[00:01.270 --> 00:08.410]  Well, it feels like times have changed.
[00:09.150 --> 00:09.650]  Mondays.
[00:10.370 --> 00:11.590]  Midnight.
[00:12.470 --> 00:13.250]  Meals.
[00:14.230 --> 00:14.950]  And the air.
[00:18.210 --> 00:32.210]  And you're
[00:35.440 --> 00:36.800]  listening to Radio Station W.
[00:36.960 --> 00:40.610]  B.A.I., where the time is just about 7 o'clock.
[00:44.180 --> 00:45.080]  Time for Off the Hook.
[00:45.920 --> 00:47.880]  The telephone keeps ringing.
[00:48.200 --> 00:50.400]  So I ripped it off the wall.
[00:51.380 --> 00:53.380]  I cut myself while shaving.
[00:54.020 --> 00:55.900]  Now I can't make a call.
[00:56.720 --> 00:58.740]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:01.400 --> 01:03.000]  But did it bump for the best?
[01:03.180 --> 01:04.160]  It's back the worst.
[01:04.760 --> 01:06.660]  I hope that's understood.
[01:06.860 --> 01:07.660]  But did it bump?
[01:40.380 --> 01:41.460]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[01:41.600 --> 01:42.400]  The program is Off the Hook.
[01:42.620 --> 01:47.540]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you for the next hour or so, along with an assorted cast of characters.
[01:47.700 --> 01:48.020]  Bernie S.
[01:48.100 --> 01:48.780]  down there in Philadelphia.
[01:48.780 --> 01:49.500]  Bernie, how are you doing?
[01:49.960 --> 01:50.460]  Good evening.
[01:51.840 --> 01:54.200]  It's been an eventful week for the most part.
[01:55.240 --> 01:59.500]  I didn't get a chance to talk to you before the program, but is there anything of interest going on down there?
[01:59.780 --> 02:01.620]  Well, Mike actually has an interesting story.
[02:01.700 --> 02:02.480]  Mike has an interesting story.
[02:02.480 --> 02:02.940]  What's the story?
[02:02.940 --> 02:05.040]  I just faxed to him just now at the studios.
[02:05.280 --> 02:06.120]  Late breaking news.
[02:07.380 --> 02:09.020]  Mike just ran out of the station.
[02:09.200 --> 02:10.240]  I don't know what that's all about.
[02:10.440 --> 02:11.680]  He's running to the fax machine.
[02:11.820 --> 02:14.340]  Okay, well, I didn't know we even had a fax machine.
[02:14.620 --> 02:15.550]  Not for the show, anyway.
[02:15.620 --> 02:19.300]  We have one somewhere down the hall in a closet behind the locked doors.
[02:20.160 --> 02:23.820]  Apart from that, Bernie, apart from faxing us things, that we don't know what they are, anything else?
[02:25.660 --> 02:26.340]  Really, no.
[02:26.440 --> 02:27.500]  Let's just go with the flow tonight.
[02:28.240 --> 02:30.930]  Okay, well, hopefully...
[02:30.930 --> 02:35.300]  I'm a bit out of it because everything in the studio seemed to break down at the same time.
[02:36.740 --> 02:38.940]  And just trying to recover from that.
[02:39.180 --> 02:41.340]  But as always, we have news stories.
[02:41.490 --> 02:42.550]  We have letters from our listeners.
[02:42.550 --> 02:47.540]  We also have your phone calls, which we'll be taking in just a little bit.
[02:49.100 --> 02:54.320]  I guess what I'd like to start with is some late breaking news.
[02:54.480 --> 02:56.380]  A thief has stolen a Berkeley laptop.
[02:56.560 --> 02:57.400]  You see Berkeley laptop.
[02:57.560 --> 03:00.300]  This is actually a headline that was on CNN the other day.
[03:00.920 --> 03:05.380]  A computer contained information on 98,000 individuals.
[03:06.220 --> 03:07.000]  That's right.
[03:07.220 --> 03:15.360]  University of California, Berkeley police are investigating the theft of a campus laptop computer containing information on 98,000 individuals.
[03:15.560 --> 03:16.700]  And I don't know.
[03:16.780 --> 03:20.400]  How do you have a laptop that has that much information on it?
[03:21.000 --> 03:32.260]  The university said a person who walked into its graduate division offices on March 11th was seen leaving with the laptop by a campus employee who reported the theft to campus police.
[03:32.640 --> 03:42.280]  The computer contained information on most individuals who applied to or attended UC Berkeley's graduate school between 1976 and 2004.
[03:42.280 --> 03:43.460]  All this on a laptop.
[03:43.860 --> 03:44.440]  Amazing.
[03:44.900 --> 03:49.280]  About a third of the computer's files contained dates of birth and or addresses.
[03:49.720 --> 03:50.960]  No, no, we didn't leave out this.
[03:51.220 --> 03:52.640]  Social security numbers, they were in there too.
[03:52.640 --> 03:53.700]  And names.
[03:54.540 --> 04:01.600]  UC Berkeley says it has no evidence that personal data was actually retrieved or misused.
[04:01.780 --> 04:04.320]  I don't know how they would have that kind of information in the first place.
[04:05.740 --> 04:20.520]  In accordance with California state law, the university said it is making every reasonable effort to notify the 98,369 individuals whose names and social security numbers were on the computer.
[04:21.420 --> 04:31.920]  UC Berkeley has set up a website at newscenter.berkeley.edu slash security slash grad for those concerned that their information may have been on the stolen computer.
[04:32.090 --> 04:38.780]  What you do is you go there, enter your name, your social security number, your date of birth, and they'll look it up and see if they have it.
[04:38.860 --> 04:40.240]  And if not, well, they do now.
[04:41.480 --> 04:42.090]  I don't know.
[04:42.140 --> 04:42.920]  I don't know about that part.
[04:42.920 --> 04:44.860]  But, uh, I don't know.
[04:44.940 --> 04:46.860]  That's, uh, how do you do something like that?
[04:46.900 --> 04:48.360]  How do you put all this information on a laptop?
[04:48.780 --> 04:50.260]  I know how you get laptops stolen.
[04:50.350 --> 04:51.020]  That much I do now.
[04:51.160 --> 04:53.400]  But all this information on a laptop, why?
[04:54.660 --> 04:58.860]  How do you watch someone leave with the laptop and not say anything?
[04:59.090 --> 04:59.330]  Yeah.
[04:59.500 --> 05:00.350]  Well, obviously they did.
[05:00.450 --> 05:02.280]  They just didn't want to tackle the guy, I guess.
[05:02.950 --> 05:12.540]  And more importantly, would we be hearing about this if it were not in California, which is one of the few states that requires businesses such as UC Berkeley?
[05:12.920 --> 05:20.680]  To, uh, to notify, uh, individuals whose, uh, uh, information on their computers might have been illegally compromised.
[05:22.120 --> 05:22.520]  Yeah.
[05:22.780 --> 05:25.300]  Uh, I, I don't think New York has, uh, such a law.
[05:25.300 --> 05:27.000]  So these kinds of things should be going on all the time.
[05:27.120 --> 05:30.980]  But it just goes to show, like, how information is being stored in all these different places.
[05:31.380 --> 05:34.840]  Yeah, you don't have to break into a mainframe computer to get access to it.
[05:34.860 --> 05:37.220]  You don't have to, uh, be an administrator someplace.
[05:37.680 --> 05:43.740]  All these laptop computers wandering around, they get sold on eBay, or they get stolen, or they get lost, or they just get thrown out.
[05:43.950 --> 05:45.100]  They have all this information.
[05:45.100 --> 05:47.560]  How many times do you think they actually wipe the hard drives?
[05:47.800 --> 06:01.500]  Yeah, someone did a study by, uh, or, I mean, an informal study by buying lots of computers off of eBay and checking the hard drives and found that, uh, a good percentage of them actually had still personal information and sensitive stuff on them when they were sold.
[06:01.500 --> 06:14.600]  Um, and most of them, uh, even if the information had been deleted, the hard drives hadn't actually been wiped because, uh, when files are deleted, it deletes, uh, kind of a pointer to the file.
[06:14.710 --> 06:16.480]  It says, well, this file, the data is here.
[06:16.600 --> 06:18.020]  It doesn't actually delete the data.
[06:18.180 --> 06:18.960]  It's easy to get back.
[06:19.120 --> 06:23.120]  So, the data is still on the hard drive unless you wipe over it a couple times.
[06:23.360 --> 06:25.400]  And you don't have to be the NSA to get the data back either.
[06:25.660 --> 06:28.180]  Uh, it's just a simple matter of, uh, if, yeah, replace.
[06:28.330 --> 06:35.210]  I know in the old computer systems, you just replace the first letter of the, of the file because they just get rid of the first letter of the file and it would be unreadable.
[06:35.330 --> 06:38.760]  But if you put the letter back or any letter, all of a sudden the file will be back too.
[06:39.160 --> 06:44.160]  If, I mean, and there's, there's plenty of commercial software to, to bring back files that have been deleted.
[06:44.480 --> 06:46.360]  You can just go buy them in the CompUSA.
[06:47.000 --> 06:52.660]  Um, but, I mean, if, if, it is wiped, if you are the, uh, a government, perhaps you can restore it.
[06:52.720 --> 06:55.220]  There's all sorts of things with the actual physical attributes of the disk.
[06:55.360 --> 06:58.340]  But, um, if you, if, you know, if you're no one important...
[06:58.340 --> 07:02.340]  If you burn the disk and break into a million pieces, it's less likely they'll be able to recover it.
[07:02.450 --> 07:11.600]  But if you're just looking to protect some degree of privacy, if you, if you're selling a computer to somebody on eBay or something like that and you don't want your personal information going with it, what would you suggest?
[07:11.860 --> 07:13.840]  Overwrite the hard drive a couple times with garbage.
[07:14.080 --> 07:14.620]  How do you do that?
[07:14.950 --> 07:16.540]  Uh, easy to do in Linux.
[07:16.840 --> 07:18.660]  I'm sure there's software to do it in Windows.
[07:19.100 --> 07:19.380]  Mm-hmm.
[07:19.720 --> 07:21.830]  In Linux, you would just, like, cat, uh, /etc...
[07:21.830 --> 07:23.860]  We could just copy a big file, like, download a huge...
[07:23.860 --> 07:25.780]  Dev random to the device.
[07:26.140 --> 07:26.400]  Yeah.
[07:26.520 --> 07:33.380]  Actually, you would have to do it several times because there's third-party utilities out there that can, they can retrieve it even if it's been written over once.
[07:33.860 --> 07:41.020]  Uh, you really need to write a random string of ones and zeros over the whole hard drive several times or over that section of the drive.
[07:41.740 --> 07:47.640]  And, uh, even then the FBI has ways of digging it out of the lower levels of the magnetic oxides.
[07:47.880 --> 07:53.180]  Yeah, it's like they, they can look at the current waveforms and extract what the original one was.
[07:53.300 --> 07:54.040]  Yeah, it's crazy.
[07:54.300 --> 07:58.220]  We have a great story that comes out of Australia from the, uh, Canberra times.
[07:58.300 --> 07:59.040]  Am I pronouncing that right?
[07:59.450 --> 07:59.740]  Canberra?
[07:59.860 --> 08:00.160]  Canberra.
[08:00.460 --> 08:00.760]  Canberra.
[08:00.920 --> 08:01.280]  All right.
[08:01.760 --> 08:02.260]  I want to make sure.
[08:02.450 --> 08:06.280]  Because we have a lot of listeners in Australia and in that part of the world, which, uh, is really cool.
[08:06.560 --> 08:07.420]  I don't think they listen to us.
[08:07.780 --> 08:08.620]  Could they listen to us live?
[08:08.620 --> 08:10.720]  I guess it's like seven in the morning there or something.
[08:10.720 --> 08:13.710]  It's, uh, it's, uh, it's in the early afternoon or something.
[08:13.860 --> 08:14.860]  It's a fun time to listen.
[08:14.980 --> 08:15.020]  No.
[08:15.020 --> 08:15.720]  I don't think it's early afternoon.
[08:15.800 --> 08:17.380]  It's about 12 hours ahead of us.
[08:17.460 --> 08:17.600]  Yeah.
[08:17.710 --> 08:19.240]  So that would make it about seven in the morning.
[08:19.360 --> 08:20.450]  Nine in the morning.
[08:20.710 --> 08:21.800]  My sister's in Australia.
[08:21.800 --> 08:24.420]  If it's 12 hours ahead of us and it's 7.08 here, how could it be nine here?
[08:24.420 --> 08:24.680]  Well, okay.
[08:24.760 --> 08:34.240]  It goes, it goes, it's 14 when, when it's daylight savings time for both and it's 12 when it's not because they're reversed because their seasons are reversed because they're in the southern hemisphere.
[08:34.520 --> 08:36.280]  You carry too much knowledge for any human.
[08:36.840 --> 08:38.140]  Why do you think I don't think I have my nickname.
[08:38.330 --> 08:39.080]  But anyway, continue.
[08:39.340 --> 08:40.140]  Jeopardy Jim, yes.
[08:40.280 --> 08:40.450]  Okay.
[08:41.000 --> 08:53.080]  Well, coming out of Australia here, criminals have hacked into John James Hospital's phone system, racking up almost $5,000 of international calls in a cyber attack known as Freaking.
[08:54.600 --> 08:57.900]  Yes, that's what they have defined as, Freaking, with a PH.
[08:58.760 --> 09:01.680]  At least they said criminals have hacked into, you know.
[09:02.310 --> 09:06.000]  In an American paper, they would say hackers, even though it's got nothing to do with hacking.
[09:06.000 --> 09:08.800]  They just simply managed to make free phone calls or something.
[09:09.300 --> 09:13.160]  At least two other Canberra organizations have fallen prey to the scam this year.
[09:13.600 --> 09:20.520]  John James officials believe the hospital could have been facing a bill of more than $100,000 if the problem had not been promptly discovered.
[09:20.740 --> 09:23.220]  Now, here's the definition of what Freaking is.
[09:23.400 --> 09:26.800]  It involves people hacking into an organization's... Okay, they did use the word.
[09:27.040 --> 09:34.420]  Hacking into an organization's phone system, commonly through a private automatic branch exchange known as PABX.
[09:34.420 --> 09:40.700]  They can make calls and listen to, delete, or change messages, often leaving victims with huge bills.
[09:41.420 --> 09:44.360]  I don't know how you'd make that many phone calls, though.
[09:44.400 --> 09:44.900]  I really don't.
[09:44.980 --> 09:46.200]  That's a heck of a lot.
[09:46.900 --> 09:54.060]  Telstra, the phone company down there, estimates 16 to 20 of its customers are attacked in this way every month, although the number is dropping.
[09:54.060 --> 10:07.260]  John James Chief Executive Phil Lowen said that Telstra had notified the hospital just before Easter that a caller had made between $4,000 and $5,000 worth of calls to South America and the Asia-Pacific region in just over 24 hours.
[10:07.640 --> 10:09.680]  The first call had been at 1.30 a.m.
[10:09.700 --> 10:14.120]  on March 22nd, and the hospital had stopped all international calls the next afternoon.
[10:14.320 --> 10:14.860]  Boy, that's quick.
[10:14.860 --> 10:23.860]  Well, you know, if you're going to get someone dialing into your phone and stealing phone calls, you should really investigate a cheaper plan in advance.
[10:24.100 --> 10:24.620]  Well, here's the thing.
[10:24.640 --> 10:26.540]  The hospital is using an older system.
[10:26.760 --> 10:30.160]  It allowed people to dial in from the outside and then make further calls.
[10:30.260 --> 10:33.120]  We used to call those things extenders way back in the day.
[10:33.760 --> 10:38.760]  Basically, what you do is you'd scan an exchange, and then you'd hear a ring and a dial tone.
[10:38.900 --> 10:39.420]  All right?
[10:39.500 --> 10:42.700]  And then the dial tone would tell you that you could dial out.
[10:42.700 --> 10:48.600]  Sometimes it wasn't even an authorization code, or sometimes it was a two-digit authorization code, or something absurdly simple like that.
[10:48.680 --> 10:53.500]  And then you could call anywhere in the world, and it would never be traced to you because there was no such thing as caller ID back then.
[10:54.600 --> 10:58.200]  Anyway, they've turned off the hacker's access to this system.
[10:59.280 --> 11:01.220]  Now, this is a great quote here.
[11:01.300 --> 11:11.940]  We all hear about computer hackers, but we forget that telephone exchanges are big computers these days and have the same vulnerability as your IT network does and should be treated with the same level of security.
[11:13.700 --> 11:14.240]  All right.
[11:14.580 --> 11:19.040]  Well, you know, it's basically you leave a door wide open and somebody's going to walk into it and do something.
[11:19.180 --> 11:19.980]  But hacking?
[11:20.120 --> 11:20.780]  I don't think so.
[11:21.100 --> 11:22.200]  Someone just called a phone number.
[11:22.380 --> 11:24.060]  I don't know if there was even a code involved.
[11:26.580 --> 11:30.660]  Bernie, any memories of phone systems of the past?
[11:30.660 --> 11:31.400]  Oh, yeah.
[11:31.660 --> 11:37.400]  I remember back in the 80s exploring various PABXs.
[11:37.660 --> 11:45.280]  There was one where I was working, actually, and I discovered its access port number and called into it.
[11:45.660 --> 11:48.220]  The statute of limitations is over, so I can talk about this now.
[11:49.320 --> 11:50.400]  You're sure about that, right?
[11:50.720 --> 11:51.380]  I'm certain.
[11:51.540 --> 11:51.720]  Okay.
[11:51.720 --> 11:56.760]  I was back in the 80s, and it was some co-workers, and I didn't want to go to work a particular day.
[11:56.760 --> 11:58.460]  It was going to be a nice day.
[11:58.640 --> 12:12.800]  So I called in, and I called into the PBX, and believe it or not, it was interfaced to the heating, ventilation, air conditioning system as well, the same dial-in system.
[12:12.800 --> 12:17.300]  So we changed the heat to go really out of control that day.
[12:17.520 --> 12:20.400]  So they couldn't open the building.
[12:20.560 --> 12:21.120]  It was just too high.
[12:21.220 --> 12:22.240]  It was like 100 degrees in there.
[12:22.600 --> 12:24.780]  And so none of us had to go to work that day.
[12:26.260 --> 12:28.640]  That's a little bit towards anarchy there.
[12:29.600 --> 12:30.120]  Okay.
[12:30.500 --> 12:31.920]  Another story out of London.
[12:32.880 --> 12:37.140]  A new national network of mobile cameras is to track criminals on the roads.
[12:37.520 --> 12:42.780]  Automatic number plate recognition cameras linked to an extensive database will pinpoint vehicles police want.
[12:43.720 --> 12:50.600]  The system led to a dramatic increase in arrests when it was tested by 23 forces between June 2003 and June 2004.
[12:50.940 --> 12:59.360]  The cameras mounted in vans scan number plates and check them against a police database containing more than 8.5 million registrations.
[12:59.740 --> 13:07.380]  It takes less than a second, allowing police at checkpoints to stop, quote, unquote, wanted vehicles immediately and question the occupants.
[13:07.380 --> 13:14.320]  Last year, the government pledged 15 million pounds to support the ANPR rollout over the next year.
[13:14.660 --> 13:15.580]  That's kind of scary.
[13:15.580 --> 13:17.400]  I have a feeling they're going to be doing something like that here.
[13:17.680 --> 13:19.580]  Is that $45 million?
[13:21.060 --> 13:22.400]  It's probably more like $30 million.
[13:23.160 --> 13:24.380]  It's Fahrenheit 451.
[13:25.120 --> 13:26.480]  Everyone, go to your front door.
[13:26.660 --> 13:27.220]  Throw it open.
[13:27.800 --> 13:28.760]  Montag is running.
[13:30.060 --> 13:31.160]  Yeah, I suppose so.
[13:32.880 --> 13:35.800]  Bernie, are you frightened by this kind of a thing?
[13:36.940 --> 13:37.700]  Not terribly.
[13:37.980 --> 13:38.080]  Yeah?
[13:38.660 --> 13:40.460]  I mean, nothing frightens me anymore.
[13:40.560 --> 13:47.960]  And by the way, Mike should be aware that the actual press release he's looking for, which is the second faxed, is now on the fax machine.
[13:48.460 --> 13:51.280]  You know, I went to the fax machine before and there was nothing there.
[13:51.360 --> 13:52.760]  I'm just going to stay in the studio.
[13:52.840 --> 13:55.020]  I wish you guys would work this out before the show.
[13:55.200 --> 13:56.140]  Definitely there now.
[13:56.140 --> 13:56.640]  All right.
[13:58.140 --> 13:59.240]  Mike, you want to look one more time?
[13:59.380 --> 14:00.700]  Oh, I think Leo's going to go.
[14:00.740 --> 14:01.100]  Leo's going to look.
[14:01.200 --> 14:01.540]  Okay, good.
[14:01.560 --> 14:01.940]  Thank you.
[14:03.020 --> 14:04.260]  We had another story.
[14:04.360 --> 14:05.840]  I'm looking kind of frantically for this.
[14:06.500 --> 14:07.860]  It's probably on the fax machine.
[14:08.040 --> 14:08.960]  Yeah, maybe it is.
[14:09.800 --> 14:10.960]  Something else about...
[14:10.960 --> 14:16.220]  I think this had to do with Chicago and taking pictures and police and things like that.
[14:16.220 --> 14:18.300]  While you're looking, I could tell a story about the post office.
[14:18.320 --> 14:19.980]  Why don't you tell a story about the post office while I'm looking?
[14:19.980 --> 14:24.620]  I got a package from somebody who's been promising to send it for some time.
[14:24.740 --> 14:25.280]  Oh, I found it.
[14:25.280 --> 14:34.480]  But they told me that the post office now has, much like automated checkouts at supermarkets, an automated kiosk to mail things.
[14:34.640 --> 14:37.760]  And they mailed something else which happened to weigh over a pound.
[14:37.880 --> 14:51.380]  And that's significant because some years ago we mentioned that the post office no longer lets you mail things over a pound at a freestanding mailbox because then it'll just go near its post office and they'll contact you.
[14:51.680 --> 14:57.160]  You have to go into the post office and show ID that matches the return address on the package you send.
[14:57.520 --> 15:01.020]  Wait, let's stop this bus for a second here because I got a question.
[15:01.200 --> 15:01.340]  Sure.
[15:01.420 --> 15:05.060]  You're not allowed to put something in a mailbox that's over how much?
[15:05.260 --> 15:05.940]  16 ounces.
[15:06.040 --> 15:08.420]  16 ounces, which is last I checked the pounds, right?
[15:08.420 --> 15:08.540]  Right.
[15:09.860 --> 15:11.100]  But you can.
[15:11.320 --> 15:12.360]  Who's going to stop you?
[15:12.540 --> 15:12.800]  Exactly.
[15:13.620 --> 15:14.300]  Exactly what?
[15:15.080 --> 15:15.740]  That's my point.
[15:15.740 --> 15:18.180]  No one will physically stop you from doing this.
[15:18.240 --> 15:20.880]  They do not have postal police sitting on every mailbox saying...
[15:20.880 --> 15:24.340]  But there's a sticker on the mailbox that says you can't do that.
[15:24.680 --> 15:26.200]  It says due to heightened security.
[15:26.700 --> 15:26.860]  Yeah.
[15:27.360 --> 15:28.700]  But what happens if you do?
[15:29.280 --> 15:32.700]  They take it to the post office and then they put it aside.
[15:33.340 --> 15:34.120]  And then what?
[15:34.280 --> 15:35.480]  It blows up there, I guess.
[15:35.600 --> 15:36.380]  Oh, my God.
[15:36.960 --> 15:37.480]  I mean, come on.
[15:37.520 --> 15:38.360]  Don't they think these things through?
[15:38.520 --> 15:41.260]  It's like they think of half of it and they don't think of the other half.
[15:41.260 --> 15:44.740]  It doesn't get to the target unless you're smart and your target is the post office.
[15:44.760 --> 15:48.260]  Yeah, if your target's the post office, it's a damn good way to get it there.
[15:48.460 --> 15:48.780]  Well...
[15:48.780 --> 15:49.640]  I tested this theory.
[15:49.800 --> 15:50.900]  I mailed a three-pound...
[15:50.900 --> 15:52.740]  I mailed just to see if this would work.
[15:53.480 --> 15:56.260]  I could have mailed it to the post office, but I just wanted to see if it would work.
[15:56.260 --> 16:06.000]  I had a priority mail package with the appropriate amount of postage applied to the box, and I did put a return address on there.
[16:06.120 --> 16:08.680]  I put my own, so I don't know whether that made any difference or not.
[16:08.720 --> 16:16.900]  But I was able to put it into one of these post office mail boxes on the corner, and my recipient got it.
[16:17.760 --> 16:28.480]  So I don't know whether they were ignoring the rules that day or whether they always routinely ignore the rules, but a three-pound priority mail package was mailed from a street mailbox, and it went through the system okay.
[16:28.780 --> 16:31.960]  Well, speaking of recipients receiving your mail, we have received your fax.
[16:31.980 --> 16:34.780]  It's not three pounds, but it was difficult getting here for some reason.
[16:34.900 --> 16:36.100]  Let's just finish this story.
[16:36.140 --> 16:36.500]  All right, go ahead.
[16:36.700 --> 16:52.100]  The point is, my correspondents told me that they now have these unmade kiosks inside the post office where you can weigh your package, put the appropriate amount of postage on it, and put it into a box, a slot in the post office, and it will be mailed,
[16:52.120 --> 16:55.020]  even if it's over a pound, and no one examines it.
[16:55.120 --> 17:04.290]  So not only, Bernie, are they lax at mailboxes on quarters, they're lax at the post office itself, and that's the end of the story.
[17:04.420 --> 17:05.750]  The machine takes your photograph.
[17:06.060 --> 17:07.420]  Look at the EFF's website.
[17:07.560 --> 17:09.270]  They did a FOIA request.
[17:09.400 --> 17:10.920]  What if you wear a paper bag over your head, though?
[17:11.670 --> 17:14.100]  Apparently, there's software in the machine to detect that.
[17:14.100 --> 17:16.600]  What if you wrap your turban so it hides your face?
[17:16.600 --> 17:18.300]  I don't know if the software works, but they have it.
[17:18.300 --> 17:23.770]  If I can find a store that still has paper bags, I'm going to go down there and do this at the FOIA post office.
[17:23.860 --> 17:24.730]  I'll give you a paper bag.
[17:24.790 --> 17:25.300]  Do you have a paper bag?
[17:25.380 --> 17:25.580]  Thank you.
[17:25.700 --> 17:26.360]  I'm sorry, Bernie, what?
[17:26.640 --> 17:32.600]  We had a listener write in about this many months ago, at least two or three months ago, and I wasn't really sure what he was talking about.
[17:32.700 --> 17:39.620]  He was talking about machines at the post office that let you get stamps and mail stuff, and it had a camera in it.
[17:39.660 --> 17:42.730]  And I'd never seen or heard of one of these things, but apparently this is what you're talking about.
[17:42.730 --> 17:46.230]  Yeah, they have them up by me in a couple of post offices.
[17:46.430 --> 17:47.640]  I don't know how prevalent they are.
[17:48.170 --> 17:50.120]  All right, so what's this damn facts?
[17:50.290 --> 17:53.300]  This facts, which is really, we spend a lot more effort on this than it's worth.
[17:54.490 --> 18:04.900]  There's a hosting provider called flag.blackend.net, which hosts infoshop.org and a number of other anarchist-friendly websites.
[18:05.320 --> 18:12.950]  And they got a message from the FBI saying, please give us your IP logs.
[18:13.030 --> 18:13.580]  A message?
[18:13.730 --> 18:14.730]  What, like an instant message?
[18:14.930 --> 18:15.510]  I don't know.
[18:15.690 --> 18:16.900]  It was presumably a subpoena.
[18:17.080 --> 18:18.640]  Maybe some guy came to their house.
[18:19.610 --> 18:27.210]  The point is he's under court order not to speak about the specifics, so I can't really provide details about what exactly was subpoena.
[18:27.290 --> 18:28.990]  So the FBI came and did something.
[18:29.170 --> 18:41.080]  The FBI demanded that he turn over this information, this IP logs about who had posted something controversial, presumably, which is what they tend to demand.
[18:41.080 --> 18:45.950]  And then this guy feels that he has two choices as he sees them.
[18:46.320 --> 18:49.320]  One, do not comply with the wishes of the FBI.
[18:49.320 --> 18:55.600]  This will most likely lead to the seizure of flag, which is the machine, and a compromise of all the sites and information online.
[18:55.690 --> 18:58.080]  It will probably also lead to me being imprisoned.
[18:58.080 --> 18:58.900]  I would guess.
[18:59.010 --> 19:00.300]  I personally do not fear this.
[19:00.430 --> 19:00.970]  Blah, blah, blah.
[19:01.750 --> 19:03.360]  We would lose our home as a result.
[19:03.360 --> 19:13.290]  Two is comply with the wishes of the FBI, provide the IP addresses, and count on the fact that I will catch a lot of heat and hatred from my comrades in the Iron Candace movement worldwide.
[19:14.900 --> 19:17.430]  Both of which are kind of crappy choices.
[19:17.430 --> 19:18.530]  He chose number two.
[19:19.100 --> 19:19.930]  To cooperate.
[19:20.580 --> 19:21.360]  To cooperate.
[19:21.670 --> 19:21.840]  Okay.
[19:21.930 --> 19:30.540]  Well, my question right here is, now, when IMC went through something similar not too long ago, there was nothing that the feds could get because there's nothing stored in the machines.
[19:30.540 --> 19:32.840]  Now, in this case, that's not the situation?
[19:32.840 --> 19:33.100]  Right.
[19:33.230 --> 19:39.670]  These are the two lessons that I draw from the differing ways that Indymedia and Flagg has handled the subpoena.
[19:39.790 --> 19:44.100]  The first lesson is, don't keep information if you don't want the feds to have it.
[19:44.880 --> 19:53.380]  There's no reason at all to keep IP addresses, especially if you're accepting controversial postings from the world at large.
[19:53.690 --> 19:57.400]  And the second thing to learn is that you can fight subpoenas.
[19:57.750 --> 20:02.270]  And even if you don't win, you can delay them, you can get them modified, you can get them narrowed in scope.
[20:02.880 --> 20:08.750]  So there's really never a reason to just turn over the information as soon as the FBI asks for it.
[20:08.900 --> 20:13.030]  And contrary to this guy's fears, you don't get shot immediately.
[20:13.030 --> 20:14.340]  So it takes a little while.
[20:14.340 --> 20:15.990]  I can think of a reason.
[20:15.990 --> 20:23.300]  If you're scared, if you don't have the support network, if you're being told all kinds of information from people around you, that may not necessarily be true.
[20:24.000 --> 20:29.640]  I've long since learned that, you know, you never know how someone's going to react to a situation like this until it actually happens.
[20:29.640 --> 20:33.540]  And I can't really blame people for overreacting in certain situations.
[20:34.250 --> 20:39.620]  That's why it's especially important for us to know that there's other people out there, that there is a support network of sorts.
[20:39.620 --> 20:43.140]  If something like this happens to you, you know, there should be someone you can call.
[20:43.250 --> 20:45.010]  There should be somebody you can ask for help from.
[20:45.780 --> 20:48.580]  And I'm not really sure if we have something like that yet.
[20:49.600 --> 20:50.300]  Dial a hacker.
[20:50.600 --> 20:51.120]  I'm sorry, what?
[20:51.450 --> 20:52.400]  You need dial a hacker.
[20:52.820 --> 20:58.770]  Yeah, well, you know, something good that would be, you know, of help in a situation like this.
[20:58.840 --> 21:02.470]  I mean, there are organizations like the EFF and the ACLU that will help.
[21:03.060 --> 21:04.430]  Did he try contacting them?
[21:04.670 --> 21:05.710]  You know, I don't know.
[21:06.290 --> 21:08.640]  But there's no such indication in here.
[21:09.170 --> 21:12.030]  Okay, well, we certainly hope the situation works out.
[21:12.040 --> 21:13.640]  I guess we'll keep following it.
[21:13.690 --> 21:14.860]  Is this being updated in any place?
[21:16.360 --> 21:23.710]  There's this sort of not a press release because he's under a gag order, but he sent a lengthy email that went all over the place.
[21:23.860 --> 21:27.250]  And I haven't seen any updates since then.
[21:27.380 --> 21:30.360]  Okay, so I guess people can check IndyMedia and maybe there'll be something posted there.
[21:31.170 --> 21:31.530]  Yes.
[21:32.470 --> 21:34.400]  It won't be on CNN, so I'm pretty sure.
[21:34.450 --> 21:38.340]  The website of the guy is flag.blackened.net.
[21:38.450 --> 21:39.710]  Which is currently in federal custody.
[21:39.990 --> 21:40.510]  No, no, no.
[21:40.620 --> 21:41.040]  Oh, it's not?
[21:41.190 --> 21:41.400]  No, no.
[21:41.400 --> 21:42.030]  I thought they took it.
[21:42.030 --> 21:45.100]  No, he turned over information, so he still has the machine.
[21:45.300 --> 21:45.770]  I see.
[21:45.900 --> 21:48.080]  He was afraid that they would take the machine.
[21:48.340 --> 21:48.560]  Okay.
[21:48.750 --> 21:51.280]  But we don't know what the information is, and we may never know.
[21:52.320 --> 21:54.950]  Okay, well, that's something of interest.
[21:55.800 --> 21:56.740]  What else do we have?
[21:57.000 --> 21:59.580]  Okay, I found the story about the Chicago Police Department.
[21:59.780 --> 22:01.320]  They've installed cameras in 10...
[22:01.320 --> 22:02.710]  Actually, this happened six years ago.
[22:02.780 --> 22:04.620]  They installed cameras in 10 squad cars.
[22:04.720 --> 22:05.710]  We probably talked about it here.
[22:05.710 --> 22:10.960]  To restore public confidence after a pair of police shootings killed two unarmed civilians.
[22:11.400 --> 22:14.580]  It was supposed to be the wave of the future for the entire police fleet.
[22:14.720 --> 22:17.800]  Instead, it turned out to be a 10-camera pilot program that went no further.
[22:18.060 --> 22:28.930]  However, on Thursday, Fleet Management Commissioner Michael Picardi disclosed plans to install cameras on 125 new squad cars scheduled for delivery over the next two months.
[22:28.930 --> 22:37.100]  It's from front-wheel drive Chevrolet Impalas that will replace the old rear-wheel drive Ford Crown Victoria.
[22:37.240 --> 22:38.320]  I'm not sure how relevant that is.
[22:38.720 --> 22:40.500]  It makes it safer for the officer.
[22:40.600 --> 22:44.170]  Now you're filming everything that's going on during a traffic stop during an arrest.
[22:45.860 --> 22:49.880]  Picardi said he's even experimenting with a Big Brother bonus for unmarked police cars.
[22:50.000 --> 22:52.430]  A tiny microphone positioned near the windshield.
[22:52.430 --> 22:55.380]  So powerful, it can pick up conversations on the street.
[22:56.280 --> 23:02.640]  You could pull into a street corner, and if there's a drug deal going on a half block away, you can hear what's going on.
[23:02.760 --> 23:07.710]  You could have all the windows shut and the air conditioning on, and you could hear everything going on outside the vehicle.
[23:07.860 --> 23:08.880]  I don't know what this guy's smoking.
[23:09.020 --> 23:10.320]  Is this really even possible?
[23:10.620 --> 23:11.740]  It's ridiculous, isn't it?
[23:11.800 --> 23:16.340]  It's a clear violation of federal wiretap.
[23:16.460 --> 23:18.260]  Well, if it's real, it's a clear violation.
[23:18.260 --> 23:19.620]  But I'm wondering if it's even real.
[23:19.840 --> 23:20.740]  Bernie, do you think it's real?
[23:20.740 --> 23:28.520]  Well, legality is aside, and he's right, that it would be a violation of federal wiretapping laws under Section 2510.
[23:28.740 --> 23:41.170]  But just from a workability standpoint, all the background noise of a vehicle-mounted microphone, you'd have engine noise, you'd have all the street noise.
[23:42.430 --> 23:46.620]  You're not going to pick up a conversation a half a block away on the street.
[23:46.740 --> 23:50.520]  Well, is there some kind of parabolic technology that allows them to point at somebody?
[23:50.740 --> 23:54.140]  Even if you had one of those, it would still be way too much background noise.
[23:54.380 --> 24:00.980]  And even with extensive filtering, like really sophisticated fast Fourier transfer analysis filtering, it's not going to happen.
[24:01.260 --> 24:07.520]  You'd have to have a microphone, you know, within a few feet of the person on the street if it's any kind of a city street where there's background noise.
[24:07.820 --> 24:08.930]  It's just the laws of physics.
[24:09.040 --> 24:16.040]  Ed Yonka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois, said he would be concerned if the police recorded those conversations without a warrant.
[24:16.040 --> 24:20.300]  It would raise serious questions under the Fourth Amendment and the Illinois eavesdropping law, he said.
[24:20.740 --> 24:24.280]  Illinois State Police have 1,200 vehicles equipped with cameras.
[24:25.880 --> 24:27.710]  That's Illinois, not Chicago.
[24:28.280 --> 24:32.840]  It's all pluses, no minuses, said State Police spokesman Lincoln Hampton.
[24:33.240 --> 24:38.620]  The Cook County Sheriff's Office has video cameras and 144 of its 255 marked squad cars.
[24:38.760 --> 24:42.580]  14 unmarked squad cars used in traffic enforcement also have cameras.
[24:42.860 --> 24:49.360]  Officers wear microphones and inform drivers they are being recorded for the TV show Cops, no doubt.
[24:49.360 --> 24:56.210]  The Chicago Police Department, meanwhile, is destined to follow the lead of many suburban police departments in getting sport utility vehicles.
[24:56.360 --> 24:58.360]  That's how you combine all the evils together.
[24:59.560 --> 25:02.430]  Police, SUVs, what else could we possibly put in this package?
[25:02.580 --> 25:02.950]  Cameras.
[25:03.040 --> 25:05.710]  Cameras, microphones, shotguns.
[25:05.930 --> 25:06.460]  I don't know.
[25:06.950 --> 25:08.240]  Eight SUVs have been ordered.
[25:08.540 --> 25:13.240]  If the response is good, as many as 50 of them could be on the street within a few years at a cost of $28,000.
[25:15.320 --> 25:16.980]  50 SUVs cost $28,000.
[25:17.280 --> 25:17.710]  That's not bad.
[25:17.880 --> 25:18.760]  Each, probably.
[25:19.000 --> 25:19.360]  You think?
[25:19.740 --> 25:20.140]  Yes.
[25:20.640 --> 25:22.140]  Because that's like 500 bucks an SUV.
[25:22.300 --> 25:22.880]  That's not a bad thing.
[25:23.240 --> 25:23.540]  All right.
[25:26.000 --> 25:28.020]  You know, it's simply staggering to me.
[25:28.060 --> 25:39.500]  But I think the only thing that we can do to test this is to ask all our Chicago listeners to, if you see a police car, move to a half block away and start talking about drug deals and see what happens.
[25:40.140 --> 25:42.000]  We've got you back if something bad happens.
[25:42.100 --> 25:43.430]  Don't actually have drugs on you.
[25:43.690 --> 25:46.000]  But, you know, let's just see if they can hear you.
[25:46.560 --> 26:01.580]  Well, better yet, if it's one of these deals where the officer is wearing, and this is more common, the officer is wearing a wireless microphone transmitter where they can walk up and during the, you know, where they ask you for your license and registration and do your initial questioning at the window of your car,
[26:02.740 --> 26:06.500]  and ostensibly they notify you that you're being recorded audio and video.
[26:06.500 --> 26:20.820]  If you happen to know or have a frequency counter to measure the frequency of the cop's wireless microphone transmitter, you could then transmit, you know, as was demonstrated in the movie Freedom Downton, transmit on that frequency any other audio.
[26:21.170 --> 26:28.240]  So on that videotape would be some audio of your choosing instead of your conversation with a police officer.
[26:28.380 --> 26:29.540]  That might be kind of amusing.
[26:30.840 --> 26:31.360]  Okay.
[26:31.560 --> 26:34.710]  Well, moving along here, this is something that I thought was kind of interesting.
[26:34.710 --> 26:36.320]  This comes from the Seattle Times.
[26:36.580 --> 26:39.060]  You hear about this device called a Fox Blocker?
[26:39.720 --> 26:40.170]  Yeah.
[26:40.170 --> 26:41.210]  Apparently, you've heard about this, Mike?
[26:41.300 --> 26:41.500]  Yeah.
[26:41.690 --> 26:42.450]  It blocks Fox.
[26:42.520 --> 26:44.140]  It blocks Fox News Channel.
[26:44.240 --> 26:46.840]  Now, it's a little silver bit of metal.
[26:47.000 --> 26:48.580]  It screws into the back of most televisions.
[26:48.580 --> 26:51.540]  It allows people to filter Fox News from their TV sets.
[26:52.430 --> 27:00.930]  The Tulsa, Oklahoma resident who invented this device has received thousands of emails, angry and complimentary, a few death threats since the device debuted in August.
[27:00.930 --> 27:09.300]  Apparently, the making of terroristic threats against those who don't share your views is a high art form among a certain core audience, said Sam Kimmery.
[27:09.930 --> 27:17.980]  Formerly a registered Republican, even a precinct captain, Kimmery became an independent in the 1990s when he said the state party stopped taking input from everyday members.
[27:18.140 --> 27:26.690]  He contends Fox News' top-level management dictates a conservative journalistic bias that inaccuracies never are retracted and what errs is more opinion than news.
[27:26.690 --> 27:30.020]  What I'm more curious about, though, is how it works.
[27:30.240 --> 27:32.170]  How does this thing know where Fox is?
[27:32.430 --> 27:43.080]  It's a form of a bandpass filter, sometimes called a notch filter, and it's used in RF applications a lot to filter out unwanted signals, and you can tune it so that it'll filter out.
[27:43.080 --> 27:44.740]  But how do you tell it where Fox News is?
[27:44.800 --> 27:47.280]  Because they're always moving it around on cable systems and satellite systems.
[27:47.430 --> 27:50.210]  I'm assuming it would be specific to a certain area.
[27:50.740 --> 27:50.900]  Yep.
[27:51.260 --> 27:51.690]  Well, it costs...
[27:52.220 --> 27:54.500]  It's actually a band stop filter, but you were close.
[27:55.080 --> 27:57.950]  Well, it costs $8.95, apparently, and...
[27:57.950 --> 27:59.430]  $8 or $800?
[27:59.560 --> 28:02.580]  No, I don't think it's worth that much to block Fox.
[28:03.260 --> 28:15.140]  But, you know, I think this is something that all the people who want to control what's over the radio and over the TV and are upset by the filth that they see, you know, people saying the word damn or something like that, and it really gets them upset,
[28:15.430 --> 28:16.930]  they can use these little...
[28:16.930 --> 28:21.760]  Of course, they'd have to get like 100 of them, but they could stick these things on for every channel that they don't want to receive.
[28:21.760 --> 28:27.480]  It is so well known, it made an episode of Boston Legal, believe it or not.
[28:27.640 --> 28:27.880]  What do you mean?
[28:28.100 --> 28:29.560]  They actually brought this into a script?
[28:29.560 --> 28:42.960]  It was featured in an episode of Boston Legal, where some, ostensibly some fictional high school principal put it on the televisions in the school and was sued because, as a governmental agency, the schools could not block just one channel.
[28:44.580 --> 28:46.210]  Amazing, what people waste their time on.
[28:46.670 --> 28:48.620]  Redbird, you have a secret sound.
[28:48.720 --> 28:52.880]  You want to make that sound now and we can give people the opportunity to guess what the sound is.
[28:52.980 --> 28:54.280]  Nobody in the studio give it away.
[28:54.620 --> 29:01.000]  Basically, you're going to make a sound and hopefully people out there are smart enough to be able to guess what the sound actually is.
[29:01.060 --> 29:03.930]  When we take phone calls later, maybe somebody will win.
[29:04.120 --> 29:04.300]  Sure.
[29:04.300 --> 29:04.500]  Go ahead.
[29:06.450 --> 29:06.950]  All right.
[29:07.170 --> 29:07.580]  That was...
[29:07.580 --> 29:08.190]  You want to do it one more time?
[29:09.610 --> 29:10.900]  Try to do it a little closer to the microphone.
[29:12.110 --> 29:12.430]  Okay.
[29:12.430 --> 29:13.240]  That was good.
[29:13.360 --> 29:15.040]  Now, if you know what that sound is...
[29:15.040 --> 29:15.480]  Well, I know.
[29:15.820 --> 29:17.620]  Well, yeah, I mean, if you're not in the studio...
[29:17.620 --> 29:20.260]  And Bernie, I think you're disqualified, too, because, well...
[29:20.260 --> 29:20.820]  I don't think...
[29:20.820 --> 29:22.950]  Sprint PCS did not translate it very well.
[29:23.720 --> 29:24.880]  Yeah, that's probably true.
[29:25.190 --> 29:26.580]  Okay, some letters now.
[29:26.620 --> 29:33.980]  You can write to us, OTH at 2600.com, if you have any opinions to spout or any suggestions or bits of information.
[29:34.520 --> 29:39.500]  And our phone number, we'll be taking phone calls in just a couple of minutes, 212-209-2900.
[29:39.760 --> 29:43.100]  That's country code one, for those of you outside the United States.
[29:44.300 --> 29:46.960]  Actually, it's one anyway, even if you're in the United States, but never mind.
[29:47.400 --> 29:51.480]  And your last edition of Off the Hook, a listener rang in about receiving a phone call from 911.
[29:53.280 --> 29:54.800]  Did we read this last week?
[29:54.880 --> 29:55.580]  I don't know if we did.
[29:56.170 --> 29:56.360]  Okay.
[29:56.740 --> 29:58.260]  I think we got it last week.
[29:58.780 --> 30:01.600]  Just to let you know, the same thing happened to me a few months ago here in the UK.
[30:01.600 --> 30:04.100]  The phone rang, and on picking it up, there was a 999.
[30:04.300 --> 30:06.980]  An operator asking me which emergency service I required.
[30:08.190 --> 30:14.280]  I hung up, and later in the day, when I picked up the phone to make a call, I automatically got put back through to the emergency services without dialing anything.
[30:14.780 --> 30:16.400]  Al Strange, signed Baz.
[30:16.840 --> 30:18.260]  Well, I have no explanation.
[30:18.540 --> 30:18.960]  Anybody here?
[30:19.710 --> 30:20.620]  I have a theory.
[30:20.880 --> 30:21.580]  All right, what's the theory, Bernie?
[30:22.000 --> 30:28.210]  Well, something or someone on his phone line may have dialed 999, which I guess is 911 in where, Australia?
[30:28.540 --> 30:29.190]  That's in England.
[30:29.640 --> 30:30.220]  England, okay.
[30:30.950 --> 30:40.580]  And then they may have a system there that sort of traps your line so that you, after you hang up, if you pick up the phone again, you're still connected to 999.
[30:41.060 --> 30:59.740]  Now, it could have been, if he has a computer modem connected to his phone line, he could have downloaded one of these pieces of nasty, you know, one of these malware programs that is a dialer that actually does, dials either a 900 number or some toll number that makes the spammer some money,
[30:59.880 --> 31:05.950]  or can dial 911 or 999 or whatever the person who wrote the software tells it to do.
[31:06.400 --> 31:08.760]  And maybe, you know, maybe that's what happened.
[31:09.060 --> 31:12.930]  And then, you know, then the 999 people then seized his line.
[31:13.240 --> 31:14.210]  I don't know, it's just a theory.
[31:15.370 --> 31:18.170]  Here's something else involving phone trickery.
[31:18.170 --> 31:25.020]  If you call 411 from a payphone and press zero until it puts you to the operator, the operator automatically asks city and state.
[31:26.300 --> 31:29.690]  That's according to somebody, Dakota from West Virginia.
[31:29.980 --> 31:30.710]  The name is Dakota.
[31:30.840 --> 31:31.620]  The state is West Virginia.
[31:31.720 --> 31:32.600]  I know that doesn't work here.
[31:32.780 --> 31:40.620]  Just for people's curiosity, when the cops called me back during that chase, it was just a private number, like caller ID blocked or maybe Annie blocked as well.
[31:40.950 --> 31:42.360]  So nothing interesting here.
[31:42.980 --> 31:43.380]  Wow.
[31:43.620 --> 31:47.740]  But the 411 thing, that's something I don't think works.
[31:47.740 --> 31:49.620]  I mean, I'm sure people will try that from payphones.
[31:49.840 --> 31:53.280]  And, you know, they have the system pretty well covered now.
[31:53.640 --> 31:54.280]  I don't think it's...
[31:54.280 --> 31:56.710]  Try it in West Virginia and get back to us with details.
[31:56.950 --> 32:01.360]  Maybe on the way to Dayton Hamvention, we can stop in West Virginia and dial 411.
[32:01.580 --> 32:02.710]  And Wheeling, West Virginia.
[32:02.880 --> 32:04.670]  Well, hopefully your car won't get stuck there again.
[32:04.980 --> 32:05.210]  Oh, man.
[32:05.850 --> 32:06.950]  You ever get it out of there, Bernie?
[32:07.350 --> 32:08.960]  Yeah, I had to go back three times.
[32:09.100 --> 32:09.840]  It was really bad.
[32:09.980 --> 32:15.580]  You know, when I went back the second time, that river that we walked down to the bank, it completely flooded its banks.
[32:15.580 --> 32:17.240]  It was like 50 feet higher.
[32:17.380 --> 32:20.760]  That whole amphitheater area we were walking through was completely submerged.
[32:21.000 --> 32:22.210]  Very, very bizarre.
[32:22.520 --> 32:23.170]  Yeah, that's something.
[32:24.120 --> 32:25.740]  You know, we don't have a single phone call coming in.
[32:25.780 --> 32:26.240]  That's amazing.
[32:26.340 --> 32:27.000]  We have one phone call.
[32:27.100 --> 32:27.880]  Okay, let's...
[32:27.880 --> 32:29.690]  If we get more phone calls, we'll start taking them.
[32:29.780 --> 32:31.300]  212-209-2900.
[32:31.460 --> 32:32.220]  That's our phone number.
[32:32.400 --> 32:33.580]  Continuing with listener mail.
[32:34.170 --> 32:39.480]  We had a bunch of feedback on the MPAA ratings regarding the rating fees.
[32:40.000 --> 32:44.560]  Do you know if you get anything else for your money besides a rating?
[32:44.690 --> 32:49.190]  Do you get a breakdown of which parts of the movie resulted in the given rating and why?
[32:49.320 --> 32:51.450]  Seems like an awful lot of money for a few hours of work.
[32:51.800 --> 32:53.000]  Signed, Dead Karma.
[32:53.260 --> 32:54.690]  Arsene, what do you think about this?
[32:54.690 --> 33:16.210]  I don't have the papers in front of me, but I do remember seeing that if the director has a dispute, they can file to get their movie re-rated or something like that, but they would then receive a set of details on why certain things... why the film was rated specifically.
[33:16.500 --> 33:18.210]  But otherwise, you don't get anything.
[33:18.300 --> 33:18.860]  You just get a rating.
[33:19.100 --> 33:21.480]  So you have to complain to get a breakdown.
[33:21.480 --> 33:26.710]  That's what the sheet suggests, but I mean, maybe in practice, it's different.
[33:26.820 --> 33:28.430]  Well, I mean, you've done a lot of research into this.
[33:28.620 --> 33:36.080]  Now, have you ever heard of a case where somebody complained that it was rated too mildly, where they wanted that R, but they only got a PG?
[33:36.710 --> 33:44.170]  I think usually they try to work the ratings down, like, for example, from an X, or rather from an NC-17 to an R.
[33:44.910 --> 33:46.000]  But it never goes the other way.
[33:46.140 --> 33:47.450]  Well, usually not.
[33:47.450 --> 33:51.430]  It's just they make more money when it's... when they have a wider audience.
[33:52.690 --> 33:53.120]  Okay.
[33:53.260 --> 33:54.840]  A couple of the letters on this subject.
[33:55.520 --> 33:59.760]  You were talking about your own rating system on March 9th.
[33:59.880 --> 34:06.840]  I thought you might be interested to look at this alternative rating system at www.capalert.com.
[34:06.960 --> 34:08.680]  C-A-P-A-L-E-R-T.
[34:09.400 --> 34:11.480]  Why are you grinning like that, Mike?
[34:11.760 --> 34:13.180]  The Cap Alert guy is great.
[34:13.180 --> 34:13.960]  Yeah, yeah.
[34:14.080 --> 34:16.220]  Especially because it combines Christianity.
[34:16.580 --> 34:19.520]  Now, it's always a good read because almost everything is bad for you.
[34:19.720 --> 34:29.040]  Did you know that recent movie Robots includes sinister plan to overthrow, social status insults, posterior in-face humor, and transsexual suggestion?
[34:30.480 --> 34:33.080]  Well, it's a lot more specific than the MPAA, isn't it?
[34:33.980 --> 34:38.760]  This site is regularly linked to by www.ntk.net for their own amusement.
[34:38.950 --> 34:39.660]  I'm not sure who they are.
[34:39.660 --> 34:42.180]  But anyway, that's Signed Martin.
[34:42.480 --> 34:45.560]  Well, it's an example of somebody else doing a rating system.
[34:45.680 --> 34:58.940]  I don't see why we can't do a rating system for a bit more liberal-minded people that takes into account other things such as religious references or overt patriotism or demeaning to women or whatever.
[34:58.940 --> 35:03.200]  Whatever things you want to say that aren't really noticed by the MPAA.
[35:03.200 --> 35:15.440]  You know, I never thought I'd be defending the capillac guy, but it costs him like $10 to come up with his whole thorough rating system, which is a much better deal than the like $2,000 to come up with a single letter.
[35:15.540 --> 35:16.320]  People pay him for this?
[35:16.360 --> 35:16.700]  No, no, no.
[35:16.740 --> 35:17.760]  But he goes to see the movie.
[35:17.840 --> 35:20.500]  It costs him $10 or probably less than wherever he is.
[35:20.520 --> 35:22.000]  Yeah, the MPAA people, they don't pay to see the movie.
[35:22.100 --> 35:26.860]  You pay them to see your movie and you pay them thousands of dollars and, you know, it's insane.
[35:28.580 --> 35:30.920]  Anyway, another letter on this subject and we'll take some phone calls.
[35:30.920 --> 35:46.120]  I was looking for the original theatrical version of Requiem for a Dream and Hollywood video carried the movie under a so-called R, but only because I'm leery of the mega change, I noticed in the fine print that this R version was actually an edited R,
[35:46.300 --> 35:49.200]  edited R version of an R-rated movie.
[35:50.200 --> 35:50.680]  Right.
[35:50.900 --> 35:55.240]  The originally released R-rated version was available on video as unrated.
[35:56.120 --> 35:59.000]  Blockbuster and Hollywood video did not carry the unrated version.
[35:59.640 --> 36:09.060]  Unfortunately, I was living in a very new area of a distant Chicago suburb and did not have realistic access to an independent retailer and Netflix wasn't yet born.
[36:09.340 --> 36:18.740]  So to see the original theater-released version of an R-rated movie, I obtained a DVD via my local library's loaning network after much research to verify that I would get the version that I wanted.
[36:19.100 --> 36:26.640]  This won't work for everyone, though, because library networks in less populated areas do not have the video and DVD resources of those near metropolitan areas.
[36:26.640 --> 36:36.460]  So not only does an NC-17 handed down by the ratings board kill a film's chances with the mega chain retailers, even a heavy-handed and hyped hard R can as well.
[36:36.620 --> 36:37.180]  Hard R.
[36:37.400 --> 36:39.180]  Arson, you ever hear of this particular phrase?
[36:39.780 --> 36:50.220]  No, but I did hear from the MPA while I was doing research that if you were to change any content in the film and then release it to DVD, you would have to change the name, too.
[36:50.220 --> 37:00.760]  So, for that version that was supposedly a different R, that movie should have had a different name, like Requiem for a Dream, Director's Cut, or something similar.
[37:00.920 --> 37:02.200]  It shouldn't have been in any fine print.
[37:03.080 --> 37:07.660]  Also problematic is that there are no less than four differently rated versions of Requiem for a Dream.
[37:07.820 --> 37:10.980]  There's R, there's edited R, there's unrated, and then there's unedited?
[37:11.680 --> 37:12.140]  Okay.
[37:12.560 --> 37:13.660]  That must be something.
[37:14.180 --> 37:20.020]  This can make discussion of the film difficult, since the discussion always has to begin with determining which version has been seen by whom.
[37:20.500 --> 37:26.760]  I guess directors should just edit their films down to PG-13 to keep everything simple for the mega chains located between McDonald's and Starbucks.
[37:27.000 --> 37:28.840]  Support independent video retailers.
[37:29.200 --> 37:30.100]  Signed, MovieFan.
[37:30.220 --> 37:32.640]  Yes, that's about the best thing you can possibly do.
[37:33.460 --> 37:33.900]  Unreal.
[37:34.080 --> 37:34.800]  Okay, let's take some phone calls.
[37:34.800 --> 37:36.680]  It's 2-2-2-0-9-2-9-2-9-hundred.
[37:37.500 --> 37:39.220]  And good evening, you're on the air.
[37:39.660 --> 37:40.660]  Hey guys, how are you?
[37:40.720 --> 37:42.860]  Do you guys see Otbell, or hear Otbell?
[37:43.280 --> 37:44.380]  We've heard him over the years.
[37:44.560 --> 37:47.960]  Yeah, he had Nitnick on Sunday night.
[37:48.740 --> 37:50.160]  Actually, I didn't know he was back on the air.
[37:50.800 --> 37:52.680]  Yeah, Otbell had him in the hacker.
[37:53.640 --> 37:54.300]  The hacker?
[37:54.600 --> 37:56.040]  Yeah, well, that's what they call him.
[37:56.180 --> 37:56.420]  Okay.
[37:56.700 --> 37:58.800]  Well, he's a white hacker, he's a good hacker.
[37:59.100 --> 37:59.440]  Okay.
[37:59.780 --> 38:02.220]  He just published a book, just like you guys.
[38:02.500 --> 38:03.100]  Did you guys hear about him?
[38:03.100 --> 38:04.080]  Probably Kevin Mitnick.
[38:04.080 --> 38:05.060]  Yeah, Kevin Mitnick.
[38:05.180 --> 38:07.600]  Who was supposed to be on our show last week, but canceled at the last minute.
[38:07.880 --> 38:10.380]  Right, but he was on this weekend on Otbell's show for about three hours.
[38:10.480 --> 38:11.160]  Just to let you know, guys.
[38:11.720 --> 38:13.560]  Okay, well, is there anything else you wanted to let us know?
[38:14.360 --> 38:15.420]  Nothing else at this time.
[38:15.620 --> 38:17.320]  Okay, thanks for that info.
[38:18.280 --> 38:19.480]  And good evening, you're on the air.
[38:19.960 --> 38:20.500]  All right.
[38:21.160 --> 38:22.280]  Let's move along over here.
[38:22.400 --> 38:23.320]  Good evening, you're on the air.
[38:24.480 --> 38:42.840]  You know, it's interesting listening to your discussion, but I'm wondering how we factor in the increasing religiosity of the GOP into this equation of what really amounts to a suppression of artistic freedom.
[38:44.040 --> 38:44.520]  Okay.
[38:45.500 --> 38:46.920]  It's not just the GOP.
[38:47.100 --> 38:49.340]  I mean, Tipper Gore was a huge fan of this whole nonsense.
[38:50.560 --> 38:53.300]  Well, Tipper Gore is a phenomenon unto herself.
[38:54.460 --> 38:54.940]  Okay.
[38:54.940 --> 39:20.520]  I mean, but if one looks at how the Republican Party is curtsying to the religious right and how films are simply not distributed in certain Bible Belt areas because they're considered to be unsaleable, what about the people who, however red state you may be situated,
[39:20.720 --> 39:21.800]  you might want to see the movie?
[39:22.420 --> 39:22.940]  Yeah.
[39:23.920 --> 39:25.420]  You're locked out, literally.
[39:25.800 --> 39:26.160]  Exactly.
[39:26.420 --> 39:42.900]  And as we move further and further in their artistic direction, what I'm concerned about is that the people who finance motion pictures will develop the notion that, well, I mean, you guys said it a moment ago, PG is the way to go.
[39:43.320 --> 39:43.560]  Yeah.
[39:43.880 --> 39:45.460]  Fortunately, that's how it seems to be.
[39:46.120 --> 39:46.780]  Yes, Jim.
[39:46.860 --> 39:47.560]  It's not this.
[39:47.700 --> 39:48.800]  This isn't new.
[39:48.960 --> 39:51.200]  I mean, this has been going on since the 30s.
[39:51.200 --> 39:52.200]  Of course, of course, of course.
[39:52.460 --> 40:04.600]  God's Little Acre, a movie we made in the, what, the early 50s, was famous for not being played down south because of its shocking themes of incest and its supposed denigration of Southerners.
[40:06.160 --> 40:09.280]  At least we still have cable uncensored by the FCC.
[40:09.600 --> 40:12.380]  As long as that remains, I think we still have hope.
[40:12.520 --> 40:14.140]  Well, for this week we do, anyway.
[40:14.360 --> 40:15.580]  That's exactly the point.
[40:15.760 --> 40:18.220]  When do you think they'll invade against cable?
[40:18.380 --> 40:22.220]  Well, I also want to point out that as a Republican, I don't curtsy to the religious right.
[40:22.400 --> 40:24.640]  My oppression is not based on my religion.
[40:24.720 --> 40:25.280]  Well, let me tell you something.
[40:25.280 --> 40:31.980]  As a Republican, you should know that your particular party has been hijacked by these people from the religious right.
[40:31.980 --> 40:34.100]  They have the gun to the head of the driver.
[40:34.300 --> 40:38.200]  You should be damn upset by that because the Republicans are being defined by the religious right.
[40:38.200 --> 40:39.840]  I have plenty of reasons to be upset, okay?
[40:39.840 --> 40:41.620]  Don't tell me what I should be most upset about.
[40:41.680 --> 40:43.360]  Oh, I think it's awesome.
[40:43.460 --> 40:44.920]  Maybe you could be least upset about it.
[40:45.080 --> 40:48.500]  It's a list of things that you should be upset at, but we won't get into it right now.
[40:48.920 --> 40:52.940]  Joe Lieberman has been pretty vocal against these types of films as well.
[40:53.180 --> 40:54.560]  Well, he's a Republican too, isn't he?
[40:54.680 --> 40:55.320]  No, he's not.
[40:55.500 --> 40:56.520]  Oh, come on.
[40:56.820 --> 40:57.980]  How do you define Republican?
[40:58.080 --> 40:59.040]  For God's sake.
[40:59.400 --> 41:00.120]  There's a party.
[41:00.240 --> 41:00.780]  You have to join.
[41:02.160 --> 41:04.280]  Yeah, well, they just won't let him in.
[41:04.360 --> 41:05.600]  That's the only reason he's not a Republican.
[41:05.880 --> 41:08.700]  Have folks heard about this controversy around IMAX films?
[41:08.920 --> 41:09.240]  What?
[41:09.840 --> 41:10.740]  IMAX films, apparently.
[41:10.740 --> 41:12.880]  Is that too much for the religious right now too?
[41:13.120 --> 41:15.640]  Yes, because they're mentioning evolution in them.
[41:15.700 --> 41:16.360]  Oh, good Lord.
[41:17.160 --> 41:18.020]  Oh, that's true.
[41:18.140 --> 41:18.880]  Yeah, I have heard about this.
[41:19.440 --> 41:35.440]  So, and this is really because the IMAX, it costs so much money to make an IMAX film and there's a very limited amount of IMAX theaters that even if some small percentage of IMAX theaters largely in the South won't show films that mention evolution, it could prevent them from getting made.
[41:35.520 --> 41:40.300]  Look, imagine if we were to go out and say, okay, from this point on, no more religion.
[41:40.300 --> 41:42.260]  We don't talk about religion, it's outlawed.
[41:42.300 --> 41:46.100]  That's what the religious people are trying to do for anything that's not their particular religion.
[41:46.100 --> 41:47.100]  Don't they see that?
[41:47.360 --> 41:49.100]  It's wrong either way.
[41:49.240 --> 41:50.280]  You know, it's really curious.
[41:50.280 --> 42:02.460]  If one extends to all religions the, let's say, the sway that has been given to the religious right, then why wouldn't we have passages from the Koran?
[42:03.280 --> 42:04.200]  Well, that's...
[42:04.200 --> 42:16.100]  In other words, it simply becomes a joke because then which religious group is in the majority in which area and who can get their scriptures enshrined in marble and put in front of a courthouse.
[42:16.220 --> 42:19.620]  I mean, it becomes a kind of a contest of absurdity.
[42:20.420 --> 42:25.140]  This is how you disarm the people who want to bring school prayer back into schools.
[42:25.280 --> 42:31.080]  You say, fine, okay, we can pray in the schools, however, we'll be praying to Allah and see how they react then.
[42:31.680 --> 42:34.060]  You know, all of a sudden they won't be for prayer in schools anymore.
[42:34.260 --> 42:49.940]  And that, you know, the point of that is that there are people who go to these public places who are not religious or who subscribe to a different religion and to be forced to sit through something that, you know, is not to their liking, I guess, in that particular way is rather unfair.
[42:50.540 --> 42:53.180]  So, you know, leave it for some other arena.
[42:53.520 --> 42:56.820]  There's one totally out of place to mention the Federalist Papers here.
[42:56.820 --> 43:15.960]  And the reason why the secular governmental mode was chosen wasn't to disrespect religion or to in any way diminish it, but simply to make that hardline separation between that which essentially affords freedom and that which invites repression.
[43:17.540 --> 43:31.780]  meaning that if you say, well, we're going to be a religious or a Christian republic or an Islamic republic, that we're now doomed to the limitations of that religion's purview.
[43:33.400 --> 43:33.900]  Interesting.
[43:34.060 --> 43:34.520]  Or damned.
[43:36.060 --> 43:37.120]  We'll see, I guess.
[43:37.380 --> 43:38.380]  Thanks for your call.
[43:38.520 --> 43:38.780]  Thank you.
[43:38.880 --> 43:39.960]  And keep up the good work.
[43:40.180 --> 43:40.420]  Thanks.
[43:41.400 --> 43:44.840]  212-209-2900 is our phone number you're listening to off the hook.
[43:45.820 --> 43:52.940]  And, you know, these issues, I know they've been around for ages, but it just seems like they're becoming more and more all-encompassing and controlling.
[43:53.440 --> 44:02.440]  I mean, I've never seen radio in the state it's in now where people are very paranoid where, you know, we have to face half a million dollar fines for saying the wrong word.
[44:03.580 --> 44:06.280]  It's, you know, I'm trying to figure out where the crisis is.
[44:06.280 --> 44:11.520]  Why are people in such a state over something that isn't really an issue or a problem?
[44:11.640 --> 44:15.100]  People think that, you know, there's indecency on the radio and on television.
[44:15.100 --> 44:19.220]  Well, then you tune the channel or you just don't watch that particular program or something.
[44:19.780 --> 44:21.780]  I mean, is it really that big a deal?
[44:21.920 --> 44:23.100]  What are we talking about specifically?
[44:24.280 --> 44:24.780]  All right.
[44:24.900 --> 44:26.380]  212-209-2900.
[44:26.620 --> 44:27.400]  And good evening.
[44:27.520 --> 44:27.900]  You're on the air.
[44:29.120 --> 44:29.800]  Go ahead.
[44:30.260 --> 44:31.940]  Oh, okay.
[44:31.940 --> 44:33.080]  I'm sorry.
[44:33.220 --> 44:42.320]  I just wanted to make a comparison to what's going on in America right now with basically the U.S.
[44:42.380 --> 44:43.520]  Taliban that's going on.
[44:44.520 --> 44:44.920]  Mm-hmm.
[44:45.560 --> 44:49.340]  You know, I heard on the radio the other day that they're going to have...
[44:49.340 --> 44:52.420]  You can't use the word, I guess...
[44:52.420 --> 44:55.560]  Don't use the word if you're trying to use an example.
[44:56.080 --> 44:56.380]  Right.
[44:57.740 --> 45:01.040]  In scientific, in school, in science, they don't want to teach.
[45:02.360 --> 45:03.580]  It's evolution, basically.
[45:04.240 --> 45:07.380]  They want to say that, you know, everything goes according to the Bible.
[45:08.660 --> 45:09.640]  In some places.
[45:09.860 --> 45:10.780]  In some places, yeah.
[45:10.940 --> 45:14.160]  But, you know, it's crazy.
[45:14.160 --> 45:14.940]  It really is.
[45:15.120 --> 45:24.660]  It's insane to be moving backwards like this, away from science, away from, you know, what the rest of the world is learning and talking about.
[45:25.380 --> 45:27.140]  To go back into superstition.
[45:27.140 --> 45:27.760]  And it's...
[45:28.580 --> 45:30.980]  I just have a very big problem with that myself.
[45:31.800 --> 45:32.440]  Yeah, me too.
[45:32.820 --> 45:33.020]  Thank you.
[45:33.020 --> 45:33.220]  All right.
[45:33.300 --> 45:33.860]  Thanks for your call.
[45:35.020 --> 45:35.500]  All right.
[45:35.560 --> 45:36.280]  Let's go over here.
[45:36.380 --> 45:36.900]  And good evening.
[45:37.220 --> 45:37.900]  You're on the air.
[45:38.400 --> 45:38.660]  Hi.
[45:38.720 --> 45:39.060]  How you doing?
[45:39.060 --> 45:39.440]  Good show.
[45:39.620 --> 45:39.920]  Thank you.
[45:40.460 --> 45:42.000]  I was commenting...
[45:42.000 --> 45:47.740]  I wanted to comment on, you know, if there's something on the radio or TV that you don't like, you know, just change the channel.
[45:48.020 --> 45:49.240]  I completely agree with you.
[45:49.460 --> 46:00.220]  The problem is, is that eventually everyone who's putting on a show says, oh, it's okay to use this word or that word or show this part of the body or that part of the body.
[46:00.380 --> 46:03.420]  And pretty soon, there's nothing that you can watch on TV.
[46:03.520 --> 46:04.720]  There's nothing you can listen to.
[46:04.720 --> 46:07.840]  If that's true, then won't people just stop watching and then there won't be an audience?
[46:08.260 --> 46:18.520]  Well, maybe I'm in the minority, but it's like, you know, after a while, I start to feel like it's someone telling me, hey, if you don't like it, if you don't like the air, don't breathe it.
[46:18.760 --> 46:19.560]  You see what I'm saying?
[46:19.860 --> 46:20.160]  Yeah.
[46:20.220 --> 46:24.880]  But the thing is, radio and television, commercial at least, exist to make money.
[46:25.020 --> 46:29.720]  If the people aren't being attracted by the product, you're going to lose money.
[46:29.900 --> 46:32.100]  If you create something that's...
[46:32.100 --> 46:32.940]  I'll give you an example.
[46:33.700 --> 46:39.820]  Pay TV, all right, has created some of the best television programming that this country has ever produced.
[46:39.980 --> 46:43.980]  And it's got all kinds, all kinds of four-letter words and nudity and things like that.
[46:44.220 --> 46:45.720]  And people are drawn to it.
[46:45.800 --> 46:47.420]  Now, is that something that's horrible?
[46:47.620 --> 46:48.720]  Maybe to some people it is.
[46:48.980 --> 46:56.340]  But if this were to be forbidden because it offends some Bible thumper someplace, well, then, you know, we all lose.
[46:56.340 --> 47:01.260]  I think legislating is probably taking anything like that too far because there's always a fine line.
[47:01.400 --> 47:03.680]  And yet people always bring out Michelangelo as David.
[47:03.900 --> 47:06.400]  Is that pornography or is it art?
[47:06.680 --> 47:09.660]  The thing is, is like, yeah, okay, there's been some great stuff.
[47:09.800 --> 47:15.540]  There is great writing that has nudity and there is great writing out there that has, you know, expletives and so forth.
[47:15.640 --> 47:17.960]  But just after a while, I start to get tired of it.
[47:18.080 --> 47:18.880]  And, you know, I'm just...
[47:18.880 --> 47:20.040]  Okay, but then you don't...
[47:20.040 --> 47:23.420]  I'm a New Yorker and, you know, I was raised here and bred here and born here.
[47:23.420 --> 47:25.600]  Just after a while, I start to weary of it.
[47:25.740 --> 47:27.840]  And I think that a lot of other people are too.
[47:27.980 --> 47:31.140]  But if you get tired of it, you move on to something else.
[47:31.300 --> 47:32.100]  You tune the channel.
[47:32.240 --> 47:33.900]  You turn off the TV or, you know...
[47:33.900 --> 47:35.480]  After a while, though, there really isn't much.
[47:35.780 --> 47:36.540]  You know, there really isn't.
[47:36.600 --> 47:39.620]  Except for, like, you know, the Family Channel or Christian Radio or something.
[47:39.780 --> 47:40.580]  Well, yeah.
[47:40.660 --> 47:41.960]  I don't need to get desperate here.
[47:42.500 --> 47:43.560]  That's not much of a choice.
[47:43.720 --> 47:45.360]  I mean, let's face it.
[47:45.400 --> 47:52.120]  You know, I think there's always going to be, you know, a constituency for good, clean, wholesome things on television.
[47:52.120 --> 47:53.600]  And you're not going to want to alienate that audience.
[47:53.780 --> 47:55.240]  And if that's your audience, fine.
[47:55.440 --> 48:05.500]  But don't shut it off to the rest of the people that want to, you know, maybe use common day vernacular in the way they speak and not, you know, censor everything that they do.
[48:05.600 --> 48:15.760]  Now, I'm not saying that this should be, you know, shoved down people's throats and we should just have, you know, all kinds of bad language and violence and nudity all the time everywhere you look.
[48:16.360 --> 48:27.880]  But I think the way that they're coming down on this, if you say something that you can hear any time you walk down any street, if you say that on the radio or on television, all of a sudden it's a big federal case.
[48:28.020 --> 48:28.320]  Why?
[48:28.440 --> 48:29.580]  Why does it have to be like that?
[48:29.720 --> 48:39.060]  Well, there's always the idea of like there's, you know, we're in a new time and a new place and this is not the 1960s and this is not the 1860s and this is not the 1760s.
[48:39.280 --> 48:50.000]  Sometimes I wonder, though, just how far it's going, people are going to say it's okay to go before there really should be some kind of real firewall put up.
[48:50.180 --> 48:56.420]  It's like what's going, what people wear today, you know, you would have been thrown in jail had you worn it a hundred years ago.
[48:56.560 --> 49:03.740]  It's like you just start to wonder how far is it really going to be allowed to go before even someone like you is shocked and saying, hey, I don't think this is right.
[49:04.220 --> 49:12.680]  Well, I mean, I think there are ways to deal with it that don't involve dragging archaic organizations like the FCC into it and making them into the morality police.
[49:12.820 --> 49:14.320]  Or the television council or something like that.
[49:14.360 --> 49:19.460]  Look at what happened down the road at Hot 97, okay, when they played that stupid song.
[49:19.920 --> 49:22.020]  Now, I don't think the FCC got involved.
[49:22.160 --> 49:23.480]  I don't think any licenses were threatened.
[49:23.680 --> 49:25.820]  Instead, people got outraged.
[49:26.000 --> 49:28.920]  People signed all kinds of petitions, demonstrated outside the station.
[49:29.020 --> 49:29.400]  And you know what?
[49:29.400 --> 49:30.020]  It had an effect.
[49:30.160 --> 49:32.840]  People were fired and programming was changed.
[49:32.840 --> 49:36.160]  They're still, you know, doing a lot of stupid things over there.
[49:36.200 --> 49:37.720]  But it did have an effect.
[49:37.860 --> 49:38.540]  It did shake them up.
[49:38.620 --> 49:42.080]  So you'd rather leave these sorts of things up to the people, the great unwashed, so to speak?
[49:43.300 --> 49:46.080]  Well, you know, I don't know if you want to refer to them that way.
[49:46.100 --> 49:51.160]  But I think audiences do have some power and some intelligence.
[49:51.160 --> 49:54.120]  And I think they can decide for themselves what they want to hear.
[49:54.460 --> 49:59.320]  I mean, you know, there are songs that can no longer be played over the radio that are works of art.
[49:59.320 --> 50:03.140]  And yeah, they might have a four-letter word in them, but they're still works of art.
[50:03.180 --> 50:06.780]  But they're not allowed to be played because some minister someplace might get upset.
[50:06.940 --> 50:08.320]  You know, well, he's not even going to be listening.
[50:08.500 --> 50:10.360]  Why do we care about that?
[50:10.440 --> 50:15.720]  Meanwhile, things that are offensive to me, like religion on the radio constantly all the time, that's not touched.
[50:16.300 --> 50:22.820]  I think what happens, though, is that people need others to speak up for them because, hey, most of us are kind of busy.
[50:23.040 --> 50:32.300]  And it only takes... and the reason why, say, I would guess this Hot 97 incident was railed against so much was because there was a big amount of publicity.
[50:32.340 --> 50:35.520]  And it's a scandal, and it's titillating, and it's funny.
[50:35.900 --> 50:38.300]  But, you know, I think that people need a minister here or there.
[50:38.360 --> 50:42.340]  I think that people need someone to speak out for them because most of us don't know how to say it.
[50:42.340 --> 50:43.720]  Most of us don't know what to do.
[50:43.800 --> 50:45.300]  Most of us don't know how to address this situation.
[50:45.300 --> 51:04.240]  Yeah, but then you get organizations that send out a couple of million pieces of mail, and then the FCC and Congress and all those people think that this is a large constituency filled with people making up their own minds when in actuality it's just one or two or three people that are sending out the same thing over and over again and really having way too much control.
[51:04.500 --> 51:14.140]  And when people really get involved, though, really, truly get involved instead of these fraudulent organizations, they... it's like... I'm always reminded of that situation in 1984, the proles.
[51:14.340 --> 51:15.980]  They get up... they get excited.
[51:16.200 --> 51:16.880]  They get up in arms.
[51:17.040 --> 51:18.760]  They want to cause a revolution over what?
[51:18.960 --> 51:24.640]  Not over any sort of injustice, over the fact that their pots and pans are not good quality.
[51:25.020 --> 51:28.120]  It's like people get up in arms over the dumbest...
[51:28.120 --> 51:30.760]  Okay, but is that, you know, which comes first?
[51:30.760 --> 51:35.460]  I think people are programmed into thinking that they can't affect any kind of a change.
[51:35.660 --> 51:37.140]  Well, I think you've definitely got a point there.
[51:37.140 --> 51:49.340]  Yeah, I think if people put their heads together and were, you know, united in various ways as individuals, they would be surprised at how much change they could actually get, how much they could fight people that are really controlling things.
[51:49.520 --> 51:52.140]  Listen, I want to move on to another call, but thanks very much for calling in.
[51:52.260 --> 51:59.940]  Not to mention the large amount of revolutions that have been caused by people whose first complaint is the quality of their consumer goods.
[51:59.940 --> 52:01.860]  Yeah, but you have to take it the next step, you know?
[52:02.060 --> 52:06.880]  But that's what tore down the Berlin Wall, essentially, and destroyed the Soviet Union.
[52:07.140 --> 52:12.200]  People finally rebelled to the fact that all the money was going for guns and none for butter, so to speak.
[52:12.380 --> 52:14.060]  And people have real issues to deal with.
[52:14.300 --> 52:18.260]  Here, you know, as long as you can put gas into your SUV, you know, life is still comfortable.
[52:18.620 --> 52:20.660]  It doesn't matter if you lose a little bit of freedom of speech.
[52:21.860 --> 52:25.000]  People have to get more upset about the things that they're losing that really matter.
[52:25.300 --> 52:25.500]  Okay.
[52:25.900 --> 52:26.560]  Next phone call.
[52:26.640 --> 52:26.880]  Good evening.
[52:26.940 --> 52:27.340]  You're on the air.
[52:37.140 --> 52:43.140]  On Foe Network 24, which is now advocating, you know, state-sponsored torture.
[52:45.160 --> 52:47.720]  It's a hugely popular show, Monday nights, 9 o'clock.
[52:48.020 --> 52:48.460]  That's...
[52:49.960 --> 52:51.240]  What network is this?
[52:51.440 --> 52:52.560]  That's Fox.
[52:52.820 --> 52:52.920]  Foe.
[52:53.420 --> 52:53.860]  Okay.
[52:54.440 --> 52:57.900]  You know, it's so passe to talk about Foe Network news, but...
[52:57.900 --> 52:58.120]  Right.
[52:58.340 --> 53:01.840]  You know, and all these other horrible shows they have on, but this one is particularly disturbing.
[53:02.040 --> 53:02.700]  What's the name of the show?
[53:03.060 --> 53:03.500]  24.
[53:03.760 --> 53:03.980]  24.
[53:07.140 --> 53:08.880]  You brought that up, because I actually watched that show.
[53:09.200 --> 53:11.200]  I can't believe what they're doing on that program.
[53:11.340 --> 53:19.280]  I only hope that towards the end of the season, all these people that they've tortured, including a bunch of innocent people, that they will...
[53:19.280 --> 53:21.340]  In some way, it's going to come back to haunt them.
[53:21.520 --> 53:28.900]  But they're basically saying, they're sending a message out in this fictional TV program that it's okay to torture people if it's for the greater good.
[53:29.340 --> 53:31.480]  And these values, they stick, you know?
[53:31.560 --> 53:35.520]  They stick with the people watching them until they say, yeah, you know what?
[53:35.520 --> 53:36.420]  It's okay to do that.
[53:37.140 --> 53:48.040]  Yeah, you know, they've got a couple of sympathetic law enforcement-type people, but typically they're all, you know, like this past Monday night, the guy got the truth serum.
[53:48.340 --> 53:49.520]  You know, he was one of the good guys.
[53:49.620 --> 53:50.620]  He still got the truth serum.
[53:50.900 --> 53:51.620]  The truth serum.
[53:51.620 --> 53:52.980]  He knows what is going to happen to him next time.
[53:52.980 --> 53:56.160]  He's potentially going to get wiped out like his mother did, et cetera.
[53:56.420 --> 53:59.620]  Well, there's another character that was tortured, and it turned out that she was completely innocent.
[53:59.620 --> 54:05.520]  And then they portrayed her as the bad character because she was angry about it, and she was demanding something in return.
[54:06.140 --> 54:09.300]  So they fired her and made her seem like she was blackmailing people.
[54:09.500 --> 54:10.880]  Her son's up for sacrifice.
[54:10.920 --> 54:11.280]  Yeah.
[54:11.840 --> 54:19.080]  I think these things, you know, it's commercial television and all that and entertainment, but it does reflect the values and how they're changing in our country.
[54:19.580 --> 54:24.580]  And you have to look at that and kind of shudder because, wow, these kinds of things might stick.
[54:24.820 --> 54:29.740]  You know, what you said to the previous callers, if this program offends you so much, then don't watch it.
[54:29.960 --> 54:31.080]  Yeah, of course.
[54:31.080 --> 54:36.860]  But you should also watch it and comment on it if there's something in there that's objectionable to you.
[54:36.920 --> 54:40.380]  And I don't have any problem with people objecting to things that they find offensive.
[54:40.840 --> 54:44.000]  But don't go around telling people that they cannot see it.
[54:44.080 --> 54:47.280]  You know, because you don't like it, nobody else has the opportunity to see it.
[54:47.280 --> 54:50.580]  Because, you know, everything is going to be turned off if you do that.
[54:51.000 --> 54:51.360]  Everything.
[54:52.400 --> 54:52.880]  Oh, yeah.
[54:52.920 --> 54:53.340]  That's the noise.
[54:53.440 --> 54:53.660]  Go ahead.
[54:53.960 --> 54:54.980]  Make that noise one more time.
[54:55.440 --> 54:56.280]  Nobody guessed it.
[54:56.420 --> 54:57.100]  Nobody guessed it.
[54:57.200 --> 54:58.460]  We'll have one more call.
[54:58.780 --> 54:59.880]  We have time for about one more call.
[55:00.400 --> 55:00.920]  All right.
[55:02.040 --> 55:02.940]  And good evening.
[55:03.000 --> 55:03.420]  You're on the air.
[55:04.320 --> 55:04.680]  Hello?
[55:04.900 --> 55:05.400]  Yes, go ahead.
[55:06.460 --> 55:06.820]  Hi.
[55:07.940 --> 55:09.180]  Where are you calling from?
[55:09.780 --> 55:10.460]  I'm calling...
[55:10.460 --> 55:10.840]  Echo...
[55:10.840 --> 55:11.160]  Oh, okay.
[55:11.200 --> 55:11.560]  There you go.
[55:11.800 --> 55:12.120]  Okay.
[55:12.220 --> 55:13.500]  I'm calling from...
[55:14.200 --> 55:15.920]  I don't want to say it on the air.
[55:16.040 --> 55:17.180]  No, it's just you were echoing.
[55:17.280 --> 55:18.080]  Amazingly.
[55:18.360 --> 55:19.660]  Oh, the radio was on.
[55:19.660 --> 55:20.060]  Okay.
[55:20.380 --> 55:21.120]  What's on your mind?
[55:22.800 --> 55:24.660]  I like your show.
[55:24.860 --> 55:28.080]  Not because I use cell phone or I believe in hacking.
[55:28.320 --> 55:29.920]  But I like you guys.
[55:29.920 --> 55:31.100]  You are very smart.
[55:31.100 --> 55:32.080]  Your voice.
[55:32.280 --> 55:33.580]  The way all of you talk.
[55:34.280 --> 55:37.040]  Today, I was able to get on the phone.
[55:37.040 --> 55:51.260]  I wanted to say about the topic, the slippery slope of sex on the TV or violence on the TV or slippery slope of lying by the corporate or politicians and going into war.
[55:51.260 --> 55:58.780]  I see them all as same phenomena, even though some of them are called left-winger and some of them are called right-winger.
[55:59.320 --> 56:02.160]  But in my mind, actually, they're all wrong.
[56:03.460 --> 56:13.460]  And of course, the slippery slope of lying of corporate and politicians kills life and maybe not sex and violence on the TV, but I think indirectly they do too.
[56:14.400 --> 56:34.540]  What I do not understand is that why human beings cannot be decent about any of those aspects and not go too far in slippery and taking a course in the slope and going too far on either of, you know, all of those aspects.
[56:34.540 --> 56:36.100]  I just don't understand it.
[56:36.460 --> 56:39.860]  But of course, that's why we have all the problems that go on.
[56:41.640 --> 56:47.720]  But I don't have TV because I'm tired of all the channels.
[56:47.920 --> 56:51.460]  I don't want to see it because it's either all lie or sex or violence.
[56:51.460 --> 56:53.060]  I do not care for any of it.
[56:53.280 --> 56:58.140]  I bought it radio recently because I only want to listen to WBAI.
[56:58.240 --> 56:58.640]  Okay.
[56:58.820 --> 57:00.360]  Well, that's great.
[57:00.560 --> 57:03.200]  Unfortunately, we're going to have to end it there, but please keep on listening.
[57:03.620 --> 57:04.000]  Okay.
[57:04.140 --> 57:04.800]  Yes, I do.
[57:04.960 --> 57:05.900]  Thanks for your feedback.
[57:06.400 --> 57:07.180]  Take care.
[57:07.380 --> 57:07.720]  All right.
[57:08.440 --> 57:11.020]  That's going to do it for us on this edition of Off the Hook.
[57:11.460 --> 57:15.980]  Obviously, a whole new topic of interest to pursue.
[57:16.360 --> 57:16.680]  Yes.
[57:16.780 --> 57:16.960]  Okay.
[57:17.180 --> 57:19.640]  One more time with the noise, and then we're going to reveal what the noise actually is.
[57:19.960 --> 57:21.520]  And don't forget Friday, the meeting.
[57:21.840 --> 57:22.700]  Friday, there's a meeting.
[57:22.860 --> 57:22.940]  Yes.
[57:23.620 --> 57:25.040]  Bernie, you want to guess what the noise was?
[57:25.800 --> 57:27.800]  It sounds like he's spitting, but I can't tell.
[57:27.800 --> 57:28.220]  No, no.
[57:28.240 --> 57:28.760]  He's definitely not.
[57:28.840 --> 57:29.740]  Well, he might be, but no.
[57:29.820 --> 57:30.280]  That's not it.
[57:30.860 --> 57:32.000]  It's the sound of...
[57:32.000 --> 57:33.180]  Why don't you tell us what it is?
[57:33.180 --> 57:37.680]  It's two MetroCards being long, I guess.
[57:38.180 --> 57:42.480]  Basically, if you come to the meeting, we'll demonstrate how to make that amazing sound, the New York City meeting.
[57:42.620 --> 57:42.760]  Okay.
[57:42.880 --> 57:43.500]  We're out of here.
[57:43.660 --> 57:44.680]  Stay tuned for the computer show.
[57:45.080 --> 57:45.820]  See you next week.
[58:53.940 --> 58:54.040]  See you next week.
[59:07.140 --> 59:10.330]  I'm so happy for the rest.
[59:22.460 --> 59:26.420]  Now it's time to take a break.
[59:30.950 --> 59:35.330]  Come straight to four or you'll be late.
[59:51.080 --> 59:52.320]  Ha ha ha ha!
[59:54.860 --> 59:58.100]  You're listening to WBAI Radio.
[59:59.920 --> 01:00:03.280]  99.5 FM in stereo.