WBAI Radio 388, Atlantic Avenue, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, New York.
The zip code is 11217.
Again, send your comments to the WBAI Community Advisory Board, 388 Atlantic Avenue, 3rd Floor,
Brooklyn, New York, 11217.
Thanks for your ideas and invaluable support.
And, you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
It's 7 o'clock.
Time 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.
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.
Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum!
Good evening, everybody.
The program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening joined tonight by Mike.
Good evening.
Happy Wednesday.
Thank you, Rob T. Firefly!
Good evening.
Kyle.
Hola!
And Bernie S.
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
Well, today was an interesting day.
I don't know if you've tried to get to certain websites,
but you might have had some difficulty.
You might have had some little spinning dials
that didn't quite resolve.
Actually, they did resolve.
What I expected to find when I heard about this,
this is part of the fight for the future,
net neutrality, all that.
I heard that Netflix was going to have
simply a spinning wheel on the front page,
and I figured, wow, that's really big of them
to simply cut off all of their customers
and not give them any of the content they paid for.
But no, in actuality, they have the spinning wheel
just sort of on the side.
And that's part of a public outcry
against the U.S. cable company's attempted power grab.
It's called the spinning wheel of death.
And from this article in The Guardian,
explains we all hate it.
But you may be seeing a lot of it on the internet today,
and that's because today is the internet slowdown.
Have we been participating in an internet slowdown, anyone?
Yes, obviously you have.
Okay.
I'm just going to speak very slowly today.
I haven't really been on the internet that much today,
so I haven't had a chance to enjoy the slowdown.
But the point is that the internet will get slow
if the net neutrality debate is lost.
And basically, companies will be able
to put you on a crowded highway
instead of the fast superhighway, unless you pay more.
If you pay more, hey, everything's okay.
And if you don't cross them in any way,
if you don't go to sites they don't like,
things will go smoothly for you.
So, I don't know.
I mean, just to be clear, it's not you, the consumer,
who can pay more.
That would be, you know, one thing.
But it's going to be differentiation
amongst different content providers
or websites you might want to visit,
some of which don't like to think of themselves
as content providers.
I mean, it creates a class system
with the nature of routing on the internet,
which gives priority to other people.
It sort of breaks the whole way
that routing was set up originally
when the internet was first getting started.
Emanuel.
Yes, go ahead, Barney.
Reminds me of the book 1984 by George,
was it, oh, Animal Farm by George Orwell,
where the dictatorial pigs were saying
that all animals are equal,
but some animals are more equal than others.
Yes.
Because this is what this amounts to here.
All the traffic will be routed equally,
except some will be routed more equally than others.
In other words, the others get slowed down.
Four legs good, two legs better.
That's right.
All right.
And if they really truly want that,
why don't they just get some of their own networks
and build something on top or parallel
to the existing network and not disrupt the freedom
and free routing of people
that enjoy the public internet as it is?
Well, go ahead, Rob.
Well, and to be sure,
they want to charge, basically, they wanna double dip.
They wanna charge the publishers of content
when the recipients of the content
are already paying for their internet accounts,
their internet access.
So basically, the model that the,
since the 20 years or so we've had
the internet in public mainstream use,
the people have paid for their net connections
and therefore have been able to access the net.
That's it, in general.
You were able to access what you wanted
without anyone getting in between you.
But they wanna charge the people
who are publishing individual sites,
who are using, who are basically making
the net interesting to use in the first place.
So yeah, some of us don't feel like
we should have to accede to that double dipping.
And this is an extension of a lot of encroachments
on the concept of bandwidth and internet
being like a utility.
You've seen this in a lot of ways with,
well, with wireless it's a little different,
but tiering of data packages.
And sort of walled garden the slow
freeing up of data on a handset.
It took quite a while.
I remember when they had like media nets
and different things on the early GPRS enabled handsets.
And also just tiering and,
what was the other thing I was thinking of?
It'll come back to me, but just this concept
of not getting just this free open internet,
but perhaps, oh, I would say limiting
and throttling of certain sites
or limiting and creating sort of,
well, we see it like sites being forbidden,
firewall rules, these kinds of things.
They give you a certain kind of the internet
as opposed to what Rob was saying,
which is like a free and open, well, utility as it were.
So Rob, I think you might've just slightly misspoken
and I think you know this,
but maybe some of our listeners might not,
that the people who make websites
already pay to be on the internet.
Maybe that's fair.
You pay to be on the internet,
they pay to be on the internet,
so you can be connected to.
But what a lot of the large ISPs want
is that the major content provider
should not just pay their ISPs,
but should pay your ISP as well.
And that's, what's really kind of perverse about all this.
And to Kyle's earlier point
that maybe they should just build
a separate network,
that's what the cable companies want to do.
They want to choose what should be on the internet
and what should be hard to get to on the internet
and what should not be on the internet.
And maybe in some parallel universe
where there was competition
and you could choose between cable company A
that gave you the whole internet
and cable company B that gave you part of the internet,
that might be okay.
But we don't have that in the United States.
Most people have at most one or two choices
for broadband in their home.
And those choices all want to slow down the internet
for websites that don't pay their bribes.
And so it's not like you can choose.
So if you want to be a teleco
and you want to be a monopoly,
then my view is that you should be regulated
like a monopoly and have common carrier status
as it's called.
And there's all these crazy legal terms.
But in my view and in the view of a lot of the people,
if you want to be the only game in town,
you have to be the fair game in town.
And I think that's totally reasonable.
Emmanuel.
Yes, go ahead, Murray.
This protection racket as Mike was just alluding to
that the internet service providers
are trying to get legalized.
So they would say,
hey, that's a nice content site you have there.
Be ashamed if we were to slow down
and your users wouldn't be able to use your services.
If anybody believes that charging,
that the ISPs charging these content providers fees
to handle the traffic
isn't going to get passed down to consumers,
they're diluting themselves.
And if any politicians say
this isn't going to increase your cost,
they are lying to you
because it's going to get passed down to the consumer.
It always does.
And to say that you're slowing down connections
that are already from a world like global perspective,
pretty darn slow to start with is hilarious.
I mean, it's laughable.
And what I meant really with building their own networks,
I mean, they already co-locate.
I know Netflix, I mean, I know I've read an article.
They already like locate servers for caching
and other things away from their locations
and closer to like points of presence
for like major communities
where a broadband might distribute from a backbone.
They're already doing that for efficiency's sake, I'm sure.
And it just seems like, well, if they care so much
and it's so advantageous to them,
why don't they lease their own lines
and do that stuff separately, but without disrupting.
And as Rob and you guys have said,
like protecting the internet.
I mean, clearly the government does that.
They have their own parallel connections
and they don't disrupt or, well,
they don't, they're capable of running their own equipment.
And their meddling is kept to purely recreational purposes.
When their stuff is concerned,
they provide their own equipment.
And I just, I really feel like it's an encroachment
on the public internet, as we've been saying.
Yeah, and you mentioned bringing the sort of routing
toward the shortest point between two points.
That's basically, that's a basic factor
of how the internet's put together.
On a technical level, the internet was built
from the ground up to route around damage,
to route the most efficient way possible.
So the internet is basically already as it is
with network neutrality not being violated.
The internet is already gonna get you what you want
in the fastest way possible.
That's just how it works.
It's a little more complicated than that,
but we should be clear that network neutrality
is already a thing that we don't have
in some circumstances.
Netflix has already started paying the bribes
to some of the largest ISPs
because they want to get their movies to people.
And that's cool.
Netflix has a business model
that maybe allows them to do that
or maybe allows them to take a loss for a couple months.
They would rather not be paying this money, as they've said,
but they can afford it.
Other people can't afford these fees
and will be forced to pay them
if the large telcos have their way.
And Level 3, which is a large connector of networks,
has published some blog posts showing
that the cable companies are deliberately slowing down
the interconnections that they have between Level 3
and, well, they don't name names, but it's Comcast,
to force people like Netflix to pay these bribes.
So it's already happening.
So the people who say,
oh, they would never go after Netflix,
Netflix was literally the first one they went after
and more are coming.
How exactly are they doing?
If this isn't in place yet,
how are they telling Netflix,
you have to pay us to get this traffic to go faster?
So there's nothing in place.
What we want to have is we want to have regulation in place
that says you must maintain a neutral network.
So what, again, no names have been named,
but it's Comcast and Time Warner.
They are refusing to upgrade the switching equipment
between them and Level 3 and many other large business ISPs
so that the data can go through fast enough.
Unless a bribe is paid.
But what I'm curious about is how do they phrase that?
How do they say, oh, we can fix this
if you just pay us now?
So they don't fix it that way.
They don't upgrade the core network
that the public can use.
And what they do is they say,
hey, Netflix, that switch, it's kind of slow.
Wouldn't you rather be on our side of the switch
so that you don't have to go through it?
And that's what they do.
And they've already started getting away with it
and we must stop them.
So basically we're already at a stage
where they can get away with this.
They are getting away with it.
Okay, so what we're advocating for then
is for more regulation so that they can't get away
with what they currently get away with,
let alone the future where they want
to get away with even more.
You're saying it's bad enough as it is right now
for them to be subjected to further restrictions?
Yes.
I'm saying that they should be,
if they want to be a public utility,
they should be regulated like one.
If they don't want to be a public utility,
then they should have competition.
They can't have it both ways in my view.
And cable companies are not considered public utilities?
It's super complicated.
If I try and tell you the details off the top of my head,
I'm gonna get them wrong.
But they are claiming to be in this like,
there's a telecommunications provider
and an information service provider
and they're regulated very differently.
And they're claiming to be whichever one
gives them the most advantage on any given day.
Is Verizon, a phone company,
are they subject to the same rules and regulations?
No.
Sorry, Verizon Internet is not subject
to the same rules and regulations as Verizon landlines.
Oh, that's how they get around it.
Okay, so they basically do the old source interlink thing
of splitting into two companies.
Okay. Michael Powell,
it was the guy who did that.
Uh-huh, yes, Michael Powell,
our good friend, Michael Powell.
Yeah, tell us some of the history of Mike there.
Well, back during the, Colonel, Colonel Colin Powell,
Colonel, no, General Colin Powell.
I gotta get the rank right.
General Colin Powell's son, Michael Powell.
You know, a little nepotism.
George W. Bush hired him to be the,
appointed him to be a commissioner of the FCC
back a few administrations ago.
And he pushed and basically had things changed
so that cable companies would, or I'm sorry,
internet service providers were no longer,
Mike can probably help clarify this for me,
were no longer going to be regulated like common carriers.
And ever since, we've seen this slippery slope
into what we all feared and it's getting worse.
It's getting real.
Look at how much they're willing to spend
fighting these things instead of upgrading the network
so that everything can just be routed and switched
in a really balanced way to begin with.
And then the infrastructure is such that
it can allow all of these things to transit
in the most efficient way possible,
the way it ought to be set up.
They wanna just sit on these existing connections
and weasel one way or another
to get these media companies that are like,
hot web 2.0 companies to pay them off.
And then they'll probably not upgrade after that anyway.
They'll get their way and then it'll still be slow.
We'll still be paying through the nose
and they'll be extorting money out of these media companies
that want better networks anyway
and want to deliver content and stuff
over to your handset or whatever.
And we're just gonna continue to sort of flounder in this
without stepping outside of it
and without building and running
and demanding better infrastructure
and infrastructure outside of this context.
And it's really kind of, well, sad to see
because there's so much that's possible
and so much we could build that we've seen run really well.
And I'd be really sad
if people didn't see through some of these tactics.
Well, to wrap this up from the Guardian article,
net neutrality is about free speech
and preventing powerful interests
from discriminating against, censoring,
slowing down and blocking content on the internet.
And hopefully the unstoppable momentum
of today's internet slowdown
is just a reflection of public outcry
that has been simmering
since the FCC first announced its proposal
to allow for a tiered, i.e. divided internet.
We've bombarded them with petitions,
camped out in tents at their doorstep.
And of course, John Oliver crashed their website.
That was one of the proudest moments.
It's been widely reported, and I've heard this before,
that more than 99% of the comments
that the FCC has gotten so far
broadly support net neutrality.
Now, if the FCC chooses to move ahead
with a proposal that benefits cable executives
while undermining public interest
and public comment periods are meaningless
and the FCC exposes itself as an agency
that has no legitimacy
or verifies that theory amongst some of us.
So basically, today is a statement.
Today is something that kind of measures
the outcry that already is out there.
What happens tomorrow?
What do we do?
I don't know.
I've got a small update.
Fight for the Future,
who has arranged today's day of protest
on battleforthenet.com,
they sent out an email a few hours ago
that says the slowdown is working like magic.
At some points, we had more than 1,000 phone calls
going per minute to Congress
and the White House,
and the sheer volume of comments
has crashed the FCC's submission system once again,
which is fun.
So slow down the internet and crash systems.
We sound like one of those,
well, one of those groups, but.
Capiche?
Yeah, but the point is,
where do we go from here?
We need a plan.
We need to know, okay, we've done this.
We've indicated that there's strength in numbers.
Do we keep commenting on the FCC site?
There's gotta be a clear plan of action,
and that's something that has always been.
Obviously, go to EFF.org
and see what those guys are saying
because they tend to win a lot of cases
when they actually go to court and challenge things,
but the rest of us need to know what we can do
because, yeah, that's strength in numbers.
It might be a little disheartening
because it seems like we keep fighting
this very battle time and again.
We did it with the SOPA PIPA days.
We're doing it with this,
and I think the best we can hope for
is that people stay angry about it.
So many causes come and go,
and we're a big deal one day and forgotten the next,
and the best we can do,
because even if we defeat this this time,
it's just gonna come back again in some other guys
at some point in the near future
because those who want net neutrality
to die its final death are the ones with lots of money
and lots of time and lots of people working on it,
so the best we can do is also be lots of people
working on it and stay aware, stay angry about it,
and stay focused on what's important to not let happen.
I also think we shouldn't pay for things
that don't have our interests at all in mind
and maybe build some of our own things
that are perhaps better instead of paying for them.
All right, that sounds like a good note to end on,
build our own things and communicate and talk to other people
and hopefully share stories and things like that,
and it's kind of a good lead-in to something
that we want to remind people about.
Coming up in just over a week is,
anybody want to guess?
You know already, no?
The Equinox?
Maybe, maybe, that's possible,
but no, that's not what I'm thinking of.
I'm thinking of Maker Faire.
Maker Faire's happening again in spring,
and not in spring, in Queens in the fall,
and we have a call for volunteers.
If you want to attend Maker Faire
and actually get in for free,
you can volunteer and learn a lot, teach a lot.
Maker Faire is something that we try to attend
every year when it comes to New York
because it's just a great way to meet new people
and see all kinds of cool things that are being invented
by individuals, by kids, all kinds of people
that appreciate the kinds of things we're talking about.
So that happens at the Hall of Science in Queens,
New York Hall of Science,
that's right on the seven train by the World's Fair,
and if you go to tinyurl.com slash makerfaire-volunteer,
and you spell Maker Faire, M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E-dash,
volunteer, all the information
on how you can volunteer is there,
and I'm told, I'm told that they need people
that know how to solder.
So I guess Mitch Altman is somewhere else
in the planet right now,
otherwise they would have all the knowledge
they could possibly need,
but if you know how to solder,
there is definitely a use for your skills at Maker Faire.
It's coming up, not this weekend coming up,
but the one after that,
and of course more information you can find
at the Maker Faire site,
which, did I write that down?
I think it's makerfaire.com, without a dash.
I believe Mitch is not attending
because of Maker Faire's affiliation with DARPA,
which we've discussed in the past,
but even when he does attend,
he's very, he can do the work of more than one person,
but Maker Faire is on such a scale
that it takes more than him to do it.
And it gets bigger every year,
and that space is huge,
and it's just incredible how it gets filled up.
But it really is, it's a very healthy, positive environment.
That's why I always encourage people to go to that.
So yeah, coming up, Maker Faire,
and we'll have probably a ticket giveaway next week
on this show, as we do every year,
and maybe an interview with somebody
at Maker Faire in general.
Bernie, are you gonna come up this year?
I'm gonna try.
I missed it last year, but I was there the year before.
It's always a lot of fun.
It's just like a great big park.
Isn't it held, is it still gonna be held
at the old World's Fair grounds?
Yes, not actually the World's Fair grounds.
That's across, on the other side of the parkway,
but the Hall of Science.
It's a huge area, and you get to it very easily
on the number seven train, or by car, too,
if you're driving in from someplace else.
All the info is on their website,
but yeah, it's the same place.
I like it.
Lots of grass and trees and tents,
and it's very festive and very techie,
and you'll be with a lot of kindred spirits.
It's really, they take over basically the entire,
including lots and some of the grassy fields.
It's huge.
There's tons of different villages for different things,
like robotics competitions and different things
like a hackerspace kind of area,
or a making village with soldering and all of that,
as well as concessions, tons of great food
and entertainment, different groups doing exhibitions
and shows, and as well as vendors and workshops,
people teaching things and kind of demoing new stuff,
and of course, there are sponsors
and other people represented with kind of funky displays
and a lot of eye-catching, really interesting stuff,
so it's definitely worthwhile.
Actually, I just found this on the website.
There's that soldering thing.
It's called Learn to Solder.
It's the Learn to Solder booth,
so if you look that up and fill out the form,
they say Learn to Solder activity
is one of the most popular at Maker Faire,
soldering newbies and experienced solderers
alike of all ages, and I mean all ages.
We're talking five-year-old soldering.
It's kind of a scary sight.
They can put together their very own blinky LED rocket pin,
and if you've been to Maker Faire,
you know this tent is rocking all weekend long, yes,
and I see from this form that you'll actually get paid
minimum wage if you volunteer there,
so in addition to getting in,
you'll actually get paid for your efforts,
so if that's something you're interested in,
if you know how to solder,
then search for that on the Maker Faire site.
Sorry, go ahead, Rob.
Something about Maker Faire people might not know,
it's an all-ages event, as you said.
It's a very all-ages event.
It is great for kids.
If you've got children of your own,
if you have access to children that are not your own,
bring them to Maker Faire because they'll love it.
You'll have a great time, and you know.
Wait a minute, what did you just advocate there?
Attacking children.
Okay, fine.
Absolutely, but yeah, bring kids to this
because there is no better time to get a kid
actually interested in Maker subjects, Hacker subjects,
all this cool stuff that you could do with technology
and inventiveness and creativity.
The Hall of Science is a great place on its own for that,
but Maker Faire is just all the more awesome,
and it's great stuff to show them.
That is the thing, you've touched upon something
because in all the ones I've been to,
and I don't know how many there have been,
it's what, five now?
Something like that.
You see kids running around,
just having the time of their lives,
and playing with all kinds of gizmos,
and working on inventions as well,
and in all that time, I've seen one kid crying.
One, and you know, crowds of kids.
You'd expect more than that, but not only one,
and I'm not sure he was even in the right place.
He might have been on his way someplace else.
That's a very good point.
Yeah, so MakerFaire.com, check it out there,
and we might be there with the van.
We're not sure, but regardless of whether or not
we're there, you can be there,
and hopefully we'll have ticket giveaways next week,
and you can help people solder,
and volunteer in other ways as well.
Okay, back to breaking news of a sort.
What's this I'm reading?
For some reason, this story is Dateline Moscow.
Nearly five million Gmail passwords leaked.
Five million, guys?
Really?
Hackers have, and right away, right away,
this story goes off on the wrong foot.
Why are they hackers?
Why are they always hackers when passwords get leaked?
If they're leaked, anybody can get them.
It's not hard to guess a password,
if that's what's going on here.
It's not hard to trade a file with passwords in it,
but let's look at the story,
and hold our noses when the H word is used to describe.
Go ahead.
Just replace it with Bridge Club members.
I'd rather read it the way it's written,
so people can experience the full stench of it.
Hackers have stolen and published a database
containing the logins and passwords
of nearly five million Google accounts,
Russian technology news source CNews.ru reported,
and that's the Moscow Dateline there.
Now, according to information provided by a user
of the Bitcoin Security Online Forum,
where the database was published,
over 60% of the accounts corresponding to those logins
can be accessed successfully.
The database contains 4.93, talk about precise numbers,
4.93 million Google accounts from English,
Russian, and Spanish users.
This news comes just a couple of days after it came to light
that over 4.6 million mail.ru accounts,
and over 1.25 million Yandex email boxes
have also been compromised.
Their information was also published
on the Bitcoin Security Forum.
The two Russian companies have said
that the databases containing the compromised email accounts
comprise mostly inactive and hacked accounts,
which had been collected over a long period of time
via phishing and Trojan horses.
The internal security systems of the companies
were not compromised, they said,
with nearly 11 million email logins and passwords
now floating around on the web,
email providers have suggested
that their users choose strong passwords
and enable two-step verification.
Well, okay, we know two-step verification
can be thwarted pretty easily,
and apparently people are just leaving accounts
lying around.
Does this really even count?
If these are Gmail accounts
that aren't being used in the first place
or whatever other service,
is it any different than somebody
creating a million passwords, a million accounts
on some free web server, free web email service,
and using those?
Is there really a story here?
Well, one difference between taking
even an abandoned, inactive Gmail account
and just creating a new one of your own
is that abandoned one will have a contact list
and possibly other information sitting in its mailboxes
that would be of use to somebody looking to do shady things.
Okay, all right.
So people should change their passwords regularly, I guess,
but we aim the show for a general audience,
but we know that many of our listeners
do work in the computer industry
or the security industry or whatever,
and I have a challenge to us, those of us who do that.
We have to fix this password problem.
We have to come up with something better than passwords
because this is just gonna happen.
It has been happening more and more often.
It's gonna continue to happen more and more often,
and normal people do not have the brain capacity.
I do not have the brain capacity.
Most people do not have the brain capacity
to remember 1,000 different passwords
for 1,000 different sites that change every two months
because their databases get leaked,
so we have to come up with something better,
and I don't know what it's gonna be.
Well, if you have a good password,
a database being leaked should not contain that password.
It should be encrypted in some form.
Yeah, but you're on some website
that you think is well-implemented,
and it turns out not to be,
so that website unbeknownst to you
has your password in the clear,
and they have no security, so it got leaked,
and now you have to change it on all the other sites.
This is not something that normal people can do all the time.
How about we just reveal the names of those sites
that have no security whatsoever?
I think that would be a good way.
And then what?
It's too late by the time we find out.
But you don't use them anymore.
But it's too late is my point.
It's too late for what?
For your Yahoo account?
To stop using an account, a website,
after you learn that its security is poor.
Well, you're not using it anymore
if it's been compromised.
Someone else is using it in your name.
But it's a good lesson to those people
that are thinking of using it,
not to trust those companies.
It's also a good message for companies
thinking of getting into this business,
that you have to have some level of security
unless you wanna be made a fool of.
And it's just, I'm finding it hard to believe
that there are companies out there
where you could just simply get a database
and you have all the passwords.
I mean, a 12-year-old kid can set up a free BSD machine
that has more security than that,
and it's really not that difficult.
And especially after all the time
that we've been talking about this, it's unforgivable.
So I don't think that's what happened with Gmail.
I think in Gmail's case,
they were easy-to-guess passwords, right?
Some of them are easy-to-guess passwords,
and apparently some of them were taken
from the user's computer with a keylogger
or some other Trojan.
Well, the other thing to remember with all this
is that sometimes people use the same password
for all of their accounts,
whether bank accounts or email, whatever.
So if you're good and you're targeting somebody,
you can really take over their lives pretty easily
if the users themselves use bad passwords.
Now, we had CNN last week, of course, advising people,
if your password is password,
you might wanna change those S's to dollar signs,
and then you'll be more secure.
Well, guess what?
You're not that much more secure at all,
especially after they said that.
So there are all kinds of things that you can learn,
all kinds of ways you can make yourself more secure
by not using words, not using your birthday,
not using your social security number, God forbid.
One of the best I've seen is using a sentence,
a sentence that you can remember,
and using, say, the first letter of each word
of that sentence.
Doesn't spell a word, but you can remember the sentence.
And maybe you capitalize the second letter
and not the third.
Things like that, little things that only you would know.
And when you get those questions,
in case you forgot your password,
you don't make it something like,
what was my hometown when I grew up?
It's pretty easy to figure that out.
Or what is my name?
You know, you can lie.
You don't have to, what is your favorite color?
You can say Mars.
You know, no one's gonna prosecute you for doing that.
Do whatever you want, just remember what it is you did.
It's not difficult.
My favorite color actually is Mars.
But having a strong password isn't the only thing.
You could still get your, you could still lose your,
you could still lose the security of your password
by other means.
So it's not enough just to have a snazzy,
innovative password.
You have to change it regularly.
Because then if you end up in one of these databases,
if your name and password is being traded around
on some forum, there's still the chance
that you can change it to something else
by the time somebody, a criminal,
wants to do something with it.
So yeah, get into the habit.
Update your passwords every so often.
I mean, yeah, that's good advice.
But it's, people don't follow it.
And we know people don't follow it.
And we have to do something better in the long run.
Do you have any ideas, though?
I don't, unfortunately.
All right.
Well, speaking of data breaches and bad security,
Home Depot, wow.
You know, I've been hearing rumors
about Home Depot now for several weeks.
Why have I been hearing rumors about this?
The story was only released this week.
Basically, there have been all kinds
of data breaches, apparently.
Home Depot said customers who shopped at its stores
as far back as April were exposed,
meaning the breach extended for more than four months,
including the busy summer season
when we all go to Home Depot.
Far longer than the three-week Target breach.
And you remember the fallout from that.
People were resigning.
All kinds of stock was falling, stuff like that.
And get this, there's a guy in Illinois
who was already suing them.
Home Improvement Retailer, Home Depot,
has been sued over the data breach by a customer
saying the company failed to properly
safeguard customer data from hackers.
Again, here we go, hackers.
Yeah, of course, that's the only possible culprit.
In a lawsuit filed in Chicago yesterday,
you gotta figure, this guy was ready to file the lawsuit.
It takes time to get a lawsuit together.
So obviously, word of this was circulating in some form.
And I understand, Bernie, you had some kind
of involvement with, well, I mean,
not involvement with this.
Yes, I was one of the hackers who did this.
No, actually, I was a Home Depot customer.
Back on, I just verified this today, August 25th.
I used my business debit card at Home Depot
to buy more than $100 worth of building materials.
Then an hour later, I went to Lowe's to get something
that Home Depot didn't have in stock,
and I couldn't use my debit card.
Like, what's going on?
So I called my bank, and they transferred me
to the security department who told me that, yes,
we've been noticing a big spike in fraud
at home improvement stores.
I'm like, well, yeah, I went to a Home Depot an hour ago,
and now I'm at a Lowe's, and I have enough money
in my account to buy this stuff, so let me buy it.
They said, oh, okay, and then they let me buy it.
But the folks at the point of sale there at Lowe's,
they'd never seen this before.
It had never happened.
I thought this was really weird.
Then about a week later, I heard the story
about Home Depot was just breaking, coming out.
I was like, aha.
So folks in security were aware this was going on,
and you heard rumors about it, too.
But the big news story broke after, apparently,
a lot of other people knew about it.
Interesting.
So you basically were told that something was up,
and this news was held back until now?
Well, I'm not pointing fingers
at who was holding it back or whatever,
but news media has their own priorities
on what they report and when.
But my bank's credit debit card security department
told me weeks ago that they had noticed a big spike
in card fraud related to home improvement stores.
When I told the people at Lowe's that,
of course, they didn't say Home Depot.
They said home improvement stores.
But when I told the people at Lowe's
that where my card was declined,
they're like, wow, we'd never heard of that before.
I did it on my speaker phone,
so it's kind of embarrassing
when your card gets declined.
You're kind of looked at as like.
Oh, I point and laugh at the people
that it happens to all the time.
It's a great source of amusement.
I put my phone on speakers so they could hear this,
so I wouldn't have to explain them,
and they wouldn't have to believe what I said.
But they were astonished.
Like, wow, we'd never heard of this before,
the home improvement store.
Just using your card at a home improvement store
would flag your card for not being usable.
So I was kind of annoyed, and I told them that,
and not at Home Depot.
It wasn't Lowe's fault.
I told the folks at my bank
that I was annoyed that my card was flagged,
and I'd done nothing wrong with it,
and it was not defrauded at all.
But anyhow, they fixed that,
and I spoke to them again today and at the bank today,
and they said that, yeah, you don't have to get a new card.
If there's any fraud, you won't be liable for it.
But you have to notice it, I think,
within a month or two on your statement
before, you know, or you have to eat it.
I'm not sure if that's true.
I think if you notice it,
it might be a little bit more of a number of hoops
you have to jump through,
but I think if you notice fraud at any stage,
maybe years down the road, it would be hard to do that.
Yeah, I know there's a time limit
after which it's too late to let them know
that you didn't do this,
but maybe they make exceptions for cases like this
where it's a known situation, like this Home Depot thing.
I mean, the next stage on this probably is Home Depot
who's going to have to provide credit monitoring,
free credit monitoring to all the millions of people,
and it's a joke because they only do it for one year,
and any criminal who's stolen all this credit card,
debit card stuff is just gonna wait a year
and then do it after the credit monitoring runs out.
It makes no sense.
E, did you read that it was the same as the Target breach?
How it was done?
I heard it was the same method used,
which means these people are learning absolutely nothing
and they're not taking any additional safeguards.
It's insane.
It's the same point of sale equipment that's being used here.
Yeah, and they're often running Windows or Windows CE
on top with some stuff on top,
and the thing with places like Target
or like Walmart or Home Depot
is they're really highly centralized,
and they rely really heavily on VPNs
and their own private lines
that go all to one central place in Atlanta,
and it's all handled by home office
and home servers and all of that internal network stuff.
I learned that they actually control
what time the lights get turned off
at branches throughout the country from that central area.
Yes, that's true.
Imagine hacking that,
but we're not gonna get into details on that.
Interesting, though, and Bernie, I noticed also,
because you wrote about this on our list,
that your credit cards or your debit cards
are going to be changed fairly soon,
and I think that's happening to everybody in the country,
that we're moving finally to a system
of using a chip instead of, or in addition to, a MagStripe.
Well, not in addition to a MagStripe,
but in addition to a PIN code.
It'll be chip and PIN.
It's been in use in Europe for, what, like 20 years now?
Chip and signature or chip and PIN, I believe,
because credit cards won't require a PIN,
but they will require a signature.
Do you have trouble using your MagStripe cards in Europe?
Oh, yes, what a pain that is.
It's like you have a MasterCard or you have an American,
and they don't take it if it's from the United States,
which, what's the point of having it
if it's not accepted everywhere?
So, yeah, if you have a credit card,
very soon you will probably get a letter from them,
and oddly enough, all of my MasterCards,
I have a few of them, turned into Visa cards
when they announced this change,
and all of my account numbers had to be changed,
which means I have to contact all these merchants
that have recurring charges.
They don't do that.
You have to do that, so it's a major pain,
but I will be a lot happier having a chip
instead of just that MagStripe.
I have a question, not about this,
but so what's gonna happen is that Home Depot's
gonna be required to provide this
like credit monitoring service,
that who knows what it does,
and I was in a situation recently
where I was offered a free year of credit monitoring
for some nonsense.
I hope they took it.
Did you take it?
No, I didn't.
I don't know what it does.
I'm fairly certain the answer is nothing,
but what I do know has happened is that
the entity that was responsible for my data being lost
transferred, presumably, like a list
of everyone whose data was lost
to this credit monitoring service,
so what we know is gonna happen
at some point in the future
is the credit monitoring service itself
is gonna get hacked,
and everyone who's paranoid about their credit
is gonna have their data lost,
and I can't wait for that to happen.
It's that same logic, the do not call list,
is a list of people who don't wanna be called,
and you can get that list.
You can say, hey, I'm a telemarketer.
I wanna know who not to call.
Now you have a list of people that you know
you can get very angry if you just call them
and solicit things.
Yeah, we're basically plagued by lists
and our inability to maintain their security.
Well, I think we can solve this problem, Mike,
of not trusting the credit monitoring companies
by signing up for credit monitoring monitoring services,
which should be a burgeoning new field of business.
Yeah, it never ends.
To where do I send the letter
with my social security number on it?
You know what, let's open up a P.O. box
and we can do this ourselves,
because I'm sure it's a good idea that we'll go far.
Manuel. Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
Along the same lines, there's a big news story this week,
or yesterday, or today.
I hate talking about Apple.
I don't own any Apple products,
but they have a new thing called Apple Pay,
which is supposed to do away
with all this credit card fraud and stuff.
I'm sure it'll end it all, won't it?
Well, what's different about it?
Well, instead of having a credit card,
you will have, there's actually a chip
in the new iPhone 6, another reason not to buy it,
that has hardware encryption in it, reportedly,
that will allow you to make credit card transactions
with any one of Apple's blessed merchants.
Apple has apparently signed deals
with a whole bunch of merchants already,
point-of-sale merchants, and maybe online.
I don't know, I think it's just point-of-sale, not online.
And this uses a lot of NFC technology, right, Bernie?
Exactly, near-field radio communication.
Oh, I see, okay.
You hold your phone, you tap your phone,
or hold it near this little transponder
at the point-of-sale system,
and it goes bleep, bleep.
It probably doesn't make sounds,
but anyway, the data is securely exchanged
for your credit card information,
and the merchant never has your credit card info.
So now, obviously, Apple's gonna be the big target.
I can't wait till they get hacked.
Yeah, I actually was feeling sorry for Apple yesterday,
watching them unveil these products,
and just so many people coming down on them hard
for coming out with technology
that already exists on other devices,
and just making fun of Apple in general.
I almost felt sorry.
I didn't really feel sorry for them, but I almost did.
Well, this Apple Pay stuff is, as I understand it,
it's basically PayPal for people with expensive telephones.
So, I mean, I have a different brand of expensive telephone
that already has this functionality,
and it's really, I don't like it.
It's really inconvenient to use.
From a consumer perspective, it is much more time-consuming
than just swiping a credit card.
So I'm really curious to see if or why
anyone wants to use this,
but maybe Apple did it better, I don't know.
Let me give out our phone number
so our listeners can join in the conversation
in the time we have left.
212-209-2900.
All right, so can I wish for something?
Yeah, you can have one wish.
It's like future nostalgia?
Fine, future nostalgia.
I wanna go back to a time
when the telephone company made their own phone.
Can we do that?
Interesting, the phone company making its own telephone.
Yeah, like there are ODMs.
It's an original design manufacturer.
It's a thing, right?
So you have that in the electronics world.
These telephone service providers,
granted, yeah, they just wanna be service providers,
little private worlds,
and they can just charge everybody everything,
but why not make their own handsets?
I would be interested in that.
I wanna see that.
It would be really fantastic,
just from a nostalgic perspective.
I wanna see a Sprint handset that's actually Sprint.
You remember like-
I don't know if you do.
Can we approach these devices with any more romance?
Because this artificial romance is just, I don't know.
I don't think you'll ever get anything
to match a good old-fashioned Bell 500 handset, but-
It's kind of like a ventriloquist.
The phone company has the handset manufacturer,
and then, does anybody see that?
It's great that you're wishing for these things,
but I'm not sure.
Rob, what do you think?
I think the reason this didn't work out
the first time around was because
there were all these other manufacturers
of more interesting phones than you could get from Bell,
phones shaped like watermelons and footballs
and cats and things, and Bell was not providing them,
so you had to get it somewhere else.
That took off like a lead balloon.
No, I think, as far as landlines go,
those old-fashioned Bell phones were the ones that-
But it's still around.
You can still find them in garage sales everywhere.
Functionally, they're the best,
and if you still have one,
it still probably works as well as it ever did,
but people are fickle creatures,
and they want new fancy things.
No, no, no, Rob, but I get what you're saying,
but why not a Western Electric mobile handset?
Well, first of all, they don't exist anymore.
I yearn for that.
That'd be very heavy.
I think they could really do something
in this market, this market of just constant churn
of fashionable handset after fashionable handset
with one lousy new feature over another
and all this constant comparison.
I would just love to see one of these service providers
come out swinging with some brilliant idea
and just blow all of these manufacturers out of the water.
Kyle?
And just be interesting for a change
instead of fighting net neutrality and stuff.
Go ahead, Barney.
Kyle, Western Electric now it's Lucent,
and you know their logo?
It's been around for 15, 20 years now.
It's like this sort of circular,
smeared circular thing with a red donut.
It's Alcatel, oh yeah, the crayon mark.
Yeah, well, Dell System Engineers,
they have for years referred to this new logo
as the bloody sphincter of quality.
Well, there you go right there.
You know, we're just a jaded bunch of people now.
I will say that there are, when I was in Portugal,
there were some interesting ads for Alcatel handsets.
All right, let's move on.
Some of the things we were talking about,
net neutrality and maybe handsets
made by phone companies that sell service
and all the other things that we're wishing for,
maybe credit card security and good passwords.
Maybe a new country can do all of this for us,
and if there is a new country,
its name will be Scotland in 10 days,
and who knows, we could make that the capital
of intelligence as far as technology goes.
Probably not, but-
Will they get a top-level domain now?
Well, that's what I was gonna bring up, actually,
because since now, the United Kingdom is panicking
over the fact that the polls have changed
and Scotland may very well be an independent country
in the next two weeks.
What is gonna be the top-level domain?
And everywhere I look, I see that .scot
has been given the go-ahead.
That's S-C-O-T.
These are older stories, though.
These are stories from several months, even years ago.
Scotland is set to receive its own internet domain
after an international authority gave permission
for the country to have its own unique web addresses,
and they decided to go for .scot.
Every other country in the world,
even the United States, has a two-letter country code.
So obviously, that's not going to be something
that fits in with all the others.
So my question is, what's gonna be their two-letter code?
Are they gonna have one?
Are they gonna bypass this somehow?
It's not a good first step as a country
to break the rules and go with a four-letter one.
Are there two-letter ones left?
Well, there have to be.
I mean, someone do the calculation of how many,
Mike, you're good at math.
26 squared is more than the number of countries
in the world by far.
26 squared is what, though?
Can someone do that?
It's hundreds.
Oh, thank you. Many hundreds.
But so it's gonna take more than a week
for Scotland to become independent,
presumably if they vote for it.
I'm willing to help with this.
All right, you know, the ISO will assign them a code,
probably, and then they'll get a domain out of it.
But if they don't choose independence,
then they can't have a two-letter code,
so I guess they can have the four-one
if that's what they vote for.
Well, yeah, obviously, if they're not
an independent country, then they don't even
get to have a two-letter domain.
But they can't have the most obvious one, SC.
Somebody else has got that already.
Who took that?
Who took SC?
I don't know who, but there are .SC sites out there.
But I think also, I think they probably might be happy,
okay, they might be happy and okay
with the four-letter country code
just because domain names now,
they've got all these new top-level domains
like .kitchen and .bike and .plumbing and .sexy
and all this other ridiculous stuff.
It's a real waste of time.
So basically, top-level domains have passed
the point of crazy already, so I think.
Every time this happens, we have to register
2600.kitchen and things like that,
so that we maintain our brand,
and it's a cost of fortune.
No, actually, we don't do that.
212-209-2900, we just had a bunch of calls,
and because the phone companies are greedy now,
they make it stop after five rings,
so people have to keep redialing.
Yeah, we got caught up in a conversation,
so the first person who calls back,
212-209-2900, we will put on the air.
There's one, so let's go to that person.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Speak up, please.
Oh, look at that, the light turned green again,
so this is not working.
I'm sorry, we cannot hear you.
In fact, we can't even see you.
212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
Wait for a couple more calls to come in.
Mike, go ahead.
I think it's for the Seychelles.
Seychelles, you know, they've been nothing but trouble.
They really have.
You're gonna start a war between Scotland
and the Seychelles, okay.
No, I wanna get calls from Seychelles.
All right.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Yes, I suppose England will be the ununited kingdom now.
You know, Tom, you didn't fix that static on your phone.
Huh?
We told you about this a couple weeks ago.
You have static on your line, don't you hear it?
Oh, yeah, oh boy.
You have a landline, and you need to fix that static.
This is like a call from the 1970s here.
But you sound nice and clear, though, I'll say that.
See, the ununited kingdom, that'll be England.
Ununited kingdom.
Well, they can't use UK anymore
if they're not gonna be the United Kingdom.
Anyway, thanks for your call.
Let's take another call here.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, hi, I'm concerned.
We all are.
Isn't it something like, you know, you build a mousetrap,
and then someone else builds a better mousetrap?
So no matter how they do with a credit card
or cash or a chip, then it can be hacked or, you know.
First, turn down your radio, because we hear you twice.
You got it.
And second, that's an excuse
for never doing anything, though.
You know, because someone's gonna break it eventually.
Why even build it?
People in government.
And I wanna add, these big stores
that replace the whole bunch of mom-and-pop hardware stores,
they make so much money,
and their prices aren't really much lower at all.
And with all this profit they make,
because they have a ton of customers all day,
such as Home Depot, shouldn't they be more responsible?
And shouldn't they wanna protect their customer?
And shouldn't they wanna protect their store?
Their own, you know, transactions and stuff?
You would think, and you bring up a good point.
Always go to a local hardware store
before you go to Home Depot or Lowe's,
because you'll get actual people
that care about what they do,
and probably will protect your data a whole lot better.
I'll tell you something else.
Sometimes you can get better products, too.
Absolutely.
Okay, thanks for that call.
Rob, go ahead.
Just going back to what the caller was saying
about the better mousetrap.
The really sad part of that situation
is that the chip and pin that will be our better mousetrap
was the better mousetrap for the rest of the world
20 years ago.
So we've just been too lazy
to even get to the slightly decent mousetrap.
And cheap.
212-209-2900, good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead, speak up.
No?
Okay, let's try this one.
Okay, our phone system is a little bit messed up.
I'm sorry about that.
Half the buttons aren't working.
So if you got disconnected,
please call back 212-209-2900.
There's a call.
And you know, these aren't picking up.
I'm sorry, I don't know how to do this
if the phones don't pick up.
We're picking up, but they're not going onto the instrument.
Let's try this one.
We're getting a lot of calls,
but the phone instrument is not working.
So, I don't know what to say.
Anyone, anything you want to add?
That's pretty sad.
It is sad, look at that, all turning green.
Wasn't there a piece of tape on there?
Maybe that was an important piece of tape.
Well, the piece of tape
just covers up the flashing light.
That doesn't really help in any way.
There we go, we got a red light here.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Yeah, hi, yes, hello, Manuel.
Hi, how you doing?
Yes, hi, I'd like to know,
I've been, a lot of radio stations,
like I go around the country a lot,
and I know that a lot of radio stations
sound the same, like they have the same sound effects
on that same, so they say the same thing.
Not this one, not this one.
I mean, look at where we're airing right now.
Of course, right, but you don't,
like, if you go around the country,
you use them like the rock station.
Uh-huh.
Okay, like, it's cold beer and hot wings.
Every radio station, like rock radio station,
whether you're in New Mexico, or California, or Indiana.
It's called homogeneity,
and it's the enemy of all freethinkers everywhere.
I remember you talking about that.
Just like toll-free numbers, like 800 numbers,
like, you know, like the vanity numbers,
like, just like, you know, like,
what type of taking over, you know,
Toyota was, with Nissan.com.
And lousy cell phone connections, too.
Oh, and we lost that one.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
A tone, well, that's an improvement.
Good evening, you're on off the hook.
Hey, what's up, Emanuel?
How you doing, what's on your mind?
Well, this is actually a topic based on 2,600 meetings.
Is this okay?
Yes, 2,600 meetings, I believe, took place last Friday,
all around the world.
And, Rob, they went on smoothly in New York?
Yes, indeed.
Okay, good, what's your comment?
Well, the problem is that I live in Delaware,
and there hasn't been a single 2,600 meeting,
and I decided to start one,
except I'm having trouble getting it started.
What kind of trouble are you having?
Well, it's just that I have a nearby mall
that is willing to host it at a cafe area.
And it's just that I'm trying to get noticed
in the next article,
but I'm not contacting anyone from 2,600.
Okay, well, a couple of things.
First off, you don't have to ask permission.
You're having the meeting in a public area,
in a food court, or some place that people congregate in.
As long as you're not being disruptive,
you have every right to be there.
So if you ask permission,
someone's gonna say no at some point.
So just pick the place that you think is best,
whether it's a coffee shop with tables,
or a mall, food court,
or some other area that's open to the public.
And try and be nice about it, too.
Buy things from the people that sell things around there
so that you're not just taking up space.
And then what you do is you simply get the word out
in whatever way you can.
One thing we suggest,
if you go to like a Barnes & Noble or something
that sells the magazine,
you simply insert some little flyer there saying,
hey, you like this magazine,
you might like the meetings to take place.
And then update us.
Send email to meetingsat2600.com and tell us how it's going.
If you do that a few times,
then we print it in the magazine and on the website,
and all of a sudden, you have more people showing up.
All right, well, thank you so much, Emanuel.
I'm really excited to start this meeting up
because I think it's about time Delaware gets in it.
Absolutely.
Yeah, Delaware is definitely time for this.
I don't know if Delaware ever had a meeting before,
so that would be a great thing.
And again, meetings,
if you're not familiar with the concept,
it's not really a meeting per se, it's a gathering.
It's where people just kind of hang out and share stories
and meet other people.
There's no set agenda and there's no leader.
There's none of that.
It's just basically a place where first Friday of the month
for a few hours, people get together.
Also, the advice I'd have
is put up a website for the meeting.
That'll help get the word out.
Post it to boards about your area,
boards about the hacker community and things like that.
And yeah, the word will spread.
Absolutely.
Hey, we're out of time.
Personal Computer Show is coming up next.
If you want to write to us, our email address, as always,
othat2600.com.
You can use that address to send us news clippings
or items of note, questions, theories,
points of outrage, whatnot.
It's Emmanuel for Off The Hook.
We will see you again next week.
Same time, same place.
Good night.
♪ Yeah, it's a shock, but now I can see my fault then ♪
♪ Well, I made up my mind now, see how the water's forming ♪
♪ It's a personal let, I cannot come to terms with it ♪
♪ The choices that I made, well, it seems I'm here to stay ♪
♪ The wind is strong, but don't pull me down ♪
♪ I've got the right, the wrong, and that's the strength of love ♪
♪ It's been a while, but I think I've got it now ♪
♪ The wind is strong, but they won't pull me down ♪
♪ I found myself off to things I said I'd never do ♪
♪ I made mistakes, yeah, well, part of growing up is true ♪
♪ We see eye to eye, but I wasn't waiting for me to know ♪
♪ Until time seemed to walk, I know it's time to go ♪
♪ Forget what I've learned, learn to forget ♪
♪ I never wanted this, I'm happy with the way I was ♪
♪ Success is heaven, cause I tried ♪
♪ I never wanted this, I really never wanted this ♪
♪ Down ♪
♪ Down ♪
♪ Down ♪
♪ Down ♪
♪ Down ♪
♪ Down ♪
♪ Down ♪