[00:00.000 --> 00:01.080]  Monica Lopez.
[00:01.280 --> 00:03.840]  Our Washington editor is Leanne Caldwell.
[00:04.000 --> 00:05.680]  Shannon Young is our headlines editor.
[00:05.940 --> 00:11.480]  Our technical production team at KPFA in Berkeley includes Eric Klein and Antonio Ortiz.
[00:11.680 --> 00:16.460]  You can listen to this newscast in its entirety at fsrn.org.
[00:16.920 --> 00:20.720]  We also welcome your comments, questions, and story ideas.
[00:20.720 --> 00:23.740]  Just email us at comments at fsrn.org.
[00:23.900 --> 00:26.780]  From KPFK in LA, I'm Laura Bogado.
[00:34.840 --> 00:37.000]  And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York.
[00:37.100 --> 00:38.760]  The time is exactly 7 o'clock.
[00:38.920 --> 00:40.540]  Once again, time for Off the Hook.
[02:03.270 --> 02:04.290]  And good evening to everybody.
[02:04.370 --> 02:05.150]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:05.210 --> 02:13.510]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you for the next hour or so as we talk about the latest developments in technology, privacy, and all the other things going on.
[02:13.610 --> 02:17.310]  We are joined today by Mike.
[02:17.750 --> 02:18.230]  Hello.
[02:19.110 --> 02:20.390]  And, oh, Lynn, you're here.
[02:20.930 --> 02:22.230]  Visiting from Atlanta, right?
[02:22.350 --> 02:22.630]  Hello.
[02:23.490 --> 02:24.110]  And Redbird.
[02:24.430 --> 02:25.110]  Good evening.
[02:25.390 --> 02:25.810]  Arseny.
[02:26.190 --> 02:26.530]  Hello.
[02:26.990 --> 02:27.190]  Jim.
[02:27.630 --> 02:27.970]  Arg.
[02:28.430 --> 02:29.890]  And Kevin, number two.
[02:30.230 --> 02:30.690]  Hello.
[02:30.690 --> 02:31.730]  And Bernie S.
[02:31.810 --> 02:32.310]  down there in Philadelphia.
[02:32.770 --> 02:33.290]  Bernie S.
[02:33.350 --> 02:33.810]  number one.
[02:34.170 --> 02:35.870]  We have a lot of people here today.
[02:36.030 --> 02:37.030]  His name tag says Robert.
[02:38.050 --> 02:38.410]  What?
[02:38.530 --> 02:39.510]  Kevin's name tag says Robert.
[02:39.510 --> 02:39.730]  Yeah.
[02:39.850 --> 02:41.090]  Well, that's to confuse the people downstairs.
[02:41.270 --> 02:41.470]  Okay.
[02:42.130 --> 02:42.490]  Okay.
[02:42.490 --> 02:51.330]  So we have some interesting things that have been going on this past week, including, do you know, the White House has been uploading anti-drug videos to YouTube?
[02:51.970 --> 02:52.330]  Yeah.
[02:52.450 --> 02:55.210]  That's apparently their way of reaching out to the youth of America.
[02:55.250 --> 02:56.510]  They don't have anything else to do?
[02:57.430 --> 02:59.450]  Well, it took them a few months to figure out how to do it.
[02:59.450 --> 03:12.610]  They're distributing government-produced anti-drug videos on YouTube, the trendy internet service that already features clips of wacky drug-induced behavior, and step-by-step instructions for growing marijuana plants.
[03:12.670 --> 03:17.230]  You know, if you've seen some of the videos that are on YouTube, it's self-sufficient for the anti-drug message.
[03:17.570 --> 03:19.750]  I guess it is in some way.
[03:19.890 --> 03:21.150]  I have no problem with this.
[03:21.150 --> 03:29.590]  I think, I mean, look at all those classic films where they've deconstructed, you know, educational videos and such over the years.
[03:30.190 --> 03:37.730]  YouTube is the perfect venue for any sort of educational, campy educational film.
[03:37.850 --> 03:40.150]  Well, Michael Bojega has a problem with it.
[03:40.390 --> 03:41.150]  Who is he?
[03:41.150 --> 03:46.910]  He is, he's an author and director of the journalism school at Iowa State University.
[03:48.310 --> 03:50.990]  Like, like, like he ever affected my life before.
[03:51.050 --> 03:53.610]  He has a, well, he's affecting it now because I'm telling you, he has a big problem with this.
[03:53.710 --> 03:56.430]  And he says it's the wrong forum and the wrong target.
[03:56.990 --> 04:03.130]  And he says it's misdirected because online video services don't afford serious consideration to weighty topics.
[04:03.890 --> 04:04.490]  Weighty topics.
[04:04.890 --> 04:05.010]  That's true.
[04:05.450 --> 04:07.510]  The whole point of YouTube is that it's an open forum.
[04:07.630 --> 04:08.990]  How could you say it's not the right forum?
[04:09.090 --> 04:10.170]  You can put whatever you want on it.
[04:10.310 --> 04:10.750]  That's true.
[04:10.910 --> 04:11.250]  That's true.
[04:11.390 --> 04:14.110]  But, uh, it should be, uh, interesting to see the White House participating.
[04:14.110 --> 04:18.290]  Well, it's like the guy, it's like if the White House made a MySpace that says, hey, kids, don't do drugs.
[04:18.370 --> 04:19.470]  Or like, hey, kids, don't be terrorists.
[04:19.510 --> 04:20.270]  No, they haven't.
[04:20.330 --> 04:20.870]  They probably have.
[04:20.870 --> 04:21.630]  I mean, they probably do.
[04:21.630 --> 04:25.250]  You could look it up and maybe, maybe someone will make one for the government.
[04:26.010 --> 04:29.230]  Now, uh, Bernan, Stan, you, uh, spent some time hanging out with the government this week.
[04:30.410 --> 04:30.710]  Yeah.
[04:30.710 --> 04:36.790]  Oh, um, believe it or not, I had, uh, breakfast with the director of the Department of Homeland Security.
[04:36.950 --> 04:37.270]  Really?
[04:37.510 --> 04:38.170]  Where'd you guys go?
[04:38.230 --> 04:38.650]  Waffle House?
[04:39.090 --> 04:44.410]  Um, you know, there's no Waffle House in Philadelphia, but I would have, but you can't get butter at Waffle House.
[04:44.590 --> 04:46.990]  Well, there's that, but, uh, well, there's plenty of good places to go in Philadelphia.
[04:46.990 --> 04:48.010]  I hope you showed him a good time.
[04:48.170 --> 04:50.790]  I wanted to butter him up, but I couldn't if I went to Waffle House.
[04:51.190 --> 04:53.310]  So, seriously, what, what, what exactly is going on here?
[04:53.930 --> 05:01.110]  Uh, well, he made a nearly surprised visit to, uh, a gathering of the World Affairs Council, of which I'm a member here in Philadelphia.
[05:01.410 --> 05:07.730]  We sort of gather to discuss, uh, matters of importance to the nation and the world and, you know, whatever.
[05:08.270 --> 05:09.890]  And it sounds more important than it is.
[05:10.550 --> 05:11.070]  Uh-huh.
[05:11.150 --> 05:18.370]  So, um, just about, uh, a couple of days before, um, I think, about two weeks ago, no, it was last week?
[05:18.490 --> 05:18.690]  Yes.
[05:19.110 --> 05:27.490]  Last week there was an announcement, um, that, uh, he was going to be in town and he agreed to speak, uh, to our group of about a hundred people, uh, who showed up.
[05:27.690 --> 05:28.610]  And he was there.
[05:28.810 --> 05:35.390]  And it was really strange, just sitting a few feet away from a guy you see on television, uh, standing next to the president talking about Homeland Security.
[05:36.170 --> 05:47.850]  And, um, yeah, I got to hear his, uh, um, uh, his speech, which was mostly canned, uh, pre-midterm election, uh, terrorist fear-mongering, fear-mongering, in my opinion.
[05:48.090 --> 05:55.890]  But, uh, uh, it was interesting hearing him reply to questions that were not scripted, which, you know, usually they are in television or the radio.
[05:56.190 --> 05:57.470]  Now, Brian, let's ask you a question.
[05:57.590 --> 05:58.630]  Anybody could have done this?
[05:59.530 --> 06:01.010]  Anybody could have showed up at this thing.
[06:01.130 --> 06:04.410]  It wasn't closed to members of the World Affairs Council, but it was not publicized either.
[06:04.750 --> 06:08.290]  You had to have been invited by email, or at least advised by someone else.
[06:08.310 --> 06:13.570]  I invited a couple of friends to come, but they couldn't make it, because it was during business hours, so, but I had it up there anyway.
[06:13.770 --> 06:16.470]  But by what tremendous governmental oversight were you invited?
[06:17.390 --> 06:18.970]  Well, it wasn't the government that invited me.
[06:19.070 --> 06:20.370]  The World Affairs Council invited me.
[06:20.370 --> 06:21.610]  I'm a member of the World Affairs Council.
[06:21.710 --> 06:23.190]  How did you become a member of the World Affairs?
[06:23.250 --> 06:24.070]  You think you know somebody.
[06:24.250 --> 06:25.330]  The World Affairs Council?
[06:25.510 --> 06:26.370]  I don't even know what that is.
[06:26.570 --> 06:28.850]  Like I said, it sounds a lot more important than it is.
[06:28.990 --> 06:33.070]  But, you know, it's just people who are concerned about, uh, the world and the nation and things like that.
[06:33.070 --> 06:33.730]  Well, that's me.
[06:33.850 --> 06:34.530]  I'm concerned.
[06:34.530 --> 06:35.290]  I think we all are.
[06:35.510 --> 06:36.210]  How do we join?
[06:36.410 --> 06:39.090]  I think there's a branch in, uh, in New York, the World Affairs Council.
[06:39.270 --> 06:39.990]  So, look it up.
[06:40.110 --> 06:40.930]  It's really an interesting group.
[06:41.050 --> 06:44.150]  They have some amazing speakers that you would never have access to otherwise.
[06:44.410 --> 06:45.450]  And I had to have a...
[06:45.450 --> 06:50.330]  I got the chance to have a face-to-face conversation with the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
[06:50.470 --> 06:50.810]  This is a...
[06:50.810 --> 06:53.070]  This is a Cabinet-level appointee.
[06:53.810 --> 06:57.750]  He sits at a table with the President on a regular basis.
[06:57.750 --> 07:03.850]  I mean, this is an interesting, uh, situation where somebody like me could actually have a conversation with someone like that.
[07:03.890 --> 07:04.490]  Face-to-face...
[07:04.490 --> 07:06.690]  How close to his face did you get, and how loud did you talk?
[07:07.210 --> 07:09.310]  Uh, I was about, uh, 15 feet away.
[07:09.470 --> 07:09.690]  Oh, that's...
[07:09.690 --> 07:10.190]  And everybody...
[07:10.190 --> 07:14.290]  He heard me, and everybody else heard me, and I got a chance to ask him a specific question.
[07:14.290 --> 07:15.290]  So, what did you ask?
[07:16.190 --> 07:17.730]  Well, uh, the first...
[07:17.730 --> 07:20.150]  There were only, like, four or five people that got to ask questions.
[07:20.290 --> 07:20.810]  That was the last one.
[07:20.870 --> 07:21.230]  The first...
[07:21.230 --> 07:21.650]  The first...
[07:21.650 --> 07:27.330]  All the questions except mine were the kind of, like, questions like, uh, if I was a terrorist, I would try this.
[07:27.330 --> 07:29.250]  What are you doing to prevent that kind of thing?
[07:29.350 --> 07:29.590]  Uh-huh.
[07:29.930 --> 07:32.890]  But, um, I didn't want to be just like a me-too kind of person.
[07:32.890 --> 07:39.350]  So, I brought up a, uh, an advisory that the Department of Homeland Security released about a month ago.
[07:39.350 --> 07:51.150]  And it was the first time, to my knowledge, where the Department, uh, released an advisory, uh, urging, uh, IT directors to, to install a specific patch, a specific piece of software.
[07:51.590 --> 07:52.970]  MSO 6.0.4.0, right?
[07:53.230 --> 07:53.830]  Yeah, exactly.
[07:54.030 --> 07:54.230]  Yeah.
[07:54.230 --> 08:03.310]  The Department advised a specific piece of software should be installed on computers in order to, uh, uh, boost the, uh, security of the nation's infrastructure.
[08:03.970 --> 08:12.550]  And, uh, you know, this was a patch a Microsoft release to, uh, um, uh, I believe it was, uh, Internet Explorer patch.
[08:13.230 --> 08:25.270]  So, uh, I applied the patch, and then it came out a few days later that that patch had a serious problem with it that could, uh, in some situations, corrupt, uh, data files on your computer.
[08:26.350 --> 08:39.770]  And, uh, so I checked the Department site again, and, uh, after this, this bug to the patch had been, uh, discovered and widely reported, the Department was still urging people to install the original patch.
[08:39.910 --> 08:45.010]  In other words, the link they provided pointed to the old patch that had serious bugs on it.
[08:45.550 --> 08:47.370]  So, anyhow, I brought this up.
[08:47.470 --> 08:51.270]  Not that I expected an informed answer from the Secretary, because he probably was involved in this minutia.
[08:51.550 --> 09:09.330]  But I said, and I asked him, you know, with your Department of 185,000 people, um, what is your Department doing to better vet, uh, its advisories, specifically when it, when it advises people to install a specific piece of code from a particular manufacturer,
[09:09.650 --> 09:16.750]  uh, rather than just relying upon a particular vendor like Microsoft Word on this being, uh, a good solution to a problem.
[09:17.270 --> 09:19.710]  And, uh, he wasn't aware of it.
[09:19.710 --> 09:27.230]  And, uh, he said that he trusted their, his, uh, his, uh, department to, to, to, to better vet things in the future and so forth.
[09:27.350 --> 09:28.770]  So he, uh, but it was interesting.
[09:28.770 --> 09:35.290]  A lot of people in the room had, in the IT world were aware of this situation and were sort of snickering.
[09:35.570 --> 09:42.210]  And the Secretary heard this and it was clear to him that, that other people were aware that this was an embarrassing situation with the department.
[09:42.370 --> 09:43.290]  And he sort of stuttered.
[09:43.290 --> 09:45.290]  And it was really an interesting situation.
[09:45.710 --> 09:48.250]  You made the director of Homeland Security stutter?
[09:48.470 --> 09:54.270]  He sort of like paused and like, he realized that people realized that this was a problem that he wasn't aware of.
[09:54.430 --> 09:58.030]  To be fair, it requires no effort at all to make the president stutter.
[09:58.230 --> 09:59.250]  Well, yeah, but come on.
[09:59.250 --> 10:00.390]  He's not an expert in anything.
[10:00.750 --> 10:03.830]  He stuttered about, about a particular issue that I brought up.
[10:04.530 --> 10:06.950]  Um, anyway, I, I hightailed it out of there afterwards.
[10:08.050 --> 10:13.770]  Bernie, I think that you got somebody in big, big, big trouble at the Department of Homeland Security somewhere.
[10:14.050 --> 10:14.610]  Yeah, probably.
[10:15.590 --> 10:17.890]  And, and they stopped taking questions right after that, huh?
[10:18.230 --> 10:20.290]  I was allowed, well, I think I was going to be the last one anyway.
[10:20.830 --> 10:21.070]  Mm-hmm.
[10:21.450 --> 10:30.750]  But, uh, on my way out, I, I was able to check out the, there was this caravan of special government vehicles out in front of the, the Union League, this building where this meeting was held.
[10:30.930 --> 10:31.090]  Mm-hmm.
[10:31.290 --> 10:36.690]  And, uh, there were five of these, uh, these big Ford Explorers with tinted out windows and special antennas on them.
[10:37.350 --> 10:47.430]  Um, and, um, uh, they were there waiting, so in case the, uh, you know, something hit the fan, he would be able to run out and jump in the car and take off and, you know, tend to Homeland Security.
[10:47.710 --> 10:51.330]  But they all had, well, it was interesting, they all had Pennsylvania license plates on them.
[10:51.630 --> 11:04.050]  And I, uh, contacted a friend of mine who's got law enforcement contacts, and he said that this department typically uses plates, they have spare plates they use depending on which plate, which state they're in, and they just put those states' plates on there.
[11:04.050 --> 11:09.990]  So no matter where he goes, these same, these same vehicles will put plates for that state on them, which I thought was kind of interesting.
[11:10.130 --> 11:10.650]  That's interesting.
[11:10.830 --> 11:16.810]  And that's sort of contrary to what I've been seeing with federal plates, which now have labels of the agency on the actual plate.
[11:17.110 --> 11:18.310]  So instead of just saying U.S.
[11:18.390 --> 11:19.850]  government, you know what division of the U.S.
[11:19.890 --> 11:20.470]  government it is.
[11:20.570 --> 11:22.630]  Well, you can typically tell, too, if they don't say that.
[11:22.790 --> 11:23.930]  If they're, these were not federal plates.
[11:24.070 --> 11:25.470]  These were, like, normal-looking plates.
[11:25.610 --> 11:27.450]  So they were sort of designed to be kind of undercover.
[11:27.990 --> 11:29.990]  But, uh, you can always tell a U.S.
[11:30.310 --> 11:37.170]  government plate, the first character, uh, for instance, If it's a J, if it's a J, you know it's the Department of Justice.
[11:37.510 --> 11:37.750]  Oh.
[11:38.270 --> 11:46.070]  So these are things you can usually tell from the first letter what department of federal government it's registered to.
[11:46.090 --> 11:49.130]  In a lot of cases, it's the GSA, the General Services Administration.
[11:49.350 --> 11:50.230]  It's like a big motor pool.
[11:50.490 --> 12:00.290]  But if you see like a white van, like I saw parked in front of my apartment a few years ago with tinted out windows, it starts with a license plate that starts with a J, you know it's the Department of Justice.
[12:00.710 --> 12:01.110]  Interesting.
[12:01.630 --> 12:03.750]  Do they have T for the Torture Department?
[12:03.850 --> 12:06.310]  Department now and whatever else they're running?
[12:06.450 --> 12:07.250]  Oh, that's probably Treasury.
[12:07.650 --> 12:08.290]  Oh, okay.
[12:09.250 --> 12:10.850]  That sort of fits together.
[12:10.970 --> 12:12.330]  But you're talking about weird vehicles.
[12:12.510 --> 12:16.590]  We have a plethora of weird vehicles around the city now because of the whole UN thing.
[12:16.750 --> 12:20.870]  Every single president in the world and prime minister is in town apparently, including Bush.
[12:21.610 --> 12:23.850]  And even prime ministers who aren't prime ministers.
[12:24.090 --> 12:27.670]  Yeah, because coups take place sometimes when prime ministers leave the country.
[12:27.670 --> 12:30.250]  And of course, that's what happened to the prime minister of Canada.
[12:32.350 --> 12:33.910]  I thought, did I misread that?
[12:35.550 --> 12:35.950]  Wait.
[12:36.210 --> 12:39.370]  I was theorizing yesterday how to do a coup in the United States and how to do it right.
[12:39.530 --> 12:43.150]  You know, and where do you get Bush to go and who is it that actually surrounds the buildings.
[12:43.350 --> 12:44.930]  And it's worth thinking about.
[12:45.350 --> 12:47.290]  These people are saying that it's not Canada.
[12:47.470 --> 12:49.130]  Like there's more than one foreign country.
[12:49.130 --> 12:50.070]  Is that how it works?
[12:50.710 --> 12:51.110]  Yeah.
[12:51.110 --> 12:52.190]  Yeah, that's weird.
[12:52.530 --> 12:54.430]  Yeah, there are many countries out there.
[12:54.670 --> 12:58.990]  But in any event, have any of you guys been wandering around the city seeing some of the motorcades and weird vehicles that are out there?
[12:59.150 --> 13:03.450]  And all of eastern Manhattan is closed off because they have to get around.
[13:03.670 --> 13:07.310]  I think Bush is in the Waldorf Astoria holding court.
[13:07.510 --> 13:09.770]  Somebody delayed my flight inbound.
[13:09.930 --> 13:10.270]  Uh-huh.
[13:10.930 --> 13:19.470]  Because the pilot came on and said that we were being delayed due to a VIP departure out of JFK.
[13:19.470 --> 13:22.710]  Yeah, that's probably the Thai prime minister hightailing it back.
[13:22.750 --> 13:24.130]  Actually, he's in London now, I think.
[13:25.150 --> 13:29.210]  There's actually a lot of like TFRs and like temporary flight restrictions and stuff like that going on.
[13:29.210 --> 13:29.390]  Yeah.
[13:30.210 --> 13:32.130]  I mean, you have the president of Iran.
[13:32.370 --> 13:34.330]  You have, you know, Hugo Chavez here.
[13:35.470 --> 13:37.830]  It's really, it's a who's who of...
[13:37.830 --> 13:40.710]  Do you think the president of Iran did a little shopping while he was in town?
[13:40.850 --> 13:41.090]  I don't know.
[13:41.090 --> 13:42.330]  Or do you think that we kind of...
[13:42.890 --> 13:45.690]  Okay, you have a visa to go to the UN and turn around and leave.
[13:45.750 --> 13:47.250]  We could run into them after the show.
[13:47.410 --> 13:48.670]  You know, they'll be touring Manhattan.
[13:48.850 --> 13:49.130]  Who knows?
[13:49.470 --> 13:53.250]  He's been wearing the same style of clothes every time I've seen him on TV, so I don't think he went shopping.
[13:54.830 --> 13:55.410]  Okay.
[13:55.850 --> 14:07.870]  Speaking of governmental things, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said yesterday, Congress should require internet providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight...
[14:08.620 --> 14:09.250]  Oh, I know.
[14:09.510 --> 14:10.370]  Child pornography.
[14:10.670 --> 14:11.350]  Child pornography, correct.
[14:11.650 --> 14:12.250]  Yeah, of course.
[14:19.470 --> 14:26.790]  said, Mueller have met with several internet providers, including Time Warner's AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon.
[14:27.310 --> 14:33.050]  Law enforcement officials have indicated to the companies they must retain customer records, possibly for two years.
[14:35.130 --> 14:38.330]  And that's kind of foreboding in some ways.
[14:38.510 --> 14:39.390]  Now, here's the thing.
[14:39.630 --> 14:46.410]  Just a few weeks ago, we reported on what happens when this data gets retained, and that is that the data gets out.
[14:46.730 --> 14:48.750]  People's private data gets leaked.
[14:49.030 --> 14:51.170]  There was the whole thing with AOL search data.
[14:51.490 --> 14:55.370]  Can you imagine if everyone was required to keep this data, how much of it would be leaked?
[14:55.370 --> 14:57.830]  Well, now, when we say this data, what exactly are we talking about?
[14:57.910 --> 14:58.970]  What kind of data are they keeping?
[14:59.410 --> 15:09.770]  Apparently, it's going to be sort of what websites you visit, who visits which websites, the from and to lines of emails, and stuff like that.
[15:09.950 --> 15:10.290]  Wow.
[15:10.510 --> 15:12.350]  That's a lot of information.
[15:12.350 --> 15:12.990]  It is, yeah.
[15:12.990 --> 15:16.330]  And is it normal for any internet service provider to keep that information?
[15:16.330 --> 15:17.570]  What websites you visit?
[15:17.650 --> 15:18.790]  Who you send mail to?
[15:19.050 --> 15:25.690]  I mean, sometimes they might keep mail server logs for a few days just to be able to diagnose problems with the system.
[15:26.990 --> 15:32.410]  There might be a reason to keep web visits, although I can't think of one for similar reasons.
[15:32.650 --> 15:35.250]  But two years is really no need.
[15:35.410 --> 15:42.510]  Now, can they go beyond just the website and the particular file you looked at on the website, particular picture, particular things you've downloaded?
[15:42.670 --> 15:43.270]  Can they do all that?
[15:43.410 --> 15:47.430]  Well, it's hard to say, of course, because the bill hasn't been written yet, much less passed.
[15:48.230 --> 15:50.290]  Not so far as what ISPs do right now.
[15:50.430 --> 15:51.450]  Oh, yeah, sure.
[15:51.470 --> 15:51.970]  They're able to do that.
[15:51.970 --> 15:56.850]  If an ISP wanted to, it could keep the actual data that's transferred, not merely...
[15:56.850 --> 15:57.730]  Well, assuming it's not encrypted.
[15:58.390 --> 16:05.070]  If you're using SSH or any other sort of encrypted program to communicate, they won't be able to see that.
[16:05.070 --> 16:07.610]  But they will be able to see various other things.
[16:07.770 --> 16:08.830]  And that's kind of scary.
[16:09.190 --> 16:09.530]  Yeah.
[16:10.130 --> 16:14.890]  And this is, of course, happening in Europe already, data retention.
[16:15.150 --> 16:16.890]  So it might come to the United States.
[16:16.890 --> 16:21.750]  This is the one thing that our legal situation was better, and it might change.
[16:22.210 --> 16:24.190]  Now, in Europe, what's the deal?
[16:24.310 --> 16:26.250]  How long are they keeping things for there, and what kinds of things?
[16:26.450 --> 16:34.050]  I don't know off the top of my head the exact details of the program, but it's a similar program to the one being proposed here.
[16:34.750 --> 16:35.070]  Wow.
[16:35.190 --> 16:36.790]  So, okay, how do we protect against this kind of thing?
[16:36.870 --> 16:37.550]  Bernie, do you have an idea?
[16:39.730 --> 16:42.210]  Well, I would like to say that we could do something to prevent this.
[16:42.210 --> 16:45.570]  We can write our legislators and complain about this.
[16:45.690 --> 16:56.690]  But if it happens, or it might be more likely when it happens, most Western countries have an agreement with each other that they will be exchanging this information.
[16:56.690 --> 17:09.270]  For instance, one EU country now can, if they're part of the EU, part of this agreement, can access another country's ISP logs.
[17:10.010 --> 17:27.850]  And if the US joins this, it's going to be even more interesting because your internet breadcrumbs, or to put it in layman's terms, will be easily accessible by people in other countries that, you know, don't even have to follow US privacy laws.
[17:27.850 --> 17:29.530]  It's really a weird situation.
[17:30.990 --> 17:32.230]  Yeah, it certainly is.
[17:32.410 --> 17:36.330]  There's mitigating factors that you can use for the actual data that you're transferring.
[17:36.530 --> 17:38.150]  Like, you can use encryption and stuff like that.
[17:38.210 --> 17:44.170]  But when it comes to covering the tracks of who you're actually talking to, like if I wanted to send you a map, it gets much more difficult.
[17:44.410 --> 17:46.510]  And you can use networks like Tor and stuff like that.
[17:46.630 --> 17:51.050]  But at this point, they're not really fast enough to be practical.
[17:51.050 --> 17:56.670]  And, you know, it really depends on a lot of cooperation between people participating in projects like that.
[17:56.670 --> 18:00.530]  And because of spammers and things, they're seen as a negative thing more than a positive thing.
[18:00.530 --> 18:04.830]  A lot of times, all the IP addresses in the Tor network are blocked from certain services.
[18:04.870 --> 18:13.550]  And so it gets to be a very difficult thing to cover who you're actually talking to, especially if everybody's logging and all these logs are accessible from different departments.
[18:13.750 --> 18:15.510]  But guys, it's to fight child pornography.
[18:15.770 --> 18:17.770]  I mean, isn't it worth it for that?
[18:18.130 --> 18:19.810]  Yeah, but here's the thing.
[18:20.010 --> 18:25.830]  If you're into child pornography, are you not going to go sit in front of somebody's house with an open access point?
[18:25.830 --> 18:25.850]  Right.
[18:25.950 --> 18:28.290]  Are you not going to go to a T-Mobile hotspot?
[18:28.450 --> 18:33.730]  Are you not going to go somewhere to a hotel and access the internet for free?
[18:33.750 --> 18:36.510]  And they're never going to know where you are, who you are.
[18:36.570 --> 18:37.590]  You spoof your MAC address.
[18:37.790 --> 18:39.150]  I mean, that's not even that big a thing.
[18:39.270 --> 18:41.030]  These people are not the brightest bulbs in the tree.
[18:41.210 --> 18:53.770]  You know, they're, they, these are, we're talking about priests sitting in their offices and churches surfing child porn sites and wondering why they get caught and, or executives having a stash of a hard drive space just dedicated to nothing else.
[18:53.930 --> 18:56.450]  And, uh, wow, I didn't think you, you would be able to see that.
[18:56.650 --> 19:00.350]  But of course we know it's really not for child pornography.
[19:00.910 --> 19:01.250]  Yeah.
[19:01.390 --> 19:05.530]  That's, that's the suspicion that maybe this is just getting the foot in the door.
[19:05.530 --> 19:11.290]  If this bill does pass and you use encryption and try and cover your tracks, wouldn't that just draw that much more attention to you?
[19:11.390 --> 19:12.150]  That would make you guilty.
[19:12.810 --> 19:14.830]  If you have nothing to hide, what are you hiding?
[19:15.090 --> 19:18.890]  Well, yeah, but a lot of people use a, use a VPN encryption for work.
[19:18.890 --> 19:21.890]  So it really wouldn't pop up as being that incredibly unusual.
[19:21.890 --> 19:28.650]  I mean, you, you, you, I guess if you were VPNing to a service provider, then it might pop up a little bit more as being unusual.
[19:28.870 --> 19:34.090]  But, you know, I mean, so many people use, use encryption to get into their corporate network.
[19:34.090 --> 19:41.410]  Well, I mean, let's, let's look at one of the concerns that one of our listeners brought up a couple of weeks ago, and that was the, the Lebanese television station, Al Manar.
[19:41.790 --> 19:48.770]  He was concerned that if I connect to Al Manar and start watching their video, which is banned in our country, would I be put on some kind of a list?
[19:48.850 --> 19:50.630]  It seems to me like it's very easy to do that.
[19:50.790 --> 19:54.670]  And this is something that becomes more difficult with, I mentioned networks like Tor and stuff.
[19:54.810 --> 19:56.610]  You, you really can't use Tor for that.
[19:56.730 --> 20:03.790]  You, for example, for instance, one of these anonymizing networks, just because of late, of the latency, and it's just impossible to stream video.
[20:03.970 --> 20:11.030]  And it's, and it's actually unfair to other users of that network to do so because of the amount of bandwidth that you're using and jumping across multiple nodes with.
[20:11.170 --> 20:15.030]  I mean, if everybody starts using encryption, wouldn't that give them an excuse to start breaking the encryption?
[20:15.290 --> 20:20.630]  Oh, I think they're, that's high on their list, because I understand child pornographers use encryption too.
[20:21.290 --> 20:21.630]  So...
[20:21.630 --> 20:21.810]  No.
[20:22.130 --> 20:22.330]  Yeah.
[20:22.530 --> 20:22.810]  It wouldn't be.
[20:23.110 --> 20:25.890]  So now encryption is bad, and that has to be defeated.
[20:25.890 --> 20:38.710]  One of the interesting things about this bill is that they're, what they're saying is that it will require a warrant to get this data, and it will only be revealed in the instances of actual suspicion of a crime and all this stuff.
[20:38.790 --> 20:40.250]  Until Bush decides it doesn't need a warrant.
[20:40.450 --> 20:40.890]  Exactly.
[20:42.010 --> 20:47.850]  It's, I'm not sure, you know, they have no credibility anymore, the government, when they claim they're going to respect our privacy.
[20:49.110 --> 20:53.890]  So the only control that we have is to sort of make the data not collected in the first place.
[20:53.970 --> 20:54.290]  Of course.
[20:54.510 --> 20:55.570]  That's what they're trying to change.
[20:55.570 --> 21:00.690]  Will that stop them from doing it anyway, even if we do succeed in making it illegal?
[21:01.170 --> 21:03.530]  They can have secret agreements with these companies.
[21:03.910 --> 21:09.910]  I wonder if users themselves can request logs of their own data going back two years.
[21:09.910 --> 21:15.350]  Like if I call my credit card company, I can ask them for all the credit card transactions that they have.
[21:15.630 --> 21:15.890]  Mm-hmm.
[21:16.150 --> 21:18.290]  Well, certainly if you work for those companies, I'll bet you get it pretty easily.
[21:18.310 --> 21:25.470]  Well, no, I mean, it would make sense that they would be able to give you logs of your own data of, like, of everything that you went to.
[21:25.650 --> 21:32.610]  It would make sense technically, but it wouldn't make sense on a PR basis because then you would know what it is that they're saving about you.
[21:33.170 --> 21:37.730]  I mean, try getting an ATM camera shot of you to prove that you took out money.
[21:37.730 --> 21:39.010]  It's very difficult to do these things.
[21:39.330 --> 21:41.790]  They don't want you to have access to what they have access to.
[21:43.050 --> 21:53.710]  All right, speaking of protecting children, a man suspected of kidnapping a 14-year-old girl and keeping her in an underground bunker was charged Sunday with, well, all kinds of crimes I don't want to get into here.
[21:53.830 --> 22:03.870]  But the interesting part about this story, as far as we're concerned, is that she was rescued because she sent a text message from the guy's phone.
[22:03.870 --> 22:07.010]  She got to his phone, apparently, and sent a text message.
[22:07.510 --> 22:12.770]  And what happened after that was investigators used cell towers to determine the general location of the phone.
[22:13.090 --> 22:16.410]  And deputies began the search on Friday night.
[22:16.690 --> 22:18.550]  And it's interesting.
[22:18.750 --> 22:21.310]  Bernie, do you think there's something different here?
[22:22.070 --> 22:37.030]  Well, we've always been told by law enforcement that the whole reason for this cell phone tracking is in 9-1-1 cases, where you dial 9-1-1 from your cell phone, and you're locked in the trunk of a car or something, and you call, and they'll know where you are,
[22:37.150 --> 22:39.110]  and they can rescue you on a situation.
[22:39.410 --> 22:44.890]  Well, this is the first incident I'm aware of where their cover was blown.
[22:45.170 --> 22:51.410]  The law enforcement cover was blown on that, where we have a situation where just a text message was sent.
[22:51.630 --> 22:57.470]  And after that, it wasn't even an active phone as far as making calls go.
[22:57.470 --> 23:04.810]  And they were able to look back in the logs, find out what phone had sent the message, and then track down the location of that phone.
[23:05.530 --> 23:11.830]  Now, I'm really glad this girl was found, and, you know, this is a great story from a standpoint of she was rescued.
[23:12.070 --> 23:12.310]  It's great.
[23:12.590 --> 23:26.690]  But it shows the dishonesty that we've experienced before, where law enforcement says, the only reason I do this is to help find emergency callers, or 9-1-1 callers.
[23:26.690 --> 23:34.710]  And here, it demonstrates that they have the ability to track phones without the phone even being used in real time to make the call.
[23:34.870 --> 23:45.230]  I'm not sure I totally agree with this, because what I understand happened was the girl sent a text message from the guy's phone, and in so doing, transmitted his phone number.
[23:45.250 --> 23:53.570]  And all that law enforcement did at that point was simply look for that phone number, triangulate the signal, see where that phone actually was at that moment.
[23:53.570 --> 23:54.270]  And that's fine.
[23:54.390 --> 24:03.530]  I don't have a problem with what they did in this case, but that's not ever been sort of advertised by law enforcement, is that's one of their capabilities, even though we kind of knew it was their capability.
[24:03.830 --> 24:13.170]  It's just interesting to know, and we should all know, that law enforcement can track the location of a phone at all times, even if you're not on the phone at the time.
[24:13.910 --> 24:15.470]  And most people don't think that.
[24:15.550 --> 24:17.950]  Most people think they can only be tracked while they're using their phone.
[24:17.950 --> 24:23.330]  If your phone is on at all, they can determine the location of your phone and ostensibly you.
[24:23.430 --> 24:30.290]  The bombers last year in London, when one of them escaped to, I think, Italy, his phone was found the second he turned it on.
[24:30.370 --> 24:31.050]  He wasn't using it.
[24:31.050 --> 24:36.350]  He just turned it on, put a SIM card in a different phone, actually, and that was enough to catch him right there.
[24:36.570 --> 24:38.010]  So is this really anything new?
[24:38.170 --> 24:38.910]  It's not new.
[24:39.070 --> 24:46.710]  The Emmett St. Guillen murder the other year, where the bouncer took this drunk girl to the boondocks of Brooklyn, never used his telephone.
[24:46.710 --> 24:57.050]  They find her body at a given location, and then they look at the nearby cell tower's records and discover whose phones were there at the approximate time the body was dumped.
[24:57.230 --> 25:03.590]  It's only this one guy who happens to be the bouncer at the bar where she was last seen alive.
[25:03.770 --> 25:05.290]  And these were just pings from the phone?
[25:05.410 --> 25:06.470]  He wasn't making a phone call?
[25:06.510 --> 25:08.230]  He didn't make a phone call, just pings from the phone.
[25:09.010 --> 25:20.810]  What's important here is to note that your cell phone is constantly associating itself with the nearby towers, and that every single place that you go, every place that you go with your cell phone on, all that information is logged.
[25:20.990 --> 25:24.110]  And, you know, depending on the provider, they may retain it for longer than other providers.
[25:24.110 --> 25:26.450]  But it's never clear how long they actually do that.
[25:26.590 --> 25:35.270]  So for however long the provider decides to keep their logs for, you can be traced at every single place that you've been with your cell phone on.
[25:35.270 --> 25:41.290]  And most people keep their cell phone on them all the time, and the cell phone's always on, and it's always associating with the nearby towers.
[25:41.470 --> 25:50.010]  So, and your provider, your cell phone provider can track you back, however far back their logs go, and see every single place that you've been when your cell phone's on.
[25:50.090 --> 25:56.050]  I imagine any company that keeps logs just has sort of this instinct to keep them forever.
[25:56.590 --> 26:01.970]  And this space is cheap, so it's quite possible to store it in a tape someplace and put it in a vault.
[26:02.210 --> 26:07.030]  And if you ever needed to, you could find out what phones were answering at a certain time in a certain location.
[26:07.210 --> 26:12.990]  So our advice, I guess, to those people considering serious crimes is basically turn your phone off.
[26:13.090 --> 26:17.870]  But then keep in mind that that action in itself, all of a sudden your phone is unreachable.
[26:17.990 --> 26:18.870]  That could be suspicious.
[26:19.150 --> 26:20.590]  Maybe you should leave it on, but at home.
[26:20.930 --> 26:25.270]  Maybe you should get a special phone just for the crime and use that.
[26:25.830 --> 26:28.470]  Or maybe you just don't need phones anymore, you know?
[26:28.470 --> 26:29.750]  Now I have a question.
[26:29.950 --> 26:32.770]  This bunker, was it in the guy's house or was it somewhere else?
[26:32.770 --> 26:35.890]  Yeah, you know, it's one of these lunatics that has bunkers in their homes.
[26:35.890 --> 26:41.230]  Why don't they just get the phone number, look up the customer's address, and then go there without all this fancy dude ads?
[26:41.230 --> 26:42.610]  You know, I never even thought of that.
[26:42.730 --> 26:43.410]  I never thought of that.
[26:43.470 --> 26:44.570]  Of course, it was in his home.
[26:44.810 --> 26:55.610]  The guy dug out five bunkers underground, sort of like World War I trench warfare bunkers, five of them starting underneath his trailer.
[26:55.830 --> 26:57.070]  Why am I surprised?
[26:57.510 --> 27:01.950]  Starting underneath his trailer and going into the woods, five bunkers that were connected.
[27:02.830 --> 27:08.030]  So, of course, the fifth one was far away and had no connection to his house except for the tunnel in between.
[27:08.750 --> 27:10.870]  You know, even law enforcement, I think, could figure that out.
[27:11.110 --> 27:11.450]  Yeah, they did.
[27:11.630 --> 27:12.130]  Tunnels between bunkers.
[27:12.870 --> 27:13.250]  All right.
[27:13.670 --> 27:18.090]  Speaking of phone fun, we got lots and lots of mail about...
[27:18.090 --> 27:18.750]  Did you have something, Kevin?
[27:18.870 --> 27:19.070]  No.
[27:19.290 --> 27:19.630]  Oh, okay.
[27:19.670 --> 27:20.490]  You're flailing about.
[27:20.690 --> 27:21.110]  It was fun.
[27:21.930 --> 27:26.890]  We had lots and lots of mail about the various text-to-landline services.
[27:26.970 --> 27:28.890]  And we discovered one last week after the show.
[27:29.090 --> 27:35.490]  And what we're talking about, basically, is you have a cell phone and you send a text message and you send it to a landline.
[27:35.490 --> 27:36.130]  What happens?
[27:36.330 --> 27:41.310]  And over the past few weeks, we've learned that most of the world seems to have a system in place for this.
[27:41.410 --> 27:46.590]  So you can send a text message to someone at their home and they actually get a voice reading them a message.
[27:46.690 --> 27:49.190]  Or if they have a special type of phone, they see a text message.
[27:49.850 --> 27:53.770]  We discovered that a couple of companies do something like that here.
[27:54.050 --> 27:55.770]  What company was it we were talking about last week?
[27:56.070 --> 27:57.390]  Last week, we had Sprint.
[27:57.490 --> 27:57.930]  Sprint.
[27:57.990 --> 27:58.590]  Sprint does that.
[27:58.690 --> 28:01.690]  We didn't have very much luck doing it ourselves, but a lot of our listeners did have luck.
[28:02.370 --> 28:04.830]  We discovered after the show that Verizon does this too.
[28:05.030 --> 28:05.990]  Text-to-landline.
[28:06.090 --> 28:13.350]  It enables subscribers to send text messages converted to voice messages to most phone numbers in the U.S.
[28:14.650 --> 28:17.730]  But we discovered a rather interesting caveat about all this.
[28:19.130 --> 28:24.610]  If the intended recipient does not receive my text message, what does it mean?
[28:24.930 --> 28:31.590]  And their answer to that is when a message is sent to a landline number, a number of conditions may preclude delivery.
[28:31.810 --> 28:35.750]  The landline number is protected from receiving pre-recorded messages.
[28:35.970 --> 28:37.950]  I didn't know about that protection.
[28:38.630 --> 28:43.950]  I know not receiving telemarketing calls is one thing, but pre-recorded messages.
[28:44.130 --> 28:44.610]  That's kind of strange.
[28:45.010 --> 28:48.810]  Or get this, the number is not white pages publicly listed.
[28:49.270 --> 28:56.050]  In this case, you'll get a message saying, sorry, a message to this particular number could not be delivered as this number does not accept text-to-landline messages.
[28:57.450 --> 29:04.950]  What's weird about this is why do they assume that if it's unlisted that it shouldn't be accepting text messages?
[29:05.510 --> 29:06.370]  It's very weird.
[29:06.370 --> 29:07.410]  It's very strange.
[29:07.570 --> 29:16.150]  And that also means that Verizon, every time you send a text message to a landline, is doing this really quick lookup to make sure that there's actually somebody associated with that number who's publicly listed.
[29:16.750 --> 29:18.630]  And if not, they reject it based on that.
[29:18.710 --> 29:20.590]  I was just going to ask, who has access to these databases?
[29:20.950 --> 29:23.970]  I mean, is every company doing this, or is this a Verizon-specific policy?
[29:24.090 --> 29:26.210]  Verizon is the former New York telephone.
[29:26.410 --> 29:27.610]  I understand that.
[29:27.750 --> 29:29.990]  But Sprint, for instance, do they have a policy like this?
[29:30.070 --> 29:30.790]  I don't think so.
[29:30.870 --> 29:32.890]  I don't think they would have access to the same data.
[29:32.890 --> 29:35.950]  We need to experiment and be agitators on this.
[29:36.090 --> 29:39.810]  We must know someone who has an unregistered phone number.
[29:39.990 --> 29:42.350]  We attempt to send this person text messages.
[29:42.410 --> 29:53.030]  When they don't receive them, we then have him advocate, have him call up, I presume he's a Verizon customer, or she, call up and say, hey, my friend sent me text messages.
[29:53.030 --> 29:54.010]  I didn't get them.
[29:54.110 --> 29:55.010]  I want them.
[29:55.370 --> 29:56.690]  I think this is a...
[29:56.690 --> 29:59.270]  Yeah, but then they'll just say, well, list your phone number, you big dummy.
[29:59.610 --> 30:00.930]  No, there's... well, then you sue.
[30:00.930 --> 30:02.730]  Well, sue, based on what?
[30:02.810 --> 30:05.110]  This is a great idea, but what exactly?
[30:05.190 --> 30:08.070]  They're denying you a service because you want to be private.
[30:08.370 --> 30:13.810]  What other service does the phone company deny you because you want your number unlisted?
[30:16.430 --> 30:17.650]  You still get the phone book.
[30:17.750 --> 30:20.110]  They still send you the phone book without your name in it.
[30:20.270 --> 30:20.610]  Exactly.
[30:20.610 --> 30:22.630]  They're denying one service arbitrarily.
[30:22.770 --> 30:24.930]  Here's who else they deny the service to.
[30:25.450 --> 30:29.130]  Text to landline messages can only be delivered to phone book listed landline numbers.
[30:29.610 --> 30:31.930]  Messages will not be delivered to, ready?
[30:32.530 --> 30:35.730]  Convalescence centers, emergency operators.
[30:37.230 --> 30:38.190]  Okay, I guess.
[30:38.190 --> 30:40.050]  That seems like a place you might want to send a message.
[30:40.050 --> 30:41.750]  I want to send a text message to 911.
[30:43.530 --> 30:45.150]  It seems like a rather bizarre way to do it.
[30:45.290 --> 30:47.390]  The person in the bunker might have wanted to do that.
[30:47.590 --> 30:50.370]  Medical facilities, facsimile machines.
[30:50.530 --> 30:51.470]  Okay, how do they know?
[30:51.590 --> 30:55.650]  I guess when it picks up that something gets triggered and it doesn't send it, or it doesn't try to send it.
[30:55.710 --> 30:57.090]  But didn't we hear about a service that could do?
[30:57.090 --> 31:01.710]  Yeah, allegedly Sprint can send to fax machines, but we didn't get a chance to test that.
[31:01.710 --> 31:06.250]  Well, I'm sure there's unlimited, unlisted numbers, numbers outside the 50 U.S.
[31:06.390 --> 31:10.870]  states, which means not Canada, and other prohibited destinations.
[31:11.450 --> 31:12.370]  Who knows?
[31:15.250 --> 31:24.150]  The fax thing, aren't there phone-to-fax services where you can text to a computer, a website or something, and it goes to a fax?
[31:24.310 --> 31:25.970]  There used to be, at least several years ago.
[31:27.030 --> 31:29.190]  Yeah, well, it's confusing.
[31:29.210 --> 31:33.470]  And I think that's why people don't know what's going on, because of all these different companies doing it in different ways.
[31:33.630 --> 31:35.570]  But I was kind of surprised to find out about that.
[31:35.790 --> 31:37.570]  Is this something you have to pay extra for?
[31:37.990 --> 31:39.910]  You have to pay 25 cents for everyone that goes through.
[31:39.930 --> 31:40.490]  I know that much.
[31:40.510 --> 31:46.510]  So if I send a text message off my Verizon phone to somewhere, to a landline, it would work?
[31:47.450 --> 31:51.910]  It should, if it's a listed and they're not a convalescent center or something like that, yeah, it should go through.
[31:51.950 --> 31:52.390]  What about cuss words?
[31:52.910 --> 31:54.310]  I think, well, try it.
[31:54.450 --> 31:55.350]  Go crazy, try.
[31:55.450 --> 31:57.490]  I think cuss words will work.
[31:57.590 --> 31:58.770]  Should I call VAI?
[31:59.690 --> 32:00.890]  No, don't do that.
[32:01.610 --> 32:07.670]  The crummy thing is that it's not so easy to tell what numbers are landlines and what numbers are cell phone numbers now.
[32:07.690 --> 32:11.350]  So you're being charged based on whether it's a landline or a cell phone.
[32:11.570 --> 32:13.330]  And, you know, it's not so clear.
[32:13.470 --> 32:16.650]  So you might be charged 25 cents for one text message and nothing for another one.
[32:16.810 --> 32:17.050]  Bernie?
[32:18.070 --> 32:18.510]  Yes.
[32:19.130 --> 32:21.750]  I have a one caveat about this.
[32:21.870 --> 32:22.010]  Okay.
[32:22.050 --> 32:34.730]  If you happen to be a Sprint customer, a Sprint PCS customer, and you have an older phone, I have what's called a 2G phone instead of a 3G phone, second-generation versus third-generation phone.
[32:34.730 --> 32:37.970]  It's about, I don't know, about eight years old, seven, eight years old.
[32:37.970 --> 32:40.270]  They won't let you use this service.
[32:40.970 --> 32:41.730]  It's strange.
[32:41.730 --> 32:53.790]  I can send SMS messages to other SMS-capable phone numbers, but I can't send SMS to messages to landlines.
[32:54.010 --> 33:05.970]  And Sprint has not been able to explain to me why this doesn't work and why there's this strange conflict, why I can send them to any SMS-capable phone, but I can't send them to landlines.
[33:06.190 --> 33:10.870]  Tell them if they can't answer your question, maybe you'll ask the director of Homeland Security, maybe he'll answer the question.
[33:11.130 --> 33:12.110]  It's a network issue.
[33:12.230 --> 33:13.790]  It has nothing to do with the handset itself.
[33:13.910 --> 33:14.090]  Mm-hmm.
[33:14.190 --> 33:21.730]  So I'm just wondering why they're discriminating against me as being a classic phone owner, but they are.
[33:22.630 --> 33:22.990]  Kevin?
[33:23.130 --> 33:26.330]  I'm still missing the whole point of sending a text message to a landline.
[33:26.530 --> 33:28.290]  I mean, isn't it cheaper just to call the number?
[33:28.390 --> 33:30.370]  Yeah, I'm missing the whole point of text messages in the first place.
[33:30.490 --> 33:32.330]  They were fun at first, but now...
[33:32.330 --> 33:33.150]  You use them more than anyone.
[33:33.150 --> 33:34.010]  No, I don't, actually.
[33:34.170 --> 33:35.810]  They're annoying, they...
[33:35.810 --> 33:43.250]  What if you're trapped in a bunker with some guy who wants to molest you, and you don't want to wake him up, so you send a text message to someone like your mother?
[33:43.390 --> 33:45.650]  You can't message the emergency operator.
[33:45.790 --> 33:46.630]  You send it to your mother.
[33:47.070 --> 33:47.750]  Hi, Mom.
[33:48.330 --> 33:49.210]  I'm in a bunker.
[33:49.450 --> 33:52.290]  Yeah, that must be a great message to get with a digitized computer voice.
[33:53.130 --> 33:57.150]  Um, okay, so, um, why are you handing me a phone?
[33:58.270 --> 33:58.670]  Okay.
[33:58.970 --> 34:00.170]  I don't know what you want me to do.
[34:00.170 --> 34:01.150]  Read it.
[34:01.490 --> 34:02.430]  Uh, okay.
[34:04.150 --> 34:05.470]  Why would I read that?
[34:05.690 --> 34:07.670]  You're giving out secret numbers when I'm supposed to give out.
[34:07.850 --> 34:08.890]  Well, it says it's a landline.
[34:09.230 --> 34:10.710]  Okay, whatever.
[34:11.050 --> 34:11.570]  All right.
[34:11.830 --> 34:12.970]  Let's talk about this after the show.
[34:13.030 --> 34:13.870]  I don't know what you're trying to do.
[34:14.370 --> 34:19.630]  Um, we have, um, we have, uh, this update on the Steve Rambam situation.
[34:20.090 --> 34:30.870]  Uh, New York private investigator who was the inspiration for Kinky Friedman's mystery novels appeared in a federal court in California on charges of trying to intimidate a government informant by impersonating an FBI agent.
[34:30.990 --> 34:33.310]  And he was on our show and it was almost at our conference.
[34:33.510 --> 34:48.610]  Uh, in an initial court appearance last Wednesday, Steve Rambam, who is a fictional alter ego, Rambam appears in Friedman novels, such as the love song of J Edgar Hoover, was released on $25,000 bond, uh, and scheduled to be arraigned on October 23rd.
[34:48.710 --> 34:58.790]  He was charged with impersonating a federal officer in an attempt to intimidate the family of a confidential government informant in Rosemead, California on April 21st, according to court documents.
[34:59.410 --> 35:09.210]  Um, and, um, according to an affidavit filed by the FBI, Rambam flashed what appeared to be an official government identification to the family and later introduced himself as an FBI agent.
[35:09.490 --> 35:13.990]  Uh, according to, uh, his attorney, Jeff Rutherford, Steve Rambam is absolutely not guilty.
[35:14.170 --> 35:17.430]  He will fight this charge at every stage and intends to be exonerated.
[35:17.650 --> 35:24.250]  Um, he and the FBI have, uh, uh, Kinky Friedman said he and the FBI have not been on good terms for many years.
[35:24.630 --> 35:28.270]  They play a cat and mouse game, uh, that he will win this case.
[35:28.270 --> 35:31.530]  He's a good guy who works very unconventionally, sometimes on both sides of the law.
[35:32.170 --> 35:34.210]  I'm not sure what he means by that exactly.
[35:34.370 --> 35:37.670]  That's not the sort of thing you want to say about someone who's just been charged with a crime.
[35:37.930 --> 35:38.050]  No.
[35:38.050 --> 35:39.390]  Works on both sides of the law.
[35:40.050 --> 35:40.710]  That's something.
[35:40.810 --> 35:42.910]  But here's, here's the thing that really gets me about this story.
[35:43.190 --> 35:45.990]  And of course, Steve will be up here again, I'm sure to talk about this.
[35:46.390 --> 35:52.390]  But, uh, Steve Rambam was arrested July 24th at a hotel in New York as he was about to give a lecture at a computer hacking conference.
[35:52.390 --> 35:54.390]  There was our conference, the hope number six conference.
[35:54.910 --> 35:59.910]  The FBI handcuffed him and led him away in front of a stunned audience There was no stunned audience.
[36:00.130 --> 36:02.970]  They did it on a, on a different floor with much fewer people.
[36:03.090 --> 36:04.490]  We didn't know about it till after it happened.
[36:04.590 --> 36:07.910]  But somehow, somebody wrote stunned audience when this first happened.
[36:08.030 --> 36:09.670]  And that's become part of history now.
[36:09.950 --> 36:12.150]  The audience was stunned when they found out about it later.
[36:12.610 --> 36:15.490]  Uh, yeah, but he wasn't led away in front of the stunned audience.
[36:15.590 --> 36:15.970]  Oh, well.
[36:16.030 --> 36:19.530]  They just have to use the word stunned in there somewhere and make a- I was stunned.
[36:19.710 --> 36:21.790]  I was, I was more shocked than stunned.
[36:22.070 --> 36:22.190]  All right.
[36:22.430 --> 36:24.350]  But- Maybe you should tell them they should get their facts straight.
[36:24.550 --> 36:25.030]  I was odd.
[36:25.030 --> 36:26.250]  It's the Associated Press.
[36:26.630 --> 36:28.410]  They know more about it than I do now.
[36:30.190 --> 36:31.750]  It's, it's the word of, of gospel.
[36:32.670 --> 36:33.430]  Um, okay.
[36:33.650 --> 36:35.890]  So, uh, that's, that's the latest on that.
[36:36.130 --> 36:39.930]  And, uh, we'll keep you updated, of course, as, uh, as we learn more.
[36:40.490 --> 36:43.430]  Um, just a quick note about the, the Rambam talk.
[36:43.770 --> 36:46.770]  I don't want to give any specific details to get people's hopes up.
[36:47.130 --> 36:51.270]  But, uh, tentatively, it will happen, uh, in the middle of October.
[36:51.930 --> 36:58.810]  Okay, this is, this is the, uh, the panel that was not able to proceed normally because he was taken away in handcuffs in front of a stunned couple of people.
[36:58.930 --> 36:59.290]  Exactly.
[36:59.630 --> 37:07.430]  And, uh, and, uh, we're gonna try and set that up for another place in the New York metro area for free so people can see that.
[37:07.470 --> 37:07.610]  Right.
[37:08.250 --> 37:08.770]  Okay, good.
[37:09.930 --> 37:11.970]  Um, we have some, uh, bits of email.
[37:11.970 --> 37:27.350]  Uh, of course, you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com, uh, or you can send us regular snail mail at off the hook, uh, care of WBAI, 120 Wall Street, 10th floor, New York, New York.
[37:27.950 --> 37:30.030]  One zero zero zero five.
[37:30.130 --> 37:31.110]  That's what happens when you daydream.
[37:33.810 --> 37:37.650]  Um, here's, here's some, uh, here's some mail that we've gotten over the past week.
[37:37.650 --> 37:45.230]  I'm writing this as one of the callers was talking about transmitting a message on a certain frequency to get anyone listening to any radio station to hear what they have to say.
[37:45.390 --> 37:48.050]  It reminded me of this thing that happened to me about a year ago.
[37:48.310 --> 37:50.090]  Uh, maybe you'd be interested in hearing about it.
[37:50.110 --> 37:54.690]  I was on my way to work one day listening to a CD I had in my CD player in my car.
[37:54.930 --> 37:58.290]  All of a sudden from my speakers came someone talking.
[37:58.290 --> 38:02.950]  I had no idea what they were saying as it wasn't that clear, but it also didn't last that long.
[38:03.190 --> 38:08.570]  As it ended and my music resumed, I noticed a black van with a large antenna on it zoomed by me.
[38:08.770 --> 38:14.930]  Could it have originated from the van, possibly with some random college kids playing a joke on everyone in the highway?
[38:15.150 --> 38:18.670]  Uh, if so, how would that have been accomplished and with what technology?
[38:18.810 --> 38:20.370]  Does anybody care to, uh, answer this?
[38:20.770 --> 38:21.210]  Yes.
[38:22.210 --> 38:22.850]  Go ahead.
[38:23.610 --> 38:27.230]  Oh, um, yes, it was coming from, it was coming from the black van.
[38:27.410 --> 38:29.850]  And two, it was probably not college kids, uh, playing a prank.
[38:29.850 --> 38:49.170]  It was probably, almost certainly, uh, one of these illegal TB operators with, uh, with, uh, a really high power, uh, dirty, uh, amplifier, but it's really poorly designed and emits all kinds of spurious emissions, uh, that are likely to, uh, uh, work their way into any kind of audio circuit that's near them,
[38:49.490 --> 38:54.250]  like a CD player or a radio or any kind of stereo audio consumer.
[38:54.470 --> 38:57.790]  Even an iPod, it could probably invade and just get into the audio circuit.
[38:57.790 --> 39:06.590]  These, these, these illegal TV amplifiers that, that amplify a five watt signal to hundreds of watts are, are so poorly designed sometimes because they're illegal.
[39:07.270 --> 39:14.290]  Um, they just emit all kinds of RF, uh, noise and spurious emissions, and they're likely to be picked up by anything, including toasters.
[39:14.570 --> 39:30.990]  My favorite story of this happening is, uh, when these amplifiers were more popular back in the 70s and early 80s, um, uh, truckers going by churches would be, uh, using these amplifiers and, you know, transmitting hundreds of illegally powered, uh, signals,
[39:31.250 --> 39:33.310]  and they'd be picked up by church PA systems.
[39:33.710 --> 39:46.850]  So, you, some of these off-collar truckers' comments would be broadcast to, uh, to the congregation of churches if they were driving by, and it caused a lot of consternation, and, you know, people didn't know where these voices were coming from, some far away,
[39:46.910 --> 39:48.930]  heavenly, weird thing.
[39:49.910 --> 39:57.590]  Anyway, I, I want to differentiate this from, uh, what we were talking about last week, which was the IF stuff, uh, transmitting on the IF frequency.
[39:57.750 --> 40:03.690]  Now, what Bernie's referring to is these incredibly high-powered transmitters, uh, that are actually interfering with the audio stage.
[40:03.690 --> 40:06.390]  And this doesn't require you to be listening to the radio for this to work.
[40:06.490 --> 40:13.810]  It could just, it just literally overloads the audio stage, and the AM modulation is rectified, and yada, yada, you hear over the speakers or the headphones or whatever.
[40:14.030 --> 40:22.450]  And what we were referring to last week, which we got some feedback on as well, was transmitting on the frequency that the radio, uh, the radio's IF uses.
[40:22.730 --> 40:26.190]  And I'll, I'll explain what the IF is, I think that's why you're raising your hand.
[40:26.630 --> 40:37.090]  Um, so all, all the circuitry that are, that's in, uh, your radio, any commercial radio, uh, receiver, I'm sorry, works at an IF frequency.
[40:37.270 --> 40:43.650]  So, basically, you, you take all the circuitry, and you design it to work really well around this one frequency, which is the intermediate frequency.
[40:43.970 --> 40:51.670]  And a separate stage, uh, closer to the front end of the radio takes the frequency that you're, that you want to listen to.
[40:51.810 --> 40:58.730]  So, for instance, BAI would be 99.5, mixes that with another frequency, and, and basically down converts it to the IF frequency.
[40:58.950 --> 41:06.350]  So that it, it works within, uh, the constraints of the circuitry that you designed, you know, to work at the IF frequency.
[41:06.350 --> 41:08.130]  So, hopefully, that's a decent explanation.
[41:08.370 --> 41:10.550]  But basically, you can really mess things up by...
[41:10.550 --> 41:11.470]  To clarify what's going on.
[41:11.590 --> 41:15.710]  So, anyway, so, so there's no, there's really no filtering at the IF frequency.
[41:15.910 --> 41:20.810]  There's filtering to prevent image frequencies and, and all this other stuff from, from mixing in as well.
[41:20.950 --> 41:27.110]  But you can't filter out the IF frequency because that's where your signal is, and that's the signal that you're trying to demodulate.
[41:27.310 --> 41:31.150]  So, so what we were playing with is, is transmitting at the IF frequency.
[41:31.390 --> 41:33.930]  And we got some feedback from, uh, film crews.
[41:34.430 --> 41:38.870]  I thought you might be interested in knowing that I tried the 10.8 megahertz experiment, and it did not work for me.
[41:39.010 --> 41:42.470]  I have an HF transceiver that can output nicely on 10.8 megahertz.
[41:42.630 --> 41:47.890]  I've tested with several conventional FM radios that were here in the house, tuned up and down the FM band with no luck whatsoever.
[41:48.210 --> 41:53.210]  I even tested reception with a real cheap radio figuring it had really poor filters, but still nothing at all.
[41:53.490 --> 41:55.990]  Even in between stations where there was nothing but static.
[41:56.830 --> 42:01.890]  I've tried pushing out an audio, uh, audible test carrier on both wide and narrow bandwidth at that same frequency.
[42:02.090 --> 42:08.250]  I've also checked my output from the HF rig with another receiver that was tuned to 10.8 megahertz to make sure I was indeed getting out, and I was.
[42:08.690 --> 42:13.030]  And, uh, actually a couple of hours before he emailed, I was, I was playing with the same thing.
[42:13.770 --> 42:17.330]  And, um, my setup was actually using, uh, a ham radio.
[42:17.670 --> 42:25.530]  And I was transmitting, uh, on 10.8 megahertz as well, using, uh, using only 5 watts and a very inefficient antenna.
[42:25.730 --> 42:28.690]  I was pretty confident that I wasn't going to be interfering with anyone.
[42:29.110 --> 42:34.810]  And, uh, so I was pushing 5 watts into this relatively inefficient antenna that I had tuned up, uh, for that frequency.
[42:35.270 --> 42:42.850]  And, uh, tuning around on the transmitter, I was actually able to overload the signal of another, uh, ham radio rig that I had tuned to the FM broadcast band.
[42:43.270 --> 42:46.670]  And, uh, also on my iRiver and another FM receiver that I was using.
[42:47.030 --> 42:50.410]  And, uh, interestingly enough, the IF frequencies aren't always the same.
[42:50.510 --> 42:52.050]  So it's not always 10.8 megahertz.
[42:52.170 --> 42:53.610]  I had one radio that was on 10.8.
[42:53.770 --> 42:57.050]  I had another one that was on 10.51, which is kind of strange.
[42:57.050 --> 42:59.250]  And, uh, another one that was on 10.7.
[42:59.410 --> 43:00.650]  So it's, it's not so straightforward.
[43:00.810 --> 43:03.330]  And, and I responded to him mentioning that.
[43:03.490 --> 43:06.090]  And, uh, he tried the same thing and it worked.
[43:06.230 --> 43:07.530]  So it's definitely possible.
[43:07.670 --> 43:11.170]  The sort of range that I got with 5 watts was only a couple of feet away from the transmitter.
[43:11.510 --> 43:17.750]  But, um, I'd assume that if you pushed, you know, 50 to 100 watts or something into a, into a resonant antenna, you could probably get pretty far.
[43:17.770 --> 43:19.230]  And stuck it on top of an apartment building or something.
[43:19.350 --> 43:19.910]  Stuck it somewhere, yeah.
[43:20.090 --> 43:24.730]  But keep in mind that, you know, you're subject to any prosecution for doing this because it's not a legal transmission.
[43:24.730 --> 43:26.330]  For talking about it, you're not though.
[43:26.650 --> 43:26.710]  No.
[43:26.710 --> 43:28.090]  And we're trying to learn how the whole thing works.
[43:28.290 --> 43:32.610]  And we are at a radio station, so it's not really to our advantage for people that know how to do this.
[43:32.770 --> 43:36.150]  So, uh, you know, I think it's, I think it's of interest to spread the knowledge.
[43:36.390 --> 43:37.410]  Well, Emmanuel, briefly?
[43:37.690 --> 43:38.190]  Very briefly.
[43:38.430 --> 43:41.570]  I just wanted to, yeah, very, I just want to mention that I did some research on this.
[43:41.730 --> 43:51.310]  And there are two commercial systems, uh, that are sold to, uh, military agencies, uh, specifically special forces, PSYOPs, uh, uh, teams.
[43:51.310 --> 43:58.030]  They're specifically designed to transmit, uh, radio signals on IF frequencies around 10.8 megahertz.
[43:58.270 --> 44:00.550]  So these are designed for, uh, U.S.
[44:00.650 --> 44:07.010]  military to go in a particular, uh, theater of operation, typically, uh, I guess, uh, like a metropolitan area.
[44:07.230 --> 44:20.010]  And they can actually transmit, uh, so that all, all FM radios in the, in the town will be picking up, uh, the propaganda or a message like, oh, now we are in control or whatever they want to say.
[44:20.130 --> 44:25.610]  Well, is this perhaps what the Midtown Tunnel uses to tell you about construction going on, on, uh, on the weekend or something?
[44:25.750 --> 44:36.390]  I, I looked into this actually, and if you tune around in the tunnels, you'll notice that there's actually no transmission occurring when you're tuned to, uh, for, for instance, a station that's not a local New York station.
[44:36.630 --> 44:46.150]  So what it, what they seem to be doing is taking their repeater circuitry because the tunnels have repeaters for, uh, the FM stations that are broadcast locally and just over, overwriting that signal.
[44:46.250 --> 44:48.150]  They're not actually broadcasting at the IF.
[44:48.150 --> 44:53.790]  So usually they just simulcast the signal somehow, they, and, and then when they want to say something on top of it, both AM and FM.
[44:53.950 --> 44:54.050]  Right.
[44:54.170 --> 44:56.390]  They simply just blast through with their, with their message.
[44:56.950 --> 45:16.450]  I was, I was gonna say that we also had a similar problem with this, with ham radios, uh, in Atlanta, uh, on the 220 megahertz band, um, and there was a certain country station, and if it, I think it was a Ford, it might've been Chevy, factory radio, and they were tuned to this one certain country station,
[45:16.470 --> 45:18.810]  then they would come out on, on our ham radio.
[45:19.030 --> 45:22.450]  But then when you get 15 or 20 feet away from them, it would go away.
[45:22.570 --> 45:23.730]  And it was the same thing.
[45:23.830 --> 45:29.050]  It's the mix of the IF within, feeding back into the antenna, and all these other things are going on.
[45:29.390 --> 45:37.530]  And just the, the wonderful world of radio frequencies, I mean, you might not even be able to tell exactly how it's getting in there.
[45:37.630 --> 45:51.850]  I mean, it might be, you know, in the audio circuitry, it could be in the, in the, um, the IF, or it could just be a really poorly designed circuit that's just hearing everything that it hears.
[45:53.490 --> 46:00.110]  I mean, there's, there's a lot of stages where, you know, potentially you can, you can get a lot of interference.
[46:00.290 --> 46:03.050]  So it's, it's pretty interesting anyway, when you want to make it work to your advantage.
[46:03.270 --> 46:09.410]  It's, it's kind of interesting that most ham spend a lot of time trying to keep, from causing interference.
[46:10.350 --> 46:11.650]  We're not trying to interfere.
[46:11.910 --> 46:13.670]  We're just trying to explain what can possibly be.
[46:13.670 --> 46:16.850]  Well, the best way to keep from, uh, interfering with things is to understand how it works.
[46:17.250 --> 46:17.590]  Yes.
[46:17.590 --> 46:18.570]  That's what we're all about here.
[46:18.610 --> 46:25.550]  I mean, it all comes down to better shielding of the innards of your radio and television equipment is, is really part of the problem.
[46:25.730 --> 46:32.930]  I mean, the, the degradation and the quality, uh, to make it one third of a cent cheaper, uh, product.
[46:33.230 --> 46:34.490]  One third of a cent cheaper?
[46:34.730 --> 46:34.810]  Yeah.
[46:35.390 --> 46:36.090]  It adds up.
[46:36.590 --> 46:39.250]  Uh, 212, two zero nine, two nine hundred is our telephone number.
[46:39.430 --> 46:43.710]  If, uh, this, uh, story from the UK about other things that are talking that maybe shouldn't be.
[46:43.850 --> 46:44.130]  Okay.
[46:44.250 --> 46:45.410]  But let me finish my sentence.
[46:45.410 --> 46:49.690]  If people would like to call us and be on the air, uh, 212, two zero nine, two nine hundred.
[46:49.810 --> 46:49.990]  Go ahead.
[46:50.430 --> 46:57.550]  There's, uh, closed circuit television cameras in this place called the Middlesbrough town center, which are talking.
[46:58.170 --> 47:03.830]  Seven cameras have a facility which allows operators to bark orders at those involved in antisocial behavior.
[47:04.030 --> 47:04.870]  This is nothing new.
[47:04.950 --> 47:06.250]  We talked about this 10 years ago.
[47:06.970 --> 47:07.890]  Well, I did anyway.
[47:08.250 --> 47:09.830]  There's a camera at Piccadilly circus.
[47:10.010 --> 47:10.130]  All right.
[47:10.190 --> 47:15.570]  If you stand up on a statue where the fountain, a voice will bark out at you telling you not to do that from a camera.
[47:15.830 --> 47:16.710]  Why would they do that?
[47:17.030 --> 47:18.790]  Because they don't want you jumping up on fountains.
[47:18.890 --> 47:21.170]  This is terrible technology is the point I was getting at.
[47:21.230 --> 47:22.670]  And in England, in England, they've had this.
[47:22.730 --> 47:23.350]  This is England, right?
[47:23.630 --> 47:25.830]  It's, it was reported as news by BBC.
[47:26.010 --> 47:27.950]  It says BBC news, not BBC stuff.
[47:28.110 --> 47:28.750]  They do all the time.
[47:30.870 --> 47:32.410]  It's stuff they do all the time in England.
[47:32.610 --> 47:33.890]  Look, the whole Teletubby culture.
[47:34.270 --> 47:36.930]  It's, uh, loudspeakers coming up out of the ground talking to you.
[47:37.010 --> 47:38.950]  That's, that's what England is all about these days.
[47:39.970 --> 47:40.550]  Uh, okay.
[47:41.690 --> 47:43.150]  Shall we, um, take a couple of phone calls?
[47:43.210 --> 47:44.370]  Let me read one more, one or two more letters.
[47:44.610 --> 47:49.130]  Uh, on the recent, uh, episode of Off the Hook, what was the name and artist of the song you closed the show with?
[47:49.270 --> 47:50.550]  Uh, someone saying it was David Bowie.
[47:50.610 --> 47:51.170]  That was last week.
[47:51.170 --> 47:51.390]  Yes.
[47:51.530 --> 47:56.050]  That was a song called Battle for Britain, uh, from the album called Earthling.
[47:56.330 --> 48:01.070]  We get a lot of, uh, people writing in asking us various, uh, various pieces we played.
[48:01.150 --> 48:02.130]  In fact, here's one that's interesting.
[48:02.330 --> 48:12.950]  I've been listening to some old shows and on your February 2nd, 1999 episode, about eight minutes and 40, uh, 40 seconds in, some ominous sounding music started and played for several minutes.
[48:13.310 --> 48:14.470]  Can you tell me what it was?
[48:14.610 --> 48:15.130]  Signed, Brett.
[48:15.490 --> 48:17.990]  Well, that's a tall order, Brett, but we're going to try it.
[48:18.070 --> 48:20.170]  We're going to try it because we have access to the internet right here.
[48:20.790 --> 48:25.030]  And, uh, what I can do is I can go online and I can find that show.
[48:25.210 --> 48:25.950]  What did you say it was?
[48:26.030 --> 48:27.410]  Uh, February 2nd, 1999.
[48:28.190 --> 48:29.710]  Uh, I'm clicking on February.
[48:30.710 --> 48:33.650]  I've submitted my request and the machine is hanging.
[48:33.950 --> 48:34.450]  Uh, okay.
[48:34.630 --> 48:35.010]  You know what?
[48:35.010 --> 48:37.790]  We're going to get back to you on this because we can't seem to connect for some reason.
[48:38.630 --> 48:40.490]  Um, look, it's just sitting there.
[48:40.590 --> 48:41.150]  It's not my fault.
[48:41.270 --> 48:42.410]  I clicked the right button and everything.
[48:42.550 --> 48:47.550]  The point is that you can access the old shows on the internet and yeah, you know, why not?
[48:47.670 --> 48:47.810]  Yeah.
[48:48.870 --> 48:53.410]  Obviously you can access it, but if someone can, uh, can get to that and let us know what we played, we'd sure like to know.
[48:53.670 --> 48:54.050]  All right.
[48:54.130 --> 48:56.210]  2 and 2, 2 0 9, 2 900.
[48:56.690 --> 48:57.110]  Good evening.
[48:57.250 --> 48:57.650]  You're on the air.
[48:58.610 --> 48:59.310]  Speak up, please.
[48:59.950 --> 49:00.210]  Hello.
[49:00.470 --> 49:00.890]  Yes, go ahead.
[49:01.310 --> 49:03.210]  Uh, just a couple of things.
[49:03.510 --> 49:09.910]  Um, I have been a listener for a long time and I don't usually get to, uh, listen to the shows live.
[49:10.110 --> 49:10.950]  So that was nice.
[49:11.610 --> 49:19.770]  Uh, also, I wanted to comment, uh, is it permissible to, I guess, redistribute would be the correct word.
[49:20.010 --> 49:21.770]  The, uh, videos from hope.
[49:22.010 --> 49:22.710]  Uh, sure.
[49:22.910 --> 49:23.070]  Yeah.
[49:23.190 --> 49:27.050]  Uh, just don't sell them, but file sharing network.
[49:27.250 --> 49:27.370]  Yeah.
[49:27.390 --> 49:29.730]  If you can stick them on a file sharing network, we see, we can't do that.
[49:29.810 --> 49:34.310]  We can't even put the high, high bandwidth versions of the audio up because we just don't have enough bandwidth.
[49:34.470 --> 49:40.710]  But, uh, uh, yeah, anything from the conference is, is certainly, uh, something that we'd like to get out there, both video and audio.
[49:41.090 --> 49:44.750]  Uh, but yeah, put it up on a file sharing network so people can download it.
[49:44.830 --> 49:51.510]  But also, uh, if, if you want, uh, want to have the actual DVDs, please buy them as well, because that's what makes it all possible.
[49:51.750 --> 49:54.750]  If nobody buys them, then we can't, uh, continue having conferences and things.
[49:54.870 --> 49:57.550]  But, uh, yeah, you are encouraged to, to, to spread it around.
[49:57.750 --> 49:58.030]  Right.
[49:58.030 --> 49:59.730]  I do have the actual DVDs.
[49:59.830 --> 50:05.230]  What I was asking about was me distributing, distributing them on a file sharing network.
[50:05.450 --> 50:05.570]  Yeah.
[50:05.770 --> 50:07.050]  I don't see any problem with that.
[50:07.610 --> 50:08.010]  Great.
[50:08.250 --> 50:08.430]  All right.
[50:08.490 --> 50:08.750]  Thanks.
[50:08.750 --> 50:09.590]  Uh, thanks for your call.
[50:09.990 --> 50:14.130]  And again, I should point out the, uh, the hope videos are all available in record time.
[50:14.230 --> 50:16.870]  We got them, uh, we got them all completely, uh, finished.
[50:17.030 --> 50:25.930]  And also the, uh, the leftover hope, uh, hope number six t-shirts have finally been found in boxes and we, uh, we are offering them for people too.
[50:26.490 --> 50:33.990]  Uh, if you want information on that, go to, uh, store.2600.com and just look around for t-shirts and, and videos and things like that.
[50:34.090 --> 50:35.550]  And you'll find all kinds of fun things.
[50:36.330 --> 50:37.090]  Uh, okay.
[50:37.170 --> 50:38.670]  Let's see if we can squeeze in one or two more.
[50:38.810 --> 50:39.250]  Good evening.
[50:39.350 --> 50:39.710]  You're on the air.
[50:41.050 --> 50:41.450]  Hello.
[50:41.710 --> 50:41.830]  Yeah.
[50:41.910 --> 50:42.230]  Speak up.
[50:42.990 --> 50:43.150]  Yeah.
[50:43.290 --> 50:47.130]  I had a quick question, uh, concerning accessing a corporate network remotely.
[50:47.390 --> 50:47.650]  Okay.
[50:47.910 --> 50:58.790]  If I'm using, um, I'm actually using cable to connect to a corporate network, but I have an additional PC that I'm sometimes surfing with, uh, simultaneously.
[50:59.110 --> 51:01.050]  Is there any way for them to see the traffic?
[51:02.510 --> 51:06.270]  Well, are you using the same PC that you're connected to, uh, that you use the VPN?
[51:06.430 --> 51:06.450]  No.
[51:06.730 --> 51:07.810]  They're two different PCs.
[51:07.830 --> 51:08.090]  Okay.
[51:08.090 --> 51:17.250]  It's connected through the VPN and then there's another one that's just connected up to the cable network, but they both access via that common... Right.
[51:17.390 --> 51:18.610]  Then, then the short answer is no.
[51:18.930 --> 51:27.670]  Um, if, if you're using the same machine that you have, uh, the VPN connection on, generally speaking, it'll change your internet gateway so that all your traffic goes through your corporate network.
[51:28.030 --> 51:35.650]  And so any web browsing that you would do on that machine would be, uh, logable and viewable by the IT staff at whatever company you work for.
[51:35.750 --> 51:38.370]  But if you're using a different machine on the same connection, I wouldn't worry about it.
[51:39.090 --> 51:39.450]  Okay.
[51:39.770 --> 51:40.110]  All right.
[51:40.290 --> 51:41.330]  Thanks, uh, thanks for your call.
[51:41.850 --> 51:42.410]  Let's go up here.
[51:42.550 --> 51:42.810]  Good evening.
[51:42.930 --> 51:43.250]  You're on the air.
[51:44.330 --> 51:44.550]  Hello?
[51:44.790 --> 51:44.970]  Yes.
[51:45.010 --> 51:45.250]  Go ahead.
[51:45.410 --> 51:45.650]  Yes.
[51:45.730 --> 51:50.910]  I wanted to ask you what you think about the RFID chip that they're putting in passports now?
[51:51.910 --> 51:57.510]  Well, we've, we've talked about, uh, the RFID technology coming to, uh, passports around us, uh, over the last few weeks.
[51:57.730 --> 51:59.530]  Uh, they're now issuing them, right?
[51:59.710 --> 51:59.890]  Yeah.
[51:59.930 --> 52:00.170]  I don't know.
[52:00.210 --> 52:02.650]  I have to renew my passport, so maybe I'll get my hands on one soon.
[52:02.930 --> 52:03.170]  Yeah.
[52:03.390 --> 52:05.270]  Well, do you, do you have one, caller?
[52:05.750 --> 52:13.270]  Uh, I don't have one yet, but I have to renew my passport and, um, I'm getting a little anxious about having this thing in there.
[52:13.550 --> 52:13.770]  Mm-hmm.
[52:14.010 --> 52:19.210]  Well, you, you can shield your passport and what a lot of people are doing is simply using aluminum foil to store it.
[52:19.310 --> 52:29.030]  If, if you have to carry it around, uh, there are other, you know, there are people who make wallets, for instance, that have, uh, shielding built in, but you can't read it really much further than a couple of feet away.
[52:29.210 --> 52:31.430]  And then with the shielding, it becomes much, much shorter than that.
[52:31.550 --> 52:34.690]  So if you, if you can shield it, that's your best, uh, bet.
[52:34.850 --> 52:36.690]  Does that address all your concerns about this?
[52:36.810 --> 52:36.810]  No.
[52:36.910 --> 52:42.890]  In an airport, you constantly, you can't be closing it and opening it, uh, with aluminum foil all the time.
[52:42.890 --> 52:44.950]  They're asking you for your passport all the time.
[52:45.130 --> 52:45.270]  Mm-hmm.
[52:45.290 --> 52:51.170]  So it's going to have to be, uh, pretty much out in the the plane.
[52:51.790 --> 52:54.910]  I'm just wondering, um, because you can easily break it.
[52:54.990 --> 52:58.530]  You can easily break that circuit by putting your passport in the microwave for a second.
[52:59.010 --> 53:00.890]  Um, I was wondering what would happen.
[53:01.590 --> 53:05.670]  So, uh, encourage anyone to break their RFID passport.
[53:05.950 --> 53:08.390]  I think they, they're considering making that a crime to do that.
[53:08.390 --> 53:09.570]  Well, what if you do it by mistake?
[53:10.070 --> 53:16.690]  I think it's the same as make, I think they consider it the same as making a modification to your passport, which would already be a crime.
[53:16.850 --> 53:17.010]  Yeah.
[53:17.370 --> 53:27.290]  I think that if you're that concerned about it, the thing to do would be to search on the web for RFID shielding passport wallet or something like that and, and get one.
[53:27.370 --> 53:34.610]  I mean... But like the caller said, you do have to have this thing freely available, not wrapped up in aluminum foil when you're going through international airports.
[53:34.710 --> 53:39.690]  And at that moment where you do present it to a passport officer, people around you can still read it, right?
[53:39.890 --> 53:41.090]  In a certain range.
[53:41.090 --> 53:41.110]  Yeah.
[53:41.110 --> 53:47.590]  But I mean, yeah, but somebody also could, could read what the contents are that you're showing to the passport officer.
[53:47.690 --> 53:48.130]  I mean...
[53:48.130 --> 53:50.710]  Well, they'd have to stick their face over your shoulder to do it though.
[53:50.910 --> 53:51.070]  Yeah.
[53:51.170 --> 53:57.950]  Well, there, there, there's a point where it becomes impractical and, and people can start using high resolution cameras and take a picture for instance, and then analyze it later.
[53:58.050 --> 54:01.670]  And that, you know, it's the same thing as having an RFID reader and all the same information is available.
[54:01.870 --> 54:06.390]  So at some point, yeah, you have to take the RFID passport out of your wallet, but...
[54:06.390 --> 54:12.090]  It just seems like a disturbing step because you know they're going to improve the range at some point and there's going to be more data stored.
[54:12.310 --> 54:16.910]  And it's just going to be a, a, a slippery slope all the way down this hill until we're all drowning.
[54:17.090 --> 54:17.450]  No, I agree.
[54:17.590 --> 54:20.610]  And the, and the technology isn't necessary for what they want to use it for anyway.
[54:20.850 --> 54:28.610]  And conventionally, like, you know, like I've mentioned before on shows, what they do is they read it with the readers that can read the magnetic ink that's printed on the bottom of your passport.
[54:28.610 --> 54:32.190]  And this is just something that they think will speed it up, but they have to look at it anyway.
[54:32.190 --> 54:42.310]  I saw something in a recent news article, I forget where it was exactly, but, uh, had to do with, um, with the government's desire to, to, uh, process lots of people very quickly.
[54:42.830 --> 54:48.430]  And I think, Bernie, I think you might've raised the point as to, uh, why do they need to process so many people so quickly?
[54:48.510 --> 54:49.790]  What are they really planning here?
[54:50.590 --> 54:58.750]  Whenever I ever hear a government agency saying they need to, uh, electronically process more people, uh, a lot faster, uh, that concerns me.
[54:59.270 --> 54:59.550]  Yeah.
[55:01.430 --> 55:10.430]  I mean, any, anyone who's entered the country knows that the time consuming step is not the like swiping of the passport through the machine to get the data.
[55:10.590 --> 55:13.870]  It's the like silly interrogation, uh, that follows.
[55:14.230 --> 55:18.930]  I think you're going to see them with a RFID reader when you exit the airplane at the door.
[55:19.170 --> 55:24.810]  And then they're going to say, Oh, we have Mr. Goldstein exiting the airplane today.
[55:24.910 --> 55:34.430]  Maybe we should, uh, be ready for him when we, uh, when we get down there, when he gets down or, or pull him aside on the way and, and surprise you or something like that.
[55:34.490 --> 55:38.030]  I mean, that, that's the type of thing that I think they're after.
[55:38.210 --> 55:38.210]  Yeah.
[55:38.210 --> 55:54.410]  But you see, when, when this is hailed as a, as a great success, which it inevitably will be by the people that created it, don't you think they're going to want to expand it and put it on driver's licenses and put it on credit cards and put it on your house keys and whatever else they can figure out where to put RFID tags and technology?
[55:55.090 --> 55:55.530]  It's already on keys.
[55:55.550 --> 55:56.770]  It's already in credit cards.
[55:56.970 --> 56:00.250]  So it's, you know, it's we're, we're already there is, is what I'm trying to say.
[56:00.370 --> 56:02.650]  And it's not on credit cards to that extent though.
[56:02.770 --> 56:08.430]  I mean... Oh, it's a, you know, I mean, most of the credit cards that you can get these days have RFID chips in them, or at least it's an option.
[56:08.590 --> 56:08.850]  Mhm.
[56:08.990 --> 56:11.110]  And um... I gotta tell you, I'm not impressed with that technology.
[56:11.230 --> 56:13.330]  I, I have one of those, I have one of the blink ones.
[56:13.330 --> 56:13.850]  They call it.
[56:14.350 --> 56:24.230]  It works at 7-eleven, and I'm always trying to use it at seven And the guy insists on taking my card and swiping it, which defeats the whole purpose of it, because the thing doesn't recognize it right away.
[56:24.630 --> 56:27.170]  MTA is doing something with, I believe, Citibank.
[56:27.670 --> 56:36.590]  We tried this, actually, where you can use your RFID technology from a Citibank card and get a MetroCard or get on the train that way.
[56:37.030 --> 56:39.650]  But the question is, what about your transfer?
[56:39.710 --> 56:40.350]  How do you get a transfer?
[56:40.450 --> 56:41.570]  Nobody seems to have an answer for that.
[56:41.570 --> 56:43.810]  There's an interesting thing about the RFIDs.
[56:43.850 --> 56:50.610]  Most of them work on Part 15 frequencies, which means that you could legally transmit there and interfere with it at a certain level.
[56:50.750 --> 56:52.090]  All right, we're going to have to leave it at that, unfortunately.
[56:53.770 --> 56:56.410]  All kinds of things to talk about, all kinds of things to think about.
[56:56.650 --> 56:59.230]  Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[56:59.710 --> 57:01.970]  We'll be back again next week with another exciting edition.
[57:02.130 --> 57:03.450]  Stay tuned for The Personal Computer Show.
[57:03.630 --> 57:03.950]  Good night.
[57:03.950 --> 57:06.170]  It
[57:21.230 --> 57:23.110]  looks like an accident.
[57:24.370 --> 57:26.770]  Caused by the government.
[57:27.910 --> 57:30.910]  Good people with good intent.
[57:32.170 --> 57:35.430]  Paving the highway down.
[57:36.010 --> 57:38.250]  It seeps into the water.
[57:39.350 --> 57:42.130]  Where the bad side is burning.
[57:43.010 --> 57:46.330]  And it's not the way they lead us.
[57:46.930 --> 57:49.710]  It's in the act of the turning.
[57:51.110 --> 57:54.150]  The way things are geared here.
[57:54.970 --> 57:57.250]  The way it's all green.
[57:58.830 --> 58:01.370]  The names are named.
[58:02.710 --> 58:06.490]  And now they're all naming names.
[58:06.890 --> 58:09.570]  They're putting on human faces.
[58:10.030 --> 58:11.710]  There is no alternative.
[58:12.130 --> 58:13.630]  Carved in stone.
[58:14.350 --> 58:16.610]  And I want nothing.
[58:17.970 --> 58:20.730]  Is what I'm trained to believe in.
[58:22.310 --> 58:26.250]  But I can still dream of things .
[58:26.250 --> 58:26.250]  .
[58:26.250 --> 58:26.450]  .
[58:26.450 --> 58:27.150]  .
[58:27.150 --> 58:29.250]  That have never been .
[58:29.250 --> 58:29.490]  .
[58:29.490 --> 58:29.770]  .
[58:29.770 --> 58:30.050]  .
[58:30.050 --> 58:31.150]  But someday will be.
[58:33.790 --> 58:35.890]  Someday will be.
[58:41.450 --> 58:43.530]  Someday will be.
[58:44.850 --> 59:15.670]  It looks like an accident Caused by the government Good people with good intent Paving the highway down The way things are geared here The way it's all framed The names are named And now they're all naming names.
[59:15.990 --> 59:18.810]  They're pouring on human faces.
[59:19.110 --> 59:22.790]  Say there is no alternative to turn to stone.
[59:23.790 --> 59:25.890]  And I want nothing.
[59:26.870 --> 59:30.030]  It's what I'm trained to believe in.
[59:31.230 --> 59:38.110]  But I can still dream of things that I've never been.
[59:38.110 --> 59:40.530]  But someday we'll be.
[59:47.310 --> 01:00:01.190]  On Wednesday, September 20th, at 7 p.m., join Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Myra McPherson for a lively discussion with journalist Joe Connison of her book, All Governments Lie, The Life and Times of I.F.
[01:00:01.290 --> 01:00:01.590]  Stone.
[01:00:01.750 --> 01:00:02.130]  I.F.
[01:00:02.190 --> 01:00:08.990]  Stone taught journalists to doubt government propaganda, to dig for facts in documents, and to find whistleblowers who told the truth.
[01:00:08.990 --> 01:00:12.170]  This will be McPherson's only public appearance in New York City.
[01:00:12.350 --> 01:00:19.250]  The event is free and will take place at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street and Central Park West.
[01:00:19.290 --> 01:00:21.230]  A book signing will follow the event.
[01:00:21.430 --> 01:00:23.110]  That's Wednesday, September 20th.
[01:00:23.190 --> 01:00:24.690]  Doors open at 6 p.m.
[01:00:24.770 --> 01:00:26.210]  No reservations required.
[01:00:26.490 --> 01:00:32.230]  For further information, call 212-874-5210, extension 144.
[01:00:32.650 --> 01:00:37.270]  That's 212-874-5210, extension 144.
[01:00:38.190 --> 01:00:39.550]  Hello, we are Kinky.
[01:00:40.150 --> 01:00:41.850]  You're listening to WBAI.