Women of different ages and ethnic groups face the camera and tell their stories.
Lastly, live theater. A stage and TV actor Stacey Linantz enacts The Siege, a powerful
story of the harassment of a doctor by the far right.
For the full five-week festival schedule, go to WBAI.org.
It's all at 388 Atlantic Avenue. Doors open at 6 p.m. for shorts, with features at 7.30.
The popcorn machine is working, the popcorn is hot, and so is the subject.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI. The time is 7 o'clock. Time once again for Off The Hook.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
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. Good evening.
Rob T. Firefly. Good evening.
Kyle. Hello, hello. Hi, hackers.
And Bernie S. Pregnant pause there. Greetings from Pennsylvania.
Well, we have some programming announcements to share with people.
Turns out our autumn fundraiser is beginning right on schedule next week, and we are on for two hours next week.
That's right, from 7 o'clock until 9 p.m. Eastern time.
And the good news is that we will have our own premiums again.
Reason being that the Wikileaks slash Edward Snowden thumb drive issue is in the process of being resolved,
and we expect those to be shipped out to people who pledged for them a year ago.
Yes, we know it's been a long time, but we expect that to be well underway by the time we're on next week if it's not finished by then already.
So we would not be going on saying that we're going to be offering our own premiums again unless that were true.
So many thanks to all the people who knocked their heads against the wall to get that to happen.
And we are looking forward to October, to the fundraiser, and hopefully we can do well.
Hopefully our listeners will come through and show their support, as they always have done in the past.
One thing, if you have any issues other than those thumb drive issues with premiums, say in the last, oh, I don't know, two years, email us, oth at 2600.com.
That's if you pledged for something and didn't get it and you still want it.
Just email us, oth at 2600.com.
We can't promise that we'll be able to find it, but we'll at least do some detective work and try and track it down, and if at all possible, replace it with something of equal or better value.
These kinds of things tend to happen in places where chaos reigns supreme, but we're trying really hard to fix all this.
And if you do have an issue with a premium and you get in touch with us, what we need is the name and address that the pledge was made under, your address now if that's changed,
and the general date and the pledge.
The date the show was on the air, how much you pledged for, your shoe size, and any other pertinent information that might help us to track this down.
Probably your social security number.
Definitely that. Definitely social security number, any bank account information you have, and date of birth, obviously.
Bernie, anything to add to this?
This has always been a challenge for us as our listeners know, but the WBAI, we don't know who pledges.
They don't give us that information, so we have to work with a largely volunteer group at BAI who fulfills these premiums or sometimes doesn't.
It's always a challenge finding out what was shipped, what wasn't shipped, when and how.
So we finally just crossed a big hurdle with these flash drives, which will be en route to us very shortly to populate with the wonderful data, and we will have them shipped out soon.
I'm very excited by this.
Nobody's more excited than me, believe me.
I'm just sorry that it took so long, and we hereby vow that we won't let that happen again.
We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that such a situation can't develop, and we're brainstorming to figure out ways to make it.
You took a stand.
I'm sorry?
Say again?
You took a stand, Emanuel, on the air, and I admire you for taking a stand and saying, hey, we can't offer any more of our own premiums that we donate until WBAI makes good on agreeing to ship what people already pledged and paid for.
So it made a difference, and we're finally getting out from under that rock, and I'm so relieved.
Well, I think Rob T. Firefly deserves some of the credit for actually going down and facing people and refusing to leave until they ponied up the cash.
Absolutely.
Is that what happened, Rob, or was it a little bit more pleasant than that?
That's an accurate description.
I think there were tears shed on both sides, and no, actually, it was quite nice.
We made $7,000 for the station with this premium, so I think, you know, the few hundred that it cost to…
At the end of the day, our listeners know we've never been shy about registering our feelings about things that are going on at the station, you know, things that are coming between us and our ability to do the best show we can here.
And I think we're on a good path toward solving that and getting back to what we're here for, which is to make some good radio.
Now, let me just ask this question because, as you know, we each have our own fan bases, and Rob T. Firefly, I know that you're in demand for a number of things this month.
Will you be in attendance next week?
I cannot next week.
You cannot.
So, okay, those people that only tune in for Rob, he's not going to be here next week for the two-hour show.
I'll be here in spirit.
And now, Mike, I understand you're going to India sometime soon. Will you be here next week?
I was fortunate enough to schedule my flight for after next week, so I will be here.
All right, all right. So I hear cheering from outside, so that's good. That's good. Okay. And I believe…
Yeah, I'll be here.
Okay, and I think I'll be here. Bernie, how about you?
I will be on the airs from somewhere. I'm not sure where I'll be, but I'll definitely call in and I'll do my share of pitching.
Okay, well, we're never sure where you are, but you always are on the phone someplace.
Yep.
Okay, good. So we've got that to look forward to, and BAI continues to move forward somehow.
But we would like to also bring you all kinds of developments in the world of technology and evolution and de-evolution
and various other things that we've kept a critical eye on for lo these many years.
And we'll be opening up the phones later on if you want to call in and share your opinions, your thoughts.
Hey, has anyone heard the name Theresa May? No? Bernie?
It rings a bell. I can't remember what time…
Oh, it's going to ring a lot of bells. It's going to ring a lot of bells.
I've been seeing stories concerning Theresa May lately, and she is the Home Secretary over in the United Kingdom there.
And she is laying out plans that will allow judges to ban people from broadcasting or protesting in certain places,
as well as associating with specific people.
They'll be barred from speaking at public events if they represent a threat to the functioning of democracy.
These are new extremist disruption orders.
You guys, you hear about this whole ISIS, ISIL, IS whatever it is that's going on out there.
There's a method to the madness, all right?
Yeah, there are extremists every place. There's all kinds of horrors going on throughout the world.
But you better believe that there are people gathered right now in a circle someplace in D.C.
that are planning how to use that to their advantage, how to crack down, and how to make our lives a lot more controlled.
Now, in this situation, what Theresa May is planning, quote-unquote extremist, whatever that is,
will have to get posts on Facebook and Twitter approved in advance by the police under sweeping rules planned by the conservatives.
Now, the election is next May, and yes, her last name is May, so that's going to work out just fine and dandy, isn't it?
I'm just reading these stories about what's planned here, what the Tory government is thinking about doing.
I have to check the URL to make sure that it's not from The Onion or something else, but it's real.
In this country, it would be called prior restraint, wouldn't it?
I believe so.
Yeah, over there, they don't have a First Amendment, so it's a little easier for them.
But the so-called liberal Democrats in the U.K. parliament have pushed back hard on this naked censorship.
But it's a really disturbing trend, and I could see it coming here.
I just want to make sure I heard you correctly, Emanuel.
You said that the goal of this measure is to stop people who are threats to democracy?
Yes.
Do they define democracy, or is it—?
Well, I think you'd have to ask Theresa May for the definition of democracy.
Obviously, she holds that under lock and key, but this is part of what's known as the prevent strategy.
And you better get used to all kinds of these little catchphrases because of all the terror and horror we're facing.
But basically, it supposedly tackles the ideology behind a terrorist threat.
So-called hate preachers who currently stay just within terrorism legislation will be one of the targets of banning orders and extremism disruption orders, otherwise known as EDOs.
Not making this up. This is real.
The target is people who currently stay within the law?
Yes.
All right.
Move the law a little bit so that now they're outside the law.
This is very confusing to me. I mean, it's not confusing at all in some sense.
We know exactly what she's up to and what many politicians like her around the world are up to, but it's weird.
And you should also keep in mind that David Cameron is currently in power, and he supports this kind of thing right now.
Earlier in September, he announced that the police would be given new powers to seize the passports of terrorist suspects and stop British jihadists from returning to the UK.
Those are for people that actually went over to Syria or Iraq.
And that's just kind of amazing that that's happening.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary.
And how do we describe what a shadow home secretary is to people?
That's the opposition government that's not in power?
Yeah, the political party, which is not in power, which in this case is – I should have had the answer at the tip of my tongue.
Yes, Mike, you should have. What's wrong with you?
But the political party, which is not in power, appoints sort of spokespeople on the same issues that the cabinet has.
Do they run through a lot of political parties not in power, though?
Do they all have the home secretary?
I mean, there's only sort of two-and-a-half large parties in the UK.
Really?
And one-and-a-half of them are in power.
We're not the only ones, then, that only have a couple of choices, if they are choices at all.
And the Liberal Democrats, it seems pretty clear, are going to disappear.
Well, anyway, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the government should take action to stop young Britons being drawn to extremist ideology.
Seems like maybe that's what's happening with Theresa May, actually, just in a different sort of way.
And Yvette Cooper is proposing tougher measures to prevent would-be jihadists from traveling to join ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria.
See, it's OK if you travel to Iraq to fight on another side.
But if you travel to Iraq to fight on the side of somebody that they don't like, then they're going to prevent you from either doing that or coming back.
It's interesting. People should look this up if they have a chance.
There was a series that was on BBC earlier, I think earlier in the spring, of I think it was called Destination Syria or something like that,
where it was basically following people who were traveling in a car to Syria to help fight the government there.
Remember, a year ago, the government was the worst possible thing.
They were the ones killing hundreds of thousands of people and gassing and all that.
And now, if you do that, if you travel to Syria to fight that kind of horror that is not being fought by their own government, now you're a terrorist.
So it's gotten really, really complicated and crazy.
And I'm fascinated by where this is going to be in a year, if not a month or two from now.
Emmanuel.
Yes, Bernie.
I'm reading this article in the mail that you're reading, too.
It also says,
Don't governments around the world promote hatred against their enemies?
I mean, doesn't the United States do this?
Doesn't the U.K. do this?
I mean, it seems to be the whole nature of military organizations and the folks that control them.
Well, you have to define hatred in the right way.
It's not hatred if you're hating the right people.
Oh, okay.
It doesn't say that, though.
There's a crash course on this you can get online.
It doesn't say that in the mail here.
It says,
Any group that spreads or promotes hatred.
But, you know, military long has to promote hatred of the enemy in order to justify killing them.
This also will deny access to the airwaves and, as we mentioned, to the net.
I don't know how they're going to pull this off.
And it will be targeted not just at so-called hate preachers, but also those who sought to disrupt the democratic process and undermine democracy.
And we've seen that at every political protest in this country, how those words are completely abused.
And people who are actually fighting for democracy are accused of undermining the democratic process.
It's nothing new.
But it's not hatred if it's coming direct from the Ministry of Love.
Yeah, I guess that's what we have to keep in mind.
Man, do you remember when Jerry Adams, the spokesperson for the IRA, was prohibited for years?
Not him permitted, but no news media or any other organization was allowed to broadcast his speaking on the air, television, radio, anything like that.
Do you remember that? It wasn't that long ago.
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
And there were these crazy pantomime things where they could show a video of him speaking, and then they would have someone mouth the words.
It was just ludicrous.
We may see a new phase of this where ISIS will, or who knows what groups, will have information.
Certain information will be allowed on the internet or broadcast, but on TV.
And other people will have to mouth the words to make it not a criminal offense.
It's very weird.
Well, I would love to hear what—I know we have listeners in the UK and surrounding areas who would probably have some feelings on this.
If you're listening live, get in touch when we open up the phones later, or email us if you're listening later, and let us know what you think.
And I'm sure a lot of people out there are asking, what in God's name does this have to do with the hacker world, the hacker culture?
This is the kind of thing that we've been fighting against now for a long time.
The twisting of words, the cracking down on any kind of opposition, or mischief, or various people that just simply don't agree with you.
We're not talking about terrorist evil people that do horrible things.
We're talking about simply expressing another view, and not toeing the line of what these people define as the democratic process.
And using technology to censor people.
Exactly. Using the net and saying that they're going to prevent people from expressing themselves in any way on the Internet, that's scarier.
That's scarier than anything else I've been reading about.
So, Mr. Emanuel Goldstein, you may be familiar with an author who went once from the United Kingdom to a foreign country to fight in their wars,
and wrote a very famous book called Homage to Catalonia.
George Orwell did that.
Or Catalonia, maybe he spelled it.
Would he be subject to this kind of laws if he was living today?
Well, it depends, because he went to Spain, right?
Yeah.
And I don't think Spain at the time was an Islamic republic.
It was. Believe it or not, it was in the past. People don't seem to know this.
A long time ago.
A long time ago.
Also not a republic.
Okay, whatever. But the point is, if you do it for the right side, like I mentioned before, then you can get away with all kinds of things.
You'd be a mercenary in parts of Africa, and no one's going to say a word about it.
But if you butt heads with your own regime in any way, you're going to be looked upon as an enemy.
And don't think it's going to stop here.
It'll be expanded to include all kinds of, quote unquote, subversive elements.
They always introduce the most shocking ones first.
The child molesters and the terrorists and all kinds of people that everybody is against, everybody is going to want to lock up.
And then, okay, in addition to that, we want to keep people safe proactively, so let's just install all of these safeguards and barriers.
And it's a very scary thing. You have to keep your eyes open for this.
I mean, but he went to fight with basically the communists, which were no friend of the British government at the time.
Yeah, I guess they kind of overlooked that.
Maybe they liked his book so much that they didn't go after him. I don't know.
The point is, we have to always keep an eye out for this kind of thing.
And by the way, speaking of ISIS, this is something completely unrelated to all of this,
but do you realize that anybody who has a phone number that ends in 4747 actually has a phone number that spells ISIS?
And that's a great prank to pull on somebody.
Just saying, that's part of the whole hacker thing going on here.
Okay, we have other news as well.
This is really kind of a silly story, I guess, in the bigger scheme of things,
but it shows how corporate worlds and governments and military all seem to combine.
This story is about hackers that are charged with stealing over $100 million in U.S. Army and Xbox technology.
Yes, because we know that's pretty much the same thing.
Four men have been charged with breaking into the computer systems of Microsoft, the U.S. Army, and leading games manufacturers
as part of an alleged international hacking ring, we all know what those are like,
that netted more than $100 million in intellectual property.
Okay, first of all, netted $100 million in intellectual property,
you can net $100 million in intellectual property just with a single command and copying a few files
because people will say that's worth this amount and you copied it.
If every copy was worth that amount, it would be a great way to generate all kinds of cash and solve the world's problems,
but it really doesn't work that way.
But it's great for prosecutions. It's great for making those numbers go up.
Anyway, the four are aged between 18 and 28.
They're alleged to have stolen Xbox technology, Apache helicopter training software,
and pre-released copies of games such as Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3.
Yes, I said three, according to an indictment dating from April that was unsealed yesterday.
Now, two of the hackers pleaded guilty, but at least one of them raised some objections
to some of the allegations being raised here.
According to prosecutors, the defendants stole intellectual property and other proprietary data
related to the Xbox One gaming console and Xbox Live online gaming system
and pre-released copies of popular video games.
The Department of Justice claimed the technology was worth between $100 million and $200 million,
which, as I said, was a figure hotly disputed by one of those facing charges.
Now, they have been jointly charged with conspiracies to commit computer fraud, copyright infringement,
wire fraud, mail fraud, identity theft, and theft of trade secrets.
They were also individually charged with individual counts of aggravated identity theft,
unauthorized computer access, copyright infringement, and wire fraud.
All of this could be simply logging in using a different username than the one that belongs to you.
That's wire fraud, that's identity theft, unauthorized computer access, and copyright infringement all right there.
They are alleged to have access to the computer system of Zombie Studios,
which allowed them to access an Apache helicopter training simulation program
that the company had developed for the U.S. Army.
You see what's going on here?
These are people that broke into a system to play a game, to download a game, to have a bit of fun,
and they're being charged as if they broke into the U.S. military.
There was nothing here, unless I missed it, and I read through this whole story,
there's nothing here that shows them breaking into an actual military computer.
They're breaking into a system that has games that the military uses.
Is that the same thing now?
Is that really where we are, where you could do that and you're putting the nation at risk?
And paid for by our U.S. tax dollars, by the way.
It's all paid for by our U.S. tax dollars.
Yeah, you know, that ship has sailed.
But, I mean, think about just how absurd this is,
that these are people probably just out for a bit of fun,
and they're being treated as if they're terrorists.
They're being treated as if they're terrorists for downloading pre-released games.
Where was Matthew Broderick during all of this?
I know! He'd still be in prison now, from 1983, if this was the present back then.
I mean, what we're seeing is, like, maybe what these people did should be illegal.
But it is not nearly as bad for anything as if they had, you know, actually stolen $100 million,
or actually caused $100 million in actual damage, or broken into an actual military base.
And we see this sort of over-prosecution, you know, and this is not the first,
and probably, unfortunately, not the last time we'll see such a thing,
where the penalties sought are just so out of proportion to the actual damage caused
that there's almost no way to reconcile it.
Emanuel?
Yes, Bernie?
I was pointing out that under federal criminal guidelines,
criminal sentencing guidelines, the U.S. Sentencing Commission,
the fraud statutes, the way people are sentenced is based on how much the alleged fraud occurred, amounted to.
So when the government says that, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars was defrauded,
when clearly that's not the case...
And they always talk like that, too. Why is that?
Well, they kind of do, actually.
But at the sentencing phase of these cases, the government doesn't have to prove that these dollar amounts are true.
There's no, the standard of evidence, the burden of proof is much lower than at trial.
So if someone ends up pleading guilty to a lesser offense, they can pull out these crazy estimated damages.
They agreed not to in my case because I kind of forced them to if I plead guilty, but I knew that was coming.
So in this case, the sentences could be decades when you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of alleged dollar fraud,
which even though it could be totally fictitious.
And the average person will say, yes, send them away because look at what they did.
U.S. military, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Obviously, these people have nothing at all to contribute to society and they're just going to cause us harm.
And you really can just pull the numbers out of wherever if you want to slap a value on intellectual property to throw into a court case.
It happened in Kevin Mitnick's case.
He was accused of causing, however, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage by downloading some firmware,
which the company later released open source.
And as far as intellectual property goes, I've got a phone on me right now.
I've got photos on this phone that I've taken.
So that's my intellectual property.
If one of you steal my phone right now, I could claim, OK, Mike's just taken my phone.
So I'm going to say each one of those photos is possibly 100 million dollars.
The cops are already here.
I can see a video monitor.
So this is working out pretty well.
I have maybe 30 photos on set up to the cloud.
And are there naked pictures of celebrities on there as well?
I think I think you're into this for billions now, Mike.
All right.
That was fast.
I hope you don't charge me by the second that you were deprived of the use of these photos.
There's also another aspect to this whole case.
It's believed to be the first conviction of a foreign-based individual for hacking into U.S. businesses to steal trade secret information.
That's according to the authorities.
Because one of these people was from a foreign country.
It's a country known as Canada.
And, Kyle, I'm going to ask you to say this word because you're good at pronouncing Indian names.
What's the name of that place?
Mississauga.
In Ontario.
So you got a native connection.
You got a Canadian connection.
You got all kinds of hostile foreign powers there that who knows?
Who knows what's actually going on?
It's very intriguing, very dangerous, and very scary.
So congrats to the authorities for pulling this off, for finding these people that were downloading games and putting our nation at risk.
Bravo.
All right.
Something else that I saw in, I think, Bernie, you might have found this particular story from a newsletter.
Apparently, the cost of a personal computer back in 1987 is a secret, according to the CIA.
Yeah.
Under the prevailing information policies of the Central Intelligence Agency, even some well-known public facts, such as the price of a popular personal computer, may be withheld from public disclosure.
Now, according to this paper, we bought our first Commodore Amiga in 1987 for less than price redacted, including software.
Yeah.
That's something that was released.
price figure is marked BX3XC, signifying that the information is being withheld under the CIA Act of 1949, by which CIA may withhold information about the organization, functions, names, official titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed by the agency.
But the question being raised here is, is the cost of a publicly available consumer item like the Commodore Amiga computer properly subject to this exemption?
Bernie, I would imagine you would say no.
Well, anybody could look it up.
It's just kind of silly.
I think that the CIA's rationalization was they don't want to reveal their sources and methods, like the method like they spent this much on an Amiga personal computer.
But it's funny.
The paper that was censored or redacted here that someone got from a Freedom of Information Act request, I believe, was kind of cute.
I don't know what the acronym NPIC stands for, but it's, quote, NPIC Amiga and Videotape, sort of a play on Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
And that was the CIA title of this document.
It was from a CIA journal called Studies and Intelligence.
And it was among hundreds of papers posted online this month in response to a FOIA lawsuit brought by Jeffrey Scudder.
I'm not sure who he is, but kudos to him for getting these documents out, redacted as they may be.
It's kind of funny.
How much was an Amiga computer back in 1987?
We can't talk about that.
That's a secret, isn't it?
Maybe the Amiga salesman was just nice and gave them his employee discount, and they don't want to drop a dime on that guy and get him into trouble for doing that all these years later.
Too many secrets.
All right.
Well, othat2600.com is our e-mail address if you want to write to us.
We have a couple of letters that we'd like to read that people have sent to us.
And, again, you know, you can say complimentary things.
You can say critical things.
I'm going to start with some critical things.
Are we ready?
Can we handle this?
All right.
Chaps.
Uh-oh.
Right away.
Right away, I know we're in trouble.
In the last two shows, you have talked about credit cards, but many of the details you have surmised are just plain wrong.
You only speak from your personal use of payment services in the USA, and don't bother to do the simplest research on the issues before spouting your wrong assumptions.
Well, okay.
Yeah.
I'm looking forward to hearing what we said that was so terrible and wrong.
And, obviously, our words are going to be based on our own experiences.
We can't have experiences of other people.
That's what we need you for.
Last week and this, meaning last week and the week before that, you mentioned using the U.S. zip code to verify transactions.
This is a standardized service that many acquiring banks, the bank processing the transaction on behalf of the merchant, in various ways to verify transactions.
I think there's a verb missing there.
This uses the Address Verification Service, or AVS.
I'm quite familiar with that.
Basically, it takes the first line of the address and takes a zip code and matches that.
There's a link to a Wikipedia page on the service.
AVS takes only the numeric parts of the address, so it is of limited value in places with alphanumeric postcodes, such as Canada, U.K.
Common fraud in the U.K.
Take note, everybody.
Common fraud in the U.K. is where delivery of online ordered goods is only accepted at the cardholder's address, and the fraudsters find an address that matches the numeric parts as a drop address to order goods with a stolen card number.
Okay.
I didn't know that.
I'm not very keyed in to fraud in the U.K. or Canada, but wow, okay.
That's a big security hole right there.
The discussion on the rollout of chip cards, finally, to U.S. customers uses that standard, those standards, I think is what you meant to say, that are under the remit of EMVCO.
That's a hard name to say.
EMVCO.
This is a cross-scheme standards body, and all the standards for cards are freely available.
Again, Wikipedia is your friend.
I've always said that.
I think you, as 2600 and off the hook, need to do a little bit of fact-finding before you talk about such things on the air, or get people who do know what they are talking about.
Signed, Stuart.
Well, Stuart, you know, first of all, I love these letters that spend more time criticizing rather than explaining.
I don't see a single thing that you've mentioned here that we got wrong.
What do we say?
Bernie, do you remember anything that we might have said that crossed this guy, that we got completely wrong?
I'd have to play back the last show, but I appreciate him letting us know that there was something we said wrong, but I wish he would tell us what exactly we said wrong.
Well, I mean, I'm reading this, and there's nothing here that I say, wow, okay, I got that wrong.
I only remember talking about AVS, or about the verification system, but I'm familiar with it because I've been involved in Internet online merchandising for quite some time,
and it's something that works well in the United States, doesn't really work that well overseas,
and I think that's pretty much the extent of any discussion we might have had on that particular.
I know we've been talking about chip cards and their introduction in the United States.
Again, that wasn't our idea.
That's happening in a few months, so it doesn't work yet.
That is something I did learn, that the software has not yet been introduced in this country.
So if you try to use your chip card, it won't work.
It won't work whether you're a merchant, whether you're a customer.
You'll still have to do the mag stripe, but it's coming, and one day you will find yourself using the chip part of your credit card.
If you don't have a credit card, one day you will find a credit card in the mailbox that has a little chip on it.
Yeah, again, I don't see what we said that was incorrect as far as that goes.
I mean, the chip is, of course, for in-person transactions,
and the address verification stuff is for online and telephone and mail order transactions,
so they're not really competing technologies.
There is one in-person application that is used for, and that's gas stations.
When you go to a gas station, oftentimes the pump will ask you for your zip code,
it's looking it up, it's comparing it with the AVS system.
I did hear this.
Maybe this listener is confused with another show because I did hear this on a different radio program on the same station
where somebody was saying that's a very Orwellian thing,
that the CIA or some government agency is using that information from gas stations to track your whereabouts.
And the thing is, you know, the credit card company already has that information.
They already have your zip code.
All they're doing at the gas pump is verifying that the card you are using matches the zip code of the billing address
that that card is registered for.
If you get that, try it.
Try getting it wrong.
Experiment.
By all means, you will see that when you get it wrong, it says try again.
It won't take your card or anything like that.
And when you get it right, you'll be allowed to purchase as much fuel as you want.
And I guess the rationale is if it's a stolen credit card,
the thief might not know your home zip code and couldn't use it to buy gas or other things if they didn't know that zip code.
But, I mean, it's not a great security tool, but it's, you know, anything you do like that can help.
Yeah, you can't buy more than 100 gallons of gas.
Wait, you can't buy more than 100 gallons of gas?
Really?
Yeah, usually per transaction.
Why is that?
Is that because the pump just doesn't turn around?
I think it's $100 worth of gas, maybe not 100 gallons.
That's not too hard to do.
Yeah, but as soon as you hit around 100, I think usually it'll slow down and then stop.
And then if you'd like more than that amount of fuel, I think more than $100 worth of fuel, you have to do another transaction.
I'm going to bring my semi down to the gas station and try this and see if it actually stops at 100.
That's interesting to know.
These are interesting things to know as far as limitations and the way these machines work.
You know, one thing that worked a number of years ago, we reported this in the magazine.
This is kind of funny.
Add gas pumps, the kind that you would operate yourself and do all the credit card transactions.
If at the end, instead of hitting when it asks do you want a receipt, instead of hitting no, you hit cancel.
The whole transaction is canceled even though you already filled up your car.
That is how bad the software was written a number of years ago.
I don't think that still works.
I never tried it myself.
Didn't want to get in trouble.
But, yeah, that's experimentation.
I would just add for people who don't generally buy gasoline that the MTA ticket selling machines also ask for your zip code.
That's right.
Exactly.
And something else, too, and this was only introduced a few years ago.
Transactions in supermarkets and various other stores that are under a certain amount.
I think the amount is now $50.
Don't require signatures anymore.
And they're supposed to look at your card to see if the signature is on the back.
But most times they don't.
If you go to an automated checkout, of course, they don't because there's no person there.
And, you know, it's also fun to use those to experiment with those things.
People write articles to us all the time about ways to get things for nothing or various other trickery that's involved with those machines.
But there are other tricks as well.
Find secret menus in them.
There are secret menus in many supermarkets.
There are ways for you to get a loyalty card even if you don't have one.
All kinds of little tricks that we like to share.
But, yeah, it's part of technology.
I never really want to think of myself as loyal to a supermarket.
No, I don't either, and I don't like the fact that you get the real price if you have a card and you get charged extra if you don't.
Because that is really what's happening.
You're not getting a better deal.
You're just getting what it should cost if you use a card.
And if you don't, you're basically paying a penalty for not having a card.
Although I'll add that some grocery chains are starting to phase out these cards because they realize they can just track customers based on their credit cards without pretending to give them discounts and all this stuff.
Right.
Okay, I'm going to say this.
I'm not going to say what chain it is.
But there is at least one chain in the area that has a menu item that you can find that says, forgot my card.
And if you press that button, it says, thank you for using your card, and you get all the discounts.
But you don't have to actually show a card.
And, of course, there's other things too where you can get a card number.
People share card numbers all the time.
And I guess there are accounts where people are buying enormous amounts of groceries and other things and getting discounts or whatever.
But, yeah, this is all part of the whole credit card electronic transaction world.
And there's a number of fun things, a number of stupid things as well.
I'm constantly having to contact my credit card company to verify suspicious transactions.
And it's really silly.
I'll give you an example.
I recently got a chip card in exchange for a MagStripe card, a sole MagStripe card.
And I had to go through all of my monthly auto bill companies, contact them, give them the new credit card number.
And so I did that.
And as soon as one of them charged to the new card number, it was flagged as suspicious.
A company that charged every single month for years was flagged as suspicious.
And then I had to contact them again, say, okay, put it through a second time.
It's, you know, someone's definitely not thinking about how these things actually work.
Rob?
Maybe it's not just your card that's suspicious.
Maybe it's you.
Well, definitely.
But they know that by now.
Hey, let's read another letter.
Last week you talked about Apple and other tech companies not complying with those secret orders.
Get this.
There's a scam going around where people are posing as federal agents and gaining personal info.
And this is brilliant.
Someone has had their bank account wiped out because someone told the bank that they had this order to give them the account holder's info.
And the bank was not to tell the account holder that they were being investigated.
It sounds perfectly plausible because this kind of thing is happening all the time.
So giving the ID thief the account number, name, Social Security number, all kinds of other information.
The bank did that.
And they're not allowed to tell the person that they gave this information out.
So ID thievery is now entering into a whole new realm where the banks are basically protecting them.
And it's all based on the paranoia that we are forced to live with right now.
Yeah, a lot of the scare tactics that we've seen in the, I think those are called, what are those letters called?
FISA or FICA court? Foreign Intelligence?
Yeah, the FISA court.
Surveillance Act.
Yeah, they send these letters to people that basically are a gag order and demand something of them or their institution.
And this is a result of sort of the cultural shift that has been forced on us over the past couple of decades.
Whereas it would have at one point in our history been very strange to hear when you pick up your phone at your job at the bank,
to hear something like, oh, well, you've got to give us this info and not tell the customer because basically, you know, you have to.
And now it's a thing that's not so insane.
It's not so out of the question that people would think it's suspicious.
They'll just go with it because in an authoritative society, people will obey a voice of authority, whether or not it's valid.
Did you see this weird story in The Times the other day?
There's a company called New Star, which runs a sort of weird part of the phone system where the networks sort of interconnect with each other.
And their contract, their federal contract, is up.
And one of the entities that's competing for the new contract is based overseas.
It's an American division, but of Ericsson, which is from Sweden.
And some spy agencies are saying, you know, don't know, don't give this contract to a foreign government because then we'll.
And sorry, not a foreign government, but a foreign company, because then we won't be able to get all the data.
But what these spies are basically admitting is that they are getting illegal data because the American division or even if it's a foreign country, it's still going to be subject to U.S. law.
So any data that the spy agencies are legally entitled to.
And remember, they write the laws most of the time they're already going to get.
And so they're worried that they're not going to be able to get data they're not entitled to.
And it's just insane. And it's just this like weird story in the business section that probably no one would read.
Well, it's even weirder because do you know who Newstar hired as a consultant?
A certain Michael Chertoff, the well-connected former secretary of Homeland Security.
So when you think about that, Bernie, I know you're not surprised by that.
Well, isn't Michael Chertoff the same guy that worked for Rapid that was a spokes a lobbyist for RapidScan, the company that put out these the naked body scanners that U.S. Department of Transportation Security put in all the U.S.
A lot of U.S. airports. And then it was found to be fatally flawed.
So then they had to retire all the machines. But so Michael Chertoff has no credibility.
Well, I mean, effective product representing it is protecting people's security. And it was a fraud.
The other way to phrase this is that he's obviously very good at his job.
Yeah. And speaking of Michael Chertoff, you know, I have Michael Chertoff's credit card.
I do. Basically. And this is completely on the level, folks. I'm not ripping off Michael Chertoff, but maybe I am stealing a bit of his identity.
You can do this. Anyone can do this. You can simply request another credit card from the account you have in any name you wish.
Now, as you know, that caused me all kinds of problems at the border a few times.
I don't carry them with me when I cross the border because customs agents do not understand why somebody would do that.
But, yeah, when he was when when he was part of Homeland Security, I had a Michael Chertoff card with me to get me out of a jam in case in case I got into one.
And you can do that, too. Just contact your credit card company. It doesn't cost anything.
And you can stretch the realm of credibility by getting a card for Scooby-Doo or something.
Who knows? Just let us know what you were able to find. It's something that hackers appreciate, and I don't think anybody else really does.
We're going to take phone calls. 212-209-2900. Here's one more bit of email.
And again, you can write to us. OTH at 2600 dot com with your your comments and contributions.
Zippy writes in to say he's a van courier that does lots of work in large fashion events and has some recommendations for possible places to have hope that are bigger.
Some spaces I can recommend. I have no idea how large Pier 59 is, but they have an event space that's in the Chelsea Piers.
There's another pier on 15th Street further down. More funky, but worth looking at as well.
Wasn't I held in one of those piers when I was arrested back in 2004? I don't think I'd want to go back to there.
I think it might've been the one by 15th Street. I don't know.
Also on Washington Street between Spring and Houston, it's an event space on the west side of the street.
OK, Zippy, thank you very much for sending in those suggestions.
We'll look into those, but I would suspect that probably when you add it all up, it's not as big as what we have right now at the hotel.
We would need something bigger than what we have now and something that's fairly close together so that you don't have to travel several blocks to get to another room for a different talk.
But, you know, it's New York. Anything's possible.
Well, except cheap real estate.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, and we always appreciate these suggestions. There's no such thing as too many options.
So by the time Next Hope rolls around, yeah, we would love to have a pile of other stuff to look into.
Well, Next Hope was in 2010, so that won't be rolling around.
We have to come up with a name for the one that comes after the one we just had.
212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
I see we have a call.
I see the phone line did not light up.
I'm sorry. This phone is acting weird again.
So people, please keep trying to call in, and we'll keep trying to answer the phone.
I'm going to do some operations on the phone here.
You guys want to carry it for a second?
This is a weird phone system that we've got here and a weird world that we live in.
Oh, I'd like to say that we are simulcasting tonight and last week on Woodstock 104.1 out of Woodstock, New York.
That's a cool thing.
And also a cool thing is that we have successfully answered the phone.
Good evening, caller. You're on the air.
Hi. That was me a second ago, and I didn't have my radio down.
That must be why the phone didn't work. It's very intelligent.
Yeah. So I just had a couple of questions and comments about the HOPE and then about e-mail infrastructure in general.
Go right ahead.
HOPE was great. It was phenomenal. It was eye-opening. It was socially enjoyable.
It was crowded, too. It was very crowded. We know how crowded it was.
But aside from that, the one constructive comment maybe would be some of the talks were very technical in nature and other talks were very rudimentary.
And it was hard to tell just from the description.
So maybe a scale or something of like a one, two, three?
Or some kind of legend, like a rating system, like this is a circle for easiest and diamond.
We would have to ask the presenters to rate their own talks because, obviously, we won't know having not seen them.
But I would – okay, it's a good idea.
I would like to encourage people who present talks in the future maybe as part of the description to say this is a rudimentary introduction to this particular subject or this is – I mean, some people already do this.
But I think, yes, you're right, it would be quite helpful if that was made clear because, you know, we get it from both ends.
We have people that say we're not technical enough.
We have people that say we're too technical.
And I like to think that we have a variety, but it would be really good if people knew which applied to which talk.
Yeah, and we should point out that the presenters are the ones who write the descriptions and give them to us.
So, yeah, we would love for the presenters to maybe include that info.
We correct grammar.
We correct spelling.
And we might make sentences flow a little better.
But, yeah, for the most part, they write it.
This is really useful.
It reminds me of the old Heath Kit catalog where you would – next to each item in the catalog is the skill level, like I think one to five on how complicated it was to build this kit.
And then you'd know, like you didn't want to bite off more than you could chew.
So I think this could be a really good idea, and thanks for that suggestion.
Any other suggestions for us?
No, that's it on the hope.
One other comment on – I know you've talked a lot about email infrastructure and security and the bad moniker of hackers and stuff,
but I just wanted to give a quick story of something that happened to me.
I'm a fairly security conscious person.
I use tons of things online to protect anonymity.
But I was out of work for quite a while.
I filled out an application online, and I was in a hurry.
And I do use Gmail HTTPS, but I sent a PDF with some private information that was not password protected.
Now, obviously, once it leaves Gmail and it goes to my future employer's servers, it goes through a million other servers that are not Gmail or theirs.
And literally 48 hours later, a bunch of cell phone accounts were opened up in my name.
They showed up with ID, their security number, home address, everything, 48 hours.
I'm not kidding.
And so it's a commentary on the lack of true security that's there for email, the false sense of security people have.
But I think it's also something that you guys allude to, that it's – those are criminals, right?
They're not hackers, but they do use hacker-type skills, right?
They're using a system, a function that it's not designed for.
They are getting through security.
They're being inquisitive, but then they do something that is illegal.
Right, exactly.
Criminals can do hacking, but that doesn't make them a hacker.
True, right.
Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of things you could say, parallels you can draw.
You know, a drunk driver is using a car that was developed by somebody.
It doesn't make the person who developed the car guilty of the crime that that person committed using that technology.
And there are all kinds of ways you can draw parallels.
But it's an important point what you make as far as how insecure things are when you send them through email.
But let me ask you this.
When you have something stored in your Gmail account, do you feel that that is secure?
At least it's semi-secure.
I mean, I tend not to use it for those types of things, obviously, and I was careless.
You know, I liken it to I have a lock on my door, but I ran out and I forgot to lock my door.
Does that mean that marauders should be free to, you know, steal everything in my house within minutes of me leaving?
You know, we do live in a dangerous world, but there's a false sense of security.
Yeah, it's important to know where those vulnerable points are.
And definitely sending something in the clear through email, that's one of those vulnerable areas.
Absolutely.
But I know that you've had guests on in the past that talk about restructuring email as a protocol.
You know, the SMTP is not designed to be secure.
And I'd just like to hear more about that stuff on the show.
Right.
That's something that hackers are spearheading.
And that, I think, is ample evidence that hackers are not the ones that want to do this kind of thing.
Hackers want to keep things private, secure, encrypted, and free for everybody to use.
And we had Hope Talks just on that very topic, Hope X Talks on securing email, dark mail, that sort of thing.
So it's worth checking out those talks.
I will.
I miss them, but so I'll hop on the website and check them out.
Great.
Thanks for your call.
All right.
Thank you.
One thing that I think is interesting, I'd hope we had a number of talks on a number of computing systems
to make electronic communications more secure.
So I think that I don't know which one is going to win.
Well, yeah, I hope one of them wins or at least all developed or something
because I would hate to see it slowed down by, you know, different factions.
We've seen so many things get slowed down.
This is something that's essential.
That's really, really important.
And what the caller speaks to is something that I'm quite familiar with.
I know, Kyle, you set up a machine recently.
Yes.
Just a ridiculous machine that we were experimenting with, and we just put it online on a cable modem.
Inside of a half hour, somebody from China was port scanning and trying actual logins for various,
like Fluffy was one of the usernames.
Someone out there, if you put a machine up and you have it on a cable modem somewhere,
somebody from China is going to come along and try to log in as Fluffy.
And, well, they'll fail, I think.
I don't think they've gotten in yet.
You know, I feel like putting up a honeypot and just having something so obvious
and seeing what they do once they log in.
I would love to do that.
It certainly was a reminder.
I mean, it is always a reminder to think very carefully about your networks that you're using
and maybe take an interest in what's going on, not only your traffic,
but what other people might be doing on your network.
Yeah, and considering that this is something that we had never opened up that particular IP before,
inside of just a few minutes, somebody finds it and is trying things on it.
It gives you a sense of the scale and the speed.
Yeah, the scale can be really surprising.
I mean, to extend the caller's metaphor of if he leaves his door unlocked,
is somebody just going to wander into his house and take his stuff?
Imagine leaving your door unlocked in a neighborhood where people were constantly trying every doorknob in the city.
Thousands of times a minute.
How about this?
How about the door is in a hallway and people can walk through that door
and obviously they're going to try and open it.
It's that ridiculous now.
The analogy just doesn't hold up.
It's not a house, okay?
It's basically a corridor.
It's a highway.
It's something like that.
Let's take one more phone call if we can.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes, good evening.
Hi.
Excuse me.
I'm on a Time Warner.
Okay, please turn the radio down and ask us your question.
Yes.
I'm on Time Warner.
Time Warner subscriber.
I'm sorry to hear that.
My condolences.
I am too.
I am too.
Although, they have picked up their turbo to finally to well over 100 megs.
Because ever since they announced, you know, boosting the turbo to 100 megs,
it was only going as far as 84.
But I'm calling in regard to earlier this week.
I went to check my call logs, right?
And I found my telephone number and name on my own call logs.
Will you explain that?
Were you calling your own voicemail or something like that?
No, no, no.
I just happened to see it on there.
You know, a call coming in to me with my own name and number.
And I'm unlisted registry.
Perhaps a call forwarding?
Any of those options?
Nothing you set up?
No.
Can you account for your whereabouts at that particular moment?
Well, actually, you know, when the call came in, you know,
I didn't receive the call until I, you know, I checked it on my call log.
In other words, somebody called me and what I was told by the technical department
is some spoofing going around.
That's possible.
I suspect what this might be is just bad software where when they don't get a
phone number, when a caller ID might be blocked, they might insert your number.
There could be a number of different reasons for this.
But I'm sure other people use Time Warner.
They can write to us, othat2600.com,
and we'll read any kind of response that people might have explaining what
this is all about.
We are out of time.
And the Personal Computer Show is up next.
But don't forget, next week we have a two-hour program,
a two-hour fundraising program here on WBAI.
And we hope that you show your support.
And this week, 2600 meetings happening all over the world.
Find yours at 2600.com slash meetings.
That's right.
And, again, write to us, othat2600.com.
We'll see you next week.
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Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow.