[00:02.160 --> 00:11.460]  Hi, I'm Bernard White, Program Director here at WBAI, and I'm taking this moment to thank all of our faithful listeners and let you know that we appreciate your support.
[00:11.680 --> 00:13.620]  In fact, we could not survive without it.
[00:13.820 --> 00:20.540]  However, looking back through our records, we see that there are some of you who have not yet honored your pledges from the last Fund Drive.
[00:20.800 --> 00:29.100]  Therefore, we're requesting that those of you who pledged in the October 2004 Fund Drive take this opportunity to honor your past pledges.
[00:29.100 --> 00:34.900]  We know that sometimes things come up that make it difficult to follow through on your commitment.
[00:35.180 --> 00:41.900]  However, we hope that things have kind of straightened themselves out, and you will take this moment to honor your pledge.
[00:42.060 --> 00:43.440]  We appreciate your support.
[00:43.660 --> 00:44.080]  Thank you.
[00:47.710 --> 00:50.690]  Okay, we've asked nicely, so you don't want to hear the second speech.
[00:51.490 --> 00:54.190]  It's 7 o'clock here on a Wednesday night.
[00:54.550 --> 00:56.650]  You're listening to WBAI in New York.
[00:56.850 --> 01:00.070]  It's time for me to find the right button.
[01:00.070 --> 01:04.050]  And it's time for Off the Hook to begin playing at this moment.
[02:29.290 --> 02:30.250]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:30.390 --> 02:31.230]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:31.230 --> 02:37.790]  Mike, Manuel Goldstein here with you for the next hour or so, along with a cast of others here in the studio.
[02:38.430 --> 02:40.230]  We're going to try and get Bernie S.
[02:40.350 --> 02:40.890]  on the telephone.
[02:40.890 --> 02:44.330]  He's over in Prague, which is in the Czech Republic.
[02:45.090 --> 02:47.510]  Mike, what's the country code for the Czech Republic?
[02:48.190 --> 02:48.630]  420.
[02:49.190 --> 02:50.450]  Three-digit country code.
[02:50.570 --> 02:50.930]  Yes.
[02:51.070 --> 02:51.970]  Very, very nice there.
[02:51.970 --> 03:01.590]  Yeah, there are a number of countries that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union and all that, a lot of country codes somehow were needed.
[03:02.430 --> 03:06.890]  East Germany used to be 3-7, and now 3-7X is used for various other countries.
[03:08.130 --> 03:13.090]  So it's always a challenge, and it's always a challenge calling overseas from here.
[03:13.090 --> 03:14.230]  We're going to try that first.
[03:14.230 --> 03:15.970]  We have a couple of methods of doing this.
[03:16.530 --> 03:22.030]  First, the method I don't think is going to work is using our own BAI phone system.
[03:24.670 --> 03:27.650]  Prefixing with the 011 and the country code.
[03:30.190 --> 03:32.030]  And all kinds of other numbers.
[03:37.520 --> 03:38.480]  Let's see what happens.
[03:38.480 --> 03:40.620]  We're calling a hotel in Prague.
[03:54.680 --> 03:58.460]  And that silence, I think, means that the call is not going anywhere.
[03:59.980 --> 04:02.380]  But the music doesn't sound much like Prague.
[04:02.580 --> 04:09.540]  No, and the music isn't coming from the phone either, so it would be nice, wouldn't it, if they gave you a little music to keep you entertained while the call was being processed.
[04:09.700 --> 04:14.140]  But, you know, the way things work here at BAI, if you get silence, it means nothing's happening.
[04:14.500 --> 04:17.460]  And that's true on interpersonal things as well as phone things.
[04:18.080 --> 04:21.880]  If you talk to somebody and you're met with a blank stare, it means that you're not going to get anywhere.
[04:23.080 --> 04:29.120]  So, we're met with a blank stare of the BAI phone system, so we're going to try the alternative that we have devised ourselves.
[04:29.860 --> 04:32.860]  Of course, it means that we pay for it ourselves, but, you know, it's really not that much money.
[04:33.160 --> 04:36.580]  We're using that magical system, AI telephone, is that what it is?
[04:37.600 --> 04:39.180]  American International Telephonics.
[04:39.180 --> 04:47.460]  It allows you to program your own toll-free number and have it forward anywhere in the world for fairly low prices, including the cost of the toll-free call, which I think is...
[04:47.460 --> 04:48.340]  What is it, the product?
[04:48.420 --> 04:49.300]  Something like 10 cents a minute?
[04:49.880 --> 04:51.120]  You know I didn't look it up.
[04:51.240 --> 04:52.520]  All right, well, it's something like that.
[04:52.680 --> 04:54.100]  It's something like that, and Bernie S.
[04:54.260 --> 04:55.620]  is worth at least that much.
[04:55.900 --> 05:00.020]  So, we're going to call him using that particular method.
[05:03.720 --> 05:06.900]  And hopefully the buttons on this thing will work at least.
[05:12.380 --> 05:17.260]  Now, the next voice you hear should be that of a hotel operator in Prague.
[05:17.420 --> 05:18.200]  Well, actually, you'll hear...
[05:18.200 --> 05:20.540]  Okay, you'll hear a recording from the phone company first.
[05:21.480 --> 05:23.080]  Your call is being connected.
[05:23.320 --> 05:23.860]  Please wait.
[05:27.760 --> 05:30.140]  Now you'll hear a Prague hotel operator.
[05:37.890 --> 05:38.390]  Reception?
[05:38.770 --> 05:40.630]  Hello, room 214, please.
[05:42.250 --> 05:45.290]  You can call it from your own phone.
[05:45.790 --> 05:49.050]  Actually, I can't because this number routes only to the hotel.
[05:49.990 --> 05:50.830]  Yeah, okay.
[05:51.150 --> 05:51.590]  I'm sorry.
[05:52.190 --> 05:52.670]  No problem.
[05:52.910 --> 05:53.630]  All right, thank you.
[05:56.030 --> 05:56.690]  He's probably right.
[05:56.690 --> 05:58.770]  They probably do have a DID line to their room.
[05:59.450 --> 06:00.710]  Unheard of here, but...
[06:01.230 --> 06:02.210]  We can't reprogram...
[06:02.210 --> 06:03.930]  We could reprogram the number to call there, I guess.
[06:04.010 --> 06:05.570]  But then we'd have to give the number out over the air.
[06:06.090 --> 06:07.490]  And that's not good for anybody.
[06:10.710 --> 06:13.430]  Yeah, the official language in the Czech Republic is English, by the way.
[06:13.490 --> 06:13.830]  Did you know that?
[06:13.970 --> 06:14.350]  It's true.
[06:16.550 --> 06:17.290]  What's going on here?
[06:17.690 --> 06:18.030]  Hello?
[06:18.770 --> 06:19.110]  Hello?
[06:19.630 --> 06:19.970]  Bernie?
[06:20.590 --> 06:21.210]  Oh, hello.
[06:21.450 --> 06:21.890]  How you doing?
[06:22.090 --> 06:23.010]  We didn't wake you, did we?
[06:23.430 --> 06:24.770]  It's like one in the morning here.
[06:24.910 --> 06:25.490]  What are you doing?
[06:26.730 --> 06:27.890]  I thought we had this worked out.
[06:27.950 --> 06:28.050]  No.
[06:28.750 --> 06:31.410]  All right, we have to talk to the producer of this show.
[06:31.730 --> 06:36.970]  No, Bernie, we were supposed to call you, as arranged before, to talk on the air.
[06:36.990 --> 06:40.130]  Well, Laszlo was supposed to pick up the phone, but I guess he's too soundly.
[06:40.270 --> 06:42.610]  No, Laszlo usually sleeps through these things.
[06:43.010 --> 06:56.510]  Well, try and splash some cold water in your face, because it's airtime, and a time for us to entertain the people with news of telecommunications, hacking, and international travel, which is what you're engaged in right now.
[06:56.750 --> 06:57.630]  All of the above.
[06:57.630 --> 06:58.470]  Yeah, yeah.
[06:58.650 --> 07:00.550]  So, it sounds like you're having a great time over there.
[07:01.110 --> 07:05.430]  It's pretty exhausting, but it's an amazing place here, Prague, in the Czech Republic.
[07:06.290 --> 07:08.970]  Did you climb the hill and see the castle and all that kind of thing?
[07:09.890 --> 07:16.290]  Yes, it took about a day to see even a fraction of this amazing structure.
[07:16.770 --> 07:26.490]  I think I boiled it down to one thing, and that's kind of about a 5,000-year history of human habitation of this hill.
[07:26.930 --> 07:35.630]  And over the past 5,000 years, people have been playing king of the hill to keep power over that hill.
[07:36.390 --> 07:37.710]  And it's quite a story.
[07:37.810 --> 07:38.590]  It's a good hill, too.
[07:39.110 --> 07:39.870]  It's a good hill.
[07:40.170 --> 07:49.790]  You can buy ice cream from the vendors up there on top of that hill and look over the rest of the city and just reminisce about what it used to be like, however many thousands of years ago, maybe.
[07:50.270 --> 07:51.490]  Did you go to Kafka's house?
[07:52.150 --> 07:52.730]  We did.
[07:53.070 --> 07:53.850]  It's a good place, too.
[07:54.550 --> 07:58.310]  I can see why someone would get inspired to write stories of oppression and doom.
[07:58.790 --> 08:02.730]  Yes, many of us have experienced such stories ourselves.
[08:03.070 --> 08:04.770]  Now, isn't this an anniversary for you today?
[08:05.610 --> 08:07.490]  Oh, actually, yesterday, yeah.
[08:07.810 --> 08:08.070]  Yesterday.
[08:08.310 --> 08:18.450]  Yesterday was the 10th, believe it or not, 10th anniversary of my arrest by the United States Secret Service outside of Philadelphia.
[08:18.830 --> 08:33.910]  And Laszlo thought it would be appropriate to have us check into a hotel here in Prague, which is the former offices of the secret police under the communist regime here in Prague.
[08:34.750 --> 08:44.610]  And there's prison cells here, one of which housed Václav Havel, the now president of the Czech Republic.
[08:45.270 --> 08:52.730]  But back in those days, he was an activist, like yourself and many of our listeners.
[08:53.410 --> 08:55.570]  And he was locked up for his activism.
[08:55.570 --> 09:00.070]  May I ask, what do they use the prison cells inside the hotel for now?
[09:00.770 --> 09:03.990]  You can actually stay in them, this hotel room.
[09:04.730 --> 09:05.910]  For a nominal fee.
[09:06.090 --> 09:07.670]  I hope you didn't do that.
[09:07.870 --> 09:11.950]  No, it's pretty cheap, but they didn't have any that had enough room for us.
[09:12.050 --> 09:14.250]  They're quite small, as you can imagine, as prison cells.
[09:14.450 --> 09:17.690]  But it's kind of a hostel now, so youth stay there.
[09:18.250 --> 09:19.510]  And it's bunk beds.
[09:19.910 --> 09:21.910]  You can get the youth to stay anywhere, can't you?
[09:22.190 --> 09:22.650]  Pretty much.
[09:22.790 --> 09:23.250]  Prison cells.
[09:23.250 --> 09:23.850]  You can stay in a prison cell.
[09:23.970 --> 09:24.250]  Wow.
[09:24.250 --> 09:29.070]  Got some great pictures of this, and it's just...
[09:29.070 --> 09:32.410]  I'm in the same building where Vaclav Havel was imprisoned.
[09:32.610 --> 09:44.890]  Well, when I went to Romania, I found out the day after that I'd stayed in the same hotel that their particular secret police had used to record the conversations, the telephone conversations of most of the population of Bucharest.
[09:45.430 --> 09:52.450]  And it was right across the street from where Cusescu gave his final speech and where the Civil War actually began, the short-lived Civil War.
[09:53.810 --> 10:00.910]  So, yeah, I can understand the feeling of kind of weird memories of the place that you must be feeling.
[10:01.590 --> 10:07.990]  I did have a flashback of the United States as I was walking down one of the streets here near the top of the hill here in Prague.
[10:08.550 --> 10:20.170]  Lazlo and I are walking downhill and a hill on a street, I guess it's sort of like our embassy row in D.C., but it's, you know, other embassies here in Prague.
[10:20.170 --> 10:23.690]  And they all looked like nice embassies.
[10:23.770 --> 10:33.150]  And then we came across one building and there were all these, like, flak-jacketed police with machine guns and, you know, jackboots.
[10:33.230 --> 10:38.790]  Well, not jackboots, but, you know, black, you know, oppressive-looking people with machine guns out in front of one building.
[10:39.050 --> 10:40.310]  Like, what's going on here?
[10:40.310 --> 10:42.010]  I'll bet I know what building that is.
[10:42.330 --> 10:54.150]  Police cars all over the place and, like, a screening area where cars coming up the street had to have, be stopped and, like, mirrors wheeled underneath the cars looking for bombs and...
[10:54.150 --> 10:55.530]  It's the American embassy, right, Bernie?
[10:56.410 --> 10:58.530]  I don't know how you could stand the suspense.
[10:58.610 --> 10:59.770]  It's the American embassy, right?
[11:00.370 --> 11:02.090]  There was the American flag right there.
[11:02.150 --> 11:02.630]  Right, of course.
[11:03.130 --> 11:10.090]  That was the centrist of all this paranoia of people searching for bombs and cars.
[11:10.330 --> 11:12.910]  And none of the other embassies were worried about this at all, except the American...
[11:12.910 --> 11:20.050]  And it reminds me of when I was in Estonia, wandering through the streets of Tallinn, and there were these houses similar to what you described.
[11:20.050 --> 11:22.070]  I was taking pictures of all kinds of things.
[11:22.190 --> 11:23.410]  And the only time I was...
[11:23.410 --> 11:36.170]  And my entire trip going through Belarus and the ex-Soviet Union, Russia, Poland, all kinds of different countries, the only time I was ever threatened with arrest and had the cops called on me was when I took a picture of the American consulate.
[11:37.390 --> 11:41.710]  And it's great that an American is who's threatening me with arrest when I'm in Estonia.
[11:41.990 --> 11:43.390]  But that's the way it goes, I guess.
[11:43.510 --> 11:44.790]  There were bars over all the windows.
[11:44.790 --> 11:56.490]  I mean, it looked like a military encampment, only it was a nice house that had been converted into this fortress with, you know, all these armed guards and...
[11:56.490 --> 11:57.270]  It's sort of a...
[11:57.270 --> 11:59.170]  It's a parallel to what's happening in the country.
[11:59.230 --> 12:02.430]  It's a nice country, nice scenery, but it's being converted into a prison.
[12:03.550 --> 12:04.270]  Very strange.
[12:04.410 --> 12:06.810]  All kinds of mind control going on.
[12:06.910 --> 12:08.550]  But let's not get too depressed here.
[12:08.650 --> 12:09.590]  You know, you are in Prague.
[12:09.590 --> 12:11.050]  It's a cheerful city now.
[12:12.490 --> 12:18.850]  On a positive note, there's some political graffiti here, which we did not see here in...
[12:19.450 --> 12:21.510]  We don't see as much of this in the U.S.
[12:21.870 --> 12:26.930]  But there was actual political graffiti in various places, including, you know, bathroom stalls.
[12:27.150 --> 12:31.050]  There's actual political graffiti with, you know, intelligent statements.
[12:32.090 --> 12:34.350]  And so it's really kind of interesting.
[12:34.350 --> 12:37.310]  Is there a particular statement you'd like to recall for us?
[12:37.330 --> 12:37.770]  I'm trying to remember.
[12:38.130 --> 12:47.030]  Some of them were about the United States, and there was another one about freedom for the Basque Republic, and things like that that you just don't see in...
[12:47.030 --> 12:48.070]  That's kind of odd.
[12:48.150 --> 12:51.970]  People come to the Czech Republic to write graffiti about the Basque region of Spain?
[12:52.230 --> 12:52.690]  Mm-hmm.
[12:52.850 --> 12:55.130]  I guess that's intelligence for you.
[12:55.190 --> 12:56.430]  People are aware of what's going on.
[12:56.770 --> 12:57.770]  People from all over the world here.
[12:57.850 --> 13:02.310]  I was surprised at just such a huge mix of people from all over the world here.
[13:02.430 --> 13:03.510]  All kinds of different languages.
[13:04.470 --> 13:10.170]  I was in Prague once and met people from the Basque region, so they must be there all the time.
[13:10.870 --> 13:11.210]  Yeah.
[13:11.670 --> 13:12.510]  I guess so.
[13:13.230 --> 13:13.890]  All right, Bernie.
[13:14.010 --> 13:20.950]  Well, if you can stay with us for the hour, if we're not keeping you up too late, we have all kinds of good...
[13:20.950 --> 13:21.810]  Now that I'm awake...
[13:21.810 --> 13:22.970]  When do you return to the States?
[13:23.650 --> 13:24.050]  Tomorrow.
[13:24.230 --> 13:25.010]  We're finally heading back.
[13:25.190 --> 13:29.830]  It was a nine-day trip to Hanover for the C-Bit Conference, and then we went to Leipzig.
[13:30.510 --> 13:32.890]  Then we went to Dresden, which was really...
[13:32.890 --> 13:38.770]  Both Leipzig and Dresden were really fascinating, much more than we even expected, and Prague the past three days.
[13:39.370 --> 13:42.270]  So it's been a whirlwind tour.
[13:42.810 --> 13:43.050]  Okay.
[13:43.270 --> 13:43.650]  Great.
[13:44.670 --> 13:45.150]  Okay.
[13:45.190 --> 13:48.430]  Well, let's update folks on various things that are going on.
[13:48.430 --> 13:50.330]  First, a couple of news stories.
[13:50.750 --> 13:52.210]  You might have heard about this one.
[13:52.210 --> 13:54.470]  This is concerning what's going on in Germany.
[13:54.630 --> 14:01.690]  Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the checkout.
[14:02.930 --> 14:04.370]  I couldn't make this up, could I?
[14:04.610 --> 14:08.350]  Saving the time spent scrambling for coins or cards.
[14:08.890 --> 14:18.790]  An Ideca store in the southwest German town of Roesheim has piloted the technology since November, and now the company plans to equip its stores across the region.
[14:18.790 --> 14:28.630]  All customers need to do is register once with their identity card and bank details, then they can shop straight away, said store manager Roland Fitterer.
[14:28.970 --> 14:34.410]  The scanner compares the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database along with account details.
[14:36.150 --> 14:41.750]  And they say over at this supermarket chain, they're confident the system will not be abused.
[14:42.930 --> 14:46.470]  You know, there are just so many ways this system can be abused.
[14:46.470 --> 14:53.870]  It can be abused on the consumer level, it can be abused on the store level, it can be abused on the government level, using fingerprints to buy groceries, to buy anything.
[14:54.050 --> 14:59.670]  The system is inherently an abuse, so maybe they mean that it can get no more absurd than it already is.
[15:00.110 --> 15:04.190]  I mean, you know, do we have anything to hide, really, when we're buying things at the store?
[15:04.610 --> 15:05.390]  Think about it.
[15:05.490 --> 15:06.830]  It is incredibly convenient.
[15:06.830 --> 15:08.710]  No fumbling for change or credit cards.
[15:08.710 --> 15:16.870]  It's just, you put your finger there and you get whatever it is, your money is deducted from wherever you have your money, assuming you have money, that is.
[15:17.050 --> 15:18.030]  What if you don't have money?
[15:18.090 --> 15:19.770]  If you don't have money, you have to get somebody else's finger.
[15:21.730 --> 15:25.430]  We've always been giving the finger to people without money, so it shouldn't be hard, right?
[15:25.830 --> 15:26.310]  It's true.
[15:27.350 --> 15:28.270]  Jim, you have a...
[15:28.270 --> 15:42.930]  I can see how a 16-year-old who otherwise might be responsible will now, with the fear of being exposed to his parents, not by prophylactics, you know, and it's going to backfire in the most interesting and unbelievable ways.
[15:43.050 --> 15:44.910]  It's always prophylactics out of the issue, right?
[15:44.990 --> 15:48.250]  Always buying rubbers at the store that, you know, defeats these...
[15:48.250 --> 15:49.630]  Not everybody can go online.
[15:49.630 --> 15:53.310]  These wonderful advances of technology that are designed to make our lives easier.
[15:53.890 --> 15:58.550]  Yeah, you have to go to the pharmacist and say that you're going to fill them with water and throw them off the building.
[16:00.150 --> 16:00.570]  Wow.
[16:01.650 --> 16:03.390]  Okay, we probably have heard about this.
[16:03.510 --> 16:13.010]  Prime Minister Tony Blair has won the support of Parliament for a new anti-terrorism law that will allow the government to act swiftly against foreign terrorist suspects who have been granted bail.
[16:14.410 --> 16:15.030]  That's right.
[16:15.210 --> 16:19.270]  The House of Lords approved new powers, and they fought about this for quite some time.
[16:19.330 --> 16:33.210]  It took a number of weeks for compromises to be reached, but they finally approved new powers to order house arrest, impose curfews, and use electronic tagging without trial after the government made concessions to end the bitter parliamentary deadlock.
[16:33.830 --> 16:49.450]  Now, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, which also allows the government to ban terrorist suspects from meeting certain people or traveling and to restrict their access to the internet or telephone, later received the formality of royal assent to become law.
[16:49.630 --> 16:51.370]  That's the bizarre little customs they have over there.
[16:51.930 --> 17:01.190]  The new control orders are likely to be used first against the eight foreign nationals, including radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, who is suspected of having ties with al-Qaeda.
[17:01.350 --> 17:03.730]  However, they did release him without any charges.
[17:04.150 --> 17:09.090]  But apparently, now there's going to be another level where you're not charged, but you're still suspected and treated as such.
[17:09.230 --> 17:09.870]  Well, here's the thing.
[17:10.010 --> 17:13.370]  Like, if this guy actually did something which is wrong, then they couldn't...
[17:13.370 --> 17:18.930]  The laws already exist in Britain, as in the United States, to arrest the guy and lock him up or whatever.
[17:18.930 --> 17:26.150]  But this kind of, like, silliness where he hasn't done anything wrong, but maybe one day he might is really...
[17:26.150 --> 17:29.510]  Yeah, it's pre-crime or something like that.
[17:29.830 --> 17:40.850]  The other thing that seems really redundant about this is that when judges release a defendant on bail, the judge always sets conditions on that defendant.
[17:41.650 --> 17:45.870]  And, you know, it should be up to the judge to decide what those conditions should be.
[17:45.870 --> 17:56.930]  And in this case, any of the conditions they're imposing on people by this new law could just as easily be conditioned, dictated by the judge at the request of the government.
[17:57.350 --> 18:03.290]  But, you know, so this law is really completely unnecessary because the judge can make it as part of the bail conditions.
[18:03.930 --> 18:11.830]  Well, it just tells me that they don't have strong cases and they no longer have confidence in the legal system as it stands now.
[18:12.010 --> 18:13.330]  And that's why they need to cheat.
[18:13.490 --> 18:15.270]  They need to get around any restrictions.
[18:16.090 --> 18:18.070]  Basically, this is what happened.
[18:18.730 --> 18:32.870]  The Justice Duncan Owsley had set strict bail conditions on the people who were released, the eight people, including a nighttime curfew, restrictions on whom they can meet, on their access to mobile phones, the internet.
[18:33.950 --> 18:37.310]  Katata was banned from preaching at mosques or leading prayers.
[18:37.930 --> 18:48.210]  But that law expired and the government wanted new powers that would allow them to do similar things or extend that particular way of treating people.
[18:48.930 --> 18:52.390]  So under this law, the government must apply to a judge to issue house arrest orders.
[18:52.570 --> 18:59.190]  But in an emergency, a government minister can immediately order the lesser measures and seek court approval within seven days.
[19:00.450 --> 19:04.450]  Believe it or not, conservatives, I guess things are completely different over there.
[19:04.850 --> 19:12.010]  They say it would infringe on civil liberties and they demanded a sunset clause that would require the law to expire after a year.
[19:12.270 --> 19:17.430]  The government refused, saying such an amendment would send a message that Britain was soft on terrorism.
[19:18.910 --> 19:19.430]  Jim.
[19:20.150 --> 19:32.570]  Bernie, and anybody else who might think this, don't think that just because judges could put these same restrictions on people released on bail, that this makes this law all right.
[19:32.690 --> 19:33.290]  It doesn't.
[19:33.430 --> 19:40.590]  In other words, it takes this out of the hands of the judges and puts it in the hands of the police and security forces.
[19:40.870 --> 19:45.890]  In other words, if you are able to get a judge to put these restrictions on, fine.
[19:46.250 --> 19:49.350]  And if the judge doesn't, you can put them on anyway with this law.
[19:51.850 --> 19:53.110]  Very dark days.
[19:53.850 --> 19:58.250]  We'll be keeping an eye on that one and all the other ones, I'm sure, that will be taking place.
[19:59.110 --> 20:00.670]  Cheshire Catalyst sent us a couple of stories.
[20:00.910 --> 20:09.070]  He's been wandering around the southeast section of BBC News and he tells us about a mobile telephone protest in Bangladesh.
[20:09.550 --> 20:10.070]  That's right.
[20:10.130 --> 20:16.910]  Mobile telephone users in Bangladesh have demonstrated in the capital, Dhaka, to demand that operating companies reduce their call charges.
[20:16.910 --> 20:19.150]  We can't even get people to demonstrate against the war here.
[20:19.430 --> 20:21.650]  They're demonstrating against phone charges there.
[20:21.770 --> 20:22.090]  It's amazing.
[20:22.690 --> 20:28.230]  The protesters say the charges they face are more expensive than other operators in the South Asia region.
[20:28.550 --> 20:37.990]  The protest organized by the Citizen Rights Movement, rather generic term, isn't it, was attended by dozens of mobile subscribers.
[20:38.210 --> 20:38.730]  All right.
[20:38.890 --> 20:39.990]  It wasn't millions.
[20:39.990 --> 20:40.530]  It was dozens.
[20:40.530 --> 20:41.690]  But still, you know...
[20:41.690 --> 20:46.210]  We could probably get dozens to protest Verizon if we really put our minds to it.
[20:46.210 --> 20:50.130]  We had a couple of dozen protesting the Kevin Mitnick film by Miramax.
[20:50.130 --> 20:50.330]  Right.
[20:50.570 --> 20:51.890]  And yeah, it did make a difference.
[20:51.890 --> 20:52.390]  That's true.
[20:52.630 --> 20:54.290]  But I didn't get this kind of coverage.
[20:54.330 --> 20:57.130]  I don't think Verizon would care if we had a couple dozen people, though.
[20:57.370 --> 20:57.930]  No, no.
[20:58.930 --> 21:02.430]  Although, you know, Verizon might care that VerizonReallySucks.com is about to expire.
[21:02.610 --> 21:02.770]  Ooh.
[21:02.870 --> 21:04.310]  And I haven't decided yet if I'm going to renew it.
[21:04.490 --> 21:04.690]  Ooh.
[21:06.110 --> 21:06.550]  Yes.
[21:06.750 --> 21:07.830]  I'm open to bribery.
[21:08.330 --> 21:13.570]  All four mobile companies operating in the country say they are trying to reduce the cost of calls.
[21:13.750 --> 21:18.710]  The protesters said the mobile telephone companies charge prepaid subscribers just over 11 U.S.
[21:18.730 --> 21:22.610]  cents a minute, a rate which they say is far higher than in neighboring India.
[21:22.830 --> 21:25.010]  It's always about what the Indians are doing, isn't it?
[21:25.530 --> 21:31.050]  Bangladesh, India, always, you know, comparing whose grass is greener and that kind of thing.
[21:31.190 --> 21:33.650]  So yeah, I guess they have a better rate in India.
[21:33.650 --> 21:34.290]  11 U.S.
[21:34.290 --> 21:36.110]  cents a minute, though, for prepaid.
[21:36.170 --> 21:37.350]  That's not so bad, is it?
[21:38.410 --> 21:38.930]  Well, when they...
[21:38.930 --> 21:40.330]  It actually seems reasonable to me.
[21:40.530 --> 21:41.570]  I mean, what do we wind up paying?
[21:41.630 --> 21:43.350]  Something like 35 cents a minute prepaid?
[21:44.490 --> 21:47.830]  Well, the employees are probably paid more in this country.
[21:48.250 --> 21:48.450]  Mm-hmm.
[21:49.210 --> 21:49.610]  That's...
[21:49.610 --> 21:51.470]  Except there are no employees in this country anymore.
[21:51.470 --> 21:52.670]  They're all in India or Bangladesh.
[21:53.270 --> 21:53.710]  It's true.
[21:54.490 --> 21:56.470]  Anyway, they refuse to back down.
[21:56.550 --> 21:59.550]  They say they will continue their campaign for lower rates until their demands are met.
[21:59.550 --> 22:03.670]  So these are hardliners here that we're dealing with, demanding lower rates in Bangladesh.
[22:04.590 --> 22:12.590]  Also, thousands of people in Nepal have been queuing to re-register their cell phones after mobile services were cut when the king seized power in February.
[22:13.110 --> 22:14.410]  Don't you just love these kind of stories?
[22:14.650 --> 22:18.670]  The king seized power, so that meant that all mobile services had to be cut off.
[22:19.150 --> 22:24.090]  Applicants must provide personal details and photographs for security reasons, the authorities said.
[22:24.890 --> 22:26.810]  Coups data are always causing trouble.
[22:26.990 --> 22:27.190]  Yeah.
[22:27.190 --> 22:28.210]  Is that the right term?
[22:28.310 --> 22:28.770]  Coups data?
[22:29.570 --> 22:30.990]  The coup is the noun, right?
[22:31.470 --> 22:32.110]  I guess.
[22:32.510 --> 22:32.830]  Yeah.
[22:33.070 --> 22:37.070]  Yeah, but I've seen it pluralized in English with the etas pluralized.
[22:37.230 --> 22:37.490]  All right.
[22:37.570 --> 22:39.010]  Well, it's one of those little things.
[22:39.090 --> 22:40.070]  I agree with the theory.
[22:40.230 --> 22:40.350]  Yes.
[22:40.430 --> 22:44.810]  In a foreign phrase, you generally, or a multiple compound phrase, you pluralize the noun.
[22:44.950 --> 22:45.410]  What's the other one?
[22:45.510 --> 22:46.510]  Attorneys general or...
[22:46.510 --> 22:47.090]  Yeah, that's correct.
[22:47.270 --> 22:47.510]  Okay.
[22:48.290 --> 22:51.630]  Anyway, phone and internet links to Nepal were cut when king...
[22:51.630 --> 22:51.890]  Oh, boy.
[22:52.010 --> 22:55.610]  King Gyanundra.
[22:55.830 --> 22:56.170]  Is that right?
[22:56.170 --> 22:57.610]  I would just call him the king of Nepal.
[22:57.950 --> 22:58.410]  King G.
[22:58.510 --> 22:59.110]  Let's call him that.
[22:59.530 --> 23:02.610]  Took power on the 1st of February, but have since been restored.
[23:03.170 --> 23:09.690]  Nepal had almost 90,000 mobile users before the royal coup, which has been heavily criticized at home and abroad.
[23:10.030 --> 23:15.990]  The king sacked his government because he said it had failed to tackle a bloody uprising by Maoist rebels.
[23:17.070 --> 23:25.950]  Mobiles have remained banned in the kingdom, as well as Maoists, for security reasons, according to the authorities who say the Maoists use them to communicate.
[23:26.150 --> 23:26.730]  Oh, my God.
[23:26.850 --> 23:27.050]  Really?
[23:27.410 --> 23:27.850]  Mobiles?
[23:27.950 --> 23:28.950]  You mean the hanging sculptures?
[23:29.230 --> 23:29.710]  No, no, no.
[23:29.790 --> 23:30.530]  Mobile phones.
[23:30.530 --> 23:34.890]  Apparently, Maoists are using them to communicate amongst themselves and possibly to others.
[23:35.370 --> 23:35.710]  Wow.
[23:37.250 --> 23:38.850]  That's pretty shocking news right there.
[23:39.490 --> 23:44.030]  Apparently, the king figured this out, sacked the government, and maybe a few other places as well.
[23:44.610 --> 23:49.770]  But apparently, he's been more effective, though, at banning mobiles than he has at banning Maoists.
[23:50.370 --> 23:51.090]  Yeah, yeah.
[23:51.290 --> 23:52.050]  It seems that way.
[23:52.730 --> 24:00.290]  The thousands of users seeking to re-register their mobiles must submit an application, which officials will then scrutinize ahead of the planned resumption of services.
[24:00.410 --> 24:02.130]  I'll bet one of the questions is, are you a Maoist?
[24:02.190 --> 24:03.170]  Have you ever been a Maoist?
[24:04.150 --> 24:04.550]  No?
[24:04.610 --> 24:05.530]  How about a Trotskyist?
[24:05.670 --> 24:07.110]  I guess I could ask all kinds of questions.
[24:08.270 --> 24:08.830]  Oh, okay.
[24:09.150 --> 24:10.850]  That's another variation.
[24:11.150 --> 24:11.350]  Yes.
[24:11.610 --> 24:13.150]  There's different factions of Trotsky's.
[24:14.010 --> 24:18.850]  Anyway, long queues formed outside the offices of state-run Nepal Telecom.
[24:18.850 --> 24:32.750]  The kingdom's sole mobile provider, when it opened its doors to applicants in the capital on Tuesday, re-registration process is expected to last for five days, and only mobile users on contracts are affected.
[24:32.750 --> 24:36.010]  There are no current plans to allow people with prepaid mobiles to use them.
[24:36.570 --> 24:40.870]  So that's from the BBC on that particular issue.
[24:41.430 --> 24:45.690]  Now, Bernie, you had some trouble last week in Germany.
[24:45.690 --> 24:48.970]  In fact, we had a listener comment on this.
[24:50.550 --> 24:57.290]  Basically, you were asked to show identification to register your SIM card, your prepaid SIM card in Germany.
[24:57.970 --> 25:05.730]  This reader from Frankfurt named Oliver says, This has always been the law in Germany that phone users need to register with the name and address.
[25:06.050 --> 25:08.130]  Buying a SIM is similar to this.
[25:08.910 --> 25:11.490]  Bernie is correct that this has not been enforced in the past.
[25:11.490 --> 25:13.350]  I guess this is a result of 9-11.
[25:14.010 --> 25:19.150]  He made a comment that we've gotten used to the minor quality of cellular calls in reference to Sprint.
[25:19.410 --> 25:26.210]  In my opinion, I cannot really find a difference between my ISDN landline and a call on our GSM system.
[25:26.210 --> 25:28.950]  I prefer the 1800 band over the 900, though.
[25:29.470 --> 25:29.850]  The U.S.
[25:29.890 --> 25:31.310]  1900 also rates high.
[25:31.430 --> 25:34.750]  Do you see a difference between T-Mobile and Sprint in the U.S.
[25:34.830 --> 25:35.730]  on call quality?
[25:36.350 --> 25:37.550]  Any comments on that, Bernie?
[25:37.870 --> 25:40.070]  Well, you've used both of those carriers, haven't you?
[25:40.290 --> 25:40.890]  I have.
[25:41.030 --> 25:46.050]  You know, maybe it's my phone, but it just sounds like I'm using, you know, a cheap phone.
[25:46.050 --> 26:02.090]  I have not really used T-Mobile before, but as a long-time Sprint subscriber for the past, I don't know, almost seven years now, I found it, the voice quality is nowhere near toll quality.
[26:02.850 --> 26:13.530]  I've made voice-over IP calls here from Europe that were of stunningly good quality and just, you know, way better than Sprint PCS.
[26:13.530 --> 26:17.970]  I guess the vocoders are just compressed more and more these days.
[26:18.170 --> 26:32.710]  So when you use the cell phone that you have now, the Thai phone that you brought from Thailand and inserted a German SIM into, you're saying the voice quality on that is noticeably better than your Sprint PCS phone back here at home?
[26:32.710 --> 26:32.930]  No, no.
[26:32.990 --> 26:39.130]  I was talking about voice-over IP calls I made from just internet cafes here in Germany and Prague.
[26:39.130 --> 26:59.730]  But the voice, I actually think the voice quality of my Sprint PCS phone is slightly better, but only because it's a smaller, it's not because of the network necessarily, it's just because my Sprint handset is several years old and it has a vocoder that uses several thousand more bits per second to model my voice and the voice of the person I'm talking to,
[26:59.930 --> 27:15.330]  whereas the new phone I bought that's used on telecom, which is the British, or sorry, the European arm of, well, the European equivalent of T-Mobile, I guess, or the mother company of T-Mobile.
[27:15.330 --> 27:21.470]  So it sounds more tinny and more constrained because it's probably like a three or four kilobit per second vocoder.
[27:21.870 --> 27:27.630]  So, but I mean, it's usable, but it's just, you know, it's just nowhere near toll quality that we should come to expect.
[27:27.810 --> 27:39.690]  Yeah, I've yet to find something that matches the phones that I grew up with, the old Bell system phones, where, you know, it really depended on the line quality, but if you got a good connection, you could hear somebody very, very clearly.
[27:39.690 --> 27:46.390]  And I have not encountered something of that nature with cell phones.
[27:46.470 --> 27:48.930]  It just seems like it's a lot cheaper sounding.
[27:49.410 --> 27:51.710]  Maybe the guy who wrote us just has a bad landline.
[27:52.570 --> 27:53.110]  That's true.
[27:53.230 --> 27:57.790]  Maybe his ISDN line is awful, but he seems to be satisfied with it, which is interesting.
[27:57.990 --> 28:06.450]  But, you know, when I was a kid, I figured by the time I was an adult, we'd have FM sounding phones, you know, where you could actually, it would sound as good as if you were listening to the radio.
[28:07.090 --> 28:10.430]  Or, like, talking to somebody in person, but we have not achieved that.
[28:10.610 --> 28:11.730]  There's no reason I couldn't.
[28:11.830 --> 28:14.270]  It's just, it's not the limitations of that technology.
[28:14.570 --> 28:27.890]  It's that there's no limitation to the greed of the carriers who want to squeeze everyone's voice into a smaller and smaller bit stream, which can only replicate a meager representation of your voice.
[28:27.890 --> 28:28.690]  So it's greed.
[28:28.690 --> 28:29.690]  It's not the technology.
[28:29.850 --> 28:34.470]  We could have really stellar sounding voice quality over cell phones.
[28:34.630 --> 28:36.390]  They're just too greedy to let that happen.
[28:36.390 --> 28:40.890]  Well, maybe there's a non-greedy startup company out there that will use that as its selling point.
[28:40.890 --> 28:41.830]  And we can only hope.
[28:42.550 --> 28:43.810]  We're talking to Bernie S.
[28:43.970 --> 28:46.090]  live from Prague in the Czech Republic.
[28:46.330 --> 28:49.710]  You're listening to Off the Hook here on WBAI.
[28:50.650 --> 28:53.630]  And let's look at a few more listener letters.
[28:53.830 --> 28:58.190]  You can write to us, OTH at 2600.com, if you have anything that you'd like to comment upon.
[28:58.190 --> 29:03.710]  And we'll be taking phone calls a little bit later in the hour, 212-209-2900.
[29:03.710 --> 29:03.770]  Good.
[29:04.550 --> 29:05.190]  You're off the hook.
[29:05.330 --> 29:09.670]  Do you guys have any tips about social engineering by email?
[29:10.150 --> 29:11.170]  Is it possible?
[29:11.330 --> 29:12.450]  I'd really like to know.
[29:12.510 --> 29:13.610]  And how effective is it?
[29:14.810 --> 29:20.070]  Well, I guess you could basically lie sending an email.
[29:20.070 --> 29:23.390]  That's basically what social engineering is, committing somebody to give you information.
[29:23.570 --> 29:23.850]  Right, Jim?
[29:23.850 --> 29:29.310]  Isn't this the same guy that sent us a letter saying, I'd like to go phishing, P-H, phishing?
[29:29.530 --> 29:30.930]  And could you tell me how?
[29:31.030 --> 29:31.670]  I mean, come on.
[29:31.830 --> 29:34.650]  What is this, social engineering by email?
[29:34.750 --> 29:35.850]  What are you trying to do?
[29:36.470 --> 29:37.270]  I mean...
[29:37.270 --> 29:41.510]  Well, I mean, I don't want to call into question someone's motives just because they ask a question.
[29:42.390 --> 29:45.970]  But basically, social engineering involves fooling somebody.
[29:45.970 --> 29:55.710]  It involves getting information from someone based on cleverly impersonating somebody that you aren't, obviously, or just getting them to trust you in some way.
[29:55.890 --> 29:56.330]  Well...
[29:56.330 --> 29:57.170]  Email is...
[29:57.170 --> 29:58.610]  You don't have that kind of contact.
[29:58.810 --> 30:01.710]  You don't have the voice going back and forth.
[30:01.930 --> 30:05.570]  I can't see the word social engineering and email together because of this fact.
[30:05.790 --> 30:10.070]  You would have to lie about your email address.
[30:10.070 --> 30:17.050]  And that's a technical thing that is on the verge of clear fraud.
[30:17.270 --> 30:18.850]  In other words, it can be done.
[30:18.990 --> 30:24.970]  You can make it so that it looks like you're sending it from Bill Gates at Microsoft.com.
[30:25.290 --> 30:35.730]  But if you know anything about email and you have a normal email account on the receiving end, you can easily see that it's not from Microsoft in most cases.
[30:35.730 --> 30:52.010]  One of the better ones that I got recently, I was almost fooled by, was an official-looking piece of email from eBay saying that there was a fraudulent transaction that was made in my name and I needed to click on the link to make sure that I wasn't involved in it.
[30:52.270 --> 30:53.930]  And the mail had come from eBay.
[30:54.070 --> 30:56.030]  The link was to eBay.com.
[30:57.590 --> 31:04.850]  But the thing that was not true was that, yeah, it said eBay.com, but when you actually clicked on the link, it went someplace else.
[31:05.250 --> 31:06.130]  Very well done.
[31:06.270 --> 31:09.610]  But all you have to do is look at the headers and you can see where it's really coming from.
[31:09.750 --> 31:12.490]  But people don't take the time to examine these things.
[31:12.490 --> 31:15.990]  And they get fooled and dragged into all kinds of horrible things.
[31:17.170 --> 31:18.350]  All right, let's move on to another letter.
[31:18.670 --> 31:21.370]  And this actually is based on something Rebel said last week.
[31:22.350 --> 31:22.870]  You're off the hook.
[31:22.930 --> 31:28.370]  I just wanted to know if dialing 0 then 9 to get emergency is quicker than dialing 911 or not.
[31:28.610 --> 31:32.970]  I was at an international airport and I had to contact 911 and never spoke to a real person.
[31:32.970 --> 31:35.050]  And for five minutes, I had, please hold.
[31:35.050 --> 31:36.350]  We understand this is an emergency.
[31:36.530 --> 31:37.250]  Please do not hang up.
[31:37.330 --> 31:38.430]  We will respond shortly.
[31:39.570 --> 31:42.770]  Personally, if this had been a big emergency, what would have happened?
[31:43.050 --> 31:43.730]  Signed Samuel.
[31:43.910 --> 31:46.370]  Well, I doubt it's any faster.
[31:46.710 --> 31:57.710]  What Rebel called in to tell us about was that there's a new feature when you dial 0 where after you dial 0 and get James Earl Jones, you get an option to dial 9 for the police.
[31:57.890 --> 32:00.450]  I would imagine all they're doing is transferring you to 911.
[32:00.830 --> 32:02.190]  So I don't think you're going to save any time.
[32:02.270 --> 32:03.730]  I really don't know what the purpose of that is.
[32:03.790 --> 32:04.510]  It seems kind of silly.
[32:04.650 --> 32:06.450]  Nobody has 911 blocked.
[32:06.630 --> 32:08.450]  So it's rather silly.
[32:10.330 --> 32:17.510]  Speaking of airports, this listener writes in with a couple of stories involving airline airport security.
[32:18.650 --> 32:21.670]  This is a story that apparently he had heard about.
[32:22.390 --> 32:28.330]  A former pilot and his wife were traveling and after getting screened by airport security sat down to get a bite to eat inside the terminal.
[32:28.990 --> 32:34.710]  Lo and behold, they were presented with metal knives and forks, more than enough to set off the alarms at any security theater venue.
[32:35.330 --> 32:41.150]  The writer was shocked that such a thing is even possible due to the emphasis placed on security at airports these days.
[32:41.550 --> 32:44.750]  He called the TSA later only to be met with little care and enthusiasm.
[32:44.750 --> 32:48.650]  He decided to call back another time thinking the woman on the phone was having a bad day.
[32:49.070 --> 32:52.070]  However, he was greeted with even less concern on his second attempt.
[32:53.090 --> 33:02.470]  This reader is not quite so shocked seeing the purpose of all these security implementations is really not for the purpose of our safety, but rather for the security of the government's public image.
[33:02.790 --> 33:07.750]  I remember I was traveling through an airport and there was a sushi bar after you went through security.
[33:07.930 --> 33:11.330]  And they have all kinds of sharp knives there that the cooks use.
[33:11.330 --> 33:14.390]  And they're walking away from their pulse, leaving all the equipment there.
[33:14.570 --> 33:15.650]  It's very, very simple.
[33:15.790 --> 33:18.190]  It could have been easily smuggled onto the airplane.
[33:18.670 --> 33:21.830]  Now, yeah, I suppose they could have an extra security checkpoint, but they didn't.
[33:22.590 --> 33:35.530]  On our flight from Kennedy Airport to Paris, and we had a connecting flight to Hanover, we were given metal knives by Air France flight attendants to cut our food with.
[33:36.530 --> 33:37.950]  Well, they're like butter knives, right?
[33:38.030 --> 33:38.790]  Or are they real, like...
[33:38.790 --> 33:39.830]  No, these were...
[33:39.830 --> 33:40.790]  They're like stabby knives?
[33:41.050 --> 33:47.310]  They were blunt, but they had sharp edges, really quite sharp edges, so, you know, for cutting stakes and stuff.
[33:47.470 --> 33:53.410]  Well, you know, it's also possible to make sharp edges out of all kinds of things, including your fingernails, if necessary.
[33:53.990 --> 33:59.110]  So, yeah, it's a false perception of security to start with.
[33:59.650 --> 34:02.370]  This person also sends in a second story, a personal story.
[34:02.370 --> 34:09.790]  My family and I traveled over the Thanksgiving holidays, my wife, daughters, ages four years and seven months at the time, and I flew round trip on Northwest.
[34:10.290 --> 34:15.630]  I don't recall if we had the infamous four S's on our boarding passes, but we were all marked to be hand searched.
[34:16.070 --> 34:22.210]  That's right, not only my wife and I, but both my four-year-old and seven-month-old daughters were scrutinized as well.
[34:22.410 --> 34:27.810]  My wife literally had to hold the baby up at arm's length while the security fellow scanned her with the wand.
[34:29.090 --> 34:31.810]  We all had to remove our shoes, empty our pockets, etc.
[34:32.830 --> 34:42.230]  Funny thing, though, they never found the false floor in my backpack, which only held a pair of shoes, and they didn't even bother to open up my metal SD card case, sort of like Emanuel's Altoids, Tim.
[34:42.770 --> 34:48.230]  I guess if you're going to smuggle a weapon, hide it in a metal container in an obvious zipper-accessible false floor of a backpack.
[34:48.730 --> 34:54.290]  The most amusing portion of this search came when the next four S victim came along while we were putting our shoes back on.
[34:54.490 --> 34:59.890]  This was a large elderly woman in a wheelchair, obviously very terrorist-ish in her appearance.
[34:59.890 --> 35:04.550]  The person wheeling her was not allowed to help, had to go through the normal checkpoint and wait.
[35:04.890 --> 35:14.810]  The security fellow instructed the woman to remove her shoes, which she did with what seemed to be significant pain and struggle, and was then instructed to lift her feet while he scanned them with his magic wand.
[35:15.370 --> 35:29.150]  Now, being in a wheelchair, it's pretty obvious that this woman had reduced capabilities in her lower extremities, so she was literally forced to pick her leg up with both hands and hold it there while it was blessed by the big black magic scepter of the airport security theater gods.
[35:29.530 --> 35:31.610]  The same went for the other leg.
[35:31.710 --> 35:34.610]  She then had to put her shoes on, again, painful and difficult.
[35:35.370 --> 35:36.290]  I'm so relieved.
[35:36.470 --> 35:41.330]  I don't have to worry about elderly wheelchair-bound terrorists unless, of course, they get their hands on some silverware.
[35:42.130 --> 35:43.790]  Signed, Simi from Michigan.
[35:44.390 --> 35:44.830]  Unbelievable.
[35:45.210 --> 35:48.430]  How can a metal-detecting wand work when you're sitting in a metal wheelchair?
[35:48.870 --> 35:52.270]  I would imagine she had to hold her leg away from the metal wheelchair so that didn't happen.
[35:52.530 --> 35:54.550]  Maybe they asked her to get up, but she did refuse to.
[35:54.790 --> 35:55.210]  Who knows?
[35:55.710 --> 35:58.670]  I mean, what if she's sitting on some metal knife?
[35:59.050 --> 36:00.670]  I mean, it could never tell.
[36:00.730 --> 36:08.970]  Yeah, I mean, it's both so absurd in how ineffective it can be and absurd in how they're trying to make it seem effective in the most bizarre ways.
[36:09.690 --> 36:14.490]  All right, we also had a lot of feedback on the MPIA discussion that we had.
[36:14.490 --> 36:21.010]  Uh, this comes from the director of a non-profit arts and exhibition space in Rhode Island.
[36:21.650 --> 36:24.690]  Um, a few notes about the, uh, MPAA.
[36:25.630 --> 36:28.710]  We were talking about our own, uh, rating system that we'd like to start.
[36:29.350 --> 36:40.530]  MPAA ratings are an attempt by the industry to police itself, which replaced the old production code in 1968 in an attempt to squel public outcry over increased nudity and language in films.
[36:41.030 --> 36:45.470]  Uh, the industry knows that if they don't do it, the public will push a government agency to do it for them.
[36:45.770 --> 36:47.550]  When, when we say public, let's be clear.
[36:47.730 --> 36:49.890]  We, we mean certain elements of the public.
[36:50.050 --> 36:55.030]  People that carbon copy letters and make it seem like there are millions of them when they're actually probably about six.
[36:55.650 --> 37:03.350]  Uh, you've seen this self-regulation move recently in TV's voluntary rating system and video games and in the typical era by the record industry.
[37:03.630 --> 37:09.230]  Uh, broadcast TV and radio are fined, as you know, by the FCC for objectionable content.
[37:09.230 --> 37:14.950]  Uh, movies, video games, and music are something people choose to purchase, so they are not regulated by the FCC.
[37:15.290 --> 37:20.190]  Same rationale as cable TV, sex, violence, and language, although the FCC wants their hands on that as well.
[37:20.910 --> 37:24.510]  Uh, there are no laws that prohibit films from being made or being seen.
[37:24.670 --> 37:27.170]  However, all the chain movie theaters readily comply.
[37:27.470 --> 37:42.610]  This isn't some conspiracy, but simple common sense that if a manager of a local theater allows 10-year-olds and, uh, by inference, markets to 10-year-olds to view a movie like Showgirls or a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, then the community will boycott the theater and will demand the manager's head.
[37:42.850 --> 37:49.030]  Uh, communities indirectly enforce the rating system by forcing adult theaters and art house theaters out of town or into bad neighborhoods.
[37:49.270 --> 37:55.490]  Uh, for instance, they may pass a local zoning law banning an adult theater from within 100 years, uh, 100, uh, years?
[37:55.690 --> 37:58.450]  I think he means yards, uh, of an elementary school.
[37:59.230 --> 38:00.150]  Maybe years as well.
[38:00.350 --> 38:02.210]  Uh, movies don't have to be rated anything.
[38:02.330 --> 38:06.110]  No law or regulation says that a director has to submit a movie to the MPAA board.
[38:06.110 --> 38:13.230]  Uh, they can make up their own rating, but they can't use anything similar to G, P, G, R, et cetera, because these ratings are registered trademarks.
[38:13.390 --> 38:14.670]  They can use N-R.
[38:14.970 --> 38:16.430]  You see N-R on DVDs a lot.
[38:16.650 --> 38:22.910]  Uh, a movie is originally rated R, but the director's cut is rated N-R because the studio didn't bother going through the ratings board again.
[38:23.590 --> 38:27.610]  Each newspaper has its own guidelines about what it will and won't advertise.
[38:27.610 --> 38:31.950]  If a newspaper's editors choose not to run ads for NC-17 movies, they won't.
[38:31.950 --> 38:36.310]  Obviously, the Village Voice has different movie advertising guidelines than the Christian Chronicle.
[38:36.790 --> 38:38.630]  There's no such thing as X anymore.
[38:38.630 --> 38:40.370]  It's been replaced by NC-17.
[38:40.990 --> 38:43.190]  Originally, X didn't have anything to do with porn.
[38:43.370 --> 38:47.250]  Midnight Cowboy, Clockwork Orange, they were both rated X for adult themes and content.
[38:47.510 --> 38:52.890]  But sexually explicit films like Deep Throat got the X2, uh, forever linking X to pornography.
[38:53.190 --> 38:56.130]  And then the porn industry came up with Triple X, and history was made.
[38:56.810 --> 39:03.930]  Uh, good, uh, source for all this, um, is the Jack Valenti book, How It All Began.
[39:04.410 --> 39:09.230]  Yes, uh, the president, the former president of the MPAA talks about, uh, the rating system.
[39:09.450 --> 39:13.270]  I highly recommend, by the way, if you want to read this book, try and find it online.
[39:13.490 --> 39:14.910]  Don't give Jack Valenti your money.
[39:15.130 --> 39:17.590]  And that's, uh, from Damon of, uh, Rhode Island.
[39:17.690 --> 39:19.030]  Thanks very much for, for writing in.
[39:19.170 --> 39:21.210]  Any, uh, comments, Arseny, on, on all this?
[39:21.410 --> 39:22.970]  All those are very insightful.
[39:22.970 --> 39:28.530]  Um, the only thing I wanted to say was, um, about the video game industry.
[39:28.690 --> 39:35.630]  And I do think that it's regulated by, um, people in the industry rather than anybody.
[39:36.150 --> 39:39.370]  Um, I'm pretty sure that's the way it works with them.
[39:40.190 --> 39:42.210]  Other than that, very good letter.
[39:42.770 --> 39:44.470]  Uh, we got another letter, too.
[39:44.770 --> 39:46.730]  Uh, first, I'd like to say I enjoyed listening to your show.
[39:46.850 --> 39:49.650]  I get information and a perspective I wouldn't otherwise receive.
[39:49.650 --> 39:50.470]  And that's good to know.
[39:50.470 --> 39:54.850]  But about the MPAA ratings, guys, uh, I, I think you fail to understand the rating system.
[39:55.130 --> 39:58.130]  All the ratings are geared towards children and their parents.
[39:58.410 --> 40:01.490]  Well, I think that's sort of the point we were making, is that we're kind of sick of that.
[40:02.030 --> 40:03.450]  Children and parents always being the issue.
[40:04.110 --> 40:06.270]  Um, there's a lot of other people out there, too, you know.
[40:06.630 --> 40:11.390]  All the ratings except NC-17 still allow parents to bring their children if they see fit.
[40:11.510 --> 40:16.090]  Since the ratings are for children and their parents, it makes sense that all the members of the committee are parents.
[40:16.090 --> 40:19.310]  The MPAA isn't telling any adults what movie to see.
[40:19.470 --> 40:22.530]  Adults can see any movie they want, no matter what the ratings are.
[40:23.510 --> 40:24.550]  I disagree.
[40:24.550 --> 40:32.510]  Because when you have ratings like NC-17, it's very easy to say this theater will not show any movies with NC-17 ratings.
[40:32.510 --> 40:35.770]  Then, the adults are not able to see the films.
[40:36.090 --> 40:42.310]  Also, as we just mentioned in the previous letter, certain newspapers will not advertise NC-17, uh, films.
[40:42.730 --> 40:53.210]  Uh, now, whenever you have ratings of this sort, once you start categorizing things, it's very easy to simply make blanket statements resulting, uh, in, in certain films being cut off from the public.
[40:53.410 --> 40:57.290]  Well, um, directors usually try to cut their films down to get R ratings.
[40:57.290 --> 41:01.370]  Like, there's a, there's a big hype that the new Star Wars film is going to be PG-13.
[41:01.870 --> 41:05.650]  Everyone's going crazy saying, oh no, Star Wars is going to get so violent that it has to be restricted.
[41:06.130 --> 41:11.590]  Um, so, NC-17 films are basically restricted by the MPAA.
[41:12.570 --> 41:16.950]  And also, you know, what you just said, the, they cut their films to get the R rating.
[41:17.110 --> 41:26.010]  They're changing their work of art to comply with what these parents are saying in some theater someplace in, in, in Los Angeles.
[41:26.010 --> 41:27.390]  I don't think that's right.
[41:27.710 --> 41:28.630]  I mean, you know, fine.
[41:28.810 --> 41:30.270]  Have, have a children's version.
[41:30.450 --> 41:31.650]  Have a children's version of everything.
[41:31.850 --> 41:32.350]  I don't care.
[41:32.690 --> 41:32.930]  Fine.
[41:33.010 --> 41:36.570]  Put out, you know, 50 cent CDs and have them geared towards five-year-olds.
[41:36.870 --> 41:37.630]  That's, that's okay.
[41:37.690 --> 41:39.630]  But don't affect it for the rest of us.
[41:39.810 --> 41:40.030]  All right.
[41:40.030 --> 41:42.530]  Some of us want to see things the way they were intended to be seen.
[41:42.610 --> 41:49.310]  And we don't care how many times they say the F word or, or, you know, show things that other people might find offensive.
[41:49.830 --> 41:51.510]  Let us have that choice at least.
[41:51.590 --> 41:52.890]  And we don't have that choice right now.
[41:52.890 --> 41:59.810]  There's also an inherent contradiction in the notion that these ratings are merely advisory and for the benefit of parents.
[42:00.430 --> 42:06.890]  And this rule that no children may see an NC-17 film even with their parents' permission.
[42:08.190 --> 42:14.110]  Presumably they're, you know, parents who, you know, saw some film and said their kids can see it.
[42:14.110 --> 42:23.090]  And then Jack Valenti in, in cooperation with NATO, which we learned about is the National Association of Theater Owners.
[42:23.170 --> 42:24.790]  They don't possess any fighter planes, so.
[42:24.990 --> 42:26.010]  Not that we know about.
[42:26.170 --> 42:26.330]  Not yet.
[42:27.690 --> 42:30.270]  And we'll, we'll, you know, enforce this rule.
[42:30.570 --> 42:33.730]  So it's, it's, there's some contradictions going on.
[42:33.730 --> 42:37.950]  I have a real problem with, with a theater owner telling a parent that your kid is not allowed to see it.
[42:37.950 --> 42:49.110]  You know, you might have a really intelligent 15-year-old kid, but he's not allowed to see a particular movie because these parents in some distant city have said that your child may not see this.
[42:49.230 --> 42:58.910]  To me, that is definitely, you know, a violation of somebody's freedom to, to view what they want to view and make their own decisions.
[42:59.630 --> 43:06.390]  On the other hand, you have laws that state that adults cannot show children, even if it's their children, pornography.
[43:06.390 --> 43:07.410]  But this isn't pornography.
[43:07.530 --> 43:09.150]  That's the whole point, you know.
[43:09.250 --> 43:10.730]  NC-17 is not pornography.
[43:11.750 --> 43:15.690]  You know, it's, it's certain themes that, that these guys have trouble with.
[43:15.850 --> 43:20.570]  The, the point is, is that there, there are legal restrictions as, as well as these.
[43:20.750 --> 43:26.650]  That we're not exactly sure what the NC-17 restriction is, if it's a law in various jurisdictions.
[43:27.610 --> 43:33.990]  Well, it's theater policy, and this letter writer continues, theaters are private property, so if the theater wants you to show ID and you want to see the movie, show it.
[43:34.550 --> 43:39.610]  They're, uh, not copying it or storing it on any kind of database, so I feel it's okay.
[43:39.870 --> 43:42.490]  I'm not sure how you know that, but never mind, we'll assume it's true for now.
[43:42.870 --> 43:46.130]  I'm 30 years old, but I get carded every time I buy cigarettes or go into a bar.
[43:46.290 --> 43:48.710]  I don't mind showing my ID, and neither should you.
[43:50.130 --> 43:54.250]  Well, I think that's a whole other kettle of worms, but, uh, let's, let's avoid that one for now.
[43:54.250 --> 43:57.230]  Uh, by the way, could you possibly extend your show by another hour?
[43:57.390 --> 43:58.290]  You know, that's a good idea.
[43:58.370 --> 43:58.970]  Why don't we do that?
[43:59.990 --> 44:01.450]  Okay, we'll be two hours from now on.
[44:01.690 --> 44:02.890]  I'd love to do a two-hour show.
[44:03.130 --> 44:09.730]  But actually, what he's suggesting, I know the radio station only gives you an hour, but could you record an hour after the show for internet-only streaming or download?
[44:09.890 --> 44:11.010]  Signed, Thurman from White Plains.
[44:11.150 --> 44:12.450]  Well, Thurman, thanks very much for your letter.
[44:12.970 --> 44:20.830]  Um, you know, I'm of the belief that internet radio is, is all fine and good, but it is not a replacement for regular broadcasting radio.
[44:20.830 --> 44:30.770]  And that's what we want more than anything, is to be broadcast so people driving in their cars, people listening at home who don't have computers can actually listen to us, find us by accident, that kind of thing.
[44:31.070 --> 44:36.430]  So if, um, if there are radio stations out there that want to carry us, please, you can write to us as well.
[44:36.630 --> 44:39.490]  Uh, we do have, uh, ways that you can simulcast.
[44:39.610 --> 44:48.970]  We do have ways that you can get a high-quality, uh, version of this radio program so that you can, uh, not high quality as far as discussion goes, high quality as far as the sound quality.
[44:48.970 --> 44:55.610]  Because when you listen online, it's not as good as over the radio, uh, write to us, O-T-H, at 2600.com if you're interested in that.
[44:55.970 --> 45:01.050]  And I should also point out that we're simulcast on shortwave, uh, W-B-C-Q, 7415 kilohertz.
[45:01.530 --> 45:05.270]  Uh, and, uh, I guess you can hear us right now across, uh, North America.
[45:05.370 --> 45:05.890]  Is that right, Barney?
[45:06.550 --> 45:10.290]  Uh, North America and most of Canada and, uh, into South America.
[45:10.510 --> 45:12.330]  And I even heard it once in South London.
[45:12.970 --> 45:14.370]  South London, England, not Ontario?
[45:14.570 --> 45:14.710]  That's right.
[45:14.890 --> 45:15.110]  Wow.
[45:15.310 --> 45:15.990]  How about that?
[45:16.390 --> 45:17.430]  That's, uh, that's pretty cool.
[45:17.430 --> 45:20.010]  I'm taking a, a listener poll.
[45:20.210 --> 45:24.110]  And this poll is very unique because there may be no listeners eligible to respond.
[45:24.350 --> 45:39.150]  Uh, but if you're a listener and you're not listening, uh, either on WBAI or WBCQ or on the internet, but if you're listening on some other station, uh, we want to know, uh, because there are some stations which have said they want to carry us and, and we like that.
[45:39.230 --> 45:39.830]  It's not a problem.
[45:40.030 --> 45:42.210]  But we're just curious if they actually are or not.
[45:42.290 --> 45:42.410]  Yeah.
[45:42.490 --> 45:45.270]  I mean, you know, there's no complicated forums to fill out or anything like that.
[45:45.270 --> 45:47.610]  I know a couple of low-power FM stations were interested in doing that.
[45:47.730 --> 45:48.810]  So, yeah, we do want to know.
[45:48.930 --> 45:49.650]  It's important.
[45:50.290 --> 45:58.950]  And, uh, you know, it's, it's also, uh, it's important to get new stations on so that people can listen to us over the radio, um, and to stay in, uh, of the internet.
[45:59.390 --> 46:00.190]  These things are now possible.
[46:00.510 --> 46:00.870]  Okay.
[46:01.030 --> 46:04.710]  So if you're, sorry, if you're listening, email us, OTH at 2600.com.
[46:04.930 --> 46:07.070]  Uh, we, uh, we'll take some phone calls.
[46:07.070 --> 46:08.670]  It's 212-209-2900.
[46:08.710 --> 46:13.770]  But first, I just want to ask the, the, uh, the panel here and on the phone, if anybody knows, this is sort of a trivia question.
[46:13.850 --> 46:14.750]  This, this happened today.
[46:15.170 --> 46:16.570]  Uh, actually it didn't happen today.
[46:16.690 --> 46:17.610]  It happened very recently.
[46:17.990 --> 46:25.370]  Uh, the FCC has, uh, has allocated a new telephone number, a new nationwide telephone number, 811.
[46:26.010 --> 46:30.330]  Do any of you know what they have allocated 811 to be, uh, used for?
[46:32.310 --> 46:34.690]  That silence tells me that nobody has a clue.
[46:34.930 --> 46:35.590]  I, I will guess.
[46:35.770 --> 46:35.890]  All right.
[46:35.890 --> 46:37.190]  I have heard nothing about this.
[46:37.330 --> 46:38.530]  Nothing at all, but I will guess.
[46:38.850 --> 46:41.510]  Does it have anything to do with the emergency broadcast system?
[46:41.630 --> 46:42.190]  No, it does not.
[46:42.330 --> 46:42.730]  Oh, well.
[46:43.590 --> 46:45.070]  Playing games of crazy 8s.
[46:45.210 --> 46:46.050]  Leo, do you have a guess?
[46:46.150 --> 46:48.070]  I'll guess it's a terrorist hotline or something.
[46:48.370 --> 46:54.150]  Well, it's, it has to do with Homeland Security in a sense, but, uh, not, not that kind of sense.
[46:54.810 --> 46:55.450]  Nobody else?
[46:55.750 --> 46:56.110]  Bernie?
[46:57.170 --> 47:04.870]  No, I was just going to guess, though, that 711 is a lot of the is going to be, uh, co-opted by the Southland Corporation, which owns all the 711 stores.
[47:06.010 --> 47:10.230]  That's actually kind of, kind of a good idea, but no, definitely, definitely not true.
[47:10.430 --> 47:13.990]  I heard 711 is going to be Las Vegas Tourism and Convention Bureau.
[47:14.190 --> 47:17.690]  I'll reveal the answer, uh, after our callers have a chance to, uh, to, to weigh in on it.
[47:17.770 --> 47:21.970]  Also, I want to, uh, extend congratulations to, uh, FCC Commissioner Kevin J.
[47:22.250 --> 47:26.010]  Martin, who has been designated the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
[47:26.530 --> 47:30.210]  And now I'd like to condemn him immediately after, uh, after saying that.
[47:30.310 --> 47:36.030]  For some of the remarks he made, uh, in front of the, um, the, the parents, uh, yeah, it's always the parents.
[47:36.110 --> 47:45.930]  The parents' TV council, I think it was, uh, where he basically tore apart an episode of South Park that used the S word a number of times, saying that this kind of thing is outrageous and must be stopped.
[47:46.550 --> 47:48.190]  Of course, you know, it's on cable TV.
[47:48.410 --> 47:49.130]  People pay for it.
[47:49.210 --> 47:49.970]  People make the decision.
[47:49.970 --> 47:52.290]  But now they apparently want to regulate that as well.
[47:52.470 --> 47:56.690]  So, I don't think this guy's going to be much of an improvement over Powell, but we'll just have to see.
[47:56.930 --> 47:57.090]  All right.
[47:57.150 --> 47:58.950]  212-209-2900.
[47:59.050 --> 48:00.010]  Let's take some phone calls.
[48:00.430 --> 48:01.050]  And good evening.
[48:01.110 --> 48:01.550]  You're on the air.
[48:01.810 --> 48:02.110]  Yes.
[48:02.190 --> 48:04.050]  Is 7-1-1 for Pirate Radio?
[48:04.250 --> 48:04.950]  Uh, no.
[48:04.990 --> 48:06.350]  I wish it were, but no, it's not.
[48:06.730 --> 48:08.650]  The mystery number is 8-1-1, right?
[48:08.830 --> 48:08.970]  Yeah.
[48:09.030 --> 48:10.650]  8-1-1 is, is, is the, yeah.
[48:11.070 --> 48:12.050]  Let's not confuse people.
[48:12.130 --> 48:13.070]  I don't know what 7-1-1 is.
[48:13.350 --> 48:15.270]  Let's, uh, let's try to dial 8-1-1 and see what happens.
[48:15.390 --> 48:17.050]  Bernie, I hope, uh, you don't get cut off by this.
[48:17.530 --> 48:18.090]  Uh, hold on.
[48:18.250 --> 48:20.130]  Let's, uh, let's get dialed on here.
[48:21.090 --> 48:21.570]  All right.
[48:21.670 --> 48:22.530]  We're going to dial 8-1-1.
[48:24.090 --> 48:25.830]  Let's see what happens, if anything.
[48:28.810 --> 48:31.270]  We're going to be being met with the BAI silence again.
[48:33.250 --> 48:33.670]  All right.
[48:33.710 --> 48:35.030]  Let's assume that's what we're being met with.
[48:35.730 --> 48:35.870]  Um.
[48:37.490 --> 48:38.410]  Can I just leave it there?
[48:38.590 --> 48:40.590]  No, because we can't take another call if we do leave it there.
[48:41.010 --> 48:42.630]  So, uh, Leo, you already had a guess.
[48:42.730 --> 48:43.330]  You can't get another guess.
[48:43.990 --> 48:44.330]  Um.
[48:45.210 --> 48:45.570]  Okay.
[48:45.670 --> 48:46.730]  We're going to move on to another phone call.
[48:47.510 --> 48:48.250]  And good evening.
[48:48.390 --> 48:49.190]  You're on the air.
[48:50.130 --> 48:50.810]  Hi, Emmanuel.
[48:51.010 --> 48:51.170]  Hi.
[48:51.230 --> 48:51.530]  How are you doing?
[48:52.030 --> 48:52.550]  Hi, good.
[48:52.770 --> 48:53.390]  Uh, listen, I've...
[48:53.390 --> 48:54.550]  Oh, first of all, the 8-1-1.
[48:54.890 --> 49:02.590]  Um, that's the, uh, uh, something about, um, an emergency contact for contractors, uh, cable lines or, or utility lines or something?
[49:02.630 --> 49:03.910]  You're very, uh, correct on that.
[49:03.950 --> 49:04.570]  Did you know that yourself?
[49:04.730 --> 49:05.750]  Or did you just do a Google search?
[49:05.930 --> 49:06.530]  Oh, no, no, no.
[49:06.530 --> 49:08.350]  Oh, you're doing Google searches on the other side of the room.
[49:08.390 --> 49:08.990]  That's not fair.
[49:09.750 --> 49:11.190]  No, I heard it on the news earlier.
[49:11.390 --> 49:12.870]  But, uh, I wanted to ask you.
[49:12.870 --> 49:17.410]  I've heard you and Bernie talk about your, uh, Sprint PCS, uh, phones a couple times.
[49:18.190 --> 49:24.590]  Um, I, forgive me if you already know about this, because, uh, I haven't had a chance to listen, but, uh, I use mine a lot for, uh, text messaging.
[49:25.170 --> 49:39.370]  And, uh, if you go right to, uh, Sprint's website, messaging.sprintpcs.com, you can send a text message, uh, to any Sprint PCS phone, and there is a field for a return number.
[49:40.110 --> 49:54.830]  And if you put, uh, another Sprint PCS, I'm sorry, another Sprint PCS phone number in that field, then, uh, the caller ID from the phone you send it to receives that number and acts as if it really came from that number.
[49:55.270 --> 49:56.770]  Yeah, that's, that's actually pretty old.
[49:57.010 --> 50:07.210]  And, in fact, that, that used to be, um, uh, the case, uh, I know with, uh, with Omnipoint, VoiceStream, you were able to, uh, to leave voicemail messages and basically define whatever number you wanted.
[50:07.730 --> 50:11.610]  And then when the person got alerted to the voicemail message, it would appear to be coming from that number.
[50:11.770 --> 50:15.370]  And people had all kinds of fun leaving messages from the White House and things like that.
[50:15.570 --> 50:16.270]  Oh, okay, okay.
[50:16.430 --> 50:19.310]  Um, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's fairly easy to do that kind of a thing.
[50:19.310 --> 50:22.010]  I'm kind of surprised they, they haven't, uh, done anything to stop it.
[50:23.270 --> 50:24.910]  Okay, I, I wasn't aware that it was that old.
[50:24.990 --> 50:31.950]  I just, I just happened to come across the, uh, site not too long ago and, you know, thought it was kind of fun to play around with my friends, you know, but...
[50:32.430 --> 50:33.770]  Yeah, oh, definitely, definitely.
[50:34.270 --> 50:34.590]  Okay.
[50:34.830 --> 50:35.590]  All right, thanks for your call.
[50:35.990 --> 50:57.270]  And, uh, just to give more information on the, uh, 8-1-1, uh, this is, uh, what the order from the FCC reads, uh, we designate 8-1-1 as the National Abbreviated Darling Code to be used by State One-Call Notification Systems for Providing Advanced Notice of Excavation Activities to Underground Facility Operators in Compliance with the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002.
[50:57.790 --> 51:07.330]  This order implements the Pipeline Safety Act, which provides for the establishment of a nationwide toll-free abbreviated dialing arrangement to be used by State One-Call Notification Systems.
[51:08.030 --> 51:13.090]  They rejected the, uh, the alternative of pound sign three, four, four.
[51:13.650 --> 51:21.810]  Uh, they, uh, they basically said, uh, uh, we're not in favor of using a code with a leading star or number sign for access to one-call centers.
[51:23.630 --> 51:31.090]  Um, basically, uh, AT&T asserts that discontinuing the use of pound three, four, four will require a re-education process for users who have been using pound three, four.
[51:31.150 --> 51:32.490]  Has anyone used pound three, four, four?
[51:33.190 --> 51:34.270]  Contractors who dig, maybe.
[51:34.430 --> 51:35.570]  Can we use pound three, four, four?
[51:35.570 --> 51:36.350]  I don't think that's going to work.
[51:36.490 --> 51:36.730]  Let's try that.
[51:36.730 --> 51:36.890]  Let's see.
[51:37.570 --> 51:37.910]  Hang on.
[51:38.010 --> 51:38.510]  Can we get a dial tone?
[51:39.090 --> 51:40.570]  No, we, we don't have a dial tone.
[51:40.710 --> 51:41.310]  Let's try over here.
[51:41.690 --> 51:42.470]  Everybody's calling in.
[51:42.590 --> 51:43.710]  That's why it's very hard to get a dial tone.
[51:45.630 --> 51:46.670]  Pound three, four, four.
[51:47.450 --> 51:48.690]  Say, we want to do a little digging.
[51:52.750 --> 51:54.390]  Um, I'd be interested if that actually works.
[51:56.070 --> 51:57.030]  I don't think it's going to.
[51:57.830 --> 52:00.230]  Um, so pound three, four, four is out.
[52:00.390 --> 52:04.110]  I don't know if anybody has actually, uh, uh, used that, uh, that particular number.
[52:04.630 --> 52:06.110]  And I don't think it's, it connects now.
[52:06.290 --> 52:06.850]  So 8-1-1.
[52:06.990 --> 52:12.150]  Can you imagine all the people who are dialing 9-1-1 who are going to get these people that expect them to tell, tell them where they're going to be digging?
[52:13.230 --> 52:14.950]  Because that's, uh, what happens when you dial it, Mike?
[52:15.150 --> 52:24.110]  I dialed the, the pound three, four, four on, on my, uh, mobile phone and was welcome shortly thereafter to the Long Island and New York City one call center.
[52:24.110 --> 52:24.710]  Oh, really?
[52:24.890 --> 52:25.010]  Yes.
[52:25.070 --> 52:26.670]  All right, so it works from, from cell phones at least.
[52:27.090 --> 52:28.050]  All right, let's try to take some more calls.
[52:28.150 --> 52:28.390]  Good evening.
[52:28.430 --> 52:28.810]  You're on the air.
[52:29.390 --> 52:29.710]  Hello?
[52:29.950 --> 52:30.470]  Yes, go ahead.
[52:30.990 --> 52:31.350]  Oh, hi.
[52:31.890 --> 52:34.250]  Let's, I'll just get this, uh, okay, the plug out of my ear.
[52:34.570 --> 52:39.010]  Uh, wouldn't, I want to know, when do you, you meet every, uh, every two weeks, is it in New York?
[52:39.170 --> 52:41.230]  2,600 meetings are the first Friday of every month.
[52:41.350 --> 52:42.970]  I, I don't need to adhere to what, both slowly.
[52:43.110 --> 52:43.150]  What?
[52:43.210 --> 52:47.010]  The 2,600 meetings are the first Friday of every month in various cities.
[52:47.270 --> 52:48.130]  Oh, it's the first Friday.
[52:48.250 --> 52:48.650]  In New York?
[52:48.810 --> 52:48.910]  When?
[52:49.170 --> 52:51.470]  Uh, the first Friday between 5 and 8 p.m.
[52:51.470 --> 52:52.270]  at the Citigroup Center.
[52:53.130 --> 52:53.950]  Where is that, Logan?
[52:54.130 --> 52:57.690]  That's on 53rd between, uh, Lexington Avenue and, uh, 3rd Avenue.
[52:58.830 --> 52:59.550]  50, 53rd?
[52:59.670 --> 52:59.810]  Yes.
[52:59.950 --> 53:01.610]  Between Lexington and, uh, what was that again?
[53:01.690 --> 53:02.170]  3rd Avenue.
[53:02.890 --> 53:04.890]  Oh, okay, 53rd, okay, and Lexington and Lexington.
[53:05.530 --> 53:18.490]  And, uh, let me ask, he just mentioned before, I'm not too familiar with all this stuff, but I heard somewhere about, he just mentioned text messages, how, uh, and I heard on the news somewhere, whatever, they're listening in, the company's retaining your messages.
[53:18.490 --> 53:20.770]  I don't know anything, I don't bother with these things at all, really.
[53:20.770 --> 53:22.510]  I just listened to you, show them time to time.
[53:22.670 --> 53:22.870]  Uh-huh.
[53:23.290 --> 53:36.230]  Uh, and they mentioned that Sprint holds it, like, they were, most of these companies hold it without people knowing it, uh, for a day or two, and they gave the companies the amount of time they hold it from a day to two or three, and Sprint was a whopping two or two and a half weeks,
[53:36.690 --> 53:37.430]  and all that.
[53:37.530 --> 53:38.190]  You know about this, Jim?
[53:38.330 --> 53:39.450]  Yeah, I saw the news story.
[53:39.570 --> 53:45.990]  I don't remember what local affiliate of the network news did it, but essentially, yeah, uh, I'm not sure if Sprint is quite that long.
[53:45.990 --> 53:47.570]  I thought the longest was two weeks.
[53:47.790 --> 53:49.150]  Most of them, three or five days.
[53:49.150 --> 53:49.830]  Yeah, it was up there.
[53:50.050 --> 53:50.810]  Yeah, no, it was.
[53:50.950 --> 53:51.970]  Okay, I'll take your word for it.
[53:51.970 --> 53:53.430]  It's a whopping, whopping...
[53:53.430 --> 54:01.250]  Yeah, they hold the text messages in case that there's some crime involved that they get subpoenaed, that they have to hand them over.
[54:01.770 --> 54:02.490]  Oh, but...
[54:02.490 --> 54:04.470]  But after three weeks, pretty much, they're gone.
[54:05.470 --> 54:07.910]  Oh, yeah, but still, I don't know, I got...
[54:07.910 --> 54:09.890]  Hey, like an encrypted SMS message.
[54:10.030 --> 54:12.730]  Exactly, like anything else, you have to be careful.
[54:12.930 --> 54:14.150]  Send it in a, in a code.
[54:14.310 --> 54:16.470]  Oh, and they do, listen, uh, if you're real...
[54:16.470 --> 54:19.470]  Oh, I'll tell you another time, maybe, about some, but, uh, let me ask you something.
[54:19.570 --> 54:21.410]  Do you know anything about the, uh, Echelon?
[54:21.610 --> 54:23.290]  Anything about viewing Echelon?
[54:24.250 --> 54:24.610]  Echelon?
[54:24.890 --> 54:25.950]  Yeah, Echelon?
[54:26.470 --> 54:29.630]  Where they can view through your, your house and all that, like radio waves?
[54:30.570 --> 54:35.670]  We, we, we, we would need several hours to get into all the various stories about that, but, uh...
[54:35.670 --> 54:36.690]  A quick answer to...
[54:36.690 --> 54:37.490]  Quick, quick, yeah, Bernie.
[54:37.890 --> 54:39.110]  Do you believe it in reality?
[54:39.670 --> 54:40.490]  Let the word answer.
[54:40.690 --> 54:55.610]  A quick answer to the listener's question is to, uh, go out and, uh, borrow or buy a book called Chatter, which just came out, which is an excellent expose about the entire Echelon system, and it's not used domestically by our government, uh, ostensibly,
[54:55.770 --> 55:07.810]  but it is used by our allies who then readily trade that information with us to get around with the laws that we have against our government spying on us, uh, via telephone tapping and that sort of thing.
[55:07.990 --> 55:08.930]  Get the book Chatter.
[55:09.070 --> 55:09.730]  It's really a good read.
[55:10.050 --> 55:11.590]  Okay, let's try to take some more phone calls.
[55:11.870 --> 55:13.050]  Oops, I hit the wrong button.
[55:13.210 --> 55:13.750]  I'm sorry about that.
[55:14.130 --> 55:14.430]  Good evening.
[55:14.530 --> 55:15.010]  You're on the air.
[55:16.010 --> 55:16.530]  Go ahead.
[55:16.790 --> 55:17.310]  Yes, go ahead.
[55:18.310 --> 55:19.570]  Yeah, quick question.
[55:19.570 --> 55:40.890]  A friend of mine received a phone call on his cell phone, and before answering the call, it said, uh, area code 999, and then the phone number was 999-999, and he answers the phone, and it was 911 calling him, but they were saying hello like he was calling them.
[55:41.270 --> 55:46.410]  And then they, you know, they called him back and was like, why are you calling 911 and I was just curious.
[55:46.550 --> 55:47.330]  Wow, that's interesting.
[55:47.330 --> 55:48.710]  Oh, that would never happen.
[55:48.890 --> 55:51.030]  Well, I mean, the caller ID can easily be spoofed.
[55:51.210 --> 55:52.210]  That's not an issue.
[55:53.490 --> 55:58.290]  Maybe somebody three-wayed to 911 and, uh, and, and, you know, that kind of a thing.
[55:58.610 --> 55:58.970]  Okay.
[55:59.090 --> 55:59.590]  It's possible.
[56:01.190 --> 56:07.690]  It's, uh, it's also possible, uh, and maybe this is more like, did you leave off a number or were there only six numbers in the phone number?
[56:08.270 --> 56:11.470]  It was, no, no, no, it was full nine across.
[56:11.610 --> 56:12.730]  Okay, so ten digits of nine.
[56:13.050 --> 56:13.370]  Yeah.
[56:13.530 --> 56:18.530]  It's quite possible when a 911 switchboard operator calls, that's how their PBA exes programmed to send the number.
[56:18.810 --> 56:19.950]  I would not be surprised.
[56:20.350 --> 56:21.190]  Okay, but...
[56:21.190 --> 56:23.970]  Because all nines in England, it was, it used to be emergency.
[56:24.190 --> 56:25.350]  In fact, I think it still is.
[56:25.950 --> 56:26.150]  Right.
[56:26.150 --> 56:28.110]  Um, so it's possible that they called him.
[56:28.270 --> 56:30.090]  I don't know why they would call him saying that he called them.
[56:42.390 --> 56:42.750]  Right.
[56:42.750 --> 56:46.450]  Even if your keypad is locked, uh, 8-0 will dial 9-1-1.
[56:46.570 --> 56:48.530]  So maybe, if it wasn't as positive...
[56:48.530 --> 56:50.490]  8-0 will dial 9-1-1 in an IKEA phone.
[56:50.590 --> 56:50.850]  Why?
[56:50.850 --> 56:51.490]  There's a bunch of them.
[56:51.590 --> 56:52.130]  I don't know why.
[56:52.190 --> 56:55.630]  I actually called them an ass and they gave me a list of all the numbers that dial 9-1-1.
[56:55.850 --> 56:58.930]  And 7-1-1, by the way, is T-2-Y in a lot of states.
[56:59.110 --> 56:59.970]  That's, that is true.
[57:00.410 --> 57:00.790]  That is true.
[57:00.790 --> 57:02.410]  I don't know if it's a nationwide mandate.
[57:02.530 --> 57:03.330]  I don't believe it is.
[57:03.490 --> 57:04.130]  Not yet, anyway.
[57:04.490 --> 57:04.850]  All right.
[57:04.890 --> 57:06.030]  Let's see if we can squeeze in one more.
[57:06.130 --> 57:06.430]  Good evening.
[57:06.430 --> 57:06.950]  You're on the air.
[57:07.890 --> 57:08.490]  Go ahead.
[57:08.610 --> 57:08.830]  Hi.
[57:09.130 --> 57:09.530]  Yeah, hi.
[57:09.770 --> 57:15.330]  I was calling to, uh, just about the, uh, security, uh, at the airport.
[57:15.650 --> 57:22.070]  Uh, you guys were covering this issue, I think, uh, about a few months back with the SSS on the boarding pass.
[57:22.590 --> 57:23.990]  Yes, the four S's.
[57:24.230 --> 57:36.430]  What I noticed was if you print your boarding pass online before you go to the airport, that doesn't show up on there and you don't go through the, uh, extensive, uh, security, uh, search.
[57:36.690 --> 57:38.050]  You mean if you print it at your house?
[57:38.310 --> 57:38.970]  That's correct.
[57:39.190 --> 57:49.410]  Online, if you go to the website, the airline's website, whichever you're flying, and you print your, uh, boarding pass, you don't get that SSS, uh, code on the boarding pass.
[57:49.510 --> 58:00.270]  But if you appear at the airport and go to the counter, based on your looks, I think that's when they decide to, uh, put the, uh, SSS on your boarding pass.
[58:00.370 --> 58:03.690]  Well, it's interesting because I had that happen to me and I, I didn't go to a person.
[58:03.750 --> 58:05.490]  I went to a computer there at the terminal.
[58:05.490 --> 58:08.690]  I guess the computer didn't like my looks or something because I got four S's printed out there.
[58:08.990 --> 58:12.210]  But yeah, interesting, interesting idea to, uh, to print it out yourself.
[58:12.590 --> 58:14.990]  And I guess, uh, your computer won't print out the S's.
[58:15.150 --> 58:17.410]  Maybe you could write them in and see if, uh, how people react to that.
[58:18.130 --> 58:18.650]  I don't know.
[58:19.010 --> 58:20.630]  Um, anyway, that's going to just about do it for us.
[58:20.710 --> 58:23.330]  Bernie, uh, we'll see you, uh, back in Philadelphia, I guess, next week?
[58:23.710 --> 58:24.230]  That's right.
[58:24.450 --> 58:24.790]  All right.
[58:25.430 --> 58:27.270]  And, uh, I want to thank everybody for listening.
[58:27.430 --> 58:30.070]  Again, you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[58:35.810 --> 58:36.730]  See you next week.
[58:39.470 --> 58:44.270]  The Baltimore County School Board have decided to expel Dexter from the entire public school system.
[58:44.450 --> 58:47.330]  Mr. Kirk, I'm as upset as you to learn Dexter's truancy.
[58:47.510 --> 58:49.830]  But certainly, expulsion is not the answer.
[58:50.090 --> 58:51.790]  I'm afraid expulsion is the only answer.
[58:52.170 --> 58:55.270]  It is the opinion of the entire staff that Dexter is criminally insane.
[58:55.270 --> 58:57.090]  Sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing,
[59:06.380 --> 59:10.820]  sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing,
[59:10.820 --> 59:12.120]  sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing,
[59:12.120 --> 59:22.790]  sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing
[59:30.480 --> 59:32.680]  He was white as a sheep.
[59:32.940 --> 59:34.820]  And he also made false teeth.
[59:51.880 --> 59:52.920]  Avalanche is above.
[59:53.220 --> 59:54.460]  Business continues below.
[59:54.640 --> 59:56.540]  Did I ever tell you this story about...
[59:56.540 --> 59:57.200]  Cowboys!
[59:57.540 --> 59:58.200]  Mid-Midgets.
[59:58.640 --> 59:59.400]  The Indians.
[59:59.940 --> 01:00:01.720]  What frontiers are tired?
[01:00:01.960 --> 01:00:04.460]  I felt strangely hypnotized.
[01:00:05.220 --> 01:00:07.340]  I was in another world, the world of 20.
[01:00:07.340 --> 01:00:09.040]  20,000 girls.
[01:00:09.260 --> 01:00:10.340]  And red tails.
[01:00:10.500 --> 01:00:11.460]  To an optometrist.
[01:00:11.560 --> 01:00:13.680]  A man with a golden eye ball.
[01:00:13.860 --> 01:00:14.940]  And tighten your buttocks.
[01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:16.160]  Pour juice on your chin.
[01:00:16.340 --> 01:00:17.700]  I promise my girlfriend I can.
[01:00:17.900 --> 01:00:18.580]  The violin.
[01:00:18.800 --> 01:00:19.200]  Violin.
[01:00:19.380 --> 01:00:19.820]  Violin.
[01:00:27.390 --> 01:00:28.430]  Frontier Psychiatry.
[01:00:46.810 --> 01:00:47.850]  Frontier Psychiatry.
[01:00:56.340 --> 01:00:57.380]  Frontier Psychiatry.
[01:01:08.340 --> 01:01:10.000]  Hey, hey, hey, hey.
[01:01:10.120 --> 01:01:13.380]  You're listening to WBAI New York 99.5 FM.
[01:01:13.380 --> 01:01:21.440]  This beautiful Wednesday afternoon, evening, March 16th, 2005 at exactly 8 o'clock.