Off The Hook - 2006-08-16

[00:00.000 --> 00:06.980]  [SPEAKER_18]: The spirit of Black August moves through centuries of black, Indian, and multicultural resistance.
[00:07.320 --> 00:09.660]  [SPEAKER_18]: It is an emblem of the spirit of freedom.
[00:10.000 --> 00:17.060]  [SPEAKER_18]: It is a long, smoldering spark of the fire in the hearts of a people, hearts burning and yearning for freedom.
[00:17.340 --> 00:20.980]  [SPEAKER_18]: These commentaries are produced by Noelle Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
[00:23.840 --> 00:29.040]  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News from KPFK in L.A., Amara Bogado.
[00:32.700 --> 00:39.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: And this is radio station WBAI New York, where the time is 7 o'clock, and that means it's time for Off The Hook.
[00:42.440 --> 00:46.980]  [SPEAKER_19]: The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:47.880 --> 00:52.520]  [SPEAKER_19]: I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
[00:53.280 --> 00:55.240]  [SPEAKER_19]: We couldn't get much worse,
[00:58.600 --> 01:00.760]  [SPEAKER_19]: bump for the best, expect the worst.
[01:01.280 --> 01:04.240]  [SPEAKER_19]: I hope that's understood, one diddly, boom!
[01:39.800 --> 01:40.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: And good evening to everybody.
[01:40.860 --> 01:41.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: The program is Off The Hook.
[01:42.100 --> 01:44.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[01:45.900 --> 01:48.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: Joined tonight by Mike.
[01:48.480 --> 01:48.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Hi.
[01:49.400 --> 01:50.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: Redbird.
[01:50.440 --> 01:50.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Good evening.
[01:51.320 --> 01:51.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: Jim.
[01:52.580 --> 01:53.180]  [SPEAKER_11]: Nobba's tag.
[01:53.360 --> 01:53.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, wait a minute.
[01:53.800 --> 01:54.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Why is your mic not working?
[01:55.500 --> 01:56.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: Testing, testing.
[01:56.540 --> 01:56.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, hold on.
[01:57.040 --> 01:57.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're not up loud enough.
[01:57.840 --> 01:58.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: Go ahead.
[01:58.240 --> 01:58.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: Testing, testing.
[01:59.140 --> 01:59.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: All right.
[01:59.780 --> 02:00.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's horrible.
[02:00.620 --> 02:01.780]  [SPEAKER_11]: Nobba's tag, as I said.
[02:01.960 --> 02:03.240]  [SPEAKER_17]: And we're joined by Not Kevin.
[02:03.620 --> 02:03.820]  [SPEAKER_11]: Hello.
[02:04.260 --> 02:05.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's the name you're going to go by, huh?
[02:05.720 --> 02:06.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Not Kevin.
[02:06.120 --> 02:07.060]  [SPEAKER_14]: Sure, why not?
[02:07.300 --> 02:10.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: All right, well, you know, we don't want to confuse people thinking that you're the other Kevin, the real Kevin.
[02:11.020 --> 02:13.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: So you could be not Kevin.
[02:13.640 --> 02:14.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: The imaginary Kevin.
[02:14.620 --> 02:15.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: I'm more confused than ever.
[02:15.920 --> 02:17.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, well, I think that's the point.
[02:17.320 --> 02:18.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: And, of course, Bernie S.
[02:18.360 --> 02:19.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: joins us down there in Philadelphia.
[02:20.260 --> 02:22.020]  [SPEAKER_15]: My microphone is working better than usual.
[02:22.620 --> 02:23.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: You do sound better.
[02:23.520 --> 02:25.180]  [SPEAKER_17]: You sound like you're talking to us from the 1980s.
[02:25.180 --> 02:25.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: Why is that?
[02:26.060 --> 02:27.540]  [SPEAKER_15]: I'm on an analog phone.
[02:27.700 --> 02:28.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: An analog phone?
[02:28.520 --> 02:29.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: Is that the newest thing?
[02:29.500 --> 02:30.820]  [SPEAKER_15]: An analog wired phone.
[02:31.000 --> 02:33.640]  [SPEAKER_15]: Isn't it amazing how much better we sound with old technology?
[02:33.800 --> 02:34.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, wait a minute.
[02:34.460 --> 02:35.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: I want in on this.
[02:35.780 --> 02:38.700]  [SPEAKER_17]: How do I sign up for something that's analog and wired?
[02:38.900 --> 02:39.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's what I want.
[02:40.260 --> 02:49.980]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's hard these days, but if you really search and beat the bushes, you can actually find a company that will connect a wire to a telephone.
[02:50.180 --> 02:51.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: What do you mean, beat the bushes?
[02:51.580 --> 02:53.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: What kind of political remark is that?
[02:54.460 --> 03:00.120]  [SPEAKER_15]: This is not... for the Secret Service agents, who I'm sure are listening again, this is not a threat against the president.
[03:00.120 --> 03:03.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: Didn't some guy wind up in prison for saying he was going to go bush burning or something?
[03:03.580 --> 03:05.060]  [SPEAKER_15]: I do recall something like that.
[03:05.060 --> 03:05.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, so you have to be careful.
[03:06.140 --> 03:06.980]  [SPEAKER_15]: I should, you're right.
[03:07.020 --> 03:07.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Meeting bushes.
[03:07.920 --> 03:08.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, okay, fine.
[03:09.060 --> 03:12.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, apart from all that, you're talking to us on a wired line.
[03:12.980 --> 03:13.380]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[03:13.800 --> 03:15.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it does sound so much better.
[03:15.480 --> 03:16.180]  [SPEAKER_15]: I'm sure.
[03:16.740 --> 03:17.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow.
[03:17.200 --> 03:20.660]  [SPEAKER_15]: Compared to Sprint or whatever other wireless carrier I'm normally on.
[03:20.660 --> 03:25.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: But if somebody wanted to sign up, it would be difficult, wouldn't it?
[03:25.280 --> 03:27.840]  [SPEAKER_15]: It would be, but you'd have to wait.
[03:27.980 --> 03:30.800]  [SPEAKER_15]: There's a waiting period and there's physical issues involved.
[03:31.240 --> 03:36.100]  [SPEAKER_15]: But it can be less expensive than a cellular phone, and it has certain advantages.
[03:36.420 --> 03:37.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: How long can the wire be?
[03:38.680 --> 03:40.720]  [SPEAKER_15]: It can be kilometers.
[03:41.520 --> 03:42.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow.
[03:42.320 --> 03:49.120]  [SPEAKER_15]: But you can actually reach out to any number on the public switch telephone network on the planet, which is pretty amazing.
[03:49.700 --> 03:50.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: It is.
[03:50.400 --> 03:50.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: It really is.
[03:50.980 --> 03:53.800]  [SPEAKER_15]: And both wired and wireless phones you can reach with this technology.
[03:54.040 --> 03:54.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: Mm-hmm.
[03:54.620 --> 04:02.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: The fact of the matter is, calls from Zimbabwe sound better now than calls from New York if one is on a wired line and one is on a wireless line.
[04:03.000 --> 04:03.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's true.
[04:03.640 --> 04:03.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: Mm-hmm.
[04:04.940 --> 04:06.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: But enough about this.
[04:06.120 --> 04:11.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: We have some important news to cover, in fact, a breaking story, which I'm sure of all listeners are concerned about.
[04:11.240 --> 04:20.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: And as a radio station, we have a public service message to sort of a responsibility to get you all the information as it comes in, and as we are, in fact, a source of information.
[04:21.160 --> 04:21.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: God help you.
[04:22.980 --> 04:31.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes, a 60-year-old woman was successfully restrained on an airline coming over to the United States and tied up by fellow passengers.
[04:31.060 --> 04:38.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: And apparently, she had boarded the airplane with facial cream and was fortunately stopped.
[04:39.560 --> 04:48.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: The plane was accompanied by fighter jets that made it land in Boston instead of, I think it was going to New York or Washington, D.C.
[04:50.000 --> 04:52.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: And, yeah, she was taken off the plane.
[04:52.560 --> 04:53.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: We got another terrorist.
[04:53.540 --> 04:53.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: Thank God.
[04:54.160 --> 04:54.520]  [SPEAKER_11]: Wait, wait, wait.
[04:54.540 --> 04:55.860]  [SPEAKER_11]: Please tell me you're exaggerating.
[04:55.960 --> 04:56.420]  [SPEAKER_11]: Please tell me...
[04:56.420 --> 04:57.180]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, this is actually what happened.
[04:57.280 --> 04:58.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: This really did happen.
[04:58.200 --> 04:58.560]  [SPEAKER_11]: Wait a minute.
[04:59.120 --> 05:03.140]  [SPEAKER_11]: I can believe that they were very upset with the facial cream.
[05:03.260 --> 05:05.100]  [SPEAKER_11]: I can believe the fighter jets.
[05:05.200 --> 05:08.140]  [SPEAKER_11]: But please, don't tell me she was tied up because of this.
[05:08.140 --> 05:10.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: The passengers didn't want to take any chances.
[05:10.280 --> 05:10.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're kidding me.
[05:11.040 --> 05:12.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, look, this is a time of war, Jim.
[05:12.900 --> 05:13.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: We have to be careful.
[05:14.100 --> 05:17.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Better to err on the side of safety than on the side of danger?
[05:18.340 --> 05:26.720]  [SPEAKER_11]: You know, aside from the fact that I would expect to be locked up by the time I got home, I would say it's time for armed insurrection.
[05:27.320 --> 05:33.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, maybe it's that kind of sentiment that's making people get tied up because maybe she was calling for that too on the airplane there with her facial cream.
[05:33.900 --> 05:34.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: You never know.
[05:34.940 --> 05:38.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: Now, I heard a vicious rumor earlier that she may have also had a screwdriver.
[05:39.920 --> 05:41.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, but I didn't hear that one.
[05:41.660 --> 05:42.020]  [SPEAKER_11]: She did.
[05:42.020 --> 05:45.520]  [SPEAKER_11]: She paid for the screwdriver and drank it all down in one gulp, I'm sure.
[05:45.880 --> 05:52.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: What I heard, though, was from the Boston authorities, the Boston airport authorities, was that there was a link to Al-Qaeda.
[05:52.180 --> 05:53.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: And they later retracted that statement.
[05:54.920 --> 05:55.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: Priceless.
[05:55.480 --> 05:56.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: And her husband named Al?
[05:56.820 --> 05:57.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: Maybe.
[05:57.420 --> 05:58.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: There could have been something like that.
[05:58.340 --> 05:58.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[05:58.760 --> 05:59.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: I don't know.
[06:00.160 --> 06:03.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: But, Bernie, this brings to mind the other case.
[06:03.040 --> 06:05.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, by the way, I saw somebody walking into this building with a bottle of water.
[06:06.040 --> 06:07.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: I just wanted to point that out.
[06:08.560 --> 06:09.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, it was you.
[06:09.620 --> 06:10.440]  [SPEAKER_11]: That's a sports drink.
[06:10.460 --> 06:11.620]  [SPEAKER_11]: You've got a sports drink on you.
[06:11.620 --> 06:13.540]  [SPEAKER_11]: No, it's just a sports drink bottle.
[06:13.640 --> 06:14.860]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, that's even more suspicious.
[06:14.920 --> 06:15.140]  [SPEAKER_11]: Oh, yeah, right.
[06:15.420 --> 06:21.700]  [SPEAKER_11]: I know that technically it's banned from the cockpit here, the radio station here, the studio.
[06:21.840 --> 06:22.340]  [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I mean, why should...
[06:22.340 --> 06:24.540]  [SPEAKER_11]: But I'll drink from it to prove that it's not...
[06:24.540 --> 06:25.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, it's still...
[06:25.560 --> 06:30.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, I heard that the actual ingredients of the sports drink were somehow volatile mixed with the right chemicals.
[06:30.960 --> 06:31.560]  [SPEAKER_11]: Well, that's true.
[06:32.320 --> 06:34.180]  [SPEAKER_11]: Oxygen is an oxidizing agent.
[06:34.440 --> 06:34.760]  [SPEAKER_11]: Mm-hmm.
[06:35.720 --> 06:36.040]  [SPEAKER_11]: And...
[06:36.040 --> 06:36.960]  [SPEAKER_11]: You can rust the plane.
[06:37.180 --> 06:37.860]  [SPEAKER_11]: Years ago...
[06:37.860 --> 06:38.840]  [SPEAKER_11]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[06:39.280 --> 06:40.540]  [SPEAKER_11]: Years ago, there was a guy...
[06:40.540 --> 06:41.260]  [SPEAKER_11]: I can't remember his name.
[06:41.320 --> 06:44.360]  [SPEAKER_11]: I think his last name was Purdue, just like the Indiana engineering school.
[06:44.500 --> 06:44.760]  [SPEAKER_11]: Mm-hmm.
[06:45.120 --> 06:47.140]  [SPEAKER_11]: And there were videos on the net.
[06:47.220 --> 06:49.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: I was going to say the chicken guy, but that's me.
[07:00.960 --> 07:01.900]  [SPEAKER_11]: It's an oxidizing agent.
[07:02.640 --> 07:06.580]  [SPEAKER_11]: And, of course, hydrogen, the other component of water, is highly explosive.
[07:06.840 --> 07:13.740]  [SPEAKER_11]: And so, obviously, water, H2O, hydrogen dioxide, deadly.
[07:14.000 --> 07:15.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: And aren't we made up mostly of water?
[07:16.920 --> 07:20.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: The entities that are speaking right now, we're comprised of a lot of water.
[07:20.980 --> 07:21.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: Which is why, yeah.
[07:21.500 --> 07:22.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: I think we're the dangers.
[07:22.560 --> 07:22.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: We could be.
[07:22.740 --> 07:24.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: Keep us off the planes and everything will be all right.
[07:24.780 --> 07:25.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: But why is it?
[07:25.780 --> 07:28.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Why is it that only airplanes are the ones that are subjected to this?
[07:28.160 --> 07:30.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: I could walk into a bus with a bottle of water, no one's going to say anything.
[07:30.960 --> 07:32.180]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I can use an iPod, too.
[07:32.280 --> 07:33.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: And a cell phone.
[07:33.560 --> 07:34.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: On the subject of cell phones.
[07:35.000 --> 07:37.100]  [SPEAKER_11]: But you could only kill 30 or 60 people on a bus.
[07:37.760 --> 07:39.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, what if it's passing another bus?
[07:39.780 --> 07:40.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: I don't know.
[07:42.000 --> 07:44.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Anyway, Bernie, the story about the cell phones.
[07:44.640 --> 07:47.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: Want to give us a brief summation of what that was all about?
[07:48.300 --> 07:51.900]  [SPEAKER_15]: The college students with 1,000 cell phones in their van?
[07:52.000 --> 07:53.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: I think there were two different cases, weren't there?
[07:54.320 --> 07:56.100]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's getting hard to keep track of all these.
[07:56.480 --> 07:57.680]  [SPEAKER_15]: But that's my favorite one.
[07:58.300 --> 08:11.140]  [SPEAKER_15]: And there were some college students in the town of Caro, Michigan, C-A-R-O, that went to one of these big box stores and just bought a whole bunch of cell phones.
[08:11.280 --> 08:12.540]  [SPEAKER_15]: They were on a special sale.
[08:12.540 --> 08:14.380]  [SPEAKER_15]: You could only buy a few of them at a time.
[08:14.380 --> 08:16.740]  [SPEAKER_15]: But they just kept going back in line and buying more and more of them.
[08:17.200 --> 08:19.720]  [SPEAKER_15]: And they didn't buy that many there.
[08:19.820 --> 08:21.660]  [SPEAKER_15]: They bought, I don't know, a few dozen there.
[08:21.660 --> 08:25.120]  [SPEAKER_15]: And somebody got suspicious thinking that, oh, that's suspicious.
[08:25.120 --> 08:27.980]  [SPEAKER_15]: And they called the police and the police intercepted them in their van.
[08:28.120 --> 08:37.260]  [SPEAKER_15]: And they're arrested on terrorism charges because the police chief there said cell phones can be used as detonators.
[08:37.680 --> 08:38.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: Absolutely.
[08:38.440 --> 08:40.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, I just want to look back at the story as it came out.
[08:41.640 --> 08:44.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: This was only on the 13th, a few days ago.
[08:44.720 --> 08:48.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, they were arraigned on Saturday.
[08:48.220 --> 08:58.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: And the statement that the Tuscaloosa County prosecutor said at the time, I believe these are the same people, he said that the targeted issue in this case was the Mackinac Bridge.
[08:58.420 --> 09:00.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: That is what we have information on.
[09:00.560 --> 09:04.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: The bridge is five miles long, connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas.
[09:04.980 --> 09:10.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: And apparently a photograph was found of the bridge on their cell phone or something like that.
[09:10.240 --> 09:11.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, I was reading this story back then.
[09:11.800 --> 09:13.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: I was just, I was looking for the evidence.
[09:13.640 --> 09:21.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Like, where was the actual evidence that, yeah, they had a lot of cell phones and they took a picture of a bridge, and they're Palestinian-American, but is that it?
[09:23.560 --> 09:23.940]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[09:24.220 --> 09:25.420]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's the Mackinac Bridge, actually.
[09:25.620 --> 09:26.420]  [SPEAKER_15]: But it's a beautiful bridge.
[09:26.420 --> 09:27.600]  [SPEAKER_15]: I've driven across it myself.
[09:28.440 --> 09:32.660]  [SPEAKER_15]: And it's tempting to, you know, you almost can't not take a picture of it.
[09:32.680 --> 09:33.580]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's such an amazing sight.
[09:33.640 --> 09:35.220]  [SPEAKER_15]: So, that's not surprising in and of itself.
[09:35.420 --> 09:39.960]  [SPEAKER_15]: But having a thousand cell phones, clearly, you know, they were going to blow it up.
[09:39.960 --> 09:59.420]  [SPEAKER_11]: Well, what was most interesting that I found about this is that some law enforcement agent in the early stages of this mentioned that not only could the cell phones be used as timing devices for improvised explosives, but the batteries could be made into methamphetamines so they could make more money for terrorist purposes.
[09:59.700 --> 10:00.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, my God.
[10:00.660 --> 10:03.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, whatever happened to the good old days where you just blew things up, you know?
[10:03.920 --> 10:05.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: You didn't need cell phones.
[10:05.520 --> 10:08.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: You didn't need detonators with remote timers and things like that.
[10:08.740 --> 10:10.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: You didn't need all this fancy-schmancy stuff.
[10:12.480 --> 10:19.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: The best part about this story, though, is that the two brothers arrested in this case, their last name is Othman, spelled O-T-H-M-A-N.
[10:19.120 --> 10:21.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: And, of course, the initials for Off The Hook are O-T-H.
[10:21.600 --> 10:23.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: I just thought that was kind of neat.
[10:23.520 --> 10:25.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: But they've been released now, right?
[10:25.640 --> 10:26.740]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yes, they've been released.
[10:26.740 --> 10:35.040]  [SPEAKER_15]: Just the police couldn't... had to save face somehow and leave some charge standing, which was that they gave false information.
[10:35.200 --> 10:40.380]  [SPEAKER_15]: They allegedly didn't fully identify themselves when they were apprehended.
[10:40.620 --> 10:52.980]  [SPEAKER_15]: But, according to all reports, they were very cooperative in the investigation and continued to say that these were phones they were purchasing on sale for resale in another state.
[10:52.980 --> 10:56.860]  [SPEAKER_15]: I think they were going to... were they going to Texas or somewhere?
[10:57.140 --> 10:57.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[10:57.660 --> 11:01.020]  [SPEAKER_15]: Where these prepaid cell phones can be sold for, say, $30.
[11:01.520 --> 11:08.380]  [SPEAKER_15]: So, you know, these are college students on the summer break trying to be enterprising and buy something in one market.
[11:08.500 --> 11:17.240]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's a classic business situation called arbitrage, where you can find the difference in pricing between two markets and capitalize on it.
[11:17.280 --> 11:18.920]  [SPEAKER_15]: And I think these kids are pretty smart.
[11:18.920 --> 11:22.680]  [SPEAKER_15]: But apparently the smart police detective in Carroll, Michigan...
[11:22.680 --> 11:26.320]  [SPEAKER_15]: By the way, his telephone number is area code...
[11:26.320 --> 11:27.760]  [SPEAKER_15]: David Matlin is a police chief.
[11:27.880 --> 11:31.300]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's area code 989-673-2402.
[11:31.460 --> 11:37.520]  [SPEAKER_15]: It would be interesting to find out exactly how cell phones can be used as a detonator.
[11:37.520 --> 11:42.740]  [SPEAKER_15]: And if you happen to have a cell phone, you might want to turn yourself in for having something that dangerous.
[11:42.740 --> 11:52.880]  [SPEAKER_15]: Likewise, the prosecutor, Mark Rean, who claimed that cell phones can be used to make methamphetamine, Mark Rean can be reached at area code 989-672-3900.
[11:53.040 --> 11:58.680]  [SPEAKER_15]: Because that would be a really interesting story to find out from him, how cell phones can be used to make methamphetamine.
[11:59.180 --> 12:03.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, I don't know if he'll give you a how-to, but maybe he will have some interesting answers to questions.
[12:03.700 --> 12:04.420]  [SPEAKER_13]: Here's the thing.
[12:04.960 --> 12:15.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: If you were going to blow up the bridge and you were going to use a cell phone, I think you would need like one cell phone, maybe two cell phones and one as a backup, maybe a few extra to actually communicate with.
[12:15.100 --> 12:17.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: I'm sure it wouldn't add up to a dozen cell phones.
[12:17.540 --> 12:18.000]  [SPEAKER_13]: Oh, no.
[12:18.240 --> 12:19.180]  [SPEAKER_11]: A thousand cell phones.
[12:19.260 --> 12:20.400]  [SPEAKER_11]: Five-mile-long bridge.
[12:20.400 --> 12:23.780]  [SPEAKER_11]: You want an explosion every couple of feet to make sure that baby comes down.
[12:23.860 --> 12:25.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, but wouldn't one explosion detonate?
[12:25.380 --> 12:26.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's how it works on the cartoons.
[12:26.980 --> 12:28.400]  [SPEAKER_17]: So one explosion detonates the other ones.
[12:29.040 --> 12:31.960]  [SPEAKER_11]: You learned all your explosives technology from cartoons.
[12:32.800 --> 12:34.580]  [SPEAKER_11]: That's why your stuff doesn't work.
[12:35.760 --> 12:38.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Not all my stuff doesn't work, but we won't get into that on the air.
[12:39.320 --> 12:41.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, so, okay, I guess they're off the hook.
[12:42.160 --> 12:47.620]  [SPEAKER_14]: But I think the point is you'd have to have more explosives than cell phones to blow up a bridge.
[12:48.300 --> 12:49.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, probably.
[12:49.340 --> 12:51.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: And a thousand cell phones, are they targeting a thousand bridges?
[12:52.120 --> 12:54.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's the question on everybody's mind.
[12:54.240 --> 12:54.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's very daring.
[12:55.100 --> 12:55.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: A thousand points of light.
[12:56.620 --> 12:57.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[12:57.440 --> 13:06.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: Speaking of Palestinians, calls made to the Palestinian territories will now carry their own designation rather than appearing on AT&T's bills as calls to Israel.
[13:06.360 --> 13:13.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: AT&T is putting its official stamp on the West Bank and Gaza by changing its phone bills, a move driven more by economics than politics.
[13:14.000 --> 13:19.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: Long-distance charges for dialing the Palestinian-run lands will carry their own designation rather than appearing as calls to Israel.
[13:20.060 --> 13:20.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: The company...
[13:20.940 --> 13:21.700]  [SPEAKER_17]: Didn't it just say that?
[13:21.940 --> 13:29.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: The company is also raising the rates sharply for calling the West Bank and Gaza, citing the rising fees AT&T needs to pay other carriers in that region to connect calls.
[13:29.960 --> 13:32.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: That comes from the Palestine Press Agency.
[13:32.340 --> 13:33.560]  [SPEAKER_13]: Here's what I don't understand.
[13:34.800 --> 13:36.560]  [SPEAKER_13]: Palestine has its own country code.
[13:36.920 --> 13:38.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: Why was it ever printed as Israel?
[13:39.120 --> 13:40.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, apparently it was.
[13:40.720 --> 13:43.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: I think the country code may not matter all that much.
[13:43.080 --> 13:44.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: It might just have been an extension.
[13:44.520 --> 13:45.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's very strange.
[13:45.480 --> 13:45.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: It is weird.
[13:46.520 --> 13:55.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: We had a listener write in to tell us how to listen to the so-called banned television station called Al-Manar.
[13:55.140 --> 13:59.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I'd like to see if there's any real evidence that this is, in fact, banned in the United States.
[14:00.100 --> 14:01.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: We said that last week.
[14:01.560 --> 14:02.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: We read that from a story.
[14:02.640 --> 14:03.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'll get you the evidence.
[14:03.780 --> 14:04.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, I'd like to...
[14:04.120 --> 14:06.920]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's in the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
[14:07.180 --> 14:08.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: So that means we can't watch their TV shows?
[14:08.920 --> 14:09.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: I guess.
[14:09.340 --> 14:10.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's very strange.
[14:10.200 --> 14:16.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: And so if I connect to the URL I'm about to give you, would I be breaking the law if I was in the United States when I did it?
[14:16.440 --> 14:18.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, you're not allowed to support them as the law.
[14:18.980 --> 14:22.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it's unclear to me if watching their television show counts as supporting them.
[14:23.020 --> 14:24.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, our listeners support us by listening.
[14:25.140 --> 14:25.460]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yes.
[14:25.460 --> 14:33.280]  [SPEAKER_11]: No, if you don't send them a check and you don't pay subscriber fees to them and you don't buy anything from any of their advertisers...
[14:33.280 --> 14:34.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: What if I click on one of their ads?
[14:34.820 --> 14:36.000]  [SPEAKER_11]: That's what I was just about to say.
[14:36.000 --> 14:38.100]  [SPEAKER_11]: If you don't buy anything from their advertisers...
[14:38.100 --> 14:39.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: I was doing that a lot before.
[14:39.640 --> 14:40.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: Whoops.
[14:40.540 --> 14:44.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: Anyway, Julius writes in with this information.
[14:45.360 --> 14:55.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: HTTP colon slash slash WWITV.com slash television slash 117.htm The 50K1 works at the time of writing this email.
[14:56.600 --> 14:57.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I tested it today.
[14:57.940 --> 14:58.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: And sure enough, it does.
[14:59.120 --> 15:00.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I was watching it for a little while.
[15:00.900 --> 15:03.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I couldn't, of course, understand anything they were saying.
[15:03.120 --> 15:05.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: There was a lot of Hezbollah, the other word they were saying.
[15:06.040 --> 15:07.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: And they seemed kind of angry and agitated.
[15:07.940 --> 15:10.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Other than that, I really couldn't make out most of it.
[15:10.900 --> 15:12.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: But it was interesting.
[15:13.960 --> 15:14.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[15:14.380 --> 15:15.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: So that's the update there.
[15:15.660 --> 15:21.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: And of course, you can write to us, it's oth@2600.com if you have any particular tips or information like that.
[15:22.520 --> 15:24.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: Bernie, do you have anything else down there before we switch to another feature?
[15:25.200 --> 15:34.020]  [SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, I just wanted to mention that for our listeners, that the country code, the international dialing code for the Palestinian Authority is 970.
[15:34.860 --> 15:38.240]  [SPEAKER_15]: And their own Internet domain, too, top-level domain is .ps.
[15:39.240 --> 15:39.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[15:39.860 --> 15:46.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Did you guys have anything to say about the crazy security threat alert condition levels that took place last...
[15:46.460 --> 15:47.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: about a week ago?
[15:47.280 --> 15:49.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: We were at the absolute highest.
[15:49.200 --> 15:49.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: We were at red.
[15:50.020 --> 15:50.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: But only...
[15:50.680 --> 15:51.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I didn't know you could do this.
[15:51.840 --> 15:55.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: Only for certain vehicles in the air, ones coming from the UK to the US.
[15:55.340 --> 15:57.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: I had no idea that you could have different color...
[15:57.780 --> 16:01.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: I wonder if this room could be classified as green, maybe, because we feel totally safe here.
[16:01.760 --> 16:03.340]  [SPEAKER_11]: I was thinking about that.
[16:03.460 --> 16:07.740]  [SPEAKER_11]: And I was thinking that if you flew from London, you would start out red.
[16:08.320 --> 16:10.520]  [SPEAKER_11]: You'd get to New York City, which would be orange.
[16:10.700 --> 16:12.140]  [SPEAKER_11]: You get to JFK, walk out.
[16:12.420 --> 16:13.640]  [SPEAKER_11]: You're in New York City, it's orange.
[16:13.640 --> 16:21.060]  [SPEAKER_11]: And if you quickly got to, say, Nassau County, which is literally borders part of JFK Airport, you would be down to...
[16:21.060 --> 16:21.920]  [SPEAKER_11]: What's below orange?
[16:22.400 --> 16:23.140]  [SPEAKER_11]: We've never been there.
[16:23.180 --> 16:23.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, it's yellow, right?
[16:24.060 --> 16:24.380]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yellow.
[16:24.500 --> 16:25.000]  [SPEAKER_11]: Okay, we've been there.
[16:25.020 --> 16:31.360]  [SPEAKER_11]: So in the space of a few minutes, technically, you would go through three different color levels.
[16:31.540 --> 16:35.360]  [SPEAKER_11]: It's like going through three states in a couple of minutes or standing in three states at the same time.
[16:35.520 --> 16:37.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Which isn't as much fun as you make it out to be.
[16:38.520 --> 16:39.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Standing is much more fun than I'm after the security levels.
[16:39.980 --> 16:41.300]  [SPEAKER_14]: It's like flying through a rainbow.
[16:41.500 --> 16:42.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: Flying through a rainbow.
[16:42.220 --> 16:46.660]  [SPEAKER_14]: And we can't have this room green or whatever because Jim still has his Gatorade bottle out.
[16:46.860 --> 16:48.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, well, the thing is, England went...
[16:48.820 --> 16:52.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: They just started this new categorization about a week ago.
[16:52.400 --> 16:53.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: And sure enough, they got to use it immediately.
[16:54.240 --> 16:56.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: And they were at severe, which is the highest.
[16:56.240 --> 16:57.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: And I think the whole country was at severe.
[16:58.060 --> 17:00.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: And what that means is a terrorist act is imminent.
[17:00.960 --> 17:03.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: Not a possibility, but definite.
[17:03.180 --> 17:03.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's going to happen soon.
[17:03.940 --> 17:04.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it didn't.
[17:04.860 --> 17:06.600]  [SPEAKER_17]: And a lot of people feel really cheated now.
[17:07.780 --> 17:09.400]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, it's really bizarre.
[17:09.400 --> 17:14.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: A lot of people are questioning the timing and what exactly it means.
[17:14.780 --> 17:24.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: And in light of this whole crazy cell phone thing and the facial cream scandal and all that, you got to wonder just how much of this is put on for show.
[17:24.820 --> 17:27.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: I guess we'll find out when they finally charge these guys or something.
[17:28.460 --> 17:32.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, we have a special feature tonight with some special guests.
[17:32.880 --> 17:36.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: And to give you kind of a hint as to what it is we're going to be talking about.
[17:36.660 --> 17:39.220]  [SPEAKER_03]: Zero, six, one, zero, seven.
[17:39.500 --> 17:40.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes, it's our old friends.
[17:41.040 --> 17:41.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Eight, zero, zero, zero.
[17:42.160 --> 17:43.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: The speaking numbers.
[17:44.240 --> 17:45.160]  [SPEAKER_03]: Eight, zero, zero, eight, zero.
[17:45.160 --> 17:48.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: And we've played this, we've played messages like this many times.
[17:48.540 --> 17:50.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: This is excerpts from one of them.
[17:50.480 --> 17:58.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: And basically, it took place when Parties Unknown put together a strange recording.
[17:59.200 --> 18:01.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: And what was on that strange recording?
[18:01.520 --> 18:02.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Nobody really knew.
[18:02.540 --> 18:04.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: Just a bunch of numbers being repeated over and over again.
[18:05.460 --> 18:09.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: Numbers would show up in Craigslist with a particular coded phrase.
[18:09.960 --> 18:13.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it was driving everybody insane, including us.
[18:13.940 --> 18:20.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, the people who actually did this or were responsible for this came forward at DEFCON a couple of weeks ago.
[18:21.020 --> 18:23.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it was all a big experiment.
[18:23.500 --> 18:28.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Joining us on the line now from Los Angeles, I believe we have three people.
[18:28.960 --> 18:30.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: We have Vidiot.
[18:31.000 --> 18:31.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: Are you there?
[18:31.700 --> 18:32.440]  [SPEAKER_08]: Hi, Emmanuel.
[18:32.460 --> 18:32.920]  [SPEAKER_08]: How are you doing?
[18:33.060 --> 18:33.160]  [SPEAKER_08]: Good.
[18:33.280 --> 18:35.000]  [SPEAKER_08]: I'm afraid the other two haven't joined me yet.
[18:35.360 --> 18:35.460]  [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, okay.
[18:36.120 --> 18:36.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: I want to introduce them.
[18:36.800 --> 18:39.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: I was having a problem with his phone and Datagram apparently forgot to charge his.
[18:39.640 --> 18:40.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: So it looks like it's just me for the moment.
[18:41.280 --> 18:42.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, you guys really are geeks, aren't you?
[18:43.100 --> 18:43.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, yeah.
[18:43.600 --> 18:45.000]  [SPEAKER_08]: You can tell by how organized we are.
[18:45.020 --> 18:45.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow, that's great.
[18:45.840 --> 18:49.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, well, why don't you just give us an outline as to how did this all come about?
[18:49.320 --> 18:51.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: One day you were just sitting around looking for ways to drive people
[19:04.140 --> 19:11.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: and turn to the asterisk PBX and Strom and Datagram had their heads together and suddenly they turned to us and said, hey, I wonder if we could do a number station by phone.
[19:12.220 --> 19:14.400]  [SPEAKER_08]: And that's pretty much where the idea came from.
[19:15.760 --> 19:18.920]  [SPEAKER_08]: We decided at that moment we were going to do a number station by phone.
[19:19.040 --> 19:21.080]  [SPEAKER_08]: We just then had to come up with a good reason why.
[19:21.880 --> 19:24.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, had you listened to number stations on shortwave before?
[19:25.040 --> 19:25.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, yes.
[19:25.560 --> 19:27.940]  [SPEAKER_08]: We were all big fans of the Conet project and whatnot.
[19:29.100 --> 19:29.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow.
[19:29.900 --> 19:32.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, the first thing you did was you...
[19:32.160 --> 19:34.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, who came up with the idea to put an ad in Craigslist?
[19:35.180 --> 19:41.200]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, actually, if you read our website, you'll get a lot of history and you can see that we weren't terribly organized at the beginning.
[19:42.420 --> 19:45.200]  [SPEAKER_08]: The very first message was mostly put together by Strom.
[19:45.480 --> 19:47.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: He's the one, I believe, who had the idea to put things up on Craigslist.
[19:47.880 --> 19:58.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: He also coined the term Mindfraulein and he also picked the text to put inside the message as well as the text that was posted on Craigslist.
[19:58.920 --> 20:14.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, and that Mindfraulein thing, that convinced many people that we're dealing with some kind of international espionage here, some kind of secret message being passed between double agents and it just, it added so much intrigue and every couple of weeks,
[20:14.060 --> 20:17.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: another message would appear in a different edition of Craigslist.
[20:17.300 --> 20:18.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: Like, the first one appeared where?
[20:18.560 --> 20:20.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: In, was it New York or...?
[20:20.380 --> 20:22.300]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yes, I believe it was New York was the first one.
[20:22.420 --> 20:24.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: And then after that, it appeared in San Francisco.
[20:25.660 --> 20:33.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, and it popped around all over the country and people were scanning, looking for these things, and wow, so what was the idea?
[20:33.600 --> 20:34.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: What did you want people to do?
[20:35.300 --> 20:43.780]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, the original idea, what we wanted to happen, was we were hoping we could get enough interest into these that people would start to try to attack them in new and different ways.
[20:43.780 --> 20:49.280]  [SPEAKER_08]: There's been a lot of crypto challenges online, things like alternative real-life games, etc., etc.
[20:50.080 --> 20:57.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: What we hope to do is we hope to encourage someone to try to crack these from the point of view of cracking a one-time pad, which is what they were encrypted with.
[20:57.940 --> 21:01.520]  [SPEAKER_08]: And the classic way of attacking a one-time pad is to look for a repeated key.
[21:01.780 --> 21:07.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: So we were going to repeat the key on two very short messages, on the very first and on the very last.
[21:07.320 --> 21:13.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: We were hoping that someone would look for a key intersection or a key collision and would be able to crack the messages that way.
[21:13.540 --> 21:15.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: As it turned out, that wasn't practical.
[21:16.200 --> 21:16.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[21:16.700 --> 21:28.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, for the benefit of the many grandmothers who listen to us, who might not have any idea what a one-time pad is, can you give a very, I guess, simple explanation as to how a message would be encoded in that fashion?
[21:29.520 --> 21:30.280]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, okay.
[21:30.440 --> 21:36.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: What you would use, you would have some kind of relationship between your plain text and a one-time pad.
[21:36.440 --> 21:43.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: The one-time pad being, say, a list of randomly generated numbers and letters.
[21:44.420 --> 21:50.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: In this case, if someone wants to go to our website, they can get a BitTorrent to download their, build their own MindFryline kit.
[21:50.800 --> 21:54.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: And in that, it has the code that generates these one-time pads.
[21:54.060 --> 21:56.560]  [SPEAKER_08]: So they can actually take a look and see how this is done.
[21:58.700 --> 22:07.200]  [SPEAKER_08]: What it does, each letter, when it's represented in ASCII, in binary, it consists of eight bits.
[22:07.460 --> 22:15.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: You would take the eight bits for the letter that you want to encode, and then you would take the eight bits for the corresponding letter in the one-time pad, and you would perform a ZOR on them.
[22:15.420 --> 22:17.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: And that's an exclusive OR operator in binary.
[22:18.120 --> 22:25.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: And basically, that's just a fancy way of saying that if the bits are the same in both, like if you have a zero up above and a zero down below, it's still a zero.
[22:25.340 --> 22:28.060]  [SPEAKER_08]: If they're different, like a one and a zero becomes a one.
[22:28.820 --> 22:30.980]  [SPEAKER_08]: And that becomes your ciphertext.
[22:31.100 --> 22:38.460]  [SPEAKER_08]: You would convert that binary back into ASCII, and that's what would be read out, in this case, in decimal form by our number station.
[22:38.760 --> 22:47.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, now, the one-time pad, if this were a message between spies, say, the other person would have to have a copy of that, right?
[22:47.440 --> 22:48.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yes, yes.
[22:48.220 --> 23:02.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: In fact, one-time pads are considered mathematically unbreakable, but the problem with them is the key distribution problem, meaning that you would have to somehow securely move a pad from one place to the person that you were going to talk to before you actually had the conversation.
[23:02.760 --> 23:04.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: This is why they're not normally used in practice.
[23:05.780 --> 23:12.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: And you're referring to literally a pad of paper with numbers on them.
[23:16.200 --> 23:37.160]  [SPEAKER_15]: It could be a pad of paper.
[23:37.160 --> 23:39.440]  [SPEAKER_15]: Nobody else could make sense of these messages except the intended target.
[23:39.760 --> 23:46.140]  [SPEAKER_15]: And using the one-time pad, the field operative could, or secret agent, could decode the messages.
[23:46.340 --> 23:49.320]  [SPEAKER_15]: So that's where this all started decades and decades ago.
[23:49.480 --> 23:54.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: Of course, there's a big difference when you have to call a phone number to get the message because you're no longer passive then.
[23:54.860 --> 23:56.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're actually taking part in that.
[23:56.540 --> 24:00.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: But I believe you guys demonstrated how that wouldn't even be necessary, right?
[24:00.700 --> 24:01.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[24:01.180 --> 24:04.160]  [SPEAKER_08]: Actually, that came about almost accidentally.
[24:04.940 --> 24:12.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: When we were talking to the folks who run DEFCON about getting a position there to talk, we had to come up with a smoke screen.
[24:12.500 --> 24:19.500]  [SPEAKER_08]: And our original experiment was mostly just to map the size and the organizational abilities of the cryptographic community.
[24:19.760 --> 24:33.300]  [SPEAKER_08]: So we decided to come up with this smoke screen story that really, we were looking for a way to pass messages back and forth without having to create a channel, without having other people pass your message for you.
[24:33.640 --> 24:38.780]  [SPEAKER_08]: And in retrospect, it turns out it actually did work that way, even though it wasn't really what we intended to do.
[24:39.640 --> 24:48.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: I know one thing that really frustrated me, the first message when it was posted, somebody made a mistake on one of the numbers, and it just kept getting reposted everywhere.
[24:48.340 --> 24:51.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: So any chance of figuring it out would have been completely blown by that.
[24:52.240 --> 24:54.140]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's very interesting that you bring that up.
[24:54.240 --> 24:56.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: That was one of the things we brought up during our talk.
[24:56.560 --> 25:07.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: We made some observations about how the cryptographic community works, and one of them was that in this case, in this instance dealing with us, there was quite a bit of misinformation that was caused by simple accidents.
[25:08.520 --> 25:09.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes, absolutely.
[25:10.220 --> 25:16.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, okay, so you put out the first number, and then what, a couple of weeks later, a second number came out?
[25:16.760 --> 25:17.160]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[25:18.540 --> 25:22.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: We had planned to release them a couple of, you know, maybe two weeks to a month in between.
[25:22.820 --> 25:25.800]  [SPEAKER_08]: And we were going to release the final one just prior to DEFCON.
[25:26.560 --> 25:26.920]  [SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[25:26.940 --> 25:27.980]  [SPEAKER_08]: That was our original plan.
[25:29.120 --> 25:36.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, I understand we had something to do with messing that up a bit, and we apologize for that, but keep in mind, we had no idea what was going on.
[25:37.200 --> 25:39.740]  [SPEAKER_08]: You know, actually, I wanted to say something about that.
[25:40.940 --> 25:43.500]  [SPEAKER_08]: I will admit, we were a little bit out of shape at the time.
[25:43.640 --> 25:47.760]  [SPEAKER_08]: However, after we thought about it for a while, something occurred to us.
[25:47.760 --> 25:53.480]  [SPEAKER_08]: And that was, from your perspective as an outsider, there was really only two things you could have thought about these messages.
[25:53.800 --> 25:58.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: The first being that it was spook stuff, and you would never find out what the answer was anyway.
[25:58.660 --> 26:03.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: The second being is that maybe it was somebody's viral marketing campaign, and who really cares if you screw that up?
[26:03.860 --> 26:05.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, everybody thought it was Google or something.
[26:05.540 --> 26:06.160]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, exactly.
[26:06.520 --> 26:08.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: And so, you know, no hard feelings whatsoever.
[26:10.460 --> 26:12.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, it was fun.
[26:12.060 --> 26:16.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: But what were your feelings, though, before you knew it was us, when another number came out and it wasn't you?
[26:17.880 --> 26:19.200]  [SPEAKER_08]: Pretty much, we were stunned.
[26:19.740 --> 26:29.080]  [SPEAKER_08]: We'd had a few little copycats, basically people creating Mindfrowline listings on Craigslist, you know, posting their boss's phone number or something as a joke, so he'd get a million calls.
[26:29.480 --> 26:33.080]  [SPEAKER_08]: But when an actual number station popped up, we were stunned.
[26:33.220 --> 26:34.980]  [SPEAKER_08]: We never thought that would actually happen.
[26:35.180 --> 26:37.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, Mike here is, of course, the brains behind that.
[26:37.220 --> 26:39.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: And, Mike, how hard was it for you to put that together?
[26:39.580 --> 26:40.340]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's not that hard.
[26:40.460 --> 26:54.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: As I'm sure you guys know, once you have the idea to construct these, and especially since I was able to steal the audio from you, I didn't have to go out and record it, and the actual construction of the number station, if you know asterisk, really doesn't take that long.
[26:55.300 --> 26:57.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: Is that how you guys put it together each time?
[26:57.360 --> 27:01.700]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, actually, Strom put it together using asterisk, running a very simple script.
[27:02.140 --> 27:07.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's a Perl script, actually, that uses the PerlCrypt OTP package to handle the encryption.
[27:08.020 --> 27:10.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: And I think the whole thing is about 15 lines of code.
[27:10.300 --> 27:11.040]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's actually quite simple.
[27:11.540 --> 27:11.780]  [SPEAKER_08]: Wow.
[27:12.540 --> 27:21.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, we're speaking with Vidiot from Los Angeles, who's part of Project Evil, the people behind the strange number stations we've been reporting on since spring.
[27:21.980 --> 27:30.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: You can go to their website, www.projectevil.org, and there's all kinds of information there, as well as information on how you can do this yourself.
[27:31.260 --> 27:38.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'd like to just play a little bit of audio from the way the station sounded, not station, but the phone number.
[27:38.660 --> 27:43.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: When you would call the number, you would hear opening music, and that music, of course, would close it as well.
[27:43.900 --> 27:46.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: And in between, you would hear various digits.
[27:46.960 --> 27:56.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: And what this is, what we put together here, is just basically all the digits in a row, 0 through 9, just so you can hear what the voices sound like.
[27:56.080 --> 27:59.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: And then we're going to talk about how those voices were obtained.
[28:18.470 --> 28:24.050]  [SPEAKER_03]: Group 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
[28:24.830 --> 28:30.830]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, and that's, those are basically the voices that we were being driven mad with for a few months.
[28:31.770 --> 28:39.310]  [SPEAKER_17]: I gotta tell you, I think most people would have come up with the idea to just simply use a computer-generated voice synthesizer or something like that.
[28:39.630 --> 28:51.210]  [SPEAKER_17]: The voices that you found, you actually found in a way I guess none of us expected but they sounded so creepy and disembodied and it really, it was like watching an episode of Lost.
[28:51.510 --> 28:55.070]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, this is one of my favorite parts of the whole project actually, was getting these voices.
[28:56.070 --> 28:59.790]  [SPEAKER_08]: That's actually the beauty that is Strom Carlson and his very weird mind.
[29:00.910 --> 29:09.610]  [SPEAKER_08]: Strom realized that if you call random people on the phone and you just say something to them, for example, you just repeat the number 1 over and over again.
[29:09.830 --> 29:11.270]  [SPEAKER_08]: 1, 1, 1.
[29:12.350 --> 29:15.290]  [SPEAKER_08]: Eventually, they'll say it back to you to get you to say something different.
[29:15.570 --> 29:17.130]  [SPEAKER_08]: And so this is exactly what he did.
[29:17.250 --> 29:24.930]  [SPEAKER_08]: He called people on Craigslist who were offering certain, let's just say, intimate personal services in their ads.
[29:26.070 --> 29:30.850]  [SPEAKER_08]: And he would just repeat numbers to them over and over again until they repeated the number back to him.
[29:31.050 --> 29:32.530]  [SPEAKER_17]: And most people would do that?
[29:32.670 --> 29:33.430]  [SPEAKER_17]: They wouldn't just hang up?
[29:34.050 --> 29:36.910]  [SPEAKER_08]: Apparently, I think he said he had a 60% success rate.
[29:37.470 --> 29:39.470]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, now, we're going to actually play.
[29:39.570 --> 29:43.270]  [SPEAKER_17]: You guys were kind enough to actually dig up the audio.
[29:43.850 --> 29:44.290]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, yes.
[29:44.410 --> 29:47.430]  [SPEAKER_17]: This is driving me crazy because a lot of people are into the cryptology and all that.
[29:47.570 --> 29:51.890]  [SPEAKER_17]: I was into how you actually got the numbers together and what that phone call was like.
[29:52.590 --> 29:53.690]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, uh-oh.
[29:54.470 --> 29:54.990]  [SPEAKER_17]: Did we lose anybody?
[29:55.830 --> 29:56.770]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, we lost somebody.
[29:57.270 --> 29:58.010]  [SPEAKER_17]: Bernie, are you still there?
[29:58.150 --> 29:59.510]  [SPEAKER_15]: I'm here, but I think we lost Vidion.
[29:59.510 --> 30:01.850]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, we're going to have to call him right back.
[30:01.850 --> 30:03.510]  [SPEAKER_17]: Why don't you guys confer for a minute?
[30:08.130 --> 30:09.070]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, nice, Jim.
[30:09.170 --> 30:09.630]  [SPEAKER_11]: Anything else?
[30:10.070 --> 30:12.870]  [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, there's a website focusing on death.
[30:13.130 --> 30:22.250]  [SPEAKER_11]: Not that that's news, but this is by the founder of Monster.com, Eons.com, E-O-N-S.
[30:22.710 --> 30:28.190]  [SPEAKER_11]: Among other features, it has a database of obituaries to which you can add photos and comments.
[30:28.730 --> 30:42.050]  [SPEAKER_11]: It has interactive games to build your brain strength, news on entertainment and hobbies for older people, a longevity calculator, and most interesting, a function that will send out alerts to your friends when you die.
[30:44.710 --> 30:45.910]  [SPEAKER_11]: Eons.com.
[30:46.090 --> 30:50.750]  [SPEAKER_11]: That's a handy thing for all of us in the future, I hope.
[30:52.210 --> 30:55.710]  [SPEAKER_11]: And Emmanuel is punching away numbers frantically.
[30:55.990 --> 31:00.570]  [SPEAKER_13]: I have a press release here from the New York Civil Liberties Union, which this is from last week.
[31:01.310 --> 31:19.710]  [SPEAKER_13]: They are suing the New York City Police Department over their treatment of photographers and filmmakers, and this is something we've talked about in the past on this show, where the police department really likes to harass people who take pictures of bridges and all kinds of other things.
[31:20.010 --> 31:26.530]  [SPEAKER_13]: And so now the New York Civil Liberties Union is suing the city over that, so hopefully that lawsuit will turn out well.
[31:27.050 --> 31:28.050]  [SPEAKER_13]: We have them back?
[31:28.050 --> 31:28.870]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, we got them back.
[31:29.030 --> 31:30.290]  [SPEAKER_17]: There was a momentary glitch.
[31:30.470 --> 31:33.530]  [SPEAKER_17]: Apparently we said something sensitive and the government stepped in.
[31:34.150 --> 31:35.050]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, you guys are back.
[31:35.530 --> 31:36.550]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, Screw's joined us now.
[31:36.710 --> 31:37.070]  [SPEAKER_17]: Screw, okay.
[31:37.070 --> 31:42.870]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm actually somewhere where I'm not in my car with no air conditioning in the middle of the desert right now, so hopefully I can actually do that.
[31:42.990 --> 31:43.630]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, good, good.
[31:43.690 --> 31:53.170]  [SPEAKER_17]: And just for the benefit of our listeners who might be offended by the name, it's not spelled S-K, you know, the bad way it's spelled S-K-R-O-O-O, so don't be offended.
[31:53.970 --> 31:57.330]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, so we were talking about the actual numbers.
[31:57.330 --> 31:59.990]  [SPEAKER_17]: We're about to play the audio from the phone calls.
[32:00.110 --> 32:01.690]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, Vidya, you were telling us...
[32:01.690 --> 32:11.850]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, what I just wanted to mention so that your audience would understand when they hear this, Asterix records incoming and outgoing audio streams separately, and what they're going to hear here is just the incoming audio.
[32:12.150 --> 32:15.470]  [SPEAKER_08]: Due to a hard drive crash, we lost the outgoing audio, unfortunately.
[32:16.030 --> 32:23.870]  [SPEAKER_08]: So they're going to have to imagine in their own minds, listening and hearing Strom repeat the numbers over and over again to these people.
[32:24.910 --> 32:29.530]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, and I've got a couple of questions about a couple of conversations, too.
[32:30.390 --> 32:37.150]  [SPEAKER_17]: So let's listen to the way the numbers were actually recorded, with the exception of zero, and a little bit of history here.
[32:39.730 --> 32:40.210]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello?
[32:43.610 --> 32:45.010]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello?
[32:49.700 --> 32:51.100]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello?
[33:04.270 --> 33:04.970]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello?
[33:07.970 --> 33:08.670]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello?
[33:11.230 --> 33:11.650]  [SPEAKER_03]: Two?
[33:17.590 --> 33:18.310]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello?
[33:20.150 --> 33:20.790]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello?
[33:23.530 --> 33:25.290]  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you want...
[33:25.290 --> 33:26.490]  [SPEAKER_03]: May I hear you?
[33:29.150 --> 33:30.330]  [SPEAKER_03]: Who is three?
[33:33.030 --> 33:33.950]  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[33:38.130 --> 33:38.710]  [SPEAKER_12]: Hi there.
[33:38.910 --> 33:40.170]  [SPEAKER_12]: You've reached 364.
[33:40.870 --> 33:45.070]  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm not around to take your call right now, but if you'd leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
[33:52.180 --> 33:52.580]  Hello?
[33:52.580 --> 33:52.980]  [SPEAKER_04]: Five?
[33:54.880 --> 33:55.460]  [SPEAKER_04]: Five what?
[33:59.410 --> 33:59.810]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello?
[34:01.130 --> 34:01.530]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey.
[34:04.390 --> 34:05.010]  [SPEAKER_02]: How's it going?
[34:06.990 --> 34:07.390]  [SPEAKER_02]: Huh?
[34:09.310 --> 34:10.710]  [SPEAKER_02]: Six.
[34:12.880 --> 34:14.280]  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[34:15.140 --> 34:15.400]  [SPEAKER_02]: Bye.
[34:15.740 --> 34:15.740]  Ciao.
[34:15.860 --> 34:16.740]  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello?
[34:18.000 --> 34:18.760]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes?
[34:19.580 --> 34:20.400]  [SPEAKER_04]: Hello?
[34:21.380 --> 34:22.380]  [SPEAKER_04]: How you doing?
[34:25.250 --> 34:26.550]  [SPEAKER_04]: This is Kevin?
[34:30.340 --> 34:31.080]  [SPEAKER_04]: Seven?
[34:35.220 --> 34:36.480]  [SPEAKER_04]: Hello?
[34:39.430 --> 34:40.050]  [SPEAKER_04]: Hello?
[34:42.490 --> 34:43.090]  [SPEAKER_04]: Eight who?
[34:46.380 --> 34:47.220]  [SPEAKER_04]: Hello?
[34:48.680 --> 34:49.380]  Hello?
[34:51.580 --> 34:52.580]  [SPEAKER_04]: What nine?
[35:21.160 --> 35:22.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[35:22.560 --> 35:22.560]  Oh, that's awesome.
[35:22.560 --> 35:23.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: There's a dialogue being played in the background.
[35:24.020 --> 35:27.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: One of the phrases was, the computers are down.
[35:28.660 --> 35:29.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: You want to listen to that carefully.
[35:30.180 --> 35:30.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's funny.
[35:31.540 --> 35:35.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: The person who said three, though, it really sounded like he was saying P, didn't it?
[35:35.480 --> 35:36.620]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, I think it did.
[35:36.980 --> 35:37.260]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[35:37.720 --> 35:38.780]  [SPEAKER_07]: You know, it does a little bit.
[35:38.940 --> 35:41.480]  [SPEAKER_07]: I think what it comes down to is the guy has a pretty heavy Asian accent.
[35:41.480 --> 35:42.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: Uh-huh.
[35:42.200 --> 35:46.180]  [SPEAKER_07]: And to me, to my ear, it sounds more like T-R-E-E.
[35:46.340 --> 35:46.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh-huh.
[35:46.820 --> 35:49.760]  [SPEAKER_07]: But I can see how it could be P as well, which is far more amusing anyway.
[35:50.000 --> 35:56.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: And then I was very happy to hear the guy say six and realize it wasn't my voice because some people thought it was, including me for a little bit.
[35:56.480 --> 35:58.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: But that was kind of spooky.
[35:58.200 --> 36:01.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: That was scary when I thought it might be my voice being used there.
[36:01.480 --> 36:03.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, but he seemed to be having a conversation.
[36:03.840 --> 36:05.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Were you actually talking to him?
[36:05.860 --> 36:06.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: Uh, no.
[36:06.320 --> 36:08.980]  [SPEAKER_08]: All Strom did was repeat numbers to them over and over again.
[36:09.300 --> 36:10.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: But he was saying, hi, how you doing?
[36:11.080 --> 36:11.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: What's up?
[36:11.760 --> 36:16.660]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I think this has more to do with the nature of the personal services the guy was attempting to sell on Craigslist.
[36:16.700 --> 36:16.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: I see.
[36:17.520 --> 36:17.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[36:18.180 --> 36:22.200]  [SPEAKER_07]: It kind of sounded like we caught him in the middle of, shall we say, brokering another deal.
[36:23.000 --> 36:32.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: There are all sorts of conclusions you can make based on this, how people react when you just speak numbers to them over the phone, what people do when they come across something crazy like this, and how the community reacts.
[36:33.040 --> 36:33.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes, Bernie.
[36:33.520 --> 36:43.800]  [SPEAKER_15]: I just want to mention that the background noise is reminiscent of some of the clues that number stations enthusiasts try to pick up on.
[36:43.800 --> 36:54.460]  [SPEAKER_15]: Uh, often times these, uh, occasionally these, uh, these shortwave broadcasts of, uh, uh, covert number stations will have some other audio in the background, which is unintended by the broadcaster.
[36:55.040 --> 37:01.660]  [SPEAKER_15]: Uh, sometimes it's, uh, faint, uh, audio of Radio Havana, for instance, on the Cuban number station.
[37:01.800 --> 37:03.720]  [SPEAKER_15]: Sometimes they get their audio mixed up in the studios.
[37:04.280 --> 37:06.820]  [SPEAKER_15]: Uh, sometimes there's other little sounds going on in the background.
[37:06.820 --> 37:13.400]  [SPEAKER_15]: And, and number stations enthusiasts seize on these little clues to try to figure out where these broadcasts are originating from.
[37:13.580 --> 37:25.120]  [SPEAKER_15]: So this is the same sort of, uh, uh, of clues that were even unintentional, uh, with this experiment, uh, or reminiscent of, uh, what, what real number stations enthusiasts do with, uh, with actual numbers broadcasts.
[37:25.140 --> 37:29.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: Except we got absolutely nowhere trying to figure that out trying to see where these background noises were or anything like that.
[37:29.940 --> 37:30.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Jim.
[37:30.360 --> 37:36.960]  [SPEAKER_11]: Did, did you guys ever think of calling these people back and explaining what their voices are used for?
[37:37.960 --> 37:41.220]  [SPEAKER_07]: Um, I, to be honest with you, I don't think we actually kept records of the numbers.
[37:41.600 --> 37:45.420]  [SPEAKER_07]: Uh, it'd be amusing to see if they, if any of them actually knew about what was going on.
[37:45.700 --> 37:50.540]  [SPEAKER_11]: Well, um, you said they were all offering, uh, sexually oriented services, right?
[37:51.040 --> 37:51.440]  [SPEAKER_11]: Uh, well.
[37:51.820 --> 37:59.700]  [SPEAKER_11]: You, you could probably post in Craigslist in the sexually oriented column saying, hi, if you got a strange phone call where we just repeated numbers.
[37:59.700 --> 38:01.980]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, because you really want to maintain contact with those people.
[38:02.120 --> 38:02.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: No, no, no, no.
[38:02.820 --> 38:03.920]  [SPEAKER_11]: I think it's just fair.
[38:04.120 --> 38:06.820]  [SPEAKER_11]: You've, you've used them for, for your own purposes.
[38:07.040 --> 38:09.640]  [SPEAKER_11]: You should at least explain to them why.
[38:10.280 --> 38:12.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: I don't think they're staying up nights worrying about it.
[38:12.520 --> 38:14.680]  [SPEAKER_11]: No, I don't think they are, but it would be polite.
[38:15.440 --> 38:19.400]  [SPEAKER_14]: I'm sure strange people like you call them all the time and they don't care for an explanation.
[38:19.600 --> 38:19.700]  [SPEAKER_14]: Yeah.
[38:19.720 --> 38:21.640]  [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I repeat numbers, but I don't care what they say, no.
[38:21.640 --> 38:22.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, okay.
[38:22.980 --> 38:32.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, as far as, uh, apart from us almost, uh, messing up the whole thing, uh, were there any other milestones where something happened that was either a very positive thing or a very negative thing?
[38:33.280 --> 38:34.680]  [SPEAKER_07]: Honed by Ensign Crusher.
[38:34.840 --> 38:35.380]  [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, yes.
[38:37.020 --> 38:40.360]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, we, that was, that was probably one of our favorite moments of the whole thing.
[38:40.500 --> 38:46.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: We, the, uh, originally the group numbers that were read at the beginning were supposed to be the area code where the next message was going to appear.
[38:46.880 --> 38:47.160]  [SPEAKER_06]: Mm-hmm.
[38:47.160 --> 38:49.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: And we didn't think anyone would catch on to that until at least the third message.
[38:49.980 --> 38:53.060]  [SPEAKER_08]: But the day the second message came out, Will Wheaton figured it out.
[38:53.240 --> 38:56.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: And we had to scramble to come up with new, a new set of group numbers.
[38:57.020 --> 38:57.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, I mean...
[38:57.720 --> 38:57.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: Will Wheaton?
[38:58.040 --> 39:00.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, actually, I, he, he posted something on Slashdub.
[39:00.160 --> 39:03.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: I think a number of other people were saying the same thing because the first number showed up where?
[39:03.980 --> 39:05.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: In, uh, in, uh, in 415, right?
[39:05.680 --> 39:09.860]  [SPEAKER_08]: We give, we give Will Wheaton credit because his was actually the first post we saw that said that.
[39:09.920 --> 39:10.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: Right, right.
[39:10.720 --> 39:10.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[39:11.240 --> 39:12.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: The first number was where?
[39:12.620 --> 39:13.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: It was in, uh, 212?
[39:14.360 --> 39:14.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[39:14.640 --> 39:14.780]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[39:15.140 --> 39:16.380]  [SPEAKER_04]: New York, then San Francisco.
[39:16.440 --> 39:19.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: And that one said group 415, and then the second number was in 415.
[39:19.880 --> 39:23.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: And yeah, I think at that point, especially when dealing with phone phreaks, they would say, yeah, there's gotta be a connection there.
[39:23.740 --> 39:30.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: And then that one was group 617, so we all thought the next one would be in 617, but I think it turned out to be in 678 or something, right?
[39:31.140 --> 39:34.620]  [SPEAKER_07]: Um, yeah, from that point, we actually moved it to, uh, see, it was NSA.
[39:35.160 --> 39:36.940]  [SPEAKER_07]: Uh, it wasn't Albuquerque, it was Atlanta.
[39:36.940 --> 39:46.380]  [SPEAKER_07]: And it was interesting because we did have a copycat going on at the time who actually posted a copycat station in 617 in Boston anticipating us.
[39:46.580 --> 39:50.480]  [SPEAKER_07]: The only problem was when you actually called the number, it went to the Federal Reserve Bank.
[39:50.820 --> 39:52.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, I remember that one.
[39:52.600 --> 39:52.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[39:52.780 --> 39:56.400]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, that wasn't really, uh, it was just a copycat message, not a copycat number station, right?
[39:56.740 --> 39:57.060]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[39:57.540 --> 39:57.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[39:57.940 --> 39:59.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: We were the only copycats, right?
[39:59.500 --> 40:03.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: There was nobody else that, uh, actually went to the trouble of piecing it all together, and...
[40:03.060 --> 40:06.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: Uh, you, you were the only ones that really completely copycatted it.
[40:06.500 --> 40:11.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: Except, a lot of people said, this sounds different, there's something different about this, we weren't able to completely replicate it.
[40:11.880 --> 40:17.240]  [SPEAKER_07]: Well, I, I think what that may have been down to, because I, I talked to a couple people, uh, at DEFCON about this, who had the same theory.
[40:17.240 --> 40:25.100]  [SPEAKER_07]: And what they said it was, was you could tell the, the, the audio quality was, at, at least a generation down.
[40:25.100 --> 40:27.500]  [SPEAKER_07]: They said in some way it sounded inferior to the previous ones.
[40:27.700 --> 40:28.220]  [SPEAKER_06]: Mm-hmm.
[40:28.460 --> 40:32.940]  [SPEAKER_07]: And that you could tell that it had been somehow audited, that it wasn't taken from the original samples.
[40:33.160 --> 40:33.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: You hear that, Mike?
[40:33.920 --> 40:36.220]  [SPEAKER_17]: You've got a bit more work to do before you become a true spy.
[40:36.400 --> 40:43.700]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, you know, I did say on the air that the, yeah, the recording that we had was a bit over-modulated, so the, uh, play out sounded the same.
[40:43.720 --> 40:45.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: We couldn't get access to the masters, unfortunately.
[40:45.440 --> 40:46.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, well, we should have called them up.
[40:46.440 --> 40:46.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[40:47.220 --> 40:47.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[40:48.240 --> 40:50.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, any other, uh, any other milestones?
[40:51.180 --> 40:56.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, really, the biggest milestone probably for us was when Homeland Stupidity picked up the story and started running with it.
[40:56.360 --> 40:56.640]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[40:56.640 --> 41:02.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: That, that was exciting for us because we really wanted to see how the community would organize and try to, try to crack these codes.
[41:02.860 --> 41:05.360]  [SPEAKER_08]: That was the, sort of the purpose we put behind all of this.
[41:05.360 --> 41:14.700]  [SPEAKER_08]: And, uh, watching the thought and the, the care and the, the, just the sheer gargantuan amount of effort people put into trying to crack it was, uh, phenomenal.
[41:15.060 --> 41:20.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: And Homeland Stupidity becoming the hub for that, just sort of organically growing was fascinating to watch.
[41:20.600 --> 41:24.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: And you're referring to the site HomelandStupidity.us run by Michael Hampton, one of our listeners.
[41:25.340 --> 41:25.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[41:25.780 --> 41:28.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: And, uh, yeah, that's a great discussion going on there.
[41:28.480 --> 41:38.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: Now, since you guys revealed everything at DEFCON and, and in the, uh, weeks afterwards where all the messages were finally, um, uh, given out, uh, what has been the reaction?
[41:39.020 --> 41:40.680]  [SPEAKER_08]: Uh, overwhelmingly positive.
[41:41.140 --> 41:46.020]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think we've only, I think we've only had one person that's been extrude, extremely bitter with us.
[41:46.580 --> 41:52.060]  [SPEAKER_07]: And I, I think that guy's kind of, uh, quieted down now that he's realized that, you know, nobody forced you to participate in this.
[41:52.440 --> 41:52.660]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[41:52.960 --> 41:54.800]  [SPEAKER_07]: And we're not going to take his death threat seriously.
[41:55.380 --> 41:55.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[41:56.340 --> 42:00.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, he felt he was wasting a lot of time just trying to figure something out that was actually...
[42:00.120 --> 42:00.720]  [SPEAKER_08]: I guess.
[42:00.720 --> 42:01.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: I don't know.
[42:01.340 --> 42:02.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: I haven't paid a lot of attention to him.
[42:02.680 --> 42:07.420]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's just, he's been the one loud voice screaming at us ever since we, we came, came into the light.
[42:08.320 --> 42:08.680]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow.
[42:08.980 --> 42:09.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: So, uh...
[42:09.460 --> 42:11.920]  [SPEAKER_08]: But overall, the reaction has been very positive.
[42:12.420 --> 42:14.400]  [SPEAKER_08]: Um, we've had a lot of people asking questions.
[42:14.400 --> 42:15.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: We've had a lot of interest in the website.
[42:16.380 --> 42:17.980]  [SPEAKER_08]: Sold a lot of t-shirts, you know?
[42:18.740 --> 42:19.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[42:19.200 --> 42:19.380]  [SPEAKER_17]: Cool.
[42:20.540 --> 42:20.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow.
[42:21.200 --> 42:23.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, so, uh, it's too bad we don't have Strom here.
[42:23.880 --> 42:25.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: He's, uh, he's unreachable by phone today, right?
[42:26.000 --> 42:29.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, unfortunately he's out in the middle of nowhere camping with his family.
[42:29.240 --> 42:31.740]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, maybe not unfortunately, but unfortunately we can't talk to him.
[42:32.020 --> 42:32.240]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[42:32.900 --> 42:33.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[42:33.240 --> 42:34.700]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, that's, uh, that's perfectly okay.
[42:35.180 --> 42:37.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, any other, uh, comments you want to leave us with?
[42:38.440 --> 42:40.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think I've covered just about everything I wanted to say.
[42:40.700 --> 42:44.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Any advice for people that, uh, want to participate in, uh, things like this?
[42:44.460 --> 42:55.520]  [SPEAKER_08]: Well, actually, I, we can give you a little advice if anyone does whatever decide to run their own crypto challenge, uh, which, um, we learned quite a bit from, from our mistakes and we could pass this on.
[42:55.660 --> 42:59.600]  [SPEAKER_08]: It's actually, uh, something that we, uh, talked about in our DEFCON talk.
[42:59.600 --> 43:02.880]  [SPEAKER_08]: Um, first off, and this is the most important thing.
[43:02.960 --> 43:06.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: If anyone out there wants to run a challenge like this, please be organized.
[43:07.080 --> 43:11.520]  [SPEAKER_08]: Don't do what we did and just make stuff up at the last second off the cuff.
[43:11.860 --> 43:12.140]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[43:12.880 --> 43:23.260]  [SPEAKER_07]: And, and, and to put some, sorry, not to interrupt, but to put some perspective on that, uh, you have to realize that when all of this started off, this really was sort of a thank you to the spooks list for basically, you know, it was basically our way of saying,
[43:23.360 --> 43:25.160]  [SPEAKER_07]: hey, you know, we're glad you guys are here.
[43:25.160 --> 43:29.380]  [SPEAKER_07]: We were in the number stations to hear something fun, you know, to go screw around with for a while.
[43:29.840 --> 43:34.440]  [SPEAKER_07]: And we never actually counted on the six degrees of bacon effect of membership of that list.
[43:34.840 --> 43:35.060]  [SPEAKER_07]: Uh huh.
[43:35.300 --> 43:35.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[43:36.220 --> 43:37.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, that's the thing.
[43:37.040 --> 43:39.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: You guys, you made the initial post to that list, right?
[43:39.880 --> 43:40.320]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yes, we did.
[43:40.460 --> 43:42.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: And then, then Bernie brought it to our attention on off the hook.
[43:42.760 --> 43:45.400]  [SPEAKER_17]: And then just, I guess it went crazy from there.
[43:46.860 --> 43:51.260]  [SPEAKER_08]: I should point out that that post, that one email is the only thing though that we did to promote this.
[43:51.440 --> 43:53.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: We didn't make a single post in any online forms or anything else.
[43:53.960 --> 43:56.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: It grew completely organically following that single email.
[43:57.080 --> 44:00.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Do you think if you hadn't done that, that attention would have been given to it?
[44:01.440 --> 44:01.820]  [SPEAKER_08]: No.
[44:01.820 --> 44:02.240]  [SPEAKER_08]: Probably not.
[44:02.920 --> 44:03.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[44:04.180 --> 44:04.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Wow.
[44:04.540 --> 44:05.960]  [SPEAKER_08]: I think it's highly unlikely.
[44:06.160 --> 44:10.620]  [SPEAKER_08]: I mean, unless a lot of number stations people troll the Craigslist personals.
[44:11.140 --> 44:11.260]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[44:11.740 --> 44:17.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: Which apparently a lot of people do because this was found very quickly each time and also taken off very quickly each time.
[44:18.520 --> 44:19.460]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, just about.
[44:19.740 --> 44:23.180]  [SPEAKER_08]: There was a few that stayed up quite a long time and some that were gone the first day.
[44:23.180 --> 44:25.700]  [SPEAKER_08]: It was really hard for us to gauge exactly why that happened.
[44:26.460 --> 44:26.700]  [SPEAKER_17]: Mm-hmm.
[44:27.280 --> 44:27.640]  [SPEAKER_15]: Emmanuel?
[44:27.880 --> 44:28.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes, go ahead Bernie.
[44:28.500 --> 44:35.520]  [SPEAKER_15]: It might be worth mentioning that to our listeners who are interested in joining the Spook's mailing list, just do a web search for Spook's mailing list.
[44:35.520 --> 44:52.500]  [SPEAKER_15]: And you'll find a really, what I think is an intriguing mailing list of individuals who have great pleasure in listening to shortwave numbers broadcasts and trying to figure out what they mean, where they're from, traffic analysis patterns, that sort of thing.
[44:52.620 --> 44:55.780]  [SPEAKER_15]: It's a bizarre hobby, but it's one that I enjoy.
[44:56.060 --> 44:56.540]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, it's good.
[44:56.540 --> 45:05.240]  [SPEAKER_07]: Actually, one thing in relation to that, too, is if you do search for it, they also have, they sanitize the email addresses first, but they have all the old postings to the list archived publicly.
[45:05.560 --> 45:08.740]  [SPEAKER_07]: So you can actually go back through and look at a couple years of the sort of stuff they've been covering.
[45:08.840 --> 45:09.500]  [SPEAKER_07]: It's really interesting.
[45:10.240 --> 45:10.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Cool.
[45:11.220 --> 45:15.700]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, we've been speaking with Vidiot and Screw from projectevil.org.
[45:15.700 --> 45:20.280]  [SPEAKER_17]: Is there a way for people to get in touch with you who might have some questions about employment with the NSA or something?
[45:21.340 --> 45:22.840]  [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, they can reach us through our website.
[45:22.840 --> 45:28.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: There's a link on the contact page, or they can just send an email to meinfraulein at projectevil.org, and that'll come to us.
[45:28.700 --> 45:30.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: I suppose you want to spell that?
[45:31.260 --> 45:35.740]  [SPEAKER_08]: M-E-I-N-F-R-A-U-L-E-I-N at projectevil.org.
[45:36.380 --> 45:41.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, guys, I want to thank you for being on the show and also for providing us with endless hours of fun.
[45:41.740 --> 45:42.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're most welcome.
[45:42.620 --> 45:43.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: Glad you enjoyed it.
[45:44.240 --> 45:48.040]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, and hopefully you'll keep being imaginative and creative and come up with something even better.
[45:48.320 --> 45:49.240]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we'll try.
[45:49.760 --> 45:50.660]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right, thanks, guys.
[45:50.700 --> 45:50.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: Take care.
[45:51.040 --> 45:51.280]  [SPEAKER_06]: Bye-bye.
[45:51.380 --> 45:51.580]  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
[45:53.220 --> 45:54.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm glad it worked out this way.
[45:55.280 --> 45:57.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: Imagine that we never found out what it was all about.
[45:57.760 --> 46:03.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: That would have really kind of frustrated me for the rest of my years.
[46:03.160 --> 46:04.500]  [SPEAKER_15]: I'd still be losing sleep over it.
[46:04.660 --> 46:05.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, me too.
[46:07.940 --> 46:13.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: Most of these stations, the stations that are actually out there, never get solved because they're one-time pads.
[46:13.760 --> 46:17.900]  [SPEAKER_17]: And if you're not the person that the message is meant for, it's not very likely you're going to figure it out.
[46:18.940 --> 46:22.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, we can take phone calls, 212-209-2900.
[46:22.740 --> 46:24.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: A couple of pieces of email.
[46:24.480 --> 46:25.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: Mike, do you have something?
[46:25.260 --> 46:41.280]  [SPEAKER_13]: I just have this study that Human Rights Watch did, which is a bit more systematic than stuff we've done in the past, where they went into these Chinese search engines and the American search engines, where both the Chinese and the American ones are owned by the same people.
[46:41.280 --> 46:45.160]  [SPEAKER_13]: So Yahoo China and Google.cn and MSN China.
[46:45.440 --> 46:53.020]  [SPEAKER_13]: And they actually very systematically typed in all these phrases in Chinese for human rights lawyers and Tibet independence.
[46:53.280 --> 46:59.140]  [SPEAKER_13]: And they saw, you know, results that were in the American version, but not the Chinese version.
[46:59.400 --> 47:10.460]  [SPEAKER_13]: And they, you know, the special message, for example, on Google, it says in Chinese, of course, according to local laws, regulations and policies, a portion of the search results do not appear.
[47:10.840 --> 47:21.840]  [SPEAKER_13]: And it's really shows how this Chinese Internet censorship is done with the complicity and even help of these large American corporations.
[47:22.120 --> 47:31.780]  [SPEAKER_13]: And one thing that they note in their report is that Yahoo China does sort of much more censoring than Google and MSN.
[47:32.060 --> 47:37.120]  [SPEAKER_13]: And also that Yahoo has the most business dealings in China.
[47:37.300 --> 47:38.360]  [SPEAKER_13]: And they help to imprison people, too.
[47:38.420 --> 47:39.580]  [SPEAKER_13]: And they help to imprison people.
[47:39.720 --> 47:49.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: They're the only one of the group to actually have offices in China where they offer email to residents, you know, email specifically targeted for residents of China.
[47:49.420 --> 47:56.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: So they get subpoenaed for, you know, political things that are crimes in China, but nowhere else.
[47:56.980 --> 48:02.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: That message that you read from Google that says some of this has been... isn't available.
[48:02.280 --> 48:04.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: Is that something that anybody in China who is searching will see?
[48:05.380 --> 48:13.900]  [SPEAKER_13]: If they're searching for a term, you know, they have three controls, Microsoft, Dailon, which is a city, and Paris.
[48:14.060 --> 48:16.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: And so the message doesn't appear on those three searches.
[48:17.140 --> 48:22.360]  [SPEAKER_13]: But on all the other, you know, human rights, democracy, torture, that message does show up.
[48:22.400 --> 48:27.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm just wondering if the Chinese authorities would be a little peeved that that message even shows up saying that they're not getting everything.
[48:27.340 --> 48:27.980]  [SPEAKER_13]: I don't know.
[48:28.180 --> 48:35.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: On the... they also did these searches on Baidu, which is a completely Chinese search engine with no American owners that I know about.
[48:35.860 --> 48:36.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: And there's no message there.
[48:37.180 --> 48:38.540]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's just things are missing.
[48:38.820 --> 48:39.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[48:39.280 --> 48:41.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: Let's get to the phones because we have a bunch of phone calls.
[48:42.380 --> 48:43.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: And good evening.
[48:43.300 --> 48:43.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're on the radio.
[48:45.120 --> 48:45.640]  [SPEAKER_17]: Speak up, please.
[48:45.640 --> 48:46.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yes.
[48:46.260 --> 48:48.000]  [SPEAKER_10]: Good day, everyone.
[48:48.380 --> 48:52.060]  [SPEAKER_10]: A very cryptic program today.
[48:52.380 --> 48:52.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, we try.
[48:53.180 --> 48:53.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[48:53.420 --> 48:58.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, you're succeeding because there's so many important things going on.
[48:58.240 --> 49:03.760]  [SPEAKER_10]: And not to say this isn't important in a certain area, but I don't know where the area is.
[49:03.900 --> 49:05.520]  [SPEAKER_10]: But, you know, I'm a little concerned.
[49:05.520 --> 49:12.620]  [SPEAKER_10]: I think I brought it up once before because as a goer to the LSB, the WBAI local station.
[49:12.620 --> 49:12.820]  [SPEAKER_10]: Okay.
[49:12.860 --> 49:14.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: We're not getting into station politics.
[49:14.500 --> 49:14.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm sorry.
[49:14.900 --> 49:16.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: This happens every time that guy calls.
[49:16.240 --> 49:17.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: We want to stay on the subject here.
[49:18.200 --> 49:18.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Good evening.
[49:18.600 --> 49:19.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're on the radio.
[49:19.720 --> 49:20.120]  [SPEAKER_16]: Hey.
[49:20.400 --> 49:24.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm just wondering, is there any news on that August meeting?
[49:25.420 --> 49:26.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: What August meeting?
[49:26.820 --> 49:29.100]  [SPEAKER_06]: The one that they arrested the guy at Hope.
[49:29.100 --> 49:29.360]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, okay.
[49:29.520 --> 49:35.060]  [SPEAKER_17]: We're trying to get a space for Steve Rambam, who was arrested before he gave his talk at Hope.
[49:35.060 --> 49:38.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: And we're trying to work something out for, I believe, next month.
[49:38.620 --> 49:39.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: Joe, do you have something on this?
[49:40.220 --> 49:43.720]  [SPEAKER_14]: Hopefully, we're going to have a space at Steven's Institute of...
[49:43.720 --> 49:45.800]  [SPEAKER_14]: If I could talk, I could explain.
[49:45.940 --> 49:47.720]  [SPEAKER_14]: Steven's Institute of Technology in Hoboken.
[49:47.900 --> 49:51.260]  [SPEAKER_14]: We're working on that right now with one of the professors that works there.
[49:51.660 --> 49:54.180]  [SPEAKER_14]: And if we get something going, that'll be the space.
[49:54.180 --> 49:56.000]  [SPEAKER_14]: And we're shooting for some time in September.
[49:56.220 --> 49:56.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[49:56.500 --> 49:58.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: We'll see if that's doable.
[49:58.020 --> 50:02.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: But the idea is to present the panel that was not able to be presented in full.
[50:03.500 --> 50:04.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: And do it for free.
[50:05.280 --> 50:09.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: Get video presentations out there just as a message that you can't shut us up.
[50:09.940 --> 50:10.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: All right.
[50:10.660 --> 50:11.460]  [SPEAKER_17]: And good evening.
[50:11.600 --> 50:12.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're on the radio.
[50:13.280 --> 50:13.540]  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello?
[50:13.760 --> 50:14.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, speak up, please.
[50:14.980 --> 50:15.440]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[50:15.980 --> 50:16.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: What's on your mind?
[50:18.000 --> 50:20.320]  [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to ask about two things.
[50:20.500 --> 50:21.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, make it fast.
[50:22.480 --> 50:27.680]  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, one is about the double CD that came out about ten years ago.
[50:27.900 --> 50:31.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: Just repeating numbers over and over and over and over again.
[50:32.680 --> 50:34.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, I don't know about that double CD that came out.
[50:34.900 --> 50:35.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: Do you know what it's called?
[50:37.040 --> 50:45.400]  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the guy who used to do a show that pretty much focused on a substance that was a cure for drug addiction.
[50:46.440 --> 50:46.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[50:46.940 --> 50:52.900]  [SPEAKER_01]: I played it and it was just something, it wasn't as complicated as the thing you guys were just talking about.
[50:53.080 --> 50:58.940]  [SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, someone saying two, three, eight, five.
[50:59.200 --> 51:00.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: And that cured drug addiction?
[51:00.820 --> 51:01.340]  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
[51:01.560 --> 51:01.740]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh.
[51:01.960 --> 51:03.760]  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's what I normally talk about.
[51:03.980 --> 51:04.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[51:04.360 --> 51:11.280]  [SPEAKER_01]: And someone put out a double CD and it came from somewhere in Europe and no one knew what it was.
[51:11.880 --> 51:12.400]  [SPEAKER_17]: Interesting.
[51:12.660 --> 51:13.880]  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's one thing.
[51:13.880 --> 51:17.860]  [SPEAKER_01]: The second thing is something I called you years ago.
[51:18.000 --> 51:18.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh-huh.
[51:18.680 --> 51:23.680]  [SPEAKER_01]: Back when your sidekick was a different guy who stopped being your sidekick for a while.
[51:23.860 --> 51:26.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, we've had many incarnations of the show, yes.
[51:26.800 --> 51:27.160]  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[51:27.560 --> 51:34.640]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I asked you this question and you and your then sidekick said, well, that would take two whole shows.
[51:35.240 --> 51:39.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, well, with five minutes left, hopefully you're not going to ask us the same question, but go ahead.
[51:40.000 --> 51:43.960]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I will ask you the same question and hope you will devote at least one show to it.
[51:44.100 --> 51:44.880]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, what's the subject?
[51:45.000 --> 51:45.820]  [SPEAKER_01]: And here's the question.
[51:46.060 --> 51:49.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not the only person I know who worries or wonders about this.
[51:49.620 --> 51:50.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, but you've got to say it, please.
[51:50.820 --> 51:53.640]  [SPEAKER_01]: When you get a website.
[51:53.880 --> 51:54.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh-huh.
[51:55.160 --> 51:57.240]  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, who gets the money?
[51:57.720 --> 52:03.000]  [SPEAKER_01]: Who decides how much it costs to register that website?
[52:03.640 --> 52:05.640]  [SPEAKER_01]: Where does that money go?
[52:07.840 --> 52:10.240]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay, you're talking about domain registration, I would imagine.
[52:10.460 --> 52:10.720]  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, domain registration.
[52:11.420 --> 52:11.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: Right.
[52:11.920 --> 52:13.800]  [SPEAKER_01]: Who decides how much it costs?
[52:14.200 --> 52:21.060]  [SPEAKER_01]: Who decides that the in-between people, the go-betweens will be to collect that money?
[52:21.300 --> 52:21.640]  Uh-huh.
[52:21.640 --> 52:22.680]  [SPEAKER_01]: Where does it go?
[52:23.040 --> 52:25.780]  [SPEAKER_01]: Where does it, you know, what is it used for?
[52:25.940 --> 52:26.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Right.
[52:26.280 --> 52:27.720]  [SPEAKER_01]: How is the price determined?
[52:28.660 --> 52:29.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, of course...
[52:29.440 --> 52:32.680]  [SPEAKER_01]: So please, please get on this and I might do a whole show about it.
[52:32.680 --> 52:42.540]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, okay, I'm not sure how much interest we can maintain for a whole show, but we can tell you briefly that ICANN is the organization that oversees it, much to many people's chagrin, I know.
[52:42.780 --> 52:56.580]  [SPEAKER_13]: There's a very complicated structure of registrars and resellers and the actual people that operate the databases and they all get, you know, their few dollars and it's really kind of a corrupt system.
[52:57.000 --> 53:02.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: And it's something that I don't know if we'd be privy to all the information as far as where the money goes and how much.
[53:02.480 --> 53:10.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: I mean, if you register something with GoDaddy for like, you know, $5 or something like that, obviously it's being split differently than going through network solutions for $34.99.
[53:10.280 --> 53:19.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, network solutions keeps like 30 of those $34.99 and it's not clear exactly what they do with it that costs, you know, GoDaddy can do it for $3, but...
[53:19.680 --> 53:20.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: It's weird.
[53:20.380 --> 53:28.240]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'll give the caller credit for finding something that is very weird and kind of mysterious and probably bad.
[53:28.700 --> 53:35.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: Um, I guess if, if, if listeners out there have information on this that they'd like to share with us, they can write to us oth@2600.com.
[53:35.660 --> 53:39.440]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, and of course you can snail mail us to off the hook care of WBAI.
[53:39.800 --> 53:43.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, 120 wall street, 10th floor, Walter.
[53:44.080 --> 53:44.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: He's gone.
[53:44.700 --> 53:44.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[53:45.780 --> 53:46.320]  [SPEAKER_17]: New York.
[53:46.460 --> 53:46.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: New York.
[53:47.520 --> 53:49.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: One zero zero zero five.
[53:49.900 --> 53:51.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: You have one New York, not both.
[53:51.880 --> 53:53.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: I still have the state.
[53:53.400 --> 53:53.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm sorry.
[53:53.700 --> 53:54.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: I overstepped my bounds.
[53:54.520 --> 53:54.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah.
[53:55.060 --> 53:55.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, you did.
[53:55.980 --> 53:56.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: All right.
[53:56.740 --> 53:58.020]  [SPEAKER_17]: Let's take another phone call.
[53:58.120 --> 53:58.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: Good evening.
[53:58.480 --> 53:59.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're on the air.
[54:00.240 --> 54:01.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: Speak up, please.
[54:01.140 --> 54:01.320]  [SPEAKER_10]: Yes.
[54:01.360 --> 54:03.960]  [SPEAKER_10]: Why aren't there any women's voices on this station?
[54:04.040 --> 54:04.400]  [SPEAKER_17]: All right.
[54:04.520 --> 54:05.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: Enough, enough, enough.
[54:05.680 --> 54:06.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: Good evening.
[54:06.400 --> 54:06.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're on the radio.
[54:07.180 --> 54:09.780]  [SPEAKER_17]: We need more lines so we can have less of the same people.
[54:10.240 --> 54:10.560]  [SPEAKER_17]: Go ahead.
[54:11.560 --> 54:12.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: Speak up.
[54:12.100 --> 54:12.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes.
[54:12.900 --> 54:14.980]  [SPEAKER_09]: Hey, I want to clear some information.
[54:15.100 --> 54:16.660]  [SPEAKER_09]: A lady freaked out on the plane.
[54:16.900 --> 54:17.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: Yes.
[54:17.620 --> 54:18.580]  [SPEAKER_09]: She was claustrophobic.
[54:18.720 --> 54:19.120]  [SPEAKER_09]: Hand cream.
[54:19.380 --> 54:19.900]  [SPEAKER_09]: All claustrophobic.
[54:20.000 --> 54:20.840]  [SPEAKER_17]: She was claustrophobic.
[54:20.920 --> 54:21.100]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[54:21.100 --> 54:22.520]  [SPEAKER_09]: And she freaked out.
[54:22.600 --> 54:25.080]  [SPEAKER_09]: And when they went through her bag, they found the hand cream.
[54:25.240 --> 54:25.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, boy.
[54:26.060 --> 54:28.320]  [SPEAKER_09]: And you know the hand cream could have blown up the whole plane.
[54:28.420 --> 54:33.060]  [SPEAKER_09]: But it just goes to show you how bad the security is that she walked out with the freaking hand cream.
[54:33.220 --> 54:38.260]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, also today, I heard a 12-year-old in London was able to get past security without a passport.
[54:38.260 --> 54:40.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: I don't think that's the biggest deal in the world.
[54:40.100 --> 54:46.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: He went through security and was checked for all the usual stuff, but got on a plane, international plane to Portugal and didn't have a passport because nobody checked.
[54:46.980 --> 54:47.740]  [SPEAKER_09]: He was running away.
[54:47.920 --> 54:49.160]  [SPEAKER_09]: He ran right past security and everything.
[54:49.240 --> 54:49.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: He ran...
[54:49.720 --> 54:51.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, he went through security though, didn't he?
[54:51.300 --> 54:51.460]  [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[54:51.520 --> 54:52.620]  [SPEAKER_09]: He walked right past everybody.
[54:52.880 --> 54:53.080]  [SPEAKER_09]: Uh-huh.
[54:53.080 --> 54:54.740]  [SPEAKER_09]: Hey, I've been listening to your show for years.
[54:54.880 --> 54:56.780]  [SPEAKER_09]: I live upstate and I'm usually driving out of town.
[54:56.920 --> 54:57.780]  [SPEAKER_09]: I love your show.
[54:57.900 --> 54:58.440]  [SPEAKER_09]: It's fantastic.
[54:58.440 --> 54:59.000]  [SPEAKER_17]: Thank you.
[54:59.320 --> 55:00.740]  [SPEAKER_09]: And it's totally cool.
[55:01.520 --> 55:03.320]  [SPEAKER_09]: I know you guys use the word geeks.
[55:03.440 --> 55:06.140]  [SPEAKER_09]: It's amazing to hear geeks make this stuff so freaking cool.
[55:06.400 --> 55:07.460]  [SPEAKER_09]: So thanks a lot.
[55:07.600 --> 55:07.860]  [SPEAKER_09]: Take it easy.
[55:07.860 --> 55:08.580]  [SPEAKER_17]: Thanks for listening.
[55:08.780 --> 55:10.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: You know, I like those sentences that don't have a butt in them.
[55:10.600 --> 55:11.960]  [SPEAKER_17]: I thought there was a butt coming in that sentence.
[55:12.600 --> 55:19.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: But hopefully it's interesting to the non-geeks as well, the people out there, the grandmothers who listen, because we want to make this stuff accessible.
[55:19.120 --> 55:20.920]  [SPEAKER_17]: We want people to understand what it's all about.
[55:21.380 --> 55:22.800]  [SPEAKER_17]: And that's what we've been trying to do here.
[55:23.320 --> 55:23.860]  [SPEAKER_17]: Let's take another phone call.
[55:23.940 --> 55:24.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: Good evening.
[55:24.320 --> 55:24.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: You're on the radio.
[55:26.180 --> 55:26.720]  [SPEAKER_17]: Go ahead.
[55:27.180 --> 55:27.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: Hello?
[55:28.880 --> 55:29.660]  [SPEAKER_17]: What's on your mind?
[55:30.520 --> 55:30.980]  [SPEAKER_16]: Hi, Emmanuel.
[55:32.420 --> 55:35.140]  [SPEAKER_16]: All the guys in the Off The Hook IRC, say hi.
[55:35.420 --> 55:35.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[55:36.200 --> 55:37.140]  [SPEAKER_17]: Hello, IRC.
[55:37.620 --> 55:38.260]  [SPEAKER_16]: All right.
[55:39.100 --> 55:47.540]  [SPEAKER_16]: I just wanted to say something about that those Palestinian Americans that were arrested in Michigan.
[55:47.600 --> 55:48.180]  [SPEAKER_17]: In Michigan, yes.
[55:48.420 --> 55:52.500]  [SPEAKER_16]: They live about an hour away, so it was on the local news where I was.
[55:53.180 --> 55:56.800]  [SPEAKER_16]: And apparently it wasn't just a thousand cell phones they found.
[55:56.800 --> 56:09.040]  [SPEAKER_16]: They also found, I think, $11,000 cash records of passenger lists and information about security checkpoints.
[56:09.540 --> 56:11.320]  [SPEAKER_16]: That was a different group of people.
[56:11.320 --> 56:12.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: That was a different group of people.
[56:12.480 --> 56:13.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: There are two different instances.
[56:14.260 --> 56:16.480]  [SPEAKER_17]: So that means...
[56:16.480 --> 56:17.480]  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, that's what was reported.
[56:17.620 --> 56:18.420]  [SPEAKER_17]: That's what was reported.
[56:18.560 --> 56:27.760]  [SPEAKER_17]: But it's always interesting to follow these stories afterwards and make sure that what's reported initially is actually true or is at least followed up on because many times it's not.
[56:27.760 --> 56:30.820]  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm reading it off Forbes right now and it seems to be the same people.
[56:31.060 --> 56:31.340]  [SPEAKER_17]: Okay.
[56:31.420 --> 56:35.300]  [SPEAKER_17]: Can you send us the link to the article and we'll go over it next week during the show.
[56:35.320 --> 56:35.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: Here's the thing.
[56:35.920 --> 56:38.200]  [SPEAKER_13]: These media sites often get stuff wrong.
[56:38.400 --> 56:44.960]  [SPEAKER_13]: I mean, this woman they reported, she had a note about Al-Qaeda and then it turned out that she didn't have any such note.
[56:45.340 --> 56:46.520]  [SPEAKER_17]: People panic.
[56:46.640 --> 56:47.820]  [SPEAKER_17]: People say all kinds of weird things.
[56:48.320 --> 56:50.160]  [SPEAKER_17]: It's just the nature of humanity, I guess.
[56:50.380 --> 56:50.940]  [SPEAKER_17]: I don't know.
[56:50.940 --> 56:57.120]  [SPEAKER_17]: Anyway, I want to thank everybody for calling in and for writing in and just for doing the things they do.
[56:57.240 --> 56:58.500]  [SPEAKER_17]: Talk to some interesting people tonight.
[57:00.340 --> 57:03.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: Our address again, oth@2600.com.
[57:06.020 --> 57:09.200]  [SPEAKER_17]: And we'll be back again next week with another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[57:09.380 --> 57:16.240]  [SPEAKER_17]: Until then, keep thinking as freely as the authorities will allow you to and let us know if you see anything strange.
[57:16.240 --> 57:18.620]  [SPEAKER_17]: If you see something, email OTH.
[57:18.880 --> 57:19.080]  [SPEAKER_17]: Good night.