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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.
Bondedly bond for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bondedly bond.
Bondedly bond.
Bondedly bond.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Manuel Goldstein here with you on this hectic Wednesday evening.
It's the last day for our fundraising activities here at WBAI.
We've done so well so far.
It's incredible.
What did we do last week?
Something like four grand or something?
Or was it two grand?
I don't remember.
We just we keep raising all this money, and it's great.
And this is the last week that you'll have the opportunity to call in and get all kinds
of cool stuff.
We'll give you the details in just a little bit.
I want to introduce people first.
Red Hecht.
Hello.
Welcome.
You're going to be running the board next week because I'm not going to be here.
Yep.
I'm going to be up in Quebec.
Yeah, because there's an election going on up there, and they want me to monitor it,
make sure it's fair.
Rob T. Firefly.
Welcome.
Good evening.
And Kevin, how are you?
Very well.
Dotret Returns.
Hello, strangers.
From wherever it is you've been in the last few weeks.
And we have Voltaire on the other side of the room.
Hello.
How you doing?
Bernie S. joins us from Philadelphia this week.
Yes, I just returned to Philadelphia from California.
Uh-huh.
Okay, great.
And you have fun in California?
I did.
I was at a conference in San Francisco, met up with a bunch of our friends there.
I couldn't make it down to TourCon in San Diego, but I still met up with a bunch of
hacker friends in San Fran.
So it was good.
Had a bit of some issues getting back to Pennsylvania, but that's another story.
And joining us from the swing state of Ohio is our good friend Kevin Mitnick.
Hey, how are you?
Pretty good.
Now, you're in the news today for some reason.
Something seems to have happened with your recent travels.
You want to give us a quick update?
Yeah, I was in Bogota, Colombia, working.
And when I flew back into the United States, and mind you, I travel a lot.
I've been traveling internationally since I was off supervised release in 2003.
When I never had this happen is when I arrived into passport control, they swiped my passport.
And all of a sudden, the guy started reading what was ever on his screen.
And right away, that was a bad indicator.
And then he started typing into the computer, reading more, typing and reading more.
And he turns to me with a big smile on his face.
He goes, hey, Kev.
I go, yes.
He goes, there's some people here that want to have a word with you, but don't worry.
Everything will be fine.
And then he marks the blue form that you fill out, the customs declaration form with a big
B on it.
I don't know what B stands for, but I'm sure it wasn't good.
So then he told me to go get my luggage.
So I went to go get my luggage and then went through to downstairs.
But right when I was at the baggage claim waiting for my bags, my girlfriend from Bogota
told me, and she goes, honey, honey, the policia just called me.
And I go, what are you talking about?
She goes, you know, the electronic equipment you sent to Las Vegas?
I go, yes.
They said there's cocaine inside.
I go, what?
And she goes, yes.
What's going on?
What's going on?
And I said, I don't know.
I don't know.
I will call you back.
So then I went to get my bags.
And in the meantime, I was able to, I had full access to my laptops and everything because
I was still, you know, I wasn't being interrogated yet.
I was still in the process of picking up my stuff.
So I went on my computer for a little bit while I was waiting for my bags, check my
email and such.
And then called my girlfriend back.
I go, so what's going on?
And she told me that the customs police and Bogota had asked for her permission to physically
open the drive.
And she said, OK.
So then by that time, I decided to go downstairs.
And then when I present this blue form, immediately they whisked me to this area where there's
a long conveyor belt.
And they tell me to put all my property up on this conveyor belt.
And then this guy comes walking over, this customs agent.
And he goes, so Mitnick?
I go, yeah.
He goes, have you ever been arrested before?
And I go, oh, no.
And I go, yeah, I happened to be arrested before.
He goes, for what?
And I told him, hacking.
He goes, were you ever in prison before?
And I go, yeah.
And he goes, for how long?
Five years.
And he goes, five years?
He goes, we got to see what you have here.
Of course, they already knew that I was in custody before.
I'm sure it was on their computer.
So in any event, so I put all of my bags up on this conveyor belt.
They start searching through it.
And there was so much stuff that they get kind of bored.
And the guy goes, well, I got to go make some phone calls.
So after about 30 minutes, he comes back.
And then he goes into my carry-on.
And he pulls out this device.
It was in a static protection bag.
And what this thing was is an HIV spoofer that I was demonstrating in Columbia for my talk.
It's a device that basically reads and spoofs HID cards, HIV cards.
And the thing looks like this big circular antenna or inductance.
And it goes into the circuit board with a 9-volt battery.
And the guy's eyes are wide open.
He goes, what's this?
And I go, well, that's an HIV spoofer.
I said, you see that card around your neck?
I could read your information and become you.
He goes, you're kidding.
And I go, no, no, it's real.
And then he starts searching my bag some more.
And he found a set of southward lock picks.
Oh, boy.
He goes, what are these?
And I go, these are lock picks.
And he goes, what are you using those for?
And I said, you know, my hobby is lock picking.
And I also demonstrate this in my talks.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Kevin, did you have your business card with you as well, which actually is a lock pick?
Yeah, yeah.
So I was getting to that.
So I said, well, I have something better to pick locks with.
And his eyes widened like I was going to make a confession or something like that.
And I go, here you go.
And I hand him a, I said, this is my lock pick set on the business card.
And then right away, he got a little bit sad because he thought he was going to,
you know, reel in the big fish that I was somehow doing something wrong.
I mean, do you want me to go through the whole details of the story?
I'll just give you the very, very brief overview.
There's a lot of humorous parts in here.
Well, give us a little bit of humor because we could certainly use that.
But yeah, we are a bit pressed for time.
So I guess the highlights.
I just want to see how long I can go on.
I don't want to bore you.
Well, you certainly won't bore us.
OK, great.
So, you know, he's looking.
Then he gets on the phone and tell some other federal agent that he found a credit card reader.
So he thought that the HIV spoofer, which is an RFP reader device,
was somehow could read credit cards, which was totally erroneous.
Well, right then and there, I knew there was going to be trouble.
So eventually they, they transferred me up to this other room.
They seized my phone so I can't call anybody.
Then I asked, I go, am I under arrest?
And then they go, no.
And I said, OK, then I could leave then, right?
So they go, no, no, no, you're detained.
You're detained.
Detained is different than being arrested.
Arrest and detain, they mean the same thing.
You can't leave.
Yeah, right.
For me, it's the same.
So because I remember being detained for four and a half years.
Well, I had this happen to me once going into Canada, and I just made a point of going to
the bathroom without asking their permission to see what they do.
And of course, they freaked out.
I didn't have to go to the bathroom, but I just wanted to see
how far they were going to take this.
And eventually they let me go.
Yeah, I mean, this was incredible.
So they, no, they weren't bringing me a room with other people.
They brought me into like a room, but it wasn't locked.
It's where, you know, people usually sit to wait for customs.
And there was this guy at the counter running wants and warrants of people.
So I knew I was in the section of people that were like under criminal suspicion.
So eventually, all of a sudden, this ICE agent shows up from the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, a different federal agency.
And he's telling me, he goes, well, he told me, you know, he goes, well, you know, we
could seize all your equipment up to three months, and we could look at everything you have.
And I don't really want to do that.
But if you could verify why you're in Atlanta, why you're in our state, you know, I might
let you go without taking your equipment.
And I'm thinking to myself, aren't I a U.S. citizen?
I mean, do I need a reason to be in Atlanta?
But that was besides the point.
So I told him I was there to moderate a panel for ASIS International.
And I even said, incidentally, he and FBI agents on the panel.
So they didn't believe me, right?
So they said, can you prove this?
I said, well, I have my itinerary on my laptop.
I just have to get access to the internet and I could pull it down for you.
Access to the internet from Customs.
Does that work?
From Customs, right.
So I have a wireless card.
They don't have, like, open Wi-Fi, you know, Customs, you know, come connect to our Wi-Fi
with a Verizon wireless card.
No, but they probably have their own network.
You just have to get their password.
Yeah, yeah.
I figured I was waiting for you to come help me, you know, and then you'd type in their
password for me.
Yeah.
You know, because you probably know it.
I don't.
So so anyway, I put my laptop and the first thing I have my Mac configured is on Firefox.
And I'm like, it brings up a dialog box to clear your history and to clear your cookies
and all that stuff.
Just this is my default, because I always do.
So when that dialog box pops up, it says clear private data.
I clicked yes.
Oh, boy.
And they all freaked out, right?
The Customs and ICE agents.
And they grabbed my laptop from me.
But I powered it off like it was in his hands.
And I'm holding the power button to power it off.
Why are you doing that?
So to conserve my battery.
I don't want my battery to be dead.
Wow.
Yes.
So I mean, so I'm like wondering, like, what the heck is going on?
I'm thinking that this has to do, like, maybe the authorities in Colombia called the US
and said there was cocaine in the package or something.
I didn't know what was going on, but I knew I had nothing to do with it.
So then, so eventually, I get moved to this other room, like an interrogation room.
And they actually have it videotaped in the audio bug.
And he lets you know about it.
And they ask you to verify the truth of the customs form.
And of course, it was truthful.
And then they decided to, like, go through an inventory, do what they call an inventory
of everything.
And if you know how much electronic equipment I carry on my gigs, I'm always, you know,
redundant.
Three laptops.
I think I had, like, four Nokia phones, three iPhones.
I mean, I have a lot of stuff.
You know, it takes hours.
And already, people were waiting for me to take me to this event.
So one guy hands me one of my laptops.
It's an ASUS 900.
And on there, there's a firmware.
I forgot the name of the Linux operating system, the bastardized Linux operating system.
But anyway, if you don't have an SD card in there, it boots off the firmware, which is
Linux.
And I didn't have an SD card in there because it was actually safely in a case in my laptop.
So Custom Agents goes, well, let's see if you're going to cooperate with us.
I go, OK.
They go, is this your laptop?
I go, of course.
Of course, I wouldn't be carrying it.
And he goes, well, we want you to log us into the laptop.
I said, OK, cool.
I said, there's an account on there called Kevin, which has limited access.
There's an account called Root, which, you know, you can get to everything.
Which one do you want me to log into?
And they said Root, of course.
So he hands me the laptop.
I log in to Root.
Password, by the way, was Root backwards because it was the default in the firmware.
OK.
And I handed them the laptop, and they went through it for a while.
But there was nothing there because, again, it was just booting into the firmware on this
laptop.
And it was like a big time waster, in a sense.
So once they realized I was cooperating, then the ICE agent finally came back and told me
that the FBI in Atlanta had cleared me that they know I take all this equipment around.
I do all this public speaking.
I'm not hacking anymore.
And the ICE agent apologized for this inconvenience.
By this time, it's like going up on four hours.
There's a lot more I skipped in the story.
Well, Kevin, I'm curious, if you hadn't given them full access to your laptop, what might
have happened?
Oh, then they would have believed I wasn't cooperating and probably seized all my equipment
for who knows how long.
And that could have easily put me out of business because, well, I have several engagements
I was doing, one in Atlanta, one in New York.
And it would have been a huge inconvenience.
And I always take a precaution anyway.
Anytime I travel back into the United States knowing that there's a border exception to
search and seizure, any of my confidential data dealing with my clients stuff that's
under nondisclosure agreements, I basically encrypt and send via SSL to the United States.
And then I wipe it from my computer.
At the end of the day, there was nothing on my computer that would be of interest or
confidential, but it was still my privacy.
I even called my attorney, remember, Don Randolph, and I said, do I have to give them my
password?
He said, absolutely, don't give them anything regardless.
And rather than take that stance, I basically, when they handed me this laptop that I never
really used but is mine, I logged them into that and they were satisfied.
Right.
Yeah, it was a shortcut, I guess.
Kind of that these guys weren't good investigators because you would think they'd go to the Mac
where I was checking my email rather than going to this other machine.
I mean, that would make logical sense to me.
So the ICE agent basically cleared me and he says, hey, I'm done with you.
There's nothing we need further from you.
But then the customs agents still detained me for a little bit longer as they were inventorying
my stuff and they finally let me go.
But this was a very uncomfortable experience because I had, oh, so to get back to the cocaine
story.
So I finally, after this was over, I called my girlfriend.
I go, hey, what's going on with FedEx?
And she goes, oh, yeah, they opened your drive.
They opened all your electronic stuff and they found there was nothing there.
I go, of course, there was nothing there.
But meanwhile, they drilled a hole in my hard drive, right?
And apparently what I took, I took this equipment to like a mailbox, et cetera, but it wasn't
called mailboxes, et cetera.
It was some mailing house, like in some mall in Bogota.
And I said, box this up, paid their 120,000 pesos, gave them an address and figured I'd
be done with it.
But maybe some of the paper they used had some residue on there.
I have no idea.
And it triggered off an alert.
And so when this was happening in Colombia, I always presumed it was somehow related,
which it wasn't.
So I was like scared to death that somebody had planted some drugs in my electronic equipment
and I was going to take the route for it.
But fortunately, it turns out it was a false positive.
But that doesn't negate the stress that I had to go under at U.S. Customs for no reason.
And why I think this story is important is because this could happen to anybody.
Of course.
They didn't say we singled you out because you have a criminal history.
They basically could single out anyone that comes into the U.S.
It doesn't matter.
You're old, you're young.
It could be Steve Wozniak.
It could be anybody.
And they could seize your equipment up to 90 days.
They can do anything they want.
And it's pretty scary.
And I never really thought it would happen to me.
Well, actually, that's wrong, because I actually encrypted and sent my data all the time.
But I figured it was a long shot.
But of course, I was wrong.
And I was detained for four hours.
And that's like being under arrest.
And also, your hard drive had a hole drilled through it.
Now, what are they going to do about that, the Colombian authorities?
That's not the United States government.
That's the Colombian government.
And to get anything out of them will probably, you know, it's not like the states.
And it's a third world country.
Fortunately, I didn't have any really important data on there.
But it still was a one terabyte max or drive.
It cost me like a few hundred bucks.
Wow, quite a story, Kevin.
And I'm glad you made it OK through this.
I saw the headline, and my heart fell.
I thought maybe we're going through this nightmare all over again.
But it sounds like it kept you cool throughout it.
And hats off to you for that.
Yeah, well, I did nothing wrong.
But it was really scary because of these simultaneous situations.
And realizing that when you go to a border, the government could look through anything
of yours, take your iPods, take your iPhones, take your computers, and basically confiscate
it for whatever time they need to go through it to satisfy themselves.
There's no contraband.
And probably Bernie knows this more than anybody else.
You know, 30 days can turn into 90, which can turn into 180 days, which can turn into years.
And you're without your equipment.
By the time you get it back, the information on Earth, you know, worthless.
And probably your equipment doesn't work.
Absolutely.
Now, there's a lot of controversy recently about people supposedly being required to
give passwords to customs agents to their laptops.
And I'm a firm believer that you should never give that information out.
Obviously, in your case, since there was nothing on that computer anyway, it was a shortcut
to get out of that situation.
But, you know, I fear the day is going to come where I'm coming across the border, and
I have a laptop, and I'm just not going to give them that password no matter what.
I don't know what's going to happen there.
But I hope a lot of people also take that stance.
Because once someone gets into your laptop, there's no end to all the kinds of information
they can find out about you.
Private information, things they have no business knowing.
And to say that they have the right to get that information, it's like giving them the
keys to your house and the combination to everything that you own.
And we just, we can't let that slip through our fingers.
Yes.
And by the way, I have a contractual obligation with my clients that I have under NDA.
I do a lot of security testing and pen testing.
That somehow I, it doesn't have an exception in the NDA that you could disclose this to
a U.S. government agency.
So technically, without me going through these precautions, I could violate the NDA.
I could be sued.
I could be, you know, basically put out of business.
So, you know, it's really important.
And I actually talked to Don Randolph, who was my lawyer in the criminal case, while
I had my phone.
And he told me, absolutely don't give them anything.
Don't talk to them.
Just, you know, just answer the questions about why you're outside the country, what
you were doing there, what you brought back, but anything else, just refer to him.
Right.
Because they're going to misinterpret it.
They don't have to let you go.
Right.
They're going to misinterpret all kinds of things.
They have no technical knowledge.
They're going to think they're onto something that they're really not.
Well, Kevin Minton, we're glad that you survived this.
I know, Bernie, you had an interesting story while traveling back from San Francisco.
Could you tell us in just a couple of minutes, because we have some features we have to go
into for the fundraiser, what it is that happened to you this week?
Oh, yeah.
Well, it also, in a way, had something to do with RFID, although it was not quite as
exciting as Kevin's situation.
I flew back from San Francisco to Philadelphia via St. Louis.
But on the way to St. Louis, we had to make an emergency landing because someone on the
passenger on the plane had a stroke.
Fortunately, there was a doctor who happened to be sitting next to me who volunteered to
help the stroke victim.
And we landed in Las Vegas, and we were there for a couple of hours.
And by the time we finally got to St. Louis, there were no more flights out of there.
So I had to spend the night in St. Louis.
But on my way to St. Louis, or Las Vegas, when I got in the security line, an airline
representative, not a TSA rep, but an airline security rep, this is where you get funneled
into the security line before TSA looks at your stuff.
The airline rep looked at my passport and my boarding pass, and he pointed out the RFID
symbol on the cover of the passport, one of those new RFID passports.
Actually, I got it a year and a half ago here in Philadelphia.
And he pointed it out to his colleagues.
See this?
This is the new electronic passports.
And he was saying, this is a good thing.
It's a good thing.
And I pointed out, no, it's not a good thing.
It effectively makes your passport a beaconing device for anyone that wants to determine
your identity, or if you're an American, or if you're in an unfriendly area,
and someone who's not friendly to you or to Americans in general.
Bernie, you actually tried to explain this to them?
I did explain this to them.
And they were looking at each other like, oh, you're right.
This is not a good thing.
These are just airline hacks.
These weren't even TSA people.
So that was that.
We had an interesting discussion.
And it was not a problem.
So today, though, when I'm leaving St. Louis for Philadelphia, I got into the security line.
I handed my passport to the TSA rep at my boarding pass.
He looked at them sort of casually and handed it back to me and waved me on.
And then I walked about 10 feet away.
And he said, he shouted my name.
I said, come back here.
He said, so I did.
I didn't know what was about.
I handed him.
He grabbed my passport and my boarding pass again.
He pointed at the cover of it.
He said, what is this?
I said, you mean that little symbol there?
He said, yes.
What is that?
I said, it's an RFID passport.
It's got an RFID chip in it.
And he's like, well, I've not seen this before.
This is unusual.
It boggles my mind that he has not seen an RFID.
A TSA agent has not seen an RFID passport when they've been issued for over a year and a half
now.
These are the people who would see it more than anybody.
You would think.
How could they not see this?
But he was all flustered by this little symbol at the bottom of my passport that was unfamiliar
to him.
And I said, well, these are being issued all over the place now, as far as I know.
Maybe not all cities, but I know Philadelphia is one of the first cities to start issuing.
Isn't it great that you're somebody who takes opposition to this more than anybody,
and yet you somehow get the blame for it?
He was just sort of pointing it in an accusatory way.
What is this?
It looked like it might have been a sign that it was counterfeit or something, I'm guessing.
Anyhow, he gave it back to me in a disgruntled way to wave me on.
But it was just bizarre.
You would think that the Transportation Security Administration would know what a real passport
looks like and would know that an RFID passport has this little symbol on the front of it,
and it's not an indication that it's a fake passport.
It was just weird.
You should have told him that it was a bad thing, too.
It sounds like he was ready to agree with you.
He was in a less friendly mood than the airline reps that I spoke to yesterday.
They were cheerful.
They were just really clueless.
Well, they were both kind of clueless, but it was just odd that I had two RFID-related
incidents with security-type people two days in a row.
But I'm really bowled over that this TSA agent did not know what an RFID passport was.
Bizarre.
Well, we've heard two good stories about traveling across borders of some sort,
borders of mentality and borders of countries,
and I get to travel across the border in a couple of days by land, so that should be more fun.
Kevin, Bernie, I'm glad you both made it out okay, but let's try and stay out of trouble, huh?
We'll keep trying.
We'll do our best.
All right.
Kevin, great to hear from you, too, and I'm sure we'll see you again soon.
All right.
Take care.
All right.
Take care, Bernie.
Take care, everybody.
Kevin Mitnick joining us from the swing state of Ohio.
I'm not sure what he's doing there, but hopefully it'll be for the good of all.
Bernie, thanks for your story as well.
We have business we have to take care of here at the radio station, though,
because as I said, we are in the middle of the last day of our fun drive here at Off The Hook,
and somehow we've already made over $1,000, which is great,
so we want to thank people for calling in.
The number is 212-209-2950.
Here are the premiums that we have, and we're going to run this down,
then we're going to play an excerpt from something.
We have the DVDs from The Last Hope.
That was our conference that took place in July.
Now, we have a limited number, limited number, meaning that we have five of these.
We can give away no more than five.
In fact, we might have already given away one,
and that is the 100-DVD set of all the talks at the Hope conference that took place in July.
That's for a pledge of $250 to 212-209-2950.
Now, if that's a bit much for you, okay, get the 20-DVD set for a pledge of $125,
and we also have a 10-DVD set for a pledge of $75.
A 10-DVD set will get you the featured speakers, the keynote speakers,
social engineering, things like that.
And in fact, the excerpts that we're going to play tonight, you would get with the 10-DVD set.
That's for a pledge of $75, 212-209-2950.
20-DVD set, you'll get a bit more.
You'll get the lockpicking talks and a couple of other things thrown in for a pledge of $125.
And then again, for $250, you'll get everything.
But again, we only have five left, 212-209-2950.
We also have, for people that are interested in T-shirts,
we have the brand new 2600 T-shirt for a pledge of $30 in the size of your choice.
That is not, Kevin, what, the Telephone Security?
The Telephone Security shirt.
Want to describe that to us?
It is a black shirt on the front.
Has a call path, per se, where there's several different angles of attack to your telephone call,
from, say, CALEA or the Patriot Act or all these other things.
And on the back is a description of each one of them.
Regular telephone calls, or ways that they can be intercepted and eavesdropped on.
Yes.
And this is all on a shirt?
All on a shirt that you can own.
How does this get represented on a shirt?
A friendly octopus named Eve between our two callers, Alice and Bob.
And Eve is, I take it, eavesdropping?
Eve is eavesdropping.
All right.
So that's pictorially represented on the front and on the back
is an explanation of each of the methods of attack.
All right.
So that's yours for a pledge of $30.
If you want a 2600 sweatshirt, the black pullover sweatshirts we're offering this time.
It's got the government seal on the front.
All kinds of...
Actually, no, the government seal's on the back, right?
Back.
Yeah.
And the numbers 2600 are in the front in small numbers.
That is yours for a pledge of $50, 212-209-2950.
And finally, we also have the best of 2600, the 888-page book,
which was released over the summer.
And we have a limited number of signed copies.
Actually, we'll be signing them after you pledge and pay too.
And we'll be signing it, making it out to you.
So it'll be a personalized autographed edition of the best of 2600.
That's for a pledge of $75.
So all of that, 212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line.
Join those people and help support this radio station
because it's through your support that we're able to stay on the air.
You notice we don't have commercials.
If we did, we couldn't talk about the things that we're talking about now.
Let's not forget any pledge above $30, we'll get you the off-the-hook t-shirt.
That's right.
Every pledge $30 and above, automatically,
you get an off-the-hook t-shirt, which you can't get anywhere else.
Anywhere else.
Yeah.
So you can't stop that.
You're going to get that no matter what.
So that's coming your way.
212-209-2950.
What we're going to do now is we're going to play an excerpt from
The Last Hope Conference.
And again, any pledge for the DVDs, whether it's 10, 20, or 100 DVDs set
at prices of $75, $125, and $250 respectively,
you will get this excerpt.
You'll get this whole talk, in fact, video of Steve Rombaum,
who gave a three-hour talk on privacy and ways that your privacy can be invaded
and ways to protect it, ways it can be abused.
Fascinating talk.
The guy can just go on forever.
He's been on the radio many times and had a packed house listening
to his every word on Saturday night.
This is yours, along with so many other talks.
212-209-2950.
Let's listen to Steve Rombaum telling us a thing or two about privacy.
Again, our phone number, 212-209-2950.
I love this example.
This is a real example.
Massachusetts DMV, the driver's license people in Massachusetts.
A couple of years ago when they were implementing their facial recognition program,
I mean, you know they were up late with pizza and Jolt Cola,
and they were punchy, and the sixth sense of humor comes out.
So they said, you know what?
Let's test this out.
Let's get some photos from the America's Most Wanted website,
and let's compare it to the Massachusetts DMV driver's license photo database.
And they did, and they actually caught a guy.
They called the state police.
They said, you're not going to believe this.
State police says, yep, it's really Robert Howell,
and they went and arrested him.
New York Times article.
Sun Times article from earlier this year.
Illinois implemented facial recognition with their driver's licenses,
ran a program to compare all the driver's licenses against all the other driver's licenses
to detect people getting multiple driver's licenses.
Caught a whole bunch of people.
Now, we're not the government.
A really annoying television producer came to me,
and he said, listen, you've got all this technology.
Can you just run databases on photos and names
and catch wanted people without going out for looking for them?
And I said, of course.
This is what I'll charge you to do the story.
And he said, never mind.
But I got curious.
So I went to the state of Illinois child support enforcement office.
And I went to the state of Illinois child support enforcement database.
Go home, try this yourself.
It's unbelievably easy.
You can write an algorithm that will do this.
Anybody can.
Here's a guy, Blaine, who last paid child support in 2007,
and he owes $40,806.
And here's his MySpace page with all of his information.
With some of his unpaid child support.
Next one's even funnier.
Here you have a guy, Ronald, who last paid in 2007.
He owes almost $100,000, $99,066.
There's his wanted poster.
There's his MySpace page.
Now, I want you to look.
I love this.
I want you to look at the difference between the top photo,
where he's like buff and in good shape and happy and clear-eyed,
and the bottom, where he's laying on a couch wearing a t-shirt,
you know, putting on weight, blurry-eyed.
That's his MySpace friends.
So now you know why.
That's where the child support and the sleep is going.
Okay, so you guys are hackers.
You learn about exploits, and you try to figure out countermeasures.
So you wear, you know, you decide, you know,
these facial recognition cameras aren't going to get me.
I'm going to go to the novelty store and get a Groucho Marx nose and glasses
and walk down the street.
It won't help.
There are now facial recognition algorithms that are being developed
and being made better and better and better and better on a daily basis almost
that any piece of exposed skin can be compared.
95% accuracy.
Now, for certain things, that's crap.
That means if you check 1,000 people,
you're going to get 50,000 false positives.
The answer to that is you take that subset of 50,000 people,
and you rerun them and rerun them until you're fairly accurate.
But the nose and glasses won't work.
So let's say you get a hoodie, you pull it up,
you get the elephant man's mask,
and you walk down the street saying,
I'm a human too.
Won't help.
Won't help.
They will recognize the elephant man's gait recognition.
This was first developed.
I spoke about this at Stevens.
This was first developed, of course, in Surveillance Crazy England.
I don't know if you guys remember Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.
That's probably who developed it.
But they have a thing that can tell who you are by the way you walk.
And the proof that it has some potential?
FBI is investing a billion dollars.
I mean, like the little guy, a billion dollars in the technology.
Cameras are going to be able to look at how you walk.
You wear a hat, you wear a hoodie, you wear a mask.
It's Bob with a hat, a hoodie, a mask on.
And by the way, this is one time when intrusive technology was great.
This guy was a pedophile,
and they found him molesting little children on pedophile websites.
That was the original photo.
Dutch cops figured out how to unswirl it, and they arrested him.
So even if you think you can conceal your photo and do other things, forget it.
All right.
So you say, they're going to recognize me.
They can tell how I walk.
I'm going to get in my car, and I'm going to tint the windows,
and I'm going to travel safely,
and only like pop out at the last moment and run into the building.
All right.
This particular system is capable of capturing up to 3,000 license plates in an hour.
We have two forward-facing cameras and one side-facing camera.
The side-facing camera is out at a 90-degree angle,
and it's basically for doing parking lot applications.
I can go into a parking lot of a shopping center
and drive down the lanes of the parking lot.
And as I'm doing that, I'm running every single license plate in that parking lot.
The forward-facing cameras, one is forward-facing to the lane to the left,
and one is forward-facing to the lane to the right.
And what I'm getting there is typically oncoming cars,
and the camera to the right would be either cars in the number two lane
or cars that are parked along the side of the road.
So what the screen gives you here is it gives you an overview picture of the vehicle.
The software then isolates the license plate, and it gives you the plate patch.
And what you see here in the yellow box above the plate patch
is what the software actually read the plate to be.
So one of the other applications for this system
is to frequently check parking lots for vehicles that are of interest to the police.
I just want to show you one thing.
But auto theft and traffic enforcement only scratch the surface of what ALPR is capable of doing.
We also have...
Look at that picture.
That's for real.
This, if you are observant enough, drive down the interstates,
you will see every overpass, every bridge abutment,
every possible place to mount a camera.
Cameras are now being mounted.
If there is a BOLO, if there's a be on the lookout notice
for Bob driving Subaru license plate ABC123,
it will be programmed into the license plate recognition alert.
The minute you drive down the street, a cop will know where you are,
be vectored right into you.
That's a good thing.
Now, a bad thing?
Bob is an annoying hacker.
We want to know who he's meeting with and where he's going,
but he's really sensitive to surveillance.
And he checks his car for bumper beepers,
and he doesn't have an iPhone, and he takes the battery out of his phone.
And he pays cash for everything.
They can still track you.
A couple of things, and I'm going to now start going through this at the speed of light
because we want to allow time for the Q&A.
It's gotten so good, this is the first time I've seen this.
We want to allow time for the Q&A.
It's gotten so good.
This is a real Quiviti billboard.
They now have billboards.
You look at the billboard, the billboard looks back at you,
knows how long you're looking at the billboard, what you were looking at.
Facial recognition glasses.
Now, how many times have somebody come up to you,
Bob, how you doing?
And you're like, who is this?
All you have to do in a couple of years, hit a button.
Oh, this is Fred.
He owes me $50.
And he's always trying to mooch money off of me.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I don't know who you are.
Go away.
This is an actual beta testing pair.
CCTVs, just letting you know, not very worthwhile in the real world.
If you catch somebody and you've got the video, you can use it to convict them.
But actually using it to catch them, not very effective.
Now, the one thing is, photos of a crime in progress, it's a great thing.
I mean, it's a photo.
Photos don't lie.
It's not like a photo can be made to show you doing something you didn't do
or events that didn't happen.
I love that one.
Oh, final word on surveillance cameras.
One more time from Baltimore.
There you go.
OK.
Very quickly, interpretation of activity and behavior.
I've been talking for two hours now, how people watch you and how people track you
and how they gather this.
One of the most important things is they've got all this data.
What the hell do they do with it?
Well, they run it through artificial intelligence programs.
Well, they run it through artificial intelligence programs.
And they run it through other programs that interpret it for them.
Instead of an analyst sitting there with printouts or in front of a computer screen,
the computer decides if you're a good guy or a bad guy.
And a lot of times, it's legit.
I mean, you check flights to Iran right before a bombing and split.
You buy a book on fighting cancer.
Either you or somebody you know has cancer.
You rent a gay porno movie.
You're probably gay.
You put an address into MapQuest.
You're interested in that address.
You fill a prescription for Xanax.
You fill a prescription for Viagra.
Duh.
Here's my favorite one.
You're on a plane four times this year sitting next to the same woman who's not your wife.
I mean, unlikely it's a coincidence.
And it means something.
And this is the state of things today.
There are two big programs that are being constantly worked on and updated
for the U.S. government to interpret that.
One is called NORA, which stands for Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness.
This was started in Vegas casinos.
The stuff that you see on that show, I think it's called casino, right?
Or Vegas or whatever, James Caan plays the casino owner.
And it shows they zoom in on the guy's face and it immediately tells them who it is.
And it pulls up his whole history.
Absolutely legit.
Casinos really do that and really can do it.
And it's being developed for the government.
And the example of this, when it was pitched by the casino guys to the government,
was the blackjack dealer once shared a telephone number
with the sister of the guy now winning big at his table.
Think about that for a second.
Not hard to do for a database.
There's something called ADVISE.
Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement.
Only the government can name that.
This is being developed for DHS, Department of Homeland Security.
Showing links between data and all the links of these links to individual people.
In 2004, DHS at their big conference in Virginia that they held that year,
at that time, their requirement was storage for one quadrillion links.
Then.
Now, beyond belief.
Now look, I'm an investigator.
I'm not going to stand up here and say,
ooh, this is all bad.
Because sometimes it's good.
When the government actually uses the right information in the right way and does its job,
it saves lives.
It could have saved 3,000 lives right here in New York.
Let me interpret this for you.
Of the 9-11 hijackers, two were known as Al-Qaeda terrorists
who were coming into this country to do a terrorist act.
Al-Hizmi and Al-Midhar.
They were known.
They were known to the CIA.
They were known to the FBI.
Unfortunately, the CIA didn't tell the FBI they were already in America.
That's another story.
Fourteen of the other terrorists could have been linked to them
through the most basic database checks that even a private investigator could have done.
Mohammed Atta, the ringleader, shared an address.
Five other terrorists shared a telephone number with Atta.
Another terrorist shared a frequent flyer number.
And another terrorist not on the watch list shared an address.
Just this basic database matching, if it had been done,
if it had been done in a timely way and it had been done inefficiently,
the World Trade Center would conceivably still be standing.
And this would be a different world.
So this is not always a bad thing.
It's a bad thing when it's used on innocent people.
All right.
And we're listening.
We were listening to Stephen Rombaum at the Last Hope conference this past July.
And it's part of the package that we're offering tonight for only a few more minutes.
The callers at 212-209-2950.
Just one of many talks that were given at the conference.
It's yours, the 10 DVDs sent with Steve's talk and a bunch of others for a pledge of $75.
If you want to get 20 talks, well, the cost there is $125.
You want to get all the talks, which is about 100 of them, that's $250.
But I'm not sure we have any left.
We only had five tonight.
So 212-209-2950, the early bird catches the worm as far as that goes.
We have all sorts of other premiums to offer as well.
What do you guys think of that particular talk?
Interesting thoughts brought up.
Although it's almost three hours long, it's definitely one of the most compelling talks.
Oh, it's more than three hours long.
He went over time.
He went over by at least 1,000 hours.
I don't know.
Rumor is he's still talking now.
Still going.
3,000 hours.
He has a lot to say.
He does have a lot to say, but it's worth it.
It's actually worth watching this talk.
It's definitely one of the more educational and informal talks of Hope, at least I think so.
And I count a lot of it.
And it's actually scary to sit through and watch his presentation of all these things,
especially the CCTV and the photograph portion he was just talking about in the clip.
And we're sitting there just almost sweating in just disbelief that these things could happen.
Sweating in disbelief.
It was scary.
Yeah.
No, it's scary.
Steve's talk will scare you.
It'll scare some sense into you.
And as he says, he's being honest about this.
He doesn't think it's always a bad thing.
He has a different perspective.
But the amazing thing about the Hope talks is that people from different perspectives
are sharing information.
And that's really the strength of the hacker community.
I think another amazing thing about this speech, and most of the speeches actually
from the Hope conference, they're not that tech.
You don't have to be very tech savvy to understand them.
But the Steve Ramban talk, it had almost nothing to do with technology.
So even like-
Well, we try to make it available to as many people as possible by making it not too technical.
It's not to say there aren't technical talks at the conference.
Yes, there's a bunch of those.
But there are also a lot that are for people literally just walking in off the street that
have no knowledge what hackers are all about.
And we try to make it understandable.
And we try to do that through the magazine as well.
So I think that's something that Steve's talk definitely succeeds in doing.
Bernie, do you have any thoughts on that particular talk?
Unfortunately, I didn't catch most of it because I was running around with the organizing stuff.
But I've heard Steve talk before.
And he is a phenomenal speaker.
And you really can't do justice to it by listening to it.
You can listen to it free online via Hope.net.
But you really need to see the visual aid that he shows to really grasp some of the
concepts he's talking about.
It's phenomenal stuff.
It's pretty scary, too, where we're headed as a surveillance society.
But anyone who listens to this radio program probably realizes the value of this information
that we're conveying to them.
And it's a tremendous value that for $250 or for a smaller amount, you can get the 20
DBD set or the 10 DBD set.
And all this money goes to WBAI.
It does not go to us.
This station really supports this kind of information sharing unlike any other radio
station I know of.
So I urge listeners to call 212-209-2950.
We have that and a lot of other good premiums.
All the money goes to WBAI.
It's a great station to support.
Absolutely.
Now, while we were listening to this in the studio, RedHack's computer took a picture
of him.
And this is an example of surveillance that I think you believe is a good thing, right?
What's the idea behind that?
It's actually a project from, I think, the University of Washington.
It's from Washington.edu.
And basically what it does is it's intended for if your laptop gets stolen.
There's actually some commercial products out there.
If your laptop gets what?
Stolen.
OK.
But this one is free and it's cross-platform.
And basically when the laptop connects to the internet, it records, I guess, the IP
address it's connecting from.
And every so often, if it has, in the case of a Mac, an iSight, it takes a picture.
And it uploads it to OpenDHT, which is a big storage system, but under an encrypted file.
And in theory, you generate the keys on your computer.
So as long as you keep those somewhere safe, it's symmetric encryption, so nobody else
should be able to decrypt it.
So you can see the face of the person who took your laptop and get his location.
Yeah.
I can hardly wait till your laptop gets stolen so we can test this out.
That'd be fun.
It's going to be a blast.
OK.
Again, 212-209-2950 for a pledge of $250.
You get all the Hope Talks if they're still available.
For $125, you'll get 20 of the highlights, 20 DVDs.
For $75, you'll get a 10 DVD set.
That'll include Steve's talk.
It'll also include the talk we're about to hear now, a little excerpt from the Social
Engineering Panel.
212-209-2950.
Let's take a listen.
OK.
That's not right.
I'm sorry.
I played the wrong thing.
Let's skip to this.
You know, these CD players really can be confusing sometimes.
This is from the…
Actually, I just would like to quickly say, since we don't have time to do it, but this
would have been a good one.
We have a list of Starbucks that are closing.
Apparently, having millions of stores, they have to, like, downsize a little bit.
Yeah, it happens.
But we were going to call them representing the Last Hope Foundation.
What we are…
What we are…
No, we don't have time.
We're a company that makes donations to employees affected by downsizing.
And we're trying to be nice here.
And we want to send a check, but we just need the employee list.
Facts to us, you know.
With the social security numbers for tax purposes.
No, we're not.
We don't have time.
Kevin's going to get mad.
I do not want Kevin Mitnick on my badge.
All right.
All right.
OK.
Will it be Ohio or will it be California?
Good lord.
Say it's popular.
I told you.
All right.
I hope they're open.
Phone about to be picked up.
All right.
You guys got to be quiet.
It's very hard to explain a thousand laughing people to somebody on the phone.
You know, the TV can only be so loud in the background.
All right, here we go.
OK, now we know their whole phone number.
Great.
So.
I don't think they're there.
Oh, great.
Hello.
Hello.
There's nobody there.
OK, let's call California then.
I.
Spoke to somebody earlier with the organization that makes donations to
the employees affected by downsizing.
You're the twelve eighty San Juan Street Starbucks.
I'm sorry.
What was that?
I'm calling from the last hope foundation.
Did you get did someone speak to you about this?
I have not been talked to.
I'm sorry.
OK, well, we called earlier.
We're the organization that makes it.
Your store is is set to be closed, correct?
OK, we make donations to employees.
We're a national organization and we're funded by PayPal and various other methods.
What we do is we make donations to the employees that are affected by these downsizing
throughout the nation.
Yeah, so basically we just needed the fax sent to us of the employee names.
Oh, OK.
Do you need our fax number?
I can take that from you, but I can't I can't do anything about that.
We have to be my manager.
OK, well, if you could just say that you talk to me and that this is something that we need
to have processed by Monday in order to get the check out.
Last hope, he said the last hope found.
Have you never heard of us?
No.
When a store when a store is downsized, what we do is we we take up collections for the
employees who are terminated and then depending on the amount of of the donations, we send
checks to either the entire store or to each individual employees.
In your case, it would probably amount to about seventy five dollars each.
Not very much, but it's something.
And we represent the national organization that that helps people that are being downsized.
And unfortunately, that's what's happening to you right now.
So I talked to somebody at length before.
I thought that you would have gotten the information and they could send the fax now.
OK, well, I don't I'd like I can't.
Um, what's the word?
Like I have no authorization to like send all that stuff out because from what I knew
was that our employees were they had the option of going to different stores.
And if we couldn't find something for them, they I can't remember.
But I don't know anything about this because I'm not from this store.
You're not from the store that you're in.
No, I'm from a different store.
I'm covering a shift.
OK, you wouldn't be covered.
You realize that.
No, I'm just saying I don't want you to be disappointed.
No, no, no, I know.
I understand what you're saying, but I'm not from the store like my store is not shutting
down.
I'm from a different store.
One of their employees got sick, so I came in for them.
I see that might explain why you didn't get the message then.
Yes.
OK, and what is your name?
Andrea.
Andrea.
OK, yeah, I mean, if I if you were one of the people that was affected, I could take
your name now and actually you'd be on the list.
But since you're not from the store, I'm afraid I can't do that.
No, yeah, my my my store is not shutting down.
I'm fine.
But if it does shut down, but eventually you will probably get a call from one of our
representatives and then all you would have to do.
I understand that.
It makes sense.
Good.
That's all I wanted to hear.
Thank you very much.
OK, good night.
Closing words.
It makes sense.
Yeah, all right.
Good night, everybody.
Kevin's up next.
All right, that was a lot of fun.
The part of the social engineering panel that we had at the last hope yours for a pledge
of either seventy five, one twenty five or two fifty, depending on how many DVDs you
want.
Ten DVDs for seventy five, twenty four, one twenty five, one hundred for two fifty if
there's any left.
Two one two two zero nine two nine five.
Oh, hope conference was was a real blast.
A lot of fun.
And we're in the last couple of minutes of our fundraiser here at WBAI.
It's been great so far.
We're well over two thousand dollars and we hopefully hopefully we'll get more people
calling in two one two two zero nine two nine five.
Oh, let's remind our listeners that this is the last week for fundraiser last week.
Yeah, it's it's been great.
We've been on four weeks in a row and we've we've done really well each week.
Thanks very much to our listeners for all their support.
In fact, let me let me ask our listeners one more favor.
This is for actually our sister station that we started out on with all kinds of other
radio programs in the past and actually the home of Off the Wall right now.
WUSB and Stony Brook has been nominated as the best college radio station by the folks
over at MTV.
And yeah, OK, maybe we don't think too highly of them, but still, it's kind of a cool thing.
If you go to MTVU.com, actually, the full URL is this.
It's Woody's.
I don't know why they call it Woody's, but that's what the name of the award is.
W-O-O-D-I-S dot MTVU dot com and then go into slash nominees slash college underscore
radio and you'll see WUSB there as one of five stations that you can vote for is the
best college station in the country.
And if you vote for them and make them win, you'll make us happy, too.
But only vote if you really believe that they're they're doing a good job.
Again, MTVU.com, please support the other radio station that made all this possible
because, well, it sort of was a pathway to WBAI.
All right.
Once more, the phone number here, 212-209-2950.
We're offering the help DVDs.
We're offering 2600 T-shirts.
We're offering 2600 sweatshirts.
And we're offering the signed copies of the best of 2600 book.
Everybody down there, everybody down there has all the information.
So feel free to ask them however many questions you want.
212-209-2950.
But you have to call in the next four minutes to take advantage of any of this.
OK, we're out of time.
And it's time once again for one of our phone songs.
This is a listener sent in one by a band called Cold Cut.
See you next week.
Good night.
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At the appointed time, sit down and begin to call.
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♪ I'm back in the world now, my telephone, my telephone ♪
♪ Oh, yeah! No matter where I am, telephones are in a jam ♪
♪ Can't finish anything, the telephones are always ringing ♪
♪ Got no job, got no pay, don't let them take my phone away ♪
♪ In my car, in my home ♪
You never know these days.
♪ Everybody's getting it on my phone, everybody's getting it on my telephone, everybody's getting it on my phone, everybody's getting it on my telephone ♪
♪ Telephone, I've been hanging on the line, telephone, wasting all my time ♪
Oh, cut.
Bye, telephone.