
Wow.
Well, a lot of people still spend that.
Right, right, right. But still, $100 per month in 1900 would be pretty damn middle class,
whereas now it would have to be more like $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month.
I think it would catapult above middle class back in 1900.
Right, exactly.
Bernie, I know you had something to say about this, about this tax. Are you going to try
to get yours back?
Well, that's what people are gearing up for. They haven't exactly, the IRS hasn't really
released rules yet on how you can stake your claim for all the telephone taxes you have
paid, but apparently it looks like you're going to have to provide copies of all the
phone bills you've ever paid in which you want to get reimbursed for the Spanish-American
telephone taxes, federal taxes, on your phone bill.
Now, it would be interesting to see how cooperative telephone companies, both wired and wireless,
will be with people who call to say, hey, I'd like copies of all my past bills so I
can reclaim this tax. By the way, this tax was just ruled unconstitutional by a federal
judge, and the federal government decided they weren't going to take it to the Supreme
Court because they knew they were going to lose, because by law it really was unconstitutional.
So, yeah, I'm starting to collect my old phone bills. I don't have them going back all that
far, but businesses are the ones you really have the most to gain by this. Some companies,
like the company I work, we've got 50 phone lines, and that taxes every one of those lines.
But not since 1900. You weren't around that long.
No, no, no. But I'm saying that if you've got 50 phone lines, you've got a lot more
to gain by even going back a few years as opposed to an individual. But I think everybody
should really start trying to get all your past phone bills. You can do this now. You
can try to collect all your past phone bills, call your phone company, say I want them going
back as far as I can get them, because within the next few months you'll be able to submit
a claim, and this could really amount to several hundred dollars to your average person.
I'd imagine this would be pretty difficult because I haven't actually received a hard
copy of my phone bill in a while. I do everything online. And if I remember correctly, with
most providers, online interface, they usually only allow you to go back a couple of months,
like maybe six months max.
But they're the phone company. They keep all the records. I know because the NSA keeps
asking for them, and they give it to them. So these are the people that have all the
information, and of course, yeah, they'll say we only give it for a couple of months.
I save everything, and I guess that's one of the advantages. I'm not looking forward
to going through decades of phone bills.
I bet they're much more cooperative with the NSA than they would be with one individual
calling.
You think the NSA is going to get their tax back? Yes, Bernie.
I'm just agreeing with the Redbird guy. You think they're going to be more cooperative
with the NSA than the average citizen? By the way, we found out yesterday that Arlen
Specter, our stalwart privacy advocate with respect to this NSA spying infrastructure,
is backing down now and apparently cooperating with Warren Hatch in a deal to not subpoena
the telephone company executives as was originally planned, such as AT&T, SBC, Verizon, etc.
So they got to him, huh?
Apparently somebody got to him through Warren Hatch, and apparently the telephone company
executives are not going to be subpoenaed after all. Now, I'm sure those executives
would just do what the tobacco industry executives do and plead that, you know, I can't recall
or whatever, but it's kind of a whitewash at this point. The telephone company executives
who apparently sold out our privacy against federal law are not even going to be held
accountable by even giving subpoenas to answer why they did this.
And last show we were talking about how the FCC was backing down from doing any sort of
investigation whatsoever. So yeah, they're going to totally get away with this.
But what's interesting is AT&T seems to be the only company that isn't denying that they did it.
Am I mistaken in hearing this?
SBC denied the Washington Times story.
Right. Everybody's denying it, but AT&T, they have not denied it, right?
AT&T and SBC are the same company.
Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting. How many of these companies are actually the same company?
Verizon is MCI, right?
There's only two companies left, I think.
Well, there were three cited in the USA Today article, right? The original article.
And so far we have no proof that those who are denying it actually didn't do anything.
How do we get that proof exactly? It's impossible.
Well, one way is that the documents they're filing in court, they did not redact properly.
And this is an issue we've covered before.
Now, perhaps you could explain what that means exactly and how silly it really is.
All right. If you have a document and it has some public information and some secret information,
what you used to do in the old days was you took the document, you took a black marker and photocopied it or something,
so you couldn't read behind the black marker and gave it to the person.
Black markers are great. They do so much. And they do that and they do it effectively.
Now what you do, apparently, is you export it to a PDF and draw black boxes on top of it.
But what they don't realize is that the text beneath the black box is still there.
So you can copy and paste and get all the text.
So do you run a program called Remove Black Box or is it just one thing?
You just run the reader and you go copy and then you paste it into something else.
Picture it as a layer on top of the image and that's it.
You just remove the top layer and you see everything.
Now, I heard about this.
There's a document that the NSA published that I highly recommend to anyone.
It's called Redacting with Confidence.
Yeah, they told people how.
It's very informative.
I heard about this years ago. These guys didn't hear about it?
Don't recommend that. We want to see what they're saying.
We spoke about this because I think there was some government that had released a document
that they redacted in probably a year and a half.
This is at least the third time we've instructed the NSA how to do it.
From now on, we're charging you guys at the NSA, okay?
We're not going to do it on air. You have to pay us.
This is the AT&T, not the NSA.
Let's hear what they did.
This is the lawsuit that, as you know, the EFF is suing AT&T saying it's against the law what you've done.
Is this some kind of law? Everybody has to have a three-letter acronym here?
EFF, AT&T, NSA. Okay, fine.
Yes, it's a rule.
Give us an update as to what we do.
That's why we're not involved.
What did we learn from AT&T's ignorance?
Well, not a whole lot, actually.
What did they redact? Did they redact anything interesting?
I think the details of what is in this secret room, exactly.
Oh, the secret room that they supposedly do all the monitoring from?
Yeah.
I don't actually have a copy of the document with me, but you can get it from news.com.com.com, whatever they're called.
Okay. All right.
And this is the case that the government is asserting a state secrets privilege
in order to sort of get the whole lawsuit thrown out before they even find out what's going on.
Another big story that has been hitting all over locally is the 40% cut of homeland security funds for New York.
I swear I have never seen so many people fall for something at the same time.
This is how it sounded last week.
The representatives, all the representatives, the senators, state representatives, everybody,
was in an uproar because there is less money coming in for homeland security funds.
It's kind of nebulous as to what exactly that means.
But this is the best report that I heard. I heard it last week.
And they're basically almost tearfully saying that now the program of global surveillance for downtown,
what do they call that, the wall of-
Yeah, they were trying to emulate what they had.
The ring of iron.
Right.
And the ring of iron where everything would be seen is in danger. It's in jeopardy.
Oh, no.
The New York City Police Department might have to back down from their plan to put sharpshooters on the roof of popular tourist attractions.
And boy, it just sounded so sad.
It sounded like a social program was getting cut.
The NYPD was in tears.
They want to put snipers everywhere.
And now they can't do it because there isn't enough money.
And everybody is falling for this.
Everybody is falling for this.
This doesn't do anything.
Putting snipers in places just makes people think like they're under occupation, having cameras everywhere.
It doesn't give you security.
That is not accomplished in that way.
If I'm correct, this is a copy of what they were trying to do in London or what they did in London, what they already have there, right?
I know they're using London as a model in some ways, but I think they're going well beyond what London is doing.
Okay.
Yeah.
Ring of steel.
Ring of steel.
Is that what it is, ring of steel or ring of iron?
They call it the ring of steel in London.
Okay.
Well, it's a ring of stupidity if you ask me.
Arsony.
Didn't some guy get shot in the face like six times in London also?
What does that have to do with anything?
Well, I mean, then they had all this money for that.
I don't know people that didn't get shot six times in the face here.
Oh, you're talking about the innocent guy that got shot in the underground because they thought he was guilty of something because he was wearing a coat.
Well, he ran too.
No, he didn't run.
He didn't run.
Later turns out they ran onto the train and shot him.
He was sitting on the train when they shot him.
Right, because the orders are to make sure that he can't get a suicide switch going, shoot him in the head, otherwise the arms might jerk or something.
It's interesting to see how the stories change if you just keep paying attention to them after they initially get reported.
Something that turns out to be an obvious threat turns out to be less obvious and then not a threat at all.
That has a curious tie into something that I've only seen exploited, well, mentioned in the New York press.
The Post came out with an article from information from the NYPD on cell phone guns, a gun that would shoot four .22 caliber bullets out of something that looked like or perhaps originally was a cell phone.
And the New York press ran with this and pointed out that once you have people with the idea of a cell phone gun, since everyone carries a cell phone, everyone is now a suspect.
Well, yeah, everyone's been a suspect for a while.
Well, yeah, but this now justifies it more.
What happened in Canada in the last week where suspected terrorists were captured who were planning all sorts of things, a real Olympics of terrorist acts from blowing up buildings to beheading the prime minister.
I mean, you know, it sounds like a wish list, but did they actually have a plan?
That's what I'm curious about.
But anyway, what the United States is now looking at, they're looking at this as proof, this in addition to what happened in July last year in England, that the next attack will come from within our country.
So that means all of us are suspects, all of us are potential al-Qaeda members.
Well, some more than others in their view of things.
Yeah, but the only way to find out is to watch everybody.
In a manual?
Yes.
You mentioned how the facts change in these stories as time goes on.
I've already, since the Canadian story broke a few days ago, heard multiple major news outlets say that these guys, some of them were underage teenagers, possessed 6,000 pounds of explosives.
Well, no, they possessed 6,000 pounds of fertilizer.
Explosives.
You have to mix it with other chemicals and go through a process, whatever, to make it into explosives.
I'm not saying these people weren't dangerous, but you can't say something is something that it didn't.
It's almost like saying dental putty is C4 plastic explosives.
All right, I knew that dental putty was going to come back.
But yeah, basically what they did was they accepted 6,000 pounds of fertilizer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Was it from the horses?
I don't know where they got the fertilizer, but that's basically what happened.
And yeah, it's an unusual thing to have delivered to you, that's for sure, if you're not a farmer.
And the cops were on top of it from the beginning, I guess.
What do you do with 6,000 pounds of really anything?
Well, I'm sure Timothy McVeigh would have had a good answer for that, but he's no longer around.
So yeah, that's something that we will see ripple effects of that, certainly, in many different ways.
And you know, to this day, a lot of people still are not concerned with the NSA monitoring all these connections.
They're not listening in on the phone calls, at least not – they haven't admitted to that, or we haven't figured it out yet, but they are collecting.
Their goal is to have a record for every phone call placed inside the United States.
That's their goal, and that scares me.
And if it doesn't scare you, I don't know, there's a disconnect someplace.
I'm not quite sure where it is.
If you're not scared yet, we've got even more that's scary.
According to the New York Times last Friday, the Justice Department is asking Internet companies
to keep records on the web surfing of their customers to aid law enforcement.
And there's speculation that they'll have legislation introduced to force them to do this.
That's scary, all right.
We already have this, of course, in Europe, and it's pretty bad.
Okay.
We have lots of listener mail.
We like to catch up because we haven't been on for a couple of weeks.
Our email address is othat2600.com.
Let's see what people have to say.
Dear OffTheHook, I was surprised by the sound of apparently real electromechanical ringers on WBAI's phones during your May 24th FunDrive broadcast.
I enjoy using a 1958 Western Electric wall-mounted rotary-dialed telephone to make local calls.
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to laugh, but it just sounds funny.
It's a model 554A-B with a non-modular fabric-covered handset cord found at a local ham fest.
All right.
Everybody in the room who has never used a rotary phone, raise your hand.
Okay.
It's not that bad then.
You've all used a rotary phone?
Of course.
Even the young people here have used a rotary.
Okay.
I'm surprised.
Some people don't know how to operate them.
They really don't.
They're mystified.
We still use the word dial.
Yeah, we still use the word dial.
Why is that exactly?
Why not?
I haven't dialed anything in ages.
The alternatives are terrible.
Punch in the number?
Push.
You've got dials right on the device.
Enter.
You have your left hand on it.
Enter the number.
That's what you have to do.
You enter everything these days, right?
You enter data.
You enter phone numbers.
Okay.
Yeah.
Enter insanity.
It has two actual physical metal bells inside the case and a little electromechanical striking
device to make them ring.
Unfortunately, the ringer doesn't work.
I've sought the advice of phone freaks and antique enthusiasts.
Some have said that the electrical characteristics of the U.S. phone system have changed since
1958 and today's system no longer sends the proper signal to cause my phone to ring.
Others say there have been no such changes and cite the possibility that my phone is
broken or improperly wired to explain its silence.
Were there changes to the phone system that might cause my old phone to cease ringing?
If so, what's the oldest phone model year that I might expect to ring?
Signed, Tim, listening from WBCQ as well as online.
Well, okay, Jim, you have an answer for this?
My aunt has the same telephone in her bedroom since 1967.
1958 Western Electric wall-mounted rotary dial telephone?
I don't know, but she has a phone that's at least from 1967.
Oh, she's had the same phone herself.
I thought you meant the same as...
Right.
Okay.
And this phone continues to ring, so I doubt that there's that much a difference between
a 58 phone and a 67 phone, and consequently, I doubt that this phone is not ringing.
The phone has a lot of...the ringer has a lot of copper wire wrapped around the electromagnet,
and it's very, very thin.
One little break would screw it up, so I suspect it's your phone.
I was just going to say the same thing.
It's just a high-voltage AC waveform sent down the line when you want the phone to ring,
and it's just an electromagnet, so check your phone.
It's probably your phone that's broken.
Try another...
I have an answer for this guy.
Bernie, go ahead.
The ringing voltage has been standard since the 40s.
It's 90 volts at 20 cycles per second.
And his phone may work.
It's possible he has an old party line phone, because I remember one of my neighbors when I was a little kid
had a party line phone, and it still had a 90-volt ringer in there,
but there was a weight in there that made it resonate at a different frequency.
What the phone company would do is, depending on which party shared the same local loop on the party line,
they would ring it at 90 volts at maybe 20 cycles or 40 cycles or 60 cycles,
and then it would selectively ring just that party's phone,
and they could all share the same line that way, and it wouldn't be answering other people's calls.
So he might have an old party line phone from 1958 that's tuned for something other than 20 cycles.
So if he can look if there's a weight on there, he can adjust.
See, I thought party line phones simply indicated which party by a different kind of ring,
like two short rings and one long ring.
I thought that was the only difference.
It depends on the switch.
There were some switches where you could actually have a different ringing frequency,
and my neighbors were one of them.
It wouldn't ring.
And I asked his dad why that was, and he's an electrical engineer.
And he showed it to me, and there's an adjustment that you could make.
We actually adjusted it to the other.
Then it would ring at different times when his neighbor's got calls.
But you could still listen in on the neighbor's calls regardless, right?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
That's the importance of a party line.
It seems like a mechanical bandpass filter.
That sounds very interesting.
All right.
So I think you can get your phone to work unless it's that weird party line thing, which would be interesting.
Or it could be broken.
It could be broken.
Yeah, it could be broken.
Try another rotary phone in there.
All right.
Hello, folks.
I heard Mike talking about his Cuban e-mail account and Emmanuel's remark about Telnet slash SSH access and got curious.
I sat down to do some research but came to a seemingly dead stop in short order.
The reason, carieste.cuba.cu does not resolve here in the States, at least not using my DNS server.
Of course, other domains in the .cu.tld resolve and can be accessed here, but I can't get at that particular domain at all.
It makes me wonder.
I don't know whether both the names and IPs involved with that site are blocked, and if so, by whom.
It would be neat to see some info on the domain, if not some of what was being hosted there,
but someone obviously doesn't think that would be in my best interest.
Any info on this, Mike?
Well, first I want to apologize for the mistake I made on the air last time, and it's Correo de Cuba, no S.
Correo, C-O-R-R-E-O-D-E-C-U-B-A.
Wait, how many R's?
Two R's.
Okay, C-O-R-R-E-O-D-E-C-U-B-A.
Two O's?
No.
It sounded like you said E-O-O.
That's what I heard.
Yeah.
C-O-R-R-E-O-D-E-C-U-B-A.C-U.
Okay, that's it.
I'm not saying it again.
That's the master recording right now, and everything will be referred back to that one.
Okay, so that does resolve in the United States.
No, it doesn't.
Then what's the point?
That was supposed to take like 10 seconds, not this whole conversation.
All right, so I gave out the wrong address, and it doesn't resolve.
And it doesn't resolve, but it also doesn't resolve from the Internet next door to it in Cuba,
so I don't think it has to do with being in the United States.
Okay.
Do we have an IP maybe we can give people?
I don't.
Well, didn't you send mail from there?
You can send mail, but you can't go to it.
Yeah, but if you sent mail from there, an IP would have had to go along with that mail, correct?
I'll look in the headers of an email I received from Mike, and I'll let you know.
Okay, we'll give out Cuban IPs next week.
If anyone does get it to work, my password is on the Internet.
You can find it somehow.
Your password's on the Internet?
There's a photograph of the piece of paper with my password on it,
and if you can find it, you can use my account.
Wow, that sounds very insecure of you.
So if you're listening to us by shortwave in Cuba, you can pretend to be Mike.
Trust me, you're not listening to us in shortwave.
By shortwave in Cuba, we tried.
Dear OffTheHook, there will be protests to eliminate DRM in front of Apple stores in major cities around the country.
Please let your listeners know they can participate by going to www.defectivebydesign.org.
I hope to see some of you for the one in New York, signed Luke.
Luke, thank you very much for writing to us.
But Luke, guess what you did not include in your email.
Yes, you told us about the protests.
You told us where it was going to be.
You even gave us a website.
You didn't tell us when it was.
I have that information.
So many people send us important things, and they leave out one very vital bit of information.
You have the information?
I have the information.
Okay, thank God.
It's a good thing for Luke that I happened to print this out.
Because I had more to say about Luke.
So, all right.
All right.
Go ahead.
Well, it's on June 10th, which is this Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. local time,
in your choice of city, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, or Plano.
Where?
Plano, Texas.
Plano?
Why Plano, Texas?
I don't know.
Because W.R. Grace is there?
Maybe.
I think they looked where they had the most subscribers, and somehow Plano snuck up there.
So, what are they protesting here?
See, I'm not exactly sure what good a protest of this would do.
I think not using the product would be as good as you can do,
because I think most of their contracts depend on the fact that they have DRM.
And so many other online music stores have it, that if Apple doesn't...
I concur that not using the product is an effective thing to do.
However, another effective thing to do is to inform other people that they should not use the product either.
And a good way to do that is to...
What these people do, they're very stylish, these people.
They wear hazmat suits, and they go.
So, if you go on the website, you can be one of the people in the hazmat suits.
It's kind of neat.
Gosh, that sounds like a lot of fun for everybody.
I mean, not using their product is a start, but at the same time, there's plenty of people who don't care,
or, as Mike said, don't know about these things,
and who will continue to use the product.
The iPod and iTunes are very popular, and a lot of people just use it.
And there's also the chance that mainstream media will show up,
and then more people find out about it that way.
Of course, they get the wrong story, probably.
Well, as I said, it's very photogenic.
There's photos.
They did this before only in San Francisco, and now they're expanding a little.
To Plano?
Plano, yes.
They could tell people about that program that lets you get rid of the DRM.
Does it still work?
Well, if you have iTunes 5, not 6.
Okay, and a reminder that CarolinaCon is taking place this weekend.
That's right, June 9th and 10th at the Hampton Inn in Raleigh, North Carolina.
If you want more information, this is one of those hacker conferences.
We've heard about them.
Go to carolinacon.org.
We should put on a hacker conference.
You know, it's a good idea.
Maybe sometime in July in New York City.
Really?
Since we gave away tickets to it, I think we might as well have it.
Yeah, July 21st, 22nd, 23rd.
Go to www.hope.net.
Let's have it at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Hotel Pennsylvania, good idea.
The first two letters of each word spell out hope.
Awesome.
Yeah, how about that?
I just worked that out now.
That's smart.
Okay, now we got a lot of mail about the crazy numbers we played.
It seems to me that calling a phone number to get secret codes
would be a major risk to the spy,
while listening to the radio can be done without easy detection.
My guess is that this is either fake, a way of spreading disinformation,
a way of tracking people who want to listen,
in other words, trying to find enemy code breakers,
or if it is real, it could be something that takes advantage of the A&I
to give out different codes depending on who is calling.
Signed, James.
Well, James, so far everybody who's called that number,
the number being the 212 number we called last show,
has gotten the same message.
Now, what's happened since then is very interesting.
The 212 number started out by saying group 415,
spat out a whole bunch of numbers with all kinds of weird voices
and played music on either side of it.
Now, that number has since been disconnected or no longer works,
but another number has popped up.
That number popped up in area code 415,
which is interesting because the last one said group 415,
and the way these numbers pop up is through personal ads on Craigslist
in the particular city.
The first one was in New York, and this one was in San Francisco,
and another number popped up.
This one said group 617,
so the theory is that the next one will be somewhere in Boston.
I'd just like to play a few seconds of the second one as it showed up
because we actually have a bit of information
that might prove to be interesting.
Group 617.
Group 617.
Group 607.
Group 607.
Group 8020.
Group 8020.
Group 21085.
Okay, and it just pretty much continues like this for about five minutes.
It plays the music again, and nobody really knows what it means,
but number stations have existed on shortwave for a number of years,
and now they seem to be moving into the world of telephones.
It's probably nothing serious.
It's probably someone playing around seeing who can decode the secret message
as opposed to the theories we just heard from one of our listeners,
but it's a fun thing to experiment with.
Well, what made you reach the conclusion that it's nothing to worry about?
Because so many people know about it.
I don't know.
It just seems unlikely that it's a serious thing.
I want to make one.
Do you want to make one?
I want to make one.
It wouldn't be that hard.
Well, I guess.
You've got to make one that sounds good, though.
It sounds like this, and this is identical to the first one.
Yes, Bernie?
One of our listeners, I believe it was Charles Geffert,
wrote in and said that he identified the music,
which was the same on both messages,
as being from the 80s band A-Ha,
and I think the tune was Take On Me, is what he's saying.
No, that's definitely not Take On Me.
That's one of my favorite songs.
I know it's not Take On Me.
It's from the 80s band A-Ha.
You know the band.
Okay.
They're saying their best hit was Take On Me.
Yeah, okay.
But he didn't identify the song, but he did.
Okay, this one is called Little Black Heart from the album Minor Earth Major Sky.
And it's just amazing to me that BAI listeners can pretty much figure out anything.
If we say, what are these strands of music?
What do they mean?
Somebody's going to write in and say what they are,
and I think that's just incredible.
Oh, could this be the song itself?
I don't know how we managed to do this, but yeah, this sure sounds like it.
But I think we have to suffer through some inane lyrics
before it actually does the magical part.
I never saw sunlight burn as bright
I never felt darkness the way I feel it tonight
You say it's getting better
You say it's alright
I never felt darkness like I feel it tonight
Okay, we're not going to make people sit through all this,
because it's a few minutes long,
but we are going to fade it up when it gets to the part
that sounds like what we heard already on the number stations.
But yeah, we did get a lot of mail on this, a lot of theories.
In fact, one theory, here, listen to this.
This is rather interesting.
Six.
Six.
Six.
Six.
Six.
No, no, no, that was yesterday.
That's true.
It was 666 yesterday.
It's not a problem for hope number six either.
It's basically we just spliced together a whole bunch of the sixes.
Some people have said that that six sounds like yours truly.
Take a listen to it carefully.
I don't know.
Six.
Six.
Six.
Huh?
I don't know.
It would be kind of creepy though if that was my voice on there.
Bernie, you did some kind of a scientific test and you concluded that this was not my
voice, right?
Well, I sampled your voice saying six on one of the previous Off the Hook show and I ran
it through a computer program called CoolEdit Pro, which you can generate called a spectrogram,
like a color 3D chart of what the voice waveform looks like.
I played it back.
I looked at it.
It didn't look the same.
It was back and forth, sideways and backwards and upside down and slow and fast.
When you play it like you do, it does sound like you.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm going to fade you down here because here comes the music.
Okay, so the magical music, the mystery music has been identified thanks to Q-Strategy.
Was that the same person who you quoted before, Bernie?
Yes.
Well, he's from Charles and Jeffford, who apparently goes by the name Q-Strategy.
Okay.
And the song is called Little Black Heart by a band called A-Ha, which I believe is
a Norwegian band.
So maybe that tells us something about the person who did this, listening to music from
Europe perhaps and speaking German phrases in the Craigslist ads and the song Little
Black Heart from the album Minor Earth, Major Sky.
Okay, so we have lots of different theories and Redbird, you have one?
Well, no, but a lot of people had actually emailed us suggesting that possibly the numbers
were people from our show, which I mean, it sounds kind of crazy.
I'd like to read that actually because this is such a good theory that I almost believe
it.
I'm a shortwave listener and a ham radio operator and I've been interested in spy number stations
ever since I first came across them by accident while tuning through the shortwave radio bands.
Your report on the New York telephone number station both last week and this week intrigued
me greatly.
I went to Google and typed in the number station's code group number sequence so that I could
find the number station's telephone number.
That's a mouthful.
I tried calling it for myself and in doing so I ended up finding out that a large discussion
about the mysterious telephone number had been taking place at the Spooks Mail Archive.
At first, the whole telephone number station seemed to be a huge mystery to me and I was
absolutely mind boggled by it, but after listening to last week's edition of Off the Wall, some
odd peculiarities about the telephone number station started to strike me.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I am slowly beginning to believe that you and your group
of friends at 2600 Magazine and Off the Wall, and I guess Off the Hook too, are behind this
telephone number station and that you are doing it as a tricky way to promote your upcoming
Hope No. 6 Hacker Conference.
Here are the things that I pieced together to come to this conclusion.
One of the main members of your Off the Hook crew is the venerable Bernie S., who is not
only an avid shortwave listener, a scanner enthusiast, and a technician class ham radio
operator.
He gives you a call sign, Bernie.
Should I give that?
Go ahead.
N-3-K-O-W.
But he is also the person who speaks on panels at your Hope Conferences about spy number
stations.
Do you dispute any of those charges?
Well, at the last Hope No. 5, the 5th Hope, I did play some excerpts from some spy radio
stations with the numbers just like that.
As a result, Bernie S. is essentially an expert about spy number stations and could easily
help you set one up with the proper format so that it would sound authentic.
I agree.
Fortunately, it didn't happen, but it would be nice.
But it gets better.
It gets better.
You happen to have a reputation as a bit of a phone freaker, and I bet that you would
have absolutely no problem obtaining an unlisted New York City telephone number.
Yeah, that's pretty easy.
And setting up the open source asterisk PBX system on it.
Well, Mike, that's something you'd be good at, right?
In fact, the number, the fact that it is an asterisk PBX system that is being used leads
me even more to believe that it is the 2600 gang that is behind it because the hacker
community is well known for championing open source software.
In addition, it is no secret that you and most of the Off the Hook crew live in the
New York area.
So I think the fact that this number station is hosted on a New York City telephone number
is no coincidence.
Ah, but it's not the second number hosted in San Francisco, and none of us are there
right now.
So you think.
Well, we have pretty good microphones if they are.
We do have friends in San Francisco.
We do.
We do.
We have plenty of friends.
We weren't supposed to talk about them, but okay.
Continuing here, as you mentioned in the latest Off the Wall show, I too thought that the
number six as played back by the number station sounded like your voice.
While I have no way of proving this, I have a feeling that all of the different spoken
numbers used by the number station were sampled from the audio archives of your Off the Hook
radio show, and that all of the numbers used by the number station were actually once said
over the radio show by members of the Off the Hook crew or guests on the show.
Some of the numbers in the number station's recordings sounded like they were said in
foreign accents.
Those numbers could have been sampled from the voices of several of Off the Hook's many
European hacker guests that have come on the show over the years.
Also, I feel the fact that it is your voice that is saying the number six also has great
significance because the HOPE conference that is coming up later this summer will
be HOPE number six.
You know, I wish we had this kind of marketing savvy here.
We should have done something yesterday with 666, you know, promoting HOPE number six.
It's not like we're ever going to get another chance to do that, huh?
Man.
All right.
Continuing here, the last big thing that I heard that really tipped me off into thinking
that it was you behind this whole telephone number station was what you said after playing
the recording of it over the air on Off the Wall last Tuesday.
Six.
Six.
No, not that.
You told the audience you never know where little hints and messages and secrets will
pop up.
They could be any place.
That sounds very suspicious to me, Emanuel.
Very suspicious.
It sounds to me like you are leading your entire listening audience on and that you
will be dropping us tiny little clues about the number station messages, number station
messages, true meaning.
It should be a number station's message.
Yeah, that should be it.
Over time, in many assorted places, including your radio shows in the form of updates on
the story and perhaps through your websites, blogs, and magazines as well, you will keep
feeding us little clues to this mystery and generating more and more interest until finally,
right before the HOPE conference this summer, you will reveal the secret message as being
something corny like, you should all attend the HOPE number six conference.
And that you and your friends were behind the telephone number station all along.
He caught us.
Well, just to clarify, the secret message that appeared on Off the Wall was actually
a backwards message and it was a contest to win a couple of free tickets for HOPE number
six.
And some people were able to get that pretty quickly, in fact.
You can see if there's a conference in progress by looking at the main 2600.com page and seeing
if you see George W. Bush flashing behind the HOPE number six logo.
And if he's flashing, that means it's a contest in progress.
You have to find it and you have to solve it.
So that's what that was.
That was what that secret message was.
Finishing up the letter, that's my theory about your New York telephone number station
As to why the phone number to the telephone number station was originally posted on Craigslist
and not on one of your own websites, the answer to that is obvious.
Emanuel, considering the fact that you run the HOPE conference's social engineering panel
every year, it is no doubt that you have some real talent as to misdirecting people and
pulling the wool over people's eyes.
I think that posting a number on Craigslist, then reporting it on your radio shows like
it's some bizarre mystery and then pretending to act horrified when someone mentioned to
you that it was your voice on the recording for the number six was all your attempt to
both make it sound like 2600 was not involved with the telephone number station, but at
the same time, promote its existence to all of you off the hook and off the wall listeners
so that you could get a large targeted audience interested in the number station mystery so
that you can string them all along with little clues, suck them in and then shock them all
when you reveal that it was all a ruse to promote HOPE number six.
In other words, you are trying to social engineer your entire listening audience to become interested
in your HOPE conference.
I've got to say, you know, if that was the case, I'd be too scared to reveal it now.
If my theory that this is all some kind of bizarre promotion for HOPE is correct, then
I doubt that you would ever tell me so because I could then possibly blow the lid on the
whole little game you were playing with your audience.
But the shadow knows what you're really up to, Emmanuel.
The shadow knows.
And when you and Bernie S. and the Off the Hook crew finally reveal what your little
telephone number station actually is to your listening audience, I will be able to say
I told you so, signed, Dangerous Dan.
That's really good, though.
It is really good.
And you almost have me believing it.
But Dangerous Dan, I swear to you, I had nothing to do with this.
I'm as mystified as anybody.
The only thing I have been able to figure out from this thing, you heard series of five
numbers being said over and over again.
I'm convinced that it's actually a series of three numbers.
Why?
Because almost every third number is a zero except for a couple where it's a one.
And both sets of numbers are divisible by three, not by five.
Plus, number stations, as a rule, say five numbers, repeat five numbers, and then say
the next five numbers, repeat five numbers.
Doesn't mean that that's the length of the message or anything like that.
I just want to say that if my voice is being used on this, I plan to sue.
Who are you going to sue?
Well, if you did it, I'll sue you because you're doing it to promulgate hope.
I mean, I'm sure there's a minimum of 400 bucks for appearing on a radio commercial
or something.
Bernie, I'd like you to answer these accusations as well.
But first, I'm going to give out the phone number, 212-209-2900, we'll be taking your
phone calls from wherever you happen to be in the world, country code one if you're overseas.
Bernie, any response to that?
I must say, it was a brilliant conspiracy theory.
But I am responsible for bringing the information about this weird number station phone number
to Off The Hook.
And I'm a member of the Spooks mailing list.
Yeah, that's curious, isn't it, Bernie?
You brought it to our attention.
I did bring it to your attention.
I'm a member of the Spooks mailing list, and I regularly listen to shortwave and occasionally
hear shortwave number station.
So I'm on the mailing list, and I saw the discussion on there, and I called the number
and I thought it was intriguing.
So then I forwarded that information to you all on the list, and that's why we ended up
talking about it.
Let me just clarify.
I have nothing to do with it.
Let me just clarify one thing.
When I deny that we're involved in this, I'm really only denying that I'm involved in this.
I don't really know what other people around me are involved in.
So for all I know, the rest of you could have conspired, used my voice, or not used my voice
as the case may be, and kept me in the dark.
I'm denying my role in this.
I'm clean.
But I don't know about the others.
And that's the thing with these number stations.
You wind up not trusting anybody.
Now, Bernie, has anybody ever managed to translate what a number station was actually saying?
Yes.
From Cuba, of all places, just a few years ago, I think about three, four years ago.
And I should also point out the fact that we were just in Cuba also should not be seen
as anything suspicious.
No.
No connection whatsoever.
All right.
But it's been well known that some of these number station transmissions on shortwave
originate from the island of Cuba, and people have triangulated the signals and that's where
they're coming from.
And occasionally they goof up, and the audio from Radio Havana plays in the background
and it's like, whoops.
Stuff like that.
Some alleged Cuban spies were detained in Miami, and they had in their possession one-time
pads or diskettes with lists of numbers used as a key against the broadcast numbers coming
from a Cuban station.
And the FBI allegedly was able to match up and decode some messages.
They never released the content of that, but that was alleged by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
And you can just do a search for Cuban spies, Miami, radio, shortwave on a search engine.
These numbers are not typical of a number station because there aren't so many zeros
normally.
Am I correct in saying that?
Typically, these are one-time pad, it's a one-time pad encryption method.
So you can't decrypt them unless you have the key, you're not going to be able to do
it.
It's theoretically the most secure.
It changes every time.
So what I'm saying is, when number stations are broadcast in the past, was there a pattern
such as every third digit being a zero?
Was there anything ever like that?
I've never heard of that.
That's why I think this is different in some way.
Yeah.
Theoretically, the one-time pad form of encryption is the most secure, and it would be a completely
random sequence if it was done correctly.
So there would be no patterns like what you mentioned.
All right.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
Why don't we go to the telephones and talk to our listeners for the first time in quite
a while since we didn't do it during the fundraiser either?
Let's.
All right.
Let's do that.
Let's go over here and see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Hi.
How are you?
Yeah.
You're talking about Cuba.
Yeah.
We're talking about Cuba, among other things.
Yeah.
But I think a bunch of your listeners should go to Cuba, and I will pay for them because
your station's a bunch of communists and belong in Cuba.
Oh, wait.
Wait.
Don't go away.
I wanted to talk about this some more.
Oh.
Yeah.
He said that like he was angry.
Did you think he was really angry?
Yeah.
I think he was being generous.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for offering that.
That's a good deal.
Yeah.
Do we have caller ID?
We can trace the number and bill him for all the tickets for all the listeners he said.
Did he say all the listeners or only some of the listeners?
Some of our listeners.
I don't think it'd be right for him to send those who don't want to go to Cuba to Cuba.
Well, okay.
Fine.
Those listeners who do want to go to Cuba, they can meet us at a certain time.
Now, the thing is, though, where are they going to go from?
Because technically, sir, I know you're not suggesting that people should break the law
and go to Cuba illegally.
So we're going to have to fill out forms and get them to qualify in some way.
Which is getting harder and harder.
It is getting harder and harder.
We'll have all that information on a numbers station sometime in the next few weeks.
You know, actually, I think your wish can be granted only when we change our policy
towards the country, you know, and allow people to go there.
And then, sir-
Whose policy?
The United States policy.
Oh, their policy.
Their policy.
Yeah.
Then we can, you know, your wish will come true.
We'll contact you then.
And we can all go to Cuba and hang out and watch all the old cars go by.
Okay, let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Yes, I am.
Great show, guys.
But I'm still waiting for my premium.
I'm sorry.
Say that again?
I'm still waiting for my premium.
You're waiting for your premium?
Yes.
For the-
For the recent fundraiser?
Yeah.
TV be gone.
You haven't gotten your TV be gone yet?
Nope.
You definitely should have.
Nope.
Okay.
All right.
What I'd like you to do then is send us an email.
OTH at 2600.com.
Uh-huh.
And we'll send you the information that you pledged with.
Okay.
And we'll track you down, and we'll figure it out, and we'll get that to you.
We promise.
I appreciate that.
All right.
Good show.
Good show, guys.
All right.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
All right.
All right.
These things happen, though.
We have so many people calling in and pledging, and so many things flying around.
Sometimes we lose track of people, but we always try to fix it.
And usually we do.
Let's take another phone call.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Yes.
What's on your mind?
Yeah, good show.
I enjoy your show.
Thank you.
You know, it's funny.
I was laughing at that man who called and hung up because you mentioned Cuba.
Yeah.
All we did was mention Cuba.
We didn't even say anything political.
I know.
I know.
I know that.
But the thing that I find funny, why he listen to this station if he don't like this station?
Because he says your station is not good.
Oh, lots of people listen to us who hate us.
I mean, you know, we encourage people who don't like us to listen to us, because then
they're wasting their time, I guess.
Oh, man.
That's so funny.
I'm like, why is he listening to me hate?
That's funny.
Yes.
But anyway, keep up the good show.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Take care.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Speak up.
What are you calling from?
A tunnel?
Turn down the radio.
Yeah, please.
Okay.
Now, I didn't catch the first two to three minutes of the show.
Sir, whatever phone you're calling from, you really need an upgrade.
I'm back now.
Okay.
I don't know if you were ever here.
But, okay.
Keep trying.
Can you hear me now?
Well, I hear something.
All right.
Let's hear what you have to say.
Let's start over.
I missed the first few moments of the show talking about the phone company.
So, I have been...
You must be saying something against the phone company, because they're sure trying to keep
you from saying it.
You can't hear me?
I can hear...
Well, you're sort of bouncing in and out.
Tell us.
What kind of phone are you using?
I'm calling from a cell phone.
What company are you using?
I'm using Singular.
Hmm.
Bad signal, huh?
All right.
It's better now.
Much better now.
Okay.
Well, I wanted to know what you were talking about with the...
Is that for that long-distance tax from the 1800s?
Oh, the tax.
The federal excise tax on phone bills, yes.
Yes.
And I can get a refund from the phone company going back how far?
Well, according to the articles I've read, first of all, you don't get the refund from
the phone company.
You get it from the U.S. government, particularly the Treasury Department, and specifically
the IRS.
And one thing that strikes me as odd in all the articles I've read, and if somebody's
got some different news, I hope to hear it, is that it's going to be on your income tax
return that you file for only the last three years of this tax.
So, tax that you've paid in the past is lost, gone, to the coffers of the United States
with no corporate recourse.
Pardon?
All the tax I've paid is lost anyway.
Well, that may be true anyway, but that's a political thing, but I'm saying...
That's a rather cynical view there.
I'm saying that the most you'll be able to get back of this excise tax is three years
worth, according to the articles I've read, and I have nothing that says any different
from that.
They either say nothing about it, or they say only the last three years worth.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Let's move on to another one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, what have we here?
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
You're on the air.
Hi.
So, I had an AT&T calling card since 1993, and at some point during the merger between
AT&T and SBC, they said they were getting rid of this particular type of calling card.
So, I called up AT&T and inquired about it, and they said that they'd canceled it in error
and restarted the service.
Then, I called another representative a couple days later, and she basically told me that
the card had been canceled again, but it still functions, and I am getting a $4 bill for
it every month, but I'm making tons of phone calls on it, and it still works.
So, you're saying you're not getting charged for the phone calls, just paying $4 a month?
Yeah, for the card itself, but not getting charged for the phone calls at all.
If this keeps up for a few months, please email us the number of that card.
No, I don't think we want to get involved in yet another scheme here.
You don't want to end up with a bill, though, at the end of all this, when they realize
they've made a mistake?
That bill is probably going someplace.
Obviously, it's not the same as the card, which they think you're not using at all.
You don't get any kind of itemization that says zeros next to it or anything like that?
Nothing.
You might want to be careful, because you might end up with a huge bill at the end of
the year, or at the end of something, when they realize it.
But then again, it's not because of any fraud on his part.
He's not paying the bill because they're not sending him the bill, and they're not turning
off the service.
So, obviously, it's a mistake of some sort.
I wouldn't go around bragging about it, though, because then they might try and track you
down and say that you're aware of the situation.
It's very hard for them to collect, say, a year's worth of phone bills if they have neglected
to send it to you, though.
Yeah, despite my jokes, I think going crazy on the phone card may not be a good idea.
They may say, well, you knew you had a phone card.
You knew you'd have to pay for it someday.
So, you know, don't call the Pope.
Yeah, it's like when I had the precursor to T-Mobile.
It was at VoiceStream, where they weren't billing for incoming calls in Europe at all.
And I used that, and then a year later, they said, okay, we've figured out the system now,
because they had a new computer system, and we're going to start billing for incoming
calls now.
For you people who have used this, consider it a gift, and we're going to crack down now.
So, you know, they knew that they wouldn't be able to collect on all of the rightful
charges.
Okay, let's see if we have time for a couple more.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, hello.
Hi, how are you?
I wanted to ask you, cable vision, the cable vision in the town of Long Island, I guess
it's the same.
I have a telephone program through that, and, you know, my telephone, the phone I'm on,
actually, and it sounds very hollow, because I believe their phone service works through
the internet.
Can you explain why that is?
Well, the internet is rather hollow.
It's very echoey, and no, that's not the reason.
You're using a voice over IP service, and it's very obvious from our end that you are,
and it's just, it's poor data compression, and...
I thought cable vision, though, had mastered this.
I thought they were doing better than just your fly-by-night voice over IP operations.
Well, you're listening to it right now.
They're obviously not.
I'm surprised.
Yeah, I also get, like, an echo quite often, you know, and I can hear myself hear myself
type of thing.
Yeah, have you complained to them?
Yeah, yeah, but, you know, you don't get a lot of results fast with the big companies,
so...
Well, you should come on back to a wired phone of some sort.
Yeah, I didn't want to switch.
I also wanted to ask you, what does the HOPE Conference have to offer a, let's say, a layman?
A layman, many things, many things.
It's not all technical talk.
We have all kinds of discussions about...
Oh, gosh, where do I start?
Phone systems and open-source software, old computers.
There's lectures ranging from, you know, beginners to experts on various subjects.
Correction, we will be having a lecture on free software.
Oh, well, that too, and maybe the difference between the two.
And it's how many days?
Three, right?
Three days.
There's a film festival.
And if nothing else, you can see a lot of rather interesting films
ranging from the completely esoteric to the rather mainstream
dealing in some way with hacking, telephones, computers, and their influence on our lives.
Yeah, and we're working on network connection that's faster than ever.
We're working on having Segways to play with.
It's just going to be basically an amusement park filled with fun
for people remotely interested in technology in any form.
And Arsene, maybe you have a couple of ideas
about what kind of films we'll be playing because you're running that.
Well, we're doing sort of clips, interesting clips.
I can confirm that pretty much every hacker-created, hacker-produced TV show,
online TV show is going to be there in one form or another.
And then in the evening, we're going to play feature-length documentaries
and all sorts of interesting stuff.
And it's not just computers.
There's some political stuff, just some funny stuff, cartoons.
Yeah, so it's kind of for everyone.
We're going to have Jell-O Biafra and Kevin Mitnick again,
and all sorts of speaker list is going to be released very soon.
And we have Richard Stallman giving one of the keynotes.
It's going to be really interesting.
You'll learn a lot no matter what level you're at.
Are you able to bring a cassette recorder, a video recorder, or not?
Of course. Yeah, sure.
Okay. One more thing, Emmanuel, I've received discs.
I'm committed to the $100 donation.
And I received a T-shirt, but I haven't sent you anything.
But I will send.
Oh, which pledge driver are we talking about?
The one before this, I believe, this past one.
Okay. Well, yes, please, pay us.
See, sometimes it works the other way, too,
and we send people things who haven't paid us.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying happened.
No, I didn't pay you. You paid me.
But I got my end. You'll get my end.
I hope so. I hope so.
Okay. I'm mentioning so you can catch a technical glitch
because I don't want to see everything go out the window
and not come in for you.
Yeah, maybe you could send us an email, too,
so we don't send you another one, which might happen.
This whole station is like a technical glitch.
Yeah, but this is our fault if we're sending people things
that they didn't pay for yet.
But we'll see.
Just don't tell.
Yeah, okay. Thanks for your call.
Thanks for your honesty.
And thanks, everybody, for listening
because we're out of time.
We're back again next week with another action-packed edition.
And maybe there'll be another number station by then.
Till then, it's Manuel Goldstein.
Have yourselves a good night.
Going out to the late Desmond Decker.
See you next week. Have a good week.
Oh, oh, seven
Oh, oh, seven
At Ocean Eleven
And now rude boys a go wheel
Cause them out a jail
Rude boys cannot deal
Cause them must get veal
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Them a loot, them a shoot, them a wheel
A shanty town
Them a loot, them a shoot, them a wheel
A shanty town
Rude boys a bump up your shoulder
A shanty town
Rude boys a bump up your tongue
A shanty town
Oh, oh, seven
Oh, oh, seven
At Ocean Eleven
And now rude boys a go wheel
Cause them out a jail
Good boys cannot fail, cause they must head there
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail, shanty town
Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail, shanty town
Good boy dey pa-pa patient, shanty town
Good boy dey pa-pa patient, shanty town
Bodies get taller, shanty town
Soldier get longer, shanty town
Good boy dey weep and a wail, shanty town
Good boy dey weep and a wail, shanty town
Haha, yeah, I love, I love, uh, the person, uh,
Off the hook, these guys are off the chain, I mean hook
Anyway, I like that show anyway, and uh