We podcast at FSRN.org.
You can email us your feedback, questions, and story ideas to
comments at FSRN.org. Today's newscast was produced by
Monica Lopez and Taina Giese. Our Washington, D.C. editor is
Leon Caldwell, and our headlines editor is Shannon Young.
Our technical production team at KPFA in Berkeley includes Antonio Ortiz
and Puck Lowe. From KPFK in L.A., I'm Aura Bogado.
And you're listening to
Radio Station WBAI New York, where the time is
7 o'clock, time once again for Off The Hook.
But if they could, they would, on Diddley Bow, for the best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, on Diddley Bow.
Diddley Bow
Oh, boy. It's a good thing this isn't television.
What we have to go through to get things to work around here.
It's Off The Hook, another exciting edition here on this Wednesday evening
as we prepare to enlighten you on what's going on in the world
of high technology and low intelligence and all sorts of other
neat things going on. Hey, I had a very positive experience
today. Well, first let me introduce people. We've got
Redbird over there. Wait a minute, I have no microphones this week.
Good evening. There you go. Mike on the other side of the room. Hi.
And somewhere in the world is Bernie S.?
Yes, I'm in Scranton, Pennsylvania on a landline.
Well, that's different for you, and you sound pretty good.
The change has done you well. Must be one of those good old
step-by-step switches they use up here in Scranton.
Oh, I remember the step-by-step switches. Yes, those were
the days. What I was saying was I had a positive experience today.
I took the subway train. I was on the L line on First Avenue
and it had one of those little signs that said
next train in seven minutes, etc.
You're not going to say it was accurate. It was accurate. Not only was it accurate,
but I heard an announcement. I heard an announcement. I was standing on the subway
platform and this big voice came booming in saying the next train
will be, the next Eighth Avenue-bound train will be arriving in approximately
seven minutes. And I could understand every word of it. And then, to make it even better,
I heard that same voice on the other side of the platform announcing
the train that was going to Brooklyn for the other people. I could still hear it, but it was obviously
geared for those people. And they actually not only were able to make the announcement
legible, they were able to direct it at the appropriate people.
All the trains that she was advertising and the signs were advertising
came exactly when they said they were going to do. Now, I know this might seem like a simple thing to people
in other parts of the world, but to us, this is like the second coming of Christ. It really is.
Are you sure you weren't in another city?
No. And the other thing was the train wasn't even that loud. It was almost like the train was in a
different city because for some reason, and this is something no one has ever been able to answer me,
trains in New York City are louder than any place else. Why do they have to be so loud?
It's an old system. It's an old system, fine, but it's rails, it's wheels.
Those are new train cars. Why can't they be quieter? No one can explain this.
See, that's the kind of noise I get from people.
They just don't know. So anyway, I had to head uptown. I had to do
all kinds of things today. I'd like you guys to meet the newest member of my family.
This is the phone I had a brief affair with
when I was down in Brazil and became obsessed with bringing it up here to New York.
And I got to tell you, this phone is impossible to get. This is the
Nokia E70. And I don't know why.
I just want to fit in. All I've ever wanted to do in my life is just
be like everybody else. But it seems that no matter what I decide I want,
it always has to be inaccessible. And this phone was impossible
to get. I was looking for it online. I called Nokia. They said, yeah, we discontinued
that phone. It's a great phone, though. We don't know why we discontinued it. It's really good.
Good luck finding it. I went to eBay and saw it there for
all kinds of outrageous sums. I saw it in various cellular phone stores.
Here's the thing. Whenever you buy something online, you have to look
up the name of the place you're buying it from. Just put it into Google and see what kind of
reviews they've gotten. Almost every single instance
the people who were selling these phones or the stores that were selling these phones
were completely being trashed by the people who had done business with them. These people are
the biggest ripoff artists ever. They will not send you what you paid for. They'll rip you off. They'll send you
defective merchandise. You kind of don't want to go with people like that. And I almost did several times.
Thankfully, people give negative feedback and it really is educational.
I was able to find one person... You've described 99% of my experiences on eBay,
by the way. Really? I've never had a bad experience on eBay. I really haven't.
I'm lucky, I guess. But I did find one person on eBay who was
selling this phone. However, there was a little catch. It didn't come with a battery. It didn't come with the back
of the phone, the little thing that clips over the battery. It didn't come with a charger or
a manual or I imagine a warranty or anything like that. But it was about half the price that it normally
would be. Those are usually important things. Yeah, well they are. But I figured
I could get a battery. But no, the battery was... I went to all these stores on the
island asking and people were like, hey, where'd you get that kind of a phone?
It's just a phone. It's just really something that I thought was
normal. But apparently it's really bizarre and weird.
So anyway, the point is I finally got the thing. I finally went all the way up to the Nokia store
in Manhattan, which apparently is the only place in the world where I could get
a battery for this thing. And now I introduce
you to my new Nokia E70 phone, which
looks really cool, I think.
Well, okay, I'm going to change all that, obviously. But I'm going to
pass it around. And as you can see, it's what they call a candy bar
phone. And as soon as I figure out how to open it up myself, there's a little keyboard
there. See, isn't that cool? Yeah. You're not sold, but
it's better than the iPhone, I'll tell you that right now. So yeah, I had to run
up there and get that. Then I had to also go and get another region-free
DVD player. For some reason, I have the worst luck with DVD players. I didn't do anything and I'm recording a sound clip
here. You're recording a sound clip? I just handed you the phone. How did you do that?
Well, stop doing that. We're recording the show as it is. We don't need to record it on a phone.
Emmanuel? Yes, Bernie? I just looked up
this phone that you were describing. It was actually released in October 2005.
Well, I'm not one to talk about old cell phones, because mine's about 10 years old.
But what particular features made you go to so much effort
to track down this particular phone? Well, after a while, it sort of became
just an obstinate struggle to do what people were telling me I couldn't do.
So I sort of lost track of what the actual features were. But I think it's really cool that it flips open
and there's a full keyboard there. It's got a very nice screen.
It can do a lot of things as far as
messaging, email, all kinds of wireless
things. My phone's 10 years old. It does those things.
I think if we put a little competition between the two phones, you'll
see that mine... I want a handicap, then. Yeah, mine will beat yours handily.
The other thing it can do is beep on the air. It can beep. It can ring.
One thing that I really like, which I guess more phones do these days, is
using MP3s as ringtones. You just make your own ringtone. Who buys
ringtones? Everybody out there is buying ringtones. It's a big source of
income to the music industry now. Ringtones. How does anybody justify
paying to make your phone ring? Has anyone in this room, and be honest,
ever purchased a ringtone? No.
You're smirking, though, Redbird. Are you sure? Absolutely sure.
I'm smirking because it's such an absurd concept.
What do people pay for these things? It's a huge amount.
It is a source of hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for
wireless carriers, these ringtones. Unfortunately, wireless carriers often make it hard
for you to put your own ringtones on there. Some won't let you use
MP3s or write your own ringtones, but as some of our listeners may have heard
a couple of weeks ago, the most popular ringtone in
Spain was the president of Spain telling Hugo
Chavez to shut up. Not the president of Spain.
The king of Spain. Yes, the king of Spain, what did I say? You said the president.
I'm sorry, I meant the king of Spain, Juan Carlos, I believe, telling
Hugo Chavez, ostensibly the president of
Venezuela, to shut up at some conference.
That became the most downloaded ringtone.
Hundreds of millions of people had downloaded this and paid for it.
I saw the video where he said
shut up. First of all, obviously it's not in English, but second of all,
I can't even picture that as a ringtone. It wasn't even that
impressive, it was just somebody getting annoyed and saying shut up. I think somebody said it to music and that's what made it
even more appealing. Here's the interesting thing, it's not actually that
it's not actually the king on the ringtone because apparently it's illegal to commercialize
the king's voice in Spain. So it's an actor saying
will you please shut up or something in the same tone
of voice. It's illegal to impersonate? No, you can impersonate the king.
It's illegal to use the king's voice? You can't sell the king's voice.
But you can sell the king's voice in other countries, can't you? I could sell the king's voice.
I never thought I'd say that phrase, but yeah, it's kind of weird. So basically it's a new song
whose sole lyrics are shut up and it has nothing
to do with the king at all. Okay, the point is people are paying for ringtones
which I think is the stupidest thing ever and the thing is you
have to pay a second time to get another phone or if you change or run out of ringtones
or things like that. I will never do that. I will never do that. One thing
though that is kind of interesting, and let's see if this actually works, this is what
Redbird was spending a half hour trying to figure out before is how to get the CD player to work.
It was like five minutes. Okay, but just to get it to work was a feat.
Now if you explain it, it's going to sound like we're morons,
but the CD player is pretty absurd. Okay, well we can explain it later, but
there should be a voice that joins us
as soon as I hit this button, and there isn't because
apparently that button doesn't control it, so I guess I have to hit this button over here
and that doesn't do anything.
We'd like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost
certainly talking too loud.
Okay, well that's not the one I was supposed to play. It skipped over the first one for some reason, but
that's the lady. That's the lady who does the London Underground subway announcements.
That's the same voice. Does that actually get announced anywhere?
Well, I wish it played the first one because that's a nice normal recording. Maybe the second one will be
a normal recording. Let's see. Passengers are
reminded that a smile is actually a friendship signal, not
a sign of weakness. No, that's not a normal one either.
You see, what she did was, she went online
basically. Her name is Emma Clark. It's kind of funny because
where I grew up, where I almost grew up, the library out by me
Well, I tried my best and it just didn't take.
Emma Clark Library. It's a different Emma Clark, not named after her, but it's kind of weird that it's the same name.
But the woman behind the gentle, even voice which warns London's
subway commuters to mind the gap was
fired after telling a newspaper she thought the transit network was dreadful.
Emma Clark has been recording messages for London's sprawling subway network,
popularly known as the Tube, since 1999. And in addition
to warning passengers to watch their step in walking between subway cars and the platform,
she also reads the train's stops, tells Londoners
how long they have to wait until their next ride, and delivers service updates.
Transport for London is the body responsible for running the subway,
and they said that Clark was fired for telling the Daily Mail
that she avoided using the subway whenever possible. The thought of being stuck
in the Tube with strangers for minutes on end and having to listen to endless
repeated messages of my own voice fills me with horror, she told the paper.
Minutes on end, that's not so bad, minutes on end. She said using the service
every day had been dreadful. The paper also featured Clark's website
which hosts a series of spoof Tube announcements, including one warning
a passenger not to stare at a woman's chest, and another telling American tourists
you are almost certainly talking too loud. Transport for London noted that some of the
spoof announcements were quite funny, but the spokesman there said
Clark's attack on the subway had crossed the line. We wouldn't employ someone to
promote our services who simultaneously criticizes those services, but her voice
can still be heard in the subway cars until a replacement is
found. She is in a unique situation though, nobody else can make those claims.
No, but what we're going to do is play a few of these throughout the course of the show
and you can figure out yourself if they're real or fake.
Customers are reminded that smoking is not permitted anywhere
on the London Underground. I think that's real. Well they're all real.
Well no, I think that's a real announcement that plays on the Tube, because there was nothing
funny about that. No smoking on the Tube? Yeah, I think that's a
real regulation. I think that's kind of funny. Maybe.
Do not drop litter on the train. Please use the tramps provided.
Okay, now that might sound funny to us, because of the use of the word tramps,
but apparently over there, over there, tramps has a totally
different meaning, and I guess that's where you would put trash
if you found yourself on a London subway car. Even in the United States
we still put our trash in the tramps. Well maybe you do, but
there are plenty of tramps on the subway in Philadelphia.
We really want to go down this road, Bernie.
So we have all kinds of interesting stories here tonight on
this edition of Off The Hook. This is interesting. Someone sent this in
to us pretty recently. A security flaw in
Passport Canada's website has allowed easy access to the personal
information, including social insurance numbers, dates of birth, and driver's
license numbers of people applying for new passports. The breach was discovered
last week by an Ontario man completing his own passport application.
He found he could easily view the applications of others by altering one
character in the internet address displayed by his web browser.
I was expecting the site to tell me that I couldn't do that, said Jamie Lanning of
Huntsville. I'm just curious about these things, so I tried it, and boom, there was
somebody else's name and somebody else's data. Well,
I don't know. That's Canada, but if you did that here, Mike, what do you think would happen?
If you changed one number in the passport application?
If you tried this kind of experimentation. I think you'd be arrested. Probably.
Or at least threatened with arrest. You certainly wouldn't get nice articles written about
you in the Globe and Mail. And this is a nice article. Contrast this with the article
last week about the hackers getting the information from, what was that company's
name? That was Convio. Convio. Because they were
negligent in handling it, and hackers got blamed, even though hackers
hadn't really done anything. It was just lying out there for anybody to look at.
Now, an internet data security expert
and professor at the University of Ottawa, Carlisle Adams, says this is exactly how
identity theft happens. If you want to take out a mortgage, for example, this is the type of information
the bank is going to ask for to make sure you're really the person you're claiming to be.
Then, all of a sudden, there's a mortgage in someone else's name. Now, it's such a simple
thing that I don't believe for a second that this guy was the first person to discover it.
So, I mean, the claims are true. This is exactly how identity theft happens. And, of course,
if you're committing identity theft, you're not going to go public with this information.
Which is kind of nice that they wrote such a good article.
Because the person did come forward with the information. He obviously wasn't using it for fraudulent
purposes and had an actual concern for the public.
And that doesn't happen all that often.
A Washington resident whose social insurance and driver's license numbers were accessed by Mr. Lanning
said he was, quote-unquote, totally surprised to learn that his personal
information was so readily available. There's contact with some random guy.
If you read the disclaimer on the website, it's supposed to use high-tech security,
he said in an interview. You'd think it wouldn't be that bloody simple.
He sounds a little peeved, and I would be, too.
Now, here's the thing. They asked the spokesperson for Passport Canada
and he said, yeah, our website was down on Friday, but that was for another reason.
And then they said they fixed the security breach, but when the reporter
went and tried it, they found that it was still there.
These people clearly don't know how to run a website.
Well, the person who's talking and the person who's running the website are two different people.
No, but the person who's running the website is the one who doesn't know what they're doing.
Well, maybe that person's on vacation somewhere and doesn't even know about this.
What we do know is that it's being reported in a somewhat accurate way and the blame is being placed
on the people running the system, which is exactly where it should be placed.
Now, contrast that to a story that took place here in New York.
It's rather of a different nature, but still I think it speaks to attitude.
This guy, a freelance photographer, Carlos Alejo,
says he was late for a business meeting when he spotted a wallet lying abandoned
on a subway platform bench. He picked it up and put it in his bag with every intention
of later finding its owner. But as he rushed aboard the No. 6 train last Wednesday
at Grand Central, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
That's right. After he gave the officers the wallet, he was
frisked, made to put his hands against the wall and hand over his identification
so they could do a criminal history check.
He said,
The look on the cop's face was like he already knew that I was guilty.
He said,
That just stabbed me right there in the heart. I was so ashamed.
My face went red. People were looking. I've been in this country 17 years
and never felt discriminated against until that day. That's really absurd.
It is absurd. I've heard about this happening where if you find something in the subway
system here in New York and you take it,
if you find it on the bench or something like that, if you don't do exactly what they
want you to do, which I guess is take it to them,
find the undercover cop or find the subway platform guy.
Last year we went through this on the air. I found a cell phone on the subway and we were calling the owner
on the air. But you didn't get arrested for taking the cell phone. I didn't get arrested.
I think Mike ultimately found the person who was...
I met the guy. We had a tearful reunion of the phone. It was incredible.
The entrapment...
It's so bizarre that you're being entrapped for doing something
good. You're taking something that has been lost and
presumably trying to find the owner by taking it and looking up
the information. That's how generally you return things to people. You have to have them in your
possession for a little bit of time. True, he could have been stealing it. That's part of the risk of
leaving your property on a bench. Someone could take it.
But just assume that if somebody does that, they're guilty of something. I assume there's all kinds of
profiling going on here that makes certain people get questioned more than others.
It's very unhealthy and I don't think people are going to be doing very many good deeds as a result of this.
The judges agree with you. These convictions are getting thrown out.
But it doesn't seem to stop the police.
The program is called Operation Lucky Bag.
I think you raise a good point that if people learn about this
program, they might be afraid to pick up... Honest people might
start being afraid to pick up wallets and things left on the subway, leaving
only the thieves as the ones who are going to do it. So it's not good for people who lose things.
Definitely not.
I was unclear from what part of the story you read to me.
How long was it after he picked up the wallet and put it in his bag
that he was approached by the police? It was right away.
He was getting onto a train. Basically it's a stakeout.
So if you see anything, it's kind of like
those legendary countries where if you pick up a piece of bread from the street
you get your hand chopped off. And that's why there's no theft in that particular place.
It's sort of the same mentality. Don't take anything that doesn't belong to you or you will be punished.
Even if you have good intentions.
I really think the police have better things to do. Especially in New York City.
You're both making a mistake, which is a very common mistake made by people who don't live in New York City.
You're assuming that the New York Police Department has finite resources
and that if they can spend time on this, they'll stop spending time on something else worthwhile.
No, this is not true. The New York Police can spend as much time on as many things as they want
and still have more police left to do other silly things.
Where do you get that information? From experience, it seems to be true.
I've never seen them run out.
Well, if you doubt that, come to the New Year celebration in Times Square and I'm sure you'll see more cops than you've ever seen
anywhere before at any time.
And there'll still be thousands more somewhere else wasting their time on something else.
In fact, that might be a good night to pull off that caper we were talking about in another part of town.
But it won't be because there'll be police there as well.
To demonstrate the point, all the cops will be in Times Square. We'll be in that other place we talked about doing what we said.
And you'll see how many cops, if somebody blows the whistle, how many cops will show up there.
And I don't want to get more specific than that because I think we might get in trouble if I do.
The point is that there are a lot, yeah, definitely a lot.
And some people will say that's a good thing. Some people say we need more.
Because we're just so out of control. And when you tell people that enough times, then they begin to act like that.
And that's what they're used to.
Okay, here's something from... Oh, we have another announcement? Let's hear one more.
Here we are again, crammed into a sweaty tube carriage.
And today's Wednesday.
Well, how did she know it was Wednesday?
All right, the voice of the London Underground there.
You know, I don't know.
If I was running the subway system and she was the person doing my recordings, I would kind of be upset.
Well, okay. Then you would fire her, too.
All right.
I don't know.
Moving back over to England.
This reader, or listener, actually, Zen writes in.
Any room for a couple of million sane people in your country? The lunatics are running the asylum over here, I'm afraid.
We need to get out. God help us all.
What is Zen referring to?
Well, a teenager has been given an anti-social behavior order that bans him from promoting his criminal behavior online.
Police discovered the 17-year-old from Norfolk was posting comments
and photographs on the Bebo social networking site glorifying his exploits.
At Norwich Youth Court,
the district judge banned the youth from using the internet
to publish material that is, quote, threatening or abusive, unquote,
and, quote, promotes criminal activity, unquote.
ASBOs, ASBOs is what they call this as part of Newspeak, anti-social behavior, ASBO.
They usually placed on offenders to ban them from frequenting certain places
or carrying out particular activities.
But this is the first case to come to light in which someone has been given an ASBO
to stop them using the World Wide Web.
The court heard that a police investigation found the boy had posted offensive comments against officers
and photographs of drug taking.
Constable Tim Chapman of the Norfolk Police said the comments on the Bebo website
demonstrated his attitude towards offending the community and the police.
The boy was given the two-year ASBO after admitting a series of offenses,
including stealing a vehicle and possession of cannabis.
What do you guys think of this? Do you think if there's evidence the guy actually committed these crimes,
that this is an appropriate way of dealing with it?
Well, I think he's screwing himself over in the long run because in terms of, I don't know,
I mean, in terms of employment in the future, who's going to hire him if they see that sort of stuff online?
I mean, most employers do internet searches before they hire people.
I guess he is. People are dumb.
Yeah, if it's this obvious. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why, you know,
he's probably not doing himself a favor by posting all this stuff, but at the same time,
I don't know that it's...
Well, if he actually did commit these crimes, why don't they charge him with the crimes instead of telling him he can't talk about this?
Right, well, I mean, you know, he should be able to say what he wants. That's kind of a First Amendment thing.
Which I don't have in England.
Don't post photographs of yourself committing crimes on the internet.
But beyond this specific case, these anti-social behavior orders,
am I really supposed to call them ASBOs?
Yeah, ASBOs is the right word for it.
All right, these ASBOs are becoming this really weird tool for law enforcement and the prosecution system
in the UK where they're able to put sort of arbitrary restrictions on people.
And, you know, if our listeners are interested, they can do some research.
They're really weird and really problematic in a lot more ways than just this one case.
I would go a step beyond what Mike suggested and advise people committing crimes
not only to not post your photographs online, don't take photographs.
What in God's name are you doing? Are you committing a crime? Are you taking photographs of yourself committing a crime?
Photographs tend to be looked at by people. That's why they're called photographs.
Don't give anybody advice like that.
It's good advice. I mean, no matter how you slice it, it's good advice.
Okay, I take it a step further. Don't commit crimes. Is that what you want me to say?
It's good. All right, fine. Who's going to listen to that advice?
Yeah, coming from me, I think that won't mean too much. Did we talk about this, about the Skype encryption
and the German police? No? Not yet.
Okay, well, German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in
internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected
criminals and terrorists. That's according to Germany's top police officer.
Skype, as you know, allows users to make telephone calls over the internet from their computer to other Skype
users free of charge. Law enforcement agencies
and intelligence services have used wiretaps since the telephone was invented.
In fact, Alexander Graham Bell was one of the first people
to be wiretapped. I don't know if people know that. Yeah, he was a suspicious character
at the time. That's how we have the recording of him talking to Watson. Yeah.
Watson, come here. I need you. They didn't know what he meant by that. They didn't know what he wanted Watson to come
there for, and so they launched a whole big thing into that. Anyway, implementing
the wiretaps is much more complex in the modern telecommunications market
where the providers are often foreign companies. The encryption with Skype
telephone software creates grave difficulties for us, said the
president of Germany's Federal Police Office, BKA.
We can't decipher it. That's why we're talking about source telecommunications surveillance.
That is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted.
Here's what I think about that. First of all, there's no public
information as to what type of encryption Skype uses or how they
implement it, as far as I know. I know that this was the case a number of years ago.
But second of all, why should we necessarily
believe a statement like that? That they can't decrypt it? Right.
First of all, it's entirely technically feasible that they can't, and
any reasonable implementation of a good encryption algorithm
should have that effect. But at the same time, it's
hearsay. If you wanted to make your criminals think that this
was a secure channel... You'd think it could be a trap. If you wanted to make criminals think that this was
a secure channel, you might say that we can't decrypt it. So yet another tip to criminals today.
If you think that Skype is secure, this might just be
something that's being said to make you believe that. Emmanuel? Yes, Bernie, go ahead.
I don't think any of our listeners would think that
our government or any other government would plant false information
in the media to further their goals.
Oh, I'm not suggesting that. I was suggesting that. I hope I'm not suggesting that.
Personally, I think it's inconceivable to me that the
NSA has not looked at the Skype
encoding method and
done work with it, whether they've succeeded in
determining how the encryption algorithm works or not, I don't know. But it seems
beyond belief that such a popular voice communications
medium that is encrypted, that they haven't looked
at it. That's just beyond belief. I think the best
advice comes from our friend Rob, who on a previous show had mentioned that
he obviously doesn't know of any way that the Skype traffic can be decrypted,
but you should only think of Skype as being
as secure as a regular phone line. I mean, there's no reason to think that it's any more
secure based on the information that we have, and there's no reason to think that it's any less
secure at the same time. But don't depend on it. If you have something private to say, don't
depend on that as protecting that information. Or get a crypto phone.
Or get a crypto phone. And I'd like to see more things like the crypto phone come into
being, so people actually know they're secure, unless they're being listened to
in the same room. So that's always that possibility. Which is usually the easiest way to do it.
It is. It is. Just planting a bug or just having somebody there with ears.
All of that is possible. But here's something else concerning eavesdropping.
Cisco has confirmed it's possible to eavesdrop on remote conversations
using Cisco VoIP phones. It's voice over IP phones.
In its security response, Cisco says an attacker with valid extension
mobility authentication credentials could cause a Cisco
unified IP phone configured to use the extension mobility feature
to transmit or receive a real-time transport protocol
RTP audio stream. The thing is, people
talk like this all day long or work for these companies. You know, here's the thing.
I actually understood one of those acronyms, which puts me ahead of probably
most of our audience. And you get to explain it. But I still don't know what the sentence means.
I can explain what this means. Okay, go ahead, Bernie. In a nutshell,
this means that if the hotel you're staying in has
Cisco VoIP phones in it, and they're becoming increasingly popular hotel room phones,
someone anywhere in the world
with the right knowledge and software
and with a poorly configured
hotel phone system, which is more often than not, I'm sure,
anyone anywhere in the world with the right software and tools can
listen not only to your phone conversations in that hotel room, but
remotely enable the microphone in that phone
so that they can hear everything going on in your hotel room.
And that's what that means. Now, this was brought to light
at a hacker conference known as TorCon in San Diego.
Two hackers, John Kindervag and Jason Ostrom, said they were able to access
a hotel's financial and corporate network, and they were able
to record other phone calls. The hackers used penetration tests
implemented by a tool called VoIP Hopper, which mimics the Cisco
data packets sent at three-minute intervals and then trades a new Ethernet interface
getting the PC, which the hackers switched in place of the hotel phone,
into the network running the voiceover IP.
So that's really fascinating. This information comes from network world, and
it's scary if this is possible. Imagine what people with actual
access to resources can do with this. Very scary.
And one thing you don't have to worry about at the Hotel Pennsylvania where the HOPE conference is,
they do not have VoIP phones there, so I don't think that'll be a problem. Just good old-fashioned wiretaps.
There is an easy solution to this, however. What is that?
If you're worried about such a thing in your hotel room, you can unplug the phone
when you don't want to be listened to.
And then when you need to make the call and don't mind the call being listened to
if you're really paranoid, just plug it in at that point. And if you're really paranoid,
go somewhere else and use a payphone or a cryptophone or something.
Yes, I think we're pushing people into the cryptophone world a lot more these days.
OK, time for another London Underground announcement. Is it real or is it fake?
Passengers are reminded that like all voiceover artists,
I probably look nothing like you imagine and may turn out to be somewhat
of a disappointment. I don't know. I think that might be a real announcement.
Do we know what she looks like? No, but I'm pretty sure I heard that on the train
last time I was over there. Let's play one more and then we'll read another interesting story.
Let customers off the train first, please. Oh, she sounded angry there.
Wait, at that point, are you not a customer? Is it possible not to be a customer?
Yeah, why is she calling customers and not passengers? Isn't that weird?
Is that how travelers are referred to overseas, customers? It's a very expensive system.
Absolutely. And does that mean that if you see someone who's not a customer, i.e.
a transit employee or a policeman or somebody like that,
you don't have to let them off the train first. What is her name?
Emma Clark. With an E on the end? Yes.
At the end of the Clark, not the E, Emma.
Let's hear another while you're looking that up. Mind the Gap.
That's the most famous one.
Of course, the original Mind the Gap recording was done by a guy and I think that one
is more classic than this one, but I certainly have heard that a few hundred thousand times.
Okay, one more announcement, then we're going to go into a story and then by that time, maybe Bernie
will know what she looks like. I'm already looking at a bunch of pictures of Emma Clark.
I don't know if any of them are the right Emma Clark. Here, together with the BBC.
Well, there's a lot of attractive looking Emma Clarks
if you Google the image for Emma Clark.
But I'm going to keep looking to see if I can find out for sure if she's the one.
Okay, well, you keep up your quest and I'm sure there's an email address there somewhere so you can pursue this even further.
Let's hear one more announcement and then we'll get into this other story.
Would passengers filling in answers on their sudokos
please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative
and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.
Okay, amen.
I have to agree with that one. Oh, wow, thank you. Thank you for saying that.
Okay, the same microwave radiation that reheats pizza can now be used to fry the electrical systems in cars.
Stop me. I guess this is a great day for technological progress.
First of all, that first sentence that you read is wrong once you read the rest of the article
because it's a totally different frequency that they're talking about.
Well, first, I didn't finish the sentence yet. I didn't finish the sentence. Let me start it over again.
I'm already upset about it.
The same microwave radiation that reheats pizza can be used to fry the electrical systems in cars, stopping them dead in their tracks.
It would be useful if you could do both at the same time.
If emitted from a rooftop device, the radiation could be used by law enforcement officers
to put an end to dangerous car chases or by military personnel
as a nonlethal way of disabling vehicles that get too close for comfort.
The idea is to warn an automobile some distance away from a high-value target like a military barrack
or a communications center. If they don't comply, you just zap them
and it prevents them from coming closer. Of course, what if it's at the bottom of a hill?
You ever think of that? Yeah. What?
A car is coming down a hill.
That's why you build your high-value objects, whatever you build them at the top of hills.
High-value targets. Yeah, they're the ones calling it a target.
Redbird, why is this not accurate?
They were saying they were using something in the 300 MHz range. Is that right?
Ovens typically operate at 2.45 GHz, whereas the high-power car stopping system is at 300 MHz.
First of all, it doesn't necessarily make that much sense to me.
It's possible, but Ed, what do you think?
It doesn't make that much sense to me.
It's highly doubtful. I've heard of these things being developed over the past 20 years,
and it hasn't really been deployed yet, is all I know.
They keep saying, oh yeah, we'll have it any day now.
Kind of like flat-screen TVs you can hang on your wall were around
for 40 years before it really happened.
I don't think it's ready for prime time yet, and the 300 MHz signals
that they were talking about are nowhere close to microwave signals.
Those are 2,400 MHz. I found a picture of the Emma Clark.
Oh, good. I'm happy for you.
And I'm not disappointed. She'll be happy to hear that, I'm sure.
It's on a...
Our listeners know how to use Google if they're that fascinated.
It's like Amy Goodman, only she's smiling.
Okay. I've seen Amy smile.
Maybe I'll get you a picture of that and you can compare.
Getting back to the microwave story, though, they claim it's the same kind of energy used in microwave ovens.
I don't know what that means. Same kind of energy, but at a different frequency.
It's part of the electromagnetic spectrum. That's what they mean.
That's as close as they can get.
Okay. There are no biological effects, they say. Isn't that nice?
We comply with every standard in the literature as far as biological impact.
Anyway, as far as the technical aspect of this, correct or not,
to disable cars, the device first generates energy that is amplified using a generator.
The energy is converted to microwave radiation and then directed by way of a specially designed antenna
at the offender in a narrow beam. This sounds like a Star Trek episode.
The higher the frequency of the radiation, the more directed the beam,
the more powerful car parts, such as lightbulb filaments, lug nuts,
frame bolts, or windshield antenna.
It would take an awful lot to burn out a lightbulb filament.
Wait, now they're aiming this energy in a narrow beam, but the car is moving.
Yeah, the car is moving. I don't understand. Why would you aim it at a lightbulb?
What does that get you, exactly?
Most of this article doesn't make any sense.
Do a little more research and tell us what they find out.
Oh, we have another one? Hang on, one more announcement.
You're allowed to say that sort of thing?
Oh, I'm aware. I didn't know if you were allowed to say that sort of thing.
I don't know. It seems like people would get upset about that.
Well, people are upset about reality, and this is simply addressing it in a humorous way.
Anyway, this listener has done some research into voting machines.
Dear 2600, off the hook, I obtained this information firsthand.
I worked in Ohio on the Diebold voting machine conversion in 2005.
It was my job to flash upgrade the firmware.
Here are the specs. Everybody got a pencil?
Processor, 300 MHz. Memory, 256 MB.
Operating system, Windows CE with replaced splash screen and explorer.
Encryption, 128-bit. Connectivity, Ethernet.
Modem, mouse, keyboard, PCMCIA X2.
This is where the legalities play havoc.
In order for Ohio to be able to use these machines, they needed two copies of each vote.
One that stores on a PCMCIA microdrive, and the other has to be a physical copy.
A printer is attached and locked inside a plastic case.
If either copy is damaged or lost of even a single vote,
the whole county's votes are unusable.
The voting machine is network ready with an Ethernet port.
Firmware can be copied with a simple EEPROM reader, but as I said, it is only Windows CE.
The EEPROM connection cable is located under the attached printer.
An external keyboard can be connected.
The password to disable the 128-bit encryption
is only 8 numbers, 0 through 9, and always starts with a 1.
Now we have only 7 unknown numbers.
The encryption software will load as a SysTray application.
Disabling it completely would be very simple, even without the password.
This password will vary county to county.
Keys to unlock the side panels and barrel keys like soda machines
Back to the firmware. Under the attached printer is, as I stated, the EEPROM plug.
There is also a factory reset button.
This button will reload the standard WinCE interface into RAM
and erase the 128-bit encryption and default to 64-bit.
Questions are welcome. Agent Glitch, thank you for that information.
You guys have any questions for Agent Glitch?
I don't exactly understand the encryption explanation.
I just didn't understand the explanation, but I'd be curious to see the firmware.
Agent Glitch, please write in with some further explanation for Redbird.
Can you get a copy of the firmware?
Maybe I shouldn't ask that.
We're doing all kinds of criminal conspiracy tonight, so it fits right in with the theme.
Tip to criminals, don't discuss your crimes on the radio.
Who would be stupid enough to do that?
Dear Off The Hook, I'm a New York City listener. Great show.
I was videotaping near the United Nations when the W was in town.
Of course, being George W. Bush.
And I was approached by two Secret Service agents who told me that there are people around who are suspicious of me.
Kind of scary.
Anyway, I heard there are credit card machines that can read credit cards from your wallet.
I bet that's a good idea.
There are credit card machines that can read credit cards from your wallet.
I bet the Secret Service can do the same thing without seeing your wallet.
With RFID, perhaps. What do you think? Signed, S.
It's interesting, because that's the exact same thing that happened to a friend of mine several years ago during one of those UN summits.
Just walking around, approached by two Secret Service officers saying that his existence was suspicious.
I think the existence of Secret Service agents is suspicious.
Who can I report that to?
They're always going around yelling at people. It's very out of the ordinary.
Is it possible to read credit cards from your wallet?
Perhaps. They're encrypted, but I don't know how many of the protocols have been cracked.
Can you tell that this person has a gold card without knowing the number?
I don't think so.
You're talking about the credit cards with RFID.
I don't have one either.
I'll consider that when I wander around in the UN.
If you had an RFID-shielding wallet, you wouldn't have to worry.
All right. I'll consider that, too.
Here's another letter. You guys are geeks and nerds.
Dear Sirs, I hope the subject line which I just read satisfies your November 29th request for more hate mail.
We did request more hate mail. We didn't really get a whole lot.
No, that doesn't count.
Here are the insults.
That's a definite insult.
That's a low blow right there.
Unbelievable.
You'd think that some people would appreciate us.
Where's Scranton?
Tobias. I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce that.
Yes. Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Do we have to call Bernie back?
You don't have to call me back at all if you don't want to.
We have to if we want to take phone calls because we couldn't get you on the appropriate line.
Can we get him on the appropriate line now?
We're going to come back. All right. We're going to come back. We promise this time.
We won't leave you hanging. And while we're waiting for Bernie to be reconnected,
let's hear from our friend over in London with another exciting London Underground announcement.
Please leave the train.
Well, that's rather abrupt, isn't it? How about something a little bit more humorous than that?
Please note that this train will not stop at the next station.
Those are two real announcements in a row. Those are actual announcements that are played on the London Underground.
Let's see if we can find one that is not actual.
Residents of London are reminded that there are other places in Britain outside your stinking
toll of a city and that if you remove your heads from your arses
for just a couple of minutes, you may realize that the M25
is not the edge of the earth.
Oh, that's the only one we had to censor because she says a word there that we can't say.
You actually censored it? We had to, yeah. Otherwise it's a $325,000 fine.
I don't think it's wise to have a list of words you can't say on the air
in view of the person. Because they're all going through my head right now.
Is Bernie back? Yes, I'm back. And as a matter of fact,
when my phone just rang and I answered it, the first thing I heard
was Emma Clark's voice and I'm looking at her picture as I heard her voice.
It was very strange. You're just fascinated by that picture, aren't you?
She's a pretty woman. And there you are in Scranton, Pennsylvania just staring
at the computer screen. Emma Clark and listening to her voice playing on WBAI.
All right. Our phone number is 212-209-2900
so we have time to take a few phone calls if there's anybody
out there with some question or something of interest to say.
Here's a question that somebody sent in to us based on what we were talking about last week.
You talked about the subject. I was interested and disturbed by the implications of it.
And that was, of course, cell phones being able to transmit your location.
My question is, would it be possible for a carrier to assemble a list of people
based upon their location at a point in time? For example, could they list attendees
of a political rally? Bernie, what do you think of that? Absolutely, it's possible.
There's equipment made by a company called Harris Corporation that allows
the IDs of phones, the IMEI
number, which identifies the handset.
It's sort of a small directional antenna thing. They can just point at a fairly
directional, they can point it at a crowd of people and find out whose phones are
on in that group of people and then do pretty quick
research to find out who those people are.
That is definitely scary. All right, let's see if we can squeeze in a phone call or two.
And I've got to press the button hard. Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook. Hey, how are you folks? How are you doing?
Enjoy it. Thank you. Quite regularly.
I came across Emanuel's chilling account of his
travails during the Republican coronation of 2004.
And I'm writing some fiction, but I like it to be
as fact-based as possible. My question is,
were the cops, in his experience, making
a particular point of videotaping people's faces on the street
during, you know, as they
were rounding people up and doing various demonstrations?
Most definitely. You're talking about the Republican convention in 2004.
There was a large number of policemen with video cameras and they were
pointing directly at people. And of course, the people were
videotaping the cops, too. It was kind of a standoff. But then once the arrests were made,
they had more videos going and more still photography.
How biometrically
applicable is the standard videotape
in terms of getting the facial image
into some kind of digitized database?
That's a question of how sophisticated the NYPD setup is.
I would imagine if they're using state-of-the-art software,
it's not that tough to do. No. It's getting easier every day.
Yeah. Because there's this perceived need that we have to have this.
And I don't know if you folks have seen, they now have this
giant observation tower that's about, I don't know,
three stories in the air at parades and the like
with 360-degree views.
They actually were doing field tests of it at Shea Stadium
in the parking lot, or maybe they were doing it for real there.
And they had it up in Harlem for a while, too, I think, right? Oh, there's a couple of them.
And they were doing it just at the St. Patrick's Day parade by the reviewing stand.
But the point is, they were making a particular
come up and get a good, nice close-up of people's faces.
Scary. Now, is this tower something that is manned or womaned
at 30 feet, or are there cameras that move around from a 30-foot height?
No, there can actually be someone up there, yeah. I believe there's somebody up there.
Like a crow's nest? Yeah. And, you know,
there's NYPD right on it, which
is of no great comfort. No.
Well, you'd hate to think it was somebody else doing that.
At least you know who's watching you. We're from the government, and we're here to help.
All right, good reassuring words to hear. Thank you for your time. Let's carry on, guys.
She doesn't look like Amy Goodman. No, that was another person. Let's not get into this now.
All right, good evening. You aren't off the hook. Go ahead.
Hi. Could you tell me how much
tin foil, aluminum foil is needed to
protect the passport from having the RFID
chip scanned? Just one or two layers should be fine.
Just wrap it once, I think you'll be okay. Double wrapping to be extra sure.
Thanks. All right, good luck. Not on your head.
No, around the passport. Good evening, you're on
off the hook. Hi. How and where do you get in cryptophones? How do you get cryptophones?
I guess you go to cryptophone.de. Is that the address? I don't remember the URL,
but they're unlocked GSM phones. Well, Bernie, you have the internet where you are, right?
In Scranton, they just got it in Scranton. No, I'm saying if you can stop
gazing at Emma Clark's face for a moment, maybe you could check out to make sure that cryptophone.de
is the actual website. I will confirm that in about one minute.
They are unlocked GSM phones, so if you're in the United States, you have to have a GSM
provider, which is most commonly going to be T-Mobile or AT&T.
They run Windows CE, as far as I remember, Pocket PC, whatever they want to call it.
They're pretty useful. You have to be
connecting to another cryptophone for it to be effective.
Yes, and the answer to that question is
cryptophone.de, as in Delta
Echo. As in Germany. The German top-level domain.
I've used a cryptophone. It works well, but
as Redbird pointed out, it's only
effectively secure if you're speaking to somebody else with another cryptophone, but
you don't actually have to have a physical cryptophone on the other end. There is a
free piece of software you can download from that website
that allows someone with a multimedia PC
using the sound card to emulate
a cryptophone on the other end. You can really call anybody that way,
and as long as that computer itself isn't bugged, then you're in good
shape. Also note that it uses a data stream, so you also have to have a data
plan. It doesn't use the GSM board. It uses something called circuit switch data,
which actually not all carriers support.
I don't know if the U.S. carriers support it this month or not. It's always
changing, but it might not work.
Hopefully people will get more involved in that.
Last couple of messages from our friend over in London.
Well, that's a real one, isn't it?
I think we're down to the last three.
Okay. You can also
find these announcements.
I should give out the URL, shouldn't I? Well, let me play an announcement while I'm looking for the URL.
Oh, that's a good one right there. It's
emmaclark.com. That's Clark with an E. And here is our final announcement of the night.
Okay. Thank you very much for those London Underground announcements.
Brought to you here on Off The Hook. And that's going to do it for us here tonight.
Remember, there are 2,600 meetings coming up this Friday all around the world.
And all sorts of other fun things like that.
I'll be at the Highline Ballroom for the Carbon Silicon Show.
Maybe I'll see you there. Otherwise, next week.
See you then.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...