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A media whose priorities seem out of step with their responsibilities.
We need a media that strengthens democracy, not a media that strengthens the government.
We need a media that enriches public discourse, not one that enriches corporations.
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And this is WBAI New York. It's 7 o'clock, time once again for Off the Hook.
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And good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
Mike.
Hi.
Jim.
Hi.
Dotret.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And Voltaire.
Hey.
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Yeah, okay, what's been new since we've done a regular show?
It's been a little bit of a gap, I guess.
Thank you.
Yes, Bernie, do you have something?
Down here in Philadelphia, we had a couple of interesting stories.
Yes.
Most recently, a Philadelphia suburban high school called the Lower Marion School District was sued by some parents of a student who was called into the vice principal's office
and called out for using drugs at home, which apparently the school district discovered from looking at him through the webcam on his school-issued laptop without telling him or any other students that they were surveilling students.
So let me sort of understand this. The school, is it a high school?
Yeah, a high school.
High school. Gave out laptops, which right away is, I think, unusual, and they had on these laptops cameras installed, and I guess if the students weren't savvy enough to figure that out and turn them off, they were able to actually watch the students at home.
Yeah, and what's even more disturbing, though, is the school district did not advise parents or students that the school had this capability to remotely view students using their laptops wherever they might happen to be, even if they were in their own bedrooms, changing their clothes.
I mean, this is just Orwellian to the nth degree.
Not to take away from this at all, but how many of us using laptops would be able to tell if the cameras were on, period?
It's not easy to tell. I think it would be nice if laptops or any computer really had an LED that was sort of in series with the power line to the cameras so that whenever the camera was on, the light would have to be on manually.
These are Apple MacBooks, and I believe that they have those little lights, don't they?
Yeah, most laptops, in fact, do have these lights, but the software in question would just take a picture very briefly as the laptop was being opened if the reports are correct, so you would just see this little blink, and if you weren't paying attention, which you probably weren't, then you could easily miss it.
But they were doing more than that, not just taking a still image. They were actually watching people.
My understanding is they were just taking still images, but that has the same effect.
Yeah, they were still images, and so the parents of the student were outraged, especially since the kid was apparently just eating his favorite candy called Mike and Ike, which do resemble colorful pills.
And they went on television saying that the student was just using the candies and so forth.
But the point is, the school districts were saying, oh, we did all this just so we could track stolen laptops.
If a laptop was reported stolen, then we could try to find out who had it by activating the webcam remotely and seeing who was using it.
But this particular student's laptop was never reported stolen.
So it calls into question all kinds of privacy concerns, and even the FBI is investigating now to find out if there are any federal laws the school district violated.
If they'd been activating the microphones, for instance, that would constitute federal wiretapping violations.
Well, here we go again with getting people for recording in Pennsylvania without permission.
Well, this would be a federal issue. That would be federal as well. But in Pennsylvania, it would be illegal.
But apparently the Attorney General of Pennsylvania has not at least announced they're investigating this sale, but the FBI has said they are investigating.
And the school district, the vice president's principal in question, who showed this picture of the student to him, saying that here we have a picture of you taking pills at home,
had this very teary press conference a few days ago outside of Philadelphia saying that she and her family were verbally attacked online for things that they would be outraged if someone was viewing their children online without permission.
But she didn't deny doing what is alleged in the lawsuit.
Right now, the story today is that a lot of the parents in the school district, Laura Marion School District, are now opposing the class action lawsuit against the school, saying it's just going to raise the school taxes sky high if there's multimillion dollars awarded to all the families that join the class.
I have that story right here, in fact. Basically, one parent says it makes no sense to me. It's like I'm suing myself. And they, I guess, feel that suing the school district for doing something wrong is only hurting the school district, and hence the students. Do you see any merit in that?
Absolutely. It happens in so many cases where a government is sued, whether it's local, state, or federal, and the people who are actually responsible or culpable for violating people's rights or whatever are never the ones who are personally held responsible. It always gets passed down to the taxpayers.
It happened in New York with all the lawsuits for civil rights violations during the RNC thing here in Philadelphia back in 2000 during the RNC protests. All those awards just basically came out of taxpayer dollars eventually. So…
Right. The accountability is the issue. The people who are held…nobody who's actually responsible is ever really, really held accountable, it seems. And in this case, it'll be interesting to see. I think the parents in question here, who are considering joining the class action or opposing joining the class action, are going to go the extra mile to ensure that whoever was responsible for making this happen are personally held responsible, and it's not just a cash award that's going to ultimately come out of the taxpayers' pockets.
Yeah. And we've seen things like this, like in this city, when the city gets sued, when the police department gets sued for false arrest, and it just all comes out of the city coffers. But unfortunately, I think this is the only way that entities like this are ever made to pay for doing something wrong. And is there any other way besides these massive lawsuits?
I don't want to drop my lawsuit. I'm suing them for a false arrest in 2004, and it's the only thing keeping me going is the hope that one day there'll be some vindication. But yeah, I see the point where obviously the right people aren't really held to account, but has that ever been the case in modern times?
Is there any way to really hold the right people to account?
Well, I think one of the things that can come out of lawsuits like this, and this lawsuit in particular, is the discovery phase where you can find out who manufactured the software in question that allows this spying. I'm sure that the school district itself did not develop the software. You can find out where else the software is being used. I'm sure there are other school districts that are also spying on their students, and they don't have the same sort of savvy parents who are filing lawsuits.
So hopefully one of the things that will be able to come out of this is a more broad stopping of this.
Wait, wait, wait. How would they be held liable for somebody dying of an overdose because they didn't report somebody they're spying on?
No, the point is that they shouldn't even have the feature built in in the first place because it's so tempting. That's why you shouldn't have logs either because it just ends up being more dangerous.
They can't be held accountable for not reporting something if they never saw it in the first place. You can have this kind of feature built into a laptop. For instance, you need some sort of password in order to even use this feature.
So you have somebody who's held accountable, and they know that this feature can't be used unless it's been justified, and you have to write it down somewhere.
But if you just say, oh, well, these people can turn this computer on and just see images whenever the heck they want to, that's where the problem is.
All right. Well, it's an interesting story, and I guess – when did it actually happen, Bernie?
Well, the actual remote viewing happened a few months ago, but the class action just wasn't filed until a week or so ago here in suburban Philadelphia.
So it happened, I think, a couple, three months ago, but now it's becoming huge news now that the lawsuit's filed.
What I think is interesting is that the school district doesn't really explain yet, and as Mike pointed out, there'll be a discovery phase in this whole case.
Why was this particular student's webcam remotely viewed by the school district officials?
Apparently he wasn't a drug user, he was just eating candies.
Candies are not good for you either, and I do think – I applaud our school officials for taking an interest in what students do in their homes.
It looks like it was just random snapshots that we're taking of people.
So it wasn't even video? That's the thing, because they have the capability to do video, but they weren't making use of that?
Well, maybe, as Mike pointed out, maybe they wanted to avoid people noticing the light was on for more than just a brief moment.
But what also goes into the question is that the school district could well have been trafficking in child pornography inadvertently by activating webcams remotely just at random,
wherever these laptops might have been, which students had to keep their laptop in the bedroom at home.
I think there has to be a rule, any story that we talk about, somehow we have to equate it to child pornography, because in this society, it's not hard to do.
Yeah, I actually don't think we should mince our issues. This is a privacy issue.
We shouldn't take the far-right, oh, it's protecting the children stance. That should be an issue.
It's not just far-right, though. It's American. Think of the children. We have to be able to see them from the bus stop, and every moment has to be…
This is a thing that was about the children. Laptops that were given to children.
Right, it's about a particular…
That their rights were violated because they're kids, and they apparently, people are more likely to violate someone's rights who doesn't have much of a voice.
All right. Well, more from Philadelphia, which is also, I think, kind of interesting.
Two members of the Philadelphia City Council are considering legal action against Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace in the wake of a flash mob earlier this week that turned violent.
Actually, it was a couple of weeks ago. This is one of the stories we're holding on to.
They claim social media sites don't do enough to keep tabs on violence that could be organized through their communications channels.
No charges have been drawn up in the letter. The council members asked the permission of Mayor Michael Nutter to pursue the possibility of a lawsuit.
The letter says, it is disheartening, to say the least, that these youth so casually disrespected our residents, businesses, customers, visitors, and our police department.
And they're discussing a rampage through the Macy's department store at the Market East Mall and a massive snowball fight that took place.
It was organized via text messages and other mass communication.
No one was injured, but at least 150 teenagers were involved and 16 arrests were made, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
So these people are offended because someone had a snowball fight at which no one was injured.
Yeah, but Mike, someone could have been injured. Someone could have gotten hit with a snowball.
All right. You ever think about that?
Which is made out of snow.
I've seen that happen.
There's one solution here, and that's to have, you know, somebody watching over everybody's conversation on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and have, you know, a good old big brother tell you when you're doing something that's bad for you.
Let me please finish the letter here. While they certainly owe this city an apology and deserve to be punished under the fullest extent of the law, it's always the fullest extent of the law.
Nobody ever wants to punish anybody halfway. It's always the fullest extent.
We believe that social media outlets should also bear some of the blame.
Now, in case you want to know who wrote that, council member Frank DeCicco and James Kinney.
They say this is the second time such a band of mischievous teens has formed via social media and went on to destroy property.
Happened once before, like five years ago. Yeah.
We believe that the lack of monitoring of these sites allows for mass organized riots to occur.
Well, hallelujah. It's about time we figured out a way to organize some riots because all the riots I've tried to organize just have, you know, kind of fizzled.
And it's good to have a way to know that it's going to get. I mean, come on, let's be serious here.
This is only the second time that there's been a band of mischievous teens in Philadelphia organized by text.
So who do they sue when they organize themselves by like talking on the playground or in the school hallways?
Playground manufacturer, I suppose.
They say suing Facebook in this case is like suing the phone company of telephone calls we use to plot a bank robbery.
It's not the responsibility of a social network with 400 million members around the world to monitor conversations between mischievous high schoolers.
Ah, yes, but imagine if it were the control we could have.
We could have the cameras running so we could see what they're doing at all times while they're sending text messages to each other.
They're talking basically about something else that happened two years ago when a water fight flash mob organized in England and they wound up trashing an award-winning public garden.
Yeah, 7,000 people RSVP'd to a Facebook invite for a night of mayhem in a British seaside town.
And the local cops imposed a 24-hour ban on liquor there.
The whole thing is just crazy.
And this comes to us from CNET News.
Very interesting turn of events.
But, Bernie, what do you make of this?
Well, there's an update today.
There was another flash mob right at City Hall.
Oh, it's out of control.
Right outside.
Now, I think, I don't know for sure because that wasn't part of the list, but I think these students were outraged that council members, Chico and Kenny, both of whom I've met and don't seem to have a clue about technological issues.
When I was discussing with them about cameras being put all over the city by the government.
I think the students are actually protesting this move to have monitoring of their Facebook conversations by holding another flash mob today right at City Hall.
And a whole bunch of students were, I don't have an exact number, but a bunch of students, more students were arrested today right at City Hall during this flash mob.
So the plot thickens.
Can someone explain to me what exactly they did that was illegal?
They had a snowball fight.
I thought that was legal.
Someone could have gotten killed.
And they ran through a Macy's and they didn't buy anything.
What was that all about?
I mean, come on.
Our whole society is based on commerce.
And to have that many people run through a store and get the merchants hopes up and then just to leave again without buying a thing.
I mean, come on.
Why not just open up the floodgates and have our country invaded by foreigners?
It could happen.
Yeah.
It could happen if we're not careful.
Now they're flashing with mobs.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
It's a good thing we didn't have this Twitter and MySpace and everything else technology decades and generations ago because otherwise we would have had rebellion in the past by students.
This has never happened before.
Yeah.
The Red Hat joins us.
Yeah.
And your mic is not working.
Sorry.
Go try it.
Yeah.
Hello.
OK.
I was actually listening on the way here.
So I'm actually up to date.
Whether or not what they did was illegal.
OK.
Maybe it's kind of silly that a snowball fight and they ran through a store.
But let's say they destroyed some property.
OK.
Just theoretically.
Or got mud all over the floor.
Whatever they did.
The point is that you can't really go after Facebook or MySpace or these sites for and say that you have to monitor more closely.
I mean, it's kind of like right now.
You know, you can't sue Google for stuff that they index because.
Yes.
We're working on it.
So it's kind of it's user generated content on the website and it's not really the fault of the website.
What people are putting on it.
What I want to know is how do you do this?
How do you organize a flash mob to go and have a snowball?
I mean, I want to do this.
I want to organize a flash mob to do something just at least once in my life.
I'd like to be able to say, hey, I got that huge throng of people to do that.
Have a funny idea and then, you know, get.
What's funny about a snowball fight?
Well, I mean, I guess there's some teenagers that would be.
But I mean, get something, some sort of interesting idea that would benefit from a flash mob.
So, for example, you know, improv everywhere.
They do things where they say, OK, we need X number of people to show up at Best Buy wearing, you know, bright blue shirts.
I got one.
How about that this Friday at five o'clock in the Citigroup Center?
Everybody shows up for a 2600 meeting and at all kinds of malls and gathering places around the world on the first Friday of the month.
OK, because somebody can get on the on the on the text network and get that out there.
That sounds dull.
It's already been done.
Next, you're going to tell me it's done every month.
But I mean, also, you know, one of the things that you can do if you really want to do this, you know, get say that we're going to do a flash mob in some place.
But don't tell people the location so that they have to give you their contact information.
Say this time you're going to get the information.
And I think that would probably encourage more people to come because they're waiting to go to whatever you say.
And then, you know, it's kind of become the day that gets everybody's contact information, get the word out somehow.
But you become this.
Tell your friends who tell their friends who tell their friends.
That's what social networking is for.
And it seems that there's one one place where all the names and numbers are stored.
And all they have to do is subpoena that.
And they have everybody.
That's true.
Yes.
Isn't that kind of a danger?
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Not if you don't keep logs.
Well, yeah.
But if they if they want to contact these people, they have to keep logs.
Right.
But as soon as the action is over, you never.
Well, that would be nice.
You should make a flash mob website.
Well, coming back, at least on topic a bit is, you know, again, about how silly this is and compare this to telling the phone company to monitor their phone logs and for people organizing stuff that other people don't like is, you know, if they were to start monitoring this thing, this Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that, then people would just start moving towards text messaging or phone calls or some other new communication.
People is going to have a way of communicating.
What are you going to do?
Then start tapping everybody's phone lines that way they can't organize.
Don't give them ideas.
You know, it's probably just a political move, though.
Oh, no.
There was this thing that happened at this mall and people are mad about it and we have to look like we're doing something.
Yeah, I know.
This is what it always is.
You got to you got to react.
You got to do something.
Something has to be done.
Something's not being done.
But then you have this dangerous thing in politics when people act just for the sake of looking like they're doing something.
They can cause horrible things to happen.
Right.
And you're wasting time and you're wasting resources.
And and you know, you might end up sending setting dangerous precedents if you get some judge who hasn't read the Constitution or the laws accurately.
OK, moving on.
Here's another story that has been in the news more recently.
Four men accused of using a network of computers and automated software to buy up online tickets to concerts and sporting events and selling them at a profit were indicted on fraud, conspiracy and computer hacking charges.
Federal prosecutors said this on Monday.
Now, these guys allegedly made more than twenty five million dollars by reselling more than one point five million of the most desired tickets to performances by Bruce Springsteen, Hannah Montana, Bon Jovi, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel, et cetera, et cetera.
2007 Major League Baseball playoff games at Yankee Stadium, the 2006 Rose Bowl, the tapings of the TV show Dancing with Stars, tickets to the Next Hope, all kinds of things were just included in here.
Now, charged with the indictment are Kenneth Lawson of actually these are all of Alameda of Los Angeles, Christopher Kirsch and Faisal Nadi and Joel Stevenson of Alameda, California.
All of them surrendered in Newark on Monday, except for Nadi, who's not in the United States, but promising to get back as quickly as possible.
Why'd have to go to Newark is I'm not quite sure about that.
Now, they operated as wise guy tickets.
What they did was they allegedly targeted Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, MLB.com, Music Today and other online ticket vendors.
They're accused of hiring programmers in Bulgaria to create a nationwide network of computers that impersonated individual visitors to the ticket vendor sites, flooding the sites at the exact moment that the tickets went on sale.
The network of computers, dubbed Capture Bots, automated and sped up the buying process by completing capture tests.
Those are the ones where you have to type little words.
Sorry?
To prevent bots from...
To prevent this kind of thing from happening, yeah.
So either Ticketmasters was really bad or the Bulgarians are really clever.
Well, here's the thing.
They were doing this from 2002 until 2009.
Took them that long to actually get caught.
And I guess my question is, what is it exactly that they did that was illegal?
I mean, they took advantage of bad programming, I suppose.
They figured out a way around the system.
They paid for the tickets, did they not?
Well, yeah, but they're...
It sounds like what's illegal is that they took over a network of people's home computers to do the ticket buying.
That sounds...
That's true.
...like a crime to me.
That's the one thing I didn't see in this article.
You said it just a few seconds ago.
They said they had a network of computers.
They didn't say anything about stealing a network of computers or using somebody else's computers.
Well, to make it look like actual buyers, they probably...
Hiring programmers in Bulgaria to create a nationwide network of computers that impersonated individual visitors.
I don't see anything in there saying that they used other people's computers.
Well, the easiest way to create a nationwide network of computers is to compromise computers and put yourself around them.
Not if you're making millions and millions of dollars.
You can just make your own networks pretty easily.
But still...
As far as figuring out ways to flood the network and get in there and impersonate things, is that a crime?
Well, I mean, you're elbowing out everybody who's actually a person...
You're elbowing people out on the subway.
I mean, there's all kinds of ways to elbow people out.
People do it all the time on the Internet.
The idea is that you're doing it to exploit the people who actually want the tickets
because what you're doing is you're forcing everybody but you to be able to buy a ticket.
To not be able to buy a ticket and then saying,
Hey, you could have bought it if we let you in for $25, but we're going to sell it to you for $200.
Voltaire?
There are also incredibly strict anti-scalping laws in most states.
I don't know how much that plays here.
Scalping actually was legal.
They could do that.
They could resell the tickets.
That's not a problem.
But there are probably also anti-scalping laws that ticket lobbyists have passed through.
Not that I'm defending these people, but...
I mean, I'm not defending their actions either.
I'm just saying what they did actually was a bit clever and they figured something out.
How is it that seven years went by and nobody could detect that they were even doing it?
I think it's bigger than it seems.
How is it that they did it for seven years?
I mean, I would think that if they were running the sort of thing that they would think to themselves,
these guys will notice their website gets overloaded pretty regularly
and then all of a sudden these other tickets, expensive tickets, start getting sold.
I think they would have limited how many years they were going to do this for.
I don't think the people selling the tickets really cared.
They just wanted to sell the tickets, so they weren't really...
Well, now they care.
Well, they care because it got exposed, but I think it wasn't really in their interest to say,
oh, is this fair?
No, we just want to sell all the tickets.
I'm talking about stopping it before you get caught.
I mean, this seems like a pretty predictable thing that eventually will raise some eyebrows.
Anyway, the men faced up to five years in prison on a conspiracy charge,
up to 20 years on each of the 42 counts of wire fraud,
and $250,000 fine on each of the 19 counts,
charging, gaining unauthorized access and exceeding...
Get this, exceeding authorized access to computers.
I never heard that before.
What kind of charge, Bernie?
Have you ever heard about this, exceeding authorized access to computers?
I have not.
To me, it's been black and white.
Either you access the computer without permission or you don't.
Maybe it's...
In this case, they access the computer.
There's probably some rule that the ticket companies have online that you can't...
But those are rules, Bernie.
They're not laws.
They're just rules.
You're right.
You're right.
Maybe it's a new law against DDoS attacks that had to be put in place when...
Because there have been some pretty high-profile ones.
Did they actually do a distributed denial-of-service attack on this,
or did they simply get there first and get there faster than other people
and in that way prevent them from getting through?
Effectively, it's...
I mean, what they were doing is they were blocking the actual legitimate people connecting.
I mean, maybe they didn't make it so that you couldn't connect.
Maybe they didn't flood it so that the site went down,
but they basically filled all the slots really quickly.
So, I mean, in a way, it would be.
At what point, though, do you become illegitimate?
I mean, I can buy a ticket under a fake name and I haven't committed a crime.
I can do that twice and I haven't committed a crime.
Now, if I do it a thousand times, at what point does it become a crime?
That's the question.
I think there's ways to answer that question,
and the Socratic method is not one of them.
We could go read the indictment.
I don't know if you have a copy.
Exceeding authorized use of computers and things like that.
That's going to say what they did.
None of us know the law.
We could make it up, but I don't know where that's going to get us.
From a moral point of view is what I'm getting at here.
Exceeding authorized access can make sense if you think about it for a second,
being that systems may have rules on what kind of ways you're allowed to access the system,
and going beyond those parameters is then exceeding what you're authorized to do.
For instance, you're allowed to log on an IRC server and talk to people.
You're not allowed to take root control over the machine.
Just like you can get in trouble for breaking into a machine that you're not allowed to get into,
you could get in trouble for it.
But can we say on our IRC network that no more than two users from the same account can be used?
If you do that, then all of a sudden you've committed a crime.
I personally think there should be limitations.
I like limitations of all sorts, but there's a reality to how you can charge people.
Rob?
In the case of tickets, there's usually, if you buy tickets online,
there's a limit to how many tickets one person is supposed to be able to buy.
If you break that limit through this network or through anything else,
then you're using the system in a way you're not authorized to.
That's probably where they got that if I had to.
Right, but you have to define a person.
If you make fake people, you have other people involved in the conspiracy.
You get sent to fake jail.
It's an interesting story.
Hopefully they just fixed their system.
I think this is a good indication of something where if they just have some safeguards in place,
maybe this won't be so easy.
It would be nice to.
Unless the Bulgarians are really, really clever.
They are really clever.
They really are.
Maybe people will finally realize this.
That's the whole thing.
In this case, they actually did have safeguards.
They're using a capture system.
I suspect that it wasn't the capture system itself that was broken.
It's that you can pay people in India or pay people in Mechanical Turk or something
to break the capture for you.
Were there people actually typing in the words?
I'm not sure the details.
I don't think so.
They wouldn't have been able to do it that quickly.
The idea is that they really did it within the first few seconds.
Yeah.
How did they?
This is what I'm interested in.
How did they break that system?
Because they make checksums of the individual examples of the captures,
and then they'll compare that when they find in the source of the document.
Or you're a really clever programmer, and you figure out some flaw in that capture system being used.
If you have a capture breaker that is only accurate, say, 5% of the time,
and you have 100 computers, then you're going to get 5 of them right.
It sounds like they had a sufficiently large network that maybe they were just relying on that.
Or it could be something incredibly stupid, like they're using the same phrase on every single one of them.
That never underestimates stupidity.
Yes.
The Berkman Center at Harvard just did an interview with Zitrain recently about using Mechanical Turk for stuff like this,
and it's a good audio program that I recommend downloading.
Okay.
Can you tell us how?
It's from the Berkman Center.
So just look up Radio Berkman Podcast, and it should be the last two episodes.
Okay.
Changing gears a little bit here.
Look at this, and this is something that it's hard for me to even say, but there is no more Topeka, Kansas.
Topeka, Kansas has renamed itself.
They are now known as Google.
I'm not kidding.
Topeka Mayor Bill Buntin signed a proclamation on Monday calling for Topeka to be known for the entire month of March as Google Kansas,
the capital city of fiber optics.
He told city council members after they calmed down that prior to a special meeting of the council held at noon at City Hall to hear the first reading of a proposal
that wasn't linked to local efforts to convince Google to make Topeka a test site for an ultra-fast Internet connection.
Yeah, I think that sentence made sense.
Buntin asked the seven council members on hand if they had a problem with his issuing the proclamation,
which also encourages Topekans to recognize and support continuing efforts to bring Google's fiber optics experiment to,
I almost said Topeka, to Google, and not objected.
I support pushing the send button, said Councilman Jeff Preisner.
Buntin told reporters afterward that the proclamation was more fun than anything else.
Well, I don't think there's any room for fun in politics, and I think this is something that we need to be able to prove is complete nonsense, right?
Rob?
I just think it was really nice of him to honor the famous hacker FiberOptic in this way.
I'm sure he's very flattered.
Yeah, yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
But what we're going to do now is we're going to get on the phone, all right?
Do we have a dial tone?
Okay.
I'm going to call the area code for, well, I guess it used to be called Topeka.
Now it's Google, Google Kansas.
And we're going to see if this actually works.
Okay, we have our magical code there we have to enter, which I look for.
I'm calling information in Google.
All right, let's see what happens.
Quest Directory Assistance.
For what city?
Google.
For what state?
Kansas.
For what listing?
The mayor's office.
That's the supervisor.
They're listening to a recording.
One moment, Haley will be right with you.
Oh, good, okay, thank you, Haley.
Hi, I'm sorry, for what city?
Google in Kansas.
Google?
Yes.
G-O-O-G-L-E?
That's right, yes.
I'm not showing a city listed under that name in Kansas.
Really?
Oh, I got the right area code, right?
785?
That is the area code in Kansas.
Yeah.
But I can't pinpoint directly where it's at.
Okay, that's unusual.
If it was in another part of Kansas, would you be able to tell me that?
What do you mean?
Well, if I have the wrong area code, for instance, because they have more than one.
It used to be 913, I think, and now it's 785.
Let's see what I could pull up.
One moment.
I have several area codes, 785, 913, 620.
316.
316.
Yeah.
But are you able to see if there's a Google in any of those?
I did try statewide, just searching under the name Google, and nothing's coming up at all.
You see, we're trying to pursue a story that just came over about a city called Google, Kansas.
They're trying to get Google to come in there, and apparently it's a big thing that they're now calling it Google.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Would the old name maybe help you at all?
Yeah, let's try that.
Hang on.
Let me see if I can find that.
I'm not from Kansas, so you can probably tell.
Topeka.
Okay.
Topeka?
Topeka?
C-O-P-E-K-A?
Is that it?
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
I've heard that name before, but apparently that's not called that anymore.
It's called Google now.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
Maybe you guys should make a note of that.
I should.
I'm going to write that down right now on my supervisor note.
Because I imagine that a lot of people are going to be calling because Google does draw a lot of people.
They're very popular.
All right.
Well, thank you for letting me know that.
No problem.
And if you could give me the mayor's office in Google or Topeka or, I'm sorry, Topeka, whatever it's called.
Okay.
Yep.
Here's that mayor's number for you.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome, and have a good night.
You too.
Thank you for using Quest.
The number is area code 785-368-3895.
You may return to directory assistance by pressing zero.
Repeat, the number is area code 785-368-3895.
Okay.
I just want to go.
I want to be dismissed.
How do I do that?
Again, you may return to directory assistance by pressing zero.
I don't want to.
All right.
Can you just get rid of that line?
It's the top one.
Again.
Goodbye.
All right.
So I think we learned a lot here.
It could have gone on all day.
It could have.
It really could have.
Yes, we did learn a lot.
I haven't called directory assistance in forever, so it's changed quite a bit.
You can call directory assistance and tell them that random cities have changed their names, and they will let their supervisors know about that.
Yeah.
Well, I think we made her night.
That's the important thing.
So, yeah.
Google Kansas.
Go visit.
You'll have the month of March to see it.
I wonder if they've actually gone and, like, changed the signs and everything like that.
It's not just a place.
It's a month in time.
And if you call 7-Eleven in that city, will they say 7-Eleven Google?
I mean, are they required to do this?
I mean, the mayor says it's fun, but he strikes me as a serious kind of guy that says that,
but means that he expects you to follow the command.
All right.
Yes, Mike, you're looking at something.
Well, I was hoping there would be a picture of the mayor in the story.
You're looking at the wrong story, for one thing.
Well, there's still no picture.
Look at the story about the Ticketmaster thing.
It just says city limits.
Uh-huh.
I'm not impressed.
All right.
We're going to take phone calls.
212-209-2900.
We want to hear from our listeners.
But I hear good news on the Amtrak front.
Anybody want to tell us about this?
On the very expensive trains, they'll now have Wi-Fi.
Okay, but you got to pay a lot of money to get on the train to use Wi-Fi.
But what if a train is, like, zipping through your town?
Can you hop on Wi-Fi while it's doing that?
Maybe for a second.
You'd have to be very fast.
Well, just enough to send a tweet to a smart mob, you know?
Wouldn't that be the ultimate 24 scenario that the bomb plot was sent in on a Wi-Fi connection
from a speeding Amtrak train going 120 miles an hour through a particular town?
Yeah, you have a car that comes up alongside it and just basically leeches off the connection.
You know, I want to do it.
Not the bomb part, but I want to do that.
I want to actually wait for a train to go by and see if my connectivity is that good,
if my PC is that good, where it can hop on that quickly.
What time do the trains meet?
I don't know. I'm not sure.
The other thing, I assume this is based on the cellular network,
and the cellular network doesn't work all that well on much of Amtrak's route.
It passes through some relatively rural areas.
So I'd be curious to know how well this Wi-Fi is going to work.
Probably not that well.
I mean, I've used Wi-Fi on buses, and it's decent.
You go, oh, wow, I'm on the Internet. I'm on a bus.
But it's not great.
And, you know, it's probably similar.
Now there's some word out of Germany, I believe.
Good news, Mike?
Good news. Temporary good news, but good news nonetheless.
I'll take it.
As our listeners may know, in Europe and in Germany,
there's something called data retention laws,
which means if you're an Internet provider,
you're required to keep information on all your customers
and what they email and where they go on the Internet.
And you're required to keep that information for six months
and give it to the government upon request.
And the German version of that law was ruled by the German high court,
which is called the Federal Constitution Court,
to be illegal under German law.
So the data retention is going to go away in Germany.
The bad news is it's probably going to come back in a form
that's more acceptable to the court.
Interesting.
And we'll have an announcement.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just have an announcement I wanted to mention,
that this coming Friday and Saturday in Culpsville, Pennsylvania,
just half an hour north of Philadelphia,
is the 21st annual Winterfest.
It's a contingent of hundreds of shortwave listeners
and satellite monitors.
Basically all hobbyists that are interested in monitoring the radio spectrum
from D.C. to daylight in any way, shape, or form
should gather pirate radio operators, shortwave broadcasters, etc.
So go to swlfest.com if you want information about it.
I will be there, as I have been for many years.
It's really very interesting and a lot of fun.
Okay, good to know.
Again, our phone number is 212-209-2900.
Anything on your mind, anything you'd like to contribute?
A couple of the items, our friends over at Cryptome are back.
Now, I believe we mentioned this last week or the week before
that Cryptome was having some issues.
They had a DMCA notice served upon them by Microsoft?
Yes.
What was that all about?
Anybody have any details?
They claimed copyright on a leaked document,
and it was a disingenuous claim just to basically censor their…
It was a Microsoft-like spying policy
of how they'd sell the government agency's access to their users.
So at cryptome.org, I spelled C-R-Y-P-T-O-M-E dot O-R-G,
they're back up.
Does anybody know if the document is back up as well?
Yes.
The document is still there.
Microsoft apparently was just kind of embarrassed
that they had made the entire Cryptome website go away,
so they withdrew their complaint.
Rob?
And the document was immediately everywhere
because of our friend the Streisand effect.
Yes, that's what happened.
Do you want to, for the new folks listening,
what the Streisand effect is?
If you don't know what the Streisand effect is,
it's when something is forcefully taken down off the internet
and in response is put everywhere on the internet.
And how does Streisand tie into that?
Streisand ties into it because it goes back to a photograph
that was taken of her house from public waters,
which she tried to censor.
The person in question was taking the photograph
as a survey of the entire coast,
and her house just happened to be there.
But she raised a stink basically over this photo being out there,
and so people responded by mirroring that photo everywhere.
Interesting.
Here's something that I find to be unbelievable
as far as actually happened a few weeks ago.
But there's this place called Tracy, California.
And apparently in Tracy, California,
they've come up with a brilliant idea to force people to pay
whenever they call 911.
Now, you can either pay $48 for an entire year,
in which case you can, I guess, call 911 to your heart's content.
Or actually, you know what?
I'm not really...
It says here that they could be charged a couple hundred bucks.
Maybe if they haven't signed up for the fee,
then they'll have to pay a couple hundred bucks
if they call them once or something crazy like that.
It's microscopic print, so I can't really tell.
Now, there's already a 911 fee on my cell phone bill every month.
Yeah, but this is actually... I don't know if the call won't go through
and they'll just come and expect a credit card payment
when the ambulance arrives or something like that.
But this is wrong on so many levels.
I just cannot believe it that they would actually...
This has to be illegal for one thing.
They expect a payment with the ambulance
or at some point after the ambulance arrives anyway.
But, I mean, I could see something like a penalty
for people who make frivolous 911 calls.
Frivolous is one thing, yes.
If I call and I'm upset because McDonald's
didn't give me my Coca-Cola, that's one thing.
But can you imagine if you don't call and you need to call
and you just don't want to deal with paying either a couple hundred bucks
or $48 or whatever?
Making it a fee that anyone who calls 911 has to pay is absurd.
I'm sure it won't last.
I think it's good that we give 911 services to the free market
and let the consumers decide.
Yeah, you can select your carrier.
I don't really care for this socialized Obama 911 care.
Rob.
I must point out that pretty much any cell phone
that doesn't have service attached to it
will call 911 for free.
Yeah, that's true.
That is true.
But how many of us have cell phones that aren't attached to anything?
I've got a jar full.
I do.
Do you?
I have several.
I just keep them around.
I keep them charged.
You never know when you're going to need them.
But what about pay phones?
You can call 911 for pay phones in this area.
And how do they get it?
How do they collect it?
That's a good point.
Insert $45 worth of quarters.
Actually, in all seriousness,
I'd recommend taking your old cell phone to a local battered woman's shelter
because they can actually use them.
And I've done that.
Yeah, donating cell phones.
Because of the fact that they can call 911,
there are a number of charities that will take old cell phones
and give them out to people who need to dial 911 because they're in a bad situation.
It seems like overkill.
Couldn't it just be a simple device that does nothing but call 911?
Right, but how many extra cell phones are there floating out there?
Think about it.
That's true.
There are quite a few.
So, I mean, I had a friend who did a drive and collected like 900 cell phones.
But it's embarrassing to be seen with those because they're so out of fashion.
But that's not the point.
The point is somebody who actually needs it and who might be in a bad situation
and needs that kind of access.
What I'm saying, in all seriousness,
it would be nice to have this really simple device that everybody can have on them,
whether or not they carry a cell phone or not,
that simply pressing a button calls the cops.
It's unnecessary.
It seems like it could be cheap, really cheap,
because you don't have to have speed dialing and all the other things that cell phones have.
Yes?
What would be great is if the cops actually were just around the neighborhood.
Oh, yeah, that would be wonderful.
And you just call for help and they would hear you.
Uh-huh.
You know? I mean.
I'm concerned that they're around a little too much anyway.
Also, if they're well-armed.
I want them to be really well-armed.
I think what you've just described, though,
is that I've fallen and I can't get up thing from the TV commercials.
Yeah, okay, there you go.
How did that work?
You pushed a button on the thing around your neck.
The life phone pendant or whatever they call it.
Yeah, something like that.
Yeah, you push a little button on a pendant hanging around your neck
and then the cops would be called to come to your residence or ambulance or whatever.
All right.
Well, that's the brainstorming that we have here.
But let's hear what our listeners have to say.
212-209-2900.
Haven't heard from you in a while, so let's take a phone call, too.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes.
Hi.
What's on your mind?
I was wondering if you guys know about there's something going on with Verizon
looking into downloading of free movies.
You know, they've got these websites that download free movies.
I got a call from Verizon telling me that I have to call them back for a copyright issue.
Oh.
Well, providers, do you have Fios or something?
Fios or something through them?
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, what happens is providers will do that.
They'll get some kind of a letter from a studio saying that we've detected that this person,
that a subscriber is downloading something they shouldn't be downloading,
and then what they do is they contact you to tell you to stop.
Okay.
Even though the sites, they don't go after the sites themselves.
You know, I've always been unclear as to how exactly they know you're downloading this particular film
at this particular time without having access to that site themselves.
Rob, do you know?
It's like with protocols like BitTorrent, you're not just downloading, you're uploading to others.
Right.
And the people on the other side of this equation will join in and see how many people are uploading
and then get all those IP addresses and go from there.
I see.
And there's no way you could be doing something legitimate that they have no right to complain about.
I mean, that's how I like to always get them.
I mean, you can but not if you're distributing copyright infringing content.
Right.
So like Rob said, you're basically talking about a peer-to-peer situation.
In the past, it was things like Napster and stuff where you were just sharing one file,
but now things with BitTorrent are so prevalent and it still is peer-to-peer.
The reason it's so fast is because you're not only downloading from the original person who uploaded,
if they're still on, but all the other people who are also downloading at the same time.
And you're a part of that.
You're sharing, and that's where they get you because they see, like Rob said,
they connect it to this BitTorrent swarm and they see who else is in it.
All right.
All these people are violating our copyright.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yeah.
Speaking of Verizon, I've been hearing from a lot of my friends that Verizon's been screwing over people more than usual.
Oh, don't even get me started.
Yeah.
We're involved with one of those.
And I was just curious because it's so confusing of like what was the cause of that four-day blackout?
Okay.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I did want to sort of update people on that.
What happened to us was there was some kind of an outage here in New York City that involved both cable and phone lines.
And we had a DSL connection for our main mail machine.
And, you know, it took a full day for Verizon to even acknowledge that there was a problem.
This was after we're trying to contact our DSL provider and tell them that there's a problem.
There's all kinds of formalities that have to be undertaken.
Long story short, we basically waited almost four full days before we were put back online.
And it was only after we really started massively tweeting about this.
I hate to say that this is what did it.
But Verizon was saying, the outage started, I think, on Monday.
Verizon was saying as of Thursday, you know what, it's going to snow today and tomorrow's Friday.
So you know what that means.
So we're going to get to this next Monday.
Basically saying whatever they felt like lying about things, saying they were showing up when they weren't showing up, saying they were on the call when they weren't.
And, you know, for the average customer, they just have to sort of grin and bear it.
We were lucky that we had a community of people that were there for us.
We started tweeting about it.
Word got out.
And all of a sudden, within two hours, it started working again.
And the thing that really gets me is that Verizon gave no clue that they were going to fix it.
And everybody was surprised that it all of a sudden started working.
So this is the kind of thing that we have to deal with when we deal with phone companies.
Unfortunately, in our case, it means we're going to have to move to a co-location facility, which means less control over our own machine.
But that seems to be the direction everyone is heading.
The funny thing that I thought about this whole situation is that Verizon was basically saying, well, if you were our customer instead of, you know, being a customer of somebody else, that you have to go over our top.
They say that.
This would never happen.
They say that.
In the old days, when we had a DSL connection out on the island, they would say that to us.
You know, if only you had us, you wouldn't get cut off so much.
And the DSL providers say to us, you know, Verizon goes and they just clip the lines.
They just clip the lines and then they're out two days and they go and repair the lines because the lines still come through Verizon.
And, yeah, if you had only used them, this wouldn't happen.
It's really incredible that they got away with that.
But these days, nobody is using DSL anymore.
Everyone is going to, like, some virtual server someplace.
Oh, you mean for hosting?
Yeah.
Nobody wants to deal with this.
People don't even have their own machines anymore.
You know, you've got the whole cloud thing going on.
It's sad.
I mean, there's good to it.
There is good to it.
I mean, we just saw the good in it because the cloud helped get us.
It kind of depends.
Well, it kind of depends what services you're looking to do.
You know, if you're just looking to run some scalable web app that doesn't really need, you don't really need full control of your machines, then a cloud is a good place for, like, a startup to go.
Right.
But when you want your own control.
I miss the days where every kid was setting up his own machine and running mail servers and websites and basically just learning how it all got together rather than just farming it out someplace else.
I mean, yeah, it's much faster now, much more efficient, much more stable, but I don't think people are learning as much.
Maybe.
Okay.
Let's see if we can take one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
You're talking about the button that would press for help.
My brother got my mother, who's getting on in years, one of these things and set it up.
And you're supposed to test it once a month to see if it works.
So after she'd had the service for a month, she tested it and she found out that the only place that it worked was.
You care to guess?
Oh, well, probably in the one place she never goes, maybe downstairs in the street.
No.
The one place that it worked was right by the phone.
Ah, okay.
That's brilliant.
Okay.
So it was completely useless.
Yes.
And apparently, although this is a great use for used cell phones, there is a shortage of people donating used cell phones.
Handicapped people can't get them because there aren't enough for senior citizens and so forth.
So if people do gather up 900 cell phones in their area, that's a really great thing to do.
But you also have to have chargers for them.
I have an old OmniPoint phone.
I'd love to donate it, but I can't even charge the thing and I don't think I can get a battery for it anymore.
I'd just like to see if it could still work.
This is something from the mid-'90s or late-'90s, and it's huge.
But it would be great just to walk around with it.
I don't think anyone wants you to donate that phone specifically.
If it can call 911, then by the definition, it should work.
It might be more useful for someone who's homebound than carrying it around on the street where it might be heavy for them.
Yeah, it could be a weapon as well in case they get somebody breaking in.
Yes, go ahead.
Well, like you mentioned before about a purpose-built device, all you really need is, say, some sort of a digital pager or whatever, GPS, and you just hit a button on it and 911 gets a page from this location and they check it out.
I just think that going back, yes, you could have a purpose-built device.
You could probably manufacture it really cheap, but you also have the fact that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of old cell phones.
How often have you changed your cell phone? Two, three times since you maybe started using a cell phone?
And so, I mean, just for our listeners, if you have two, three, one old cell phone, go find out if you can donate it somewhere.
Maybe this is something we can do at Hope is gather people's cell phones and then simply donate them somewhere.
Again, I still worry about how would they get charged without the chargers as well.
Well, no, you have to include the charger.
When my friend did it, you know, you put it in like a Ziploc bag with the charger and the phone.
Okay.
And that was how it worked.
Let's take one more phone call, if we can squeeze it in really quickly.
Good evening, you're on Off the Hook.
Yeah, China's bailing out the Pacifica Sound.
I was wondering where this person was.
Try one more.
Good evening, you're on Off the Hook.
Hey there.
Hi, what's on your mind?
Hey, just real quick about the Amtrak thing.
They also, this week, rolled out Wi-Fi in a bunch of stations up and down the Northeast Corridor.
Okay.
Including our very own Penn Station.
So while you're waiting for the train that's very delayed to show up, you can actually get on the net and complain about it.
Exactly.
Well, you know, you've got plenty of time waiting for an Amtrak train.
Okay.
Good to know.
Thanks for the information.
We are out of time, but we will be at the 2600 meeting this Friday coming up.
And we'll see you again next week.
So write to us, othat2600.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
Until then, the man who calls himself Off the Hook, have a good night.
the next one.
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