When asked about the proposed relocation, Shirley said he hadn't read the report.
Shirley expects the Intergovernmental Compact Agreement to be finalized later this month.
The forgotten people of Bennett-Freeze say they will take the challenge to the Tribal Supreme Court.
The Hopi General Council refused to comment for this story.
For FSRN in the Bennett-Freeze, I'm Christina Onestad.
You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News, from KPFK in Los Angeles, I'm Auda Bogado.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI-New York.
It's 7 o'clock, 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.
Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Very good evening to everybody, the program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike over there.
Who?
And Jim over in the corner.
What?
Redbird.
Good evening.
This mic is not working for some reason.
You're, yeah, that's the right color.
I'll try this.
Say something else.
Don't use that mic.
There's something wrong with that mic.
Use that one.
Good evening.
There's something wrong with you, apparently.
All right, wait, no, try that again.
I had the wrong button for a second.
Good evening.
There we go.
And not Kevin has joined us.
Hello.
All right, and Bernie.
Bernie's down there in Philadelphia.
Why?
Exactly.
Always wanted to know that.
We weren't on last week, but we are on this week.
And as far as I know, we'll be on next week talking about high technology
and the future and how dismal it all seems and taking your phone calls.
And, boy, we have a lot of things to cover tonight, as always.
Cell phone owners apparently are getting brand new rights
or maybe rights they should have had to start with.
According to this dispatch,
cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets
in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules
that were announced last week.
Is this why we were dancing and celebrating before?
This is something good, right?
I was just dancing and celebrating for fun, but this is good news.
Yeah, this is good news.
This is good news.
It's common sense that we should be able to unlock phones
so that we can use them with different carriers.
Does this go beyond this?
Is it just cell phones, or are there more things covered?
It seems to be very narrowly tailored to cell phones.
And another thing that this law doesn't do
is require the carrier to actually help you change companies.
It only makes it so they can't throw you in jail
if you figure out how to do it by yourself.
Now, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
they are disappointed that the Copyright Office
rejected a number of exemptions that could have benefited consumers,
including one very much of interest to us,
that would have let owners of DVDs legally copy movies for use
on Apple computers, iPods, and other portable players.
It doesn't really cover everything, but it covers some things.
It's interesting.
Apparently, if you're a professor, you can now use DECSS.
Yeah, if you're a professor, you can use DECSS.
I still can't use it. I still can't post it.
And you're not a professor?
No. I guess I could appoint myself one.
If you start teaching a class at the local community college,
then everything will change.
If that's what it takes.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
What if you just profess things?
Does that make you a professor?
And is there such a thing as an honorary professor?
I think you have to have a capital P,
and a title of some sort, and maybe even a salary.
But it's something. It's something.
Here's an interesting story, too, out of London.
A tabloid journalist accused of hacking into the voicemail system
in Prince Charles' office has pled guilty
and apologized to both the prince and his sons.
Clive Goodman, the royal editor.
Royal editor?
I mean, I don't mean to make fun of England, but come on.
Is there anything they don't put royal in front of?
Well, wait a minute.
Is he perhaps the editor for a newspaper called The Royal?
No, no, no.
The newspaper is called News of the World.
Oh.
He's the royal editor.
I don't know if he gets a crown with that or how that works.
I think it means he edits the section of the paper dealing with royalty.
Is that what that means?
That may be good.
I think so.
That seems good.
Awfully bizarre way to say it.
Well, you know.
All right.
Continuing with the story,
the royal editor was arrested after members of the prince's household
reported suspected security breaches in the telephone network.
Basically, he unlawfully intercepted voicemail messages.
Do you know how easy this is?
This is a big scandal over there, but basically,
somebody apparently didn't change their default password
or pick something easy to guess like their birth date
or it reverted to some kind of default or it was maybe two digits long.
Who knows?
This is kid stuff.
It really is.
Anyway, he accepts that this was a gross invasion of privacy
and Mr. Goodman accepts that the characterization is correct.
He therefore apologizes unreservedly to the three members of the royal household staff
concerned and their principals, Prince William, Prince Harry,
and the Prince of Wales.
Was there any punishment besides having to apologize?
Well, let's see.
The guy is free on bail pending sentencing.
So, yeah.
Who knows what's going to happen to him after that?
Yeah, voicemail.
You can't trust it.
You can't trust it because unless it's a really secure system that protects privacy,
even if you pick a good password,
if somebody's social engineer is the company
and is able to get them to reset your password
or get them to tell you what it is,
anything is possible.
It's old news.
It's been going on since the 1980s.
I found a SIM card the other day in an attempt to find its owner.
You're always finding people's phones.
It's very strange, but all it was this time was a SIM card laying on the ground.
You found just a SIM card?
Which is a much more bizarre thing to find.
I couldn't even see a SIM card lying on the ground.
I saw the SIM card.
It was right out.
I was getting out of my car, and I saw the SIM card on the ground.
In an attempt to find out the owner, I checked the voicemail.
Wait, you put it in your phone, I guess.
I put it in my phone, yeah.
Okay.
I figured, you know, if I'm going to get in trouble with it,
at least it's goodwill.
Okay, so you put the SIM card in your phone,
and does that mean you could log into their voicemail?
Right.
I just dialed the number of the phone.
And there's no password?
It was T-Mobile, and, you know, they have that feature.
The password feature turned off if you call from your own phone.
Right.
Okay, so you heard their messages.
Yeah.
You changed their outbound message?
No, no, no, no, no.
Hey, I'm an idiot.
I left my SIM card on the floor.
But I wasn't able to get the identity of the person,
so unfortunately it's still sitting on my table.
Well, give it to me.
I'll find them.
So if you're out there within the sound of our voices,
and you have lost a SIM card, contact us.
It could be yours.
So now, don't you have other contact information in there?
Maybe people on speed dial on that SIM card?
Yeah, there wasn't anybody in the SIM card's phone book.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay, it doesn't say their phone number when you leave the message,
like on their outgoing message or anything like that?
No, I didn't actually check the incoming phone number.
Isn't there something on the SIM card that tells you the phone number?
Well, you get the phone number of the SIM card.
Okay.
You know, that the SIM card is assigned to, but that doesn't really help me.
What if you called T-Mobile and said, hey, I found you.
Yeah, you know what?
There's a certain extent at which I'm willing to go.
Well, that's not that difficult.
Maybe there's a reward offered.
So if you're out there and you're totally friendless
and have lost your SIM card, we have it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, this is kind of a shocking story concerning stupidity and privacy
and the lack of it and the loss of it.
Somebody apparently made off with a printout of personal information
about Nassau Community College's entire student body,
more than 21,000 students.
What kind of a printout was that?
I mean, that's huge.
This happened at my school as well at some point.
At the same time?
It was a coordinated effort?
Probably not at the same time.
It sounds like Al-Qaeda.
They do things like that.
But I believe it was a list of students and social security numbers.
But this is a printout.
This is the amazing thing.
No, this was a printout that was left behind by some staff, I believe.
And if I'm correct in my facts, it was a printout.
And I think somebody got his hands on one of the pages
with a whole bunch of students and a whole bunch of social security numbers
and published it as proof that, you know.
Well, apparently what happened here is an administrative assistant
in the student activities office was they were authorized to use the list
and everything.
They were cross-checking the names of individuals involved
in various student activities against the master list of students
registered at the college.
What century are these guys in?
They have to have a printout of 21,000 students to cross-reference something?
What a lot of my professors also do is require that you put the last four digits
of your social security number on exams and homework assignments
so that they can more easily keep track of it, which is retarded.
Well, that's something else.
But what's – they have to print out 21,000 names and information?
Well, I'm assuming that as the attendance sheets and whatnot are printed out,
they have all this information on them as well.
All right.
Well, anyway, somebody had this huge printout of 21,000 students.
They left it on their desk for 10 minutes, and when the assistant returned,
the list was gone.
It contained students' names, addresses, social security numbers, phone numbers.
Unbelievable.
The cops are involved.
Homeland Security has gotten involved in this.
You know, I got to say to the people at National Community College,
you're not dealing with a terrorist act here.
You're dealing with some mischief maker, probably somebody like me,
who saw an opportunity.
No, believe me.
If this had presented itself to me when I was in college,
I definitely would have grabbed it.
I mean, everybody on campus.
It seems like a big chunk of paper.
Well, look for somebody who lifts weights and is carrying a huge package.
Depending on the number of people on a page,
it's probably less than a ream of paper.
It's not that much.
All right.
You obviously have some experience in this field.
I have no comment on these allegations.
Well, the point is let's not go too crazy here.
I'm sure somebody just took the thing thinking,
hey, this is an opportunity for me to be able to get everybody's information.
Now they've turned it into a big Homeland Security investigation.
The person is probably scared out of their minds.
So we make this offer, return it to us, hear it off the hook,
no questions asked, and after a suitable amount of time,
we'll give it back to the college.
That's fair, right?
And fingerprints.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll wipe the fingerprints for safekeeping.
But, yeah, you got to be careful with all sorts of things, even printouts.
Even printouts aren't safe.
We promise not to make a photocopy because we don't have that much paper around.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a waste of time anyway.
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
There was a similar act as to pity by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about a week ago.
They allowed or they improperly safeguarded a couple of computers up in Hazleton,
Pennsylvania, where one of these driver's license centers is.
And there were 11,000 driver's license records that were stolen from two laptops.
The laptops themselves were stolen.
This is names, pictures, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, all that stuff.
And it wasn't encrypted.
And so there's this huge investigation, and everybody at the whole Department of Motor Vehicles
is in damage control mode, and it's a big mess.
Bernie, if I remember that story correctly, didn't they also steal enough card stock
to make up something like 500 licenses?
Yes, and the actual driver's license printers, just like a desktop printer,
they print them.
So the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania now has had to change the design of their driver's licenses.
Wait a minute.
Does that mean everybody has to get a new license?
That remains to be seen.
But the spokesperson for the Department of Motor Vehicles of Pennsylvania
has said that they've made subtle changes in the design of the driver's license now
so they'll be able to tell, which obviously that doesn't make any sense
because there's millions of licenses already out there.
Right.
So they're just in damage control mode trying to put the best spin on this as possible
on a just egregiously stupid lack of security.
Why is this information on a laptop?
It seems not like the sort of information employees need to be carrying around.
I can tell you why.
Because these people have quote-unquote legitimate access,
and when anybody has legitimate access, they abuse it in different ways,
whether it's copying it to all kinds of devices,
whether it's looking up your friends and finding out their criminal records and things like that.
One thing, unauthorized access is bad, but authorized access is also bad
because people seem to have a license to do whatever they wish,
and lots of times it's incredibly stupid.
This is a continuously changing database, though.
It's not something that a snapshot of which would be even useful to the DMV.
I mean it's something that has to be continuously changing
and queries have to be done against the master database.
I'm not saying it makes sense that somebody would copy it to their laptop.
No, but they obviously had access to it and they did that.
Maybe they like to get their jollies at home by looking people up
and having their own little database that they can reference anytime.
We know very little about these laptops.
They could have been Wi-Fi enabled,
and it could have been just at the moment they were stolen that this became a static record.
They're being used in different parts of the office,
so they have to be semi-portable.
It could make sense up until you realize it could be stolen.
Well, I realize that the instant they do it, anything can be stolen.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist mentality.
Okay, speaking of homeland security and insecurity and things like that,
this is kind of crazy.
Without notifying the public, federal agents have assigned millions of international travelers,
including Americans, computer-generated scores
rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments.
I'm sure somebody with a laptop, though, has it.
The government intends to keep the scores on file for 40 years.
Now, these scores are assigned to people entering and leaving the United States
after computers assess their travel records, including where they are from,
how they paid for their tickets,
their motor vehicle records,
their past one-way travel,
their seating preference,
and what kind of meal they ordered.
Come on. This is getting insane.
They're actually defining whether or not you're a terrorist risk
if you sit by a window or by an aisle
or if you order the non-crappy meal as opposed to the standard one.
And we can't see this.
Probably an aisle would be best for terrorists.
Yeah, because you want to run up and start trouble.
I guess.
What kind of meal would be more primitive?
I always request a window.
A halal meal.
I always request a window because I like to watch out,
but apparently that makes me less of a terrorist.
Well, that's good.
Maybe. I don't know. I don't know how their scores are compiled.
Well, yeah, but if it's a window in an escape exit aisle,
you're there to block it, possibly.
Yeah, I suppose.
I think some Freedom of Information Acts are in order here
to find out what people's scores are.
I'd love to see what mine is. I really would.
Well, this is actually something that Rombaum talked about, right?
If it's held by a private company,
if it's a private company that's compiling these scores,
you would be able to—
Well, Homeland Security is not a private company.
Well, if they outsource it, if they outsource this information to—
It just seems like something that—
Well, if they outsource it, then I'm relatively confident
somebody's going to leave a printout of it lying someplace,
and one of our agents will come and get it at the right time, hopefully.
But, boy, this affects how many people?
Eighty-seven million people a year who enter the country by air,
and 309 million enter by land or by sea.
I don't know so many more enter by land or by sea,
but I guess that's everybody that comes back and forth
from Canada and Mexico and the ocean.
I think more by land than by sea these days.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, apparently also the names of vehicle drivers and passengers
are entered when they cross the border,
and Amtrak is voluntarily supplying passenger data
for trains to and from Canada.
Did you know that?
That's sweet.
I didn't know that.
Wait a minute.
Did they even—
Only the border agents looked at my passport,
and, of course, they interrogated me further,
but Amtrak never looked at ID for me,
so how would they—
Really?
Yeah, if they hadn't taken—
Reservations?
Ticket reservations?
I mean, I did it on a credit card.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, but I could have used a different name
on the credit card easily.
Well, yes, but they've reported something, I'm sure.
Okay.
Well, obviously, privacy advocates are not happy about this.
It's probably the most invasive system
the government has yet deployed
in terms of the number of people affected,
said David Sobel from the EFF.
Some individuals will be denied the right to travel
and many the right to travel free of unwarranted interference
as a result of the maintenance of such material.
Is that going to be something that's disclosed?
Like, you can't travel because your terrorist score is too high?
I don't know if they're going to say that,
or they're just going to come up with something else,
like, you know, we don't like the way you look,
or your name came up, or who knows?
I mean, this is this bizarre notion
that we've talked about before
that the government seems to have,
that there are some people who are so dangerous
that they cannot be allowed on an airplane
under any circumstances,
and yet they're not committing any crimes
for which they can be arrested.
And is it any better if they get on a bus or a train?
I don't—the whole thing makes no sense.
Yeah, have you ever—
you remember the argument reductio ad absurdum,
you take it to its absurd conclusion.
If you're so dangerous to the United States,
why won't they let you leave?
That's a good point.
Okay, now continuing with Orwellian
and British-type things and airports.
A system using fingerprint scanning
and face recognition systems,
which is designed to speed up passenger transit times
and increase security,
is beginning a trial at Heathrow Airport's
Terminal No. 3, so rush right on over there
and check it out.
The voluntary scheme, which is called MySense,
M-I-S-E-N-S-E,
it's going to be run for a year,
and passengers traveling from London to Dubai and Hong Kong
will be the first to play with this system.
Now, this technology,
according to the UK Home Office Minister,
could be crucial in helping Britain
to secure its borders in a more mobile age.
Participation in the scheme is free,
and enrollment only takes a few minutes.
Participating passengers are asked to scan
their passport photo page
and have a print taken of their index finger.
The information is stored forever
by UK Immigration Services.
After then checking in,
passengers can pass through a MySense automatic security gate
by placing their finger on a scanner
and inserting their boarding card into the reader.
This is incredible.
This is incredible.
There's also an enhanced version of this
called MySense Plus,
which requires participants to record all 10 fingerprints
and provide detailed images of their eyes and face.
And they also have to give their consent
for their data to be checked
against a criminal record database.
And then that information is then shared
between the immigration services in the UK,
United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong,
and is designed to identify those
who are deemed safe to travel.
Why would you ever participate?
There seems to be no advantage at all.
Here's the advantage.
In return for sharing all this personal information,
passengers are fast-tracked through immigration
at Dubai and Hong Kong
and on their return to Britain.
And in a second phase of the project,
a membership card holding biometric details
will allow travelers to speed through immigration
using special machines.
Oh, that's nice,
having a card with all of your biometric data on it.
How dumb do you have to be
to consent to something like this
just to save a little time?
This information is something that
who knows what they're going to do with this information.
It's permanent.
They're always going to keep your fingerprints.
Used to be you had to be a criminal
to get your fingerprints held by the government.
Now it seems everybody
is literally waiting in line to give fingerprints.
One of the things that bothers me
that no one seems to have mentioned
about scanning your biometrics or whatever
is this can be used against you.
Fingerprints, supposedly,
it's very difficult to generate
a false fingerprint somewhere,
although a few years back
a New York State trooper
was convicted of doing just that.
Biometrics, all you have to do
is tap into the machine
3,000 miles from anywhere you've ever been
and say, gee, you passed through here
and here's the proof.
Your index finger was scanned
and the person was this high
and it matched your iris
and all they're doing
is entering the electronic data
that you've scanned in somewhere else.
This is very disturbing but overlooked.
And, of course, this is, I guess, part of a trend
because I'm looking at a report from Maine
Sheriff's Office up in Eddington
that wants to offer iris scans
for all the children of the neighborhood.
They're reaching out to area schools
to scan pupils' irises
and basically they're sending parental permission slips
to all the parents
and hoping that everybody signs up.
They'll then be scanned into the system
and fingerprints of children,
according to this news story,
have been the main identifying tool
many agencies use
but fingerprints are often unreliable
so the Sheriff's Department,
thanks to a $25,000 grant
from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.
Now, who are these people
and what's their interest in children's iris scans?
Is it the author?
Yeah, that's his wife's name.
Wow.
The author of many, many books.
Cujo.
Pet Sematary.
Stephen King.
That's Stephen King.
The Langoliers.
Oh my goodness.
Okay, well, apparently he's got something in the works.
Well, he's from Maine.
Yeah, and now apparently
he wants to scan all the children's eyes.
That sounds like the plot of a novel.
I think so.
I think he's setting something up.
Anyway, that $25,000 grant bought an iris scanner
and associated software
to collect identification information
of school children.
And, of course, everybody is scared out of their minds
thinking, yeah, this is the only way
my child is going to be safe
is if all this information is kept
in a computer someplace.
If we get some kind of RFID thing
implanted in Junior's skin,
he'll be safe that way.
Well, I was actually reading, you know,
an article about this
and there were comments at the bottom
like most articles online these days
and there was a whole discussion
between people who presumably live in that area
and they were saying, oh, this is so great,
the government's finally doing something
to protect our kids.
And the whole pretext of the article I read, anyway,
was that they would use this data
in case the child is lost,
I guess so that the police know
that they found the right kid.
I mean, this seems ridiculous.
If you find a kid, how hard is it?
I mean, I can think of all sorts of
horrible unintended consequences.
Okay, suppose someone is a truly depraved child molester.
Ooh, you now find him, you know,
three years later with the girl in the basement,
and she's been blinded.
Because...
What?
So as to not match the irises.
Oh, yes, this is my daughter.
She's been blind since birth.
Okay, you really have...
You should be writing to Stephen King, folks.
I've had a fever earlier this week.
Obviously, it's done something to my brain.
Yes, hasn't broken yet.
Okay, and that's just a little tidbit
of some of the things going on in our wacky world.
We'd like to hear more.
If you have stories you'd like to share with us,
oth at 2600.com is our address.
We get lots of mail,
and let's go through a little bit of that right now.
Of course, we'll be taking phone calls, too,
at 212-209-2950 in just about 15 minutes or so.
Nope, 2900.
Oh, I'm sorry, did I give the pledge line?
You gave the pledge line.
What's wrong with me?
I must be in pledge mode for some reason.
You have my fever.
Wow, okay.
It's not like we haven't been giving that number enough anyway.
Yeah, no, it's setting in my mind.
212-209-2900, sorry.
I don't know what happens if you call the other number.
Okay, we had all kinds of responses to our show a few weeks ago.
We were talking about elections and voting and things like that.
Try to keep it to a minimum tonight
because there are so many other things to talk about as well.
But here's a letter from Foghorn.
My friends worked at a polling place in New Rochelle, New York,
before I came here to Penn State.
And back in New York,
we used the big mechanical machines you love so much.
Hey, I never said I love the machines, okay?
You gave that impression.
I love the machines.
Look, I said it to the Diebold people.
I said these machines we know and love.
I was being sarcastic in case that wasn't clear.
And if you saw me, I was like winking and doing all kinds of other gestures.
But the point, we'll get into a debate between mechanical and other things.
I'm going to review the tapes.
Yeah, do that.
At the end of the night, when you crack open the machine,
the rotors have a tendency to want to shift around.
They're pretty loose from all the years of use.
To get a good count, you need to insert a piece of tinfoil
to keep the rotors locked in place and keep them from moving.
During a rather touchy election a few years ago,
the Republican Party's poll watchers had a bad habit of forgetting
to put the tinfoil into the rotors before opening the panel,
thus making the count less accurate.
I have no doubt that such shady actions have taken place
at other polling stations as well.
While there's a possibility of hacking the new electronic voting machines,
I think that the polling place is set up to appropriately social engineer
the population to keep from mucking with the machines.
And even with the large amount of crooked poll workers,
there are usually a sufficient amount of large men with guns standing around
to keep them from doing anything untoward.
Keep up the good work, listen to you guys every week.
So, yeah, I guess the darker side of mechanical machines.
I mean, let's face it, there is no paper trail with the mechanical machines.
Basically, what you have is, I believe, Mike, you work with these things.
There's levers, and they have numbers that get displayed on little counters.
Yeah, it's basically an odometer inside that goes up
when the levers move left, right, and up and down,
and all the other ways they move.
Right. So, now, when the night is over, when the election is finished,
you basically have these numbers that are displayed.
Yeah, there's basically little windows that open up,
so you can see the odometer behind.
Okay. And then I imagine, I'm not part of this whole process,
so I don't know how it works, but I imagine somebody goes around
and writes down those numbers? Is that how it works?
Yeah, they write them down, and they call, and then...
Does somebody watch them write it down?
The way it's supposed to work is that in each precinct,
which is called an election district in New York,
there's supposed to be one person appointed by the Democrats
and one appointed by the Republicans.
You'll notice that this does nothing to ensure the rights of third parties.
No.
But, of course, in New York, there's not that many Republicans,
and so they sometimes can't find one, and they have two Democrats.
Why don't they just let the Greens do all of it,
and the Republicans and Democrats can sling mud at each other in full time?
I don't think that's a good idea.
Not that many of those, either.
All right, so basically, supposing somebody calls in the wrong number,
what prevents them from doing that?
Well, it does get checked.
There is an opportunity for representatives of all the parties, actually,
and I've actually done this as a representative of the Green Party,
to go visit the Board of Elections warehouse some weeks after the election,
and there's a printout of the numbers they've received,
and you can go around and compare with the actual machines.
Okay, but, I mean, on election night,
when somebody is actually on the phone to Election Central,
and they're reading numbers,
is anybody watching to make sure they're not just completely lying about it?
Well, the other party, there's two of them.
So what, they're both holding phones?
I don't know exactly how it works. They're watching each other.
Well, this doesn't cover the case that the email talked about,
which is that the rotors are loose.
What if someone just takes a spin at them?
Well, I don't know about that. I mean, somebody would see that,
but what you're referring to is mechanical problems with these old machines.
I mean, seeing that is just as likely as seeing any of the other scams that we're talking about.
You don't think somebody would notice if someone went to the back of the machine and hit something really hard?
How long does it take to do that?
I don't know.
But you see somebody tampering with obviously spinning the motors.
I believe what Foghorn said in the email is essentially that it could easily be a few numbers off, two or three.
That is significant, but it is not criminal.
Spinning the rotors is criminal.
Being off by a couple of numbers because you're sloppy is bad, but it's not really criminal in my opinion.
Well, here's another story that another listener sent us.
It comes out of New Brunswick in New Jersey, where you're from.
Every vote counts, but was every vote counted?
County clerks have the decisive function of certifying election results,
assuring that only the will of the voters delivered those elected to public office.
The trouble is electronic voting machines, including Passaic County's AVC Advantage machines manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems.
We saw them, right, NotKevin?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oakland, California is where they're from.
They tally votes with proprietary software that no county official can access.
That can leave a county clerk feeling uncertain even after an election is certified.
How do I prove that all of the votes have been counted correctly?
How do we determine whether the software is working properly?
We have to rely on the vendor and their software.
And I think right there, that to me shows the difference between the electronic system and the mechanical system.
One, okay, you have mechanical breakdowns and sloppy fraud possibilities.
Here you have secrets.
Here you have closed software that we can't look at, and who knows what's really going on.
You're not taking into account, though, that electronic voting machines can be made so that these problems don't exist.
Oh, they can be, but they're not.
These are horrible, horrible systems.
But they're not.
That's the problem.
They haven't been.
Well, they can be is the point.
Okay.
My point is until they are, I think we're better off with what we have now.
But see, that's not helping the situation because there's already a law, as far as I understand, in New York State that says that we have to make the transition to electronic voting machines.
You're not going to get that reversed because of federal law.
We should try to appeal that law in whatever way possible.
But it's not going to happen because somebody is going to end up looking very foolish if that law is repealed.
Oh, they're going to look foolish regardless.
But so the logical progression is, I think, to implement or at least demand the implementation of secure electronic voting machines.
Okay.
Well, here's the thing.
You have certain companies that have come forward and are presenting these machines.
We saw four of them at the demonstration, and I think they're the front runners.
I don't think you're going to get any other choices.
I think there's going to be one of those that we wind up with, and they're all proprietary.
Repealing the laws is one thing, but adding to it and demanding certain security features and the inclusion of some of the stuff that we've talked about on previous shows is certainly a lot more possible than going back to paper and pencil or mechanical voting machines.
Okay.
Paper and pencil.
That's an interesting point because some people have written in saying that paper and pencil is the way to go, and I think, Mike, you're one of the proponents of that.
I would say we should go forward to paper and pencil.
I don't know why Redbird's terming it as going back.
We used it.
We must have used that.
I never used it.
Back in the 1700s, I'm sure.
I don't know.
They didn't have pencils back then.
Yes, they did.
What did they have?
Here's what one of our listeners said.
Your last few shows have discussed the many different ways to cast ballots when you vote in the United States.
With all the confusion and reliability issues with these electronic voting machines, why do they keep using them?
I guess the obvious answer is to keep people from voting and fix elections so certain parties may win.
Well, that's a theory.
I live in Canada, originally from Newfoundland, and recently moved to Ontario and have voted in both provinces.
All the elections that I have voted in, either provincial or federal, have been cast with paper ballots.
You simply walk into the church, school, whatever, show a piece of government ID to the voting official who then confirms your address,
highlights your name on the list they have in front of them, and hands you a paper ballot.
From there, you walk over to a small table, which has something similar to a three-sided cardboard box placed on the table to maintain your privacy.
From there, you take the pencil provided and mark the letter X next to the candidate's name you are voting for.
After that, you fold it up and place it into a cardboard box back at the official's table and walk out of the building.
It's that simple.
So why would they want to use these computers that I'm sure cost thousands of dollars and create so much confusion for the general public?
Not to mention the fact that they seem to be totally hackable and easy to manipulate.
The pencil and paper that we use to vote with use no electricity, there's a definite paper trail,
and there is no confusion about how to use them.
However, if you are confused about using a pencil and paper to vote, you have some serious issues.
Thank you, Andrew, for that letter from Canada.
What do we have to say?
New York actually has all the apparatus you described of cardboard boxes and papers and pencils.
And they're there in case the voting machine breaks down.
There's a prize club near me.
I know where to get more.
No, no, no.
In your poll, where you have your big, clunky mechanical machine, in the back of the machine is paper and pencils and three-sided cardboard boxes for use as privacy screens,
and in case the machine breaks down.
So this is something that New York State clearly already knows how to implement.
Apparently.
Just to get back to the mechanical failure, these new machines that we saw, most of them took up a good size of a whole wall.
And some of them had rotating accesses, hydraulics, and huge touchscreen CVs that all seemed very prone to breaking.
What makes, I mean, if these lever machines have barely any mechanical problems, I think these are going to have a lot more.
I mean, these things are literally lifting two feet off the ground and then going down.
You can move them left and right, and the screens reverse, and all this crazy stuff.
I mean, I don't like mechanical failures any more than the next guy, but I will take a mechanical failure over something that's prone to fraud any day because at least mechanical failures will be sort of neutral.
But I think the electronic voting machine concept, I'm not saying this is implemented now, but I think the concept has the potential to actually improve election security because you're eliminating all the stuff in the middle.
So you have some government agency that's counting all the votes that you presume is trustworthy, right?
And then you have the voter who you presume is the other trusted party that's casting the vote.
And if you implement encryption correctly and if you implement verification that all the hardware is not tampered correctly, which can be done, by the way.
It's just not done at this moment.
You can eliminate the fraud that's occurring because of poll workers and because of everybody in between you and where these votes are being counted.
So I think if it's implemented properly, there's the potential for more secure elections.
That's a very big if.
Even if it is implemented properly, these machines are more prone to breaking down than mechanical ones.
Well, that's another issue.
I mean, the machine not working and going to use another machine is a different concept than fraud.
Well, I think a lot of our listeners use computers, and a lot of us have had trouble with our computers.
How many of us have had trouble with our pencils that we couldn't fix quickly?
Sometimes they break.
Yeah, but then they sharpen them, all right?
Jim?
Redbird insists that with the electronic machines, it's another case of the government, like in all other voting systems, counting the votes.
The problem is they are not counting the votes directly.
There is that counting software, which is in all cases proprietary.
But it doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be.
Oh, I agree.
It does not.
But at the moment, it is.
I mean, counting is a pretty basic thing.
Why does it have to be proprietary?
You should be adding something to another something, and what's proprietary about that?
It's certainly software that doesn't have to be proprietary.
The problem is going back to these old systems is going to be harder than progressing to the electronic systems.
And I think that adding more controls to the electronic systems is probably the best way.
As we discussed before, in the electronic touchscreens, the paper trail is not as developed and untamperable as it is with the optical reader.
In the optical reader, the thing that's red is the ballot, and it exists afterwards.
It can be counted manually if you have to or want to.
Well, that's just a matter of the input device.
The input device, in that case, is a piece of paper, which is perfectly fine.
It's just the mechanism which the votes are counted with.
That has to be.
Yeah, and I found a lot of trouble with a lot of problems with the device that was being used to count the scanned paper in the machine I played with.
Yeah, it could be made better, but right now it's not.
And my only point is that until we have something that, yeah, we can all agree is good, is something that's open to scrutiny, moving ahead is a bad idea and something that is going to land us in a whole lot of trouble that we won't be able to get out of anytime soon.
So, yeah, we should try and stop this however we can.
Now, my question, though, is Canada, they've been doing this paper ballot thing, and everyone tells me, yeah, but that would never work in the United States.
Why wouldn't that work in the United States?
Don't we have the same basic offices people are elected for?
We have government.
We have elected officials.
How come they can do something in Canada that we can't do other than elect intelligent leaders?
There are two reasons for that, in my opinion.
One is the theory that Canada has only about one-tenth our population, so therefore they can do it much more easily.
No, wait, wait, because you have ten times as many people counting the vote then.
That's my counterargument, yes.
Your counterargument to yourself?
No, counterargument to this argument that other people present.
Oh, okay.
I thought you were presenting it.
Sorry.
Well, I'm presenting what other people present because they're not here.
The other argument is that people want to know what the vote was the night of the election.
Well, that's just what we've gotten used to so far.
They do that in Canada.
I've seen it.
The same night.
In fact, even if it's not, what does it matter?
When it took us a month to get the election returns in 2000, Canada had an election that in one night they had the answer.
But the point is, in our cases, the elections are in November.
People don't take office generally until at least January, sometimes later.
That's two months.
Yeah, but they've got to fire the staff and get a moving company and things like that.
You also have a lot more people to trust in this model.
If you have that many people counting the votes, there's a lot more people you have to trust.
But they're not being trusted for anything big.
You have to trust somebody that they can count 100 ballots correctly.
And then you have to trust somebody that they can count 10 tables worth, the sums of 10 people together.
It's a pyramid.
And as you get higher up the pyramid, what are you doing to –
It increases, but it doesn't increase arithmetically.
You're not adding one person for every one ballot.
I don't know.
I have a hard time –
I don't see a disadvantage to paper other than people thinking it's silly and backwards.
But it's really not.
Certain things in life, going analog, going very basic, low maintenance is the way to go.
Something as basic as voting and counting.
To respond to the trust issue that Redbird brought up, the solution is very simple.
You have people from each of the parties replicating the first step of counting.
You have someone for one candidate and someone from the other candidate watching over each other's shoulder.
It's what they do in recounts.
It's very easy.
And then once those numbers are published, anyone who feels like it can check the addition themselves.
Okay.
I thought you had mentioned flaws earlier in the show with that system.
I did find one flaw though with the paper ballot system.
What's to stop somebody from just plopping down a whole new box of ballots and saying,
yeah, this just came from over here in this district.
I mean what exactly stops someone from saying this box belongs and this box does not?
Is there a system?
What do you mean?
Well, I mean basically having more votes just showing up in the main counting area.
I think it's a box of paper that indicates how people have voted.
What's to stop somebody from just producing another box?
Well, the boxes are issued.
They don't just come in at the end.
Each precinct gets a box and they know how many boxes there are supposed to be and which boxes.
Do they know how many ballots are in each box?
Is there a method to prevent more ballots?
Yeah, because when you get checked off that you voted,
you can count the number of check marks and compare it with the number of votes in the box.
Is all this stuff actually done or is it just theoretical?
I've heard of this being done in elections in Africa.
It's not that hard.
Well, that's where they've had paper ballots that have been covered by the media in the last several months.
We could learn a lot from how smoothly some of those elections go too, I think.
Bernie, yes.
I was going to say, listeners may recall that I voted with a paper ballot in the last election,
and my paper ballot was a provisional ballot, and I voted with a paper ballot,
and it was inserted into an envelope that had a serial number on it.
And that envelope was inserted into another envelope which had my name and address information in it
because they had to look me up to be sure I was a registered voter, which I am,
but they still managed to screw it up.
In my case, there is a way to determine how many paper votes there are, supposed to be,
if they are serialized, and that's what was done in my case.
Or at least the envelopes into which each was inserted were serialized.
I think those of you who voted in the BAI elections, it's similar.
Bernie, were you ever able to check to see that your vote was counted?
Yes, and I imagine some of our listeners checked too.
My vote has still not been counted, and when I have time I will visit the Philadelphia Voter Registration Office
and ask for an explanation why.
I read the serial number and the URL off to our listeners, and I wonder how many of them checked on that,
but it says my vote has not been counted.
So a potential problem with the paper ballot system, votes do not get counted.
Well, we don't know if the other ones were counted, but that's true.
That's true. At least you know sometimes it's kind of a system.
Okay, one final letter on the topic.
When voting a few weeks ago, I took a chance to examine the machine carefully.
Besides noticing an Ethernet port on the top of the machine,
I also noticed what appeared to be an unexposed compact flash card sticking out of the top of the machine,
totally unlocked and unprotected.
The machines were not networked together as far as I could see.
Besides the obvious danger of someone swapping out the software or results on the flash card,
it seems strange that no one even put a cover on it, much less lock it to the machine
so someone wouldn't just steal it for their digital camera or whatever.
From James in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Very good points there.
And I think as our listeners play around with these things,
they'll discover all sorts of potential wide open holes.
Okay, here's one final letter that's very interesting.
Then we're going to take phone calls 212-209-2900.
I work for the UK Passport Office.
I issue passports to first-time applicants as well as renewals and losses and damage.
For that reason, I ask that you not give my information out, which we're not going to do.
I've been away for a while, so I'm just catching up on past Off the Hook episodes.
I've just got up to speed with your comments about RFID and passports.
As of a few weeks ago, UK biometric passports have reached 100% rollout
two or three months later than planned.
The passports have an antenna and chip containing the usual personal information
as well as a digital copy of your photograph for use with facial recognition software.
To ease people's minds as to what information is stored on the chip,
free RFID readers are being provided at all seven offices spread across the country
for people to come in, scan their passports, and see what is held on this chip.
Isn't that nice?
This service is new, so I haven't been able to ascertain how monitored these readers will be
as it presents a huge threat to someone who has their passport stolen.
I am also still trying to find out whether or not what the reader shows is actually all that is on the chip.
I doubt it is.
Another abomination coming in the near future is that everyone who wants a passport
will have their application processed in the same manner,
establishing citizenship and right of abode, etc.,
and they will then absolutely have to attend an interview in order to get their passport.
I don't quite know their reasoning behind this, nor what kind of questions will be asked.
There are also plans in the works for the National Identity Register,
whereby from 2008, every applicant's details will be entered onto a centralized database.
This already happens, and records are never destroyed.
I assume the only difference with this new database is that it will be easier
for the police and other authorities to access.
Everyone with a passport will also be obliged to notify the passport office of any changes,
such as address and personal details.
We're not going to release this guy's name, obviously,
but wow, this is starting to sound like the old-style Soviet Union with their restrictions.
Well, I have a lot of questions for, let's call him British Passport Man.
First of all, we would love it if you could experiment with that reader
and see if it also reads credit cards or if it's just proprietary to the passwords,
because this could be an opportunity for crooks.
Just go with whatever you've got to your passport office and read it.
Something tells me that it's not going to read credit cards.
I hope not.
Because just like on the easy MetroCard system here,
the system that scans some RFID credit cards work,
other ones it just flashes a light and doesn't give you anything.
Well, he points out that someone who has stolen someone else's passport
can get the personal information of that person off the reader now.
So this could be interesting.
Can you just get the personal information by opening up the passport and looking at it?
Maybe there's more stuff on the RFID chip.
Yeah, if there's more information there.
But I think what this guy says, or this could be a woman too, we don't know,
is that there could be more information on there and they're not telling you.
And I think that's very likely.
Yeah, I mean, that's obvious, but who knows.
All of our calls disappeared somehow.
Something wrong with the phone.
We had calls and they all went away.
They seem to be transferring someplace.
I'm sorry. Try again.
212-209-2900.
We'll be taking phone calls as soon as they start coming in.
We can note that this is significantly different than the passports that we have here
because, well, as far as I know, there's no biometric data on any of the U.S. passports
that are going to be issued with RFID now.
And also we don't have a system of keeping track of addresses on the passport itself.
Not yet, but I'm sure something like that is in the works.
National ID cards, national health cards, who knows what they're going to come up with,
a reason to do this.
Well, you have to register your address and be your whereabouts known at all times.
I believe there is some data that they get from the photograph on the chip,
which is a form of biometrics.
Wouldn't it be something if they, just like terrorists are supposed to do,
they hid information inside the picture.
They hid data inside the actual picture.
And what, steganography?
They could do that.
The government could do that.
They don't need to, but they could.
Yeah, well, just to throw us off.
But we'll find out what they're really up to with the help of our listeners and readers.
212-209-2900.
Let's take a couple of phone calls.
And good evening.
You're on off the hook.
I know nothing about computers and machinery, but I'm still puzzled.
VAI-ites and radicals and leftists were so concerned about individual freedoms,
liberties, and protection of our rights and secrets.
But it seems like the people that are perpetrating these crimes are the very ones
who used to advocate the fact that we needed protection.
What happened?
People do change over the years, that's for sure.
But I think there's a base of people, whether they're new people or the same old people,
that know this is wrong, that know that it's ill-advised,
and are willing to reveal how it actually works and fight it when necessary.
May I ask you a question?
Take, for example, Google.
I think that's one of the biggest violations of our rights, but we sit back and enjoy it.
Or hang up and listen.
Okay, I'm not sure what you can really do about Google.
In the case of Google, it's the classic case of privacy invasion versus convenience.
I think the tradeoff for most people with something like Google is pretty clear.
Well, Google is not the government yet.
I mean, they're not coming in and forcing you to give information to them.
No, but it doesn't really matter because the government still has access to that data.
Yeah, but you don't have to use Google is my point.
You don't have to have a Gmail account.
And we've warned people about some of the risks of having something like that.
As long as you're educated, you know what to use, what not to use, how to use something safely.
But this is a classic argument in favor of the free market where as long as everyone has all the information they need, they'll make the right decision.
But the case is that people don't have all the information, and they don't have time to have all the information.
And so people like Google are able to just get all this information without everyone worrying about it.
I think this speaks to one of the points Steve made at his talk a couple of weeks ago that people just give all this information out on the net.
And that's the biggest resource for private eyes and law enforcement trying to track down people looking at their MySpace and their live journal entries and all sorts of other information that they just willingly put on there, the most private confidential things, their innermost thoughts.
And that's so much more effective than watching somebody, waiting for them to leave, and following them.
And we're just giving it all away.
So you have to think about that.
You have to think about it before you open up a web page that has all this private information about you on it.
All right, another phone call.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Yes, hey guys.
How you doing?
Listen, try to program in some more quality...
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Try to program some more quality time because we want to have more feedback.
But big story, and hopefully next week or you can put something together, guys, but big story.
Speaking about the net, we have five big companies, British Petroleum of America, Walmart, and Applied Materials.
You know, I'm sure they're Fortune 500, five companies.
They are now asking employees to sign up to put their medical records on the net.
And the nightly business report, you know, they had the official saying,
oh, this will help us with, you know, wrong prescriptions and, you know, the reasons for it.
But then somebody came on and said, well, hey, do you think that if you suffer from chronic illnesses
and you're costing your employer more that they're not going to be looking at your medical records?
So it's almost time, you know, but please bring some information
because this is really connected to everything you're talking about tonight and a crucial issue.
And I'll listen over the air.
Thanks for your call.
Jim?
Well, this is another example of a federal law with somewhat unintended consequences.
There's a law that says now your medical records are supposed to be kept in electronic form
so that if you end up someplace else, the doctor at the location that you're at can access it.
And, of course, the most convenient way to do this is via the net, hopefully encrypted,
but apparently in a lot of cases not.
Just another opening for more information about you to be misused
or fall into the hands of somebody who may misuse it.
All right. Another?
I mean, the one thing that ever does have any data protection is medical records.
There are laws like HIPAA that mandate certain security measures be taken.
How effective this law is is something I don't know,
but it's the one place that you really have any privacy under the law.
Okay. Something's wrong with our phones because I just saw a whole bunch of calls all disappear at the same time.
I don't know what's going on, but if we only have one call came back.
We had a bunch before.
Okay. There's nothing, but they're showing up in weird places.
Maybe it's coordinated raids by the Feds against our listeners.
I think there's something wrong with the light bulbs inside the phone.
Let's go over here.
In the air.
Hi. I'm a little nervous.
That's okay.
I've been hearing about the dangers of RFID chips being scanned by some random crook passing by.
I was just wondering, wouldn't like a Maxwell cage prevent that?
You know, a card holder made out of a wire mesh included inside it
or just wrapping it in an aluminum foil or something?
There are a lot of devices like that.
During the fundraiser a few weeks ago, we had RFID wallets that we were offering.
RFID shielding wallets.
Yeah. RFID. I'm sorry. RFID shield. I guess I should clarify that.
But it sort of makes you wonder, so then what's the point of having something with RFID if you're constantly shielding it?
Yeah.
The whole idea is convenience and ease of use.
Maybe we don't really want that if we're constantly shielding it.
Well, it's one of those deals where they can do it, so they will.
That's the only reason I can think of.
That's how I feel about electronic voting machines.
They'll do it because, you know, they will.
Right.
And we can't really do anything to stop it, which is why we have to raise our voices.
All right. I was just wondering if that sort of thing would actually work
or if there's some reason that it wouldn't in this particular case.
Yeah.
It works very well.
Okay. Thank you.
It does. All right. Thanks for your call. Let's go over here.
Good evening. You're on the radio.
Hello.
Hi. Speak up, please.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes. I hear you fine.
Okay.
Where are you calling from?
Brooklyn.
All right. Brooklyn. Go ahead. You're on the air.
Okay. You know, I just had a quick thought based on the last discussion.
I wonder in countries like Canada where the government takes care of health care,
do the companies there even care?
I mean, it's not even an issue as to what your medical records are.
An issue as to what?
You know, it's not even an issue as to what your medical records are
because the government is in charge of that.
They're not going to see you as a liability, you know what I mean?
Okay.
So you think because the government is mining this database that we're not going to see more corporate interest in it?
No. I mean, I'm just speaking only about health care.
If in a country like Canada where the government takes care of health care,
the corporations don't even get involved because it's not even an issue, or maybe they do.
I don't know. I'm just posing a thought, you know?
I don't know enough about the Canadian health care system.
I imagine drug companies get involved probably more with the government.
It's not the drug companies he's referring to.
He's referring to your employer giving you health benefits
and them knowing whether or not you're a high risk for whatever,
them losing more money because you're ill all the time.
Or you had a chronic illness. It wouldn't even be an issue it seems, you know?
Well, if there's somebody from Canada who'd like to call in and talk about this, we'd love to hear it.
All right. Thanks for that call from what I suspect is a cell phone.
These phones, there's something wrong with these phones.
I mean, they're never this dead. There's something definitely going on.
Maybe we're not so good.
Maybe, yeah. Maybe nobody's listening anymore.
Maybe the authorities have gotten everybody.
Good evening. You're on the radio.
Hey, guys. How are you doing?
Good. How are you?
Listen, I have a question, two questions actually, but make them quick.
Do you have any experience with a program called Registry Mechanic?
I do not. Is there anybody in this room?
It sounds like something that you might want to ask the next show.
Yeah, the Personal Computer Show comes on after us.
Oh, I'm not on the Personal Computer Show?
No, you're on Off the Hook.
I'm on the tech show?
No, very close though. Thanks for your call there.
Good evening. You're on Off the Hook. Speak up.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead. You have a hum on your line.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead. Speak up, please.
Hi. I was wondering, you gave us information about passports,
and I called about renewing my passport,
and I found out that when people reply for passports,
all of the things are bundled to either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh,
and then they bundle them back to the center closest to where you live,
as many as they can hold.
But if it's like New York, the excess gets bundled to other places
where they have less of a load.
Okay.
And that only one of these centers at the moment is actually putting on chip.
One of 16 centers, I believe.
I think it actually might be Philadelphia that's doing that.
I just actually went through this process,
and mine is going to be processed in Philadelphia.
So as soon as I get my passport back, I will let you guys know.
Oh, and we can play with it. We can play with the RFID.
I don't remember which one, but it was someplace more obscure,
like Cincinnati or wherever, comparatively obscure.
We will find out shortly.
Yeah, we'll let you know. Thanks. I haven't heard a hum like that in years.
That's pretty bad.
Well, it reminds me of how the phones used to sound.
Sometimes they sound better. Sometimes they sound worse.
Of course, even if the chips are only in one center right now,
they'll be in all of them soon enough.
That's true. That's true. It's only a matter of time.
And our time is up, so I want to thank those people for listening.
Again, you can write to us, othat2600.com.
Emmanuel Goldstein for Off The Hook.
We'll see you next week, same time, same place.
Stay tuned for The Personal Computer Show.
Good night.
All over, take off all your
I know you're not open to me
It's been a long time
You never stopped to see me try
Today won't start again
All over, take off all your
How could you ever need this?
I still don't know why
Why you would keep me off your mind
Today won't start again
All over, take off all your
Can't seem to ever reach you
There's been a few times
I almost woke up in your arms
Today won't start again
All over, take off all your
I know you're not open to me
It's been a long time
You never stopped to see me try
Today won't start again
All over, take off all your
How could you ever need this?
How could you ever need this?