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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.
The phone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I hope that's understood.
I hope that's understood.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hello.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And Bernie S.
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
You have a particularly static-y line tonight, Bernie.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Is it a landline or a cell phone?
It is a landline. I mean, I could call back.
No, no, it's all right. I think it might improve.
Sometimes that happens. You just bang the phone or something.
Well, greetings.
Again, programming note, we have coverage of the Democratic National Convention taking place
just about an hour from now here on WBAI, so stay tuned for that.
It's going to be all kinds of fun.
And the most interesting part, I think, is the commentary from Pacifica,
which is well worth tuning into so much better than the TV commentary that you might hear
in various other forums.
And I think we have Bill Clinton speaking tonight, so that's always interesting.
You never know what he's going to say except that his speech has probably been leaked
and we know exactly what he's going to say.
Have you read it?
No, I haven't.
Oh, well, then you don't know what he's going to say.
No, but it's probably out there.
I know that was the case with Romney and with everybody last week,
except for Clint Eastwood. They didn't know what he was going to say.
No one apparently knew what he was going to say.
He didn't know what he was going to say.
Last time they tried that.
Right. Well, no, I thought it was a good move to have something unscripted.
I think it should all be unscripted, but, yeah, good luck having that ever happen again.
All right, some sad news to start the show with.
One of our friends and contributors to this show, the hacker community,
and various other forums has passed away.
Bill SF, who you may have heard years ago on this particular radio program,
and if you attended any of the conferences, the early HOPE conferences,
and certainly a bunch of the European conferences,
he was a big part of that for a number of years.
Bill SF came from San Francisco, hence the SF in his name,
although listening to an old radio program from WUSB called Brain Damage,
which is available on our website if you go to www.2600.com, look for the Brain Damage section.
Somewhere in 1994 he explains his name during one of his visits,
and he said, yes, it means San Francisco, but it also means single frequency,
which for phone freaks that is something that would be kind of an aside,
another kind of inside joke, I guess.
We have an excerpt from this radio program that I'd like to play.
I guess we'll start off with that.
This is actually from 1998, from Election Day 1998,
one of the times that Bill was visiting New York,
and this particular episode is interesting because he's talking about his feelings about this country.
Now Bill had lived in San Francisco most of his life,
and he became an expatriate.
He moved to the Netherlands and was very happy over there,
and that's where he spent the last few decades.
We don't quite know the circumstances of his death and what exactly happened.
We just know that people were worried about him for a couple of weeks,
and they found him in his apartment.
That's really all we know at this point, so we're pretty saddened by this.
He was probably, of all the people I know, he knew the most about signaling,
signaling meaning routing phone calls, the old systems, the foreign systems, the new systems.
He was brilliant as far as engineering things,
and I didn't understand half the things he was doing.
So we're going to remember him for the rest of our lives,
and certainly at every conference we're going to be thinking of him.
This is an excerpt from Election Day 1998 when Bill S.F. was in the studios.
Basically, let's start with you, Bill.
You've been traveling around the country for the last couple of weeks,
for not the first time.
This is about the fourth time I've been in the United States in about the last nine years or so,
and well, this is so far so good.
It's been a very good holiday.
We've had a great time.
I have my friend Yost here, who hopefully will say hello and get the nerve at some point.
We've found a few things shocking about being here.
What's shocking?
We want to know what's shocking.
War on drugs and the basic politics in the U.S. and elections and all that.
The war on drugs continues on.
I've been learning more about this over the past few weeks.
Yes, it continues on, and marijuana sells for $50 for two grams, which is just, I mean, I just went, no way.
We can't give prices out over the air.
Oh, I'm sorry.
But, yeah, I mean, the war on drugs is really out of control here, building prisons left and right.
I was just in Philadelphia this past weekend, and it's unbelievable.
They're building a maximum security federal penitentiary right smack in the middle of town,
and, you know, they have these signs on the construction site saying that it's illegal to take pictures of the building.
It's illegal to take pictures.
I find that amazing.
Of course, we took lots of pictures, and, you know, we'll continue,
and I'll say right on the air, if that's the law, I'm going to break that law left and right.
We take pictures of prisons all over the damn place because these are buildings, you know,
and you stick them in the middle of the city and tell people, oh, you can't take a picture of that.
It's just out of control.
It's also civil disobedience, isn't it?
Well, I guess it's, yeah, it turns into that.
But why build more prisons?
I mean, if you eliminate the war on drugs, you can make a moratorium on the building of prisons,
although I guess a big business has an interest in building prisons because it…
It's an industry.
It inspires a lot of people.
No, it's an industry, and by putting minor drug offenders, by putting computer hackers,
by putting every person you can think of in prison, you make money for these towns,
these businesses that build prisons.
It really is a booming industry, and they estimate that, well,
almost up to 2 million prisoners right now.
So I've heard about almost 1 percent, but I've also heard what is even more scary is that up to 5 percent
of the people in the United States are under direct control of the government,
which means that this is like how Nazi Germany was before the war.
Well, you see, if you're under direct control, at least you know that you're under direct control.
You get those little notices.
Yeah, but if you mess up, you go to prison.
But how about all the rest of us that think we're free,
but actually are just doing exactly what they want us to and supporting these things,
and saying, yeah, you know, there's crime on the streets.
We have to build more prisons to put the people away.
That's foul logic.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
I mean, look at Amsterdam, where Jost and I come from.
It's very free.
I mean, the crime rate is almost nothing.
I mean, one-twentieth the prison population.
I mean, it's night and day.
Well, you know, I attribute that to the fact that you guys don't have guns all over the place.
We don't have guns all over the place, and you shouldn't have guns all over the place in the U.S. either.
I know that's going to generate some calls.
Well, if you look at the way things are, if you look at all the attention that's being drawn towards things,
the authorities are so concerned about speech, about what is being said on the net,
about what people are posting on copyright issues, what you have access to, what you listen to, what you read.
The fact that little kids have access to things that can blow their heads off, that's secondary.
That doesn't matter so much.
But speech, that's a danger.
That's what you've got to lock people up for, for things like that.
You mean this is a situation where the system administrator is responsible in America for what's on his system?
I mean, I run two fairly big servers in Amsterdam, and it's none of my responsibility what's on it.
If somebody complained there was kiddie porn, I would immediately remove it.
But otherwise, I don't have to go checking through all the pages and see what people have up there.
Right, because that turns you into Big Brother.
I'm not Big Brother, no.
You have to look for crimes before they're even committed.
Right, right.
There is an option to do fascist logging on Unix systems.
They say don't use it, but maybe in some countries it's required.
Well, it's like you say, an option.
It's not something that any clear-thinking person, I think, should be running.
Never.
If you're running a system just to keep an eye on everybody, why don't you just be a prison guard?
It would be a lot easier and more direct.
All right, that was Bill SF in one of his appearances at our radio studio.
The oldest studio is actually on 35th Street back in 1998, Election Day 1998.
And I think he was here last in 2004.
So it's been some time.
I haven't really been in touch with him over the years.
So I feel kind of bad about that, learning of his passing over the weekend.
Bernie, any stories that come to mind with Bill?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, the first time I talked with Bill SF, and I immediately knew from the first time I saw his handle earlier,
that it was referred to single frequency, or at least assumed it did.
It made sense because he was a signaling freak.
He called me in the late 80s out of the blue.
You might have given him my phone number, which was fine.
And he just called, and we just started talking, and he was such an interesting guy.
And he explained to me why he'd moved to the Netherlands for freedom.
And he was so excited about living in what he considered a free society in comparison to the United States.
And one conversation that really came to mind when I heard of his passing this past week was that
we were discussing the telephone system in East Germany before the wall came down, the GDR, German Democratic Republic.
They had a unique telephone system there that had wiretapping as a built-in integral feature.
Every line in the entire telephone system was automatically ready to wiretap.
It was like a built-in feature.
And we remarked how scary and evil that seemed, that a telephone system,
a nationwide telephone system could be designed from the ground up with built-in surveillance as an integral feature.
And then about five years later, our own government, the head of the FBI here, Louis Freeh at the time,
intensely lobbied Congress to enact CALEA, the Communications Act for Law Enforcement Assistance,
which basically mandated the same thing for all telephone companies in the United States.
So I guess he got out of dodge at a good time.
But one humorous story was that I remember one of the early HOPE conferences.
It might have been the first HOPE conference or the second one, the Anand HOPE.
It wasn't the second because he was in Holland for that one.
It was the first HOPE conference, I think it was.
Or it might have been H2K, one of those early HOPE conferences.
He gave a talk about phone phreaking and signaling, and he told one story.
I'll just have to make it brief.
They were playing around with circumventing different systems and so forth.
He and a friend accidentally took down Belgium.
So they accidentally cut off Belgium from the rest of the world's telephone systems just for a few minutes.
And they panicked and they got it back connected again.
That was pretty funny. They took down Belgium.
Yeah, well, that's the kind of thing that can happen, I guess.
They fixed it.
They probably made it better, too.
And if people want to see those videos, they're available for free online.
Just go to store.2600.com, click on the DVDs and video section, and just click on the talk having to do with boxing or phone phreaking.
And you'll see a little play button, and you can actually watch the video and see Bill in his prime back there in the 1990s where he was giving these talks, and 2000 as well.
Yeah, it's quite a loss to the hacker community because this is a guy that, like a true hacker, would explain as long as you would listen how certain things worked.
And I know a bunch of people like that, but Bill is somebody that really got it.
Yeah, and along those same lines, there is a text file that he wrote called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Phone System, Phreaking in the 90s.
I think that turned out to be an article, too, maybe in 1993 in a magazine.
Yeah, possibly.
It's online as well.
This is still online everywhere, and I recommend if you're at all interested in the tech behind the phone system, check it out because not only does he describe the state of the system as it was back then, but he does it in a really relatable way.
He explains to you not only what it's doing, but why it's doing it, why certain things do work in certain ways.
And it's a really well put together intro, and it's just really indicative of the sort of knowledge this guy had rattling around in his head.
Yeah, and one of the things that we would always discuss was the fact that boxing, which is basically signal routing, in-band signaling where you can, say, send a 2600 hertz tone down the line and seize a long distance trunk and use MF tones to route things and all kinds of other tones.
In the 90s, early 2000s, he would say that it's not dead.
People say it's dead, but it's not.
There are still places you can route phone calls that way where it's not all out-of-band signaling yet.
And he would always know where those places were.
He was an expert.
Somehow he kept track of it all, and his knowledge was simply unbelievable.
And I just hope we're able to preserve that knowledge and just learn more about the things that he was teaching people and experimenting with himself.
He was quite a character, quite a person.
I remember one time he was coming.
This might have been in 2004, the last time he was here.
I mistakenly gave him the wrong address.
I said 100 Wall Street instead of 120.
And I remember him calling me from inside the wrong building.
And I wasn't aware.
I was upstairs.
I wasn't aware that he was in the wrong building.
So I was talking to the guy at the desk and saying, no, it's okay.
Send him up.
He's with the station.
And they sent him up in the wrong building just because I talked to the guy on the phone and said, yeah, it's okay.
Send them up.
So we inadvertently found a big security hole that that particular building had where anybody on the phone could basically say, yes, send them up.
And I think the MCI was in that building at the time.
They might still be there.
So that was a bit of fun.
We had all kinds of adventures like that where we inadvertently would wind up breaking security or just having fun experiences.
And I hung out with him once with our friend Rob from Holland out in California where Bill is from.
And I think that was the first time I met him was out in California on his own turf.
And quite a lot of interesting times there, experiments, playing with phones, things like that.
It's the kind of stuff that it's hard to share but impossible to forget.
Yeah.
And Rob also posted on his blog a note about Bill SF passing away.
And the comments on that post read like a who's who of the freaking community circa 1998.
And it's really touching to see this outpouring of support and remembrance and notes from his apparently what seems to be his family members and things like that.
All right.
Sad day in the world of hackers.
So we move on to what's going on in the news.
Various interesting things that of course are of interest to all of us.
Not the least of which is this latest thing from the hacker group Antisec and the anti-hacker group FBI that basically have the two of them sparring with each other.
This is the news report that we received.
One million Apple UDIDs, universal device.
That's how you say it, right?
You don't say you did.
What's that, Bernie?
Unique device identifiers.
Well, it says here in the story universal device IDs.
Well, they would have to be unique because they are.
No, the other story says unique.
So yeah, I guess we got to write a letter to the people that wrote the first article.
Well, in any event, these one million Apple UDIDs were released to the public along with notification center tokens, device names, device IDs.
Now, none of this data is personal information, but it can be tied back to device owners, names, and addresses.
Now, Antisec, the group that released the data, they say that this one million, this number of one million is just part of over 12 million UDIDs they obtained from an FBI-owned laptop, which was compromised back in March of 2012.
The total dump supposedly contains names, addresses, cell phone numbers, and all kinds of other information about the device owners that they have taken out of what they released to the public.
So now, if this is true, this is something that affects almost anybody who owns an Apple device, and you can't just change that number.
You can't change a UDID like you can change a password.
But basically, the FBI is saying, no, that's not what happened.
They're saying that it's totally false and that the FBI never had this info in the first place.
Why would we have this info?
Why would we have all the info on people who have iPhones and iPads and whatever else, UDIDs, whatever devices those go in?
In an official statement that was emailed to journalists, the FBI said that at this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.
Now, Antisec responded to that, and they basically said, this is far from denial.
And they continue to taunt the FBI by saying, before you deny too much, remember, we're sitting on three terabytes of additional data.
We have not even started.
Wow.
So I don't know where this is all coming from, but all of a sudden, we have a very interesting battle going on here.
Mike, what do you think?
I mean, it's really hard to know who has less credibility.
Obviously, one of them is wrong.
I don't know how the FBI, like the FBI press office, could possibly know that no one who works for the FBI has ever had a copy of this data.
Well, supposedly, the guy whose laptop it was is the guy who tries to recruit hackers to work for the FBI.
So that's a good indication of who might have that information.
I mean, the whole thing is bizarre.
One thing that seems to be the case is that the data probably didn't come from Apple itself.
It seems to have come from some sort of app developer who evidently, at least allegedly, either gave this data to the FBI or this company itself had its systems broken into.
And so no one's really fessing up to being the maker of the app where this data came from.
One sort of interesting theory, which is supported by some circumstantial evidence, is that the app in question is actually an identity theft protection app, which would be wonderfully ironic if true.
But we're still trying to get that confirmed.
The laptop belonged to Special Agent Christopher Stangle.
And they say that they breached his notebook through a JavaScript exploit.
Java.
It's a Java exploit.
Okay.
And someone just went to a website.
They were lured to a website.
And by going there, all of a sudden, their laptop was able to be accessed.
Is that what basically the story is?
That's the claim, yeah.
All right.
Well, you know, they did produce a million names.
So that does tend to lend credence to the fact that they have something and they got it from somewhere.
And, of course, back in the late 90s, Intel had in the Pentium 3 processor, they were talking about putting in a unique serial number for every processor that would basically work in the same way that these unique identifiers in Apple products work.
And people freaked out about it.
You know, it was a privacy risk.
It was far more dangerous than it could be useful.
And eventually, Intel backed off on doing that.
And now it's a matter, of course, that all these devices have this unique identifier that cannot be changed by any means.
And we're stuck with them.
So this UDID is Apple has it.
Android has something similar that's, like, possible to change but very, very difficult to change.
So it's basically unchangeable.
And the number one use of this identifier is for advertising, right?
So if you have application A on your phone and application B, the way that these applications can know that you're the same device, you're the same person, is to note that you have the same UDID.
So then they can correlate.
They can be like, oh, look what he's doing on Facebook.
We're going to, in this other app, sell him, you know, books for putting faces in and correlate this data that you might have thought would be separate.
And this is almost a bigger scandal than the fact that a million of them got out or 12 million even.
But these databases of 12 million and even more, these databases exist in the hands of companies, advertising networks in particular, that you wish wouldn't have them.
So I think it will be interesting to see if this causes some sort of backlash against the collection of this data in the first place or just a backlash against giving it to the FBI.
It's also interesting.
I'm reading about this Java zero day thing that allegedly the FBI agent fell victim to.
Also, in addition, the email addresses, this was a while back, the email addresses of 40 international cybercrime investigators wound up being leaked.
And it's interesting because what happened was they say the FBI may have inadvertently played a part in the attack.
Now, earlier this year, an Irish citizen with the handle of palladium was arrested, charged with having intercepted an FBI conference call, which authorities say he then provided to LulzSec and anonymous leader Sabu.
Now, unknown to this palladium guy, Sabu was actually an informant that we reported on earlier this year.
Accordingly, the leak call got released.
But the names of all the people that were about to be arrested and some other investigative details were curiously blanked out of the audio.
And I was curious about that myself, why that was happening.
So in retrospect, it appears, according to this Information Week article, that the FBI excised information from the recording before allowing it to be released so that they wouldn't interfere with the investigations.
But they apparently didn't do that for the email addresses of the 40 law enforcement agents who had been included in the conference call invite.
They got leaked by the FBI because they didn't wipe out that information.
So it's interesting and quite a saga, and I'm sure we'll hear more about that in the future.
Yeah, I mean, it's going to have to come out at some point where this data actually came from originally and how Antisec got a hold of it.
And both of those questions are very interesting.
Yeah, you know, and I would say if they have 12 million, let's think about that number for a second.
12 million, is that all the people who have iPhones in the country?
No, far from it.
I don't know.
It seems like a lot of people have iPhones, but I don't know how many millions do.
So this goes with the theory that it's from some app with 12 million users, which is a possibility.
Well, I would suggest that whoever has this data contact people who are, say, journalists or people that could help verify the story, who they see their names in that list and say, look, we have this information.
And that way they can refute whatever the FBI is saying and say, yeah, they do have this information.
And where did they get it from?
So apparently, in order to talk to the media, you have to work for Gawker and put a tutu on and photograph it with a shoe on your head.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
So if you just go on Gawker.com, and I think it's still there.
I do know that there was a guy with a shoe on his head at our keynote address at Hope.
Does that have something to do with this?
I don't know.
Maybe.
All right.
During the Yes Men talk.
I don't think it's related, but I could be wrong.
So there's two people with shoes on their heads and they're not okay.
There was a demand from Antisec that they would only talk to the media if this specific journalist from Gawker posted a photograph of himself in a tutu with a shoe on his head.
And he met that demand.
So maybe there'll be some more information as a result.
Yeah.
What reporter would not do that, given that kind of a demand?
I mean, come on.
Journalism 101.
It's a great photograph.
You should go look at it.
Yeah.
I'm dying to.
Staying with Apple for a moment here.
You hear about this.
There's a new Apple patent that has been granted to Apple.
Basically, this patent could prevent academic cheating and recording of things inside the cinema by basically disabling certain functions of your iPhone, such as the camera.
The camera that can record certain things.
But what's interesting is, according to this, here's what it says.
Here's what Apple says.
As wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices, and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these devices in various social and professional settings.
The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate, and even threaten people in sensitive venues.
For example, cell phones with loud ringers frequently disrupt meetings, the presentation of movies, religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, academic lectures, and test-taking environments.
So the solution here is to be able to force these devices to enter sleep mode when entering a quote-unquote sensitive area.
Now, according to something that Apple says later on in this statement, and listen to this very carefully, covert police or government operations may require complete blackout conditions.
Translation, the ability to turn everybody's phone off or turn off certain functions of your phone in a particular area, such as, say, outside a convention, in a demonstration area.
That's something that they're seriously looking into and developing.
Wow.
So the only good news here is that Apple has patented this technology, and Apple has recently shown itself to be a vigorous enforcer of its patents.
So that means, at least for the duration of the patent, you will be able to avoid these restrictions by purchasing a device from another company.
You really think that's going to hold?
I can hope, can't I?
But, like, these evil things combined in incompatible ways?
How broad could the patent possibly be?
A device to disable a function on a phone?
They can't own all of that, right?
They own a patent on, like, black lines with curves.
Do they?
Yeah.
They got a billion dollars for it.
All right.
I was experimenting with those.
I'll stop now.
I just love that the overview of this patent means that Apple had to put into words a paragraph describing how disruptive their own product can be.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a good point.
Bernie, yes, you have something?
Well, I just wanted to point out that if people are worried about this in the future, if such a feature gets implemented in phones and is controlled by entities they don't trust, bring a backup device.
Like a camera, not a camera that's built into your cell phone that's controlled by Apple or government agencies.
If you just bring us a standalone camera, you can take all the pictures you want.
But when you put all your eggs in one basket and that basket is controlled by third parties who you may not trust or don't even know what they're doing, then you're putting yourself at risk.
But one thing that standalone camera can't do as well as your cell phone camera is something like live streaming without a bunch of other equipment strapped to your back and a whole other chunk of infrastructure being used.
So that's one thing that you would not be able to do.
If you remember last year at Occupy Wall Street, live streaming became a major deal.
People over the world were able to watch what was going on live.
It was not being covered by any media other than that.
And so, yeah, if you have your own camera and you record it and play it back later someplace, first of all, you've cut the number of people recording things by a huge amount.
But second of all, there's a long delay or at least a crucial delay that you lose that live element of it.
So, yeah, it's a form of control of a technology that the authorities are aching to exercise.
Staying with Apple, though, for a moment, there's this other issue.
It hasn't been a good week for Apple, I don't think.
They basically have been rejecting this app called Drones Plus.
It's basically an app that sends users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robot kills somebody in one of America's many undeclared wars.
Apple keeps blocking the Drones Plus program from its App Store and therefore from iPhones everywhere.
They say the content is objectionable and crude.
Now, I don't know, I don't have an iPhone myself, but I imagine that there's plenty of crude things in apps these days.
And you just have to wonder why would they block this information that basically tells people where drones are attacking human beings.
Because they can and because they've decided to.
And once they've decided to, they're going to come up with an endless litany of excuses to show that they're right.
Why did they decide to in the first place?
Is this a national defense thing?
Is this something where they just don't want people to know what's going on?
Because they have this power over their users and it's a corrupting power.
But that doesn't address the why.
It tells me that yes, they have all this power and they can exercise, but why do they find this objectionable?
Why is this something that we should not see?
And that just seems like a strange decision.
There are many strange decisions taken by their app review team.
There was a particularly notable case a couple of years ago that I think we covered on this program
where a political cartoonist had his app blocked from the Apple App Store until he won the Peel of Surprise.
And he was able to get some press for the fact that he had been blocked.
And they sort of backed down.
So maybe these guys will get some press as well and back down.
But Apple wants to control what its users do.
And for some reason they think that knowing where people are being killed by the U.S. military shouldn't be allowed.
I would love to have an app like that.
I mean it sounds a bit morbid, but when a drone strike occurs, Drones Plus catalogs it,
presents a little map of the area where the strike took place marked by a push pin.
And you can look at media reports of a given strike and read some basic facts.
It's something that everybody should have or be aware of in any event.
What I'm curious about though is has this been submitted to other app places such as Android or anything like that?
My understanding is that they have not at least yet rewritten it to run on non-Apple devices,
which is something you have to do.
Did you see this? I'm trying to find exactly where it is and failing.
You're looking up an app on your own phone?
I'm trying to find some data and I should have brought it with me.
Obama was finally asked about the drone strikes by some random local television reporter.
It's kind of amazing that this finally happened.
The national White House press corps just avoids the topic entirely.
Local reporters aren't on the same leash that the press corps is.
I imagine somebody in North Carolina that just managed to ask him a question directly.
He had a five minute interview and rather than being like,
he actually asked some serious questions.
Obama was like, I'm not going to admit that we have a drone program,
which is absurd because everyone knows that they do.
It's funny that he would say that.
But it's great and everyone should watch the clip and everyone should email us to remind me what city this took place in.
Emmanuel?
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I think you make a good point.
The White House press reporter team, they could get booted off.
They could just be not granted admission to the White House anymore if they ask an embarrassing question like that.
Yes, they tow the line. They really do.
It's a good question.
But I'd like to know whether the U.S. government, like the Pentagon,
contacted Apple and said we would like you to remove this app from your app store
or whether Apple took it upon themselves.
We'll probably never know, but it's interesting.
Personally, if Apple found that application to be objectionable, obnoxious,
I find the practice of our tax dollars being used to just drop bombs and blow up people who've had no trial.
Sometimes they're even Americans.
They drop bombs on overseas.
I find that even more objectionable than a piece of computer software on your phone.
I think every time something like this happens, every drone strike,
we should translate it to say what that would mean for the space program if they didn't do that.
Because they're always doing that for the space program.
They're always saying, well, if we didn't go to Mars, we could do this.
But let's do it the other way.
Let's say if we didn't strike this particular place in Pakistan,
we could have gone to the moon or something like that.
I'm sure it's not the moon, but some place.
Or you fed children.
There's all kinds of things you can do with money.
Always bring up feeding children when it comes to NASA,
but they never do that when it comes to the military.
They could feed.
They never do that.
That debate never happens.
It always happens just when you're talking about space exploration.
How many Pakistani children could you feed for the cost of killing one of them?
I bet a lot.
You can't feed the Pakistani children that you just blew up.
They won't eat anymore.
Yeah, Mike.
Well, the ones who aren't dead yet.
All right.
But, yeah, we're getting a little bit morbid here.
But I'm just trying to steer it in a more positive direction
and also kind of turn the naysayers around.
All right.
We have to move on.
Speaking of hacker groups making claims and stuff like that,
supposedly Mitt Romney's tax returns are in the hands of a team of hackers
who plan on releasing them publicly at the end of the month
unless a ransom is paid.
Bad idea, guys.
I mean, how are you going to pick up the ransom?
It's never going to happen.
Just release the information.
He has to release it at some point anyway, doesn't he?
It's got to get out there.
Evidently not.
He doesn't have to release his tax returns.
He's not?
Yeah, but don't they always release them in the end somehow?
Isn't it public information?
No?
Don't have to.
Maybe his tax returns while he's in office or something are more public,
but I don't think he ever has to go back.
Okay.
Anybody who has Romney's tax returns,
it's public service to humanity to release them
because this guy wants to be the leader of the free world.
Well, okay.
The free world while he makes it less free, yeah.
Yeah, whatever.
But the point is if you have this information, share the information.
That's what the hacker spirit is all about.
And this is something that I think very few people would argue
that we don't have any right to know.
And obviously there's something in there that he doesn't want us to see.
So let's see that.
All right.
Locek, still in the news,
a man suspected of being a member of the hacking group Locek
has been arrested in the United States according to the FBI.
Rinaldo Rivera, 20 years old,
accused of being involved in hacking Sony Pictures
in May and June of last year
in which thousands of personal details were published online.
Remember those hacks?
In fact, you'll see them on the hacker calendar,
the dates that that happened.
It was news.
But get this.
If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison,
15 years in prison for basically hacking into a machine
and revealing information.
I mean, you know, if I basically bought into everything
that people on the other side say
and agree that this caused harm and damage and things like that,
how do you justify such a lengthy prison time
for somebody who simply hacked into a machine
and released information?
Sony Pictures is still around.
They're still doing quite well.
It was an embarrassment, yes.
It was something that might have given them a black eye.
But how severe do we want to get with these penalties?
15 years.
And we say this with a straight face.
You know, people convicted of violent crimes
don't get that kind of prison sentence.
So it's really sending a message in a very serious way to people
not to mess with corporate America,
not to mess with computer systems that belong to powerful entities.
Yeah, go back to beating people up physically
because that will get you much less of a penalty.
Yeah, apparently.
Right, Bernie?
What's that?
Don't people who commit violent crimes get less penalties in this?
It usually works out to be the case.
People can have literally gotten away with murder
in like a 5, 10, 15-year sentence.
And hackers could be facing even more time for that,
for something that harmed no person.
It's really weird.
Yeah, I'd like to know who was actually harmed
by having this information released.
Okay, maybe it's an embarrassment.
Yeah, okay, but whose life was destroyed?
Who lost a significant amount of money?
And don't give me corporate nonsense.
Tell me people who actually lost something.
I don't think it exists, not in this particular case anyway.
Yeah, it was an embarrassment for the government,
for corporate America,
but it was also a learning moment
where hopefully they improved their security a bit
and maybe stopped doing stupid things.
Okay, more in the world of people being arrested.
One of the founders of Pirate Bay was arrested in Cambodia,
Gottfried Stratholme Varg,
one of the founders of the file-sharing website,
the Pirate Bay,
arrested in Cambodia after an international warrant
was issued following a conviction in Sweden
for copyright violations.
They tracked him down all the way to Cambodia.
Pirate Bay, though, they're still up and running, right?
I haven't freaked with them lately.
Last time I tried it, it was maybe a month or two ago,
but I think we would have heard if they went down.
Yeah, but it's amazing how they really spare no expense
in tracking people down that rub them the wrong way.
Apparently, Cambodia does not have an extradition treaty with Sweden,
so they have to make it up as they go along.
It's kind of, I guess, exciting.
Maybe Julian should go over there.
Wow, okay.
He has to get there first.
Take the secret tunnel from the Ecuadorian embassy
to the Cambodian embassy in London.
And then, yeah.
And then he's, I don't know, and then maybe BMO.
I don't know.
I'm sure there are ways to do it.
If he could do any of these things, he could get to Ecuador,
which I guess is the place to be if you're Assange.
We'll see.
What else?
The owner of a TV streaming links site, Surf the Channel,
was sentenced to four years jail time at Newcastle Crown Court in the UK.
Anton Vickerman was previously found guilty of conspiracy to defraud
for facilitating copyright infringement.
The landmark case follows a sting operation by the MPAA.
Yeah, they run sting operations.
They partnered with the UK Federation Against Copyright Theft
to obtain evidence against the site operator.
In 2010, surfthechannel.com was among the most visited streaming link websites
on the internet.
The site had more than 400,000 visitors a day
who were mostly looking for popular TV shows.
And again, you know, what's the big deal with people looking for popular TV shows
which are broadcast for free anyway?
And here this guy is getting sent to jail for four years
for basically helping these corporations advertise their products,
which is what TV shows are.
So I don't get it. I don't get it.
Yeah, once again, running a link website like that
where this person, I assume, was not uploading the material himself.
He was just showing other people where it was,
which is basically the equivalent to me telling you that,
hey, if you go search for your favorite TV show on YouTube,
you'll probably find some material put up there
that wasn't put up by the copyright holder.
Don't tell me that.
You've just committed a crime by telling me this.
Now I'm responsible for all of those copyright violations on YouTube.
Oh boy. Yeah, you're responsible now.
That's how it works. That is how it works.
Bernie, do you think this reflects at all on the O'Dwyer case
that we've been reporting on?
Well, it's interesting.
There must be some difference between this case and the O'Dwyer case
because...
Yeah, he was never charged in the U.K.
Exactly. Lawyers were saying that he had not violated any U.K. law,
whereas this guy was charged and convicted.
So there's probably some difference.
What it is, I don't know.
I haven't found that in any of the reporting yet,
but there's got to have been some difference.
Or maybe they changed the law in the U.K.
after Richard O'Dwyer had committed the foul,
the inexcusable act of posting links on a website telling people,
hey, you can get this stuff over there if you want.
By the way, next week at this time,
we're broadcasting an interview with Julia O'Dwyer, Richard O'Dwyer's mom.
Kyle and I visited her in the U.K., I believe in June,
and quite an interview.
And we'll be checking in, updating the case next week as well.
So she is amazing.
She has gone to bat for her son.
As she told us, don't get a mom mad.
Don't interfere with a mother's love for her kid with this kind of nonsense
because they're trying to extradite him to the United States
for alleged crimes committed in the U.K.
by running a linking website which was not considered a crime in the U.K.
It's very scary and an important case to follow.
So we'll be having that interview next week at this time.
And it's something that will be a precedent for many other people over there
that corporate America wants to have in their clutches.
All right, what else?
The hugely popular sports streaming and download site Roja Director,
I don't know if I'm saying that right,
has won its battle with the United States more than one and a half years
after the feds took the domain names of the Spanish company.
The authorities have now dropped their lawsuit,
meaning that the domains will soon be returned.
Roja Director will become available again on its .com domain,
marking yet another shameful episode
in the overbroad U.S. war on online copyright infringement.
And as so often happens in these cases,
the U.S. government didn't lose in court.
They just decided their own position was indefensible
and stopped the proceedings.
So this does not set a precedent, unfortunately,
that can be used to prevent further abuses of this power in the future.
This is the second case that we know about.
The first was a French music website called Deja's One,
however they pronounce it.
And they had a similar situation where their domain was taken away
and suddenly they got it back but no one will tell them why
or how they can keep it.
And so the U.S. government is just going to go around
seizing domains and maybe sometimes they'll have a reason to
and sometimes they won't.
And we'll never know the limits of their powers.
Very true.
Also in the news, Kim.com has had $6 million in seized assets
released to him following a high court ruling.
The multi-millionaire founder of Mega Upload
has been fighting for his money and assets
since they were frozen by police in January.
The funds were released to allow .com
There really is his last name, .com.
He changed it.
The funds were released to allow .com to pay $2.6 million in legal fees
as well as $1 million for future costs
and $1 million for the rent of his Coatesville residence.
.com wants to purchase the mansion and could legally do so
at the end of next month.
.com and his three co-accused
face copyright racketeering and money laundering charges in the U.S.
and, of course, they're trying to extradite them as well.
So that's yet another case to be following over the months ahead.
Manuel?
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I just want to point out that story also says that
a court ruling in that jurisdiction in New Zealand
found that the search warrants used to carry out that raid in January
with the helicopters and the stormtroopers,
that raid, the search warrants were completely invalid.
So, um...
And remember, this was the U.S. government
that pushed the New Zealand government
to perform those searches.
So this stuff is...
You couldn't write this stuff.
It's just unbelievable.
Yeah, well, we have to keep paying attention
and thanks to our listeners for sending us information
on all of these stories and more.
That does make a big difference.
We'll be taking phone calls in just a moment.
But first, let's see what some listeners are saying via email.
And, of course, you can write to us,
We love to hear from you,
especially when you say critical things,
which this person is about to do.
Okay.
I have become so disgusted
with the caller segments at the end of the show
that I have considered skipping them.
In today's ADD world of news bits in 140 characters,
I can understand becoming accustomed
to concise information,
but demanding that listeners make a salient statement
in 30 seconds or less is unreasonable.
Did we ever do that?
Did we demand that they make a...
I think in the case of rebel,
if that's what you're referring to,
we sometimes move on
because we know where that's going to go.
And if you've been listening to the show
since the early 1990s,
you would know that as well.
But I think once people actually begin speaking,
we hear them out.
Am I wrong on that?
I think we do.
You know, sometimes there's a reason not to,
but it's pretty rare.
It's rare that we cut somebody off.
What I was objecting to a few weeks ago
were silences, long silences,
or people being confused,
or people saying,
hang on while I turn down my radio
and then taking a trip all the way across the room
and coming back.
Or people calling in just because
they wanted to hear me spell something again,
which takes time away from other people
who have something unique to say.
Things like that.
You know, this is the only letter we got
that basically didn't like this.
But I stand by.
I stand by maintaining some standards.
Now, it's not all on our callers.
There's something about our system
that I think could be improved as well.
What a lot of commercial radio stations do
is they put you on hold.
They screen the calls.
Now, we don't do that
because I think it takes away from the spontaneity.
But what a lot of commercial radio stations do
is they pick up the phone,
say, who are you?
What do you want to talk about?
Where are you calling from?
And then they send a little message
to the people in the studio saying,
we've got Bob from Houston on line three
and he wants to talk about Mitt Romney
or something like that.
And then we know all that,
but that takes away from the spontaneity.
But what the person on the other end hears,
they hear the radio station,
and I think they hear it in delay
so that they're not confused
by the radio being live
and then they're on
before it gets to them live on the radio.
So yeah, you do have to sort of compensate for that.
It's a little bit tricky,
but I maintain it can be done.
I've worked in radio for a while
and I've seen it get done before.
So it's not really that unreasonable,
I don't think.
But let's continue with this letter.
Some topics require a little bit of backstory.
Some answers to questions
beg follow-up questions.
Some listeners don't have English
as a first language,
to name a few reasons,
and I don't really see how that applies
to any of this
because that's not the problem.
The problem is basically at...
You know what?
Let me demonstrate it.
Let me demonstrate it.
I've got a recording here.
This is the week that I just decided...
Yeah, I was a little stressed out.
I had been driving
through flooded streets of New York
and I'd gotten here late
and I simply asked
that a few guidelines be followed
and you're going to hear the guidelines,
but then you're also going to hear
kind of a collage
of what followed the guidelines.
Listen to this.
We're going to take phone calls.
212-209-2900
if you have any questions for our guests
or any other comments
on other things going on
in the hacker world,
in the technological world,
in the world in general.
But please,
a couple of notes in advance.
Speak when you're spoken to.
In other words,
when we say you're on the air,
that's when you begin speaking
and turn down your radio
and try to talk about something
that has to do with
something we're talking about.
Do you think this is going to work?
You know,
I never really tried it before,
but it just seems like
whenever we take phone calls
that we get a lot of confusion sometimes.
So I'm hoping that doesn't happen.
212-209-2900.
Let's see if it happens.
And good evening.
You're on off the hook.
See?
This is what I'm talking about,
the silence.
You know,
all you got to do is talk.
We're going to move on to the next person.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Okay, you know,
we don't have time.
We only have a few minutes.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Hello?
Hi.
Okay, you know,
that counts as not having your radio turned on either.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Yeah, hi.
Hi.
Quickly now.
Quickly.
Yeah, let me just turn this radio down.
All right.
I don't know what it is.
You're not getting the memo, folks.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Yeah, hi.
Hi.
Okay, that's too long.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Too long.
What is going on here?
It's like a plot of some sort.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
I am an enchanter.
Okay, that's wonderful.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Too long.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up.
Okay, that was a few weeks ago.
You know, I try to be nice,
but sometimes my patience is tried.
And yeah, there was a bit of editing there
because there were a couple of calls between those ones
that actually people were speaking pretty quickly,
but we have so little time, so little time.
Go ahead.
I have confidence in our listeners tonight.
I think they'll do a good job.
I do want to finish this letter.
Oh, sorry.
Because I do believe people should be given the chance to speak,
and this is a good opportunity to do that.
My favorite calls from the past were callers
who were given a couple of minutes
and were there for some back and forth in the dialogue.
That's basically disappeared in the last year or two.
I don't know what show you're listening to,
but we have lots of back and forth.
Also, answer immediately or get hung up on as getting old.
I don't know how it got old in one week, but fine.
As someone who called the show and off the wall many years ago,
I recall the number of rings it took to get through.
After hearing the same repetitive rings,
sometimes for over four minutes,
it's hard to get your brain in gear immediately
when you finally hear a greeting on the other end of the line.
I don't know.
If you hear somebody say hi,
really because you've been hearing rings for four minutes,
you can't say hi back.
You have to wait five seconds before saying anything.
I'm not sure I understand how that works.
In addition, it's reasonable not to give people a second
to turn down their radio.
Who is realistically going to turn off their radio
to sit and listen to rings for four minutes
with nothing to do in the meantime?
Good point, but does your radio have to be so far away
that you have to get up to turn it off
and we have to wait for you to come back?
Sometimes I've seen that go on for up to 10 seconds.
Our listeners deserve better than that.
You don't need to hear people wandering around their house
turning down the radio.
You put the radio next to you so that you can turn it down
as soon as you hear my voice on the phone.
It's not that hard.
I imagine I can't be the only listener
who is losing patience with the impatience.
Losing patience with the impatience, that's classic.
I like that line.
Impatience demonstrated with listener phone calls
at the end of the show.
Actually, you are the only person who's written in.
I'm sure there's other people that feel the same way,
but just so you know, you are the only one to have written in.
And only one person has written in
complimenting me too, out of fairness.
I feel sorry for the callers.
I'm sure many people with enlightening information
have been cut off because they couldn't switch
from waiting to talking in a split second.
That's more like a couple of seconds.
With the current state of affairs,
I personally no longer have interest in calling the show
and can't see how anyone has the willingness
to put up with the public humiliation
that some callers receive.
Okay, first of all, for it to be public humiliation,
you got to say something so you can be identified.
If you're silent and I hang up on you,
how is that public humiliation?
Nobody knows who you are.
So yeah, I think you're being a bit too sensitive here.
If you just speak up a little quicker,
then none of this will be a problem.
Other than the caller segment, it's been a great show.
Keep up the good work.
Keeping the general populace informed on tech matters.
Give your listeners a break.
Devoted listener of 10 years.
Noli, thank you so much for your letter.
Seriously, thanks for writing in.
We do appreciate it.
And here's a letter from William.
I listened to your show late at night.
The best show you did was when you were slightly late
for a show a few weeks ago
where you were put in a brave, daring mood.
I'm always in a brave, daring mood.
The result of your fighting through a rainstorm
or whatever wants an impetus.
That's all it takes.
An impetus for you to be impatient with the callers
who weren't sounding off quick enough
when it was their turn to speak on the air.
I thought this was hilarious.
Wish you would do it more often.
Well, thanks, William, for that.
I don't really want to keep doing that.
I just hope that we can have back-and-forth dialogue
that goes quickly.
Yes, Mike.
Well, we're not going to have much dialogue.
It's almost time to end the show.
All right.
Well, this will be easy then.
Let's take a call.
Good evening.
You are on Off The Hook.
Hi.
See, right away.
They speak right away.
Isn't that good?
You're a very good caller so far.
Thank you.
Can you comment on the Samsung-Apple patent fight?
And then can you also make the connection
to the service systems,
which cooperates most with the government?
AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprinter, Verizon tying up.
Okay.
Thanks for that question.
The only critique I have of that call
is that it was made from a cell phone,
which sounded like crap.
But that's more endemic of society today,
not your fault.
Does anybody have anything to address on that issue?
I think the answer to the second question
is all of them cooperate with the government.
As for the patent thing,
we alluded to it a bit earlier in the show.
I don't think it's good for anyone except Apple,
but maybe I'm wrong.
I don't know.
Samsung actually has a billion dollars to spare,
which is kind of crazy to think about.
So who knows?
Okay.
Any other comments on that?
There was kind of a clever hoax going around
about a week ago where they were saying
supposedly Samsung was paying its fine totally
in nickels brought on trucks,
and it would be a ridiculous amount of nickels.
That was on the internet, wasn't it?
So it must be true.
So it was obviously a hoax
because you could look up the number of nickels
required for this,
and it was like 20 times greater
than the number of nickels produced annually
by the U.S. Mint.
I just wish people would take the time
to do their research.
Yeah, but couldn't they have old nickels?
They wouldn't have to get new nickels.
Like 20 years worth of nickels,
I think we would notice.
I wouldn't.
Let's take another phone call.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Yes.
I'd like to mention the fact that
you know why toll-free numbers
are running out of 800 numbers?
Because every time you have a vanity number,
like 800 lawyers,
you know, when somebody wants a number,
it's taken over.
You mentioned this once before
on one of your shows.
Well, thanks for paying attention,
but I think that if the listeners took a vote,
this would be the kind of call
that we disconnect within 30 seconds
because, you know, it's Rebel
and it's tradition,
and we all love tradition, right?
I wasn't cruel by doing that.
All right, good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Speak up.
Hi.
Hi, what's up?
I'm not here.
I want to answer a question about stories.
Did we have a question about storage?
Okay, well, answer the question.
Okay, great.
I'm debating as to what kind of storage
options to use.
Sounds like you have a question about storage.
All right.
One of those storage services,
not knowing what kind of technology
we'll be looking at
in the next four or five years.
Any ideas about any suggestions?
What kind of things are you storing?
How big?
Well, I'm storing photographs.
A lot of photographs.
I have about 6,000 photographs to store.
I have business papers
and other documents that I'd like to store.
I scan them.
My suggestion is, first of all,
store everything locally on a hard drive
that you have control over
and have a backup someplace else as well
in case that blows up.
I understand that.
The question is,
what kind of secondary backups do you suggest?
Another hard drive.
Well, I don't know if that's good
because, you know,
if both hard drives,
you don't keep them in the same place.
No, I do not.
Okay, that might be good.
But, yeah, you know,
something you can access from far away.
What do we think about keeping in the cloud?
Do we have thoughts about that?
I mean, it's very tricky.
There's a few providers
that use some sort of encryption
so that the provider can't read your data.
I know that Spider Oak is one such provider.
But most of the big ones,
Dropbox and Google and Amazon
and all these people,
they will give your data over to the government
if it asks nicely.
And you won't know about it.
And if that's a concern for you,
then I would avoid those services.
All right.
We are out of time
and the Democratic Convention
is coming up in just a moment.
Right on time, I believe.
Right on time.
Right on time.
Yes, they're ready.
Okay, they're about to start
down there in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Please keep listening to WBAI
because the coverage you hear on this station
will be unlike coverage you hear anyplace else.
And you'll learn things.
You'll learn things that you'll never learn
on CBS, NBC, ABC or any of the other ones.
We'll be back again next week
and we'll have that interview with Julia O'Dwyer
and a bunch of other fun things as well.
Write to us, othat2600.com.
Emmanuel for Off The Hook.
Have a good night.
Right on time.
Right on time.
Right on time.
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That bass beat is like, uh.
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That frets beat is like, uh.