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And here at WBAI in New York, it's time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
On Diddly Bump, but the best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
On Diddly Bump.
And Good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Immanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening
Joining me tonight, over there is Jim.
Hello!
What are we, barking like a dog today, Jim?
I said hello!
You barked at the whole listening audience.
I'm sorry.
If anyone took that personally, I apologize.
Redbird, hopefully immersive-alized.
Can you say anything at all?
There you go.
Okay, good.
Arseny.
Hello.
And Mike over there.
Hi.
Other side of the room is not Kevin.
Yeah, hello.
And down in Philadelphia is Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Well, guys, we made it in tonight.
I don't know how we're supposed to talk about this,
but basically we have a brand new system in the building.
I don't know where people come up with these ideas,
but to get into the building now you have to be on the computer.
There's a computer that stores the name of everybody
that comes into the station.
And whether you're a guest or a host or I don't know who else,
you have to be already entered into the computer and...
On the list.
On the list.
That's the hard part.
The problem is not that you have to go in the computer.
The problem is you have to go in the computer in advance.
Yeah, so you log into this computer
and basically you have to put your name in
or have somebody at the station put your name in.
But the thing that strikes me about that,
the old system basically you showed ID
and you said where you were going
and it's like most other buildings in New York.
I don't know if this is something that's happening
all over the city,
but we have some kind of computerized system
where your name then gets entered into the computer.
It's called a request.
I guess it could be denied.
And then when you show up,
you just give the name and they let you in
because your name is already in the computer.
Did you show ID?
I showed ID because I didn't know I wasn't supposed to show ID.
Because we're trained to do it.
No, I did show ID.
You did.
Okay, well, Mike, you didn't show ID.
No, I didn't show ID.
You just spelled your name and they let you right in.
There's a new guy down there too.
There's a new guy down there.
They've purged the old people, the old system.
Everything is different.
I like the old people.
Me too.
But the thing that bothers me about this,
the thing that worries me is what's going to happen
if someone gains access to this system
or maybe somebody already does have access to this system.
We have all kinds of shady people coming in and out of the station.
Most of them are us,
but all sorts of people that,
well, let's just say the folks over at DHS,
Department of Homeland Security,
might be very interested to know
who's coming into the station and who's not.
I mean, maybe they don't care.
But the point is,
it's a bit of information that's out there now
that wasn't out there before.
So someone comes in to talk about government policy,
to complain for an hour about something that's not fair,
or to reveal something,
reveal a story that nobody knows about,
they would know this person's name
and maybe some more information too.
And when they came into the station,
and who authorized them.
Yeah, that is a very big danger.
But I also see a way around that,
which is in itself a security flaw.
Mike, when you came up,
you said you spelled your name, correct?
Yes, I spelled it correctly.
He spelled it correctly.
No, no, no, no, no.
Adverbs, Jim, adverbs are very important.
I know the difference between the phrase,
you spelled your name, comma, correct,
and you spelled your name correctly.
Well, you didn't say comma.
How are we supposed to know there's a comma there?
You have to speak the word comma
if you expect that to be conveyed, Jim.
Anyway, back to this.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
We have now access to the generation of the list
that will be used in the future when we come upstairs?
Question mark.
Question mark.
Take it.
Yes, I think so.
I don't really understand your sentence,
but I can interpret it correctly.
In other words, you could enter anyone's name
who might be coming up here,
like, for example, Kevin Mitnick, correct?
If he's coming, which I don't think he is.
He was in Columbia last night.
You could put his name on the list.
But you raised an interesting point.
What if we have the...
What if he's been suborned?
You just had to use that word, didn't you?
I like it.
All right.
What if we have the dark demon coming up here or something
who's going to show us the latest tricks
in phone technology,
and he doesn't want to be known
as actually coming here to the station
to reveal this interesting bit of information?
In other words...
Now he has to give his real name,
be in a computer,
which is accessible by God knows who,
and there's no secrecy anymore.
Well, I have an experiment that we can try.
Go ahead.
I have a piece of ID that says Jeopardy on it.
Uh-huh.
Put that down as the name.
Let's see if I can get in next week with that ID.
Okay.
And I should point out,
this is not station policy.
This is building policy,
and who knows who dictates what the building policy is.
It could have come down from our new independent mayor.
Who knows?
It could have come down from anybody.
Not Kevin.
Well, I was just going to say
you don't have to put down your real name.
You can put down anything.
Maybe.
Maybe they check a database.
What database?
I don't know.
A database of real names.
Well, I guess we'll try some other names.
We shouldn't be conspiring on the air
as to how we're going to get around our own security,
but it's just interesting.
I'd like to know.
Yes, Bernie.
I just want to interject.
Whoever, whatever government authorities
that might have an interest in who is a guest
on this show anonymously,
they wouldn't have to have access to the system.
All they would have to do is get a subpoena
and get access to the entire database.
Yes, but as the Bush administration
has shown us many, many times,
getting access by subpoenas,
it's a real pain in the ass,
and they'd rather skip that stage.
They'd rather just go and get the access
without even telling anybody,
and I think we've made it a lot easier
for them to do that.
Is that a segue into the story that I'm holding?
It could be.
What story is that?
This is a story many people want to know about.
This is from last Thursday's Washington Post,
and the title is,
FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped
in Collecting Data.
And you mentioned when that story came out
that all the news always seems to happen on Thursday.
Yes.
That's kind of odd, isn't it?
It's a conspiracy, I think,
but last Thursday they did an audit,
an internal FBI audit found
that the Bureau potentially violated
the law or agency rules
more than 1,000 times
while collecting data about domestic phone calls,
emails, and financial transactions in recent years.
And what's interesting is that
they found 1,000,
let's be generous and call them errors,
when they just audited 10%
of the total requests.
Yeah, but Mike,
if they're auditing a billion attempts,
1,000 isn't that many.
How many actual times did they do this?
There were 19,000 letters
seeking 47,000 pieces of information.
So this is a 10% sample of 19,000
would be 1,900 letters.
Wait, you're saying out of 1,900 letters,
1,000 of them overreached?
Overreached.
Some could overreach more than once.
That's more than half.
Well, not necessarily,
but sometimes it was a mistake.
If they said, hey, Verizon,
give us this guy's calls for April,
and Verizon was like,
you know what, take the whole year while you're at it.
So that one's not the FBI's fault,
but many of them are the FBI's fault.
And this is an internal investigation?
Yes.
So imagine if you had the ACLU or somebody do this,
or EFF or somebody like that.
Wow.
And you know why this happens?
Because there's absolutely no oversight.
It's almost too obvious to say.
Something else that happened,
I believe this happened on Thursday too,
AT&T announced their new attempt
to battle internet piracy.
I almost said privacy,
which is basically the same thing as far as they're concerned.
They're going to work with
Hollywood studios and recording labels
to devise technology.
They haven't yet made it up, but they're going to.
That identifies offshore content
pirates who use this network
to upload illegal copies of movies
and music. Details remain sketchy,
but the effort obviously
worries privacy advocates who fear
the San Antonio-based company.
Yes, AT&T is San Antonio-based.
Did you know that?
From a beat cop monitoring which websites
customers visit and what computer files
they share.
Well, it's battling piracy.
Should we be concerned and worried about this?
It's to protect us, isn't it?
AT&T is just going to lose half their customers.
You think? They're just going to go someplace else?
Well, if they start blocking all sorts of websites,
if they have a choice, they're just not going to use AT&T.
Who uses AT&T to access the internet?
I do.
Occasionally through my cell phone.
Through your cell phone, yeah.
Well, you have to remember AT&T
is the company formerly known
as PacBell, which is the
CLEC in large parts of the country.
I thought they were the company formerly known as BellSouth.
Whatever they're called.
So in large parts of the country, AT&T is like
Verizon, and the people who don't know any better
just got their DSL from them.
Which is a lot of people.
Now, another story that happened this week
concerns DSL,
what AT&T is offering known as Naked DSL.
And I believe
that it was as low as $10 a month
to have AT&T DSL.
If you're in certain states,
and this is because of some kind of a takeover,
I think this had to do with the BellSouth thing,
I've looked into this a little bit more since then
and apparently it's not really that much of a savings.
In fact, there was one site I looked at
where they said the savings is about only $1 a month
from some other company.
Does anybody understand what this is all about?
They're offering it only to certain states
as a result of merging with another company.
Well again, this is the states where
I'm sorry, I said see like, I meant I like
the incumbent carrier,
which is like Verizon in New York.
And in some states, it's AT&T.
And if you're in one of those states
apparently,
if you're in one of those states
and you have a phone line from them
and I think if you don't already have DSL from them
there's a whole host of conditions
then you can get DSL for $10 a month.
I called them.
Yeah, you called them, Bernie.
I wanted to see what kind of connections
the customer service rep would go through
if I called to request this $10 a month
naked DSL service.
Did you call it naked DSL when you were on the phone with her?
I did refer that to her
and that sent her to another tizzy.
But it's not a naked DSL service.
No, it's not
because you have to have phone service too with it.
Ah, okay.
But in any case, I referred to it
as I read it in an article that I read online.
And it took about 20 minutes
for her to research it
and get back to me
after several times being put on hold
that it met the certain conditions
had to meet the certain conditions
that you described already.
It only applied to 22 states
where BellSouth was the incumbent local exchange carrier
and a whole host of other requirements
that I already had a phone line through them
etc., etc., etc.
But I was disappointed at that point
and thanked her and hung up.
But it took 20 minutes to find this out from AT&T itself.
And you won't really find it on their website either.
No, they hide it.
Amazing.
Alright, so AT&T,
bad guys of the week, I think.
I bought the century
on this show.
Well, the state of Ohio is
trying for that honor.
This is an incredible story.
A backup computer storage device with the names
and social security numbers of 64,000
state employees was stolen
from a worker's car last Sunday.
And basically
they say they don't believe worker privacy is in jeopardy
because you need
special equipment
to access the information.
What kind of special equipment do you need
to access a database exactly?
A computer.
It's already on a computer.
You clear that hurdle
and then what?
But then they go on to mention
that the employee
who was an intern mistakenly left
the device in a vehicle parked outside
a device that was supposed
to be taken into his home
as part of a protocol, a backup
protocol in place since 2002.
Why does an intern have access to this?
The way they're supposed to do it,
they're supposed to take the information about
64,000 state employees and keep it
at their houses. That's their backup scheme.
Does anybody see something
wrong with this?
Can't the state of Ohio afford a safe deposit box
somewhere or something?
I just read this and I was blown away.
Every week somebody loses
10,000 or 100,000 or a million
data files
with private information in it.
But to admit that this is your plan
to give everybody these devices
and have them keep them at their homes,
do you think maybe they might make copies
with special equipment at their homes
of this data that all kinds of
identity problems could result?
I could just imagine the conversations at the office.
Hey Dave, it's your turn to take
the backup copy home this week.
How does this work? This is insane.
If we did this, if anybody did this,
we'd be labeled as completely incompetent.
But they keep it secret. We don't find out
about their schemes until something like this happens.
It seems
almost like the state of Ohio's
only concern is that they
would completely lose this data.
That they wouldn't have access to it anymore because they lost all copies
of it. They seem to be only concerned about that
and not about the privacy and integrity
of the data so that it wouldn't get into the hands
of ne'er-do-wells.
Right. They do not have faith in their own
system. They imagine they're going to delete the whole thing.
So, oh, thank God
Charlie has a copy in his garage
someplace and we can call on him
to bring it in. It's true we fired him three years ago
but I'm sure he'll cooperate and give
us that information. Even if you think this is a good
system, why an intern?
Why not at least the head of the department?
Because an intern probably won't ask questions.
I won't say
this is a ridiculously stupid idea.
Alright, state of Ohio. If you're a state
employee in Ohio, I guess you have something
to worry about now, right? Probably
we're picking on Ohio, it's only because
they got caught. But probably every single
state does something like this and probably a lot of
companies do too and probably a whole
mess of universities.
It's sad. Okay,
we found out this as well. If you're
in Sydney, Australia
guess what? You're going to be getting a visit from
President George W. Bush. He's not going to be coming to your
house, don't worry about that. But he is going to be coming to your city
and when he does that
you will have a lot of trouble
making cellular phone calls
because mobile phone calls
will be blocked by a sophisticated
counter-terrorism measure
to prevent bomb attacks
because we all know bomb attacks
are
done by cellular phones.
There's no other way. The President's
motorcade will be shadowed by a helicopter
equipped with signal jamming equipment.
Terrorists have used mobile phones
to detonate remote-controlled bombs in Iraq
and in the second Bali bomb attacks.
It is expected
what if they just use matches?
It is expected mobile phone calls
will drop out in an area the size of a
football field as the helicopter passes
overhead.
The technology was first used by the U.S. President
when Bush attended the APEC summit
in Busan, South Korea back in
2005. I got to say
this thing
seems to be just using this as a matter of habit
that this is how people are going to be
protected. But what's interesting is that
with a skilled
electrical engineer you can probably design
or not probably, you can design
circuitry that can detect the jamming equipment
and set off a bomb that way.
I mean you could actually use their jammers
to determine when
the President is in range.
Or you can use any number of ways
to detonate bombs that people have used over
the centuries. You don't need cellular phones
to do this. Do you think there's some other
agenda here that they're not telling us
as to why they want to cut off communications?
It just seems so
silly to do it this way.
I find it credible that they are stupid enough
to think this will somehow protect the President.
It's not just
manual. I don't think
it's just to prevent
the possibility
of someone using
a cellular phone connection to
remotely trigger a bomb.
I don't think they want
the White House Communications Agency
in the United States is responsible for
monitoring and
disrupting communications
in the area of the President's
physical presence.
And they don't want anybody
communicating on cell phones
around the President in a hostile environment
like another country. Passing messages
back and forth you mean? Exactly, that sort of thing.
They don't want to say, hey he's over here
or he's on his way, he's coming
get ready, that kind of stuff.
I think they're trying to jam that as well.
I agree, it's really stupid
to think that this is going to prevent
setting off a bomb remotely. There's so many other
methods that could be used
that this is ludicrous. Well, the thing is
it's not just going to be used when
the President is in town. It's going to be used every time
there's a demonstration, anytime
you want crowd control. This is a test.
This is a test of the system to see
whether or not they can control
the cellular phone calls
in a region the size of a football field
or maybe one day the size of a city.
And I just think it's absurd
when you think of a situation
where all sorts of unrest
might be happening, that's when you need to make phone calls
where you need to get help to certain people perhaps
or, I mean
I just think it would be amazingly ironic
if the cops and law enforcement weren't able
to communicate because of this very thing.
Or civil protest.
What about a civil protest where people are
legally protesting, say in the United States
or another country, yet the
protesters can't communicate with each other to coordinate
their legal protest
and exercise their free speech.
This could be used to stifle
or to stomp on
free speech rights. Well, remember when our
layout artist, Shapeshifter, was arrested
during the Republican convention in 2000
they based the entire
case against him on the fact that
they saw him talking on a cellular phone
while he was walking the streets of Philadelphia.
Thereby, he was one of the organizers
because he was talking to somebody else
actually he was talking to me because I had just come into town
I wanted to know where he was
and we were basically
apparently plotting the destruction
of God knows what with a cellular phone.
So they're very scared of communication.
This should tell you the importance of communication
and why it's so essential
that we figure out ways to
stay in touch with each other
that are backups for the
existing systems because they will try to turn those off
when things hit the fan.
Speaking of blocking
communications
here's a company I never heard of before
Cell Antenna Corp. Ever hear of them?
Apparently they make
antennas and they make repeaters.
They have asked the FCC
to permit first responders
to use jamming equipment
to prevent terrorists from using cell phones
again to detonate bombs known as
improvised explosive devices.
What?
This is incredible. Now a private company
wants the ability to do this. It was inevitable.
If they're first responders, wouldn't that mean the explosion
already happened? That's a good point.
I guess you can tell by the look in
somebody's eyes that they're about to detonate something
so that's when you want to turn off the cellular phones.
I don't know how they expect to be able to have
this knowledge. Just to
elucidate for not Kevin
no, generally after you have the first
explosion, which isn't always necessarily
detonated by cell phone, you have another guy
watching and waiting for the
first responders so when they go past
the second bomb
site, that's when they set off the second bomb.
Don't you also have the person trapped under rubble who wants to alert
people that, hey, I'm here, please rescue me
and he has a cell phone? Right, right, right.
So what do you do about him? Maybe only friendly
cell phone calls will get through.
Seems like a company who's trying to find a way
to get more business. Well, they're in
Carl's Sprints, Florida?
Is that a town? Carl's Springs?
No, it says Carl's Sprints here.
Sprints. I'm sorry.
They said they decided to
petition the agency for the rule change after
the 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals
rejected on jurisdictional grounds
as challenged to a law allowing only
the federal government to interfere with wireless
communications. So they're annoyed
that only the federal government can interfere with wireless
communications. They want to be able to do it too.
I mean, I can sort of understand
but come on. It's another product that they're
going to be able to sell because it'll become
legal if that's the case and
right now it's not. Well, Howard
Melamed, Cell Antenna's CEO
says the following,
Oh my god.
This guy really
believes this too. That's the amazing part.
So these guys are going to be carrying around these cell phone
jammers and showing them to their friends
and having fun in restaurants and on, you know,
buses. Hey, I resent that. It kind of sounds familiar.
I resent that. First of all, my cell phone
jammer only works in a very small
area, okay? These guys, who knows
what kind of jamming possibilities
they'll have. But yeah,
you're right. One person is going to
have it. I mean, one fireman will
say, hey, we got to turn this off. This guy looks
suspicious and somebody else will say, well, no,
not really. I need to make a phone call now.
It's going to be mayhem. It's going to be mayhem.
We should accept that. I mean, somebody could explode
a bomb by waving at
somebody else who then has the
detonator in his hand and you're communicating
in that way. How do you prevent that?
There's always going to be a way to detonate something.
I'll tell you how to prevent that. You just increase the amount of
pollution in the air so that they can't see the guy
waving his hand from far away.
Okay. You thought that was the most annoying bit
of technology to rear its ugly
head this week. No, you'd be wrong.
Statistics show that driving
while talking on the cell phone increases
the chance of an accident by
400%. Those are statistics,
all right. Though, speaking
on the cell phone while driving is not a crime
in many states as of yet.
Taking into consideration the statistics, it will
eventually be banned in all of the states.
A new company known as Highway and
Safety Control is
releasing a device to automatically
detect drivers talking on their cell
phones and instead of police officers
needing to observe a cell phone in use,
the system automatically detects a cell phone
call and records which
car was making the call.
Oh, it gets better. Already in use
in a few European countries, the system will make it
to the US this fall. It's designed
to detect, identify
and cite drivers who break cell phone
laws and
the company attaches
a paint gun to mark the car
or even an EMP gun that can disable
the offending cell phone. Everybody
wants to disable cell phones. I can understand
wanting to disable cell phones, but
a paint gun on your car, my God, can you imagine
a reaction to that? Isn't it still
legal to make hands-free cell phone
calls in most states? Apparently, but
I don't know if this... Can this detect
the difference between the two? Well, here's
another difference it can't detect.
What if you're riding with someone?
How is it going to tell the difference between the
driver making a cell phone call
and the passenger making a
cell phone call? Are you serious about the EMP? That's what it says.
Oh, come on. That's what it says.
I can't tell you the story. I think this is an excellent
product. It seems like a fake site.
Is it a fake site? Well, if so, then
I'm happy to
alert people to something that could happen one day.
It looks real to me. Yes, Bernie, go ahead.
What if you're in a convertible
and you shoot the paintball
and it hits you in the eye
and it causes a huge accident and people get
killed? It's for your own safety, Bernie.
Okay. I think
whether or not this is a joke, it's
not something that is beyond the realm of possibility.
People want to disable these things.
They want to become increasingly
obnoxious in doing so.
I mean, we've seen cars with the big stickers
on the windshield because they parked illegally and it's
impossible to get the stickers off and they certainly cause
a problem. I've seen people trying to drive with
stickers on their windshield.
This sounds like the UK cops that crush your cars.
They're destroying
your cell phone with the EMP and
they're destroying your paint job with the paintball gun.
I think this is a brilliant plan.
Mike doesn't get a vote
in these issues.
Only one person gets a vote
and that's Sheldon Silver,
but moving on.
When people start firing back with other paint guns,
that'll certainly
cause commotion.
Not Kevin's into paint guns.
Are you? Okay.
I've always wondered,
Emmanuel, why people don't...
I would never do this myself, but all these red light cameras
and surveillance cameras
could be easily taken out of commission
with a paintball gun just by
covering the lens with paint
from a good distance if you're a good shot.
I'm curious how often
this happens and why more people aren't
taking advantage of this opportunity. Not that I ever would.
Well, wouldn't they catch you doing that?
Well,
the red light cameras only trigger when
they detect that you're going through the red light.
So that
would be an opportunity for people to
cover the lenses with paint
while the light is green.
And there's other situations, too, I guess.
You could wear a mask or whatever, but I'm not suggesting
this by any means. I'm sure
Google Maps will somehow catch you
and you'll be reported in that way. Oh, and by the way,
speaking of Google Maps,
we did have somebody who wrote in
to us, Zachary,
somewhere in
the States. He's 14 years old.
He wrote to us listening to the show on
the 13th and heard about Google
Street View, so I played around while listening to the show and
found some very creepy, interesting, and slightly perverted
images. And, by the way, I also found
a picture of a dog and its owner.
And he sent us the picture. We asked
somebody to send in a picture of a large
dog, and Zachary sent
us a picture of two large dogs.
In fact, they're both standing on two feet, fighting with
each other. It's an amazing picture. Apparently, it's
some kind of a dog run in Berkeley. If you go to
1826 Hearst Avenue,
H-E-A-R-S-T, in Berkeley,
and zoom in, you'll see those two dogs
in the park. And we got other people riding in
with dogs, too. It was simply
incredible. I can't believe people
are finding things so fast on
Street View. Emanuel,
Jennifer wrote in
also. She had
just coincidentally
emailed her from an inquiry she'd made
like a month ago about devices
that would keep her phone from ringing
if it was a number that she'd blocked
into a device or something. So I emailed her a response to that
when I finally found the information. It took me a long time.
But anyway, right after I emailed her,
she emailed back saying, were you folks asking
about looking for a big
dog using Google Streets? And we said,
yes. I said, yes, even though I wasn't on the show last
week because I had to work.
So essentially, just as a lark, she punched in her
home address,
where she used to live, and there was a big dog in the
intersection. And she just totally freaked
out. And it's like,
you know, that it was like
more than a coincidence or something.
He was in the intersection? He was in the middle of the street, you mean?
Well, it was actually crossing the street.
And I still shot of that,
obviously. But she was so
freaked out that I said, yes, we were looking for
anyone who could find a big dog
using Google Streets. So she, like,
right after she got that email from me,
she punched in her former address
and sure enough, there was a big dog
walking across the street. And she
just sort of had this strange mental
experience that, you know,
suddenly there's a big dog there.
We didn't tell you, Bernie, but we went out
after the show to a lot
of correspondence houses with a big
stuffed dog and put it there waiting
for the Google Maps van to
come by. Actually, you know, it's not a Google van.
It's a car. A car, I'm sorry.
What I want to do is I want to make a fake Google
car and just
imitate the camera and drive around, just
see what people do.
They've already done that for a commercial in the
1960s. Show us your larks.
Okay, well, that's
fascinating stuff. But I have a new challenge
for people out there with Street View. And by the way,
if you don't know what we're talking about, maps.google.com
they've taken pictures of
entire cities, every single block,
every single building it seems,
and a lot of people walking around. It raises all
sorts of privacy issues. If you're,
say, walking with somebody that you're not supposed to
be talking to or someplace you're not supposed to
be, it's very possible you could get busted
because the Google car with the camera comes by
and takes a picture of you and anybody in the world
can look at it. Last week we asked people to
send us intersections or
streets that had dogs walking down the street.
I imagine there's all
sorts. When you photograph all of New York City,
what other cities are there? The Bay Area?
The Bay Area. I think they did
Las Vegas. Eventually they're going to do
everything. That's scary. Because that's
Google's motto. Eventually we'll do
everything. But walk down the street in New York.
You see a million cameras anyway all over the place.
Can you access them from
your home and see what they see? Does it matter?
I don't know. That's the question.
I think a caller last week hit it on the
head. They're doing this for commercial purposes.
And when you take pictures of people for commercial purposes
it's different than taking a tourist
picture and showing it to people.
They're not selling a product, but they
actually are because they are somehow going to make
money at this.
They are using your
image, using your license plates on
your car, using the way
your home looks. I don't know.
I find it fascinating, but I also find it a little bit troubling.
But anyway, my challenge for this
next coming week, since
people are able to find just about everything,
and it's not nearly as nice,
I want someone to find a dead animal
that pictures a road
kill or something like that. Because if you're driving around
you see it enough, a squirrel, a raccoon,
maybe even a dog, or certainly a
human would qualify, but
I don't know. I don't know how good Google is as far as
finding things like that. If you work for Google
and you kill an animal just for this,
you don't qualify. However, if you kill
a co-worker for this...
I don't think they're that up to date.
I don't think they're out there right now uploading
and we'll see images from
yesterday on this thing.
It's probably like a year old, a couple of years old.
No, it's like a few months old.
The place I work now,
there used to be a parking garage
or something, and now
it's not there anymore, but on Google
it is. They only did that
like 8 months or 6 months ago.
I should be able to tell how old it is from my street
because they've been building a couple of buildings.
What if people, everybody
just unites and puts up signs
that says, Google sucks, and everybody
will see
pictures. Of course, that sort of changes
the way our cities look.
Everyone's going to have Google sucks on their
front building.
It could be some fun.
It's all about having fun.
Another person wrote to us
we were talking about GPS last week
and cars. The first generation
does use radio
direction finding techniques.
In my area, four antennas are mounted
on the police vehicle
and by using different antenna combinations, the relative
direction can be determined.
Currently, a GPS receiver
is combined with the low jack
transmitter. It sends the location
of the vehicle to the cops.
The amusing part about this is
the amount of effort the local cops
use when they get a low jack hit.
I've never actually seen this, but I wonder if the officers
who find a stolen car get some kind of reward.
They don't put this amount of effort into the usual calls.
That's Gary
who wrote in with that.
They're startled when they see the low jack detector
go off in their car.
I did see a low jack hit on cops once
which was fascinating.
Manual, I should interject.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Go ahead.
Most of these low jack
transmitters you pay for
and then also pay a monthly fee for
to have installed in your car.
Don't send your GPS coordinates.
Just send a beacon signal
that will trigger
a receiver in a police car
which are given away free
to police departments around the country
by the low jack corporation
so they can sell more of these little transmitter things
to people like you and me.
Keep your car from getting stolen.
When your car gets stolen, you call low jack
and they turn on
a powerful transmitter
that triggers your thing in your car
to transmit a beacon signal
and the police who happen to be driving by you
will hear a beep, beep, beep
and they see a display
above their dashboard
like a directional display
showing which direction the stolen car is.
You've got to be pretty close to it.
The newer models that just came out recently
also transmit GPS coordinates
to the GPS receiver
where you can actually tell the police
the car is at this intersection or near this intersection.
But most of them just transmit
a beacon signal that will just
send a beeping signal
to the cops near you.
That signal is broadcast, I believe,
on 173.0750 MHz.
Does that sound familiar to you, Bernie?
I believe that's the frequency.
That was it, yeah.
If you have a police scanner
at home, it's a fun experiment
just to tune into one.
In fact, I was at Redbird's place
just last weekend
and we tuned into that frequency
and we were actually listening to low-jack transmission.
And might it have sounded
something like this?
Sound familiar, Bernie?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you take the antenna off your scanner
and drive around,
if you pick up
if you pass by
a stolen car,
you'll know when you pass by a stolen car.
If you have the antenna on, it's going to pick up stuff from far away
and you won't know that you're that close to it.
But if you take off the antenna, you'll only be able to hear
that if you turn the squelch all the way down
on your scanner receiver.
Now, what we just heard, is that what's transmitted
when the car is stolen, or is that just transmitted all the time?
No, only when the car is stolen.
It's kind of like
in your car, it's like a paging receiver.
You know those pocket pagers back in the days,
the early days of cell phones and earlier?
It would just beep.
So it's kind of like a pager without a display on it.
And when you call and report your car stolen from low-jack,
they send a unique code
to the special kind of receiver that's in your car,
which is akin to a pager.
It's keyed just to your car only, your car receiver only.
And then it tells that car receiver
remotely through the transmission
to activate a radio transmitter in your car
that transmits this beacon signal.
So it's not transmitting all the time,
it's transmitting when low-jack tells it to transmit.
But if you happen to be going by a car
that's being told to transmit,
and you have your radio scanner
tuned to 173.075 MHz,
you can tell right there
you're on top of a stolen car.
But I don't recommend you stare at the people or whatever,
because they could have guns or whatever.
So just keep on going and watch the fun.
So what you were hearing in that clip was actually
the tower transmitting a paging signal
to all of the low-jack units.
And what you would hear if the car was actually stolen
was more of a continuous transmission.
Yes.
Now is it possible for people to translate
what we played and give back some kind of data,
or is that just something that
low-jack understands and nobody else?
That's a good question.
If you do a Google search,
or a low-jack,
you can find some interesting experiments
people have done with trying to decode
these transmissions.
I'm sure someone has done it.
I haven't researched it thoroughly myself,
but you could find out
if you figured out their encoding scheme,
which is probably not encrypted,
the GPS coordinates of stolen cars
in your fair city.
So that might be kind of fun.
A lot of opportunities for organized crime here,
so we're happy to provide tips and ideas.
You mentioned Google again.
This just came to me now.
Wouldn't it be kind of an interesting thing
if Google just decided to go on strike for a day?
How would that affect our everyday lives?
Nobody would be able to look up anything.
Nobody would know where to go.
The mapping system would stop working.
People wouldn't know how to read news.
You'd have to learn how to
go to the alternate sites.
And they do exist. They're out there.
But they just have such a stranglehold, it seems.
Everybody uses them all the time.
There are dozens of other sites
that provide the exact same services.
Name one. Yahoo.
Ask.com.
When Google starts taking them over, though,
and one day they just demonstrate
our power by turning everything off.
Power power?
Remember AltaVista?
They own BAI. You didn't know that?
They bought us last year.
I guess I wasn't supposed to talk about that.
Yes, we're a Google station.
They'll have stations at some point.
Google Radio. Yeah. You laugh now.
Okay, our email address,
othat2600.com.
We got this piece of mail from ThoughtFreaker,
who sends us an interesting phone number.
An intercept concentrator
that puts an operator on the line
and asks for the number you're calling.
And he'd like us to give that number a try.
Which I think I'm going to do.
But a warning. Yes, Mike?
What does that mean, an intercept concentrator?
Well, basically what happens is
you call. This used to happen a lot in the old days.
You would call a number
and the operator would ask you what number you called.
And then you tell her
and she'd plug the number into a computer
and it would play a recording. In fact, I remember
you would tell her certain numbers
and the number would repeat back
say, 212, 209, 2900
is a working number.
That's a recording you would never get,
obviously, because it was a working number.
But it's just, I guess, to report that somehow.
Now, this number happens to be in Hawaii
so I'm not sure if they'll believe that phone number.
He says, you can tell her any number
that's 10 digits long and no matter how ridiculous
it might be, they'll send it to the announcement machine.
But it doesn't always work since
operators aren't trained to deal with this.
Some of them insist that their equipment doesn't allow them
to send the number to the announcement machine.
Others will simply pick up the call
and stay silent. On a rare occasion
they'll ask their supervisor how to do it too.
But again, most of them don't feel it's worth the trouble
so they'll just do one of their
two elaborate evasion techniques.
So let's give it a try.
I'm going to get a magical dial tone here.
And dial this number.
Which hopefully
is actually
going to this
nice little recording operator.
OK, we have to enter our secret code now
which we don't want going over the air.
And let's see what happens.
We'll give our phone number.
Aloha, what number are you calling from please?
Yes, I'm trying
to reach 212.
No, what is the number you're calling from?
Oh, I'm calling from 212
209
2900.
Are you dialing the same number?
I mean the same air code, 212 209?
Yes.
Try calling it again.
It's saying that it's coming up on an intercept
but it's not recognizing the intercept.
What does that mean, it's not recognizing the intercept?
It's not coming up.
There's no information for the intercept.
I see. OK. Is there some kind of recording
I'm supposed to get?
No, it's not even giving me that.
Really? Interesting.
OK, so you suggest I try calling again.
Yes.
OK, I'll do that.
Bye.
The number you have dialed, area code
212
209
2900
is not in service.
Please try your call again later
for further information.
You're lying to us.
OK, all right, fine.
The number you have dialed, area code
212
212
209
2900
is not in service.
Please try your call again later
for further information.
OK, I guess
we won't get a human.
Yes, that's very interesting.
This would be a great way to get a recording
of
a telephone company operator kind of voice
saying that your own number is not
in service and putting that on your own
answering machine or voicemail greeting.
Yeah, if you can't just simply edit it
together yourself, yeah, that would be a bit
of fun. All right, thanks.
Thanks, Thought Freaker, for sending in that number.
I'm always interested in fun phone numbers
to
play around with.
Wow, she didn't think a recording
was going to come on. She said, that's it.
Good thing I stayed on for an extra second.
So what did we just learn there, exactly?
I don't really know, to be honest.
Because our number is, in fact, in service.
I would like to think that.
But I guess our listeners will tell us that
for sure. Our phone number is 202-
as you heard, 209-2900.
And call us.
All those calls right there.
In fact, I have to get rid of that one.
Bernie, I'm going to put you on hold for a second
while I get rid of that other call.
Hang on, I've got to hit that button,
then I've got to hit this button,
hang that up, hit this button,
and then hit you, and you're back, right?
Bernie? Yes, I'm back.
Hang on a second.
Okay, here's another letter.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
This is about Emanuel's rant on iTunes.
Emanuel, while I fully understand
about buying the CD
rather than downloading from an online store,
less quality, plus no physical copy,
it is fairly well known
that Apple allows users of the iTunes store
to re-download all their purchases
if their computer crashes.
This is allowed about once every 12 months.
Some begging may be required.
Also, when you download a song,
you're immediately asked by a prompt
if you would like to back up your purchase
by burning a CD, etc., etc.
By all means, buy CDs.
They are usually less money
when they are first released,
have the best sound quality,
and are already a physical backup.
Well, Andrew, I have to disagree
unless they have changed their policy.
This is a quote from docs.info.apple.com.
iTunes store purchase content
can be downloaded only once.
You are entitled to download it only once.
When you buy a song, video, game, or album
from the iTunes store,
you are entitled to download it a single time.
They say the same thing three times in a row.
I guess that makes it pretty clear.
If you want to download it again,
you must purchase it again.
You can copy downloaded content
between authorized computers.
Now the little lecture here,
important, make a backup of the content
you purchase.
In case of data loss,
I had lost a hard drive
and I was able to simply re-encode
the CDs that I owned,
but I wasn't able to re-encode
what I had downloaded
between the last backup I made
and the time of the crash.
Unless you immediately make a backup
every time you download something,
you are kind of screwed.
Maybe iTunes changed their policy.
This document can be found
docs.info.apple.com
article.html?artnum="93050".
I was playing with this about a year ago
with a friend of mine,
and I absolutely remember
the ability to add another computer
or add multiple computers to your account.
I believe it was a maximum of three,
but it might have been more,
where you can actually re-download
content that you've purchased
a maximum number of times.
There was a number of times
and then you could unregister
that computer from your account
and you would no longer be able
to download more than one copy
of the music you purchased.
I think I remember that too,
vaguely, but what I wanted to say
was that this kind of goes back
into what AT&T wants to do
with banning the pirated stuff,
but it's like, hey, if you bought
a copy of a Beatles song on Apple
through Apple's store
and you lose it,
you legally should be able
to just download an mp3 of it
because you bought it already.
AT&T would probably think that's wrong.
That's not good.
I think if you own it in vinyl,
you should be able to get an mp3 of it
because you've already bought the damn thing.
Why do you have to buy it a second time
because their standards have changed?
Can't get the Beatles from iTunes at all.
That's another point.
My original point here was that
when you download music,
it's not the same thing as buying the CD.
It's just not, so it shouldn't be treated
the same way.
Here's our phone number.
We have a couple of calls coming in.
Let's get a whole bunch of calls,
and we'll go to the phones
and take a whole lot of calls, hopefully.
Oh, Emanuel, real quick,
I wanted to mention a sad passing
of Mr. Wizard,
who probably many of our listeners
enjoyed watching back in the day.
He was really the first hacker
I was ever exposed to.
I think his show was on for 13 years
and ended in 64,
but he was so enthusiastic
and he encouraged people to ask why
and figure out how things worked
in the physical world.
He made a big impression on me
and a lot of other people,
and I just wanted to shout out
for Mr. Wizard, Don Herbert.
He died at 89.
He was an amazing guy,
and he had a lot of influence
on a lot of people.
I used to watch that, too.
I used to wake up at 6 a.m.
Thank you, Mr. Wizard.
That's good.
This story, which I find to be
pretty incredible, has to do with
yet another scandal
in the Bush administration.
The report is entitled,
and this comes from the U.S. House
Representatives Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform,
which I think the Bush administration
is keeping in business,
Investigation of Possible Presidential
Records Act Violations.
It's illegal
for people in a presidential
administration to send
email on a system that's
not the White House system.
They can't send email
through Hotmail or through Gmail
that has to do with policy.
They have to send it through
particular systems that are archived
for historical purposes.
What's been happening is that the
Republican National Committee has been giving out
what's known as RNC email accounts,
and what they're concluding
here is that the number of White House officials
given RNC email accounts is higher
than previously disclosed.
In March 2007, White House
spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a
handful of officials had RNC email accounts.
In later statements, her estimate rose
to 50 over the course of the administration.
In fact, the committee has learned from the RNC
that at least 88 White House officials
had RNC email accounts.
The officials with RNC email
accounts include Karl Rove,
the president's senior advisor Andrew
Card, the former White House chief of staff
Ken Melman, the former
White House director of political affairs, and many
other officials. White House officials
made extensive use of their RNC
email accounts. The RNC
has preserved 140,216
emails sent or received
by Karl Rove. Good lord.
Over half of these emails
were sent to or received from individuals
using official.gov email
accounts. These
email accounts were used by White House officials
for official purposes, such as communicating
with federal agencies about federal appointments
and policies. There has
been extensive destruction
of the emails of White House officials by the
RNC. Of the 88 White House officials
who received RNC email accounts,
the RNC has preserved no emails
for 51 of them.
In a deposition, Susan Ralston,
Mr. Rove's former executive assistant,
testified that many of the White House
officials for whom the RNC has no email
records were regular users of their
RNC email accounts
using the system frequently
or daily.
I don't understand this.
So, some of the people
at the RNC lost their records,
but not other people? It just seems very
strange sort of system administrator
who'd do that. Yeah, it depends what is meant by
lost the records.
I mean, they could have deleted the mail themselves, and
there's no backup
system to it.
They're just not revolting. It's probably
in some intern's house.
Yeah, that's entirely possible.
But there's really no difference between this, using
their RNC email account, and
using any other email account that they would have
had access to, you know, any free email
account, Gmail, Hotmail, whatever. Which they're not supposed to use
for official business. Right, which they're not supposed to use. However,
it's very convenient to be running your own servers
and being able to delete any backups
or archives of email that you don't want
people to see. And a lot of this was sent
in the opening days of the
Iraq invasion, or the days leading up to that.
There's all kinds of history here that is
being erased, that has been erased.
And this is turning into a huge, huge scandal.
I don't know if it's ever going to go anywhere,
because we don't seem to care about huge scandals
anymore. But there's a
this is all over
the net if you look for it.
Just look for the investigation of possible presidential
records, act violations, and you'll see the
entire report here.
And hopefully there'll be more information on this. What I'd like to know
though, what is the domain that
they were using? I'd like to see if I got any mail
from these jokers. The RNC
email account that they were using,
they don't say that anywhere, what it actually is.
Emmanuel? Yes, Bernie.
I just wanted to interject. It might be
worth comparing this story to
the Vice President
Al Gore's use of a White House telephone
to make fundraising calls
back when the Clinton-Gore
administration was in power. Now, even though
Al Gore used a Democratic
National Committee, DNC,
phone card to ensure that
all tolls were billed to the Democratic
National Committee and not to taxpayers,
the Republicans, they
were in hell about this
for months.
Then the White House had a separate telephone
installed in the White House
at DNC expense, not taxpayers.
Republicans still made noise about it.
But I'd say it's probably safe to assume
that the 88-plus
Bush-Cheney White House officials
who used this RNC email account
or official government business
did not have separate RNC-
owned computers
on their desks connected to a
separate RNC-owned network
to communicate with primarily
.gov
accounts,
which this report from
the Henry Waxman
Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform said most of these emails
were to and from government agencies.
There's two controlling
legal authorities in this case.
One is the Presidential Records Act,
which required the White House administration
to preserve all official documents,
including email, and the second one
is called the Hatch Act.
It penalizes government workers
who use government offices, equipment,
or time for partisan politics.
It reminded me, because I'm an older person,
of the infamous 18-minute
off-the-tape gap.
Remember, Richard Nixon actually had
his own Oval Office intentionally
because he was such an
egomaniac. He wanted to have everything
he said recorded for prosperity
in the future.
After the whole
Watergate break-in and the cover-up,
there was a mysterious erasure
of 18 minutes on one of these
tapes, and it's speculated
this proof was his
attempt to cover up
the committee
to reel up the president's burglary
of the Democratic National Committee's
Watergate headquarters.
This whole thing with the current White House
administration seems to make that look like
a minor ethics infraction, in my opinion,
and that brought down
a sitting second-term president.
I don't know if anything's going to happen
these days. Like you pointed out, people don't seem to
care anymore, but this is a really important story.
People deserve to know
what their elected officials are doing,
especially when the law says that they
must, under law, preserve
all of their communications
that affect
policy,
that sort of thing.
This is outrageous,
and people should be paying attention
to this story, because it's got legs.
I think people should, if they pay attention
to it and inquire,
this could go somewhere.
It's very interesting.
Very good point. Now let's try and take some phone calls.
We have a few on the line, 212-209-2900.
Let's try and get through as many as we can.
Good evening. Aaron, off the hook.
Well, you know,
the Bushes, the professional CIA
people, they're trying to bring down Hugo Chavez.
So, I mean, why are you upset?
You want to bring him down.
Oh, please. Good God.
Oh, this is a fact.
Talking down about Hugo Chavez.
Good evening. Aaron, off the hook.
People are just like dogs with bones, really.
Go ahead.
I have two quick comments. First off,
I don't know if you saw on the news, but the United
Airlines computer system at LAX
went down today. Yeah, and I can account
for my whereabouts, so.
We all can, right?
Isn't this the second time this month that a computer
failure has caused massive delays in a major
airport? There was an air traffic control computer
problem earlier, and yeah, now there's this.
Computers, yeah, if you rely on computers, totally
you're going to have problems like this, absolutely.
Well, how are we to know that this isn't malicious?
I mean, if someone did manage to break
into an airline computer system,
they would never tell us, you know what I mean? True.
They may never know.
I mean, there could be all kinds of things. It could be
a spam attack, it could be
somebody kicking out a cord,
it could be someone getting access.
That's why accountability is so important, but
Jim's right, we may never know.
It's scary to think it's so vulnerable. And another quick
comment, the backing
of my spring issue of 2600
fell apart today. Oh no.
Yeah. What do you mean the backing?
Like the glues come undone.
The glues come undone?
You mean the pages like fell out because the glue is
no longer gluey?
Yeah. If you can send that back to us, we'll
replace it and send you something else for your
trouble, but that should definitely not be happening.
Definitely not be happening. I'd like to know
if that's happened to anybody else.
But that's the first I've heard of this.
Okay, well thank you very much. Alright, take care.
That's not what you want to hear.
202-209-2900.
And good evening, you're on off the hook.
Oh dear. Don't give up.
We'll get to you eventually. Good evening, you're on
off the hook. Hello?
Yes.
If anyone out there wants
to read a book of Chuang Tzu,
C-H-U-A-N-G
as it's often spelled, T-Z-U,
so-called
disciples of
Lao Tzu. What's this got to do with
what we're talking about? Well,
he wrote a
book about some
guy in some canton, some county,
some state,
who decided to make
his whole system,
his whole county, his whole area
so tight and
so secure.
You know, which in those days
meant guards and roadblocks
and stuff like that, and spears.
And so
he got it so tight and so
secure that the
next door guy,
the next door feudal lord,
said,
Hey, you've got this wrapped up so
tight and so secure,
this other lord
came over and stole
the whole thing.
Okay.
That's 45 seconds of my life I'll never get back.
And one last call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, hi. Thank you for the program.
Thank you. I'm a blind person.
I heard you talking earlier about
GPS devices. I'm wondering if
anybody out there knows of something
available. So if I'm walking,
say, crossing Lexington Avenue,
it will say Lexington
Avenue to me. I'll listen off the air.
Okay, thanks for your call. Does anybody have an
answer for that really quickly? If you look up the car
ones, some you can get for the
car you can carry, they
sometimes have a vocal, like the
thing will tell you, turn right, turn left, you're walking on the
street. Okay. We're going to have to leave it at that.
Hopefully we can follow up with this in
weeks ahead. I want to thank people for calling.
Very quickly, one person wrote in
asking us what song was played at the end of
the June 18, 2003 show.
This is from Rudy.
Well, we have
the very same song right now.
This is from Sparks.
Talent is an asset and thanks for listening to
our old shows and listening to the
music we play on the old shows and asking questions.
We're back again next week, another
exciting edition of Off the Hook. Manuel Goldstein.
Have a good night.
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