Monica Lopez and Tyra Giese produce today's broadcast.
Our technical production team at KPFA and Berkeley is Antonio Ortiz and Puck Lowe.
For archives of this or any other newscast or documentary, go to our website at www.fsrn.org.
From KBCS in Bellevue, Seattle, I'm Yuko Kadama.
And this is radio station WBAI New York, where it's 7 o'clock, time for Off The Hook.
Much worse. But if they could, they would.
Bondedly bound for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bondedly bound.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
And joined tonight by Mike.
Hello.
And Redbird.
Good evening.
Is that everybody in the studio? Is nobody else here?
Who are you? What are you doing in here?
I'm usually not here, but wow, a whole two-thirds of the room is empty.
Is this some kind of a holiday or something?
One half of the room is empty.
No, it's two-thirds of the room, because there's like four chairs over there.
No, there's three.
Look over there, it's another one.
That's not a...
Usually we have a whole lot of people here, and it's just three.
And of course, Bernie down in Philadelphia. Bernie, how are you?
Greetings from Philadelphia.
And I'm back from traveling around this time to Austria, to Italy, to San Marino, to Vatican City.
Four countries. Four countries in two weeks.
But only two of them bigger than, like, you know...
You know, the size really shouldn't be an issue. I'm so glad Jim isn't here.
The size of the country should not matter, because...
The reason I'm glad he's not here is because he'd make a lewd remark right now when I said that.
But you did it for him, so thanks.
Because it sounded very nasty to say, I'm so glad he's not here for people who don't understand why I said that.
It's not that we have any kind of bitter, you know, rivalry or hostility or anything like that worth speaking about.
Of course not.
All right. So let's drop it now.
Yes, but the countries, San Marino and Vatican City, yes, true, they are rather tiny.
But they are different. They're interesting.
San Marino is this mountainous community that is really kind of a tourist trap.
But it's kind of cool to be walking 45 degree angles up and down streets.
And Vatican City, of course, is all quite religious.
And very picturesque, as I might point out.
I did check for GSM cell phone companies inside both.
And I couldn't find anything other than three Italian companies inside Vatican City.
However, in San Marino, my phone did pick up something called RSM01, Republic of San Marino number one.
There was another phone company.
However, it did not allow me access.
So I imagine people in San Marino are able to use a totally different cell phone company.
But you have to be a resident.
So that must be a pretty sweet deal because they only have 30,000 people who live there.
You should call your provider and demand that they have a roaming agreement with this company.
Yes, if I could figure out what their name is other than RSM01.
But the Italian hacker meeting was incredible.
I think I might have been the only American there, which in and of itself is pretty cool.
But we had the three-day meeting at basically a huge squat that was near the Pisa train station.
And I guess in this country, that sounds illegal.
That sounds really wretched.
But it was probably one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.
Just met so many really interesting people, had so many good conversations.
And it seems everybody there knows how to make really good food too.
So it was just an amazing event.
They have hacker meetings, massive hacker meetings once a year.
This was the 10th annual one.
They have it all over the country.
So next year it might be in some completely different city.
And I intend to try and make it to that one as well.
And I hope other Americans go and get into the spirit because that's what it's all about.
And most people speak English.
How long is that event?
This one started on Friday and went to Sunday.
And at the end of it, it just felt like, well, I'll say it the way I said it at the talk I gave.
I wound up giving a two-hour talk, which kind of surprised me because I was only supposed to give a one-hour talk.
And I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do that.
But the crowd was just so receptive and interested in the things that I was talking about.
I just kept on going and then got into a dialogue, answered questions.
And it was really, really cool.
It was one of the best audiences I've had, actually.
But I was comparing the different hacker scenes, different hacker conferences.
And just sort of off the top of my head, I was drawing analogies.
And I said, you know, this is different.
This is so different.
I had been there for a few days already.
When you go to a German hacker conference, it's sort of like being on this big spaceship where all these incredible things just suddenly start to work.
And you don't exactly know why.
You don't know where the technology came from.
It all just sort of somehow works.
Is that a reference to the actual spaceship?
Well, it's funny because they do have a spaceship at the German conferences.
I'm sorry, Bernie, what?
You just said the Heart of Gold.
The Heart of Gold.
It's the name of the spaceship that is there.
Exactly.
But the funny thing is I wasn't even thinking of that when I said it.
But I guess it does sort of make sense now that you mentioned that.
And then I said the Dutch hacker conferences.
Well, those, it's like being on some incredible drug where you just kind of don't know what's going to happen next.
Different images and lights and sounds are hitting you all at once.
And it's just, wow, there's just no words to describe it.
And then there are the American hacker conferences.
And those are kind of like being on a very busy boulevard where there's all this traffic going back and forth really fast.
And you have to be careful not to get run over by something because all the images are hitting you really quickly.
And then there's here, here in Pisa, here in Italy, where it feels like you're just part of one huge family.
And that's really how it felt.
I don't want to sound sappy, but it just felt like everybody was kind of on the same side and really happy to be there, happy to be amongst friends.
So I hope more Americans experience that next time.
So it's an event worth traveling for.
I think so.
It's an event worth killing for.
Not that I suggest anyone do that.
But it's an event very well worth whatever you have to go through to get to.
Are you afraid that the Americans will create a rift in the family?
Yeah, I am actually.
Because I stress that, yeah, you have to sort of get into the spirit where sometimes things don't quite work out the way that you want them to.
I stayed in places that didn't have hot water.
I stayed in places where there was no communication, no internet connectivity for a day or two.
And you know what?
You find other things to do.
You find ways to get around.
And you just sort of take in the environment and live as the people around you live.
And if you can do that, you're going to have a great time.
Now, did you have any problems with people not speaking English?
Most people spoke at least some English.
So there was really not much of a problem with that at all.
And other areas, non-hacker related, yeah, there are people that didn't speak English.
But it's fairly easy to make yourself understood in whatever language is being spoken around you, for the basics anyway.
Well, that's one of the concerns that I always had before I went to the first, I guess it was the CCC Congress that I went to first, the first European hacker conference that I went to.
I was worried about people not speaking English.
And it turned out that almost all of the panels I went to, people were very intelligible.
And it wasn't a problem at all.
Yeah, in Germany, certainly in the western part and in Berlin, most everybody speaks English.
And, of course, Holland as well.
And even in England, that's not a problem.
I wouldn't go that far.
Well, yeah, it's kind of hard to understand those people.
But the thing is, most parts of the world, and I've been to Malaysia and Singapore and China and Mongolia, all kinds of places like that.
Even if there are a large number of people who don't speak the language, there are so many ways to just make yourself understood in sign language and just smiling and nodding.
And I've communicated better with people that I don't share any language similarities with than I communicate with a lot of people back home, which is kind of weird.
You could even do the thing that people who aren't Americans are alleged to sometimes do and learn some of the language before you go.
Yeah, I've considered that.
Some people are good at that, like Fiber, who we were talking to a few weeks ago over in Malaysia.
He's able to pick up languages like you would not believe.
He could go to the Klingon home world and be fluent by the time the episode is over.
But I'm not like that.
I took French for most of my school career, and I can still barely say a sentence.
And I can understand that people are speaking French around me, but I don't know what they're talking about.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
There's that curious American trait of when you're in another country, speaking loudly and slowly, hoping that the foreigners will understand, even with maybe sort of a tinge of a phony accent, and hoping that the natives will understand you.
Yeah, I hope I don't do that.
If anyone ever sees me doing that, you have my permission to smack me silly because that is one of the most annoying things ever.
But yeah, it's amazing.
And you know what?
There's another Hacker thing going on in Brazil in a couple of weeks that I'm going to be going to, so I'll be away again.
But I don't think we're on the air that week.
I think that's one of our off weeks during the upcoming fundraiser.
So any other questions about what was going on over there?
I have a question for anybody who's in Rome.
Maybe it's all of Italy.
I'm not exactly sure.
But for some reason, the mass transit system there, they have a metro, and they also have some overground trains in the city itself, as well as, of course, a really comprehensive national network.
But in Rome, I noticed that the subway system, the trains drive on the left.
They drive instead of the right.
It's like you're in London, except nobody else is observing that.
No one else is driving on the left.
But for some reason, the trains do.
And that's the kind of thing that isn't in any guidebook, but I noticed it right away, and I couldn't figure it out.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
Speaking of trains, and you mentioned ESN systems at the beginning of the show, I just got off a Philadelphia subway car moments before the beginning of the show tonight, just in time.
And while I was standing on the platform, I noticed some Philadelphia electricians installing a microwave panel antenna on the subway platform pointed down towards the direction that the tunnel was going.
And I said, what is this?
And I knew full well what it was, a microwave antenna.
But they said, yeah, we're putting these in for AT&T Singular.
And I thought, that's pretty interesting.
So following up on our story a week or two ago, where I think it was Transit Wireless who was putting this system in the New York City subway system, here we have an actual carrier, not some reseller or hangers-on like Transit is.
We have Singular AT&T Wireless putting coverage in on the platforms that are supposedly going to work on the trains, because the way this thing was pointed, it was pointed down the tunnel at an angle.
So that's kind of interesting.
I'm going to research this.
Redbird was asking me if this is an exclusive arrangement that Singular AT&T Wireless has with the city of Philadelphia.
I'm going to find out, see how much kickback it had to pay the city or whatever, and get back to you all.
I know in Vienna, I'm pretty sure in Vienna, there's coverage throughout the city on the metro, the underground.
And the thing is, it's so quiet there that you can actually have a conversation that doesn't annoy people around you.
There are exceptions, of course, people who tend to shout on the phone.
And I don't see that happening here, because it's just so loud.
Well, another thing that's different over there is that a lot of the companies have very good roaming agreements with each other, so you can use other carriers' networks without a problem.
Yeah, but not in other countries.
If you go to a different country, the rates are ridiculous.
If you go from, say, Germany even to Holland.
No, but within the country, for users in that country.
And the difference here is that, for instance, T-Mobile users are absolutely not going to be allowed on the AT&T network.
And most likely, that seems to be the trend.
Verizon, that's a whole separate protocol, so that's not going to work.
Well, yeah, of course.
The whole iPhone thing, I think, is indicative of the kind of hostility there is towards hopping onto a different phone company, even if you have the technology to do it.
You just mentioned that the roaming rates, they're going to go down.
I keep hearing that.
There's an EU directive.
They're going to go down.
EU directives.
OK, well, good, but are they going to go down enough?
That's the thing.
I think they're going to be about 30 euro cents a minute, which is OK.
I was trying to find a decent rate.
I really was.
A decent rate like I found in Malaysia and in Singapore.
Actually, I didn't find it.
A friend of mine did.
But I couldn't find in Austria or Italy a SIM that would allow calls over voice over IP or anything that would be less than, say, a euro a minute to call the states.
T-Mobile, by the way, has the worst possible arrangement.
I cannot understand what these people are smoking.
But basically, you know, if you travel overseas and you have a T-Mobile phone, because we were researching this desperately last week before the show to see how you guys could call me without us paying a fortune.
And it turns out that even if you call my phone, my T-Mobile phone over there, an incoming call costs the same as an outgoing call while I'm standing there.
Usually what happens is you have to pay more to call from Europe to the United States.
But if the United States calls me on my phone and I'm standing in Europe, I pay the same rate for incoming.
It's absurd.
So we had almost no way to make a phone call until I went out and got an Italian SIM.
Did you have internet access at that point?
I had some internet access.
But if you're thinking about Skype, forget it.
Well, because still that's the best way that I found to communicate in Europe with people back here.
And you can get a Skype in account if you want.
Not that I'm promoting Skype.
I'm also saying that you need a fair amount of bandwidth, which I never had over there.
I never had.
In fact, connecting was very difficult in Rome because they have lots and lots of internet stores.
But these internet stores basically have a lot of terminals, and they just want you to use the terminals.
And they're also for making phone calls to other countries.
It was kind of strange.
I found one where I was able to bring my laptop in.
And for a euro every 15 minutes, I was able to actually use their Wi-Fi network.
But I had to go down into this room that had all these phones that were being used to call foreign countries.
And this guy was screaming in Arabic for half an hour at somebody.
And it was just so annoying.
I had to leave.
I couldn't stay on the internet because this guy was getting so angry and getting me so upset, too, that it was just impossible to go on.
But it's not easy.
It's not easy to connect to the net.
The first night I was in Rome, I was able to lean out of my window and actually hook up to somebody's network.
But it didn't stay the next day.
I think it was some fellow traveler that was using something, and I was able to take advantage of that.
You could have gone to one of these places for the show.
Not for incoming calls, no, just for outgoing calls.
You could have called us.
You know our number.
Yeah, but it wasn't a good deal.
It wasn't a good deal to the United States.
Not as good as you might think.
Anyway, let me just mention one other thing from Italy, which I think is pretty cool.
This is something that the hackers did over there at the hacker meeting.
They take a rather dim view of mainstream journalists, which is something we can all identify with.
And I saw them actually on, I believe it was Thursday, or actually it was Friday, the first day of the conference.
They were letting a mainstream journalist in to the conference.
And I was told that he was from the newspaper La Nation, which is this paper right here.
It's interesting because the way it's spelled, it looks like it says Nazi 1.
That's exactly what it looks like.
That's how it's spelled, but that's not what it means.
It means nation, La Nation.
That's one of the national papers.
And by the way, I was asking about, I think there's a paper called Manifesto.
I think that's what it's called.
And I asked, is that a paper of the Communist Party?
And they're like, no, the Communist Party has not published a paper in years.
That's just a newspaper by communists.
So it's incredible that you actually distinguish the difference like that.
That's how many different viewpoints are being expressed.
I'm not really sure where this newspaper is coming from.
I don't think they're as right-wing as their title might imply.
But they basically took the guy on a real tour of craziness while he was there
and told him that the situation in Myanmar where the government was preventing people
from getting out onto the net and telling the story as to the massacres that are going on there,
that that was being caused by a virus, a computer virus,
that the government was installing in computers throughout the country.
And they even had a name for the virus.
And it spelled out HOAX, the hoax virus.
It's all printed in here.
This story, of course, is in Italian.
But you see the word hoax.
You see the word hoax as being reported that, yes, it's a hoax virus,
was being run by the Myanmar government.
This is dated September 29th.
And there's also an article in there that has something on me, too.
I'm told that they refer to me as the head of EFF or something or the king of EFF.
I don't know exactly what it was, but I was told it was kind of a bit inaccurate,
to say the least.
Mike, you don't read Italian, do you?
I can't even find the story.
It's page 26, so that should be pretty easy.
I'm on the right page.
Yeah, it's at the bottom.
It says hacker in the title.
Yeah, that's the story.
Everybody was talking about this on Saturday because this guy,
he didn't check his facts.
He didn't check anything.
He just basically came to this thing and wrote down what people told him
and reported it as fact.
How many times have we seen journalists do this,
quote-unquote journalists do this, with regard to the hacker world
and just usually use it against us,
usually believe what somebody else says hackers are doing?
But in this particular case, the hackers really took him for a ride,
and I think he got what he deserved for not doing any kind of research whatsoever.
Do you think they'd lose credibility because of that?
I don't think they want credibility with this kind of publication.
I mean, it might sound like they're shooting themselves in the foot,
but they view it differently over there.
They don't need the mainstream media.
They're doing their own thing, and they want to be left alone.
Yeah, so the mainstream came there, and they played with them a little bit.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
I happened to notice on Friday, or actually Thursday night,
I was watching BBC World on television here in Philadelphia,
and I saw a video clip from Myanmar TV, which of course is run by the Myanmar government,
and there was a screen, sort of a video clip that said,
quote, VOA and BBC, sky full of liars, end quote.
And it was actually, the video actually had audio in English,
which I thought was very curious,
but basically it was saying the foreign media were fabricating reports
about the civil unrest and about troops attacking Buddhist monks and that sort of thing.
And the BBC went on to report that Myanmar was shutting down all the Internet cafes
and pay phones and Buddhist temples in an effort to
Using the hoax virus to do that.
Well, or whatever means to prevent apparently a citizen journalist
from getting information out about what's going on, specifically videos.
So who was it who was saying that it's a sky full of liars?
It was a Myanmar state television broadcasting company,
which of course is run by the government,
and there was this wonderful screenshot, and it just showed the big black letters,
VOA and BBC, sky full of liars.
I guess sky full is some Myanmarese term for lots of liars,
or they were just a bunch of liars.
Sky is also a major satellite network, too.
I don't think that was the reference.
In any case, I just thought it was rather amusing.
Yeah, definitely.
It shows that there's other perspectives out there,
but I think most of the world sees the situation over there for what it is,
and hopefully we'll learn more about that.
I had something interesting on the whole Myanmar situation,
and that was how the word is getting out, unfiltered news from Myanmar.
This came from the International Herald Tribune that I read on the airplane.
In Myanmar, secret networks of dissident citizen reporters
operating beneath the noses of government spies
are giving the world unprecedented glimpses
of the biggest anti-junta protest in almost 20 years.
With foreign journalists barred from what is one of the world's most closed states,
much of the worldwide media coverage is coming from exiled reporters
in countries like Thailand and India,
and there are clandestine contacts on the inside.
Technology ranging from the latest Internet gadgets to satellite uplinks
to camera phones are making possible the pictures
of the massed monks and civilians marching,
and the response by security forces,
they're ensuring that those are on television screens around the world within hours.
In contrast to the last major Burmese uprising in 1988,
it could not be more stark.
Then as many as 3,000 people were killed when soldiers opened fire on the crowds,
but it took days for the news, let alone pictures or video footage, to emerge.
According to a British reporter, Dominic Fowler, based in Bangkok during 1988,
the difference is night and day.
Now the whole population are journalists on the move,
equipped with all sorts of information capturing devices
from telephones and video machinery that you just couldn't use in 1988.
And back then, back in 1988, all information went via the telex.
Remember that, the telex?
At the luxurious Strand Hotel in Yangon, formerly Rangoon,
in one day its single line accounted for 90% of all international calls,
according to the government spies who came around the next day to find out why.
As troops fired warning shots at crowds in Yangon a week or so ago,
citizen journalists in the masses seething through the city center
were sending their thoughts, pictures, and video to broadcasters like CNN and the BBC.
More important, the news is beamed back in by satellite television and radio,
by exile newsgroups like the Democratic Voice of Burma,
now one of the main ways that Myanmar's 56 million people learn about events inside their own country.
Apart from dissident news outlets, the only sources of news inside Myanmar
are the ruling military's rigidly controlled state media,
which, according to one man in the country, broadcasts only pop singers and lies.
The Burmese state broadcaster, Myanmar's state broadcaster,
for television is called MRTV.
But what I found interesting is that mainstream reporting broadcast media outlets like BBC,
which has a Burmese language website,
was actively encouraging people in Myanmar to send in photos and videos to the BBC,
via the internet, so that they could be rebroadcast.
And that's just an interesting, almost sort of trying to provoke or promote this stuff
from citizen reporters, from getting information out.
I thought it was a rather intriguing situation.
It's good to encourage people to get the word out, but at the same time they have to be safe.
I heard CNN International, when I was overseas,
encouraging people to be very careful if they do choose to do that.
Don't put yourself at risk, but if you're able to, please, we want to see what's out there.
There's a flaw in this system, though,
and that is that there's only two internet providers in Burma,
and that they're run by the government,
which apparently discovered on Friday or Saturday that they could shut them both down.
But it took them that long.
Well, they learned how to do it.
And apparently the amount of information coming out has really gone down since then,
and the amount of repression from the few reports that do go up has gone up.
So it's not perfect yet.
Well, there are definitely other ways to get the information out if you really wanted to.
I mean, you could even send images over shortwave if you had to.
I mean, you need more specialized equipment than just a computer.
Don't you think the shortwave antennas might draw attention?
They can be pretty discreet.
Transmitting antennas?
I have an incredibly discreet magnet wire antenna up at my apartment building,
and if anyone saw that—
No, but that's to receive.
No, that's also to transmit.
You're broadcasting on shortwave?
100 watts, yeah.
I'll tell you what.
Why don't you arrange a little broadcast later on?
We'll tell our listeners the frequency, and we'll see how many people can hear you.
I will do it with a ham radio operator.
I won't just broadcast on—I can't broadcast to the public.
I can broadcast point to point.
For the sake of argument, pretend our country is under siege by a madman
who is driving us into ruin of all sorts,
and that you are the only person that can get a message out to the rest of the world to,
please, come and help us.
Let's see if it can get to anybody else.
I'd like to know.
Maybe something not so dramatic, but sure.
I mean, if there's anyone out there that wants to test it, no problem.
All right.
Well, I just think we've come a long way in 20 years
that there are more ways to get the message out,
but as Mike said, yeah, it's relatively easy to clamp down on them,
but I suspect that there is a lot of footage being stored in various places
that will get out at some point,
and we'll see some of the other atrocities or horrible things that may have happened.
Oh, sure.
Yes, go ahead.
I just wanted to point out that your request,
that you actually asked Redbird to do something that was illegal under U.S. federal law.
Well, he said he could do it.
I said I wouldn't do it.
But you said you could.
You said you had a shortwave device.
I could drop a rock on your head, but that would be illegal,
so I'm not going to do it.
Maybe Redbird could transmit his video to a single designated recipient
in the free land of Canada who could then disseminate it to the world.
Why is he dropping a rock on my head anyway?
How did we get violent about this?
I was just trying to draw an analogy.
My point is that amateur radio operators,
or also known as ham radio operators in the U.S.,
are not permitted to broadcast.
Broadcast, by definition, means to a wide audience,
whoever happens to be listening,
you're not transmitting to any particular party.
Ham radio operators in the U.S. are only permitted to transmit
to a specific intentional person.
Okay, so if this radio show then were just broadcast to one person,
could we put it on, just broadcast it on any shortwave?
Anybody can hear an amateur radio transmission, no problem,
with a shortwave radio.
You have to have an intended recipient generally.
You cannot broadcast.
It's just sort of mincing words,
but it's well defined in FCC regulations.
Amateur radio operators in the U.S. cannot broadcast.
They cannot just transmit music or anything.
They can't transmit music at all,
but they cannot transmit anything unless there's an intended recipient
as opposed to just a broad audience, whoever happens to be listening.
Okay.
Moving on to all kinds of other issues throughout the world,
and we are doing kind of a global show today, I guess,
and we'll be taking phone calls like we promised last week,
212-209-2900.
Wait for the signal.
We'll let you know when we start taking phone calls,
but write down the number.
Heathrow's Terminal 5 in London feels more like a stadium
or amphitheater than an airport.
It's 400 meters long, 160 meters wide, 43 meters high.
It's enormous.
It's as big as 50 football fields,
which are soccer fields over there,
across its five floors,
and it has the largest span roof in the entire U.K.
It's also surprisingly pleasant, for now at least,
though an estimated 30 million passengers a year
will test that functional beauty to the limit.
With six months to go until the March 27th opening,
the construction work is done,
and Terminal 5 is ready to be fitted out
with shops, seating, and so on.
It sounds marvelous, doesn't it?
Well, guess what?
Terminal 5 will have shops, cafes, and bars
like any other airport,
and some of those are already fitted out.
Harrods is one.
The terminal also has some new features.
For instance, all passengers on domestic routes
will have their photograph taken
and fingerprints scanned at passport control.
Their fingerprint will be checked again
at the gate before boarding.
This is for domestic flights.
I don't understand.
There's no passport control at domestic flights.
Well, I guess maybe there will be now.
I don't know.
This is from the BBC,
so I imagine they kind of should know the facts on this.
Heathrow's operator, BAA,
says this was to allow them to enter
and use the full departure lounge and facilities.
It's also so we can make sure
that the person who turns up at the gate
is the same one who checked in.
I didn't know they needed fingerprints
to figure that out these days.
Another state-of-the-art addition includes X-ray scanners
which screen hand luggage before they enter departures.
Never used before,
the Advanced Threat Identification System
is designed to detect explosives and liquids in baggage
and automatically divert suspicious bags
to one side for further examination.
In fact, the entire building is designed with security in mind.
We've been able to work security in
rather than try to add it on afterwards, they say.
I don't know.
Fingerprints for domestic flights.
This is what they're dealing with in England now.
For any flights, it's bad enough.
Well, yeah.
I mean, for overseas flights as well, I guess.
But only if you go through Terminal 5.
What if you just go through Terminal 4 instead?
It's kind of weird, isn't it?
I imagine if they deem this thing to be a success,
which they'll probably do because that's what they do.
They always deem things successes.
Then they'll start adding it to other terminals
and maybe even other airports.
And it gets worse.
The European Union's top justice official
wants a log kept of all non-EU citizens
entering and leaving any of the 27 nations
in the European Union,
part of a whole new list of anti-terror measures.
But they don't already have one?
Not keeping a log like we do, I don't think.
I mean...
I mean, they just wave at me when I come in.
Well, if you're a EU visitor,
but the non-EU visitors,
they take my passport, they put it in a machine...
No, if I use my American passport,
then lots of times they just wave and say hi.
But the airline still has your information.
They do, but apparently they don't do anything with it right now.
I don't believe that.
That's what they say.
Non-EU nationals will be electronically registered
with biometric identifiers under the plan.
Is this getting your attention a little bit more now?
That's new.
The register is extremely necessary
in order to crack down on people
who are granted permission to stay for a restricted time
but melt away when the period expires.
The scheme would operate alongside
an airline passenger data recording system
modeled on one developed by the United States,
which is also planned to be unveiled in November.
Officials are still debating whether to adopt the system
for flights within the EU
as well as those to and from countries outside the Union.
Other measures include a plan to set up a database
to provide an early warning system
on lost or stolen explosives
and new provisions to deal with the misuse
of the Internet by terrorists.
How are the terrorists misusing the Internet?
Are they sending spam?
Are they doing denial of service attacks?
What are they doing exactly?
He said, the spokesman here said
he would propose sanctions against websites.
Sanctions against websites?
How do you propose a sanction against a website?
You suspend funding from the United Nations or something?
Okay, sanctions against websites
that disseminate terror propaganda
or bomb building instructions
or engage in recruitment for terrorist groups.
Yeah.
Well, non-net neutrality would allow them to easily do that.
We'll get to that.
We'll get to that.
You know, the US, as you know, already has such a database.
But something I just learned in the last week
is that you can request your file from that database.
So I've sent last week a letter to Washington, D.C.
saying, I would like to know everything
that you know about me.
Oh, boy.
It's nice knowing you, Mike.
Are you going to get a bunch of black pieces of paper?
I don't know what will happen.
I sent it certified mail.
I haven't even got my return receipt,
let alone any information.
We'll see what happens.
Somewhat related to what we were just talking about.
In the name of counterterrorism,
Western countries in Europe
are moving to erect online security borders
with aggressive proposals
to not only block and, I guess, sanction websites,
but to unleash Trojan emails
containing spyware that would monitor jihadists.
This comes from the International Herald Tribune again
and also the New York Times.
It's simply incredible.
Critics warn...
Critics should be screaming at the top of their lungs,
but critics warn that the security measures
could lead to censorship and privacy invasion,
but governments...
Wait, wait.
Critics warn that the security measures
could lead to censorship?
They are inherently censorship.
I don't understand how refined
these critics can possibly be,
how laid back they are,
but they must be smoking something
to really relax them
because this is not the time to be relaxed.
Yes, it could lead to censorship and privacy invasion,
but governments are pressing for legislation
aimed at thwarting attacks
and walling off websites,
walling off websites that espouse illegal activities
or are likely to have the effect of facilitating crime.
Folks, that is us, okay?
How many times have you seen the 2600 website
be inaccessible because it is accused
of facilitating criminal activity?
The website, not the magazine.
The website, which just pretty much has
the radio shows on it.
There's very little content compared to the magazine.
Yeah.
Too little content, if you ask me.
But that's what they're going to do.
They're walling off websites
that espouse illegal activities
or are likely to have the effect of facilitating crime.
It would be very easy to simply say
all hacking sites,
all sites affiliated with hackers in any way
are under that particular label.
Now, how can you guarantee that
these terrorists will be infected with the Trojan?
Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it?
And how do you guarantee that it's going to stay there
and not be used in other ways?
Well, and then you're talking about a slippery slope
which may lead us to requirements
for companies like Microsoft
to incorporate back doors into their operating systems
and stuff like that.
Yeah, it just never ends.
And the thing that really bothers me about this
is that they're including Internet sites
that offer bomb-making recipes under all of this.
Now, I'm not into bomb-making,
but bomb-making stories and instructions
are covered by the First Amendment in this country
and have long since been available in print,
in books, in various methods.
But now they're sort of sneaking that in,
saying, well, yeah,
anything that has to do with bomb-making recipes,
that's terrorist material,
and that's going to be sanctioned and blocked
and punished in all sorts of ways.
And they're also planning
on making online recruiting of terrorists
a punishable offense.
How many times do you get spam saying,
would you like to join Al-Qaeda
and make hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Now, I don't know about that.
Either there is or there's not already
a law making recruiting of terrorists
a punishable offense.
You would think.
Why does it matter if it's online or offline
or, you know, sort of you meet the guy on IM
and then go to dinner with him?
Well, I know those guys
who stand on the street corner
and hand out the little pieces of paper
that say, join this particular jihadist movement
and, you know, blow up buses and things like that.
I know they've cracked down on those
and they're no longer around.
They don't have those anymore in New York.
Those are gone.
Yes.
Maybe in your neighborhood.
But apparently, apparently it's going on
on the internet
and they're sending mail to people
and trying to get innocent children
to join terrorist groups.
No, the whole thing is insane and ridiculous.
This is, we have to ask,
when something like this happens,
what is it they really want?
And I think they just want to establish,
I guess, a foot in the door
and keep certain things offline forever.
Now, anyway, countries are already
moving individually to acquire tools
that would give them the ability
to reach beyond national borders.
In Germany, where the authorities
recently foiled a planned terrorist attack,
the interior minister is seeking powers
to spy virtually using emails
that could infect recipients' computers
with spy software,
citing the threat of terrorism.
The Swedish defense minister
has also sought broad powers
to monitor email traffic without court orders,
while in Australia,
the government introduced legislation this month
to enable the federal police
to block and ban websites
through orders to internet service providers.
According to Richard Clayton,
who is a computer security researcher
at the University of Cambridge,
one way of viewing these trends
is that the terrorists have won.
They're making us change our society
to counteract,
not what the terrorists are doing,
but what they're threatening to do.
And what's being proposed
doesn't really make any difference
for a terrorist
who will find a way around it.
This guy makes a lot of sense.
The thing that really gets me about all this,
they're going to be sending Trojan horses,
Trojan emails through the net.
Do you think those are just going to stop
at the terrorist email addresses?
Do you think they might start bouncing
all over the net
and everyone's going to get infected
and then all computers will be able
to be monitored by these organizations?
Well, they'll probably restrict it
to the special terrorist top-level domain
email addresses.
Yes, what is that, TER or something?
Well, the problem is
this is a real step back for security.
I mean, when you have powerful entities
like governments,
the United States government
or any other governments
looking to keep security
from progressing to the point
where most machines are actually secure
and can significantly deter
this sort of attack,
we have a serious problem.
It's not good for anybody.
Definitely not, definitely not.
Okay, and what else?
Good news.
Let's have some good news.
This is from Holland.
And by the way,
we'll start taking phone calls,
212-209-2900.
They're currently being stored
at an army hangar
somewhere in a place called Meath
and in rented locations
around the country
at an annual cost
of over 700,000 pounds.
However, a Dutch judge has ruled
that the e-voting machines
used in his country's November
and March elections
were not adequately authorized
and at least one type of machine
was not certified.
The machines were manufactured
by NEDAP, the same company
which won the Irish e-voting contract.
And basically what happened
was that these machines
have been ruled to be illegal,
not to be used in the next elections.
They're going to be using paper and pencil.
And that's only after two elections.
They're much quicker than us
in picking this sort of thing up.
Yeah, and they really got it.
A case against these machines
is brought by a Dutch political action group,
We Don't Trust Voting Computers,
which had highlighted
how many Dutch e-voting machines
could be hacked into electronically
from 20 to 30 meters away.
Future Dutch elections
will now be held
using the traditional
pencil and ballot paper method
until more secure machines
are developed.
You know, I think we've interviewed
on this program
the head of that foundation.
I think we might have done that.
Or, I don't know if he's the head,
but a member of that foundation.
So, yeah, the world is constantly in flux.
And we're constantly talking to the people
that are helping to create that,
I guess, conversation that never stops.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
Are there any lessons
that we might be able to take
from that group in the Netherlands
which could be applied here in the U.S.
to have a more secure voting system
that was less subject to tampering?
I mean, I would say just be persistent
and loud and aggressive
and make sure you go to all the hearings
and make sure that you get
as much media coverage as possible.
Obviously, that's a lot easier to do
in a smaller country
and especially a liberal country.
But I think it's possible
if you can get through to people
that you might actually turn some heads
and make some progress.
And certainly what happened in Holland
should be inspiration for us.
And I think one of the major issues as well
is you really need hands-on access
to the machines to demonstrate
that these sort of attacks are really practical.
And that's one of the things
that Hacking Democracy,
the documentary, really showed
and really got a lot of people to think,
hey, look, this stuff is actually possible.
It's not just a bunch of crazies
on WBAI talking about it.
It's true.
It might originally be a bunch of crazies
on WBAI talking about it,
but then it spreads.
And then before you know it,
regular people are talking about it.
And they're forgetting about us
for having brought it up in the first place.
There you go.
Also some good news from Berlin
and a ruling dated March 27, 2007,
but has only now been published.
What happened there?
I don't understand how that works.
The printing press was broken.
Well, I mean, if you come up with a ruling,
shouldn't the ruling go into effect immediately,
not wait six months or whatever?
All right, it's now been published
and it's likely to have legal ramifications,
which I would hope a ruling would do.
The local court of the Berlin district of Mitt
has barred the Federal Ministry of Justice
from retaining personal data acquired via its website
beyond the periods associated
with the specific instances of use of the site.
Thus IP addresses in particular
may no longer be filed away.
Given these web markers,
it is even today possible in most cases
without any elaborate effort being required
to identify internet users
by merging personal data
with the help of third parties.
The judges declared.
The local court also opposed the view
espoused by operators
and some data privacy watchdogs
that security reasons justify a recording regime
that over short periods of time
maps the behavior of all net users
and allows individual users to be picked out.
Well, I guess this is good news,
although there is the right to appeal
that still might happen.
It's interesting.
It seems to be the law,
or at least the proposed law in Germany,
both that you must record this data
and that it is illegal to record this data,
so it'll be definitely interesting
to see how it turns out.
Yeah, there'll be some back and forth on this,
and maybe in another six months
we'll hear what they said yesterday.
Okay, some letters.
OTH at 2600.com.
Thanks to people who wrote in
after our pleas last week to get more mail.
We did get more mail, quite a bit of it.
And please continue to send the mail
because we like to know you're out there,
and sometimes we even read the mail on the air
and, of course, we also take your phone calls,
and we'll take them in a couple of minutes.
212-209-2900.
We want to see all the phones light up,
so if you haven't called yet, call now,
and when I look over there again
and see all the lines lit up,
we'll go right to the phones.
Off-the-hook rules.
I love this show,
and I'm looking forward to the next Hope.
I just wanted to say something about net neutrality.
You guys talked about how the word regulation
can be misused by net neutrality opponents
and how they will frame the issue
as trying to keep the Internet
quote-unquote free of regulation,
and we want to keep a quote-unquote
free and open Internet
that does not allow corporate monopolies
to discriminate which traffic gets allowed
and which traffic gets throttled.
A better way of phrasing it
is to say that we do want to regulate
the Internet service providers
to ensure that freedom of speech is preserved.
We don't want to turn over the keys
to AOL, Time Warner, or anyone else
to determine what content should be accessible
and what content should not be.
The opponents want to keep the Internet
free of regulations requiring integrity
and freedom of speech to be preserved.
Talking about bandwidth issues
complicates the picture.
If you can set someone's bandwidth
to one byte a second,
you are effectively blocking any traffic from them.
So I would not talk about bandwidth
but simply say that ISPs should not have
the power to block content that they don't like.
Without net neutrality,
there is nothing to stop an ISP
from blocking blogs or editorial sites
that criticize an ISP.
We have to save freedom of speech
on the Internet, signed Roe.
I still got to say, you know,
when you say that you're regulating the net,
it's something that rubs me the wrong way.
And I don't think that's what we're trying to do.
I think we're trying to preserve the net.
I think what they're trying to do
is regulate the net and control various bits of traffic.
We should point out this is not merely theoretical.
AT&T just this week released a revision
to its Terms of Service.
The Terms of Service now state
that AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend
all or a portion of your service
without notice for conduct that AT&T believes
tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T
or its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries.
Now, they've promised that they don't really mean it.
What does that mean?
But they refuse to remove this clause
which says in plain English,
if you criticize AT&T,
you know, if you use your AT&T DSL
to post a blog which says, you know,
AT&T service is no good,
they can cancel your account.
So if AT&T is my ISP,
and I publicly criticize them like on a blog or something
about AT&T's secret cooperation with NSA
in warrantless wiretapping activities.
Don't do it, Bernie. Don't do it.
It's not worth it.
Then AT&T can now legally terminate my account?
Oh, boy, you've done it now.
You've gone on the radio.
And silenced me?
You've gone on the radio and criticized them.
They're going to find out your IP,
and they're going to cut you off.
Well, unfortunately, my AISP is not AT&T,
but if it were, I could be done.
But they might get service from AT&T.
That's true.
Yeah?
They could be bought by AT&T tomorrow.
Well, AT&T could, I don't know.
Does it apply to AT&T backbone services
that are provided to my ISP?
I don't know.
Okay, dear folks,
first off, wonderful show you're doing.
I've been a semi-regular listener
going back to the archives of your show on my iPod,
which, by the way, anyone can listen to,
www.2600.com slash off the hook.
They're all there.
And if you want the Hi-Fi versions,
well, there's information on how to get those as well.
The question here is,
I'm happy you offered the Hi-Fi MP3s of the latest shows.
I was wondering, would you object to me
setting up an archive of these,
publicly available on the net?
This way, the Hi-Fi versions will be available
for a long period of time.
Yes, we have the Hi-Fi,
the semi-Hi-Fi versions available for two weeks,
but we just don't have the bandwidth
because those are the 64K ones
as opposed to the 16K ones
that aren't the Hi-Fi ones.
So many people download them,
and we just don't have enough bandwidth
for that to build up a massive library.
So we keep them on for two weeks,
and then they get cycled,
or they get replaced by the newer ones.
And we also have the 128K super Hi-Fi ones,
which we only have available on DVD.
But regardless,
yes, it's perfectly okay to make those available
if you have the bandwidth
and don't mind people using all of it up,
downloading our show.
The point of the show, it's on a radio station.
Get it out there,
and whether it's an old show or a new show,
people still find it interesting.
And it's always good to hear that.
Always good to get a letter
from somebody commenting on something
we said back in 1997.
It happens.
It really does.
Okay, so we take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
We have a few calls.
There's still some open lines.
Let's take this one.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hey, where do you get all this money
to travel all over the world
like you own the planet?
What's that about?
Oh, it's good to be home.
You know, this is the kind of attitude
I always get.
Who do you think you are anyway?
I got that from the customs official
when I came in.
I got searched, JFK.
I always get searched at JFK for some reason.
And as soon as I got in,
yep, only one on the plane.
We're going to search you.
How do I get the money?
Well, first of all, these trips
were actually paid for by the people
I was speaking for,
which were different conferences
around the planet.
So, yeah, you can save your righteous indignation
for some other cause.
I'm sure you'll find one.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yes, Emmanuel.
I got a problem with my computer.
Somebody's trying to hack it.
Send me the cube,
like you should go.
What?
Is there a full moon?
It must be a full moon, right?
It's got to be.
All right.
That would be a good trick.
I don't even know.
Good evening.
Okay, that was our best call so far.
Let's try this one.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, I had a quick question,
and I'll listen off the air.
Okay.
Has the FCC given up on cracking it down
on pirate radio and the FM dial?
It seems like there's a huge plethora
of new pirate stations on the air,
and I thought maybe with all these
stupid little transmitters.
Okay, can I just ask,
can I ask what some of these state,
what frequencies you're hearing them on?
Oh, my God, there's so many of them,
even ones that are,
there's a couple,
there's one in Brooklyn that's actually
on the same frequency as FMU.
There's one in Queens that is on 101.5.
It's like I drive a limo,
and I'm always tooting around.
What kind of programming do they have?
The ones in Queens and Brooklyn
are just like Jamaican and French.
Okay, those are the Haitian pirate stations.
Yeah, there's a lot of those in Brooklyn.
I think almost every frequency of the dial
has one someplace.
I know.
It's crazy.
Well, I mean, to me it's only a problem
if it interferes with something else
I'm trying to listen to,
and you said FMU.
Yeah, I take that personally
if it interferes with FMU.
There is one, and I told them,
and there's not really anything they can do
because apparently they say
that they're not cracking down or anything.
There's so many little ones here and there.
But we had an interesting adventure once
where we tracked down a pirate station
that was actually being run out of a church
in Queens that was broadcasting
on the same frequency as WUSB
out in Stony Brook at 90.1,
and we took exception to that
because while that station doesn't go to Queens normally,
in a fringe period it could,
and plus this station was actually strong enough
that it was starting to hit Nassau County.
So we knew the FCC wasn't going to be of any help,
so we just basically had to sort of,
what did we do, Bernie?
We track them down ourselves?
Yeah, we used some electronic direction finding.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Yeah, we...
We used the fact that they read their address on the air.
Well, there was that too.
Actually, I didn't hear that.
We were driving around with a frequency counter
and an FM receiver,
and then the frequency counter beeped
on the frequency that we were looking for,
and I looked up and I said,
look, it's an FM broadcast band antenna.
Yeah, but Mike is correct
in that we were at that address
because they had read that address in Spanish,
and we were just verifying that, in fact,
there was a transmission coming from there,
and that's when you looked up and saw the antenna.
Speaking of Spanish, there's tons of pirate
stations out here, and there's tons of them.
Well, I mean, again, it's...
I find it only a problem if it's interfering
with something that you want to listen to.
I consider the big broadcasters,
the ones that are broadcasting
off the Empire State Building
and own every single station
in the city, it seems.
I think there's a degree of piracy there as well
because the airwaves are for the public.
Emmanuel?
Yes, go ahead.
I just wanted to finish this story.
We got the information about the church,
and I spoke to...
There was actually a church service going on at the time,
so I couldn't speak to the pastor
because he was preaching, so I spoke with someone
in the congregation, got his contact information,
his phone number of the pastor,
and called him a day or two later
and explained the situation.
I said it was a private individual,
but that your station was interfering with...
What station was it interfering with?
USB.
Yeah, WSB.
It would be best if you would not interfere
because interfering with a licensed station
is likely to involve the FCC.
I believe your exact phrase was
it would be a shame if something were to happen
to this place, and you were sort of...
I did not say that.
It was like that scene
from The Ruttles
where John Belushi goes in and kind of...
Well, never mind.
I just told the truth
that pirate stations that interfere
with licensed stations
are more likely to get the attention
of the FCC than pirate stations
that don't interfere with licensed stations.
And if we can find you, they can find you.
Exactly.
A couple days later,
they were gracious enough to move
to a frequency that wasn't interfering.
Well, they were smart enough to move
to a frequency that wasn't interfering,
and we even suggested a couple
that might be better homes for them,
and they took one of them,
which I think actually was a very smart thing.
Well, I was wearing a 2600 hooded sweatshirt,
which does have a vaguely
government-looking steel
all over the back of it,
but I don't know if that had anything to do with it
because the pastor never actually saw it.
I called him on the phone.
Yeah, but believe me, you got the attention
of the crowd of people in the church
that saw you walk in or walk around.
Perhaps they thought we were the federales.
So if you want to impersonate
federal officers,
you might want to consider
getting a 2600 sweatshirt
unless you want to be more careful
and then don't.
Everyone was happy.
It worked out for the best for everyone,
and so that was the lesson.
Yeah, that was the lesson we got from that.
By the way, speaking of pirates,
there is a station that a lot of people
think is a pirate station.
I think they're at 877,
which is technically Channel 6.
It's the audio carrier frequency
for TV Channel 6.
But apparently we do.
We have a low power Channel 6.
I think it's in Queens.
It's very low power.
However, the sound is very high power.
So that means the entire tri-state area
at 877 is getting this music station
that everyone thinks is a pirate
because that's not a frequency
you're supposed to be broadcasting
a radio station on,
but it's actually legal because
it's a television station broadcasting music.
Very smart, and I can't believe
a few years ago there was
a station who couldn't get
a low power FM license
because it was before
they were reinstated by the FCC
a few years ago,
but they were able to get
a low power television station license,
and all they did broadcast
was the audio carrier.
That kind of annoyed some people
who complained to the FCC,
so then they had to broadcast
a video carrier as well.
24-7
along with their audio sub-carrier
at 87.7 MHz.
It's a way of being smart
and a way of sort of sidestepping the rules.
All right, let's see if we can take a couple more phone calls.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Yeah, what's up with all them
frequent flyer miles you're piling up, man?
You're living like the life of the 50 rich.
What's up with that?
I already answered that question.
You might want to consider a better phone.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Okay, what I'd like to know,
I catch a show only episodically,
and I read this obituary
in the Times,
and maybe you've already talked about it.
I'd like to hear whatever
interesting stuff you can shed on it.
Joy Bubbles, never heard of him,
and you probably know all about him.
Oh yeah, Joy Bubbles passed away,
I believe it was in August.
In fact, we played an excerpt of Joy Bubbles
when he was interviewed on this program
earlier this year.
It was an excerpt from a number of years ago.
He was known as High Rise Joe,
Joe Ingressia,
one of the most knowledgeable
people about the phone network.
I was very sad to hear
about his passing.
The New York Times did a really, really good
obituary.
What made me want to have met him.
I suggest people out there
just type the word Joy Bubbles
into the New York Times search engine,
nytimes.com,
they've opened up their archive now
so that you don't have to pay for it or anything like that.
You'll just see the most amazing
obituary
that really does
this guy justice.
I'm just sorry we didn't get to talk to him more.
One other thing.
The number stations, are they entirely
history now?
I heard one last night.
Who's hiding
from who?
Didn't that used to be Soviets
and Americans?
There's all kinds of entities
out there now trading information.
We don't know who they are.
It's a dangerous world.
It certainly is. A mysterious world too.
Thanks for helping us try
and figure it out.
That's going to pretty much do it for us this week.
We'll be back again next week.
Next week is our first of two
fundraising shows for the
fall season.
If you normally listen on delay, you should listen
and learn about all this stuff.
Please do, because it definitely helps us.
It keeps this place going.
This place is definitely
worth preserving on the radio dial.
Mark your calendars.
It's a bit
of a pain to have to worry
about this kind of thing, but think of the alternatives.
Suddenly, it's not so bad.
This is Emanuel for Off the Hook.
We'll catch you next week.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
Have a good night.
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All right.
All right, it is now 8 p.m.
That's right, 8 p.m. on WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
Also broadcasting on the web at WBAI.org.