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And the time is seven o'clock on the nose.
You're listening to WBAI New York.
It's time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bon Diddley Bon for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bon Diddley Bon!
.
Good evening, everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Mike.
Hi.
And Redbird put all those papers away.
Ignore now. Good evening.
And Lynn joins us this week.
Hello, all.
You haven't been here in a while?
No.
Bernie S. down there in Philadelphia.
Thank you.
Bernie, are you distracted by something?
Oh, I'm sorry.
I got a radio show going on here.
No time here in Philadelphia.
No time for social niceties.
Yes, Bernie joins us from Philadelphia.
This is indeed a dark day, at least I think it is.
Reading a story here that moved recently over Reuters.
You may have heard of Reuters. It's a news service that...
British, no?
I'm not sure exactly.
They broadcast from all over the place, or they transmit or write stories.
But they're reporting a story which I find incredibly disturbing.
Basically, Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people, have named the word of the year.
And the word of the year is the word woot.
W-0-0-T.
I am not kidding.
It's an expression of joy coined by online gamers.
And it was crowned word of the year yesterday by Merriam-Webster.
It's like I'm in some kind of...
That's not going to actually appear in a dictionary.
Bizarro world here. I don't know. I mean, I didn't think this would happen.
I think it has to. If they named it word of the year,
I think if you buy the dictionary, it'll probably be in there.
Well, how in the world do you list something that has numbers in it in a dictionary?
You can't do that.
You list them before the letters, I guess.
So you put it right at the beginning.
This is the first W word after W itself?
W is not a word.
It's in the dictionary.
W is in the dictionary?
Yes.
I guess it would be the letter W.
Yeah, pretty much.
All right. Well, that's a waste of space right there.
This is more of a waste of space.
And it's the beginning of the end, I think,
because now that they're going to do that,
they're going to have to list elite and all its different spellings.
And it's never going to end.
You could fill a whole book just with ways to spell 31337.
Whole books have been filled with this kind of nonsense.
Anyway, the dictionary says it is like saying yay, Y-A-Y.
This is all so good to know.
It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all.
I think that latter condition.
No, at all.
That's actually a really bad thing for them to say.
What, for no reason at all?
Yes.
Well, that's sort of the reason why they did this, I think, is for no reason at all.
Aye, aye, aye.
Okay, here's why.
Here's why this happened, and that's not in the dictionary either.
Visitors to the website, Merriam-Webster's website,
were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases
culled from the most frequently looked up words on the site and submitted by readers.
Runner-up was – all right, you guys want to guess what the runner-up was?
Assuming you don't already know.
Go ahead, Mike.
Does it have any digits in it?
I'm not giving you any hints.
You have to come up with something on your own.
If I can't get that hint, then I can't guess.
All right, Mike won't guess.
I have no idea.
I have no imagination whatsoever.
LOL.
LOL, that's very good.
Lynn, that's very good.
Great guess.
It's wrong, but it was a good guess.
Bernie, what do you got?
Bernie?
I think Bernie's having a party someplace, and we don't rank on the list.
Okay.
All right.
Well, when Bernie rejoins us, maybe he'll guess what it is.
I'm just going to tell you.
The runner-up word was Facebook.
What?
Yeah, Facebook.
That's not a word.
Woot is not a word either, is it?
It's more of a word than Facebook.
No, it's not.
It's not a word.
It's a proper noun, sort of.
Well, it's not a proper noun here.
Some people have turned it into a verb, but...
Anyway, a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the website Facebook.
Oh, it was listed as a verb.
Well, does that really matter?
Yeah, it was listed as...
Woot was a verb, too.
It wouldn't make it any better.
Merriam-Webster president John Morris resigned afterwards.
Well, no, he should have resigned afterwards, but he didn't.
He said Woot reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words.
People look for self-evident numeral letter substitutions 0 for O, 3 for E, 7 for T, and 4 for A.
This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character.
Wait, more efficient?
It's also an express lane to illiteracy.
They can probably double the size of their dictionaries if they wanted to make those substitutions.
Of course, you could just print total gibberish and have an infinite book.
I'm sure you could do that.
One website, thinkgeek.com, already sells T-shirts with the word Woot printed on the front.
That was one of their crowning glories when they came up with that one.
Woot belongs to gamers the world...
Oh, I'm going to get hate mail, I know.
How dare you criticize the word Woot?
I'm sure every email from now on is going to have that word in it, but I don't care.
I have to speak my mind.
I actually used to own that T-shirt.
I can't imagine you walking around with a T-shirt that says Woot.
I've seen him wearing sillier things.
That's true.
But then I spilled paint on it, so I guess I was ahead of the trend in rejecting this word.
Did you spill paint on it, or did you one day find that paint somehow got onto it?
No, I'm pretty aware of how the paint got on it.
Ah, okay.
Bernie, you're back! Welcome back!
How's the party going?
I'm wondering what the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary have to say about this.
Well, I bet they don't say Woot.
I bet they say something of a negative sort that has numbers in it.
I don't know about that. I can't think that way.
But anyway, ThinkGeek says,
Woot belongs to gamers the world over.
It seems to have been derived from the obsolete Woot, W-H-O-O-T,
which essentially is another way to say hoot,
which itself is a shout or derisive laugh.
I've only heard that coming from owls.
Others maintain that Woot is a sound several players make while jumping like bunnies in Quake 3,
referring to a popular video game.
What are its roots in Old English?
I'm getting to there.
Online gamers often replace numbers and symbols with...
It's not just online gamers. Anybody online does this.
People in instant messaging, people on IRC.
Unnecessarily, if you're on the computer.
Some people use that as part of their names
because somebody already took the name spelling the traditional letters,
so they use the numbers.
I think that's one of the main reasons this is done.
Online gamers often replace numbers and symbols with letters to form
what Merriam-Webster calls an esoteric computer hacker language.
Yeah, blame us for something else.
And that's known as, of course, LeetSpeak.
This translates in... Leet is spelled, of course, I'm sorry, L-3-3-T.
And that translates into Leet, L-E-E-T...
So wait.
Ah, wait. L-E-E-T, which is short for elite, oddly enough spelled E-L-I-T-E.
So in your railing against this, you just read L-3-3-T as leet,
as though it were correct, even in the midst of a rant against such things.
And I also started off the story by saying woot was the word.
Obviously, you can't pronounce the numbers,
so you have to say it in a certain way, but yeah.
I don't know.
I think we're on a long downward spiral, and it's beginning right now.
I can see it as a special edition dictionary,
but I can't see including it in the actual full-on Webster's dictionary.
Thank you.
That would make me happy right there if they did that.
Can you imagine your grandparents or relatives that aren't familiar with computers
opening up the Merriam-Webster dictionary on a stormy night just to pass the time
and coming across a word like woot spelled with zeros
or a word like leet spelled with threes?
I mean, their world would fall apart.
Who finds this funny?
They said the same thing in the 19th century about huzzah.
No, I don't think they did.
And I challenge you to go and find some records
that have people as outraged as I am here tonight.
I mean, look at me. I'm red-faced with rage.
Well, you actually a little bit are.
I am. I'm going to sit down again.
I'm going to sit down again, but still, the whole thing is just really a travesty.
It's an attack on the language.
So anyway.
Yes, let's move on to something a bit more important and relevant.
And that, of course, is the story of the Icelandic teen
who called the secret White House phone.
Did you hear about this one?
This is kind of a crazy story.
Vilfjll Atlesson, a 16-year-old high school student from Iceland.
Apparently you can name 16-year-olds over there.
Here you're not allowed to.
Under 18, if you're accused of anything, you have to be anonymous.
Anyway, he decided to call the White House,
but he could not imagine the publicity it would bring.
This is a story that was on ABC's website.
Introducing himself as Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson,
who is the actual president of Iceland,
Atlesson found what he believed to be President George W. Bush's
allegedly secret telephone number
and phoned requesting a private meeting with him.
Can you imagine an Icelandic president
needing a private meeting with the American president?
What would they discuss exactly?
How in the world did he get this number?
Okay, we're getting to that.
I just wanted to talk to him, have a chat,
invite him to Iceland and see what he'd say.
A White House spokeswoman, Emily Lorimer,
that's spelled L-A-W-R-I-M-O-R-E.
The only reason I spell her name
was because I've never seen that name spelled like that before.
And since we are focusing on spelling and words tonight,
I felt it might be entertaining.
She insisted that the young man
did not dial the private number,
but instead dialed 202-456-1414.
We all know that number as the main switchboard
for the West Wing, not the TV show,
the actual West Wing.
But that, unfortunately, was not the case.
The student gave ABC News,
reporting this story, the phone number,
and it was indeed an extension off...
They spelled extension wrong in this story.
They spelled it with a T instead of an S.
Can you believe that?
Maybe it's something else.
That's not how you...
Anyway, it's indeed an extension
off the White House switchboard,
and it goes to a security command post office
in the building next door to the White House.
Vilfil's mother, a HARPA...
Oh, boy, Heinrichsdottir.
I'm not going to say that again.
I'm sorry, because I probably mangled it.
She's a teacher at a local high school.
She said her son did, in fact,
get through to a private phone.
Interesting she knows all this.
This was not a switchboard number of any kind.
It was a secret number
at the highest security level.
Vilfil claims he was passed on to several people,
each of them quizzing him
on President Grimson's date of birth,
where he grew up, who his parents were,
and the date he entered office.
I mean, these are things we could find out
on Wikipedia pretty easily.
I think that's what he did.
Well, and if you were an Icelandic citizen,
and you were still in high school,
you probably would have had to memorize
these sorts of things.
Now, wait a second.
If the president of Iceland does call,
he has to answer these questions.
He has to tell the people his date of birth?
That's sort of not very...
Well, I'm sure George W. Bush
has to tell his date of birth
whenever he requests a phone call to somebody.
I'd ask if he called me.
This is the United States.
This is how we treat people from other countries.
Exactly, including presidents.
I would be curious how the White House staff
got that information.
I mean, they were probably sitting on Wikipedia.
Well, I'm sure that they have a list
of everybody's birthdates that might call.
Anyway, he says it was like
passing through checkpoints.
Yeah, you're right.
You read the story.
I had Wikipedia and a few other sites open,
so it was not so difficult, really.
When he finally got through
to President Bush's secretary,
Vilfil alleges he was told
to expect a call back from Bush.
You know, it's not hard to get through
to the secretary.
It really isn't.
I called Reagan's secretary once.
Anyway, she told me the president
was not available at the time.
That's what they do.
They tell you that.
But that she would mark it on his schedule
to call me back on Monday evening.
Instead, the police showed up
at his house in Atgrains,
which is a fishing town
about 48 kilometers from Reykjavik,
and took him to the local police station
where they questioned him for several hours.
The police chief said they were under orders
from U.S. officials to quote-unquote
find the leak,
that I had to tell them
where I'd found the number.
Otherwise, I would be banned
from ever entering the United States.
You know, that's not a threat
to a lot of people.
No, no, it really isn't.
Sorry, I had the world's smallest violin
playing for him, yes.
He says that he can't remember
where he got the number.
I just know I've had it for a few years.
I must have gotten it from a friend
when I was about 11 or 12.
That's where we all get these numbers.
His mother continued to defend him.
He's very resourceful, you know.
He's become a bit of a hero in Iceland.
Bush is very unpopular here.
It's not hard to become a hero
just by calling the White House.
He was eventually released
into his parents' custody.
No charges have been brought
against the high school student.
Turned out to be
the Secret Service Uniform Division,
which handles security for the president.
If the number were not top secret,
the kid asked,
why would the police have told me
that I would be put on a no-fly list
to America?
Well, I can answer that.
You can be put on that no-fly list
for almost any reason,
so it's not really that hard.
I don't really understand
how anyone can expect a phone number
to be a top-secret, like, security thing.
Yeah, I mean,
what if you accidentally dialed it?
I mean, or,
heaven forbid that you dialed
several numbers around other numbers
that you saw off of a business card,
perhaps.
That might be illegal.
I'm not sure.
We used to call all kinds of numbers
back in the 80s
that allegedly went to secret command posts,
and there was one we called.
I forget exactly how they answered the phone,
but they would answer,
oh, I know how they did it.
I know how they did it.
They would say, signal.
You call this 800 number,
and this was before 800 numbers revealed
who was calling them,
so you could call an 800 number
with relative safety
and not have to worry about being traced back,
and what happened was
this military-sounding person
would pick up and say, signal.
Then he'd hang up the phone.
Then you'd hear somebody else
pick up another phone,
say, signal as well,
and then hang up,
and a third person.
They were always three different people,
always three different phones picking up.
It was the weirdest thing ever,
and then what happened was,
and I don't know how they did this back then.
If you would get a dial tone,
actually, no.
What happened was your phone would ring,
and a dial tone would be there,
and it would be a distant dial tone,
and this was well before caller ID existed
that they were able to do this,
so if anybody knows the secret of signal
way back in the 80s,
I'd like to know more about that.
Don't people call funny phone numbers anymore?
We used to do that all the time,
but I have a lot of work to do,
and maybe nobody wants to talk about that.
Well, something else that's fading away,
pay phones.
This is kind of interesting.
There's an article in Newsday over the past week
about how there are only four walk-in pay phones,
pay phone booths, that is,
left in Manhattan, only four.
Can you believe that?
I didn't know there were as many as four.
Yeah, they're all on West End Avenue, by the way,
so if you fancy a trip,
there's one on 101st Street.
I'm not sure where the other three are,
and this is something else
that was a direct result of this story.
There was a rotary pay phone
at the D'Agostino supermarket in Murray Hill,
and it still functioned,
except nobody was ever using it,
and as soon as the story came out,
or as soon as another story similar to this one came out,
Verizon came and took it away,
so it doesn't exist anymore,
but I find it amazing that up until very recently,
there was actually a rotary pay phone
in service in New York City.
I've seen one outside of New York City,
but I don't exactly remember where it is.
Well, it's not in the city, though.
It's probably in the sticks someplace, right?
Well, it wasn't in the sticks,
but I mean, it was in a city.
It just wasn't in New York City.
I'd like to know how many people still use rotary phones.
You do?
Okay, tell us all about it.
I have a rotary phone in my house.
But do you use it?
It's in a guest room, but it works.
So you force your guests to use it when they come over.
Yes.
All right.
Is it a rotary phone,
or is it a push-button phone that pulses out?
No, it's a rotary,
a real, for real rotary phone from my grandmother's house.
Okay, good.
But what I'm getting at here,
you have a touch-tone phone in addition for that same line.
Oh, yeah.
All right, so what I'm looking for
is somebody who only uses a rotary phone.
I'm sure a lot of our listeners do,
but I'd like to hear from them.
They used to charge for touch-tone in Georgia,
and so my grandmother's house,
the reason that I got the rotary phone
is before she moved out,
she really did 3 years ago have a rotary phone.
I guess she did have a touch-tone cordless phone,
but she did not pay them for touch-tone ever in her life.
Never, ever, ever did she pay for touch-tone.
Okay.
So this basically is coming about
as a result of AT&T's announcement
that they're getting out of the payphone business
by the end of 2008.
Now, I understand BellSouth already did this.
This is kind of confusing
because BellSouth is now AT&T, right?
Yeah, but BellSouth has been out of the payphone business
for quite some time.
Okay.
You still find the phones with the coin boxes
that say BellSouth on them,
but very, very few of them I've ever seen
are still BellSouth phones.
Okay, but it seemed like AT&T had already done this
because BellSouth turned into AT&T.
They were out of the payphone business,
and now AT&T's getting out of it.
AT&T's getting out of it,
so I guess it's kind of a trend.
But when's the last time anyone here used a payphone?
I used one a couple of weeks ago.
Tell us all about that.
It was a co-con,
and I needed to call an 800 number,
and so I used it.
So that payphone derived no benefit from you using it.
That's right.
It's unfortunate that they were deprived of any revenue,
but that's the rules.
I did.
I used one a couple of weeks ago to see.
I was just curious to see
if the TTY drawer would pop out or not,
and it didn't.
I called a valid TTY number, and it didn't work.
Did you try 800-855-1155?
No, but I'll try that one next time.
That's a pretty good one.
That one always works, assuming the TTY works.
Well, they have to say hello, apparently.
Somebody has to type hello back.
They have to say all kinds of things.
They have to transcribe whatever you're saying?
No, no, no.
If you go up to a payphone that has one,
the person on the other end or the machine on the other end
has to type hello for the drawer to pop.
Oh, I see.
That's not true.
Well, I don't know.
That's what this one said.
It just hears the carrier tone,
and then as soon as it detects the carrier tone on the other end,
it trips a solenoid in the motor that pushes the drawer out.
Well, let's just put it this way.
I tried two at the Atlanta airport, and it did not work.
I was bored during a flight delay.
Well, try that other number.
Okay.
I mean, that's where people tend to use payphones more is in airports
where they're held captive someplace,
and they might not get a cell phone signal.
They might not want to pay huge roaming fees or something like that,
and it's interesting to see these huge banks.
If you go to Port Authority Bus Terminal,
you'll see huge banks of payphones that just go on forever,
and they're not being used.
They're not being used by anybody.
Oh, even at the airports, they're stripped out a lot.
I mean, they've stripped down a lot of them
to where maybe where there used to be 10 or 15, there's like two.
They're doing that often in the subway too,
which is the one place you really need them.
Well, you know, it seems to me that in New York City,
and maybe I'm completely wrong on this,
but even the payphones you see,
I think the reason that Verizon still keeps those around in the city,
they're not making money off of the phones.
They're making money off of the advertisements
on the outside of the phone booths.
And that's really the only reason these things have stuck around for so long
is because of the advertising that's on the side of the phones.
It's really kind of weird.
But payphone advertising is $62 million a year business in New York City.
That's a lot of quarters.
Yeah, well, it has nothing to do with the quarters.
It has to do with paying for the space.
Payphones, by the way, 35,000 payphones in New York City 12 years ago.
Today, 22,697.
I wonder how many actual calls out of those.
Because I bet you that there's payphones today on street corners here
and they don't get a phone call for a 24-hour period.
Because you just don't see people using them.
I mean, unless they're…
I don't know.
I just don't see people using them.
I mean, I'm not here all the time.
It's interesting.
The story had a headline in Newsday called,
Hanging Up on Payphones.
And then later on in the day,
somebody must have gotten angry because they changed the headline.
The exact same story now reads,
Payphones Pay Off in New York City.
It's the exact opposite sentiment.
So I think Verizon has a lot of pull over at Newsday
to change the whole outlook there.
Okay, here's another hacker story.
Evil hacker is doing something bad.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed on Thursday
that a sophisticated cyber attack over the last few weeks
may have allowed personal information about thousands of lab visitors
to be stolen.
The assault appeared to be part of a coordinated attempt
to gain access to computer networks at numerous laboratories
and other institutions across the country.
Lab Director Tom Mason said this in a memo to the 4,200 employees
at the Department of Energy facility.
Oak Ridge officials would not identify the other institutions
affected by the breach,
but they said hackers may have infiltrated a database of names,
social security numbers, and birthdates of every lab visitor
between 1990 and 2004.
There was no classified data of any kind compromised,
the lab spokesman said.
There are people who think that because they accessed this database
that they had access to the lab's supercomputer.
That is not the case.
There was no access at all.
You have to give your social security number just to visit?
You have to give your social security number
for just about everything these days.
But again, this is an example of just poor security
being taken advantage of by who knows who,
and hackers taking the blame for that.
Unreal.
Every year we build bigger and more sophisticated fences
around our databases,
and every year our enemies find new and more sophisticated ways
to tunnel under the fence, they say.
This is an ongoing challenge that is going to be there
as far as we can see in the future.
I don't get that.
If the enemies are tunneling under the fence,
then making the fence taller might not help so much.
No, definitely not.
And also, having private information kept on a machine
that can be accessed by people that really have...
Why do you need to have this information there,
accessible to people from the outside world in the first place?
Why do you have to have your visitor computer
tied in to the internet at all, period?
Doesn't make any sense.
WBAI's visitor computers on the internet.
Yeah, and you'll know that I didn't give them my social security number
or a lot of other information.
Okay, what else?
We have this rather interesting press release that we got
about a law enforcement...
Well, this is from the Law Enforcement Associates Corporation,
known as LEA.
They're the largest U.S. developer and manufacturer
of undercover surveillance equipment.
And a couple of days ago, they announced that they received an order
from a state police department in the Midwest
for more than $120,000 in electronic surveillance products.
The devices will be used for covert operations
within the customer's undercover units.
Due to officer safety concerns,
details about the customer and the purchased products
will not be disclosed.
I don't even know what the point of having a press release is
because I can't reveal what they're selling
and who they're selling it to,
but this is what they try and say in the whole thing.
We've introduced a broad range of new surveillance products during 2007,
and these devices are gaining significant momentum
within our target markets.
This contract is one of many multi-product order prospects
our sales team has been pursuing,
and we are optimistic that we will convert additional opportunities
into firm orders in the current and coming quarters.
This person should run for office because they didn't say anything.
I know, it's incredible.
Go ahead, Bernie.
What this company, LEA, Law Enforcement Associates,
is best known for is what are known in the surveillance field
as body wires or covertly worn audio transmitters
for undercover stings and that sort of thing.
So even $120,000 may not sound like a lot of money.
It probably buys a few hundred of those devices,
or maybe not even a few hundred.
They're kind of expensive.
And I think the safety issues they're worried about is
if people knew what state police agency was using them
and what products they were,
the bad guys could use counter-surveillance equipment
to pick up the signals that they emit
and say, aha, you're an undercover narc, and see you later.
Bernie, I've looked at some of these magazines,
and I think you've pointed some of them out to me
and get some in the mail.
But a lot of the devices that companies like to sell
look really, really cheesy,
and they're using pretty, I don't know,
rudimentary technology for really high prices.
Some of them are, but some of these,
LEA actually makes some pretty good equipment
from some catalogs I've seen.
Their catalogs are actually very tightly controlled as well.
But in any case, surface mount stuff,
and now they're using digital frequency hopping,
spread spectrum body mics to make them
more difficult to intercept.
So, you know, government contracts.
Yeah, there was a police department in the Atlanta area
that it was later determined that their mics were,
their body mics were on an international marine frequency
that anybody who went to Radio Shack
and bought a marine radio for $200 could listen to.
Brilliant.
Yeah, that was a winner.
Okay, we have an update on something
that we featured last week.
I'll just, I'll let her say the words.
Welcome to Copilot Live.
Okay, that is our friend Emma Clark,
who we featured.
Not again.
Yeah, Emma Clark is back.
She's gotten rehired, apparently.
We talked about her last week being fired
from the London Underground for saying things
to the media that apparently they didn't like.
And she, of course, spoke the immortal words,
Mind the Gap, to millions of commuters every day.
Now she works for Copilot Live 7.
Apparently, I'm not sure if that's Copilot Live 7.
That sounds like a helicopter, but I think it's,
I think this is a, one of those GPS navigator things
for cars, where you basically give various directions
to the driver.
Take ninth exit at roundabout.
Yeah, something like that.
But she also, she's recorded a bunch of bits for that,
but she's maintained her sense of humor,
and she has a lot of spoof ones for this as well.
Let's listen to one of them.
Attention, fixed automatic safety camera.
Okay, well, you know, actually, that wasn't a joke.
That's real.
Apparently, cars over there in England can tell you
when there's a camera coming up,
when there's a red light camera or a speed camera
or something like that.
My understanding is in England,
my understanding is in England, that's all the time.
No, no.
A camera coming up.
Yeah, well, it's quite a bit, but what they,
there's actually a whole big database of these,
the locations of these cameras.
And in Garmin speak, they're called points of interest.
And you can load them, and it will say, okay,
if you're going 70 miles an hour as you approach this one,
then it'll pop up,
because I don't believe you can use radar detectors there.
There's also a rule that says that such cameras
have to be displayed.
You have to have a sign saying speed camera ahead.
So I don't think you'd ever see that in this country,
but in England, that's the way it is.
They have these cute, they have these cool little signs,
and the sign is actually a camera with a bellows,
like an old timey camera with a bellows on it,
with the accordion thing.
And that's what the sign looks like.
It's kind of humorous.
Interesting.
Well, speaking of kind of humorous.
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Yeah, imagine that popping up out of your navigator,
or perhaps this.
If you hadn't bought such a cheap car,
you could have caught up with him.
Okay.
Emanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
Jens and I, on Sunday,
were heading over to Brooklyn to visit with Jim,
who we'll talk about in a moment.
Yes.
But I used a GPS navigator,
I think it was made by a company called Mio.
And every time we'd miss a turn,
which was frequently,
because we had to go through all these circular,
it was crazy.
We probably had to take about 100 turns
to get from Fort Lee, New Jersey,
to this place in Brooklyn.
And every time you'd miss a turn,
it would say it was recalculating,
and it was in this Australian butler-sounding voice.
But we were joking that there should be different voices
and different demeanors,
like a berating demeanor,
like, how could you have missed that turn?
That sort of thing.
And we were having fun.
The one in Hertz rental car,
she sounds very disappointed with you
when you miss a turn.
It's like recalculating records.
No, I know this voice well.
That's a never-lost lady,
calculating route.
And I can't stand it,
because half the time,
she tells you,
please proceed to the highlighted route.
That's her job to tell me
how to get to the highlighted route.
What she does is,
she puts me on some road
that doesn't connect to the other road,
and then I've got to figure it out myself,
and she won't help.
That was probably one of the worst
voice-prompting systems that I've ever heard.
I mean, there were instructions like,
make a right,
then followed by a keep to the left.
Yeah.
That was like one of the funniest ones.
She's got the grammar a little wrong,
but yeah, you're right.
Somehow, they don't seem to be able
to tie in the right phrasing.
Can I give you a GPS rental car nightmare?
Oh, I'd love one.
Returned a rental car in Florida,
and just found out this week
that I was charged $399 by,
can I name the company?
Yeah, go ahead.
Alamo Rent-A-Car,
for a GPS that I gave them back.
So we're,
me, my credit card company,
and them are battling currently.
They claim that the navigator system
is no longer in the car.
No, they use a Garmin external one,
and they give you a little baggie
with it in it.
Okay.
And then you plug it into the cigarette lighter,
and you pop it in there,
and they say I didn't give it back to them.
And you say you did.
And I sure as did.
Well, okay.
Well, keep us updated.
So I'll keep you updated on that.
I have a phone call in to the regional VP,
so we'll see what happens with that.
All right.
And here's Emma Clark with another announcement.
I like to just sort of throw those in randomly
just to really mess with people's heads.
They are fun.
GPS units, though,
you tend to sort of get too used to them,
and then you can't get anywhere without one of them.
So speaking of GPS,
when officials are calling a first for the LAPD,
detectives on Tuesday said
they got a crucial and immediate break
in a slaying case
by using a global positioning satellite system
that was tracking the movements of gang members.
As part of a new state crackdown on gangs,
authorities last month tagged some gang members
with monitoring bracelets
as a condition of their parole from prison.
The bracelets keep a running log
of where the 20 gang members are,
including time-stamped mapping.
They say the system paid off Monday night
after a fatal shooting.
As soon as the radio call went out
reporting the drive-by shooting,
Sergeant Ruby Malachi had an idea.
He runs the LAPD's Crime Analysis Center
right below City Hall East.
I'm sorry, to she.
And she directed her officers
to punch in the date, time, and location
into the computer tracking the movements
of the 20 gang members.
She noticed that one of the gang members
was at the address where the shooting occurred.
At the scene, witnesses say they saw
seven people in a black SUV
from which the shots were fired.
A police helicopter tracked the gang members'
GPS trail to Compton and found the black SUV.
So this is being heralded as a great victory
in GPS technology and people tracking.
LAPD Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner
says it's futuristic, it's real-time,
it's almost a scene-out-of-minority report,
referring to the Steven Spielberg movie
that delves into the future of law enforcement.
And I think this is something
we're going to be seeing a whole lot more of,
and I'm kind of scared of this.
Yeah, I mean, I have to say,
okay, first of all, this has to go on
like the top ten stupidest criminals list
of committing a crime while wearing a GPS bracelet.
Right.
While on parole or out of prison on bail
or whatever he was.
But I mean, I do have,
there's a privacy issue with having this thing on,
but I guess if you don't want to take the parole
and take the deal, then you can stay in jail.
But it comes down to, that's really stupid.
Yeah, well, of course, there were seven people in the SUV,
so who knows, maybe he just was hitching a ride
or something and it was a big coincidence,
but probably not.
All right, then we have this case of,
and this is, of course, continuing to be disturbing
because we've talked about this before.
The New York City Police Department, NYPD,
is being slapped with a lawsuit
after detaining a graduate student
who was taking pictures near a subway station
in Upper Manhattan.
The New York Civil Liberties Union says
Arun Witta was taking pictures
outside the 207th Street subway stop
on the number one train in July
when a police officer got suspicious,
handcuffed him, and detained him for half an hour.
Witta says he was taking photos for a personal project
chronicling the city's subway stops.
I was definitely embarrassed.
It was definitely humiliating
to be standing on a street corner.
Obviously, people were staring at me thinking,
why is that guy in cuffs?
Sounds like the story we read last week
about the person who picked up the lost wallet
and was cuffed or questioned
on the subway station by cops.
Witta says initially the police did not tell him
why he was being stopped or handcuffed.
He says the officer checked his ID
and told him he may have to issue him a ticket.
Eventually, two plainclothes officers
showed up on the scene, questioned him,
and looked through the pictures on his camera
before letting him go.
He says the only explanation he received at the time
was that the NYPD has to be extra careful these days.
Witta, who is half Indian, says he has no doubt
his skin color played a role in the incident.
I definitely know secondhand many other people
who have taken photos in the subway
but have never been subjected to this kind of treatment
that happened to me.
I don't have a doubt that if I looked different,
this wouldn't have happened.
The NYCLU says the police violated
Witta's constitutional rights
and has filed a lawsuit on Witta's behalf.
But, you know, a lot of us who take pictures
do get harassed by cops or security guards
who seem to have some idea that this is illegal,
that it's not permitted to take pictures of trains
or train stations anymore.
It is.
The police even seem to think that.
That's what I'm talking about, the police.
I had a New Jersey transit officer tell me
probably three or four years ago at the Trenton station
I was taking pictures of the transit fare instrument machines.
And he started yelling at me,
he said he was going to confiscate the camera.
He said, there's some law.
I said, well, what is the law?
And I had him call in his supervisor
and his supervisor said to him on the radio,
and I heard this,
well, we know there's a law, it's just not printed anywhere.
Typical, very typical.
Okay, our phone number is 212-209-2900.
We'd like to take as many phone calls as we possibly can tonight
because we always seem to run out of time.
And we know we have a lot of people out there.
Again, if you have a rotary phone,
we'd sure like to hear from you
because we'd like to know how many people out there
still use the things
and have them as their primary means of communication.
The problem is our phone number has so many nines and zeros in it
the rotary people will take a long time to dial.
Yeah, so?
Well, you know, they might not be able to get in.
They better start dialing now.
All right.
Here's some letters from our listeners
who write to us at othat2600.com.
You were talking about RFID credit cards on your show,
which got me thinking.
I have two RFID cards that I use regularly.
One is for the gate at my apartment complex.
The other is for access to RFID-controlled doors at work.
I've tried putting both cards in my wallet for convenience,
though when I tried this,
I couldn't open the gate or the doors at work.
While having two RFID cards together scramble the signal.
If that is so, you could have your passport, RFID credit cards,
and gate key, as it were, in the same pocket
and not have to worry about people picking up
a clear transmission of any of these items.
I could be way off.
I haven't researched RFID very much in depth,
so correct me if I'm wrong,
but is this a feasible theory, signed Dr. Lecter?
Yeah, but a more reliable theory is to just keep it shielded.
If the two tags are on the same frequency
and the protocol that they're using
isn't designed for multiple use,
then, yeah, they're going to collide
and you're not going to get an accurate reading.
But a more reliable way to do that
is to actually shield the wallet.
Okay.
Or purchase one.
But obviously that will help.
I think what he was asking was,
is it possible to confuse these signals?
Do they have to be the exact same frequency?
Yeah, if he had a UHF tag and an HF tag,
then it's probably going to work just fine
and there won't be a difference.
But if he has two tags that are on the same frequency range,
then, yeah, they're going to collide.
They're not going to work properly.
Okay.
Again, I'll phone number 202-209-2900.
We'll go to the phones in just a couple of minutes.
This is an interesting letter that we received from somebody
who is glad that he has such a long drive to work every day
because he listens to our show on his commute back and forth.
The reason I'm writing this is because of a flaw
I discovered while working as an agent for Alltel Wireless.
It began when I borrowed a used phone from my ex-wife,
who wasn't my ex at the time,
to make some adjustments to my account.
Before I was able to get the changes made,
a few days had passed and I had left the borrowed phone on.
She had since received a new one
and the voice service was working on her new handset.
When I finally got around to switching the ESN to my old phone,
I noticed that the phone in my absence had received some new texts.
I thought it was odd, so I opened it up and read the inbox,
about 10 messages from her friends.
I knew there weren't any messages on the phone.
She was good about trying to cover her tracks.
I thought this was really odd
because the messages were all dated after I had received the phone from her,
so I decided to test the phone.
I sent her a message from my working handset
and sure enough, it came to the old phone.
But minutes later, I received a message back from her
in response to my text.
I thought this tapping into the network with just a phone
that had at one time been activated on the account was odd,
so I tried it with my phone.
I reprogrammed the old phone with my information
and sent her a message back.
And sure enough, when my working handset received the message,
so did the phone that had never been on my account.
I've tried it a few times since, and it's worked almost every time.
So apparently, all you have to know is how to program a phone
and the number you want to eavesdrop on, and you're golden.
I talked to my agent about it, and she directed me to call tech support.
I just wanted to know why the phones would still receive texts
when they weren't registered on the system.
He told me that they knew that it could be done,
and to tell the customers to keep the old handsets off
or return them to me for disposal.
I found this very odd considering how much communication happens
via text messaging these days, and I wonder if other cell phone companies
have this same flaw in their system.
Thanks, Dan, for writing in.
Very interesting potential flaw there.
There's a clue here, and that is to his question,
and that is Altel is a CDMA carrier, uses CDMA technology,
and both Verizon and Sprint PCS also use CDMA.
In fact, Altel is one of these rural carriers that sets up cell sites
to sort of snag Verizon and Sprint customers who are out of the area,
and then they generate revenue that way for themselves
by charging Sprint and Verizon for roaming.
But getting back to that, it would be worth for some of our listeners
to try this if they have Sprint or Verizon handsets.
But what you'd have to know, you'd have to know the master subscriber lock code
for that handset so that you could change the phone number of the handset.
You wouldn't be changing the electronic serial number, just the phone number.
Or if you upgraded a handset from one to the other,
the old one would still have the old number in it,
like in this gentleman's situation.
So it's worth trying.
I don't think it would work with a GSM carrier,
but it would work with Sprint or Verizon as well.
It sounds to me like, and I don't know the details about Altel.
I mean, I see they provide service in outlying areas,
but not in the area that I live.
And it sounds to me like they're giving some information away
or he got a hold of that piece of information that you're talking about,
but I don't think that Verizon or Sprint give you that.
I have had them give it to me before.
If you're out of a contract, you can sort of social engineer it out of them.
They're sort of loathe to give it up to you while you're still on the contract
because they don't want you to use that phone on another CDMA carrier.
But you can get it, and sometimes you can find it online and so forth.
I just was trying to get the letter
because I thought the writer said he worked for Altel.
Yeah, obviously because he had customers.
Yeah, so he can get access to all kinds of things.
Right, he worked as an agent for Altel Wireless.
Yeah, it sounds like he's like a reseller
because I don't know that Altel has like their own back corporate stores
like AT&T and SingularWood.
It would be like one of these little shops around here
where they sell service from a bunch of different providers.
Okay, let's take some phone calls, 202-209-2900.
First, let's have our last announcement from Emma Clark.
When exactly did you pass your test?
Okay, that's for the GPS navigator.
Actually, I was a second to last one.
We'll get to the last one in a little bit.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Hey, how are you doing, Emanuel?
What's on your mind?
I have a question for you.
A strange thing happened to me.
I use my cell phone for business and personal use,
and I found out I called one of my clients on the landline
and told them to write me a check or whatever,
and they sent me a check,
and it's a completely other person's name,
and I called them back,
and they got the name off of the caller ID,
and it's not even my name.
It's some completely other person's name.
It's my cell phone coming up on their caller ID to the landline.
And so I called Verizon.
They've never even heard of such a thing happening,
and so they sent out what they call the trouble ticket.
And it still hasn't done anything because it's still happening,
and I figured it might have been
because I know different states use different ones.
So I called Friends of New Jersey,
and the same thing happened.
It comes up with the same name.
Okay, so probably what happened, how long have you had the cell phone?
Maybe 10 years.
Oh, 10 years, okay.
That's different.
I don't know.
I was going to say that probably somebody had your number beforehand
and you simply got their name.
Right.
Is it an unusual name or something?
Here's the weird part.
The name that's coming up is a dear friend of mine
that I've grown up with since kindergarten.
Okay, that's kind of spooky then.
This is like a Twilight Zone episode.
I don't know why something like that might happen
unless is it possible that somehow a representative got confused
when you called them and mentioned your friend's name
or your friend used your phone?
Yeah, none of that ever happened.
He's never used my phone, and he lives in a different state.
He's been living in a separate state for a couple of years now.
How well do you know this person?
Is it possible that he actually has nefarious purposes
and has gone into your account and added his name somehow?
Absolutely not.
Yeah, I know.
We're dear friends.
We grew up together.
And that's the weirdest part is that I can't imagine
how out of all the things in the world that his name would come up.
And plus the thing is the name on my account is the same.
It's the same credit card.
It's the same everything about my account.
Nothing's changed.
So even if he did do that, he doesn't use my number or his phone.
Without giving any specific information,
is his name unique enough that you know that it's his name
and it's not just something like, you know...
Absolutely.
Okay.
Well, that tells me that it's something personal
and somebody you know is responsible for this somehow,
maybe a practical jokester or something somehow.
It's weird.
It's bizarre.
I've never heard of anything like this.
Does anybody have any theories here?
Did you get your phone in those same room as him 10 years ago?
No.
No, because he was a little bit younger.
So when I went to college and stuff, he was still in high school.
And that's when I moved away,
and that's when I got the cell phone in New York.
Has your number ever shown up with the right name?
I don't know.
I'm assuming because, you know, a lot of people that call them cell phones,
they just save my name as their number.
So it's not like a landline caller ID.
Right.
So, you know.
And the other thing, too, is I want to know how to fix it,
and they had no idea.
And I don't know who controls the landline,
like that kind of database that saves the names of people,
I don't know, like the cell phone, you know.
Well, the phone companies like Verizon, AT&T,
they contribute and they have databases.
I'm not exactly sure who it is that runs them.
I think they all kind of run them, don't they?
The phone companies should be able to fix it, I think.
Yeah, they should be able to fix it.
But I'm more curious how it happened.
I think it's more of a mystery.
Have you ever changed your cell phone company?
No.
I've never changed companies.
I've had the same number, you know.
May we ask what your cell phone company is?
It's Verizon.
Verizon.
Okay.
And is this your only cell phone?
Yeah.
Yep.
Weird.
Have you ever shared anything,
a phone or any kind of utility with this other person?
Never.
All right.
Well, you've given us something to think about.
I'm sure we'll get some mail on this
and we'll read it in future weeks
and hopefully somebody can figure out just what happened.
Yeah, and if I find out anything,
I'm going to let you guys know, definitely.
Yeah, please, because we're going to be up nights
worrying about this.
This is unusual.
Hopefully they'll fix it for you.
Yeah, well, fixing it is easy.
That's the easy part.
But I'd really want to know how that happened.
But that's a mystery for sure.
Okay.
Okay.
Shall we take another phone call?
Good evening.
No.
Okay.
They've left.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Oh, how you doing?
What's up?
I was wondering if you could tell me,
you mentioned shielding your wallet
when you have those cards in there.
What's the best way to shield a wallet or a purse?
And also, if you could tell me a good website
that I could get a young boy interested in
cell phone tricks and stuff like that.
Okay.
I'm going to ignore that second question.
We were a little worried there for a second.
And now I know what I think that you're asking
on the first one.
I'm still worried.
All right.
What is the guy that came and gave the premiums?
It's Diferware.
The RFID shielding wallets that you can actually purchase
are from a company named Diferware.
That's spelled D-I-F-R-W-E-A-R.
Yeah, because if you start wrapping your credit cards
up in tin foil, people are going to think
that you might need to go to the rubber room
and stuff.
I mean, you know, it'll work, but...
If you paint the tin foil a different color,
they don't know it's tin foil.
What?
It's tin foil paint.
You don't know about this?
Oh, that's what's coming out from under your hat.
I'm sorry.
You think I'd walk around unprotected?
What do you think my hat's made out of?
Oh, yeah, it is.
Oh, wow.
I'm the only one in the room with, yeah, okay.
But you can effectively shield them
with a couple of layers of aluminum foil,
and it'll work just fine.
All right.
And if you have any of those RF...
I'm sorry, ESD static bags
that the computer circuit boards
and subassemblies are packed in,
they're sort of like this gray silvery.
Two...
If you double-bag it in that stuff,
that'll shield it as well.
All right, let's take another phone call.
212-209-2900.
We have a couple of open lines.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yeah.
What's on your mind?
Oh, how you doing?
How you doing, fellas?
What's up?
Everybody all right?
Yeah, we're fine.
Yeah, we're good.
What's going on?
So that guy who called earlier
about the name showing up on his phone?
Mm-hmm.
I would check my credit if I was him.
Well, I imagine he probably has.
He probably is aware of something,
if anything else weird is going on.
Yeah, that's one of the first steps I would take,
because...
I mean, here's the thing.
How would you even know
if your name wasn't right
on someone else's caller ID
unless they told you?
Exactly, and it's perfect.
Mm-hmm.
Because you wouldn't know.
And that's too much of a coincidence,
especially if the guy's name,
like you asked the question,
is it an uncommon name?
Because a common name is one thing,
but if it's an uncommon name
and it belongs to his friend
who lives in another state,
that's a huge coincidence.
I would start looking
for some kind of identity theft
if I was him.
That sounds like reverse identity theft to me.
I mean, usually one person
is trying to make their way
into using another person's identity
as opposed to changing
the other person's name on their accounts
to the thief's name.
It just seems like the wrong direction to me.
I'm sure there's a practical jokester
involved in this somehow
because the coincidence is just too weird.
But it brings forth an interesting point.
You can have an unlisted phone number.
You can have your phone billed to you someplace,
but the information that tells caller ID
what your name is,
that's completely different information.
And that can be spoofed.
That can be spoofed,
and it can also be looked up
in various ways.
If you spoof the number,
lots of times the lookup is done,
and you'll see the name
coming from the database.
And that's a good way to find out
people's unlisted phone numbers.
If you simply scan an exchange
and get every number
to show what name is associated with it,
they won't even know.
It's easier than anything.
It's a lot easier than anything.
Okay, second phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes, hi.
You mentioned about
the walk-in telephone booths
on Western Avenue.
Yes.
It's on West 66th Street.
Oh, really?
Yes.
West 66th and West End Avenue.
It's Monday, but I see it all the time.
Really?
Have you visited it lately?
Yes.
I don't use it,
but it's a walk-in telephone booth,
the kind Superman would change in.
It's definitely there.
Yeah, it's good to just sort of walk in
and sort of stand there for a while
and see the world go by,
even if you don't use the phone.
It's right near ABC also,
because ABC's on...
But anyway,
it's on 66th and West End Avenue.
Okay, thanks for the tip.
And we'll head over there later
and go down memory lane.
Yeah, old payphone booths.
My school has a couple of them.
Booths, actual booths.
Booths that are built into the wall.
Remember, you used to be able to close the door,
the sort of accordionist door,
and a little fluorescent light would come on,
and sometimes a fan would go on too.
Bernie, I know you remember these things.
Yeah, it was great.
It was like being in your own
little cocoon for a while.
And it could be.
You could stay in there for a long time
and make all sorts of phone calls.
And then you'd get out the bottle cap
and the pull tab and the...
This is in war games.
Typically, there was a bench in there.
I mean, you could sit on a bench,
and there's like a little surface
for writing under the payphone.
And you had your fan and your light,
and you could get work done in there.
Yeah, many times that served as my office
before I actually had one.
Okay, a couple of minutes left
for phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Oh, look, all the lines are lit now.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Oh, hi.
Oh, boy, where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Manhattan.
Okay, well, you're in a very noisy place.
What's on your mind?
I just got a comment about the Verizon phone caller
who called them before
about having somebody else's name come up.
I had the same experience.
Oh, really?
Uh-huh.
And was it somebody you knew?
No, nobody I knew.
And what was the explanation,
or did you never get one?
No, I have no explanation at all.
And it only comes up on certain phones,
not others.
Some friends, my name comes up on other friends' phones.
An Asian woman's name comes up.
Now, are the friends whose this other number comes up on,
are they landline phones?
And then your friends who your name comes up on?
No, all cell phones.
They're all cell phones?
Yeah.
Well, okay, caller ID is not transmitted on cell phones.
You define the name on the cell phone.
In other words, if somebody calls you,
you're the one that says who they are.
You don't get the name sent to your cell phone.
Do you understand?
When I call certain people, my name comes up.
Uh-huh.
And then when I call certain other people,
only two people, an Asian woman's name comes up.
Okay, but if they're using cell phones,
they're the ones that have defined your number as the Asian woman,
is what I'm trying to tell you.
If they're using a landline, then it's something strange happening.
So, in other words, if you have a cell phone,
if a person has a cell phone
and they program in a number to come up with Lily, for example,
it's going to come up Lily, no matter who the name in the database is,
because it doesn't actually go and look up the name in the database.
No, I'm telling you, it comes up a different name, totally.
Okay, but what we're telling you is that if you have a cell phone,
you define that name yourself.
The person getting called,
you can say everybody calling you is named President Bush.
You can say that, and it'll show up every time they call.
You cannot do that on a landline,
because a landline actually receives data that looks up a name
and matches it to the phone number.
We're kind of out of time now,
so that's it for the phone calls this week.
But I want to thank everybody for calling in
and for giving us all sorts of interesting questions
and things to think about.
Ah, yeah.
Division X.
And we'll be back again next week with another edition of Off The Hook,
where all sorts of things will be discussed and debated
and revealed for maybe the first time.
That's why the universe sent me today.
Also, our email address, othat2600.com.
Tune in again next week at this exact same time,
and we'll have another exciting edition.
Meantime, tune in for The Personal Computer Show,
coming up in just a couple of minutes here on WBAI.
Good night.
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