and the true voice of the people by making a donation to WBAI.
To make a donation, go to our website at givetowbai.org.
That's give the number to WBAI.org.
Thank you for supporting listener-sponsored community
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And you are listening to community radio here, WBAI New York at 99.5 FM.
The time is 8 o'clock.
Time once again for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Von Diddley Bonk for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
Von Diddley Bonk!
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 Rob T. Firefly.
Hang on, I hit the wrong button.
No, somebody else hit the wrong button.
Try it now.
Good evening.
All right.
Rob T. Firefly here.
And Kyle.
Yes, I'm here.
Hi.
I'm here.
Actually, only three of us this week, different cast and crew.
But we are still in the midst of our mini-drive in December, so we urge people to give a call
to 516-620-3602, pledge whatever you can afford, become a WBAI buddy where you pledge a certain
amount every month, a certain trifling amount, like $5 or something, and that turns into
more when you multiply it by 12, which is how many months we currently have in the year.
You can also text us, 41444, with the letters WBAI, and fill in your information that way.
You can go to our website, give2wbai.org, that's give, the number two, wbai.org.
And it helps support this place and the whole Pacifica Network.
You know, I did something interesting the last few days, using one of those devices
that we have, you know, smart devices, smart speakers, ones that are always eavesdropping
on you and doing what you say.
You're talking to electronics.
Well, yeah, it's interesting, because, okay, I'll just say, Alexa, she's been here.
She's been to the studio, she's been a guest on the show.
So I was talking with her, and I asked her to play, not this Pacifica station, not WBAI,
but I went to a different one.
And you can do that.
You can listen to other radio stations, thanks to the internet, but with apps like TuneIn
and things like that, it's kind of collected together in a very easy-to-manage way.
So you can say to Alexa, play WPFW, for instance.
And I was listening to WPFW for hours, the Washington, D.C. station of Pacifica.
Then I listened to KPFT in Houston and heard all kinds of good music and talk from there,
totally different style.
And then I made my way west to KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFA in Berkeley, and eventually
back here at WBAI in New York.
So we have five stations, five main stations, and they're all uniquely different.
It's a very amazing network that's been around since 1949, longer than most networks, I have
to say.
And somehow it survived, it survived all kinds of crises, and yes, we're in a crisis now
with this whole Empire State Building business, but I think we'll get through it.
I think we will, and I think if people listened more to the variety that is on this network
through different stations, I think they would realize how amazing, unique it is and why
it has to be preserved.
So with that in mind, I hope people call 516-620-3602 and simply say to the volunteer who picks
up the phone, what can I get for pledging this amount of money?
Whatever it is you can afford, and they will help you.
They will send you a thank you gift for whatever it is that you wish to donate.
You can do the same thing online, give to wbai.org, and you'll see all kinds of things
there as well.
But the main reason to call or to go to the website or to text to 41444 is to save the
radio station, keep the radio station going.
We've been at this location on the dial since 1960, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any
other radio station in New York City that has been around that long.
Oh yeah, you may say that a bunch of lunatics running the asylum here and always at each
other's throats and all kinds of arguments and bickering go out over the air and in the
studios, and we're talking about all kinds of things no one else talks about.
But somehow that lasts.
Somehow that is an organization that is not privy to all kinds of marketing research that
says, well, you know what, we should go country this week, and we'll pull in the 18-24s, and
we'll get more for our buck on that particular format.
We stuck to the premise of the Pacifica Foundation as it began, founded by Lou Hill in 1949,
and we've kept going.
That has been the bond that has strengthened us.
And also, of course, the listeners, listeners who have called in.
We were the first radio station, I believe, to even ask listeners to call in and pledge
support.
So having those two things, having that commitment and having the listener support, that is what
keeps a radio station and that is what keeps a network together for so long.
And I see no reason for that to change.
Yes, there are challenges ahead.
There are things we have to focus on, things we have to fix and get past.
We've been doing that since day one.
I think we're in good shape.
Yes, indeed.
We're in an age when people are willing to pay and subscribe to so many things.
You're subscribing to your music service.
You're subscribing to however many video delivery services, depending on who has what shows
you want to watch or follow, and subscribing to this, subscribing to that.
And radio still remains strong.
It still remains free.
And it still remains something that you can get hold of with a very inexpensive piece
of equipment that most people have access to.
This is the only thing that's keeping us available, is what we're doing now, is asking listeners
like you to chip in and help us do what we do.
If you think it's worth doing what we do, then yes, show it by helping us out.
Give to WBAI.org or call 516-620-3602 or text the letters WBAI to the number 41444 and be
part of what goes on around here.
Help us keep doing what we do and do it strongly.
Amen.
Amen.
This is a special model.
It's a different way of doing things.
It allows people to express themselves.
It allows us to make things up.
You get to make up how much you want to pledge.
We get to program and do freeform radio the way we want to do.
That allows a show like this.
So please, whatever you can, any amount, it all adds up.
We're here for you so long as you can make a pledge when we're doing these fund drives.
So it's a big deal and we really, really appreciate your support.
You say a show like this, and that makes me think, a show like this, what show is this?
This is off the hook.
It's been on the air in one form or another since 1988 and a show like this, it's the
only one of its kind, I think, certainly in New York, probably in the country where we
talk about hacker issues for at least an hour each week and we take phone calls and
we sometimes experiment on the air and do all kinds of things that just can't be done
in other places for one reason or another.
The biggest reason is having sponsors.
If you have sponsors, you can't really do things that make companies upset or make them
look foolish or call them out on how they might be ripping people off or various things
like that.
You can't get too political, you can't start criticizing those people you might have in
your pocket.
You know, a place like this, it's messy, but it's free speech and that's what it's all
about and the hacker world fits into that very, very nicely and that's why we've found
a home here at WBAI and hopefully our listeners feel the same way.
We're going to be opening up phones a little later on so people can call in and share their
feelings on this and other things as well.
Actually, I'd like to read a letter because we do get mail from listeners.
I want to urge people to write more letters to us because I think it reflects society
in general where people just write less or what they do write is confined to one or two
lines and a bunch of links.
I'm sorry, but that doesn't bring us nearly as much joy as getting something that is paragraphs
long and you know what, it can even be paragraphs that are tearing us apart saying why we're
so terrible and how it is their most solemn wish that one day we just lose interest in
the show and do something else instead.
Things like that.
At least we know you took the time to pin these words and attach them together and it's
good for you to write.
It's good for you to feel like, yeah, I said that and it's there.
It's something that is on the record.
You said it.
It's not a tweet.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
Oth at 2600.com.
I remember years ago we used to give out a snail mail address.
I don't know what it is.
I mean, I know the address on Atlantic Avenue here in Brooklyn, but I don't know if we'd
ever get the mail, so I'm not encouraging people to do that.
But I remember in the past we used to read the snail mail address every week and we would
get mail there too.
Well, now email.
Everyone has email, right?
I know lots of people, they shy away from email now.
They only communicate through a particular company or I only send Facebook messages.
What is that anyway?
How do you only communicate via someone else's platform?
Email is somewhat independent.
You can run your own email server.
You can sign up for another company.
There are all kinds of ways that you can use it on your own terms.
But if you only communicate through Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatnot, you're
playing by their rules.
They can kick you off anytime they want.
It's their machine.
It's their business.
It's their company.
And you have to agree to that.
But running an email server of your own, that is the ultimate challenge, I think, for people
on the net to do things themselves.
Now, of course, we're going to be talking about net neutrality because that might be
ending in a couple of days.
We have to talk about last minute strategies and all that.
And that could adversely affect the very things we're talking about.
So it's really vital that we have an understanding of it and that we fight for what we believe
in.
But let me read this letter from a listener who writes, hi there, I've been listening
to the show for a few years now.
In between also going through all the shows since 1988.
Yeah, that's right.
All the shows are online except for the two that got stolen out of my car many years ago.
And if you're the person that did that, no questions asked.
Just return them and we'll put them online.
But you can go to www.2600.com slash off the hook.
Find all of our shows.
And it's really quite a time capsule of how things have changed, how technology has changed.
I mean, the things I'm talking about now as far as people communicating in different ways.
Well, the way the phone network sounded alone is just simply staggering back in the 80s
and 90s.
And since we made lots of phone calls and did experiments on the air, you can hear that.
And you can hear us talking about the various phone companies and the takeovers and technological
changes.
Anyway, this listener has been listening since 1988.
He's almost caught up.
I'm curious, though, why the dynamics and themes seem to have changed over the years
in comparison to shows pre-2K, pre-2000.
I don't think I've heard any mention of phones, cellular or pay phones, in the last few years
of listening.
Well, I got to say, I don't have this person's name.
Oh, no, Dave.
I'm sorry, Dave.
I have to say, Dave, we're just talking about phones right now.
We do talk about phones quite a bit, actually, probably more than anyone else.
But you're right.
Things have changed.
As we're mentioning right now, things change over the years.
Technology changes.
Interests change.
But I think you're listening to the only people right now that are fixated on phones so much
that we'll keep talking about them no matter what.
And even though all the pay phones in the city are being yanked out, we're still going
to talk about pay phones.
We're still going to talk about how they used to work if they're not there anymore and what
the capabilities are and various other functions, landlines, dial-up modems, all kinds of things
like that.
We talk about new technology and old technology.
Yeah.
It's funny.
I was listening to some of the very earliest Off the Hooks recently, and you actually introduced
the show at one point as, welcome to Off the Hook, the show about phones.
Wow.
I said that.
Yeah.
That's a direct quote.
I love that because it was a show about phones at the time.
It was before most people had computers in their house.
But the concept is the same.
We talk now about computers and the internet, as those involved in the show did then, because
that's the purpose it's serving.
It's the connection of your average person to and from the outside world and this method
of communication that just opens so many doors and presents so many possibilities.
And it's the same reason the early phone freaks were phone freaks because they were messing
with the biggest computer there was, which was the phone system.
And so what we talk about here just evolves along that path and along the various ways
in which we're using technology to find connections with one another and expand our own horizons
and do things and learn things and so on.
Well, it's the magic of the phone that got me into the whole thing in the first place
because through this device, you can communicate with the whole world.
And this device was a massive computer, one massive system, the Bell system.
And if you could figure out how to use that, you could do all kinds of things and impress
all kinds of people and just learn so much.
And I think that's what drove the phone freaks of the early days.
And then that kind of transitioned nicely into the whole computer revolution.
And the two really existed side by side for quite some time.
And now, of course, it's changed quite a bit, but that feeling is still there.
But also, just to address that point, we open the show every week with this sound.
Now you know what that sound is.
Maybe some people don't know what that sound is.
That is an off-hook tone.
And what an off-hook tone is, that's what happens if you leave your phone off the hook,
which is the name of the show.
Hence that sound at the beginning.
Maybe people don't know this.
I know it's obvious to us.
But if you somehow, for some reason, forgot to hang up your phone, you were talking to
somebody, and they hung up, eventually, your phone would make that noise.
It was so loud that you'd hear it from any part of your house, and you'd say, where's
the phone?
Off the hook.
And you'd have to find it and hang it up.
I remember before that tone, actually, though, my dial tone just made kind of a louder tone,
but it wasn't a repeating tone like that.
But I don't know what they do in other countries or what they did in other countries.
I don't even know what they do here in the studio, because we have this phone over here,
which has this weird tone.
OK, so what if I leave that off the hook?
What happens?
Is it ever going to change?
See, this is the kind of thing we do in the air.
We'll play a tone to see what happens to the tone.
But we can talk while the tone is there.
I'm interested in what the tone has to say.
Yeah.
Oh, oh.
There we go.
OK.
But you know, that noise, that's called a reorder.
Some people call it a fast busy.
That's not enough to get your attention from across the house.
That gets your attention if you've got the phone next to your ear.
But sometimes this tone changes to something else.
In fact, I hear this tone kind of stumbling over itself.
Listen carefully.
OK, well now it's not doing it.
Oh, OK, all right.
Now that gets your attention.
I'm not satisfied.
Yeah, I think it might turn into something else.
I'll turn it down, though, so I don't drive people crazy.
But yeah.
I'm waiting for it to start playing Kraftwerk or something.
Anyway, let's finish with Dave's letter here, because he had a very good point, I think.
Understandably, times have changed.
VoIP is here, that voiceover IP, but it's still a fascinating topic and one that I wish
would get discussed from time to time.
Well, I hope you're happy tonight, Dave, because we're certainly discussing it.
While I do hear the odd security breach brought up, why is there so little talk about security
breaches?
The last show, all that was discussed was Trump's Twitter account and whether he should
have one.
The whole Trump Twitter account business was pretty relevant to the things we talk about.
It has to do with access to technology, freedom of speech, the way news is dispersed, and
how people can be manipulated.
And equality.
I'm sorry?
Equality.
I mean, like how he's treated under the law versus other people.
Yeah, how other people would have been treated under similar circumstances.
We change topics from week to week, so that is something that certainly was relevant at
the time, but we don't talk about that every week.
We do talk about security breaches when they come up.
We've got a few to talk about tonight, certainly.
Anyway, if my vote as a Canadian would count, and I don't see why it wouldn't, I would say
no to the question we were asking, whether Trump should have his Twitter account.
And I think most people agreed with that, that he should not have a ... Did we have
the final poll?
We have our Twitter account, Hacker Radio Show.
We had a poll, should Donald Trump lose his Twitter account because of the abuse that
he was heaping onto it?
You're looking that up.
Let me finish the letter.
On the topic of payphones, I've spent a total of three weeks walking around New York City
in the past year.
I noticed 99% of the phones I saw were Titan.
I might have seen a few Verizon, but mainly Titan payphones, even during my ventures into
Queens and Brooklyn.
Who is that company affiliated with?
As far as I know, they're just Titan.
I don't even know if they operate phones anymore.
I think they're an ad company mostly, and they use those phones as real estate for that.
Isn't that something?
Yeah, it's like a whole sub-industry that is ... It's something that really didn't depend
on the phone network, so the phone network changes or becomes cost prohibitive, well,
they still have this place for eyeballs and people to ... And that's valuable.
It started out, you had a payphone booth, and then a payphone kiosk, and they put advertising
there.
Then as the phone was used less and less, they said, hey, we can still use the advertising,
so let's have a phone company that is simply about advertising, and maybe we'll throw in
a phone or two, but it's certainly not going to be the priority.
There are no Verizon payphones anymore.
They're gone.
True.
Yeah.
We've seen many different instances of them being pulled out.
I think there's maybe one working one.
It's becoming like that, that there's only a couple left, and they're being replaced
by these other Wi-Fi sort of modern or futuristic payphones.
The Link NYC, you mean?
Yeah, and we've discussed that a little bit, too.
There's one right here now.
They put one in front of the station.
I'm not sure if it's activated yet.
It wasn't the last time we were in touch.
It's like the scene from 2001 where the monolith suddenly appears, and all the pro-magnum whatever
people are throwing sticks and stones.
Well, that's happening, too.
People are throwing things at it, and it's causing all kinds of chaos and outbursts,
but it will be activated if it's not activated yet.
I think when the moon gets full or something.
This is like the sort of extension of what the telephone system began and emerged as.
These new ways of using signal like a Wi-Fi signal and a handset, it's akin to the features
you would be offered through a payphone or through a household, but it's just changed
form.
As the conversations changed about internet and telephones and long distance, it became
more about wireless phones when those started.
This is also when the internet was emerging, and people were just starting to get broadband,
so they were using their landlines in different ways, maybe with the DSL and all of those
things.
They can now basically instruct the current environment, and these kiosks are a part of
that process, which I think they're settled on.
They're going to stay, I think.
I don't think they're not going back.
That's the future of payphones in New York.
Sad to say, but we still get more payphone photos sent to 2600 than anything else.
People are still out there worldwide finding them and taking pictures, and I think that's
something that, if nothing else, that's why payphones will stick around.
We have a lot of damaged ones.
We do, yeah.
A lot of unmaintained ones, saying it nicely.
We'll share more on that later, sure.
Rob, do you have some info on the poll we took?
I do.
We posted on November 29th, should Twitter delete real Donald Trump's account?
There are 613 votes, 71% of which were yes, 29% said no.
I said no.
I didn't say no there.
I said no on the air.
I think most of us did on the air.
If he didn't have the Twitter account, then we wouldn't be privy to all the craziness.
Some of the craziness, but not all the craziness, and I think we need to be privy to all of
it.
He might be more productive, I think is maybe the way people think that might go, is that
he'll do more things.
He won't be spending as much time, but he'll be seething and upset.
Yeah, it just doesn't hold water, does it?
I mean, think about what you're saying there.
It doesn't sound right.
I cannot picture any universe where that guy is more productive.
You think he won't do more president stuff, because he doesn't have to sit there and fumble
around with the keypad and stuff?
No, I don't.
I can't see it, but yeah.
Let's finish up with this letter, which is taking the majority of the hour, it seems,
on the ... Okay, so we had the Titan thing.
Okay, it's pretty much over, yeah.
I'm also an active listener of Off the Wall, just after the fact.
Great show.
Thanks, Dave.
Thank you for listening to both shows, Off the Walls on Tuesday nights on the other radio
station.
And yeah, we'd like to hear from our listeners.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com, and put some sentences together, old school style,
and we'll be happy to sometimes read it on the air, certainly all the time read it amongst
ourselves.
You can also tweet us at Hacker Radio Show if you're a Twitter user, though I do love
an email.
If you must.
If you must use Twitter, yeah, you can tweet directly to us, and I'm sure people are doing
that right now.
I still love an email.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's great to ...
Yeah.
It's great to have a whole email account just to write us a letter.
I mean, there's a myriad of places that would let you do that.
Mm-hmm.
Let's take a quick look at some of the things that are happening in the quote-unquote hacker
world.
An Australian airport had sensitive security details and building plans stolen after its
computer systems were hacked.
Perth Airport was hacked by a Vietnamese man, Le Duc Hoang Hai, who used the credentials
of a third-party contractor to get access to the system in March of last year.
Look, the story just came out, so don't look at me.
I'm just finding out about it now.
That's according to the West Australian, which apparently is a newspaper of some sort.
Now, Hai has been jailed by the Vietnamese military court for four years for illegally
accessing Perth Airport's corporate network in 2016.
Okay, so here we have ... This is a whole Dragon episode in 10 seconds here.
You have the crime being detected, the perpetrator being caught, and now he has been sentenced.
End of story.
Four years for hacking into the Perth Airport system.
Somehow, I feel like there's a but.
No, there's no but there.
That is the story.
Here's something else, too.
The cybercriminal group believes to be operating out of Russian-speaking territories.
I don't know why it's phrased that way.
Russian-speaking territories?
You mean like Russia?
I don't know what that means.
Has hit at least 20 banks and financial companies and stolen millions of US dollars in the process.
Details of these attacks were first made public in a report published recently by Russian
cybersecurity firm Group IB.
The company believes this is a new group, different from other advanced criminal organizations
that have hit the financial sector in the past.
Other media outlets are calling this hacker group the money takers.
I got to tell you, if your organization is called money takers, you're not hackers.
That's not what hacking is about.
You might know how to hack, maybe.
I kind of doubt it, but money taking, this goes against everything that the hacker culture
is all about.
Actually, it says here researchers named this group money takers.
Okay, it's based on the name attackers gave to one of their hacking utilities.
So it's really confusing now what money taker is.
It was a utility and then somebody used that utility to name the entire group whatever.
If you're stealing money, you're stealing money, you're a thief and not a hacker.
And also, that's just not a very original name.
What do you suppose came in second when they were trying to decide?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe the wet bandits.
I don't know.
We have all kinds of other stories of things that have happened in the last couple of weeks.
We just get so much.
A lot of people send us tips as well, which is good to have.
We had the story of, this happened in North Carolina actually about a week or so ago.
The Mecklenburg government, they were paralyzed as their hacked computer files were held for
ransom.
They were held in Mecklenburg County.
Unknown computer hacker struck them after a county employee unknowingly opened an email
attachment that unleashed spyware and a worm into the county's computer system.
County manager Dino Diorio said on Tuesday night that the hacker essentially froze the
county's electronic files and that hacker was seeking $23,000 for an encryption key
that would release the files.
It's called ransomware.
And the hacker's deadline was last Wednesday at 1 p.m.
Now, from what I understand, they were going to pay this and then they decided not to,
which I think is the right thing, not to ever pay for this kind of nonsense.
And again, that's got nothing to do with hacking.
And the deadline passed.
I don't know what happened.
No one's heard from Mecklenburg County in the last week.
So Mecklenburg County, I'm sorry, no one's heard from them.
So I don't know if they made it through there or if they've lost all control over everything.
But our thoughts are with you.
If anyone, our listeners are in Mecklenburg County, please let us know what's happening.
Yeah, ransomware is a known thing.
It happens in the whole field of computer security.
It's almost never a hacker that targets you.
You download some piece of crap from somewhere and it does its thing, which was set up long
ago by someone shady using a plug and play tool that you can get everywhere.
So this isn't an act of hacking so much as an act of security failure.
And yeah, it doesn't deserve to paint a picture of just some individual hacker who's rubbing
their hands in glee or something.
And there's so much really, it'd be very hard for us to cover absolutely every bit and every
detail of it.
I mean, I'm just looking, I get alerts for these things.
There's stuff going on all the time.
You can bet your major providers of operating systems like Apple or Microsoft, they're going
to have updates constantly.
They do theirs with much fanfare even, especially if it's particularly nasty or related to a
widespread botnet attack and so on.
And especially with the holidays, there's been a lot of emphasis on everyone being careful.
And you do, you want to be really quite careful because of these things like ransomware, which
are kind of nasty and not fun to deal with.
And I don't think there's ever been ransomware that wasn't nasty.
Yeah.
I don't think you want to expose yourself to that.
And so you want to take precautions and look out for things to update.
The number one precaution to take is make backups and make backups and keep the backups.
Here's the thing, things people don't think about.
You make a backup and you don't keep it next to the computer.
That way if your office blows up or something, you don't lose everything.
You keep that someplace else, different location, different city if possible.
And you keep the backup for periods of time.
You keep a backup from a year ago, you keep a backup from six months ago, you keep one
from a week ago and you update it on a regular basis.
That way if anything ever happens, you might lose a couple of days, but you won't lose
everything.
And it's so simple.
I mean, get a tape backup system or backup onto another hard drive, backup in the cloud
if you're comfortable doing that.
But the important thing is to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And update things, maintain your equipment just like you would anything else.
But my point is that just because maybe we didn't get to it doesn't mean that you shouldn't
be alert and so on.
So yeah, it's hard for us to cover everything.
And so if it is going on and we don't mention it, it's probably because we were talking
about other things and really it's so comprehensive that there's quite a bit of angles and threats
out there.
So you want to watch out.
The real reason is that we don't have enough time.
Time is our enemy.
We're only on for an hour a week.
And you know, hacking is the number one story everywhere it seems.
It has been for like years in one form or another.
And we can only cover so much.
Look, it's more than half an hour and we haven't gotten to the net neutrality yet.
And we can't get to the net neutrality until we get to this new feature.
Yes, as promised, we came up with a theme for Hack of the Week and now we have the theme
for Hack of the Week.
And that was the Hack of the Week is finding the theme because, well, it could have been.
I mean, it took a lot of work and it took a lot of diligence and that's what hacking
is, right?
I like that theme.
Yeah, okay.
All right.
So last week, Kyle had the Hack of the Week without a theme where he figured out how to
fix our car using a device called the...
Finally, yeah.
I used a vehicle interface that was specific to the vehicle and it helped.
Yeah.
And it got so much response from listeners too.
Our car hackers, I guess, just the way you can take technology, take control of technology
yourself.
Well, I had a situation this week where I was trying to buy train tickets, completely
different scenario here.
I was trying to buy train tickets online overseas because we'll be going to the CCC this year
and going other places as well.
And I went through this whole big thing on the German website, which is a great website
for figuring out when trains are running and possibly getting tickets, but not always.
Sometimes it's just good for informational purposes.
The site is bahn.de, B-A-H-N dot D-E.
And I found a really good price, a really good rate.
And I went through the entire thing of entering the day we were going, what kind of accommodation
on the train we wanted, payment information.
And I finally got to the point where I clicked and that's when I got this error message that
said your payment could not be processed.
I tried it again, same thing happens, you know, because that's what you have to do.
You have to keep trying.
Then I realized something, something must be wrong.
I tried a different card and I got the same message, but this time I got an email right
away from my card saying, hey, what are you trying to do?
You're trying to charge something overseas.
We don't like that.
You know, you got to click here to say that's okay.
And that told me right there that, oh, there's a problem.
Apparently these overseas transactions are triggering alerts and I need to figure out
a way around that.
So the best way around that obviously was to click okay so that I could bill to that
particular agency afterwards.
But then the problem became that the deal I had gotten had disappeared, was no longer
there.
Instead, twice, three times the price, that was the new rate for the train that I wanted
to book.
And so, you know, I guess what you're programmed to do is just accept your bad luck and, you
know, not question the system.
But that's not the hacking mentality.
The hacking mentality is to keep trying all different possibilities.
So I figured out that if you chose a different day on that website and then you clicked ahead
one day, you didn't get the same results as if you clicked on the day that you wanted
to go in the first place.
You got different results.
I don't know why, but you did.
I kept trying that enough times where I would go backwards and forwards and, you know, I
literally spent three hours doing this.
But eventually it worked.
Eventually I hit some kind of combination where I got the rate that I had originally
been quoted.
I used the credit card, which had now been cleared for this kind of purchase.
And I got that rate because I wouldn't accept the fact that I just had bad luck and I'd
have to pay two or three times more now.
And that, I think, is a lesson to be learned there, that, you know, you always have the
power to keep trying something, you know, keep pounding away until you get the result
you want.
That's what hacking is all about.
And it won't always work and people will see you wasting a lot of time and they won't
understand why.
And I think if you have all those things come together, that's when you realize, yeah, this
is what hacking is all about.
So that is this week's Hack of the Week.
Rob, I hope you're thinking of something to do for next week.
Hopefully, you know, between all the people who do this show, we are hacking things constantly
and we'll keep coming up with things.
And if not, well, we'll turn to our listeners.
Our tone is still going, by the way.
It's going to be comforting now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's always...
Actually, I should probably hang up because we can't take phone calls and we want to take
phone calls later.
If that line is busy, we won't be able to.
Net neutrality.
All right.
So net neutrality coming up for that FCC vote in, what, two days?
Yeah.
Not good.
Not good at all.
Today, today, librarians have something to say about this.
Oh, did they?
So you know it's getting real.
Oh, this will be cool.
All right.
An open letter.
Well, actually, it's the presidents of the New York, Brooklyn, and Queens public libraries.
I don't know where the Bronx and Staten Island are, but these three have something to say.
Now, on Thursday, the FCC is set to vote on a measure that would repeal net neutrality,
transform the openness of the Internet.
The effort to repeal the Obama-era initiative has been mired with protests, a deeply flawed
commenting period, that's saying it very nicely, and calls to halt the vote even from
within the commission.
Calls to halt the vote even from within the commission.
Now, a poll released just this week found that 83 percent of Americans do not approve
of the move to kill net neutrality.
Now, I can read that one again, too.
A poll finds that 83 percent of Americans do not approve of the move to kill net neutrality.
Yeah.
Even Republican lawmakers are breaking from their party to call for legislation that keeps
net neutrality in place.
I'm going to read...
Okay, I can't read everything twice, but it's all really, you know, good and inspiring.
And you know, you add Alabama to that, and it's really, you know, it's a good week so
far.
But we have a big fight ahead of us.
Now, Ajit Pai's FCC is expected, regardless, to move forward with the vote tomorrow.
And that has almost everyone who uses the Internet concerned.
Now, this letter from Anthony Marks, president and CEO of the New York Public Library, Linda
Johnson, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Public Library, and Dennis Walcott, president
and CEO of the Queens Library, outlined how they feel the move to strip net neutrality
could negatively impact the New York area public library systems.
This is what they have to say.
Since their inception, public libraries have fought to ensure that all people, regardless
of their background or beliefs, have access to knowledge, education, and opportunity.
That noble mission hasn't changed, even as technology has.
In addition to books and other materials, public libraries in every community in our
great country are providing access to the computer and the Internet, technology training
classes, tablets, laptops, and more, offering everyone the tools they need to improve their
lives, strengthen their communities, and succeed.
Libraries are at the foundation of the American dream.
The recent proposal by the Federal Communications Commission to abandon current net neutrality
rules stands in direct opposition to this vital work.
The proposal essentially gives broadband providers financial incentive to govern the openness
of the Internet, paving the way for models in which consumers pay for priority access,
and those who can't pay are limited to a slow lane.
Without the current protections, the already yawning digital divide will be widened.
We know in New York City, millions of families cannot afford broadband access at home.
These families are in our branches, borrowing Wi-Fi hotspots, or using our public computers
to do homework, pay bills, apply for jobs, or communicate with relatives.
For these New Yorkers, the 216 library branches across the city are their only option for
access to technology.
For the FCC to place Internet access, something that in today's world is a necessity, not
a luxury, to place that even further out of reach is appalling.
You don't want a librarian to think you're appalling, believe me.
As strong advocates for and guardians of the right for people to seek and receive information
from all points of view without restriction, New York City libraries cannot possibly support
such a measure.
For us, though, it's more than just principle.
We too would potentially need to pay broadband providers extra so our content could be delivered
on the same terms as commercial content providers.
For public libraries, most of which are government agencies or non-profits, this could be a serious
burden as we deliver large amounts of video to our patrons, have users remotely accessing
collections at home, we offer hundreds of expensive data sets to the public for free.
As libraries will increasingly collect digital assets, these costs will increase.
In other words, this proposal directly impacts the public's ability to access library collections
and materials, the very tools that have helped even the playing field for so many in this
country for centuries.
To see who will be affected, simply walk into any New York City library branch, or
if you're listening from a different part of the country, walk into your branch.
See the students who literally cannot do their homework without our computers.
See the parents and caregivers who are learning English and applying for jobs online to improve
their circumstances.
See the higher education students, independent researchers and scholars who need our databases
and online collections to further scholarship.
Imagine how frustrated they will be, how demoralized, how when they find out they can
no longer access what they need.
Now, critics of net neutrality are quick to point out that it could stifle innovation.
Why, for example, would a cable company invest in having the highest speed data network if
it could not reap the financial rewards of selling premium access to that higher speed
data?
These critics say the new proposal values private investment and innovation over government
intervention.
Those are weak arguments.
In reality, far more technology companies are financially incentivized to spur innovation
around high speed internet than just the telecom and cable companies own the infrastructure.
The consumer demand to deliver uninterrupted streaming of the hottest new Netflix show
or multiplayer access to the latest PlayStation game will keep internet speeds humming with
or without net neutrality.
Wow.
It's something.
I've noticed so many entities, so many people are uniting to fight this thing.
I've seen a post today, for instance, from, there's one from Google.
Our values remain the same.
The internet should be competitive and open.
That's how it works today.
That's how it has always worked.
It's a level playing field where new entrants and established players can reach users on
an equal footing.
If internet access providers can block some services and cut special deals that prioritize
some company's content over others, that would threaten the innovation that makes the internet
awesome.
The internet was designed to empower people to get online.
You need to use an internet access provider, but once you're online, you decide what to
do and where to go.
Anyone anywhere can share their opinions freely, and any entrepreneur, big or small, can build,
launch, and innovate without having to get permission first.
We believe that consumers should continue to enjoy open on-ramps to the internet.
That means no internet access provider should block or degrade internet traffic, nor should
they sell fast lanes that prioritize particular internet services over others.
These rules should apply regardless of whether you're accessing the internet using a cable
connection, a wireless service, or any other technology.
We saw Mozilla has an amazing page up, if you go to advocacy.mozilla.org, you can actually
make a phone call right now, call your member of Congress, urge them to stop Ajit Pai's
plan.
Last week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai revealed that anti-net neutrality
proposal his agency has set to vote on December 14th.
These rules are way, way, way worse than expected.
If passed, this would eradicate crucial protections for free speech, competition, and innovation
online.
It's illegal for big cable companies to create fast lanes to throttle the speeds of competing
websites or filter out social media posts they don't like.
This could mean that you pay more for less of the web.
At this stage of political gamesmanship, Congress holds a powerful sway over this issue.
As constituent outrage grows, they can call on Pai to stall the vote on these awful rules,
hold him accountable if he goes through with it.
There's already been a groundswell of opposition, but we need to raise the volume even higher
so that every elected official knows how toxic Pai's plan is.
So there are so many places that you can go and take more action.
We've named a few of them.
I'm sure you can find more.
I'm sure you can call your elected officials and add your voice to this growing curse.
It matters.
It adds up.
We've seen this time and time again.
We saw it with what happened on Election Day.
We saw what happened yesterday in Alabama.
We see it with people gathering together to raise their voices in opposition or in
support of a common goal.
I think we have a very, very good chance of killing this.
Yeah.
I noticed a couple others.
There's been a lot of really good statements we could go on with.
I was sent something by a student hacker friend before the show that was something they noticed
on GitHub, which invariably they use for projects and their own development of electronics
and code.
That link is github.com save-net-neutrality and there it says, save net neutrality in
the U.S. again.
A free open internet is once again at stake.
Now more than ever before, it's time to make a ruckus.
Call your representative.
I saw this on Al Jazeera.
I saw this good summary of what net neutrality is all about because it's kind of hard to
explain to people.
I think we've gotten the basic premise of it out, but it's a little difficult sometimes
to get people to understand it, but net neutrality is a set of principles and rules that say
internet service providers, known as ISPs, must treat all data fairly without blocking
or throttling certain data streams.
This means that an ISP like Comcast can't slow down a streaming service like Netflix,
nor can it block or slow down Fox News in favor of NBC, which is owned by Comcast.
You see how it works.
Open internet advocates fear an end to net neutrality will lead to censorship and increased
cost for internet connectivity.
The FCC plans on ending the policy for net neutrality tomorrow.
It's definitely an urgent issue right now and something that ... It doesn't matter where
you come from politically.
As was pointed out here, yeah, Fox News could be the ones to feel the pain of this, or just
an alternative news site of whatever type.
It's something that anyone that has value towards individual expression will feel the
pain of.
This is a battle that we've fought already so many times, as you mentioned, Kyle.
We've dealt with SOPA and PIPA and so many repeated attempts by the powers that be to
sneak net neutrality out from under us.
Every time the internet has exploded, people have risen up and said, no, this is something
we need.
This is something that's important.
It seems to quell the threat until the next time the same damn thing comes up.
It gets really tiring.
It seems that the powers that be have figured out that all they have to do is make us tired,
make us complacent, make us not care anymore whether it goes one way or another, and also
to put a complete shill in charge of the FCC, who literally was laughing and doing stand-up
comedy at an event regarding how against the structure of the fundamental internet he is.
That was painful.
It was terribly painful.
That was very painful.
It's all of the revisionism and muddying of what it actually is, what it has been over
the course of, as Rob said, the historical changes and attempts to go in this direction.
Now that leadership, we're getting it full on, but there's no less importance on getting
active and talking about this and making it very, very clear to your members.
Be nice to them, but make it clear.
Be adamant that your community, the people are affected by this, and we need this resource
ever more in the future.
Our phone number for listeners to call in and speak on the air, 347-335-0818.
We have a few minutes.
We can take your calls.
In today's New York Times, they noted that Reddit, Etsy, Kickstarter were among the sites
warning that the proposal of the FCC to roll back net neutrality rules would fundamentally
change the way the internet is experienced.
Kickstarter cleared its entire home screen for a sparse white screen reading defend net
neutrality in large letters.
And Reddit, the popular online message board, pushed in multiple ways on its site for keeping
the rules, including a pop-up box on its home screen.
But they also focused on some of the larger companies, and we've been mentioning Netflix.
And it's obvious to me that Netflix may support net neutrality now, but they may become so
big that it doesn't really matter to them because they can afford whatever is being
charged.
This is for the next Netflix.
This is for the company that is basically rising up out of nothing and creating something
brand new that needs to not be crippled by fees to get equal access.
Now it's interesting too, focusing on Netflix here, according to the Times, they were once
among the most vocal of net neutrality boosters.
They're perhaps the most conspicuous now in their relative silence.
In recent months, the company's chief executive has said net neutrality is no longer the company's
primary battle, partly because Netflix is now large enough that it can secure the deals
it needs with internet access providers to ensure its service is delivered smoothly to
consumers.
So that's something to look out for.
I mean, they're down to co-locating equipment, and they're very deeply integrated as far
as their physical presence.
To say nothing of these new sorts of business models that might become appealing.
They already have your monthly subscription.
Now they can meddle with how you get the subscription, whether it comes fast enough or whether it's
reliable.
And these kinds of things may become less important to them because they don't feel
it.
Thank you very much.
Let me just give out the phone number one more time because I think a call fell off.
347-335-0818.
Please call in and voice your opinion.
347-335-0818.
The common thread with Netflix, Google, Etsy, Kickstarter, all these companies is that they
all just started at one point as a little website on the net somewhere.
They had the same fighting chance as everyone else to get their thing off the ground, to
get their thing out there used and successful.
And one of you listening out there might have the idea for the next Netflix or Google or
Facebook or whatever.
But you need to ensure that you have the same fighting chance as everyone else out there,
that you don't have an unfair playing field where the deck is stacked against you already
unless you pay protection money to this company or that company.
Net neutrality is important.
It's the only thing preventing this scenario.
Another thing to remember was the process was really hampered by a lot of random and
fake comments to the FCC.
This hasn't been a clean fight, and there's no sense that it's going to be any better
in the future without people get galvanized around it.
We have some of those comments, but let's see if we can take a listen to a phone call
first.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Hey, I was wondering if anybody could give a report back as to the net neutrality protests
that happened on the 7th and also what happened in Alabama.
I'd love to hear from you guys.
Okay.
Well, Alabama, they had an election yesterday and decided not to vote for a suspected child
molester and went for the guy that prosecuted the KKK instead, so that's a good thing.
As for the protest outside Verizon stores last week, did anybody go?
None of us went.
That's kind of sad.
Okay.
That's our fault.
That's our fault, but I did hear reports today about how many people were out, and it was
something that did happen nationally in some of those locations, I know, in major cities
for sure, but if other people were there, please write us, othat2600.com.
We'd love to share and be able to let people know how that goes.
Use those words, sentences, paragraphs, the things we like to see, othat2600.com.
Our phone line is open right now, 347-335-0818 is our call-in number.
If you want to pledge, that number is 516-620-3602, and we certainly appreciate everybody who
calls that number, and if you've learned something tonight, if you've gotten something out of
this show, please call that number and pledge any amount, whether it's a one-time pledge
or a monthly donation.
It all adds up, just like the people adding up to oppose net neutrality being killed.
That makes a difference.
That's why we're having this conversation right now.
Just like that, your call adds to all the people who have called before you and have
pledged for this place since 1960 to keep it going.
You can add yourself to that as well.
That's 516-620-3602, or the website give2wbai.org.
Let's take another phone call, and good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Hi, it's Tom from the Bronx here.
Tom from the Bronx.
How you doing?
If they choke the internet out off the city, where people can't get it, would that bring
the newspapers back?
Oh, you know, that's an interesting thought there, Tom, but I don't think it's going to
go that way.
I think what you'll have instead is you'd have a monopoly of one company that provides
you with the news as they see it, and anybody who had alternative thoughts, alternative
ideas, they'd have to have pretty deep pockets because otherwise they wouldn't be able to
get the same kind of access.
Yeah.
That's really simple.
Well, eventually, they're trying to make things go that way.
Let's face it.
Well, that's, yeah.
People who are into monopolies and having the rich get all the power, yeah, it's not
hard to predict this will happen.
If that continues, the telegraph will make a big comeback, I guess.
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
The powers that be, the people interested in the telegraph, they're going to have to
have a monopoly of one company that provides you with the news as they see it, and anybody
who had alternative thoughts, alternative ideas, they're going to have to have pretty
deep pockets because otherwise they wouldn't be able to get the same kind of access.
Yeah.
That's really simple.
Yeah.
People who are into monopolies and having the rich get all the power, yeah, it's not
hard to predict this will happen.
If that continues, the telegraph will make a big comeback, I guess.
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
The powers that be, the people interested in the telegraph, they're going to have to
have pretty deep pockets because otherwise they wouldn't be able to get the same kind
of access.
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
The powers that be, the people interested in the telegraph, they're going to have to
have pretty deep pockets because otherwise they wouldn't be able to get the same kind
of access.
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
Yeah.
Again, I don't think that's really where we're heading, but ...
And when you say in favor of it, in favor of the bill from, I believe, 2014, when we
codified this, when we made a piece of legislation that protected the net as neutral ...
Okay, I'm sorry.
I misunderstood this.
I thought I was reading comments that fake people made.
These are the real people who had comments made under their name.
These are real comments from real people about fake comments from fake people using their
name.
In other words, this comment was made under my mom's name.
She passed away several years ago from cancer.
This is sickening.
This person from Indiana said, this is a fake filing.
This is in the county that I served on active duty in the Marine Corps for nearly five years.
Please do something about this.
This is crazy.
Says someone in Fremont, Ohio.
Okay, so there are a lot of people very angry about this because their names were used.
That's not cool at all.
I mean, I would be mad too, and so yeah, check that.
Okay, so there are a lot of ...
Go ahead.
You're on the air.
You're our last call.
Go ahead.
Yes.
In this system of vulture capitalism, the little man down the bottom always suffers.
Not until there's a change in the method of which the society has been governed that we
will get an equal share.
Well that's going to take a while to change the entire system, and we do have to have
these battles.
We do have to have these fights to get victories along the way, but I do agree.
I do agree that it's going to take a monumental change for the injustice not to be the default
setting, and I do hope that we see that in some of our lifetimes anyway.
That's going to have to be the last word because we're out of time.
Thank you for that call.
Thank you people who have called in to 516-620-3602 with your pledges.
Thank you to people who are currently writing to us at othat2600.com with your prose.
Thanks to those of you who are tweeting at us, Hacker Radio Show on Twitter, and thanks
to everybody who will listen again next week at this time, well, next week an hour before
this time when we're signing on for another edition of Off The Hook.
Until then, this is Emanuel.
Have a good night.
Hey now, what's up?
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Tell me that you want to get wet, pretty maid.
See me up here dancing, dancing on the floor.
Got you thinking about doing just a little more.
Way I wear my knickers around this booty tight.