Yo, this is G Love on WBAI New York, New York.
And you're listening to 99.5 FM, WBAI New York.
The time is 7 p.m.
Time once again for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
I hope that's understood, one day they'll know.
And good evening, the program is, of course, Off The Hook, Red Hect here in the studio,
joined tonight by Mike, hi there, Voltaire, good evening, Dot Rhett, hello, Gus, oh hi,
Rob T. Firefly, good evening, and Jim, hello.
And we are joined on the phone, as usual, by Bernie S. in Philadelphia, greetings from
Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, all right.
And I believe we also have Emanuel on the phone, hello, Emanuel, are you there?
Can you hear us?
Oh, dear.
Well, I think we lost Emanuel, well, while we try and reconnect him, do you have any
news, Bernie?
Oh, hello.
Oh, there he is.
Okay, good.
All right, hang on, the microphone's not, I'm using a handheld microphone on my computer,
can you hear me now?
Yes.
I'm sorry, I'm talking to you through Gmail, which is not a place, but I'm using Gmail
to actually get through to the station, and I'm actually here in Irvine, California, joined
by Mish.
Hello.
Who lives out here.
Long time no speak.
Yeah, good to see Emanuel again, it's been a couple of years.
Actually Mish and Red Hect went to school together.
It's true.
Yes, we did, and I'll be back in New York next week, actually, so I'll be able to say
hello in person.
Nice.
So what brings you to California, Emanuel?
Well, not the car that I was driving, because I dropped that off in Arizona.
That was actually the first part of the mission, was to get my friend's car from New York to
the Phoenix area, and that entailed me going through all kinds of different states, most
of which are smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, and I gotta tell you, that puts a lot
of strain on anybody, going through all of that, because basically, and I don't want
to belittle anybody, because everybody I've met, everybody I've talked to has been really
nice and intelligent and fun to be with, but when you're just driving through, all you
hear on the radio is either fundamentalism, meaning religion being hammered into your
head over and over again, country music, again, I really have nothing against country music,
I have something against any kind of music being hammered into my head nonstop, or just
very bland material, or right-wing talk hate radio on the AM part of the dial, and I gotta
tell you, it gets very tiresome after a while, it leaves you a bit cynical, and I think one
of the conclusions I came out of this with, as I was pulling into Arizona, was that after
hearing all the angry people, after hearing all the fundamentalism, after hearing all
the country music, what this country needs is a whole lot more immigrants, a lot of them, fast.
Is that to make more radio, specifically?
Well, I'll tell you, when I was driving close to the Mexican border, my phone actually started
roaming in Mexico, I was still in the United States, but I was able to pay roaming fees
for being in a foreign country, the radio suddenly got a whole lot better, the music
was better, and funnily enough, all of a sudden there were Mexican food places everywhere
being run by the same people that want to kick all the Mexicans out, so things got very
diverse and a lot more interesting.
If you're going up through the Central Valley in California, you'll also find that you'll
find dozens at a time of various kinds of Mexican music, Norteño and Banda, and things
like that, and it gets really kind of crazy where you suddenly are in a different country
even though you're right smack in the middle of California.
What's also interesting, being right smack in the middle of California, here in Irvine,
we're not that far from Los Angeles, maybe what, about 60 miles or so, 40 miles?
You can pick up FM radio stations from Mexico, there's a station at 91.1 called 91X, which
is a commercial station, and as listeners may know, anything below 92 has to be non-commercial
but only in the United States, so here you have an American station, but they get away
with it by broadcasting out of Tijuana, and they have such a powerful signal that it comes
all the way up to Los Angeles from Tijuana.
What's also odd is that we were driving around yesterday, I'm not sure if this is still true
today, but 90.7 is supposed to be KPFK, which is WBAI's sister station out here, and it
wasn't on the air.
It was on the internet, but it wasn't on the air, and I've been trying to find out from
all kinds of people what the story is with that.
I'm not sure if they're on today because I don't have a radio nearby, but there was something
going on.
I was getting a Mexican station instead at 90.7, but that was a bit concerning.
I'm glad you guys are still there.
Hey, Emmanuel, is that station in Tijuana allowed to occur?
You know, that's an interesting question, Voltaire.
I guess probably they could, but I'm sure there's some kind of an arrangement where
the federal government of the United States could put pressure on maybe their advertisers
or something like that if they got to be a little bit too obnoxious.
I think they're willing to turn a blind eye towards what they're actually doing, which
is broadcasting at an insanely powered station in a non-commercial band with commercial material.
I think that's as far as they can go without feeling some pressure.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie?
Hey, I just wanted to point out, I'm sure you're really familiar with this term, border
radio, which has been sort of a tradition for many decades, really ever since the 20s,
since radio broadcasting was even happening.
Stations were locating themselves just south of the U.S.-Mexico border to operate much
higher power transmitters, and they were illegally allowed to operate in the United States and
also circumvent other regulations.
So border radio is a North American tradition, and it's really interesting to hear what's
coming from the South.
It's pretty much the same as the kind of music or programming you hear on a commercial station
here in the United States, but it's, as you say, much more powerful and designed to get
around certain restrictions, such as the power restrictions.
But speaking of the border, this is something a lot more serious and a lot more disturbing.
And I had known about this.
In fact, we've talked about this on the radio station before.
We even played something from, I believe, YouTube concerning this.
But our country has border patrol checkpoints, but you don't have to cross a border to go
through them.
They're basically in the middle of New Mexico, Arizona, California.
I believe the rule is, there is a rule about this, that you can be within 100 miles of
the border, and it can be considered the border by Homeland Security, and they can stop you
and search you.
The first time this happened, I was in the car, and they simply asked me.
They had a dog.
They had a dog sniff my car and gave the status of I was an American citizen, and I said yes.
And they wanted to know about Club Mate, because I had a bunch of it in the car.
But it didn't really go beyond that.
What was really more disturbing was when I was taking a Greyhound bus down to San Diego,
and the bus got stopped a couple of different times.
What I noticed there, without fail, was absolute racial profiling, where they would simply
go up, if you were white and you said that you were from the United States, they moved
on to the next person.
You didn't have to show any documentation.
If you were Hispanic, you had to show documentation.
And if you did not have that documentation, you were taken off the bus, and they had to
check to see if you were actually a citizen.
And it's just incredible, because if you listen to the radio around these parts, or mostly
around the middle part of the country, people are basically begging for this kind of thing,
because they've convinced themselves that Mexicans are tantamount to Satan, that they're
here raping the women, killing the men, stealing all the jobs, setting fire to everything around.
So we need to have these checks to get rid of all the Mexicans, because they're causing
all these problems, and we're about to fall into anarchy.
In fact, there was one radio host, not a caller, a host, saying that it's going to take a dirty
bomb being set off in one of our cities by these Mexicans to wake us up.
And I must have missed when Mexicans became part of Al-Qaeda, but in these people's eyes,
that's exactly what it is.
And so everybody is in such a panic that they couldn't have enough border patrols within
their own communities.
And it's really scary, and a very unhealthy way of living.
And I just wonder how many people in other parts of the country are aware that this is
what's going on.
AMANPOUR Emmanuel, did you try saying, no, I won't answer your questions?
I'm curious what would happen.
EMANPOUR Yeah, you know, it's interesting to say that, Mike.
When you're actually on a bus with a lot of people, if you take a position like that,
you're basically going to be holding everybody up.
It's not going to be a very pleasant bus ride for you afterwards.
And it's a simple enough question, are you an American citizen?
Yes.
Beyond that, the conversation for me never went beyond that.
I think I might have put on a little bit more attitude had they started questioning me more.
But I really didn't feel like making a stand at that point.
I did feel very sorry for the other people, especially when we passed through a town called
Calexico, which I guess is right on the California-Mexico border.
Very strange.
I've been to Americana, and I've been to Calexico.
I wasn't aware of these towns that are half and half.
But a lot of Hispanic people got on the bus at that point, and sure enough, we had a border
patrol check afterwards.
And we were there for at least 40 minutes while they checked all the Hispanic people
out.
It's really a very disturbing thing.
HOFFMAN And did they, do you think they, did they find what they were looking for?
Did they take people off the bus?
They found a Mexican or two, if that's what they were looking for.
But, well, they took two people off our bus, and one came back about 20 minutes later with
a big smile on his face.
So I guess that meant that he checked out okay.
The second one we didn't see again.
So I don't know what the deal was.
But the thing is, and this is something I find very disturbing, people seem to believe
that you're required to have ID on you at all times.
Now, I must have missed a memo if that's the case, but I think you can pretty much walk
around with impunity in this country and not have to show ID on demand.
Am I wrong on this?
GRIFFIN It's, that's generally the case.
There are some, there was a case, a case a couple, three years ago where some guy, it
might have been in Arizona, who refused to show ID, and he was arrested for that.
But it was just not following orders for a police officer not to, not failing to show
ID specifically.
But yes, this is one of the few countries where you don't actually have to carry around
papers all the time, although it looks like that's coming to an end pretty soon, especially
with the Real ID Act.
HOST So Bernie, if you're Hispanic then, and you
find yourself on one of these buses or a passenger in somebody's car, because obviously you have
to have a driver's license if you're driving, what happens to you if you can't prove that
you're a citizen?
That's part of what's happening with all these laws that are being passed in places like
Arizona and Texas, where police are being empowered to check on the citizenship of anybody
they suspect of maybe being either not a U.S. citizen or just suspicious in one way or another.
All of a sudden, you wind up creating a society where you have to present papers upon demand.
And the unfortunate thing is that people here seem to be demanding that kind of thing.
GRIFFIN Well, you know, it, the police may be being
empowered, but I think actually in some cases, from what I've been hearing, they also don't
want that power.
They also don't want that responsibility because it's just so much extra labor for them.
I know my mom lives in Arizona now, and we hear a lot from her that the police there
just say, you know, we can't do our jobs if you also give us this to do.
HOST Well, what cops are you talking about?
What cops don't want more authority, like what police organizations, I would love to
meet them.
GRIFFIN There's authority, but then there's also,
you know, work.
And they're simply having a lot of work to do, and they know what they can do and what
they can't.
And there are police officers, and I think police chiefs of various sorts, who have spoken
out and said, this is not something that makes sense for your normal everyday city police
force to do.
HOST It also affects their ability to fight real
crime because it makes certain groups of people afraid to talk to the police and say, hey,
I was just beat up yesterday.
GRIFFIN Right.
And it's also worth noting that in most states, it is not a state offense to be in that state
without citizenship or, you know, green cards or whatever you need, a visa.
So the police can't legally hold you on that charge.
They'd have to turn you over to the ICE men, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement people.
And that, as Gus just pointed out, involves a lot of work and a lot of paperwork transferring
someone over from custody from your local police department to ICE.
HOST Well, it's interesting because this is a
border patrol part of DHS, and I was actually, I drove up to the fence in Texas.
I wanted to see what the border looked like.
And just shy of El Paso, drove right up because I was very curious about this, and those guys
are everywhere.
All of them I saw driving away from the border at high speeds.
I didn't really see any on the border, just a huge fence and nobody on the ground.
But this guy did pass me in an SUV, or it might have been a pickup truck, and he gave
me this little wave as he walked by, as he drove by.
And I realized that must have been one of the minute men, that must have been one of
those people that take it upon themselves to patrol the border.
He must have thought I was one of them.
I didn't wave back, and I think I became a suspect at that point, but I hightailed it
out of there.
But it was a very kind of creepy place.
It sort of felt like it was under occupation, everybody looking at everybody else.
HOST It's very visually striking, the border
fence.
And I think actually it was used in a movie that didn't get quite enough attention.
It somehow got to Sundance, but didn't get a broader release.
It's called Sleep Dealer.
And basically the premise of this movie is that it's in the future, and the border has
been closed to immigrants from Mexico, but they are still doing work for people in the
United States by jacking into remote controlled devices and doing it through avatars and things
like that, and robots.
And it's really a neat movie that I think a lot of people who listen to the show would
probably be very interested in.
Again, the name is Sleep Dealer.
And yeah, so if you really want to get a visual sense of the border as well, it's an interesting
take on it.
MR.
HOGAN Well, we could talk about scary things all
night long, just involving the U.S. border.
But there are a lot of other scary things that we should get into worldwide, and some
informative things as well, maybe some entertaining things.
There's something that's just happened today, in fact, that I think is very, very interesting.
You may recall at the CCC, the Chaos Communication Camp, earlier this year, or actually late
last year, we spoke with Breno de Winter, who is a journalist who is doing all kinds
of freedom of information investigations from the Netherlands.
And one thing that he talked to us on the show about earlier this year was the public
transportation card in the Netherlands that he was investigating.
And he actually wound up disclosing a rather big security hole, and it made national news
over there.
However, what's happening now is that the Justice Department was investigating him.
And today, he wound up being interrogated.
And for a while there, he was worried that he wasn't going to be allowed to go back home.
But Breno, you are home now, correct?
MR.
BRENO DE WINTER.
Yes, I'm definitely home.
And I'm happy to be away from the police station.
But what happened was that earlier this year, indeed, I traveled on some of those cards,
proving that it is very easy to fake or to fool the back office and don't leave a single
trace and travel to transportation for free.
This was broadcast on radio, several television shows, national news.
The public broadcaster I worked for, I've written articles about it, and it led to debate
in Parliament.
And for that reason, under some circumstances, you are allowed to break the law.
Now, what happened is, last week, I got a letter from the district attorney's office
that they considered me to be a suspect.
And it turned out that they were charging me or planning to charge me with defrauding
a value card, which carries a six years prison sentence.
And today, they added two more charges, breaking into a computer and also having the means
or tools to break into a value card.
And those are pretty serious charges.
And the police have been asking me a lot of questions about the journalistic value
of this investigation, because that would be a reason not to pursue this case.
However, what you need to understand is, I'm a freelance journalist, and hiring a lawyer
is a lot of money for me.
So I've already spent thousands and thousands of euros only to, you know, end up in a police
station for the interrogation.
So it's very threatening for me as a journalist to do my job.
Breno, as a freelance journalist, do you also find that the police have less respect for
your credentials?
Because I know a lot of the times freelancers seem to face that.
No, I can't.
No.
Fortunately, not.
I'm pretty well known in the Netherlands in the journalistic community, and they clearly
did their homework on who they were dealing with.
So actually, the police were very respectful when I, at a certain point, said, like, I
don't want to answer this question, because then I would have to disclose my sources.
And they didn't pressure me, and they left it at that.
It was just a very long interrogation, but they were very polite.
So no, I don't think that happened at all.
The Association of Journalists in the Netherlands, they sent in their letter of support explaining
that what I did was journalistic research needed to be done.
And basically the same was done by the section of the freelance journalists.
So no, I've been getting a lot of support so far, and a lot of people on Twitter and
a lot of my readers have been supporting me so far.
Bruno, what were some of the things that they asked you about?
Of course, how I did it.
I refused to answer those questions.
Then they asked it more general, like, what could you do with Value Card?
So I explained a bunch of the options.
They asked me how long the fraud has been ongoing, which was a period of three weeks,
which was also out in the news.
So I explained that.
I explained why it was important over such a long period, not a single day or a single
trip, because what I tried to do is get my cards blocked.
And as soon as I had the blocked card, I wanted to show that you can even travel on a blocked
card.
So I really needed to go out of my way.
And one of the funny things was that at a certain point, I said to them, well, if you
have camera images of me, then probably you will have seen that on some of the buses I
got into, I even waved into the camera.
I've not been disclosing that I've been doing this, because I did it as a journalist.
Bruno, gracious, what was I about to ask?
Sorry, somebody else, go ahead.
What was their response like to your answers?
Did they seem satisfied, or do you think this is going to continue?
It's very hard to say.
The thing in the Netherlands is that you don't have a grand jury.
What will happen now is that the police will give the report to the district attorney,
and he will have to decide whether to pursue the charges or not.
Obviously this is a case that raises media attention, and going after a journalist in
general makes a journalist a bit nervous.
So I don't know what will happen.
For me, it's very uncertain.
And you need to imagine, during the weekend, I didn't know that I even, whether I would
not be arrested or not.
And Monday morning, the district attorney said to my lawyer that I wouldn't be arrested.
But still, technically, that's a possibility.
So really, until I gave my signature on the statement, and he took it and he gave me a
copy of it, until that moment I was very unsure whether I would be arrested or not.
And every time he left the room and came back, my fear was that the next thing he would say
like you're under arrest now and you have to come with us.
You have to imagine that in the Netherlands, if such a thing were to happen, you might
not get out before October.
Now, Breno, when this story broke, was there any indication that they might be going after
you about all this?
Or was this a surprise?
No, the company behind it said that they pressed charges against a bunch of cards.
And what I actually expected was them to withdraw the charges or the complaint and leave it
at that. But they didn't.
So the district attorney office has no option but to investigate.
That's what they did.
So, no, I didn't expect that anything would come from it.
And if anything were to come from it, I would then expect to go after all the journalists
that were involved.
Because to make my point, I showed it to a whole bunch of journalists that did the thing
themselves and they have not been asked to answer questions.
So here I am as a freelance all alone.
And for instance, the National News, which has like a budget of 175 million euros each
year, doesn't get a single question.
And I end up paying thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Amazing. Breno, of course, you are a journalist, so I assume that one thing that's going to
happen as a result of all this is that there's going to be some kind of a story posted on
the Web, right?
Absolutely. There are a whole bunch of stories already posted and it has already been on
television and that they are after me.
So there is quite a bit of media attention.
I had a bunch of journalists also calling me after I tweeted that I could leave the
police station.
So there is a lot of media attention for it in the Netherlands.
And what sorts of responses apart from this in like the general public and the journalist
community have you been getting for your story?
Well, actually, it's very interesting.
Most stories, you know, you've got people in favor of you or against you.
I haven't seen a single comment against me.
Everybody is convinced that what I showed was novel and was proving a point that
needed to be made to the public.
And most people are outraged.
Somebody was already working on getting one million free Brenno stickers.
So that was kind of cool.
That was something going on this morning.
And so several people have offered to set up a web fund or a web fundraiser to help
me cover the legal fees.
So and from the from the readers and the followers, I get a lot of support.
Hey, Brenno, go ahead, Bernie.
Oh, I'm sorry, Brenno. I wanted to ask you, do you think that this all this very
expensive attention that the law enforcement agency there?
First of all, what I want to know, what what law specific what law enforcement agency
there was interrogating you?
And do you think that all this attention, which is obviously costing you a lot of
money out of pocket for simply doing your job as a journalist?
Do you think that will have a chilling effect on other journalists in the future
reporting on security problems with with mass transportation, payment instruments,
their instruments?
You know, to start with the last question, yes, I'm very afraid for the chilling
effect. And that's also why I'm shouting that this is happening.
And we've had several cases where journalists had to break the law to make a
point. In all those cases, ultimately, the judge threw out the charges.
So I'm very optimistic about the final outcome.
That's a way to get there. Maybe very expensive.
And that that has a chilling effect.
On the other hand, it was a very emotional part of the of the interrogation.
At some point, the police asked me what meant for me as a person that they were
going after me like this.
And they've been really working to get that part of it very obvious in the
statement. And, you know, you lose a lot of sleep and you get nervous over it.
You're afraid to do your job.
I'm not I don't feel free to write whatever I want right now.
And you have to imagine that never in my articles or in my my news reporting and on
television, I went after individuals.
I always went after the case.
And then it's very disturbing that all of a sudden the Justice Department steps into
your private life and and and goes after you like that.
And again, I'm not blaming them for doing their job, but I'm blaming the company
that that has incurred billions of dollars to the Dutch taxpayer that is really
trying to to prevent me from doing my my job.
Three weeks ago, I had a different incident and I was doing a stand up in front of
their office and they tried to get me removed.
My cameraman refused to stop filming.
Ultimately, they called the police and the police ended up explaining to them that if
you're on the open street, you're allowed to make a video.
And this is the type of company I'm dealing with right now.
It seems to me it seems to me that what you're facing is is a lot like what a lot
of people are facing with members of Anonymous and members of LELSEC being taken down
publicly. And I'm sort of wondering if whether what we're seeing on the behalf of
international law agencies is is that they're trying to sort of have a public forum
with, you know, on their terms about what the role of hacking is.
Is it something that's journalistic and sort of telling people about things?
Is it somehow malevolent?
And, you know, so I'm sort of wondering, you know, where do we go?
That's a very interesting question, because that's something that is very hard.
You know, at a certain point, one of the detectives was asked me, like, was it really
necessary to make each and every trip?
And I explained to him that the chilling effect of that question is that I don't feel
free to do my research to prove a point.
You know, maybe I could indeed have taken one trip less.
But on the on the bigger scheme of things, that is totally irrelevant.
I imagine.
Go ahead. Yeah.
So so now law enforcement is now stepping into where does journalism begin and where
does it end? And also hacking as well, I guess.
Yes. Well, breaking the law in general is acceptable for journalistic purposes if you
meet a couple of conditions.
One of them is that it needs to have a social or relevant impact.
It needs to be relevant in the first place.
And it needs to be done to prove a point that something is major wrong.
Well, all of these three conditions are something that I easily meet.
Now, all news agencies, all newspapers, all radio stations were talking about this
this proof of concept.
Parliament had to stop debating about Afghanistan.
I was talking about my hack.
So it was it was that big.
So it's beyond any discussion that it was relevant and important to prove.
And so and actually, the police wasn't debating that at all.
And the thing the thing, though, is that I did never expect it that that it would come
to this point because of the relevance, because all the and all the previous cases we
had in the Netherlands.
Bruno, I imagine you're going to be at the chaos camp in Germany later this summer,
correct? Yes, I am.
And will you be giving any kind of a talk or a summation of what's been going on?
Definitely. I need to get my lecture in and hopefully I'll also be able to show a
documentary on how press freedom in the Netherlands works or doesn't work.
OK, great. Well, hopefully people in the States will come to the chaos camp and meet
you in person and hear what you have to say.
More information on that at CCC dot D.
Bruno, is there a site that people can go to either in Dutch or in English with more
information if they want to follow the story?
At the moment, there isn't, unfortunately, but we are working on that.
It all caught me by surprise.
And the only thing I've been doing so far is trying to get my my story to the police
in a in a way that that they can easily do their job and see that I did this for one
reason. And that's the reason of journalism.
All right. Well, listen, you have our support and we're certainly going to keep
following this story as it develops.
And please keep doing what you're doing because it's a real inspiration.
Thank you so much, guys, and thanks for paying attention to me.
OK, we're here for it.
And sticking with with the Netherlands just for a moment, just today, just to show how
cool these this country is as far as what what they do today, they released five and
10 euro coins that have QR codes on the back of them.
I mean, how cool is that?
I just want to I keep seeing QR codes and advertisements and things like that and keep
noticing how graphically they're supposed to mean something really different from
traditional barcodes.
Like, think about it.
If you put a traditional barcode on somebody's forehead in an advertisement, it
means this person's a tool they're buying into the system.
But if you put a QR code on them, it's like, oh, it's happy.
It's fun. It's got technologies.
It's Tefutar, you know.
And so I'm sort of, yeah, QR codes.
What if they put a barcode on instead?
I think what's also funny is when you're in the subway and there's an ad on the subway
with a QR code, but you could scan it, but it's a URL.
So you're on the subway.
You can't actually you can't actually view the page.
Well, one difference I wanted to point out with a barcode and the other type of code
we're talking about QR codes is that barcodes are numeric only and they really can't
contain a web address or any any other.
Depends on it depends on the format.
I mean, there are certain alphanumeric barcode formats.
Yeah, but they're very few and they're just they're really just not used anywhere
that that I've seen.
I mean, the standards are developed, but they're just not.
Well, also also QR codes are a lot higher density, right?
You can put a lot more data into a smaller area.
So so barcodes really do make you a number.
And QR codes really are cooler because they can have like a picture in them.
Yes. OK, I'm half convinced.
And for those of you who'd like to play along, but you don't have one of these fancy
codes, what's encoded in the QR code on these coins is the website www.letterq5g.nl
www.q5g.nl
Which is I would just I would just like to give a personal request to our Dutch
friends out there to please put a couple of those aside for us.
So when we go over there later this summer, we can actually hold them in our hands
ourselves. I just look forward to, you know, the the eventuality in the future that
they lose control of this website and somebody put something up else on it.
And some coin collector of the future gets a big surprise.
Lemon party.
Well, most like has a lot of work to do.
It's going to be a while before they get to that.
Bernie, the answer your question.
The website redirects to information about the Dutch coin people, but it's all in
Dutch. So I don't know exactly how informative it is.
They probably needed a really short URL because they didn't have a lot of space on
the coin. Well, it redirects.
It redirects to a long URL.
Right. I'm just saying that's why that's why it was such a short domain, because
it was what's the whole idea was to put a QR code on on coins so that they
could you could scan them and be brought to a website about the QR codes on
coins. I mean, what's the point?
We have to go deeper. But see, but it's a redirect.
Right. So they can point it to anything.
What is it? What's the goal in this?
What are they what are they hoping to accomplish in the end?
And are these are these sponsored by could these be eventually be sponsored by
corporations or just a government only deal?
I mean, what's the whole point behind this?
Bernie, they're commemorative coins.
The goal is to sell the coins to people like us who might buy them.
That's the that's the goal.
Even even when QR codes are sorry, even when QR codes are no longer cool, there
will still be people like us who are still like, oh, you know, exciting old
technologies will be like, oh, look, it's exciting.
It has an old QR code on it.
The fact of the matter is we've always known money talks and now it has a
website to maybe money blogs next.
Also, as far as new technology and changing the way we look at things, I don't
know if you guys heard what the Internet Corporation for Sign Names and Numbers
known as ICANN has has decided to do.
But wow, this is going to change a whole lot of things.
Apparently, top level domains and the top level domain is basically dot com, dot
org, dot net. They're going to be almost anything you can think of in the future.
And by the future, I mean about a year or so from now, you might see something,
let's say, ending in Pepsi instead of Pepsi dot com, or you might see something
ending in Pacifica instead of Pacifica radio.
But, you know, it's very unlikely because for us anyway, because to do this, you
need to spend one hundred eighty five thousand dollars to apply and then about
twenty five grand a year just to run the thing.
But you are going to see this happening with large corporations and other
organizations. And I just wonder what's the Internet going to look like in just a
few short months?
You know, it's interesting. There have been attempts before by people not not
associated with ICANN to actually make to make other top level domains.
But those have always kind of fallen flat.
But if they're doing it, this is what?
Name dot space was one of them.
Yeah. So I'm wondering for those from those of you in the room who do some
coding, is this going to it seems to me like it would create a nightmare.
Like what kind of how are you going to have to change the, you know, the parser
just to parse something that looks like a URL for a change?
That's that's not really trivial.
It depends. It actually depends because the top level domain could in itself
bring you to a website.
In practice, very few actually do this.
But if you were just simply at HTTP word, that wouldn't work.
You're not really you're not really parsing, but you don't really need a list
of the endings.
You know, you just have to be able to look up for a TLD.
There's a specific TLD server.
And then from there, it's just kind of a search.
Yeah, it's not it's not like there's a hard coded list in your in your program.
We we promised more scary material.
So let's get back to some scary material.
There's a lot of it this week.
Really? Yeah. Well, OK.
Let's scare some people. Apparently, the FBI is on the move.
And this came in yesterday.
I believe we have more information on this.
The FBI is seizing Web servers.
I imagine servers in general in a raid on a data center.
This happened yesterday in Reston, Virginia, about 115 in the morning
at a hosting facility used by a company known as Digital One.
They happen to be based in Switzerland.
The FBI has not responded to any any comments or any requests, that is.
But basically, here's what an email to one of its clients on Tuesday afternoon
from Digital One's chief executive said.
This problem is caused by the FBI, not our company.
In the night, FBI has taken three enclosures with equipment plugged into them,
possibly including your server.
We cannot check it after FBI's unprofessional, quote, unquote, work.
We cannot restart our own servers.
That's why our Web site is offline and support doesn't work.
He says the company staff has been working to solve the problem for 15 hours.
A government official who declined to be named said
that the FBI was actively investigating the Lowell's security group
known as WOLSEC and any affiliated hackers.
The official said the FBI teamed up with other agencies in this effort,
including the Central Intelligence Agency and various cybercrime bureaus in Europe.
It begins now, folks.
This is where the crackdown on these mischief makers starts.
And the FBI is being very tight lipped about what it is they're doing.
But it's kind of kind of what we expected to see happen.
It's it's a little bit scary.
I mean, I don't know if you read the stories updated.
And apparently the the hosting company said these are the three servers
you're interested in.
And what the FBI did is they assumed that Iraq,
which is can hold up to 42 computers, was a server.
So they took three whole racks of equipment,
including, you know, some some reasonably large companies,
Curbed and Eater, which which are fairly popular blogs and Pinboard,
which is a social bookmarking site.
And all these servers just got taken.
So the FBI crackdown is now taking down more servers than law security ever did.
And it's kind of amazing.
Good job. I mean, these are the these are the cybercrime experts at the FBI,
presumably, who took these servers.
And they don't know the difference between a server and a rack.
Exactly. Collateral damage.
It's collateral damage.
Yeah, in all fairness, Mike, it was one fifteen in the morning.
All right. Probably bleary eyed.
They didn't know what they were doing.
They might have just come from a bar.
Who knows? Even at one fifteen in the morning,
I know the difference between something I can pick up
and something that takes a forklift to move.
Well, yeah, but you don't work for the FBI now, do you?
So obviously not. Oh, boy.
We're going to be next.
The I just wanted to note the so Pinboard, the company said
they put up a note on Twitter saying we should have a jackbooted
thug image for our downtime page.
And my old friend Kellen, who worked at any be in on Indymedia with me,
tweeted back, yeah, we used to plan a lot for jackbooted
thug attack vectors when we were working at Indymedia.
And it's kind of funny.
I never thought it would be this broadly applicable.
And it's sort of interesting to think of the FBI as an attack vector
in that sense.
Now, Locek has released a statement.
Shall we read the statement?
Because I think it's kind of amusing.
Is it safe for the radio?
Well, I'll make it safe.
How about that? All right.
This is apparently in celebration of their one thousandth tweet.
I can't believe that this is real.
But yeah, they hit their one thousandth tweet.
And I guess if you want to follow them, it's LULZSEC on Twitter.
And basically, this is this is what they had to say to the Internet.
Dear Internet, this is low security.
Better known as those evil bastards from Twitter.
We just hit one thousand tweets.
And as such, we thought it best to have a little chitchat
with our friends and foes.
For the past month and a bit, we've been causing mayhem and chaos
throughout the Internet, attacking several targets, including PBS,
Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the U.S.
government, Sony, some more online gaming servers
by request of callers, not our own choice.
Sony again, and of course, our good friend Sony.
While we've gained many, many supporters,
we do have a mass of enemies, albeit mainly gamers.
The main anti LULZSEC argument suggests that we're going to bring down
more Internet laws by continuing our published shenanigans
and that our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you.
But what if we just hadn't released anything?
What if we were silent?
That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now,
inside PBS, inside Sony, watching, abusing.
Can you hear me OK?
Yes, indeed.
All right, Mike, you messaged me saying you were hearing hums.
I want to make sure you know we were hearing hum.
It's better now.
But I don't know what you just read, what it means.
Well, that's that's those are the words, though.
I mean, you heard the words, didn't you?
I did. OK, well, to you, it might sound like hum,
but to some people, it's actual it means something.
Continuing here, do you think every hacker announces everything they've hacked?
We certainly haven't.
And we're damn sure others are playing the silent game.
Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google mail accounts,
your Skype accounts?
What makes you think a hacker isn't silently sitting inside all of these
right now, sniping out individual people or perhaps selling them off?
You are a peon to these people, a toy, a string of characters with a value.
This is what you should be fearful of.
Not us releasing things publicly, but the fact that someone hasn't
released something publicly.
We're sitting on 200,000 Brink users right now that we never gave out.
It might make you feel safe knowing we told you so that Brink users
may change their passwords.
What if we hadn't told you?
No one would be aware of this theft and we'd have a fresh
200,000 peons to abuse, completely unaware of a breach.
Yes. Yes, there's always the argument that releasing everything in full
is just as evil.
What with accounts being stolen and abused.
But welcome to 2011.
This is the lulz lizard era where we do things just because we find it
entertaining watching someone's Facebook picture turn into a penis
and seeing their sister's shocked response is priceless.
Receiving angry emails from the man you just sent 10 dildos to
because he can't secure his Amazon password is priceless.
You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it.
We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us
with what they do with it.
Most of you reading this love the idea of wrecking someone else's
online experience anonymously.
It's appealing and unique.
There are no two account hijackings that are the same.
No two suddenly enraged girlfriends with the same expression
when you admit to killing prostitutes from her boyfriend's
recently stolen MSN account.
And there's certainly no limit to the lulz lizardry
that we all partake in on some level.
And that's all there is to it.
That's what appeals to our Internet generation.
We're attracted to fast changing scenarios.
We can't stand repetitiveness and we want our shot of entertainment
or we just go and browse something else like an unimpressed zombie.
And then they say, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan a few times.
That's Nyan Cat right there.
I'm not sure how you supposed to say that.
Is there is there a particular rhythm to that?
Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan.
No, no, no, no.
That's wrong because Rob should have us.
Yes. OK.
The the actual rhythm intended is Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan.
And I'll just stop there.
It goes. It goes on.
Rob Vincent, ladies and gentlemen, from the Internet.
That's way more than eight times.
It's only there eight times.
It was the gist.
I got the spirit of Nyan, Nyan, Nyan, Nyan.
No, no, no, no, no.
All right. I tried to find out.
I'm sorry. It's one of one of their one of their icons is the Nyan Cat, which is a meme.
N-Y-A-N. Google it.
Yeah, the memes. Oh, boy.
All right. Let's finish this up.
Nobody is truly causing the Internet to slip one way or the other.
It's an inevitable outcome for us humans.
We find we nom, nom, nom.
And there's another Internet meme for you.
We move on to something else that's yummier.
We've been entertaining you one thousand times with one hundred and forty characters or less,
and we'll continue creating things are exciting and new until we're brought to justice,
which we might well be.
But, you know, we just don't give a living bleep at this point.
The first word I did not read.
You'll forget about us in three months time when there's a new scandal to gawk at or a new shiny thing to click on via your 2D light filled rectangle.
People who can make things work better within this rectangle have power over others.
The white hats who charge ten thousand dollars for something we could teach you how to do over the course of a weekend.
The writing you want mentally disabled.
This is the Internet where we screw each other over for a jolt of satisfaction.
There are peons and lulls, lizards, trolls and victims.
There's losers that post crap they think matters and other losers telling them their crap does not matter.
Both times the word crap was not actually used.
In this situation, we are both of these parties because we're fully aware that every single person that reached this final sentence just wasted a few moments
of their time. Thank you, bitches.
Low security.
So, guys, I'm not going to reserve comment on all of this.
I think it's pretty revealing and and rather interesting, some of the things that they brought up.
But I'd sure like to hear your feelings on it and definitely our listeners feelings on if we have time for that.
I off the bat have one question.
I mean, besides this, this is very interesting.
You know, I said a lot. What the heck is a lulz lizard?
Can we get the lulz boat theme song that they have on their on their Web site playing?
I think it's just a love boat.
We'd have to confessor that it is.
But it's yes. So imagine the love boat theme or we'll sing it.
All I all I have to say about this is, you know, some crowds get together and they watch pro wrestling.
This is what we have. And it's just, you know, just intellectually, it is entertaining and it is educational and it may not be politically correct.
But I think we're better off learning than not learning.
It's good to hear. It's good to hear the policy statement, but I'm not sure if this policy statement is going to endear.
The public in their mission.
Didn't somebody say that the lulz will become a legal defense in the next couple of months as a result of these kinds of actions?
People say all kinds of things on the tweety birds.
I'm not sure winning over the public is high on the priority list.
I think basically just stating their their point of view, like it or leave it is what they're doing.
I did think it was interesting, though, that they bring up the possibility of being brought to justice.
We might well be, quote, unquote, brought to justice.
And I thought that's that's rather interesting to have that outlook.
Didn't one of them just get taken down?
Someone was arrested yesterday, I believe, in the UK.
But from what I've heard, that's not one of the people.
That was anonymous, right?
Wasn't it? I don't know who can even keep track of them.
No, I think the UK police had a press release and they were saying, like, oh, we got a little sick guy.
But turned and was like, no, he's not one of ours.
I think that's happened twice now.
We're involved. Yeah, I think that's happened twice now where police somewhere have arrested somebody and trumpeted the fact that they got someone from LulzSec.
And LulzSec, of course, came back with, you know, either that person is not one of us or that person is only marginally involved or or what have you.
Well, it's the right approach if they ever do catch someone.
What kind of pressure do you think Twitter is under?
Because this is how they are getting the message out.
They have over 100,000 followers now.
If if Twitter just shut down that account, obviously they'd move on to another one.
But still, it would it would slow them down a little bit.
But that has not happened.
And I imagine Twitter must be under some kind of pressure.
People would be crying foul so loudly, at least I would hope.
I mean, the United States government was pushing for, you know, Twitter to stay active for people in other parts of the world to get their opinions out.
And then all of a sudden to say, oh, no, no, but we don't like this opinion.
I don't know.
But then, of course, we we know from the cases of of our friends Ropp and Jacob Appelbaum and Brigitte from from Iceland that that Twitter is willing to give over information to those who ask for it on notorious users of their service.
Well, sure, shut down.
Yeah, that's not entirely fair, because what Twitter did was they let the world know that they were being asked.
Google didn't do that.
And Facebook didn't do that, even though undoubtedly they were asked as well.
The people at Twitter appealed this.
And as a result of their appeal, people found out that it was happening in the first place.
And Twitter had no choice legally to deny that information to the FBI or other law enforcement agencies.
They're legally required to turn that over because we live in a free country.
Although, to be fair, they shouldn't be keeping lives like that.
I mean, it seems reasonable, seems reasonable to assume that FBI, sorry, that Twitter has the information about who is posting to the LulzSec account or sorry, what IP address is posting and that the FBI has asked for this information and and that this information has not yet led to an arrest.
So we all know how how reliable an IP address is as a means of identifying a human.
Right.
As a pretty easy to to to to mask that with with something from a different part of the world.
Hey, shall we take some phone calls to one to zero nine to nine hundred?
We should. But no one's calling.
Well, because we didn't give out the phone number.
Well, two one two two zero nine two nine hundred is the phone number.
And I know you just said that, but it takes people a few seconds to dial in.
You have like people listening on the Internet because it takes a few seconds for them to to get out.
Well, while people are calling, we have we have contact from a listener.
This was actually a snail mail that came to the station today, which is regarding something we discussed last week.
It goes, Dear OTH, and this is an anonymous letter.
Dear OTH, I have two comments in response to topics you discussed on your June 15th, 2011 show.
I work for a large company that has a URL filter.
When I attempt to access www.2600.com, the site is blocked and the blocking software lists the reason as, quote, hacking related, unquote.
However, the URL of store.2600.com is not.
And store is actually hosted by Yahoo.
I think it's a Yahoo store.
Yeah. And yeah.
And the second point is regarding your discussion of using digital pagers to annoy somebody by sending their phone number to a large amount of pagers.
This has been used with good success in issue volume 13, issue two, summer 1996.
In the letter section on page 37, there's a warning from F in Denver regarding a porn sting operation that was run by the Postal Service and Denver Police Departments.
This phone number was sent via a little program in BASIC and an auto dial modem to many pagers in the Denver dialing area.
And soon the phone number was disconnected, as noted in volume 13, issue four, page 51.
I had a personal involvement in this, but to this day, my lips have been sealed.
And yeah, the letter is unsigned.
Here's right on top of that, volume 13, number four.
Yeah. Some legal document there.
Awesome. Wow. We have any phone calls yet?
We do. And we've just put you on the air.
Hello. Hi.
What's on your mind?
I was remembering my deceased father used to say that the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union was that in the Soviet Union,
you always had to carry papers around showing that you have the right to be where you were.
And in the United States, you could walk down the street without them.
He'd be turning over in his grave.
Yes. Yes, indeed.
All right. Well, thanks for the call.
Let's move over here.
Hello. Hello.
You're on the air.
Hi, this is CJ calling from Long Island.
I just had a question.
I was cleaning out my garage and I'm a little, you know, a tinkle around from the 70s when I was a kid.
I wanted to show my kids, but I have a black box, a red box, a blue box or any of those things work anymore.
Well, they don't work per se.
But if you actually have these devices, they're tremendously interesting to study and to teach people how the phone network used to work.
And by all means, if you do have such devices, they are valuable.
They're something you should hold on to.
Yeah, I remember the black box used to drop the voltage from like 60 to 40 on a phone line.
And then a black box would fool your your your phone company, your local phone company into thinking that the phone was still ringing after you picked it up.
It only worked on mechanical switches.
So the phone company would see that the phone was ringing for an hour.
And in actuality, you were talking that the remote party would not get billed.
That's right. And then they got wise to that after a while, right?
Then it came out. Nobody would be ringing a phone for an hour.
But you had to talk to the ring.
That was the sucky part about it.
But it was free. People trying to reach us sometimes ring the phone for an hour.
And the red was the red of the blue box that did the coin.
That would be a box for coins.
The red box was for coins.
Blue box was for routing things throughout the network.
It's all really fascinating.
Which is why the twenty six hundred.
That was the hang up tone.
Right. And then that would open an international trunk for which you could do some dialing.
I mean, we'd love to go into this some more and maybe one day we will.
But this is definitely something that begs a lot more information.
Sure. OK, good.
I just wanted to see if these things are still useful or just something to show the kids.
It's sort of a novelty item.
Yeah, they're definitely useful as educational tools.
And you can certainly design your own system.
Thank you very much, guys. I appreciate you.
All right. Thanks for the call.
I guess that's all the time we have for this show.
Oh, dear. It always goes so fast.
We have too much interesting content.
That's our problem. Where will you be next week, Emmanuel?
That's a good question. I am not 100 percent sure.
Either somewhere in the northwest or some other part of the country.
All right. As long as you're sure what country you'll be in, you're in better shape than usual.
Yeah, I'll be here. All right.
Well, until next week. Good night.
Long lasting pill to last.
But I'm feeling I'm caring.
I'm healing. I'm sharing.
I'm sharing. I'm healing.
I'm caring. I'm feeling proud.
Put it down with my income is up.
I take a short position on the long bond.
And my revenue stream has its own cash flow.
My revenue stream has its own cash flow.
I read junk mail. I eat junk food.
I buy junk bonds. I watch trash sports.
I like a rough sex. I like tough love.
My hard drive is hardcore.
No softball.
Oh, girl.
But, but, but, but, of course,
unseemly, impure taste, cheap language,
naughty, saucy, bawdy, raunchy, foul, vile, lewd.
I'm a rude dude, but I'm the real deal.
Lean and mean, cocked, locked and ready to rock.
Rough, tough and hard to bluff.
I take it slow. I go with the flow.
I ride with the tide. I got mine in my stride.
Driving and moving, selling and spending, and jiving and grooving.
Proven well in winning.
Proven proving , well in winning.
I'm feeling, and caring, and dealing, and sharing.
I'm sharing. I'm healing. I'm caring. I'm feeling.
I'm ninety-eight ball ahead of the curve.
On point, on test On messaging off jobs.
You don't need to cohost these bees.
You got no urge to binge and purge.
You can't shut me up. You can't dumb me down.
Because I'm tireless.
And I'm wireless.
I'm a formulated medical miracle.
I've been pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened,
pre-approved, pre-packed, post-dated, freeze-dried,
pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-pickered, pre-pickered.
Pre-cooked, pre-freezed, pre-hosted and freeze-dried.
Pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened,
pre-approved, pre-packed, post-dated, freeze-dried.
Pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-heated,
pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packed, oh, the end.
I'm new wave, but I'm old school.
I wear power ties that tell power lies.
I take power naps and run wake free laps.
I'm new wave, but I'm old school.
I got a personal trainer, a personal shopper,
a personal assistant, a personal agenda.
I'm an unbeliever and an overachiever
Laid-back but fashion-forward
Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance
Super-sized, long-lasting, built to last
Super-sized, sized, long-lasting, built to last
But I'm feeling, I'm caring, I'm healing, I'm sharing
I'm sharing, I'm healing, I'm caring, I'm feeling
I'm new-wave, but I'm old-school
I'm new-school
I'm hanging in, there ain't no doubt
And I'm hanging tough, over and out